Ship of Wealth: Massachusetts Merchants, Foreign Goods, and the Transformation of Anglo-America, 1670-1760

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1996

Ship of wealth: Massachusetts merchants, foreign goods, and the transformation of Anglo-America, 1670-1760

Phyllis Whitman Hunter College of William & Mary - Arts & Sciences

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Recommended Citation Hunter, Phyllis Whitman, "Ship of wealth: Massachusetts merchants, foreign goods, and the transformation of Anglo-America, 1670-1760" (1996). Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects. Paper 1539623879. https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.21220/s2-skdp-cf18

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with with permission permission of the of copyright the copyright owner. owner.Further reproduction Further reproduction prohibited without prohibited permission. without permission. SHIP OF WEALTH:

MASSACHUSETTS MERCHANTS, FOREIGN GOODS,

AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ANGLO-AMERICA, 1670-1760

A Dissertation

Presented to

The Faculty of the American Studies Program

The College of William and Mary in Virginia

In Partial Fulfillment

Of the Requirements for the Degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Phyllis Whitman Hunter

1996

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UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. APPROVAL SHEET

This dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Bnvllis Whitman Hunter Author

Approved, April 1996

Robert M. Gross

^ JtiWl (klijLjhx Michael McGiffert ^

//?, J cyc/I Margaretta M. Lovell

Adam Potkay

Richard Lyman Bushman "j Columbia Umversity

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Page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv

LIST OF TABLES v

ABSTRACT vi

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 2

CHAPTER 2. PROVIDENCE AND PROFITS 22

CHAPTER 3. MUCH COMMERCE AND MANY CULTURES 56

CHAPTER 4. CHANGING WORLDVIEW: VALUING THE VISIBLE 133

CHAPTER 5. THE NEW WORLD OF COSMOPOLITAN BOSTON 174

CHAPTER 6. CONFLICT IN THE STREETS 209

CHAPTER 7. CONCLUSION: FINDING PEACE IN SALEM 247

BIBILOGRAPHY 286

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This “Ship of Wealth” was constructed with the aid of generous fellowship support from the College of William and Mary, the American Antiquarian Society, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the Peabody Essex Museum. Particular thanks go to Nancy Burkett, Joanne Chaison, John Hench, and all my other friends at AAS, to Peter Drummey, Conrad Wright and the staff of MHS, and to Will La Moy, Jane Ward and their staff at the James Duncan Phillips Library.

While I may have conceived the design of this ship, her hull, rigging, and sails have been shaped and filled not only by my own labor but by a group of masters. Foremost among them is Robert Gross who applied his extraordinary intensity, brilliance, and commitment over several years, to compel me to sharpen my argument and connect it with previous scholarship. Michael McGiffert went well beyond the role of first reader, offering not only his superb editing skills but also a willingness to listen carefully and question perceptively any new, and sometimes unfounded, ideas. Margaretta Lovell has also been a significant part of the planning and crafting of this ship and has sustained the builder in numerous ways. Adam Potkay recently joined the partnership to offer guidance based on the English experience. Richard Bushman of Columbia University provided a reading from his considerable expertise in matters of colonial consumption and cultural change, and raised important issues for future consideration. Each member of the dissertation committee has held out a vision of a completed work; these visions have not been realized, but without them, far less would have been accomplished.

I also want to thank Sharon Zuber for reading the entire manuscript at a critical moment and giving both professional and personal support. Two other William and Mary faculty members had important influence on this work. Barbara Carson first introduced me to the world of goods and to theories about consumption -- her influence on this craft is considerable. Clyde Haulman kindly provided needed guidance about economic matters. Friends, far and near, and my children, Kim and Zac, sustained, encouraged, and routed for me throughout the entire construction project.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. LIST OF TABLES

Table Page

1. Indentured Servants Brought to Salem by Philip 83 English and Family, 1675-1731

2. Wealth Inequality in Boston, 1689-1765 follows 221

3. Emergence of Capital Markets in follows 259 Massachusetts, 1730-1780

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ABSTRACT

This study examines capitalism and cultural change in early New England. The research focuses on leading merchants in Boston and Salem Massachusetts from the last third of the seventeenth century to 1760. During this period, merchants, royal officials, and professionals formed a prominent, influential elite that refashioned the town landscape and social structure of colonial ports. Merchants adopted a new Anglo-American worldview that gradually supplanted Puritan spiritual and providential understanding of the world and, instead, emphasized visible, material characteristics as the source of value in science, commerce, and consumption. The resultant “world of goods, "created a social marketplace where identity, shaped by owning and displaying high-style goods and genteel manners, could be purchased by anyone with money. Incorporating both exotic imports and foreign merchants, the new culture fostered capitalism and helped to dispel earlier conflicts over sectarian beliefs and ethnic origins that had plagued Boston and Salem. Thus, this study argues that it was consumption and a worldview that placed value in the material not Puritan asceticism, as sociologist Max Weber and his supporters insist, that initiated the spirit of modern capitalism.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. SHIP OF WEALTH:

MASSACHUSETTS MERCHANTS, FOREIGN GOODS,

AND THE TRANSFORMATION OF ANGLO-AMERICA, 1670-1760

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION

In Boston, Massachusetts, fifty years after its founding by Puritan

entrepreneurs and preachers from eastern England, ministers Samuel Willard and

Increase Mather published a vehement attack on religious toleration that harkened

back to the first generation of colonists. In the pamphlet, part of a long-standing

quarrel with an embattled Baptist church across the river in Charlestown,1 Willard

insisted, “our first Planters' . . . business was not Toleration”; they “were professed

Enemies of it. ”2 And so were Willard and Mather. Yet, forty years later, Mather

helped to ordain a Baptist minister in Boston, offering “the right hand of fellowship,”

and then his son Cotton preached a sermon onBrethren Dwelling Together in Unity

emphasizing the importance of toleration.3 What could account for such profound

change not only in the Mathers' professed attitudes but in the cultural context within

which they made their names as the foremost Puritans in all of New England?

The shift exhibited by Increase and Cotton Mather was part of a larger cultural

transformation taking place throughout Anglo-America that produced much of what

we know as the modern world. Propelled by the growth of long-distance trade and

the introduction of foreign goods from Asia and the new world, and fueled by

Protestant individualism, Anglo-Americans (and Europeans generally) developed new

ideas about human's place in the cosmos and adopted new social and economic

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practices. This transformation, taking place roughly between the sixteenth and

eighteenth centuries, culminated in what postmodern critics refer to as “the

Enlightenment project” and in modern capitalism; that is, it resulted in specific new

ways of thinking and doing. This study is an effort to examine the interplay between

cultural change and emerging capitalism both in the broader context of a changing

transatlantic English culture and in a specific time and place by focusing on leading

overseas merchants in Boston and Salem, the two leading port towns in colonial

Massachusetts, during the years 1670 to 1760.

A study of capitalism and cultural change in early New England cannot begin

without engaging the argument in the seminal work of German sociologist Max

Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published at the beginning

of the twentieth century.4 In that work, Weber concludes that a particular religious

outlook created in its followers a devotion to rational and incessant striving, which

Weber denotes as the “spirit of capitalism.” This spirit continued to flourish in the

West even after the religious beliefs that engendered it changed or died out.

Beginning with a comparative perspective, Weber observes that pietist sects in

England, France, and North America, most notably the Puritans, adopted a doctrine

of the calling that encouraged believers to be diligent and please God by their “active

performance of His will in a calling.”5 One’s daily work was to be pursued through

a methodical, rational striving, accompanied by what Weber names “worldly

asceticism,” which “turned with all its force against one thing: the spontaneous

enjoyment of life” and also “restricted consumption, especially of luxuries.”6

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Emphasis on the calling was intensified by Calvinist belief in predestination -- a

conviction that God had pre-selected those who would join him in heaven and those

who were destined for hell. While good deeds on earth could not determine one’s

ultimate fate, the elect were expected to behave as if they had been chosen. This

dilemma created what Weber terms “strong 'psychological sanctions'” brought forth

by the “necessity of proving one's faith in worldly activity.”7 Weber suggests that by

faithfully following a particular calling and practicing “worldly asceticism,” Puritans

came to valorize work yet eschew the wasteful consumption that often accompanied

wealth.8 Thus, they not only built up capital to re-invest in productive activities but

also developed the spirit of capitalism -- the incessant seeking of profit through

disciplined work and rational calculation.9

If Weber's theory is correct, we should find it operating in Puritan

Massachusetts, in the lives of leading merchants like John Hull. Hull arrived as a

youth with his family from England, trained as a goldsmith and, through his work as

mintmaster for the colony, quickly rose to prominence as a trader and as Treasurer of

the Colony. He and other merchants followed a path of worldly asceticism and a

devotion to their particular calling (in Puritan terms the general calling was to love

and obey God), but others, such as Boston traders Henry and Samuel Shrimpton and

Salemite Philip English, pursued a lifestyle that seemed anything but ascetic. In mid-

seventeenth-century Boston, not the most promising site for lavish consumption, the

Shrimptons surrounded themselves with sumptuous textiles of matched colors

following the latest continental fashions, thereby contradicting what Weber describes

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as Puritanism's “fundamental antagonism to sensuous culture of all kinds.”10

Weber insists that after the influence of religion declined, the “spirit of

capitalism” continued in secular utilitarianism. In his view, the capitalist entrepreneur

“avoids ostentation and unnecessary expenditure, as well as conscious enjoyment of

his power, and is embarrassed by the outward signs of the social recognition which he

receives.”11 Even in the twentieth century, successful entrepreneurs, according to

Weber, followed “a manner of life . . . distinguished by a certain ascetic tendency . .

. a sort of modesty.”12 My study demonstrates the opposite. Mid-eighteenth-century

Boston and Salem merchants invested time and money in displaying their wealth to

members of their own class through opulent furnishings and serving utensils from

around the world and to townsmen of all classes by constructing elegant mansions in

the latest English design, traveling through the streets in large coaches emblazoned

with their coat of arms, and donating valuable objects and buildings to churches and

towns. Boston merchant Peter Faneuil, from a Huguenot trading family that fled

France and established a trading network in Boston, New York, and Amsterdam,

claimed his status as a provincial “English” gentleman through careful attention to

consumer goods.13 In a letter to a London merchant containing an order for silver

knives and forks from England, he explained precisely the intricacies of an engraved

design he requested on each handle.14 Timothy Ome, an eighteenth-century Salem

merchant who figured among the town's “codfish aristocracy,” contracted with a

local artisan, detailing the exact paint colors for walls and trim in each room in his

new house.15 Both these documents and many others demonstrate an attention to

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fashionable details that belies any notion of worldly asceticism. Instead, merchants'

identities, I argue, were very much defined by owning and displaying luxury goods as

proof of their growing ability to master the complex details of overseas trade. In

eighteenth-century port towns, capitalism was about both getting and spending.

Weber, like many other social theorists, argues from a productivist position;

that is, he puts production (of capital) and work at the center of his analysis while

neglecting the role of consumption. In contrast, I contend that “ostentation and a

sensuous involvement in material goods” are at the very heart of the spirit of

capitalism.16 By fashioning new forms of identity, shaped and communicated by and

through possessions, English gentility fostered an explosion in demand that firmly

embedded capitalism in Anglo-American culture.17 Thus, although I agree with

Weber's contention that the growth of capitalism is not “a question of the origin of

capital sums” but rather of the development of a “new spirit,” I disagree on a most

fundamental level about the nature of that spirit.

Weber's most valuable insight is his insistence on bringing together idealist

and materialist explanations. His translator, Talcott Parsons, points out that Weber

introduced “a very important set of new emphases which were largely unfamiliar to

the economic-historical discussion of the time.”18 He developed what is still regarded

as the most important alternative to Marx's interpretation of capitalist society. By

placing “the role of values . . . in a theoretical light,” he acknowledged the

importance of ideas and attitudes as well as economic forces in influencing action.19

Weber saw the ideal and the material coming together in the Protestant concept of the

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calling. I see them coming together in the transatlantic “world of goods.”

Historians have often considered the early decades of the Massachusetts Bay

Colony to be a virtual demonstration of Weber's thesis. The first to apply his ideas to

Puritan New England was historian Perry Miller, who explains the paradox that

Weber found in the “Protestant ethic”: believers were expected to “devote themselves

to making profits without succumbing to the temptations of profit.”20 Miller cites

Richard Mather, aging patriarch of the important ministerial family, who expressed

the difficulty of following this injunction in his farewell sermon delivered, in 1657. to

his church in Dorchester. Mather knew and “experience showfed] that it is an easy

thing in the middest of worldly business to lose the life and power of Religion.”21 If

that happened, he continued, “nothing thereof should be left but only the external

form, as it were the carcass or shell, worldliness having eaten out the kemell, and

having consumed the very soul and life of godliness.”22 Mather's fears were not

unfounded.

Unlike Weber, who maintains that capitalism requires a pose of worldly

asceticism, Miller recognizes that the colonists did not long sustain the balance

between profits and piety. For New Englanders, profiting handsomely from selling

fish to the West Indies and Southern Europe, “the 'sacred cod'” became a symbol

second only, if that, to the Bible. ” By the last quarter of the seventeenth century,

“even the upper class of inherited position . . . became less the dedicated leaders of a

religious movement and more a closed corporation of monopolists.”23

The ministers responded by developing a genre of sermons called jeremiads

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designed to recall the people to their founders' early goals. John Higginson, Salem's

minister, reminded his listeners that “New England was originally a plantation not of

trade but of religion—'Let merchants and such as are increasing Cent per Cent

remember this.'”24 Jeremiads also chronicled the long list of sins the colonists had

fallen into, sins that, according to Miller, were not committed by depraved persons

but “such as were bound to increase among good men” and were incurable. “What

they gained of elegance or luxury was the just reward of blessed diligence, yet

business and riches meant devotion to the world, and luxury meant pride.” In

Miller's interpretation, the jeremiads “consititut[ed] a chapter in the emergence of the

capitalist mentality” by showing how “intelligence copes with . . . a change it

simultaneously desires and abhors.” Condemning the sins prepared society to “march

into the future. ”25

What kind of future would it be? Miller saw the changes in the last decades of

the seventeenth and the first decades of the eighteenth centuries not merely as a

growth of toleration (as signaled by the Mathers at the beginning of this chapter) but

as “a shedding of the religious conception of the universe. ” Religion no longer

supported a communal vision; instead “Christian Liberty” was transformed into a

foundation for the ownership of private property. “Soon afterward, the philosophy of

social status yielded to the ethic of success, and merchants who took advantage of the

market learned to control congregations despite the clerics.” Even ministers closely

associated with the Congregational way, like Cotton Mather, took part in the new

ethos. In 1692, Mather penned a series of allegories called Political Fables. They

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aimed not only to skewer his opponents but also, said Miller, to bring the wit,

urbanity, and manners of London “to solid Boston;'’ their “spirit is . . . worldly.”26

Miller's account of the path from Puritan paradox through commercial trade to

worldly urbanity parallels my interpretation of the transformation taking place in

Boston and Salem. The stories are similar even though based on different sources. I

relied most heavily on personal papers of leading merchants; Miller's primary sources

were sermons of leading ministers. Both of our accounts, however, tell the story

from the elite point of view. The changes at the highest levels did affect other social

groups because elites made the rules, shaped the landscape, and employed the people -

- at least in urban settings. To determine how deeply this transformation in mentality

reached into the middling and lower groups would require research and interpretation

based on a set of alternative sources, a task well beyond the scope of this project.

Merchants are at the center of my study, and they stand hand-in-hand with

ministers in Miller's complex account of early New England. Other scholars have

investigated colonial merchants. Several monographs on individual merchant houses

have been written, the most useful for this study being W. T. Baxter’s House of

Hancock which provides important details on the commerce and life of Thomas

Hancock and on business in mid-eighteenth-century Boston.27 Baxter, perhaps without

intending to, offers a fine rendering of the commercialization of life and the connection

between production (trade) and consumption (luxury) in Hancock's life.

The most important study of colonial merchants is Bernard Bailyn’s The New

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England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century.28 Bailyn asserts that merchants in the

northern colonies were “the dynamic economic force” and “occupied a strategic position

in society.”29 He does not explicitly address the relationship o f Puritanism and

capitalism, however, he does acknowledge that “church and state . . . most readily

impinged on the professional life of the merchant in regard to the just price and usury”

and that “the assumption of justified control of economic life had a far wider

applicability” including controls on prices and wages.30 “In New England, doctrine

preceded practice.”31 Bailyn sees “the merchant group emerging from the constrictions

of a medieval social order” by the late seventeenth century. He credits overseas traders

with initiating many social changes because as “Citizens of an international trading world

. . . the merchants took the pattern for their conduct not from the Bible or from parental

teachings but from their picture of life in restoration England.”32 As they gained political

influence in the last decades of the century, merchants led the shift from the parochialism

o f Puritan New England to the cosmopolitanism of commercial Anglo-America.33

Yet in Bailyn's view, “though united by the demands of a commonoccupation,

they [merchants] did not form a socially homogeneous unit.”34 In fact, he sees

differences among merchant interest groups as “important elements in the determination

of events during the century.” Asking somewhat different questions than those I pose in

this study, Bailyn found that in the 1690s and throughout the eighteenth century, “the

occupation of trade, though it defined an area of common interests for the men engaged

in it, did not delimit, a stratum of society.” Although trade “was the most important

single vehicle for social ascent,” Bailynmaintains that commerce “was not so much a

way of life as a way o f making money: not a social condition but an economic activity.”35

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. While providing a full and rich picture of economic activity in New England and

of merchants’ complex and multiple connections in establishing commerciallinks

throughout the Atlantic world, Bailyn also offers an analysis of a deeply divided

occupational group. After the 1660s, a Puritan party characterized by “the parochialism

of rural and Puritan New England” began to be set off from a royalist party centered in

Boston, composed in large part of “recently arrived merchants without churchaffiliation

or the franchise” who adopted the “cosmopolitanism of commercial Britain.”36 The

competing merchant interest groups in New England connected, in Bailyn's analysis,

directly to political events in England -- “suddenly,. . . the full effects o f the changes set

in motion by the Restoration . . . were felt.” He suggests that it was this division among

merchants that drove the rebellion against royally appointed Governor Sir Edmund

Andros in 1689. In a few brief pages of his final chapter, Bailyn hints that “society in

New England port towns was solidifying; mobility was slowing down,” and a group of

leading families, “the ruling aristocracy of eighteenth-century New England” were

tightening “their control of trade and politics.”37 However, when the issues of imperial

politics came to a head in the 1760s and 1770s, the merchants, in spite o f appearing as a

dominant, unified group, “reacted not as a unit but as individuals whose social

differences were at least as strong as their common interests.”38

This dissertation can be seen as a continuation of Bailyn's work. His detailed

analysis concludes in the 1690s; mine begins in the 1670s and centers on the

development of a powerful merchant elite, Bailyn's “ruling aristocracy,” that reshapes the

physical and social structure of Boston and Salem. However, by attending to new

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questions of consumption, cultural difference, space, and the emergence of class

opposition, and by emphasizing the significance of an eighteenth-century world of goods,

I am able to draw out developments only hinted at in Bailyn's or Miller’s work.

Since 1970, a literature shaped by new social historians has portrayed early

New England as an egalitarian, communal, pre-capitalist society where settlers sought

only a “competence.”39 According to this interpretation, colonists, concerned more

with establishing family security and less with earning profits, attempted to limit and

contain involvement with markets. Several other social historians, drawing on

Weber, Miller, and Bailyn, have contested this view with assertions that the Puritans

were capitalists from the start. Foremost among these is Stephen Innes, whose latest

work, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England,

published in 1995, is a study of capitalism in early Massachusetts.40 Innes agrees that

“much appears to support a 'pre-capitalist' portrayal of early New England” but goes

on to insist that “the weight of the evidence . . . stands squarely on the capitalist

rather than pre-capitalist side of the ledger.” In his view, the Puritan colonists were

not “modern in any meaningful use of that term” but had, he argues, “clearly crossed

the threshold that separates a pre-capitalist from a capitalist society.”41 The founders

of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, he notes, “were bearers of a culture that was

already capitalist when they arrived in the New World.”42 Adopting a Smithian and

Weberian view of capitalism that stresses the division of labor, a wage labor force

free of restrictions by guilds and states, and private property, all legitimated by the

state, Innes argues for the development in the Bay Colony of a distinctive “civic

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ecology” based on representative government and private property.43 From this

“civic ecology,” shaped by “a chain of covenants joining family, church, town, and

commonwealth,” emerged “a robust public sphere.” Innes draws from both Weber’s

insights on the calling and worldly asceticism and Miller's interpretation of Puritan

covenant theology to explain the “federal theology” and “civic ecology” that

developed in early Massachusetts. He agrees with Weber that “Puritanism played a

key role in the transition to capitalism by channeling and legitimating the striving

behavior increasingly common among seventeenth-century Englishmen of all religious

persuasions. ” Innes concludes that “in rejecting a sacerdotal order ruled by ministers,

while seeking to establish a pure social order based on testified regenerate [church]

membership, the Bay colonists created one of the early modern world's first civil

societies.n44

This portrayal of civil society and the public sphere differs from that

developed by German sociologist Jurgen Habermas and adopted by American

historians in the 1980s and 1990s.45 Habermas situates the growth of voluntary

associations or civil societies, free from the control of church and state, in the rise of

a public sphere in eighteenth-century England and Europe. According to Habermas,

the institutions that gave rise to civil society were the coffeehouses, salons, and table

societies where reasoned debate took place and a critique of government, especially

absolute monarchy, could form.46 The most critical institution for the development of

the public sphere, in Habermas's view, is the public press. Most scholars agree that

the newspaper, a key element in the commercialization of print, did not come into its

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own until the eighteenth century in either England or America.47 Coffeehouses and

other public venues that supported the growth of civil society and the public sphere

did not appear in Massachusetts, as I demonstrate, until the late seventeenth and the

eighteenth century, well after the Puritan commonwealth that Innes describes. Thus,

I argue, the emergence of civil society was a product of capitalism and pan and parcel

of the consumer revolution.48 It was in 1745 that up-and-coming merchant Timothy

Orne and other young gentlemen joined to form The Civil Society in Salem.49 It was

twenty years later that, through Orne's efforts, a newspaper began publication in

Salem, the second largest port in Massachusetts.50 Clearly, the civil society that Innes

describes in the mid-seventeenth century is a very different social form from that

emerging in Salem and Boston a century later. This suggests one reason why the

capitalists Innes finds in early Massachusetts are not “modern” and those I locate a

century later are.

In drawing out the contours of Massachusetts' civic ecology, Innes continually

refers to the contradictions inherent in Puritanism between “the culture of discipline”

and economic striving. Yet his overall picture of a unified “communally based

individualism” shaped by covenants and capitalism partially obscures the diversity

present even in the early decades of settlement.51 Because his analysis is aimed at

ideology and institutions and based primarily on public documents and published

sources, he is not able to glimpse Henry Shrimpton, a Boston brazier turned

merchant, quietly accumulating a houseful of sumptuous goods, or the West Country

Anglican founders already distancing themselves from Puritan attempts to control the

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polity and economy of Salem.52 Innes's work ends in the mid-seventeenth century

before the scientific and consumer revolutions began to transform England and its

colonies. It is true, the seeds of change were present in the contradictions he

highlights; he does not, however, give them faces and voices.

Like the work of Bernard Bailyn before it, this study explores capitalism by

studying capitalists. Unlike any previous work, it examines capitalists as both

producers and consumers, thereby locating the transition to modern capitalism not in

the Protestant ethic but in the transatlantic “world of goods” and in a changing

worldview that places value on and finds identity in material and visible things. Max

Weber chose Benjamin Franklin as characteristic of the “spirit of modern capitalism”

after the Protestant ethic had done its work. Franklin's maxims in Necessary Hints to

Those Who Would be Rich, written in 1736, portrayed, in Weber's reading, “the

ideal of the honest man of recognized credit,” and “above all the idea of a duty of the

individual toward the increase of his capital, which is assumed as an end in itself.”53

However, in my analysis, it would not be Benjamin Franklin but his wife, Deborah,

who, in purchasing a silver spoon and China bowl to replace her husband's pewter

and earthenware because he “deserved it,” exhibited the “spirit of modern

capitalism.”54

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NOTES TO CHAPTER I

1. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 128.

2. Samuel Willard quoted in Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1956; reprint, New York: Harper & Row, 1964), 145.

3. Miller, Errand. 145. The sermon was entitled Brethren Dwelling Together in Unity. See Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 374.

4. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1958). Published as essays in two succeeding volumes ofArchiv fur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, in 1904-05. his studies were part of a lifetime of work dedicated toward exploring the effect of religion on economy and society. When encountering Weber, one encounters a host of subsequent scholars who have layered over his already complex thesis with volumes of commentary and criticism. Thus it is important to isolate what Weber is saying. I do not need to detail the many amplifications or criticisms of Weber's essays; the disagreements center on his easy usage of Puritan, Pietist, and Methodist, as interchangeable with and representative of Protestantism and on his selection of texts, Saints' Everlasting Rest and Christian Directory by Richard Baxter and The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin to demonstrate, respectively, the Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism. See Thomas Nipperdey, “Max Weber, Protestantism, and the Context of the Debate around 1900,” in Weber's Protestant Ethic: Origins. Evidence. Contexts, ed. Hartmut Lehmann (Washington, D.C.: Cambridge University Press for the German Historical Institute, 1993), 74-75. Several of Weber's studies were influenced by his colleague and co-editor (of a German sociological journal) Werner Sombart. See for example, Ernst Troeltsch, Protestantism and Progress: A Historical Study of the Relation of Protestantism to the Modern World, trans. W. Montgomery (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958); R.H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1926); and H.M. Robertson. Aspects of the Rise of Economic Individualism: A Criticism of Max Weber and his School (Cambridge: University Press Cambridge, England, 1933). Some recent entries include Gordon Marshall, In Search of the Spirit of Capitalism: An Essay on Max Weber's Protestant Ethic Thesis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982); and Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth, ed. Weber's Protestant Ethic: Origins. Evidence. Contexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). See Malcolm H. MacKinnon, “Part I: Calvinism and the Infallible Assurance of Grace: The Weber Thesis Reconsidered,” and “Part II: Weber's Exploration of Calvinism: the Undiscovered Provenance of

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Capitalism," British Journal of Sociology 29. no. 1 and 2 (1989) and David Zaret's rebuttal of MacKinnon, “The Use and Abuse of Textual Data” in Lehmann for a recent example of a critical exchange over textual data.

5. Weber, The Protestant Ethic. 158, 160, and passim.

6. Ibid. 166, 171,

7. Ibid., 121.

8. Weber, The Protestant Ethic. 154 and passim. For translator Talcott Parsons's explanation of his translation of Weber's termsinnerweltliche Askese (meaning in the world) and ausserweltliche Askese (meaning out of or withdrawn from the world) see, 193-4.

9. Ibid., 69, 71. See 75-78 on rationalization.

10. Ibid., 105.

11. Ibid., 71.

12. Ibid.

13. For a detailed discussion of Peter Faneuil and his gentry status see Chapters 5 and 6 of this work.

14. Peter Faneuil to Samuel and William Baker, 10 June 1738. Peter Faneuil Letterbook, New England Historical and Genealogical Society, Boston, Massachusetts. (Hereafter PF Lbk and NEHGS respectively).

15. William Luscomb and John Pickering subscribers, 31 Jan 1763. Timothy Orne Papers, Peabody and Essex Museum (formerly the Essex Institute), Salem, Massachusetts. (Hereafter TOP and El respectively).

16. Sociologist Colin Campbell uses religious history and literary criticism to develop an alternative to Weber’s Protestant Ethic. In The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism, he concludes that “the cultural logic of modernity is not merely that of rationality as expressed in the activities of calculation and experiment; it is also that of passion, and the creative dreaming born of longing.” In sum, Campbell believes that “the dynamism of the West ultimately depends” on the “tension generated between” rationality and passion. Colin Campbell, The Romantic Ethic and the Spirit of Modern Consumerism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), 227.

17. In his study of material culture in eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, Richard Bushman makes a persuasive argument for the intimate connection between gentility and consumer goods and the growth of modern capitalism. He states that

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“gentility and capitalism collaborated in the formation of consumer culture, gentility creating demand and capitalism manufacturing supply. . . . A large market for consumer goods was a prerequisite for industrialization.” Bushman demonstrates the spread of gentility and consumer products from the gentry (the subjects of my study) into the middling classes. This occurs through “emulation,” not “imitation” but participation in the “power . . . the glory, strength, and beauty that were believed to inhere in those who stood at the peak of society and government. ” Desire to partake in the ideal was also “interwoven with the actual authority and power of the aristocracy” and, I suggest, with a new epistemology as well. Richard L. Bushman. The Refinement of America: Persons. Houses. Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 406-407.

18. Talcott Parsons, “Preface to New Edition,” in Weber, The Protestant Ethic, xv.

19. Ibid., xv, xvi.

20. Miller, From Colony to Province. 41. There is another paradox in Puritanism as it developed in the new world -- a paradox central to covenant theology. The Puritans, in Miller's analysis, designed their theology around three covenants, between God and the congregation, between God and the commonwealth, and between God and each believer. The covenant of Grace between God and man meant a voluntary agreement with God. In Miller's words, “If a man can believe, he has done his part; God then must needs redeem him and glorify him.” But if God is unknowable, mysterious, all-powerful, the God of providence, how can he be bound to a covenant, a contract, with any human? Miller explains, “He who might rule by fiat limits Himself to a contract. . . . In Himself, He remains an unknowable transcendence, but in His Covenant he freely takes upon Himself . . . a yoke. . . . He is ruled by a law, constrained by be moral, committed to sweet reasonableness.” Through a voluntary contract, the infinite God was constrained to a bargain with humankind. Here also were the seeds of transformation. Covenant theology opened the way, I suggest, for mankind to gain a sense of mastery not only over the material universe but also over the spiritual. Thus began the path from providence to natural philosophy, from wonder to novelty, and from getting to spending. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century ( New York: Macmillan Company, 1939; reprint Boston: Beacon Press, 1961), 377, 376, 379.

21. Richard Mather quoted in Ibid., 4.

22. Ibid.

23. Ibid., 44, 50.

24. Reverend John Higginson quoted in Ibid., 36.

25. Ibid., 52, 40, 52.

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26. Ibid., 171,170.

27. W.T.Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston. 1724-1775 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945). See also Byron Fairchild, Messrs. William Pepperell; Merchants at Piscataqua (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954); and James B. Hedges, the Browns of Providence Plantations 2vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952-1968). On Philadelphia merchants see Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1986); and Frederick B. Tolies, Meeting House and Counting House; The Quaker Merchants of Colonial Philadelphia. 1682-1763 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948).

28. Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955).

29. Ibid., ix.

30. Ibid., 22.

31. Ibid., 23.

32. Ibid., 134, 139.

33. Ibid., Chapter VII, “The Merchant Group at the End of the Seventeenth Century,” 168-198.

34. Ibid.

35. Ibid., 194, 194-94, 194.

36. Ibid., 143, 124, 143.

37. Ibid., 143, 197.

38. Ibid., 197.

39. Two important articles that represent this pre-capitalist viewpoint are James A. Henretta, “Families and Farms: Mentalite in Pre-industrial America,” William and Mary Quarterly (hereafter WMQ). 3rd ser., XXXV (1978):3-32; and Daniel Vickers, “Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America,” WMQ 3rd ser., XLVII (Jan 1990):3-29. See also Kenneth A. Lockridge, A New England Town; The First Hundred Years (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1970). Two significant recent entries in the transition to capitalism debate are Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts. 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990) and Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market Places

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to a Market Economy; The Transformation of rural Massachusetts. 1750-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992) both of whom suggest that rural New Englanders were not fully involved a the “spirit of modern capitalism” until the mid- to-late eighteenth century.

40. Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995).

41. Ibid., 42,42,44,45.

42. Ibid., 56. Innes bases his conclusion on the argument of Robert Brenner who credits the growth of commercial agriculture in England with producing an early transition to capitalism. In short, Brenner argues that English capitalism developed “within an aristocratic landlord framework” not through a Marxian bourgeois revolution. Robert Brenner, “Bourgeois Revolution and Transition to Capitalism,” in The First Modern Society: Essavs in English History in Honour of Lawrence Stone, ed. A. L. Beier, David Cannadine, and James M. Rosenheim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 303-304. See also The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Preindustrial Europe, ed. T. Aston and C.H.E. Philpin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). What is now known as “the Brenner Debate” began with his article, “Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-Industrial Europe,” Past and Present 70:30-75.

43. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 47, 51, 209, 206. On the division of labor see Adam Smith, Wealth of Nations (London, 1776; reprint, Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1991), 9-18. Smith says, “The division of labour, however, so far as it can be introduced, occasions, in every art, a proportionate increase of the productive powers of labour.” And further, this division of labour is the necessary “consequence of a certain propensity in human nature; . . . the propensity to truck, barter, and exchange one thing for another.” Smith, Wealth of Nations. 11, 19.

44. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 101, 208.

45. Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989). This work was originally published in Germany in 1962.

46. Ibid., 45-46, 51, 59. Habermas links the discursive space of the public sphere with developments in architectural space and new forms of leisure; he notes, “festivities for the whole house gave way to social evenings; the family room [the hall in colonial New England] became a reception room [a parlor] in which private people gather to form a public.” Ibid., 44.

47. Ibid., 23-26. See also Charles E. Clark. The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture. 1665-1740 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

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48. See Habermas, Transformation of the Public Sphere. 20-22.

49. Rules of the Civil Society, 25 Feb 1745. Salem Miscellaneous Papers, El.

50. John Mein to Samuel Curwen, 12 Dec 1767. Curwen Manuscripts, American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. (Hereafter CM and AAS respectively).

51. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 251, 308. For a portrayal of cultural and ethnic diversity in early Massachusetts' towns see Christine Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts. 1690-1750 (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1984). Also see Chapter 3 of this dissertation.

52. See Chapter 2 and 3.

53. Weber, The Protestant Ethic. 51.

54. Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography and Other Writings, ed. L. Jesse Lemisch (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), 92. Franklin notes that “this was the first appearance of plate and china in our house,” and was the beginning of what became “in a course of years as our wealth encreased [sic],” a collection of silver worth several hundred pounds. Ibid.

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A profound cultural shift occurred in Anglo-America during the late

seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. To fully understand the momentous

impact of that transformation, we must first enter into the mental and material world

of mid-seventeenth century Anglo-Americans. We begin that process in New England

with a focus on two of early Boston's leading merchants, John Hull and Henry

Shrimpton, and an exploration of the relationship between capitalism and Puritanism

in a colonial port. By delving into the diaries and letterbook of Puritan goldsmith and

trader John Hull and by “reading” the house and possessions of wealthy brazier and

merchant Henry Shrimpton, we can bring into view the spiritual and cultural practices

that were inspired by a seventeenth-century worldview and its particular Puritan

inflection.

Bostonians, lacking agreed-upon “scientific” explanations for even common

natural phenomena, resorted to beliefs in the supernatural, whether in the form of

God's providence or in the devil's work. Having survived the dislocation of a

transatlantic migration and re-established themselves in a new land, the early

generations of New Englanders were acutely aware of the unpredictability of life. To

cope with uncertainty, they engaged in material and spiritual practices designed to

control, contain, and protect body and soul from unknown threats and unfamiliar

strangers. This need to control and contain, coupled with a desire for economic

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expansion, created a cultural contradiction that was especially intense for committed

Puritans. It posed a dilemma not solved until the next century.

The Puritan world of seventeenth-century New England was fashioned around

a contest between the need for an open, expansive economic life and the desire for a

closed, defined social order. Material life in early New England expressed this

contradiction by confining goods within movable chests and boxes that were arranged

in changing locations throughout rooms designed for multiple uses. The structures

themselves, framed with massive oak beams, confined and protected families while

repeating the feel and shape of the below decks of overseas sailing vessels much like

the ships that brought Puritans to the shores of Massachusetts Bay. Houses stood

firmly fixed while recalling the mobility of an ocean crossing, and the dangers of a

new world.

Boston, the leading New England port, whose waterfront lay open to traders

and strangers from three directions, had a gate restricting access by land. It was not,

however, the urban or domiciliary landscape but the psychic geography which

encompassed the most intense paradox. Puritan colonists sought to build a city of

"visible saints" on a site necessitating dependence on foreign trade and the fishing

industry, thus setting up a culture of contradictions inherent in joining Puritan

communal ideals and capitalist commercial practices. This chapter explores those

incongruities and their variously inflected expressions in Boston's urban geography, in

the inventoried property of one wealthy Boston merchant, and in the spiritual

landscape of another.

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John Hull came to New England as a boy. Trained as a goldsmith, he married

into the Quincy family and gained substantial capital as mintmaster for the Bay

Colony. He increased his wealth through international trade, achieved the high office

of Treasurer of the Colony, and bequeathed his riches to his son-in-law and future

Chief Justice of provincial Massachusetts, Samuel Sewall. John Hull lived in an age

of wonders. For Anglo-Americans in the seventeenth century many events were

unpredictable. In his world, no laws of nature and physics explained the movement

of stars and planets. No abstract theory of social compact directed the formation of

new societies or re-shaped existing governments. No "invisible hand" guided

merchants in understanding market behavior. Order and meaning lay in a Christian

covenant with God, a system of obligations and rewards which depended ultimately

on God's will. Magic and religion provided explanations for most occurrences.1

Comets, earthquakes, deformed animals, and infants' sudden death, all became

portents of mysterious forces.2 In his Diary. Boston merchant John Hull chronicled

sightings of comets, "blazing stars," several earthquakes, and the birth of Quaker

Mary Dyer's deformed child.3 Some of his fabulous stories included tales of two suns

observed by men in New Haven "for the space of half one hour" and "a strange

mortality of fishes in a pond near Cambridge, the manner whereof was wonderful."4

On Long Island one clear summer morning, several towns reported seeing "many

companies of armed men in the air" accompanied by sounds of drumming and "great

guns."5

Devastating losses or safe returns of ships at sea posed equal mysteries.

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Uncertainty prevailed for Hull and other Puritan merchants because "such is man's

infermyty wee know not wheatheir wee move tow fast or to slow or wheather it bee

better to sit still or to goe."6 At times Hull evinced true puzzlement regarding the

source of good or ill fortune. One year after losing shipments of beaver and other

furs aboard two ships seized by the Dutch, he observed, "the Lord made up my lost

goods in the two vessels last year by his own secret blessing, though I know not

which way."7 In Boston one cold Sabbath morning, ice cut through the cables of four

ships about to embark for England. Hull recorded that "all [were] forced on shore;

and get off they could not until . . . three days after the spring-tides." Hull

concluded, "God, having tried them, set them again at liberty.”8

God's providence explained both bad and good. In the winter of 1676-77

several fires started in Boston. One blaze "consumed about fifty dwelling-houses and

the North Meeting house," but "the Lord sent much rain, moderated the spreading of

it."9 Later that winter, a rooftop candle started a fire "yet was prevented spreading

through the wonderful providence of God.”10 Hull related the winter's events to a

friend in London. "Since our Town was fired in November Last, it hath been three

times (in plain evident reason) on purpose endeavoured to be fired," but "the Lord

hath in a very wonderfull maner prevented it."11 Reason provided evidence for Hull

to suspect arson, but reason could not explain why only one attempt succeeded. Hull

invoked man's intellect in one sentence and God's mystery in the next. An oscillation

between rational and spiritual and a reluctance to attribute human evil to God, or

Satan, created fissures in the explanatory power of providential discourse. It was

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within these spaces that men's choices operated to influence God's work. God

remained paramount, however, and Hull daily acknowledged "the Lord most wise &

Soveraign government of the world."12

A system of providential thinking developed whereby natural disasters

portended human occurrences, and all events related to God’s purposes for men on

earth. The Connecticut sighting of armies in the air was followed by "flying

caterpillars," which "arose out of the ground and from roots of corn," and wheat

blast, which "took hold of Conecticot and New Haven."13 During the winter of 1665-

66, colonists experienced "an extraordinary tempest of wind," and "very unsettled

weather" in November and December.14 The Charles River froze solid three times

that winter, and the channel beyond Castle Island, twice.15 Two women died in

childbirth, and "several miscarried, some hardly escaping with life."16 Not an

unusual group of events for the seventeenth century in themselves, the key to

interpretation lies in the sequence of events, first bad weather, then death. At the end

of this section in the Diary Hull writes, "All these trials are not to be mentioned with

England's great affliction” -- the plague.17 He concludes with a plea: "the good Lord

spare and teach our nation to draw near to him!" Within this system, God rewarded

and punished human behavior individually and collectively. After a series of

successes in raiding the French trading posts in Canada, and narrowly averting armed

conflict with the Pequots, the Bay colonists no doubt felt satisfaction but, "not to let

wholly slip some chastisements of God unto the Commonwealth in general, and more

particularly unto this town of Boston, one of the honored magistrates . . . was taken

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away by death."18 "Another such like providence befell us this year," Hull writes in

recording the death of Major General Edward Gibons.19 Several years later Hull

expresses, very simply and eloquently, the cosmology of providential thinking: "The

spring was very wet; yet it pleased God to give a seed-time."20

In this schema, worldly wealth became visible evidence of God's blessings.21

When Boston received news of the safe arrival of all the ships "that sailed hence for

England last year," Hull recognized "the Lord's gracious preservation of the estates of

his poor, despised people."22 Again and again Hull repeated the phrase, "The Lord

brought in," applying it in succession to a small ship "sent out by myself and others,"

"several vessels that I had adventures in," "the ketch Adventure whereof I was pan

owner," and "the ship Providence."23 In the fall of 1666, Hull "sent to England a

considerable adventure in sundry ships. . . . And it pleased the Lord all that I sent

arrived safe, and came to a good market. "24 Later Hull returned to this entry and

added a postscript, "The Lord make me thankful."25

When the world reflects God’s judgments, history becomes a narrative of the

working out of God's will on earth. Historians have focused intently on the New

England Puritans' special sense of mission, their "errand into the wilderness."26

Historian Keith Thomas asserts that English Protestants claimed this spiritual mantle

as well, declaring themselves "a people singled out by God for a special purpose, an

elect nation ctilled upon to play a particular part in the designs of providence.n27 John

Hull participated in this tradition by beginning the public portion of his Diary with a

brief history of the settlement of New England, when "God therefore moved the

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hearts of many to transport themselves far off beyond the seas, into this our New

England."28 He chronicles how the newcomers "gathered into several churches" and

formed a civil government peopled only by church members, "the churches and civil

state thus mutually embracing and succoring each other."29

In Puritan providentialism the individual was expected to shape his or her

behavior to Christian principles without any immediate expectation of rewards. They

may come; they may not. God will decide. A person can only control his or her own

behavior in hope of attracting God’s blessings and ultimately God's grace. A believer

is condemned to uncertainty. To combat doubt, Puritans engaged in a series of

practices such as diary writing, frequent prayer, and a disciplined (but not necessarily

ascetic) lifestyle. After Hull rose to the rank of ensign in the Boston militia, one of

many prestigious positions and honors he achieved, he prayed for "a spirit of wisdom

and humility, love, and faithfulness," to obey his superiors and be helpful "to my

inferiors, and by him, [God] be kept from temptation and corruption or pollution.30

Each time the town chose him as selectman, Hull responded with a private plea for

"wisdom," "humility," and "grace,” always seeking God’s reassurance.31

Disciplined and careful notation, a crucial element in Puritan piety, constituted

a critical element in a merchant’s success as well. A set of sailing orders directed to

John Harris exemplifies Hull's concerns. Hull instructed Harris and his mate to

"daily so think thereof as to quicken your prudent, diligent, & frugall improvemnt of

your time for the good of your Owners," and he stressed that Harris "daily forcast &

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write down what you have necessary to effect."32 Several years later Hull cautioned

his cousin Edward Hull in London, "Couzen Lett me tell you that if you be a factor

and take Comision you must never negglect yor accpts [accounts] and Espetially your

accpt of Sales."33 Keeping careful track of moving goods helped to garner profits and

to contain anxiety in an unpredictable business in an uncertain world.

Account books and letter books performed a function that paralleled sermon

notes and diaries. Each helped to ward off anxiety about unforeseen and

uncontrollable events. Each served to reassure through effort and the very presence

in writing of God's blessings in goods and ships, and in life and spirit. John Hull

began his Diary so that he "may be the more mindful of, and thankful for, all God's

dispensations towards me." His letterbook preserved a copy of all his business

correspondence so that he might be more mindful of the dispensations of his worldly

goods. The parallel forms of writing ministered to shared concerns about the

unknowable future.34

While spiritual diaries and commercial accounts were part of a shared practice

of coping with uncertainty, commerce introduced other elements which threatened to

unsettle the delicate equilibrium of Puritan capitalism. Trade was absolutely essential

for colonial settlements perched on the Atlantic fringe. The role merchants played in

rescuing Massachusetts from its first depression in the 1640s, bringing goods and

money into the colony and transporting commodities overseas, made them powerful

figures in early New England.35 To the extent that they followed Puritan practices in

their language and behavior, as did Hull, they contributed to the careful balance

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between piety and profits as well as providing entry into the transatlantic world for

their land-bound neighbors.

Merchants entered trade in a variety of ways. Some, guided by a father or an

uncle, joined established family concerns. Some married into commercial families or

married a merchant’s widow. Others financed their initial ventures with borrowed

capital. A few began as tradesmen and artisans gradually learning to ship their own

products. Younger sons of landed gentlemen began as clerks/assistants to established

merchants. John Hull acquired his capital through a combination of artisanal skill,

family connections, and public office. Born in Market Harebourough in

Leicestershire in 1624, Hull, at the age of ten, emigrated from England with his

family. They settled in Boston, and after a short stint at school he began an

apprenticeship as a goldsmith and "through God's help, obtained that ability in it, as I

was able to get my living by it."36

In colonial America, goldsmiths, poised at the peak of a recognized hierarchy

of artisanal occupations, worked primarily in silver and carried on several other

functions in port towns.37 In addition to crafting objects which denoted wealth and

cultural attachments, goldsmiths also acted as bankers because they were the most

qualified persons to assess the value of foreign coins.38 They usually possessed a

stock of specie and metal and often extended their services to taking monies and plate

on deposit and making loans.39 Hull and his London-trained partner, Robert

Sanderson, crafted the earliest pieces of colonial silver, in a “late Renaissance” or

“Mannerist” style popular among merchants and gentry in Northern Europe and the

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London.40 The partners assembled and trained a group of apprentices who dominated

the craft of gold and silversmithing in Boston. Throughout the eighteenth century,

according to one recent study, “the principal practioners of the craft” in Boston

“traced their lineage back to the patriarch firm” of Hull and Sanderson.41 In spite of

his recognized skill as a gold and silversmith, Hull made only passing references to

this work in his diary and letterbook, apparently preferring to feature his vocation as

overseas trader.42 In 1647, he married Judith Quincy, daughter of Edmund, the

founder of an important Massachusetts family, in a ceremony performed by Governor

John Winthrop.43 Within ten years, Judith Hull gave birth to five children, only one

of whom, daughter Hannah, lived to adulthood.44 While his wife was drawn into a

narrowing circle of birth and loss, Hull widened his horizons and launched a career as

a merchant.

In 1652, his business received a powerful jump start. The General Court, the

legislative body of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, expressed concern over the amount

of counterfeit coin circulating in the colony. Hull noted in his diary, "much loss

accruing in that respect (and that did occasion a stoppage of trade)."45 The Court

dealt with the problem by ordering a mint to be set up to coin Massachusetts shillings.

The silver shillings were designed to weigh 3/4th of the English equivalent.46 This

coin became the famous "pine tree shilling," and the Court chose John Hull as

mintmaster. For his work, the Court authorized him to keep one coin out of every

twenty he minted. This amounted to a 5 % commission on the coinage of the colony

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and provided a windfall that Hull reinvested in trade.47

Situated at the edge of an Atlantic trading network, colonial merchants relied

on a kinship network which often included commercial connections to London.48 In

his study of New England merchants, Bernard Bailyn notes that, "young John Hull

built up his many-sided business with the help of his uncle, Thomas Parris, a

haberdasher, and his 'Coz Edw' Hull at the 'Hatt-in-Hand' within Aldegate,

London."49 However, Hull’s connection to uncles and cousins in the English dry

goods business seemed to have presented more problems than solutions. As with

many other Boston merchants, Hull's major imports from England consisted of

various fabrics for the colonial market, along with small manufactured items of metal

or glass, which depended on the development in England of what economic historian

Joan Thirsk categorizes as by-employment.50 Many small landholders and agricultural

laborers in England found it necessary to supplement their income with handicraft

work. This work, organized by entrepreneurs or "projectors," supplied England and

America with items such as pins, nails, starch, knitted stockings, beaver hats, pens,

cutlery, as well as somewhat larger iron products. Hull ordered many of these small

items from his uncle Edward Hull and his cousin Daniel Allin, both merchants in

London. In a letter to Allin, Hull bluntly told him, "you[r] Pens are useless heer

table books not being used here & most men carieing Inkhorns in the Pockett. "51 Not

only were pens a problem, but "the French hatts are so bigg that now [no] heads heer

are bigg enough for them."52 Hull also alluded to problems selling padlocks,

horsebells, and candlesticks received from Allin.53

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Perhaps in an effort to escape another deluge of French hats and useless pens,

Hull sought out other trading partners unknown to him or his family. Economic

interests propelled him beyond the confines of Boston colleagues or Puritan overseas

networks. In one instance, on the advice of wealthy merchant Samuel Shrimpton, he

consigned a "small percell" of loggwood and two hogsheads of tobacco to

"Mountsier" James de la Ronde.54 Yet, when Hull attempted to branch out and deal

with strangers, the transactions did not always go well. A year after establishing their

trading relationship, he wrote sharply to remind de la Ronde. "Sr No coloured silks

are of any use here; onely black" and to complain of merchandise "not vendible" in

Boston.55 In 1672, he requested Solomon Delyon in Jamaica, another "stranger," to

either pay interest or put up security on his debt of 100 pounds plus 24 pounds

interest.56 Hull hoped for Delyon's "Ingenuity & Justice," since in spite of being a

stranger, he had “bene so Courteous & Civil." Hull went so far as to suggest that if

Delyon repaid the debt, he would "subscribe myselfe your loving friend." Apparently

that failed to persuade Delyon or alter his circumstances because nine years later Hull

wrote to Samuel Bradstreet, the governor's son, a physician in Jamaica, requesting

assistance in collecting the debt from Delyon.57 Thus the fragile threads of

communication that Hull and other colonial merchants cast out across the Atlantic

world were often stretched to the breaking point.58

Yet Hull continued to develop his overseas commerce and began shipping furs

to England and fish to Southern Europe and supplying farm produce to the West

Indies. Overall, his merchant ventures followed much the same patterns as those of

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other New England merchants. The key to success lay in the ability to command

local commodities suitable for sale in distant ports. Like all merchants trading

overseas, Hull depended on the hinterland or region surrounding Boston for supplies

of commodities that would "sell dear" in English, European, and West Indian

markets. Letters and diary entries reveal clues to Boston's relationship to the local

farm economy.

Early New England has been characterized as a region of small farms where

each farm family aimed for a "competence" or for economic independence.59 In a

colony that produced few manufactured goods other than homespun cloth and locally

made leather items, this did not mean self-sufficiency. In fact, the economy, led by

prosperous merchants and landholders, exhibited increasingly complex relationships

with others throughout the countryside.

These relationships took the shape of partnerships, tenancy, barter of goods

and services, wage labor, apprenticeships, and, later, moneylending and marine

insurance arrangements. Hull, for example, owned farms in Medfield and on Hog

Island in Boston harbor that were either leased to tenants for a portion of the produce

or operated by managers employed by Hull. Leasing farms or employing managers

and perhaps other wage laborers was a common practice among large landholders in

Massachusetts Bay. This runs counter to earlier scholarship, but recent social

histories have demonstrated the prevalence of this practice, which borrowed some

details from English procedures.60 In 1659, Hull and a surveyor went to Medfield,

west of Boston, to lay out a three hundred acre farm on recently purchased land.61

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Correspondence indicates that Hull leased the Hog Island farm to tenants for five

years at five shillings per year. Hull, who held title to the island by order of the

General Court, had problems collecting even that modest sum and in 1675 he

empowered an agent to "sell the Island for money or any other verry Good pay. "62

Like other overseas traders, Hull depended on commodities from the land,

particularly grain and timber, and he experimented with a variety of methods to

acquire them.63

In his Ietterbook Hull detailed his business transactions, his difficulties with

employees, his struggles to collect debts from distant strangers, and his efforts to find

new commodities and reliable supplies. But in seventeenth-century Massachusetts,

strong Puritan beliefs tempered the centrifugal force of market exchange. Hull,

wealthy merchant, Massachusetts officeholder, and committed Puritan exemplified

how early Bay Colonists successfully negotiated the intersecting, and in many ways

conflicting, claims of commerce and community.64 To structure imaginatively his

trade with strangers, non-Puritans, and non-Englishmen, Hull employed a Puritan

discourse of Providential causality. He used this same discourse to explain, to

himself and his community, an acquisitive search for profits that became transformed

into a search for salvation.

