The tossing spray of Cocheco’s fall
Hardened to ice on its rocky wall,
As through Dover town in the chill gray dawn,
Three women passed, at the cart tail drawn!

Bared to the waist, for the north wind’s grip
And keener sting of the constable’s whip,
The blood that followed each hissing blow
Froze as it sprinkled the winter snow.

Priest and ruler, boy and maid
Followed the dismal cavalcade;
And from door and window, open thrown,
Looked and wondered gaffer and crone.

“God is our witness,” the victims cried,
“We suffer for him who for all men died;
The wrong ye do has been done before,
We bear the stripes that the Master bore!”

“Smite, Goodman Hate-Evil! harder still!”
The magistrate cried, “Lay on with a will!
Drive out of their bodies the Father of Lies,
Who through them preaches and prophesies!”

So into the forest they held their way,
By winding river and frost-rimmed bay,
Over wind-swept hills that felt the beat,
Of the winter sea at their icy feet.

The Indian hunter, searching his traps,
Peered stealthily through the forest gaps;
And the outlying settler shook his head,–
“They’re witches going to jail,” he said.

At last a church-house came in view;
A blast on his horn the constable blew;
And the boys of Hampton cried up and town
“The Quakers have come!” to the wondering town.

From bar and woodpile the goodman came;
The goodwife quitted her quilting frame
With her child at her breast; and hobbling slow,
The granddam followed to see the show.

Once more the torturing whip was swung,
Once more keen lashes the bare flesh stung.
“Oh, spare! They are bleeding!” a little maid cried,
And covered her face the sight to hide….

Then on they passed, in the waning day,
Through Seabrook woods, a weariful way;
By great salt meadows and sand-hills bare,
And glimpses of blue sea here and there.

Then by the church house in Salisbury town,
The sufferers stood, in the red sundown,
Bare for the lash! O pitying Night,
Drop swift thy curtain and hide the sight!

With shame in his eye and wrath on his lip
The Salisbury constable dropped his whip.
“This warrant means murder foul and red;
Cursed is he who serves it,” he said.

“Show me the order, and meanwhile strike
A blow at your peril!” said Justice Pike.
Of all the rulers the land possessed,
Wisest and boldest was he and best….

He read the warrant: “‘These convey
From our precincts; at every town on the way
Give each ten lashes.’ God judge the brute!
I tread his order under my foot!

“Cut loose these poor ones and let them go;
Come what will of it, all people shall know,
No warrant is good, though backed by the Crown,
For whipping women in Salisbury town….”

The Quakers sank on their knees in praise
And thanks. A last, low sunset blaze
Flashed out from under a cloud and shed
A golden glory on each bowed head.

The tale is one of an evil time,
When souls were fettered and thought was crime,
And heresy’s whisper above its breath
Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!

1658

Last night I saw the sunset melt through my prison bars,
Last night across my damp earth floor fell the pale gleam of stars:
In the coldness and the darkness all through the long night-time,
My grated casement whited with autumn’s early rime….

All night I sat unsleeping, for I knew that on the morrow
The ruler and the cruel priest would mock me in my sorrow.
Dragged to their place of market, and bargained for and sold,
Like a lamb before the shambles, like a heifer from the fold!

Oh, the weakness of the flesh was there,- – the shrinking and the shame;
And the low voice of the Tempter like whispers to me came:
“Why sit’st thou thus forlornly,” the wicked murmur said,
“Damp walls thy bower of beauty, cold earth thy maiden bed?

“…And what a fate awaits thee!–A sadly toiling slave,
Dragging the slowly lengthening chain of bondage to the grave.”
…I wrestled down the evil thoughts, and strove in silent prayer,
To feel, O Helper of the weak! That thou indeed were there…

At length the heavy bolts fell back, my door was open cast,
And slowly at the sheriff’s side, up the long street I passed.
I heard the murmur round me, and felt, but dared not see,
How, from every door and window, the people gazed on me.
…We paused at length, where at my feet the sunlit waters broke
On glaring reach of shining beach, and shining wall or rock;
The merchant ships lay idly there, in hard clear lines on high,
Tracing with rope and sender spar their network on the sky….

Then to the stout sea-captains, the sheriff, turning, said,
“Which of ye, worthy seamen, will take this Quaker maid?
In the isle of fair Barbados, or on Virginia’s shore,
You may sell her at a higher price than Indian girl or Moor.”

Grim and silent stood the captains; and when again he cried,
“Speak out, my worthy seamen!”–no voice, no sign replied;
But I felt a hard hand press my own, and kind words met my ear,–
“God bless thee, and preserve thee, my gentle girl and dear!”

A weight seemed lifted from my heart, a pitying friend was nigh,–
I felt it in his hard, rough hand, and saw i in his eye;
And when again the sheriff spoke, that voice so kind to me,
Growled back its stormy answer like the roaring of the sea,–

“Pile my ship with bars of silver, pack with coins of Spanish gold,
From keel-piece up to deck plank, the roomage of her hold,
By the living God who made me!–I would sooner in your bay
Sink ship and crew and cargo, than bear this child away!”

