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ESSAYS 
 
 IN 
 
 AMERICAN HISTORY 
 
 HENRY FERGUSON, M. A. 
 
 Northam Professor of History and Political Science in 
 Trinity College, Hartford. 
 
 New York 
 JAMES POTT AND COMPANY 
 
 114 Fifth Avenue. 
 
I \ ! fi'i 
 
 nu >::•■■ \ ii' 
 
 I, M t I ' 
 
 
 Copyright, 1894, 
 
 BY 
 
 JAMES POTT & CO. 
 
CONTENTS, 
 
 i. 
 
 THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND 9 
 
 II. 
 THE WITCHES 61 
 
 III. 
 SIR EDMUND ANDROS HI 
 
 IV. 
 THE LOYALISTS 161 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 These essays are presented to the public in 
 the belief that though what they contain be 
 old, it is worth telling again, and in the hope 
 that by viewing the early history of the 
 country from a somewhat different stand- 
 point from that commonly taken, light may 
 be thrown upon places which have been 
 sometimes left in shadow. 
 
 The time has been when it was considered 
 a duty to praise every action of the reso- 
 lute men who were the early settlers of 
 New England. In the glow of an exultant 
 patriotism which was unwilling to see any- 
 thing but beauty in the annals of their coun- 
 try, and in a spirit of reverence which made 
 them shrink from observing their fathers' 
 shortcomings, the early historians of the 
 United States dwelt lovingly on the bright 
 side of the colonial life, and passed over its 
 shadows with filial reticence. It is evident 
 
 5 
 
6 PREFACE. 
 
 that no true conception of any period is pos- 
 sible when so studied, and it is a matter for 
 congratulation that at the present day the 
 subject can be treated with greater impar- 
 tiality, and that it is no longer necessary for 
 American writers to make up for the political 
 and literary insignificance of their country 
 by boasting either of the vastness of their 
 continent or of the Spartan virtue of their 
 forefathers. 
 
 In the same manner, in earlier days, when 
 the recollection of the struggle for inde- 
 pendence was still vivid, patriotic Americans 
 were unable to recognize anything but ar- 
 bitrary tyranny in the attempts made from 
 time to time by the English government to 
 give unity and organization to the group o.f 
 discordant and feeble settlements, or to see 
 anything but what was base and servile in 
 the sentiments that inspired those whom they 
 nicknamed Tories. Now, under the influ- 
 ence of calmer consideration, men are begin- 
 ning to admit that something may be said 
 for men like Andros, who strove against the 
 separatist spirit which seemed to New Eng- 
 land to be the very essence of liberty, and 
 even for those unfortunates who valued the 
 connection with Great Britain more than 
 they did the privileges of self-government, 
 
PREFACE. 7 
 
 and who were compelled in grief and sorrow, 
 from their devotion to their principles, to 
 leave forever the homes they loved. The war 
 of secession has taught Americans to under- 
 stand the term, and appreciate the sentiment, 
 of loyalty. It is no longer an unmeaning 
 word, fit only to he ridiculed in scurrilous 
 doggerel hy patriot rhymsters, as was the case 
 a hundred years ago, hut appeals to an an- 
 swering chord in the heart of every man who 
 remembers the quick heart-beats and the 
 grand enthusiasm of those four years of 
 struggle, the true heroic age of American 
 history. 
 
 The paper upon The Quakers in New Eng- 
 land is an enlargement and revision of an 
 article printed in the American Church Re- 
 view, in April 1889, and that upon Sir Ed- 
 mund Andros has been printed by the His- 
 torical Society of Westchester County, N. Y., 
 before whom it was read in October 1892, 
 but it has been revised and enlarged. In- 
 stead of burdening the pages with notes and 
 references, they have been placed together 
 after each essay, so that they may be readily 
 used by those who desire to do so, and yet may 
 not affront the eyes of those who do not 
 desire them. 
 
 It is impossible to give credit for every 
 
8 PREFACE. 
 
 statement to every historian who may have 
 made it ; it has been the desire of the author 
 to indicate his principal sources of informa- 
 tion, and he has not knowingly omitted any 
 work upon which he has relied for the his- 
 torical facts presented. 
 
 Trinity College, Haktford, 
 October 1894. 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
 In the year 1656, in the midst of the period 
 of the Commonwealth, the good people 
 of Massachusetts, who were enjoying a brief 
 season of rest after their troubles with the 
 Baptists and the Antinomians, heard to their 
 horror that they were likely to be visited by 
 certain fanatics of whom they had heard 
 from their brethren in England. These were 
 known to them by the invidious name of 
 Quakers, and were confounded with Adam- 
 ites, Muggletonians, and Eanters, strangely 
 named sects which the confusion of the 
 times had broiight forth. 1 
 
 This remarkable body of men, whose history 
 has presented such strange contrasts of wild 
 enthusiasm and imperturbable stolidity, of 
 fanaticism and quietism, of contempt for the 
 world and its rewards on the one side, and of 
 sordid love of peace and money-getting upon 
 
 9 
 
10 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 the other, had recently come into being as 
 one of the natural results of the unsettling 
 of religious faiths and practices which had 
 accompanied the political revolution in Eng- 
 land. The Quaker movement was a revolt 
 at once from the enforced conformity of the 
 Laudian establishment and from the intoler- 
 able spiritual oppression of the Calvinistic 
 divines, whose little fingers, when they came 
 into power, had been thicker than the loins 
 of their predecessors. 
 
 The great Anglican prelates of the reign of 
 Charles I. were unfortunate in the circum- 
 stances amidst which their lives were spent. 
 They were liberal and tolerant in theology, 
 and they were pilloried as bigots ; they 
 held an idea of what the Church of England 
 should be, that was utopian in its compre- 
 hensiveness, and they are described by every 
 New England writer of school histories or 
 children's story-books as narrow minded ene- 
 mies of freedom of thought. The system 
 proposed by Andrewes and Montague was 
 essentially that of Sir Thomas More : liber- 
 ality in matters of belief, with uniformity in 
 practice and in ritual. The Puritan divines, 
 on the other hand, were despotic in matters of 
 faith and doctrine to a degree rarely equalled 
 in the history of the human mind, while 
 
TEE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 11 
 
 they insisted upon their right of refusing the 
 system of worship which was established by 
 law in the Church of England, and of choos- 
 ing for themselves religious ordinances to 
 suit their own tastes and fancies. They did 
 not plead for liberty on the ground that the 
 principle of compulsion in religious matters 
 was wrong and illegitimate, but because the 
 services of the Church of England were, in 
 their opinion, unscriptural if not idolatrous. 
 The one party was tolerant in doctrine, and 
 despotic, tyrannical at times, in matters of 
 ritual ; the other claimed to be indifferent as 
 to ritual, but was despotic in opinions. The 
 church, by attempting to regulate public 
 worship, was led in some instances to appear 
 to be persecuting men for doctrinal differ- 
 ences ; the Puritans, from their zeal for or- 
 thodoxy in doctrine, became, when the power 
 was placed in their hands, the strictest pos- 
 sible disciplinarians. The tendency of the 
 one party was to subject the church to the 
 state, and thus make it an instrument of 
 political authority ; the other tended to the 
 subjection of the state to the church, making 
 the civil authority little more than the body 
 by which the edicts of the ministers should 
 be registered and their decrees should be 
 enforced. 
 
12 ESSAYS W AMERICAN HISTOBT. 
 
 With the early history of Quakerism we 
 have little to do. Its founder, George Fox, 
 was the son of a weaver at Fenny Drayton 
 (or Drayton in the Clay) in Leicestershire. 
 He had heen piously brought up by his par- 
 ents, who were members of the Church of 
 England, and passed a boyhood and youth of 
 singular purity and innocence. When he 
 was growing up to manhood he passed 
 through a period of deep religious depression, 
 and found no help from any of his friends or 
 from the ministers of the parish churches in his 
 neighborhood (who at this time were mainly 
 Presbyterians) or from the newer lights of 
 the rising separatist bodies. One counselled 
 him. to have blood let, another to use tobacco 
 and sing psalms ; and the poor distracted boy, 
 whose soul was heavy with a sense of the 
 wrath of God, found no comfort from any of 
 them. A careful study of the Bible made 
 him quick to see the weak points in the sys- 
 tems that surrounded him, and at last he 
 found the comfort he sought in the sense of 
 an immediate communion with God and an 
 indwelling of the Spirit of Christ within the 
 soul. For a time he led a solitary life, leav- 
 ing home and friends and wandering over 
 the country on foot, clothed in garments of 
 leather, sleeping wherever he could find a, 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 13 
 
 lodging, and spending whole days sometimes 
 in the hollows of great trees. Soon it was 
 " borne in upon him " that the presence of 
 the Spirit and the inner light was as good a 
 qualification for the office of preacher as that 
 of being a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, 
 and he began his public ministry about the 
 year 1646. 2 
 
 With the externals of Quakerism we are 
 all familiar : the morbid conscientiousness 
 that forbade the use of the common forms of 
 courtesy, the simple dress, the refusal to sub- 
 mit to the authority of magistrates or of 
 priests in matters concerning religion, and 
 the unwillingness to pay them the usual com- 
 pliments due to their position. The true in- 
 ner nature of Quakerism, which gave it its 
 strength, lay not merely in its abhorrence 
 of forms and formulas, its vigorous protest 
 against any compulsion in matters either of 
 religious thought or religious observance, 
 but essentially in its consciousness of the 
 need of the Divine presence and its belief in 
 the fulfilment of the Saviour's promise to 
 send his Spirit into the world. 
 
 It was a faith for martyrs and enthusiasts, 
 a faith which in its simple earnestness had 
 wonderful power of conviction, but which 
 was especially liable to counterfeits and pre- 
 
14 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 tenders, who could delude themselves or 
 others into a belief in their inspiration, and 
 who substituted a wild extravagance for the 
 enthusiasm of the first believers. One can- 
 not help regretting that Fox's fate placed 
 him in so uncongenial a century as the seven- 
 teenth and in so matter-of-fact a country as 
 England. Had he been born in Italy in the 
 middle ages, his name might rank with that 
 of Francis of Assisi. But it was impossible 
 to expect comprehensiveness or liberality 
 from the Puritans of the day, all the less be- 
 cause of the abuses and fanatical actions by 
 which Quakerism was parodied and made 
 ridiculous. It was essentially an esoteric 
 religion, and had, in consequence, the great 
 disadvantage of being able to furnish no 
 tests by which the true could be distinguished 
 from the false, those inspired with a genuine 
 religious enthusiasm from the fanatics and 
 pretenders. 
 
 Their revolt from all established customs 
 and usages, their disrespect for authority, 
 and the boldness with which they rebuked 
 and disputed with the preacher in the pulpit 
 of the " steeple house " or with the justice 
 on the bench, brought them at once into dif- 
 ficulties with the rulers in church and state, 
 who showed themselves no more tolerant of 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 15 
 
 dissent from their own favorite way of think- 
 ing and acting than were the most despotic of 
 all the Anglican prelates. They were impris- 
 oned, fined, beaten, and exiled ; in 1656 Fox 
 computed that there were seldom less than 
 a thousand Quakers in prison at once. They 
 seemed inspired with a spirit of opposition ; 
 wherever they were not wanted, there were 
 they sure to go. They visited Scotland and 
 Ireland, the West India islands and the 
 American colonies ; one woman testified be- 
 fore the Grand Turk at Adrianople, two others 
 were imprisoned by the Inquisition at Malta ; 
 one brother visited Jerusalem and bore his 
 testimony against the superstition of the 
 monks, others made their way to Rome, Aus- 
 tria, and Hungary, and a number of them 
 preached their doctrines in Holland and Ger- 
 many. 3 Such enthusiasm, even in those in 
 whom it was genuine, was very nearly akin 
 to insanity ; and in many instances the divid- 
 ing line was crossed, and the votaries allowed 
 themselves to commit grotesque and indecent 
 actions, or to speak most shocking blasphe- 
 mies and to receive an idolatrous veneration 
 from the silly women who listened to their 
 ravings. The disturbances of the times pro- 
 duced many other bands of fanatics who were 
 frequently confounded with the Quakers, and 
 
16 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 gave to them the odium of their misdeeds. 
 The Ranters, the Adamites, the Muggleto- 
 nians, and the Fifth Monarchy Men were all 
 akin to the Quakers in heing opposed to the 
 order established by law, and in professing 
 to be guided by an inner light ; they differed 
 from them, however, in making their relig- 
 ious fanaticism very often a cloak for secret 
 vice or for wild plots against the govern- 
 ment. The temporary overthrow of the com- 
 prehensive church establishment of the judi- 
 cious statesmen and reformers of Elizabeth's 
 reign had opened the gates to a flood of irre- 
 ligion and fanaticism. The ecclesiastical 
 despotism established by the Westminster 
 Assembly was more repugnant to Englishmen 
 than the old church which had been sup- 
 pressed, and the condition of England in 
 religious matters during the Commonwealth 
 forms one of the best apologies for the severe 
 reactionary measures that were adopted when 
 the king and the bishops were restored in 1660. 
 It was in the middle of this period that the 
 episode of the Quaker troubles in Xew Eng- 
 land occurred, an episode which has been 
 given an unpleasant prominence in the 
 colonial history of New England, partly from 
 the bitterness of the feelings which were 
 aroused on both sides, but especially from 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 17 
 
 the bearing that it had upon the question of 
 the people of Massachusetts for the powers 
 and responsibilities of self-government. The 
 story is a sad one of misdirected earnestness 
 and zeal on the one side, of mistaken consis- 
 tency and fidelity to principle, however false, 
 upon the other. We condemn while we 
 admire ; we wonder at the steadiness and 
 constancy of both judged and judges, while 
 we regret the tragic results that stained the 
 new commonwealth with innocent blood. 
 It is not surprising, however, that such a 
 conflict took place, for as a recent writer of 
 great learning and ability has well said of 
 the relations of the Quakers and their 
 opponents, — " the issue presented seemed to 
 have a resemblance to the mechanical prob- 
 lem of what will be the effect if an irresis- 
 tible body strikes an immovable body." 4 
 
 The colonial governments which had been 
 established in New England in the first 
 half of the seventeenth century were not, 
 as is frequently assumed, homogeneous and 
 similar, but differed from each other in 
 their political status and to some extent in 
 their political institutions, and very greatly 
 in the spirit which governed and directed 
 them. 
 
 Massachusetts had a charter obtained from 
 
 2 
 
18 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 the Crown for a trading company, and trans- 
 ferred to the colony by a daring usurpation ; 
 Rhode Island had a charter granted by the 
 Long Parliament ; Plymouth had obtained 
 its territory by purchase from the old Ply- 
 mouth Company, but its political existence 
 was winked at rather than recognized ; Con- 
 necticut and New Haven were, to all intents 
 and purposes, independent republics, save for 
 a somewhat doubtful acknowledgment of 
 the supremacy of the king and of the Com- 
 monwealth that was his successor. All but 
 Rhode Island were joined together in a fede- 
 ral league for mutual defence against exter- 
 nal and internal enemies. 
 
 The circumstances of the settlement of the 
 various colonies had been such as to render 
 the colonists extremely tenacious of their own 
 privileges, and extremely jealous of any inter- 
 ference from the other side of the ocean. 
 The people of Massachusetts, especially, lived 
 in constant dread of their much-prized charter 
 being taken away from them by the king, 
 from whom it had been obtained, or by the 
 parliament, which considered that it was its 
 province to meddle with and to regulate all 
 things in heaven and on earth. 
 
 It is quite remarkable that the attitude of 
 the colonies to the home government, during 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 19 
 
 the period of the Commonwealth, no less than 
 in the years which preceded it, was one of 
 jealous suspicion. The charter colonies 
 feared that their privileges would be inter- 
 fered with, the self -organized colonies were 
 in dread of a quo warranto or a scire facias, 
 which would disclose the irregularity of their 
 organizations or the defectiveness of their 
 titles. 
 
 The godly and judicious Winthrop, the 
 statesmanlike founder and governor of Mas- 
 sachusetts, had died, sorrowing on his death- 
 bed for the harshness in religious matters 
 into which he had been forced ; and in his 
 place was the severe and fanatical Endicott, 
 a man of gloomy intensity of nature, a stern 
 logician, a man who neither asked nor 
 granted mercy. The clergy were fanatically 
 devoted to their religious and political pe- 
 culiarities, and were inferior in wisdom and 
 judgment to the great leader who had come 
 out from England with the early settlers 
 at the beginning of the colony. Cotton was 
 dead, and was succeeded in his office of teacher 
 by John Norton, who differed from his prede- 
 cessor by the lack of the principal character- 
 istics which had so greatly distinguished 
 him : "Profound judgment, eminent gravity, 
 Christian candor, and sweet temper of spirit, 
 
20 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 whereby he could very placidly bear those 
 who differed from him in other apprehen- 
 sions." 5 Hooker had long since removed to 
 Connecticut, where he had been largely 
 instrumental in founding a more genial com- 
 monwealth upon a broader and more liberal 
 basis. Wilson, the first pastor of the church 
 at Boston, was indeed still living, but was a 
 worthy associate of Endicott and Norton, 
 and distinguished then, as he had always 
 been, rather by zeal than by either discretion 
 or Christian charity. 
 
 By a process of successful exclusions and 
 banishments the community had been ren- 
 dered tolerably homogeneous, or at least sub- 
 missive to the theocratical system which had 
 been established. Those who had been de- 
 feated in the struggle for existence had gone 
 elsewhere to found new commonwealths, all 
 with a greater amount of religious liberty 
 than that of Massachusetts. 
 
 The first we hear of the Quakers in Xew 
 England is in an order of the General Court 
 appointing May 14, 1656, as a public day of 
 humiliation, " to seek the face of God in be- 
 half of our native country, in reference to the 
 abounding of errors, especially those of the 
 Banters and Quakers." 6 
 
 About two months later a ship arrived 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 21 
 
 from Barbadoes, bringing as passengers 
 two Quaker women, Mary Fisher and Ann 
 Austin. As soon as they arrived in the har- 
 bor, the Governor, the Deputy Governor, and 
 four assistants met and ordered that the cap- 
 tain of the ship should be compelled to carry 
 them back to Barbadoes ; that in the mean 
 time they should be kept in jail, and the books 
 which they had brought with them should be 
 burnt. During imprisonment they were sub- 
 jected to great indignities and insults at the 
 hands of the brutal jailer, apparently with- 
 out warrant, being stripped naked and their 
 bodies examined for witch-marks, with attend- 
 ing circumstances of great indecency. They 
 were half -starved in prison, and then after a 
 detention of about a month they were sent 
 away. No sooner had they gone when an- 
 other vessel arrived from England, bringing 
 eight more, four men and four women, be- 
 sides one man from Long Island, who had 
 been converted during the voyage. Officers 
 were sent on board the vessel, and the Qua- 
 kers were taken at once to the jail, where they 
 were kept eleven weeks, and then sent back 
 to England, despite the protests of the ship- 
 master. 7 During their detention they were 
 examined before the magistrates, and they 
 increased the abhorrence in which they were 
 
22 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 held by their rude and contemptuous an- 
 swers, which gave the authorities a sufficient 
 excuse for keeping them in prison. Their 
 books were burned ; and though some pains 
 seems to have been taken to convince them of 
 their errors by argument, it was in vain. 
 One of the women, Mary Prince by name, 
 made herself particularly obnoxious by the 
 eloquence of her abuse. She reviled the 
 governor from the window of the prison, de- 
 nouncing the judgment of God upon him, 
 wrote violent letters to him and to the mag- 
 istrates, and when the ministers attempted 
 to argue with her, she drove them from her 
 as " hirelings, deceivers of the people, priests 
 of Baal, the seed of the serpent, the brood of 
 Ishmael, etc." 
 
 While this second batch of Quakers was in 
 prison, the Federal Commissioners were in 
 session, and resolved to propose to the several 
 General Courts that all Quakers, Ranters, 
 and other notorious heretics should be pro- 
 hibited coming into the United Colonies, 
 and if any should hereafter come or arise, 
 that they should be forthwith secured or re- 
 moved out of all the jurisdictions. 8 These 
 recommendations were acted upon by all 
 the General Courts at their next sessions : 
 by Connecticut, October 2, 1656 ; Massachu- 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 23 
 
 setts, October 14, 1656 ; New Haven, May 27, 
 1657 ; Plymouth, June 3, 1657. 
 
 In Massachusetts the action of the Gen- 
 eral Court was most decided and severe. 
 Shipmasters who brought Quakers into the 
 jurisdiction were to be fined one hundred 
 pounds, and to give security for the return 
 of such passengers to the port from which 
 they came. Quakers coming to the colony 
 were to be "forthwith committed to the 
 House of Correction, and at their entrance 
 to be severely whipped, and by the master 
 thereof to be kept constantly at work, and 
 none suffered to converse or speak with them 
 during the time of their imprisonment." A 
 fine of five pounds was imposed upon the 
 importation, circulation, or concealment of 
 Quaker books ; persons presuming to de- 
 fend heretical opinions of the said Quakers 
 should be fined two pounds for the first 
 offence, four pounds for the second ; for the 
 third offence should be sent to the House of 
 Correction till they could be conveniently 
 sent out of the colony ; and what person or 
 persons soever should revile the officer or 
 person of magistrates or ministers, " as was 
 usual with the Quakers," should be severely 
 whipped, or pay the sum of five pounds. 9 
 
 It was not long before the law was put 
 
24 MS8AT8 IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 into operation. The first cases were Ann 
 Burden and Mary Dyer. They were im- 
 prisoned for two or three months, and then 
 Burden, after having all of her little prop- 
 erty taken from her in fines and jail charges, 
 was sent back to England, and Dyer was 
 delivered to her husband, the Secretary of 
 Rhode Island, upon his giving security not 
 to lodge her in any town in the colony nor 
 permit any to speak with her. 10 
 
 Mary Clarke, however, who had come 
 from England "to warn these persecutors to 
 desist from their iniquity," was whipped, re- 
 ceiving twenty stripes with a whip of three 
 cords, knotted at the ends. Charles Holden 
 and John Copeland, who had been sent away 
 the year before, returned to the colony, and 
 were whipped thirty stripes apiece and im- 
 prisoned, and Lawrence and Cassandra 
 Southwick were imprisoned and fined for 
 harboring them. Richard Dowdney, who 
 arrived from England to bear his testimony, 
 was scourged and imprisoned, and, together 
 with Holden and Copeland, was reshipped to 
 England. 11 
 
 The authorities now thought that their 
 laws were too lenient, and in October 1657 
 they were made more rigorous. The fine 
 for entertaining Quakers was increased to 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 25 
 
 forty shillings an hour, and any Quaker re- 
 turning into the jurisdiction after being once 
 punished, if a man, was to lose one ear, and 
 on a second appearance to lose the other. 
 If he appeared a third time, his tongue was 
 to be bored through with a red-hot iron. 
 "Women were to be whipped for the first and 
 second offences, and to have their tongues 
 bored upon the third. 12 In May of the fol- 
 lowing year, a penalty of ten shillings was 
 laid upon every one attending a Quaker 
 meeting, and five pounds upon any one 
 speaking at such meeting. 13 
 
 In spite of these severe enactments the 
 Quakers returned ; and the more they were 
 persecuted, the more they appeared to aspire 
 to the distinction of martyrdom. Holden, 
 Copeland, and John Eouse, in 1658, had their 
 right ears cut off ; but the magistrates were 
 afraid of the effect upon the people of a pub- 
 lic execution of the law, and hence inflicted 
 the penalty in private, inside the walls of the 
 prison, in spite of the protest of the unfort- 
 unates, after which they were again flogged 
 and dismissed. 14 In October 1658 a further 
 step was taken in accordance with the advice 
 of the Federal Commissioners, who met in 
 Boston in September, and the penalty of 
 death was threatened upon all who, after 
 
26 ESSAYS IA' AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 being banished from the jurisdiction under 
 pain of death if they returned, should again 
 come back. 15 Massachusetts was the only 
 colony to take this step, which indeed was 
 carried in the meeting of the Commissioners 
 by her influence against the protest of Win- 
 throp of Connecticut ; and the measure was 
 passed by a bare majority of the General 
 Court after long debate, and with the ex- 
 press proviso that trial under this act should 
 be by special jury, and not before the magis- 
 trates alone. Captain Edward Hutchinson 
 and Captain Thomas Clark, men whose 
 names should be remembered, desired leave 
 to enter their dissent from the law. The 
 Court was urged on to this unfortunate ac- 
 tion by a petition from twenty-five of the 
 citizens of Boston, among whom we find the 
 name of John Wilson, the pastor of the First 
 Church. These represented that the " incor- 
 rigibleness " of the Quakers after all the 
 means that had been taken was such " as by 
 reason of their malignant obdurities, daily 
 increaseth rather than abateth our fear of 
 the Spirit of Muncer and John of Leyden re- 
 newed, and consequently of some destructive 
 evil impending," and asked whether the law 
 of self-preservation did not require the adop- 
 tion of a law to punish these offenders with 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 27 
 
 death. 16 In order to justify its action, the 
 Court ordered that there should be " a writ- 
 ing or declaration drawn up and forthwith 
 printed to manifest the evils of the teachings 
 of the Quakers and danger of their practices, 
 as tending to the subversion of religion, of 
 church order, and civil government, and the 
 necessity that this government is put upon 
 for the preservation of religion and their own 
 peace and safety, to exclude such persons 
 from among them, who after due means of 
 conviction should remain obstinate and per- 
 tinacious." 17 This declaration was composed 
 by John Norton, and printed at public ex- 
 pense. 18 
 
 The rulers of the colony had now com- 
 mitted themselves to a position from which 
 they could not recede without loss of dignity, 
 and which they could not enforce without 
 great obloquy. They evidently were under the 
 impression that the mere passage of the law 
 would be enough, and that they would never 
 be obliged to proceed to the last extremity. 
 But they miscalculated the perseverance and 
 enthusiasm of the men with whom they had 
 to deal, and were soon involved in a conflict 
 of will from which there seemed to them to 
 be no escape except by putting the law into 
 effect. It would have been better for them 
 
28 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 to have heeded the wise advice that they had 
 already received from Ehode Island, whose 
 magistrates had replied to one of the former 
 communications of Massachusetts requesting 
 their co-operation in restrictive measures 
 against the Quakers, in these remarkable 
 words : 
 
 " We have no law among us, whereby to punish any 
 for only declaring by words, etc., their minds and un- 
 derstandings concerning the things and ways of God, 
 as to salvation and an eternal condition. And we, more- 
 over, find that in those places where these people afore- 
 said in this colony are most of all suffered to declare 
 themselves freely, and are only opposed by arguments in 
 discourse, there they least of all desire to come. And we 
 are informed that they begin to loathe this place, for 
 that they are not opposed by the civil authority, but, with 
 all patience and meekness, are suffered to say over their 
 pretended revelations and admonitions. Nor are they 
 like or able to gain many here to their way. Surely, we 
 find that they delight to be persecuted by civil powers ; 
 and when they are so, they are like to gain more adhe- 
 rents by the conceit of their painful sufferings than by 
 consent to their pernicious sayings." 19 
 
 The law was passed in October 165S, and 
 at first it seemed to have accomplished its 
 object. The first six Quakers who were 
 banished after it had been put in force went 
 away and made no attempt to come back ; 
 but in June 1659 four who were more reso- 
 lute and determined appeared in Boston 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 29 
 
 with the avowed intention of defying the 
 law. They were William Robinson, Marma- 
 duke Stevenson, Nicholas Davis, and Mary 
 Dyer. They were arrested and sentenced to 
 banishment (September 12th), with the threat 
 that they should suffer death if they re- 
 mained or returned to the colony. Nicholas 
 Davis and Mary Dyer "found freedom to 
 depart ; but the other two were constrained 
 in the love and power of the Lord not to 
 depart, but to stay in the jurisdiction, and 
 to try the bloody law unto death." 20 They 
 withdrew to the New Hampshire settlements, 
 but in about four weeks returned to Boston 
 prepared to die, and were joined there by 
 Mary Dyer, who had decided to share their 
 fate. They were arraigned before the Gen- 
 eral Court, which was then in session, and 
 admitting that they were the persons ban- 
 ished by the last Court of Assistants, were 
 sentenced to be hanged in a week from that 
 time (October 19th). 21 The authorities evi- 
 dently were afraid of popular sympathy, for 
 they gave orders for a military guard of one 
 hundred men to conduct them to the gal- 
 lows, while another military force was 
 charged to watch the rest of the town, and 
 the selectmen were instructed to "press ten 
 or twelve able and faithful persons every 
 
30 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 night to watch the town and guard the 
 prison." 
 
 Neither side would yield : the Quakers had 
 come back with the declared purpose of 
 dying for their faith and for the principle 
 of religious liberty ; the authorities did not 
 dare to withdraw from the position in which 
 they had rashly placed themselves, and the 
 leaders do not seem to have had any desire 
 to do so. They felt that the question of 
 their authority was at stake, and that if 
 they yielded their power over the people 
 would be gone. They were willing to claim 
 for themselves and their institutions the 
 protection of the laws of England, but they 
 would not admit any appeal to those laws 
 when they conflicted with the colonial regu- 
 lations. They claimed to own the colony in 
 full sovereignty, in virtue of their charter 
 on the one hand and their deeds from the 
 Indians on the other, and they argued that 
 they had the same right to exclude obnox- 
 ious and dangerous persons, and to destroy 
 them if they persistently thrust themselves 
 upon them, that a householder has of resist- 
 ing a burglar, or a shepherd of killing the 
 wolves that break into his sheepfold. 
 
 It is a great mistake to say that they had 
 come to the colony from a zeal for religious 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 31 
 
 liberty. What they had come for was to 
 be in a place where they could order relig- 
 ious affairs to suit themselves. As Besse, 
 the Quaker historian, shrewdly remarks : 
 " They appear not so inconsistent with them- 
 selves as some have thought, because when 
 under oppression they pleaded for liberty 
 of conscience, they understood it not as the 
 natural and common right of all mankind, 
 but as a peculiar privilege of the orthodox." m 
 
 The tragedy was performed on the twenty- 
 seventh day of October 1659 ; the prisoners, 
 walking hand in hand, were brought to the 
 gallows by the soldiers. They were insulted 
 in their last moments by the bigoted "Wilson, 
 and when they tried to address the people 
 their voices were drowned by the beating of 
 the drums. Eobinson and Stevenson died 
 bravely, and Mary Dyer mounted the ladder 
 to meet her fate ; her skirts were tied, the 
 rope was about her neck, and she was on the 
 point of being "turned off," when she was 
 released by the magistrates in consideration 
 of the intercession of her son, who had come 
 up from Ehode Island to try to save his 
 mother's life. She unwillingly accepted 
 the grudging gift, and went back to Ehode 
 Island. 23 
 
 The popular feeling was so strong against 
 
32 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 the magistrates for their severity, that they 
 thought it best to put forth a declaration, in 
 which they argued that their proceedings 
 were justified by the law of self-defence, and 
 by the precedent of the English laws against 
 the Jesuits ; and they calmly stated that 
 what they had done was only to present the 
 point of their sword in their own defence, 
 that the Quakers who had rushed upon it 
 had become "felons de se," and that their 
 former proceedings and their mercy to Mary 
 Dyer upon the " inconsiderable intercession " 
 of her son "manifestly evinced that they 
 desired their lives absent rather than their 
 death present." M 
 
 The bodies of the unfortunate men were 
 treated with indecent brutality, and were 
 buried naked beneath the gallows. Mrs. 
 Dyer remained away for sis months, and 
 then the spirit moved her to return once 
 more and die. Her husband wrote to Endi- 
 cott to beg her life, but without avail. ]Sb 
 mercy could be shown her as long as she 
 defied the law. It is said that her life was 
 offered her if she would promise to keep out 
 of the colony henceforth, but she declined to 
 receive the favor. 25 " In obedience to the 
 will of the Lord I came," said she, "and in 
 his will I abide faithful to the death." 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 33 
 
 Meanwhile the prisons and the house of 
 correction had been the fate of other delin- 
 quents, and the jailer and executioner had 
 had plenty of employment with the scourge. 
 The South wicks, with their eldest son Josiah, 
 were whipped, fined, and imprisoned for 
 withdrawing from the public services and 
 worshipping by themselves, and their two 
 younger children were ordered to be sold 
 as slaves to the West Indies in satisfaction 
 of the fines imposed. 26 W. Shattuck was 
 whipped, fined, and imprisoned. Sarah Gib- 
 bons and Dorothy Waugh were whipped. 
 Hored Gardner, a woman with a suck- 
 ing babe, and a young girl who came 
 into the colony with her, were scourged 
 with the "three- fold knotted whip, and 
 during her tortures she prayed for her per- 
 secutors." 
 
 William Brand was thrown into the House 
 of Correction, and, refusing to work, was 
 beaten constantly by the brutal jailer with a 
 tarred rope an inch thick. The pathetic 
 record says : " His back and arms were 
 bruised black, and the blood was hanging as 
 in bags under his arms, and so into one was 
 his flesh beaten that the sign of a particular 
 blow could not be seen, for all became as a 
 jelly. 2 ? 
 
