Repairing the Breach: Puritan Expansion, Commonwealth Formation, and the Origins of the United Colonies of New England, 1630–1643

Home , Aquidneck Island, History of New England, New Haven Colony, Roger Ludlow, Samuel Gorton, Theophilus Eaton

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By arrangement with the Colonial Society of Massachusetts the Editors of the New England Quarterly are pleased to publish the winning essay of the 2017 Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History

Repairing the Breach: Puritan Expansion, Commonwealth Formation, and the Origins of the United Colonies of New England, 1630–1643

neal t. dugre

EW Englishmen disrupted commonwealth formation in F North America more than Samuel Gorton, a mystical preacher who founded the plantation of Shawomet on Narra- gansett Bay in 1642. Gorton’s peculiar theology and knack for destabilizing civil order led to his banishment from nearly every New England plantation during his first five years in the region. Among scads of Puritan detractors, Gorton earned distinction for his perceptive critiques of how they built their colonies and for the dissemination of his views through the skillful

I am grateful to Timothy Breen, Walter Woodward, Scott Sowerby, Caitlin Fitz, and the Front Range Group in Early American History for their comments on earlier versions of this essay. I would also like to thank the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, the Whitehill Prize committee—Fred Anderson, David Hall, and Mary Beth Norton— and the editors of The New England Quarterly.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 383 manipulation of the London press.1 He wielded both talents to great effect in his 1646 pamphlet, Simplicities Defence Against Seven-Headed Policy. Like other critics, Gorton focused his ire on Massachusetts Bay.2 Yet Simplicities Defence departed from conventional diatribes against the colony’s churches and civil government by alerting readers to a new, more troubling source of Puritan civil power. The pamphlet’s title page reported that the Bay Colony and neighboring polities of Connecticut, Ply- mouth, and New Haven had lately coalesced into the “combate of the United Colonies.” They confederated, he claimed, “not onely against some of the Natives and Subjects, but against the Authority also of the Kingdome of England.” Joined together, the four colonies could extend their collective vision of a Puri- tan commonwealth “beyond the bounds of all their own jurisdictions.”3 Confederation promised to cement Puritan control over New England. Gorton’s warnings about inter-colony connections clash with prevailing understandings of how Puritan New England and early modern Atlantic polities developed. Historians study- ing those processes typically adhere to a paradigm of state

1Philip F. Gura, A Glimpse of Sion’s Glory: Puritan Radicalism in New England, 1620–1660 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1984): 276–303; Carla Gar- dina Pestana, “Gorton, Samuel (bap. 1593, d. 1677),” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2004), online ed. (accessed August 11, 2011). On Gorton’s use of the London press, see Jonathan Beecher Field, Errands into the Metropolis: New England Dissidents in Revolutionary London (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 2009), 48–71. 2For a list of 1640s London pamphlets critical of New England, see Carla Gardina Pestana, The English Atlantic in an Age of Revolution, 1640–1661 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 235–40. 3Samuel Gorton, Simplicity’s Defence Against Seven-Headed Policy, ed. William R. Staples, in Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society (Providence, RI: Marshall, Brown and Company, 1835), 2:21, 23. “Simplicities” is the original spelling from the original pamphlet, but my citations are to a modern transcription which the editor entitled “Simplicity’s . . . ” I have kept the original spelling for references in the main text, but the revised spelling in the citations. Gorton’s characterization of confederation as a threat to royal sovereignty would have made sense to English audiences familiar with the pro-Catholic Confederate Assembly of Kilkenny which, although its members professed loyalty to the crown, grew out of the Irish uprising of 1641 just prior to the establishment of the United Colonies of New England. Pádraig Lenihan, Confederate Catholics at War, 1641–1649 (Cork, Ire.: Cork University Press for the Irish Committee for Historical Sciences, 2001). In quoted passages I have expanded contractions, but otherwise retained the original spelling.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 384 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY formation concerned with how colonies evolved into autonomous states or nations. This perspective assumes Europe’s American polities originated as well-defined “colonies,” and fo- cuses on the internal development of individual colonies as well as their relationship to the metropole.4 New England studies influenced by the state formation paradigm most often revolve around Massachusetts Bay and point to Puritanism as the key to that and neighbor colonies’ stability and power.5 Over the past several decades, historians have enriched this picture signifi- cantly by situating early New England colonies within a transatlantic Puritan movement and the political context of England’s seventeenth-century revolution.6 Yet scholars have still not ade- quately explained how contemporaries preserved their tenuous commonwealth as the population of Massachusetts Bay grew, dispersed into the hinterland, and divided into new polities— changes contemporaries pointed to as perhaps the greatest threat facing their young plantations. In the decade before Samuel Gorton published Simplici- ties Defence, Puritan expansion beyond the confines of Mas- sachusetts Bay led settlers to revise their blueprint for a

4Elizabeth Mancke, “Polity Formation and Atlantic Political Narratives,” The Ox- ford Handbook of The Atlantic World, c.1450–c.1850, ed. Nicholas Canny and Philip Morgan (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2011), 382–83. For a recent corrective, see Alexander B. Haskell, For God, King, & People: Forging Commonwealth Bonds in Renaissance Virginia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omo- hundro Institute, 2017). 5See for example Timothy H. Breen and Stephen Foster, “The Puritans’ Great- est Achievement: A Study of Social Cohesion in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts,” Journal of American History 60 (1973): 5–22. 6David D. Hall, A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2011); Michael P. Winship, Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni- versity Press, 2012); Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture, 1570–1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Car- olina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1991). See also Mark Peterson, “Why They Mattered: The Return of Politics to Puritan New En- gland,” review of A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England, by David. D. Hall and Godly Republicanism: Puritans, Pilgrims, and a City on a Hill, by Michael P. Winship, Modern Intellectual History 10 (2013): 683–96; Nicholas Tyacke, “Revolutionary Puritanism in Anglo-American Perspective,” Huntington Library Quarterly 78 (2015): 745–69, and “The Puritan Paradigm of En- glish Politics, 1558–1642,” The Historical Journal 53 (2010): 527–50; Daniel C. Beaver, “Politics in the Archives: Records, Property, and Plantation Politics in Massachusetts Bay, 1642–1650,” Journal of Early American History 1 (2011): 3–25.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 385 commonwealth, an inward-looking polity deriving its stability and strength from reciprocity among fellow members of the body politic.7 The Puritan commonwealth established in Mas- sachusetts preserved that balance through a finely-tuned relationship between church and state designed to protect citizens from the inevitable corruption of their rulers.8 As removals split the Massachusetts body politic, Puritan authorities gradually recognized the need for an expanded institutional infrastructure that went beyond the familiar pillars of church and colony government. Just as Gorton feared, Puritans embraced intercolonial confederation as a tool of commonwealth formation— a means to preserve the commonwealth already established in Massachusetts and foster a broader, regional commonwealth of similar polities known as the United Colonies of New England. Historians normally present New England’s confederation as a military alliance, not an exercise in polity formation.9 In part, this characterization displays the successful branding efforts of United Colonies agents. Edward Winslow, for instance, de- fended the United Colonies against Samuel Gorton and other critics by stressing the confederation’s utility in securing help- less colonists from hostile Indians.10 Our narrow view of the

7Jonathan Scott, Commonwealth Principles: Republican Writing of the English Rev- olution (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 34–39, 133–35, and passim. 8Winship, Godly Republicanism, 184–85, 226–29; Peterson, “Why They Mattered,” 692. 9Harry Ward offers a fuller analysis of the confederation and its operations than most scholars, but his interpretation of the confederation as an antecedent of eighteenth-century federalism conforms to the state formation paradigm and down- plays the full extent of intercolonial discord endemic to the United Colonies and its origins. Harry M. Ward, The United Colonies of New England, 1643–90 (New York: Vantage Press, 1961). Ward’s study supplants an earlier PhD dissertation by Harold Kolling. A third study by Omer Perdue analyzes the confederation’s ties to Puritan theology but has little to say about its civil dimensions. Kolling, “The New England Confederation of 1643: Its Origin, Nature, and Foreign Relations, 1643–1652” (PhD diss., University of Chicago, 1956); Omer Perdue, “The New England Confederation: Its Origins in Puritan Covenant Theology” (PhD diss., Graduate College Union Insti- tute and University, 2004). 10Edward Winslow, Hypocrisie Unmasked: By a true Relation of the Proceedings of the Governour and Company of the Massachusets against Samuel Gorton (and his Accomplices)...(London,1646), 65; Edward Winslow, New-Englands Salamander . . . (London, 1647), 25. On Winslow’s service as an agent of Massachusetts and, less formally, the United Colonies in London, see Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Pilgrim

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 386 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY confederation also echoes decades of scholarship that distilled New England expansion in the seventeenth century into an intercultural conflict of “English” versus “Indians.”11 A bounty of nuanced studies of Anglo-Indian affairs has turned that nar- rative on its head in recent years. But the revision has yet to trickle down to the confederation itself, a disconnect evident in the way scholars continue to constrict artificially the confederation’s origins story. Late in 1642, the story goes, authorities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven became convinced that the Narragansett sachem Miantonomi had marshaled a “Combination” of Native peoples to destroy their plantations.12 Puritan leaders responded to this threat the following spring by allying their four colonies into a confederation of their own.13 In fact, as members of the New Haven General Court later testified, the confederation “was no rash & sudden ingagement.”14 The four United Colonies confederated after more than five years of planning, planning initiated in