The complex negotiations between providence and profits with which early

Bostonians mapped their imaginative universe mirrored the labyrinthine geography of

the early town. Streets curved around the North end, docks shot their tendrils out

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into the water, barricades supported decaying gun emplacements at North and South

Batteries framing the waterside, while houses and shops clustered around the Town

House, Dock Square, and Clark's Square, and thinned into a straggling row along the

one road out of town.6S Boston faced the water, and early representations of the town

were drawn from the point of view of a visitor coming from the water.66 Portraying

the contradictions built into Puritan Boston, the arms of docks stretched forward

welcoming the visitor while an array of sharply pitched roofs behind the waterfront

hinted at a more prickly, private society.67

The hub of this waterside community centered around Town House Square,

just two blocks from the harbor. The widest and perhaps the straightest street in

Boston, later called King Street, joined the route to the mainland, "the Street to

Roxbury," at this square. Boston, whose shape has changed considerably since the

1600s, was then a peninsula connected to the rest of Massachusetts by the Neck, a

thin strip of land.68 In the words of one recent arrival in 1687, the town was "almost

an Island; it would only be necessary to cut through a Width of three hundred Paces,

all Sand, which in less than twice twenty-four Hours would make Boston an Island

washed on all Sides by the Sea."69 The point where the main road from the neck met

the widest street from the water marked the social and political center of Boston.

Bernard Bailyn called Town House Square "the exact pivot point of the primary orbit

of Atlantic trade in New England. "70 Here stood the First Meeting House built in

1640 and the Town House, which echoed Tudor-Stuart market halls in provincial

cities like Aldergate. The Town House, built in 1657 with a bequest from Robert

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Keayne, a successful and controversial merchant, was designed to provide shelter for

"the country people that come with theire provisions . . . to sitt dry in and warme

both in cold raine and durty weather" and to furnish meeting rooms for Courts, "the

Elders," and other town groups on the upper floors. On the first floor, "the open

roome between the pillars may serve for Merchants, Mr [Masters] of Shipps and

Strangers . . . to meete in."71 In his concern for a sheltered and orderly market site,

Keayne initiated, as we shall see, a continuing and contested effort on the part of

wealthy merchants to shape and control the flow of goods and people in the town of

Boston.

While goods flowed all along the crescent-shaped waterfront, the Town Dock,

surrounding an enclosed pond, like the inner docks in Amsterdam, became an

important commercial site for shops, warehouses, and taverns.72 The streets linking

Town House Square to Dock Square were lined with homes and commercial

establishments of merchants and well-to-do artisans involved in overseas trade. The

cross street closest to the water signified this connection with the name "Merchants'

Row."

Facing the Town House, on the corner of one of these cross streets (later

named Shrimpton's Lane), stood the house and shop of an enterprising brazier (brass-

maker) turned merchant, Henry Shrimpton. The plan of Shrimpton's house and shop,

like others in Anglo-American port towns, followed a building tradition alive with

accents of medieval England and urban France. Material culture historian Robert St.

George describes the multiple origins of the town house courtyard design we see in

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Shrimpton's home.73 From 1600 tol640 architects in England, most notably Inigo

Jones, informed by design books from France and Italy, developed a classically

influenced design for town houses in London.74 Meanwhile, London and provincial

merchants were copying French complexes, which they observed on buying trips to

Rouen and St. Malo.75 Similar plans, echoing enclosed farmyards, monastic

complexes, and courtyards of medieval inns, were built in London, Exeter, and

Totnes, as early as the 1550's by cloth merchants in the French trade.76 Thus, by the

mid-seventeenth century, we see the beginning of an international style transported

and patronized by merchants and tied directly to the circulation of goods. (By mid

eighteenth century, the requirements of "English gentility" would incorporate foreign

elements not only from France and Italy but from Asia and Africa.)

If we were to walk east one short block from the Town House, turn toward

Dock Square, and enter the home of prosperous Boston artisan become merchant,

Henry Shrimpton, we would find a dark interior with only a few small windows and

low, heavy beamed ceilings. In most homes the rooms would be somewhat sparsely

furnished with a few carved wooden chests and cupboards. In Shrimpton's more

opulent environment, heavy wooden furniture was cushioned with lengths of deep-

colored silk, brocade, velvet, and thickly patterned oriental carpet. Precious silver

plate and other valuable objects were hidden away in chests, physical expression of

the belief in interiority, -- the most precious human treasures, the heart, the soul,

both presumed to be hidden within the body.77 Thus for the Puritan, even the affluent

commercial Puritan, the physical world he created mirrored the qualities of his

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spiritual world. In the seventeenth-century New England house -- surrounded by

wooden structure with few small openings to the outside world -- one felt both

constrained and protected.78

In comparison to most homes from this early period. Shrimpton's house was

crowded with belongings.79 Henry Shrimpton was first admitted as an inhabitant of

Boston and member of the church in 1639. On his arrival from England, he set up

business as a brazier and entered into a few merchant ventures. As he accumulated

wealth, he invested in textiles for his home and clothing for his family. At his death

in 1666, Shrimpton left, for the time and place, an extraordinarily large estate of

£ ll,979.80 He was one of the wealthiest men in Boston, yet he rarely figures in

accounts of the social and political life of mid-century Boston. He apparently did not

have the requisite education and kinship connections to join the Puritan elite.81 Yet

his wealth, the opulence and abundance of his possessions, and a richness of materials

belie any facile reference to "Puritan simplicity." In seventeenth-century England,

Europe, and the colonies, movable wealth took the form of metals or textiles. Bed

linens, clothing, and table linens were the most valued items other than gold and

silver coins. These luxuries were often missing entirely from poor homes, and

middling folk especially in the South invested free capital in clothing and tablecloths

rather than furniture or housing.82

In the Shrimpton house, the Hall, with its rough plaster walls and dark beamed

ceilings, was the site of most family activity other than sleeping. Furnished with

tables, stools, and ten leather chairs topped with high cushions, the room served as a

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family dining room with window curtains (unusual in seventeenth-century homes) and

one "greate Quishin" for the master of the house.83 A livery cupboard contained

glass, earthenware, and pewter. In this room, the family gathered for prayer guided

by a Bible and a concordance. In the kitchen, the women, probably assisted by one

or two female servants, prepared meals at the fireplace using roasting spits, fire tongs,

bellows, and roasters. They served dinner with uncommonly elegant equipment such

as "two brass chaffin dishes," £33 of pewterware, and a case of knives. Even the

kitchen was dressed with a cushion, a cupboard cloth, and curtains at the window.

Across the entry from the Hall, the "Greate Chamber," shrouded in heavy

materials, displayed the most important pieces of furniture. A bedstead draped with

red hangings dominated the room, creating a cocoon of privacy and warmth for night

while making a bold assertion of wealth by day. Other items of great value were

tucked away in Shrimpton's "grate Chist with his wearing apparell" and one "trunk

[marked] EL of womans wearing apparell." Nineteen cushions in rose, Turkey, and

gilt adorned the chamber, which contained a round table, seven leather and two

turned chairs, and a "Chist of drawers," a type of case furniture recently introduced in

England. Behind the Greate Chamber, a small room called "his Closet" provided a

place of privacy for Shrimpton. Here in a desk and case he stored his valuables:

gold, English, Spanish, and New England money, gold rings, spices, sugar,

spectacles, and a prospect glass.84 Here also he may have uttered his private

prayers.85

The "Green Room" featured a bed shrouded in a suite of green curtains,

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valances, and counterpane with matching cupboard cloth and window curtains. A

green rug, several green cushions, and a looking glass completed the ensemble. This

bedroom may have been occupied by son Samuel and his wife.*6 A livery cupboard

in this room contained most of the family's silver, table linens including fifty napkins,

a looking glass, a trunk of children's bed linens, and a small cabinet with several gold

rings and two purses. The four young daughters slept in the chamber over the

kitchen, which contained a bedstead with a trundle bed and three "Childs chayres."

More linens, featherbeds, and children's clothing were stored in the Entry Chamber

and several garret rooms.*7 Throughout the house, valuable objects were enclosed in

trunks, desks, chests, and cabinets, protected and easily moved to accommodate

uncertain times and unpredictable events.

Shrimpton's shop, part of his courtyard complex, contained his working tools

for pewter and brass as well as finished products such as seventeen wine cups, three

dozen saucers, seven "new fashioned" quarts, three dozen "great Alcamy spoons,"

salts, chamber pots, porringers, barber bowls, smoothing irons, stew pans, and cow

bells. These items represent just a small portion of Shrimpton’s stock on hand. In

the cellars, Shrimpton stored raw material, stocks of metal wire and scrap, and

foodstores for the family. The garret and loft of the shop held more brass and pewter

products while the yard also enclosed an outhouse, a wood yard, and at least one load

of charcoal.

Several items in Shrimpton's inventory provide important points of

comparison to English practices and to eighteenth-century Boston inventories

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. discussed in later chapters. The ever-present cushions — the Shrimptons owned

forty-six -- added comfort to rigid, upright, high-backed chairs in a period before the

advent of upholstered seating furniture;88 they also signaled an interest in consumer

display of materials such as "gilt" and "turkey." 89 In the seventeenth century,

window curtains stood out as a marker of wealth and cosmopolitan taste. One scholar

of English patterns of consumption found only 13% of middle class inventories in

England and America between 1675 and 1725 recorded any window curtains.90

Among the wealthiest London group in that study, 68% owned curtains in 1675.91

The Shrimptons' window curtains shielded Tudor-style diamond-paned casement

windows grouped in threes, which were replaced in the eighteenth century by

rectangular-paned sash windows symmetrically arrayed across the Georgian facades of

the next generation merchants' homes. His inventory shows that Henry Shrimpton

and his family had assembled an impressive collection of goods in a town imposed on

the wilderness just three decades earlier. The matching suites of bed hangings, table,

chimney, and cupboard clothes, and window curtains, found in the Great Chamber (in

red) and the Green room indicate sophisticated European influence. The fashion for

matching fabrics within a room originated, in 1619, when Madame Rambouillet

remodeled the interior of her Parisian "hotel" designing a Chambre Bleue for her

literary salon.92 In the 1640s, fueled by English fascination with the foreign and

exotic, a fashion for textiles en suite was "commonplace in grand circles" in England

and by 1666 we find it in the Shrimpton’s tiome in Puritan Boston.93

The Shrimptons' goods were poised midway between the older Elizabethan

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and the soon-to-come Georgian material and cultural domains. Elizabethan gentry

interiors emphasized mobility and flexibility, and this influence continued well into

the seventeenth-century. Social occasions centered on grand ceremonial celebrations

held in multi-purpose halls, in contrast to the eighteenth-century gentility inscribed in

daily social rituals like tea drinking and in the permanent decoration of separate rooms

designed for specific functions. The Shrimpton's expenditures on bed linens,

clothing, and plate — all portable items and stored in chests and trunks rather than tall

case furniture — mark an older tradition.94 Shrimpton kept his valuables in a desk and

case in "his closet," and his wife kept her valuables in a trunk labeled with her

initials, yet they sought out sumptuous materials and grouped them in the latest

cosmopolitan style.95 The family's participation in a transitional material culture

paralleled John Hull's rhetorical balancing act between providence and profits.

In spite of his financial success and his high-style possession, Shrimpton does

not appear as a leading figure in the accounts of mid-century Boston.96 As an artisan

and merchant he could not claim the traditional elements of gentry status — university

education, kinship connections to elite families from England, and local reputation.

Wealth alone would not have brought him the companionship of the Winthrops,

Dudleys, Bradstreets, Mathers, or any of the other leading Puritan families of Boston.

Yet Shrimpton's separate kitchen, permanent bedsteads, "chist of drawers," many

cushions, and fabrics en suite demonstrate an attention to an emerging aesthetic

which, in the coming decades, would refashion architecture and furniture to both

shape and reflect the Anglo-American commercial elite that superseded the Puritan

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elect in Boston. As a belief grew in men and women's own abilities to make a place

for themselves in the world, and as a practice developed of employing material goods

and genteel manners to demonstrate their place, the “religion of the closet” and the

heart seemed less and less imperative.97

The physical landscape of mid-seventeenth-century Boston developed as a

result of individual and group projects undertaken by prominent inhabitants and

undergirded by growth in trade. The layout of houses, streets, public buildings,

wharves, and warehouses took on much of the topsy-turvy character of English port

towns, shaped, not by an ordered plan, but by the needs of merchants to move large

quantities of goods in and out of the city. The homes of wealthy merchants repeated

the theme of imported, valuable goods stored in movable containers within a built

space reminiscent of the confines of an overseas vessel carying foreign goods. The

expansive physical world of Boston stood in sharp contrast to Puritan attempts to

order, control, and hedge in the disruptive effects of foreign trade and the multiplying

sites of market exchange.

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Although Boston churchmen and magistrates censured merchant Robert

Keayne for reaping excessive profits, twenty years later they accepted his bequest and

enthroned commerce at the center of Boston even as they placed trade at the heart of

their plans for the town and colony.98 But Boston became a marketplace increasingly

unconfined by the traditional or Puritan strictures of a just price.99 Neither price nor

trade could be located at a single level or place. Instead, hawkers traipsed through

the streets of Boston and trade goods spilled out along the waterfront and the major

thoroughfares. Merchant John Hull could claim to live "out of the way of trade," but

his livelihood depended on trade and, later, his Cotton Hill neighborhood would

become the site of Georgian mansions erected by eighteenth-century merchant princes

of the principal trading town in New England.

In a seventeenth-century world marked by mobility in the forms of Anglo-

American migration, international trade, foreign goods, and alien merchants, many

events seemed unpredictable. Puritans, inspired by their concern for salvation in

heaven and order and security in an ever-changing earthly world, sought to order,

bind and constrain individual behavior, material goods, and community mores;

security was possible only within tight limits. Yet to arrive on the shores of North

America and to support the fledgling land-rich and people-poor colony, Puritans had

to rely on the "adventure" of overseas trade. Even more disconcerting to them, they

had to depend upon the labor of other religious and cultural groups to sustain their

city. While Puritanism and capitalism may have worked well together at the

individual level, when multiplied to the level of communities, the competing impulses

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created almost unbearable tensions for trading towns like Salem and Boston. In

building Boston, Puritan colonists embodied the contradiction between a need for

open, expansive economic life and a desire for a closed, limited, and secure society.

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NOTES FOR CHAPTER 2

1. See David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder. Days of Judgment; Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990) for the prevalence of magic in Puritan New England.

2. See Hall, Worlds of Wonder, especially Chapter 2, "A World of Wonders," 71- 116 for a "wonderful" explanation of the close connection between the literature of wonder and Puritan religious beliefs. For a discussion of wonder literature in England see J. Paul Hunter, Before Novels: The Cultural Contexts of Eighteenth- Century English Fiction (New York: W.W.Norton & Co., 1990), Chapter 8, "'Strange, but True': Fact, Certainty, and the Desire for Wonder," 195-224.

3. John Hull, "Diary of John Hull" American Antiquarian Society Transactions and Collections vol III (1857), 215, 214, 207, 189. [Hereafter called Diary, j

4. Hull. Diarv. 230.

5. Hull, Diarv. 218.

6. John Hull to Mr Thomas Buckham & Mr Daniell Allin, Oct 29, 1672, from "Letterbook of John Hull" manuscript and typescript in the collections of American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts. The letterbook, a common item in merchants' papers consists of copies of letters sent to Hull's correspondents. The copies may have been executed by Hull, his clerk or apprentice, and after his death by his son-in-law Samuel Sewall. [Hereafter abbreviated as Lbk].

7. Hull, Diarv. 149.

8. Hull, Diary, 223.

9. Hull, Diary, 242.

10. Hull, Diary, 242-43.

11. John Hull to John Harwood, Aug 6, 1677, Lbk.

12. John Hull to John Harwood, Aug 6, 1677, Lbk.

13. Hull, Diary, 218.

14. Hull, Diary, 220.

15. Hull, Diary, 220.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. 48 16. Hull, Diary, 220. 17. Hull, Diary, 220.

18. Hull, Diary, 176. 19. Hull, Diary, 176. 20. Hull, Diary, 187.

21. Perry Miller indicates that in Puritan thought “the rewards of industry were not consequences of industriousness, nor of the state of the market or of rates of exchange,” rather, the “gifts were from God.” Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 41.

22. Hull, Diarv. 154.

23. Hull, Diary,154-55.

24. Hull, Diary,156.

25. Hull, Diary. 156.

26. See, for example. Perry Miller, Errand into the Wilderness (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); and Sacvan Bercovitch, The Puritan Origins of the American Self (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), 108, who insists that in Cotton Mather's Magnolia Christi Americana, “the idea of national election takes on a literalness undreamed of by Luther or Foxe. . . . The New England Puritans gave America the status of visible sainthood. The subsequent impact of their concept cannot be overestimated. ”

27. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971), 91.

28. Hull, Diary,167.

29. Hull, Diary,168.

30. Hull, Diarv. 147.

31. Hull, Diary,147.

32. John Hull toJohn Harris, orders 20 Sept 1677, Lbk.

33. John Hull toEdward Hull, 20 May 1680, Lbk.

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34. According to David Hall, Samuel Sewall, who shared a providential interpretation of the world with his father-in-law, John Hull, frequently used words like “sudden.” “surprising,” and “unexpected.” Hall eloquently expresses the feeling of uncertainty and the desire for protection that recurs in Sewall's Diary. “It is this yearning for protection that, from start to finish, unifies the diary and emerges as the substance of religion. ” This same yearning, I believe, appears not only in Puritan diaries but in the material world of seventeenth-century Boston. Hall, Worlds of Wonder. Chapter 5, “The Mental World of Samuel Sewall,” 224, 214.

35. For a discussion of the merchants' role in alleviating the depression see Darrett Rutman, Winthrop's Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town. 1630-1649 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 186.

36. John Hull, Diary. 142. Hull may have received his training from his step-brother Richard Storer who served an apprenticeship in London. One scholar believes that Hull learned his trade under the man he later named as his partner, Robert Sanderson, who had completed an apprenticeship, in 1632, with William Rawlins a goldsmith in London. See Albert S. Roe and Robert F. Trent, “Robert Sanderson and the Founding of the Boston Silversmith's Trade,” in New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century by Jonathan L. Fairbanks, and Robert F. Trent (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982), 3:482.

37. For information on Hull's work as a silversmith see Roe and Trent, “Founding of Boston's Silversmith Trade,” 480-500; Kathryn C. Buhler, American Silver- 1655-1825 in the Museum of Fine Arts Boston 2 vols. (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, L972), 1:4-10; Kathryn Buhler and Graham Hood, American Silver: Garvan and Other Collections in the Yale University Art Gallery 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 1:2-9; Martha Gandy Fales, Early American Silver (New York: E.P.Dutton & Co., 1973), 4-12; Graham Hood, American Silver: A History of Style. 1650-1900 (New York: Praeger, 1971), 12-45; and Samuel Eliot Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1930), 154. Barbara McLean Ward and Gerald W.R.Ward's Silver in American Life (Boston: David R. Godine, 1979) is helpful on eighteenth-century silver in colonial America but has little to say about John Hull.

38. See Hood, American Silver. 12 on the social significance of owning silver pieces or “plate” as it was often called.

39. Roe and Trent, “Founding of Boston Silversmith's Trade,” 480, 485.

40. Fales uses the term “late Renaissance tradition” in reference to Hull and Sanderson”s early work while Trent emphasizes the more particular mannerist designation. See Fales, Early American Silver. 4-5 and Robert F. Trent, “The Concept of Mannerism” in New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century by Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982),

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368-412. See also, Buhler's stylistic analysis of possible Dutch influence through England and colonial New York on Hull and Sanderson's work in American Silver. 1:2-9

41. Roe and Trent, “Founding of Boston Silversmith's Trade,” 486. See also Hood, American Silver. 37.

42. Roe and Trent assert that for Hull his responsibilities as a banker and broker took precedence over his craft activities. Sanderson however, continued to train apprentices and produce stylish silver objects. Roe and Trent, “Founding,” 480, 484.

43. In Puritan New England, marriage was considered a civil agreement not a religious sacrament. Governor Winthrop probably performed the marriage because Judith Hull was the daughter of Edmund Quincy, an influential member of the group who followed John Cotton from old Boston to new. Quincy received a several hundred acre land grant at Mount Wollaston (later the site of the town of Quincy) and was classed among the middling gentry by Rutman in Winthrop's Boston. 73. Quincy died in 1636 three years after coming to the Bay Colony. By marrying Judith, Hull allied himself to an important family. This may indicate that he had already achieved some prominence in Boston society.

44. Hull, Dairy, passim.

45. Hull, Diarv. 145.

46. Pence, shillings, and pounds made up the basic units of the English monetary system. 12 pence = 1 shilling, 20 shillings = I pound. The English pound, or pound sterling traded at a discount to colonial currency. That is to say, the colonial units were usually worth less than the British units. To further complicate matters, these units usually represented units of account rather than specific coins. The most frequently circulated coins were Spanish dollars or pieces of eight. For a detailed explanation and a chart of conversion ratios from English money to colonial units and colonial to English values that demonstrates the rapid inflation of in the 1730s and 40s, see John McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America. 1600-1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).

47. Hull, Diary. 120. Hull may have chosen Sanderson as his partner in the colony mint but this seems unclear from the paucity of references to Sanderson in Hull's manuscripts.

48. See David Cressy, Coming Over: Migration and Communication between England and New England in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 269-291; Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 35-36, 87-91,

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134-137; and Ian K. Steele, The English Atlantic. 1675-1740: An Exploration of Communication and Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986)passim.

49. Bailyn, Merchants. 87.

50. JoanThirsk, Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a Consumer Society in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978).

51. John Hull to Daniel All in, Jan 31, 1672, Lbk.

52. Ibid.

53. John Hull to Mr Thomas Buckham & Mr Daniel Allin, Oct 29, 1672 and John Hull to Mr. Daniel Allin, May 8, 1673, Lbk.

54. John Hull to Mountsier James DelaRonde 22 Jan 1675, Lbk.

55. John Hull to Mr. de La Ronde 31 Mar 1676, Lbk.

56. John Hull to Mr. Solomon Delyon, 12 Mar 1672, Lbk.

57. John Hull to Samuel Bradstreet 27 Sept 1687, Lbk.

58. See Steele, The English Atlantic. 213-14.

59. See Daniel Vickers, "Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America." William and Mary Quarterly vol. XLVII no. 1 (Jan 1990): 3-29. James Henretta in his "Introduction" to The Origins of Capitalism in America: Collected Essays (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1991) insists that "capitalist practices and values were not central to the lives of most of the inhabitants of British North America before 1750.” Origins, xxi. Much of the difference between Henretta's point of view and the evidence found in the papers of Boston and Salem merchants can be attributed, I believe, to a difference in the rural and urban economies before 1750. Hull and other merchants and entrepreneurs, operating from the urban economy of Massachusetts ports, such as Salem and Boston, owned and operated outlying farms for commercial purposes.

60. For recent works that explore the presence of tenant farms in early New England, 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, 1991), 32-33; Stephen Innes, Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-Century Springfield (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983); and Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County. Massachusetts. 1630-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 77-83.

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61. Hull, Diaty, 149; Martin, Profits in the Wilderness. 32.

62. Letter to Richard Collicott, June 10, 1675, Lbk.

63. See Martin, Profits in the Wilderness. 106-107 on Hull's lumber mill in Maine and 73-79 on Hull's investment in land in Rhode Island where he raised horses for export to Barbados.

64. I see these conflicting claims as forming a web like that detailed in Darrett B. Rutman’s essay "The Social Web: A Prospectus for the Study of the Early American Community," in William L. O’Neill ed. Insights and Parallels: Problems and Issues of American Social History (Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Co.), 57-89.

65. For more detail on the spatial development of early Boston see Rutman, Winthrops's Boston. 240-241, and Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History 2nd. ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 8-9.

66. Whitehill, Boston. 14-15.

67. See Rutman, Winthrop's Boston. 241-42.

68. Whitehill, Boston. 6,15, 9.

69. Report of a French Protestant Refugee, in Boston. 1687. trans. E.T.Fisher (Brooklyn, N.Y., 1868), 14.

70. Bailyn, New England Merchants. 98.

71. Robert Keayne, quoted in Bailyn, New England Merchants. 97.

72. By focusing on material objects, that is, the flow of goods and ships, the importance of Dock Square is brought to the forefront.

73. Robert Blair St. George, "Bawns and Beliefs: Architecture, Commerce, and Conversion in Early New England," Winterthur Portfolio Vol 25, No.4 (Winter 1990), 266-271.

74. Ibid., 266.

75. Ibid., 267.

76. Ibid., 269-271. St. George develops a complex argument about a textual "doubling" in which merchants use forms which invoke "public, benevolent images" of monasteries and inns as built metaphors "to mask private interest" (269-270). Another reading, my own, suggests that enclosure had more to do with a defensive stance toward an unpredictable world and perhaps a "doubling" of the practice of

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prayer in the "closet," and accounting in the “office. ”

77. I contend that the placing of valuables within closed chests rather than displaying them on top of case furniture as became the custom in eighteenth-century interiors, is part of the culture of early modern Europe — a cultural element that was in some ways intensified by Puritanism. Storing precious objects in chests represents a material analogue of the soul stored within the body.

78. Hall describes Samuel Sewall's response to returning home as a “feeling of transition from a zone of danger to one of safety.” Hall, Worlds of Wonder. 217.

79. Bailyn, New England Merchants. 192.

80. Henry Shrimpton Inventory, 24 July 1666, SCPR File # 409: Bailyn, New England Merchants. 192.

81. Darrett Rutman in Winthrop's Boston asserts that by the second generation, that is before 1660, wealth determined gentry status suggesting that “men of more than average means -- constituted a gentry and dominated the town economically, socially, and politically,” 246. Yet Henry Shrimpton, one of Boston's wealthiest men, did not figure in gentry circles or hold any major political positions. I think Rutman may be downplaying the pivotal role of religious affiliation and English, especially East Anglian origins.

82. See Cary Carson, et.al. “Impermanent Architecture in the Southern American Colonies,” in Material Life in America. 1600-1860. ed. Robert Blair St. George (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1988); and Gloria L. Main and Jackson T. Main, “Economic Growth and the Standard of Living in Southern New England, 1640-1774,” Journal of Economic History. XLVIII (1988).

83. Shrimpton Inventory, 1666.

84. It is interesting to note that sugar was stored with spices and valuables since it was a rare luxury item in the seventeenth century. By the nineteenth century sugar became the primary source of cheap calories for the English working-class. See Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. Penguin Books, 1985.

85. For descriptions of the daily, private devotions practiced by Puritans see Hall, Worlds of Wonder. 125-26, 228-34; Charles Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Century New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), Chapter 6 "Private Devotion: Secret Exercises," 156-193.

86. Since extant records do not indicate that Samuel Shrimpton owned any real estate before his father's death, it would be consistent with a practice found by other

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colonial scholars like Philip Greven in Four Generations: Population. Land, and Family in Colonial Andover. Massachusetts (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1970) for Samuel and his wife to live with his parents in the family homestead.

87. This "reading" of Henry Shrimpton's house from the room by room probate inventory is informed by architectural histories like Abbot Lowell Cummings, The Framed Houses of Massachusetts Bay. 1625-1725 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979); Robert Blair St. George "’Set Thine House in Order': The Domestication of the Yeomanry in Seventeenth-Century New England" in New England Begins: The Seventeenth Century 3 vols ed., Jonathan L. Fairbanks and Robert F. Trent (Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1982); St. George, "Bawns and Beliefs," 241-287; and the personal experience of living in a seventeenth-century framed house in Massachusetts.

88. Material cultural scholar Margaretta Lovell has suggested that status in the Tudor-Stuart era could be measured by the number of muscles a person could relax when sitting. The very poor simply squatted, others perched on stools, the head of the household in middling families could rest his arms in an armchair, women and children made do with benches or stools. At the highest level, the kings of England and France often held court while lying in the state bed. The forty-six cushions in the Shrimpton household placed them well into elite status in colonial Boston (and probably in any provincial English city as well).

89. Peter Thornton, Seventeenth-Centurv Interior Decoration in England. France. and Holland (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 109. Thornton recounts a fascinating story in consumer history. If a cushion, cloth, or carpet is designated Turkey it is probably imported from the Near East, especially Anatolia where an industry sprang up to supply the English market with these "exotic" foreign materials. Turkey work, however, designates English imitations of Anatolian textiles (made for the home market) that flourished in seventeenth-century textile centers like Norwich. Problems of authenticity apparently surfaced earlier than most cultural historians acknowledge. The Shrimptons owned six "Turkye Quishins" valued in sum at two pounds (or 40 shillings). This relatively high cost, cushions from the Green Room were valued at two shillings each, indicates that they were probably imports from Turkey, not English reproductions.

90. Edgar de N. Mayhew and Minor Meyers, Jr., A Documentary History of American Interiors from the Colonial Era to 1915. New York, Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1980, 7, 23. Regarding window curtains, Mayhew notes that during the period of 1675-1715, "window curtains remained rare, confined only to chambers in fashionable houses."

91. Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behavior and Material Culture in Britain. 1660- 1760 (London: Routledge, 1988), 8 and Table 2.2.

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92. Thornton, Interior Decoration. 7-8.

93. Ibid., 104 and Shrimpton Inventory. For a discussion of the spread of French interior design to England and Holland see Thornton, Interior Decoration. Chapter II.

94. See Cary Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?” in Of Consuming Interests: the Stvle of Life in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Cary Carson, Ronald Hoffman, and Peter Albert (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994), 554 on this transitional material culture.

95. Carson, "The Consumer Revolution,” 580. Carson details the changing forms and kinds of furniture required to accommodate a new emphasis on personal and social display.

96. Historians have often overlooked Henry Shrimpton. Perry Miller mentions him only once in The New England Mind and then conflates him with his son Samuel. He is only mentioned once in Rutman's Winthrop's Boston, as an arrival of the late 1630s.

97. Samuel Sewall prayed privately and also sang psalms in his “closet.” Hall, Worlds of Wonder. 218. See also Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety. 176. Hambrick-Stowe refers to “the disciplines of secret devotions” which included reading, writing in a diary, meditation, and prayer.

98. See Whitehill, Boston. 14-15. On Keayne see Bernard Bailyn, ed. The Apologia of Robert Keayne (Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1964). See also Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1995), 124-25 and 160-62.

99. On the “just price” in colonial New England see Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 160-69.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 3: MUCH COMMERCE AND MANY CULTURES

In the late 1600s Salem merchants, like their Boston brothers, sent goods

throughout a broad trading network that extended to and from the West Indies, Spain,

Portugal, France, and England, as well as up and down the colonial coastline. Salem

was an open port, welcoming vessels and goods from throughout the Atlantic world.

Shipping merchants participated in both a local nexus and a wider, transatlantic web

of economic exchange, kinship, and friendship. As the marketplace of Essex County,

Massachusetts, the town of Salem embodied a tension between the familiar and the

foreign.

In an era of limited currency, market exchange depended on an exchange of

labor, goods, and credit among neighbors, but transplanted English colonists also

depended on an Atlantic lifeline which supplied necessary and exotic goods. Port

cities, the “marts” of colonial America, embraced a contradiction. Trade, financed

and directed by merchants, supported by artisans and laborers, and drawing on

products from the surrounding countryside made colonial settlement possible, yet it

simultaneously worked to undermine local norms. The marketplace, in the words of

historians Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, "is the epitome of local identity . . . and

the unsettling of that identity by the trade and traffic of goods [and people] from

elsewhere."1 In Salem, Puritan colonists' efforts to fix an identity based on religion

and English origins were continually challenged and unsettled by planters, artisans,

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mariners, merchants, and fishermen from other regions in England, and other

countries in Europe. Drawn to Salem by economic opportunity, they complicated any

single definition of community or of capitalism.

Much has been written about seventeenth-century Salem, prompted in part by

fascination with the witchcraft crisis that erupted in 1692.2 If we explore Salem by

centering attention on the biography of wealthy merchant and accused witch Philip

English, this familiar material takes on a different coloration. Issues not highlighted

in previous histories take on an intense hue in this account. Salem Town, which often

appears as a unified, Puritan, commercially oriented port — as in Richard Gildrie's

history of Salem as a Covenant Community - in this study emerges as a divided and

conflicted community. Focusing on Philip English's career in Salem provides a

means to highlight the problem of drawing and maintaining community boundaries as

diverse cultural groups arrived in New England. The material artifacts and spatial

arrangements of English's world provide additional evidence of Salem as a space

structured by a town center and a number of peripheral groups dispersed around the

edges.3 The urban layout and the town polity of seventeenth-century Salem were

primarily determined by the powerful Puritan merchants who, after the 1630s,

occupied the physical and metaphorical center of town. Late in the century,

peripheral groups raised challenges to the town center by achieving economic success

from a marginal location, shaping an oppositional tavern culture, disrupting church

services in witness to a God within, or launching political efforts to gain control over

common lands. As a result, this alternative story of Salem tells of a conflicted town

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where a variety of ethnic and religious groups drawn to Salem by an expansive

economy challenged the Puritan goals of unified community. In response, the

dominant group of Puritan merchants sought to control, exclude, and/or marginalize

other cultural groups in Salem throughout the seventeenth and early eighteenth

centuries. This is a multicultural story written for a multicultural age.

In order to understand Philip English's life in Salem we must examine the

antecedents of the town's economic prosperity and the multiple peoples that came to

participate in trade, fishing, shipbuilding, artisanal manufacturing, and agriculture.

Salem was founded four years before the Winthrop fleet arrived to establish the

Massachusetts Bay Colony. The town began not as a refuge for Puritan dissenters but

as an outgrowth of English investments.4 The Dorchester Company, an English

joint-stock company established by investors from Western England, aimed to reap

financial benefits from a New England colony devoted to fishing and trade.5 After a

failed attempt at settlement on Cape Ann, a remnant of West Country Englishmen

found their way to a peninsula, surrounded on three sides by sheltered bays, that was

called Naumkeag by the native American inhabitants. Led there in 1626 by Roger

Conant, the "Old Planters," as they were later called, attempted to establish their

commercial vision of an agricultural, trading, and fishing venture.6 They soon

welcomed like-minded immigrants recruited from an English parish presided over by

Conant's brother John. Two years later, John Endicott, representing the New

England Company, arrived with a contingent of seventy colonists, many also from

West Country gentry families.7 Salem's early inhabitants, including an unusually

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large number from English gentry origins—more than one quarter of the settlers

received 100 acres rather than the land grants of six to ten acres commonly offered to

newcomers in nearby towns-practiced an uncommon form of Protestantism

“somewhere between Puritan and Anglican.”8

Within its first decade, Salem became a pluralistic society as West Country

planters received an influx of colonists from a different cultural region. Numerous

families from East Anglia, an area northeast of London and just across the North Sea

from the Lowlands, followed their minister, Roger Williams, west across the Atlantic

to Salem in 1631.9 Seventeen families, all from the busy port of Great Yarmouth,

Norfolk, formed a nucleus of familiarity and friendship in the new surroundings.

Driven by the desire to practice a purified form of religion and influenced by the habit

of practicing mixed agriculture in a natural environment much like that of New

England, the East Anglians clashed with the West Countrymen and their "strange"

ways.10

Accustomed to compact villages surrounded by planting fields and grazing

meadows shared by all, East Anglians, infused with dreams of both economic

prosperity and Christian millennium in the new world, tried to impose their "imagined

community" on the fledgling settlement.11 The Old Planters had grown up in a very

different environment of Western England, a world of dispersed farms and manors,

punctuated with occasional scraggly fishing villages and a few port towns dotted along

an irregular coastline.12 In addition, Roger Williams, the newcomers' minister,

espoused a radical Puritanism that called for separation from the Church of England

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and encouraged lay preaching by men and women.13 The divisions between Williams

and his East Anglian supporters, on one side, and the West Country Salemites, backed

by the Boston church, on the other, grew so troublesome that in 1635 the General

Court banished Williams to Rhode Island, where he was joined by ten families from

Salem.14

In the midst of this crisis, another shipload of newcomers arrived including

men who were to assume leading positions in Salem's civic affairs for the next half-

century; notably, Edmund Batter, William Hathorne, and Philip Veren.15 Coming

from counties in the geographic center of England, Wiltshire, Bedfordshire, and

Cumberland, they took up residence in the middle of Salem and forged a centrist

position mediating between the ardent East Anglians and the Old Planters. Several

more of Williams's supporters left town in 1638 in the wake of the Antinomian crisis,

following Boston's lay preacher Anne Hutchinson into banishment at Rhode Island,

further easing local tensions.16

These extreme antagonisms over religion, which had intensified cultural

differences to the breaking point, led Salem's newly arrived minister, Hugh Peter, to

attempt to clarify boundaries and re-direct the townspeople's energies.17 To heal

divisions and cope with exploding growth -- between 1633 and 1635 the town

population doubled -- both groups agreed to adopt measures formulated by the leading

Puritan divine.18 Peter's plan set the terms for Salem’s continuing efforts to balance

economic, social, and spiritual concerns. The minister suggested and the town leaders

agreed upon two strategies. First, “it seemed to them that the way to prevent

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difficulty was to define Christian community more carefully.”19 Church members

were required to sign a covenant or be excommunicated. Second, Peter advised the

colony to take specific measures to foster a fishing industry. He moved beyond

advice to action. The minister encouraged shipbuilding by putting together a group of

investors and recruiting shipbuilder Richard Hollingsworth to construct an unusually

large 300-ton ship.20 Peter's economic proposals thereby resurrected the corporate

plans for a fishing and trading settlement first formulated by English sponsors in the

1620s. Unfortunately, his economic plans undermined his social aim of a unified

commonweal bound together by a mutual covenant with God.21

The Church Covenant that Hugh Peter wrote for Salem expressed on a

spiritual level the same concerns with a dissolving unity, "having found by sad

experience how dangerous it is to sit loose to the Covenant we make with our God:

and how apt we are to wander into bypaths," that shaped his social goals. The

solution consisted in precise directions for earthly and spiritual life. It became

important to fix a single definition of church (and community) membership and to

"oppose all contrary ways, canons, and constitutions of men in his worship."22 Peter

asked Salemites for an explicit recognition of the right of the best men to lead and the

others to follow. He called for "all lawful obedience to those that are over us, in

Church or Commonwealth, . . . that they should have encouragement in their places,

by our not grieving their spirits through our Irregularities," as Roger Williams and his

followers had done.23 Peter and his supporters thought that obedience to a church

covenant would provide a framework within which Salemites and other Massachusetts

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settlers could safely pursue economic opportunity based on ocean-going commerce

and keep the multitude of mariners and merchants soon to arrive on their shores either

at the margins or within the covenant. Puritan scholar Perry Miller explains that “the

core of each town was a church, composed of those who had given proof that they

were visibly sanctified, joined together by a covenant into which they entered of their

own will.”24 Peter hoped to make all the inhabitants part of the covenant. Neither

he nor the other Bay Colony leaders supporting his design could see that he was

pursuing a contradictory strategy, seeking to impose religious and cultural conformity

while at the same time promoting an economic base, the fishery, that would draw

strangers from throughout the Atlantic world, many of whom would not be willing to

follow the Puritan path.25

The plan worked for a time. By the 1640s, Salem's deep-water harbor and

excellent network of waterways supported a developing fishery and the beginnings of

overseas trade.26 As increasing numbers of settlers were drawn to Salem, the

peninsula's narrow neck no longer accommodated large land grants to prosperous

farmers. Instead, newcomers received property several miles inland in an area soon

to be designated as "the Farms," later called Salem Village and then, in the following

century recast as the independent town of Danvers.27

The prominent men overseeing Salem's initial commercial growth — Edmund

Batter, William Hathorne, Henry Bartholomew and Walter Price -- did not

concentrate their energies exclusively on importing and exporting goods. They

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continued to acquire large land grants, an important source of status and power, and

set up farms cultivated by extended families or by tenants.28 They also devoted

considerable energy to town and colony affairs. Important town officials often

worked their way to the top through a ladder of offices beginning at constable and

culminating with selectman.29 Selectmen had immediate and continuing influence on

many of daily life's small details and large issues. When Bartholomew, Hathorne,

and Price won election to the group of selectmen (originally called "the seven men" in

many towns), they took on the responsibility for managing activities ranging from

doling out poor relief to licensing taverns, and for carrying out the will of the

inhabitants as expressed in semi-annual town meetings. In Salem, selectmen had also

acquired the de facto power to grant land and divide up the common area, decisions

nominally reserved to proprietors who possessed "rights" in the commons (which

could be bought and sold like real estate).30

At the colony level, the General Court, the chief governing body, consisted of

one or two representatives from each town, called Deputies, and a smaller "Court of

Assistants," often called Magistrates. Deputies and Magistrates were both elected

annually, Deputies at local town meetings and Magistrates/Assistants by the full body

of the General Court. Magistrates or Assistants functioned for the colony much like

selectmen did for their town, carrying out the day-to-day business and following up

on decisions made by the full General Court. Magistrates often did double duty by

acting as magistrates for the county court system in their home counties. Although

the system of governance was based on election by most adult white male property

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holders (specific regulations allowing only freemen or church members to vote at

town meetings were not always enforced), electoral outcomes reinforced existing

ideas of deference. Magistrates were rarely ousted from their post, and the office of

selectman rotated among acknowledged leaders, with occasional newcomers, often

sons, taking their fathers' places. Deputies and Assistants/Magistrates represented the

town to the Colony and vice versa. Towns with several Magistrates, like Salem and

nearby Ipswich, had greater influence at the colonial level but often had greater

expectations thrust upon them especially in times of war.

Salem proved fertile ground for several men of respectable English

background who combined entrepreneurial efforts with religious conformity and

political office. To understand how a Puritan merchant group gathered much of the

social and political power in town, it is useful to briefly review the careers of some of

Salem's prominent seventeenth-century leaders. Henry Bartholomew, an East

Anglian merchant, began with a small half-acre house lot in Salem. He made the

mistake (so some locals thought) of following Roger Williams to Rhode Island but

returned after a few months, immediately rejoining the church. Two years later, the

town enticed him to stay with a grant of 150 acres; a few years later, voters elected

him to the most important office. Bartholomew was chosen as selectman or deputy to

the General Court in Boston almost every year from 1643 to 1684.31

Joining Bartholomew and William Browne, another powerful Puritan

merchant, on the magistrates’ bench, William Hathorne, a peacemaker between East

Anglians and West Countrymen, became one of Salem's leading representatives to the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Colony, and a magistrate for the Essex County Quarterly Court from 1650 until his

death in 1681. These men and others such as Walter Price followed Hugh Peter's

dictum, both fostering commerce and joining the church. Price, coming to Salem in

1644 as a single man from the bustling port of Bristol, England, quickly joined the

church and married a daughter of middling mariner/merchant Benjamin Gerrish. Five

years later, he began working his way up through the ranks of town offices, starting

as constable. Within a decade of coming to Salem, while still a young man of 34,

Price began his long tenure as selectman. His rise to prominence was recognized by a

gift from the town, that is, from the selectmen, of 100 acres. When he died in 1674,

leaving an estate of L2,058, Price's son followed him into town leadership.32

As Hathorne, Batter, Bartholomew, and Price built docks and warehouses

along the edge of the inner harbor, and occupied the front row seats in Salem's

Meeting House, the Old Planters moved to the outskirts of this activity, taking up

dispersed farms across the outer harbor on "the Ryal Side" and "the Cape Ann side."

Farmers and West Country gentlemen found their role in town leadership

diminishing, in part because several rural regions severed ties with Salem to form

independent units. The town fathers and the General Court agreed to carve out

separate towns from the most distant areas of Salem. Wenham Pond became Wenham

in 1643 and the area around Jeffries Creek became the small coastal town of

Manchester in 1645.33 Marblehead, home to fishermen and shoremen from a variety

of ethnic groups, officially separated from Salem in 1648, but extensive economic ties

between Salem merchants and Marblehead fishermen and shoremen kept Marblehead

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in the position of a client state well into the eighteenth century.34 The final secession

in this re-drawing of geographic and cultural boundaries occurred in 1668. when the

West Country settlers of the "Cape Ann Side," separated by water and culture from

Puritan, commercial Salem, became the town of Beverly.35 Still concerned about the

loss of these valuable agricultural regions, the town leaders would refuse to grant

Salem Village's requests for separate status in the 1680s, further intensifying the

conflict between Townsmen and farmers.36

The early conflicts in Salem over regional origins and religious beliefs

heightened awareness of difference but also gave townspeople confidence in the

methods they had used successfully to contain or exclude difference. The prominent

leaders of Salem during the middle decades of the century spoke with one voice in

public affairs, the voice of a mercantile elite, and practiced similar business strategies

— clientage arrangements in the fishing industry and shared investments in vessels and

cargoes.37 Members of Salem's emerging merchant elite worked together on town

committees to erect a new meetinghouse, commanded the two Salem militia

companies, and, as selectmen, authorized "settling of a highway" from Salem to

Reading in the interior and the widening of bridges to Ipswich and Wenham.38 These

same families shared ownership in vessels and commercial ventures, built stores and

warehouses next to each other along the inner harbor, constructed large, gabled

houses around the Town House and along Essex Street, and linked their children in

marriage to each other, to Boston merchants, and to the grandchildren of the colony's

founding families.39 The townspeople, at least the long-term residents, recognized

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and supported the growing dominance of mercantile families: from 1665 to 1700

voters chose six merchants for each farmer they elected to the seven-man board of

selectmen.40 Merchants built their budding empire, in pan, on the fishing industry.

Fishing expeditions, peopled by English servants, launched from English ports, and

financed by English capital, had come to Salem early, especially to the shores of

Marblehead and Winter Island.41 English crews spent summers on the shore drying

and packing fish, but this was not the "resident fishing industry" Hugh Peter had

called for in his master plan for Salem. Nor were fishermen, tending toward

rowdiness, hard drinking, and profanity, the "residents" Peter had in mind.42 Most

householders who settled in New England preferred the life of independent farmer to

the difficult, dirty, and ill-paying job of catching and curing fish.43 The town and the

General Court did not recognize the paradox built into Hugh Peter's prescription for

Salem. If town and colony wanted to support economic opportunity and commercial

growth, they would have to accept strangers in their midst. The townspeople

continued to struggle with this issue throughout the seventeenth century.

As Salem's commercial success grew, the groups of strangers within its

borders multiplied. A small colony of fishermen had settled in the 1630s on Winter

Island attached by a causeway to the eastern end of Salem's central peninsula. The

town encouraged them to stay by granting small half-acre lots on lifetime tenure, and

fencing off the causeway to prevent animals from destroying the fish spread out to dry

in the sun.44 But during the early years, most fishermen came to Salem as transients,

as members of a vast pool of British maritime laborers, many from the West Country,

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who "drifted into the fishery in the course of their travels."45 With fish so readily

available and so cheap that farmers used it to fertilize their fields, local merchants had

little control and little incentive to organize and finance a local fishery. But Salem,

and the broader commercial world upon which it depended, soon changed.

The onset of Civil War in England (1642) altered circumstances for Salem, for

the Bay Colony, and for the transatlantic world to which all Salemites were, at least

indirectly, connected. The bustling growth of the Bay Colony came to an abrupt end.

Without a constant flow of new immigrants to the colony, prices for farm products

dropped to the cellar, and English goods, metalwares, cloth, glass, and tools,

disappeared from merchants' shops.46 The Civil War in England disrupted not only

the flow of new settlers to Massachusetts but the flow of fish from Newfoundland to

England and Spain, creating an opportunity for Salem and Boston entrepreneurs. The

price of good "merchantable" cod escalated; the simultaneous growth in the West

Indies of sugar plantations based on slave labor from Africa provided an outlet for

broken, undersized, or damaged "refuse" fish that planters used to feed their slaves.

Massachusetts merchants were able to fill the gap caused by events in England; the

output of the New England fishery grew from 6,000 quintals in 1641 to 60,000

quintals annually in 1675.47 The fish trade spawned its share of "instant millionaires"

in Salem and Boston, allowing men like George Curwen, Philip English, and Henry

Shrimpton to enter the ranks of wealthy merchants, but among them, only Curwen

reached a prominent position in the social elite. In the seventeenth century, money

could not buy everything.

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George Curwen arrived in Salem from Workington in Cumberland County

England in 1638 with his wife and two small children.48 He received a modest grant

of twenty acres from the selectmen. He soon constructed a store and warehouse at the

inner harbor and began to build his fortune and make himself useful to the town.

Curwen, perceived as a "man of property and education," was chosen selectman

within a decade of his arrival.49 Curwen joined the First Church three years later.

His wife had taken the covenant in 1640 and his second son had been baptized that

same year; he probably attended church regularly where he joined William Hathorne

and William Browne on the "Magistrates' Bench."50 By the time Jersey merchant

Philip English made his decision to marry and settle in Salem in the 1670s, George

Curwen already held a very prominent position in town and often served as Deputy to

the General Court.51 Through his children's marriages, Curwen claimed connections

to the Hathornes and Brownes in Salem and to important Boston merchant families of

Sheafe and Gibbs. Curwen's oldest son John married Margaret Winthrop,

granddaughter of John Winthrop, founder and long-time Governor of Massachusetts

Bay and daughter of Connecticut Governor John Winthrop Jr.52 Curwen's estate,

valued over L 6,000 in 1685, included five houses, four warehouses, and two

wharves in Salem, a warehouse and wharf in Boston, three farms, and four ships.53

As George Curwen aged, his sons John and Jonathan stepped into their father's

place, both serving as selectmen and Deputies to the General Court. John, the elder

son, took over as militia leader and handled the overseas trading. Jonathan supervised

the lumber mill in Maine and climbed to the highest level of the Massachusetts

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judiciary system, while serving regularly first as deputy and then, after 1689. as

councilor to the General Court.54 Jonathan Curwen gained his greatest fame as judge

on the Court of Oyer and Terminer during the Salem witchcraft trials in 1692.

Patriarch George Curwen's oldest son. Captain John died “cut off” in the summer of

1683 “in the midst of usefulness and when his prospect was fair for unusual

eminence.” Within two years the elder Curwen was dead and Jonathan, a gifted jurist

but not a skilled merchant, was left to carry on the family obligations, which included

not only his own young children but also two teenage sisters and an eleven-year-old

brother from his father's second marriage, and his dead brother's only son.5S

The Curwen family, mercantile winners in the early fish trade, was

experiencing grave difficulties in carrying on family and enterprise, just at the time

when Philip English, leader of the Jersey French community, was developing his

business, hiring captains for his ships, building a mansion house, and gaining a

provisional acceptance in the social and political elite of Salem. When Philip English

came to Salem in the 1670s he had a crucial advantage over his established

colleagues. He was already a part of the Anglo-European commercial network. Most

Salem traders were still endeavoring to move beyond dependence on London

merchants by developing direct contacts with Spanish and French ports; English, in

contrast, had matured in the midst of "foreign" traders.

Curwen Sr. had built his prominence on several savvy moves, taking

advantage of the disruption in commerce and the fishery during the two decades,

1640-1660, of the interregnum in England.56 Although still dependent on London

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merchants, whose own crews and vessels had been impressed for service in the war,

Salem merchants like George Curwen provided the financing to develop a resident

fishing industry by offering credit to fishermen and their crews, leasing them vessels,

outfitting ships for each voyage, and allowing families left at home to purchase

supplies on credit.57 In return, crews promised their catch to their creditor/patron,

who then sold the fish abroad, parceled out the share of profits to the men, and started

the cycle all over again.58 Merchant capitalists gradually increased the amount of

funds invested in the New England fishery. During the 1660s Curwen carried over

L I,000 in debit balances for 80 men involved in fishing "to the Eastward" off the

coast of Maine.59 This investment insured Curwen and other merchants an ample

inventory of fish to supply their own creditors in London and their customers in the

Caribbean.

