19: We Need to Talk About the Charter

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A PRODUCT OF THE WHISPERFORGE: SOUND & STORY, BROUGHT TO LIFE

[[Theme music: “Lakeside Path” by Blue Dot Sessions]]

Hello, and welcome to Remarkable Providences, the podcast about charters and civil war, monarchs and mutiny, and, of course, the Salem Witch Trials. I’m your tour guide, Kate Devorak. 

[Music: Jaunty.] 

The time has come, the tour guide said, to talk of many things. Of business, ships, and government, the overthrow of kings. And of one decree which helped ring in such witchy happenings. Yup, it’s charter time. Remember how, for the past two seasons, I’ve been dancing around this “charter” business and promising that I’ll get to it? Today’s the day! We’re going to get into the nitty gritty of how the Massachusetts Bay Colony came into being, how it worked, how it didn’t work, and how distrust and the eventual breakdown of the government paved the way for the witch trials. 

So let us go on this journey together, you and I. It’s finally time to talk about the charter. 

Let’s go back to the European colonization of America. Yaaaay. 

The Massachusetts Bay Colony, like other English settlements in North America, began as a joint-stock company, a business venture in which individuals invested in stock and shared in the company's successes and failures. Yes, we’ve been a corporation the whole time.  

The Company’s goals were twofold: the land would be used for economic purposes, such as for farming, hunting, fishing, and lumberjacking, and also serve as a permanent settlement for colonists, who would buy stock in the company. It’s just like Animal Crossing. Oh my god, it’s just like Animal Crossing. Only instead of populating your island with cute deer or whatever, it’s a bunch of religious refugees who hate the Pope. Of course, the English Companies set up shop with the assumption that the land they were granted was largely uninhabited, despite decades of knowing that wasn’t true, like in Animal Crossing. Listen, if those islands really were uninhabited, why do I keep digging up skulls, Tom Nook?

[Music: Curious.]

In keeping with this podcast’s theme of second chances, the Colony was a second shot for a company looking to prove itself. The Massachusetts Bay Company was founded in 1628, basically built from the bones of the Dorchester Company, which had unsuccessfully attempted to establish a colony at Cape Ann. One of the company’s organizers, John White, was obsessed with starting a colony that could serve as a refuge for English Puritans, who at the time were being persecuted under Anglican English law. The Pilgrims at Plymouth had managed to pull off a similar feat in 1620, and White hoped to colonize the region directly to the north of the other nonconformists. 

Puritan families bought stock in the company, with many of them intending to inhabit the colony’s land as well as exploit it for profit. Settlement was possible, and a quiet life away from the blasphemous grip of the Church of England was fairly enticing. The Cape Ann colony hadn’t been a total wash, as the remaining settlers had gone on to found Salem in 1626, which served as a landing point for the first wave of Puritan migration to North America. 

With the amount of interest in immigration, Massachusetts Bay Company leaders worried about the legal status of their colony. Land grants had been given to several companies in the area, and many overlapped. Which is fine, I guess, if you’re simply stripping the area of profitable resources, but when you start promising plots to Puritans with progeny, ambiguity isn’t ideal. It’s always land boundaries with these people! What the company leaders needed was an official Royal Charter. The Charter would basically act as the colony’s constitution. It set the bylaws for the company and detailed the rights of the colonists. 

I just want to pause for a sec just to get us all on the same page by formally saying that all of this is incredibly silly and made up and means absolutely nothing when you take into account that these rules were put into place with the assumption that North America was empty when the Europeans ran into it. It wasn’t, and it’s really messed up that everyone kind of pretended that it was. There were thousands of indigenous people living on that land when the Massachusetts Bay Company decided to set up shop. But of course, to the English, they didn’t matter because they didn’t have rifles or God. What did they have? Food? Matrilineal kinship? Complex societies and customs? No thank you, we have a business to run into the ground. 

