Colonization of Massachusetts: Religion and Society

We want to move northward now and spend some time talking about colonization in New England. And we're going to focus now specifically on the colony of Massachusetts, which is actually going to entail two separate colonizing endeavors, as we'll see. But it'll give you a good sense then of how colonization in the New England region of the United States differed from that of Virginia, especially. Because what we find in the case of New England now, and specifically Massachusetts, is that colonization now is especially going to be a religious undertaking. Remember when we talked about Virginia, I stressed that it was an economic undertaking. The lure or the pull of wealth is what especially prompted colonization in Virginia. On the other hand, in the case of Massachusetts. very much this is going to be a religious undertaking and very much a reflection of the religious discord that existed within England at this time. Now, it is important to remember that in the 1530s, Henry VIII established the Anglican Church as separate from the Roman Catholic Church. Now, when he did that. he created a tremendous amount of turmoil within England itself. There were a large number of Catholics in England who continued to hold their allegiance to Rome. On the other hand, there were supporters of the king who wanted the Anglican church to be different than the Roman church. And the problem for Henry, of course, is that he wanted to avoid civil war. within England. He wanted to avoid a situation in which Roman Catholics might rise up and rebel against him and against his church. So constructing the Anglican church, that is, you know, creating a theology, creating a belief system, creating an operational structure within the Anglican church was a very tenuous, problematic process, okay? It had to be done with great care, and it had to be done carefully. And no matter what he did, he wasn't going to keep everybody happy. Now, as it turned out, the man pictured in this slide, Thomas Cranmer, he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was largely responsible for conceptualizing the Anglican Church. And in order to appease Catholics, and in order to... maintain consistency between the Anglican church practices and the Roman Catholic church practices, Thomas Cranmer effectively created an Anglican church that was modeled on the Roman model. And so, for example, the king was going to replace the pope as the head of the church, but underneath the king there would be a hierarchy of clergymen. There would be bishops, there would be archbishops, and there would be ministers. at the local level. So the hierarchy of the clergy would look very similar to the Roman Catholic Church, all right? That means there would be a very strong centralized leadership and administration within the church, and Cranmer as Archbishop in Canterbury would be among the most powerful, all right? On the other hand, there were those now who looked at this and newly created Anglican church and saw problems with it. There were some who embraced the ideas of John Calvin. Calvinists were Protestants. They had opposed the role of a powerful clergy in administering the church. And more than anything, they saw the clergy as corrupt, corruptible. And these Calvinists now especially believed that the Anglican church needed to be cleansed or purified of a corrupt, dominating clergy. And so Calvinists in the Anglican Church were especially critical of men like Cranmer and others. These are Protestants who did not believe that the Anglican Church should be shaped along the same model as the Roman Church. So what happens? Well, these Calvinists... They are members of the church, and it is important to understand the law held that if you're an Englishman or woman, you were a member of the Anglican church. There was no separation of church and state. If you were an Englishman or an Englishwoman, you were a member of Henry's church. That in itself is what alienated many Catholics. On the other hand, those that were members of the church were also alienated by... The formation and the practices of the church, right? Some Calvinists believed that they had a duty. Well, in fact, all Calvinists believed that they had a duty to reform and cleanse the church, okay? But some Calvinists ultimately came to the conclusion that the cause, the mission to clarify the church had ultimately been lost. OK, those Calvinists became known as separatists. All right. Their only resort in their minds was to leave the church altogether. OK, to sever ties with the church, which effectively meant that in many ways they were severing ties to their English roots. All right. And some of the pilgrims who are going to come to North America then. belonged to this class of Anglicans that we call separatists. They believed that the fight to purify the Anglican church was lost, and their only option was to leave the church altogether, to separate from the church. On the other hand, there were also Calvinists who believed that they had a covenant with God, a contract with God. We'll talk more about these groups in greater detail as we go along as well. Through their contract, they had an obligation to continue to work for the purification of the Anglican Church. And again, most important was to purify the clergy, to cleanse the church of a clergy. Many Calvinists were starting to embrace a concept called Congregationalism. Congregationalism was something that Puritans embraced. They believed that church congregations should be administered at the local level. They shouldn't, you know, orders and directions should not come from a higher authority, whether it's the king or an archbishop, but rather the authority of the church should rest with local congregations themselves. And so they advocated for a very decentralized administration of congregations, right? But most important then, Puritans believed that they had an obligation. without fail, to continue to fight and to work for the purification and cleansing of the Anglican church. The fight was never lost. The hope was never lost. That's the difference then between Puritans and Separatists. Separatists were ready to abandon the fight. Puritans were not. Both were Calvinists. Both were Anglicans. But both had different views of their place within. the church and within society. All right. So having established these differences, then we want to look at the first of the pilgrims that arrived in New England. And of course, these are the very famous pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, the ones that came and celebrated the first Thanksgiving in the New World. OK. And I want to talk a little bit about them and explain