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Nearly all the clergy, except Cotton, in whose house Vane was an inmate, clustered together in defence of their influence, and in opposition to Vane; and Wheelwright, who, in a sermon on a fast day appointed in March, 1637, for the reconciliation of differences, maintained that "those under a covenant of grace must prepare for battle and come out and fight with spiritual weapons against pagans, and anti-Christians, and those that runne under a covenant of works," in spite of the remonstrance of the governor, was censured by the general court for sedition. At the ensuing choice of magistrates, the religious divisions controlled the elections. Some of the friends of Wheelwright had threatened an appeal to England. The contest appeared, therefore, to the people, not as the struggle for intellectual freedom against the authority of the clergy, but for the liberties of Massachusetts against the interference of the English government. In the midst of such high excitement that even Wilson climbed into a tree to harangue the people on election day, Winthrop and his friends, the fathers and founders of the colony, recovered power. But the dispute infused its spirit into everything; it interfered with the levy of troops for the Pequod war; it influenced the respect shown to the magistrates; the distribution of town-lots; the assessment of rates; and in May the continued existence of the two opposing parties was held to be inconsistent with the general welfare. To prevent the increase of a faction esteemed so dangerous, it was enacted by the party in power that none should be received within the jurisdiction but such as should be allowed by some of the magistrates. The dangers which were simultaneously menaced from the Episcopal party in the mother country gave to the measure an air of magnanimous defiance; it was almost a proclamation of independence. As an act of intolerance, it found in Vane an inflexible opponent; and, using the language of the times, he left a memorial of his dissent. "Scribes and Pharisees, and such as are confirmed in any way of error "-these are the remarkable words of the man, who soon embarked for England, where he pleaded in parliament for the liberties of Catholics and dissenters-" all such are not to be denyed cohabitation, but are to be pitied and reformed. Ishmael shall dwell in the presence of his brethren."

The friends of Wheelwright could not brook his censure; but, in justifying their remonstrances, they employed the language of fanaticism. "A new rule of practice by immediate revelations" was to be the guide of their conduct; not that they expected a revelation "in the way of a miracle;" such an idea Anne Hutchinson rejected "as a delusion; " they only slighted the censures of the ministers and the court, and avowed their determination to follow the free thought of their own minds. But individual conscience is often the dupe of interest, and often but a specious name for self-will. The government feared, or pretended to fear, a disturbance of the public peace. A synod of the ministers of New England was therefore assembled, to settle the true faith. Numerous opinions were so stated that they could be harmoniously condemned; and vagueness of language, so often the parent of furious controversy, performed the office of a peace-maker. After Vane had returned to England, it was hardly possible to find any grounds of difference between the flexible Cotton and his equally orthodox opponents. The triumph of the clergy being complete, the civil magistrates proceeded to pass sentence on the more resolute offenders. Wheelwright, Anne Hutchinson, and Aspinwall were exiled from the territory of Massachusetts, as "unfit for the society" of its citizens; and their adherents, who, it was feared, "might, upon some revelation, make a sudden insurrection," and who were ready to seek protection by an appeal from the authority of the colonial government, were required to deliver up their arms.

The principles of Anne Hutchinson are best seen in the institutions which were founded by her associates. Wheelwright and his friends removed to the banks of the Piscataqua; and, at the head of tide-water on that stream, they founded the town of Exeter, one more little republic in the wilderness, organized on the principles of natural justice by the voluntary combination of the inhabitants.

A larger number, led by John Clark and William Coddington, proceeded to the south, designing to make a plantation on Long Island or near Delaware bay. But Roger Williams persuaded them to plant in his vicinity. In March, 1638, a social compact, signed after the precedent of New Plymouth, founded

their government upon the universal consent of the inhabitants; the forms of administration were borrowed from the Jews. Coddington, who had been one of the magistrates in Massachusetts, and had always testified against their persecuting spirit, was elected judge in the new Israel. Before the month was at an end, the influence of Roger Williams and the name of Henry Vane prevailed with Miantonomoh, the chief of the Narragansetts, to make them a gift of the beautiful island of Rhode Island. Under this grant, they clustered round the cove on the north-east part of the island; and, as they grew rapidly in numbers, in the spring of 1639, a part of them removed to Newport. The colony rested on the principle of intellectual liberty; philosophy itself could not have placed it on a broader basis. In March, 1641, it was ordered by the whole body of freemen, and "unanimously agreed upon, that the government, which this body politic doth attend unto in this island and the jurisdiction thereof, in favor of our prince, is a DEMOCRACIE, or popular government; that is to say, it is in the power of the body of freemen orderly assembled, or major part of them, to make or constitute just lawes, by which they will be regulated, and to depute from among themselves such ministers as shall see them faithfully executed between man and man." "It was further ordered that none be accounted a delinquent for doctrine;" the law for "liberty of conscience was perpetuated." The little community was held together by the bonds of affection and freedom of opinion; and "the signet for the state" was ordered to be "a sheafe of arrows," with "the motto AMOR VINCET OMNIA: Love shall conquer all things." A patent from England was necessary for their security; and in September they obtained it through the now powerful Henry Vane.

