Long time ago the puritans landed at plymouth rock which is the start of the Mass Bay Colony. They indured many hardships. They then started the foundations of puritans law in the americas. I learned about their culture which is based on their laws. It was a harsh enviorment and the weather was hard on them.
NEW ENGLAND
The northeastern New England colonies had generally thin, stony soil, relatively little level land, and long winters, making it difficult to make a living from farming. Turning to other pursuits, the New Englanders harnessed waterpower and established grain mills and sawmills. Good stands of timber encouraged shipbuilding. Excellent harbors promoted trade, and the sea became a source of great wealth. In Massachusetts, the cod industry alone quickly furnished a basis for prosperity.
With the bulk of the early settlers living in villages and towns around the harbors, many New Englanders carried on some kind of trade or business. Common pastureland and woodlots served the needs of townspeople, who worked small farms nearby. Compactness made possible the village school, the village church, and the village or town hall, where citizens met to discuss matters of common interest.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony continued to expand its commerce. From the middle of the 17th century onward it grew prosperous, so that Boston became one of America's greatest ports.
Oak timber for ships' hulls, tall pines for spars and masts, and pitch for the seams of ships came from the Northeastern forests. Building their own vessels and sailing them to ports all over the world, the shipmasters of Massachusetts Bay laid the foundation for a trade that was to grow steadily in importance. By the end of the colonial period, one third of all vessels under the British flag were built in New England. Fish, ship's stores, and woodenware swelled the exports. New England merchants and shippers soon discovered that rum and slaves were profitable commodities. One of their most enterprising -- if unsavory -- trading practices of the time was the "triangular trade." Traders would purchase slaves off the coast of Africa for New England rum, then sell the slaves in the West Indies where they would buy molasses to bring home for sale to the local rum producers.
http://en.wikipedia.org
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called the Massachusetts Bay Company, for the institution that founded it) was an English settlement on the east coast of North America in the 17th century, in New England, centered around the present-day cities of Salem and Boston. The area is now in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, one of the 50 United States.
aol.com
The second European settlement (after the Spanish at St. Augustine, Florida) in the America's was at Roanoke in 1585. The first settlement was a disaster and all returned to England. The second settlement in 1587, disappeared. There are current day Native Americans who believe themselves to be descendants of the "lost settlement of Roanoke" from members of this second settlement who disappeared. Not until twenty years later did the first permanent settlement finally take root, at Jamestown. This settlement was primarily commercial in nature and was not real successful. The population of Jamestown was rather static. The Pilgrim's then landed at Plymouth Rock, approximately 30 miles south of present day Boston in 1620, thirteen years after Jamestown. Again, the settlement persevered, but could not be described as a beachhead of colonization of the colonies. During the 1620's, there were some other settlers who migrated to Massachusetts after the Pilgrims, but they were small and relatively insignificant.There were also advance parties for the Puritans in the years 1628 and 1629.
Winthrop's Fleet landed in Salem, Massachusetts in 1630, with the first mass exodus of Puritans from England. There were a 1,000 settlers in that first group of settlers. Two hundred died that winter and two hundred more returned to England the following spring. But, in the next ten years, 20,000 persons, most from England and most of the Puritan philosophy, immigrated to Massachusetts to form the backbone of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. And, then, it was over. There was hardly any further migration into New England until after the Revolution. Virtually all growth of the colony after 1640 was by natural reproduction, which is why once you've found yourself a descendant of a pre-Revolution New Englander, you very likely have a bunch of immigrant ancestors.
John Winthrop was their leader, until his death in 1649. A man of some wealth, he helped to finance the first expedition and his money fed many of those first settlers in that first year.
They landed at present day Salem, but almost immediately moved to the present day site of Boston harbor. Within a couple of years, a new extension, that of Charlestown, was created. Ezekiel Richardson, our ancestor, was in Winthrop's fleet and was a founder of the church in Charlestown. Within ten years, the colony had spread into small settlements in Woburn, Lexington, Concord, Cambridge, Watertown, and others that can be seen on a map today, all within a 30-50 mile radius of Boston.
Within a few short years, this industrious and hearty group of pioneers had established a successful and thriving colony in the New World.
