The Puritans and Massachusetts Bay Colony
Development
The Puritans were also experiencing their share of difficulties with the persecutions of Bishop Laud and others of the Church of England hierarchy, and the Rev. John White, of Dorchester, Dorset, became an advocate of Puritan settlement in the New World. He wanted a New England sanctuary for Puritans as well as Separatists. In 1624, under his encouragement, the Plymouth Council for New England gave the Dorchester Company a grant for a colony at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, as a home for their fishing fleet.
The fifty men left at the Cape to establish the Dorchester Colony were joined by John Lyford, Roger Conant, Peter Palfrey, John Balch, John Woodbury and others of the Plymouth Plantation who did not like Separatist rule. When the site proved unsuitable for a settlement, Conant suggested they all move south to Nahum Keike/Naumkeag, which they did in 1626. The Dorchester Company went bankrupt, but Thomas White continued to supply support for the members of the colony.
Salem
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20 June 1628 – After the demise of the Dorchester Company, Rev. White sought new investors who formed The New England Company for a Plantation in Massachusetts (New England Company, for short), with Matthew Craddock as its governor. They sent supplies and about 100 additional colonists under the direction of John Endicott, one of the company subscribers, to Nahum Keike, which was renamed Salem.
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Charlestown
In 1629, Endicott sent William, Richard and Ralph Sprague to Mishawaum to lay out a settlement near Thomas Walford’s fort, which they named Charlestown. Thomas Walford, acting as an interpreter with the Massachusetts Indians, negotiated with the local sachem Wonohaquaham for Endicott and his people to settle there. Although Walford had a virtual monopoly on the region's available furs, he welcomed the newcomers and helped them in any way he could, unaware that his Episcopalian religious beliefs would cause him to be banished from Massachusetts to Portsmouth, New Hampshire within three years. (Wikipedia article on Charlestown.) In addition to the Spragues, Charlestown settlers included Thomas Graves, Increase Nowell, Simon Hoyt, Rev. Francis Bright, and about 100 others. It was intended to be the capital of the new Puritan colony.
Lynn
Meanwhile, in 1629, the Plymouth Colony was establishing a plantation at Saugus, between Charlestown and Salem, claiming territory which contained the present towns of Swampscott, Nahant, Lynn, Lynnfield, Reading, and Wakefield.
Emergence of the Massachusetts Bay Company
The New England Company merged into The Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629, which sought and received a Royal Charter from Charles, who apparently assumed it was for business purposes and was unaware that he was facilitating Puritan emigration. After Charles dissolved Parliament in 1629, the company's directors met to consider the possibility of moving the company's seat of governance to the colony. This was followed by the Cambridge Agreement later that year, in which a group of investors agreed to emigrate and work to buy out others who would not.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony became the first English chartered colony whose board of governors did not reside in England. This independence helped the settlers to maintain their Puritan religious practices with very little oversight by the king, Archbishop Laud, and the Anglican Church. The charter remained in force for 55 years, when, as a result of colonial insubordination with trade, tariff and navigation laws, Charles II revoked it in 1684.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony)
In April of 1630, a fleet of 11 ships carrying 700 passengers, under the direction of one of the company’s stockholders, John Winthrop, set sail from Southampton, England, bound for New England to establish their “holy commonwealth,” the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This dedicated band of Puritans hoped to build a religious community around a purer, more Biblical church”. Essentially, they were seeking to establish Zion.
The City on a Hill Address
Before leaving England, John Winthrop delivered a sermon to his people titled, "A Model of Christian Charity." It is now called The City on a Hill address. Winthrop spoke of the special covenant the Puritans had with God and of their actions which would be watched by the world. The following is an excerpt:
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“Thus stands the cause between God and us. We are entered into covenant with Him for this work. We have taken out a commission. The Lord hath given us leave to draw our own articles. We have professed to enterprise these and those accounts, upon these and those ends. We have hereupon besought Him of favor and blessing. Now if the Lord shall please to hear us, and bring us in peace to the place we desire, then hath He ratified this covenant and sealed our commission, and will expect a strict performance of the articles contained in it; but if we shall neglect the observation of these articles which are the ends we have propounded, and, dissembling with our God, shall fall to embrace this present world and posterity, the Lord will surely break out in wrath against us, and be revenged of such a people, and make us know the price of the breach of such a covenant.
