Women of America Part 6

"Whereas divers persons unfit for marriage, both in regard of their yeong yeares, as also in regard of their weake estate, some practiseing the inveagleing of men's daughters and maids under gardians, contrary to their parents and gardians likeing, and of mayde servants, without leave and likeing of their masters: It is therefore enacted by the Court that if any shall make any motion of marriage to any man's daughter or mayde servant, not having first obtained leave and consent of the parents or master so to doe, shall be punished either by fine or corporall punishment, or both, at the discretions of the bench, and according to the nature of the offence.

"It is also enacted, that if a motion of marriage be duly made to the master, and through any sinister end or covetous desire, he will not consent thereunto, then the cause to be made known unto the magistrates, and they to set down such order therein as upon examination of the case shall appear to be most equall on both sides."

While it would seem from the first part of this somewhat puzzlepated enactment that "yeong yeares" were considered as disabling one from "inveagleing" young ladies into the toils of matrimony, yet in cases where it was evident that the objection of the master of the maid servant was founded upon entirely personal grounds of his own gain there was recourse to a tribunal for the obtaining of justice. This portion of the law shows how careful were the old fathers of the country to encourage marriage wherever this could be done with no risk to the harmony of the settlement. We can also see how strict were the ideas of female servitude. Not only had the parent or guardian absolute power over the hand of the daughter or ward, but the master of an indentured servant could at least obstruct her matrimonial designs. In all these cases there was the same basal idea--the loss of service. The interest of the father in his daughter, of the guardian in his ward, and of the master in his maid servant were supposed to be identical and to be founded on actual loss sustained through the transference of right of service from them to an alien in the family. In this "fiction of the law" one can see the persistence of an idea as old as the status of woman as a mere chattel, and it is curious to note that in some phases it survives even unto the present day.

There are recorded numerous instances of the enforcement of the law which has been quoted. One Will Colefoxe, in 1647, was brought before the court at Stratford and fined five pounds for "labouring to inveagle the affection of Write his daughter;" and, among several other notable instances, we find Arthur Hubbard in 1660 fined the same amount as Colefoxe, the court this time being that of Plymouth, the complainant Thomas Prence, the Governor of the colony, and the charge that of "disorderly and unrighteously endeavoring to gain the affections of Mistress Elizabeth Prence." It would seem that Master Hubbard was as persistent as he was unrighteous, for after an interval of seven years we find him again mulcted of the same amount for the same offense regarding the same lady; but his patient waiting had its reward, as in a few months he became the happy husband of Mistress Prence.

Yet the law did not exclusively care for the father and threaten the suitor, for the latter, as we have seen, had recourse of law if he were unjustly rejected by the master of a "mayde;" and it would seem that this part of the statute was held to apply to the father as well, since in 1661 Richard Taylor obtained judgment against the father of Ruth Whieldon for interfering with the marriage of the young pair. Probably the court issued something in the nature of a perpetual injunction; but its task must have been most difficult in the case of another youth, Ralph Parker by name, who, having been sent about his business by the sire of his faire ladye, actually sued said sire for loss of time incurred in courting. Nor were there lacking maids to aid their lovers to avoid the penalty of the law. There is record of one Sarah Tuttle who was, on May Day in the year 1660, and in the colony of New Haven, while on an errand to a neighbor, Dame Murline, kissed by Jacob Murline in the very presence of his mother and sisters. The chronicler,--doubtless with shocked feelings but not without a suggestion of a smacking of lips as well,--records that "they sat down together, his arm being about her and her arm upon his shoulder or about his neck; and hee kissed her, and she kissed him, or they kissed one another, continuing in this posture about half an hour, as Maria and Susan testified." Which, when one considers the detail, was doubtless very shocking; and we cannot wonder that Goodman Turtle haled Murline into court on the charge of "inveagleing the affections of Sarah his daughter." But behold! Sarah, "being asked in court if Jacob inveagled her said, 'No!'" This was a baffling of justice, perhaps unprecedented; for only absolute "inveaglement" could const.i.tute guilt under the statute, and the party most concerned denied the criminality of the accused by taking the guilt upon herself. It is no wonder that the scandalized court took occasion to call Sarah a "bould Virgin," and fined her a goodly amount, though on what count does not appear. Two years afterward half the fine was remitted, nor does it appear that the remaining moiety was ever paid; which seems just as well, since the real sufferer would probably have been Master Tuttle, the plaintiff, who would naturally be called on to pay his daughter's debt--which would have been a miscarriage of justice indeed.

It would seem from these accounts that matrimony was hedged about with difficulty in the time of the Puritans; but this was far from being the true state of the case. On the contrary, marriage was in every way given "incurridgement." In several towns bachelors about to change their condition were allotted tracts of ground from the commonwealth, and "maid lotts" were granted at Salem until frowned upon by that grand old Puritan, Endicott, who placed on the town records his opinion that it were best to discontinue the custom and "avoid all presedents & evil events of granting lotts unto single maidens not disposed of."

