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  The people of the province were ill-disposed to surrender any of the liberties which they saw their neighbors in the enjoyment of; and disregarding the feelings of the king's appointee, its representatives declared that only laws made by the assembly and approved by the people should be valid. Robert Mason, who had a patent to part of the region, finding himself opposed by the colonists, got permission from England to appoint an adventurer, Edward Cranfield, governor; Cranfield went forth with hopes of much plunder; but they would not admit his legitimacy, and he took the unprecedented step of dissolving the assembly; the farmers revolted, and their ringleader, Gove, was condemned for treason, and spent four years in the Tower of London. It was another attempt to convince the spirit of liberty by "the worst argument in the world"; but it was ridiculous as well as bad in Gove's case; he was but a hard-fisted uneducated countryman, whose belief that the patch of land he had cleared and planted among the New England mountains was his, and not another's, was not to be dissipated by dungeons. The disputed land-titles got into the law courts, where judges and juries were fixed; but no matter which way the decisions went, the people kept their own. Cranfield sent an alarmist report of affairs to London, declaring that "factions" would bring about a separation of the colony unless a frigate were sent to Boston to enforce loyalty. Nothing was done. Cranfield tried to raise money through the assembly by a tale about an invasion, which existed nowhere save in his own imagination; the assembly refused to be stampeded.

  The clergy were against him, and he attempted to overcome them by restrictive orders; but they defied him; he imprisoned one of them, Moody; and succeeded in disturbing church service; but the people would rather not go to meeting than obey Cranfield. His last effort was to try to levy taxes under pretense of an Indian war; but the people thwacked the tax collectors with staves, and the women threatened them with hot water. A call for troops to quell the disturbances was utterly disregarded. How was a governor to govern people who refused to be governed?

  Cranfield gave it up. He had been struggling three years, and had accomplished nothing. He wrote home that he "should esteem it the greatest happiness to be allowed to remove from these unreasonable people"; and this happiness was accorded to him; it was the only happiness which his appointment had afforded. New Hampshire was in bad odor with the English government; but the farmers could endure that with equanimity. They had demonstrated that the granite of their mountains had somehow got into their own composition; and they were let alone for the present, the rather since Massachusetts was enough to occupy the king's council at that time.

  The fight between Massachusetts and Charles began with the latter's accession in 1660, and continued till his death, when it was continued by James II. The charter of the colony was adjudged to be forfeited in 1684, twenty-four years after the struggle opened. While it was at its height, the Indian war broke out to which the name of the Pokanoket chief, King Philip, has been attached. Thus both the diplomacy and the arms of the colony were tested to the utmost, at one and the same time; the American soldiers were victorious, though at a serious cost of life and treasure; the diplomatists were defeated; but Massachusetts had learned her strength in both directions, and suffered less, in the end, by her defeat than by her victory. The issue between England and her colony had become clearly defined; the people learned by practice what they already knew in theory --the hatefulness of despotism; and their resolve to throw it off when the opportunity should arrive was not discouraged, but confirmed. From the Indian war they gained less than a wise peace would have given them, and they lost women and children as well as men. Such conflicts, once begun, must be pushed to the extremity; but it cannot but be wished that the people of Massachusetts might have found a means of living with the red men, as their brethren in Pennsylvania did, in peace and amity. The conduct of Indians in war can never be approved by the white race, but, on the other hand, the provocations which set them on the warpath always can be traced to some act of injustice, real or fancied, wanton or accidental, on our part. King Philip was fighting for precisely the same object that was actuating the colonists in their battle with King Charles. Doubtless the rights of a few thousand savages are insignificant compared with the higher principles of human liberty for which we contended; but Philip could not be expected to acknowledge this, and we should extend to him precisely the same sympathy that we feel for ourselves.

  A great deal of pains had been taken to convert and civilize these New England tribes. John Eliot translated the Bible for them; and it was he who made the first attempt to determine the grammar of their speech. But though many Indians professed the Christian faith, and some evinced a certain aptitude in letters, no new life was awakened in any of them, and no permanent good results were attained. Meanwhile, the Pokanokets, with Philip at their head, refused to accept the white man's God, or his learning; and they watched with anxiety his growing numbers and power.

  They had sold mile after mile of land to the English, not realizing that the aggregate of these transactions was literally taking the ground from under their feet; but the purchasers had the future as well as the present in view, and contrived so to distribute their holdings as gradually to push the Indians into the necks of land whence the only outlet was the sea. It was the old story of encroachment, with always a deed to justify it, signed with the mark of the savage, good in law, but to his mind a device to ensnare him to his hurt. In 1674, Philip was compelled to appear before a court and be examined, whereat his indignation was aroused, and, either with or without his privity, the informer who had procured his arrest was murdered. The murderers were apprehended and sentenced to be hanged by a jury, half white and half Indian. The tribe retaliated and war was begun.

  Philip, or Metaconet the son of Massasoit, may at this time have been about forty years old; he had been "King" for twelve years. The portraits of him show a face and head that one can hardly accept as veracious; an enormous forehead impending over a small face, with an almost delicate mouth. But he was obviously a man of ability, and his courage was hardened by desperation. His aim was to unite all the tribes in an effort to exterminate the entire English population, though this has been estimated to number in New England, at that time, more than fifty thousand persons.

