# Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Endecott, John

​ENDECOTT, JOHN (1588?–1665), governor of New England, is supposed to have been born at Dorchester, Dorsetshire, in or about 1588, but nothing is known of his early life. On 19 March 1628 he joined with five other ‘religious persons’ in purchasing a patent of the territory of Massachusetts Bay from ‘the corporation styled the council established at Plymouth in the county of Devon for the planting, ruling, and governing of New England in America.’ Among those who almost immediately after the purchase secured proprietary rights in the ‘Dorchester Company,’ as it was called, and who became respectively governor and deputy-governor of the company in London, were Matthew Cradock [q. v.] and Roger Ludlow. Being related to both by marriage, it is probable that Endecott was selected at their instance as a ‘fit instrument to begin the wildernesse-worke.’ He was accordingly entrusted with full powers to take charge of the plantation at Naumkeag, afterwards Salem. Accompanied by his wife and some twenty or thirty emigrants, he sailed from Weymouth in the ship Abigail, 20 June 1628, and reached Naumkeag on 6 Sept. following. As a ruler Endecott lost no time in showing himself earnest, zealous, and courageous, but, considering the difficulties which he had to battle against, it is not surprising that he was occasionally found wanting in tact and temper. His conduct towards the Indians was always marked with strict justice. On making known to the planters who had preceded him that he and his associate patentees had purchased all the property and privileges of the Dorchester partners, both at Naumkeag and at Cape Ann, much discontent ​arose. Endecott and his puritan council viewed with no favourable eye the raising tobacco, ‘believing such a production, except for medicinal purposes, injurious both to health and morals,’ while they insisted on abolishing the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The wise enactments of the company's court in London did much towards allaying these and similar disputes (cf. Cradock's letter to Endecott, dated 16 Feb. 1628–9, in Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, pp. 128–37). To protect themselves against the Indians a military company was organised by the settlers and Endecott placed in command. His attention was next called to the illegal trading and dissolute ways of the settlers at Mount Wollaston, or Merry Mount, now Quincy. He personally conducted an expedition thither, ‘rebuked the inhabitants for their profaneness, and admonished them to look to it that they walked better’ (Winthrop, New England, ed. Savage, 1823, i. 34). ‘In the purifying spirit of authority’ he then cut down the maypole on which Thomas Morton, their leader, had been wont to publish his satires on the puritans, while his followers made merry around it in the carousals for which the sale of arms and ammunition to the Indians furnished the supplies. He also changed the name of the settlement to Mount Dagon. Endecott continued to exercise the chief authority until 12 June 1630, when John Winthrop, the first regularly elected governor, arrived with the charter by which the government of the colony was entirely transferred to New England. Endecott, who had been chosen one of his council of assistants, gave a cordial welcome to Winthrop, and a friendship began which lasted without a cloud while the latter lived (ib. i. 26). On 3 July 1632 the court of assistants, to mark their sense of his services, granted him three hundred acres of land situate between two and three miles in a northerly direction from the main settlement at Salem, afterwards known as his ‘orchard farm’ (Felt, Annals of Salem, 2nd edit. i. 178). In 1634 he was nominated one of the seven military commissioners for the colony. In September of this year a rumour reached the colony that the king had demanded their charter with the intention of compelling obedience to the ceremonies of the church as interpreted and enforced by Laud. Endecott, ‘a puritan of puritans,’ was strangely moved at the news. Inflamed by the fiery eloquence of Roger Williams he publicly cut out with his sword the red cross of St. George from the banner used by the train band of Salem for the reason, as he alleged, that the cross savoured of popery. The colony dared not refrain from taking cognisance of an act with which most of its principal men, including Winthrop himself, secretly sympathised. The matter was accordingly brought before the general court, and after due investigation ‘they adjudged him worthy admonition, and to be disabled for one year from bearing any public office; declining any heavier sentence, because they were persuaded he did it out of tenderness of conscience and not of any evil intent’ (Winthrop, i. 155–6, 158). For protesting against the harsh treatment of Roger Williams he was shortly afterwards committed, when, finding it useless to resist, he made the apology demanded, and was released the same day (ib. i. 166).