"Spinsters of uncertain age" were difficult to find in those days; the time and circ.u.mstances called for matrimony as a duty to the State as well as to oneself. The death of the sister-in-law of Governor Bradford was recorded with the addition of some words of wonder that, though ninety-one years of age, "she was a G.o.dly old maid never married." Yet even then there was a measure of respect for those women who refrained from matrimony, and some of these were commended for their choice. There is to be found in the _Life and Errors_ of John Dunton an account of a maiden lady which is worth quoting, not only for the picture of the lady herself, but for the light which it throws upon some of the customs of its time,--which was, however, rather later than the days which have thus far been considered.

"It is true an _old_ (or superannuated) Maid in Boston is thought such a curse as nothing can exceed it (and looked on as a dismal spectacle); yet she by her good nature, gravity, and strict virtue convinces all (so much as the fleering Beaux) that it is not her necessity but her choice that keeps her a Virgin. She is now about thirty years (the age which they call a _Thornback_) yet she never disguises herself, and talks as little as she thinks of Love. She never reads any plays or Romances, goes to no b.a.l.l.s or Dancing-match (as they do who go to such Fairs) to meet with Chapmen. Her looks, her speech, her whole behaviour are so very chaste, that but once, (at Governor's Island, where we went to be merry at roasting a hog) going to kiss her, I thought she would have blushed to death.

"Our Damsel knowing this, her conversation is generally amongst the women (as there is least danger from that s.e.x) so that I found it no easy matter to enjoy her company, for most of her time (save what was taken up in needle work and learning French &c.) was spent in Religious Worship. She knew Time was a dressing-room for Eternity, and therefore reserves most of her hours for better uses than those of the Comb, the Toilet, and the Gla.s.s.

"And as I am sure this is most agreeable to the Virgin Modesty which should make Marriage an act of their obedience rather than their choice.

And they that think their Friends too slow-paced in the matter give certain proof that l.u.s.t is their sole motive. But as the Damsel I have been describing would neither antic.i.p.ate nor contradict the will of her parents, so do I a.s.sure you she is against Forcing her own by marrying where she cannot love; and that is the reason she is still a Virgin."

The ideas of the old critic would hardly commend themselves in their entirety to modern times; yet they hold a germ of truth.

Marriage customs among the early colonists presented some curious contrasts. The practice of "bundling," probably imported from Wales, was long extant in the rural districts; yet in the same district in which this custom was most prevalent there was another practice of the opposite extreme of prudery, whereby those who were pa.s.sing through the first and even intermediate stages of courtship were forced to "do their spiriting" in the presence of the household, the only license of propinquity granted to them being the privilege of whispering their words through a hollow stick about six feet long, known as a "courting-stick." The use of this as a conductor ensured secrecy to the speech of love; but the enforced separation must have been terribly disheartening at times, and there must have been occasions when the lover longed to lay the stick upon the backs of the company and put them to flight. It must have been as difficult to be impa.s.sioned through this medium as nowadays to propose through a telephone.

There was abundant protection for wives in the early laws of the northern colonies. Bigamy was forbidden in a law which forbade a man to "marrie too wifes which were both alive for anything that can appear otherwise at one time," which strikes one as more well-meaning than lucid. The husband must not beat his wife or even abuse her with angry words, while she, on the other hand, if she gave vent to "a curst and shrewish tongue" was in danger of the stocks or the ducking-stool. The husband was not allowed to desert his wife for long or even to keep her in an outlying and dangerous situation, else the town "will pull his house down." Woman may have been regarded as the weaker vessel by the old Puritans, but they were determined that her interests should not be neglected, at least so far as in that age was well and customary.

Though marriage was in many ways hedged about with safeguards, there existed in the earliest times at Plymouth a form of public betrothal which too often was considered as sufficient by the parties thereto. It was called a pre-contract, but was not entirely binding. There was usually a sermon preached on the occasion of the ceremony, and it was the custom to allow the bride to choose the text which she thought most applicable to the general or particular circ.u.mstances of the case.

Marriage was for long by banns, and the ceremony was at first performed by magistrates and not by clergymen. This fact, as well as the further fact that any "man of dignity" came under the generic t.i.tle of "magistrate" in the meaning of the custom, gave rise to many complications and no little scandal--as in the case of old Governor Bellingham, who when a widower of forty-nine married himself to Penelope Pelham, who was not half his age. This acting in the dual capacity of bridegroom and magistrate was a little too much for the patience of the community, and the governor was called upon to stand trial for his offence; but as he insisted upon his prerogative of occupying the bench the result was not edifying.

There were many local customs at marriages which were by no means admirable, such as the scrambling for the bride's garter, the bedding of the newly wedded pair, and like fashions, imported from the rural districts of England. These things were carried to such a length that restrictive laws were found necessary, and in 1651 "mixt and unmixt"

dancing at taverns during wedding ceremonies was distinctly forbidden.

Dancing may seem to us incongruous with the spirit of the old Puritan life; but dance they did, as is evident from the law referred to and from the fact that dancing persisted as an accompaniment of all weddings. Though a little out of its period, it may be recorded here that in 1769 there were danced at one wedding ninety-two jigs, fifty contra-dances, forty-three minuets, and seventeen hornpipes, all being safely accomplished by a little past midnight.