“Now the onely way to avoyde this shipwracke and to provide for our posterity is to followe the Counsell of Micah, to doe Justly, to love mercy, to walke humbly with our God, for this end, wee must be knitt together in this worke as one man, wee must entertaine each other in brotherly Affeccion, wee must be willing to abridge our selves of our superfluities, for the supply of others necessities, wee must uphold a familiar Commerce together in all meekenes, gentlenes, patience and liberallity, wee must delight in eache other, make others Condicions our owne rejoyce together, mourne together, labour, and suffer together, allwayes haveing before our eyes our Commission and Community in the worke, our Community as members of the same body, soe shall wee keepe the unitie of the spirit in the bond of peace, the Lord will be our God and delight to dwell among us, as his owne people and will commaund a blessing upon us in all our wayes, soe that wee shall see much more of his wisdome power goodnes and truthe then formerly wee have beene acquainted with, wee shall finde that the God of Israell is among us, when tenn of us shall be able to resist a thousand of our enemies, when hee shall make us a prayse and glory, that men shall say of succeeding plantacions: the lord make it like that of New England: for wee must Consider that wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us; soe that if wee shall deale falsely with our god in this worke wee have undertaken and soe cause him to withdrawe his present help from us, wee shall be made a story and a byword through the world, wee shall open the mouthes of enemies to speake evill of the wayes of god and all professours for Gods sake; wee shall shame the faces of many of gods worthy servants, and cause theire prayers to be turned into Cursses upon us till wee be consumed out of the good land whether wee are going: And to shutt upp this discourse with that exhortacion of Moses that faithfull servant of the Lord in his last farewell to Israell Deut. 30. Beloved there is now sett before us life, and good, deathe and evill in that wee are Commaunded this day to love the Lord our God, and to love one another to walke in his wayes and to keepe his Commaundements and his Ordinance, and his lawes, and the Articles of our Covenant with him that wee may live and be multiplyed, and that the Lord our God may blesse us in the land whether wee goe to possesse it: But if our heartes shall turne away soe that wee will not obey, but shall be seduced and worshipp other Gods our pleasures, and proffitts, and serve them, it is propounded unto us this day, wee shall surely perishe out of the good Land whether wee passe over this vast Sea to possesse it;
“Therefore lett us choose life,
that wee, and our Seede,
may live; by obeyeing his
voyce, and cleaveing to him,
for hee is our life, and
our prosperity.”
To read the entire address, go to https://www.greatamericandocuments.com/speeches/winthrop-city-upon-hill/.
For more information about John Winthrop, go to http://www.pbs.org/godinamerica/people/john-winthrop.html.
Arrival in New England
The Winthrop fleet began arriving in New England in 1630, The ship Mary and John was the first to arrive. It was carrying 140 passengers from the English West Country counties of Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and Cornwall. These included William Phelps along with Roger Ludlowe, John Mason, Rev. John Warham and Rev. John Maverick, the father of Samuel Maverick who had settled at Chelsea; Nicholas Upsall, Henry Wolcott and others who would become prominent in the founding of a new nation.
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The flagship, the Arbella, arrived on June 12, carrying Governor John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, Isaac Johnson, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Simon Bradstreet and the other leading settlers, along with the colonial charter. They landed first at the Dorchester Company’s 1628 settlement in Salem. They learned that eighty people there had died of sickness and famine, and there were not sufficient supplies to accommodate their group. |
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Winthrop and his group explored Boston Harbor and decided to settle at Charlestown where there was a great house that had been built by Mr. Graves, sent over by their Company the previous year. But there was also sickness and hunger in Charlestown, and July 30, 1630 was set apart as a day of fasting and prayer.
Under the Puritans, a town was a church congregation. Rev. John Wilson had come from Suffolk, England with Winthrop’s group and was chosen as the teacher for their congregation. At the close of the religious services on the day of the fast, the following church covenant was signed by Winthrop, Dudley, Bradstreet and many of the several hundred men and women in the company:
“In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in Obedience to His holy will and Divine Ordinance - We whose names are hereunder written, being by His most wise and good Providence brought together into this part of America in the Bay of Massachusetts and desirous to unite ourselves into one congregation or Church under the Lord Jesus Christ our Head in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed and sanctified to himself, do hereby solemnly and religiously (as in his most holy Presence) Promise and bind ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the Rule of the Gospel and in all sincere Conformity to his holy Ordinances and in mutual love and respect each to the other so near as God shall give us grace.”
The congregation they established became the First Church in Boston. All the Congregational Churches in America have followed their organization.
Move to the Pautuxet Penninsula
At the invitation of the Rev. William Blaxton, who had a good clean water supply, the Congregation moved to the Pautuxet Penninsula, which they named “Boston” in Sept. 1630. Later, Blaxton, disliking Puritan “rule of the Brethren,” moved south to settle in what is now Rhode Island.
The First Church in Cambridge, Cambridge Historical Society, April 1915.
http://www.ask.com/wiki/Massachusetts_Bay_Colony (accessed Dec. 2020)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puritans
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Puritanism