what they mean. some of the issues that they faced as part of their pilgrimage to the New World. OK, first of all, the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower were basically a group of separatists that came from the English town or village of Scrooby. OK, Scrooby was a village in the north of England, a little bit. certainly north of London and a little bit inland. The Scrooby separatists were a group of Anglicans who by 1608 had become convinced that they could not change the church. By 1608, certain legislation had passed. A Puritan minister's tax had been levied upon Puritans. Those that ultimately... had to pay that tax, well, they argued they were being taxed unfairly. They were being singled out because of their opposition, their criticism of the clergy. Point being that this group of separatists now, by 1608, had concluded that they simply could not do anything to fix the church any longer, and the time was right to separate. Initially, They traveled for a period of about 10 years to the Netherlands, and they ultimately lived in the town of Leiden in the Netherlands for about 10 years. And the problem is that these separatists, the longer they lived on Dutch soil, the more closely attached to the Netherlands they became, especially their children. They were losing their English identity, for one thing, but they also found it difficult to compete economically. in the Netherlands because the various craft guilds are favored Dutch workers. English workers were seen as immigrants and consequently they found it difficult to get work, to get jobs. So finally, under the leadership of William Bradford, the man pictured in this slide, these scooby separatists decided collectively that they were going to leave Europe altogether and that they were going to now try to organize a pilgrimage and a migration across the ocean to the Americas. William Bradford, the governor, initially negotiated with the Virginia Company of London. Remember, the Virginia Company of London had already been established by this time. And Bradford was able to secure permission to settle a party, these separatists, in the area around the Hudson River. which was in the far north of the Virginia claim at this time. Today, it actually would be part of New York. But nevertheless, far north of the Chesapeake Bay, these separatists, these pilgrims, were going to be allowed to settle. And so they gathered their resources, and Bradford ultimately was able to raise the money to tartar. charter actually a couple of ships, but one of the ships proved not to be seaworthy. And so they ended up making the voyage, leaving Europe, leaving the island of Great Britain, I should say, in 1620. And specifically in the month of September in 1620. The ship that they chartered, of course, was called the Mayflower. And basically then approximately 102 people boarded the Mayflower and set sail for the New World. The passage was actually relatively uneventful. It wasn't without some tragedy. There were a couple deaths on board. But it was nothing like the earlier passage that the Virginia Company had undertaken. It was not as, well, it was not. It did not bring about as much death on board. And so there were basically 100 or roughly 100 survivors of the transport itself. Now, what you need to know about the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower is that they were not all these groovy separatists. In fact, to be honest with you, the separatists under the leadership of Bradford were actually a minority of the population. In order to raise enough money for the chartering of this ship, Bradford had to begin recruiting from outside of the community, the community of saints, as they called themselves. These separatists were not the sole occupants of the Mayflower. In fact, they were a minority faction on the Mayflower. The majority of the travelers on the Mayflower were what what the so-called separatists or saints called themselves called strangers. These 67 strangers were actually, oh, there were undoubtedly some Catholics among them. There were undoubtedly some Anglicans, you know, more in line with the king's church. They were not separatists. The point being... that they may have been some Dutch settlers in there even. But the point is that these were not all the separatists from Scrooge. And the point then is that those that arrived on the Mayflower came from a wide variety of different backgrounds and a host of different beliefs. Beliefs about the church, beliefs about themselves. And consequently then they needed in order to survive, They needed to come together. They were going to learn valuable lessons that the men in Virginia did not learn. Rather than bickering amongst themselves, they needed to cooperate. And the only way they were going to do that was to draw up an agreement. And so shortly before making landfall, and they made landfall off the coast of Massachusetts in December, of 1620, William Bradford drafted a compact, a contract among the the pilgrims themselves. That Mayflower Compact is very important in setting the tone for governance, not only in Massachusetts, but in the United States more generally. And perhaps most importantly, what the Mayflower Compact did was it recognized, A, that all of these pilgrims were Englishmen and Englishwomen. as Englishmen and Englishwomen, they were loyal to the crown. Remember, some had come from the Netherlands most recently, but the point is they are now all claiming their place as Englishmen and Englishwomen. Because they arrived north of the Virginia claim, they're now in territory that was not officially claimed by the crown. What they're now going to do is claim that they're Englishmen. They're claiming this territory for the King of England. And most importantly, and this is very important, they are now all Englishmen, but they are not going to govern themselves in accordance with any particular religious perspective. In other words, the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, the Separatists, all of these groups, are going to be free to practice their religion, and the government is not going to impose or enforce a strict church. In other words, and this is very important, this is critical, this is going to be a civil government, and there is not going to be an official religion. There's going to be separation of church and state. Yes. All of these people are professing their Christian beliefs. They are all Christians, but they do not have a common church. They are therefore going to separate church and state in order to make sure that none of the religions gets a civil upper hand over the other religions. So what we have in the case of the Mayflower Compact then is the earliest