"Emigration to New England was at first encouraged by the king and his servile ministry, doubtless with a view of getting rid of the men who could not rest under the proceedings of an arbitrary government. But in 1634 the royal government resolved to deprive New England of its chartered rights, to send a royal governor to that country, and as far as possible to stop the emigration to the American strand. Repeated attempts were made to check this emigration. In March, 1638, an order in council was passed to detain eight ships then in the Thames, full of passengers, bound to New England; and on the 6th of April, in the same year, an order in council was passed that no person should be allowed to go to New England without a license. In consequence of this order, many persons embarked ostensibly for Virginia, but really for Massachusetts." The Richardson Memorial
spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk
In 1628 a group of Puritans, led by John Winthrop
and Thomas Dudley, persuaded King James to grant them an area of land between the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River in North America. That year the group sent John Endecott to begin a plantation in Salem.
The main party of 700 people left Southampton in April 1630. The party included John Winthrop, Thomas Dudley, William Pynchon, Simon Bradstreet and Anne Bradstreet. Before they left John Cotton gave a sermon where he emphasized the parallel between the Puritans and the God's chosen people, claiming it was God's will that they should inhabit all the world. During the 1630s over 20,000 people emigrated to Massachusetts.
John Winthrop was the first governor of Massachusetts Colony. He chose Boston as the the capital and the seat of the General Court and the legislature. Thomas Dudley was appointed his deputy and on four occasions (1634, 1640, 1645 and 1650) he served as governor.
sims.berkeley.edu
Oath Of A Freeman
I -AB- being (by Gods providence) an Inhabitant, and Freeman, within the jurisdiction of this Common-weath, doe freely acknowledge my selfe to bee subject to the government thereof; and therefore doe heere sweare, by the great & dreadful name of the Everliving-God, that I will be true & faithfull to the same, & will accordingly yield assistance & support therunto, with my person & estate, as in equity I am bound: and will also truely indeavour to maintaine and preserve all the libertyes & privilidges therf, submitting my selfe to the wholesome lawes, & ordres made & stablished by the same; and further, that I will not plot, nor practice any evill against it, nor consent to any that shall soe do, butt will timely discover, & reveall the to the publick weale of the body, without respect of personnes, or favour of any man, Soe help mee God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
answers.com Early English colony in Massachusetts. It was settled in 1630 by a group of 1,000 Puritan refugees from England (see Puritanism). In 1629 the Massachusetts Bay Co. had obtained an English charter allowing it to trade and colonize in New England. Puritan stockholders envisioned the colony as a refuge from religious persecution in England, and they transferred control of the company to the emigrants in Massachusetts. Led by John Winthrop, the colonists founded their colony on the Charles River at what would become Boston. In 1684 England annulled the company's charter and in 1691 established royal government under a new charter, which merged Plymouth colony and Maine into the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Established under the aegis of the New England Company, Massachusetts Bay Colony was first established by a group of Puritan merchants in 1630. The merchants had obtained their initial charter from the Council for New England in 1628. Wary of the validity of that document, the company reorganized, secured a modified royal charter, and renamed itself the Governor and Company of massachusetts Bay. The charter, which ceded lands from three miles south of the Charles River to three miles north of the Merrimack, allowed the company to establish its own government for the colony, subject only to the king.
In the face of mounting tensions in England—constricting economic opportunities, an increasingly corrupt Anglican Church, the dissolution of Parliament by Charles I, and the jailing of prominent Puritan leaders—settlement in American grew ever more attractive. And though members maintained an interest in the trading company's economic potential, they recognized too the religious and political benefits of establishing an American colony. The colony would be a religious refuge, a "holy experiment," where devout Puritans and their families would settle far from England's corruption. In a daring move that contributed to their governmental, religious, and economic autonomy, the Company decided to move its entire operation to MASSACHUSETTS, out of range of the Crown's watchful eye. In October 1629 the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Company chose lawyer, gentleman, and devout Puritan John Winthrop to be the colony's first governor. Winthrop began the arduous task of raising money, locating and provisioning ships, and attracting a range of passengers interested in participating in the "holy experiment."
