Volume 1, Chapter 20, The Puritans Purify Theocracy in Massachusetts
The Puritans had no sooner landed in the New World than they began coercively to purify
their surroundings. As early as John Endicott's arrival in Salem, the Puritans had surprisingly
had shifted from their loyal opposition within the Anglican Church and had severed themselves
from the Anglican Communion. In this way they became, to a large extent, as separatists
as the Plymouth Pilgrims they had previously despised. This act of separation was accomplished
in 1629 with Francis Higginson and Samuel Skelton as the guiding ministers. Two Puritan
members of the Council, John and Samuel Brown, balked at this radical departure from Puritan
beliefs and moved to form an Anglican church of their own. This prompted the government
to move quickly in the first act of purifying the colony's spiritual atmosphere. Governor
Indicott protested that the Browns' speeches and activities were tending to mutiny and
The Puritans also proceeded to the final destruction of Thomas Morton's ill-starred Marymount Colony.
For Morton, in 1629, had indeed re-established his colony of the interracial frolic, the
The Anglican maypole and brisk and efficient trade in Indian furs that competed with Massachusetts Bay.
Massachusetts offered to share the Bay Company's fur trading monopoly with Morton, but the highly efficient Morton refused to do so,
judging that he could easily outcompete the Massachusetts monopoly.
This he did, far outstripping Massachusetts in the fur trade by over six to one.
This the colony could not tolerate.
and Captain Littleworth was sent to Marymount with an armed troop.
Littleworth cut down the maypole, burned Morton's house and confiscated his property and proceeded to destroy the settlement.
Morton was charged by the authorities with alienating the Indians, the reverse of the fact, and was again deported to England.
Back in England, the embittered Morton protested his persecution and worked for Gorgias in trying to void the Plymouth and Massachusetts patents, but to no avail.
Years later, returning to Massachusetts, the poverty-stricken Morton was heavily fined, was imprisoned for a year by the authorities, and died in Maine shortly after his release.
The Massachusetts colony was organized in towns. The church congregation of each town selected its minister. Unlike the thinly populated, extensive settlement of Virginia, the clustering in towns was ideal for having the minister and his aides keep watch on all the inhabitants.
Although the congregation selected the minister, the town government paid his salary. In contrast
to the poorly paid clergy of the southern colonies, the salary was handsome indeed.
Out of it, the minister could maintain several slaves or indentured servants and amass a
valuable library. The minister, himself a government official, exerted enormous political
The Congregation was ruled not democratically by the members, but rather by its Council of Elders, also highly important was the minister who functioned as church teacher, specializing in doctrinal matters.
Since only church members could vote in political elections, the requirements for admission
became a matter of concern for every inhabitant.
These requirements were rigorous.
For one thing, the candidate had to satisfy the minister and elders of his complete adherence
to pure doctrine and of his satisfactory personal conduct, and, once admitted, he was always
subject to expulsion for deviations in either area.
As the years wore on, the rule of the oligarchy tended to tighten and polarize further, so
that a lower proportion of the colony was admitted to church membership.
The Puritan leaders made strenuous efforts to exclude the unsanctified from the colony.
Thus, in 1636, the town of Boston outlawed any persons entertaining strangers for more
More Than Two Weeks Without Obtaining Permission from the Town Government
Salem went one better by hiring an inspector to go from house to house once a month to
inquire what strangers have thrust themselves into the town.
To quicken his incentive for snooping, he was rewarded with the fines levied against
those whose crime in entertaining strangers he had uncovered.
In 1637, the Massachusetts government imposed this outlawing of hospitality on all towns,
and it was now illegal for any town to permit a stranger to move there without the consent
of high government officials.
As the years went on, however, and the colony grew, the authorities were forced by the need
for labor to admit servants, apprentices, sailors and artisans who did not necessarily
belong to the body of Puritan saints. To the saints and their leaders, any idea of
separation of church and state was anathema. As the Puritan synod put it in their Platform
of Church Discipline, 1648, it is the duty of the magistrate to take care of matters
of religion. The end of the magistrate's office is godliness. It is the duty of the
The magistrate to punish and repress, idolatry, blasphemy, heresy, venting corrupt and pernicious
opinions, open contempt of the word preached, profanation of the Lord's Day.
Should any congregation dare to grow schismatical or walk incorrigibly or obstinately in any
corrupt way of their own, the magistrate was to put forth his coercive power.