manifestation of a separation of church and state. One of the reasons why the United States has survived as long as it has is because it's instilled in our Constitution now that the central government, the federal government, does not advocate for a particular religion. And that goes back to the Mayflower in an attempt to assure that no religion would dominate, okay? No denomination would dominate, right? So the Mayflower Compact, very, very important. As they came ashore at New Plymouth after 1620, they encountered Native Americans. They initially got along peacefully with these Native Americans. And again, in 1621, they celebrated their first harvest. Native Americans taught them how to plant corn and how to survive. And whereas the Virginians had made... big mistakes in alienating Native Americans. Well, these Plymouth settlers tended to cooperate better with Native Americans. At least initially, they didn't alienate them. Now, that was going to change over time, and it was especially going to change with the arrival of settlers in Massachusetts, which we'll talk about here in a moment. That would change. But initially, it is fair to say that it is the cooperation with Native Americans and the assistance of Native Americans that quite literally allowed the Plymouth Plantation to survive. The Plymouth Plantation was established in 1620 by the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower. And it lasted, it survived as an independent, self-governing plantation for about 70 years. Okay. But finally, in 1691, the Plymouth Plantation, which, again, is kind of located south of Boston and inside of Cape Cod. OK, as you can see on this map, it survived for about 70 years until it was annexed by the much larger and much more powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony. All right. So eventually Plymouth became part of Massachusetts. OK, so if Plymouth was an independent. plantation, then how then did Boston get to be settled? How is it that Massachusetts came to be settled? Well, in order to talk about the founding of Boston and the founding of Massachusetts Bay now, we need to kind of go back over to England and talk about another group of Calvinists, not separatists, but Puritans. Their motivation... ultimately is going to be of a religious motivation as well. But on the other hand, and this is important to note, It's actually going to start out as an economic venture. The establishment of Massachusetts started as an economic venture. In 1620, a group of businessmen basically approached the king, Charles I, with a proposal to establish a company, a joint stock company, modeled on the Virginia Company of London. Okay. And this joint stock company then would organize a colonizing expedition in the New World, in Massachusetts, further north of Virginia. Now, Charles I was eager to see the expansion of his realm, especially the economic expansion of his realm. And so he authorized the creation of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Now, in order to understand... what happened to the Massachusetts Bay Company, we first have to understand that all of the men who invested, all of the stockholders in the Massachusetts Bay Company were called free men. A free man was simply a way of identifying a stockholder, not only in this company, but in any company. So a free man was a stockholder. And that becomes confusing because in American history, we often think of freedmen as the former slaves. Freedmen, in this case, it has nothing to do with slavery. It has to do with one's ability to be able to buy and own stock. If you were free of other encumbrances, you could buy stock. You could invest in a company. And so those who bought stock. Those who bought into the Massachusetts Bay Company were called free men. And free men were significant because within the company itself then, they had voting power. They had the ability to influence the decision-making process within the company itself. So it's important that you understand that because free men are going to have an important role to play now in what happens with this company and what happens with the colony. All right. Now, I should say they petitioned Charles I. I apologize. The Massachusetts Bay Company was actually chartered by James I, who was still king in 1620. So clarify that. All right. On the other hand, in 1625, five years after the Massachusetts Bay Company was chartered, James I died. And his son, Charles I, assumed the throne. Now, Charles I. did not like the way his father, James, had administered the British Empire. He believed that too much power had been relinquished to different regions of the country and even to different noblemen within his empire. And so Charles I, especially, believed that too much power had been conceded to Parliament. But the point is, Charles I, now as king, is going to begin the process of consolidating the power of the king. He wants the king to be a powerful, forceful, centralized leader. He's not going to tolerate dissension within the British Empire, and that includes dissension from Puritans and separatists. Puritans were challenging the clergy. They were challenging his church especially. They were causing problems within his realm. And so consequently, when he became king, Charles I is now going to start levying the Puritan ministers'tax. His father had kind of relaxed the taxation, had not been especially difficult or tough in imposing the ministerial tax on Puritan ministries. But now he's going to do that. And, of course, Puritans are going to be up in arms. They're going to be furious about this. They're going to protest. They're going to try and overturn the Puritan minister's tax. And the way to do that was to try and work through Parliament. Parliament was the voice of the people. Parliament was the only hope that they had in trying to overturn these oppressive actions by the king. And so in 1629... The king took the extraordinary step of basically dissolving parliament altogether. Now, in order to help you understand, basically... what this means or what the what this is like this would be like the president of the United States dissolving congress basically saying that congress is henceforth dissolved and the president is the sole voice of government in the United States K that would bring about revolution here in the United States and that is what happened in England okay the dissolution of parliament is going to touch off what effectively amounts to 30 years of war now. And ultimately, Charles I, as we'll see, he's going to lose his head over this. But in the meantime, Puritans now have to wrestle with this whole issue of the oppression of Puritans in England and the dissolution of Parliament. So in