Unexpected revolutionaries
This blog post by award-winning historian Francis J. Bremer is based on a presentation to PHB audiences in November 2025. In it, he relates how the very same resistance to tyranny and commitment to liberty that led, in England, to bloody civil war, the execution of a king, and a republic, resulted in New England in the very first American bill of rights.
Royalists attack Parliament’s supporters in London, 1641, in a precursor to the violence of the English civil wars. By contrast, issues of self-governance and representation were enshrined in law in New England. Wenceslaus Hollar, “Colonell Lunsford assaulting the Londoners at Westminister Hall,” 1641. British Museum
I began my last talk for the Partnership of Historic Bostons by quoting John Adams, who, looking back in 1780 on the origins of the American Revolution, cited the importance of the "virtues and talents of the people" that had been shaped by the institutions of early New England: its towns, schools, militia, and churches. In that talk, which you can watch here, I focused on the defense of liberty against tyranny by the Puritan colonists of the 17th century - a revolution before the Revolution.
Today I wish to turn my focus to how 17th century Puritan colonists defined and enshrined their liberties. While the legacy of resisting tyranny and standing up for liberties remains as important for us as it was for John Adams, it is also important to remember for what liberties the colonists were willing to fight.
When John Winthrop and his fellow Puritans departed England in 1630 they brought with them the charter that enabled them to govern and they quickly set about redefining the corporate structure of the Massachusetts Bay Company into the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. Their efforts to do so were certainly shaped by their religious faith, but they were also shaped by their experiences of English civil society and awareness of those aspects of that society that they disapproved of. In fact, the Massachusetts Bay Company had been formed at a time of intensifying political friction between King Charles I and Parliament.
In England that friction would lead to war. In New England the result would be new guarantees of liberty. A review of that history will help us to understand the decisions that would be made in New England.
Following his accession to the throne in 1625, King Charles I had sought to finance his regime by what was generally considered unauthorized collection of taxes such as customs duties referred to as tonnage and poundage. Then, in 1626 he imposed a Forced Loan and imprisoned without trial some of those who refused to pay it, including members of the aristocracy with strong Puritan connections such as Theophilus Clinton, the 4th Earl of Lincoln, Sir Nathaniel Barnardison and Sir Francis Barrington.
Despite the 1628 Petition of Right, Charles I prorogued Parliament, thus beginning the period known as Personal Rule - a decade when there was no national elected body, taxes were raised on his say-so, and imposing unpopular religious change. In 1649 he was tried, found guilty of treason against his subjects, and executed outside the Banqueting Hall in London. National Portrait Gallery, London
When this effort failed to produce sufficient revenue because Englishmen refused to pay taxes unauthorized by a parliament, Charles was compelled to summon a parliament in 1628. In return for agreeing to provide the king with funds, that body forced the king to accept what is known as the Petition of Right. That document set out a number of grievances, including complaints about statutes that had been broken, and then set forth certain "rights and liberties," including that no person should be forced to pay any form of tax without an act of Parliament, no one should be imprisoned without due cause, and that troops should not be billeted in private homes without the consent of the owner. Having accepted the petition, Charles dissolved the Parliament and ignored the petition as he ruled without calling another parliament for over a decade, a period known as the Personal Rule.
During this period from March of 1629 to April 1640 Charles ruled without any opportunity for parliamentary response. He regularly violated the principles he had accepted in the Petition of Right, employing questionable medieval laws to raise money and supporting religious innovations that alienated Puritans and many others. His efforts to impose changes in the religion of his northern kingdom of Scotland finally led to an uprising that led to open conflict known as the Bishop's War. Forced to seek sufficient funds to fight the rebellious Scots, Charles summoned a Parliament in April 1640. That body refused to consider supplying the king with funds unless grievances were first addressed. Refusing to do so, Charles dissolved what became known as the Short Parliament within a month of its assembling.
When the Scots invaded the north of England and demanded a large sum as part of the cost of a truce, Charles summoned a new Parliament in November 1640. One of the first measures which that body forced the king to accede to was a stipulation that it could not be dissolved without its consent. The clash between this Long Parliament and the king would lead to the English civil wars or Puritan Revolution and usher in debates over the nature of the church and the state that would be followed closely in New England. With this as background, I want to turn to the question of how the Englishmen living in New England sought to define their liberties.