  The odds were all upon the colonists' side; but they had not yet learned the Indian method of warfare, and the woods, hills and swamps, and the unprotected state of many of the settlements, gave the Indians opportunities to prolong the struggle which they amply improved. Had they been united, and adequately armed, the issue might have been different.

  Captain Benjamin Church, a hardy pioneer of six and thirty, who had watched the ways of the Indians, and learned their strategy, soon became prominent in the war, and ended as its most conspicuous and triumphant figure. At first the colonists were successful, and Philip was driven off; but this did but enable him to spread the outbreak among other tribes.

  From July of 1675 till August of the next year, the life of no one on the borders was safe. The settlers went to the meeting-house armed, and turned out at the first alarm. They were killed at their plowing; they were ambuscaded and cut off, tortured, slain, and their dissevered bodies hung upon the trees. At the brook thereafter called Bloody Run, near Deerfield, over seventy young men were surprised and killed. Women and children were not spared; it was hardly sparing them to carry them into captivity, as was often done. The villages which were attacked were set on fire after the tomahawking and scalping were done. Horrible struggles would take place in the confined rooms of the little cabins; blood and mangled corpses desecrated the familiar hearths, and throughout sounded the wild yell of the savages, and the flames crackled and licked through the crevices of the logs.

  In December, Church commanded, or accompanied, the little army which plowed through night and snow to attack the palisaded fort and village, strongly situated on an island of high ground in the midst of a swamp, in the township of New Kingston. The Narragansetts were surprised; the soldiers burst thei
r way through the palisades, and the red and the white men met hand to hand in a desperate conflict. Then the tomahawk measured itself against the sword, and before it faltered more than two hundred of the New Englanders had been killed or wounded, and the village was on fire. The pools of blood which the frost had congealed, bubbled in the heat of the flames. None could escape; infants, old women, all must die.

  It was as ghastly a fight as was ever fought. The victors remained in the charred shambles till evening, resting and caring for their wounded; and then, as the snow began to fall, went back to Wickford, carrying the wounded with them. It is said that a thousand Indian warriors fell on that day.

  At Hadfield had occurred the striking episode of the congregation, surprised at their little church, and about to be overcome, being rescued by a mysterious gray champion, who appeared none knew whence, rallied them, and led them to victory. It was believed to be Goffe, one of the men who sentenced Charles I. to be beheaded, who had escaped to New England at the time of the Restoration, and had dwelt in retirement there till the peril of his fellow exiles called him forth. The war was full of harrowing scenes and strange deliverances. Annie Brackett, a prisoner in an Indian party, crossed Casco Bay in a birch-bark canoe with her husband and infant and was rescued by a vessel which happened to enter the harbor at the critical moment.

  Church hunted the Indians with more than their own cunning and persistency; and at last it was he who led the party which effected Philip's death. The royal Indian was hemmed in in a swamp and finally killed by a traitor from his own side. The savages could fight no more; they had caused the death of six hundred men, had burned a dozen towns, and compelled the expenditure of half a million dollars. Scattered alarms and tragedies still occurred in the East, and along the borders; but the war was over. In 1678 peace was signed. And then Massachusetts turned once more to her deadlier enemy, King Charles.

  CHAPTER EIGHTH

  THE STUARTS AND THE CHARTER

  The cutting off of Charles I.'s head was a deed which few persons in Massachusetts would have advocated; Cromwell himself had remarked that it was a choice between the king's head and his own. History has upon the whole accepted the choice he made as salutary. Achilles, forgetting his heel, deemed himself invulnerable, and his conduct became in consequence intolerable; Charles, convinced that his anointed royalty was sacred, was led on to commit such fantastic tricks before high heaven as made the godly weep. Achilles was disillusioned by the arrow of Paris, and Charles by the ax of Cromwell. Death is a wholesome argument at times.

  But though a later age could recognize the high expediency of Charles's taking off, it was too bold and novel to meet with general approbation at the time, even from men who hated kingly rule. Prejudice has a longer root than it itself believes. And the Puritans of New England, having been removed from the immediate pressure of the king's eccentricities, were the less likely to exult over his end. Many of them were shocked at it; more regretted it; perhaps the majority accepted it with a sober equanimity.

  They were not bloodthirsty, but they were stern.

  Neither were they demonstrative; so that they took the Parliament and the Protector calmly, if cordially, and did not use the opportunity of their predominance to cast gibes upon their predecessor. So that, when the Restoration was an established fact, they had little to retract. They addressed Charles II. gravely, as one who by experience knew the hearts of exiles, and told him that, as true men, they feared God and the king. They entreated him to consider their sacrifices and worthy purposes, and to confirm them in the enjoyment of their liberties. Of the execution, and of the ensuing "confusions," they prudently forbore to speak. It was better to say nothing than either to offend their consciences, or to utter what Charles would dislike to hear. Their case, as they well knew, was critical enough at best. Every foe of New England and of liberty would not fail to whisper malice in the king's ear. They sent over an envoy to make the best terms he could, and in particular to ask for the suspension of the Navigation Acts. But the committee had small faith in the loyalty of the colony, and even believed, or professed to do so, that it might invite the aid of Catholic and barbarous Spain against its own blood: they judged of others' profligacy by their own. The king, to gain time, sent over a polite message, which meant nothing, or rather less; for the next news was that the Acts were to be enforced.