Edward Winslow: New England’s First International Diplomat: A Documentary Biog- raphy (Boston, MA: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 2004), 232–51. For negative characterizations of the confederation, see Gorton, Simplicity’s Defence, 21, 23, 60, 62, 90–91, 162–63, 167–68; Major John Child, New-Englands Jonas Cast up at London. . . (London, 1647), postscript 13, 12 [irregular pagination]. 11See, for example, Francis Jennings, The Invasion of America: Indians, Colonial- ism, and the Cant of Conquest (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1975); Alden T. Vaughan, The New England Frontier: Puritans and Indians, 1620–1675 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1965). 12Anonymous, “Relation of the Indian Plott,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., vol. 3 (Cambridge, MA, 1833), 162 (hereafter Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll.). For an overview of this episode, see Michael Leroy Oberg, Uncas: First of the Mohegans (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), 94–99; Andrew Lipman, The Saltwater Frontier: Indians and the Contest for the American Coast (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015): 153–64; John A. Sainsbury, “Miantonomo’s Death and New England Politics, 1630–1645,” Rhode Island History 30 (1971): 111–23. 13See for example Oberg, Uncas, 87–88, 102; Jenny Hale Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King: Indians, English, and the Contest for Authority in Colonial New En- gland (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005), 27; Julie A. Fisher and David J. Silverman, Ninigret, Sachem of the Niantics and Narragansetts: Diplomacy, War, and the Balance of Power in Seventeenth-Century New England and Indian Country (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014), 51–52; Matthew S. Muehlbauer, “Holy War and Just War in Early New England, 1630–1655,” Journal of Military His- tory 81 (2017), 685. 14Charles J. Hoadly, ed., Records of the Colony or Jurisdiction of New Haven, from May 1653 to the Union (Hartford, CT: Case, Lockwood, and Co., 1858), 5 (hereafter New Haven Recs. II).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 387 response to the mid-1630s removals of Massachusetts settlers to the Connecticut River Valley. Indeed, Miantonomi’s plot was itself partially a reaction to the political realignment of Puritan polities cohering into a civil confederation in 1642. Reconnecting the confederation established in 1643 to its roots in the removal crisis of the 1630s helps to reveal the mechanics of commonwealth formation in England’s early colonies. The success of early modern colonial ventures like Massachusetts hinged not only on the internal balance of church and colony government but also on regional geopoli- tics, especially relations among neighboring polities with common religious and national roots. Puritan efforts to devise an intercolonial confederation offer insight into some of the ways early English colonists worked to turn disparate polities of vary- ing origin and legitimacy into functional commonwealths. Their efforts suggest how English settlers were not limited by narrow ideas about the proper shape of a commonwealth or colony and that the dizzying array of polities in new world settings could be beneficial to settlement. With careful planning and compromise, Puritan authorities took the common problem of expansion and turned it into one of their most powerful tools of colonization.

Dividing the commonwealth Relentless acquisition of land both defined English settler colonialism and presented its single greatest challenge.15 Schol- ars have long recognized how colonial expansion triggered intercultural violence. Less understood, however, is how the dispersion of settlers could undermine core tenets of the early modern commonwealth. That effect particularly vexed English efforts to colonize the American northeast. While historians have not ignored the devastating consequences English colonialism had for New England’s Native populations, they

15Wendy Warren, New England Bound: Slavery and Colonization in Early America (New York: Liveright, 2016), 90. For an introduction to settler colonialism as a category of analysis see Lorenzo Veracini, “‘Settler Colonialism’: Career of a Concept,” Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History 41 (2013): 313–33.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 388 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY nonetheless tend to present expansion outward from Mas- sachusetts Bay as a testament to the vitality of the Puritan experiment.16 Massachusetts’s founders, on the other hand, viewed expansion as a threat to their vision of a single, unified commonwealth clustered around Boston.17 Instead of celebrat- ing the mid-1630s “removeall” of hundreds of settlers to the Connecticut River Valley, Governor John Winthrop and many of the colony’s other leaders “feare[d]” it.18 Expansion meant division. After all, Connecticut’s first planters arrived there by taking themselves out of Massachusetts. In New England, a Puritan commonwealth could not grow without first breaking apart. For Puritans, the decision to remove oneself from the commonwealth demanded compelling justification. In mid-1630s Massachusetts, as in England before, Puritans justified removal as an appropriate response to an ailing commonwealth.19 Re- moval petitions from residents of Newtown and other communities citing the lack of suitable land in Massachusetts hinted at deeper concerns with the colony’s administration.20 Newtown

16See for example Bruce C. Daniels, New England Nation: The Country the Puritans Built (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 53–54; Joseph A. Conforti, Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 33–34; cf. Francis J. Bremer, The Puritan Experiment: New England Society from Bradford to Edwards, rev. ed. (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1995), 73–74. Referring to the two as “sister colonies,” Bremer underscores Connecticut’s dissatisfaction with Massachusetts. 17John Winthrop, “A Modell of Christian Charity,” in The Founding of Mas- sachusetts: Historians and the Sources, ed. Edmund S. Morgan (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), 201–3. On the sermon, see Abram Van Engen, “Origins and Last Farewells: Bible Wars, Textual Form, and the Making of American History,” New En- gland Quarterly 86 (2013): 543–92; Van Engen, Sympathetic Puritans: Calvinist Fellow Feeling in Early New England (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2015), 54–58. On the intention to establish one community, see Darrett B. Rutman, Winthrop’s Boston: A Portrait of a Puritan Town, 1630–1649 (Chapel Hill, NC: Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1965), 280–83. 18The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649, ed. Richard S. Dunn et al. (Cam- bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 128 (hereafter Winthrop’s Journal). 19Warren, New England Bound, 22–23. 20On New England’s population growth and geographic expansion see Bernard Bai- lyn, The Barbarous Years: The Peopling of British North America: The Conflict of Civi- lizations, 1600–1675 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2012), 372, 514; Simeon E. Baldwin, “The Secession of Springfield from Connecticut,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 12, Transactions, 1908–1909 (Boston, 1911): 55. The need for grazing

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 389 minister Thomas Hooker made that critique explicit while de- fending his town’s petition before the General Court in 1634. The common complaint of “beinge straitned” for land, he argued, was a symptom of mistakes the government made in lay- ing out new towns. Hooker and his allies criticized how the “townes were sett so neere eache to other,” calling the division of lands a “fundamentall error” that restricted economic growth and, as a result, undercut Newtown’s ability to provide for the clergy. While the colony’s founders deliberately set towns close together as a means to keep settlers safe and united in a single community, proponents of removal suggested that approach undercut the ends of Puritan colonization. The Connecticut Valley’s main appeal was its “Comodiousnesse.” Settlers could spread out their towns and thereby build a more perfect commonwealth than the one left behind in Massachusetts.21 Forced removals of dissidents could ameliorate tension within the colony, but the voluntary migration of fellow Puri- tans to Connecticut divided Massachusetts.22 The first sign of trouble appeared in 1634, when the General Court split on the question of whether Newtown’s petitioners should be allowed to go. Opponents worried that removals would violate the unity of spirit essential to a godly commonwealth. The colony could not afford to lose so many current and future residents (for if Hooker, one of their most prominent ministers, left, he would surely divert future migrants away from Massachusetts).

land was especially acute among residents of Newtown, Watertown, and Dorchester (the first communities that petitioned for removal), see Mary Jeanne Anderson Jones, Congregational Commonwealth: Connecticut, 1636–1662 (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1968), 18–19. See also Winthrop’s Journal, 118, 146–47. 21Winthrop’s Journal, 126–27, 146–47, 160. The General Court later censured New- town resident John Pratt for criticizing the configuration of land allotments in a letter to friends in England, see John Noble, ed., Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay, 1630–1692 (Boston: Suffolk County, 1904): 2:110, 112. On the tension between settlement patterns, economic growth, and Puritan social ideals, see John Frederick Martin, Profits in the Wilderness: Entrepreneurship and the Founding of New England Towns in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Institute of Early American History and Culture, 1991), 111–17. 22For an introduction to forced removal practices, see Nan Goodman, Banished: Common Law and the Rhetoric of Social Exclusion in Early New England (Philadel- phia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 390 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Moreover, settlers who planted themselves so far from the nu- cleus of Puritan colonization risked exposing themselves and Massachusetts to the dangers of foreign attacks and even royal censure for erecting a plantation without proper authorization. Why risk so much when the Newtowners “might be accommo- dated at home” by a grant of additional land within the colony? Neither the magistrates nor deputies could agree on how to proceed. The debate aroused such “a great difference” within the court that its members had to adjourn for a day of humilia- tion to restore decorum. When they reconvened, the Newtown- ers scuttled their own plans and saved everyone from further unrest by accepting a grant of additional Massachusetts land in lieu of removal.23 Even as opposition to removal in the General Court dissi- pated in subsequent months and settlers began heading west, the issue continued to split the general public. Men and women interested in leaving Massachusetts for a new life in Connecti- cut became pariahs. Critics rationalized their departures by suggesting the would-be migrants were no longer worthy of the Bay Colony. Captain Edward Johnson of Woburn captured this sentiment in his 1653 history of New England. Johnson por- trayed the migrants as querulous people, recalling how they, “having their hearts gone from the Lord [Land], on which they were seated, soone tooke dislike at every little matter.” He quipped that even grants of fertile land, such as the tract New- towners accepted in 1634, drew complaints from would-be migrants who “deemed it unsupportable” that they should have to “eate their bread with toile of hand and [hoe].” As far as Johnson could tell, settlers who removed to Connecticut did so because they were lazy and morally deficient—they left the Bay as soon as “a people of stronger Faith then themselves” bought up “their Houses and Land.”24

