Puritan Magistrates

Almost a hundred years after that law was passed, its penalty was inflicted upon the commander of a British man-of-war. She arrived at Boston after a long cruise. As her commander was going toward his home in that city, he met his wife in the street hastening to greet him, when he gave her an affectionate kiss. A stern old magistrate in a cocked-hat and powdered hair in a queue, who was "learned in the law," seeing the act, caused his immediate arrest. The next morning, after due trial, the captain was convicted and the punishment of flogging was administered in a very mild way, but in a public place, causing much merriment. When the victim was about to sail on another cruise, he invited that magistrate and others whom, he understood, had approved of his punishment, to a complimentary dinner on board of his vessel, as a token of his forgiveness and submission. They accepted it, and when they were all merry with good cheer, and were on deck ready to depart, he ordered his boatswain and mate to give the magistrates a sound flogging. Each officer was armed with a knotted cat-o'-nine-tails, and they drove the astonished guests pell-mell over the side of the vessel into the boat waiting to receive them. The captain sailed away, and the law was soon afterward repealed. Governor Winthrop tempered these laws with merciful mildness in their execution. On one occasion it was reported to him that a man had been stealing from his store of winter's firewood, and he was urged to punish him. "I will soon put a stop to that bad practice," said the governor sternly. He sent for the offender. "You have a large family," he said to the offending culprit, "and I have a large magazine of wood; come as often as you please, and take as much of it as you need to make your dwelling comfortable." Then turning to his accusers, he said: "Now I defy him to steal any more of my firewood."

The bigotry and austerity of the Puritans in Massachusetts were vehemently condemned at the time of their iron rule in New England, and have been ever since. But there are peculiar considerations in their case, which the eye of justice cannot overlook. Their theology and their ideas of church government were founded upon the deepest heart-convictions of a people not broadly educated. They had encountered and subdued a savage wilderness for the purpose of planting therein a church and a commonwealth fashioned in all their parts after a narrow but cherished pattern. They felt that the domain which they had conquered with so much peril and toil was their own, and that they had as good a right to regulate its internal affairs according to their own notions, and exclude all obnoxious persons, as had a householder the affairs of his family and the avoidance of an unwelcome visitor. They had boldly proclaimed the right to the exercise of private judgement in matters of conscience, and so they tacitly invited the persecuted of all lands to come to them. Therefore, "unsettled persons," libertines in unrestrained opinions, came to Massachusetts from abroad to disseminate their peculiar views. In that dissemination the Puritans saw clear prophecies of a disorganization of their church. They took the alarm early, and with a mistaken policy they resisted such encroachments upon their domain and into their society with fiery penal laws implacably executed. But it was only in respect to religion that the Puritan laws were specially harsh as compared with the general jurisprudence or science of law of that day. "Good forbid," said Governor Dudley in his old age, "our love for the truth should be grown so cold that we should tolerate errors-I die no libertine." "Better tolerate hypocrites and tares than thorns and briers," exclaimed that "famous man of God," as Norton called Parson John Cotton. "To say that men ought to have liberty of conscience is impious ignorance," said Parson Ward of Ipswich, author of "The Simple Cobbler of Agawam." "Religion admits of no eccentric notions," said Parson Norton, the colleague of Ward, biographer of Cotton, and persecutor of the Friends or Quakers.

Friends or Quakers. The peculiarities of this sect, we have considered in Chapter Ninth of the Second Book. Among the earlier disciples of George Fox were many enthusiasts whose zeal led their judgment. They were absolute fanatics, and sometimes became lunatics in their religious views and actions, and were utterly unlike the sober, mild-mannered members of that society to-day. They ran into the wildest extravagancies in the exercise of the liberty of speech; openly reviling magistrates and ministers with intemperate language; overriding the rights of all others in maintaining their own, and scorning all respect for human laws. They made the most exalted pretensions to the exclusive possession of the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the power of persuasion with which they were endowed. Some, in the pride of their egotism, went to Rome to convert the Pope ; others went to the East to convince the Grand Turk and his people of their errors; and some came to America to proselyte the Puritans in New England, the Roman Catholics in Maryland, and the Cavaliers and Churchmen in Virginia. Some of them behaved so wildly and disorderly in Boston that they suffered intensely from the indignation of the magistrates and clergy there; and they so disgusted the tolerant Roger Williams, that he tried to root them out of Rhode Island.