the aftermath of the dissolution of Parliament, 12 freedmen... or Freeman, excuse me, 12 stockholders organize a meeting. These are the most powerful members of the Massachusetts Bay Company. And not coincidentally, they are all Puritans. The fact of the matter is, while this was organized as an economic venture, those that invested to a very large degree were Puritans, not exclusively. But to a very large degree, this was becoming a Puritan business venture. So when these 12 Puritans meet, they meet in London. They are going to make some very important decisions. First of all, they are now going to make the decision that the colony, Massachusetts, was not simply going to be a business venture, but it would also serve. as now a refuge for all Puritans. Any Puritan who wanted to avoid the persecution of the crown, the oppression of the crown, could now leave England and could now travel to the New World and ultimately become citizens and members of the Massachusetts community, the colony. The second important decision that was made... then was that all company meetings henceforth were going to be held in the new world itself. Okay. This meeting might be held in England, but the next meeting is going to be held in the new world. Okay. And ultimately what that means is that if you're a Freeman, you hold stock in the company. And if you want to participate in the decision-making process, if you want to vote, you're going to have to relocate to the new world. All right. That meant that many of the, Non-Puritans now, if they own stock in the company, were inclined to want to sell that stock and get out of the company. Because this was clearly now a company that was being taken over by Puritans for the benefit of Puritans. Finally, the third important development to take place at this meeting is that these 12 freemen are going to invite a man by the name of John Winthrop. to serve as their governor. And by serving or inviting John Winthrop to serve as governor now, they are asking a man to not only provide leadership, but also to help conceptualize how Puritan congregations are going to be administered in the new world. John Winthrop is going to become not just a governor. But he's going to become an important leader of the Massachusetts church that these Puritans are going to begin establishing. So who was John Winthrop, the man who's been invited to serve as governor? Well, John Winthrop was born in 1588, and he was basically a man who was raised in the lap of luxury. His father owned a very large manor. It was called Groton Manor. Okay. And he was the eldest son who stood to inherit a tremendous amount of land. He stood to live, like his father, a very, very comfortable life. On the other hand, when he was 17 years old in 1605, John Winthrop had been introduced to Puritanism. And as a Puritan now, he had become a vocal critic of the church, the king's church. And that put him at odds with the aristocracy itself. Most of the nobility, most of the high-ranking dignitaries owed their station in life to the king. And because they owed their station in life to the king, they supported the king. That included John Winthrop's father. But John Winthrop went in a different direction. He began to challenge the king. He challenged the king's church. He challenged the clergy. As a Puritan now, John Winthrop was going to become somewhat alienated, both by his father and by the nobility more generally. So his father did die. His father did die. leave him a very comfortable estate. And John Winthrop could have led the life of comfort. But he was a man who was guided to a very large degree by his principles and his loyalty to his religion. So what's going to happen now? Well, John Winthrop had a dilemma. Does he leave his life of comfort? Does he leave? his landed estate in England in favor of life in a new world. The year is 1630. Remember, just a few years earlier, more than 300 people had lost their lives in Virginia as a result of an Indian uprising. Life in the new world was potentially dangerous. Why would a man who was living in the lap of luxury give all of that up? to go out and risk life on the frontier. That was the dilemma that John Winthrop faced. But his dilemma was more than just personal. It was more than just a question of his personal comfort. This dilemma was very much a philosophical dilemma. Because remember, John Winthrop was a Puritan. And Puritans believed that they had an obligation. A covenant with God meant that they had to cleanse and purify God's church. The only way that they could work for the salvation of God's church was to remain in England, to work and reestablish parliament, to work to reestablish the church, and to oppose Charles'church. So if they left... They would be committing a separatist sin. They would be leaving God. They would be abandoning God's church. So how can they justify leaving England, breaking their covenant with God? That is ultimately what John Winthrop had to rationalize. And it was for that reason that Puritans turned to John Winthrop. Well, John Winthrop rationalized. the departure this way. First of all, he did not believe that he was turning his back on the church. He may be removing himself geographically, but that did not mean that he was removing himself spiritually from the church. The church remained important to him. He believed that in Massachusetts, Massachusetts would serve as what he called a shining city upon a hill. It's an expression that is commonly used, widely used today. Well, John Winthrop was perhaps the first person to really articulate this idea in the case of the United States. Massachusetts would serve as a shining city upon a hill, and Anglicans throughout the realm would look at the congregations, the Puritan congregations. They would see how wonderful they are. They would see how these truly are a manifestation of God's church. And because of that example, they would want to replicate Massachusetts. So the only way that they could convince the people in England to embrace Puritanism was to demonstrate how Puritanism could work, how well it would work. The shining city upon a hill. And so in 1630, John Winthrop did accept the invitation. and he and others now are going to organize a mass migration. 17 ships and 1,000 people now are going to sail across the ocean, and they are going to arrive on the... on the Charles River, just north of the already established Plymouth Plantation. OK, so they are just north of Plymouth. Now, double check here. OK, I tell you what, I'm going to stop this lecture right here. And when I come back in my next lecture, we'll we'll talk about Massachusetts and then we'll wrap up our discussion by saying some things about. Pennsylvania as well