23Winthrop’s Journal, 126–28. The “difference” concerned Newtown’s removal as well as procedural questions the Newtown vote tally raised about whether to count votes of magistrates and deputies collectively or separately, and whether magistrates could veto measures that did not receive approval by a majority of the Council. See Hall, Reforming People, 27–28. 24J. Franklin Jameson, ed., Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence, 1628–1651 (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1967), 106.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 391 The act of removing—of dividing the commonwealth—left Puritans in both Massachusetts and Connecticut with a problem more serious than the scourge of internal discord. Author- ities in both places failed to anticipate how quickly the Con- necticut migrants would evolve into a distinct body politic with needs and interests that clashed with those of Massachusetts. Two factors accelerated this transformation. First, the Con- necticut plantations founded in 1635 and 1636 were necessarily at a different stage of development than the older, more established colony of Massachusetts. In order for their new plantations to succeed, Connecticut magistrates had to prioritize basic needs, especially access to food.25 Second, the new plantations’ proximity to Pequot Indians and Dutch New Nether- land made them vulnerable to attack.26 The Pequot War in 1636 revealed the full implications of these factors.27 Whereas Massachusetts military leaders preferred aggressive preemptive assaults against the Pequot, Connecticut officials like Lieutenant Lion Gardener, commander of Saybrook Fort, repeatedly pleaded for a more cautious approach. Gardener protested that while the Massachusetts men could “take wing and flee away” to the safety of the Bay, the people ofCon- necticut would be the ones left “at the stake to be rosted or for hung[er] to be starued.”28 Even if the people of Massachusetts

25For a broader discussion of the practical challenges facing new plantations, see Kathleen Donegan, Seasons of Misery: Catastrophe and Colonial Settlement in Early America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014). 26On the Native peoples of the Connecticut River Valley and surrounding areas see Kathleen J. Bragdon, Native People of Southern New England, 1500–1650 (Nor- man: University of Oklahoma Press, 1996), 20–25. For early English interactions with the Pequots see Neal Salisbury, Manitou and Providence: Indians, Europeans, and the Making of New England, 1500–1643 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 188, 209, 211. 27Alfred A. Cave, The Pequot War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), 203, 204n55; Jennings, Invasion of America, 177–227. See also Vaughan, New England Frontier, 93–154; Lipman, Saltwater Frontier,125–64; Pulsipher, Subjects unto the Same King, 21–24. 28Cave, Pequot War, 101, 113.; Relation of the Pequot Warres Written in 1660 By Lieutenant Lion Gardener and Now First Printed from the Original Manuscript, With an Historical Introduction ([Hartford, CT?]: Hartford Press, 1901), 6, 9. On Connecti- cut concerns about food and the war, see Katherine A. Grandjean, “New World Tem- pests: Environment, Scarcity, and the Coming of the Pequot War,” William and Mary Quarterly 68 (2011): 75–100.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 392 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY and Connecticut wanted to see themselves as a single commonwealth, geography was breaking them up into two distinct body politics. Disregard for Connecticut’s unique vulnerability in the war encouraged settlers to sharpen the distinction between themselves and the English of Massachusetts. As the war came to an end, Connecticut magistrates surprised both Narragansett Indi- ans and the Massachusetts General Court by announcing that they did not consider themselves party to any wartime treaty between the Narragansetts and Massachusetts. Instead, Con- necticut would conduct Indian diplomacy on their own terms.29 In 1638, Connecticut authorities signed a treaty with both the Narragansetts and Mohegans codifying the division of the Pu- ritan commonwealth into two. Crucially, the terms of the treaty left open for Massachusetts to be a party, a fact that shows the persistent vision of a united commonwealth of English plantations. Yet the inclusion of the Mohegans, a tribe of strategic importance to the Connecticut Valley, and Connecticut authorities’ control over the process acknowledged the colony’s unique needs and put it before those of Massachusetts.30

Contesting the sinews of society Removals from Massachusetts to the Connecticut Valley opened a breach within the commonwealth that continued to

29Roger Williams to John Winthrop, August 14, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 6vols. (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1929–), 4:52–53 (hereafter Winthrop Pa- pers); John Winthrop summary of a letter to Thomas Hooker, August 28, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:53; Winthrop’s Journal, 190–92. While the 1637 treaty between Massachusetts and the Narragansett has not survived, John Winthrop summarized it in his journal. According to Winthrop, the 1637 treaty encompassed all the English plantations that agreed to its terms. The first article describes the treaty as “A firm peace between us [Massachusetts and the Narragansett] and our friends of other plantations, (if they consent,) and their confederates, (if they will observe the articles, etc.,) and our posterities” (191). 30Daragh Grant has assembled the most complete transcription of the 1638 treaty in “The Treaty of Hartford (1638): Reconsidering Jurisdiction in Southern New En- gland,” WMQ 72 (2015): 461–98. Francis Jennings argues that Connecticut pressured the Narragansett to sign the new treaty, claiming that its purpose “was to force the Narragansetts to take Connecticut’s orders instead of Massachusetts’s,” but I have not encountered evidence that substantiates this interpretation. See Jennings, Invasion of America, 258–60.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 393 expand in what historian Katherine Grandjean calls the “long wake of the Pequot War.”31 Even as the Pequot War and its aftermath drove Puritans in Massachusetts and Connecticut further apart, it also showed that these plantations could not thrive in isolation. Nor did contemporaries seek isolation. New England’s Puritans, then, stumbled upon an early iteration of one of the fundamental challenges of Atlantic polity formation. How could two neighboring polities—drawn together by theo- logical and national bonds, yet brought into opposition by geography, local interests, and differing legal statuses—peacefully and fruitfully coexist as one harmonious commonwealth? The very forces driving Massachusetts and Connecticut apart also compelled their leaders to tackle this challenge with alacrity and creativity. Settlers saw in their struggle an opportunity for innovation. In the late 1630s, church and civic leaders in Mas- sachusetts and Connecticut simultaneously began to contest the “synnewes of society[,] the bond of peace.”32 In short, they began to reevaluate the composition of a commonwealth. The idea to heal the wounds of removal with a confederal union of New England polities first emerged in Massachusetts in 1637. Governor John Winthrop and members of the council presented confederal union as a way to make a commonwealth possible in an expanding region. As Winthrop recalled, they drafted articles of confederation to ensure “that all differences, which might fall out” between Massachusetts and Connecticut “should be ended by a way of peace, and never to come to a ne- cessity or danger of force.”33 Confederation would accomplish that end by preserving the General Court’s guardianship over Connecticut plantations. That guardianship originated with the Massachusetts Commission of 1636, a document that circum- vented the ambiguities of the Warwick Patent—which did not authorize its holders to establish a government—by delegating

31Katherine A. Grandjean, “The Long Wake of the Pequot War,” Early American Studies 9 (2011): 379–411. 32Thomas Hooker to John Winthrop, ca. Dec. 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:75–76 33Winthrop’s Journal, 278.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 394 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY magisterial authority to eight Connecticut planters.34 Thus the provision Winthrop called the “chief article” and “most ma- terial point” specified “That, upon any matter of difference, two, three, or more commissioners of every of the confederate colonies should assemble, and have absolute power (the greater number of them) to determine the matter.”35 Later exchanges indicate that Winthrop intended for commissioners to be allo- cated to each colony in proportion to their population. In practical terms, that meant his more populous colony would retain a measure of control over Connecticut.36 Winthrop did not seek this arrangement to subordinate the Connecticut plantations to Massachusetts.37 Rather the plan offered the most efficient way to keep Puritans settled along the Connecticut River and the Bay knit together in one body politic. A confederal union that privileged Massachusetts might restore the status quo ante. Winthrop and several councilmen “propounded” their plan for confederation to a delegation of Connecticut ministers and magistrates gathered in Newtown, Massachusetts in Au- gust 1637.38 Yet the Connecticut delegates—including ministers Thomas Hooker and Samuel Stone, and magistrates Roger