“Well answered, worthy captain, shame on their cruel laws!”
Ran through the crowd in murmurs loud the people’s just applause.
“Like the herdsman of Tekoa, in Israel of old,
Shall we see the poor and righteous again for silver sold?”

I looked on Governor Endicott, with weapon half-way drawn,
Swept round the throng his lion glare of bitter hate and scorn;
Fiercely he drew his bridle rein, and turned in silence back,
And sneering priest and baffled clerk rode murmuring in his track.

Hard after them the sheriff looked, in bitterness of soul;
Thrice smote his staff upon the ground, and crushed his parchment roll.
“Good friends,” he said, “since both have fled, the ruler and the priest,
Judge ye, if from their further work I be not well released.”

Loud was the cheer which, full and clear, swept round the silent bay,
As with kind words and kinder looks he bade me go my way;
For God who turns the courses of the streamlet of the glen,
And the river of great waters, had turned the hearts of men.

Thanksgiving to the Lord of Life! To God all praises be,
Who from the hands of evil men hath set his handmaid free.
All praise to God before whose power the mighty are afraid,
Who takes the crafty in the snare which for the poor is laid!

Through its own logical reasoning, Antinomianism was a transcendental philosophy which, in its most literal definition, ascertained that God, as is similarly believed in enduring Eastern philosophies, is without attributes and, as Ms Hutchinson declared in court, does not require direct mediation through the clergy to be attained for personal salvation. It was this facet above all else that the Puritan authorities were most offended and therefore directed the most contention, for such beliefs would deny them the authority afforded them through the poorly disquised church-state . Contrary to antinomianism and despite the Puritan’s arguments, however, Anne Hutchinson never claimed that she was not bound by “Christian Moral Law”.

“I doe cast you out and in the name of Christ I doe deliver you up to Satan, that you may learne no more to blaspheme, to seduce, and to lye.”

Rev. John Wilson

Her once beloved pastor, Rev John Cotton, who up to this point was at the very least tolerant of the “delusional” woman “not fit for our society“, and had even aided her and Sir Henry Vane’s attempt in having her brother-in-law replace John Wilson as Pastor of Boston, was now only too quick to distance and disassociate himself from her and soon became her nemesis by joining Wilson’s chorus in attacking her meetings as a “promiscuous and filthie coming together of men and women without Distinction of Relation of Marriage,” whose “opinions frett like a Gangrene and spread like a Leprosie, and will eate out the very Bowells of Religion.” Banished from Massachusetts, she relocated with her husband and 14 children to Rhode Island, welcomed by Gov Roger Williams, where they founded the town of Pocasset. A few years later, she and all but one of her children were killed in attack by the Narragansett Indians. Her compassionate brother-in-law, Rev John Wheelwright, was subsequently banished from Massachusetts, and after purchasing land from the Indians beyond the reaches of the Massachusetts Colony within just 14 days of the Court’s rulings, founded a church in the northern frontier town of Exeter in 1638.

Equally notable among the congregation of Rev. John Wilson’s church in Boston was Mary Dyer, a close friend and supporter of her midwife, Anne Hutchinson. Mary Dyer and her husband William were disenfranchised from the church as supporters of both Rev Wheelwright and Ms Hutchinson and her “Antinomian” philosophy in 1637, and eventually relocated to Rhode Island where they remained until 1652, when William and Mary Dyer accompanied Roger Williams and John Clark to England. While William returned to Rhode Island in 1653, Mary remained in England until 1657 studying George Fox‘s theology which has come to be known as the Quaker religion.

Upon her return to America, she made a stop-over in the Massachusetts Bay Colony on her journey home to Rhode Island. By this time, the courts of Massachusetts Bay Colony had implemented a series harsh laws against those who had become members of “The Religious Society of Friends“, or held sympathies towards them, and upon landing in Massachusetts, Mary Dyer was subsequently arrested as an undesired missionary of the outlawed religion. In 1660, at the conclusion of her third arrest and subsequent trial in Massachusetts, she was hung to her death for defying the Courts rulings regarding the spread of the Quaker Religion .

In the midst of all the controversies of 1637, Daniel Wing, his mother Deborah and his brothers, Stephen, John and Matthew, travelled south from Saugus (of Massachusetts Bay Colony) to the base of the Cape Cod peninsula to help found the new town of Sandwich in the more religiously tolerant Plymouth Colony. Many family researchers suggest that the impetus for relocating to Sandwich from Saugus was most likely one of land as Saugus was becoming crowded from the influx of “The Great Migration“; however, it is quite probable that as the TIMELINE below seems to indicate, as children of reformation ministers they were becoming sensitive to the increasingly blatant politically motivated religious oppression experienced by like-minded friends and neighbors in nearby towns, and simply resolved to relocate once again as a pre-emptive measure of self preservation, travelling under the care and guidance of fellow “William & Francis” passenger, family friend, and future kinsman, Edward Dillingham, one of ten original land patentees of Sandwich.

