English colonist William Vassall (1592–1656) is remembered both for promoting religious freedom in New England and commencing his family's ownership of slave plantations in the Caribbean. A patentee of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Vassall was among the merchants who petitioned Puritan courts for greater civil liberties and religious tolerance. In 1647, he and John Child published New-England’s Jonas cast up in London, a tract describing the efforts of colonial petitioners. By early 1648, Vassall moved to Barbados to establish a slave-labor sugar plantation. He and his descendants were among the Caribbean's leading planters, enslaving more than 3,865 people before Britain abolished slavery in 1833.
Family
William Vassall's paternal grandfather, Huguenot Jean Vassall, sent his son John to England from the family's native Normandy when religious dissension arose. A man of “great wealth,”Power, Vassalls at Belle House Neck, p. 30. John Vassall (1548–1625) fitted out and commanded two ships against the Spanish Armada, assistance rewarded by Queen Elizabeth I with a grant of arms.Calder, John Vassall and His Descendants, p. 5. The Vassall arms are included in the National Armada Memorial in Plymouth, England. Among the ships owned by John Vassall in part or whole was a Mayflower. It was not the vessel that famously carried settlers to Plymouth. See R. G. Marsden, "The Mayflower,” English Historical Review (19 October 1904), p. 675. In 1618, he purchased two shares of stock in the Virginia Company at a cost of £25.10,Folger, “The Descendants of Resolved White,” p. 256. beginning a centuries-long family tradition of investment in colonial enterprises. William was the son of John Vassall and his second wife, Anna Russell. He was baptized in Stepney, Middlesex, on 27 August 1592.Calder, John Vassall and His Descendants, p. 7. On 9 June 1613, he obtained a license to marry Anna King in Cold Norton, Essex. The couple had ten children; five daughters (Judith, Frances, Anna, Margaret, Mary) and one son (John) survived to adulthood.Surviving children of William Vassall and Anna King: Judith (b about 1619; m Mayflower passenger Resolved White), Frances (b about 1623, m James Adams), John (b about 1625, m Anna Lewis), Anna (bap 1628, m Nicholas Ware), Margaret (b about 1633, m Joshua Hobart), Mary (b about 1634, unmarried in 1655). See Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1872-73.
Massachusetts: 1628–1630 In March 1628, brothers William and Samuel Vassall were among the original patentees of the Massachusetts Bay Company.Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1871; Whitmore, The Massachusetts Civil List, p. 11. Both were named Assistants in 1629.Young, Chronicles of the First Planters, p. 71. Initially, William Vassall took an active role in company leadership. In 1629, he was appointed to the committee to consider the division of lands and to the committee to resolve orders.Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1871. On 26 August 1629, he was among the twelve men who signed the Cambridge Agreement and pledged to be ready “to embark for the said plantation” by 1 March 1630.Full text of the Cambridge Agreement in Young, p. 281-82.
In summer 1629, the Company sent “some fifty persons from Salem to begin the settlement of Charlestown.”Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, p. 110, 115. Two settlers were forced back to England when they attempted to establish an Episcopal church. John and Samuel Brown asked William and Samuel Vassall to represent them in the dispute. Attorney John Winthrop spoke on the company's behalf, defending the Browns’ removal. This was Vassall's first confrontation with Winthrop on the issue of religious tolerance. Winthrop always won. The Company confiscated the Browns’ private letters,Sidney Perley, The History of Salem, Massachusetts, vol. 1, 1924, p. 167. and the “principle was virtually laid down that the Episcopal form of worship would not be tolerated in the colony.”Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, p. 116.
At a 20 October 1629 meeting of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Winthrop was elected Governor, and Vassall was reelected as an Assistant. On 23 March 1630, they were among the eight men who attended the last Court of Assistants held in England, aboard the flagship Arbella at port in Southampton.Aspinwall, “William Vassall no Factionist,” p. 474, Young, Chronicles of the First Planters of the Colony of Massachusetts, p. 127. Within months, Vassall would sail to New England in the same fleet that carried Winthrop and the other Assistants,Aspinwall, “William Vassall no Factionist,” p. 474. perhaps aboard the Lyon. In total, fifteen ships transported about 1,500 people to Massachusetts in 1630. Their emigration initiated an event known as the Puritan Great Migration when as many as 21,000 people emigrated to New England between 1630 and 1640.Rebecca Beatrice Brooks, “The Great Puritan Migration." History of Massachusetts Blog, 24 May 2017.
According to Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley, “Mr. Vassal, one of the Assistants, and his Family” returned with the Lyon when it was sent back to England for provisions in July, a month after its arrival.Dudley, “To the Right Honourable, My very good Lady, The Lady Bridget,” p. 11. The Vassalls—including four children aged one through eleven—were not alone on the return voyage. Dudley notes that some fled the colony “out of fear of famine” and others “out of dislike of our Government.” When the family returned to an economically stable New England in five years, they chose to make their home not in Massachusetts Bay, but in its more tolerant neighbor to the south, Plymouth Colony.