From this period Endecott seems to have acted in greater harmony with the other leaders of the colony. In 1636 he was reappointed an assistant, and was also sent, along with Captain John Underhill, on an expedition against the Block Island and Pequot Indians. Little save bloodshed was effected. During this same year his views concerning the hateful cross triumphed. Many of the militia refused to serve under a flag which bore what they regarded as an idolatrous emblem; and after solemn consultation the military commissioners ordered the cross to be left out. In 1641 Endecott was chosen deputy-governor, and was continued in office for the two succeeding years. In 1642 he was appointed one of the corporation of Harvard College. His increasing influence insured his election as governor in 1644. The following year, when he was succeeded in the governorship by Joseph Dudley, he was constituted sergeant major-general of Massachusetts, the highest military office in the colony. He was also elected an assistant, and one of the united commissioners for the province. Upon the death of Winthrop, 26 March 1649, Endecott was again chosen governor, to which office he was annually elected until his death, with the exception of 1650 and 1654, when he held that of deputy-governor. Under his administration, especially from 1655 to 1660, the colony made rapid progress. His faults were those of an age which regarded religious toleration as a crime. As the head of the commonwealth, responsible for its spiritual as well as temporal welfare, he felt it his duty to scourge, banish, and even hang the unorthodox. Especially obnoxious to him were the quakers, of which sect two men were executed in 1659 and a woman in 1660. Long before this he had issued a formal proclamation against wearing long hair ‘after the manner of ruffians and barbarous Indians, ​dated 10 March 1649 (Hutchinson, Massachusetts, i. 142). To meet the necessities of the time he established in 1652 a mint, which, contrary to law, continued to coin money until the charter of the colony was abrogated in 1685. In 1658 the court granted him, ‘for his great service,’ the fourth part of Block Island. At this time he was also elected president of the body of colonial commissioners. In 1660 the court was asked to confirm a grant of land which the Indians, mindful of his just dealing, had presented to his eldest son John.
Soon after the Restoration the struggle began in Massachusetts to save the charter and the government. Endecott drew up, in the name of the general court of Boston, a petition to the king praying for his majesty's protection and a continuance of those privileges and liberties which they had hitherto enjoyed. The ‘open capitall blasphemies’ of the quakers and their incorrigible contempt of authority were also set forth (Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., America and West Indies, 1661–8, pp. 8–10). Charles returned vaguely favourable answers, desired Endecott to make diligent search for the regicides, Whalley and Goffe, and ordered all condemned quakers to be sent to England to be dealt with there (ib. pp. 11, 27–8, 33–4, 55). In 1662 the king expressed his willingness to take the plantation into his care provided that all laws made during the late troubles derogatory to the king's government be repealed, the oaths of allegiance duly observed, and the administration of justice take place in the king's name. He further suggested that ‘as the principal end of their charter was liberty of conscience’ the Book of Common Prayer and its ceremonies might very well be used by those desirous of doing so (ib. pp. 93–4). In April 1664 the king thought fit to send four commissioners to the colony, but without the least intention or thought, so he declared, of violating or in the least degree infringing their charter (ib. p. 201). When, however, the commissioners proceeded to sit in judgment upon the governor and court, the latter published by sound of the trumpet their disapprobation, and forbade every one to abet such conduct. The commissioners had therefore to depart, threatening against the authorities of Massachusetts the punishment ‘which many in England concerned in the late rebellion had met with.’ Endecott addressed a strongly worded protest against this attempt to override their privileges to Secretary Sir William Morrice, 19 Oct. 1664, and again petitioned the king (ib. pp. 247–9). In his reply to the general court, 25 Feb. 1664–5, Morrice complained of Endecott's ‘disaffection,’ and stated that the king would ‘take it very well if at the next election any other person of good reputation be chosen in his place’ (ib. p. 282). Before the effect of this recommendation could be ascertained Endecott had died at Boston, 15 March 1664–5, aged 77, and was buried ‘with great honour and solemnity’ on the 23rd. Tradition assigns the ‘Chapel Burying-ground’ as the place of his interment, but the tombstone has long been destroyed, it is supposed by British soldiers during the American war. At the time of his death Endecott had served the colony in various relations, including the very highest, longer than any other one of the Massachusetts fathers.
Endecott was twice married. His first wife, Ann Gower, who was a cousin or niece of Matthew Cradock, died soon after coming to the colony, it is believed childless; and he married secondly, 18 Aug. 1630, Elizabeth Gibson of Cambridge, England, by whom he had two sons, John, born about 1632, and Zerubbabel, born about 1635, a physician at Salem. A portrait of Endecott, said to have been taken the year he died, is in possession of the family, and has been copied and often engraved. He and his descendants to the fourth generation wrote the second syllable of the name with ‘e,’ but the ‘i’ has prevailed since.
G. G.