But along with this moderate Protestantism espoused by the English government, as consequent upon the assertion of English national independence, there grew up the fierce uncompromising democratic Protestantism of which the persecuted Lollards had sown the seeds. This was not the work of government. [Sidenote: The yeoman, Hugh Latimer]

By the side of Henry VIII. stands the sublime figure of Hugh Latimer, most dauntless of preachers, the one man before whose stern rebuke the headstrong and masterful Tudor monarch quailed. It was Latimer that renewed the work of Wyclif. and in his life as well as in his martyrdom,—to use his own words of good cheer uttered while the fagots were kindling around him,—lighted "such a candle in England as by God's grace shall never be put out." This indomitable man belonged to that middle-class of self-governing, self-respecting yeomanry that has been the glory of free England and free America. He was one of the sturdy race that overthrew French chivalry at Crecy and twice drove the soldiery of a tyrant down the slope of Bunker Hill. In boyhood he worked on his father's farm and helped his mother to milk the thirty kine; he practised archery on the village green, studied in the village school, went to Cambridge, and became the foremost preacher of Christendom. Now the most thorough and radical work of the English Reformation was done by this class of men of which Latimer was the type. It was work that was national in its scope, arousing to fervent heat the strong religious and moral sentiment of the people, and hence it soon quite outran the cautious and conservative policy of the government, and tended to introduce changes extremely distasteful to those who wished to keep England as nearly Catholic as was consistent with independence of the pope. Hence before the end of Elizabeth's reign, we find the crown set almost as strongly against Puritanism as against Romanism. Hence, too, when under Elizabeth's successors the great decisive struggle between despotism and liberty was inaugurated, we find all the tremendous force of this newly awakened religious enthusiasm cooperating with the English love of self-government and carrying it under Cromwell to victory. From this fortunate alliance of religious and political forces has come all the noble and fruitful work of the last two centuries in which men of English speech have been labouring for the political regeneration of mankind. But for this alliance of forces, it is quite possible that the fateful seventeenth century might have seen despotism triumphant in England as on the continent of Europe, and the progress of civilization indefinitely arrested. [Sidenote: The moment of Cromwell's triumph was the most critical moment in history]

In illustration of this possibility, observe what happened in France at the very time when the victorious English tendencies were shaping themselves in the reign of Elizabeth. In France there was a strong Protestant movement, but it had no such independent middle-class to support it as that which existed in England; nor had it been able to profit by such indispensable preliminary work as that which Wyclif had done; the horrible slaughter of the Albigenses had deprived France of the very people who might have played a part in some way analogous to that of the Lollards. Consequently the Protestant movement in France failed to become a national movement. Against the wretched Henry III who would have temporized with it, and the gallant Henry IV who honestly espoused it, the oppressed peasantry and townsmen made common cause by enlisting under the banner of the ultra-Catholic Guises. The mass of the people saw nothing in Protestantism but an idea favoured by the aristocracy and which they could not comprehend. Hence the great king who would have been glad to make France a Protestant country could only obtain his crown by renouncing his religion, while seeking to protect it by his memorable Edict of Nantes. But what a generous despot could grant, a bigoted despot might revoke; and before another century had elapsed, the good work done by Henry IV. was undone by Louis XIV., the Edict of Nantes was set aside, the process of casting out the most valuable political element in the community was carried to completion, and seven percent of the population of France was driven away and added to the Protestant populations of northern Germany and England and America. The gain to these countries and the damage to France was far greater than the mere figures would imply; for in determining the character of a community a hundred selected men and women are more potent than a thousand men and women taken at random. Thus while the Reformation in France reinforced to some extent the noble army of freemen, its triumphs were not to be the triumphs of Frenchmen, but of the race which has known how to enlist under its banner the forces that fight for free thought, free speech, and self-government, and all that these phrases imply. [Sidenote: Contrast with France; fate of the Huguenots]

In view of these facts we may see how tremendous was the question at stake with the Puritans of the seventeenth century. Everywhere else the Roman idea seemed to have conquered or to be conquering, while they seemed to be left as the forlorn hope of the human race. But from the very day when Oliver Cromwell reached forth his mighty arm to stop the persecutions in Savoy, the victorious English idea began to change the face of things. The next century saw William Pitt allied with Frederick of Prussia to save the work of the Reformation in central Europe and set in motion the train of events that were at last to make the people of the Teutonic fatherland a nation. At that same moment the keenest minds in France were awaking to the fact that in their immediate neighbourhood, separated from them only by a few miles of salt water, was a country where people were equal in the eye of the law. It was the ideas of Locke and Milton, of Vane and Sidney, that, when transplanted into French soil, produced that violent but salutary Revolution which has given fresh life to the European world. And contemporaneously with all this, the American nation came upon the scene, equipped as no other nation had ever been, for the task of combining sovereignty with liberty, indestructible union of the whole with indestructible life in the parts. The English idea has thus come to be more than national, it has become imperial. It has come to rule, and it has come to stay. [Sidenote: Victory of the English Idea]

We are now in a position to answer the question when the Roman Empire came to an end, in so far as it can be answered at all. It did not come to its end at the hands of an Odovakar in the year 476, or of a Mahomet II in 1453, or of a Napoleon in 1806. It has been coming to its end as the Roman idea of nation-making has been at length decisively overcome by the English idea. For such a fact it is impossible to assign a date, because it is not an event but a stage in the endless procession of events. But we can point to landmarks on the way. Of movements significant and prophetic there have been many. The whole course of the Protestant reformation, from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth, is coincident with the transfer of the world's political centre of gravity from the Tiber and the Rhine to the Thames and the Mississippi. The whole career of the men who speak English has within this period been the most potent agency in this transfer. In these gigantic processes of evolution we cannot mark beginnings or endings by years, hardly even by centuries. But among the significant events which prophesied the final triumph of the English over the Roman idea, perhaps the most significant—the one which marks most incisively the dawning of a new era—was the migration of English Puritans across the Atlantic Ocean, to repeat in a new environment and on a far grander scale the work which their forefathers had wrought in Britain. The voyage of the Mayflower was not in itself the greatest event in this migration; but it serves to mark the era, and it is only when we study it in the mood awakened by the general considerations here set forth that we can properly estimate the historic importance of the great Puritan Exodus. [Sidenote: Significance of the Puritan Exodus]



CHAPTER II.

THE PURITAN EXODUS.

In the preceding chapter I endeavoured to set forth and illustrate some of the chief causes which have shifted the world's political centre of gravity from the Mediterranean and the Rhine to the Atlantic and the Mississippi; from the men who spoke Latin to the men who speak English. In the course of the exposition we began to catch glimpses of the wonderful significance of the fact that—among the people who had first suggested the true solution of the difficult problem of making a powerful nation without sacrificing local self-government—when the supreme day of trial came, the dominant religious sentiment was arrayed on the side of political freedom and against political despotism. If we consider merely the territorial area which it covered, or the numbers of men slain in its battles, the war of the English parliament against Charles I. seems a trivial affair when contrasted with the gigantic but comparatively insignificant work of barbarians like Jinghis or Tamerlane. But if we consider the moral and political issues involved, and the influence of the struggle upon the future welfare of mankind, we soon come to see that there never was a conflict of more world-wide importance than that from which Oliver Cromwell came out victorious. It shattered the monarchical power in England at a time when monarchical power was bearing down all opposition in the other great countries of Europe. It decided that government by the people and for the people should not then perish from the earth. It placed free England in a position of such moral advantage that within another century the English Idea of political life was able to react most powerfully upon continental Europe. It was the study of English institutions by such men as Montesquieu and Turgot, Voltaire and Rousseau, that gave shape and direction to the French Revolution. That violent but wholesome clearing of the air, that tremendous political and moral awakening, which ushered in the nineteenth century in Europe, had its sources in the spirit which animated the preaching of Latimer, the song of Milton, the solemn imagery of Bunyan, the political treatises of Locke and Sidney, the political measures of Hampden and Pym. The noblest type of modern European statesmanship, as represented by Mazzini and Stein, is the spiritual offspring of seventeenth-century Puritanism. To speak of Naseby and Marston Moor as merely English victories would be as absurd as to restrict the significance of Gettysburg to the state of Pennsylvania. If ever there were men who laid down their lives in the cause of all mankind, it was those grim old Ironsides whose watchwords were texts from Holy Writ, whose battle-cries were hymns of praise. [Sidenote: Influence of Puritanism upon modern Europe]

