Transcript for:
Colonial Dynamics Between England and America

all right well this is history 203 england and america 1600 to 1700. welcome back to history 203 in this session we're going to talk about the english colonies english efforts in the new world had faltered to say the least in the 16th century however in the 17th century north america would see the establishment of lasting english colonies and this is significant for our purpose because obviously uh these colonies become the the catalyst that will be the united states of america uh one thing that's very striking and i guess the many ways the main interpretive focus here for me is the fact that the english colonies in america are so diverse in in nature they're different uh obviously you were talking about their english but they're founded for different reasons they develop very different economies uh and so why is that true and i think there's there's a few ways of kind of explaining it but to me it's a real striking thing for example you know you know decades after jamestown was founded uh in 1607 uh commissioners arrived rural commissioners arrived in rhode island in 1665. the royal government was aware that rhode island was involved in a very serious border dispute with its neighbors with connecticut massachusetts bay plymouth et cetera each colony involved in the border dispute possessed documents with the king's seal confirming their title to land in addition in 1663 rhode island received a royal charter with a very detailed though you know quite unintelligible description of the boundary therefore the 1665 world commission was designed to settle the dispute and this is something that would happen with other there'd be a tremendous dispute between pennsylvania and virginia over you know over boundaries right over the forks of the ohio would consider pittsburgh so the royal commission in 1665 conducted a series of surveys and recommended a settlement but no sooner had the commissioners left to return to england then the dispute was renewed and in fact nearly a century would pass before massachusetts and rhode island concluded a final boundary this long border dispute and others like it illustrate how english colonization as one text put it and i quote transformed maps of the north america into a crazy quilt of territorial claims and counter claims unquote that's actually a quote from the historian joseph conlon english kings operated under the assumption that what they what lay on the other side of the atlantic was their property to distribute as they saw fit despite the fact that people already lived there despite the fact that previous kings make you know make similar kinds of grants you have overlapping grants the result is a lot of conflict a lot of different uh overlapping claims uh you know to land and a lot of that is a result of a slight knowledge of local geography right and we talked about that in the last session i even mentioned the bats and fallen expedition in 1671. the colony of virginia is looking for the pacific ocean the initial charter for the virginia company held at virginia's boundaries for the atlantic and the pacific right uh and so english imperial efforts uh you know have a kind of a interesting conflictual kind of element to them and there's some english colonies are not unified in any way right they're so different and you don't have that common institution that the spanish overseas ever had the church to kind of bring any unity to things right therefore the english established very different colonies and we could take as one example a very important example would be the institution of slavery slavery did exist in the northern colonies but the northern colonies developed economies that were much less conducive to the use of the institution of slavery northern colonies new england colonies in particular would eventually move more and more towards shipbuilding maritime trade uh things of that nature whereas the southern colonies virginia maryland virginia the carolinas georgia et cetera would establish con would establish economies based on plantation type agriculture in which you know the institution of slavery became fundamental right and they also therefore produced an elite class planners nearly aristocrats uh who govern those colonies in a very different way than the colonies in new england that emphasized i guess you might say a more i don't want to say democratic uh but more classical liberal approach in a sense that you know people had more voice in government the idea that they should have more voice of government and so you know in a sense it's kind of interesting in a sense you start to teach the civil war even at this point uh in a sense because of the the differences in those colonies slavery is one of those those fundamental differences and we certainly see that early on and so you have a very interesting mix of colonies as a result now english colonies took different forms right you had some colonies that were charter colonies they were established by joint stock companies who had a charter from the king you cannot govern over other englishmen without permission of the king you had some colonies like pennsylvania for example which was a proprietary colony in which it was given to a particular individual or particular family by the crown and then you had royal colonies and royal colonies virginia eventually would be a royal colony royal colonies uh had a royal governor who was sent over by by by the by the government in london and basically represented the crown in the colony and dealt with a local assembly or colonial assembly in america right virginia eventually becomes one of these in which you know you have royal governors the house of burgesses is like parliament in virginia and the world governor is like the king in essence in virginia and so it reflects the relationship between the king and parliament back in england now english english england was a very complex society in the 17th century experiencing several problems recurrent violent religious and political upheavals tensions ran high especially after the death of elizabeth the first in 1603 and the establishment of the stuart monarchy under james the first of england who had been james vi of scotland right he's the the son of mary queen of scots uh and so james the first i think i have a slide for you there he is who comes to the throne of england in 1603 uh and his son struggled with parliament now what i'm going to do now is kind of talk a little bit about about english history here right again we're going to deal a bit with england and this this becomes very important as background for us and the reason why is people who left england in 1607 for virginia left a very different place than people who left for plymouth in 1630 or someone who left for pennsylvania in 1680 right so when people leave england and why they leave england you know when they left really in a sense gives us some information for why they left right they would leave for different reasons at different times and what's going on in england has a lot of impact in terms of what happens in america and what happens in 17th century england also has a lot of impact on you know how americans viewed themselves especially politically and religiously okay so we need to think a little bit about that james the first who would of course grant the charter to the virginia company was an uh explicit believer in the divine right of kings he had earlier written a book called the true law of free monarchy right and in which he used the bible to basically justify the power of the king right this is the divine right of kings or what i think of as biblical absolutism the idea that the king's authority cannot be threatened cannot be challenged because the king is king by the grace of god the king the king only is answerable to god in terms of what he does monarchy is always a religious institution monarchy always has a religious element to it you know this particular family governs because god has selected this family and so james the first argues in true law free monarchies to resist the king is to resist god right he uses you know paul's letter to the romans chapter 13 and you know paul says the powers that be are ordained of god and those that resist the power resist to their damnation it says in the king james bible right condemnation right and so god condemns resistance of duly constituted monarchy right so james the first is arguing that the king's authority should not be limited right the king's authority should be absolute the model for that will essentially eventually be france right you find absolutism in prussia russia sweden various european states but france is going to be the poster boy for absolutism right the idea that the king's authority has no limit and and you know to some degree uh 17th century europeans arguing that the king should have authority without limit it makes more sense than you might think right if you think about the reformations and the chaos and the turmoil that it came out of the wars of religion the thing that monarchy promises that absolute absolutism tends to promise is the idea of order stability right stability uh the great uh french political theorist bishop in his book you know politics drawn from the very words of holy scripture contends that without the king having absolute power you know he cannot he cannot restrain evil you have to have that kind of a figure in order to restrain evil in the state right thomas hobbs who's writing here in the 17th century uh who is an advocate of royal authority uh you know argues that you know without without the king and without this without this absolute monster this leviathan of authority uh you know chaos is what will result right uh a man in a state of nature uh his life and hobbes's words are is solitary poor nasty brutish and short right in order to have any hope of survival or stability absolutism right order is what is necessary and so these folks are arguing that only the authority of the king can produce that kind of order england though will not be an example of absolutism england develops a very very much a constitutional monarchy a monarchy that is limited in its power and that develops you know throughout the 17th century because of the conflict between the king and parliament i mean james the first talks about absolutism a very famous speech he makes in 1610 before parliament he instructs parliament not to teach him his office right uh he tells parliament you know that the king's authority uh in the kingdom is like the father's authority in the home right that's an argument by correspondence you find that a lot with divine right theorists as as god the father governs in heaven right as king upon the throne i mean god in the bible is often portrayed as a king right when isaiah has his vision of god in isaiah chapter 6 god is sitting upon the throne right when john has a vision of god in the apocalypse in the revelation the book of revelation you know and he and and he's called up you know to the throne room and he sees god right sitting upon the throne uh so god is a king and so as god is a king and governs the universe as a sovereign with no dispute to his authority the idea is the king should govern in the kingdom on earth with the same type of authority and the father should govern in the home with the same type of authority and what is true on one level of existence they argue should be true on other levels of existence okay so james the first was a vocal advocate of the concept of absolutism but in reality his son charles the first was someone who did more to try to make it a reality right and so charles the first came to the throne in 1625 and here we have the tripartite type portrait of charles the first that was very popular in the 17th century charles the first took a hard line on issues such as taxation he tried to levy taxes without parliament i mean parliament was an