Enough of the general for the present; let us come to the particular in exemplification of the status of women among the old Puritans. In the beginning of this chapter the statement was made that women played a most prominent part in the religious polity of the northern colonies, and it is well that the a.s.sertion should now be established. The early history of New England holds the stories of more than one remarkable woman, and one of the most remarkable among them was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who may be selected as in many regards a typical New England woman of the early colonial days. It is true that Mrs. Hutchinson was not an American by birth and had even pa.s.sed some forty years of life when she first stood upon the sh.o.r.es of our country; but she was of those who invaded this land filled with the spirit of liberty that afterward took such strong root, and in the genius of her nature she was emphatically American. The old New England spirit found no better exposition than in this daughter by adoption, and it is for this reason that she has been chosen, being of one stock with the native Puritans, as typical of the woman of her time and country.

Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, who had been born in England about 1590, landed at Boston on September 18, 1634. She came in the name of religious liberty, seeking that freedom which she was denied in the land of her birth; but even on her voyage to our sh.o.r.es she had excited suspicions as to her orthodoxy, and there was some delay, probably at the instance of the Rev. Mr. Symms, her fellow pa.s.senger, in granting her membership in the first church of Boston. She had been somewhat free, according to Mr.

Symms, in "venting her revelations" on the outward voyage; but her kindly att.i.tude toward friends and acquaintances soon reconciled most of the Bostonians to her presence in their midst. The fact was that Mrs.

Hutchinson was what was in those days known as a "notable" woman. She could be helpful to those in trouble in mind, body, or spirit, and she was skilful in a very comprehensive pathology. Welde, of Roxbury, tells us that she was "a woman very helpful in the time of childbirth and other occasions of bodily disease, and well furnished with means for those purposes." True, he also calls her "the American Jezabel;" but even in his blame of her he admits, though he probably did not mean it as a compliment, that she was "of a nimble wit and active spirit and a very voluble tongue, more bold than a man, though in understanding and judgment inferior to many women." The latter part of this description simply meant that Master Welde did not agree with the theories promulgated by Mrs. Hutchinson.

And indeed it needed not to be very prejudiced to agree with Master Welde herein. For Mrs. Hutchinson, though she "sat under" Mr. Cotton and professed great love for his doctrines, was undoubtedly more than tainted by Antinomianism,--a word, in its broad acceptation, signifying the consciousness of "justification by faith," and an abiding justification that could not be shaken even by the commission of sin.

Hence, said the enemies of the Antinomians, these latter took advantage of their presumed state of grace to live as they pleased, licentiously or cleanly, they being surely saved by their faith and therefore free to mould their works as they chose. This was carrying to its extreme the theory of sanctification professed by the Antinomians; yet it was not an unfair deduction from the tenets of that body. The Antinomians were looked upon as menaces to the morality of any land in which they took root, as pursuing pleasure and vice under the cloak of fanaticism. To make matters worse in the Boston colony just at this time with which we are concerned, the new governor, Henry Vane, was vehemently suspected of being an advocate of the hated sect; and therefore when Mrs. Hutchinson began to hold women's meetings at which she set forth her religious tenets, which were perilously close to Antinomianism,--though she, as well as her chief ally and brother-in-law, John Wheelwright, never admitted the applicability of the t.i.tle,--there arose an outcry against these proceedings. Wheelwright was brought to trial on certain counts, and he and Governor Vane, with Cotton himself,--he having been gradually brought into the controversy in a rather singular manner,--formed a party which was opposed to the ma.s.s of the Puritans and was considered little less than a scandal. At the end of a three weeks' session, held in Cambridge to deal with this matter of heresy, the first American clerical synod condemned the opinions of the recalcitrants, and then proceeded to adopt a resolution which is of more importance to us than was their general condemnation; it ran thus:

"That though women might meet (some few together) to pray and edify one another, yet such a set a.s.sembly (as was then in practice at Boston) where sixty or more did meet every week, and one woman (in a prophetical way, by resolving questions of doctrine and expounding Scripture) took upon her the whole exercise, was agreed to be disorderly and without rule."

Though this expression of opinion, for it was after all but little more, on the part of the synod was aimed at the special case of Mrs.

Hutchinson, it is none the less of some general interest in its broad statement. Evidently the Puritans were at one with St. Paul in his opinion that women should be silent in the churches.

None the less for the fulminations of the synod did Mrs. Hutchinson continue to hold the meetings that were so repugnant to the elders of the colony; and by this time she had become a real power. That she was entirely convinced of the truth of her tenets, of the divine source of her "revelations," and of the honesty and purity of her own purpose is certain; that she was considerably influenced by a love of notoriety and an intense natural combativeness is at least probable. Opposition, especially that which took the form of contempt for her s.e.x and intelligence, only inflamed her the more; and soon she became really turbulent in her denunciations of the ruling powers. Matters became so grave, threatening not only the orthodoxy but the peace of the colony, that drastic methods were decided upon. John Wheelwright was first disfranchised and banished, and then Mrs. Hutchinson was summoned before the Court. The proceedings on the occasion of her arraignment may best be set forth in the words of Winthrop, that prejudiced yet trustworthy chronicler:

"The Court also sent for Mrs. Hutchinson, and charged her with divers matters, as her keeping two public lectures every week in her house, whereto sixty or eighty persons did usually resort, and for reproaching most of the ministers (viz., all except Mr. Cotton) for not preaching a covenant of free grace, and that they had not the seal of the Spirit, nor were able ministers of the New Testament: which were clearly proven against her, though she sought to shift it off. And after many speeches to and fro, at last she was so full as she could not contain, but vented her revelations, amongst which this was one, that she had it revealed to her that she should come into New England and should here be persecuted, and that G.o.d would ruin us and our posterity, and the whole State, for the same. So the Court proceeded and banished her; but, because it was winter, they committed her to a private house, where she was well provided, and her own friends and the elders permitted to go to her, but none else."