Because what we find in the case of New England now, and specifically Massachusetts, is that colonization now is especially going to be a religious undertaking. Remember when we talked about Virginia, I stressed that it was an economic undertaking. The lure or the pull of wealth is what especially prompted colonization in Virginia. On the other hand, in the case of Massachusetts.

very much this is going to be a religious undertaking and very much a reflection of the religious discord that existed within England at this time. Now, it is important to remember that in the 1530s, Henry VIII established the Anglican Church as separate from the Roman Catholic Church. Now, when he did that. he created a tremendous amount of turmoil within England itself. There were a large number of Catholics in England who continued to hold their allegiance to Rome.

On the other hand, there were supporters of the king who wanted the Anglican church to be different than the Roman church. And the problem for Henry, of course, is that he wanted to avoid civil war. within England. He wanted to avoid a situation in which Roman Catholics might rise up and rebel against him and against his church. So constructing the Anglican church, that is, you know, creating a theology, creating a belief system, creating an operational structure within the Anglican church was a very tenuous, problematic process, okay?

It had to be done with great care, and it had to be done carefully. And no matter what he did, he wasn't going to keep everybody happy. Now, as it turned out, the man pictured in this slide, Thomas Cranmer, he was the Archbishop of Canterbury, and he was largely responsible for conceptualizing the Anglican Church.

And in order to appease Catholics, and in order to... maintain consistency between the Anglican church practices and the Roman Catholic church practices, Thomas Cranmer effectively created an Anglican church that was modeled on the Roman model. And so, for example, the king was going to replace the pope as the head of the church, but underneath the king there would be a hierarchy of clergymen. There would be bishops, there would be archbishops, and there would be ministers. at the local level.

So the hierarchy of the clergy would look very similar to the Roman Catholic Church, all right? That means there would be a very strong centralized leadership and administration within the church, and Cranmer as Archbishop in Canterbury would be among the most powerful, all right? On the other hand, there were those now who looked at this and newly created Anglican church and saw problems with it. There were some who embraced the ideas of John Calvin.

Calvinists were Protestants. They had opposed the role of a powerful clergy in administering the church. And more than anything, they saw the clergy as corrupt, corruptible.

And these Calvinists now especially believed that the Anglican church needed to be cleansed or purified of a corrupt, dominating clergy. And so Calvinists in the Anglican Church were especially critical of men like Cranmer and others. These are Protestants who did not believe that the Anglican Church should be shaped along the same model as the Roman Church.

So what happens? Well, these Calvinists... They are members of the church, and it is important to understand the law held that if you're an Englishman or woman, you were a member of the Anglican church. There was no separation of church and state. If you were an Englishman or an Englishwoman, you were a member of Henry's church.

That in itself is what alienated many Catholics. On the other hand, those that were members of the church were also alienated by... The formation and the practices of the church, right? Some Calvinists believed that they had a duty. Well, in fact, all Calvinists believed that they had a duty to reform and cleanse the church, okay?

But some Calvinists ultimately came to the conclusion that the cause, the mission to clarify the church had ultimately been lost. OK, those Calvinists became known as separatists. All right.

Their only resort in their minds was to leave the church altogether. OK, to sever ties with the church, which effectively meant that in many ways they were severing ties to their English roots. All right. And some of the pilgrims who are going to come to North America then. belonged to this class of Anglicans that we call separatists.

They believed that the fight to purify the Anglican church was lost, and their only option was to leave the church altogether, to separate from the church. On the other hand, there were also Calvinists who believed that they had a covenant with God, a contract with God. We'll talk more about these groups in greater detail as we go along as well.

Through their contract, they had an obligation to continue to work for the purification of the Anglican Church. And again, most important was to purify the clergy, to cleanse the church of a clergy. Many Calvinists were starting to embrace a concept called Congregationalism.

Congregationalism was something that Puritans embraced. They believed that church congregations should be administered at the local level. They shouldn't, you know, orders and directions should not come from a higher authority, whether it's the king or an archbishop, but rather the authority of the church should rest with local congregations themselves. And so they advocated for a very decentralized administration of congregations, right?

But most important then, Puritans believed that they had an obligation. without fail, to continue to fight and to work for the purification and cleansing of the Anglican church. The fight was never lost. The hope was never lost.

That's the difference then between Puritans and Separatists. Separatists were ready to abandon the fight. Puritans were not. Both were Calvinists.

Both were Anglicans. But both had different views of their place within. the church and within society.

All right. So having established these differences, then we want to look at the first of the pilgrims that arrived in New England. And of course, these are the very famous pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, the ones that came and celebrated the first Thanksgiving in the New World.

OK. And I want to talk a little bit about them and explain what they mean. some of the issues that they faced as part of their pilgrimage to the New World. OK, first of all, the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower were basically a group of separatists that came from the English town or village of Scrooby. OK, Scrooby was a village in the north of England, a little bit.

certainly north of London and a little bit inland. The Scrooby separatists were a group of Anglicans who by 1608 had become convinced that they could not change the church. By 1608, certain legislation had passed. A Puritan minister's tax had been levied upon Puritans.

