Cl3- oio

^m

HOMES AND HAUNTS

OF THE

PILGRIM FATHERS

**I,

HOMES AND HAUNTS

OF THE

PILGRIM FATHERS

ALEXANDER MACKENNAL, D.D.
Secretary of the International Congregational Council of 1891, and President of
the Free Church Council of England and Wales, 1899
Author of " 7"^!? English Separatists," etc.

Mitb (toIoure& ^frontispiece anb IRinetMbree JUustrations

FROM OKIGINAL DRAWINGS AND PHOTOGRAPHS BY

CHARLES WHYMPER

LONDON
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY
Philadelphia: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
1899

PRINTED BY
HAZELL, WATSON, AND VINEV, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.

f;/ ¦. :\!

VLIET CANAL, GOING TOWARDS DELFT.

PREFACE

HE purpose of this book is to present to the
reader, by means of a series of carefully planned
illustrations, buildings, places, objects, and portraits
in England and Holland indubitably associated with
the Pilgrim Fathers. The artist's purpose has
been to reproduce, wherever possible, structures
and objects of interest which it is practically certain
that the Pilgrim Fathers must have themselves seen, and representations of
the towns and villages where they are known to have resided, and the
buildings where they undoubtedly worshipped. The local views have been
chosen mainly with reference to those features of landscape which are
to-day much the same as they were in the seventeenth century.

PREFACE
No work on this subject in recent years has appeared, illustrated in
the style or in the profusion of examples contained in this volume.
Drawings are given from Scrooby, Austerfield, Boston, Gainsborough, York,
Plymouth, Standish Hall and Duxbury Hall, Southampton, and Cambridge,
in England. Buildings and places in Holland associated with the Churches
at Leyden and Amsterdam have been reproduced, either from drawings
or from original photographs taken expressly for use in this work.
Dr. Mackennal is responsible for the bulk of the letterpress :
viz. Chapters I. to IV. inclusive, and also Chapters VIII. and IX.
Chapters V. and VI. were written by the Editor, and Chapters VII.,
X., and XI. by Mr. Charles Whymper.

NEARING BOSTON.

THE SPOT WHERE THE MAYFLOWER LAY ON THE BAR3ICAN, PLYMOUTH.

GAINSBOROUGH

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

13

CHAPTER n
WILLIAM BREWSTER AND THE CHURCH AT SCROOBY

3'

CHAPTER HI
AUSTERFIELD, THE HOME OF GOVERNOR BRADFORD

49

CONTENTS

CHAPTER IV PAGE
MVLES STANDISH AND THE STANDISH COUNTRY ... 66

CHAPTER V
BOSTON .... . . . . .86

CHAPTER VI
CAMBRIDGE AND CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE .... -99

CHAPTER VII
^VISBECH, THE TOWN OF DOROTHY MAY . . . . . .Ill

CHAPTER VIII
HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON . . . . . . . . -119
CHAPTER IX
DELFSHAVEN AND FAREWELL WORDS ...... . I54
CHAPTER X
SOUTHAMPTON ..•¦•• ¦ ¦ I?'

CONTENTS

PLYMOUTH

CHAPTER XI

I' AGE

SCROOBY CHURCH.

COLOLTRED PLATE

GENERAL VIEW OF SCROOBY

Frontispiece

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT
VLIET CANAL, GOING TOWARDS DELFT . ...
NEARING BOSTON . . . ....
THE SPOT WHERE THE ilAYFLOWER LAY ON THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH
SCROOBY CHURCH .... . . .
THE OLD CITY WALLS, SOUTHAMPTON
THE OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH
GAINSBOROUGH OLD HALL
GAINSBOROUGH OLD HALL (eNd) ....
ORIEL WINDOW, OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH
THE OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH
COMING UP THE RIVER TO BOSTON
ANCIENT CARVINGS IN SCROOBY CHURCH .
SITE OF PALACE, SCROOBY
SCROOBY FROM THE ROAD TO GAINSBOROUGH
INSIDE THE SCROOBY STABLE .
COMMUNION-RAILS, SCROOBY CHURCH
SITE OF THE STOCKS, SCROOBY CHURCHYARD
SCROOBY MANOR-HOUSE ....
GOVERNOR Bradford's house, austerfield .
AUSTERFIELD CHAPEL

PAGE V
vi
vii ix
.xiv 12 13
17
2024
28
3°31
33
35
40
4246 48 53

ILL USTRA TIONS
PAGE
THE OLD FONT, AUSTERFIELD . . 59
THE CELLAR IN THE BRADFORD HOUSE . 63
VANE OF STANDISH CHURCH . . 65
STANDISH ARMS . . 66
STANDISH CHAPEL . . 67
STANDISH CROSS . . 71
STANDISH CHURCH (iNTERIOr) . 75
PORCH OF STANDISH CHURCH . 77
DUXBURY HALL . . -79
SLAB TO THE MEMORY OF JAMES STANDISH . 82
THE STOCKS, STANDISH 82
STANDISH HALL 83
STANDISH CHURCH 85
BOSTON STUMP AND MARKET-PLACE 86
THE COTTON LIBRARY, BOSTON . 87
OLD WOODEN DOOR, BOSTON CHURCH 90
cotton's PULPIT, BOSTON CHURCH . . . 9 1
BOSTON STUMP FROM THE WASH 93
THE OLD KITCHEN, GUILDHALL, BOSTON . . 94
THE OLD POOR-HOUSE, BOSTON . . . . . 95
AN OLD BOOK IN THE LIBRARY AT BOSTON ... 96
THE INNER QUADRANGLE, CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE, SHEWING THE TOWER OF ST. BENEDICT'S 98
PETERHOUSE FROM THE FELLOWS' GARDEN . . 99
THE INNER COURT, CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE . . TOO
A BIT OF THE OLD COURT IN CORPUS, CAMBRIDGE . 102
THE TOWER OF ST. BENEDICT'S CHURCH FROM CORPUS . 1 03
THE INTERIOR OF ST. BENEDICT'S CHURCH . 1 04
THE PORCH OF THE OLD ROUND CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE . I05
THE CHAPEL, PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE I06
OLD HOUSES ON CASTLE HILL, IN CAMBRIDGE I07
THE OLD PORCH, ST. BENEDICT'S CHURCH . I08
THE ROSE AND CROWN INN, WISBECH . no

ILU'STRATIONS
PAGE
OLD HOUSES IN MARKET MEWS, WISBECH III
THE BELFRV, GRAMMAR SCHOOL, WISBECH ... .112
THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL, WISBECH . . . II -^
A BIT OF WISBECH . . . . . . II4
STATUE IN WISBECH CHURCH, DATE 1630 . . . 115
OLD SIGN, THE HORN AND PHEASANT, WISBECH ... 116
A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY HOUSE IN LEYDEN . . I 18
VIEW ON VLIET CANAL, LOOKING TOWARDS LEYDEN . . I20
A VIEW AT THE HAGUE . . . . . 122
A HOLLAND CANAL . I2C
H00(; STRAAT, LEYDEN . . . . . 128
AN ORPHANAGE, LEYDEN . . I30
THE ACADEMY, LEYDEN . . 1 33
ALMSHOUSE, SITE OF ROBINSON'S HOUSE, LEYDEN . . . 135
ROMAN CASTLE AT LEYDEN . . . -137
THE ACADEMY, LEYDEN . -^39
CHAPEL IN ST. ANNE's ALMSHOUSE, LEYDEN . . 140
HOOGLANDER CHURCH (ST. PANCRAS), LEYDEN . . . 145
ST. PETER's CHURCH, FROM BELL LANE SIDE, LEYDEN . I48
SCHOOL ON ST. PETER's CHURCH CANAL, LEYDEN .
OLD DELFT AND OUDE KERK ,
NIEUWE KERK, DELFT ..... . • . 1 60
STADHUIS, DELFT ... . . . 161
THE TABLET WHICH MARKS THE SITE OF JOHN ROBINSON'S HOUSE IN LEYDEN 165
ON THE CUSTOMS HOUSE, BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH . 1 68
FACSIMILE OF A MAP OF SOUTHAMPTON, DATED i6tI . I70
SOUTHAMPTON (from AN EARLY PRINT) . 171
NORMAN FIREPLACE IN KING JOHN'S PALACE, SOUTHAMPTON . 1 73
THE WEST GATE, SOUTHAMPTON . 1 75
THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH 182
THE BARBICAN FROM COXSIDE . . 1 83
COTTAGE BUILT ON THE OLD CITY WALL, PLYMOUTH . 187

149
155

ILL USTRA TLONS

THE MAYFLOWER STONE ... . .
THE .MAYFLOWER TABLET IN THE WALL, PLYMOUTH
PLYMOUTH PRIESTEN HOUSE ...
A BIT BEHIND THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH
OLD PALACE, ST. ANDREw'S STREET, PLYMOUTH
THE DOORWAY IN THE PRIESTEN HOUSE, PLYMOUTH
PLYMOUTH SOUND, LOOKING TO MOUNT EDGCUMBE
THE OLD CHAPEL, PLYMOUTH .
IN A STREET BEHIND THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH

PAGE i88 189
191193 194195197 198

THE OLD CITY WALLS, SOUTHAMPTON.

THE OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH.

-¦ J--^^, —
GAINSBOROUGH IJLD HALL.

CHAPTER I
GAINSBOROUGH
' By the margin, \villow-veiled,
Glide the heavy barges trailed
By slow horses.'
N the twenty-ninth day of June, eighteen hundred
and ninety-six, the town of Gainsborough-on-
the-Trent was the scene of an incident unique
in itself and of some historical interest. The
Hon. T. F. Bayard, Ambassador from the United
States to the Court of St. James, came down
from London to lay the memorial-stone of a

church bearing the following inscription :-
13

14 GAINSBOROUGH
TO THE
GLORY OF GOD
THIS STONE, IN MEMORY OF
JOHN ROBINSON, PASTOR AND EXILE,
WAS LAID ON JUNE 29, 1896,
BY THE HON. T. F. BAYARD,
AMBASSADOR IN ENGLAND
OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.
The people of Gainsborough knew the importance conferred on them
by this event ; they knew that an ambassador is second in public rank
only to the ruler of the country in which for the time he is living ;
that Mr. Bayard represented the dignity of the American Republic ; and
they gave themselves loyally to welcome him. The District Council
received him in front of the town-hall ; the Lord Lieutenant of the
County of Lincoln spoke heartily at a public luncheon ; the town was
decked out for a festival ; many persons had come from a distance to join
in the ceremony of the stone-laying ; and a company of Americans, who
were going from one spot to another in Europe associated with the Pilgrim
Fathers, made a visit to Gainsborough part of their programme.
It was rather a critical time when this group of Englishmen and
Americans drew together. The Venezuela trouble, which might have led
to hostilities between the two nations, was not yet settled ; and all were
anxious to speak words that should conduce to a peaceful ending. When
the Lord Lieutenant quoted the words used by Mr. Lowell, at a banquet
following the competition of American and English riflemen at Wimbledon, —
' If ever the riflemen of both nations should be fated to meet in battle,
may God grant that the rifles of both nations may be turned in the
same direction ! ' — every one present joined in the aspiration. The ambassador
had won ' golden opinions from all sorts of men ' ; he was known to be

GA INSB OR O UGH 1 5
of high character, generous demeanour, intellectual culture, and considerate
of others ; he was a friend of England as well as an American citizen.
His visit was one of the happy incidents which have bound the two nations
together in close friendship.
Mr. Bayard's supreme interest was in the particular ceremony that he had
come to perform. His choicest words were spoken when he laid the stone,
talking of the Christian Church whose call had brought him there, and of
John Robinson to whose memory the place of worship was being erected.
Mr. Bayard was not a Puritan ; nor did his political associations unite him
with all the Americans who were that day in Gainsborough. A private
letter, written by him just before he left England, contains the following
sentences : ' Although I responded readily and with sincere desire to pay
respect to Pastor John Robinson, yet I was not unaware that in New
England there were many of Puritan descent who would have preferred
another orator. Nevertheless, I am not able to believe that any one with a
mind more single, and more anxious to honour the true servant of God,
John Robinson, could have stood and spoken at the corner-stone of the
Memorial Church in Gainsborough than he who undertook the duty.' It
was his modesty which made him feel thus. American Republicans and
Democrats joined with English Nonconformists in hearty sympathy, as he
drew the lessons of large religious toleration inculcated by Robinson, at a
time when both the Separatists and their opponents made the tolerant
spirit very difficult. As an American citizen Mr. Bayard was grateful to
recall the train of providential circumstances which placed John Robinson
among the founders of the Pilgrim Commonwealth — the fathers of the
great American people, whose dwelling-place, although he longed to share
it, he died without beholding.
John Robinson's place in the religious history of England and America
is assured ; he is honourably remembered in the annals of the city and the
university of Leyden ; his beautiful character appears in his writings, and

i6 GAINSBOROUGH
in the loving remembrance of him cherished by his two friends William
Bradford and Edward Winslow, the able governors of the Plymouth Colony.
What we know of him makes us wish to know more. His personality has
emerged, placid and victorious, out of the controversies of the stormy
seventeenth century. But no portrait of him remains : we may sometimes
think we see an expression reminding us of what he might have been
like in the faces of some of his descendants, but a composite Robinson
photograph would be a perilous experiment. We should like to be sure
that he has been identified with John Robinson, Fellow of Christ College,
Cambridge, in 1598; for then we should think it highly probable that he
was a native of Gainsborough. Bradford leaves it uncertain if he was a
member of the Separatist Church in that town, constituted in 1602. What
is known is that he went to Holland as a member of the Scrooby Church,
and that that community was connected with the Church in Gainsborough.
Probably the Scrooby Separatists were at first one fellowship with those of
Gainsborough, coming weekly along the road of fourteen miles which still
exists, and crossing the Trent by ferry. We know this, and it is enough.
The spiritual succession, so much more significant than the biographic
details, is established ; and it is well done to have gratefully associated a
Church in Gain.sborough, of the order of government he loved, with John
Robinson's name.
Pilgrims to Gainsborough ought to come to it by the road from Scrooby.
They will be in the footsteps of Robinson and Bradford and Brewster ; and
the mind will be full of them, striving to understand ' the burden of the
Lord ' which was upon them, as the men of the village went to share their
anxieties with the men of the town. It is an old-fashioned road, winding
between hedges and under trees, bordered by strips of grass, greener and
more loved by cattle than the grass of the meadows ; it is untouched by
the railway, which thrusts itself on the eye in every other road leading
to the town. The tower of the parish church grows on the view, a Gothic

GAINSBOROUGLI

17

structure two hundred years older than the Pilgrims, although the body of
the church is modern. There, too, is the Trent, always the same, coming
down from the moorlands of Staffordshire, not so clean as it was before
Burslem and Burton and Nottingham became the crowded manufacturing
towns they now are, but keeping its old easy flow, which is broken at times

GAINSBOROUGH OLD HALL (END),

by the ' eagre,' the tidal bore that rushes up destructively, and must have
made the ferry-crossing very risky. The bridge is new, but lovers of the
picturesque forget both the newness and the toll as they look on the cluster
of houses bordering the river. George Eliot's description is exact, when
from this point you see ' the town of St. Ogg's — that venerable town with
the red-fluted roofs and the broad warehouse gables, where the black ships
unlade themselves of their burthens from the far north, and carry away, in

1 8 G A INSB OR O UGH
exchange, the precious inland products, the well-crushed cheese and the soft
fleeces, which my refined readers have doubtless become acquainted with
through the medium of the best classical pastorals.'
George Eliot goes on, with an aesthetic accuracy which leaves you
perfectly content to have no descriptive details: ' It is one of those old, old
towns which impress one as a continuation and outgrowth of nature, as
much as the nests of the bower-birds or the winding galleries of the white
ants : a town which carries the traces of its long growth and history like a
millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot between
the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legions turned
their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the long-haired sea-kings
came up the river and looked with fierce, eager eyes at the fatness of the
land. It is a town " familiar with forgotten years." ' Yes ; Gainsborough
is all that — picturesque, dreamy, quaint ; but not as you come to it by rail.
Then you see the smoke, and hear the din of driving wheels and revolving
shafts and clashing doors ; and your eyes are blinded to the past, and your
ears do not take in the silence of bygone centuries. Gainsborough is three
towns in one. From the market-place, which unites them all, the town
expands to the railway, concentrates itself toward the river, and along the
roads, where the neat villas of the lorosperous tradesmen are, it steps out
leisurely into the country. It is a curious, even a mysterious, town ; not
striking, but interesting, with an interest which grows ; in the general absence
of buildings of monumental antiquity, you wonder that it should look so old ;
you search for beauty, which you do not discover, and your eye is caught
by some bit of domestic picturesqueness or venerable age. There are soft,
low hills about it, with the shadow of trees, and green patches that look
up meekly through the smoky air. But you will not find the charm and
the rest if you tarry where the ' works ' are ; you must make your way to
the Trent. There is the old Gainsborough — the dreamy town, in some
places not too clean ; there the sloops and schooners still come up, and
the barges still come down ; there is the source of the modest wealth and

GAINSBOROUGH 19
tranquil industries which made a centre to which it was worth the railway's
while to come. And there, too, is the town with which is associated the
name of John Robinson ; to which Bradford brought his cheeses and his
wools ; to which Brewster may have resorted, occasionally, on a market-
day, if he wanted to buy or sell a horse, and could not transact his business
without crossing the Trent.
There is in Gainsborough one noble relic of antiquity, — the manor-
house ; or, as it is now called, the Old Hall. George Eliot describes this,
too, with accuracy of observation and sympathetic insight : 'It was the
Normans who began to build that fine old hall, which is like the town,
telling of the thoughts and hands of widely sundered generations ; but it is
all so old that we look with loving pardon at its inconsistencies, and are well
content that they who built the stone oriel, and they who built the Gothic
facade and towers of finest small brickwork with the trefoil ornament, and
the windows and battlements defined with stone, did not sacrilegiously pull
down the ancient half-timbered body with its oak-roofed banqueting hall.'
In Stark's History of Gainsborough we have a more careful architectural
account of the erection : ' The front of the Old Hall is principally
constructed of large oak timber framing, forming three sides of a
quadrangle, open to the south ; but the back part of the building is gene
rally of brickwork.' ' On the north side there is part of a very beautiful
pointed stone structure, which probably was originally intended for a chapel.
. . . This chapel was probably executed by Richard de Gaynisburgh,
a distinguished mason, who flourished about the end of the fourteenth
century, and was much employed in repairing and beautifying the
cathedral at Lincoln, in the east end of which he was buried.' ' Sir
Thomas Burgh, temp. Henry VI. and Edward IV., appears to have
bestowed considerable pains in re-building the Manor House, as the greater
part of it seems to be of the style of architecture then beginning
to be in use. The tower, at the north-west end, about eighty feet in
height, is built entirely of brick, and finished in a most masterly manner,

20

GAIN SB OR O UGH

the bricks being all well smoothed, and excellently joined. The trefoil
ornament is here very conspicuous ; and the whole bears evident marks
of the utmost care and attention having been bestowed upon it.'
We owe very much to
these restorers and beautifiers
of the older time ; we recognise
how much we owe them when
we see what destruction the
architectural self-consciousness
of our own century works on
the remains of antiquity. The
plasterers and whitewashers of
the Georgian period covered
up much beautiful building, but
at least they leit it for us to
unveil ; many of our recent
enthusiasts have destroyed pre
cious work for the sake of
uniformity in style. In this
Old Hall of Gainsborough,
timber and brick and stone,
Gothic and Tudor and English
domestic work, blend in an
exquisite harmony, as gTatit\-ing
to the eye as it is full of
historical suggestion.
When the Separatists were
forming their Church, the hall
was inhabited by a family ol marked Puritan traditions. William Hickman,
afterward made Sir William Hickman, by James I., at Belvoir Castle, bought
the manor of Lord Burgh in 1596; and he lived in the manor-house until

ORIEL WINDOW, OLD HALL, GAINSIJn

GAINSBOROUGH 2i
his death in 1625. These Hickmans were a noteworthy race, strong and
enterprising men, some of them distinguished for their piety. We should
not have guessed them to be Normans from their name ; but the historian
relates the tradition that they came into England with the Conqueror. Their
genealogical record begins with 1272, when Robert Hickman was lord of
the manors of Bloxam and Wickham, in the county of Oxford. They served
the Kings of England in the Army, about the Court, and in Parliament,
some of the younger sons becoming traders in London. They acquired
the manor of Woodford Hall, in Essex, early in the fifteenth century.
Walter, the grandfather of Sir William, is mentioned as a benefactor of
churches in Northamptonshire.
Sir William Hickman's father was Anthony, a London merchant. His
mother was Rose Lock, daughter of a mercer in London, and heiress to her
mother, Catherine Coke. There is preserved at Thonock Grove, a house
about two miles out of Gainsborough, to which the family removed in the
middle of the last century, a manuscript written by this lady, from which
we gather that she added force of character and religious devotion to the
already well-endowed Hickmans. Its title reads thus : —
' Certaine old stories, recorded by an aged gentlewoman, a time
before her death, to be perused by her children and her posterity.
Written by her, w'^ her owne hand, in the 85"' yeere of her age, and
about the yeere of our Lord 1620' (the year in which the Mayflower
was ploughing her way across the Atlantic).
She begins with a reference to her father and mother. Of her father
she finds this story in Hollinshed's Ckronicle : —
' In the 25th yere of King Henry 8, being the yeere of o' Lord 1534,
at the sute of the ladye Katherine, dowager, a curse was sent from the
pope, which cursed both the king and the realme. This curse was set vp

2 2 G A INSB OR 0 UGH
in the towne of Dunkirk, in Flanders ; for the bringer thereof durst no
neerer approach, where it was taken down by Mr. Lock, of London,
mercer.' ' For y' act y" king gave him loo'' a yeere, and made him a gent of
his privye chamber, and he was the king's mercer, and his ma''' vouchsafed
to dine at his house. Moreov'' he was knighted, although he was
never maior, but only sherief of London, and so was never any London""
before him.
' I remember y' I have heard my father say, that when he was a
yong merchant, and used to go beyond sea, Oueene Ann Boloin, y' was
mother to o" late Oueene Elizabeth, caused him to get her y= gospells and
epistles, written in parchment in French, together with the psalmes.
' My mother, in the dayes of King Henry the 8th, came to some light
of the gospel, by meanes of some english books, sent privately to her by
one of my father's factors, from beyond sea : whereupon she used to call
me w"' my 2 sisters, into her chamber, to read to us out of the same
good books, very privately, for fear of troble, bicause those good books
were then accounted hereticall ; and a merch' named Paginter, who used
to bring english bybles from beyond sea, was slaine w"" a gun as he went
in the streete. — Therefore my mother charged us to say nothing of her
reading to us, for fear of troble.'
Proud as Rose Lock was of her father and mother, Mrs. Anthonv
Hickman was quite as proud of her husband. We see this in her
statements that, before he married her, he was worth _;^i,ooo by his books,
' y' were examined by my father's appointment ' ; that he and her brother
were merchant venturers, and had ships of their own, ' and did make
divers voyages into farre countries, some of which voyages were of such
note and fame, as they are spetially recorded by Mr. Richard Hackluit ' ;
and that ' it pleased God to blesse and prosper well their adventures, and
though thereby their riches did increase, yet they did not set their harts
uppon them ' ; but used their wealth for the relief of godly preachers.

GAINSBOROUGH 23
' some of whom did afterward suffer martirdom in Oueene Mary's days ' ;
and among them she specially mentions the martyr Bishop Hooper, John
Foxe of the Book of Martyrs, and John Knox.
She soon had occasion to shew herself of as fine a fortitude as her
parents and husband. Though only a girl when Mary came to the throne,
she joined with her husband in sheltering persecuted Protestants, and in
holding religious services in her house, at which the Communion of the
Lord's Supper was partaken of When her husband, ' to drive away the
wicked days,' went to Antwerp, after a tedious imprisonment for Noncon
formity, she could not well go with him. A child was born soon after,
of whose baptism she naively writes : ' I sent to Oxford, to y*" Byshops,
(who were then and there in prison, and did afterwards suffer martirdom
there,) to be advised by y^", wheth' I might suffer my chylde to be baptized
after the popish manner ; who answered me, y' the sacrament of baptisme,
as it was used by the papists, was the least corrupted, (that is, less than
the other sacrament,) and therefore I might ; but therewithall, they said y' I
might have gone out of England before y' time, if I had done well : and
so my chylde was baptised by a popish priest ; but, bicause I would
avoide the popish stuff as much as I could, I did not put salt into the
handkerchief y' was to be delivered to the priest, at the baptisme ; but
put sugar in it, instead of salt.'
She joined her husband at Antwerp, where they thought themselves
safer than in England, not ' for any more liberty of the gospell given
there,' but because there were ' not parish churches but only cathedral,' and
it was not easily seen who came to church and who not. Another child
was born in Antwerp, who was preserved from popish baptism by a pretty
evasion. ' Whereas, it is the custom there, to hang at the streete doore,
when a woman lyeth in, a little peece of lawne : it was so, y' our house
opened into two streetes, therefore I hanged forth a peece of lawne uppon
either side or doore, to y'= end, y' the neighbours, on either side, might
suppose that it went out at the other doore, to be baptised.'