S4 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HlSTOBT. 
 
 William Leddra and Eouse, whose ears 
 had been cut off, were ordered to be whipped 
 twice a week with increasing severity until 
 they consented to work, and were at last dis- 
 missed from the colony under pain of death 
 if they returned. 
 
 Patience Scott, a girl eleven years old, 
 was imprisoned as a Quaker, but discharged, 
 after a period of detention, in consideration 
 of her youth ; but her mother, Catherine 
 Scott, for reproving the magistrates for a 
 deed of darkness, was whipped ten stripes, 
 although she was admitted by them to be 
 otherwise of blameless life and conversation. 
 
 Christopher Holden, who, in spite of losing 
 his ears in 1658, had returned once more, 
 was banished upon pain of death by the same 
 court that had hanged Eobinson and Steven- 
 son. 28 Seven or eight persons were fined, 
 some as high as ten pounds, for entertaining 
 Quakers, and Edward Wharton, for piloting 
 them from one place to another, was ordered 
 to be whipped twenty stripes, and bound to 
 his good behavior. Divers others were then 
 brought upon trial, " for adhering to the 
 cursed sect of Quakers, not disowning them- 
 selves to be such, refusing to give civil 
 respect, leaving their families and relations, 
 and roaming from place to place vagabonds 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 35 
 
 like " ; and Daniel Gold was sentenced to 
 be whipped thirty stripes, Eobert Harper 
 fifteen, and they, with Alice Couiiand, Mary 
 Scott, and Hope Clifton, banished upon pain 
 of death ; William Kingswill whipped fifteen 
 stripes ; Margaret Smith, Mary Trask, and 
 Provided Southwick ten stripes each, and 
 Hannah Phelps admonished. 29 In No- 
 vember, William Leddra, who had been re- 
 leased, returned, and was at once arrested. 
 On his trial the opportunity of withdrawal 
 was again extended, but he refused to accept 
 it, and was executed March 1, 1661. As he 
 ascended the ladder he was heard to say : 
 "All that will be Christ's disciples must 
 take up the cross," and just as he was 
 being thrown from its rounds, he cried in 
 the words of Stephen, "Lord Jesus, 
 receive my spirit." Wenlock Christison, who 
 had been before this sentenced to death, but 
 allowed to leave the colony, had returned, 
 and during Leddra's trial he came boldly 
 before the Court and told the astonished 
 judges : "I am come here to warn you that 
 ye shed no more innocent blood. " He was at 
 once arrested, and was brought up for trial 
 three months later. There was an unusual 
 difference of opinion in regard to the case, 
 and the condemnation was only secured by 
 
36 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 the violence of Endicott, who was able to 
 browbeat the others into consent. But the 
 sentence they passed was never executed. 
 The people were tired of bloodshed, and the 
 opposition which was shown in the General 
 Court to any further proceedings was so 
 great as to make a change in the law 
 necessary. 30 
 
 The humanity of the delegates to the 
 Court was probably considerably quickened 
 by a sense of the dangerous position in 
 which the colony stood since the restoration 
 of Charles IT., who, they might naturally 
 fear, would call them to an account for their 
 proceedings, especially as the colony had 
 allowed nearly a year to pass without any 
 recognition of the change in the political 
 situation. 
 
 The General Court attempted to save its 
 dignity by interposing a still greater num- 
 ber of shameful and unusual punishments 
 between the first offence and the death pen- 
 alty, and declared that, " being desirous to 
 try all means with as much lenity as might 
 consist with safety to prevent the intrusions 
 of the Quakers, who had not been restrained 
 by the laws already provided, they would 
 henceforth order that such intruders should 
 be tied to a cart's tail and whipped from 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 37 
 
 town to town toward the borders of the 
 jurisdiction. Should they return after being 
 dealt with thus thrice, they were to be 
 branded with the letter R on their left 
 shoulder, and be severely whipped and sent 
 away again at the cart's tail. Should they 
 again return, they were to be liable to the 
 former law of banishment under pain of 
 death." 31 
 
 It is quite possible that this appeared to be 
 lenity to men like Endicott and Norton, but 
 it is very doubtful whether the Quakers 
 so considered it. It did not prevent, though 
 it anticipated, an order from the king direct- 
 ing that any Quakers imprisoned or under 
 sentence should be released and sent to Eng- 
 land for trial. 32 To make this still more 
 galling to the pride of the colony, it was 
 sent by Samuel Shattuck, a Salem Quaker, 
 who had been banished from the colony 
 under pain of death if he should return, and 
 who, we cannot doubt, thoroughly enjoyed 
 his mission and the humiliation of Endicott. 
 For a short time the order was obeyed and 
 then the " lenient " laws were put in force 
 again ; and, as many delicately nurtured 
 Quaker women found to their cost, the 
 "tender mercies" of the saints were cruel. 
 Palfrey remarks, with great gratification ap- 
 
38 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 parently, that "no hanging, no branding, 
 ever took place by force of this law," but 
 that " under its provisions for other penal- 
 ties the contest was carried on for a consider- 
 able time longer." 
 
 It would be wearisome to cite all of the 
 subsequent proceedings ; a few of them will 
 suffice to show that the treatment of the 
 Quakers still continued to be extremely 
 severe, and that in spite of it all they persis- 
 ted in braving the threats of the magistrates. 
 It was not until 1679, when religious tolera- 
 tion was forced against their wills upon the 
 good Christians of Massachusetts, that the 
 Quakers found any safety within the bound- 
 aries of the colony. 
 
 In 1661, when the Quakers were set free 
 at the command of the king, some of them 
 were whipped at the cart's tail twenty stripes 
 apiece, on the ground that they were vaga- 
 bonds. 33 
 
 In 1662, Josiah Southwick,who had returned 
 from his banishment, was whipped at the 
 cart's tail in Boston, Eoxbury, and Dedham, 
 and dismis sed into the woods with a warning 
 not to return. The magistrates apparently 
 had found that their old style of whipping 
 was too humane ; for the whip used on this 
 and several subsequent occasions was made, 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 39 
 
 not of cord, " but of dried guts like the bass 
 strings of a bass viol," with three knots at 
 each end — a weapon which, according to con- 
 temporary testimony, made holes in the back 
 that one could put pease into. 34 
 
 In December 1662 Ann Coleman, Mary 
 Tompkins, and Alice Ambrose were stripped 
 to the waist and whipped at the cart's tail in 
 Dover, Hampton, and Salisbury, and were 
 forced to walk the entire distance in slush 
 and snow up to their knees. The "lenient " 
 sentence required indeed that they should be 
 whipped in each town in the jurisdiction, but 
 the constable at Newbury found in the war- 
 rant some flaw by which he was able to release 
 them. On their return to Dover, they were 
 seized by the constables by night, dragged 
 face downwards over snow and stumps to 
 the riyer, one of them at least was doused 
 in the stream and dragged after a canoe, 
 and they were only released because the storm 
 was too severe for their tormentors to brave. 36 
 Ann Coleman, again, with four friends, was 
 whipped through Salem, Boston, and Ded- 
 ham. 36 Elizabeth Hooton, a woman of over 
 sixty years of age, Fox's first convert, was first 
 imprisoned, and then carried two days' jour- 
 ney into the wilderness, " among wolves and 
 bears, " and left there to shift for herself. On 
 
40 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 returning, she was kept in a dungeon at 
 Cambridge two days without food, tied to the 
 whipping-post and flogged there, then taken 
 to Watertown, where she was flogged with 
 willow rods, flogged again at Dedham, and 
 then carried into the woods as before. 
 Coming back once more to fetch her clothes 
 from Cambridge, she and a companion, " an 
 ancient woman," and her daughter were 
 whipped in private, in spite of which we find 
 her coming once more to Boston, and on that 
 occasion she was whipped again at the cart's 
 tail. 37 Mary Tompkins, Alice Ambrose, and 
 Atiti Xeedham also appear again and again 
 in the records of suffering. One Edward 
 Wharton, who was most resolute in defying 
 the authorities, was constantly under arrest, 
 and even a bare enumeration of his floggings 
 would fill a page. 
 
 In 1665 Deborah Wilson, for going naked 
 through the streets of Salem "for a sign," 
 was whipped ; but the constable executed his 
 office so mercifully that he was displaced 
 There is a pathetic incident mentioned by 
 Bishop, the Quaker historian, that "her ten- 
 der husband, though not altogether of her 
 way, followed after," as she underwent her 
 punishment, "clapping his hat sometimes 
 between the whip and her back." M 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 41 
 
 Eliakim Wardwell, at Newbury, was fined 
 heavily in 1665 for entertaining Wenlock 
 Christison ; and this injustice in addition to 
 the other cruel acts, so affected his wife 
 Lydia that, although a modest and deli- 
 cate woman, she came naked into the meet- 
 ing at Newbury, as a testimony against 
 them. She was seized and hurried away to 
 the court at Ipswich, which sentenced her to 
 be whipped at the nearest tavern post. 
 Bishop says : 
 
 Without Law or President they condemned her to be 
 tyed to the fence Post of the tavern, where they sat, 
 which is usually their Court places, where they may 
 serve their ears with Musick, and their bellies with Wine 
 and gluttony ; whereunto she was tyed stript from the 
 Waste upwards, with her naked breasts to the splinters of 
 the Posts and there sorely lashed, with twenty or thirty 
 cruel stripes, which though it miserably tore and bruised 
 Tier tender body, yet to the joy of her Husband and Friends 
 that were Spectators, she was carried through all these 
 inhumane cruelties, quiet andchearful, and to the shame 
 and confusion of these unreasonable bruit beasts, whose 
 name shall rot, and their memory perish. 39 
 
 Eliakim, her husband, some time after, for 
 vindicating her character, was by order of 
 the court at Hampton bound to a tree and 
 whipped fifteen lashes. In 1675 a law was 
 passed which made it the duty of the con- 
 stables, under heavy penalties, to break up 
 
42 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 all Quaker meetings and to commit those 
 present to the House of Correction, there to 
 have the discipline of the house and be kept 
 to work on bread and water, or else to pay 
 five pounds. 
 
 In 1677 an order was passed requiring an 
 oath of fidelity to the country, and legal 
 liabilities were imposed upon all who re- 
 fused the oath. This struck directly at the 
 Quakers, and was believed by them, whether 
 justly or not, to have been made for the 
 purpose of vexing and plundering them. 40 
 A vigorous protest against it was made in 
 writing by Margaret Brewster, who came 
 from Barbadoes to bear her testimony against 
 the law and to declare the evils that were 
 coming upon the colony. Having, as she 
 declared, " a foresight given of that griev- 
 ous calamity called the Black Pox, which 
 afterwards spread there to the cutting off of 
 many of the People. Wherefore she was 
 constrained in a prophetic manner to warn 
 them thereof, by entering into their publick 
 assembly clothed in sackcloth and ashes, and 
 with her face made black." For this she 
 and four of her friends were arrested and 
 cast into prison upon the charge of " making 
 a horrible disturbance, and affrighting 
 the people in the South Church in Boston 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 43 
 
 in the time of the public dispensing of the 
 Word, whereby several women .... are 
 in danger of miscarrying. " She was whipped 
 at the cart's tail twenty lashes, and the 
 young women who were with her were 
 forced to accompany her during her punish- 
 ment. Twelve Quakers, who were arrested 
 the same day at a Quaker meeting, were 
 whipped, and fifteen the week following.* 1 
 
 In the other colonies the sufferings of the 
 Quakers were not so severe, though in Ply- 
 mouth they had to endure banishment, fines, 
 and whippings. In Connecticut, thanks prob- 
 ably to the wisdom of John Winthrop, the 
 only cases which occurred were met with 
 banishment, and the Quakers seem to have 
 respected the jurisdiction where they were 
 mercifully treated. In New Haven there 
 were several prosecutions ; Southold on Long 
 Island seems to have been the place most 
 frequented by the Quakers, though they also 
 appeared in Greenwich. The only case of 
 extreme severity was that of Humphrey Nor- 
 ton, who had already borne his torturing in 
 Massachusetts, where he had enraged the 
 magistrates by his appeal to the laws of 
 England. He was arrested at Southold and 
 taken to New Haven, where he was " cast 
 into Prison and chained to a Post, and kept 
 
44 ESS A YS IN AMERICAN HIS TOR T. 
 
 night and day for the space of twenty Days 
 with great Weights of Iron in an open Prison 
 without Fire or Candles in the bitter cold 
 Winter (December 1657), enough (reason- 
 ably) to have starved him," as Bishop writes. 
 When he attempted to reply to Davenport in 
 the Court, he was not suffered to speak, but 
 was gagged with " a great Iron Key, tied 
 athwart his mouth." After his trial was 
 over he was whipped thirty stripes and 
 branded H in the hand. 42 Several who sym- 
 pathized with or who entertained Quakers 
 were punished with heavy fines. In New 
 Netherlands they fared little better ; ** and in 
 Virginia the much-flogged Mary Tompkins 
 and Alice Ambrose found little mercy from 
 the cavaliers, being put in the pillory and 
 whipped with a cat-of -nine-tails so severely 
 that blood was drawn by the very first stroke ; 
 and George Wilson, "in cruel irons that 
 rotted his flesh, and long imprisonment, de- 
 parted this life for his testimony to the 
 Lord." 44 In Maryland they were subjected 
 to fine and imprisonment for refusing to 
 take an oath or to serve in the militia. 
 Liberty of conscience was granted in 1688. 45 
 It was in New England, and especially in 
 Massachusetts, that the persecution was 
 general and severe. The magistrates, as a 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 45 
 
 rule, defended their action, as necessary to 
 the maintenance of their authority and to 
 the preservation of order and orthodoxy ; and 
 their conduct has been extenuated and ex- 
 cused, if not actually defended, by modern 
 New England historians. 
 
 It is not a pleasant history, but there is 
 something to be said upon the side of the au- 
 thorities even by one who has no admiration 
 for them or sympathy with them. The 
 Puritans had not come to New England for 
 liberty of thought, but for liberty of action. 
 Having failed, as they thought at the time, 
 to secure the triumph of their views in the 
 church and state of England, they preferred 
 to leave the struggle and come to New Eng- 
 land, where they could live under their own 
 system without being obliged to contend or 
 suffer for their faith — a point upon which the 
 Quaker controversialists make some very 
 sharp remarks. 46 
 
 They considered the territory which they 
 held to be their own peculium, and claimed 
 that by their charter they had acquired 
 absolute sovereignty in its limits, subject to 
 no appeal to England ; and they realized 
 that if appeal to England was granted, their 
 absolute authority was at an end. One of 
 the leading colonists is reported to have said : 
 
46 ESSAYS IN AMEBIC AN HISTOBT. 
 
 " If we admit appeal to the Parliament this 
 year, next year they will send to see how it 
 is, and the third year the government will 
 be changed." The settlement also had in 
 their eyes a religious character ; it was 
 founded, as they boasted, for religion and 
 not for trade, and they held that they had a 
 right to dictate the religious usages and 
 practices therein, as was shown by their 
 treatment of Mrs. Hutchinson and Wheel- 
 wright, Roger Williams and Gorton, Child 
 and Maverick, not to mention Morton of 
 Merry Mount. They believed the Quakers 
 to be a pernicious sect, confounding them 
 with other fanatical bodies which they re- 
 sembled, and they feared that the natural 
 consequence of the claim which they made to 
 immediate revelation would be communistic 
 attempts at the overthrow of the established 
 order, such as had been seen a hundred years 
 before in Germany. From these premises 
 the conclusion was a natural one, that their 
 duty was to nip the evil in the bud, to crush 
 the Quakers before they became strong 
 enough to be dangerous to the state. Their 
 action in banishing the first that arrived, 
 before any overt acts were committed, was 
 undoubtedly technically illegal ; but if the 
 Quakers had been in reality what they fancied 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 47 
 
 them, no one would have blamed them for 
 their prompt decision. Besides, they had a 
 law by which they were accustomed to banish 
 heretics, and the Quakers might very well 
 come under that description. 
 
 As regards the compelling shipmasters to 
 carry them back to the port from which they 
 had come, such a custom had prevailed from 
 a very early date in the case of undesirable 
 immigrants. Winthrop, in his History 
 mentions the reshipping to England of a 
 crazy pauper woman whom the parish of 
 Willesden had sent over to the colonists in 
 Massachusetts. The Quakers came in spite 
 of banishment, and the more they were im- 
 prisoned and beaten the more daring became 
 their defiance, the more violent their abuse. 
 They spared neither priest nor magistrate, 
 and the floods of denunciation which they 
 poured out were portentous. It is not to be 
 wondered at that a stern and severe people, 
 living a hard and cruel life of constant 
 struggle with the elements, and in the con- 
 stant dread lest their privileges should be 
 assailed, should have been cruel in their 
 treatment of these incorrigible offenders. 
 
 Judged by the common standard of the 
 age, the cruelty of the treatment of the 
 Quakers is not so remarkable as to be singled 
 
48 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 out above all other cruelties for reprobation. 
 The Quakers themselves were cruel at times. 
 George Fox himself is said to have been a 
 witch-finder ; and a son of the Samuel 
 Shattuck who bore the king's mandate to 
 Endicott appears in the Salem witchcraft 
 trials as a prominent witness against some 
 of the unfortunates. 47 The folly and fatuity 
 of the treatment adopted is more of a point 
 to notice. In the colonies where the Quak- 
 ers were let alone they caused no trouble. 
 Palfrey's sneer, that there was no order to 
 disturb in Ehode Island, may be justified 
 perhaps as regards that colony, but Con- 
 necticut certainly was a well-ordered com- 
 monwealth. In Massachusetts, on the con- 
 trary, the same persons kept coming again 
 and again, and the severer the punishments 
 the madder became their actions. It should 
 be remembered that the acts usually men- 
 tioned as justifying the Puritans' severity, 
 such as the performances of the naked 
 women at Salem and Newbury, of the men 
 who broke bottles on the pulpit steps, and of 
 the woman who smeared her face with black 
 and frightened the matrons in the Old 
 South church, were not committed until 
 after the persecution had been carried on for 
 years, until scores of women had been 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 49 
 
 stripped naked and flogged by the authorities, 
 until men had had their ears cut off, and 
 until three men and one woman had been 
 put to death upon the gallows. The persecu- 
 tion was a blunder, and the details of it 
 made it a blunder of the most atrocious 
 description. Power was put into the hands 
 of local and irresponsible magistrates to 
 sentence men and women to these shameful 
 and unusual punishments, and brutal con- 
 stables and jailers were entrusted with the 
 enforcement of the law without any due 
 supervision. The most painful part of the 
 whole history is the attitude of the Puritan 
 clergy, in Massachusetts especially. They 
 were bitter and bigoted, hounding on the 
 magistrates to their cruel work, and insulting 
 the unfortunate wretches when they came 
 to suffer. Quaker instinct rightly, no doubt, 
 fixed upon John Norton as the " Fountain 
 and Principal unto whom most of the cruelty 
 and bloodshed is to be imputed. " * 
 
 For the constancy of the Quakers them- 
 selves, their endurance and their fortitude, 
 one can feel nothing but admiration. One 
 remembers how, centuries before, men who 
 like them were willing to die rather than to 
 deny their faith had been called the enemies of 
 mankind, and accused of a perverse and execra- 
 
50 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 ble superstition. It must be admitted, how- 
 ever, that their behavior was often of a kind 
 that would not be allowed to-day any more 
 than it was then, although it is to be hoped 
 that our modern statecraft would find milder 
 and more efficient means of repression than 
 did our predecessors in New England ; yet 
 when one remembers how the Mormons were 
 treated in Illinois and Missouri, and how the 
 mob destroyed a Eoman Catholic convent in 
 Massachusetts, within the memories of living 
 men, we may think it perhaps prudent not 
 to be too sweeping in our condemnation. 
 
 The fundamental difficulty in the Puritans' 
 position was their illegal and unconstitutional 
 government. To maintain that, they were 
 led to deny to other Englishmen their rights, 
 and to assert an independence of the home 
 authorities which was little short of actual 
 separation. 
 
 The second evil principle in their govern- 
 ment was the union of church and state, or 
 rather the subjection of the state to the 
 church, a church moreover in which the 
 people had no rights except by favor of the 
 ministers, a church that was a close corpora- 
 tion and imbued with the spirit of the law 
 of Moses rather than that of the gospel of 
 Christ. In church, as well as in state, there 
 
TBE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 51 
 
 was a consciousness that their existence was 
 illegal and illegitimate ; that, in spite of their 
 protests to the contrary, they had separated 
 from their fellow-Christians in England and 
 had formed a polity for themselves ; hence, 
 just as they felt it necessary to manifest 
 their political authority by acts of severity 
 upon any who questioned it, so they deemed 
 it necessary to maintain their orthodoxy by 
 persecuting those who differed from them in 
 religion. They were ill at ease both politically 
 and religiously, and they sought to disguise 
 the fact from themselves, by making proof 
 of all the power that they possessed. Hence 
 it was that the conflict arose which has stained 
 with innocent blood the early history of the 
 land. It is not to be wondered that the 
 Quakers should see, in the horrible death of 
 Endicott and the miserable end of Norton, 49 
 the hand of an avenging Providence, or that 
 they should believe that for a distance of 
 twenty miles from Boston the ground was 
 cursed so that no wheat could ripen because 
 of a blood-red blight that fastened upon it. 60 
 But we, who live at a time when we can 
 view the history of the struggle with calm- 
 ness and impartiality, may respect the grim 
 determination of the severe magistrates 
 who felt it their duty, at whatever cost, to 
 
52 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 keep that which was committed to their 
 trust free from the poison of heresy and 
 fanaticism, while we sorrow at the blindness 
 which hid from their eyes the folly and the 
 cruelty of their proceedings. We may sym- 
 pathize with the tortured Quakers, whom we 
 now know to he harmless enthusiasts, yet 
 without approving or extenuating their mad 
 actions, their abusive language, or their 
 grotesque indecencies ; and we may hope that, 
 though at enmity in this life, yet, as Brown- 
 ing wrote of Strafford and Pym, 
 
 " in that world 
 Where great hearts led astray are turned again," 
 
 both now are able to respect each other's 
 loyalty of purpose and fidelity to their re- 
 spective conceptions of truth. 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 53 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 1 Vide infra, Note 6. 
 
 8 George Fox, Journal. It is well to notice that of 
 the ministers mentioned by Fox by name or parish, 
 Nath. Stevens, the rector of Fenny Drayton, was a Pres- 
 byterian of some eminence, and was ejected for non-con- 
 formity in 1662. So also was Matthew Cradock, the 
 " priest of Coventry," who was a distinguished non-con- 
 formist divine. The priest at Mansetter, who advised 
 tobacco and psalm-singing, kept his living during the 
 whole period of the Commonwealth, and so may be pre- 
 sumed not to have been a ' ' Churchman " in the commonly 
 received sense of the term. " One Macham," of whom 
 Fox speaks, and who seems to have treated him with more 
 sympathetic kindness than any of the others, was a loyal 
 Churchman and was sequestered in 1645, as a penalty for 
 his adherence to the bishop and the king to whom he had 
 sworn allegiance. It is rather surprising to find his- 
 torians in general, even those who should be better in- 
 formed, assuming that, because these men were filling 
 the parishes of the Church of England, they were, there- 
 fore, Church of England clergymen. 
 
 3 Bishop, George, New England Judged, London, 
 1661, pp. 14-25. 
 
 4 Geo. E. Ellis, Memorial History of Boston, vol. i. 
 p. 181. 
 
 6 Hubbard's History of New England, p. 553. 
 6 Massachusetts Records, iv. (1), 276. 
 • Bishop, 5-13. 
 
54 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 8 Hazard, Historical Collections, ii. 349. Rhode Island 
 Records, i. 374. 
 
 9 Mass. Records, iv. (1), 277. 
 i° Bishop, 38, 39. 
 
 » Bishop, 40, 43. 
 
 18 Mass. Records, iv. (1), 308. Bishop, 50. 
 
 n Mass. Records, iv. (1), 325. 
 
 " Bishop, 72, 73. 
 
 15 Mass. Records, iv. (1), 345, 346. 
 
 " Mass. Archives, vol. x. p. 246. 
 
 " Ma&s. Records, iv. (1), 348. (In payment for this 
 work Norton received five hundred acres of land, a good 
 price for a sermon. Ibid., p. 397.) 
 
 18 The Heart of New England Rent at the Blasphemies 
 of the Present Generation. Printed by Samuel Green, 
 Cambridge in New England, 1659. The arguments used 
 in this declaration are so characteristic of the spirit of the 
 times that the following extract may be useful. The 
 author has been demonstrating that the Quakers were 
 heretical on various points of the faith, and that the Scrip- 
 tures authorize the punishment of false believers. He 
 continues : 
 
 " But other Scriptures omitted, I shall here transcribe 
 only two more, both of which are eminently pregnant 
 with this truth : wherein also are cases put between the 
 cause of God and our near relations, on purpose to pro- 
 vide against obstructions in this great business of re- 
 ligion. 
 
 The first we have Deitt. xiii. per totum. 
 
 Relating to all times succeeding that constitution ; ' If 
 thy brother, the son of thy mother, or thy son, or thy 
 daughter, or the wife of thy bosom, or thy friend, which 
 is as thine own soul, entice thee secretly, saying, Let us go 
 and serve other gods, which thou hast not hnown, thou, 
 nor thy fathers ; Thou shalt not consent unto him, nor 
 hearken unto him ; neither shalt thine eyes pity him, 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 55 
 
 neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him.'' 
 vers. 6, 8. The second we have Zech. xiii. 1, 3. Ex- 
 pressly relating unto the times of the Gospel. In that day, 
 viz. : after the Coming of the Messiah in the time of the 
 Gospel when the families of the tribes shall mourne Ohapt. 
 xii. 11. Thefamilie of the house of David apart, & the 
 familie of the house of Nathan apart, etc. There shall 
 be a fountain opened, i. e. the doctrine of Christ under 
 Moses' dispensation is compared to a fountain vailed, 
 2 Cor. iii. 13, etc. Under the Gospel dispensation to a 
 fountain opened. The vail of the Temple & the ceremonial 
 law being taken away. And it shall come to pass that 
 when any shall yet Prophecie, then his father & his mother 
 that begat him, shall thrust him through, when he prophe- 
 cieth. These words [thrust him throughj may be under- 
 stood either of a Capital punishment judicially dispensed, 
 or of any other smart punishment piercing though not 
 Capital. 
 
 "Wee through grace abhorre prejudicing the liberty 
 of conscience the least measure, and account such report 
 of us to be a slander. And through the same grace ; 
 Wee both dread, and beare witness against, liberty of 
 heresy, liberty to Blaspheme the Blessed Trinity, the Per- 
 son and Office of Christ, the holy-Scripture, the tabernacle 
 of God, and those that dwell in heaven. Howsoever fal- 
 laciously transformed into, and misrepresented under the 
 plausible vizard of liberty of conscience falsely so called. 
 We say Religion is to be perswaded with Scripture- 
 reasons, not Civil weapons : with Arguments, not with 
 punishments. But blasphemies immediate and heresies 
 carried on with an high hand, and persisted in are to 
 be suppressed with weapons and punishments ; where 
 reasons, and arguments cannot prevail. 
 
 We distinguish between Heresie (Quiet and alone, Tur- 
 bulent, i. e. incorrigible) accompanied with soliciting the 
 
56 ESSAYS IN AMEBIC AN HISTORY. 
 
 people to apostacy from the Faith of Christ to defection 
 from the churches, to Sedition in the Commonwealth. 
 And that after due meanes of conviction, and Authorita- 
 tive prohibition. 
 
 "We subject not any to Civil or Corporal punishment for 
 heresie, if quiet and alone. We do not inflict any Church- 
 censure in case of heresie, without doctrinal conviction 
 on the Churche's part, and contumacy on the delinquent's 
 part foregoing. 
 
 In case of Heresie incorrigible, in conjunction with en- 
 deavours to seduce others thereunto, and tending to the 
 disturbing of Publick-order, we acknowledge it to be the 
 pious Wisdom of the Magistrate to proceed gradually, 
 and where gentler meanes may rationally be looked at as 
 effectual, there to abstain from the use of any severer 
 remedie. 
 
 And according to this method, hath been the gradual 
 proceeding of the Magistrate here, with those (hitherto 
 incorrigible) Quakers, who from England have unreason- 
 ably and insolently obtruded themselves upon us. 1. In- 
 structing them. 2. Eestraining them untill an opportu- 
 nity for their returne. 3. Publishing a law to warne and 
 prohibite both them and all others of that sect, from 
 Coming into this jurisdiction : otherwise to expect the 
 house of Correction. And in case they returned yet again, 
 then to loose one of their eares, etc. 
 
 At last upon experience of their bold contempt of these 
 inferior restraints, and that after their being sent away 
 again and again, they continue to return yet again and 
 again ; to the seducing of diverse, the disturbance, vexa- 
 tion and hazard of the whole Colonie. The Court finding 
 the Law passed, to be an insufficient fence against these 
 persons, proceeded to a Sentence of Banishment. 
 
 Their restraint before the Law published, was but 
 restraint in the Prison, until an opportunity of shipping 
 them away. They who after the Law was published, 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 57 
 
 would that notwithstanding, break in upon us from Eng- 
 land, or other forraign parts, by Rode-Island, after their 
 correction received, and discharging their dues, might 
 return again to the Island, if they pleased. The wolfe 
 which ventures over the wild Sea, out of a ravening de- 
 sire to prey upon the sheep, when landed, discovered and 
 taken, hath no cause to complain, though for the security 
 of the flock, he be penned up, with the door opening unto 
 the fold fast shut ; but having another door purposely 
 left open, whereby he may depart at his pleasure either 
 returning from whence he came, or otherwise quitting 
 the place. 
 
 Their Sentence of Banishment as Circumstanced, by an 
 Impartial and equal eye, may be looked upon as an Act 
 which the court was forced unto se defendendo, in defence 
 of Religion, themselves, the Clnirches, and this poore 
 State and People from Ruine : which the principles of 
 confusion, daylie and studiously disseminated by them, 
 threatened to bring all unto, if not seasonably prevented. 
 Exile from a wilderness, from a place of exile ; though 
 voluntarie, from a place ; confinement whereunto would 
 indeed justly be called exile, is an easie exile." (Pages 
 48, 49, 53, 54.) 
 
 19 Rhode Island Records, i. 376-378. See also the letter 
 of the General Assembly, 378-380. 
 
 20 Bishop, 95. 
 
 51 Mass. Records, iv. (1), 383. 
 
 22 The Sufferings of the People called Quakers, by Jos. 
 Besse, London, 1753, ii. p. 177. 
 
 23 Bishop, 89-95, 109. 
 
 24 Hubbard's History of New England, p. 173. See also 
 an Address to the King (Charles II.), Dec. 19, 1660, in 
 which the colonial authorities argue as follows : " Con- 
 cerning the Quakers, open and capitall blasphemers, open 
 seducers from the glorious Trinity, the Lord's Christ, our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, etc. the blessed gospel], and from the 
 
58 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 Holy Scriptures as the rule of life, open enemies to gov- 
 ernment itself as established in the hands of any but men 
 of their oune principles, malignant and assiduous pro- 
 moters of doctrines directly tending to subvert both our 
 churches and state, after all other meanes for a long 
 time used in vajne, wee were at last constrejned, for our 
 oune safety, to pass a sentence of banishment against 
 them, vpon pajne of death. Such was theire daingerous, 
 impetuous, & desperat turbulency, both to religion & the 
 state civil & ecclesiastical, as that how vnwillingly so- 
 ever, could it have binn avoyded, the magistrate at last, 
 in conscience both to God and Man, judged himself called 
 for the defense of all, to keep the passage with the point 
 of the sword held towards them. This could do no harm 
 to hiTTi that would be warned thereby : theire wittingly 
 rushing themselves therevpon was theire oune act, & 
 wee, wth all humility, conceive a cryme bringing theire 
 blood on theire oune head The Quakers died, not be- 
 cause of theire other crymes, how capitall soever, but 
 vpon theire superadded presumptuous & incorrigible con- 
 tempt of authority ; breaking in vpon vs notwthstanding 
 theire sentence of banishment made knoune to them. 
 Had they not binn restreigned, so farr as appeared, there 
 was too much cause to feare that wee ourselves must 
 quickly haue dyed, or worse ; and such was theire in- 
 solency, that they would not be restreined but by death ; 
 nay, had they at last but promised to depart the jurisdic- 
 tion, and not to returne wthout leaue from authority, wee 
 should haue binn glad of such an opportunity to haue 
 sayd they should not dye." Mass. Records, iv. (1), 450- 
 453. Bishop, 113. 
 
 " Mass. Records, iv. (1), 419. 
 
 56 Mass. Records, iv. (1), 366. Bishop, 90, 91. 
 
 " Bishop, 44-48, 52-54. 
 
