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Title: The Beginners of a Nation
Author: Edward Eggleston
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A HISTORY OF
LIFE IN THE UNITED STATES
THE BEGINNERS OF A NATION
A HISTORY OF THE SOURCE AND RISE
OF THE EARLIEST ENGLISH SETTLEMENTS
IN AMERICA WITH SPECIAL
REFERENCE TO THE LIFE AND
CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE
BY
EDWARD EGGLESTON
[Illustration: Editor's logo.]
NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1896,
By EDWARD EGGLESTON.
_TO_
_THE RIGHT HONORABLE JAMES BRYCE, M. P._
_MY DEAR MR. BRYCE_:
_In giving an account of the origins of the United States, I have told
a story of English achievement. It is fitting that I should inscribe
it to you, who of all the Englishmen of this generation have rendered
the most eminent service to the American Commonwealth. You have shown
with admirable clearness and candor, and with marvelous breadth of
thought and sympathy, what are the results in the present time of the
English beginnings in America, and to you, therefore, I offer this
volume. I need not assure you that it gives me great pleasure to write
your name here as godfather to my book, and to subscribe myself, my
dear Mr. Bryce,_
_Yours very sincerely,_
_EDWARD EGGLESTON._
PREFACE.
In this work, brought to completion after many years of patient
research, I have sought to trace from their source the various and
often complex movements that resulted in the early English settlements
in America, and in the evolution of a great nation with English speech
and traditions. It has been my aim to make these pages reflect the
character of the age in which the English colonies were begun, and the
traits of the colonists, and to bring into relief the social,
political, intellectual, and religious forces that promoted
emigration. This does not pretend to be the usual account of all the
events attending early colonization; it is rather a history in which
the succession of cause and effect is the main topic--a history of the
dynamics of colony-planting in the first half of the seventeenth
century. Who were the beginners of English life in America? What
propulsions sent them for refuge to a wilderness? What visions
beckoned them to undertake the founding of new states? What manner of
men were their leaders? And what is the story of their hopes, their
experiments, and their disappointments? These are the questions I have
tried to answer.
The founders of the little settlements that had the unexpected fortune
to expand into an empire I have not been able to treat otherwise than
unreverently. Here are no forefathers or foremothers, but simply
English men and women of the seventeenth century, with the faults and
fanaticisms as well as the virtues of their age. I have disregarded
that convention which makes it obligatory for a writer of American
history to explain that intolerance in the first settlers was not just
like other intolerance, and that their cruelty and injustice were
justifiable under the circumstances. This walking backward to throw a
mantle over the nakedness of ancestors may be admirable as an example
of diluvian piety, but it is none the less reprehensible in the
writing of history.
While the present work is complete in itself, it is also part of a
larger enterprise, as the half-title indicates. In January, 1880, I
began to make studies for a History of Life in the United States. For
the last sixteen or seventeen years by far the greater part of my time
has been given to researches on the culture history of the United
States in the period of English domination, that "good old colony
time" about which we have had more sentiment than information. As year
after year was consumed in this toilsome preparation, the magnitude of
the task became apparent, and I began to feel the fear for my work so
felicitously expressed by Ralegh, "that the darkness of age and death
would have covered over both it and me before the performance." It
seemed better, therefore, to redeem from the chance of such mishap a
portion of my work, by completing this most difficult part of the
task, in order that when, early or late, the inevitable night shall
fall, the results of my labor, such as they are, may not be wholly
covered over by the darkness.
There is always difference of opinion in regard to the comparative
fullness with which the several portions of a historical narrative
should be treated, and I can not hope to escape criticism on this
point. I have related some events with what will be considered
disproportionate amplitude of detail. But the distinctive purpose of
this work is to give an insight into the life and character of the
people, and there are details that make the reader feel the very
spirit and manner of the time. It is better to let the age disclose
itself in action; it is only by ingenious eavesdropping and peeps
through keyholes that we can win this kind of knowledge from the past.
Literary considerations should have some weight in deciding how fully
an episode shall be treated, unless the historian is content to
perform the homely service of a purveyor of the crude ore of
knowledge. I have sought to make this "a work of art as well as of
historical science," to borrow a phrase from Augustin Thierry. Some
omissions in this volume will be explained when its successors appear.
I find it an embarrassing task to make acknowledgment to those who
have assisted me; the debts that have accumulated since I began are
too many to be recorded. I must not neglect to express my grateful
remembrance of the hospitality shown to my researches during my
various sojourns in England. At the British Museum and at the Public
Record Office every facility has been extended to me, and a similar
attention was shown to my wants at other less public repositories of
books, such as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. To Dr.
Richard Garnett, the head of the printed book department of the
Museum, I owe thanks for many personal attentions. I am also indebted
to Mr. E. M. Thompson, keeper of the manuscripts in the museum. The
late Mr. W. Noel Sainsbury, of the Public Record Office, was very
obliging. I owe most of all to the unfailing kindness of the Right
Honorable James Bryce, M. P., who found time, in the midst of his
preoccupations as a member of Parliament and his duties in high
office, to secure for me access to private stores of historical
material. Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice with generous kindness put himself
to much trouble to facilitate my examination of the manuscripts at
Landsdowne House. I am indebted to Lord Leconsfield for permission to
visit Petworth House and read there Percy's Trewe Relacion in the
original manuscript. I must ask others in England who befriended my
researches to accept a general acknowledgment, but I can not forget
their courtesy to a stranger. In common with other students I
received polite attentions during my researches in Paris at the
Bibliothèque Nationale.
In this country I owe much to the librarians of public libraries and
their assistants--too much to allow me to specify my obligations to
individuals. At the Astor, and at the Lenox, under its more recent
management, my debt has been continual for many years. Acknowledgments
are due to the officers of the Boston Public Library, the Library of
Congress, the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, and the libraries of the
New York, the Massachusetts, the Pennsylvania, the Maryland, and the
Virginia Historical Societies. To Harvard College Library and to the
New York State Library I am specially indebted; from them I have been
able to supplement my own collection by borrowing. The Brooklyn
Mercantile Library has granted me similar privileges. The New York
Mercantile Library, on the other hand, I have not found hospitable to
research.
To my generous friend Mr. Justin Winsor I owe thanks for many favors.
Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet opened his valuable collection to me, and the
late Mr. S. L. M. Barlow showed me similar kindness. My friend, Mr.
Oscar S. Straus, permitted me to use at my own desk valuable works
from his collection. There are others whose friendly attentions can be
more fitly recognized in later volumes of this series, and yet others
whom I must beg to accept this general but grateful acknowledgment.
Mr. W. W. Duffield, the Superintendent of the Coast and Geodetic
Survey, supplied the artist with the coast charts from which the maps
in this volume were drawn.
To avoid misapprehension, it is needful to say that this is not a
re-issue of anything I have heretofore produced. The lectures on the
culture history of the United States given at Columbia College and
other institutions were never written or reported. The papers on
colonial life contributed to the Century Magazine in 1882, and the
years following, were on a different plan and scale; they have merely
served the purpose of preliminary studies of the general subject. To
the editor and publishers of the Century Magazine I am obliged for
their courtesy in all affairs relating to my contract with them, and
for an arrangement which enables me to have free use of my material.
JOSHUA'S ROCK, LAKE GEORGE, _October, 1896_.
CONTENTS.
BOOK I.
_RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY._
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
English Knowledge and Notion of America at the Period of
Settlement 1
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
James River Experiments 25
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
The Procession of Motives 73
BOOK II.
_THE PURITAN MIGRATION._
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
Rise and Development of Puritanism 98
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
Separatism and the Scrooby Church 141
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
The Pilgrim Migrations 159
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
The Great Puritan Exodus 188
BOOK III.
_CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING._
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
The Catholic Migration 220
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
The Prophet of Religious Freedom 266
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
New England Dispersions 315
LIST OF MAPS.
(In the coast line the American maps follow the charts of
the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey; the third map
conforms to the British Ordnance Survey.)
I.--Chesapeake Bay 1
II.--James River 28
III.--The cradle of the Pilgrims 149
IV.--Coast explored by the Pilgrims 177
V.--The colony at St. Mary's 245
VI.--Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth 275
VII.--The early settlements on Narragansett Bay 296
VIII.--New England after the dispersions 343
[Illustration: Chesapeake Bay.]
BOOK I.
RISE OF THE FIRST ENGLISH COLONY.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
_ENGLISH KNOWLEDGE AND NOTIONS OF AMERICA AT THE PERIOD OF
SETTLEMENT._
I.
[Sidenote: The Elizabethan age.]
The age of Elizabeth and James--the age of Spenser, of Shakespeare,
and of Bacon--was a new point of departure in the history of the
English race. All the conditions excited men to unwonted intellectual
activity. The art of printing was yet a modern invention; the New
World with its novelties and unexplained mysteries was a modern
discovery; and there were endless discussions and agitations of spirit
growing out of the recent reformation in religion. Imagination was
powerfully stimulated by the progress of American exploration, by the
romantic adventures of the Spaniards in the West Indies, and their
dazzling conquest of new-found empires in Mexico and Peru. It was an
age of creation in poetry, in science, and in religion, and men of
action were everywhere set on deeds of daring. The world had regained
something of the vigor and spontaneity of youth, but the credulity
and curiosity of youth were not wanting. The mind of the time accepted
and reveled in marvelous stories. The stage plays of that drama-loving
age reflected the interest in the supernatural and the eager curiosity
about far-away countries. Books of travel fitted the prevailing taste.
He who could afford to buy them regaled himself with the great folios
of Hakluyt's Voyages and Purchas his Pilgrimes. General readers
delighted in little tracts and pamphlets relating incidents of
far-away travels, or describing remote countries and the peoples
inhabiting them, or the "monstrous strange beasts" found in lands
beyond the bounds of Christendom.
[Sidenote: Credulity about America.]
[Sidenote: George Beste, First Voyage of Sir Martin Frobisher.]
America excited the most lively curiosity as a world by itself and the
least known of all the "four parts" into which the globe was then
divided. There were those, indeed, who made six parts of the world by
adding an arctic continent, which included Greenland and a vast
southern land supposed to stretch from Magellan's Strait southward to
the pole. It was easy to believe in these two superfluous continents;
they were mirages of the New World. Every great discovery excites
expectation of others like it. And in a time when vague report or
well-worn tradition counted for more than observation or experimental
knowledge, it was inevitable that current information about America
should be distorted and mixed with fable. In that age, still
pre-Baconian, men had few standards by which to measure probabilities,
and to those shut in by the narrow limits of mediæval knowledge the
mere uncovering of a new continent whose existence contravened the
fixed beliefs of the ages was so marvelous that nothing told about it
afterward seemed incredible.
[Sidenote: Illusions of discoverers.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
The history of American exploration is a story of delusion and
mistake. The New World was discovered because it lay between Europe
and the East Indian Spice Islands by the westward route. Columbus,
seeking the less, found the greater by stumbling on it in the dark.
Zuan Caboto--in English, John Cabot--who is described by a
contemporary as "a Venetian fellow with a fine mind, greatly skilled
in navigation," discovered North America in 1497. But he did not exult
that he was the finder of a vast and fertile continent in which great
nations might germinate, for he believed that his landfall at Cape
Breton was within the dominions of the Grand Cham of China, and he
sailed down the coast again the next year, "ever with the intent to
find said passage to India." It was announced on his return from his
first voyage that Henry VII had "won a part of Asia without a stroke
of the sword."
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
The discovery of the Pacific by Balboa in 1513, and the voyage of
Magellan's ship across that ocean in 1520, were not sufficient to
remove the illusion that America was connected with Asia. The notion
that the New World was an Asiatic peninsula died lingeringly about the
middle of the sixteenth century; but to reach Asia was still the main
purpose of western exploration, and America was for a long time
regarded mainly as an obstruction. The belief in a passage to the
Pacific by means of some yet-to-be-discovered strait severing the
continent of America, survived far into the seventeenth century, and
the hope of coming by some short cut into a rich commerce with the
Orient led to a prying exploration of all the inlets, bays, and
estuaries on the American coast and so promoted discovery, but it
retarded settlement by blinding men to the value of the New World.
II.
[Sidenote: Frobisher.]
[Sidenote: Frobisher's Voyages, Hakl. Soc., _passim_.]
Adventure by sea became a favorite road to renown for ambitious
Englishmen in the time of Elizabeth, and the belief in a passage
through or round North America grew into a superstition. The discovery
of this strait seemed, in the phrase of George Beste, a writer of the
time, "the onely thing of the world that was left undone whereby a
notable mind might be made famous and fortunate." Sir Martin
Frobisher, who is reckoned by Camden "among the famousest men of our
age for counsell and glory gotten at sea," made three voyages in 1576
and the following years to that part of the American coast almost
under the arctic circle. He desisted from the attempt to get to China
by an arctic channel only when he had involved the "venturers" or
stockholders associated with him in heavy debts, and spent the fortune
of his wife and stepchildren, to whom "glory gotten at sea" must have
been insufficient compensation. "Sir Martin Frobisher whome God
forgive" is the phrase in which he is spoken of by his wife.
[Sidenote: Gilbert.]
[Sidenote: Haies in Hakl. Voy., 184-227.]
In the year of Frobisher's first voyage, Sir Humphrey Gilbert issued a
treatise to prove that there was a way to the East Indies round North
America. This he demonstrated by a hydra-headed argument constructed
after the elaborate fashion of that unscientific age, proving the
existence of a northwest passage, first by authority, secondly by
reason, thirdly by experience of sundry men's travels, and fourthly by
circumstance. Not content with getting to China by logic, and nothing
daunted by Frobisher's brilliant failure, Gilbert mortgaged his estate
that he might engage in attempts yet more disastrous than Frobisher's,
and lost his life during his second voyage, in 1584.
[Sidenote: Hakluyt.]
[Sidenote: Hakl. Disc. on Western Planting.]
[Sidenote: N. Y. Col. Docs. I, 16.]
About this time there appeared on the scene the famous geographer,
Richard Hakluyt, one of those men that exert a marked influence in
favor of a new movement mainly by ardor and industry. Hakluyt's fervor
was akin to enthusiasm, his belief of every story favorable to
projects for colonization, and his unwavering faith in the projects
themselves bordered on flat credulity. To men of his own time his
tireless advocacy of American exploration and colony-planting must
have seemed irksome hobby-riding. But he was the indispensable
forerunner of colonization. "Your Mr. Hakluyt hath served for a very
good trumpet," says Sidney. Believing in everything American as
unwaveringly as if his soul's salvation depended on his faith, he
believed in nothing more sublimely than in a passage to the "South
Sea" or Pacific Ocean. He seized on every vague intimation of ignorant
map-makers, on every suspicion of an explorer, on every fond tale of
an Indian that tended to lend support to the theory in hand. All
evidence was of equal weight in his scales, provided it lay on the
affirmative side of the balance. It mattered little to him where his
witnesses placed this elusive passage. In Hakluyt's mind it was
ubiquitous. The Pacific is now "on the backside" of Montreal Island,
and the great Laurentian lakes suffer a sea change; now it is reached
by a river flowing three months to the southward--that is, the
Mississippi. Then the much-sought strait is carried northward on the
authority of an old map--"a great old round carde"--shown him "by the
King of Portingall." But he had also seen "a mightie large old mappe
in parchment" which showed, as far south as latitude 40°, a little
neck of land "much like the streyte neck or Isthmus of Darienna." He
had seen the same isthmus on another old map "with the sea joynninge
hard on both sides as it doth on Panama." In a paper meant for private
use, he expresses solicitude that the nearness of the Pacific to
Florida shall not become known too commonly. Many years later an
injunction was granted in Holland forbidding a publisher to insert in
a map the newly discovered channel into the South Sea.
III.
[Sidenote: Ralegh.]
Both Frobisher and Gilbert made ineffectual attempts to plant colonies
in the new lands, but colony-planting held a place in their minds
quite secondary to the search for the South Sea in the north and the
finding of gold. It was only when the large and lucid mind of Sir
Walter Ralegh took up the subject seriously that the settlement of an
agricultural colony became for a while the real object of American
voyages. Ralegh sent no men to the arctic or to the wintry shores of
Newfoundland, as Frobisher and Gilbert had done. He turned to milder
latitudes, and dispatched his explorers in 1584, and his colonists in
1585, to the coast of what is now North Carolina.
[Sidenote: Ralph Lane's quest.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
[Sidenote: Lane's Account in Hakl. III.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
But the ever-mischievous South Sea delusion did not vanish when the
period of colonization was reached. Ralph Lane, the governor of
Ralegh's first colony on Roanoke Island, having inquired perhaps for
that western sea which Hakluyt had seen "on the mightie old mappe in
parchment," understood the inventive savages to say that the Roanoke
River sprang from a rock so near to a sea that the waves in storm
often dashed into this fountain, making the river brackish for some
distance below. That the story might be more interesting, they added
that there was gold there, and that the walls of a town in that land
were made of pearls. This is what the white men fancied the Indians
said; but whatever they said was spoken in a tongue of which Lane's
men had but the most scanty knowledge, if indeed it were not given
mainly by signs. Nothing dispirited by the extravagance of these
tales, Lane and some of his men set out to immortalize and enrich
themselves--like a company of children running after the pot of gold
at the end of the rainbow. While the crafty Indians were plotting the
destruction of the colonists left behind, the governor and his
followers pursued their quest until they were obliged to eat their
dogs, made palatable by seething with a dressing of sassafras leaves.
They returned, half famished and wholly disappointed, just in time to
rescue the colony from destruction. But faith is faith, and despite
his severe experience Lane went back to England believing that the
Roanoke rose near to the Bay of Mexico "that openeth out into the
South Sea." The map which the colonists brought with them when they
abandoned the country in 1586 handed down the delusion, in another
form, by showing a strait leading from the neighborhood of Port Royal
into a body of water to the westward.
IV.
[Sidenote: Seeking the Pacific on James River.]
[Sidenote: Hudson.]
[Sidenote: Dermer.]
Twenty years after the return of Ralegh's first colonists the
Jamestown company was sent to plant the germ of an English-speaking
nation in North America. Beginning with the first voyage of Columbus,
the search for a route through America had lasted a hundred and
fourteen years. No passage north of Magellan's Strait had been found,
yet a belief in the existence of such a water-way remained a part of
the geographical creed of the time. The Jamestown emigrants were
officially instructed to explore that branch of any river that lay
toward the northwest, perhaps because the charmed latitude of 40°
might thus be reached. It was in carrying out this instruction that
Captain John Smith came to grief at the hands of the Indians while
looking for the Pacific in the swamps of the Chickahominy. Smith
rarely mixed his abounding romance with his geography; he is as sober
and trustworthy in topographical description and in map-making as he
is imaginative in narration. But Smith was at this time under the
influence of the prevailing delusion, and he hoped that his second
voyage up the Chesapeake would lead him into the Pacific. His belief
in a passage to the westward in latitude 40°, just beyond the
northward limit of his own explorations, he communicated to his friend
Henry Hudson, who was so moved by it that he sailed to America in 1609
in violation of his orders, and in seeking the strait to the South Sea
penetrated the solitudes of the picturesque river that bears his name.
The explorer Dermer was intent on winning immortality by finding a
passage to the Pacific when, in 1619, he was storm-driven into Long
Island Sound. At Manhattan Island, or thereabout, he got information
from the obliging Indians that made plain his way to the Orient. He
was very secretive about this route, which, however, seems to have
lain through Delaware Bay.
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
[Sidenote: Sandys's plan.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
[Sidenote: Luke Fox.]
[Sidenote: Northwest. Fox, p. 172.]
[Sidenote: Weston Documents 45 and 47 and ff.]
[Sidenote: Catlet and Lederer.]
[Sidenote: Glover, in Phil. Trans., xi 626. Comp. Perfect Descr. of
Va., 1649 and Lederer's Voyage.]
[Sidenote: Lawson's Carolina, 47.]
[Sidenote: Scot's Magazine, 1765, page 161.]
A false notion once generally accepted is able to live in some
ghostly shape after the breath is out of its body. The hope of a
passage to the Pacific by means of a strait and the belief in a
narrow isthmus in latitude 40° could not long survive the increase
of knowledge that followed the settlement of Virginia and Captain
Smith's explorations. But sixteen years after the landing at
Jamestown, when these two geographical jack-o'-lanterns had ceased
to flicker, the poet George Sandys, who was secretary of the colony,
wrote that he was ready to venture his life in finding a way to the
South Sea, but this way was now to be by an overland route. About
the same time Henry Briggs, the famous Savile lecturer at Oxford,
proved to the satisfaction of many that the rivers running westward
from the Virginia mountains must reach the Pacific in about one
hundred and fifty miles. One Marmaduke Parkinson, an explorer
sailing in the Potomac, confirmed the theory of the learned
mathematician by discovering in the house of a chief a "China Boxe,"
whatever that may have been. In 1631 Luke Fox set sail by the
northwest, carrying a letter from Charles I addressed "to the
Emperor of Japan," which he probably was not able to deliver. In
1634 Captain Thomas Yong got as far as the falls of the Delaware in
the endeavor to go through the continent in latitude 40°. The strait
and isthmus and northwest passage having failed, Yong was content
to go by fresh water till he should reach a Mediterranean Sea in the
heart of America, which he believed to open into both the "North
Ocean" and the South Sea. As the century advanced the fresh-water
route had in turn to be finally abandoned, and seekers after the
Pacific were fain to betake themselves to dry-shod travel, and even
to mountain-climbing, as George Sandys had proposed. A Colonel
Catlet is mentioned who reached the Alleghanies in the endeavor to
find a river flowing westward, but he was daunted by what seemed to
him almost impassable ranges of mountains that barred his way. Over
these "rocky hills and sandy desarts" scarce a bird was seen to fly.
