Whether his scheme was as comprehensive as that of Pontiac in 1763, whether or not it amounted to a deliberate combination of all red men within reach to exterminate the white men, one can hardly say with confidence. The figure of Philip, in the war which bears his name, does not stand out so prominently as the figure of Pontiac in the later struggle. This may be partly because Pontiac's story has been told by such a magician as Mr. Francis Parkman. But it is partly because the data are too meagre. In all probability, however, the schemes of Sassacus the Pequot, of Philip the Wampanoag, and of Pontiac the Ottawa, were substantially the same. That Philip plotted with the Narragansetts seems certain, and the early events of the war point clearly to a previous understanding with the Nipmucks. The Mohegans, on the other hand, gave him no assistance, but remained faithful to their white allies.

For thirteen years had Philip been chief sachem of his tribe before the crisis came. Rumours of his unfriendly disposition had at intervals found their way to the ears of the magistrates at Plymouth, but Philip had succeeded in setting himself right before them. In 1670 the rumours were renewed, and the Plymouth men felt that it was time to strike, but the other colonies held them back, and a meeting was arranged between Philip and three Boston men at Taunton in April, 1671. There the crafty savage expressed humility and contrition for all past offences, and even consented to a treaty in which he promised that his tribe should surrender all their fire-arms. On the part of the English this was an extremely unwise measure, for while it could not possibly be enforced, and while it must have greatly increased the irritation of the Indians, it was at the same time interpretable as a symptom of fear. With ominous scowls and grunts some seventy muskets were given up, but this was all. Through the summer there was much uneasiness, and in September Philip was summoned to Plymouth with five of his under-sachems, and solemnly warned to keep the peace. The savages again behaved with humility and agreed to pay a yearly tribute of five wolves' heads and to do no act of war without express permission.

For three years things seemed quiet, until late in 1674 the alarm was again sounded. Sausamon, a convert from the Massachusetts tribe, had studied a little at Harvard College, and could speak and write English with facility. He had at one time been employed by Philip as a sort of private secretary or messenger, and at other times had preached and taught school among the Indian converts at Natick. Sausamon now came to Plymouth and informed Governor Winslow that Philip was certainly engaged in a conspiracy that boded no good to the English. Somehow or other Philip contrived to find out what Sausamon had said, and presently coming to Plymouth loudly asseverated his innocence; but the magistrates warned him that if they heard any more of this sort of thing his arms would surely be seized. A few days after Philip had gone home, Sausamon's hat and gun were seen lying on the frozen surface of Assowamsett Pond, near Middleborough, and on cutting through the ice his body was found with unmistakable marks of beating and strangling. After some months the crime was traced to three Wampanoags, who were forthwith arrested, tried by a mixed jury of Indians and white men, found guilty, and put to death. On the way to the gallows one of them confessed that he had stood by while his two friends had pounded and choked the unfortunate Sausamon. [Sidenote: Murder of Sausamon]

More alarming reports now came from Swanzey, a pretty village of some forty houses not far from Philip's headquarters at Mount Hope. On Sunday June 20, while everybody was at church, a party of Indians had stolen into the town and set fire to two houses. Messengers were hurried from Plymouth and from Boston, to demand the culprits under penalty of instant war. As they approached Swanzey the men from Boston saw a sight that filled them with horror. The road was strewn with corpses of men, women, and children, scorched, dismembered, and mangled with that devilish art of which the American Indian is the most finished master. The savages had sacked the village the day before, burning the houses and slaying the people. Within three days a small force of colonial troops had driven Philip from his position at Mount Hope; but while they were doing this a party of savages swooped upon Dartmouth, burning thirty houses and committing fearful atrocities. Some of their victims were flayed alive, or impaled on sharp stakes, or roasted over slow fires. Similar horrors were wrought at Middleborough and Taunton; and now the misery spread to Massachusetts, where on the 14th of July the town of Mendon was attacked by a party of Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Massacres at Swanzey and Dartmouth, June, 1675]

At that time the beautiful highlands between Lancaster and the Connecticut river were still an untrodden wilderness. On their southern slope Worcester and Brookfield were tiny hamlets of a dozen houses each. Up the Connecticut valley a line of little villages, from Springfield to Northfield, formed the remotest frontier of the English, and their exposed position offered tempting opportunities to the Indians. Governor Leverett saw how great the danger would be if the other tribes should follow the example set by Philip, and Captain Edward Hutchinson was accordingly sent to Brookfield to negotiate with the Nipmucks. This officer was eldest son of the unfortunate lady whose preaching in Boston nearly forty years before had been the occasion of so much strife. Not only his mother, but all save one or two of his brothers and sisters —and there were not less than twelve of them—had been murdered by Indians on the New Netherland border in 1643; now the same cruel fate overtook the gallant captain. The savages agreed to hold a parley and appointed a time and place for the purpose, but instead of keeping tryst they lay in ambush and slew Hutchinson with eight of his men on their way to the conference. [Sidenote: Murder of Captain Hutchinson]

Three days afterward Philip, who had found home too hot for him, arrived in the Nipmuck country, and on the night of August 2, took part in a fierce assault on Brookfield. Thirty or forty men, with some fifty women and children—all the inhabitants of the hamlet—took refuge in a large house, where they were besieged by 300 savages whose bullets pierced the wooden walls again and again. Arrows tipped with burning rags were shot into the air in such wise as to fall upon the roof, but they who crouched in the garret were watchful and well supplied with water, while from the overhanging windows the volleys of musketry were so brisk and steady that the screaming savages below could not get near enough to the house to set it on fire. For three days the fight was kept up, while every other house in the village was destroyed. By this time the Indians had contrived to mount some planks on barrels so as to make a kind of rude cart which they loaded with tow and chips. They were just about setting it on fire and preparing to push it against the house with long poles, when they were suddenly foiled by a heavy shower. That noon the gallant Simon Willard, ancestor of two presidents of Harvard College, a man who had done so much toward building up Concord and Lancaster that he was known as the "founder of towns," was on his way from Lancaster to Groton at the head of forty-seven horsemen, when he was overtaken by a courier with the news from Brookfield. The distance was thirty miles, the road scarcely fit to be called a bridle-path, and Willard's years were more than threescore-and-ten; but by an hour after sunset he had gallopped into Brookfield and routed the Indians who fled to a swamp ten miles distant. [Sidenote: Attack on Brookfield]

The scene is now shifted to the Connecticut valley, where on the 25th of August Captain Lothrop defeated the savages at Hatfield. On the 1st of September simultaneous attacks were made upon Deerfield and Hadley, and among the traditions of the latter place is one of the most interesting of the stories of that early time. The inhabitants were all in church keeping a fast, when the yells of the Indians resounded. Seizing their guns, the men rushed out to meet the foe; but seeing the village green swarming on every side with the horrid savages, for a moment their courage gave way and a panic was imminent; when all at once a stranger of reverend aspect and stately form, with white beard flowing on his bosom, appeared among them and took command with an air of authority which none could gainsay. He bade them charge on the screeching rabble, and after a short sharp skirmish the tawny foe was put to flight. When the pursuers came together again, after the excitement of the rout, their deliverer was not to be found. In their wonder, as they knew not whence he came or whither he had gone, many were heard to say that an angel had been sent from heaven for their deliverance. It was the regicide William Goffe, who from his hiding-place had seen the savages stealing down the hillside, and sallied forth to win yet one more victory over the hosts of Midian ere death should come to claim him in his woodland retreat. Sir Walter Scott has put this pretty story into the mouth of Major Bridgenorth in "Peveril of the Peak," and Cooper has made use of it in "The Wept of Wish-ton-wish." Like many other romantic stories, it rests upon insufficient authority and its truth has been called in question. [32] But there seems to be nothing intrinsically improbable in the tradition; and a paramount regard for Goffe's personal safety would quite account for the studied silence of contemporary writers like Hubbard and Increase Mather. [Sidenote: The mysterious stranger of Hadley]

This repulse did not check for a moment the activity of the Indians, though for a long time we hear nothing more of Philip. On the 2d of September they slew eight men at Northfield and on the 4th they surrounded and butchered Captain Beers and most of his company of thirty-six marching to the relief of that village. The next day but one, as Major Robert Treat came up the road with his 100 Connecticut soldiers, they found long poles planted by the wayside bearing the heads of their unfortunate comrades. They in turn were assaulted, but beat off the enemy, and brought away the people of Northfield. That village was abandoned, and presently Deerfield shared its fate and the people were crowded into Hadley. Yet worse remained to be seen. A large quantity of wheat had been left partly threshed at Deerfield, and on the 11th of September eighteen wagons were sent up with teamsters and farmers to finish the threshing and bring in the grain. They were escorted by Captain Lothrop, with his train-band of ninety picked men, known as the "Flower of Essex," perhaps the best drilled company in the colony. The threshing was done, the wagons were loaded, and the party made a night march southward. At seven in the morning, as they were fording a shallow stream in the shade of overarching woods, they were suddenly overwhelmed by the deadly fire of 700 ambushed Nipmucks, and only eight of them escaped to tell the tale. A "black and fatal" day was this, says the chronicler, "the saddest that ever befell New England." To this day the memory of the slaughter at Bloody Brook survives, and the visitor to South Deerfield may read the inscription over the grave in which Major Treat's men next day buried all the victims together. The Indians now began to feel their power, and on the 5th of October they attacked Springfield and burned thirty houses there. [Sidenote: Ambuscade at Bloody Brook, September 12]

