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Pilgrim Church. 
 
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 THE PATH 
 
 THE PILGRIM CHURCH, 
 
 FROM ITS ORIGIN IN ENGLAND TO ITS ESTABLISH- 
 MENT IN NEW ENGLAND. 
 
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 AN HISTORICAL SKETCH. 
 
 WEITTEX FOE THE MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETr, AND 
 APPROVED BY THE COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY, 
 
 Dkpositouy, No. 13 Corntiill. 
 
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 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year ISfi'j, 
 
 BY THE MASSACHUSETTS SABBATH SCHOOL SOCIETY, 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Massachusetts. 
 
 Electrotjped and Printed loy Wright & Potter, No. i Spring Lane. 
 
 X Z, J( 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It has seemed to the writer desirable that young 
 persons should have a more distinct and coherent 
 knowledge than is common, of the causes, influ- 
 ences, circumstances, trials, and providences con- 
 nected with the emigration of our forefathers to 
 their home in New England. It has accordingly 
 been his aim to enable his readers to look in upon 
 those transactions and see them as they were. It 
 would have been easy to expand the narrative; 
 but he has aimed at brevity. Some of the topics 
 would have required a fuller statement, had the 
 volume been written for a different class of read- 
 ers. Some portions of the book may even now 
 seem too circumstantial — for example, the account 
 given of the principles of the Puritans. But the 
 statement was thought to be as brief as it could 
 consistently be made. 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 The writer is well aware that he eould have 
 made, in some ivspeets, a moiv spirited niu-rative, 
 bv easting mueh of his material into other forms 
 of statement. But he thought it better on the 
 whole to let the aetor^. in great measure, tell 
 their o\yii tale, and to seeure perfeet truthfulness 
 n\ther th:ui graphic effect. The narrative is a 
 history, and not a fancy. sketch. Even the want- 
 ing links of the story have not been supplied, 
 except in cases perfectly obvious. The facts have 
 been gathered with cai-e from vimous sources, 
 such as Bradford's History of Plymouth Planta- 
 tion, Youngs Chivnicles, XeaVs History of the 
 Puritans, Hunter's Foundei*s of New Plymouth, 
 Bartlett's PhTuouth and the Pilgrims, Motley's 
 Dutch Republic, and vaiious othei- vohimes. 
 

 CONTENTS. 
 
 
 CHAPTER. 
 
 . 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 L- 
 
 — ScROOBY Manor, 
 
 7 
 
 II.- 
 
 -Hampton Court, 
 
 . 27 
 
 III.- 
 
 -Star Chamber and High Cc 
 
 )M- 
 
 
 MISSION, .... 
 
 . 52 
 
 IV.- 
 
 -Boston and Hull, . 
 
 . 66 
 
 V.- 
 
 —Holland, .... 
 
 . 78 
 
 VI.- 
 
 — Leyden, .... 
 
 . 107 
 
 VII.- 
 
 —London, .... 
 
 . 131 
 
 VIII.- 
 
 —Delft Haven, . 
 
 . 148 
 
 IX.- 
 
 —The Ocean, . . 
 
 . 163 
 
 X.- 
 
 —The Land, .... 
 
 . 183 
 
 XI.- 
 
 —Home, 
 
 . 201 
 
 XII.- 
 
 —Fast and Thanksgiving, . 
 
 . 225 
 
 XIII.- 
 
 —Rest at Last, . 
 
 . 241 
 
 X 
 
PATH OF THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 SCROOBY MANOR 
 
 Not more than a mile from the boundary 
 line between the counties of York and 
 Nottingham, in England, and six miles west 
 of Lincolnshire, lies the little village of 
 Scrooby. Though situated on a branch of 
 the Northern Railway, it is quite too small a 
 village to be found upon an ordinary map. 
 It lies in the midst of a level and fertile 
 district. The fields around, neatly divided 
 by green hedges, are laden in summer with 
 heavy crops of grain, or dotted here and 
 there with grazing cattle. Through the 
 plain slowly and glassily winds the little 
 
8 THE riLGRKM C li U R C H . 
 
 Stream well termed the Idle, lingering in 
 many a curve on its way to join the Trent. 
 To the nortli a little way beyond the Idle 
 lies the village of Austerfield, hidden among 
 the trees from the sight of the railway trav- 
 eler ; while the site of Scrooby, close upon 
 its southern bank, is marked at once to the 
 eye by the village church pouitmg with its 
 graceful spire to the sky. 
 
 One spot about the village of Scrooby— 
 and one alone — possesses special interest. 
 Even tliat has very little for the eye to see. 
 Passing the modest cottages and alone: the 
 rich grassy plain that skirts the river, 
 through a wicket gate you enter a laro-e 
 enclosure covered with tlie finest turf, 
 bounded on one side by the river and on 
 another by the railroad. A trench or moat, 
 now dry, but which within the memory of 
 living men was filled with water, divides the 
 enclosure from the gardens of the village ; 
 and near the centre of tlie area stands a 
 
S C R O B Y M A N O U . 9 
 
 noble group of sycamores. Nothing remains 
 to tell oi' the wealth and luxury that once 
 reveled on this spot, except a few fragments 
 of richly carved wood-work which, a few 
 years since, and perhaps now, might be seen 
 sustaining the roof of a neighboring cow- 
 house. 
 
 That dry moat, and that carved wood 
 work carry us back to a time when for 
 several generations the archbishops of York 
 used to ride forth from this spot witli their 
 splendid retinues to the chase, and return at 
 night to the festive board. For that for- 
 saken spot was once occupied by Scrooby 
 Manor Hoiise, the favorite hunting-seat of 
 the Primates of England. The group of 
 sycamores, no doubt, stands near the site 
 of the principal building. An odd-looking 
 y)ile it must have been — an " inner court- 
 building " encompassed by a spacious outer 
 court four times as large, all built of timber, 
 except the front of the house — the latter 
 
10 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 being of brick, with a flight of stone steps 
 leading to the door. The whole was sur- 
 rounded by a moat. 
 
 Royalty once at least had mounted that 
 stone stairway. In 1541 Henry the Eighth, 
 on his northward journey, had passed a 
 night at Scrooby Manor. But his presence 
 can hardly have added to the pleasure of the 
 palace ; for it was towards the close of his 
 life, a few months before the lustful tyrant, 
 who had divorced two wives and beheaded 
 one, executed yet another. They must have 
 breathed more freely in the manor as he 
 passed on his way. 
 
 But the time came when the old manor 
 house was to be thronged with a very differ- 
 ent company. The last archbishop that 
 resided here was the learned but hasty and 
 passionate Sandys, a vigorous hater of the 
 Puritans. When the old man died in 1588, 
 the estate was bequeathed to his son, Sir 
 Samuel Sandys, thenceforth to be more and 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 11 
 
 more neglected, till the park became a farm 
 and the house fell to decay. But before 
 decay had begun its work, and while the 
 archbishop's son still owned it, though he 
 did not occupy, the ancient halls began to 
 echo with unwonted sounds. On each Sab- 
 bath morning, as early at least as the year 
 1606, a watchful observer might have seen a 
 considerable number of men and women, 
 quietly and even stealthily gathering from 
 the villages around, and entering the old 
 manor house. A grave but cheerful man, 
 some forty years of age, with a deliberate 
 utterance and the air of one who had 
 mingled with men, welcomed his brethren 
 in the Lord. It was William Brewster — a 
 man whom God had specially guided, and 
 trained, and brought to this spot for the 
 work in which he was now engaged, of gath- 
 ering up the Puritan spirit of the neighbor- 
 ing country — of making ^croohy Manor Ike 
 cradle of the Pilgrim Church, and thence- 
 
12 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 forth of daring and enduring foremost in all 
 the checkered fortunes of the church, and 
 aiding its business affairs with his practical 
 wisdom and firmness, till the little church 
 was landed and firmly planted in its western 
 home. 
 
 William Brewster — " Elder Brewster," as 
 he afterwards became — seems to have been 
 all along the central person of the enter- 
 prise, the man to whose influence, judgment 
 and firmness the church was most indebted 
 in all its earlier outward history. He was 
 of what is called a good family — had been 
 well educated, and even spent a little time 
 at Cambridge University, where he became 
 a religious man. Thence he had entered 
 the service of Sir William Davison, Secre- 
 tary of State to Queen Elizabeth — a man 
 of rare qualities and true piety. He had 
 been Davison's confidential servant and 
 friend, had accompanied him on his embassy 
 to the Netherlands — had slept with the Keys 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 13 
 
 of Flushing under his pillow — ^liad ridden 
 through England wearing his master's gold 
 chahi of honor, on their return — and when 
 the false queen had executed her own 
 cousin, Mary of Scotland, and thrown the 
 blame upon her Secretary, Brewster still 
 followed him in his fall till his good offices 
 could be of no further use. The next we 
 hear of him he has retired to the cou^^try 
 and rented the old manor at Scrooby. For 
 thirteen years, at least, he held the office of 
 postmaster, or post, as the term then was, at 
 Scrooby. It was a busy office. His work 
 was not alone to receive and deliver letters 
 and transmit them over the great northern 
 mail route, but to send them by special 
 despatches into the region round, not pro- 
 vided then, as now, with cross-routes, to 
 keep relays of horses for travelers hy post, 
 and to furnish such travelers the rest and 
 refreshment they might require. It was a 
 sort of compound of the business of post- 
 
14 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 master, expressman and innkeeper. His 
 business will explain his occupancy of so 
 large a mansion. But while his head and 
 hands are full of work, his heart is full of 
 Christian zeal. Besides his own godly life 
 and example, he is active in "procuring 
 good preachers to all places thereabouts, 
 and drawing on of others to assist and help 
 to forward in such a work ; he himself being 
 commonly deepest in the charge, and some- 
 times above his ability." 
 
 But the time has arrived when he and his 
 friends can no longer worship m the parish 
 churches. Their conscientious piety is 
 " scoffed and scorned," the godly ministers 
 that fed the flame of their faith are driven 
 out of the churches and forbidden to preach, 
 and the people themselves are hunted and 
 harrassed by the civil authorities, as will 
 presently appear, till they will soon be fairly 
 driven to make a firm and final stand. 
 They met informally to pray and praise, till 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 15 
 
 at length, about the time when we have 
 introduced Brewster to the reader — not 
 earlier than 1602, and probably as late as 
 1606 — they have joined themselves into a 
 church of Christ, and agree to walk in all 
 his ways " whatsoever it should cost them.'' 
 It was a costly experiment to them. And 
 Brewster is the central spirit in the move- 
 ment, and is to be the one fertile and 
 resolute character around whom the whole 
 enterprise hinges. 
 
 So here they are, strangely enough, in the 
 old episcopal mansion. And while in the 
 neighboring church a surpliced priest is 
 chanting prayers to the swell of the organ, 
 or reciting a sermon tliat he never com- 
 posed, or reading the daily lessons from the 
 apocrypha, or, clad in a cope, is administer- 
 ing the wafer-bread to kneeling men profane 
 in speech and godless in life, and while the 
 people are bowing at every mention of the 
 name of Jesus, soon to retire from church 
 
16 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 and keep the remainder of the Lord's own 
 day at the ale-house or the dancing-green — 
 the little group at the manor house are 
 praying without a book, and smgmg without 
 an organ, and listening to the fervid words 
 of one who speaks from his own deep relig- 
 ious experience to theirs, and then they will 
 withdraw to their homes, to spend the rest 
 of the sacred time with their families and 
 train the little ones to count the day of the 
 Lord honorable and a delight. 
 
 There are two preachers in that congrega- 
 tion to-day. One of them is " a grave and 
 fatherly old man, having a great white 
 beard." His name is Richard Clifton. Two 
 or three miles away is the village church of 
 Babworth and the pleasant parish where for 
 many years he pungently preached the 
 gospel and faithfully catechized the little 
 ones, and led many souls to Christ. He has 
 given up his pleasant home for his Master's 
 sake — ^but he will die before this little flock 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 17 
 
 find their new home beyond the Atlantic. 
 His awakening ministry had penetrated into 
 the neighboring villages before he left his 
 Rectory, and one young man at least had 
 habitually walked from Austerfield to 
 Babworth to be enlightened in the gospel. 
 But the younger preacher of that Scrooby 
 congregation is the man of mark. He is 
 just thirty-one years old, and his name is 
 destined to be memorable and venerable in 
 the future church of God — it is John 
 Robinson. The little company do not know 
 him yet as they soon will know him ; for the 
 company are mostly of Mr. Clifton's former 
 congregation, and Robinson has just come 
 among them. Of his personal appearance 
 no record or hint remains. They soon 
 found him to be " very courteous, affable 
 and sociable in his conversation " — " a man 
 learned and of solid judgment, and of a 
 quick, sharp wit, of a tender conscience, and 
 very sincere in all his ways— a hater of 
 
 2* 
 
18 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 hypocrisy and dissimulation," and one who 
 *^ would be very plain with his best friends." 
 "He was an acute and expert disputant, 
 very quick and ready ; " a truth-loving 
 man, " never satisfied till he had searched a 
 cause to the bottom," and " ever desirous 
 of any light." He soon became and always 
 remained " much beloved " by his people, 
 " and as loving was he unto them ; " while 
 he was also " much esteemed and reverenced 
 of all that knew him." He is a graduate 
 of Cambridge, has been rector of an Epis- 
 copal church, and abandoned it for con- 
 science' sake. He is a man of more liberal 
 and elevated views, perhaps, than any of his 
 brethren, and soon to become in the spirit- 
 ual affairs of the church what Brewster was 
 in the temporal — " a man," say they in later 
 times, " not easily to be paralleled." 
 
 One other person present demands espe- 
 cial attention, although but seventeen years 
 of age. It is William Bradford, the future 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 19 
 
 historian of the little church and Governor 
 of Plymouth Colony. Fourteen years ago 
 his father died and left him to the guardian- 
 ship of his uncles. He belongs to one of the 
 most respectable families among the yeo- 
 manry of Austerfield. The little parish 
 church still stands, in our day, seven or 
 eight hundred years old, where in his child- 
 hood he attended service on the Sabbath. 
 But at length the rumor of Clifton's awak- 
 ening preaching reaches Austerfield and 
 draws young Bradford thither. The way to 
 Babworth, six or seven miles, lay through 
 the village of Scrooby ; and Brewster doubt- 
 less must often have been his companion on 
 the latter portion of the road, and com- 
 muned with him of heavenly things, as they 
 went and came together. Amid the dis- 
 pleasure of friends and scoffs of the profane, 
 he joins the little church, casts in his for- 
 tunes with it, and, young as he is, becomes 
 one of its most efficient arms from this time 
 
20 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 forth. His early instructions must have 
 been limited ; but he has a thirst for knowl- 
 edge, and will go on until he speaks the 
 Dutch and the French languages, and has 
 learned the Latin and the Greek ; nor will 
 he rest till he can read the Hebrew too, 
 because he " will see with his own eyes the 
 oracles of God in their native beauty." 
 Resolute, prompt, self-denying, sagacious, 
 modest and conciliatory — the time is coming 
 when for six-and-thirty years, with but five 
 years' rest, procured by his own earnest 
 entreaty, he shall be Governor of the Colony 
 at Plymouth. 
 
 The other faces are indistinct. Here very 
 likely are Mr. Clifton's sons Zachary and 
 Timothy, and in all probability Elder Brew- 
 ster's children, at least the older ones, 
 Patience, Fear, Love, and Wrestling. Here 
 also, most likely, are Richard Jackson and 
 Robert Rochester, though they are not to 
 find their way to America. Here, perhaps, 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 21 
 
 is Alice Carpenter, afterwards Mrs. South- 
 worth, and her father. And could we look 
 in upon them, no doubt we should see 
 others who followed the fortunes of the little 
 church to its haven of rest. But we have 
 no certain knowledge who else at this time 
 were here. 
 
 But why are they here at all ? There are 
 religious services to-day in the village 
 church, scarcely a stone's throw away — the 
 place where their fathers worshiped, the 
 place where the villagers still assembled to 
 listen to the liturgy and hear the hymns of 
 praise chanted to the organ ; yea, the very 
 priest that reads those prayers they them- 
 selves are taxed to pay. ^ Why then are they 
 not there ? Why does the old manor house 
 echo their homelier strains of sacred song, 
 and their louder words of petition and of 
 exhortation ? And why, too, if they pre- 
 ferred to worship thus, did they not con- 
 tinue quietly to assemble in this secluded 
 
22 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 spot, and not incur the trouble, the expense, 
 and the trials of a journey to a distant 
 land ? 
 
 For those who live in a country and an 
 age in which churches of every name are 
 scattered peacefully around by each other's 
 side, and every man, unmolested, attends on 
 any or none of them all, according to his 
 choice, it is hard to realize that those simple- 
 hearted men who only met to worship God 
 in their own chosen way, were offending 
 against the highest authority of the realm, 
 because they worshiped God hi the old 
 manor house rather than the village church, 
 or that their preachers were incurring the 
 punishment of felons because they thus dis- 
 pensed the pure gospel of Christ without the 
 prayer-book and the priestly robes and the 
 village church. Yet so it was. And it 
 required no little Christian hardihood, even 
 for those who sympathized in their views, to 
 take the decided stand. There was now but 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 23 
 
 one other church like this in that portion of 
 tlie kingdom — at Gainsborough, some ten 
 miles distant. 
 
 Indeed it is not certain that there was a 
 third like theirs now holding religious ser- 
 vices in any portion of the kingdom. There 
 had been a noble band that were accustomed 
 to meet for prayer and reading of the Word 
 of God in South wark, a borough of London 
 on the south side of the Thames, seeking 
 privacy in the darkness of tlie night or the 
 seclusion of some grove. They too had 
 organized a church as early as 1592, at the 
 house of Francis Johnson. But hardly had 
 they done so, before tlie storm of persecu- 
 tion had burst upon them. Some fifty-nine 
 of them lay at one time in various London 
 prisons, besides ten of their number who 
 had died in prison, sinking under the inten- 
 tionally aggravated hardships and privations 
 of their prison life. Henry Barrowe, John 
 Greenwood and John Penry had been car- 
 
24 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 ried from those prisons to the gallows. 
 Many of them had fled to Holland, till, 
 between imprisonment and exile, the Soiith- 
 wark church had been suspended. 
 
 One link, at least, connected this perse- 
 cuted band with the Scrooby church. The 
 Rev. John Smyth, who had been a compan- 
 ion and fellow-sufferer of the Southwark 
 brethren, was one of the ministers at Gains- 
 borough; and from this latter flock the 
 Scrooby church seems to have been an 
 offshoot. 
 
 The tempest indeed had lulled after the 
 murder of Greenwood, Barrow and Penry. 
 No doubt there was hope of better times, 
 when a change of monarchs should come 
 and the sceptre should pass from the hands 
 of stern Elizabeth. For it was during the 
 year 1602 — the last moody and broken- 
 hearted year of the queen's life, not very far 
 from the time when, though dying, she 
 declared with characteristic energy that " no 
 
SCROOBY MANOR. 25 
 
 rascal's son but a king's," namely, "our 
 cousin of Scotland " should succeed her,— 
 that the Gainsborough church had been 
 formed. Tlie better times they looked for 
 did not come. After a time— perhaps 
 before the time at which this narrative com- 
 mences — Smyth and many of the church at 
 Gainsborough had left for Amsterdam. 
 
 The Scrooby church, in its secluded spot, 
 remained the longest. Some favor may 
 have been procured for them by the owner 
 of the mansion— for another member of the 
 family. Sir Edwin Sandys, ten years later, 
 proved a valuable friend at court. But they 
 were not immolested. The malice of their 
 adversaries first obliged them to change 
 about their place of assembly, and "they 
 kept their meetings every Sabbath in one 
 place or another, exercising the worship of 
 God among themselves," till they saw " they 
 could no longer continue in that condition." 
 Many of them " had their houses beset and 
 
26 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 watched night and day/' and some " were 
 taken and clapped up in prisons," until they 
 too, " seeing there was no hope of their 
 continuance there, by joint consent resolved 
 to go into Holland." 
 
 But who was the man and what the influ- 
 ence that made their situation so intoler- 
 able ? It was all summed up in one 
 memorable sentence of the man who was 
 " no rascal's son, but a king's," when he 
 rose from his chair at Hampton Court and 
 declared, " I will make them conform, or I 
 will harry them out of the land, or else 
 worse." 
 
 To the explanation afforded by that mem- 
 orable scene we will look in the next chap- 
 ter, — in which we must carry the reader 
 back to a period three years previous. 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 27 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 HAMPTON COURT. 
 
 On the north bank of the Thames, twelve 
 miles nearly west of London, stands the 
 palace of Hampton Conrt. It was once the 
 favorite resort of the monarchs of England. 
 It is now an odd architectural jumble, where 
 the noble Tudor-Gothic of the original edi- 
 fice, as built by Cardinal Wolsey, stands side 
 by side with Grecian pillars and porticos, 
 added by Sir Christopher Wren. It is now 
 noted chiefly for its fine gardens and park, 
 and for its gallery of a thousand pictures — 
 many of them indeed of very little value, 
 though containing a series of portraits of tlie 
 successive Courts from Henry Eighth to 
 George the Second, and above all, the seven 
 
28 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 celebrated cartoons of Raphael, which are 
 among the chief wonders of ancient and 
 modern art. 
 
 You could not have seen all tliese things 
 there, of course, two hundred and fifty years 
 ago. But if you had been there on Satur- 
 day, the 14th day of January, 1604, you 
 would liave beheld a very singular scene. 
 In the drawing-room of the privy-chamber 
 of this palace, there were gatliered a sliowy 
 group of men, the chief ecclesiastical and 
 civil dignitaries of England. First and fore- 
 most were the three men who, eleven years 
 before, had urged on the slaughter of Green- 
 wood and Barrowe — namely, Jolm Whitgift, 
 Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of 
 all England, Richard Bancroft, the Bishop 
 of London, his chief adviser and bitter suc- 
 cessor, and Bilshi, Bishop of Winchester. 
 With them were the bishops of Worcester, 
 St. David's, Chichester, Carlisle, and Peter- 
 borough, one archdeacon and seven deans ; 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 29 
 
 and around them stood the whole privy 
 council of the king, and a numerous crowd 
 of courtiers — spectators of the coming scene. 
 A little forward of the canopy of state stood 
 a vacant chair. As this brilliant group, all 
 clad in their official costumes, had been 
 summoned from the outer chamber to tlie 
 drawing-room, they left behind them, in the 
 ante-chamber, sitting on a form like a set of 
 school-boys, four men, robed in fur gowns 
 like the professors in foreign universities. 
 All that day they were kept without. They 
 bore the nickname, " Puritans." 
 
 When all was ready in the drawing-room, 
 the king entered and seated himself, with 
 his hat on, in the vacant chair — James the 
 First of England, thirty-seven years of age, 
 whom Mr. Dickens has described as " ugly, 
 awkward and shuffling both in mind and 
 person. His tongue was much too large for 
 his mouth, his legs were much too weak for 
 his body, and his dull, goggle-eyes stared and 
 
 3* 
 
30 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 rolled like an idiot's. He was cunning, 
 covetous, wasteful, idle, drunken, greedy, 
 dirty, cowardly, and the most conceited man 
 on earth. His figure — ^what is commonly 
 called ricketty from his birth — presented the 
 most ridiculous appearance that can be 
 imagined, dressed in thick padded clothes, 
 as a safeguard against being stabbed, (of 
 which he lived in continual fear,) of a grass- 
 green color from head to foot, with a hunt- 
 ing-horn dangling at his side instead of a 
 sword, and his hat and feather sticking over 
 one eye, or hanging on the top of liis head 
 as he happened to toss it on. He used to 
 loll on the necks of his favorite courtiers, 
 and slobber their faces, and kiss and pinch 
 their cheeks; and the greatest favorite he 
 ever had used to sign himself in letters to 
 his royal master his majesty's ' dog and 
 slave,' and used to address his majesty as 
 ' his Sowship.' He was one of the most 
 impertinent talkers ever heard, (in the 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 31 
 
 broadest Scotch,) and boasted that he was 
 unanswerable m argument." The picture 
 is hardly overdrawn. The king was very 
 disgusting in manners, and very conceited 
 and despotic in character. He had consid- 
 erable learning and no wisdom. He was 
 here to display his conceit, his pedantry, his 
 folly, and his despotism. 
 
 James had just ascended the throne of 
 England nine months before. On his way 
 to London, he was met by a petition called 
 the " Millenary Petition,'* because signed l3y 
 near a thousand ministers of the church of 
 England, in which they humbly prayed for 
 the " reformation of certain ceremonies and 
 abuses of the church." James, in reply, 
 had published a proclamation, appointing a 
 conference, in which he would hear the 
 parties desiring and those opposing the 
 change. He himself had nominaled (he 
 disputants on both sides. The time had now 
 
32 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 come ; and here is the famous Conference 
 of Hampton Court. 
 
 The king sits down in his chair. The 
 church dignitaries in their canonicals stand 
 before him. The courtiers and privy coun- 
 cillors look on. The four " Puritans " sit 
 on their form in the ante-chamber. The 
 king opens with a speech, in which he 
 thanks God — and here he puts off his hat — 
 that he is now come into the promised land ; 
 that he sits among grave and reverend men ; 
 that he is not a king as formerly [in Scot- 
 land] without state, nor in a place where 
 beardless boys would brave him to his face. 
 He assures them that he intends no essential 
 changes in the church, though he is willing 
 to remove any scandalous disorders ; and if 
 the complaints are frivolous, he " desires to 
 cast a sop into Cerberus' mouth that lie may 
 never bark again." He then proceeds him- 
 self to make a few objections to certain 
 things m the liturgy and practice of the 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 33 
 
 established church. The bishops fall upon 
 their knees and entreat the king not to con- 
 sent to any alterations, lest it should be 
 regarded as affixing a stigma on their past 
 treatment of the Puritans. Three slight 
 changes in the phraseology of the prayer- 
 book are agreed upon. And so ends the 
 first day's conference — which was merely a 
 private arrangement between the king and 
 one party as to the best mode of silencing 
 the other. 
 
 Monday comes. The mock conference 
 goes on. The four men in fur gowns are 
 now called in — to be interrupted, sneered 
 at, brow-beaten, threatened, and silenced. 
 The ecclesiastics are there to break in upon 
 them continually and vexatiously. The 
 nobles and privy councillors are present to 
 join occasionally in the " king's mirth and 
 raillery " about the Puritans. The monarch 
 himself is there to play the part of witness, 
 advocate, and judge, and at times to add the 
 
34 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 authority of the sovereign. The four men 
 are very able men, but they are abashed and 
 intimidated as they stand in that presence, 
 Hke culprits before a tribunal. Dr. Rain- 
 olds, professor at Oxford, is esteemed the 
 most learned man in England ; Dr. Sparke, 
 another Oxford professor, and Mr. Chadder- 
 ton, master of Emanuel College, Cambridge, 
 are two very eminent scholars ; and Mr. 
 Knewstubbs, fellow of Cambridge Univer- 
 sity, a man of less prominence. They do 
 not, however, fully represent the principles 
 of the " thousand " ministers, nor are they 
 in all respects agreed among themselves. 
 But it makes little difference m the result. 
 
 These learned men did not succeed, even 
 had they been fully prepared, in laying the 
 whole case before the king. We will there- 
 fore gather up from various public state- 
 ments made just about that time, within a 
 year or two, the principal things they 
 demanded, and lay them before the reader. 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 35 
 
 The main thing that covered the whole 
 ground was this. "All that we crave of his 
 majesty and the state is, that, with his and 
 their permission, it may be lawful for us 
 to luorsliip God according to his revealed 
 will; and that we may not be forced to the 
 observance of any human rites and cere- 
 monies.''^ Here is the whole thing hi a 
 nutshell — permission to worship God in 
 their own way — according to the Scriptures, 
 and without any human inventions. Thoy 
 do not ask to force any body else to their 
 mode — they even say about this time that 
 they are willing to pay their tithes or taxes 
 for the support of the established churches. 
 They only ask to be let alone. 
 
 Now, as we said, the " Puritans " did not 
 all agree in every thing ; nor did they all 
 carry out the principle that they started 
 with. But those that went farthest — to 
 whom belong Robinson and Brewster and 
 others, take the following ground. 
 