In 1669, Lederer, a German surveyor, set out from Virginia on a
similar futile exploration. As late as 1700 the well-informed Lawson
speaks hopefully of the proximity of the Pacific to North Carolina.
This fallacy had prompted many desperate adventures, and had been
the cause of many important discoveries, in the two centuries that
it held possession of men's minds. It reached its last attenuation
in 1765, when the public prints announced that large boats were
fitting out at Quebec to try the whale-fishing in Lake Ontario, and
that "they have hopes of finding a communication by water with the
western ocean, founded on the favorable reports of some Indians, who
inform that a river runs westward many hundreds of miles as large as
the Mississippi."
V.
[Sidenote: Gold-hunting.]
[Sidenote: Hakluyt. Pref. to Va., magnified.]
[Sidenote: Pilgrimage, 795.]
As the mistake made by Columbus had left for heritage an almost
ineradicable passion for the discovery of a westward sea way to Japan
and China, so the vast treasure of gold and silver drawn by the
Spaniards from Mexico and Peru produced a belief in the English mind
that a colony planted at any place on the American coast might find
gold. Here, again, the undoubting Hakluyt and other writers after him
were ready with learned conclusions balancing on the tight rope of
very slender premises. If an Indian had been seen wearing a piece of
copper that "bowed easily," this flexibility proved it to be tarnished
gold. If a savage seemed to say in his idiom, or by gestures and other
signs, something which the puzzled newcomers took to signify that in a
country farther on the copper was too soft for use, or that it was
yellow, or that it had a good luster, what further evidence could an
ingenious writer desire of the existence of the precious metal in that
country? Purchas, the successor of Hakluyt in geographical research,
explains the divine purpose in thus endowing a heathen land with gold,
which is that the Indian race "as a rich bride, though withered and
deformed, ... might find many suitors for love of her portion," and
thus the pagans be converted. But Purchas filches both the simile and
the pious thought from Herrera, who in turn probably pilfered it with
many better things from the good Las Casas. Purchas also speaks with
more optimism than elegance of the "silver bowels and golden entrails
of the hills," as though one had but to dig into the first mountain to
be enriched.
[Sidenote: Frobisher's gold.]
[Sidenote: Early Virginia gold-hunting.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
Frobisher brought home from sub-arctic islands what his clumsy
assayers avouched to be "gold eure." Refining works were erected for
this stuff at Deptford to no profit, and to this day the inquisitive
student is not able to ascertain from the conflicting reports whether
there was any gold in the ore or not. The main causes of the suffering
at Jamestown during the first winter were the waste of time and the
consumption of supplies while lading the ships with the glittering
"dust mica" which is so abundant in the Virginia sands. The
worthlessness of this cargo could not weaken the hopes of those
alchemists who were able to produce gold merely by the use of
arguments. The mines in Virginia moved farther west. It wanted only
that explorers should reach the mountains. In spite of the sickness
that wasted the colony in 1610, Lord De la Warr sent an expedition to
dig gold on the upper James, but the warlike up-river tribes soon
drove the prospectors back. In 1634, Sir John Harvey sent another body
of men on the same fool's errand, though there had not been found in
all the years preceding a particle of tangible evidence that gold
existed in Virginia. But on the James, as on the Hudson, the
glistering pigment with which the Indians besmeared their faces on
occasions of display was believed to contain gold, and the places of
its procurement were sought with ludicrous secrecy.
[Sidenote: Fact and fable about America.]
[Sidenote: Ingram's story.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
The unfaltering faith in the existence of abundant gold on the eastern
coast of North America could not have subsisted on thin air so long if
it had not been stimulated by the almost fabulous wealth drawn from
South America by Spain. It had received encouragement also from the
tales told by adventurers returned from America, who seem to have
thought it necessary to bring back stories that would match in some
degree the prevalent beliefs about the New World. The earliest but one
of all the documents relating to America preserved among the British
state papers is the statement of one David or Davy Ingram. With a
hundred other luckless seamen he was put ashore in Mexico by Sir John
Hawkins, because the ship lacked provisions. Ingram, traveling from
tribe to tribe, achieved the notable feat of crossing the continent in
a year. In 1569 he embarked on a French ship that he found near the
mouth of the St. John River in what is now the province of New
Brunswick. It was eleven years later that Davy Ingram, at home in
England, made his statement, and the sailor's story had by that time
gained much, perhaps, by frequent telling to wonder-loving listeners.
Sometimes he relates facts with sobriety, speaking the truth by
relapse, it may be; again, he seems to be repeating tales told him by
the savages, who were habitual marvel-mongers, or weaving into the
account of what he had seen legends common in the folklore about
America that had grown up in Europe; or perchance he only falls into
an old forecastle habit of incontinent lying without provocation. The
American women are described as "wearing great plates of gold covering
their whole bodies like armor.... In every cottage pearls are to be
found, and in some houses a peck"--an assertion that had a grain of
truth in it, since the sailor no doubt mistook wampum beads for
pearls. Fireflies, in this old tar's exalted memory, are "fire
dragons, which make the air very red as they fly," while the buffalo
appears as an animal "as big as two of our oxen." The streets in one
"city" are broader than London streets, which we may readily believe.
The banqueting houses are built of crystal, "with pillars of massie
silver, some of gold." This is a fine example of the manner of a mind
afflicted with the vice of exaggeration; crystal becomes silver in the
next breath, and silver is as instantly transmuted to gold. All that
optimistic projectors sought in America--gold, silver, pearls by the
peck, and great abundance of silkworms--are obligingly supplied in
Ingram's narrative. Such tales impressed the imagination in a romantic
and uncritical age.
VI.
[Sidenote: Indian devil-worship.]
The interest in America was heightened by popular curiosity regarding
the Indians. The American savages were sometimes treated as
sun-worshipers, but they were more commonly thought to be worshipers
of devils. The prevailing belief in witchcraft, divination, and
abounding evil spirits rendered it easy for Europeans to accept the
Indian deities as supernatural beings, and to credit the pretensions
of the powwows, or Indian priests, to give knowledge of distant or
future events, to heal the sick, and even to bring rain in time of
drought. But it was observed at Plymouth that when the Pilgrims prayed
for rain it fell gently, and that the rain procured by the Indian
conjurers was violent and destructive--a rain with something devilish
about it. According to writers of the time, the demons worshiped by
the savages were able to materialize themselves on great occasions,
appearing to their votaries in some beastly form. This belief in
Indian devil-worship fitted well with the religious faith of the
period, which can hardly be described as anything but a sort of
Manichæism dividing the government of the universe almost equally
between good and evil powers. Religionists of all schools desired to
convert these subjects of Satan, not from those philanthropic motives
that are main considerations in modern propagandism, but because their
conversion would glorify God, and yet more because it would despite
the devil. Sometimes the religious motive was incongruously supported
by hopes of commercial advantage. The navigator Davis wrote to
Secretary Walsingham that if the Indians "were once brought over to
the Christian faith they might soon be brought to relish a more
civilized kind of life and be thereby induced to take off great
quantities of our coarser woolen manufactures."
[Sidenote: Indians exhibited.]
[Sidenote: Rosier's True Relation.]
[Sidenote: Tempest, ii, 2.]
The early explorers made a practice of kidnapping Indians and
transporting them to England, where the sight of barbarians without
doublet or hose quickened the interest in projects for colonization
and adventure. In our age of commercial activity and extended
geographical knowledge one can form but a weak conception of the
excitement produced by the sight of "the Indian man and woman," no
doubt Esquimaux, brought by Frobisher. Portraits of these rarities
were made for the king and queen and others. In 1605 Weymouth brought
from the coast of Maine five kidnapped Indians, "with all their bows
and arrows" and two beautiful birch-bark canoes. "This accident,"
exclaimed Sir Ferdinando Gorges, "hath been the means of putting life
into all our plantations." Some of the savages captured at various
times were exhibited for money, and one perhaps was shown after he was
dead; at least we may venture to conjecture so much from Shakespeare's
jeer in The Tempest at the idle curiosity of the crowd. In England,
says Trinculo, "any strange beast makes a man. When they will not give
a doit to relieve a lame beggar, they will lay out ten to see a dead
Indian." This interest in outlandish savages no doubt suggested to the
poet the creation of the monster Caliban, who probably seemed a
realistic figure to the imagination of that age.
VII.
[Sidenote: Notions about animals.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
[Sidenote: Evelyn's Diary, i, 277.]
The animals of the new continent excited the wonder of the people of
Europe and increased the interest in America. Regarding them, also,
the most extravagant stories were easily credited. It was recorded in
the sober Latin of Peter Martyr that the advance of Cabot's ships was
retarded by the multitude of codfish on the Newfoundland coast, and
that the bears were accustomed to catch these fish in their claws. It
is hard to recognize the familiar opossum in the description by
Purchas: "A monstrous deformed beast, whose fore part resembleth a
fox, the hinder part an ape, excepting the feet, which are like a
man's; beneath her belly she hath a receptacle like a purse, where she
bestows her young until they can shift for themselves." The humming
bird was believed to be a cross between a fly and a bird. The Hudson
River Dutch settlers went further, and named it simply "the West
Indian bee." These dainty creatures were prepared for exportation to
Europe in New Amsterdam by drying them, in Barbadoes by filling them
with sand. They were accounted "pretty delicacies for ladies, who wore
them at their breasts and girdles." Evelyn saw two preserved as great
rarities at Oxford, in 1564. A New England versifier extols
The humbird for some queen's rich cage more fit
Than in the vacant wilderness to sit.
[Sidenote: Wood's New Eng. Prospect, p. 23.]
[Sidenote: De Bry's Hariot, p. 10.]
Flying squirrels, when brought into English parks in 1608, were the
occasion of much wondering excitement. King James begged for one of
them, like a spoiled child. The skins of muskrats were esteemed for
their odor and were brought to England "as rich presents." It was
thought that musk might be extracted from this animal. Hariot, the
learned man of Ralegh's first colony, fancied that the civet cat would
prove profitable to settlers in America, but his words indicate that
he had been misled by traces of the skunk, whose perfume has never yet
come into request. Speaking of the "civet catte," he says, "in our
travails there was found one to have been killed by a salvage or
inhabitant; and in many places the smell where one had lately beene
before."
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
The raccoon, the "aroughcun" of the Virginia Indians, being a
plantigrade, was esteemed a monkey; the peccaries were called the wild
hogs of America, and were thought to have "their navels on the ridge
of their backs." Somewhere in the region of the Hudson River a beast
is described as having a horn in the middle of his forehead, from
which it would appear that the unicorn on the royal coat of arms may
have been found running at large. It is not easy to account for the
"camel mare," reported to have been seen about three hundred miles
west from the coast of New Jersey, unless it belonged to the genus
_Incubus_. The bewildering number of new creatures found in America
troubled the European scholars of that day, who were ever theological.
They were puzzled to get so many four-footed beasts and creeping
things into the compass of Noah's ark. Mercator, the Flemish
geographer, avoided this difficult embarkation by concluding that
America had been excepted from the Deluge.
VIII.
[Sidenote: An age of romance and adventure.]
Thus grotesque and misleading were many of the glimpses that Europe
got of the New World as the mists of ignorance slowly lifted from it.
These erratic notions regarding America give one an insight into the
character of the English people at the period of discovery and
colony-planting. Credulity and the romantic spirit dwell together. The
imagination in such an age usurped the place of discrimination, and
the wonderful became the probable. The appetite for the marvelous
fostered exaggeration; every man who had sailed in foreign seas
thought it shame not to tell of wonders. The seventeenth century
indeed betrayed a consciousness of its own weakness in a current
proverb, "Travelers lie by license." History and fiction had not yet
been separated. Like every other romantic age, the period of Elizabeth
and James was prodigal of daring adventure; every notable man aspired
to be the hero of a tale. English beginnings in America were thus made
in a time abounding in bold enterprises--enterprises brilliant in
conception, but in the execution of which there was often a lack of
foresight and practical wisdom.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 3.]
See the careful and learned discussion of the Voyages of Cabot by the
late Charles Deane, in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of
America, vol. iii. Mr. Deane effectually destroys the delusion which
so long gave the credit of this discovery, or a part of it, to
Sebastian Cabot, the son of the real discoverer. Mr. Henry Harrisse,
in John Cabot, the Discoverer of America, and in an earlier work, Jean
et Sebastien Cabot, etc., reaches the same conclusion. He even doubts
Sebastian's presence in the expeditions of his father, John Cabot,
etc., p. 48.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 4.]
Yet George Beste, who sailed with Frobisher, says: "Now men neede no
more contentiously strive for roume to build an house on, or for a
little turffe of ground, ... when great countreys and whole worldes
offer and reache out themselves to them that will first voutsafe to
possesse, inhabite, and till them." These countries, he says, "are
fertile to bring forth all manner of corne and grayne, infinite sortes
of land cattell, as horse, elephantes, kine, sheepe, great varietie of
flying fowles of the ayre, as phesants, partridge, quayle, popingeys,
ostridges, etc., infinite kinds of fruits, as almonds, dates, quinces,
pomegranats, oringes, etc., holesome, medicinable, and delectable"
(Frobisher's Voyages, Hakluyt Society, p. 38).
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 8.]
Ralegh, in his History of the World, book i, chap, viii, sec. xv, has
an interesting digression on the danger of trusting such
communications, and he relates an anecdote of misapprehension by this
very party sent under Grenville and Lane: "The same happened among the
English, which I sent under Sir Richard Greeneville to inhabit
Virginia. For when some of my people asked the name of that country,
one of the savages answered, '_Wingandacon_,' which is as much as to
say, as, _'You wear good cloaths,' or gay cloaths_." From this answer
it came that the coast of North Carolina was called "Wingandacon," or,
in its Latinized form, Wingindacoa, while the chief, or "king," of the
country appears in the narratives of the time as Wingina. Ralegh says
that Yucatan means merely "What say you?" and that Peru got its name
from a similar mistake.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 8.]
I found the original of this map among the drawings made by John White
in the Grenville Collection in the British Museum. It was reproduced
to accompany a paper of mine on the Virginia Colony in the Century
Magazine of November, 1882. It excited interest among scholars, as it
was supposed to have been previously unknown. A copy was afterward
found, however, in the collection made by Dr. Kohl for the State
Department at Washington. The drawings in the Sloane MSS., British
Museum, attributed to John White by Dr. E. E. Hale, in the
Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, iv, 21, are not
White's originals. The latter are in the Grenville Collection. See my
comparison of the two in The Nation of April 23, 1891.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 10.]
As late as December 5, 1621, in a letter from the Virginia Company to
Governor Wyatt, these words occur: "The Conjectures of the Southwest
Passage and the piece of copper which you sent us gladly saw and
heard." This long-surviving desire for a short passage to the East
Indies is traceable to the passion that existed in Europe in the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries for spices, and this no doubt came
from the gross forms of cookery in that time. Anderson's Commerce, sub
anno 1504, cites Guicciardini on the great quantities of spices used,
and adds: "For in those days the people of Europe were much fonder of
spices in their cookery, etc., than they have been in later times."
The rise in the price of commodities in Elizabeth's time may have been
only apparent, but it promoted voyages looking to the extension of
commerce. Compare Holinshed, i, 274.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 10.]
Waterhouse's Declaration of Virginia, 1622, a rare tract. Also
Purchas, iii, 892, 893, where these words are quoted from Briggs: "The
Indian Ocean, which we commonly call the South Sea, which lyeth on the
West and Northwest Side of Virginia, on the other side of the
mountains beyond our Falls [of James River] and openeth a free and
faire passage, not only to China, Japan, and the Moluccas, but also to
New Spaine, Peru, and Chili, and those rich countries of Terra
Australis not as yet discovered." It is one of many marks of practical
sagacity in Captain John Smith that after his experience on the
American coast he was able to form views of the geography of the
continent almost a century in advance of the opinions held in his
time. He speaks of "those large Dominions which doe stretch themselves
into the main God knoweth how many thousand miles" (Generall Historie,
book vi).
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 14.]
So late as 1626, Fleet, the only survivor of the massacre of Spelman's
party, after spending five years in captivity among the Virginia
Indians, persuaded a London merchant to intrust him with a vessel for
the Indian trade by his stories of the "powder of gold" with which the
savages made a paint for their faces. To this story he added a
statement that he had often been in sight of the South Sea or Pacific
Ocean. Fleet's Journal may be found in Scharf's History of Maryland,
i, 13, etc. Van der Donck relates, in his description of New
Netherland, that Kieft, the director of New Netherland, and Van der
Donck, found an Indian painting himself and bought the pigment, which
being burned in a crucible yielded two pieces of gold. (See the
translation in New York Historical Society Collection, ii, 161, 162.)
A bag of specimens of the precious ores of the Hudson River region was
sent to Holland by the ill-fated ship that sailed out of New Haven in
1645. The ship was seen no more except by the New Haven people, who
beheld its specter in the sky. Of the Hudson River gold mines no
specter has ever been seen in earth or sky.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 15.]
I have quoted from Mr. Sainsbury's abstract of the fragment in the
British Public Record Office, but a similar statement by Ingram was
inserted in Hakluyt's Divers Voyages in 1589. It was omitted in the
later edition as too incredible even for Hakluyt. See also a paper by
Dr. De Costa, in the Magazine of American History, March, 1883, on the
copy of Ingram's Statement preserved in the Bodleian Library. Ingram's
story, and others like it, seem to be satirized in the play of
Eastward, Ho! by Chapman, Jonson, and Marston. The assertion of
Seagull, in the play, that "they have in their houses scowpes,
buckets, and diverse other vessels of massie silver," would seem at
first sight to be an unmistakable allusion to the extravagance of
Ingram's narrative. But in the second edition of Bullein's A Dialogue
against the Fever Pestilence, which was published in 1573, one Mendax,
describing an unknown land, declares that "their pottes, panns, and
all vessells are cleane gold garnished with diamondes." This shows
that Ingram's story had probably absorbed certain traits from what I
have ventured to call European folklore tales about America--folk
tales originally applied to the Orient, no doubt; echoes of Sir John
Mandeville and Marco Polo, perhaps. Of course it is just possible, but
not probable, that Bullein had heard the tales of Ingram, who had
returned three years or more before he printed his second edition. The
authors of Eastward, Ho! probably enlarged on Bullein.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 18.]
"Unguibusque inter squamas immissis," Decade III, book vi. These
details are probably given on the authority of Sebastian Cabot, whose
veracity is not above suspicion.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 19.]
Some of the early writers speak of "apes." Strachey calls what appears
to be a raccoon a monkey, and Brickell, as late as 1743, uses the same
word. The peccaries are recorded as in the text by the marvel-loving
Purchas, p. 805. One finds unicorns in Speed's Prospect, Description
of New York. Speed also lets us know that the buffalo was accustomed
to defend himself by vomiting "a hot scalding liquor" on the dogs that
chased it. Argall was the first Englishman to see the bison, in 1613.
Citing his letter, Purchas says, p. 943, "In one voyage ... they found
a slow kind of cattell as bigge as kine, which were good meate."
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
_JAMES RIVER EXPERIMENTS._
I.
[Sidenote: Departure of the emigrants.]
[Sidenote: Ld. Chancellor's Speech in reply to the Speaker.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1606.]
In December, 1606, there lay at Blackwall, below London, the Susan
Constant, of one hundred tons, the Godspeed, of forty tons, and the
little pinnace Discovery, of but twenty tons--three puny ships to bear
across the wintry Atlantic the beginners of a new nation. The setting
forth of these argonauts produced much excitement in London. Patriotic
feeling was deeply stirred, public prayers were offered for the
success of the expedition, sermons appropriate to the occasion were
preached, and the popular feeling was expressed in a poem by Michael
Drayton. Even those who were too sober to indulge the vain
expectations of gold mines and spice islands that filled the
imaginations of most Englishmen on this occasion could say, as Lord
Bacon did later: "It is with the kingdoms on earth as it is with the
kingdom of heaven: sometimes a grain of mustard seed proves a great
tree. Who can tell?" On the 19th of that most tempestuous December the
little fleet weighed anchor and ran down on an ebb tide, no doubt, as
one may nowadays see ships rush past Blackwall toward the sea. Never
were men engaged in a great enterprise doomed to greater sorrows.