It was to this unwonted alliance of intense religious enthusiasm with the instinct of self-government and the spirit of personal independence that the preservation of English freedom was due. When James I. ascended the English throne, the forces which prepared the Puritan revolt had been slowly and quietly gathering strength among the people for at least two centuries. The work which Wyclif had begun in the fourteenth century had continued to go on in spite of occasional spasmodic attempts to destroy it with the aid of the statute passed in 1401 for the burning of heretics. The Lollards can hardly be said at any time to have constituted a sect, marked off from the established church by the possession of a system of doctrines held in common. The name by which they were known was a nickname which might cover almost any amount of diversity in opinion, like the modern epithets "free-thinker" and "agnostic." The feature which characterized the Lollards in common was a bold spirit of inquiry which led them, in spite of persecution, to read Wyclif's English Bible and call in question such dogmas and rites of the church as did not seem to find warrant in the sacred text. Clad in long robes of coarse red wool, barefoot, with pilgrim's staff in hand, the Lollard preachers fared to and fro among the quaint Gothic towns and shaded hamlets, setting forth the word of God wherever they could find listeners, now in the parish church or under the vaulted roof of the cathedral, now in the churchyard or market-place, or on some green hillside. During the fifteenth century persecution did much to check this open preaching, but passages from Wyclif's tracts and texts from the Bible were copied by hand and passed about among tradesmen and artisans, yeomen and plough-boys, to be pondered over and talked about and learned by heart. It was a new revelation to the English people, this discovery of the Bible. Christ and his disciples seemed to come very near when the beautiful story of the gospels was first read in the familiar speech of every-day life. Heretofore they might well have seemed remote and unreal, just as the school-boy hardly realizes that the Cato and Cassius over whom he puzzles in his Latin lessons were once living men like his father and neighbours, and not mere nominatives governing a verb, or ablatives of means or instrument. Now it became possible for the layman to contrast the pure teachings of Christ with the doctrines and demeanour of the priests and monks to whom the spiritual guidance of Englishmen had been entrusted. Strong and self-respecting men and women, accustomed to manage their own affairs, could not but be profoundly affected by the contrast. [Sidenote: Work of the Lollards]

While they were thus led more and more to appeal to the Bible as the divine standard of right living and right thinking, at the same time they found in the sacred volume the treasures of a most original and noble literature unrolled before them; stirring history and romantic legend, cosmical theories and priestly injunctions, profound metaphysics and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At a time when there was as yet no English literature for the common people, this untold wealth of Hebrew literature was implanted in the English mind as in a virgin soil. Great consequences have flowed from the fact that the first truly popular literature in England—the first which stirred the hearts of all classes of people, and filled their minds with ideal pictures and their every-day speech with apt and telling phrases— was the literature comprised within the Bible. The superiority of the common English version of the Bible, made in the reign of James I., over all other versions, is a fact generally admitted by competent critics. The sonorous Latin of the Vulgate is very grand, but in sublimity of fervour as in the unconscious simplicity of strength it is surpassed by the English version, which is scarcely if at all inferior to the original, while it remains to-day, and will long remain, the noblest monument of English speech. The reason for this is obvious. The common English version of the Bible was made by men who were not aiming at literary effect, but simply gave natural expression to the feelings which for several generations had clustered around the sacred text. They spoke with the voice of a people, which is more than the voice of the most highly gifted man. They spoke with the voice of a people to whom the Bible had come to mean all that it meant to the men who wrote it. To the Englishmen who listened to Latimer, to the Scotchmen who listened to Knox, the Bible more than filled the place which in modern times is filled by poem and essay, by novel and newspaper and scientific treatise. To its pages they went for daily instruction and comfort, with its strange Semitic names they baptized their children, upon its precepts, too often misunderstood and misapplied, they sought to build up a rule of life that might raise them above the crude and unsatisfying world into which they were born. [Sidenote: The English version of the Bible]

It would be wrong to accredit all this awakening of spiritual life in England to Wyclif and the Lollards, for it was only after the Bible, in the translations of Tyndall and Coverdale, had been made free to the whole English people in the reign of Edward VI. that its significance began to be apparent; and it was only a century later, in the time of Cromwell and Milton, that its full fruition was reached. It was with the Lollards, however, that the spiritual awakening began and was continued until its effects, when they came, were marked by surprising maturity and suddenness. Because the Lollards were not a clearly defined sect, it was hard to trace the manifold ramifications of their work. During the terrible Wars of the Roses, contemporary chroniclers had little or nothing to say about the labours of these humble men, which seemed of less importance than now, when we read them in the light of their world-wide results. From this silence some modern historians have carelessly inferred that the nascent Protestantism of the Lollards had been extinguished by persecution under the Lancastrian kings, and was in nowise continuous with modern English Protestantism. Nothing could be more erroneous. The extent to which the Lollard leaven had permeated all classes of English society was first clearly revealed when Henry VIII. made his domestic affairs the occasion for a revolt against the Papacy. Despot and brute as he was in many ways, Henry had some characteristics which enabled him to get on well with his people. He not only represented the sentiment of national independence, but he had a truly English reverence for the forms of law. In his worst acts he relied upon the support of his Parliament, which he might in various ways cajole or pack, but could not really enslave. In his quarrel with Rome he could have achieved but little, had he not happened to strike a chord of feeling to which the English people, trained by this slow and subtle work of the Lollards, responded quickly and with a vehemence upon which he had not reckoned. As if by magic, the fabric of Romanism was broken to pieces in England, monasteries were suppressed and their abbots hanged, the authority of the Pope was swept away, and there was no powerful party, like that of the Guises in France to make such sweeping measures the occasion for civil war. The whole secret of Henry's swift success lay in the fact that the English people were already more than half Protestant in temper, and needed only an occasion for declaring themselves. Hence, as soon as Catholic Henry died, his youthful son found himself seated on the throne of a Protestant nation. The terrible but feeble persecution which followed under Mary did much to strengthen the extreme Protestant sentiment by allying it with the outraged feeling of national independence. The bloody work of the grand-daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the doting wife of Philip II., was rightly felt to be Spanish work; and never, perhaps, did England feel such a sense of relief as on the auspicious day which welcomed to the throne the great Elizabeth, an Englishwoman in every fibre, and whose mother withal was the daughter of a plain country gentleman. But the Marian persecution not only increased the strength of the extreme Protestant sentiment, but indirectly it supplied it with that Calvinistic theology which was to make it indomitable. Of the hundreds of ministers and laymen who fled from England in 1555 and the two following years, a great part found their way to Geneva, and thus came under the immediate personal influence of that man of iron who taught the very doctrines for which their souls were craving, and who was then at the zenith of his power. [Sidenote: Secret of Henry VIII.'s swift success in his revolt against Rome] [Sidenote: Effects of the persecution under Mary]

Among all the great benefactors of mankind the figure of Calvin is perhaps the least attractive. He was, so to speak, the constitutional lawyer of the Reformation, with vision as clear, with head as cool, with soul as dry, as any old solicitor in rusty black that ever dwelt in chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His sternness was that of the judge who dooms a criminal to the gallows. His theology had much in it that is in striking harmony with modern scientific philosophy, and much in it, too, that the descendants of his Puritan converts have learned to loathe as sheer diabolism. It is hard for us to forgive the man who burned Michael Servetus, even though it was the custom of the time to do such things and the tender-hearted Melanchthon found nothing to blame in it. It is not easy to speak of Calvin with enthusiasm, as it comes natural to speak of the genial, whole-souled, many-sided, mirth-and-song-loving Luther. Nevertheless it would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owe to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy. Perhaps not one of the mediaeval popes was more despotic in temper than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the promulgation of his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind have taken toward personal freedom. Calvinism left the individual man alone in the presence of his God. His salvation could not be wrought by priestly ritual, but only by the grace of God abounding in his soul; and wretched creature that he felt himself to be, through the intense moral awakening of which this stern theology was in part the expression, his soul was nevertheless of infinite value, and the possession of it was the subject of an everlasting struggle between the powers of heaven and the powers of hell. In presence of the awful responsibility of life, all distinctions of rank and fortune vanished; prince and pauper were alike the helpless creatures of Jehovah and suppliants for his grace. Calvin did not originate these doctrines; in announcing them he was but setting forth, as he said, the Institutes of the Christian religion; but in emphasizing this aspect of Christianity, in engraving it upon men's minds with that keen-edged logic which he used with such unrivalled skill, Calvin made them feel, as it had perhaps never been felt before, the dignity and importance of the individual human soul. It was a religion fit to inspire men who were to be called upon to fight for freedom, whether in the marshes of the Netherlands or on the moors of Scotland. In a church, moreover, based upon such a theology there was no room for prelacy. Each single church tended to become an independent congregation of worshippers, constituting one of the most effective schools that has ever existed for training men in local self-government. [Sidenote: Calvin's theology in its political bearings]

