TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
Footnote anchors are denoted by [number], and the footnotes have been placed at the end of the book.
New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
Some minor changes to the text are noted at the [end of the book.] These are indicated by a dashed blue underline.
THE
PILGRIM FATHERS
OF
NEW ENGLAND:
A HISTORY.
BY W. CARLOS MARTYN,
AUTHOR OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF JOHN MILTON, A HISTORY
OF THE ENGLISH PURITANS, ETC.
“What sought they there, whose steps were on the dust
Of the old forest lords? Not summer skies,
Nor genial zephyrs, nor the amenities
Of golden spoils. Their strength was in the trust
That breasts all billows of the abyss of time,
The Rock of Ages, and its hopes sublime.”
American Souvenir.
PUBLISHED BY THE
AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY,
150 NASSAU-STREET, NEW YORK.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1867, by the American Tract Society, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.
PREFACE.
Lord Bacon assigns the highest meed of earthly fame to the builders of states, conditores imperiorum. The Pilgrim Fathers were members of that guild, and their story belongs to the heroic age of America. “No other state,” remarks Stoughton, “can boast of such an origin, and adorn its earliest annals with a tale as true as it is beautiful, as authentic as it is sublime.”
But aside from the honor which attends the Forefathers as the founders of empire, they march down the ages crowned with richer and more fragrant laurels; for they built not for themselves or for posterity alone, in imitation of Romulus, and Cyrus, and Cæsar, and Ottoman; they planted also for justice and for God.
Therefore they are the rightful heirs of the benedictions of mankind; while to Americans they are doubly precious as “the parents of one-third of the whole white population of the Republic.”
Of course, the career of the Pilgrim Fathers has been often painted: but the interest of the story is inexhaustible, and its thrilling incidents exhibit the wisdom, the benevolence, the faithfulness of God in so many glorious and delightful aspects, and are so replete with facts whose inevitable tendency is to inflame the love, strengthen the faith, and awaken the wondering gratitude of the human heart, that it is impossible to wear the “twice-told tale” threadbare by repetition. Besides, a thoughtful scholar, who has himself laid his garland of everlasting upon the altar of the Pilgrims, has reminded us that, “however well history may have been written, it is desirable that it should be re-written from time to time by those who look from an advanced position, giving in every age to the peculiar and marked developments of the past, a simple, compact, and picturesque representation.”
This sketch runs back to the cradle of Puritanism; summarily rehearses the causes of which it was begotten; accompanies the Pilgrim Fathers across the channel, and depicts the salient features of their residence in Holland, and the reasons which pushed them to further removal; sails with them in the “Mayflower” over the stormy winter sea; recites in some detail, the incidents which accompanied the settlement at Plymouth and the kindred colonies throughout New England; and closes in the sunshine of that league between the New England colonies which was the prophecy of the Republic, and the crowning glory of those who are distinctively called the Pilgrim Fathers.
The volume has been carefully written, and it is fortified by copious marginal notes and citations from a wide range of authoritative authors, from the humblest diarist to the most pretentious compiler who struts in the rustling satin of history.
This is “a round unvarnished tale,” and aims at fairness of statement, not copying that dealer in history whom Lucian derides for always styling the captain of his own party an Achilles, and the leader of the opposition a Thersites. Nor does it enter the “debateable ground” of sectarian polity; but avoiding alike the Scylla of indiscriminate encomium, and the Charybdis of controversy, it merely reproduces the broad and unquestioned facts of an emigration whose purpose and whose result was to
“Win the wilderness for God.”
New York, January, 1867.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Spiritual Forces and the Motors of Materialism—English Puritanism—Its Conflicts with the Dramatic Religion of the Popes—Aspiration—The Modern Era—The Recast Ecclesiasticism—Two Parties in the New-modelled English Church—The Puritans—The Conformists—The Error of the Church-and-state Reformers—The Epic of our Saxon Annals—Britain, emancipated from the Pope, hugs the Popedom—Persecution—The Separatists—Their Disappointment—The Separatists of the North of England—Division in the Protestant World—The Philosophy of Luther—Calvin’s Rationale—The Separatists adhere to Calvin—The Raid for Exact Conformity—The Pilgrim Fathers prepare to quit the Island—Pilgrim Traits—Obstacles—The Attempted Exodus—Treachery—The Pilgrims “rifled by the Catchpole Officers”—Imprisonment—The Second Attempt—The Rendezvous—A Midnight Scene by the Sea-shore—Arrival of the Ship—The Stranded Barque—The Captain’s Alarm—The Ship sails—The Deserted Dear Ones on Shore—A Woful Picture—Captured—The Storm—Holland at last—Reunion
CHAPTER II.
The Quays of Amsterdam—Quaint Aspect of the City—Its History—The Pilgrims and the Dutch Burghers—Strange Characteristics of Dutch Social Life—The Pilgrims go to Work—Their Employments—The Removal to Leyden—Reason of the Change of Residence—Leyden—Its Thrilling Story—The Exiles “raise a Competent and Decent Living”—They “enjoy much Sweet Society and Spiritual Comfort together in the Ways of God”—John Robinson—Elder Brewster—The Pilgrims grow in Knowledge and Gifts—Their Discipline—Robinson’s Wisdom—The Exiles win the Cordial Love and Respect of the Dutch—An Illustration—Testimony of the Leyden Magistrates—The Controversy—Robinson and Episcopius—The Debate—“Famous Victory” of the English Divine—Reformed Churches of the Continent—Catholicity of the Pilgrims—Their Bias towards Religious Democracy—Peregrini Deo curæ
CHAPTER III.
Many Circumstances conspire to render the Exiles anxious and uneasy in Holland—They “know that They are but Pilgrims”—The Projected Removal from the Low Countries—Their “Weighty Reasons”—A Grand Germ of Thought—The New World—Career of Maritime Discovery—The Pilgrim Council—The Debate—The Argument of the Doubters—The Apostles of the Future—Ho, for America—The Decision
CHAPTER IV.
Pilgrim Prayers—“Where shall we plant our Colony”—“Large Offers” of the Dutch—Determine to settle in “the most Northern Part of Virginia”—The two English Emigration Companies—The Envoys—Their Return—The Letter of Robinson and Brewster—The Virginia Company and King James—Two Questions—The “Formal Promise of Neglect”—The “Merchant-adventurers”-Terms of the Compact—Republicanism of the Pilgrims—Robinson’s Sermon—Who shall sail with the “Forlorn Hope?”—The Past—Robinson’s Farewell—The “Speedwell” and the “Mayflower”—“Good-by, Leyden”—“Adieu, Friends”—The “Yo hoy” of the Seamen
CHAPTER V.
At Southampton—The Abortive Departure—The Number of Voyageurs “winnowed”—Final Embarkation—The “Floating Village”—On the Atlantic—Opening of Robinson’s Letter of Advice—The Seaborn Government—All Hail, Democracy!—Carver elected Governor—The Pilgrims propose to land—The Captain’s Mistake—Geography of the Wilderness—The Unseaworthy Shallop—The Sixteen Scouts—Miles Standish—On Shore—First Drink of New England Water—The Mysterious Mound—The Hidden Corn—Pilgrim Conscientiousness—Return of the Explorers—In the Shallop—The Dawn of Winter—Renewed Search for a Landing Spot—First Encounter with the Indians—“Woath wach haha hach woach”—The Breakers—First Christian Sabbath in the New World—Plymouth Rock
CHAPTER VI.
The Pilgrims decide to settle at Plymouth—The Landing—The First Law—The Pioneers at Work—Plan of the Town—The Weather—Satisfaction of the Pilgrims with the Site of their Colony—The Journal—Pilgrim Traits—A Page from Cotton Mather—The Frenchman’s Prophecy—Social Arrangements—Standish chosen Captain—Births and Deaths—The Block-Citadel—Isolation of the Pilgrims—Combination of Circumstances which produced the Settlement of Plymouth in 1620
CHAPTER VII.
The Early Spring of 1621—The Pilgrims Buoyant and Hopeful-Planting—In the Woods—The Tyro Hunters—A Forest Adventure—The Storm—On the Skirts of the Settlement—“Welcome, Englishmen”—The Solitary Indian—His Entertainment—Samoset’s Story—Valuable Information—The Kidnapper— The Nausets—Pilgrim Description of Samoset—“What shall we do with our Dusky Guest?”—Samoset’s Embassy—His Return—Squanto—His Romantic History—Massasoit—The Redman and the Pale-face—Negotiations—The Treaty—Its Faithful Observance—A Picture of Massasoit—Billington’s Offence—The Lackey duelists—Death—Frightful Mortality—Burial hill—Death of Governor Carver—Bradford elected Governor—Departure of the “Mayflower”—Feeling of the Pilgrims—The “Orphans of Humanity”
CHAPTER VIII.
The Pilgrim Panacea—The Summer—The Prospect—Wild Fowl, Shell-fish, and Berries—A Glimpse at Plymouth in 1621—The Pioneers open the Volume of Nature—Lessons in Woodcraft—Bradford and the Deer-trap—Explorations—The Embassy to Massasoit—Its Object—The Indian Guide—The Pause at Namasket—A New “Kind of Bread”—The “Deserted Village”—The Wigwam “Palace” of Massasoit—Presents—The Sachem and the Horseman’s Coat—The “Pipe of Peace”—The Sagamore’s Cordiality—Massasoit’s Housekeeping—A Full Bed—Indian Games—The Feast—The Return—Honorable and Amicable Treatment of the Indians by the Pilgrim Fathers—Advantages of this Course—Barbarism makes an Obeisance to Civilization—End of the Indian’s Lease of Ages of the Forest—The New Tenant takes Possession in the Name of God and Liberty
CHAPTER IX.
The Lost Boy—The Searching Party—In the Shallop—The Water spout—The Bivouac—Visitors at the Camp-fire—The Indian Hag—Her Strange Emotion—The Riddle solved—En Route again—The Lost Boy found—His Adventures—A Startling Rumor—The Hasty Return—Intrigues—The Narragansetts—Squanto, Tokamahamon, and Habbamak—Corbitant’s Wiles—The Runner’s News—Departure of Standish and his “Army” of Fourteen Men—The Forest March—On the War-trail—The Sleeping Village—The Bloodless Assault—“Friend, Friend”—Flight of Corbitant—Safety of Squanto and Tokamahamon—Homeward—Good Effect of the Bloodless Raid—Heroism and Kindness of the Pilgrims—The Midnight Expedition of Miles Standish—Boston Bay, and the River Charles—The “Harvest Home”—“New England’s First Fruits”—Building at Plymouth—The Variety of Game—The First Thanksgiving—“Free Range”
CHAPTER X.
The Strange Sail—“Is it a Frenchman, or a Buccaneer?”—Warlike Preparations—The English Jack—Joy of the Pilgrims—Arrival of the “Fortune”—News from Home—The Reinforcement—A Moment of Sadness—The Letter Budget—The London Company under a Cloud—Course of the King—A Technical Difficulty—The New Patent—Weston’s Complaint and Bradford’s Reply—Departure of the “Fortune”—Cushman’s Sermon—The Bane of Plantations—Winslow’s Letter Home—Hilton’s Missive—Social Life and Wants of the Pilgrim Fathers—The “Fortune’s” Mishap
CHAPTER XI.
Provisions for the New-comers—Danger of Famine—Hardships—Patient Spirit of the Pilgrims—Brewster’s Submission—Morale of the Colony—Some “Lewd Fellows of the Baser Sort” get “shuffled” into the “Mayflower’s” Company—Character of the Recent Reinforcement—Bradford’s Government—The Laws—Bradford and the “Tender Consciences”—The Controlling Element—Homogeneity
CHAPTER XII.
