2.    The Covenants of the New Englanders

In New England we find two types of covenants, civil and religious: the Church covenant and the State covenant. In the Puritan Tradition, the religious covenant can be seen as the founding principle of congregationalism. Indeed, a congregational church is not born before a community of like-minded Puritans agree to live, behave and above all worship, according to the word of God, as they could explicitly find in the Scriptures.[7] The congregational church was self-governing in so far as its members elected its minister, the elders and the other leaders, and it was independent because it was not subjected to any bishop or higher body, apart from God. There was no intermediary between God and His congregations. Naturally, the pledge of obedience was a written covenant, in the Protestant tradition of literacy and of the supremacy of the written text over the oral tradition.

            The Covenant was not only the basis of all religious congregations, the Puritans believed it was also the basis of all nations. Obviously if a civil society is founded with the same tool as that used to found a church, it is the sign that the founders consider that religion is the foundation upon which the civil state must be built. The signatories combined themselves freely and willingly "into a civil body politick"[8] as well as to a religious congregation, and coercion was totally absent from these texts and this theory. When laws were drafted, they were subjected to the consent of the governed,[9] even though we may wonder to whom this term actually referred; and once they were passed, they had to be obeyed, which is not a problem when you consent to the law. Nothing was coercively imposed on an unwilling population: in Dedham for instance, if one disagreed with the laws and the form of government, they were perfectly allowed to leave and let the community of like-minded people remain together subjected to their covenant, and thereby obeying God's laws since it was what covenants were all about. However, one might claim that the notion of consent and the absence of coercion apply only to the founding and founders of those so called oligarchies.[10] Later applicants had to fit in the standards set by the founders of the church to gain citizenship, as we shall develop throughout chapter 3. Oligarchy at the level of the town was probably as desired as not. First it would secure a core of godly church members, which was essential. This selectivity was responsible for some sort of screening, and prevented any comprehensive enfranchisement and church membership. Only the godly, the saints, the chosen ones, those who could show they would be saved, could qualify for church membership and then consequently for citizenship.[11] As in any selection, some would not make it and would not be allowed in. Yet those who would operate this selection must have cherished the hope that the whole community might be able to prove themselves saved and to be accepted into the church and as a consequence as citizens, unless they were women, and at that time women did not even dream about voting and holding office. Centuries would pass before that happened.[12] Consent was thus a very relative notion. It roughly meant that nobody was forced into church membership. However, church member or not, every single inhabitant of the colony was expected to live according to the laws of God, since a breach of a divine article meant a breach of a civil or criminal law, and as such was punishable by the State.[13]

The Puritans believed God had given them a Special Commission. As John Winthrop had declared in his Modell of Christian Charity (1630), "we are now entered into a Covenant", whereas he nor the other passengers had signed any such document.[14] The Covenant was implicit; they were to make it explicit once arrived. The sheer fact that they wrote covenants implied that they would have to submit unquestionably to the principles or clauses set out in them: submission and obedience were a matter of course.[15] Therefore it might be far-fetched to see the covenants only as guarantees to an orderly society. The Puritans who emigrated to New England may have been obsessed with the idea of sin as an obstacle on the path to salvation and with the omnipresence of the Devil and evil in general but this feature must not be exaggerated nor become a caricature. And yet to a certain extent the very nature of the population and of the experiment - the exceptional, larger-than-life dimension - conveys a sense of the fear of failure[16]. The whole experiment could be ruined - New Jerusalem would fail to be established and the Charter could be confiscated - if leaven[17] contaminated these pure yet fragile communities, weakened by their economic dependency and the fact that they were not self-supporting. That way, by making every signatory pledge himself to obey devoutly the requirements of the covenants, they would satisfy God's will and secure peace and uniformity, and therefore stability, the sine qua non for success in the wilderness. Although all the covenants herein studied contain provisions urging submission to the Law in order to secure internal peace and consequently the safety of the experiment, only the Mayflower Compact can be seen entirely, we believe, as a pragmatic prerequisite for survival with ungodly men in the wilderness.