Though most immigrants were motivated in part by the promise of economic stability in a colony rich in natural resources, including land, many were guided by a commitment to the tenets of Puritanism, a religion that stressed the individual's personal covenant with God and community. In New England they would plant the seeds for a godly colony where the congregants themselves would shape their religious institutions. Not all of those immigrants attracted to the mission, however, were devout Puritans. Winthrop and the other Company leaders took pains to ensure that the colony would include settlers with the skills necessary to ensure its success—craftsmen, doctors, servants, and laborers—regardless of the depth of their religious commitment.
The Company pointedly assured those they left behind that they were not Separatists; from aboard their ship the Arbella, they published a written public statement proclaiming their allegiance to the Crown and Church of England. Unlike their brethren who had abandoned the Church to establish a Separatist colony in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, the members of the Bay Company intended instead to plant the seeds for a pure church that would in turn spark the continued reformation of the church in England. On 8 April 1630 the Arbella and three other ships set sail with some four hundred men, women, and children.
Though the ships initially made land at the small settlement at SALEM, where eighty people had died during the previous harsh winter, Winthrop and the other Company officers encouraged their band to settle new land south of Salem, on the bay. Concerns about the Salem settlement went beyond its limited resources: several of Salem's settlers had developed a reputation for sympathy with the Separatists in Plymouth. Seeking to escape that branding, the new colonists established plantations in towns around the bay, including Charlestown, Newtown, Roxbury, and Dorchester. Winthrop eventually settled in Boston.
The first winter in the colony tested the mettle of the settlers. Starvation and disease took the lives of two hundred people, and another two hundred returned to England in the spring. The task of not only protecting colonists but also ensuring the economic stability of the colony fell to Winthrop and his officers. Aided by a steady stream of immigrants who continued to flee England and arrived with fresh supplies, including window glass, cooking tools, guns and powder, and cloth and clothing, by 1631 the colony had attained a level of economic equilibrium.
In the fall of 1630 the Company called the first General Court in Massachusetts Bay. Though franchise (being able to vote) was not considered the right of Englishmen, and the colony's charter did not demand that the magistrates address this issue, the Court opened freeman ship (the rights of citizenship) to all male residents. At the same time, the Court limited the power of freemen to the right to choose the colony's assistants; all legal and judicial powers were retained by the assistants themselves, who on their own elected the governor and deputy governor.
In acknowledgment of the colony's religious mission, in 1631 the Court restricted franchise to only those freemen who were church members. In spite of that limitation, by so doing the Court extended franchise to more men than would have had that right in England. The Court recognized that a covenanted people would be more inclined to accept their leadership If they had participated in the process of establishing the government. Though the new government was explicitly not a theocracy—ministers were prohibited from holding public office—the decision to limit franchise to church members also made the colony's theocratic underpinnings abundantly clear. A religious commonwealth, Massachusetts Bay established Puritanism as the state-supported religion, and made it clear that no other faiths would be tolerated in the colony.
At its session in May, the Court enfranchised 118 men. By the following year, the Court decided to turn the election of the governor over to freemen rather than the assistants. Winthrop and the majority of the original assistants were reelected in each of the first few years of the colony.
The original settlers of massachusetts Bay implemented laws designed to create communities that capitalized on broadly based franchise; they sought to avoid a society ruled by a few wealthy landowners, typical of that which they had left behind in England. Though property ownership was and remained the primary ingredient in the Puritan recipe for godly communities, for the most part the colony took pains to ensure equitable distribution of that essential resource. The Bay Colony government deeded title for townships to groups of male settlers. These proprietors distributed the land among themselves. And though proprietors made land grants reflecting the current wealth and status of town leaders—men of the highest rank received the largest plots—all proprietors received enough land to support their families.
Moreover, all men participated in the central governmental organ, the town meeting. Each year the town meeting chose selectmen, passed ordinances, and levied and collected local taxes. Each town elected its own representatives to the General Court, which soon assumed a greater authority in colonial politics than the governor and magistrates.
Colonists recognized the centrality of their holy covenant with God and each other. As regenerate Christians, it was their duty to monitor the purity of their political leaders, their spouses and children, their neighbors, and even the very clerics who instructed them in the path to a godly life and community. Though the governor, deputies, and assistants did not always agree on the extent to which the government should control behavior—resulting in an almost constant legal battle over laws governing everything from dress to alcohol consumption—all colonists were wary of behavior perceived to be outside of accepted definitions of pious conduct and demeanor.