The bulwark of liberties for the Massachusetts colonists was the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter - seen by them as a guarantee of self-government. Over the course of the 17th century there would be various efforts by English governments to revoke the charter but they would be successfully resisted until the 1680s. In the meantime the colonists sought to use the authority granted them in order to determine how they were to be governed. I want to briefly relate the process whereby the colony legal code was developed and then focus on the actual laws and liberties.
In May 1634, after discussions of how the corporate governance set out in the charter was to be adapted to the process of civil government it was decided that "none but the General Court [the legislature] hath power to make and establish laws." Having been given responsibility for making laws, in the following year the General Court named a committee consisting of Governor John Haynes, Deputy-Governor Richard Bellingham, Thomas Dudley, and John Winthrop to "frame a body of grounds of laws, in resemblance of a Magna Carta." Nothing came of this, in part because John Winthrop and some others believed that allowing magistrates leeway to define how laws were to be applied in a new colony was preferable to a setting definitions of laws and penalties.
The charter granted by Charles I for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which the colonists took with them on their journey to New England and which, they believed, enabled their self-governance.
In 1636 the General Court tried again, charging a committee consisting of Governor Henry Vane, Deputy Governor John Winthrop, John Haynes, Richard Bellingham, and the clergymen John Cotton, Hugh Peter, and Thomas Shepard to make a draft of laws that would be "agreeable to the word of God [and] which might be the fundamentals of this Commonwealth" and to present it to the next General Court.
No doubt distracted by the Pequot War and the turmoil surrounding the controversy around Anne Hutchsinson, that committee also failed to complete its task, though John Cotton compiled Moses, His Judicials, based entirely on judicial law from the Old Testament. That proposal was rejected by the General Court. In 1638 the freemen (voters) of every town were instructed to come together, identify what laws they thought should be fundamental, and present them to yet another committee that would organize the results into a compendium of laws. John Cotton and Nathaniel Ward appear to have been the most engaged members of that committee, which sent its results back to the towns, which in turn sent their views to the General Court.
Based on this input, in 1641 the Court approved the Body of Liberties. Adopted by a popularly elected legislature after input from citizens in the various towns, it was not a code of laws but a statement of the principles on which the colony's civil society was based, comparable to Magna Carta or a bill of rights. Six years later the General Court approved an actual legal code, which was published in 1648 as The Book of the General Laws and Liberties Concerning the Inhabitants of the Massachusetts. Hailed by legal historians as the first printed code of laws in the Western World, it arose from the history of English legal disputes but was also influenced by the reform ideas advanced by groups that had emerged in England during the English civil wars, such as the Levellers. The Laws and Liberties drew extensively on the principles set forth in the 1641 Body of Liberties (which was not published at the time), and it is that first document - the Body of Liberties - that I want to discuss, touching upon points that focus on the aspirations of the puritan colonists.
We do not have space to review the entire document, which you can read here. Rather, I want to single out provisions which I think are particularly relevant for us to consider today and comment on some items that are generally misrepresented.
Title page of the General Laws and Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony, 1648, based on the principles of the 1641 Body of Liberties.
The preamble to The Liberties of the Massachusetts Colony in New England, 1641 read:
The free fruition of such liberties, immunities, and privileges as humanity, civility, and Christianity call for as due to every man in his place and proportion without impeachment and infringement hath ever been the tranquility and stability of churches and commonwealths. And the denial or deprival thereof the disturbance if not the ruin of both.
The document then went on to enumerate these liberties, starting with a basic statement asserting the importance of due process.
1. No man's life shall be taken away, no man's honor or good name shall be stained, no man's person shall; be arrested, restrained, banished, dismembered, nor any ways punished, no man shall be deprived of his wife or children, no man's good estate shall be taken from him nor any way indammaged under color of law or countenance of authority, unless it is by virtue or equity of some express law of the country warranting the same, established by a General Court and sufficiently published....