Those that ultimately... had to pay that tax, well, they argued they were being taxed unfairly. They were being singled out because of their opposition, their criticism of the clergy. Point being that this group of separatists now, by 1608, had concluded that they simply could not do anything to fix the church any longer, and the time was right to separate. Initially, They traveled for a period of about 10 years to the Netherlands, and they ultimately lived in the town of Leiden in the Netherlands for about 10 years.

And the problem is that these separatists, the longer they lived on Dutch soil, the more closely attached to the Netherlands they became, especially their children. They were losing their English identity, for one thing, but they also found it difficult to compete economically. in the Netherlands because the various craft guilds are favored Dutch workers. English workers were seen as immigrants and consequently they found it difficult to get work, to get jobs.

So finally, under the leadership of William Bradford, the man pictured in this slide, these scooby separatists decided collectively that they were going to leave Europe altogether and that they were going to now try to organize a pilgrimage and a migration across the ocean to the Americas. William Bradford, the governor, initially negotiated with the Virginia Company of London. Remember, the Virginia Company of London had already been established by this time.

And Bradford was able to secure permission to settle a party, these separatists, in the area around the Hudson River. which was in the far north of the Virginia claim at this time. Today, it actually would be part of New York. But nevertheless, far north of the Chesapeake Bay, these separatists, these pilgrims, were going to be allowed to settle.

And so they gathered their resources, and Bradford ultimately was able to raise the money to tartar. charter actually a couple of ships, but one of the ships proved not to be seaworthy. And so they ended up making the voyage, leaving Europe, leaving the island of Great Britain, I should say, in 1620. And specifically in the month of September in 1620. The ship that they chartered, of course, was called the Mayflower.

And basically then approximately 102 people boarded the Mayflower and set sail for the New World. The passage was actually relatively uneventful. It wasn't without some tragedy.

There were a couple deaths on board. But it was nothing like the earlier passage that the Virginia Company had undertaken. It was not as, well, it was not.

It did not bring about as much death on board. And so there were basically 100 or roughly 100 survivors of the transport itself. Now, what you need to know about the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower is that they were not all these groovy separatists. In fact, to be honest with you, the separatists under the leadership of Bradford were actually a minority of the population. In order to raise enough money for the chartering of this ship, Bradford had to begin recruiting from outside of the community, the community of saints, as they called themselves.

These separatists were not the sole occupants of the Mayflower. In fact, they were a minority faction on the Mayflower. The majority of the travelers on the Mayflower were what what the so-called separatists or saints called themselves called strangers. These 67 strangers were actually, oh, there were undoubtedly some Catholics among them. There were undoubtedly some Anglicans, you know, more in line with the king's church.

They were not separatists. The point being... that they may have been some Dutch settlers in there even.

But the point is that these were not all the separatists from Scrooge. And the point then is that those that arrived on the Mayflower came from a wide variety of different backgrounds and a host of different beliefs. Beliefs about the church, beliefs about themselves.

And consequently then they needed in order to survive, They needed to come together. They were going to learn valuable lessons that the men in Virginia did not learn. Rather than bickering amongst themselves, they needed to cooperate.

And the only way they were going to do that was to draw up an agreement. And so shortly before making landfall, and they made landfall off the coast of Massachusetts in December, of 1620, William Bradford drafted a compact, a contract among the the pilgrims themselves. That Mayflower Compact is very important in setting the tone for governance, not only in Massachusetts, but in the United States more generally.

And perhaps most importantly, what the Mayflower Compact did was it recognized, A, that all of these pilgrims were Englishmen and Englishwomen. as Englishmen and Englishwomen, they were loyal to the crown. Remember, some had come from the Netherlands most recently, but the point is they are now all claiming their place as Englishmen and Englishwomen.

Because they arrived north of the Virginia claim, they're now in territory that was not officially claimed by the crown. What they're now going to do is claim that they're Englishmen. They're claiming this territory for the King of England. And most importantly, and this is very important, they are now all Englishmen, but they are not going to govern themselves in accordance with any particular religious perspective. In other words, the Anglican Church, the Catholic Church, the Separatists, all of these groups, are going to be free to practice their religion, and the government is not going to impose or enforce a strict church.

In other words, and this is very important, this is critical, this is going to be a civil government, and there is not going to be an official religion. There's going to be separation of church and state. Yes.

All of these people are professing their Christian beliefs. They are all Christians, but they do not have a common church. They are therefore going to separate church and state in order to make sure that none of the religions gets a civil upper hand over the other religions.

So what we have in the case of the Mayflower Compact then is the earliest manifestation of a separation of church and state. One of the reasons why the United States has survived as long as it has is because it's instilled in our Constitution now that the central government, the federal government, does not advocate for a particular religion. And that goes back to the Mayflower in an attempt to assure that no religion would dominate, okay?

No denomination would dominate, right? So the Mayflower Compact, very, very important. As they came ashore at New Plymouth after 1620, they encountered Native Americans. They initially got along peacefully with these Native Americans.