34“A Commission graunted to seuall Persons to governe the People att Connecticott (1636),” in Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England, 5 vols. in 6 parts (Boston: Commonwealth of Mas- sachusetts, 1853–54), 1:170–71 (hereafter Mass. Recs.). On the patent and initial ties between Massachusetts and the Connecticut Plantations, see Walter W. Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr., Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture, 1606–1676 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omo- hundro Institute, 2010), 50; Karen Kupperman, “The Connecticut River: A Magnet for Settlement,” Connecticut History, 35 (1994), 56; Charles J. Hoadly, The Warwick Patent ([Hartford, CT?]: Hartford Press, 1902). 35John Winthrop summary of letter to Thomas Hooker, August 28, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:53; Winthrop’s Journal, 278. 36In 1638, Hooker, quoting a letter from Winthrop no longer extant, complained of how the sixth article in Winthrop’s proposal gave “a small preheminence” to Mas- sachusetts, thereby “exceed[ing] much the lymitts of that equity which is to be looked at in all combinations of free states.” The article he referred to was almost certainly the basis for the sixth article of confederation adopted in 1643, which specified how many commissioners each member colony would have. Thomas Hooker to John Winthrop, c. December 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:79–81; Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:5. On population, see Daniels, New England Nation, 5; Pestana, English Atlantic, 229–34. 37Winthrop’s Journal, 277–78. 38Winthrop’s Journal, 231–32, 278.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 395 Ludlow and William Pynchon—were already implementing the first phase of their plan. In contrast to the Massachusetts proposal, their design preserved a commonwealth of Puritan settlers by establishing Connecticut as a distinct body politic. Hartford, Wethersfield, Windsor, and Agawam plantations had originated as separate enterprises, loosely connected by the Massachusetts Commission of 1636 as well as their inhabitants’ agreement to recognize John Winthrop Jr., agent of the War- wick patentees, as their governor. This temporary arrangement gave way to a more permanent civic order the following year when the commission and Winthrop’s appointment expired. Settlers filled the void that spring by electing their ownmag- istrates and “committeemen” representing each town to sit as a General Court. This court operated independently from May 1637 through 1639.39 Once the Pequot War ended, residents of Hartford, Wethersfield, and Windsor combined into “one Pub- like State or Commonwelth.”40 Their autonomous government, established in a constitution called the Fundamental Orders, derived its authority and legitimacy from the free consent of the governed—not the Massachusetts General Court or even the king.41 Reorganizing the disparate Connecticut plantations into a colony opened the door to a more harmonious relationship with Massachusetts. Once formed into a colony, Connecticut could deal with Massachusetts as its equal. Thus, at a May 1638 meeting of the Connecticut General Court, when the magistrates and committees were “fallinge into consideracion of divers par- ticulers that might or may concerne the generall good of these

39“Agreement of the Saybrook Company with John Winthrop Jr.,” July 1635, Winthrop Papers, 3:198–99; Winthrop’s Journal, 157–58. Gaps in surviving records make it difficult to establish a precise timeline for Connecticut’s evolving government, see Jones, Congregational Commonwealth, 23–35, 61–77. 40“The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut,” in Jones, Congregational Common- wealth, 178. The Fundamental Orders were not formally ratified until January 1639, but the terms were in place by 1638. See Hall, Reforming People, 207n35. 41Jones notes, “there is no agreement on whether [the Fundamental Orders] was adopted by the freemen, the free planters, the committees, the Corte [i.e., the Gen- eral Court in operation from 1637–39], or all the adult males in the Commonwealth.” Congregational Commonwealth, 75; 191n3.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 396 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY parts,” their minds returned to Massachusetts and the prospect of a confederation, and this consideration resulted in a letter from Roger Ludlow to Governor Winthrop announcing Con- necticut’s desire to resume negotiations. Rather than focus on sources of division, Ludlow’s letter identified the ideals Puri- tans in both polities held in common. Puritans settled along the Connecticut River and the Bay had removed themselves from England because they shared a calling “to establish the lord Jesus in his Kingly Throne” and “to maynteine the Com- mon Cause of his gospell with our liues and estates.” Differ- ences over how to pursue those goals best must not drive the colonies further apart. Connecticut and Massachusetts needed to find a way “to combine and vnite our selues to walke and liue peaceably and lovingly togeather.” They had to stick together, Ludlow insisted, because they were all each other had. Their common purpose left both parties with “fewe frends vppon the face of the earth.” If they could find a way to “joine hartes and hands,” they could better “defend our priviledges and freedomes wee nowe enioye against all opposers.”42 Ludlow and Winthrop saw confederal union’s potential as a means of commonwealth formation but differed in their views of how such a confederation might function. Above all, Winthrop sought a confederation that could overcome the inefficiencies of his colony’s current government. Hence his sense of majority rule as perhaps the crucial element of Mas- sachusetts’s proposal—even though that arrangement could in theory privilege Massachusetts, the colony with the most representatives. Ludlow, however, cared most about equity likening the confederation to the biblical covenant between David and Jonathan. David, the Philistine warrior renowned for slaying Goliath, covenanted with Jonathan, son of the Israelite King Saul, to share themselves and their possessions as equals. De- spite their different social standing, David and Jonathan cared

42Roger Ludlow, in Behalf of the General Assembly of Connecticut to the Governor and Assistants of Massachusetts, May 29, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:36–37 (hereafter Ludlow, “Connecticut to Massachusetts”).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 397 for each other because each loved the other “as his own soul.”43 Ludlow recognized that ensuring such love between Connecti- cut and Massachusetts would require each party to adhere to “some Rules Articles and agreements by which wee may be regulated.” Those rules would give each party “recourse” in intercolonial quarrels and “be as evidence to each in case either should goe aboute through any Corrupcion to make a breach.”44 Connecticut and Massachusetts, in other words, would maintain harmony by keeping each other in line. The most important rule was that the confederation would govern by unanimity. If the commissioners could not agree, they would return the matter in question to their respective colonies for further discussion and advice. After this period of reflection, the commissioners would reassemble and take another vote, repeating the entire process until they reached a consensus.45 Whereas Winthrop’s design would minimize barriers to action in order to ensure efficiency, Ludlow’s promised to force the representatives (and, by extension, their colonies) to figure out a way to get along. Winthrop felt less optimistic. Requiring unanimity, he protested, “would occasion infinite trouble and ex- pense, and yet leave the issue to the sword.”46 Although the details differed, it seemed as if authorities in both colonies wanted similar things from a confederal union. In Ludlow’s words, they sought a “bottom vppon which our Peace and loue may be anchored.”47 Connecticut magistrates John Haynes, William Pynchon, and John Steele presented their plan to the Massachusetts General Court around June 1638. Ini- tially the conversation about how to move forward was civil, but within months, a shocking level of intercolonial vitriol overcame the region. Massachusetts resident William Spencer visited the Connecticut plantations in November 1638 and reported to

431 Sam. 18:1–4 (King James Version). 44Ludlow, “Connecticut to Massachusetts,” May 29, 1638, 4:36–37. 45Winthrop’s Journal, 278; John Winthrop’s Summary of His Letter to Thomas Hooker, August 28, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:53–54. Precisely who the commissioners would consult is not clear. 46Winthrop’s Summary to Thomas Hooker, August 28, 1638, 4:53–54. 47Ludlow, “Connecticut to Massachusetts,” May 29, 1638, 4:36.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 398 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Winthrop that he “found A preieduse [prejudice] in the spir- rits of some men concering your state [i.e., Massachusetts].” Spencer tried to defend his colony but found some of the sentiments so intense that he “could not tell what to say.”48 Rumor had it that ire flew both ways. More than a few Mas- sachusetts colonists inverted Lion Gardener’s complaints about the roots of the Pequot War. These scandalmongers labeled Connecticut’s people “poore rash headed creatures” who “rushed them selves into a warr with the heathen.” Connecticut authorities learned of “plotts” hatched in old and New England to “keepe passengers from coming” to the colony. Innkeepers in Massachusetts reportedly “intertayne[d] ther guests with in- vectives agaynst Conitticut” and treated anyone who ignored their lies “as a man scant worthy to live.” Slanders against Con- necticut planters became so commonplace that Native peoples joined in, taunting them as “runnagates whipped out of the Bay” and people without honor.49 By December, animosity grew so intense that all Thomas Hooker and Winthrop could agree on was the fact that Satan was hard at work in New En- gland, “sowing jealousies and differences between us” so that “he might ether openly or secretly blemish the vnity of the spirit, and eat asunder the synnewes of society[,] the bond of peace.”50 Since the animus of the late 1630s coincided with the end of the Pequot War, hostile exchanges between Massachusetts and Connecticut look like a direct byproduct of the jurisdictional dispute over conquered territory. Authorities in each colony certainly viewed Pequot land as a source of revenue and power and bitterly challenged each other’s claims for years to come.51 Yet considering how these colonists were well accustomed to jurisdictional disputes of all sorts, and the fact that residents nonetheless continued to profess their love for each other, this

48William Spencer to John Winthrop, November 29, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:74. 49Hooker to Winthrop, ca. Dec. 1638, 4:76–78. 50Winthrop’s Journal, 277; Hooker to Winthrop, ca. Dec. 1638, 4:75–76. 51On the protracted dispute over Pequot territory, see Woodward, “Which Man’s Land? Conflict and Competition in Pequot Country,” in Prospero’s America, 93–137; Jennings, Invasion of America, 257–58.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 399 explanation does not fully account for the profusion and spite- ful nature of the charges. Behind the territorial claims lay a fundamental division. Their real concern had less to do with which colony possessed Pequot land and more to do with how each would govern its territory. Instead of seeing Connecticut’s proposal as an earnest at- tempt to forge an equitable union, Winthrop and his colleagues in the General Court viewed it as a rebuke of Massachusetts civil government and a rejection of the commonwealth. While “the differences between us and those of Connecticut were divers,” Winthrop wrote in his journal, “the ground of all was their shyness of coming under our government.” This supposed “shyness” troubled Winthrop for two reasons. First, he considered the fear of Massachusetts domination baseless. His government “never intended to make them subordinate to us.” Even if Massachusetts happened to have more commissioners, he trusted those commissioners to maintain equity.52 This reasoning fits with his views on magisterial authority. He appar- ently assumed that only magistrates would serve as commissioners.53 Connecticut had nothing to fear because such wise and prudent men would always act “for the public good,” as their oath required.54 Knowing that, he could not help but as- sume that the people of Connecticut were “very jealous” for no reason.55 Connecticut’s apparent aversion to Massachusetts government also hit a nerve because of its relevance to Massachu- setts’s internal debates about magisterial authority.56 In order