  Massachusetts thereupon proceeded to define her position. A committee composed of her ablest men caused a paper to be published by the general court affirming their right to do certain things which England, they knew, would be indisposed to permit. In brief, they claimed religious and civil independence, the latter in all but name, and left the king to be a figurehead without perquisites or power. They followed this intrepid statement by solemnly proclaiming Charles in Boston, and threw a sop to Cerberus in the shape of a letter couched in conciliating terms, feigning to believe that their attitude would win his approbation. Altogether, it was a thrust under the fifth rib, with a bow and a smile on the recover.

  Probably the thrust represented the will of the majority; the bow and smile, the prudence of the timid sort. Simon Bradstreet and John Norton were dispatched to London to receive the king's answer. They went in January of 1662, and after waiting through the spring and summer, not without courteous treatment, returned in the fall with Charles's reply, which, after confirming the charter and pardoning political infidelities under the Protectorate, went on to refuse all the special points which the colony had urged.

  Already at this stage of the contest it had become evident that the question was less of conforming with any particular demand or command on the king's part, than of admitting his right to exercise his will at all in the premises. If the colony conceded his sovereignty, they could not afterward draw the line at which its power was to cease. And yet they could not venture to declare absolute independence, partly because, if it came to a struggle in arms, they could not hope to prevail; and partly because absolute independence was less desired than autonomy under the English flag. England was as far from granting autonomy to Massachusetts as independence, but was willing, if possible, to constrain her by fair means rather than by foul. Meanwhile, the tongue of rumor fomented discord. It was said in the colony that England designed the establishment of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts; whereupon the laws against toleration of "heretics," which had been falling into disuse, were stringently revived. In London the story went that the escaped regicides had united the four chief colonies and were about to lead them in arms to revolt. Clarendon, to relieve anxiety, sent a reassuring message to Boston; but its good effect was spoiled by a report that commissioners were coming to regulate their affairs. The patent of the colony was placed in hiding, the trained bands were drilled, the defenses of the harbor were looked to, and a fast day was named with the double purpose of asking the favor of God, and of informing the colony as to what was in the wind.

  Assuredly there must have been stout souls in Boston in those days. A few thousand exiles were actually preparing to resist England!

  The warning had not been groundless. The fleet which had been fitted out to drive the Dutch governor, Peter Stuyvesant, from Manhattan, stopped at Boston on its way; and we may imagine that its entrance into the harbor on that July day was observed with keen interest by the great-grandfathers of the men of Bunker Hill. It was not exactly known what the instructions of the English officers required; but it was surmised that they meant tyranny. The commission could not have come for nothing. They had no right on New England soil. The fleet, for the present, proceeded on its way, and Massachusetts voluntarily contributed a force of two hundred men; but they were well aware that the trouble was only postponed; and depending on their charter, which contained no provision for a royal commission, they were determined to thwart its proceedings to the utmost of their power.

  How far that might be, they would know when the time came. Anything was better than surrender to the prerogative. When, in reply to Willoughby, a royalist declare
d that prerogative is as necessary as the law, Major William Hawthorne, who was afterward to distinguish himself against the Indians, answered him, "Prerogative is not above law!" It was not, indeed.

  Accordingly, while the fleet with its commissioners was overawing the New Netherlanders, the Puritans of Boston Bay wrote and put forth a document which well deserves reproduction, both for the terse dignity of the style, which often recalls the compositions of Lord Verulam, and still more for the courageous, courteous, and yet almost aggressive logic with which the life principles of the Massachusetts colonists are laid down. It is a remarkable State paper, and so vividly sincere that, as one reads, one can see the traditional Puritan standing out from the words--the steeple crowned hat, the severe brow, the steady eyes, the pointed beard, the dark cloak and sad-hued garments. The paper is also singular in that it remonstrates against a principle, without waiting for the provocation of overt deeds. This excited the astonishment of Clarendon and others in England; but their perplexity only showed that the men they criticised saw further and straighter than they did. It was for principles, and against them, that the Puritans always fought, since principles are the parents of all acts and control them. The royal commission was, potentially, the sum of all the wrongs from which New England suffered during the next hundred years, and though it had as yet done nothing, it implied everything.

  Whose hand it was that penned the document we know not; it was probably the expression of the combined views of such men as Mather, Norton, Hawthorne, Endicott and Bellingham; it may have been revised by Davenport, at that time nearly threescore and ten years of age, the type of the Calvinist minister of the period, austere, inflexible, high-minded, faithful. Be that as it may, it certainly voiced the feeling of the people, as the sequel demonstrated. It is dated October the Twenty-fifth, 1664, and is addressed to the king.