Things were becoming desperate. For ten weeks, from September 9 to November 19, the Federal Commissioners were in session daily in Boston. The most eminent of their number, for ability and character, was the younger John Winthrop, who was still governor of Connecticut. Plymouth was represented by its governor, Josiah Winslow, with the younger William Bradford; Massachusetts by William Stoughton, Simon Bradstreet, and Thomas Danforth. These strong men were confronted with a difficult problem. From Batten's journal, kept during that disastrous summer, we learn the state of feeling of excitement in Boston. The Puritans had by no means got rid of that sense of corporate responsibility which civilized man has inherited from prehistoric ages, and which has been one of the principal causes of religious persecution. This sombre feeling has prompted men to believe that to spare the heretic is to bring down the wrath of God upon the whole community; and now in Boston many people stoutly maintained that God had let loose the savages, with firebrand and tomahawk, to punish the people of New England for ceasing to persecute "false worshippers and especially idolatrous Quakers." Quaker meetings were accordingly forbidden under penalty of fine and imprisonment. Some harmless Indians were murdered. At Marblehead two were assaulted and killed by a crowd of women. There was a bitter feeling toward the Christian Indians, many of whom had joined their heathen kinsmen in burning and slaying. Daniel Gookin, superintendent of the "praying Indians," a gentleman of the highest character, was told that it would not be safe to show himself in the streets of Boston. Mrs. Mary Pray, of Providence, wrote a letter recommending the total extermination of the red men.

The measures adopted by the Commissioners certainly went far toward carrying out Mrs. Pray's suggestion. The demeanour of the Narragansetts had become very threatening, and their capacity for mischief exceeded that of all the other tribes together. In July the Commissioners had made a treaty with them, but in October it became known in Boston that they were harbouring some of Philip's hostile Indians. When the Commissioners sharply called them to account for this, their sachem Canonchet, son of Miantonomo, promised to surrender the fugitives within ten days. But the ten days passed and nothing was heard from the Narragansetts. The victory of their brethren at Bloody Brook had worked upon their minds, so that they no longer thought it worth while to keep faith with the white men. They had overcome their timidity and were now ready to take part in the work of massacre. [33] The Commissioners soon learned of their warlike preparations and lost no time in forestalling them. The Narragansetts were fairly warned that if they did not at once fulfil their promises they must expect the utmost severities of war. A thousand men were enlisted for this service and put under command of Governor Winslow, and in December they marched against the enemy. The redoubtable fighter and lively chronicler Benjamin Church accompanied the expedition.

The Indians had fortified themselves on a piece of rising ground, six acres in extent, in the middle of a hideous swamp impassable at most seasons but now in some places frozen hard enough to afford a precarious footing. They were surrounded by rows of tall palisades which formed a wall twelve feet in thickness; and the only approach to the single door of this stronghold was over the trunk of a felled tree some two feet in diameter and slippery with snow and ice. A stout block-house filled with sharpshooters guarded this rude bridge, which was raised some five feet from the ground. Within the palisaded fortress perhaps not less than 2000 warriors, with many women and children, awaited the onset of the white men, for here had Canonchet gathered together nearly the whole of his available force. This was a military mistake. It was cooping up his men for slaughter. They would have been much safer if scattered about in the wilderness, and could have given the English much more trouble. But readily as they acknowledged the power of the white man, they did not yet understand it. One man's courage is not another's, and the Indian knew little or nothing of that Gothic fury of self-abandonment which rushes straight ahead and snatches victory from the jaws of death. His fortress was a strong one, and it was no longer, as in the time of the Pequots, a strife in which firearms were pitted against bow and arrow. Many of the Narragansetts were equipped with muskets and skilled in their use, and under such circumstances victory for the English was not to be lightly won. [Sidenote: Expedition against the Narragansetts]

On the night of December 18 their little army slept in an open field at Pettyquamscott without other blanket than a "moist fleece of snow." Thence to the Indian fortress, situated in what is now South Kingston, the march was eighteen miles. The morrow was a Sunday, but Winslow deemed it imprudent to wait, as food had wellnigh given out. Getting up at five o'clock, they toiled through deep snow till they came within sight of the Narragansett stronghold early in the afternoon. First came the 527 men from Massachusetts, led by Major Appleton, of Ipswich, and next the 158 from Plymouth, under Major Bradford; while Major Robert Treat, with the 300 from Connecticut, brought up the rear. There were 985 men in all. As the Massachusetts men rushed upon the slippery bridge a deadly volley from the blockhouse slew six of their captains, while of the rank and file there were many killed or wounded. Nothing daunted they pressed on with great spirit till they forced their way into the enclosure, but then the head of their column, overcome by sheer weight of numbers in the hand-to-hand fight, was pushed and tumbled out into the swamp. Meanwhile some of the Connecticut men had discovered a path across the partly frozen swamp leading to a weak spot in the rear, where the palisades were thin and few, as undue reliance had been placed upon the steep bank crowned with a thick rampart of bushes that had been reinforced with clods of turf. In this direction Treat swept along with his men in a spirited charge. Before they had reached the spot a heavy fire began mowing them down, but with a furious rush they came up, and climbing on each other's shoulders, some fought their way over the rampart, while others hacked sturdily with axes till such a breach was made that all might enter. This was effected just as the Massachusetts men had recovered themselves and crossed the treacherous log in a second charge that was successful and soon brought the entire English force within the enclosure. In the slaughter which filled the rest of that Sunday afternoon till the sun went down behind a dull gray cloud, the grim and wrathful Puritan, as he swung his heavy cutlass, thought of Saul and Agag, and spared not. The Lord had delivered up to him the heathen as stubble to his sword. As usual the number of the slain is variously estimated. Of the Indians probably not less than 1000 perished. Some hundreds, however, with Canonchet their leader, saved themselves in flight, well screened by the blinding snow-flakes that began to fall just after sunset. Within the fortified area had been stored the greater part of the Indians' winter supply of corn, and the loss of this food was a further deadly blow. Captain Church advised sparing the wigwams and using them for shelter, but Winslow seems to have doubted the ability of his men to maintain themselves in a position so remote from all support. The wigwams with their tubs of corn were burned, and a retreat was ordered. Through snowdrifts that deepened every moment the weary soldiers dragged themselves along until two hours after midnight, when they reached the tiny village of Wickford. Nearly one-fourth of their number had been killed or wounded, and many of the latter perished before shelter was reached. Forty of these were buried at Wickford in the course of the next three days. Of the Connecticut men eighty were left upon the swamp and in the breach at the rear of the stronghold. Among the spoils which the victors brought away were a number of good muskets that had been captured by the Nipmucks in their assault upon Deerfield. [Sidenote: Storming of the great swamp fortress, December 19]

This headlong overthrow of the Narragansett power completely changed the face of things. The question was no longer whether the red men could possibly succeed in making New England too hot for the white men, but simply how long it would take for the white men to exterminate the red men. The shiftless Indian was abandoning his squalid agriculture and subsisting on the pillage of English farms; but the resources of the colonies, though severely taxed, were by no means exhausted. The dusky warriors slaughtered in the great swamp fight could not be replaced; but, as Roger Williams told the Indians, there were still ten thousand white men who could carry muskets, and should all these be slain, he added, with a touch of hyperbole, the Great Father in England could send ten thousand more. For the moment Williams seems to have cherished a hope that his great influence with the savages might induce them to submit to terms of peace while there was yet a remnant to be saved; but they were now as little inclined to parley as tigers brought to bay, nor was the temper of the colonists a whit less deadly, though it did not vent itself in inflicting torture or in merely wanton orgies of cruelty. [Sidenote: Effect of the blow]

To the modern these scenes of carnage are painful to contemplate. In the wholesale destruction of the Pequots, and to a less degree in that of the Narragansetts, the death-dealing power of the white man stands forth so terrible and relentless that our sympathy is for a moment called out for his victim. The feeling of tenderness toward the weak, almost unknown among savages, is one of the finest products of civilization. Where murderous emotions are frequently excited, it cannot thrive. Such advance in humanity as we have made within recent times is chiefly due to the fact that the horrors of war are seldom brought home to everybody's door. Either war is conducted on some remote frontier, or if armies march through a densely peopled country the conditions of modern warfare have made it essential to their efficiency as military instruments that depredation and riot should be as far as possible checked. Murder and pillage are comparatively infrequent, massacre is seldom heard of, and torture is almost or quite as extinct as cannibalism. The mass of citizens escape physical suffering, the angry emotions are so directed upon impersonal objects as to acquire a strong ethical value, and the intervals of strife may find individual soldiers of hostile armies exchanging kindly services. Members of a complex industrial society, without direct experience of warfare save in this mitigated form, have their characters wrought upon in a way that is distinctively modern, as they become more and more disinclined to violence and cruelty. European historians have noticed, with words of praise, the freedom from bloodthirstiness which characterizes the American people. Mr. Lecky has more than once remarked upon this humane temperament which is so characteristic of our peaceful civilization, and which sometimes, indeed, shows the defects of its excellence and tends to weaken society by making it difficult to inflict due punishment upon the vilest criminals. In respect of this humanity the American of the nineteenth century has without doubt improved very considerably upon his forefathers of the seventeenth. The England of Cromwell and Milton was not, indeed, a land of hard-hearted people as compared with their contemporaries. The long experience of internal peace since the War of the Roses had not been without its effect; and while the Tudor and Stuart periods had atrocities enough, we need only remember what was going on at the same time in France and Germany in order to realize how much worse it might have been. In England, as elsewhere, however, it was, when looked at with our eyes, a rough and brutal time. It was a day of dungeons, whipping-posts, and thumbscrews, when slight offenders were maimed and bruised and great offenders cut into pieces by sentence of court. The pioneers of New England had grown up familiar with such things; and among the townspeople of Boston and Hartford in 1675 were still many who in youth had listened to the awful news from Magdeburg or turned pale over the horrors in Piedmont upon which Milton invoked the wrath of Heaven. [Sidenote: Growth of humane sentiment in recent times]