From the time they left the Thames the ships were tossed and delayed
by tempests, while the company aboard was rent by factious
dissensions.
II.
[Sidenote: The laws and orders.]
Those who shaped the destinies of the colony had left little undone
that inventive stupidity could suggest to assure the failure of the
enterprise. King James, who was frivolously fond of puttering in novel
projects, had personally framed a code of unwise laws and orders. The
supremacy of the sovereign and the interests of the Church were
pedantically guarded, but the colony was left without any ruler with
authority enough to maintain order. The private interest of the
individual, the most available of all motives to industry, was merged
in that of the commercial company to which Virginia had been granted.
All the produce of the colony was to go into a common stock for five
years, and the emigrants, men without families, were thrown into a
semi-monastic trading community like the Hanseatic agencies of the
time, with the saving element of a strong authority left out. Better
devices for promoting indolence and aggravating the natural proneness
to dissension of men in hard circumstances could scarcely have been
hit upon. Anarchy and despotism are the inevitable alternatives under
such a communistic arrangement, and each of these ensued in turn.
III.
[Sidenote: Character of the emigrants.]
[Sidenote: Smith's Gen. Hist., iii, c. i and c. xii.]
[Sidenote: Advertisements for Planters of New Eng., p. 5.]
[Sidenote: Comp. Briefe Declaration in Pub. Rec. Off., Sainsbury i,
66; and New Life of Va.]
[Sidenote: Essay on Plantations.]
The people sent over in the first years were for the most part utterly
unfit. Of the first hundred, four were carpenters, there was a
blacksmith, a tailor, a barber, a bricklayer, a mason, a drummer.
There were fifty-five who ranked as gentlemen, and four were boys,
while there were but twelve so-called laborers, including footmen,
"that never did know what a day's work was." The company is described
by one of its members as composed of poor gentlemen, tradesmen,
serving men, libertines, and such like. "A hundred good workmen were
better than a thousand such gallants," says Captain Smith. Of the
moral character of the first emigrants no better account is given. It
was perhaps with these men in view that Bacon declared it "a shameful
and unblessed thing" to settle a colony with "the scum of the people."
IV.
[Sidenote: The arrival.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1607.]
[Sidenote: Percy, in Purchas, p. 1689.]
The ships sailed round by the Canaries, after the fashion of that
time, doubling the distance to Virginia. They loitered in the West
Indies to "refresh themselves" and quarrel, and they did not reach
their destination until seedtime had well-nigh passed. They arrived on
the 6th of May, according to our style. Driven into Hampton Roads by a
storm, they sailed up the wide mouth of a river which they called the
James, in honor of the king. At that season of the year the banks
must have shown masses of the white flowers of the dogwood, mingled
with the pink-purple blossoms of the redbud against the dark primeval
forest. Wherever they went ashore the newcomers found "all the ground
bespread with many sweet and delicate flowers of divers colors and
kinds." The sea-weary voyagers concluded that "heaven and earth had
never agreed better to frame a place for man's habitation."
[Sidenote: The first meetings with Indians.]
[Sidenote: Percy, in Purchas iv, pp. 1685, 1686.]
They were like people in an enchanted land--all was so new and
strange. On the first landing of a small party they had a taste of
savage warfare. "At night, when wee were going aboard, there came the
savages creeping from the Hills like Beares, with their Bowes in their
Mouthes, charged us very desperately, hurt Captain Gabrill Archer in
both hands, and a Sayler in two places of the body very dangerous.
After they had spent their arrowes, and felt the sharpness of our
shot, they retired into the Woods with a great noise and so left us."
[Illustration: James River.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1607.]
But the newly arrived did not find all the Indians hostile. The chief
of the Rappahannocks came to welcome them, marching at the head of his
train, piping on a reed flute, and clad in the fantastic dress of an
Indian dandy. He wore a plate of copper on the shorn side of his head.
The hair on the other side was wrapped about with deer's hair dyed
red, "in the fashion of a rose." Two long feathers "like a pair of
horns" were stuck in this rosy crown. His body was stained crimson,
his face painted blue and besmeared with some glistering pigment
which to the greedy eyes of the English seemed to be silver ore. He
wore a chain of beads, or wampum, about his neck, and his ears were
"all behung with bracelets of pearls." There also depended from each
ear a bird's claw set with copper--or "gold," adds the narrator,
indulging a delightful dubiety.
[Sidenote: Purchas i, 686 and following.]
During the period of preliminary exploration every trait of savage
life was eagerly observed by the English. The costume, the wigwams,
and most of all the ingenious weapons of wood and stone, gave delight
to the curiosity of the newcomers.
V.
[Sidenote: Founding of Jamestown.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Relatyon of the Discovery of our River, Am. Antiq. Soc.,
iv, 61.]
The colonists chose for the site of their town what was then a
malarial peninsula; it has since become an island. The place was
naturally defended by the river on all sides, except where a narrow
stretch of sand made a bridge to the main. Its chief advantage in the
eyes of the newcomers was that the deep water near the shore made it
possible to moor the ships by merely tying them up to trees on the
river bank. Here the settlers planted cotton and orange trees at once,
and experimental potatoes, melons, and pumpkins, but they postponed
sowing grain until about the first of June in our reckoning.
[Sidenote: The winter of misery.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1607.]
[Sidenote: Purchas, p. 1690.]
They took up their abode in hastily built cabins roofed with sedge or
bark, and in ragged tents. The poorer sort were even fain to shelter
themselves in mere burrows in the ground. Ill provided at the start,
the greater part of their food was consumed by the seamen, who
lingered to gather comminuted mica for gold. In this hard environment,
rent by faction, destitute of a competent leader and of any leader
with competent authority, the wonder is that of this little company a
single man survived the winter. "There never were Englishmen left in
any foreign country in such misery as we were in this new-discovered
Virginia," says George Percy, brother to the Earl of Northumberland. A
pint of worm-eaten barley or wheat was allowed for a day's ration.
This was made into pottage and served out at the rate of one small
ladleful at each meal. "Our drink was water, our lodgings castles in
the air," says Smith. The misery was aggravated by a constant fear of
attack from the Indians, who had been repulsed in an energetic assault
made soon after the landing of the English. It was necessary for each
man to watch every third night "lying on the cold, bare ground," and
this exposure in a fever swamp, with the slender allowance of food of
bad quality and the brackish river water, brought on swellings,
dysenteries, and fevers. Sometimes there were not five men able to
bear arms. "If there were any conscience in men," says Percy, "it
would make their hearts bleed to hear the pitiful murmurings and
outcries of our sick men without relief every day and night for the
space of about six weeks." The living were hardly able to bury the
dead, whose bodies were "trailed out like dogs." Half of the hundred
colonists died, and the survivors were saved by the Indians, who,
having got a taste of muskets and cannon in their early attack on
Jamestown, now brought in supplies of game, corn, persimmons, and
other food, to trade for the novel trinkets of the white men.
VI.
[Sidenote: Emergence of Captain John Smith.]
Peril and adversity bring the capable man to the front. The colony
proceeded, by means of the technicalities habitually used in those
days, to rid itself of its president, Wingfield, a man of good
intentions but with no talents suitable to a place of such difficulty.
Slowly, by one change and then another, the leadership fell into the
hands of Captain John Smith. During the voyage he had drawn upon
himself the jealousy of the others, probably by his boastful and
self-asserting habit of speech. When the list of councilors, till then
kept secret, was opened at Jamestown and his name was found in it, he
was promptly excluded by his associates. It was only on the
intercession of the clergyman, Hunt, that he was at length admitted to
the Council.
His paradoxical character has been much misunderstood. Those who
discredit the historical accuracy of Captain Smith's narratives
consider his deeds of no value. It is the natural result and
retribution of boasting that the real merit of the boaster is cast
into the rubbish heap of contempt along with his false pretensions.
On the other hand, those who appreciate Smith's services to the colony
in its dire extremities believe that the historical authority of such
a man must be valid.
[Sidenote: His romantic tendencies.]
His character, double and paradoxical as it is, presents no insoluble
enigma if we consider the forces of nature and of habit underlying its
manifestations. According to his own highly colored narrative, he had
fed his fervid imagination on romances of chivalry. The first natural
result in a youth so energetic as he, was that he should set out to
emulate the imaginary heroes of whom he had read. It was equally a
matter of course that a man of his vanity should exaggerate his own
adventures to the size of those that had excited his admiration. The
same romantic turn of the imagination that sent him a-wandering after
exploits in Flanders and in the wars with the Turks, in Barbary, and
in Ireland, made his every adventure seem an exploit of heroic size.
Such a man is valuable when boldness and aggressive action are in
request; to relate facts where autobiography is involved he is little
fitted.
[Sidenote: His story of his own life.]
According to Smith's own narrative, he was robbed and shipwrecked at
sea; he slew three infidel champions in single combat and cut off
their heads, just for the amusement of the ladies; he was made captive
by the Turks and escaped by slaying his master with a flail; he
encountered pirates; in the plunder of a ship he secured by the grace
of God a box of jewels; and, to round off his story, he was beloved
in romance fashion by a fair Turkish lady, one Tragabigzanda;
befriended by a Russian lady, the good Calamata; and, later, was
snatched from the open jaws of death by the devotion of the lovely
Princess Pocahontas, daughter of King Powhatan, of Virginia. What more
could one ask? Here are the elements of all the romances. But, to
crown all, he emulated the misadventure of the prophet Jonah, and he
even out-Jonahed Jonah. He got ashore by mere swimming without the aid
of a whale, when cast overboard by Catholic pilgrims to appease a
tempest. Never any other wanderer since the safe return of Ulysses
passed through such a succession of marvelous escapes as this young
John Smith. His accidents and achievements, even without exaggeration,
were fairly notable, doubtless, but they are forever obscured by his
vices of narration.
[Sidenote: Interest in colonization.]
[Sidenote: His character.]
By the time he was twenty-eight years old this knight-errant had
pretty well exhausted Europe as a field for adventure. Soon after his
return to his own land he found the navigator Gosnold agitating for a
new colony in Virginia, the scene of Ralegh's failures. That being the
most difficult and dangerous enterprise then in sight, nothing was
more natural than that Smith should embark in it. From this time to
the end of his life this really able man gave his best endeavors to
the advancement of American colonization. In counsel he was accounted
wise, and his advice was listened to with more than common deference
in the assemblies of the Virginia Company as long as the company
lasted. In labor he was indefatigable, in emergencies he proved
himself ready-witted and resourceful. His recorded geographical
observations are remarkably accurate considering his circumstances,
and his understanding of Indian life shows his intelligence. His
writings on practical questions are terse, epigrammatic, and wise
beyond the wisdom of his time. But where his own adventures or credit
are involved he is hardly more trustworthy than Falstaff. His boasting
is one of the many difficulties a historian has to encounter in
seeking to discover the truth regarding the events of an age much
given to lying.
VII.
[Sidenote: Smith's exploration and trading.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1607, 1608.]
[Sidenote: Oxford Tract, _passim_.]
[Sidenote: Gen. Hist _passim_.]
On Smith principally devolved the explorations for a passage to the
Pacific and the conduct of the Indian trade. He was captured by the
Indians in the swamps of the Chickahominy and carried from village to
village in triumph. Contriving to secure his release from the head
chief, Powhatan, he returned to Jamestown. Nothing could have suited
better his bold genius and roving disposition than the life he
thereafter led in Virginia. He sailed up and down the bays and
estuaries, discovering and naming unknown islands, ascending great
unknown rivers, cajoling or bullying the Indians, and returning to his
hungry countrymen at Jamestown laden with maize from the granaries of
the savages. Smith and his companions coasted in all seasons and all
weather in an open boat, exercising themselves in morning
psalm-singing and praying, in manoeuvring strange Indians by
blustering or point-blank lying, and in trying to propagate the
Christian religion among the heathen--all in turn as occasion offered,
like true Englishmen of the Jacobean time.
[Sidenote: His narrative.]
Captain Smith's earlier accounts of these achievements in Virginia
seem to be nearer the truth than his later Generall Historie. As years
rolled on his exploits gained in number and magnitude in his memory.
The apocryphal story of his expounding the solar system by means of a
pocket compass to savages whose idiom he had had no opportunity to
learn is to be found only in his later writings. He is a prisoner but
a month in the narrative of the Oxford Tract of 1612, which was
written by his associates and published with his authority, but his
captivity had grown to six or seven weeks in the Generall Historie of
1624. His prosaic release by Powhatan had developed into a romantic
rescue by Pocahontas. Two or three hundred savages in the earlier
account become four or five hundred in the later. Certain Poles assist
him in the capture of an Indian chief in the authorized narrative of
Pots and Phettiplace. In the later story our hero performs this feat
single-handed. A mere cipher attaches itself sometimes to the figure
representing the number of his enemies, who by this simple feat of
memory become ten times more redoubtable than before.
[Sidenote: His service to the colony.]
[Sidenote: Oxf. Tract, p. 32. Gen. Hist., bk. iii, ch. v.]
[Sidenote: Historie of Travaile into Virginia, p. 41.]
But it does not matter greatly whether the "strangely grimmed and
disguised" Indians seen by Smith at one place on the Potomac, who,
according to the story, were shouting and yelling horribly, though in
ambuscade, numbered three or four hundred as in one account, or three
or four thousand as in his later story. To Captain Smith remains the
credit of having been the one energetic and capable man in those first
years--the man who wasted no time in a search for gold, but won from
the Indians what was of infinitely greater value--the corn needed to
preserve the lives of the colonists. In an open boat, with no
instrument but a compass, he explored and mapped Chesapeake Bay so
well that his map was not wholly superseded for a hundred and forty
years. Even Wingfield, who had reason to dislike Smith, recognizes the
value of his services; and Strachey, who had every means of knowing,
says that "there will not return from" Virginia "in hast any one who
hath bene more industrious or who hath had (Captain Geo. Percie
excepted) greater experience amongst them, however misconstruction
maye traduce here at home."
[Sidenote: Smith overthrown.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1609.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
During the autumn of 1608 and the winter following Captain Smith was
sole ruler of Jamestown, all the other councilors having gone; but the
next spring there arrived five hundred new colonists inadequately
provisioned, and under two of the old faction leaders who were Smith's
mortal enemies. These were the visionary and turbulent Archer and his
follower Ratcliffe. Smith got some of the newcomers to settle at
Nansemond, and others took up their abode near the falls of the James
River. After much turmoil Smith was disabled by an accident, and his
enemies contrived to have him sent home charged, among other things,
with having "incensed" the Indians to assault the insubordinate
settlers under West near the falls, and with having designed to wed
Pocahontas in order to secure royal rights in Virginia as son-in-law
to Powhatan.
[Sidenote: His later years.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
He afterward explored the New England coast with characteristic
thoroughness and intelligence. What he published in his later years by
way of advice on the subject of colony-planting is full of admirable
good sense. With rare foresight he predicted the coming importance of
the colonial trade and the part to be played by the American fisheries
in promoting the greatness of England by "breeding mariners." He only
of the men of his time suspected the imperial size and future
greatness of North America. He urged that the colonies should not
annoy "with large pilotage and such like dues" those who came to trade
in their ports. Low customs, he says, enrich a people. This is a
strange doctrine in an age when foreign trade seemed almost an evil,
and false conceptions of economic principles were nearly universal.
Captain Smith's words are often pregnant with a wit whose pungency is
delightful. In mental and physical hardihood, and in what may be
called shiftiness, as well as in proneness to exaggeration and in
boastfulness, he was in some sense a typical American pioneer--a
forerunner of the daring and ready-witted men who have subdued a
savage continent.
VIII.
[Sidenote: The famine of 1609-'10.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1609, 1610.]
[Sidenote: A. D. 1610.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
[Sidenote: Tragicall Relation, 1623. Briefe Declaration, 1624, both in
British Pub. Record Office. Percy's Trewe Relacyon, MS., Petworth
House.]
Disaster of some sort could hardly have been avoided had Captain Smith
been allowed to stay, but after his departure ruin came swiftly, and
there was no hand strong enough to stay it. The unchecked hostility of
the savages drove the outsettlers from Nansemond and the falls of the
James. The Indians found exercise for their devilish ingenuity in
torturing those who fell into their hands alive, and outraging the
dead. The brave but unwise Percy added fuel to their consuming fury by
visiting their shrine and desecrating the tombs of their chiefs. There
was now no one who could carry on the difficult Indian trade.
Ratcliffe, who had conspired to send Smith back to England, fell into
an ambuscade while emulating Captain Smith's example in trading with
Powhatan. He was tortured to death by the Indian women, and only
fifteen of his fifty men got back to Jamestown. The brood hogs of the
colony were all eaten, the dogs came next, and then the horses, which
were to have stocked Virginia, were consumed to their very hides.
Rats, mice, and adders were relished when they were to be had, and
fungi of various sorts were eaten with whatever else "would fill
either mouth or belly." An Indian slain in an assault on the stockade
was dug up after he had been three days buried, and eaten "by the
poorer sort," their consuming hunger not being embarrassed by the
restraints of gentility. From this horrible expedient it was but one
step to the digging up of their own dead for food. Famine-crazed men
even dogged the steps of those of their comrades who were not quite
wasted, threatening to kill and devour them. Among these despairing
and shiftless men there was but one man of resources. Daniel
Tucker--let his later sins as tyrant of Bermuda be forgiven--bethought
himself to build a boat to catch fish in the river, and this small
relief "did keep us from killing one another to eat," says Percy. He
seems to have been the only man who bethought himself to do anything.
One man, in the ferocity engendered by famine, slew his own wife and
salted what he did not eat at once of her flesh, but he was put to
death at the stake for this crime. Some, braving the savages, sought
food in the woods and died while seeking it, and were eaten by those
who found them dead. Others, in sheer desperation, threw themselves on
the tender mercies of the Indians and were slain. To physical were
added spiritual torments. One despairing wretch threw his Bible into
the fire, crying out in the market place that there was no God in
heaven. Percy adds, with grim theological satisfaction characteristic
of the time, that he was killed by the Indians in the very market
place where he had blasphemed in his agony. The depopulated houses,
and even the palisades so necessary for protection, were burned for
firewood by the enfeebled people, and Jamestown came presently to look
like the slumbering ruins of some ancient fortification. Fortunately,
the Indians did not think it worth while to lose any more of their men
in attacking the desperate remainder. It seemed inevitable that all
who were shut up in the Jamestown peninsula should perish of hunger in
a very few days. Of the nearly five hundred colonists in Virginia in
the autumn of 1609, there were but sixty famine-smitten wretches alive
in the following June, and hardly one of these could have survived had
help been delayed a few days longer.
IX.
[Sidenote: The arrival of Gates and Somers, 1610.]
[Sidenote: A True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony of Virginia,
1619, p.23.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
Relief came to the little remnant from a quarter whence it was least
expected. The emigrants of the preceding year had been sent out under
the authority of Sir Thomas Gates and Sir George Somers. The two
leaders were jealous of each other, and for fear either should gain
advantage by prior arrival they embarked in the same ship. This ship
became separated from the rest of the fleet and went ashore on the
Bermudas, then uninhabited, and "accounted as an inchaunted pile of
rockes and a desert inhabitation for Divels," in the words of a writer
of the time; "but all the fairies of the rocks were but flocks of
birds, and all the Divels that haunted the woods were but herds of
swine." Here old Sir George Somers, a veteran seaman, constructed two
little cedar vessels, and provisioning them for the voyage with what
the islands afforded--live turtles, and the flesh of wild hogs and
waterfowl salted--the company set sail for Virginia in the spring of
1610, arriving barely in time to save the colony from extinction.
Finding that their provisions would not last more than two or three
weeks, they abandoned the wreck of Jamestown, crowding all the people
into four pinnaces, including the two improvised cedar boats built on
the Bermudas. They sailed down the river in the desperate hope of
surviving until they could reach Newfoundland and get supplies from
fishing vessels. The four little craft were turned back on
encountering Lord De la Warr, the new governor, ascending the James to
take charge of the colony. The meeting with De la Warr was bitterly
regretted by the old settlers, who preferred the desperate chance of a
voyage in pinnaces on a shipless sea with but a fortnight's provision
to facing again the horrors of life at Jamestown.
[Sidenote: De la Warr's arrival, 1610.]
[Sidenote: Smith's Oxford Tract, so called.]
With all the formalities thought necessary at that time, De la Warr
took possession of Jamestown, now become a forlorn ruin full of dead
men's bones. Gates was sent to England for a new stock of cattle,
while the brave old Sir George Somers once more embarked for the
Bermudas in the Patience, the little cedar pinnace which he had built
wholly of the wood of that island without a particle of iron except
one bolt in the keel. In this boat he sailed up and down until he
found again "the still vexed Bermoothes," where he hoped to secure
provisions. He died in the islands. Argall was also sent to the
Bermudas, but missed them, and went north to the fishing banks in
search of food.
