JIGSAW GENS
Emerald Knights — The Crackdown Microgeneration
As the youngest Cavaliers and the oldest Magnas, this cusp of Americans confronted church-state issues with vigor and mutiny
It’s very easy for us to get wrapped up in the chaos and uncertainty of our current time period. We only remember the events we experienced during our lives. In general, the younger we were…the less awareness we possessed over the dynamics influencing domestic and international affairs. Often, these patterns repeat. In other cases, they’re unique to a particular point in history that radically departs from those which came before it.
I define intergenerational literacy as the ability to identify which world events had the greatest impact on any specific age group from any point during history. That’s the value of my “Jigsaw Gens” anthology. This multi-part series encourages us to figure out a viable path forward based on the successes or failures of those who lived in the decades and centuries preceding us.
Here are the 27 primary generational cohorts whom I’ve outlined from the past 350+ years of America’s journey…
Parliamentarians | Concentrics | Inflectors
Kingdomites | Cavaliers | Magnas
Glory Warriors | Lumineers | Enlightening Rods
Septennials | Liberty Lords | Goodpublicans
Madisonians | Unimpressionists | Transcendentals
Redeemers | Golden Renegades | Stowegressives
Missionaries | Hemingrebels | GI-Gens
Traditionalists | Baby Boomers | GenXers
Millennials | Zoomers | Alphas
In-between main generations, there are cusps that form a transitional buffer zone from one larger generation to the next one. These are also referred to as “microgenerations.” As I explore these grey areas from across history, I’ve been looking at how they fill in gaps while American culture progresses.
Today, I’ll examine dynamics faced by the microgeneration born during the early-1640s. As with each cusp I’ve defined, their birthyears fall upon a roughly five-year period. I’ve baptized them — within a historical context — as the Emerald Knights.
Who They Are
Emerald Knights were born approximately between 1640 to 1644 — give or take a couple of years on either end. They were comprised of the youngest Cavaliers and the oldest Magnas. Americans on this cusp were born as the New England Confederation formed. Their childhoods were marked by anti-Catholic bigotry, British colonization of the Carolinas, the first Navigation Act, and the First Anglo-Dutch War. As teenagers, they lived through the Second Anglo-Dutch War and saw nonconformist thought spread by the Fifth Monarchists. Male Emerald Knights fought in the Third Anglo-Dutch War. By this cusp’s thirties, William Penn was rising to prominence and the English Restoration was underway.
The moniker of “Emerald Knights” refers to their struggle with envy and regeneration (both symbolized by shades of green) when considering economics and family values. Based on their choices, they’d reap good fortune or endure bad fortune (also signified by the color green) based on choices made during young adulthood. In their twenties through their fifties, Emerald Knights found themselves at a crossroads in terms of whether they’d obey or eschew the Church of England.
As elders, those who’d survived remembered the escalation of the first two French and Indian Wars. In the aftermath of “The Glorious Revolution” and the Salem Witch Trials, British loyalists pivoted from theocratic rigidity to waging war against North American Tribal Nations (such as the Tuscarora and the Yamasees) as well as the French. In the twilight of their lives, British tensions with the Spanish resulted in late-1720s warfare. Emerald Knights’ children and grandchildren came to know a world where tolerance for Methodists, Catholics, and Quakers became more mainstream.
I’ve labeled Emerald Knights as “the Crackdown Microgeneration” because they were middle-aged citizens while Henry Care’s writings were being censored over in England. Care’s English Liberties centered its philosophies around the Magna Carta — which would later influence William Penn’s own work. North America’s Indigenous people (led by Metacomet) struggled to maintain their sovereignty over British and French colonists. King James II was deposed while Emerald Knights were in the prime of their lives. Soon, with the advent of King William’s War, the French and the English turned against one another (with various Indigenous tribes as fairweather allies). During this time, “Yeoman” became an official Royal Navy rank — gatekeepers over who could receive food and other battle supplies.
Thus, this microgeneration trudged through efforts of the ruling elite to crack down on those who wanted freedom and liberty. This tug-of-war embedded itself within the American fabric as a harbinger of conflict across upcoming centuries.
Their Early Lives
As Emerald Knights were born, there’d already been two decades’ worth of the Puritan Great Migration and Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slave Trade. America had seen the rise of New Amsterdam, the founding of Harvard, death from the Pequot War, and Boston Gaol prison erected. But as they moved through their lives, imperial power struggles would really flare!
Youngsters on this cusp were now beholding the boldness of George Fox, the tyranny of Peter Stuyvesant, and the autocracy of King Charles I. By their adolescence, Emerald Knights watched Swedes and Quakers being oppressed across the Colonies. Soonafter, the First Anglo-Dutch War highlighted European monarchs’ thirst to control international trade.
With age, Emerald Knights grew conflicted about how the Maryland Toleration Act had failed to live up to its promise. Their parents and grandparents taught them to anticipate struggles over religious liberty, abolitionism, and colonial borders — regardless of upon which side they, as individuals, ultimately fell.
When They Came-of-Age
For people born in the 1640s, the average life expectancy had only inched upward to the approximate age of thirty. This was based on high infant mortality and lack of medicine. However, based on regional differences, Emerald Knights who survived their thirties could potentially live up to their forties through their seventies.
