University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-2001 Fear of an oath : piety, hypocrisy, and the dilemma of Puritan identity. John M. Lund University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Lund, John M., "Fear of an oath : piety, hypocrisy, and the dilemma of Puritan identity." (2001). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1287. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1287 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FEAR OF AN OATH: PIETY, HYPOCRISY, AND THE DILEMMA OF PURITAN IDENTITY A Dissertation Presented by JOHN M, LUND Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY May 2001 Department of History © Copyright by John M. Lund 2001 All Rights Reserved FEAR OF AN OATH: PIETY, HYPOCRISY, AND THE DILEMMA OF PURITAN IDENTITY A Dissertation Presented by JOHN M. LUND Approved as to style and content by; Barry J. tevy. Chair rA^Q—Jo Gerald McFarland, Member Stephen Nissenbaum, Member ' Mason I. Lowance Kathy Peiss, Department Chair Department of History ABSTRACT FEAR OF AN OATH: PIETY, HYPOCRISY, AND THE DILEMMA OF PURITAN IDENTITY MAY 2001 JOHN M. LUND, B.A., SUSQUEHANNA UNIVERSITY M.A., UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT PH. D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Professor Barry J. Levy Despite the fact that Puritans viewed themselves as honest embodiments of God's Word, they were routinely condemned as consummate liars, dangerous sharpers, and seditious malefactors. The perception of Puritans as hypocrites and tricksters began in Elizabethan England and gained wide currency during the Stuart monarchies. The disreputable attributes attached to Puritans followed them across the Atlantic when they settled New England. Throughout the seventeenth century the stigma of dishonesty and deceptiveness tainted perceptions of the Puritan plantations. By the eighteenth century, the English speaking world universally held New Englanders in low repute. Like their Puritan forebears. New Englanders during the decades prior to the Revolution were seen as deceptive, dishonest, and crafty. In Old England, Puritans created a cultural identity based upon privileging oaths as a sacred form of discipline and this preoccupation with oaths played a major role in generating their reputation for dishonesty and hypocrisy. They antagonized their neighbors by attacking the popular vernacular habit of swearing low-grade oaths. Worse still, they lied or found ways of lying to circumvent the oaths mandated by the crown and church to enforce religious conformity. Their reaction against English state oaths made them enemies of the crown and church and led them into exile on the Continent or in New England. In New England, Puritans created a civil and ecclesiastical polity complete with its own loyalty oaths which substituted the English oaths of allegiance. These innovations enraged the home government and generated iv scathing denunciations of New England Puritans. Resistance to English trade regulations, especially the subterfuge practiced around the required customs-house oaths, similarly contributed to Puritan's low repute. Puritans fretted over their reputation for dishonesty. In New England, the social structure they created aimed to eliminate hypocrisy and identify the godly. Nonetheless, the decades of oath controversies led Puritans to become adept at verbal play and resorting to literal interpretations of truth. These characteristics came to be recognized as a key component of the region's identity and endured into the eighteenth century to become the hallmark of the 'Yankee' personality. V TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT iv CHAPTER I. THE ORDEAL OF 'ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND' AND 'DAME PURECRAFT': THE CONFLICT OVER SWEARING CRUDE OATHS AND THE PURITAN CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE 1 II. RELIGIOUS TESTS, EX OFRCIO OATHS, CASUISTRY, EXILE, AND MIGRATION TO NEW ENGLAND 27 III. HDELITY, FREEMEN, COVENANTS, AND CONFLICT: PURITAN NEW ENGLAND DURING THE RRST CHARTER PERIOD 61 IV. NEW ENGLAND'S REFORMATION OF MANNERS: GOVERNING VERBAL BEHAVIOR 129 V. THE CASE OF WILLIAM PENN'S WILL 168 VI. THE ART OF SMUGGLING: CUSTOMS-HOUSE OATHS, "CHEATING THE DEVIL," AND THE DILEMMA OF COMMERCIAL SPEECH 212 EPILOGUE 258 APPENDIX: ORIGINAL CONNOTATIONS OF 'PURITAN' AND 'YANKEE' AND A BRIEF SUMMARY OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF EARLY NEW ENGLAND 272 BIBLIOGRAPHY 279 vi CHAPTER I THE ORDEAL OF 'ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND' AND 'DAMEPURECRAFT' : THE CONFLICT OVER SWEARING CRUDE OATHS AND THE PURITAN CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE Playwright Ben Jonson incorporated prevailing perceptions of Puritans in his 1614 comical satire Bartholomew Fair, a play about contemporary social life and manners. The prologue, dedicated to James I, alluded to Puritanism by warning that "the zealous noyse of your lands Faction" which "vext" England would be included. In the play, two characters, "Zeal-of-the-Land'' and "Dame Purecraft," represented the brethren." Zeal was described to audiences as "Rabbi Busy" while "painful I Puritan] Purecraft was characterized as "a most elect hypocrite." (Purecraft's son-in-law, "John Little-Wit," even boasted that he could appear a Puritan by being "Hypocrite enough, daughter, "Win Little-Wit" who though I were never so straight lac'd.") Purecraft's was married to John, knew Puritans disdained what they considered "prophane" so that she and festivities, including the annual Bartholomew Fair, but hoped to attend her husband might appear to be "in fashion." To accomplish their goal, "Win Little- be cured by Wit" feigned an illness and told her mother that the malady could only parody of the Puritan satisfying her "longing to eate Pigge" at Bartholomew Fair. In a find out if her daughter predilection for Old Testament law, Purecraft consulted Zeal to but not at Bartholomew "may commit the act." He determined that she could eat pig syllogisms, the playwright had Zeal Fair. Lampooning the Puritan use of deductive that is nourishing, and may be long'd announce: "Now Pigge, it is a meat, and a meat eaten; very exceeding well eaten." But, he for, and so consequently eaten; it may be for the very calling it a continued, "as a Bartholmew-pig, it cannot be eaten, Idolatry and you make the Fayre, no Bartholmew-pigge, and to eat it so, is a spice of for her daughter's health, Purecraft better then one of the high Places." Fearing He, in make it as lawful as you can." implored "Brother Zeal-of-the-Land [toj thinke to wore a "vaile," he advised, "... and be turn, contrived a way. If the daughter 1 Zeal even shadowed as it were, it may be eaten ... [at | the Fay re." Purecraft and agreed to chaperon the couple so that they could "be religious in midst of the prophane."! At the fair the Puritans gorged themselves, especially Zeal who declared he would "eate exceedingly and prohesie." Yet even as he feasted. Zeal unleashed a torrent of abuse on both the fair and its attendees. "ITlhe tents of the uncleane," "the wares are the wares of the devil," "the merchandize of Babylon," "the peeping of Popery upon the stals," he exclaimed. These denunciations led other characters at the fair to condemn Zeal and his party. They labeled the Puritans "Fine ambling hypocrite." hypocrites." They derided Zeal as a "stone puritane" and "an excellent right When Zeal's disgust for the festivities overwhelmed him, he destroyed a vendor's flasket of Idols! . which I will booth. "|T|his Idolatrous Grove of Images, this . arrested and thrown in the pull downe." For his iconoclastic rampage, Zeal was stocks.2 humorous episode: The play presented an unmistakable moral lesson from this stocks. To underscore the annoying, hypocritical Puritans deserved to be placed in the England's "painful brethren" as point, the playwright had Dame Purecraft unmask she disingenuously arranged particularly disreputable rogues. Purecraft revealed how return "for a third part of "marriages for our decayed Brethren with rich widows" in him as the "the capitall Knave of the their wealth." She then exposed Zeal, excoriating for the estates of "deceased Brethren." land" who surreptitiously served as the executor heirs for his oath when He earned his living by extorting money from rightful the second decade of the "swearing the absolute gift of their inheritance." By and Evelyn Simpson, eds., iR^n inncnn R;.^mew Fair in C. H. Herford, Percy On anti-Puritan literature .n general Ben Jonson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), VI:9-40; Conn.: Archon Books, M^.H^n Anti Puritan Satire 1572^1642 (Hamden. see: William P. 1968). Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds., 2Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair in C. H. Herford, Ben Jonson, VI:9-40. 2 seventeenth century, Jonson's presentation of Puritans as con men needed no explanation. The "painful brethren" in the comedy conformed to popular English perceptions of Puritans as sanctimonious frauds and consummate liars.3 The play presented many of the real social conflicts which contributed to the low repute of Puritans. The use of formal, Ramist logic by Puritans - parodied by Zeal's arguments concerning the lawfulness of eating roast pig at the fair - set them apart from popular culture and made them