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
[Sidenote: De la Warr's government, 1610.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: British Museum, MS. 21,993, ff. 174, 178. Instr. to Gates
and De la Warr.]
[Sidenote: Gold-hunting.]
[Sidenote: Briefe Declaration, MS., Pub. Rec. Off.]
Jamestown was cleansed, and with a piety characteristic of that age
the deserted little church was enlarged and reoccupied and daily
decorated with Virginia wild flowers. All the bitter experience of the
first three years had not taught the true method of settling a new
country. The colony was still but a camp of men without families, and
the old common stock system was retained. To escape from the anarchy
which resulted from a system that sank the interest of the individual
in that of the community, it had been needful to arm De la Warr with
the sharp sword of martial law. Some of the instructions given him
were unwise, some impossible of execution. To convert the Indians out
of hand, as he was told to do, by shutting up their medicine men or
sending them to England to be Christianized by the methods then in
use, did not seem a task easy of accomplishment, for Indian priests
are not to be caught in time of war. But De la Warr undertook another
part of his instructions. A hundred men under two captains were sent
on a wild-goose chase up the James River to find gold or silver in the
mountains, whither the phantom of mines had now betaken itself. This
plan originated with the London managers of Virginia affairs, and men
had been sent with De la Warr who were supposed to be skillful in
"finding out mines." But being especially unskillful in dealing with
the Indians, they were tempted ashore by savages, who offered them
food and slew them "while the meate was in theire mouthes." The
expedition thereupon turned back at a point about forty miles above
the present site of Richmond.
[Sidenote: Flight of De la Warr.]
A new town was begun at the falls, in the fond belief that two mines
were near, and De la Warr took up his residence there. Jamestown,
drawing its water from a shallow and probably polluted well, became
the seat of a fresh epidemic. In the month of March following his
arrival the governor fled from the colony to save his own life,
leaving Virginia more than ever discredited.
X.
[Sidenote: Sir Thomas Dale, 1611.]
[Sidenote: Docs. Rel. to Col. Hist. N. Y., i, pp. 1, 2, 3, 9, 10,
16-21.]
As the hope of immediate profit from Virginia died away, the colony
would have been abandoned if there had not arisen in its favor a
patriotic enthusiasm which gave it a second lease of life. Many of the
great noblemen were deeply engaged in this new agitation in favor of
the unlucky colony, and none more deeply, perhaps, than Prince Henry,
the heir apparent. At Henry's request, Sir Thomas Dale, an officer who
had been employed about the prince's person, and who with other
English officers was now in the service of the Netherlands, was
granted leave of absence to go to Virginia. Since the colony was a
check to Spain, the Netherlands were supposed to have an indirect
interest in the enterprise and were persuaded to continue Captain
Dale's pay. De la Warr, who remained in England, was nominally
governor; Gates, when present in Virginia, was the ranking officer;
but for five years Dale appears to have been the ruling spirit in the
colony.
[Sidenote: The heavy hand of Dale, 1611-1616.]
[Sidenote: A Briefe Declaration of the Plantation of Virginia, 1624,
MS., Pub. Rec. Off.]
To induce him to go, Dale had been deceived regarding the condition of
the plantation, as had been everybody else that had gone to Jamestown
after the first ships sailed. The vice-admiral, Newport, was the
principal reporter of Virginia affairs in England and the principal
agent of the company in this deception. Dale's rough temper was
already well known. It was for this, no doubt, that he had been chosen
to do a rude piece of work. On his arrival he saw the desperate state
of the undertaking. He pulled Vice-Admiral Newport's beard and
threatened him with the gallows, demanding "whether it weare meant
that people heere in Virginia shoulde feed uppon trees."
[Sidenote: Brit. Museum, MS., 21,993, f. 174.]
[Sidenote: Briefe Declaration.]
Under the inefficient government of George Percy, who had again been
placed in charge, the seedtime of 1611 was allowed to pass without the
planting of corn. The Jamestown people were found by Dale "at their
daily and usual work bowling in the streets." But the days of
unthrifty idleness were at an end. "The libertyes, ffranchises, and
immunityes of free denizens and natural-born subjects of any our
other dominions" promised to the colonists, were also at an end from
the moment of the arrival of this sharp-set soldier and
disciplinarian. Dale's pitiless use of martial law turned Virginia not
exactly into a military camp, but rather into a penal settlement where
men suffered for the crime of emigration. The men taken to Virginia in
Dale's own company were hardly fit for anything else, and were so
"diseased and crazed in their bodies" that at one time not more than
sixty out of three hundred were capable of labor. The food sent with
Sir Thomas Dale by the corrupt contractors was "of such qualitie as
hoggs refused to eat." Sir Thomas Gates afterward made oath to its
badness before the Chief Justice in London.
XI.
[Sidenote: The years of slavery.]
Dale regarded himself as an agent of the company. His aim was by hook
or crook to make the hitherto unprofitable colony pay dividends to the
shareholders, who were his employers. His relation to the emigrants
was that of a taskmaster; one might, perhaps, more fitly call him a
slave-driver. Instead of seeking to render the colony self-supporting
by clearing corn ground, he gave his first attention to lading vessels
with sassafras root, then much prized as a medicine, and cedar timber,
valued especially for its odor.
[Sidenote: Briefe Declaration. Percy to Northumberland, Hist. MS.,
Commission, Rept., iii, 53, 54.]
[Sidenote: Observations and Travel from London to Hamburgh, p. 13.]
During a part of Dale's time eight or nine ounces of meal and half a
pint of peas was the daily ration. In their declaration, made some
years afterward, the surviving colonists aver that both the meal and
the peas were "moldy, rotten, full of cobwebs and maggots, loathsome
to man and unfit for beasts." Better men than these might have been
driven to mutiny by the enforced toil and bad food. And mutiny and
desertion were usually but other names for suicide under the rule of
the pitiless high marshal. Some fled to the woods, hoping to reach a
mythical Spanish settlement believed to be not very far away. Dale set
the Indians on them, and they were brought back to be burned at the
stake. Others, who in desperation or deadly homesickness resolved to
venture their lives in a barge and a shallop "for their native
country," suffered in various ways for their temerity. Death by
shooting or hanging was clemency. One offender was put to death by the
awful torture of breaking on the wheel, a penalty that Dale may have
learned during his stay on the Continent. Taylor, the water poet, has
left us the sickening details of such an execution in Germany in 1616.
One need not waste any sympathy on those who were hanged for stealing
to satisfy hunger; death is more merciful than life to men in such a
case. But one poor rogue, who thought to better his rations by
filching two or three pints of oatmeal, had a bodkin run through his
tongue and was chained to a tree until he perished of hunger. Though
these things were twice attested by the best men in the colony, one
prefers to make some allowance for their passionate resentment, and
to hope that some of the horrors related are exaggerated. It is hard
to believe, for example, that men unable to work were denied food, and
left to creep away into the wretched burrows in the ground used for
shelter, there to die unregarded in the general misery.
[Sidenote: Briefe Declaration.]
In 1612 a company of ten men sent out to catch fish braved the perils
of the ocean in a little bark and got back to England. It was the only
escape from Dale's tyranny, pitiless and infernal. "Abandon every hope
who enter here" was almost as appropriate to the mouth of the James
River as to the gate of Dante's hell. All letters of complaint sent to
England were intercepted, and all efforts of friends of the colonists
in England to succor or rescue them were thwarted by the company in
London. The king's pass to one of the colonists authorizing him to
leave Virginia was sent to him by his friends closely made up in a
garter, to avoid the vigilance of Sir Thomas Dale.
[Sidenote: Dale's services.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
Dale's administration was strongest on its military side. There was no
danger that the Indians would reduce the colony to any straits while
he was in charge. He gave his first attention to fortification, and he
even begged for two thousand convicts out of English jails to form a
line of posts from Hampton to a point a hundred miles above Jamestown.
He sent Argall all the way to Mount Desert to plunder a Jesuit
settlement and make prize of a French ship--an undertaking congenial
to Dale's military temper and the Viking tastes of Argall. As his
experience increased, Dale came to understand that other than military
measures were needed to found a colony, though he never more than half
comprehended the elements of the problem. In his later time he cleared
more corn ground, and he could boast at his departure that Virginia
contained six horses, a hundred and forty-nine neat cattle, two
hundred and sixteen goats, and hogs without number. Dale set off a
private garden of three acres of land to each of the old planters, on
the condition that they should provide food for themselves while still
giving nearly all of their time to the service of the common stock.
Even this slave's-patch of private interest given to only a fraction
of the colonists put some life into Virginia; but two thirds of the
people were retained in the old intolerable bondage, and not even the
most favored secured personal ownership of land. Dale's administration
was remembered as "the five years of slavery."
XII.
[Sidenote: Dale's return.]
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
[Sidenote: Note 11.]
The rough-handed soldier from the Low Countries had indeed brought the
Virginia chaos into order, but it was an order almost as deadly as the
preceding anarchy. Dale confessed that the government of Virginia was
"the hardest task he had ever undertaken," and he got himself out of
it after five years by making a theatrical return to England in 1616
with a train of Indians, including the "Princess" Pocahontas,
converted, baptized with a Christian name as Rebecca, and wedded to an
Englishman. He added glowing reports of the country, and proved all by
exhibiting "at least sixteen several sorts of staple commodities to be
raised in this plantation." For greater effect, samples of twelve of
these products of the colony were sold by public auction in the open
court of the company. Though Dale could show many commodities, some of
which have never flourished in Virginia since his time, he left behind
him not an established community, but a mere camp of unhappy men
retained in the country by the sheer impossibility of getting away.
After nine years of suffering, Virginia consisted of some three
hundred and twenty-six men, twenty-five women and children, and graves
outnumbering many times over all the living souls.
[Sidenote: Note 12.]
Three things had been discovered in Dale's time that were of
importance to the colony. Dale had by personal experiment learned the
two fishing seasons in the James River. The colonists had begun the
profitable cultivation of tobacco, and the economic success of the
colony was thereby assured. Lastly, even Dale's small experiment with
private interest rendered the apportionment of the land and the
establishment of private ownership certain to come in time. As early
as 1614 it was estimated that three men working for themselves raised
more corn than ten times as many when the labor was for the public
stock.
XIII.
[Sidenote: Argall's government.]
[Sidenote: Lord Rich's intrigue.]
[Sidenote: Note 13.]
[Sidenote: Stith, 142.]
[Sidenote: The Companie's root of difference. MS. Rec. Va. Co., May 7,
1623.]
[Sidenote: MS. Rec. Va. Co., _passim_.]
Captain Argall, who succeeded Sir Thomas Dale, was a bold and notable
mariner. He had built the first Virginia vessel; he had traded with
the Indians for corn with as much enterprise and address as Captain
Smith had shown; he had in a small ship called the Dainty made the
first experimental voyage to James River by the westward route,
avoiding the long circuit by the Canaries and West Indies. It had been
his fortune to be the first Englishman to see the American bison,
which he found near the Potomac. He it was who by a shrewd trick had
captured Pocahontas and held her as hostage; and he drove the French
out of Maine, despoiling their settlement at Mount Desert. To a
mastery of all the arts that make the skillful navigator he added the
courteous politeness of a man of the city and the unfaltering rapacity
of a pirate. As governor, he robbed the company with one hand and the
hapless colonists with the other. While using the ships and men of the
colony to carry on the Indian trade, he turned all the profits of it
into his own wallet. The breeding animals of the colony accumulated by
Dale he sold, and made no account of the proceeds. There was hardly
anything portable or salable in Virginia that he did not purloin. He
even plundered the property of Lady De la Warr, the widow of his
predecessor. He boldly fitted out a ship belonging to Lord Rich, and
sent an expedition of sheer piracy to the West Indies under an old
letter of marque from the Duke of Savoy. When advices from England
warned Argall that his downfall was imminent, he forthwith redoubled
his felonious diligence. His chief partner in England was Lord Rich,
who became the second Earl of Warwick in 1619, about the time of
Argall's return, and who is known to history in his later character as
a great Puritan nobleman, who served God while he contrived to better
his estate with both hands by such means as troublous times put within
his reach. He was not content with small pickings. Rich appears to
have aimed at nothing less than wrecking the company and securing the
land and government of Virginia. The first step toward this was to get
a charter for a private or proprietary plantation within Virginia
which should be exempt from all authority of the company and the
colony. This independent government was to serve as a refuge from
prosecutions for Argall and other piratical agents, and at last to
possess itself of the wreck and remainder of Virginia. The second step
in this intrigue was one that could have availed nothing in any time
less respectful to shadowy technicalities and less prone to legal
chicanery than that of James I. As we have seen, jealousy was excited
in Virginia by the possibility of Captain Smith's wedding Pocahontas
and setting up a claim to authority based on her inheritance from
Powhatan. A tradition lingered in Virginia a hundred years later that
King James questioned Rolfe's right to intermarry with a foreign
princess without the consent of his sovereign. If this had any
foundation, it grew out of the value of a pretext in a time of
technicality and intrigue. There may have been already a scheme to
trade upon the hereditary right of Powhatan's daughter. Pocahontas
died in England, leaving an infant son. Argall, on his arrival,
hastened to notify the company that Opechankano, the brother and
successor of Powhatan, had resolved not to sell any more land, but to
reserve it for the son of Pocahontas when he should be grown. The
company charged that this was a ruse to serve the ends which Argall,
Rich, and others had in view. The larger plan miscarried, but Argall
found his prey so tempting that he lingered longer than was safe, and
got away in the nick of time by the aid of Lord Rich, who had stood
guard like a burglar's pal, and who contrived to delay the ship
carrying out the new governor until a small swift-sailing vessel could
be sent to fetch away Argall and his varied booty of public and
private plunder. In that day justice often went by favor, and Argall
consigned his spoils to hands so powerful that the Virginia Company,
stripped bare by his treacherous villainy, could never recover any of
its lost property. The embittered colonists had the bootless
satisfaction of sending over after the runaway governor twenty-four
bundles of accusatory depositions.
XIV.
[Sidenote: Fall of the lottery.]
[Sidenote: Note 14.]
From the first nobody reaped any profit from investments made in the
new colony except the clique of merchants who had been allowed to sell
wretched supplies for the distant settlers at ruinous rates. Rich and
those interested with him had abundantly reimbursed themselves for all
outlays on their part. The Virginia Company, swindled by commercial
peculators at home, robbed by a pirate governor in America, and
embarrassed by Spanish intrigues at the English court, had also been
deprived of the lotteries, large and small, which had supplied money
for sending eight hundred emigrants to Virginia. The lottery, which
had fallen into great disrepute and had suffered "many foul
aspersions," was abolished in compliance with a public sentiment. The
company was tottering swiftly to a fall; vultures like Warwick were
waiting longingly for its death.
[Sidenote: Revival of interest, 1618.]
But there set in once more a widespread patriotic movement in its
behalf. Such movements were characteristic of that vital age when love
of country was fast coming to count for more as a motive to action
than loyalty to the person of a prince. "Divers lords, knights,
gentlemen, and citizens, grieved to see this great action fall to
nothing," came to its rescue with one final effort which resulted
after some years in putting the enterprise well beyond the danger of
failure. They formed auxiliary societies within the Virginia Company,
after the custom of corporations in that day. Each of these undertook
to plant a settlement or "hundred." In one year the population rose
from less than four hundred to about a thousand. The newly active
element infused a more liberal spirit into the company, and set about
correcting the abuses in its management.
XV.
[Sidenote: The Great Charter, 1618.]
[Sidenote: Pub. Rec. Off. Col. Papers, iii, 40. Disc. of the Old Va.
Co.]
[Sidenote: Note 15.]
The movement of 1618 was retarded by the disgrace into which the
colony had fallen. An unbroken series of misfortunes and
disappointments, the bad conduct of the company's affairs, the ill
fame of Dale's remorseless tyranny, and the fresh Argall scandal, had
made Virginia odious. One convict to whom the alternative was
proposed, chose hanging in preference to transportation to Virginia.
It was needful that something should be done to restore credit. The
men who took the lead in the patriotic movement of 1618 on behalf of
Virginia were mainly liberal statesmen--that Earl of Southampton who
is known as the friend of Shakespeare; Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the
greatest men of a great age, whose brave support of popular liberty
had lost him the favor of the king; Sir John Danvers, and others. The
records before the election of Sandys in 1619 were probably destroyed
to conceal the guilt of the managers. We can only conjecture that the
rising influence of the men who were able a few months later to
overthrow the ruling party had much to do with the most notable
change that took place in the conduct of affairs in the Virginia
Company at this time. On the 13th of November, 1618--memorable but
neglected and forgotten date--the Virginia Company, acting within the
powers conferred on it by its charter, granted to the residents in
Virginia a document styled a "Great Charter or Commissions of
Priviledges, Orders, and Lawes." No copy of this instrument now
exists, but some of its provisions have been preserved. It established
a legislative body, to consist of councilors of estate and of
representatives or burgesses chosen by the several "plantations" or
hundreds, and it limited the power of the governor. This charter was
the starting point of constitutional government in the New World. It
contained in embryo the American system of an executive power lodged
mainly in one person, and a Legislature of two houses. One might
without much exaggeration call this paper a sort of Magna Charta of
America, and it was a long and probably a deliberate step toward
popular government. If the results that have followed it be
considered, it can hardly be accounted second in importance to any
other state paper of the seventeenth century.
XVI.
[Sidenote: Division of land.]
[Sidenote: Note 16.]
[Sidenote: Aspinwall Papers, p. 14, note.]
[Sidenote: True Declaration, p. 25.]
Not only did this admirable charter establish a representative form of
government and do away with martial law, but it fairly launched the
Virginians on the current of freedom and advancement by authorizing a
liberal division of land to all those who had arrived before the
departure of Sir Thomas Dale. The oldest land titles in Virginia are
deduced from the authority of the Great Charter of 1618. Communism,
pernicious everywhere, is at its worst in an infant settlement. "Every
man sharked for his own bootie," says a writer on Virginia in 1609,
"but was altogether careless of the succeeding penurie." The
distribution of land abolished the common stock system of labor, and
opened a pathway to the ambition of the diligent.
[Sidenote: The good news in Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 17.]
[Sidenote: Tragicall Relation, 1623.]
Tidings of the great change wrought in their condition and prospects
by the new charter reached the dwellers on the James River in the
spring of 1619, and the colonists were "ravished with so much joy"
that they felt themselves "now fully satisfied for their long labors
and as happy men as there were in the world." They valued their
liberties as no man can who has not known the bitterness of bondage,
and in 1623, when they had reason to fear the re-establishment of the
old tyranny, the Virginia Assembly petitioned the king in these strong
words: "Rather than be reduced to live under the like government, we
desire his Majesty that commissioners may be sent over to hang us." We
have here, perhaps, the very first of the many protests of colonial
Legislatures against oppression from England.
XVII.
[Sidenote: The sending of wives to Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 18.]
[Sidenote: Note 19.]
In 1618, before the adoption of the charter, it was concluded, in the
quaint phrase of the time, "that a plantation can never flourish till
families be planted and the respects of Wives and Children fix the
people on the soyle," or, in simpler words, that a colony of bachelors
can hardly found a state. The first ship laden with home-makers
carried over ninety maids, and the company thought it necessary to
promise special rewards to the men who should marry these young women.
If the maids were as certified, "young, handsome, and well
recommended," they needed no such dowry in a land that had hardly a
woman in it. Young or old, handsome or homely, the maids did not prove
a drug. Shipload after shipload of them were eagerly bought by the
planters, who had to pay a round sum in the high-priced tobacco of
that early time to defray the cost of transporting these wives.
Besides having to pay for his wife, the planter could have her only on
the condition of winning her consent; and the eager courtship that
ensued on the arrival of a shipload of maids must have been one of the
most amusing scenes in the settlement of America. Suitors far
outnumbered the women, and the latter had things pretty much their own
way. The first cargo of this interesting merchandise was landed in
1619, but as late as 1624 the women were probably in danger of setting
the colonists by the ears, for the governor felt obliged to issue a
proclamation threatening fine or whipping for the offense of betrothal
to more than one person at a time. In 1632, thirteen years after the
first shipment, we find the colony still being replenished with women
sent in the same fashion. In that year, two, whose behavior during the
voyage had been disgraceful, were sent back as unfit to be mothers of
Virginians. The precaution could not have been of much practical use,
but it indicates the early growth of a wholesome local pride. When
there were house mothers in the cabins, and children born in the
country, the settlers no longer dreamed of returning to England; and
there was soon a young generation that knew no other skies than those
that spanned the rivers, fields, and vast primeval forests of their
native Virginia, which now for the first time became a home.
XVIII.
[Sidenote: The struggle ended, 1624.]
It is not the Virginia colony alone that we have seen in the crucible.