The Salient Features of the Colonial Government—The “Proper Democracy”—The Course of England—The Governor—The Council—The Legislative Body—Test of Citizenship—Reasons and Excuses for It—Early Decrees—The Jury Trial—First Laws—The Digest—Provision for Education—The Old Statute Book of the Colony—Unique Legislation—First Marriage in New England—Marriage a Civil Contract
CHAPTER XIII.
Second Winter in the Wilderness—Faith as a Motor—Anxiety—The Indian and the Package—A Prisoner—The Riddle Solved—The Mysterious Rattlesnake Skin—Defensive Measures—First “General Muster” in New England—The Expedition and the Alarm—Habbamak’s Confidence—The Squaw-scout—No Danger—The Expedition resumed—Squanto’s Freaks—The Boast of a Travelled Indian—The Buried Plague—The Cheat uncloaked—Hunger—The Boat and the Letter-bag—Cold Comfort—Dissensions among the Merchant-adventurers in London—Bradford’s Comments
CHAPTER XIV.
Arrival of the “Charity” and the “Swan”—The News—Weston’s Desertion—The Situation in England—In a Quandary—The Pilgrims entertain Weston’s Rival Colony—Word brought of a Massacre in Virginia—Winslow’s Mission to the Coast of Maine—The Double Benefit—Morale of the Westonians—They finally settle at Wessagusset—Their Lazy Mismanagement—Bradford’s Rebuke—The Forayers—Bradford’s Walk of Fifty Miles—Death of Squanto—The Lean Harvest—The English Trading Ship—Progress in Building at Plymouth—How the Pilgrims went to Church
CHAPTER XV.
Affairs at Wessagusset—Expostulations and Appeals of the Pilgrims—An Anecdote—Reported Sickness of Massasoit—Pilgrim Embassy to visit Him—On the Way—The Death Song—Corbitant’s Lodge—At Massasoit’s Wigwam—The Pow-wows—Winslow and the Sachem—The Cure—Massasoit discloses a Conspiracy—The Return—The Envoys and Corbitant—A Shrewd Sagamore—How the Pilgrims communicated Religious Truth—Deliberation at Plymouth—A Frightened Messenger from Wessagusset—The Expedition of Miles Standish—Standish and the Westonians—Sad Condition of that Colony—The Plot disclosed—Indian Braggadocio—The Two Knives—The Little Man and the Big Man—Patience of Standish—The Death-grapple—Habbamak’s Comment—The Skirmish—The “Capital Exploit” of Miles Standish—The Westonians abandon Wessagusset—End of a Colony whose “Main End was to catch Fish”—Wetawamat’s Head—A Liberation—News of the Baffled Conspiracy reaches Leyden—Robinson’s Fine Comment—Strength and Weakness
CHAPTER XVI.
The Mysterious Blacksmith—Weston at Plymouth—A Favor—Ingratitude—Continued Famine at Plymouth—The Community of Interest—How it worked—Its Partial Abandonment—Facts brain Plato’s Theory—Bradford’s Argument against the Communal Idea—The Pilgrims rest on Providence—Their Shifts to live—The Drought—The Fast—The Answered Prayer—Rain at last—Habbamak’s Remarks—Five Kernels of Corn—A Package of Home Letters—Pierce’s Patent—He “vomits it up”—Captain Francis West—New Recruits—The “Annie” and the “Little James”—Feeling among the New-comers—Cushman’s Epistle—A Prescient Scribe
CHAPTER XVII.
The Lading of the “Anne”—Winslow departs for England—Plenty once more—Social Arrangements—Robert Gorges—Birth and Death of Another Colony at Wessagusset—Morrel’s Latin Poem—Prosperity of Plymouth—An Election—The Mishaps of a Fishing Expedition—Preparations for Planting—Winslow’s Return—What he brought—The Purpose and Animus of the London Company of Merchant-adventurers—John Lyford—Circumstances of his Advent—John Oldham—The Pernicious League—Onslaught upon the Pilgrim Government—Wolves in the Sheepfold—The Intercepted Letters—An Explosion—Oldham “tamed”—Lyford’s Trial—The Sentence—Winslow’s Exposé in England and America—Running the Gauntlet—Banishment of Lyford and Oldham—Effect of the Lyford Troubles—Brewster’s Ministry—An Exception to the Indian Doctrine of “Poor Pay, Poor Preach”—Tenets of the Plymouth Church—“Brown Bread and the Gospel is Good fare”—Liberty
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Pilgrims initiate Measures to buy out the Merchant-adventurers—Standish sails for England on this Errand—His Narrow Escape from Capture by a Turkish Rover—His Partial Success and Return—Sad News—Death of Cushman in England—Death of Robinson at Leyden—Last Hours and Character of the Moses of the Pilgrims
CHAPTER XIX.
Progress of Population at Plymouth—Smith’s Report—A Leaf from Bradford’s Journal—Romulus and Rome; Plymouth and the Pilgrims—The Winter of 1626-7—Allerton’s Embassy to England—His Success—The “Undertakers”—The New Organization—Plan of Division—Habbamak’s Grant—First Coveted Luxury of the Emancipated Colony—Allerton’s Second Mission—Provision made for the Transportation of the Remainder of the Leyden Congregation—Patent for Land on the Kennebec—The New Trading Station—A Crazy Clergyman—Catholicity of the Plymouth Church—Wide Range of the Pilgrim Enterprise—Commerce opened with the Dutch at New Amsterdam—Isaac de Rasières at Plymouth—Wampum—The Pilgrim Settlement as seen through the Eyes of a Dutchman—Joyous Arrival of the Leyden Exiles—How They were received—Mount Wollaston—Thomas Morton turns it into a Den of Riot and Debauchery—Grief of the Pilgrims—Expostulation—Affront—End of an Experimentum Crucis of Immorality—The Pilgrims find “All Things working together for their Good”
CHAPTER XX.
English Politics—The Puritans and the Pilgrims—Multitudes in Britain prepare for Emigration—Roger Conant—Old John White of Dorchester—The Point d’Appui—White’s Message—Conant’s Determination—Agitation at London—A New Scheme for Puritan Emigration—It is patronized by Men of Substance and “Gentlemen born”—The Lock opened by the Silver Key—A Patent—John Endicott leads a Colony into New England—Salem settled—The English Hermit—Individuality of the Saxon Race—The Explorers colonize Charlestown—News of Endicott’s Success in England—Incorporation of the Massachusetts Company—Its Powers—An Old Legend
CHAPTER XXI.
Organization of the Massachusetts Company—A Unique Letter of Instruction to Endicott—The Soil ordered to be purchased of the Indian Owners—A Blast against Tobacco—The Colonial Seal—Preparations for the Embarkation of Fresh Emigrants—Buckingham—Strafford—Laud—Puritans Eager to Emigrate—The Flotilla—The Plentiful Provision of “Godly Ministers”—Bright—Smith—Higginson—Skelton—“Farewell, Dear England”—Britain does not know her Heroes—The Landing at Salem—Higginson’s Impressions—The Pilgrims plant a Church at Salem—Cordial Relations opened with the Plymouth Colonists—Endicott’s Letter to Bradford—An Additional Link in the Chain of Friendship—Ordination of Higginson and Skelton—The Ceremony—Bradford’s Tardy Arrival—The Confession of Faith—Birth of the Theocracy—Dissatisfaction of the Church of England men at Salem—The Brothers Brown—Breach of the Peace imminent—Endicott sends the Browns home to England—Endicott cautioned by the Massachusetts Company
CHAPTER XXII.
The New Colony outstrips Plymouth—Intense Interest in the Colonies felt in England—Higginson’s Tract—Men of Wealth and Position prepare to emigrate—One Thing makes Them Hesitate—Character of the Charter—The “Open Sesame”—Alienation of the Government of the Company—A Daring Construction changes a Trading Corporation into a Provincial Government—Joy of the Would-be Emigrants—The Election—An Extensive Emigration set Afoot—The Fleet of Ten Vessels—In the Cabin of the “Arbella”—Winthrop—Dudley—Humphrey—Johnson—Saltonstall—Eaton—Bradstreet—Vassall—The Women of the Enterprise—The Lady Arbella Johnson—The Farewell at Yarmouth—On the Atlantic
CHAPTER XXIII.
“Land ho!”—The Supper at Salem—Sickness—Explorations—The Settlement at Cambridge—Busy Days—Death—The Last Hours of Francis Higginson—Death of Arbella Johnson—Grief and Death of her Husband—The Mortality List—Cambridge partially Deserted—Settlement of Boston—The Original Occupant of Shawmut Peninsula—Blackstone’s Oddities—The “Lord-Bishops” and the “Lord-Brethren”—Activity of the Colonists—The View from Beacon Hill—Winthrop’s Cheery Letter to his Wife
CHAPTER XXIV.
Fundamental Law of the Colonies of Massachusetts Bay—Earliest Legislation—First General Assembly—The Democratic Tendency—The Test of Citizenship—Reflections—Animadversions on the Theocratic Plan—The Acorn and the Oak
CHAPTER XXV.
Life in the Wilderness—Winthrop’s Adventure—The False Alarm—The Settlers and the Wolves well frightened—The Courtship of Miles Standish—Alden’s Wedding—Morton once more at “Merry-Mount”—An Execution—Radcliff, and his Punishment—The Mysterious Stranger—A Knight of the Holy Sepulchre astray in the Wilderness—The Three Wives—The Pursuit—An Unmasked Jesuit—The “Italian Method” tabooed in New England—Satan’s Ill-manners—Utopia—A Sentence from Demosthenes—Great Combat between a Mouse and a Snake—Its Significance—Fresh Arrivals—Eliot—Roger Williams-Attachment of the Pilgrims to their Rocky Refuge—How New England looked to a Puritan—How it looked to a Churchman—A Difference of Standpoint—The Brood of Townlets—The Western Wilds no longer Tenantless
CHAPTER XXVI.
The Advance of Civilization—Growth of Plymouth—Ralph Smith—Winthrop visits Bradford—Gubernatorial Civilities in the Olden Time—Leaves from Winthrop’s Note-book—The Primitive Ferry-boat—Bradford’s Mare—The Empty Contribution-box—Boundary Quarrel with the French—The Compliments of the Gentlemen from the Isle of Rhé—How They were answered—The Valley of the Connecticut—Efforts to colonize those Bottom Lands—Bradford solicits Winthrop to organize a United Effort for that Purpose—The Sachem’s Offer—Winthrop’s Refusal—The Plymouth Pilgrims determine to enter Connecticut unassisted—The Dutch attempt to balk Them—The Pilgrims colonize Windsor—A few Dutch Oaths—A War-path which ended in a Hug—An Infectious Fever at Plymouth—Consequent Mortality—Some “Strange Flies”—Ebb and Flow of the Tide of Emigration—Attempted Emigration of Hazlerigge, Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell—They are stopped by an Order in Council—The King’s Faux Pas—Three Famous Men embark for New England, and supply The Great Necessities of the Colonists—Haynes—Cotton—Hooker—Title by which the Settlers hold their Lands—Progress towards Democracy—Cotton’s Sermon against Rotation in Office—Its Non-effect—Colonial Authority divided between Two Branches—Law against Arbitrary Taxation—Representative Republicanism—A Dream broken
CHAPTER XXVII.