Over the course of the first generation of settlement in Massachusetts Bay, tensions surrounding the colony's religious establishment erupted into outright disputes. On several occasions those disputes resulted in attempts to purge the community of people who put into practice controversial religious beliefs. Roger Williams, minister of the church in Salem, condemned the legal establishment of the Puritan church in Massachusetts Bay, advocating instead the separation of church and state the Pilgrims had instituted in the Plymouth Colony. The government, he claimed, had no authority over the spiritual lives of the settlers. In addition, he objected to the Puritans' practice of seizing rather than purchasing Indian lands. In the face of mounting tension, the magistrates banished Williams from the colony in 1635. He settled with his followers in Rhode Island, where they established the town of Providence.
Anne Hutchinson was another target in the magistrates' attempts to control dissidence in the colony. Hutchinson, a midwife of some renown in England, mother of seven children, and wife of a prominent merchant, held prayer meetings for as many as sixty women in her home following church services. There she led discussions about the minister's sermons, and questioned the emphasis they seemed to her to place on good behavior—a covenant of works rather than one of faith. An antinomian, Hutchinson believed that faith and the resulting grace came through direct revelation from God, clearly threatening to the authority of the colony's ministers. Moreover, as a woman, Hutchinson's actions challenged traditional belief that only men should be responsible for religious teaching.
In 1637 Massachusetts Bay's magistrates tried Anne Hutchinson for heresy. Though she defended herself before the judges with courage and no small amount of skill, they found her guilty and banished her from the colony. Hutchinson followed Roger Williams to Rhode Island.
Other religious dissidents left Massachusetts Bay of their own volition. In search of both greater religious freedom and the opportunity to acquire more land, one hundred Puritans led by Thomas Hooker left the colony in 1636 to settle in the Connecticut River Valley, establishing the town of Hartford. Others established Wethersfield, Windsor, and New Haven.
In addition to religious dissent, political and economic controversy shaped the colony's development. With three thousand miles separating Massachusetts Bay from mother England, the colony considered itself an independent commonwealth. That assumption came into direct conflict with the Crown's mercantilist expectations. In 1660, on his ascent to the throne, Charles II established a committee to gain control of British colonial resources. The LORDS OF TRADE AND PLANTATION oversaw colonial commerce. It monitored adherence to Parliament's new NAVIGATION ACTS of 1660 and 1663, reining in colonial merchants trading with foreign countries in sugar, tobacco, and indigo, and instituting additional laws regulating European exports to America.
New England merchants bristled at the Crown's efforts to reassert control. The Bay Colony's government chose to ignore the Navigation Acts, and persisted in importing and exporting goods as it saw fit, claiming that the royal charter exempted it from the new trade regulations. The Crown responded by sending troops to the colony to enforce compliance. In 1684, on the recommendation of the Lords of Trade, the English court revoked the colony's charter. Two years later, it created the DOMINION OF NEW ENGLAND, effectively eliminating a number of existing colonial governments, Massachusetts Bay's among them. James II appointed Edmund Andros Governor of the Dominion. Andros banned town meetings, dismissed the assembly, and questioned the validity of all land titles filed under the original charter. The Puritan colonists of massachusetts Bay petitioned the Crown for Andros's dismissal, but their protests fell on deaf ears.
In the wake of the ouster of James II in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, however, Massachusetts Bay successfully revolted against Andros, who returned to England. The Bay Colony asked for the restoration of its original charter. Though the recently enthroned William and Mary agreed to the dissolution of the Dominion, they did not fully restore the colony's independent authority. Instead, they created a new colony of massachusetts, under a royal charter established in 1691. Plymouth and Maine were absorbed into Massachusetts Bay. Though the charter restored the Massachusetts assembly, it undermined the colony's theocratic underpinnings; all male property owners, not just Puritan church members, were guaranteed the right to elect representatives. The charter also gave the Crown the right to appoint the governor. The government established by the 1691 charter existed for the next seventy years. In spite of the Crown's influence under the new charter, the Bay Colony's government grew increasingly independent.
digitalbookindex.com
BANNED priests
The English Puritans who settled Massachusetts in the 1630s feared dangers lurking in the vast new land. What frightened them most was not hostile Indians or wild animals. In the woods to the north and west were people they perceived as "devils" — Roman Catholic Frenchmen and their Jesuit missionary priests.