advisatory body uh that had been established for some time and some of the origins of that go back to henry the second you you definitely have uh the idea of parliaments in the reign of edward the first uh and that the notion is uh you know that you know the king relies upon parliament to put in place tax policy charles the first tries to tax without parliament okay uh and even tries to conduct wars without parliament he tries to for example the king of england traditionally could impose taxes upon cities that are on the coast fill the for the building of naval vessels this is called ship money charles the first extends that the cities in the interior right he does various things uh to try to exercise sole authority his actions with the church were controversial i mean james the first had insisted on episcopal governance meaning that the church was governed by bishops a hierarchy of bishops and archbishops etc uh you know and uh i mean james the first had not been very favorable toward the puritans right i mean the only concession that the puritans obtained from james the first was a new translation english translation of the bible right to replace the bishops bible which was an english translation that had been rendered in elizabeth's reign which was less than less than adequate right but ironically i mean puritans did not like the king james bible they saw it as too much the bible of the monarchy the king right uh certain things for example uh one of the instructions that james the first had issued to the translators of the king james bible was that they could not change the the the episcopal language or the uh the theological language uh of the of the bishops bible in other words when when when the bishops bible rendered the greek word episcopus or as uh which overseer as bishop the king james bible has to render it bishop as well and so the ecclesiastical language remained the same and so puritans would continue to be advocates of the use of the geneva bible which was a calvinist bible with copious study notes etc that had been uh basically translated by calvinists english calvinists studying in the academy in geneva uh and uh that there's an irony there in a sense that one of the instructions that james the first had in terms of of the king of the translation of the bible was no study notes he wanted no study notes because he didn't like the study notes these the expository notes that were found in the geneva bible and he thought that they compromised the authority of monarchy and so he wanted no study notes which always makes me kind of laugh a little bit whenever i see a king james study bible because king james wanted no study notes right no no expository nodes uh charles first went even further uh especially in terms of his appointments in terms of the church his archbishop canterbury william laud was an armenian was uh was uh not a calvinist right and i'll talk a little bit more about what calvinism really means when we look at puritan new england but calvinists you know john calvin you know the the french theologian in the 16th century uh had basically argued and you know the process ain't nothing new someone before them wrote all these things the process and reformers had the benefit of the printing press calvin you know really stressed the sovereignty of god the idea that god was in control uh and he also stressed the sovereignty of god in terms of the doctrine of election right he contended that god in his in his infinite wisdom had chosen who would be saved and who would be damned in eternity past he's drawn from romans 9 ephesians 1 he's drawn from the writings of saint augustine right but he's really emphasizing that uh the arminius jacob arminius was the reformer who rejected that and argued that people have free will right and so laud was from that school of thought and so puritans were very much upset at law so you can see for example if this is happening in the 1620s 1630s that's when the separatists and puritans are coming to america because there's a lot of religious upheaval right they're in opposition to the king right the king is not pleased with the puritans and so the idea of them leaving england actually is good for good from his point of view and good from their point of view there's a famous story about charles the first in which you know a prominent puritan was in his presence and he asked him he says are you my loyal subject and the puritan he responds to the king and says i am your sire your most loyal subject the king says then why doth thou oppose me on the matter of sunday sports you know games and sports and things like that played on sunday uh you know puritans didn't want you to dance on sunday didn't want taverns to be open things like that and the the puritan you know says to the king because i am thy most loyal subject and charles the first has his ears cut off so you can kind of see you know the situation and the in the kind of the tension that exists in terms of religion trying to govern without parliament is also problematic because it's against the traditional rights of englishmen as expressed in the magna carter back in 12 12 15 in which king john grants concessions right you know the idea that the king would govern with parliament not in spite of parliament and this results eventually uh in the english civil war right the english civil war which was waged from 1642 to 1649 in which the king is at war with parliament all right the king unfurls his banner at nottingham gets an army together and actually fights a war with parliament and that that will rages from 1642 to 1649. uh really good history of that is by christopher hibbert h-i-b-b-e-r-t uh royalists and roundheads um there's also a fantastic multi-volume history of the english civil war uh written by cv wedgwood uh and i i'm sure that wedgwood's probably in the library here in athens uh c.v wedgewood sicily veronica wedgewood and she wrote back in the in the 30s and 40s and at a time in which ladies didn't write much military history and so she published everything as cv wedgewood rather than her name sissel of sicily veronica and she wrote what to me is the the best account of the 30 years war from 1618 to 1648 and she published it in the late 1940s but her mo her multiple uh volume history of the english civil war is a classic and she uh i know that there's at least one volume of that uh you know at least one of the three volumes actually in the raleigh county public library for my beckley students um as well so i mean that's that's still a a kind of a masterpiece i guess you might say in narrative history i mean sicily veronica wedgewood knew how to tell a story right it's the whole point and it's an interesting conflict right uh it's a it's an interesting conflict and the king you know is waging more parliament and loses right uh and loses and in fact uh you know the key parliamentary leader uh you know i'm not gonna go too much into the english civil war but i will point out something parliament's cry right parliament's battle cry in many ways is no taxation without representation you can't tax us you cannot take our property without the consent that we express in our representatives and that should sound familiar because it's the same kind of thing that's going to be said by you know thomas payne and thomas jefferson and james madison etc benjamin franklin etc in the american revolution right so in a sense english civil war has a massive impact on the american revolution it is a part of their political consciousness and so parliament prevails in fact one of the key parliament leader leaders is the puritan oliver cromwell right who commands uh you know the puritan army eventually or the you know the parliamentarian army and uh very very successful commander there there's a wonderful movie about him in which richard harris plays oliver cromwell and uh i think sir alec guinness played charles the first and timothy dalton did a phenomenal job playing uh prince rupert who was the king's nephew and the king's calvary commander and so cromwell though succeeds and one of the things of course comes out of this is the execution of the king right charles the first who had tried to bring the scots in uh you know is executed for treason they behead him and so there's a period of time in which oliver cromwell is essentially the puritan dictator of england now if the puritans are running a show in the 1640s and into the 1650s there's not much need for puritans to go to america a lot more puritans are going to america in the 1620s and 1630s as opposed to the 1640s and 1650s that should make sense 16 20 16 30s they're being persecuted by charles the first 1640s to 1650s they're persecuting other people right they're basically enforcing their will in england at that particular point cromwell of course dies in 1658 and uh two years later a little less than two years later the son of charles the first is brought back he's been in exile in france and he is charles ii right and there's an image of charles ii if charles ii was here today he would be upset with me because of how i've rendered the rain dates right that r means rain so i'm saying his reign began in 1660. charles ii would say no sir my reign began in 1649 with the death of my father obviously he doesn't govern though from 1649 to 1660 right uh you know the puritans are governing and so you know he doesn't actually exercise any authority but he would he would he would quibble with that but he does govern personally from 1660 to 1685. this is the restoration of the stewards right uh and uh charles first that image of him is an interesting one uh he actually was bald so he wore a wig uh he he was tall he's around six foot three which is extremely tall for that time period uh and uh you know this this painting shows off the legs right the hose and the legs uh that that was uh you know the the aspect that the ladies at court would write about a gentleman they'd write about his legs you know and so charles is second here very proud of his legs in that sense and charles ii you know uh he he had no legitimate children right the the queen was barren uh he doesn't pull henry viii he doesn't try to replace her uh he did uh have uh an impressive array of mistresses uh you know certainly a part of what was going on in his reign more importantly for our purposes uh charles the first tries to resist puritan measures right limiting he tries to you know tries to come up with measures that are more helpful for english catholics right the problem is by this point and this long been the case catholicism was more and more seen in england as the ideology of hostile foreign powers and the idea is that charles ii has spent all this time in france he has a secret treaty with the with the king of france that he will at some point openly personally convert to catholicism which he does on his deathbed in 1685 and he is being uh you know financed clandestinely by the french crown too in many measures uh and so there's still a lot of religious tensions uh during the reign of charles ii uh however these will boil over in the hit the reign of his brother james ii who had been the duke of york now by the way uh in uh in 1640 in the 1640s the english in fact drive the dutch out of new netherlands and renamed the colony uh new york after the duke of york after the younger brother of the king right james ii was much more openly catholic and that was problematic what made this even more problematic was he unexpectedly was able to father a son later in life right the thought was that you know they were they were probably not going to have any more children he doesn't have a son and so therefore you know they would be able to select a protestant more protestant king after his death uh he kind of put forth the idea therefore that there may be an actual catholic king of england and he had resisted you know several parliament's measures and the result is a is another civil