Ironically, the aging but ambitious family patriarch Rev Stephen Bachiler, never known to shy away from a challenge, chose not to move southward, but had removed to Ipswich two years earlier to renew his church following a political fallout with John Winthrop, and in 1638 after petitioning the Courts, became the original founder of the town now known as Hampton NH, very near the banished Rev. Wheelwright in Exeter, along the northern fringe of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Choosing to remain with Rev Bachiler were select family members of Deborah Wing’s sisters, including Theodate Hussey (wife of Christopher Hussey), as well as the son of her brother Nathaniel Bachiler. While the documented history of the the town of Hampton, its church, and the early genealogy of its founder are quite extensive and need to not be repeated in its entirety at this narrative, comprehending our ancestral history would not be complete without further investigation, as their lives were very typical and reflective of 17th century colonial America .

In July of 1640, just three years after arriving in Sandwich, Daniel Wing bought his home from early settler Andrew Hallett, and then in 1641, married his first wife, Hannah Swift, which would prove to be the first of very many Wing-Swift marriages throughout the next 200 years. Between the years of 1642 and 1664, while supporting himself primarily as a fisherman along the Herring River, Daniel and Hannah would come to have nine children; and it appears that in the midst of his procreating years of the 1650′s Daniel, along with his brother Stephen, embraced the principals of the Quaker religion and assumed all of the personal and political burdens that such a choice implied.

By worshipping God as a Quaker, Daniel and many other of our early ancestors, chose to follow the more esoteric, and seemingly mystical, path of seeking and adhering to the Truth of the “Inner Light” of God that dwells within man and is revealed through devout meditation and prayer. He believed, as all members of The Religious Society of Friends do, that God does not sanction the doctrines of any one particular “visible”, man-made church. and that a man could CHOOSE by his own free will to become “saved”, rather than as Puritans had proclaimed, that one must be CHOSEN by God

The Puritans subscribed to traditional Judaeo-Christian philosophy and abided the “letter” of Biblical law, while the Quakers believed that Jesus’ message was the conveyance of a faithful leap in personal awareness and experiential knowledge, and not the extension, expansion, or adaptation of the Hebrew faith as taught by the Roman Catholics. Quakerism, in its practice, threatened to usurp the civil authority of the General Court of the Massachusetts Bay Colony by virtue of their unwillingness to complete the statement, “God is…”, for they understood that to do so would not only subject them to the authority of the Puritan civil and religious philosophy, but more importantly, it would wrongfully prove God to be false. Despite their subtley intimate spiritual perceptions and their strict adherence to the just laws intended for the promotion of compassionate communities and personal accountability, their “radical” departure from the practice of the traditional ritual acts of baptisms of water and swearing of Oaths became fodder for gross politically sponsored social condemnation. Quakers and any one else who willfully defied the Puritans on virtually any religious principal or tenet were publicly condemned, harassed, beaten, banished and even killed as heretics, madmen, witches and demons – the very accusations and actions once perpertrated against the Puritans themselves by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Church of England.

The Puritans were under no delusions of “separation of Church and State” (as William Vassal had so desired) ,so, while their hands may have been tied religiously by their own proclamations of tolerance and freedom, they were quite capable and more than willing to squash the perceived threat of quiet rebellion of Quakerism through legal and political means. John Winthrop’s secessor, Governor Endecott, during the latter 1650′s, essentially invoked a “war powers act” against any suspected Quaker and their sympathisers and exercised corporal punishment against the transgressors caught violating them. However, in making this informal declaration of war , the Governor and the General Court acted in ignorance to the fact that as a religion, Quakerism, unlike Puritanism, had absolutely no intent on becoming a political entity or civil authority and additionally, in a sense, took the stance that while Quakerism and religious tolerance may be acceptable in “God’s Kingdom” , they were not good enough for man’s.

While many of those who emigrated to America as Puritans simply sought religious and social refuge from England, hindsight seems to tragically indicate that they were manipulated through their need for religious guidance as they set out to bring into reality the grand “City upon the hill”, because the expansion into the new world, from the perspective of the English ruling class, was simply a means of exploiting natural resources. Native Americans, Quakers, “Antinomians”, Anabaptists, and others who happened to hinder this intent were simply deemed expendable as non-conforming burdens upon “society”.

There was no central American government with a system of checks and balances as of yet, nor were there any established channels independent from the church hierarchy through which the communities could communicate, therefore, control was successfully leveraged by manipulating the settlers with the fear of God’s Wrath exercised through the influence of wealthy educated “ecclesiasts” and “divines” whose politically motivated religous propaganda spewed forth of the “evils” of those outside of their religion in order to justify their actions and influence the already over-stressed and desparately dependant planters.