To the modern mind there is in that account merely the picture of an excitable, overwrought, hysterical woman, keyed to the pitch of rejoicing in martyrdom and "venting her revelations" to this end and under an impulse of enthusiasm. It seems impossible that she should be taken seriously; yet perhaps the Court was in the right, for such a woman, at once intelligent and fanatical, may have been a greater threat to the community than it is possible for us to realize at this day.

Excommunication followed the sentence of the court, and her bearing under this ban confirms the opinion above expressed concerning her happiness in finding martyrdom; for we are told by Winthrop that "after she was excommunicated, her spirits, which seemed before to be somewhat dejected, revived again, and she gloried in her sufferings, saying that it was the greatest happiness, next to Christ, that ever befel her." She was to have plenty of that kind of "happiness" in her life, for Mr.

Cotton, once her firm ally, p.r.o.nounced against her the censure of the church, and even one of her sons deserted her in her adversity and took sides with her enemies; her husband appears to have been from the first either a very feeble ally or a silent disapprover of her methods. She was persecuted in many ways, even after her removal to Providence, Rhode Island, and certain maternal troubles, the result of physical causes, were gleefully taken advantage of by her enemies and chronicled as divine punishments for heresy. The latter part of her life must be written down a failure, though it held a brave struggle to maintain a gallant front to her foes; and when, in August, 1643, she fell one of the victims of an Indian ma.s.sacre even her best friends must have felt that there was little cause to regret her fate. She had been in the colonies about two years before she began to preach, about four before she was excommunicated, and about nine before her death. In that time she had proved a firebrand and a disturber of the peace such as had not before been known and she had threatened to disrupt the colony of Boston and rend it into lasting separation. She had failed; but she had made manifest a danger.

She had done more than this. She had proved the possibility of woman as an element in the polity and progress of the State. In her way she was a pioneer. She was the first American woman to take a decided lead in matters of general interest. She was the first to hold meetings, to claim for her s.e.x the privilege of freedom as claimed by the men of the Pilgrims. She was the first American woman to uprear the banner of her s.e.x in the matter of independence; she may be said to have been the prototype of all the succeeding upholders of "women's rights." When Winthrop, at her trial, brought up the accusation of having held women's meetings, she quoted "a clear rule in t.i.tus, that the elder women should instruct the younger." Then Winthrop asked her if she would instruct an hundred men if they desired it, to which she replied that she would not, but would instruct any one man who might so wish. She insisted positively upon her right to teach in her own way, and asked: "Do you think it not lawful for me to teach women, and why do you call me to teach the Court?" She may have been somewhat hazy as to her real theological creed, but she a.s.suredly held clear ideas as to the rights of her s.e.x.

Above all, and in this she was highly typical of the American woman of later days, she was an enthusiast. Contrary though the theory be to the general belief, the most salient and persistent trait among the Puritans was enthusiasm, however it hid itself behind a cold and contained exterior. It was their enthusiasm that made them what they were, that enabled them to found their portion of a mighty nation; they were the most intensely enthusiastic people that ever went to the making of a nation; not a Cavalier, not a Frenchman, not a Castilian, ever held the fire that burned in the spirit of these old Puritans, even though the stroke of iron was needful visibly to call it from their flint. In Anne Hutchinson that overpowering quality of enthusiasm was to be found in a superlative degree, and thus, above all, we find in her the type of the coming woman of America.

