Fear of an oath

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Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014
1-1-2001
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John M. Lund
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Lund, John M., "Fear of an oath : piety, hypocrisy, and the dilemma of Puritan identity." (2001). Doctoral
Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1287.
https://doi.org/10.7275/86e4-dy69 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1287
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FEAR OFAN OATH:
PIETY, HYPOCRISY, AND
THE DILEMMA OF PURITAN IDENTITY
A
Dissertation Presented
by
JOHN M, LUND
Submitted to the Graduate School ofthe
University ofMassachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
May 2001
Department ofHistory
©
Copyright by John M. Lund 2001
All Rights Reserved
FEAR OF AN OATH:
PIETY, HYPOCRISY, AND
THE DILEMMA OF PURITAN IDENTITY
A
Dissertation Presented
by
JOHN M. LUND
Approved as to style and content by;
Barry tevy. Chair
J.
—
rA^Q
Jo
Gerald McFarland, Member
Stephen Nissenbaum, Member
Mason Lowance '
I.
Kathy Peiss, Department Chair
Department ofHistory
ABSTRACT
FEAR OF AN OATH:
PIETY, HYPOCRISY, AND
THE DILEMMA OF PURITAN IDENTITY
MAY
2001
JOHN M. LUND, SUSQUEHANNA
B.A., UNIVERSITY
M.A., UNIVERSITY OF VERMONT
PH. D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST
Directed by: Professor Barry Levy
J.
Despite the fact that Puritans viewed themselves as honest embodiments of
God's Word, they were routinely condemned as consummate liars, dangerous
sharpers, and seditious malefactors. The perception of Puritans as hypocrites and
tricksters began in Elizabethan England and gained wide currency during the Stuart
monarchies. The disreputable attributes attached to Puritans followed them across the
Atlantic when they settled New England. Throughout the seventeenth century the
stigma ofdishonesty and deceptiveness tainted perceptions ofthe Puritan plantations.
By the eighteenth century, the English speaking world universally held New
Englanders in low repute. Like their Puritan forebears. New Englanders during the
decades prior to the Revolution were seen as deceptive, dishonest, and crafty.
In Old England, Puritans created a cultural identity based upon privileging oaths
as a sacred form of discipline and this preoccupation with oaths played a major role in
generating their reputation for dishonesty and hypocrisy. They antagonized their
neighbors by attacking the popular vernacular habit of swearing low-grade oaths.
Worse still, they lied or found ways of lying to circumvent the oaths mandated by the
crown and church to enforce religious conformity. Their reaction against English state
oaths made them enemies of the crown and church and led them into exile on the
Continent or in New England. In New England, Puritans created a civil and
ecclesiastical polity complete with its own loyalty oaths which substituted the English
oaths ofallegiance. These innovations enraged the home government and generated
iv
scathing denunciations of New England
Puritans. Resistance to English trade
regulations, especially the subterfuge practiced around the required customs-house
oaths, similarly contributed to Puritan's low repute.
Puritans fretted over their reputation for dishonesty. In New England, the
social structure they created aimed to eliminate hypocrisy and identify the godly.
Nonetheless, the decades of oath controversies led Puritans to become adept at verbal
play and resorting to literal interpretations oftruth. These characteristics came to be
recognized as a key component of the region's identity and endured into the eighteenth
century to become the hallmark of the 'Yankee' personality.
V
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ABSTRACT
iv
CHAPTER
THE ORDEAL OF 'ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND' AND
I.
'DAME PURECRAFT': THE CONFLICT
OVER SWEARING CRUDE OATHS AND
THE PURITAN CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE
1
RELIGIOUS TESTS, EX OFRCIO OATHS,
II.
CASUISTRY, EXILE, AND MIGRATION
TO NEW ENGLAND
27
HDELITY, FREEMEN, COVENANTS, AND CONFLICT:
III.
PURITAN NEW ENGLAND DURING
THE RRST CHARTER PERIOD
61
NEW ENGLAND'S REFORMATION OF MANNERS:
IV.
GOVERNING VERBAL BEHAVIOR
129
V. THE CASE OF WILLIAM PENN'S WILL 168
THE ART OF SMUGGLING: CUSTOMS-HOUSE OATHS,
VI.