36 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 They hold, then, that none but the Word 
 of God can teach them what to believe and 
 what ceremonies to use in worship ; that it 
 is very wrong for men to compel others to 
 worship in any particular way ; and also that 
 it is wrong to use the ceremonies that men 
 have invented, if they have been used in 
 idolatry and superstition. 
 
 As a consequence of this freedom from 
 compulsion, they hold one set of worshipers 
 (or church) is equal in authority to any 
 other church — and is not under its power, 
 nor has any power over it. It must simply 
 govern itself. 
 
 Every little church therefore must choose 
 and have its own pastor and church officers. 
 And there are no other church officers than 
 those of particular churches — no bishops, 
 archbishops, and the like. 
 
 Every pastor ought to be able to interpret 
 the Word of God and to preach publicly ; 
 and all ignorant and mere reading priests 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 37 
 
 ought to be rejected. He ought to be able 
 himself to lead the congregation in prayer ; 
 and no forms or ceremonies, except those 
 appointed in the Bible, ought to be laid 
 upon him. 
 
 When a pastor is chosen, or an unworthy 
 member is to be disciplined, it ought to be 
 done with the free consent of the whole 
 church. 
 
 When an unworthy member is finally 
 excommunicated from the church, that is 
 the end of the church's dealings with him, 
 for " we exclude from ourselves all secular 
 pomp or power, holding it a sin to punish 
 men in their bodies, goods, liberties or lives, 
 for any merely spiritual offence." * 
 
 These principles in their full extent were 
 held only by the smaller portion of the 
 thousand ministers — the Independent or 
 Congregational portion as they afterwards 
 became, and to whom the Scrooby church 
 
 * Neal I., 250. 
 
38 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 belonged. Nor did they always consistently 
 carry out their principles. The greater part, 
 most likely, and at that time possibly Robin- 
 son himself, would have been satisfied with 
 less radical changes, and remained in the 
 Church of England. 
 
 The four Puritans at Hampton Court 
 confined themselves to requests for certain 
 improvements on the established church. 
 They were not suffered to say all that they 
 wanted to say. The things which they said 
 and would have said, by way of objection to 
 the church in which they were compelled to 
 worship, were these : 
 
 They would have objected to the whole 
 discipline of the Church of England, as 
 unscriptural. All sorts of characters, the 
 most wicked and abandoned, were admitted 
 indiscriminately to the communion ; and if a 
 man were ever excommunicated, it was not 
 done for any thmg immoral, but because he 
 would not comply with the ceremonies. 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 39 
 
 When excommunicated, it was done by a set 
 of worldly men, not by the churcli or its 
 spiritual officers ; and the excommunication 
 was only another name for fines, impjris- 
 oiiments, and confiscation of goods. Xo 
 attempt was made to hallow the Sabbath, 
 but trading and all sorts of amusements 
 were freely allowed, and indeed soon after 
 this by royal proclamation were openly 
 encouraged. 
 
 They objected to the government of the 
 church. They believed that all pastors were 
 " bishops," and equal in authority. They 
 claimed that to put the whole government of 
 the church into the hands of a few men 
 called archbishops, bishops, and so forth, 
 and to give them power over their brethren 
 and over the churches, was wholly contrary 
 to the Bible. They held that the enormous 
 incomes of these men who were not pastors, 
 were wrong, while the poor pastors "vverc 
 many of them almost staryed. They held 
 
40 THE PILGRIM 'CHURCH. 
 
 that their worldly engagements and their 
 pomp and parade were iinscriptural — the 
 very archbishop Whitgift then present hav- 
 ing on one occasion entered Canterbury 
 with a retinue of five hundred horsemen, 
 one hundred of whom were his own serv- 
 ants. These officers were appointed, not by 
 the churches, but by the king. 
 
 They objected to the way in which the 
 churches were provided with ministers ; that 
 a certain man, perhaps a layman, would 
 receive the income of a church, or of several 
 churches, and hire some other person (a 
 curate) to do his work ; and these men so 
 employed were, in a vast number of cases, 
 too ignorant to prepare a sermon. The 
 people had no voice in the selection of a 
 pastor. They held that every minister 
 should be qualified to preach ; and moreover 
 that he was the proper person to administer 
 " confirmation," rather than the bishop, a 
 stranger. They thought that me ministers 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 41 
 
 should have permission to hold occasional 
 meetings with each other for mutual 
 improvement, called " prophesyings.'' 
 
 In regard to the church service, there 
 were many things, more or less important, 
 to which they took exception. It seemed 
 wrong to be compelled always to use in 
 public worship certain set forms of prayer, 
 without permission in any case to express 
 their petitions in their own words. Certain 
 passages in the offices of baptism and burial, 
 implying that the infant was regenerated in 
 baptism, and that the deceased person had 
 surely gone to heaven, they regarded as 
 improper in doctrine. They held that the 
 church "lessons," omitting, as they then did, 
 nearly one-fourth of the Old Testament and 
 substituting three-fifths of the Apocrypha, 
 put dishonor on the inspired Word of God, 
 and taught some grave errors. They re- 
 garded the observance of saints' days and 
 church holidays as unauthorized and super- 
 
 4* 
 
42 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 stitious. The frequeut repetition of the 
 Lord's prayer and the constant responses 
 did not please them, as savoring too much 
 of vahi repetitions ; and especially they 
 disproved of the " intoning " or singing of 
 the prayers. 
 
 They had strong objections to certain 
 requh'ed rites and ceremonies — some of 
 them as behig improper of themselves, 
 others as having been connected with gross 
 superstitions and tending to foster them. 
 When a child was baptized it seemed to 
 them utterly wrong that certain other 
 parties than the parents should stand as 
 godfathers and godmothers, and make those 
 promises for the children which belonged 
 only to the parents to make and to keep ; 
 also that a child should be entitled to the 
 communion just as soon as it could repeat 
 the Lord's prayer and the catecliism, ivithout 
 anj) other qualification. The sign of the 
 cross in baptism, which was no necessary 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 43 
 
 part of the rite, and which had been so 
 abused that many deemed the rite invaUd 
 without it, they disliked. Also the act of 
 kneeling to receive the sacrament, as being 
 a relic of the Romish superstition, which 
 supposed the bread to be changed into the 
 body of the Son of God and adored it 
 accordingly — " a breaden God." They ob- 
 jected to being required to bow at the name 
 of Jesus, as founded on a false interpretation 
 of Scripture. They strongly disliked the 
 surplice and other priestly vestments, be- 
 cause they had been consecrated to idola- 
 trous and superstitious uses, and were the 
 very badges and marks of the false religion 
 which they themselves had renounced ; the 
 use of them gave a kind of countenance to 
 popery, and was a great oifence to weak 
 minds. On similar grounds they were not 
 well pleased with some other things that 
 have now lost all unfavorable associations, as 
 
44 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 the ring in marriage, and organs and other 
 musical instruments in church services. 
 
 In regard to these ceremonies, they 
 objected above all to making them, as they 
 were made, absolutely compulsory; and to 
 ejecting a man from the ministry and for- 
 bidding him to preach at all, unless he sub- 
 scribed to all the articles and ways of the 
 church, and practiced all these ceremonies. 
 This was the odious and tyrannical thing. 
 
 Such were the main things the Puritans 
 asked. Some of them were of less impor- 
 tance and of temporary significance ; others 
 were of the deepest consequence. Some of 
 them have since been weeded out of the 
 English established Church, others modified 
 — while some of the most serious difficulties 
 still remain there. 
 
 The truth was, the Church of England 
 was then but half reformed from the Romish 
 Church. The English prayer-book was the 
 Romish missal cleared of prayers to the 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 45 
 
 Yirgin Mary, invocations of the saints, the 
 more modern rites of the Romish Church, 
 and some other excrescences; but a good 
 many taints of its origin hung about it, and 
 still hang about it to the present day. And 
 at the time when James held this famous 
 Conference, the condition of the Church was 
 still unsettled. In fact when Henry Eighth 
 broke off from the Church of Rome, the 
 cause had been simply a question of power 
 between him and the pope; who should 
 govern in church matters in England ? 
 Henry just stepped into the pope's place, 
 became head of the English Church, and 
 had every thing in his own way. Elizabeth 
 had stood in much the same position, and 
 was in many respects quite as much a Cath- 
 olic as a Protestant in her notions and feel- 
 ings, to the day of her death. And now 
 James was anxious to wield the same heavy 
 rod of arbitrary power. Great hopes had 
 been entertained of him by the Puritans, 
 
46 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 before he came to the throne. He had 
 talked very differently while king of Scot- 
 land. He had praised the Scotch (Presby- 
 terian) Church as the " sincerest kirk in the 
 world," signed the " Confession of Faith," 
 declared the service of the Church of Eng- 
 land to be " an evil-said mass in English," 
 and once interposed with Elizabeth in behalf 
 of the Puritans in England. But in the 
 words of Mr. Hallam, "James was all his life 
 rather a bold liar than a good dissembler." 
 
 So he turns at Hampton Court to the 
 lords and bishops with the words, " I will 
 tell you I have lived among this sort of men 
 ever since I was ten years old, but I may 
 say of myself, as Christ said of himself, 
 ' Though I have lived among them, yet, 
 since I had ability to judge, I never was of 
 them.' " Accordingly, the conference was 
 all a sham. 
 
 James calls on the four doctors for their 
 objections. Dr. Rainolds begins his reply. 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 47 
 
 Before he gets far, Bishop Bancroft, " in a 
 heat," on his knees begs the king " to stop 
 the doctor's mouth, because schismatics are 
 not to be heard against their bishops." 
 Rainolds in the ensuing discussion disclaims 
 being a schismatic; "which occasioned a 
 great deal of mirth and raillery between the 
 king and his nobles." After a very long 
 interruption, Eainolds is allowed to proceed. 
 The king interposes as he thinks fit. When 
 Eainolds complains of the circulation of 
 Komish pamphlets by warrant of the Court, 
 James tells him, "Doctor, you are a better 
 collegeman than statesman." Rainolds asks 
 for preaching ministers, which brings Ban- 
 croft on his knees again with the petition 
 that all the churches might have " praying 
 ministers," and that all the ministers might 
 be compelled to read the church homilies 
 instead of sermons, because " pulpit ha- 
 rangues are dangerous." The lord-chancel- 
 lor throws in a remark ; the bishop replies 
 
48 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 with a joke ; and the king ends the debate 
 on the point, by promising to " consult the 
 bishops." 
 
 When Dr. Eainolds urged his objections 
 to the apocryphal books, the bishops knew 
 not what to say ; but the Solomon of the 
 age, as James loved to be called, came to 
 their relief with a torrent of useless learn- 
 ing, closing with the question as he turned 
 to his lords, "What, trow ye, make these 
 men so angry with Ecclesiasticus ? By my 
 soul, I think he was a bishop, or they would 
 never use him so." The doctor spoke of 
 the compulsory use of the ceremonies and 
 the vestments. Here James interrupted 
 him with a defence of them in part, and 
 closed by saying, " I will have none of that ; 
 I will have one doctrine, one discipline, one 
 religion in substance and ceremony ; never 
 speak more to that point, how far you are 
 bound to obey." At length the doctor came 
 to the question of the " prophesyings." The 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 49 
 
 king could contain himself no longer, and 
 instead of hearing the doctor's reasons, he 
 told these intimidated men that he found 
 they were aiming at a Scots Presbytery, 
 "which," says he, "agrees with monarchy 
 as well as God and the devil. Then Jack 
 and Tom, Will and Dick shall meet, and at 
 their pleasure censure both me and my 
 council. Therefore pray stay one seven 
 years before you demand that of me ; then 
 if you find me pursy and fat and my wind- 
 pipe stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you. 
 But till you find I grow lazy, pray let that 
 alone." Then turning to the bishops he put 
 his hand to his hat and said, " My lords, if 
 once you are out and they in place, I know 
 what would become of my supremacy, for, 
 no bishop^ no king. Well, doctor, have you 
 any thing else to offer?" "No more," 
 replied the confounded doctor, " if it please 
 your majesty." "Then," said the king, 
 rising from his chair, " if this be all your 
 
 5 
 
50 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 party have to say, I will make them conform 
 or else I will harry them out of this land, or 
 else worse." And it will appear that he 
 was better than his word; for he harried 
 them in the land, and would not let them go 
 out. 
 
 Nothing remained but the ceremony, next 
 day, of calling in the Puritans to give them 
 their answer with the closing assurance, " I 
 will have them enforced to conformity." 
 Bancroft is in raptures, and again he goes 
 down on his knees. "I protest my heart 
 melteth for joy, that Almighty God, of his 
 singular mercy, hath given us such a king 
 as, since Christ's time, hath not been." And 
 at one point the old archbishop Whitgift, 
 though within six weeks of God's tribunal, 
 is so in transports as to cry out, " Undoubt- 
 edly your majesty speaks by the special 
 grace of God." 
 
 James chuckles over his exploits upon 
 these frightened doctors. "I soundly pep- 
 
HAMPTON COURT. 51 
 
 pered off the Puritans," he wrote to a 
 Scotchman, in his exalted way. " They fled 
 me so from argument to argument without 
 ever answering me directly, that I was 
 forced to tell them that if any of them when 
 boys, had disputed thus in college, the 
 moderator would have fetched them up, and 
 applied the rod to their buttocks." 
 
 And the bishops and courtiers called 
 James the Solomon of the age. Now for 
 the issue. 
 
62 THE PILGRIM CHURCH, 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 STAR CHAMBER AND HIGH COMMISSION. ^ 
 
 The four doctors in fur gowns have gone 
 home. Fifteen hundred ministers learn the 
 result with disappointment. Many of them 
 are determined they will not submit to the 
 "• base, beggarly ceremonies," notwithstand- 
 ing " the lordly, tyrannous power of the 
 prelates " that enforced them. A stroke of 
 palsy, four weeks later, has silenced the 
 flattering tongue of the old archbishop 
 Whitgift forever ; and Bancroft is preparing 
 to take his place. Before Whitgift's body is 
 committed to the tomb, James proclaims to 
 the nation that " his resolutions are unalter- 
 ably settled," and informs parliament that 
 the Puritans are " an insufferable sect." 
 
STAR CHAMBER ETC. 53 
 
 And by way of emphasis, ten deputies sent 
 to him with a petition for relief, who found 
 liim hunting at the time, are clapped in jail. 
 James and the bishops go to work in good 
 earnest. The first thing is to get the appa- 
 ratus of persecution in good working order. 
 One would think that Elizabeth had left 
 little to be desired. There were the Star 
 Chamber and High Commission Courts, 
 with tremendous powers — of which we have 
 more to say presently. There was a fine of 
 twenty pounds a month for staying away 
 from church service — enough to bring poor 
 men pretty surely to jail. There was a 
 requisition, that the ministers all " sub- 
 scribe " to the church articles and govern- 
 ment under penalty of ejection. There was 
 a prohibition of all preaching, catechising, 
 and praying in any private family, where 
 any beside the family were present. The 
 High Commission Court claimed almost 
 unlimited powers of search, arrest and trial 
 
 5* 
 
54 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 — and of punishment too, whether there 
 were or not any penalties prescribed by the 
 canon law. But all this was not enough. 
 
 So at the same time with the parliament, 
 the king called a Convocation or ecclesi- 
 astical assembly, and gave them power to 
 make new and sharper canons. Bancroft 
 presided with a will. They very soon turned 
 out a hundred and forty-one canons, that 
 had a grip like a vise. These were immedi- 
 ately ratified by the king's letters patent 
 under the great seal. They ought to have 
 been confirmed by act of parliament to 
 make them bind the laity, as they did the 
 clergy. But the king and the bishops did 
 not concern themselves about that. Let us 
 look at some of the crimes they punished, 
 and see what chance they left for an honest 
 Christian man. 
 
 The canons declared that the following 
 persons shall be excommunicated — ^let the 
 reader mark the word, for it meant then 
 
STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 55 
 
 not only that a man should be turned out 
 of the congregation of the faithful, and be 
 denied Christian burial when he died, but 
 that he should be rendered incapable of 
 suing' for his lawful debls, and be impris- 
 oned by civil process for life, or until he 
 make satisfaction to the Church — all persons 
 shall be excommunicated who shall affirm 
 either that " the Church of England [with 
 James and Bancroft at its head] is not a 
 true and apostolical church ; " or that " its 
 form of worship is corrupt, superstitious or 
 unlawfid, or contains any thing repugnant 
 to Scripture ; " or that " its thirty-nine arti- 
 cles are in any part superstitious or erro- 
 neous, or such as he may not with a good 
 conscience subscribe to," or that " the rites 
 and ceremonies of the church are wicked, 
 anti-christian, or such as good inen inay not 
 with a good conscience approve, tise, or 
 subscribe ; " or tha^t " its goyernnient by 
 archbishops, bishops, des^ns and archdeacons, 
 
56 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 and the rest that bear office in the same, is 
 anti-christian or repugnant to the Word of 
 God ; " or that " the form and manner of 
 making and consecrating bishops, priests or 
 deacons, contain any thing repugnant to the 
 Word of God ; " — whosoever " shall separate 
 from the communion of the Church of Eng- 
 land and combine together in a new brother- 
 hood ; " whosoever shall affirm that ministers 
 separating from the Church of England may 
 "take to themselves the name of another 
 church not established by law, or shall pub- 
 lish that their pretended church has groaned 
 under the burden of certain grievances 
 imposed upon them by the Church of Eng- 
 land ; " " whosoever shall affirm that there 
 are in this realm other meetings which may 
 rightfully challenge to themselves the name 
 of true and lawful churches ; " " whosoever 
 shall affirm that it is lawful for any sort of 
 ministers or lay persons to make rules, 
 orders and constitutions in causes ecclesias- 
 
STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 57 
 
 tical, without the king's authority, and shall 
 submit to he governed by themy 
 
 This is severe enough, certainly. But the 
 Convocation went further ; and cut off the 
 right of appeal in case of one condemned for 
 these offences, unless he would first recant. 
 They specially re-enjoined all the offensive 
 forms and ceremonies ; and required that 
 every preacher should subscribe to the 
 king's supremacy, the prayer book, and the 
 thirty-nme articles, and should declare in 
 the same subscription that he did it from the 
 heart. They closed their pleasant work by 
 pronouncing "excommunication" on any 
 man who denied the universal authority of 
 these canons, or aspersed the authority, 
 character and proceedings of the Convo- 
 cation. 
 
 Who could enforce these canons ? Many 
 of the very men that made them. The two 
 archbishops and the whole array of bishops, 
 each held his ecclesiastical court — spread 
 
58 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 thus all over the kingdom — and they could 
 summon and sentence the culprits. 
 
 But there was a more terrific body still, 
 called into being by the late Elizabeth and 
 working with fearful energy far into the 
 reign of King James' son Charles — the High 
 Commission Court. It was as absolute as 
 tlie Inquisition, and its jurisdiction extended 
 over the kingdom. It would summon an 
 accused man, and after he had lain seven 
 weeks in the clink prison, he was brought to 
 trial. The Commissioners put him on oath 
 to ansioer all questions that should be put to 
 him, and then, contrary to the first princi- 
 ples of British law, by a series of searching 
 interrogations, obliged him to accuse him- 
 self. If he answered, he was condemned 
 and punished on his own testimony ; if he 
 refused, he was imprisoned and punished 
 for contempt of court. This court claimed, 
 and within a dozen years had exercised, the 
 power to deprive men of their estates, to 
 
STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 59 
 
 imprison them for life, and even to inflict 
 capital punishment. Its authority embraced 
 offences against the "canons" or church 
 laws. Its spirit was well exhibited about 
 twelve years previously, when Rev. Francis 
 Johnson was before the court. Johnson 
 expressed his surprise that he should be 
 treated in a way which could only make 
 men hypocrites. " Come to the church and 
 obey the queen's laws," was the Commis- 
 sioner's short reply, " and be a dissembler, 
 a hypocrite or a devil, if thou wilt." John- 
 son was sent to perpetual banishment. 
 
 This court was a terror to the Puritans. 
 If a man wished to bring a minister into 
 trouble, he had only to inform the commis- 
 sioners by letter that he was a suspected 
 person, and a " pursuivant," or messenger, 
 was sent to his house with a summons. 
 Here we light upon the bishops again ; of 
 forty-four commissioners, twelve were 
 bishops. 
 
60 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Back of this was another famous, or 
 infamous, tribunal, called the Star Chamber 
 Court — so named because the roof of the 
 room in which it was held was decked with 
 gilt stars. It was an unlawful, but a fearful 
 tribunal; and its members were appointed 
 and removed by the monarch himself. Here 
 again our friends the bishops appear ; for 
 the court was " made up of certain noble- 
 men, bishops^ j^^dges and counsellors of the 
 monarch's nomination, to the number of 
 twenty or thirty." It possessed an unlimited 
 discretionary power of fining, imprisoning, 
 banishment, mutilation, and corporal pun- 
 ishment ; its jurisdiction extended to all 
 sorts of offences not coming under the cog- 
 nizance of the ordinary courts ; and its pro- 
 ceedings were of the most summary kind. 
 This was the tribunal which in the next 
 reign condemned the lawyer Prynne for 
 writing a book against plays, to have both 
 his ears cut off, to pay a fine of five thou- 
 
STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 61 
 
 sand pounds, (near twenty-five thousand 
 dollars,) and to suffer perpetual imprison- 
 ment; and sentenced Dr. Leighton, for an 
 intemperate book against the power of the 
 bishops, to be degraded as a minister, to 
 have his ears cut off, his nose slit, to be 
 branded in the face with a red-hot iron, to 
 stand in the pillory, to be whipped at a post, 
 to pay a fiue of a thousand pounds, and to 
 lie in prison till it should be paid — though 
 the parliament afterwards released him at 
 the end of ten years. 
 
 To make thorough work, the king sum- 
 moned this fearful court to the Star Cham- 
 ber and put to them three questions, to all 
 of which they gave him the answers he 
 wanted. The third question was, "What 
 punishment they deserved who framed peti- 
 tions, and collected a multitude of hands 
 thereto, to prefer to the king in a public 
 cause, as the Puritans had done, with an 
 intimation to the king that if he denied their 
 
 6 
 
 / 
 
62 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 suit, many thousands of his subjects would 
 be discontented?" To which that body 
 replied that this crime of petitioning " was 
 an offence finable at discretion^ and very 
 near to treason and felony in the pun- 
 ishment." 
 
 The king issued his proclamation in July, 
 giving the Puritans till the end of November 
 to conform. Then Bancroft springs to his 
 work. In eleven months he has driven 
 more than three hundred ministers from 
 their places, many of them into prison, and 
 many into foreign lands. Partial conces- 
 sions were accepted for a time from a multi- 
 tude of others, only lest the churches should 
 be left destitute. 
 
 A heavy hand is that of the bishops. Two 
 Puritans, Mr. Mannsel and Mr. Lad, a min- 
 ister and a merchant, one Lord's day after 
 sermon, join with Mr. Lackley in repeatmg 
 the heads of the sermon they had heard 
 in church. Charged with having held a 
 
STAR CHAMBER, ETC. 63 
 
 "conventicle," the two former are summoned 
 by the High Commission Court. The oath 
 (to answer all questions put to them) is 
 tendered and refused. They are cast into 
 prison without being admitted to bail. At 
 length they prevail on Nicolas Fuller, an 
 able lawyer, to be their counsel. He moved 
 in court for their discharge on the ground 
 that- the High Commissioners were not em- 
 powered to commit any of his majesty's 
 subjects to prison. It was an unpardonable 
 offence. Bancroft moved that ho be made 
 an example ; and Fuller was thrown in 
 prison and kept there till the. day of his 
 death. 
 
 The ministers that fled from England 
 with their followers, went to various parts 
 of Holland and formed churches, Presbyte- 
 rian and Independent or Congregational. 
 Many of them were there overwhelmed with 
 poverty. The learned Ainsworth, " a great 
 master of the Oriental languages,'' lived 
 
64 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 upon ninepence a week and some boiled 
 roots, hiring himself as porter to a printer, 
 till his employer discovered his skill in the 
 Hebrew language and made it known. Mr. 
 Smyth and his congregation must have gone 
 over about this time. 
 
 About the same time, probably, John 
 Robinson was driven from his church near 
 Yarmouth, and soon found his way to 
 Scrooby. But not long could he there find 
 rest. The pursuivants were after him and 
 his friends. Vain were their attempts to 
 elude attention ; the eye of the commission- 
 ers was on them. Then it was that they 
 resolved to follow their friends to Holland. 
 But it was no easy matter to escape from 
 the country. The king was determined to 
 crush them altogether ; and " although they 
 could not stay, yet they were not suffered to 
 go. The ports and havens were shut 
 against them, so that they were fain to seek 
 secret means of conveyance, and to fee the 
 
ETC. 6b 
 
 mariners, and give extraordinary rates for 
 their passages. And yet they were often- 
 times betrayed, many of them, and both 
 they and their goods intercepted and sur- 
 prised." Two only of these memorable 
 surprises are recorded. - They will be related 
 in the chapter following. 
 
 William Brewster and two other members 
 of the Scrooby Church are summoned by 
 the Commissioners of the Province of York 
 to appear on the 22d of April, 1608, at the 
 Collegiate Church of Southwell, some 
 twenty miles from Scrooby. They did not 
 choose to appear. The commissioners im- 
 posed a fine of twenty pounds each upon the 
 recusants, and in November made returns to 
 the exchequer to have the fines collected. 
 
 If that fine was collected, it was tlie last 
 that Brewster paid. 
 6^ 
 
66 THE PILGRIM CHURCH, 
 
 CHAPTER lY. 
 
 BOSTON AND HULL. 
 
 Fifty miles south-east of Scrooby lies the 
 old English seaport, Boston. It is quiet 
 enough now, but there was a time when its 
 business was second only to that of London. 
 Its prosperity, however, had greatly declined 
 in the days of the Pilgrims. It stands on 
 the sluggish river Witham, five miles from 
 the sea, in the midst of a low and marshy 
 region. It possesses one splendid building, 
 the finest parish church in all England, 
 whose lofty tower, two hundred and sixty 
 feet in height, is visible for leagues over the 
 surrounding furs and far away at sea. Two 
 hundred miles directly east across the 
 German Ocean, lies the city of Amsterdam. 
 
BOSTON AND HULL. 67 
 
 One day, in the latter part of the year 
 1607, William Brewster, William Bradford, 
 and a large company of men, women and 
 children, with their worldly goods, might 
 have been seen upon the way with their 
 faces turned anxiously toward the town that 
 was marked by that lofty tower, which they 
 were now approaching. They were bound 
 for Holland. It was a sore trial to them. 
 They shrunk from leaving " their native 
 country, their lands and livings, and all 
 their friends and familiar acquaintance." 
 That was not all. They were going to a 
 country "where they must learn a new 
 language, and get their livings they knew 
 not how.'' They thought of Holland as an 
 expensive place to live, involved at that very 
 time in " the miseries of war." They were 
 countrymen and worthy farmers, " not 
 acquainted with trades or traffic," the chief 
 occupations of Holland. Many of them, so 
 they have told us, thought it " an adventure 
 
68 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 almost desperate, a case intolerable, and a 
 misery worse than death." The only reason 
 why these things " did not dismay them " 
 was that " their desires " (they say) " were 
 set on the ways of God, and to enjoy his 
 ordinances. TJiey rested on his Providence^ 
 and knew whom they had believed.''^ 
 
 So they " had hired a ship wholly to them- 
 selves and made an agreement with the 
 captain to be ready at a certain day, and 
 take them and their goods at a convenient 
 place, where they accordingly would all 
 attend in readiness." They reach Boston — 
 but the captain is not there. " After long 
 waiting and large expenses, he came at 
 length and took them in at night.'''' But 
 better for them if he had not come at all. 
 He is a false-hearted wretch, and has before- 
 hand made secret arrangements with their 
 persecutors. As soon as the company and 
 their goods were all aboard, the officers 
 rushed in. Equally harsh to their victims 
 
BOSTON AND HULL. 69 
 
 and faithless to their employers, the officers 
 seem first to have plundered them on their 
 own account. They "put them into open 
 boats and then rifled and ransacked them, 
 searching them to their shirts for money ; " 
 nor were "even the women" spared the 
 indecent search. " Their money, books and 
 much" of their other property having been 
 thus taken away, they are carried back into 
 town and " made a spectacle to the multi- 
 tude who came flocking on all sides to 
 behold them." Among that multitude 
 undoubtedly there were some who in after 
 years came from tliis very spot and founded 
 another Boston in New England. Thomas 
 Dudley or Richard Bellingham, future gov- 
 ernors of Massachusetts, may have been 
 there ; or perhaps even a little boy ten years 
 of age, Samuel Whiting, who afterwards 
 was the minister of Lynn. If it had been 
 five years later, John Cotton might have 
 been there — the man who afterwards was 
 
70 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 preacher in that splendid church, and later 
 yet the famous minister of the second Bos- 
 ton ; but that brilliant ^nd eloquent scholar 
 was residing still at Cambridge as one of the 
 Fellows, and soon to be Head Lecturer, of 
 Emanuel College. The exhibition, trying 
 as it was, was not in vain. Here, and after- 
 wards at Hull and Grimsby, "their cause 
 became famous, and occasioned many to 
 look into it." And their Christian deport- 
 ment " was such as left a deep impression in 
 the minds of many," and afterwards was the 
 means of adding to their numbers. 
 