It might be well over a year from the time Curwen or his fellow merchants

laid out funds for a fishing crew to the day a ship returning from Spain or England

brought the "neet proceeds" back to Salem in the form of goods to be sold or credit to

be applied to other obligations awaiting payment. Soon thereafter, or perhaps even

before results were known, another cycle of credit and exchange would begin as

fishing crews left their winter quarters in Salem and Marblehead to head for Isles of

Shoals, Monhegan, or Newfoundland. When fishermen headed out to sea, merchants

could only hope that memories of debts owed, houses built, and families cherished

proved strong enough to inspire the smelly, heavy, and perilous work upon which the

commercial success of Salem was coming to depend.60

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The resident fishermen whose cottages and children spilled across Marblehead,

Winter Island, and among the seamen, ship's carpenters, and dock workers at the

eastern end of Salem town, did not exactly fit the community norms articulated by

Hugh Peter and reinforced by merchant officials. Few fishermen attempted to join

the Salem church; of sixty-six fishing families settled in town before 1676 only four

had accepted the church covenant. Most espoused a "combination of Anglican

spirituality and English popular culture that. . . was an affront to Puritan tradition."61

Prominent Puritan minister Cotton Mather lamented their use of "the Pagan Language

of a Good Fortune" to report their "Luck of Fish."62 Usually the poorest working

inhabitants of any community, fishermen resorted to rough language and physical

violence in direct contempt of community ideals and authority.63

Townspeople misinterpreted the work rhythm of the fishing industry, which

differed from patterns in agriculture or trade. When out on a voyage, the crew of a

fishing ketch spent "months of labor on an isolated stretch o f shoreline in exclusively

male company, punctuated only by visits from other fishermen or wine peddlers and

by occasional trips home.B64 Back in port between voyages or in the midst of a winter

freeze, the men experienced enforced idleness.65 This seasonal labor pattern disturbed

Bay Colony authorities. In 1674 the General Court complained that "when they are at

home, & not imployed in their callings," fishermen come "to be spectators, or

otherwise ideling gaming, or spending their time unproffitabley." Fishermen and

mariners, while economically essential, offered a bad example "where by such

persons as attend their duty, & spend their time in that service, are discouraged .n66

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This pattern of bouts of intense labor at sea alternating with weeks of idleness at home

developed in response to the physical environment and the demands of international

trade. While fishermen had to accommodate their lives to both natural rhythms and

market cycles, by both necessity and choice, they did not conform to the moral

guidelines of the Puritan merchant leaders. As a result, most fishing families lived as

an often troublesome sub-culture at the margins of Salem Town.67

Another group of "outsiders," the Quakers, arrived in Salem during the 1650s

and 1660s. Initially, they threatened the status quo far more than disorderly

fishermen. Although many Quaker families settled in the Woods, a region at the

outskirts of Salem near its border with Lynn, they refused to stay put, insisting

instead on disrupting Sunday worship and marching down Essex Street naked.68

Selectmen were forced to imprison the offenders who feared the fate of their co

religionists hanged in Boston.69 The initial Salem Meeting began, just two years

after the first "contagion" in New England, when thirty people, several of them

members in good standing of First Church, gathered at Nicholas and Hannah Phelps'

house to hear two traveling Quakers speak.70 Salem officials acted quickly. Two

constables and merchant-selectman Edmund Batter broke up meetings and imprisoned

local followers and visiting preachers. In one incident, Batter stopped a visiting

Quaker from addressing the Salem Meeting by stuffing his mouth with a glove and

dragging him out by his hair. The more harshly officials reacted, the more aggressive

the Quakers became, leading to the moment when six Salem Quakers disrupted the

ordination of Salem's new minister John Higginson. The protestors, whose “dramatic

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forms of witness were fueled by hopes for the immediate end of the world,” were sent

immediately to jail in Boston, while Higginson proclaimed that the “inner light” was

“the Devil's Sacrifice” and “a stinking Vapor from Hell.”71

Gradually, as visits from traveling witnesses slowed and fewer new members

joined the Salem meeting, town officials adopted an approach which relied more on

fines than physical violence and imprisonment.72 Not surprisingly, the fines often

equaled the assessment of ministerial rates which the Quakers had refused to pay. A

few Quakers managed to integrate themselves into the community — Thomas Maule,

who arrived in 1668 after the most virulent hostilities had subsided, was able to

purchase property in town and pursue a modest mercantile trade - but a sense of

unease about the Society of Friends lingered.73 The Quakers in Salem acquired a

reputation for unscrupulousness, sharp dealing, and excessive litigation in business.74

The same charges would be leveled at the Jersey "French." One angry mariner made

the connections explicit. Railing in court about his Quaker creditor, ship's captain

John Vittum exclaimed, "the Quaker dog shall never have one of them [his missing

cargo] again . . . it is as good going a privateering as taking anything from him [the

creditor] as from a French man for I doe account him noe better."75 Quakers,

Frenchmen, dogs, what did they have in common in the minds of "English" colonists?

It must have seemed that none could be adequately pinned down or penned out. Each

spoke a different tongue; each threatened to invade the very heart of Salem.

As English, Welsh, and Irish fishermen spread across the waterfront of Salem

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and Marblehead harbors, the "French" from the Isle of Jersey formed a separate

cultural circle with merchant Philip English at its center. Driven from their island

home by economic decline and waning opportunity, Jersey's youth had to look

elsewhere. Word of Salem, an increasingly prosperous fishing center in North

America, reached the island as the inhabitants were facing an imploding economy. A

few Jerseyans tried Salem in the 1660s. Daniel Bacon, perhaps the first Channel

Islander to become a permanent resident, set up a boatbuilding business at Knocker's

Hole on the shores of a tidal creek at the southern edge of Salem's waterfront.76 In

1661 boatbuilder William Stevens of Gloucester constructed a ship for three Jersey

merchants; one of them, Jean LeBrun (John Brown), later settled in Salem.77 At least

three Jersey fishermen worked as clients of Salem merchants. One of Salem's few

prosperous fishermen, Job Hilliard, purchased a share in one of George Curwen's

fishing ketches in 1663 and took up residence at the far eastern end of town, which

was to become an enclave of Jersey Islanders.78

Born into the Channel Island milieu of mixed English and French cultural

practices, Philip English rose to ambiguous prominence in Salem's maritime world.

His odyssey reveals much about how individuals and communities coped with the

competing impulses of adventure and security in late seventeenth-century Anglo-

America. Philip English, a Frenchman and Anglican, represented an anomaly in

Salem. Throughout his life he experienced a series of events that served alternately to

include and distance him from his fellow townsmen. For decades English ranked as

one of the wealthiest merchants in a town run by affluent merchants and their

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ministerial kin, but both his French origins and his Anglican religion served to

marginalize him from the merchant elite headed by the Browne and Curwen

families.79

By the time Philippe L'Anglois's name entered the birth records of Trinity

Parish, Jersey, in 1651, the people of the Channel Islands, Northern France, and the

West Country of England had developed a tightly woven fabric of commercial

relationships which stretched across national borders and language barriers. It was a

fabric that both sustained and limited L’Anglois/English in his search for economic

and social mastery in colonial New England.

The Channel Islands, Philip English's first home, proved to be an ideal

training ground for an ambitious mariner. Emerging from shallow waters "littered

with reefs and rocks," the Islands lie sheltered between (or imprisoned in ) the

outstretched arms of Normandy and Brittany, France.80 "Strong tidal currents, which

change direction many times daily, swirl around the Islands."81 South of the Isle of

Jersey (at 45 square miles the largest of four islands), a vast reef extends, almost

equal to the island in size.82 Jersey's topography resembles a great wedge tilted

toward France with high cliffs on the northern side and St. Ouen's long sweeping

bay, rocky coastline, and prevailing westerly winds offering a death trap to sailors on

the west.83 The low-lying South Coast, facing France, shelters St. Helier, the best

deep-water harbor on Jersey,84 Islanders situated on the Eastern shore live so close to

France that "Churches and Houses may be easily discerned from either Coast."85 The

"small and narrow current" that flows between them poses a navigational danger in

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peacetime but provides an essential barrier during war.86

Navigation by sail in and around the Channel Islands held many hazards, but

the Islands offered incentives for those willing to brave the currents.87 Their location

placed them in a perfect position to carry on licit and illicit trade with France, to

control shipping in and out of the English Channel, and to disrupt commerce (via the

Seine) between French Atlantic ports and Paris.88 Originally part of the Duchy of

Normandy, the Channel Islands became an English domain in 1066. In order to keep

the Islands loyal to the English king, in spite of their proximity to France, succeeding

monarchs conferred special privileges that promoted Island commerce. By agreement

between the kings of England and France, the Islands were declared neutral territory.

Edward IV confirmed their neutral status in 1483, and it remained in effect until the

reign of William III (a Dutchman) at the end of the seventeenth century.89 Neutrality

may have profited French and Island merchants as much as it did the English Royal

Court, operating as "a truce between the Normans and Bretons and the islanders, for

their mutual advantage and convenience."90 English policy bestowed "very large

privileges and immunities to the people of these islands, making it their greatest

interest to depend on England."91 Imports from England entered the Islands with no

duties, and Island manufactured goods and "growth" could come into English ports

free of imposts, which made the Islands a “place of common vent” for Anglo-French

trade.92 Traders exchanged English cloth, lead, and tin for French canvas, linen, and

wine.93 Merchant capitalists imported English wool into Jersey for its largest local

industry, the knitting of woolen stockings (hence our word jersey for a type of knit

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fabric), which were sold primarily to France.94

Coming of age on the Isle of Jersey, Philippe L'Anglois no doubt learned the

expert sailing and navigation techniques required to negotiate Channel waters and

absorbed the atmosphere of an international trading community. In St. Aubin, Jersey,

every Monday he could visit a market held "for merchants of foreign commodities,"

where Jersey traders exchanged wine, salt, iron, and wool from Spain and Portugal

for fish, stockings, and surplus wheat sent to Iberia.95 Merchants from the Channel

Islands like Simon Le Sebirell and James Lampriere, who fled to France when their

home base supported the royalist cause during the English Civil War, settled in the

port of St. Malo and formed close commercial partnerships with French merchants

while still maintaining their Jersey connections.96 L'Anglois/English would parlay

the international connections he formed growing up on Jersey into a substantial

colonial fortune.

After the restoration in 1660, just when Channel Islanders should have been

enjoying the fruits of their loyalty to Charles I during the English Civil War, they

found their major industry - knitting woolen stockings -- entering what proved to be

a permanent decline. In their heyday, knitters on the Isle of Jersey had fashioned

240,000 pairs of colorful striped and patterned stockings annually for European

markets.97 As the seventeenth century wore on, relations between England and

France worsened. Imperial policies, like a French tariff on stockings (1654) and on

other English goods (1678), began to affect the cozy commercial network among

French ports, the Channel Islands, and West Country trading centers.98

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Jerseyans faced economic troubles on other fronts as well. Having joined the

French and English in the Newfoundland cod fishery in the late 16th century,

[slanders found it increasingly difficult, as did their English counterparts, to compete

with larger French ships. At Trinity Bay on the Atlantic coast of Newfoundland, the

typical Jersey fleet of twenty had declined by 1670 to only two or three vessels."

Navigation in the vicinity of the Channel Islands was not easy nor relationships

with France smooth, yet the inhabitants depended on both; by the second half of the

century, island population had so exceeded the land available for its support that

Jersey imported half of its grain every year.100 Under these conditions it was "not

easie for a Man . . . to enlarge his Patrimony, in a Country so full of People," and

since land value was reckoned in quarters of wheat, rising or falling "according to the

Price that Corn [grain] bears each Year in the Market," estates were always "variable

and uncertain."101 Like many Massachusetts towns a century later, the island's young

people looked toward a future of diminishing prospects.102

As a young man whose homeland faced the beginning of what came to be a

long era of declining fortunes, Philippe L'Anglois, scion of an upper middling Jersey

family and godson of the influential Sir Philip De Carteret, came to Salem.103

Initially Salem may have been simply another port-of-call, one made more appealing

by his undoubted ability to speak English. Although French, colored with "a

Barbarism or two" was "the common language" in Jersey, most "Gentlemen,

Merchants, or Principal Inhabitants" also spoke English.104 Like many of the transient

maritime laborers of the Atlantic world, L'Anglois shuttled around England, France,

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Spain, and North America.105 It was only when he wed that he, like other mariners,

put down roots or in this case took up his wife's roots. With his marriage,

L'Anglois, claimed the English identity immanent in his family name and began to

shape himself into an English gentleman/merchant -- a questionable quest in that era

of strict social divisions between English gentry and commercial nabobs in that

Puritan stronghold of Salem, however commercial it might be.

Philip English came to Salem as a young man in the early 1670s and boarded

with the Hollingsworth family.106 The elder Hollingsworth carried on a coastal trade

with a branch of his family established in Virginia. Shortly before Hollingsworth's

death in 1675, Mary, his only surviving child, married Philip English.107 English did

not simply continue his father-in-law’s established coastal trade but, taking advantage

of his Jersey and French contacts, reached for a wider role in burgeoning overseas

commerce.108 The earliest accounts of English's trading ventures appear in letters

written in French. In 1677, an agent in St. Malo (a French port), acting for "sire

Moise Coubel, gentleman of said Jersey," Financed a voyage for L’Anglois in the

amount of £208. The letter of indebtedness, signed before a notary, laid out the

intended voyage. L'Anglois, master of the ketch Speedwell, would head from Jersey

to Boston and then to "Bilbao, Biscay, Bordeaux or coast of England," and

"afterwards return to said Jersey or the said harbor of Saint Malo."109 English

completed the voyage and repaid the funds in 1679.

Trade ventures financed by French merchants and financiers gradually

disappeared from English's account pages by the late 1680s. Instead, he developed

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owned several vessels, which he sent to St. Christophers. Barbados, the Bay of

Indorows [Honduras], and Surinam in the Caribbean, to Bilbao. Spain, and to

Madeira and Fayall in the Wine Islands and Azores. By the 1680s, he began to

employ others as masters and ship captains and stayed in Salem to manage his

expanding ventures. After his sons Philip, Jr. and William came of age, English

operated ships in the colonial coastal trade from Nova Scotia to Virginia as well as

overseas. From these voyages, his captains brought back "Barbados goods" such as

rum, molasses, and sugar and "English goods" such as "nailes, blewo lining,

Osnbrigs, Holland Duck, cordage," "felt hatts," and "peper, nutmeg, cloves, and

starch."110 Exotic commodities were not the only foreign imports English would

bring to Salem.

Philip English established himself in Salem by marrying Mary Hollingsworth

and inheriting her father's coastal shipping business and family property at the eastern

edge of Salem. Like many other Salem merchants, English maintained his own fishing

fleet. The fishing industry centered on Winter Island on the outskirts of Salem harbor

(see map) housed the fishermen, isolating them and their foul smelling catch from the

town center. The island provided generous space for the yards, fishing flakes, and

stages (wooden scaffolding on which fish were laid to dry in the sun). Wharves on

the island served for loading hogsheads packed with dried and salted fish aboard

ocean vessels and for unloading the essential supplies of salt, barrel staves, and hoops

used to pack cod and mackerel for shipment to the Caribbean or Southern Europe.

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Soon English began to gather a colony of like-minded. French-speaking

mariners, fisherman, and apprentices around him.111 Prompted by fears of increasing

pauperism as Channel Island economies declined, officials there encouraged poor

families to send their children to America as indentured servants.112 Service with

Philip English, known by Jerseyans and connected to the island's highest nobility,

must have seemed like a fortunate opportunity.

In January and February 1675, English, only twenty-four years old himself,

"being at present aboard his ship of which he is master," agreed to take on at least

two Jersey boys, one as a joiner-carpenter and the other "to learn some vocation or

trade considering that which Mr. L'Anglois or said child may find suitable." English

promised to nourish and clothe them "well and honestly" and provide two "well made

habits" for each young man.113 Unlike most indenture arrangements in Colonial New

England, he made no promises in reference to religion. English brought at least eight

indentured servants to Salem via the Isle of Jersey, probably many more.114 (See

Table 1) Often these young people worked, not directly for English, but in houses all

over Salem and ships all over the Atlantic. Philip English Jr. and son-in-law John

Touzel, also from Jersey, continued the tradition as they came of age and established

themselves as innkeeper and ship's captain. Prosperous Jersey families like the

Englishes continued to bring indentured labor to Salem and Marblehead at such a

great rate that Marblehead schoolmaster Josiah Cotton claimed he spent more time

"writing indentures for Jersey boys and girls" than teaching his pupils.115

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TABLE 1

INDENTURED SERVANTS BROUGHT TO SALEM BY PHILIP ENGLISH AND FAMILY, 1675-1731

Philip English:

DATE NAME HOME YEARS SERVICE

1675 Phle. Gaudin Jersey 4.5 joiner/carpenter 1675 Jean Binet Jersey 6 1676 Jacque Chevalier Jersey 6 mariner 1677 Jane Massury Jersey 6* domestic service 1677 Ellener Clarke Jersey domestic service 1677 Mary Pary Jersey 6 domestic service 1683 John Lawrence Stockholm 6 1684 Emanuel Francisco Portugal 5 labor at sea or shore

Philip English, Jr.:

1718 Thomas Le Sebirel Jersey 6 mariner 1723 Edward Garvey Jersey 5 tavern servant 1731 David Le Sebirel Jersey 4 mariner

John Touzel:

1724 George Cook Jersey 4 mariner

Sources: English Family Papers, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA; George E. Dow, ed. Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County Massachusetts. Salem, MA: Essex County Massachusetts, 1911.

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Not every Jersey family viewed Philip English as a welcome rescuer. Widow

La Messurier, on learning that her father had agreed to bind her sister Jane Massure

to Philip English, testified. "I was troubled but seeing that she must be embarked, did

Furnish her very well with all sorts of necessaries for her Apparrell" and a "coffer" to

keep them in.116 Unfortunately for Jane and her family, she did not survive the

voyage to New England. Another young servant, Mary Pary, making the same

passage cared for Jane as she lay dying. Mary attested that Jane "desired that those

who tended her should have what was left in her chest of clothes." But English

ignored her last wish. The merchant parceled out Jane's finery "among his other

servant maidens." The clothes, worth fewer than twenty shillings, did not make up

for the L7 cost of Jane's passage, which English tried unsuccessfully to recover based

in part on her claim that her brother Benjamin, already in Salem, would pay the

passage.117

For English these indentures served an economic as well as cultural purpose.

When his indentured servants arrived in Salem, English would hire them out in Salem

and Marblehead and receive their wages as annual income during their term of

servitude. In 1682, he hired out twenty-three-year-old Thomas Nichols of Jersey as a

seaman aboard the ketch John under Edward Woodman of Salem for thirty shillings

per month. Their voyage took Nichols and Woodman from Boston to Barbados, to

Saltudus [Tortuga], back to Barbados, and then to London, where the vessel was sold

and Nichols left stranded and unpaid since his wages could only go directly to his

master.118 As servants indentured to English, young people of Jersey, like Thomas

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pleasant, but if they survived, and most did, they might set up their own simple home

and raise a family in modest circumstances, most likely in Philip English’s

neighborhood at the eastern end of Salem among other Jersey "French."119

By 1685, at least two dozen families formed a separate cultural community

based in part on language.120 It would have been no surprise to any Salemites to

overhear conversation in French as they walked down English Lane or among the

cottages of the Masurys, Hilliards, Whites, and Searles clustered along the lanes

leading to the waterfront near the Marblehead ferry. Mrs. Baldin, "a French lady,"

offered her church confession in French, a Marblehead schoolmaster worked

feverishly translating indentures for Jersey youth, merchant English corresponded

with Channel Island and French traders in his native tongue, and the Essex County

Quarterly Court accepted written testimony in French.

Most Jerseyans stayed apart from Salem's First Church, perhaps preferring

private worship in accord with the customs of their homeland, where they used The

Book of Common Prayer translated into French and recited the Anglican liturgy,

again in French. In Jersey on "the Lord's Day," "public exercises" included "reading

the Common Prayer." Worshipers received Communion four times a year, always at

Easter and Christmas. The Jerseyans shared one practice in common with Puritans.

They believed that "All Fathers and Masters of Families shall be exhorted and

injoyned to cause their children and Domesticks to be instructed in the knowledge of

their Salvation."121 Perhaps this was such an ingrained article of faith for Channel

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Islanders that they saw no need to make such instructions explicit in an indenture

agreement, or perhaps their less rigid Calvinism allowed them to omit the clause.

The Jersey French stood out and lived apart from other Salem townsmen, but

as mariners and fishermen they participated in a developing "alehouse culture" which

became a feature of maritime communities in colonial New England.122 In 1678, at

least fifty seamen and mariners resided in English’s neighborhood in "the east part of

Salem."123 Even though the fishing industry was in the midst of a shift from transient

to resident labor, many strangers frequented Salem.124 The town drew crowds from

all over Essex County on days when the Quarterly Court held its sessions. Young

men from nearby villages came to the port to ship out on fishing crews or trading

vessels. English merchant ships frequently disgorged their sailors for overdue shore

leave.125 All of these visitors needed refreshment.

Town officials distinguished between legal or licensed taverns and illegal

drinking houses. The General Court limited Salem to two wine taverns, four inns,

and four retailers of wine and strong drink, compared to Boston's twenty-four

authorized taverns. Salem's ratio of one drinking place for every eighty people

resembled the English homeland more closely than rural Essex County, which could

offer only one tavern for 219 people.126 Salem's minister directed a letter to the

General Court in 1678 complaining about "too numerous" drinking houses and people

"too much given to drinking and not so well affected to Sobriety, Law & good

order."127 Reverend Higginson must have been pained to hear that a man having "a

pot of beer and a cake" one Sunday morning "scorned to go hear old Higginson for he

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was an oppressor of the poor," while another tavern goer, behind on his ministerial

rates, threatened to have the constable hanged before he would have "any of it to pay

Mr. Higenson."128 Jasper Danckaerts, a Dutch pietist visitor to Boston, referred to

"Sabbath revels." noting that "All their religion consists in observing Sunday, by not

working or [by] going into the taverns on that day."129

Patrons also distinguished between licensed and illegal inns. Almost all

disorderly tavern incidents brought to the court's attention occurred in Salem Town's

eighteen or Salem Village's four illegal Taverns.130 It was in these unlicensed, "easily

established and often short-lived" drinking houses that an alehouse culture motivated

by "festal sociability, entrepreneurial spirit, and indifference-or even hostility—to

authority" developed.131 Women played an important role in running taverns where a

"concourse of strangers" took food and drink.132

Philip English participated in tavern culture from an ambiguous perspective.

A potential inheritor of a licensed tavern managed by his mother-in-law, Eleanor

Hollingsworth, and an aspiring member of Salem's merchant elite, English had one

foot in the door of gentlemanly sociability associated with upscale wine taverns near

Town House Square at the heart of Salem. Yet Mrs. Hollingsworth’s Blue Anchor

Tavern, situated, like English’s other properties, on the eastern waterfront, welcomed

Jerseyans from the neighborhood, passengers from the Marblehead Ferry, and

fishermen and mariners from Salem and abroad. It was in this tavern that English

probably first met his future mother-in-law and possibly his future wife as well. It

was no doubt his home port before his marriage to Mary Hollingsworth. Soon, it

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would be his and pass eventually to his son, Philip English. Jr.133 As owner of a

tavern patronized by many of the dissident elements in Salem, English placed himself

in a paradoxical postion, one which kept him closely connected to the French and

fishing communities but also added to the income needed to join the merchant elite.

By operating local fishing vessels and drying, packing, and shipping facilities

on Winter Island, by owning all or portions of several ocean-going ships, by trading

with the Caribbean, Southern Europe, and the Wine Islands, and by importing goods

from London for barter or sale in Salem, English accumulated a substantial fortune.

In 1689, less than twenty years after coming to Salem, English joined Major William

Browne, Esquire, Benjamin Browne, Esquire, Major Redford, and William Hirst

among the top five taxpayers in Salem.134

With financial success came an ambiguous social status for English. In 1683,

English built a large tudor-style gabled house in the eastern end of town. Known as

"English's Great House," it contained a counting room and shop as well as expansive

living space and a "great porch on the western end."135 The house must have

towered over its surroundings for he built in an area covered with small cottages

occupied by fishermen, mariners, and ship's carpenters. (See map) The other

wealthy merchants lived in the center of Salem, clustered near the town square and

the inner docks.136 English's property also included the Blue Anchor Tavern located

at the end of English's wharf near the landing for the ferry to Marblehead.137 His

mansion stood about a block inland on the corner of English Lane and Main Street,

which led from the center of town to the fishing stages and wharves on Winter Island.

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Philip English commanded a substantial domain, owning several houses, wharves, a

tavern, a warehouse, and a great mansion, but he held sway in a marginal location.

From his "great house" beyond the center of town, English echoed the ancient

tradition of foreign merchants forced to live and conduct business outside the city

walls. In sixteenth and seventeenth-century Anglo-America this custom of exclusion

flourished in “The Liberties;” territory outside the walls of London that became a

place of production and exchange beyond the control of guilds.138 Recent English

historians portray "The Liberties," site of insane asylums, hospitals, markets, and

gallows and home to the poor, the infirm, the foreign, and the rebellious, as "a

domain of cultural ambivalence and excess."139 As such, it served as a social and

textual margin or commentary on the civic center. An area outside Philadelphia

named The Northern Liberties, like its London predecessor, became a space where

public rituals inverted the social hierarchy. Described by historian Susan Davis,

Philadelphia's Northern Liberties in the early nineteenth-century consisted of "a poor

working-class district clustered around boatyards and docks and pocked with small

workrooms."140 If any area in Salem resembled London or Philadelphia's "Liberties"

it was Philip English's neighborhood. Given that “The Liberties” are often sites of

subversive ritual and activities, English, the most visible and powerful representative

of his site, must have threatened both the agrarian interests of Salem Village and the

established merchants of Town House Square.

In 1683, the same year he built his "Great House," Philip English began his

move up the ladder of town offices by becoming a constable for the eastern pan of

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town. His duties included collecting taxes and keeping order in his pan of town. In

response to complaints from Salem, the Quarterly Court ordered constables and

tithingmen "diligently to enquire and search tippling houses" to rein in "the increase

of disorders amongst us."141 Salem's constables, in spite of their instructions, had

very little success in penetrating alehouse culture especially in unlicensed taverns. In

attempting to enforce official standards of behavior by halting fights and enforcing

curfews, constables often met with verbal and physical abuse; sometimes they were

attacked with chairs and andirons. Bystanders often refused to interfere and might

even join an attack on authority.142 Perhaps Philip English was chosen constable

because the townsmen thought he could combine the authority of office with his local

reputation to quell his countrymen and keep order in this unruly neighborhood. After

all, the selectmen had often ordered constables to "take Spetiall care to watch the

Eastward end of Towne,"143 Powerful as he may have been in his own neighborhood,

English had been unable or unwilling to collect taxes from mariners who considered

themselves transients and therefore exempt from town rates. English claimed that he

should not be responsible for non-residents; the selectmen did not agree. This

dispute derailed English's integration into the Salem elite and his claims to the wider

recognition and deference accorded every other leading merchant family.

Salem, a singular noun meaning peace, thus represented a collection of

sometimes bellicose communities. An inhabitant of Salem in the 1690s would be

uneasily aware of several "sorts" of people within the town, distinguished, in part, by

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where they chose to live. The merchant elite built substantial Tudor-style gabled

houses and simple but sturdy public buildings around Town House Square and along

Essex Street at the center of town. South of Town House Square, along the inner

harbor, merchants constructed wharves and warehouses; along Ruck's Creek several

shipbuilders set up shop, giving this area its name of Knockers Hole. The French-

speaking immigrants from the Isle of Jersey clustered together at the Eastern edge of

town. A mix of artisans, tavern-keepers, mariners, and laborers occupied smaller

dwellings along the waterfront, around the periphery, and scattered along the roads

out of town. Further to the east, beyond the Jerseyans, most fishermen were

relegated to the Neck and Winter Island, where they lived in meager cottages among

rough wooden platforms spread out across the fields for drying fish. In "the Woods,"

far to the southwest of town and nominally within the Farms, a number of Quakers

made their home. Each of these neighborhoods that made up Salem Town defined

themselves in part by their different ethnicities, religions, and economic positions.

The Reverend Hugh Peter's dream of a covenant community had shattered under the

impact of economic expansion into a kaleidoscope of shifting cultural groups.

1692 was a banner year for Philip English. At least it began that way. In

spite of occasional problems with rotting fish, his trade with the Caribbean was

flourishing.144 He had several vessels, including the Repair and the Susanna (named

after his daughter), shuttling between Salem and St. Christophers loaded with cod,

mackerel, shingles, pipe staves, and pine boards. The Repair made several trips

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across the Atlantic to Fayall in the Wine Islands, returning with cargoes of wine,

iron, raisins, and olives.145 English had improved his fortune relative to the other .

leading merchants, rising to third highest position in Salem's tax rolls.146 While no

merchant was anxious to pay more taxes, English no doubt took pride in his growing

fortune.

In March, English was elected selectman at the Spring town meeting, finally

achieving local power. This was his first elective office since a year as constable,

which had ended with English embroiled in a law suit with the board of selectmen

over uncollected taxes. With this public recognition, he joined the ranks of the

merchant elite, holding economic and political power over and for their townsmen.

Of course, unlike English, these other families — the Brownes, Curwens, and

Hathornes - shared English as a native language and the Magistrates Pew as a church

bench. Their allegiances were clear, their backgrounds unambiguous, their names

unchanged. These were the families that had dominated the board of selectmen; by

joining their ranks, English had become truly "English," or had he?

If 1692 began well for Philip English, it seemed to mark the end of a decade

of sorrowful and disturbing events for the Bay Colony and for Salem. A series of

increasingly distressing political conflicts with England produced a climate of fear and

suspicion in Massachusetts. In 1683 England began the process of revoking the

charter of Massachusetts Bay issued in 1629 and carried to New England with the

Winthrop fleet. The Stuart kings and Parliament used a conflict over land claims in

Maine as an excuse to move against a colony that, in their eyes, behaved too much

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like an independent nation.147 In September 1684, Massachusetts Bay Colony

Governor Simon Bradstreet and the General Court learned that the Charter had been

revoked. The cancellation had several important consequences for Bay colonists.

For one, every property owner's claim to real estate was immediately called into

question. Without the Charter in force, town meetings did not have the power to

grant land.148 This meant that deeds granted to colonists over the last fifty years

might be invalid. The following March the General Court, ignoring its own

unauthorized status, confirmed all land titles and granted the County Courts power to

settle land disputes. These proved futile gestures.149

The English Crown placed Massachusetts and New York under a royally

appointed governor and abolished the General Court’s elected assembly. The Royal

plan restructured the judicial system, replacing the county Quarterly Courts with

Chancery Courts to handle land claims and a Court of Common Pleas for other

complaints, all staffed by appointees from Boston.150 The new courts enforced strict

legal procedures so that many Salem plaintiffs found their cases thrown out of court

for minor details. Selectmen were constrained from suing in the name of the town;

since most were reluctant to sue as individuals for town complaints, their power to

regulate was considerably weakened.1SI

In just a few years, Bay colonists had lost their right to elect juries and to

present cases before presiding justices from Essex County, often the same men they

elected to represent them at the General Court. In Salem, figures like William

Hathorne, William Brown, Sr., Bartholomew Gedney, and later Jonathan Curwen,

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while not always in favor with every resident, at least represented the choice of a

portion or a group within Salem. Having to plead their cases before little-known

outsiders forced on them by a distant, autocratic government angered Salemites.152

Massachusetts townsmen also lost control over the powers of legislation and taxation.

Previously, the General Court had set the amount of colony tax to be paid by each

town, but the towns themselves decided on individual assessments and, by assigning

the task to constables for each neighborhood, handled collection of town, county, and

colony rates. Without the charter in force, Salemites and other Massachusetts settlers

were now in a position little better than subjects of an autocratic monarch. This

growing impotency, coupled with anxiety over the right to own private property — the

basis for much of the economic power of colonial North America and the only

opportunity for most immigrants to claim a "competency" — threatened the very heart

and purpose of society.153

Neither elimination of the General Court nor changes in the judicial system

provoked as much written commentary or heightened feeling as the enforced

toleration of Anglicans and Quakers. The Dominion government under Sir Edmund

Andros granted religious toleration and revoked tax support for Puritan ministers.154

A practicing adherent of the Church of England, Andros and some of the royal

officials he brought with him to New England, joined by some Boston merchants,

formed an Anglican church. At first they appropriated South Church for their

services but in 1688 built King's Chapel on a corner of the town burying ground.

The site was commandeered by Andros in what one Bostonian later described as "a

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barefaced squat."155 In 1690, three Massachusetts ministers, John Allin, Joshua

Moody, and Samuel Willard, authored a pamphlet opposing toleration. They

denounced their "Persecutors," implying that those who favored toleration also

scorned Godliness, "which their sore eyes feel an Ey-sore in."156 Yet few pamphlets

attacked Anglicans directly; perhaps at this moment they were too powerful.

The ministers reserved their most extreme antagonism for Quakers. The

policy of religious toleration encouraged Quakers to renew the proselytizing efforts of

the 1660s. George Keith, a Scottish itinerant preacher who aimed to rejuvenate

original Quaker principles and passions, preached openly in the streets of Boston.157

This "eye-sore" drove Puritans into a frenzy of vituperative language. Allin, Moody,

and Willard, asserted that "In Quakerism we see the Vomit cast forth in the by-past

ages by whole kennels of those creatures . . . licked up again for a new Digestion,

and once more exposed for the poisoning of mankind."158 Casting Quakers as nothing

more than beasts, they echoed the epithets voiced by defendants in the Essex County

Courts. The new Charter attempted to enforce toleration and widen voting privileges

by substituting property requirements instead of freeman status, which was often

linked to church membership. In response, Puritan lamentations grew more strident

still.

Throughout the colony in the years preceding the Salem witchcraft trials,

feelings ran high. In 1689, after receiving news of England’s Glorious Revolution

that installed William of Orange as King of England, Massachusetts colonists

rebelled. Marching through the streets of Boston, a crowd of men and boys from all

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over Boston and Essex County, led by several magistrates who had been displaced by

the Dominion government, captured and imprisoned Sir Edmund Andros and several

of his supporters.159 They re-installed aging Governor Simon Bradstreet, a long-time

magistrate and Salem resident since his marriage to widow Anne Gardner in 1679.160

But lacking a charter, burdened with a dismantled judicial system, and facing the

specter of a harsh royal response to rebellion, Bradstreet's government remained

ineffectual.161 King William's War, beginning in 1689, raised another specter, the

threat of Indian raids on rural towns. Many Essex County residents still recalled with

horror attacks by native Americans on Andover in 1676. It was in this climate of

anxiety and institutional weakness that witchcraft hysteria overtook Salem and spread

throughout the County.

Merchant Philip English's election as selectman of Salem may have resulted

from the change in voting regulations under the new Charter or a provisional

recognition that he had more in common with the leading "English" merchants of

Salem than he displayed in difference. With his election, English entered the coterie

of the Salem elite, but he had only a few months to enjoy his new found status. In

February 1692, rumors of witchcraft rippled through Salem; by the end of the month

three people had been formally accused.

Rumors of witchcraft were very much a part of early modern culture. They

represented one element of religious and magical thinking, one part of a literature of

wonder, and one aspect of a belief in Satan.162 However, executions for witchcraft

were uncommon.163 Prior to Salem's outbreak, there had been ninety-three trials for

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transplanted New Englanders had grown to maturity in East Anglia, particularly in

Essex Country (England) where the rate of witchcraft indictments and executions

exceeded New England's.165 In northern European countries with significant

Protestant populations, like Germany, Switzerland, and France, trials and executions

of witches were more common than in England or her Northern colonies. Southern

European, Catholic countries of Italy and Spain, showed little concern over

witchcraft.166 Only rarely did anxiety over witches reach the court system in the

southern colonies. The practice of executing witches disappeared everywhere by the

end of the seventeenth century. Salem was the last witchcraft panic in the Protestant

world.167 By exploring the Salem trials with a selective focus on Philip English and

his wife — both accused by girls and women from Salem Village — the motivations

underlying the hysteria become both more complex and more comprehensible. Not

only a deep-seated concern about emerging capitalism but also an anxiety about “the

other” were intensified by a period of confusing political transformation. It was not

difference alone that elicited accusations; in each case, those singled out had crossed

boundaries and placed themselves in an ambiguous relationship to the various groups

uneasily occupying Salem.

While whispers about witchcraft comprised a part of Protestant culture, this

time, rumors and accusations swirled into hysteria. In April, the Court accused

twenty-two people and in May, another thirty-nine, among them Philip English and

his wife.168 The process by which witches were accused and tried in England and

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New England followed a similar sequence. After a complaint by or on behalf of a

victim, the magistrates of the local court gathered evidence, which consisted of

depositions from witnesses including anybody claiming to be harmed by the accused.

Women suspected or accused were examined for a "witch's tit" (often a simple mole

or blemish might be identified) where the demon was thought to suckle. With written

evidence before it, a grand jury would either issue an indictment or throw out the

case. At this point, the authorities often placed those indicted in jail for weeks or

months to await trial. At the trial, the accused faced their accusers and a trial jury

determined innocence or guilt. The sentence was passed by magistrates following the

verdict.169 The records of Philip and Mary English's trial are missing, but a few

depositions tell us that Ann Putnam, Marcy Lewis, Susannah Sheldon, Mary Wallcott

and Elizabeth Booth all complained against merchant English while Mercy Lewis and

Susannah Sheldon also implicated Mrs. English.170

Neither Philip English nor his wife fit the profile of a typical seventeenth-

century witch. The most commonly accused were middle-aged women of English and

Puritan background and low social status. These women, usually married with few or

no children, had a reputation for abrasive, contentious personalities that they

displayed in conflict with family members and in crimes of theft, slander, and

assaultive speech.171 While English may have been an aggressive litigator, as

selectman and leading merchant he seemed an unlikely suspect.

According to one remaining deposition, English's case fits a pattern of

relations between accused and accusers highlighted by scholars of witchcraft in old

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and New England. In what historians Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum have

characterized as a parody of the church covenant~a contract denied—the presumed

victim withholds something from the supposed witch, who retaliates with black

magic.172 Philip English's encounter with William Beale of Marblehead, who testified

against him, followed this pattern of request and rejection.173 In his statement, Beale,

a man of about sixty, complained that in March of the previous year, "a very greate

& wracking paine had seized uppon my body." As he lay in his bed early in the

morning he saw a shadow of a man whose legs "weere of a very greate stature or

bigness." He turned away and as he looked in that direction again, "I saw in the

darkness aforesayed the plaine shape or els the person of phillip English of Salem."174

Beale wondered "what is this mans business heere now . . . or w'ch way came he

hither so soone this morneinge by land or by water or hath hee been at marbllee Head

all nighte & then laboring to correct my [torn] not to thinke that hee was a wich;"

Beale prayed to Jehovah and "by secret ejaculations instantly the roome aforesayed

became clear & the shape shade or person vanished."175

Beale had had earlier dealings with English. He testified that in the spring

before New England expeditionary forces left for Canada, Philip English came to a

neighbor's house when Beale was present and "in A fauneing & flattering manner"

asked Beale to "give mee A good evidence in shewing me the bounds of my lande;"176

English tried to entice Beale into giving supporting testimony in a land dispute with

Mr. Richard Reede of Marblehead by offering him "a piece of eighte in my pocket,"

but Beale answered: "doe not tell mee of your piece of eight for if I bee called I must

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give evidence against you." English "seemed to be moved & told mee that I Iyed."177

That fall, English sued Reade and had him arrested over the land dispute. Beale

offered to testify for Reade and even rode to Lynn to seek another witness who could

support Reade's claim. At the very moment Beale was "in discours about the titllee

of the lande aforesayed my nose gushed out bleedinge in A most extraordinary

manner."178 Beale's testimony ends leaving the court to draw the conclusion that

Philip English had practiced black magic on William Beale.

Beale did not come to court with an unblemished record. He had appeared

frequently in Essex County Court cases and had been convicted of assault, lying, and

swearing. Aware of his past, other Marblehead men scoffed when Beale tried to

assist the local constable in arresting an angry drunk. Beale recounted that his

neighbors "Called my [me] dog rogue base fellow . . . and told me I deserved to have

my braines beat out for such absurd speeches."179 Beale had troubled relations not

only with his neighbors and the legal authorities, but also within his own family. His

wife was repeatedly unfaithful, giving him a reputation far and wide as a cuckold.

Worse yet, he was not only cast out of the marriage bed but periodically driven from

his house. One rainy night he appeared at a neighbor's door, mattress in tow,

complaining pitifully that his wife "did upbraide him."180 Scorned by family and

society, Beale fit the accepted profile of a witch at least as well as the man he

accused. But Beale, originally from East Anglia and "a man of some means,"181 had

the proper pedigree of English origins and Puritan professions. He did not offer a

direct threat to the powerful elite of Salem Town who served as justices in the

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witchcraft trials.

Philip and by marriage Mary English did share one characteristic with many

other accused witches: they crossed boundaries. In Salem, as in most other New

England witchcraft episodes, a preoccupation with issues of mobility and boundaries

underlay the accusations made against individuals and acknowledged by the

community.182 Witchcraft charges on occasion seemed to be the escalation of personal

quarrels expressed in the hysteria of adolescent girls, but they did not proceed to trials

and executions without the support of a significant and powerful segment of the

community. In the local conflict between factions in Salem Village, issues of birth,

status, fixity, and mobility loomed large. From the perspective of the afflicted girls

who launched the accusations, the areas beyond the Village bounds were "dangerous

enemy territory."183 From the perspective of Salem's merchant elite who carried on

the prosecutions, territories beyond the center of Town were suspect. Members of the

faction opposed to Village minister Samuel Parris were all logical targets. No

accusations, however, were leveled at those "long-time Village residents who had

been born to wealth and respectability"; they were born to respectability and their

status was fixed.184 In contrast, those who were in motion socially and geographically

like Rebecca Nurse and Philip English drew attention to themselves and were

vulnerable because they were not fully a part of any group.

Rebecca Nurse, "a respected older woman of Salem Village,” married to a

"once obscure artisan" in Salem Town, moved to the village in 1678 when her

husband purchased a "rich, 300-acre farm" near Ipswich road.185 Residents of the

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Ipswich road area, many targeted for accusation, while nominally of the village often

seemed connected to town interests and to the mobility of travelers and traders who

passed along this main artery to the north and stayed in taverns operated by Edward

and Bridget Bishop, Joshua Rea and Walter Phillips.186 From the leading merchants’

perspective, Ipswich road was a marginal site. Rebecca Nurse had crossed both

geographic and status boundaries and become associated with the fluidity of the

Ipswich Road area; she was part of neither the isolated Village nor the mercantile

center.

A concern with boundaries had become increasingly evident throughout Essex

County in the decade preceding the trials. As longevity and population growth put

pressure on availability of land, fanners began competing for less desirable land.

During the 1680s, the Quarterly Courts handled a growing number of law suits over

formerly negligible swamp land.187 Farmers in towns laid out as open field villages

began to consolidate land and instituted lawsuits even in interior communities where

no shortage of land existed.188 Absentee landowners were targeted for legal action

because, as a Lynn farmer asserted about one such, he "cannot be contented to run

lose in his own pasture but he must break over fences."189 Ministers and others

expressed concerns in writing about problems of fences and boundaries. Minister

William Hubbard of Ipswich in his History of New England printed in 1684 cautioned

those who break through boundaries to "take heed . . . lest a serpent bite them while

they are breaking the hedge that should secure others' liberties."190 Cotton Mather, a

prominent Puritan divine, drew the association of transgressing boundaries directly to

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witchcraft. In Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions he

described metaphorically how "hellish Witches, are permitted to break through the

Hedge which our Heavenly Father has made about them that seek Him."191 Thus the

connection between Jerseymen, Quakers, dogs, and witches becomes clearer; they all

broke through boundaries constructed by the Puritan order.

English and his wife were the wealthiest and most influential of the Salem

defendants, though by late summer the young women of Salem village had widened

their net to include several important Bostonians, culminating in their accusation of

Lady Phipps, the newly appointed governor's wife.192 English, unlike his merchant

compatriots the Brownes and the Curwens, proved vulnerable to accusation. One

local historian noting, "that the storm burst mainly on the humble ones of the

community," suggested that English's case was exceptional because he suffered from

"the odium attaching to the English Church."193 I suggest that odium to French

origins played its part as well.194

Living apart, speaking, at times, a foreign language, participating in a fishing

culture which transgressed Puritan norms, the Jersey French community also

employed legal practices that further intensified their reputation as "outsiders."195 The

Channel Island's system of justice, based on French law and Norman practice,

differed significantly from English common law, which formed the basis of the Bay

Colony legal order.196 The Catel court set up to handle cases of debt and bankruptcy

on Jersey operated by a set of decrees that encouraged creditors to sue quickly.197 To

satisfy merchants, the major creditors in Jersey, a "Saturday Court" met every week

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to make prompt litigation possible.198 Philip English continued this practice in New

England and created a reservoir of resentment by acting quickly to sue debtors even if

they had acknowledged his claim and made plans for repayment. In his defense,

English claimed that "it is every dayes waye in every trading towne, for marchants

upon neglect of payment, for to arrest theire debtors."199

Throughout Essex County, the Jersey French carried a reputation not only of

sharp legal practice and clannish conniving, but also of lying and theft.200 It was

understood by most "English" townspeople that former Jersey residents would

conspire together to cheat others. One Marblehead constable accused a Jersey fish

seller, John Brock, of cheating as he weighed the catch. The constable voiced his

anger and suspicion by calling Brock a "knave, cheater, and French dog."201 Several

times, men arrested for theft found it useful to direct suspicion toward a "Frenchman"

or Jarseyman.B202 As a result of this climate of suspicion and instantaneous litigation,

local authorities were "more prone to resort to official action against these outsiders,"

and Jerseyans were quick to object to local authority. One Jerseyan, Thomas Baker,

called venerable magistrate William Hathorne a "white hat [white-haired], limping

rogue." He refused a warrant served him, asserting he "did not care for all the laws

in the country."203 The suspicion between the Jersey community and Salemites from

the town center was mutual.

Suspicion of all things French was further fueled by a rumor that had swept

through Massachusetts in 1689. It was reported by two Salem men recently released

from a French prison in Canso, Nova Scotia that Sir Edmund Andros planned to

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deliver New England into the hands of ten French men-of-war already sailing toward

Boston.204 The fact that Andros belonged to a prominent Channel Island family from

Guernsey added fuel to the fire of anti-French sentiment.205

Massachusetts colonists drew on a broader Anglo-American feeling against the

French. The ousting of French Protestants (called Huguenots), many of whom fled to

England and to British North America (see Chapter 5) after the revocation of the edict

of Nantes in 1685, reminded England that France was a Catholic country.206 Fears of

a Catholic monarch (sponsored by French troops) returning to the English throne

prompted a series of Jacobite scares and fueled support for a succession of wars with

France continuing for over 100 years.207 Historian Linda Colley in her recent book,

Britons: Forging the Nation. 1707-1837. suggests that this anti-French prejudice had

much to do with defining British nationhood in the eighteenth century. According to

Colley, “Britishness was superimposed over an array of internal differences in

response to contact with the Other, and above all in response to conflict with the

Other”as embodied in Catholic France.208(6) The process which Colley relates is

similar but not identical to the moves carried out by the Puritan center in Salem.

Unlike British identity, which did not “come into being . . . because of an integration

and homogenisation of disparate cultures,” but rather emerged from within when

faced with the Other of Catholic France and an overseas empire, Salem Puritan

merchants wished to impose homogeneity on other cultural groups or exclude them

from the geographic and political center.209 In each case, however, the French were

perceived as Other and felt as a threat.

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The negative feelings of many Salemites, particularly the leading merchants

and those allied to them, did not result in wholesale accusations of witchcraft against

the Jersey French; instead, Philip and Mary English were singled out. It was not

solely Philip English's "Frenchness" but rather his ambiguity that caused concern. By

rivaling other prominent Salem merchants in commercial success and joining them in

the highest local offices, English moved from his marginal status, across powerfully

imagined but experientially porous boundaries to the metaphorical center of Salem,

yet he continued to live among the Jersey French, to espouse Anglicanism, own a

waterfront tavern, and exceed local norms in aggressive court proceedings. This

movement, from margins to center and back grounded first and foremost in English's

origins in the ambiguous culture of the Channel Islands, like his very name, both

English and French, condemned Philip English.

The Englishes managed to escape from jail in Boston. They fled to New York

and remained there until the following year. In their absence, the Curwens seized the

English family's trade goods, looted their mansion, and appropriated furniture and

personal items. Philip English petitioned for years to receive restitution from the

General Court of Massachusetts. One of his petitions listed commodities including

Spanish iron and 43 quintals of Cod fish from the "Ware hous att the Pint of Rocks,"

[on Winter Island]; 500 "butchells of Vorginiy Whet [Virginia wheat] and 203

bushels of "Engen Com" from the "Weare Hows behind Dockter Roundeys"; sugar,

molasses, cordage, nails, and "1 Chist of Glass" in the warehouse in the Lane; and

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rum, twine, rope, and anchors in the warehouse on the wharf.’10 On his wharf at the

end of English Lane sat huge piles of 58,000 boards, 10,000 staves, and 28,000

shingles waiting to be loaded upon ships bound for the Caribbean. English listed

several quantities of cloth taken from his "dwelling house" and "Luse in the Shop

Chamber . . . besides a considerable quanitty of household goods & other things

which I Cannot exactly give a pertickolar Acco[untJ off."211 His enumerated claims

totaled £1,183. English avowed that this property was "What I had Seized tacking

away Lost and Embezeld whilst I was a prisoner" and on "flight for my life." The

estate "was so seisd and Tackin away Chiefly" by George Corwin, "Late Sheriff

desesd."212 After twenty-six years, a committee appointed by the General Court (the

legislative body of colonial Massachusetts) awarded English two hundred pounds "to

be paid out of the publick Treasury in full satisfaction for what he may have sustained

& suffered. "213

The English family returned to Salem in 1693 to rebuild their lives. Mary

English died soon after, supposedly of an illness contracted in the damp Boston jail.214

With his goods expropriated and his home and warehouses ransacked, Philip English

disappeared from the list of taxpayers in 1692-93. Few records exist to indicate how

he managed to re-build his fortune. We do know he entered into occasional trade

ventures with some of the leading merchant families of Salem. In 1695, for example,

he consigned a shipment of wine worth almost £700 to a partnership he formed with

Samuel Browne, John Turner, and Edward Lyde (formerly a clerk of wealthy Boston

merchant Samuel Shrimpton), and in 1700 he accepted a power of attorney from

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Benjamin Marston to facilitate trade arrangements.’15 Perhaps the “English”

merchants of Salem sought a French connection to protect them from privateers on

the seas during King William's war: more likely, English offered generous terms and

important overseas contacts. Unfortunately, the few scattered pages remaining from

his accounts of the 1690s offer only partial answers. What does stand out in the

record is that merchant English continued to ship fish to the West Indies and Southern

Europe and bring back wine from Madeira and Fayall. He sometimes ventured

shipments in partnership with other Salem traders. Economic interest apparently

prevailed over cultural difference, for members of the Salem establishment willing to

share business arrangements with a French Anglican in their midst. In doing so, they

assisted Philip English in recovering from his losses sustained during the outbreak of

community hysteria and xenophobia.

By 1699, having re-established his overseas commerce, English again held the

fifth highest tax assessment for the town, joining two of the Browne family,

Deliverance Parkman, and Benjamin Marston as the wealthiest men in Salem.216

Philip English's financial success may have influenced the property-holding

inhabitants now able to vote for local officials. He won election to the board of

selectman in 1700 for the first time since his brief service in 1692. Yet his

ambiguous origins, part French, part English, continued to set him off from the other

"English" merchants in Salem. And, once again, his tenure was cut short by social

conflict.

How did Philip English and the Jersey “French” community challange the

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Puritan communal ideal?217 In Puritan doctrine, and in other Calvinist sects as well,

merchants pursued trade as a calling, a particular employment ordained for each

individual by God himself. Ministers exhorted the faithful to exercise diligence and

care in the daily work of their calling. Yet wealth did not automatically result from

diligence but came as a gift from God. New England Puritans added another

conceptual layer to the matrix of obligations and rewards. They perceived themselves

as God's people chosen to build a new city in the wilderness. If riches are blessings

from God, and New England Puritans are God's chosen people, then an Anglican

Frenchman who achieves great wealth in the midst of Salem represents an anomaly —

something out of order. Anthropologist Mary Douglas suggests that when the social

system requires someone to hold ambiguous roles, "these persons [like English] are

credited with uncontrolled, unconscious, dangerous, disapproved powers-such as

witchcraft and evil eye."218 An anomaly from his first entrance into Salem, Philip

English refused to stay put. He built a "great house" like other leading families — but

on the wrong side of town. He became a selectman and then breached the rules of

petitioning. He anglicized his name and gradually gave up French trading

connections in favor of English partners, yet he refused to forsake his Anglican

worship, rowing to Marblehead on Sundays to attend Anglican services.219 English

was neither French nor English, neither stranger nor member. He remained

undefinable, ambiguous, and threatening.

Philip English's personal and family history continued to be shaped by his

marginality in Salem. Gathering more and more wealth through his successful trading

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ventures, English continued to represent a subversive element in the civic order of

Salem. Shut out from the traditional avenues of power through public office. English

attempted to preserve and extend his commercial empire. As his two eldest sons

came of age, he quickly introduced them to commerce by employing them as ship

captains and teaching them the trade. William proved a gifted learner and soon

piloted vessels to the Caribbean. Philip Jr. had a more difficult time mastering the

multitude of skills required, from careful accounting to aggressive bargaining and

from supervising cargo to plotting an ocean course by sun and stars. In spite of

careful tutoring Philip Jr preferred dry land, and after a few coastal voyages, he took

over management of the family inn, the Blue Anchor Tavern.