24

GAINSBOROUGH

At last deliverance came by the death of Queen Mary, ' which was not
a little joyful to me to heare of; for during the tyme of her tyrannous
reigne, I had often prayed earnestly to God, to take either her or me forth
of the world. In all which time,' she concludes, ' I never was present at
any of the popish masses, or any other of their idolatrous service, for all
which blessings and deliverances, sent to me from my good God, I most

'?^'Ii.'^'-5*^7=!**T^--'— ~

THE OLD HALL. GAINSBOROUGH.

humbly beseeche his ma'"^, y' I and mine, may never forget to be
thankfull ; not seeking our owne vaine glory thereby, but giving all
praise and glory to his goodness, who so graciously preserved, blessed,
and delivered me.'
It would be very pleasant to believe that Sir William Hickman
favoured the Gainsborough Separatists ; for then we might go on to
imagine that the banqueting hall in the manor-house served them, at

G A INSB OR O [ ^GH 2 5
least occasionally, as a chapel ; and that this good old lady might have
talked with Brewster, who had been as loyal a subject of Queen Elizabeth
as herself. But the probabilities are on the other side. A man might be
a strong Puritan, and also a strong opponent of the Separatists ; and the
Hickmans were evidently courtiers when they could be so without violence
to their Protestantism. Brewster's public career closed years before he
became a Separatist ; the Hickmans were in association with the Crown
to the last. Anthony Hickman, LL.D., of Cambridge, brother of Sir
William, fought a long batde with the university, but it was to defend
the rights of the Crown as well as his own religious liberty. He had
been elected a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, by mandate from the
queen. He refused to take orders, being ' well affected to the Puritans.'
There was difficulty about his continuance in his fellowship, because he
would not even be ordained deacon ; and then, on his re-election, there
arose a question as to his seniority. The struggle may be deciphered in
various manuscripts in the British Museum ; but there is no suspicion of
Anthony's being a Separatist. Sir William's eldest son, Willoughby, was
created a baronet by Charles II., in 1643.
The pastor of the Separatist Church in Gainsborough was the Rev.
John Smyth, who came there from Lincoln, where he had been appointed
preacher after he had already suffered imprisonment for Nonconformity. He
had been a Fellow of Christ College, Cambridge ; but he was a much older
man than Robinson, and could hardly have been his contemporary at
the university. The earliest date given for Robinson's residence is 1592,
in which year Smyth was in the Marshalsea prison.
John Smyth is known to ecclesiastical students as the Se-Baptist ; that
is, the man who, finding none from whom he could conscientiously accept
baptism, baptised himself He has been much scoffed at for this, but the
scorn is not deserved. Brook, the grave author of the Lives of the
Puritans, puts his case fairly : ' The Brownists, who denied the Church of
4

26 GAINS B OR O UGH
England to be a true Church, maintained that her ministers acted without
a divine commission ; and, consequently, that every ordinance administered
by them was null and void. They were for some time, however, guilty
of this inconsistency, that while they re-ordained their pastors and teachers,
they did not repeat their baptism. This defect was easily discovered by
Mr. Smyth ; whose doubts concerning the validity of baptism, as administered
in the national Church, paved the way for his rejecting the baptism of infants
altogether. Upon further consideration of the subject, he was led to
conclude, that immersion was the true and only meaning of the word
baptism ; and that the ordinance should be administered to those only
who appeared to believe in Jesus Christ. But the absurdity of Mr. Smyth's
conduct certainly appeared in this, that refusing to apply to the German
baptists, and wanting a proper administrator, according to his views of
the ordinance, he baptized himself Smyth also became an Arminian,
whereas Robinson and those who were with him were decided Calvinists ;
and a number of other ' singular notions ' were attributed to him ; so that
ultimately his memory was not grateful to his early friends. It is to be
put down to his credit that Crosby, and the Baptists generally, defend his
reputation. He was an able man, eloquent and popularly persuasive ; one
would say also of marked, even anxious, veracity. His frequent changes
of opinion are an evidence of this. He was very kind to the poor. In
Amsterdam he practised physic, ' in administering whereof he usually took
nothing of the poorer sort.' Of the rich, too, ' he took but half so much
as other doctors did, excepting some, who being able and well-minded,
urged more upon him.' On the other hand, he was a bitter controversialist,
even for those days ; he was also unstable. Bradford has written of him :
' His inconstancy and unstable judgment, and being so suddenly carried
away with things, did soon overthrow him.' Amsterdam was the scene
of these less happy incidents in his relation to his brethren ; there is
no hint that there was trouble in Gainsborough. In a controversy with
Mr. Bernard, a Nottinghamshire neighbour — a controversy embittered by the

GAINSB OR O UGH 27
fact that they had been neighbours, and that Bernard had once tried to
become Vicar of Gainsborough — Smyth appeals in his defence ' to the town
of Gainsborough and those there that knew my footsteps in this matter.'
There is regretful remembrance, as well as blame, in Bradford's dismissal
of him. ' In one of these Churches (besides others of note) was Mr. John
Smith, a man of able gifts, and a good preacher, who afterwards was
chosen their pastor. But these afterwards falling into some errours in y"
Low Countries, ther (for y" most part) buried themselves, and their names.'
Local tradition has been exhausted by enquirers after relics of the
Pilgrim Fathers in Lincolnshire. And because the enquiry very often
creates the remembrance, local tradition has given us as much fancy as fact.
Examination into family registers, and documents not directly connected
with Separatism, may enable those who come after us to know much
about which we can only wonder and conjecture. The emigration of the
Gainsborough Church to Amsterdam, about 1606, was so complete, that
soon all traces of them were lost in their old home, and Separatism was at
an end in Gainsborough. The Act of Uniformity, in 1662, called a new
Dissent into being. The Vicar of Gainsborough was not ejected ; but, in
1725, 'Francis Hopkinson, formerly a mercer, left the sum of ^200, to
be laid out in the purchase of land, for the support of a Presbyterian or
Independent Minister to the Society of Protestant Dissenters in Gainsburgh,
that he might receive the income thereof, during the term of his ministry ' ;
and some other endowments were afterward made for the same object.
' The Society of Protestant Dissenters of the Presbyterian or Independent
persuasion ' is referred to, under these terms, in two other gifts ; and thus
we know that the descendants of the Puritans in Gainsborough shared
the generous exjjectation which was entertained in the early part of the
eighteenth century, that a 'happy union' of the Independents and the
Presbyterians was practically accomplished. But religious controversy was
not yet dead. The old Presbyterian meeting-house, with its ample close,

28

GAINSB OR O UGH

passed under Unitarian management ; and the orthodox Dissenters were in
obscurity until the Evangelical Revival changed the face of England.
John Wesley often preached in ' the large body of the old hall ' ; and
George Whitefield preached there, in or a little before the year 1767.
Sir Neville G. Hickman was friendly alike to the Calvinistic and the
Arminian societies which were formed in the days of England's great
awakening. ' A large room (chamber) ' was used by preachers of Lady
Huntingdon's Connexion; and the Vi'esleyan Methodists used 'a large room
of the ground floor of the east wing of that building.' The Gainsborough
manor-house has this pleasant memory connected with it : about the time
of the Hickmans' removal to Thonock — probably immediately after — it
gave a home to the two small and earnest companies out of which sprang
the Methodist Society and the Congregational Church, whose buildings are
now conspicuous objects in the old town.

COMING UP THE RIVER TO BOSTON.

¦?
-'-*'
n ¦^•-^'>
/ /
ANCIENT CARVINGS IN SCROOBY CHURCH.
.< »l 1

CHAPTER II

WILLIAM BREWSTER AND THE CHURCH AT SCROOBY

than the
Railway,

sense it
between

¦ Love thyself last : cherish those hearts that hate thee
Corruption wins not more than honesty.
Still in thy right hand carry gentle peace.
To silence envious tongues. Be just, and fear not :
Let all the ends thou aim'st at be thy country's,
Thy God's, and truth's.'

CROOBY, in Nottinghamshire, — Scrooby Manor, as
it is not very accurately styled in the Pilgrim
Story, and in many contemporary documents ;
Scrooby Court, as, occasionally, the local people
call it, — has been rediscovered within living memory.
It is worth a visit by those who love 'a pleasing
land of drowsyhead,' if it were for nothing else
gives of Tudor England. It lies on the Great Northern
Retford and Doncaster, on the direct road to Scotland ;
31

32 SCROOBY
and when you have got out at the station, when the smoke of the engine
has cleared into the sky and the rattle of the train is borne away, this is
what you see. A broad meadowland, not well cultivated, hummocky plots
of stiff soil, in which the dock grows plentifully, and through which creeps
the River Idle, between low sedgy banks, where rises the yellow flag, a
Madonna among the irises, and the marsh marigold spreads, more golden than
the buttercups of the field. A grey church is before you, with quiet tower
and a short spire, not too obtrusively piercing the sky. And then you come
on the little village, consisting of a single street, with three or four rough
sideways, leading by scattered cottages to farm-steadings. A solitary horse
is drawing a clay-stained cart ; cattle browse in stillness ; men and women
work here, and children go to school : but all is leisurely. Without hurry
you recall the memories which have brought you from the town.
We shall have a more vivid image of William Brewster, and his life
in Scrooby, if we are not too quick to summon him before us ; let us dwell
for a little on an earlier story, a touching incident of the year 1530. Wolsey
spent a few weeks of the late summer in his palace here, when he was on
his way from the council-chamber of Henry VIII., to hide his broken heart
in York. Readers of Shakspere are struck with the sudden change from
pride to meekness, from insolence to suavity, in the cardinal after his fall ;
they wonder if Griffith's account of him is as true as it is affectionate, —
' He was a scholar, and a ripe and good one ;
Exceeding wise, fair-spoken, and persuading :
Lofty and sour to those who loved him not ;
But to those men that sought him sweet as summer.'
We shall understand all this better if we peruse what is said of him
by his faithful servant Cavendish, whose Life of JFo/sey Shakspere had
evidently read before he wrote his play. Scrooby had been since Domesday
Book an appanage belonging to the Archbishops of York, who made the
palace a hunting-lodge ; and on his way hither from Southwell, where

SCROOBY

ii

Wolsey had been spending the time since Easter, he passed through
several parks well furnished with deer. Divers gentlemen tried to get him
to join the chase, at least to distract his cares by looking on a hunt.
' But in no wise they could entreat him to hunt. Although the worshipful
gentlemen being in his company provoked him all that they could thereto,
yet he would not consent, desiring them to be contented, saying that he
came not into the country to frequent or follow any such pleasures or

*^- .',...

SCROOBY, FROM THE ROAD TO GAINSBOROUGH.

pastimes, but only to attend to a greater care that he had in hand,
which was his duty, study, and pleasure.' And thus ' he came to Scroby,
where he continued until after Michaelmas, ministering many deeds of
charity. Most commonly every Sunday (if the weather did serve) he would
travel into some parish church thereabout, and there would say his divine
service, and either hear or say mass himself causing some one of his
chaplains to preach unto the people. And that done, he would dine in
some honest house of that town, where should be distributed to the poor
a great alms, as well of meat and drink as of money to supply the want
5

34 SCROOBY
of sufficient meat, if the number of the poor did so exceed of necessity.
And thus with other good deeds practising and exercising during his
abode there at Scroby, as making of love-days and agreements between
party and party, being then at variance, he daily frequented himself there
about such business and deeds of honest charity.'
Seventy years after, the hundred of Basset- Lawe, where these churches
are in which Wolsey heard his chaplains preach, had become a stronghold
of Puritanism. At Sutton-cum-Lound, a parish ecclesiastically, then as now,
united to Scrooby, first Henry Brewster and after him James Brewster were
vicars ; these were near relatives of the Pilgrim Father. Richard Clifton,
the ' good and fatherly old man, having a great white beard,' who went to
Amsterdam to join the Scrooby Church, of which he had been either the
pastor or the teacher, was formerly Rector of Bab worth, a few miles away.
To Worksop, farther off to the south, Richard Bernard came in r6oi,
from Epworth, the parish in which Samuel Wesley the elder afterward
lived, and in which John Wesley was born. Bernard was a pronounced
Puritan, but he never became a Separatist ; he subsequently wrote the
Separatist's Sehisnic, to which Robinson's Justification of Separation was a
reply. Robert Gifford, another clergyman who ' seemed weary of the
ceremonies,' and was ' hotly persecuted by the Prelates,' although he never
left the Established Church, held a Yorkshire vicarage close to Worksop.
These are the more eminent of the Puritan clergy from whose preaching
and conferences came the Separatist Church of Scrooby.
It gives the modern pilgrim a start of mingled surprise and pleasure,
as he turns down the road to the site of the old palace, to see a sign-post
pointing him ' To the Post-Office.' For he remembers that William Brewster
was postmaster, or ' post,' as he was called in those days. The post then
was a much more important person than the small farmer who now distributes
letters to the villagers, and graciously receives the many American and the
few English strangers who come to see the spot where the Church which so

DMHX Miji
n oo

SCROOBY 2>7
mightily influenced the history of the United States was formed. Scrooby
lay on the great North Road ; it was a station taken in going from London
to Doncaster and Durham, Newcastle and Berwick-upon-Tweed. The post
was, in the first place, an officer of the Crown, whose duty was to supply
horses to the royal messengers, and send them on their way with all speed
and comfort. For this service Brewster received the sum of twenty pence
a day, afterward raised to two shillings, and a sufficient profit on the charges
he was at in entertaining the messengers themselves. Occasionally, like the
Norwegian bonde, the post would attend to the wants of the ordinary traveller,
though he was warned that this must not interfere with his first service
due to the Crown. Some accounts for food and lodging and mileage
which have come down to us shew a much more liberal tariff than the
station-master on the roads in Norway is allowed to charge.
William Brewster's family was of some local standing ; he himself had
once had prospects of employment about the Court. His friend Bradford
has told us this : ' After he had attained some learning, viz. the knowledge
of the Latin tongue and some insight into the Greek, and spent some small
time at Cambridge, and there being first seasoned with the seeds of grace
and virtue, he went to the Court, and served that religious and godly
gentleman Mr. Davison divers years, when he was Secretary of State ;
who found him so discreet and faithful, as he trusted him above all others
that were about him, and only employed him in matters of greatest trust
and secrecy. He esteemed him rather as a son than a servant, and for his
wisdom and godliness in private he would converse with him more like
a familiar than a master. He attended his master when he was sent in
embassage by the Queen into the Low Countries (in the Earl of Leicester's
time) as for other weighty affairs of State, so to receive possession of the
cautionary towns ; and in token and sign thereof the keys of Flushing being
delivered to him in her Majesty's name, he (Davison) kept them some time,
and committed them to his servant, who kept them under the pillow on
which he slept the first night. And at his return the State honoured him

38 SCROOBY
with a gold chain, and his master committed it to him, and commanded him
to wear it when they arrived in England, as they rode through the country,
until they came to the Court.'
It was an exceedingly important mission on which Davison had been
sent in company with the Earl of Leicester, and the queen's advisers
were gratified with the result. But Elizabeth had designs of her own
which had been thwarted by the earl's action. She was inflamed, also, by
the personal jealousy she always felt where Leicester was concerned ; and
when Davison appeared at Court, her fury broke out on him. She was for
refusing: to ratifv the engagements into which Leicester had entered, and
drove Davison out of her presence with her usual roughness of speech.
He was bold enough to go to her again, ' and with tears besought her to
be better advised, laying before her the dishonourable, shameful, and dangerous
effects of so unhappy a message, which would be utter ruin to the cause,
and her own dishonour and undoing.' Elizabeth gave way a little ; but
Davison was too honest a man for her ; and soon after he fell into lasting
disgrace. The next year saw the execution of Mary, Queen of Scots, whose
death Elizabeth passionately desired, but for which she wished to disclaim
the responsibility. She threw the blame on Davison, who had received
from her the warrant under which Mary died ; and his public career was
at an end. William Brewster remained with his master ' some afood time
after, doing him many offices of service in the time of his troubles.' From
what we know of his character, we may well believe that this young man,
who had brought with him from Puritan Cambridge ' the seeds of grace and
virtue,' and was sincerely attached to ' that religious and godly gentleman
Mr. Davison,' was glad to escape from the degradations of life at Court. He
was twenty-three years old in 1587, when 'he flung away ambition,' and
came to the quiet house in Scrooby, where his father was postmaster,
and where he had himself been born.
Another of Davison's young assistants — private secretary to the councillor,
as he would be called to-day — whose hopes of employment at Court were

SCROOBY 41
now blighted, was George Cranmer, grand-nephew of the martyr. Cranmer's
most intimate friend was Edwin Sandys, son of the Archbishop of York,
with whom, as the lord of Scrooby Manor, the Brewsters were in intimate
association. The Pilgrim Fathers came afterward to be in constant corre
spondence with Sir Edwin Sandys when he was directing the affairs of the
Plymouth Company, under whose protection they sailed for America. Every
link in the association of Scrooby with New Plymouth is of interest ; even
more interesting are the spiritual sympathies binding together men whose
ecclesiastical courses were so different.
It was a grave company to which we have been introduced, — Davison
and the Archbishop of York, the senior men ; George Cranmer, Edwin
Sandys, and William Brewster, the younger ones : and they were sure to
discuss questions of ecclesiastical polity in a catholic temper. Dr. Brown
has fully described for us Davison's Puritan fidelity ; Mr. Hunter alludes to
his largeness of view. ' Davison,' he says, ' was eminently a Puritan himself,
one of the more reflective and philosophical, we may believe, of their party,
extending his views, as Brewster did, beyond the mere ceremonies, to the
great principles which ought to govern men in the management of
ecclesiastical affairs, and in their dealings with each other respecting them.'
The archbishop had been a Puritan, even a violent Puritan, in his young
days at Cambridge ; and although he knew how to become a personal
favourite with Queen Elizabeth, and followed the Tudor tradition of enriching
his family with Church lands, he was still able to take a broad view of Church
questions. The preamble to his will contains a valuable sentence, whose
double application he must have seen. He easily acknowledges that ' our
Ecclesiastical Polity, in some points, may be bettered,' as to which, as well
as to rites and ceremonies, he would reserve particulars to the discretion of
the godly, saying only thus : ' That the state of a small private Church, and
the form of a large Christian kingdom, neither would long like, nor at all
brook, one and the same Ecclesiastical Government.' His son. Sir Edwin,
in his EuropcB Speculum, has written of the troubled state of ecclesiastical 6

42

SCROOBY

affairs, in a style in which, Mr. Hunter says rightly, ' we cannot but
perceive a correspondency in some parts with the celebrated Farewell
Address of Robinson.' He is discussing ' what kind of unity poor
Christendom may hope for, whether Unity of Verity, or Unity of Charity,
or Unity of Persuasion, or Unity of Authority, or Unity of Necessity.'

SITE OF THE STOCKS, SCROOBY CHURCHYARD.

His sentences are long enough to satisfy Coleridge, without Coleridge's
dignity and exactness ; but we see his meaning. ' There is an agree
ment,' he says, ' in the general foundation of religion, in those articles
which the Twelve Apostles delivered unto the Church, perhaps not as
an abridgement only of the faith, but as a touch-stone also of the

SCROOBY 43
faithful for ever ; and whilst there was an entire consent in them, no
dissent in other opinions only should break joeace and communion.'
' The seat of truth,' he beautifully says, ' is aloft, of virtue in the
midst, both places of honour, but neither truth nor virtue draw to an
utter extremity.' He believes that, by regarding only essentials, a Church
government, and an order of worship, may be established universally in
all Christian dominions. ' For all other questions it should be lawful for
each man so to believe as he found cause ; not condemning others
with such peremptoriness as is the pride of some men of overweening
conceits ; and the handling of all controversies for their final compounding
to be confined to the schools, to councils, and to the learned languages,
which are the proper, places to try them, and fittest tongues to treat
them in.'
Old Isaak Walton's description of the domestic troubles of Richard
Hooker has become one of the well-known passages of English literature ; it
is to Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer we are indebted for his most vivid
picture of them. They had been favourite pupils of Hooker in Oxford ;
and when they visited him in his poor Buckinghamshire parsonage, they
found him, with Horace in his hand, ' tending his small allotment of sheep
in a common field, which he told his pupils he was forced to do then, for
that his servant was gone home to dine and assist his wife to do some
necessary business. When his servant returned and released him, then his
two pupils attended him unto his house, where their best entertainment was
his quiet company, which was presently denied them, for " Richard was
called to rock the cradle."' It is a long way from Drayton Beauchamp,
in Bucks, to Scrooby ; but as we remember that Hooker was at this time
writing his Ecclesiastical Polity, we may conjecture the subject of their
quiet conversation, so quickly interrupted. There is a marked contrast,
too, between the Ecclesiastical Polity and the Defence of Separation, but
the men who wrote the books were of a like spirit. It is a purely fanciful
group, for Robinson was far younger than Hooker; but it makes a pleasant

44 SCROOBY

picture, rich with suggestions of regret for wasted opportunities, — the two
masters in controversy, Richard Hooker and John Robinson, and between
them the three disciples, Edwin Sandys, George Cranmer, V/illiam Brewster.

Brewster resigned the office of post on September 30, 1607; in
April, 1608, he was fined for recusancy; in the same year the Scrooby
Church was following the Gainsborough Church to Amsterdam. In the
meantime the manor-house had been their place of worship, and he had
been a generous host. ' They ordinarily met at his house on the Lord's
Day, and with great love he entertained them when they came, making
provision for them to his great charge.' Mr. Hunter says that Bradford,
whose truthfulness he does not suspect, ' leaves us with the impression
that Brewster had an independent fortune.' The statement is not well
grounded ; Bradford lets us see that the host of the Church was straitened
by the charges he was at. It is his benevolence, not Bradford's narrative,
which has created the false impression on Mr. Hunter. No eulogium
can be more honourable, more touching than this fact — that Brewster's
ample generosity should have obscured the truth that his means were
not large. William Brewster must have been a singularly winning man. Bradford
does not enlarge on his virtues until he describes his death ; and then he
writes : ' 1 should say something of his life, if to say a little were not worse
than to be silent.' Among his virtues it is his modesty which gradually
affects us most. ' In New England he would labour with his hands in the
fields as long as he was able ; yet when the Church had no other minister,
he taught twice every Sabbath, and that both powerfully and profitably, to
the great contentment of the hearers, and to their comfortable edification ;
yea, many were brought to God by his ministry. He did more in this
behalf in a year than many that have their hundreds a year do in all their
lives.' And yet he accepted Robinson's decision that, as he was not a

SCROOBY 45
pastor, he must not preside at the Lord's Supper. We never find him in
the first place : he is Davison's servant ; second to Robinson in Leyden,
and to Bradford in Plymouth. ' None did more offend and displease him
than such as would haughtily and proudly carry and lift up themselves,
being risen from nothing.' ' He had a singular good gift in prayer, both
public and private, in ripping up the heart and conscience before God, in
the humble confession of sin, and begging the mercies of God in Christ
for the pardon of the same.' He is among the Pilgrim Fathers as was
Andrew among the Apostles : always coming in behind some one else, —
'Simon Peter's brother'; the friend of John; the adviser of Philip;
yet always depicted as doing good. He had found the 'sure and safe way
to rise in,' which Wolsey confessed himself to have ' missed.'

Of the manor-house at Scrooby there are now only the foundations,
an arch in the farmhouse that occupies part of the site, which manifestly
must have belonged to a nobler building, and a few finely moulded timbers
supporting the roof of the stable. The mansion was pulled down before the
middle of the seventeenth century ; a Nottinghamshire antiquarian writes of it,
in 1673, as having been, 'within memory, a very fair palace.' The moat is
dry ; a small garden retains something of its old good culture, but the park
is a somewhat coarse meadow. Crossing over to the church, you come on
the pound, or pinfold, filled with nettles ; close to it is another nettle-grown
enclosure, in which are the remains of the stocks. In the farthest angle
of the churchyard is a small house, called the vicarage. It consists of a
house-place and a smaller room on the ground floor : there is no staircase ;
you must get to the two garrets by a moveable ladder. Some ot the
parish clergy of England lived in houses thus mean ; Hooker's house may
have been little better ; but the Mcar of Scrooby lived at Sutton, and this
cottage is misnamed. The church walls are in good preservation, but of
the interior, as it was in Brewster's days, little remains. What does remain

46 SCROOBY
has special interest for the antiquarian ; it is some oak carving, in excellent
preservation, of a luxuriant vine, ' bearing fruit.' The vine, in ecclesiastical
decoration, is the symbol of the Church ; and it seems like an irony
of time, that has devoured so much, to have spared this symbol in
a place where the Church was wasted by division and marred with
distrust.

SCROOBY MANOR-HOUSE.

