As a nation the individuals living within our borders have been trying to define liberty since the first settlers put their feet on dry ground in Jamestown and Plymouth. This is a general overview of one group. Dissent began almost immediately that resulted in the colonies of Connecticutt and Rhode Island. Later New Hampshire, Vermont, and finally Maine.
The four major Britsh migrations to what became this country brought more than thier religious beliefs and folkways. Each group; Puritans and dissenters, exiled Cavaliers,Quakers and Pietists, the English and Scots from the border counties, and Irish economic refugees brought their own conception of liberty.
While the colonists of New Englanders were Puritans and dissenters by majority there were settlers that lived in the Massachusetts colony but were not necessarily members of the church. However most had to live under the theocracy of the ruling church.The Puritans came to build a righteous community. Their version and they had some conceptions of liberty that were unique to their settlements. David Fischer argues in Albion’s Seed that the word liberty was used in four different ways that would probably strike modern Americans as unusual.
the first definition of liberty described liberty or liberties that belonged to the community or communities rather than the individual. Writers, from the founding of the colony for the next two centuries spoke of the liberty of New England, the liberty of Boston, or the liberty of the town. There is evidence that Sam Adams wrote more often about the ”liberty of America” than the liberty of individual Americans.
This concept of collective liberty was consistent, to New Englanders at least, with restrictions on individual liberty that modern Americans would find very restrictive to say the least. In early years of the Massachusetts colony, potential colonists couldn’t settle there without permission from the general court. Persons who were judged to have dangerous opinions, in the eyes of the authorities, could be and occasionally were shipped back to England. Sometimes in irons. The concept was that public order was more important and of a potential settler was judged to potentially be a threat to public order then settlement was forbidden. Puritan minister John Norton argued that that it was better "an innocent and good man should suffer than order, for that preserves the whole."
The right to vote Plymoth and Masssachusetts Bay colonieswas restricted to "freemen" and members of the church. Note. Beomings a member of the church could take several years and qualifications were restrictive. One of the first schisms occurred over the religious restrictions. Clergyman Thomas Hooker led an exodus to small colonies that eventually became Connecticutt.
Threats to public order included attempts by Baptists and Quakers to preach publically. The colonial government retaliated first with banishment. Repeat attempts brought floggings, often brutal; being whipped through the streets, even from town to town then banished. Further repeated attempts resulted in death. Although the worst of the religious persecutions were over by the mid 1670's.
Those colonial New Englanders accepted restraints, but did insist that the restrictions be consistent with the written laws of the Commonwealth. And they insisted that they had the right to order their communities in their own way. Not the way it was done in Pennsylvania, or Virginia, or in some cases even England.
Liberty or liberties had a second meaning in New England. One that had roots in the counties of East Anglia where many of colonists and most of their pastors emigrated from. Individuals could be granted the liberty to do something that they normally couldn’t do. For example, certain individuals could be granted the liberty to fish or hunt in certain areas while that liberty was denied to others. In some cases the liberty granted depended on someone’s social rank. For example a gentleman could not be punished with a whipping unless the crime was extremely serious and “his course of life was vicious and profligate.” (the author didn’t provide any examples) Those of lesser rank, had a lesser liberty: they were limited to forty stripes or less if they were sentenced to a flogging.
And codified in the fundamental liberties of the colony was the right of any man, inhabitant or foreigner to come before the courts or town meetings and have his voice heard. And if he couldn’t plead his own cause he had the right to ask someone else to speak for him.
And there was a third kind of liberty in New England. It was referred to as Soul Liberty, Christian Liberty or Freedom of Conscience. This did not mean freedom of conscience in the way we understand it. This was freedom to practice the true faith as defined by the fundamental law of the colony. This liberty did not apply to Quakers, Catholics, Anglicans, Baptists, or even Presbyterians who did not agree to a very restrictive definition of reformed theology. And the definitions could, and often did, depend on the whim of the local minister. Basically, it meant they were free to persecute everyone else in their own way. I know, I’m getting a headache just trying to wrap my brain around the idea that the freedom to serve God in your own way in your own community could be defined as the right to hang Quakers for preaching in the town.
And, at times, liberty was used in a fourth way. It described an obligation of the “body politicke” to protect individual members from what the author calls the “tyranny of circumstance.” The Massachusetts poor laws may have been limited but the General Court recognized a right for individuals to be free from want in a basic sense. It wasn’t a question of collective welfare or even social equality.
In Fischer’s opinion these four ways of looking at liberty; collective liberty, individual liberties, soul freedom and freedom from tyranny of circumstance were all part of what the New Englanders sometimes called ordered liberty. The New Englanders had their ways of defining liberty; other colonies and their settlers didn’t always agree.
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