NORTH SHORE BREEZE 
Vol. XII 
AND REMINDER 
Manchester, Mass., Friday, September 4, 1914 
No. 36 
The Old Planters of Cape Ann 
Paper Read at Manchester Historical Society Meeting Contains Much of Interest 
Concerning Early Days of North Shore 
+g a meeting of the Manchester Historical Society on 
Monday evening Joseph A. Torrey read a paper on 
“The Old Planters of Cape Ann.” After giving a brief his- 
tory of the vicissitudes of the pioneers, who in 1624 
came to what is now Gloucester to found a colony and 
‘to fish in the bay, and who two years later removed to 
what is now Salem, he related such facts as are known 
concerning those who made their homes in Manchester. 
Among these were William Allen, William Bennett, John 
Foster, Walter Knight, Laurence Leach, George Norton, 
John Woodbury, as well as of John Balch, Thomas 
Gardner, and Roger Conant who took root in Salem 
and Beverly. Concluding with a comparative estimate of 
the Puritan and Pilgrim character as exhibited at that 
period, he spoke as follows: 
The Puritans sought to reform the established 
Church without leaving it. The Pilgrims were a sect of 
the Puritans, who, despairing of success in attempts to 
reform the Church from within, resolved to come out and 
be separate. They were stigmatised as “Separatists.” 
They had left the Church of England before coming to 
Plymouth. For twelve years they had lived and formed 
a church of their own in Holland with John Robinson as 
pastor and William Brewster as elder. Holland, which 
allowed them much liberty, was yet but a temporary asy- 
lum. They must have a country of their own with free- 
dom to worship God and liberty to shape their political 
institutions! For high religious motive, for devotion 
and sacrifice, the Pilgrims, as compared with the Puritans 
must bear the palm; but the Puritan was a close second. 
By such noble souls was New England settled. A body 
of men more remarkable for their piety and morality 
and more respectable for their wisdom never commenced 
the settlement of any country. It has been truly said, 
“God sifted the finest wheat of Europe to plant it here on 
virgin soil.” 
The Puritans were professedly loyal to the Estab- 
lished Church of England. On their departure for the 
New World Higginson declared, “We do not go to New 
England as separatists from the Church of England, 
though we can but separate from the corruptions in it; 
but we go to practise the positive parts of Church reforma- 
tion, and propogate the true religion in America.” He 
concluded this declaration with a fervent prayer for the 
church and state of England. But in their seven week’s 
voyage, with leisure for serious discussion of their mis- 
sion and later in conference with their Plymouth brethren, 
they must have concluded that their only hope for religi- 
ous and political freedom lay in “a church without a 
bishop and a state without a king.” 
The fact remains that within six weeks of the landing 
of Higginson, on June 29, 1630 he established a veritable 
Congregational Church at Salem. 
Of the two bodies I remark this distinction: The 
Pilgrims stood rather for religious freedom and the Puri- 
tans for political freedom, though each stood stoutly for 
both. The Pilgrims were comparatively mild. The 
Pilgrims never hanged anybody. The Puritans were in- 
dependent, aggressive, uncompromising. Their heads 
were hard, their hearts not altogether so. It is not true, 
in the words of a wicked wag that on landing “they feil 
on their knees and then on the aboriginees.” ‘The Indians 
were paid for their lands. The Plymouth treaty with 
Massasoit remained inviolate for fifty years till broken by 
the redmen. 
The Puritans whipped the Quakers, who were a 
nuisance, and banished Roger Williams the pestilent 
“higher critic” of church and state. It is to the credit 
of the Puritans that they stamped out the Witchcraft de- 
lusion, albeit by heroic remedies. Their warrant was the 
scripture injunction, “Thou shall not suffer a witch to 
live.” They hanged the witches, while England and 
Germany at the same period burned them. 
Intolerance was necessary for self-defence. They 
had come hither to enjoy their own opinions and this 
freedom must not be interfered with. The alternative 
was to banish or be banished by the intruders. ‘The 
continent was wide, with room elsewhere for those who 
differed. By their very intolerance they founded institu- 
tions whose strength is freedom of opinion. Edmund 
Burke declared “the people of New England were not 
worse than the rest of mankind. Withal they were a 
sturdy race with just enough of grit, grace and greed to 
make godliness profitable for this life as well as for the 
life to come.” 
The Puritans had their faults or they would not have 
been human. They were faults of the age in which they 
lived. Their virtues were beyond those of their age. 
They builded better than they knew, which is a proof 
of divine guidance. God does not leave himself without 
a witness. They may be compared to the great image 
which Nebuchardnezzar set up, whose head of gold 
and whose feet were part metal and part mud, but planted 
on the earth. These pioneers of civil and religious lib- 
erty had a high ideal. They strove to attain it for them- 
selves but were not so successful in imposing it on others. 
They had an ingrowing and outgoing conscience. They 
would regulate others’ conscience as well as their own. 
This is a queer sort of freedom of conscience. The con- 
science that is good enough for one man is not good 
enought for two. We cannot.legislate men into virtue. 
Man grows like a tree, from within. Only a right inward 
impulse can secure right outward conduct. Their devo- 
tion to Scripture was sincere but narrow. For English 
law they would substitute the laws of Moses. They saw 
some aspects of truth so clearly and nearly that they 
were blind to the facts of human experience, a sort of 
moral Myopia. After all, narrowness is forceful, liber- 
alism is lax. Their faults were but the efflorescence of 
their virtues. “The flower will rot, the seed will 
grow:”’ Conscience of the Puritan brand is apt to be 
wrong at first and right at last. Time makes ancient 
