1629

6

HIS MODEL OF CHRISTIAN CHARITY.'

133

times he was strong enough even to free himself from the need for such renunciation. The Comus is the immortal witness of a half-successful attempt to consecrate those arts which weaker men would have banished. Thus the Puritanism of men such as Hampden and Winthrop was not like a sudden wave of religion sweeping over an enervated and sensual class. It did not transform life at the risk of a violent reaction; rather it braced up men's energies and impulses by setting forth aims higher indeed than those held before, yet akin to them, bound to the associations and memories of the past, not severed from them by the shame of recantation or remorse.

His Model

We have evidence from Winthrop's own pen that he well understood the duties which were laid upon himself and his associates, and the moral and sociai of Christian difficulties to which a young community is specially exposed. His views on these points are set forth in an address written during his voyage, and entitled A Model of Christian Charity.'

Charity.' 1

It may be described as a short and clear statement of the principles on which Christian men should live together, and especially of those moral laws which should guide them in their use of private property. As we might expect from the whole career of the writer, the work does not aim at any marked originality of thought; yet it is full of individual character, and wholly free from conventionality either of idea or expression. It is the work of a practical man writing for a practical end. From first to last there is nothing sectarian nor controversial. Illustration is used where it is needed, but there is no display of learning, and the style, unlike much of the writing of that age, is neither ponderous nor fantastic. Winthrop's view of property is that of Aristotle. He

1 The Model of Christian Charity is printed in the Massachusetts Historical Collection, 3rd series, vol. vii.

would have individual ownership combined with common use.1 At the same time that community of enjoyment must not be based on any formal system, nor can it be provided for by exact rules. It must spring from the free spirit of Christian charity and brotherly love. Winthrop also shows himself fully alive to the dangers which beset a young community, where the struggle of life is keener than in an old-established state. •We must,' he says, ' be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities for the supply of others' necessities.' Finally he appeals to his followers by reminding them how their failure will discredit the cause of God. If they should fail through their own selfishness they will shame the face of God's worthy servants. If they should succeed, then men would say of other plantations in later days, 'The Lord make it like that of New England.'

Winthrop's

More than one of Winthrop's associates was, like himself, abandoning ease, wealth, and the possibility of a brilliant public career. Such were the Deputyassociates. Governor, John Humphrey, and Isaac Johnson. Slightly, if at all, lower in rank was Thomas Dudley, a stern Puritan who had served in the Huguenot army under Henry the Fourth. All these were connected with the Earl of Lincoln, the head of a great Protestant family, Humphrey and Johnson as his sons-in-law, Dudley as the steward of his household.2

In the spring of 1630 Winthrop and his party of emigrants sailed. Owing to delays in preparing the ships the whole body did not sail together, but parture. in at least three detachments, numbering in all about nine hundred emigrants. This, which we may

Their de

1

Kowás.

φανερὸν τοίνυν ὅτι βέλτιον εἶναι μὲν ἰδίας τὰς κτήσεις, τῇ δὲ χρήσει ποιεῖν Politics, ii. 5. 8.

2 Sketches of all these men are given in the Archæologia Americana, vol. iii.

1630

THE EMIGRATION OF 1630.

135

regard as virtually the foundation of Massachusetts, was unquestionably the greatest effort of colonization which Englishmen had yet made. For the first time the projects of Raleigh and Gilbert found their fulfilment. England was at length sending out, not a band of traders nor of pauper labourers, but a worthily representative body of citizens, animated, like a Greek colony, with the desire to reproduce the political life of the country which they were leaving. In Virginia, indeed, so far as natural conditions allowed, the constitutional life of the mother country reappeared in no unworthy form. But the growth of Virginia had been imperceptible and, as it were, unconscious; there was no epoch in its history which answered to the great New England emigration of 1630. As far as the romance of its circumstances and the personal heroism of its leaders goes, the settlement of Plymouth, beyond a doubt, must rank higher than that of Massachusetts. But it cannot claim the same importance as a deliberate and well-considered effort of colonization. It was not free choice but hostile pressure from without which drove the Plymouth settlers to forsake their English homes and to accustom themselves to an exile which lessened the effort of emigration. The founders of Massachusetts were many of them rich men furnished with ability, dwelling peaceably in their habitations, who forsook the good things of the world to win for themselves and their children a home free from its corruptions. The narrowness of their aims and measures must often forbid our sympathy or even awake our indignation; it should never blind us to the greatness of their undertaking.