When civilized men are removed from the safeguards of civilization and placed in the wilderness amid the hideous dangers that beset human existence in a savage state of society, whatever barbarism lies latent in them is likely to find many opportunities for showing itself. The feelings that stir the meekest of men, as he stands among the smouldering embers of his homestead and gazes upon the mangled bodies of wife and children, are feelings that he shares with the most bloodthirsty savage, and the primary effect of his higher intelligence and greater sensitiveness is only to increase their bitterness. The neighbour who hears the dreadful story is quick to feel likewise, for the same thing may happen to him, and there is nothing so pitiless as fear. With the Puritan such gloomy and savage passions seemed to find justification in the sacred text from which he drew his rules of life. To suppose that one part of the Bible could be less authoritative than another would have been to him an incomprehensible heresy; and bound between the same covers that included the Sermon on the Mount were tales of wholesale massacre perpetrated by God's command. Evidently the red men were not stray children of Israel, after all, but rather Philistines, Canaanites, heathen, sons of Belial, firebrands of hell, demons whom it was no more than right to sweep from the face of the earth. Writing in this spirit, the chroniclers of the time were completely callous in their accounts of suffering and ruin inflicted upon Indians, and, as has elsewhere been known to happen, those who did not risk their own persons were more truculent in tone than the professional fighters. Of the narrators of the war, perhaps the fairest toward the Indian is the doughty Captain Church, while none is more bitter and cynical than the Ipswich pastor William Hubbard. [Sidenote: Warfare with savages likely to be truculent in character]

While the overthrow of the Narragansetts changed the face of things, it was far from putting an end to the war. It showed that when the white man could find his enemy he could deal crushing blows, but the Indian was not always so easy to find. Before the end of January Winslow's little army was partially disbanded for want of food, and its three contingents fell back upon Stonington, Boston, and Plymouth. Early in February the Federal Commissioners called for a new levy of 600 men to assemble at Brookfield, for the Nipmucks were beginning to renew their incursions, and after an interval of six months the figure of Philip again appears for a moment upon the scene. What he had been doing, or where he had been, since the Brookfield fight in August, was never known. When in February, 1676, he re-appeared it was still in company with his allies the Nipmucks, in their bloody assault upon Lancaster. On the 10th of that month at sunrise the Indians came swarming into the lovely village. Danger had already been apprehended, the pastor, Joseph Rowlandson, the only Harvard graduate of 1652, had gone to Boston to solicit aid, and Captain Wadsworth's company was slowly making its way over the difficult roads from Marlborough, but the Indians were beforehand. Several houses were at once surrounded and set on fire, and men, women, and children began falling under the tomahawk. The minister's house was large and strongly built, and more than forty people found shelter there until at length it took fire and they were driven out by the flames. Only one escaped, a dozen or more were slain, and the rest, chiefly women and children, taken captive. The Indians aimed at plunder as well as destruction; for they were in sore need of food and blankets, as well as of powder and ball. Presently, as they saw Wadsworth's armed men approaching, they took to flight and got away, with many prisoners and a goodly store of provisions. [Sidenote: Attack upon Lancaster, February 10, 1676]

Among the captives was Mary Rowlandson, the minister's wife, who afterward wrote the story of her sad experiences. The treatment of the prisoners varied with the caprice or the cupidity of the captors. Those for whom a substantial ransom might be expected fared comparatively well; to others death came as a welcome relief. One poor woman with a child in her arms was too weak to endure the arduous tramp over the icy hillsides, and begged to be left behind, till presently the savages lost their patience. They built a fire, and after a kind of demon dance killed mother and child with a club and threw the bodies into the flames. Such treatment may seem exceptionally merciful, but those modern observers who best know the Indian's habits say that he seldom indulges in torture except when he has abundance of leisure and a mind quite undisturbed. He is an epicure in human agony and likes to enjoy it in long slow sips. It is for the end of the march that the accumulation of horrors is reserved; the victims by the way are usually despatched quickly; and in the case of Mrs. Rowlandson's captors their irregular and circuitous march indicates that they were on the alert. Their movements seem to have covered much of the ground between Wachusett mountain and the Connecticut river. They knew that the white squaw of the great medicine man of an English village was worth a heavy ransom, and so they treated Mrs. Rowlandson unusually well. She had been captured when escaping from the burning house, carrying in her arms her little six-year-old daughter. She was stopped by a bullet that grazed her side and struck the child. The Indian who seized them placed the little girl upon a horse, and as the dreary march began she kept moaning "I shall die, mamma." "I went on foot after it," says the mother, "with sorrow that cannot be expressed. At length I took it off the horse, and carried it in my arms till my strength failed me, and I fell down with it .... After this it quickly began to snow, and when night came on they stopped. And now down I must sit in the snow, by a little fire, and a few boughs behind me, with my sick child in my lap, and calling much for water, being now, through the wound, fallen into a violent fever .... Oh, may I see the wonderful power of God that my spirit did not utterly sink under my affliction; still the Lord upheld me with his gracious and merciful spirit." The little girl soon died. For three months the weary and heartbroken mother was led about the country by these loathsome savages, of whose habits and manners she gives a vivid description. At first their omnivorousness astonished her. "Skunks and rattlesnakes, yea the very bark of trees" they esteemed as delicacies. "They would pick up old bones and cut them in pieces at the joints, ... then boil them and drink up the liquor, and then beat the great ends of them in a mortar and so eat them." After some weeks of starvation Mrs. Rowlandson herself was fain to partake of such viands. One day, having made a cap for one of Philip's boys, she was invited to dine with the great sachem. "I went," she says, "and he gave me a pancake about as big as two fingers. It was made of parched wheat, beaten, and fried in bear's grease; but I thought I never tasted pleasanter meat in my life." Early in May she was redeemed for 20 pounds, and went to find her husband in Boston, where the Old South Church society hired a house for them. [Sidenote: Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative]

Such was the experience of a captive whose treatment was, according to Indian notions, hospitable. There were few who came off so well. Almost every week while she was led hither and thither by the savages. Mrs. Rowlandson heard ghastly tales of fire and slaughter. It was a busy winter and spring for these Nipmucks. Before February was over, their exploit at Lancaster was followed by a shocking massacre at Medfield. They sacked and destroyed the towns of Worcester, Marlborough, Mendon, and Groton, and even burned some houses in Weymouth, within a dozen miles of Boston. Murderous attacks were made upon Sudbury, Chelmsford, Springfield, Hatfield, Hadley, Northampton, Wrentham, Andover, Bridgewater, Scituate, and Middleborough. On the 18th of April Captain Wadsworth, with 70 men, was drawn into an ambush near Sudbury, surrounded by 500 Nipmucks, and killed with 50 of his men; six unfortunate captives were burned alive over slow fires. But Wadsworth's party made the enemy pay dearly for his victory; that afternoon 120 Nipmucks bit the dust. In such wise, by killing two or three for one, did the English wear out and annihilate their adversaries. Just one month from that day Captain Turner surprised and slaughtered 300 of these warriors near the falls of the Connecticut river which have since borne his name, and this blow at last broke the strength of the Nipmucks. [Sidenote: Virtual exterminations of the Indians, February—August, 1676]

Meanwhile the Narragansetts and Wampanoags had burned the towns of Warwick and Providence. After the wholesale ruin of the great "swamp fight," Canonchet had still some 600 or 700 warriors left, and with these, on the 26th of March, in the neighbourhood of Pawtuxet, he surprised a company of 50 Plymouth men under Captain Pierce and slew them all, but not until he had lost 140 of his best warriors. Ten days later Captain Denison, with his Connecticut company, defeated and captured Canonchet, and the proud son of Miantonomo met the same fate as his father. He was handed over to the Mohegans and tomahawked. The Narragansett sachem had shown such bravery that it seemed, says the chronicler Hubbard, as if "some old Roman ghost had possessed the body of this western pagan." But next moment this pious clergyman, as if ashamed of the classical eulogy just bestowed upon the hated redskin, alludes to him as a "damned wretch." [Sidenote: Death of Canonchet]

The fall of Canonchet marked the beginning of the end. In four sharp fights in the last week of June, Major Talcott, of Hartford, slew from 300 to 400 warriors, being nearly all that were left of the Narragansetts; and during the month of July Captain Church patrolled the country about Taunton, making prisoners of the Wampanoags. Once more King Philip, shorn of his prestige, comes upon the scene. We have seen that his agency in these cruel events had been at the outset a potent one. Whatever else it may have been, it was at least the agency of the match that explodes the powder-cask. Under the conditions of that savage society, organized leadership was not to be looked for. In the irregular and disorderly series of murdering raids Philip may have been often present, but except for Mrs. Rowlandson's narrative we should have known nothing of him since the Brookfield fight.