And if the state was to be the strong coercive arm of the church, so the church in turn was
to foster in the public the duty of obedience to the state rulers. Church government furthereth
the people in yielding more hearty obedience unto the civil government. From this attitude,
it followed for the Puritan that any rebel against the civil government was a rebel and
So insistent indeed were the Puritans on the duty of obedience to civil government that the content of its decrees became almost irrelevant.
As Reverend John Davenport, a leading Puritan divine, put it,
You must submit to the ruler's authority and perform all duties to them whom you have chosen,
whether they be good or bad, by virtue of their relation between them and you.
Naturally, John Winthrop, who had helped govern Massachusetts for twenty years after its inception, agreed with this sentiment.
To Winthrop, natural liberty was a wild beast,
East, while correct civil liberty meant being properly subjected to authority and restrained
by God's ordinances.
Perhaps the bluntest expression of the Puritan ideal of theocracy was the Reverend Nathaniel
Ward's The Simple Cobbler of Ag Guam in America, 1647.
Returning to England to take part in the Puritan Ferment there, this Massachusetts divine was
horrified to find the English Puritans too soft and tolerant, too willing to allow a
diversity of opinion in society.
The objective of both church and state, Ward declaimed, was to coerce virtue, to preserve
unity of spirit, faith and ordinances, to be all like-minded of one accord, every man
to take his brother into his Christian care and by no means to permit heresies or erroneous
opinions.
Ward continued, God does nowhere in his word tolerate Christian states to give toleration
to such adversaries of his truth.
If they have power in their hands to suppress them, he that willingly ascends to toleration
In the description of varieties of religion, his conscience will tell him he is either an atheist, or a heretic, or a hypocrite, or at best captive to some lust.
Polypiety is the greatest impiety in the world. To authorize an untruth by a toleration of state is to build a sconce against the walls of heaven, to batter God out of his chair.
And so the Puritan ministry stood at the apex of rule in Massachusetts, ever ready to use the secular arm to enforce its beliefs against critics and false prophets, or even against simple lapses from conformity.
To enforce purity of doctrine upon society, the Puritans needed a network of schools throughout the colony to indoctrinate the younger generation.
The Southern Colonies individualistic attitude toward education was not to be tolerated.
Also the clusters of town settlements made schools far more feasible than it did among
the widely scattered rural population of the Southern Colonies.
The first task was a college, to graduate suitably rigorous ministers and to train school
Schoolmasters for Lower Schools
And so the Massachusetts General Court established a college in Cambridge in 1636, named Harvard
College the following year, appropriating 400 pounds for its support.
In a few years, after schoolmasters had been trained, a network of grammar schools was
established throughout the colony.
In 1647, the government required every town to create and keep in operation a grammar
school. Thus Massachusetts forged a network of governmental schools to indoctrinate the
younger generation in Puritan orthodoxy. The master was chosen and his salary paid by the
town government and, of course, crucial to selecting a master, was the minister's intensive
inquiry into his doctrinal and behavioral purity. Indeed, in 1654, Massachusetts made
it illegal for any town to continue in their post any teachers that have manifested themselves
unsound in the faith or scandalous in their lives. To feed the network of grammar schools,
the colony in 1645 compelled each town to provide a schoolmaster to teach reading and
There would be no point to government schools for indoctrinating the masses if there were no masses to be indoctrinated.
Vital to the system, therefore, was a law compelling every child in the colony to be educated.
This was put through in 1642, the first compulsory education law in America,
and was in contrast to the system of voluntary education
then prevailing in England and in the southern colonies.
Parents ignoring the law were fined and wherever government officials
judged the parents or guardians to be unfit
to have the children educated properly, the government was
empowered to seize the children and apprentice them out
to others. One of the essential goals of Puritan
Puritan rule with strict and rigorous enforcement of ascetic puritan conception of moral behavior.
But since men's actions, given freedom to express their choices, are determined by their
inner convictions and values, compulsory moral values only serve to manufacture hypocrites
and not to advance genuine morality.
Coercion only forces people to change their actions.
It does not persuade people to change their underlying values and convictions.
And since those already convinced of the moral rules would abide by them without coercion,
the only real impact of compulsory morality is to engender hypocrites, those whose actions
no longer reflect their inner convictions.