war or really a revolution i guess you might say in 1688 called the glorious revolution and it's called the glorious revolution because it's relatively bloodless uh james ii will basically flee england right uh his uh his descendants will continue uh to uh try to claim that they are kings of england uh the last jacobite or stuart pretender is defeated at the battle colladen in 1746 right kind of ending the stewart's claim altogether but he flees in 1688 that's the glorious revolution because essentially what parliament does is it invites uh william william and mary to assume the throne mary was a protestant member of the stuart family who was married to the duke of orange uh you know who was essentially a dutch nobleman and they come to england and assume you know the throne as william iii and mary the second the college of william and marion in virginia is named after them right and part of what takes place here and this is very important for us is part of this settlement is the imposition of certain restrictions upon the crown right in a document usually known as the english bill of rights the english bill of rights of 1689. i mean as a constitutional government the big difference between one of the big differences between the british system and the american system even today is we have a written constitution right and we debate about what that constitution means continuously debate about what that constitution means i mean right now people debate about whether we should adhere to the original intent or language or purpose of the constitution or if the constitution is a living document that can change its meaning over time right that's uh that's the debate that you that you find conservatives tend to want to see it in terms of original intent liberals tend to view it in terms of being a living document right and so you know they can morph into different meaning but we have a written constitution that's a part and parcel of what american politics is about the american system the english constitution is unwritten and not surprisingly they argue about what that means too right but they do have some important documents the magna carta was an important document and this one the english bill of rights was an important document because what a bill of rights basically is is a list of rights which are a list of limitations on the power of government so the english bill of rights is a list of limitations upon the power of the crown you know the crown cannot tax without parliament's approval right things like that when we think about the united states constitution one of the compromises that will bring about the ratification of that constitution will obviously be that federalists those who are advocating ratification of the constitution promised a bill of rights right that they would approve a bill of rights in the first congress and so the first ten amendments to the united states constitution are the of the american bill of rights right and if you look at the bill of rights you know look at the constitution one of your readings will be the constitution if you look at the first ten amendments of the constitution they all have something in common they are limiting the power of the central government congress shall not congress shall not congress shall not establish a church right or bridge the freedom of religion right congress shall not do various things congress shall not you know uh you know interfere with free speech with assembly with those kinds of things these are all limitations on the power of the of the central government the concept of a bill of rights is about that and the english bill of rights was about that as well this is what william and mary if you're going to be if you're going to reign in england right if you're going to govern in england this is what you will not do these are the restrictions upon the power of the crown and so what we're seeing here again is the is this this movement in england toward being a limited constitutional monarchy right you don't have anything like that in france until the french revolution right uh you know in france you know you know louis xiv says la tossing why i'm the state right i'm france people aren't friends i'm friends you know the king's word is law is the idea uh not so in england not something you have the concept of limited government excuse me these are all concepts that are going to mean a lot to colonists in america and really should inform us as to why things happen the way they do in the 18th century right why you do move toward independence and why you do establish a republican the way that you do uh and that's something that we need to bear in mind right so when someone leaves england during all this this this chaos here this turmoil or or when you leave dictates really who left and why they left and maybe even where they went okay so we need to kind of keep that in mind as we're thinking about the establishment of of these colonies in america now what i'm going to do is the textbook talks about a lot of the colonies i'm only going to look really at a few right and i'm going to kind of contrast south versus north here right virginia as opposed to plymouth and massachusetts bay to kind of really kind of get to the end of that whole idea of diversity of colonies so let's start uh you know with virginia now one of the things again that's important here is uh you're going to have ample capital to finance ventures you're going to have the will of the state to you know allow this to happen and to actually endorse it because they believe that their their benefits that can come from a tax revenue etc also i mean think about it think about this in conjunction with naval supremacy you do realize that in the age of sale if you engage in naval warfare what you don't do if i if if i'm the captain excuse me of an english vessel and we're at war of france and england's going to be at ward france with france you know from you know the late 17th century on and off to 1815 right but if if i see a french warship if i'm the english captain excuse me what i don't do is i don't really try to sink the enemy ship right what i want to do is capture it so most of what i'm attempting to do is in terms of using onboard artillery is i'm attacking the mass and sails right using chain shot which is two balls linked by chain the idea if you send it through the mass you're tearing up the rigging i want to incapacitate the ship so that they will actually surrender and i capture the ship i have timbers on board so that i can repair that ship and i can basically take it over because a battleship you know a man of war represented you know about a hundred acres of hardwood i mean if i can capture the enemy ship rename it i save my government a tremendous amount of money now think about north america all of the timber that was available uh you know i mean these endless almost seemingly endless tracks of virgin timber often hard wood things like oak that you could use in the manufacture of warships you know obviously the crown was going to be very interested in timber because timber was necessary to build ships right so that england was interested north america shouldn't shock us at one iota considering their commitment to naval supremacy right i mean you didn't try to destroy it it ship's too valuable so that's why it's kept you you didn't try you didn't try to hit them with didn't want a cannonball to hit him at the water line and sink the ship right and that's why by the way during a naval battle uh anyone who's injured and there'll be all kinds of people injured because everything's wood think about it metal hitting wood splinters everywhere i mean splinters into people huge splinters you know that's why sailors lost eyes and things like that you know uh so all the uh your medical officer would would be in the bottom of the ship with the with the wounded it's actually seen as the safest place because you don't try to sink the ship are you trying to take the ship so it shouldn't surprise us again that england was interested in acquiring some place with timber first thing that the settlers of jamestown will send back to england is timber it's timber uh they're going to send back wood and the eye and that's that that uh that should not you know there's every reason therefore the crown should be interested in uh in that happening right uh there's every interest that the crown would be interested in getting rid of people that are annoying and are you know you know the puritans if we can send them off and and get some revenue out at the same time they saw it as a win-win right uh you know they also saw it as a means of getting rid of criminals right you can send criminals off to america and use indentured servitude by the way indentured servitude's the way people are going to go to america right many especially like in virginia southern college this is really true uh the notion that i mentioned this last time is you would basically pay for your passage in this fashion when you got to america someone would buy your indenture and you work for them for seven years and you know your your your freedom is definitely limited i mean if you're indentured to someone in america you do not have the right to marry you can't marry without their permission you can't you know you have to stay with them and stay on that land uh they have the right to administer corporal punishment to you right uh to chastise you uh if you fail to to meet the uh you fail to do your work right i mean the line between indentured servitude and slavery is an interesting one right obviously indentured servants are not slaves because it's not perpetual after seven years they're free right slaves are not free after seven years right and what we find especially in virginia and the book that really really really goes into this is by edmond morgan called american slavery american freedom uh is uh in virginia especially by the late 17th century this the colony of virginia makes distinctions between servants and slaves and there are certain things you can do to slaves you can't do the servants right a distinction is is made between the two right and we'll see why uh you know virginia becomes more committed to slavery and less indentured servitude here subsequently but indentured servitude provides the means by which englishmen can come to america uh you know rather willingly and you would do so willingly in a sense that america offered you something that you cannot have uh at home and that that thing that it offers is land if you're in england land's in the hands of the crown it's in the lands of the hands of nobility it's in the hands of the church you know you don't have access to land if you come to america after seven years you can get your own land you can basically be your own person uh it's a dream it's a dream and i know the digital servitude sounds awful and i think there's a tendency for us to to really focus on the on the harsh aspects of it but if you compared it to for example apprenticeship back in europe if you were going to be you know especially an artisan or craftsman a blacksmith or cooper cooper makes barrels uh you know you would be indentured uh you know maybe for 20 30 years right the idea is you know you're under this other craftsman for a long time before you have any hope of actually you know having your own your own operation i mean sometimes i think that there's a tendency to just think how terrible intentional servitude was but not to see that you know people were attracted to it because life back in england you didn't offer the hope that a possible life in america did right uh and so you know and that discontent plays into this right the idea that people are politically discontent at some points with the stewards discontent in terms of religion uh puritans want to go and establish godly communities not necessarily communities where there's religious freedom right they want to establish