QKOO<a a
ozaw>oo

CHAPTER III

AUSTERFIELD-THE HOME OF GOVERNOR BRADFORD

'Dost thou look back on what hath been,
As some divinely gifted man.
Whose life in low estate began,
And on a simple village green ;
Who breaks his birth's invidious bar,
And grasps the skirt of happy chance.
And breasts the blows of circumstance,
And grapples with his evil star ;
Who makes by force his merit known,
And lives to clutch the golden keys.
To mould a mighty state's decrees.
And shape the whisper of the throne?'
ROM Gainsborough, in Lincolnshire, we have come
to Scrooby, in Notts ; a short walk of three or
four miles more will take us to Austerfield, another
little place lifted into notice by the story of one
man's joiety and modest worth. We keep to the
meadows as far as we can, and soon cross the
River Idle into Yorkshire. We no longer tread
the narrow northern road which once brought the horseman through Scrooby ;
we find ourselves on a broad highway, and under an avenue of fine elms
we reach Bawtry. Going straight through the town, and dipping under
the railway viaduct, in another two miles we arrive at Austerfield, of which
49 7

50 A USTEREIELD
Mr. Bartlett has given us the picture : ' A hamlet of the most humble
description, simply a double row of rustic cottages, old-fashioned and mossy,
but with their geraniums in the windows, and bright patches of flowers in
the little gardens, displaying that neatness and instinctive rural taste peculiar
to the better class of English husbandmen.' Bawtry is a more important
place than either Austerfield or Scrooby. It consists mainly of one street,
ample enough to accommodate the weekly market, and the three annual fairs
of wool and cheese and corn, to exercise horses and give room to deploy
large flocks of sheep and herds of oxen. The width of the street confers
no dignity on the small town ; it rather dwarfs the houses on either side.
Looking farther, you see signs of a modest prosperity ; ambition dies here,
but one might have comfort as well as quiet in Bawtry. Richard Monckton
INIilnes made Bawtry Hall his home ; it was a congenial resting-place for
his particular literary turn, and here he wrote appreciative words of the
Pilgrims and the Mayflower.
Passing between these three places, we see how natural it was for
the Separatists west of the Trent to form a Church distinct from that
in Gainsborough. Everything here is rural ; we are in a yeoman's home :
Gainsborough, with its shipping, its seafaring life, its breath of salt water —
modest as all this must have been — was not like this. Here they were
within easy call of one another : Gainsborough was a good fifteen miles
away from Austerfield, and at the end of the journey there was the
uncertain river, liable to floods from above and the tidal wave from below,
which must have made the ferry often unquiet and sometimes unsafe.
There is no need to fancy any trouble with Pastor Smyth and his
Gainsborough flock, like that which afterward sent the Pilgrims from
Amsterdam to Leyden ; the yeoman's love for field-walks and an easy ford
is enough for us to remember.
We begin to apprehend another fact, which to the student of the
literature alone seems very strange. For two hundred years the precise
home of the Pilgrim Fathers in England remained unknown. And yet it

A USTEREIELD 51
was indicated in Bradford's history ' of Plimoth Plantation ' and Cotton
Mather's sketch of Bradford, with a clearness that leaves no doubt possible.
' They were of sundrie towns and vilages,' says Bradford^ ' some in
Notinghamshire, some of Lincollinshire, and some of Yorkshire, wher they
border nearest together.' ' They ordinarily mett at his [that is, Brewster's]
house, on y' Lord's day, which was a manor of y'= bishops.' Mather says:
' Among these Devout People was our William Bradford, who was born
Anno 1588, in an obscure village called Ansterfield.' These notes of place
are unmistakeable ; there is no other spot in England where they all
unite. The slight slip made in deciphering the name — Ansterfield for
Austerfield — could not mislead any one who was on the right track. These
sentences from Bradford and Mather had been read and reprinted again
and again, they were quoted wherever the old story was told, and still
people continued ignorant of the locality meant until 1849. Then the spot
was identified by the Rev. Joseph Hunter, who speaks of himself as
' sprung from persons who maintained many of the principles and adopted
many of the practices by which these people were distinguished, and who
were, indeed, the chief supporters of them in the hundred of Broxtowe
which adjoins to Basset-Lawe.' Baptismal registers, legal documents, old
lists have since been studied, with the result of absolutely sustaining the
identification. This ignorance of a fact so patent is easily understood from a literary
point of view. ' Neither Bradford nor Brewster,' says Mr. Hunter, ' nor
the divines who were concerned in the movement were of the eminent of
the earth, about whom there is a curiosity widely extended through the
country which gave them birth, and concerning whom nothing is thought
unimportant.' Curiosity as to the lives of the inconsiderable is with most
Englishmen a modern endowment, and we have only lately come to
understand the value of antiquarian study as an aid to historical accuracy.
Moreover, the events of the Commonwealth and the Restoration had obscured
the earlier incidents. Nonconformity was associated with Cromwell's

52 A USTEREIELD
Independents and the men of the Ejectment; very few knew anything of
the Plcclesiastical Idealists of the later years of Elizabeth and the beginning
of James's reign. The persons who were interested in the Pilgrim Fathers
were mostly on the other side of the Atlantic, without the means of exploring
English records or visiting English sites. Just as the story of Abram's
migration was written on Hebrew, not on Assyrian soil, so, until recent
years, English concern in the Pilgrim Fathers has been little more than a
reflex from the stirring history of American constitutional freedom.
But down here, where the counties of Lincoln, Notts, and York border
nearest together, we feel, as well as understand, the neglect into which the
homes of the Pilgrim Fathers fell. We are in a land of forgetfulness. The
farms, the streams, the skies, the low rolling hills wooded to the top, remain,
the rooks draw to their nests, and the lark rises from the sod, as in the
bygone centuries, while persons have died out of remembrance. The little
girl, playing before her mother's house, is cared for, as her white pinafore
and rosy cheeks and sunny hair reveal ; the tired husbandman knows he has
a home to go to at nightfall ; twilight deepens into darkness, and doors shut
in a full, if not a vivid, life. But the men whose haunts we come seeking
are forgotten. Their emigration was so thorough that no tradition of them
lingers in the place which once knew them so well. What calls itself tradition
is the new play of a somewhat sluggish fancy. American visitors arrive in
numbers every year ; and from their questions and their talk fragments of
story are picked up, which the villager tries to associate with the familiar
objects about him, but not with much success. He calls these modern
Americans ' the Pilgrims ' ; he is very vague about the difference between
the martyrs of Mary's reign and the persecuted in the times of Elizabeth.
The exodus has been complete. And then, perhaps, the curious visitor
remembers that not only have Scrooby and Austerfield forgotten Brewster and
Bradford ; Bradford also has left unmentioned the names of Austerfield and
Scrooby. Mr. Hunter is continually regretting that the old writer, who has
told us so much of the events in which he took a leading part, has not

A USTEREIELD 55
given us more precise information concerning places and names and dates,
all that we should like to be sure of in trying to recall the Pilgrims in
their habit as they lived. We are baffled by a double indifference. The
places they quitted were so indifferent to the cause they were devoted to,
that the remembrance of them has been cut off; and they were so indifferent
to everything except the cause in which they suffered, that only by the aid
of the antiquarian can we fix their local habitation and their social standing.
We know that the Pilgrims had not forgotten their old homes ; they
wrote letters to England, and heard from some whom they had left behind.
Among modern American Puritans fancy has played about the story of
Bradford's second marriage. His first wife was Dorothy May, whom
he met in Amsterdam and married there. She fell over the side of
the Mayflower, in Cape Cod Harbour, during her husband's absence ; she
disappeared, unheard, leaving behind her in England a little son. Two years
after, the ship Anne brought to Plymouth, among other passengers, a young
widow, Alice Southworth, whom Bradford married, and with whom he lived
thirty-four years in happy wedlock. What calls itself tradition will have it
that she was an old Nottinghamshire sweetheart ; that the ' course of true
love ' had not ' run smooth ' with the boy and girl ; but that, when both had
lost their first consorts, Bradford courted her by letter, and was accepted.
It may be so, but it is all uncertain, it is not even likely ; and we may
seriously err if we transfer our modern literary sentiment concerning romantic
love to seventeenth-century Puritanism. The biographies of the period let
it be seen that lovers loved, and husbands and wives were passionately
attached to one another then as now, but they were shyer than we in
talking of their affections ; conscience was more to them than courtship. In
Cotton Mather we may read the cause of what looks like a permanent
alienation between Bradford and his birthplace. Mather tells us that the
people of Austerfield ' were as unacquainted with the Bible, as the Jews
do seem to have been with part of it in the days of Josiah ; a most
Ignorant and Licentious people, and like unto their Priest.' He tells us

56 A USTERELELD
also that Bradford's uncles, in whose charge he was left an infant orphan,
became bitterly opposed to him on religious grounds. ' Some lamented him,
some derided him, all disswaded him : Nevertheless the more they did it,
the more fixed he was in his Purpose to seek the Ordinances of the Gospel,
where they should be dispensed with most of the Commanded Purity ; and
the sudden Deaths of the chief Relations which thus lay at him, quickly
after convinced him what a Folly it had been to have quitted his Profession,
in expectation of any Satisfaction from them. So to Holland he attempted
a removal' Mather's strong language doubtless represents the original
tradition received from Bradford himself; it shews us that his life in
Austerfield must have been so bitter as to make him glad if he could
forget it ; we can perceive a certain dignity of studied silence in his
narrative — he would not record the names of villages which he could only
think of with reprobation.
William Bradford occupied the same relation to the body politic of New
Plymouth as William Brewster sustained to the Church. Both Church and
colony were democratic communities, under the leadership of men freely
chosen by the members of the colony and the Church. When the company
on board the Mayflower saw land, it was discovered that they were far to
the north of the territory where they had received permission from England
to settle, and that therefore the letters patent they bore with them
were invalid. To guard against anarchy, they met in the cabin, and signed
a solemn agreement, constituting themselves into a ' civill body politick,'
pledging themselves, by virtue of this covenant, ' to enacte, constitute, and
frame such just and equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices,
from time to time, as shall be thought most meete and convenient for y°
generall good of y° Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and
obedience.' The significance of the ' Mayflower Compact,' as it has been
called, has been recognised by all American historians. Bancroft regards it
as the origin of popular constitutional liberty. John Quincey Adams says :

A USTEREIELD 57
' This is perhaps the only instance in human history of that positive,
original, social compact which speculative philosophers have imagined as the
only legitimate source of government. Here was a unanimous and personal
assent by all the individuals of the community to the association, by which
they became a nation.' And it is the Scrooby Church covenant applied to
political life. There is nothing said in the political compact about the
Church ; nothing said in the Church covenant about the nation. But the
solemnity of the personal pledge by which they bound themselves to one
another, the recognition of the equal consent of all the members of the
community as the source of authority, and the freedom from specific
regulations, handed down by tradition from the past, or deduced from
abstract speculation, are conspicuous characteristics of both agreements. ' As
y^ Lord's free people,' says Bradford of the Separatists of Gainsborough and
Scrooby, ' they joyned themselves (by a covenant of the Lord) into a church
estate, in y" fellowship of y" gospell, to walke in all his wayes, made known,
or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavours,
whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them.' The Mayflower
company bind themselves ' solemnly and mutually in y° presence of God,'
to ' enact, constitute, and frame such just and equall lawes, ordinances, acts,
constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete
and convenient.' Their claim of freedom to interpret the conditions and
obey the exigencies of the future ; their fearless reliance upon God for
wisdom, fortitude, and mutual fidelity, in meeting all possible demands,
are quite as important a contribution to human liberty as is the theory
of equality and brotherhood. The American Continent was the place where
this large and liberal doctrine of Church life and national government
first found development ; but its birthplace was that obscure corner in Old
England where Nottinghamshire runs up into Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.
The ' Pilgrim Republic,' as Mr. John A. Goodwin well calls the
colony of New Plymouth, lasted about seventy years, and for nearly the first
half of this time William Bradford was its governor. When he was
8

58 A USTEREIELD
unanimously chosen, on the death of John Carver in 1 621, he must have
known that responsibility for the well-being, even for the existence, of the
colony was thrown largely on him. Sickness was rife ; in less than a year,
out of a hundred and one who landed from the Mayflower, fifty-one were
dead. They had not grain enough for both food and seed ; supplies were
slow in coming from England ; they lived almost entirely on fish. The
Indians were watchful; the graves of the dead had to be made level with
the soil, lest their foes should see how rapidly their ranks were thinning.
Discontent occasionally appeared among their own people ; and stragglers
from vessels brought disaffection. The municipal law, the habit — social
and economical — of the colony had to be determined ; the men who had
broken away from precedent had to make decisions for future guidance.
Every record which has come down to us reveals in Bradford a man whose
courage, patience, practical wisdom, resource, and tact were equal to the
emergency. The earlier years of the colony were the most troubled ; very
slowly stability and prosperity emerged; the aid of New Plymouth was
sought by neighbouring settlements which followed them from England ;
and its political example was copied by the new-comers. And to Bradford's
leadership this was largely due. Greater individuals than he may have
appeared in American history ; but when we consider the men he led, the
wisdom with which he led them, and the confidence they felt in their leader,
we are not surprised to hear him still styled — out of reverence and affection —
Governor Bradford.
Bradford was a man of the north-eastern English midlands. The
quick ear can still catch in the speech of the folk in South Yorkshire and its
Lincolnshire border the slightly nasal twang and the rising inflection of the
voice which we associate with New England. The ' obscure and ignorant
and licentious village ' which moved Cotton Mather's scorn was Bradford's
only English home. He was not, like his friends, a Cambridge student. It
was in his wanderings about these fields that he cherished ' a youth sublime ' ;
these gentle uplands and this open sky gave room for his soul to expand.

the old font, AUSTERFIELD.

A USTEREIELD 6i
From the sale of his small estate here he gained the means to emigrate
and start a new life in Holland. From his Nottinghamshire friends he not
only received his religious convictions, but also the zeal he had for sound
knowledge. 'He was a Person for Study as well as Action; and hence,
notwithstanding the Difficulties through which he passed in his Youth, he
attained unto a notable Skill in Languages ; the Dutch tongue was become
almost as vernacular to him as the English ; the French tongue he could
also manage ; the Latin and the Greek he had mastered ; but the Hebreiv
he most of all studied. Because, he said, he luould see with his own eyes the
Ancient Oracles of God in their Native Beauty. He was also well skill'd
in History, in Antiqtdty, and in Philosophy ; and for Theology he became so
versed in it, that he was an Irrefragable Disputant against the Errors,
especially those of Anabaptisin, which with Trouble he saw rising in his
Colony ; wherefore he wrote some Significant things for the Confutation
of those Errors. But the Crozvn of all was his Holy, Prayerful, Watchful,
and Fruitful Walk ivith God, wherein he was very exemplary.' Of course,
all this does not mean accurate scholarship of the university standard even
of that time, still less the modern severe critical judgment ; but it does
mean love of learning and zeal for truth. The intellectual and spiritual
habit was acquired by him in his boyhood and early youth, when he crossed
the fields to Babworth, where he enjoyed ' Mr. Richard Clifton's Illuminating
Ministry,' and went down to Scrooby to converse with Downes and Brewster,
or walked over to Alkley, where lived the Rev. Mr. Silvester, a friend of
the family, who had a good library of English and Latin books.
Lying a little back from the road is Austerfield Chapel, with its beautiful
Norman doorway ; and here may still be read the register of his baptism.
'1589, March 19th. William, the son of William Bradfourth. The register
follows the Old Style; we should write, March 19, 1590. The parish book
contains the names of several Bradfords, of different generations, their
baptisms and marriages and deaths. The name was spelt indifferently
Bradfurth and Bradfourth ; he himself signed his name William Bradford.

62 A USTEREIELD
The chapel is very interesting. It is a small building, consisting only of a nave
and chancel, separated from each other by a Norman arch. You enter from
the south side ; before you there is a walled-up doorway, the upper part of
which is now a large window, through which the gable corner of a farmhouse
looks in upon you, and, when the barns are full, the top of a yellow haystack.
Some beautiful old Gothic windows, and Norman work lately uncovered,
are being carefully restored. The building is worth preservation for its
antiquity ; it has undergone little change, no structural change, for centuries.
Austerfield is a chapelry, dependent on the parish of Blythe. This is a
good specimen of the smaller old ecclesiastical buildings, erected in a style
as pure as that of the noblest parish church. The present font is modern ;
an old capacious vessel for water has been brought back into the chapel, and
Is shewn as the original font. Dr. Dexter found, in a yard in Austerfield,
another old stone vessel, used for watering poultry, which has a primitive
look. This was bought for America, and is now in a Congregational
Church in Chicago. Which of these two vessels is the font in which
Bradford was baptised, or if either of them were so, is a question to be
decided by archaeologists, not by local makers of tradition.
At the upper end of the village stands a comfortable house, now divided
into two cottages, lying open to the sun, and commanding a view of the
farms around. You are told that this is ' the Bradford House.' The term
is American rather than English ; but Bradford's early home may have
been here ; this is such a dwelling as a yeoman, in easy circumstances,
would have lived in three hundred years ago. Persons who think of good
architecture as referring to structure more than ornamentation will see
excellence in the building. It is a two-storied Elizabethan house, of well-laid
bricks, with sharply squared corners ; the tiled roof is not deeply eaved,
but sufficiently so to throw the rain off the walls. It has no trees about it ;
and being exposed to the sunshine and to every wind, it has no moss nor
lichen growing on it ; neither has any toad-flax nor stone-crop found a
rooting-place between the bricks. Entering by the left-hand door, you find

A USTEREIELD

63

THE CELLAR IN THE BRADFORD HOUSE.

yourself in the ' house-place,' or ' house,' as it is called in the midland
counties. This was the living-room, with broad chimney and a large oven
to the grate ; overhead are the racks from which hams and game might

64 A USTEREIELD
hang ; on the wall above the fireplace, in Bradford's time, there would have
been a bras.i blunderbuss among the bright pewter pots and platters. When
the door is thrown wide open, as it mostly is in such a house, and the fire
is burning briskly, the ' house-place ' is the cheeriest, friendliest part of the
dwelling ; you need no parlour as you sit chatting in a room like this.
The right-hand door probably served for the kitchen, unless it was added
when the house was divided in two ; it admits you to another large
room, where the rougher work was done. Across this room a flight of
broad stone steps takes you into a small cellar, also admirably built. This
you are told is * the place where the Pilgrims used to worship, for fear of
the persecutors.' It is very unlikely. The cellar is not a concealed room ;
the door is seen from the kitchen, and two windows, one on the steps
leading to it, the other in the cellar itself, are pierced in the outside wall.
The imagination, unable to people this cellar with frightened people at their
prayers, calls up another picture — -the notable housewife and her serving-maids.
Bradford was a youth of eighteen, unmarried, when he went out from
Austerfield. His mother died when he was a child ; one sister, Margaret,
died the day after her baptism, four years before he was born ; he had
another sister, Alice, two years and six months older than himself but of
her we know nothing more. No woman form associates itself with the life
of this pensive boy. But we think that a woman must have designed this
cellar. It is dry in floor and walls; the brick- and stone-work is good; the
door IS directly opposite the window, so that it can be kept well aired ; and
the window itself, just under the ceiling, opens to the north, from which no
sunbeam strikes the shelves. Butter and milk and fresh meat could be kept
here ; the bacon would be on the rack in the house-place, and the cheeses
in an out-building. If this be, indeed, the Bradford House, the future
governor was born in a well-planned home.
Another touch will complete our brief sketch of Bradford in Austerfield.
His father and mother died when he was an infant, and one little sister
the day after her baptism. The ' sudden deaths ' of his ' chief relations '

AUSTERFIELD

65

are mentioned by Mather : a cousin William ' died young ' ; two other children
of the same family died unbaptised in 1595 and 1597. The Bradfords were
a short-lived house. He himself had a feeble childhood. ' Soon and long
sickness kept him, as he would afterwards thankfully say, from the Vanities
of Youth, and made him the fitter for what he was to undergo.' He lived
to a good old age, and seems to have been a hale man in America. His
last winter brought with it some indisposition ; and ' as the Spring advanced,
his health yet more declined ; yet he felt himself not what he counted Sick,
till one Day.' His early impressions of sickness and death sobered, but did
not daunt him ; like the trials of his fidelity, they prepared him for a
vigorous manhood, and the ' ineffable consolations ' amid which he passed
away. May 9, 1657. At the time he put the final touches to his history, he
had four children, three of whom were married. There are many of his
descendants now in the United States, able to trace succession from him,
and some of them proud to bear his name.

VANE OF STANDISH CHURCH.

STANDISH ARMS.

CHAPTER IV
MYLES STANDISH AND THE STANDISH COUNTRY
' My gracious lord, I tender you my service.
Such as it is, being tender, raw, and young;
Which elder days shall ripen and confirm
To more approved service and desert.'
' \Vhy, what a wasp-stung and impatient fool
Art thou, to break into this woman's mood,
Tying thine ear to no tongue but thine own 1
'Yea, there, thou makest me sad and makest me sin.
In envy that my Lord Northumberland
Should be the father to so blest a son,
A son who is the theme of honour's tongue ;
Amongst a grove, the very straightest plant;
Who is sweet F'ortune's minion and her pride.'
YLES STANDISH among the Pilgrim Fathers—
this is a conjunction which at first seems a little
startling. We remember him mainly from the
tradition that he had the ill luck usually attending
a man who does his wooing by proxy ; and
Longfellow has rendered him small service by
contrasting him with the youthful figure of John
Alden, and making him the object of the winsome Puritan maiden's
66

STANDISH CHAPEL,

THE STANDISH COUNTRY 69
merriment. And yet he was a person who won both admiration and love ;
as he was utterly loyal of heart, his friends were utterly loyal to him. He
served the infant settlement well. But for him the colony of New Plymouth
might have come to a speedy and disastrous end, and all the future of the
American Republic would have been other than it is. We cannot think
of the United States without recalling the influence on the national life of
the religious habit and the free spirit of Massachusetts and Connecticut ; and
these bear the impress of the early settlement. The Pilgrim Fathers did
not take into the New World Penn's determination to use none but
peaceful methods with the Indians ; they meant to fight, if only by fighting
they could make themselves secure ; and Standish led their skirmishes.
His bravery was unfailing ; not sickness nor weariness nor any ill success
could daunt him, and his dexterity well supported his courage. He knew
how to surprise the Indians in their encampments and guard his little band
against their attacks ; he could also negotiate terms of peace with them,
and he had friends among their chiefs. He learned to speak their
language ; irioreover, those among the sagamores who could read ' the
captain's eye' knew he was an honest as well as a brave man, and gave
him their confidence. He was the trusted comrade of the settlers in their
mercantile projects, helped to determine their colonial policy, and was sent
to England to represent their wishes. Time after time Governor Bradford
called him into his council ; for twenty-nine years out of the thirty-six of
his life in New England he was ' assistant ' to the governor ; he was also
for six years treasurer to the colony. He served his people without fee or
salary ; by his own exertions he gained a competency for himself, and left
his children well provided for. He was a reading man ; studied Csesar's
Commentary and other military writings, as well as books of contemporaneous
theology. He had also some skill in medicine ; and Bradford speaks of
him as a tender nurse. In the terrible sickness which fell on the settlers
a short time after their landing, when out of the hundred and one who
had come a.shore many were dead and many in hospital, and only six or

70 THE STANDISH COUNTRY
seven were left sound persons, Myles Standish, the military commander,
joined Elder Brewster in doing the homeliest and the most womanly
service; 'unto whom,' says Bradford, ' myselfe and many others were much
beholden in our low and sicke condition.' Edward Winslow, William
Bradford, and Myles Standish are known in American literature as the
Triumvirate, the three men whose joint exertions both saved and made the
state. Mr. John A. Goodwin has made a sympathetic study of Myles Standish
in his charming book The Pilgrim Republic. He especially dwells on the
fact that Standish might easily have made himself military dictator of the
settlement, and sums up his account of him thus : ' Great as a ruler over
others, he was far greater as a ruler over himself His services merit our
warmest gratitude and challenge our admiration. He was the man of men
whom the Pilgrims most needed to come to them, and nothing was more
improbable than that such a one would do so, or, if he did, that he would
long remain loyal, steadfast, and submissive to the voice of the people. No
man ever more decidedly had a mission, and none ever more nobly
fulfilled it.'
Bradford's many references to Myles Standish warrant this eulogium.
From Bradford and his editors we also have descriptions which explain
Priscilla's slighting estimate of the ' choleric captain,' the ' little chimney ' that
is 'soon hot.' He was 'eager and peremptory,' so one writes of him.
Lyford, the disreputable minister who gave the Pilgrims so much trouble,
and of whom they found it so hard to get rid, thought, wrongly however,
that it would be easy to displace him if another military leader vv^ere sent
out from England, ' for this Capten Standish looks like a silly boy, and is
in utter contempt.' Morton, of Merry Mount, calls him 'Captain Shrimp';
but the shrimp took Morton the Cavalier prisoner, and sent him ignominiously
back to England. Standish was the Harry Hotspur of the Pilgrim band, a
man whom it was easy to make fun of, but one whom his friends knew how
to value, and whom even they who scoffed at him would have been glad to
call their own. It is evident that Longfellow had read Bradford carefully ;

THE STANDISH COUNTRY

71

he reproduces some of the old writer's affectionate touches ; underneath the
poet's laughter we can see his admiration. But it is dangerous to laugh
at a hero ; the valet's depreciation clings. The difference between Bradford

STANDISH CROSS.

and Longfellow is simply this — and in its result it is much : Bradford gives us
a heroic character with some amusing defects ; Longfellow paints a humorous
personage of innate nobility. As was inevitable, the^ humour has thrown the
nobility into the shade.