The Puritans were horrified to find that Jesuit missionaries working in the French provinces were successfully converting Indians and, even worse, English captives to Catholicism. Puritans believed that Catholic converts were destined for eternal damnation. To prevent the spread of Catholicism into Massachusetts Bay, the General Court banned Jesuit priests from entering the colony.
While the Puritans were inhospitable to anyone who did not share their religious views, they were particularly hostile to Roman Catholics. Puritans had originally separated from the Church of England because they believed it had not cleansed itself fully of "corrupt" Catholic practices. They "purified" worship by eliminating rites, rituals, and outward signs of religion such as crucifixes, holy water, statues, priestly vestments, and stained glass. They also rejected church hierarchy and abolished the priesthood. To them, the Pope was the "Antichrist," and the "Papists" who followed him were in league with the devil.
The French had begun staking out claims even before the English arrived in Plymouth. Like their countrymen at home, the French who established trading posts at Quebec in 1608 and Montreal in 1642 were Roman Catholics. They brought with them Jesuit priests, members of a Catholic order that promoted education as the best way to spread Catholicism. The Jesuits had considerable success converting Huron and Algonquin Indians. As the French missionaries pushed south as far as the Kennebec River in present-day Maine, the Puritans saw a double threat on their border. These men were not only Catholic, they were French, and France and England were already struggling for dominance of the North American continent. With its territory in Maine, Massachusetts was the northernmost English colony. The French Catholics were an all-too-real threat.
The first Jesuit missionary made several trips along the coast of what is now Maine in 1611, almost 20 years before the Puritans settled in Boston. Others followed. In 1646 a French ship visited Boston with two priests on board, and the colonial governor entertained them at his home. The General Court did not approve of the governor's hospitality. The next year lawmakers banned Jesuit priests from the colony.
Only a handful of Roman Catholics resided in Boston in these years. According to a 1689 report, there was not a single "Papist" living in New England. But in the early 1700s, stories began circulating that there were "a considerable number" of Catholics in the colonial capital. During the winter of 1732 a newspaper reported that an Irish priest had celebrated Mass "for some of his own nation" on St. Patrick's Day. Bostonians were alarmed enough for the governor to order the sheriff and constables to break into homes and shops and arrest any "Popish Priest and other Papists of his Faith and Persuasion." While English and French soldiers were fighting in what came to be called the French and Indian War, authorities in Boston arrested 100 French Catholics "to prevent any danger the town may be in."
Even after the end of the war, Bostonians did not let down their guard. Each year, Harvard College sponsored a lecture against "popery." In 1765, the lector prayed, "May this seminary of learning, may the people, ministers, and churches of New England ever be preserved from popish and all other pernicious errors." Three years later, Samuel Adams proclaimed that "the growth of Popery" posed an even greater threat than the hated Stamp Act. As late as 1772 Boston specifically prohibited "Roman Catholicks" from practicing their religion because it was "subversive to society."
The Revolution forced Massachusetts to change its stance towards, if not its view of, Catholics. An alliance with France was critical to the success of the American cause. From his Cambridge headquarters in 1775, George Washington objected to the celebration of "Guy Fawkes Day" — the anniversary of a failed 1644 Catholic uprising in England. Washington was incensed that there should be "officers and soldiers in this army so void of Common sense" as to insult the Canadians and French, the new nation's potential allies. After independence, some French soldiers chose to remain in Boston, creating the core of the first Catholic congregation in New England. Mass was celebrated publicly in the city for the first time on November 1, 1788.
When Rev. Fr. John Carroll, the Bishop of Maryland, visited Boston in the spring of 1791, he wrote home that "it is wonderful to tell what great civilities have been done to me in this town, where a few years ago a Popish priest was thought to be the greatest monster in the creation." The Bishop estimated that there were then about 120 Catholics then living in Boston.
Under the leadership of two French priests who arrived in the 1790s, the Catholic Church took root in New England. Over the next ten years, the Catholic population of Boston grew to about 500. When John Carroll visited again in 1805, he decided it was time for the city to have its own bishop. In April 1808, he appointed the Rev. John Louis de Cheverus the first Bishop of Boston.