William, the older son, was by all accounts a talented mariner.220 Few

documents remain to bear witness to his skill but one account from 1712 details a

voyage to Surinam by sloop Mary with "William English Commander."221 Three

years later, at twenty-five, William English died. His brother John continued to

command ships for his father, and Philip Sr. looked also to his son-in-law John

Touzel to carry on the family business.222 In 1720, English acknowledging “the Love

and good will and natural effection which I have an do bear to my Son in Law John

Touzel and Susannah his wife" granted them the deed to a seven acre property

including "buildings, fencing, & Fruit trees" on Point of Rocks, a promontory jutting

into Salem harbor between his own mansion, tavern, and wharf complex and the

fishing compound at Winter Island.223 Revealing a concern for family stability and

lineage, he included "the children born after the said Susanna my Daughter unto my

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said son in law" in the deed.224

While firmly planting his descendents at the eastern end of Salem, English

finally, in 1732, succeeded in planting his name in the center of Salem by donating

land for the first Anglican church to be built near Town House Square. In that same

year, a probate commission found that the estate of Philip English "is greatly wasted

and daily wasting." The court judged English "not capable of manageing his estate"

and appointed his "Particular friend & acquaintance" Thomas Manning and his son

Philip joint guardians of the senior English.225 Later accounts referred to English's

"cloudiness of mind" assumed to have been brought on by the unjust treatment he

received during the witchcraft episode forty years before.226 English, over eighty by

this time, was sent to live with his daughter and son-in-law. An account submitted by

the Touzels to the estate reveals the mundane details of his now restricted life. There

were charges for "His Board Washing & Mending & Fire and Attandance in Sicknes

& Health" at 20 shillings for seventy weeks and 25 shillings for another fifty

weeks.227 During these same years, Touzel brought suit against his father-in-law for a

debt of £85, which "tho often requested" English "hath not paid but detained ye same

from him."228 One can imagine the stress within that household, the conflicting

claims of love, obligation, and frustration with an aged father no longer able to care

for himself and grown children not able to communicate with him. One small entry

squeezed into the middle of an account page submitted to the executors of English’s

estate tells us that these imaginings have validity. A brief list of charges concluded

with this note: "To my fathers Board & Lodgeing from 7 Oct 1735 when Mr Toozel

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turned Father out of doors to 10 March when he died."229 He suffered the same fate,

and perhaps the same disease, as abandoned Alzheimer patients on the streets of urban

American today. Philip English died as the ultimate foreigner, no longer piloting a

ship of wealth but condemned to passage on a ship of fools.230

A complex of issues crystallized around Philip English, who, with his financial

success, threatened the Puritan definition of community and glaringly exposed the

tension between a fixed social and religious order and a mobile and multicultural

commercial economy built into Hugh Peter's prescription for Salem. Laid out so

many years before, Peter’s ideas pointed the community toward a cultural

predicament which even the drastic remedy of executions for witchcraft could not

solve.

Historians have interpreted the Salem witchcraft trials as a conflict between

capitalism and a traditional, Puritan-tinged society, and this interpretation is partially

correct.231 But in Salem, a group of wealthy, Puritan, shipping merchants comprised

the traditional order. The Browne family, like Philip English, sent ships to the

Caribbean, Southern Europe, and England. The Brownes led the tax rolls and

dominated local government.232 Other wealthy merchants such as George Curwen and

his sons, Benjamin Lynde, Benjamin Marston, and William Hirst participated in the

shaping of civic society as selectmen and justices. Salem then could be described as a

merchant oligarchy.233 That oligarchy was threatened and almost overturned by the

confrontation from rural Salem village during the witchcraft crisis in 1692.234 The

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challenge, I suggest, came not only from resistance to capitalism but also from those

marginalized for reasons of nationality, religion, or cultural practices. Their

"foreignness." their difference, threatened the social order built on a capitalist and

Puritan foundation.

Philip English embodied the paradox built into Puritan town founding in

Massachusetts. English, his sons, his Jersey French son-in-law John Touzel, and the

many young French-speaking apprentices he and Touzel gathered around them to

assist at sea and on land, imperiled the closed world of Puritan community. For

Salem merchants, the desire to increase profits through trade with "foreign" that is to

say, non-English merchants conflicted with their search for an ordered and peaceful

community of visible saints. Concerns about wealth and vice, which appear in the

sermon literature, represented an anxiety resulting, in part, from the tension of

overlapping communities and the tendency for profitable exchange to force and

expand the limits of the local. Exclusion of "the other," not rejection of capitalism or

wealth, marked the boundary of the Puritan community. Therefore the much

lamented "decline" posited by Puritan ministers (and taken up by twentieth-century

historians) was not solely a free fall into a market society -- trade relations for profit

were fully present in the first years of the Bay Colony.235 It also reflected a fear of

strangers' potential to unsettle the fragile culture of colonial towns wedged between

the ocean and the forests, both peopled with the different and disorderly. The threat

came not from wealth but from wealth in the hands of outsiders of non-English

origins and non-Puritan persuasions. Declension, long interpreted as a result of

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capitalist wealth and market forces, can also, I argue, be interpreted as the penetration

of "the foreign." Philip English represented the foreign element in Salem. His

wealth did not offend, but wealth owned and displayed by someone so different, did.

English's success threatened the power of providential discourse.

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NOTES - CHAPTER 3

1. Peter Stallybrass and Allon White, The Politics and Poetics of Transgression (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1986), 27.

2. Three recent historical treatments of Salem witchcraft stand out: Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum developed a detailed community study, Salem Possessed, based primarily on public documents relating to Salem Village, the outlying agrarian district of Salem. Their study connected intense local conflicts in Salem Village with a fear shared by many of the villagers, of capitalist transformation and the growing dominance of the commercial center in Salem Town. In The Devil in the Shape of a Woman. Carol Karlsen put gender at the center of her analysis. She found that accused witches were often women who transgressed the traditional, limited role expected of women by the community and did so without the protection of a father or husband. For example, widows with property in their own names and without a closely related strong male figure to speak for and control them often became targets of witchcraft accusations. John Demos, in Entertaining Satan, undertook an extended interpretation of witchcraft throughout New England during the seventeenth-century. His interpretation holds that witches are often figures who occupy an ambiguous position within the community, usually as a result of having crossed social boundaries shared by many and enforced by the dominant group. These three studies taken together form a complex, and in many ways, mutually reinforcing picture of a central event in New England's early settlement. See Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1974); Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Women: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W.W.Norton, 1987); John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982).

3. See for example, Edward T. Hall, The Hidden Dimension (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, 1966 who explains that “both man and his environment participate in molding each other.” and that “people from different cultures inhabit different sensory worlds.” Therefore, according to Hall, “the architectural and urban environments that people create are expressions of “ their culture. The layout of Salem was partially determined by the powerful group of Puritan merchants who occupied the literal and metaphorical center of town.(2).

4. See Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (New York: W.W.Norton & Company, 1995), 71.

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5. On English joint-stock companies and the Dorchester Company in particular 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, 1991), 134-35 and 137-38.

6. Richard P.Gildrie, Salem. Massachusetts. 1626-1683: A Covenant Community (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1975), 2.

7. Ibid., 8.

8. Ibid., 19.

9. They followed Williams to escape not only religious persecution but also depressed economic conditions. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 73.

10. Gildrie, Salem. 27, 28; Christine Heyrman, Commerce and Culture: The Maritime Communities of Colonial Massachusetts. 1690-1750 (New York:W.W.Norton & Company, 1984), 33, 35; and Stephen Foster, The Long Argument: English Puritanism and the Shaping of New England Culture. 1570- 1700 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), 139. Some of the “strange ways” practiced by Roger Williams congregation included women wearing veils and lay prophecy during church meetings by both men and women.

11. David Grayson Allen. In English Ways: The Movement of Societies and the Transferal of English Local Law and Custom to Massachusetts Bay in the Seventeenth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981) offers a detailed examination of the differences of English regional cultures and the transfer of those differences to New England communities. Allen's detailed work explores the differences between port cities and rural villages within East Anglia. Since the largest single group of East Anglians coming to Salem came from Great Yarmouth, the major port for Norfolk, England's second largest city, we can presume to categorize their customs. Allen explains that the influence of manors had diminished considerably in the county of Norfolk in East Anglia., 66, 70 while manorial control continued to be a significant factor in county political and social arrangements in the West Country. For the purposes of this argument it is only necessary to sketch a few basic differences between the first group o f settlers in Salem, referred to as the Old Planters, and the next group to arrive from East Anglia (a region in the East of England which includes the counties of Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex). In areas like the chalk country of Wiltshire/Hampshire where manorial control remained strong, it was often associated with a more rigid hierarchical system, what Allen refers to as “common western English traits, such as the propensity for rigid social structure. ”(89) According to Allen, the town of Newbury, both an agricultural and port town north of Boston and Salem on the Merrimac River, [like Salem] was “born in diversity, even in contention. ”(89) In this case, settlers from Wiltshire and Hampshire, southwest of London, even though near neighbors, brought with them to

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New England a “variety of subregional characteristics.” (89) They, like the settlers in Salem described here, “manifested wide differences in their views toward religion, ranging from mild episcopacy to radical personalized religion. ”(89)

12. Working from a somewhat broader perspective, David Hackett Fischer in Albion's Seed etc. characterizes the differences between farming villages and commercial ports in East Anglia and the larger manor holdings and landed-gentry (and aristocracy) dominated West Country. Fischer demonstrates how those differences played out in the divergent settlement patterns of New England and the Chesapeake. On differences between East Anglia and the West Country see also David Hackett Fischer, Albion’s Seed; Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 42-49 (on East Anglia) and 241-247 (on the West Country).

13. Gildrie Salem 33 & 55.

14. GS36.

15. See GS 46,61; Felt 274. = Short bio of Curwen and impt to town.

16. Gildrie, Salem, 49; Darrett Rutman, Winthrop's Boston: Portrait of a Puritan Town. 1630-1649 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965), 118-136.

17. See Innes. Creating the Commonwealth. 113.

18. Peter had a wide popularity in England; he recorded having preached to a crowd of 6 or 7,000 people at St. Sepulchre in London. Rutman, Winthrop's Boston. 14. In the 1640s Peter returned to England as Chaplin to Oliver Cromwell and lost his life for the Puritan cause. See Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 228.

19. Gildrie, Salem, 51.

20. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 288. In these early years of settlement, the Colony arranged/sponsored the building of at least two 300 ton ships. Most ships plying the Atlantic and owned by New England merchants during the next 100+ years were half that size or less. See for example entrances and clearances for Salem Harbor 1751. Ocean-crossing vessels could be as small as 40 tons and some were as large as 200 tons but most ranged from 80-150 tons.

21. For Innes the problem centered on social mobility. “The Puritan economic ethic . . . contained features that subverted the social order it was designed to sustain — in particular a degree of economic mobility inconsistent with the ideal of an ordered social hierarchy.” Ibid., 101. In my interpretation, it was the cultural difference of groups drawn to Massachusetts by Puritan economic plans that posed the most difficult problem. Social mobility among Puritans from Eastern England was welcomed as witnessed by the careers of Simon Bradstreet and John Hull.

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22. Gildrie, Salem. 52. See Miller. Colony to Province. 210 on the importance of the covenant.

23. Ibid., 53.

24. Perry Miller, The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), 439.

25. Innes says, “few leaders of Winthrop's generation appear to have realized that many of their own policies were fostering this social mobility.” Nor, I argue, did they recognize that they were fostering cultural pluralism. Innes, Creating the Commonwealth. 105.

26. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 39.

27. Ibid., 37.

28. Gildrie, Salem. 61, 57. For a discussion of tenant farms and tenancy in Essex County Massachusetts, not widely recognized as an important feature of early New England, see Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex Countv. Massachusetts. 1630-1850 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994), 53-54 and 77-83.

29. Constables were chosen for different neighborhoods within the town. Their duties included keeping order and collecting taxes in their assigned neighborhood.

30. Ibid., 123, 153.

31. Ibid., 71.

32. Ibid., 61, 110.

33. Ibid., 26, 67, 103, 113; Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 49; Gildrie, Salem. 67-70.

34. Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 214and passim.

35. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 39.

36. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 39, 40-42.

37. Miller points out that “the saints did not need to be a majority if only they held the power,” as they did, for the most part, in Salem. Miller, Colony to Province. 53.

38. Ibid., 87;Joseph B. Felt, Annals of Salem (Boston,1845), 238,252;Gildrie, Salem, 107, 109.

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39. Gildrie, Salem. 109; Bernard Bailyn, New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 135-136.

40. Boyer and Nissenbaum, 87; Gildire, Salem. 138.

41. Vickers, Farmers & Fishermen. 91-94; Harold A. Pinkham, Jr., “Winter Island, Salem: Its Use and Abuse” EIHC vol. 118 (1982), 189; Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 209-211; Bailyn, New England Merchants. 77.

42. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 96, 139; David Thomas Konig, Law and Society in Puritan Massachusetts: Essex Countv. 1629-1692 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 75-76; Richard P.Gildrie, “Taverns and Popular Culture in Essex County, Massachusetts, 1678-1686,” EIHC vol. 124 (1988), 165-67.

43. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 97.

44. Pinkham, “Winter Island.” 190.

45. Vickers. Farmers and Fishermen. 130-131. Hevrman. Commerce and Culture. 213;

46. Rutman, Winthrop's Boston. 183-84; Bailyn, New England Merchants. 45-47.

47. A quintal means hundredweight and equals either 100 kilograms or 100 pounds though in practice the amount could vary considerably. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 98-100; Bailyn, Ibid, 78.

48. Gildrie, Salem. 103; Manuscript Guide, Curwen Family Papers, James Duncan Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA.

49. Gildrie, Salem, 61, 106-07, 103.

50. The Records of the First Church in Salem. Massachusetts. 1629-1736. Ed. by Richard D. Pierce (Salem, MA; Essex Institute, 1974),9 & 27; Boyer and Nissenbaum, 119; Sidney J. Perley, The History of Salem. Massachusetts. 4 vols. (Salem: Sidney Perley, 1929), 11:221.

51. Felt, Annals of Salem. 279.

52. Ibid., 274; Manuscript Guide, Curwen Family Papers.

53. Manuscript Guide, Curwen Family Papers; Gildrie, Salem, 61, 111.

54. Felt, Annals of Salem. 274; Manuscript Guide, Curwen Family Papers; Konig, Law and Society. 76-77; Gildrie, Salem. 103.

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55. Felt, Annals of Salem. 274; Gildrie, Salem. 61; Manuscript Guide, Curwen Family Papers.

56. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 45.

57. Bailyn, New England Merchants. 77, 80-81; Vickers, Fanners and fishermen, 108-113.

58. I am indebted to Daniel Vickers and the wonderful work he has done in piecing together the working arrangements between fishermen and merchants. In examining merchant account books it is easy to get the impression that the fish some how appear as if by magic, packed and loaded on a transatlantic voyage.

59. Vickers. Farmers and Fishermen. 112.

60. This reconstruction of the exchange cycle in the fishing industry is built upon Vickers and my own examination of merchants's papers and account books. For an excellent discussion of the importance of the fish trade to Massachusetts see James G. Lydon, "Fish for Gold: The Massachusetts Fish Trade with Iberia, 1700-1773," NEQ vol LIVH (Dec 1981): 539-582.

61. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 133, 139.

62. Cotton Mather, Fishermen Calling, 12-20, 42-43. Quoted in Ibid., 140.

63. Ibid, 135, 138.

64. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 127.

65. Ibid., 127; Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 213.

66. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed.. Records of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. II: 553.

67. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 127.

68. Gildrie, Salem, 117, 130, 133.

69. Carla Pestana, Quakers and Baptists in Colonial Massachusetts. 27, note #4.

70. Ibid., 25.

71. Ibid., 27-28, 29, 36-37, 42.; Christine Heyrman, “Specters of Subversion, Societies of Friends: Dissent and the Devil in Provincial Essex County, Massachusetts,” in Saints and Revolutionaries: Essays on Early American History. Edited by David D. Hall, John M. Murrin, and Thad W.Tate (New York: W.W.Norton, 1984), 48.

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72. See Jonathan M. Chu, “The Social Context of Religious Heterodoxy: The Challenge of Seventeenth-Century Quakerism to Orthodoxy in Massachusetts.” EIHC vol. 118 ( April 1982): 119-150.

73. Pestana, Quakers and Baptists. 41; Map of Salem 1700.

74. Heyrman. Commerce and Culture. 126-130.

75. Springer v. Vittum, 1712. Quoted in Heyrman, “Dissent and the Devil.” 62.

76. Perley, History of Salem. 111:28.

77. A.G. Jamieson, ed. A People of the Sea: The Maritime History of the Channel Islands. (New York: Methuen, 1986), 272.

78. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. Ill, 114; Map of Salem 1700.

79. See Salem tax lists, Salem Town Manuscripts, Peabody Essex Museum. Also see Gildrie, Salem, passim on the merchant elite in Salem.

80. A. G. Jamieson,ed. A People of the Sea: The Maritime History of the Channel Islands. (New York: Methuen, 1986), xxx.

81. Ibid., xxx.

82. Ibid., xxxii.

83. Philip Falle, An Account of the Isle of Jersey. The Greatest of Those Islands that are now the only Remainder of the English Dominions in France with A New and Accurate Map of the Island. (London: John Newton, 1694), 60; Jamieson, People of the Sea, xxx-xxxii.

84. Jamieson, People of the Sea.xxx-xxxii.

85. Falle, Isle of Jersey. 56.

86. Falle, Isle of Jersey, "Preface".

87. Jamieson, People of the Sea, xxx.

88. Jamieson, People of the Sea, xxxv; J.C. Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering, 1500-1689," in A^People of the Sea: The Maritime History of the Channel Islands, ed. A.G. Jamieson (London:Methuen, 1986), 61-74; Falle, Isle of Jersey. "Preface."

89. Rosemary E. Ommer, From Outpost to Outport: Structural Analysis of the Jersey-Gaspe Cod Fishery. 1767-1886 (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's

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University Press, 1991), 12; Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering." 60: Jamieson, People of the Sea, xxxvi.

90. F.B. Tupper, The History of Guernsey and its Baliwick (2nd ed. London, 1876), 132. Quoted in Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering," 61.

91. Lord Hatton, Governor of Guernsey, quoted in Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering," 69.

92. Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering," 69, 71.

93. Ibid, 75. (Appleby)

94. Ibid., 78,85.

95. G.R. Balleine, A History of the Island of Jersey (London; Holder & Stoughton, 1950), 225; quoted in Ommer, Outpost to Outport. 15; Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering," 89.

96. Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering," 86, 94.

97. Appleby, "Neutrality, Trade, and Privateering," 77, 85. This production was accomplished by a total population of about 25,000; therefore per capita production equaled about 100 stockings annually.(Ommer 13)

98. Ibid., 87; Ommer, Outpost to Outport. 18.

99. Ommer, Outpost to Outport. 18. (for whole para.)

100. Falle, Isle of Jersey, 84.

101. Ibid., 85-86. (Falle)

102. Robert A.Gross, The Miniutemen and Their World. (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 76 and Chapter 4, passim.

103. A.G. Jamieson, "The Channel Islands and Overseas Settlement, 1600-1900," in A People of the Sea: The Maritime History of the Channel Islands, ed. A.G.Jamieson (London: Methuen, 1986), 273-74.

104. Falle, Isle of Jersey. 83-84.

105. See Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen. Pirates, and the Anglo-American Maritime World. 1700-1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), Chapter 1 “The Seaman as Man of the World: A Tour of the North Atlantic, c. 1740. ”

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106. General information about Philip English and Salem is drawn from local histories cited above and below. On English's first appearance in Salem see Bailyn, New England Merchants. 144.

107. George F. Cheever, "A Sketch of Philip English—A Merchant in Salem from About 1670 to about 1733-4," EIHC Vol.l No. 5 (November 1859), 158.

108. See Bailyn, New England Merchants. 144, 146.

109. Letter of indebtedness between Philipe L'Anglois and Sieur Cennaud Cou?id. merchant, Apr 20, 1677. Typed translation. English Family Papers, Peabody and Essex Museum (formerly the Essex Institute) Salem, Massachusetts. Hereafter abbreviated as EFP.

110. Philip English to Major John Pilgrim, Jan 28. 1695, LS, English Family Papers, Essex Institute, Salem, Massachusetts: Account page, 1705-1707, English Family Papers, El.

111. See EFP and Konig, Law and Society. 70-71.

112. Jamieson. People of the Sea. 237

113. Phel. Gaudin to Philippe L'Anglois. Indenture 7 Jan 1675; Jean Binet to Philippe L'Anglois, Indenture 5 Feb 1675. Originals in French, EFP.

114. Not all of Philip English's documents survived and other brief references like that of Josiah Cotton in Marblehead, indicate that he played an important role in peopling Salem and Marblehead with "French" labor.

115. Josiah Cotton. Quoted in Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 245.

116. Essex Quarterly Court Records (Salem, ) Edited by George F.Dow, VI:347.

117. Ibid., IV:348; 346-48; 346.

118. Ibid., IX: 198.

119. Konig. Law and Society. 71. For a discussion of the material goods and economic prospects of resident fishermen (often from Jersey) in seventeenth-century New England see Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen, 135.

120. Konig, Law and Society. 70; David Konig, “A New Look at the Essex 'French': Ethnic Frictions and Community Tensions in Seventeenth-Century Essex County, Massachusetts,” EIHC vol. 110 #3 (July 1974): 165-180; Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 245. The cultural differences were so persistent that even in the third decade of the eighteenth century their existed a climate of mutual hostility

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between Jerseyans and other Essex County families. See Heyrman. Commerce and Culture, 299-300.

121. Falle. Isle of Jersey. 118, 137, 141, 136. 141.

122. Richard P. Gildrie, “Taverns and Popular Culture in Essex County, Massachusetts. 1678-1686,” EIHC vol. 124 (1988), 171-72.

123. Felt, Annals of Salem. 262.

124. Vickers, Farmers .amLEishermen, 156-57.

125. Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 213.

126. Gildrie, “Taverns,” 161-62; Peter Clark. The English Alehouse: A Social History. 1200-1830 (London: Longman, 1983), 44-45.

127. Reverend John Higginson. Quoted in Gildrie. “Taverns,” 163.

128. Essex Quarterly Court Records VII: 1,110,246-47.

129. Journal of Jasper Danckaerts. 1679-80. ed. B.B. James and J. Franklin (New York: 1913), 274.

130. See Gildrie, “Taverns,” Table 2, 164.

131. Ibid., 168.

132. Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen. 133.

133. See EFP.

134. See tax list etc. (I may do a chart or enter all the tax stuff in an appendix) Have to look up proper citation.) The other eight were Samuel Gardner, Major Redford, Major Browne, Esq, John Hathorne, Esq, William Hirst, John Horne [later Ome], Benjamin Browne, Esq, and Israel Porter. In 1690 English and Samuel Gardner were each assessed 6 L, Major Redford 10 L, and Major William Browne 36 L. Salem Tax Lists, transcribed by WPA in Salem Town Records, MSS Collections, EI.

135. James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Seventeenth Century. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1933, 323, xviii, 296; Cheever, "Sketch of Philip English," EIHC. 160; In his diary, Reverend William Bentley, noted intellectual and bibliophile, describes a visit to English's house. "It was the largest in Town [in 1690] and he was a merchant having 24 sail of vessels." Bentley describes his visit, "Went over the well known house of English near the neck gate. The Cellars are completely finished.

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The Stone wall is built of as large stones as are now in use which contradicts the opinion that they generally built of small stones of choice, at that age. There is an hearth, very large oven, and all conveniences. The Rooms are the largest in Town, the floors are laid in plank, and are sound at this day. . . . the upper pan of the house among the Peeks have curious partitions and very much Room. Even the Cellars are plastered." Bentley's editor Edward S. Waters adds a note about the house: "It was taken down before 1840 and was then known as the 'forty peaked house.'" William Bentley, The Diary of William Bentley: Pastor of the East Church Salem. Massachusetts 4 vols. Reprint edition (Gloucester, MA.: Peter Smith, 1962), 248.

136. For observations on the neighborhood where English built his "great house," see Phillips, Salem in the Seventeenth Century. 180-181, 314, 322 and James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century. Salem: Essex Institute, 1969. Original published in 1937.

137. Phillips. Salem in the Seventeenth Century. 181,314. English's wife Mary inherited the Blue Anchor from her parents. Antiquarian accounts suggest that Mary's mother Eleanor Hollingsworth ran the tavern and it was there that she first saw Philip English, her daughter's future husband. Ibid, 209, 323; Cheever, 160.

138. On the geographic and social marginalizing of merchants, markets, and exchange see Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-american Thought. 1550-1750. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 21-23. On "the Liberties" outside the walls of London as a site of production and exchange beyond the control of guilds see Ibid., 50. For an analysis of "The Liberties" as "a domain of cultural ambivalence and excess," see Steven Mullaney, "Civic Rites, City Sites: The Place of the Stage." in Staging the Renaissance: Reinterpretations of Elizabethan and Jacobean Drama. New York: Routledge, 1991; Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theater in Nineteenth-Centurv Philadelphia. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.

139. Mullaney, "Civic Rites," 22.

140. Davis, Parades. 78. See also Stuart Blumin who characterizes Philadelphia's Northern Liberties as an area with few merchants and professionals and many unskilled workers. It was among the “least attractive and least convenient parts of the city,” where “municipal services were poorly performed.” Stuart M. Blumin, The Emergence of the Middle class: Social Experience in the American City. 1760-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 48.

141. Gildrie, “Taverns,” 171.

142. Ibid.

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143. Town Records of Salem. Massachusetts. 3 vols. (Salem:Essex Institute, 1869, 1913, 1934), 2:257-58.

144. Daniel King to Philip English, 1688. Philip English Papers. James Duncan Phillips Library, Peabody and Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. Hereafter referred to as PEP and PEM respectively.

145. Mss. Account pages, 1688 and 1689. PEP, PEM; Sidney Perley, The History of Salem Massachusetts 4 vols. (Salem: Sidney Perley, 1929), IV:317.

146. Salem Town Records, Tax Lists, Typescript. PEM.

147. See David Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America (New York: Haper and Row, 1972) and J.M. Sosin, English America and the Revolution of 1688: Royal Administration and the Structure of Provincial Government (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982) on Mason and Gorges claims.

148. Konig, Law and Society. 159.

149. Ibid.. 161.

150. Ibid., 160-163.

151. Ibid., 162-164.

152. Ibid., 162-63.

153. For a discussion of the ideal of "competency" or "a degree of comfortable independence" as the goal for most colonists see Daniel Vickers, "Competency and Competition: Economic Culture in Early America" WMO (January 1990): 3-29.

154. Christine Leigh Heyrman, "Specters of subversion. Societies of Friends: Dissent and the Devil in Provincial Essex County, Massachusetts," in Saints & Revolutionaries: Essays on Early American History eds. David D. Hall, John M. Murrin, Thad W. Tate (New York: W.W. Norton, 1984), 56.

155. N. I. Bowditch quoted in Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History 2nd.ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 35.

156. John Allin, Joshua Moody and Samuel Willard, The Principles of the Protestant Religion Maintained (Boston: Richard Pierce, 1690), Preface.

157. Heyrman, Devil and Dissent. 56-57; See Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible; Social Change. Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 50-52 on George Keith in Philadelphia.

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158. Allin. et.al. Principles of the Protestant Religion. Preface.

159. See Lovejoy, The Glorious Revolution in America.

160. Bradstreet’s first wife, also named Ann, and New England's first published poet died in 1672. The Gardner/Bradstreet "mansion" a Tudor-style house stood on what are now the grounds of the Essex Institute of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem.

161. See Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 108 on the problem of weak institutions in New England during this period.

162. On witchcraft in seventeenth-century England and America, see John Demos, Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early_New England (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982); Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1971); Carol F. Karlsen, The Devil in the Shape of a Woman: Witchcraft in Colonial New England (New York: W.W.Norton, 1987); and David D. Hall, Worlds of Wonder. Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Earlv New England (Cambrdige: Harvard University Press, 1990). On witchcraft in Salem the best full-length treatment is Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed.

163. John Demos, cited in Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 31.

164. Demos. Entertaining Satan. 11.

165. Ibid., 11-12.

166. Ibid., 11-12.

167. Ibid., 13.

168. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 31.

169. Demos, Entertaining Satan. 10.

170. Paul Boyer and Stephen Nissenbaum, The Salem Witchcraft Papers: Verbatim Transcripts of the Legal Documents of the Salem Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692. 3 vols. (New York: Da Capo, 1977), 1:313-321.

171. Demos, Entertaining Satan. 93. See also Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed, 204-208.

172. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 210.

173. Salem Witchcraft Papers. I: 317-319.

174. Ibid., 1:317.

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175. Ibid., 1:317-318.

176. Ibid, 1:318.

177. Ibid.

178. Ibid., 1:318-19.

179. Essex Quarterly Court Records, V:90-92. Quoted in Heyrman, Commerce and Culture, 220.

180. Ibid., 216.

181. Ibid., 216.

182. See Boyer and Nissenbaum, 187, 191.

183. Ibid., 192.

184. Ibid., 187.

185. Ibid., 147, 200.

186. See Map 5 "The Ipswich Road, 1692," Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. 95.

187. Konig, Law and Society. 55.

188. Konig, Law and Society. 55; Greven?

189. Ibid., 68.

190. William Hubbard, A General History of New England from the Discovery to MDCLXXX. (Cambridge, Mass.: Hillard & Metcalfe, 1815), xiv.

191. Cotton Mather, Memorable Providences Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions (Boston: 1690).

192. Ibid. 32.

193. Cheever, "Sketch of Philip English,"EIHC, 162.

194. Konig in Law and Society supports this interpretation on English as a vulnerable outsider. Philip English "possessing vast property, privileges denied to others, and a certain 'arrogance of manner,'” was according to Konig, “the preeminent symbol of the Jersey community that his English neighbors regarded suspiciously and enviously." Konig. Law and Society. 74.

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195. Konig, "Essex 'French'”, 171-73: Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 214.

196. Konig. Essex French. 173. Falle. Account of the Isle of Jersey. 111. lam greatly indebted to David Konig's work on the Essex “French” for providing support for my understanding of the ethnic Other in Salem.

197. In Jersey bankruptcy laws required a creditor to assume all of a debtor's outstanding debts to recover just their own loss Konig, Essex French. 173-74.

198. Ibid., 174.

199. Philip English, Masury vs. Bridges. Essex Quarterly Court Records. VII:111. Konig explains that a juridical system used on the Isles of Jersey and Guernsey, home of many of the Essex French including Philip English, differed in important ways from the system of Quarterly Courts used in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Konig argues that this difference, which caused Channel Islanders to resort to jail the minute a debt became delinquent, led to much of the anger from Salemites of English origin accustomed to a slower and seemingly gentler pace of debt collection. Konig cites instances of Philip English jailing Benjamin Mazury, another Frenchman from Jersey, who reviled English's "perfidious and fallacious act," as an example of a practice offensive to English colonists. However, these same records of the Essex Quarterly Court yield similar examples not confined to those of French origin. For example, in a single court session in 1655, wealthy Ipswich merchant William Payne, member of the local gentry and benefactor of the grammar school in Ipswich, evicted three different impecunious defendants from their land for overdue debts and even seized the corn crop of one of the debtors who subsequently disappeared from the town records. Konig also refers to English’s willingness to sue his father-in-law's estate as a breach of Bay Colony procedures but in Boston at about the same time, leading Puritan merchant Peter Sergeant initiated a suit against the settlement of his father-in- law’s estate. The suit embroiled Sergeant and his brother-in-law, Samuel Shrimpton. inheritor the Shrimpton fortune (See Chapter 2), in a legal battle that lasted for years. Therefore, while the Channel Islanders' willingness to resort to legal measures might have exceed that of other Salem figures it represented only an incremental increase in an already litigious society. This in itself would not account for the marginalization of a successful trader like Philip English. Coupled with his French origins, accent, and Anglican beliefs, however, it adds to the definition of difference against which Puritan merchants defined themselves.

200. Konig, Essex French, 174-74 ; Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 214.

201. Brock's Case (1672), Essex Quarterly Court Records. V:90-92.

202. Beadle vs. Best (1683), and Ketville vs. Tucker (1681), EQCR. Quoted in Konig, Essex French,175.

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203. Ibid., 171, 172, 171.

204. Perley, History of Salem. 3:321. I searched for any record on this side of the Atlantic of a connection between Andros and Philip English since they were both from the Channel Islands but found none.

205. In spite of this intriguing connection I could find no evidence of any direct relationship between Philip English and Edmund Andros.

206. Linda Colley, BritonsrForging the Nation 1707-1837 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992), 23. For other discussions of anti-French feeling and the complicated relationship between British identity and France see also Gerald Newman, The Rise of English Nationalism: A Cultural History. 1740-1830 (1987) and Jeremy Black, Natural and Necessary Enemies: Anglo-French Relations in the Eighteenth Century (1986).

207. Colley, Britons. 26.

208. Ibid., 6.

209. Ibid. I suggest in this dissertation that a common identity which included wealthy French (although not Catholic) merchants emerged among elites in eighteenth-century Boston and Salem through the means of a lifestyle centered around a world of goods.

210. Salem Witchcraft Papers. Ill: 989-991.

211. Ibid.

212. Ibid., 991.

213. Witchcraft Papers. Ill: 1044.

214. Cheever, "Sketch of Philip English," 166.

215. Invoice to Philip English, 11 July 1695. English Family Papers: Benjamin Marston to Philip English, Power of Attorney 23 Nov 1700, EFP.

216. Salem Town Records, Tax Lists, El. Historians debate over the correlation between wealth and assessed values for tax purposes. By 1699 Salem included three figures in their total assessment, Polls, House and land, and Goods, thereby making certain that merchants trade goods did not escape their notice. Therefore I believe these Salem tax assessments provide a good indicator of relative wealth.

217. For an interpretation which positions the "Jerseymen" of Salem as outside the local power structure see Konig, “Essex ’French'”, 165-180.

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218. Douglas. Purity and Danger: an Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (London: Ark Paperbacks, 1966), 96, 99.

219. Heyrman, Commerce and Culture. 267.

220. Cheever. "Sketch of Philip English." 175.

221. Account page, Sloop Mary, William English Commander, 1712. EFP. El.

222. See Cheever, 174; and numerous account pages of John Touzel sailing for Philip English and later on his own account. Touzel Family Papers, Subgroup 3 EFP. El.

223. Deed of Land, Philip English to John Touzel, 1720. EFP,El

224. Ibid.

225. Guardianship of Philip English, July 3, 1732. EFP, EI.

226. Cheever, "Sketch," 176.

227. Note on back of Summons to Philip English, 1733. EFP, EI.

228. Summons to Philip English, 1733. EFP.

229. Account page of Philip English Jr. to his father's estate, 1732-37. EFP,EI.

230. In the middle ages, the insane, those no longer mentally competent, where put aboard ships and forced to sail forever outside the bounds of civilized society. See Michel Foucault's Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason Trans.by Richard Howard (New York: Vintage Books, 1965) for an evocative discussion of narrenschiffe.

231. See especially, Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed.

232. See Salem Tax Records. The Brownes, William, Samuel and their sons, consistently ranked one, two, and three on Salem tax assessments for decades. Their assessments were often several multiples greater than English and other merchants ranking fourth, fifth, and sixth.

233. This is supported by Richard Gildrie in Salem.

234. Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed.

235. See Heyrman, Commerce and Culture, the work of social historian Stephen Innes, especially Labor in a New Land: Economy and Society in Seventeenth-Century Springfield (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), Bailyn, New England

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Merchants, and 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, 1991).

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. CHAPTER 4: CHANGING WORLDVIEW: VALUING THE VISIBLE

The tensions over ethnic and religious differences that plagued seventeenth-

century Salem were lessened in the following generations by the evolution of a new

worldview that took hold throughout much of Anglo-America between 1670 and

1760. During these decades, Anglo-American elites shifted their thinking in complex

ways from providential and supernatural interpretations to ways of understanding

influenced by natural philosophy, rationalism, and growing involvement in market

relations. They adopted alternative sources of value and identity in a world of

changing social, economic, and interpretive practices. This new cultural style, by

placing greater importance on humans and the exterior world, reduced the

significance of religious differences. Focusing attention on visible, observable,

purchasable goods and manners lessened the importance of regional origins and

fostered a social marketplace where the well-to-do could buy recognition and status.1

Differences over religion and ethnic origins, previously deeply felt and emotionally

charged, were transmuted into conflicts between haves and have-nots over essential

resources and the control of urban space.2

These cultural changes were intimately connected with capitalism, both

emerging in response to, and further shaping and propelling, market capitalism.

Caught up in increasing dependence on commodities (and profits) from distant shores

and under the pressure of increasing numbers of cultural groups mingling in the towns

133

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of England and America, colonists could no longer rely on a locally shared body of

traditional social and spiritual values. Older beliefs no longer worked to contain

sectarian or cultural difference. The tensions and conflicts which roiled the waters in

late seventeenth-century Salem offered an example of the inability of any one group to

impose a single religious practice or require a particular local origin within a

community dedicated to capitalist expansion and overseas trade. The specific tensions

in a multicultural Salem were part of the growing instability of inherited categories

and uncertainty about the sources of authority and truth, which initiated a

transformation in values, beliefs, and cultural practices — a change in worldview

throughout Anglo-America.

In this chapter, we step back from the local focus on merchant families in

colonial New England to assume a transatlantic perspective. By exploring congruent

developments in religion, literature, fashion, science, and commerce, this chapter

points to the increasing importance of material surroundings in creating meaning and

connoting value. It is this cultural transformation, in tandem with specific local

changes, that produced, in the eighteenth century, a re-shaping of Boston and Salem

led by prosperous merchants. Thus, this chapter forms a crucial passage in the

journey traced in this work, from its beginning in the unpredictable Providential

cosmos of John Hull to its destination in the genteel sociability and cosmopolitan

commerce of Salem merchant Timothy Ome.

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Traces of the change that spread across urban Anglo-America at the turn of the

seventeenth century were visible over a hundred years before. In the pre-Elizabethan

world of sixteenth-century England, feudalism fixed social and power relations in

congruent categories so that wealth based on Iandownership connected directly to

social and political pre-eminence. A person's occupation, social status, and residence

were linked in a lineage of local knowledge. These established categories changed

with the beginning of commercial agriculture in the sixteenth century, which led to

enclosures of common lands, increasing geographic mobility, and a growing pool of

laborers, especially in the cloth industry, who were disconnected from the land. At

the same time, port cities of England were also seeing their first influx of exotic

goods and foreign merchants.3 These goods and traders fit uncomfortably into

traditional society, thereby creating a necessity for incorporating exotics into English

categories of social structure and symbolic meaning, or finding a means to distance

and contain these potentially revolutionary products and producers.

From the Elizabethan age forward, lamentation about luxury was accompanied

(although not always in the same texts) by concern about the difficulty of discerning

members of the gentle ranks. Social and economic changes called into question the

status of gentlemen. No longer commanding the loyalty of vassals through his control

of the economic prospects of all within his domain, a gentleman had to derive status

from other sources. Some said it came too frequently and too easily. Writing in the

1580s about De Republica Anglorum. Thomas Smith asserted that “as for gentlemen.

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they be made good cheape in England. . . . [One] who can live idly and without

manual labor, and will beare the port, charge and countenaunce of a gentleman, he

shall be . . . taken for a gentleman. ”4

Under the early Stuart kings, the sale of manors, and titles like Baronet to go

with them, allowed successful English merchants to establish an ambiguous entre'

into genteel society5 and prompted one contemporary observer to say, “there is no

Country under the Sunne, that hath such an Apochryphall Gentry as the English,

where the sonnes of Brokers bland with, and out brave, and precede the most Ancient

[gentry] of it, as if clothes had the guift to enoble blood. ”6 While clothes could

hardly change bloodlines, they contributed an increasingly significant element to the

presentation or presumption of gentility while simultaneously clouding the category

and eroding its connection with an inner character thought to be virtuous or noble.

Historian of science Steven Shapin noted that “one response to a society in flux was a

range of discrepant cultural enterprises aimed at stating clearly the legitimate

principles of gentility.”7 Among these, a genre of Puritan courtesy literature

exemplified by Richard Brathwait's The English Gentleman developed an ideal of the

“Christian gentleman” who displayed meekness and modesty as marks of “true

Gentilitie. ”8 Brathwaite sailed against the growing tide in the question of the

relationship of birth and behavior by insisting, “a Gentleman is a Man of himself,

without the addition of either Tayler, Millener, Seamster, or Haberdasher.”9

After 1660, under the multiple pressures of Restoration court life, growing

international trade, an emerging consumer revolution, and changing epistemological

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concepts in science and literature, the association of inner character with exterior

appearance began to erode. This dissolution appeared to contemporaries as a

dangerous loss of coherence and a potential change in the meaning of truth. Truth

itself was being displaced onto exterior signs, to visible displays, and to a marketplace

of the self. The literary forms of the late seventeenth-century demonstrate the

concern with unstable categories and a pre-occupation with identity -- am I a

gentleman? — and representation -- how can we know a gentleman? “The saint's

life, spiritual autobiography, the picaresque, criminal biography, and the travel

narrative” all, in the words of literary scholar Michael McKeon, “focus the broad-

based experimentation with revolutionary notions of how to tell the truth in narrative

upon the particular problem of how to tell the true story of an individual human

life.”10 But the problem was deeper than even McKeon suggests. It centered on how

to tell and know truth itself.

By examining remarkably congruent developments in a variety of cultural

practices, in literature, science, fashion, and commerce, we can see how a cultural

style developed that placed emphasis on careful attention to and detailed recording of

visible, perceptual details. Truth value began to be derived less from intense religious

faith and more from ability to observe and control immediate surroundings. This new

cultural style or worldview, which emerged gradually during the period under study

(1670-1760), placed emphasis on ownership and visible display of possessions as

crucial elements in individual and group identity. It changed the arrangement of

urban space to foster not only burgeoning overseas trade but also new forms of social

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gathering.11 The new cultural style can be evoked as “a world of goods”: it

appropriated foreign objects to advance a definition of English gentility and gave rise

to a social marketplace, especially in port cities of England and America where,

through the careful use of visible markers, French and Dutch merchants such as Peter

Faneuil and Jacob Wendell in mid-eighteenth-century Boston mapped themselves into

the center of elite society. These same markers indicated a growing difference

between the privileged and the dispossessed. This was a different world from the

Salem that periodically excluded Philip English from sharing power with merchants of

English origin and Puritan persuasion. To chart this sea change in worldview, we

return to Boston in 1683.

Alone in his study, Puritan minister Increase Mather fought off Boston's

January cold by drafting the chapter headings for a new book.12 In, An Essay for the

Recording of Illustrious Providences13 Mather traveled to distant seas, recounting

windspouts, whirlwinds encasing ”pillar[s] of light," and "a great sea which broke

upon" a ship and drowned four men “yet one survived through the good hand of a

gracious God."14 Combining accounts of storms at sea and tales of devils showering a

house with stones for days on end, Mather built for his pious readers an extended

meditation on the dangers of Satan and the power and benevolence of God.15

Underlying his fascination with the natural world was the belief that God was

unknowable by human understanding. Mather asked, "Dost thou know the

ballancings of the Clouds, the wondrous works of him who is perfect in

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knowledge?"16 Thunder and lightning, commonplace elements in man’s environment,

ranked as "mysterious and beyond humane Capacity to comprehend."17 Although

implying that most of God's everyday work was beyond the ken of man, Mather

chose to concentrate on extraordinary tales of “unusual, strange Apparitions,”

deformed infants, and amazing deliverances from certain death."18 He also related,

with great gusto, "Remarkable Judgements upon noted Sinners," especially

Quakers.19 For Mather and his readers, these happenings "were to be reckoned

among Illustrious Providences."20

Mather worked furiously and completed his 372-page compendium within the

year. In some ways, the collection presaged the eighteenth-century encyclopedia

movement by attempting to gather all the recorded observations known. But the

world encompassed within his essay was grounded in a dramatically different

understanding of man and nature than that portrayed less than a century later by

Diderot. While a Puritan minister might gather and recount, he could in no way

explain, unlike the later encyclopediaists. In fact, the more inexplicable the event,

the better it fit Mather's collection and the more intensely it glorified God.

Increase Mather’s compilation of Illustrious Providences, while epitomizing

the providential tradition, actually contained important traces of a new epistemology

as well. Scholars disagree about the extent of Mather's understanding of and skill in

the new sciences being developed in England during the seventeenth century.21 His

An Essav for Recording Illustrious Providences does demonstrate a concern with

accuracy and careful observation shared with scientific tracts published in England by

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. the Royal Society.-2 In attempting to establish that his tales represented true accounts

of God's workings in the world, Mather assured his readers that he received reports

from trustworthy sources variously described as "a worthy person," "an Eye-witness,"

"an intelligent person" or, most reassuring of all, a minister.23 From these

correspondents Mather acquired "good information" and "sober accounts]."24 His

concern with establishing authority through reference to learned and reputable

correspondents suggests that truth depended upon accurate reporting of

physical/material events. This understanding of authenticity works in some tension

with his overarching interpretive concern to establish the "truth" of God's intervention

in earthly processes and the immanence of the devil and the holy spirit in human life.

(His sources of authority reproduced the values of Puritan hierarchy based on

religion, education, face-to-face encounters, and local reputation.) By stressing a

concern with authority and representation, Mather reflected the way in which his own

work both maintained and yet undermined providential thinking.25

Oral and written accounts of God's intervention in earthly affairs and His hand

in directing individual lives were a prominent feature of Puritan worship. In early

New England, entering into church membership required each person to give an oral

account of a personal conversion experience that told of the wonder of God's work in

the heart. As the use of individual relations of conversion declined after mid-century,

congregations began using group declarations of a renewal covenant to replace the

individual stories of spiritual re-birth. In 1680, concerned with the continuing effects

of a deadly war with native Americans, the threat to the colony charter posed by the

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coming of English agent Edward Randolph to Boston, and a perceived decline in piety

throughout the town, the congregation of Boston's Third Church received its

covenant.26 In their ceremony of June 29. 1680, the members took "Notice of many

Provoking Evils and procuring Causes of the Judgements of God upon New

England."27 They pledged to "continue to worship God in Publick, Private. Secret"

and to avoid "the Sins of the Times," which "have brought the Judgements of God

upon New England. "28 The covenant, recited orally, invoked an understanding of

God’s intervention in the world to both save and punish his people. Reference to

"private" and "secret" worship gestured toward a process in which providential

understanding intersected with issues of individual authority and representation.

"Private" devotions referred to prayer and scripture reading which took place

in the home with the family assembled. The father usually led family devotions, but

often mother and children would gather for scripture reading without the father.29 It

is in the undertaking of "secret" or solitary devotions that a place was created for

growing individualism and an increasing influence of self-representation. In an

English devotion manual called Precepts for Christian Practice, re-printed in Boston

just a few years after the Third Church’s Renewal Covenant, Edward Reyner enjoins

Christians as their fourth daily charge to "performe all Duties, both in family and

Closet, especially these three, of prayer, meditation, and reading. . . . with diligence

and delight."30 Another manual, imported into Boston by bookseller John Usher,

called Husbandry Spiritualized by English divine John Flavell directed "husbandmen"

to their spiritual employments.31 Flavell's guide led the reader through "many

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pleasant observations." to "Pertinent applications, and serious reflections."32 This

religion of the closet, which might simply be a corner of the bedchamber, emphasized

private scripture and meditational reading, prayer, and reflection. In developing these

faculties, Puritans were encouraged to form an understanding of their own spiritual

journeys and to fashion some understanding of the relationship between individual

experience and Godly providence. By casting aside the Anglican and Catholic

formulaic prayers and patterned liturgy, Puritanism required individual responses to

worldly events and spiritual questions.33

To construct individual interpretations required constant effort. Leading

Boston minister John Cotton coached his congregation "to reade the word, and to

meditate thereon," as "a daily part of a Christian holy life."34 For some, this

spiritual meditation and self-reflection took the form of a diary.35 Puritan merchant

John Hull kept two diaries. One, designed to record "some Observable Passages of

Providence Toward the Country" began with a brief history of the settlement of

Massachusetts Bay Colony.36 The other, relating "Some Passages of God's

Providence about Myself and in Relation to Myself," commenced with accounts of his

"deliverance from death" as a two-year old.37 Beginning with a transcription of a text

from Deuteronomy 8:2, which instructs "Thou shalt remember all the way which the

Lord thy God led thee," Hull "penned" his diary so that "I may be the more mindful

of, and thankful for, all God's dispensation towards me."38 Intending to celebrate

God's blessings, his writing also provided a forum to explore the boundaries between

self-representation and providential intervention. While Hull seemed to lean toward a

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heavily religious interpretation of life, by the very act of writing and recording he

gave solidity to man’s actions, and participated in a self-reflexive fashioning of his

own identity. Through careful accounting and recording of events and shaping his

interpretation of them, Hull celebrated both God in heaven and man on earth.

By emphasizing an individual's efforts to interpret and assign value, diary-

keeping and private meditation fostered a thoughtful stance toward unusual wonders

and daily occurrences. In assigning causality, Hull shared the concerns of Boston

ministers with episodes of unbelief. For example, in 1662, Hull interpreted a "very

great drought" which left the grass and corn "so scorched, there was little likelihood

of any harvest," to the unwillingness of magistrates to suppress Quakers in "our

eastern plantations [New Hampshire and Maine]."39 As a punishment for their laxity,

"God seemed to shut out their prayers" [for rain] until the elders "met, in a synodical

way" to fast and pray. "The Lord gave a speedy answer," so Hull determined, by

granting "a full supply of rain, and a pretty comfortable harvest. B4° While this

explanation seems far from the "scientific" accounts of natural philosophy which

filled the Transactions of the Royal Philosophical Society in London, they share an

effort to observe and explain natural phenomena. Hull's diary seems much closer to

Increase Mather's essay, but both volumes incorporated practices of careful recording

of details and individual interpretation (although within a Providential discourse)

which would eventually lead to epistemological change.

Meditating and recording events and ideas in writing became a common

practice for intellectual and spiritual investigations. In the seventeenth century,

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scientific inquiry and providential interpretation were not considered opposing

endeavors.41 Noted empiricist Robert Boyle, a chemist and one of the leading early

members of England's Royal Society, developed a method of meditation, "a way of

thinking" designed for "Christian virtuosi," which he called Meletetics.42 By

practicing careful attention to even the smallest details of daily life and developing

interpretive "reflections" on what one sees, an individual "improves his Reasoning

Faculty."43 Boyle perceived his method, like Puritan meditation, as appropriate not

just for learned elites but for all who wished to understand the "stenography of God's

omniscient hand.n44 Another follower of the new science, botanist John Ray, insisted

in his lectures on natural theology at Cambridge that the study of nature was a

Christian duty.45 For Boyle, Ray, and Isaac Newton who followed them, scientific

discovery was a part of an on-going project to know God. But as the century wore

on, an increasing division appeared between a scientific understanding of the world

and a providential interpretation of natural wonders. What seemed all of a piece to

Boyle at mid-century seemed confusing to Increase Mather in his considerations of

God's wonders. In 1674, Boyle too expressed concern "that under-valuation . . . of

the study of things sacred . . . is grown so rife among many (otherwise ingenious)

persons, especially studiers of physicks."46

Secular versions of Increase Mather's collection abounded in late seventeenth-

century Anglo-America. Nathaniel Crouch, a bookseller and publisher in London,

issued a series of inexpensive, small chap-books whose sensational titles and

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dependence on detail participated in a genre similar to providential wonder literature

penned by Puritan ministers.47 In a volume called Wonderful Prodigies of Judgment

and Mercv. discover'd in above three hundred memorable Histories Crouch compiled

a series of tales very much like those gathered by Mather in Illustrious Providences.48

Beginning his collection with "Dreadful Judgements on Atheists" and "Blasphemers"

and moving through accounts of witches, predictions of Death, sad ends of Popes and

Apostates, and judgments on Murderers, he concluded with "Divine Goodness to

Penitents" in a manner similar to Mather's last chapter on "Deliverances" and

"Special Answers of Prayer."49

Mather may have read Crouch's publication; ten copies of Wonderful

Prodigies were shipped to Boston in 1683.50 The work of both authors attempted to

address issues of authority. Crouch, putting faith in vivid vocabulary and sheer

numbers, hoped to persuade readers by recounting three hundred of these remarkable

occurrences. He, like Mather, also relied on sources "of undoubted Authority and

Credit"51 and positioned himself as the compiler of "histories" "collected from

Authentick Records, Real Attestations, Credible Evidences, and asserted by Authors

of Undoubted Verity."52 Here we see an understanding of truth and value, shared by

spiritual diarists and scientific investigators, based on accurate observation and

evidence derived not only from believable persons but from careful, detailed,

"authentick" written notations of perceptual (or imaginary) impressions.

Crouch skillfully took advantage of the epistemological uncertainties of the

period to appropriate text from learned works. By extracting "pleasant Relations" of

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"fantastical Rites" from published travel accounts and by printing "secret histories" of

past monarchs, all packaged in small books priced at one shilling, Crouch expanded

the market for wonder literature. Boston and London bookseller John Dutton said of

Crouch, he "melted down the best of our English Histories into Twelve-Penny Books"

and in doing so became, according to Dutton, "a celebrated author.53

To aid himself in conforming to the emerging standards in his "cut and paste"

histories, Crouch constructed not just a pen name but a fictive author called Richard

or Robert Burton, a historian who often inscribed an address to the reader at the

beginning of each "history.n54 After Burton's name on the title page, Crouch would

list other works Burton authored, building up a substantial corpus which added

another set of self-referential details to Crouch's body of evidence. In his preface

"To the Reader" of The English Empire in America. Burton [Crouch] emphasizes not

the authority for the text but the "Variety and Novelty" which are "the most pleasant

Entertainments of Mankind."55 In his account of the new world, "this Land of

Wonders," literature, empire, and the market come together. Burton tells us, I "Ship

my self for a New World" to relate "the gallant Atcheivements of our English Heros

in America."56 Here the wonders have moved from heaven to earth, from God's

providence to Englishmen's exploits. The "history" focuses primarily on travelers'

descriptions and early encounters with native Americans. In describing the Indians,

who are both "timerous" and "prone to violence," Burton explains their violent

tendencies by "their blood being dried up by over much fire while they are very

lecherous from a dust choler."57 In Burton's view, all of the Indians are "Canibals"

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just like "formerly the heathen Irish, who use to feed upon the Buttocks of Boys, and

the paps of Women."58 With passages like these Crouch took part in an imperialist

rhetoric and catered to a desire for "variety and novelty," which had its parallels not

only in scientific investigation but also in the market place.

