Religious Dissensions in New England: Massachusetts Bay and Rhode Island

However much these theological contests might disquiet the colony of Massachusetts Bay, they contributed to the more speedy population of America. When Williams was banished from Salem, in the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-four, such was the attachment of his hearers to a pastor whose piety they revered, that a good number of them voluntarily accompanied him in his exile. They directed their march towards the south; and having purchased from the natives a considerable tract of land, to which Williams gave the name of Providence, they settled there. They were joined soon after by some of those to whom the proceedings against Mrs. Hutchinson gave disgust; and by a transaction with the Indians they obtained a right to a fertile island in Narragansett Bay, which acquired the name of Rhode Island. Williams remained among them upwards of forty years, respected as the father and the guide of the colony which he had planted. His spirit differed from that of the Puritans in Massachusetts; it was mild and tolerating; an, having ventured himself to reject established opinions, he endeavored to secure the same liberty to other men, by maintaining that the exercise of private judgment was a natural and sacred right; that the civil magistrate had no compulsive jurisdiction in the concerns of religion; that the punishment of any person on account of his opinions was an encroachment on conscience and an act of persecution. These humane principles he instilled into his followers, and all who felt or dreaded oppression in other settlements resorted to a community in which universal toleration was known to be a fundamental maxim. In the plantations of Providence and Rhode Island, political union was established by voluntary association and the equality of condition among the members, as well as their religious opinions; their form of government was purely democratical, the supreme power being lodged in the freemen personally assembled. In this state they remained until they were incorporated by charter.

To similar causes the colony of Connecticut is indebted for its origin. The rivalship between Mr. Cotton and Mr. Hooker, two favorite ministers in the settlement of Massachusetts Bay, disposed the latter, who was least successful in this contest for fame and power, to wish for some settlement at a distance from a competitor by whom his reputation was eclipsed. A good number of those who had imbibed Mrs. Hutchinson's notions, and were offended at such as combated them, offered to accompany him. Having employed proper persons to explore the country, they pitched upon the west side of the great river Connecticut as the most inviting station; and in the year one thousand six hundred and thirty-six, about an hundred persons, with their wives and families, after a fatiguing march of many days through woods and swamps, arrived there, and laid the foundations of the towns of Hartford, Springfield, and Wethersfield.

As appears in the selection which immediately follows this one, previous settlements had been made in the same locality.

The history of the first attempts to people the provinces of New Hampshire and Maine, which form the fourth and most extensive division in New England, is obscure and perplexed by the interfering claims of various proprietors. The company of Plymouth had inconsiderately parcelled out the northern part of the territory contained in its grant among different persons; of these only Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Captain Mason seem to have had any serious intention to occupy the lands allotted to them. Their efforts to accomplish this were meritorious and persevering, but unsuccessful. The expense of settling colonies in an uncultivated country must necessarily be great and immediate; the prospect of a return is often uncertain and always remote. The funds of two private adventurers were not adequate to such an undertaking. Nor did the planters whom they sent out possess that principle of enthusiasm which animated their neighbors of Massachusetts with vigor to struggle through all the hardships and dangers to which society, in its infancy, is exposed in a savage land. Gorges and Mason, it is probable, must have abandoned their design if, from the same motives that settlements had been made in Rhode Island and Connecticut, colonists had not unexpectedly migrated into New Hampshire and Maine. Mr. Wheelwright, a minister of some note, nearly related to Mrs. Hutchinson, and one of her most fervent admirers and partisans, had, on this account, been banished from the province of Massachusetts Bay. In quest of a new station, he took a course opposite to the other exiles, and, advancing towards the north, founded the town of Exeter, on a small river flowing into Piskataqua Bay. His followers, few in number, but firmly united, were of such rigid principles that even the churches of Massachusetts did not appear to them sufficiently pure. From time to time they received some recruits, whom love of novelty, or dissatisfaction with the ecclesiastical institutions of the other colonies, prompted to join them. Their plantations were widely dispersed, but the country was thinly peopled, and its political state extremely unsettled. The colony of Massachusetts Bay claimed jurisdiction over them, as occupying lands situated within the limits of their grant. Gorges and Mason asserted the rights conveyed to them as proprietors by their charter. In several districts the planters, without regarding the pretensions of either party, governed themselves by maxims and laws copied from those of their brethren in the adjacent colonies. The first reduction of the political constitution in the provinces of New Hampshire and Maine into a regular and permanent form was subsequent to the Revolution.