 K Mass. Records, iv. (1), 391. 
 
 '• Bishop, 111. Mass. Records, iv. (1), 411. 
 
THE QUAKERS IN NEW ENGLAND. 59 
 
 30 Bishop, Second Part, 14, 26, 30-35. 
 
 31 Mass. Records, iv. (2), %A, May, 1661. 
 
 32 Bishop, Second Part, 38, 39. The Declaration pre- 
 sented to the King by the Quakers may be found in the 
 Preface to Besse's Sufferings of the People called Quakers, 
 I. xxx., xxxii. 
 
 33 Mass. Records, iv. (2), 24. 
 
 34 Bishop, Second Part, 52. 
 
 35 Ibid., 58, 65. 
 
 36 ibid., 112. 
 
 31 Ibid., 90-105. 
 38 Ibid., 74. 
 zs Ibid., 68, 69. 
 
 40 Besse, ii. 259. 
 
 41 Besse, ii. 260-264. 
 
 42 Bishop, 154, 155. 
 
 43 Bishop, Second Part, 105-108. 
 
 44 Bishop, Second Part, 46, 120. 
 
 45 Besse, ii. 387. 
 
 46 " And you shewed your Spirit, who ran away from 
 England, and could not abide the sufferings of your purse, 
 and a Prison, and when you were got beyond Sea, then 
 you could Hang, and Burn, and Whip, God's Creatures, 
 and the true Subjects of England ; yet you would have 
 the name of Christians who have cast away all Humanity 
 and Christianity, by your fury, rage, and Nebuchadnez- 
 zar's spirit ; who are worse than the very Indians, whose 
 name stinks both among Indians and Christians, which 
 is become a proverb and a common Cry, The bloody 
 Crimes of New England, a company of rotten Hypocrites 
 which fled from Old England to save their purses and 
 themselves from Imprisonment, and then can Hang, and 
 Burn, and Whip, and spoil the Goods of such as come 
 out of England to inhabit among them, only for being 
 
 called Quakers Are these the men that fled 
 
 for Religion all people may say, that now Hang, Burn, 
 
60 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN SISTOBT. 
 
 Imprison, Cut, Fine, and spoil the Goods, and drink the 
 blood of the innocent. God will give you a Cup of trem- 
 bling, that you shall be a by-word, and a hissing to all 
 your neighbours." Bishop, Second Part, 146, 147. 
 
 4 ~ See Note 33, on the next Essay. 
 
 48 Bishop, 67. 
 
 *» Bishop, Second Part, 139. Besse, ii. 270. 
 
 w Hutchinson, History of Massachusetts-Bay, i. 223. 
 
II. 
 
 THE WITCHES. 
 
 The story of the witchcraft delusion in 
 New England is a sequel and companion- 
 piece to the history of the conflict with the 
 Quakers. Both exhibit the least attractive 
 side of our forefathers, and both point the 
 moral that the intermeddling by ecclesiastics 
 in matters of public policy is dangerous to 
 the state. It is a strange tale of superstition 
 and of panic, painful to dwell upon, but nec- 
 essary to a proper comprehension of the 
 characters of the leaders of New England, 
 and of the conditions under which the strug- 
 gling colonies developed their strong and 
 distinct individuality. It should always be 
 remembered that belief in witchcraft was 
 not a peculiarity of New England, and that 
 the reason the colonists there have been 
 judged so hardly for their panic is that 
 
 men have felt that they had claimed to be 
 
 61 
 
62 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 superior to the men of their generation, and 
 thus should be measured by a higher stand- 
 ard. Their claim had some justification. 
 The leaders of thought in New England had 
 advanced in some directions far beyond their 
 contemporaries ; in political insight and 
 political adroitness they have had few equals 
 in any period ; but they were hampered and 
 burdened by the very religion which to their 
 fathers had been a gospel of liberty and a 
 source of inspiration. This had become a the- 
 ology with its dogmas and its rules ; the de- 
 vout and earnest ministers who had con- 
 tended for their faith in England, or had 
 braved the perils of the seas and the loneli- 
 ness of the wilderness to be free to worship 
 God as they chose, had given place to the 
 second generation, who had never known 
 suffering, and were therefore ignorant of 
 mercy ; men who were enthusiastic indeed, 
 but not so much enthusiastic for religion as 
 for their creed ; not so zealous for Christ as 
 for their own peculiar way of worshipping 
 him. The result had been a general lower- 
 ing of spiritual tone, which was recognized 
 and freely acknowledged and deplored by the 
 best men of the period. It seems inevitable 
 that this hardening and narrowing should 
 follow ages of contest and struggle. When 
 
THE WITCHES. 63 
 
 the faith becomes a war-cry, it necessarily 
 loses much of its spirituality. Beliefs for 
 which one age has suffered become crystal- 
 lized into formulas for the next, and divines 
 wonder at the hardness of men's hearts in 
 refusing obedience to what once indeed had 
 been a law of life, but by being made a com- 
 mandment has become a law unto death. 
 
 So, while our New England forefathers 
 were clever politicians, shrewd and adroit 
 men of affairs, practical and full of ingeni- 
 ous expedients, intelligent and clear-headed 
 about their secular business, they retrograded 
 in religion, and became formalists and con- 
 troversialists. Theological orthodoxy sup- 
 planted intelligent Christianity, and New 
 England religion sank into a dreary series 
 of wranglings about Cambridge platforms 
 and Saybrook platforms, half-way cove- 
 nants and whole-way covenants, old lights 
 and new lights, consociations and associa- 
 tions, until it became, for a time at least, 
 more arid and lifeless than ever had been the 
 Church of England, against the formalism of 
 which they were continually protesting. It is 
 true that a few isolated cases of witchcraft 
 are found occurring in the early history of the 
 colonies, and it was then that the severe laws 
 were enacted ; yet the serious trouble, the 
 
64 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 great panic, did not come until the first gen- 
 eration, " those men who had seen the works 
 of the Lord," had been gathered unto their 
 fathers. One cannot imagine John Cotton 
 playing the part of his namesake Cotton 
 Mather, or John Winthrop, superstitious as 
 he was, in the place of Stoughton. Even 
 Wilson and Norton, who exulted in the blood 
 of the Quakers, thought witch-finding a 
 cowardly yielding to popular folly. The 
 responsibility of the men of the first genera- 
 tion lies rather in the character of the 
 religious training they gave their successors, 
 a gloomy religion, which in themselves had 
 been mitigated by a piety, sincere if fanatical, 
 and perhaps also by some recollection of the 
 brighter experiences of their childhood's 
 days in the more genial religious fife of 
 England, a life their children had never 
 known. 
 
 It is, then, not astonishing that our fore- 
 fathers in New England should have been 
 victims to a common delusion of their times. 
 We may even say that the circumstances of 
 their lives were such as to render them espe- 
 cially liable to it ; for though the hardships of 
 the early history of the settlement grew less 
 as time went on, the life in New England 
 was, at the best, lonely and depressing. The 
 
THE WITCHES. 65 
 
 colonists lived dreary lives of laborious and 
 uninteresting toil, with few physical com- 
 forts, and with poor and unvaried diet. They 
 had few amusements, little or no recreation, 
 and they were constantly in face of difficul- 
 ties, constantly exposed to danger. Their 
 houses were on the verge of the mysterious 
 forest, where strange sights and sounds 
 were to be seen and heard, where dwelt the 
 Indians, often hostile and always a source 
 of uneasiness. They had few books, and 
 those they had were not of a character to 
 draw them away from the contemplation of 
 themselves. The Bible they had, it is true, 
 but to read it for any purpose except that of 
 spiritual exercise would have been deemed 
 profane. Sermons of abnormal length and 
 dryness, controversial treatises, ponderous 
 alike literally and figuratively, and, as we 
 shall see later, ghastly and blood-curdling 
 accounts of memorable providences, formed 
 their principal literature. The settlers had 
 been for the most part emigrants from quiet 
 country towns and villages in England, put 
 down in the unknown wilderness, to work out, 
 under the pressure of religious enthusiasm, a 
 new social and religious polity. The life was 
 small, narrow, and squalid, only redeemed 
 from utter sordidness by gleams of religious 
 
66 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 idealism and by the stern resolution of the 
 better class of the settlers to keep themselves 
 and their neighbors in the paths of right- 
 eousness. Their religion was a sombre Cal- 
 vinism, giving more prominence to the ter- 
 rors of the law than to the comforts of the 
 gospel. Living as they did in scriptural 
 thought, speaking in scriptural phraseology, 
 dwelling constantly upon the similarity of 
 their position with that of the children of 
 Israel, it is not surprising that they should 
 have carried their intense literalism into 
 every particular. Their external relations, 
 their religious and political systems, were 
 ruled by the law of Moses as they imagined 
 it from their somewhat uncritical study of 
 the Old Testament. Their Christianity was 
 profoundly internal and introspective, some- 
 thing which was between each individual 
 soul and the Almighty, rather than a law of 
 social life. The result of this was twofold. 
 They were led to ascribe to their own con- 
 victions the character of divine revelations, 
 and were also rendered intensely morbid, 
 sometimes exalted above measure and some- 
 times as irrationally despondent. They felt 
 that they were the chosen people of the Lord, 
 doing a great work for him, in " setting up 
 the candlestick of a pure church in the wil- 
 
THE WITCHES. 67 
 
 derness to which the like-minded might re- 
 sort " ; and this feeling led them to believe 
 that they were especially exposed to the 
 malice and spite of the devil, who desired to 
 thwart their purpose. They saw special 
 providences in every common occurrence 
 that made for their welfare or that seemed 
 to vindicate their theological prejudices, the 
 envy and spite of the devil in every misad- 
 venture or threatening circumstance. Cot- 
 ton Mather may be taken as a characteristic 
 specimen of the more intelligent and devout 
 thinkers among the men of the second gen- 
 eration, and for him the whole daily life of 
 the colony was a spiritual warfare. The 
 very object of his greatest work, the " Mag- 
 nalia Christi," is to show the special work- 
 ings of Divine Providence in favor of the 
 people of Massachusetts, and to exhibit how 
 they had battled against "principalities and 
 powers, against the rulers of the darkness 
 of this world, against spiritual wickedness 
 in high places." The savage Indians were 
 supposed to be devil- worshippers, and to 
 serve him at their " pow-wows " in the dark 
 recesses of the unbroken forest. Every 
 storm, every meteor, every unnatural birth, 
 was a portent. 1 It is not strange that under 
 such conditions a strong belief in the reality 
 
68 ESSAYS IV AMERICAN HISTORY- 
 
 of witchcraft should have existed, especially 
 when the delusion was general in Europe as 
 well as in America. 
 
 The belief in the power of evil spirits to 
 interfere with man has been held in every 
 age and in all parts of the world. It is a 
 survival of that fear of the unseen, which 
 filled the souls of men in those early ages 
 when, ignorant of the forces of nature, they 
 felt the universe about them to be hostile 
 and ascribed all unfamiliar sensations to the 
 agency of some invisible enemy. It is not 
 strange that such a belief should have arisen. 
 Man's commonest experiences were those of 
 hostility and pain ; wild animals were hostile, 
 his wilder fellow-men were still more hostile ; 
 from both he suffered injuries that were in- 
 flicted consciously and with evil intent ; by 
 analogy — the earliest, as it is the latest, form 
 of reasoning — the other evils he suffered 
 must be also the acts of conscious beings. 
 The twinges of rheumatism were no less real 
 than the pain from the blow of a foeman's 
 club ; it was only natural to reason that 
 they had been inflicted by an unseen en- 
 emy. 
 
 The fear of the unseen, so characteristic of 
 primeval man, has left many traces in lan- 
 guage, religion, and custom. Like many an- 
 
THE WITCHES. 69 
 
 other instinct inherited from savage life, it 
 remains lurking in the human mind, and at 
 certain times comes to the surface. It has 
 developed itself in two directions. On the 
 one hand it has led to religion, to a faith 
 in a supernal Protector with whom the dark- 
 ness and the light are both alike ; on the 
 other, to a grovelling fear of evil spirits, 
 which has been the cause of the belief in 
 magic, sorcery, and witchcraft. The fear of 
 Jehovah was, for Israel and for the world, 
 the beginning of wisdom. The "seeking 
 unto wizards that peep and mutter " is the 
 parody of religion, which seems always to 
 exist by its side. 
 
 It is probable also that the belief in evil 
 spirits may have had, in some cases, a different 
 origin. It has been often pointed out on his- 
 torical as well as on philological grounds 
 that, in many cases, the conquest of one tribe 
 by another has degraded the religion of the 
 conquered into a secondary and dishonor- 
 able position. When the Saxon convert re- 
 nounced Woden, Thunor, and Saxnote and all 
 their words and works, the gods of Asgard 
 still remained, in the belief of both convert 
 and converter, as malignant enemies of 
 Christianity. Whether from a primitive 
 fear or a degraded polytheism, the result has 
 
70 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 been the same ; man tends to surround him- 
 self with a host of invisible foes. 
 
 The monotheistic religions, especially, have 
 waged a bitter warfare upon this form of poly- 
 theism, as derogating from the honors due 
 only to the highest. Judaism, Christianity, 
 and Islam have all declared war against the 
 witch and the magician, at times by stern 
 legislation, at times by wise teaching of the 
 unreality and nothingness of the pretences 
 of those who claim supernatural powers. 
 
 Perhaps the most strange fact in the history 
 of the subject, and a remarkable example of 
 the impossibility of anticipating every result 
 of an action, is that the very efforts which 
 were made by the enlightened lawgivers of 
 Israel to eradicate this debasing superstition 
 have been in later times the provocation of 
 the continued recurrence of the delusion. 
 The words of the law of Israel have been 
 used to prove the reality of the existence of 
 the offence it had attempted to obliterate, 
 while the severity of the punishments em- 
 ployed among a people just rescued from 
 barbarism has been made an excuse for 
 equal severity under circumstances the most 
 widely different. 
 
 Even now such superstitions are extremely 
 common among the negroes of the southern 
 
THE WITCHES. 71 
 
 portion of the United States, and of the West 
 India Islands, as they are among the Slavs 
 in Bohemia and Eussia, and among the igno- 
 rant in every land. Even among the educated 
 classes there is a more than half -serious be- 
 lief in "charms," "mascots," and "hoodoos," 
 which is laughed at but acted upon. The 
 superstitions about Friday, the number thir- 
 teen, and many others of the same nature, 
 are still acted upon all over the world, and 
 the belief in the evil eye is not confined 
 to any one class or nation. Spiritualistic 
 materializations and the marvels of Hindu 
 theosophy are modern examples of this same 
 recurrence to the fears and follies of our 
 savage ancestors. 
 
 In the seventeenth century, it was only a 
 few emancipated spirits who did not so be- 
 lieve, and they were looked upon with horror 
 by the majority of religious men as Saddu- 
 cees and unbelievers. No less an authority 
 than King James himself, the British Solo- 
 mon, had written a most "learned and pain- 
 ful " treatise to prove the necessity of such 
 a belief for all Christian people, a treatise in 
 which he expounded satisfactorily, to him- 
 self at least, all the most recondite minutiae 
 of the subject. 2 
 
 In his reign, by Act of Parliament, witch- 
 
72 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 craft had been made punishable by death, 3 and 
 the scandalous case of Lady Essex's divorce 
 had been decided on grounds of " maleficium 
 versus hanc." 4 Still more recently, as the 
 wise and godly Baxter relates, during the 
 period of the Commonwealth, the learned 
 Calamy had looked on with approval, while 
 Matthew Hopkins, the witch-finder, tortured 
 some poor wretches, among whom was one 
 unfortunate dispossessed clergyman of the 
 persecuted Church of England, into confess- 
 ing revolting absurdities. 5 Still later, after 
 the Eestoration, the usually judicious Sir 
 Matthew Hale had condemned and burned 
 two women as witches, in the very Suffolk 
 from which so many of the New Englanders 
 had come, on evidence of the same character 
 as that upon which American courts had to 
 decide. 6 If these erred in believing in witch- 
 craft, they erred in good company, with all 
 the most orthodox teachers of religion and 
 philosophy in Europe, Protestant and Catholic 
 as well. Even Selden, who had no belief in 
 witchcraft himself, justified the severity 
 which was exercised against those condemned 
 of that offence, by arguing that if a man 
 thought that by turning his hat around and 
 saying "Buz" he could kill a man, he ought 
 to be put to death if he made the attempt, 
 
THE WITCHES. 73 
 
 no matter how absurd the claim might be. 
 Sir Thomas Browne, the well-known author 
 of the Beligio Medici, gave his testimony as 
 an expert at the trial of the Suffolk witches, 
 upon the side of the reality of witchcraft. 7 
 When the student of the early annals of the 
 Colonies realizes the extent of this supersti- 
 tion, and at the same time the literal char- 
 acter of the religion of the majority of the 
 settlers in New England, their bitter hatred'"" 
 of theological opponents, and their readiness 
 to believe evil in regard to them ; when he 
 appreciates how harsh and mean and unlovely 
 was the life that most of them lived, and 
 observes that, side by side with an exalted re- 
 ligious enthusiasm, the lowest and most ab- 
 horrent forms of indecency and vice pre- 
 vailed, he will no longer be inclined to won- 
 der at the existence in such a community of 
 the witchcraft delusion, but will rather be 
 amazed that, with such a people and among 
 such surroundings, its duration was so short 
 and its victims so few. 
 
 Although the crime of witchcraft was espe- 
 cially named in the colonial statutes, and the 
 penalty of death imposed upon offenders, it 
 was some time before a case was detected ; and 
 the early settlers seem usually to have acted in- 
 most cautiously in this matter. Connecticut 
 
74 ESSAYS IN AMEBIC AN HISTORY. 
 
 has the unenviable pre-eminence of having 
 furnished the first victim, if Winthrop may be 
 believed. He notes : "One of "Windsor was 
 arraigned and executed in Hartford for a 
 witch" in March, 1646-7. 8 Then followed, 
 in 1648, the execution of Margaret Jones at 
 Charlestown, Mass., whose fate Winthrop 
 also describes. She was tested according to 
 the most approved maxims of witch-finders 
 in England, being stripped and searched for 
 witch-marks, or the teats by which it was 
 believed the devil's imps were nourished. 
 The search paid no regard to decency, and 
 when the inquisitors found some small ex- 
 crescence they were fully satisfied of the 
 guilt of the accused, and she was accordingly 
 hanged. 9 In the same year the founders of 
 the liberties of Connecticut put to death, at 
 Hartford, one Mary Johnson, with whom, it 
 is related, ' ' Mr. Stone labored with such suc- 
 cess that she died in penitence, confessing 
 her abominable crimes of familiarity with 
 the devil." 10 In 1650, a Mistress Lake was 
 hanged at Dorchester, and a Mistress Ken- 
 dall at Cambridge, showing that not all the 
 superstitious had migrated from those places 
 to Hartford and Windsor. 11 In 1651, Mary 
 Parsons of Springfield was hanged for in- 
 fanticide ; she was generally accused of be- 
 
THE WITCHES. 75 
 
 ing a witch, but on trial before the General 
 Court was cleared, owing to the insufficiency 
 of the testimony ; M and Hugh Parsons, her 
 husband, who was tried and found guilty by 
 the Court of Assistants in 1652, was re-tried 
 and acquitted by the General Court, ' ' which, 
 after perusing and considering the evidence, 
 . . . judged that he was not legally guilty 
 of witchcraft, and so not to dye by law." n 
 These instances of careful examination, as^ 
 well as the small number of the cases, show 
 that in the first twenty -five years there was no 
 general panic, and that the authorities were 
 inclined to proceed with a deliberation which 
 contrasts very favorably with the tone of 
 feeling in England at this time. In 1651, 
 Goodwife Bassett was hanged at Stratford, 14 
 and John Carrington and his wife of 
 Wethersfield, probably at Hartford, 15 and in 
 1653, Goodwife Enapp suffered at Fairfield. 16 
 In Massachusetts there were no more cases 
 until 1656, in which year Mistress Hibbins, 
 a woman of position, whose husband had sat 
 as an assistant at some of the earlier trials, 
 was hanged in Boston. It is noticeable in 
 her case that though the magistrates had 
 refused to accept the verdict of the first jury 
 that had found her guilty, the General Court, 
 to whom the case came in regular course, 
 
76 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 condemned her. 17 Her execution shocked 
 the wiser portion of the community, and 
 even men of the narrow religious views of 
 Norton and Wilson, though they did not 
 venture openly to oppose the popular demand 
 for her life, were heard to say in private that 
 they had hanged a woman whose chief offence 
 was in having more wit than her neighbors. 18 
 
 After her death there were no more execu- 
 tions in Massachusetts for over thirty years, 
 though the increasing frequency of marvel- 
 lous occurrences and suspicious cases pro- 
 mised ill for the future. Good sense as yet 
 controlled public affairs, in this direction at 
 least. In Connecticut witch-finding still con- 
 tinued ; in 1553 the wife of Joseph Garlick 
 of Easthampton (L. I.) was tried for this 
 offence ; in 1659 there was an alarm in Say- 
 brook ; and in 1662, one Goody Greensmith of 
 Hartford was convicted, on her own confess- 
 ion, of having had carnal intercourse with the 
 devil, and was hanged for the offence ; two 
 other women were condemned with her but 
 "made their escape " ; her husband was not 
 so fortunate and was put to death. Mary 
 Barnes of Farmington was indicted January 
 6th, 1662-3, and was probably executed with 
 the Greensmiths. 19 
 
 Other cases occurred, but it is believed that 
 
THE WITCHES. 77 
 
 this was the last execution for witchcraft in 
 Connecticut. The Gallows Hill in Hartford 
 was, however, long remembered, and has not 
 even yet lost its unsavory reputation. The 
 political changes incident to the reception 
 of the charter, by which the colony of New 
 Haven was calmly absorbed by its astute and 
 ambitious neighbor, seem to have occupied 
 men's minds sufficiently to keep them from 
 any great amount of activity in this direc- 
 tion. Yet, in 1665, Elizabeth Seger was 
 found guilty of witchcraft at Hartford, but 
 set at liberty, and, 1669, Katharine Harrison 
 of Wethersfield was tried and condemned ; 
 the verdict, however, was overruled and the 
 prisoner released by the Special Court of As- 
 sistants ; 20 four women were tried in 1692, at 
 Fairfield, one of whom was condemned to 
 death, but not executed ; two women were 
 indicted at Wallingford, and a woman was 
 tried at Hartford as late as 1697, but ac- 
 quitted. 21 It has sometimes been said that 
 the arrival of Andros and the loss of the 
 charter in 1687 was the only thing that pre- 
 vented a serious outbreak of the delusion in 
 Connecticut. 
 
 When the delusion revived in Massachu- 
 setts it was with increased force and viru- 
 lence. Its recrudescence may be directly 
 
78 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 traced to the publication and general circu- 
 lation in the colony of a book by Increase 
 Mather, entitled " An Essay for the record- 
 
 \ing of Illustrious Providences," etc., which 
 contained a detailed account of all the mar- 
 vels that Divine benevolence or wrath had 
 wrought in the last thirty or forty years. 22 
 At about the same time appeared the account 
 of the trials in England under Sir Matthew 
 Hale ffl and of the remarkable mania which 
 had raged in Sweden in 1669. ^ These hor- 
 rible stories became the subject of conversa- 
 tion, of meditation in private, and of sermon 
 and prayer in public. They were apparently 
 read or related to the young as edifying and 
 instructive literature ; for, from this time 
 forward, children in New England began to 
 repeat the phenomena that had prevailed 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. 
 
 The colony was in a very excited and dis- 
 contented condition. The beloved patent 
 
 , upon which the Commonwealth of Massachu- 
 setts had been so boldly reared had been taken 
 away from them, and they had been brought 
 under the government of England. Their 
 "purity of doctrine" was more than threat- 
 ened, as not only had they been compelled to 
 desist from persecuting Quakers, but they 
 had also been constrained to allow the hated. 
 
THE WITCHES. 79 
 
 Book of Common Prayer to be read in pub- 
 lic, and to permit men to worship God ac- 
 cording to its rubrical provisions. More than 
 this, the king's governor had actually pol- 
 luted one of their meeting-houses by using it 
 for the performance of the services of the na- 
 tional church. It seemed indeed to many of 
 the men who were now prominent in the room 
 of their wiser fathers, that Satan was making , 
 a desperate attack upon the colony ; and their 
 minds were predisposed to believe any mar- 
 vels the result of diabolical agency. 
 
 The first manifestation of the revived de- 
 lusion appeared in 1688, in the family of 
 John Goodwin, a sober and prosperous me- 
 chanic of.Boston. His children, all of whom 
 were said to be remarkable for "ingenuity 
 of character," and who had been religiously 
 brought up, and were "thought to be with- 
 out guile," suddenly exhibited the most 
 alarming symptoms. One of them, a young 
 girl, had given some offence to an old Irish- »- 
 woman of bad character, and had been re- 
 paid with vigorous abuse and vituperation. 
 Shortly afterwards she began to fall into 
 fits, which were deemed by her friends and 
 neighbors to have something diabolical 
 about them. Soon the same complaint at- 
 tacked also her sister and her two brothers, 
 
'8(P) ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 and the terrified, observers reported that they 
 were all "tormented in the same part of 
 their bodies at the same time, though kept in 
 separate apartments, and ignorant of one 
 another's complaints." They were free from 
 trouble at night and slept well. Their af- 
 flictions always came on in the daytime and 
 in public. Their diabolical visitants were 
 apparently instructed in theology, and dis- 
 played a depraved taste in literature that was 
 intensely scandalizing to the pious Cotton 
 Mather, who interested himself most deeply 
 in the strange affliction of the children. He 
 relates that they would throw the children 
 into a senseless condition if they but looked 
 on the outside of such good books as the 
 Assembly's Catechism or Cotton's Milk for 
 Babes, while they might read with complete 
 impunity Oxford Jests, popish or Quaker 
 books, or the Book of Common Prayer. ffi The 
 other symptoms were yet more alarming, 
 physicially, if not spiritually. " Sometimes 
 they would be deaf, then dumb, then blind, 
 and sometimes all these disorders together 
 would come upon them. I Their tongues 
 would be drawn down their throats, then 
 pulled out upon their chins. Their jaws, 
 necks, shoulders, elbows, and all their joints 
 would appear to be dislocated^land they would 
 
THE WITCHES. 81 
 
 make most piteous outcries of burnings, of 
 being cut with knives, beat, etc. , and the marks 
 of wounds were afterwards to be seen." The 
 ministers of Boston and Charlestown came to 
 the house, and kept there a day of fasting 
 and prayer, with the happy result of curing 
 the youngest of the children. The others 
 continued as before ; and then, the clergy 
 having failed, the magistrates took up the 
 case. The old woman whose violent tongue 
 had apparently had some connection with the 
 first outbreak of the complaint, was arrested 
 and thrown into prison, and charged with 
 witchcraft. She would neither deny or con- 
 fess, but " appeared to be disordered in mind," 
 and insisted on talking Gaelic, though she 
 had been able to talk English before. The 
 physicians examined her, and reported that 
 she was compos mentis, and on their report 
 the poor creature was hanged — a serious blot 
 on the usually judicious administration of 
 Sir Edmund Andros ; so unlike him that one 
 is inclined to suspect he must have been ab- 
 sent from Boston when this foolish crime was 
 perpetrated. The children gradually re- 
 covered, grew up, "experienced religion" in 
 the usual way, and never confessed to any 
 fault or deceit in the matter. Hutchinson 
 
 writes that he knew one of them in after 
 6 
 
V 
 
 82 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 years, who had the character of a very sober, 
 virtuous woman. 26 
 
 As these cases may be referred to the cir- 
 culation of the record of the former marvels 
 and illustrious providences, so now in their 
 turn they became the provoking causes of 
 many others ; for a full and particular ac- 
 count of these was printed, first in Boston, 
 and then, almost immediately afterward, in 
 London, with an introduction from no less a 
 person than Richard Baxter. This, together 
 with the other relations, was circulated 
 throughout the colony, and led to a still 
 greater outbreak of the delusion. 27 Men 
 thought about witches and talked about 
 witches, and very naturally soon came to 
 believe that all the accidents and disasters 
 and diseases, which they could not explain 
 by common natural causes, were the result 
 of demoniac agency. 
 
 The strong rule of Andros had ended in 
 revolution and disturbance ; but, much to 
 their disappointment, the people had been 
 obliged to accept a new charter under which 
 the rule of the hierarchy was still restrained 
 by the appointment of the governor by the 
 crown. The leaders, astute as ever, suc- 
 ceeded in securing the appointment of Sir Wil- 
 liam Phips, an ignorant and underbred sailor, 
 
THE WITCHES. 83 
 
 hoping to be able to influence him easily, 
 and thus to continue their authority. The 
 lieutenant-governor was Stoughton, one of 
 themselves, whose narrowness of mind and 
 bitter prejudices made him a man upon whom 
 they could rely implicitly. But before the 
 charter arrived, the colony was thrown into 
 a ferment of excitement by the dreadful oc- 
 currences at Salem village (now Danvers), 
 which, to tbe minds of the majority of the 
 population, indicated unquestionably that the 
 enemy of souls was making a most desper- 
 ate attack upon the community. 
 
 The trouble broke out in the family of the 
 minister of the village, Parris by name, who 
 had shortly before had serious difficulties 
 with some of his congregation. 28 His daugh- 
 ter and his niece, girls ten or eleven years 
 old, began to make the same complaints that 
 had been made by the Goodwin children in 
 Boston three years before. The physicians 
 found themselves at a loss, and hence were 
 quite convinced that the ailments were super- 
 natural, and declared that the children were 
 bewitched. An Indian woman named Ti- 
 tuba, a servant in the house, tried some ex- 
 periments of a somewhat disgusting nature, 
 which she claimed would discover who the 
 witch was that was tormenting them. 
 
84 ES8AY8 IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 When, the girls knew what she had done, 
 they immediately cried out that Tituba ap- 
 peared to them, pricking and tormenting 
 them, and straightway fell into convulsions. 
 The woman, alarmed at this, confessed what 
 she had been doing, but stoutly maintained 
 that, though she knew how to find out 
 witches she herself was none. The condi- 
 tion of the children excited much attention, 
 and the more they were investigated the 
 worse they grew, and soon several others 
 were seized with the same symptoms. These 
 all had their fits, and when in them would 
 accuse not only the Indian woman, but also 
 two old half-witted crones in the neighbor- 
 hood, one of whom was bed-ridden as well as 
 imbecile. The three were committed to 
 prison, where Tituba confessed that she was 
 a witch and accused the others of being her 
 confederates. They soon had company in 
 the jail, as two others, women of character 
 and position, Mistress Cory and Mistress 
 Nurse, were complained of ; and when they 
 were brought to examination, all the chil- 
 dren "fell into their fits" and insisted that 
 the accused were tormenting them. The 
 women naturally denied this outrageous 
 charge, but in spite of their denial were 
 committed to prison, and with them, so great 
 
THE WITCHES. 85 
 
 was the infatuation and panic, a little child 
 of only four years of age, who, as some of the 
 girls insisted, "kept biting them with her 
 little sharp teeth." J 
 
 Panic, like rumor, thrives by what it feeds 
 on ; and from day to day new victims were 
 accused and committed, until the prisons 
 were crowded. More than a hundred women, 
 many of them of good character and belong-! 
 ing to respectable families in Salem, Andover, 
 Ipswich and Billerica, were arrested, and 
 after an examination, usually conducted by 
 Parris, were thrown into the jails to await 
 their formal trial. 29 Many of these,in order to 
 escape, confessed whatever they were charged 
 with, and generally in their confessions tried 
 to win favor for themselves by accusing 
 some one else. 30 Neighborhood quarrels, old 
 sores, spite, envy, and jealousy added their 
 bitterness to the prevailing madness. It 
 seems incredible that any rational beings 
 could have been found to give credence to 
 the farrago of nonsense that was solemnly 
 sworn to ; yet it was the most marvellous 
 tales that found the readiest credence. One 
 confession may be cited as a sample, to illus- 
 trate what was the force of panic terror in 
 the midst of this apparently civilized com- 
 munity. 31 
 
80 ESSATS IN AMERICAN HI8TOBY. 
 
 "The examination and confession (8 Sept. 92) of 
 Mary Osgood, wife of Captain Osgood of Andover, 
 taken before John Hawthorne and other their 
 Majesties justices. 
 