52Winthrop’s Journal, 277–78; Winthrop’s Summary to Hooker, August 28, 1638, 4:53. 53The council had not consulted deputies on the original proposal. See Winthrop’s Journal, 278. On the office of commissioner in Massachusetts, see Ward, United Colonies, 62–65. 54For Winthrop’s views on magisterial authority, see Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2003), 212–13, 217–18, 307–9. As Bremer explains, magistrates in Massachusetts took an oath in which they promised “to give your vote as in your judgment and conscience you shall see to be most for the public good”—a passage Winthrop added to the oath. 55Winthrop’s Journal, 278. 56The protracted quarrels over civil authority in Massachusetts Bay, particularly with regard to the balance of power between magistrates and deputies, have received much

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 400 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY for a confederation to work, Winthrop believed that its commissioners needed broad power to act without constantly seek- ing their freemen’s consent or advice. Connecticut’s proposal requiring unanimous decisions and bringing issues back to each colony to secure unanimity struck him as being “infinitely tedious and extreme chargeable.”57 Above all, he decried the “unwarrantableness and unsafeness of referring matter of coun- sel or judicature to the body of the people”; for in a commonwealth “the best part is always the least, and of that best part the wiser part is always the lesser.”58 Recycling the argument he used to justify magisterial authority in his own colony, Winthrop objected to how Connecticut’s terms would empower ordinary colonists and undercut godly magistrates. Rather than an abstract debate about the essence of civil government in godly commonwealths, Puritans in Connecti- cut and the Bay fixated on something more tangible: government of the upriver plantation of Agawam (now Springfield, Massachusetts) founded by William Pynchon in 1636. Agawam fell within Massachusetts’s chartered bounds, but before June 1638, everyone treated it as one of the Connecticut plantations. The 1636 Massachusetts Commission named William Pynchon a magistrate, but he and other Agawam residents also partici- pated in several Connecticut General Court sessions between 1637 and 1638. Pynchon’s affinity for Connecticut deteriorated during the Pequot War when he refused to contribute corn to the common stock.59 Frustration with Connecticut’s revised articles of confederation gave him a chance to air his grievances and the Massachusetts General Court, to reevaluate Agawam’s

attention from scholars. See especially Hall, Reforming People; Winship, Godly Repub- licanism; Robert Wall follows the controversy into the 1640s. Robert Emmet Wall Jr., Massachusetts Bay: The Crucial Decade, 1640–1650 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1972). For Winthrop’s political views, see Bremer, John Winthrop. 57Winthrop’s Journal, 278. 58Winthrop, Summary of Letter to Hooker, August 28, 1638, Winthrop Papers 4:53– 4. 59On the Agawam controversy and Pynchon’s ties to Connecticut see Baldwin, “Se- cession of Springfield from Connecticut,” 55–82; David M. Powers, Damnable Heresy: William Pynchon, the Indians, and the First Book Banned (and Burned) in Boston (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2015): 59–66.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 401 status. After hearing Connecticut’s proposition in 1638, members of the court decided that they too “would take the like liberty to add and alter” the articles of confederation. “Though we were formerly willing that Agawam . . . should have fallen into their [Connecticut’s] government,” Winthrop explained, now “we intended to keep it.” Toward that end, Massachusetts added two provisions to Connecticut’s plan. The first defined the boundaries between the two colonies as the headwaters of the Pequot, now Thames, River (running north-south) and “the limits of our [Massachusetts’s] own grant” (east-west). These boundaries reaffirmed Agawam’s place within Massachusetts jurisdiction. The second addition gave both colonies rights of access to the Connecticut River, critical to making Agawam profitable.60 While these terms also placed Pequot lands in Massachusetts, both parties spoke only of their implications for Agawam. The sudden obsession with Agawam illustrates how Puri- tans grappled with expansion by evaluating the core elements of civil government in a commonwealth. During this phase of intercolonial rancor, the Rev. Thomas Hooker supplanted Ludlow as the colony’s leading spokesperson. In heated exchanges with Winthrop, Hooker vehemently rejected any at- tempt to remove Agawam from Connecticut’s jurisdiction but never disputed the fact that the plantation fell within Mas- sachusetts’s chartered bounds. Nor did Winthrop press that point.61 Instead, the controversy revolved around how the people of Agawam had been and ought to be governed. Hooker argued that since its founding, Agawam operated as one of the Connecticut plantations. For the Massachusetts General Court or William Pynchon now to deny Connecticut jurisdiction contravened the lawful authority of the very magistrates

60Winthrop’s Journal, 278–79. 61Winthrop’s Journal, 278–79; Hooker to Winthrop, ca. December 1638, Winthrop Papers 4:82. Hooker told Winthrop “I have advised with the Commissioners, and ther [sic.] expressions to me were these, that they were so far from consenting, that you should take away the iurisdiction in Agaam from them to your selves, that to ther best remembrance ther was no such thing mentioned, nor were ther one sillable sounding that way in all the agitation of the businesse.”

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 402 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY both the General Court and Agawam’s freemen put in power— a point tailored to Winthrop’s concern for magisterial authority. Moreover, it seemed illogical, even irresponsible, for the Mas- sachusetts General Court to claim jurisdiction over Agawam when that town’s isolation from Boston precluded the court from exercising its jurisdiction in any meaningful way.62 Such isolation suited Pynchon just fine. Without strong ties to either government, he could rule Agawam as a fiefdom. In Agawam, both Hooker and Winthrop found evidence that each other’s professions of peace and interest in securing a harmonious Pu- ritan commonwealth were disingenuous.63 John Winthrop traced all of this trouble—revisions to the articles, the hostility Connecticut planters felt toward him and his colony, the disparagements Massachusetts residents directed toward them, and especially the agitation over Agawam—back to a common source in Connecticut: “two errors in their government.” First, magistrates and ministers in those plantations had empowered “diverse scores” of men ill-equipped for their station. Here, Winthrop alluded to the committees representing each town on the General Court.64 Whereas Massachusetts allowed two deputies per town, each Connecticut town had four committeemen.65 In practice, this meant committeemen outnumbered magistrates. Massachusetts faced a similar im- balance, a problem the magistrates kept in check by curtailing the deputies’ powers. That workaround was not an option in Connecticut because the committeemen and magistrates also shared equal powers in the General Court. The second, related error Winthrop identified involved the qualities of men serving

62Both Connecticut and Massachusetts residents pointed this out. See, for example, William Spencer to John Winthrop, November 29, 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4:74; Hooker to Winthrop, ca. December 1638, 4:82–84. 63Winthrop to Hooker, August 28, 1638; William Spencer to John Winthrop, November 29, 1638; Hooker to Winthrop, ca. December 1638, Winthrop Papers, 4: 54, 74, 82–84. 64Winthrop’s Journal, 280. Winthrop does not specifically mention the committeemen, but Connecticut’s magistrates still largely consisted of the men Massachusetts empowered under the 1636 Commission suggesting that he would not have objected to their suitability for office. 65Hall, Reforming People, 40.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 403 in government. With so few qualified men in office in Connecti- cut, the “burden for managing of state business fell upon some one or other of their ministers,” particularly Thomas Hooker, who played a central role in Connecticut polity formation as well as negotiations for the confederation. Hooker’s active involvement in state affairs exceeded what Winthrop considered the proper role of a minister. As a result, his “actions wanted that blessing, which otherwise might have been expected.”66 Massachusetts and Connecticut’s inability to settle on terms of confederation struck Winthrop as a consequence of inher- ent flaws within the Connecticut polity. Residents of the two colonies appeared to disagree on fundamental aspects of what made up a commonwealth.

Expansion and contraction Plans for confederal union in the late 1630s rarely figure into understandings of commonwealth formation in early New En- gland. By 1640, Winthrop, Hooker, Ludlow, and others had not agreed on how to confederate or resolved the relationship between Massachusetts and the Connecticut plantations. Yet these failures belie a more important achievement. Authorities in the two colonies kept returning to the bargaining table because they had reached a consensus about how to construct a functional, expanding Puritan commonwealth. Sustaining commonwealths in North America would require an infrastructure that went beyond the familiar nodes of church and colony government. Puritans continued to pursue confederation because they realized that their commonwealths would thrive together or not at all. This conviction—about the need to buttress their commonwealths with the added infrastructure of an intercolonial confederation—explains how a plan conceived by and for two colonies in 1637 entangled all English polities in New En- gland by 1643.

