The Beginnings of New England | Page 3

PLANTING OF NEW ENGLAND.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New England ... 88, 89
Wessagusset and Merrymount ... 90, 91
The Dorchester adventurers ... 92
John White wishes to raise a bulwark against the Kingdom of
Antichrist ... 93
And John Endicott undertakes the work of building it ... 94
Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble; the Gorges and Mason
claims ... 94, 95
Endicott's arrival in New England, and the founding of Salem ... 95
The Company of Massachusetts Bay; Francis Higginson takes a
powerful reinforcement to Salem ... 96
The development of John White's enterprise into the Company of
Massachusetts Bay coincided with the first four years of the reign of
Charles I ... 97
Extraordinary scene in the House of Commons (June 5, 1628) ... 98, 99
The King turns Parliament out of doors (March 2, 1629) ... 100
Desperate nature of the crisis ... 100, 101
The meeting at Cambridge (Aug. 26, 1629), and decision to transfer the
charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and the government
established under it, to New England ... 102

Leaders of the great migration; John Winthrop ... 102
And Thomas Dudley ... 103
Founding of Massachusetts; the schemes of Gorges overwhelmed ...
104
Beginnings of American constitutional history; the question as to
self-government raised at Watertown ... 105
Representative system established ... 106
Bicameral assembly; story of the stray pig ... 107
Ecclesiastical polity; the triumph of Separatism ... 108
Restriction of the suffrage to members of the Puritan congregational
churches ... 109
Founding of Harvard College ... 110
Threefold danger to the New England settlers in 1636:--
1. From the King, who prepares to attack the charter, but is foiled by
dissensions at home ... 111-113
2. From religious dissensions; Roger Williams ... 114-116 Henry Vane
and Anne Hutchinson ... 116-119 Beginnings of New Hampshire and
Rhode Island ... 119-120
3. From the Indians; the Pequot supremacy ... 121
First movements into the Connecticut valley, and disputes with the
Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam ... 122, 123
Restriction of the suffrage leads to disaffection in Massachusetts;
profoundly interesting opinions of Winthrop and Hooker ... 123, 124
Connecticut pioneers and their hardships ... 125

Thomas Hooker, and the founding of Connecticut ... 120
The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (Jan 14, 1639); the first
written constitution that created a government ... 127
Relations of Connecticut to the genesis of the Federal Union ... 128
Origin of the Pequot War; Sassacus tries to unite the Indian tribes in a
crusade against the English ... 129, 130
The schemes of Sassacus are foiled by Roger Williams ... 130
The Pequots take the war path alone ... 131
And are exterminated ... 132-134
John Davenport, and the founding of New Haven ... 135
New Haven legislation, and legend of the "Blue Laws" ... 136
With the meeting of the Long Parliament, in 1640, the Puritan exodus
comes to its end ... 137
What might have been ... 138, 391
CHAPTER IV.
THE NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY.
The Puritan exodus was purely and exclusively English ... 140
And the settlers were all thrifty and prosperous; chiefly country squires
and yeomanry of the best and sturdiest type ... 141, 142
In all history there has been no other instance of colonization so
exclusively effected by picked and chosen men ... 143
What, then, was the principle of selection? The migration was not
intended to promote what we call religious liberty ... 144, 145

Theocratic ideal of the Puritans ... 146
The impulse which sought to realize itself in the Puritan ideal was an
ethical impulse ... 147
In interpreting Scripture, the Puritan appealed to his Reason ... 148, 149
Value of such perpetual theological discussion as was carried on in
early New England ... 150, 151
Comparison with the history of Scotland ... 152
Bearing of these considerations upon the history of the New England
confederacy ... 153
The existence of so many colonies (Plymouth, Massachusetts,
Connecticut, New Haven, Rhode Island, the Piscataqua towns, etc.)
was due to differences of opinion on questions in which men's religious
ideas were involved ... 154
And this multiplication of colonies led to a notable and significant
attempt at confederation ... 155
Turbulence of dissent in Rhode Island ... 156
The Earl of Warwick, and his Board of Commissioners ... 157
Constitution of the Confederacy ... 158
It was only a league, not a federal union ... 159
Its formation involved a tacit assumption of sovereignty ... 160
The fall of Charles I. brought up, for a moment, the question as to the
supremacy of Parliament over the colonies ... 161
Some interesting questions ... 162
Genesis of the persecuting spirit ... 163

Samuel Gorton and his opinions ... 163-165
He flees to Aquedneck and is banished thence ... 166
Providence protests against