 They are delivered to the magistrates of 
 Boston, and kept under arrest till instruc- 
 tions should come from the lords of the 
 council. The magistrates were friendly and 
 showed them all the favor they could — 
 which is not strange when such a man as 
 the father of Samuel Whiting somewhere 
 about this time was mayor of the city. All 
 of them were confined a month; after which, 
 
BOSTON AND HULL. 71 
 
 with the exception of seven principal men, 
 they were dismissed to their homes — if 
 homes they could be said to have. Brewster 
 and six others with him lay still longer in 
 prison and were bound over to the court. 
 Bradford was dismissed earlier on account 
 of his youth. 
 
 But though frustrated, they are not 
 shaken in their purpose. The following 
 spring they renew the attempt, but at 
 another place. The little river Idle, that 
 washes Scrooby manor, flows into the Trent, 
 the Trent into the Humber, and the Hum- 
 ber into the German Ocean. On the north 
 bank of the Humber, twenty miles from its 
 mouth, lies the brisk little seaport Hull, and 
 close by the mouth of the river, the ancient 
 but declining port of Grimsby. Distrusting 
 the faith of their countrymen, they seek out 
 a Dutch captain at Hull, state their case to 
 him, gain satisfactory assurances, and make 
 their appointment. To escape observation. 
 
72 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 they fix upon a solitary place between 
 Grimsby and Hull, where he should meet 
 them, and take them on board. It was a 
 point nearly north from Boston and north- 
 east from Scrooby, about fifty miles distant 
 from each place. The women and children, 
 with the goods, were sent to the appointed 
 spot m a small bark, and the men were to 
 meet them by land. The ship is a day 
 behind them. Meanwhile the sea is rough, 
 and the women sick, and the seamen run 
 the bark into the shelter of a neighboring 
 creek. When the ship arrives next morn- 
 ing, the captain sees the men on shore, and 
 the bark with its contents left fast aground 
 by the ebbing tide — where it must lie till 
 noon. No time is to be lost. A boat is sent 
 for the men on shore. One load of them 
 are on board and the boat is about to return 
 — but, alas ! it is too late. The country is 
 roused ; a great company of horse and foot 
 are in sight, and rapidly advancing. Tlie 
 
BOSTON AND HULL. 73 
 
 Dutchman, with an oath, weighs anchor and 
 sets sail. 
 
 So here are a part of the men on their 
 way to Holland — Bradford among them — 
 with not a change of clothing, and many of 
 them with hardly a penny in their pockets, 
 their wives and children left to the tender 
 mercies of their persecutors. They could 
 not restrain their tears; they would have 
 given all they had " to be again on shore ; " 
 but there was no remedy. And soon it 
 became a question whether those wives and 
 children would ever see them more. A 
 fearful storm fell on them and tossed them 
 about for fourteen days, during which they 
 were driven upon the coast of Norway and 
 for a whole week saw neither sun, moon nor 
 stars. The sailors " with cries and shrieks " 
 gave up all hope ; the passengers " without 
 any great distraction" gave themselves to 
 fervent prayer, and " with a great height of 
 divhie faith cried, 'Yet, Lord, thou canst 
 
 7 
 
74 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 save ; yet, Lord, thou canst save.' " Wlien 
 they reached the port in safety, they felt it 
 to be in answer to tlieir prayers. 
 
 Of the men who were left behind, those 
 who were needed to assist the women, 
 remained ; the rest made their escape. But 
 bitter was the distress of the company in the 
 bark, and sad the sight they presented — 
 children "hanging about" their mothers, 
 " crying for fear, and quaking with cold, 
 and the mothers themselves in deep dis- 
 tress, weeping on every side for their hus- 
 bands that were carried away," for "the 
 poor little ones hanging about them," for 
 their forlorn and miserable prospects, " not 
 knowing what should become of them and 
 their little ones," as they " had no homes to 
 go to." The magistrates were sadly at a 
 loss what to do with them. " To imprison 
 so many women and innocent children for 
 no other cause but that they would go with 
 their husbands seemed unreasonable;" "and 
 
BOSTON AND HULL. 75 
 
 to send them to their homes again was as 
 difficult, for they had sold their houses and 
 livings." So they " harried them round " 
 from one place to another, and from one 
 justice to another, till all were wearied and 
 tired with them and glad to be rid of them 
 on any terms. In the meantime " the poor 
 souls endured misery enough." 
 
 But the wise and cheerful Brewster and 
 the calm and beloved Robinson remained 
 with them in England through all their 
 troubles. Retreat could not now be thought 
 of; a necessity lay upon them to go, and it 
 " forced a way for them " — for most likely 
 the magistrates found it indispensable to let 
 them go. "In the end, notwithstanding 
 these storms of opposition, they all got over, 
 some at one time and some at another, and 
 met together agam, according to their 
 desires, with no small rejoicing." Rejoic- 
 ing, indeed! when those anxious husbands 
 and fathers, those forlorn and weeping 
 
76 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 wives, and those affrighted, homeless chil- 
 dren rushed to each other's arms ! Robin- 
 son and Brewster, who had " stayed to help 
 the weakest over before them," came with 
 the last company; and all are together 
 again, but in a foreign land. 
 
 These trials had been hard for them, but 
 not without their uses for the Master's 
 cause. Their faith, and constancy, and 
 Christian deportment, and their purpose, 
 too, had been thoroughly advertised in these 
 three important places, Boston, Hull and 
 Grimsby, and in the region round about. 
 They made their mark. And it is noticeable 
 how when in later days they found their 
 way across the Atlantic no portion of the 
 mother country was so abundantly repre- 
 sented in the emigration that followed them, 
 as the region round about the scene of their 
 sufferings and notoriety. The name of 
 Boston itself and of a score or two of towns 
 lying within a radius of sixty or eighty miles 
 
BOSTON AND HULL. 77 
 
 — Hull, Waltliam, Cambridge, Beverly, 
 Hingham, Needham, Framingham, Asliby, 
 Yarmouth, Brain tree, Lynn, Boxford, Sud- 
 bury, Ipswich, Haverhill, Woburn, Leicester, 
 Northampton, Hatfield, Wenham, and others 
 — transferred to the earlier settlements of 
 Massachusetts, bear witness to the origin of 
 many of the early colonists themselves. 
 Little but the pure gold, too, could pass 
 through such a fire. 
 
 Those despairing women and those 
 anxious men saw not fully the reason for 
 their trials. But God had a reason, 
 nevertheless. 
 7* 
 
78 THE PILGRIM CHURCH 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 HOLLAND. 
 
 The Pilgrims are safe at last in Holland. 
 Why are they here ? They came because 
 here they could find perfect safety ; and God 
 brought them here, apparently to teach 
 them some lessons they could not have 
 learned, had not their way to Plymouth led 
 through Holland. Here was " a church 
 without a bishop and a state without a 
 king." Here was the only state in Europe 
 or the world, where there was then perfect 
 civil tolerance on religious subjects. God 
 sent the pioneers of New England thither to 
 make them more thoroughly tolerant and 
 republican than any other band of emigrants 
 that came to America. As they were to 
 
HOLLAND. 79 
 
 shape the whole history of New England, 
 they were made to undergo a severer train- 
 ing, and a more thorough maturing, and to 
 gain wiser and more liberal views by a 
 broader experience. In after days they 
 refrained from some of the practical errors 
 of the later colonists. And though compar- 
 atively few and poor, their early influence 
 on the first settlement of New England was 
 invaluable. How came the state of things 
 they found in Holland ? 
 
 It was the fruit of one of the most terrible 
 histories of suffering that the annals of the 
 world contain. The fierce and murky 
 elements that kept the heavens of England 
 in commotion for more than a hundred 
 years, with successive storms of persecution, 
 with lowering clouds and muttering thun- 
 ders and flashing fires, had swept through 
 Holland in one long and awful hurricane, 
 and burned themselves out at last, to leave 
 the sky all bright and pure. 
 
80 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Ill England, the movement of the Refor- 
 mation had been slow. Three-quarters of a 
 century had passed already since Henry 
 YIIL, tlie great-great-uncle of James the 
 First, had rudely torn England from the 
 authority of the pope, because the pope 
 refused to grant him a divorce from Catha- 
 rme, his queen. But Henry, having broken 
 away from Rome, suppressed the monas- 
 teries and absorbed their wealth, afterwai'd 
 endeavored to hold the English Reformation 
 where it was. He withdrew the permission, 
 once given, to read the Word of God, 
 retained auricular confession, the seven 
 sacraments, the cehbacy of the clergy, the 
 doctrine of transubstantiation, prayers for 
 the dead, invocation of the saints, and most 
 of the peculiarities of popery, except the 
 supreme authority of the pope. And so he 
 held the kingdom in an ambiguous condi- 
 tion, wherein he continued to burn as here- 
 tics those Avho avowed the doctrines of 
 
HOLLAND. 81 
 
 Luther, and to hang as traitors those who 
 maiiitamed the supremacy of the pope. 
 Indeed on one occasion, in 1540, three 
 Protestant ministers and four Papists were 
 sent on the same hurdle or cart to the same 
 place of execution. In the brief reign of 
 Henry's son, Edward YI., Protestantism was 
 made the national religion, the prayer-book 
 compiled from the Romish missals, and thus 
 from tlie ancient liturgies, substantially, into 
 its present form, and a higher pitch of liber- 
 ality attained in one respect than ever since 
 in the Episcopal Church, namely, in recog- 
 nizing foreign chiu'ches without bishops, and 
 foreign ministers not ordained by bishops, as 
 true churches and ministers. But persecu- 
 tion contmued to some extent towards those 
 who went beyond a certain range ; Anabap- 
 tists were burned. Then came bloody 
 Queen Mary, another of Henry's children, to 
 re-establish Romanism. In her reign of 
 about five vears and a half, besides those 
 
82 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 who were secretly murdered in prison, four 
 hundred persons, including sixty women and 
 forty little children, were burned alive for 
 their religion. There is a place in London, 
 called Smithfield, now used for a cattle 
 market, rich with the blood of the martyrs. 
 Those fires of Smithfield began with good 
 John Rogers, the man who at the stake 
 refused to recant for an offered pardon, 
 though a wife and ten children bound him 
 to the world. The reign of Elizabeth, 
 though not so polluted with blood, was 
 severe on non-conformity. By the act of 
 uniformity, passed in the second year of her 
 reign, any minister who should venture to 
 address his Maker in other language than 
 that of the Book of Common Prayer, was 
 liable to the loss of goods and chattels for 
 the first offence, to twelve months' imprison- 
 ment for the second, and imprisonment 
 during life for the third. It was she who 
 established the High Commission Court. 
 
HOLLAND. »y 
 
 The Anabaptists still were executed ; Bar- 
 row, Greenwood and Penry suffered death, 
 and the members of the Soiithwark Church 
 lay in prison ; and others fled the country. 
 Then came James, to be followed by the 
 heavy hand of Charles with his notorious 
 Archbishop Laud. Never for an hour was 
 the principle of full toleration erected in 
 England till the glorious government of 
 Cromwell — then to be long again sub- 
 merged. 
 
 But in Holland the state of things had 
 long been different. The terrific struggle 
 for liberty of conscience had been carried 
 through in the reigns of the famous Em- 
 peror Charles the Fifth and his fanatical son 
 Philip II., of Spain; and a quarter of a 
 century before the death of Philip, William 
 the Silent, Prince of Orange, had founded 
 the Dutch Kepublic on principles of full 
 toleration. 
 
84 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 The train of events may be briefly 
 sketched. The Reformation had swept into 
 Holland almost immediately on the public 
 appearance of Luther, — the provinces of 
 Holland being tlie paternal inheritance of 
 the Emperor Charles. It was the one deep 
 regret of Charles' latest hours, that when 
 Luther appeared before him at the cele- 
 brated Diet of Worms, he had not violated 
 his own royal word and sign-manual and 
 put Luther to death ! But he showed his 
 disposition. For in that very year, 1521, 
 and from the very place of the Diet, the 
 young emperor had issued an arbitrary edict 
 for Holland, declaring that as " the aforesaid 
 Martin [Luther] is not a man, but a devil 
 under the form of a man, and clothed in the 
 dress of a priest, the better to bring the 
 human race to hell and damnation, therefore 
 all his disciples are to be punished with 
 death and confiscation of goods. ^^ Another 
 edict soon forbade all private assemblies for 
 
HOLLAND. 85 
 
 devotion; all reading of the Scriptures; all 
 discussions ivithin one's oivn doors concern- 
 ing faith, the sacraments, the papal author- 
 ity, or other rehgioiis matters, under penalty 
 of death. Then, in 1535, come still another 
 edict condemmng all heretics, whether re- 
 pentant or persevering, to death ; repentant 
 males to be executed with the sword, 
 repentant females to be buried alive ; the 
 obstinate of both sexes to be burned. These 
 horrible edicts were all re-enacted in a body 
 by subsequent decrees, and remained the 
 law of the land tln-ougliout the reign of 
 Charles. 
 
 To do this bloody work, Charles intro- 
 duced the Inquisition into Holland, and 
 appointed his sister, Mary, Dowager Queen 
 of Hungary, Regent of the Netherlands. 
 Tliis woman, worthy to be, as both she and 
 the emperor were, first cousin to bloody 
 Mary of England, wrote to her brother in 
 1533, that in her opinion "all heretics, 
 
Ob THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 whether repentant or not, should be perse- 
 cuted with such severity that error might be 
 at once extinguished, care being only taken 
 that the provinces luere not entirely depopu- 
 lated.^^ The awful work was thoroughly 
 done. The number of Hollanders who, 
 during the reign of Charles and in obedience 
 to his edicts, had been beheaded, burned 
 and buried alive for the offences above 
 enumerated, swelled to the dreadful total of 
 one hundred thousand ! 
 
 Charles resigned his dominions at last to 
 his son Philip, charging him, as one of his 
 last injunctions, to maintain tlie Catholic 
 religion ; then retired to his monastery at 
 Juste to issue savage exhortations to his son 
 to cut out the root of heresy. 
 
 Philip the Second needed no exhortations. 
 He had been well mated when he married 
 " bloody Mary." He gave himself to " the 
 rooting out of heresy," and the maintenance 
 of Romanism, as the work to which his life 
 
HOLLAND. 87 
 
 was consecrated; and more than once ex- 
 pressed the willingness to sacrifice all his 
 dominions, if need were, in the effort. Full 
 of cunning yet destitute of wisdom, hesitat- 
 ing and yet obsthiate, more utterly devoid 
 of truth and honor than it is possible for 
 language to set forth — so did he make his 
 whole life an atmosphere of lying — bitter 
 and relentless, yea, never yet cleared of 
 deep suspicions concerning the murder of 
 his eldest son. Philip devoted his earliest 
 leisure to carry out the purpose of his life. 
 In 1559 he appointed his sister, the duchess 
 of Parma, Regent of the country ; and being 
 about to withdraw into Spain, he solemnly 
 charged her in public thoroughly to enforce 
 the edicts and decrees made by the Emperor 
 Charles, and now renewed by Philip himself, 
 for the extirpation of all sects and heresies. 
 The monarch celebrated his arrival in Spain 
 with a splendid cmto da fe, in whicli he 
 
88 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 feasted his eyes witli tlie sight of thirteen 
 distinguished victims burning at the stake. 
 
 Ah'eady the reformed religion had gained 
 a strong foothold in Holland, coming in 
 through the Lutheranism of Germany on 
 one side, and tlie Calvinism of France on the 
 other. The edict which Philip re-enacted 
 and left as his parting gift to Holland 
 inflicted its terrible penalty on those who 
 should print, write, copy, keep, conceal, buy, 
 sell or give any book or writing composed 
 by Calvin, Luther, Zwingle, and other here- 
 tics — those who should injure images of the 
 virgin or the saints — those who should be 
 present at any Protestant meetings — all lay 
 persons who should read, teach, or dispute 
 concerning the Holy Scriptures, openly or 
 secretly — those who should entertain any of 
 the opinions of Luther, Calvin, &c. The 
 penalty was burning alive, and forfeiture of 
 all the property. If they repented, the men 
 might receive the mercy of being executed 
 
HOLLAND. 89 
 
 with the sword, the women of bemg buried 
 alive. Any person harboring or supplying 
 a suspected heretic, or failing to denounce 
 him, should receive the heretic's doom. A 
 bounty was offered to the informer ; and the 
 traitor who should attend a " conventicle ' 
 and then betray his friends, should receive a 
 full pardon. 
 
 Spanish soldiery were left, and new 
 bishops appointed in Holland, to aid in exe- 
 cuting the destined work. Peter Titelman 
 and a dozen other inquisitors sprang eagerly 
 to their calling. The prisons swarmed with 
 victims, and the streets with processions to 
 the stake. Occasionally the dull routine of 
 strangling, burning and burying alive, was 
 relieved by some such case as that of Ber- 
 trand le Bias, who had snatched a conse- 
 crated wafer from the priest, and with the 
 exclamation, " Misguided men, do you deem 
 this thing to be Jesus Christ your Lord and 
 Saviour ? " had broken it to fragments, and 
 
 8* 
 
90 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 trampled it on the ground. This man was 
 thrice put to the torture. He was dragged, 
 on a hurdle, witli his mouth closed with an 
 iron gag, to the market place. His right 
 hand and foot were burned and twisted off 
 between two red-hot irons — his tongue torn 
 out by the roots, and the iron gag again 
 applied. With his arms and legs fastened 
 together behind his back, he was then fast- 
 ened by the middle of his body to an iron 
 chain, and swung back and forth over a slow 
 fire till he was roasted. 
 
 Sometimes a whole family were taken off; 
 tluis John de Swarte, his wife and four chil- 
 dren were all burned together. Secret 
 drowning was substituted, to some extent, 
 for public burning, to take away the glory 
 of the martyr's death. And so the work 
 went on. Still the hiquisitors complained 
 of delay. Philip urged from Spain. At 
 length tlie phrenzy of the people was 
 aroused. Religious assemblies met every 
 
HOLLAND. 91 
 
 where under arms — and field preaching 
 spread in all directions. Pledges of resist- 
 ance began to be made throughout the prov- 
 inces, and confederations formed. The 
 great religious assemblies — or camp-meet- 
 ings — where the worshipers came all armed 
 to the teeth, sometimes numbered fifteen or 
 even twenty thousand persons. A fierce 
 popular outbreak rose in Antwerp, and in a 
 single night the magnificent cathedral, 
 wliose spire rose five luuidred feet, and 
 wliose interior was adorned with the most 
 gorgeous and costly decorations — a maze of 
 art and wealth — was completely disembow- 
 eled of its images, its relics, and all its 
 treasures, and made a wreck within. The 
 affrighted Regent was about to fly from the 
 country, and was with difficulty restrained. 
 The Protestants obtahied permission from 
 the terrified government to hold their relig- 
 ious assemblies unmolested, till advice 
 should be received from the king. Envoys 
 
92 THE PILGRIBI CHURCH. 
 
 are sent to Spain, asking the abolition of the 
 inquisition, revocation of the edicts, and 
 pardon of offenders. Philip dissembled, and 
 meditated meanwhile the most awful ven- 
 geance. 
 
 At length all was ready. An armed 
 invasion of Holland is resolved upon ; and 
 ten thousand chosen and veteran Spanish 
 soldiers are detached under the command 
 of the duke of Alva. The name of this man 
 has come down to us laden with infamy. 
 He was the ablest general in Europe, and 
 was sixty years of age. Cruel, unscrupulous 
 and indifferent to public opinion, he was in 
 every respect a fit instrument to execute the 
 designs of Philip. 
 
 One can almost see that cast-iron man, 
 " tall, thin, erect, with a small head, a long 
 visage, lean, yellow cheek, dark, twinkling 
 eyes, adust complexion, black, bristling hair, 
 and long, sable-silvered beard," as he 
 marches on his track of perfidy and blood ; 
 
HOLLAND. 93 
 
 and that veteran army, accompanied by a 
 corps of tivo thousand prostitutes^ regularly 
 enrolled and distributed as part of the equip- 
 ment, as it wound on its way to butcher, 
 burn and ravish for the sake of the " holy 
 Catholic religion." 
 
 No resistance at first was offered. The 
 cities of Holland surrendered their keys. 
 Two chief nobles of Holland, Counts Egmont 
 and Horn, trusting the lying assurances of 
 Alva and his master Philip, are decoyed 
 within Alva's grasp, and he passes his arm 
 lovingly over the neck of Egmont, already 
 devoted to the block. In a few days they 
 are hurried from the banquet to the prison, 
 and soon after their headless bodies lay on 
 the scaffold in the great square of Brussels. 
 The execution of eighteen other prisoners 
 of distinction had just preceded ; and long 
 before their tragic end the streams of blood 
 had been pouring forth like water. 
 
 Alva had established a court superseding 
 
94 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 all other tribunals, to be known in history, 
 forever, as the Blood Council. This coTirt, 
 in horribly sweephig terms, pronounced 
 guilty of treason, all who had ever signed a 
 petition against the new bishops, the inquisi- 
 tion or the edicts ; all who had under any 
 circumstances tolerated public preaching ; 
 those who had ever omitted resistance to the 
 field preaching, tlie image-breaking, the pre- 
 sentation of a remonstrance by the nobles ; 
 or who should have asserted that the king- 
 did not possess the right to deprive all the 
 provinces of their liberties, or who should 
 have maintained that this court — utterly 
 illegal though it was — was bound in any 
 manner to respect any laws and charters ; — 
 and the punishment of treason was pro- 
 nounced to be instant death. The method 
 of the court was as summary as its character 
 was arbitrary. Its examination of evidence 
 was the merest mockery, and individuals 
 arrested for trial were not seldom executed 
 
HOLLAND. 95 
 
 before their names were reached. Nothino- 
 ill modern history, but the Revohitionary 
 Tribunal in France, two liundred years 
 later, will compare witli it. In three 
 months it had destroyed eighteen hundred 
 lives, and was just enterhig on its work. 
 Men were sentenced by platoons. In a 
 single day, for example, eighty-four inhabit- 
 ants of Valenciennes were condemned; on 
 another day forty-six inhabitants of Malines ; 
 on another, nhiety-fivc from different parts 
 of Flanders. A grand swoop was made on 
 the holiday of Shrovetide, and five hundred 
 victims caught and executed. Anguish was 
 carried into every village and almost every 
 family in the land. Alva told the deputies 
 of Antwerp that " his majesty would rather 
 the whole land should become an uninhab- 
 ited wilderness, than that a single dissenter 
 should exist within its territory." 
 
 It seemed as though this threat was to be 
 made good. In February, 1568, a decree 
 
96 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 of the inquisition pronounced sentence of 
 death on all the inhabitants of the Nether- 
 lands, as heretics. From this sentence of 
 death on three millions of men, women and 
 children, only a few persons, especially 
 named, were excepted. The king's procla- 
 mation confirmed the sentence, and ordered 
 its execution. The intention, of course, was 
 not actually to slaughter all, but to give 
 complete facility for the destruction of any. 
 The Blood Council wrought the harder. 
 The solenmities of Holy Week were followed 
 by the fall of eight hundred heads. To 
 avoid all disturbance as the victims marched 
 through the streets on such occasions, they 
 were gagged by having the tongue thrust 
 through an iron ring, and then seared by a 
 hot iron and thus made fast. It were a 
 mere harrowing of the feelings further to 
 detail these proceedings. Enough that 
 when Alva resigned his command of six 
 years' duration, he boasted that eighteen 
 
HOLLAND. 97 
 
 thousand and six hundred persons liad been 
 sent by him to execution alone, — besides the 
 countless victims who had been slaughtered 
 in his military murders. More than a 
 hundred thousand men abandoned their 
 country. 
 
 Just about this time the noble Baron 
 Montiguy, who had left his young four- 
 months bride to go as ambassador to Spain, 
 and had lain there four years in confme- 
 ment, was secretly strangled in prison. All 
 the complicated details of his private mur- 
 der, were arranged minutely by king Philip 
 with a man of awful perfidy and falsehood, 
 now revealed after the lapse of three centu- 
 ries, which almost staggers belief. 
 
 The noble Prince of Orange rallied his 
 countrymen to resistance. Ill-supplied and 
 feebly supported, some opening successes 
 were followed by bitter reverses ; and the 
 Hollanders abandoned the struggle. Fresh 
 slaughters succeeded. In the infatuation of 
 
98 T U E r I L K I M C U U R C H . 
 
 his viotorios. Alva imposed the most exhaust- 
 ing and even ruinous taxes on the ^veaUh 
 aud trade of IloUand. All business was 
 arrested. The people stood appalled, and 
 fooling at length their forlorn aud desperate 
 condition, again set up the standard of 
 revolt. The Prinee of Orange, wlio from 
 an outward CathoUe, had been led along 
 until he beeame not only a Protestaut, but 
 a deeply religious man, with an unlaltering 
 trust in God amid reverses aud ingi*atitude, 
 and soiuetimes beggary and desertion, like 
 a very father of his coimtry. led the nation. 
 Fivm the begim\ing of his r..■.^^• :; •.:; loT-, 
 he pi\">olaimed ptr/t'ct />::'. :/ ili^ioji. 
 \mdor penalty of death to those who in- 
 fringed it. 
 
 Hardly had success and hope began to 
 ei'O'VNni his struggles, when lie was thiuider- 
 struck aiui deep gloom was cast upon his 
 prospects by the *' massacre of Saiiit Ixu-- 
 tholomew/' The neighbormg monarch. 
 
HOLLAND. 99 
 
 Charles IX., of France, who had pledged 
 him aid, gave from his royal palace the signal 
 of that havoc, and from his palace window, 
 with gun in hand, shot at his subjects ; and 
 within thirty days the blood of unknown 
 thousands of Protestants (from 25,000 to 
 100,000) watered the streets of Paris and 
 the villages of France. The pope of Rome 
 in grand procession with his cardinals, went 
 to the church of St. Mai^k to render thanks 
 to God for this signal grace ; Philip of Spain 
 congratulated the monarch of France not 
 only for the valorous exploit, but for an 
 event to which " he owed the preservation 
 of the Netherlands." Alva is stimulated, 
 his victims disheartened. Wliy detail the 
 awfiil scenes that marked the taking of such 
 places as Zutphen and Naarden, when in the 
 former place the orders were to spare not 
 a smgle man alive, nor leave a house un- 
 burned, and where the citizens were stabbed, 
 or hung upon their own shade trees, or 
 
100 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 stripped naked and turned into the fields to 
 freeze in the wintery nights, or hung by the 
 feet upon the gallows to be four days and 
 nights in perishing, — and, at last, five hun- 
 dred of them tied two and two, baek to 
 back, and drowned in the river Yssel : and 
 in the latter plaee, beside all other eoneeiva- 
 ble horrors carried on with shouts of laugh- 
 ter as a wild amusement, the soldiers even 
 ill some cases drank the blood from their 
 victims* veins. And both here and in every 
 place whieh the Spaniards took, the women 
 were surrendered to the worst outrages that 
 could be mflieted on them. 
 
 Such scenes as these marked their path, 
 and the pen is weary to record over 
 and over these same dreadful outracres. 
 Throughout this whole career, " men were 
 tortured, beheaded, hanged by the neck and 
 legs, burned before slow fires, pmched to 
 death with red-hot tongs, broken on the 
 wheel, starved, and ilayed alive. Tlieir 
 
HOLLAND. 101 
 
 skills stripped from the living body, were 
 stretched upon drums, to be beaten in the 
 march of their brethren to the gallows." 
 
