of the The first effect of this step was to reveal rather than to create disunion in the colony. Two brothers, John Expulsion and Samuel Browne, members of the Council, Brownes.1 and highly esteemed by the leading men of the Company, were dissatisfied with the ministers for not using the Book of Common Prayer and for neglecting the ceremonies of the Church of England. Accordingly, they drew together a congregation of those who thought with them, and read the service from the Prayer Book. For this they were summoned before the Governor and Council. The Brownes then charged the ministers with being Separatists, and foretold that they would become Anabaptists. After some further dispute Endicott told them that New England was no fit place. for such as they were, and sent them home. They demanded compensation from the Company, and the matter was referred to a committee, containing amongst its members four nominated by the Brownes themselves. Beyond that point we have no account of the dispute. The feature of the case least to the credit of the Company is an entry in the records to the effect that certain letters, written by the Brownes to their friends in England, were to be detained and read, and might be used against their authors if occasion offered. But the substantial justice of a measure is a different matter from the propriety of each detail. On the face of it, no doubt, there is something repulsive in the spectacle of those who had just been suffering from persecution becoming, at least in outward appearance, persecutors in turn. The later history of New England will furnish examples of ecclesiastical tyranny which leave no room 1 Endicott's dealings with the Brownes are told by Morton (p. 100). Bradford does not mention it, nor does it appear whence Morton derives his account. We have also various entries in the records, and a letter from the Assistants in England to the ministers on the subject. It is clear from this letter that the Assistants rather feared the indiscreet zeal of those in the colony. 1629 BANISHMENT OF THE BROWNES. 129 If for extenuation. But the banishment of the Brownes differed widely in detail if not in principle from the persecution of the Antinomians and the Quakers. Again, expulsion from an old-established society and exclusion from a newly-formed one are two widely different things. In the latter case the penalty to the individual is far less, the need of the community for protection far greater. Endicott and his council might reasonably plead that the colony was a partnership formed for special objects, and that it would be folly to suffer men among them who were avowedly hostile to those objects. there were a fault, it lay not so much in the expulsion of the Brownes as in the somewhat jesuitical policy which up to that time had disguised the intentions of the Company. If the colony was to become what its promoters intended, unity, not merely of religious belief, but of ritual and of ecclesiastical discipline, was, at least for the present, a needful condition of existence. We must not condemn the banishment of the Brownes unless we are prepared to say that it would have been better for the world if the Puritan colony of Massachusetts had never existed. This measure showed that Massachusetts was to be an exclusively Puritan settlement. The next step Transfer of to Amer. was a declaration that it was to be as far as the charter possible an independent commonwealth. On ica.1 the twenty-eighth of July Cradock laid before the Assistants a proposal for transferring the government of the plantation to those in America, instead of keeping it subordinate to the Company in England. No vote was then taken, but the members present were instructed to consider the matter privately and secretly,' and to report their views in writing at the next meeting. Before that meeting twelve of the more influential members bound themselves by a written agreement to emigrate with their families if the transfer The whole of these proceedings are recorded in the Archives. of the government could be effected. On the twentyninth of August the question was formally proposed and the measure carried. At first it was intended that this change should only apply to the government of the colony, and not to the commercial management of the Company. As expressed in the minutes of the Company, 'the government of persons was to be held there, the government of trade and merchandises to be here.' The relations, in fact, between the two bodies were to be like those subsisting between the Virginia Company and the local legislature. But the example of Virginia was not encouraging, and the men who were about to settle in Massachusetts aimed at an amount of independence which they could never enjoy unless they were set wholly free from the control of a corporation in England. The matter was somewhat complicated by the fact that the Company was in debt to the amount of three thousand pounds, two-thirds of which debt was caused by unpaid subscriptions. Although this may have made the details of arrangement more difficult, yet in one way it furthered matters. The speculation looked so unpromising that it was easy to arrange a compromise with those partners who regarded the undertaking solely or chiefly as one of business. Two committees were appointed, one to represent the interests of the shareholders, the other those of the planters who were going out. The encumbered state of the Company made it necessary, in modern commercial language, to propose a fresh issue of stock to the original shareholders. They, however, refused this proposal. Finally it was arranged that the stock and liabilities of the Company should be transferred to ten persons. In consideration of their incurring this risk they were to enjoy a partial monopoly of the fur trade, an entire monopoly of salt-making, of the shipping of emigrants and goods, This agreement is published by Mr. Young, M. C., 279. 1629 JOHN WINTHROP. 131 and of supplying the public magazines at fixed rates. The valuation made for this transfer showed that the present stock of the Company was only worth one-third of the sum subscribed. In compensation for this loss an additional portion of land was allotted to each shareholder, together with the right of investing a further sum for trade, such trade to be carried on for seven years under the control of the ten partners, and then to revert to the shareholders. Nothing seems to have come of this. The practical result of the transfer was to extinguish the old Company and to substitute a private firm of ten partners, all directly interested in the political and social future of the colony. Of their commercial doings we hear nothing, and there can be little doubt that these were subordinated to the general well-being of the settlement. John appointed The change of design necessarily brought with it a change of officials. It was needful that the more important offices of the Company should be filled Winthrop by men who intended to emigrate. Cradock Governor. accordingly resigned. His place was filled by John Winthrop. He was now in his forty-third year; a Suffolk landholder, the representative of one of those houses of which so many rose during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries from burgess rank to a place among the country gentry. He was himself a member of the Inner Temple, and had held a small legal office. We may well believe that even those who knew him can have scarcely discerned the promise of a future career of greatness as a statesman. For his was one of those characters, essentially English, in which the seventeenth century was above all fruitful, men whom a careful discharge of small duties has trained for higher tasks, who when those tasks come accept them with no unworthy shrinking or self-abasement, with the dignity and consciousness of strength, but who, till that hour comes, care little what the world thinks of their powers. In such men there is no impatience nor haste, no craving for the rewards or the excitement of the conflict, but a steadfast waiting for some clear call of duty. They may seem slothful to those who do not know the inner secret of their strength; they might be fatalists if it were not for their resolute purpose and creative power. Such were the men whom Puritanism found waiting their summons. A living coal from the altar of Calvin touched their lips. The English squire and trader was transformed into a statesman who could baffle princes in council, a soldier who could overthow them on the battle-field. The training and temper of such men fitted them to take all that was best in their new creed. The gloom of Calvinistic theology, the atrocity of its logical conclusions, went for nothing with men who were indifferent to abstract speculation. They did not need to be transformed by the moral discipline of Puritanism; it was enough if they were imbued and inspired with higher aims. The culture of the Renaissance, its art hovering on the verge of frivolity, its humanism ever passing into sensuality, formed no part of their lives. The Englishman of the Elizabethan age did not turn his back on the world of art, but it had no real hold on his spirit. At most it was but the fringe of his life and did not enter into the substance of it. His very pastimes, like those of Englishmen in all ages of healthy national vigour, had in them an element of discipline and self-restraint. His recreations were found in those solemn and divine harmonies of music' which Milton deemed a needful part of manly training, or in those field-sports in which the strength, endurance, and intelligence of man were still matched against the craft of wild beasts. If he gave up these pleasures at the bidding of religion, he did so, not so much in the spirit of the self-mortifying ascetic, as of the man who puts away childish things. Some |