James Wolfe - Understanding the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Published in 2016 by Enslow Publishing, LLC.

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Copyright 2016 by Enslow Publishing, LLC.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Wolfe, James, 1960

Understanding the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony / James Wolfe and Barbara Moe.

pages cm. (Primary sources of American political documents)

Summary: Discusses the creation and execution of the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the early days of the United StatesProvided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7660-6870-4

1. MassachusettsHistoryColonial period, ca. 1600-1775Juvenile literature. 2. Massachusetts Bay CompanyJuvenile literature. 3. PuritansMassachusettsHistory17th centuryJuvenile literature. I. Moe, Barbara A. II. Title.

F67.W873 2016

974.402dc23

2015008041

Printed in the United States of America

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Contents

Looking to a New World

Settling Colonies

The Massachusetts Bay Colony

Growing Pains

The Colonys Gain Comes at the Expense of Others

Appendix: The 1629 Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Colony

Glossary

Further Reading

Web Sites

Bibliography

Index

Chapter One

Looking to a New World

And our Will and Pleasure is, and Wee doe hereby for Us, our Heires and Successors, ordeyne and graunte, That from henceforth for ever, there shalbe one Governor, one Deputy Governor, and eighteene Assistants of the same Company, to be from tyme to tyme constituted, elected and chosen out of the Freemen of the saide Company, for the tyme being, in such Manner and Forme as hereafter in theis Presents is expressed, which said Officers shall applie themselves to take Care for the best disposeing and ordering of the generall buysines and Affaires of, for, and concerning the said Landes and Premisses hereby mentioned, to be graunted, and the Plantation thereof, and the Government of the People there.

The Massachusetts Bay Colony Charter

Puritans seeking religious freedom sailed to the New World to start a new life.

T he Massachusetts Bay Colony was settled by Puritans who fled England in search of religious freedom. Persecuted in their own country for their opposition to the Church of England, these refugees sailed to the New World under extremely difficult circumstances. They had been granted a charter by King Charles I to colonize in New England for business purposes, but their real intent was to practice their own form of Protestantism.

The Protestant Reformation

The history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its charter really begins in the sixteenth century with the Protestant Reformation in Europe. As early as the fourteenth century, complaints against the Catholic Church and calls for its reform were widespread. During this period, the Catholic Church had become very powerful, and in fact it was one of the biggest landholders during the Middle Ages. As a result, many bishops and abbots regarded themselves as secular rulers and were principally concerned with increasing their personal wealth. Corruption in the Catholic Church was widespread, and the clergy had lost a lot of respect. One of the most protested practices was the selling of indulgences by the clergy to raise money. Indulgences were guarantees that sins would be forgiven and that an individual would spend less time in purgatory before taking a certain place in heaven. Indulgences would often be given in large numbers if, for example, there was a need to raise money for a new cathedral, and those who gave, regardless of the state of their souls, were promised salvation.

King Charles I granted a charter to the Puritans who wanted to settle in the New World.

Protesting a mass granting of indulgences to raise money for the construction of St. Peters in Rome, on October 31, 1517, a priest named Martin Luther (14831546) nailed to the door of All Saints Church in Wittenberg, Germany, his famous Ninety-Five Theses. This was a long list of the abuses of the Catholic Church.

Originally, Luther wanted to reform the Catholic Church from within. But he had come to believe that abuses like indulgences were signs of a deeper problem within the churchfor instance, its belief that only the clergy could mediate between the people and their god. Luther believed that a church was a group of believers united by faith. The church was its congregation, not the clerical bureaucracy, and any member of the church ought to be able to communicate with his or her God directly. This and other new ideas led to the great split in doctrine, known as the Reformation, between the Catholics and the Protestants.

Martin Luthers Ninety-Five Theses manifesto sparked the Protestant Reformation, a split from the Catholic Church.

The Lutheran segment of Protestantism took its name from Martin Luther. But there were many other individuals preaching various programs of religious reform, some of whom came before Luther. One of the issues that disturbed these reformers was that the Catholic Church permitted the Bible to be printed only in Latin, so that only the educated clergy could read it and interpret the scriptures for the masses. Reformers in England wanted the Bible translated into English so that any literate person could read it. Two of these men were John Wycliffe (13281384) and William Tyndale (14941536).

John Wycliffe was a professor of theology at Oxford University who questioned the authority of the pope and was expelled from the church for his radical ideas, which preceded Luthers by almost 200 years. Sometime around 1382 he completed a translation of the Bible into English. His followers were known as Lollards, and they traveled around England spreading Wycliffes ideas. They believed that an organized church was not necessary for salvation and that people could establish a direct relationship with God through prayer. Persecution by the Catholic Church ended the movement. More than forty years after Wycliffes death, the pope ordered that his bones be dug up and burned.