72 THE STANDISH COUNTRY
Standish's presence and position among the Pilgrim Fathers will probably
surprise some, who look upon the Separatists as the narrowest section of the
Puritans ; and who, despite the testimony of history, are never weary of
affirming that they had no place in their community for any one who was
not in religious agreement with them. Standish was not a member of the
Church, and probably had little sympathy with their creed or with their
religious observances, although he was too large of nature to try to disturb
them. Nevertheless, his name is attached to the Mayflower Compact. There
was a certain commissionership which only a Church member could fill ; but
in other respects he was equal, in responsibility and standing, with the
heads of the colony. The personal attachment on both sides was sincere
and deep. He had been attracted to John Robinson in Leyden, and thought
so much of the exiles that he joined them when they went to settle in
America. One of the last two letters written by Robinson before his death
contains a touching reference to Standish. There had been a fight with
Indians, and the slaughter of seven of them had been referred to in letters
that reached Leyden from Plymouth. This is Robinson's reply : ' Concerning
y^ killing of these poor Indeans, of which we heard at first by reporte, and
since by more certaine relation, oh ! how happy a thing had it been, if you
had converted some, before you had killed any ; besids, wher bloud is once
begune to be shed, it is seldom stanched for a long time after. You will
say they deserved it. I grant it ; but upon what provocations and invitments
by those heathenish Christians ? Besids, you, being no magistrats over them,
were to consider, not what they deserved, but what you were by necessitie
constrained to inflicte. Necessitie of this, espetially of killing so many, (and
many more, it seems, they would, if they could,) I see not. Methinks one
or two principals should have been full enough, according to that approved
rule, The punishment to a few, and y'= fear to many. Upon this occasion
let me be bould to exhorte you seriously to consider of y" dispossition of your
Captaine, whom I love, and am perswaded y'' Lord in great mercie and for
much good hath sent him among you, if you use him aright. He is a man

THE STANDISH COUNTRY 73
humble and meek amongst you, and towards all in ordinarie course. But
now if this be meerly from an humane spirite, ther is cause to fear that by
occasion, espetially of provocation, ther may be wanting y' tenderness of y"=
life of man (made after Gods image) which is meete. It is also a thing
more glorious in mens eyes, then pleasing in Gods, or convenient for
Christians, to be a terrour to poor barbarous people ; and indeed I am
afraid lest, by these occasions, others should be drawne to affecte a kind
of rufling course in the world.' Robinson's characteristic tenderness of
conscience appears here ; especially in his reference to the ' heathenish '
conduct of some neighbouring white settlers in their original provocation
of the Indians, and in his fear lest Standish's virtues may be of natural
disposition rather than of divine grace ; and some persons may think that
the military governor on the spot was a better judge of what was needed
than the pastor in Holland. Indeed, Robinson anticipates this criticism, and
does not deprecate it ; for he adds : ' I doubt not but you will take in good
part these things which I write, and as ther is cause make use of them.'
The passage illustrates the abiding problem of the Church — how to harmonise
the convictions of the Christian teacher with the sense of duty in those who
are responsible for the safety of the community. It illustrates equally the
large-heartedness both of Standish and of the Pilgrim Fathers, that men
so different in habit and temperament should have carried on together the
affairs of the little commonwealth.
Myles Standish spent the greatest part of his life out of England, a
self-banished man. In his earliest youth he was fighting Spain in the
Netherlands, an officer in Queen Elizabeth's army ; and here he acquired
his skill as a soldier. When ' the famous truce ' of twelve years was agreed
to between the Spaniards and the Dutch, to which Bradford gratefully
alludes as lasting all the time the Scrooby Church was in Holland, he stayed
where he was ; and, in Leyden, he became acquainted with Robinson and
Bradford and the rest of the exiles. The reason of his absence from his
lO

74 THE STANDISH COUNTRY
Lancashire home was, not political necessity, nor any misconduct on his
own part, but disgust at a wrong he believed to have been done him by
some powerful relatives. He loved England, loved to visit it ; when he
made a home for himself in the New World, he called it Duxbury, the
name of one of the historic Standish homes. It was characteristic of him
to remain away from a place where he would be fretted by the sense of
personal injustice which he was powerless either to set right or to resent.
In his will he inserted the following clause : ' I give unto my son and
heir-apparent, Alexander Standish, all my lands, as heir-apparent by lawful
descent, in Ormistic, Bouscouge, Wrightington, Maudsley, Newburrow,
Cranston, and in the Isle of Man, and given to me as right heir by lawful
descent, but surreptitiously detained from me, my great-grandfather being
a second or younger brother from the house of Standish of Standish.'
Ormistic is Ormskirk, Bouscouge is Burscough, Cranston is Croston, all in
the hundred of Leyland, in the County Palatine of Lancaster. Claims of
this sort are often supposititious ; but there is reason for believing that
Myles's wrong was not imaginary. Mr. Goodwin tells a curious story which
goes to confirm the suspicion of injustice done him. ' Early in this century
the American descendants of Myles began an inquiry into the case. It was
found that, while Elizabeth's commission indicated Standish's birth as in
1584, the leaf for 1584-5, in the Chorley parish register, had been pumiced
so carefully as to leave no trace of the writing, though the record is otherwise
complete from 1549 to 1652. This defaced page is not even now open for
inspection. In 1S47 Mr. Bromley, an attorney for the heirs, obtained leave
as an antiquary to examine the volume ; but the rector, finding him searching
for Standish's birth, arrested him under some ancient law, and enforced on
him a fine of about ^75, with the alternative of imprisonment ; and he
even refused to certify that the register is illegible at this point.' The belief
that Myles Standish was victimised is deeply embedded in American
sentiment. The family of Standish was for some centuries one of the most

standish CHURCH (INTERIOR).

THE STANDISH COUNTRY

11

powerful in the North of England. The road between Wigan and Chorley
passes through a noble sweep of country, which, in the seventeenth century,
must have been a fine farming tract, with corn-fields and grazing land,
enclosed by the stately woods which still bound the property. The traveller
passes the Boar's Head Inn, and farther on the White Crow, names which
call up visions of a hunting

gentry and a rural people alert
to notice animal portents. This
is the Standish estate. At the
southern end is Standish Manor,
which, in 1287, was held, under
Earl Ferrars, by Jordan, grand
son of Thurstan de Standish.
A few years after Jordan's
brother Hugh acquired Duxbury
Manor, and founded the younger
branch of the family. The
township of Standish was of
importance during the Roman
occupation of Britain ; and the
Standish family is known to have
been here since the Norman
Conquest. Thurstan de Standish
(1221) is, however, the illus
trious personage from whom
both the elder and the younger branches love to trace their descent.
The Standishes have been allied by marriage to many of the most
distinguished English houses — the Heskeths and the Harringtons in
Lancashire, and the Dukes of Norfolk, among others. They have been
mixed up with great political events. John Standish was the first to
wound Wat Tyler, when knocked down by the Lord Mayor of London,

PORCH OF STANDISH CHURCH.

78 THE STANDISH COUNTRY
and for this service he was knighted by Richard II. Henry Standish,
a Franciscan friar, was Bishop of St. Asaph in the time of Henry VIII. ;
he sided with Queen Catherine in the matter of the divorce, going on his
knees to Henry in the vain endeavour to turn him from his purpose, and
afterward helping the queen to prepare her defence. They were fighters too,
winning distinction at Agincourt, and in Scotland in the fifteenth century.
They were not always found on the same side. At the Reformation a
permanent division took place between the elder and the younger branches ;
the Duxbury people becoming Protestant, while the Standishes of Standish
adhered to the old faith. Thomas Standish, of Duxbury, sat in the 1640
Parliament as a Parliamentarian ; his son, a Royalist, was shot in the siege
of Manchester two years after. Ralph Standish, of Standish, the son-in-law
of the Duke of Norfolk, joined the Pretender at Preston, in November, 1715,
and with difficulty saved his estate. Their diversity, in politics and religion,
does not seem to have been by craft, that the family might be secure,
whichever side won ; it was in their nature to follow their own way.
Mr. Bartlett, who visited the district in 1853, found this to be the tradition
concerning them. Speaking of the two halls, and the two branches of
the family, he says : ' There has been no end of litigation and dispute with
regard to the property, so that, as an old man in the neighbourhood
observed, " it seemed as if there were a spell hanging over it." '
It is not possible, in the absence of more specific information, to
know on what terms Myles Standish lived with the heads of the two
houses ; nor can we safely conjecture the circumstances under which he was
deprived of his lands. In his will his title is affirmed to be through the
Standishes of Standish. He makes no claim to Duxbury, which had been
held, during eleven generations, by direct male descent from Hugh, the
founder of the younger branch. With this agrees the tradition of his being
a Roman Catholic, although this tradition is confused by his alleged baptism
in Chorley Church. He called his eldest son Alexander, that being the
name of the possessors both of Standish and of Duxbury Halls during

THE STANDISH COUNTRY

79

Myles's youth. Any wrong there was seems to have been perpetrated by
an immediate relative, not by the head of either house.
During the present century a great change has passed over the aspect
of the region. The Wigan coal-field has been worked ; the London and
North-western and the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railways have come,

DUXBURY HALL.

developing a great traffic ; and various factories, chemical among others, are
busily in operation. The wealth of the territorial lords has largely increased,
while the male descendants of the Standishes of Standish and Duxbury have
died out. Mansions occupy various heights for some miles around Wigan ;
but they belong to manufacturers and professional men who direct the local
industries. Both halls have now been sold to strangers ; the ' family

So THE STANDISH COUNTRY
portraits' in Standish, the 'Spanish and Italian pictures' in Duxbury, seen
by Mr. Bardett, have been dispersed ; the latest report is that Standish Hall
is to be turned into a brewery.

It was on a dull day in early April that I set out from Wigan on a
ramble in search of Myles Standish. Driving along the elevated road which
leads to Duxbury Hall, I thought how beautiful a county this must have
been before it became prosperous. The low hills, the undulating fields, the
old hedgerows, the beeches and the ashes, once lay open to the sun ; now
they lie open to the pall of smoke that covers nearly the whole of Northern
England, and which, more than the moisture brought in from the sea
when the west winds blow, is the cause of the bad weather of Lancashire.
The dull atmosphere was scarcely broken up by the breeze ; it seemed
' moving altogether, if it moved at all ' ; there was a fitful mildness in the
air, and there were fitful gleams from the sky, which about noon became a
short spell of sunshine. Large works bordered the road, with carboys and
railway-waggons and horses waiting for their loads ; it would have been a
tedious prospect, but the activity of the workmen enlivened it. A stately
viaduct broke out from a tunnel ; then the railway ran into a deep cutting
in the valley below : should Lancashire ever become a ruin, persons will
come from far lands and call these objects beautiful, as now we speak of
the beauty of the aqueducts on the Appian Way. Always, when the eye
glanced forward, there were the beckoning hills and the rolling uplands, and
the bare trees revealing the symmetry of their structure, the strong arches
of their boughs, and their massive outline. In the middle distance were
coal-pits, with their widespread rubbish-tips, tall chimneys, counting-houses,
clanking chains, and clustered cottages where the workmen and their wives
and children live. The feeling of space grew on one — space being slowly
filled up, but not annihilated. By-and-by we came to Duxbury, suddenly,
unexpectedly, though I had been asking for it all along. The hall is a

THE STANDISH COUNTRY 8i
large square mansion, the outside walls about seventy years old ; it has
neither stateliness of proportion nor beauty of treatment. But the situation ! —
the Standishes had the old English sense for sites in their building. The
house lies in a little hollow, and faces the south ; woods and fields are
around you ; the sun came out, warming the skin and lighting up the
prospect. No sign of factory or coal-pit was visible from where I stood ;
if only the smoke would lift, I could see the land somewhat as Myles
Standish saw it. It was an empty house, save for a few servants ; the
garden was being prepared for its new occupants, and I was kindly allowed
to walk about it. But this was no old garden ; except for half a dozen
splendid yews and the rich brown soil, nothing was here on which Myles
Standish could have looked. These square mansions effectually destroy
the feeling which years should bring ; signs of decay suggest the need of
the bricklayer and the plasterer and the mason ; they move no reverence,
stir no vague regret. It was a pleasant sight, but it had no sentiment in
it. After a short stay I drove off, back for Standish Church and Hall,
along the drive and to the right on the Wigan road ; and then the sentiment
came, startlingly, quite unlike anything that could have been anticipated.
We had reached the Ellerbeck Colliery, when I turned to get a last look
at the park. It was no longer visible ; a huge tip, stretching from the
works to the road, filled up the view. In the hazy light it was a fine
object, like a massive bastion, striding out, with a menacing aspect, as if
to guard the mansion beyond. So has England changed ; castles and
military works are gone ; homes are defended by productions, the fruit of
enterprise and toil.
Turning up a road leading westward, two or three miles before reaching
Wigan, we came to Standish Church and village, on the way to Standish
Hall. The church is a fine edifice, in excellent preservation, uniformly built
in Perpendicular Gothic, of the early Tudor period. Entering by the south
porch, you come at once on the Standish chapel, which the later Catholic
lords of the manor have not used, although they were the proprietors of the
1 1

THE STANDISH COUNTRY

// TO \^.,
(j THE MEMORY of'' :^ x~-^
//jAlMES STATED 1 5H^^v '^^
H2^yedy5 @aTnekeepcr|', ^
I LATHOM HOUSE

advowson. Directly opposite this is
another chapel, serving as a vestry,
with Standish graves underneath. There
are no conspicuous Standish monu
ments ; but on the northern wall, near
the chancel, there is a slab to the
memory of a humble Standish, who
was gamekeeper to another Lanca
shire family. The church floor is
largely made up of tombstones ; but
the nave is so closely filled with pews
that no inscription can be read. In
the broad market-place outside the church there is an ancient cross,
and close by it the stocks, both bearing signs of recent restoration.
The stocks have not been used for more than sixty years ; and some
time since 1853, when Mr. Bartlett was here, they were removed in a
state of partial decay. When, in 1897, there was a question of celebrating
the sixtieth year of the Queen's reign by some permanent memorial, on the
motion of a primitive village antiquary the stocks were repaired and put
back in their original place, and the cross was also cleaned and repaired. The
Standish cottages are not attrac
tive. They are inhabited mostly
by colliers, whose families seem
abundantly fed, but with little
education. A short drive took me to
Standish Hall, another building
facing the south, standing among
fields and within woods, all sadly
neglected and suffering from un
controlled damp ; the house has

'&-.

%J^

THE STANDISH COUNTRY

83

a beautiful prospect, down a wooded valley toward the western side of
Wigan. It is not a stately mansion, like Duxbury ; it has been built
at various times, and can scarcely be called beautiful, but it is eminently
picturesque and interesting. The front occupies two sides of an irregular
quadrangle. The oldest part is what remains of a two-storied timber

STANDISH HALL.

house, which was new when Myles Standish was born ; on the east side
is a chapel, with bell-tower, of red brick and Georgian architecture.
At the western end of the timbered building is the doorway, with rooms
overhead, and beyond this another Georgian bit of red brickwork, all of
plain style and three stories in height. The house ends in a western wing.

84 THE STANDISH COUNTRY
of a single story, in plastered work and quite modern in date. It looks
as if it had been added for a billiard-room ; it really consists of two
apartments and a corridor. Everything has gone to decay ; looking through
the windows, you catch sight of antiquities which you long to examine.
One small room in the original home has a Standish device over the
chimneypiece ; not the three dishes, but the owl and rat. The north side
— that is, the back of the hall — is really the most picturesque part. On
the left is the chapel, with the gable of the nave rising above the
lower gable of the chancel. The body of the hall, behind the south
front, has three projecting gables over the servants' quarters. Still farther
forward are outhouses, with an outer staircase, a laundry with ventilating
turret, and beyond this, to the west, another gable. The gables are
admirably proportioned, and, rising in their clear colour and fairly sharp
edges, they carry on the eye from portion to portion of the home, and
set you wondering as to the uses and histories of the rooms they veil.
In this old hall was concocted the Lancashire plot of 1694, for replacing
the Stuarts on the throne. Here, doubtless, many a futile dream was
dreamed, of changing the new order in Church and State, till gradually
the Standishes ceased to find themselves influential persons in the territory
of their fathers. Then the hall was let to strangers ; for many years France
was the loved resort of the owner. Now the ancient mansion is alienated
from the race.
Outside the Standish grounds is another colliery, the Prospect pits ; and
here, too, the mound of refuse has taken the form of a bastion, but not so
gloomy nor so grand as that of Duxbury.
A visit to the home of the Standishes will give the reflective visitor
much material for thought ; years roll by in an hour, changes accomplish
themselves in his vision, and always there is a human background ; it is an
old dwelling-place, of men and women and their children, amid whose relics
he is standing. But one thing refuses to come when he bids it. There is
here no image of Myles Standish. One little object in the Pilgrim Hall,

THE STANDISH COUNTRY

85

at Plymouth. Massachusetts, awakens a feeling he has not here : a girl's
sampler, with the legend, ' Lora Standish is my name.' The name Lora
goes back to 1398, when Lora, daughter of Sir Roger de Pilkington,
married Lawrence de Standish, of Standish Hall. The memory and fame
of the Standishes have passed over with Myles to America.

STANDISH CHURCH.

BOSTON STUMP AND MARKET-PLACE.

CHAPTER V

BOSTON
HE associations of Boston in Lincolnshire with the
Pilgrim Fathers are twofold. In the early part of
the seventeenth century that growing port on the
Witham was the scene of the first attempt on
the part of the members of the Church at Scrooby
to escape to Holland. The little sleepy English
town, on the other hand, added more than it
deemed to its own glory when it gave the name of Boston to that settlement
S6

BOSTON 89
on the eastern shores of Massachusetts which rapidly developed into the
great town which has had so much to do, during the last century and a
half, with the history and development of the United States. But the
English Boston was not linked by any such close and intimate association
with the origin and fortunes of the Pilgrim Fathers as Gainsborough and
Scrooby and Standish.
Although the history of Boston, like that of many another quiet English
town, stretches back into a remote past, and although ever since the Norman
Conquest it has been the seat of commercial activity and of steadily increasing
trade, especially as a port on the east coast, yet for the great majority of
Englishmen ' Boston Stump ' sums up their knowledge of the antiquities
and features of interest in the town. This famous tower is indeed well
worthy of such widespread knowledge. It is the tower of the church of
St. Botolph, founded in 1309, and partly restored in 1857 by some of the
inhabitants of the greater Boston over the sea, who thus in practical and
enduring shape acknowledged their association with the older city. The
tower of St. Botolph's, closely resembling in general appearance the tower
of Antwerp Cathedral, rises to a height of two hundred and ninety feet.
It is crowned with a beautiful octagonal lantern, and over the flat corn-
lands of Lincolnshire, or as the sailor on the North Sea is making for
the mouth of the Witham, can be seen for over forty miles.
The great New England name closely associated with the older Boston
is that of John Cotton, who in 161 2 became Vicar of St. Botolph's. Born
in 1585, he entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1598, and finally became
Fellow and Tutor of Emmanuel College in that university. While at
Cambridge he passed under influences similar to those which had previously
so powerfully guided and moulded the views of John Robinson. Cotton
carried with him to his vicarage at Boston strong Puritan sympathies, a
high conception of the ministerial office and work, and a resolution to be
diligent and faithful in his spiritual office. These qualities, which endeared
him to the best members of his flock, made him at the same time an
12

90

BOSTON

OLD WOODEN DOOR, BOSTON CHURCH.

object of suspicion to those in authority under such rulers as James I.
and Charles I. In 1633 he was compelled to resign his charge, and.

BOSTON

91

although in danger of
arrest, made his way to
London, and escaped to
New England. There,
in the new Boston, he
was made colleague of
John Wilson in the pas
torate of Boston Church.
It was from members
of the modern repre
sentatives of this Church
that much of the money

COTTON S PULPIT, BOSTON CHURCH.

came which in 1857 went to Boston Stump. The pulpit which John Cotton
filled is still in use in the church ; and though the England ot James I.

92 BOSTON
thought him only worthy of imprisonment because he dared to think for
himself and to place the precepts of the New Testament above the
ordinances of men, the Boston of to-day honours his memory as one of
her noblest sons. The Cottonian Library, which occupies a room over
the porch of Boston Church, also commemorates his influence.
Under a king like James I., and with bishops like Laud and Bancroft
not only in power, but supported by the whole authority of king and
executive, the humble Christians of Gainsborough and Scrooby were certain to
fare but ill. So intolerable did their position become, that they determined
to take refuge in the only European country where religious toleration was
possible — in Holland. But whilst it meant fines, imprisonment, and possibly
death to stay, escape was illegal, and had to be accomplished secretly. It
is here that Boston becomes prominent in our story. What happened there
cannot be better told than in the words of Dr. John Brown. ^
' These voyagers in search of freedom resolved to move as a body, and
not in detached companies, and to make Boston, on the Lincolnshire coast,
their point of departure. They therefore hired a vessel wholly to themselves,
making agreement with the captain to be ready at a certain date to take
them and their goods at a convenient place where they would meet him.
Meantime the deceitful scoundrel had privately arranged their betrayal, and
no sooner had they stepped on board than the officers and searchers were
at hand to arrest them. Put back into open boats, the minions of the law
"rifled and ransacked them, searching them to their shirts for money, yea,
even the women further than became modesty, and then carried them back
into the town, and made them a spectacle and a wonder to the multitude
who came flocking on all sides to behold them. Being thus first by the
catchpole officers rifled and stripped of their money, books, and much other
goods, they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers were sent to
inform the Lords of the Council of them ; and so they were committed
to ward."
' Tfie Pilgrim Fathers of New Efigland, pp. loi — io6.

BOSTON

93

' Boston, in which these unfortunate prisoners found themselves after
their arrest, one of the most curious old towns in England, had long been

BOSTON STUMP, FROM THE WASH.

declining from the good old days when, in the reign of Edward III., it sent
seventeen ships and three hundred and sixty men for the invasion of Brittany.

94

BOSTON

Its ancient buildings, — the quaint old house in Wormgate, the old building
in Spain Lane, the Grammar School, the Hussey Tower, the Guildhall in
South Street, and, most of all, the great Church of St. Botolph, with its
magnificent tower, seen as a landmark far off at sea, and known all the
world over as Boston Stump, — these all bespeak the antiquity and former

THE OLD KITCHEN, GUILDHALL, BOSTON.

importance of this eastern port on the Lincolnshire coast. It was in the
old court-room on the first floor of the Guildhall that William Brewster and
his companions were presented to the magistrates, and it was to the old
cells, still to be seen on the ground floor, they were remitted back " till
order came from the Council Table." These cells had been in use at that
time for about sixty years, for "in 1552 it was ordered that the kitchen

BOSTON

95

under the town-hall and the chambers over them should be prepared for
a prison and a dwelling-house for one of the sergeants."
' The magistrates were not unfavourable to them, for Puritanism was
too rife in Boston itself for them to think ill of those who went that way.

THE OLD POOR-HOUSE, BOSTON.

When, a quarter of a century later, nine hundred Puritan colonists sailed
for Massachusetts with John Winthrop, many of the leading townsmen of
Boston were among the number : Richard Bellingham, recorder of the town
from 1625 to 1633, Atherton Hough, mayor of the borough in 1628, and

96 BOSTON
Thomas Leverett, an alderman; Thomas Dudley, Richard Bellingham, and
John Leverett were afterwards governors of Massachusetts, and William
Coddington, father and governor of Rhode Island ; while John Cotton, the
Puritan preacher of Boston Church for twenty years, became one of the
leading religious forces of New England life.
' The seeds of all this movement were therefore in the town at the
time these prisoners were there. This was probably why that, as Bradford
tells us, " the magistrates used them courteously and shewed them what
favour they could, though they could not deliver them till order came from
the Council Table." What was done in the matter by the Lords of the
Council we do not know. After detaining them for a month, and possibly
receiving instructions to that effect from the Privy Council, the magistrates
dismissed the main body of the prisoners, sending them back to their homes
at Scrooby or elsewhere, and keeping seven of the leaders still in prison.
These, after a further period of detention, they bound over to appear at
the Assizes. One of these seven, Bradford tells us, was William Brewster,
who " was chief of those that were taken at Boston, and suffered the
greatest loss." 'What happened at the Assizes there are no records to
shew, but the failure of this attempt in the autumn of 1608 did not
prevent the making of other endeavours to get away in the course of
the following spring.'

AN OLD BOOK IN THE LIBRARY AT BOSTON.

uPwr,
wn

o
< DOf

PETERHOUSE FROM THE FELLOWS GARDEN.

CHAPTER VI

CAMBRIDGE AND CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE
LTHOUGH extant evidence seems to prove that
lohn Robinson was educated at Cambridge Uni
versity, the proof is not quite so complete as
could be desired. Perhaps the best case is
presented in Dr. Brown's Pilgrim Fathers of
New England^ : —
' Here [at Scrooby] the good and venerable
man Richard Clyfton became their pastor by free choice of the people, and

1 Pages 94, 95.
99

lOO

CAMBRIDGE

joined with him as teacher was another man of the strength and nobleness
of whose Christian character, and the breadth and enlightenment of whose
mind, two continents were to hear more and more as the centuries passed
on. This was John Robinson, a man whose name is fragrant and memorable
in Free Church story. Before he came to Scrooby he had been a preacher

THE INNER COURT, CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEGE.

of Christ's Gospel in the county of Norfolk, and there had won men's hearts
to himself as well as to the truth. Henry Ainsworth, who knew him well,
tells us that " certain citizens of Norwich were excommunicated tor resorting
unto and praying with Mr. Robinson, a man utterly reverenced of all the
city for the grace of God in him." None of his contemporaries have given
us a connected story of this good man's life. Joseph Hall, afterwards

CAMBRIDGE loi
Bishop of Norwich, says that " Lincolnshire was his county," a statement
borne out by the following entry in the register of Corpus Christi College,
Cambridge: "John Robinson. F. Linsch. admitted 1592. Fell. 1598." As
to where in Lincolnshire his birthplace was, still remains uncertain.
Gainsborough claims him, and there is this much to be said for that claim,
that among the benefactors who have left money to the town may be
found the names of Nathaniel Robinson and John Robinson. This, however,
in the case of a name so common does not count for much in the way of
evidence. So far as dates are concerned, John Robinson, D.D., Archdeacon
of Lincoln, and Precentor of Lincoln Cathedral, may very well have been
his father. He was of Pembroke College, Cambridge. In Bishop Kennett's
Collections it is recorded that May 31, 1574, "he was installed Archdeacon
of Bedford, in the place, as it seems, of William Rodd, and about 1576
he succeeded John Aylmer in the Archdeaconry of Lincoln, of which church
he was about that time made chauntor. Obiit 1597." He would seem
to have been made precentor before he became archdeacon, for in the
Lincoln register there is the following entry : " Collated to the Precentory,
Aug. 3, 1572, John Robinson, M.A." If there is anything in this conjecture,
John Robinson of Scrooby and Leyden was born in the precentory at
Lincoln in 1575, some three years after his father became precentor. A
mere youth of seventeen, he entered the University when Cambridge was
keenly alive to the religious movements of the time. That eminent Puritan
William Perkins was public catechist of Robinson's own college, where it
was his duty to read a lecture every Thursday during term time on some
useful subject of divinity. He was also afternoon lecturer at St. Andrew's
Church, where he attracted great numbers of Cambridge men by his earnest
spirit-stirring addresses ; and as Robinson states that his " personal conversion "
was brought about in the Church of England, it is probable that it was
under this man's influence, all the more probable, inasmuch as in later
years Robinson published a catechism as an Appendix to Mr. Perkins Six
Principles of the Christian Religion!

