THE STRUGGLE for RELIGIOUS FREEDOM at the TIME of the FOUNDING of ATTLEBOROUGH (A Talk by Rev
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THE STRUGGLE FOR RELIGIOUS FREEDOM AT THE TIME OF THE FOUNDING OF ATTLEBOROUGH (A talk by Rev. John Fisk to the Attleboro Historical Preservation Society, April 19, 2012) During the time I was minister of the First Baptist Church, Attleboro, I researched and wrote a family history of my own. One of the interesting things I discovered was that my great grandparents, Arthur and Mary Fisk, lived in the villages of Coddenham and Debenham, in the county of Suffolk, just over the line from Attleborough, in the county of Norfolk. The surrounding towns sound familiar: Dedham, Boston, Framlingham, Sudbury, Ipswich. My great grandfather raised horses but had to give up that line of work when WWI came and the government took all his horses, a theme in the movie War Horse. I did visit Attleborough, England, in 1998 during a sabbatical when I was researching early Baptists at the library at Regents Park College, Oxford. Today, Attleborough is a very pleasant suburb of the city of Norwich. As I look back over my own life I see a pattern of movement physically, psychologically and spiritually away from a restricted Attleborough, England environment towards a more free expression. In a small way I have followed in the footsteps of the first English settlers in America, seeking more freedom for my soul. There’s a wonderful text in Psalm 119:5 “God has brought me into a broad place.” In other places that phrase “broad place” is translated as liberty. In the Book of Genesis that broad place where the people would find room to flourish was called Rehoboth, and Attleborough was founded as the northern section of Rehoboth in the Plymouth Bay Colony, a place for people to find freedom and flourish. I’d like to explore with you the religious context of the early settlers who founded Attleborough and surrounding communities. You probably know that the very first settlers in Attleborough came from the settlement at Rehoboth, located in today’s Rumford section of East Providence (see map on p.5). The boundary line between Rhode Island and Massachusetts was not finalized until much later. The group that came to Rehoboth and subsequently to Attleborough in the mid to late seventeenth century was from the Plymouth Bay Colony. They were of a less restrictive frame of mind than the Mass Bay Colony in Boston, leaning towards less interference by civil authorities in matters of religion. They felt that having more space might lead to less religious friction. One of the central questions debated hotly by the early 17th century English was whether freedom of religion might be allowed. Preserving law and order and the authority of the king was paramount. The Tudors in the 16th century had thrown off the authority of the Pope for political reasons, but they were not about to let go of their own religious authority as rulers. The idea that a society could separate religious faith and practice from enforcement by the civil authorities was unthinkable, except to a tiny minority. That minority grew substantially in the early 17th century. Amongst Protestants the shades of opinion on this subject were roughly as follows (see handout): 1. The Church of England proclaimed it was the state church into which all English people were born. The duties of membership were enforced to varying degrees by civil magistrates (established church). 2. Most Puritans wanted to reform the Church of England to eliminate abuses in the episcopal form of government, to replace it either with a presbyterian or congregational form of government, to strengthen the role of good preaching and the Bible, especially as it applied to the disciplined life of the Christian. They still wanted religious observance enforced by civil authorities but did not want to break with the C of E. Hence Sabbath keeping, taxes to support the church, and clergy provided by the town were all standard fare. The colonists of the Mass Bay Colony were this brand of Puritan. 3. A smaller group of Puritans, known as Separatists, wanted to break with the Church of England and begin new churches with a congregational form of government. Church members should be exemplary in their conduct and live like saints, but religious practice was still to be enforced by the magistrates. Those in the Plymouth Bay Colony were this brand of Puritan. A subset of this group did not want enforcement of religious observance by the civil authorities. Some were known as Independents and some were Baptists who rejected infant baptism also. The people who founded Rhode Island and towns like Rehoboth, Swansea and Attleborough were part of this sub group. It was just a few thinkers in England who advocated the separation of state and church in the early 17th