The popularity of Crouch's chap-books continued into the eighteenth century.59

As a child in Boston, Benjamin Franklin sold his volumes of Bunyan's Pilgrim's

Progress to buy "R. Burton's Historical Collections: they were small chapmens

books, and cheap, forty or fifty in all."60 In Boston as in London, Burton's

"histories" took their place alongside spiritual interpretations such as those crafted by

Increase Mather and his son Cotton after him. The cultural work of wonder literature

included celebrating and marveling at God's mysterious workings, confronting fears

of the unpredictable by exploring the limits of the unknown, and working out

questions of truth, authority, and value through a concern for careful and accurate

observation and "truthful" recording of natural phenomenon. Wonder literature,

especially in the hands of publishers like Crouch, gradually slid into an increasing

emphasis on variety and novelty, not as a celebration of God's powers, but as a

source of human validation.

Just as wonder literature blurred the boundaries between fact and fiction and

between spiritual and sensational, so also the coming of foreign goods blurred the

demarcations of a hierarchy of persons based on local, traditional values. For

example, the introduction of Indian cottons into the English textile market, promoted

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in a calculated program by Sir Josiah Child. Director of the East India Company, led

to a craze for calico in late seventeenth-century England.61 Originally imported and

sold to the middling and lower sort as an inexpensive substitute for “brocades and

flowered silks favored by the aristocracy,” Indian calicoes had soon become “the

Ware of Ladyes of the greatest quality, which they wear on the outside of Gowns and

Mantuoes and which they line with velvet and Cloth of Gold.”62 Calicoes not only

appealed to ladies but also spoke to the question of how to identify a gentleman. In

1699, a London pamphleteer exclaimed, “it was scarce thought about twenty years

since that we should ever see Calicoes the ornaments of our greates Gallants . . . but

now few think themselves well dresst till they are made up in Calicoes, both men and

women.63

Silk from the Bengal region in India also became a pan of the quickly

evolving consumer world of Anglo-America. English merchants both responded to

and shaped an emerging “fashion pattern” that stressed change in color and decoration

of material.54 Directors of the East India Company recognized the importance of

change and novelty in marketing a product of exotic origins. Writing, in 1681, to

their factors in India, they stressed

a constant and generall Rule, that in all flowered Silks you change the fashion and flower as much as you can every year, for English Ladies and they say the French and other Europeans will give twice as much for a new thing not seen in Europe before, though worse, then they will give for a better silk for [of?] the same fashion worn the former years.65

The letter implied that the directors were simply responding to the inexplicable whims

of the ladies. Their tone maintained an innocence of their efforts to naturalize

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demand in the name of fashion. Nicholas Barbon, an important contemporary writer

on economic matters, recognized an explicit connection between commerce and

gentility in his Discourse of Trade written in at the height of the calico craze. Barbon

observed that “Fashion or the alteration of Dress, is a great Promoter of Trade....

It is the Spirit and Life of Trade, It makes a Circulation, and gives a Value by Turns,

to all sorts of Commodities; keeps the great Body of Trade in Motion.”66 He

emphasized the importance of fashionable consumption based on novelty to stimulate

endlessly recurring demand and keep the heart of commerce pumping. The

celebration of fashion fused two nascent modes of Enlightenment response:

empiricism -- in the careful attention to changes in the pattern, color, and texture of

materials, and sensibility -- in the pleasure and wonder of not just the new, but the

novel, that is. “a thing not seen in Europe before.”

But ambivalence about foreign goods prompted an unease even among

devoted mercantilists like Daniel Defoe, who lamented the progress of calico, saying,

“it crept into our houses, our closets and bedchambers; curtains, cushion[s], chairs,

and at last beds themselves were nothing but Callicoes or India stuffs.”67

Writers were not the only ones to object to an influx of imported goods. As

the craze for calico swept through the gentry, it caused economic distress among those

least able to afford fashionable goods at inflated prices. Workers in the silk weaving

workshops of Spitalfields in London rioted against the effects of foreign competition

in 1697, and in 1700 Parliament prohibited the importation of Asian silks, which only

temporarily cut back on imports and further fueled the demand for calicoes.68 The

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silk-weavers rioted again in 1719 “in a general assault on all wearers and sellers of

the hated Calicoes,” committing “several Disorders and Outrages on the Bodies of

Persons wearing Calicoes, and printed Linnen.”69

The disturbances, which spread to several areas of London and to Norwich, a

cloth-making center and second city of the kingdom, produced, in 1721, a

Parliamentary prohibition on cottons imported from India.70 The ban did not reduce

consumer delight in printed cottons, but it did provide an important stimulus to the

English textile industry because “the Humour of the People [runs] so much upon

wearing painted or printed Calicoes and Linnens. ”71 After a generation of calico

madness, a domestic product through visible characteristics alone, could represent

exotic origins.

Another type of late seventeenth-century literature incorporated the foreign,

the remarkable, and the novel into a scientific discourse. The Royal Society, an

association of learned gentlemen formed in England after the Restoration (1660) to

further the study of science, played an important role in bringing together science and

commerce. Lay observers were recruited throughout Anglo-America to scrutinize

natural phenomena and foreign lands and record their observations for others to read

in the society’s journal. The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society issued

instructions to seamen and travelers in order “to shew them what is pertinent and

considerable to be observ’ed in their Voyages and Bodes, and how to make their

Observations and keep Registers or Accounts of them.” The instructions reminded

potential contributors that, “in our designed Natural History we have more need of

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importance of eyewitness accounts, immediacy, and detail in supporting the truth

value of observations was stressed in the Society's instructions to “keep an exact

Diary, delivering at their return a fair Copy thereof . . . to be perused by the R.

Society. ” The process of recording eyewitness reports involved at least two

renderings of accounts: “Let [travelers] therefore always have a Table-Book at hand

to set down every thing worth remembering, and then at night more methodically

transcribe the Notes they have taken in day.”73

This method offers a striking parallel to instructions directed to merchants for

keeping commercial accounts. In his instruction manual, The Complete English

Tradesman. Daniel Defoe assured the would-be merchant or tradesman that “exact

keeping [of] his books is one essential part of a tradesman's prosperity.”74 Like the

Royal Society’s instructions for travelers, “everything done in the whole

circumference of his trade must be set down in a book . . . so it should be done at the

very time of it. ”75 Both the day-book (a daily record of all transactions) and the cash

book “must [then] be ransacked over for the particulars” and amounts posted to every

debtor's “particular account” in the ledger.76 For the tradesman, his entire identity is

at stake: “The books are a register of his estate, the index of his stock.”77 If the

tradesman lets his books go unsettled and uncast up, then “he knows nothing of

himself.”78 His very existence, according to Defoe, is dependent on a visible record

of daily activity.

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Employing a set of practices reminiscent of spiritual diaries and scientific

records, careful merchants engaged in a daily round of conversation, correspondence,

and posting accounts in a constant effort to determine exchange value and transpose

moving commodities into fixed notations within the leather-covered pages of

daybooks, ledgers, and journals. Differences abound between this most worldly

procedure and the emotional, self-searching of pious meditation, or the presumedly

dispassionate observation of empiricism, yet similar problems of assigning value and

granting authority plagued all these processes during the late seventeenth and early

eighteenth centuries.

Merchants used account books of all sizes. Samuel Grant, a cloth merchant,

tailor, and upholsterer kept a massive journal of 922 pages to record his transactions

between 1737 and 1758.79 Grant's journal probably represents the middle of three

types of accounts which the contemporary bookkeeping manuals recommended for the

strict "Italian" method. The journal records entries by date, includes the name of the

customer, a brief description of the item purchased and the unit cost, as well as a total

bill customer by customer. To the left of each name is a carefully inscribed number

which indicates the folio in Grant's ledger (no longer extant) which would include

both debit and credit sides for each customer’s account.

Frequently, these ledger accounts ran for years without being balanced. In

many cases, only death put a period to the running accounts. At that time, the

balance would be calculated and the debit or credit forwarded to the executors.

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Occasionally, cautious merchants might convert book debt, the accepted term for

these running accounts, into some type of bonded debt. Perhaps doubts about a

customer's financial condition surfaced in coffee-house conversation. Perhaps debits

had outweighed credits for too many months or years. Perhaps the merchant

observed a laborer struggling to provide for a growing family, a widow forced into

smaller quarters, an older mariner obliged to give up his favored Madeira. Perhaps

the merchant himself felt strapped for ready cash or experienced a credit crunch.

Each of these small dramas left a telltale sign in account books. The running account

was balanced, the date noted, and the customer signed a brief note acknowledging the

total debt. At this time, the debt might be written into a promissory note. In the

seventeenth-century, these are elaborate documents pledging potential heirs to honor

the debt and outlining a time scheme for payment. By the 1720s and 1730s, they

have become much less formal and often just the signature in the account book seems

to suffice.80

Samuel Grant's account book, more properly, his journal, does not give us

balances or matching debits and credits for each customer, but it does tell us a number

of things about Grant, his customers, and eighteenth-century Boston. Grant carried

on a remarkably diverse business. He operated an upholstery and tailor shop

patronized by some of Boston's leading notables, including Thomas Hancock (uncle

of John, the signer of the declaration) and Peter Faneuil. He invested in voyages

(probably to the West Indies) and traded wholesale goods with a number of merchant

companies. Grant demonstrated detailed attention to small sums as well as large. On

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June 11, 1738, he noted in his careful script a purchase by "Peter Faneuil. Esq" of

one piece of lusting (a type of silk) 82 ells in length at 20 shillings per ell for a total

of £ 82.81 On the same day, in the same careful hand, Grant noted Jacob and John

Wendell's selection of one pair of hose for £1. The Wendells made frequent small

purchases from Grant but also purchased piece goods (cloth) in quantities amounting

to £250 for one order. Benjamin Faneuil, Peter's brother spent £74 for eleven dozen

handkerchiefs in April 1738. Were these intended for resale or simply personal use?

The account book is silent on that matter.

In recording both large and small debts in such a careful and consistent

manner. Grant fulfilled Daniel Defoe’s dictum, "he that delights in his trade will

delight in his books."82 In his guide to business, called The Complete English

Tradesman and published in London in 1726, Defoe insists that a tradesman must

"keep his books always in order; his day-book duly posted, his cash duly balanced,

and all people's accounts always fit for a view."83 Without this careful stock-taking,

recorded in writing and ciphers, the tradesman or merchant "knows nothing of

himself, or of his circumstances in the world."84 Just as the Puritan needs to pray and

meditate daily, to know himself in relation to God, so the businessman needs to keep

"an exact account of what goes out and comes in" because "a tradesman's books, like

a Christian's conscience, should always be kept clean and clear."85 Here we see how

exact observation and careful accounting lead from confusion to clarity and become

the ground for value and identity. Elsewhere, Defoe reiterates the importance of

accounts as a way of reflecting on and knowing the self; a merchant who has not duly

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posted and balanced his books "can give no account of himself to himself, much less

to any body else."86 In a world of waning providential interpretation, identity and

authenticity were more frequently located in the outward, observable, and recorded

details. As the equivalent of diary keeping (and later of the novel), accounting

represents the self in a world increasingly understood in terms of markets and

mechanistic philosophy.

Often cast aside by bibliophiles are the "ephemera" of various blank books and

forms printed by English and colonial presses. Among those once blank books remain

vast numbers of merchant account books.87 Account books, however, have more to

tell us than the numbers in them reveal. When studied as cultural artifacts, the bottom

line becomes just the first entry. Merchant account books and business documents

offer evidence of shifting cultural concerns and changing commercial practices. They

embody an integration of secular and spiritual concerns and a melding of rational and

sentimental philosophy in the shaping of a new bourgeois culture in eighteenth-

century Anglo-America.

Writing and daily records came together not only in private memo books and

business accounts but also in the daily conversation and exchange of information

which was crucial to merchants, royal officeholders, and budding professionals. The

provincial newspaper emerged in eighteenth-century ports throughout the Atlantic

world as a voice linking new commercial developments with a re-fashioned social

landscape. Just as provincial social life recast itself in terms of regular repetitive

rituals often enacted in public sites such as promenades and assemblies, commercial

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interchange centered on daily visits to the exchange and the coffeehouse. Like their

London counterparts who gathered at the Royal Exchange, Boston merchants met

daily at the covered walkway underneath the Town House or across the square at the

Royal Exchange Tavern owned by the Shrimpton merchant family. They gathered at

the London Coffeehouse or the Bunch of Grapes Tavern across King Street from Peter

Faneuil's warehouse at the beginning of Merchant's Row.88 One observer noted that

"the custom of Boston is to shut up their warehouses at one o’clock, and go on

'change, and return about four o'clock in the afternoon."89 Dr. Alexander Hamilton,

a visitor to Boston in 1744, recalled a visit "to Change att 12 o'clock and heard no

news, only some distant hints of an intended expedition of the English against Cape

Breton."90 The 'change represented a process as much as a site and encapsulated the

intimate relation among commerce, money, and news; exchange of currency and bills

went hand in hand with exchange of information. It was from this urban process that

the demand for up-to-date news for public consumption arose.91 Accurate news from

abroad formed an essential part in merchants' decisions about which goods to send to

which port, when, and how risky a venture or how profitable a sale a cargo would be.

Provincial officials required knowledge about relations between King and Parliament,

between England and France, and among other European states.92 These specific

needs joined with a general fascination for the new and novel.

Prior to the first provincial newspapers, this demand had been answered by

private letters, newsletters, and sending of London newspapers to colonial merchants

and gentlemen. John Hull, operating his trading business from the edge of the

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Atlantic world, filled his correspondence with requests and expression of gratitude for

a most valuable commodity -- news. He frequently thanked his London cousin for

"your Inteligens Constantly sent by gazetts & other prints."93 On another occasion,

Hull wrote to Thomas Glover, a ship captain and merchant then in London, noting

that he is "at the fountain of Intelligence."94 "If any thing come to your hands

weighty & of good worth," Hull wrote, "I should be glad to Receive a little now and

then."95 Always seeking information to assist him with shipping decisions, Hull did

not always find what he needed, complaining "the Pamphlets have all In thes days but

the most of them are of very little Concerne that it Requireth Judgment to Discern

what is worth Transporting."96 Hull instructed his ship captains to be on the look out

for "such newes as may give you good Encouragment" to head for a certain

destination and always try to determine "such Goods as you know to bee most

vendible.n97 In a letter to Salem merchant Philip English written from London during

Queen Anne's War, John Seale, a business correspondent, cautioned English to

"allways take care to send coppy of your letters by severall shipps, by reason of the

many of them that are taken into France."98 Seale followed his own advice, noting in

closing that this was a copy sent via New York on 22 March "of what I wrote to you

the 15th current per via Boston. "99

This difficulty in communication and the constant need to assess current events

throughout the Atlantic world and make predictions upon limited information made

news crucial to burgeoning commerce and central to daily interaction among

merchants in the provincial cities. The Boston Newsletter by its very name paid

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homage to the newsletter tradition begun by merchants in Europe in the late fifteenth

century.100 To garner important foreign news, the paper's printer Duncan Campbell

visited the waterfront, going among newly arrived vessels to gather information.

Among the "Undertakers'' who contributed support during the early years of the

Newsletter were "Gentlemen, Merchants, and others."101 Boston's second

newspaper, the Boston Gazette, appeared in 1719 at the request of Boston-based

merchants. To make it "more acceptable to the Trading part of this Town," the

Gazette published price currents -- up-to-date lists of prices for commodities in

various Atlantic ports.102 The merchants found that public information helped their

competitors as well and expressed some resistance to regular inclusion of price

currents. However, merchants continued as the Gazette's "chief Boston patrons."103

The newspaper originated not only from merchants' commercial needs but also

from a broader public's fascination with novelty.104 The interest in new accounts and

wondrous tales which had gone into the making of Richard Burton/Nathaniel Crouch

as a “celebrated author” also drove the market for newspapers. As early as 1673,

Richard Baxter lamented the passion for novelty, noting that tt[a]ll men are affected

most with things that seem new and strange to them.”105 He observed the connection

among news, novelty, and capitalist endeavor by observing that “if nature were not

much for Novelty, the publishing ofNews-books would not have been so gainful a

Trade so long.”106 The word journalist, evoking the French wordjour meaning day

and the idea of a daily journey or news from afar, came into vogue in the 1690s,

bringing with it similarities to earlier practices of daily spiritual journals and up-to-the

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minute commercial accounts.107

The proliferation of coffeehouses in late seventeenth and early eighteenth-

century Anglo-America was closely linked with the rise of newspapers and with the

growth of capitalism. An advertisement from the Salisbury [England] Journal for

proprietor John Child's coffeehouse gives the flavor of these establishments and

indicates their importance as a center for the exchange of information and a site of

pleasurable experience. At Child's coffeehouse can be found

the Votes, King's Speech and Addresses, the Gazette, Daily Advertiser, General Evening-Post, Evening Advertiser and London Chronicle, Salisbury Journal, Monthly Magazines, Sessions Papers and Dying Speeches; the best Coffee, Tea, Chocolate and Capillari, will be constantly provide, with all due and proper Attendance .... The Room is conveniently fitted up large, light, and warm, and subject to no annoyance whatever.108

An observer of the London scene in 1726 confirmed Brathwait’s earlier observation

by exclaiming that “all Englishmen are newsmongers.” He suggested that “what

attracts enormously in these coffee-houses are the gazettes and other public papers.”109

Gentleman's clubs provided another venue for exchange of information and

ideas.110 In Boston, clubs formed for a variety of ostensible purposes but company

and conversation often seemed purpose enough. Merchants involved themselves not

only in the old "Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company," which functioned as an

elite training ground for colonial social as well as military leaders, but in newer

organizations like the Episcopal Charitable Society (not just for Anglicans), the

Wednesday Night Club, and a Merchant's Club which may have been in existence

since the 1740s but became active in the 1760s.111 These clubs provided another

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opportunity to see and be seen and to assess the credit of one's partners and

competitors. The connection among visibility, credit-worthiness, and authority was

exemplified in Boston in 1765 when leading merchant Nathaniel Wheelwright suffered

financial ruin and had “stopt payment.”" 2 According to diarist and fellow merchant

John Rowe, Wheelwright, after his bankruptcy, “kept in his room,” his promise to

pay no longer true and his presence no longer visible.113 Wheelwright's bankruptcy

and several others became the “talk of the town,” so that issues of authority, value,

and novelty mingled in the news.114 While exchanging opinions and reports,

merchants and other elite gentlemen also exchanged business information, a visible

reassurance of value, and that most prized possession — news.

In Boston and throughout eighteenth-century Anglo-America, a desire for the

new and the novel expressed itself not only in the wearing of ever-changing designs in

imported calico and in a desire for the stimulation of foreign brews, but also through

a participation in the pleasures of new information made visible through print.

Commerce transformed the pursuit of novelty and of sensible/sensual pleasure into the

business of capitalism.

The new ethos craved not only novelty but the desire for light, for making

visible. The new scientists gradually seemed to replace God as the bringer of light to

the world. Often termed the Enlightenment, the growth of natural philosophy, in the

words of one supporter, shed a “mighty Light which spreads itself over the world

especially in those two free Nations of England and Holland.”115 Sir Isaac Newton's

works on optics and theories of light had the greatest popular impact of all his

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writings.116 An illustration for a 1729 English translation of Newton's Principia

(written in Latin) depicts Newton enthroned in the heavens instructing an adoring

naked female, both surrounded with a halo of light. The caption extolls scientists,

proclaiming that by “Expelling darkness, mathematicians opened the gates of heaven

[and revealed] the unchangeable order of these things.”"7 In a book about Newton's

theories written for laymen, Voltaire, the French philosophe, asserts that light “most

explains the Secrets, and brings us the nearest to the first Springs, of Nature.”" 8

While learned men and women were striving to make visible nature's secrets,

the fascination with light gradually extended into the material world. Larger sash

windows, arrayed symmetrically across Georgian facades, replaced small diamond-

paned windows of earlier times."9 Urban spaces began in the eighteenth-century to

be designed around long vistas and open squares.120 Social observers praised well-lit

evening occasions, and advertisements for coffeehouses often claimed good lighting as

one of their virtues.121 Historian Barbara Stafford, arguing for the present day

importance of visual proficiency, notes that “for the Enlightenment, powers of

discernment, visual acumen, and the development of probing habits of sight were

requisite skills” not only in natural history but for art and medicine as well. In the

field of medicine, “dissection interrogated the inert body by violently laying it bare. ”

According to Stafford, the aim of the anatomical method “was to get at a fundamental

truth. ” This same skill in visual discernment essential to scientific observation and

medical knowledge was equally important to the merchant who had to order,

catalogue, assess, price, and record hundreds of kinds and patterns of cloth and

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innumerable metalwares of different compositions, shapes, and functions, and who

needed to evaluate and exchange coins and moneys of account from many different

nations. Consumers also had to possess powers of discernment and up-to-date

knowledge to select among the merchants' and shopkeepers' many offerings. To

express their participation in the new age, they must select cloth, for example, of the

most fashionable color and figure.

Science, commerce, fashion, journalism, and medicine participated in similar

practices all highly dependent on making visible. By shedding light on. by describing

and cataloguing, by privileging the new, Anglo-Americans developed a cultural style

which emphasized exteriority. Gradually, it came to be understood that through acute

observation and careful assessment, the truth was not simply revealed by faith but

rather discovered through science. No longer primarily a secret of God, truth became

a product of humans. By extension, through purchasing, owning, and using man-

made products, men and women could make and re-make their own identity.122

The result of this changing worldview was to place value on just those cultural

elements that would further capitalism. By emphasizing novelty, placing value on

exterior appearance of things, and finding pleasure in the sensate appreciation of

physical goods, the new cultural style produced an explosive demand for consumer

goods and a society that began to assess men and women in light of the goods they

owned and the manner in which they deployed them. It was this changing worldview,

I argue, that gave birth to the true spirit of capitalism ~ the desire to buy and to

possess.

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NOTES FOR CHAPTER 4

L. During this period of change — one historian referring to the rapid assimilation and impact of science between the 1680s and 1720s called it “a profound crisis” — ideas about authority and truth were de-stabilized and then re-formed around visible, outward characteristics. Margaret C. Jacob, The Cultural Meaning of the Scientific Revolution (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988), 105.

2. Throughout her work on the scientific revolution, Jacob stresses the origins of the new science as an attempt to combat religious fanaticism, doctrinal rigidity, and monarchical absolutism. “The English version of the new science, whether in the form of Hobbes's materialism or Boyle’s Christian atomism, had been, . . . inextricably bound up since the early 1650s with the search for an alternative to rigid Puritanism, to radical sectarianism, as well as to the pretensions of absolutist monarchy.” Jacob. Scientific Revolution. 108-109. Philosopher Stephen Toulmin extends this point in Cosmopolis: The Hidden Agenda of Modernity (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1990) to include the continental philosophers, especially Descartes and Leibniz, also striving to find principles to understand the world that would transcend religious differences and provide a universal language; hence the “Age of Reason.”

3. See for example, David Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy. 1450-1700 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991).

4. Thomas Smith, De Republica Anglorum. The Maner of Government or Policie of the Realme of England (London, 1583), 27; facsimile reproduction of 1583 original (Menston: Scolar Press, 1970).

5. See Laurence Stone, Crisis of the Aristocracy. 1558-1641 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965).

6. Antony Stafford, The Guide of Honour (London, 1634), 59-60.

7. Steven Shapin, A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth- Century England (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 59. I am indebted to Shapin for several of the quotes mentioned above.

8. Richard Brathwait, The English Gentleman (London, 1630), 61-65.

9. Ibid. Quoted in James Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England. 1750-1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 95.

10. Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel. 1600-1740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 89.

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11. Cultural historian G. J. Barker-Benfield refers to “The Royal Society, the College of Physicians, the universities, clubs, coffeehouses, fashionable taverns, and playhouses” as a “new cultural infrastructure.” G. J. Barker-Benfield. The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Centurv Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 38.

12. See Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather. 1639-1723 (Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press. 1988), 126 for reference to Mather's study and pages 171-72 on the drafting of Mather's book.

13. Increase Mather, An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (Boston: Samuel Green for Joseph Browning, 1684),99-100. I have used the reproduction from Scholar's Facsimiles & Reprints, Delmar New York, 1977. All page numbers are from this facsimile edition.

14. Ibid., 314, 20.

15. Ibid., 169.

16. Ibid., 100

17. Ibid., 109.

18. Ibid., Preface.

19. Ibid., Preface II.

20. Ibid.

21. In his "Introduction" to the facsimile edition of Mather's An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences, xii James Levernier refers to Mather as "a skilled scientific inquirer" who refers to the work of English scientists such as Sir Kenelm Digby and Robert Boyle. In a brief bibliographical note Levernier recounts the debate between Kenneth Murdock and Mason Lowance about the significance of Mather's science (xviii-xix). Michael P. Winship offers a thoughtful study of the mix of wonder and science in the writings of Increase’s son Cotton Mather in “Prodigies, Puritanism, and the Perils of Natural Philosophy: The Example of Cotton Mather,” WMQ 3rd ser. vol. LI #1 (Jan 1994): 92-105. See also Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 438-39.

22. On Cotton Mather's association with the Royal Society and enlightenment thought see Miller, From Colony to Province. 345-51 and Chapter XXVI, “The Experimental Philosophy. ”

23. Increase Mather, Essay. 313, 314, 164, 363.

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24. Ibid., 356, 355.

25. I am indebted to the works listed here and in the following notes for a greater understanding of the dual nature of the spiritual and secular wonder literature of the late seventeenth century. McKeon, Origins of the English Novel: Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought. 1550-1750 (Cambridge University Press, 1986).

26. The difficult conditions pressing in on Boston are explored in Bernard Bailyn, New England Merchants in the Seventeent Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 139-167.

27. Renewal Covenant, Boston 1680, A2. MHS.

28. Ibid., A3.

29. See Chapter Five, "Private Devotion: Neighborhood, Family, Conference," in Charles E. Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Disciplines in Seventeenth-Centurv New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. On page 144 Hambrick-Stowe discusses the conception of the family as a little church with the father as minister.

30. [Edward Reyner] Precepts for Christian Practice: Or. the Rule of the New Creature: Containing Duties to be Daily Observed by Every Believer (Cambridge [England], 1668), 2nd ed. Boston, 1683.

31. John Flavell, Husbandry Spiritualized, or the Heavenly Use of Earthly Things: (London: for R. Boulter, 1679); quoted in Worthington Ford, The Boston Book Market. 1679-1700 (New York: Burt Franklin, reprint 1972), 112.

32. Ibid.

33. Hambrick-Stowe says, "Puritanism encouraged believers along the path of free spiritual expression and initiative." Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety. 50.

34. John Cotton, quoted in Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety. 158.

35. Hambrick-Stowe suggests that "from the large volume of personal writing . . . that has survived, we may conclude that many of the devout did write extensively." Hambrick-Stowe, Practice of Piety. 187. According to David Hall, Samuel Sewall used his diary to "give order to experience" and link personal and family events to the larger "history of redemption." David D. Hall, World's of Wonder. Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990), 327.

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36. John Hull. "Diary of John Hull," A AS Transactions & Collections III (1857): 165-251.

37. Hull, “Diary,” 141-164.

38. Hull. “Diary,” 141.

39. Hull. “Diary,” 206.

40. Ibid.

41. In 1938. a British sociologist named Robert Merton put forth what is now called the “Merton thesis.” Drawing on the same characteristics that Max Weber stressed in his study of Puritanism and capitalism, diligence in a calling and worldly asceticism, and adding the importance of education, Merton asserted that Puritanism promoted, in the words of Puritan divine, Richard Baxter, “the study of Nature in a 'convincing, scientifical w ay.'” This “sanctification” raised science to a highly esteemed activity and helped to “direct talents into scientific pursuits which at other times would have found expression in other fields.” This, in turn, led to the scientific revolution in seventeenth-century England. Robert K. Merton, Science. Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Howard Fertig, 1970), 72, 75.

42. Robert Boyle, Occassional Reflections upon several Subjects. Whereto is premis'd a Discourse About such kind of Thoughts (1665), 28. Quoted in Hunter, Before Novels. 202. In referring to An Essav for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. Increase Mather invoked Boyle by claiming that he had written a “Natural History of New England” according to principles “described by that Learned and excellent person Robert Boyle Esq.” Increase Mather quoted in Miller, From Colony to Province. 143.

43. Ibid., 31.

44. Robert Boyle, "Of the Usefulness of Natural Philosophy," Part I, Essay 5 in Works (6 vols, London, 1744), 1:462. Quoted in Hunter, Before Novels. 203.

45. See Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 176 and Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science. Medicine, and Reform. 1626-1660 (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1975), 150.

46. Robert Boyle, Works, ed. Thomas Birch, 2nd ed. (London, 1772), IV:2; quoted in M. Hunter, Science and Society, 175.

47. I first developed an interest in Crouch when I examined one of his chapbooks in the collections of the American Antiquarian Society. Three recent scholars treat Crouch in some detail. David Hall, in World's of Wonder argues for a very porous

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boundary between learned and popular culture in early New England. The ministers distrusted and objected to Crouch’s volumes because "the moral message shrank to a bare minimum" [Hall's words] and providence was turned into a game of chance. (Hall, 112-113) Robert Mayer in "Nathaniel Crouch, Bookseller and Historian: Popular Historiography and Cultural Power in Late Seventeenth-Century England" Eighteenth-Centurv Studies (Spring 1994):391-419, informed by recent work in cultural studies by Stuart Hall and other scholars at the Birmingham Center, posits popular culture as an oppositional stance toward the dominant culture. Within this framework Mayer suggests that Crouch appropriated learned culture "for the social ends of a new class of readers, and even a usurpation of the power of those whose possession of high culture was crucial to their ability to dominate society." (Mayer 419) J. Paul Hunter in Before Novels suggests that wonder literature, both religious and secular, is part of the "relentless attempt to understand the universe" which is "at odds with rational understanding of an orderly world" represented by scientific inquiry. (JP Hunter, 209) While I agree with Hunter and Hall that wonder literature is an effort to find meaning I see a similarity between secular and providential interpretations both working in a period of epistemological instability, to explore questions of truth, authority, and value as do Robert Boyle and other participants in the Scientific Revolution.

48. [N. Crouch] Wonderful Prodigies of Judgment and Mercv. discover'd in above three hundred memorable Histories London: for N. Crouch at the Bell in the Poultry, 1683. Described in Ford, Boston Book Market. 149.

49. Ibid.; I. Mather, Illustrious Providences. Table of Contents, Chap. XII, unpaginated in back matter.

50. Ford, Boston Book Market. 118. How popular were Crouch's little books in New England?. One set of booksellers records indicates that twenty copies of Wonderful Prodigies were shipped to Boston between 1683-85. Orders for "Burton's Wares of England [The Wars in England. Scotland, and Ireland] and Burton's "Amicable Curiositys" [Admirable Curiosities. Rarities, and Wonders in England. Scotland, and Ireland.] could not be filled according to London merchant John Ive because the works were "out of print and doing again." At least two copies of Two Journeys to Jerusalem printed in 1683 for N. Crouch and containing "A strange account of the Travels of two English Pilgrims . . . With the Wonderful Manner of hatching thousands of Chickens at once in Ovens" came to Boston during the same years. Ford, Boston Book Market,118,149, 120, 138.

51. Nathaniel Crouch, Wonderful Prodigies (title page) quoted in J.P. Hunter, Before Novels. 213.

52. Ibid., 212.

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53. The Life and Errors of John Dutton. 2 vols. (London: J. Nichols, Son and Bentley, 1818), 1:206 and 2:435; quoted in Mayer, "Nathaniel Crouch, Bookseller and Historian," 391. Mayer discusses Crouch in terms of his work as a historian but I suggest that in this period the meaning of the term history is so unstable that Mayer's focus on Crouch and his "devotion to facts" begs the underlying issues. I do agree with Mayer's take on Crouch when he notes that "the sameness" of the books "makes them a typical product of the consumer revolution" which according to Neil McKendrick required "endless fashionable variations on the prevailing theme." Mayer 414.

54. Regarding Crouch's methods of appropriating narratives from more learned works see Hunter, Before Novels. 211. Boston and London bookseller John Dutton said of Crouch, he "melted down the best of our English Histories into Twelve-Penny Books." Dutton, Life and Errors: quoted in Mayer, “Nathaniel Crouch,” 391.

55. R.B. [Nathaniel Crouch], The English Empire in America 3rd edition (London: Printed for Nathaniel Crouch at the Bell in the Poultry near Cheapside, 1698), "To the Reader."

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., 69.

58. Ibid.

59. Hunter, Before Novels. 215.

60. Benjamin Franklin, The Autobiography of Beiyamin Franklin, ed. Peter Shaw (New York: Bantam Books, 1982), 12.

61. See Beverly Lemire. Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain. 1660-1800 Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 12-23. Lemire states that between 1660 and 1683 the East India Company gave Charles II £324,150 in “voluntary contributions.” In return the king promoted the fashionableness of Indian fabrics by wearing an “oriental-style waistcoat.” Ibid., 15.

62. From an EIA dispatch book, 1687; quoted in Lemire, Fashion's Favourite. 14, 16.

63. John E. Willis, “European Consumption and Asian Production in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), 136.

64. See Neil, McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H.Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Centurv England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982).

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65. Ibid., 137.

66. Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade (London, 1690); quoted in James Raven. Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England. 1750-1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 161.

67. Daniel Defoe, Weekly Review. 31 Jan 1708; quoted in Ibid., 16.

68. See Willis, “European Consumption,” 137.

69. Lemire, Fashion's Favourite. 35-36.

70. Workers in England's volatile wool industry were the main participants in the riots in Norwich. Ibid.

71. Ibid., 41-42.

72. Philosophical Transactions. II (1676); quoted in McKeon, Origins of the English Novel, 102.

73. Ibid., 103.

74. Daniel Defoe, The Complete English Tradesman (London, 1726); reprint of 1839 edition published by William and Robert Chambers, Edinburgh (Gloucester, England: Alan Sutton, 1987), 188 (page references are to the reprint edition).

75. Ibid.

76. Ibid., 190-191.

77. Ibid., 187.

78. Ibid., 188.

79. Samuel Grant Account Book. MSS Collections, American Antiquarian Society.

80. These promissory notes appear in surviving merchant papers for as little as a few shillings. Often they are accompanied by a series of crudely written letters on small scraps of paper pleading for more time to pay the debt owed. Occasionally time is requested by a wife on behalf of her husband. Rarely does payment of small debts become a matter for the courts My sense, though it is only an impression, is that most merchants by the eighteenth century, while extremely attentive to the smallest amounts, do not press those judged sincerely unable to pay. In the mid-seventeenth- century at the height of Puritan influence, the court records reveal little sympathy toward debtors. These observations are a result of working with numerous merchant account books and many folders of

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miscellaneous papers at the Peabody Essex Museum. Massachusetts Historical Society, and American Antiquarian Society.

81. An ell is about 45 inches or slightly less than four feet. Therefore the piece of silk that Faneuil bought was about 120 yards in length.

82. Defoe. The Complete English Tradesman. 187.

83. Ibid.

84. Ibid., 188.

85. Ibid.

86. Ibid., 14.

87. Economic historians have used account books to chart new ground in the history of emerging capitalism particularly in rural New England. See Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts. 1750-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Christopher Clark, The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts. 1780-1860 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990). Other scholars have mapped the business fortunes of individual merchant families. See James B. Hedges, The Browns of Providence Plantation 2 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1952-1968); W.T.Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945). Others have used account books combined with social and demographic sources to shape overviews of New England merchants in the seventeenth century and revolutionary-era merchants in Philadelphia. See Bailyn, New England Merchants: Thomas M. Doerflinger, A Vigorous Spirit of Enterprise: Merchants and Economic Development in Revolutionary Philadelphia (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986). For a discussion of extant "ephemera" such as tickets, bills of lading, and other blank forms see William S. Reese, "The First Hundred Years of Printing in British North American: Printers and Collectors," Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 99, part 2 (1989), 363.

88. See Baxter, House of Hancock. 184 and Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 26.

89. Quoted in Baxter, House of Hancock. 184.

90. Carl Bridenbaugh, ed. Gentleman’s Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 114.

91. See Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. Thomas Burger (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1989), 14-56. Habermas, in analyzing European developments, asserts

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"the traffic in news that developed alongside the traffic in commodities showed a similar pattern. With the expansion of trade, merchants' market-oriented calculations required more frequent and more exact information about distant events. . . . The great trade cities became at the same time centers for the traffic in news. . . . Almost simultaneously with the origin of stock markets, postal services and the press institutionalized regular contacts and regular communication. "(16) Note the emphasis on regularity and its, corollary predictability.

92. Charles E.Clark, The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture. 1665-1740 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 83.

93. John Hull to Daniell Allen, 23 Aug 1672; Hull to Allen, 4 Aug 1674, John Hull Letterbook, typescript, A AS. (Hereafter noted as Lbk).

94. John Hull to Thomas Glover, 13 Dec 1681, Lbk.

95. Ibid.

96. Ibid.

97. John Hull to John Harris, Orders, 4 Mar 1674, Lbk.

98. John Seale to Philip English 15 Mar 1705, English Family Papers, Peabody and Essex Museum. (Hereafter noted as EFP).

99. Ibid.

100. Clark, Public Prints. 23.

101. Boston News Letter 7 May 1705 and 14 Jan 1706; quoted in Clark, Public Prints. 82.

102. Clark, Public Prints. 107.

103. Ibid.

104. See Hunter, Before Novels. Chapter Seven “Journalism: The Commitment to Contemporaneity,” 167-194.

105. Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory: or. A Summ of Practical Theologie. and Cases of Conscience (London, 1673), 36; quoted in Hunter, Before Novels. 173.

106. Ibid.

107. See Hunter, Before Novels. 172.

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108. Salisbury Journal. 28 March 1757. Quoted in C. Y. Ferdinand, “Selling it to the Provinces: News and Commerce round Eighteenth-century Salisbury,” in Consumption and the World of Goods, ed. John Brewer and Roy Porter (London: Routledge, 1993), 401.

109. Quoted in Hunter, Before Novels. 174.

110. For a sophisticated analysis of public self-fashioning of gentlemen's clubs see David Shields, "Anglo-American Clubs: Their Wit, Their Heterodoxy, Their Sedition," WMO 3rd ser. vol.LI No.2 (April 1994): 293-304.

111. Boston Episcopal Charity Society, List of Subscribers, 1726[?],Quincy, Wendell, Upham Papers, MHS; Annie Rowe Cunningham, Letters and Diary of John Rowe. Boston Merchant.1759-1762. 1764-1779(Boston, 1903), passim; "Wednesday Night Club -- Boston," 24 Sept 1733. Quincy, Wendell, Upham Papers, MHS. See Richard D. Brown, Knowledge is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America. 1700-1865 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 112-113 for an account of Boston merchant John Rowe's clubbing activities and his dependence on “face-to-face socializing” in the “the wharves, the taverns, the coffeehouses, and the clubs” during the 1760s. Brown suggests that Rowe may have been even more dependent on socializing than most merchants for his information, but the overall thrust of Brown’s argument is that merchants depended on oral communication more than print (114). From my perspective the distinction seems a bit artificial in that both face-to-face and printed communication participated in the same effort to make things visible. Face-to-face communication combines self-presentation (a pre occupation of the age) with the possibility of reading truth on the face— that again relies on the authority of the visible. Print transforms information into visible marks on the page open to all who can read. Both forms are connected to the project of establishing truth by making details visible.

112. Rowe, The Letters and Diary. 74; quoted in Brown, Knowledge is Power. 113.

113. Ibid.

114. Brown. Knowledge is Power. 113.

115. Jacob, Scientific Revolution. 115.

116. William J. Scheick, “The Newtonians and the Transmission of Authority,” The Library Chronicle of the University of Texas at Austin vol.25 #3, 34.

117. Ibid., 36.

118. Ibid., 34.

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119. In 1705, Thomas Bannister of Newport. Rhode Island noted that “Sash windows are the newest Fashion.” Thomas Bannister quoted in Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons. Houses. Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 124-126, 231.

120. See Chapter 9 “Terraces, Squares, and Crescents” in Mark Girouard, The English Town (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990); and Chapter 3 “The Open Window of the Eighteenth Century” in Richard Sennett, The Conscience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990).

121. See page 29 of this chapter; and Bushman, Refinement of America. 126.

122. Richard Sennett fittingly suggests that pleasure in man-made products extended to the design of landscapes and gardens carefully designed to imitate a natural profusion of wildlife. He notes, “One's pleasure in looking through the open window was indeed increased by the knowledge one had a hand in contriving the view.” Sennett, Conscience of the Eye. 75.

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This and the following chapters explore how the shift in worldview among

Anglo-American elites precipitated a re-arrangement of personal and social space in

Boston and Salem. Merchants and their colleagues at the center of this study took the

lead in re-building their colonial communities into provincial British cities. They also

re-fashioned their own identities based on a new emphasis on possessions and genteel

manners. They joined with royal officials to form a powerful gentry class,

emphasizing, through their control of trade and the urban landscape, their ability to

re-make society on the new principles of a world of goods. Their power was limited,

however, by the resurgence of older, traditional values of a moral economy, asserted

by urban crowds during difficult economic times. While sectarian and ethnic

differences became smoothed over in a visible, purchasable world of goods, new class

divisions emerged to trouble the polite society of eighteenth-century Boston and

Salem.

The changing worldview in Anglo-America was shaped and reinforced by a

momentous transition in the material world of Anglo-America between 1660 and

1760. English historians have characterized this period of change as the "Urban

Renaissance" and the "Consumer Revolution."1 Both these frameworks stress a

qualitative change associated with the sudden increasing availability and diversity of

174

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new sorts of goods. An explosion in the number and kinds of goods was

accompanied by a new attention to presentation and style and by a multiplication of

leisure activities. The most significant change centered on a revolution in the

meaning of goods in Anglo-America. Authority and value, previously vested in

traditional categories of local reputation, piety, probity, university education, and

family connections, and ultimately in God, gradually and fitfully became connected to

records of material details, displays of visible wealth, and participation in genteel

forms of sociability.2 Altered relationships to material artifacts and the changing

urban landscape not only provided new sources of “truth,” but also shaped new forms

of self-identity and led to a re-drawing of social boundaries. An increasing emphasis

on visible wealth offered a pathway for successful merchants of non-English descent

to enter the elite circles of colonial communities. Yet new values simultaneously

propelled the formation of class-based divisions. Wealth, possessions, and manners

became central to dividing the prosperous elite from the dispossessed poor. A new

language of goods developed in response to, and further facilitated, the growth of

capitalism. American colonists, especially those living in port cities, found their

world transformed. Merchants in the transatlantic trade played a key role in this

transformation by shipping Western and Asian commodities, bringing the latest

English consumer goods to their warehouses and shops, building mansion houses and

pleasure gardens, investing in modern wharves and streets, and financing public

buildings and churches. These men and their families also played a critical role by

acquiring and displaying high-style goods as part of the round of entertaining essential

to the new social relations of elites in Boston and Salem.

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The transition to a new cultural style shaped around a world of goods could be

seen before the turn of the century in Boston. On February 8, 1698, Boston's

wealthiest merchant, Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, died.3 Six days later, he was buried

in a monumental funeral ceremony. The intervening hours were filled with elaborate

preparations. Tailor Peter Barbour fashioned four black morning suits and

"westcoats" for Shrimpton's brothers-in-law Nicholas Roberts and Eliakim

Hutchinson and for Hutchinson’s son William and merchant Thomas Palmer at total

cost of £40. Seamstress Anna Peacock sewed a black dress and hood for Madame

Shrimpton.4 John Roulston made a coffin including "the frame for the coat of arms

and fitting it up. "5 Over 400 pairs of kid gloves were purchased from glover Roger

Killcup to be delivered to the mourners.6 Extensive arrangements were underway at

the grave site, supervised by mariner Thomas Walker, who brought in 400 "hard

bricks," three bushels of lime and sand to build the tomb.7 Savill Simpson dug the

grave; William Mumford assisted by laying steps and paving at the bottom.8 Benches

were set up around the tomb, and a wooden cover was prepared to lay over it.9 At

Shrimpton’s home, yards and yards of black cloth draped the entry, staircase, and

room where the coffin lay.10 The funeral day arrived, and the Colonel's coach with

horses "in Mourning; Scutcheon on their sides and Deaths heads on their foreheads"

moved solemnly through the streets of Boston.11 The "Coach stood by the way here

and there and mov'd solitarily."12 The bearers included Major General Winthrop and

Lt. Colonel Hutchinson, while members of the family led the widow as they

proceeded to the new burying ground. Mourner Samuel Sewall noted the "very fair

and large Paths [which] were shovel'd by great pains and cost."13 One path

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accommodated the ten companies of soldiers in attendance. Their leader. Captain

Clark, led the firing of “twelve great guns"14 as Colonel Shrimpton "was buried with

Arms."15 This ornate and solemn ceremony connected Shrimpton with a long

tradition of elaborate funerals but also carried Boston into a new era by honoring a

man bearing a novel standard of power and display. Shrimpton's funeral partook of

the older Elizabethan tradition of extravagant occasions while it gestured forward in

time to Georgian refinements.16

Shrimpton and his circle introduced new fashions to Puritan Boston not only

by wearing scarlet, lace, and gold and sporting powdered wigs, but also by traveling

in coaches and participating in a social style at odds with Puritan standards of

moderation. Sewall, son-in-law of John Hull, complained of Shrimpton and his

rakish friends: they “drink Healths, curse, swear, talk profanely and baudily ....

Such high-handed wickedness has hardly been heard of before in Boston.”17 Yet,

through his support of religious tolerance (he allied himself with Boston's Anglicans

and also permitted Baptists to use his property on Noddles Island) and his connections

with Royal officials, Shrimpton had allied with the group soon to gain ascendancy in

Boston. Men like Shrimpton, heir to his father Henry's substantial estate at mid

century, his brother-in-law Charles Lidget, and other wealthy merchants joined with

royal officials to form a nascent merchant elite in Boston that played an increasingly

powerful and visible role in the town.18

Shrimpton's only son, Samuel Jr., carried the merchants' growing interest in

self-presentation and fashion into something akin to dandyism. An account between

Shrimpton and Boston tailer Peter Barbour covering the years 1694-97 shows entry

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after entry designated as "for your son."19 Young Samuel, 22-25 years of age during

the period, had his silk westcoats embroidered with silver thread and purchased six

cloth coats, five waistcoats, nine pairs of breeches — some with silver buttons -- and

one "Surtout coat" or overcoat, all in an effort to keep up with the rapid change in

fashions set in motion by the Anglo-American demand for novelty. Shrimpton Sr.

also ordered two suits during this period, one to be "laced and fringed."20 To prepare

properly for company and to display his elegance, Shrimpton Jr. engaged in a

dressing ritual in his bed chamber aided by an ensemble of a "blacke Japan Table.

Looking glass, dresing boxes, two glass sconces, and two small [candle] stands."21

In “dressing his face,” he employed an assemblage of entirely new objects not seen

anywhere before the late seventeenth-century.22 His dressing boxes contained small

compartments to hold combs, brushes, powders, and ointments just coming into

fashion to enhance the genteel face.23 With cultural values shifting to exterior visible

signs, presenting the face in the best possible light was essential to impressing other

gentlemen and ladies. One's character could be worn or seen on the body. In an era

and in a business where coin was scare -- there was a constant shortage of specie in

New England throughout the colonial era — and so much depended on credit, time

and money spent on personal appearance not only furthered the cultural imperative of

the new worldview, but also made good business sense. And that was the point.

Capitalism shaped much of eighteenth-century life, from the desire for a fashionable

appearance to the belief that truth resided in an accretion of visible details recorded in

scientific experiments, in commercial accounts, and in a person's face.24

The Shrimptons were not the only family to change the social presentation of

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self. During the first half of the eighteenth century, well-to-do Bostonians

participated in what English historian Neil McKendrick has named "the consumer

revolution" which marked an "increasing interest in and availability of a wide variety

of material goods designed to present the self, transform the environment into a

comfortable and decorative stage, and, in the process, reshape leisure activities."25

The consumer revolution, I argue, was a direct result of increasing trade and the

influence of market relations translated into a changing worldview that emphasized

visible characteristics and favored wealth and its presentation and uses.

These changes took place not only in the great metropolis of London but also

in English provincial centers such as Boston and Salem, Massachusetts. Many people

in eighteenth-century Boston seemed to believe an earlier version of a twentieth-

century maxim: what's good for business is good for Boston. As English merchant-

economist Nicholas Barbon had proclaimed in 1690, fashion “keeps the heart of

commerce pumping.”26 Fashion fused with capitalism in the drive to re-make the

town and its inhabitants in the image of English provincial cosmopolitanism and

shaped the lives not only of merchants trading overseas, but of all who lived within

the city.

As cities began to remake their urban landscapes, an openness and regularity

emerged with an emphasis on vistas, walkways, gardens, and squares. Houses

designed or re-faced with Georgian symmetry and sash windows smoothed out the

jumbled appearance of the earlier Tudor aesthetic of gables and projections, of mixed

materials and heavily patterned exteriors. Compare for example the jumbled shapes

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of Philip English's "Great House" of 1683 with the single geometric block,

highlighted by ranks of windows and an entrance flanked by classical columns, of

Timothy Ome's "Mansion" built in Salem around 1760.27

New buildings and sites materialized to accommodate genteel leisure pursuits

appearing first in London and soon after in provincial ports and market centers in

England and New England. Greens for bowling, long an aristocratic sport in

England, were situated near gardens and often included "houses" or rooms for

entertainment. Lady Celia Fiennes described the playing area in Newcastle-upon-

Tyne during her visit there in 1698, as "a very pleasant bowling-green . . . with a

large gravel walk round it, with two rows of trees . . . making it very shady." On the

fourth side of the green she noted "a fine entertaining house," and "a pretty garden by

the side . . . where the gentlemen and ladies walk in the evening."28 In Boston, the

bowling green on Cambridge Street changed hands in 1714;29 the new owner, "Mr

Daniel Stevens at the British Coffee House in Queen Street," announced that the

"Green will be open'd on Monday next" and promised that "all Gentlemen,

Merchants, and others, that have a Mind to Recreate themselves, shall be well

accommodated by the said Stevens."30

Assemblies in England and America, which offered a mix of entertainment

such as dancing, card-playing, dinners, and concerts, took place in inns, market halls,

town halls, and in assembly rooms built as commercial or civic ventures.31 Some

assemblies marked special occasions, but in many urban centers, meetings occurred

on a regular schedule and tickets were sold on a subscription basis. Church services

now competed with social assemblies as events providing structure to the weekly

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calendar. York, which in 1731-32 built some of the most magnificent rooms in all of

England, held assemblies on a weekly basis in the winter and less frequently in the

summer.32 The York assembly rooms cost over £5,000 and were financed originally

by 200 shareholders who elected directors to manage the facilities. The shareholders

received annual dividends, which often went uncollected, and by 1754 amounted to

over £500.32 Resort towns such as Bath and Tunbridge Wells often had more than

one set of assembly rooms built and managed by competing proprietors.34 Other

towns took longer to establish gathering rooms: Bristol established its first site in

1755, Newcastle-upon-Tyne built its rooms in 1774-76.35 In Boston, in 1733, a bi

weekly subscription assembly was held during the winter season at "Mr. Pelham’s

great Room. ”36 Pelham gave notice "to the Gentlemen and Ladies Subscribers and

others, . . .[his assembly] will be Open'd on Wednesday the Tenth of January and

continue Six Wednesdays during the Months of January, February and March."37 The

advertisement notes that "it was falsely and maliciously Reported that the said

Assembly was put off last Wednesday" and concludes "that it was then held, and will

certainly Continue."38 Visiting Boston in 1744, Maryland gentleman, Dr. Alexander

Hamilton reported that “Assemblys of the gayer sort are frequent here: the gentlemen

and Iadys meeting almost every week att consorts of musick and balls."39 Hamilton,

something of a connoisseur of gentility, insisted that he saw "as fine a ring of ladys,

as good dancing, and heard musick as elegant as I had been witness to any where. "40

Dances popular in the early eighteenth century, such as the minuet, included

complicated figures where gentlemen and ladies circled and came together in a

manner designed to showcase fashionable clothing and skilled body movements.41

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Dance, an an which required instruction and practice, necessitated dancing masters.42

We find evidence of an itinerant teacher of genteel skills in Boston as early as 1715.

when Samuel Shrimpton, Jr's widow Elizabeth was billed by George Brownell a total

of £15. 7. 0 for five andlA months "Dancing," five months "playing on the

Spinnet," six weeks "Vi board," and other sundries.43 Dr. Hamilton, after a midday

dinner with a leading merchant, enjoyed "a tune on the spinett from his daughter,"

who sang as she played. Other ladylike pursuits were practiced and taught in Boston.