Before studying this document in particular, we must note that, at the level of New England as a whole, the population was composed of two groups, only one of which was motivated by religion. Either the members of that group wanted to worship according to the principles they thought right and thus to separate - hence "separatism" - from a Church of England they found too hopelessly corrupt to be altered from any internal influence, or they wanted to establish the Kingdom of God on Earth altogether, because they thought they had a Special Commission from God, and that it was part of their contract, the part they had to fulfill in order to get their heavenly reward: salvation. Unlike Saul, they were expected by their leaders - and ultimately by God - to obey every single article of that commission.[18]

            That latter group made up the bulk of the population of New England. Even among them, there were or would be dissenters who would be unquestionably Christians and Protestants, and even Puritans whose conception of religion differed very slightly and on tiny technical details.[19] Aside from these intellectual dissenters there would also be simple people who, though unequivocally religious themselves, would not be ready or capable, not godly enough, to follow the rules of the Saints. In other words there would be sinners among the Saints.[20]

Furthermore, they would not all be repentant sinners trying to resist temptation but eventually failing. Some Englishmen emigrated out of economic reasons, only or mostly to improve their economic condition. It must be kept in mind that it was a time of land hunger in England, and America was advertised there as a whole continent of virtually free land. Furthermore, it was also already advertised as a land of freedom from interference of the crown in people's religious life and from obstructive economic regulations.[21] The problem with these people, in the eyes of the Saints, was that they were not the type of neighbors wanted and looked for in an attempt to build the purified New Jerusalem they believed they had been sent across the ocean to erect. These neighbors would have a corrupting influence on the purifying process. They were the leaven.

It might have been less so at the time when the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth. But the presence of two antagonistic groups was at the root of the drafting of the Mayflower Compact, the first American civil covenant and one of the most important documents in the history of British North America. The Pilgrims were a minority aboard the Mayflower. Indeed, the thirty-five emigrants from Leyden were outnumbered by the sixty-six West-Country men whom the Company had assigned to them to increase the odds of survival. Had more Separatists joined their brethren from Leyden to America, there might not have been question of additional West-Country settlers, there would not have been question of the Mayflower Compact at all. Typical of West-Country men, these were not Puritans, or if they were, they were very moderate Puritans who could not measure up to the Pilgrims in terms of godliness.[22] They were more interested in economic betterment than by spiritual fulfillment, and rather than evangelizing the Indians, they would do their best to take advantage of them for the fur trade.

The Pilgrims had not crossed the Atlantic in order to establish the Kingdom of God as the Puritans who settled Massachusetts did. And, had they been on their own, that is without the West-Country men, they probably would not have needed any regulation on, say, adultery, for it would have been totally irrelevant in a world of godly men and women. What they wanted to do was just worship as their consciences dictated them and as if they had stayed in England. They just could not remain over there because they were not safe, and they were no longer satisfied with their lives in the Netherlands.[23] Emigration now seems a natural process for Separatists, but the only institution they rejected was the Church of England and not necessarily the Crown - since Arminianism would not be on the agenda before another few years - or even less the laws and customs of England. Yet they did not want to be ruled by materialistic men who probably saw them as stern and self-righteous Puritans, in the original offensive meaning.

During the crossing, the West-Country men had already tried to challenge the authority of the Pilgrims.[24] To secure their position as leaders of the colony, the latter needed to get the free men - the only people who would have a say in the political life in New Plymouth, as opposed to servants - to pledge their obedience to certain principles and to the laws that would be established, to abide by the rules, and for that purpose they drafted a written document that was to be signed, probably in order to keep trace of the agreement in case a dispute should arise.[25] It was natural and legitimate that the Pilgrim Fathers should rule since they had originated the project. They had sent agents to negotiate a patent from the Council of New England. In their eyes, they were the instigators, and the West-Country men had only been invited to join the experiment to increase the chances of survival.[26] If they did not want Puritan neighbors they might as well have stayed in England, or sailed to Jamestown.