Hardly had the echoes of the Antinomian controversy died away when there came to New England a yet more rending cataclysm, in which women were again the leading spirits. This was the "intrusion" of the Quakers. To us it may seem as absurd as wonderful that the n.o.ble doctrines of the Society of Friends should once have been regarded as especially dictated by the Father of Lies; but when the Quakers reached at last the sh.o.r.es of New England with their "pernicious doctrines," it seemed to the Puritans that the devil had been unchained in their midst. When on July 11, 1656, there arrived in the port of Boston a ship which among other pa.s.sengers brought to the colony two women, Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, who were known to be members of the accursed sect, there ensued a general consternation which was well satirized by Bishop in his _New England Judged_, when he writes: "Two poor women arriving in your harbour so shook ye, to the everlasting shame of you, as if a formidable army had invaded your borders." It would require little less than a volume to set forth the reasons which caused the Puritans so to hate and fear the Quakers; but it is enough for our present purpose that we understand that not a plague of small-pox or cholera could have created such consternation as did the coming of these two feeble women. Mary Fisher, a most enthusiastic follower of Fox, had already undergone martyrdom in the attempt to spread the faith of her co-religionists, having been imprisoned in England for months and whipped "until the blood ran down her body." She was later to travel even as far as the dominion of the "Grand Turk" and hold speech with that potentate, and at last to die, an old woman, at Charleston, South Carolina. When she and Ann Austin made their appearance in the harbor of Boston--more terrible to the Puritans than the sea-monster to Andromeda--they were promptly imprisoned and their tracts, with which they were of course provided, were burned in the market-place. They were held in bondage for some weeks and were then placed on board their ship and exiled. But they had done their work, if only in exciting terror, and the fire that consumed their tracts was to be a spark that lighted a great conflagration. When the General Court met, it pa.s.sed a long and incendiary law against the coming of the Quakers, telling of their "divilish opinions," and providing for the fining and whipping of offenders. This did not keep away the detested sect, who believed that they were intrusted by G.o.d with a message to the world and would not be silenced. There were among them many devoted men; but there were yet more devoted women, and the second, like the first, "intrusion" of the Quakers was by women, Ann Burden and Mary Dyer. In August, 1657, arrived a pioneer in Mary Clark, who boldly proclaimed that she came with "a message from the Lord," and who found her welcome in the receipt of twenty stripes and banishment.

Salem began to be known as a stronghold of the Quakers or at least of their admirers, and among others one Ca.s.sandra Southwick, an old woman, was imprisoned for sympathy extended to the Friends. Perhaps there was other reason as well, for under the date of March 9, 1660, we find that "Major Hawthorne, at dinner with the Gov. and Magistrates at a Court of a.s.sistants, said that at Salem there was a woman, called Ca.s.sandra Southwick, that said she was greater than Moses, for Moses had seen G.o.d but twice, and his back, and she had seen Him three times, and face to face, instancing the places." Probably Ca.s.sandra--ominous name!--was a fanatic who had become insane from a sense of self-importance, as was too often the case with religious enthusiasts, and had made herself obnoxious to the powers of the colony by her claims. We hear no more of her after her imprisonment; but she too was typical of a certain phase of New England femininity in those days.

It is in Mary Dyer, however, that we find the true type of the New England Quakeress--a type which persists in more than one aspect of the American woman. Believing that she was sent by G.o.d with His words to mankind, she would not be hushed from uttering them. Sent away from Boston on her first appearance there, she soon returned and preached the "infamous" doctrines of her sect--"peace and goodwill toward men." In the interval between her visits the offence of which she was guilty in preaching the creed of the Quakers had been made capital--one of the deepest blots that rest upon even this speckled period of New England history. Mary Dyer felt that in returning to Boston to preach she was going to her death; but she held it her duty, and she did not shrink. On September 14, 1659, she was condemned to banishment or death, if she did not leave within two days; but it was no desire to escape the ultimate penalty that led her on this occasion to return to her Rhode Island home, for on October 8th she once more appeared in Boston. She was at once arrested and with two other Friends was condemned by the Court "to suffer the poenalty of the lawe (the just reward of their transgression) on the morrow." One sees a twinge of conscience in the clause in parentheses, as excusatory of themselves to posterity. Mary Dyer, however, though included in the original sentence, was, on the intercession of her son, reprieved from death and her sentence commuted to banishment, "to be forthwith executed if she returned. In the meanwhile she was to go with the other two condemned to the place of execution, and to stand upon the gallows with a rope about her neck till her companions were executed." She went to her ignominious punishment "as to a Wedding Day" and heartened her companions for their trial--though they needed no encouragement. Moreover, she did not wish to accept her own life at the hands of those who had made the unjust law under which her companions suffered, she probably believing that the already large number of Quaker sympathizers would be enlarged by the spectacle of a woman put to death for her faith. Probably, too, she was of the same enthusiastic spirit as Anne Hutchinson, that rejoiced in martyrdom. At all events, though once more banished, she reappeared in Boston, and in little more than six months from the date of her last sentence she was once more before the Court upon the charge of "rebelliously returning into this jurisdiction, notwithstanding the favour of this Court towards her," and she was sentenced to die on June 1st. On that day she accordingly went to her death, as calmly and triumphantly as to the crown of her life, as indeed the moment probably seemed to her.

It is difficult to gauge the character of Mary Dyer, who may be taken as the type of the New England Quaker of her day, even though she was of alien birth. That she was a woman of pure and holy spirit there can be no doubt; and though her persistent affronting of death may seem to savor of fanaticism, it was fanaticism, if at all, of that sort which inspired the early Christian martyrs. She was utterly sincere; and sincerity may plead forgiveness for any mere error.

In Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer we have seen two types of the New England woman as leaders of men. The former was perhaps more of a power, the latter of an influence; but each was complement to the other, not in task but in type. It needs no wonderful discernment to see in these women the rise and florescence of the New England spirit which has come down to our own day and has permeated and informed the whole American genius of femininity. Through their descendants--in some cases unworthy of their ancestors, whom they deserted or even betrayed the blood of Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Dyer is with us; but that is of less moment than the survival of their spirit, of the independence of the American woman when convinced of right, of her steadfastness in following her impulses, undeterred by sneers or even bodily perils. Though they were not directly of the Puritan mothers, not directly of the stock which has most numerically survived, the names of Anne Hutchinson and Mary Dyer are deserving of honorable memorial as among the first founders of the feminine republic of America.