century. But the leaders who came to this part of the world were strongly influenced by them. And many of them came from the Eastern areas of England. John Smyth (c.1570-1612) was a clergyman who came from Lincolnshire (Gainsborough) and was educated at Cambridge. He was the first Baptist theologian and one of the earliest theologians to support the separation of church and state: “The magistrate should leave Christian religion free, to every man’s conscience, and to handle only civil transgressions” (Shapers of Baptist Thought, p.28). The followers of Smyth, Thomas Helwys, and John Murton also advocated for separation of government from religion. Helwys told King James in 1612 that the King had “no power over the immortal souls of his subjects”, John Smyth, Baptist Theologian for which Helwys ended up in Newgate prison. In 1615 Murton wrote, “earthly authority belongs to earthly kings, but spiritual authority belongs to the one spiritual King who is King of Kings.” Smyth was also a friend of John Robinson (1575-1625), the first theologian of the Congregationalists. Both of them took their congregations to Holland to escape persecution in England. From Robinson’s congregation came the first pilgrims to Massachusetts at Plymouth. Robinson was born in Nottinghamshire. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth's Grammar School, Gainsborough (same town as Smyth), and at the age of about sixteen, he entered the University of Cambridge. He remained there for the next twelve years, first as a John Robinson, student, and then later as a teacher. Congregational Theologian The year 1606 was a very important one in his life for it was then that he left the Church of England and became a Separatist. Though vigorously persecuted, Separatist congregations had been active, especially in London, for a number of years. Later that year, a group of Puritans in the nearby village of Scrooby formed a Separatist congregation that came to number about one hundred members. Robinson, it appears, returned to Gainsborough and became a member of John Smyth's Separatist congregation that met in secret. However, at some point, he seems to have joined up again with the Separatists in Scrooby. The congregation met at Scrooby Manor, the home of William Brewster (one of the Mayflower Pilgrims). Brewster was an old friend of Robinson as well as a Cambridge alumnus. The congregation left England for Leiden, Holland in 1609 (the home of Rembrandt), and under Robinson’s teaching formed the nucleus of the first pilgrims to come to America at Plymouth. The first settler in what later became Attleborough was Rev, William Blackstone, born in 1595 in County Durham and educated at Cambridge University. He came to Boston about 1625 but found the same intolerance there amongst the “Lord’s brethren” as he had left behind in England amongst “the Lord’s bishops”. So he then moved to the banks of the Pawtucket River (later renamed the Blackstone), and lived where the Ann and Hope Mill is today. “It was not that he hated people but that he loved solitude more,” wrote Daggett in his history of Attleborough. He had good relations with Native Americans and was friends with Roger Williams, but he typified the desire the get away from the religious quarrels and enjoy peace and solitude. Roger Williams was not the first person to advocate the separation of church and state, as we have seen from earlier Baptists like Smyth, Helwys and Murton. But he was the first to put it into practice, by establishing a colony where people could practice their religion according to their own views without interference by the authorities. This was quite radical because it meant throwing off the authority of the king over religion. The accusation against the early non-conformists like Smyth, Helwys and Williams was that they were revolutionaries, like the Anabaptists who had taken to arms in Munster, Germany, in the mid 16th century. But the Baptists were at pains to protest that in matters civil they were obedient to the laws of the king and parliament. But their point was that In matters spiritual no ruler had the right to interfere in the relationship of each person with their God. Roger Williams (1603-1683) came to New England seeking refuge from persecution for his views. Born in London, Smithfield, apprenticed to Edward Coke, lawyer, Statue of Roger Williams educated at Cambridge, married to Mary Barnard at High Laver, Epping, Essex, (near where I grew up) he came to Boston then to Salem and Plymouth and back to Salem and then was banished. He questioned the King’s right to grant charters and said the land belonged to the Indians and should be purchased from them. He criticized the Plymouth Colony for not going far enough to separate from the Church of England. He challenged the authorities in Boston over the taking of oaths in God’s name.