And again, in 1621, they celebrated their first harvest. Native Americans taught them how to plant corn and how to survive. And whereas the Virginians had made...

big mistakes in alienating Native Americans. Well, these Plymouth settlers tended to cooperate better with Native Americans. At least initially, they didn't alienate them. Now, that was going to change over time, and it was especially going to change with the arrival of settlers in Massachusetts, which we'll talk about here in a moment. That would change.

But initially, it is fair to say that it is the cooperation with Native Americans and the assistance of Native Americans that quite literally allowed the Plymouth Plantation to survive. The Plymouth Plantation was established in 1620 by the pilgrims aboard the Mayflower. And it lasted, it survived as an independent, self-governing plantation for about 70 years. Okay.

But finally, in 1691, the Plymouth Plantation, which, again, is kind of located south of Boston and inside of Cape Cod. OK, as you can see on this map, it survived for about 70 years until it was annexed by the much larger and much more powerful Massachusetts Bay Colony. All right. So eventually Plymouth became part of Massachusetts.

OK, so if Plymouth was an independent. plantation, then how then did Boston get to be settled? How is it that Massachusetts came to be settled? Well, in order to talk about the founding of Boston and the founding of Massachusetts Bay now, we need to kind of go back over to England and talk about another group of Calvinists, not separatists, but Puritans.

Their motivation... ultimately is going to be of a religious motivation as well. But on the other hand, and this is important to note, It's actually going to start out as an economic venture. The establishment of Massachusetts started as an economic venture.

In 1620, a group of businessmen basically approached the king, Charles I, with a proposal to establish a company, a joint stock company, modeled on the Virginia Company of London. Okay. And this joint stock company then would organize a colonizing expedition in the New World, in Massachusetts, further north of Virginia. Now, Charles I was eager to see the expansion of his realm, especially the economic expansion of his realm.

And so he authorized the creation of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Now, in order to understand... what happened to the Massachusetts Bay Company, we first have to understand that all of the men who invested, all of the stockholders in the Massachusetts Bay Company were called free men.

A free man was simply a way of identifying a stockholder, not only in this company, but in any company. So a free man was a stockholder. And that becomes confusing because in American history, we often think of freedmen as the former slaves. Freedmen, in this case, it has nothing to do with slavery.

It has to do with one's ability to be able to buy and own stock. If you were free of other encumbrances, you could buy stock. You could invest in a company.

And so those who bought stock. Those who bought into the Massachusetts Bay Company were called free men. And free men were significant because within the company itself then, they had voting power. They had the ability to influence the decision-making process within the company itself.

So it's important that you understand that because free men are going to have an important role to play now in what happens with this company and what happens with the colony. All right. Now, I should say they petitioned Charles I. I apologize.

The Massachusetts Bay Company was actually chartered by James I, who was still king in 1620. So clarify that. All right. On the other hand, in 1625, five years after the Massachusetts Bay Company was chartered, James I died. And his son, Charles I, assumed the throne.

Now, Charles I. did not like the way his father, James, had administered the British Empire. He believed that too much power had been relinquished to different regions of the country and even to different noblemen within his empire. And so Charles I, especially, believed that too much power had been conceded to Parliament. But the point is, Charles I, now as king, is going to begin the process of consolidating the power of the king.

He wants the king to be a powerful, forceful, centralized leader. He's not going to tolerate dissension within the British Empire, and that includes dissension from Puritans and separatists. Puritans were challenging the clergy. They were challenging his church especially. They were causing problems within his realm.

And so consequently, when he became king, Charles I is now going to start levying the Puritan ministers'tax. His father had kind of relaxed the taxation, had not been especially difficult or tough in imposing the ministerial tax on Puritan ministries. But now he's going to do that.

And, of course, Puritans are going to be up in arms. They're going to be furious about this. They're going to protest. They're going to try and overturn the Puritan minister's tax. And the way to do that was to try and work through Parliament.

Parliament was the voice of the people. Parliament was the only hope that they had in trying to overturn these oppressive actions by the king. And so in 1629...

The king took the extraordinary step of basically dissolving parliament altogether. Now, in order to help you understand, basically... what this means or what the what this is like this would be like the president of the United States dissolving congress basically saying that congress is henceforth dissolved and the president is the sole voice of government in the United States K that would bring about revolution here in the United States and that is what happened in England okay the dissolution of parliament is going to touch off what effectively amounts to 30 years of war now. And ultimately, Charles I, as we'll see, he's going to lose his head over this. But in the meantime, Puritans now have to wrestle with this whole issue of the oppression of Puritans in England and the dissolution of Parliament.

So in the aftermath of the dissolution of Parliament, 12 freedmen... or Freeman, excuse me, 12 stockholders organize a meeting. These are the most powerful members of the Massachusetts Bay Company.

And not coincidentally, they are all Puritans. The fact of the matter is, while this was organized as an economic venture, those that invested to a very large degree were Puritans, not exclusively. But to a very large degree, this was becoming a Puritan business venture.