66Winthrop’s Journal, 280.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 404 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY Authorities in Massachusetts and Connecticut drew two additional polities—Plymouth Colony and New Haven Colony— into their plan to strengthen their own commonwealths. The Massachusetts General Court proposed including Plymouth in September 1642, and New Haven received its invitation shortly thereafter, most likely during a visit from Connecti- cut magistrate Roger Ludlow.67 While the four colonies all shared similar forms of church and civil government, the late additions were strategic and self-interested, particularly for Massachusetts. Bringing in Plymouth and New Haven had the practical benefit of improving Massachusetts and Connecticut’s security by extending their magistrates’ influence over regional affairs, especially English dealings with Native Americans. Since planning for the confederation began in 1637, removals and transatlantic migrations had further expanded the English footprint in the Northeast, most notably with the founding of New Haven. By the early 1640s, such growth made regional affairs more complex and less stable than ever before.68 Rumors of a Narragansett plot to attack the English plantations in 1642 revealed just how untenable the situation had become. The four colony governments could not agree on the

67It is unclear from surviving evidence whether Massachusetts or Connecticut first proposed including New Haven or when they made the proposal. New Haven Gover- nor Theophilus Eaton expressed interest in some form of cooperation with other En- glish plantations (including Connecticut, Massachusetts, and the towns of Portsmouth and Newport on Aquidneck Island in Narragansett Bay) in 1640. The Massachusetts General Court records for September 1642 indicate that New Haven was one of the colonies to be included in the final confederation talks. Ludlow may have discussed the idea with New Haven leaders Eaton, Steven Goodyear, and John Davenport later that year when he traveled to the colony to consult about the Narragansett plot. The New Haven General Court, however, did not make any preparations for participating in the 1643 meeting until April 1643, just weeks before their representatives’ departure for Boston. On Eaton’s interest see Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Recs., 1:305; Winthrop’s Journal, 341. On the Massachusetts General Court’s 1642 reference to New Haven, see Mass. Recs., 2:31. For Ludlow’s trip, see Anonymous, “Relation of the Indian Plott,” 164. On New Haven’s preparations, see Charles J. Hoadly, ed., Records of the Colony and Plan- tation of New Haven, from 1638–1649 (Hartford, CT: Case, Tiffany and Co., 1857), 87 (hereafter New Haven Recs. I). 68Michael Leroy Oberg, Dominion and Civility: English Imperialism and Native America, 1585–1685 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), 114–19; Lauric Hen- neton, “‘Fear of Popish Leagues’: Religious Identities and the Conduct of Frontier Diplomacy in Mid-seventeenth-century Northeastern America,” NEQ, 89 (2016): 356– 83.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 405 seriousness of the Narragansett threat or how best to respond to the rumors. The smaller plantations, convinced of the legitimacy of the threat, were eager to head off Miantonomi and his allies with a preemptive strike. Yet the Massachusetts Council doubted the rumors and concluded that hasty action was unwarranted. They were in the uncomfortable position of pleading with their neighbors not to act, reasoning that in war the Indians would not distinguish between Englishmen from different colonies; a preemptive assault might appease the smaller colonies, but it would make Massachusetts less secure.69 The situation offered the council a frightening il- lustration of just how powerless Puritan expansion left them in the defense of their own colony. Having more polities in the confederation could have the effect of making the region’s political landscape more coherent while also shrinking the number of individuals who had power to make such decisions and giving Massachusetts and Connecticut magistrates an official means to influence their neighbors. Neither Plymouth nor New Haven had to join the confederation. Yet authorities in both colonies embraced the opportunity as a means to bolster their commonwealths against internal crises. Beginning around 1641, Plymouth settlers had watched with grave concern as “wickedness did grow and break forth” in the colony.70 The trouble started with a quarrel over baptism techniques. Rev. Charles Chauncy threw his church into turmoil when he insisted that sprinkling or pouring water on one’s forehead (the usual method) amounted to an “unlaw- ful” practice. His insistence on immersing all of the church’s baptism candidates led to a series of public debates and, ulti- mately, to Chauncy’s removal.71 Another wickedness occurred

69Winthrop’s Journal, 406–12; Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs. I, 78–79; J. Hammond Trumbull, ed., The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, Prior to the Union with New Haven Colony, May, 1665 (Hartford, CT: Brown & Parsons, 1850), 73–74 (hereafter Conn. Recs.); Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Recs., 2:22–26; William Bradford to John Winthrop, June 29, 1640, Winthrop Papers, 4:258–59. See also, Muehlbauer, “Holy War and Just War,” 685. 70William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (1952; repr. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006), 316. 71Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 313–14.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 406 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY in 1642, when two men from Lynn raped John Humphry’s eight- and nine-year-old daughters. While settlers tried to grapple with those crimes, they found Thomas Granger cop- ulating with a mare. To everyone’s horror, he then confessed to bestiality with “a cow, two goats, five sheep, two calves, and a turkey.”72 Governor William Bradford later “marveled at” how “so many wicked persons and profane people” could infiltrate a colony “where the same was so much witnessed against and so narrowly looked unto, and severely punished.”73 Plymouth’s afflictions, whatever their cause, were all symptoms of an expanding commonwealth.74 Bradford knew Plymouth needed help. Prior to the 1640s, its General Court had a history of ignoring or rejecting over- tures for intercolonial cooperation, especially when they came from Boston. Its members had, in fact, missed a chance to hear John Winthrop’s plan for confederal union in 1637. By 1642, however, Plymouth was “now willing” to entertain the idea.75 Securing the struggling colony from Narragansetts and other Native peoples certainly encouraged this change of heart, as did the conclusion of a protracted border dispute with Massachusetts in 1640.76 But taking the colony’s internal troubles into view suggests a more fundamental shift in how Plymouth leaders like Bradford sought to sustain the commonwealth in the 1640s. Through informal exchanges with neighbor colonies, Plymouth had already begun to expand the colony’s infrastructure beyond church and colony government. Plymouth’s church members asked ministers in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven for advice about their dispute with Rev. Chauncy, then used their responses to justify his

72Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 320; Nathaniel B. Shurtleff and David Pul- sifer, eds., Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, 12 vols. (Boston: Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 1855–61), 2:44 (hereafter Plymouth Recs.). 73Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 316, 321. 74John Winthrop observed the same predicament in Massachusetts Bay, noting that “as people increased, so sin abounded, and especially the sin of uncleanness.” Winthrop’s Journal, 374. 75Winthrop’s Journal, 231–32, 414. 76Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 304–5, 308; Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Recs., 1:254.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 407 dismissal.77 Opinions solicited from magistrates and elders in the other colonies likewise supported Thomas Granger’s execution in 1642 as an appropriate application of the death penalty.78 Massachusetts and Connecticut’s idea for a confederation resonated with Plymouth authorities’ own efforts to fortify their commonwealth through connections to neighbor polities. New Havenites, too, saw confederation as a tool for state formation. The New Haven plantation founded in 1638 evolved into a distinct colony composed of five previously independent plantations in tandem with and because of the formation of the United Colonies of New England. Until 1643, New Haven (which included the dependencies of Stamford and Southold) and the neighboring plantations of Guilford and Milford operated as independent polities. Each plantation established its own church and rudimentary government. This arrangement, however, “tended to the weakening of the country, and hindrance of the general good of the whole.”79 It specifically conflicted with the Rev. John Davenport’s vision for New Haven to become a New Jerusalem.80 Bringing Guilford and Milford under New Haven’s jurisdiction would transform all the plantations into a more perfect commonwealth. Little about that plan enticed the people of Guilford and Milford. To the contrary, it would have required them to accept a new form of government that restricted freemanship and public office to church members—an arrangement that would disenfranchise six freemen in Milford who did not meet

77Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 314. 78George Spencer of New Haven and William Hatchet of Salem, Massachusetts were similarly found guilty of sodomy and bestiality and executed in 1641 and 1642. See Winthrop’s Journal, 374–75, 385; Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs. I, 62–69, 71–73. On the cooperation across plantations in this matter, see Thomas Shepherd to John Winthrop, c.1642, Winthrop Papers, 4:345. For the advice of Plymouth ministers John Rayner, Ralph Partridge, and Charles Chauncy, see “Opinions of Three Ministers on Unnatural Vice, 1642” reprinted in Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation, 404–13. 79Henry White, “The New Haven Colony,” in Papers of the New Haven Historical Society, 1 (1865): 1–6; William Hubbard, A General History of New England From the Discovery to MDCLXXX, 2nd ed. (1815; Boston: Charles C. Little and James Brown, 1848), 279. 80Bremer, Building a New Jerusalem.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 408 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY the requirement. Massachusetts and Connecticut’s offer of confederation presented a way around this impasse.81 Joining the design would facilitate New Haven’s aspirations to operate as a legitimate colony and perhaps entice Guilford and Milford to come under New Haven’s jurisdiction. New Haven’s attitude is most clearly visible in the language officials there adopted to describe the confederation as well as their procedure for attaching their colony to the design. New Haven leaders spoke of the confederation not merely as a defensive alliance; rather, they described it as a means for “exalting of Christs ends and advanceing the publique good in all the plantations.” The General Court formed a special committee con- sisting of Rev. John Davenport, magistrate Stephen Goodyear, four deputies, and other public officers. They also solicited public comment in preparing instructions for their representatives and, once the confederation had been established in May 1643, required each individual plantation to purchase a copy of the articles to familiarize settlers throughout the colony with its terms.82 All of these efforts appeared to have the desired effect of bolstering the colony. Within weeks of the confederation’s establishment, residents of Guilford and then Milford subjected their towns to New Haven’s jurisdiction, and together the plantations adopted the Fundamental Orders.83 By 1642, Puritans in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven had all begun to recognize the utility of a confederal union of neighboring plantations as a tool of commonwealth formation. For their own unique reasons, authorities in each colony became convinced that a formal, institutionalized civil bond between their polity and select