One boarding school promised to teach "Flourishing, Embroidery, and all Sorts of

Needle-Work, also Filigrew, and Painting upon Glas," as well as the more mundane

skills of "Writing, Arithmetick, and singing Psalm Tunes."44 Practice of the genteel

arts spread as quickly to Boston as to English provincial capitals.

Many of these pursuits provided not only entertainment but also an opportunity

to see and be seen. Clothing played an important role in defining self and group

identity. Clothing had always been a marker of status in the traditional hierarchy as

evidenced by regulations about which status groups could wear what luxury items.45

In 1684, Samuel Shrimpton's sister, a young woman of twenty-four, expended over

thirty pounds on a "Venetian Gowne lac'd," a "flowr'd petticoate," and various laces,

ruffles, hoods, scarves, and knotts.46 By the third decade of the eighteenth-century,

emphasis on novelty and style overshadowed the importance of opulent materials.47

In the seventeenth century, wealthy Bostonians gained much of their

information about clothing styles through letters from their English relatives and

friends. Samuel Shrimpton, Jr, who evinced a strong interest in fine clothing,

received tips from his maternal grandmother in London. With one letter in 1697, she

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sent him a "point cravat" and "lace to sew in your sleeves" explaining "lace is much

worn. "48 By the second decade of the eighteenth century, newspapers spread

information of styles and fabrics through advertisements announcing English and

European goods for sale in Boston. The Boston Newsletter of March 22, 1714,

carried an advertisement by Stephen Labbe of goods "To be Sold at Publick Vendue

or Outcry at the Crown Coffee House in King-Street, Boston" three days later.49

Labbe created interest in his auction by claiming to offer the "Newest fashion Silk

Satinets," as well as "European Goods" such as "Fans, Maps, and Pictures in gilt

Frames" all at "very reasonable Rates."50 Advertisements highlighted foreign

manufactured goods and drew attention to their recent arrival, thereby implying

quality and fashionableness. Merchant Jacob Wendell advertised goods "just arriv'd

from England and Holland" on sale at his warehouse in Merchants Row.51 Along

with Spanish and Swedish iron and German steel, Wendell sold "Silk Worsted

London made Stuffs" and "sundry sorts of other European Goods."52 John Phillips,

"Next Door to Mr Dolbear's the Braziers,” sold "fine English textiles," "Fans,

Masks," and "Silk Gloves."53

By the 1730s, London artisans began to grasp the possibility of markets in

provincial urban centers.54 In 1733, the Boston Gazette carried the announcement of

"Mrs. Elizabeth Hatton from London [who] makes Manteaus, Cloaks, Manteels, and

all sorts of Women's Apparel after the newest Mode."55 Mrs. Hatton also "has new

Patterns of Sieves by the last Ships, from the Queen's Manteau and ScarfMaker. "56

Again the emphasis is on the new and the authority derived from a connection with

London's highest social circle, the royal Court. Mrs. Hatton signals her knowledge

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of the importance of keeping up with the rapid changes in fashion by insisting that

"she'I constantly be supply'd" by the Queen's dressmaker "as the Fashion alters."57

Among the social elite, fashion became a code, a system of visible signs, which not

only announced wealth but signaled social positioning, a knowledge of international

fashion, and access to the latest designs and fabrics. Surrounded by an ever-changing

panoply of earthly delights, there was no longer time for pious contemplation of

God's wonders.

Polite society transformed the Tudor grandiosity of great feasts and public

ceremonies that punctuated the yearly calendar into a regular schedule of social events

-- daily walks, afternoon teas, visits to coffee-houses, and weekly assemblies and

concerts. Part of the genteel presentation, as we noted in Samuel Shrimpton Jr's

ensemble of dressing-table furniture, mirror, and candle stands, took place in private.

Houses changed inside, as well as adopting a classical facade. Rooms began to

acquire specific uses, and persons of consequence designated certain rooms for social

uses and furnished them with the latest in high-style furniture. Sets of dinnerware,

especially the newly available fork, emphasized the importance of each individual

diner having his or her own place setting.58 Elite families began to purchase plates

and flatware in quantities of eight, twelve, and sixteen to accommodate private dinner

parties in their dinning room.59 In Boston, by 1714, the local paper was filled with

adds for "Snuff Boxes, Cases of Knives, Forks, and Spoons," sold either by

merchants such as James Oliver in his warehouse in Merchants Row, or auctioned to

the public at the Crown Coffee House in King Street.60 That same year Mr. Banister

advertised "a Fine new Fashioned Bed that came over in the last Ship."61 As in

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clothing, the merchants promoted style and novelty as the most valuable attributes.

Bannister also offered "new Fashioned Chests of Drawers, Walnut-Tree and Winscot

Desks, tables. Glasses, Book Cases &c[etc.J all of the best Workmanship."62

Cabinet-makers, often trained in England, copied and adapted English furniture

designs. William Randall, "at the Sign of the Cabbinett, a Looking-Glass Shop in

Queen-Street near the Town-House Boston," promoted "Cabbinetts, Escrutoires,

Chests-of-Drawers, Tables, Beaufetts, Writing Desks, Bookcases with Desks, . . .

and all sorts of Japan-work, Done and Sold by" himself.63 He also specialized in

looking-glasses, glass sconces, and "old Glasses new Silvered."64

A culture devoted to making things visible promoted a desire for illumination

not only in science and natural philosophy but also in the material world of goods.

Much of the new look of homes came from a desire for and possibility of greater

illumination. Sash windows, which permitted a larger area to be covered in glass

panes, appeared first in England in the early part of the eighteenth century.65 With

more light entering the rooms and reflected back by looking glasses, mirrored glass

sconces, and the highly-polished surfaces of hardwood or enameled and gilded

furniture (Japanned), the play of light became an important part of the new elegance

in interiors. At evening social events, hundreds of candles bestowed a brilliant glow,

their sparkle reflected in mirrors, sconces, and ladies' jewels. One Boston account of

"a very Splendid Entertainment" by Jonathan Belcher, future governor of the Province

and "a Gentleman who had been Twice at the Court of Hanover," praised the event

by exclaiming, "the House [was] all over very finely Illuminated."66 By the 1730s,

Boston merchants were importing wallpaper and porcelain tiles for chimney

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surrounds.67 The tile's polished surface cleaned easily, and the colored designs

created a far different image than the alternative of soot-blackened brick.

To provide for increasing trade and the mushrooming possessions of New

England gentry, merchants invested in a commercial infrastructure that transformed

the urban landscape as dramatically as their Georgian mansions and pleasure gardens

did. An increase in the quantity and variety of goods available for sale and a growth

in the number of people able to purchase them required more goods to be shipped and

stored. Merchants banded together in informal partnerships and associations,

garnered the support of town selectmen, and proceeded to undertake significant public

works projects. In return, they gained control over the port facilities and land

passages by which almost all goods entered Boston. Most of the roads, wharfs, and

warehouses in Boston were built in this manner by private groups. By re-building the

city, merchants not only increased their ability to ship larger quantities of goods but

also made visible their control and influence over urban development and created a

physical manifestation of their participation in the changing worldview in eighteenth-

century Anglo-America.

The rebuilding of Boston took place in three phases.68 Late in the seventeenth

century, wealthy merchants like John Foster, Samuel Shrimpton, and his brother-in-

law Peter Sergeant built large mansions in a transitional style. Retaining a high-

pitched roof, the houses featured a symmetrical facade, often with third floor

dormers.69 The Sergeant house, which later became the Province House, an official

residence for the royal governors of Massachusetts, adopted this style. During this

period, the Anglicans built their first church in Boston, and Congregational merchants

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supported the formation of a new church built on Brattle Street.

In 1673-81, a group of forty merchants built with their own money a massive

circular sea wall, sometimes called the Barraicado, intended to fortify the inner

wharves and provide military protection for the town if needed.70 In return, "the

undertakers" received from the colony Council the right to build wharves and

warehouses in the flats between the shoreline and sea wall. The breakwater never

served a military purpose, while ship captains preferred the inner docks; the barricado

fell into disuse. It can be seen on the Bonner map of Boston drawn in 1722 as faint

dotted lines, labeled "Old Wharf," which issue out from shore and are intersected by

Long Wharf. In 1708, the selectmen surveyed the deteriorating "out wharfe" and

required the owners, often heirs of the original builders, to repair their sections or

forfeit them "to Others that will undertake and Maintaine the Same."71 Those who

gave up their interest in the out wharf were prohibited from extending their own

wharves any further toward the Barricado. This process created a realignment of

merchant interests and opened the door for recent winners to acquire more dock

space, while families like the Shrimptons, whose fortunes had dwindled, were

relieved of further obligation. This action by the Council, coupled with an expressed

interest in extending King Street beyond the low water mark, authorized merchants to

build additional space for greater quantities of commodities leaving Boston and more

consumer goods entering the port.

On the other side of town, a group of merchants, including Oliver Noyes,

William Payne, Elisha Cook, and David Jefferies, joined forces to improve the road

from the Neck and from Roxbury, the main route for farm products into Boston. At

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high tide the roadway often flooded, so the subscribers agreed to "Secure and Keep

off the Sea. from both Sides of the aforesaid Highway."72 In return, the town of

Boston granted the subscribers "all the upland. Beach, flatts, and Meadow ground on

both Sides of the Highway down to Low water marke."73 Thus merchants gained

control over the only entrance to Boston by land and, by improving the road,

improved their own chances for profit.

A year later, a group of Boston merchants, including Oliver Noyes, Daniel

Oliver, James Barnes, John George, John Gerrish, and Anthony Stoddard, proposed

to the town to "Erect and build a wharfe . . . at the end of King Street to the Circular

Line (the old Barricado) . . . and unto Low-water marke."74 (See Map - Bonner

1722) The group agreed to build what came to be know as Long Wharf at "our own

Cost and Charge" and in return received title to the wharf and right to "Possession

and Peaceable Improvement of the Granted Premisies."75 When construction was

completed, the merchant group built a row of brick warehouses along one side of the

wharf. Their efforts created a path through which consumer goods entered the Boston

area and at the same time fostered their own possessions in real estate.

A decade later, in 1711, a large fire swept through much of Boston creating

economic hardship for artisans and laborers. For a wealthy Anglo-American elite just

coming into being, it offered a chance to reconstruct the town in early Georgian style.

Most of the new buildings erected were of brick or stone, partly in reaction to fear of

fire and partly in response to the Anglo-American fashion for brick. During this

second rebuilding, Andrew Faneuil began his mansion house on the edge of town

while on Clark's Square, the center of the North End, merchant William Clark

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commissioned a twenty-six room manor house. The First Church and the old

wooden, Tudor-style Town Hall burned. Both were rebuilt as "handsome" brick

structures. This rebuilding, coupled with the extension of Long Wharf and the

fabrication of brick warehouses and shops along the north side of the wharf,

dramatically changed the appearance of Boston.

The third wave of construction began in the 1730s. Three new churches were

built at the outskirts of the city. Sponsored by Governor Belcher, the Hollis Street

meeting house may have been planned in pan to increase the value of property owned

by the Belchers and other merchants and land speculators.76 The Anglicans built their

second church in the Nonh End in 1723 and a third church, called Trinity, in the

western pan of the city in 1734.77 Merchant Thomas Hancock constructed an

important residence at the edge of town by the foot of Beacon Hill in 1737. He then

used his distance from town as a reason for ordering from London a coach and four

with Hancock and Henchman arms emblazoned on the doors.78 Most of the new

buildings, churches, wharves, and dwellings were sponsored and financed by

merchants, singly or in groups. Having examined the progression of construction

projects in eighteenth-century Boston, we can see how capitalism re-shaped the urban

landscape and explore how the new elite attempted to re-configure the town for its

own economic and social goals, thereby playing out in a most concrete way the value

of the visible.

An inventory taken in May 1748 on the death on one of the builders of Long

Wharf illustrates some of the changes taking place in Boston. Anthony Stoddard, a

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merchant and judge gained prominent connections through his marriage to Martha

Belcher in 1705.79 Her brother Jonathan became governor in the 1730s. After eight

years at Harvard, Stoddard chose not to become a minister like his famous uncle

Solomon but to follow his father-in-law and grandfather (and namesake) into trade.80

At the time of his death, Anthony Stoddard owned four warehouses and many

thousands of acres of land in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Maine.81 Stoddard

exemplifies the merchant who transformed himself into a landed gentleman; all four

of his warehouses were leased to others, and no evidence exists of his investment in

ships.82 He lived in a brick mansion house on King Street, the main street between

Long Wharf and the Town House.83 His mansion house contained both a shop and a

warehouse either connected to the dwelling area or in a separate building on the

grounds.84 If we had drawings of Stoddard's brick mansion, we would see a dramatic

difference from seventeenth-century brazier/merchant Henry Shrimpton's home.

Stoddard's mansion had a garden, separate from the yard, reflecting the eighteenth-

century interest in walking out of doors as a leisure activity for men and women.85

Inside the Stoddard mansion on King Street, a new emphasis on dining and

partaking of hot beverages, as well as a much larger investment in furniture,

distinguished Stoddard's personal belongings from Henry Shrimpton's. No longer are

the most expensive items centered around the bedstead. In fact, Stoddard's most

valuable belonging is a "large clock with a fenered [veneered] case" worth £120. The

clock with its tall angular case and silvered face projected a masculine patriarchal

image intent on counting and measuring time as pan of the enlightenment goal of

gaining rational and predictable control over nature. This was, not coincidentally, a

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primary goal for transatlantic shipping merchants. Wealthy trader Thomas Hancock

ordered a London made clock with "3 figures viz. Fame, Peace, & Plenty, . . Well

proportioned & Guilt with burnish'd Gold" a top the case.86 His figures represented

icons of merchant life, a need for "fame" as in a widespread reputation for credit,

skill and solvency, "peace" to avoid wartime interruptions in trade, and "plenty" of

goods to ship and "plenty" across the land to support strong markets for goods, all of

which equaled "plenty" of profit in the merchant's pocket. Most eighteenth-century

tall case clocks also indicated phases of the moon and tidal variations that were critical

to anyone involved in ocean-going ventures.87

Stoddard's front room, which held the tallcase clock, contained the latest in

fashionable items, including a large looking glass worth £12 and four glass sconces;

displayed on a large round table and a small oval table were "China bowles" and large

tureens imported from the Far East. In Stoddard's chamber, his bed hangings

included a white calico quilt, again an Asian import, and an elegant high chest with

twelve drawers.88 The windows were dressed with four "diaper window Curtains"

and two "valens" suggesting symmetrical sash windows. Pictures painted on glass of

Queen Mary and Prince George, various mezzotint prints, and portraits of Admiral

Shovell, King Charles II, and Admiral Russell adorned the walls. As with the

dandified Samuel Shrimpton Jr., Stoddard's dressing ritual took place before a

dressing table and looking glass. The bed chamber closet held several "burnt Scollopt

and pudding dishes" suggesting that the Stoddards ate informal meals in their bed

chamber. During these relaxed hours, Stoddard would have forsaken his wig and

worn his elegant and expensive "Damask Silk [dressing] gown" and cap.89

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Many of the new decorative and fashionable items owned by Anthony

Stoddard and others in the Boston elite originated not in England but in Europe or

Asia. A la mode clothing designs featured French and Italian silks or Indian calicoes.

Wallpaper originated in France, and most designs retained elements of French scenes

or patterned French toile. During the early decades of the eighteenth century.

Japanning -- lacquering furniture with glossy ebony accented by dashes of vermillion

and gold -- became the height of elegance; by mid-century, furniture crafted of

polished mahogany from the Caribbean became the most desired style. The daily

ritual of tea time was based exclusively on foreign products, cups and saucers, and

teapots from China, tea from East Asia, and sugar from the Caribbean. Demand for

these products drove British imperial trade. Repeatedly foreign goods were

incorporated into fashionable markers of genteel status, creating tremendous profits

for merchants and embedding capitalism in the minutia of social relations. This is not

to say that gentility and the fashion system were simply the product of a clever

capitalist marketing scheme but rather that through a merging of transformations in

the intellectual, social, and economic realms, possessions displaced providence and

took on a new importance in fashioning individual identity, defining economic and

social relations, and shaping cultural expressions.

The story of the Faneuil family of Boston illustrates the extent of cultural

change in colonial Massachusetts. Unlike Philip English, continuously pushed to the

margins of seventeenth-century Salem because of his French origins and Anglican

faith, the Faneuils, a French Anglican family arriving in New England a generation

later, joined the eighteenth-century Boston elite by adopting the possessions and

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manners characteristic of English gentility. The cultural authority of visible wealth

exerted such cachet that the Faneuils did not find it necessary to anglicize their name

or obscure their origins. Instead they mapped the family moniker into the center of

eighteenth-century Boston (and into twentieth-century tourist guides as well.)

The Faneuils came to America after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in

1685, which signaled the end of toleration for Protestants in Catholic France.90

Huguenots, as the religious refugees from France were called, fled to neighboring

Protestant countries of Holland and England and to Dutch and English colonies

overseas. In February 1692, the General Court drew up a list of "persons of the

French nation admitted into the colony."91 Among those named, three brothers from

a merchant family in La Rochelle, Andrew,(1657-1738) Benjamin, and John Faneuil,

had arrived in Boston by way of Holland.92 John soon returned to France. Benjamin,

after a few years in Massachusetts, settled in New Rochelle, New York. Andrew

remained in Boston. Benjamin married another Huguenot refugee, Anne Bureau,

whose uncle, Thomas Bureau, established himself as a major London merchant and

founder (by an investment in 1694 of £500) of the Bank of England.93 The Faneuil

brothers quickly developed trading networks with their relatives in England, Holland,

and France. Andrew married a French woman, but the couple remained childless. In

New York, Benjamin and Anne Faneuil gave birth to six children, two sons followed

by four daughters.94

Upon the death of Benjamin Faneuil in New Rochelle, his sons Peter and

Benjamin Jr. moved to Boston, where they trained as merchants under their uncle

Andrew.95 The elder Faneuil built up a substantial fortune during his years in Boston.

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Very few of Andrew Faneuil's business records remain to indicate precisely how he

accomplished this. References in contemporary accounts continue to refer to Faneuil

as a merchant so presumably trade provided the bulk of his profits. We do know that

he began to purchase real estate in Boston. In 1703, he purchased a half interest in a

brick house on King Street (now State Street) and six months later purchased the other

half of the house.96 Faneuil carried out many of his real estate purchases in the month

of January, perhaps to take advantage of low winter real estate values or perhaps to

invest the profits he garnered on the previous year's commerce. While most

merchants did not publicly record their profit and loss on an annual basis, several did

use November and December to balance some long-standing accounts.97 Nathaniel

Oliver, a well-connected and wealthy merchant, sold Andrew Faneuil an investment

property of seven houses and land on the corner of Cornhill and King Street (now

Washington and State) near the Town House. In the 1730s, Faneuil bought and sold

wharves and warehouses including Oliver’s Dock and a warehouse on Long Wharf.98

His main warehouse stood in one of the most advantageous commercial locations at

the corner of Merchant’s Row and King Street. Opposite Faneuil's warehouse stood

the Bunch-of-Grapes Tavern, much frequented by merchants and ship captains.99

In 1711, Andrew Faneuil acquired from Humphry Davie a stone house and

land on Tremont Street, which he proceeded to fashion into a three-story mansion

surrounded by seven acres of landscaped gardens.100 Faneuil's house can be seen on

John Bonner's map of Boston drawn in 1722, as a large, three-story, hip-roofed

structure set well back from the street and fronted with an arched gateway and

fence.101 One member of the Quincy family of Boston remembered "the deep court

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yard ornamented by flowers and shrubs, . . . surmounted by a richly wrought iron

railing decorated with gilt balls.” The mansion was "brick, painted white; and the

entrance framed by "a semi-circular balcony." The memorist described the hall and

apartments as "elegantly furnished" and recalled "terraces, which rose from the paved

court behind the house."102 From his elegant mansion, Faneuil simply crossed the

street to attend services at King's Chapel, the first Anglican church in Boston.103

Although Andrew Faneuil provided generously in his will for the French Church

located on School Street a block south of his home, he attended King's Chapel and

supported the building of a second Anglican church in 1734 on Summer Street. The

family maintained pews in both churches.104

Andrew Faneuil died in Boston, in February 1738.105 He was said to be the

wealthiest man in town, and a grand funeral paid homage not only to his success in

commerce but to the dramatic cultural changes underway in Boston. The Boston

News-Letter of 23 February 1738 described "above 1,100 persons of all Ranks,

besides the Mourners, following the Corpse; also a vast number of Spectators were

gathered together on the Occassion."106 The paper offered the opinion, "'tis supposed

that as this Gentleman's Fortune was the greatest of any among us." Faneuil's

funeral "was as generous and expensive as any that has been known here."107 Like

Samuel Shrimpton's rites in 1698, guns fired to honor the wealthy merchant. One

antiquarian account suggests that the family distributed three thousand pairs of

mourning gloves and sent two hundred mourning rings to close friends and relations

in New England, England, Holland, and France.108

No inventory of Andrew's possessions remains to tell us the precise extent of

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the fortune his nephew Peter inherited. But when Peter died just five years later at

the age of forty-two, he left an estate valued at £ 44,453 in Massachusetts money or £

7,557 sterling.109 Peter Faneuil maintained or improved on his uncle's assets by

aggressively pursuing commercial strategies, setting up fishing stations in

Newfoundland, and maintaining broad overseas connections with merchants in

Amsterdam and La Rochelle. During his brief reign as scion of the family, he was

the wealthiest man in Boston.110

Peter Faneuil lost no time after his uncle’s death in enjoying his newly

acquired riches. He and his sister Mary Ann, who lived with him in the family

mansion, began to refurbish the interior and participate in a fashionable lifestyle.

From his agents in London, he ordered a plentiful supply of china and glassware and

one dozen each of silver handled knives, forks, and spoons, "haveing the Crest of my

Armes cutt on each of them." He enclosed "the Impression of the Armes that the

goldsmith may take the Crest of" and also ordered a "Large handsome Lanthorn to

hang in an Entry way."111 A year after his uncle's death, Faneuil turned to Boston

upholsterer and dry goods merchant Samuel Grant whose customers included other

leading merchants like Thomas Hancock, Colonel Jacob Wendell, and the Orne

family of Salem. Faneuil ordered several expensive and stylish pieces of upholstered

furniture from Grant including "1 Elbow chair cov'd with Cha." [Chaney or China

silk] at £11.15 shillings.112 He also requested six "Large chairs" at £5 each, twelve

leather chairs at 33 shillings each, and two "Compass chairs [chairs with rounded

seats]" at 33 shillings each.113 Later that year, he purchased from Grant a bed rug and

plaid blanket for himself and a set for his sister Mary Ann.114 The following year,

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Faneuil ordered three dozen leather chairs and an "Easie Chair [wing chair] of

morocco Leather and Callico Case [slipcover]." His expenditure of £20 for the

"Easie Chair" alone equated to more than twice what many less fortunate Bostonians

could accumulate in an entire lifetime.115 Faneuil did not confine his luxurious

expenditures to interiors alone. A few months after receiving his inheritance, he

ordered a "chariot" and two harnesses from London.116 At his death in 1743, he left

"I Chariot" valued at £400, one coach, a two-wheel chaise, a " 4 Wheel Chaise at

£150," and fourteen harnesses valued at £770.117 Frenchman Peter Faneuil rode

through the streets in style — English style.

The inventory of Peter Faneuil's estate reveals an extensive collection of

opulent furnishings. In the parlor, guests, called to tea by the chimes of an eight-day

walnut case clock, sat on "Carved Fineerd [veneered] Chairs and Couch" gathered

around a marble table. Faneuil and his sister, dressed in English fashions and assisted

by a black slave from Africa, served tea from East India, sweetened with sugar from

the Caribbean, in China "Cupps, Saucers, Tea Pott, Stand, Bowl, and Sugar Dish,"

all arrayed on a Turkey carpet from Anatolia.118 These foreign goods transported by

merchants were then transformed by the ritual of teatime into the defining moment of

English gentility.

Faneuil and Stoddard belonged to the same social and civic circles. A list of

subscribers to the Boston Episcopal Charity Society, a social and charitable

organization not confined to Anglicans, shows the melding of families of different

ethnic origins and similar economic and social status. Among the subscribers were

merchants of French origin like Peter Faneuil and Stephen Deblois, members of the

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Dutch Wendell family, staunch Anglican merchants like Charles Apthorp and

Sylvester Gardiner, as well as Congregational merchant John Hancock.119 All of these

men derived the major portion of their income from investment in overseas trade.120

Many of them and others of the merchant elite held important political offices in

Boston and at the provincial level. In 1740, for example, the Boston town meeting,

moderated by merchant Thomas Cushing, elected three leading merchants and one

shopkeeper among the seven selectmen. Leading merchants filled the ranks of

Overseers of the Poor and town Auditors and the four men, Thomas Cushing, Jr.,

Edward Bromfield, James Allen, and Thomas Hutchinson, chosen as representatives

to the General Court were all leading merchants.121 Several overseas merchants from

Boston and Salem claimed membership on the Council (the upper house of the

Massachusetts legislature) in 1740, including John Jeffries, Jacob Wendell, and

Anthony Stoddard of Boston and John Turner and William Brown of Salem.122 Many

of these merchants had been chosen Justices of the Peace earlier in their career.

Justices chosen in 1731 included Anthony Stoddard, Jacob Wendell, Andrew Faneuil,

and James Bowdoin (also of French extraction).123 Thus during the fourth and fifth

decades of the 1700s, a melding of families with various religious affiliations and

ethnic origins characterized the ranks of political and social leaders in

Massachusetts.124 The Faneuil family were very much a part of the prominent people

who constructed the elite culture of eighteenth-century Boston.

Faneuil Hall, donated to the town by Peter Faneuil, marked the climax of the

final phase of eighteenth-century re-building in Boston and demonstrated the

conjoining of commerce and gentility.125 In 1743, Boston mapmaker and engraver

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. William Price, in what was probably a commercial venture designed to capitalize on

the controversy and interest in Faneuil Hall and its benefactor's death (see Chapter 6),

paid homage to Faneuil's role by dedicating "A SouthEast View of the Great Town of

Boston in New England in America'' to Peter Faneuil, Esq.126 Price limned a view in

which Faneuil's public and private buildings frame the center, the focal point of the

townscape. Graceful Georgian cupolas, pierce the sky just as straight and narrow

wharves project into the harbor's waters. If one entered Boston via Long Wharf, and

most did, and looked up the elongated extension of wharf and King Street toward the

civic center, the vista ended at Town House Square. A glance to the right would

reveal Boston’s latest handsome public building, Faneuil Hall, topped by a

grasshopper weathervane, a replica of one atop the Royal Exchange. If one looked

slightly left and up the hill, beyond Town House Square, one could see another

grasshopper crowning the summer house of the Faneuil estate. Frenchman Peter

Faneuil had helped to fashion a Boston skyline of cosmopolitan forms and commercial

icons, making visible the new values at the center of the merchant elite.

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NOTES FOR CHAPTER 5

1. For "The Urban Renaissance" see Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 166Q-177Q (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989). On the "Consumer Revolution" see Neil McKendrick, John Brewer, and J.H. Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth- Century England (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982). For other studies of consumption and lifestyle in England and America during the seventeenth and eighteenth century see Carole Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer in England and America (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990); Lorna Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour and Material Culture in Britain, 1660-1760 (London: Routledge, 1988); Cary Carson, et.al. Of Consuming Interests: The Stvle of Life in the Eighteenth Century (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1994); Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons. Houses. Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992); John Brewer and Roy Porter, eds. Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993) includes comparative material from Asia.

2. Perry Miller notes that by the 1720s ministers demonstrated that “they had learned that 'welfare' is a material conception.” In a sermon by Ebenezer Pemberton Miller concludes that “it was impossible to disguise how preponderant. . . were physical goods over spiritual.” Miller, From Colony to Province. 379.

3. According to Bernard Bailyn “by 1687 he [Shrimpton] was the richest man in Boston. In that year he paid the town's largest tax. His assessed wealth in trade was 1.7 per cent of the total assessed mercantile property in Boston: his estimated real estate holdings in that town alone totaled .6 percent of the entire value of the principality's land and buildings.” Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 192.

4. Peter Barbour, Bill to the Estate of Col. Samuel Shrimpton, 1698; Anna Peacock Bill 1698. Shrimpton Papers MHS.

5. John Roulston, Bill Feb 14, 1698. Shrimpton Papers MHS

6. Roger Killcup, Account page, 1687-98. Shrimpton Papers, MHS.

7. Thomas Walker, Bill Feb 12, 1698. Shrimpton Papers MHS.

8. William Mumford, Bill 1698; Savill Simpson, Bill Dec 25, 1698. Shrimpton Papers MHS

9. John Egberd, Bill Feb 21, 1698. Shrimpton Papers MHS

10. Mark Girouard, Life in the English Country House: A Social and Architectural History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 90. Girouard describes how the courtyard, entrance facade, stairs and rooms leading to the coffin are draped in black cloth. For aristocrats, the coffin room was draped in black velvet. For lesser

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mortals, a lesser cloth was used.

11. Samuel Sewall, The Diary of Samuel Sewall. 1674-1729 2 vols. Ed. Thomas Halsey (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1973), I: 147.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid.

15. Ibid.

16. For a comparison of Samuel Shrimpton’s funeral to the typical Puritan funeral see David E. Stannard, The Puritan Wav of Death: A Study in Religion. Culture, and Social Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977).

17. Sewall. Diary. 1:150-151.

18. By emphasizing the consolidation of a merchant elite which also included royally appointed officials and some urban professionals, ministers, physicians, and lawyers, I take a stance that differs from Bernard Bailyn in his study of seventeenth-century merchants. While Bailyn did not extend his study into the eighteenth-century, he did make two somewhat conflicting statements on this matter of a unified merchant elite. Referring to the mid-eighteenth-century, he agrees that “the leading merchants were towering figures,” but goes on to insists that “though united by the demands of a common occupation, they did not form a socially homogeneous unit. ” However, near the end of his study, Bailyn refers to a group of “merchant clans” such as the Wentworths, Apthorps, Bowdoins, Faneuils, and the Olivers, who “came together to form a large part of the ruling aristocracy of eighteenth-century New England.” Bailyn, New England Merchants, ix; 196. From my own research, a merchant elite did come together during the first half of the eighteenth-century in Massachusetts but was radically split during the revolutionary era when the tenor of the people, including some merchants, turned decisively against “the world of goods” which had formed the means and underlying worldview of their economic and social identity.

19. Peter Barbour, Account pages signed 1694-97. Shrimpton Papers MHS.

20. Ibid.

21. Samuel Shrimpton Jr Inventory 22 Jan 1704. SCPR File # 2826 Mass Arch.

22. Cary Carson, “The Consumer Revolution in Colonial British America: Why Demand?,” in Carson et.al., Of Consuming Interests. 575-589.

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23. Carson. "Why Demand?" 579. Carson notes that dressing boxes first appeared in New England inventories in the 1670s while the term dressing table only appears in inventories after 1700.

24. Just as merchants and others drew on the interest in visible details to reshape their world, so I have drawn on the interest and comments of Sharon Zuber to make visible some of the nascent connections between this and the previous chapter and between God and goods.

25. See McKendrick, Birth of a Consumer Society ; Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour.

26. Nicholas Barbon, A Discourse of Trade. (London, 1690). Quoted in James Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England. 1750-1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), 161.

27. Salem, did not develop into a major twentieth-century city like Boston so more of the early homes are still standing or lasted long enough to be captured in pen and ink (English) or by photograph (Orne).

28. Celia Fiennes, The Journeys of Celia Fieness. ed, C. Morris (London, 1947), 340. Cited in Borsay, Urban Renaissance. 175-6.

29. Boston News Letter. 3 May 1714.

30. Ibid.

31. See Borsay, Urban Renaissance. 150-162 on assemblies in English provincial towns. The word assembly is used to designated the event, the building, and/or the projected series of gatherings.

32. Ibid.. 154.

33. Ibid., 160.

34. Ibid., 151-2, 154.

35. Ibid., 158-59.

36. Boston Gazette. 8 Jan 1733.

37. Ibid.

38. Ibid.

39. Alexander Hamilton, Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton. 1744. ed. by Carl Bridenbaugh (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 146.

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40. Ibid.

41. Borsay, Urban Renaissance. 273 notes that "One of the features of such spaces [assembly rooms] was their open plan, with a minimum of obstacles to interfere with the vision of those using them." See also Plumb, J. H. Georgian Delights (Boston: Little Brown, 1980), 33-34.

42. Rhys Isaac in The Transformation of Virginia. 1740-1790 (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1982), 81-87 discusses dancing as an important social performance where skill, with the proper fashionable dress, can open doors to the highest level of society and bring patronage from prominent families.

43. George Brownell, Account page [1715]. Shrimpton Papers MHS.

44. Boston News Letter. 19 April 1714.

45. See N.B.Harte, "State Control of Dress and Social Change in Pre-Industrial England," in Trade. Government and Economy in Pre-Industrial England: Essavs presented to F.J.Fisher ed. by D.C.CoIman and A.H. John (London: Widenfeld and Nicolson, 1976), 132-165; Shammas, The Pre-industrial Consumer. 216-219; and Phyllis Hunter, "Oh What a Tangled Web We Weave: Multiple Discourses in early Massachusetts Sumptuary Laws," Paper presented at the American Studies Association Annual Meeting, Boston, Massachusetts, 4-7 November 1993.

46. Elizabeth Shrimpton, Account page, 21 August 1684. Shrimpton Papers MHS

47. For a discussion of the "fashion pattern" and the exaggerated attention to novelty in fabric, style, and color of clothing, see McKendrick, et. al.. Birth of a Consumer Society, passim.

48. Elizabeth Roberts to Samuel Shrimpton Jr, 17 July 1697. Shrimpton Papers MHS

49. Boston News Letter. 22 March 1714.

50. Ibid.

51. Boston News Letter. 5 December 1720.

52. Ibid.

53. Boston News Letter. 2 May 1734.

54. See Richard L. Bushman, "American High-Style and Vernacular Cultures," in Colonial British America: Essavs in the New History of the Earlv Modem Era, ed. Jack Greene and J.R.Pole (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984) for a discussion of the role of artisans in transmitting genteel culture from London to provincial cities.

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55. Boston Gazette. 21 May 1733.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid.

58. For an intricate discussion of the changes and meaning of tableware and dinning patterns see Barbara G. Carson, Ambitious Appetites: Dining. Behavior, and Patterns of Consumption in Federal Washington (Washington: American Institute of Architects Press, 1990) passim.

59. Carson, Ambitious Appetites. 24-25.

60. Boston News Letter. 22 March 1714.

61. Boston News Letter. 3 May 1714.

62. Ibid.

63. Boston News Letter. 2 May 1715.

64. Ibid.

65. Borsay, Urban Renaissance. 51-52.

66. Boston News Letter. 27 September 1714.

67. Boston Weekly News-Letter 2 May 1734 "John Phillips, Next Door to Mr Dolbear's the Braziers, selling . . . Paper for Rooms, and Tiles for Chimneys."

68. The information in the next three paragraphs is put together from Bonner's Map Qf Boston, 1722,Whitehill's Topographical History, and Price's Southeast View of Boston. 1743.

69. For a fascinating discussion of the transitional artisan-mannerist style architecture in England and the colonies, see Cary Carson, “The Public Face of Architecture in the American Colonies,” a slide lecture presented at the Fortieth Williamsburg Antiques Forum, January 31-February 5, 1988.

70. Walter Muir Whitehall, Boston: A Topographical History 2nd edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 19-20.

71. Boston Records vol. 8, 154-55.

72. Boston Records vol. 8, 47.

73. Ibid., 48

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74. Boston Records vol 8, 66.

75. Ibid., 67.

76. See Whitehill, Boston, who puts forth this view, 39-40.

77. Regarding church steeples, an eighteenth-century design feature, see Richard L. Bushman, The Refinement of America: Persons. Houses. Cities (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992), 172-74.

78. W.T. Baxter, The House of Hancock: Business in Boston. 1724-1775 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1945), 96.

79. Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College. . . . 14 vols. Vols. IV-XVII of Sibley's Harvard Graduates (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933-1975), IV: 384.

80. Miller notes that Anthony Stoddard the grandfather was a Puritan merchant, one of those who “humble themselves by public profession before the congregation” and who were able to “combine profits with search of soul.” Miller, From Colony to Province. 255. This demonstrates, in three generations of one family, the shift from Puritan to cosmopolitan that took place in Boston and Salem. Stoddard came from a staunch Puritan family yet aligned himself culturally with the provincial elite.

81. Ibid., 385; "Articles of Agreement" (re Stoddard Lands in Connecticut) 1 May 1741. Misc Bound, MHS.

82. Anthony Stoddard Estate Settlement, SCPR File # 8959.

83. Ibid.; Whitehill, Boston. 21.

84. Anthony Stoddard Inventory, 22 September 1748. Shrimpton Family Papers MHS. Samuel Shrimpton's daughter Elizabeth married Anthony's brother David Stoddard.

85. In building his Boston mansion on Beacon Hill in 1735, Thomas Hancock instructed his gardener to “layout the upper garden allys,” “Trim the beds,” “Gravel the Walks,” and “Sodd the Terras.” Quoted in Bushman, Refinement of America. 129.

86. Thomas Hancock to Wilks & Rowe, 10 July 1739. Thomas Hancock Letterbook (TH LBK).

87. See Otto Mayr, Authority. Liberty, and Automatic Machinery in Early Modem Europe (Baltimore; Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986); and David S. Landes, Revolution in Time: Clocks and the Making of the Modern World (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

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88. Stoddard’s high chest and other furniture may have been made in Boston. For a detailed examination of the adaptation of English furniture styles by colonial craftsmen see Lovell, “Boston Blockfront Furniture.” Like much of the Georgian architecture coming into being in Boston, blockfront furniture was, according to Lovell, characterized by “a richness, rationality, classic proportions, and an uncompromising symmetry,” 78.

89. Ibid.

90. In the 1670s the Faneuil family in France sent trade goods to Boston via an agent named William Taylor. Bernard Bailyn, The New England Merchants in the Seventeenth-Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 145.

91. For an account of the early groups of French families' arrival in Boston see Justin Winsor, A Memorial History of Boston (Boston, 1868-1874), 249-253. Jon Butler's The Huguenots in American. A Refugee People in New World Society (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983) offers a general account of Huguenot settlements in America but is too broad to be useful here.

92. Probably via Rotterdam where a branch of the family had settled. See J.F. Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants and the Protestant International in the Seventeenth Century,” WMO 3rd ser. Vol LII (Jan 1995), 91 and unpaginated genealogy of “The Faneuil Family, with Relatives.”

93. Annie Thwing, Thwing Catalogue, MHS; Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants,” 90.

94. Thwing, Catalogue, MHS; Bosher, “Faneuil Family, with Relatives.”

95. Abram English Brown, Faneuil Hall and Faneuil Hall Market or Peter Faneuil and his Gift (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1900), 12-13. Brown's account of Peter Faneuil resembles hagiography and should be considered somewhat dubious but here his suggestion matches with other references such as Thwing.

96. Thwing catalogue, MHS.

97. See previous chapters and Chapter 7 on Timothy Orne who calculated his annual net worth for three years in the early 1760s, in small paper memo books now in the Orne Family Papers at the Peabody and Essex Museum. It is my contention that overseas merchants did have fairly clear ideas about what activities netted the greatest returns even if they did not precisely calculate those returns. I believe they kept an informal running tally at least in their heads or perhaps as Orne seems to have done, in private memos. Therefore it is plausible that Andrew Faneuil would have known when he had concluded a good season, and could invest available funds in real estate. Some of his real estate may have been acquired through payment of credit.

98. Thwing Catalogue, MHS.

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99. Walter Muir Whitehill, Boston: A Topographical History 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968), 26.

100. The purchase from Davie is recorded in the Thwing catalogue. Several sources mention Faneuil's mansion.

101. John Bonner, The Town of Boston in New England Frances Denning, Boston, 1722. Stokes Collection, New York Public Library.

102. Eliza S.M. Quincy, Memoir of the Life of Eliza S. M. Ouincv. Quoted in Winsor, Memorial History. 259.

103. Whitehill, Topographical History. 35.

104. Brown, Faneuil Hall. 15; Bonner, Map of Boston.

105. Bosher, “Huguenot Merchants,” “Faneuil Family.”

106. Boston News-Letter. 23 Feb 1738. Quoted in Winsor, Memorial History. 261.

107. Ibid.

108. Brown, EaneuiLHall, 23, 27.

109. Peter Faneuil, Inventory 28 March 1743. Suffolk County Probate Records File n 7877. Mass Arch. See Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible: Social Change. Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 118 and Table 7, 400. Comparing range of personal wealth in Boston and Philadelphia in pounds sterling, Nash lists the figure £7,557 as the top figure in Boston between 1736-1745. This figure corresponds to Nash's calculation of Peter Faneuil’s inventory in pounds sterling and most likely represents the highest estate valuation Nash encountered in Suffolk County wills during the ten year period. When comparing Faneuil's wealth to the median personal wealth figure of £1,065 sterling of the richest 10% of Bostonians represented in Nash's sample, we can see that he probably maintained or improved on his uncle's position and remained the wealthiest man in Boston.

110. Ibid., 399.

111. Peter Faneuil to Samuel and William Baker, 10 June 1738. PF Lbk. NEHGS.

112. Samuel Grant, 29 May 1738. "Account Book, 1737-1745." American Antiquarian Society.

113. Ibid.

114. Grant, 4, and 14 August 1738. Account Book. AAS.

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115. Nash, Urban Crucible. Table 6., 399. The Easie chair was worth just slightly less than a Boston mariner's annual income in pounds sterling in the same year. Nash, Urban Crucible. Table 2, 392.

116. Winsor, Memorial History. 260.

117. Peter Faneuil, Inventory 28 March 1743. SCPR.

118. This scene is recreated from the details of Faneuil's estate inventory. Peter Faneuil, Inventory, 28 March 1743. Suffolk County Probate Records File ft 7877.

119. Boston Episcopal Charity Society, 1726 from the Quincy, Wendell, Upham Papers, microfilm, MHS.

120. It is important to remember that in this work the word merchant is reserved for those trading overseas while retail merchants who confined their operations to shops or local business would in most cases not be members of the merchant elite studied in this dissertation.

121. William H. Whitmore, ed. The Civil List.

122. Ibid.

123. Ibid., 128.

124. Among those included in what Bailyn calls “the ruling aristocracy of eighteenth- century New England” are several families of French origin such as the Faneuils and Bowdoins of Boston and the Ayraults and Bernons of Rhode Island. Bailyn, New England Merchants. 197.

125. In the early republic between 1800-1820, a whole new round of major public buildings were constructed in a neo-classic style by a succeeding generation of merchant families like the Appletons, Lawrences, and Lowells who garnered their wealth from trade with Asia.

126. For details on the market for prints and its links to the consumer revolution see Margaretta M. Lovell, “Painters and Their Customers: Aspects of Art and Money in Eighteenth-Century America,” in Carson, et.al. Of Consuming Interests. 298-306.

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Growing economic divisions and conflicts over a central marketplace in mid-

eighteenth-century Boston exposed, or made visible, the limits of a unified merchant

elite to impose its consumer values and economic power on the middling and lower

families of the town. While merchant capitalism re-fashioned Boston into a leading

provincial center for the Anglo-American world of goods, the new emphasis on

markets and possessions called forth opposition from those further and further

marginalized from owning valuable goods or even basic resources. The extraordinary

social realignment that bypassed the Puritan old guard to create a powerful Anglo-

European-American elite also produced an enlarging division between rich and poor.

Intimations of these changing positions were in the air by the late seventeenth-

century Boston. In 1687, a French Protestant refugee arrived in Boston as a scout for

families fleeing France after the revocation of the edict of Nantes. In an anonomous

report, the newcomer compared Boston, "built on the Slope of a little Hill," to his

hometown; "[it] is about as large as La Rochelle."1 The Rochellais and other

Huguenots, like the Jersey French, represented a foreign element in Puritan New

England.2 The informant fashioned an account made up of answers to a series of

question posed by potential migrants.3 Written just after the Massachusetts Bay

209

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Colony lost its charter and received in return an influx of royal officials and English

merchants, the account records the benefits of overseas trade and the changing

religious and ethnic complexion of Boston.4

After "a long passage at sea" via St. Kitts, a group of Huguenots entered

Boston in 1686. The fifteen families, "reduced to great sickness and poverty," were

welcomed as "objects of a true Christian charity."5 The Council requested donations

from churches throughout the colony and appointed merchants Elisha Hutchinson and

Samuel Sewall to distribute aid to the needy families. Of course, not all Huguenot

newcomers fit this profile; as we have seen, the Faneuil family, well connected to

important merchants in England, France, and Holland, quickly parlayed their

connections into capital and eventually into colonial prominence.

But those who came empty-handed like the Huguenot families from the Virgin

Islands were received in Boston not as martyrs to the cause of Protestantism but as

pitiful "objects of charity. "6 That phrase, used repeatedly in eighteenth-century

Boston, expresses a world of meaning. Placing another person in the position of

object implicitly expresses a power relationship in which the person giving charity

exerts control over the recipient. The refugees and the growing ranks of

impoverished widows, laborers, and artisans in eighteenth-century Boston, like Philip

English in Salem, lived "outside the walls" but for different reasons and within a

different social matrix.

Having appropriated the authority to change the spatial environment by

building port facilities and designing elegant buildings for social gatherings, the

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merchant elite of Boston and Salem took on a measure of obligation of caring for the

"deserving" poor and in the process distanced themselves from their supplicants. No

longer were rich and poor subject equally to God's benevolence or judgment. Now,

successful merchants and their ministers worked as God's appointed agents in

dispensing charity and overseeing poor relief.7 Operating from a very different

understanding than early Puritan calls for Christian charity, wealthy donors and their

recipients no longer shared a belief in subjection to God's providence. Instead, they

often stood on opposite sides of a gulf shaped as much by men as by God.

Commercial success, no longer conceived as a blessing from God, instead provided a

source of gifts to God.8

Ministering to many of Boston's leading merchants at his Brattle Street

Church, Benjamin Colman expressed this eighteenth-century "enlightened" view quite

clearly.9 In a sermon of 1736 titled "The Merchandise of a People; Holiness to the

Lord," Colman asked rhetorically, "Shall not your Merchandize and your Hire be

Holiness to the Lord?"10 He explained that "one natural benefit of Trade and

Commerce to any People is that it enlarges their Hearts to do generous Things."11

Unlike ministers and magistrates who heaped opprobrium and censure on Boston

merchant Robert Keayne a century earlier for charging excessive prices, Colman

accepted the laws of markets and money supply. During inflationary times, he

acknowledged, “money falls" in value and "you all raise your Merchandise."12

Rather than railing at injustice, Colman turned his sermon into a plea for a cost-of-

living raise for ministers, saying, "It is impossible that They should eat sufficiently,

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or have Clothing for their Families if their Support rise not while all your Trade and

Hire rise after so prodigious a Manner."13 Injustice results "if you do not raise their

support."14

Colman's understanding of economic issues may have been absorbed from his

brother John, a successful Boston merchant and author of at least one currency

pamphlet. In a paean to the benefits of trade and commerce (seventeenth- century

Puritans would have referred to God's blessings), Colman asserted that "the

Knowledge of Christ has been propagated by Trade far and near."15 In an interesting

echo of Dudley North's praise of fashion, he added, "commerce . . . enlarges Peoples

Hearts to do generous Things, for the Support of Divine Worship and Relief of the

Poor."16 Here it is not God but commerce that enlarges men's hearts. Contrast this

with John Hull's expressions of wonder at God's gifts. Or compare it with Cotton

Mather's sermon on "Durable Riches" delivered in 1695, and the magnitude of

change becomes clear. Mather, a transitional figure to be sure, remarks "that when

Riches do without any Interruption flow in upon us, we grow but the more Hungry

and Craving after them; . . . Tis well therefore that our God, Orders now and then a

Loss for us."17 For Mather and his followers, riches and losses "flow" from God to

humans, not from merchants to ministers and the needy. One generation later,

agency and power once located outside of humans, in the supernatural, has, or so

Colman and his congregation believed, been captured and controlled through skillful

practices and careful accounting.18 No doubt they recognized the partial and

contingent character of human mastery; its very tenuousness required constant

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assertion through accumulation, display, and charity. Riches, even if acquired by

one's own diligence and acumen, could swiftly become losses. Thus the slippery

boundary between affluence and poverty necessitated increasingly visible

demarcation.

Merchants responded to ministerial calls for philanthropy, no doubt sensing

the dual role charitable gifts fulfilled, both marking the donors as men of importance,

affluence, and generosity and ameliorating growing social problems.19 In Boston,

successful merchants consistently served as Overseers of the Poor.-10 By selecting

them, the townspeople may have hoped to put their most affluent citizens under

obligation to contribute to town relief efforts.21 The office also provided a platform

for merchants to act out their benevolence in very visible ways, visiting the poor,

constructing and supervising an almshouse and workhouse, and doling out "outdoor"

relief to destitute widows and families.22 Every three months, a small group of

Overseers, accompanied by a constable, walked through each ward of the town,

dispensing alms and observing the conditions of poor neighborhoods, "To Inspect.

Prevent, and Suppress Disorders."23 Historian Christine Heyrman characterizes this

street procession as a "theater of legitimation" where the merchant elite “could begin

to exhibit their authority, to exact deference, and to establish monuments to their

cultural hegemony. "24 Others took to the streets in opposition to this top-down

cultural authority, asserting their rights, not to charity, but to food at a reasonable

price.

In eighteenth-century Boston, refashioned social boundaries emphasized a

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division between haves and have-nots.~ Merchants of French and Dutch origin no

longer seemed threatening to the Anglo-American gentry when they displayed high-

style goods and partook of English gentility by riding through town in coaches,

drinking tea in elegant parlors, and walking through gardens dressed in the latest

fashions from London. Gentility smoothed over ethnic and sectarian differences,

creating a community defined by wealth, power, and refinement. The lower sort —

unemployed and poor artisans, mariners and dockworkers, destitute widows and

orphaned children, the disabled and infirm, unable to accumulate goods or attend to

minute distinctions required by genteel manners -- remained on the other side of the

divide.26 Possessions defined social status and expressed control over resources and

economic production. Those without possessions were often without the means to

acquire basic necessities; they were truly dispossessed.

But the dispossessed were not completely without power. The merchant elite

in Boston had more success imposing Georgian symmetry on the streetscapes of

Boston than imposing good order on the use of those streets. The limits of gentry

control were exposed most consistently by a long-running contest over the market.

Concerns relating to the momentous changes in early modern culture often seemed to

coalesce around specific economic problems. In a new era of world wide-trade an

increasing placelessness of the market, a lengthening chain of market exchange, and

an accelerating shift from goods presented for sale to goods represented by money,

paper instruments, and account book entries, all contributed to anxiety over the

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market.27 In the words of historian J.C. Agnew, social and economic changes

introduced "a protean social world, one in which the conventional signposts of social

and individual identity had become mobile and manipulable reference points.'’28 This

world of goods "convened rank itself to a negotiable asset."29 To counteract this

mobility of identity, Boston's merchant elite, many of whom had used their

purchasing power to fix their own social identity in this new cultural marketplace,

also attempted to fix the value of commodities in account books and fix the time and

place of commodity markets in Boston.

The desire to circumscribe markets was part of a long tradition of ambivalence

over foreign trade and its middlemen practioners. In Ancient Greece, and again

during the Middle Ages, market places emerged at cross roads outside the jurisdiction

of cities. As trade increased, markets moved into town centers, often an open square

overlooked by the church. This shift enabled urban officials to enforce orderly

procedures and exact fees and tolls.30

In Elizabethan England, town corporations were run by freemen composed of

"the trading element of the town, its merchants, artificers, innkeepers, shopkeepers,

and stall-holders -- perhaps the upper third of its population. "31 Control over the

marketplace was one of the important functions of town corporations and was closely

connected with gaining independence from manorial control. Market towns

developed all over England after 1570, supplanting the huge regional fairs, like the

famous Sturbridge fair, that had been the central means of exchanging trade goods.

By 1640, over 800 towns in England held at least one market day per week.32 A

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spiritual mantle for trade and traces of its original location were invoked in the

construction of market crosses on the town squares of English villages and cities. A

market cross usually resembled a small pavilion with a covered area and raised

platform where local officials might read announcements of importance.33

In London and Paris, extensive market areas like Leadenhall and Les Hailes

developed to accommodate the explosive growth in trade. Leadenhall, built after the

great fire of 1666, consisted of four large buildings surrounding an expansive open

square which held hundreds of stalls -- over 100 butchers' stalls for beef alone, and

140 more for other meats.34 Leadenhall became a focus of civic pride for

Londoners.35 Other English towns began to build more substantial structures for their

markets, often combining the function of a market place under arches on the first

floor with a large room for meetings of local officials on the second floor. Called

variously Town Hall, Market House, or Guild Hall, these buildings were frequently

built and rebuilt as architectural styles and economic purposes changed.36

Borrowing from this English (and European) tradition, Boston built a Town

Hall in 1657 with funds bequeathed by controversial merchant Robert Keayne.