I02

CAMBRIDGE

It so happens that in Corpus Christi College have survived even more
complete and undoubted remains of the Elizabethan period than in many of the
other Cambridge collesfes. The visitor who now wanders into the old court,
o o

A BIT OF THE OLD COURT IN CORPUS, CAMBRIDGE.

or Studies the Saxon architecture in St. Benedict's Church, looks upon buildings
upon which the eye of John Robinson may have rested hundreds of times.
If the entry quoted above really refers to the great SejDaratist teacher,
then undoubtedly he often trod the picturesque old court, and often entered

CAMBRIDGE

103

the church so rich in Saxon remains. He is not enrolled upon the list of
famous men who have gone forth from Corpus, or, as in his day it was
called, Bene't College. But though his name does not stand beside those of
Matthew Parker, Thomas Tenison, Nicholas Bacon, Christopher Marlowe,
and others, it may yet be doubted whether any one of these has so potently
influenced the thought and life of succeeding generations as the quiet student
who first in his own mental and spiritual life worked out the problem of

THE TOWER OF ST. BENEDICT S CHURCH FROM CORPUS.

religious liberty, and then spent his life in striving to bring others into that
liberty wherewith Christ had made him free.
Corpus Christi now makes a much more imposing show among the
many architectural glories of Cambridge than it did three centuries since.
But with the splendid range of recent buildings facing Trumpington Street
and with the great new quadrangle we have nothing to do. These came
into existence long after John Robinson's day. The visitor who passes

I04

CAMBRIDGE

through the great quadrangle into the inner court comes upon a range of

THE INTERIOR OF ST. BENEDICTS CHURCH.

buildings that present now almost the identical features which they possessed
in 1598. The engravings of Corpus which accompany this chapter enable the

CAMBRIDGE

105

reader to
walls and
of rooms
Robinson
for years. The old hall has
fallen from its early dignity,
and is now merely a kitchen ;
but the handsome window is
as it was three centuries ago.
St. Benedict's Church was

THE PORCH OF THE OLD ROUND CHURCH, CAMBRIDGE. 14

io6

CAMBRIDGE

used for the religious services ot the college for more than two centuries
before the college chapel was built. The tower of this church is one of the
finest specimens of Saxon architecture extant, and was built prior to the
year lOoo ; that is, it has braved the storms and survived the chances of
over nine hundred years. The interior, of which also we present an
illustration, is famous for its fine Saxon arch.

THE CHAPEL, PETERHOUSE, CAMBRIDGE.

Cambridge itself possesses a rich treasure ot early buildings,
notwithstanding the vandalism of recent centuries and the inevitable pressure
of the modern utilitarian spirit. Of these we present two or three typical
examples. The first is the noted Church of the Holy Sepulchre, one of the
four surviving round churches in England. This building is said to have
been consecrated in iioi. The western door, which is shown in our

CAMBRIDGE

107

engraving, is a fine example of the Norman semicircular arch, with zigzag
mouldings. St. Peter's College is the oldest of the Cambridge foundations,
dating from the close of the thirteenth century. The restorers of the
eighteenth century exerted much ingenuity in endeavouring to destroy its
most characteristic features under the guise of restoration.
The older streets of Cambridge still contain houses upon which the eye

tWW'^_

' 'M.r. ^^jy twi/Ai^

OLD HOUSES ON CASTLE HILL, IX CAMBRIDGE.

of John Robinson and his contemporaries may often have rested. One
such, a bit of picturesque Cambridge on the domestic side, we present to
the reader. Neither of our great universities has, during the last two centuries,
looked upon the Separatist movement in the religious life of the nation with
at all a kindly eye. Nor is it to be expected from human nature that they
should. If John Robinson was right in the contention for which he sacrificed

io8

CAMBRIDGE

preferment, for which he suffered exile, for which the men he trained
preferred the rigours and desolations of New England with freedom, to
the comforts of Old England with religious bondage, then much of the
religious life and polity of the Oxford and Cambridge of to-day is fatally
mistaken. But the spiritual descendants of John Robinson recognise, and
recognise gratefully, that in both universities, and perhaps in Cambridge
especially, influences have been at work, and are tending more and more
in the direction of John Robinson's ideal — religious freedom, and religious
equality in subjection to no lordship but that of Jesus Christ.

THE OLD PORCH, ST. BENEDICTS CHURCH.

THE ROSE AND CROWN INN, WISBECH.

OLD HOUSES IN MARKET MEWS, WISBECH.

CHAPTER VII

WISBECH, THE TOWN OF DOROTHY MAY

N looking back over the history of any old English
town, one is struck by the ever-changing story
that it has witnessed. Long years ago this quiet
agricultural town of Wisbech was a port of some
note, with a castle which in its later years was
always full, according to what was the fashion of
the day, either with Papists put in by Puritans,
or Puritans put in by Papists — sometimes with one, sometimes with the

112

WISBECH

THE BELFRY, GRAMMAR SCHOOL, WISBECH.

Other. Further, the old building of which we give an engraving was until
lately the grammar school : prior to that for long years it had been the

U ISBECH

113

town-hall ; and earlier still the old guildhall of the Guild of the Holy
Trinity was on this site, if not in this actual building.
Wisbech is proud of its history. In a.d. 657 it was mentioned in a
charter of grants made by
the Saxon king Wulfere,
and thence onwards from
time to time the historian
gives us little notes about
it, which shew that it was
a place of importance —
well, apparently, in the
midst of the active life
of the times. Sometimes
even royalty came and
stayed within its bounda
ries, and it is told how
one of them — King John —
left his royal robes and
jewels, and even the very
crown of England, in the
deep mud of one of the
waterways that surround
the town. Much of this
history is recorded accu
rately and certainly by
deeds, charters, and manuscripts, which exist to this day, and can be
seen by the curious in the Corporation Library in the Wisbech Museum.
But we regret that we can hold out no hope to the student of Pilgrim
Father lore of discovering much really relative to the subject heading
this chapter.
The short sentence, ' Dorothy May of Wisbeach,' seems to contain all
IS

THE OLD GRAMMAR SCHOOL, WISBECH.

ti4

)r ISBECH

known about the young wife — she was only sixteen when she married ot
'William Bradford of Austerfeld, fustian worker.' That Dorothy had an
elder sister is certain, as a record exists that four years before Bradford s
marriage one Jean de I'Ecluse, a book printer from Rouen, had taken to
wife Jacomyne May, also of Wisbech. But with these two scraps of
information we have to rest satisfied, and all that the student can do is

A BIT OF WISBECH.

!!»B«i-.-».,-..»„v,.. , ;¦ ^.,y.'m:f^ iSa««4iaf«^««t«B*»M*"

to wander round the old place, and -^^ -
note what still remains ot those things
that must liave met Miss Dorothy's
eyes, as she, with her sister, wended
her way through the narrow, crooked
streets to school. Brave and loyal eyes they must have been, full ot deep
and fervid faith in the man to whom she had plighted her troth, and for
whom she left her home, and crossed those dark and most troubled waters,
when only still little more than a mere girl. The visitor to Wisbech who
has any sympathy with the Pilgrim Fathers eagerly wishes to find out
more about her — where she lived, who were her parents, why they let her

WISBECH

"5

go so young, whether she went quite alone, or whether her parents went
too ; but now nothing is forthcoming.
Dorothy Bradford's experience of the New World was destined to be
brief and her end tragic. She lived through all the excitement and
hardships and perils of the voyage in the Mayflower. But while the
vessel was lying at anchor off Cape Cod, and before any foothold had
been gained upon the soil
of America, Dorothy Brad
ford's life suddenly ended.
During the absence of her
husband with the first ex
ploring party that had been
sent out, through some
accident, witnessed, appa
rently, by no one on board,
the young wife fell over
board and was drowned — -
the first of the party to die ;
but soon, alas ! to be fol
lowed by many others.
When we first visited
Wisbech (the inhabitants
spell it without the ' a '
now), and saw at the angle of two streets, in large letters, the name ' May '
over a drapery store, we were delighted, and at once started making a
sketch of what we thought was a most valuable find. We were well on
with our work, never heeding a wonderful and terrible fishy smell from
a neighbouring stall, when the good friend to whom we had introductions
came and knocked down our castle by telling us that the name, although
the same, had no sort of connection with Dorothy. We shut our sketch
book, and went down into the adjoining crypt.

STATUE IN WISBECH CHURCH, DATE 1630.

ii6

U7SBECH

Then later we received every
courtesy from the keeper of the
archives and the parish registers,
but no entries could be found
bearing upon the Mays. In the
old church of St. Peter there is
endless interest, and its antiquity
is such that it must have been an
OLD SIGN, THE HORN AND PHEASANT, WISBECH. ^J^ building eVen iu DorOthy's
days. Perhaps she came here Sunday by Sunday, perhaps she did not ; but,
anyhow, she must have passed by it hundreds of times, and possibly dressed
in ruff and steeple hat, like the good lady whose kneeling figure is seen
in one of the memorials on the church walls.
Quite certainly, too, she must have been familiar with the old inn
the Horn and Pheasant, for that dates back to 1475 ; and we shew its
old metal sign, which may still be seen on one of the gabled ends forming
an archway into the stable-yard. To-day the inn is known as the Rose
and Crown, and is interesting as having had a continuous history as a
house of entertainment for over four hundred years. Then the old block
of half-timber buildings shewn in another of our pictures must certainly
have often been seen by her, and doubtless they have not been very
considerably altered since her days. Clearly she belonged to a good,
quiet, homely family, who made no great stir in the place, who held to the
views they thought true, and who, when the time came, were ready even to
brave much for conscience' sake. But of all that there is no record ; and
in the last published history of Wisbech, which makes a sumptuous volume
of four hundred and ninety-five pages, less than a dozen lines are devoted
to what to us is the most interesting personality yet produced by this old
Fenland town.

A SEVENTEi;NTn-CENTURY HOUSE IN LEYDEN.

CHAPTER VIII

HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON

' Nor shall the eternal roll of praise reject
Those Unconforming . .
 a voluntary prey
To poverty, and grief, and disrespect,
And some to want — as if by tempests wrecked
On a wild coast. How destitute ! Did they
Feel not that Conscience never can betray,
That peace of mind is Virtue's sure effect?
Their altars they forego, their homes they quit.
Fields which they love, and paths they daily trod.
And cast the future upon Providence ;
As men the dictates of whose inward sense
Outweighs the world ; whom self-deceiving wit
Lures not from what they deem the cause of God.'
HE Scrooby Church continued together about a
year, says Bradford, and kept their meetings every
Sabbath in one place and another, exercising the
worship of God amongst themselves, notwithstanding
all the diligence and malice of their adversaries.
Then, seeing they could no longer continue in
that condition, they resolved to get over into
Flolland, as they could, which was in the years 1607 and 1608. They were
driiwn to the Low Countries, because they heard that freedom of religion
was there for all men ; as also how sundry from London, and other parts
of the land, had been exiled and persecuted for the same cause, and were
gone thither, and lived at Amsterdam and in other places of the land.
119

120

HOLLAND AND fOHN ROBINSON

In the earlier days of Elizabeth's reign, when Protestants of the Low
Countries were fleeing from the wrath of Alva, many of them found refuge
in England. Now Holland was repaying the debt ; and Holland and
England were to unite in training the founders of the North American
States for their eventful place in history. The successful resistance ot
Spanish tyranny under William the Silent had had two results : the

w?w '" ' Wi "W^fs:s^p'';wsi^wc^if^''""'"'**--T^^

VIEW ON VLIET CANAL, LOOKING TOWARDS LEYDEN.

establishment of Holland as the earliest home of liberty of thought — a
distinction to which the gallant nation has never been untrue ; and the
transfer of commercial supremacy from the Flemish to the Dutch. One
of the trusts accepted by William, when he became Governor of Holland
and Zeeland, was that he should maintain the exercise of the Reformed
Evangelical Religion, but should not permit cmquiries to be made into any

AMSTERDAM 121
man's religious belief, or disabilities to be inflicted on any because of their
religion. Middleburg became a centre of Presbyterian and Congregational
religious activity ; books of priceless value to Puritan literature were constantly
being printed there and smuggled into England. Amsterdam had been the
home of the earliest English Congregational Church — that of martyred Barrow
and Greenwood and Penry — for more than ten years when the brethren of
the Second Separation came, first from Gainsborough and afterward from
Scrooby. The prosperity of Amsterdam dates also from the accession of
William the Silent. The trade of Antwerp had been ruined ; merchants
and manufacturers left the Spanish Netherlands ; and Amsterdam was for
a time the greatest mercantile city in Europe. It grew rapidly in size and
population ; its promise was still high when the victims of English persecution
sought a home in it.
To a modern Englishman, this rapidly advancing prosperity would have
been itself an attraction ; to the yeomen of the sixteenth century it was
much the reverse. England was then as far behind Holland in mercantile
enterprise and social amenities as in regard for liberty of thought and the
rights of conscience. Bradford reveals a shrinking from contact with the
higher civilisation of the Hollanders which, hard as it is for us to understand,
needs to be taken account of as one feature of the rural life of the times.
He says : ' Being thus constrained to leave their native soyle and countrie,
their lands and livings, and all their freinds and famillier acquaintance, it
was much, and thought marvelous by many. But to goe into a countrie
they knew not (but by hearsay), wher they must learne a new language,
and get their livings they knew not how, it being a dear place, and subjecte
to the misseries of warr, it was by many thought an adventure almost
desperate, a case intolerable, and a misserie worse then death. Espetially
seeing they were not aquainted with trads nor traffique (by which y'= countrie
doth subsiste), but had only been used to a plaine countrie life, and y^
inocente trade of husbandrey. But these things did not dismay them (though
they did some times trouble them), tor their desires were set on y° ways
16

122

HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON

of God, and to injoye his ordinances ; but they rested on his providence,
and knew whom they had beleeved.'
In another passage he reveals a certain timorousness, as well as a sense
of hardship before them, which they felt on their arrival in Holland.
' Being now come into y" Low Countries, they saw many goodly and

A VIEW AT THE HAGUE.

fortified cities, strongly walled and garded with troopes of armed men.
Also they heard a strange and uncouth language, and beheld y'= differente
manners and custumes of y" people, with their strange fashons and attires ;
all so farre differing from y' of their plaine countrie villages (wherein thev
were bred, and had so longe lived), as it seemed they were come into a
new world. But these were not the things they much looked on, or long

AMSTERDAM 123
tooke up their thoughts ; for they had other work in hand, and an other
kind of warr to wage and maintaine. For though they saw fair and
bewtifull cities, flowing with abundance of all sorts of welth and riches, yet
it was not longe before they saw the grimme and grisly face of povertie
coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle and
incounter, and from whom they could not flye ; but they were armed with
faith and patience against him and all his encounters ; and though they
were sometimes foyled, yet by Gods assistance they prevailed and got
y^ victorie.' This bashfulness in a foreign country — so un-English, as we find
ourselves calling it — was not a peculiarity of the Separatists from the midland
counties alone ; it equally characterised the townsmen who had come from
London in 1593. Indeed, they were even more unready than Robinson's
company to make the effort required for the adoption of a higher standard
of living. It is a pitiful story which Dr. Dexter recounts of the sufferings of
these exiles in the journey from Kampen, on the Zuyder Zee, to Amsterdam,
staying some time at Naarden, where they were helped by town's money.
They were mostly poor Londoners, so poor that the imprisonment of the
father for a few weeks brought his family to destitution. They had had to
part with their small stocks and household furniture at a forced sale ; they
had not the daring of the soldier, the self-respect of the scholar, or the
enterprise of the merchant-adventurer ; — they were Englishmen of the humbler
class, as Shakspere knew them, — used to bear
' the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes.'
In Amsterdam itself 'they were almost consumed with deep poverty;
loaded with reproaches ; despised and afflicted by all.' In the Bruinistensteeg
(Brownists' Lane), in that city. Dr. Dexter found what remains of their last
meeting-house, to which they removed in 1662. As Dexter looked on the

124 HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON
building, ' no comelier than the litde home among the boughs which the
summer songster has deserted, after autumn winds and winter storms have
devastated and fouled it,' he thought of Henry Vaughan's beautiful lines :
' He that hath found some fledged bird's nest may know
At first sight if the bird be flown ;
But what fair Dell or Grove he sings in now.
That is to him unknown.'
It was a natural reflection for an American Consfresfationalist, with his mind
full of the story of the Pilgrim Fathers after they had crossed the Atlantic ;
an Englishman, thinking of the homes the earlier exiles had left, may have
different thoughts. Twenty years after Dexter's visit a company of American
and English descendants from the Separatists stood on the same spot. I
had just before been at Naarden, the place which the immigrants from
London had spent a few weeks at, on their way to Amsterdam, and where
they were helped by public charity. Fourteen miles from the city, on the
way to Utrecht, the railway drops you in a pleasant little spot, whose
pretty wooden houses, standing among fine trees, bordering broad and dusty
roads, remind one of the rural suburbs of Boston and the villages of New
Jersey. Naarden is a small, comely town, standing within walls, and having
a large barrack as its most conspicuous feature. It looks as if it had
undergone no great change in three hundred years. The houses are well
cared for ; the narrow streets are so clean that, if you have brought your
luncheon with you, you may sit down anywhere, and, spreading a clean
napkin on the paving-stones, can eat it without disgust. I found my way
into the back streets, but nowhere could I see a place in which poverty-
stricken, tired wanderers, sick of heart, in quest of a humble shelter, might
hide their heads. Everywhere was the same impression of modest sufficiency ;
the consciousness of misfortune would only be intensified here. In such a
place no kindness of treatment could make artisans and small shopkeepers
from Southwark and Rotherhithe and Deptford feel at home ; they
could add nothing to the well-being of this self-contained municipality. I

AMSTERDAM

125

did not wonder that they went on to shroud themselves among the thousands
of Amsterdam. Brownists' Lane, which finally received them, is a narrow,
dingy street, abutting on a dirty little canal, one of those side-waters which
anastomose the larger canals in Amsterdam, and are never made clean by
a flushing current directly in from the sea. The people were like the
place, unclean, coarse, living in penury : they gathered round us, greedy to

A HOLLAND CANAL.

earn a florin by procuring candles and lighting us up the dark staircase
which led to one of the Brownist homes. V^^e rested on a small landino-
not receiving a gleam of sunshine nor a ray of light from the sky. A door,
one of four or five, opened and let us into a small room, beyond which
was another, with window looking out on the allev. A low room on
another floor, capable of holding perhaps a hundred people, and filled with

126 HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON
disused things, was shewn us as the place of worship. The house was not
left to decay, like a tenement in a London slum ; but it was frowsy and
ill-aired. The hardness of the life of the poor, even in prosperous Amsterdam,
was the impression which nothing could remove. This was the place, I
thought, more befitting their circumstances than sunny Naarden, to which
my spiritual ancestors came ; and they themselves were like the people
whom I saw. Their humiliation, even more than their physical suffering,
was borne in upon me. They had left England under a great religious
impulse, and to such trials their faith was exposed. Some of them went
back to England, and were forgotten ; many remained behind, and were
forgotten here. And, while they were ' dreeing their weird,' the principles
for which they endured were passing on to victory ; the next generation
saw the Independents ruling England, teaching kings that law was above
monarchy, and laying deep, both in the old land and in the new, the
foundations of Christian democracy.
There were now three communities of English Nonconformists in
Amsterdam : the ' anciente church,' as Bradford styles it — that is, the body
of London exiles, whose pastor was Francis Johnson ; ' Mr. John Smith
and his companie ' — that is, the Gainsborough Church, settled here in 1606 ;
and the Scrooby Church, which had come over in sections, under Bradford
and Brewster and Robinson. They often, perhaps habitually, worshipped
together ; but each fellowship maintained its individuality. Partly this was
due to the difference of social habit between them. Englishmen of the
sixteenth century were not cosmopolitan ; the citizens of London, the
yeomanry, and the seafaring population of a provincial town had marked
distinctions which kept them from mixing freely and easily with each other.
Partly it was due to the uncertainty of tenure which characterised their life
in a foreign city, their difficulty in finding means of living, and the special
responsibility each man found himself under of looking at'ter the well-being
of those who had reached Holland in his own company. But there were

AMSTERDAM 127
other, subtler diversities between them — diversities which, under different
circumstances, would have been slight and transitory, but which with them
gradually assumed grave importance. The Scrooby Church had a more
catholic temper than either of the other two Churches — derived from
Robinson's teaching, to whom Separatism was always an unwelcome necessity,
the rigour of which he tried to soften, and from the influence of Brewster,
who had something of the largeness of one who knew, however slightly,
the ways of Courts. Smyth and Johnson were men of intenser, narrower
minds ; they impressed their severity of judgment on the companies they
taught. And between these two there was a variation. To neither of
them was separation unwelcome ; they were marked individualists. But
Smyth's zeal shewed itself in relation to Christian doctrine ; Johnson's in
relation to the discipline of the Church.
It is not pleasant to read of the strifes among the Separatists in
Amsterdam ; we should remember that the religious freedom which they
claimed, and have bequeathed as a rich heritage to Christendom, had its
own problems to solve, and that all our learning is through mistakes.
Conscience is a good servant, it is a bad master ; especially is it a bad
dictator, assuming to give law to others. While Francis Johnson was a
prisoner in the Fleet, he had married a young widow, Thomasine Boyes,
whose husband, Edward Boyes, a well-to-do haberdasher on Ludgate Hill,
had himself suffered, and died in the midst of his sutferings, for the cause.
She seems to have been a generous woman, of a liberal temper and an
open hand ; she certainly was both a loyal and an affectionate wife. But
she was light-hearted and fond of dress. She brought with her into Puritan
circles something of the habit of the young City dame, living in a street
which was constantly trodden by the richly attired gallants, who came from
St. James's into the City to see the citizens' wives and be seen by them.
A kindly nature can recognise the beauty as well as the humour of the
story — can be glad that love brought a little gaiety into this grim Puritanism.
A friendly imagination would choose to depict Mrs. Boyes as drawn away

12c

HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON

from influences that might have corrupted her by the Gospel to which her
husband was devoted, would remember that her character was never
attacked, would see in the fact that she chose to share Francis Johnson's
dangers, when she might have been a free woman in a gay city, the signs
of a deeper nature, not insensible to piety and self-devotedness. But,
because she still dressed smardy, Johnson's brother, a jealous and pragmatic

HOOG STRAAT, LEYDEN.

man, would have the Church sit in judgment on her and her husband.
The result was his own excommunication ; but for many nights the members
had to listen to unsavoury discussions among men of narrovv minds. The
trouble resulting from this was over before the Scrooby Church appeared
in Amsterdam ; but new difficulties were in the way. Smyth was making
the question of baptism and the Calvinistic doctrines the occasion of a

AMSTERDAM 129
new division ; and the thorny subject of the Eldership was dividing Johnson
and Ainsworth. The quarrels of the Church became a scandal in the city.
Robinson, foreseeing how matters might go, determined to remove his
community to more congenial surroundings. ' When they had lived in
Amsterdam aboute a year,' says Bradford, ' Mr. Robinson, their pastor, and
some others of best discerning, seeing how Mr. John Smith and his companie
was allready fallen into contention with y'= church y' was ther before them,
and no means they could use would doe any good to cure y" same, and also
that y" flames of contention were like to breake out in y' anciente church it
selfe (as afterwards lamentably came to pass) ; which things they prudently
foreseeing, thought it was best to remove, before they were any way
engaged with the same, though they well knew it would be much to y=
prejudice of their outward estats, both at presente and in licklyhood in
y" future ; as indeed it proved to be.'
The capitals of modern Europe have been remodelled, as well as
rebuilt, during the last half-century, and in the process they have become
very much alike. Rome, Paris, London, have lost a great deal of what
in them was distinctively Italian, French, and English ; the connection
between the history in literature and the architecture of the streets has
gone. Crumbling stones, with mystery in their decay, have been removed
by the cart-load ; the nooks, where legend used to linger, are all thrown
open in embankment, boulevard, and avenue. Probably Amsterdam has
suffered less from this change than other cities, tor the change itself began
with the Dutch renaissance. The love of clear, square oudine, of sunshine
and tidiness, the sharp contrast between high light and deep shadow, the
flat-frontedness which reveals everything at once — all this may be associated
with that direct, strenuous working for an aim, of which Holland, in the
seventeenth century, set Western Europe the example ; but the price we
have to pay for it is the dislocation of all our ancient memories, the severance
of the present from the past. Old Amsterdam is more like modern Amsterdam 17

I30

HOLLAND AND lOHN ROBINSON

than old London is like new London, or old Paris than Paris Haussmanised.
The fact, however, does not help the traveller wishing to see the homes
of the Pilgrim Fathers in Holland. There are no dim haunts inviting
you to enter ; in Amsterdam you do not wander, you go.
And so we have to come back to our books, from which we learn
something, if not all we wish to know. Henry Ainsworth, who prepared

AN ORPHANAGE, LEYDEN.

the metrical version ot the Psalms, rough in rhythm, and set to rough
music, which the Pilgrims used in New Plymouth, and whose translations
and annotations 'of the Hebrew Scriptures the revisers of the Old
Testament, twenty years ago, were glad to consult, is said to have lived
in Amsterdam on ninepence a week and some boiled roots, and to have
carried a porter's knot for a bookseller, who found out that he was a

AMSTERDAM 131
Hebrew scholar, and gave him more congenial and profitable work. Some
others, who had been students, ' were content to carde and spin, or to learn
trades, thereby to maintain themselves ' — so George Johnson tells us,
adding that he himself, for some time, had not above ' six or seven or
eightpence the weeke to live upon.' The scanty earnings of the exiles had
to be supplemented by money sent from England out of Henry Barrow's
legacy, by gifts to the needy out of the little store a few had brought
from home, and by charity from their Dutch neighbours. But the literary
activity of the controversialists among them did not cease. Statements of
their case were offered to Dutch leaders of religious thought in the pulpit
and the university ; and printed memorials were sent to England, begging
for permission to return and live in toleration at home. Small sympathy
was felt with them in Amsterdam ; but some of their writings reached
Leyden, — so that the special doctrines to which they were testifying, as
well as their general soundness in the faith, were already known when
Robinson and his party reached that city, and only needed the added
witness of godly and peaceful living to win appreciation and respect. The
Amsterdam Separatists had to put up with a modified persecution even in
the land of religious toleration. Influences were brought to bear to keep
them to themselves, and hinder their free association with the citizens.
They were restricted to a worship which was substantially private, not
public. Their mode of worship was very much that which is adopted by
the non-Episcopal Churches generally : free prayer reading of the Scriptures
with exposition, singing of the Psalms of David, a sermon, the observance
of the two sacraments. A collection was made at each service for the
support of their officers and for the poor. They were wonderfully faithful
to their convictions ; few of them abandoned their Church, though their
meetings were occasionally stormy and their lot was so hard. The
Amsterdam Church — the Bruinisten, as their Dutch neighbours called
them — lingered on until the end of the century. In 1701 the remnant
became a part of the English Reformed Church in Amsterdam.