 Still the patriots rallied nobly. There 
 was the long and desperate defence of Har- 
 lem, in which even a military company of 
 women did noble service, and m which an 
 army of 30,000 besiegers left 12,000 of their 
 number dead around the city, before the 
 absolutely starving inhabitants surrendered. 
 There was the siege of Alkmaar, in which 
 eight hundred soldiers and thirteen hundred 
 citizens, resisted sixteen thousand Spanish 
 troops and in three terrible assaults were 
 driven back, while every living man was on 
 the walls ; and not alone cannon balls and 
 bullets, but boiling water, pitch and oil, 
 melted lead, tarred and burning hoops, were 
 hurled forth, and amid the flying missiles, 
 undaunted women and children passed back 
 and forth with powder and ball for their 
 
 fathers and brothers, until even some of the 
 9* 
 
102 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Spanish soldiers suffered themselves to be 
 run through the body rather than again 
 advance to the walls ; and their commander 
 learning that the Prince of Orange had 
 already given orders to cut down the dykes 
 and let the waters of the ocean flood the 
 land, called off his fiends of war. Every 
 thing, indeed, was at stake for Alkmaar ; 
 for Alva had privately declared that he 
 "would not leave a single creature alive." 
 
 Alva at length, laden with crime and 
 detestation was permitted to retire. His 
 successor made from time to time some 
 show of reconciliation ; but the attempt at 
 subjugation still went on. Philip's purpose 
 was not to be shaken. The struggle con- 
 tmued, marked by various successes and 
 many reverses too. One of the most gallant 
 things in history was the long and triumph- 
 ant defence of Leyden. One of the most 
 awful chapters in the annals of military 
 crime was the sacking of Antwerp, still 
 
HOLLAND. 103 
 
 known as "the Spanish Fury" — in which 
 every conceivaDle atrocity ran riot, and 
 eight thousand citizens were slaughtered, 
 six millions of property destroyed by fire, 
 and at least six millions more were carried 
 off by the Spaniards. More desperate, reso- 
 lute, and united grew the resistance of Hol- 
 land. Often defeated, never despairing, 
 always trusting in the God to whom he com- 
 mitted all, Orange finally came off victorious. 
 In a time of his deepest discouragement 
 and destitution of all foreign help, he replied 
 to the despondent inquiry of one of his 
 advisers: "You ask if I have entered into 
 a firm treaty with any great king or poten- 
 tate, to which I answer, that before I ever 
 took up the cause of the oppressed Chris- 
 tians in these provinces, I had entered into a 
 close alliance with the King of kings ; and I 
 am firmly convinced that all who put their 
 trust in Him, shall be saved by His almighty 
 hand. The God of armies will raise up 
 
104 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 armies for us to do battle with our enemies 
 and His own." And the God of armies 
 did remember him. The interpositions of 
 Heaven seemed quite as remarkable, and as 
 indispensable too, as in our own Revolution, 
 ary war. 
 
 Seven provinces formed the Republic of 
 the United Netherlands. Met by the Span- 
 ish commanders with alternate attempts at 
 bribery and assassination, the Prince of 
 Orange fell at length by the assassin's hand 
 in 1584. His son and successor, Maurice, 
 followed in his steps with a constant suc- 
 cession of battles, sieges and victories, till at 
 length the peace of Antwerp, formed in the 
 very year after the arrival of the Pilgrims, 
 gave a twelve years' breathing spell to the 
 harassed land. 
 
 But for many years before the establish- 
 ment of peace, Holland became the refuge 
 of the persecuted in all parts of Europe. 
 Thousands expelled by Spanish cruelty from 
 
HOLLAND. 105 
 
 Southern Netherlands, (now Belgium,) 
 Huguenots from France, and Puritans from 
 England, flocked into the Northern Nether- 
 lands, now Holland. At Rotterdam, the 
 Hague, Leyden, Utrecht, and other places, 
 there were English churches formed on the 
 Presbyterian plan, as well as those of Epis- 
 copal government. 
 
 The great and flourishing city of Amster- 
 aam especially was a point of attraction. 
 For fifteen years already, when the Pilgrims 
 arrived, there had been an Independent 
 Puritan Churcn in Amsterdam, and another 
 was formed just before their arrival. Among 
 these were many of the men who had lain 
 in the prisons of London, when Barrowe and 
 Greenwood and Penry were summoned forth 
 to the scaffold. The court and the bishops 
 in England, after the execution of Penry, 
 staggered by the odium of executing for 
 treason men who died with the strongest 
 expressions of loyalty on their lips, had 
 
106 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 cleared the prisons of them by sentence of 
 banishment. And here they had long been 
 in Amsterdam, with their pastors, Francis 
 Johnson and Henry Ainsworth. There 
 were more than three hundred communi- 
 cants in the older church at Amsterdam. 
 
LEYDEN. 107 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 LEYDEN. 
 
 The pilgrims landed in Amsterdam. Brews- 
 ter may perhaps have been there when he 
 was in Holland, more than twenty years 
 before. Even to his eyes it must have been 
 greatly changed ; trade and wealth had 
 flowed in, until the city was almost three 
 times as large as then. To the other mem- 
 bers of the little band it was a strange sight, 
 " all so far differing," they say, " from their 
 plain country villages, wherein they were 
 bred and had so long lived, that it seemed 
 they were come into a new world." The 
 wealth and luxury that revelled around, 
 only stood in stronger contrast with their 
 own destitution and almost beggary. Hear 
 
108 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 their sad and yet manly reminiscence : 
 " Though they saw fair and beautiful cities, 
 flowing with abundance of all sorts of wealth 
 and riches, yet it was not long before they 
 saw the grim and grisly face of poverty 
 coming upon them like an armed man, with 
 whom they must buckle and encounter, and 
 from whom they could not fly. But they 
 were armed with faith and patience against 
 him and all his encounters ; and though 
 they were sometimes foiled, yet by God's 
 assistance they prevailed and got the vic- 
 tory." In truth, with the exception of a very 
 few persons, like Brewster and Bradford, 
 they were originally men of small means, 
 and what little they possessed had been 
 pretty thoroughly stripped away in the hard- 
 ships of their removal. Even Brewster was 
 now reduced like the rest. And the difficulty 
 was for men who had been brought up in 
 agricultural occupations, to maintain them- 
 
LEYDEN. 109 
 
 selves in a country that depended so largely 
 on its trade and manufactures. 
 
 But they did not remain long in Amster- 
 dam. For the sake of their religious peace, 
 these tempest-tossed men were willing to 
 make another removal within a year, " though 
 they well knew," so they say, " it would be 
 much to the prejudice of their outward 
 estates, both at the present and in the 
 future." They found the independent 
 churches at Amsterdam in the midst of a 
 contention, with the strongest prospect of 
 its increase rather than its diminution. It 
 is the misfortune of all human movements, 
 however good, often to be discredited by a few 
 unworthy individuals. The better the cause 
 and the more of courage and zeal it requires, 
 the greater the liability to be weighed down 
 by individuals who possess " zeal without 
 knowledge," and who push that zeal beyond 
 all the bounds of wisdom, reason and 
 charity. So the Pilgrims found it to be in 
 
 10 
 
110 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Amsterdam. The chiirch itself was a mis- 
 cellaneous collection ; and three sources of 
 trouble had sprung up. Mr. Jolm Smyth 
 had led off a secession church, upon a singu- 
 lar mixture of Baptist and Perfectionist 
 principles, with certam fanatical doctrines, 
 such as that flight in time of persecution 
 was unlawful, and the smgmg of set words 
 or verses to God was unauthorized. In the 
 original church trouble had arisen about a 
 case of discipUne, which grew out of certam 
 excessive views upon the plainness of female 
 dress. And finally, one of the pastors of 
 that church, Mr. Johnson, advocated Presby- 
 terian views of church government, while 
 Mr. Auisworth and the bulk of the church 
 were Congregational. Li view of the 
 present and the coming troubles, Robinson 
 and liis church determined to remove 
 '• before they were engaged " in them. 
 
 Leyden became their home m Holland. 
 And thoudi '* not so beneficial to their out- 
 
LEYDEN. Ill 
 
 ward means of living" as Amsterdam, no 
 place was invested with more befitting asso- 
 ciations for such a band. It was but about 
 thirty years smce the city had braved and 
 vanquished still more terrific foes than 
 theirs. One of the noblest defences in the 
 records of history was made at Ley den. In 
 1574, after a blockade of five months, and 
 while scantily supphed and almost without 
 troops, the city was invested by the Spanish 
 army, and girdled with sixty-two redoubts 
 so effectually that scarcely any thing but a 
 carrier-pigeon could find its way out or m. 
 The citizens felt, as did the Prince of 
 Orange, that the fate of the coimtry hinged 
 on their manhood, and girded themselves 
 solemnly and resolutely to the work of 
 resistance. The food which they had early 
 weighed out on allowance, soon failed. Tlie 
 flesh of horses, dogs and rats, weeds and 
 every substance by which human life can be 
 protracted, were eaten and exhausted. One 
 
112 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 only hope remained — to break down the 
 dykes and sluices and let the ocean drive 
 out their invaders. To this appalling deso- 
 lation of a vast territory, the consent of the 
 States of Holland was asked — and given. 
 " Better a drowned land," said they, " than 
 a lost land." The dykes were opened, but a 
 contrary wind long kept back the waters. 
 Starvation began. Anxious messages were 
 sent to the Prince to hasten the relief; but, 
 alas ! broken down with his overwhelming 
 cares, a raging fever was coursing through 
 his veins. Day after day they mounted the 
 ancient tower and looked despairingly 
 towards the ocean, fifteen miles away. The 
 enemy taunted them. Once, indeed, a band 
 of the more faint-hearted citizens thronged 
 the house of their burgomaster and de- 
 manded a surrender. " I tell you," replied 
 the haggard but undaunted man, " I have 
 made an oath to hold the city, and may God 
 give me strength to keep my oath ! I can 
 
LEYDEN. 113 
 
 die but once. ... I know that we shall 
 starve if not soon relieved ; but starvation is 
 better than the dishonored death which is 
 the only alternative. Take my body to 
 appease your hunger, but expect no surren- 
 der from me." They catch the flame- 
 return to the walls— and hurl new defiance 
 to the enemy. " Ye call us rat-eaters and 
 dog-eaters ; and it is true. So long, then, 
 as ye hear dog bark, or cat mew, within 
 these walls, ye may know that the city holds 
 out. And when all has perished but our- 
 selves, be sure that we will each eat our left 
 arms, retainhig our right to defend our 
 women, our liberty, and our religion, against 
 the foreign tyrant." 
 
 At length Orange recovered. A violent 
 gale from the north-west piled up the waters 
 of the ocean in huge masses, and sent them 
 pouring through the broken dykes, The 
 whole country around Leyden became a vast 
 lake, over which those anxious eyes soon 
 
 10* 
 
114 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 saw the fleet of Orange approaching to their 
 relief. From one chief fortress the Span- 
 iards fled in terror along the dykes and 
 causeways, and were drowned and slain as 
 they went. That night the remainder of 
 the besieging army disappeared in silence. 
 In the morning the famished citizens rushed 
 with frantic eagerness to meet their deliver- 
 ers and their food. Then they marched in 
 solemn procession to the great church to 
 give thanks to God. Prayer was offered ; 
 and thousands of voices lifted the song of 
 praise, but broke down with an uncon- 
 trollable weeping. Six thousand of their 
 dear friends had died of starvation. 
 
 Among the privileges bestowed on the 
 city for its heroic defence, was the founda- 
 tion of the University of Ley den. Five 
 months only from the close of the siege the 
 city was all astir with the inauguration cere- 
 monies. The University soon became 
 famous, and has been adorned with many 
 
LEYDEN. 115 
 
 nam.es of European reputation. Such 
 names as these, Grotms, Descartes, Scaliger 
 and Boerhaave, are found m the Hst of its 
 professors ; and the city itself was called the 
 Athens of the West, and the North Star of 
 Holland. 
 
 To Leyden came the Pilgrims, " valuing 
 peace and their spiritual comfort," says 
 Bradford, " above any other riches whatso- 
 ever; and at length they came to raise a 
 comfortable living with hard and continual 
 labor." Bradford himself learned the art 
 of silk-dyeing. Brewster taught Dutch 
 students the English language, and after a 
 time became quite popular as a teacher. 
 And toward the latter portion of the resi- 
 dence in Leyden he set up a printing-press 
 and issued several religious books that were 
 prohibited in England, till at length the 
 British government again set its watchful 
 eye upon him, and reached out its long arm 
 
116 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 after him. He was thought to be arrested 
 once ; but the drunken officer had seized the 
 wrong man. He was followed so close, 
 however, that during the last year which the 
 company spent in Holland, Brewster and his 
 family, with all their goods, were lying 
 snugly concealed in England, probably in 
 London, where it is thought he kept close 
 till the Mayflower sailed. Others of the 
 expatriated band were weavers, who made a 
 living by their looms, which they carried 
 with them. 
 
 Thus they resorted to every lawful device 
 for a subsistence. They succeeded — ^but by 
 the hardest labor. It was " great labor and 
 hard fare," and "it was low with many 
 of them.'* Their admirable and Christian 
 traits helped them not a little. "Wlien 
 they wanted money tlieir word would be 
 taken amongst the Dutch, because they had 
 found by experience how careful they were 
 to keep their word, and saw them so painful 
 
LEYDEN. 117 
 
 [pains-taking] and diligent in their call- 
 ings." The preference was even given to 
 them in their labors, and their custom was 
 sought by the tradesmen, " for their honesty 
 and diligence." So unexceptionable was 
 their deportment, that not long before their 
 departure, the magistrates m pubhc court 
 bore honorable testimony to them : " These 
 English," said they to the Walloons of the 
 French Church, " have lived among us now 
 this twelve years, and yet we have never had 
 any suit or accusation come against any of 
 them. But your strifes are continual." 
 Mr. Robinson their pastor — for Mr. Clifton 
 had remained at Amsterdam — was soon 
 recognized as a rare man, and treated with 
 much consideration. It so happened that 
 the two Di\inity Professors in the Univer- 
 sity, Episcopius and Polyander, became 
 engaged in a warm controversy on what is 
 called Ai'minianism — Arminius himself hav- 
 ing been a professor in the University, and 
 
118 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 died on the year of Robinson's arrival. 
 Episcopius was an Arminian, Polyander a 
 Calvinist. Robinson, of course, held with 
 the latter ; and, by his earnest and pressing 
 solicitation, three times appeared in discus- 
 sion against Episcopius. And, says Brad- 
 ford, " the Lord did so help him to defend 
 the truth and foil his adversary that he put 
 him to an apparent non-plus in this great 
 and public audience." It has been sug- 
 gested that this claiming of the victory may 
 be the result of friendly partiality. But 
 whether this be so or not, Robinson's pub- 
 lished works show him to have been a man 
 of rare abilities ; and it is clear that in 
 Leyden his estimation was high. After six 
 years' residence he was received as a mem- 
 ber of the University — a privilege attended 
 with the rather singular benefits of exempt- 
 ing him from the control of the town magis- 
 trates, and entitling him to half a tun of 
 beer every month, and about ten gallons of 
 
L E Y D E N . 119 
 
 wine every three months — if he chose to 
 receive them. And when at length he died, 
 five years after the sailing of the Mayflower 
 and the Speedwell, the " magistrates, minis- 
 ters, scholars and most of the gentry of 
 Leyden mourned his death as a public loss, 
 and followed him to the grave." 
 
 Here "they continued many years in a 
 comfortable condition, enjoying much sweet 
 and delightful society and spiritual comfort 
 together, in the ways of God, under the able 
 ministry and prudent government of Mr. 
 John Robinson and Mr. William Brewster, 
 who was an assistant unto him in the place of 
 an elder, unto which he was now called and 
 chosen by the church ; so that they grew in 
 knowledge and other gifts and graces of the 
 Spirit of God ; and lived together in peace, 
 and love, and holiness." And the same writer 
 who makes this statement, and who himself 
 was there from the beginning to the end, adds 
 a testimony which need not be disputed : " I 
 
120 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 know not but that it may be spoken to the 
 honor of God, and without prejudice to any, 
 that such was the humble zeal and fervent 
 love of this people towards God and his 
 ways, and the single-heartedness and sincere 
 affection one towards another, that they came 
 as near the primitive pattern of the first 
 churches as any other church of these latter 
 times has done, according to their rank and 
 quality." 
 
 Meanwhile many persons from various 
 parts of England joined them, until their 
 number amoimted at last to more than three 
 hundred persons. Here they were joined by 
 the good soldier, afterwards their military 
 chief in America, Myles Standish. He had 
 served among the English troops sent by 
 Queen Elizabeth to aid the Hollanders in 
 their struggles for liberty ; and encountering 
 the Pilgrims at Ley den, cast in his lot with 
 tlieirs. The town of Duxbury, in Massa- 
 chusetts, where he afterwards had his home 
 
LEYDEN. 121 
 
 and laid his bones to rest, commemorates his 
 recollections of the English Duxbury, his 
 earlier home, where the family name of 
 Standish is still perpetuated in one of the 
 oldest families of Lancashire. Edward 
 Winslow, twenty-two years old, travelhig on 
 the continent with his wife, arrived at Leyden 
 and joined them too — afterwards their gov- 
 ernor in Plymouth. Here, probably, John 
 Carver, one of their deacons and the first of 
 their governors, found them. 
 
 During their residence here, their views 
 were Uberalized towards men of other true 
 Christian churches ; and they were displaying 
 that spirit of broad charity which has com- 
 monly marked the congregational churches 
 in later times. Robinson had been " more 
 rigid in his course at first than towards his 
 latter end." But it was their practice 
 freely to commune with the French and the 
 Dutch churches ; they invited a Scotch 
 Presbyterian minister to their communion 
 11 
 
122 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 table in Ley den, though the invitation was 
 for prudential reasons, declined. And in 
 regard to the English Church, Eobinson 
 " advised us by all means to endeavor to 
 close with the godly party of the kingdom of 
 England, and rather to study union than 
 division." And while they objected to the 
 " mixed communion " of Christians and 
 impenitent men together, and condemned 
 the government of that church by bishops 
 and a monarch as unscriptural, and therefore 
 denied the National Church, as national, to 
 be a true church ; they never objected to 
 listening to the preaching of the evangelical 
 ministers of that church, nor to communing 
 with them and their godly communicants 
 separate from the whole congregation ; and 
 they have left on record the statement that 
 " there are [in that church] some parish 
 assemblies that are true churches, by virtue 
 of an implicit covenant among themselves. 
 
LEYDEN. 123 
 
 ill which regard the Church of England may 
 be held and called a true church."* 
 
 But they cannot remain here. Eobinson 
 and Brewster have been anxiously looking at 
 their condition, and feel that they are not 
 accomplishing their best usefulness. They 
 lay their views before various brethren, pro- 
 posing another removal. From "private 
 discussion " it passes to " public agitation ; " 
 and " the congregation, with fasting and 
 prayer, seek the Lord to direct us." Ob- 
 jections are made, " many fears and doubts " 
 are expressed. 
 
 Robinson and Brewster, " with some of 
 the sagest members," urge these reasons: 
 First, they are shut up from all prospect of 
 growth. It is so difficult to maintain them- 
 selves that few persons joined them, and 
 some who came could not stay. Surrounded 
 on all sides by foreigners, they are afraid 
 
 * Bradford's Dialogue, in Young's Chronicles of the 
 Pilgrims, p. 416. 
 
124 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 ■« 
 
 they may even lose the English language in 
 process of time. Secondly, the original stock 
 of emigrants are growing old and wearing 
 out with " their great and continual labors;" 
 and there is danger that the whole enter- 
 prise should eventually fade away. Thirdly, 
 they are inexpressibly anxious for their 
 children. " We were unable to give sucli 
 education to our children as we ourselves had 
 received." Nay, their sons and daughters, 
 were " oppressed with the weight of their 
 labors, and became decrepit in early 
 youth, the vigor of nature being consumed 
 in the very bud." But worst of all, and 
 " of all sorrows most heavy to be borne," 
 those children were in danger of becoming 
 morally " degenerate and corrupted." The 
 Holy Sabbath, which they were accustomed 
 to reverence, Avas then, as now upon the 
 continent of Europe, constantly profaned on 
 every hand around. Their sons driven by 
 the pressure within, and drawn by the 
 
L E Y D E N . 125 
 
 temptations without, were breaking away 
 from parental control; some went to sea, 
 some joined the army, and others fell into 
 courses tending still more " to the great 
 grief of their parents and the dishonor of 
 God." A last and apparently the greatest 
 reason was their burning desire to spread the 
 gospel " in the remote parts of the world." 
 Apparently their isolated condition forced 
 upon them the conviction that they were in a 
 measure wasting their influence and living 
 only for themselves, when there was much 
 work to do for the kmgdom of Christ. And 
 they had thought of America as the place 
 of their labors. 
 
 These tilings they urge on their brethren. 
 There are some to urge strong counter 
 reasons. It was a design attended with 
 "many inconceivable perils." There are 
 "the casualties of the seas," and "the length 
 of the voyage," such as the aged and the 
 feeble " could never endure," the " miseries 
 11* 
 
126 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 of the land," " liable to famine, nakedness 
 and the want of all things," with probability 
 of disease from the " change of air, diet and 
 water ;" " continual danger of the savage 
 people, cruel, barbarous and treacherous, 
 not content only to kill, but flaying men 
 alive with the shells of fishes, cutting off the 
 joints and members and broiling them on 
 coals, and causing men to eat the collops of 
 flesh in their sight ; witji other cruelties too 
 horrible to be related." Then where was 
 the money to come from, for the transporta- 
 tion ; where the supplies to sustain them on 
 their arrival ? Others had lamentably failed 
 in the attempt. They themselves had found 
 it hard enough to arrive in Holland and live 
 even in that rich and well-regulated com- 
 monwealth. How would it be in the wilder- 
 ness beyond the broad ocean ? 
 
 All these objections were urged; and 
 weighty ones they were. No wonder they 
 " moved the bowels of men to grate within 
 
LEYDEN. 127 
 
 them," and made '^ the weak to quake and 
 tremble." But Robinson and his friends 
 answered by frankly admitting the difficul- 
 ties, and asserting the need of a correspond- 
 ing courage. "The dangers," said they, 
 " are great, but not desperate, and the 
 difficulties many, but not invincible ; for 
 although many of them are likely, yet they 
 are not certain. It may be that some of the 
 things feared may never befall us ; others by 
 providence, care, and the use of good means, 
 may in a great measure be prevented ; and 
 all of them through the help of God, by 
 fortitude and patience may be either borne 
 ,or overcome. True it is that such attempts 
 are not to be made and undertaken but 
 upon good ground and reason, not rashly or 
 lightly, as many have done for curiosity or 
 hope of gain. But our condition here is not 
 ordinary. Our ends are good and honora- 
 ble, our calling lawful and urgent ; and 
 therefore we may expect the blessing of God 
 
128 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 in our proceeding. Yea, though we should 
 lose our lives in this action, yet we may have 
 comfort in so doing- ; and our endeavors will 
 be honorable. We live here as men in exile 
 and in a poor condition, and as great miser- 
 ies may possibly befall us in this place ; for 
 the twelve years truce are out and there is 
 nothing but beating of drums and preparing 
 for war, the events of which are always 
 uncertain. The Spaniard may prove as 
 cruel as the savages of America; and the 
 famine and pestilence are as sore here as 
 there, and less liberty to look out for a 
 remedy."* 
 
 The discussion was long and anxious. At 
 length the leaders prevail, and a majority 
 vote decides the question. They will go. 
 
 But whither? Here was another question 
 difficult of solution. New England never 
 once entered their thoughts ; was never 
 
 * These are the very words given by Bradford, 
 changed only to the first person and the present tense. 
 
LEYDEN. 129 
 
 alluded to. Some were for Guiana, "blessed 
 with a perpetual spring," but endangered 
 by the diseases of a tropical climate and 
 exposed to the Spaniard. Others were for 
 some part of Virginia, which was under 
 English rule and already occupied by an 
 English settlement. But here again was a 
 difficulty. The colonizing of Virginia had 
 been under express injunction from the king 
 that all religious services should be held 
 according to the forms of the Church of 
 England. And should persecution arise, it 
 might fare harder with them in that distant 
 land than even in the mother country. 
 
 They decide at length for the region held 
 by the Virginia company. But they hope to 
 live hi a distinct body by themselves ; and 
 they have some friends of " rank and qual- 
 ity " about the court, who " put them in 
 good hope " that they might obtain of his 
 majesty, James, of Hampton Court memory, 
 " free liberty and freedom of religion." 
 
130 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Alas, they did not know that even while 
 they were discussing the proposition, thq 
 Solomon of his age was issuing a proclama- 
 tion (in 1618) requiring the bishop of Lan- 
 cashire to constrain all the Puritans in that 
 diocese to conform or to leave the country. 
 
 What terms they made, the next chapter 
 will reveal. 
 
LONDON. 131 
 
 CHAPTEE YII. 
 
 LONDON. 
 
 The little church had a long negotiation, 
 and a hard bargain at last. For two years 
 the matter was pending, and messengers and 
 communications passing between Leyden 
 and London. They felt, however, that their 
 messengers " also found God going along 
 with them ; " and perhaps they had good 
 reason to deem it a special mark of His 
 favor that they were enabled to go at all. 
 The king's disposition towards the Puritans 
 was rather embittered than softened,, since 
 he had threatened to harry them out of tlie 
 land or make them conform. And as the 
 wolf bid the crane be thankful for getting 
 lier head safe out of his jaws, so it was a 
 
132 THE PILGRIM 'CHURCH. 
 
 special privilege that James, though he 
 would grant no pledges, was willing to let 
 them alone. 
 
 Providentially it was so ordered that the 
 Virginia Company, by reason of their past 
 pecuniary ill success, were extremely anxious 
 to find colonists, and were therefore disposed 
 to do all in their power to favor the enter- 
 prise. 
 
 Another good providence had seemed to 
 link Scrooby to Plymouth, in giving these 
 friendless men a friend at court. It will be 
 remembered that the last Archbishop of 
 York who occupied the manor-house in 
 which the little church held their first 
 assemblies, was Archbishop Sandys, and that 
 after his death the property passed to his 
 son. Sir Samuel Sandys. Brewster had been 
 for many years a tenant, and unquestionably 
 a trusty tenant, of the latter. In this hour 
 of need, another member of the same family 
 came to their aid. Sir Edwin Sandys, ap- 
 
LONDON. 133 
 
 parently a brother of Sir Samuel, who must 
 have known well the history of this church 
 and probably had personal knowledge of 
 Brewster, a highly religious man as well as 
 a person of ability and influence, was the 
 chief agent in overcoming the difficulties in 
 their way. He was one of the principal 
 members of the Virginia Company. Sandys 
 writes to Robinson and Brewster, after com- 
 mending the discretion of their agents in 
 1617, and promising all reasonable aid. 
 " And so I betake you with this design, 
 which I hope verily is the work of God, to 
 the gracious protection and blessing of the 
 highest." They reply, "with all thankful 
 acknowledgment of your singular love, ex- 
 pressing itself, as otherwise, so more specially 
 in your great care and earnest endeavor of 
 our good in this weighty business," and 
 assure him that " under God, above all per- 
 sons and things in the world we rely upon 
 you, expecting the care of your love, the 
 
 12 
 
134 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 counsel of your wisdom, and the help and 
 countenance of your authority." 
 
 Just before this correspondence, John 
 Carver and Robert Cushman had been sent, 
 at the common expense, to London. Sandys 
 had done his best to secure full religious 
 liberty and " to have it confirmed under the 
 king's broad seal." It was su.pposed to be 
 practicable. Sandys procured the aid of Sir 
 Robert Naunton, Secretary of State, to inter- 
 cede with James ; and the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury was also approached on the 
 subject. But James was utterly inflexible. 
 They so far prevailed that the king privately 
 agreed to " connive at them and not molest 
 them, provided they carried themselves 
 peaceably." But to tolerate them publicly, 
 under his seal, he would not consent for a 
 moment. Some of their friends hoped that 
 they would compromise the difficulty with 
 the Church of England by having their 
 ministers ordained by the bishops ; appa- 
 
LONDON. 135 
 
 rently this was a condition made by the 
 archbishop. They could not yield that 
 point. For they held that every pastor is a 
 bishop, and all pastors equal ; and that the 
 power to ordain pastors is lodged in the 
 church. 
 
