UNIT 2 THE CONSOLIDATION AND DISPERSAL

OF THE PURITAN UTOPIA

Structure

2.0 Objectives
2.1 Introduction: The Puritan town as a projected communal utopia.
2.2 Unanimity as the motif for an integrated community.
2.3 The emergence of trading interests as a factor undermining the unity within
the Puritan settlements.
2.4 Puritans against themselves: the beginnings of dissent within the fold of
Puritanism.
2.5 Let Us Sum Up
2.6 Questions
2.7 Suggested Readings.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

The aim of this Unit is to represent the structure of the Puritan town in New England
as that of a projected communal utopia. The focus of study will be the Puritan elite's
efforts to highlight the spirit of unanimity within the community in order to obscure
the fictions and fractions that frequently threatened to disrupt its unity. Various
factors contributed towards the dissolution of the collective identity which the
Puritans sought so assiduously to cultivate. Not the least of the factors was the
emergence of trading interests which involved attempts to link the economy of the
Puritan town with that of the world beyond. Gradually, new and manifold forces of
dissent started to operate from the margins against a mainstream notion of
Puritanism. The Unit will indicate the complex modes through which some of these
fordes succeeded eventually in diluting, if not destroying altogether, the utopian
aspirations of the new England Puritans.

2.1 THE PURITAN TOWN AS A PROJECTED

COMMUNAL UTOPIA

The historian Robert Kelley has astutely stated,

Virginians settled as individuals upon the land they received from'the

Crown. New Englanders settled as communities upon land granted
to each village by the General Court (the legislature) of
Massachusetts Bay Colony.

In New England, individuals got land only from the village, and then only if they
were members of that community. That is, they would be looked over first bly
members of the village leadership to see i f they were godly, if they were true
Puritans. Then they would sign the covenant (common agreement) which the:
founders of the village had drawn up together at its founding. This covenant bound
all people living in the town to "fear and reverence . . . Almighty God" and "profess
and practice one truth . . . the foundation whereof is everlasting love."
Each town (the term refers to a large piece of territory, not just to the village at its The Consolidation and
core) might be hundreds of thousands of acres in extent. The founding villages, Dispersal of the Puritan
however, turned their backs on that vast wilderness and formed compact village Utopia
communities devoted to producing the perfect Christian life. All townspeople
accepted the community's moral authority and discipline. According to the number
of persons in each household, their social standing, and the "usefulness in either
Church or Commonwealth" of their patriarch--Puritan life was profoundly rooted in
male dominance. As echoed in the Old Testament--the town would grant so much
pasture lands in the "commons," so many strips of arable farming land, and so much
woodland. Everything was done communally. Just as each person's inoral life was
properly under the general observation of the overseeing group, so the cattle were
grazed under the supervision of a common herdsman and what was planted in the
fields was decided upon in common and ploughed and harvested in the same way.

New England towns were almost entirely self-governing. And no m e in them had to
pay quit-rents to any overlord for their lands (in contrast to the colasnies in the south,
where annual quit-rents had to be paid to the proprietors or to the Crow). Laimd,
once granted to the individual farmers by the town, was theirs in fee simple: they
owned it absolutely. The Puritans were determined never to reproduce in tkreir part of
America the ancient curse of tenant farming, which existed as the general rule in
England--that is, the rule of manor lords who could raise rents and evict tenants at
will. Just as Puritans wanted no bishops over their churches and their religiouc,,1'ives,
they wanted no lords over their properties and their secular lives.

Several days a week the townspeople would gather in the mectsng house to hear
sermons from their minister. Each congregation was an independent ccxnmamity;
there was no hierarchy that bound them together with other corlgregi+tnsns. ]Ire basis
of admission to any congregational community would be the ability of an individual
to publicly, and in detail, describe the agony and the ecstasy of having gone through a
salvabon experience. Congregationalism, in short, was a "church of saint'%built
around a vision of Christian perfection. Visible faith and a visibly faithful way of
living: these, it was said, were clearly the marks of God's grace in the saved person.
Then, after grave inquiry, the "selectmen" who would govern the town were elected
fiom the community. It was assumed that henceforth these individuals ultimately
answered only to God.

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2.2 UNANIMITY AS THE MOTIF FOR AN
INTEGRATED COMMUNITY

The Puritan village, wherever located, was defined by an enthusiasm for unity, order
and peace. New England was not founded, as is a popular misconception, as a
democracy in the modem sense. People were supposed to talk together and argue
things out in the town meeting house, but when decisions were made, all were to
"assent unanimously." In practice, Puritans accepted that certain individuals were
more substantial and authoritative than others, and the board of selectmen elected
from this elite was generally presumed to exercise a divine magistracy that should be
obeyed dutifully. Indeed, Puritans generally disliked what we would call democracy,
which implies free and open criticism of leaders and the organisation of opposition to
depose them. This was seen as running against the oneness desired by God, and
being disruptive of harmony. The idea of dissension, of a kind of "party politics"
within the village community, was beyond grasping, or accepting, as right. Were
they not people of one God? Was there not one truth in all things? Unanimity - this
was what New Englanders aimed for and prized. Anarchy and chaos were feared.

