Massachusetts Bay Colony

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was an early English settlement in North America. Founded in 1630 by a group of Puritans led by John Winthrop, the colony began near the bay at the mouth of the Charles River in what is now the state of Massachusetts and included most of the area that comprises New England in the present day. The colony was started as an effort to gain freedom of religion for the Puritans and had what amounted to a state religion. The colonists were generally not accepting of the beliefs of others, and there was turmoil when those from both inside and outside the colony disagreed on religious matters. After the colony declined to allow the king greater control over its governance, its charter was revoked by England in 1684.

Background

The seventeenth century was a time of religious disagreement in England. The Church of England was the official church of the country; whoever ruled the country was also the ruler of the church. Several different Protestant groups disagreed with some of the beliefs and practices of the Church of England.

Prior to the establishment of the Church of England, the country's official religion was Roman Catholicism. Some groups thought the Anglican church was still too much like the Catholic Church. The Pilgrims, for instance, wanted to break with the Church of England and form their own church. The Puritans, on the other hand, sought to reform the Church of England.

The Puritans wanted a simpler, more pure form of worship without what they saw as excessive pomp and circumstance in the church's liturgy. They sought more sedate worship services where the hymns were sung without musical accompaniment. They also thought the leadership of the church was corrupt. The Puritans failed in their efforts to reform the Church of England. Instead, they were given land in the New World and a charter—or document granting permission on the king's authority—to establish a colony where they could worship as they wished.

In 1628, the New England Company was formed and granted the charter for land at Massachusetts Bay and beyond. The actual charter extended to the Pacific Ocean, but the colonists never went farther than what are now the New England states of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island. A small group of Puritans led by John Endecott first settled in Salem, Massachusetts. Endecott later governed the Massachusetts Bay Colony four times between 1644 and 1664.

The New England Company was changed to the Massachusetts Bay Company in 1629; by April of the following year, the renamed company sent John Winthrop and fifteen ships bearing around one thousand Puritans to the colony. Winthrop delivered a sermon called "A Model of Christian Charity," which is commonly called "A City upon a Hill" sermon, in which he urged the colonists to hold true to their obligations before man and God, and told them they would be an example for others to follow.

Overview

When the colonists began arriving in Massachusetts Bay Colony in June of 1630, they found the area was already home to several Algonquin tribes, including the Massachusetts tribe that gave the region its name. In the first decades after their arrival, the colonists had several conflicts with the native tribes, including a two-year battle against the Pequot that began in 1636 and what became known as King Philip's War against the Wampanoag beginning in 1675.

They also discovered that life was very difficult. The earliest colonists lived in mud homes and wigwams similar to those of the Native Americans. Eventually the colonists would build homes of wood and stone. These homes were generally centered around a town that included an inn and some shops. It also included two buildings that were very important to the Puritans: a school and a town hall that was used for both civic and religious purposes.

Education was very important to the Puritans, who saw it as the means by which a person could become literate to read and study the Bible. Education was taken so seriously by the Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony that they founded several colleges, including what became Harvard University in 1636. It was officially formed by the Massachusetts General Court, which was the governing body of the colony.

The court also enforced a number of laws related to religious practices, including imposing penalties for such offenses as sleeping in church and engaging in a list of prohibited behaviors on the Sabbath. Some holidays, including Christmas, were banned because they were seen as pagan. The court was able to do this because the colony had the ability to govern itself without oversight from England.

Although the colony was founded by people seeking to worship as they wanted, the Puritans were not tolerant of those with other beliefs. They persecuted any Quakers who arrived in the colony. They also banished a number of people because of their beliefs, including Thomas Hooker, a Puritan minister who felt the people should have more voice in the laws; Roger Williams, a colonist who spoke out for the rights of Native Americans over the land; and Anne Hutchinson, a midwife and spiritualist who was accused of heresy. Hooker was instrumental in the establishment of the laws of what became the colony of Connecticut, while Williams and Hutchinson were key figures in the formation of the colony of Rhode Island.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony was successful financially and traded within the colony, with merchants back in England, and with other areas such as the West Indies. The colony dealt mainly in fish and seafood, along with some furs and shipbuilding. This led to the need for the establishment of a mint in the colony in 1652.

Following political changes in England, the British government sought to restore its authority over the increasingly successful colonies. The Massachusetts Bay Colony declined to relinquish its right to rule itself. As a result, English authorities acted in the 1660s and 1670s to revoke the colony's charter but never actually served the paperwork. In 1681, the British government finally issued the writs to revoke several of the charters governing North American colonies but still withheld delivering the writs until it was too late for the colonists to respond. As a result, the charter was officially revoked on June 18, 1684. In 1691, a new charter was issued by King William III that combined Massachusetts Bay Colony with several other colonies to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Bibliography

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