communities in which they make the rules and people who disagree with them they persecute them right and so all these things are kind of pushing the english to continue here right and indentured servitude provides the means the means for that to happen all right so the first successful english colony was jamestown right jamestown uh so james the first had assumed the throne in 1603 and the king favored the virginia company and the virginia company actually had two branches one was uh located uh in plymouth and it was under for sir fernando gorge and the other was located in london it had its main office in london and it it was under the auspices of sir thomas smith uh so he grants charters to the king to the virginia company uh king james the first does the plymouth branch makes this makes the first attempt to settle a colony and they did that actually in what we think of as maine they conducted an expedition uh to uh an area near the kennebec river in maine and that that expedition fails and part of it is uh the conditions in maine right i mean uh you know that's winter hits maine pretty hard right i mean maine maine's very far north uh and so uh you know that it breaks up because as one as one of the settlers contended because of and i quote the extreme unseasonable and frosty weather unquote so they simply quit right so fernando gorge also had went over with them and he had inherited uh he had been receiving the word he was inheriting a considerable inheritance from a from a relative that passes away so he goes back right it also doesn't help that particular effort and so the london branch then made its attempt right and the london branch is the branch of the company that will establish jamestown okay they had received a charter from the king in april of 1606. they were authorized to of course establish a colony the charter of 1606 also created a royal council of 13 to administer the colonists under the authority of the crown but that that council of course uh was you know composed of major investors in the company in december of 1606 the virginia company of london launched an expedition 160 men three ships right three ships the susan constant the god speed and the discovery they spent four months at sea gained side of the chesapeake bay sailed up the river 30 miles and basically established a site now the site of jamestown excuse me the site of jamestown between the james and new york river right the site of jamestown is basically built or basically basically it comes from a defensible position they sought a defensible position the the area actually they chose was not the best in terms of health for example i mean uh you know the nature of the tides brought water back up right you know from so in other words i mean well just be blunt here uh you know if you empty chamber parts or whatever into the river the tide brought a lot of that waste material back and so it wasn't healthy it wasn't a healthy spot but it was defensible right so military defense was their main concern in terms of the actual location uh and the uh first thing they do is is fell trees and send back a load loads of timber again right wood was scarce is the idea in england you know america promised the idea of all kinds of timber that could be used especially for shipbuilding right the experience of jamestown was a harsh one i'd say the least provision of food that they carried was nowhere near adequate one settler pointed out that i quote having fried some 26 weeks in the ship's hold contained as many worms as grains unquote this combined with the hard labor dramatic had a dramatic impact on the settlers right so within a few months nearly 50 settlers were already dead right so very harsh experience uh in fact uh the jamestown settlement would not have survived except for the generosity of natives and this is something we often find right columbus found that cartier found it initially the natives are friendly i do not see the threat that these colonists actually end up being the generosity of the indians was praised by thomas studly one of the settlers who credited god right who argued that god had used them to save you know the settlement he said and i quote god that great patron of all good endeavors in that desperate extremity so changed the hearts of the savages that they brought such plenty of their fruits and provision that no man wanted and so they were essential in terms of this colony's survival bleak times however persisted and one of the initial problems is the settlers the initial settlers who came to jamestown were unused to labor to hard labor uh one of the earlier chroniclers of virginia william byrd described them as described the first settlers as being in a quote about a hundred men most of the reprobates of good families the rejects of good families but they weren't accustomed to labor right to working with their hands uh and so it took harsh discipline to keep the colony together a lot of that actually happened initially under uh the auspices of captain john smith who was definitely a tough and resourceful guy in fact he had at one point uh been a slave in the islamic world and had escaped and here he enforces law and order in virginia right he noticed right pretty quickly that one of the serious problems was the pooling of all the settlers labor into one common stock right you know if everybody uh you know lived off everyone else uh you know then the industrious did all the work and the lazy lived off the work of the industrious smith later wrote in a quote when our people were fed out of the common store and labored jointly together glad was he who could slip from his labor or slumber over his task unquote so he established private ownership so in other words you didn't work you wouldn't eat is the idea right so you had to you had to be responsible for yourself right and smith contended that under this system the labor of three or four was equal to the labor of 30 under the communal system and by the end of 1608 smith had taken charge of the bickering group and was enforcing order with the threat of banishment from the colony altogether 1608-1609 a very trying time for the jamestown settlement known as the starving time and smith was able to preserve the colony only with the aid of natives the local native leader palatine uh and palatin uh is in charge of a confederacy or an alliance of tribes it's often often called the palatine tri confederacy uh palitan saw the english as another group to be befriended i mean and there this is something that happens um the english have something that's very useful firearms and a palatine could maintain you know sole trade with the english he could gain access to firearms whereas traditional enemies would not gain access right so he could use that against his traditional native enemies okay and so he was willing to trade and establish friendship uh with uh with with jamestown uh the english effort at jamestown had three goals right that's that we need to remember that the english efforts of jamestown had three goals uh one was to find the northwest passage right the all-water route to asia second was to define sources of gold and silver similar to what the spanish had found in in central and south america and third was to find lands that would be suitable for the cultivation of valuable crops such as grapes and citrus fruits and things like that in all three areas jamestown failed miserably well the northwest passage doesn't exist right and the james and york rivers uh do not flow very far west uh there was no sources of silver and gold comparable to central uh and south america uh they're also uh you know virginia is not a place to grow citrus fruits right oranges and things like that the climate is not that uh not conducive for that and so they failed in all three and again something that really kind of inhibits them here is the fact you have these gentlemen who are not accustomed to labor uh and they are in fact uh more interested in trying to find silver and gold than they are trying to farm right and so by the time that uh you know smith was later injured and left virginia in 1609 he left what he referred to and as i quote a misery a ruin a death and a hell now at 16 1608 more settlers including some women began to arrive at the settlement at jamestown and one thing that virginia is going to struggle with early on is its demographics i mean even after it begins to be successful by the 1620s 1630s you only have you have like four or five men to every one woman in virginia in fact the company uh in the 1620s early 1620s will actually send a ship of women to virginia all of which come over as indentured servants who are essentially wives for the settlers in virginia the idea and this actually produces a little animosity because you know the wealthier settlers you know acquire the indentureds of the ones that they they find you know the wives that the women they find most appealing and take them as wives right but you know you have to send a ship full of women because you have again four or five men to every one woman virginia becomes a place very rough and tumble kind of society very violent society young masculine society in every way they continue to struggle by 1610 although successive voyages from england had brought over 200 additional settlers only 60 60 settlers remained alive in jamestown the the company had secured very little property in fact eventually in 1624 james the first would revoke the colonies charter and virginia would in essence function as a royal colony in which you know they will be sent a royal governor who will actually govern them uh you know as as the king will be in the place of the king so to speak right uh and so they continue to struggle however in the 16 teens uh some developments take place i think that were important in terms of enabling virginia to survive right and i think we need to definitely think about that now james the first does revoke the charter in 1624 but in 1619 uh the virginia company uh had established the head rights system which continues even as a royal colony and here's how the head right system worked the idea is if you're in virginia and you're you're a settler you would gain 50 you'd be granted 50 additional acres for every indentured servant that you brought to america so if a ship shows up with a bunch of indentured servants uh or that you know that one vessel shows up in in 1621 a shipment of wives wives for virginians uh and you you you purchased the indenture of one of the of one of the women there's sometimes a weird name one of those names of one of those women's those women was uh lettuce king i've always thought that was interesting lettuce king was her name her name first name was lettuce right so if you purchase lettuces in denture you would be granted 50 acres if you purchase indentured food of two people you would be granted 100 acres right so this becomes the basis of large holdings of land for certain key families who become uh first families of virginia right uh eventually become significant planners uh because in the 16 teens you also see the introduction of full-scale slavery of slavery coming into virginia as well right but the head right system is part of the establishment of that that planner class now the thing that was going to make virginia successful was tobacco now englishmen had become familiar with tobacco from their contact with with natives but they eventually tobacco would even have a market on the european continent right so colonists started to cultivate tobacco as early as 1612. right in 1618 virginia shipped 30 000 pounds of tobacco to england and most of that was then exported to the continent right by 1627 that had increased to about half a million pounds right per year so tobacco becomes a significant cash crop right and later just like sugar would be in the caribbean islands or later cotton would be in the south the deep south in the early united states