 Apparently it required some adroitness in 
 their friends to secure what they did. For 
 when some question was raised in the Privy 
 Council about their religious practices, Rob- 
 inson and Brewster, in reply, drew up two 
 forms of statement, either to be presented as 
 was thought best, though preferring the 
 shorter and more general one, which was 
 only ten lines in length. But when Sir 
 John Wolstenholme, the gentleman to whom 
 they were sent, had read them both, he 
 declared that he would show neither of 
 them, " lest he should spoil all." 
 
 The refusal to pledge toleration was a 
 great disappointment to the church. Some 
 thought their enterprise rested on a pretty 
 
136 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 " sandy foundation " now. Some regretted 
 that they had ever applied, to be thus 
 refused. But the leaders were resolute. 
 They said that the king was willing enough 
 to leave them unmolested, but was only 
 influenced by reasons of his own for with- 
 holding any public declaration. They 
 added, too, that if the king's private assur- 
 ance, already given, was good for nothing, 
 then " a seal as broad as the house floor " 
 would be equally worthless ; for with a dis- 
 position to wrong them, there " would be 
 means enough found to recall or reverse it. 
 And they must herein rest on God's provi- 
 dence as they had done in other things." 
 
 They determine to rest on God's provi- 
 dence. Cushman and Brewster are dis- 
 patched to London to make the business 
 arrangements. But by this time the 
 Virginia company was engaged in an inter- 
 nal broil, and the business was kept in 
 suspense for a year or more. At length 
 
LONDON. 137 
 
 when these troubles are settled, a patent is 
 procured from the company, of which the 
 only use was to encourage them for the 
 time ; for, being made out in the name of a 
 man who failed of going with him, it became 
 of no value. 
 
 But the hardest part was to adjust the 
 penuniary affairs of the expedition. The 
 church had not money enough to emigrate. 
 One Thomas Weston, a London merchant of 
 their acquaintance, whose brother was after- 
 wards a troublesome neighbor at Weymouth 
 in Massachusetts, came to Leyden, and 
 urged them on with large assurances of aid 
 from himself and his business friends. The 
 best thing to be done was to form a joint- 
 stock company in London that should 
 advance the money, while the emigrants 
 should give their personal labor ; and in the 
 division of expected profits, each man should 
 draw as much as so many pounds of stock. 
 The arrangement was made accordingly ; 
 
 12* 
 
138 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 but, pressed by their necessities, the colo- 
 nists were obliged to submit to a very 
 oppressive scheme. Cushman and Carver 
 again were their agents to negotiate this 
 matter ; and their efforts are attended with 
 one continued series of annoyances. In- 
 deed Cushman, though an active and an 
 excellent man, proved not to be the most 
 suitable negotiator. Robinson regretted the 
 appointment of Cushman as one of two mis- 
 takes which were made, because he was 
 " most unfit to deal for other men by reason 
 of his singularity, and too great indifference 
 for any conditions." A part of this singu- 
 larity seems to have consisted in the disposi- 
 tion to act on his own single responsibility. 
 For he exceeded his express instructions, 
 and very considerably increased the hard- 
 ship of the compact. 
 
 The Leyden brethren had assented to the 
 sharp bargain whereby each colonist should 
 be reckoned in the partnership as equivalent 
 
LONDON. 139 
 
 only to one share of ten pounds^ and in the 
 division of property and profits at the end 
 of seven years should draw only in that 
 proportion. But they insisted that from 
 this division should be exempted their 
 houses, gardens and home fields, to be their 
 own private property ; also that two days of 
 each week should be reserved to them from 
 their common-stock labors to expend on 
 their own personal concerns. Cushman, 
 without consulting his clients and therefore 
 contrary to his express instructions, yielded 
 these two important points. No doubt he 
 found many difficulties in the way of any 
 arrangement whatever. Some of the largest 
 offers of money had been withdrawn after 
 the long delay, on various pretexts, and con- 
 cerning a good portion of the promised aid 
 Cushman writes to Carver, "We may go 
 scratch for it." The chief merchant-adven- 
 turer, Weston, is lukewarm and does not 
 fulfill his engagements to provide a ship. A 
 
140 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 general diversity of views and even conten- 
 tion prevails among the members of the 
 joint-stock company in England. So to 
 close the business, and prevent a certain and 
 total failure, as Cushman alleges, he was 
 compelled to waive all conditions. 
 
 The church at Ley den, to a man, oppose 
 the concession, and strongly remonstrate 
 with their agent. Nay, some private com- 
 plaints reached him that he had made " con- 
 ditions fitter for thieves and bond-slaves than 
 for honest men ; " while a series of formal 
 objections is drawn up and sent him. 
 Cushman, whose letters show him to be a 
 little heady, draws up a reply so decidedly 
 tart that, though still preserved, Bradford 
 thinks it never was sent to Leyden, being- 
 kept back by Carver. Other letters he did 
 send, and the correspondence between him 
 on the one side, and Bradford, Winslow, 
 Fuller and Allerton, who wrote a joint letter 
 on the other, is not destitute of grim wit. 
 
LONDON. 141 
 
 Cushman demanded their reasons for op- 
 posing his settlement, saying they must 
 " think he had no brains ; " to which they 
 reply quoting the remark, and " desiring 
 him to exercise his brains therein, referring 
 him to our pastor's former reasons, and then 
 to the censure [judgment] of the godly 
 wise." In a letter which crossed them on the 
 way, (June 10, 1620,) Cushman says he had 
 been so disheartened by discouragements on 
 one side and complaints on the other, that he 
 had declared he would give up his accounts 
 to Carver and quit the whole enterprise, 
 " with only his poor clothes on his back," 
 but he " had gathered up himself by further 
 consideration and resolved to make one trial 
 more ; " that on calling upon Mr. Weston, 
 the chief adventurer, he found him so dis- 
 contented, as to have often said, "but for his 
 promise, he would not meddle with the 
 business further," but he also " at the last 
 gathered up himself a little more, and com- 
 
142 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 iiig to me two hours after, told me he would 
 not leave it." So they resolved to hire a 
 ship. He and Weston went together and 
 examined a vessel of a hundred and eighty 
 tons, " and a fine ship it is," says Cushman. 
 It was the Mayflower. " And seeing our 
 near friends there are so strait-laced, we hope 
 to assure her without troubling them far- 
 ther ; and if the ship prove too small, it 
 fitteth well that such as stumble at straws 
 already may rest them there [at Ley den ?] 
 awhile, lest worse blocks come in the way 
 ere seven years be ended." Referring again 
 to the complaints, he says : " If men be set 
 on it, let them beat the air ; I hope such as 
 are my sincere friends will not think but I 
 can give some reason of my actions. If I 
 do such things as I cannot give reasons for, 
 it is like you have set a fool about your 
 business — and so turn your reproof to your- 
 selves, and send another and let me come 
 
LONDON. 143 
 
 again to my combs." (He was a wool- 
 comber.) 
 
 In the letter of Bradford and others, just 
 referred to, the community at Leyden ex- 
 pressly " require " Cushman " not to exceed 
 the bounds of your commission, which was 
 to proceed upon the conditions agreed upon 
 and expressed in writing at your going over 
 about it." Unless Mr. Cushman over- 
 estimated the trouble, the whole scheme so 
 far as the English adventurers were con- 
 cerned, was at this time on the verge of 
 dissolution. " To speak the truth, there is 
 fallen already among us a flat schism, and 
 we are readier to go to dispute than to set 
 forward on a voyage." So, believing it, as 
 he affirmed, to be the turning point of the 
 enterprise he did what he was expressly for- 
 bidden to do, and yielded the matters in 
 question ; " otherwise all had been dashed, 
 and many undone." He meanwhile con- 
 cealed from his friends at Leyden what he 
 
144 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 had done, alleging afterwards the want of 
 time to notify them, and the danger of 
 further delay. 
 
 The band at Leyden were so opposed to 
 the conditions proposed, that " four or five 
 of the chief" members, even on their arrival 
 in England on the way to Plymouth, " came 
 resolved not to go upon those conditions," 
 tlie knowledge of which had reached them 
 only through circuitous channels. But, 
 meanwhile, owing to the delay of Weston to 
 provide shipping for the voyage — a matter 
 committed to his charge — and other discour- 
 agements experienced, " tlie state of tlungs 
 at Leyden," Robinson writes to Carver, " is 
 very pitiful ; there is great want of money 
 and means to do needful things. Mr. Pick- 
 ering will not defray a penny here, though 
 Robert Cushman presumed on I know not 
 how many hundred pounds from him and I 
 know not whom." Some who have already 
 paid in part, refuse to advance any more, 
 
LONDON. 145 
 
 " till they see shipping provided, or a course 
 taken for it. Nor do I think there is a man 
 here," adds Robinson, " would pay any thing' 
 if he had his money again in his purse,'''' 
 This was but six weeks before the time of 
 sailing. 
 
 The final settlement of terms in London 
 on the 1st of July, though the nature of the 
 terms was concealed, seems to have set all 
 again in motion. The "fine ship" May- 
 flower is hired to sail from England, and the 
 little Speedwell, one-third as large, is bought 
 in Holland, to take colonists to join the 
 Mayflower to aid in transporting them, and 
 to remahi in America. By the terms 
 arranged in London, there is a seven years' 
 partnership of money and labor, all property 
 for that length of time to be held in com- 
 mon, and at the end of the time to be so 
 divided that the London merchant who 
 invested one hundred pounds, should receive 
 ten times as much as the penniless laborer 
 
 13 
 
146 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 who gave himself. If, however, the laborer 
 had ten pounds of his own to invest, for that 
 also he should be entitled to a share in the 
 profits. But there was no exemption of 
 their homesteads from the final division, nor 
 of two days in the week for private use, 
 although Mr. Weston had assented to those 
 terms in Leyden, and Mr. Cushman had 
 been expressly required to insist upon them. 
 It was agreed by the church that but part 
 of them should go now, that part to be the 
 youngest and strongest; that those who 
 went should be volunteers ; that the majority 
 should keep the pastor with them, and the 
 minority the elder ; that " if [what an if !] 
 the Lord should frown on our proceedings 
 the colonists should return," and the breth- 
 ren at Leyden should " assist and be helpful 
 to them ; but if God should be pleased to 
 fiivor them that went, then they also should 
 endeavor to help over such as were poor and 
 ancient and willing to come." 
 
LONDON. 147 
 
 Such were the grave doubts tliat hung 
 over this bold enterprise from the beginning ; 
 and such the difficulties, often completely 
 disheartening, that blocked the way. Yet 
 these are only the beginning of sorrows. 
 What weary, cloudy days — what restless, 
 anxious nights — ^wliat plannings and misgiv- 
 ings — what expectations and discourage- 
 ments — what resolutions and recoils — ^what 
 fervent prayers to God, hung round that 
 critical step ! Is it not always so ? Is not 
 every great and good enterprise born among 
 trials and difficulties ? 
 
 The final determination was not reached 
 till they had held " a solemn meeting and a 
 day of humiliation to seek the Lord for his 
 direction." After a sermon from the be- 
 loved Eobinson, in which he " strengthened 
 them against their fear and encouraged tliem 
 in their resolutions," the plans were matured 
 and adopted. 
 
148 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 DELFT HAVEN. 
 
 At Delft Haven, fourteen miles soutli-west 
 of Leyden, lies the Speedwell in the river 
 Meiise. It is the 21st of July. A boat is 
 drawn lazily down the canal to the vessel, 
 laden with the richest freight that ever left 
 the ports of trading Holland. It is the band 
 that now " knew they were Pilgrims, and 
 lifted up their eyes to the heavens, their 
 dearest country, and quieted their spirits " 
 as they sadly " left that goodly and pleasant 
 city which had been their resting-place near 
 twelve years." 
 
 The news had reached Leyden that all 
 was ready. The companions in exile, then 
 to be separated for a time, had " solemnly 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 149 
 
 sought the Lord together.'' Their pastor 
 took his text from E^a 8 : 21 : " And there 
 at the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, 
 that we might humble ourselves before our 
 God, and seek of him a right way for us, 
 and for our children, and for all our sub- 
 stance." The text, as the reader will find 
 by comparison, was not taken from king 
 James' version — a version made while they 
 were in Holland, though requested in the 
 Conference of Hampton Court — but from 
 the older Geneva version, which " of all 
 translations was the worst," said his majesty, 
 " because of the marginal notes, which 
 allowed disobedience to kings." It was on 
 this occasion that Mr. Robinson gave that 
 memorable address breathing the highest 
 style of Christian magnanimity and marking 
 him as a man in advance of his times. 
 
 " Brethren," said Mr. Robinson, " we are 
 now quickly to part from one another, and 
 whether I may ever live to see your faces on 
 
 13* 
 
150 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 earth any more, the God of heaven only 
 knows ; but whether the Lord has appointed 
 that or not, I charge you, before God and 
 his blessed angels, that you follow me no 
 farther than you have seen me follow the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. 
 
 " If God 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 by my ministry ; for I am verily per- 
 suaded the Lord has more truth yet to 
 break forth out of his holy Word. For my 
 part I cannot sufficiently bewail the condi- 
 tion of the Eeformed Churches who are 
 come to a period in religion, and will go at 
 present no further than the instruments of 
 their reformation. The Lutherans cannot 
 be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw ; 
 whatever part of his will our God has 
 revealed to Calvin, they will rather die than 
 embrace it ; . and the Calvinists, you see. 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 151 
 
 stick fast where tliey were left by that great 
 man of God, who yet saw not all things. 
 
 " This is a misery much to be lamented ; 
 for though they were burning and shining 
 lights, in their times, yet they penetrated 
 not into the whole counsel of God, but were 
 they now living, would be as willing to 
 embrace further light as that which they 
 first received. I beseech you, remember it 
 is an article of your church-covenant, that 
 you receive whatever truth shall be made 
 known to you from the written Word of 
 God. Remember that, and every other 
 article of your sacred covenant. But I must 
 withal exhort you to take heed what you 
 receive as truth ; examine it, consider it, 
 and compare it with other scriptures of 
 truth, before you receive it; for it is not 
 possible the Christian world should cqme so 
 lately out of such anti^christian darkness, 
 and that perfection of knowledge shquld 
 break fortli at once." 
 
152 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 And among many other admonitions, not 
 recorded, he urged a hearty co-operation 
 with the non-conforming ministers of the 
 Church of England, whose bishops had 
 driven him and his from their country. 
 " There will be no difference between them 
 and you, when they come to the practice of 
 the ordinances out of the kingdom." And 
 he earnestly advised them " rather to study 
 union with the godly party of the kingdom 
 of England than division," and to see " liow 
 near we might possibly without sin close 
 with them, than in the least measure to 
 affect division or separation from them." 
 
 On this occasion the pastor's large house 
 was thrown open for a feast given to them 
 by the company that remained. There, 
 says one of the departing band, "we re- 
 freshed ourselves, after tears, with singing 
 oi psalms, making joyful melody in our 
 hearts as well as with our voices, there being 
 many of our congregation very expert in 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 153 
 
 music ; and indeed it was the siveetest mel- 
 odij that ever mine ears heard^ Yes, there 
 were many sweet voices there, that never 
 sung together again this side of heaven — 
 many that before a twelvemonth were to 
 sing around the throne of God. 
 
 Most of the brethren accomi^anied or fol- 
 lowed them to the harbor of Delft Haven ; 
 and some of their friends came thither from 
 Amsterdam, a distance of thirty-six miles, to 
 take leave of them. Again the departing 
 company are "feasted." The long night 
 wears away with " little sleep," but chiefly 
 in "friendly entertainment, Christian dis- 
 course, and other real expressions of true 
 Christian love " between those who deeply 
 felt that this might be their last opportunity. 
 Next day the wind is fair. The rising tide 
 warns them on board the Speedwell. Then 
 comes the " sad and mournful parting,'^ 
 with "sighs, and sobs, and prayers," with 
 " tears gushing from every eye," and words 
 
154 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 "that pierced each heart;" and even the 
 Dutch strangers standing on the wharf and 
 looking on "cannot refrain from tears." 
 The pastor fell " upon his knees — and they 
 all with him — and with watery cheeks com- 
 mended them with the most fervent prayers 
 to the Lord and his blessing. And then 
 with mutual embraces they took their leave 
 one of another ; which proved to be," says 
 Bradford, " the last leave to many of them." 
 Then as the little vessel parted from the 
 wharf, Robinson and his companions stand 
 looking mutely on, " unable to speak one to 
 another for tlie abundance of sorrow to 
 part." " We gave them," adds Winslow, 
 " a volley of small shot and three pieces of 
 ordnance, and so lifting up our hands to 
 each other and our hearts for each other to 
 the Lord our God, we departed, and found 
 His presence witli us in the midst of our 
 manifold straits." A quarter of a century 
 after, as he informs us, the Dutch at Delft 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 155 
 
 Haven " preserve the memory of the part- 
 ing." "There was between iis that went, 
 and the brethren that stayed, such love as 
 indeed is seldom found on earth." ! sad 
 and mournful parting ! 
 
 With his accustomed considerateness Mr. 
 Robinson sends by the Speedwell a confi- 
 dential letter to Mr. Carver, then in Eng- 
 land, intended apparently to forestall any 
 apprehension that blame was laid upon him 
 for the change made in the articles of agree- 
 ment. He says he has a true feeling of 
 Carver's "perplexity of mind and toil of 
 body," recognizes the " great difficulties he 
 had undergone," and congratulates him that 
 he is now to have " the presence and help of 
 so many godly and wise brethren, for bear- 
 ing your part of the burden, who also will 
 not admit into their hearts the least thought 
 of suspicion of any negligence, at least pre- 
 sumption, to have been in you, whatever 
 they may think in others." He assures him 
 
156 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 and his " good wife, my loving sister," fliat 
 " my heart is with you and I will not fore- 
 slow [delay] my bodily coming at the first 
 opportunity." "I do ever commend my 
 best affection unto you," continues the 
 loving and beloved pastor to his deacon, 
 " which if I thought you made any doubt of, 
 I would express in more, and the same more 
 ample and full words. And the Lord in 
 whom you trust and whom you serve in this 
 business and journey, guide you with his 
 hand, protect you with his wing, and show 
 you and us his salvation in the end, and 
 bring us in the meanwhile together in the 
 place desired, if such be his good will, for 
 Christ's sake. Amen." 
 
 The Mayflower lies at Southampton, three 
 hundred miles distant, on the southern coast 
 of England. A prosperous wind soon brings 
 them thither. Carver, Cushman, Brewster 
 probably, and a few friends direct from 
 England, are waiting for them there. There 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 157 
 
 is " a joyful welcome and mutual congratu- 
 lations ; — ^and then to " business." How is 
 it about tlie " alteration of the conditions." 
 Mr. Carver pleaded that he was employed in 
 procuring supplies at Southampton, and had 
 no distinct knowledge of what Mr. Cushman 
 had done at London. Mr. Cushman is in 
 rather an awkward situation ; for liere are 
 Winslow and Bradford and Fuller and 
 Allerton, the four resolute men that desired 
 him to exercise his brains on their reasons, 
 and required him not to exceed his commis- 
 sion. "We never gave Robert Cushman 
 authority to make one article for ns, but 
 only sent him to receive moneys upon arti- 
 cles before agreed upon." How now, 
 Robert Cushman ? He says he has " done 
 nothing but what he was urged to partly by 
 the grounds of equity, and more especially 
 by necessity, otherwise all had been daslied 
 and many undone." He also pleads that 
 the other agents were satisfied to leave the 
 
 14 
 
158 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 management at London in his hands. But 
 why did he not refer the matter to Leyden 
 according to his express instructions ? " He 
 could not well in regard to the shortness of 
 the time ; and again he knew it would 
 trouble them and hinder the business." 
 They are no better satisfied. Mr. Martin, a 
 new-comer fresh from Billerica in England, 
 rather blunt in his speech, even remarks 
 that " the merchants are blood-suckers " to 
 require such conditions. Mr. Weston also 
 comes up from London to see them off and 
 to have the conditions confirmed. They tell 
 Mr. Weston that " he knew right well that 
 these were not according to the first agree- 
 ment ; " nay, he himself had proposed in 
 Leyden that the colonists should retain their 
 own homesteads — that matter had all been 
 settled before a penny had been advanced. 
 And as they are not at liberty to yield the 
 point without consent of their friends now in 
 Leyden, and indeed had been specially 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 159 
 
 charged by the chief men there, when they 
 came away, not to give their consent, they 
 shall not sign these articles. 
 
 Mr. Weston is greatly offended, and tells 
 them they must then " look to stand on 
 their own legs." They still lack a hundred 
 pounds to clear off their debts and leave the 
 port. Weston will not advance a penny for 
 them, but returns to London, leaving them 
 to shift as they could. They sell some sixty 
 or eighty firkins of their butter and raise the 
 money. They also write a manly remon- 
 strance to the merchants, setting forth the 
 facts of the original agreement, but, as 
 matter of conciliation, offering, if the part- 
 nership should not prove sufficiently profit- 
 able, to continue it after the seven years 
 are expired. As matter of fact the articles 
 are not signed for more than a year. But 
 in November of the following year, moved 
 somewhat perhaps by the persuasions of Mr. 
 Cushman, and magnificent promises from 
 Mr. Weston, (which proved to be but 
 
160 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 "wind,") and probably still more by the 
 wishes of their friends in Leyden, who may 
 have felt that their own hopes of joining 
 them depended on retaining the good will of 
 the merchants, they signed the hard terms. 
 
 When all these business arrangements 
 had been dispatched, oil is poured upon the 
 troubled waters by an affectionate pastoral 
 letter from Mr. Robinson, which was now 
 produced, and in apostolic style read to the 
 whole company. 
 
 " Loving Christian friends," it began, " I 
 do heartily and in the Lord salute you all, 
 as being they with whom I am present in 
 my best affection and most earnest longings 
 after you, though I be constrained for awhile 
 to be bodily absent from you. I say con- 
 strained, God knowing how willingly, and 
 much rather than otherwise, I would have 
 borne my part with you in this first brunt, 
 were I not by strong necessity held back for 
 the present. Make account of me in the 
 meanwhile, as of a man divided in myself 
 
DELFT HAVEN. 161 
 
 with great pain, and as (natural bonds sot 
 aside) having my better part with you." 
 
 He exhorts them as the foundation of* all 
 other virtue by daily repentance to renew 
 their heavenly peace with God ; then by the 
 utmost watchfulness to maintain peace with 
 each other ; and not alone by watchfulness 
 against giving offence, but by mutual for- 
 bearance against taking offence — a caution 
 the more necessary, he says, both because of 
 the intimate association of so many compara- 
 tive strangers, and the very nature of their 
 " intended course of civil community." He 
 urges upon them mutual affection to carry 
 on harmoniously their common interests, 
 and the stern repressing of all selfishness ; 
 and finally the exercise of great wisdom and 
 godliness in the election of their officers, 
 because " you are to have at least for the 
 present only them for your ordinary govern- 
 ors, whom yourselves shall make choice of 
 for that work." 
 
 14* 
 
162 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 " These few things," conchides the apos- 
 toKc man, " I do earnestly commend unto 
 your care and conscience, joining therewith 
 my daily incessant prayer unto the Lord, 
 that He who hath made the heavens and the 
 earth, the sea and all rivers of waters, and 
 whose providence is over all His works, 
 especially over all his dear children for good, 
 would so guide and guard you in your ways, 
 as inwardly by his Spirit, so outwardly by 
 the hand of his power, that both you and 
 we also, for and with you, may have after 
 matter of praising His name all the days of 
 your and our lives. Fare you well in Him 
 in whom you trust, and in whom I rest. 
 
 " An unfeigned well-wilier of your happy 
 success in this hopeful voyage. 
 
 "John Robinson." 
 
 What a breathing out of Christian wisdom, 
 and of true Christian hopefulness and rest. 
 
THE OCEAN. 163 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE OCEAN 
 
 The little company sailed out of Southamp- 
 ton harbor, " scarce having any butter, no 
 oil, not a sole to mend a shoe, nor every 
 man a sword by his side, wanting many 
 muskets, much armor" — and depending 
 for future aid on a company of money- 
 making men, already dissatisfied and divid- 
 ed, through whose negligence they shall 
 yet see famine face to face, and, but for the 
 Almighty arm, shall perish. Strong only in 
 God, and their own brave Christian hearts. 
 It was the fifth of August. In that very 
 j^p&iiih, a Dutch ma&-of-war was entering 
 ^/"^ James River, Virginia, and landing that ill- 
 fated cargo of twenty negro slaves, which 
 
IGtt THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 was the beginning of such long disaster to 
 the western continent. There was the bane, 
 here was the antidote. 
 
 Other potent influences are rising or pass- 
 ing away. In Enghmd Cromwell has just 
 come of age, and this month he is married. 
 Sir Francis Bacon, an old man of sixty years, 
 has just been condemned for corruption on 
 the bench, and has lain three months in the 
 Tower of London, a disgraced and ruined 
 man. John Milton, a boy of twelve years, 
 is already beginning those midnight studies 
 that impaired his sight with " drop serene ;" 
 and Shakspeare has lain four years in his 
 grave. On the Continent the thirty years 
 war is just bursting out, in which all Eiu'ope 
 is to be embroiled ; while the pusillanimous 
 James, decoyed by the hope of a Spanish 
 bride with two millions dower for his son, 
 looks coldly on and sees his own son-in-law 
 driven a beggar from the throne of Bohemia, 
 and the Protestant cause depressed. 
 
THE OCEAN. 165 
 
 Such was the time when the Pilgrims 
 sailed. Changes have taken place among 
 them since we saw them first. Age is creep- 
 ing upon Brewster — he is now fifty-six years 
 old ; and Mrs. Brewster is in ''a weak and 
 decayed state of body." The boy Bradford 
 is now a bold, sagacious man of thirty-two, 
 and by his side stands his wife, Dorothy May. 
 Tlie little John, whom they have so carefully 
 left behind, shall never see his mother again, 
 destined as she is to a watery death on the 
 very coast of the promised land. There is 
 the accomplished and resolute Winslow in 
 the very opening of manhood, also to be a 
 governor and trusty agent of the colony, — . 
 and his wife Elizabeth, whose days are num- 
 bered. There is the active and enterprising 
 Isaac Allerton, many years the governor's 
 assistant, with Mary his wife and the three 
 young children so soon to be motherless. 
 There is the good soldier Myles Standish, 
 small of stature, but great of heart ; and she 
 
166 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 of whom ill less than six months it was 
 written " this day dies Rose, the wife of 
 Captain Standish." There is Samuel Fuller, 
 the beloved physician of the colony, as well 
 as a deacon of the church, who with a pru- 
 dent forecast has left both wife and child in 
 Leyden. And without enumerating many 
 others less prominent in position or early 
 taken away, there is the good John Carver, 
 a man " of singular piety and rare for 
 humility," laborious and self-sacrifichig, who 
 having already spent his estate in the enter- 
 prise, will shorten his days in " his care and 
 pains for the common good ;" and as he is 
 among the oldest, so he is among the nearest 
 heaven; and the loving wife, who "being 
 a weak woman," will die " within five or six 
 weeks after him." 
 
 Three others at least have left their whole 
 families behind, and several a portion of 
 their children. Among the company are 
 fourteen " servants," and several other per- 
 
THE OCEAN. 167 
 
 sons whose only interest in the enterprise 
 consists in their being hired for certain pur- 
 poses. There are ten or twelve others 
 pledged apparently by no family ties. And 
 it is sad to see one group of children without 
 father or mother to accompany them — Rich- 
 ard and Jasper and Ellen More and their 
 little brother — divided out in the families of 
 Carver and Brewster and Winslow. Kinder 
 homes they cannot find ; yet by another year 
 Richard alone shall be living. 
 
 Such, in part, was the company that sailed 
 from Southampton. Their troubles are just 
 begun. The Speedwell speeds ill. Her 
 captain soon complains of a leak, and both 
 vessels put back into the port of Dartmouth. 
 The little vessel is thoroughly examined and 
 repaired. Eight precious days, with a fair 
 wind, are lost. Perhaps no better picture 
 can be given of the discouragements they 
 encountered from without and from the 
 influence of at least one leading man within. 
 