They were pioneers also. Anne Hutchinson was the first woman preacher of whom we have record on these our sh.o.r.es, and she was the first of the many religious "prophetesses" who were to rise up and for a time draw men and women to them because of their personality rather than from any merit in their tenets. It was probably far less that which Mrs.

Hutchinson preached than that which she was that brought to her meetings those "seventy or eighty" devoted women who looked upon her as one inspired. Mary Dyer had no following, was, like Him she preached, "despised and rejected of men"; but she was in a sense the protomartyr among women in our country, and she kindled a flame which in another guise rose to a gigantic conflagration when the time came for women to speak fearlessly and openly their thoughts concerning great matters.

That our picture may know some completeness, however, it is needful to glance at the effect of these women and others like them upon the female world of New England. While Anne Hutchinson in some sense stood alone of her s.e.x, Mary Dyer was only one of a great number of devoted men and women, merely singled out by her fate for enduring memory. The women of the Quakers, driven by the Spirit, went through the land preaching, in defiance of all the laws that were fulminated against them. We must not be too sudden or violent in our condemnation of the men who sat in judgment upon these people, for to the Puritan the Quaker represented a peril which in this day we cannot comprehend, while the Puritan had also the excuse for harshness that he owned the land and only desired the Quaker to remain outside his borders. Yet, when this is said, we can but give the most hearty admiration to the superb courage of the people who believed it to be their duty to intrude where they were not desired, and, believing, shrank from no consequence of their faith. Their women, with whom we have most particularly to do, suffered grievously for their devotion; they were whipped at the cart's tail, they were maimed, they were branded, they were even hanged; yet they persisted. By their devotion they not only gained many adherents--rarely open sympathizers, but secret friends--but set a standard for womanhood. Gradually the Puritan camp, under the constancy of their foes, became divided. The majority of the Puritans, and especially of their women, grew more and more virulent as the Quakers persisted in their "intrusion"; but there was among the women an element, ever growing and strengthening, which found inspiration in the methods of those whom they had at first contemned. They had themselves suffered for their faith, though not as these others; and they found a respect for those who shrank from no penalty so that they might testify to their faith and do service. It is after the coming of the Quakers that we find the New England woman more determined, more active, more bound to high ideals. The mark of the despised Quakers remained deeply graven, in effect if not in heredity, on the New England character, especially in its women. Moreover, the example of the female preachers of the Quakers had its effect in urging upon the New England woman hitherto undreamed-of possibilities of making herself heard in the councils of the land. Seeing what women could do as well as bear, the New England woman was made stronger for both, and she did not forget the lesson which came to her through those whom at first she received with hatred and despite.

Such were the great religious feminine uprisings and revolts in New England. Woman had proved that she was capable of establishing at least a partial independence, had shown that she was gradually coming to be a force that would have to be reckoned with in future estimates of the commonwealth. It is true that the fathers of the land did not read the signs of the times and believed the new movement of feminine progress to be but sporadic and of certain termination in the near future; but they had some excuse for their blindness in the existence and nature of another feminine movement which placed the female nature in a most unenviable light,--that of witchcraft.

Under the chronological system which has been adopted--though it has been stretched several times nearly to the breaking-point--it becomes necessary to treat of witchcraft in New England in two separate chapters, the Salem outbreak falling by date within the later period of colonization.

Before we too greatly blame our forefathers and foremothers for their superst.i.tion and cruelty in the matter of witchcraft, it may be well to remember a few facts in connection with the subject. Such men as Cranmer, Bacon, Luther, Melancthon, and Kepler have recorded their belief in witchcraft, and as late as 1765 Blackstone wrote: "To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of witchcraft and sorcery is at once flatly to contradict the revealed word of G.o.d in various pa.s.sages both of the Old and New Testaments; and the thing itself is a truth to which every nation in the world hath, in its time, borne testimony either by example, seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits." Blackstone was not unenlightened; and so we can see that a belief in the actual and present existence of witchcraft was not inexcusable in our New England forbears. Belief in witchcraft was prevalent in England down to the nineteenth century; and even in the English Church in the seventeenth century there was a canon which forbade clergymen to cast out devils without being duly licensed to do so, and such licenses were actually issued by the Bishop of Chester. It must also be remembered that America was considered, by virtue probably of the color of its aborigines, to be the peculiar domain of His Satanic Majesty, who delighted in dwelling within its sh.o.r.es. Hence it would have been rather strange if there had not arisen in the colonies accusation of witchcraft. This, however, does not preclude our sympathy with the victims or our conclusions as to the nature of the women who believed in such charges and as to the civilization which condemned the witches to death. For it was usually on charges brought by women against women that there came accusation of witchcraft; the men were rarely more than judges and executioners. Thus the subject falls well within our scope of discussion and narration.