tobacco turns out to be a very very important development in fact one visitor to jamestown observed and i quote and this image really kind of fits with this quote if you look at and they're growing tobacco everywhere right one visitor to jamestown observed down a quote the streets of all and all the other spare places are planted with tobacco the colony is dispersed all about planting tobacco unquote right so tobacco becomes uh you know the the thing that you know virginia becomes known for and so virginia develops an economy based on the on a cash crop and therefore they need cheap labor you have a denture at servitude but slavery also comes involved in this as well right and so you you basically you have some individuals who are going to own lots of land who are going to produce tobacco and they're going to be dependent upon you know servitude or slave labor in order to do that right and so you have a planner class that's constantly pushing people west i might add right because one of the thing things about tobacco is it it tends to lend itself towards soil erosion and so there's always a movement to try to get more land right which creates tensions obviously with the natives as a result uh another important development here you know tobacco of course again is crucial wait a second let me do this i mean uh james the first has this statement about tobacco if i can get the slide up right so let's look at this james the first talking about tobacco uh and i think this is interesting he he didn't like it right he didn't like tobacco much he said smoking is accustomed lows into the eye hateful to the nose harmful to the brain dangerous to the lungs yes they knew that back then and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless thus says the man who grants the charter then revokes it in 1624 but is certainly willing to acquire tax revenue willing to take the benefits of tobacco right but the question is how does england govern a colony with the revoking of the charter right when you revoke the charter you're no longer using that council you're no longer using the company virginia becomes a royal colony but how do you really administer that colony and here what we see is and this is true of all the colonies right i mean the colonies are very different and that is my main thrust but one thing that is true of all the colonies is the crown attempts to to to administer through i guess we might see as a salutory or benign neglect right in other words just out of a practical sense you allow a degree of self-government i mean you can't really rule directly because you're three or four months away every bit of news you get from virginia in england is three four months old every bit of news that you get in england i mean in virginia from england is three or four months old and so what the english do and this turns out i think to be a crucial thing for us right is they allow allow a degree of self-government right so at the same time that you're establishing the head right act the head right system you also are permitting the development of the house of burgesses the house of burgesses will be the governing assembly the legislative assembly in virginia therefore you know uh good virginians and i'm a native virginian right good virginians uh argue that the legislature of virginia the general assembly of virginia is the longest running or longest continuously running legislative body in the western hemisphere that may or may not be true but in any event you know it it does have a long history and the house of burgesses in essence would be the representative it's parliament in virginia right and so virginians govern themselves they tax themselves and the house of burgesses is like parliament and the royal governor is like the king uh the world governor just like the king the king in england can dissolve parliament james the fir charles the first had done that so much right but you know the king in england can dissolve parliament and call for new elections have a new parliament elected well in in virginia the royal governor can dissolve the house of purchases and have a new out and have a new election of representatives right now the people are going to dominate the house of burgesses are going to be planners right who own large amounts of property large numbers of slaves these folks are going to control virginia they will do so by over representing uh you know areas uh you know in which you have high concentration of slaves and plantations they will do that uh you know by property requirements you have to have so much property to serve uh in the house of purchases to begin with right so planners basically governor virginia the planner elite and and planners southern planners turn out to be essentially somewhat like an aristocracy and i think that's that's true even later i mean someone like a robert e lee later like in the 19th century robert e lee is almost like a an aristocrat right you know i don't think it's accidental that many european aristocracies followed the civil war and admired people like lee right because they saw in people like lee themselves right men like lee were aristocrats and they saw you know the planters as an aristocracy and the planters would have certainly liked that because they see themselves that way right but the idea here is again that virginia governs itself to a degree the crown does not govern it directly and that is something that's going to be true in every single one of these colonies so in terms of internal taxation it's done by your colonial assembly so on down the line here when the crown starts to try and the parliament's tries to directly tax it will be a novelty because for several generations you know for a hundred for nearly a century and a half essentially you've allowed these colonies to govern themselves and now you're going to try to change the rules right so that's something for us to remember for down the line right so virginia will have the house of burgesses massachusetts bay will have the general court every one of these uh colonies will have something similar we'll have something similar but again virginia is a very volatile society very volatile society and as they continue to press westward and virginia's going to be aggressive in terms of their expansion this creates more problems obviously with the uh with the natives right so for example in 1622 uh powellton's successor attempts to launch an assault on the english to try to drive them out he even you know kills like a third of the colonists the english response was violent and bitter you know whether friendly or not all natives were considered by the colonists to be enemies london instructed the settlers to and i quote and this is one of their uh one of their directives to unquote to root out the indians from any longer being a people right destroy them so settlers committed atrocities indians then responded right the goal here was genocide the goal is trying to wipe out the native populations and so you have tense conflict that rages from the 1620s into the 1640s in virginia in 1646 the colony and indian leaders agreed to occupy separate territory and agreed to a peace that lasts for nearly 30 years right about 1646 to 1676 and during that period of time we see a dramatic increase in terms of population in virginia so about in 1640 the population is about a thousand in 1660 the population was 40 000 40 000 and in fact the crown started to make efforts to to have more control over the virginia market for tobacco and you see the first of a series of navigation acts right the crown is trying to is trying to gain the benefits obviously of colonial output of tobacco okay but you have a period of time in which you have peace right but as you get into the 1660s and into the 1670s the population is growing the demand for more land is there and so there's a considerable amount of tension and this boils over in 1676. a new wave of settlers are pushing west on the indian lands settlers complained bitterly and regularly about the colony's government that indians were raiding their livestock these sellers sought official permission to drive the natives away from white settlements okay the royal governor at this point is william berkeley uh barclay in fact is how the name is pronounced it's spelled like we would say berkeley but apparently it was pronounced barclay right barclay in fact uh in this slide for bacon's rebellion uh is uh uh the clean-shaven gentleman with the wick i think i've got a good quote from barclay here ah here we go here's a quote from sir william barkley we'll use a couple of them from him okay and barkley says how miserable that man is that governs a people where six parts of seven were using old english spelling here at least are poor indebted discontented and armed so let's look at this quote a little closer so miserable is that man he's talking about himself now barclay i might point out as a young man had helped to basically secure that treaty in 1646 right so he's responsible for that peace that's his peace okay and he's saying how miserable how terrible it is you know it's a miserable life to be the guy that has to govern as much folks six parts of seven are poor indebted dentured right those kinds of things discontent and worst of all for him armed therefore dangerous right that means if this if this is true right if what barkley's saying in this statement is true we also can say what that one part of seven are rich creditors content probably still armed but they you know they're the ones benefiting from the colonies policies right so six out of there's a there's a tremendous potential in other words for class conflict that's what boils over into into bacon's rebellion and i'll go back to that in a moment but let me give you another quote from barkley right and there's a there's barkley's image and barclays says i thank god that we have not free schools nor printing you talk about virginia right and i hope we shall not have these 100 years for learning has brought disobedience and heresy and sex into the world and printing has divulged in him and libels against the government god keep us from both we got to keep people ignorant right we can't people you can't have education you don't want people reading writing they'll read the wrong things they'll get they'll get ideas it'll be harder to govern be harder to control and this in fact is going to be something that's going to be a part of you know the southern experience right uh you know southern colonies and then southern states will not have a tendency not to have free schooling uh until really after the civil war right uh you know planners will educate their own children through private education right they'll bring in tutors to educate them privately they don't care about paying taxes in order to establish schools to get people to educate people because they see that as dangerous right you don't want people thinking right and so barclay's saying i thank god we don't have education in printing we don't want that we don't need that here and i think that the reason why is it it's such a volatile society in which you have people who are unhappy and people who are discontented and people who want land and they want therefore to break that peace with the natives and they find an advocate they find a hero in nathaniel bacon so let's go back a couple slides bacon's rebellion bacon is the gentleman with the the mustache and the goatee nathaniel bacon was a a relative of governor barkley by marriage and so therefore he was able to gain a seat uh on the verge on the governor's council his advisory council and he pushed for a war of extermination against the natives against the indians which barkley resisted right uh he had established that peace that was his peace uh and but it's very popular with with many of the poor settlers in virginia right and so what eventually happens is bacon rises in rebellion against barkley and they