The fate of English colonization was no doubt settled by the
experiments made during the first years on the James River, and the
story told in this chapter is but the overture to the whole history of
life in the United States. In our colonizing age a settlement might be
made in the heart of Africa with a far smaller loss of life than was
incurred in the first sixteen years in Virginia. From 1607 to 1623
there were landed in Virginia more than six thousand people. The
number that returned to England was inconsiderable, but in the year
1624, when the colony passed under a royal government, there remained
alive in the colony only twelve hundred and seventy-five. Of those who
came in these early years four fifths perished. A part of this loss
was due to radically wrong conceptions of the nature, end, and proper
methods of colonization, a part to corrupt and incompetent management
in the London Company. The bad character of many of the earliest
emigrants was one cause of difficulty. The writers of the time
probably exaggerated this evil in order to excuse the severity of the
government and the miseries into which the settlers fell. But the loss
of many of the early comers must be accounted a distinct gain to
Virginia. Unfitted for their environment, they were doomed to
extinction by that pitiless law which works ever to abolish from the
earth the improvident, the idle, and the vicious.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 29.]
In 1889, when I visited Jamestown, there was no apparent trace of
Sandy Beach which had connected the island with the mainland. This bit
of sand, in the antique phrase of one of the early colonists, was "no
broader than a man may well quaite a tileshard." Strachey, in Purchas,
p. 1752. Jamestown is now a farm; the ruins of the church and many of
the tombs in the eighteenth-century churchyard remain; but the upper
end of the island is wearing away, and I picked out of the crumbling
sand, far from the later burying place, human bones of earlier
burials, possibly of the victims of the famines and epidemics. The
walls of the magazine had been exposed by erosion. I brought away
wrought nails, bits of glass grown iridescent from long burial, and
an exploded bombshell of so small a caliber as to mark its antiquity.
By the aid of a negro youth living on the farm I found the hearth
bricks turned up in various places by the plow, and the arrangement,
or rather lack of arrangement, of the town could thus be made out. My
guide volunteered the information that Jamestown was "the first place
discovered after the Flood." Some drawings made at the time were
reproduced with an article on Nathaniel Bacon in the Century Magazine
for July, 1890.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 37.]
Whether Smith was injured by gunpowder and required treatment, as he
asserts, or was sent home under charges, has been matter of dispute.
Both accounts are correct, as is shown by the testimony of an
important manuscript at Petworth House, in Surrey, which I was allowed
to examine by the courtesy of Lord Leconsfield. It is from the pen of
George Percy, a brother of the Earl of Northumberland, who was chosen
to succeed Smith on his departure from the colony. It is not the
narrative from which Purchas makes extracts, but a sequel to it. The
title is "A Trewe Relacyon of the pceedinge and Ocvrrentes of momente
wch have hapned in Virginia from the Tyme Sr Thomas Gates was
shipwrackde vpon the Bermudes Ano. 1609 vntill my depture ovtt of the
country wch was in Ano Dni 1612." It is a quarto of forty-one pages.
Percy was a man of courage, but his own narrative in this little book
shows that he had no qualification for the office of governor except
the rank of his family. His ill health is made an excuse for his
inefficiency, but Dale's letter of May 25, 1611, shows that even the
horrible events of Percy's first government had not taught him to
plant corn when again left in charge. Percy naturally resents Smith's
boastfulness, and bluntly accuses him of laying claim to credit that
was not his. The charge that Smith, unable to control the unruly
settlers at the Falls under West, advised the Indians to attack them,
is supported by Percy; and a very different charge, that he stirred up
the Indians to assassinate West himself, appears at a later time in
Spelman's Relation, a tract that bears abundant internal evidence of
the writer's mental inability to speak the truth. Percy himself
relates that the Indians were already hostile to West's party, and
that they had wounded and killed some of West's men in resentment of
their wanton outrages. See also the account in the Oxford Tract, with
the signatures of Pots and Phettiplace, for Smith's version of the
affair. "Bloody-mindedness" seems not to have been a trait of Smith.
But the exigency was a terrible one, for death by starvation was
already impending, and only the restoration of discipline at any cost
could have saved the colony from the horrible fate it met. Such a
course would not have done much violence to the notions of the time,
and would have found precedents in the various plots against the lives
of Smith, Wingfield, and others in the colony. It is quite probable,
however, that there is no truth in the story. The violent hatred of
the factions will account for the suspicion.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 38.]
Captain Smith's True Relation was sent from Virginia and was printed
in London in 1608. In 1612 he published what is commonly referred to
as the Oxford Tract. Its proper title is very long. The first part of
it is as follows: "Map of Virginia, with a description of the Covntry,
the Commodities, People, Government, and Religion. Written by Captain
Smyth, sometime Governor of the Covntry. And wherevnto is annexed the
proceedings of those colonies since their first departure from
England," etc. The second part of the book professes to be taken from
the writings of eight of the colonists, whose names are given, and to
have been edited by W. S.--that is, the Reverend Dr. Symonds. The
Generall Historie was first proposed in a well-considered and rather
elegant speech by Captain Smith at a meeting of the Virginia Company,
April 12, 1621, while the new patent which was to be submitted to
Parliament was under discussion. He suggested the writing of a history
to preserve the memory of the worthies of Virginia, dead and living,
and gave it as his opinion that no Spanish settlement of the same age
afforded matter more interesting. "Which worthy speech," says the
record, "had of the whole court a very great applause as spoken freely
to a speciall purpose, and therefore thought fitt to be considered and
put in practice in his due time. And for which also Mr. Smyth as
preferring allwaies mocions of speciall consequence was exceedingly
commended." MS. Records of the Virginia Company, i, 197-200. A first
edition of the Generall Historie appeared in 1624, the last two
editions in 1632. The book is a compilation of Smith's earlier works,
somewhat expanded, not to say inflated. The later portions are mostly
made up from the official and _quasi_-official pamphlets. Just what
was Dr. Symonds's part in the preparation of the Oxford Tract and the
Generall Historie it would be interesting to know. The latter work
was in some sense by authority of the company, and liable to the
peculiar suspicion that hangs about writings designed to advance the
colony and not primarily to record history. Its descriptive portions
are of high value, and we are now able to control its historical
errors to a certain extent. Besides these three works on Virginia,
Smith published a Description of New England, 1616, New England's
Trials, 1620, and Advertisements for the Unexperienced Planters of New
England or Elsewhere, in 1631, the year of his death. These all
contain valuable matter relating to Virginia. He also published in
1627 two works on seamanship, a Sea Grammar, and the Accidence or
Pathway to Experience necessary for a Young Seaman. In 1630 he
published his True Travels, a book which contains an account of his
own adventures previous to his going to Virginia. More than a quarter
of a century had elapsed between the occurrence of these adventures
and their publication. Smith's vivid imagination had meantime no doubt
greatly magnified his own exploits. It is quite impossible at this day
to sift what truth there is in the True Travels from the
exaggerations. Travelers in that time were not held to a very rigid
account, and their first obligation seems to have been to amuse their
readers. No distinct line had yet been drawn in literature between
fact and fiction.
Many years ago, before I had had an opportunity to examine and compare
all his writings, I rashly printed a brief argument in favor of the
trustworthiness of Captain John Smith and the credibility of the
Pocahontas story. I believe no person of critical judgment can make a
thorough comparison of Smith's successive books without being
convinced of the ineradicable tendency of his mind to romance in
narrating adventure, especially his own adventure. Even his style
where his vanity speaks loses something of its native directness and
force. His practical writings on navigation and on the proper conduct
of colonization, and his descriptions of the country and the savages,
are plain, direct, and lucid. His speeches in the Virginia Company
appear to have been exceedingly wise, and to have impressed his
hearers. Note, for example, his proposals (Records, i, 197) that
colonial governors should be liable to trial in England; his proposal
to reduce the fee for sending a child to Virginia from five pounds to
five marks, the cost of apprenticing to a trade (i, 174); and his
preference for a governor well paid to one working "for love"
(February 4, 1623). His personal morals were probably unexceptionable.
One of his associates certifies to his freedom from tobacco, wines,
dice, debts, and oaths. But a comparison between the statements made
in the Oxford Tract and those in the Generall Historie leaves upon the
mind of the critic a distinct impression of the very processes by
which his adventures were exaggerated in his own memory as time
elapsed. The three or four hundred savages on the Potomac (Oxford
Tract, p. 32, a sufficiently marvelous story) rise to three or four
thousand in the Generall Historie. Pocahontas becomes the central
figure in incidents as told in 1624 in which she had no place in 1612.
There is but one allusion to Pocahontas in the entire Oxford Tract (p.
103), and that has to do with the charge that Smith intended to marry
her. A just and witty judgment of Captain Smith was made almost in his
own time by Thomas Fuller. He says: "Such his perils, preservations,
dangers, deliverances, they seem to most men beyond belief, to some
beyond truth. Yet we have two witnesses to attest them, the prose and
the pictures, both in his own book; and it soundeth much to the
diminution of his deeds that he alone is the herald to publish and
proclaim them.... However, moderate men must allow Captain Smith to
have been very instrumental in settling the plantation in Virginia,
whereof he was Governor, as also admiral of New England." Fuller's
Worthies, edition of 1840, i, 276. Those who desire to see an
ingenious and learned defense of Captain Smith, particularly in the
matter of the Pocahontas story, will find it in an address by Mr.
William Wirt Henry, published by the Virginia Historical Society.
Prof. Arber's discussion of the subject in his edition of Smith's
Works is sentimental rather than critical. Compare Deane's Wingfield
for the other side. Unnecessary heat has characterized some of the
debates about John Smith. History pitched in a shrill polemical key is
not instructive and is something less than amusing. These debates
center themselves on the Pocahontas story, which is of little
historical importance except as it involves the trustworthiness of
Smith's narrative.
The conduct of Captain Smith in the Virginia colony will be better
understood if we appreciate the character of his principal opponent,
Gabriel Archer. Archer's return to Virginia in 1609 and his agency in
overthrowing Captain Smith are alluded to apparently in a passage in
the New Life of Virginea, 1612, "In which distemper that envious man
stept in, sowing plentifull tares in the hearts of all," etc. One of
Archer's schemes seems to have been to establish a parliament and a
complicated government at the beginning. Purchas and Strachey both
take sides against Archer in his controversy with Smith. Purchas, iv,
p. 1749, Oxford Tract, 22. Wingfield warned Newport of the danger of
disturbance from Archer, who was "troubled with an ambitious spirit."
Wingfield's Discourse, 77, 94, 95. Wingfield also says, "In all their
disorders was Mr. Archer a ringleader." He adds that Ratcliffe "did
wear no other eies or eares than grew on Mr. Archer's head." For a
bibliographical account of Smith's works the reader is referred to the
valuable notes in Mr. Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of
America, vol. iii, _passim_.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 38.]
A Trewe Relacyon, etc., at Petworth House, as above. The Indians in
sheer wantonness scraped out the brains of their dead victims with
mussel shells. Percy seems to have retaliated in a way to exasperate
without disabling the savages. He "burned their hawses, Ransacked
their Temples, tooke downe the corpses off their deade Kings from off
their Toambes [that is, the scaffold on which their well-dried remains
were deposited], and caryed away their pearles, caps, and bracelets
wherewith they doe decore their Kings fvneralls." (For this sacred
house thus desecrated by Percy the Indians had such reverence that
none but priests and chiefs were allowed to enter, and the Indians
never ventured to pass it without casting some offering of tobacco,
wampum, copper, or puccoon root into the water.--Strachey, 90.) When
Percy had captured a chief's wife and children, the soldiers in
revengeful wantonness, according to Percy's account, threw the
children out of the boat and shot them in the water. The inefficient
Percy was able to save the life of the "queen" or chief's wife with
difficulty. West and Ratcliffe, who had overthrown Smith, are accused
by Percy of unnecessary cruelty to the savages. West sailed away in
the ship, leaving Jamestown to its fate. Ratcliffe was put to death
with exquisite tortures. There is no doubt some truth, as there is
certainly jealousy, in Percy's charge that Captain Smith was "an
ambitious, unworthy, and vainglorious fellow, attempting to take all
men's authorities from them," but he was neither weak, like Percy and
Ratcliffe, nor visionary, like the gold-hunting Martin and the
doctrinary and demagogical Archer, nor treacherous and cruel, like
West. With all his faults he only was master of the situation in these
early years. Percy admits that the lawful authority was that of Smith.
The history of the government of Percy and his supporters seems to
justify Smith's refusal to share his lawful power with incompetent
factionaries.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 39.]
So far the State Papers, but Percy, in his A Trewe Relacyon, adds that
he caused the man to be tortured till he confessed, and he relates
repulsive details of the crime. The effrontery of an official
publication went so far as to deny (True Declaration, 1610), on the
authority of Sir Thomas Gates, this fact so circumstantially and
abundantly attested. In Peckard's Life of Ferrar, p. 158, a petition
from the Virginia colony to the king is preserved in which occur these
words: "To tell how great things many of us have suffered through
hunger alone would be as incredible as horrible for us to repeat to
your sacred ears."
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 41.]
See, among other authorities, A Plaine Declaration of Barmudas, in
black letter, 1613, written by one of the party. Myriads of birds
nested on the island. How the hogs came to be there is matter of
conjecture. The writer of the Plaine Declaration makes old Sir George
Somers the resourceful hero of their marvelous escape, and it was from
him that the islands took the name of Somers or Summer Islands. For
want of pitch, the seams of the vessels were paid with "a kind of hard
lime" and some "wax cast up by the sea." Strachey's A True Reportory
of the Wracke and Redemption of Sir Thomas Gates, Knight, etc.,
Purchas, iv, p. 1734, is also by one of the shipwrecked party. The
Rev. Joseph Hunter has written with much learning, patient research,
and fatiguing prolixity to disprove the theory that Shakespeare's
Tempest was suggested by the wreck of Gates and Somers. He succeeds in
showing its relation to another occurrence, but works of imagination
do not usually have their origin in a single fact, and it is hard to
resist the conviction that the Tempest, as we have it, contains more
than one allusion to the wreck upon "the still vexed Bermoothes."
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 42.]
The beauty of the wood of certain American trees had already been
noted. The communion table in Jamestown in De la Warr's time was made
of black walnut. The pews were of cedar, and there were "fair, broad
windows," with shutters of cedar, "to shut and open as the weather
shall occasion," but there appears to have been no glass. Window glass
was little used at that time, and there probably was not a glazed
window in the colony. The pulpit was of cedar, and the font was "hewen
hollow like a canoa." Strachey, in Purchas, p. 1755.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 42.]
Some families appear to have gone to Virginia with De la Warr. The
purpose to send families of wives and children and servants is
expressed in A True Declaration, which was dated 1610, but, as Mr.
Alexander Brown points out, issued in December, 1609.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 48.]
The Tragicall Relation of 1623, and the Briefe Declaration of 1624,
manuscripts in the British Public Record Office, are the most
important authorities for the facts given in the text. The Briefe
Declaration is rather the fuller, but the earlier paper supplies some
particulars. These two formal documents are not from the same hand,
and the slight difference between them in details tends rather to
confirm than to shake the reader's confidence in their testimony. The
names of Sir Francis Wyatt, George Sandys, and other prominent
colonists appended to the Tragicall Relation are a guarantee of its
good faith. It is curious to note that Raphe Hamor, whose relation is
so favorable to Dale, and who held the post of secretary under Dale
and that of vice-admiral under Argall, signs this paper, which is a
severe impeachment of Sir Thomas Smythe's administration of the
affairs of the company before 1619. Hamor's True Discourse has
heretofore usually been taken as an authority, but after reading the
documents in the Public Record Office one is compelled to believe that
Hamor, or perhaps one might say Dale, under cover of his secretary,
misrepresents the state of the colony, and makes promises to those who
may emigrate that it was hardly possible to carry out. The Discourse
of the old Virginia Company (Colonial Papers, iii, 40), and other
papers in the Public Record Office relating to the strife between the
company and the Court, throw light on this period. The half-apologies
for Dale's cruelties in Smith's Generall Historie, book iv, prove
their existence. "For amongst them, so hardened in evil," says this
writer, "the fear of a cruel, painful, and unusual death more
restrains them than death itself." See also Hamor, p. 27. There is a
letter from Whitaker appended to Hamor's Discourse. Though apparently
an incidental letter, it bears marks of having been procured for
purposes of vindication. Its defensive tone goes to show that the
character of Dale's tyranny had transpired in England. Whitaker
praises Sir Thomas Dale mainly for being religious and valiant, and
says that he had "great knowledge in Divinity and good conscience in
all his doings; both which bee rare in a martiall man." In Whitaker's
Good Newes of Virginia, 1613, there is no praise of Sir Thomas Dale.
That Dale was famous for his severity before he left Europe is
manifest from the phrase used by the Jesuit Biard, "Le Mareschal
Thomas Deel que vous auez ouy estre fort aspre en ses humeurs."
Relation, chap. xxxiii. See in this and the preceding chapter the
whole account of his savage temper toward his French prisoners, etc.
It has been the custom of our older writers to speak of Dale's
administration only in praise, but careful weighing of the original
authorities shows that Dale was utterly pitiless in the cruelty of his
discipline and unjust in his detention of the old planters, and that
when he left the colony he was more generally execrated than any other
man that ruled in these early days, not even excepting his successor,
Argall. Dale's severity was serviceable in carrying the enterprise
through straits, but the reports of his harshness brought the colony
into disrepute and checked immigration. The detestation of Dale was
shared by the best men in Virginia, yet it is to be remembered that
the savagery of Dale's government was due not wholly to the brutal
temper of the man, but partly to the age and the school in which he
had been bred. Legal torture was in use long after this. The Clarendon
Papers, quoted by Southey, state that at Henley-on-Thames, as late as
1646, it was ordered that a woman's tongue should be nailed to a tree
for complaining of the tax levied by Parliament. The cruel practices
of the agents of the Virginia Company are paralleled by those of the
East India Company at the same time. "Before they were intrusted with
martial law they made it a rule to whip to death or starve to death
those of whom they wished to get rid." Mills, British India, i, 38.
Even that champion of popular liberty, Sir Edwin Sandys, found it in
his heart to approve of Dale's course while admitting its harshness.
He said to the court of the Virginia Company of the 17th of November,
1619, that "Sir Thomas Dale, building upon these foundations with
great and constant severity, reclaymed almost miraculously those idle
and disordered people, and reduced them to labor and an honest fashion
of life." MS. Records of the Virginia Company. Compare also Sir Thomas
Smythe's defense, note to Aspinwall Papers in IV Massachusetts
Historical Collections, ix, p. 1. My citations from the Tragicall
Relation and Briefe Declaration are partly from the originals in the
British Public Record Office, which I carefully examined in 1885, but
the first of these is printed in Neill's Virginia Company, and the
Briefe Declaration was published by the State of Virginia in 1874 in a
Senate document entitled Colonial Records of Virginia. Very good
abstracts of both papers appear in Sainsbury's Calendar. I cite the
Discourse of the Old Virginia Company from the MS. in the British
Public Record Office. I do not remember to have seen it in print.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 49.]
Birch's Court of James I, i, 415. Chamberlain to Carleton, June 22,
1616: "Sir Thomas Dale is arrived from Virginia, and brought with him
some ten or twelve old and young of that country, among whom is
Pocahuntas, daughter of Powhatan, married to one Rolfe, an Englishman.
I hear not of any other riches or matter of worth, but only some
quantity of sassafras, tobacco, pitch, tar, and clapboard, things of
no great value unless there were plenty, and nearer hand. All I can
hear of it is, that the country is good to live in, if it were stored
with people, and might in time become commodious. But there is no
present profit to be expected."
[Sidenote: Note 11, page 49.]
The Discourse of the Old Virginia Company, an exceedingly interesting
manuscript in the British Record Office, makes it appear that as late
as 1618 the colonists had no thought of staying in Virginia, and even
the directors at home were interested only in making money out of
tobacco and sassafras, with little or no care to plant a permanent
colony. Some allowance must be made, perhaps, for the _ex-parte_
nature of this paper, but its tone and the high character of those who
offered it give reason to trust it. Colonial Papers, iii, 40. Answer
of the Virginia Company to Queries of the Privy Council in 1625.
[Sidenote: Note 12, page 49.]
We may trust Hamor's True Discourse, p. 17, for some of these details,
though the book generally is discredited by the account given in the
Tragicall Relation, which Hamor himself signed with others in 1623. A
comparison of all these authorities makes it evident that only
eighty-one who were ranked as "farmers" derived any benefit from
Dale's three-acre division, while about two hundred others were
probably left in unmitigated bondage.
[Sidenote: Note 13, page 51.]