The first New World victim of such an accusation was Margaret Jones, who, in 1648, was condemned at Charlestown, where she lived, and was duly hanged. The ground of accusation seems to have been that Goody Jones, as she was called after the fashion of the day, was a medical pract.i.tioner who did not believe in venesection or in the use of violent emetics, but worked her cures by means of herbs and simples, and thus aroused the jealousy and distrust of the regular physicians. The case is instructive as showing the very slight grounds that were sufficient to bring about a charge of witchcraft; and it is also instructive, as demonstrating the childlike credulity of some of the strongest men of the time, that Governor Winthrop, who presided at the trial of Goody Jones, records as a proof of the woman's guilt that at the hour of her execution there came "a very great tempest in Connecticut which blew down many trees." There were at least two other victims within the next two years; but in 1656 we find a case that is really startling, as showing the ranks into which the prevalent superst.i.tion could penetrate as a fatality. In that year was hanged on Boston Common Mistress Ann Hibbins, whose husband had been a member of the Council of a.s.sistants and an esquire, and whose brother, Richard Bellingham, was deputy-governor of Ma.s.sachusetts. We know very little of the merits of this case, which is unfortunate, as the facts would undoubtedly be interesting, looking to the high social standing of the victim. Mistress Hibbins was tried before Endicott, and we may be sure that that stern old Puritan paid no attention to the social position of the accused. We know that the Rev. John Norton, who had breathed fire and flame against the Quakers and was no friend to any who disturbed the peace of the colony, held that Mistress Hibbins was wrongfully done to death and declared that she was condemned "only for having more wit than her neighbors;" and he tells us that the circ.u.mstance which held most weight against her was her remark, on seeing two people inimical to her talking together, that she was sure that they were talking about her. It would not seem that magic was needed to suggest such a conclusion; but the judges thought that no one but a witch could have divined such an abstruse fact, and Mrs. Hibbins suffered for her feminine penetration.

Acquittals were not unknown, but they were rare. But whether acquitted or not, those accused of witchcraft, who were not seldom women of extremely refined and gentle natures, were subjected to many indignities as well as great cruelties during the time they rested under suspicion or charge. These outrages, effected for the purpose of proving or testing the witches, were in some cases of such a nature as to make it undesirable to do more than allude to them. In like manner, the punishments on conviction were often carried out in a manner revolting to the delicacy of the condemned. It is recorded, however, that on one occasion, where the accused had confessed to doing most wonderful things, the jury, marvellously gifted with common sense, simply found that said accused had lied in the confession, whereupon the court pa.s.sed sentence of a fine or a whipping; but such a jury was very rare, and one of the most remarkable features of the whole matter is found in the confessions of the self-styled witches. When Goody Glover, in 1688, was accused of having bewitched a child named Margaret Goodwin, in revenge for an accusation of theft, she was visited in prison by Cotton Mather, and to him she confessed that she had made a compact with the Evil One and was in the habit of frequenting Sabbats held by him. She had been sentenced, and the confession could do her no possible good or harm; it and all of its kind must have been dictated by a sheer hysterical nervousness or else by a fanatical craze for notoriety. Indeed, it was in those days a badge of distinction, albeit a perilous one, to be declared a witch; and next in fame was to enjoy the reputation of having been bewitched by some noted sorceress. Of this latter insanity the above-named Margaret Goodwin was a notable example. Though but a child, she was shrewd enough to enjoy the attention which she excited as a victim of witchcraft; and she steadfastly refused to be cured, even though Cotton Mather, then but a young preacher, took her into his own home for treatment. As a somewhat peculiar and in some ways characteristic product of her time and place Margaret Goodwin deserves a moment's attention from us. She was a perfect little elf in shrewdness and she could act like a Rachel. She was determined that she would not lose the notoriety and the comfortable home which she had found, so she played her part to perfection. Mather hated Quakers, Catholics, and even the Church of England; so Margaret found that she could read most easily Quaker or "Popish" tracts as well as the Book of Common Prayer, but not a word in the Bible or any Puritan work. What symptoms of the workings of the devil could seem surer to a man of Mather's prejudices and sympathies? Then again Margaret could not be prevailed upon to enter Mather's study, and would scream and kick like a young donkey until she was dragged by force into the room, when she would become calm and a.s.sert that the devil had just fled from her in the form of a mouse, unable to endure the presence of the sacred works which lined the walls.

Probably she had learned these things from the old dames of her native village, with their remnants of Teutonic folklore; but the strange part of the affair was that Cotton Mather, who tells us all these details, had no doubt whatever of the genuineness of the possession. If the accusers of Goody Glover were typical of the credulity and superst.i.tion of their age, Margaret Goodwin, with her shrewd ability to make use of the most salient tendencies and prejudices of her benefactor in order to deceive him, was a type of a certain other aspect of Puritanism which has not yet entirely died away--and never will as long as New England possesses individuality of human product. So that even the minx who fooled Cotton Mather to the top of his bent seems to be worthy of rescue from obscurity in this retrospect of the path by which American women have reached their present position and characteristics.