132 HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON
We are not to suppose that the Church life of this separated people
was all unhappy. We know how pleasures spring up in unlikely places, —
' And disappointment's dry and bitter root.
Envy's harsh berries, and the choking pool
Of the world's scorn are the right mother-milk
To the tough hearts that pioneer their kind,
And break a pathway to those unknown realms
That in the earth's broad shadow lie enthralled.'
William Bradford, whose disapproval of Smyth and his followers is
manifestly heartfelt, and who shared Robinson's gladness to get away
from Amsterdam, in his later remembrance looked lovingly back on his
association with these brethren. For the sake of the young people of
Plymouth, who wanted to know more of the life their fathers and grandfathers
had passed in Holland, he wrote his Dialogue. In it occurs this picture of
the ' anciente church ' when at its best : ' Truly there were in them many
worthy men, and if you had seen them in their beauty and order, as we
have done, you would have been much affected therewith, we dare say. At
Amsterdam, before their division and breach, they were about three hundred
communicants, and they had for their teachers those two eminent men before
named, and in our time four grave men for ruling elders, and three able
and godly men for deacons, one ancient woman for a deaconess, who
did them service many years, though she was sixty years of age when
she was chosen. She honoured her place, and was an ornament to the
congregation. She usually sat in a convenient place in the congregation,
with a little birchen rod in her hand, and kept little children in great
awe from disturbing the congregation. She did frequently visit the sick
and weak, especially women, and as there was need called out maids and
young women to watch and do them other helps as their necessity did
require ; and if they were poor, she would gather relief for them of those
that were able, or acquaint the deacons ; and she was obeyed as a mother
in Israel and an officer of Christ.'

AMSTERDAM

'^ZZ

Bradford was a young man during the stay of the Pilgrims in Amsterdam.
Here, at twenty-three, he married Dorothy May, aged sixteen, the wife who
passed over the side of the Mayflower so mysteriously off Cape Cod. And
other marriages took place here. It is a mark of the hopefulness which
-distinguished this little band that they encouraged the married life. They
favoured early marriages and the
,re-marriage of the widowed ; they
¦were as confident as were the
Hebrews that ' children are the
heritage of the Lord,' and for
the same reason — they were sure
that they had a future before
them. They welcomed trial, the
temporary frustration of their
hopes, hard living, change ot
employment, and severe toil,
because they believed that by
these things strenuous men were
made — men whom God could use
for the accomplishment of His
purpose. In a letter written in
1617, by Robinson and Brewster,
to Sir Edwin Sandys, supporting
their request to be allowed to
-emigrate to Virginia, they say this :
' We veryly beleeve and trust y"= Lord is with us, unto whom and whose
:service we have given ourselves in many trialls. . . . We are well weaned
from y" delicate milke of our mother countrie, and enured to y'= difficulties
of a strange and hard land, which yet in a great parte we have by patience
-overcome. The people are for the body of them industrious and frugall,
Ave thinke we may safly say, as any company in the world. Lastly, it is

THE ACADEMY, LEYDEN.

134 HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON
not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small
discontentments cause to wish them selves home againe.'
A spirit like this is needed in men who are destined to be the founders
of a nation ; but another strain is also needed to temper the strenuousness.
The hardness of their discipline did not cease when they reached Leyden,
but gradually there came to them peaceful conditions, congenial employment,
modest prosperity, and the respect of their fellow-citizens. It was in Leyden
their leaders gained largeness of sympathy, the catholic judgment, the
unsuspicious habit in dealing with their fellows, which, equally with fearlessness,
patience, and severe self-control, are found in manly character and a strong
national life.
' A fair and beautiful city,' Bradford calls Leyden, ' and of a sweet
situation.' Fair and beautiful it still appears, even to those who have looked
on the cities of many peoples and learnt their ways. Seen from a distance,
across the dreamy Holland flats, with their ground mists and glancing waters^
its spires rise, like the palm-trees of the hot South, beckoning to repose.
As you draw nearer, the peaked roofs of soft brown come into view, where the
shadows linger amid the high lights. Entering the city, you find yourself
in a home of noiseless industry. The main street is narrow, with tall houses
on each side. You tread on a somewhat irregular pavement, swept scrupulously
clean. There are many open spaces, with the blue sky curving overhead —
the squares of the churches, the waterways, the wide, uncovered market ;
and you are never out of sight of trees. Walk up the low steep of the
burg, where is a ruined fort, — choose the morning for your walk, while
the haze is still lifting from the two branches of the Rhine, — you will have
glimpses of gardens and opening streets to tempt you down for farther
exploration. ' A fair and beautiful city,' truly, in which memories are
slumbering, like echoes that do not fail to answer him who knows how
to awake them.
The city was ' made more famous ' (again we are quoting Bradford) , by

ALMSHOUSE, SITE OF ROBINSON'S HOUSE, LEYDEN.

LEYDEN

^2>7

the university wherewith it is adorned, in which of late had been so many
learned men.' Junius and Lipsius, Grotius and Arminius, Scaliger and
Vossius, Daniel Heinsius and the geographer Cluverlus were in Leyden,
or had recently died, when the Pilgrims entered it. A school of painting
originated here, greatest in which was Rembrandt ; others whom we recall
were Lucas van Leyden, Jan Steen, and Gerard Douw. The succession

ROMAN CASTLE AT LEYDEN.

of great men has been kept up ; among them Boerhaave, the physician,
in the seventeenth century, and Kuenen, the Biblical scholar of our own
time. With so many priceless associations, Leyden has not forgotten John
Robinson. His name is still held in reverence by the citizens. To
Americans and Englishmen, Bradford's brief narrative is a good guide
book to the memories of the city.
The Pilgrims had been here over eleven years when they gave up
i8

138 HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON
their new homes ; these were years of hard work, but they left a happy
remembrance. The population of the city had been reduced from one
hundred thousand to fifty thousand during the Spanish War, with its terrible
siege, and was only beginning to recover itself. Its special industry was the
woollen manufacture, and in this the wool-growers from Notts and South
Yorkshire found themselves able to take some part. Bradford became a
fustian-cutter ; others were combers and carders, stocking-weavers, makers
of blankets and baize and serge. The building trades, carpentering, brewing,
and baking, even tobacco-pipe making, employed others. We may sum up
their sojourn in two extracts from Bradford — the one recording his
recollection of their entrance into Leyden, the other their feeling when
they left. ' Wanting that traffike by sea which Amsterdam injoyes,
[Leyden] was not so beneficiall ifor their outward means of living and
estats. But being now hear pitchet, they fell to such trads and
imployments as they best could, valewing peace and their spirituall
comforte above any other riches whatsoever. And at lenght they came
to raise a comptente and comforteable living, but with hard and continuall
labor.' ' So they letle y' goodly and pleasante citie, which had been ther
resting-place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes, and
looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to y'' heavens,
their dearest cuntrie, and quieted their spirits.'
We shall hardly be wrong if we say that Robinson and Brewster,
with some others, were attracted hither by the fame of the university.
There is a pleasant tale about its foundation, of parabolic, if not of historic,
truth. ' According to a popular tradition. Prince William of Orange offered
,to reward the citizens for their gallant conduct in the defence of 1574 by
exempting them from the payment of taxes for a certain number of years,
or by the establishment of a University in their city. The latter alternative
is said to have been preferred : at all events, the prince founded the
University in 1575.'
Leyden has points of resemblance to Cambridge. It is a market

LEYDEN

139

place, with a business street, lying a little off which are comfortable
residences, and especially the academic buildings, which stamp a character
of thought and tranquillity on the city. A beautiful botanic garden
spreads out behind the academy. The reputation of the university is
high as a school of medicine and natural science. Brewster earned his
living at first by teaching English,
' after the Latin manner,' that is
to say, grammatically, not as a
vernacular, and had many pupils,
Danes and Germans as well as
Dutch. The Elzevir Press made
Leyden a centre for book pub
lishing, and he left teaching for
printing ; by these two employ
ments he acquired some savings.
Robinson, as the pastor, was
exempted from the necessity of
manual toil ; he spent his time
in literary as well as pastoral
work. In 1615 he was made
an honorary member of the uni
versity ; he thus became free from
military demands, and was allowed
to buy his beer and wine without
payment of duty to city or State.
Another member of the Church, Thomas Brewer, was also a university man,
and could plead privilege against summary arrest.
Robinson's share in the Arminian controversy, then ivexing the Faculty of
Theology, is referred to in all the histories of the Pilgrims. No one has ever
described it more vividly than quaint old Bradford. ' In these times allso'
were y" great troubls raised by y" Arminians, who, as they greatly mollested

THE ACADEMY, LEYDEN.

140

HOLLAND AND JOHN ROBINSON

y" whole state, so this citie in particular, in which was y" cheefe universitie ;
so as ther were dayly and hote disputes in y"= schooles ther aboute, and
as y° studients and other lerned were devided in their oppinions hearin, so
were y^ 2 proffessors or devinitie readers them selves, the one dayly teaching
for it, y*" other against it. Which grew to that pass, that few ot the

CHAPEL IN ST. ANNE'S ALMSHOUSE, LEYDEN.

discipls of y= one would hear y" other teach. But Mr. Robinson, though
he taught thrise a weeke him selfe, and writ sundrie books, besids his
manyfould pains otherwise, yet he went constantly to hear ther readings,
and heard y" one as well as y'= other ; by which means he was so well
grounded in y'= controversie, and saw y*= force of all their arguments, and

LEYDEN 141
knew y= shifts of y^ adversarie, and being him selfe very able, none was
fitter to buckle with them then him selfe, as apperd by sundrie disputs ;
so as he begane to be terrible to y" Arminians, which made Episcopius
(y*" Arminian professor) to put forth his best stringth, and set forth sundrie
Theses, which by publick dispute he would defend against all men. Now
Poliander, y* other proffessor, and y'= cheefe preachers of y" citie, desired
Mr. Robinson to dispute against him ; but he was loath, being a stranger ;
yet the other did importune him, and tould him y' such was y'= abilitie
and nimblness of y^ adversarie, that y^ truth would suffer if he did not
help them. So as he condescended, and prepared him selfe against the
time ; and when y'= day came, y" Lord did so help him to defend y"
truth and foyle this adversarie, as he put him to an apparent nonplus,
in this great and publike audience. And y" like he did a 2 or 3
time, upon such like occasions. The which as it caused many to praise
God y' the trueth had so famous victory, so it procured him much honour
and respecte from those lerned men and others which loved y* trueth.'
The influence of his life in Leyden upon John Robinson was so pleasant
and so important as to demand a little specific study. Persons who become
acquainted with the Separatists only as controversialists, and see the intensity
of the times reflected in Robinson's first published work, the Justification of
Separation, sent out in 1610, are surprised at the mellowness and catholicity
of his later writings. There was found in his study after his death, and
published in 1634 by his grateful and admiring congregation, A Treatise
of the Laivfulness of Hearing of the Ministers in the Church of England,
and this, both by his opponents and some of his fellow-Independents, has
been looked upon as a partial abandonment of his original position. It was
not so : not at all are we to regard it as a dying recantation of the opinions
fidelity to which had cost him so much ; nor does it imply that, if he had
lived longer, he might have conformed. The practice of the Church in
Leyden was catholic and eirenical. He had preached on the lawfulness of

142 HOLLAND AND fOHN ROBINSON
occasional attendance at such services as early as 1617, when Elder Brewster
had been challenged for acting on this principle. If persons applying for
Church membership, in the excess of their zeal, or to ingratiate themselves
with the congregation, would sometimes attack the Church of England,
Robinson and Brewster would stop them, saying that this was no part of
the confession of their faith as Christians. The Church at Leyden was in
no sense a narrow Church. ' He favoured full communion with the Reformed
Churches of France and Holland, received members from them, and welcomed
their members to the Christian ordinances. He went so far as to offer
communion to the Church of Scotland.' ' A godly divine,' says Edward
Winslow, ' comming over to Leyden, being very conversant with our Pastor,
Mr. Robinson, and using to come to hear him on the Sabbath, after sermon
ended, the Church being to partake in The Lord's Supper, this Minister stood
up, and desired hee might, without offence, stay and see the manner of his
administration, and our participation in that Ordinance. To which our Pastor
answered in these very words, or to this effect. Reverend Sir, you may not
onely stay to behold us, but partake with us, if you please, for wee acknowledge
the Churches of Scotland to be the Churches oj Christ, &c. The Minister
also replyed to this purpose, if not also in the same words ; That for his
part hee could comfortably partake with the Church, and willingly would, but
that it is possible some of his brethren of Scotland might take offence at his
act ; which he desired to avoid, in regard of the opinion the English Churches
which they held communion withall had of us. However, he rendered thanks
to Mr. Robinson, and desired in that respect to be onely a spectator of us.'
The study of Robinson's life and writings reveals two characteristics,
and we cannot say that either of them was in excess of the other — the
intensity of his conscience, the tenderness and breadth of his affections.
This combination appears in his controversial books : he is direct in speech
and strenuous in argument ; he is never bitter in invective ; he is indignant
at misrepresentation, but his indignation has a profound sorrow at its heart :
he meets railing, not with railing, but with remonstrance. His separation

LEYDEN 143
from the Churches of England, especially the Puritan section of them, was
never arrogant nor vaunting ; it is manifestly a grief to him to be cut off
from men whose Christian character he admires. He tells us how long
and painful was his struggle with the conviction that he ought to leave their
fellowship. He was kept back by his ' over-valuation ' of their learning and
holiness ; he blushed in himself to have a thought of pressing one hair's
breadth before them in this thing, ' behind whom I knew myself to come so
many miles in all other things.' ' Had not the truth been in my heart as a
burning fire shut up in my bones, I had never broken these bonds of flesh
and blood, wherein I was so straitly tied, but had suffered the light of God
to have been put out in mine own unthankful heart by other men's darkness.
It is impossible for any one who has had experience of spiritual conflict to
read his posthumous treatise without a reverent sympathy with the struggle
between a good man's conscience and his heart. He enumerates the various
ways in which the association of Conformists and Nonconformists is not only
lawful, but obligatory ; he speaks of the piety of very many Conformists,
who may in some congregations be so numerous as to stamp a character of
godliness on the congregation itself; he dwells upon the preaching of the
Gospel in their pulpits as being for the edification of Christians and the
salvation of sinners, and as therefore to be recognised by occasional
attendance on their worship ; he condemns no one for excessive attendance
at these services, he rather rejoices to find opportunities for his own
people to be present ; and then solemnly and sadly declares that their
Church order is so radically contrary to Christ's ordinance that for himself
he must remain aloof Here is his conclusion : ' For myself thus I believe
with my heart before God, and profess with my tongue, and have before
the world, that I have one and the same faith, hope, spirit, baptism, and
Lord which I had in the Church of England, and none other ; that I esteem
so many in that Church, of what state or order soever, as are truly
partakers of that faith, as I account many thousands to be, for my
Christian brethren, and myself a fellow-member with them of that one

144 HOLLAND AND fOHN ROBINSON
mystical body of Christ scattered far and wide throughout the world ; that
I have always, in spirit and affection, all Christian fellowship and
communion with them, and am most ready, in all outward actions,
and exercises of religion, lawful and lawfully done, to express the same; and
withal, that I am persuaded, the hearing of the Word of God there
preached, in the manner and upon the grounds formerly mentioned, is
both lawful and, upon occasion, necessary for me, and all true Christians,
withdrawing from that hierarchal order of Church government, and ministry,
and appurtenances thereof, and uniting in the order and ordinances instituted
by Christ, the only King and Lord of His Church, and by all His
disciples to be observed ; and lastly, that I cannot communicate with, or
submit unto, the said Church order, and ordinances there established, either
in state or act, without being condemned of my own heart, and therein
provoking God, who is greater than my heart, to condemn me much more.
And, for my failings, which may easily be too many, one way or other,
of ignorance herein, and so for all my other sins, I most humbly crave
pardon, first and foremost, at the hands of God ; and so of all men, whom
therein I offend, or have offended, any manner of way, even as they
desire and look that God should pardon their offences.'
It is surely easy to interpret a life which thus reveals itself without
accusing the man of inconsistency of sentiment, or variableness of temper, or
vacillation of will. In England, he was denied liberty of conscience, and
so was forced into controversy and an attitude of self-defence ; in Holland,
he was allowed to worship as his judgment bade him, and the desire to
vindicate himself gave way to his impulse of loving and trusting his fellow-
Christians. And this happy change came to him in his Leyden life. The
peaceable spirit longs for a peaceful home ; because they could not have it
in Amsterdam, the Scrooby Church came on to the university city. When
they applied for leave to settle here, they were frankly bidden come ; only
they were reminded that citizens of Leyden must obey the laws and ordinances.
Something was already known of the principles of the Separatists by the

HOOGLANDER CHURCH (ST. PANCRAS), LEYDEN.

19

LEYDEN

147

university authorities and the clergy of the city; something also was known
of the unfortunate reputation for quarrelsomeness ot the earlier English
settlers in Amsterdam. Doubtless, their coming was awaited with curiosity,
and some suspicion, as to whether they would prove as inoffensive as
their doctrines seemed to enlightened Hollanders. They soon acquired a
reputation for honesty, industry, and peaceableness. Their Dutch neighbours
trusted them as they did not trust the Walloons. Then came the knowledge
of Robinson's ability and soundness in the faith. It was a new experience
for him to be treated as an orthodox divine of learning and spiritual insight,
to whom might safely be committed the public maintenance of the truth ot
God. The invitation implies much private friendship between Robinson and
the Dutch clergy, which must have led to an increasing sense of the true
Christian fellowship of their respective Churches. How gladly Robinson
followed the dictates of his own heart any kindly Christian person may well
imagine. In those later days he remembered his former conflicts : how he
would never have left the Church of England if he might have exercised
his ministry without the use of ' the ceremonies ' which he, and all the
Puritans, loathed as idolatrous ; and though he never regretted the hard
discipline which had given him freedom to constitute a Church according to
Christ's own order, his old tenderness toward his early religious home came
back to him. This narrative is an abiding Christian admonition. Religious
asperities are softened, and at length die out, in an atmosphere of freedom.
Give liberty to heretics ; by-and-by, both the heretic and the orthodox learn
how worthy each is of the other's trust and love. There will be no revival
of the wish for uniformity among and within the Churches ; nor perhaps will
men ever come to think alike on the points at issue in the seventeenth
century. English and American Protestants have given up the hope, have
lost even the desire, to see their own systems of Church government adopted
by all Christians ; but they have learned that Christian brotherhood is not
destroyed by these distinctions, nor even endangered where there are liberty
and friendliness. When Christians are free to act as conscience bids them.

148

HOLLAND AND /OHN ROBINSON

mutual good understanding and faith in one another's fidelity are sure to
come. We owe much to John Robinson for teaching us this lesson, and
much to the ' fair and beautiful city ' where he himself learnt it.
The church of St. Peter, in Leyden, is a lofty building, consisting of
nave and transepts. The windows are pointed ; but the spacious interior,
the whole of which is visible at one view, is more like a basilica than a

ST. PETER'S CHURCH, FROM BELL LANE SIDE, LEYDEN.
Gothic church. It is divided by tall columns into five portions, and has the
cold, utilitarian look which marks Teutonic churches. The rich colours ot
the Catholic building are wanting ; so, too, are tawdry decorations and the
flaring altar-lights. It has not the dim and low recesses of an English
cathedral, nor ' Storied' windows richly dight.
Casting a dim religious light.'

LEYDEN

149

A small portion of the broad centre, capable of seating three or four hundred
people, is arranged for worship ; and here, in July, 1891, there was a touching
ceremonial. An engraved slab, in memory of John Robinson, had been, by
permission of the authorities, inserted in the southern outside wall, at the
charge of a committee appointed by the National Council of the Congregational
Churches of the United States of America. When the International Council
of Congregationalists finished its
sessions in London, a deputation
of Americans and Englishmen
went across to unveil the slab.
The deputation passed, in short
procession, between a guard of
honour of the city police, and
through the crowding citizens,
to the church, where they were
met by the burgomaster and
other distinguished representa
tives of the university, the clergy,
and the corporation. After the
slab was uncovered, the assem
bled people entered the church,
and were addressed by Dr.
Charles Ray Palmer, the burgo
master, in Dutch, Professor
Kuenen, who spoke in admirable
English, and Dr. Fairbairn. The service was Puritanically simple, but it
was full of heart. England and Holland and America were uniting to
commemorate the service rendered to the Church of God, and to the
freedom of humanity, by this plain man, so devout, so conscientious, so
broadly sympathetic.
Almost facing this slab is a smaller one, on the wall of a private

SCHOOL ON ST. PETER S CHURCH CANAL, LEYDEN.

I50 HOLLAND AND fOHN ROBINSON
house, informing the passer-by that ' On this spot lived, taught, and died
John Robinson. 1611 — 1625.' The original house has long since been
removed, but the present modest structure, in its general arrangements, may
well suggest Robinson's own dwelling-place. The front contains the living-
rooms, and a large chamber used as a place of business for the committee
now managing the property ; this answers to the parsonage and the meeting
house of the Church. Behind it is a quadrangle, with a garden, the three
other sides of which are made up of small, neat almshouses, set apart for
decayed Protestant foreigners, speaking the French language. It is a happy
accident that these tenements are devoted to godly charity ; for Robinson,
who had secured a large piece of land for the purposes of the Church,
erected in his garden twenty-one cottages, for the use of its poorer members.
In the committee-room of this property was held on Sunday afternoon,
July 5, 1896, a religious service, attended by about a hundred American
and half-a-dozen English pilgrims. ' The place,' says an American reporter,
' was hot and crowded to excess, so that we stood in a double row around
the walls, there being no seats. But we came to worship and to thank God
for His wonderful mercy, and the thought of all present naturally reverted
to the time when Robinson here preached to his devoted tollowers. They
must have looked upon the same huge church which towered over us ; and
we could easily imagine what sad forebodings filled their minds, for the
loftiest faith never dreamed of the glorious development awaiting their cause.
Dr. Robinson, the worthy descendant of his pious ancestor, led us in prayer,
and the exercises closed by singing —
" My country, 'tis of thee."
The hymn was sung to the tune ot the English National Anthem. The
English preacher took for his text 2 Cor. iv. 7 : " But we have this
treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of
God, and not of us." '
The religious life of the exiled community was of a singularly winning

LEYDEN 151
character ; indeed, but for the peace of their fellowship, and the exaltation
of their spiritual purpose, their secular life would not have had the tranquillity
which marked it. Bradford has recorded it for us, and has told us how
much of its prosperity was due to Robinson. ' They grew in knowledge
and other gifts and graces of y" spirite of God, and lived togeather in
peace, and love, and holines ; and many came unto them from diverse parts
of England, so as they grew a great congregation. And if at any time
any differences arose, or offences broak out (as it cannot be, but some time
ther will, even amongst y" best of men), they were ever so mete with, and
nipt in y" head betims, or otherwise so well composed as still love, peace,
and communion was continued ; or else y" Church purged of those that
were incurable and incorrigible, when, after much patience used, no other
means would serve, which seldom came to pass. ... His love was greate
towards them, and his care was all ways bente for their best good, both for
soule and body ; for besids his singulier abilities in devine things (wherein
he excelled), he was also very able to give directions in civill affaires, and
to foresee dangers and inconveniences ; by w""*" meanes he was very helpfuU
to their outward estats, and so was every way as a commone father unto
them. And none did more offend him than those that were close and
cleaving to them selves, and retired from y= commone good ; as also such
as would be stiffe and riged in matters of outward order, and invey against
y" evills of others, and yet be remisse in them selves, and not so carefull
to expresse a vertuous conversation.' In his later Dialogues, Bradford speaks
again of the harmony of the Church, and unites the Elder, William Brewster,
with the Pastor in his grateful remembrance. Edward Winslow, who had
joined them in Leyden, says the same thing. ' I persuade myself never
people upon earth lived more lovingly together, and parted more sweetly,
than we the Church at Leyden did ; parting, not rashly in a distracted
humour, but upon joint and serious deliberation, often seeking the mind of
God by fasting and prayer, whose gracious presence was not only found
with us, but His blessing with us from that time until now.' Robinson's

152 HOLLAND AND fOHN ROBINSON
own words, having the grace and elevation which came so easily to his
pen, are well known. Rebuking Bernard for his ' contemptuous upbraiding
of God's people,' as if they were inconstant, proud, unstable, contentious,
and especially indignant with him for nicknaming poor Christians — Symon the
saddler, Tomkin the tailor, Billy the bellows-maker — he gives this personal
testimony : ' But for ourselves, Mr. B., and that whereof we take experience
in this our popularity, as you term it ' (meaning their practical acquaintance
with popular government in the Church), ' I tell you, that if ever I saw the
beauty of Sion, and the glory of the Lord filling his tabernacle, it hath
been in the manifestation of the divers graces of God in the church, in that
heavenly harmony, and comely order, wherein by the grace of God we are
set and walk ; wherein, if your eyes had but seen the brethren's sober and
modest carriage one towards another, their humble and willing submission
unto their guides, in the Lord, their tender compassion towards the weak,
their fervent zeal against scandalous offenders, and their long-suffering towards
all, you would, I am persuaded, change your mind, and be compelled to take
up your parable, and bless, where you purposed to curse, as Balaam did.'
It has been affirmed that the little community was so far honoured as
to have the use of one of the large city churches ; but this could have
been, at most, only a special, an exceptional incident. The Leyden custom
was to extend to foreign religious bodies settling in the city permission to
worship in their own houses, in which, however, they were allowed to erect
large rooms ; and as there was no restriction on attendance in these rooms,
considerable congregations might gather. Robinson's pastoral labours were
carried on, in the dwelling in the Klok-Steeg (Bell Lane), under the shadow
of St. Peter's belfry. Twice he and his sadly crossed the street to bury
a child under the pavement of the church ; and here at last his own body
was laid. Winslow alludes, in the quotation just given, to the ultimate
' parting ' of the Church. After long and anxious discussion, not as to
whether they should go to America or remain in Holland, but as to who
should go now and prepare the way for the rest, it was determined to put

LEYDEN 153
the question to the vote. If a majority resolved on immediate departure, the
pastor was to accompany them ; if a minority, he was to remain behind. The
result was that not quite so many were ready to go as were bent on staying, and
Elder Brewster led them on their second migration. It was clearly under
stood that the majority only awaited good news from the settlers to rejoin them ;
and Robinson longingly and lovingly awaited the summons. It did not come.
Before his family set out for America, another call had come to him, and
he went on a farther journey. After a short sickness, amid prayers and
sobbings, and to the lifelong regret of his people, he died, early in March,
1625, not yet fifty years old, and was buried in St. Peter's Church. ' If
either prayers, tears, or means would have saved his life, he had not gone
hence.' ' The University, and Ministers of the city, accompanied him to his
grave with all their accustomed solemnities ; bewayling the great losse that
not onely that particular Church had, whereof he was Pastor ; but some of
the chief of them sadly affirmed, that all the Churches of Christ sustained
a losse by the death of that worthy Instrument of the Gospel.'
His grave is not shewn. In St. Peter's they used to remove from the
¦earth under the pavement the bodies which had been longest interred, to
make room for others, and no one knows where Robinson's remains lie.
We have not been told what he was like in bodily aspect ; his writings,
and the impression he made on those who knew him, alone remain,
fragments of his personality. We cannot rightly be sorry for this ; so he
himself would have had it. Undue regard for the persons of men was
one of the generous weaknesses which he bewailed as dangerous, and
contrary to the will of God, who would have His children more alive to
the future than to the past. But he is not forgotten, nor is the remem
brance of him barren. His influence is seen in the religious life of two
great nations ; and he is better understood to-day than at any time since
Hollanders laid his body in the ground, and Brewster, and Bradford,
and Winslow, and honest Myles Standish sorrowed because they would
never welcome him to the colony of which he was the spiritual founder. 20

CHAPTER IX
DELFSHAVEN AND FAREWELL WORDS
' Darkling our great forefathers went
The first steps of the way ;
'Twas but the dawning, yet to grow
Into the perfect day.
And grow it shall ; — our glorious sun
More fervid rays afford :
The Lord hath yet more light and truth
To break forth from His word.
The valleys passed, ascending still,
Our souls would higher climb.
And look down from supernal heights
On all the bygone time.
Upward we press — the air is clear.
And the sphere-music heard :
The Lord hath yet more light and truth
To break forth from His word.'

