in Boston; the rest, scattered in five other towns. The Court pretended to justify this insult by referring to the excesses of the Munster Anabaptists of a century earlier : "Insomuch as there is just cause for suspition that they, as others in Germany in former times, may, upon some revelation, make a suddaine irruption upon those that differ with them," runs the preamble of the disarming order, with a sly dig at Mrs. Hutchinson's "revelations." And now Boston church was brought back into the fold. Taking advantage of the temporary absence of twelve more of the leaders of the congregation, Cotton and Winthrop succeeded in browbeating the cowed and leaderless society into excommunicating Mrs. Hutchinson. Says Winthrop, after telling the story: "At this time, the good providence of God so disposing, divers of the congregation (being the chief men of that party, her husband being one) were gone to Narragansett to seek out a new place for plantation." This assumption of divine help in a political trick is the most unlovely sentence Winthrop ever penned. The age and religious freedom In all this persecution the Massachusetts Puritans were not behind their age: they merely were not in advance in this respect. In England the Puritan Long Parliament in 1641, demanding reform in the church, protested that it did not favor toleration: "We do declare it is far from our purpose to let loose the golden reins of discipline and government in the church, to leave private persons or particular congregations to take up what form of divine service they please. For we hold it requisite that there should be throughout the whole realm a conformity to that order which the laws enjoin.' One On the other hand, a few far-seeing men did reach to loftier vision. In that same year, Lord Brooke wrote nobly in a treatise on religion: "The individual should have liberty. No power on earth should force his practice. that doubts with reason and humility may not, for aught I see, be forced by violence. . Fire and water may be restrained; but light cannot. It will in at every cranny. AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION 97 Now to stint it is [to-morrow] to resist an enlightened and inflamed multitude. . . . Can we not dissent in judgment, but we must also disagree in affection?" In America Roger Williams caught this truth clearly, and made it the foundation principle of Rhode Island. So, too, Sir Richard Saltonstal, one of the leaders of the 1630 migration. Saltonstal's company settled Watertown, which from the first was inclined not only to democracy in politics but to "separatism" in religion. (Indeed it seems probable that resentment by the town at certain interference by the magistrates with their pastor was back of the famous Watertown Protest regarding taxation; page 77.) Saltonstal remained in the colony less than two years. Nearly twenty years later (1650) he wrote from England to leading Massachusetts clergy a touching protest against religious persecution. "Reverened and deare friends, whom I unfaynedly love and respect: It doth not a little grieve my spirit to heare what sadd things are reported dayly of your tyranny and persecutions in New England-as that you fyne, whip, and imprison men for their consciences. Truely, friends, this your practice of compelling any in matters of worship to do that whereof they are not fully persuaded, is to make them sin . . . and many are made hypocrites thereby.. We... wish you prosperity every way [and pray] that the Lord would give you meeke and humble spirits, not to stryve soe much for uniformity as to keepe the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. I hope you do not assume to yourselves infallibilitie of judgment, when the most learned of the Apostles confesseth he knew but in parte...." 1 This extract does very imperfect justice to the fine and tender charity of Saltonstal's long letter. With the answer (a masterpiece of Puritan sophistry) the document is printed in Hutchinson's Collection of Original Papers, whence both letters are reproduced in West's Source Book in American History. The Lord Brooke quoted above planned at one time, with his friend, Lord Say, to settle in Massachusetts. In the interesting negotiations (Source Book), the Reverend John Cotton explains to the Lords that in Massachusetts the General Court must soon divide into two Houses, representing the two "Orders" of "gentlemen" and "freeholders." (This was in 1636! cf. pages 87-88.) At a later time these same two noblemen tried to establish a colony in the Connecticut valley, where Saybrooke was named for them. CHAPTER V OTHER NEW ENGLAND COLONIES BY 1640 there were five colonies in New England, besides Plymouth and Massachusetts. English proprietors had founded fishing stations on the coasts of Maine and New Hampshire, and these settlements had been reinforced and Puritanized by Hutchinson sympathizers from Massachusetts. The New Haven group of towns began with a Puritan migration from England in 1638. This colony closely resembled Massachusetts; but it had a little less aristocracy, and depended a little more on the Old Testament as a guide in government. The two remaining colonies, Rhode Island and Connecticut, represented new ideas and played new parts in history. Each was born of rebellion against one part of the Massachusetts ideal: Rhode Island, against theocracy; Connecticut, against aristocracy. In the long run the great Massachusetts plan of aristocratic theocracy broke down; while these two little protesting colonies laid broad and deep the foundations of America. Roger Williams in Rhode Island was the apostle of modern religious liberty; and Thomas Hooker in Connecticut was the apostle of modern democracy. Emphasis RHODE ISLAND Williams founded the town of Providence in the spring of 1636 (page 94). From the Indians he bought a tract of land, and deeded it in joint ownership to twelve on freedom companions "and to such others as the major part of us shall admit into the same fellowship." Later comers signed an agreement to submit themselves "only in civil things" to orders made for the public good in religion by the town fellowship, — in which they were freely granted an equal voice. "Civil" in this passage is used in its common English sense in that day, as opposed to "ecclesiastical." The point to the agreement is that the people did not purpose to let the government meddle with religion. Williams' opinion upon the possibility of maintaining civil order without compelling uniformity in religion is set forth admirably in his figure of speech, comparing a state to a ship, where all, passengers and seamen, must obey the captain in matters of navigation, though all need not attend the ship's prayers. No opportunity was lost to assert this doctrine. In 1644 Williams secured from the Long Parliament a "Patent' authorizing the Rhode Island settlements to rule themselves "by such a form of civill government," and to make "such civill laws and consitutions" as the majority might prefer. Then, in 1663, when the colony received its first royal charter, the fundamental idea was made yet more explicit : "Whereas it is much on their hearts." says a preamble, quoting the petition of the colonists, "to hold forth a livelie experiment that a most flourishing civill state may stand . . with a full libertie in religious concernments," accordingly, "noe person within the sayd colonye, at any tyme hereafter, shall bee any wise molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question, for any differences in opinione in matters of religion, and [i.e. provided he] doe not actually disturb the civill peace.' Rhode The practice of the colony, too, kept to this high level. During the Commonwealth in England, Massachusetts complained that Rhode Island sheltered Quakers, who then swarmed across her borders to the Quakers annoy her neighbors. Williams disliked Quakers heartily; but he now replied that they ought to be punished only when they had actually disturbed the peace, and not merely for being Quakers. "We have no law," ran this noble argument, "to punish any for declaring by words their minds concerning the ways and things of God." Massachusetts threatened interference. The smaller colony appealed to England, praying "Whatever fortune may befall us, let us not be compelled to exercise power over men's consciences." In Rhode Island, religious freedom was not a mere means to timorous toleration. The chief purpose of |