What did New Englanders think about the relationship between state and church? On
the one hand they rejected the idea that church and state should be unified in the
sense that they should be interwoven. Back home in Old England, the Church of
Conlexls o f ~ m e r i c a n England shared in the making of laws (its bishops sat, and still sit, in the House of
Literuture Lords), and it had a court system that could punish people by even incarceration for
moral offences. The Puritans wanted none of this, and they gave their ministers no
such function or powers. However, Puritans were not what were then termed
"separatistsu--radicalswho demanded an absolute separation of state and church.
, Rather, they believed that in a given country there should be a single state church
supported by public taxes to which all citizens of the country should belong. We
must remember, once more, that the Puritans believed deeply in unanimity, in the
whole community thinking and acting in unison in every respect.

2.3 THE EMERGENCE OF TRADING INTERESTS AS A

FACTOR UNDERMINING THE UNITY WITHIN THE
PURITAN SETTLEMENTS

The immediate task in New England was to find an economic basis for the new
community. The money that emigrating Puritans brought with them sustained
Massachusetts through its early years. Meanwhile, a frantic search for furs was under
way. By 1640 this search had pushed settlements out to Connecticut, south along
Long Island, and north to the Merrimac River. However, the supply of furs in New
England was limited. By 1660 the triide had dropped off steeply; by 1675 it was
virtually extinct. Worse yet, the outbreak of civil war in England in 1642 reduced
immigration to a trickle, and with it the flow of money from England. Thereafter,
Massachusetts entered extremely difficult times.

A lasting source of income was found in the rich fishing waters that lay off the coasts
of northern New England and Newfoundland. Steeped in minerals and nutrients, the
mix of cold Arctic waters and the Gulf Stream in this region generated a huge fish
population and therefore fertile fisheries. These waters had provided fish to French
and Portuguese traders for generations, but after 1640 New Englanders moved in so
vigorously that within twenty years they dominated the trade. The codfish became
the Massachusetts symbol, for it provided the basis for a healthy New England
economy.

The consequence was the emergence of an extensive and elaborate trading system in
the Atlantic. Based upon fish, lumber products, rum, wine, tobacco, English
manufactured goods, and eventually slaves, it touched England, West Africa, the
Caribbean Islands, the Southern colonies in America and New England. Through this
trade, New England became closely embroiled in the slave traffic. In 1643 the first
New England vessel carried a cargo of black slaves to the plantations.

As this intricate new trading network emerged, an ascendant class, the merchants
arose in Massachusetts. The Puritan authorities were not traders, but were usually
drawn from the lesser rural gentry in England. They were firmly moored to the
traditional medieval conception that business activities should be engineered so as to
benefit the general community and not just particular individuals.

Controversy soon broke out in Idassachusetts over whether merchants could raise the
price of goods when the demands of the market allowed them to do so. The medieval
injunction, issued at a time of stable prices, was that every article has a "just" tag.
Higher rates were nothing but exploitation of the buyer. Robert Keayne, a Boston
merchant, who insisted on selling imported goods at higher prices than those decreed
by the General Court, was tried and fined for his offence. As trade enlarged, these
early troubles evolved into a continuing internecine conflict between the Puritan
authorities, backed by the rural villagers all over Massachusetts, and the increasingly
assertive and aggressive merchants of Boston. The merchants had emig~ateddirectly
from the crowded business districts of London. They knew each other intimately,
intermarried extensively, and shared the business values of an increasingly The Consolidation and
individualistic age. They soon became men of importance in New England, for they Dispersal of the Puritan
exported iron goods, cloth and other vitally necessary manufactured goods of
England. Suave and articulate, tending to be always on the side of social mobility
and religious tolerance, they introduced into New England life an influence Puritans
regarded with alarm. Many of them wore foppish London dresses, which to Puritan
eyes was scandalously sinful.

Atlantic trade routes

By 1660 New England's merchants were trading freely all over the Atlantic with
France, Spain and Holland, among other countries. After the Restoration of
monarchy, Charles 11's government moved vigorously to pull the New England
merchants back into line and to tighten the reins on the empire. In the Navigation
Acts, the royal authorities required that most colonial trade be channeled through
England. These regulations brought loud complaints,but London was determined.