The Pilgrim Fathers and the Mosaic Code—Toleration in the Seventeenth Century—American and European Thinkers alike reject it—Arrival of Roger Williams at Boston—His Motives for Emigration—His Hopes and Views—Speedily attracts Attention—His Devotion to the Principle of Toleration—His Advocacy of it places Him in Direct Opposition to the System on which Massachusetts is founded—Under the Frown of the Authorities—Williams refuses to join the Boston Church—His Declaration—Statement of his Idea of Toleration—The Pilgrims regard Him as a Dangerous Heresiarch with “a Windmill in his Head”—Consternation at Boston on the Rumor of Williams’ Instalment in the Place of Higginson at Salem—Winthrop’s Letter of Expostulation—The Salem Church does not heed it—Williams begins to preach—Quits Salem for Plymouth—Bradford’s Estimate of the Young Welchman—Williams cements a Lasting and Cordial Friendship with the Indians—Returns to Salem on Skelton’s Death—Recommencement of his Struggle with the Colonial Government—His Pamphlet on the Charter—His Retraction—Ought Women to appear Veiled at Church?—Williams says Yes, Cotton says No—Cotton convinces the Ladies—The English Commission for the Regulation of the Colonies—The Pilgrims decide to “avoid and protract”—Endicott cuts the Cross out of the English Flag—Williams speaks against the “Freeman’s Oath”—Trouble—Williams’ Democracy—Points of Variance between the Reformer and the Colonists—The Citation—Williams before the Court—His Frank Defence—Banishment—The Flight through the Winter Woods—Animadversions—Months of Vicissitude—Settlement of Providence—Williams bases his Colony on Toleration and Democracy—Mather’s Epigram—Williams makes a Distinction between Toleration and License—Williams’ First Visit to England—Intimacy with Vane and Milton—The Second Visit—Cromwell and Marvell added to his List of Trans-atlantic Friends—Elected on his Return President of the Providence Plantations—Excelsior—Williams and the Indians—An Incident—Reflections on the Work and Character of Roger Williams
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Progress of New England in Material Prosperity—Arrival of Three Thousand Settlers in a Single Year—An Illustrious Trio—Hugh Peters—The Younger Winthrop—Sir Harry Vane—A Long Smouldering Feud placated—Value which the Pilgrims set on Education—Good and Bad Universities—A Public School planted at Cambridge—Harvard College—Relations between Learning and Manners—Enlarged Colonization of New England—The Plymouth Pilgrims at Windsor—The Younger Winthrop at Saybrook—Hooker’s Parishioners at Cambridge—Petition for “Enlargement or Removal”—The Advance Guard of Civilization—The New Hesperia of Puritanism—Hooker and Haynes lead a Colony into Connecticut and settle at Hartford—Pilgrimage from the Sea-shore to the “Delightful Banks” of the Inland River—Liberality of the New-born Colony—New Haven planted by English Puritans—Colonization of Guilford, Milford, and Long Island—Character of these Settlers—Commerce and Agriculture as the Basis of New States—Constitution of New Haven—The First Political Paper ever cradled in a Manger—The Connecticut Colonists and the Dutch at New Amsterdam quarrel over their Boundary Line—A Yankee Rûse—The Dutchmen and the Onion Rows—Isolation of the New Settlements—The War-whoop
CHAPTER XXIX.
The Pilgrims and the Indians—Stern Justice with which the Forefathers treated the Aborigines—An Illustration—Murder in the Woods—Its Punishment—End of the Epoch of Peace—Reason Why—The Pequods—Uncas—The Pequod Embassy to the Narragansetts—The Forests pregnant with Insurrection—Vane solicits the Intervention of Roger Williams—The Solitary Canoe—Williams in the Wigwam of Miantonomoh—The Pequod Diplomats at Work—Williams pushes his Dangerous Opposition—Old Friendship prevails—The Narragansetts refuse to dig up the Hatchet—The Pequods take the War-path alone—Sassacus—First Patter of the Coming Storm—A Thrilling Scene on the Connecticut River—The Captured Pinnace—Border Gallantry—A Unique Naval Battle—How News travelled in the Olden Time—Endicott on the Trail—A Pilgrim Friar Tuck—Failure—Pandemonium—New England trembles on the Verge of Death—Energy of the Colonists—Mason’s Expedition—The Council of War—The Chaplain’s Prayer—Off Point Judith—The Landing—The Seaside Bivouac—The Midnight March—The Pequod Village—A “Sound of Revelry by Night”—The Indian Fort—The Night Attack—Scenes of Horror—The Flight of Sassacus—The Pursuit—The Swamp Battle—The Sagamore’s Escape—The Gory Scalp-lock—“Sachem’s Head”—Death, and Servitude of the Survivors—Civilization Victorious
CHAPTER XXX.
Pilgrim Exclusiveness—The Old Alien Law—Dissenters swarm into Massachusetts Bay—Agitation—The Two Parties—Anne Hutchinson—A Commendable Practice—Mrs. Hutchinson’s Week-day Lectures—The “Covenant of Works” and the “Covenant of Grace”—Heady Current of Dissension—Horror of the Pilgrims—Antinomianism—Familism—The Female Heresiarch—The “Legalists”—Mutual Exasperation—Vane’s Disgust—Wreck of Vane’s Administration—Winthrop’s Law—Vane’s Reply—The Founders of the Colony regain their Influence—Trial of Anne Hutchinson—Cotton and his Protégé—“Immediate Revelations”—Banishment of the Antinomians—Roger Williams welcomes the Exiles to Providence—Purchase and Settlement of Rhode Island—A Happy Result from an Unhappy Cause
CHAPTER XXXI.
Law as the Reflection of National Character—Pilgrim Legislation—The Homes of New England—Origin of Towns—Town Meetings—Duty of voting—“Prudential Men”—An Odd Trait—Pilgrims fined for refusing to hold Office—High Character of the Early Governors—Bradford—Edward Winslow and Thomas Prince—Winthrop—Dudley—Vane—Endicott—Other Pivotal Men—God’s Benediction on New England
CHAPTER XXXII.
New England in 1641—Inhabitants—Villages—Churches—Houses—Agriculture—Commerce—Trade—Manufactures—Foreign Influence of the Pilgrims—The Tone of New England in treating with the Long Parliament during the Civil War—Two Rejected Invitations—Consolidation of Colonial Liberty—The Oppressed made Guests of the Commonwealth—The Germ of Union—The United Colonies of New England—Character of the League—Reflections—Colonial Union the Crowning Service of the Pilgrim Fathers to Humanity—The Second Generation—The Work and the Lesson of the Pilgrim Fathers
THE
PILGRIM FATHERS
OF
NEW ENGLAND.
CHAPTER I.
THE EXODUS.
“Nothing is here for tears; nothing to wail
Or knock the breast; no weakness, no contempt,
Dispraise or blame; nothing but well and fair.”
Milton, Samson Agonistes.
The influence of that mysterious triad, the gold eagle, the silver dollar, and the copper cent, has been overestimated. Spiritual forces are more potent than the motors of materialism. The Sermon on the Mount outweighs the law of gravity. Ethics make safer builders than stocks. Two hundred years ago, commercial enterprise essayed to subdue the New World in the interest of greedy trade, hungering for an increase; but though officered by the brightest genius and the highest daring of the age, backed by court favor and bottomed on the deepest bank-vaults of London, the effort failed.
Where physical forces balked, a moral sentiment bore off a trophy. The most prosperous of the American colonies were planted by religion. New England is the child of English Puritanism; and yet, paradoxical as it may seem, antedates its birth. Men say that the history of New England dates from 1620. ’Tis a mistake. New England was in the brain of Wickliffe when, in the infancy of Britain, he uttered his first protest against priestcraft and pronounced the Christianity of Rome a juggle. New England, in esse, was born in that chill December on Plymouth Rock; New England, in posse, was cradled in the pages of the first printed copy of the English Bible.
Soil does not make a state; nor does geographical position. That spot of ground which men call Athens does not embrace the immortal city. It bears up its masonry; but the Athens of Socrates and of Plato exists in the mind of every scholar. The intellectual and moral elements which enter into and shape it, these are the real state. In this sense, New England was in the pages of the Puritan publicists, in the psalms of the Lollards, and in the prayers of Bradwardine, centuries before that winter’s voyage into the dreary wilderness.
Society, government, law, the graces of civility, the economic formulas, are growths. “Books, schools, education,” says Humboldt, “are the scaffolding by means of which God builds up the human soul.” There are no isolated facts. Events do not occur at hap-hazard. Each effect has its cause; it may lie buried beneath many blinding strata, so that it must be dug for, but it exists.
Puritanism was not a sudden creation. It did not crop out of the sixteenth century unexpectedly, and begin to impeach formalism without a cause. It was a growth. “It was as old as the truth and manliness of England. Among the thoughtful and earnest islanders, the dramatic religion of the popes had never struck so deep root as in continental soil.”[1] Chafed and weary, the people had long demanded a purer and more spiritual faith. The strong repressive hand of the Vatican was not able to stop the mouth of unwearied complaint. Thinkers were convinced that Rome had paganized Christianity. Christ was banished from all active influence. He could only be reached and “touched with the feeling of our infirmities” through the intercession of saints, who were constantly invoked. The popes professed to possess a fund of supererogation, which they might dispense at will; and this became their stock in trade. Salvation by meritorious works was preached. Brokers in souls hawked their celestial wares in every market-place. Rome, an incarnate Pharisee, made broad its phylactery, and hid beneath it a dead religion and a corrupt church.[2]
From Wickliffe to Tyndale, a few earnest, devout men had impeached this cheat. But the influence of these teachers was at best but local. They were barely able to keep the gospel torch aglow, and to pass it down from hand to hand through the dusky centuries. The masses were affrighted from the pursuit of knowledge by the jingle of the rusty and forged keys of St. Peter, which locked the storehouse of divine revelation, and barred the investigations of the human mind.
The modern era dawned in the sixteenth century. The invention of printing was the avant courier of reform. The reformers gained a fulcrum for their lever. Scholars might shake the dust from their mouldy folios, and by opening the early records, convict Rome of heresy. Their conclusions might then be scattered broadcast on the wings of the press. Well might the perturbed ghost of Latin Orthodoxy exclaim,
“Ah, fatal age, which gave mankind
A Luther and a Faustus.”
Bibles were everywhere opened. Reform swept from the mountains of Bohemia into Germany; crossing the Saxon plains, it entered the Netherlands; thence it passed the channel into England. In the island it was received with enthusiasm. The government, from personal motives, extended to it the hand of fellowship; the people adopted it, because they felt the inadequacy of Romanism to meet their religious wants.[3]
Rome did not strike its flag without a struggle. As Demetrius was shocked when Paul, a wandering preacher from Tarsus, impeached his Diana, so the Vatican professed to be horrified when the reformers inveighed against the popedom. “Socrates”—so runs the old Grecian indictment—“is guilty of crime for not worshipping the gods whom the city worship, but introducing new divinities of his own.”[4] The adherents of the ancient faith tacked a similar indictment upon the front of the reform. Where they dared, they invoked the thumb-screw and kindled an auto da fé. When they could not fight with these congenial weapons, they made faces at their opponents, and hurled epithets. The iconoclasts were called “infidels.” Hooker and Hales, Stillingfleet, and Cudworth, and Taylor were thus stigmatized.[5] And indeed, “this is a cry which the timid, the ignorant, the indolent, and the venal are apt to raise against those who, faithful to themselves, go boldly forward, using the past only to show them what the present is, and what the future should be.”
