A Brief History of the United States. John Bach McMaster
taken to buy the land on which it stood. The old Plymouth Company (pp. 38, 39), organized in 1606, was succeeded in 1620 by a new corporation called the Council for New England, which received a grant of all the land in America between 40° and 48° of north latitude. From this Council for New England, therefore, the Pilgrims bought as much land as they needed. The king, however, refused to give them a charter, so the people of Plymouth, or the Old Colony as it came to be called, managed their own affairs in their own way for seventy years. At first the men assembled in town meeting, made laws, and elected officers. But when the growth of the colony made such meetings unwieldy, representative government was set up, and each settlement sent two delegates to an assembly.
[Illustration: GRAVE OF MILES STANDISH, near Plymouth.]
THE SALEM COLONY.—Shortly after 1620, attempts were made to plant other colonies in New England. [5] Most of them failed, but some of the colonists made a settlement called Naumkeag. Among those who watched these attempts with great interest was John White, a Puritan rector in England. He believed that the time had come for the Puritans to do what the Separatists had done. The quarrel between the king and the Puritans was then becoming serious, and the time seemed at hand when men who wished to worship God according to their conscience would have to seek a home in America. White accordingly began to urge the planting of a Puritan colony in New England. So well did he succeed that an association was formed, a great tract of land was obtained from the Council for New England, and in 1628 sixty men, led by John Endicott, settled at Naumkeag and changed its name to Salem, which means "peace."
THE MASSACHUSETTS BAY COLONY.—The members of the association next secured from King Charles I a charter which made them a corporation, called this corporation The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England, and gave it the right to govern colonies planted on its lands. More settlers with a great herd of cattle were now hurried to Salem, which thus became the largest colony in New England.
[Illustration: THE EARLY NEW ENGLAND COLONIES.]
THE GREAT PURITAN MIGRATION.—The same year (1629) that the charter was obtained, twelve leading Puritans signed an agreement to head an emigration to Massachusetts, provided the charter and government of the company were removed to New England. One of the signers was John Winthrop, and by him in 1630 nearly a thousand Puritans were led to Salem. Thence they soon removed to a little three-hilled peninsula where they founded the town of Boston. More emigrants followed, and before the end of 1630 seventeen ships with nearly fifteen hundred Puritans reached Massachusetts. They settled at Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Watertown, and Cambridge.
The charter was brought with them, the meetings of the company were now held in the colony, and so many of the colonists became members of the company that Massachusetts was practically self-governing. Before long a representative government was established in the colony, each town electing members of a legislature called the General Court. Every town also had its local government carried on by town meetings; but only church members were allowed to vote.
MAINE AND NEW HAMPSHIRE.—About two years after the founding of Plymouth, the Council for New England granted to John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges (gor'jess) a large tract of land between the rivers Merrimac and Kennebec. In it two settlements (now known as Portsmouth and Dover) were planted (1623) on the Piscat'aqua River, and some fishing stations on the coast farther north.
In 1629 the province was divided. Mason obtained a patent (or deed) for
the country between the Merrimac and the Piscataqua, and named it New
Hampshire. Gorges received the country between the Piscataqua and the
Kennebec, which was called Maine.
[Illustration: ENGLISH ARMOR. Now in Essex Hall, Salem.]
UNION WITH MASSACHUSETTS.—The towns on the Piscataqua were small fishing and fur-trading stations, and after Mason died (1635) they were left to look out for themselves. With two other New Hampshire towns (Exeter and Hampton) they became almost independent republics. They set up their own governments, made their own laws, and owed allegiance to nobody save the king. Massachusetts, however, claimed as her north boundary an east and west line three miles north of the source of the Merrimac River. [6] She therefore soon annexed the four New Hampshire towns, and gave them representation in her legislature.
If the claim of Massachusetts was valid in the case of the New Hampshire towns, it was equally so for those of Maine. But it was not till 1652, after Gorges was dead and the settlers in Maine (at York, Wells, and Kittery) had set up a government of their own, that these towns were brought under her authority. Later (1677), Massachusetts bought up the claim of the heirs of Gorges, and came into possession of the whole province.
[Illustration: ROGER WILLIAMS FLEES TO THE WOODS.]
RHODE ISLAND.—Among those who came to Salem in the early days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, was a Puritan minister named Roger Williams. [7] But he had not been long in the colony when he said things which angered the rulers. He held that all religions should be tolerated; that all laws requiring attendance at church should be repealed; that the land belonged to the Indians and not to the king; and that the settlers ought to buy it from the Indians and not from the king. For these and other sayings Williams was ordered back to England. But he fled to the woods, lived with the Indians for a winter, and in the following summer founded Providence (1636). [8]
And now another disturber appeared in Boston in the person of Anne Hutchinson, [9] and in a little while she and her followers were driven away. Some of them went to New Hampshire and founded Exeter (p. 60), while others with Anne herself went to Rhode Island in Narragansett Bay, and founded Portsmouth and Newport.
For a time each of the little towns, Providence, Portsmouth, and Newport, arranged its own affairs in its own way, but in 1643 Williams obtained from the English Parliament a charter which united them under the name of The Incorporation of Providence Plantations on the Narragansett Bay in New England.
CONNECTICUT FOUNDED.—Religious troubles did not end with the banishment of Williams and Anne Hutchinson. Many persons objected to the law forbidding any but church members to vote or hold office. So in 1635 and 1636 numbers of people, led by Thomas Hooker and others, went out (from Dorchester, Watertown, and Cambridge) and founded Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford in the Connecticut River valley. Later a party (from Roxbury) settled at Springfield. For a while these four towns were part of Massachusetts. But in 1639 Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield adopted a constitution [10] and founded a republic which they called Connecticut.
THE NEW HAVEN COLONY.—As the quarrel between the Puritans and the king was by this time very bitter, the Puritans continued to come to New England in large numbers. Some of them made settlements on Long Island Sound. A large band under John Davenport founded New Haven (1638). Next (in 1639) Milford and Guilford were started, and then (in 1640) Stamford. In 1643 the four towns joined in a sort of union and took the name New Haven Colony.
[Illustration: PURITAN DRESS.]
THE UNITED COLONIES OF NEW ENGLAND.—Thus there were planted in New
England between 1620 and 1643 five distinct colonies, [11] namely: (1)
Plymouth, or the Old Colony, (2) Massachusetts Bay Colony, (3) Rhode
Island, or Providence Plantations, (4) Connecticut, and (5) the New Haven
Colony.
In 1643 four of them—Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven—united for defense against the Indians and the Dutch, [12] and called their league "The United Colonies of New England." This confederation maintained a successful existence for forty-one years.
EFFECT OF THE CIVIL WAR IN ENGLAND.—When the New England confederation was formed, the king and the Puritans in old England had come to blows, and civil war was raging there. During the next twenty years no more English colonies were planted in America. War at once stopped the stream of emigrants. The Puritans in England remained to fight the king, and numbers went back from New England to join the Parliamentary army. For the next fifteen years population in New England increased slowly.
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