The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut. M. Louise Greene
He was reserved in speech and manner. So far, the stubbornness which he had inherited from his father was mistaken for a strong will, and his attitude towards Spain, after the failure of the Catholic marriage which had been arranged for him, was regarded as indicating his strong Protestantism. It took but a short time, however, to reveal his stubbornness, his vanity, pique, extravagance, and insincerity. Within four years, he had dissolved Parliament three times, had sent Sir John Eliot to the Tower for boldly defending the rights of the people, had dismissed the Chief Justice from office for refusing to recognize as legal taxes laid without consent of Parliament, had thrown John Hampden into prison for refusing to pay a forced loan, and, finally, had signed the "Petition of Rights" [17] in 1628, only to violate it almost as soon as the contemporary bill for subsidies had been passed. Charles, finding he could not coerce Parliament, dissolved it, and entered upon his twelve years of absolute rule, marked by imprisonments, by arbitrary fines, forced loans, sales of monopolies, and illegal taxes, which raised the annual revenue from £500,000 to £800,000. [18]
It was during the first years of Charles's misrule—to be specific, in 1627—that "some friends being together in Lincolnshire fell into discourse about New England and the planting of the Gospel there." Among them were, probably, Thomas Dudley (who mentions the discussion in a letter to the Countess of Lincoln), Atherton Hough, Thomas Leverett, and possibly also John Cotton and Roger Williams, for all these men were wont to assemble at Tattersall Castle, the family seat of Lord Lincoln. The latter was, in religious matters, a staunch Puritan, and in political, a fearless opponent of forced loans and illegal measures. Thomas Dudley was his steward and confidential adviser, and the others were his personal friends and, in politics, his loyal followers. These men, afterwards prominent in New England, had watched with interest the fortunes of the Plymouth Colony, and now concluded that since England lay helpless in the grasp of Charles the time had come to prepare somewhere in the American wilderness a refuge and home for oppressed Englishmen and persecuted Puritans. This little group of men began at once to correspond with others in London and also in the west of England who were like-minded with themselves. Men of the west, in and about Dorchester, had for some four years or more been interested in the New England fisheries between the Kennebec and Cape Ann. On that promontory they had landed some fourteen men, hoping to start a permanent settlement. The plan had failed, the partnership had been dissolved, and a few of the settlers had removed to Salem, Massachusetts. The Rev. John White, the Puritan rector of Salem, England, saw a great opportunity. He at once interested some wealthy merchants to make Salem, in Massachusetts, the first post in a colonization scheme of great magnitude, and as leader of an advance party they secured John Endicott. From the council for New England the company secured a patent on March 19, 1628, for the lands between the Merrimac and the Charles rivers. On June 20, 1628, thirteen days after Charles had signed the "Petition of Rights" that he was so soon to violate, the advance guard of the colonists set sail for Salem, in the New World, arriving there early in the following September.
In America, friendly relations were soon established between the settlers of Salem and Plymouth. On the voyage over, sickness, due to the unwholesome salt in which some of their provisions had been packed, broke out among the Salem colonists, and continuing in the settlement, forced Endicott to send to Plymouth for Dr. Samuel Fuller, deacon in the church there. He was skilled both in medicine and in church-lore, for he had also been one of the two deacons in the church during its Leyden days. He worked among the disabled at Salem, and, later, among the sick colonists at Boston, paving the way for a better understanding and closer friendship with the Plymouth settlers. There had been a tendency to look upon these earlier colonists as extremists. Their enemies in derision called them "Brownists." They did in truth cling most firmly to Browne's doctrine that the civil magistrate had no control over the church of Christ. In their opinion, the function of the civil power in any union of church and state was limited to upholding the spiritual power by approving the church's discipline, since that had for its object the moral welfare of the people. As Endicott and Fuller talked together of all that in their hearts they both desired for the church of the future, they realized that they agreed on many points. The Plymouth church had been virtually under the sole rule of its elder, William Brewster, during the greater part of its life in America, for its aged pastor had died before he could rejoin his flock. Such government had tended to modify the early insistence upon the principle that the power of the church was "above that of its officers." This doctrine was associated in men's minds more with Robert Browne, who had originated it, than with Henry Barrowe, who had modified it, and it was towards Barrowism that the larger body of Puritans were drawn.
The Salem people, in their isolation three thousand miles from the home-land, felt the necessity of some form of church organization. As they had fled from the offensive ceremonial of the English Church, they determined to be free from cross and prayer-book, and from anything suggestive of offense. In the great matter of membership and constitution, their new church was to be brought still nearer to the requirements and simplicity of Gospel standards. More and more Puritans were coming to prefer the church of "covenant membership" to the birthright membership of the English Establishment. Many were urging a limited independence in the organization, management, and discipline of members of local churches. Some among the Puritans had adopted the Presbyterian polity, while many preferred that form of ordination. Such ordination had been accepted as valid for English clergymen during the earlier part of Elizabeth's reign. It was still so recognized by all the English clergy for the ministers of the Reformed churches on the Continent, and with such, English clergymen of all opinions still continued to hold very friendly intercourse. It was not until Laud's ascendency that claims for the divine right of Episcopacy, to the exclusion of other branches of the Christian faith, were strenuously urged. Thus it happened that after many conferences, Endicott could write to Governor Bradford in May of 1629, that:—
I acknowledge myself much bound to you for your kind love and care in sending Mr. Samuel Fuller among us, and rejoice much that I am by him satisfied touching your judgment of the outward form of God's worship. It is, as far as I can gather, no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, and the same which I have ever professed and maintained ever since the Lord in mercy revealed Himself unto me: being far from the common report that hath been spread of you touching that particular.
Endicott further expresses the wish that they may all "as Christian brethren be united by a heavenly and unfeigned love;" that as servants of one Master and of one household they should not be strangers, but be "marked with one and the same mark, and sealed with one and the same seal, and have, for the main, one and the same heart guided by one and the same Spirit of truth," and that they should bend their hearts and forces to the furthering of the work for which they had come into the wilderness. Thus, Salem had decided upon the type of church her people wanted, while she still waited for the ministers who were coming with the larger number of her colonists, and whom she believed competent to guide her religious life.
Only a few weeks after the sending of Endicott's letter to Governor Bradford, five vessels arrived, bringing several hundred well-equipped colonists. They had been sent out by the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. This corporation had bought out the Salem Company, and was backed by the most influential Puritans of wealth and social prominence, by men who had lost all hope of either religious or civil freedom when Laud had been raised to the bishopric of London and when Charles persisted in his despotic government. By the elevation of Laud to the bishopric of London, Charles offended the most puritanically inclined diocese in England, and the whole Puritan party. In his new office, Laud quickly succeeded in severing communication between the Reformed churches on the Continent and those in England. He strictly prohibited the common people from using the annotated pocket-Bibles sent out by the Genevan press. He forbade the entrance into office of nonconformists as lecturers or chaplains. He put an end to feofments, so that puritanically inclined men of wealth could no longer control the livings. He excluded suspended ministers from teaching, and also from the practice of medicine, and even forbade their entering business life. He required absolute conformity to his own high-church standards. He insisted upon doing away with all Calvinistic innovations tending to simplicity of ritual, and upon reviving many ecclesiastical ceremonies which had fallen into disuse. Hence, English Puritans saw in America the only hope of the future, and began that exodus which, during the next ten years, or more, annually sent two thousand emigrants to the Massachusetts shore to find homes throughout New England.