So when these 12 Puritans meet, they meet in London. They are going to make some very important decisions. First of all, they are now going to make the decision that the colony, Massachusetts, was not simply going to be a business venture, but it would also serve.

as now a refuge for all Puritans. Any Puritan who wanted to avoid the persecution of the crown, the oppression of the crown, could now leave England and could now travel to the New World and ultimately become citizens and members of the Massachusetts community, the colony. The second important decision that was made...

then was that all company meetings henceforth were going to be held in the new world itself. Okay. This meeting might be held in England, but the next meeting is going to be held in the new world. Okay. And ultimately what that means is that if you're a Freeman, you hold stock in the company.

And if you want to participate in the decision-making process, if you want to vote, you're going to have to relocate to the new world. All right. That meant that many of the, Non-Puritans now, if they own stock in the company, were inclined to want to sell that stock and get out of the company.

Because this was clearly now a company that was being taken over by Puritans for the benefit of Puritans. Finally, the third important development to take place at this meeting is that these 12 freemen are going to invite a man by the name of John Winthrop. to serve as their governor. And by serving or inviting John Winthrop to serve as governor now, they are asking a man to not only provide leadership, but also to help conceptualize how Puritan congregations are going to be administered in the new world. John Winthrop is going to become not just a governor.

But he's going to become an important leader of the Massachusetts church that these Puritans are going to begin establishing. So who was John Winthrop, the man who's been invited to serve as governor? Well, John Winthrop was born in 1588, and he was basically a man who was raised in the lap of luxury. His father owned a very large manor.

It was called Groton Manor. Okay. And he was the eldest son who stood to inherit a tremendous amount of land. He stood to live, like his father, a very, very comfortable life.

On the other hand, when he was 17 years old in 1605, John Winthrop had been introduced to Puritanism. And as a Puritan now, he had become a vocal critic of the church, the king's church. And that put him at odds with the aristocracy itself.

Most of the nobility, most of the high-ranking dignitaries owed their station in life to the king. And because they owed their station in life to the king, they supported the king. That included John Winthrop's father. But John Winthrop went in a different direction.

He began to challenge the king. He challenged the king's church. He challenged the clergy.

As a Puritan now, John Winthrop was going to become somewhat alienated, both by his father and by the nobility more generally. So his father did die. His father did die. leave him a very comfortable estate. And John Winthrop could have led the life of comfort.

But he was a man who was guided to a very large degree by his principles and his loyalty to his religion. So what's going to happen now? Well, John Winthrop had a dilemma.

Does he leave his life of comfort? Does he leave? his landed estate in England in favor of life in a new world. The year is 1630. Remember, just a few years earlier, more than 300 people had lost their lives in Virginia as a result of an Indian uprising.

Life in the new world was potentially dangerous. Why would a man who was living in the lap of luxury give all of that up? to go out and risk life on the frontier.

That was the dilemma that John Winthrop faced. But his dilemma was more than just personal. It was more than just a question of his personal comfort. This dilemma was very much a philosophical dilemma. Because remember, John Winthrop was a Puritan.

And Puritans believed that they had an obligation. A covenant with God meant that they had to cleanse and purify God's church. The only way that they could work for the salvation of God's church was to remain in England, to work and reestablish parliament, to work to reestablish the church, and to oppose Charles'church. So if they left...

They would be committing a separatist sin. They would be leaving God. They would be abandoning God's church.

So how can they justify leaving England, breaking their covenant with God? That is ultimately what John Winthrop had to rationalize. And it was for that reason that Puritans turned to John Winthrop. Well, John Winthrop rationalized. the departure this way.

First of all, he did not believe that he was turning his back on the church. He may be removing himself geographically, but that did not mean that he was removing himself spiritually from the church. The church remained important to him. He believed that in Massachusetts, Massachusetts would serve as what he called a shining city upon a hill. It's an expression that is commonly used, widely used today.

Well, John Winthrop was perhaps the first person to really articulate this idea in the case of the United States. Massachusetts would serve as a shining city upon a hill, and Anglicans throughout the realm would look at the congregations, the Puritan congregations. They would see how wonderful they are. They would see how these truly are a manifestation of God's church.

And because of that example, they would want to replicate Massachusetts. So the only way that they could convince the people in England to embrace Puritanism was to demonstrate how Puritanism could work, how well it would work. The shining city upon a hill. And so in 1630, John Winthrop did accept the invitation. and he and others now are going to organize a mass migration.

17 ships and 1,000 people now are going to sail across the ocean, and they are going to arrive on the... on the Charles River, just north of the already established Plymouth Plantation. OK, so they are just north of Plymouth.

Now, double check here. OK, I tell you what, I'm going to stop this lecture right here. And when I come back in my next lecture, we'll we'll talk about Massachusetts and then we'll wrap up our discussion by saying some things about.

Pennsylvania as well

Transcript for:Colonization of Massachusetts: Religion and Society

Transcript for:
Colonization of Massachusetts: Religion and Society