FROM SUFFERING TO COMFORT

71

English stateliness. They trod brier-tangled forest paths, clad in ruffles, silk hose, long cloak, and cocked hat, and solemnly exchanged garments, in token of friendship, with painted savages who now and then stalked haughtily into the villages to dine with the chief men.

Slowly, too, the colony worked its way to a rude Progress to comfort. In 1670 a Boston schoolmaster, Ben- rude jamin Thompson, pictures for us how

"the dainty Indian maize

Was eat with clam shells out of wooden trays,
Under thatched huts without the cry of rent,
And the best sauce to every dish - Content."

comfort

From the first New England furnished a variety of employments. Every free man had his plot of ground, and the "gentlemen" soon tried soon tried not very successfully Varied

to farm large plantations with indentured serv- occupations ants. The stony soil forced the settlers at once to take up

THE CRADOCK HOUSE (1636) AT MEDFORD. This is the oldest brick house in the United States. With the exception of the porch it is in the same condition as in colonial times. Cradock was the first governor (president) of the Massachusetts Company in England. He never came to America, but he did try for a time to till some large grants of land there by bands of indentured servants. These grants were made him in recognition of his services in England.

other work also. Each family raised a few pigs, to supply the pork-barrel- and the straying and trespasses of these unruly brutes was an incessant source of annoyance and even of dissension. As soon as possible, men began also to breed cattle. The fisheries furnished some profitable export to England, to

at the

help pay for European
supplies; and from the
woods that reached to
their doors, the settlers
fashioned staves
staves and
clapboards both for
home use and for export.
Mills to grind grain ap-
peared here and there,
where streams provided
water power. And, in
the second year, New
England's famous ship-
building and coasting
trade began, when Win-
throp launched The
Blessing of the Bay-a
small schooner, which
traded for furs with the
Indians and with Eng-
lish settlements along
the coast, from the
Kennebec to the Con-
necticut. Very early
some primitive "iron

Lynn (Saugus) Iron Works in 1642. Note works" began to extract iron from the easily worked "bog" deposits,

the graceful lines. In 1648 the Lynn Iron Furnace turned out eight tons a week.

and to "cast" simple implements. In 1646 the Massachusetts General Court gave a patent to Joseph Jenks for certain improvements on the scythe which gave that tool its modern form. Brick kilns were among the early industries. The first saw-mill did not appear until 1663 at

DANGER OF ENGLISH INTERFERENCE

73

Salmon Falls in New Hampshire. Soon at many points such mills were turning the forest about them into rough lumber for export to England, while, at clearings remote from water power, the logs were burned into potash, or pearl ash. Potash in that day was indispensable in manufacturing woolen goods and glass and in making soap, and all through the colonial period large amounts were sent to Europe.

For a time, there was danger that England might interfere with the Massachusetts experiment. The colony's land, which had been bought from the New England Danger of Council in 1628, was part of a tract granted earlier English by that body to Gorges (p. 47). Probably the interference trouble came merely from ignorance of American geography. The Massachusetts charter of 1629 (from the King) strengthened the colony's title; and in 1631 the colonial government arrested two of Gorges' agents, and, after severe handling, shipped them back to England.

Gorges finally got the matter before the King's Council, and that body ordered the leaders of the original Massachusetts Company to produce the charter and explain these acts of the colonial government. When it was discovered that the charter was in America, a series of peremptory demands were sent to the authorities there for its return, and legal processes were begun in the English courts to overthrow it. Meantime, in 1635, the New England Council surrendered its charter, and Charles appointed Gorges "governor general" over all New England. Gorges began to build a ship and to get together troops.

The leaders in Massachusetts did not weaken. After consulting with the ministers, it was agreed, “that, if a general governor were sent, we ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions (if we are able); otherwise, to avoid or protract." At its next meeting the General Court voted a tax of 300 (many times larger than had before been known in the colony), and began a series of fortifications, not on the frontier against the Indians, but on the coast to resist an English ship. Bullets were made legal tender in

place of small coin; and a committee was appointed "to manage any war that may befall," with power to establish martial law. No one thought of sending back the charter. Quaint excuses were sent in plenty; and, when these wore thin, the royal orders were quietly ignored, and, at last, openly defied.

This policy of "protracting" won. Gorges' ship was ruined by an accident in launching, and he could not get money to build another or to keep his troops toVictory for Massa- gether. The King, economizing rigidly in the chusetts midst of the "ship-money" troubles, would give commissions, but no gold. The English courts did finally declare the charter void (1638); but the ship that brought word of this brought news also of the rising of the Scots, and the colony "thought it safe" bluntly to refuse obedience to the "strict order" for the surrender of the document, even hinting rebellion. In England, matters moved rapidly to the Civil War, and Massachusetts was left untroubled to work out her experiment. After the Restoration in England, the legal authorities there decided that, since the charter had not actually been surrendered, the process against it was ineffective.

Dominant

II. ARISTOCRACY VS. DEMOCRACY

The Puritan fathers did not find it easy to stretch the charter of a merchant company into a constitution for a commonwealth—especially as that commonwealth aristocracy was pulled now this way, now that, by contending aristocratic and democratic factions. Early Massachusetts was predominantly aristocratic. The charter provided that all important matters of government should be settled by the stockholders ("freemen") in four "General Courts" each year. But only some twelve freemen of the corporation had come to America. These were all of the gentry class, men of strong character and, most of them, of prudent judgment. Before leaving England, they had all been made magistrates (governor, deputy governor, and

ARISTOCRACY VS. DEMOCRACY

75

"Assistants"). Even without such office, and merely as freemen, the twelve had sole authority to rule the two thousand settlers and to make laws for them; and the little oligarchy began at once to use this tremendous power. The first meeting of Assistants in America fixed the wages of laborers, forbidding a carpenter or mason to take more than two shillings a day.

ment

From the first a democratic movement challenged this oligarchic government. The first General Court was held in October, 1630. By death and removal, the Challenged twelve possessors of power had shrunk to eight. by a demoThese eight gentlemen found themselves con- cratic movefronted by a gathering of one hundred and nine sturdy settlers asking to be admitted freemen. This was a united demand for citizenship, by nearly all the heads of families above the station of unskilled laborers. To refuse the request was to risk the wholesale removal of dissatisfied colonists either to Maine, where Gorges would welcome them, or to Plymouth; to grant it was to endanger the peculiar Puritan commonwealth at which the leaders aimed, and to introduce more democracy than they believed safe.

In this dilemma, the shrewd leaders tried to give the shadow and keep the substance. They postponed action on the application until the next spring. Meantime they passed two laws in violation of the charter: first (October, 1630), that the Assistants, instead of the whole body of freemen, should make laws and choose the governor; and second (May, 1631), that the Assistants should hold office during good behavior, instead of all going out of office at the end of a year as the charter ordered. Then they admitted 116 new freemen, having left them no power except that of electing new Assistants "when these are to be chosen."

The applicants, in their anxiety to get into the body politic, agreed for a time to these usurpations. Indeed they did not know what their rights should be. The charter was locked in Winthrop's chest, and only the magistrates had read