The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes. Thomas MortonЧитать онлайн книгу.
it was a formidable one. It assumed the shape of a petition to the Privy Council, asking the Lords to inquire into the methods through which the royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay had been procured, and into the abuses which had been practised under it. Besides many injuries inflicted on individuals in their property and persons, the Company was also charged with seditious and rebellious designs, subversive alike of church and of state. The various allegations were based on the affidavits of three witnesses—Thomas Morton, Philip Ratcliff and Sir Christopher Gardiner. Behind these was the active and energetic influence of Gorges and Mason.[106]
It is not necessary in this connection to go into any detailed statement of the wrongs complained of by Ratcliff and Gardiner. They were of the same nature, though even more pronounced than those of Morton. The country had in fact been purged of all three of these individuals. The original document in which they set forth their cases, and made accusation against the magistrates, has unfortunately been lost. In referring to it afterwards Winthrop said that it contained “some truths misrepeated.”[107] Apart from severe judgments on alleged wrong-doers, including whipping, branding, mutilating, banishment and confiscation of property, the burden of the accusation lay in the disposition to throw off allegiance to the mother country, which was distinctly charged against the colony.
A harsh coloring was doubtless given in the petition to whatever could be alleged. So far as casting off their allegiance to the mother country was concerned, nothing can be more certain than that neither the leaders nor the common people of New England entertained at that time any thought of it; but it is quite equally certain that the leaders at least were deeply dissatisfied with the course public affairs were then taking in England. They were Puritans, and this was the period of the Star Chamber and the High Commission. No parliament had been called since 1629, and it was then publicly announced at Court that no more parliaments were to be called. There is no reason to suppose that the early settlers of Massachusetts were a peculiarly reticent race. On the contrary it is well known that they were much given to delivering themselves and bearing evidence on all occasions; and in doing so they unquestionably railed and declaimed quite freely against those then prominent in the council-chamber and among the bishops. That there was a latent spirit in New England ripe for rebellion was also, probably, asserted in the lost document. However Winthrop might deny it, and deny it honestly, this also was true; and subsequent events, both in Massachusetts and in England, showed it to be so. In the light of their sympathies and sufferings, Morton and Gardiner probably realized the drift of what they had heard said and seen done in New England a good deal better than Winthrop.
The result of the Morton-Gardiner petition was the appointment of a committee of twelve Lords of the Council, to whom the whole matter was referred for investigation and report. The committee was empowered to send for persons and papers and a long and apparently warm hearing ensued. The friends of the Company found it necessary to at once bestir themselves. Cradock, Saltonstall and Humfrey filed a written answer to the complaint, and subsequently, at the hearing, they received efficient aid from Emanuel Downing, Winthrop’s brother-in-law, and Thomas Wiggin, who lived at Piscataqua, but now most opportunely chanced to be in London.
At the Court of Charles I. everything was matter of influence or purchase. The founders of Massachusetts were men just abreast of their time, and not in advance of it. There is good ground on which to suspect that they did not hesitate to have recourse to the means then and there necessary to the attainment of their ends. It has never been explained, for instance, how the charter of 1629 was originally secured.[108] When Allerton, at the same time, tried to obtain a similar charter for the Plymouth colony, he found that he had to buy his way at every step, and Bradford complained bitterly of the “deale of money veainly and lavishly cast away.”[109] That the original patentees of Massachusetts bribed some courtier near the King, and through him bought their charter, is wholly probable. Every one bribed, and almost every one about the King took bribes. That the patentees had powerful influence at Court is certain; exactly where it lay is not apparent. The Earl of Warwick interested himself actively in their behalf. It was he who secured for them their patent from the Council for New England. But Warwick, though a powerful nobleman, was “a man in no grace at Court;” on the contrary, he was one of those “whom his Majesty had no esteem of, or ever purposed to trust.”[110] Winthrop says that in the Morton-Gardiner hearing his brother-in-law, Emanuel Downing, was especially serviceable.[111] Downing was a lawyer of the Inner Temple.[112] There is reason to suppose that he had access to influential persons—possibly Lord Dorchester may have been amongst them.[113] However this may be, whether by means of influence or bribery, the hearing before the Committee of the Privy Council was made to result disastrously for the complainants. Gorges took nothing by his motion. In due time the Committee reported against any interference with the Company at that time. Such grounds of complaint as did not admit of explanation they laid to the “faults or fancies of particular men,” and these, they declared, were “in due time to be inquired into.” King Charles himself also had evidently been labored with through the proper channels, and not without effect. Not only did he give his approval to the report of the Committee, but he went out of his way to further threaten with condign punishment those “who did abuse his governor and the plantation.”
Gorges’s carefully prepared attack had thus ended in complete failure. The danger, however, had been great, nor was its importance underestimated in Massachusetts. This clearly appears in Winthrop’s subsequent action; for when, four months later, in May, 1633, information of the final action of the Council reached him, he wrote a letter of grave jubilation to Governor Bradford, giving him the glad news, and inviting him to join “in a day of thanksgiving to our mercifull God, who, as he hath humbled us by his late correction, so he hath lifted us up, by an abundante rejoysing in our deliverance out of so desperate a danger.”[114]
Though badly defeated, and for the time being no doubt discouraged, Gorges and Morton were not disposed to desist from their efforts. As the latter expressed it, they had been too eager, and had “effected the business but superficially.”[115] They had also committed the serious mistake of underestimating the strength and influence of their antagonists. If Gorges, however, was at home anywhere, he was at home just where he had now received his crushing defeat—in the antechambers of the palace. All his life he had been working through Court influences. Through them, after the Essex insurrection, he had saved his neck from the block. If Court influence would have availed to secure it, in 1623 he would have pre-empted the whole territory about Boston Bay as the private domain of himself and his descendants. At Whitehall he was an enemy not lightly to be disregarded; and this Winthrop and his colleagues soon had cause to realize.
Thwarted by strong influences in one direction, Gorges went to work to secure stronger influences in another direction. He knew the ground, and his plan of operations was well conceived. To follow it out in detail is not possible. Here and there a fact appears; the rest is inference and surmise. The King was the objective point. Of him it is not necessary here to speak at length, for his character is too well understood. Dignified in his bearing, and in personal character purer than his times—a devout, well-intentioned man—Charles was a shallow, narrow-minded bigot, with a diseased belief in that divinity which doth hedge a king. He would have made an ideal, average English country gentleman. After the manner of small, obstinate men, he believed intensely in a few things. One was his own royal supremacy and his responsibility, not to his people but to his kingship. He was nothing of a statesman, and as a politician he was his own worst enemy. His idea of government was the Spanish one: the king had a prime-minister, and that prime-minister was the king’s other and second self. In Charles’s case Buckingham was at first prime-minister; and, when Buckingham was assassinated, he was in due time succeeded by Laud. Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, had not died until August 4, 1633, and a few days later Laud was appointed to succeed him. He thus became primate almost exactly eight months after the first attack on the charter. It was through him that Gorges now went to work to influence the King and to control the course of events in New England. His method can be explained in four words: Laud hated a Puritan.
At first the secret connection of Gorges and Morton with the events which now ensued is matter of pure surmise. There is no direct evidence of it in the records or narratives. At a later period it becomes more apparent. As