White and other Company members appealed to King Charles I, who ultimately granted the Charter of 1629. This set the Massachusetts colony apart from other royal or proprietary colonies in that it allowed for a government elected by the colonists themselves. Sweet deal!

Here’s the thing though: the Puritans weren’t 100% clear about their intentions at this point. It seems that the king just assumed the company was a business, meant for businessy things, not a sneaky way of building the Puritans’ ultimate clubhouse, and didn’t think too much about it.  What the king didn’t know wouldn’t kill him. 

    Actually… the Puritans would kinda kill him, but I’ll get to that in a sec. 

[Break]

[Music: Increased drama.]

So Massachusetts started out as kind of a lie. Maybe not so much a lie as an omission of intent. So that’s another strike against the whole endeavour.

What made the Charter of 1629 rather unusual, and quite powerful, was that it didn’t include any clause that required the Company to stay in England. Normally, this kind of charter would dictate that the Company meet in a certain place or that the board members needed to reside in a specific area. The Charter of ‘29 left that ambiguous, which allowed for the Company’s board of directors to by and large move to the colony itself. They set up their headquarters in Boston, meaning that there would be comparatively little influence from the king and the Anglican church on how it operated. With the colony’s population made up of shareholders or like minded folk, the Puritans could more or less control how they governed themselves, as laid out in the charter. 

The colony was governed by a body called the General Court, comprised of a governor and two legislative branches. The House of Deputies was made up of representatives elected from each town, while all freedmen of the colony elected the eighteen members of the House of Assistants. The Assistants also filled a judiciary role as magistrates. The members would serve as judges for their respective county courts, and, when necessary, they would act as the supreme court of the colony, along with the governor. The governor was voted in annually by the legislative Houses. Only freedmen could serve in the General Court, meaning that they were white, landowning men who were, notably, members of the Puritan church. In turn, only freedmen were allowed to vote, which allowed the colony to run as a kind of democratic theocracy. The charter allowed for this governing body to establish their own laws, so long as they were not, quote, “repugnant” to the laws and statutes of England. 

Within the first decade of Puritan settlement, the colonists were clamoring for an established legal code to ensure individual rights and further check the power of the General Court. This ultimately resulted in the 1641 publication of the Massachusetts Body of Liberties, written by Puritan minister and former lawyer, Nathaniel Ward. We’ve talked about the Body of Liberties before. That’s the one that says witches and double jeopardy are no good, but slavery’s a-okay. Its blending of English and Mosaic law further solidified Massachusetts as increasingly independent and distinctly Purtian. One could even say “exclusively Puritan”, as all other religions were outlawed in the colony. Church services were mandatory, as was each community’s obligation to financially support their minister. Mission accomplished, gang!

[Music: Mysterious.]

The next year, Civil War broke out in England. 

As I’ve said before, it is my divine right as an American to not dive too deeply into British history, and I will not start here. The various political movements going on in England at this time are very interesting and incredibly complicated, and we don’t have time to get into all that. What you need to know is that there were a series of civil wars between Parliamentarians and Royalists over the governance of the country as well as conflicts concerning religious freedom, during which Charles I was beheaded and replaced by Oliver Cromwell, a military leader, statesman, and independent Puritan. 

With the establishment of the English Commonwealth, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was safer than ever to do what they wanted without the specter of the King over their shoulders. What they wanted to do at this point was expand. The resources that kept the lights on could be found in abundance in New Hampshire and Maine, and so the Puritans in Massachusetts moved north and claimed land, regardless of the legality or morality. The colony’s population was growing, as was their merchant class. The colonists began to diversify their trade, and sought out more profitable markets in Europe and the West Indies, despite disapproval from England. 