The Wars of the Three Kingdoms subsided right before Emerald Knights began having children of their own. While they were teenagers, Mary Dyer and her followers got publicly executed for daring to exert pro-Quaker independence. Josias Fendall set the standard for attempts at bloodless coups. King Charles II tried to reassert control even as the Half-Way Covenant chipped away at hard piety over on American shores.
Emerald Knights were the twentysomethings thrust into theological battles for moral superiority. Michael Wigglesworth’s The Day of Doom served as a prominent example of trying to scare the populace into faith-based submission. Black Emerald Knights and their offspring were denied humanity via partus sequitur ventrem. Harvard published the Eliot Bible in Algonquin, signifying a shift toward converting Indigenous communities to Christianity.
By the mid-1660s, colonial rulers amplified these efforts. The Second Anglo-Dutch War (and the resulting Treaty of Breda) enabled the English to force the Dutch into standing down. To double down on white supremacy, six of the Colonies officially prohibited emancipation for African-descended slaves.
It wasn’t until Massachusetts Bay Colony refused to swear allegiance to Charles II when royalists realized how there was serious resentment brewing within the American Colonies as a whole.
How They Shaped The World
Male Emerald Knights were among those who gave their lives during the Third Anglo-Dutch War, King Philip’s War, Bacon’s Rebellion, and the Battle of Bloody Brook. Metacomet’s surrender and death marked a turning point where White members of these generations augmented their exploitation of Indigenous and Black counterparts. In the early-1670s, William Berkeley had essentially set that standard by only allowing White male landowners to have voting rights.
By the time members of this cusp were in their thirties, land expansion was noticeably inflating. Charles Town, Niagara Falls, Lake Michigan, and the Province of New Hampshire gained European inhabitants. Thinkers such as John Locke and John Usher advanced classical liberalism and modern linguistics amidst Charles II’s balancing act.
Entering their forties, Emerald Knights were thrust into a decade of tumult leading up to “The Glorious Revolution.” French colonizers claimed La Louisiane bordering the Mississippi River, as Huguenots fled from oppression inflicted by King Louis XIV. Over in England, King James II ascended to the throne. In order to exert more control over the Colonies, James II created the Dominion of New England; he placed it under the command of Edmund Andros, whose unpopularity spurred King William’s War.
1688 and 1689 proved to be watershed years for this microgeneration. As “The Glorious Revolution” arrived, Quakers took more emboldened stances against slavery. Although the rise of William & Mary accompanied the 1688–89 Toleration Act, civil unrest shook American soil. Unchecked oligarchy, a thirst for decentralization, Indigenous/White tensions, and religious suppression drove colonists’ anger toward their European rulers. This resulted in armed conflicts such as the Battle of Brackett’s Wood, Leisler’s Rebellion, and 1689’s Boston Revolt.
As fiftysomethings, Emerald Knights continued to deal with discord between royalists and insurgents. The Cambridge Association scrutinized the Salem Witch Trials. Anti-Catholic sentiments still raged, even as King William’s War came to an end. Paper production via William Rittenhouse, opening the College of William & Mary, and expansion of Massachusetts Bay Province enabled the British Crown to gain a stronger colonial foothold. But colonists themselves felt mixed sentiments about this. Groundwork was being laid for the American Revolution to come one century later.
At the turn of the Eighteenth Century, Queen Anne’s War exacerbated tensions between England, France, and Spain. Fort Pontchartrain and Yale College were erected. Despite William Penn drafting his Charter of Privileges, French conquerors enslaved the Chitimacha tribe. Virginia and the Carolinas imposed anti-Black “slave codes,” extending chattel slavery for the next century-and-a-half.
Benjamin Franklin was just beginning his life…as the last of the Emerald Knights were preparing for theirs to end.
Their Golden Years
Very few Emerald Knights lived into the 1710s. Those who did were able to see a growing mainstream acceptance of the Quaker faith. They watched members of the Glory Warrior, Lumineer, Enlightening Rod, and Septennial generations fight in the Tuscarora War and the end days of Queen Anne’s War. The British Crown was transferred from Queen Anne to King George I.
Emerald Knights who survived into the second half of that decade observed the establishment of New Orleans and San Antonio (including the Alamo). Indigenous resistance to colonization waned following the Yamasee War. In 1718, Spaniards surrendered their occupation of Pensacola to troops led by future President Andrew Jackson.
As the youngest Cavaliers died out across the 1720s, their Emerald Knight “little sibs” approached generational extinction, as well. Fort Dummer was attacked by Abenaki warriors. The Anglo-Spanish War pitted English and Hispanic armed forces against each other over trade disputes.
Most of the Emerald Knight cusp was fully deceased by the time of John Peter Zenger’s seditious libel trial — although some of the younger Magnas would live long enough to witness it. That meant, despite all of their pushback against colonial crackdowns, they never got to revel in the renaissance that would be largely driven by Ben Franklin and his contemporaries.
Here are 10 prominent Americans from the Emerald Knight cohort:
Members of the previous microgenerations were named…
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