Because of its “separatism”, the Plymouth Colony wielded less political muscle in its waning autonomy than the more influential Massachusetts Bay Colony with its ties to the English Government, so as the Quaker persecution began to heat up, kinsman William Bassett was removed from his appointed duties as constable of Sandwich after only one year of service, due in part to his sympathies with Quakerism, and was replaced by an ‘outsider’ by the name of George Barlow who proved himself to be a coarse and callous man who savored his position of unabated authority. With the Court’s endorsement, he intentionally targeted Quakers with desirable property so that he may personally confiscate their goods for his own personal profit and gain, as well as take those with little means simply to affect the most amount of suffering. Barlow, in his greed and desire to appease the courts for official recognition, was instrumental in causing Daniel to come close to losing his house and everything he had when around 1655 he and other prominent citizens became involved in serious religious dissension, opposing the church authorities in Plymouth. So his brother John stepped in and helped him retain his property when he was fined for supporting newly arrived Quakers by invoking a nearly forgotten old English law a where man could be declared legally dead by the courts and his property made over to his heirs.

Threatened with financial ruin by the repeated court appearances and exorbitant fines imposed upon him, the shrewed old Quaker, while unyielding in his religious convictions, took advantage of this law and caused his estate to be administered in his own life time, and thereby preventing any great personal loss.

His wife Hannah died in March 1664 from complications arising from the birth of Daniel II who was born ten days earlier. But at 50 years old, Daniel remarried two years later on June 2, 1666 , to 29 year old Ann Ewer, the daughter of fellow Quaker, Thomas Ewer. Together, they had three more children. In a strange twist of fate, George Barlow became reliant on his children and grandchildren for support in his later years, many of whom became Quakers and were in fact married to Daniel’s descendants.

TIMELINE

1646

George Fox (1624-1691) had discovered that “truth is to be found by direct experience of the inner voice of God speaking to the soul.” Without any formal religious training or background, he started preaching this belief. He was a charismatic speaker and quickly gained converts to his new faith.  After several years of growth, it was decided to send believers abroad to spread the news to others.

Both Massachusetts Bay Colony and Plymouth Colony had heard the rumblings of the Quaker movement. They were both also facing rising dissatisfaction of the established church from colonists who came to the New World due to religious persecutions only to encounter more persecutions at their new home.

1652

Mary Dyer, a close friend of Anne Hutchinson (of the Antinomian controversy fame) sailed with Roger Williams on a political mission to England. While there she met and became a ardent follower of George Fox and the Quaker faith.

1656

After starting out in the Barbados, two women journeyed to Boston in 1656 to spread the word:  Anne Austin and Mary Fisher.  Within a week a small band of eight more Quakers arrived at Boston Harbor from London, England.  In October 1656 (shortly after the arrival of the Quakers) Massachusetts Bay Colony established the following law:

“Whereas there is a cursed sect of heretics lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers…” upon entering within a jurisdiction, “shall be forthwith committed to the house of correction, and at their entrance to be severely whipped, and by the master thereof be kept constantly to work, and none suffered to speak with them…” and it is ordered “that what person or persons soever shall revile the office or person of the magistrates or ministers, as is usual with Quakers, such person or persons shall be severely whipped, or pay the sum of five pounds.”

Nov 1656, Daniel’s sixth child, John, was born.

1657

Upon her return to America from England, Mary Dyer, accompanied by Ann Burden, made a stop-over in the Massachusetts Bay Colony on her journey home to Rhode Island so that Ms Burden could settle the estate of her deceased husband in Boston. By this time, the Massachusetts Bay Colony had begun implementing a series of harsh laws against those who had become members of “The Religious Society of Friends“, or held sympathies towards them, so Mary Dyer and Ann Burden were arrested almost immediately upon setting foot on Massachusetts soil as undesired missionaries of the outlawed religion.

Preceding Ms. Dyer’s and Ms Burden’s arrest by two days were the arrests of two young Quaker missionaries, Christopher Holder and John Copeland, who had disrupted a church service in Salem. A member of the church, Samuel Shattuck, was arrested along with them as a sympathizer when he attempted to come to their aid after church officials wrestled Holder and Copeland to the floor and had stuffed a glove and a handkerchief down their throats to prevent them from further speaking. Starved, beaten and whipped, the three men spent the next two and half months in jail.

Also jailed were Holder and Copeland’s host, Salem church members, Lawrence and Cassandra Southwick. Though Lawrence was released, his wife remained imprisoned for seven weeks for having in her possession a paper written by their guests.

Meanwhile, Mary Dyer’s husband, a man of some political influence and credibility as a Secretary for the colony of Rhode Island, successfully petitioned the release of his wife. Her travelling companion, however, was expelled from Massachusetts not for being found in a court of law as being a Friend, though, but because of her “guilt” through her association with Mary Dyer and was forcibly returned to England. Ms Burden was in fact required to pay for the expenses incurred by her expulsion with what little monies she had collected from the settlement of her husbands accounts .