Across the Atlantic, the deceased Charles’ son, Charles II, returned from exile to restore the monarchy in 1660, royally screwing up the colony’s future plans. When Charles II regained the crown, he revoked all charters, and declared that he would reinstate them based on proof of loyalty. Which I think is pretty fair in this case. Over the next two decades, he attempted to reign in the unruly Puritans by further restricting their economic dealings and granting a royal charter to New Hampshire, effectively breaking up Massachusetts’ hold on New England. So the colony sent agents who, with non-buckled hats in hand, attempted to convince the King that they were totally cool, totally normal subjects of the Crown so they could have their government back please. It didn’t work. Aside from the Civil War grievances, the Massachusetts Puritans had been pushing their boundaries with the English government for some time now. They seemed to be fine expanding the colony on their own, they had continued trade with countries other than England despite the Navigation Acts that prevented them from doing so, they minted their own currency without the king’s face on them (big no-no), and their persecution of non-Puritan Protestants had recently resulted in the execution of several Quakers. Until the Puritans could learn to behave themselves, the Crown would be in charge.  

The original Charter was officially revoked in 1684, and the rug was pulled out from under the Puritans. Imagine you wake up tomorrow, and the government you know and tolerate no longer exists. Like what happens every four years in the US. Great system, no notes. To make matters worse, in 1685, Charles II died, and was replaced by his brother, notorious Catholic convert, James. Please, try to contain your outrage. 

The new King decided it best to smush the colonies together to form one, giant, unwieldy SUPER COLONY—the Dominion of New England. It was pretty much doomed to fail. First of all, the Dominion was simply too big to govern effectively. One governing body would now be in charge of the Massachusetts and Plymouth Colonies, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Maine. Then, he put the worst guy in charge- the former governor of New York, Sir Edmund Andros. An Anglican. 

Andros was to reign as governor, aided by a council of assistants, no longer elected by the colony’s freedmen, but appointed by the Dominion. The initial plan was to include representatives from each of the colonies in the Dominion, but due to travel and budget cuts, most of the council was made up of Puritan men from Massachusetts and Plymouth. I’ll get into some of these guys more next episode, but let’s say there are some familiar spirits there.

[Music: Timid.]

Andros brought with him religious tolerance for all Protestants, not just Puritans. Even discrimination against Catholics was prohibited, how woke! Twenty years before, the colony was executing Quakers on the Boston Common. Now this new governor shows up, and suddenly they’re expected to give over Boston’s South Church for Anglican services? That shit wouldn't fly. When ministers throughout the Dominion refused to acknowledge days of fasting for the new government, or encouraged their congregations to resist the new regime, Andros was sure they were fined, if not arrested. 

Andros also proved to be a threat on the secular level. In 1687, he enacted a new tax to replenish the colony’s empty coffers. The economy was in shambles following King Philip’s War, and the high wartime taxes had failed to decrease in the 1680s. People were already desperate and angry by the time Andros rolled in, and many found this tax to be intolerable, especially since it was imposed by an unrepresentative government. In protest, the towns of Ipswich, Topsfield, and Rowley refused to appoint tax collectors. Andros responded by arresting dozens of alleged rabble-rousers throughout Essex County, including several high-ranking men who had held office under the old charter. 

In response to these stirrings of resistance, Andros clamped down on town meetings, limiting gatherings of local governance to a single annual meeting for election purposes. Meetings for any other reason were strictly forbidden. 

As part of his mission to reinstate good old fashioned English law and order, Andros also changed the way the colony’s courts worked. They were going back to the old English ways, which was of course bad news for the Puritans. Now, everyone would be required to swear on the bible before testifying. You can’t just swear on a bible, that’s idolatry! Blasphemy! Also, non-Puritan freemen would be eligible to serve on juries. How can you, probably a white, landowning man, expect to have a fair trial when your jury could be packed with white, male, landowning Quakers and Anglicans? You just can’t. Andros also appointed new judges to oversee local courts—wealthy urbanites who had little knowledge of the counties they were expected to serve. More and more cases were required to be tried in Boston, creating what many saw as unnecessary travel expenses on top of already outrageous hikes in court fees. So it’s at this point that many people in the colony just stop taking each other to court. Which on its face sounds like it could be a good thing, but the legal system was how these people solved their problems. If you had an issue with somebody, you dealt with it through the church or the court. To be fair, up to this point, there was a lot of overlap in those two spheres, but now the court was simply off the table. The Puritans were now left to fend for themselves, and by that I mean sit and stew in their drama for years. 