lead expeditions they lead you know kind of quasi-military efforts against natives right and at one point they even burned jamestown right and bacon issues a list of grievances against against governor barkley uh basically accusing him of having policies that you know are are helpful for his for his uh his favorites other you know planners uh and it's really kind of a statement of class conflict and so uh you know it's it's interesting it's a list of grievances you know in 1676 whereas the declaration of independence in 1776 will have a list of grievances against the king right so it's similar in that sense right so this is what governor barkley has done he's done this to help his his friends and planners at the expense of the poor folk here in virginia bacon attempts to to bring together all the desperate elements of virginia society shows how volatile it was uh when when london finds out when england finds out about this they dispatch 1100 troops but by the time they make it to virginia i mean they hear about the rebellion it's already four months old and by the time the 1100 troops get to virginia there's an additional four months at least bacon had died of uh disease uses the uh the arrival of those troops to make examples of some of the leaders who are still around with public executions but barclay also will be recalled he will lose his position as royal governor because you know chaos had ensued on his watch right so what this says is uh it talks about it tells us again just how volatile a virginia society could be how rough and tumble and difficult it was it was a frontier society uh that was given to violence it was given to class conflict there's always the potential for problems and so one thing we find here is uh you know bacon had appealed to dentured servants and then some and so we see the planter class in virginia after bacon's rebellion becoming more and more committed to slavery to african slavery rather than to indentured servitude and slavery becomes their primary method of you know of labor in terms of tobacco production so a very very different society a male society a youthful society a volatile society but one that contrasts greatly uh with the colonies we see for example developing in puritan new england right so let's look a little bit of puritan new england now again the puritans the puritans were were protestants who wanted to see the church of england cleansed of any elements even remotely connected with catholicism puritans were calvinists and i've talked about calvinism some calvinism of course is derived from uh you know the theologian praxillons right john calvin you know one of the great magisterial uh protestant reformers uh and and calvin was french but calvin had established uh you know a seminary in geneva the academy which he named after plato's famous school right and calvin was a very uh you know still is a well-regarded theologian he still studied considerably he was very systematic and more systematic in many ways than luther he wrote extensively luther wrote extensively but calvin wrote you know extensively in terms of commentaries in fact he wrote commentaries on most books of the bible his commentary on genesis is massive in fact they had a copy of it in the library here in athens i'm assuming it's still there uh but if it's if it's if it's a thousand pages it's one page it's it's huge right uh he's most known uh for a a work he wrote and in fact he wrote it earlier early in his career and continued to revise it called the institutes of the christian religion the institutes of the christian religion which really really details his theology and it's a it's a magnus opus of of religion of religious writing of theology to say the least uh and i've talked a little bit about calvin argued to begin with i mean you can kind of see calvinism a lot of people use tulip t-u-l-i-p right uh calvinism taught total depravity right calvin taught you know that people are sinful that they're born into sin right original sin now almost everybody in the 16th century agrees with that right and into the 17th century uh that that's that's not a that's not a new notion it's definitely paul line right you find it in st paul you definitely find in st augustine and other early religious writers but calvin really stresses that people are depraved he also stresses you t u u is unconditional election or predestination calvin argued you know and this is something that by the way luther also argued this but not nearly as vehemently or not nearly as as aggressively you cannot acquire salvation through good works calvin would argue you're incapable you can't choose god you're depraved it's not part of your nature god must choose you and so the elect those who are saved are those who are unconditionally elected by the sovereign will of god and those who are not elected are the reprobates the damned god had made this choice this is god's action right salvation is completely and absolutely of god none of it was comes from man right none of it comes from human action l limited atonement the idea that you know the sacrifice of christ is only efficacious for the church for the elect i is irresistible grace uh the notion that you know if god's gonna save you you can't you can't do it you know you can't prevent it god does it right it's god's action it's god's choice god is sovereign he is perseverance of saints or what you know theologians today protestant theologians are especially like baptist theologians uh we'll call that the eternal security of the believer right you know once you're saved you can't lose salvation because you had nothing to do with acquiring it all right and so for calvin god is absolutely sovereign and active in all things he writes in the institutes of the chris institute of the christian religion that you know not you know not not a drop of rain falls from heaven to the earth throughout the express will of god so when things happen things happen because god has projected or permitted them to happen and this has a lot of impact on the puritans right i mean one aspect of this is kind of interesting if you believe this you would think well you know i can't do anything about whether i'm saved or not you know i'd rather have salvation or not i'll see you folks at the tavern right i can't do anything about it i was golfing you know why should i bother ironically calvinist tend to be really adamant about showing good works right because what you want to do is you want to the if you believe as luther did and calvin does believe this that's good work works are the results of salvation if you have works it shows that you have faith it shows that you have salvation right i mean in the book of james in the new testament james says that you know faith without works is dead in other words it's not real faith it's not living faith it's dead right real faith has works and so calvinists tend to want to demonstrate uh you know uh i guess you might say evidence of salvation evidence of election through works and this is applied in various ways uh and one of the applications of this i mean if you believe that god is sovereign and these kinds of things are this is the case uh then you know this has implications in terms for example of the nature of a community and government so the puritans are calvinists and the puritans tend to adhere to something called covenant theology right covenant theology which is drawn right out of calvin's understanding here okay and especially if you think of the calvinist reading of the old testament in the old testament i mean calvin certainly makes a big deal about god choosing abraham right in genesis god chooses abraham and has a covenant with abraham and chooses abraham's descendants and there are different kinds of covenants a covenant is an agreement and there are different kinds of covenants the covenant with abraham in the old testament is a covenant that's that's a royal grant it's unconditional in other words god is saying to abraham here's what i'm doing i'm going to give your descendants as land and your descent you're going to have descendants that are going to be more than the stars of the sky or the sand of the sea and and god requires nothing of abraham right he gives him a sign of the covenant you know circumcision is the sign of the covenant but the idea is god god makes all the promises right you look at genesis and the covenant god makes the promises to abraham here's what i'm going to do here's what i'm going to do right and at one point when the covenant is cut right there's an idea the hebrew word in fact it's often translated covenant literally means to cut and the idea is that sacrifice is involved in the covenant and so in the book of genesis when abraham god's you know giving abraham this covenant they cut the covenant he has a sacrifice animal sacrifice and and he splits these birds and he puts them on each side god protects the sacrament and abraham he drives bird drives you know drives the animals birds away from the from the sacrifice and god goes between the pieces right uh in the form i think of a of a torch and a fire pot right god goes through abraham does not because god makes the promises right so calvin really was into that kind of thing right so that's an unconditional covenant but later god makes a covenant with israel you know with abraham's descendants when he brings him out of egypt and he says i'm going to bring you into the land if you look look at deuteronomy like chapter 29 30 31 you know he says here's the here's the good things i'm going to do for you if you if you keep my covenant that's a conditional covenant if you keep my covenant and you don't serve other gods you serve only me i'm gonna you know the crops will grow and things like that and then there's a there's a bunch of curses there are blessings right then there's there's more curses in blessing there's curses for if you fail right if you fail you serve other gods and you you know do all these things you're not supposed to do you if you break my covenant here are the consequences eventually i'll take you out of that land right i'll send other peoples to conquer you and remove you from the land that idea that concept of covenant is very important in terms of the puritans and that's why i'm talking about that okay the puritans believe in covenant theology if we are puritans and we have a community we establish a town we establish a community god has allowed us to do that we have a covenant with god god expects us to maintain a degree of morality and so if someone you know breaks the covenant it's not a private matter i mean a lot of times you know puritans are you know they get a little bit of a maybe it may be a bad rap in a sense that you know i mean for example h.o lincoln in the 1920s said a puritan was someone in a quote who has the haunting fear that someone somewhere may be happy unquote and so we see puritans as drab people you know who you know are enforcing a strict morality and there's there's something definitely to that i think it can be overstated i mean uh calvinism is is not uh ascetic right i mean like most protestantism it would reject you know uh you know medieval masticism right uh and things of that nature the asceticism of catholicism uh calvin and the institutes argue that god in a quote intended to provide not only for our necessity but likewise for our pleasure and delight and hath he not made many things worthy of our estimation independent of any necessary use unquote increased math of the great you know puritan theologian said i quote that wine is from god but the drunkard is from the devil so they weren't completely against drink they weren't completely against sex but they believed sex could only be in the context of marriage right but the idea is in terms of covenant theology that you know we have to maintain a degree of morality in our community regardless so even if you don't want to you know even if you