At length in July, 1676, having seen the last of his Nipmuck friends overwhelmed, the tattered chieftain showed himself near Bridgewater, with a handful of followers. In these his own hunting-grounds some of his former friends had become disaffected. The daring and diplomatic Church had made his way into the wigwam of Ashawonks, the squaw sachem of Saconet, near Little Compton, and having first convinced her that a flask of brandy might be tasted without fatal results, followed up his advantage and persuaded her to make an alliance with the English. Many Indians came in and voluntarily surrendered themselves, in order to obtain favourable terms, and some lent their aid in destroying their old sachem. Defeated at Taunton, the son of Massasoit was hunted by Church to his ancient lair at Bristol Neck and there besieged. His only escape was over the narrow isthmus of which the pursuers now took possession, and in this dire extremity one of Philip's men presumed to advise his chief that the hour for surrender had come. For his unwelcome counsel the sachem forthwith lifted his tomahawk and struck him dead at his feet. Then the brother of the slain man crept away through the bushes to Church's little camp, and offered to guide the white men to the morass where Philip lay concealed. At daybreak of August 12 the English stealthily advancing beat up their prey. The savages in sudden panic rushed from under cover, and as the sachem showed himself running at the top of his speed, a ball from an Indian musket pierced his heart, and "he fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him." His severed head was sent to Plymouth, where it was mounted on a pole and exposed aloft upon the village green, while the meeting-house bell summoned the townspeople to a special service of thanksgiving. [Sidenote: Death of Philip, August 12]

It may be supposed that in such services at this time a Christian feeling of charity and forgiveness was not uppermost. Among the captives was a son of Philip, the little swarthy lad of nine years for whom Mrs. Rowlandson had made a cap, and the question as to what was to be done with him occasioned as much debate as if he had been a Jesse Pomeroy [34] or a Chicago anarchist. The opinions of the clergy were, of course, eagerly sought and freely vouchsafed. One minister somewhat doubtfully urged that "although a precept in Deuteronomy explicitly forbids killing the child for the father's sin," yet after all "the children of Saul and Achan perished with their parents, though too young to have shared their guilt." Thus curiously did this English reverence for precedent, with a sort of grim conscientiousness colouring its gloomy wrath, search for guidance among the ancient records of the children of Israel. Commenting upon the truculent suggestion, Increase Mather, soon to be president of Harvard, observed that, "though David had spared the infant Hadad, yet it might have been better for his people if he had been less merciful." These bloodthirsty counsels did not prevail, but the course that was adopted did not lack in harshness. Among the sachems a dozen leading spirits were hanged or shot, and hundreds of captives were shipped off to the West Indies to be sold into slavery; among these was Philip's little son. The rough soldier Church and the apostle Eliot were among the few who disapproved of this policy. Church feared it might goad such Indians as were still at large to acts of desperation. Eliot, in an earnest letter to the Federal Commissioners, observed: "To sell souls for money seemeth to me dangerous merchandise." But the plan of exporting the captives was adhered to. As slaves they were understood to be of little or no value, and sometimes for want of purchasers they were set ashore on strange coasts and abandoned. A few were even carried to one of the foulest of mediaeval slave-marts, Morocco, where their fate was doubtless wretched enough. [Sidenote: Indians sold into slavery]

In spite of Church's doubts as to the wisdom of this harsh treatment, it did not prevent the beaten and starving savages from surrendering themselves in considerable numbers. To some the Federal Commissioners offered amnesty, and the promise was faithfully fulfilled. Among those who laid down arms in reliance upon it were 140 Christian Indians, with their leader known as James the Printer, because he had been employed at Cambridge in setting up the type for Eliot's Bible. Quite early in the war it had been discovered that these converted savages still felt the ties of blood to be stronger than those of creed. At the attack on Mendon, only three weeks after the horrors at Swanzey that ushered in the war, it was known that Christian Indians had behaved themselves quite as cruelly as their unregenerate brethren. Afterwards they made such a record that the jokers and punsters of the day—for such there were, even among those sombre Puritans—in writing about the "Praying Indians," spelled praying with an e. The moral scruples of these savages, under the influence of their evangelical training, betrayed queer freaks. One of them, says Mrs. Rowlandson, would rather die than eat horseflesh, so narrow and scrupulous was his conscience, although it was as wide as the whole infernal abyss, when it came to torturing white Christians. The student of history may have observed similar inconsistencies in the theories and conduct of people more enlightened than these poor red men. "There was another Praying Indian," continues Mrs. Rowlandson, "who, when he had done all the mischief he could, betrayed his own father into the English's hands, thereby to purchase his own life; ... and there was another ... so wicked ... as to wear a string about his neck, strung with Christian fingers." [Sidenote: Conduct of the Christian Indians]

Such incidents help us to comprehend the exasperation of our forefathers in the days of King Philip. The month which witnessed his death saw also the end of the war in the southern parts of New England; but, almost before people had time to offer thanks for the victory, there came news of bloodshed on the northeastern frontier. The Tarratines in Maine had for some time been infected with the war fever. How far they may have been comprehended in the schemes of Philip and Canonchet, it would be hard to say. They had attacked settlers on the site of Brunswick as early as September, 1675. About the time of Philip's death, Major Waldron of Dover had entrapped a party of them by an unworthy stratagem, and after satisfying himself that they were accomplices in that chieftain's scheme, sent them to Boston to be sold into slavery. A terrible retribution was in store for Major Waldron thirteen years later. For the present the hideous strife, just ended in southern New England, was continued on the northeastern frontier, and there was scarcely a village between the Kennebec and the Piscataqua but was laid in ashes. [Sidenote: War with the Tarratines, 1676-78]

By midsummer of 1678 the Indians had been everywhere suppressed, and there was peace in the land. For three years, since Philip's massacre at Swanzey, there had been a reign of terror in New England. Within the boundaries of Connecticut, indeed, little or no damage had been inflicted, and the troops of that colony, not needed on their own soil, did noble service in the common cause.

In Massachusetts and Plymouth, on the other hand, the destruction of life and property had been simply frightful. Of ninety towns, twelve had been utterly destroyed, while more than forty others had been the scene of fire and slaughter. Out of this little society nearly a thousand staunch men, including not few of broad culture and strong promise, had lost their lives, while of the scores of fair women and poor little children that had perished under the ruthless tomahawk, one can hardly give an accurate account. Hardly a family throughout the land but was in mourning. The war-debt of Plymouth was reckoned to exceed the total amount of personal property in the colony; yet although it pinched every household for many a year, it was paid to the uttermost farthing; nor in this respect were Massachusetts and Connecticut at all behind-hand. [Sidenote: Destructiveness of the war]

But while King Philip's War wrought such fearful damage to the English, it was for the Indians themselves utter destruction. Most of the warriors were slain, and to the survivors, as we have seen, the conquerors showed but scant mercy. The Puritan, who conned his Bible so earnestly, had taken his hint from the wars of the Jews, and swept his New English Canaan with a broom that was pitiless and searching. Henceforth the red man figures no more in the history of New England, except as an ally of the French in bloody raids upon the frontier. In that capacity he does mischief enough for yet a half-century more, but from central and southern New England, as an element of disturbance or a power to be reckoned with, he disappears forever.



CHAPTER VI.

THE TYRANNY OF ANDROS.