HE whole time spent by the Pilgrims in Leyden.
was not more than about eleven years, the last
three of which were employed in arranging for
the departure to America. It had taken them
some time to become acquainted with the city,
to learn their new trades, and find remunerative
employment. Scarcely had they begun to feel at
home when they saw that they had here no permanent resting-place. The
hardness ot their life was telling on them ; even more than the difficulty
154

DELES HA VEN

155

of subsistence, they felt the almost impossibility of realising their hope
that they might work for the establishment ot the kingdom of God.
Many who came to them from England, sympathising with their purpose,
and desiring to be with them, could not endure that great labour and hard
fare, with other inconveniences, which they underwent and were contented
with. They reflected that they were growing older, and their continual

OLD DELFT AND OUDE KERK.

labours, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened their old age before the
time. Fears haunted them that, within a few years more, they would be
in danger of scattering, by necessities pressing them, or sink under their
burdens, or both. They did not feel secure, even in Holland. The twelve
years' truce between the Spaniards and the Dutch was drawing to an
end; and the Hollanders, anxious for the English alliance, might be
tempted to give the exiles up to the power of King James. They could
not go to London on necessary business without being watched, perhaps

156 DELFSHA VEN
apprehended and imprisoned. There was a difference, too, in religious
habit between English Puritans and the Reformed Churches of the Continent,.
not enough to hinder communion, but enough to give them the constant
sense of being strangers in a foreign land. They were especially solicitous
for the children. Bradford sets this out in a touching manner : ' As necessitie
was a taskmaster over them, so they were forced to be such, not only to
their servants, but in a sorte to their dearest children ; the which as it
did not a little wound y" tender harts of many a loving father and mother,
so it produced likewise sundrie sad and sorowful effects. For many of their
children, that were of best dispositions and gracious inclinations, haveing
lernde to bear the yoake in their youth, and willing to bear parte of
their parents burden, were, often times, so oppressed with their hevie
labours, that though their minds were free and willing, yet their bodies
bowed under y^ weight of y" same, and became decreped in their early
youth, the vigor of nature being consumed in y'= very budd, as it were.
But that which was more lamentable, and of all sorrowes most heavie to
be borne, was that many of their children, by these occasions, and y° great
licentiousnes of youth in y' countrie, and y'^ manifold temptations of the
place, were drawne away by evill examples into extravagante and dangerous
courses, getting y*" raines off their neks, and departing from their parents.
Some became souldiers, others tooke upon them farr viages by sea, and
other some worse courses, tending to dissolutenes and the danger of their
soules, to y" great greefe of their parents and dishonour of God. So
that they saw their posteritie would be in danger to degenerate and be
corrupted.' Bradford is one of the simplest writers ; but he cannot quite suppress-
the consciousness that it was their heroism which was the cause of their
trials. Speaking of the English who came to them, and left them when
they found under what difficulties they were labouring, he has this sentence :.
' But though they loved their persons, approved their cause, and honoured
their sufferings, yet they left them, as it weer, weeping, as Orpah did her

DELFSHA VEN 157
mother in law Naomie, or as those Romans did Cato in Utica, who desired
to be excused and borne with, though they could not all be Catoes.' Their
heroism stood the test. They shrank from a new venture, foreseeing that still
greater hardships would have to be undergone, if the cause, in which they had
already suffered so much, was to be advanced. But it was at length borne
in upon them that God had in view some high and arduous destiny which
they must fulfil. ' Lastly (and which was not least), a great hope and
inward zeall they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make
some way therunto, for y" propagating and advancing y" gospell of y"
kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of y^ world ; yea, though they
should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for y" performing of so
great a work.'
In this way the pilgrim consciousness was awakened in them. Here,
in Leyden, we must seek tor the origin of the term which has come to be
lovingly applied to them and the colony they founded — ' the Pilgrim
Fathers ; the Pilgrim Republic ' — and which that intelligent and honest
writer, Mr. Hunter, has strangely failed to understand. They were pilgrims —
not in the modern sense of the word, visitors to a shrine already held
sacred, but in its original sense, wanderers in far-off lands. These men
made the shrines which now we visit ; their exile has hallowed not only
' the soil which first they trod,' but every spot associated with them.
' They knew they were pilgrims,' Bradford says, more than once. They
were not driven out of Holland, ' as the heathen historians did feign of
Moses and the Israelites when they went out of Egypte ; it was of their own
free choice and motion.' The Sacred Book, which was their light and solace,
is the story of a great migration and what came of it ; they felt called out,
like Abram, to go whither they know not, believing that He who called
would lead and settle them. Abram and Moses, and David and Ezra, were
all wanderers in the heroic period of their lives ; these modern men gathered
fortitude from the example of Israel's patriarchs and statesmen, and stayed
themselves on the God of Israel. When Bradford, in his not unprosperous

158 DELFSHAVEN
old age, remembers the mingled joy and anxiety which possessed them, as
they got into Cape Cod Harbour, ' wher they ridd in saftie,' he breaks into
a strain of rapture such as rarely disturbs his narrative : ' What could now
sustaine them but y" spirite of God and his grace ? May not, and ought
not, the children of these fathers rightly say : Our faithers were Englishmen
which came over this great ocean, and were ready to perish in this willdernes ;
but they cried unto y" Lord, and he heard their voyce, and looked on their '
adversitie, &c. Let them therefore praise y' Lord, because he is good, and
his mercies endure for ever. Yea, let them which have been redeemed of y^
Lord, shew hoiv he hath delivered them from the hand of y' oppressour.
When they ivandered in y' desert ivilldernes out of y" way, and found no
citie to dwell in, both Imngrie, and thirstie, their soivle %vas ovei^whelmed in
them. Let them confess before y" Lord his loving kindnes, and his wonderfull
works before y" sons of men.'
The fact which most impresses us as we read the story of those three
anxious years in Leyden, from 161 7 to 1620, is the increasing courage
and resolution of the leaders as they are compelled to face the many grave
difficulties which were before them in their migration. In their first
discussions, when the wilds of America appeared the only place for them
if they left Holland, all sorts of fears, ' neither unreasonable nor unprobable,'
were uttered : the casualties of the seas, the length ot the voyage, the
weak bodies of the women and the older men ; the miseries of the land,
famine, nakedness, sickness ; and ' the want, in a manner, of all things.'
The cruelties of the Indians were enumerated — how they were not content
with killing their captives, but flayed them alive with shells of fishes, cut
off their limbs, and broiled portions of their flesh on coals, which they ate
in the sight of the sufferers. ' And surely it could not be thought but
y^ very hearing of these things could not but move y'= very bowels of men
to grate within them, and make y'^ weake to quake and tremble.' They
answered these fears by recalling that great and honourable actions were

DELFSHA I EN 159
accompanied with difficulties : but these were not invincible ; they were to
be met with corresponding courage. All of them, through the help of
God, might, by fortitude and patience, be either borne or overcome.
Ordinary men, with worldly motives, might give way : but their condition
was not ordinary ; their ends were good and honourable, their calling lawful
and urgent; and therefore they might expect the blessing of God on their
proceeding. The first proposal was to go to Guiana, a country rich, fruitful, and
blessed with a perpetual spring and a flourishing greenness, where vigorous
nature brought forth all things in abundance and plenty without any
great labour or art of man. The wise reply to this suggestion was that
such climates have grievous diseases, and noisome impediments, from which
more temperate climates are free, and that Englishmen need a cooler home.
Moreover, the Spaniards would come, as soon as they had gained any
prosperity, and dispossess them. They fixed on some part of Virginia —
as what is now the Southern States of North America and the Middle
States up to the Hudson River was then vaguely called; here they hoped
they could live as a distinct body by themselves, under the general
government of Virginia, enjoying freedom of religion.
Sir Edwin Sandys, the acquaintance of Brewster, was a prominent
member of the Virginia Company; he, and some other great persons of
good rank and quality, assured them of help in delivering their suit to the
king. Negotiations to this effect were begun, and dragged wearily on
from the autumn of 161 7 until they left Southampton in August, 1620.
The statement they presented of their religious and ecclesiastical position,
although they made every concession possible, and more concessions than
some of them liked, was deemed so unsatisfactory by Sir John Wolstenholme
that 'he would not show them at any hand, lest he should spoil all.' His
Majesty would not grant them the liberty they asked for. They were
privately assured that they would not be stopped ; but they knew that,
if they went, it would be on their own responsibility.

i6o

DELFSHA VEN

Their first agreement, with the merchant adventurers of the London
Company, who promised to furnish them with money and to share the
adventure, was found so unsatisfactory that it was never acted on. A
second set of articles of agreement was afterwards signed, on their behalf,
with the Plymouth Company ;
but their agent had so far
departed from the instructions
given him that they had to
repudiate the contract. Many
of the merchants thereupon
refused to advance money ;
and they had to sell some
of the scanty stores they had
provided for the voyage before
they could proceed. Sabine
Staresmore, who went to
London to meet Sir Edwin
Sandys and the Virginia Court,
was imprisoned in Wood
Street Compter, an old place
of confinement for Separatists.
Brewster was obliged to hide,
when in England, lest he
should share the same fate.
All things seemed conspiring
to daunt them ; the difficulties
they thought they were pre
pared for proved more and more disheartening than they had counted on.
While these things were, one after another, being reported at Leyden,
bad news reached them of the total failure of an earlier migration from
the Amsterdam Church : out of one hundred and eighty persons who had

NIEUWE KERK, DELFT.

DELFSHA I 'EN

i6i

sailed for Virginia, 'packed together like herrings,' in a ship too small
for the company, and badly victualled, one hundred and thirty had died, and
the rest returned full of complainings. In a community like that in Leyden,
none of these things were kept secret ; there was no desire to conceal them ;
all was discussed in Church
meeting. The majority of
the members were sorely
depressed ; some dropped
away altogether. When the
final vote was taken, rather
fewer were in favour of
leaving Leyden than of re
maining there. Out of a
society numbering, at its best
time, about three hundred,
not one hundred were at last
ready to go.
On Brewster, and Carver,
and Bradford, and Dr. Samuel
Fuller, and a few others
devolved the task of keeping
up the faith and courage of
the disheartened people. They

came subsequently to see the
Divine hand in their discipline,
even in their disappointments.
' Those that went bak were
for the most parte such as were willing so to doe, either out of some
discontente, or feare they conceived of y'' ill success of y'' vioage, seeing so
many crosses befall, and the year time so farr spente ; but others, in regarde
of their own weaknes, and charge of many yonge children, were thought

STADHUIS, DELFT.

1 62 DELFSHAVEN
least usefull, and most unfite to bear y" brunte of this hard adventure ; unto
which worke of God, and judgmente of their brethren, they were contented
to submite. And thus, like Gedions armie, this small number was devided,
as if y^ Lord by this worke of his providence thought these few to many
for y" greate worke he had to doe.' These words of Bradford were written
later, when the Speedwell proved unfit for the Atlantic, and the Mayflower
could not contain all who had left Southampton ; but the passage shews the
lofty faith, the sense of a high service to which God had called them, which
underlay their courage.
For this faith and courage they were largely indebted to John Robinson.
His fortitude seems never to have wavered; he used all his influence as
pastor, and all his power of instruction and persuasion, to sustain the
resolution to go on this pilgrimage. His letters are full of wise counsel,
meek wisdom, and patient hope. How he preached in those days Bradford
lets us see. The hour of their greatest depression was when a patent was
granted them, ' after their long attendance.' ' Divisions and distractions had
shaken off many of their pretended friends, and disappointed them of much
of their hoped for and proferred means.' The patent itself was very different
from that which they had applied for ; its terms were hard, and its advantages
small : ' a right emblime, it may be, of y*" uncertine things of this world ;
y' when men have toyld them selves for them, they vanish into smoke.'
They had a solemn meeting and a day of humiliation, to seek the Lord for
His direction. After prayer, in which the brethren joined, knowing how
much depended on the final decision they must now make, they waited for
their pastor's counsel, given in a sermon. In Puritan assemblies, on such
occasions, the text is of the greatest significance : it comes like God's own
word ; it is at once a history, an argument, and an appeal. Robinson's text
was I Sam. xxiii. 3, 4 : ' And David's men said unto him. Behold, we be
afraid here in Judah : how much more then if we come to Keilah against
the armies of the Philistines ? Then David enquired of the Lord yet again.
And the Lord answered him and said, Arise, go down to Keilah ; for I will

DELFSHA VEN 163
deliver the Philistines into thine hand.' ' From which texte he taught many
things very aptly, and befitting ther present occasion and condition,
strengthening them against their fears and perplexities, and incouraging them
in their resolutions.' Immediately after, it was resolved how many and who
should go, and that their elder, Mr. Brewster, should be their leader. It
was agreed by mutual consent and covenant that those who went should be
an absolute Church of themselves, as well as those who stayed, each Church
having full self-government ; ' yet with this proviso, that as any of the rest
came over to them, or if the other returned upon occasion, they should be
reputed as members, without any further dismission or testimonial.' It was
also promised to those who went first, that the others, if the Lord gave
them life and means and opportunity, would come to them as soon as
they could.
Months had to elapse before they were prepared to leave Leyden ; but
at length the fateful hour came. They had sold their little stocks, wasted
by the delay ; their homes were dismantled and empty ; they
' stood on tip-toe in the land,
Ready to pass to the American strand.'
' They that stayed at Leyden,' says Winslow, ' feasted us that were to
go, at our pastor's house, being large, where we refreshed ourselves, after
tears, with singing of psalms, making joyful melody in our hearts, as well as
with the voice, there being many in our congregation very expert in music'
Then came a day of solemn humiliation, when John Robinson preached to
them his farewell sermon. Again he resorted to the Old Testament, the
book of Israel's pilgrimage; his text was Ezra viii. 21 : 'And there at the
river, by Ahava, I proclaimed a fast, that we might humble ourselves before
our God, and seeke of him a right way for us, and for our children, and for
all our substance.' ' Upon which he spent a good parte of y" day very
profitably, and suitable to their presente occasion.' It seems likely that, at
this time, he spoke the words which Winslow has remembered, and which

1 64 DELFSHA I EN
have become a classical passage, not in Nonconformist merely, but in Christian
literature generally. ' We are now ere long to part asunder, and the Lord
knoweth whether ever he should live to see our faces again. But whether the
Lord had appointed it or not, he charged us before God and His blessed angels
to follow him no further than he followed Christ ; and if God should reveal
anything to us by any other instrument of His, to be as ready to receive
it as ever we were to receive any truth by his ministry. For he was very
confident the Lord had more truth yet to break forth out of his holy Word.
He took occasion also miserably to bewail the state and condition of the
Reformed Churches, who were come to a period in religion, and would go
no further than the instruments of their Reformation. As, for example, the
Lutherans ; they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw ; for
whatever part of God's will He had llirther imparted and revealed to Calvin,
they will rather die than embrace it. And as also, saith he, you see the
Calvinists, they stick where he left them, a misery much to be lamented.
For though ttiey were precious, shining lights in their times, yet God hath
not revealed His whole will to them ; and were they now living, saith he,
they would be as ready and willing to embrace further light as that they
had received. Here also he put us in mind of our Church covenant (at
least that part of it) whereby we promise and covenant with God, and one
with another, to receive whatsoever light or truth shall be made known to
us from his written Word. But withal exhorted us to take heed what we
received for truth, and well to examine and compare and weigh it with
other scriptures of truth, before we received it ; for, saith he, it is not
possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick,
anti-Christian darkness, and that full perfection of knowledge should break
forth at once.'
These words, and his further advice to shake off the nickname Brownist,
and to study union with the godly party of the kingdom of England rather
than division, breathe the very spirit of John Robinson, and are expressed in
that elevated style into which he occasionally broke under strong excitement.

DELFSHA] EN

165

They reveal, too, the influence of the Leyden life upon him. It was a
common feature of the early Separatist Churches that they bound themselves
to follow whatever God should, in the future, reveal to them, as well as
what He had revealed. But the acceptance of this principle, and its practical
application, are two distinct matters. The English Churches were struggling
for the right to confess the doctrines they had received ; no wonder they

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were indifferent to further development of them. Robinson came into
practical contact with Lutheranism and Calvinism ; and his very detachment
from the Churches about him enabled him to form a large judgment concerning
them. He was essentially a tolerant man, willing to love, always glad to
see where he could honour, and learn from, other men. But even the tolerant
temper needs favouring conditions, that it may fully know itself The quiet
life of study, the respect he met with, the affections which moved him

i66 DELFSHA VEN
toward men of different confessions, made Robinson, who could have died
a martyr, the seer and herald of larger, sweeter truth.
The Speedwell, a little pinnace of sixty tons, was waiting at Delfshaven,
in the end of July, 1620. Stepping into the barges which awaited them,
in one of the Leyden waters, the Pilgrims soon found themselves on the broad
Vliet Canal. A short ten miles brought them to a side canal, communicating
with the Hague, the principal seat of the Counts of Holland, and the beautiful
city which the States-General made their capital. Here they turned
eastward, and another fifteen miles brought them to Delfshaven. On the
way they passed the city of Delft, a place of more relative importance
then than now. The stately Stadhuis (Town House, Hotel de Ville) had
been just restored after a fire ; the strong tower of the Oude Kerk, erected
in the fifteenth century on the site of an earlier building, and the graceful
spire of the Nieuwe Kerk, 1384 to 1396, rose above the houses, as the Pilgrims
skirted the town. The earthenware industry was then in its prime ; but better
china, made in other countries, has put Delft ware out of vogue. Delfshaven
itself is now a suburb of Rotterdam. Rotterdam then occupied but a small
portion of its present site ; it had a population of twenty thousand, which
has giown to nearly fourteen times that number. The present population
of Delft is thirty-two thousand.
For the final farewell we must again have recourse to Bradford, whose
graphic story would be spoilt by paraphrase or comment. ' When they
came to y*" place they found y" ship and all things ready ; and shuch of
their freinds as could not come with them followed after them, and sundrie
also came from Amsterdame to see them shipte and to take their leave of
them. That night was spent with litle sleepe by y'^ most, but with freindly
expressions of true christian discourse and other real expressions of true
christian love. The next day, the wind being faire, they wente aborde,
and their freinds with them, where truly dolfuU was y'= sight of that
sade and mournfull parting ; to see what sighs and sobbs and praires
did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy

DELFSHAJ'EN 167
speeches peirst each harte ; that sundry of y" Dutch strangers y' stood on
y" key as spectators, could not refraine from tears. Yet comfortable and
sweete it was to see shuch lively and true expressions of dear and unfained
love. But y^ tide (which stays for no man), calling them away y' were thus
loath to departe, their Reve'^ pastor falling downe on his knees (and they
all with him), with watrie cheeks comended them with most fervente praiers
to the Lord and his blessing. And then with mutuall imbrases and many
tears, they tooke their leaves one of an other ; which proved to be y" last
leave to many of them.'
When, with this description in his mind, the pilgrim of to-day goes
to Delfshaven, his first feeling will probably be of disappointment, even a
shock of disappointment. Sandpits and dusky woods, the heathery moorland,
the banks of a peaty stream, the wild seashore, or some small cottage,
dimly lighted under the shroud of night — these are scenes with which
the poet and the artist have linked the worship of the persecuted and the
exile's parting prayers. Delfshaven is busy, bright, prosperous. There are
so many branch canals, one quay is so much like another, that he may
not even fancy himself on the very spot where the Pilgrims' farewells
were uttered. And few people stay long enough in Delfshaven to lose
this first impression. You cannot linger where every one is bustling, nor
take in the loneliness of the Pilgrims' lot where all things speak of cheerful
commerce. Coming away, the modern pilgrim perhaps reflects that this
was the true loneliness of those exiles ; conscience had made their condition
so different from that of the honest folk who had found them a home,
and gave them sympathy and admiration. But even that reflection is not
allowed to be our final thought of this parting scene ; for we read that
they departed from Delfshaven like warriors going on conquest. ' We gave
them,' says Winslow, who was on board, ' 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 with us.' Perhaps the feeling which made the leaders go out with

i68

DELFSHAVEN

a salute of honour was that which orders the playing of some lively or
triumphant tune when soldiers return from the burial of a comrade — the
desire to dissipate the sadness of the occasion. But we may read in it
the unconquerable resolution of men who were not afraid for their future.
They were following the track which civilisation and freedom have, up till
now, invariably taken. They were ' stepping westward,' —
' And stepping westward seemed to be
A kind of heavenly destiny.'

ON THE CUSTOMS HOUSE, BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH.

22

FACSIMILE OF A MAP OF SOUTHAMPTON, DATED 161I.

{From an early print?)