When, therefore, upon the news of Elizabeth's accession to the throne, the Protestant refugees made their way back to England, they came as Calvinistic Puritans. Their stay upon the Continent had been short, but it had been just enough to put the finishing touch upon the work that had been going on since the days of Wyclif. Upon such men and their theories Elizabeth could not look with favour. With all her father's despotic temper, Elizabeth possessed her mother's fine tact, and she represented so grandly the feeling of the nation in its life-and-death-struggle with Spain and the pope, that never perhaps in English history has the crown wielded so much real power as during the five-and-forty years of her wonderful reign.

One day Elizabeth asked a lady of the court how she contrived to retain her husband's affection. The lady replied that "she had confidence in her husband's understanding and courage, well founded on her own steadfastness not to offend or thwart, but to cherish and obey, whereby she did persuade her husband of her own affection, and in so doing did command his." "Go to, go to, mistress," cried the queen, "You are wisely bent, I find. After such sort do I keep the good will of all my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest assured of some special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience." [2] Such a theory of government might work well in the hands of an Elizabeth, and in the circumstances in which England was then placed; but it could hardly be worked by a successor. The seeds of revolt were already sown. The disposition to curb the sovereign was growing and would surely assert itself as soon as it should have some person less loved and respected than Elizabeth to deal with. The queen in some measure foresaw this, and in the dogged independence and uncompromising enthusiasm of the Puritans she recognized the rock on which the monarchy might dash itself into pieces. She therefore hated the Puritans, and persecuted them zealously with one hand, while circumstances forced her in spite of herself to aid and abet them with the other. She could not maintain herself against Spain without helping the Dutch and the Huguenots; but every soldier she sent across the channel came back, if he came at all, with his head full of the doctrines of Calvin; and these stalwart converts were reinforced by the refugees from France and the Netherlands who came flocking into English towns to set up their thrifty shops and hold prayer-meetings in their humble chapels. To guard the kingdom against the intrigues of Philip and the Guises and the Queen of Scots, it was necessary to choose the most zealous Protestants for the most responsible positions, and such men were more than likely to be Calvinists and Puritans. Elizabeth's great ministers, Burleigh, Walsingham, and Nicholas Bacon, were inclined toward Puritanism; and so were the naval heroes who won the most fruitful victories of that century, by shattering the maritime power of Spain and thus opening the way for Englishmen to colonize North America. If we would realize the dangers that would have beset the Mayflower and her successors but for the preparatory work of these immortal sailors, we must remember the dreadful fate of Ribault and his Huguenot followers in Florida, twenty-three years before that most happy and glorious event, the destruction of the Spanish Armada. But not even the devoted men and women who held their prayer-meetings in the Mayflower's cabin were more constant in prayer or more assiduous in reading the Bible than the dauntless rovers, Drake and Hawkins, Gilbert and Cavendish. In the church itself, too, the Puritan spirit grew until in 1575-83 it seized upon Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, who incurred the queen's disfavour by refusing to meddle with the troublesome reformers or to suppress their prophesyings. By the end of the century the majority of country gentlemen and of wealthy merchants in the towns had become Puritans, and the new views had made great headway in both universities, while at Cambridge they had become dominant. [Sidenote: Elizabeth's policy, and its effects] [Sidenote: Puritan Sea-rovers]

This allusion to the universities may serve to introduce the very interesting topic of the geographical distribution of Puritanism in England. No one can study the history of the two universities without being impressed with the greater conservatism of Oxford, and the greater hospitality of Cambridge toward new ideas. Possibly the explanation may have some connection with the situation of Cambridge upon the East Anglian border. The eastern counties of England have often been remarked as rife in heresy and independency. For many generations the coast region between the Thames and the Humber was a veritable litus haereticum. Longland, bishop of Lincoln in 1520, reported Lollardism as especially vigorous and obstinate in his diocese, where more than two hundred heretics were once brought before him in the course of a single visitation. It was in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and among the fens of Ely, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, that Puritanism was strongest at the end of the sixteenth century. It was as member and leading spirit of the Eastern Counties Association that Oliver Cromwell began his military career; and in so far as there was anything sectional in the struggle between Charles I. and the Long Parliament, it was a struggle which ended in the victory of east over west. East Anglia was from first to last the one region in which the supremacy of Parliament was unquestionable and impregnable, even after the strength of its population had been diminished by sending some thousands of picked men and women to America. While every one of the forty counties of England was represented in the great Puritan exodus, the East Anglian counties contributed to it far more than all the rest. Perhaps it would not be far out of the way to say that two-thirds of the American people who can trace their ancestry to New England might follow it back to the East Anglian shires of the mother-country; one-sixth might follow it to those southwestern countries—Devonshire, Dorset, and Somerset—which so long were foremost in maritime enterprise; one-sixth to other parts of England. I would not insist upon the exactness of such figures, in a matter where only a rough approximation is possible; but I do not think they overstate the East Anglian preponderance. It was not by accident that the earliest counties of Massachusetts were called Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, or that Boston in Lincolnshire gave its name to the chief city of New England. The native of Connecticut or Massachusetts who wanders about rural England to-day finds no part of it so homelike as the cosy villages and smiling fields and quaint market towns as he fares leisurely and in not too straight a line from Ipswich toward Hull. Countless little unobtrusive features remind him of home. The very names on the sign-boards over the sleepy shops have an unwontedly familiar look. In many instances the homestead which his forefathers left, when they followed Winthrop or Hooker to America, is still to be found, well-kept and comfortable; the ancient manor-house built of massive unhewn stone, yet in other respects much like the New England farmhouse, with its long sloping roof and gable end toward the road, its staircase with twisted balusters running across the shallow entry-way, its low ceilings with their sturdy oaken beams, its spacious chimneys, and its narrow casements from which one might have looked out upon the anxious march of Edward IV. from Ravenspur to the field of victory at Barnet in days when America was unknown. Hard by, in the little parish church which has stood for perhaps a thousand years, plain enough and bleak enough to suit the taste of the sternest Puritan, one may read upon the cold pavement one's own name and the names of one's friends and neighbours in startling proximity, somewhat worn and effaced by the countless feet that have trodden there. And yonder on the village green one comes with bated breath upon the simple inscription which tells of some humble hero who on that spot in the evil reign of Mary suffered death by fire. Pursuing thus our interesting journey, we may come at last to the quiet villages of Austerfield and Scrooby, on opposite banks of the river Idle, and just at the corner of the three shires of Lincoln, York, and Nottingham. It was from this point that the Puritan exodus to America was begun. [Sidenote: Puritanism was strongest in the eastern counties] [Sidenote: Preponderance of East Anglia in the Puritan exodus]

It was not, however, in the main stream of Puritanism, but in one of its obscure rivulets that this world-famous movement originated. During the reign of Elizabeth it was not the purpose of the Puritans to separate themselves from the established church of which the sovereign was the head, but to remain within it and reform it according to their own notions. For a time they were partially successful in this work, especially in simplifying the ritual and in giving a Calvinistic tinge to the doctrines. In doing this they showed no conscious tendency toward freedom of thought, but rather a bigotry quite as intense as that which animated the system against which they were fighting. The most advanced liberalism of Elizabeth's time was not to be found among the Puritans, but in the magnificent treatise on "Ecclesiastical Polity" by the churchman Richard Hooker. But the liberalism of this great writer, like that of Erasmus a century earlier, was not militant enough to meet the sterner demands of the time. It could not then ally itself with the democratic spirit, as Puritanism did. It has been well said that while Luther was the prophet of the Reformation that has been, Erasmus was the prophet of the Reformation that is to come, and so it was to some extent with the Puritans and Hooker. The Puritan fight against the hierarchy was a political necessity of the time, something without which no real and thorough reformation could then be effected. In her antipathy to this democratic movement, Elizabeth vexed and tormented the Puritans as far as she deemed it prudent; and in the conservative temper of the people she found enough support to prevent their transforming the church as they would have liked to do. Among the Puritans themselves, indeed, there was no definite agreement on this point. Some would have stopped short with Presbyterianism, while others held that "new presbyter was but old priest writ large," and so pressed on to Independency. It was early in Elizabeth's reign that the zeal of these extreme brethren, inflamed by persecution, gave rise to the sect of Separatists, who flatly denied the royal supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs, and asserted the right to set up churches of their own, with pastors and elders and rules of discipline, independent of queen or bishop. [Sidenote: Puritanism was not intentionally allied with liberalism]