The beginnings of New England were made in the full daylight of modern history. It was an age of town records, of registered deeds, of contemporary memoirs, of diplomatic correspondence, of controversial pamphlets, funeral sermons, political diatribes, specific instructions, official reports, and private letters. It was not a time in which mythical personages or incredible legends could flourish, and such things we do find in the history of New England. There was nevertheless a romantic side to this history, enough to envelop some of its characters and incidents in a glamour that may mislead the modern reader. This wholesale migration from the smiling fields of merry England to an unexplored wilderness beyond a thousand leagues of sea was of itself a most romantic and thrilling event, and when viewed in the light of its historic results it becomes clothed with sublimity. The men who undertook this work were not at all free from self-consciousness. They believed that they were doing a wonderful thing. They felt themselves to be instruments in accomplishing a kind of "manifest destiny." Their exodus was that of a chosen people who were at length to lay the everlasting foundations of God's kingdom upon earth. Such opinions, which took a strong colour from their assiduous study of the Old Testament, reacted and disposed them all the more to search its pages for illustrations and precedents, and to regard it as an oracle, almost as a talisman. In every propitious event they saw a special providence, an act of divine intervention to deliver them from the snares of an ever watchful Satan. This steadfast faith in an unseen ruler and guide was to them a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. It was of great moral value. It gave them clearness of purpose and concentration of strength, and contributed toward making them, like the children of Israel, a people of indestructible vitality and aggressive energy. At the same time, in the hands of the Puritan writers, this feeling was apt to warp their estimates of events and throw such a romantic haze about things as seriously to interfere with a true historical perspective. [Sidenote: Romantic features in the early history of New England]

Among such writings that which perhaps best epitomizes the Puritan philosophy is "The Wonder-working Providence of Zion's Saviour in New England," by Captain Edward Johnson, one of the principal founders of Woburn. It is an extremely valuable history of New England from 1628 to 1651, and every page is alive with the virile energy of that stirring time. With narrative, argument, and apologue, abounding in honesty of purpose, sublimity of trust, and grotesqueness of fancy, wherein touching tenderness is often alternated with sternness most grim and merciless, yet now and then relieved by a sudden gleam of humour,—and all in a style that is usually uncouth and harsh, but sometimes bursts forth in eloquence worthy of Bunyan,—we are told how the founders of New England are soldiers of Christ enlisted in a holy war, and how they must "march manfully on till all opposers of Christ's kingly power be abolished." "And as for you who are called to sound forth his silver trumpets, blow loud and shrill to this chiefest treble tune—for the armies of the great Jehovah are at hand." "He standeth not as an idle spectator beholding his people's ruth and their enemies' rage, but as an actor in all actions, to bring to naught the desires of the wicked, ... having also the ordering of every weapon in its first produce, guiding every shaft that flies, leading each bullet to his place of settling, and weapon to the wound it makes." To men engaged in such a crusade against the powers of evil, nothing could seem insignificant or trivial; for, as Johnson continues, in truly prophetic phrase, "the Lord Christ intends to achieve greater matters by this little handful than the world is aware of." [Sidenote: Edward Johnson]

The general sentiment of the early New England writers was like that of the "Wonder-working Providence," though it did not always find such rhapsodic expression. It has left its impress upon the minds of their children's children down to our own time, and has affected the opinions held about them by other people. It has had something to do with a certain tacit assumption of superiority on the part of New Englanders, upon which the men and women of other communities have been heard to comment in resentful and carping tones. There has probably never existed, in any age or at any spot on the earth's surface, a group of people that did not take for granted its own preeminent excellence. Upon some such assumption, as upon an incontrovertible axiom, all historical narratives, from the chronicles of a parish to the annals of an empire, alike proceed. But in New England it assumed a form especially apt to provoke challenge. One of its unintentional effects was the setting up of an unreal and impossible standard by which to judge the acts and motives of the Puritans of the seventeenth century. We come upon instances of harshness and cruelty, of narrow-minded bigotry, and superstitious frenzy; and feel, perhaps, a little surprised that these men had so much in common with their contemporaries. Hence the interminable discussion which has been called forth by the history of the Puritans, in which the conclusions of the writer have generally been determined by circumstances of birth or creed, or perhaps of reaction against creed. One critic points to the Boston of 1659 or the Salem of 1692 with such gleeful satisfaction as used to stir the heart of Thomas Paine when he alighted upon an inconsistency in some text of the Bible; while another, in the firm conviction that Puritans could do no wrong, plays fast and loose with arguments that might be made to justify the deeds of a Torquemada. [Sidenote: Acts of the Puritans often judged by a wrong standard]

From such methods of criticism it is the duty of historians as far as possible to free themselves. If we consider the Puritans in the light of their surroundings as Englishmen of the seventeenth century and inaugurators of a political movement that was gradually to change for the better the aspect of things all over the earth, we cannot fail to discern the value of that sacred enthusiasm which led them to regard themselves as chosen soldiers of Christ. It was the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence" that hurled the tyrant from his throne at Whitehall and prepared the way for the emancipation of modern Europe. No spirit less intense, no spirit nurtured in the contemplation of things terrestrial, could ever have done it. The political philosophy of a Vane or a Sidney could never have done it. The passion for liberty as felt by a Jefferson or an Adams, abstracted and generalized from the love of particular liberties, was something scarcely intelligible to the seventeenth century. The ideas of absolute freedom of thought and speech, which we breathe in from childhood, were to the men of that age strange and questionable. They groped and floundered among them, very much as modern wool growers in Ohio or iron-smelters in Pennsylvania flounder and grope among the elementary truths of political economy. But the spirit in which the Hebrew prophet rebuked and humbled an idolatrous king was a spirit they could comprehend. Such a spirit was sure to manifest itself in narrow cramping measures and in ugly acts of persecution; but it is none the less to the fortunate alliance of that fervid religious enthusiasm with the Englishman's love of self-government that our modern freedom owes its existence. [Sidenote: Spirit of the Wonder-working Providence]

The history of New England under Charles II. yields abundant proof that political liberty is no less indebted in the New World than in the Old to the spirit of the "Wonder-working Providence." The theocratic ideal which the Puritan sought to put into practice in Massachusetts and Connecticut was a sacred institution in faults of the defence of which all his faculties were kept perpetually alert. Much as he loved self-government he would never have been so swift to detect and so stubborn to resist every slightest encroachment on the part of the crown had not the loss of self-government involved the imminent danger that the ark of the Lord might be abandoned to the worshippers of Dagon. It was in Massachusetts, where the theocracy was strongest, that the resistance to Charles II. was most dogged and did most to prepare the way for the work of achieving political independence a century later. Naturally it was in Massachusetts at the same time that the faults of the theocracy were most conspicuous. It was there that priestly authority most clearly asserted itself in such oppressive acts as are always witnessed when too much power is left in the hands of men whose primary allegiance is to a kingdom not of this world. Much as we owe to the theocracy for warding off the encroachments of the crown, we cannot be sorry that it was itself crushed in the process. It was well that it did not survive its day of usefulness, and that the outcome of the struggle was what has been aptly termed "the emancipation of Massachusetts." [Sidenote: Merits and faults of the theocracy]

The basis of the theocratic constitution of this commonwealth was the provision by which the exercise of the franchise was made an incident of church-membership. Unless a man could take part in the Lord's Supper, as administered in the churches of the colony, he could not vote or hold office. Church and state, parish and town, were thus virtually identified. Here, as in some other aspects of early New England, one is reminded of the ancient Greek cities, where the freeman who could vote in the market-place or serve his turn as magistrate was the man qualified to perform sacrifices to the tutelar deities of the tribe; other men might dwell in the city but had no share in making or executing its laws. The limitation of civil rights by religious tests is indeed one of those common inheritances from the old Aryan world that we find again and again cropping out, even down to the exclusion of Catholics from the House of Commons from 1562 to 1829. The obvious purpose of this policy in England was self-protection; and in like manner the restriction of the suffrage in Massachusetts was designed to protect the colony against aggressive episcopacy and to maintain unimpaired the uniformity of purpose which had brought the settlers across the ocean. Under the circumstances there was something to be said in behalf of such a measure of self-protection, and the principle required but slight extension to cover such cases as the banishment of Roger Williams and the Antinomians. There was another side to the case, however. From the very outset this exclusive policy was in some ways a source of weakness to Massachusetts, though we have seen that the indirect effect was to diversify and enrich the political life of New England as a whole. [Sidenote: Restriction of the suffrage to church members]

At first it led to the departure of the men who founded Connecticut, and thereafter the way was certainly open for those who preferred the Connecticut policy to go where it prevailed. Some such segregation was no doubt effected, but it could not be complete and thorough. Men who preferred Boston without the franchise to Hartford with it would remain in Massachusetts; and thus the elder colony soon came to possess a discontented class of people, always ready to join hand in glove with dissenters or mischief-makers, or even with emissaries of the crown. It afforded a suggestive commentary upon all attempts to suppress human nature by depriving it of a share in political life; instead of keeping it inside where you can try conclusions with it fairly, you thrust it out to plot mischief in the dark. Within twenty years from the founding of Boston the disfranchisement of such citizens as could not participate in church-communion had begun to be regarded as a serious political grievance. These men were obliged to pay taxes and were liable to be called upon for military service against the Indians; and they naturally felt that they ought to have a voice in the management of public affairs. [Sidenote: It was a source of political discontent]

Besides this fundamental ground of complaint, there were derivative grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much power was rested in the discretion of the magistrate, and they clamoured for a code of laws; but as Winthrop says, the magistrates and ministers were "not very forward in this matter," for they preferred to supplement the common law of England by decisions based on the Old Testament rather than by a body of statutes. It was not until 1649, after a persistent struggle, that the deputies won a decisive victory over the assistants and secured for Massachusetts a definite code of laws. In the New Haven colony similar theocratic notions led the settlers to dispense with trial by jury because they could find no precedent for it in the laws of Moses. Here, as in Massachusetts, the inquisitorial administration of justice combined with partial disfranchisement to awaken discontent, and it was partly for this reason that New Haven fell so easily under the sway of Connecticut. [Sidenote: Inquisitorial administration of justice]