81Federal Writers’ Project of the Work Projects Administration for the State of Con- necticut, History of Milford Connecticut, 1639–1939 (Bridgeport, CT: Braunworth & Co., 1939), 16–17. 82This concern for the confederation’s role in stabilizing church and state is further evident in the committee the General Court appointed to prepare instructions for their chosen representatives (Theophilus Eaton and Thomas Gregson). The committee members included both state and church leaders knowledgeable of the towns’ diverse needs. Hoadly, ed., NewHavenRecs.I,87, 96–7. 83Federal Writers’ Project, History of Milford, 16–17; Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs. I, 110–16.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 409 neighbors could supply a needed source of stability, cohesion, and even legitimacy for growing colonies. This way of thinking helps explain how and why Massachusetts and Connecticut brought Plymouth and New Haven into their design, and why those colonies embraced the opportunity. In a similar way, it helps to explain the decision to exclude the region’s other English polities—namely the Rhode Island plantations and the fledgling English settlement in Maine—from confederation. Rhode Island’s exclusion was not a foregone conclusion. As recently as 1641, New Haven Governor Theophilus Eaton expressed Connecticut, Plymouth, and his own colony’s interest in coordinating Indian affairs amongst themselves and the plantations of Newport and Portsmouth on Acquidneck (Rhode) Island.84 That possibility, however, evaporated around 1642 just as ideas about the confederation’s power to bolster Puritan commonwealths began to crystallize, and the previously disparate and unchartered plantations of Rhode Island took steps to combine themselves into a distinct colony of their own.85 Puritans in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven did not wish to confer any legitimacy upon such a polity—one they considered fundamentally at odds with the idea of a Puritan commonwealth. As Massachusetts Governor Richard Bellingham explained to the Plymouth General Court in 1642, the people of Rhode Island “rend themselves from all the true churches of Christ and, many of them, from all the powers of magistracy.” For that reason, Massachusetts refused to “join with them in any league or confederacy at all.”86 Massachusetts and Plymouth also had practical concerns in mind. Some Rhode Islanders, including Samuel Gorton,

84Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Recs, 1:305; Winthrop’s Journal, 341. 85Sydney V. James, The Colonial Metamorphoses in Rhode Island: A Study of In- stitutions in Change, ed. Sheila L. Skemp and Bruce C. Daniels (Hanover, NH: Uni- versity Press of New England, 2000), 17, 20; John M. Barry, Roger Williams and the Creation of the American Soul: Church, State, and the Birth of Liberty (New York: Viking, 2012), 273. 86Richard Bellingham to William Bradford, March 28, 1642, in Bradford, Of Ply- mouth Plantation, 317–18; Mass. Recs, 1:305. On the breach between Massachusetts and Rhode Island, see Edmund S. Morgan, Roger Williams: The Church and the State, new ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 2006).

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 410 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY had planted themselves on land they believed (or simply wanted) to be theirs. If they brought Rhode Island into the confederation, their hopes of establishing jurisdiction over those lands would certainly vanish. And so, while the similarly charter-less colonies of Connecticut and New Haven “were admitted Colonies in their great Combination,” they left “Rode Island slighted.” The Rhode Island plantations “could never be acknowledged for a colony.”87 Concerns about orthodoxy and polity formation also influenced Maine’s ties to the emerging confederation. In the fall of 1642, the Massachusetts General Court announced its desire to include Maine in the confederation at the same time it called Plymouth. At that moment, the court was in the process of trying to engineer Sir Ferdinando Gorges’s plantations into a dependency upon Massachusetts.88 Settlers in Maine, however, soon moved in a different direction. They “made Acomenticus [York] (a poor village) a corporation,” installed a tailor as their mayor, and called the Rev. Joseph Hull—made available by his recent excommunication in Massachusetts—to serve as their minister. Instead of a Massachusetts dependency, Maine sought to be a “corporation,” a colony unto itself. As John Winthrop explained in his journal, the Maine plantations “were not received nor called into the confederation, because they ran a different course from us both in their ministry and civil administration.”89 The wording of Winthrop’s rationale—“they ran a different course from us”—neatly encapsulates the dual justi- fications for Maine’s exclusion. Like Rhode Island, Maine not only embraced an ungodly church and civil government, it also had pretensions to independence. Governor Bellingham’s re- marks about Rhode Island and the sudden rejection of Maine attest not only to how Puritans in Massachusetts and the other included colonies were defining the acceptable parameters of

87King’s Commissioners’ report on the state of the Colony of Rhode Island, Egerton Ms., v. 2395, f. 430, British Library, London. 88On Massachusetts’s ambition to control the northern plantations, see Charles E. Clark, The Eastern Frontier: The Settlement of Northern New England, 1610–1763 (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1970): 36–51. 89Winthrop’s Journal, 414, 432.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 411 ecclesiastical and civil orthodoxy, but also to their increas- ingly clear sense of the institutional infrastructure needed to make a New England colony viable. Confederation amounted to a double-edged tool of Puritan commonwealth formation; it could build up some colonies and tear others down.

New England’s Covenant Decisions about membership in the confederation opened space for Puritan commonwealth formation to undergo a radical transformation in 1643. Following years of negotiation, authorities in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven figured out a way to mitigate the problem of expansion and division into multiple polities. They showed their commitment to the change by entering into a new regional covenant, the Articles of Confederation.90 The articles formally established a new kind of civil institution in the region—a confederal union of the four colonies known as the United Colonies of New England. Thirteen representatives (six from Massachusetts, three from Connecticut, and two each from Ply- mouth and New Haven) gathered in Boston in May 1643 to emend the terms Massachusetts and Connecticut authorities had hammered out over the previous five years.91 Far from a

90On civil covenants, see Hall, Reforming People, 137–38; Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1939), 398–431. A transcription of Plymouth’s copy is in Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:3–8. John Winthrop also recorded the articles in his journal. For variations between Winthrop’s transcription and Plymouth’s copy, see the editorial notes in Winthrop’s Journal, 432–40, especially 433n99. 91Participants from Massachusetts included Governor John Winthrop, magistrates Thomas Dudley and Simon Bradstreet, and deputies William Tynge, Daniel Gibbons, and William Hathorne. Connecticut representatives included John Haynes, Edward Hopkins, and George Fenwick; New Haven, Theophilus Eaton and Thomas Gregson; Plymouth, Edward Winslow and William Collier. The difference in numbers is most likely a reflection of population and the cost of sending representatives to Boston (Con- necticut had sent a three-man delegation to earlier negotiations). The exact dates of the May meetings are unknown. Historian Harry Ward writes that the representatives deliberated and ratified in a single day, May 29, but the date is incorrect, replicating an error in John Winthrop’s transcription of the articles. Winthrop reported that there were multiple meetings and implies they occurred during the General Court session, which opened on May 10, but before ratification on May 19. Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Recs., 2:35; Trumbull, ed., Conn. Recs., 82; Shurtleff, ed., Plymouth Recs., 2:53; Hoadly New

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 412 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY simple military alliance, the articles they ratified on May 19th fundamentally redefined the region and the mechanics of Pu- ritan commonwealth formation.92 In the document, colonists articulated their answer to the question removals from Mas- sachusetts to Connecticut had first raised in the 1630s, and put forth a plan on how polities connected by a common faith yet divided by geography and local interests might peacefully and fruitfully coexist. The representatives who assembled in Boston in the spring of 1643 arrived with bigger ambitions than warding off a potential Narragansett assault. Instead they came to perfect the Puritan commonwealth. Lest anyone think otherwise, they specified their intentions in a long preamble to the articles. In it they reviewed both the original aims of Puritan colonization as well as how the work of settler colonialism, including expansion and the formation of new plantations, thwarted those plans. “Wee all came into these partes of America with one and the same end and ayme,” they began. They came “to advaunce the Kingdome of our Lord Jesus Christ and to enjoy the liberties