 ' ' She confesses that about 11 years ago, when she 
 was in a melancholy state and condition, she would 
 walk abroad in her orchard ; and upon a certain 
 time she saw the appearance of a cat, at the end of 
 the house, which yet she thought was a real cat. 
 However, at that time it diverted her from pray- 
 ing to God, and, instead thereof, she prayed to the 
 devil ; about which time she made a covenant with 
 the devil, who, as a black man, came to her, and pre- 
 sented to her a book, upon which she laid her finger, 
 and that left a red spot. And that upon her signing, 
 the devil told her he was her God, and that she 
 should serve and worship him, and, she believes, she 
 consented unto it. She says further, that about two 
 years agone, she was carried through the air, in com- 
 pany with Deacon Frye's wife, Ebenezer Baker's 
 wife, and Goody Tyler, to Five-Mile Pond, where 
 she was baptized by the devil, who dipped her face 
 in the water and made her renounce her former 
 baptism, and told her that she must be his, soul 
 and body, forever, and that she must serve him, 
 which she promised to do. She says .... that 
 she was transported back again through the air, in 
 company with the forenamed persons, in the same 
 manner as she went, and believes she was carried 
 
 upon a pole She confesses she has afflicted 
 
 three persons, John Sawdy, Martha Sprague, and 
 Rose Foster, and that she did it by pinching her bed- 
 clothes and giving consent the devil should do it in 
 
THE WITCHES. 87 
 
 her shape, and the devil could not do without her 
 consent. She confesses the afflicting persons in the 
 
 court by the glance of her eye Q. "Who 
 
 taught you this way of witchcraft ? A. Satan, 
 and that he promised her abundance of satisfaction 
 and quietness in her future state, but never per- 
 formed anything; and that she has lived more 
 miserably and more discontented since than ever 
 before. She confesses further, that she herself, in 
 company with Goody Parker, Goody Tyler, and 
 Goody Dean, had a meeting at Moses Tyler's house, 
 last Monday night, to afflict, and that she and 
 Goody Dean carried the shape of Mr. Dean, the 
 minister, to make persons believe that Mr. Dean 
 afflicted. Q. What hindered you from accom- 
 plishing what you intended ? A. The Lord would 
 not suffer it to be that the devil should afflict in an 
 innocent person's shape. 32 Q. Have you been at 
 any other witch meetings 1 A. I know nothing 
 thereof, as I shall answer in the presence of God 
 and of His people : but said that the black man 
 stood before her, and told her, that what she had 
 confessed was a lie ; notwithstanding, she said that 
 what she had confessed was true, and thereto put 
 her hand. Her husband being present, was asked 
 if he judged his wife to be any way discomposed. 
 He answered that having lived with her so long 
 he doth not judge her to be any ways discomposed, 
 but has cause to believe what she has said is 
 true." 
 
 When the new charter arrived and the 
 
88 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 new government went into operation, the 
 Governor and Council appointed Commis- 
 sions of Oyer and Terminer for the trial of 
 witchcrafts. Their action was of more than 
 ---•'questionable legality, as by the charter the 
 power of constituting courts of justice was 
 reserved to the General Assembly, while the 
 Governor and Council had only the right of 
 appointing judges and commissioners in 
 courts thus constituted. The Court, how- 
 ever, was established, and was opened at 
 Salem in the first week of June 1692. 33 
 At its first session only one of the accused 
 was brought to trial, an old woman, Bridget 
 Bishop by name, who had lived on bad terms 
 with all her neighbors, and consequently had 
 no friends. She had been charged with 
 witchcraft twenty years before, and al- 
 though her accuser had acknowledged on his 
 death-bed that his accusation had been false 
 and malicious, the stigma of the charge had 
 always remained. Consequently all the 
 losses her neighbors had met with, in cattle, 
 , /swine, or poultry, all the accidents or unusual 
 sicknesses they had had, were attributed to 
 her spite against them, and were now 
 brought forward as evidence against her. 
 This testimony, together with the charges 
 made by the possessed children, who con- 
 
THE WITCHES. 89 
 
 tinued to reveal new horrors from day to 
 day, and the confessions of other women 
 who to save themselves accused her, was 
 confirmed to the satisfaction of the Court by 
 the discovery of a "preternatural excres- 
 cence," and she was convicted and executed. 24 
 The further trials were postponed until 
 the end of the month, and in the interval the 
 Governor and Council consulted the minis- 
 ters of the province as to the proper course 
 to pursue. In their reply they recom- 
 mended caution and discretion, but con- 
 cluded their advice by saying, " Nevertheless 
 we cannot but humbly recommend unto the 
 government the speedy and vigorous prose- 
 cutions of such as have rendered themselves 
 obnoxious, according to the direction given 
 in the laws of God and the wholesome stat- 
 utes of the English nation for the detection 
 of witchcrafts. " m 
 
 The ministers had as little doubt of the 
 laws of England being available for their 
 purpose as they had of what they considered 
 to be the laws of God ; yet it is very doubtful 
 whether, at the time of Bishop's trial and 
 execution, there was any law in existence 
 which authorized their proceedings. The 
 old colonial law was no longer in force ; 
 and witchcraft not being an offence at com- 
 
90 - ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 mon law, the only law by which their action 
 could be justified was the statute of James 
 I., which must therefore have been considered 
 as in force in the colony. It is probable 
 - -4hat the execution was utterly illegal. Be- 
 fore the next cases were tried, the old colo- 
 nial statute was revived and made again 
 the law of the province. 
 
 The trials were resumed in July, and 
 were conducted in the same manner as in 
 the case of Bishop, but with even greater 
 harshness. In one case, that of Mrs. Nurse, 
 the perversion of justice was most scandal- 
 ous. The accusations were so absurd, and 
 her character and position so good, that the 
 jury brought in a verdict of not guilty. So 
 great, however, was the indignation of the 
 populace, and so serious the dissatisfaction 
 of the Court, that the cowardly jurors asked 
 permission to go out a second time, and then 
 brought in a verdict of guilty, which was ac- 
 cepted. The poor woman, whose deafness had 
 prevented her hearing and answering some of 
 the most serious charges, was solemnly ex- 
 communicated by Mr. Noyes, the minister of 
 Salem, and formally delivered over to Satan, 
 and, with four others, was hanged. It was 
 long remembered that when one of them 
 was told at the gallows by Noyes that he 
 
THE WITCHES. 91 
 
 knew she was a witch, and that she had 
 better confess, and not be damned as well 
 as hanged, she replied that he lied, that 
 she was no more a witch than he was a 
 wizard, and that, if he took away her life, God 
 would give him blood to drink ; m and it was 
 believed in Salem that the prediction was 
 literally fulfilled, and that Noyes came to his 
 death by breaking a blood-vessel in his lungs, 
 and was choked with his own blood. 
 
 It would be needlessly revolting to relate 
 the details of the subsequent trials, in which 
 the Court, driven by the popular panic 
 and the prevailing religious ideas, per- 
 verted justice and destroyed the innocent. 37 
 Nineteen persons in all were executed, all 
 of whom, without exception, died professing 
 their innocence and forgiving their mur- 
 derers, and thus refused to save their lives by 
 confessing crimes which they had not com- 
 mitted and could not possibly commit. 38 
 Besides those who suffered for witchcraft, 
 one other, Giles Cory, was put to death with 
 the utmost barbarity. When arraigned for 
 trial he refused to plead, and was con- 
 demned to the peine forte et dure, the only 
 time this infamous torture was ever inflic- 
 ted in America. It consisted in placing the 
 contumacious person on a hard floor, and 
 
92 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 then piling weight after weight upon him, 
 until he consented to plead or was crushed 
 to death. A nearly contemporary account 
 relates that when, in the death agony, the 
 poor wretch's tongue protruded from his 
 mouth, the sheriff with his cane pushed it 
 in again ; and local tradition and hallad told 
 how in his torment he cried for "more 
 rocks " to be heaped on him to put him out 
 of his misery. 39 This was the last of the exe- 
 cutions. The Court of Oyer and Terminer sat 
 no more, and in the interval between its ad- 
 journment and the opening of the sessions 
 of the "Supreme Standing Court," in the 
 following January, time was given for con- 
 sideration and reflection. 40 
 
 But it may be questioned whether considera- 
 tion and reflection would have put a stop to 
 the delusion without the operation of another 
 and more powerful cause. Thus far, the 
 accused persons had been generally of in- 
 significant position, friendless old women, or 
 men who had either affronted their neigh- 
 bors or, by the irregularity of their lives, 
 had lost the sympathy of the community. 41 
 But with their success, the boldness or the 
 madness of the accusers increased ; some 
 of the most prominent people in the colony, 
 distinguished in many cases by unblem- 
 
THE WITCHES. 93 
 
 ished lives, were now charged with deal- 
 ings with the devil, and even the wife ©iLthe 
 Governor fell under suspicion. The com- 
 munity came at last to its senses, and began 
 to realize that the evidence, which till then 
 had seemed conclusive, was not worthy of 
 attention. Confessions were withdrawn, 
 and the testimony of neighbors to good 
 character and life was at length regarded 
 as of greater weight than the ravings of 
 hysterical girls or the malice of private 
 enemies. So it came about that before long 
 those who were not prejudiced and com- 
 mitted by the part they had played, acknow- 
 ledged that they had been condemning the 
 innocent and bringing blood-guiltiness upon 
 the land. Even Cotton Mather, who had 
 been largely responsible for the spread of 
 the delusion, was compelled to admit that 
 mistakes had been made, though he still 
 maintained that if a further investigation 
 had been held in the cases of many who were 
 set free, their guilt might have been made 
 apparent. Some that had served on the 
 juries that had condemned the victims put 
 forth a paper admitting their delusion and 
 begging pardon of God and man for their 
 mistake. 42 The impressive story of Sew- 
 all's penitence, and public confession of his 
 
94 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 fault in the South Church in Boston, is well 
 known ; more consistent and logical was the 
 declaration of the stern-tempered Stoughton, 
 that when he sat in judgment he had the 
 fear of God before his eyes, and gave his 
 opinion according to the best of his under- 
 standing ; and, although it might appear 
 afterwards that he had been in error, yet he 
 saw no necessity for a public acknowledg- 
 ment of it. 43 
 
 Parris, whose part in these acts of folly 
 and delusion had been the most prominent 
 of all, and who was strongly suspected of 
 having used the popular frenzy to ruin some 
 of his personal antagonists, was compelled 
 to resign his position and leave the people 
 whom he had so grossly misled.* 1 Nbyes, 
 whose delusion had been at least sincere, 
 made public confession of his fault, and was 
 forgiven by his congregation and by the 
 community that had erred with him. Thus 
 ended one of the most painful episodes in the 
 early history of New England. 
 
 The other colonies in America were not so 
 entirely free from this superstition that they 
 should reproach the Puritans for it as a 
 special and peculiar product of their religious 
 system. There were cases in Xew York, Penn- 
 sylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, though 
 
THE WITCHES. 95 
 
 there is no record of any one having been put- 
 to death for the offence in those colonies. In 
 Pennsylvania, under the prudent instructions 
 of William Penn, who seems to have been 
 less superstitious than the Massachusetts 
 Quakers, the jury brought in a verdict that 
 the a person accused was guilty of "being 
 suspected of being a witch," and, fortunately, 
 at that time suspicion was not punish- 
 able. 45 In New York, a certain Ralf Hall 
 and his wife were tried in 1665, but were 
 acquitted, and an attempt, in 1670, to create 
 an excitement in Westchester over Katha- 
 rine Harrison, who had moved thither from 
 Connecticut, was sternly suppressed. 46 
 There were trials for witchcraft in Mary- 
 land in the last quarter of the seventeenth 
 century ; and in Virginia in 1705, thirteen 
 years later than the Salem trials, a witch 
 was ducked by order of court. 47 
 
 It is hard to decide how much of all this 
 was panic and how much deliberate fraud and 
 imposture. There is no reason to suspect any- 
 thing worse than pure superstition in the 
 early cases in Massachusetts and Connecticut ; 
 but the marvellous attacks of the Goodwin 
 children in Boston and of the Parris girls in 
 Salem seem to belong to a different cate- 
 gory. 48 It is almost incredible that the girl 
 
96 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 who played so cleverly upon the vanity and 
 the theological prejudices of Cotton Mather 
 was not fully aware of what she was doing ; 
 aDd the fact that theParris children accused 
 persons with whom their father had previ- 
 ously had trouble, renders their delusion ex- 
 tremely suspicious. The great St. Benedict 
 is reported to have cured a brother who was 
 possessed by the devil by thrashing him 
 soundly ; and it is much to be regretted that 
 the Protestantism of the Xew Englanders 
 prevented their knowing and experimenting 
 with the saint's specific, which, in all ages of 
 the world, has been admitted to be wonder- 
 fully efficacious. It has been held by many 
 that the testimony at Salem was delib- 
 erately fabricated ; Hutchinson, writing at 
 a time when men who could remember the 
 trials were yet living, is strongly of that 
 opinion. The case does not, however, seem 
 as clear as that of the Goodwins ; and of 
 them Hutchinson, as has been said, reports 
 that they were estimable women who had 
 never acknowledged any deception on their 
 part. 
 
 The phenomena of mental disease are so 
 strange and complicated that at the present 
 day men are not as ready to set everything 
 down to fraud as they were a hundred years 
 
THE WITCHES. f 97 
 
 ago. It is possible to account psychologi- 
 cally for all the phenomena recorded, with- 
 out being obliged to adopt any ver} r violent 
 hypothesis. Even if at the outset the chil- 
 dren in either case were pretending, it is 
 quite as conceivable that they should have 
 passed from pretence of nervous symptoms 
 to the reality, as it is to think that absolute 
 fraud would pass so long undetected. The 
 symptoms described are such as would be 
 recognized by any alienist to-day, and could 
 be duplicated out of the current medical 
 journals. V It may also be noticed that many 
 of the possessed were girls just coming to 
 maturity, and thus of an age when the ner- 
 vous sjjstem was passing through a period of 
 strain.^ 
 
 The rapidity with which the panic spread 
 was most remarkable, and it is painful to 
 notice the abject terror into which the popu- 
 lation was thrown, parents accused their 
 children, and children their parents, and, in 
 one case at least, a wife her husbandry Some 
 men were tied neck and heels until they 
 would confess and accuse others. 49 It was 
 a period of the most pitiful mental and 
 spiritual cowardice, and those that were 
 most directly responsible for the shameful 
 
 condition of affairs were men who, from 
 
 7 
 
98 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 their learning and their position, should 
 have been the leaders and sustainers of the 
 popular conscience in soberness of mind and 
 charity. But the ministers of New England 
 had emphasized the necessity of a belief in 
 witchcraft as a part of the Divine revelation. 
 The Old Testament spoke of witches, and had 
 said, " Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," 
 while the New Testament supplied the idea 
 of diabolical possession ; hence they argued, 
 with a style of argument not yet disused, 
 that any one who denied the existence of 
 witchcraft was a Sadducee and an impugner 
 of the truth of God's Word. Soon the rea- 
 soning was extended to prove that any one 
 who denied that the particular phenomena 
 under discussion were caused by witchcraft 
 was an enemy of religion. The ministers, as 
 has been said, have an unenviable prominence 
 in the accounts of this disastrous delusion. 
 They were as forward in destroying the 
 witches as their predecessors had been inper- 
 secuting the Quakers. They hounded on the 
 judges and juries in their bloody work, they 
 increased the popular excitement by their 
 public fasts and prayers and sermons, they 
 insulted the victims on the scaffold. It is 
 no wonder that, under such leadership, the 
 population was excited to madness. It was 
 
THE WITCHES. 99 
 
 only when they found their own families and 
 friends accused by those on whose testimony 
 others as innocent had been destroyed, that 
 they were able to recognize that the accusa- 
 tions were absurd and the evidence worthless. 
 Yet it may be said on their behalf that they 
 were not really as far in advance of the major- 
 ity of their contemporaries as they imagined 
 they were, and it is to their credit that, 
 when their eyes were opened, they were 
 opened thoroughly and not closed again. 
 Cases of witchcraft now disappeared from 
 New England, while in other lands, where 
 there was the same sombre Calvinism but 
 less enlightenment, as in Scotland, the delu- 
 sion continued for many years. 50 
 
 The theological spirit now devoted itself 
 to barren questions of little moment, around 
 which wordy battles raged and hatreds de- 
 veloped, only less destructive than those in 
 the previous century because the divines were 
 no longer the rulers of the state. Eeligion 
 sank into a barren formalism, which had no 
 noble or time-honored forms to redeem it 
 from utter indifference. From this deplora- 
 ble condition it was roused by three influ- 
 ences which led to a spiritual revival : the 
 Episcopal movement in Connecticut, the 
 preaching and writings of Jonathan Edwards 
 
100 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 in western Massachusetts, and the preaching 
 of Whitefield. The dry bones once more lived, 
 and the descendants of the Puritans manifest 
 by their earnest activity and deep spirituality 
 how stou t and strong was the stock from which 
 they have inherited many of their most pre- 
 cious characteristics. They may be thankful 
 that the old bigotry has not returned, and 
 that they are now saved from all danger of 
 interfering with public affairs by the com- 
 plete separation of church and state. 
 
 Panic terror of the supernatural, when- 
 ever it has occurred, has been a parody of the 
 prevailing form of religion. When the re- 
 ligious ideas are at once narrow and intro- 
 spective, when the social life is poor and un- 
 satisfying, and when there is also a profound 
 ignorance of bodily and mental physiology, we 
 have the combined conditions for the ready 
 and serious development of religious panic. 
 Such were the circumstances of the witchcraft 
 delusion that followed the religious revival 
 due to the preaching of the Franciscan friars ; 
 such were the circumstances in Sweden in the 
 seventeenth century, and in Scotland in the 
 eighteenth ; such were the circumstances in 
 X ew England at the period we have considered. 
 The isolated cases which appeared in various 
 countries from time to time were the result 
 
THE WITCHES. 101 
 
 of superstition and ignorance. That they did 
 not cause a panic may be attributed in some 
 cases to the better social condition ; in others, 
 to the presence in the community of men of 
 sense and character who prevented the spread 
 of delusion and calmed, instead of exciting, 
 the minds of their fellows. It is one of the 
 saddest features of the Salem trials, that 
 though prominent men whose influence 
 might have been expected to be exercised on 
 the side of soberness, disbelieved in the real- 
 ity of the "possession " and criticised private- 
 ly the methods employed, yet they allowed 
 the delusion to proceed to its tragical extent 
 without interposing their authority to pre- 
 vent or at least to denounce it. Brattle, in his 
 account of the delusion, written in October 
 1692, mentions many by name who agreed 
 with him in condemning the proceedings of 
 the justices in Salem, and the judges of the 
 Court of Oyer and Terminer, but looked on 
 while the unfortunates were tormented into 
 confession and put to death at the demand 
 of popular frenzy. 61 
 
 Though we talk of the progress that the 
 race has made in learning and enlighten- 
 ment, it is alarming to notice how ineradi- 
 cable are the superstitions of mankind, how 
 germs which men deem dead really lurk dor- 
 
102 E8SAYS iy AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 mant for ages, and then develop themselves 
 with startling rapidity when they find the 
 proper menstruum. Man,like other animals, 
 seems to exhibit a tendency from time to 
 time to revert to the original type, and to 
 reproduce the physiognomy of long-perished 
 races, with their fears and their hatreds, 
 their low spiritual conceptions and their 
 dominant animal passions. It is the work 
 of education, of civilization, and of religion to 
 strive against this tendency. We can only 
 hope that as men have, in spite of this, made 
 steady progress in many directions, and have 
 conquered and are conquering the animal 
 that is in them, they may in time get 
 the better of all the evil legacies which their 
 primeval ancestors have bequeathed them. 
 Modern science has removed the fear of 
 the plague in all civilized countries and is 
 lessening the danger of the cholera ; in like 
 manner, we may hope the old terrors will 
 also in time be swept away, and man be freed 
 from any danger of their recurrence. 
 
THE WITCHES. 103 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 1 Even "Winthrop, the governor of Massachusetts, wise 
 and good as he was, recorded in his History his direful 
 forebodings occasioned by the appearance of a monstro- 
 sity which the unfortunate Mary Dyer, who was after- 
 wards hanged as a Quaker, had brought into the world. 
 History of New England, i. 261-3. 
 
 2 Demonologie, in forme of a dialogue, 1st Ed., Edin- 
 burgh, 1597, 4to. 
 
 3 1 Jac. I. c. 12. 
 
 4 State Trials, vol. ii. pp. 786-862. 
 
 8 Baxter, Richard, D. D., The Certainty of the WorUf 
 of Spirits, p, 53. 
 
 6 A Tryal of Witclies, printed 1682, published with a 
 treatise of Sir Matthew Hale's on Sheriffs' Aeeompts, 
 London, 1683. Sir Matthew's charge was to the follow- 
 ing effect : " That he would not repeat the Evidence unto 
 them, least by so doing he should wrong the Evidence 
 on the one side or on the other. Only this acquainted 
 them, That they had Two things to enquire after. First, 
 whether or no these children were bewitched ? Secondly, 
 whether the Prisoners at the Bar were Guilty of it. That 
 there were such Creatures as Witches he made no doubt 
 at all ; For, First, the Scriptures had affirmed so much. 
 Secondly, The Wisdom of all Nations had provided laws 
 against such persons, which is an argument of their con- 
 fidence in such a Crime. And such hath been the judg- 
 ment of this Kingdom, as appears by that Act of Parlia- 
 ment which hath provided Punishments proportionable 
 to the quality of the offense. And desired them strictly 
 
104 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 to observe their Evidence ; and desired the great God of 
 Heaven to direct their Hearts in this weighty thing they 
 had in hand : For to condemn the Innocent, and to let 
 the Guilty go free, were both an abomination unto the 
 Lord." (pp. 55, 56.) 
 
 7 A Tryal of Witches, pp. 41, 42. 
 
 8 Winthrop, ii. 307. Stiles, Ancient Windsor, i. 447. 
 
 9 Winthrop, ii. 326. Hutchinson, Hist, of Massachusets- 
 Bay (London, 1765-1768), i. 150. Mass. Bee., ii. 242, iii. 126, 
 seems to refer to this case, though no names are given. 
 
 10 Mather, Cotton, Late Memorable Providences, pp. 
 62-65. Magnolia, Book vl. ch. 7. 
 
 11 W. %. Poole, in Memorial History of Boston, ii. 133 
 note. Hutchinson, ii. 10. 
 
 12 Mass. Bee., iv. (1), 47, 48. 
 ™Mass. Bec.,i. (1), 96. 
 
 14 Conn. Colonial Becords, i. 220 ; cf. New Haven Col. 
 Bee., ii. 78. 
 
 15 History of Hartford County (Conn.), Sketch of 
 Wethersfield, by S. Adams. 
 
 16 New Haven Col. Bee., ft. 78. Lydia Gilbert, of Windsor, 
 was indicted for witchcraft, March 24th, 16534, but there 
 is no record of the issue of her trial. Stiles, Ancient 
 Windsor, i. 449, 450. 
 
 " Mass. Becords, iv. (1), 269. 
 
 18 Hutchinson, i. 187, 188. 
 
 " Conn. Col. Bee., i. 573. Mather, Bemarkable Provi- 
 dences, 139. Walker, Geo. Leon, D. D., History of the 
 First Church in Hartford. Hutchinson, ii. 16, 17. 
 
 20 Judd, History of Hadley, 233. Conn. Col. Bee., ii. 
 172. For her subsequent troubles in N. Y. , Documentary 
 Hist. o/JV.F.,iv. 87. 
 
 51 Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World. Conn. 
 Col. Bee., iii. p. v. and 76, 77 note. 
 
 " Hutchinson, ii. p. 18. " But in 1685, a very circum- 
 stantial account of all or most of the cases I have men- 
 
THE WITCHES. 105 
 
 tioned was published, and many arguments were brought 
 to convince the country that they were no delusions nor 
 impostures, but the effects of a familiarity between the 
 devil and such as he found fit for his instruments." 
 
 23 A Tryal of Witches, London, 1682. 
 
 54 Horneck, in Glanvil's Saducismus Triumphatus, 
 London, 1681. 
 
 25 It will be remembered, that much against the will 
 of the Puritan leaders, they had been compelled by the 
 royal authority to allow the use of the service of the 
 Church of England, which they and their friends in 
 England had fancied some years before that they had de- 
 stroyed. For a similar instance of combined bigotry and 
 superstition, cf. Winthrop's history of the mice and the 
 Prayer Books. Hist, of New England, ii. 20. 
 
 26 Mather, Cotton, D. D., Late Memorable Provi- 
 dence*. Magnolia Ohristi, Book vi. ch. 8. Hutchinson, 
 ii. 20. 
 
 27 Late Memorable Providences, London, 1691 ; 2d Im* 
 pression. Calef, More Wonders of the Invisible World, 
 postscript. 
 
 88 Calef, More Wonders, p. 90. Hutchinson, ii. 11. 
 Upham, Tlie Salem Witchcraft. 
 
 59 Brattle, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, v. 62, 70, 71. 
 The way in which Parris conducted the investigations 
 may be seen from the following extracts from the exami- 
 nation of Elizabeth How, May 31st, 1692 : 
 
 " Mercy Lewis and Mary Walcot fell in a fit quickly 
 after the examinant came in. Mary Walcot said that 
 this woman the examinant had pincht her & choakt 
 this mouth. Ann Putnam said that she had hurt her 
 three times. 
 
 "What say you to this charge? Here are three that 
 charge you with witchcraft. 
 
 If it was the last moment I was to live, God knows I 
 am innocent of anything in this nature. 
 
106 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 Did you not take notice that now when you lookt upon 
 Mercy Lewis she was struck down ? 
 
 I cannot help it. 
 
 You are charged here. "What doe you say ? 
 
 I am innocent of anything of this nature. 
 
 Is this the first time that ever you were accused? 
 
 Yes, Sir. 
 
 Do you not know that one at Ipswich hath accused 
 you? 
 
 This is the first time that ever I heard of it. 
 
 You say that you never heard of these folks before. 
 
 Mercy Lewis at length spake and charged this woman 
 of with hurting and pinching her. 
 
 And then Abigail "Williams cryed she hath hurt me a 
 great many times, a great while & she hath brought me 
 the book. 
 
 Ami Putnam had a pin stuck in her hand. What do 
 you say to this? 
 
 I cannot help it. 
 
 "What consent have you given ? 
 
 Mercy "Warren cryed out she was prickt & great prints 
 were seen in her arms. 
 
 Have you not seen some apparition ? 
 
 No, never in all my life. 
 
 Those that have confessed they tell us they used images 
 and pins, now tell us what you have used. 
 
 You would not have me confess that which I know 
 not. 
 
 She lookt upon Mary "Warren & said "Warren violently 
 fell down. 
 
 Look upon this maid viz : Mary "Walcot, her back being 
 towards the Exa m i n ant, 
 
 Mary Warren and Ann Putnam said they saw this 
 woman upon her. Susan Sheldon saith this was the 
 woman that carryed her yesterday to the Pond. Sus. 
 Sheldon carried to the examinant in a fit & was well 
 upon grasping her arm. 
 
THE WITCHES. 107 
 
 You said you never heard before of these people. 
 
 Not before the warrant was served upon me last Sabbath 
 day. 
 
 John Indian cryed out Oh she bites & fell into a griev- 
 ous fit & so carried to her in his fit, & was well upon her 
 grasping him. 
 
 What do you say to these things ? they cannot come 
 to you. 
 
 I am not able to give account of it. 
 
 Cannot you tell what keeps them off from your body? 
 
 I cannot tell, I know not what it is. 
 
 That is strange that you should do these things & not 
 be able to tell how. 
 
 This is a true copy of the examination of Eliz. How 
 taken from my characters written at the time thereof. 
 Witness my hand 
 
 Sam. Parris." 
 Woodward, Records of Salem Witchcraft, II., 69-94. 
 
 30 Brattle, ut supra, 65, 72, 78. 
 
 31 This confession is cited from Hutchinson, History 
 of Massachusets-Bay, ii. pp. 31-33. 
 
 32 This was the commonly received opinion, and though 
 opposed by Increase Mather, was much insisted on by 
 Stoughton, the lieutenant-governor, and proved the 
 destruction of many ; as, if an innocent person could 
 not be personated, it followed that those who were ac- 
 cused by the possessed were certainly guilty. Cf. Brat- 
 tle, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, vol. v. 61 ff.,on spectral 
 evidence, and the bigotry and unfairness of Stoughton. 
 Increase Mather, Some Cases of Conscience concerning 
 Evil Spirits. 
 
 33 Hutchinson, ii. 49. Mather, Cotton, Wonders of 
 the Invisible World, 65-70. 
 
 34 It is interesting, though painful, to find as a promi- 
 nent witness against Bishop, one Samuel Shattuck, the 
 son of the Quaker who, thirty years before, had delivered 
 
108 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HI8T0BY. 
 
 to Endicott the order from Charles II. which had freed 
 himself and his friends from the extremes of Puritan 
 cruelty. 
 
 u Mather, Increase, D. D., Cases of Conscience concern- 
 ing Evil Spirits, Postscript. 
 
 36 Calef , More Wonders of the Invisible World. 
 
 37 Brattle, Mass. Hist. Soc. Collections, v. 66, 67. The 
 case of Elizabeth How.mentioned above,is a good example 
 of the way in which neighborhood quarrels and church 
 quarrels were dragged in. She had had a falling out with 
 a family by the name of Perley some*»s© years before, and 
 they now came forward with depositions that she had be- 
 witched their cows so that they gave no milk, and one of 
 their children so that it pined away. " After this," swears 
 Samuel Perley, " the abovesaid goode how had a mind 
 to ioyn to ipswich church thai being unsatisfied sent~to 
 us to bring in what we had against her and when we had 
 declared to them what we knew thai see cause to Put a 
 stop to her coming into the church. "Within a few dais 
 after I had a cow wel in the morning as far as we knew 
 this cow was taken strangli runing about like a mad 
 thing a litle while and then run into a great Pon and 
 drowned herself and as sone as she was dead mi sons 
 and miself towed her to the shore, and she stunk so that 
 we had much a doe to flea her." 
 
 The ministers of Rowley investigated the case of the 
 Perley child, and were evidently convinced that the 
 parents had put the idea into the child's head, and gave 
 plain testimony to that effect, and several neighbors 
 came forward with testimony to the prisoner's good 
 character. But a fresh collection of marvels was ad- 
 duced by a family of the name of Comins or Cummins 
 who accused her of bewitching their horses, and other 
 neighbors, not to be outdone, testified to other strange 
 occurrences, and the court condemned her and she was 
 executed on the sixteenth of July. She was, however, 
 
 "^a-w*- 
 
THE WITCHES. 109 
 
 only convicted upon the evidence obtained in Parris's 
 investigation, though the testimony of her Ipswich 
 neighbors undoubtedly had great weight with the jury. 
 The other trials are of much the same character, some 
 revealing a most fiendish animosity on the part of neigh- 
 bors or relatives, and leaving a very painful impression 
 of the condition of country life in New England that at 
 time. For testimony as to the cowardice of friends and 
 neighbors and the confessions extorted from weak-minded 
 persons, see letter of Francis Dane, Sen. ; Woodward, 
 Records, II., 66-68. 
 88 Brattle, ut supra 68, 69. 
 
 39 Drake, Annals of Witchcraft, 193. 
 
 40 Increase Mather says : " In December the court sat 
 again at Salem, in New England, and cleared about 40 
 persons suspected for witches, and condemned three. 
 The evidence against these was the same as formerly, so 
 the Warrant for their Execution was sent, and the Graves 
 digged for the said three, and for about five more that 
 had been condemned at Salem formerly, but were Ee- 
 preived by the Governour. 
 
 In the beginning of February, 1693, the Court sate at 
 Charlestown, where the Judge exprest himself to this 
 effect. That who it was that obstructed the Execution of 
 Justice, or hindered those good proceedings they had 
 made, he knew not, but thereby the Kingdom of Satan 
 was advanc'd, etc. and the Lord have mercy on this 
 Country ; and so declined coming any more into Court. 
 
 In his absence Mr. D sate as Chief Judge 3 several 
 
 days, in which time 5 or 6 were cleared by Proclamation, 
 and almost as many by Trial ; so that all were ac- 
 quitted 
 
 So that by the Goodness of God we are once more out 
 of present danger of this Hobgoblin monster ; the stand- 
 ing evidence used at Salem were called, but did not 
 appear. 
 
110 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 There were others also at Charlestown brought upon 
 their Tryals, who had formerly confessed themselves to 
 be witches ; but upon their Tryals deny'd it ; and were 
 all cleared ; So that at present there is no further prose- 
 cution of any." A Further Account of the Tryals, Lon- 
 don, 1693, p. 10. 
 
 The court apparently met December 31st, and sat into 
 January, which would account for the apparent discre- 
 pancy in regard to the time of its session. 
 
 41 The authorities were accused of great partiality in 
 allowing, in several cases, persons accused by the afflicted 
 to escape, when they were either related to them or their 
 personal friends. Brattle, pp. 69, 70. 
 
 42 Calef , More Wonders, p. 144. 
 
 43 Calef, p. 144. Hutchinson, ii. 61. 
 
 44 Calef, pp. 55-64. 
 
 45 Smith, History of Delaware County, 152, 153. 
 
 46 Documentary History of fixe State of New York, iv. 
 85-88. 
 
 4 ' Barber, Historical Collections, Virginia, 436-438. 
 