In spite

In June Winthrop landed in America. of the wealth and commercial ability of its founders, the infant settlement of Massachusetts did not escape those sufferings which so far seemed to be the allotted. portion of every colony in its early years. Of the settlers

Sufferings of the

colonists.1

who had been sent out the year before more than eighty had died during the winter, and the survivors had but a fortnight's victuals left. The arrival of Winthrop and his followers did not make matters better. Many of them were suffering from scurvy, and the ship which was to have brought stores with them was by mishap or mismanagement kept back. Unhappily it was a season of dearth in England, and but little corn could be exported. Later writers tell us of the fortitude and resignation with which the settlers endured their hardships. Dudley and Winthrop seem to have been less impressed with the heroism of those who stayed than with the faint-heartedness of those who fled. In the first year after Winthrop's landing more than a hundred settlers, some of them men of wealth, left the colony. The greater part, among them Bright, one of the four ministers lately sent out, returned to England, others joined the settlers on the Piscataqua.2

One consequence of the dearth was that the Company had no means of feeding its hired servants, who now numbered a hundred and eighty. Accordingly it was necessary to give them their freedom.

Hired servants set free.5

As each of them had cost about twenty pounds to transport the loss was a heavy one. The natural condition of New England made it certain that servile industry could never play a prominent part in the economy of the colony, and that the land would be mainly tilled by small proprietors. Yet the check thus imposed on the employment of servants and the addition to the community of a large body of free labourers must have hastened and confirmed the working of a natural tendency.

1 The arrival of Winthrop's fleet and many of the chief incidents that follow are told in a letter from Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, sent home on March 12, 1630. The letter is published in Young, M. C., pp. 303-340. 2 Dudley, pp. 315, 316. 3 Ib. p. 312.

1629-31

Extension of the

settlement.1

EXTENSION OF THE SETTLEMENT.

137

The poverty of the settlers had another important result. It led them to spread abroad over the land in search of fertile soil. From the outset they seem to have agreed by common consent that Salem would not be a fit centre for the colony. A few of the settlers sent out the year before had already established themselves to the north of the Charles river, and had given their abode the name of Charlestown. Here Winthrop at first chose his home. But the brackish water made Charlestown an undesirable dwelling-place. One of the old planters, Blackstone, had occupied a site on the south side of the Charles river which possessed a valuable spring of fresh water. He now recommended this site to Winthrop. The Governor accordingly decided to leave his first restingplace, and the inhabitants of Charlestown had the disappointment of seeing his new timber house carried across the river to a fresh site, which then received the name of Boston," and which henceforth seems to have enjoyed, though in an unacknowledged and informal manner, the position of the capital. Soon after Winthrop resolved upon a yet further migration to the inland site of Newtown. His house was for a second time actually transferred, but the urgent request of his neighbours at Boston prevailed, and the Governor stayed among them. So rapid was the process of dispersal that within a year of Winthrop's arrival eight separate settlements were in existence, dotted along the shore of

1 Our knowledge of the extension of the colony is derived partly from Winthrop, Dudley, and Wood, partly from two pamphlets published in Young, M. C. I have already mentioned one of these, the Records of Charlestown. The other is the Memoirs of Roger Clap, one of those also who came out with Winthrop. This was written apparently for the edification of Clap's children, and was not printed till 1731.

2 Charlestown Records, p. 381.

3 Winthrop, vol. i. p. 82. In citing Winthrop I refer throughout to the old pagination, which is preserved by Mr. Savage in the margin.