In Massachusetts after 1650 the opinion rapidly gained ground that all baptized persons of upright and decorous lives ought to be considered, for practical purposes, as members of the church, and therefore entitled to the exercise of political rights, even though unqualified for participation in the Lord's Supper. This theory of church-membership, based on what was at that time stigmatized as the "Halfway Covenant," aroused intense opposition. It was the great question of the day. In 1657 a council was held in Boston, which approved the principle of the Halfway Covenant; and as this decision was far from satisfying the churches, a synod of all the clergymen in Massachusetts was held five years later, to reconsider the great question. The decision of the synod substantially confirmed the decision of the council, but there were some dissenting voices. Foremost among the dissenters, who wished to retain the old theocratic regime in all its strictness, was Charles Chauncey, the president of Harvard College, and Increase Mather agreed with him at the time, though he afterward saw reason to change his opinion, and published two tracts in favour of the Halfway Covenant. Most bitter of all toward the new theory of church-membership was, naturally enough, Mr. Davenport of New Haven. [Sidenote: The "Halfway Covenant"]

This burning question was the source of angry contentions in the First Church of Boston. Its teacher, the learned and melancholy Norton, died in 1663, and four years later the aged pastor, John Wilson, followed him. In choosing a successor to Wilson the church decided to declare itself in opposition to the liberal decision of the synod, and in token thereof invited Davenport to come from New Haven to take charge of it. Davenport, who was then seventy years old, was disgusted at the recent annexation of his colony to Connecticut. He accepted the invitation and came to Boston, against the wishes of nearly half of the Boston congregation who did not like the illiberal principle which he represented. In little more than a year his ministry at Boston was ended by death; but the opposition to his call had already proceeded so far that a secession from the old church had become inevitable. In 1669 the advocates of the Halfway Covenant organized themselves into a new society under the title of the "Third Church in Boston." A wooden meeting-house was built on a lot which had once belonged to the late governor Winthrop, in what was then the south part of the town, so that the society and its meeting-house became known as the South Church; and after a new church founded in Summer Street in 1717 took the name of the New South, the church of 1669 came to be further distinguished as the Old South. As this church represented a liberal idea which was growing in favour with the people, it soon became the most flourishing church in America. After sixty years its numbers had increased so that the old meeting-house could not contain them; and in 1729 the famous building which still stands was erected on the same spot,—a building with a grander history than any other on the American continent, unless it be that other plain brick building in Philadelphia where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Federal Constitution framed. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669]

The wrath of the First Church at this secession from its ranks was deep and bitter, and for thirteen years it refused to entertain ecclesiastical intercourse with the South Church. But by 1682 it had become apparent that the king and his friends were meditating an attack upon the Puritan theocracy in New England. It had even been suggested, in the council for the colonies, that the Church of England should be established in Massachusetts, and that none but duly ordained Episcopal clergymen should be allowed to solemnize marriages. Such alarming suggestions began to impress the various Puritan churches with the importance of uniting their forces against the common enemy; and accordingly in 1682 the quarrel between the two Boston societies came to an end. There was urgent need of all the sympathy and good feeling that the community could muster, whereby to cheer itself in the crisis that was coming. The four years from 1684 to 1688 were the darkest years in the history of New England. Massachusetts, though not lacking in the spirit, had not the power to beard the tyrant as she did eighty years later. Her attitude toward the Stuarts—as we have seen—had been sometimes openly haughty and defiant, sometimes silent and sullen, but always independent. At the accession of Charles II. the colonists had thought it worth while to send commissioners to England to confer with the king and avoid a quarrel. Charles promised to respect their charter, but insisted that in return they must take an oath of allegiance to the crown, must administer justice in the king's name, and must repeal their laws restricting the right of suffrage to church members and prohibiting the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: Founding of the Old South Church, 1669] [Sidenote: Demands of Charles II.]

When the people of Massachusetts received this message they consented to administer justice in the king's name, but all the other matters were referred for consideration to a committee, and so they dropped out of sight. When the royal commissioners came to Boston in 1664, they were especially instructed to ascertain whether Massachusetts had complied with the king's demands; but upon this point the legislature stubbornly withheld any definite answer, while it frittered away the time in trivial altercations with the royal commissioners. The war with Holland and the turbulent state of English politics operated for several years in favour of this independent attitude of the colonists, though during all this time their enemies at court were busy with intrigues and accusations. Apart from mere slanders the real grounds of complaint were the restriction of the suffrage, whereby members of the Church of England were shut out; the claims of the eastern proprietors, heirs of Mason and Gorges, whose territory Massachusetts had absorbed; the infraction of the navigation laws; and the coinage of pine-tree shillings. The last named measure had been forced upon the colonists by the scarcity of a circulating medium. Until 1661 Indian wampum had been a legal tender, and far into the eighteenth century it remained current in small transactions. "In 1693 the ferriage from New York to Brooklyn was eight stivers in wampum or a silver twopence." [35] As early as 1652 Massachusetts had sought to supply the deficiency by the issue of shillings and sixpences. It was an affair of convenience and probably had no political purpose. The infraction of the navigation laws was a more serious matter. "Ships from France, Spain, and the Canaries traded directly with Boston, and brought in goods which had never paid duty in any English port." [36] The effect of this was to excite the jealousy of the merchants in London and other English cities and to deprive Massachusetts of the sympathy of that already numerous and powerful class of people. [Sidenote: Complaints against Massachusetts]

In 1675, the first year of King Philip's War, the British government made up its mind to attend more closely to the affairs of its American colonies. It had got the Dutch war off its hands, and could give heed to other things. The general supervision of the colonies was assigned to a standing committee of the privy council, styled the "Lords of the Committee of Trade and Plantations," and henceforth familiarly known as the "Lords of Trade." Next year the Lords of Trade sent an agent to Boston, with a letter to Governor Leverett about the Mason and Gorges claims. Under cover of this errand the messenger was to go about and ascertain the sentiments which people in the Kennebec and Piscataqua towns, as well as in Boston, entertained for the government of Massachusetts. The person to whom this work was entrusted was Edward Randolph, a cousin of Robert Mason who inherited the property claim to the Piscataqua county. To these men had old John Mason bequeathed his deadly feud with Massachusetts, and the fourteen years which Randolph now spent in New England were busily devoted to sowing the seeds of strife. In 1678 the king appointed him collector and surveyor of customs at the port of Boston, with instructions to enforce the navigation laws. Randolph was not the man to do unpopular things in such a way as to dull the edge of the infliction; he took delight in adding insult to injury. He was at once harsh and treacherous. His one virtue was pecuniary integrity; he was inaccessible to bribes and did not pick and steal from the receipts at the custom-house. In the other relations of life he was disencumbered of scruples. His abilities were not great, but his industry was untiring, and he pursued his enemies with the tenacity of a sleuth-hound. As an excellent British historian observes, "he was one of those men who, once enlisted as partisans, lose every other feeling in the passion which is engendered of strife." [37] [Sidenote: The Lords of Trade] [Sidenote: Edward Randolph]

The arrival of such a man boded no good to Massachusetts. His reception at the town-house was a cold one. Leverett liked neither his looks nor his message, and kept his peaked hat on while he read the letter; when he came to the signature of the king's chief secretary of state, he asked, with careless contempt, "Who is this Henry Coventry?" Randolph's choking rage found vent in a letter to the king, taking pains to remind him that the governor of Massachusetts had once been an officer in Cromwell's army. As we read this and think with what ghoulish glee the writer would have betrayed Colonel Goffe into the hands of the headsman, had any clue been given him, we can quite understand why Hubbard and Mather had nothing to say about the mysterious stranger at Hadley. Everything that Randolph could think of that would goad and irritate the king, he reported in full to London; his letters were specimens of that worst sort of lie that is based upon distorted half-truths; and his malicious pen but seldom lay idle.

While waiting for the effects of these reports to ripen, Randolph was busily intriguing with some of the leading men in Boston who were dissatisfied with the policy of the dominant party, and under his careful handling a party was soon brought into existence which was ready to counsel submission to the royal will. Such was the birth of Toryism in New England. The leader of this party was Joseph Dudley, son of the grim verse-maker who had come over as lieutenant to Winthrop. The younger Dudley was graduated at Harvard in 1665, and proceeded to study theology, but soon turned his attention entirely to politics. In 1673 he was a deputy from Roxbury in the General Court; in 1675 he took part in the storming of the Narragansett fort; in 1677 and the three following years he was one of the Federal Commissioners. In character and temper he differed greatly from his father. Like the proverbial minister's son whose feet are swift toward folly, Joseph Dudley seems to have learned in stern bleak years of childhood to rebel against the Puritan theory of life. Much of the abuse that has been heaped upon him, as a renegade and traitor, is probably undeserved. It does not appear that he ever made any pretence of love for the Puritan commonwealth, and there were many like him who had as lief be ruled by king as by clergy. But it cannot be denied that his suppleness and sagacity went along with a moral nature that was weak and vulgar. Joseph Dudley was essentially a self-seeking politician and courtier, like his famous kinsman of the previous century, Robert, Earl of Leicester. His party in Massachusetts was largely made up of men who had come to the colony for commercial reasons, and had little or no sympathy with the objects for which it was founded. Among them were Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Baptists, who were allowed no chance for public worship, as well as many others who, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. Their numbers, moreover, must have been large, for Boston had grown to be a town of 5000 inhabitants, the population of Massachusetts was approaching 30,000, and, according to Hutchinson, scarcely one grown man in five was a church-member qualified to vote or hold office. Such a fact speaks volumes as to the change which was coming over the Puritan world. No wonder that the clergy had begun to preach about the weeds and tares that were overrunning Christ's pleasant garden. No wonder that the spirit of revolt against the disfranchising policy of the theocracy was ripe. [Sidenote: Joseph Dudley]