Simultaneously, New England merchants began trooping to Whitehall, headquarters

of government in London, to complain of the harsh restrictions imposed on them by
the Puritan authorities in New England. They pointed to laws against the residence of
"strangers" and the requirement of a salvation experience as the basis for admission
to the community. Few merchants were "saved." Many, indeed, had converted to
Anglicanism, especially since Anglicans were back in power in England. -

Moved by their complaints, London began in 1665 the first of several investigations
into the problems of New England. To the royal authorities, Puritans were hardly ,
objects of sympathy. As suspected partisans to the anti-royalist revolution in England
which had been responsible for the execution of Charles I, they were treated almost
as traitors to the homeland. Thus, in 1684, not surprisingly, the English Crown came
out openly in favour of the anti-Puritan forces and pronounced Massachusetts a royal
colony.
 ConrwlsofAmerieQn From then on, the governor of Massachusetts was not elected locally from the Puritan
Literature
gentry, but almost invariably chosen in London from among English politicians. The
Angelican urban governor administered the colony in company with the powerful upper house of the
I
Merchant class legislature, the Council, which was composed of the various officials of the
dominance over Massachusetts government, themselves appointed by the governor. They were often
the Puritan chosen from the merchant class, now completely victorious over the Puritans. At the
villagers same period, an Anglican church was opened in Boston and all discrimination against
, Anglicans were removed. The Bible Commonwealth had finally been undermined.

2.4 THE PURITANS AGAINST THEMSELVES: THE

BEGINNINGS OF DISSENT WITHIN THE FOLD OF
PURITANISM

Dissensions within the Puritan fold were in part responsible for hastening the end of
the projected Puritan utopia in New England.

In 1631, Roger Williams had arrived in Boston to be a minister. He was soon

preaching that no church (not even New England's Congregational Church)ghould be
supported by general taxation, nor should everyone be required to attend it.
Inevitably, he had to leave, and in 1636 he founded his own colony, Rhode Island.
Here he created a unique community in which there was complete freedom of
conscience and genuine democracy of institutions. Williams believed that only
people's actions, and not their thoughts, should be supervised by government, and
then only if they led to the harm of others. If they wished to gather together and form
churches, these should be totally self-supporting and not connected to the state. That
is, the gathered worshippers should be "BaptistM--andBaptist Protestantism in
America has its origins in Roger William's Rhode Island. Gradually, Rhode Island
attracted discontented religious individualists from all over New England. Puritans
regarded it with distaste, for Rhode Island seemed to emblematise a licentiousness
and a lasciviousness that they found hard to accept.

'fie secular heterodoxy represented by Anne Hutchinson, however, was even more
startling. Born in 1591, Anne immigrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634,
when she and her husband joined the Puritan minister John Colton and his followers
in the fledgling colony. In New England, the outspoken Anne, who had been deeply
influenced by her father, a preacher imprisoned several times for his opposition to the
Established Church, quickly ran afoul of the colony's basic distrust of women. When
she realised that women were to be excluded from colonial affairs, she began holding
meetings for women to discuss both religious and secular matters. Her strongly
expressed belief in the individual soon attracted the merchants of the colony, who
also chafed under the authoritarianism-ofthe Puritan regime, clerical as much as lay.
Anne and her acolytes consistently came into confrontation with the authorities--
opposing wars with the Indians, fighting against the concept of Eve-induced Original
Sin, upholding the separation between church and state. By 1637, Anne had a larger
appeal than Governor John Winthorp. Brought to trial for her dissenting views, she
found a forum to address the entire colony, England--and posterity. During the trial
she was labelled a witch, a Jezebel, and compared to "the lustful Eve." Convicted,
she was banished from the colony and finally--ironically--murderedin exile by
Indians..

2.5 LET US SUM UP

In this Unit, I have tried to highlight the structure of the Puritan town in New England
as that of a projected communal utopia. This utopian projection is seen as an attempt
on the part of the Puritan elite to gloss over differences and dissensions that existed The Consolidation and
within their community. A major factor of disruption of the integrity of the Puritan Dispersai of the Puritan
community stemmed out of the community's opening up to trading interests and Utopia
thereby inevitably to the world outside itself. Slowly but steadily, this induced
divisive elements to assert themselves against a hegemonic interpretation of
Puritanism. An account of these elements which ultimately dispersed the Puritan
consolidation is also provided in this Unit.

2.6 QUESTIONS

1. Describe the structure of the Puritan town in New England as that of a

projected communal utopia.

2. How did the emergence of trading interests undermine the unity within the
Puritan settlements.

3. Discuss the cases of Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson as types of

dissent emerging against the hegemonic interpretation of Puritanism in New
England.

2.7 SUGGESTED READINGS

Same as for Unit 1.