Of these institutions Anne Hutchinson did not long enjoy the protection. Recovering from dejectedness, she gloried in her sufferings, as her greatest happiness; travelled from Massachusetts to the settlement of Roger Williams, and from thence joined her friends on the island. Young men from other colonies became converts to her opinions; and she excited such admiration that to the leaders in Massachusetts it "gave cause of suspicion of witchcraft." One of her sons and Col

lins, her son-in-law, ventured to expostulate with the people of Boston on the wrongs of their mother. Severe imprisonment for many months was the punishment for their boldness. Rhode Island itself seemed no longer a safe refuge; and the family removed beyond New Haven into the territory of the Dutch. There Kieft, the violent governor, provoked an insurrection among the Indians; in 1643, the house of Anne Hutchinson, then a widow, was attacked and set on fire; herself, her son-in-law, and all their family, save one child, perished by the savages or by the flames. The river near which stood her house is to this day called by her name.

Williams and Wheelwright and Aspinwall suffered not more from their banishment than some of the best men of the colony encountered from choice.

The valley of the Connecticut, as early as 1630, became an object of competition. In the following year the earl of Warwick became its first proprietary, under a grant from the council for New England; and it was held by Lord Say and Seal, Lord Brooke, John Hampden, and others, as his assigns. Before any colony could be established with their sanction, the people of New Plymouth, in October, 1633, built a tradinghouse at Windsor, and conducted with the natives a profitable commerce in furs. For the same trade, "Dutch intruders" from Manhattan, ascending the river, raised at Hartford the house "of Good Hope," and struggled to secure the territory to themselves. In 1635, the younger Winthrop returned from England with a commission from its proprietaries to erect a fort at the mouth of the stream, and the commission was carried into effect. Other settlements were begun by emigrants from the environs of Boston at Hartford and Windsor and Wethersfield; and, in the last days of October, a company of sixty, among whom were women and children, removed to the west. But their journey was undertaken too late in the season; their sufferings were severe, and were greatly exaggerated by malicious rumor to deter others from following them.

In the opening of 1636, "the people, who had resolved to transplant themselves and their estates unto the river Connecticut, judged it inconvenient to go away without any frame of government;" and, at their desire, on the third of March,

the general court of Massachusetts granted a temporary commission to eight men, two from each of the companies who were to plant Springfield, Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield. At the budding of the trees and the springing of the grass, some smaller parties made their way to the new Hesperia of Puritanism. In June, led by Thomas Hooker, "the light of the western churches," the principal body of about one hundred persons, many of them accustomed to affluence and the ease of European life, began their march. Traversing on foot the pathless forest, they drove before them herds of cattle; advancing hardly ten miles a day; subsisting on the milk of the kine, which browsed on the fresh leaves and early shoots; having no guide but the compass, no pillow for their nightly rest but heaps of stones. How did the hills echo with the unwonted lowing of herds! How were the wilds enlivened by the loud piety of Hooker, famed as "a son of thunder"! The emigrants had been gathered from among the most valued citizens, the earliest settlers, and the oldest churches of the bay. Roger Ludlow, the first named in the commission for government, unsurpassed in his knowledge of the law and the rights of mankind, had been deputy governor of Massachusetts; John Haynes had for one year been its governor; and Hooker had no rival in public estimation but Cotton, whom he surpassed in force of character, in liberality of spirit, in soundness of judgment, and in clemency.

The new settlement so far toward the west was environed by perils. The Dutch indulged a hope of dispossessing them. No part of New England was more thickly covered with aboriginal inhabitants than Connecticut. The Pequods could muster at least seven hundred fighting men; the white men, in number less than two hundred, were incessantly exposed to an enemy whose delight was carnage.

In 1633, some of the Pequods had murdered the captain and crew of a small Massachusetts vessel trading in Connecticut river. With some appearance of justice, they pleaded the necessity of self-defence; and in November, 1634, the messengers, whom they sent to Boston to ask the alliance of the white men, carried great store of wampum peag, and bundles of sticks in promise of so many beaver and otter

VOL. 1.-19

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