 48 Hutchinson, ii. 62. 
 
 49 Calef, p. 105. Brattle, ets above, pp. 72, 78. 
 60 Hutchinson, ii. 22. 
 
 81 Brattle, as above, p. 75. 
 
m. 
 
 SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 
 
 The casual reader of the usual American 
 histories will receive from them an impres- 
 sion that Sir Edmund Andros was a merci- 
 less tyrant, whose administration was only re- 
 deemed from being utterly disastrous by its 
 imbecility. Even Doyle in his first volume 
 of The English in America describes him as 
 a wretched "placeman," though in his later 
 volumes he somewhat modifies this unfavor- 
 able criticism and describes him as respect- 
 able but stupid. Yet the fact remains, 
 that the authorities in England held him 
 sufficiently in esteem to send him to New 
 York as lieutenant-governor under the Duke 
 of York, and to New England as governor 
 and captain-general of the united Dominion, 
 which included New York and New Jersey 
 as well as New England proper ; and after a 
 complete revolution in politics in England 
 
112 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HI8T0BT. 
 
 Andros was the man selected for the best 
 position in the gift of the Board of Trade 
 and Plantations, the governorship of Vir- 
 ginia. A man who had served the Stuarts 
 well and faithfully, even incurring the odium 
 which naturally attached to the agents of 
 their unpopular measures, must have exhib- 
 ited something more than dull stupidity, to 
 recommend hi™ to the officials of the Revo- 
 lution. The career of a public servant under 
 so many administrations must, at any rate, 
 be of interest to all students of American 
 history. 
 
 It is the unfortunate fate of many excel- 
 lent and useful officials, that, in the perform- 
 ance of their duty to the state, they are 
 obliged to render themselves personally un- 
 popular. It may freely be admitted that the 
 British crown was generally unfortunate in 
 the selection of its representatives in the 
 American colonies ; but, by a strange injus- 
 tice of history, many of the utterly bad ones 
 have had their faults forgotten or condoned, 
 while one of the most able and efficient of 
 them all, in spite of the careful and scholarly 
 works in which his character has been vin- 
 dicated, remains pilloried in the popular 
 histories of the American colonies as a tyrant 
 and oppressor. 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDEOS. 113 
 
 The caustic pens of the Mathers and the 
 bitter spite of the early New England histo- 
 rians have drawn for us an Andros whose 
 haughty and vindictive face rises before the 
 mind whenever the name is mentioned. 
 Local patriotism in Connecticut has created 
 a series of poetical myths in regard to his 
 administration, which tend to obscure the 
 sober truth of history. New York has more 
 grateful memories of the governor who 
 secured and extended her dominion and by 
 his wise and steady policy protected her from 
 her most dangerous foes. Virginia is less 
 grateful as yet, the unfortunate quarrel of 
 Andros with the clergy sufficing to obscure 
 the many material benefits conferred on 
 clergy and laity alike by his wise adminis- 
 tration. It is a curious fact, that both in 
 Virginia and in New England Andros failed 
 to please the ecclesiastics, different as they 
 were ; but, by those who are not prejudiced in 
 favor of spiritual domination, this will hardly 
 be considered as a reproach. 
 
 The true reason of the hatred of Andros 
 in New England, and of his failure for so 
 long to obtain justice in New York, was that 
 he was the agent appointed to carry out the 
 plan of uniting the scattered and discord- 
 ant colonies into one strong Dominion. The 
 8 
 
114 ES8AYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 separatist spirit of those who preferred their 
 petty local privileges to the benefits of the 
 union, that spirit which has been so danger- 
 ous to the country throughout the whole 
 course of its history, was at that time suc- 
 cessful, owing to the entirely disconnected 
 circumstance that the consolidation was 
 urged by the ministers of a king who was 
 misgoverning his people in England. In 
 carrying out these measures, the letter of the 
 law seemed to the colonists to be strained to 
 the utmost as against what they considered 
 their popular rights, and the fate of corpora- 
 tions in England alarmed the similar char- 
 tered bodies in America. James II., by his 
 foolish and wicked projects in England, dis- 
 credited his really statesmanlike object in 
 America ; the union, so desirable in itself, 
 was discredited by the methods used to effect 
 it, and the narrow theory of colonial integrity 
 and independence survived to plague the 
 descendants of the men who maintained it. 
 It is important always to discriminate 
 between the object sought and the means 
 used to effect it. Had the consolidation been 
 successful, James would be looked back upon 
 as a public benefactor, and the motto from 
 Claudian upon the seal of the Dominion, 
 " Xunquam libertas gratior exstat " which 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDBOS. 115 
 
 reads like a mockery, would have been as 
 dear to a united people as the " E pluribus 
 unum " which they afterwards adopted. 
 
 New England historians have always 
 found it difficult to admit that there could 
 be any good in a man who adhered to the 
 fortunes of the Stuarts, or who worshipped 
 in the church over which Laud had been 
 primate. But the time that has elapsed 
 since the period of struggle should have 
 mitigated, if not utterly extinguished, the 
 ancestral hostility of Puritan and Prelatist. 
 Men are learning (under the influence of 
 commemorative festivities) to revise their 
 opinions in regard to the harshness and un- 
 loveliness of the Fathers of New England ; 
 and it is to be hoped that, before long, jus- 
 tice may be done to the honesty of conviction 
 and conscientiousness of purpose that in- 
 spired those who have been so long described 
 as "malignants." Is it too much to hope 
 that men will be able to see that the English- 
 men who charged with Eupert, and the Eng- 
 lishmen who prayed and smote with Oliver, 
 were both contending for a principle which 
 was dearer to them than life — the principle 
 of stern resistance to the violation of constitu- 
 tional law ? If we honor the men who hated 
 the arbitrary government of the Stuarts, it is 
 
116 ESSAYS IV AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 unfair to condemn those who hated the far 
 more arbitrary government of the Eump and 
 the Protector. 
 
 Edmund Andros was born in London, 
 December 6, 1637, of a family that was 
 eminent among the adherents of Charles I. 1 
 His father, Annas Andros, was the head of 
 the family ; he possessed an estate upon the 
 island of Guernsey, and was royal bailiff 
 of that island. His mother was Elizabeth 
 Stone, whose brother, Sir Eobert Stone, was 
 cup-bearer to the unfortunate Elizabeth the 
 dispossessed Queen of Bohemia and Electress 
 Palatine, and was also captain of a troop of 
 horse in Holland. 
 
 At the time of Edmund's birth, his father 
 was marshal of ceremonies to the king ; 2 
 and the boy was brought up in the royal 
 household, very possibly on terms of intimacy 
 with the young princes whom he afterwards 
 served, who were only slightly his seniors. 
 For a time he is said to have been a page at 
 court ; but if this be true, it must have been 
 when he was extremely young, as court life 
 ceased to have charms, if not absolutely to 
 exist, after the civil war broke out in 1612, 
 and at this time the boy was but five years old. 
 
 Faithful to the fortunes of his masters in 
 discouragement and defeat, we find the lad 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 117 
 
 in Guernsey with his father, defending Cas- 
 tle Cornet manfully against the Parliament, 
 and, after its surrender, receiving his first 
 lessons in the field in Holland under Prince 
 Henry of Nassau. (It is a curious fact, tri- 
 fling in appearance, but possibly not without 
 significance, that during the last year of the 
 Commonwealth, and at the time of the res- 
 toration, Increase Mather was chaplain of 
 some of the troops in Guernsey, and may 
 have, even at that early date, formed the 
 bitter prejudice that is so evident in his later 
 actions.) 3 The services of the Andros family 
 were so conspicuous in this period of trial 
 and discouragement, that Edmund with his 
 father and his uncle were specially exempted 
 by name from a general pardon that was 
 issued to the people of Guernsey by Charles 
 II. on his restoration, on the ground that 
 they "have, to their great honor, during 
 the late rebellion, continued inviolably faith- 
 ful to his majesty, and consequently have no 
 need to be included in this general pardon. " i 
 The young soldier, who found himself re- 
 stored to home and safety at the age of 
 twenty-three, had passed a stormy youth ; 
 his natural boyish loyalty had been strength- 
 ened by what he had suffered on account of 
 it. He had seen those whom he most re- 
 
118 ESSAYS iy AMERICAS HI8TOBY. 
 
 spected and revered dethroned and exiled, 
 living as pensioners on the grudging bounty 
 of inhospitable princes. He had seen the 
 legal government of England subverted by 
 force of arms by men whose professions of 
 their respect for law were never louder than 
 when they were overthrowing it, and had 
 seen England ground down under the harsh 
 rule of a military despotism. He had seen the 
 orderly and regular services of the Church of 
 England proscribed, its ministers turned out 
 of their parishes to make room, not only for 
 severe Presbyterians and iconoclastic Inde- 
 pendents, but for ranting sectaries who 
 made the name of religion a by- word and a 
 mockery. It cannot be wondered that the 
 young cavalier grew up deeply impressed 
 with the horrors of rebellion and usurped 
 authority, and with the conviction that much 
 might be sacrificed for the sake of lawful 
 and regular government, or that, being as 
 he was a member of the church that had 
 been proscribed and persecuted during the 
 reign of the self-styled "godly," he should 
 have been rendered all the warmer in his at- 
 tachment to her orderly and decent rights 
 and ceremonies, as by law established. 
 
 It should be remembered that the severity 
 shown to the Dissenters at the Restoration 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 119 
 
 came largely from their close association with 
 the civil war and the government of the 
 Commonwealth. The cloak of religion had 
 been made to cover the overthrow of the liber- 
 ties of Parliament, the killing of the king, 
 and the rule of Cromwell ; and it is not un- 
 natural, though most regrettable, that the 
 victorious cavaliers should have failed to 
 make the proper distinction between dissent 
 and rebellion. 
 
 A knowledge of these early conditions of 
 the life of Andros is necessary for a compre- 
 hension of his character. They show the 
 influences which tended to form in him his 
 most notable characteristics : loyalty to his 
 sovereign, a passion for regularity and legal 
 methods in the management of affairs, and a 
 zeal for the Church of England. The promo- 
 tion of the young soldier followed quickly, as 
 he continued to display the fidelity and capa- 
 city of which his boyhood had given promise. 
 His uncle's position in the household of the 
 Queen of Bohemia determined the direction 
 of his promotion, and the nephew was made 
 gentleman-in-ordinary in the same house- 
 hold in 1660, a position more honorable than 
 remunerative, which was soon terminated by 
 her death in 1662. His military training was 
 developed by the war with the Dutch, in 
 
120 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HI8T0BT. 
 
 which he won further distinction and made 
 his first acquaintance with America and 
 American affairs. 5 The position he had held 
 in the court of the exiled queen won him a 
 wife in 1671, in the person of a young kins- 
 woman of the Earl of Craven, who had heen 
 the devoted servant, if not the husband, of 
 Elizabeth. 6 This Lord Craven was the one 
 officer of the army who remained faithful to 
 James n. to the last, and, though eighty 
 years old, put himself at the head of his regi- 
 ment of body-guards to defend the king from 
 insult, when William of Orange was already 
 in London. 
 
 The court positions held by Andros in the 
 reign of Charles II. are not those of a bril- 
 liant young cavalier, or a roystering blade 
 of the Eestoration who only cared for place 
 and plunder, wine and women ; they indicate 
 rather that passionate devotion to the house 
 of Stuart, which the most worthless of that 
 Hue were always able to inspire, devotion 
 generally recompensed by gross ingratitude. 
 His marriage was evidently, from the promi- 
 nence Andros himself gives to it, a high con- 
 nection for a simple country gentleman to 
 make, but it did not have the effect of de- 
 taching him from a soldier's life ; for in the 
 same year he appears still as major of the 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 121 
 
 regiment that had been in Barbadoes, and 
 even at that time he had obtained the repu- 
 tation of being well versed in American 
 affairs. 7 
 
 When this regiment was disbanded, Major 
 Andros received a new commission in a dra- 
 goon regiment that was raised at that time 
 for Prince Eupert, in which his four com- 
 panies were incorporated, the first English 
 regiment ever armed with a bayonet. 8 This 
 was the period when the proprietors of Caro- 
 lina were drawing up their remarkable 
 feudal constitution and dividing up lands 
 and titles among themselves. Lord Craven, 
 who was one of the proprietors, seeing the 
 interest that Andros took in American af- 
 fairs, procured him a patent conferring upon 
 him the title and dignity of a margrave, 
 together with four baronies containing some 
 forty-eight thousand acres, to support the 
 title. This gift, however, was only valuable 
 as a token of his friend's esteem. 
 
 At his father's death in 1674, he succeeded 
 him in his seigniory of Sausmarez and in 
 the office of bailiff of Guernsey. 9 He was 
 not, however, fated to dwell in quiet and 
 cultivate his father's acres ; for at the end 
 of the second Dutch war, when his regiment 
 was mustered out of service, he was selected, 
 
122 ESSAYS iy AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 probably on account of his familiarity with 
 colonial affairs, to receive the surrender of 
 New York and its dependencies, in accord- 
 ance with the treaty of peace. The territory 
 thus recovered had been granted by Charles 
 II., at the time of its first seizure in 1664, to 
 his brother, the Duke of York ; and Andres, 
 who must have been personally known to 
 them both, was now appointed lieutenant- 
 governor of the palatine province. His 
 commission bears date of July 1, 1674. 10 
 He was well fitted for the position. His 
 residence in Holland had made him familiar 
 with the people with whom he was chiefly to 
 deal, and his acquaintance with American 
 affairs stood him in good stead in matters 
 of general policy, as his administration soon 
 disclosed ; while his connection with the court 
 and with the royal family enabled him to act 
 as a confidential agent of the Duke. He ar- 
 rived in Xew York in November accompanied 
 by his wife, and after some formalities entered 
 upon his government. His treatment of the 
 conquered Dutch was marked with great 
 tact and judgment, and rarely has the trans- 
 fer of a colony of one nation to the rule of 
 another been effected with so little friction 
 or disturbance. 11 
 In regard to the serious problem of the 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDROS. 123 
 
 treatment of the Indians he was far-sighted 
 enough to continue the wise and judicious 
 policy of his predecessors in regard to the 
 powerful and dangerous confederation of the 
 Iroquois or Five Nations. The importance of 
 this can hardly be over-estimated in its bear- 
 ing upon the subsequent history of the country. 
 It is true that this policy was not original with 
 him ; he took it as a legacy from the Dutch 
 in 1674, as Nicolls had done ten years before ; 
 but it may be said that the honest and judi- 
 cious administration of Indian affairs did 
 much to save the English colonies from being 
 wiped out of existence by a general Indian 
 war. 12 If the Iroquois had been roused to go 
 on the war-path, as were the unfortunate 
 Indians of New England, it is hard to see 
 what could have saved the scattered settle- 
 ments. And again, if Andros, by a tortuous 
 and deceitful policy like that of the United 
 Colonies towards the New England Indians, 
 had thrown the Iroquois into the arms of the 
 French, who were only too anxious for recon- 
 ciliation with them, there is little probability 
 that the valor of Wolfe would ever have had 
 a chance for success on the Plains of Abra- 
 ham. 
 
 As a provincial governor Andros made 
 many enemies ; but they were mainly in the 
 
124 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 colonies lying adjacent to his own. The 
 patent of New York was very extensive, and 
 covered territory which the neighboring 
 colonies claimed had been already ceded to 
 them. 13 Connecticut had vague claims all the 
 way to the South Sea, and had been devoting 
 its energies during the short space of its his- 
 tory to edging along its frontier further and 
 further to the westward, in spite of the indig- 
 nant protests of the Dutch. Settlements 
 had been formed on Long Island, which was 
 undoubtedly beyond its limits. Now, the 
 dispute was between rival colonies of the 
 same country ; and considering the uncer- 
 tainty of the title of Connecticut, Andros 
 must be allowed to have acted with propriety 
 and moderation. He succeeded in making 
 good the title of the Duke to Long Island 
 and Fisher's Island, where the Connecticut 
 authorities were attempting to exercise juris- 
 diction ; but the boundary line upon the 
 mainland remained an unsettled question 
 even down to our own times. At Saybrook, 
 Andros did his duty in asserting formally his 
 principal's claim, but was wise enough not 
 to press a question which would have caused 
 great difficulties between the Colonies. 14 
 
 With the Xew Jersey settlers he had still 
 more difficulty, as they had various grants 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 125 
 
 and patents from the Duke himself to plead 
 for their justification ; but he pursued a 
 straightforward course, standing up, as he 
 was bound to do, for the rights of his prin- 
 cipal, unless they could be legally shown to 
 have been granted away. His passion for 
 regular and orderly business methods soon 
 manifested itself, and his letters reveal the 
 indignation of a man of affairs at the utterly 
 unbusiness-like ways of the people with whom 
 he had to do. 16 
 
 Besides his commission as Governor of New 
 York, he had undoubtedly private instruc- 
 tions as to how he should comport himself 
 towards his uneasy neighbors, the New Eng- 
 land colonies. He was anxious to keep on 
 good terms with Connecticut, as New York 
 was largely dependent upon that colony for 
 provisions ; and his letters to the Connecticut 
 authorities are mostly of a friendly character, 
 though written in a tone of superiority which 
 undoubtedly gave serious offence. On hear- 
 ing that the people of Hartford were harbor- 
 ing one of the regicides, he addressed a very 
 sharp letter to the colonial authorities, to 
 which they replied in a tone of injured inno- 
 cence, which is quite edifying, asking him 
 for the names of those who had so maligned 
 their loyalty. 16 
 
126 ESSAYS IN AMEBIC AN HISTORY. 
 
 It was impossible for the Connecticut 
 Kepublicans to realize the profound horror 
 which the execution of Charles had caused, 
 and the depth of the feeling of hatred and 
 repugnance which the perpetrators of that 
 audacious act had inspired. Even after 
 William and Mary were on the throne, and 
 James II. was an exile, it was found that a 
 regicide, of the character and position of 
 Ludlow, dared not show himself in England ; 
 and during the Eestoration period the feeling 
 was intense. The act was regarded by the 
 majority of Englishmen as sacrilege, as well 
 as murder, for it had destroyed not only what 
 was called the sacred majesty of the king, 
 but the sacred majesty of the legal govern- 
 ment. To Andros the news that G-offe and 
 Whalley were escaping justice by the conni- 
 vance of the authorities was horrible, and 
 must have suggested doubts, if he had not 
 found them already, of the policy of allow- 
 ing men who would have been excluded from 
 all office in England to rule the king's colo- 
 nies in America. 
 
 A more serious difficulty arose with Massa- 
 chusetts, whose authorities had ventured to 
 send commissioners to the Mohawks to treat 
 directly with them as an independent nation 
 — an act at utter variance with the policy of 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDE08. 127 
 
 the Dutch and English, who regarded them 
 as under their authority, and which, there- 
 fore, was liable to plunge the colony in war. 1T 
 The ostentatious assumption of independence 
 by the colony of Massachusetts, its claim to be 
 free from the laws of England, and the spirit 
 displayed by many of its leaders, which must 
 have seemed seditious to the legal mind of 
 Andros, made it necessary for him to watch 
 very carefully any affairs in which they were 
 concerned. His attitude brought upon him 
 the hostility of the colony, and its authori- 
 ties asserted, and constantly reiterated, the 
 charge that it was at Albany, by his conni- 
 vance, that Philip's Indians had procured sup- 
 plies of arms. 18 
 
 This charge, naturally, was most offensive 
 to the loyal spirit of Andros, who had fretted 
 a good deal under his forced inactivity in the 
 war ; and he repeatedly denied it, challenging 
 his accusers for proof of their assertions, 
 proof which they were absolutely unable to 
 supply. They continued, however, to insinu- 
 ate this malicious statement, and it was long 
 believed by the people of Massachusetts, and 
 led undoubtedly to much of the hostility 
 between them and Andros during his subse- 
 quent rule in New England. 19 In spite of 
 their aspersions, he continued steadily in his 
 
128 ESSAYS IX AMEBIC AN HISTORY. 
 
 prudent policy, keeping the Mohawks quiet on 
 one side, and, by vigorous measures against 
 the Indians in Maine, protecting his personal 
 enemies from inroads upon the other. 20 
 His government of New York was success- 
 ful ; the country remained in peace ; its quiet 
 contrasted strongly with the troubles in New 
 England, and the revenues of the colony 
 were honestly collected and wisely adminis- 
 tered. To those who hold the commonly re- 
 ceived opinion of Andros, it will seem strange 
 to find that he urged upon the Duke of York 
 the desirability of allowing the colonists 
 the privileges of a representative assembly. 21 
 In November 1677, he returned to England 
 on a leave of absence, remaining there until 
 May of the following year. 
 
 While in England he received the honor of 
 knighthood, a sign that his labors were ap- 
 preciated, and gave, in the form of answers 
 to the inquiries of the Committee for Trade 
 and Plantations, statements in regard to 
 American affairs which are of great value 
 as exhibiting the condition of the colonies, 
 and especially of New York, at that time. 
 His replies about New England are such as 
 we might expect from a man of his character 
 and position, and disclose no hostility. 
 
 He says : " The acts of trade and navigacon 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDBOS. 129 
 
 are sayed, & is generally beleeved, not to be 
 observed in ye Collonyes as they ought " — 
 a statement which is certainly moderate if 
 not grammatical ; and also : "I doe not find 
 but the generality of the Magistrates and 
 people are well affected to ye king and king- 
 dome, but most, knowing noe governmt then 
 their owne, think it best, and are wedded 
 and oppiniate for it. And ye magistrates 
 & others in place, chosen by the people, think 
 that they are oblidged to assert & maintain 
 sd Government all they cann, and are Church 
 members, and like so to be, chosen, and to 
 continue without any considerable alteracon 
 and change there, and depend upon the people 
 to Justine them in their actings." For a de- 
 scription of a puritan republic by a royalist 
 and churchman, this is remarkably fair and 
 correct. 22 
 
 The last two years of his government in 
 New York were vexed with difficulties with 
 some of the English merchants of the pro- 
 vince, who were probably pinched by Andros's 
 strict and methodical, and possibly also nar- 
 row and literal, administration of the revenue 
 laws. He was openly accused by them, and 
 by other discontented parties, to the Duke of 
 York as dishonest in his management of the 
 
 revenue, and was summoned home to answer 
 9 
 
130 MSSAY8 IN AMEBIC AN HISTORY. 
 
 to the charges. A special commissioner, who 
 was absurdly incompetent for the position, 
 was sent to investigate the accounts, 
 and he took the side of the merchants in his 
 report. 23 Andros, however, was able to 
 answer satisfactorily every charge against 
 him, and boldly demanded a thorough ex- 
 amination of all his acts as governor. He 
 was examined before Churchill and Jeffreys, 
 neither of whom would have been likely at 
 that time to have let any one go free who 
 had defrauded the Duke, and they reported 
 that Andros "had not misbehaved himself, 
 or broken the trust reposed in him by his 
 royal highness in the administration of his 
 government, nor doth it appear that he hath 
 anyway defrauded or mismanaged his reve- 
 nue." 24 
 
 Though completely exonerated, he was 
 not at this time reinstated in the governor- 
 ship, and the next five years of his life were 
 passed in England at court, where he ob- 
 tained an honorable position in the house- 
 hold, and in his estates in Guernsey, to 
 which in 1684 the island of Alderney was 
 added by royal grant at a rent of thirteen 
 shillings. 25 In 16S5 he received a military 
 command once more, and served in the cam- 
 paign in the west of England against Mon- 
 
SIE EDMUND ANDBOS. 131 
 
 mouth ; and the silence of the enemies in re- 
 gard to any acts of cruelty at this time is a 
 high tribute, for, if they had known of any, 
 they would undoubtedly have held him up 
 for abhorrence as a persecutor. 26 Later in 
 the year he was made lieutenant-colonel of 
 the Princess Anne of Denmark's regiment of 
 horse, under the command of the Earl of 
 Scarsdale. 
 
 The accession of James, under whom he 
 had acted previously, made it likely that 
 Andros would again receive employment. 
 In spite of the fact that he was a devoted ad- 
 herent of the Church of England, the king, 
 who was attempting to restore the Roman 
 worship, gave him his full confidence, and 
 entrusted him with the work of carrying 
 out a project which had been for some time 
 before the minds of the colonial authorities 
 in England — the consolidation of New Eng- 
 land into a single province. This was no 
 new idea of James II., but had been discussed 
 for several years ; and it was a plan that had 
 much to recommend it. 
 
 As early as 1678, the Lords of Trade and 
 Plantations had been brought to see the need 
 of a general governor and a fit judicature 
 in the colonies, for the determining of differ- 
 ences ; and in 1681 Culpepper had urged the 
 
132 ESSAYS -LV AMERICAN HISTOBT. 
 
 project. A preliminary measure had been 
 adopted of appointing a general revenue officer 
 for all the American colonies, with the power 
 of selecting his own subordinates. 27 The noto- 
 rious Randolph, a man of strict honesty and 
 probity of life, but unable to see more than 
 his own side of any question, was appointed 
 deputy surveyor-general over the Xew Eng- 
 land colonies, and devoted his energies to ob- 
 taining the forfeiture of the patent of Massa- 
 chusetts. The astuteness and bribery of the 
 Massachusetts agents were able to defer the 
 evil day until the autumn of 16Si, when the 
 charter was vacated. 28 This left Massachu- 
 setts in the hands of the crown ; the next 
 problem was to obtain the vacating of the 
 more regular charters of Connecticut and 
 Rhode Island. Writs of quo warranto were 
 issued, and sent to the colonies respectively ; 
 and the submission of Rhode Island, after 
 some decent protests, was obtained. 29 
 
 Andros was chosen by the king for the im- 
 portant post of governor-general, not, as 
 Palfrey insinuates, because he was peculiarly 
 disagreeable to Massachusetts, and so likely 
 to carry out the objects of the king : but be- 
 cause the king knew him personally, and 
 knew him to be a man of capacity and integ- 
 rity. It is absurd to suppose that James, 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDUOS. 133 
 
 who was an experienced man of business 
 himself, and more familiar with colonial 
 affairs than any king of England before or 
 since, would have intentionally selected a 
 man for the purpose who would endanger 
 the success of the undertaking. Colonel 
 Kirke, who had been actually designated as 
 governor, had been withdrawn as disagree- 
 able to New England. It is unnecessary 
 here to enter into any arguments to show the 
 advantage that would have accrued to the 
 colonies if this judicious plan had been suc- 
 cessful. New England might have been 
 spared much wasteful legislation and ruin- 
 ous financial experiments, and would have 
 been joined together in one strong province, 
 instead of being composed of several weak 
 and jealous colonies ; the union, the benefits 
 of which it took the colonists so long to learn, 
 would have been facilitated ; and a strong and 
 united front would have been presented to 
 the French, who were beginning now to 
 threaten the existence of the English colonies. 
 The Stuarts, it is true, were pensioners and 
 allies of the King of France in Europe, but 
 in America they were his natural and in- 
 evitable enemies ; and James, who, unlike his 
 brother, felt deeply the shame of his vassal- 
 age to the French, was anxious to pre- 
 
134 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 vent any extension of French . power in 
 America. 
 
 Andros arrived in Boston in December 
 1686, and was received in a most loyal and 
 even enthusiastic manner. 30 A large portion 
 of the Massachusetts people had grown weary 
 of the rule of the oligarchy, and Andros was 
 welcomed as bringing with him the protec- 
 tion of English law. His gover nm ent had 
 been constituted in detail in his commission, 
 and he at once proceeded to organize it and 
 to levy the taxes necessary for its support. 
 Deprived of the representative assembly in 
 which the semblance of free government had 
 been preserved, one of the towns attempted 
 to resist the tax. The leaders of the move- 
 ment were tried fairly and legally, and were 
 fined and imprisoned for their attempt at re- 
 sistance. m After this no attempts were made 
 to dispute the laws of the new government, un- 
 til the revolution which overthrew all legal 
 authority in the colony broke out in 1689. 
 
 It was very important for Andros that the 
 submission of Connecticut should be obtained 
 without conflict, as Massachusetts, like New 
 York, was largely dependent upon the neigh- 
 boring colony for food. The Connecticut 
 authorities fenced and parried, interposed de- 
 lays, and showed themselves, as they alwaya 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDROS. 135 
 
 did, clever men of business, exhibiting qual- 
 ities that doubtless raised Governor Treat 
 and Secretary Allyn in Governor Andros's 
 estimation. Finally, however, when further 
 resistance was dangerous, a letter was sent 
 which could be construed either as a surren- 
 der or as not a surrender, so that they might 
 have a safe retreat in any case ; and on the 
 strength of this letter Andros assumed the 
 government. 32 The period that follows is 
 sometimes described as the "usurpation," 
 but there is nothing in the history of the 
 times to give one the impression that the 
 government of Andros in Connecticut was 
 not as regular and legal a government as 
 the colony ever had. If Andros had not been 
 overthrown in Massachusetts by a carefully- 
 prepared rebellion, which left the colonies 
 without a governor, it is not likely that 
 either Connecticut or Ehode Island would 
 have ventured to resume its charter. Andros 
 came to Connecticut in October 1687, trav- 
 elling by way of Providence and New Lon- 
 don, and from New London across country 
 through what are now Salem, Colchester, and 
 Glastonbury, to the Eocky Hill ferry. He 
 was attended by a "company of gentlemen 
 and grenadiers to the number of sixty or up- 
 wards," and was met at the ferry by a troop 
 
136 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 of horse "which conducted him honorably 
 from the ferry through Waterfield (Wethers- 
 field) up to Hartford." 33 Of the transactions 
 at Hartford we have the dramatic story of 
 local tradition, the only proof of which was 
 the existence of an oak tree said to have been 
 the receptacle of the charter. For this 
 romantic story there is absolutely no con- 
 temporary authority, and the details are very 
 improbable. The charter very possibly may 
 have been concealed, and very possibly in the 
 Charter Oak, but the incidents of the famil- 
 iar story are, if known, not mentioned by 
 any writers of the time. 34 The records of the 
 colony contain simply the formal but ex- 
 pressive entry : "His Excellency, S r Edmund 
 Audross, Kn*., Capt. General & Govt of his 
 lla ties Territorie and Dominion in New Eng- 
 land, by order from his Ma tie James the sec- 
 ond, King of England, Scotland, France & 
 Ireland, the 31 of October, 1687, took into his 
 hands the government of this colony of Co- 
 necticott, it being by his Ma tie annexed to 
 Massachusets & other colonys under his Ex- 
 celencies Goverment. FIXIS." 35 
 
 Bulkeley, in the '" Will and Doom," re- 
 lates that Audros was met at Hartford by 
 the trained bands of divers towns who united 
 to pay him their respects. 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDBOS. 137 
 
 " Being arrived at Hartford," he continues, "he 
 is greeted and caressed by the Govr and assistants, 
 and some say, though I will not confidently assert 
 it, that the Govr and one of his assistants did de- 
 clare to him the vote of the Genl Court for their 
 submission to him. However, after some treaty 
 between his Excellency and them that evening, he 
 was, the next morning, waited on and conducted 
 by the Govr, Deputy Gov, Assistants and Deputies, 
 to the Court Chamber, and by the Govr himself 
 directed to the Gov's seat, and being there seated 
 (the late Govr, Assistants and Deputys being pre- 
 sent & the Chamber thronged as full of people 
 as it was capable of), His Excellency declared that 
 his Majesty had, according to their desire, given 
 him a commission to come and take on him the 
 government of Connecticut, and caused his com- 
 mission to be publicly read. That being done, his 
 Excellency showed that it was his Majesty's pleas- 
 ure to make the late Govr and Captain John Allyn 
 members of his council, and called upon them to 
 take their oaths, which they did forthwith, and all 
 this in that public and great assembly, nemine con- 
 tradicente, and only one man said that they first 
 desired that they might continue as they were." 
 
 ' ' After this his Excellency proceeded to erect 
 courts of Judicature, and constituted the said John 
 Allyn, Esq. & Judge of the inferiour Court of Com- 
 mon Pleas for the county of Hartford, and all others 
 who before had been assistants, & dwelling in the 
 same County, he now made Justices of the Peace 
 for the said County. 
 
138 ESSAT8 iy AMEBIC AS BI8T0BT. 
 
 " From hence his Excellency passed through all 
 the rest of the countys of N. Haven, N. London and 
 Fairfield, settling the Government, was everywhere 
 chearfully and gratefully received, and erected the 
 King's Courts as aforesaid, wherein those who were 
 before in the office of Gov*, Deputy Govt and As- 
 sistants were made Judges of the Pleas, or Justices 
 of the Peace, not one excepted nor (finally) except- 
 ing, but accepting the same, some few others being 
 by his Excellency added to them in the several 
 Countys, not without, but by & with their own 
 advice and approbation, and all sworn by the oaths 
 (of allegience and) of their respective offices, to do 
 equal justice to rich and poor, after the Laws & 
 Customs of the Eealm of England, and of this his 
 Majesty's dominion." 
 