"And to protect Captain Argall from being called to an account for his
government under shew of a new plantation to be set up in Virginia by
Captain Argall and his partners, whereof the said earl (Warwick) hath
since appeared to be one (which yet to this day hath had no
beginning), there was procured a patent to the said captain and his
associates for the said new plantation; whereby he and his Company,
their heirs and assigns (save only in time of defence by war), were
exempted from all power, authority, and jurisdiction to be from hence
derived or there established, that so he might reign there as great
and absolute master, without law or controulment, and without the fear
of ever being called to any future reckoning.... Whatsoever was
remaining at that time in the colony belonging to the public ... he
converted it in a manner wholly to his own private use and possession,
the very public lands cultivated, the Company's tenants and servants,
their rents, corn and tributes of corn, their kine and other cattle,
their stores and other provisions; whereby the company, being disabled
in all appearance of ever setting up the same again or to bear the
great burden of public charge both at home and abroad, being thus
stripped of all revenue, the said Company must have failed and decayed
and the whole colony have fallen in time into the hands of the said
captain and his association to be there established, which seemeth to
have been his prime and original desire.... This course of depredation
and roving not sufficing as likely to receive encounter and check from
hence, new engines were used, some to dishearten and some to disgrace
the Company, that so as it seemeth they might in time obtain the
plantation and leave it as a prey to the said captain, his friends and
followers, etc." Burk's History of Virginia, Appendix, vol. i. The
extract is from the document known as The Company's Chief Root of
Differences, etc. I have compared this copy with that in the MS.
Records of the Virginia Company, Library of Congress, and find only
slight verbal differences. At the instance of Warwick the authors of
this paper--Lord Cavendish, Sir Edwin Sandys, and John and Nicholas
Ferrar--were put under arrest in their own houses for this
"impertinent declaration." The Warwick party had made "threats of
blood" to deter Southampton from complaining to the king.
[Sidenote: Note 14, page 53.]
Birch's Court and Times of James the First, i, 311. Chamberlain to
Carleton, May 16, 1614: "Sir Thomas Gates is come from Virginia, and
brings word that plantation will fall to the ground if it be not
presently supplied. He speaks of wonderful commodities that are to be
had there if we could but have patience and would be at the cost to
bring them to perfection." Out of this necessity for some present
support came the great lottery. It was recommended by the Privy
Council to the Mayor of Canterbury, February 22, 1615. There was a
"running lottery" of smaller adventures in Paul's Churchyard before
the "great standing lottery" was instituted, and then there were other
"running lotteries" "in many other places after." Purchas, p. 1773. No
doubt there were corruptions and abuses in these lotteries. The
merchants prospered while Virginia languished. Its unpopularity is
attributed to "malignant tongues," in the MS. Records of the Virginia
Company, i, 158, and the overthrow of the lottery may have been part
of the plot of those who sought soon after to wreck the company
itself.
[Sidenote: Note 15, page 55.]
My attention was first attracted to the date of the Great Charter of
November 13, 1618, by a minute in the handwriting of Secretary
Williamson in the Public Record Office, as follows: "Those Adventurers
& Planters by Vertue of y{e} s{d} Lett{rs} Patent of Incorporacon &c.
made a Great charter of Lawes & Ord{rs} for y{e} govermn{t} of the
Country. It bore date at London, Nov. 13{th} 1618." Col. Pprs, i, 11.
The proceedings of the first Assembly in Virginia are preserved in the
Public Record Office in Pory's Report. This report gives the only
information we have regarding the provisions of this long-lost
charter. An abstract of these proceedings is printed in the Calendar
of Colonial Documents, and the whole document was reprinted in the New
York Historical Society Collections, second series, vol. iii, and yet
more carefully in the Colonial Records of Virginia, 1874. There is an
allusion to this charter in the Briefe Relation, 1624. Various
Virginia land grants deduce their authority from the Great Charter of
Laws and Orders of November 13, 1618, as we learn from a note in the
Aspinwall Papers, p. 14. There are many allusions to the charter of
1618 in the Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company in the Library
of Congress.
[Sidenote: Note 16, page 56.]
The Code of Lawes, Divine, Morall and Martiall, by which Dale reigned
was edited and published by Strachey in 1612, and reprinted in Force's
Tracts, vol. iii. This code appears to have had no other sanction than
the approval of Sir Thomas Smythe, the governor of the company. The
beneficial effect of these laws is maintained in Hamor's Discourse, in
Rolfe's Relation, and in certain letters of Dale in the Record Office.
It was not, indeed, the government by martial law, but Dale's abuse of
his power, that wrought the mischief. After the emancipation the old
settlers lived in perpetual terror lest some turn of the wheel should
put them once more in the power of Sir Thomas Smythe and his divine
and martial laws. See especially the Additional Statement appended to
the Discourse of the Old Virginia Company. On the long and bitter
dissension that resulted in the overthrow of the company, see Arthur
Woodnoth's Short Collection of the most remarkable Passages from the
Original to the Dissolution of the Virginia Company, a rare work of
great value to the historian of this period.
[Sidenote: Note 17, page 56.]
Rolfe's Relation has it that the ship which brought Yeardley brought
also the news of the election of Sandys and John Ferrar. But Yeardley
arrived in Virginia on the 18th of April (O.S.), and Sir Thomas
Smythe's resignation did not take place until ten days later.
Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company. The news that Sir George
Yeardley did bring was no doubt that the power of Sir Thomas Smythe
and his party was broken, and that the actual control of affairs was
in the hands of such men as Sandys, Southampton, Cavendish, Danvers,
and the two Ferrars. The whole policy of the company indicates that
the new party was really in power, and the appointment of such a man
as Yeardley was probably the work of the rising party. The records
before the resignation of Sir Thomas Smythe were probably destroyed
for purposes of concealment.
[Sidenote: Note 18, page 57.]
Manuscript Book of Instructions, etc., Library of Congress. Letter to
the Governor and Council by the ship Marmaduke, August 12, 1621. A
proposal to send women had been made seven years earlier. Commons
Journal, 1, 487, May 17, 1614. Extract from Martyn's Speech (for which
he was reprimanded): "That they require but a few honest Labourers
burthened with Children.--Moveth, a committee may consider of the
means for this, for Seven Years; at which some of the Company may be
present." On November 17, 1619, Sir Edwin Sandys pointed out in the
court of the company that the people of Virginia "were not settled in
their mindes to make it their place of rest and continuance." "For the
remedying of the Mischiefe and for establishing a perpetuitie of the
Plantation," he proposed the sending of "one hundred young maides to
become wives." Manuscript Records of the Virginia Company, i, 44, 45.
Two women, the first in the colony, had arrived in September, 1608.
Oxford Tract, 47. There were women in Gates's party in 1610. It was
even reported that some English women had intermingled with the
natives. Calendar Colonial Papers, i, 13. An allowance of food to
women in De la Warr's time is proof that women were there. In 1629
there was living Mistress Pearce, "an honest, industrious woman," who
had been in Virginia "near twenty years." Rolfe (a copy of whose
Relation is among the Duke of Manchester's MSS. now in the British
Public Record Office) sets down a remainder of seventy-five of the
three hundred and fifty-one persons in the colony at Dale's departure,
as women and children. It is worth recalling here that D'Ogeron, who
governed Santo Domingo in 1663 and after, supplied the buccaneers
with wives brought from France; and the plan was also put into
practice in Louisiana about a century later than the Virginia
experiment, and the same expedient, as is well known, was resorted to
in Canada. In Virginia more pains were taken to have all the women
thus imported of a good character than in some of the French colonies.
[Sidenote: Note 19, page 58.]
The belief that these maids were "pressed" or coerced into going is
probably erroneous (see the speech of Sandys, July 7, 1620, Manuscript
Records of the Virginia Company). He says, "These people (including
the maids) are to be provided as they have formerly beene, partlie by
printed publication of the supplies indicated, together with the
conditions offered to these publique tennants, partlie by help of such
noble friends and others in remote parts as have formerlie given great
assistance." The notion that some of the maidens were pressed seems to
have had its rise in the counterfeiting of the great seal and the
issuing of forged commissions to press maidens for "breeders for the
King" in the Bermudas and Virginia in order to extort money. One Owen
Evans was accused of such practices in October, 1618 (Sainsbury, p.
19), and one Robinson was hanged, drawn, and quartered for this or
similar offences in November of the same year (Birch's Court of James
I, 108). In order to encourage the adventurers or shareholders to
subscribe to the sending of maids, a town was laid off in Virginia to
be called Maydstown. The subscribers were to be allowed shares in this
town. Manuscript Records, May 20, 1622, on the general subject; also
Records under date of November 3, 1621, and the 17th of the same
month, June 11, and November 21, 1621, and the manuscript book in the
Library of Congress, which I refer to in these notes as Manuscript
Book of Instructions, pp. 76 and 89. I may remark here that this book
has not been in use in recent times for reference. Its origin is
uncertain, nor can the authorities of the library tell where it came
from. It was compiled in the latter part of the seventeenth century,
judging from internal evidence, and was perhaps kept among the records
of the colony for reference on what we should call constitutional
questions. I found a loose memorandum laid in its pages in the
handwriting of Thomas Jefferson, to whom the book probably once
belonged.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
_THE PROCESSION OF MOTIVES._
I.
[Sidenote: The chief mistake.]
The cause of the sorrows of Virginia will be more plainly seen if we
turn again to the motives that propelled Englishmen to plant a colony.
The chief mistake lay in the main purpose. If the founding of a state
had been other than a secondary and remote end, the managers might
have sent at first families and not bachelors, farmers and not
gentlemen, laborers and not riff-raff. But more visionary motives
dominated the action. A state was planted, but something else was
mainly intended by the first projectors. The work seemed continuous,
but the end in view shifted and the actors gradually changed. The only
motive that held from first to last, and ran through all the rest, was
the rivalry with Spain.
[Sidenote: The rivalry with Spain.]
[Sidenote: Lane to Sydney. Aug. 12, 1585. Sainsbury.]
[Sidenote: Lane to Walsingham. Aug. 12, 1585. Sainsbury.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
The colonies attempted by Frobisher and Gilbert were to serve as
relays in the work of exploration for a sea passage to the Pacific and
the search for mines, but they mark strongly the influence of the
Spanish example on English projects. Ralegh was a lifelong opponent in
peace and war of Spanish intrigue and aggression, and his efforts to
plant colonies in the virgin land were suggested by a knowledge of
the almost exhaustless treasure that flowed into Spanish coffers from
America. The opportune capture of a Spanish carack bound homeward from
Mexico with letters describing the wealth of Mexican mines brought the
support of English merchants to Ralegh's undertaking. Imbued with the
same spirit, Ralegh's governor wrote from Roanoke Island in 1585 that
his colony would be a means of deliverance from the domination of
Spain, "whose strength doth altogether grow from the mines of her
treasure." In the perilous isolation of the little company on Roanoke
Island, Lane assures himself that God will feed his men by means of
ravens rather than suffer their "enemies the papists" "to triumph at
the overthrow of this most Christian action." The home-staying English
of that age were spurred to colony-planting by three main
motives--cupidity, patriotic feeling, and religious zeal--and all of
these were provoked by emulation and jealousy of Spain.
II.
[Sidenote: Delusions in colony-planting.]
The prolonged movement for a colonial establishment, which extended
over the latter half of the reign of Elizabeth and almost the whole of
the reign of James I, was kept alive by delusions. The ultimate ends
for which colonies were proposed and planted in the last quarter of
the sixteenth and the first quarter of the seventeenth century were
none of them attained. The movable passage through North America to
the Pacific was still leading explorers a merry dance when the first
Jamestown emigrants sailed in 1606, and gold mines of comminuted mica,
of iron pyrites, of Indian mineral paints, and of pure fable were
potent attractions for some time after. The gradual increase of
geographical knowledge caused the "South Sea" to take shelter in the
unknown region behind the mountains, and the gold mines reported by
Indians and discovered by sanguine prospectors were somehow lost in
the interminable forests. In this exigency the first colony must have
perished for want of support if new hopes as illusive as the old had
not moved the English people to avert such a calamity.
[Sidenote: Commodities.]
[Sidenote: For example, Carlisle's treatise, Anderson's Commerce, year
1583.]
[Sidenote: Wine.]
[Sidenote: Silk.]
[Sidenote: Anderson on the year 1589.]
[Sidenote: 1609.]
The production of commodities which the ungenial climate of the
British Islands refused to grow was thought of from the beginning, and
they became after 1616 the main hope of wealth from Virginia. It
seemed grievous that England should spend her money in buying wine and
silk from southern Europe and naval stores from the Baltic. The only
maxim of political economy generally accepted in that day was that a
nation is enriched by getting money from abroad and keeping it at
home. The precious metals constituted the only recognized riches. Laws
were made to restrain the exportation of gold and silver, and
sumptuary laws to discourage the consumption of those things that must
be bought of the foreigner. Efforts to raise in Great Britain the
products of the Mediterranean region would have proved successful if
the climate had been half as favorable to such enterprises as the
government. The arguments advanced in favor of the possibility of
producing wine in England did much, no doubt, to secure the sunshine
of royal favor for experiments made to that end, but climatic
conditions were inexorable. King James busied himself to no profit in
raising mulberry trees and nursing a private stock of silkworms, in
imitation of Henry IV, the reigning King of France, who succeeded in
producing cocoons in the Tuileries but not in making silk culture
profitable in the north of France. Mulberries were first planted in
England in 1608, two years after the sailing of the Virginia
argonauts. James sent circulars to persons of influence among his
subjects asking them to cultivate mulberry trees, and, in the years
immediately following, the silk fever ran its course alongside the
excitement about the great lottery in behalf of the Virginia colony.
Hakluyt, spreading sails for America in every breeze, hastened to
announce at the first mention of silk culture that mulberry trees,
"apt to feed silke wormes to make silke," were a "chiefe commoditie"
of Virginia.
The first principles that govern colony-planting were not yet
understood. It was proposed to force everything from a forlorn camp of
men dwelling under roofs of bark and sedge, environed by treacherous
foes and in constant peril of starvation. The raising of silkworms was
begun in Virginia in 1613, and before the colony was nine years old it
was able to send to England silk that doubtless had cost more than a
hundred times its market value. The experiment came to nothing. It
could not have happened otherwise amid the miseries of those early
years. The rats, which opportunely destroyed the eggs of the silk
moth, were made to bear the responsibility for the failure.
[Sidenote: A new silk fever.]
[Sidenote: Cal. Dom. S. P. James I, p. 428.]
[Sidenote: Pory's Report, Pub. Rec. Off.]
[Sidenote: Phil. Trans. I, 201.]
[Sidenote: Hening i, 14.]
[Sidenote: Original Records of Colony of Va.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
[Sidenote: 1655.]
[Sidenote: Comp. Va. Richly Valued, 1650, and Leah and Rachel, 1636.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
Silk was little known in England at the beginning of Elizabeth's
reign, but it came into great request a few years later. In 1617 Lord
Carew declares that there is "a madness for silk instead of cloth."
This rage for silk led to the establishment of silk manufacturing in
England; throwsters, dyers, and weavers were brought to England from
abroad and settled in Spitalfields, "the cheap end of its metropolis,"
and in Moorfields. It seemed more than ever important to produce silk
in the king's dominions, in order to supply these manufacturers with
material without importation from alien lands. Accordingly, a new
effort was made in 1620 to secure raw silk from Virginia. The Earl of
Southampton, ever eager to promote the Virginia colony, "writt into
Italy, France, and Spayne" for silkworm "seed"; the king gave some
from his own stock, and the expert who had charge of the king's worms
was sent over to look after the business. A French book on the subject
was translated to instruct the colonists. The first Virginia Assembly
in 1619 had passed a law to promote the raising of the mulberry. To
save expense, the colonists at this time, or later, planted the trees
in hedgerows and mowed them with a scythe. In 1621 orders were sent
from England that none but members of the Council and the heads of
hundreds should wear silk, unless they had made it themselves. The
prohibition shows how general was the craze for silk clothing. The
climate of Virginia proved genial enough, but the massacre of 1622,
the bitter Indian conflicts that ensued in 1623, and the epidemic of
the same year, following one another swiftly, were enough to
annihilate a hundred feeble projects. The real doom of silk-raising,
however, came from the fact that the culture of tobacco in virgin soil
was incalculably more profitable and vastly less troublesome to
pioneers than hatching silkworms' eggs in one's pocket or bosom, or
sleeping with them in a small box under one's bolster and covering
them in the warm bed on rising. The project was blighted in the bud by
adverse economic conditions--a killing frost more deadly to such
enterprises than an ungenial climate. But a lesson in economic
principles is one of the hardest for men to learn. Long after the
colony had become prosperous, English projectors and Virginia
experimenters tried again and again to supplant tobacco with silk. If
we may credit the report, Virginia furnished a coronation robe of silk
for Charles I, and Charles II certainly wore silk from worms hatched
and fed in his Virginia dominions. One Esquire Digges brought
Armenians to Virginia to attend his worms. But in the Reformed
Virginia Silkworm, by Hartlib, the friend of Milton, it is announced
that a young lady had discovered that silkworms would care for
themselves on the trees, "to the instant wonderful enrichment of all
the planters there, requiring neither cost, labour, or hindrance in
any of their other employments." It is also suggested on the eager
title-page of the pamphlet that "the Indians, seeing and finding that
there is neither Art, Pains, or Skill in the thing," will
"incontinently fall to raising silk." Not only were the gentle
savages, and especially their women and children, to devote themselves
to silk, but the American caterpillar--"the natural silkworm" as it
was called--was expected to spin for the market if his cocoon could be
"refined."
[Sidenote: Hening ii, 242.]
[Sidenote: Phil. Trans. XI, 628.]
By 1666 the silk delusion had passed, and the Virginia Assembly
repealed all acts for the encouragement of mulberry trees. Ten years
later, Glover, the botanist, found many of these trees still standing
as melancholy witnesses to the waste of energy by the earlier
promoters and settlers of the colony. Almost every other American
colony made the same experiment for itself, and Virginia renewed its
endeavors from time to time, each generation forgetting what its
fathers had learned.
III.
[Sidenote: Silk-grass.]
[Sidenote: 1585.]
[Sidenote: A Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of
Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Proceedings of Va. Assembly, 1619. 2d N. Y. Hist. Society
Coll. iii, 348.]
[Sidenote: Purchas IV, p. 1777.]
[Sidenote: Instr. of 24 July, 1624. MS. Bk. of Instr. Libr. of Cong.]
Along with the silk fever went the silk-grass craze. Ralegh's people
had seen the Indians wearing garments woven of the fiber of the _Yucca
filamentosa_, the "Adam's needle and thread" of our popular speech.
Hariot, in his account of it, declares that "the like grows in
Persia," and that much of the "silk-works" coming thence to Europe was
made of this fiber. He probably confounded the yucca with the ramie
plant of the East, of which grass cloth is made. Of the yucca fiber
taken to England in 1585, "a piece of silk grogram" was made, and of
course pronounced "excellent good"; it was even presented to the
queen. The coarse and rather brittle fiber of this plant was exalted
by enthusiasts into something nearly equal to silk. Ordinances for
planting it were sent from England; at least one legislative act in
its favor was passed by the Virginia Assembly, and the most foolish
hopes were entertained regarding the profit to be had from it. By 1619
it had come to be called "silk flax," and it was then advocated for
homelier uses, such as cordage and linen, and every householder was
compelled by law to set a hundred plants; the governor himself set
five thousand. In 1624 it is spoken of as "a commoditie of speciall
hope and much use." There were by this time those who ventured to say
that the silk-grass enterprise was "full of difficultie"; but the
managers in England easily got rid of this objection by attributing
the difficulty to "negligence and want of experience." They were just
then intent on finding some commodity that would take the place of
tobacco, which was frowned upon by both court and Parliament. In spite
of all discouragement, the hope of good results from the yucca fiber
outlasted that generation, and was in full vigor in 1649, sixty-four
years after Hariot's mistake.
IV.
[Sidenote: Wine.]
[Sidenote: MS. Rec. Va. Co. i, 343.]
It was also proposed to produce wine in Virginia for English
consumption. No more gold and silver should go out of the realm to buy
port and canary to the profit of foreigners and the impoverishment of
the good and loyal subjects of his Majesty. The instructions on this
point were clear, and before the Virginia exiles had secured bread to
stay their hunger they had made wine of the sour wild grapes of the
country. French vine-dressers were sent over a little later and were
forbidden to plant tobacco, but were compelled to employ themselves
about vines, with the care of silkworms for variety. In 1621 these
Frenchmen sent to England a cask of wine, the arrival of which was
duly celebrated. Other experimental casks of wine were afterward sent
to England from America at long intervals, but without decreasing the
profits of wine growers in the Old World.
[Sidenote: Other products sought.]
[Sidenote: Nova Brittania.]