It was in 1679, when this weakness of the body politic had been duly studied and reported by Randolph, and when all New England was groaning under the bereavements and burdens entailed by Philip's war, that the Stuart government began its final series of assaults upon Massachusetts. The claims of the eastern proprietors, the heirs of Mason and Gorges, furnished the occasion. Since 1643 the four Piscataqua towns—Hampton, Exeter, Dover, and Portsmouth—had remained under the jurisdiction of Massachusetts. After the Restoration the Mason claim had been revived, and in 1677 was referred to the chief-justices North and Rainsford. Their decision was that Mason's claim had always been worthless as based on a grant in which the old Plymouth Company had exceeded its powers. They also decided that Massachusetts had no valid claim since the charter assigned her a boundary just north of the Merrimack. This decision left the four towns subject to none but the king, who forthwith in 1679 proceeded to erect them into the royal province of New Hampshire, with president and council appointed by the crown, and an assembly chosen by the people, but endowed with little authority,—a tricksome counterfeit of popular government. Within three years an arrogant and thieving ruler, Edward Cranfield, had goaded New Hampshire to acts of insurrection. [Sidenote: Royal province of New Hampshire]

To the decisions of the chief-justices Massachusetts must needs submit. The Gorges claim led to more serious results. Under Cromwell's rule in 1652—the same year in which she began coining money—Massachusetts had extended her sway over Maine. In 1665 Colonel Nichols and his commissioners, acting upon the express instructions of Charles II., took it away from her. In 1668, after the commissioners had gone home, Massachusetts coolly took possession again. In 1677 the chief-justices decided that the claim of the Gorges family, being based on a grant from James I., was valid. Then the young Ferdinando Gorges, grandson of the first proprietor, offered to sell the province to the king, who had now taken it into his head that he would like to bestow it upon the Duke of Monmouth, his favourite son by Lucy Walters. Before Charles had responded, Governor Leverett had struck a bargain with Gorges, who ceded to Massachusetts all his rights over Maine for L1250 in hard cash. When the king heard of this transaction he was furious. He sent a letter to Boston, commanding the General Court to surrender the province again on repayment of this sum of L1250, and expressing his indignation that the people should thus dare to dispose of an important claim off-hand without consulting his wishes. In the same letter the colony was enjoined to put in force the royal orders of seventeen years before, concerning the oath of allegiance, the restriction of the suffrage, and the prohibition of the Episcopal form of worship. [Sidenote: The Gorges claim]

This peremptory message reached Boston about Christmas, 1679. Leverett, the sturdy Ironsides, had died six months before, and his place was filled by Simon Bradstreet, a man of moderate powers but great integrity, and held in peculiar reverence as the last survivor of those that had been chosen to office before leaving England by the leaders of the great Puritan exodus. Born in a Lincolnshire village in 1603, he was now seventy-six years old. He had taken his degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, had served as secretary to the Earl of Warwick, and in 1629 had been appointed member of the board of assistants for the colony about to be established on Massachusetts bay. In this position he had remained with honour for half a century, while he had also served as Federal Commissioner and as agent for the colony in London. His wife, who died in 1672, was a woman of quaint learning and quainter verses, which her contemporaries admired beyond measure. One of her books was republished in London, with the title: "The Tenth Muse, lately sprung up in America." John Norton once said that if Virgil could only have heard the seraphic poems of Anne Bradstreet, he would have thrown his heathen doggerel into the fire. She was sister of Joseph Dudley, and evidently inherited this rhyming talent, such as it was, from her father. Governor Bradstreet belonged to the moderate party who would have been glad to extend the franchise, but he did not go with his brother-in-law in subservience to the king. [Sidenote: Simon Bradstreet and his wife]

When the General Court assembled, in May, 1680, the full number of eighteen assistants appeared, for the first time in the history of the colony, and in accordance with an expressed wish of the king. They were ready to yield in trifles, but not in essentials. After wearisome discussion, the answer to the royal letter was decided on. It stated in vague and unsatisfactory terms that the royal orders of 1662 either had been carried out already or would be in good time, while to the demand for the surrender of Maine no reply whatever was made, save that "they were heartily sorry that any actings of theirs should be displeasing to his Majesty." After this, when Randolph wrote home that the king's letters were of no more account in Massachusetts than an old London Gazette, he can hardly be accused of stretching the truth. Randolph kept busily at work, and seems to have persuaded the Bishop of London that if the charter could be annulled, episcopacy might be established in Massachusetts as in England. In February, 1682, a letter came from the king demanding submission and threatening legal proceedings against the charter. Dudley was then sent as agent to London, and with him was sent a Mr. Richards, of the extreme clerical party, to watch him. [Sidenote: Massachusetts answers the king]

Meanwhile the king's position at home had been changing. He had made up his mind to follow his father's example and try the experiment of setting his people at defiance and governing without a parliament. This could not be done without a great supply of money. Louis XIV. had plenty of money, for there was no constitution in France to prevent his squeezing what he wanted out of the pockets of an oppressed people. France was thriving greatly now, for Colbert had introduced a comparatively free system of trade between the provinces and inaugurated an era of prosperity soon to be cut short by the expulsion of the Huguenots. Louis could get money enough for the asking, and would be delighted to foment civil disturbances in England, so as to tie the hands of the only power which at that moment could interfere with his seizing Alsace and Lorraine and invading Flanders. The pretty Louise de Keroualle Duchess of Portsmouth, with her innocent baby face and heart as cold as any reptile's, was the French Delilah chosen to shear the locks of the British Samson. By such means and from such motives a secret treaty was made in February, 1681, by which Louis agreed to pay Charles 2,000,000 livres down, and 500,000 more in each of the next two years, on condition that he should summon no more parliaments within that time. This bargain for securing the means of overthrowing the laws and liberties of England was, on the part of Charles II., an act no less reprehensible than some of those for which his father had gone to the block. But Charles could now afford for a while to wreak his evil will. He had already summoned a parliament for the 21st of March, to meet at Oxford within the precincts of the subservient university, and out of reach of the high-spirited freemen of London. He now forced a quarrel with the new parliament and dissolved it within a week. A joiner named Stephen College, who had spoken his mind too freely in the taverns at Oxford with regard to these proceedings, was drawn and quartered. The Whig leader Lord Shaftesbury was obliged to flee to Holland. In the absence of a parliament the only power of organized resistance to the king's tyranny resided in the corporate governments of the chartered towns. The charter of London was accordingly attacked by a writ of quo warranto, and in June, 1683, the time-serving judges declared it confiscated. George Jeffreys, a low drunken fellow whom Charles had made Lord Chief Justice, went on a circuit through the country; and, as Roger North says, "made all the charters, like the walls of Jericho, fall down before him, and returned laden with surrenders, the spoils of towns." At the same time a terrible blow was dealt at two of the greatest Whig families in England. Lord William Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, and Algernon Sidney, younger son of the Earl of Leicester, two of the purest patriots and ablest liberal leaders of the day, were tried on a false charge of treason and beheaded. [Sidenote: Secret treaty between Charles II. and Louis XIV] [Sidenote: Shameful proceedings in England]

By this quick succession of high-handed measures, the friends of law and liberty were for a moment disconcerted and paralyzed. In the frightful abasement of the courts of justice which these events so clearly showed, the freedom of Englishmen seemed threatened in its last stronghold. The doctrine of passive obedience to monarchs was preached in the pulpits and inculcated by the university of Oxford, which ordered the works of John Milton to be publicly burned. Sir Robert Filmer wrote that "not only in human laws, but even in divine, a thing may by the king be commanded contrary to law, and yet obedience to such a command is necessary." Charles felt so strong that in 1684 he flatly refused to summon a parliament.