Next came an important right, which though challenged by some today, remains a bedrock of American liberties.
2. Every person within this jurisdiction, whether inhabitant or foreigner, shall enjoy the same justice and law that is general for the plantation which we constitute and execute one towards another without partiality or delay.
The liberties enumerated in the Body of Liberties applied to all - English and non-English; men and women; Natives as well as Afro-New Englanders; free men, servants, and slaves. One did not have to be a citizen to have these freedoms.
12. Every man whether inhabitant or foreigner, free or not free, shall have liberty to come to any public court, council, or town meeting and either by speech or writing to move any lawful, seasonable, and material question, or to present any necessary motion, complaint, petition, bill or information whereof that meeting hath proper cognizance, so it be done in convenient time, order, and respective manner.
Here, the universality of rights is made specific for attending public events, and the rights to free speech and to petition for redress of grievances are emphasized. The right to demonstrate, which has been an important part of American public life for almost 400 years, was established in New England by the Puritans. Petitioning was important in the civic life of the colony. Adrian Weimer, a distinguished scholar who has been a speaker for the Partnership, has made much use of 17th century petitions in her work.
“THE RIGHT TO DEMONSTRATE WAS ESTABLISHED IN NEW ENGLAND BY THE PURITANS, 400 YEARS AGO.”
18. No man's person shall be restrained or imprisoned by any authority whatsoever before the law hath sentenced him thereto if he can put up sufficient security, bail, or manprise for his appearance and good behavior in the meantime, unless it be in crimes capital and contempts in open court, and in such cases where some express act of Court doth allow it.
Here we have an assertion of the right to due process and habeus corpus.
41. Every man that is to answer for any criminal cause, whether he be in prison or under bail his cause shall be heard and determined at the next court that hath proper cognizance thereof, and may be done without prejudice of justice.
The colonists insisted on speedy justice. Would that criminal procedures were conducted with such speed today!
46. For bodily punishments we allow amongst us none that are inhumane, barbarous, or cruel.
Remember, this is at a time when in England men were stretched on the rack, hung drawn and quartered, branded with symbols of their crime (an embroidered scarlet letter doesn't seem so bad compared to having a T branded onto your forehead if you were judged a thief), and disfigured.
47. No man shall be put to death without the testimony of two or three witnesses or that which is equivalent thereunto.
This speaks for itself, though what the equivalent of a witness was could be interpreted broadly, and was in the Salem witchcraft trials.
58. Civil authority hath power and liberty to see the peace, ordinances and rules of Christ observed in every church according to his word, so be it done in a civil and not in an ecclesiastical way.
“NEW ENGLAND ACHIEVED GREATER SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE THAN ANYWHERE ELSE IN EUROPE.”
60. No church censure shall degrade or depose any man from any civil dignity, office, or authority he shall have in the commonwealth.
These get us to church and state. The New England Puritans achieved a greater separation of the institutions of church and state than was to be found in England or elsewhere in Europe at the time. In England the king was also the head of the church, bishops were de facto members of the House of Lords where they voted on taxes and legislation, and church officers served in the national court sand on the king's advisory councils. In Massachusetts no church officer could hold office in town, county, or colony government (contrary to what many believe, John Winthrop was not a clergyman, but an ordinary layman). Furthermore, as this liberty makes clear, church judgements against a person (such as censure or excommunication) did not alter one's civil status or rights. The importance of religion in the society cannot be denied, but the Puritans believed the liberties they codified in this document extended to all residents, including non-Christian Afro-New Englanders and Native Americans. And as noted previously, when given an opportunity to enact Moses His Judicials - a strict biblical code - as law, the Massachusetts General Court declined to do so. Massachusetts was not a theocracy and attempts to identify it with today's Christian Nationalist agenda is not historically accurate.
“no church officer could hold office in tow, county or colony government.”
69. No General Court shall be dissolved or adjourned without the consent of the major part thereof.
This spoke to the Long Parliament' rejection of the king's ability to send home a Parliament he disagreed with without their consent. It would be a cherished right, though rescinded in the 1692 Massachusetts Charter.