don't care about you know whether you have personally can show evidence of salvation or whatever we still need you to maintain a degree of morality because if something happens that goes wrong it has to it can be asked to explain all right the indians come and massacre you know part of our population how do we explain that god has to have allowed that to happen and so the notion is god has judged us because of a failure on our part in terms of the covenant all right someone's drinking too much right someone uh is having sex with someone else's wife right someone is not working and being idle is a big thing for them right i mean for them if you're if you're a farmer god's called you to be a farmer you should work as much as you can to be the best farmer you can be it's your calling right and so being idle is unacceptable in that society and so if the indians attack us and they slaughter a bunch of us god has judged us for a shortcoming of our community not just as individuals but our community we have to maintain a level of morality right if disease hits us god has is active he's sovereign we have to explain that there has to be an explanation of it and so they you know naturally enough looked for those who were breaking the covenant and because people aren't perfect they found people who broke the covenant right or at least they perceived that they saw that of course often you know it's scapegoating you're blaming other people you know for what's going on uh this also is it it explains the idea witchcraft right because if god's at work satan is at work too and you know the notion is satan is is active and so let's say something something goes wrong something happens that you know they go even something trivial like my cow stops giving milk oh my goodness wasn't sarah such and such up here by the barn here the other day she's a witch she's at home she's got a knife in the wall and she's performing incantations over the handle of the knife and she's stealing the milk from my cow that's called knifing right and they believed this right it was part of the how they viewed the world as working it's functioning you know satan's active there are people that are that are disloyal to us that go out in the woods you know and they meet the devil and the devil places his mark upon them uh and you know the devil is working and we've got to root that out if we don't root that out god will judge us god will judge us and god will bring his might upon us and destroy us right that's covenant theology and so there they have blue laws right i mean when i was a kid you had blue laws in virginia right you didn't you couldn't uh stores weren't open on sunday i remember when i lived in georgia for a while you know they were liquor no alcohol was sold in certain counties on on saturday and sunday um some counties didn't sell it all they're dry right but the idea is that you had laws enforcing morality well you know the puritans have that so you get stories like a ship's captain is gone for two years comes home kisses his wife on the doorstep and they put him in the stock stocks for uh you know a display of lascivious uh lascivious action right uh you know because that's unacceptable morality right uh so i mean you you make sure that you keep and why are they so intent upon this because they believe they don't that god will judge them that's a very different mindset than what you that you have in virginia right uh virginia's you know almost anything goes is kind of how you have things in colonial virginia especially early on uh and so you know what new england will have is a very different kind of a community they also have uh you know a society that will be more you know family oriented in a sense that families will come over not just you know young men the tendency is to have a very different demographic in that sense right extremely different demographic all right so the first of these colonies would be the plymouth colony and that is established by the separatists right and so here we have a slide the separatists and the mayflower compact now separatists were puritans who argued that the church of england was beyond all hope at the church of england had no hope whatsoever uh that there was no there there was nothing you could redeem from the church of england uh it was uh you know impossible right uh and so they wanted to completely separate from the church of england now obviously uh preaching this in england resulted in persecution you don't just preach by the way in england or near any european state uh you have to have a license from the king but they preach anyway and so obviously you know they can expect persecution and so the separatists you know want to get away from the church of england so in 1614 one of their congregations migrated to the dutch republic the dutch republic had religious toleration and so they could live there in the dutch republic without being persecuted but there's a problem here the separatists are opponents of the church of england but they are not proponents or they are not advocates of religious toleration and in fact they don't like religious toleration they don't like the idea for example that in the dutch republic their children are being raised around religious toleration that means there they can hear you know uh all different kinds of religious uh uh voices so to speak you know hear catholic theology they can hear uh you know armenian theology right they can hear all kinds of different viewpoints that they don't want that right they want to limit that they're not advocates of religious toleration so they want to leave the dutch republic uh and so what happens here uh is uh the separatists are able to gain backing from certain certain london economic interests to gain them a a charter to establish colony in america right where according to like one of their documents they say they could and i quote live as a distinct body by themselves unquote and so you know they don't want again they don't want religious toleration they want freedom for themselves uh but they're not wanting to establish a society where they welcome over other viewpoints never make that mistake that is not what they're about and later you see it especially with the puritan in massachusetts bay when you look at the ann hutchinson case and look at the ann hutchison document you see that that's not the case right uh so in the fall of 1620 35 of these separatists are pilgrims we can't we know them as the pilgrims right under william bradford and captain miles standish set sail for the new world uh also on board we're 60 strangers who are not separate is not puritans artisans soldiers indentured servants and in november they found themselves off the coast of cape cod in massachusetts and decided to settle there uh and not to seek virginia and their charter was virginia virginia is very widely defined here right and so that they decide to to settle there and interesting before they actually you know make the settlement right before they actually leave the ship uh offshore 41 adult men signed a compact of government known as the mayflower compact right and i think i have the text of it here in a slide right so uh here's the mayflower compact and let's kind of look at it here for a moment uh and you know in the name of god amen we whose names are underwritten the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord king james so you're trying to of course ingratiate yourself to the king because you have you have to have the authority of the king right uh so by the grace of god of great britain and they they get all his other titles right uh you know the english kings have acclaimed the part of france going back to plantagenets ireland king defender of the faith which is ironic henry viii is the first to have that title it was granted actually by the papacy et cetera having understood for the glory of god in the advance of the christian faith that's their purpose right their purpose or motivation is for the glory of god in the advancement of the christian faith and honor of our king and country a voyage to plant the first colony in northern part of virginia do by these presence solemnly and mutually in the presence of god and one another covenant here's that word again right a covenant is an agreement right covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic now i think to a large degree this is the influence of the dutch republic the dutch republic was a representative government but they're establishing a representative government and remember one thing the crown will do with all these colonies is allow a degree of representative government and that's going to be the the case here as well right so we combine ourselves together into a civil body politic we're creating a government for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the even ends of force ed by virtue hereof to enact constitute and frame such just and equal laws ordinances acts and constitutions of office from time time that shall be thought most meet or most qualified or most able and convenient for the general good of the colony under which we promise all due submission and obedience right so there this is a document about about essentially representative government and so in a world of monarchy you know they're saying we're going to combine together we're going to form a government the the authority of the government in a sense does come from god right uh god in a sense has covenant with with us but we are gain we are giving consent to the establishment of this government right and so that's that i think it's very important and again the crown will use that sense of benign or salvatory neglect to govern these colonies they will allow these colonies in a sense to govern themselves right and so they establish a settlement which they call plymouth plymouth right and you know they have some of the same kinds of issues that were true in virginia they knew very little about hunting fishing farming they also were not accustomed to the harsh climate of new england and they suffered suffered terribly the first winter about in fact about half the group died before the end of the first year a few years before a plague had been brought to the indians by european fishermen and so the natives were were standoffish not unfriendly but standoffish and they were afraid to contact uh with the separatists one native in particular however turned out to be crucial in terms of their survival and he was an individual named squanto right and squanto had apparently uh learned english from fishermen and possibly even been to england right uh and he was able to help uh the separatists right he did so uh by showing them how to plant corn or maize i guess i should say and serving as a translator between uh pit the pilgrims and the local regional chief massasoit uh in fact when i was a kid right around thanksgiving you know you'd have uh you know the teacher bring out the slide show slide projector and there you'd have squanto teaching those dumb pilgrims you know how to how to raise maize right how to raise corn uh bradford described squanto as i quote a special instrument sent by god for him this was the sovereign action of god god was preserving us through squanto six years after they had landed the pilgrims were able to virtually cut their connections with england right they were able to pay off their investors with large shipments of furs and timber there we go lumber again timber wood how important that is especially this english overseas effort ten years after the first founding they had townships established southward and onto cape cod they had also developed a system of representative government based on the mayflower compact in which each town sent representatives to the primary government in plymouth right and the crown of course permitted this to be the case right and so you know they're allowing again that degree of self-government which is a very