Anti-Catholic sentiment did not disappear with the growth of the Catholic population. Indeed, the huge wave of Irish Catholic immigration after 1840 brought a renewal of prejudice, discrimination, and even violence against Catholics. It would be more than a century before anti-Catholic sentiment would finally begin to fade. Eventually, a son of Massachusetts would become the nation's first Roman Catholic president.
quaqua.org
The Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1620, were a small religious group that was part of a larger Puritan movement (the Puritans preferred to describe themselves as "the godly," not as the "Puritans"). The Puritan movement denoted a loose collection of religious beliefs, not a particular denominational sect. Puritans believed that all institutions, including government, schools, families, communities, and the Church of England, should be "purified" by cleansing away all cultural characteristics regarded by the Puritans as ungodly.
After the Pilgrim Puritans encountered religious persecution in England, they fled to Holland. Subsequently the Pilgrims sailed to what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. From about 1630 onward, other Puritans organized the much larger Massachusetts Bay Colony under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was located where Boston now stands, and along with Plymouth formed the first two colonies of Massachusetts.
upto11.net
The Massachusetts Bay Colony (sometimes called by the name Massachusetts Bay Company, for the institution that founded it) was the direct predecessor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay and then the state of Massachusetts.
The colony was established under a charter issued to the Massachusetts Bay Company. There were actually two companies that preceded the Massachusetts Bay Company. The New England Company received a 1620 charter from King James I for all the lands in America between 40° North and 48° N, "throughout the Maine Land from Sea to Sea." This was a reorganization of the Plymouth Company granted as part of the Viginia Charter in 1606.
The Dorchester Company planted a fishing colony on Cape Ann (at modern Gloucester) in 1624, but this did not succeed. Most colonists returned to England, but a few under Roger Conant moved to Salem where they set up a trading post. They were followed by the New England Company which received a land patent extending from the Merrimack River to the Charles River plus three miles on either side.
John Endicott led a group of Puritan settlers to Salem, and served as governor from their arrival on September 6, 1628. The Massachusetts Bay Company replaced both of these when the Puritans were able to convert the patents into a royal charter on March 4, 1629.
http://celebrateboston.com
"In 1628, the foundation was laid for another colony in New England, by the name of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay. Several enterprising men at that time purchasing from the Council of Plymouth a tract of land for the purpose of settling. it. During the same year, the purchasers sent one Mr. John Endicott, with one hundred colonists, to begin a settlement, which they effected at Salem, previously called by the Indians Naumkeak.
The settlement of Massachusetts Bay, like the colony of Plymouth, was commenced by non-conformists, for the purpose of enjoying greater religious liberty in matters of worship. Among the most active in this enterprise were Mr. Endicott and Mr. White; the latter a pious and active minister of Dorchester, England.
}patriotpost.us]
The 1629 Charter Of Massachusetts Bay
And further, That the said Governour and Companye, and their Successors, maie have forever one comon Seale, to be used in all Causes and Occasions of the said Company, and the same Seale may alter, chaunge, breake, and newe make, from tyme to tyme, at their pleasures. And our Will and Pleasure is, and Wee doe hereby for Us, our Heires and Successors, ordeyne and graunte, That from henceforth for ever, there shalbe one Governor, one Deputy Governor, and eighteene Assistants of the same Company, to be from tyme to tyme constituted, elected and chosen out of the Freemen of the saide Company, for the twyme being, in such Manner and Forme as hereafter in theis Presents is expressed, which said Officers shall applie themselves to take Care for the best disposeing and ordering of the generall buysines and Affaires of, for, and concerning the said Landes and Premisses hereby mentioned, to be graunted, and the Plantation thereof, and the Government of the People there. And for the better Execution of our Royall Pleasure and Graunte in this Behalf, Wee doe, by theis presents, for Us, our Heires and Successors, nominate, ordeyne, make, and constitute; our welbeloved the saide Mathewe Cradocke, to be the first and present Governor of the said Company, and the saide Thomas Goffe, to be Deputy Governor of the saide Company, and the saide Sir Richard Saltonstall, Isaack Johnson, Samuell Aldersey, John Ven, John Humfrey, John Endecott, Simon Whetcombe, Increase Noell, Richard Pery, Nathaniell Wright, Samuell Vassall, Theophilus Eaton, Thomas Adams, Thomas Hutchins, John Browne, George Foxcrofte, William Vassall, and William Pinchion, to be the present Assistants of the saide Company, to continue in the saide several Offices respectivelie for such tyme, and in such manner, as in and by theis Presents is hereafter declared and appointed.