In 1567 the first congregation of this sort, consisting of about a hundred persons assembled in a hall in Anchor Lane in London, was forcibly broken up and thirty-one of the number were sent to jail and kept there for nearly a year. By 1576 the Separatists had come to be recognized as a sect, under the lead of Robert Brown, a man of high social position, related to the great Lord Burleigh. Brown fled to Holland, where he preached to a congregation of English exiles, and wrote books which were smuggled into England and privately circulated there, much to the disgust, not only of the queen, but of all parties, Puritans as well as High Churchmen. The great majority of Puritans, whose aim was not to leave the church, but to stay in it and control it, looked with dread and disapproval upon these extremists who seemed likely to endanger their success by forcing them into deadly opposition to the crown. Just as in the years which ushered in our late Civil War, the opponents of the Republicans sought to throw discredit upon them by confusing them with the little sect of Abolitionists; and just as the Republicans, in resenting the imputation, went so far as to frown upon the Abolitionists, so that in December, 1860, men who had just voted for Mr. Lincoln were ready to join in breaking up "John Brown meetings" in Boston; so it was with religious parties in the reign of Elizabeth. The opponents of the Puritans pointed to the Separatists, and cried, "See whither your anarchical doctrines are leading!" and in their eagerness to clear themselves of this insinuation, the leading Puritans were as severe upon the Separatists as anybody. It is worthy of note that in both instances the imputation, so warmly resented, was true. Under the pressure of actual hostilities the Republicans did become Abolitionists, and in like manner, when in England it came to downright warfare the Puritans became Separatists. But meanwhile it fared ill with the little sect which everybody hated and despised. Their meetings were broken up by mobs. In an old pamphlet describing a "tumult in Fleet Street, raised by the disorderly preachment, pratings, and prattlings of a swarm of Separatists," one reads such sentences as the following: "At length they catcht one of them alone, but they kickt him so vehemently as if they meant to beat him into a jelly. It is ambiguous whether they have kil'd him or no, but for a certainty they did knock him about as if they meant to pull him to pieces. I confesse it had been no matter if they had beaten the whole tribe in the like manner." For their leaders the penalty was more serious. The denial of the queen's ecclesiastical supremacy could be treated as high treason, and two of Brown's friends, convicted of circulating his books, were sent to the gallows. In spite of these dangers Brown returned to England in 1585. William the Silent had lately been murdered, and heresy in Holland was not yet safe from the long arm of the Spaniard. Brown trusted in Lord Burleigh's ability to protect him, but in 1588, finding himself in imminent danger, he suddenly recanted and accepted a comfortable living under the bishops who had just condemned him. His followers were already known as Brownists; henceforth their enemies took pains to call them so and twit them with holding doctrines too weak for making martyrs. [Sidenote: Robert Brown and the Separatists]

The flimsiness of Brown's moral texture prevented him from becoming the leader in the Puritan exodus to New England. That honour was reserved for William Brewster, son of a country gentleman who had for many years been postmaster at Scrooby. The office was then one of high responsibility and influence. After taking his degree at Cambridge, Brewster became private secretary to Sir William Davison, whom he accompanied on his mission to the Netherlands. When Davison's public career came to an end in 1587, Brewster returned to Scrooby, and soon afterward succeeded his father as postmaster, in which position he remained until 1607. During the interval Elizabeth died, and James Stuart came from Scotland to take her place on the throne. [Sidenote: William Brewster]

The feelings with which the late queen had regarded Puritanism were mild compared with the sentiments entertained by her successor. For some years he had been getting worsted in his struggle with the Presbyterians of the northern kingdom. His vindictive memory treasured up the day when a mighty Puritan preacher had in public twitched him by the sleeve and called him "God's silly vassal." "I tell you, sir," said Andrew Melville on that occasion, "there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the Kirk, whose subject James VI. is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a member. And they whom Christ hath called to watch over his kirk and govern his spiritual kingdom have sufficient power and authority so to do both together and severally." In this bold and masterful speech we have the whole political philosophy of Puritanism, as in a nutshell. Under the guise of theocratic fanaticism, and in words as arrogant as ever fell from priestly lips, there was couched the assertion of the popular will against despotic privilege. Melville could say such things to the king's face and walk away unharmed, because there stood behind him a people fully aroused to the conviction that there is an eternal law of God, which kings no less than scullions must obey. [3] Melville knew this full well, and so did James know it in the bitterness of his heart. He would have no such mischievous work in England. He despised Elizabeth's grand national policy which his narrow intellect could not comprehend. He could see that in fighting Spain and aiding Dutchmen and Huguenots she was strengthening the very spirit that sought to pull monarchy down. In spite of her faults, which were neither few nor small, the patriotism of that fearless woman was superior to any personal ambition. It was quite otherwise with James. He was by no means fearless, and he cared more for James Stuart than for either England or Scotland. He had an overweening opinion of his skill in kingcraft. In coming to Westminster it was his policy to use his newly acquired power to break down the Puritan party in both kingdoms and to fasten episcopacy upon Scotland. In pursuing this policy he took no heed of English national sentiment, but was quite ready to defy and insult it, even to the point of making—before children who remembered the Armada had yet reached middle age—an alliance with the hated Spaniard. In such wise James succeeded in arraying against the monarchical principle the strongest forces of English life,—the sentiment of nationality, the sentiment of personal freedom, and the uncompromising religious fervour of Calvinism; and out of this invincible combination of forces has been wrought the nobler and happier state of society in which we live to-day. [Sidenote: James Stuart and Andrew Melville]

Scarcely ten months had James been king of England when he invited the leading Puritan clergymen to meet himself and the bishops in a conference at Hampton Court, as he wished to learn what changes they would like to make in the government and ritual of the church. In the course of the discussion he lost his temper and stormed, as was his wont. [Sidenote: King James's view of the political situation]

The mention of the word "presbytery" lashed him into fury. "A Scottish presbytery," he cried, "agreeth as well with a monarchy as God and the Devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their pleasures censure me and my council and all our proceedings .... Stay, I pray you, for one seven years, before you demand that from me, and if then you find me pursy and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps hearken to you .... Until you find that I grow lazy, let that alone." One of the bishops declared that in this significant tirade his Majesty spoke by special inspiration from Heaven! The Puritans saw that their only hope lay in resistance. If any doubt remained, it was dispelled by the vicious threat with which the king broke up the conference. "I will make them conform," said he, "or I will harry them out of the land."