important part of what's going on in terms of uh of the english colonies in north america and it also is important in terms of what happens later and why the american revolution takes place so the plymouth colony has some success but by 1691 would be absorbed into a larger puritan colony called massachusetts bay okay the massachusetts bay colony uh most english puritans were not separatists right now the distinction between puritans and separatists uh separatists believe the church has no church of england has has no redeeming quality right puritans are a little less emphatic about that now from the point of view of the crown it's very hard to tell the difference between the two right obviously in the 1620s puritans have much more of a desire to leave england because of charles the first right what charles first is doing don't forget that context right and so in 1629 a well-to-do puritan lawyer named james winthrop or john winthrop sorry john winthrop led an effort to establish a company and secure the rights for a settlement in new england and this enabled winthrop to be the first governor of massachusetts bay but also something winthrop did here it's very important uh is usually a company's charter had a statement i mean that's when i talked about the virginia company i said had two branches one branch had its uh administrative center right head office so to speak in plymouth the other in london usually there was some statement in the charter that said essentially uh you know where the company or the company's official place of administration would be winthrop intentionally left that out of the massachusetts bay charter and the idea is when he left england and when these puritans leave england and come in 1630 they bring the charter with them it comes with them and so the charter the company would have its base of operation not in england but in new england okay uh and an increased mather uh said about or cotton mather rather sorry cotton mather described this letter he said i quote we would have our prosperity settled under the pure and full dispensation of the gospel defended by rulers who should be ourselves we were going to call the shots right because we were going to bring the charter with us right and this began what was sometimes called the great migration right in which in the 1630s you had puritans coming to to to america and they tend to be wealthier people and to be able to afford to do this without a cert without a digital servitude and the idea is that those settlers who are already in in america can basically make money by selling goods to those folks who show up right help them get established and so that's the pattern right so you have massive migration that helped to sustain the colony keep it going right most of the migrants were able to pay for their passage support themselves initially in massachusetts and so the idea is that the colonists who are already there benefited from that process that worked well until they until the 1640s right in the 1640s things changed right so but this is the establishment of the massachusetts bay colony so here i have a slide john winthrop in the massachusetts bay colony and winthrop had articulated uh the idea about the colony let me give you a quote here from winthrop right and so here we have a quote and winthrop is saying for we must consider that we shall be as a city upon the ill and this is often quoted i mean ronald reagan for example in the 80s quoted this and of course it comes from the new testament right city on pawn hill cannot be hid right christ says that he says the eyes of all people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our god in this work we have undertaken we shall be made a story and a byword throughout the world in other words we'll be an example a negative example to the rest of the world god will judge us and we'll be a negative example right and he goes on to talk about this we shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of god all right god's enemies will speak evil about god because we failed him right we shall shame the face of many of god's worthy servants right and caused their prayers to be turned into curses he said we're going to be consumed we're going to be taken out of the land right god will judge us if we don't maintain a degree of morality if we don't act as we should uh we will experience uh you know condemnation the judgment of god uh as a result right so so it probably shouldn't surprise us uh you know when we look at uh and when you look at that document when you see the trial interrogation of anne hutchinson what's her problem i mean what's the issue part of the problem is she's a strong woman right who's standing up to the men winthrop among them who are governing that colony and she's strong in a sense that she is she's versed in scripture because she answers with scripture now they condemn her and that the moment that they that they get to they they they have her right they've got it right is when she says that she had received divine revelation direct revelation right when she says that i mean for them revelation comes through scripture right uh when she says she received divine revelation they say say no more right uh you know she's condemned but the fact of the matter is she's guilty to begin with you know you know they're not going to they're not going to ever acknowledge no matter what she says no matter how well she defends herself they're never going to acknowledge that she is innocent but what she's done is she's established a bible study right but the notion is that she's interpreting in a way that that that is contrary to how they view it and and notice that they accuse her of being disobedient to parents they're not talking about her mother and father they're talking about themselves she is disobedient to them as the fathers of the community as political fathers and so they see her as a threat and they say at some point right we can't tolerate you right we can't you know we can't we can't tolerate your covenant we can't do that because god's going to judge us covenant theology is all over that document and it was just one of several examples you think about you know roger sherman was driven out of the colony and others were driven out of the colony for disagreeing with the authority of the leadership right uh you know again you don't want they didn't they didn't have an interest in religious toleration they had an interest in establishing their kind of godly community what they saw as a godly community right and they did this through this massive migration in the 1630s so by the end of the 1630s over 15 000 people had migrated to the new colony this massive migration helped to sustain the colony most of the migrants were able to pay for their passage again so you know this fed on itself but in the 1640s it comes to a halt it has to because of the english civil war right the english civil war changes everything uh when english civil war is being fought you don't have the same kind of movement taking place in the 1650s you don't have puritans leaving england why because the puritans are running the show from 1649 to 1658 right they're governing england so they have no interest in leaving england they're making england what they want england to be uh and so you know that meant that you know that that was a problem for the massachusetts bay colony i'll point out so the colony experienced in the 1640s its first economic setbacks uh but the disaster was escaped because as winthrop put it and i quote the lord was pleased to open up a trade with the west indies so we're starting to trade with the west indies and this is interestingly enough in a sense you know as collins as english colonists uh obviously the puritans are as anti-catholic as can be uh but we find that they end up make they end up doing quite a bit of business with catholics and spaniards in in the caribbean right uh they trade with the enemy uh if it meant if it meant uh you know uh you know uh benefits for the economy but this this also meant that like massachusetts bay and this is true of the northern colonies generally became more and more committed to a very different type of economy than what we would see in virginia or maryland or the carolinas or georgia not a plantation economy but an economy built on shipbuilding fur trade maritime trade eventually whaling things of that nature so a very very commerce right maritime commerce a very very different type of economy than we find with the you know the southern colonies who have that plantation economy therefore a different kind of society right a different kind of society as well then you don't have a a class of planners right you definitely have a puritan elite right ministers uh you are you know trying to you know enforce uh theological conformity things of that nature but it's a very different kind of society government's a difficult issue for massachusetts bay right and what comes out of it is a compromise the question is should ministers govern or you know should uh you know should to the colonists themselves how much voice they should have in government and the resort is a compromise i mean the general court which will be the legislative body in the massachusetts bay colony will be a bicameral legislature there would be a smaller upper house which would be composed of the wealthier elements of the colony and the lower house would have equal representation to from all the towns now obviously this has a lot of influence later on especially the united states after the constitution and i don't think that's an accident i mean the great champion of a bicameral legislature in many ways with john adams of massachusetts right so that's not something that probably should surprise us too much right and so essentially by the time winthrop who was elected governor nearly every year until he died in 1649 so essentially what you ended up having was another form of you know benign neglect again right you know you have a general court you have a bicameral legislature that governs they're not interested in religious liberty and if you're a quaker or a baptist or whatever in massachusetts they will persecute you right they will drive you from town they will whip you publicly they might even take a hot uh a hot iron and bore a hole in your tongue or something like that but they and if and if you persist enough they'll kill you they hang you right they're not interested in religious freedom and that document about ann hutchinson should make that quite clear but you do have that sense of benign neglect again the crown is willing to allow the colonies to govern themselves through these legislative assemblies and the other colonies the ones we haven't looked at directly but are mentioned in the text i have kind of similar institutions so that by the even the american revolution uh you know these colonists have been long accustomed to self-government in fact uh there have been several generations of self-government of that particular point and so although these colonies are very different right they have a very very different and that's important too for later on i mean uh one of the things that one of the arguments that will be made uh to parliament uh you know about you know the colonies that we don't really have to worry about the colonies making common cause uh is there they're so different there's no way they cooperate with one another right and we'll see uh someone in particular making that argument it's a little bit surprising who makes it uh but even though you have that diversity these different colleges different kinds of demographics different kinds of societies in many ways the one thing that i would argue they do have in common aside from the fact that they're english is the fact that they do establish their own governments right they do have that sense of self-government in those colonial assemblies which turns out to be crucial for later on