These men recast the ecclesiasticism of their age. The essence of Romanism was extracted from their creed, but many of its forms were retained. Then, within the new-built temple of the English church, there arose two parties. The Puritans demanded the complete divorce of the reformed church from Rome, in its ceremonies and in its belief. They strove to inaugurate the purity and simplicity of what they conceived to be the primitive worship. They esteemed the retained forms to be pregnant with mischief, in that they were the badges of their former servitude, and because they tended to bridge over the chasm between Rome and the Reformation.[6]
At the outset, the Puritans did not quarrel with the English Establishment; they all claimed to be within its pale,[7] and many of their leaders were men of high ecclesiastical standing, of the truest lives, and of the loftiest genius; but they held to the spirit rather than to the letter; to the substance of the church, not to its forms.[8]
The Conformists considered the ceremonies to be non-essential; but they desired to retain them, partly because they were enamoured of those old associations which they symbolized, but chiefly because they dreaded the effect of too sudden and radical a change upon the peace of the island. Besides, to facilitate the passage from Romanism to the reformed church, they were willing to step to the verge of their consciences in the retention of the old forms, and in the incorporation of those features of the ancient faith into the outward structure of the new theology which were not intrinsically bad.[9]
Unquestionably honest minds might differ in this policy. “But certainly the doctrine of the Puritans concerning the connection and mutual influence between forms and opinions, so far from being fanciful or fastidious, had foundations as deep as any thing in moral truth or in human nature. A sentiment determined their course; but it was more cogent than all the learned argument which they lavished in its defence. A man of honor will not be bribed to display himself in a fool’s cap; yet why not in a fool’s cap as readily as in any apparel associated in his mind, and in the minds of those whom he respects, whether correctly or not is immaterial, with the shame of mummery and falsehood? To these men the cope and surplice seemed the livery of Rome. They would not put on the uniform of that hated power, while they were marshalling an array of battle against its ranks. An officer, French, American, or English, would feel outraged by a proposal to be seen in the garb of a foreign service. The respective wearers of the white and tricolor cockades would be more willing to receive each other’s swords into their bosoms than to exchange their decorations. A national flag is a few square yards of coarse bunting; but associations invest it which touch whatever is strongest and deepest in national character. Its presence commands an homage as reverential as that which salutes an Indian idol. Torrents of blood have been poured out age after age to save it from affront. The rejection of the cope and mitre was as much the fruit and the sign of the great reality of a religious revolution, as a political revolution was betokened and effected when the cross of St. George came down from over the fortresses along fifteen degrees of the North American coast”[10] in ’76.
The contest which ensued between nascent Puritanism and the entrenched Conformists was prolonged and bitter. It deeply scarred the history of the contemporaneous actors; and it has shaped the ethics and the politics of two centuries; nor is its force yet spent. Indeed, it may be fitly called the epic of our Saxon annals.
“On the one side, in the outset, were statesmen desiring first and mainly the order and quiet of the realm. On the other side were religious men desiring that, at all hazards, God might be worshipped in purity and served with simplicity and zeal. It is easy to understand the perplexities and alarms of the former class; but the persistency of their opponents is not therefore to be accounted whimsical and perverse. It is impossible to blame them for saying, ‘If a man believes marriage to be a sacrament in the sense of the popes and the councils, let him symbolize it by the giving of a ring; if he believes in exorcism by the signing of the cross, let him have it impressed on his infant’s brow in baptism; if he believes the bread of the Eucharist to be God, let him go down on his knees before it. But we do not believe these things, and as honest men we will not profess so to believe by act or sign any more than by word.’ Theirs was no struggle against the church, but against the state’s control over it.”[11]
The fatal error of the church-and-state reformers was, that they strove to coerce unwilling consciences into exact conformity with a prescribed formula of worship by penal legislation. No latitude was even winked at. It was a new edition of the old story of Procrustes and his iron bed. Britain, emancipated from the pope, still hugged the popedom. The rulers of the island clutched the weapons and enacted the rôle of the Hildebrandes, the Gregorys, and the Innocents of ecclesiastical history. Dissent was “rank heresy.” Liberty was “license.” The measure of a conscience was the length of a prelate’s foot.
“An act was passed in 1593,” says Hoyt, “for punishing all who refused to attend the Established Church, or frequented conventicles or unauthorized assemblies. The penalty was, imprisonment until the convicted person made declaration of his conformity; and if that was not done within three months after arrest, he was to quit the realm, and go into perpetual banishment. In case he did not depart within the specified time, or returned without license, he was to suffer death.”[12]
In 1603, when James I. came down from Scotland to ascend the English throne, so stood the law. Nor did it rest idle in the statute-book. The parchment fiat was instinct with vicious life. Hecatombs of victims suffered under it.[13] “Toleration,” remarks Goodrich, “was a virtue then unknown on British ground. In exile alone was security found from the pains and penalties of non-conformity to the Church of England.”[14]
During the pendency of the dissension between the Puritans and the Conformists within the bosom of the church, many honest thinkers, feeling hopeless of success in that unequal conflict, broke from their old communion, and set up a separate Ebenezer.[15] Even so early as 1592, Sir Walter Raleigh, speaking in the House of Commons, affirmed that these “Come-outers” numbered upwards of twenty thousand.[16] Since that date, every year had added new recruits to their ranks, until, in 1603, they had expanded into a wealthy, influential, and puissant party in the state.[17]
Though socially tabooed and politically ostracised—though shackled by fierce prohibitory legislation and by governmental ill-will, the Separatists, as they were called, still prayed and hoped, walking through persecution with faith in their right hand and with patience in their left. At one time they thought they could discern a ray of light on the sullen horizon which gloomed upon them. James I. had been educated in Presbyterian Scotland.[18] He had often hymned the praises of the polity of stout John Knox.[19] When he crossed the Tweed, jubilant Puritanism cried, “Amen,” and “All hail.” Ere long, however, the weak and treacherous Stuart deserted his Scottish creed. From that moment he hated his old comrades with the peculiar bitterness of an apostate. No epithet was vile enough by which to paint them. He raked the gutter of the English language for phrases. “These Puritans,” said he, “are pests in the church and commonwealth—greater liars and perjurers than any border thieves.”[20]
At the Hampton Court Conference—an intellectual tournament between the representatives of the opposing religious parties—the royal buffoon affirmed his determination to make the Puritans “conform, or harry them out of the land, or else worse.”[21]
It has been truly said that “the friends of religious reform had never seen so hopeless a time as that which succeeded the period of the most sanguine expectation. In the gloomiest periods of the arbitrary sway of the two daughters of Henry VIII., they could turn their eyes to a probable successor to the throne who would be capable of more reason or more lenity. Now nothing better for them appeared in the future than the long reign of a prince wrong-headed and positive alike from imbecility, prejudice, pique, and self-conceit, to be succeeded by a dynasty born to the inheritance of the same bad blood, and educated in the same pernicious school. It is true that, as history reveals the fact to our age, almost with the reign of the Scottish alien that nobler spirit began to animate the House of Commons which ultimately” checkmated tyranny beneath the scaffold of Charles I. But this astounding blow was then remote. “As yet the steady reaction from old abuses was but dimly apparent, even to the most clear-sighted and hopeful minds; and numbers of devout and brave hearts gave way to the conviction that, for such as they, England had ceased for ever to be a habitable spot.”[22]
Towards the close of Elizabeth’s reign, a number of yeomen in the North of England, some in Nottinghamshire, some in Lincolnshire, some in Yorkshire, and the neighborhood of these counties, “whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for his truth,” separated from the English church, “and as the Lord’s free people joined themselves, by a covenant of the Lord, into a church estate in the fellowship of the gospel, to walk in all his ways made known or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavors, whatsoever it should cost, the Lord assisting them.”[23]
The Protestant world was at this time divided between two regal phases of reform. “Luther’s rationale,” says Bancroft, “was based upon the sublime but simple truth which lies at the bottom of morals, the paramount value of character and purity of conscience; the superiority of right dispositions over ceremonial exactness; and, as he expressed it, ‘justification by faith alone.’ But he hesitated to deny the real presence, and was indifferent to the observance of external ceremonies. Calvin, with sterner dialectics, sanctioned by his power as the ablest writer of his age, attacked the Roman doctrines respecting the communion, and esteemed as a commemoration the rite which the papists reverenced as a sacrifice. Luther acknowledged princes as his protectors, and in the ceremonies of worship favored magnificence as an aid to devotion; Calvin was the guide of Swiss republics, and avoided in their churches all appeals to the senses as crimes against religion. Luther resisted the Roman church for its immorality; Calvin for its idolatry. Luther exposed the folly of superstition, ridiculed the hair-shirt and the scourge, the purchased indulgence, and the dearly-bought masses for the dead; Calvin shrunk from their criminality with impatient horror. Luther permitted the cross, the taper, pictures, images, as things of indifference; Calvin demanded a spiritual worship in its utmost purity.”[24]
The Separatists were ardent Calvinists. They esteemed the “offices and callings, courts and canons” of the English church “monuments of idolatry.” Those of the North of England, though “presently they were scoffed and scorned by the profane multitude, and their ministers urged with the yoke of subscription,” yet held “that the lordly power of the prelates ought not to be submitted to.”[25]
In this northern church was “Mr. Richard Clifton, a grave and revered preacher, who by his pains and diligence had done much good, and under God had been the means of the conversion of many; also that famous and worthy man, Mr. John Robinson, who afterwards was their pastor for many years, till God called him away by death; and Mr. William Brewster, a reverent man, who afterwards was chosen elder of the church, and lived with them till old age.”[26]
In the year 1607 these reformers seem to have received the vindictive attention of the government, for Bradford makes this record: “After that they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side. Some were taken and clapped up in prison. Others had their houses beset and watched night and day. The most were fain to fly and leave their houses and goods, and the means of their livelihood. Yet these things, and many more still sharper, which afterwards befell them, were no other than they looked for, and therefore they were better able to bear them by the assistance of God’s grace and spirit. Nevertheless, seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no hope of peace at home, by joint consent they resolved to go into the Low Countries, where, they heard, was freedom for all men; as also how sundry from London and various parts had been persecuted into exile aforetime, and were gone thither, sojourning at Amsterdam and in other cities. So, after they had continued together about a year, and kept their meetings every sabbath in one place and another, exercising the worship of God despite the diligence and malice of their adversaries, seeing that they could no longer continue in that condition, they prepared to pass over into Holland as they could.”[27]
The Pilgrims were preëminently men of action. They were not dreamy speculators; they were not dilettanti idealists. They never let “I dare not” wait upon “I would.” With them decision was imperative, and meant action. They had dropped two words from their vocabulary—doubt and hesitation. Instantly they prepared for exile; and they accepted it as serenely when conscience beckoned that way with her imperious finger, as their descendants would an invitation to attend a halcyon gala.
Still, in the very outset they met obstacles which would have unnerved less resolute men. But the heart of their purpose was not to be broken. In 1607,[28] the Pilgrims made an effort to quit the shores of this inhospitable country. They had appointed Boston, in Lincolnshire, the rendezvous, and a contract had been made with an English captain to convey their persons and their goods to Amsterdam. The Pilgrims were punctual; the seaman was not. Finally, however, he appeared. The eager fugitives were shipped; but they were taken aboard only to be betrayed. The recreant master had plotted with the authorities to entrap the victims. The unhappy Pilgrims were taken ashore again in open boats, and there the officers “rifled and ransacked them, searching them to their shirts for money.”[29] Even the women were treated with rude immodesty.[30] After this thievish official raid, they were “carried back into the town and made a spectacle and wonder to the multitude, which came flocking on all sides to behold them. Being thus first, by the catchpole officers, rifled and stripped of their money, books, and much other goods, they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers were sent to inform the lords of the council of the matter; meantime they were committed to ward. The magistrates used the Pilgrims courteously, and showed them what kindness and favor they could; but they were not able to deliver the prisoners till order came from the council-table. The issue was, that after a month’s imprisonment, the greater part were dismissed, and sent to the places from which they came; but seven of their chiefs were still left in prison and bound over to the next assizes.”[31]
In the spring of 1608, these same indomitable Pilgrims, together with some others, resolved to make another effort to quit the house of bondage. Dryden says that
“Only idiots may be cozened twice.”