Shortly after their release from jail,Christopher Holder and John Copeland first went to Martha’s Vineyard but was turned away by Thomas Mayhew, and then on August 20, 1657, arrived in Sandwich where they were welcomed by many families, including those of brothers Daniel and Stephen Wing.

Oct 14 – Massachusetts Bay Colony Court Order - A fine of £100 to be charged to anyone providing a Quaker entry into jurisdiction, plus 40 shillings per hour for entertaining a Quaker. Additionally, any Quaker man presuming to enter the jurisdiction after suffering the penalty provided by the law passed a year earlier, “shall for the first offense have one ear cut off…and for the second offense shall have his other ear cut off…and every woman Quaker that hath suffered the law here, that shall presume to come into this jurisdiction, shall be severely whipped…and so also for her coming again she shall be alike used as aforesaid; and for every Quaker, he or she, that shall a third time herein again offend, they shall have their togues bored through with a hot iron…“

Shortly after this court order, Plymouth Colony enacted its first anti-Quaker law.  It called for the following:

Those entertaining a foreign Quaker were to be fined £5 or be whipped.

Residents seeing a Quaker were to advise the constable or be censured.

The constable was to try to apprehend the visitor and bring him to a Magistrate.

The Magistrate was to jail the visitor and assess the charges of jail and costs of transport out of the Colony.

The Quaker was to engage to leave and not return, or else to stay in jail.

Fines for meetings were forty shillings against the speaker, forty shillings against the house owner and ten shillings per hearer.

Initially there was no provision that foreign Quakers were to be whipped.

1658

Early in the year the Plymouth court ruled that certain groups of townsmen would lose their status of freemen. These included Quakers or manifest encouragers of them as well as those who refuse to take the oath of fidelity.  The Quakers felt that to give an oath was blasphemous as it would put the colony above God.

The colony also reinterpreted a law enacted in 1651 which provided a ten shilling fine for anyone neglecting worship and for settup up another church service. They simply replaced the word and with or so now there would be two separate offenses (and fines), instead of one.

The Southwicks, with their son, Josiah, spent twenty weeks in jail for their religious beliefs and incurring such fines that in the following year so as to collect unpaid fees, the authorities found it justifiable to have their children, Provided and Daniel, to be sold as slaves and removed to the Barbadoes Islands. Thankfully, this was prevented, and the Southwick family scurried to New York to live.

Daniel Wing officially declared his affiliation with the Quakers who had established a Friends meeting at Spring Hill in Sandwich, the first in America, and between the months of March to December, was arrested and brought before the Courts a total of five times and fined extensively. By October of that year, he, his brother Stephen, Thomas Ewer, and six others were not only no longer legally given admittance into the town of Sandwich, but risked execution, for on the 19th of that month, the Court order was passed that “banish both resident and visiting Quakers by pain of death if they return”. Ingeniously, however, by early December with the aid of his brother John, Daniel with foresight had his estate confirmed to his children in order to escape the fines levied due to his Quakerism, thereby preserving his home and personal assets, and in light of the Southwicks, his family, as his seventh child, Beulah was born just a month later.

1659

In October, Thomas Ewer, who would later become Daniel’s father-in-law, was sentenced to lie “neck and heels” during their pleasure for “tumultuous and seditious carriages and speeches” in court and assured him another outburst will send him away.

In Boston, Mary Dyer, Marmaduke Stevenson and William Robinson were escorted and consoled by Rev Daniel Gould of RI, as they were to be hanged their crimes of missionary work within the Massachusets Colony. Mary got reprieve, Daniel recieved 30 lashes for his concerns, Marmaduke and William were hanged.

1660

June 1, Mary once again returned to Boston and was hanged for her efforts.

June 8 – Daniel Wing and Thomas Ewer, and several others fined £5 for refusing to take oath of allegiance

November – Daniel’s eighth child, Deborah, was born

1661

May 22 – Court Order – Quakers are to “be stripped naked from the middle upwards, and tied to a cart’s tail and whipped through the town;” also to “be branded with the letter R on their left shoulder,” and “the constables of the several towns are empowered…to impress cart, oxen, and other assitance for the execution of this order…”

1662

Delivered before Gov Endecott by Samuel Shattuck, the Quaker persecutions ceased by the order of King Charles.