168 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 than is presented in a letter written from 
 this port of Dartmouth by the officious and 
 peremptory but now faint-liearted Robert 
 Cuslnnan. The reader, in perusing its 
 statements, will make some allowance for 
 the " bundle of lead crushing his heart," 
 and do him the justice to remember that 
 after these few trying weeks were over, he 
 continued to be, says Bradford, "a special 
 instrument for their good, and to do the 
 offices of a loving friend and brother." 
 
 " Loving friend " — writes Mr. Cushman 
 to Edward Southworth — " my most kind 
 remembrance to you and your wife, with 
 loving E. M., etc., whom in this world I 
 never look to see again. For besides the 
 imminent dangers of this voyage, which are 
 no less than deadly, an infirmity of body 
 hath seized me which will not in all likeli- 
 liood leave me till death. Wliat to call it I 
 know not, but it is a bundle of lead, as it 
 were, crushing my heart more and more 
 
THE OCEAN. 169 
 
 these fourteen days, [ever since the talk 
 about " the conditions,"] so that although I 
 do the actions of a living man, yet I am but 
 as dead ; — but the will of God be done. 
 Our pinnace will not cease leaking, else I 
 think we had been half way to Virginia ; our 
 voyage hither hath been as full of crosses as 
 ourselves have been of crookedness. We 
 put in here to trim her, and I think, as 
 others also, that if we had staid but three or 
 four hours more, she would have sunk right 
 down. And though she was twice trimmed 
 at Hampton, yet now she is open and leaky 
 as a sieve ; and there was a board a man 
 might have pulled off with his fingers, two 
 foot long, where the water came in as at a 
 mole-hole. We lay at Hampton seven days 
 in fair weather, waiting for her ; and now 
 we lie here waiting for her in as fair a wind 
 as can blow, and so have done these four 
 days and are likely to lie four more, and by 
 
 15 
 
170 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 that time the wind will haply turn as it did 
 at Hampton. 
 
 " Our victuals will be half eaten up, I 
 think, before we go from the coast of Eng- 
 land, and if our voyage last long, we shall 
 not have a month's victuals when we come 
 into the country. Near seven hundred 
 pound hath been bestowed at Hampton, 
 upon what I know not. Mr. Martin saith 
 he neither can nor will give any account of 
 it. [Martin had never been with the Pil- 
 grims in Holland, but for prudential reasons, 
 as lie and some of his friends were going in 
 the company, had been designated with 
 Carver and Cushman to lay in provisions. 
 He would seem to have been a little self- 
 sufficient, and perhaps Cushman's complauits 
 of him are not without some reason. But 
 Mr. Cushman shall tell his own story. He 
 proceeds.] And if he be called on for 
 accounts he crieth out of unthankfulness for 
 his pains and care, that we are suspicious of 
 
THE OCEAN. 171 
 
 him — and flings away, and will end nothing. 
 And so he insulteth over our poor people 
 with such scorn and contempt, as if they 
 were not good enough to wipe his shoes. 
 It would break your heart to see his dealing, 
 and the mourning of our people. They 
 complain to me, and alas I can do nothing 
 for them. If I speak to him, he flies in my 
 face as mutinous, and saith no complaints 
 shall be heard but by himself, and they are 
 froward and discontented and waspish and 
 discontented people, and I do ill to hear 
 them. [Mr. Martin probably was the " gov- 
 ernor " in the Speedwell.] There are others 
 that would lose all they have put in, or 
 make satisfaction for what they have had, 
 that they might depart, [the writer probably 
 was one ;] but he will not hear them nor 
 suffer them to go ashore lest they should 
 run away. The sailors also are offended at 
 his ignorant boldness, in meddling and con- 
 trolling things he knows not what belongs 
 
172 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 to, SO that some threaten to mischief him ; 
 others say they will leave the ship and go 
 their way. But at the best this cometh of it, 
 that he makes himself a scorn and laughing- 
 stock unto them. As for Mr. Weston, 
 except grace do greatly sway with him, he 
 will hate us ten times more than ever he 
 loved us, for not confirming the conditions." 
 Mr. Cushman even speaks with some 
 dissatisfaction of Mr. Robinson as beino: " in 
 the fault, who charged them never to con- 
 sent to the conditions, nor choose me into 
 office [on shipboard,] but appointed them to 
 choose those they did choose ; " — on which 
 statement Bradford remarks, "I think he 
 (Cushman) was deceived in these things." 
 Cushman — after predicting that " he (Rob- 
 inson) and they will rue too late that they 
 were so ignorant, yea, so inordinate in their 
 courses " — returns to his complaints of Mr. 
 Martin for having expended "money so 
 rashly and lavishly, without knowing how 
 
THE OCEAN. 173 
 
 he comes by it or on what conditions ; " and 
 proceeds : 
 
 " I told him of the alteration [of the 
 articles] long ago, and he was content. But 
 now he domineers and said I had betrayed 
 them into the hands of slaves — he is not 
 beholden to them [the merchants] — he can 
 set out two ships himself to a voyage. 
 Wlien, good man ? He hath but twenty 
 pound in, and if he should give up his 
 accounts, he would not have a penny left 
 him, as I am pursuaded. [' This was found 
 true afterward,' writes Bradford.] 
 
 " Friend^ if ever lue make a plantation^ 
 God works a miracle ; especially considering 
 how scant we shall be of victuals and most 
 of all ununited among ourselves, and devoid 
 of good tutors and regiment [governors and 
 government.] Violence will break all. 
 Where is the meek and humble spirit of 
 Moses ? and of Nehemiah, who re-edified the 
 walls of Jerusalem, and the state of Israel ? 
 
 15* 
 
174 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Is not the sound of Rehoboam's brags daily 
 here among us ? Have not the philosophers 
 and all wise men observed that even in 
 settled comTnonwealths, violent governors 
 bring either themselves or their people or 
 both to ruin ? How much more in the 
 raising of commonwealths, when the mortar 
 is scarce yet tempered that should bind the 
 walls ? 
 
 " If I should write to you of all things 
 which promiscuously forerun our ruin, I 
 should overcharge my weak head and your 
 tender heart; only this, prepare for evil 
 tidings of us every day. But pray for us 
 instantly ; it may be the Lord will be 
 entreated one way or the other for us. I see 
 not in reason how we shall escape even the 
 gasping of hunger-starved persons ; but God 
 can do much, and his will be done. It is 
 better for me to die, than now for me to 
 bear it, which I do daily and expect it 
 hourly ; having received sentence of death, 
 
THE OCEAN. 175 
 
 both within and without me. Poor WiUiam 
 King and myself do strive ivlio shall he meat 
 first for the fishes; but we look for a glorious 
 resurrection, knowing Christ Jesus after the 
 flesh no more, but looking unto the joy that 
 is set before us, we will endure all these 
 things and account them light in comparison 
 of that joy we hope for. Remember me in 
 all love to our friends as if I named them, 
 whose prayers I desire earnestly and wish 
 again to see, but not till I can with more 
 comfort look them in the face. The Lord 
 give us that true comfort which none can 
 take from us. 
 
 " I had a desire to make a brief relation 
 of our estate to some friend. I doubt 
 not but your wisdom will teach you sea- 
 sonably to utter things as hereafter you 
 shall be called to it. That which I have 
 written is true, and many things more which 
 I have forborne. I write it as upon my life, 
 and last confession in England. What is of 
 
176 THE PILGRIM CHUIICH. 
 
 use to be spoken of presently, you may speak 
 of it; and what is fit to conceal, conceal. 
 Pass by my weak manner ; for my head is 
 weak, and my body feeble. The Lord make 
 me strong in him, and keep both you and 
 yours. Your loving friend, 
 
 " Robert Cushman. 
 " Dartmouth, August 17, 1620." 
 
 Making all allowance for the coloring of 
 this letter, it certainly gives a glimpse of a 
 truly dismal prospect. Losing precious 
 time, short of supplies, with a leaky ship, 
 leading merchants disaffected, unsympathiz- 
 ing governor and a grumbling crew in the 
 Speedwell, a busy and talkative agent ready 
 to hear if not to foment complaints, and 
 prophesying certain and dismal ruin. Prob- 
 ably it was well for the little band to 
 undergo, as it did, a further sifting. Brave 
 hearts and strong were needed for their 
 work. 
 
THE OCEAN. 177 
 
 Robert Ciishman was not destined to be- 
 come " meat for fishes ; " he was not des- 
 tined to " the gasping of hunger-starved 
 persons," nor to be overwhehned by the 
 " bundle of lead, as it were, crushing his 
 heart." He was preserved to do good ser- 
 vice yet, and to be " the right arm " of the 
 colony with the merchant adventurers, and, 
 some five or six years later to lay his bones 
 in the mother country, as he was about 
 finally to join his brethren. Deliverance to 
 him was nearer probably than he thought — 
 although there are obscure hints in the close 
 of his letter that look towards a return. 
 
 Again they launch. A hundred leagues 
 are made, when again the Speedwell leaks 
 so badly that the captain declares he must 
 bear up or sink at sea. They put back to 
 Plymouth, and examine the ship again. No 
 special leak is found ; and indeed when the 
 Speedwell was sold, she made many profita- 
 ble voyages. But they determhie at length 
 
178 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 to abandon the vessel on the ground of 
 " general weakness." Well they may. For 
 thovigh abundantly capable of " many voy- 
 ages," she was incajoable of that one. It 
 was pre-arranged that she should leak. The 
 captain and crew understood the trick of 
 having her " over-masted and too much 
 pressed with sails," till the strain brought 
 the water pouring in through her seams. 
 They were intimidated at the fear of want, 
 as the vessel was to remain, and the crew to 
 stay with her for a year. So they had 
 " plotted this stratagem." 
 
 It became necessary with the smaller 
 vessel to dismiss a portion of the passengers. 
 Twenty persons are left, most of them 
 " willing " to go back from " discontent or 
 fear ; " but there were some dismissed, who, 
 on account of " their own weakness and 
 charge of many young children, were 
 thought least useful and most unfit to bear 
 the brunt of this hard adventure — unto 
 
THE OCEAN. 179 
 
 wliich work of God, and judgment of their 
 brethren they were contented to submit." 
 Among the number wiUing to remain were 
 Mr. Cushman and his family. There was 
 another " sad parting," ominous of ill. The 
 hospitality of friends in Plymouth, by whom 
 they "were kindly entertained and cour- 
 teously used," was afterwards commemo- 
 rated in the name of their own American 
 home. 
 
 The stormy month of September arrived 
 before they left the harbor. Besides the 
 crew, one hundred and two persons, with all 
 their effects and supplies, are crowded into 
 that little vessel ; and a birth and a death on 
 board keep their number good to the end. 
 Before long, " cross winds and many fierce 
 storms " overtake them. The upper works 
 of the ship grow leaky, and by the severe 
 shaking "one of the main beams in the 
 midships is bowed and cracked." The mut- 
 tering sailors express their fears; and "a 
 
180 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 serious consultation" is held with the officers 
 of the ship, attended with " great difference 
 of opinion among the mariners themselves." 
 The officers aver that the ship is " strong and 
 firm under water;" and the carpenter 
 promises that with a great iron screw be- 
 longing to the passengers he will bring the 
 beam to its place. The upper works can be 
 caulked, and though with the working of 
 the ship they will not long keep staunch, yet 
 there would be no great danger if they did 
 not over-press her with sails. So they com- 
 mitted themselves to the will of God, and 
 resolved to proceed " — for they were now in 
 mid-ocean. Often for days together " the 
 winds were so fierce and the seas so high 
 that they could not bear a knot of sail." 
 
 The tedium of the voyage is diversified, if 
 not relieved, by the sallies of one profane 
 and brutal sailor, who, during their sea- 
 sickness, daily loaded them " with grievous 
 execrations," expressing his hope " to cast 
 

 Pilgrim Church. pp. 181. 
 
THE OCEAN. 181 
 
 half of them overboard before they came to 
 then- journey's end," and, if gently reproved, 
 ciirsmg and swearing, bitterly. "But it 
 pleased God before they came half seas over 
 to smite this young man with a grievous dis- 
 ease of which he died in a desperate manner, 
 and so was himself the first that was thrown 
 overboard," and his fellows noted it to be 
 the just hand of God upon him." The 
 seamen appear, on other occasions, to have 
 caught the spirit of the merchant-adven- 
 turers, and to have shown them little 
 kindness. 
 
 Sixty-four long days are passed, when, on 
 the 9th of November they were made " not 
 a little joyful " by the sight of land. It was 
 Cape Cod. They are bound for the moutli 
 of the Hudson. After a dangerous entan- 
 glement, as they thought it, in shoals and 
 breakers, they were constrained to return, 
 and were next day safely moored in Cape 
 Cod Harbor. And before all other proceed- 
 
 16 
 
182 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 ings, " tlicy fell down on their knees and 
 blessed the Lord, the God of Heaven, who 
 had brought them over the vast and furious 
 ocean, and delivered them from all perils 
 and miseries thereof." 
 
THE LAND. 183 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE LAND 
 
 They knew that they had abundant cause of 
 gratitude ; and so they gave thanks to God. 
 But there was a vast deal more to be thank- 
 ful for than they then knew — or ever knew. 
 It ought never to be forgotten that the 
 first settlement of New England was in its 
 chief aspect a missionary enterprise. Even 
 the subordinate reasons rendered, resolve 
 themselves into a desire of these men to 
 make the most of themselves and theirs for 
 the cause of God ; while, before leaving Hol- 
 land, they had themselves thus expressed 
 their chief inducement: "Lastly, (and which 
 was not the least,) a great hope and inward 
 zeal they had of laying some good founda- 
 
184 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 tion, or at least to make some way thereunto 
 for propag-aling- and advancing' the gospel of 
 the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts 
 of the world ; yea, though they should be 
 but even as stepping-stones unto others for 
 the performing of so great a work." This 
 motive is too repeatedly and prominently 
 set forth to be for one moment mistaken. 
 
 They never knew how wonderfully God 
 was about to answer their prayer, nor unto 
 what great religious results he was making 
 them the " stepping-stones." Consequently 
 they never saw the bearing of some of the 
 chief dealings of God's providence on the 
 very end they had in view. God had care- 
 fully kept the land for the men. How he 
 had locked up the whole continent from the 
 knowledge of Europe till fifty years after the 
 discovery of printing, and on the eye of the 
 great Reformation. And how carefully then 
 he had shut it up from all attempts at per- 
 manent colonization till the ripest fruits of 
 
THE LAND. 185 
 
 the Reformation had been gathered. For 
 more than a hundred years after its dis- 
 covery, no European was suffered to get a 
 foothold in North America. There were 
 attempts enough. For two-thirds of a cen- 
 tury the monarchy of France and the chiv- 
 alry of Spain had vainly sought to establish 
 permanent colonies in the country. God 
 kept the land for the hour and the men. 
 
 The men — the first permanent colonists 
 of North America — ^liad already been chosen 
 from that nation of all Europe, in which on 
 the whole the rights of man had made the 
 highest progress, and the claims of God were 
 best understood. 
 
 And now the fathers of New England had 
 been taken from the best, the Puritan, party 
 of that nation ; and even of that party, these 
 were the men most thoroughly sifted and 
 tried and trained. They were sent from 
 England when the British mind was in the 
 very bloom and flush of strength — when 
 
 16* 
 
186 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Shakspeare, Bacon, Raleigh, Hampden, 
 Cromwell, UU were living. They were sent 
 by Holland to chasten their spirits and 
 broaden their views. They were sent 
 through opposition, hardship, and poverty, 
 to keep them from being overrun by worth- 
 less adventurers, and were long hedged 
 round by a wall of suffering to work out 
 their grand experiment unmolested. A pro- 
 miscuous rush of colonists in their train 
 might have changed the destinies of New 
 England — and of how much else ? Lideed, 
 the Omniscient Eye carefully watched the 
 whole course of events ; in a quarter of a 
 century God suffered but about 21,000 men 
 to follow them — men chiefly of kindred 
 mind — and then by his wise providence he 
 shut off the stream of emigration. 
 
 God had led them not only by a way, but 
 to a place they knew not. They were look- 
 ing much further south — at least to the 
 mouth of the Hudson. They were brought 
 
THE LAND. 187 
 
 to a better place for them — where there 
 should be none to dispute possession, and 
 where they and theirs might long remain 
 undisturbed, a peculiar people. Perhaps 
 they had reason to be thankful that God 
 brought them to one of the barrenest por- 
 tions of the continent. How much the 
 virtue of their descendants has clung to that 
 barren soil — or how the whole future of the 
 great Puritan family would have been 
 changed had the forefathers fallen upon 
 some luxuriant Guiana or Florida — who but 
 God can tell. 
 
 And as God led them to that spot, how 
 carefully had he cleared the place — though 
 they knew it not. He had left the savages 
 to subdue the wild beasts of the forest, till 
 about three years before, and then by a 
 terrible pestilence that almost annihilated 
 some of the tribes, he had nearly cleared 
 that whole coast of the enemies that not only 
 might, but doubtless would have devoured 
 
188 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 them in their feeble state. There were 
 times when even the feeble remnant could 
 have crushed them as they would an infant. 
 In the spot soon fixed upon for the colony, 
 the plague had left " not one man, woman or 
 child remaining." All the delays and diffi- 
 culties of the embarkation, and cross-winds 
 of the voyage, had been needful to bring 
 them to this place. Had they made an 
 earlier arrival, they would have gone to the 
 southward. Necessity brought them here. 
 
 Notwithstanding they knew not or con- 
 sidered not all these things, these men felt 
 that they had abundant reason for gratitude. 
 And they gave hearty thanks ; for no men 
 ever more thoroughly acknowledged the 
 daily providential hand of God. 
 
 And yet if they rejoiced in God, it was 
 not without the deepest sense of their for- 
 lorn condition. Here is the picture drawn 
 long afterwards by one of those very men : 
 " Here I cannot but stay and make a pause 
 
THE LAND. 189 
 
 and stand half amazed at these poor people's 
 condition. For having passed through 
 many troubles both before and upon the 
 voyage, as aforesaid, they had now no 
 friends to welcome them, nor inns to enter- 
 tain and refresh them, no houses, much less 
 towns to repair unto to seek for succor. It 
 is recorded in Scripture as a mercy to the 
 apostle ajid his ship-wrecked company that 
 ' the barbarians showed them no small kind- 
 ness ' in refreshing them. But these savage 
 barbarians, when they met with them, were 
 readier to fill their sides full of arrows, than 
 otherwise. And for the season, it was 
 winter ; and they that know the winters of 
 that country, know them to be sharp and 
 violent and subject to violent storms, dan- 
 gerous to travel to known places, much 
 more to search out unknown coasts. Be- 
 sides, what could they see, but a hideous 
 and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts 
 and wild men ? and what multitudes there 
 
190 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 might be of them they knew not. Neither 
 could they, as it were, go up to the top of 
 Pisgah, to view from this wilderness a more 
 goodly country to feed their hopes. For 
 which way soever they turned their eyes, 
 save upward to the heavens^ they could have 
 little solace or content in respect to any 
 outward objects. For, summer being done, 
 all things stand for them to view with a 
 weather-beaten face ; and the whole country 
 being full of woods and thickets, presented a 
 wild and savage hue. If they looked behind 
 them there was the mighty ocean which 
 they had passed, and was now a main bar 
 and gulf to separate them from all the civil 
 [civilized] parts of the world. If it be said 
 they had a ship to succor them — it is true ; 
 but what heard they daily from the master 
 and company but that with speed they 
 should look out a place for their shallop, 
 where they would be at some near distance ; 
 for the season was such that he would not 
 
THE LAND. 191 
 
 stir from thence until a safe harbor was dis- 
 covered by them, where they would be, and 
 he might go without danger ; and that 
 victuals consumed apace, but he must and 
 would keep sufficient for himself and company 
 for their return. Yea, it was muttered by 
 some, that if they got not a place in time, 
 they [the ship's crew] would turn them and 
 their goods on shore dnd leave them. Let it 
 also be considered what weak hopes of sup- 
 ply and succor they left behind them, that 
 might bear up their minds in this sad con- 
 dition, and the trials they were under. It is 
 true, indeed, the affection and love of their 
 brethren at Leyden were cordial and entire ; 
 but they had little power to help them, or 
 themselves ; and how the case stood between 
 them and the merchants at their coming 
 away, hath already been declared. What 
 could now sustain them but the Spirit of 
 God and his grace ? " 
 
192 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 It would seem as though little could be 
 added to the desolateness of the picture : a 
 feeble company, scantily supplied with pro- 
 visions, on a wilderness shore, in the open- 
 ing of winter; none but hostile savages to 
 receive them; a threatening crew pressing 
 them to land ; not a shelter ready nor even a 
 site selected for their home ; the captain 
 refusing to move his vessel from her moor- 
 ings, and their exploring " shallop " requir- 
 ing a fortnight's precious time to repair ; 
 with not a sympathetic heart except the 
 band almost as helpless as themselves, across 
 the water — lying at the mercy of an unsym- 
 pathizing, disaffected corporation. But still 
 one other thing is added : faction in their 
 own little number. Few as they were, 
 there was discordant material among them. 
 There were " strangers " who had joined 
 them in England, some of them employed 
 for hire, and one or two surreptitiously 
 crowded m by friends in England. These 
 
THE LAND. 193 
 
 men had dropped " discontented and muti- 
 nous speeches," declaring that as the patent 
 was for Yirginia and not for New England, 
 and consequently they were beyond its 
 reach, "none had power to command them," 
 and " when they came on shore they would 
 use their own liberty." 
 
 Troubles were thick. But these were not 
 the men to lie still in despair. They took 
 each thing in its order. First the faction 
 was silenced. For this purpose, before any 
 foot pressed the shore, that famous " com- 
 pact" was drawn, which, avowing that they 
 have imdertaken to plant a colony " for the 
 glory of God and the advancement of the 
 Christian faith, and the honor of our king 
 and country," binds them together as " a 
 civil body politic" to enact "just and equal 
 laws" "for the general good," to which they 
 " promise all due submission and obedi- 
 ence." This document, equally remarkable 
 for its declaration of their religious purpose, 
 
 17 
 
194 "THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 and its utterance, in the fewest words, of the 
 very essence of a republican government, 
 was signed by forty-one names — the adult 
 male members of the company. John 
 Carver is chosen Governor. 
 
 Now for work. The shallop is hauled out 
 for an exploring trip ; unfortunately she 
 needs sixteen days' work in repairing. No 
 time is to be lost. A band of sixteen men, 
 with Standish at their head, set forth by 
 land. The women hasten ashore to do their 
 washing. But, alas, at every passage from 
 the ship to the land in that shallow water, 
 there is a long way to wade, and many a 
 death-cold is thus early taken. 
 
 We do not propose to follow all the inci- 
 dents of their daily toils. 
 
 The most noticeable things which the 
 exploring party saw were the numerous 
 graves that marked, although they knew it 
 not, the late terrible mortality. The first 
 welcome to their new land was a shower of 
 
THE LAND. 195 
 
 arrows that came rattling around their 
 camp-fire one morning at day-break. At 
 five o'clock that morning they had already 
 held their morning prayers, in haste for an 
 early departure ; but they pause after the 
 attack to " give God solemn thanks and 
 praise for their deliverance," not a man 
 being hit or hurt, though several of their 
 coats that hung on the wall of the enclosure 
 were " shot through and through." The 
 savages had aimed at some of the chief men 
 of the colony. The special providence of 
 God, as they felt it to be, directed them to a 
 large quantity of buried Indian corn. They 
 took it, with the settled purpose of making 
 " large satisfaction " to the owner, whenever 
 he could be found ; and it was their sole 
 supply of seed-corn for the year ensuing. 
 But for this, says Bradford, " they might 
 have starved." The Lord, he adds, ^'is 
 never wanting unto his in their greatest 
 needs ; let his holy nan^e have all the 
 
196 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 praise.'' They afterwards paid the Indians 
 what the savages deemed double the value 
 of the corn. 
 
 From the time of the encounter with the 
 Indians they proceed only in the shallop. 
 Fifteen leagues they coast along, but find no 
 harbor. A storm of sleet and rain comes 
 on — the wind is high and the sea is rough. 
 With a broken rudder they press all sail to 
 gain an expected shelter, when the mast 
 breaks, the sail goes overboard, and they 
 narrowly, " by God's mercy," escape being 
 cast away — Carver, and Bradford, and Wins- 
 low and Standish among them. Again they 
 barely miss being wrecked in the breakers ; 
 and in deep darkness and a pitiless rain they 
 run under a lee shore. Fear of the In- 
 dians warned them to spend the night upon 
 the boat. But human nature could hold out 
 no longer. Many of them were so weak 
 and cold that they hurried on shore and 
 with much difficulty lighted a fire ; and the 
 
THE LAND. 197 
 
 whole company followed. " God gave them 
 a morning of comfort and refreshing." The 
 sun shone out clear and frosty. They found 
 themselves secure upon an island — Clark's 
 Island — at the entrance of the beautiful 
 harbor of Plymouth. The day is devoted to 
 resting their weary frames, drying their 
 effects, putting their arms in order, and 
 giving " God thanks for his mercies in their 
 manifold deliverances." The following day 
 was the Sabbath. But though they were all 
 rested, and their errand most pressing, and 
 their friends anxiously waiting for their 
 return, not a foot moved on its way. Tliey 
 kept holy the day of the Lord. Upon the 
 strict piety that thus loved the duties of the 
 sacred Sabbath and reverenced God and his 
 ordinances, depended the character of New 
 England. 
 
 On Monday the 11th of December, (the 
 memorable 22d, new style, as it is now 
 
 17* 
 
198 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 reckoned — though it should be the 21st,) 
 they landed on Plymouth Rock. They 
 sounded the harbor and marched into the 
 land, till they were satisfied they had found 
 the place for their home ; then hurried back 
 to " comfort the hearts " of their friends. 
 There was one heart among themselves that 
 needed comfort : the loving wife who should 
 have welcomed William Bradford back, met 
 him no more — she had been drowned in his 
 absence. 
 
 In a few days more, (on Saturday the 
 16th,) the Mayflower rides at anchor in the 
 new-found harbor. Again the holy Sabbath 
 intervenes, and fills their hearts with peace 
 and courage and strength for the morrow. 
 Monday and Tuesday are spent in exploring 
 the region to fix on a village site. There is 
 no time to lose in search or deliberation, 
 " our victuals being much spent.'* Two 
 places arc in question. So on Wednesday 
 
THE LAND. 199 
 
 morning " after we had called on God for 
 direction,'* we " go ashore again " and fix 
 upon a site " on a high ground, where there 
 is a great deal of land cleared, and that hath 
 been planted with corn three or four years 
 ago ; and there is a very sweet brook runs 
 under the hill side, and many delicate 
 springs of as good water as can be drunk, 
 and where we may harbor our shallops and 
 boats exceeding well ; and in this brook much 
 good fish in their seasons; on the further 
 side of the river also much corn-ground 
 cleared. In one field is a great hill on 
 which we point [appoint] to make a plat- 
 form and plant our ordnance [cannon] 
 which will command all about. From 
 thence we may see 'into the bay, and far 
 into the sea ; and we may see thence Cape 
 Cod. Our greatest labor will be the fetch- 
 ing of our wood, which is half a quarter of 
 an English mile. What people inhabit here 
 
200 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 we know not, for as yet we have seen none. 
 So there we made our rendezvous, resolving 
 in the morning to come all ashore and build 
 houses." 
 That was Plymouth. 
 
HOME. 201 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 HOME. 
 
 But the next day it rained and blew tem- 
 pestuously — and the next also. In the 
 midst of the storm the birth of a dead son 
 to Isaac Allerton sadly inaugurates the 
 founding of a new home. 
 