Haven Recs. I, 87. On the meeting date(s), see Winthrop’s Journal, 431–32, 440n13; Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:8; Ward, United Colonies, 42; James Kendall Hosmer, ed., Winthrop’s Journal: “History of New England,” 1630–1649, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1908), 2:105n2. 92Only Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven’s representatives ratified the articles on May 19. Plymouth’s General Court, which had not empowered its representatives to approve terms, signed the articles and formally joined the confederation three months later. Shurtleff, ed., Plymouth Recs., 2:56, 9:8; Edward Winslow to John Winthrop, June 13, 1643, Winthrop Papers, 4:393–94. Since Plymouth’s representatives in Boston did not have authority to ratify, the final article stipulated that “if Plymouth come not in,” then the articles would nonetheless be in effect for the other three colonies (Plymouth Recs., 9:8). This back-up plan combined with the fact that Plymouth’s General Court insisted on reviewing the articles before signing them underscores how removed Plymouth was from previous years of planning for the confederation and how central Massachusetts and Connecticut had been to the final form approved in 1643. The Massachusetts General Court approved a draft of the articles during its May session before its representatives met with those from the other three colonies. Connecticut’s General Court did not need another chance to review it because its members had helped craft the articles and already instructed their representatives as to which revisions they would or would not accept. Although New Haven had not been involved in previous negotiations, its commissioners were empowered to ratify terms, reflecting the settlers’ unqualified trust. Eaton and Gregson asked the courtfor instructions before they left for Boston, “butt the whole Court seemed to rest satisfied in the wisdome and faithfullnes of those which they had chosen.” Shurtleff, ed., Mass. Records, 2:36; Trumbull, ed., Conn. Recs., 82; Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs. I, 87.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 413 of the Gospell in puritie with peace.” Geographic dispersion in the 1630s had rendered those goals elusive. “In our settleinge,” they lamented, “we are further dispersed vpon the Sea Coasts and Riuers then was at first intended, so that we cannot according to our desire with convenience communicate in one Government and Jurisdiction.” By both choice and circum- stance, the single body politic had fractured into an array. In the process, removals left Puritans to “liue encompassed with people of severall Nations and strang languages” who “may proue injurious to vs or our posteritie.” Meanwhile, England had descended into civil war, leaving her colonies to fend for themselves. Rather than let these challenges crush their commonwealths, the representatives chose to adapt “for mutuall help and strengh in all our future concernements.” And so, “in Nation and Religion so in other respects,” their several colonies pledged to “bee and continue One” commonwealth “called by the name of The United Colonies of New England.”93 The plan to perfect the Puritan commonwealth began by re- defining what made an English plantation within New England a legitimate colony. Normally a colony’s legitimacy—its rulers’ authority to govern within a set jurisdiction—was codified in English law through charter or letters patent. Such was the case for Massachusetts. The 1629 Massachusetts Bay Company charter authorized it to settle a particular territory and govern the settlement and its inhabitants. Yet none of the smaller colonies could claim legitimacy through a charter. The Con- necticut plantations at least nominally fell under the Warwick Patent, but it did not have any provisions for governance. Indeed, much of the trouble caused by the 1630s removals stemmed from Connecticut’s ambiguous legal status. Ply- mouth’s case was more complicated. When the confederation emerged, Plymouth operated under the Warwick/Bradford Patent granted by the Council for New England in 1630. The patent made Plymouth a “particular plantation” under the Council for New England’s jurisdiction. While Plymouth authorities, particularly William Bradford, believed the colony’s

93Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:3.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 414 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY legitimacy derived from both the Warwick/Bradford Patent and the Mayflower Compact, the Council for New England went out of business in 1635, leaving Plymouth’s status uncertain.94 As with Connecticut, ambiguities about Plymouth and New Haven, which had no claims to a charter or patent, raised questions about their relationship with Massachusetts and, more importantly, their governments’ authority within their own jurisdictions. The 1643 Articles resolved this problem by establishing a new, regional basis for legitimacy. As a covenant “betweene the Plantations vnder the Government of the Massachusetts[,] the Plantations vnder the Government of New Plymouth[,] the Plantations vnder the Government of Connectacutt[,] and the Government of New Haven with the Plantations in Combination therewith,” the articles made membership in the confederation the litmus test for legitimacy in New En- gland. Each member acknowledged its confederates’ “peculier Jurisdiction and gouernment” within their respective territo- ries. The articles further bolstered the colony governments by denying that recognition to English plantations outside the jurisdiction of the four member colonies. “No other Ju- risdiction,” the document declared, would “be taken in as a distinct head or member of this Confederation.” Nor could “any two of the Confederates” combine themselves “in[to] one Jurisdiction without the consent of the rest.”95 Together these provisions served to inoculate the Puritan commonwealth from any problems future expansion might cause—Massachusetts, Connecticut, Plymouth, and New Haven would be the region’s only four legitimate Puritan colonies.96 Provisions that established equity among the member colonies helped to reinforce further their legitimacy as

94On Plymouth’s status, Nick Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 281–86. 95Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Records, 9:3–4. 96Samuel Gorton alluded to this effect suggesting that the United Colonies used their confederation “to make themselves appear, in the eyes of men, more holy and honorable in the things of God, then others of their brethren.” Simplicity’s Defence, 41.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 415 individual polities.97 The articles granted equal representa- tion in the form of two commissioners per colony. Moreover, every commissioner would have one vote, giving them and their colonies an equal voice in the confederation’s work. Both provisions represented a compromise made by Massachusetts to “the lesser colonies.”98 The founders designed these to ensure “order and a comely carrying on of all proceedings.” Clauses built equity into mundane procedures. Meeting locations, for example, would rotate annually to distribute the burden of trav- eling and hosting, avoiding the appearance of any single colony being more important than any other. A president would pre- side over meetings but could not “cast the scales” or otherwise upset the balance of power. Should any of the colonies violate the articles, the other confederates could censure them.99 United Colonies “proceedings” encompassed a remarkably broad range of business, giving the confederation extensive purview over all manner of regional affairs and, by extension, the internal workings of its members. Regional security con- stituted one of the major areas over which the commissioners would have “full power” to “heare examine weigh & determine.” These powers extended to “all affaires of our warr or peace[,] leagues[,] ayds[,] charges and numbers of men for warr[,] diuision of spoyles and whatsoever is gotten by conquest.” United Colonies commissioners would, for example, determine the justice of any wars involving more than one colony and set the proportions by which each member would contribute men and materiel to common causes.100 Crucially, the confederation’s jurisdiction and powers also extended well beyond matters of war to include “all thinges of like nature which are the proper concomitants or consequents of such a Confederation for amytie offence & defence.” The articles repeatedly frame security matters as one element of the institution’s purpose; they were part of the bigger project

97On the concept of equity, see Hall, Reforming People, 143–47. 98Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs. II, 5. 99Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:6, 7. 100Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:4–7.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 416 THE NEW ENGLAND QUARTERLY of commonwealth formation. As the clause “all thinges of like nature” suggests, these other powers are outlined in the articles using vague language that left the commissioners a surprising amount of latitude. The confederation’s work involved business necessary “both for preserueing and propagateing the truth and liberties of the Gospell and for their owne mutuall safety and wellfare.”101 Commissioners for the confederation would also “endeavoure to frame and establish agreements and orders in generall cases of a ciuill nature, wherein all the Plantations are interressed for preserueing peace among themselues, and preventing as much as may bee all occations of warr or differ- rences with others.” To sustain the legitimacy of its members, the colonies collectively would ensure the “free and speedy passage of justice in euery Jurisdiction,” regulate intercolonial migration, adjudicate intercolonial legal disputes (such as ser- vants who fled from one confederate colony to another), and decide whether to receive more plantations into the confederation.102 Controversies that later bedeviled the confederation stemmed from the sheer breadth of these powers. Contemporary observers pointed to ratification of the articles as a turning point in the Puritan experiment with commonwealth formation in New England. Prior to 1643 the Puritan polities had been “knitt together in affections,” but “stood in refferrence one to another loose and free from any express couenant or combination.”103 The articles resolved that dis- crepancy, a shift Thomas Hooker celebrated in an exuberant letter to John Winthrop in July 1643. By his own admis- sion, Hooker avoided heaping praise on anyone. Flattery, the Connecticut minister once remarked, was “not only crosse to my conscience but to my disposition.” News of ratification, however, warranted a momentary lapse in conscience. Hooker wrote Winthrop to congratulate him on his role in bringing negotiations for the confederation of Puritan colonies to a successful conclusion. He knew from his involvement in

101Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:4–6. 102Pulsifer, ed., Plymouth Recs., 9:5–7. 103Hoadly, ed., New Haven Recs. II, 5.

Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/tneq_a_00684 by guest on 30 September 2021 REPAIRING THE BREACH 417 the 1630s negotiations that this outcome was no small feat. Winthrop’s “spetiall prudence” in finally finding a way to sur- mount these obstacles proved him to be nothing less than “an instrument vnder God.” Hooker dubbed Winthrop the “re- payrer of the breach” in recognition of his efforts to “settle a foundation of safety and prosperity” for New England. Confed- eration, he exclaimed, created a new world that would become Winthrop’s “crowne at the great day of your account.”104 Judging from Hooker’s letter, helping to establish the confederation amounted to Winthrop’s greatest achievement. In practice, the confederation would often fall short of Hooker’s lofty rhetoric. Despite his confidence, confederation was no panacea. The breach Hooker alluded to required on- going repairs. From its genesis in 1643 through its gradual dissolution in the 1680s, the confederation provided endless fodder for external critics like Samuel Gorton as well as power struggles among the confederates themselves. Recognizing the ways confederation transformed Puritan commonwealth formation from its original iteration in Massachusetts Bay helps explain the stakes and thereby the persistence and antagonism of those intercolonial quarrels. Debates about the balance of power between colonial general courts and United Colonies commissioners or other mundane details of the confederation’s operations always cut to fundamental questions about the composition of a Puritan commonwealth.

104Hooker to Winthrop, July 15, 1643, Winthrop Papers, 4:401–2.

Neal Dugre earned his PhD from Northwestern University and is an assistant professor at the University of Houston- Clear Lake. He is currently writing a book about Puritan state- craft and inter-colony politics in the United Colonies of New England.

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