 " The Secretary, who was well acquainted with 
 all the transactions of the General Court, and very 
 well understood their meaning and intent in all, 
 delivered their common seal to Sir E. A." « 
 
 Connecticut under Andros passed a period 
 of peace and quiet. Governor Treat and 
 secretary Allyn were made members of the 
 council and judges, besides being entrusted 
 with military commands, and everyt hin g 
 went on quietly. There was an evident dis- 
 position to favor Connecticut, and every 
 reason why it should be favored. "We hear 
 of no complaint against the government or 
 the laws. The worst hardship recorded is 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 139 
 
 the settling of intestate property according 
 to English law, instead of the customs of the 
 colony. It is true that town meetings were 
 forbidden except once a year, but there were 
 frequent sessions of the courts held, so that 
 the citizens were not deprived of all the com- 
 mon interests of their lives. With Allyn 
 the governor was on most friendly terms, 
 modifying several regulations at his sugges- 
 tions, and entrusting him largely with the 
 management of Connecticut affairs. 37 To 
 make a proper catalogue of miseries, the 
 Connecticut historian, Trumbull, is obliged 
 to borrow and relate doleful stories from 
 Massachusetts, not asserting that they hap- 
 pened in Connecticut, but certainly producing 
 that impression. 38 
 
 There were many reasons why Connecti- 
 cut did not resent the government of Andros 
 as much as was the case in Massachusetts. 
 In the first place, Connecticut had had a law- 
 ful government and a law-abiding people ; 
 its charter had not been taken away as a 
 punishment, but as a political necessity ; while 
 Massachusetts had been fighting for a system 
 of more than questionable legality, and in a 
 spirit which might well seem to the royal 
 officials to be seditious. Connecticut had en- 
 joyed a form of government in which the 
 
140 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 people had really controlled public affairs ; in 
 Massachusetts the government had been in the 
 hands of an oligarchy, who resented most 
 bitterly their deposition from power as rob- 
 bing them of their peculiar privileges. In 
 Connecticut the ecclesiastical system at this 
 time was judicious and moderate ; the radi- 
 cal tendencies of the iSTew Haven colony 
 had been held in check by the wiser policy 
 of Hartford. Persecution had never been 
 a feature of Connecticut religion, and its 
 history is not disgraced with the accounts of 
 frequent religious quarrels, excommunica- 
 tions, and expulsions which are so familiar 
 to that of the neighboring colony. In 
 Massachusetts Andros found himself op- 
 posed and thwarted in every way that the 
 angry leaders could devise ; in Connecti- 
 cut, though men were attached to their self- 
 government and resented its loss, he was re- 
 ceived with respect and consideration. One 
 is led to suspect that, with all their pride in 
 their charter and love of their liberties, the 
 leading men of Connecticut were shrewd 
 enough to see the advantages that they re- 
 ceived from the new arrangement. They 
 saw the arrogance of their old rivals of the 
 "Bay Colony" humiliated; they had the 
 pleasure of seeing Hampshire county com- 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDBOS. 141 
 
 pelled to come to Hartford to court, and 
 they felt themselves favored and trusted by 
 the governor. Besides all these considera- 
 tions, from the situation of Connecticut, 
 lying as it did between Massachusetts and 
 New York, it was much to Andros's interest 
 that he should keep the colony well disposed, 
 and he took some trouble to do so. 
 
 And, after all, what do the charges of 
 tyranny and misgovernment amount to, even 
 in Massachusetts ? The real gravamen of all 
 the charges is, that the charter had been taken 
 away, and the people of Massachusetts did 
 not enjoy those laws of England which they 
 had always claimed as their birthright. The 
 personal charges against Andros were so 
 frivolous that the colonial agents did not 
 dare to put their hands to them when the 
 case was brought to trial in England, and, by 
 their failure to appear, confessed that they 
 were false and malicious. It is not likely 
 that Andros was always conciliatory. That 
 a population of dissenting Whigs should put 
 difficulties in the way of public service of the 
 Church of England, as by law established, 
 must have been to Andros unendurable, and 
 it is absurd to represent his use of a meeting- 
 house in Boston for the religious services 
 of the national church as an instance of 
 
142 ESSAYS IN AMEBIC AN BISTORT. 
 
 malignant despotism. 38 It is far from im- 
 probable tbat Andros was compelled against 
 his will to be as civil as he was to the Ameri- 
 can non-conformists, because his master was 
 trafficking with them in England. While 
 Increase Mather was intriguing with the 
 king and receiving friendly messages from 
 Father Petre, and while men like Alsop and 
 Rosewell and Penn were basking in the 
 favors of the court at Whitehall, a governor 
 of New England, even if he had wished, could 
 not venture upon any acts of oppression 
 in America. 40 In fact, Andros's actions in 
 insisting on the services of the English 
 Church in Boston may be considered among 
 the most creditable in his history, and exhibit 
 the character of the man. He risked offend- 
 ing the king, and did offend the puritans, in 
 order to show respect to that historic church 
 of his nation, which king and puritan alike 
 desired to overthrow. 
 
 It is quite probable that Andros was at 
 times rough in his language. Without jus- 
 tifying him in this, it may be pleaded that 
 it certainly was not an uncommon fault of 
 military men ; and besides, there were a good 
 many things that must have made the use of 
 strong language a relief . He did not have a 
 very high appreciation of Indian deeds ; but 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDBOS. 143 
 
 few honest men to-day, legal or lay, would 
 differ from him. He reviled the palladium of 
 New England liberties, the towns ; but perhaps 
 in this he was in advance of his age. He re- 
 organized the court system, established tables 
 of fees, and changed the method of proving 
 wills ; but here the blame is not his ; but 
 if any one's, it should lie upon the king who 
 established the province, or the council who 
 passed the laws. The truth seems to be that 
 Andros was shocked and scandalized at the 
 loose, happy-go-lucky way of doing business 
 that had, up to this time, served the colonies; 
 and he labored in New England, as he had 
 in New York, and as he afterwards did in 
 Virginia, to give his province a good, efficient, 
 general system of administration. What 
 made it objectionable to the colonies was not 
 that it was bad, but that it was different 
 from what they had had. The man who 
 does his arithmetic upon his fingers would 
 count it a hardship if he were compelled to 
 use the much more convenient processes 
 known to better educated men. The case 
 was the same in New England. They did 
 not want to be improved; they had no desire 
 for any more efficient or regular administra- 
 tion than they were accustomed to. They 
 preferred managing their own affairs badly 
 
144 ESSAYS .LV AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 to having them done for them, were it ever 
 so well. It is not difficult for us to appre- 
 ciate their discontent. 
 
 It is harder for us to put ourselves in 
 Andros's place, and to feel with him the 
 disgust of an experienced and orderly admin- 
 istrator at the loose and slipshod methods 
 that he saw everywhere; the indignation of 
 the loyal servant of the king at hardly con- 
 cealed disloyalty and sedition; the resentment 
 of a devoted member of the national Church 
 of England at the insults heaped upon it by 
 the men who had failed in their previous 
 attempt to destroy it. 
 
 Andres failed to conciliate Massachusetts. 
 An angel from heaven bearing King James's 
 commission would have failed. A rebellion 
 against his power was carefully prepared, 
 doubtless in concert with the Whig leaders 
 in England; and when the news of the Eng- 
 lish Eevolution came, Massachusetts broke 
 out also, arrested the governor, destroyed 
 the government, and set up an irregular 
 government of its own. 41 The object of 
 this revolution was evidently to overthrow 
 the Dominion of Xew England, and to 
 resume separate colonial independence be- 
 fore the new English authorities had time to 
 communicate with Andros. There is no 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 145 
 
 reason to think that Andros would have 
 tried to hold the country for James. Ee- 
 spect for the law was, with him, the reason 
 for his loyalty to the crown; and though he 
 was personally attached to the Stuarts and 
 had acted under James for many years, he 
 was governor of the Dominion, not for James 
 Stuart, but for the king of England. 
 
 The popular leaders were indeed afraid, 
 not that Andros would oppose the revolution 
 in England, but that he would accept it, and 
 be confirmed by William and Mary in the 
 same position he had held under James, and 
 that thus the hated union of the colonies 
 would be perpetuated. Their revolution was 
 only too successful. They had their own 
 way, and the events in Salem in 1692 were 
 a commentary on the benefits of colonial 
 autonomy. 
 
 In Ehode Island and Connecticut the old 
 charters were reassumed. In Connecticut, 
 as there had been little break when Andros 
 came, so now there was little trouble when 
 he departed. Secretary Allyn had managed 
 the affairs of the colony before the "usurp- 
 ation " ; Secretary Allyn had been the chief 
 intermediary between Andros and the people ; 
 Secretary Allyn continued to manage Con- 
 necticut affairs after Andros had gone. The 
 
146 E8SAY8 I2f AMEBIC AN BI8TOBT. 
 
 particularists succeeded in getting possession 
 of the government, in spite of the opposition 
 of a strong minority, and Connecticut, like 
 Massachusetts, returned to her insignificant 
 but precious independence. 42 
 
 Andros succeeded in escaping once, but 
 was arrested in Rhode Island, and returned 
 by the magistrates there to the revolutionary 
 leaders in Boston. By these he was kept in 
 prison for nearly a year, and then sent to 
 England, where, as has been said, no one 
 appeared against him. 43 Hutchinson com- 
 plains that the Massachusetts agents were 
 misled by their counsel, Sir John Somers. 
 When one considers that Somers was one of 
 the greatest lawyers the bar of England has 
 ever known, one is inclined to believe that he 
 knew his clients' case was too bad to take 
 into court. 44 
 
 The government of William and Mary 
 found nothing to condemn in Andros's con- 
 duct, and showed their appreciation of his 
 services by sending him out. in 1692, as gov- 
 ernor of Virginia, adjoining to the office at 
 the same time the governorship of Mary- 
 land. 45 
 
 He exhibited here the same qualities that 
 had characterized his government in New 
 York and Xew England ; intelligent aptitude 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDBOS. 147 
 
 for business, love of regularity and order, 
 zeal for honest administration, and conse- 
 quently some degree of severity upon offend- 
 ers against the navigation laws who were 
 often men of good birth and position, and last, 
 though not least, a great dislike of the inter- 
 ference of meddling ecclesiastics with matters 
 of state. He reduced the records of the pro- 
 vince to order, finding that they had been 
 seriously neglected ; and when the State 
 House was burned, he provided a building 
 for them, and had them again carefully 
 sorted and registered. He encouraged the 
 introduction of manufactures and the plant- 
 ing of cotton, and established a legal size for 
 the tobacco cask, an act which protected the 
 merchants from arbitrary plundering by 
 custom house officials in England, but which 
 was used by his enemies to form the basis 
 of an accusation of defrauding the revenue. 
 He was on the best of terms with the prom- 
 inent men of the Dominion, and he left be- 
 hind him a pleasant memory in Virginia 
 among the laity, and among those of the 
 clergy who were not under the influence of 
 Commissary Blair. The quarrel with Blair 
 was an unfortunate one, for, though faeddle- 
 some and dogmatic, he was working for the 
 higher interests of the colony ; but the evi- 
 
148 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 dence he himself supplies of the temper of 
 his proceedings explains Sir Edmund's anti- 
 pathy. 
 
 He was recalled to England in 1698, and 
 was worsted in his contest with Blair, having 
 been unfortunate enough to bring upon him- 
 self the resentment of the Bishop of London. 
 The record of the trial is preserved at Lam- 
 beth, and has been printed in this country, 
 and a perusal of it will convince most readers 
 that Sir Edmund received very hard usage, 
 and might have complained, in the words of 
 the lawyer who was defeated in a contest 
 with Laud, that he had been "choked by a 
 pair of lawn-sleeves." 46 
 
 The rest of his life was passed at home. 
 The government still showed their confidence 
 in him by appointing him the Governor of 
 Guernsey. 47 He lived quietly, passing a 
 peaceful old age, and died in February, 1713-4 
 at the age of seventy-six. His continued 
 interest in the welfare of the colonies, in the 
 service of which he had passed so many years, 
 is evidenced by the fact that his name appears 
 among the members of the Society for the 
 Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts. 48 
 
 Eemoved from the prejudices of his own 
 day and generation, and regarded in the im- 
 partial light of history, Sir Edmund Andros 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 149 
 
 appears not as the cruel persecutor that he 
 seemed to the Mathers and the Sewalls, nor 
 as the envious Sanballat that Blair's fervent 
 Scotch imagination pictured him, but as a 
 single-hearted, loyal English gentleman, of 
 the best type of those cavaliers, devoted to 
 church and king, who, in their horror at the 
 results of puritanism and liberalism in Eng- 
 land, were willing to sacrifice if necessary 
 some degree of personal liberty in order to 
 secure the dominion of law. 49 
 
 Judging from what we know of him, we 
 should have looked to see him, had he been 
 in England instead of in America at the 
 time of the Eevolution, by the side of many 
 fellow Tories maintaining the liberties and 
 the religion of his country. In America, 
 far from the scene of conflict, his duty was 
 to support the government of the king ; but 
 the claim of the colonists that, by arresting 
 him, they prevented him from " making an 
 Ireland of America," is disproved by his im- 
 mediate and loyal acceptance of the results 
 of the Revolution, and by the confidence 
 the new government immediately reposed in 
 him. 60 
 
 The French authorities in Canada, who 
 were in a position to judge his character 
 correctly, have left on record their opinion 
 
150 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HI8TOBT. 
 
 that it was hopeless to expect assistance 
 from him against his countrymen in the 
 struggle between the two nations that broke 
 out after the abdication of James TJ. The 
 Chevalier de Callieres, Governor of Montreal, 
 wrote to the Marquis de Seignelay as follows : 
 
 "Chevalier Andros, now Governor-General of 
 New England and New York, having already de- 
 clared in his letter to M. de Denonville that he 
 took all the Iroquois under his protection as sub- 
 jects of the crown of England, and having prevented 
 them returning to M. de Denonville to make peace 
 with us, there is no longer reason to hope for its 
 conclusion through the English, nor for the aliena- 
 tion of the Iroquois from the close union which 
 exist with those (the English) , in consequence of 
 the great advantage they derive from thence, the 
 like to which we cannot offer for divers reasons. 
 
 ' ' Chevalier Andros is a Protestant as well as the 
 whole English colony, so that there is no reason to 
 hope that he will remain faithful to the King of 
 England (James II.), and we must expect that he 
 will not only urge the Iroquois to continue the war 
 against us, but that he will also add Englishmen to 
 them to lead them and seize the posts of Niagara, 
 MichfllimackiTiac and others proper to render him 
 master of all the Indians, our allies, according to 
 the project they have long since formed, and which 
 they were beginning to execute when we declared 
 war against the Iroquois, and when we captured 
 seventy Englishmen who were going to take pos- 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDKOS. 151 
 
 session of Michillimackinac, one of the most im- 
 portant posts of Canada." 60 
 
 It is gratifying to notice that at last his 
 character and services are beginning to be 
 better appreciated in the provinces over 
 which he ruled ; and we may hope that in 
 time the Andros of partisan history will give 
 place, even in the popular narratives of 
 colonial affairs, to the Andros that really 
 existed, stern and proud and uncompromis- 
 ing, it is true, but honest, upright, and just ; 
 a loyal servant of the crown, and a friend to 
 the best interests of the people whom he 
 governed. 
 
152 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 1 The principal authority for the facts of Andros's life 
 before he became governor of the Duke of York's 
 province is a biographical sketch in the History of Guern- 
 sey, by Jonathan Duncan, Esq., London, 1841, written 
 by the late Mr. Thomas Andros of Guernsey, who died 
 in 1853. This sketch was copied in N. Y. Colonial Docu- 
 ments, ii. 740, and has been used by W. H. Whitmore in 
 his memoir of Sir Edmund Andros, in the first volume 
 of The Andros Tracts. Mr. "Whitmore has added to the 
 sketch some few additional facts collected from a pedi- 
 gree at the Heralds' Office and from private family 
 papers. His memoir is the most convenient, as it is the 
 fullest and most accurate, life of Andros that has 
 appeared. The History of Guernsey, by Ferdinand Brock 
 Tupper, contains a few additional facts in regard to him, 
 but of trifling importance. Vide pp. 367, 377, 392. See 
 also Chronicles of Castle Cornet by the same author. 
 
 s Duncan, History of Guernsey, p. 89. 
 
 3 Memoir of the Life of the late Reverend Increase 
 Mather, D. D., London, 1725, pp. 10-12. 
 
 4 Whitmore, Andros Tracts, I. ix. Duncan, p. 106. 
 'Pedigree, in Andros Tracts, I. vL Duncan, p. 588. 
 
 From Calendar of State Papers, Am. and TV. Indies, we 
 learn that Andros saw service in the West Indies, being 
 major in a regiment of foot, commanded by Sir Tobias 
 Bridge, which left England in March, 1667, and arrived 
 in Barbadoes in April. He returned to England in 1668, 
 as bearer of despatches and letters to the government, 
 and was in England in September of that year. Whether 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 153 
 
 he returned to Barbadoes is not evident, but he was in 
 England in Jan., 1671, and throughout the year. The 
 regiment was disbanded and four companies sent to Eng- 
 land, arriving there Oct. 5, 1671, and were incorporated 
 in the new dragoon regiment being raised for Prince 
 Rupert, to which Andros received his commission Sept. 
 14, 1671. This chronology is irreconcilable with that 
 given in the pedigree or by Duncan. 
 
 6 For relations of Lord Craven and Elizabeth, see Miss 
 Benger's Memoir of the Queen of Bohemia. 
 
 7 Duncan, p. 588. Calendar of State Papers, America 
 and the West Indies (1661-1668), 1427, 1436, 1439, 1476, 
 1760, 1761, 1762, 1824, 1839, (1669-1674), 394, 545. 
 
 8 Duncan, pp. 588-89. America and W. Indies (1669— 
 1674), 554, 559, 635, 639, 791. Mackinnon, Origin and 
 Services of the Coldstream Guards, i. 185. 
 
 9 Tupper, History of Guernsey, 2d Ed. , London, 1876. 
 He says (p. 392) : " Edmund Andros had succeeded his 
 father as bailiff (bailli) in 1674, with power to nominate 
 a lieutenant dnring his long non-residence ; he was also 
 a colonel of dragoons, and after his return from his 
 successive North American governments, he was con- 
 stituted lieutenant-governor of Guernsey by Queen Anne, 
 who dispensed with his executing the office of bailiff 
 and accepted Eleazar Le Marchant as lieutenant-bailiff." 
 Apparently he had some trouble at first from the gover- 
 nor of the island, Christopher, Lord Hatton, for we find 
 (p. 377) a royal order sustaining Andros, and forbidding 
 Lord Hatton to disturb him in the office of bailiff. 
 
 10 N. Y. Col. Doc. , iii. 215. The boundaries stated in 
 this Commission are as follows : ' ' All that part of 
 ye Maine Land of New England beginning at a certaine 
 place called or knowne by ye name of St. Croix next 
 adjoyneing to new Scotland in America and from thence 
 along ye sea Coast unto a certaine place called Pemaquin 
 or Pemaquid and soe up the River thereof to ye furthest 
 
154 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 head of the same, as it tendeth northwards and extend- 
 ing from thence to the River Kinebequi and soe upwards 
 by ye shortest course to ye river Canada northwards. 
 And also all that Island or Islands comonly called or 
 knowne by ye several names of Matowacks or Long 
 Island scituate lying and being towards ye "West of Cape 
 Codd and ye Narrow Higansetts abutting upon ye maine 
 land betweene ye two rivers there called or knowne by 
 ye severall names of Conecticut and Hudsons River 
 together also wth ye said river called Hudsons River and 
 all ye land from ye West side of Conecticut River to 
 ye East side of Delaware Bay, and also all those severall 
 Islands called or knowne by ye name of Martine 
 mynyards and Nantukes otherwise Nantukett, together 
 with all the lands islands soiles rivers harbours mines 
 mineralls quarryes woods marshes waters lakes fishings 
 hawking hunting and fowling and all royaltyes and 
 profitts comodity.es and hereditaments to the said several 
 islands lands and premisses, belonging and apperteyning 
 with their and every of their appurtenancies." 
 
 11 For Andros's own account of the first three years of 
 his administration, see N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 354-257. For 
 the surrender of New York, Documentary History of 
 New York, iii. 43 ; Andros's report on state of the 
 province, i. 60. 
 
 12 That this was recognized by men qualified to judge, 
 vide letter from Lieutenant-Colonel Talcott to Andros, 
 Connecticut Colonial Records (1678-89), p. 399 ; vide also 
 Doc. Hist. N.Y.,t 99; Conn. Col. Bee. (1665-78), pp. 397, 
 404, 461, 492. For Andros's own official report of the 
 assistance he rendered New England in Philips's war, see 
 y. Y. Col. Doc, iii, 264, 265. For remarks upon the con- 
 trasted Indian policies, see Brodhead, Hist. New York, 
 ii. 281-290. 
 
 13 Conn. Col. Bee. (1678-89), p. 283. N. Y. Col. Doc, 
 iii. 236. 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 155 
 
 14 Conn. Col. Bee (1665-78), pp. 260, 334, 335, 339^3, 
 578-86. N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 254. 
 
 Governor Dongan's jealousy of Andros makes his 
 statement of Andros's intentions ten years before question- 
 able authority, especially when it is remembered that at 
 the time he made the statement he was busily engaged 
 in trying to persuade the people of Connecticut to ask 
 to be annexed to New York, rather than to Massachusetts 
 under Andros. Under these circumstances, one cannot 
 help suspecting his testimony as to memoranda left 
 behind by Andros, who was one of the most cautious and 
 methodical of men. N. Y. Col. Doc. , iii. 415. If Andros 
 intended to surprise the post, he certainly was very ill- 
 judged to send notice of his claim beforehand. For the 
 best account of these proceedings, see Brodhead, Hist. 
 ofN. Y.,ii. 284-286. 
 
 15 Brodhead, Hist, of New York, ii. 303-306. New Jersey 
 Archives, i. 156-347. 
 
 16 Conn. Col. Records (1678-89), 283-285. 
 
 "Mass. Bee, iv. (2), 359-361. Brodhead, History of 
 New York, ii. 127. 
 
 18 N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 257 ff. 
 
 19 N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 254, 258, 259, 266, 267. See also 
 Randolph's report in the same vol. 242. Hutchinson , 
 Coll., 476, 490. Brodhead, ii. 290. Mather's Brief His- 
 tory of the War, 117, 129, 254. 
 
 20 N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 264, 265. 
 
 21 N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 235, 256. 
 
 22 N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 260-265. 
 
 23 N. Y. Col. Doc, 279-284, 302-308. For Andros's 
 answer, 308-313. 
 
 24 N. Y. Col. Doc, iii. 314-316. 
 
 85 Duncan, 589. N. Y. Col. Doc, ii. 741. Hutchinson, 
 Coll., 542. 
 
 26 Whitmore, Andros Tracts, I. xlix., Note D. " In an 
 old pedigree written about A. D. 1687 by Charles Andros 
 
156 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 uncle of the governor, and still preserved in the family, 
 we find : 
 
 ' The 13th April 1683, the King, Charles II gave the 
 charge of Gentleman in ordinary of his privy chamber ' 
 to Sir Edmund, and 'the 6th day of the month of June 
 1685, the King, James n. gave a Commission to the 
 above Sir Edmund Andros to command a troop of 
 Cavalry to go against the rebels in England.' This refers 
 of course to Monmouth's Rebellion. ' In August, 1685, 
 he was made Lieut. -Colonel of Lord Scarsdale's cavalry.' " 
 
 27 Palfrey, Hist, of New England, iii. 319, 334. In 
 1678, Andros had written Blathwayt that there would 
 be danger of Indian difficulties, " so long as each petty 
 colony hath or assumes absolute power of peace and war, 
 which cannot be managed by such popular governments 
 as was evident in the late Tndian wars in New England." 
 N. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 271. Earlier still, Gov. TVinslow of 
 Plymouth had told Randolph that New England could 
 never nourish until its several colonies were placed under 
 his Majesty's immediate government (Hutchinson, Coll., 
 p. 509), and Randolph had urged the matter upon the 
 council in his celebrated report. Hutch., CoU., 477-503. 
 
 28 .Mass. Hist. Soc. CoU., 4th Series, voL ii. 
 
 29 Rhode Island Col. Records, iiL 175-197. Chalmers, 
 Political Annals, 278. 
 
 30 Whitmore, I. xxvii. Cambridge Almanac, 1687. 
 
 SI Whitmore, I. xxviL Goldwin Smith, in his recent 
 work on The United States, seems to suppose that this oc- 
 curred in Xew Hampshire. 
 
 32 Conn. Col. Records (1678-89), 376-378. 
 
 33 Conn. Col. Records (1678-89), 389. 
 
 " Chalmers, Political Annals, 297, 298. General His- 
 tory of Connecticut, by a Gentleman of the Province 
 (Rev. S. Peters, D. D.), London, 1781. 
 
 Peters's account is as follows : ' ' They resigned it (the 
 charter) in propria forma, into the hands of Sir Edmund 
 
SIR EDMUND ANDROS. 157 
 
 Andros at Hertford, in October, 1687, and were annexed 
 to the Mass. Bay colony, in preference to New York, ac- 
 cording to royal promise and their own petition. But 
 the very night of the surrender of it, Samuel Wadsworth 
 of Hertford, with the assistance of a mob, violently broke 
 into the apartments of Sir Edmund, regained, carried off 
 and hid the charter in the hollow of an elm, and in 1689, 
 news arriving of an insurrection and overthrow of An- 
 dros at Boston, Robert Treat, who had been elected in 
 1687, was declared by the mob still to be Governor of 
 Connecticut. He daringly summoned his old Assembly, 
 who being convened, voted the charter to be valid in law, 
 wd that it could not be vacated by any power, without 
 the consent of the General Assembly. They then voted, 
 ihat Samuel Wadsworth should bring forth the charter ; 
 which he did in a solemn procession, attended by the 
 High Sheriff, and delivered it to the Governor. The 
 General Assembly voted their thanks to Wadsworth , and 
 twenty shillings as a reward for stealing and hiding their 
 charter in an elm." 
 
 35 Conn. Col. Rec. (1678-89), 248. 
 
 38 Bulkeley, Gershom, Will and Doom, in Conn. Col. 
 Rec. (1678-89), 390, 391. 
 
 37 Conn. Col. Rec. (1678-89), 393 note, 404 note. 
 
 38 Trumbull, History of Connecticut, i. 371-375. 
 
 39 For Andros's own account of the transaction, see N. 
 Y. Col. Doc, iii. 723-726. Andros Tracts, iii. 20, 21. 
 R. I. Col. Rec, iii. 281. 
 
 40 It is interesting to notice in this regard, that the chief 
 complaint Increase Mather made against Andros, in his 
 interview with James II. , was that he did not sufficiently 
 observe the king's Declaration of Indulgence. Mather, 
 Cotton, D. D., Life of Increase Mather, p. 41, London 
 1725. Parentator, pp. 109-116 (reprinted in part in An- 
 dros Tracts, iii. 121-187). Cf. Randolph's account in 
 N. Y. Col. Doc. , iii. 578 ; also, Chalmers, Pol. Annals, 426. 
 
158 ESSAYS Z.V AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 41 Whitmore. Andros Tracts, L 1-10. Hutchinson, L 
 374-377. .V. Y. Col. Doc., in. 722, 726. Palfrey, History 
 of New England, iii. ch. xiv., xv. That the revolution 
 was carefully prepared and planned, see Mather, Samuel. 
 Life of Cotton Mather, p. 42, and ,V. Y. Col. Doc., iii. 587, 
 583 (Deposition of Philip French), New York, 1689. 
 
 "The above said Mr. Philip French further declared 
 that being on board the ' Prudent Sarah,' Benjamin Gil- 
 lem Mastr coming from England in company with Sir 
 "SVillm Fips. heard him speak several! times the words 
 following to this effect, ' that he did say the first fishing 
 boat he mett he would hire and goe privately ashore and 
 rise a company without beating of drum, and that he 
 would take the packets sent to S* Edmund and not deliver 
 them to him, except he appeared in Councill. and there 
 would secure him.' 
 
 " That about the same time upon the said voyage hee 
 heard S* 'Willm Fips say that he appeared before the 
 Lords, and one of them starting up asked him whether 
 they would stand by the rights of their Charter, or for 
 the abuses they had received from Sir Edmund Andros ; 
 it was answered, by the right of their charter. 
 
 " And about the same time this Deponant heard him 
 say, that they (which this Deponant supposes were the 
 Lords or the Comons assembled in Parliament) told him, 
 that if they did give them trouble to hang Sir Edmund, 
 they deserved noe funds." 
 
 « Conn. Col. Bee. (1678-89), 250, 455-460. 
 
 42 N. Y. Col. Doc., iii- 723. Whitmore, Andros Tracts, 
 iii 22, 23, 41-13 (for his escape and capture, 95-102). 
 
 44 Hutchinson, i. 394. 
 
 44 Beverly, History of Virginia, L 37. C. W. (Charles 
 Wolley), A. M., A Two Years' Journal in Sew York. 
 For an unfavorable account, CoU. Mass. Hist. Soc., v. 
 124-166, " An Account of the Present State and Govern- 
 ment of Virginia.'" The Sainsbury Papers, in the State 
 
SIB EDMUND ANDROS. 159 
 
 Library at Richmond, Va., are transcripts and abstracts 
 from the London originals, of all official papers of this 
 period, relating to Virginia, and an examination of them 
 made in 1892, through the kindness of the State Librarian, 
 gave strong corroboration of the view of Andros's ad- 
 ministration presented by Wolley and Beverly, and pre- 
 sented Blair and his friends in a less amiable light than 
 they have presented themselves. Cf. Meade, Old Churches 
 and Families of Virginia, i. 107, 108. Perry, History of 
 the American Episcopal Church, vol. i. chapter vii. 
 
 46 Perry, Historical Collections of the American Colo- 
 nial Church : Virginia. 
 
 41 Whitmore, I. xxxiv. Duncan, 130, 131, 589. " In 
 1704, under Queen Anne, he was extraordinarily distin- 
 guished by having the lieutenant-governorship of Guern- 
 sey bestowed on him, whilst he also continued bailiff, his 
 duties, as such, being dispensed with for the time, he 
 having power given to him to appoint his lieutenant- 
 bailiff, who was likewise authorized to name a deputy." 
 
 48 Whitmore, I. xxxv. 
 
 49 Duncan, 589. " Sir Edmund was for many years at 
 the head of a mixed and adventurous population, in 
 newly settled and important colonies, distant from the 
 mother country, a station at all time arduous, but im- 
 measurably so in the age of revolutions in which he lived, 
 when the institutions longest established were not exempt 
 from the common jeopardy, and unusual energy was 
 called for in all, wherever situated, by whom the royal 
 authority was to be asserted. He resolutely encountered 
 the duties and responsibilities of his high office through- 
 out the long course of his career, and was successful in 
 resisting, in his military as well as in his civil capacity, 
 the intrigues and hostilities of the neighboring French 
 and Indians, to which he was continually exposed. By 
 some of the chroniclers of the period, who wrote, doubtless, 
 not uninfluenced by its partisanship, he has been repre- 
 
160 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 sen ted, in his earlier government under James the Second, 
 as an abettor of tyranny ; but by others of them, appear- 
 ing to have possessed the best means of judging of the 
 circumstances under which he acted, his conduct has 
 been liberally estimated. His later administration, under 
 William the Third, is allowed to have been irreproach- 
 able. All the colonies advanced greatly in improvement 
 whilst under his charge ; and the fact that he was dis- 
 tinguished by the marked approval and successive ap- 
 pointments of his several sovereigns, after, no less than 
 before, the Revolution, cannot but be interpreted as the 
 strongest testimonial in his favor, and highly to the honor 
 of his reputation." 
 
 Chalmers remarks (Political Annals, i. 432) : " The 
 charges of greatest magnitude were not the faults of the 
 governor, but of the constitution; the smaller accusa- 
 tions arose from actions directly contrary to his instruc- 
 tions. Did he act contrary to them and to his commis- 
 sion, he had been the most faithless of servants, and most 
 criminal of men. But he did not. For, when the agents 
 of the province impeached him before William, they 
 accused him not of acting inconsistent with either, but 
 of having exercised an authority unconstitutional and 
 tyrannous. His conduct was approved of by James ; 
 and he was again appointed a colonial governor by Wil- 
 liam, because he equally appeared to him worthy of trust 
 Unhappily oppressed by a real tyranny, the colonists of 
 those days beheld every action with diseased eyes, and 
 their distempers have descended in a great measure to 
 their historians, who have retailed political fictions as 
 indubitable truths. " And again : ' ' What a spectacle does 
 the administration of Andros hold up to mankind for 
 their instruction ; under a form of government, plainly 
 arbitrary and tyrannous, more real liberty was actually 
 enjoyed than under the boasted system, which appeared 
 so fair." 
 
 M Doc. Hist. ofN. Y., i. 179. 
 
IV. 
 
 THE LOYALISTS. 
 
