The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes. Thomas MortonЧитать онлайн книгу.
had to be provided in the first place. A large vessel was accordingly put upon the stocks. Rumor said, also, that the new governor-general was to take out with him a force of no less than one thousand soldiers.[133] Whether this was true or not, there can be little doubt that all through the winter of 1634–5 active preparations were on foot in England intended against the Massachusetts colony.
Besides watching these proceedings Winslow had other business in London which required his appearance before the Lords Commissioners. He had presented to them a petition on behalf of the two colonies for authority to resist certain Dutch and French encroachments. This proceeding Winthrop had not thought well advised,[134] as he very shrewdly argued that it implied an absence of authority without such special authorization, and might thus be drawn into a precedent. Winslow, however, had none the less submitted the petition, and several hearings were given upon it. Fully advised as to everything that was going on before the Lords Commissioners, Gorges did not favor this move. It authorized military or diplomatic action, the conduct of which by right belonged to him as governor-general of the region within which the action was to be taken. He accordingly went to work to circumvent Winslow. What ensued throws a great deal of light on Morton’s standing at the time, and the use that was made of him; and it also explains the significance of certain things in the New Canaan.
Laud, it will be remembered, was the head and moving spirit of the Lords Commissioners. His word was final in the Board. Upon him Gorges depended to work all his results; which included not only his own appointment as governor-general, with full power and authority as such, but also the necessary supply of men and money to enable him to establish his supremacy. To secure these ends it was necessary to play continually on the Primate’s dislike of the Puritans, and his intense zeal in behalf of all Church forms and ceremonies, including the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The whole political and historical significance of the New Canaan lies in this fact. It was a pamphlet designed to work a given effect in a particular quarter, and came very near being productive of lasting results. Dedicated in form to the Lords Commissioners, it was charged with attacks on the Separatists, and statements of the contempt shown by them to the Book of Common Prayer. Finally it contained one chapter on the church practices in New England, which was clearly designed for the special enlightenment of the Archbishop.[135] In this chapter it is set down as the first and fundamental tenet of the New England church “that it is the magistrate’s office absolutely, and not the minister’s, to join the people in lawful matrimony;” next, that to make use of a ring in marriage is a relic of popery; and then again “that the Book of Common Prayer is an idol; and all that use it idolaters.” It now remains to show how cunningly, when it came to questions of state, Laud was worked upon by these statements, and what a puppet he became in the hands of Gorges and Morton.
Winslow’s suit had prospered. He had submitted to the Lords Commissioners a plan for accomplishing the end desired without any charge being imposed on the royal exchequer, and he was on the point of receiving, as he supposed, a favorable decision. Suddenly the secret strings were pulled. Bradford best tells the story of what ensued.
“When Mr. Winslow should have had his suit granted, (as indeed upon the point it was,) and should have been confirmed, the Archbishop put a stop upon it, and Mr. Winslow, thinking to get it freed, went to the Board again. But the Bishop, Sir Ferdinando and Captain Mason had, as it seems, procured Morton to complain. To whose complaints Mr. Winslow made answer to the good satisfaction of the Board, who checked Morton, and rebuked him sharply, and also blamed Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Mason for countenancing him. But the Bishop had a further end and use of his presence, for he now began to question Mr. Winslow of many things, as of teaching in the church publicly, of which Morton accused him and gave evidence that he had seen and heard him do it; to which Mr. Winslow answered that sometimes (wanting a minister) he did exercise his gift to help the edification of his brethren, when they wanted better means, which was not often. Then about marriage, the which he also confessed, that, having been called to place of magistracy, he had sometimes married some. And further told their lordships that marriage was a civil thing, and he found nowhere in the word of God that it was tied to ministry. Again they were necessitated so to do, having for a long time together at first no minister; besides, it was no new thing, for he had been so married himself in Holland, by the magistrates in their Stadt-House. But in the end, to be short, for these things the Bishop, by vehement importunity, got the Board at last to consent to his commitment. So he was committed to the Fleet, and lay there seventeen weeks, or thereabout, before he could get to be released. And this was the end of this petition and this business; only the others’ design was also frustrated hereby, with other things concurring, which was no small blessing to people here.”[136]
For the time being, however, “the others’ design,” as Bradford describes Gorges’s scheme, so far from being frustrated, moved on most prosperously. All the friends and agents of the colony were now driven from the field. Cradock, Saltonstall and Humfrey had departed the council-chamber with “a pair of cold shoulders.” Winslow was a prisoner. Morton had demonstrated that his boast in the letter to Jeffreys, that he would make his opponents “sing clamavi in the Fleet,” was not an idle one. He had not exaggerated his power. Gorges’s course was now clear, and his plan developed rapidly. At a meeting of those still members of the Council for New England, held at Lord Gorges’s house on the 3d of February, 1635, the next step was taken. The redivision of the seacoast was agreed upon. It was now divided into eight parcels, instead of twenty as at the original abortive division of 1623; and these parcels were assigned to eight several persons, among whom were the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Earls of Arundel, Carlisle and Sterling. Arundel alone of these was one of the Lords Commissioners. Gorges received Maine as his portion; and Mason got New Hampshire and Cape Ann. Massachusetts, south of Salem, was assigned to Lord Gorges.
The division thus agreed on was to take effect simultaneously with the formal surrender by the Council of its great patent. Ten weeks later, on the 18th of April, at another meeting at Lord Gorges’s house, a paper was read and entered upon the records, in which the reasons for surrendering the patent were set forth. At a subsequent meeting on the 26th a petition to the King was approved, in which it was prayed that separate patents might be issued securing to the associates in severalty the domains they had assigned to each other. A declaration from the King was also then read, in which the royal intention of appointing Sir Ferdinando Gorges governor-general of New England was formally announced. Speaking by the mouth of the King, the Primate did not propose “to suffer such numbers of people to run to ruin, and to religious intents to languish, for want of timely remedy and sovereign assistance.” Curiously enough, also, this typically Laudian sentiment was enunciated at Whitehall the very day, the 26th of April, 1635, upon which, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Marblehead fishermen had brought in word of strange vessels hovering mysteriously upon the coast, causing the Governor and assistants to hurry to Boston and an alarm to be spread through all the towns.[137]
Before proceeding to eject the present occupants of the New England soil, or to force them to some compromise as an alternative thereto, it remained for the grantees of the now defunct Council to perfect their new titles. Proceedings to this end were not delayed. The division had been agreed upon on the 3d of February, and on the 26th of April the new patents had been petitioned for. Ten days later Thomas Morton was “entertained to be solicitor for confirmation of the said deeds under the great seal, as also to prosecute suit at law for the repealing of the patent belonging to the Massachusetts Company. And is to have for fee twenty shillings a term, and such further reward as those who are interested in the affairs of New England shall think him fit to deserve, upon the judgment given in the cause.” A month later, on the 7th of June, 1635, the formal surrender of its patent by the Council took place.[138]
Morton, however, was not destined to land at Boston in the train of Governor-general Gorges. The effort of 1634–5 was a mere repetition, on a larger and more impressive scale, of the effort of 1623. The latter had resulted in the abortive Robert Gorges expedition, and the former now set all the courts at Westminster in solemn action. Neither of them, however, came to anything. They both failed, also, from the same cause—want of money. The machinery in each case was imposing, and there was a great deal of it. Seen from New England it must have appeared simply overpowering. The King, the Primate, the Lords Commissioners, the Attorney General, the Court of King’s Bench,