Then there were the land disputes. Always with the land disputes, these folks. When the old charter was revoked, all of the land titles dictated by that document were voided. In a society where land ownership was directly linked with power, this was an unmitigated nightmare. Under Andros, the Puritans would be required to apply for titles in line with English law, where the land was held and granted by the Crown. To do this, landowners would need to pay an application fee on top of what was basically an annual property tax. They would also need to prove that their claims to their respective lands were legitimate, which was easier said than done. Communal lands held by towns and villages were also in question, since these spaces were technically property of the King and could be redistributed by Andros. Communities were forced to concretely legitimize their claims, some tracking down the descendants of indigenous leaders from whom to purchase renewed land titles. Andros, of course, dismissed these particular documents. 

In the north, the frontier was in jeopardy. What would become known as King William’s war began in 1688, with the Wabanaki Confederacy, aided by their French allies, ramping up attacks on English settlements in Maine. Andros responded by launching a campaign against the Wabanaki, without much success. He attempted a much larger expedition in the winter of that year, recruiting from Massachusetts militias to fortify frontier settlements, but the damage was already done. His perceived bungling of affairs led to rumors that he was in league with both the Wabanaki and the French (Andros was from the Isle of Jersey after all) and sought to stop English expansion north. Some also feared he was involved in a horrid Popish plot, due to his preservation of a Catholic chapel. Because the next worst thing to joining forces with the enemy is being in league with the Pope. 

Luckily for the Puritans, Andros was acting on borrowed time. Back in England, revolution was in the air. 

[Music: Advancing.]

King James was ousted in December of 1688, and replaced by his daughter and her husband, Mary and William. 

The political upheaval in England took a second to reach the colonies. When Andros received word of William’s ascension, he refused to believe the news, instead ordering the arrest of the messenger. But the winds of change had already arrived. The colonists seized their opportunity as soon as rumors of the Glorious Revolution reached them. Andros and other supporters of the Dominion were arrested by protesters in Boston on April 18, 1689, nearly a month before they received official notice of the change of power in England. Some things just can’t wait.

Andros’ failing seems to be that, although the Puritans painted him as the ultimate evil and a ruthless dictator, he honestly wasn’t effective enough to do anything meaningful in the colony. He was a total dick, sure, but he was also set up for failure from the get go. He didn’t have enough power to rein in his subjects, he had very little experience with the religious or political culture of Massachusetts, and he just didn’t have the support of the Crown or colonial leaders. Connecticut still really hates him by the way—they struck him from their official list of governors. 

With Andros overthrown, what was to be done about the government? Increase Mather, the author of Remarkable Providences the book, had been in England ever since the early years of the Dominion, trying to get the old charter back. He had, by accounts, made some headway with James II, but after James’ exile, Increase was forced to start his appeal from scratch with the new monarchs. Luckily, William and Mary were Protestants, so I’m sure he had a good feeling about it. 

Meanwhile, the colony reverted back to the old charter, only this time with no oversight and a lot of hurt feelings. Under Andros, factions had formed within the government, with the Puritans advocating for official restoration of the 1629 charter and royalists wanting to keep the Dominion. They ultimately decided to hold elections under the old charter rules in spring of 1690, with Simon Bradstreet, the last governor elected before Andros’ reign, serving again as interim governor. Still, the Puritan’s City on a Hill was losing its luster. 

There was also the very long, very costly ongoing war to consider. King William’s War waged on, and things were not going well in the Maine frontier. After Andros’ arrest, many of the soldiers fighting in the north were either banished as sympathizers of the Dominion or simply left now that the man who had forced them into service was out of power. This opened the frontier communities up to attack, and the French and the Wabanaki Confederacy took full advantage. 

[Music: Podcast marimba.]

