Uncontrollable Church Protests

England in the 1640s endured unprecedented religious fracturing. The momentum for religious freedom spread like wildfire, fueling the political divide in a nation at war with itself. Even the Sunday morning church service was not immune to the conflict as religious protesters disrupted sermons with angry outbursts, shouting out messages with all the fury of ancient prophets. Filled with righteous indignation, Quakers, Levelers, Anabaptists, Separatists, and others burst into church gatherings to challenge the doctrines of their ministers. This happened so often that on December 22, 1646 the House of Lords ordered local authorities to arrest anyone “who shall disturb any minister in holy orders” while he is “exercising his public calling.” 

The church protests eventually spilled overseas as religious rebels continued pouring into New England colonies, and even Harvard College was not immune. The school, which began as a training center for Puritan ministers, held regular services on their campus. In July of 1654, during an infant baptism ceremony, one man entered the chapel to stop the service and instruct them of their errors. If his objections were more academic than other church protests, it was because the protester was none other than the college president himself. The views of Henry Dunster, Harvard’s first college president, had moved away from Puritan orthodoxy toward the Anabaptist practice of adult baptism. He was soon dismissed from his office at the college, taken to court, exiled from Boston, and his last few years were spent as a preacher in Plymouth Colony. 

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“So the Priests, and the Prophets, and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the House of the Lord. Now when Jeremiah had made an end of speaking..., and all the people took him, and said, Thou shalt die the death.”

(Jeremiah 26:7-8; 1599 Geneva Bible)

See: The Life of Henry Dunster (1872) in Google Books.

Twelve Honest Men

In November 1620, the men aboard the Mayflower signed a document known as the Mayflower Compact, agreeing that they would come together as a political body to create “just and equal laws” for their new colony. One of their first laws in Plymouth Colony paved the way for jury trials. On December 17, 1623, the town court ordered that all matters of crime, trespass, and debt disputes “should be tried by the verdict of twelve honest men... in form of a jury."

Before this, crimes and legal disputes were handled within regular town meetings under the oversight of the governor, but as the colony grew, the town meeting became unwieldy for many tasks. The Pilgrim’s desire for freedom in religious practice did not mean they rejected the semblance of law and order, so as citizens of England they conducted their affairs in ways familiar to them, and that would meet the approval of governing authorities. Their differences with the Church of England may have motivated the young colony to work all the more to show themselves as conscientious and law-abiding citizens and loyal subjects of His Majesty, King James.

Although the jury system was rarely needed in the earliest days, it was certainly tested a few years later when the first murder occurred in their midst. In 1630, one of the original Mayflower passengers was put on trial before a jury and found guilty of "willful murder by plain and notorious evidence." He was soon after hanged for his crime. 

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“And I charged your Judges that same time, saying, Hear the controversies between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. Ye shall have no respect of person in judgment, but shall hear the small as well as the great: ye shall not fear the face of man: for the judgment is God's....” 

(Deuteronomy 1:16-17;1599 Geneva Bible)