These words made a profound sensation in England, as well they might, for they heralded the struggle which within half a century was to deliver up James's son to the executioner. The Parliament of 1604 met in angrier mood than any Parliament which had assembled at Westminster since the dethronement of Richard II. Among the churches non-conformity began more decidedly to assume the form of secession. The key-note of the conflict was struck at Scrooby. Staunch Puritan as he was, Brewster had not hitherto favoured the extreme measures of the Separatists. Now he withdrew from the church, and gathered together a company of men and women who met on Sundays for divine service in his own drawing-room at Scrooby Manor. In organizing this independent Congregationalist society, Brewster was powerfully aided by John Robinson, a native of Lincolnshire. Robinson was then thirty years of age, and had taken his master's degree at Cambridge in 1600. He was a man of great learning and rare sweetness of temper, and was moreover distinguished for a broad and tolerant habit of mind too seldom found among the Puritans of that day. Friendly and unfriendly writers alike bear witness to his spirit of Christian charity and the comparatively slight value which he attached to orthodoxy in points of doctrine; and we can hardly be wrong in supposing that the comparatively tolerant behaviour of the Plymouth colonists, whereby they were contrasted with the settlers of Massachusetts, was in some measure due to the abiding influence of the teachings of this admirable man. Another important member of the Scrooby congregation was William Bradford, of the neighbouring village of Austerfield, then a lad of seventeen years, but already remarkable for maturity of intelligence and weight of character. Afterward governor of Plymouth for nearly thirty years, he became the historian of his colony; and to his picturesque chronicle, written in pure and vigorous English, we are indebted for most that we know of the migration that started from Scrooby and ended in Plymouth. [Sidenote: The congregation of Separatists at Scrooby]

It was in 1606—two years after King James's truculent threat—that this independent church of Scrooby was organized. Another year had not elapsed before its members had suffered so much at the hands of officers of the law, that they began to think of following the example of former heretics and escaping to Holland. After an unsuccessful attempt in the autumn of 1607, they at length succeeded a few months later in accomplishing their flight to Amsterdam, where they hoped to find a home. But here they found the English exiles who had preceded them so fiercely involved in doctrinal controversies, that they decided to go further in search of peace and quiet. This decision, which we may ascribe to Robinson's wise counsels, served to keep the society of Pilgrims from getting divided and scattered. They reached Leyden in 1609, just as the Spanish government had sullenly abandoned the hopeless task of conquering the Dutch, and had granted to Holland the Twelve Years Truce. During eleven of these twelve years the Pilgrims remained in Leyden, supporting themselves by various occupations, while their numbers increased from 300 to more than 1000. Brewster opened a publishing house, devoted mainly to the issue of theological books. Robinson accepted a professorship in the university, and engaged in the defence of Calvinism against the attacks of Episcopius, the successor of Arminius. The youthful Bradford devoted himself to the study of languages,—Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and finally Hebrew; wishing, as he said, to "see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in all their native beauty." During their sojourn in Leyden the Pilgrims were introduced to a strange and novel spectacle,—the systematic legal toleration of all persons, whether Catholic or Protestant, who called themselves followers of Christ. Not that there was not plenty of intolerance in spirit, but the policy inaugurated by the idolized William the Silent held it in check by law. All persons who came to Holland, and led decorous lives there, were protected in their opinions and customs. By contemporary writers in other countries this eccentric behaviour of the Dutch government was treated with unspeakable scorn. "All strange religions flock thither," says one; it is "a common harbour of all heresies," a "cage of unclean birds," says another; "the great mingle mangle of religion," says a third. [4] In spite of the relief from persecution, however, the Pilgrims were not fully satisfied with their new home. The expiration of the truce with Spain might prove that this relief was only temporary; and at any rate, complete toleration did not fill the measure of their wants. Had they come to Holland as scattered bands of refugees, they might have been absorbed into the Dutch population, as Huguenot refugees have been absorbed in Germany, England, and America. But they had come as an organized community, and absorption into a foreign nation was something to be dreaded. They wished to preserve their English speech and English traditions, keep up their organization, and find some favoured spot where they might lay the corner-stone of a great Christian state. The spirit of nationality was strong in them; the spirit of self-government was strong in them; and the only thing which could satisfy these feelings was such a migration as had not been seen since ancient times, a migration like that of Phokaians to Massilia or Tyrians to Carthage. [Sidenote: The flight to Holland] [Sidenote: Why the Pilgrims did not stay there]

It was too late in the world's history to carry out such a scheme upon European soil. Every acre of territory there was appropriated. The only favourable outlook was upon the Atlantic coast of America, where English cruisers had now successfully disputed the pretensions of Spain, and where after forty years of disappointment and disaster a flourishing colony had at length been founded in Virginia. The colonization of the North American coast had now become part of the avowed policy of the British government. In 1606 a great joint-stock company was formed for the establishment of two colonies in America. The branch which was to take charge of the proposed southern colony had its headquarters in London; the management of the northern branch was at Plymouth in Devonshire. Hence the two branches are commonly spoken of as the London and Plymouth companies. The former was also called the Virginia Company, and the latter the North Virginia Company, as the name of Virginia was then loosely applied to the entire Atlantic coast north of Florida. The London Company had jurisdiction from 34 degrees to 38 degrees north latitude; the Plymouth Company had jurisdiction from 45 degrees down to 41 degrees; the intervening territory, between 38 degrees and 41 degrees was to go to whichever company should first plant a self-supporting colony. The local government of each colony was to be entrusted to a council resident in America and nominated by the king; while general supervision over both colonies was to be exercised by a council resident in England. [Sidenote: The London and Plymouth companies]

In pursuance of this general plan, though with some variations in detail, the settlement of Jamestown had been begun in 1607, and its success was now beginning to seem assured. On the other hand all the attempts which had been made to the north of the fortieth parallel had failed miserably. As early as 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold, with 32 men, had landed on the headland which they named Cape Cod from the fish found thereabouts in great numbers. This was the first English name given to any spot in that part of America, and so far as known these were the first Englishmen that ever set foot there. They went on and gave names to Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay; and on Cuttyhunk they built some huts with the intention of remaining, but after a month's experience they changed their mind and went back to England. Gosnold's story interested other captains, and on Easter Sunday, 1605, George Weymouth set sail for North Virginia, as it was called. He found Cape Cod and coasted northward as far as the Kennebec river, up which he sailed for many miles. Weymouth kidnapped five Indians and carried them to England, that they might learn the language and acquire a wholesome respect for the arts of civilization and the resistless power of white men. His glowing accounts of the spacious harbours, the abundance of fish and game, the noble trees, the luxuriant herbage, and the balmy climate, aroused general interest in England, and doubtless had some influence upon the formation, in the following year, of the great joint-stock company just described. The leading spirit of the Plymouth Company was Sir John Popham, chief-justice of England, and he was not disposed to let his friends of the southern branch excel him in promptness. Within three months after the founding of Jamestown, a party of 120 colonists, led by the judge's kinsman George Popham, landed at the mouth of the Kennebec, and proceeded to build a rude village of some fifty cabins, with storehouse, chapel, and block-house. When they landed in August they doubtless shared Weymouth's opinion of the climate. These Englishmen had heard of warm countries like Italy and cold countries like Russia; harsh experience soon taught them that there are climates in which the summer of Naples may alternate with the winter of Moscow. The president and many others fell sick and died. News came of the death of Sir John Popham in England, and presently the weary and disappointed settlers abandoned their enterprise and returned to their old homes. Their failure spread abroad in England the opinion that North Virginia was uninhabitable by reason of the cold, and no further attempts were made upon that coast until in 1614 it was visited by Captain John Smith. [Sidenote: First exploration of the New England coast]

The romantic career of this gallant and garrulous hero did not end with his departure from the infant colony at Jamestown. By a curious destiny his fame is associated with the beginnings of both the southern and the northern portions of the United States. To Virginia Smith may be said to have given its very existence as a commonwealth; to New England he gave its name. In 1614 he came over with two ships to North Virginia, explored its coast minutely from the Penobscot river to Cape Cod, and thinking it a country of such extent and importance as to deserve a name of its own, rechristened it New England. On returning home he made a very good map of the coast and dotted it with English names suggested by Prince Charles. Of these names Cape Elizabeth, Cape Ann, Charles River, and Plymouth still remain where Smith placed them. In 1615 Smith again set sail for the New World, this time with a view to planting a colony under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, but his talent for strange adventures had not deserted him. He was taken prisoner by a French fleet, carried hither and thither on a long cruise, and finally set ashore at Rochelle, whence, without a penny in his pocket, he contrived to make his way back to England. Perhaps Smith's life of hardship may have made him prematurely old. After all his wild and varied experience he was now only in his thirty-seventh year, but he does not seem to have gone on any more voyages. The remaining sixteen years of his life were spent quietly in England in writing books, publishing maps, and otherwise stimulating the public interest in the colonization of the New World. But as for the rocky coast of New England, which he had explored and named, he declared that he was not so simple as to suppose that any other motive than riches would "ever erect there a commonwealth or draw company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in New England." [Sidenote: John Smith]