 When the storm clears off, all hands are 
 on shore, " some to fell timber, some to saw, 
 some to rive, and some to carry ; so no man 
 rested that day." Many of them, too, were 
 men who had seldom done such work. 
 Amid the "frost and foul weather" of mid- 
 winter, so hindering them that they could 
 " seldom work half the week," Leyden 
 Street is lined with its " common-house " 
 twenty feet square, and its little row of 
 
202 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 dwellings packed snugly by each other's side 
 for mutual security. Nineteen dwellmgs 
 seem to have been in tlicir plan, but when 
 the Spring came they had built, and they 
 required, not half the number. In less than 
 one month from the day when the first tree 
 fell, they hold their Sabbath worship on the 
 shore. The work goes on under great diffi- 
 culties. John Goodman wanders away and 
 freezes his feet. William Bradford, by 
 reason of his late exposures, is " vehemently 
 seized with grief and pain " which " so shot 
 to his huckle-bone, [hip-bone,] it was doubted 
 he would have died instantly." The thatched 
 roof takes fire when Carver and Bradford 
 lie sick among loaded muskets, and their 
 lives are endangered ; but " through God's 
 mercy they had no harm." A furious storm 
 washes out the clay mortar with which the 
 crevices of their log-houses are filled. 
 Again the thatch of their sick-house takes 
 fire, but no harm is done. 
 
Pilgrim Church pp. 203. 
 
HOME. 203 
 
 And all the while, there are glimpses 
 and sounds of savages flitting ghostlike 
 round them in the distance, and filling them 
 with apprehensions ; till at length one " fair 
 warm day" in March, Samoset marches 
 boldly through the village to the very ren- 
 dezvous where the men are perfecting their 
 military organization, and loudly bids them 
 " welcome." It is the beginning of a firm 
 and lasting peace with the neighboring 
 Indians ; and Squanto, sole known survivor 
 of those who once tilled the corn-lands of 
 Plymouth, teaches them how to plant their 
 fields. 
 
 But long before the young blade is up, 
 the Reaper whose name is death, had thrust 
 in his sickle ; and before the month of No- 
 vember came roimd, fifty-one of the one-hun- 
 dred-and-two lay beneath the turf. Hard- 
 ship and exposure did their work, indeed, 
 chiefly before the end of March. The whole 
 family of Mr. Martin became extinct. Pris- 
 
204 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 cilia Molines is the only survivor of her 
 father's house. John Turner and his two 
 sons, Thomas Tinker with his wife and only 
 child, John and Edward Tillie and their 
 wives, John Rigdale and wife, James Chil- 
 ton and wife, Edward Fuller and wife, the 
 noble John Carver and his wife, and three 
 of the four orphan children were cut down. 
 Mrs. Wliite was written a widow ; and the 
 wives of Standish, Bradford, Winslow, AUer- 
 ton, and Francis Eaton had finished their 
 brief course. In the time of greatest dis- 
 tress, Brewster and Standish and five other 
 individuals alone were well enough to wait 
 upon the rest. "The Lord upheld these 
 persons " while they " spared no pains night 
 or day, but with abundance of toil and 
 hazard of their own health, fetched them 
 wood, made them fires, dressed them meat, 
 made their beds, washed their loathsome 
 clothes, clothed and unclothed them, in a 
 word did all homely and necessary offices 
 
HOME. 2(>5 
 
 for them, and all this willingly and cheer- 
 fully, without any grudging in the least, 
 showing herein their true love unto their 
 friends and brethren." 
 
 Meanwhile a very different scene was 
 taking place on ship-board. When the sick- 
 ness began on the land, one of the sufferers 
 — Bradford himself — had desired "a small 
 can of beer " from the supply on board, but 
 had received answer from "the master" that 
 " if he were his own father he should have 
 none." But before the vessel was ready to 
 sail the disease broke out among the crew. 
 And now for the spirit of selfishness. These 
 " boon companions in drinking and jollity " 
 dreading infection, " began now to desert 
 one another in this calamity, saying they 
 would not hazard their lives for them by 
 coming to help them in their cabins, but if 
 they died, let them die." But the passen- 
 gers showed them the kindness and atten- 
 tion which they could not gain from their 
 
 18 
 
206 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 own friends, and melted some of their selfish 
 hearts. Among others, the boatswain, who 
 had often scoffed and cursed at the passen- 
 gers, confessed that " he did not deserve this 
 at their hands — he had abused them in word 
 and deed." " ! " exclaimed he, " you 
 show your love like Christians indeed to one 
 another, but we let one another lie and die 
 like dogs." The poor fellow died, and with 
 him about half the crew. The dead were 
 buried on the bank that overhangs the 
 landing. 
 
 It is a sad picture of the weakness of the 
 colony, that, fearing lest the Indians should 
 learn their prostrate condition, the graves 
 on the bank were levelled that spring, and 
 the ground above was sown with grain. 
 Human bones have been repeatedly washed 
 from the bank ; and in the summer of 1855, 
 wlien a drain was dug through the spot, the 
 remains of several human beings were found 
 and deposited, as sacred dust, on " Burial 
 
HOME. 207 
 
 Hill.'* u Ti^e spring advancing, it pleases 
 God the mortality begins to cease, and the 
 sick and lame recover." It " puts new life 
 into the people." On the fifth of April the 
 Mayflower left the harbor on her homeward 
 voyage ; but though many a watery eye 
 must have watched her till she was lost to 
 the sight, not one of the survivors aban- 
 doned the place now hallowed by suffering. 
 "It was the Lord which upheld them," 
 writes one who was himself brought low 
 with sickness, " and had beforehand pre- 
 pared them; many having long borne the 
 yoke, yea, from their youth." It was a 
 special mercy to the little colony that, with 
 the exception of Mr. Carver, all the leading 
 men were spared. Had even five or six of 
 the more responsible members been cut off, 
 what might have been the issue, none but 
 He who ordered all, can tell. 
 
 As the autumn came on, it found them in 
 plenty ; with a good crop, a successful 
 
208 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 beaver-trade, abundance of fish, and a supply 
 of water fowls and wild turkeys. " And 
 thus," say they, " they found the Lord to be 
 with them in all their ways, and to bless 
 their outgoings and their incomings, for 
 which let his holy name have the praise 
 forever, to all posterity." 
 
 So, "our harvest being gotten in, 
 [twenty acres of Indian corn, and six acres 
 of barley and peas,] our governor sent 
 four men on fowling, that so we might after 
 a special manner rejoice together after we 
 had gathered the fruit of our labors. They 
 four in one day killed as many fowl as, with 
 a little help beside, served the company 
 almost a week. At which tune, among 
 other recreations, we exercised our arms, 
 many of the Lidians coming among us, and 
 among the rest their greatest king, Massa- 
 soit, with some ninety men, whom for three 
 days we entertained and feasted ; and they 
 went out and killed five deer, which they 
 
HOME. 209 
 
 brought to the plantation, and bestowed on 
 our governor, and upon the captain and 
 others. And although it be not always so 
 plentiful as it was at this time with us, yet 
 by the goodness of God, we are so far from 
 want, that we often wish you, [our distant 
 friends,] partakers of our plenty." 
 
 Thus wrote Winslow to his friend Morton 
 in December, 1621. But his exultant words 
 were a little premature. The plenty was 
 diminishing before the letter was sent. The 
 ship Fortune, by which it was dispatched, 
 had brought thirty-six more colonists and no 
 supplies — " not so much as a biscuit-cake or 
 any other victuals for them ; neither had 
 they any bedding but some sorry things they 
 had in their cabins, nor pot, nor pan, nor 
 any thing to dress their meat in ; nor over- 
 many clothes, for many of them had brushed 
 away their coats and cloaks at Plymouth as 
 they came." However, they were mostly 
 able-bodied young men ; and ^'the plantation 
 
 18* 
 
210 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 was glad of this addition to tlicir strength." 
 An almost double number of consumers 
 makes a speedy difference in the provisions ; 
 and the Governor is obliged to put all on 
 half allowance with the prospect at that rate 
 of only six months' supply. 
 
 The Fortune also brought a harsh letter 
 from Mr. Weston, complaining of the trans- 
 actions before they sailed, and chiding them 
 because, in the labors and sickness of the 
 winter, they had been unable to lade the 
 Mayflower with a valuable freight. He had 
 learned, of course, from the crew of the ship 
 the prostrate condition of the colony, yet he 
 sees fit to address Governor Carver in the 
 following style : "That you sent no lading in 
 the ship is wonderful and worthily distasted. 
 I know your weakness was the cause of it, 
 and I believe more weakness of judgment 
 than weakness of hands. A quarter of the 
 time you spent in discoursing, arguing and 
 consulting, would have done much more." 
 
HOME. 211 
 
 Aiid he goes on to assure them that if they 
 will sign "the conditions" and send a good 
 lading in this ship, to requite his expendi- 
 tures and encourage the company, he " ivill 
 never quit the business though all the other 
 adventurers should.^^ 
 
 They freighted back the Fortune " with 
 good clapboard as full as she could stow, 
 and two hogshead of beaver and otter 
 skins ; " the whole lading being valued at 
 five hundred pounds. But as to Mr. Wes- 
 ton's valiant assurances, " all proved but 
 wind," says Bradford, " for he was the first 
 and only man that forsook them, and that 
 before he so much as heard of the return of 
 the ship or knew what was done ; so vain is 
 the confidence in man." 
 
 To Mr. Weston's complaints. Governor 
 Bradford writes in a manly and touching 
 strain — with a single burst of honest indig- 
 nation. The last sentence of the extract is 
 one of the indications that even into their 
 
212 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 little number there had crept individuals 
 with whom they had nothing in common. 
 The Billington family, for example, had 
 "been shuffled into their company" by 
 friends in London. The father was a pro- 
 fane and troublesome " knave," who, after 
 causing continual annoyance to the colony, 
 ten years later was hung for murder. But 
 to the letter of Bradford to Weston : — 
 
 " Sir : Your large letter written to Mr. 
 Carver I have received, wherein (after the 
 apology made for yourself) you lay many 
 heavy imputations upon him and upon us 
 all. Touching him, he is departed this life, 
 and is now at rest in the Lord from all those 
 troubles and incumbrances with which we 
 are yet to strive. He needs not my apology ; 
 for his care and pains were so great for the 
 common good, both ours and yours, that 
 therewith, it is thought, he oppressed him- 
 self and shortened his days ; of whose loss 
 
HOME. 213 
 
 we cannot sufficiently complain [deplore]. 
 At great charges in this adventure, I confess 
 you have been, and many losses may sustain ; 
 but the loss of his and many other honest 
 and industrious men's lives cannot be valued 
 at any price. Of the one there may be 
 hope of recovery, but the other no recom- 
 pense can make good. But I will not insist 
 on generals, but will come now to particulars. 
 " You greatly blame us for keeping the 
 ship so long in the country, and then to send 
 her away empty. She lay five weeks at 
 Cape Cod, while with many a weary step and 
 the endurance of many a hard brunt, we 
 sought out in the foul winter a place of 
 habitation. Then we went in so tedious a 
 time to make provision to shelter us and our 
 goods, about which labor many of our arms 
 and legs can tell us to this day we were not 
 negligent. But it pleased God to visit us 
 then with death daily, and with so general a 
 disease that the living were scarce able to 
 
214 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 bury the dead, and the well not in any 
 measure sufficient to tend the sick. And 
 now to be so greatly blamed for not freight- 
 ing the ship, doth indeed go near us and 
 much discourage us. But you say you 
 know we will pretend weakness ; and do you 
 think we had not cause ? Yes, you tell us 
 you believe it, but it was more weakness of 
 judgment than of hands. Our weakness 
 herein is great, we confess, therefore we will 
 bear this check patiently till God send us 
 wiser men. But they which told you we 
 spent so much time in discoursing and con- 
 sulting, <fec., their hearts can tell their 
 tongues, they lie. They cared not, so they 
 might salve their own sores, how they 
 wounded others. Indeed, it is our calamity 
 that we are (beyond expectation) yoked 
 with some ill-conditioned people who will 
 never do good, but corrupt and abuse 
 others." 
 
HOME. 215 
 
 111 the same letter the Governor informs 
 him that they have at length signed the 
 articles ; exhibits the condition of affairs, 
 and apprises him distinctly that unless they 
 had supplies in due time the addition to 
 their numbers must "unavoidably bring 
 famine upon them." 
 
 Hardly had the vessel sailed and the com- 
 pany been put on short allowance, when the 
 Narraganset tribe of Indians, covering the 
 wliole State of Rhode Island and numbering 
 thirty tliousand, offended at their friendly 
 relations to certain other tribes, sent them a 
 messenger with a bundle of arrows tied with 
 a snake-skin. The Governor of this little 
 band of eighty-seven men, women and chil- 
 dren, by advice of others, " sent a round 
 answer" to the tribe that mustered five 
 thousand warriors, " that if they rather have 
 war than peace they might begin when they 
 would ; they had done them no wrong, 
 neither did they fear them." He also sent 
 
216 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 back the skin of the rattle-snake, stuffed 
 with powder and balls. But the colony at 
 once surround their dwellings with a strong 
 stockade, with gates that were shut and 
 guarded every night ; and their military 
 organization was arranged anew by Captain 
 Standish. The Narragansets, however, had 
 a mysterious horror of powder and ball. So 
 when the snake-skin came back, Canonicus 
 the chief would not touch it nor leave it in 
 his wigwam, but ordered the messenger to 
 take it home. On his refusal, it was passed 
 from hand to hand till it reached the settle- 
 ment again. The sight of gunpowder did 
 the business, and the Narragansets kept 
 their distance. 
 
 In these anxieties in their relations to the 
 savages and the merchants, the Governor 
 was not without his grave joke. On Christ- 
 mas day he summoned the people to their 
 toil as usual — ^for Christmas day they held 
 in no esteem. But most of the new-comers, 
 
HOME. 217 
 
 who seem to have been direct from England, 
 " excused themselves, and said it went 
 against their consciences to work on that 
 day. So the Governor told them that if they 
 made it matter of conscience he would spare 
 them till they were better informed. And 
 he led away the rest and left them. But 
 when they came home from their work at 
 noon he found them in the street at play 
 openly, some pitching the bar, some at stool- 
 ball, and such like sports. So he went to 
 them, and took away their implements, and 
 told them that was against his conscience 
 that they should play and others work. If 
 they made the keeping of it matter of devo- 
 tion, let them keep their houses, but there 
 should be no gaming or revelling in the 
 streets." 
 
 The second season wore away. The sup- 
 plies for which they looked did not come. 
 Instead of aid came a fishing vessel of Mr. 
 Weston, sent out on his own account, and 
 
 19 
 
218 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 letters from him, first advising them to 
 break their compact with the merchants, 
 afterwards informing them that he had quit 
 the company. Letters from Cushman and 
 three other individuals inform them, more- 
 over, that Mr. Weston is about sending a 
 colony of his into their neighborhood, imder 
 the charge of Weston's brother, " a heady 
 young man and violent, and set against you 
 there," and that the most of his colony are 
 '»' not fit for an honest man's company." 
 Mr. Weston himself admits in one of his 
 letters that they are " rude fellows," but he 
 hopes " not only to be able to reclaim them 
 from that profaneness that may scandalize 
 the voyage, but by degrees to draw them to 
 God, &c." He asks the Plymouth men to 
 give them entertainment. 
 
 They were greatly at a loss what to do — 
 advised as they were by their friends in 
 England in the strongest terms to have 
 nothing to do with this rude company, both 
 
HOME. 219 
 
 for their own sakes and anticipated trouble 
 with the Indians which such a set of men 
 must produce. But they concluded to give 
 them friendly entertainment, partly in con- 
 sideration of their earlier relations to Mr. 
 Weston, and partly in compassion to the 
 strangers themselves, thrown otherwise 
 friendless on the coast, though with abun- 
 dant supplies. So they endured them 
 through the summer — though the new- 
 comers meanly stole the green corn and 
 impaired the harvest ; — and they took care 
 of their sick for some time after the 
 departure of the new colony to Weymouth. 
 These " rude fellows " — to follow their his- 
 tory a little — in a few months squandered 
 their abundant supplies, and came to utter 
 destitution. They sold even their clothing 
 and bedding to the Indians, became their 
 servants, cutting wood and bringing water 
 " for a cap full of corn," and at length 
 resorted to stealing. Notwithstanding every 
 
220 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 device, many of them perished with cold and 
 hunger. As they wandered on the shore 
 hunting for clams and ground nuts, one of 
 them was so weak that he stuck fast in the 
 mud, and was found lying dead. They 
 embroiled themselves with the Lidians, ac- 
 cording to the predictions of all who knew 
 them ; and a plot was formed by the savages 
 to destroy them and the Plymouth colony 
 too. The great kindness of the Plymouth 
 men to the chief, Massasoit, who by Wins- 
 low's medical aid and nursing was restored 
 from what was supposed to be a fatal sick- 
 ness, induced the chieftain to disclose to 
 them the plot, on the eve of its execution. 
 
 After a careful weighing of the case, 
 Standish was dispatched with a company of 
 eight men to the Massachusetts tribe, where 
 by a prompt and daring vengeance inflicted 
 on three of the chief conspirators who had 
 already began to whet their knives with 
 insulting threats in his presence, he struck 
 
HOME. 221 
 
 terror into the hearts of all. A few other 
 Indians were slain. This was the only rup- 
 ture of their peace with the savages m that 
 generation ; and for this other men were 
 responsible. For this, the kindly Robinson 
 wrote them a letter of warm remonstrance ; 
 but the colonists themselves were so per- 
 suaded that their existence hung upon the 
 course they .followed, that they record their 
 special occasion for rendering " honor, praise, 
 and glory to God for preserving us from 
 falling when we were at the pit's brim, 
 and feared nor knew not that we were in 
 danger." 
 
 The poor discouraged remnants of Mr. 
 Weston'^ colony took ship and sailed away, 
 hoping to find friends and supplies at the 
 fishing stations off the coast ; while Standish 
 furnished them "all the corn he could, 
 scarce leaving him any to bring home ; saw 
 them well out of the bay under sail at sea, 
 and so came home, not taking the worth of 
 
 19* 
 
222 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 a penny of any thing that was theirs." 
 Such was the miserable end of the party, 
 " all able, lusty men," who came in their 
 pride and strength, boasting of their superi- 
 ority to the Plymouth company with their 
 " many women and children and weak ones 
 among them." " But a man's way," says 
 Bradford, " is not in his own power : God 
 can make the weak to stand ; let him that 
 standeth take heed lest he fall." 
 
 Not long after there came an unexpected 
 visitor among them. He had come from 
 England in a fishing vessel, disguised as a 
 blacksmith, had been cast aAvay near Ports- 
 mouth, been stripped by the Indians of 
 every article of clothing even to liis shirt, 
 and had borrowed clothes to come to 
 Plymouth. It was Thomas Weston, the 
 once rich London merchant, who had come 
 to the country only to hear of the ruin and 
 dissolution of his colony, and to sue for 
 kindness at the hands of this feeble band. 
 
HOME. 223 
 
 In their own straitened circumstances, they 
 " remembered former courtesies," yielded to 
 his urgent entreaties, and furnished him 
 with beaver skins enough to set him up in 
 trade again. They afterwards befriended 
 him when there was a warrant out for his 
 arrest for violatmg the rights of what was 
 called the Plymouth Company in England, 
 and the Governor even became his bail. 
 But it is sad to relate that Mr. Weston 
 " proved a bitter enemy to them on all occa- 
 sions, and never repaid them any thing for 
 it but reproaches and evil words." It does 
 not appear that he ever regained his wealth, 
 but lived as a needy adventurer, and died at 
 Bristol, England, " in the time of the wars." 
 His exasperation is unaccountable, except as 
 the fruit of bitter pecuniary disappointment 
 acting on a hot and impulsive nature, 
 already conscious of deserved blame. But 
 the objects of his dislike have left on record 
 
224 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 truly, that " they helped him, when all the 
 world failed him." 
 
 A more faithful heart had ceased to beat 
 but just before. The trusty Squanto, sole 
 survivor of the aboriginal occupants of 
 Plymouth, fell sick and died, " desiring the 
 Governor to pray for him, that he might go 
 to the Englishman's God in heaven," and 
 bequeathing to his English friends various 
 " remembrances of his love." 
 
FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 225 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 
 
 The crisis was yet to come. Before the 
 troubles about the Weymouth Colony and 
 with the Indians were settled, the spring of 
 1623 had arrived. No supplies had been 
 received. The new comers had been pro- 
 vided, and even the ship in which they came 
 had been partly supplied for the home 
 voyage. The Weymouth men had helped 
 exhaust their provisions, and had wasted 
 their growing crops. With the utmost diffi- 
 culty the company had worried through till 
 planting time. Small quantities of Indian 
 corn had been procured of the natives along 
 the coast, indeed all that could be spared ; 
 for the Indians previous to the use of 
 English hoes, planted but little. 
 
22G THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 April came. It was evident that extraor- 
 dinary measures must be taken to increase 
 the ensuing harvest. Thej had learned to 
 prize Indian corn "as more precious than 
 silver." The experiment of laboring for the 
 common stock, though tried by some of the 
 best men in the world under the spur of 
 necessity, failed to develop the best exer- 
 tions. The strong man felt it an injustice 
 to receive no more than the weaker or more 
 indolent who did not half so much work. 
 The more venerable members of the commu- 
 nity felt it an indignity to be placed in their 
 labors, food and clothing, on a level " with 
 the meaner and younger sort." The young 
 men repined " that they should spend their 
 time and strength to work for other men's 
 wives and children without any recom- 
 pense ; " while " for men's wives to be com- 
 manded to do service for other men, dressino* 
 their meat, washing their clothes, etc., they 
 deemed it a kind of slavery, neither could 
 
FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 227 
 
 many husbands well brook it." The whole 
 system, forced upon them against their will, 
 was felt to be a grievance and a source of 
 evil, and " it would have been worse if they 
 had been men of a different character." 
 "Let none object," says Bradford, "that this 
 is men's corruption, and nothing to the 
 course itself. I answer seeing all men have 
 this corruption in them, God in his wisdom 
 saw another fitter course for them." He 
 might have added that God himself im- 
 planted the desire of possession and 
 ordained the law of property : " Thou slialt 
 not steal — thou shalt not covet." 
 
 To meet the impending exigency and 
 apply the utmost stimulus to exertion, it was 
 resolved that this year every man should 
 plant for himself. It made all hands indus- 
 trious. The very women might have been 
 seen in the field, and their children with 
 them, planting corn. The largest possible 
 quantity was planted. But by this time all 
 
228 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 their provisions " were spent, and they were 
 to rest only on God's providence, at night 
 not many times knowing where to have a bit 
 of any thing next day. Above the people in 
 the world," said one of them, "they had 
 need to pray that God would give them 
 their daily bread." And " they bore these 
 wants," we are also told, " with great 
 patience and alacrity of spirit." 
 
 For three months they had no bread nor 
 any kind of grain. When the planting was 
 passed, their solitary boat was sent out with 
 the nets for fish, and, by relays of men, kept 
 going all the time. Sometimes it was five or 
 six days before she returned. When the 
 boat was long in coming or her supply inad- 
 equate, all hands resorted to the sea-side at 
 low-water, and dug for shell-fish in the 
 sands ; while two of the best hunters ranged 
 the woods and brought them now and then 
 a deer. During the winter previous they 
 
PAST AND THANKSGIVING. 229 
 
 had been partly relieved by ground nuts and 
 wild fowls. 
 
 Every hope was now centered in the 
 young crop. The corn was well planted, 
 according to the Indian method, with two or 
 three fishes in every hill. It came up well. 
 But, alas, from the third week of May for 
 six long weeks the intense heat of summer 
 was tempered with scarcely a drop of rain. 
 The drought was most alarming. The ear- 
 lier crop of maize began to send out the ear 
 before the plant was half grown ; and that 
 of the later planting hung down both blade 
 and stalk, changing its color till it seemed, 
 and some of it proved to be dead. " Our 
 beans also ran not up according to their 
 wonted manner, but stood at a stay, many 
 being parched away as though they had been 
 scorched before the fire. Now were our 
 hopes overthrown, and we discouraged — our 
 joy being turned into mourning." 
 
 20 
 
230 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 To add to their distress, they hear that a 
 supply which had been sent from England 
 had been twice driven back by the weather, 
 and the vessel, having afterwards been seen 
 at sea, for three months had not been heard 
 from ; only the signs of a wreck had been 
 found on the coast. " At once God seemed 
 to deprive us of all future hopes. The most 
 courageous were now discouraged because 
 God which had hitherto been our only shield 
 and supporter, now seemed in his anger to 
 arm himself against us." 
 
 Every good man is moved " to enter into 
 examination of his own estate between God 
 and his conscience ; " and the whole com- 
 pany determine " solemnly to humble our- 
 selves together before the Lord by fasting 
 and prayer." To that end a day was ap- 
 pointed by public authority, and set apart 
 from all other emjDloyments ; hoping that 
 the same God which had stirred us up here- 
 unto, would be moved in mercy to look down 
 
PAST AND THANKSGIVING. 231 
 
 upon US, and grant the request of our de- 
 jected souls, if our continuance there might 
 any way stand with his glory and our good. 
 
 " But, 0, the mercy of our God ! who was 
 as ready to hear as we to ask ; for though in 
 the morning when we assembled together 
 the heavens were as clear, and the drought 
 as like to continue, as ever it was, yet — our 
 exercise continuing some eight or nine 
 hours — before our departure, the weather 
 was overcast, the • clouds gathered on all 
 sides, and on the next morning distilled 
 such soft, sweet, and moderate showers of 
 rain, continuing some fourteen days, that it 
 was hard to say whether our withered corn 
 or our drooping affections were most quick- 
 ened or revived. Such was the bounty and 
 goodness of our God." To the above narra- 
 tive by Winslow, Bradford adds that the rain 
 " came without either wind or thunder, or 
 any violence, and by degrees in abundance, 
 so that the earth was thoroughly wet and 
 
232 TEE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 soaked therewith. Which did so apparently 
 revive and quicken the decayed corn and 
 other fruits as was wonderful to see, and 
 made the Indians astonished to behold ; and 
 afterwards the Lord sent them such season- 
 able showers, with interchange of fair warm 
 weather, as through his blessing caused a 
 fruitful and liberal harvest to their no small 
 comfort and rejoicing." 
 
 Three or four weeks after this time of 
 anguish and rejoicing, two vessels arrived — 
 the Anne and the Little James — bringing 
 about sixty passengers. Among them were 
 the wives and children of some who were 
 already here, and a few others of their 
 Leyden friends. There were also not a few 
 who had no previous connection with them, 
 but by side influences and importunity at 
 London, had pressed their way in — some of 
 them so bad, that the colony were glad to 
 pay their expenses back again next year. 
 The colony were still living on hope. Most 
 
FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 233 
 
 of them had become quite shabby in their 
 clothing; and "the best dish they could 
 present their friends was a lobster or a piece 
 of fish, without bread or any thing else but 
 a cup of fair spring water." 
 
 The new comers were dismayed. " Some 
 wished themselves in England again ; others 
 fell a weeping, fancying their own misery in 
 what they saw now in others. Only some 
 of their old friends rejoiced to see them, and 
 that it was no worse with them — for they 
 could not expect it should be better — and 
 they now hoped they should enjoy better 
 days together." All, however, with a soli- 
 tary exception came in health and found the 
 whole colony, notwithstanding their wants, 
 in perfect health. Elder Brewster is now 
 joined by his daughters, Fear and Patience ; 
 Samuel Fuller and several others by their 
 wives; Robert Hickes and William Hilton 
 by their whole families. The widow Alice 
 Southworth came also, and in a fortnight 
 
234 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 was joined in marriage to William Bradford, 
 who in early life, it is said, had sought her 
 hand. Barbara Standish, the second wife of 
 the valiant captain, came in this company ; 
 and Fear Brewster, who afterwards became 
 the wife of Isaac AUerton. 
 
 With them came a friendly letter from 
 Mr. Cushman ; and another from a portion 
 of the merchants — for they had some warm 
 friends among the merchants — in which 
 they apologize for not sending Mr. Robinson, 
 and assure them that " the hearts of hun- 
 dreds that never saw their faces are towards 
 them " " who doubtless pray for your safety 
 as their own." 
 
 About this time Captain Standish returns 
 from an excursion with a supply of pro- 
 visions. The vessels have come in safety 
 with their friends. The fields are pouring 
 out a bountiful harvest. And " having these 
 many signs of God's favor and acceptation 
 we thought it would be great ingratitude if 
 
FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 235 
 
 secretly we should smother up the same, or 
 content ourselves with private thanksgiving 
 for that which by private prayer could not 
 be obtained. And therefore another solemn 
 day was set apart and appointed for that 
 end, wherein we returned glory, and honor, 
 and praise with all thankfulness to our good 
 God which dealt so graciously with us ; 
 whose name, for these and all other mercies 
 towards his church and chosen ones, by them 
 be blessed and praised now and evermore. 
 Amen." 
 