CHAPTER X

SOUTHAMPTON

N the Saxon Chronicle we read that this place
was called Hamtune and Suth-Hamtun ; and it is
interesting, as shewing the conservative character
of the local dialect, that to this day the railway
porter bawls this same name into the ears of
the intelligent visitor, though it is permissible to
doubt whether he knows that he is using good
Anglo-Saxon. It is pleasant to visit a town which has so venerable a
history, and the way in which the civic authorities are shewing appreciation
of the treasures of accumulated centuries that are entrusted to their keeping
is a matter which should be gratefully acknowledged by all to whom the
past is dear. The lot of an enlightened modern alderman in one of
these old towns is not always happy : he is ever being scolded and pulled
171

172 SO UTHA MPTON
hither and thither by opposite factions. The earnest social reformer says :
' My dear sir, those narrow streets and courts of yours are a disgrace ;
the overcrowding in those low-pitched rooms, which have stood unaltered
since good Queen Bess's time, is abominably insanitary. Pull the whole
lot down, sir, widen the street, and build a model block of artisans'
dwellings on that ancient site.' The cultured antiquarian and lover of
the picturesque breathes threats and scorn at the said alderman's mildest
suggestion to move one single stone : ' Touch not the ancient landmarks ;
remove thy interfering hands from the venerable pile.' The alderman has
to hear all this, or something like it, continuously ; and it says much for the
wisdom of the corporation of this quaint old town, that they have brought
their old Saxon, then Norman, wall-entrenched city right up to the last
days of the nineteenth century, without either calamity on the one side, or
needless, ruthless desecration on the other.
These thoughts came to our mind as we walked along the front on
the newly made Corporation Road, and noticed with what care all the old
city walls had been preserved, and only where it was absolutely necessary
had they repaired or pointed, and nowhere, as far as we could see, had
they put new work on to old. So when at last we got actually to the
West Quay, we felt certain that what met our eyes had also certainly met
those of the Pilgrim Fathers, who had to wait weary days here on board
the Mayflower. In our reproduction of the old 1611 map of Southampton,
P is the only part of the water-side which has a true quay at all ; for
a quay, it must be remembered, is an artificial landing-place or stage,
built out, and not the natural boundary of land and water.
Tradition has it that it was at the West Quay the Mayflower lay.
And even if there had been no tradition to guide us, we should have
selected this spot, as it is clearly one of the old quiet corners of the
place, and not too. near the official and military side.
It is not known how long they stayed at Plymouth, or even exacdy
when the Pilgrim Fathers arrived there ; but the date of their arrival at

SOUTHAMPTON

173

Southampton is fixed and certain. On July 22, 1620, the Speedwell and
the Mayflower both arrived, and there they remained till the afternoon
of August 5, when they turned away once again to sea. These poor

/

voyagers waited and watched exactly fourteen days, and we can easily
picture them walking up and down on the quay, or strolling into the
town under one or other of the massive gateways that remain to this
day, to get their last peeps at the busy streets and bright shops and

174 SOUTHAMPTON
stalls — sights which they knew full well they would never again see after
they had emigrated to the new and lonely land.
Some authorities have urged that both ships lay near what is called
the Platform — an open space on which certain cannon then, as now, were
mounted ; and in one early history of the Pilgrim Fathers, published in
London, we remember seeing a picture of this very spot shewn as the
place ; but no historic authority was given for the assertion. The old
1611 map, which we reproduce, materially helps us. If there had been no
other quay or place where they could have moored, they would probably
have had to lay near the Platform ; but as we now see by this map there
was at this date a convenient spot a little farther up the Water, we may
be sure they would go there, rather than moor their vessels amidst the
military and official life that would crowd and jostle by the Water Gate.
We could, however, wish that there were more certainty about the
whole matter, but no stone tablet can here mark the spot, as it is marked
farther along the coast in Devonshire's beautiful port of Plymouth ; and
we can only suggest that there is useful and needed investigation open
to some local antiquarian in this question of solving exactly where the
first American liner lay in the Port of Southampton.
The incidents which happened at this port are deeply interesting. We
are indebted largely to William Bradford's narrative for our knowledge
of these. ' Thus,' he writes, on leaving Delfshaven, ' hoisting sail, with a
prosperous wind, they came, in short time, to Southampton ; where they
found the bigger ship come from London, lying ready, with all the rest of
their Company. After a joyful welcome and mutual congratulations, with
other friendly entertainments ; they fell to parley about their business.
How to despatch with the best expedition ? as also with their Agents,
about the alteration of the Conditions.
' Master Carver pleaded. He was (employed here at Southampton ; and

SOUTLIAMPTON

175

knew not well what the others had done at London. Master Cushman
answered, He had done nothing but what he was urged to, partly by the

THE WEST GATE, SOUTHAMPTON.

grounds of equity ; and more especially by necessity : otherwise all had
been dashed, and many undone. And in the beginning, he acquainted his

176 so UTHA MPTON
fellow Agents John Carver and Christopher Martin herewith : who consented
unto him, and left it to him to execute; and to receive the money at
London, and send it down to them at Southampton ; where they made the
provisions. The which he accordingly did : though it was against his mind
and some of the Merchants, that they were there made. And for giving
them notice at Leyden of this change ; he could not well, in regard of the
shortness of the time. Again he knew it would trouble them, and hinder the
business ; which was already delayed over long, in regard of the season of
the year ; which we feared they would find to their cost. But these things
gave not content at present.
' Master Weston likewise came up from London, to see them despatched ;
and to have the Conditions confirmed. But they refused, and answered him.
That he knew right well that these were not according to the first Agreement.
Neither could they yield to them without the consent of the rest that were
behind : and indeed they had special charge, when they came away, from
the Chief of those that were behind, not to do it. At which, he was much
offended ; and told them. They must then look to stand on their own legs.
So he returned in displeasure ; and this was the first ground of discontent
between them. And whereas there wanted well near ;^ioo to clear things
at their going away ; he would not take order to disburse a penny : but let
them shift as they could. So they were forced to sell off" some of their
provisions to stop this gap : which was some three or four score firkins of
butter ; which commodity they might best spare, having provided too large
a quantity of that kind.'
While lying at the West Quay, Southampton, the following letter was
received from John Robinson: —
' Loving and Christian friends. 1 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 a while, to
be bodily absent from you. I say, constrained : God knowing how willingly

SOUTHAMPTON 177
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 mean while, as of a man divided in myself,
with great pain ; and as, natural bonds set aside, having my better part
with you.
' And though I doubt not but, in your godly wisdoms, you both foresee,
and resolve upon, that which concerneth your present state and condition ;
both severally and jointly: yet have I thought [it] but my duty, to add
some further spur of provocation unto them who run already ; if not because
you need it, yet because I owe it in love and duty.
' And first, as we are daily to renew our repentance with our God ;
special, for our sins known ; and general, for our unknown trespasses : so
doth the Lord call us, in a singular manner, upon occasions of such difficulty
and danger as lieth upon you, to a both more narrow search, and careful
reformation, of our ways in his sight ; lest he (calling to remembrance our
sins forgotten by us, or unrepented of) take advantage against us ; and, in
judgement, leave us for the same to be swallowed up in one danger or other.
Whereas, on the contrary, sin being taken away by earnest repentance, and
pardon thereof from the Lord sealed up unto a man's conscience by his
Spirit : great shall be his security and peace in all dangers ; sweet, his
comforts in all distresses ; with happy deliverance from all evil, whether in
life or in death.
' Now next after this heavenly peace with God and our own consciences,
we are carefully to provide for peace with all men, what in us lieth ;
especially with our associates : and, for that end, watchfulness must be had,
that we neither at all in ourselves do give ; no, nor easily take, offence,
[it] being given by others. Woe be unto the World for offences ! For
though it be necessary (considering the malice of Satan, and man's corruption)
that offences come : yet woe unto the man, or woman, either by whom the
offence cometh ! saith Christ, Matthew xviii. 7. And if offences, in the
unseasonable use of things in themselves indifferent, be more to be feared

178 so UTHA MPTON
than death itself as the Aposde teacheth, i Cor. ix. 15: how much more
in things simply evil ; in which neither honour of God, nor love of man,
is thought worthy to be regarded.
' Neither yet is it sufficient that we keep ourselves, by the grace of
God, from giving offence[s] ; except withal, we be armed against the taking
of them, when they are given by others. For how unperfect and lame is
the work of grace in that person who wants charity [wherewith] to cover
a multitude of offences, as the Scriptures speak.
' Neither are you to be exhorted to this grace, only upon the common
grounds of Christianity ; which are, That persons ready to take offence, either
want charity to cover offences ; or wisdom duly to weigh human fraility ;
or lastly, are gross, though close, hypocrites, as Christ our Lord teacheth,
Matthew vii. 1-3. As indeed, in mine own experience, few or none have
been found, which sooner give offence, than such as easily take it : neither
have they ever proved sound and profitable members in societies, which
have nourished in themselves that touchy humour.
' But, besides these, there are divers special motives provoking you,
above others, to great care and conscience this way.
' As, first, you are, many of you, strangers as to the persons, so to the
infirmities, one of another : and so stand in need of more watchfulness this
way, lest when such things fall out in men and women as you suspected not,
you be inordinately affected with them : which doth require, at your hands,
much wisdom and charity for the covering and preventing of incident offences
that way. ' And, lastly, your intended course of Civil Community will minister
continual occasion of offence, and will be as fuel for that fire ; except you
diligently quench it with brotherly forbearance. And if taking offence
causelessly, or easily, at men's doings be so carefully to be avoided : how
much more heed is to be taken that we take not offence at God himself;
which yet we certainly do, so oft as we do murmur at his Providence in
our crosses, or bear impatiently such afflictions as wherewith he pleaseth

so UTHA MPTON 1 79
to visit us. Store we up therefore patience against the evil day ! without
which, we take offence at the Lord himself in his holy and just works.
' A fourth thing there is carefully to be provided for, to wit, That with
your common employments, you join common affections, truly bent upon
the general good : avoiding (as a deadly plague of your both common and
special comfort) all retiredness of mind for proper advantage, and all singularly
affected any manner of way. Let every man repress in himself; and the
whole body, in each person (as so many rebels against the common good),
all private respects of men's selves ! not sorting with the general conveniency.
And as men are careful not to have a new house shaken with any violence
before it be well settled, and the parts firmly knit : so be you, I beseech you
brethren, much more careful that the House of God, which you are and are
to be, be not shaken with unnecessary novelties, or other oppositions, at
the first settling thereof
' Lastly, whereas you are to become a Body Politic, using amongst
yourselves Civil Government ; and are not furnished with any persons of
special eminency above the rest, to be chosen by you into Office of
Government : let your wisdom and godliness appear, not only in choosing
such persons as do entirely love, and will diligently promote, the common
good ; but also in yielding unto them all due honour and obedience in their
lawful administrations. Not beholding in them, the ordinariness of their
persons ; but God's ordinance for your good : nor being like unto the
foolish multitude ; who more honour the gay coat, than either the virtuous
mind of the man, or [the] glorious ordinance of the Lord.
' But you know better things : and that the Image of the Lord's power
and authority, which the Magistrate beareth, is honourable in how mean
persons soever. And this duty you both may the more willingly, and ought
the more conscionably to perform ; because you are, at least for the present,
to have only them for your ordinary Governors, which yourselves shall make
choice of for that work.
' Sundry other things of importance I could put you in mind of, and of

i8o SOUTHAMPTON
those before mentioned, in more words ; but I will not so far wrong your
godly minds, as to think you heedless of these things : there being also
divers among you so well able to admonish both themselves and others, of
what concerneth them.
' These few things therefore, and the same in few words, I do earnestly
commend unto your care and conscience : joining therewith my daily
incessant prayers 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) as 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,
' I. R.' [John Robinson.]
' All things being now ready and every business despatched, the Company
was called together ; and this letter read amongst them : which had good
acceptation with all, and after fruit with many. Then they ordered and
distributed their Company for either ship, as they conceived for the best :
and chose a Governor, and two or three Assistants for each ship, to order
the people by the way ; and see to the disposing of the provisions, and
such like affairs. All which was not only with the liking of the Masters
of the ships : but according to their desires. Which being done, they set
sail from thence, about the 5th of August.'

'^¦»>^8w.„:j. uMk*

THE BARBICAN FROM COXSIDE.

CHAPTER XI

PLYMOUTH
N the last chapter we have followed the deeply
interesting experiences of the Pilgrim Fathers
associated with Southampton. Their visit to
that place was inevitable. The Speedwell from
Leyden had to meet the Mayflower from London
at the Hampshire seaport. But Plymouth they
had no intention of visiting, and greatly against
their will did they put in there. Incompetence on the part of the outfitters
of the Speedwell, and rascality on the part of her captain, were the chief
reasons why Devonshire has direct associations with the great emigration of
1620. In discovering exactly how this came about, we cannot do better
than again follow the guidance of William Bradford.
183

1

:s5
K2

1

1 84 PLYMOUTH
' Being thus put to sea, they had not gone far ; but Master Reynolds,
the Master of the lesser ship, complained that he found his ship so leaky
as he durst not put further to sea till she was mended. So the Master
of the bigger ship, called Master Jones, being consulted with ; they both
resolved to put into Dartmouth, and have her there searched and mended :
which accordingly was done, to their great charge ; and loss of time, and
a fair wind. She was here thoroughly searched from stem to stern. Some
leaks were found and mended : and now it was conceived by the workmen
and all, that she was sufficient ; and they might proceed without either fear
or danger. ' So with good hopes, from hence they put to sea again, conceiving
they should go comfortably on ; not looking for any more lets of this kind :
but it fell out otherwise. For after they were gone to sea again, above
lOO leagues without Land's End; holding company together all this while:
the Master of the small ship complained his ship was so leaky, as he must
bear up, or sink at sea ; for they could scarce free her with much pumping.
So they came to consultation again ; and resolved both ships to bear up
back again, and put into Plymouth : which accordingly was done. But no
special leak could be found ; but it was judged to be the general weakness
of the ship, and that she would not prove sufficient for the voyage.
' Upon which, it was resolved to dismiss her, and part of the Company ;
and proceed with the other ship. The which, though it was grievous and
caused great discouragement, was put in execution. So after they had took
out such provision as the other ship could well stow, and concluded what
number, and what persons, to send back ; they made another sad parting :
the one ship going back for London ; and the other was to proceed on
her voyage. ' Those that went back were, for the most part, such as were willino-
so to do ; either out of some discontent, or fear they conceived of the ill
success of the Voyage : seeing so many crosses befallen, and the year time
so far spent. But others, in regard of their own weakness and charge of

PIN MOUTH 185
many young children, were thought least useful, and most unfit to bear the
brunt of this hard adventure : unto which work of God and judgement of
their bretheren, they were contented to submit. And thus, like Gideon's
army, this small number was divided : as if the Lord, by this work of his
Providence, thought these few too many for the great work he had to do.
' But here, by the way, let me show, how afterwards it was found that
the leakiness of this ship was partly by being overmasted, and too much
pressed with sails. For after she was sold, and put into her old trim ; she
made many voyages, and performed her service very sufficiently ; to the
great profit of her owners. But more especially, by the cunning and deceit
of the Master and his company ; who were hired to stay a whole year in
the country : and now fancying dislike, and fearing want of victuals, they
plotted this stratagem to free themselves ; as afterwards was known, and by
some of them confessed. For they apprehended that the greater ship, being
of force and in which most of the provisions were stowed ; she would retain
enough for herself, whatsoever became of them or the passengers : and indeed
such speeches had been cast out by some of them. And yet, besides other
incouragements, the Chief of them that came from Leyden went in this
ship, to give the Master content. But so strong was self love and his
fears, as he forgot all duty and former kindnesses, and dealt thus falsely
with them ; though he pretended otherwise.
' Amongst those that returned was Master Cushman and his family :
whose heart and courage was gone from him before, as it seems ; though
his body was with them till now he departed. As may appear by a passionate
letter he writ to a friend in London from Dartmouth, whilst the ship lay
there a mending : the which, besides the expressions of his own fears, it
shows much of the Providence of God working for their good, beyond man's
expectation ; and other things concerning their condition in these straits :
I will here relate it. And though it discover some infirmities in him (as
who under temptation is free !) : yet after this, he continued to be a special
Instrument for their good ; and to do the offices of a loving friend and
24

1 86 PLYMOUTH
faithful brother unto them, and partaker of much comfort with them. The
letter is as followeth :
' " Loving friend. My most kind remembrance to you, and your
wife, with loving E. M. ; whom in this world I never look to see again.
For, besides the eminent dangers of this Voyage which are no less than
deadly, an infirmity of body hath seized me which will not, in all likelihood,
leave me till death. What to call it, I know not. But it is a bundle of
lead, as it were crushing my heart more and more these 14 days, as 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 at 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, if we had stayed at sea but three or four hours more, she would
have sunk right down. And though she was twice trimmed at Southampton ;
yet now she is as open and leaky as a sieve : and there was a board, two
feet long, a man might have pulled off with his fingers ; where the water
came in as at a mole hole.
' " We lay at Southampton 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 like to lie four more, and by
that time the wind will happily turn, as it did at Southampton. Our victuals
will be half eaten up, I think, before we go from the coast of England ;
and, if our voyage last long, we shall not have a month's victuals when we
come in the country." '
The writer of this letter, who was not only troubled with bodily illness,
but had also lost either courage or nerve, or both, turned back at Plymouth,
and returned to London. Unfortunately, we have far fewer details of the
stay at Plymouth than of that at Southampton. They left Dartmouth on

PLYMOUTH

187

August 23. Again compelled to return, the two vessels made for Plymouth ;
but the date of their arrival is unknown. The Speedwell was abandoned,
and all who were fearful or in the judgment of the leaders unsuited
to the enterprise were left behind. The Mayflower took in all extra
stores that she could, and on September 6, 1620, with a freight of
one hundred and two souls all told,
started on her a(l\ enturous \o\.ioe.

COTTAGE BUILT ON THE OLD CITY WALL, PLYMOUTH.

' Yes, I have lived here all my life, and I am an old woman, and
afore me Oliver Cromwell lived here.' Such were the rather alarming
words the aged dame addressed to us, as we asked permission to be allowed
to put her portrait into our sketch of the old house on the city wall.

1 88 PLYMOUTH
'You have heard of Oliver Cromwell, I suppose?' she added; and we
hastily assured her that we knew him quite well, but we inwardly wondered
how the great Protector managed to stow himself away in this most singular
litde abode. The house is simply a bit of the ancient wall of the fortifications
that in former days went right round the town. It is said to be a part
of some gateway or gatehouse, but there is so very little remaining that
much is left to conjecture. Certainly, however, it was existing long prior

'-^- '-^—^ ¦¦'¦f^mmcftfrnAfse,,?'

THE MAYFLOWER STONE.
to the day, in 1620, when those two little vessels the Speedwell and the
Mayflower dropped anchor alongside the Barbican, in Plymouth. The
actual spot where they lay lies just underneath this old wall, and a stone
could be easily dropped right on to their decks. This is the old part of
the town, and now, as then, the fishing-boats bring up their catches alongside
the quay, and rows and rows of cod and turbot and other valuable sea
produce are placed on the stone flags and cobbles, and sold by auction in
PLYMOUTH

189

the open air, and then are promptly packed away in boxes and sent to
some one or other of the great inland towns.
The spot where the Mayflower actually lay is now marked by a stone
tablet bearing the simple words, 'Mayflower, 1620'; and it is clear that
the present projecting quay could not have been there at that day. But
we hardly grudge the alteration, as it enables one to stand comfortably
over the very spot — once water — where this historic craft was moored ;

THE MAYFLOWER TABLET IN THE WALL, PLYMOUJH.

and we appreciate, too, the kindly forethought of those who have
marked so interesting a place. Let into the adjacent wall is a metal
memorial tablet, recording in the following words the incident, in 1620
apparently so insignificant, but fraught with consequences of such
incalculable importance : —

' On the 6th of September, 1620, in the Mayoralty of Thomas
Fownes, after being "kindly entertained and courteously used by divers

igo PLYMOUTH
Friends there dwelling," the Pilgrim Fathers sailed from Plymouth in the
Mayflower, in the Providence of God to settle in New Plymouth, and
to lay the Foundation of the New England States. The ancient Causey
whence they embarked was destroyed not many Years afterwards, but the
Site of their Embarkation is marked by the Stone bearing the name of
the Mayflower in the pavement of the adjacent Pier. This Tablet was
erected in the Mayoralty of J. T. Bond, 1891, to commemorate their
Departure, and the visit to Plymouth in July of that Year of a number
of their Descendants and Representatives.'
The slated building with its front on four columns is not a very old
building — anyhow, the front is not. Possibly that was added to give more
room for the work of the customs house, which is the purpose it now serves.
A small carved stone, bearing a coat of arms, with date of the seventeenth
century, is over a door facing up the Barbican ; but the building cannot be
said to be very interesting, either for its beauty or history.
Far otherwise is the case with the older buildings, fast disappearing, we
regret, spread fairly broadcast over the older parts of the town. They are
picturesque to a degree, overhanging tier above tier, and they must seventy
or a hundred years ago have made some of these narrow, tortuous back
streets simply perfect from an artist's point of view. The corporation,
however, does not view the matter quite in the same way, and we have
no desire to blame them ; for as these parts of the town, once inhabited
by substantial merchants and even nobility, altered their character, and
have since been tenanted by ever-increasing numbers of the very poor —
packed with people, a family in every room — these picturesque buildings have
become very insanitary, and they have had to give way to allow of streets
being widened and more light and air being obtained. The powers that
be have gone about their work in no half-hearted fashion. Still, enough
is left to shew what a peculiarly picturesque place Plymouth must once have
been. The engravings shew several of the windows and canopies over

PLYMOUTH PRIESTEN HOUSE.

PLYMOUTH

193

doorways which still adorn in many parts houses that are now poor in
every sense, but which clearly at some time were residences of the better

^^^^^^^.z

A BIT BEHIND THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH.

classes. Those of which engravings are given are all just behind the
Barbican, but there are plenty of other bits as good or better in other parts
of the city.

25

194

PLYMOUTH

The old ecclesiastical building known as the Priesten House is more in
the centre of the town, and close to the municipal buildings. No priests

OLD PALACE, ST. ANDREWS STREET, PLYMOUTH.

are there now — nothing but pork and ham, ready to be cured, was to be
seen when we entered the building, through the charming old doorway
which leads from the street.
Plymouth is very proud of its Hoe; and it is odd to see the way people

THE DOORWAY IN THE PRIESTEN HOUSE, PLYMOUTH.

PLYMOUTH

197

there look at you, if you own to being more interested with the old back
streets, the Fish-market, or the Barbican. And the same spirit is evident
where you might have expected better things ; for in the latest guide-book
published we looked in vain for any instructions which would enable the
visitor to find the place which to us was the most interesting in all Plymouth.
It contained but one paragraph of a few lines referring to the Mayflower,

^'f^iiemifvm ""

4.-L

H^ifiT-^^

PLYMOUTH SOUND, LOOKING TO MOUNT EDGCUMBE.

and it rather oddly says, ' The local [i.e. Plymouth] connection is of the
most slender kind ' ; and it seems as if the compiler did not care to dwell
upon the event, since he hurries off to discuss other and far less important
questions. Therefore, for the benefit of those who have not been as yet
to Plymouth, we would advise them, when they visit it, to ask the way to
the Fish-market. Every one seems to know where that is ; but every one

PLYMOUTH

in modern Plymouth by no manner of means knows where the Mayflower
lay. Indeed, one particular policeman looked at us most dubiously when
we asked him, doubtful whether his duty did not lie in the direction of

taking us in charge as wandering
lunatics. But he quite brightened
up when we let fall the word Fish-
market. The fishing industry, as this
very guide-book informs us, is a
most important one, and produces
some ;/^8o,ooo per annum. It
attracts not only Scotch boats, but
French and Dutch also, with the
result that figures loaf up and down
the quay, smoking placidly their big German pipes, clad in such baggy
and picturesque garments that you may well fancy yourself in some foreign

THE OLD CHAPEL, PLYMOUTH.

PLYMOUTH 199
port. In connection with the fish industry there is a Marine Biological
Laboratory, which every visitor should find time to see. Its mission is the
study of the habits and conditions of the life of our food fishes. Part of the
building is fitted as an aquarium open to the public, part as laboratories for
the use alone of students and men of science connected with the institution.
This institution stands on the Hoe, which is Plymouth's joy and pride. It
is certainly a most remarkable spot, and from this high promenade you see
right over the Sound into the Channel, with its never-ceasing procession of
great ships, amongst which our Mayflower would look but a very small
craft indeed.
One is glad to think that in this old town the Pilgrim Fathers were
kindly and hospitably received, and that they passed away and out to sea
with pleasant thoughts and memories of the friends on shore. Of those
friends, who they were and how they lived, history tells us nothing. It is
claimed, and we think justly, that they almost certainly belonged to the old
Puritan stock, who had at a very early date a settlement here and a meeting
house, the legitimate representative o^ which is the present George Street
Baptist Chapel. But when, knowing this, one tries to get hold of some
clue, disappointment is met, since the present site of the church is quite
modern, and the old site, and old building which we shew in one of
our pictures, are known not to carry us far enough back to allow of
the supposition that there is much connection with that building and
the Pilgrims. Probably the old meeting-place of "the divers friends" so
pleasantly mentioned by Bradford in his journal was some very humble
building or plain large room in one of the back streets off the Barbican
itself, and all record of its existence seems to be now completely lost.
And here for the present our wanderings in search of memorials of the
Pilgrim Fathers must cease. We have attempted to reproduce, as far as
this can be done after the lapse of two centuries and a half, the buildings,
the scenery, and the associations connected with these famous men. They

200

PLYMOUTH

were despised by their own generation ; the places from which they sprang
have not always cherished their memory ; but they accomplisned one of the
greatest works in the world's history by their simple fidelity to conscience,
to the Word of God, and to the guidance of the Spirit of truth.

,/

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ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF TRAVEL.

PUTCH pOUf^TSHIP, JSLE OF yVlAI^KEN.
(FROM A PAINTING BY H. TEN KATE.)
PICTURES FROM HOLLAND.
DRAWN WITH PEN AND PENCIL.
By RICHARD LOVETT, M.A., Author of "Norwegian Pictures," etc.
WITH ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-TWO ILLUSTRATIONS,
Imperial 8vo, 8.f. cloth boards, gilt edges ; 25.?. in morocco, elegant.

26

ILLUSTRATED BOOKS OF TRAVEL.

fHE ^V^EI^HOLTKLUBBEN, OR j3lI^DfloCK.

SCOTTISH FlUTUKES.
DRAWN WITH PEN AND PENCIL. j
By SAMUEL G. (HiF.EN, D.D. '
Illustrated by Eminent Artists.
Imperial 8vo, 8s. handsomely bound, gilt edges; 25s. in morocco, elegant.

Pheapside and jiow Phui^ch Steeple.
LONDON PICTURES.
DRAWN WITH PEN AND PENCIL.
By the Rev. R. LOVETT, M.A., Author of " Irish Pictures," etc.
WITH ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY ILLUSTRATIONS.
Imperial 8vo, 8s. cloth boards, gilt edges; 25s. in morocco, elegant.

4

YALE UNIVERSITY

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