In this opinion, however, the bold explorer was mistaken. Of all migrations of peoples the settlement of New England is preeminently the one in which the almighty dollar played the smallest part, however important it may since have become as a motive power. It was left for religious enthusiasm to achieve what commercial enterprise had failed to accomplish. By the summer of 1617 the Pilgrim society at Leyden had decided to send a detachment of its most vigorous members to lay the foundations of a Puritan state in America. There had been much discussion as to the fittest site for such a colony. Many were in favour of Guiana, which Sir Walter Raleigh had described in such glowing colours; but it was thought that the tropical climate would be ill-suited to northern men of industrious and thrifty habit, and the situation, moreover, was dangerously exposed to the Spaniards. Half a century had scarcely elapsed since the wholesale massacre of Huguenots in Florida. Virginia was then talked of, but Episcopal ideas had already taken root there. New England, on the other hand, was considered too cold. Popham's experience was not encouraging. But the country about the Delaware river afforded an opportunity for erecting an independent colony under the jurisdiction of the London Company, and this seemed the best course to pursue. Sir Edwin Sandys, the leading spirit in the London Company, was favourably inclined toward Puritans, and through him negotiations were begun. Capital to the amount of L7000 was furnished by seventy merchant adventurers in England, and the earnings of the settlers were to be thrown into a common stock until these subscribers should have been remunerated. A grant of land was obtained from the London Company, and the king was asked to protect the emigrants by a charter, but this was refused. James, however, made no objections to their going, herein showing himself less of a bigot than Louis XIV. in later days, who would not suffer a Huguenot to set foot in Canada, though France was teeming with Huguenots who would have been glad enough to go. When James inquired how the colonists expected to support themselves, some one answered, most likely by fishing. "Very good," quoth the king, "it was the Apostles' own calling." He declared that no one should molest them so long as they behaved themselves properly. From this unwonted urbanity it would appear that James anticipated no trouble from the new colony. A few Puritans in America could not do much to annoy him, and there was of course a fair chance of their perishing, as so many other colonizers had perished. [Sidenote: The Pilgrims at Leyden decide to make a settlement near the Delaware river]

The congregation at Leyden did not think it wise to cut loose from Holland until they should have secured a foothold in America. It was but an advance guard that started out from Delft haven late in July, 1620, in the rickety ship Speedwell, with Brewster and Bradford, and sturdy Miles Standish, a trained soldier whose aid was welcome, though he does not seem to have belonged to the congregation. Robinson remained at Leyden, and never came to America. After a brief stop at Southampton, where they met the Mayflower with friends from London, the Pilgrims again set sail in the two ships. The Speedwell sprang a leak, and they stopped at Dartmouth for repairs. Again they started, and had put three hundred miles of salt water between themselves and Land's End, when the Speedwell leaked so badly that they were forced to return. When they dropped anchor at Plymouth in Devonshire, about twenty were left on shore, and the remainder, exactly one hundred in number, crowded into the Mayflower and on the 6th of September started once more to cross the Atlantic. The capacity of the little ship was 180 tons, and her strength was but slight. In a fierce storm in mid-ocean a mainbeam amidships was wrenched and cracked, and but for a huge iron screw which one of the passengers had brought from Delft, they might have gone to the bottom. The foul weather prevented any accurate calculation of latitude and longitude, and they were so far out in their reckoning that when they caught sight of land on the 9th of November, it was to Cape Cod that they had come. Their patent gave them no authority to settle here, as it was beyond the jurisdiction of the London Company. They turned their prow southward, but encountering perilous shoals and a stiff headwind they desisted and sought shelter in Cape Cod bay. On the 11th they decided to find some place of abode in this neighbourhood, anticipating no difficulty in getting a patent from the Plymouth Company, which was anxious to obtain settlers. For five weeks they stayed in the ship while little parties were exploring the coast and deciding upon the best site for a town. It was purely a coincidence that the spot which they chose had already received from John Smith the name of Plymouth, the beautiful port in Devonshire from which the Mayflower had sailed. [Sidenote: Founding of Plymouth]

There was not much to remind them of home in the snow-covered coast on which they landed. They had hoped to get their rude houses built before the winter should set in, but the many delays and mishaps had served to bring them ashore in the coldest season. When the long winter came to an end, fifty-one of the hundred Pilgrims had died,—a mortality even greater than that before which the Popham colony had succumbed. But Brewster spoke truth when he said, "It is not with us as with men whom small things can discourage or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again." At one time the living were scarcely able to bury the dead; only Brewster, Standish, and five other hardy ones were well enough to get about. At first they were crowded under a single roof, and as glimpses were caught of dusky savages skulking among the trees, a platform was built on the nearest hill and a few cannon were placed there in such wise as to command the neighbouring valleys and plains. By the end of the first summer the platform had grown to a fortress, down from which to the harbour led a village street with seven houses finished and others going up. Twenty-six acres had been cleared, and a plentiful harvest gathered in; venison, wild fowl, and fish were easy to obtain. When provisions and fuel had been laid in for the ensuing winter, Governor Bradford appointed a day of Thanksgiving. Town-meetings had already been held, and a few laws passed. The history of New England had begun.

This had evidently been a busy summer for the forty-nine survivors. On the 9th of November, the anniversary of the day on which they had sighted land, a ship was descried in the offing. She was the Fortune, bringing some fifty more of the Leyden company. It was a welcome reinforcement, but it diminished the rations of food that could be served during the winter, for the Fortune was not well supplied. When she set sail for England, she carried a little cargo of beaver-skins and choice wood for wainscoting to the value of L500 sterling, as a first instalment of the sum due to the merchant adventurers. But this cargo never reached England, for the Fortune was overhauled by a French cruiser and robbed of everything worth carrying away.

For two years more it was an anxious and difficult time for the new colony. By 1624 its success may be said to have become assured. That the Indians in the neighbourhood had not taken advantage of the distress of the settlers in that first winter, and massacred every one of them, was due to a remarkable circumstance. Early in 1617 a frightful pestilence had swept over New England and slain, it is thought, more than half the Indian population between the Penobscot river and Narragansett bay. Many of the Indians were inclined to attribute this calamity to the murder of two or three white fishermen the year before. They had not got over the superstitious dread with which the first sight of white men had inspired them, and now they believed that the strangers held the demon of the plague at their disposal and had let him loose upon the red men in revenge for the murders they had committed. This wholesome delusion kept their tomahawks quiet for a while. When they saw the Englishmen establishing themselves at Plymouth, they at first held a powwow in the forest, at which the new-comers were cursed with all the elaborate ingenuity that the sorcery of the medicine-men could summon for so momentous an occasion; but it was deemed best to refrain from merely human methods of attack. It was not until the end of the first winter that any of them mustered courage to visit the palefaces. Then an Indian named Samoset, who had learned a little English from fishermen and for his own part was inclined to be friendly, came one day into the village with words of welcome. He was so kindly treated that presently Massasoit, principal sachem of the Wampanoags, who dwelt between Narragansett and Cape Cod bays, came with a score of painted and feathered warriors and squatting on a green rug and cushions in the governor's log-house smoked the pipe of peace, while Standish with half-a-dozen musketeers stood quietly by. An offensive and defensive alliance was then and there made between King Massasoit and King James, and the treaty was faithfully kept for half a century. Some time afterward, when Massasoit had fallen sick and lay at death's door, his life was saved by Edward Winslow, who came to his wigwam and skilfully nursed him. Henceforth the Wampanoag thought well of the Pilgrim. The powerful Narragansetts, who dwelt on the farther side of the bay, felt differently, and thought it worth while to try the effect of a threat. A little while after the Fortune had brought its reinforcement, the Narragansett sachem Canonicus sent a messenger to Plymouth with a bundle of newly-made arrows wrapped in a snake-skin. The messenger threw it in at the governor's door and made off with unseemly haste. Bradford understood this as a challenge, and in this he was confirmed by a friendly Wampanoag. The Narragansetts could muster 2000 warriors, for whom forty or fifty Englishmen, even with firearms, were hardly a fair match; but it would not do to show fear. Bradford stuffed the snake-skin with powder and bullets, and sent it back to Canonicus, telling him that if he wanted war he might come whenever he liked and get his fill of it. When the sachem saw what the skin contained, he was afraid to touch it or have it about, and medicine-men, handling it no doubt gingerly enough, carried it out of his territory. [Sidenote: Why the colony was not attacked by the Indians]

It was a fortunate miscalculation that brought the Pilgrims to New England. Had they ventured upon the lands between the Hudson and the Delaware, they would probably have fared worse. They would soon have come into collision with the Dutch, and not far from that neighbourhood dwelt the Susquehannocks, at that time one of the most powerful and ferocious tribes on the continent. For the present the new-comers were less likely to be molested in the Wampanoag country than anywhere else. In the course of the year 1621 they obtained their grant from the Plymouth Company. This grant was not made to them directly but to the joint-stock company of merchant adventurers with whom they were associated. But the alliance between the Pilgrims and these London merchants was not altogether comfortable; there was too much divergence between their aims. In 1627 the settlers, wishing to be entirely independent, bought up all the stock and paid for it by instalments from the fruits of their labour. By 1633 they had paid every penny, and become the undisputed owners of the country they had occupied.