The Mayflower Compact differs from other Covenants in that the "laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions and officers" to which the signatories were required to obey must only be "just and equal." This makes the document read like a compromise between laymen and people concerned about religion, which was actually the case, so that authority would not be unduly challenged. Very differently, and perhaps slightly more explicitly, the signatories of the Watertown Covenant of July 1630 were required to "observ[ing] and keep[ing] all His [God's] statutes, commands, and ordinances, in all matters concerning our reformation; his worship, administrations, ministry, and government[27]", and there the Bible is referred to as "the most clear Light and infallible Rule, and all-sufficient canon".[28] Therefore, in the Watertown Covenant, the divine injunctions and regulations were to apply to all the layers of life, from the observance of the cult to government. The Dedham Covenant (1636) considered the Bible as "that most perfect rule, the foundation whereof is everlasting love", whereas the Covenant of Exeter of 1639 demanded to set up a government "agreeable to the will of God" but at the same time "professing ourselves subjects to our Sovereign Lord King Charles" and asking for submission to "such godly and Christian laws as are established in the realm of England to our best knowledge[29]", this last clause being probably a qualification and a means to allow innovations and departures, just like the "not repugnant" and "as near as can be" clauses that can be found in the charters and patents. Moreover, in their subsequent oath, the people (as opposed to the rulers, who had to swear a different oath), were to "submit ourselves to be ruled and governed according to the will and Word of God[30], and such wholesome laws and ordinances as shall be derived there from[31] by our honored rulers and the lawful assistants, with the consent of the people": the laws were to be derived from the Word of God, that is from the Bible. The Kingdom of God - as demanded in the Special Commission - was actually being established since His laws were to be the laws of the land. The notion of consent reappears, applying to "the people", a very ambiguous term throughout the history of British America to say the least.

This emphasis on being ruled as well as worshipping according to the true will of God was the manifestation of a certain rejection of the Church of England, in spite of the apparent loyalty to the Crown that can be found in the Exeter Covenant, and more ironically in the Mayflower Compact.[32] It is quite striking in the opening sentence of the Watertown Covenant, claiming that the signatories have "through God's mercy, escaped out of the Pollutions[33] of the World." It was a basic feature of Puritanism, and of Protestantism in general, not to withdraw from the world, as monks had done, but to live in it, not to withdraw to a sin-free environment, but on the contrary, as John Winthrop explains in his Journal or in his Experiencia, to face temptation and sin, and to resist and fight it that way, which was even more of a challenge.[34] Therefore, if they could not run away from the corruption of the world, they were fleeing the corruption of England and particularly of her established Church since, as the same John Winthrop stated as one of his nine Reasons For The Plantation Of New England (1629), "the fountains of learning and religion are corrupted" and given the state of desolation of the Europeans Churches, New England would be a refuge - a "shelter and a hiding place" - for the chosen ones when the great calamity that Winthrop and others had foreseen would break out.[35]

Even more remarkable than the Watertown Covenant is the Dedham Covenant, written in 1636. Indeed it contains a fairly unique clause which can be called religious screening. The signatories promised "by all means [to] labor to keep off from us such as are contrary minded, and receive only such unto us as may be probably of one heart with us" and therefore to expel and not tolerate among them any dissenter. They would be a tightly-knit community of like-minded Puritans, and they would therefore live in an idealistic - utopian? - harmony, unlike the other communities which accepted, willingly or not, people with whom they would sooner or later disagree. This clause was unique in so far as it was the only one in which there was a fairly precise rejection of, not only the Church of England, but of any form of dissent as well. By advocating total isolation, at least in terms of population control, it took the separatism inherent to congregationalism to an extreme. And if this might reflect what most New Englanders thought, it is the only occurrence where it is explicit.[36]

Maybe less spectacular but none the less revealing of the will to break from the Church of England are clauses advocating the administration of religion according to the true will of God, thereby referring to the settlers' opinion of what the true religion was. Now that they had made it across the ocean, which John Winthrop took as a sign that God had sealed the Covenant with them[37], the reassuring words of the Humble Request pledging allegiance to the Church of England, seemed far back in time.[38] However, John Beardsley has claimed that the Humble Request was not just a diplomatic move to gain the royal favor in spite of all the rumors that were probably to be heard at the time, it was equally a satirical coded farewell pamphlet.[39]

In the same way as the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company had its "missing clause" concerning the place where the Company was to hold its meetings, the Covenants all lacked an important explicit provision: none specified who was clearly entitled to sign the covenants. The only one in which some sort of answer can be found is the Dedham Covenant. It was stipulated therein that any landholder must pay the taxes that would be imposed upon him, and that he should submit freely (note the unwanted irony[40]) to the laws that would be passed afterwards. Probably the most distinctive feature of politics and religion in seventeenth-century New England was the difference between churchgoers and church members: to become a communicant, and thus a member of the church and consequently a enfranchised freeman, one had to prove to the other members that one had experienced the conversion, that one had become a visible saint, regenerated and saved. However, this was stipulated in no covenant. It is of the utmost importance to study the links between church membership and citizenship to start assessing the theocratic dimension of New England and to try to determine the nature of the system of government as well as the dynamics of politics in Massachusetts in particular.

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