70. All freemen called to give any advice, vote, verdict, or sentence in any court, council, or civil assembly shall have full freedom to do it according to their true judgement and consciences....
This seems normal today, but note that as late as 1670 in England when William Penn was put on trial for illegal assembly and four jurors found him not guilty they were sent back to rethink their verdict. The jury then found Penn and the others guilty of “speaking in the street” but refused to add the words "in an unlawful assembly". The judges refused to accept this and ordered the jury to be "locked up without meat, drink, fire, and tobacco" until they reconsidered, while Penn called to them not to give up their rights as Englishmen. The outcome of that case that is considered to have secured for Englishmen the right for independent jurors -- something established in Massachusetts three decades earlier.
80. Every married woman shall be free from bodily correction or stripes by her husband, unless it be in his own defense upon her assault. If there be any cause of correction, complaint shall be made to authority assembled in some court, from which only she shall receive it.
This was an advance on not only English law but on the practice throughout Europe and much of colonial America. In general women would have more legal rights in colonial New England than elsewhere, though far from what they possess today.
Next, the famous Number 91.
91. There shall never be any bond slavery or villeinage or captivity amongst us unless it be lawful captives taken in just wars, and such strangers as willingly sell themselves or are sold to us. And these shall have all the liberties and Christian usages which the law of God established in Israel concerning such persons doth morally require.
This is an important passage, but because of that a few things should be pointed out. In the first place, it is generally cited as the first legislation in British America legalizing slavery and we need to rightly point to it as one of the sins of the Puritans, to use their terminology. However, significantly, unlike the practice elsewhere where slavery existed, it was not a status inheritable by a slave's children. Indeed, some scholars have argued that this provision was approved to prevent the effort of the non-puritan Bostonian Samuel Maverick to breed slaves. As for the last sentence, this allowed the judicial punishment of forced labor for crimes, which was the practice in the colony (there were in the 1630s white servants "reduced to slavery") and which is still legal in some of the United States.
It should also be noted that this doctrine was employed to protect Africans in at least one important case. In 1644 the Rainbow, a Boston ship captained by James Smith and Thomas Keysarr, joined some London ships in attacking a village on the Guinea coast of Africa. They killed some villagers, captured some Africans, and after a stop in Barbados returned to Boston with at least three of the captured Africans. Led by Richard Saltonstall, the General Court prosecuted Smith and Keysarr in 1645.
"The act of stealing Negers, or of taking them by force," Saltonstall argued, was "expressly contrary both to the law of God, and the law of this country," meaning Massachusetts. The court allowed the testimony of one of the Africans, whom the records identified as an "interpreter." The Africans were freed and sent back to Guinea at the colony's expense and a letter of public apology was sent with them, expressing the indignation of the colony over the episode. Following this trial, in November 1646 both houses of the General Court issued a statement condemning "man-stealing" as a "heinous and crying sin" equivalent to murder.
“the general court condemned ‘man- stealing’ as a ‘heinous and crying sin.’”
96. Howsoever these above specified rights, freedoms, immunities, authorities, and privileges, both civil and ecclesiastical are expressed only under the name and title of liberties, and not in the exact form of laws or statutes, yet we do with one consent fully authorize and earnestly intreat all that are and shall be in authority to consider them as laws....
The 1647 Book of the General Laws and Liberties incorporated much of the Body of Liberties into the form of actual laws. It was transparent and accessible, published so that all citizens could consult it and understand both their legal obligations and their rights and liberties. One point to note about that code was that it dramatically reduced the crimes that in England were cast as capital offenses punishable by death.
“the liberties for which the colonists fought are part of the heritage for which we should always be willing to fight.”
Perhaps the most significant contributions of the Body of Liberties and the Book of General Laws were the establishment of equity for all - the fact that all residents were possessed of these rights and liberties, and equality - that justice was to be rendered to all without distinction of race, faith, or class. These are the liberties that the colonists fought to preserve in the 17th century, that John Adams and his fellow revolutionaries were committed to, and that are a positive part of the Puritan heritage today's Americans have inherited and for which we should always be willing to fight.