Such was the humble beginning of that great Puritan exodus from England to America which had so much to do with founding and peopling the United States. These Pilgrims of the Mayflower were but the pioneers of a mighty host. Historically their enterprise is interesting not so much for what it achieved as for what it suggested. Of itself the Plymouth colony could hardly have become a wealthy and powerful state. Its growth was extremely slow. After ten years its numbers were but three hundred. In 1643, when the exodus had come to an end, and the New England Confederacy was formed, the population of Plymouth was but three thousand. In an established community, indeed, such a rate of increase would be rapid, but it was not sufficient to raise in New England a power which could overcome Indians and Dutchmen and Frenchmen, and assert its will in opposition to the crown. It is when we view the founding of Plymouth in relation to what came afterward, that it assumes the importance which belongs to the beginning of a new era.

We have thus seen how it was that the political aspirations of James I. toward absolute sovereignty resulted in the beginnings of the Puritan exodus to America. In the next chapter we shall see how the still more arbitrary policy of his ill-fated son all at once gave new dimensions to that exodus and resulted in the speedy planting of a high-spirited and powerful New England.



CHAPTER III.

THE PLANTING OF NEW ENGLAND.

When Captain George Weymouth in the summer of 1605 sailed into the harbour of Plymouth in Devonshire, with his five kidnapped savages and his glowing accounts of the country since known as New England, the garrison of that fortified seaport was commanded by Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The Christian name of this person now strikes us as rather odd, but in those days it was not so uncommon in England, and it does not necessarily indicate a Spanish or Italian ancestry for its bearer. Gorges was a man of considerable ability, but not of high character. On the downfall of his old patron the Earl of Essex he had contrived to save his own fortunes by a course of treachery and ingratitude. He had served in the Dutch war against Spain, and since 1596 had been military governor of Plymouth. The sight of Weymouth's Indians and the recital of his explorations awakened the interest of Gorges in the colonization of North America. He became one of the most active members of the Plymouth, or North Virginia, Company established in the following year. It was he who took the leading part in fitting out the two ships with which John Smith started on his unsuccessful expedition in 1615. In the following years he continued to send out voyages of exploration, became largely interested in the fisheries, and at length in 1620 succeeded in obtaining a new patent for the Plymouth Company, by which it was made independent of the London Company, its old yoke-fellow and rival. This new document created a corporation of forty patentees who, sitting in council as directors of their enterprise, were known as the Council for New England. The president of this council was King James's unpopular favourite the Duke of Buckingham, and its most prominent members were the earls of Pembroke and Lenox, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Shakespeare's friend the Earl of Southampton. This council was empowered to legislate for its American territory, to exercise martial law there and expel all intruders, and to exercise a monopoly of trade within the limits of the patent. Such extensive powers, entrusted to a company of which Buckingham was the head, excited popular indignation, and in the great struggle against monopolies which was then going on, the Plymouth Company did not fail to serve as a target for attacks. It started, however, with too little capital to enter upon schemes involving immediate outlay, and began almost from the first to seek to increase its income by letting or selling portions of its territory, which extended from the latitude of Philadelphia to that of Quebec, thus encroaching upon regions where Holland and France were already gaining a foothold. It was from this company that the merchant adventurers associated with the Mayflower Pilgrims obtained their new patent in the summer of 1621, and for the next fifteen years all settlers in New England based their claims to the soil upon territorial rights conveyed to them by the Plymouth Company. The grants, however, were often ignorantly and sometimes unscrupulously made, and their limits were so ill-defined that much quarrelling ensued. [Sidenote: Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and the Council for New England]

During the years immediately following the voyage of the Mayflower, several attempts at settlement were made about the shores of Massachusetts bay. One of the merchant adventurers, Thomas Weston, took it into his head in 1622 to separate from his partners and send out a colony of seventy men on his own account. These men made a settlement at Wessagusset, some twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. They were a disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, and soon got into trouble with the Indians; after a year they were glad to get back to England as best they could, and in this the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them. In June of that same year 1622 there arrived on the scene a picturesque but ill understood personage, Thomas Morton, "of Clifford's Inn, Gent.," as he tells on the title-page of his quaint and delightful book, the "New English Canaan." Bradford disparagingly says that he "had been a kind of petie-fogger of Furnifell's Inn"; but the churchman Samuel Maverick declares that he was a "gentleman of good qualitie." He was an agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and came with some thirty followers to make the beginnings of a royalist and Episcopal settlement in the Massachusetts bay. He was naturally regarded with ill favour by the Pilgrims as well as by the later Puritan settlers, and their accounts of him will probably bear taking with a grain or two of salt. [Sidenote: Wessagusset and Merrymount]

In 1625 there came one Captain Wollaston, with a gang of indented white servants, and established himself on the site of the present town of Quincy. Finding this system of industry ill suited to northern agriculture, he carried most of his men off to Virginia, where he sold them. Morton took possession of the site of the settlement, which he called Merrymount. There, according to Bradford, he set up a "schoole of athisme," and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves "as if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or the beastly practices of ye madd Bachanalians." Charges of atheism have been freely hurled about in all ages. In Morton's case the accusation seems to have been based upon the fact that he used the Book of Common Prayer. His men so far maintained the ancient customs of merry England as to plant a Maypole eighty feet high, about which they frolicked with the redskins, while furthermore they taught them the use of firearms and sold them muskets and rum. This was positively dangerous, and in the summer of 1628 the settlers at Merrymount were dispersed by Miles Standish. Morton was sent to England, but returned the next year, and presently again repaired to Merrymount.

By this time other settlements were dotted about the coast. There were a few scattered cottages or cabins at Nantasket and at the mouth of the Piscataqua, while Samuel Maverick had fortified himself on Noddle's Island, and William Blackstone already lived upon the Shawmut peninsula, since called Boston. These two gentlemen were no friends to the Puritans; they were churchmen and representatives of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.

The case was very different with another of these earliest settlements, which deserves especial mention as coming directly in the line of causation which led to the founding of Massachusetts by Puritans. For some years past the Dorchester adventurers—a small company of merchants in the shire town of Dorset—had been sending vessels to catch fish off the New England coast. In 1623 these men conceived the idea of planting a small village as a fishing station, and setting up a church and preacher therein, for the spiritual solace of the fishermen and sailors. In pursuance of this scheme a small party occupied Cape Ann, where after two years they got into trouble with the men of Plymouth. Several grants and assignments had made it doubtful where the ownership lay, and although this place was not near their own town, the men of Plymouth claimed it. The dispute was amicably arranged by Roger Conant, an independent settler who had withdrawn from Plymouth because he did not fully sympathize with the Separatist views of the people there. The next step was for the Dorchester adventurers to appoint Conant as their manager, and the next was for them to abandon their enterprise, dissolve their partnership, and leave the remnant of the little colony to shift for itself. The settlers retained their tools and cattle, and Conant found for them a new and safer situation at Naumkeag, on the site of the present Salem. So far little seemed to have been accomplished; one more seemed added to the list of failures.