1 Salome GOSS b: 13 Jan 1763 d: 7 May 1804
  + Aaron MOORE b: 7 Nov 1761 d: 1804
    2 Geneva MOORE b: 1790 d: 1866
      + Aaron GRAHAM b: 6 Mar 1788 d: 1875
        3 John Chandler GRAHAM b: 4 Nov 1823 d: 27 Feb 1907
          + Susan Marie WOOD b: 3 Jun 1829 d: 2 Dec 1870
            4 Charles H GRAHAM b: 28 Nov 1849 d: 1916
              + Mary Ella SWAIN b: 3 Jan 1851 d: 1925
                5 Sarah G GRAHAM b: 30 May 1877 d: 17 Jan 1958
                  + Harry Lester WING b: 23 Jul 1879 d: 4 Jul 1961
                    6 Arthur G WING b: 1914 d: 26 Apr 1974

Links:
Resolved White / William Vassal / Simon Bradstreet / Thomas Dudley / Ann Dudley

There were less than a dozen investors and Charter signers, primarily from the old English landed gentry class in service to the newly appointed Governor, who remained with the Company and came to America with the political and legal authority as “Court Assistants” to administer to the affairs of the common settlers and establish a rule of law within the challenging early days of the founding of Massachusetts. Rules were therefore eventually implemented to slowly phase in and admit select segments of the general male population. “Mechanics”, surveyors, engineers and other skilled specialized tradesmen were encouraged to become “Freemen” so as to aid in the civil transformation of a growing and diverse band of refugees who found themselves pressed along the edges of a formidable wilderness in desperate squalor to a functional, prosperous and God-faring society.

Initially, while John Winthrop and Thomas Dudley were unfortunately engaged in a personal test of wills regarding the physical location of their new home upon their arrival in 1632 to “Trimountain” (modern-day Boston), and squandering precious time needed to build before the arrival of winter (at great mortal expense to their weary companions), it was quickly determined that only the most pious of Puritan men who were not already members of the clergy could be admitted as a Free Man. A Freeman candidate was required to renounce all prior Church affiliations and swear an “oath of fidelity” towards God, the Puritan Philosophy, and most significantly, to the governing authority of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. This oath entitled them to the right to file legal suits, conduct basic business transactions and voice their concerns of community issues, but it also obligated them to many political, legal and administrative responsibilities which positioned these candidates to become potentially required to fulfill unreasonable demands. Essentially, the Massachusetts Bay Colony’s interpretation of the Puritan Philosophy dictated that the only way a man could enjoy basic civil rights was to first prove himself before a jury of “saintly men”. This jury typically consisted of members of the Court of Assistants and ranking Pastors who would determine that he had in fact been called upon as one of “God’s Elect” and therefore deemed to be virtuous, moral and beyond reproach to become a leader among ordinary men. These requirements were perceived many as very subjective, if not too stringent, and deterred many potential candidates from being seduced into an obedience to the personal whims of a developing theocratic or oligarchic ruling class. Therefore, a second phase was implemented within a few short years in response to the demands of a growing population. This new “phase” included the “oath of allegiance” which was opened to any man who faithfully attended to Church and proven to his peers of being of good social standing and moral personal character.

While many of those who emigrated to America as Puritans simply sought religious and social refuge from England, hindsight seems to tragically indicate that they were manipulated through their need for religious and civil guidance as they set out to bring into reality Winthrop’s grand vision of God’s “City upon the hill”. The Freemen system, intentionally designed to enable the Governor and his Court of Assistants, evolved into the formation of a lower governing body of legislators within the Massachusetts Bay Colony who voted on community-level issues that would be passed along to be hopefully considered and enacted upon by the upper house, the Court of Assistants. This basic organizational bicameral structure was adopted nearly 160 years later by the founders of the “United States” as the “House of Representatives” (Assembly of Freemen) and the “Senate” (Court of Assistants). But unlike our modern government structure, there was at this time no central American government with a system of checks and balances, nor was the concept of separation of Church and State ever even considered. They believed in the contrary, in fact, as they intentionally established no channels independent from the church hierarchy through which the communities could freely communicate and express their individual concerns. Political control was successfully leveraged by manipulating the settlers with the fear of God’s Wrath. This was exercised through the influence of wealthy educated “ecclesiasts” and “divines” whose politically motivated religious propaganda castigated those who worshiped outside their particularly strict religious doctrine, but more significantly, justified the Colony’s harsh actions and maintained their oppressive influence over the already stressed and desperately dependent planters.

From the perspective of the well-entrenched members of the old English ruling class, the Puritan expansion into the new world was simply a means of exploiting natural resources and tragically, Native Americans, Quakers, “Antinomians”, Anabaptists, and others who happened to hinder this intent, as we will learn, were simply regarded expendable as non-conforming burdens upon this new “society”. Unfortunately, despite the obvious foreknowledge provided through their correspondence with the “Separatist” clergy who confronted and settled a vast uncharted wilderness twelve years earlier, and despite even being greeted and aided by a representative envoy from nearby “Separatists” frontier outpost of Salem Village, the newly established Puritan society was quickly plagued by frustration, personal conflict, power struggles and least tolerable, dissent.