"CHEATING THE DEVIL," ANDTHE DILEMMA
OF COMMERCIAL SPEECH 212
EPILOGUE 258
APPENDIX: ORIGINAL CONNOTATIONS OF
'PURITAN' AND 'YANKEE' AND A BRIEF
SUMMARY OF THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF EARLY
NEW ENGLAND 272
BIBLIOGRAPHY 279
vi
CHAPTER
I
THE ORDEALOF 'ZEAL-OF-THE-LAND' AND 'DAMEPURECRAFT'
:
THE CONFLICT OVER SWEARING CRUDE OATHS
AND THE PURITAN CULTURE OF DISCIPLINE
Playwright Ben Jonson incorporated prevailing perceptions ofPuritans in his
1614 comical satire BartholomewFair, a play about contemporary social life and
manners. The prologue, dedicated to James I, alluded to Puritanism by warning that
"the zealous noyse of your lands Faction" which "vext" England would be included. In
the play, two characters, "Zeal-of-the-Land'' and "Dame Purecraft," represented the
"painful Puritan] brethren." Zeal was described to audiences as "Rabbi Busy" while
I
Purecraft was characterized as "a most elect hypocrite." (Purecraft's son-in-law, "John
Little-Wit," even boasted that he could appear a Puritan by being "Hypocrite enough,
though were never so straight lac'd.") Purecraft's daughter, "Win Little-Wit" who
I
was married to John, knew Puritans disdained what they considered "prophane"
festivities, including the annual Bartholomew Fair, but hoped to attend so that she and
her husband might appear to be "in fashion." To accomplish their goal, "Win Little-
Wit" feigned an illness and told her mother that the malady could only be cured by
satisfying her "longing to eate Pigge" at Bartholomew Fair. In a parody of the Puritan
predilection for Old Testament law, Purecraft consulted Zeal to find out if her daughter
"may commit the act." He determined that she could eat pig but not at Bartholomew
Fair. Lampooning the Puritan use of deductive syllogisms, the playwright had Zeal
announce: "Now Pigge, it is a meat, and a meat that is nourishing, and may be long'd
for, and so consequently eaten; it may be eaten; very exceeding well eaten." But, he
continued, "as a Bartholmew-pig, it cannot be eaten, for the very calling it a
Bartholmew-pigge, and to eat it so, is a spice of Idolatry and you make the Fayre, no
better then one of the high Places." Fearing for her daughter's health, Purecraft
implored "Brother Zeal-of-the-Land [toj thinke to make it as lawful as you can." He, in
turn, contrived a way. If the daughter wore a "vaile," he advised, "... and be
1
shadowed as it were, it may be eaten ... [at| the Fayre." Purecraft and Zeal even
agreed to chaperon the couple so that they could "be religious in midst of the
prophane."!
At the fair the Puritans gorged themselves, especially Zeal who declared he
would "eate exceedingly and prohesie." Yet even as he feasted. Zeal unleashed a
torrent of abuse on both the fair and its attendees. "ITlhe tents of the uncleane," "the
wares are the wares of the devil," "the merchandize of Babylon," "the peeping of
Popery upon the stals," he exclaimed. These denunciations led other characters at the
fair to condemn Zeal and his party. They labeled the Puritans "Fine ambling
hypocrites." They derided Zeal as a "stone puritane" and "an excellent right hypocrite."
When Zeal's disgust for the festivities overwhelmed him, he destroyed a vendor's
booth. "|T|his Idolatrous Grove of Images, this flasket of Idols! . . . which I will
pull downe." For his iconoclastic rampage, Zeal was arrested and thrown in the
stocks.2
The play presented an unmistakable moral lesson from this humorous episode:
annoying, hypocritical Puritans deserved to be placed in the stocks. To underscore the
point, the playwright had Dame Purecraft unmask England's "painful brethren" as
particularly disreputable rogues. Purecraft revealed how she disingenuously arranged
"marriages for our decayed Brethren with rich widows" in return "for a third part of
their wealth." She then exposed Zeal, excoriating him as the "the capitall Knave of the
land" who surreptitiously served as the executor for the estates of "deceased Brethren."
He earned his living by extorting money from rightful heirs for his oath when
"swearing the absolute gift of their inheritance." By the second decade of the
iR^n inncnn R;.^mew Fair in C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds.,
Ben Jonson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1938), VI:9-40; On anti-Puritan literature .n general
M^.H^n Anti Puritan Satire 1572^1642 (Hamden. Conn.: Archon Books,
see: William P.
1968).
2Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair in C. H. Herford, Percy and Evelyn Simpson, eds.,
Ben Jonson, VI:9-40.
2