More American History
The Religious Congregation. A second agency which figured largely in
the settlement of America was the religious brotherhood, or
congregation, of men and women brought together in the bonds of a common
religious faith. By one of the strange fortunes of history, this
institution, founded in the early days of Christianity, proved to be a
potent force in the origin and growth of self-government in a land far
away from Galilee. "And the multitude of them that believed were of one
heart and of one soul," we are told in the Acts describing the Church at
Jerusalem. "We are knit together as a body in a most sacred covenant of
the Lord ... by virtue of which we hold ourselves strictly tied to all
care of each other's good and of the whole," wrote John Robinson, a
leader among the Pilgrims who founded their tiny colony of Plymouth in
1620. The Mayflower Compact, so famous in American history, was but a
written and signed agreement, incorporating the spirit of obedience to
the common good, which served as a guide to self-government until
Plymouth was annexed to Massachusetts in 1691.
Three other colonies, all of which retained their identity until the eve
of the American Revolution, likewise sprang directly from the
congregations of the faithful: Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New
Hampshire, mainly offshoots from Massachusetts. They were founded by
small bodies of men and women, "united in solemn covenants with the
Lord," who planted their settlements in the wilderness. Not until many a
year after Roger Williams and Anne Hutchinson conducted their followers
to the Narragansett country was Rhode Island granted a charter of
incorporation (1663) by the crown. Not until long after the congregation
of Thomas Hooker from Newtown blazed the way into the Connecticut River
Valley did the king of England give Connecticut a charter of its own
(1662) and a place among the colonies. Half a century elapsed before the
towns laid out beyond the Merrimac River by emigrants from Massachusetts
were formed into the royal province of New Hampshire in 1679.
Even when Connecticut was chartered, the parchment and sealing wax of
the royal lawyers did but confirm rights and habits of self-government
and obedience to law previously established by the congregations. The
towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield had long lived happily
under their "Fundamental Orders" drawn up by themselves in 1639; so had
the settlers dwelt peacefully at New Haven under their "Fundamental
Articles" drafted in the same year. The pioneers on the Connecticut
shore had no difficulty in agreeing that "the Scriptures do hold forth a
perfect rule for the direction and government of all men."