All the commodities sought from Virginia were unsuited to conditions
in a new country. To the folly of making such experiments at all where
living itself was an experiment, the managers added the folly of
crowding a multiplicity of problematic enterprises on the colony at
the same time. With a virgin continent in which to produce novelties,
all things seemed possible in an age so hopeful. Plants of every
clime grew rank in the imagination of projectors. Virginia was a
wonderland, and it was readily believed without evidence that the
"soyle and clymate" were "very apt and fit for sugar canes"; "also
linseed and rapeseeds to make oiles," as a black-letter pamphlet of
1609 expresses it. Along with "orenges, limons, and almonds," this
official writer proposes to plant "anniseeds, rice, cummin,
cottonwool, carroway seeds, ginger, madder, olives, oris, sumacke,"
and, as if this breathless list were not enough for one new land, he
adds, "and many such like that I can not now name." If we may trust
the publications of the company, various West India plants were tried
in the very first days of the colony, while the threefold peril of
death from famine, pestilence, and savage war was imminent.
[Sidenote: Timber and naval stores.]
[Sidenote: MS. Rec. Va. Co. 31 May and 23 June, 1620.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
But it was not enough to wring from an infant colony the products of
the south; those derived from the north of Europe were straightway to
be got there also. German millwrights--"Dutch carpenters," in the
phrase of the records--were brought from Hamburg by John Ferrar to
build Virginia sawmills; timber was still sawed by hand in England.
Pitch, tar, and potash were to be produced by Poles sent out for the
purpose in the second year of the colony. Patriotism dictated that
England should be relieved of her dependence on foreign countries for
naval stores. Virginia had forests: why should she not produce these
things?
[Sidenote: Glass-making.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
[Sidenote: Iron works.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
[Sidenote: Result of the massacre.]
It had been found that the savages eagerly received glass beads in
exchange for corn and peltries. Nothing more was required to prove the
profitableness of glass-making. Some Germans were sent to the colony
in 1608, and glass works were established. For some reason no proper
materials were available at first, and it became necessary to request
that sand might be sent from England to make Virginia glass of at the
glass works in the woods near Jamestown. The German glass blowers were
prone to run away to the Indians, among whom work was lighter and food
more abundant. The tribesmen encouraged these desertions by providing
dusky wives for the men whose skill with tools and weapons they valued
highly. In 1621 the glass business was revived, and this time it was
intrusted to Italian workmen. About the same time iron works were
established at Falling Creek, with "forty skilled workmen from Sussex
to carry them forward." Twenty-five ship carpenters were sent to ply
their trade on the James River, and it was also arranged that oil was
to be distilled from walnuts by the "apothecaries." George Sandys was
sent over in July, 1621, to have entire control of all schemes for
staple commodities. There was a certain fitness in intrusting these
creatures of the imagination to a poet. Pineapples, plantains, and
other fruits were to be started forthwith. There was once again great
hope from the "rich commodity of silk," an endowed school for Indians
was founded, and the little Virginia pool became iridescent with many
frail bubbles. The sudden and frightful massacre by the savages in
March, 1622, obliterated instantly all vain and premature projects.
This calamity did not cause the failure of these foredoomed schemes;
it only saved them from a painful and lingering death, and provided
their friends with a decent epitaph for them. The people who survived
the massacre were decimated by an epidemic in the following year. What
strength they could spare from frequent battles with the savages they
spent in growing corn and tobacco, which last, of all the things
tried, proved to be the only commodity profitable for export.
V.
[Sidenote: Tobacco.]
[Sidenote: A Covnter-Blaste to Tobacco, 1604.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
Against tobacco King James had written a book. It was denounced in
Parliament and regarded by all public-spirited men as an evil.
Nevertheless, it turned the scale and saved the colony. In
colony-planting the problem is fundamentally an economic one, and
economic problems are solved by coarse and homely means. John Rolfe,
the first Englishman that ventured to wed an Indian, planted the first
tobacco at Jamestown in 1612, and by 1616 the better West India
variety had perhaps been substituted for the harsh kind grown by the
Virginia Indians, and by them called "uppowoc" or "apooke." Tobacco
prospered and was profitable, to the disgust of the pedantic king and
the sorrow of all who had cherished hopes of beautiful products from
a colony upon which so much poetic sentiment had been lavished.
Neither gold nor spices came as had been expected; the strings of
pearls seen by Ralegh's men were not again to be found, or were
perhaps transformed on investigation into wampum beads; the silver
mine once discovered on the upper James had vanished forever; tropical
fruits refused to grow; even madder and woad failed, and, though the
indigo plant would readily mature, nobody knew how to manufacture the
dye. Silk was troublesome and unprofitable, shipbuilding, and such
coarse but patriotic products as naval stores had come to naught. But
the detestable "weed," as King James had dubbed it, throve apace. As
early as 1617 the waste margins of the broad streets of Jamestown were
planted with it by the eager settlers. The English merchants grasped
at the profits of it, the farmers of the customs rejoiced in the heavy
duties imposed on it, and a powerful mercenary interest in the
prosperity of Virginia was established. By 1624, when the Virginia
Company was dissolved, the danger that the colony would be abandoned
as a result of Spanish intrigues, Indian massacres, or prolonged
discouragement had passed away. Public spirit, patriotism, and
religious enthusiasm no longer guarded it as a feeble house plant. It
had struck root in the outdoor soil of human self-interest and its
life was assured. From that time the colony that had been for
seventeen years a fairyland to dreamers in England and a perdition to
its inhabitants, became a sober money-making enterprise, uninteresting
to enthusiasts and philanthropists.
VI.
[Sidenote: Motives of sentiment.]
In the preceding sections of this chapter we have traced what may be
called the series of commercial motives that, sometimes in succession,
often in co-operation, propelled the Virginia movement. The agitation
for a colony was primarily a commercial one. The London or Virginia
Company by which it was carried forward had been organized in the form
of the great trading corporations of the time, such as the Muscovy
Company and the East India Company, and it was expected to yield large
returns. But though commercial in form and purpose, the Virginia
Company from the outset was able to appeal successfully in every
emergency to motives that were far from mercenary. Into the
chain-threads of commercial enterprise was woven a woof of patriotic
feeling and religious sentiment.
VII.
[Sidenote: Rise of the patriot party in the Virginia Company.]
[Sidenote: Woodnoth's Short Collection, p. 6.]
[Sidenote: Peckard's Ferrar, 113.]
Dale's empty-handed return, and Argall's homecoming with hands full of
the spoil of both colony and colonists, were severe blows to the hope
of profit from Virginia, and thereafter commercial motives fell to a
second place. The company began to pass more and more out of the
control of traders like Sir Thomas Smyth and Alderman Johnson, and
the corrupt clique of predatory merchants, as well as out of the reach
of voracious noblemen like Warwick. More and more it passed into the
hands of the great liberal statesmen whose leader was the
incorruptible Sir Edwin Sandys, a man of rare gifts and knowledge and
of great resoluteness. These men had suffered some disappointment, no
doubt, in their struggle for parliamentary freedom in England. They
might have succeeded better had their antagonist been a strong king,
but against the pusillanimity, the vanity, the vacillation, and the
pedantic dogmatism of James little permanent headway could be made.
Without relinquishing the conflict in the House of Commons, they took
it up in the Quarter Courts of the Virginia Company. In this new field
they found themselves afresh confronted by the obstinacy of the king,
who was stirred up to oppose them by the discarded governor, Sir
Thomas Smyth, and his friends, by Warwick, and by all the partisans of
high prerogative and all the advocates of the Spanish match.
"Bedchamber men" and others about the king's person were engaged to
work upon the king to come to the rescue of Sir Thomas Smyth's
"honor." The Spanish ambassador Gondomar, who had spies in the
Virginia Company, took pains to feed James's discontent. He told the
king that it was time for him to look into the Virginia courts, which
were held in the great hall of the house of the Ferrar family. Too
many of the king's nobility and gentry resorted thither, in order to
be in company with the popular Lord Southampton and the dangerous
Sandys. They were deep politicians, and they entertained designs
beyond a tobacco plantation. Their leaders, he said, were "subtle men
of high courage who regarded neither his master nor their own."
[Sidenote: Sir Edwin Sandys.]
[Sidenote: Royal Hist. MS. Comm. viii, II, 45.]
[Sidenote: The king's interference.]
[Sidenote: 1620.]
[Sidenote: A land of freedom.]
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
Sandys, as assistant to Sir Thomas Smyth and virtual governor, had
already succeeded in establishing in Virginia a constitutional state
with a representative government. He was furthering plans for the
foundation of the little separatist state of New Plymouth, and his
enemies set agoing tales that he had dark designs of removing with the
Pilgrims to America, in order to found a democratic state there. In
1619 Sir Thomas Smyth tendered his resignation, and the company, to
his surprise, it would appear, accepted it, and chose Sandys to his
place. When, in 1620, his first year of government drew to a close,
Sir Edwin Sandys erected an elegant ballot-box in the midst of the
hall of the Ferrars, that the brilliant assemblage of noblemen,
knights, gentlemen, and merchants might by a secret vote exercise the
right of choice without any constraint. Just as the assemblage was
about to begin voting, two clerks of the signet were announced with a
message from the king forbidding the company to choose Sandys. "Choose
the devil, if you will, but not Sir Edwin Sandys," was one form in
which the king expressed his aversion. Southampton, braving the king's
displeasure, allowed himself to be elected, with Sandys for deputy.
In June, 1621, both Southampton and Sandys were imprisoned. This
attracted attention to Virginia as a "refuge from a more oppressive
government in England." In three months' time twenty-five ships set
sail for the colony, which gained an impetus from the king's
opposition that put it beyond the danger of destruction by the
calamities of the next two years. Even before the massacre and
pestilence of 1622 and 1623, Southampton was assured by friends at
court that it would come to "push of pike," and that the company would
be overthrown. The charter of the company was vacated in 1624, but
free government had so taken root in the colony that it could never
afterward be quite extirpated. A new English state with a popular
government had been founded of deliberate purpose by a group of
English statesmen, at the head of which, and easily first, was Sir
Edwin Sandys, whose great service to the people and nation that were
to come has been almost forgotten.
VIII.
[Sidenote: Religious propagandism.]
[Sidenote: Note 11.]
We shall not have taken a just account of Virginia colonization if we
do not reckon religious motives among the many forces that carried
that wavering enterprise to success. From the excitement about
American exploration and colonization the English church caught its
first missionary impulse. The Indian captives brought from America at
various times gave to Englishmen the novel sight of men and women
from beyond the bounds of Christendom; people who had never been
baptized, and had never learned to wear English garments, "naked
slaves of the devil," as one of the early Virginia clergymen described
them. To the benevolent desire of Englishmen for the deliverance of
the savages from devil-worship and semi-nudity, there was added the
natural wish for ecclesiastical extension. The separation of England
from the Roman hierarchy had been a blow to the aspiration for an
unattainable catholicity cherished in one form or another by Christian
ecclesiastics of almost every school. It was not possible that the
great men who were leaders of the English church in the reigns of
Elizabeth and James should be content with the narrow limits of "the
little English paddock," while Spanish conquerors and missionary
priests were winning for the Roman communion a new and vast dominion
in America. English ecclesiastics felt keenly the reproach made
against them by the Roman Catholics that they were not "converters of
infidels."
[Sidenote: Zeal of the clergy.]
Perhaps the earliest of all Anglican missionaries was Robert Hunt, the
first minister in Virginia, a light shining in a dark place indeed. He
bore with unfaltering courage and a sweet-hearted patience rarely
equaled in the history of martyrdom the accumulating miseries of
Jamestown, until he also perished in the general mortality. His
nobleness of spirit softened the detestable rivalries of the early
leaders. The most active and influential writers in favor of
colonization were clergymen such as Hakluyt, Symonds, Purchas, and
Crashaw. Other clergymen, following in the footsteps of Hunt, risked
life itself in the Virginia colony, while devout laymen spent their
money in its behalf. Thus did Anglican zeal further a colonization
that, by a curious perversity of outcome, resulted in founding a
nation of dissenters.
IX.
[Sidenote: The Ferrars.]
In the great hall of the house of Nicholas Ferrar, a London merchant,
the courts or meetings of the Virginia Company were held for years.
The two sons of this Nicholas Ferrar, John and Nicholas, served in
turn as deputy governors of the Virginia Company. This pious Ferrar
family, as it became influential, lent to the scheme of colonizing
Virginia something of the air of a project for propagating the gospel.
Nicholas, the father, gave money for the education of infidels in
Virginia. A school was founded there by the gifts of the pious, and
rewards were given to those colonists who would educate Indian
children in their families. After the younger Nicholas, who was a man
of remarkable zeal and activity, tinged with a romantic enthusiasm,
became deputy in 1622, the production of silk and wine and iron and
the educating of Indians in Christianity traveled on abreast. A
college was proposed, for which an endowment of thirteen hundred
pounds was collected, and to which a valuable library was bequeathed
by a settler. Practical men grumbled at the prematurity of all this,
and complained of those in charge that "they spent Michaelmas rent in
mid-summer moone." The governor of the colony, honest Sir Francis
Wyatt, wished that "little Mr. Ferrar were in Virginia, where he might
add to his zeal a knowledge of the country."
The horrible massacre of March, 1622, made the Indian question
something other than the Ferrars saw it. All schemes for educating the
savages were obliterated in a day. The only thought after this was how
to put the savages to death, old and young, men and women, more often
by foul means than by fair. The settlers even emulated, if they did
not surpass, the treachery of the Indians. With the dissolution of the
company by _quo warranto_ proceedings in 1624 the government of the
colony passed to the Crown, and the Ferrars had no more to do with
Virginia.
X.
[Sidenote: Later History of the Ferrars.]
[Sidenote: Peckard's Life of N. Ferrar.]
[Sidenote: Arminian Nunnery 1641.]
[Sidenote: Hearne's Langtoft's Chronicle, App. to Pref., cix.]
The later career of Nicholas Ferrar the younger, though without direct
relation to colonization, throws light on the age of colony
beginnings. Rejecting the offer of a rich bride, he bought for his
mother, now a widow, the manor lordship of Little Gidding, in
Huntingdonshire, and took the entire Ferrar family, including his
brother and his sister with eighteen children, into religious
retirement. Here this half-domestic, half-monastic community gave alms
to the poor, illuminated manuscripts of the Bible, and worshiped in
its little chapel with genuflections and other observances that
procured for it the nickname of the "Protestant Nunnery," and brought
down upon it the pious fury of the Puritans. Nicholas Ferrar, who had
taken deacon's orders, was the real head of the community. He prepared
at Little Gidding what is perhaps the earliest English monatesseron of
the four gospels. By means of relays of worshipers the Ferrars kept
their devotions always in progress. The entire Psalter was chanted
antiphonally during each twenty-four hours. Those whose turn it was to
keep vigil were wont to leave a candle at the door of Nicholas and to
wish him good-morrow at one o'clock in the morning, at which hour he
was accustomed to rise and begin the exercises of the day. The
strength of this belated mediæval saint gave way under a discipline so
austere, and he died in 1637. Little Gidding, with its "fair grove and
sweet walks letticed and gardened on both sides," was devastated a few
years later by the counter-zeal of the Puritans, who showed an
especial indignation against the organ, which they broke into pieces
to light fires for roasting the sheep of the Ferrars. Behold an
epitome of the first half of the seventeenth century--its idealism in
affairs, and its war to the death of opposing ideals in religion!
[Sidenote: Advent of Puritanism.]
In the very years during which the Ferrars were most active on
behalf of Virginia the earliest Puritan movement toward America set
in. The attenuated mediævalism of the Ferrars did not lack a
certain refined beauty, but it was hardly suited to the rough work
of hewing a road along which civilization might march into a savage
wilderness. The Puritans, with their robust contempt for æsthetic
considerations--making firewood of organs with delight, and feasting
without scruple on the sheep of those whom they esteemed
idolaters--were much the fitter to be champions against the American
Canaanites.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 74.]
Two of the chapter heads to Hakluyt's Westerne Planting, printed in 2d
Maine Historical Collections, ii, sufficiently indicate the views
prevailing at the time:
"V. That this voyadge will be a greate bridle to the Indies of the
Kinge of Spaine, and a meane that wee may arreste at our pleasure for
the space of tenne weekes or three monethes every yere, one or two
hundred saile of his subjectes Shippes at the fysshinge in Newfounde
lande.
"VI. That the mischefe that the Indian threasure wroughte in time of
Charles the late Emperor, father to the Spanishe Kinge, is to be had
in consideration of the Queens moste excellent Majestie, least the
contynuall comynge of the like threasure from thence to his sonne
worke the unrecoverable annoye of this realme, wherof already wee have
had very dangerous experience."
The heading of the first chapter should be added: "I. That this
westerne discoverie will be greately for thinlargemente of the gospell
of Christe whereunto the princes of the refourmed relligion are
chefely bounde, amongst whome her Majestie ys principall."
It would be foreign to the purpose of the present work to tell the
story of Spanish jealousy of Virginia, and of the diplomatic intrigues
for the overthrow of the colony. See documents in Mr. Alexander
Brown's Genesis of the United States. One can not but regret that Mr.
Brown did not give also the original of his Spanish papers; no
translation is adequate to the use of the historian.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 78.]
This method was recommended to the colonists as late as 1753 in
Pullein's Culture of Silk for the Use of the American Colonies, and it
had probably long prevailed on the continent of Europe.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 79.]
The authorities on the early efforts to raise silk, in addition to
those cited in the text and the margin, are too numerous to find place
here. The most valuable of all is, of course, the copy of the Records
of the Virginia Company after April, 1619, in the Library of Congress,
_passim_. See, for example, under date of December 13, 1620, and June
11, 1621. See also A Declaration of Virginia, 1620, and Purchas, pp.
1777-1787, Hamor's True Discourse, Smith's General History, Book II,
Anderson's Commerce under 1620, and various state papers abstracted by
Sainsbury, with Sainsbury's preface to the first volume of his
Calendar, and Hening, _passim_. The reader is also referred to Mr.
Bruce's Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century,
issued as these pages are passing into the hands of the printer. The
wildness of some of the proposals for the production of Virginia silk
in the Commonwealth period is almost surpassed by other projects of
the time. In Virginia Richly Valued, 1650, perfume was to be extracted
from the muskrat, and the James River sturgeon were to be
domesticated. Fishes may be "unwilded," says the author. Besides
feeding silkworms, the Indians were to be used in pearl fisheries in
Virginia waters. Wyckoff on Silk Manufacture, Tenth Census, says that
experimental silkworms had been taken to Mexico by the Spaniards in
1531, without any permanent results.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 82.]
Even in Elizabeth's time efforts had been made to procure naval stores
without the intervention of foreign merchants. As early as 1583,
Carlisle, who was son-in-law to Secretary Walsingham, had subscribed a
thousand pounds toward an American colony, which it was urged would
buy English woolens, take off idle and burdensome people, and, among
other things, produce naval stores. In 1601 Ralegh had protested
eloquently against the act to compel Englishmen to sow hemp. "Rather
let every man use his ground to that which it is most fit for," he
said. Edwards, Life of Ralegh, p. 272.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 83.]
Why Germans were sent it is hard to say, as glass was made in England
as early as 1557. Glass was produced in Virginia, according to
Strachey, who says: "Although the country wants not Salsodiack enough
to make glasse of, and of which we have made some stoore in a goodly
howse sett up for the same purpose, with all offices and furnases
thereto belonging, a little without the island, where Jamestown now
stands." History of Travaile into Virginnia Brittannia, p. 71. The
house appears to have been standing and in operation in 1624. Calendar
of Colonial Documents, January 30, February 16, and number 20, pp. 38,
39.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 83.]
Purchas, p. 1777, says that one hundred and fifty persons were sent
over two years earlier to set up three iron works, but the statement
seems hardly credible. In the midst of the misery following the
massacre of 1622, and notwithstanding the imminent probability of the
overthrow of the company, which was already impoverished, some of the
adventurers or shareholders sent nine men to Virginia to try a
different method of making iron from the one that had previously been
used. Letter of August 6, 1623, in Manuscript Book of Instructions in
Library of Congress, fol. 120. Having "failed to effect" the making of
iron "by those great wayes which we have formerly attempted," the
undiscouraged visionaries "most gladly embraced this more facile
project" of making iron "by bloom," but with a like result, of course.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 84.]
The raising of tobacco in Virginia was one of the earliest projects
entertained. "We can send ... tobacco after a yeare or two, five
thousand pounds a yeare." Description of the Now-discovered river and
Country of Virginia, with the Liklyhood of ensuing Ritches by
England's Ayd and Industry, May 21, 1607. Public Record Office,
printed in Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, iv, 59,
62. The paper is supposed to be from the pen of Captain Gabriel
Archer.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 85.]