 Where and how did they keep their 
 Thanksgiving? Some eighty rods from the 
 water's edge in Plymouth, there rises a hill 
 one hundred and sixty-five feet high. On 
 the south-east portion of its summit there 
 are still discernible marks of an old building 
 site. From this point the eye of the Pilgrim 
 commanded the whole region round from 
 which the hostile Indian might approach, 
 and gazed far off over one of the loveliest 
 
23G THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 sea views in the country. Down before him 
 he saw the placid land-locked harbor, with 
 tlie island where the boat's crew, on the day 
 ])efore their memorable landing, kept the 
 lioly Sabbath under the shadow of a great 
 rock; close beneath his feet the huddled 
 cluster of rude log houses with their thatched 
 roofs and oiled-paper windows ; and between 
 tlie village and the harbor, the sacred spot 
 where in the first twelve months he laid to 
 rest the wearied frames of half his comrades, 
 tlie lovely and the strong. On this high 
 point of view there stood, after the first 
 eighteen months and for many years, "a 
 large square house with a flat roof, made of 
 thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams " — 
 and six four-pound cannons looking grimly 
 round upon the top. The room below be- 
 came their meeting-house — not their church, 
 for the church was the comi)aiiy of the 
 saints — " where they preach on Sunday and 
 the usual holidays. They assemble " (said an 
 
FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 237 
 
 eye-witness in 1627) by beat of drum, each 
 with his musket or firelock, in front of the 
 captain's door ; they have their cloaks on, 
 and place themselves in order three abreast, 
 and are led by a sergeant without beat of 
 drum. Behind comes the Governor in a 
 long robe ; on the right hand comes the 
 preacher with his cloak on, and on the left 
 hand the captain with his side arms and 
 cloak, and with a small cane in his hand ; — 
 and so they march in good order, and each 
 sets his arms down near him." After this 
 manner, probably, they marched to their 
 place of worship on that Thanksgiving day. 
 
 Assembled thus with the matchlock by 
 their sides, the cannon overhead, and God 
 all around and within, these bearded men 
 and care-worn, great-hearted women, wor- 
 shiped God in no stinted measure. " Eight 
 or nine hours " had been the time of the 
 Fast day's services. And though there was 
 not such agony of wrestling to prolong the 
 
238 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 hours of Thankfulness, liberal portions of 
 God's word no doubt were read, from the 
 old Geneva version ; words of exhortation 
 must have flowed profusely from the heart ; 
 their prayers bore a large burden of grati- 
 tude, and doubtless they sung no asthmatic 
 songs of praise. The whole congregation 
 sang ; nor for more than a hundred and 
 fifty years did the descendants of the Pil- 
 grims surrender the privilege of having " all 
 the people praise God in song." They had 
 no " lining " of the hymns. They sung no 
 fuguing tunes. York, Wmdsor Martyrs, 
 Old Hundred, and the like, they sung. 
 Perhaps on that Thanksgiving day they sung 
 from their own (Ainsworth's) "Book of 
 Psalms" this very psalm: — 
 
 Psalm C. 
 
 1. Showt to Jehovah, all the earth, 
 
 2. Serve ye Jehovah with gladness : 
 before him come with singing mirth 
 
 3. Know that Jehovah he God is ; 
 
FAST AND THANKSGIVING. 239 
 
 Its he that made us, and not wee ; 
 his folk, and sheep of his feeding. 
 
 4. O with confession enter yee 
 
 his gates, his courtyards with praising : 
 
 confesse to him, blesse ye his name, 
 
 5. Because Jehovah he good is : 
 his mercy ever is the same : 
 and his faith unto all ages. 
 
 Of what took place at home tliat day we 
 can only conjecture. The heartfelt acknowl- 
 edgment must have gone up in many of 
 those humble homes for perfect health, and 
 perfect plenty, and the sight of old familiar 
 faces, with a fervor greater than ever before. 
 And as our fathers always carefully distin- 
 guished even in outward form a thanksgiving 
 from a fast, so Elder Brewster must have 
 set at home in that old arm-chair of his that 
 is still to be seen at Pilgrim Hall, and 
 around his festal board were ranged his 
 children, Patience, and Fear, and Love, and 
 
240 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Wrestling, and Jonathan, now brought again 
 together. The good sword of Standish with 
 its Arabic inscription, must have been super- 
 seded by the huge kettle and the lordly 
 dish of his that now lie peacefully by its side 
 in Plymouth ; and the pewter platters that 
 still bear the mark, "E. W."— Edward 
 Winslow — must have done good service. 
 No doubt those men eat their bread with joy 
 and drank their beverage with a merry 
 heart ; for God accepted their works. And 
 the love of God and the spirit of overflowing 
 gratitude crowned the feast. 
 
 Such a sad and agonizing Fast, and such 
 a jubilant Thanksgiving day, doubtless have 
 never come and gone since the year sixteen 
 hundred and twenty-three. 
 
Pilgrim Church. pp. 240. 
 
REST AT LAST. 241 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 REST AT LAST. 
 
 The crisis was past. Never again was the 
 Plymouth colony reduced to such straits, 
 nor its existence seriously jeoparded. The 
 colonists labored under many disadvantages, 
 but the Lord blessed them and they pros- 
 pered. When the seven years were ended, 
 they bought out the London merchants for 
 1,800 pounds. Every foot of their lands, to 
 the time of king Philip's war, was procured 
 of the Indians by purchase. They expended 
 many hundred pounds in bringing over the 
 remainder of the Leyden company and pro- 
 viding for them in New England. And at 
 length, in the year 1630, the last of that 
 band were brought in safety to their breth- 
 ren in Plymouth. 
 
 21 
 
242 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 But before their emigration was com- 
 pleted, other men had followed on their 
 track. In 1629 and 1630 commenced those 
 settlements at Salem, Boston, and the neigh- 
 boring regions, that filled the State of Massa- 
 chusetts with a wealthy and powerful body 
 of colonists. The Plymouth settlers were 
 few in number, and feeble in resources ; 
 strong only in their brave hearts, their admi- 
 rable spirit, their indomitable energy, and 
 their firm faith in God. But it was their 
 honorable privilege to have opened the way, 
 and drawn all eyes after them. As early as 
 1623, a portion of the merchants who sym- 
 pathized with them, wrote to them thus: 
 " Let it not be grievous unto you that you 
 have been mstruments to break the ice for 
 others who come after with less difficulty. 
 The honor shall be yours to the world's end. 
 We bear you always in our breasts, and our 
 hearty affection is towards you all, as are 
 the hearts of hundreds who never saw your 
 
REST AT LAST. 243 
 
 faces^ who doubtless pray for your safety as 
 their own, as we ourselves both do and ever 
 shall, that the same God which hath so mar- 
 velously preserved you from seas, foes, and 
 famine, will still preserve you from all future 
 dangers, and make you honorable among 
 men and glorious in bliss at the last day." 
 The settlers of Salem distinctly state that 
 the tidings from the Plymouth men " occa- 
 sioned other men to take knowledge of the 
 place and to take it into consideration." 
 
 When, therefore, the oppressions that king 
 James laid upon the Puritans began to be 
 aggravated by his misguided son, Charles I., 
 and the fierce archbishop Laud, New Eng- 
 land was the place of rest to which at once 
 they turned their eyes. The Salem church 
 was immediately drawn into friendly rela- 
 tions to the Plymouth church; and when 
 Skelton and Higginson were ordained as 
 pastor and teacher at Salem, Governor Brad- 
 ford gave the right hand of fellowship. 
 
244 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 In their own church affairs the Plymouth 
 church met with much opposition from a 
 portion of the London merchants. Mr. 
 Robinson had expected soon to follow his 
 flock to America. Indeed he seems to have 
 remained behind with much reluctance. 
 Elder Brewster meanwhile was the preacher 
 to the Plymouth church ; but from some 
 scruples of his own and Mr. Robinson's, he 
 never administered baptism nor the Load's 
 Supper. But Robinson's coming, which was 
 dependant on the merchants who furnished 
 funds, was continually delayed. At length it 
 appeared that a strong and influential faction 
 of the merchants was resolutely bent on 
 giving an Episcopalian ministry to the little 
 church, or, at least, determined that such a 
 man as the Ley den pastor should not join 
 his flock. 
 
 It will be remembered how on the de- 
 parture of the Mayflower company, Mr. 
 Robinson had spoken of his earnest desire 
 
REST AT LAST. 245 
 
 " to have borne his part with them in their 
 first brunt," and of himself as held back by 
 " strong necessity," but having his '' better 
 part with them." The next year he writes 
 to them, " My most earnest desire is unto 
 you ; from whom I will not longer keep, (if 
 God will,) than means can be procured to 
 bring me with the wives and children of 
 divers of you, and the rest of your brethren, 
 whom I could not leave behind me without 
 great injury both to you and to them, and 
 offence to God and all men. The death of 
 so many of our dear friends and brethren, 
 oh ! how grievous hath it been to you to 
 bear, and to us to take knowledge of." 
 Eighteen months later the merchants apolo- 
 gize for the delay in sending " him on whom 
 you most depend ; " and in the beginning of 
 1624 they plainly inform the colonists that 
 there is a strong faction among them firmly 
 opposed to the coming of Mr. Robinson. 
 That faction send over a preacher, one John 
 
 21* 
 
246 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 Lyford, who at first ingratiates himself with 
 the church, but is soon found to be in corres- 
 pondence with the enemies of Robinson in 
 England, to prevent his coming, as well as 
 writing bitter slanders of the colony. Fur- 
 ther investigation proves him to be a man of 
 immoral life, and he is rejected from the 
 colony. 
 
 About this time Mr. Robinson begins to 
 be fully informed of the state of affairs, and 
 in December, 1G23, he writes to Bradford 
 that " our hopes of coming unto you are small, 
 and weaker than ever." He has discovered, 
 as he writes to Brewster at the same date, 
 that " five or six of the adventurers are 
 absolutely bent for us, above any others," 
 that the great body of them are " honestly- 
 minded and lovingly disposed towards us," 
 but so connected with certain " forward 
 preachers " as to be virtually controlled by 
 them ; and that " five or six of them are our 
 bitter professed adversaries," and unwilling 
 
REST AT LAST. 247 
 
 " that I of all others should be transported. 
 And for these adversaries, if they have but 
 half the wit to their malice, they will stop 
 my course when they see it intended, for 
 which this delaying serveth them very oppor- 
 tunely. And as one restive jade can hinder 
 by hanging back, more than two or three 
 can draw forward, so will it be in this case." 
 The whole letter seems almost entirely hope- 
 less in regard to his coming, and closes, 
 " Your God and ours, and the God of all 
 his, bring us together if it be his will, and 
 keep us in the meanwhile and always to his 
 glory, and make us serviceable to his majesty 
 and faithful to the end. Amen." 
 
 Robinson's prediction probably would have 
 been happily disappointed and he would 
 have been relieved from his " languishing 
 state," as he terms it, but the time was then 
 rapidly approaching for his journey to a 
 better country, even an heavenly. All that 
 is known of his peaceful end is contained in 
 
248 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 a letter from one of his bereaved flock at 
 Ley den. 
 
 " Loving and kind friends," writes Eoger 
 White to Governor Bradford and Elder 
 Brewster, April 28, 1625, "I know not 
 whether this will ever come to your hand, 
 or miscarry as other my letters have done ; 
 yet m regard of the Lord's dealings here, I 
 have had a great desire to write unto you, 
 knowing your desire to bear a part with us, 
 both in our joys and sorrows, as we do with 
 you. These are therefore to give you to 
 understand that it hath pleased the Lord to 
 take out of this vale of tears, your and our 
 loving and faithful pastor, and my dear and 
 Keverend brother, Mr. John Robinson, who 
 was sick some eight days. He began to be 
 sick on Saturday, in the morning, yet the 
 next day (being Lord's day) he taught us 
 twice. And so the week after he grew 
 weaker, every day more than other ; yet he 
 felt no pain but weakness all the time of 
 
RESTATLAST. , 249 
 
 his sickness. The physic he took wrought 
 kindly in man's judgment ; but he grew 
 weaker every day, feeling little or no pain, 
 and sensible to the very last. He fell sick 
 the 22d of February, and departed this life 
 the 1st of March. He had a continual in- 
 ward ague, yet free from infection, so that 
 all his friends came freely to him. And if 
 either prayers, tears or means could have 
 saved his life, he had not gone hence. But 
 he having faithfully finished his course, and 
 performed his work which the Lord had 
 appointed him here to do, now resteth with 
 the Lord in eternal happiness. We wanting 
 him and all church government, yet still by 
 the mercy of God continue and hold close 
 together, in peace and quietness; and so 
 hope we shall do, though we be very weak. 
 Wishing (if such were the will of God) that 
 you and we were again united together in 
 one either there or here ; but seeing it is 
 the will of the Lord thus to dispose of things, 
 
250 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 we must labor with patience to rest con- 
 tented till it pleases the Lord otherwise to 
 dispose.'' 
 
 " The Lord took him away," wrote 
 Thomas Blossom, another of his church, 
 " even as fruit falleth before it is ripe ; when 
 neither length of days nor infirmity of body 
 did seem to call for his end. . . . Alas, 
 you would fain have had him with you, and 
 he would as fain have come to you. Many 
 letters and much speech hath been about his 
 coming to you, but never any solid course 
 propounded for his going ; if the course pro- 
 pounded the last year had appeared to have 
 been certain, lie would have gone though 
 with two or three families. I know no man 
 among us knew his mind better than I did 
 about those things; he was loth to leave 
 the churcli, yet I know also that he would 
 have accepted the worst conditions which in 
 the largest extent of a good conscience could 
 
REST AT LAST. 251 
 
 be taken, to have come to you." But the 
 Lord had a better thing in store for him. 
 
 Twenty-seven days later died of the tertian 
 ague, James of England, who had "harried" 
 Robinson out of the land ; and about the 
 same time Robert Cushman died in Eng- 
 land, who, after the first panic at Southamp- 
 ton, had been the firm and useful friend of 
 the colony. 
 
 It pleased God to spare William Brewster 
 in good health to a very great age. He 
 shared all the toils and sufferings of his 
 brethren, in their days of darkness, with a 
 cheerful spirit. And afterwards so long as 
 he was able, he continued to " labor with his 
 hands in the fields," and " when the church 
 had no other minister, he taught twice on 
 every Sabbath and that both powerfully and 
 profitably." He lived to see other churches 
 formed all around, in Duxbury, Scituate, 
 Sandwich, Yarmouth, Barnstable, Marsh- 
 field and Taunton, and to witness the occu- 
 
252 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 pation of all the chief points in Massachusetts 
 and Connecticut by a powerful body of 
 settlers, who came direct from England, 
 blessed with a learned and able ministry. 
 Mather, and Cotton, and Hooker, and Dav- 
 enport, and Eliot, and their noble brethren 
 were here. More than fifty towns and 
 villages were settled ; and the confederacy 
 was forming between the four colonies of 
 Plymouth, Massachusetts, New Haven and 
 Connecticut. Brewster's son Jonathan, 
 destined for the ministry, had graduated at 
 Harvard University in 1642 ; and in the 
 year after this great joy, the old man passed 
 away to his rest. 
 
 " I am about to begin this year," writes 
 Governor Bradford in 1643, "with that 
 which was a matter of great sadness and 
 mourning unto them all. About the 18th 
 of April died their Reverend Elder, and my 
 dear and loving friend, Mr. William Brew- 
 ster ; a man that had done and suffered 
 
REST AT LAST. 253 
 
 much for the Lord Jesus and the gospel's 
 sake, and had borne his part in weal and 
 woe with this poor, persecuted church, above 
 thirty-six years in England, Holland, and in 
 this wilderness, and done the Lord and them 
 faithful service in his place and calling. 
 And notwithstanding the many troubles and 
 sorrows he passed through, the Lord upheld 
 him to a great age. He was near fourscore 
 years of age (if not all out) when he died. 
 He had this blessing added by the Lord to 
 all the rest, to die in his bed, in peace, in 
 the midst of his friends, who mourned and 
 wept over him, and ministered what help 
 and comfort they could unto him, and he 
 again re-comforted them whilst he could. 
 His sickness was not long, and to the last 
 day thereof he did not wholly keep his bed. 
 His speech continued till somewhat more 
 than half a day, and then failed him ; and 
 about nine or ten o'clock that evening he 
 died, without any pangs at all. A few hours 
 
 22 
 
254 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 before, he drew his breath short, and some 
 minutes before his last, he drew his breath 
 long, as a man fallen into a sound sleep 
 without any pangs or gaspings, and so 
 sweetly departed this life unto a better.'' 
 
 A large number of those who passed 
 through the hardships of the first winter and 
 sprhig lived to a good old age. God per- 
 mitted them to witness the fruits of their 
 self-denials and sufferings before he called 
 them away. Thirty of them were spared for 
 thirty years. Twelve of them were Hving 
 sixty years after the landing; and one of 
 them, Mary AUerton, the widow of Robert 
 Cushman's son Thomas, was living seventy- 
 eight years from that memorable time. 
 
 Standish, Winslow, Allerton and Bradford 
 lived till Cromwell was fairly seated on the 
 throne of the Tudors and the Stuarts, and 
 perfect religious toleration was established 
 for a time in England. Then at a good old 
 age they dropped away within four or five 
 
REST AT LAST. 255 
 
 years of each other. In 1655 Edward 
 Winslow died at sea, at the age of sixty 
 years. He had been a most honored and 
 useful member of the new Commonwealth, 
 and a trusted agent in its affairs abroad. 
 His estate in Marshfield became, in later 
 years, the favorite country seat of Daniel 
 Webster. The next year Standish "fell 
 asleep in the Lord," at his home in Duxbury 
 — a place that was named by him for his old 
 ancestral home in England. He was more 
 than seventy years of age. 
 
 The ensuing year Bradford followed his 
 ancient comrades. For thirty-one years he 
 had been the honored Governor of the 
 colony, — ^liaving been excused for five years 
 only after the death of Carver, and that upon 
 his own urgent request. For several months 
 his health was infirm and failing, till in May, 
 1657, he was seized with acute disease. The 
 last night but one of his life, his mind was 
 so enraptured by contemplations upon re- 
 
256 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 ligious truth and the hopes of futurity, that 
 he said to his friends in the morning, " The 
 good Spirit of God has given me a pledge of 
 my happiness in another world, and the first 
 fruits of eternal glory." And he passed 
 to his rest, greatly lamented throughout 
 New England. 
 
 Thirteen years longer lingered his widow, 
 Alice Southworth Bradford. She had fled 
 with her father to Holland, probably at the 
 age of seventeen ; had shared all the joys 
 and sorrows of the colony at Plymouth 
 except those of the first eighteen months; 
 and now passed to her rest at the ripe age 
 of eighty years. Her life had been one of 
 exemplary activity and great usefulness; 
 and her memory left a long traditional 
 fragrance in the colony. Inside the cover 
 of the recently discovered manuscript of her 
 husband's history, some affectionate hand, 
 long since mouldered to dust, pasted a copy 
 of rude verses on " the life and death of that 
 
REST AT LAST. 257 
 
 godly matron, Mistress Alice Bradford," 
 narrating her history, commemorating 
 
 " Her holy, blessed, heavenly example," 
 
 and lamenting the gradual dropping away 
 of those elder saints : — 
 
 "'Tis sad to see our houses dispossessed 
 Of holy saints, whose memory is blest ; 
 When they decease, and closed are in tomb. 
 There's few or none that rises in their room, 
 That's like to them in holiness and grace — 
 Which makes our times look with so sad a face. 
 Her glass is run, her work is done, and she 
 Is happy unto all eternity." 
 
 Thus one by one they disappeared from 
 the earth. The last of the Mayflower pas- 
 sengers lived till there were a hundred and 
 thirty churches, and more than a hundred 
 thousand inhabitants in New England ; till 
 two editions of Eliot's Indian Bible had been 
 printed, and thirty Indian churches had been 
 
 22* 
 
258 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 formed in Massachusetts, with about " three 
 thousand praying Indians." 
 
 In looking back on the history of that 
 memorable band, the chief thing that im- 
 presses us is their firm, cheerful faith in 
 God. That was their light, and their 
 strength. They had little else. They were 
 few ; they were poor ; they had little influ- 
 ence ; they were without friends ; they had 
 no men of renown to lead them on. Never, 
 since the days of the apostles, perhaps, did a 
 feebler band lead off a greater enterprise. 
 Never did an enterprise seem to human eyes 
 more absolutely hedged with difficulties at 
 every step. It is worth studying for the 
 very purpose of seeing over what obstacles 
 and through whatever impending defeat all 
 those momentous movements were carried 
 on. At each step the way seemed shut 
 before them ; and the only light they had 
 came from their calm assurance that God 
 
REST AT LAST. 259 
 
 would take care of them so long as they 
 walked the plain path of duty. Never were 
 men more confiding in God, and never did 
 men more fully own his hand in every daily 
 mercy. *They " sought direction " from him 
 before every decision. They returned thanks 
 to him for every mercy. They believed in 
 a daily providence that gave them daily 
 bread, and saved their lives from the Indian 
 arrows, and poured out the rain on their 
 withering crops, and numbered the very 
 hairs of their head. And they felt safe 
 because they knew God was with them. 
 " They rested on his Providence," say they, 
 " and knew whom they believed." 
 
 Look at their continual frustrations and 
 discouragements. Twice baffled in the at- 
 tempt to leave England, with much loss of 
 property and distress. Forced again to 
 sacrifice their worldly prospects for spiritual 
 peace, by quitting Amsterdam. Oppressed 
 with penury at Ley den, and worn out with 
 
260 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 perpchial solicitudes. Met with dismal ap- 
 prehensions on the first proposal to seek 
 another home. Too poor to plant the colony 
 they decide upon, and obliged to submit to 
 the most forbidding terms. Frustrated in 
 their efforts to obtain a pledge of toleration, 
 and again obliged "herein to rest upon God's 
 providence." Delayed by bickerings in the 
 Plymouth company till the zeal of the mer- 
 chants was cooled off. Left in such uncer- 
 tainty that six weeks before they sailed, 
 neither money nor vessels were pro^^ded for 
 their transportation. Ill-equipped, at last. 
 Incurring the anger of the chief merchant 
 adventurer on the eve of their sailing. 
 Wasting precious time and scanty provisions, 
 in vexatious delays on the English coast, and 
 obliged at last to part with the vessel they 
 had bought for the use of their new home. 
 Setting sail amid predictions of utter defeat 
 from their chief agent in England, himself 
 declining to share their fate. Failing to 
 
REST AT LAST. 261 
 
 reach their destination, and landed in mid- 
 winter on a bleak shore, with disaffection 
 muttering among them, and a selfish crew 
 anxious to get rid of them. Then came the 
 forlorn task of founding a settlement amid 
 the frosts of winter, and under continual 
 apprehension of the savages. Then followed 
 the heart-sickening calamity that laid low 
 one-half their number. New settlers came 
 to increase their numbers, but to diminish 
 their supplies. Tidings occasionally came 
 across the waters, of trouble and opposition 
 in the London company. A reckless band 
 exhausted their provisions and endangered 
 their existence. Then came the famine. 
 
 But amid all these things their faith never 
 failed. When extinction seemed to come 
 and look in their faces, they never lost con- 
 fidence in God. They felt that they had 
 forsaken God; and again they drew near to 
 him with agonizing prayer. And then their 
 sorrow was turned into great and exceeding 
 
262 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 joy. The Lord heard them — and they said, 
 let his holy " name be blessed and praised 
 now and forevermore." It was a simple, 
 confiding, daily faith, that saw God in every 
 thing, that laid hold of his hand, and 
 " walked with God." It was well expressed 
 at Leyden when in reply to all the difficul- 
 ties foreseen and admitted, they simply said, 
 " Our ends are good and honorable, our 
 calling lawful and urgent, and therefore we 
 may expect the blessing of God in our pro- 
 ceeding. Yea, though we should lose our 
 lives in this action, yet we may have comfort 
 in so doing ; and our endeavors will be 
 honorable." 
 
 Nothing but such a faith was adequate to 
 such an enterprise. Any other spirit would 
 have completely failed. Wlien the May- 
 flower returned to England after the first 
 winter's terrible mortality, no one proposed 
 to return in her. Just one hundred and 
 one years before saw the fleet of Cortez, by 
 
REST AT LAST. 263 
 
 order of the commander, burned and sunk 
 in the harbor of Vera Cruz, to shut himself 
 and his army in Mexico. It has been re- 
 corded as one of the most daring deeds in 
 the history of the world. Yet though they 
 were nigh seven hundred strong, able-bodied 
 men, all armed to the teeth, it required all 
 the address of their general to save him from 
 the despairing vengeance of his soldiers. 
 But here was a little band of fifty, including 
 women and children, still weak from sick- 
 ness, living in their mud-plastered log-huts, 
 with their dead sleeping behind them all 
 hidden in the bank, and the wilderness and 
 the savages before them, quietly watching 
 the breaking of the last bond that bound 
 them to their native land. There must have 
 been tearful eyes that followed those white 
 sails disappearing in the distant blue. But 
 there were stout hearts beneath, that turned 
 resolutely and cheerfully to their lot. 
 
264 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 The lesson is worth pondering both by the 
 young and by the old, to see through what 
 continual and seemingly insuperable obsta- 
 cles, great and good things are accomplished, 
 and how they that will do good in this world 
 must often walk by faith, and not by sight. 
 And the inner history of a great multitude 
 of achievements for the cause of Christ 
 would teach the same lesson. 
 
 For, how wonderfully God was working 
 with these humble men, and even by these 
 adverse events, to accomplish a noble work. 
 These men thought only of doing their duty 
 in a very humble way. They had no grand 
 schemes in mind. They never even dreamed, 
 to the day of their death, what a work they 
 had begun. They felt that they owed some- 
 thing to their children, to themselves, and to 
 their Master in heaven ; and they went 
 quietly and trustfully about their Fatlier's 
 business. They did not at the time under- 
 stand the way in which God was leading 
 
REST AT LAST. 265 
 
 them. The persecution that drove them 
 from England, no doubt they felt to be an 
 unmitigated hardship. The time spent in 
 Holland may have seemed to them lost time. 
 The difficulties that delayed their expedition, 
 and the poverty that cramped it, were a sore 
 trial to them. The delays in England, the 
 loss of the Speedwell, the trouble with the 
 merchants, they would gladly have been 
 spared. The sickness and famine were a 
 dark visitation. But God's hand was hi all 
 these things. They would not have left 
 England except as they were driven out. 
 The residence in Holland was a necessary 
 preparation for their further work; it 
 enlarged their views, bound them together, 
 inured them to hardships and made them 
 willing to undertake the distant expedition. 
 All the delays and difficulties that made the 
 enterprise most forbidding, sifted their num- 
 ber, and left the choice seed alone. The 
 sorrows and trials of the first settlement not 
 
 23 
 
266 THE PILGRIM CHURCH. 
 
 only kept them near to God, but shut them 
 up from all intrusion, and left them to work 
 out their experiment unmolested. And at 
 every step of their winding way, when tlie 
 path before appeared at its end, God always 
 unfolded it as they went on. Hill after hill 
 seemed to shut down across their track ; but 
 whenever they reached the spot, the way 
 went winding on among the hills. Some- 
 times it was only at the last moment that * 
 the obstruction was removed. Sometimes it 
 was done in the common course of events ; 
 at others, by such unexpected methods as 
 powerfully to enforce their views of a special 
 providence. 
 
 And thus step by step, through perplexi- 
 ties and trials, and difficulties and opposi- 
 tion, God led them on and they humbly 
 followed, till tlieir noble work was done. 
 So shall it be with every high achievement. 
 It is not done in dream-land, amid flowers 
 and sunshine and luxury and applause ; but 
 
REST AT LAST. 267 
 
 ill the hard prose scenes of daily life, with 
 struggling and weariness, and self-denial, 
 and many a discouragement. But toil and 
 faith and patience, with the blessing of God, 
 will make their mark. 
 
 " Trust in the Lord and do good ; so shalt 
 thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt 
 be fed. Delight thyself also in the Lord; 
 and he shall give thee the desires of thine 
 heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord; 
 trust also in him, and he shall bring it to 
 pass." 
 
 THE END^^^^x? 
 
 
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