Twenty years earlier, Keayne had been censured for "taking above six-pence in the

shilling profit; in some above eight-pence; and in some small things, above two for

one."37 In English money, twelve pence equal one shilling so Keayne was taking at

least fifty percent profit on his English goods. His lingering chagrin over these

charges prompted him to leave a lengthy "Apologia" in his will and a substantial sum

for the construction of a market house/town hall for Boston.

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Boston’s first Town Hall, followed the heavily built, protective Tudor

enclosures of early market houses like that in Thaxted. England. In 1711, after a

major fire, the Town Hall was rebuilt in a Georgian style, a simpler version of the

sumptuous Town Hall at Abingdon, meant to display a new symmetry and larger

expanses of glass. Rails and cupolas topped off a hip-roof, lending stature and

importance to the already imposing structure. Sometimes towering at the edge of the

town square or overlooking a separate open area set aside for markets, such buildings

symbolized the growing influence of towns. But trade escaped the bounds designed

for it in both London and Boston. Within two decades of the building of the massive

Leadenhall project, stalls and vendors were spilling out of designated areas and

clogging the streets of London.38 In a similar fashion, shopkeepers filled the shops

and stalls sheltered by Boston's town hall, and peddlers and hawkers thronged the

streets in noisy, disorderly fashion, bringing the placeless market to every doorstep.

While this disorder spelled liberty to some, to others, the leading merchants included,

it appeared as a dangerous lack of control.

A detailed look at the local conflicts over proposals for a central market to

contain retail exchange of foodstuffs exposes the limits of the merchant elite's ability

to shape the land and people of Boston. The controversy over markets came to a head

in the 1730s and 1740s; the conflict had a long history. It was part of the struggle

over resources between emerging capitalists and increasingly marginalized laborers

and "objects of charity." One form of this conflict revolved around control over the

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site and method of market exchange. The first legislative effort to confine the market

to a particular site occurred in the late seventeenth century. On June 23. 1696, the

selectmen of Boston, meeting with the Justices, "agreed that the market Appointed by

Law should be kept at one place at Present viz in and about the Town house and that

the market be opened on the 11th day of Aug'st., next."39 Gerald Warden in his 1970

history of Boston calls this a "mysterious event" but offers many clues that allow us to

unravel the mystery and suggest that this legislation was one point of contention in

what became a continuing struggle between the materialist ethos of cosmopolitan

Bostonians and the "moral economy" of the dispossessed.

Previous to the proposal of 1696, the town meeting annually chose several

clerks of the market to oversee the buying and selling that went on in the streets and

squares of Boston.40 Peddlers moved up and down the streets calling out their goods

for sale and stopping from door to door while men and women also displayed and

sold produce from outdoor stalls. The space under the Town House held small

enclosed shops rented by retail merchants. Artisans sold handcrafted goods from

shops adjacent to their homes while shipping merchants sold imported goods from

their warehouses in Merchants Row and along the wharves and docks. This

haphazard method of marketing foodstuffs and other goods seems to be have been

unique to Boston. Most larger towns and small villages in England and America had

established defined sites and times for local markets. Many localities restricted

peddling; for example the Lord of the Market in Woodbridge, England, threatened to

prosecute "'persons who come to this town with fish, fowl, fruits, butter, cheese,

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eggs' . . . and who carry these things from house to house in stead of taking a stand

or stall in the market. "4l Officials in colonial Boston attempted to maintain order

through licensing sellers, checking weights and measures,42 and appointing market

officials annually. In 1691, the town offered twenty new licenses "To sell out of

Dores."43 Those authorized included merchant Thomas Savage, distiller Thomas

Smith, and twelve widows. The predominance of widows licensed pointed to the

economic problems developing in Boston in the 1690s and indicated one form of

pension relief offered to poor widows.44

In addition to the above regulations, clerks of the market were charged with

the enforcement of the "Assize of Bread."45 Adopting an established English custom,

the selectmen of Boston and the General Court of Massachusetts passed laws

regulating the price charged for bread as determined by weight in relation to the price

of wheat.46 Law required the monthly publication of prices after 1701.47 The assize

recognized three types of bread; white, wheaten, and household, each heavier [that is

made with coarser flour] than the next. As the price of wheat rose, the required

weight of each loaf declined proportionately.48 The regulations controlled the baker's

profit and aimed at controlling the price of bread for the poor.

However, in 1696, a group of merchants established a form of vertical

integration that threatened to subvert the intentions of the assize of bread.49 Andrew

Belcher, one of New England's leading shipowners, controlled a large portion of the

grain supply of Boston.50 Belcher allied himself with Elisha Cooke, leader of the

"popular political faction" and Boston’s largest millowner.51 Together they set up

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Nathaniel Oliver, Belcher’s relation by marriage, as a baker. Oliver soon became one

of Boston’s largest provisioners of bread.52 Among them the partners operated every

element necessary to control the supply of grain and bread in the town -- except for

distribution. With Belcher and Cooke's support, Oliver gained a seat as selectman

and promptly convinced his colleagues and the justices to draft legislation to establish

a specific site for a public market. Thus Oliver enhanced the possibility of controlling

distribution as well. In this single location, Belcher, Cooke, and Oliver could control

price and supply of the most basic, most necessary food for the people of Boston. No

records of planned collusion exist to confirm the three merchant’s intentions, but later

activities of Andrew Belcher confirm that for him profit took precedence over popular

feeling.

The regulations regarding the public market seemed to have faded from

existence shortly after Nathaniel Oliver failed in his bid for re-election as selectman

the following year. But issues over the supply of grain and bread continued to surface

in Boston especially during periods of warfare and/or economic difficulties. In 1711,

when the city suffered from the effects of Queen Anne's War and a serious fire,

Andrew Belcher seized an opportunity. Belcher, through his associations with

Governor Joseph Dudley and his position as the largest grain merchant in New

England, garnered an appointment as Commissary to the British forces fighting the

French and Indians in Canada. To supply the British (and some of the Massachusetts

men fighting with them), Belcher the merchant sold grain to himself as Commissary,

netting a substantial profit in the transaction. To keep the supply flowing, Belcher

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hoarded grain, gravely depleting the supply of grain, flour, and bread in Boston.

This rapidly pushed up the price of bread, already under pressure from increasing

wheat prices.53 and created a serious problem for those with marginal incomes,

affecting well over 60% of the townspeople. (See Table 2.)

In a carefully restrained and precisely directed manner, the sufferers took

action. One morning, the captain of a Belcher grain ship about to sail out of Boston

harbor found the ship's rudder missing — cleanly sawed off.54 That evening a "mob"

of men ran the ship aground to prevent the grain from leaving. An angry Belcher

continued to let grain pile up in his warehouses and raised prices even further. The

selectmen, unable to convince Belcher to lower prices or stop exporting wheat, bought

what little they could find and resold it to the townspeople at pre-Belcher prices.55

In 1713, grain supplies again ran disastrously low, and when Belcher

continued to export grain at a high profit to the West Indies, a crowd of two hundred

broke into his warehouses and carried out their own distribution of grain.56 In each

case, the mob took specific actions to alleviate a specific problem. They knew

exactly whom to target -- Andrew Belcher, although Oliver and Cooke may again

have been involved -- and rather than attacking Belcher, they went after the grain and

succeeded in capturing a supply not just for the "rioters” themselves but for all the

needy. This follows the pattern of eighteenth-century English food riots -- another

element of Georgian urbanity imported to Boston.

These conflicts involved two separate segments of society — the upper and

lower, propertied and dispossessed -- striving to re-define their appropriate power and

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE 2. WEALTH INEQUALTIY IN BOSTON, 1689 - 1765

A. Per cent of total wealth and range of estate values for each time period in £ sterling.

Estate 1684- 1700- 1716- 1726- 1736- 1746- 1755- 1765- Values 1699 1715 1725 1735 1745 1755 1765 1775 Lower 17.2 12.6 9.7 9.3 10.2 10.1 7.4 9.6 0-60% Range 1-292 1-215 1-143 1-132 1-173 1-177 1-146 1-212 in £ Top 82.8 87.4 90.3 90.7 89.8 89.9 92.6 90.4 40% Range 307- 217- 146- 138- 174- 179- 149- 215- in £ 3,417 11,007 7.362 9,606 7,557 5,609 15.614 5,138 *

B. Per cent of Wealth Group owning Real Property.

Lower 27 23 15 12 19 21 16 20 60% + Top 88 77 77 77 80 73 81 85 40%

Sources: Gary Nash, Urban Crucible: Social Change. Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 396, 400, 401; Peter Faneuil Inventory, 28 March 1743. Suffolk County Probate Records, File # 7877. * Peter Faneuil's Estate in £ sterling. § Excluding Samuel Waldo's estate of £53,265 sterling. + The lowest 30% of inventories had from 0-5.9% of the wealth with inventories ranging from £1 to 33 sterling. Most poor decedents did not own enough valuable possessions to require an inventory and therefore are not represented on this table.

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. place in a new society governed by accumulation and possession rather than God’s

grace. Beginning in the late seventeenth century and accelerating in the early 1700s. a

series of local and international developments created an economic situation in which

the majority of Bostonians found it very difficult to maintain their basic living

conditions. King William's War (1689-1698) and Queen Anne's War (1702-1714)

required an extensive commitment of men and money from Massachusetts, including

2,000 men recruited (and impressed) for an attack on Quebec in 1711. The attack

failed and the troops sustained severe casualties. Governor Dudley estimated the

Quebec campaign alone cost the colony £50,000.57 The wars resulted in higher taxes,

currency inflation (due to large issues of paper money to finance colonial

participation), and rapidly growing numbers of widows and children in Boston. Due

to increased danger from French privateers, trade ebbed during times of war between

England and France (and her sometime ally Spain). In 1711, Massachusetts imposed

an embargo on its own shipping to assure a plentiful supply of vessels for an attack on

Port Royal in Nova Scotia. To add to the misery in Boston, a tire swept through the

city that same year. All of these difficulties combined to swell the ranks of the

laboring poor and those dependent entirely on charity to survive. Cotton Mather,

whose father had written of the wonders of God's providence, lamented earthly

plights, noting that "the distressed Families of the Poor to which I dispense, or

procure needful Relief, are now so many, and of such daily Occurrence."58

In these same circumstances, a number of merchants and land speculators

succeeded splendidly. Andrew Faneuil and, following him, his nephew Peter

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provided visible proof of merchant affluence and mastery over complex and difficult

economic conditions; it was in 1711 (as noted above) that Andrew Faneuil purchased

a stone house with seven acres and began to fashion his Georgian style mansion and

gardens. As conditions worsened for many, the elite increased its control over the

town's economy.

An examination of probate inventories ( See Table 2), based on a study by

historian Gary Nash, indicates the growing divide between the poorer sort and the

propertied class. Those who died with few possessions rarely left records of their

estate which means that any analysis based on inventories excludes the poorest group

entirely.59 Therefore the discrepancies between upper and lower wealth groups were

even more exaggerated than the data indicates. During the fifteen-year period

covering the new Charter and the beginning of Provincial government in

Massachusetts (1684-1699), the lower 60% of wealth-holders owned 17.2% of the

total wealth recorded in inventories in the Suffolk County Probate Court. During the

next fifteen years that percentage of economic goods (real and personal) owned by the

largest and poorest segment of Boston society dropped almost a third to 12.6% of the

total. The upper, segment which included 40% of the inventories, continued its

consolidation of property and by 1735 controlled 90.7% of the inventoried property.

If we translate percentages to a range of values expressed in pounds sterling,

the gap widens. In the decade of 1736-1745, values of estates (including real and

personal property) in the lower segment ranged from El to £173 sterling. The

fortunate few in the upper wealth group left estates valued from £174 to £7,557

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sterling. The highest valuation, that of Peter Faneuil. is over forty-three times as

large as the highest valuation of the lower 60%, which still excludes many of the

poorest townspeople.60 This dramatic and significant divergence continued, with

slight fluctuations, until the American revolution.61 These numbers demonstrate a

marked division into classes based on possessions (of property, consumer goods, and

money) and control over economic resources, supplanting earlier divisions carved by

religious or ethnic difference.62

At times, the dispossessed took their outrage to the streets. "Riots" erupted in

Boston several times during the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1747. for

example, anti-impressment riots to protest the “kidnaping” of local youths to serve in

the British navy engulfed the streets.63 In several instances, like the attacks on

Andrew Belcher’s ships and warehouses in 1711 and 1713, when the protests were

centered on the supply and price of grain, bread, or plans for centralizing markets,

the crowd actions followed the pattern of protests in English provincial towns and

market centers described by historian E. P. Thompson.M Thompson explores the

working out of what he denotes as a “moral economy” in food riots and crowd

actions throughout England in the eighteenth century. The "mobs" or crowds

followed a common pattern of behavior that avoided wanton destruction in an effort to

focus on specific targets, such as granaries, flour mills, tax collectors, merchants, and

markets. The crowd attempted to enforce what it perceived as a basic right of the

working poor to a supply of food at a reasonable price. Often rioters paid merchants

or millers for grain or flour confiscated at a price reflecting the crowd's sense of

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fairness.65 As Thompson and others portray it. the "moral economy" denoted a

process of changing "customs and usages" based on non-monetary norms, which

became articulated "in resistance to the economy of the ’free market.'"

English men and women brought this "bunch of beliefs, usages, and forms

associated with the marketing of food in time of dearth" with them to America.66 In

the Puritan communities of seventeenth-century Massachusetts, a combination of

plentiful food supplies, a system of warning-out strangers (especially those who might

become a financial burden to the town), and a strong sense of community among all

who were subject to God’s mysterious providence eliminated the kinds of market

crises that might have called for commoners to act on the ideas of a moral economy.

In eighteenth-century Boston, as economic conditions worsened and an emphasis on

visible wealth eroded providential thinking and reshaped community alignments,

crowd actions embodying values of a moral economy emerged in response. These

values, including a belief in every person's right to food at a price he or she could

afford, arose in opposition to the profit motive, which favored the few who controlled

the bulk of economic resources in the town. It is within this context of growing

inequality, periods of dearth, and struggles over rights to basic foodstuffs that the

furor over central markets and the limits to the mercantile gentry's control of

economic and social processes in Boston can best be understood.67

In interpreting this saga, it is important not to be misled by our present-day

association of free market ideology and individual liberalism. Read in the light of the

merchants' desire to regulate buying and selling of food and the opposition of many

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townspeople may seem contradictory. But free market ideology is just that -- an

ideology to be used by one side or another to gain advantage in economic or political

realms. In eighteenth-century Boston, the leading merchants used every conceivable

approach to controlling the price and movement of goods into and out of the town

(recall that they invested heavily in roadways as well as docks), and they maintained a

strong interest in controlling exchange of goods within the town. Perhaps they felt

that the demand from Boston's population for grain and other produce worked in

competition with their overseas trade, driving up prices and cutting into profits. Or

perhaps, the same impulse expressed in constructing Georgian mansions and

handsome public buildings prompted an interest in imposing an orderly centralized

system on the exchange of produce within the community. What is clear is that

throughout this period, the dominance of the merchant elite was repeatedly challenged

by the middling and lower sort over the issues of marketing produce.

Conflict over food distribution erupted again in the 1730s in the debate over

public markets in Boston. Early in the previous decade, several pamphlets came out

proposing and opposing a specific location for selling produce. One written in favor

of central markets by Benjamin Colman, brother to one and minister to many leading

merchants, laid out the benefits in terms of “moral values of social harmony. ”6*

Colman insisted that with strictly regulated market sites “housewives and tradesmen

would be more courteous, servants would not idle their hours away while on market

errands,” and the end result would be “thrift, frugality, and diligence.”69 Here the

theme of social order and the values of gentility served as the main impetus for

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improvement. In 1733, with the election of five new selectmen (out of seven total),

including members of leading merchant families such as Bromfields. Lees,

Jefferieses, and Winslows, proposals for a town market surfaced again.71’ At the town

meeting in March "It was voted . . . That a Market under proper Regulation, would

be of great Service and Benefit to the Town."71 The voters chose four members of

Boston's merchant elite. Honorable Thomas Fitch, Esq, Edward Hutchinson. Esq,

Thomas Palmer, Esq, Jacob Wendell, Esq, and Mr. Nathanael Cunningham as a

committee to "think of, and assign. Three suitable Places for Erecting Markets, the

Cost and Charge thereof, and how to be defrayed."72 Fitch, Hutchinson, and Wendell

were also selected to serve on several other committees including a group to consider

"the most convenient Places in this Town, for Fortifications."73

Wendell figured prominently in the central market plans throughout the 1730s.

Jacob Wendellin arrived in Boston sometime early in the century as a "poor Dutch

boy" from Albany.74 As a religious and ethnic outsider, he would have made an

unlikely candidate for a leading political and social position in Boston’s original

Puritan elite. Wendell apprenticed to merchant John Mico and married into the ranks

of the elite Oliver family.75 Records of Wendell's trading activities are scarce, but we

know that like Peter Faneuil, he developed a network of contacts overseas, expanding

beyond English merchant houses to include Dutch merchants in New York and

Amsterdam. His marriage to an Oliver and his rise to social and political

prominence, including a place on the province Council and a judgeship, demonstrated

the shift in social values to a language of wealth, possessions, and manners, which

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smoothed over ethnic and religious differences and emphasized economic power.'8

While Wendell took advantage of the new ethos to construct a social and

economic position at the center of the town's elite, he and others on the market

committee were unsuccessful in gaining control over the buying and selling of local

produce. The matter of central markets exposed the limits of Boston merchants'

ability to shape the physical and social landscape. The market committee presented

its first report to the town on March 20. Two of the recommended sites, the "Open

Space on the Town Dock" and "the Open Space before and about the Old North

Meeting House." met with ready approval, but the location of the South End market

required several town meetings and involved negotiating a lease. On March 26. the

three places were agreed upon, and £ 700 was voted "to effect the buildings and other

necessaries" and "that they may be made fit and commodious."77 Rules and

regulations of the market were set forth, and the town voted that "the Scheme of a

Market, as it has been now Read, Be Established."78

The proposed market regulations exempted all provisions coming into Boston

by sea, which left the shipping merchants free to regulate their own businesses. The

markets applied primarily to food provisions brought into Boston by land, including

"flesh, fowles, butter, eggs" but excluding grain and meal controlled by overseas

merchants.79 Fish brought into Boston by sea continued to be sold at the wharves

while ffesh-water fish fell under market rules. The market began at "the Rising of the

Sun, thro' the whole Year," every day except "the Lord's Day" and continued until

one p.m.80 No "huckster" or retailer could purchase provisions for resale until after

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one o'clock.'1

In the midst of anxiety over economic depression and confusing divisions

among the townspeople, an anonymous pamphleteer invoked a language of tradition,

suggesting that Bostonians retain the "ancient Custom or Practice among a People that

has heretofore been Advantageous. "*2 In Some Considerations Against the setting up

of a Market in this Town, the author suggested that if "there is but a bare probability

that an Alteration of it would be hurtful.” then it is safest to continue "in the Old

Custom and Usage of the Place." Centralized markets threatened to deprive

townspeople of "a Liberty we have always had of buying at our own Doors." which

represents a "Priviledge that Nature seems to allow us."*3 By invoking the authority

of "ancient practice" and claiming liberty to buy and sell at will as a natural right, the

author lent a double legitimacy to his arguments. While employing recent ideas of

natural laws governing society, the tract also used arguments of an older moral

tradition embedded in the world of hierarchy and patronage; but the pamphlet did not

draw on the older Providential Puritan language; published in Boston in 1733, it is a

wholly secular piece. God is never mentioned. That alone indicates the magnitude of

cultural change occurring in Boston and in the larger Anglo-American world.

Elites and commoners continued to vie for the power to define and control

their changing world. The marketplace issue provided one locus for the process of

redefinition of obligations and individual rights. Underlying, and intensifying this

political and cultural process were a declining economy and increasing dearth. The

volatile combination of concern over profound social changes and immediate

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economic necessity, explains why the question of central marketplaces in Boston

continued to arouse extraordinary interest and concern. The next town meeting to

consider the market proposals, held on May 28, drew such a large crowd that the

meeting adjourned to old Brick Meeting House. After a debate, "it was Put to Vote

whether the Town would have a market or not."*4 The "Scheme." determined by

written ballot, passed by twenty-five votes. 364-339. In the afternoon, each of the

twelve articles of the proposal was read, debated, and voted on; each passed. The

meeting then directed the committee to compute the costs of "Erecting the several

markets" and report back to the next town meeting.85

One month later, "the great Affair of setting up of Markets here came again

into consideration."86 Over 800 voters attended. The committee read a report of

costs involved in setting up the markets, and it was voted on by written ballot. The

report was not accepted, "Whereupon the Town voted that the said Affair be deferred

to next March meeting for further consideration. "*7 This controversy has often been

interpreted as either a city versus country issue or a political struggle between the

faction supporting Governor Belcher and the opposition "popular" party headed by

Elisha Cooke, Jr.88 However, in light of previous struggles over access to grain and

bread and the deteriorating economic conditions in Boston, the marketplace

controversy can best be understood as a negotiation of differences between an older

set of values embodied in the idea of a moral economy and a newer mentality which

emphasized profit and accumulation of wealth over the traditional obligations of

patronage which bound the less and the more fortunate.

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The following March, in Boston, another committee was formed which again

included the merchants Fitch, Palmer, and Wendell. The committee reported on sites

and costs, and on March 26, 1734. the town assembled to vote again on the "Scheme

of a Market."89 The scheme asserted that the inhabitants "labour under many

hardships and difficulties for want of an Open Public Market."90 The town voted in

favor of the markets, apparently by acclamation, since no vote totals appear, and

placed £ 700 in the hands of the committee "to effect the several Buildings

necessary."91 Colonel Wendell, a member of the committee, offered £ 50 "towards

defraying the charge of the said Market."92 On April 3, the town voted "that the

Market shall be Opened" on May 20. Perhaps the plan passed easily this time

because just a few days earlier the town appropriated money for "Purchasing Grain,

for Use of the Town, the Year ensuing."93 A committee including Nathaniel

Cunningham, also a member of the market committee, determined "What Quantity of

Grain each Family shall receive out of the Granary . . . according to the Seasons of

the Year, and Circumstances of the Town."94 This assured the provision of bread for

the poor and defused the more threatening aspects of central markets.

At sunrise on June 4, bells rang for the opening of the first public markets in

Boston. "The Concourse of People, (Sellers, Buyers, and Spectators) at the Market

Places" in the South End on the road to Roxbury, at the Town Dock, and at Old

North Meeting House, "was very considerable."95 The markets drew an "abundance

of Provisions," and those that "exceede in Goodness & Cheapness, went off quick"

while those "poor or dear" sold more slowly. Printed accounts of the opening assured

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the reader that "fix'd places of resort" would be “very beneficial” to the "great Town

in general" and to"our Country Friends in particular."96 However, not all townsmen

perceived country sellers as friends. Ten days after the markets opened, a town

butcher "had a fancy to impose on" a country butcher by taking a quarter of a lamb

"in a Clandestine manner, very much like unto Stealing."97 The thief was caught and

fined treble costs.

Not only did amity between sellers at the markets dissolve quickly, but

attendance of buyers diminished as well. Apparently the author of Some

Considerations Against the setting up of a Market in this Town perceived correctly

that Bostonians preferred the liberty of "buying at our own Doors."98 In less than two

years, the town meeting voted not to employ clerks for any of the three marketplaces

and voted that "the Ringing of Bells at the Opening of the Markets, be

discontinued."99 There were few transactions to oversee and little reason to announce

an opening. In the spring of 1737, "Sundry Inhabitants" petitioned the selectmen to

appropriate the markets to "some other Use."100 During the discussion of this

petition, one townsman "very indecently and injuriously Reflected on the Select men"

and "the whole Town," by agreeing with the "Mob, who had pull'd down the Market

on the Dock."101 The Moderator ejected the boisterous objector, and the town

proceeded to recommend the sale of the South Market and the dismantling of the

North Market House.102 The "mob" had taken care of the problem at the Town Dock.

In this instance, those opposed to and excluded from the elite world of goods

succeeded in re-building Boston in a manner at odds with merchants' desires for

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regularity and visibility. Daily transactions were again dispersed throughout the

neighborhoods and streets of Boston, escaping the scrutiny and control of preeminent

merchant and officials.

In light of this history of conflicting values, it is easy to understand why just

three years later, Peter Faneuil's offer of a substantial brick market house raised a

furor among the townspeople. On the fourteenth of July in 1740 Boston held a town

meeting to consider a petition addressed to the selectmen and signed by 343

townsmen.103 So many citizens had gathered for these deliberations that the meeting

had to be moved from the Town House to Brattle Street Meetinghouse.1114 The

petition, read aloud to the assembled crowd, asked the town to accept the offer of

Faneuil to build a market building for the town at his "Own proper Cost and

Charge."105 Faneuil promised, according to the petitioners, "to erect and build a

noble and complete structure or edifice" but a debate ran long and fierce over whether

to accept the proposed building.106 Throughout the morning, "very little progress was

made . . . beyond thanking Mr. Faneuil for his offer" and the meeting continued into

the afternoon.107 The townsmen insisted on "special precautions" to make certain only

legally qualified men participated in the vote. The Assessors were instructed to stand

by with their "Lists of Valuation of Estates and Facultys, that so None might be

allow'd to Vote in the Affair, Excepting such as were Rated in the last Tax Two

Shillings and One penny New Tenor, or Six Shillings and three pence Old Tenor" for

the Province tax.108 Each vote counted; according to the final tally 367 men voted to

accept Faneuil's gift, and 360 voted against.109 The meeting then directed the "Select

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Men" to "wait upon Peter Faneuil Esquire, and to Present the Thanks of this Town to

Him" and notify him of the acceptance of "his Generous Offer of Erecting a Market

House on Dock Square."110

Market buildings, such as Faneuil Hall, functioned as a visible sign of the

growing division between the rich and poor and the expanding control of the upper

echelons over economic resources. This growing mastery accompanied an

increasingly elaborate display of wealth and possessions by the elite and an increasing

deprivation of the lower and larger segment of society. Although Faneuil never drew

the ire of Boston crowds, he played an important role in bringing about and profiting

from a realignment of religious and social values expressed in part by accumulation

and display of possessions. While profiting from transatlantic commerce in fish

driven by the need for cheap protein in Southern Europe and the West Indies and by

the desire for sugar, tea, rum, and other exotic goods in England and the North

American colonies, Faneuil participated in the acquisition of consumer goods and the

displays attending the new definition of English gentility. Using his French origins

and merchant connections, he fashioned himself into the exemplar of an Anglo-

American gentleman. He announced his transformation by donating a Georgian brick

market hall, which to this day remains one of the distinguishing buildings of Boston.

Just as the grasshopper weathervane atop Faneuil Hall, taken from the garden pagoda

of the Faneuil mansion, signaled a colonial replica of the vane on the Royal Exchange

in London, Faneuil and the other elite merchants in Boston reproduced a provincial

version of London's capitalist commerce and cosmopolitan culture, reinforcing status

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and power by excluding others.

Peter Faneuil never lived to see his grand gesture completed. On the morning

of March 14, 1743, the moderator called the first town meeting held in the second

floor of the new hall to order. The first vote, a unanimous one. instructed that "the

Select-Men be desir’d to give the Thanks of the Town to Mr John Lovell, for his

Oration . . . on Occasion of the Death of Peter Faneuil, Esq."111 Lovell had noted

the sad circumstances: "this first annual Meeting within these Walls that were raised

by his Bounty, finds us assembled in the deepest Sorrow for his Decease."112 He

suggested that his audience might feel a "more than common distress" for the loss of

one "whose Largeness of Heart equal’d . . .his Power to do Good." Rather than

wasting his riches in luxury, "tho' Plenty always crown'd his Board." Faneuil gave to

the needy and felt "that divine Satisfaction" from giving happiness to others. His

largess was so great that "none but they who were the Objects of it. " could know the

amount. Lovell praised Faneuil for his gifts to the "hungry, naked, fatherless, and

widows in their afflictions." In an echo of Providential language, the speaker

suggested that God in giving riches to "this Man, seems to have scattered Blessings all

abroad among the People." In this framework, wealthy merchants became benevolent

middlemen dispensing God's blessings.113 But the building brought out Lovell's

greatest praise. He suggested that it "is incomparably the greatest Benefaction ever

yet known to our western Shoar." "But he is gone!" and "taken away . . . in so

sudden a Manner, as to prevent his making Provision for what his generous Heart

might design. ",14 Lovell ended his paean by calling for a new benefactor to be "rais'd

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up" who shall "if possible, rival Faneuil's Spirit."115

The oration was printed at the expense of the town and distributed in honor of

Faneuil. In spite of the praise heaped on Faneuil. the townspeople remained reluctant

to support a central marketplace, and no sellers rented space in the first floor of the

hall until nine months later when Anthony Hodgson paid 20 shillings to sell butter,

cheese and flour from Stall number eight for three days each week.11* The market

never prospered and was closed for a time in 1747 and again in 1752 while market

issues continued to provoke contentious debates.117 Peter Faneuil's conception of a

town meeting hall and a town market under one roof continued to provide a focus for

the growing division of Boston society into two segments, those who could provide

charity and those who became the objects of it. Faneuil is remembered today, not for

wealth or gentility, but for a gesture which inscribed capitalism and the economic and

cultural authority of the merchant elite onto the landscape of Boston.

Lovell's oration signaled both a new social position for wealthy French

immigrants and a new cultural position for merchants as agents of God in dispensing

charity. The French families like the Faneuils in Boston and. as we will see, the

Cabots in Salem, who arrived with money and established trading connections,

flourished both financially and socially in the eighteenth-century cosmopolitan culture

then emerging in colonial port towns. The Huguenot refugee chronicler perceptively

presaged this world of goods by warning that "whoever brings Nothing here, finds

Nothing. . . . Those who bring much, do well in Proportion."118

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NOTES FOR CHAPTER 6

1. Report of a French Protestant Refugee, in Boston. 1687. trans. E.T. Fisher (Albany, N.Y.: Munsell. 1868), 14.

2. John G. Clark, La Rochelle and the Atlantic Economy during the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981).

3. Report of a French Protestant, written as answers to a series of questions, resembled Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia written a century later also in response to French queries about America.

4. Report of a French Protestant. 27, 42, 20-21, 30.

5. Justin Winsor, et al., The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County. Massachusetts. 1630-1880. 3 vols. (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1880- 1883), 1:250.

6. Christine Heyrman, in a study of charity in New England, comes to the same conclusion about the phrase "objects of charity" and the process of distancing which occurred in eighteenth-century New England between donor and recipient or between wealthy elites and the poor and unfortunate. Heyrman phrases this point quite strongly saying, "just when the poor and dependent were becoming a more prominent feature of the eighteenth-century social landscape, they were also disappearing from the pages of ministerial literature as palpable entities possessed of social rights. More and more the poor were alluded to in passing only as the 'objects' of charity, faceless creatures whose welfare preachers promoted almost exclusively as a way of benefiting not so much the recipients as the benefactors." Christine Leigh Heyrman, "The Fashion Among More Superior People: Charity and Social Change in Provincial New England, 1700-1740." American Quarterly 34 (Summer 1982): 107-124. In contrast, Conrad Edick Wright, in The Transformation of Charity in Postrevolutionary New England (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 20- 23, stresses the benevolent and brotherly aspect of charity in colonial Massachusetts.

7. See Perry Miller, The New England Mind: From Colony to Province (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1953), 171, who says that as “the ethic of success” came to predominate, “Merchants who took advantage of the market learned to control congregations despite the clerics.”

8. On the earlier reciprocal view of charity see Stephen Innes, Creating the Commonwealth: The Economic Culture of Puritan New England (W. W. Norton &

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Company, 1995), 71-72.

9. On Colman’s background and his installation at Brattle Street Church, see Miller. From Colony to Province. 226, 241-244.

10. Benjamin Colman, The Merchandise of a People: Holiness to the Lord. (Boston: J. Draper, 1736), ii.

11. Ibid.

12. Bernard Bailyn, "The Apologia of Robert Keayne," WMQ 3rd ser. VII (1950): 568-587; Colman, Merchandise of a People, ii-iii.

13. Colman, Merchandise of a People, ii-iii.

14. Ibid., iii.

15. Ibid., 11.

16. Miller refers to “a smug acceptance of economic inequality . . . where lesser grades had no other function in the cosmos than to let their benefactors be instruments of heaven.” Miller, From Colony to Province. 401.

17. Cotton Mather, Durable Riches (Boston: John Allen, 1695), 23.

18. According to Perry Miller, “the real thread of the story . . . becomes not... a growth of toleration, but rather a shedding of the religious conception of the universe.” Miller, From Colony to Province. 171.

19. See Eric G. Nellis, “The Working Poor of Pre-Revolutionary Boston,” Historical Journal of Massachusetts vol XVII (Summer 1989): 137-159 on dual motivations for charity.

20. See Robert Francis Seybolt, The Town Officials of Colonial Boston. 1634-1775 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1939), passim.

21. Overseers of the Poor were also responsible for orphans and children of destitute parents. Nellis, “Working Poor,” 155.

22. See Stephen E. Wiberley, Jr. "Four Cities: Public Poor Relief in Urban America, 1700-1775," Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 1975.

23. 10 February 1735, Boston Town Records, Manuscript Collection, Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts; In January of 1707 a meeting of the "Justices, Select men & Overseers of the Poor" agreed to "Visit the Familyes of this Town" once every quarter "in Order to prevent & redress disorders." The merchants acting as

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overseers for the year included Elisha Hutchinson, John Clark. Esq, Thomas Brattle. Samuel Lynde, Thomas Hutchinson, Thomas Palmer, Eliakim Hutchinson. Simeon Stoddard, and Edward Bromfield — all from important merchant families.

24. Heyrman, "Charity and Social Change," ???

25. Obviously there was a middle class in Boston; it was comprised, in part, of small merchants in local trade and a large number of artisans who manufactured goods both for the populace and for shipment to the Caribbean. Building, repairing, and outfitting trading vessels supported many craftspeople. However, the declining economy and increasing inequality of wealth put pressure on those in the middling ranks. Often only two voices emerged in the many financial controversies that plagued Massachusetts in the eighteenth century; the voice of the elite who gained increasing control of economic resources and an opposition voice that varied depending on the issues at stake. A debate in the Boston newspapers during 1728, sheds some light on economic divisions. Three different budgets designed for “Families of a Middling Figure” were published, each purporting to calculate the annual expenses for a family of nine. The median budget came to £ 244.17.1 but this figure omitted costs for housing and fuel as well as excluding expenses for “the Tea table, the Coffee-cup, the Chocolate bowl, . . . and several sorts of Fruits foreign and domestick.” These desirables, “tho' expensive,” are the “Comforts of humane Life.” By comparison, a maid's annual wages [probably including room and board] were computed at £ 11 per year and a day laborer might expect an annual income of about £ 45 per year. Carl Bridenbaugh, “The High Cost of Living in Boston, 1728,” New England Quarterly (Oct 1932), 805-808, 802; G.B. Warden, “The Distribution of Property in Boston, 1692-1775,” Perspectives X (1976), 86.

26. See Nellis, “Working Poor,” passim; Warden, “Distribution of Property in Boston,” 85-86.

27. For a sophisticated discussion of the anxieties relating to markets see Jean- Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought. 1550-1750 (Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, 1986), passim.

28. Agnew, Worlds Apart. 9.

29. J.G.A. Pocock uses the phrase "a world of moving objects" which captures both the shifting meaning and uses of goods and their source in international trade. Quoted in Agnew, Worlds Apart. 188.

30. For discussions of early markets see Agnew, Worlds Apart. 20-21, and 29; Fernand Braudel, Civilization and Capitalism. 15th-18th Century, vol II, The Wheels of Commerce, trans. Sian Reynolds (New York; Harper & Row, 1982), 27-60; and Mark Girouard, The English Town: A History of Urban Life (New Haven: Yale

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University Press, 1990), 9-30.

31. Ibid.. 22.

32. Braudel. Wheels of Commerce. 43; 45.

33. Girouard, English Town. 18-24.

34. Braudel, 38.

35. Dorothy Davis, A History of Shopping. Quoted in Braudel, Wheels of Commerce. 38.

36. See Peter Borsay, The English Urban Renaissance: Culture and Society in the Provincial Town 1660-1770 (Oxford; Clarendon Press, 1989), 104-109.

37. John Winthrop, Winthrop's Journal. 1:215. Quoted in Bernard Bailyn, New England Merchants in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955), 41.

38. Braudel, Wheels of Commerce. 38.

39. A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston 22 vols. (Boston: Rockwell and Churchill, 1876-1890), 7:224. Hereafter designated as BR.

40. Ibid., passim. See also, Karen J. Freidman, "Victualing Colonial Boston," Agricultural History 47 (1973), 194.

41. Ipswich and East Suffolk CRO, V 5/9/6 - 3 (3); quoted in E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy Reviewed," Customs in Common: Studies in Traditional Popular Culture (The New Press, 1993), 316n.I.

42. In 1693 the Provincial Council passed an act establishing the English "Winchester measure" as the "publick allowed standard throughout" the province of Massachusetts. Selectmen and constables of each town "must choose a sealer of wights and measures" and test and seal a set of weights and measures with a town seal every April. "An Act for Due Regulation of Weights and Measures" reprinted in The Acts and Resolves. Public and Private, of the Province of the Massachusetts Bav. . ^ 21 vols. (Boston: Potter & Wright, 1869-1922), 1:69-79.

43. BR, 7: 207.

44. The problem of poor widows in Boston continuted. In 1742, a tax census denoted 1,200 widows, “1,000 whereof are in low circumstances” out of a total population of 16,382. Nellis, “Working Poor,” 156. Nellis suggests that for “several hundred women, full-time spinning and periodic charity were the major

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sources of their material support.” Ibid., 157.

45. Freidman, "Victualing Colonial Boston," 194.

46. Thompson, "The Moral Economy Reviewed," 290.

47. Freidman, “Victualing Colonial Boston,” 193-194.

48. Ibid., 194 n.23.

49. Thompson and other historians refer to the assize of bread, and to elements of what Thompson defines as "the moral economy" as traditional thereby implying that merchant's efforts to control the market were "modern." These terms serve to generalize and confuse the specific historical contexts of the Boston market controversy.

50. Gary Nash, The Urban Crucible; Social Change. Political Consciousness, and the Origins of the American Revolution (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 56-57 offers a brief biographical sketch of Andrew Belcher.

51. G.B. Warden, Boston. 1689-1776 (Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1970), 52. Belcher had been and would be again associated with provincial Governor Joseph Dudley to whom Cooke's popular party was adamantly opposed — or so the historians have interpreted Boston politics in the late seventeenth and first half of the eighteenth century. However, business records seem to leave clues which unsettle this narrative. For example, Elisha Cooke, Jr. joined other elite gentlemen including Anthony Stoddard, whose wife was Andrew Belcher's daughter and Governor Jonathan Belcher's sister, in The Lincolnshire Company's land speculation in Maine. Yet Cooke led the political opposition to Governor Belcher in the 1730s. Either business relationships formed entirely separate from political concerns or as historian Gary Nash suggests, it is time for a re-appraisal of Elisha Cooke, father and son. Nash, Urban Crucible. 440 n.48.

52. Ibid.

53. See Petition [submitted by bakers] to the General Court for an increase in the prices of bread, 16 September 1709. Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts (Misc. Bd.), MHS.

54. See Thompson regarding the “moral economy” and the precision with which crowds selected their targets.

55. There are several accounts of this incident. See Warden, Boston. 64-67; Nash, Urban Crucible. 76-78.

56. Nash, Urban Crucible. 77.

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57. Governor Dudley to the Board of Trade, April 8, 1712, CSP Colonial, 1711- 1712. 258-260. Quoted in Nash, Urban Crucible. 60.

58. Cotton Mather, The Bostonian Ebenezer (Boston, 1698); quoted in Nash. Urban Cmcihk, 60.

59. See Gloria Main, “Probate Records as a Source for Early Amrican History,” WMQ. 3rd ser., XXXII (1975): 89-99.

60. We can imagine how those on the edge of poverty may have felt when passing by Andrew Faneuil's mansion-in-the-making. Possibly they felt that with experience, constant effort, and a few lucky breaks, they too might inscribe their achievements on the landscape of Boston. Or perchance they might have glimpsed the unconquerable distance between a wealthy merchant and an impoverished mariner. Perhaps a widow’s anger might have flared at the thought of hungry children crowded into drafty rooms on cold, fiielless nights while Faneuil and others like him lived in spacious splendor. The less fortunate may not have perused inventories or toted up account books, but they knew by experience that numbers had consequences. I have no sources of poor widows reflecting on their feelings as the pass the mansions of Boston's merchant elite. Therefore this paragraph is "pure speculation" but represents an important effort to step outside Faneuil's charmed circle and to understand why not everyone welcomed his market house. Other evidence cited above certainly points to wealth inequality and class resentment of elite riches.

61. Several important articles support the growth of wealth inequality and the expanding division between a wealthy elite and the increasingly disadvantaged middling and lower groups. James Henretta, in his study of colonial Boston, asserts that, “by the third quarter of the eighteenth century, lines of economic division and marks of social status were crystallizing as Boston approached economic maturity.” This resulted in “the disappearance of a distinct middle group of property owners and the accumulation of wealth among a limited portion of the population.” Using Henretta's data and his own analysis of tax records from 1790, Allan Kulikoff concludes that “From 1687 to 1790, Boston's wealth became very concentrated.” He found that the proportion of wealth held by the richest ten per cent of taxpayers reached its' peak (63.46%) in 1771. Between 1771 and 1790 “the poor and near poor were growing more numerous in Boston, ”and “the close relationship between wealth and status,” continued. William Pencak's study of claims from the Boston fire of 1760 also

documents the divisions between rich and poor. Pencak concludes that, “although the fire manuscripts cannot be used to determine whether inequality was increasing in Boston, they definitely show that by the 1760s it was extremely pronounced.” For an opposing view point, see Gloria Main, who, based on probate research in Massachusetts and Maryland, agrees that “colonial cities of the North exhibited

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greater levels of inequality than did their rural hinterlands” but asserts that “no long term trend emerged before the Revolution.” James A. Henretta, “Economic Development and Social Structure in Colonial Boston,” WMQ 3rd ser., XXII (1965), 86, 87; Allan Kulikoff, “The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston,” WMQ 3rd ser., XXVIII (1971), 381,383,384; William Pencak. “The Social Structure of Revolutionary Boston: Evidence from the Great Fire of 1760,” HH X (1979), 273; Gloria L. Main, “Inequality in Early America: The Evidence from Probate Records of Massachusetts and Maryland,” HH VII (1977), 580, 581.

62. Regarding the emergence of a merchant class in eighteenth-century Boston, Henretta insists that the “range of wealth” and “difference in social background . . . preclude the creation of a monolithic class or guild with shared interests and beliefs.” Yet he follows by asserting that “the influence of this segment of society was pervasive” and concluding that “an integrated economic and political hierarchy based on mercantile wealth had emerged in Boston.” Henretta, “Colonial Boston,” 89.

63. Warden, Boston. 136.

64. Thompson, "The Moral Economy Reviewed," 340.

65. Thompson, Ibid., passim.: and E. P. Thompson, "The Moral Economy of the English Crowd in the Eighteenth Century," in Customs in Common. 185-258. In a recent article Barbara Clark Smith offers a brief review of the literature on the moral economy. See Barbara Clark Smith, "Food Rioters and the American Revolution," William and Marv Quarterly vol LI#\ (Jan 1994): 3-38.

66. Thompson, "Moral Economy Reviewed," 338.

67. See, Warden, “Distribution of Property,” passim.: On growing inequaltiy based on wealth see also, Nash, Urban Crucible: and Allan Lee Kulikoff, “The Progress of Inequality in Revolutionary Boston, WMQ. 3rd ser., XXVIII (1971): 391-428.

68. Warden, Boslon, 117.

69. Ibid.

70. Seybolt, Town Officials of Colonial Boston. 186.

71. Boston News-Letter 15 March 1733.

72. BE, 12:57.

73. Ibid.

74. Clifford K. Shipton, Biographical Sketches of Those Who Attended Harvard College. . . 14 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1933-1975), IX: 365.

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75. Mico was one of the merchants who played a key role in founding the Brattle Street Church. Miller, From Colony to Province. 241.

76. Jacob Wendell's first son to attend Harvard and graduate in 1733 was ranked fifth in his college class which indicated a high social standing. When Wendell's second son entered Harvard he was ranked first in the Class on 1747 — a clear indication of the high social rank his father had achieved. See Sibley’s Harvard Graduates V:110: VI:408-09; IX:365-7; XII:367-374; XVII:218-19.

77. Ibid., 69.

78. Ibid., 72.

79. At a Meeting_of the_Freeholders. . . . (Boston: Samuel Gerrish, 1734), 4. See also the earlier version of market regulations At a publick Town-Meeting . . . (Boston, 1733).

80. Ibid., 3.

81. Ibid., 5.

82. Ibid., 1.

83. Ibid., 1,3.

84. BE, 12:46.

85. Ibid. See also the account of this meeting in Boston News-Letter. 31 May 1733.

86. Boston News-Letter. 28 June 1733.

87. Ibid. See also BE, 12: 48-49.

88. See Warden, Boston, who says "country people who made their living by selling in Boston vehemently opposed any restriction on trade, "(117) but also goes on to interpret the conflict as one between Elisha Cooke's popular party and the supporters of Governor Belcher, 118-120. Warden suggests that the "mob" attack on the three empty market houses in winter of 1737 represented "a gesture of hopeless anger." Here E.P. Thompson's construct of a moral economy allows us to understand the crowd action as a working out of the struggle over possession and distribution of food to townspeople within the beliefs of a moral economy. Nash in Urban Crucible rightly emphasizes economic problems and focuses on crowd action as a response to those problems. See Chapters 5 and 6, 102-157.

89. BE, 12:69.

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90. Ibid.

91. Boston Gazette. 25 March 1734.

92. Ibid.

93. Warden suggests that the 1734 proposals passed easily because they "were so lenient and moderate that the whole point of the market scheme was essentially thwarted." Warden, Boston. 120. A comparison of the scheme printed for the town May 9, 1733 and the proposals printed April 24, 1734 which passed by acclamation indicates that some fines were reduced from twenty to ten shillings and that "Apples, Onions, Turnips, and all sorts of Roots, Fruit and Herbs" were exempted from the 1734 regulations. At a Meeting of the Freeholders. 4-5. I consider the purchase of adequate grain supplies for the families of Boston a more significant factor.

94. Ibid., 61.

95. Boston News-Letter. 6 June 1734.

96. Ibid.

97. Boston Gazette. 14 June 1734.

98. Some Considerations. 2.

99. BR, 12: 134.

100. BR, 12: 164.

101. BR, 12: 171.

102. Ibid., 12: 172.

105. The best account of this meeting is in A Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston (BR). 12: 258-260; See also Justin Winsor, The Memorial History of Boston, including Suffolk County. Massachusetts. 1630-1880. (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1881), 11:263-64. Winsor does not refer to the earlier efforts to establish central markets in Boston but the petition requesting the town meeting gives a brief account of the problem during the 1730s. Abram English Brown in Faneuil Hall and Faneuil Hall Market or Peter Faneuil and his Gift (Boston: Lee and Shepard, MCM), 79-83 offers a colorful but somewhat dubious rendition of events surrounding the meeting.

104. The town agreed to pay for "whatsoever Damage may happen to be done to the Pews, Seats &c." BR 12: 259.

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105. Petition, 2 July 1740, Original Papers, ii, 63 in City Clerk's office: quoted in Winsor, Memorial History. 263; reprinted in BR, 12: 259.

106. Ibid.

107. Ibid., 12: 264.

108. Ibid., 12, 260.

109. Ibid.

110. Ibid.

111. John Lovell, A Funeral Oration Deliver'd at the Opening of the Annual Meeting of the Town . . . Occasion'd by the Death of the Founder. Peter Faneuil. Esq: (Boston by Green, Bushell, and Allen for S. Kneeland and T.Green, 1743.

112. Ibid., 7.

113. Here Lovell followed Benjamin Colman's language in acknowledging the authority of wealthy merchants to dispense God's blessings. This is a subtle but important difference from seventeenth-century Boston merchant John Hull's position as subject to and recipient of God’s blessings.

114. Ibid., 9, 10.

115. Ibid., 14.

116. Brown, Faneuil Hall. 90.

117. Ibid., 94.

118. Report of a French Protestant. 25-26.

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Mid-eighteenth-century Salem, experiencing many of the same transformations

as Boston, was a very different place from the community that had ostracized Philip

English. The town had reconfigured itself from a Puritan commercial village to a

small, yet cosmopolitan, seaport. The Puritan center that had so insistently tried to

define and dominate the town during the seventeenth century had been transformed

into a merchant elite with many of the same characteristics as Boston's gentry. In the

process, townspeople came to terms with the presence of sectarian and ethnic

“foreigners” drawn by capitalism to their midst. The intense fear of outsiders, of

those who crossed boundaries, that had earlier ripped apart the social body in the

witchcraft trials of 1692 gradually dissipated with the adoption of a new Anglo-

American worldview that drew on exterior, visible characteristics to assign value and

authority. The numerous local differences fueling conflict in late seventeenth-century

Salem had been defused when the Middle Precinct and Salem Village, home to many

of the 1692 accusers, separated from the commercial center, home to many of the

accused. In 1754, the agrarian villages populated with "husbandmen" and now styled

as Peabody and Danvers hived off from the seaport yet remained economically

dependent on wealthy Salem merchants for credit and markets. Although linked by

commercial relationships, these three towns no longer functioned as a single civic

body.

247

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In mid-century Salem, religious toleration had replaced Puritan hostility

toward Quakers and Anglicans. In 1718, supported financially by both Puritans and

Anglicaas including merchant Philip English, the Second Church

(Puritan/Congregational) was established in the eastern part of town, formerly the

French quarter.1 At the west end of town, a Quaker meeting house had been built just

two years previously, and in 1732 the first Anglican church was constructed on land

donated by English one block from the First Church at Town House Square.2

Members of the Anglican church included provincial officials and notable merchants

like William Browne, descendent of Salem's wealthiest Puritan merchant family and

an important merchant and political leader in his own right.

Ethnic differences, which earlier played a key role in marginalizing Philip

English and the Jersey French community, dissolved as Salem merchants gradually

assimilated the new outlook based on a world of goods. Prominent merchants of

Jersey French origins like the Cabot family -- later touted as Massachusetts's First

family — and German ship captains and traders like the Crowninsheilds played leading

roles in the social, political, and cultural world of mid-century Salem.3 The town was

still ruled by merchants, but they based their influence not on English origins and

Puritan ideals but rather on economic power and the authority of visible markers.

A closer look at the career of wealthy merchant Timothy Ome demonstrates

the conjoining of economic and cultural values at the local level and as part of a

broader Anglo-American worldview. At the age of sixteen, Timothy Orne (1717-

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1767) of Salem began instruction in the complex method of merchant accounts.

Apprenticed informally to an unnamed Boston merchant, Orne wrote an earnest note

to his "Honored Father and Mother" in Salem.4 After inquiring about their health he

insisted, "I wish I could answer your Love to me." Young Orne expressed his hope

that "I shall in some measure answer your expectation of me." "I began upon

Accounts this week," he announced and assured them that "the increase of my

learning is by me endeavoured."5 In these phrases we hear the anxiety of a young

man placed away from home in a new situation and embarking on the beginning of his

adult life. Orne must have exceeded even the proudest parents' expectations as he

became one of the most successful and wealthiest of the Salem merchant elite, built an

impressive Federal style mansion, and participated in bringing new forms of print

culture to Salem. Orne's unusually complete business records allow us to examine the

local, regional, and transatlantic effects of capitalism as shaped by overseas traders in

the mid-eighteenth century and to explore the role of merchants in fostering a

worldview based on the “value of the visible. ”

Orne's background prepared him well for commercial and genteel life. His

grandfather Joseph Horne rose to prominence in Salem as deacon of the

Congregational church. His father, who dropped the H from the family name, was

known throughout town as Captain Timothy Orne. He entered trade as a ship captain

and later operated a small but successful merchant business from Salem.6 Timothy

Orne Jr. learned accounting procedures thoroughly; his First set of practice books,

including a wastebook (or daybook), journal, and ledger, all extant, give us a glimpse

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into the detailed workings of buying, shipping, and selling for profit. The

wastebook. a volume purchased for the purpose with a printed cover displaying a

drawing of "Sir Politick Fiery-Face, President of the Coffee-Room and Bees-Knee

Coffee Boy," revealed a neat, careful hand and a detailed accounting of costs and

sales. In this hypothetical "Inventory of the whole effects and debts" taken in May of

1733, Orne never entered bottom line. Five months later, in his ledger Orne made an

unusual move, he added it up.

Most seventeenth- and eighteenth-century merchants rarely figured the bottom

line. While managing partners in joint ventures determined each partner's percentage

of the "neat proceeds" of a voyage, they did not often include the cost of the original

merchandise shipped. Nor did merchants normally calculate their net worth on an

annual basis, or, if they did, these records have not survived. Perhaps this was a

deliberate strategy on the part of merchants whose account books were often kept by

more than one clerk, open to examination by partners in various ventures, and subject

to court inspection in law suits. However, in at least a general way, they knew good

years from bad, successful voyages from failures, profitable commodities from losers.