Composer John Bull

                     /Mathew WING(E) b: 1549 d: 16 Oct 1614
             /John WING(E) b: 1584 d: 1629
             |       \Mary b: 1553
     /Daniel WING b: Abt 1616 d: 10 Mar 1698
     |       |       /Stephen BACHILER
     |       \Deborah BACHILER
     |               \Deborah BATES
Bachelor WING b: 10 Dec 1671 d: 22 Apr 1740
     |       /Thomas EWER b: Abt 1603
     \Ann EWER b: Abt 1637 d: Abt 1720
             |       /William LEARNED
             \Sarah LEARNED b: 30 Sep 1604 d: 1652
                     \Judith GILLMAN

My earliest known Wing ancestor is Matthew Wynge, a prosperous tailor within the growing influential merchant class of English society, however, it is with his son, John Winge, that our lineage is heralded. Born in Banbury England in 1584 and educated at the Queen’s College of Oxford University, John became a clergyman of the established Anglican church at the age of 19. Shortly after accepting a full-time ministerial position, he married Deborah Bachiler, daughter of the controversial ex-Vicar of Wherwell, Reverend Stephen Bachiler. Harboring Protestant ideals during England’s tumultuous times, he was eventually offered the prestigious post of Reverend at the Hague Cathedral in the Netherlands and stood before Europe’s most influential aristocrats and intellects of that era, including an audience of “The Queen Of Hearts” Elisabeth Of Bohemia, daughter of England’s ruling Stuart King, James I. The King, Frederick V, & Queen Of Bohemia, along with two of their eight children, were forced into exile in 1622 by the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximillian, as a result of losing key military battles early in the Thirty Years War between the Protestants and Catholics which ravaged much of Europe. Almost serendipitously, the eldest daughter of Frederick and Elisabeth, named Elisabeth of Palatine, remained with her grandmother as a child, and later as an adult, grew to become the one of the first women recognized as a philosopher. She maintained an amicable 40 year relationship with Renes Descartes, primarily through personal letters, as his intellectual adversary. In later years she is known to have befriended George Fox and advocated his philosophy; the relevance of which we will come to appreciate later on. The proximity to Fredrick V brought Rev John Winge under the close scrutiny of the Archbishop of Canterbury William Laud and became cause for official international correspondence between the diplomats of England and Holland. A few of Rev John Winge’s sermons, undoubtedly heard by the banished royal family, were published as a set of five books considered by many as being controversial for the day. One of the books is currently held at John Adams Library of the Boston Museum. Three others are currently held by The British Museum, and the fifth, “The Crown Conjugal“, which was published in 1620, is an often quoted revolutionary Puritan tract advocating the spiritual equality of women. It was gratefully received from a private collector by the “Wing Family Of America” genealogical society during its 2008 annual National Family Reunion held at its ancestral home in Sandwich, Massachusetts. I not only had the distinct privilege of seeing first-hand the only existing 390 year-old original copy, but have since acquired possession of a facsimile copied from that 70+ page original.

The Separatists were the first of the religiously motivated, followed by the Puritans, to arrive in the Americas armed with little more than faith in their convictions, limited provisions and the aid of different investors and land charters. These charters, legally binding contracts, were agreed upon by the investor group, the King, and the “Planters”, and they dictated the financial terms , the geographical boundaries of their particular proposed settlement, and established ground rules of governance. The Separatist “pilgrims“, with Richard Warren and young Resolved White among them, were anxious to set afoot on land as they realized that should they settle along Cape Cod where their vessel had stalled, their original patent and its trade agreements which specified their settling along the northern coast of Virginia would no longer apply; therefore, in 1620, they illegally drafted a civil contract while still aboard ship that would later be popularly (but mistakenly) referred to as the beginning of Democracy in America, “The Mayflower Compact“. Many of England’s Protestant landed gentry class were in support of Frederick, King of Bohemia, and his fight against the oppression of the Holy Roman Empire. One such person was Theodiphilus Clinton, the fourth Earl of Lincoln in Sempringham, who in 1625, sought the advice of his estate steward and personal secretary, Thomas Dudley, on the feasibility of sending mercenary troops into the German region to fight in support of the exhiled King and his Puritan cause. Clinton, the one-time financially beleaguered Earl, once again heeded Dudley’s thoughtful advice, however, and chose not to become financially and politically entangled in the hopeless and brutal “world war”. The philanthropic Earl did eventually find historical prominence when, beginning in 1627, he informally hosted within his estate, a one-time monastery, the convening of liberal minded Puritans such as Roger Williams, Rev John Cotton, Thomas Hooker, and others, to discuss the future of Puritanism and the potential for religious liberty to flourish within the wilds of America.