 The opportunity of uniting together the 
 colonies was lost when the government of 
 England, under William and Mary, condoned 
 the rebellion in Massachusetts, and allowed 
 Connecticut and Ehode Island to resume 
 their charters. From that time onward, 
 union under the royal authority was im- 
 possible, even in the face of the pressing 
 dangers of the French and Indian wars, to 
 which for over sixty years the colonies were 
 almost continuously exposed. Futile at- 
 tempts were made, but in face of such a 
 triumph of individualism nothing could be 
 accomplished. When the conference at 
 Albany, in 1754, put forth a plan of federa- 
 tion, drawn up by Benjamin Franklin and 
 studiously moderate in its provisions, it was 
 rejected with indignation by the colonies, as 
 tending to servitude, and by the authorities 
 
 in England, as incurably democratic. 1 Yet 
 
 161 
 
162 ES8AT8 IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 the attempt that had heen made had, at 
 least, one result : it had created what we 
 may call an imperial party, the members of 
 which were devotedly attached to the con- 
 nection with Great Britain, and opposed to 
 that narrow spirit so prevalent in the col- 
 onies, which esteemed nothing as of value 
 in comparison with their local customs and 
 local privileges. This party grew strong in 
 New York, where the extravagances of Leis- 
 ter's insurrection had called for stern chas- 
 tisement, and was also well represented in 
 New England. The new charter of Massa- 
 chusetts, which gave it a governor appointed 
 by the crown, while preserving its Assembly 
 and its town organizations, had tended to 
 encourage and develop, even in that fierce 
 democracy, those elements of a conservative 
 party which had been called into existence 
 some years before by the disloyalty and tyr- 
 anny of the ecclesiastical oligarchy. Thus, 
 side by side with a group of men who were 
 constantly regretting their lost autonomy, 
 and looking with suspicion and prejudice at 
 every action of the royal authorities, there 
 arose this other group of those who con- 
 stantly dwelt upon, and frequently exagger- 
 ated, the advantages they derived from their 
 connection with the mother country. In Con- 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 163 
 
 necticut there was a strong minority that 
 had opposed the re-assumption of the charter 
 after the overthrow of Andros ; and in all 
 the royal provinces an official class was grad- 
 ually growing up, that was naturally impe- 
 rial rather than local in its sympathies. The 
 Church of England, also, had at last waked 
 up to a sense of the spiritual needs of its 
 children beyond the seas, and by means of 
 the Society for the Propagation of the Gos- 
 pel was sending devoted and self-sacrificing 
 missionaries to labor among the people of 
 the colonies. 2 The influence of this tended 
 inevitably to maintain and strengthen the 
 feeling of national unity in those of the 
 colonists who came under the ministra- 
 tions of the missionaries. In the colony of 
 Connecticut, especial strength was given 
 to this movement by an unexpected reli- 
 gious revolution, in which several of the 
 prominent ministers of the ruling congre- 
 gational body, and many of the best of the 
 laity, forsook their separatist principles and 
 returned to the historic church of the old 
 home. 3 The wars with the French, in which 
 colonists fought side by side with regulars, 
 in a contest of national significance, tended 
 upon the whole to intensify the sense of im- 
 perial unity ; although there can be no 
 
164 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 doubt that the British officers generally, by 
 their contemptuous speeches and by their in- 
 solent manner towards the colonials whom 
 they affected to despise, prepared the way for 
 the eventual rupture of sentiment between 
 the colonies and England.* 
 
 It is hardly an exaggeration to say that 
 neither navigation laws nor the Stamp Act 
 nor parliamentary interference had as much 
 to do in alienating the affections of Ameri- 
 cans from the mother country, as hadjfthe 
 ill-mannered impertinence of the British offi- 
 cers and the royal officials.^ This insolence, 
 when joined to Grenville's bungling and ex- 
 asperating attempt to extend imperial taxa- 
 tion to the colonies, had the result of uniting 
 for a time nearly all Americans in opposition 
 to the measures proposed by the advisers of 
 the king, and enabled them to win a great 
 constitutional victory over the attempt to im- 
 pose stamp duties upon themj The divi- 
 sion into two distinct parties, though as has 
 been pointed out the groups had been grad- 
 ually forming and drawing apart from one 
 another, did not really come into definite ex- 
 istence until the further impolitic measures 
 of successive ministries had strengthened 
 the hands of those who were traditionally 
 disposed to resist the authority of England. 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 165 
 
 It is very hard for us to put ourselves in 
 the place of men of a century ago, and to 
 think their thoughts and surround ourselves 
 in imagination with their environment ; we 
 naturally carry back much of the nineteenth 
 century into the eighteenth. "We know the 
 America of to-day, a vigorous, healthy, pros- 
 perous, mighty nation, reaching from sea to 
 sea, filled with a busy people, adorned with 
 the achievements of a hundred years, hal- 
 lowed by many sacred memories. The 
 American flag has floated proudly through 
 the smoke of battle in every quarter of the 
 world, and for a hundred years men have 
 seen in it the symbol of a country and a 
 fatherland. It is difficult for us to realize 
 that, before 1776, these influences had no 
 power ; there was then no nation, no coun- 
 try, no fatherland, no flag, nothing but a 
 number of not over-prosperous colonies, with 
 but little love or liking for one another. 
 Even the strongest Americans did not vent- 
 ure to use the word nation or its deriva- 
 tives, but called their congress, even after 
 the formal separation from England, simply 
 the Continental Congress. The very consid- 
 erations which show us how wonderful and 
 even sublime were the faith and the devotion 
 of the leaders of the American revolution, 
 
166 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HI8T0RT. 
 
 will also show us how natural it was, how 
 almost inevitable it was, that other men, 
 whose connection with England was closer 
 and more intimate, whose habits of mind 
 were conservative rather than progressive, 
 who had been brought up to fear God and 
 honor the king and to think more about 
 their duties than about their rights, should 
 cling with devotion to the cause of the 
 mother-country and condemn the revolu- 
 tion as a " parricidal rebellion." 
 
 Besides this highest motive, which influ- 
 enced the best and the purest-minded among 
 the opponents of colonial separation, there 
 were undoubtedly other motives of lower 
 character, which affected some men in their 
 decision, and disposed them to loyalty. The 
 political power of all the colonies had been 
 largely in the hands of those 'who were 
 known as the "better sort," usually gentle- 
 men of good family, rich and well educated ; 
 in some of the colonies official position had 
 been treated as the special prerogative of a 
 few distinguished families who contended 
 with one another for its possession : none of 
 the colonies, not even Connecticut, was dem- 
 ocratic as we understand the term to-day. 
 In some cases the revolutionary movements 
 and impulses came from a class which wished 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 167 
 
 to occupy public positions from which they 
 had been excluded, and in others from dis- 
 satisfied and discontented men of birth and 
 family, who were tired of being out in the 
 cold, while their rivals were enjoying the 
 pleasures and emoluments of office. 5 Thus 
 in New York, the history of the revolution is 
 closely boimd up with the family feuds of the 
 De Lanceys on the one side with the Living- 
 stons on the other. In Massachusetts, the 
 quarrel between Governor Bernard and the 
 Otises did much to increase the patriotism of 
 the latter family ; and until the very break- 
 ing out of hostilities, the contest within the 
 colony was between a majority of the well- 
 to-do merchants and lawyers of Boston on 
 the one side, and the least stable elements of 
 the populace, under the leadership of one of 
 the most skilful of political agitators, Sam- 
 uel Adams, upon the other. 
 
 There is no doubt that, in Massachusetts 
 at least, most well-to-do persons considered 
 the agitation at first to be merely political, 
 the usual device of the "outs" against the 
 "ins"; they laughed at the loud talk of 
 some of the orators, and considered that it 
 was put on for effect. 6 When, in addition 
 to this, the cause of American rights was 
 disgraced, year after year, by riots, murder, 
 
168 ESSAYS Iff AMERICAN H18TOBT. 
 
 arson, and sedition, those who were entrusted 
 with the responsibilities of office, however 
 much they sympathized with the abstract 
 principles that were upheld by the popular 
 leaders, were prejudiced against the concrete 
 application of them. 7 We should also re- 
 member that, down to the time of the battle 
 of Bunker Hill, if not later, all parties united 
 in the most loyal and devoted language. 
 The rights that were claimed were not the 
 rights of Man, but of " natural-born subjects 
 of the king of Great Britain " ; the king was 
 always described as " the best and most gen- 
 erous of monarchs," and separation was 
 never mentioned as a possibility in any pub- 
 lic utterance. War was looked forward to 
 by some of the most eager as a means of 
 bringing the ministry to terms, or as an un- 
 avoidable necessity if the unconstitutional 
 taxation was persisted in ; but, up to the very 
 last, most men agreed with Richard Henry 
 Lee, who said to Adams, as they parted after 
 the first Continental Congress in 1774 : " All 
 offensive acts will be repealed — Britain will 
 give up her foolish project." 8 
 
 When the most ardent American patriots 
 used this language, and used it sincerely, it 
 is not remarkable that those who formed the 
 opposing political party, who were conserva- 
 
TEE LOYALISTS. 169 
 
 tive when these were the radicals, should 
 have felt that they were bound by their duty 
 to their king and country, or that they 
 should also have felt that the disorderly ac- 
 tions and the factious attitude of some of the 
 extreme patriots in Massachusetts and else- 
 where were simply seditious. These convic- 
 tions were undoubtedly strengthened by the 
 abominable treatment which many of them 
 personally received. They were not apt to 
 look with greater favor upon a cause whose 
 votaries had tried to recommend it to their 
 liking by breaking their windows, plunder- 
 ing their houses, constantly insulting them, 
 their wives and their daughters, to say 
 nothing of tarring and feathering them, or 
 of burning them in effigy. The penal meas- 
 ures imposed by the Parliament upon the 
 town of Boston and the colony of Massachu- 
 setts had been brought upon themselves by the 
 so-called patriots. One rather wonders at 
 the slowness and mildness of the British gov- 
 ernment, and at their miserable inefficiency, 
 than at any repressive measures that they 
 undertook. They deserved to lose the col- 
 onies for their invincible stupidity, which led 
 them from one blunder into another ; they 
 irritated when they ought either to have 
 crushed or conciliated ; they tried half-meas- 
 
170 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 ures when vigorous action was necessary ; 
 they persisted in affronting all the other colo- 
 nies while they failed in chastising sedition 
 in Massachusetts. The result was that they 
 drove many men, who were loyal subjects of 
 Great Britain in 1774, into revolution in 
 1776, while they allowed the rebels of Massa- 
 chusetts to wreak vengeance at their will 
 upon those who had been faithful in their 
 allegiance to their king. 9 
 
 Besides those who were loyalists from 
 conviction and temperament and those who 
 were almost unavoidably so from the political 
 position they occupied, there were also men 
 who were loyalists from the profit it gave 
 them. Such were the holders of the minor 
 offices in the gift of the royal governors, the 
 rich merchants who represented English 
 trading-houses, and dreaded war and disturb- 
 ance. There were others whose chief desire 
 was to be upon the winning side, who were 
 unable to conceive the possibility of the defeat 
 of the English government by a handful of 
 insurgent colonists, and some also who, from 
 local or personal dislikes or prejudices, or 
 from love of opposition, took a different 
 side from that which was taken by their 
 neighbors. It is probable, however, that there 
 were hardly any whose motives were not to 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 171 
 
 some extent mixed ; few on the one hand so 
 disinterested or so devoted as not to be moved 
 in some degree by self-interest or prejudice, 
 few on the other hand whose nature was so 
 biassed by prejudice or so sordid with love 
 of place or pension as not also to be moved 
 by the higher impulse of fidelity. 
 
 Loyalty is hard to define ; it is one of 
 those virtues which appeals not so much to 
 the head as to the heart. Its critics accuse 
 it of being irrational and illogical, as being 
 based upon sentiment rather than upon con- 
 viction. Yet, in spite of logic and reason, 
 or rather, on account of its pro founder logic 
 and higher reason, loyalty will hold its own, 
 and strike an answering chord of admiration 
 in the human heart as long as men appreciate 
 disinterested virtue. It may be classed with 
 the other unreasoned qualities that men yet 
 esteem, with faith and truth, honor and 
 courage, decency and chastity. It may be 
 a man's intellectual duty to follow the 
 dictates of his understanding and to act 
 upon his temporary convictions, whatever 
 pain the action cost ; nevertheless, the man 
 whom we respect and follow is not the man 
 who is always changing, who is easily in- 
 fluenced by argument, but the man who 
 abides by certain fixed principles, and re- 
 
172 ESSAYS W AMERICAN HISTOBT. 
 
 fuses to desert them, unless it can be shown 
 him that beyond all chance of mistake they 
 are wrong and misleading. 
 
 It has been sometimes asserted that loyalty 
 can only be felt towards a personal ruler or 
 a dynasty ; such a restriction of the term 
 is entirely unfounded. It is, by its very 
 derivation, devotion to that which is legal 
 and established. Legality and Loyalty are 
 etymologically the same. -So one can doubt 
 that there is a high and noble devotion to 
 right and justice which is as admirable and 
 as strong as a devotion to any person. It 
 is a more refined sentiment and appeals to 
 a higher moral sense than does the simple 
 fidelity to a person, beautiful and touching 
 though such devotion be. The loyalty of men 
 who, like the younger Yerneys, espoused the 
 side of the Parliament in its struggle with 
 Charles the First, was as true and real a 
 sentiment, though its character was imper- 
 sonal, as was that of the stout Sir Edmund, 
 who, though "he liked not the quarrel," 
 followed the king, because " he had eaten his 
 bread too long to turn against him in his 
 necessity. " There could hardly be a finer ex- 
 ample of this loyalty to an idea than was 
 shown by those Americans who condemned 
 the stupid errors of the king and his advisers, 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 173 
 
 and realized fully the danger to liberty in 
 the system of government that G-eorge the 
 Third was attempting to carry out in England 
 and in America, and yet, in spite of all, re- 
 mained patriotic subjects, not from affection 
 but from principle, trusting to constitutional 
 methods to overcome the evils which they 
 felt as strongly adany of those who made 
 them a justification for revolution. 
 
 As has been shown, among those who 
 adhered to the side of the mother country 
 in the revolution there were men of all kinds 
 and convictions. There were those who 
 were loyal because they believed in the legal 
 right of the Parliament to tax the colonies, 
 short-sighted as the policy might be, and con- 
 sidered their duty and their allegiance to be 
 due to the united empire. There were those 
 who adhered to the king's cause from per- 
 sonal devotion to him and to his dynasty, an 
 unreasonable devotion in the eyes of some, 
 but certainly not as contemptible as Ameri- 
 can satirists have loved to describe it. There 
 were those who were by nature conservatives, - 
 willing to do anything sooner than change, 
 governed completely by a prejudice which 
 hardly deserves the noble name of loyalty, 
 but still had in it an element of steadiness and 
 sturdiness that redeems it from contempt. 
 
174 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 There were also, undoubtedly, men who cal- 
 culated the chances of victory in the strug- 
 gle and espoused the side that they thought 
 was likely to win ; there were those who 
 were for the king from pure gregariousness, 
 because some of their friends and neighbors 
 were on that side ; and, finally, some who, 
 from a mere love of opposition, set them- 
 selves against the cause of America because 
 their neighbors and townsmen favored it. 
 
 And, as the motives which impelled men 
 were different, so also their actions differed 
 when the rupture came between the king and 
 the colonies. Some were active favorers of 
 the cause of the king, doing whatever they 
 could to assist it and to injure the cause of 
 their rebellious neighbors. Others sadly left 
 their homes at the outbreak of the war and 
 took refuge in England or in some of the 
 English provinces, suffering want, anxiety, 
 and despair, snubbed and despised by the in- 
 sular English, compelled to hear America and 
 Americans insulted, dragging along a miser- 
 able existence, like that of the shades whom 
 Virgil found upon the bank of the infernal 
 river, not allowed to return to earth or to 
 enter either Elysium or Tartarus. Others 
 attempted to live in peaceful neutrality in 
 America, experiencing the usual fate of neu- 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 175 
 
 trals, animals like the bat neither beast nor 
 bird but plundered and persecuted by both. 
 Such betook themselves usually to the pro- 
 tection of the British arms, and were to be 
 found in the greatest numbers at or near 
 the headquarters of the British generals 
 in Savannah or Charlestown, Newport or 
 New York. ■ 
 
 Some American writers have been ex- 
 tremely severe upon the Americans who 
 served in the royal armies ; such condemna- 
 tion is certainly illogical and unjust. They 
 were fighting, they might have reasoned, to 
 save their country from mob rule, from the 
 dominion of demagogues and traitors, and to 
 preserve to it what, until then, all had agreed 
 to be the greatest of blessings — the connection 
 with Great Britain, the privilege and honor 
 of being Englishmen, heirs of all the free 
 institutions which were embodied in the 
 " great and glorious constitution." 
 
 If the loyalists of New York, Georgia, and 
 the Carolinas reasoned in this manner, we 
 cannot blame them, unless we are ready to 
 maintain the proposition that the cause of 
 every revolution is necessarily so sacred that 
 those who do not sympathize with it should 
 at least abstain from forcibly opposing it. 
 The further charge is made that the worst 
 
176 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 outrages of the war were committed by 
 Tories, and the ill-doings of Brant and Butler 
 at Wyoming and Cherry Valley, together 
 with the raids of Tryon and Arnold, are held 
 up to the execration of posterity as being 
 something exceptionally brutal and cruel, un- 
 paralleled by any similar actions on the part 
 of the Whig militia or the regular forces of 
 either army, Sullivan's campaign through the 
 Indian country being conveniently forgot- 
 ten. 10 Impartial history will not palliate the 
 barbarities that were committed by either 
 party; but there can be no doubt that the Tory 
 wrong-doings have been grossly exaggerated, 
 or at least have been dwelt upon as dreadful 
 scenes of depravity to form a background for 
 the heroism and fortitude of the patriotic 
 party whose misdeeds are passed over very 
 lightly . The methods of the growth of popu- 
 lar mythology have been the same in Amer- 
 ica as elsewhere ; the gods of one party have 
 become the devils of the other. The haze of 
 distance has thrown a halo around the 
 American leaders, softening their outlines, 
 obscuring their faults, while the misdeeds of 
 Tories and Hessians have grown with the 
 growth of years. But it is an undoubted 
 fact that there were outrages upon both sides, 
 brutal officers on both sides, bad treatment 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 177 
 
 of prisoners on both sides, guerilla warfare 
 with all its evil concomitants on both sides, 
 and in these respects the Tories were no worse 
 than the Whigs. There was not much to 
 choose between a Cowboy and a Skinner, 
 very little difference between Major Fer- 
 guson's command and that of Marion and 
 Sumter. There was no more orderly or 
 better-behaved troop in either army than 
 Simcoe's Queen's Rangers ; u possibly there 
 was none on either side as bad as the mixture 
 of Iroquois Indians and Tory half-breeds 
 who were concerned in the massacres at 
 Wyoming and Cherry Valley. 
 
 The Americans, however, do not deserve 
 any credit for abstaining from the use of In- 
 dian allies. They tried very hard to make 
 use of them, but without success. A few 
 Englishmen in the Mohawk Valley, faithful 
 to the traditions of just and honest treatment 
 of the Indians, which had been inherited from 
 the Dutch, had succeeded in making the Iro- 
 quois regard them as friends, but everywhere 
 else the Indian and the colonist were bitter 
 and irreconcilable foes. The savage had long 
 scores of hatred to pay, not upon the English 
 nation or English army, but upon the Ameri- 
 can settlers who had stolen his lands, shot 
 his sons, and debauched his daughters. The 
 
178 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 employment of the Mohawks by the English 
 was an outrage and a crying shame upon 
 civilization ; but the responsibility of it lies 
 directly upon the government which allowed 
 it, and the commanding generals who sanc- 
 tioned the expeditions, and only indirectly 
 upon the men who carried out the directions 
 of their superiors. 12 It is interesting to re- 
 member in this connection that the courteous 
 and chivalrous Lafayette raised a troop of 
 Indians to fight the British and the Tories, 
 though his reputation has been saved by the 
 utter and almost ludicrous failure of his 
 attempt. The fact is that, as far as the 
 Americans were engaged in it, the war of 
 the Revolution was a civil war, in which 
 the two sides were not far different in num- 
 bers or in social condition, and very much 
 the same in their manners and customs. 
 The loyalists contended all through the war 
 that they were in a numerical majority, and 
 that if they had been properly supported by 
 the British forces and properly treated by 
 the British generals, the war could have 
 been ended in 1777, before the French alli- 
 ance had given new hopes and new strength 
 to the separatist party. 13 
 
 Sabine, in his well-known work on the 
 loyalists of the Revolution, computes that 
 
THE LOYALISTS, 179 
 
 there were at least twenty thousand Ameri- 
 cans in the military service of the king at 
 one time or another during the war. 14 Other 
 authorities think this estimate too high, but 
 the number was extremely large. In New 
 York and New Jersey it is probable that the 
 opponents of separation outnumbered the 
 patriot party, and the same is probably true 
 of the Carolinas and Georgia. Even in New 
 England, the nursery of the Eevolution, the 
 number was large and so formidable, in the 
 opinion of the revolutionary leaders, that in 
 order to suppress them they established a 
 reign of terror and anticipated the famous 
 "Law of the Suspected" of the French 
 Eevolution. An irresponsible tyranny was 
 established of town and country committees 
 at whose beck and call were the so-called 
 "Sons of Liberty." To these committees 
 was entrusted an absolute power over the 
 lives and fortunes of their fellow-citizens, 
 and they proceeded on principles of evidence 
 that would have shocked and scandalized a 
 grand inquisitor. 
 
 Virginia and Maryland seem to have been 
 the only provinces in which the body of the 
 people sympathized with the projects of the 
 revolutionary leaders. The few loyalists 
 there were in Virginia retired to England 
 
180 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 with the last royal governor, and in Maryland 
 a strong sense of local independence and local 
 pride led the colony to act with unanimity 
 and moderation. 
 
 The rigorous measures adopted by the new 
 governments in the Eastern States, and the 
 activity of their town committees, succeeded 
 in either driving out their loyalist citizens or 
 reducing them to harmless inefficiency. In 
 New York and New Jersey, however, they 
 remained strong and active throughout the 
 war ; and as long as the British forces held 
 Georgia and the Carolinas, loyalty was in 
 the ascendant in those states. 
 
 The question will naturally be asked, why, 
 if they were so numerous, were they not 
 more successful, why did they yield to popu- 
 lar violence in New England and desert the 
 country while the contest was going on, why 
 did they not hold the Southern States and 
 keep them from joining the others in the 
 Continental Congresses and in the war. In 
 the first place,\a negative attitude is neces- 
 sarily an inactive one ; and in consequence of 
 this and of the fact that they could not take 
 the initiative in any action, the loyalists 
 were put at a disadvantage before the 
 much better organization of the patriotic 
 leaders. [ Though these were few in number, 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 181 
 
 in the South they were of the best families 
 and of great social influence, and in the 
 North they were popular agitators of long ex- 
 perience. They manipulated the committee 
 system so carefully that the colonies found 
 themselves, before they were aware of the 
 tendency of the actions of their deputies, in- 
 volved in proceedings of very questionable 
 legality, such as the boycotting agreement 
 known as the American Association, and the 
 other proceedings of the Continental Con- 
 gress. 15 When the war began, the popula- 
 tion of the three southernmost states had 
 very little care, except for their own lives 
 and pockets. They were, with the exception 
 of a few distinguished families, descendants 
 of a very low grade of settlers. Oglethorpe's 
 philanthropy had left the legacy of disorder 
 and inefficiency to the colony of Georgia, a 
 legacy which the Empire State of the South 
 has now nobly and grandly outlived. North 
 Carolina had a most heterogeneous popula- 
 tion, and was, perhaps, the most barbarous 
 of all the colonies ; while in South Carolina 
 the extremes in the social scale were most 
 strongly marked, from the high-spirited 
 Huguenot gentlemen to the poor whites who 
 formed the bulk of the population, worse 
 taught, worse fed, and worse clad than the 
 
182 ES8AYS IN AMEBIC AN HISTORY. 
 
 negro slaves. Such a population as this, 
 living also in constant fear of negro insur- 
 rection, was not likely to count for much on 
 the one side or the other ; and we shall find, if 
 we read Gates's and Greene's dispatches on 
 the one side, and Rawdon's and Cornwallis's 
 on the other, that the rival commanders 
 agree in one thing at least — in condemning 
 and despising the worthlessness of the militia 
 recruited in the southern country. 16 It was 
 the utter cowardice of this militia that lost 
 the battle of Camden and caused the needless 
 sacrifice of the lives of the braver Continen- 
 tals ; and the correspondence of the English 
 general is full of instances that prove that, 
 except for plundering and bushwhacking, 
 there was little use to be made of the loyal- 
 ists in the South. 
 
 As to the other questions, why, when the 
 loyalists were so numerous, were they not 
 more successful, and why did the eastern 
 loyalists yield to the violence that was offered 
 them, one question nearly answers the 
 other. They were not successful, because 
 they had no leaders of their own stock and 
 country, and because the British commanders 
 blundered throughout the war with as unerr- 
 ing certainty and unfailing regularity as 
 the various British ministries had done from 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 183 
 
 1764 to 1776. The game was in the hands of 
 the English, if they had known how to play it, 
 for the first three years of the war. Then 
 English inefficiency, rather than any belief 
 in the ability of the colonists to make good 
 their own independence, brought about the 
 French alliance ; and the war assumed from 
 thenceforward a very different aspect. The 
 desertion of their cause and their country by 
 the many Tories who left New England for 
 Great Britain or the loyal provinces, and the 
 supineness of the men of place and position 
 who attempted to preserve an attitude of 
 neutrality instead of siding openly either for 
 or against the king, weakened the king's 
 cause in America and prevented the numbers 
 of the loyalist population from counting for 
 as much as they were really worth. 
 
 The clever French diplomatist who collected 
 and translated the correspondence of Lord 
 George Germaine with the British generals 
 and admirals, a remarkably well-informed 
 critic of the military operations in America, 
 states in his Preface his opinion as follows : 
 " Another thing which clearly proves that 
 the affairs of the English have been badly 
 conducted in America, is that the American 
 loyalists alone were superior in number to 
 the rebels. How, then, has it come to pass 
 
184 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 that troops double in numbers, well paid 
 and wanting nothing, aided besides by a 
 German army, have failed in opposing the 
 partisans of liberty, who, badly paid and 
 badly equipped, often lacked everything? 
 Manifestly it is in the different capacity of 
 the commanders that we must seek for the 
 counterweight which has turned the scale in 
 favor of the latter. If the English had had 
 a Washington at the head of their army 
 there would long since have been no more 
 question of war on the American Continent. 
 . . . . M. Linguet has said somewhere in 
 his annals that the secretaries of the Con- 
 gress were better than the secretaries of the 
 English generals. The same may be said of 
 the generals themselves." 17 
 
 Besides being inefficient in the field, the 
 British commanders alienated their friends 
 and weakened the attachment of the loyal- 
 ists to the cause of the king by their ex- 
 tremely impolitic treatment of the American 
 provinces within their occupation. The 
 regular officers made no secret of their 
 contempt for the colonists, and plundered 
 them without mercy, making little, if any, 
 distinction between loyalist or rebel, Tory or 
 Whig. Judge Thomas Jones, a New Yorker 
 of prominence and position, who was a de- 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 185 
 
 voted loyalist and one of the number es- 
 pecially singled out by name in the Act of 
 Confiscation and Attainder passed by his 
 native state, has left us his record of the 
 way in which the British officers and officials 
 exasperated rather than conciliated the 
 Americans, and punished rather than re- 
 warded the loyal for their attachment to the 
 king and the integrity of the empire. He 
 writes : "In 1780, part of the army went 
 into winter quarters upon the westernmost 
 end of 'the island, where they robbed, 
 plundered, and pillaged the inhabitants of 
 their cattle, hogs, sheep, poultry, and, in 
 short, of anything they could lay their 
 hands upon. It was no uncommon thing of 
 an afternoon to see a farmer driving a flock 
 of turkeys, geese, ducks, or dunghill fowls 
 and locking them up in his cellar for secu- 
 rity at night. . . .fit was no uncommon 
 thing for a farmer, his wife and children 
 to sleep in one room, while his sheep were 
 bleating in the room adjoining, his hogs 
 grunting in the kitchen, and the cocks crow- 
 ing, hens cackling, ducks quacking, and 
 geese hissing in the cellar. . . . This rob- 
 bing was done by people sent to America 
 to protect loyalists against the persecutions 
 and depredations of rebels. | To complain 
 
186 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 was needless ; the officers shared in the 
 plunder." In Newtown, a Hessian soldier 
 opened a butcher's shop, where he undersold 
 all competitors, because while they had to 
 pay for their meat he had no such outlay. 
 In 1781, when the troops left Flushing, a 
 resident of that place wrote, " There was not 
 a four-footed animal (a few dogs excepted) 
 left in Flushing, nor a wooden fence." 
 
 We cannot wonder at the indignant words 
 with which Mr. Jones closes his recital of 
 this vandalism. "If Great Britain had, 
 instead of governing by military law, by 
 courts of police, and courts martial, re- 
 vived the civil law, opened the courts of 
 justice, invested the civil magistrates with 
 their full power, and convened general as- 
 semblies in New York, New Jersey, Penn- 
 sylvania, Ehode Island, Virginia, and in 
 South and North Carolina (as well as in 
 Georgia, where it produced the most salutary 
 effects), as the rebels abandoned these pro- 
 vinces and fled before the British arms ; and 
 prevented, by severely punishing, all kinds 
 of plunder, rapine, and pillage committed 
 by the army, the rebellion in all probability 
 would have terminated in a different manner. 
 The empire would not have been disgraced 
 or dishonored, nor Great Britain reduced 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 187 
 
 to the necessity of asking pardon of her 
 ungrateful children, acknowledging herself 
 in the wrong, and granting them absolute, 
 unconditional independence. But, alas ! the 
 very reverse of this marked every step in 
 the royal army in all its proceedings, and 
 Great Britain, as well as the Independent 
 States of America, feel to this day the dire 
 effects of a conduct so very impolitic, so un- 
 military, so unjustifiable, and so repugnant 
 to the Constitution, the spirit, the honor, 
 and the sentiments of Englishmen. 18 
 
 And now let us inquire how the loyalists 
 were treated by the new governments of the 
 various states. Besides the irregular vio- 
 lence to which the unfortunate loyalists 
 were exposed at the hands of Sons of Liberty 
 and town committeemen, they were marked 
 out for punishment and plunder by the new 
 state governments as they came into exist- 
 ence. The State of Massachusetts proscribed 
 three hundred and eight persons by name, 
 whom it condemned, if ever found within 
 its borders, to imprisonment and eventual 
 banishment ; and if they ventured to return, 
 it denounced the death penalty upon them. 
 Not all of these were the wealthy merchants 
 and lawyers who had offended the populace 
 by their addresses to Hutchinson and Gage ; 
 
188 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 at least a fifth of the number were from the 
 middle classes of society, and some of them 
 were of still humbler position. The State of 
 Xew Hampshire, small as its population was 
 at that time, banished seventy-six by name 
 and confiscated twenty-eight estates. Xew 
 York attainted and confiscated the property 
 of fifty-nine persons by name, three of whom 
 were women whose chief offence lay in the 
 attractiveness of their estates. Pennsylvania 
 summoned sixty-two persons to surrender 
 themselves for trial for treason, and on their 
 failing to appear they were pronounced 
 attainted, and thirty-six estates were confis- 
 cated. In Delaware the property of forty-six 
 refugees was confiscated. In Xorth Carolina, 
 sixty-five estates were confiscated. In South 
 Carolina, for the offence of attachment to 
 the royal cause in different degrees of of- 
 fensiveness, two hundred and fifteen persons 
 were either fined twelve per cent, of their 
 entire property, or deprived of it wholly, 
 or banished from the country. 19 In Ehode 
 Island, death and confiscation of estate were 
 the punishments provided by law for any 
 person who communicated with the ministry 
 or their agents, afforded supplies to their 
 forces, or piloted the armed ships of the 
 king ; and certain persons were pronounced 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 189 
 
 by name enemies to liberty, and their pro- 
 perty forfeited in consequence. In Connecti- 
 cut, where the loyalists were very numerous 
 but inclined to be quiet if they were let 
 alone, these offences only involved loss of 
 estate and of liberty for a term not exceed- 
 ing three years ; but to speak, write, or act 
 against the doings of Congress or the As- 
 sembly of Connecticut was punishable by 
 disqualification from office, imprisonment, 
 and the disarming the offender. The estates 
 of those who sought the royal fleets or land 
 forces for shelter might, by law, be seized 
 and confiscated. In her treatment of loyal- 
 ists Connecticut showed the same shrewd 
 sense that had characterized the proceedings 
 of that republic from its earliest days ; and 
 the result was seen in the fact that the 
 loyalists, instead of being alienated, became 
 after the war was over some of her best and 
 most patriotic citizens. William Samuel 
 Johnson, who during part of the war, at 
 least, was under surveillance as a suspected 
 Tory, but v who when the war was over was 
 one of Connecticut's delegates to the Consti- 
 tutional Convention of 1787, and Seabury, 
 the author of the clever and exasperating 
 " A W. Farmer " letters, who had been 
 pulled through the mud by Sons of Liberty 
 
190 ESS ATS I2f AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 at New Haven, were none the less loyal 
 citizens of the commonwealth and of the 
 nation, and none the less respected by men 
 who had differed from them, because they 
 had been loyal to their convictions of duty. 
 In Massachusetts, the feeling was much more 
 bitter, and, in addition to the special act 
 already mentioned, any person suspected of 
 enmity to the Whig cause might be arrested 
 under a magistrate's warrant and banished, 
 unless he would swear fealty to the friends 
 of liberty ; and the selectmen of towns could 
 prefer in town meeting charges of political 
 treachery and the individual thus accused, if 
 convicted by a jury, could be sent into the 
 enemy's jurisdiction. By a second special 
 act the property of twenty-nine persons, 
 "notorious conspirators," was confiscated; 
 of these, fifteen had been ' ' mandamus " coun- 
 cillors ; two, governors of the province ; one, 
 lieutenant-governor ; one, treasurer ; one, 
 secretary ; one, attorney-general ; one, chief- 
 justice ; and four, commissioners of customs. 
 The State of Virginia, though passing no 
 special acts, passed a resolution that persons 
 of a given description should be deemed and 
 treated as aliens, and that their property 
 should be sold and the proceeds go into 
 the public treasury for future disposal. In 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 191 
 
 New York, the county commissioners were 
 authorized to apprehend and decide upon the 
 guilt of such inhabitants as were supposed to 
 hold correspondence with the enemy or who 
 had committed some other specified acts, and 
 might punish those whom they adjudged to 
 be guilty with imprisonment for three months 
 or banishment for seven years. Persons 
 opposed to liberty and independence were 
 prohibited from the practice of law in the 
 courts ; and any parent whose sons went off 
 and adhered to the enemy was subject to a 
 tax of ninepence in the pound value of such 
 parent's estate for each and every such son. 
 
