Were the Bostonians always so tough on those that disagreed with them?
Most of the time. Puritan Bostonians had a self-righteousness that is difficult to describe in our more secular and permissive world. They believed their mission was to establish a “city on a hill,” in the immortal words of Governor John Winthrop. This meant there could be no back-sliding, no doubts, and no doubters. At the same time, however, it’s important to note that these religious conformists were becoming extremely successful merchants and tradesmen: Boston prospered even while its ministers spoke of the virtues of cleaving only to God.
Is the cod fish really as important to Boston and Massachusetts as one sometimes hears?
Today, the cod fishing trade is but a shadow of earlier times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, however, it was the very livelihood of Boston and the other coastal towns. Boston captains sailed up to Newfoundland, fished off the Grand Banks, and then carried their catch of cod fish all the way to Portugal, France, and Spain to sell. These Catholic nations had a built-in market of customers, eager for fish, which did not violate the Roman Catholic Church’s prohibition against the eating of meat on days of religious observation.
What makes the Puritans of Boston different from the Pilgrims of Plymouth?
In terms of religion, both groups were quite similar. The people we call the Puritans termed themselves Nonconformists, meaning they did not conform to the laws and regulations of the Church of England. The Pilgrims called themselves Separatists, meaning they were separate from the Church of England. But in terms of economic and social status, the two groups were rather different.
The Pilgrims were a smaller group, and they tended to come from the middle and working classes with a strong emphasis on the latter. To them it was entirely sufficient to establish a small colony on the edge of what some called the “howling wilderness.” The Puritans, by contrast, tended to come from middle- and upper-class families, with the emphasis on the latter. Immensely ambitious, they wanted to establish a godly commonwealth in America, and to appear as a “city upon a hill” (to use the famous words of Governor John Winthrop).
Did the Pilgrims and Puritans know each other well?
They did. Governor William Bradford of Plymouth was a frequent visitor to Boston, and Massachusetts governors, from John Winthrop onward, were quite familiar with Plymouth. In neither case did the close affiliation lead to great affection, however. The Plymouth Pilgrims were eager to keep their distance and political independence, and they managed to retain both until 1691, when a new royal charter brought both Boston and Plymouth in as part of the new Province of Massachusetts Bay. Toward the end of his long life, Plymouth Governor William Bradford penned these lines:
O Boston, though thou now art grown
To be a great and wealthy town,
Yet I have seen thee a void place
Shrubs and brushes covering thy face;
No houses then in thee there were,
Nor such as gold and silk did wear.
How did Boston get on its feet, economically speaking?
It took less than a decade for this to transpire. The Bostonians were extremely ambitious, and they first turned to the soil, hoping to find some bumper crop (such as what tobacco was in Virginia) that might allow them to become wealthy. The squash, pumpkins, and corn that grew so readily were all beneficial to the Puritan diet, but none of these fetched much money, so Bostonians turned to the humble cod fish instead.
Boston ships sailed to the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, where they caught immense numbers of cod fish. Bringing the cod ashore to salt and dry it, the Bostonians then shipped the fish to European nations such as France, Portugal, and Spain. These Roman Catholic countries provided an excellent market because the Catholic Church prohibited the eating of meat on many days of the religious calendar. In 1783 an image of the “sacred cod” was placed above the Speaker’s chair in the Massachusetts House of Representatives, showing how important cod was to the making of Boston, and Massachusetts.
Given that they had a sturdy religious foundation, and a growing economic one, what else did the Bostonians need?
To their mind, they needed elbow room. Shawmut Peninsula had grown thickly settled, and the Bostonians expanded outward in the 1630s and 1640s, establishing places such as Cambridge, Newton, and Watertown. Some of them went much further afield, however; one group from Newton went all the way to northern Connecticut, to establish the first towns of that neighboring colony.
The Bostonians also desired religious uniformity. In 1637 Anne Hutchinson (1591– 1643) was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony after she dared to hold religious discussion groups in her home (to the leading Puritans, this was both heretical and seditious). In 1660 Mary Dyer (c. 1611–1660) was hanged on Boston Common after she dared to preach the Quaker faith one too many times. Statues dedicated to both women now stand near the Massachusetts State House.
How far and wide did the Bostonians conduct their trade?
No one knows precisely why the early Bostonians were so fearless; all we can say is that they traveled the Atlantic Ocean as if it were their backyard. Boston skippers went as far south as Barbados, as far north as Newfoundland, and were very familiar with the trip to the motherland. This does not mean the voyages were danger-free (far from it), but that the Bostonians showed a great disdain for any sort of fear. It’s difficult to say who holds the all-time record for Atlantic crossings, but Master John Balston (1648–1705) may be close: he seems to have made the round-trip voyage at least twice a year, for a generation and more.
An illustration of Anne Hutchinson on trial for holding religious discussion groups in her home.
Though none of these early Bostonians knew the Pacific, some of them did venture to the Indian Ocean, and quite a few of them turned pirate. Captain William Kidd was not a native Bostonian, but he was arrested in that town and sent to Old England for trial.
Was there anything that these early Bostonians feared?
One is hard-pressed to give an answer. The forests, which were thick over New England in the seventeenth century, seemed to hold more terrors for them than the open sea, but there are remarkable stories of Bostonians who escaped from Indian captivity and made their way home. It may seem a little trite to say that the early Puritans feared witches and wizards, but the time period of the Salem witch trials is evidence of the fear felt by the ministers and magistrates of the colony.
What were relations with the motherland like?
The Pilgrims and Puritans both left (some say fled) Old England because of a lack of religious freedom. Once in New England, both groups showed surprisingly little tolerance for any other religious faiths. But Pilgrims and Puritans both remained suspect where the English motherland was concerned, and few of them were sad when King Charles I lost the Civil War (1642–1651) to Parliament. After Charles I was beheaded in 1649, England became a commonwealth for a decade, under the rule of Oliver Cromwell, but the monarchy was restored in the person of King Charles II in 1660.
The Boston Puritans were not thrilled by the reestablishment of the monarchy, and they did their best to evade, and sometimes even flout the Navigation Laws passed by Parliament. During the 1670s, Bostonians faced their first tormentor from overseas; Edward Randolph was King Charles II’s customs collector. During that decade, the Bostonians had other concerns, however, the foremost of them being King Philip’s War, which commenced in 1675.
INDIAN WARS
One hears of the Pequot War, but it is not always clear if Boston was involved?
The Pequot