John Winthrop, a renowned lawyer, accepted invitation to Sempringham explicitly to meet with Isaac Johnson, the future benefactor to “Winthrop’s Fleet” and husband of The Lady Arbella, Theodiphilus Clinton’s sister. It is quite probable this all initially occurred with the strong encouragement of, and with arrangements implemented by, Thomas Dudley. These meetings, held over the course of the next two years, resulted in the formation of the Massachusetts Bay Company charter. Penned by Dudley and Winthrop and signed by ten other men, including William Vassal, on August 29, 1629, it formally expressed their desired intention of establishing a New England colony founded in Puritanism, post haste, with Matthew Craddock as its Governor and John Humphrey as Deputy Governor. Oddly, none of the signers were clergy, but in fact, administrators, capitalists and lawyers. After much political financial and legal wrangling while still in England, the Massachusetts Bay Company, comprising of 127 investors representing approximately 300 families and led by John Winthrop, began settling the Boston Bay area in 1630 as a corporate colony. Wisely foreseeing the need for labor and specialized craft and trade skills for the building of their new home in America, the Puritans and their investors permitted additional passage aboard their ships for select people not of the particular community or Church in exchange for basic but essential services needed to secure the success of the venture and the community. Those who had the means to invest hard-earned currency in such very high risk ventures were led to believe that they were in effect purchasing entitlements that they may not have otherwise enjoyed in England once landing upon dry land, but the political arrangements which secretly transpired aboard the “Lady Arbella” while in transit were such that their purchased liberties were all but ignored. They had become excluded from the decision making process in an intentionally altered theocracy, and under the narrowly interpreted Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, the immigrants were coerced into strictly adhering to the authority of its Governor, lawyer John Winthrop, who had ascended to the position following Matthew Craddock’s abrupt resignation due to conflicting philosophical differences just prior to embarking.With powerful supporters conveniently remaining in England, the corporation, in its political prowess, quickly and masterfully organized and began implementing many new laws, agencies and trade arrangements, so that by the 1650′s the Massachusetts Bay Colony became a wholly successful and nearly autonomous political entity. Rev John Winge had recently returned to England, but died in London at the age of 45 from a long term illness, which he alluded to in his letters, the very same year the Massachusetts Bay Colony charter was signed.

“…no hand but Gods should have withholden myne; but such was the infirmity of myne owne body, that for divers days I could not write at all, and such is the sorrowful distraction of a sick family, that (as yet) I am neither able to write soe advisedly of my self as I would, nor goe abroad [word marked out] to sift out…Thus your Lo[rdshi]p hath the first f…ts of my recovered frailty, I am yet but feeble, and unfit for this, and unable to doe more, till God shall give me strength to travayle; which…” [Letter written on Sept. 28 1624 to Britain’s Ambassador To Holland, Sir Dudley Carleton, in reply to the Ambassador’s inquiry into Rev John Winge’s knowledge of the "Amboyna Massacre"]

The circumstances precipitating the return of Rev. John Winge and his family to England are not specifically understood or well documented, however, it may be safe to assume that the ambitions of the family patriarch, Rev Stephen Bachiler, could have played a significant role in the decision; as even our forebear’s untimely death did not seem to dissuade the determined Bachiler from acting upon his political and religious desires. How incredibly frustrating it must have been, then, for the aging Rev Bachiler, a political maverick who in earlier years helped quietly spawn the Puritan revolution in England, to witness in irony the successful formation of companies led by men seemingly less inspired than his protégé. One today can only imagine the dreams held in Rev Bachiler’s heart or dare conceive the political plans craftily conspired in his mind. Yet, as fanciful as they may seem to be, our playful ponderings would be neither unfounded nor unwarranted, because in London less than a year after the demise of Rev John Winge, the Rev Bachiler is documented as becoming instrumental in the formation of a colonizing company, comprising mostly of businessmen and merchants believed to be even more philosophically liberal than those men who formed the Massachusetts Bay Company, known as the “Company of Husbandmen“. When considering the amount of time, resources, and leg-work historically proven to be needed to formulate and implement plans as lofty as colonization, it is quite probable that Rev John Winge had been called back from Holland by Rev Bachiler far in advance of the documented introduction of the idea in the late 1620′s in order to fulfill a role of an official capacity similar in scope to John Cotton’s relationship with the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Perhaps the only shortfall in the company’s dealings was in the forming of sound political backing, as, unlike the the Massachusetts Bay Company who established a long-standing relationship with the Earl of Lincoln over the course of several years, they opportunistically sought the attention of feudal capitalist and fervent supporter of the throne, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, whose experience in colonizing of America spanned nearly 40 years. It was through his patents that the Jamestown and Popham colonies came into brief existence. But the determination of the meager populations, unlike the Puritan’s dream of religious and personal liberty, was based solely on the promise of wealth and therefore quickly waned into dissolution as they were quickly met with hardships. It was quite possible this experience alone, despite the questionable success, the Company of Husbandmen found attractive of Gorges; and the more important fact of his sworn disdain for Puritanism, which placed him on the wrong side of a swelling political tide, must have undoubtedly been cautiously considered by the anxious Bachiler and his company.