A History of the American People

settled at a crowded outdoor meeting in Cambridge. There was a great danger of a tumult that day. [The antinomians] grew into fierce speeches; and some laid hands on others; but seeing themselves too weak [in numbers], they grew quiet. Winthrop was triumphantly reelected governor, the antinomians beingquite left out' in the voting. So from 1637 Winthrop was free to
resume his clear and insistent policy of imposing orthodoxy on the colony by punishment,
exclusion, and banishment.
But doctrinal orthodoxy was the not the only measure of a man's fitness to govern, as
Winthrop learned to his cost. His natural authority was based to some extent on his descent from
the old squirearchy of England, and his manifest possession of means to keep up his station in
the New World. In 1639, however, Winthrop discovered that his English agent had cheated him,
and that his affairs were in a muddle. The agent was convicted of fraud and sentenced to have his
ears cut off. But that did not get the governor out of his financial difficulties. He found himself
£2,600 in debt-a formidable sum-and was forced to sell land on both sides of the Atlantic. His
financial plight became obvious. Friends and political supporters rallied round. They collected
£500 to tide him over. They donated 3,000 acres to his wife. But Winthrop's opponents pointed
fingers. The Puritans did not exactly insist that poverty was a sign of wickedness. But there was
a general assumption that the godly flourished and that if a man persistently failed to prosper-or
if financial catastrophe suddenly struck him-it was because he did not, for some reason, enjoy
God's favor. This idea was very potent and passed into the mainstream of American social
consciousness. Winthrop was its first victim. In 1640 he was demoted to deputy governor. Some
purists even proposed to ban him, and another unsuccessful man, from office for life, because they werte growne poor.' But this measure did not pass. Indeed, Winthrop struggled back into the governorship two years later, when his earthly fortunes revived a little. Embittered and soured by his political vicissittude andthe unregeneracy
of man,' he dealt ever more severely with dissenters. He fell foul of an unorthodox preacher
called Samuel Gorton, and commanded him to shut up or leave the colony. Gorton's
congregation sent a weird and impudent letter' to the Massachusetts government, comparing the Blessed Samuel to Christ and Winthrop to Pontius Pilate-it referred to him asthe Great and
Honoured Idol General, now set up in Massachusetts' and to his supporters as a Generation of Vipers.' Almost beside himself with rage at thesehorrible and detestable blasphemies, against
God and all Magistry,' Winthrop sent three commissions of forty soldiers to arrest them. He had
them tried and put in irons, but they continued preaching, until he took off their shackles and
simply dispatched them into the wilderness.' As a result of this high-handedness, Winthrop was
again demoted to deputy governor in 1644. He wrote in his journal that he feared rule by the
rabble, an actual democracy, the meanest and worst of all forms of government.' The amount of arguing and political maneuvering was intense. Early Massachusetts was a remarkably argumentative and politically conscious society-reflecting of course the Civil War then raging in England, which was a battle of words as well as arms. Winthrop published a treatise defending his actions, saying that a wise magistrate had no alternative but to stamp out a firebrand like Gorton before he set fire to the whole house. He said that wise men had to be given discretionary power to follow God's law as they saw it. One of the deputies attacked this view as outrageous: he said the tract should beburnt under the gallows' and added that `if some other of the
magistrates had written it, it would have cost him his ears, if not his head.''' But Winthrop
survived this controversy too, won back public favor, regained the governorship in 1646, and
held it to his death three years later.