The Puritans, however, did not boggle at this consequence. A leading Puritan divine, the
Reverend John Cotton, went so far as to maintain that hypocrites, who merrily conform to the
Church rules, without inner conviction, could still be useful Church members. As to the
production of hypocrites, Cotton complacently declared, oh, if it did so, yet better to
Hypocrites give God part of his due, the outward man, but the profane person giveth God neither outward nor inward man.
One requisite for the efficient enforcement of any code of behavior is always an effective espionage apparatus of informers.
This apparatus was supplied in Massachusetts, informally but no less effectively, by the dedicated snooping of friends and neighbors upon one another, with detailed reports sent to the minister on all deviations, including the sin of idleness.
The clustering of towns around central villages aided the network and the fond of personal information collected by each minister added to his great political power.
Moreover, the menace of excommunication was redoubled by the threat of corollary secular punishment.
Informal snooping, however, was felt by some of the towns to be too haphazard and these set up a regular snooping officialdom.
These officers were called tithing men as each one had supervision over the private affairs of his ten nearest neighbors.
One Puritan moral imperative was strict observance of the Sabbath. Any worldly pleasures indulged in on the Sabbath were a grave offense against both church and state.
The general court was shocked to learn in the late 1650s that some people, residents as well as strangers, persisted in uncivilly walking in the streets and fields on Sunday,
on Sunday, and even traveling from town to town and drinking at inns. And so the General
Court duly passed a law prohibiting the crimes of playing on civil walking, drinking and
traveling from town to town on Sunday. If these criminals could not pay the fine imposed,
they were to be whipped by the constable at a maximum rate of five lashes per ten shilling
and Fine. To enforce the regulations and prevent the crimes, the gates of the towns were closed
on Sunday, and no one permitted to leave. And if two or more people met accidentally
on the street on a Sunday, they were quickly dispersed by the police. Nor was the Sabbath
in any sense a hasty period. Under the inspiration of the Reverend John Cotton, the New England
The weekend Sabbath began rigorously at sunset Saturday evening and continued through Sunday night, thus ensuring that no part of the weekend could be spent in enjoyment. Indeed, enjoyment at any time, while not legally prohibited, was definitely frowned upon, levity being condemned as inconsistent with the gravity to be always preserved by a serious Christian. Kissing one's wife in public on a Sunday
A sea captain returning home on a Sunday morning from a three-year voyage was indiscreet enough to kiss his wife on the doorstep. For this he was forced to sit in the stocks for two hours for this lewd and unseemly behavior on the Sabbath day.
Not only were non-religious activities outlawed on Sundays, but attendance at a Puritan church was compulsory as well.
Fines were levied for absence from church, and the police were ordered to search through the towns for absentees and forcibly haul them to church.
Falling asleep in church was also outlawed, and whipping was the punishment for repeated offenses.
Gambling of any kind was strictly forbidden. The law declared, nor shall any person at any time play or game for any money upon penalty of forfeiting treble the value thereof, one half to the party informing and the other half to the treasury.
Yet, as so often happens in this world, what was so sternly prohibited to private individuals was permitted to government.
Thus, government was permitted to raise revenue for itself by running lotteries.
To government, in short, was given the compulsory monopoly of the gambling and lottery business.
Cards and dice were, of course, prohibited as gambling.
Also prohibited, however, were games of skill at public houses, such as bowling and shuffleboard,
such activities being considered a waste of time by the people's self-appointed moral
guardians in the government.
Idleness in fact was not just a sin but also a punishable misdemeanor at any time, not
only on Sunday.
If the constable discovered anyone singly or in groups engaged in such heinous behavior
as coasting on the ice, swimming, or sneaking in a quiet smoke, he was ordered to report
Time, it seems, was God's gift, and therefore always to be used in His service. A sin against God's time was a crime against the Church and State.
Drinking, oddly enough, was not completely outlawed, but drunkenness was, and subject to a fine.
The practice of drinking toast was outlawed in 1639 because of its supposedly pagan origin and because once a man has begun to drink a toast, he is on the road to perdition. Drunkenness, uncleanness and other sins quickly follow.