Scituate, Plymouth: 1635–1645 The Vassalls’ third transatlantic crossing was aboard the Blessing in summer 1635.The 1635 Blessing passenger list gives the ages of the Vassall children: Judith, 16; Frances, 12; John, 10; Ann, 6; Margaret, 2; Mary, 1. The family stayed with Rev. John Eliot in Roxbury,Rev. John Eliot identified Anna King Vassall as a member of his congregation; see Harris, “The Vassalls of New England,” p. 57. while Vassall claimed an extensive tract of “very advantageously situated land” in the new Plymouth settlement of Scituate.Power, “Vassalls at Belle House Neck,” p. 59. In 1636, he built one of the first homes in the village, naming it “Belle House,”Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 29. and on 27 November, he joined the village church.Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1871; Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 29.
Vassall's estate was “by far the largest tract allotted to any one settler,” and Scituate's minister, Rev. John Lothrop, was among the fifteen freemen who asked the court to reduce its size, arguing that their allotments were too small for sustenance. On 1 January 1637, the court decided in favor of the freemen and reduced Vassall's lot by 200-300 acres.Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 29-30. The decision required the freemen to maintain a ferry. They apparently failed to do so, for on 2 April 1638, the court granted Vassall 200 acres “to keep a ferry over the north river” and set its rates.Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 31. Vassall's efforts to enlarge his land continued, and on 3 December 1638, he was granted an additional 150 acres “provided he take the oath of fidelity.”Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1872. He took the oath on 1 February 1639, and on 3 June, the court settled “his differences with his neighbors at the harbor” and made final the 150-acre addition.Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 30. On 3 December 1639, Vassall received permission to make an oyster bank in the North River near his estate, West Newland. Use of the bank by others required his license.
While in Scituate, Vassall served on a council of war formed in September 1642 when settlers feared Narragansett reprisal,Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 160; Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1871. and in 1643, he appeared on the list of men able to bear arms.1643 List of Men Able to Bear Arms, Plymouth Colony Records, p. 191. Because he owned one of the few surveying instruments in the colony, Vassall was sometimes called upon to set bounds between disputing landowners.Carpenter, William Vassall, p. 69; see Anderson, The Great Migration Begins, p. 1871. But Vassall was best known for causing, not resolving, controversy, and he became a leader in the dispute that permanently split the Scituate Church in two.
The issue of baptism had long made the Scituate Church “inharmonious,”Power, “The Second Church of Christ,” p. 169. and when Rev. Lothrop moved to Barnstable in October 1639, more than half the congregation moved with him.Otis, Genealogical Notes of Barnstable, 1888-90, p. 336. The seven male members who remained—Vassall among them—were themselves divided. Four of the seven called Charles Chauncy to be their minister.Carpenter, William Vassall, p. 82. Vassall led the opposition against Chauncy, which ostensibly centered on the issues of baptism and communion.Deane, History of Scituate, p. 60. Chauncy believed baptism required full immersion, even for infants,Bates, “First Parish Church,” p. 164. and held “sprinkling” to be “unlawful.” Vassall agreed with colony leadership and most New England ministers that “immersion or dipping was lawful—but in this cold country, not so convenient.”George Willison, Pilgrim Reader (1953), p. 435, qtd. in Carpenter, p. 77. Spelling modernized.
Unlike Chauncy and most of his peers, Vassall believed New England's churches should open communion and baptism to all members of the Church of England, not simply those who completed the often-arduous task of joining a colonial congregation.Deane, History of Scituate, p. 60; see also Fewkes. Chauncy accused Vassall of being “inclined to the Bishops”—the Anglican hierarchy—and directed those Scituate members who opposed his call “to refrain from appearing at communion,” thereby depriving them of the “rights and privileges of membership.”Fewkes, First Parish of Norwell. The excluded members met on 2 February 1642, probably in Vassall's home, to sign a church covenant, founding a new “upriver” parish.Power, “The Second Church of Christ in Scituate,” p. 170. Chauncy cried foul, and rancor between the men continued unabated for years, as evidenced by the volume of correspondence they produced. Vassall's letters frequently focused on a “division of lands and commons” to ensure that Scituate's second parish was “at least equal” in land to its first. The plan would have increased his extensive property.Pratt, The Early Planters of Scituate, p. 69. See also p. 71. The church is now known as First Parish, Norwell.
In early 1642, Vassall wrote to Maine Gov. Thomas Gorges, warning him against hiring Rev. Joseph Hull, who had been displaced when Lothrop moved to Barnstable. When Hull took a job at a neighboring church without Lothrop's permission, he was excommunicated and a warrant was issued for his arrest. He fled to Maine. In his 17 May reply to Vassall, Gorges said he was “shocked” by Vassall's letter and stood by Hull, explaining, “As for … neighbors here I shall not press their consciences but leave them to their own liberty.Moody, “Thomas Gorges," p. 18; spelling modernized. Vassall would later petition Plymouth and Massachusetts for the very religious freedom he had hoped to deny Rev. Hull.
New England Petitions: 1645–1646