But the excellent John White, the Puritan rector of Trinity Church in Dorchester, had meditated carefully about these things. He saw that many attempts at colonization had failed because they made use of unfit instruments, "a multitude of rude ungovernable persons, the very scum of the land." So Virginia had failed in its first years, and only succeeded when settled by worthy and industrious people under a strong government. The example of Plymouth, as contrasted with Wessagusset, taught a similar lesson. We desire, said White, "to raise a bulwark against the kingdom of Antichrist." Learn wisdom, my countrymen, from the ruin which has befallen the Protestants at Rochelle and in the Palatinate; learn "to avoid the plague while it is foreseen, and not to tarry as they did till it overtook them." The Puritan party in England was numerous and powerful, but the day of strife was not far off and none might foretell its issue. Clearly it was well to establish a strong and secure retreat in the New World, in case of disaster in the Old. What had been done at Plymouth by a few men of humble means might be done on a much greater scale by an association of leading Puritans, including men of wealth and wide social influence. Such arguments were urged in timely pamphlets, of one of which White is supposed to have been the author. The matter was discussed in London, and inquiry was made whether fit men could be found "to engage their persons in the voyage." "It fell out that among others they lighted at last on Master Endicott, a man well known to divers persons of good note, who manifested much willingness to accept of the offer as soon as it was tendered." All were thereby much encouraged, the schemes of White took definite shape, and on the 19th of March, 1628, a tract of land was obtained from the Council for New England, consisting of all the territory included between three miles north of the Merrimack and three miles south of the Charles in one direction, and the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the other. [Sidenote: John White and his noble scheme]

This liberal grant was made at a time when people still supposed the Pacific coast to be not far west of Henry Hudson's river. The territory was granted to an association of six gentlemen, only one of whom—John Endicott—figures conspicuously in the history of New England. The grant was made in the usual reckless style, and conflicted with various patents which had been issued before. In 1622 Gorges and John Mason had obtained a grant of all the land between the rivers Kennebec and Merrimack, and the new grant encroached somewhat upon this. The difficulty seems to have been temporarily adjusted by some sort of compromise which restricted the new grant to the Merrimack, for in 1629 we find Mason's title confirmed to the region between that river and the Piscataqua, while later on Gorges appears as proprietor of the territory between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec. A more serious difficulty was the claim of Robert Gorges, son of Sir Ferdinando. That young man had in 1623 obtained a grant of some 300 square miles in Massachusetts, and had gone to look after it, but had soon returned discouraged to England and shortly afterward died. But his claim devolved upon his surviving brother, John Gorges, and Sir Ferdinando, in consenting to the grant to Endicott and his friends, expressly reserved the rights of his sons. No such reservation, however, was mentioned in the Massachusetts charter, and the colonists never paid the slightest heed to it. In these conflicting claims were sown seeds of trouble which bore fruit for more than half a century. In such cases actual possession is apt to make nine points in the law, and accordingly Endicott was sent over, as soon as possible, with sixty persons, to reinforce the party at Naumkeag and supersede Conant as its leader. On Endicott's arrival in September, 1628, the settlers were at first inclined to dispute his authority, but they were soon conciliated, and in token of this amicable adjustment the place was called by the Hebrew name of Salem, or "peace." [Sidenote: Conflicting grants sow seeds of trouble] [Sidenote: John Endicot and the founding of Salem]

Meanwhile Mr. White and the partners in England were pushing things vigorously. Their scheme took a wider scope. They were determined to establish something more than a trading company. From Charles I. it was sometimes easy to get promises because he felt himself under no obligation to keep them. In March, 1629, a royal charter was granted, creating a corporation, under the legal style of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The affairs of this corporate body were to be managed by a governor, deputy-governor, and a council of eighteen assistants, to be elected annually by the company. They were empowered to make such laws as they liked for their settlers, provided they did not contravene the laws of England,—a proviso susceptible of much latitude of interpretation. The place where the company was to hold its meetings was not mentioned in the charter. The law-officers of the crown at first tried to insert a condition that the government must reside in England, but the grantees with skilful argument succeeding in preventing this. Nothing was said in the charter about religious liberty, for a twofold reason: the crown would not have granted it, and it was not what the grantees wanted; such a provision would have been liable to hamper them seriously in carrying out their scheme. They preferred to keep in their own hands the question as to how much or how little religious liberty they should claim or allow. Six small ships were presently fitted out, and upon them were embarked 300 men, 80 women, and 26 children, with 140 head of cattle, 40 goats, and abundance of arms, ammunition, and tools. The principal leader of this company was Francis Higginson, of St. John's College, Cambridge, rector of a church in Leicestershire, who had been deprived of his living for non-conformity. With him were associated two other ministers, also graduates of Cambridge. All three were members of the council. By the arrival of this company at Salem, Endicott now became governor of a colony larger than any yet started in New England,—larger than Plymouth after its growth of nearly nine years. [Sidenote: The Company of Massachusetts Bay]

The time was at length ripe for that great Puritan exodus of which the voyage of the Mayflower had been the premonitory symptom. The grand crisis for the Puritans had come, the moment when decisive action could no longer be deferred. It was not by accident that the rapid development of John White's enterprise into the Company of Massachusetts Bay coincided exactly with the first four years of the reign of Charles I. They were years well fitted to bring such a scheme to quick maturity. The character of Charles was such as to exacerbate the evils of his father's reign. James could leave some things alone in the comfortable hope that all would by and by come out right, but Charles was not satisfied without meddling everywhere. Both father and son cherished some good intentions; both were sincere believers in their narrow theory of kingcraft. For wrong-headed obstinacy, utter want of tact, and bottomless perfidy, there was little to choose between them. The humorous epitaph of the grandson "whose word no man relies on" might have served for them all. But of this unhappy family Charles I. was eminently the dreamer. He lived in a world of his own, and was slow in rendering thought into action; and this made him rely upon the quick-witted but unwise and unscrupulous Buckingham, [5] who was silly enough to make feeble attempts at unpopular warfare without consulting Parliament. During each of Charles's first four years there was an angry session of Parliament, in which, through the unwillingness of the popular leaders to resort to violence, the king's policy seemed able to hold its ground. Despite all protest the king persisted in levying strange taxes and was to some extent able to collect them. Men who refused to pay enforced loans were thrown into jail and the writ of habeas corpus was denied them. Meanwhile the treatment of Puritans became more and more vexatious. It was clear enough that Charles meant to become an absolute monarch, like Louis XIII., but Parliament began by throwing all the blame upon the unpopular minister and seeking to impeach him.

On the 5th of June, 1628, the House of Commons presented the most extraordinary spectacle, perhaps in all its history. The famous Petition of Right had been Passed by both Houses, and the royal answer had just been received. Its tone was that of gracious assent, but it omitted the necessary legal formalities, and the Commons well knew what this meant. They were to be tricked with sweet words, and the petition was not to acquire the force of a statute. How was it possible to deal with such a slippery creature? There was but one way of saving the dignity of the throne without sacrificing the liberty of the people, and that was to hold the king's ministers responsible to Parliament, in anticipation of modern methods. It was accordingly proposed to impeach the Duke of Buckingham before the House of Lords. The Speaker now "brought an imperious message from the king, ... warning them ... that he would not tolerate any aspersion upon his ministers." Nothing daunted by this, Sir John Eliot arose to lead the debate, when the Speaker called him to order in view of the king's message. "Amid a deadly stillness" Eliot sat down and burst into tears. For a moment the House was overcome with despair. Deprived of all constitutional methods of redress, they suddenly saw yawning before them the direful alternative—slavery or civil war. Since the day of Bosworth a hundred and fifty years had passed without fighting worthy of mention on English soil, such an era of peace as had hardly ever before been seen on the earth; now half the nation was to be pitted against the other half, families were to be divided against themselves, as in the dreadful days of the Roses, and with what consequences no one could foresee. "Let us sit in silence," quoth Sir Dudley Digges, "we are miserable, we know not what to do!" Nay, cried Sir Nathaniel Rich, "we must now speak, or forever hold our peace." Then did grim Mr. Prynne and Sir Edward Coke mingle their words with sobs, while there were few dry eyes in the House. Presently they found their voices, and used them in a way that wrung from the startled king his formal assent to the Petition of Right. [Sidenote: Remarkable scene in the House of Commons]

There is something strangely pathetic and historically significant [6] in the emotion of these stern, fearless men. The scene was no less striking on the 2d of the following March, when, "amid the cries and entreaties of the Speaker held down in his chair by force," while the Usher of the Black Rod was knocking loudly at the bolted door, and the tramp of the king's soldiers was heard in the courtyard, Eliot's clear voice rang out the defiance that whoever advised the levy of tonnage and poundage without a grant from Parliament, or whoever voluntarily paid those duties, was to be counted an enemy to the kingdom and a betrayer of its liberties. As shouts of "Aye, aye," resounded on every side, "the doors were flung open, and the members poured forth in a throng." The noble Eliot went to end his days in the Tower, and for eleven years no Parliament sat again in England. [7]