Orne began training for his business career just as eighty-two year old Salem

merchant Philip English, his estate "daily wasting away," slipped into senility . (See

Chapter 3) In the 1740s, Orne, though still a young man in his mid-twenties,

sponsored numerous voyages to the West Indies, Fayal and Madeira in the Wine

Islands and at least one voyage each to the Cape Verde Islands off the coast of Africa

and to Surinam.7 The Cape Verde Islands located in the Atlantic off the coast of West

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Africa marked a center of the African slave trade, and Orne's adventure there

suggests that he may have experimented in that traffic. Orne's ledger notes the

journey of the brigantine Union of 96 tons in 1743 under Master Joseph Grafton, in

which Orne owned a one-eighth part of the cargo but does not name the cargo or

enumerate the profits (or losses) of the voyage. Orne's records yield only this single

account of a venture to Cape Verde Islands.

During the decade Orne also sponsored nine voyages to Barbados as well as

numerous adventures to St. Kitts (St. Christopher’s), the Leeward Islands and

Surinam, selling cargos of fish, fish oil, salt, lumber, rum, horses, farm products,

and bread to the island merchants.8 In each of these and other voyages detailed in

Orne's account books, he was probably acting as what maritime historian Ralph Davis

call “the managing owner.”9 The managing owner, usually one of the largest

investors in a vessel, kept account of expenses, oversaw repairs to the ship, managed

preparations for the voyage, corresponded with the agent or merchant regarding the

sale of goods, and parceled out “neet proceeds,” or receipts of sales to the other

partners.10 When a ship reached its destination in the Caribbean, the master, in

cooperation with a merchant living in the island port, would unload and endeavor to

sell the incoming cargo of fish, food, and horses and then begin to gather a return

cargo. Merchants like Gedney Clark and Isaac Drayton in Barbados and Fitch Pool

and Monsieur Godet in St. Eustatius recorded sales receipts, credited monies to

English firms, and exchanged bills for Orne and his partners.11 Orne's ships returned

with holds stuffed with sugar, molasses, and limes.12 By the 1750s, Orne, in

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partnership with other Salem merchants, shipped fish to Europe and dealt directly

with merchant houses in Alicante, Bilbao, Cadiz, and Lisbon.13

The profits from trade to the Caribbean and to Spain were prodigious.14

During a series of voyages to the West Indies between 1742 and 1750, the brig

Union, one of Orne's largest vessels, earned profits of £ 3,343. The schooner

Dolphin made two voyages under Captain Thomas Davis to sell fish and horses to the

Caribbean plantation economy and reaped profits of £ 920. One of the Crowninsheild

family captained Orne’s schooner America on its passage to Surinam in 1745 and

returned with a profit of £ 791.15 In five passages to and from the West Indies, the

brigantine Betty & Molly netted £ 3,075.16 Remarkably few losses appear in Orne's

ledger accounts of overseas shipments. The schooner Gloucester carrying fish and

"oyl" (oil from cod or mixed fish oil often called train oil) to the West Indies in

January of 1747 appears to have been his only major loss. Orne’s one-quarter share

of the missing cargo and vessel came to £ 624.17

In March 1747, with the loss of the Gloucester still fresh in his mind, Orne

arranged an exchange with fellow Salem merchant Joshua Ward. Ward and Orne

agreed to a risk exchange of £ 200 on separate voyages to Jamaica by the Volant,

mastered by Thomas Davis and owned in part by Orne and Ward's brig Salisbury

captained by Samuel Lee.18 Two years later Orne and Salem merchant William

Lynde exchanged "two hundred pounds old tenor" on Lynde's snow [a type of sailing

vessel] Seahorse under Moses Sweet and Orne's brig Union. Nathaniel Ingersoll

Master.19 The makers claimed "this agreement to be as good & valid as any Policy of

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Insurance in the publick offices." They signed the agreement to "witness our hand

interchangeably this day."20 The pair drafted an exchange agreement the following

year to secure transits to Barbados and Tortuga by Orne's schooner Hampton

mastered by Thomas Marong and Lynde’s schooner Welcome guided by Benjamin

Bates.21 These mutual agreements represented just one of the many methods Orne

used to spread his risks. Throughout his commercial career, he maintained a careful

and consistent diversification of his investments. His ownership stake in ships ranged

from 1/8 to V2 of a vessel.22 He separated his investments in cargo and vessels, often

shipping cargo, again owned with several partners, on vessels in which he carried

only a minor investment.

A customs record of the entrances and clearances from Salem harbor in 1751

gives us another view of some of Orne's overseas ventures.23 In January, Rowlev. a

schooner weighing 65 tons owned and managed by Orne, entered Salem on a return

passage from Avino. By March 18th the Rowley had been unloaded and refitted.

Under Master Benjamin Herbert, she sailed for Barbados. Herbert and his ship

returned from St. Martins on June 25 and remained in Salem for two and a half

months until the worst threat of hurricanes had abated, then headed back to the West

Indies on September 11. But the Rowley had not returned to home port by the end of

December. The brig Salem also maintained a shuttle route back and forth from the

West Indies but during different months. Captained by Thomas Mason, Salem

entered home port Feb 20 from St. Martins, setting out to the West Indies again on

April 15, returning July 31 and setting sail for the Caribbean again on October 26.

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Orne's brigantine Union, one of his largest vessels at 144 tons, sailed back and forth

to Barbados under master Joseph Grafton. Schooners Hampton and Endeavor also

plied the waters between Orne's wharf and Barbados and other Caribbean ports of

call. In each case, Orne attempted to set up a regular, predictable route for his

vessels, relying on established merchants in Barbados and elsewhere and keeping

experienced masters/captains on the same route while diversifying investments to

protect against unpredictable weather, variable markets, and marauding privateers.

Some of Orne's vessels followed a more flexible schedule. The Beaver, a ship

of only 40 tons, followed a variable route, entering Salem in April from Tortudo, the

salt island in the lower West Indies, and embarking from Salem in August under a

different captain bound for Cadiz, Spain and no doubt loaded with salted fish. Orne's

70-ton schooner Volant arrived in Salem from Lemat in February. In July, she set

sail for Bilbao, an important Spanish port for receiving fish located on the north coast

of Spain and to this day called "Tierra del Bacalao" [Land of the Cod].24 No customs

record of the Volant's return exists, but we find her sailing from Salem under John

Crowninsheild on a course to Lisbon in early December of the same year. While

customs collectors may have missed recording Volant's return, it is also possible that

Orne instructed Crowninsheild to return with wine from Spain, an illegal commodity,

which they then off-loaded in a nearby community such as Beverly or Marblehead.

Since coastal voyages did not fall under the scrutiny of British customs officials, a

ship entering from a nearby port might not have drawn official attention. One

historian of colonial trade suggests that the papers of Boston and Salem merchants,

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including Peter Faneuil and the Cabots and Lees of Salem, both partners of Timothy

Orne in many ventures, "indicated that illegal trading was endemic" in the commerce

from Southern Europe.25 Wine from the Azores, Wine Islands, and Cape Verde

Islands could enter Massachusetts ports legally, but wine shipped directly from Spain

became an illegal product under British law. The above details point to the

possibility that indeed the Volant engaged in smuggling Spanish wine to Salem for

Timothy Orne.

During the 1760s, Orne continued his overseas shipping, developing extended

correspondence and long-standing relationships with merchant house such as Griffiths

& Thomas in Bristol, Lane & Booth in London, and Joseph Gardoqui & Sons in

Bilbao.26 At the height of his business, Orne maintained substantial surplus credit

with merchant houses in London and Spain.27

Complete as Orne’s remaining records may appear, they do not allow us to

formulate quantitative comparisons of his business within this large commercial

sphere. In this world of global trade Orne certainly carried only a small presence.

While his influence, especially with long-time correspondent merchant houses situated

in ports to which Orne frequently directed his vessels may have carried both an

economic and a personal component -- correspondence from the Guardoquis in Bilboa

often included references to the “charming Mrs. Orne” and sometimes gifts to the

family were mentioned -- it is probable that he figured as only one among many

customers of Lane & Company, one of London's largest firms dealing in the America

trade.28 Orne’s influence in European ports and financial markets was modest, but his

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ability to establish shuttle routes and maintain long-term connections with overseas

merchants in England, Spain and the West Indies contributed to colonial merchants’

growing sense of mastery and a refashioning of identity no longer entirely dependent

on God’s will. By injecting some stability and predictability in transatlantic trade,

merchants like Orne gained confidence in the future as they accumulated capital and

acquired material goods. This allowed them to reconceptualize their role as a center

of power within a new worldview, which aspired to name, number, and control both

nature and the mysteries of market exchange.

It is within the smaller orbits shaped by Orne's insurance and money-lending

businesses that his importance grows and his economic contribution gains

significance. Orne's insurance business, designed at first, like his risk exchanges with

merchants William Lynde and Joshua Ward, to reduce his own exposure to loss,

became an increasingly important part of his commercial investments. While Orne

supplied insurance to other merchants, he also arranged to insure his own voyages but

took care to spread the entire risk among other underwriters.

An insurance document from 1747 indicates the procedure and language used

to transact the agreements. In this instance, Orne gathered underwriters to insure his

own vessel on a voyage to Jamaica. The printed form begins with the phrase, "In the

name of God, Amen," and continues with a blank space where the merchant writes

his name, occupation, and location. The document calls for further details of the

ship, including "the Body, Tackle, Stores, Utensils, apparel, appurtenances" and

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"any kind of goods & merchandise loaden on board," the master, and destination.

The insurance premium was set at seventeen per cent, which means that Orne and the

underwriters anticipated the possibility of trouble. The War of Austrian Succession

(1744-1748), involving naval conflicts between England and France in the Caribbean,

posed a serious danger to shipping even though Orne's ship the Volant was bound for

the English colony of Jamaica. Orne certainly knew the risks; several letters in his

possession from correspondents in the West Indies warned in 1746 that "these times

are become very Dangerous."29

The printed portion of the document details the many hazards against which

the adventure is insured: dangers “of the Seas, Men of War, Fire, Enemies, Pirates,

Rovers, Thieves, Jettizons, Letters of Mart and Counter-Mart, Surprizals, Takings at

Sea, Arrests, Restraints, and Detainments of all Kings, Princes and People"-- and the

list continues. Under the final line of the printed document, the subscribers signed up

for their portion of the risk, writing, for example, "I, Henry Gibbs am Content for

two hundred Pounds Old Tenor." In this policy Gibbs, a Boston merchant, undertook

£200, Benjamin Browne accepted £ 100, and William Lynd also £ 100. The printed

document included provisions to decide disputes "by Referees chose by each Party."

and the insurers (by signing below) agreed that this insurance has "as much Force and

Effect as the surest Writing or Policy of Assurance heretofore made in Lombard-

street, or in the Royal-Exchange, or elsewhere in London. B3° Thus Salem merchants

invoked the authority of metropolitan practices and appropriated the benefits of the

English financial revolution and the establishment throughout Anglo-America of

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regularized procedures for business contracts. Again. Orne and other leading

merchants used insurance to introduce an element of security and predictability to

their commercial affairs and to their sense of self-in-the world.

By the late 1750's, Orne, in partnership with John Higginson, a minor

merchant and Register of Deeds for the town, insured many voyages annually.

During the Seven Years' War between France and England, the premiums they

charged varied from a low of four per cent to a high of thirty-five per cent of the

value insured, depending on the vessel, master, and destination of each voyage and

also on international circumstances since European wars always affected shipping to

the West Indies and often spilled over into North America. In the quarter ending in

September 1761, Orne and Higginson insured thirty-four vessels for a premiums

totaling £ 269.17s.31 The partnership never took on a liability of more than £ 60 on

any one vessel. Orne also carried on an insurance trade with John Nutting, son of the

local schoolmaster, who became a crown official as collector of the port.32

In 1761, with his insurance business well established, Orne sought

underwriting on his brigs Cicero and Salem from Samuel Savage of Boston. Savage

replied to Orne's request, "I reced yours yesterday per Cpt Gardner & have agreable

to your orders insured £900 on yr Brig Cicero and £200 on yr Brig Salem from Salem

to St Eustatious at 12 per cwt [12 %]."33 The amounts were subscribed by eleven

men, with no more than £100 risk per boat. Many of the underwriters were Boston

merchants, including John Rowe, John Tudor, Joshua Winslow, John Scollay and a

Hutchinson.34 This indicates that Orne's contacts had broadened to include Boston's

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leading merchants and that his reputation for good commercial practices -- that is, his

credit in both senses of the word -- had spread well beyond Salem.

Orne also exercised his influence and reinvested his capital in the local

economy through an extensive private banking enterprise.35 He loaned money at the

legal maximum of six per cent per year as set by British law to numerous individuals

in towns throughout northeastern Massachusetts in sums as small as £6 to amounts

over £200.36 (See Table 3) In 1765 for example, Orne loaned at interest a total of

£2,020 to thirty-three different people in Salem.37 From Salem Village, established as

a separate town of Danvers in 1760, thirty-two inhabitants owed Orne a total of

£2,124.38 Another thirty-five of Orne's borrowers, owing principal amounts from

£15 to £150, lived in the farm communities of Topsfield, Boxford, and Middleton.

His customers for loans included 29 borrowers from the inland towns of Andover and

Wenham and the ports of Beverly, Ipswich, Lynn, Marblehead, Gloucester, and

Newbury. Orne's regional orbit of capital flow reached to towns northwest of Boston

like Reading and Medford and stretched as far west as Shrewsbury (near Worcester)

and Lebanon, Connecticut, and as far north as Wells, Maine. Orne invested almost

£9,000 in the people of Massachusetts. To what extent this increased the productive

power of the local and regional economy is impossible to determine, but it certainly

established Orne as a power center and perhaps increased the demand for overseas

products within Orne's sphere of economic influence.

Orne's economic power spread through Salem and surrounding communities

through his employment of local fisherman and artisans and his purchase of supplies

Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE 3. EMERGENCE OF CAPITAL MARKETS IN MASSACHUSETTS. 1730- 1780.

Location Rural Mass Worcester Worcester B P ll Worces RuralMass 1730-1780 Cty 1740 Cty 1755 1765 ter 1781-1838 Cty 1786 Same Town 33.1% 29% 37% 24% 25% 19.1% Next Town 17.7% ------tt% . --- 28.4% In County 40.2% 91% 85% 46% 80% 37.2% Out of Cty 9% 3% 3% m 8% 15.3% State

Sources: Winifred Barr Rothenberg, From Market-Places to a Market Economy: The Transformation of Rural Massachusetts. 1750-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 130; John L. Brooke, The Heart of the Commonwealth: Society and Political Culture in Worcester Countv. Massachusetts. 1713-1861 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 48; Timothy Orne memo book, 1765, TOP, EL

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economic relations with over 272 individuals, ranging from correspondent merchant

Gedney Clarke, Esq. in Barbados to "sinister'’ (seamstress) Rachel Pippen, who

purchased small quantities of rum from Orne and paid with paper money. Shipwright

Samuel Bacon, who worked on Orne's ships, took sugar and a set of oars in

payment.39 Most of the accounts involved an exchange of products running over

several years, with the balance sometimes in favor of the purchaser, who may have

just delivered a large load of fish or farm products, and sometimes in favor of Orne.

Most common purchases included sugar, rum, and salt (in that order), and the most

common forms of payment involved work for Orne or barrells of fish. Some of the

larger account balances could be found among those who supplied Orne with

provisions for overseas voyages, providing fish to sell in the West Indies and Spain,

or furnishing artisnal labor building and repairing Orne's many ships. Philip

Sanders, a baker whose account with Orne balanced at £515 in March of 1647,

purchased sugar, rum, cloth, and flour from Orne and paid with baked bread used to

provision Orne's ships and with fish Sanders most likely received from his local

customers. George Deland, a local carman [dock worker], purchased rum, cloth,

and small sums of money from Orne and repaid his debits with fish. Beverly cooper

Isaac Dodge paid for his salt, rum, sugar, and cloth with kegs for shipping liquids.

Fish supplanted scarce paper money and specie in Salem. Few customers paid

Orne in money; many more paid in fish. Orne needed substantial quantities of fish to

support his commerce to Spain and the West Indies. To supply these large quantities,

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he owned his own fishing boats and also relied on those in the fish trade like

shoreman Charles King of Salem, coaster Christian Bubier, and shoreman David

Furniss, (the latter two of Marblehead), whose balances ran to E607, £562, and £834

respectively. Orne acquired farm produce from Andover and Middleton and lumber

from Middleton and Lynn. Unlike seventeenth-century Boston merchant John Hull,

Orne did not maintain his own farms or sawmill.

As pan owner of over fifty vessels during his career, Orne kept a number of

blacksmiths, shipwrights, ropemakers, and coopers busy building and repairing his

vessels. He seemed to rely most heavily or expensively on blacksmith Jon Mansfield

of Lynn for over £1,000 worth of nails. Boston ropemaker Ed Gray traded his cable

for Orne's hemp, while Samuel Field a boatbuilder from Salem built small boats for

the merchant in return for salt, sugar, rum, and foodstuffs. Local instrument maker

Daniel King and goldsmith Joseph Gardner fashioned astronomical equipment and

buckles and metal fittings for many vessels, for which Orne paid them in the other

local currency, rum, as well as sugar, farm products and cash. Connected by

exchange relationships that often continued for many years, Orne stood poised at the

center of an extensive agricultural and industrial complex through which capital, in

the form of labor and commodities, flowed.

Historians of the eighteenth century explore economic relations in terms of

clients and patrons. John Brewer uses the phrase "client economy" to describe the

web of credit relationships between tradesmen and their patrician customers in

England.40 Tradesmen were dependent for their livelihood on the wealthy to

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consume, in turn, aristocratic patrons expected long-term credit from artisan-

producers. Until a broader base of consumers and an alternative source of credit

emerged, economic transactions were tied to social relationships. This situation

extended to the colonies.41 In his recent book exploring the radical nature of social

change during the American revolutionary era, Gordon Wood characterizes the social

structure of eighteenth-century America as a world of patronage. "Personal

relationships of dependence, usually taking the form of these between patrons and

clients, constituted the ligaments that held this society together and made it work."42

Consequently, deference was tied closely to economic well-being.

Patronage, however, does not capture the complexity of social and commercial

relationships present in Timothy Orne's range of businesses. His retail trade, which

combined extensive barter with occasional cash payments, represented face-to-face

transactions shaped extensively by concepts of credit-worthiness as well as client-

patron obligations. Orne customarily extended credit for years at a time to local

customers from Salem and nearby towns. Just the process of agreeing on a value of

account for goods purchased and sold, while influenced by his knowledge of overseas

prices, must have also relied on a local consensus of value. Allowing Orne, or his

clerks, set a price in his account book.

In Orne's insurance business and his role as a local banker we see what might

be characterized as a rational approach to investment, one less dependent on patron-

client relationships than the trades most historians have focused on. Regardless of

how well he knew a borrower or ship captain, he lent only relatively small amounts

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and carries only a portion of the insurance risk. In the symmetrical columns listing

his insurance contracts for 1761 we see a transformation from personal to impersonal

relationships under the influence of the market in risk. Here, friends and employees

reduced to one-line entries, become visible traces of market exchange. Each entry

indicates a claim, a possession, a monetary interest related to but separate from social

ties. Relations of patronage and friendship that bind Orne to his favored ship captain

Jacob Crowninsheild are in the insurance records reduced to a simple entry

of 60 — Crowninshield —IIP [%] - 6.12 —” which means Orne insured sixty

pounds worth of a voyage of Crowninshield's at the rate of eleven per cent for a

premium of six pounds and twelve shillings. The name, bracketed by numbers,

diagrams a social relationship bracketed, that is set aside, by market relations and the

possibility of monetary profit. Few of the names on the insurance rosters of 1761

are among Orne's merchant and ship captain partners or among the leading mercantile

families of Salem. Gone are the familiar names of Lee, Gardner, Lynde, Lovett, and

Pickman. Nor do they appear as customers or employees in Orne's ledger of the

1740s and 1750s. The names in the account books signify not a personal or patronage

relationship but rather a monetary transaction, an arbitrary unit in the market of risk

transactions. Here capital, rather than the personal influence wielded between patron

and client, gives Orne his power. Yet much of his capital was contingent on personal

relations with Salem and Boston's leading merchants and ship captains and his

patronage of local artisans and fishermen. So Orne was dependent on both personal

and business relationships based on his economic and social credit. He inhabited a

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world which defines social identity by wealth, accumulation, and display at the

expense of traditional relationships between kin and among a Christian believers. In

Orne's universe, economic and social relationships were interwoven in a complicated

way that served to reinforce the eighteenth-century world of goods and accentuated

exterior, rational, material sources of authority and value.

The port of Salem, site of Timothy Orne's rise to commercial prominence, had

a population of about 3,500-4,500 in the mid-eighteenth century. The town was

described by travelers as a "pritty place” and "a large Town, well built,” which

"consists of one very long street, running nearly east and west."43 It contained "many

genteel large houses (which tho’ of wood) are all plastered on the outside in Imitation

of Hewn Stone," or ”plan[e]d and Painted."44 Each house "Covers a Great Deal of

Ground, being at a Conveniant Distance from Each Other, with fine Gardens back

their houses."45 Orne joined many of his commercial and social partners in erecting

new and stylish mansions on Essex Street. Previously the most prestigious block in

town lay to the east of Town House Square, where the prominent Brown family lived

and Governor Simon Bradstreet's gabled Tudor-style mansion (now site of the Essex

Institute) stood until 1753.46 While William Browne's residence was still considered

the finest house in town in the 1760s, the elite neighborhood was shifting slightly

westward, first to Essex Street and then in the nineteenth century to Chestnut Street

one block south and west of Essex and lined with federal-style mansions of merchants

in the China Trade.47

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Orne's social world was contained within a very small orbit. His home lay

within a few blocks of his warehouses and wharves on Town Cove.48 Along Essex

Street, several of Orne's friends and fellow merchants occupied substantial homes

including younger Benjamin Pickman, Frances and Joseph Cabot, and Samuel

Gardner. Supreme Court justice Benjamin Lynde, customs official John Higginson,

and attorney William Pynchon also lived nearby. From his home Orne could see

Town House Square with the Court House and behind it First Church. Across from

the church at the Jefferies' Tavern, a seasonal series of bi-weekly assemblies with

music and dancing, like those established in English provincial towns, entertained the

Salem gentry until 1766, when the Assembly House was built on Cambridge Street, a

short walk from the Orne's.49 The new assembly building provided "an elegant

room" 40 by 30 feet with a very tall ceiling with "two handsome drawing rooms

adjoining, . . . and a neat musick-gallery on the west side."50 Elite families

participated in a constant round of visits, dances, assemblies, tea drinking, "turtles,"

and barbecues interleaved with births, weddings, and funerals.51 Many of the gentry,

Orne included, kept both chaises and larger coaches for trips to nearby towns.52 Thus

Salem re-created a local version of English cosmopolitan gentility.

Not all sections of town participated equally in genteel society. At the eastern

end of town the area of homes, wharves, and taverns formerly presided over by Philip

English was still characterized as a distinct area of poor homes.53 English Lane still

retained its name, but much of Philip English's property belonged to Touzel

descendants including plebeian silversmith John Touzel.54 Further to the east lay the

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neck and Winter Island, where, according to one traveler, "they cure all their Own

Cod for Markett, Saw there a Vast Number Flakes Cureing."55 Cultural divisions in

Salem now played themselves out on the landscape based not on national origins or

religion but on poverty and wealth.

In Salem and other Massachusetts seaports, the penetration of capitalism and

its emphasis on individual achievement created a social marketplace where wealth,

possessions, and good manners could purchase a place in the highest circles. An

accompanying cultural transformation from Puritan providence to a world of goods

allowed Jerseymen like Francis and Joseph Cabot to join the Salem elite. They

participated with Timothy Orne, grandson of a Puritan deacon, and other long-time

Salemites in business ventures as well as in forming clubs for gentlemanly

companionship, benevolent charity, and classical learning. The Crowninsheilds, a

family of German origin, who captained vessels for Orne and the Pickmans, also

made their way into the Salem gentry. Not everyone accepted die changing

boundaries of elite status. One of the Brownes, member of the former first family of

Salem, caricatured Francis Cabot in a satirical verse as "a little Fretful man/ Whose

ease consists in scolding when he can. "56 The same poet referred to the

Crowninsheilds as "base Plebians" of "the Vulgar Race."57 His must have been a

minority voice since the Crowninsheilds and Cabots were very much a part of the

social rounds detailed in gentry diaries during the 1760s and 1770s.58

Timothy Orne positioned himself as an patrician patron of local crafts-people

particularly when he built the Orne mansion in 1763. At the age of forty-six, one of

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the wealthiest members of Salem’s codfish aristocracy, Orne commissioned a three-

story late-Georgian house built on Essex Street in Salem. (See figure 11). He had

married Rebecca Taylor in 1747, and when they moved into the new home with their

six children, Samuel, the youngest, was still a toddler. The elegant interior had

Dutch tile fireplace surrounds and fifteen mezzotints with gilt edges, purchased from

Stephen Whiting in Boston.59 The house painters engaged by Orne agreed in writing

to "compleatly paint and finish his New house in Salem to the Satisfaction of Said

Orne in a good Workmanship like Manner. "60 Orne favored dark colors described as

"Stone Collour" and "Lead Collour," while one front chamber was done in green and

one back chamber in "Russian Blue."61 For painting the entire interior Orne paid

Luscomb and Pickering £33.6.8 and two gallons of rum "& no more."62

To add elegance to his furnishing for the mansion Orne purchased a mahogany

desk and book case, a mahogany tea table with claw feet, and a "swan mahongne

table with oland feet. "63 The Ornes commissioned a new mahogany bedstead with

"Carved Boards & Cornishes," draped with "Crimson Harratteen" [a kind of watered

silk] counterpane and bedcurtains.64 To accompany the luxurious bed they purchased

sue mahogany chairs with harratteen bottoms and one harrateen easy chair.65 A local

woodworker provided posts and banisters, set "pins and cants to hang clothes on,"

framed "54 foot" of pictures, and mended various pieces of furniture including a tea

table and nine chairs.66 Designed and furnished in the height of English fashion,

Orne's home symbolized the social capital he derived from his economic success and

his participation in international commerce. His involvement in a pursuit of profit

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and his mastery of a complex web of market relations were expressed in an

accumulation of high-style possessions and a display of genteel civility. Orne took

one step further in the uansformative acts of wealthy eighteenth-century

Massachusetts merchants; he convened economic capital into cultural capital by

founding gentleman's discussion clubs, a social library, and the first newspaper in

Salem.67

Gentlemen's clubs, a feature of eighteenth-century England, often formalized

the connection between commerce and culture. Meeting in coffeehouses and taverns,

"Our modern celebrated clubs," the noted English periodical the Spectator affirmed,

"are founded upon eating and drinking. "68 But clubs also provided a group setting

which reinforced shared values, promoted civility, and fostered informal business

arrangements among friends.69 In February 1745, Timothy Orne, his Essex Street

neighbors and merchant partners the Cabot Brothers and David Britton, and William

Pynchon, a young attorney and descendent of the patriarch of Springfield, formed a

club which they named The Civil Society. The men agreed "to meet together at Mrs.

Pratt's," a nearby inn, on Tuesday and Friday evenings "for the Preservation of

Friendship & Conversation."70 The group set out rules in writing; fines for cursing

and quarreling enforced refined behavior, and introducing new members to the group

required unanimous consent. In the first rule the group agreed that "Every Member

shall pay his Club," thereby demonstrating the dual meaning of the word club.71

English historian John Brewer observes that "in the eighteenth century the term 'club'

was understood as a verb, rather than as a noun: 'to club together' to pool one's

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financial resources for almost any collective activity, automatically created a club."72

A club also meant a bill for food and drink, so that a club connoted a pooling of

friendship, civility, business interests, and a continuation of face-to-face contact

which promoted social and commercial investments. The Civil Society of Salem

aimed for a free exchange of ideas and participated in what Joseph Addison in the

Spectator styled as bringing philosophy and political economy "out of the Closets and

Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-Tables and

in Coffee-Houses."73 Market relations influenced not only the flow of goods and

capital but the equally crucial flow of information. As a merchant, Orne concerned

himself with both.

The Civil Society enlarged its membership and a few months later ten

members raised £50 for the relief of "the poor people in Salem whose Husbands or

Sons went for the good of there Country in the land Service against Cape Britton. "74

The French had attacked Massachusetts fishing boats off Newfoundland and captured

Canso, a fishing port in northern Nova Scotia. In return Massachusetts, led by

Council members like Benjamin Pickman of Salem, sponsored an attack on

Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island under William Pepperell, a leading merchant from

Maine. The French port was captured and Pepperell knighted by the king of England

for his services, even though Louisbourg was returned to the French in the treaty of

Aix-La-Chapelle, which ended the war in 1748. The Civil Society subscription for

the relief of widows and families of war veterans demonstrated the pooling of funds

for charitable purposes, which developed outside of religious circles. Like the careful

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sharing of risk among ship owners and insurers of cargo, the Civil Society members

each contributed a share of five pounds to create a substantial bank of funds rather

than dispense separate sums.75 For Salem gentry, charity had become evidence of

gentility and the wielding of economic power rather than a dispensing of the blessings

bestowed by God among the people of God.

Continuing his leadership in voluntarist activities, Timothy Orne in 1760

joined Colonel Benjamin Pickman and Admiralty Judge-Samuel Curwen to found the

Social Library in Salem.76 Pickman subscribed twenty guineas, Orne fifteen guineas,

Curwen ten guineas, and twenty-five other men five guineas a piece to set up the

library.77 Subscription lists named the Cabots, attorney William Pynchon, Dr. E. A.

Holyoke, and several of Orne's business partners including John Nutting, Richard

Derby, John Crowninsheild, and Samuel Gardner his partner and brother-in-law.78

To offset his membership fee for two shares (charged in addition to the initial

subscription) Orne donated several books to the library, among them were three

volumes of Locke's Works.79 Library lending records detail the works Orne

borrowed from 1764 to 1767. He read works in political economy such as three

volumes of Cato's Letters. Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, and a response called

Answer to Fable of the Bees, borrowed volumes on husbandry and religious tracts

like Hoadlv on the Sacrament and Sermons at Boyles Lectures, and indulged in an

occasional novel such as Fielding's Tom Jones.80 Other novels borrowed under

Orne's name, such as Fortunate Countrymaid and Betsy Thoughtless, probably reflect

the taste of his daughters Rebecca and Sarah, who were nineteen and fifteen at the

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time. Orne digested French works in English translation like Rollin's Belles Lettres.

which attempts to reconcile classical learning and Christian morality.81 In Voltaire's

"Letters," probably a translation of Voltaire’s English Letters. Orne encountered

praise for Locke and Newton, criticism of the French monarchy, and acclaim for

British freedoms. A wide ranging reader, Orne borrowed an eclectic list of forty-five

titles during the three years documented. After reading Locke, Cato's Letters, and

Voltaire, Orne had imbibed a reasoned argument for individualism and a rational

approach to life, which he practiced so carefully in his economic ventures and in his

social relationships as well.

Orne's final step in bringing print culture to Salem involved efforts to begin a

local newspaper. Orne and Samuel Curwen apparently organized a subscription to

fund the publication of a local newspaper. A letter from printer bookseller John Mein

of Boston notes receiving "the additional subscribers from Mr. Orne."82 Mein agreed

to honor the subscribers wishes, even if "advertisements be ever so numerous, to keep

always Six pages of our Paper for News & Essays." But Orne did not live to see the

first issue of the Essex Gazette appear on August 2, 1768.83

Timothy Orne died in July 1767 at the age of fifty, leaving behind his wife

and six children between the ages of five and nineteen. His business correspondence

indicates a long illness. Over a year before his death, Orne wrote to Joseph Gardoqui

& Sons, his correspondent merchant house in Bilbao, to inform them that, "haveing

been for some time in a very infirm state of health," he was "advised by my

physicians to set all business aside."84 He noted that "it is not likely that I shall be

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any further concerned in shipping” and asked Gardoqui to settle his accounts. Orne

ended his letter with a plea: "I hope in a few years to have a son please God he lives

and prospers to step in and supply my place in trade. "8S During the next year. Orne

wrote to his agents Lane, Son & Fraser in London and Griffiths & Thomas in Bristol

to clear up his accounts.86 In May 1767, he wrote again to the Gardoquis regretting

that his health prevented him from taking advantage of "agreeable markets." Orne

died at the height of his commercial success. His private memo book reveals a net

worth increasing every year from a total of £19,613 in 1763 to £24,890 in January of

1766.87 He left an estate valued at over £22,000 divided among his widow and

children.88 His oldest son Timothy, sixteen, with the help of uncles and business

partners, took over the shipping business and carried on with some success.89

Timothy III married the daughter of Orne's good friend William Pynchon but

forfeited much of the Orne estate when he fled Salem after threats of being tarred and

feathered for his loyalist leanings.90 The dispensation of Orne's estate made his

daughters substantial heiresses.

While the women in Orne's family appear rarely in business correspondence

they do figure in the role of consumers, particularly after his death. Less than a year

after burying her husband, Rebecca Orne went on a shopping spree in Boston. She

visited John Barrett & Sons to select "white Furniture Callicoe," yellow "India

Sattin," and damask table cloths and draperies. From Jane Custis she purchased 28

yards of various fabrics, a white beaver hat, tortoise shell combs, lace, and silver

cord and tassels for an expenditure of £143. The following day, May 11, she bought

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three large sconce glasses from Abigail Whitney's shop and then chose three sets of

China cups, twelve wine glasses, one sett of coffee cups and various serving pieces

from the wares of Samuel Fletcher. In two days of shopping, Mrs. Orne spent a total

of £205. In September, she received a bill from Boston upholsterer Samuel Grant,

whose customers included wealthy Boston merchants Peter Faneuil and Thomas

Hancock. While in Boston she commissioned Grant to fashion a new suite of bed

curtains and matching counterpane, investing a total of £95 for what must have been

luxurious appointments. A bill to "Miss Orne" in July 1768 describes the making of

three negligees trimmed in silk embroidery for a total of £25.

These expenditures may have been in preparation for daughter Rebecca's

wedding to Joseph Cabot, son of Orne's friend and partner, in August 1768. Notice

of the wedding of "Mr. Joseph Cabot of this Towne" to "Miss Rebecca Orne, eldest

Daughter of Mr. Timothy Orne, late an eminent Merchant of this place," appeared in

the first issue of the Essex Gazette.91 Just two years later, the Orne's second daughter

Sarah, "a young Lady with a Fortune of about Three thousand Pounds Sterling,"

married Clark Gayton Pickman, another Salem merchant’s son. Unfortunately,

Rebecca did not enjoy widowhood for long. Perhaps exhausted from bearing eight

children in seventeen years (two died young) and coping with the demands of

managing a household alone, even in the midst of wealth, she died in 1771 before

seeing the rest of her children wed.

Enmeshed in a life of childbirth and gentility, Rebecca Orne and her daughters

only appear in Orne's account books as ciphers of consumption. Timothy Orne’s life,

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so intimately connected with commerce, consumption, and the cultural changes

associated with the development of a market society, now rests in nineteen boxes and

nineteen volumes of business accounts housed in the library of the Peabody Essex

Museum. Just as Peter Faneuil’s career as a merchant and his passionate effort to

transform himself into an English gentleman took shape in the building of Faneuil

Hall, so Timothy Orne, scion of respectable English stock devoted himself to a

rational pursuit of financial and cultural capital embodied in account books and "civil

society."

In the figure of Timothy Orne we see the three major transformations of

eighteenth-century Anglo-America coming together. Orne played a significant role in

expanding capitalism and participated in re-shaping the urban landscape of Salem. He

was a central figure in the emergence of a merchant elite which defined itself through

the display of visible wealth, accentuating the difference between rich and poor,

between Essex Street and English Lane. Orne also took a leading role in bringing

print culture to Salem and fostering the growth of a public sphere separate from

religion and from state control. For Orne, exchange of commodities, currency,

opinions, and ideas flowed together in the life of an eighteenth-century colonial

gentleman. By bringing together commerce and literature, Orne made possible his

own existence as both a gentleman and a merchant simultaneously, combining that

which had previously been two separate categories.

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CONCLUSION

During the century from 1670 to 1760, belief in the supernatural,

whether God or the devil, was gradually supplanted by growing confidence in human

agency and a developing cultural transformation, which smoothed over ethnic and

sectarian differences into a polite society. This changing worldview brought about

dramatic transformations in urban space, social structure, and cultural values in

Boston and Salem and produced class divisions in the larger city, especially during

times of economic decline. The emergence of a world of goods in Boston and Salem

was part of a growing differentiation of social space and increasing attention to the

public presentation of self and community. The influence of overseas trade and

foreign commodities prompted a redefinition of Anglo-American elite culture and a

re-clothing of ethnic difference in the politesse of gentility. This redefinition reduced

friction between individuals and shifted conflict to political differences rendered into

print and class differences played out in the streets.

Just a few years after 1760, the Anglo-American elite in Boston and Salem lost

their influence, and those who continued to favor remaining British subjects and to

follow cosmopolitan fashions rather than wearing homespun and supporting the move

for American independence were forced to flee to Canada or England. From the

same public space, which the merchant elite did so much to bring about, issued the

ideas and writings which turned the public against high-style English goods and

against the Anglicized merchants who imported them. During the Revolutionary era,

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both the war and republican values worked against a resumption of capitalist

expansion. Not until the early decades of the nineteenth century would the "market

revolution," begun in eighteenth-century port cities, resume its influence on cultural

production and once again reshape both public spaces and personal values.

At the close of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. Max Weber

announced that, “Since asceticism undertook to remodel the world and to work out its

ideals in the world, material goods have gained an increasing and finally an

inexorable power over the lives of men as at no previous period in history.”92 This

study charts the beginnings of that inexorable power which continues to shape the

lives of men and women not only in the West but also in an era of global capitalism

throughout the world. In the first half of the eighteenth century, a group of parallel

and interconnected transformations in ideas about knowledge, authority, and value

came together to buttress the continuing growth of merchant capitalism. Inspired by

an interest in novelty and fashionable goods, the growth of public print, and new

forms of sociability, a worldview emerged in Anglo-America which placed great

value on visible records and markers and produced a culture of goods. This was the

beginning of modern materialism which many have celebrated and others, like Weber,

often mistakenly considered a cheerleader for capitalism, have deplored. The leading

merchants in Boston and Salem, key players in bringing this new world of goods to

the doorsteps and chambers of colonial America, could not have known how their

daily decisions would help to set in motion exactly those notions of value and novelty

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which still drive the economies of many nations.

In analyzing how changes taking place across Anglo-America re-shaped the

physical, social, and psychic landscape of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts, I have

not completed a detailed study of a single topic but rather sketched the outlines of a

long-term interpretive project. This study, like a single ship in the transatlantic trade,

takes a risk in the hope of delivering a profitable cargo. It is only one among the

many vessels needed to sustain a commerce in ideas.

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NOTES FOR CHAPTER 7

1. James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century (Salem, MA: Essex Institute. 1969), 159-160.

2. Ibid.. 161-62; Philip English Papers. James Duncan Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum.

3. See Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century. 245-247 and passim. A widely known rhyme refers to Boston as “the land of the bean and the cod/ where the Lowells speak only to Cabots/ and the Cabots speak only to God.”

4. Timothy Orne, Jr. to Timothy Orne, Sr and Lois Pickering Orne, 17 Oct 1733. Timothy Orne Papers, James Duncan Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum (formerly the Essex Institute). (Hereafter TOP, El.)

5. Ibid.

6. No historians have offered an explanation for why the second generation Ornes dropped the H from their name. See a brief account of the family in Phillips, Salem. 135.

7. Timothy Orne Ledger, 1738-1753, TOP, EL

8. Ibid. The accounts of voyages recorded in Orne's ledger during the 1740s are probably confined to the adventures in which he acted as managing partner. Often the managing partner appeared as the owner of the vessel even when financially his investment might equal as little as one-eighth of the value of the ship. When applied to Timothy Orne the designation owner usually means a shared investment with other merchants. Often the ship's master or captain also "owned" an interest in both the vessel and the various cargos. At least twenty-three voyages under six different captains to destinations in the West Indies including St. Kitts (St. Christophers), Leeward Islands, and Surinam appeared in Orne's Ledger..

9. Ralph Davis, the Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. (London: Macmillan & Co., 1962), 160.

10. Orne Ledger, TOP, El.

11. Ibid. and Manuscript Guide to the Orne Family Papers, MSS 41, 21-22.

12. Ibid. See account with Gedney Clarke, Esq. 4/07/44 and accounts with Isaac Drayton dated 1/21/43, 2/28/43, and 1/12/44.

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13. See Timothy Orne Merchant House and Shipping Correspondence, TOP. Absent from the ledger covering the decade of the 1740s is any account of Orne shipping fish to Southern Europe, although Salem merchants had eclipsed Bostonians in this trade by the previous decade. If, as I suggest, Orne’s ledger only included those voyages on which he acted as managing partner, then it is probable that other Salem merchants acted as managing partners on voyages to Spain and Portugal during these years. No doubt Orne would have participated in the fish trade with Iberia in partnership with other leading merchants in Salem. Curiously, overall figures for codfish shipments from Salem to Southern Europe are missing for the same period. This lends weight to the possibility that other merchants, whose records have since disappeared, took responsibility for the record-keeping duties of managing partner for this branch of trade during the 1740s. The other possibility, though I have found no evidence to support this, is that Orne, like Peter Faneuil of Boston, shipped cod directly from Newfoundland, in which case his shipments would not be reflected in totals of cod shipped from Salem. Accounts with Newfoundland might have been noted in a different ledger, now missing.

14. It is important to note that the profits indicated gross profits only. The original cost of the commodities shipped from Salem were not figured in or deducted directly from the sales receipts, although costs for customs, unloading and storage, and a sales commission incurred in the distant ports were usually deducted before neet proceeds were determined. Also the figures from the 1740s reflect the rapid inflation of Massachusetts Old Tenor which was the money of account for most Massachusetts merchants. For details on Old Tenor, New Tenor (after 1750) and their relationship to the British pound see John J. McCusker, Money and Exchange in Europe and America. 1600-1775: A Handbook (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1978).

15. Timothy Orne Ledger, 1738-1753. TOP, El. In each case the account indicates Orne's share of the voyages as 1/8 but it is not completely clear that the profits represent Orne's share of the proceeds. Since many account books kept by various merchants do often record what they frequently term, "neat proceeds" from their fractional share, I conclude that this figure does represent Orne's share of the profits. It is then curious why the voyage to Surinam was not repeated. Since Surinam was a Dutch colony there may have been an appearance, or practice of smuggling.

16. Timothy Orne Ledger, 1738-1753. TOP, EL In each case the gains, recorded in the rapidly inflating old tenor, may not have been as quite as impressive as they appear.

17. Ibid.

18. Timothy Orne and Joshua Ward 17 Mar 1747. TOP, EL

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19. Timothy Orne and William Lynde, 13 Nov 1749. TOP, El. The agreement spells out the details, "if sd snow be lost in her present voyage to Jamaica then the sd Orne to pay sd Lynde 200L or if the sd brigg be lost in her present voyage to Jamaica the sd Lynde to pay sd Orne 200L."

20. Ibid.

21. Timothy Orne and William Lynde, 24 Feb 1750. TOP, EL Since both vessel and master were carefully named in these agreements and seaworthiness of vessels and reputation of the masters must have ranked as important elements in assessing risk.

22. Timothy Orne Ledger, 1738-1753. TOP, EI., passim. See also Timothy Orne memo book which lists "Shipping Cargo's and Adventure abroad" for 1766. TOP, EI.

23. The details in the following paragraph are from “Entrances and Clearances of Salem Customs, 1751" unless otherwise noted.

24. James G. Lydon, "Fish for Gold: The Massachusetts Fish Trade with Iberia, 1700-1773." New England Quarterly LIV (Dec 1981), 543.

25. Lydon, 573.

26. See Timothy Orne Merchant House Correspondence, TOP, EI.

27. In 1761, Orne sends two brigantines, Salem and Cicero to St. Eustatious with Cicero insured for £900. In 1766 Orne records his investments in "Shipping Cargo's and Adventures abroad" which includes half ownership of eight vessels, quarter- interest in three others, and half of cargos of six of the eleven ships listed. The total investment amounts to £ 4,416 New Tenor. In addition he has £2,223 New Tenor (or £1,667 sterling) due from abroad, including £533 (£400 sterling) from Lane & Booth in London and £1,466 (N.T.) credit with Guardoqui & Sons in Bilbao, Spain. The surplus held in the London account of Lane & Co. for Orne and the even greater surplus with the Guardoquis in Spain supports my observation that the Massachusetts merchants made their profits in selling fish to Spain, and sought out and developed this market not simply to provide credits for English goods, but to maximize their returns. In fact, of all the entrances and clearances recorded by Salem customs officials, in 1751 only one named London and seven either came from, or were heading to Liverpool. The lack of overseas traffic to London reinforces the fact that the Salem economy did not depend heavily on goods from England. Ibid.

28. Lane & Booth dissolved and was superceeded by Lane, Son, & Fraser on April 30, 1766. Their first letter to Orne advising of the change, included a copy of the new partnership agreement as well as details of Orne's account and a letter received

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about credit forthcoming from the Guardoquis. This letter was drafted August 15th, three and one-half months after the partnership change. Had Orne been a major customer he no doubt would have been advised sooner. See Timothy Orne, Merchant House Correspondence, TOP ,EI.

29. Nathaniel Palmer to Richard Derby, 27 April, 1746. TOP, El.

30. Ibid.

31. Mr. Timothy Orne his Insurance Acct with John Higginson, 1761. TOP, EI.

32. Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Century. 263.

33. Samuel Savage to Timothy Orne, 31 Mar 1761. TOP, EI.

34. Ibid.

35. In this, Orne made a major contribution to the development of capital markets in the inland economy of Massachusetts. (See Table 3)

36. Timothy Orne memo books, 1763, 1764, 1765, 1766, TOP, EI.

37. Timothy Orne memo book, 1765. TOP, EI.

38. Ibid.

39. Timothy Orne Ledger, 1738- 1753. TOP, EI. To assist in understanding Orne's relationship to the local and internation economy I constructed a summary table of all 271 accounts initiated during the 1740s and recorded in the ledger, including location, (noted when it is not Salem) occupation when noted, balance and date of account when the account is balanced, sometimes after several years, and the common items bought and sold.

40. John Brewer, "Commercialization and Politics" in The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century. England. Neil McKendrick, John Brewer and J. H. Plumb (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982), 198.

41. Ibid., 199

42. Gordon S. Wood, The Radicalism of the American Revolution (New York: Random House, 1991), 63.

43. Under a "List of Inhabitants of Salem 1754" Orne enumerates 3,464 inhabitants, 372 houses, 205 widows, 1505 families, and 123 Negroes." Timothy Orne, Civic Papers, TOP,EI.; Dr. Alexander Hamilton, Gentleman's Progress: The Itinerarium of Dr. Alexander Hamilton. 1744. ed. Carl Bridenbaugh (Chapel Hill:

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University of North Carolina Press, 1948), 122; Birket, Some Cursory Remarks. 15- 16; quoted in Hamilton, Progress, n.278, 239; Hamilton, Progress. Ibid.

44. Birket. Some Cursory Remarks. 15-56 in Bridenbaugh ed. Progress, n #278, 239.

45. Captain Francis Goelet, "Capt. Francis Goelet in 1750," Two Centuries of Travel in Essex County Massachusetts: A Collection of Narratives and Observations Made hv Travelers. 1605-1799 compiled by George Francis Dow (Topsfield, Mass: Topsfield Historical Society, 1921), 75.

46. Phillips, Salem. 169

47. Phillips, Salem. 319.

48. Previously the most prestigious block in town lay to the east of Town House Square where the prominent Brown family built their homes and Governor Simon Bradstreet's gabled Tudor-style mansion [now site of the Essex Institute) stood until 1753. While William Browne's residence was still considered the finest house in town in the 1760s, the elite neighborhood was shifting slightly westward to culminate in the nineteenth century in the Chestnut Street federal homes [located one block west and one block south of Essex Street] of merchants in the China Trade.

49. Phillips, 182; Mrs. Mary (Vail) Holyoke, The Holyoke Diaries. 1709-1856 (Salem: The Essex Institute, 1911), 49, 51, 59. Gerald W.R.Ward, "The Assembly House," EIHC (Oct 1975), [241-266], 242; "A Historic Ball Room," EIHC XXXI, 80.

50. Essex Gazette 28 Nov 1769 quoted in Gerald W.R.Ward, "The Assembly House," EIHC (Oct 1975), [241-266], 245.

51. Mary (Vail) Holyoke, passim; Phillips, Salem, passim.

52. Lists of Chaises and Chairs, 1753 & 1757. Salem Misc. EI.

53. Phillips, Salem. 173.

54. Material culture scholar Gerald Ward portrays Touzel as simple craftsmen who did not win much business from the wealthy of Salem. His work focused on utilitarian items of pewter and brass rather than ornate silver serving pieces.

55. Goelet, in Dow ed. Two Centuries of Travel. 75.

56. B.F.Browne, "Memorandum Book," quoted in Phillips, Salem in the Eighteenth Cfiflflux 246.

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57. Ibid., 247.

58. Mary Holyoke, Diaries. 49, 50, 52, 54, 55, 59, 60,62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 72, 75.

59. Timothy Orne Account page 1763, TOP. EI; Bill from Stephen Whiting to Timothy Orne 16 May 1763, TOP, EI.

60. William Luscomb and John Pickering subscribers. 31 Jan 1763, TOP, EI.

61. Ibid.

62. Ibid.

63. Thomas Meedham to Timothy Orne May 1763, TOP, EI.

64. Hannah Cabot to Timothy Orne, 19 July 1763, TOP, EI.

65. Ibid. This would have made a intensely colorful impression with yards of crimson fabric in either the green or "Russian blue" chamber.

66. Jon Gavet to Timothy Orne 1763. TOP, EI.

67. See Pierre Bourdieu, The Field of Cultural Production: Essays on Art and Literature (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 8. Bourdieu suggests that educational, political, economic, and cultural "fields" are homologous and thus can be analyzed with economic logic using concepts such as "investment" and "capital" even though not determined by economics. "All practices, including those purporting to be . . . non-economic, [can be analyze] as economic practices directed toward the maximizing of material or symbolic power." We can apply Bourdieu's formulation to understand how Orne's actions in building a stylish home and founding a social library might be interpreted as investments in cultural and symbolic power. It is in this way that economics and market relations shape social relations through an investment of authority in visible markers of value.

68. The Spectator, ed. D.F.Bond 5 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965) Quoted in John Brewer, "Commercialization and Politics" McKendrick, Birth. 222.

69. See Ibid, 218-223.

70. Rules of the Civil Society 25 Feb 1745. Salem Miscellaneous Papers, EI.

71. Ibid.

72. Brewer, "Commercialization," 217.

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73. Spectator, no. 10. Quoted in Jean-Christophe Agnew, Worlds Apart: The Market and the Theater in Anglo-American Thought. 1550dL75Q (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 171.

74. Civil Society Account, Salem Misc. Manuscripts, EI.

75. Ibid.

76. "The Covenant Articles of the Social Library" 31 Mar 1760, MSS 56, EI.

77. Ibid., Phillips, Salem. 258. Phillips has Orne down for 10 Guineas but the original records indicate his contribution at 15 Guineas.

78. Ibid.

79. Timothy Orne Library Account, TOP, EI.

80. Charge Book, Social Library Mss. EI

81. Ibid. Information on Rollin and Voltaire's works are from the Dictionary of National Biography.

82. John Mein to Samuel Curwen, 12 Dec 1767. Curwen Manuscripts, American Antiquarian Society.

83. Phillips, Salem, 299

84. Timothy Orne to Joseph Gardoqui & Sons 13 June 1766. TOP, EI.

85. Ibid.

86. Timothy Orne to Lane, Son & Fraser 3 Nov 1766; Timothy Orne to Griffiths & Thomas 3 Nov 1766. TOP, EI.

87. Timothy Orne memo books 1763-1766, TOP, EI.

88. Essex County Probate Records, Massschusetts Archives.

89. Orne’s youngest son Samuel died at the age of 22 before ever establishing himself in business.

90. Phillips, Salem. 260, 390; "Manuscript Guide to the Orne Family Papers," EI.

91. Essex Gazette. 2-9 August 1768. Quoted in Louisa Dresser, "The Orne Portraits by Joseph Badger," Worcester Art Museum Bulletin (Feb 1972), 10.

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92. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958); originally published as Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus in Archivfur Sozialwissenschaft und Sozialpolitik, Vol XX and XXI, (1904-05), 181.

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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Phyllis W hitman Hunter

Born in Detroit, Michigan, September 20, 1943, Graduated from Parkland

High School, Orefield, Pennsylvania in June I960. B.A. Harvard University, 1965.

Established a career in sales management and financial planning. Returned to

complete an M.A. in American History at the University of South Florida, July,

1990. In August 1990, the author entered the doctoral program in American Studies

at the College of William and Mary completing the requirements for the Ph.D. in

April, 1996.

In August, 1996, the author begins a position as Assistant Professor in colonial

history at the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

309

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