Massachusetts Bay Colony
The Massachusetts Bay Colony included the part of the present State of Massachusetts from the neighborhood of Boston northward. It was founded by Puritans, who, it will be remembered, had not separated wholly from the Church of England, but opposed many of its ceremonies. In the civil war with England they sided with the Parliament and were subjected to the same persecution as the Separatists. In 1628 a number of wealthy Puritans bought the territory from the Council of Plymouth, and, receiving a charter the following year from Charles I, sent small colonies across the Atlantic. Then the company itself followed, taking with it the charter and officers, thus gaining a colony in America that was wholly independent of England. Salem and some other small settlements had previously been made.
The colony was one of the most important that ever settled in this country. Its leaders were not only of the best character, but were wealthy, wise, and farseeing. A large number arrived in 1630, and founded Boston, Cambridge, Lynn, and other towns. Although they suffered many privations, they were not so harsh as those of Plymouth, and the colony prospered. During the ten years succeeding 1630, 20,000 people settled in Massachusetts, and in 1692 the two colonies united under the name of Massachusetts.
It would seem that since these people had fled to America to escape religious persecution, they would have been tolerant of the views of those among them, but such unhappily was not the case. The most important part of their work was the building of churches and the establishment of religious instruction. The minister was the most important man in the colony, and no one was. allowed to vote unless a member of the church. A reproof in church was considered the most disgraceful penalty that could be visited upon a wrong-doer. The sermons were two, three, and sometimes four hours long, and the business of one of the officers was to watch those overcome by drowsiness and wake them up, sometimes quite sharply.
It would seem that since these people had fled to America to escape religious persecution, they would have been tolerant of the views of those among them, but such unhappily was not the case. The most important part of their work was the building of churches and the establishment of religious instruction. The minister was the most important man in the colony, and no one was allowed to vote unless a member of the church. A reproof in church was considered the most disgraceful penalty that could be visited upon a wrong-doer. The sermons were two, three, and sometimes four hours long, and the business of one of the officers was to watch those overcome by drowsiness and wake them up, sometimes quite sharply.
Massachusetts Bay Company
Massachusetts Bay Company English chartered company that established the Massachusetts Bay colony in New England. Organized (1628) as the New England Company, it took over the Dorchester Company, which had established a short-lived fishing colony on Cape Ann in 1623. The group obtained (1628) from the Council for New England a grant of land between the Charles and Merrimack rivers, extending westward to "the South Sea." One of the men who negotiated for this patent, John Endecott , became leader of the colony at Naumkeag (later Salem), founded (1626) by Roger Conant and others from the Cape Ann settlement. In 1629 the New England Company obtained a royal charter as the "Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England." Almost immediately the emphasis changed from trade to religion, as the Puritan stockholders conceived of the colony as a religious and political refuge for their sect. A group led by John Winthrop (1588-1649) signed the so-called Cambridge Agreement (1629), by which they engaged to emigrate to New England provided that they could buy out the stock of the company and thus gain complete control of the company's government and charter. Since the royal charter did not specify where the stockholders should meet, this arrangement was made, and the Massachusetts Bay Company became the only one of the English chartered colonization companies not subject to the control of a board of governors in England. The colonists sailed for New England in 1630. They reached Salem, soon moved to Charlestown, but decided to make their chief settlement at the mouth of the Charles River, a commanding position on Massachusetts Bay. There Boston was established. Attempts were made by the Council for New England, under the leadership of Sir Ferdinando Gorges , to annul the colony's land claims, but the efforts were unsuccessful. The company and the colony were synonymous until 1684, when the charter was withdrawn, and the company ceased to exist. In 1691 a new charter made Massachusetts a royal colony and extended its jurisdiction over Plymouth and Maine. . . . . . . .