This time they made a compact with a Dutch captain at Hull—they would not trust an Englishman.[32] The plan now was, that the men should assemble on a wild common, between Grimsby and Hull, a place chosen on account of its remoteness from any town; the women, the children, and the property of the exiles were to be conveyed to that part of the coast in a barque. The men made their way thither, in small companies, by land. The barque reached its destination a day sooner than the foot travellers; it was also some hours ahead of the ship.[33] As the short, chop-sea of the channel caused the passengers in the barque to suffer acutely from seasickness, the sailors ran into a small creek for shelter. Here the night was passed. How comfortless! The deep roar of the sullen breakers smote heavily upon their ears; and while the chill winds swept over them, the ceaseless pulsing of the sea and the hollow moaning of the waves at midnight, for the sea continued rough, deepened the melancholy feelings which could not but agitate their breasts. So huddled on the weird, strange shore, they counted the hours till dawn.[34]
In the morning the longed-for ship arrived; but through some negligence of the sailors, the vessel containing the women, their little ones, and the property, had run aground. The men stood in groups on the shore; and that no time might be lost, the captain sent his boat to convey some of them on board, while a squad of sailors were detailed to help get the grounded barque once more afloat. But alack, by this time so considerable a gathering in such a place, and at an hour so unusual, had attracted attention; information was conveyed to the neighboring authorities; and as the boat which had already taken the great part of the men to the ship, was again returning to the shore, the captain espied a large company, some on horseback, some afoot, but all armed, advancing towards the spot where the hapless barque still lay aground with the few remaining men grouped about it. Alarmed, the mariner put back to his vessel, swore by the sacrament that he would not stay, and deaf to the importunities of his sad passengers, he spread his sails, weighed anchor, and was soon out of sight.[35]
We may imagine with what aching hearts the poor exiles in the ship looked towards the receding shore, to their disconsolate companions, and to their precious wives and children, who stood there “crying for fear and quaking with cold.” Those on board the ship had no property, not even a change of raiment; and they had scarcely a penny in their pockets. But the loss of their possessions was as nothing to the cruel stroke which had severed them from those they best loved on earth.[36]
“Robinson—honest and able general as he was in every sense—had resolved to be the last to embark. He was therefore a witness of the scene of distress and agony which ensued on the departure of the ship. The outburst of grief was not to be restrained. Some of the women wept aloud; others felt too deeply, were too much bewildered, to indulge in utterance of any kind; while the children, partly from seeing what had happened, and partly from a vague impression that something dreadful had come, mingled their sobs and cries in the general lamentation. As the sail of the ship faded away upon the distant waters, the wives felt as if one stroke had reduced them all to widowhood, and every child that had reached years of consciousness felt as one who in a moment had become fatherless. But thus dark are the chapters in human affairs in which the good have often to become students, and from which they have commonly had to learn their special lessons.”[37]
On the approach of the officers some of the men escaped, others remained to assist the helpless. These were apprehended and “conveyed from constable to constable, till their persecutors were weary of so large a number of captives and permitted them to go their way.”[38]
As to the voyagers, the very elements seemed to war against them. They soon encountered foul weather, and were driven far along the coast of Norway; “nor sun, nor moon, nor stars, for many days appeared.” Once they gave up all for lost, thinking the ship had foundered. “But when,” says a writer who was himself on board, “man’s hope and help wholly failed, the Lord’s power and mercy appeared for their recovery, for the ship rose again, and gave the mariners courage once more to manage her. While the waters ran into their very ears and mouths, and all cried ‘We sink! we sink!’ they also said, if not with miraculous, yet with a great height of divine faith, ‘Yet, Lord, thou canst save! yet, Lord, thou canst save!’ And He who holds the winds in his fist, and the waters in the hollow of his hand, did hear and save them.”[39]
Eventually the storm-tossed ship dropped anchor in Amsterdam harbor; and “in the end,” says Young, “notwithstanding all these tortures, the Pilgrims all got over, some at one time and some at another, and met together again, according to their desire, with no small rejoicing.”[40]
CHAPTER II.
THE HALT.
“Weep ye not for the dead, neither bemoan him; but weep sore for him that goeth away: for he shall return no more, nor see his native country.” Jer. 22:10.
When the Pilgrims stepped from the deck of their vessel upon the quays of Amsterdam, they felt that sad, aching sense of utter desolation which always smites exiled hearts in a strange country. But there was much about Amsterdam which tended to increase this natural homesickness, and to make the blood pulse still more coldly through their veins. Every thing was novel; the manners, the costume, the architecture, the language of the people. Their first steps were involved in an apparently inextricable maze; they were confounded by the bewildering confusion of land and water. Canals, crawled with their sluggish water, before them and behind them, to the right and to the left. Indeed, the town was so much interwoven with havens, that the oozy ground was cut up into ninety-five islands or detached blocks, connected with each other by two hundred and ninety fantastic bridges. The principal havens, called grachts, were from a hundred to a hundred and forty feet wide, and extended in semicircular curves one after the other through the town.
In order to reach the interior of the city, it was necessary to cross a number of these broad harbors; and in making the necessary deflections in passing from gracht to gracht, all recollection of the points of the compass vanished from the minds of the bewildered Englishmen, so that they received the impression that they were wandering in a labyrinth from which it was impossible to escape by their own unaided efforts.
The houses were built of brick, and were generally four or five stories high, with fantastic, pointed gables in front. Some of them were elegantly constructed; but the larger number of the citizens seemed desirous of making their dwellings look as like warehouses as possible. Almost every house had a piece of timber projecting from the wall over the uppermost window in the gable, and this was used for hauling up fuel or furniture to the top story. All the residences were erected upon piles of wood driven into the soft, marshy ground; but so insufficient was this precaution in giving stability, that many of the buildings leaned considerably from the perpendicular, and seemed as if about to topple over into the street or splash out of sight through the mud. The roadway between the houses and the water was so narrow, that in some of the finest streets a coach could not conveniently turn round.
Such were some of the strange sights which greeted the wondering eyes of the Pilgrims as they hurriedly trod, on the day of their arrival, from the quay where they had landed, into the interior of the quaint old town in search of lodgings.
A brief residence sufficed to familiarize the exiles with the peculiarities of the city. They soon discovered that Amsterdam stood upon the southern bank of the Ai, a neck of the sea which possessed the appearance of a navigable frith. They examined the quays and piers which rose sheer out of the water, so as to afford the greatest facility for the shipment of goods from the abounding warehouses. They wondered at the peculiar form of the town, which was semicircular, with its straight side on the Ai, while the bow swept several miles inland. The canals were fed by the river Amstel, from which the town was named. An immense exterior belt of water, which the Dutch termed “the cingel,” pursued a zig-zag line round the sites of ancient bastions, which were then crowned with windmills, whose long arms and tireless fingers were incessantly employed in snatching up the ever-encroaching water, and casting it far out into the sea.
From the condition of a fishing-village on the Amstel, in the thirteenth century, Amsterdam had risen, under the fostering privileges of the counts of Flanders, to be a commercial town of some importance even in the fourteenth century. The establishment of the Dutch independence so greatly accelerated its prosperity, that in the beginning of the seventeenth century it had attained the first rank as a maritime city. Antwerp, the old El Dorado, was eclipsed. Amsterdam became the entrepôt of commerce; ships visited it from all nations; its merchants were famed for their honesty and frugality; and its great bank enabled it to take the lead in the pecuniary concerns of Europe. The city was inhabited by a quarter of a million of souls; and seated in its swamp, it was the freest town in the world. It was a city of refuge to the oppressed of all nations; and therein, perhaps, lay the secret of its wonderful prosperity.
Amsterdam was the Venice of the Netherlands. It was literally a spot which had been wrung from the grasp of the unwilling and ever-protesting sea. A perpetual Waterloo conflict was waged between the persistent Hollander and old Neptune for the possession of the soil which man’s skill had usurped. The city, and indeed the Netherlands at large, formed the “debatable ground” of this unique struggle between humanity and the elements. The whole country was a morass, whose buildings were constructed on huge piles; and it was this that gave rise to the saying of Erasmus, that “multitudes of his countrymen were like birds, living on the tops of trees.” Across the forehead of the Netherlands brains and persistence had written their motto, “Labor omnia vincit.”[41]
Such was the city in which the Pilgrims now found themselves domesticated. In some things they found it easy to assimilate with their new neighbors: a common faith was one strong bond of union; a passion for liberty was another. But there were not lacking strong points of dissimilarity. The Pilgrims were orderly and staid; yet they never could reconcile themselves to that spirit of system, or precise, long-authorized method, which formed one of the most remarkable traits in the manners of the Dutch. In all departments of their social economy they seemed to act upon established rules, from which it was esteemed a species of heresy to depart. There were rules for visiting, for sending complimentary messages, for making domestic announcements, for bestowing alms, for out-of-door recreations—every thing was required to be done in a certain way, and no other way was right. Society was an incarnate rule.
Another thing which puzzled the Pilgrims was, that in their various walks they observed that every house was provided with one or more mirrors in frames, fastened by wire rods on the outsides of the windows, and at such an angle as to command a complete view both of the doorway and of all that passed in the street. They afterwards found that these looking-glasses were universal in Holland, and were the solace of the ladies while following their domestic avocations.
But the exiles were too grateful for toleration to be hypercritical. “They knew that they were Pilgrims, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to heaven, their dearest country, and quieted their spirits.”[42] They spent no time in idleness, but with stout hearts went to work. They had been bred to agricultural pursuits; but in Holland they were obliged to learn mechanical trades. Brewster became a printer;[43] Bradford learned the art of dyeing silk.[44] Some learned to weave, and found employment in the cloth guilds and at the looms. But though grim poverty often pinched them, and their temporal circumstances were never very prosperous, they yet praised God for what they had; and exile and the bond of a common misfortune knit their hearts close together, so that their spiritual enjoyment in each other’s society was precious and full.[45]
Amsterdam was not altogether a city of strangers. There were some there already, who, like themselves, had left their native island for conscience’ sake.[46] But though they had formed a church, its vitals were torn by fierce dissension. The feud blazed when Robinson and his friends reached Holland; since nothing could placate the resentment of the hostile parties, the Pilgrims, fearful of the baleful effect of the quarrel upon themselves, decided, after a sojourn of twelve months, to remove from Amsterdam to the neighboring city of Leyden.[47]
“While Amsterdam was rising into mercantile wealth, Leyden was acquiring literary reputation. By a singular but honorable preference, the citizens, on being offered by William the Silent, in 1575, as a reward for their valor during the famous siege, either a remission of taxes or the foundation of a university, at once chose the university. The city had obtained the appellation of the Athens of the West. But with its scholastic cloisters it combined busy manufactures: while in one street the student was engaged with his books, in another the weaver was seated at his loom. But all breathed quietude and liberty; and it is difficult to imagine a more inviting home than that which Leyden presented to these weary, sore-footed Pilgrims as they trod along the pleasant road from Amsterdam, ‘seeking peace above all other riches.’