It may be objected to the women whose names appear in this chapter that they were not typical New England women, but were only typical of phases of New England life in the early days of the colonies. Whether or not this allegation be just, we can a.s.suredly learn from their stories and characters much of the atmosphere in which lived the New England woman of the greater part of the seventeenth century. She was at once a product and a producer, a cause and an effect, of her environment. There was constant action and reaction; she molded her time and her time molded her. She lived, as we have seen, if we have rightly understood that which we have read, in an atmosphere of religious turmoil and energy, of purity of purpose and integrity of faith, and of the darkest and most narrowing superst.i.tion. All these things acted mentally and spiritually upon the woman of New England. They entered into her life and character; she was energized as well as controlled and directed by them. There was of course no steadfastness, no persistence, of one straitly-hewn type; but there was an ever-recurring tendency, a gradual advance along the line of least resistance. Many were the faults of the Puritan woman: she was cold, she was hard, she was fanatical, she was credulous; but she was virtuous, she was truthful,--in higher sense than mere veracity,--she was faithful,--in deeper sense than mere constancy,--and she was strong with a strength that came to her from resistance to the influences which sought her downfall. And she was deep--deep with the depth of the sea and the forests and the universal spirit of the new land that had made her its child.

She was sternly repressed. Subjection to her husband was a rule of the Puritan woman's life, accepted by her as rightful and even necessary.

For it she found Biblical authority, and that was sufficient for her in all things. Yet, though literally and not merely nominally under the rule of her husband, the Puritan woman never thought of herself as a slave, either to a man or a system. Privately she might be a scold and a shrew,--if she had not the fear of the ducking-stool or the scold's bridle before her eyes,--but publicly she was under tutelage, and respected herself, even as she was respected, none the less on that account. It was a matter of time and place; it was a self-imposed condition rather than the survival of barbarism, as it is considered to-day by the theorists of femininity.

So, at the close of the early period of colonization, when the land was beginning to thrill with the first stirrings of nationality, the Puritan woman, not yet a type though strongly individual, stood looking into the future as one that sees but does not fear the coming time of need and responsibility. No longer English, not yet American, she stood a transition product, but one that was to find result in a permanency that would lay the strongest impress upon the nation that was to arise in after years.

Meanwhile, there was advancing in another portion of our country--a portion so remote from New England as practically to be a different land in all but ties of birth--a feminine civilization of a type widely different from that of Ma.s.sachusetts and Connecticut. The Northern culture was strongly and preeminently democratic in its origins; that of the South, before the close of the period now under consideration, had come to be as preeminently aristocratic. Beginning in the same way as that of Ma.s.sachusetts,--even with lower origin, since for a time it threatened to be a mere penal settlement,--Virginia soon began to attract to herself a cla.s.s of adventurers widely differing from those who sought religious liberty on the bleak sh.o.r.es of Plymouth Bay.

Differing from the general rule in such matters, in Virginia it was the better cla.s.s which survived, the convict cla.s.s being gradually submerged by the persistence of the higher grade of immigrants. It must not, however, be forgotten in recalling the origin of the Virginian feminine culture that even among the convicts there were many who were mere prisoners of state and were of birth and standing the equal of any free men whom they left behind them in England. Nor are origins of so much concern as results; it is only where the former are evidently and persistently causal that they need dwelling on in this work. Therefore, we will pa.s.s from Virginia in the act of formation to Virginia as settled by a people who were as individual in their way, though a most diverse one, as their brethren of New England; but before completing the journey from Ma.s.sachusetts to Virginia let us pause for a moment at an intermediate colony, to commemorate the deed of another woman pioneer in America, Mistress Margaret Brent, of Maryland, the first American woman to demand equal rights with men in the councils of state, the prototype of every female reformer of later times.

It is necessary to suppose the reader familiar with the government and affairs generally in that peculiar palatinate, the colony of Lord Baltimore in Maryland. On the 9th of June, 1647, Leonard Calvert, the Governor of Maryland and vice-gerent of Lord Baltimore, died at St.

Mary's, then the capital of the colony. He was attended during his fatal illness by his kinswomen, Mistresses Margaret and Mary Brent, and the former was made administrator to his estate. From this resulted an unprecedented incident, when in January, 1648, the new governor having called a session of the a.s.sembly, Mistress Margaret Brent appeared in the council chamber and demanded "to have a vote in the House for herself and another as his Lordship's [Lord Baltimore] attorney." Upon the refusal of the a.s.sembly, shocked at such a revolutionary demand, to consider the matter, Mistress Brent "protested in form against all the proceedings of that a.s.sembly, unless she might be present and vote as aforesaid." Her protest did her very little good, unless it be well to have one's name handed down as a baffled reformer, but she thus won for herself at least a right to have her name placed on the pages of any volume dealing with the progress of the women of America. As far as there is any record, Margaret Brent was absolutely the first woman who ever even dreamed of being accorded equal rights of citizenship in a commonwealth of modern times, though antiquity could show other examples. She was at all events the first American woman to demand the privilege of the ballot and of a share in the government of her country; and her demand was based on the same foundation as that of her sisters in later times, that of the rights conferred by the care of property and a stake in the welfare of the commonwealth. The women reformers of our day should promote Margaret Brent to the position of their patron saint and protomartyr.