 The Congress naturally left such matters 
 largely to the individual states, but neverthe- 
 less passed a resolution subjecting to martial 
 law and death all who should furnish pro- 
 visions, etc., to the British army in New 
 Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, and re- 
 solved that all loyalists taken in arms should 
 be sent to the states to which they belonged, 
 there to be dealt with as traitors. 20 
 
 In regard to this subject of legal attainder 
 and exile, Mr. Sabine remarks very moder- 
 ately and sensibly : " Nor is it believed that 
 either the banishment, or the confiscation 
 laws, as they stood, were more expedient 
 than just. The latter did little towards 
 
192 ESSAYS LPT AMERICAN BISTORT. 
 
 relieving the public necessities, and served 
 only to create a disposition for rapacity, and 
 to increase the wealth of favored individuals. 
 Had the estates, which were seized and sold, 
 been judiciously or honestly managed, a 
 considerable sum would have found its way 
 to the treasury ; but, as it was, the amount 
 was inconsiderable, some of the wisest and 
 purest Whigs of the time hung their heads 
 in shame, because of the passage of measures 
 so unjustifiable, and never ceased to speak 
 of them in terms of severe reprobation. Mr. 
 Jay's disgust was unconquerable, and he 
 never would purchase any property that had 
 been forfeited under the Confiscation Act of 
 Xew York." 21 
 
 Curwen, a Salem loyalist who was allowed 
 to return after the war, writes in terms 
 that, though exaggerated, yet describe the 
 result upon public morals of the confisca- 
 tions : 
 
 "So infamously knavish has been the con- 
 duct of the commissioners, that though 
 frequent attempts have been made to bring 
 them to justice, and respond for the produce 
 of the funds resting in their hands, so 
 numerous are the defaulters in that august 
 body, the General Court, that all efforts have 
 hitherto proved in vain. Not twopence in 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 193 
 
 the pound have arrived to the public treasury 
 of all the confiscations." B 
 
 It only now remains to notice the treatment 
 the unfortunate loyalists received from their 
 friends in England and the manner in which 
 the British government — for which they had 
 sacrificed home, friends, and property, and 
 had embraced exile, contempt, and penury — 
 threw them upon the tender mercies of their 
 opponents in the treaty of peace. This sur- 
 render of their interests by Lord Shelburne 
 called out, in both Houses of the Parliament, 
 expressions of sympathetic indignation ; but 
 the sympathy never took any material shape. 
 Sheridan, in the House of Commons, exe- 
 crated the treatment of these unfortunate 
 men, " who, without the least notice taken 
 of their civil and religious rights, were 
 handed over as subjects to a power that 
 would not fail to take vengeance on them for 
 their zeal and attachment to the religion and 
 government of the 'mother country.'" In 
 the House of Lords, Lord Loughborough 
 said, r' that neither in ancient nor modern 
 history had there been so shameful a deser- 
 tion of men who had sacrificed all to their 
 duty and to their reliance upon British faith. " \ 
 
 To such charges Lord Shelburne could only * 
 reply by a feeble appeal to the mercy of his 
 13 
 
194 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 condemners : " I have but one answer to give 
 the House ; it is the answer I give my own 
 bleeding heart. A part must be wounded 
 that the whole of the empire may not 
 perish. If better terms could be had, think 
 you, my lords, that I would not have em- 
 braced them ? I had but the alternative 
 either to accept the terms proposed or con- 
 tinue the war." ffl 
 
 Lord Shelburne's statement was correct. 
 He had entered upon the negotiations for 
 peace full of sympathy for the loyalists and 
 resolved to make their cause the cause of 
 England ; but when, to his attempts to ob- 
 tain for them the restoration of their property 
 and the abolition of penal laws, was opposed 
 a steady non possumus, his enthusiasm for 
 his persecuted fellow-countrymen waned ; 
 and when at last it was plainly suggested to 
 him that a year's prolongation of the war 
 would cost more than all the loyalists' prop- 
 erty put together, he consented to accept 
 the assurance, the futility and emptiness of 
 which was evident upon the face of it, that 
 " Congress shall earnestly recommend " to 
 the several states to repeal the laws of at- 
 tainder and confiscation which had been 
 passed against the Tories and their property. 
 One of the American negotiators brusquely 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 195 
 
 remarked that it was better and more proper 
 that the loyalists should be compensated by 
 their friends than by their enemies. This 
 desertion of their interests almost broke the 
 hearts of some of the best and most public- 
 spirited of the loyalists, who had given up 
 everything for the cause of their country, 
 and now saw themselves consigned to poverty 
 in their old age, or at the best to supplicat- 
 ing aid of the British government and being 
 exposed to all " the insolence of office and the 
 scorns that patient merit of the unworthy 
 takes." 24 
 
 It took a long time to adjust the claims 
 and to distribute the bounty which was doled 
 out by unwilling officials. It was 1783 when 
 the war closed, but not until 1790 was the 
 indemnity paid out to the claimants; and 
 then England forced her unfortunate pen- 
 sioners, made paupers by their trust in her, 
 to accept about £3,300,000 for losses reck- 
 oned at over £8, 000, 000. It is estimated that 
 over a thousand claimants had in the mean 
 time perished in want and penury. Those 
 were on the whole more fortunate, as events 
 proved, who had braved it out in America 
 than were those who had trusted to the 
 gratitude of England. 25 
 
 What was the loss of America was the 
 
196 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTOBT. 
 
 gain, to her nearest neighbors, the coast pro- 
 vinces of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. 
 As early as 1775 the exodus from Boston to 
 Halifax had begun ; and when Howe evacu- 
 ated the city, a large number of loyalists 
 took refuge with the fleet and army, 
 and leaving all behind came to Halifax 
 to seek their fortunes under another sky. 
 From that time on, throughout the war, 
 Halifax was the haven of refuge for perse- 
 cuted loyalists. 26 At the evacuation of New 
 York and Savannah no fewer than 30,000 
 persons left the United States for Nova 
 Scotia. Halifax was so crowded that houses 
 could not be had at any price, and provisions 
 were held at famine prices. 27 From north- 
 ern New York and Vermont the loyalists 
 crossed over into Upper Canada and laid the 
 foundation of that prosperous province under 
 the vigorous government of Governor Simcoe, 
 who during the war had commanded a 
 regiment of loyalist rangers which had 
 done efficient service. 28 With many a suffer- 
 ing, many a privation, these exiles for con- 
 science' sake toiled to make homes for them- 
 selves in the wilderness, and it is to them 
 that the development of those provinces is 
 due. Familiar New England names meet 
 one at every turn in these provinces, 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 197 
 
 especially in Nova Scotia. Dr. Inglis of 
 Trinity Church, New York, was the first 
 bishop, and Judge Sewall of Massachusetts, 
 the first chief justice there. The harshness 
 of the laws and the greed of the new common- 
 wealths thus drove into exile men who could 
 be ill spared, and whose absence showed itself 
 in the lack of balance and of political steadi- 
 ness that characterized the early history of 
 the Republic. This, moreover, perpetuated a 
 traditional dislike, grudge, and suspicion 
 between the people of the United States and 
 their nearest neighbors, men of the same 
 blood and the same speech ; while the new- 
 founded colonies, composed almost exclu- 
 sively of conservatives, were naturally slow, 
 if sure, in their developement. 
 
 This dislike and suspicion is now fortunate- 
 ly diminishing with the lapse of years, but 
 it was a great pity it ever was created. The 
 men who were willing to give up home, 
 friends, and property for an idea, are not 
 men to be despised or laughed at, as was the 
 fashion of the generation which roared with 
 delight over the coarse buffooneries of Trum- 
 bull's McFingal. They are rather men for us to 
 claim with pride, and to honor as Americans, 
 Americans who were true to their convictions 
 of duty, confessors for their political faith. 
 
198 ESSAYS IX AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 Sabine relates the following conversation : 
 " ' Why did you come here, when you and 
 your associates were almost certain to endure 
 the sufferings and absolute want of shelter 
 and food which you have now narrated ? ' 
 asked an American gentleman of one of the 
 first settlers of St. John, New Brunswick, a 
 man whose life .... was without a stain. 
 ' Why did we come here ? ' replied he, with 
 emotion that brought tears; — 'for our loy- 
 alty; think you that our principles were not 
 as dear to us as were yours to you ? ' " 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 199 
 
 NOTES. 
 
 1 Franklin's Memoirs (London, 1818, p. 201), (Sparks, p. 
 176). "In 1754, war with France being again appre- 
 hended, a congress of commissioners from the different 
 colonies was by an order of the lords of trade to be as- 
 sembled in Albany ; there to confer with the chiefs of 
 the six nations, concerning the means of defending both 
 their country and ours. 
 
 We met the other commissioners at Albany about the 
 middle of June. In our way thither I projected and 
 drew up a plan for the union of all the colonies under 
 one government, so far as might be necessary for de- 
 fence, and other important general purposes. As we 
 passed through New York, I had there shown my project 
 to Mr. James Alexander and Mr. Kennedy, two gentle- 
 men of great knowledge in pnbllc affairs, and being 
 fortified by their approbation, I ventured to lay it before 
 the congress. It then appeared that several of the com- 
 missioners had formed plans of the same kind. A pre- 
 vious question was first taken, whether a union should 
 be established, which passed in the affirmative, unani- 
 mously. A committee was then appointed, one member 
 from each colony, to consider the several plans and re- 
 port. Mine happened to be preferred, and with a few 
 amendments was accordingly reported. By this plan the 
 general government was to be administered by a Presi- 
 dent General appointed and supported by the Crown ; 
 and a grand Council to be chosen by the representatives 
 of the people of the several colonies met in their respec- 
 
■200 EH SAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 tive assemblies. The debates upon it in congress went 
 on daily hand in hand with the Indian business. Many 
 objections and difficulties were started, but at length they 
 were all overcome, and the plan was unanimously agreed 
 to, and copies ordered to be transmitted to the board of 
 trade and to the assemblies of the several provinces. Its 
 fate was singular : the assemblies did not adopt it, as 
 they all thought there was too much prerogative in it ; 
 and in England it was judged to have too much of the 
 democratic. The different and contrary reasons of dis- 
 like to my plan make me suspect that it was really the 
 true medium : and I am still of opinion it would have 
 been happy for both sides if it had been adopted. The 
 colonies so united would have been sufficiently strong to 
 have defended themselves : there would then have been 
 no need of troops from England ; of course the subsequent 
 pretext for taxing America, and the bloody contest it 
 occasioned, would have been avoided." 
 
 The plan proposed may be found in Franklin's Works 
 (Sparks, i. 36), (London, 1833, v. 299) ; X Y. Col. Doc., vL 
 889. The proceedings of the Congress iniV. Y. Col. Doc., 
 vi. 853, other accounts of the Congress by members ; 
 Hutchinson, Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 19-25 ; William Smith, 
 History of New York, ii. 180 ; Stephen Hopkins, A true 
 representation of the plan formed at Albany (in 1754) for 
 uniting all the British northern Colonies, in order to 
 their common safety and defence (R. I. Historical 
 Tracts, No. 9). For an excellent brief statement of the 
 attempts at consolidation and plans suggested for that 
 purpose, see Winsor, Narrative and Critical History of 
 the O. S., v. 611. 
 
 * The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in 
 Foreign Parts was founded in 1701 . A previous organiza- 
 tion bearing a similar name had been founded during the 
 period of the Commonwealth, especially for work among 
 the aborigines in New England, and it is to this associa- 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 201 
 
 tion that we owe that most interesting of missionary- 
 relics, Eliot's Indian Bible. Great interest was taken in 
 this by the celebrated Robert Boyle, and scholarships were 
 endowed by Sir Leoline Jenkyns in Jesus College, Oxford, 
 one condition of which was that the beneficiary should 
 devote his life after taking his degree to missionary work 
 in the plantations. The reports of Commissary Bray, 
 who had been sent out to Maryland, of the spiritual des- 
 titution of the American colonies and of the difficulties 
 under which the ministers of the Church of England 
 labored, led to the organization and incorporation of the 
 Society, which has been from that day to this an active 
 agency in the spread of religion and knowledge in the 
 colonies of Great Britain. Humphreys, Historical Ac- 
 count of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. 
 Hawkins, Missions of the Church of England. 
 
 z For a full account of this most interesting revolution, 
 see E. Edwards Beardsley, D. D., The History of the 
 Church, in Connecticut. See also Life and Correspond- 
 ence of Samuel Johnson, D. D. , and Yale College and the 
 Church (History of the American Episcopal Church, vol. 
 i. 561). Humphreys, Historical Account, 339. 
 
 4 Franklin's Memoirs, vol. i. pp. 318, 220. An amusing 
 instance of the prevailing ignorance in regard to Amer- 
 ican affairs even among its friends is given by Benjamin 
 Vaughan in a note in Franklin's Memoirs, vol. v. p. 320. 
 "To guard against the incursions of the Indians a plan 
 was sent over to America (and, as I think, by authority) 
 suggesting the expediency of clearing away the woods 
 and bushes from a tract of land,. a mile in breadth, and 
 extending along the back of the colonies." It is said 
 that this plan was the contribution of Dean Tucker 
 towards the solution of the Indian problem of the day. 
 
 5 Jones, Hist. New York, ii. 291, 559. Political Maga- 
 zine, Apr., 1780. Hutchinson, History Mass. Bay, in. 86- 
 88,. 166 note, 254, 293. Hutchinson's Diary, i. 65. For 
 
202 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 reasons assigned by Hutchinson for the patriotism of 
 John Adams, Hist. iii. 297. 
 
 'North American Review, lix. p. 270 (Sabine). "It 
 may be asked, why, when the oppressions of the mother 
 country were so very flagrant and apparent, there was 
 not greater unanimity than appears to have existed ; and 
 why a party, so large in numbers, which in so many 
 colonies included persons so respectable, and hitherto so 
 universally esteemed, was seemingly, or in fact, averse 
 to breaking away from British dominion. These ques- 
 tions have been put to loyalists themselves. They have 
 answered, that, upon the original formation of parties, 
 they were generally regarded as the common organiza- 
 tions of the ins and outs ; the one striving to retain, and 
 the other to gain, patronage and place ; and that the 
 mass in taking sides with or against the royal governors, 
 were stimulated by the hopes which politicians have 
 always been able to excite in their followers." 
 
 1 Moore's Diary of the American Revolution, i. 37-52, 
 138. Massachutensis, Letters I., III., IV. Hutchinson, 
 History of Mass. Bay, iii. passim. A W. Farmer, The 
 Congress Canvassed, p. 8. The name Tory was given 
 first in 1763, as a title of reproach to officers of the 
 crown and such as were for keeping up their authority. 
 Hist. Mass. Bay, iii. 103. 
 
 8 Adams's Works, ii. 362. 
 
 9 For the manner in which the temperate remonstrance 
 of the loyal colony of New York was treated, see Parlia- 
 mentary Register, vol. i. 467-478. 
 
 10 A specimen from a comparatively moderate article 
 upon the loyalists may serve to substantiate the state- 
 ment of the text (No. Am. Rev., lxv. p. 142) : "The 
 meanest, most dastardly, and most cruel scenes and deeds 
 of the Revolution were enacted as the proper fruits of a 
 civil war by a large majority of the Tories, who remained 
 at home, and who, as regulars, as volunteers, in gangs, 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 203 
 
 or as individual outlaws, were the instigators of nearly 
 every foul and atrocious act in the whole strife. It ia 
 from these, the majority of the whole number, that the 
 name of Tory has received its hateful associations, which 
 will cling to it to the end of time. A class that includes 
 an Arnold and a Butler can never hope for complete re- 
 demption, at least so long as Judas remains in ' his own 
 place.' " 
 
 One is glad to appeal from this intemperate and exag- 
 gerated language to the essay upon the loyalists by Dr. 
 George E. Ellis, in Winsor's Narrative and Critical His- 
 tory, vol. vii. It would be as undesirable as it is unneces- 
 sary to supply, as could readily be done, instances of gross 
 cruelty and barbarity inflicted by the Whigs upon the 
 unfortunate loyalists " who remained at home." The 
 Correspondence of Lord Cornwallis gives a most painful 
 picture of the condition of things in the South (Corr. , i. 
 73), and the letters of Count Fersen, who cannot be sus- 
 pected of prejudice, reveal the hardly less savage condi- 
 tion of affairs in the North. He says, for example, of 
 Rhode Island (Letters, i. 40, 41) : 
 
 ' ' C'est un pays qui sera fort heureux s'il jouit d'une 
 paix longue, et si les deux partis qui le divisent a present 
 ne lui font subir le sort de la Pologne et de tant d'autres 
 republiques. Ces deux partes sont appeles les Whigs et 
 les Torys. Le premier est entierement pour la liberte et 
 l'independance ; il est compose de gens de la plus basse 
 extraction qui ne possedent point de biens ; la plupart 
 des habitants de la compagne en sont. Les Torys sont 
 pour les Anglais, ou, pour mieux dire, pour la paix, sans 
 trop se soucier d'etre libres ou dependants ; ce sont les 
 gens d'une classe plus distinguee, les seuls qui eussent des 
 biens dans le pays. Lorsque les Whigs sont les plus forts, 
 ils pillent les autres tant qu'ils peuvent." 
 
 "Simcoe, Lt.-Col. J. G., A History of the Operations 
 of a Partisan Corps called the Queen's Bangers, com- 
 
204 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 manded by Lt.-Col. J. G. Simcoe, during the war of the 
 American Revolution. New York : Bartlett and Welf ord, 
 1884, 8vo, pp. 328. 
 
 " The Americans made several attempts to make use 
 of the Tnflia.TiB : Montgomery used them in his Canadian 
 expedition ; they were in the New England army which 
 laid siege to Boston ; in April, 1776, Washington wrote to 
 Congress urging their employment in the army, and 
 reported on July 13th that, without special authority, he 
 had directed General Schuyler to engage the Six Nations 
 on the best terms he and his colleagues could procure ; 
 and again, submitting the propriety of engaging the 
 Eastern Indians. John Adams thought " we need not 
 be so delicate as to refuse iiie assistance of Indians, 
 provided we cannot keep them neutral." A treaty was 
 exchanged with the Eastern Indians on July 17, 1776, 
 whereby they agreed to furnish six hundred Indians for 
 a regiment which was to be officered by the whites. As 
 a result of this, the Massachusetts Council subsequently 
 reported that seven Penobscot Indians, all that could be 
 procured, were enlisted in October for one year ; and in 
 November Major Shaw reported with a few Indians who 
 had enlisted in the Continental service. Winsor, Narr. 
 and Crit. Hist., vol. vi. 656, 657. The following brief 
 entry in a diary will show that even among the patriot 
 forces savage customs sometimes found place : " On 
 Monday the 30th sent out a party for some dead Indians. 
 Toward morning found them, and skinned two of them 
 from their hips down for boot legs : one pair for the 
 major, the other for myself." Proceedings N. J. Hist. 
 Soc, ii. p. 31. 
 
 13 North American Review, lix. 264 (Sabine). "The 
 opponents of the Revolution were powerful in all the 
 thirteen colonies ; in some of them they were nearly 
 if not quite equal in number to its friends the Whigs. 
 On the departure of Hutchinson he was addressed by 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 205 
 
 upwards of two hundred merchants, lawyers and other 
 citizens of Boston, Salem and Marblehead. On arrival 
 of Gage, forty-eight from Salem presented their dutiful 
 respects ; on his retirement he received the ' Loyal address 
 from gentlemen and principal inhabitants of Boston ' to 
 the number of ninety-seven, and eighteen country 
 gentlemen and official personages who had taken refuge 
 
 in Boston." 
 
 ' ' The division of parties in Connecticut, Rhode Island 
 and New Hampshire was much the same as in Massa- 
 chusetts. New York was the loyalists' stronghold, and 
 contained more of them than any colony in America. 
 While proof to sustain this assertion can be adduced to 
 almost any extent, we shall cite but a single though 
 conclusive fact ; namely, that soon after the close of the 
 war the Assembly of that State passed a bill prohibiting 
 adherents of the crown from holding office, which was 
 objected to and returned by the Council of Revision, 
 who, among other reasons for their course, stated, that 
 if it were suffered to become a law, there would be 
 difficulty, and in some places an impossibility, of finding 
 men of different political sympathies, even to conduct 
 the elections. In some of the southern colonies, the 
 loyalists were almost as numerous as in New York. In 
 the Carolinas it may be hard to determine which party 
 had the majority ; and it will be found that there were 
 occasions when the royal generals obtained twelve or 
 fifteen hundred recruits among the inhabitants, merely 
 by issuing a proclamation or call upon them to stand 
 by their allegiance to "the best of sovereigns. . . . Few 
 of the Carolinians would enlist under the American 
 banner ; but after the capitulation (of Charlestown) they 
 flocked to the royal standard by hundreds." See also 
 Sabine's Loyalists, Introductory Sketch ; Ryerson, Loyal- 
 ists of America, ii. 57, 124. For remarks on the war, as 
 a civil war, see Ramsay, Hist. U. S., ii. 467-9. 
 
206 ESSAYS IJf AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 14 Sabine, i. 65. 
 
 15 A W. Farmer, The Congress Canvassed, pp. 17-19, 
 exhibits the manner in which delegates to Congress 
 were chosen in New York. "The New York City com- 
 mittee (a self-appointed body) applied to the supervisors 
 in the several counties to call the people together and to 
 choose committees, which committees were to meet in 
 one grand committee ; and this grand committee of 
 committees were to choose the delegates for the county 
 or to declare their approbation of the New York delegates, 
 and if any county did not meet and choose their com- 
 mittee it was to be taken for granted that they acquiesced 
 in the New York choice." Again as to delegates chosen 
 by the Assemblies : " The Assembly has no legal right 
 to act by itself and claim to represent the people in so 
 doing. The people are not bound by any act of their 
 representatives till it hath received the approbation of 
 the other branches of the legislature. Delegates so 
 appointed are, at best, bat delegates of delegates, but 
 representatives of representatives. When therefore the 
 delegates at Philadelphia, in the preamble to their Bill 
 of Rights, and in their letter to his Excellency General 
 Gage, stiled their body ' a full and free representation 
 of ... all the Colonies from Nova Scotia to Georgia,' 
 they were guilty of a piece of impudence which was 
 never equalled since the world began, and never will be 
 exceeded while it shall continue." Again : " No pro- 
 vincial legislature (even if complete) can give them such 
 powers as were lately exercised at Philadelphia. The 
 legislative authority of the province cannot extend 
 further than the province extends. None of its acts 
 are binding one inch beyond its limits. How then can 
 it give authority to a few persons, to make rules 
 and laws for the whole continent ? . . . . Before such a 
 mode of legislation can take place, the constitution of our 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 207 
 
 colonies must be subverted and their present independ- 
 ency on one another must he annihilated." 
 
 The logic of the loyalist writers is unanswerable, and 
 their legal reasoning is usually correct and precise ; the 
 fallacy of their position was that they were in face of a 
 revolution. Elements had been introduced into the 
 struggle which, like the presence of an infinite quantity 
 in an equation, vitiated the reasoning, however correct 
 the process may have been. The author argues, for 
 example : " To talk of subjection to the King of Great 
 Britain, while we disclaim submission to the Parliament 
 of Great Britain, is idle and ridiculous. It is a distinc- 
 tion made by the American Republicans to serve their 
 own rebellious purposes, a gilding with which they have 
 enclosed the pill of sedition, to entice the unwary colo- 
 nists to swallow it the more readily down. The King of 
 Great Britain was placed on the throne by virtue of an 
 Act of Parliament : And he is king of America, by virtue 
 of being king of Great Britain. He is therefore king of 
 America by Act of Parliament. And if we disclaim that 
 authority which made him our king, we, in fact, reject 
 him from being our king, for we disclaim that authority 
 by which he is king at all." It may be noticed that the 
 fundamental Whig doctrine of the supremacy of Parlia- 
 ment, which is here so strongly urged, was never under- 
 stood or appreciated by those who called themselves 
 "Whigs in America. 
 
 16 Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence, i. pp. 263, 265 
 11 Clinton-Cornwallis Correspondence, ii. pp. 308, 309. 
 
 18 Jones, Thomas, History of New York, i. 362-3, 172- 
 176. 
 
 19 Christian Examiner, viii. pp. 127, 128 (Dabney). 
 Curwen, Journal, 475, 479. 
 
 80 Sabine, North American Review, lix. pp. 287, 288. 
 Loyalists, i. 71-81. Ryerson, Loyalists of America, ii. 
 130, 136. 
 
208 ESSAYS IN AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 n No. Am. Rev., lis. p. 289. 
 
 w The Journal and Letters of the late Samuel Ourwen, 
 New York and Boston, 1842, p. 147. 
 
 8 * Parliamentary History, vol. xxiii. 411, 412, 430, 481. 
 The following extracts may be added to those given in 
 the text ; Mr. Burke said : " Better to have left the whole 
 to future negotiation, and to have been totally silent upon 
 the subject in the treaty, than to have consented to have 
 set our hands to a gross libel on the national character, 
 and in our flagitious article plunged the dagger into the 
 hearts of the loyalists, and manifested our own impo- 
 tency, ingratitude and disgrace " (p. 468). In the same 
 debate Mr. Lee said : "Europe, Asia, Africa and Amer- 
 ica beheld the dismembership and diminution of the 
 British Empire. But this, alarming and calamitous as it 
 was, was nothing when put in competition with another 
 of the crimes of the present peace, the cession of men 
 into the hands of their enemies, and delivering over to 
 confiscation, tyranny, resentment and oppression the un- 
 happy men who trusted to our fair promises and deceit- 
 ful words. This was the great ground of his objection : 
 and he called it a disgraceful, wicked and treacherous 
 peace ; inadequate to its object, and such as no man 
 could vote to be honorable without delivering his char- 
 acter over to damnation for ever " (p. 492). 
 
 M Ryerson, ii. 64. Curwen's Journal, 367. Jones, 
 History of X. Y. , ii. The bitterness of the mortification, 
 and resentment at the treatment they had received from 
 the hands of their friends, is well exhibited in Judge 
 Jones's remarkable work, which, however trustworthy or 
 the reverse it may be in other respects, may be followed 
 implicitly as an exhibition of loyalist feeling towards the 
 mother country. 
 
 ,s Jones, ii. 645-654 "Wilniot, Historical View of the 
 Commission for Enquiry into the Losses, etc., London, 
 1815. Ryerson, ii. 159-182. Diary and Letters of 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 209 
 
 Thomas Hutchinson, ii. 435-437. Sabine, i. 86-90. In 
 March, 1784, the number of persons who had preferred 
 their petitions was 2,063, and the alleged losses £7,046,278, 
 besides outstanding debts in America amounting to 
 £2,354,135. "In 1788 Mr. Pitt submitted a plan for 
 classifying the claimants, and of classifying and appor- 
 tioning the nature and amount of consolation to be 
 allotted to each ; and to those whose losses had been 
 caused principally by the deprivation of official or pro- 
 fessional incomes, he proposed a system of pensions. 
 By the 5th of April, this year (1790), the Commissioners 
 in England had heard and determined 1,680 claims, and 
 had liquidated the same at the sum of £1,887,548. It 
 appeared, finally, that the number of applicants from 
 England, and from the Canadian provinces, attained to 
 the aggregate of 5,072, of which 954 either withdrew their 
 applications or failed to press them, and the sum of the 
 losses is stated to have been £8,026,045. Another return 
 is made out by Mr. J. E. Wilmot, one of the Commis- 
 sioners, wherein the amount of the claim is given as 
 £10,358,413, and the amount of the claims allowed at 
 £3,033,091. The subject was again raised in Parliament 
 in 1821, but though there was much sympathy expressed 
 for the sufferings of those who had trusted to their 
 country to recompense their fidelity, the sympathy ex- 
 hausted itself in words." See also Lecky, England in the 
 Eighteenth Century, iv. 268. Curwen, 367, 368. 
 
 26 Ryerson, ii. 127. No. Am. Rev., lix. 279. Hawkins, 
 Missions of the Church of England, 249. The Frontier 
 Missionary, or Life of the Rev. Jacob Bailey, by "W. S. 
 Bartlett, New York, 1853 (Collections of the Protestant 
 Episcopal Historical Society, vol. ii.). This work gives a 
 pathetic account of the hardships and privations under- 
 gone by the exiles in Nova Scotia, as well as a graphic 
 picture of the methods used by the town committees in 
 
210 ESSAYS Hi AMERICAN HISTORY. 
 
 New England with those who adhered to the cause of 
 the king. 
 
 M Hawkins, Missions, 371-3. Ryerson, ii. 206. Mass. 
 Hist. Soc. Proceedings, Oct., 1886, p. 95. For the treat- 
 ment of the loyalists in the United States after the treaty 
 of peace, see especially Jones, Hist. New York, vol. ii. 
 Roberts, Hist, of New York, ii. 449 ff. Lecky (Hist. Eng- 
 land in the Eighteenth Century, iv. 367) remarks rather 
 sharply : ' ' The loyalists to a great extent sprung from and 
 represented the old gentry of the country. The pros- 
 pect of seizing their property had been one great motive 
 which induced many to enter the war. The owners of 
 the confiscated property now grasped the helm. New 
 men exercised the social influence of the old families, 
 and they naturally dreaded the restoration of those whom 
 they had displaced." 
 
 88 Vide supra, Note 11. 
 
 M No. Am. Rev., lix. 262 (Sabine). Lecky "s tribute to 
 the loyalists may be added : " There were brave and 
 honest men in America who were proud of the great and 
 free empire to which they belonged, who had no desire 
 to shrink from the burden of maintaining it, who re- 
 membered with gratitude the English blood that had 
 been shed around Quebec and Montreal, and who, with 
 nothing to hope for from the crown, were prepared to 
 face the most brutal mob violence and the invectives of 
 a scurrilous press, to risk their fortunes, their reputations, 
 and sometimes even their lives, in order to avert civil 
 war and ultimate separation. Most of them ended 
 their days in poverty and exile, and as the supporters of 
 a beaten cause history has paid but a scanty tribute to 
 their memory, but they comprised some of the best and 
 ablest men America has ever produced, and they were 
 contending for an ideal which was at least as worthy 
 as that for which Washington fought. The maintenance 
 of one free, industrial and pacific empire, comprising 
 
THE LOYALISTS. 211 
 
 the whole English race, may have been a dream, but it 
 was at least a noble one." History of England in the 
 Eighteenth Century, iii. 418. For historical notices of 
 the loyalists in Canada, the following are also useful : 
 Settlement of Upper Canada (1872), by William Canniff ; 
 Toronto of Old (1873), by Dr. H. Scadding ; Centennial of 
 the Settlement of Upper Canada by the United Empire 
 Loyalists, 1784-1884 ; The Celebrations at Adolphustown, 
 Toronto, and Niagara, Toronto, 1885. 
 
 THE END.