“If the history of the city they had left was calculated to stimulate them to industry, the story of the town they were entering was adapted to keep alive their love of liberty. Traces might still be seen of the effects of the heroic deed performed by the citizens of Leyden, when, contending for their freedom, they preferred to inundate their city and give it to the sea, rather than submit to the cruel tyranny of Spain.”[48]
Here, as before at Amsterdam, they fell to work. “Being now pitched,” says Bradford, “they fell to such trades and employments as they best could, valuing peace and their spiritual comfort above any other riches whatsoever; and at length they came to raise a competent and decent living, but with hard and continual labor.”[49]
In Leyden the Pilgrims remained for many years, “enjoying much sweet society and spiritual comfort together in the ways of God, under the able and prudent government of Mr. John Robinson. Yea, such was the mutual love and respect which this worthy man had to his flock and his flock to him, that it might be said of them, as it once was of the famous emperor Marcus Aurelius[50] and the people of Rome, that it was hard to judge whether he delighted more in having such a people, or they in having such a pastor. His love was great towards them, and his care was always bent for their best good, both for soul and body; for besides his singular ability in divine things—wherein he excelled—he was very able to give direction in civil affairs, and to foresee dangers and inconveniences; by which means he was very helpful to the outward estates of the exiles, and so was in every way a common father to them.”[51]
Mr. William Brewster was Robinson’s assistant, and “he was now called and chosen by the church” to fill the place of elder.[52] The Pilgrims “grew in knowledge and gifts and other graces of the Spirit of God, and lived together in peace and love and holiness; and as many came unto them from divers parts of England, they grew to be a great congregation. If at any time differences arose or offences broke out—as it cannot be but sometimes there will, even among the best of men—they were ever so met with and nipped in the bud betimes, or otherwise so well compassed, as still love, peace, and communion, were preserved; or else the church was purged of those that were incorrigible, when, after much patience used, no other means would serve—which seldom came to pass.”[53]
Though strict in their discipline and strongly attached to their distinctive principles, the Leyden exiles were far from being bigots. Robinson, though, in Cotton Mather’s phrase, “he had been in his younger time—as very good fruit hath sometimes been, ere age hath ripened it—soured by the principles of rigid separation,”[54] was now developed into a man of large-hearted benevolence and enlightened catholicity. Over his flock he breathed this heavenly spirit. Nothing more offended him than the conduct of those “who cleaved unto themselves, and retired from the common good.”[55] Nothing more provoked him than to witness undue rigidity in the enforcement of subordinate matters, especially when sternness on points of outward order was associated, as is often the case, with laxity in the critics. Robinson knew how to estimate “the tithe of mint and anise and cummin” in their relative value to the weightier matters of the law. Schism he condemned; division he deplored. From the government and ceremonies of the English Establishment his conscience compelled him to dissent, but he was prepared to welcome the disciples of that and of all other Christian communions to the fellowship of the Lord’s table. “Our faith,” said he, “is not negative; nor does it consist in the condemnation of others, and wiping their names out of the bead-roll of churches, but in the edification of ourselves. Neither require we of any of ours, in the confession of their faults, that they renounce or in any one word contest with the Church of England.”[56]
It is not strange that such a teacher should have won the reverent regard of his Pilgrim flock. They could not fail to hold him “in precious estimation, as his worth and wisdom did deserve.” And “though they esteemed him highly while he lived and labored among them,” says Bradford, “yet much more after his death,[57] when they came to feel the want of his help, and saw, by woful experience, what a treasure they had lost; yea, such a loss as they saw could not be repaired, for it was as hard for them to find such another leader and feeder in all respects, as for the Taborites to find another Ziska.[58] And though they did not, like the Bohemians, call themselves orphans after his death, yet they had as much cause to lament their present condition and after-usage.”[59]
Characterized by so much unity, peacefulness, consistency, and true-hearted love, the Pilgrims could not fail to win the sincere respect of the Leyden citizens. Though most of them were poor, yet there were none so poor but if they were known to be of the English congregation, the Dutch tradesmen would trust them in any reasonable amount when they lacked money, and this because they had found by experience how careful they were to keep their word, while they saw them painful and diligent in their respective callings. The Leyden merchants even strove to get their custom; and when they required aid, employed the honest strangers and paid them above others.[60]
The city magistrates testified to the sobriety and peacefulness of their guests on the eve of their departure from Holland. “These English,” said they, in reproving the exiled Walloons[61] who were attached to the French refugee church, “have lived among us now these twelve years, and yet we never had any suit or action against any one of them; but your strifes and quarrels are continual.”[62]
The reputation of their pastor for sanctity and learning no doubt tended to raise the respectability of the English church in the estimation of the Dutch.
Circumstances afforded him ample scope for the display of his talents. A heated discussion between the Arminians and the Calvinists raged in Leyden during his residence in the city, and in that far-famed controversy the great English divine was finally persuaded to take part.[63]
In the schools there were daily and hot disputes. Scholars were divided in opinion. The two professors or divinity readers of the Leyden university were themselves ranged on opposite sides; one of them, Episcopius, teaching the Arminian tenets; the other, Polyander, proclaiming the Calvinistic creed.[64]
Robinson, though he taught thrice a week, besides writing sundry pamphlets,[65] went daily to listen to the disputations, hearing first one side, then the other. In this way he became thoroughly grounded in the controversy, saw the force of the opposing arguments, and became familiar with the shifts of the inimical disputants. Some sermons which he delivered in the English church on the contested issues attracted public attention. Episcopius had just published certain theses which he had affirmed that he was prepared to maintain against all opponents. Polyander and the chief preachers of the city waited upon Robinson, and urged him to pick up the gauntlet. He was loath, being a stranger; but they beat down the rampart of his objections, and finally Robinson consented to dispute. Episcopius and the Pilgrim pastor met, and in this public tilt the English champion is said to have achieved “a famous victory.”[66]
Ever after this verbal tournament, Robinson was held in the highest esteem by the learned men of the university, by the Dutch preachers, and by the republican government of Holland.[67] Indeed, it is said that nothing but the fear of offending the English king prevented the bestowal upon him of some mark of national favor.[68]
On their part, the English refugees always treated the reformed churches of the Continent with honor and fraternal kindness. “We acknowledge,” remarked Robinson, “before God and man, that we harmonize so perfectly with the reformed churches of the Netherlands in matters of religion, as to be ready to subscribe their articles of faith, and every one of them, as they are set forth in their confession. We acknowledge these churches as true and genuine; we hold fellowship with them as far as we can; those among us who understand Dutch, attend their preaching; we offer the Supper to such of their members as are known to us and may desire it.”[69]
Yet the Pilgrims did not indorse the system of church government which received the imprimatur of the Synod of Dort. They steadfastly maintained that each single church or society of Christians possessed within itself full ecclesiastical authority for choosing officers, administering all the ordinances of the gospel, and settling its discipline; in a word, they held to the perfect independence of the individual churches, and framed their ecclesitical polity on the purest democratic model.[70]
“They conceded,” observes Uhden, “that synods and councils might be useful in healing divisions between churches, and in imparting to them friendly advice, but not in the exercise of judicial authority over them, or in the imposition of any canon or any article of faith, without the free assent of each individual church.”[71]
Sheathed in the panoply of their principles, busied in the multifarious activities of their daily employments, and solaced by faith, the Pilgrims “made shift to live in these hard times.” Peregrini Deo cura, runs the old Latin phrase; and this exiled band of worshippers proved that strangers are indeed peculiar objects of God’s care.
CHAPTER III.
THE DECISION.
“Can ye lead out to distant colonies
The o’erflowings of a people, or your wronged
Brethren, by impious persecution driven,
And arm their breasts with fortitude to try
New regions—climes, though barren, yet beyond
The baneful power of tyrants? These are deeds
For which their hardy labors well prepare
The sinewy arms of Albion’s sons.”
Dyer.
Although the Pilgrims resided at Leyden in honor, and at peace with God and their own consciences, many circumstances conspired to render them anxious and uneasy. The horizon of the Netherlands grew gloomy with portents of war. The famous truce between Holland and the Spaniard drew near its conclusion.[72] The impatient demon of strife stood knocking at the door. Homesickness gnawed at their hearts. Dear, cruel England filled their thoughts. The language of the Dutch had never become pleasantly familiar.[73] Frequently “they saw poverty coming on them like an armed man.” Many of their little band were taken from them by death. “Grave mistress Experience having taught them many things,” some of their “sagest members began both deeply to apprehend their present dangers and wisely to foresee the future, and to think of timely remedy.” They inclined to removal, “not out of any newfangledness or other such like giddy humor, by which men are oftentimes transported to their great hurt and danger, but for sundry weighty and solid reasons.”[74]
These have been often recited, and they completely vindicate the project to remove.
The Pilgrims “saw, and found by experience, the hardness of the place and country to be such that few in comparison would come to them, and fewer would bide it out and continue with them; for many that joined them, and many more who desired to be with them, could not endure the great labor and hard fare, with other inconveniences which they underwent and were content to bear. But though they loved the persons of the exiles, approved their cause, and honored their sufferings, yet they left them weeping, as Orpah did her mother-in-law Naomi, and as those Romans did Cato in Utica, who desired to be excused and borne with, though they could not all be Catos.[75] For many, though they desired to enjoy the ordinances of God as the Pilgrims did, yet, alas, chose bondage, with danger of conscience, rather than to endure these hardships. Yea, some preferred the prisons of England to this liberty in Holland, with these afflictions. The Pilgrims thought that if a better and easier place of residence could be had, it would draw many to them, and take away these discouragements. Yea, their pastor would often say that many of those who both wrote and preached against them there would, if they were in a place where they might have liberty and live comfortably, practise as they did.”[76]
Then again, “they saw that, though the exiles generally bore all these difficulties very cheerfully and with resolute courage, being in the best and strength of their years, yet old age began to steal upon them—and their great and continued labors, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened it before the time—so it was not only probably thought, but apparently seen, that within a few years more they would be in danger to scatter by necessities pressing them, or sink under their burdens, or both. Therefore, according to the divine proverb, that ‘a wise man seeth the plague when it cometh, and hideth himself,’[77] so they, like skilful and tried soldiers, were fearful to be entrapped and surrounded by their enemies, so as they should neither be able to fight or fly; so they thought it better to dislodge betimes to some place of better advantage and less danger, if any such could be found.”[78]
It was furthermore perceived that, “as necessity was a task-master over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to their servants, but in a sort to their dearest children; the which, as it did not a little wound the tender hearts of many loving fathers and mothers, so it produced likewise sundry sad and sorrowful effects; for many of their children, who were of the best disposition and most gracious inclinations, having learned to bear the yoke in their youth, and being willing to bear part of their parents’ burden, were oftentimes so oppressed by their heavy labors, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies bowed under the weight, and became decrepit in early youth, the vigor of nature being consumed in the bud. But that which was more lamentable, and of all sorrows most heavy to be borne, was, that many of the children, by these means and the great licentiousness of youth in those countries and the manifold temptations of the place, were drawn away by evil example into extravagant and dangerous courses, getting the reins off their necks, and departing from their parents. Some became soldiers, others made far voyages by sea, and some walked in paths tending to dissoluteness and the danger of their souls, to the great grief of their parents and the dishonor of God. The Pilgrims saw that their posterity would be in danger to degenerate and be corrupted.”[79]
Still again—“and this was not least”—they were inclined to remove by the “great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least of making some way thereto, for the propagation and advancement of the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for the performance of so great a work.”[80]
These and some other kindred reasons[81] pushed the Pilgrims to further emigration. The question which each began to ask the other was, “Whither shall we go?” Soon this query stared all other considerations out of countenance, and became the all-engrossing topic of discussion at the hearth-stones and in the chapel of the exiles.
