What They Left Behind: The English Politics the Puritans Rejected

We take for granted the town meetings and elected officers of early Massachusetts, as well as its laws proclaiming individual rights and liberties for most free white men. But the puritans in England could not.

In fact, in England these would have been seen dangerously radical – innovations anathema in a polity ruled largely by royal decree and marked by hierarchy and arbitrary rule, and liberties to which no ordinary person was entitled.

In this first of our fall lecture series, Tyrannies & Liberties: Politics in 17th Century New England, David Hall, author of numerous books on the puritans, explores the policies and political principles New England puritans tossed overboard when they departed English shores for their new lives. His opening lecture offers an essential window onto the radicalism of these puritans in the 17th century English context and their rejection of what many saw as the tyranny of both church and state.

This lecture is both live and live-streamed. Join us at Suffolk Law School, Boston, or on Zoom. Suffolk Law School is wheelchair accessible.

What was jettisoned once the early New England colonists boarded the Mayflower and the Arbella?

The answers seem obvious. Hereditary monarchy as the all-encompassing head of state and simultaneously head of the state church. Royal courts (technically known as “prerogative” courts), most famously the Star Chamber, which functioned without jurors and could make life or death decisions. A Parliament of two houses, the Lords, of the nobility and bishops in the state church (all of them depending in some manner on the Crown), and House of Commons, formally elected but usually filled with lesser nobility or gentry (such as Oliver Cromwell). And governance, including of London, by a tightly controlled council with very little turnover. Indeed, rotation in office was never part of this system.

Three other aspects of the political system loomed large for the colonists.

One was taxation. In theory, Parliament determined the revenues the monarchy needed - to sustain its own style, to fight wars, and so on. Parliament's ability to refuse a request from the monarch was one of the few checks and balances in the system. But two loopholes existed: the king could in theory impose certain taxes by fiat; he also controlled how often and when Parliaments, the most representative political body in England, met. Not every year, for sure - indeed infrequently. When Charles I dissolved the Parliament of 1628-29, he would wait until 1640 (at a moment of crisis) to summon another one.

Second, there were no political parties in anything like the modern sense. Loyalty to the Crown was expected of everyone, loyalty intersecting, inevitably, with self-interest.

Third, the state church was heavily top-down. Anyone wanting to be a minister had to be approved and ordained by a bishop, who could also suspend or otherwise remove anyone who offended him.

Finally, turning to economics, most land was owned by the aristocracy. Middling farmers rented their land.

Leaving these behind, in fact and in temperament, paved the way for the creation of a remarkably different forms of church, state, and local governance.

In both Massachusetts and Connecticut, new governments, both town and colony, showed the radical and reforming nature of the colonists.

Arriving under the auspices of the Massachusetts Bay Company and initially employing the standard plan of governance in its 1629 charter, the colonists in Massachusetts began almost at once to adapt and alter the charter to their new circumstances.

Three of these circumstances had a special importance.

Because the new government began almost at once to levy taxes on the settlements, the new town meetings demanded a voice in how they were taxed, an issue the colonists brought with them from their experiences with the regime of Charles I.

Second, they wanted rotation in office and made this happen in 1634 when John Winthrop was not re-elected (elections were annual, as prescribed in the charter). So important was this principle that the founders of Connecticut decided that no governor could succeed himself for a second year (although he could return to office later).

Third, the key economic issue for most of the colonists was how land would be distributed, land granted the colony by its royal charter. Newly founded towns decided that their distribution of land would benefit every household. Some families would get more, some less, but all got, at least in theory, enough.

Towns also ensured that every adult male could vote in town meetings that decided how town lands and other resources, particularly timber, would be distributed. Town selectmen were also voted in or out of office annually.

No one wanted to use the word “democracy,” which meant, to 17th century men and women, a chaotic mode of governance in which all were rulers. But in Rhode Island the word was embraced, and today it is a useful term for town governance throughout most of New England.

Steps of this kind swept aside the hierarchical, resource-constrained English system and opened the way to participation and equity of a new kind.

David Hall is professor emeritus of American religious history at Harvard Divinity School. His books include Worlds of Wonder, Days of Judgment: Popular Religious Belief in Early New England; A Reforming People: Puritanism and the Transformation of Public Life in New England; and The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century. His latest book is The Puritans: A Transatlantic History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019).