It was not long before the effects of all this were felt in New England. The mission of Dudley and his colleague was fruitless. They returned to Boston, and Randolph, who had followed them to London, now followed them back, armed with a writ of quo warranto which he was instructed not to serve until he should have given Massachusetts one more chance to humble herself in the dust. Should she modify her constitution to please a tyrant or see it trampled under foot? Recent events in England served for a solemn warning; for the moment the Tories were silenced; perhaps after all, the absolute rule of a king was hardly to be preferred to the sway of the Puritan clergy; the day when the House of Commons sat still and wept seemed to have returned. A great town-meeting was held in the Old South Meeting-House, and the moderator requested all who were for surrendering the charter to hold up their hands. Not a hand was lifted, and out from the throng a solitary voice exclaimed, with deep-drawn breath, "The Lord be praised!" Then arose Increase Mather, president of Harvard College, and reminded them how their fathers did win this charter, and should they deliver it up unto the spoiler who demanded it "even as Ahab required Naboth's vineyard, Oh! their children would be bound to curse them." Such was the attitude of Massachusetts, and when it was known in London, the blow was struck. For technical reasons Randolph's writ was not served; but on the 21st of June a decree in chancery annulled the charter of Massachusetts. [Sidenote: Massachusetts refuses to surrender her charter] [Sidenote: It is annulled by degree of chancery, June 21, 1684]

To appreciate the force of this blow we must pause for a moment and consider what it involved. The right to the soil of North America had been hitherto regarded in England, on the strength of the discoveries of the Cabots, as an appurtenance to the crown of Henry VII.,—as something which descended from father to son like the palace at Hampton Court or the castle at Windsor, but which the sovereign might alienate by his voluntary act just as he might sell or give away a piece of his royal domain in England. Over this vast territory it was doubtful how far Parliament was entitled to exercise authority, and the rights of Englishmen settled there had theoretically no security save in the provisions of the various charters by which the crown had delegated its authority to individual proprietors or to private companies. It was thus on the charter granted by Charles I. to the Company of Massachusetts Bay that not only the cherished political and ecclesiastical institutions of the colony, but even the titles of individuals to their lands and houses, were supposed to be founded. By the abrogation of the charter, all rights and immunities that had been based upon it were at once swept away, and every rood of the soil of Massachusetts became the personal property of the Stuart king, who might, if he should possess the will and the power, turn out all the present occupants or otherwise deal with them as trespassers. Such at least was the theory of Charles II., and to show that he meant to wreak his vengeance with no gentle hand, he appointed as his viceroy the brutal Percy Kirke,—a man who would have no scruples about hanging a few citizens without trial, should occasion require it. [Sidenote: Effect of annulling the charter]

But in February, 1685, just as Charles seemed to be getting everything arranged to his mind, a stroke of apoplexy carried him off the scene, and his brother ascended the throne. Monmouth's rebellion, and the horrible cruelties that followed, kept Colonel Kirke busy in England through the summer, and left the new king scant leisure to think about America. Late in the autumn, having made up his mind that he could not spare such an exemplary knave as Kirke, James II. sent over Sir Edmund Andros. In the mean time the government of Massachusetts had been administered by Dudley, who showed himself willing to profit by the misfortunes of his country. Andros had long been one of James's favourites. He was the dull and dogged English officer such as one often meets, honest enough and faithful to his master, neither cruel nor rapacious, but coarse in fibre and wanting in tact. Some years before, when governor of New York, he had a territorial dispute with Connecticut, and now cherished a grudge against the people of New England, so that, from James's point of view, he was well fitted to be their governor. James wished to abolish all the local governments in America, and unite them, as far as possible, under a single administration. With Plymouth there could be no trouble; she had never had a charter, but had existed on sufferance from the outset. In 1687 the charters of Rhode Island and Connecticut were rescinded, but the decrees were not executed in due form. In October of that year Andros went to Hartford, to seize the Connecticut charter but it was not surrendered. While Sir Edmund was bandying threats with stout Robert Treat, the queller of Indians and now governor of Connecticut, in the course of their evening conference the candles were suddenly blown out, and when after some scraping of tinder they were lighted again the document was nowhere to be found, for Captain Wadsworth had carried it away and hidden it in the hollow trunk of a mighty oak tree. Nevertheless for the moment the colony was obliged to submit to the tyrant. Next day the secretary John Allyn wrote "Finis" on the colonial records and shut up the book. Within another twelvemonth New York and New Jersey were added to the viceroyalty of Andros; so that all the northern colonies from the forests of Maine to the Delaware river were thus brought under the arbitrary rule of one man, who was responsible to no one but the king for whatever he might take it into his head to do. [Sidenote: Sir Edmund Andros] [Sidenote: The Charter Oak]

The vexatious character of the new government was most strongly felt at Boston where Andros had his headquarters. Measures were at once taken for the erection of an Episcopal church, and meantime the royal order was that one of the principal meeting-houses should be seized for the use of the Church of England. This was an ominous beginning. In the eyes of the people it was much more than a mere question of disturbing Puritan prejudices. They had before them the experience of Scotland during the past ten years, the savage times of "Old Mortality," the times which had seen the tyrannical prelate, on the lonely moor, begging in vain for his life, the times of Drumclog and Bothwell Brigg, of Claverhouse and his flinty-hearted troopers, of helpless women tied to stakes on the Solway shore and drowned by inches in the rising tide. What had happened in one part of the world might happen in another, for the Stuart policy was the same. It aimed not at securing toleration but at asserting unchecked supremacy. Its demand for an inch was the prelude to its seizing an ell, and so our forefathers understood it. Sir Edmund's formal demand for the Old South Meeting-House was flatly refused, but on Good Friday, 1687, the sexton was frightened into opening it, and thenceforward Episcopal services were held there alternately with the regular services until the overthrow of Andros. The pastor, Samuel Willard, was son of the gallant veteran who had rescued the beleaguered people of Brookfield in King Philip's war. Amusing passages occurred between him and Sir Edmund, who relished the pleasantry of keeping minister and congregation waiting an hour or two in the street on Sundays before yielding to them the use of their meeting-house. More kindly memories of the unpopular governor are associated with the building of the first King's Chapel on the spot where its venerable successor now stands. The church was not finished until after Sir Edmund had taken his departure, but Lady Andros, who died in February, 1688, lies in the burying-ground hard by. Her gentle manners had won all hearts. For the moment, we are told, one touch of nature made enemies kin, and as Sir Edmund walked to the townhouse "many a head was bared to the bereaved husband that before had remained stubbornly covered to the exalted governor." [38] [Sidenote: Episcopal services in Boston] [Sidenote: Founding of the King's Chapel, 1689]

The despotic rule of Andros was felt in more serious ways than in the seizing upon a meetinghouse. Arbitrary taxes were imposed, encroachments were made upon common lands as in older manorial times, and the writ of habeas corpus was suspended. Dudley was appointed censor of the press, and nothing was allowed to be printed without his permission. All the public records of the late New England governments were ordered to be brought to Boston, whither it thus became necessary to make a tedious journey in order to consult them. All deeds and wills were required to be registered in Boston, and excessive fees were charged for the registry. It was proclaimed that all private titles to land were to be ransacked, and that whoever wished to have his title confirmed must pay a heavy quit-rent, which under the circumstances amounted to blackmail. The General Court was abolished. The power of taxation was taken from the town-meetings and lodged with the governor. Against this crowning iniquity the town of Ipswich, led by its sturdy pastor, John Wise, made protest. In response Mr. Wise was thrown into prison, fined L50, and suspended from the ministry. A notable and powerful character was this John Wise. One of the broadest thinkers and most lucid writers of his time, he seems like a forerunner of the liberal Unitarian divines of the nineteenth century. His "Vindication of the Government of the New England Churches," published in 1717, was a masterly exposition of the principles of civil government, and became "a text book of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers, containing some of the notable expressions that are used in the Declaration of Independence." [Sidenote: Tyranny] [Sidenote: John Wise of Ipswich]

It was on the trial of Mr. Wise in October, 1687, that Dudley openly declared that the people of New England had now no further privileges left them than not to be sold for slaves. Such a state of things in the valley of the Euphrates would not have attracted comment; the peasantry of central Europe would have endured it until better instructed; but in an English community it could not last long. If James II. had remained upon the throne, New England would surely have soon risen in rebellion against Andros. But the mother country had by this time come to repent the fresh lease of life which she had granted to the Stuart dynasty after Cromwell's death. Tired of the disgraceful subservience of her Court to the schemes of Louis XIV., tired of fictitious plots and judicial murders, tired of bloody assizes and declarations of indulgence and all the strange devices of Stuart tyranny, England endured the arrogance of James but three years, and then drove him across the Channel, to get such consolation as he might from his French paymaster and patron. On the 4th of April, 1689, the youthful John Winslow brought to Boston the news of the landing of the Prince of Orange in England. For the space of two weeks there was quiet and earnest deliberation among the citizens, as the success of the Prince's enterprise was not yet regarded as assured. But all at once, on the morning of the 18th, the drums beat to arms, the signal-fire was lighted on Beacon Hill, a meeting was held at the Town-House, militia began to pour in from the country, and Andros, summoned to surrender, was fain to beseech Mr. Willard and the other ministers to intercede for him. But the ministers refused. Next day the Castle was surrendered, the Rose frigate riding in the harbour was seized and dismantled, and Andros was arrested as he was trying to effect his escape disguised in woman's clothes. Dudley and the other agents of tyranny were also imprisoned, and thus the revolution was accomplished. It marks the importance which the New England colonies were beginning to attain, that, before the Prince of Orange had fully secured the throne, he issued a letter instructing the people of Boston to preserve decorum and acquiesce yet a little longer in the government of Andros, until more satisfactory arrangements could be made. But Increase Mather, who was then in London on a mission in behalf of New England, judiciously prevented this letter of instructions from being sent. The zeal of the people outstripped the cautious policy of the new sovereign, and provisional governments, in accordance with the old charters, were at once set up in the colonies lately ruled by Andros. Bradstreet now in his eighty-seventh year was reinstated as governor of Massachusetts. Five weeks after this revolution in Boston the order to proclaim King William and Queen Mary was received, amid such rejoicings as had never before been seen in that quiet town, for it was believed that self-government would now be guaranteed to New England. [Sidenote: Fall of James II.] [Sidenote: Insurrection in Boston, and overthrow of Andros, April 18, 1689]