At this juncture a germ of thought was developed which proved to be the seed of a mighty empire. All Europe stood a-tip-toe gazing across the misty and chilling waste of waters towards that new continent by whose discovery the genius of Columbus had rounded the globe into perfect symmetry. The glories of the New World flashed in the brilliant eloquence of Raleigh. Marvellous tales were told of the fertility of the soil and of the healthful beauty of the skies; while old sailors, who had gazed with their own eyes upon the legendary shores, passed from city to city depicting to eager and credulous crowds the terrors of the wilderness and the wild ferocity of the Western savages.
Meantime “the career of maritime discovery had been pursued with daring intrepidity and rewarded with brilliant success. The voyages of Gosnold, and Smith, and Hudson, the enterprise of Raleigh, and Delaware, and Gorges, the compilations of Eden, and Willes, and Hakluyt, had filled the commercial world with wonder. Calvinists of the French church had already sought, though vainly, to plant themselves in Brazil, in Carolina, and, with De Monts, in Acadia;”[82] and now, in 1617, some bold thinker and unshrinking speaker among the Leyden Pilgrims, perhaps Brewster, perhaps Bradford, perhaps Robinson himself, proposed to colonize “some of those vast and unpeopled countries of America which were fruitful and fit for habitation, but devoid of all civilized inhabitants; where there were only savage and brutish men, who ranged up and down little otherwise than as wild beasts.”[83]
At the outset the Pilgrims listened to this proposal, some with admiration, some with misgiving, some openly aghast. Bradford’s quaint pages afford us some glimpses of their debates. The doubters said, “It is a great design, and subject to inconceivable perils; as besides the casualties of the seas, which none can be freed from, the length of the voyage is such that the weak bodies of many worn out with age and travel, as many of us are, can never be able to endure; and even if they should, the miseries to which we should be exposed in that land will be too hard for us to bear; ’tis likely that some or all will effect our ruin. There we shall be liable to famine, and nakedness, and want of all things. The change of air, diet, and water, will infect us with sickness; and those who escape these evils will be in danger of the savages, who are cruel, barbarous, and most treacherous in their rage, and merciless when they overcome; not being content only to kill, but delighting to torment men in the most bloody way, flaying men alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the joints by piece-meal, broiling them on coals, and eating collops of their victims’ flesh while they yet live, and in their very sight.”
As these horrors darkened in their imaginations, the deeply-interested exiles who thronged the council-chamber shuddered with affright. Mothers, hearing the shrill war-whoop in advance, strained their babes yet closer to their breasts. “Surely it could not be thought but the very hearing of these things must move the very bowels of men to grate within them, and make the weak to quake and tremble.”
But the opponents of the project urged still other objections, “and those neither unreasonable nor improbable.” “It will require,” they said, “more money than we can furnish to prepare for such a voyage. Similar schemes have failed;[84] and our experience in removing to Holland teaches us how hard it is to live in a strange country, even though it be a rich and civilized commonwealth. What then shall we do in the frozen wilderness?”
Fear chilled the hearts, doubt paralyzed the nerves of the assembled exiles. Then the more resolute stood up, and, fixing their eyes on the sky, exclaimed, “God will protect us; and he points us on. All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be both undertaken and overcome with answerable courage. We grant the dangers of this removal to be tremendous, but not desperate; the difficulties are many, but not invincible; for though many of them are likely, all are not certain. It may be that sundry of the things surmised may never happen; others, by provident care and the use of good means, may be prevented; and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience may either be borne or overcome. True it is that such attempts are not to be undertaken without good reason; never rashly or lightly, as many have done, for curiosity or hope of gain. But our condition is not ordinary; our ends are good and honorable; our calling lawful and urgent; therefore we may invoke and expect God’s blessing on our proceeding. Yea, though we should lose our lives in this action, yet may we have comfort in it, and our endeavor would be honorable. We live here but as men in exile; and as great miseries may befall us in this place, for the twelve years of truce are now nigh up, and here is nothing but beating of drums and preparations for war, the events whereof are always uncertain. The Spaniard may prove as cruel as the savages of America, and the famine and pestilence as sore here as there, and our liberty less to look out for a remedy.”[85]
It was thus that the undaunted apostles of the future pleaded; and now as always, the policy of active, trustful, and religious courage overbore the timid pleas of the undecided, the plausible doubts of the skeptical, and the wailing dissent of the croakers who paused distrustful of the unknown future and enamoured of the anchored past. The Pilgrims announced their decision to follow in the wake of Columbus, and launch boldly across the Atlantic, trusting God.
CHAPTER IV.
FAREWELL.
“Like Israel’s host to exile driven,
Across the flood the Pilgrims fled;
Their hands bore up the ark of heaven,
And Heaven their trusting footsteps led,
Till on these savage shores they trod,
And won the wilderness for God.”
Pierpont.
Having decided to settle in America, the Pilgrims, “after humble prayers unto God for his direction and assistance,” held another general conference, and in this they discussed the location of their proposed colony. Some were ardent for Guiana,[86] whose tropical climate and immeasurable mineral wealth Raleigh had painted in dazzling colors, and whose fertility was such that it was only necessary to “tickle it with a hoe, and it would laugh with a harvest.” The Spaniard was already there. It has been well said that the golden dreams which deluded the first European settlers of America were akin, alike in object and results, to the old alchymists’ search after the philosopher’s stone. The painful alchymist lost not only the gold he sought, but the wealth of knowledge and of substantial commercial treasure which the researches of modern chemistry have disclosed; and so the Spanish colonists slighted the abounding wealth of a genial climate and a fertile soil, while chasing the illusive phantom of “a land of gold.”[87]
Yet, despite the apparent opening in Guiana, the Pilgrims would not go thither, partly because the pretensions of England to the soil were wavering, but chiefly because a horde of intolerant and ubiquitous Jesuits had already planted themselves in that vicinity.[88]
“Upon their talk of removing, sundry of the Dutch would have had them go under them, and made them large offers;” but “the Pilgrims were attached to their nationality as Englishmen, and to the language of their fatherland. A deep-seated love of country led them to the generous purpose of recovering the protection of England by enlarging her dominions. They were ‘restless’ with the desire to live once more under the government of their native land.”[89]
This feeling led them to reject the proposal of the Holland merchants; and, since they had also given up the idea of colonizing Guiana, they determined to essay a settlement in “the most northern parts of Virginia,” hoping under the provincial government “to live in a distinct body by themselves,” at peace with God and man.[90]
There were in 1617 two organized English companies which had been chartered by James I. to colonize America, and empowered to effect regular and permanent settlements, extending one hundred miles inland. The headquarters of one of these was in London, of the other in Plymouth.[91] The Leyden Pilgrims were impelled to sail under the auspices of one of these merchant-companies by a double consideration—a lack of means to effect an independent settlement, and a desire to emigrate in such shape that they might live under English protection.[92] Hence on selecting Virginia as the site of their intended settlement, the exiles at once despatched two of their number to England, at the charge of the rest,[93] to negotiate with the Virginia company.[94] They “found God going along with them;” and through the influence of “Sir Edwin Sandys, a religious gentleman then living,” they might at once have gained a patent; but the careful envoys desired first to consult “the multitude” at Leyden.[95]
In their interview with the Leyden merchants, the envoys had expressly stipulated for freedom of religious worship.[96] On their return to Holland they told the Leyden congregation that they “found the Virginia company very desirous to have them go out under their auspices, and willing to grant them a patent, with as ample privileges as they could bestow; while some of their chiefs did not doubt their ability to obtain a guaranty of toleration for them from the king.”[97]
The Pilgrim agents carried back with them a friendly and sympathizing letter from Sir Edwin Sandys;[98] and to this a formal answer was returned. “We verily believe,” wrote Robinson and Brewster, “that the Lord is with us, unto whom and whose service we have given ourselves in many trials; and that he will graciously prosper our endeavors according to the simplicity of our hearts therein. We are well weaned from the delicate milk of our mother-country, and inured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land, which yet, in a great part, we have by patience overcome. Our people are, for the body of them, industrious and frugal, we think we may say, as any company of people in the world. We are knit together as a body in a most strict and sacred bond and covenant of the Lord, of the violation whereof we make great conscience, and by virtue whereof we do hold ourselves strictly tied to all care of each other’s good, and of the whole. It is not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again. We know our entertainment in England, and in Holland; we shall much prejudice both our arts and means by removal; but once gone, we should not be won to return by any hope to recover even our present helps and comforts.”[99]
While these negotiations were pending the Virginia company found much greater difficulty than they had apprehended in winning from the silly and pedantic king an assent to the tolerant clauses of the Pilgrims’ patent; “and though many means were used to bring it about, it could not be effected.”[100] When the Pilgrims asked that liberty of worship might be confirmed under the king’s broad seal, they were asked two questions: “How intend ye to gain a livelihood in the new country?” The reply was, “By fishing, at first.” “Who shall make your ministers?” was the next query. The Pilgrims answered, “The power of making them is in the church;” and this spoiled all. To enlarge the dimensions of England James I. esteemed “a good and honest motive; and fishing was an honest trade, the apostles’ own calling,” yet he referred their suit to the decision of the prelates of Canterbury and London.[101]
The exiles were advised not to carry their suit before the bishops, but to rely upon events and the disposition which his majesty had shown to connive at their enterprise under “a formal promise of neglect.”[102] Besides, it was considered that if James had confirmed their titles, nothing could bind him. “If afterwards there should be a purpose to wrong us,” said they, “though we had a seal as broad as the house floor, it would not serve the turn; for there would be means enough found to recall or reverse it.”[103] So they determined in this, as in other things, to rest on God’s providence.
New agents were at once despatched to England to urge forward the lagging preparations. But dissensions in the Virginia company “ate out the heart of action.” At last, in 1619, a patent was granted,[104] and only “one more negotiation remained to be completed. The Pilgrims were not possessed of sufficient capital for the execution of their scheme. The confidence in wealth to be derived from fisheries had made American expeditions a subject of consideration with English merchants; and the agents from Leyden were able to form a partnership between their friends and the men of business in London. A company called the ‘Merchant-Adventurers’ was formed. The services of each emigrant were rated as a capital of ten pounds, and belonged to the company; all profits were to be reserved till the end of seven years, when the whole amount, and all houses, lands, gardens, and fields, were to be divided among the shareholders according to their respective interests. A London merchant who risked one hundred pounds would receive for his money tenfold more than the penniless laborer for his entire services. This arrangement threatened a seven years’ check to the pecuniary prosperity of the colony; yet as it did not interfere with civil rights or religion, it did not intimidate the resolved.”[105]
It is peculiarly interesting to us of this generation to notice how prominent a trait republicanism was in the intellectual character of the Pilgrims. It crops out constantly. Nothing must be done without the assent of “the multitude.” When any important matter was broached, the pastor did not presume to dictate, nor did the elders assume to control; the decision rested with the majority vote of the community. Their council was the ideal model of a pure democracy.