And yet the stern guardians of the public morality had their troubles. For decades later, we find ministerial complaints that the heathenish and idolatrous practice of health drinking is too frequent. Women and children, as might be expected, were treated extremely harshly by the Puritan commonwealth. Children were regarded as the virtually absolute property of their parents, and this property claim was
rigorously enforced by the state. If any child be disobedient to his parents, any magistrate
could haul him into court and punish the little criminal with a maximum of ten lashes for
each offense. Should the pattern of disobedience persist into adolescence, the parents, as
provided by the law of 1646, were supposed to bring the youth to the magistrate. If convicted
of the High Crime of Stubbornness and Rebelliousness, the Son was to be duly executed. Happily,
it is likely that this particular law on the books for over 30 years was rarely, if ever,
put into effect by the parents. Women were viewed as instruments of Satan by the Puritans
and severe laws were passed outlawing women's apparel that was either immodest or so showy
as to indicate the sin of pride of raiment. In modesty, including the wearing of short
sleeved dresses, whereby the nakedness of the arm may be discovered, a practice duly
outlawed in 1656. In outlawing pride of raiment, women were not discriminated against by the
Puritans. Men, too, felt the heavy arm of the State. In 1634, the General Court began
and the practice of outlawing finery of dress for either sex, including immodest fashions
with any lace on it, silver, gold or thread, hat bands, belts, ruffs, beaver hats and many
other items of adornment.
In 1639, more items of sin were added, for example, ribbons, shoulder bands and cuffs.
These non-utilitarian items being of little use or benefit but to the nourishment of pride.
Excessive finery was subject to heavy fines, and the law was extensively enforced.
Thus in one year, Hampshire County hauled thirty-eight women and thirty men into court
for illegal finery, silk being an especially popular sin.
One woman was punished for wearing silk in a flaunting garb to the great offence of several
Even the wearing of one's hair long, an old cavalier practice condemned by the Puritans,
who were therefore called roundheads, was placed under interdict.
The general court repeatedly condemned flowing hair as dangerous vanity.
Many Puritan divines ranked pride in long hair fully as sinful as gambling, drinking
or idleness.
One citizen fined for daring to build upon unused government land was offered a remission
of half the amount if he would only cut off the long hair off his head into a civil frame.
Hair righteousness, however, never had much of a chance even in godly Massachusetts for
some of the major leaders of the colony, including Governor Winthrop and John Endicott, persisted
in the sin of long hair.
Fixed dancing only came to the colony late in the century, but was promptly condemned
as frivolous, immoral and a waste of time. Boston, upon hearing complaints, closed down
a dancing school. The measures of the fanatical Puritan theocracy were not solely motivated
by religious zeal. Part of the motivation had an economic class basis. As the century
As we progressed, the lowly laborers and indentured servants formed an increasing minority of the populace.
Since they were not admitted to the political and social privileges of church membership,
they were naturally the most disaffected members of the social body.
The above measures were partly designed to keep the lower classes in their place.
Thus, the authorities were particularly angered to see servants or the families of laborers
The General Court in 1658 severely announced our utter detestation that men or women of
mean condition should take upon them the garb of gentleman by wearing gold or silk lace
or buttons or silk of taffeta hoods or scarves, which, though allowable to persons of greater
In short, the lower orders must know their place, and the stringent requirements of a
fanatical moral code could bend for the upper strata of society.
Similarly, the requirement of compulsory education was enforced particularly upon the indentured
Servants, as many masters believed that their servants would be less inclined to be independent
or give trouble if imbued with Puritan teachings.
Indeed, the leaders of the colony did not hesitate to justify the oligarchic rule by
the rich over the poor.
As Governor Winthrop expressed it in his A Model of Christian Charity, 1630, God Almighty
Many in his most holy and wise providence hath so disposed of the condition of mankind,
as in all times some must be rich, some poor, some high and eminent in power and dignity,
others mean and in subjection.
Generally then, it was the lower orders who had to bear the main brunt of the severely
enforced moral rules of the Puritan Code.
Indeed, Massachusetts imposed maximum ceilings on wage rates in order to lower wage costs
to employers.
The temporarily enslaved indentured servants were particularly oppressed by Puritans trying
to maintain them as the efficient property of their masters.
They therefore tried to suppress all deviant tendencies from the norm.
The sources of servants in Massachusetts and the other northern colonies were the same
as those of the servants coming to Virginia.
Many servants were branded like cattle with their initials and the date of purchase so
as to assure their rapid identification in case of flight.
When found unsatisfactory or troublesome, servants were generally punished, whipped
and Imprisoned or had their tenure of servitude extended.
Orphaned boys were bound out as servants by the state until they reached the age of 20,
while illegitimate boys were especially punished by being bound out until the age of 30.
In addition, indentured servants could, like slaves, be sold by their masters to other
masters and thus be forcibly separated from their families.
Those caught escaping were often punished by having their ears cut off.