Every loss in the north was another chip in the provisional government’s facade of control. After the failure of the Dominion, the people of Massachusetts didn’t know who to trust. They began to rely more heavily on local officials, which, in Salem Village for example, set up for the future power trips of men like Thomas Putnam and Samuel Parris.

Many people also had personal disputes that they had yet to address. Fearing that the Dominion’s courts were biased, the Puritans by and large just let problems lie and bad feelings stew for the past few years. Now Andros was gone, but the government was still on thin ice. Who could say if a court decision made today would be considered legally legitimate tomorrow?  

They all only hoped that an agreement could be reached in England, and that an end to this era of existential and legal precarity was in sight. It wasn’t. 

Enter the 1691 charter and Governor William Phips.

What Increase and his allies had wanted was a return to their City on a Hill’s pre-Andros heyday. What they got was something of a Frankenstein’s charter. It was kind of a mashup of the 1629 government and the Dominion, a compromise that pleased nobody. Notably, it extended voting rights to non-Puritan white landowning men. This was the one thing the Puritans didn’t want to happen.

[Music: Dramatic sting.]

As we know, if you give rights to a minority group, everybody else gets less rights! Look, there’s only so many rights to go around. And now, what, the Quakers get to vote? Who’s next: women, people of color, non-landlords? Terrible. At least the new charter’s parameters for freedom of religion still excluded Papists. They’re not monsters. 

While the legislative branches of the General Court retained many of their duties under the 1629 charter, all their activity was now subject to veto by the governor, who, in turn, was not elected by the colony’s representatives, but appointed by the king. So now the Puritans were stuck with a very powerful executive branch wielded by someone whom the voting public worried did not understand or value their interests in the midst of an economic downturn and a culture seemingly shifting from their traditional values. Imagine that, if you can. While they may have retained the vague idea of democracy, the king’s presence was felt as acutely as it did under Andros. Fingers crossed he appoints a cool guy! 

William Phips, turns out, is a super interesting dude, so oops he’s getting his own episode. For some context now, though: he was born in 1650 in what is now Woolwich, Maine, so he’s a homecolony boy. He made his fortune as a treasure hunter, was the first New Englander to be knighted, and served under Andros as chief sheriff of the Dominion. He and the governor never saw eye to eye, however, and Phips left for England, where he joined forces with Increase to bring about Andros’ downfall. He went on to command two expeditions against the French in Canada, then returned to England, where he teamed up with Mather again to advocate for the charter. And now he was governor. 

    Of the many many problems William Phips was expecting in his first days on the job, a witch crisis, with dozens of people already accused and one dead, was probably not high on that list. All things considered, though, maybe it should have been.  

[Music: Curious.]

Witch trials are what you get when nobody trusts the government and everybody lets personal drama sit for too long. 

Imagine that you’ve been having an issue with your neighbor for some time, say their horses kept getting into your yard and stomping up your grass. But because you didn’t trust the system to help you settle this issue, you’re just stuck for years. Then, suddenly, there’s a witch crisis in town, and seemingly anybody can be arrested if you can make the case that they’ve sold their soul to Satan. Now, you’ve never seen your neighbor ride a broom to wreak havoc in the Village, but after stewing about the horse thing, you could definitely believe it. And suddenly there’s the perfect opportunity to hash out old grievances in front of a court that can actually do something about them. 

Now there was a charter. So now, there could be an official court, with trials and judges and sentences. Now, the executions could begin. 

Remarkable Providences was written, researched, and performed by me, Kate Devorak. It was produced by Dan Manning, and recorded my home in beautiful Jersey City, NJ. Music from Blue Dot Sessions. Follow us on Twitter @RemarkablePod and everywhere else @RemarkableProvidences. For transcripts (like this one) and links to everything, visit https://whisperforge.org/remarkableprovidences. If you like the show, rate and review, or just tell your friends about it, that really helps us out. This show is made possible by our wonderful patrons. If you’d like to join them, visit our Patreon. 

Thanks for listening, and remember: the Devil’s in the details.