So now, when their envoys returned, “they made a public recital,” and the Pilgrims “had a solemn meeting and a day of humiliation to seek the Lord for his direction.”[106] Robinson preached, “teaching many things very aptly and befitting their present occasion and condition, strengthening them against their fears and perplexities, and encouraging them in their resolutions.”[107]
This fine incident was at once an illustration and a prophecy; it illustrated the rugged, self-centred, yet devout independence of the exiles, and it prophesied from this the twining laurels of success. The Pilgrims were invincible; and the secret of their strength was religious democracy. If in their right hand they held an open Bible, signifying faith and hope, in their left they clutched tenaciously the fundamental but still crude principles of organized liberty—the now open secret of later Saxon progress.
At length, in July, 1620, “after much travail and debate, all things were got ready and provided.”[108] It had been previously decided who and how many should sail with “the forlorn hope;” “for all that were willing to have gone could not get ready on account of their other affairs; neither if they could, had there been means to have transported them all together. Those that stayed being the greater number, required the pastor to tarry with them; and indeed for other reasons Robinson could not then well go, so this was more readily yielded unto. The others then desired elder Brewster to sail with them, which was assented to. It was also agreed by mutual consent and covenant, that those who went should be an absolute church of themselves, as well as those who remained; seeing that, in such a dangerous voyage, and removed to such a distance, it might come to pass that they should, for the body of them, never meet again in this world; yet this proviso was inserted, that as any of the rest crossed the water, or any of the Pilgrims returned upon occasion, they should be reputed as members without any further discussion or testimonial. It was also promised to those that went first, by the body of the rest, that if the Lord gave them life and means and opportunity, they would come to them as soon as they could.”[109]
On the eve of departure a solemn fast was held. “Let us seek of God,” said these disciples so shortly to be severed by the sullen sea, “a right way for us and for our little ones and for all our substance.” Is it strange that New England is moral and well-ordered and devout, when it was begotten of a fast and a prayer?
Robinson gave the departing members of his exiled flock “a farewell, breathing a freedom of opinion and an independence of authority such as then was hardly known in the world;”[110] and this he intermixed with practical directions for the future guidance of the Pilgrim voyagers. He chose that beautiful text in Ezra, “And there, at the river by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before God, and seek of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for all our substance.”[111]
Unhappily, “but a brief outline of that remarkable sermon has been preserved. We would gladly give whole shoals of printed discourses in exchange for that one homily. While, however, the larger part is lost in the long silence of the past, the fragments of this great man’s farewell utterances are gathered up and preserved among our richest relics.”[112]
Never was there a more affecting occasion. A Christian congregation, welded together alike by a common faith and a common misfortune, was about to be rent asunder. Some of their number, thrice exiled, were soon to essay the settlement of an unknown and legendary wilderness. These dear wanderers they might never see again with their mortal eyes; and even should they meet them once more on the shores of time, years must intervene before the greeting. Strange thoughts and anxious chased each other across the troubled mirror of each countenance. All eyes were dim with tears; all hands were clasped; the pastor’s heart was full. Amidst the painful silence, broken by a frequent sob, the low, sweet voice of Robinson was heard quivering upon the sympathetic air: “Brethren, we are now ere long to part asunder, and the Lord knoweth whether I shall live ever to see your faces more. But whether the Lord hath appointed it or not, I charge you before God and his blessed angels to follow me no farther than I have followed Christ. If God should reveal any thing to you by any other instrument of his, be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth of my ministry, for I am very confident the Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word. Miserably do I bewail the state and condition of the reformed churches, who are come to a period in religion, and will go no farther than the instruments of their reformation.
“Remember your church covenant, in which you have agreed to walk in all the ways of the Lord, made or to be made known unto you. Remember your promise and covenant with God and with one another to receive whatever light and truth shall be made known to you from his written word; but withal, take heed, I beseech you, what you receive for truth, and compare it and weigh it with other scriptures of truth before you accept it; for it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick antichristian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once.”[113]
Much is said now-a-days about the development of Christianity. The clatter of pseudo-philosophers is deafening. We have the German rationalistic school; the worshippers in the “broad church” of the humanitarians; the idolaters of a mystic pantheism; the devotees of the Socinian tenets; the bold blasphemers who reject all faith, and form a creed in epigrammatic sneers; and the apostles of two churches, one of which believes that God is too good to damn men, while the other holds that man is too good to be damned. All this divinity is quite adrift; it floats rudderless, and rejects the anchorage of God’s word. Robinson was wiser. He was no friend of stagnant Christianity; but in all his voyaging after truth he clung to his Bible anchorage. Inside of that he saw ample room for the completest development. “The Bible, not the fathers, formed his text-book; he discerned there the depths of truth and glory, into which he was persuaded that thoughtful minds might plunge farther and farther as time rolled on. The Bible was to him like the universe, a system unchangeable in its great facts and fundamental principles, but ever opening wider and wider upon devout and studious intellects. He knew there would be no change in God’s word, no addition to or subtraction from its contents; but he looked for beautiful and improving changes in men’s views—for broader, clearer, and grander conceptions of God’s truth.”[114] This was Robinson’s idea of “the development of Christianity,” and it was surcharged with profound philosophy as well as with sound practical direction and Christian pathos. The great Puritan teacher was neither a Socinian, a Pantheist, a Rationalist, nor a Mystic; he claimed no kinship with the money-changers who scourge Christ out of the temple of his divinity; least of all did he sympathize with those who reject the sufficiency of the Scripture text, and found their schemes of progress upon material bases. No; Robinson favored the most radical Christian progress, but he based his idea upon the Bible, and knew how to guard his notion of development from misconception and abuse. The evangelical believers of our day owe the famous Leyden exile a lasting debt of gratitude for the clear distinction which he has drawn between the progressive “liberty of the sons of God,” and the earth-born whims which materialism baptizes with the name of “progress.”
In this same sermon Robinson pressed one other thing, exhibiting, in a bigoted and narrow age, rare catholicity of spirit. “Another thing I commend to you,” he said; “by all means shake off the name of Brownist.[115] ’Tis a mere nickname, a brand to make religion odious, and the professors of it, to the Christian world. To that end I should be glad if some godly minister would go over with you before my coming; for there will be no appreciable difference between the Puritans who have not renounced the church of England and you, when you come to the practice of the ordinances out of the British kingdom. By all means close with the godly party of England, and rather study union than division; in how nearly we may possibly, without sin, close with them, than in the least measure to affect division or separation from them. Nor be ye loath to take another pastor or teacher; for that flock which hath two shepherds is not endangered, but secured thereby.”[116]
Thus abruptly ends this precious fragment; and it may justly be esteemed one of the rarest verbal gems in the trophied casket of our Saxon tongue.
Two vessels had been chartered for the voyage: the “Speedwell,” a small ship of some sixty tons, and a larger vessel of a hundred and eighty tons, called the “Mayflower.”[117] The “Speedwell” lay moored at Delft Haven, a little seaport in the vicinity of Leyden.[118] The Pilgrims were to sail in this ship across the Channel to Southampton, where the “Mayflower” would join them, and thence they were to launch in company across the Atlantic.[119]
On the 21st of July, 1620, the exiles quitted Leyden, which had been their quiet resting-place for eleven years, and journeyed to Delft Haven. “When the ship was ready to carry us away,” wrote Edward Winslow, “the brethren that stayed at Leyden, having again solemnly sought the Lord with us and for us, feasted us that were to go, at our pastor’s house, a commodious building. Here we refreshed ourselves, after tears, with singing psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts, as well as with the voice, there being many of the congregation very expert in music; and indeed it was the sweetest melody that ever mine ears heard. After this our friends accompanied us to Delft Haven, where we were to embark, and there feasted us again. And after prayer by our pastor, when a flood of tears was poured out, they accompanied us to the ship; but we were not able to speak one to another for the abundance of sorrow to part.”[120]
Only a part of the colonists went aboard the “Speedwell” on the day of their arrival at Delft Haven; the others tarried in the town over night, spending the hours in conversation and expressions of true Christian love.[121] “The morning light must have gleamed mournfully upon their eyes through the windows of the apartments where they assembled. It told them that the last days of their pleasant intercourse with old, endeared friends had come, for the wind was fair, and the vessel was ready to weigh anchor and sail. And so they went down to the shore, where the scene at Miletus was literally repeated, save that the people were the voyagers, instead of their apostolic father. Robinson ‘kneeled down and prayed with them, and all wept sore, and fell upon his neck and kissed him, sorrowing most of all for the words which he spake, that they should see his face no more; then he accompanied them to the ship.’ Even the Dutch strangers, who saw the parting, stood and wept.”[122]
Then came the shrill “Yo hoy” of the seamen; final caresses were exchanged; sail was hoisted; a salute was fired from the “Speedwell;” and while the friends on shore watched the receding vessel and strained their eye-balls to retain their vision, she glinted below the horizon, and was gone.
Southampton was safely and speedily reached; “the Speedwell entered port to join the Mayflower—ships whose names have become hallowed, and are worthy of being placed, with the Argo of the ancients, amid the constellations of heaven.”
CHAPTER V.
THE FROZEN WILDERNESS.
“Whoso shrinks or falters now,
Whoso to the yoke would bow
Brand the craven on his brow.
Take your land of sun and bloom;
Only leave to freedom room
For her plough, and forge, and loom.”
Whittier.
At Southampton the Pilgrims made no lengthened stay, pausing but to perfect some necessary final arrangements.[123] A fortnight later, on the 5th of August, 1620, the “Speedwell” and the “Mayflower” weighed anchor, and hoisting sail, set out in company for America. The English soil had scarcely dipped below the horizon, when the “Speedwell” made signals of distress; she was found to leak badly. After consultation, the voyagers wore ship, and put into Dartmouth harbor for repairs. Here the Pilgrims passed eight days, “to their great charge, and loss of time and a fair wind.”[124]
On the 21st of August, a fresh start was made. This time a hundred leagues of sea were passed, and the vessels were just rounding Land’s End, when lo, the “Speedwell” again bore up under pretence of unseaworthiness. Once more the shores of England were regained, and anchor was dropped in Plymouth harbor. The captain of the recusant ship, backed by his company, was dismayed at the dangers of the enterprise, and gave out that the “Speedwell” was too weak for the voyage. “Upon this,” says Bradford, “it was resolved to dismiss her and part of the company, and to proceed with the ‘Mayflower.’ This, though it was grievous and caused great discouragement, was put into execution. So after they had taken out such provision as the ‘Mayflower’ could stow, and concluded both what number and what persons to send back, they had another sad parting, the one ship going back to London, and the other preparing for the voyage. Those that returned were such as, for the most part, were willing to do so, either out of discontent or some fear conceived of the ill-success of a voyage pressed against so many crosses, and in a year-time so far spent. Others, in regard to their own weakness and the charge of many young children, were thought least useful, and most unfit to bear the brunt of this hard adventure; unto which work of God and judgment of their brethren they were content to submit. And thus, like Gideon’s army, this small number was divided, as if the Lord thought even these few too many for the great work he had to do.”[125]
But though Cushman wrote, “Our voyage thus far hath been as full of crosses as ourselves of crookedness,”[126] no dangers could appal the dauntless; and “having thus winnowed their numbers, the little band, not of resolute men only, but wives, some far gone in pregnancy, children, infants, a floating village, yet in all but one hundred souls, went on board the single ship, which was hired only to carry them across the Atlantic; and on the 6th of September, 1620, thirteen years after the first colonization of Virginia, two months before the concession of the grand charter of Plymouth, without any warrant from the sovereign of England, without any useful charter from a corporate body, the Pilgrims in the ‘Mayflower’ set sail for the New World, where the past could offer no favorable auguries.”[127]
But these Christian heroes of a grander venture than that classic voyage which Virgil has sung of old Æneas,
“Trojæ qui primus ab oris
Italiam, fato profugus, Lavinaque venit