In 1604 the king had, by a royal commission addressed to "our
treasurer of England," arbitrarily raised the duty on tobacco from
twopence a pound to six shillings tenpence. He was probably moved to
make this surprising change by his antipathy to tobacco; but by
increasing the profits of the farmers of customs and monopolists of
tobacco, he no doubt contributed to that abandonment of Virginia to
tobacco raising which seemed to him so lamentable. The use of Spanish
tobacco in England was general before that from Virginia began to take
its place. Barnabee Rich says, in 1614: "I have heard it tolde that
now very lately there hath bin a cathologue taken of all those new
erected houses that have set vppe that trade of selling tobacco in
London, ande neare about London, and if a man may beleeue what is
confidently reported, there are found to be vpward of 7000 houses that
doth liue by that trade." He says such shops were "almost in euery
lane and in euery by-corner round about London." The Honestie of this
Age, p. 30.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 86.]
The MS. records of the Virginia Company and the State papers relating
to Virginia in the Public Record Office, London, are the most
important authorities on the subjects treated in the text. On the
commodities attempted at the outset, Manuscript Book of Instructions,
Library of Congress, the first volume of Hening's Statutes, _passim_,
and Purchas, pp. 1777-1786, _passim_. On the inferiority of the Indian
tobacco, see Strachey, p. 121.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 89.]
Peckard's Life of Ferrar supplies many of the particulars in this
section. The Records of the Virginia Company and other original
authorities do not sustain all of Peckard's statements. The author's
view is evidently distorted by biographer's myopia. He often seems to
depend on tradition, but in some passages his touch is more sure, and
he writes like a man who has documents before him. Arthur Woodnoth's
Short Collection of the Most Remarkable Passages from the Originall to
the Dissolution of the Virginia Company is of great value. It is a
scarce tract, which I met first in the White-Kennett Library, in the
rooms of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. It is also in
the British Museum, Harvard College, and the Library of Congress. It
is to be taken with discrimination, but the view of the inner workings
of court intrigue as it affected Virginia is so fresh and detailed
that it would be a pity to miss its information. It was printed in
1651. There is a brief sketch of the life of Sandys in Brown's Genesis
of the United States, ii, 993.
[Sidenote: Note 11, page 90.]
Hakluyt's Discourse concerneing Westerne Planting, printed first in
the Maine Historical Collections, second series, vol. ii, page 11.
"And this enterprise the princes of religion (amonge whome her
Majestie ys principall) oughte the rather to take in hande because
papists confirme themselves and drawe other to theire side shewinge
that they are the true Catholicke churche because they have bene the
onely converters of many millions of infidells. Yea, I myself have
bene demanded of them how many infidells have bene by us converted."
BOOK II.
THE PURITAN MIGRATION.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
_RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF PURITANISM._
I.
[Sidenote: Love of display in Elizabeth's time.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Machyn's Diary, 324, note.]
Not religious disputants only, but the world in general, exaggerated
the importance of vestments and ceremonies in the reign of Elizabeth.
The love of formality and display that characterized the Renascence
was then at its height. It was a time of pomps and royal progresses.
Great historic characters went about dressed like performers in a
show. Some of the queen's gowns were adorned with jewels on every
available inch of space. These bespangled robes were draped over vast
farthingales, which spread out like tables on which her arms might
rest, and her appearance when thus attired has been compared to that
of an Oriental idol. Her courtiers and statesmen were equally fond of
dazzling the spectator. Ralegh wore a pendent jewel on his hat
feather, and the value of the gems on his shoes was estimated at six
thousand six hundred pieces of gold. The love of pomp was not confined
to the court; every nobleman and country gentleman kept his house
filled with idle serving men, the sons of neighboring gentlemen or
yeomen, whose use was to "grace the halls" of their patron by their
attendance and to give dignity to his hospitality. High sheriffs and
other officials performed their functions with thirty or forty men in
livery at their heels, even borrowing the retainers of their friends
to lend state to their office. Edward VI set out upon a progress in
1551 with a train of four thousand mounted men. These were noblemen
and gentlemen with their retainers. He was obliged to dismiss all but
a hundred and fifty of this vast army of display lest it should "eat
up the country." The gorgeous progresses of Elizabeth are too well
known to need description. A painting of the time shows her to us in
the act of making a friendly call on her cousin-german, Lord Hunsdon.
She is sitting under a canopy, and is borne on the shoulders of men
and attended by a brilliant train of lords and ladies on foot. It was
truer in the days of Shakespeare than it has been since that "all the
world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players."
[Sidenote: The age of the drama.]
A passionate love of the theater was inevitable in such a time. The
best poetry then took a dramatic form; even history was taught from
the stage; and satire and polemics felt the attraction and were often
put into imaginary dialogues. It was Shakespeare's good fortune that
he happened to live among a people fond of show and in an age
dramatic as well as poetic to its very core. Genius is nourished by
sympathy, and supremely great performance is rendered possible only by
the rare coincidence of the great man and a fitting environment.
[Sidenote: Display in dress.]
[Sidenote: Peckard's Life of Ferrar.]
[Sidenote: Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, _passim_.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
Dress signified more to the men of the time of Elizabeth and James
than it is easy for us moderns to imagine. Greatness declared itself
by external display. The son of a rich merchant when he returned from
his travels decked himself in gorgeous apparel, and formally made his
appearance on the Exchange like a butterfly newly emerged. It was thus
that his parents brought the young man out in the world. A sum equal
in purchasing power to several thousand dollars in our time is said to
have been spent on one pair of trunk hose. Men of the lowest ranks,
desirous of appearing more than they were, impoverished themselves in
buying expensive hats and hose; and it is recorded that women
suffering for the necessaries of life sometimes contrived to adorn
themselves with velvet. For the very reason that so much importance
was attached to dress, laws were made to repress inappropriate display
in people of lower rank. Even the severe Puritan moralists did not
object to the pomp of the great, but to the extravagant imitation of
it by those who had no right to such ostentation. It was with
difficulty that men could conceive of greatness without display. To
refuse a bishop his vestments was to abate something of his lofty
rank.
II.
[Sidenote: Observance of ceremonies.]
[Sidenote: Compare _supra_, p. 41.]
[Sidenote: Strachey, in Purchas, iv, 17-54.]
[Sidenote: De la Warr's letter, in Strachey's Virginia, p. xxix.]
Along with a love for external show went a scrupulous observance of
decorous and often pompous ceremonies. Englishmen in the sixteenth and
the early part of the seventeenth century never omitted to observe
proper formality, no matter how dire the emergency. One may see this
exemplified by reverting to some of the earliest events in American
history. When Gates arrived at Jamestown near the close of the
"starving time," he found only the gaunt ghosts of men clamoring to be
taken from the scene of so many horrible miseries. Instead of giving
immediate attention to the sufferings of the people, he caused the
little church bell to be rung. Such of the inhabitants as could drag
themselves out of their huts repaired once more to the now ruined and
unfrequented church with its roof of sedge and earth supported by
timbers set in crotches. Here the newly arrived chaplain offered a
sorrowful prayer, and then George Percy, the retiring governor,
delivered up his authority to Sir Thomas Gates, who thus found himself
in due and proper form installed governor of death, famine, and
desperation. When Gates abandoned the wrecked town with his starving
company he fired a "peale of small shott," in order not to be wanting
in respect for a royal fort; and when De la Warr arrived, a few days
later, he made his landing with still greater pomp than that of Gates.
There was a flourish of trumpets on shipboard before he struck sail
in front of Jamestown. A gentleman of his party bore the colors of the
governor before him. The governor's first act when he set foot on
American soil was to fall on his knees and offer a long, silent
prayer, which was probably sincere though theatrical, after the manner
of the age. He rose at length and marched up into the ruined town. As
he passed into the stockade by the water gate, which was shabbily off
its hinges, the color bearer dropped down before him and allowed the
colors to fall at the feet of his lordship, who proceeded to the
tumble-down chapel, under the earthen roof of which the authority over
the colony was duly transferred to his hands with such solemnities as
were thought proper. Whenever Lord De la Warr went to church at
Jamestown he was attended by the councilors, captains, and gentlemen,
and guarded by fifty men with halberds, wearing De la Warr's livery of
showy red cloaks. The governor's seat was a chair covered with green
velvet. It was in the choir of the now reconstructed little church,
and a velvet cushion lay on the table before him to enable him to
worship his Maker in a manner becoming the dignity of a great lord
over a howling wilderness. More than a quarter of the able-bodied men
in Virginia were needed to get the governor to church and back again
aboard the ship where he dwelt.
[Sidenote: Formality at Plymouth.]
[Sidenote: De Rasieres's letter, 2d N. Y. Hist. Coll., ii, 352.]
Even at a later date in the rather hungry little Pilgrim colony at
Plymouth almost as much ceremony was observed, though the people were
extreme Puritans without rank. At beat of drum on Sunday morning the
men came to Captain Standish's door with their cloaks on, each bearing
a musket or matchlock. They proceeded to church three abreast, led by
a sergeant. In the rear walked the governor, in a long robe. On his
right was Elder Brewster, wearing a cloak. On the governor's left was
Captain Miles Standish, who also wore a cloak and side arms, and
carried a small cane as a sort of baton of authority perhaps. Thus
"they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him."
[Sidenote: Puritanism an outgrowth of the time.]
It was only in an age such as this that resistance to the celebration
of rites and the observance of forms could be made a capital article
of faith by the Puritan, and later by the Quaker. The wearing of a
surplice, the propriety of doffing the hat on certain occasions, was a
matter for scruple and violent debate, for the grave consideration of
the lawgiver and magistrate, and for severe penalties.
III.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Puritan movement.]
[Sidenote: Fuller's Ch. Hist., book v, sec. iv, 27, 28.]
[Sidenote: 1536.]
In the brief Protestant reign of Edward VI there were those who
objected to "the vestments," and one may even find what were afterward
called Puritan opinions condemned among current errors in the
twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII; but Puritanism--as a party protest
against pomp and ceremonialism in religious worship--had its origin in
the persecution of Queen Mary's time. The English Protestants who
fled from that fiery ordeal found refuge chiefly in Protestant cities
of the Continent. Strasburg, Frankfort, Basel, Zurich, and Geneva were
the places to which these English exiles mainly resorted. Zurich and
Strasburg became cities of refuge for many of those who were to become
leaders of the Anglican or Conservative party, while others who tended
to what were afterward called Puritan views went sooner or later to
Geneva, where Calvin was the dominant influence.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1553.]
[Sidenote: The English exiles.]
In the cities in which they found safety the exiles organized English
churches. More remarkable religious communities were never gathered
into single congregations. Five bishops and five deans of the English
Church, and more than fifty eminent doctors of divinity, with younger
men who were destined to play a leading part in the future, were
comprised in these little churches. Such communities soon became
centers of animated discussion and debate.
[Sidenote: Outbreak of dissension.]
During the preceding reign of King Edward VI, English Protestantism
had been forced into many compromises within itself. No form of
religious life can become national without exacting of its advocates
of differing shades of opinion many sacrifices for the sake of unity;
but now that the leaders of English Protestantism were in exile they
found themselves in a measure freed from motives of policy and with
leisure to develop and apply their theories. A passion for the ideal
thus suddenly unchained easily becomes rampant. There sprang up
swiftly a dispute between the church in Strasburg and the church in
Frankfort on matters of government. The reformatory spirit is rarely
conciliatory, and in its excess and overflow it is wont to be
pragmatic and impertinent. Some of the reformers of Strasburg felt
bound to go over to Frankfort and re-reform the reformed English
church there; and the little English community in Frankfort was soon
torn asunder between the followers of Richard Cox and those of John
Knox--the same who was afterward so famous in the Scottish
reformation.
[Sidenote: Character of the debates at Frankfort.]
This dispute in Frankfort between the Coxans and the Knoxans, as they
were called, had all the characteristics that render church quarrels
odious. One finds in it the bitterness of slanderous violence--the
little deceptions and unmanly treacheries that characterize such
debates and disclose the sorry threadbareness of human saintship even
in exiles and martyrs for conscience' sake. But, petty as were these
squabbles at Frankfort, they produced results of the first magnitude.
Small things change the whole course of history when they lie near the
fountain head of a great current. From the conflicting factions in the
church of the exiles at Frankfort were evolved the opposing parties
that were to give character to English Protestantism, and to modify
profoundly the history of England and as profoundly the history of the
United States.
[Sidenote: The rise of the two great parties.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
In the contentions of the English at Frankfort, resulting now in the
exiling from the city of one beaten minority and now in the departure
of another, and in the driving away of one leading disputant after
another, there appeared at length the features of the two great
parties of English Protestantism face to face for the first time. One
of these parties tried to hold all of antique ritual that the
Protestant conscience could be made to bear, insisted upon the
superior authority of the clergy, and sought to disturb as little as
possible the ancient order of the English church. On the other hand,
in the rapid changes produced by the Frankfort contentions, the
tendency of the ultra wing of the Protestants to the notion of a local
and independent church and to a democratic church government was
already apparent. Even the peculiarity of two ministers presiding over
one church, which was cherished later in New England, appeared among
the English at Frankfort and Geneva at this time.
[Sidenote: A purified ritual.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
While attempting to mediate between the parties at Frankfort, Calvin
expressed his preference for a ritual of greater purity than that
established by the English Prayer Book of King Edward's time. Extreme
Protestants rallied round this ideal of a liturgy purified of human
tradition. It was some years later, after the Frankfort church had
been dissolved and the exiles had returned to England, that this party
came to be known by the name of Puritan--that is, a party not so much
bent on purity of conduct as on purifying Protestant worship from
mediæval forms.
[Sidenote: Return of the exilies, 1558.]
After the death of Mary and the accession of Elizabeth the English
Protestants returned to their own country. The two great parties that
were to divide the English church had already begun to crystallize.
Those who had settled at Strasburg and Zurich came back hoping to
re-establish the Anglican Church on the conservative basis of the
Prayer Book of Edward VI. Those who returned from Basel and Geneva had
caught the spirit of the Calvinistic churches, and wished to push the
reformation to a more logical extreme; while the Frankfort church, or
what remained of it, had been storm-driven well-nigh to a theory of
congregational independence in church government.
[Sidenote: Results.]
The petty squabbles of the English exiles, transplanted to England,
grew into bitter feuds and brought forth persecutions and political
struggles. The settlement of New England, the battles of Marston Moor
and Naseby, the temporary overthrow of the English monarchy, the
growth of non-conformity, the modification of the English Constitution
and of all English life, were germinally present in the differences
between the exiles at Zurich and those at Geneva, and in the squabbles
of Cox and Knox, of Whithead and Horne at Frankfort-on-the-Main about
gowns and litanies and the authority of the priest. It is not often
that a great historical movement can be traced through a single rill
to its rise at the fountain head.
IV.
[Sidenote: The Puritan debate.]
[Sidenote: Certayne Qvestions concerning silk or vvool in the high
priest's ephod, 1605.]
The theological debates that fill so large a place in the history of
the first half of the sixteenth century in Europe were mainly
concerned with speculative dogmas. However futile controversies may
seem that seek to reduce to formulas the relations between God and
man, they have at least a topical dignity. But the debates about
ceremonies and vestments which the exiles brought back to England from
the Continent, and which held first place there during the reign of
Elizabeth and James, were bitter without being serious. A
life-and-death struggle concerning the wearing of "white surplices" or
the making of the sign of the cross in baptism can not but seem
frivolous to the modern mind. Learned scholars like Broughton and
Ainsworth thought it not beneath them to write tractates discussing
the material of which the ephod of a Jewish high priest was made. It
was learnedly demonstrated that the ephod was of silk, and there were
sober essays on the linsey-woolsey side of that controversy. To the
fine-spun mind of that time the character of the Jewish ephod was
thought to settle the propriety of the Christian surplice. To the
modern reader the whole debate about vestments and liturgies would be
amusing if it were not so tedious. It is necessary to steady one's
judgment of that age by remembering that deeper things sometimes lay
concealed under these disputes regarding the contemptible mint and
cumin of ecclesiasticism. Puritanism at its rise was an effort to
escape from formalism, the outgrowth of an aspiration for greater
spirituality in worship; but it gradually passed into an opposite
formalism as rigid as that from which it had escaped.
[Sidenote: Uniformity not possible.]
It was in vain that Elizabeth tried to compel uniformity. The
difference between the radical and the conservative is constitutional,
and is manifest in every period of agitation. Neither the mediation of
moderate men nor the compulsion of authority can bring these two
sempiternal divisions of the human race into agreement. The
conservative English churchman limited his Protestantism to the
rejection of the pope's authority, and to certain moderate reforms in
church government and ritual. He shuddered with alarm at every
proposal to reconstruct religious institutions which were moss-grown
with ancient sentiment. The extreme Puritan, on the other hand, went
about his work in the spirit of a Jehu. He saved all his reverence for
the precepts of the Bible, now becoming common in the vulgar tongue.
He applied biblical phraseology to the affairs of life in a way that
would have been impossible had he possessed any sense of humor. He
felt himself impelled by the call of God to carry out in England the
changes that had taken place in the Calvinistic churches of the
Continent, and to go even further. He would have no surplices, no sign
of the cross, no liturgy, no church holy days. Away with these rags
of Antichrist, was his cry. Let us get back to the simplicity of the
primitive ages. The Anglican, on the other hand, felt himself an
Englishman above all, and without a stately liturgy, great bishops in
square caps and lawn sleeves, Christmas feasts, solemn Good Fridays,
and joyous Easters, there would have remained for him no merry
England.
V.
[Sidenote: Growth of party spirit.]
The party line between Anglican and Puritan was not at once sharply
drawn. It was only after debates growing ever more acrimonious, after
persecutions and numberless exasperations, that the parties in the
Church of England fell into well-defined and hostile camps. If there
had been some relaxation of the requirements of uniformity, if a
conciliatory policy had been pursued by the government, the ultimate
division might have been postponed until party spirit had cooled; but
in that day blows took the place of words, and words had the force of
blows. The queen herself could write to a bishop who scrupled to do
what she desired, "By God, I will unfrock you!" and moderation in
debate was not to be expected from lesser folk.
[Sidenote: Puritanism the party of opposition.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
When the reformer has warmed to his work he looks about him for new
abuses to fall upon. The dominant discontent of any age is prone to
spread its wings over other grievances, and feebler movements seek
shelter from the strong. Puritanism no doubt gathered momentum from
the widespread agrarian and industrial disturbance in this and the
preceding reigns. The profit from sheep-raising had induced many manor
lords to inclose the wastes on which the peasants had pastured their
cattle for ages. The humble copy-hold tenant, having no longer grass
for his cows or mast for his pigs, was driven to distress by
agricultural progress. In some cases even the common fields,
cultivated in allotments from ancient times by the members of the
village communities, first as serfs and later as tenants, were turned
into sheepwalks, and hamlets of tenants' cottages were torn down to
make room for more profitable occupants of the soil. The worst
offenders were the greedy courtiers who had secured the estates of the
English monasteries. Workmen ruined by the dissolution of the guilds
were added to the ranks of the unhappy. All the discontent begotten of
these transitions from mediæval life tended to strengthen the leading
opposition--and that leading opposition was Puritanism.
VI.
[Sidenote: Widening the field of protest.]
Puritanism also progressively widened its field of protest. Beliefs
that Protestants rejected were symbolized by the vestments of bishop
and clergy. Advanced Protestants insisted that the shadows should be
banished with the substance, that the symbol should disappear with the
dogma. We have seen that in Frankfort the inchoate Puritan party
wished to abolish the litany and purge the service book of all the
remains of the old religion. This controversy raged in England, and
the Puritan side did not at first lack support even among the bishops.
But Elizabeth, the real founder of Anglicanism, molded the church to
her will, putting down Catholics and Puritans with a hard hand. The
more advanced of the party came at length to believe that all
"stinted" prayers "read out of a book" were contrary to the purity and
simplicity of Christian worship. The hostility of the bishops to that
which the Puritans believed to be the cause of God no doubt helped to
convince the persecuted party that the episcopal office itself was
contrary to Scripture.
[Sidenote: Puritanism becomes dogmatic.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
Most of the Puritans of Elizabeth's time, under the lead of the great
Cartwright, became Presbyterian in theory and sought to assimilate the
Church of England to the Calvinistic churches of the Continent,
holding that theirs was the very order prescribed by the apostles.
Another but much smaller division of the Puritans tended toward
independency, finding in the New Testament a system different from
that of Cartwright. Both the Presbyterians and those who held to local
church government wished to see their own system established by law.
Neither faction thought of tolerating Anglican practices if the
Anglicans could be put down. The notion of a state church with
prescribed forms of worship enforced by law was too deeply imbedded in
the English mind to be easily got rid of, and the spirit of
persecution pervaded every party, Catholic or Protestant. Every one
was sure that divine authority was on his side, and that human
authority ought to be.
VII.
[Sidenote: Anglicanism becomes dogmatic.]
A corresponding change began to take place in the Episcopal party. The
earlier defenders of Elizabeth's establishment argued, somewhat as
Hooker did later, that the "practice of the apostles" was not an
"invariable rule or law to succeeding ages, because they acted
according to the circumstances of the church in its infant and
persecuted state." Episcopal government they held to be allowable, and
maintained the attitude of prudent men who justify their compromise
with history and the exigency of the time, and advocate, above all,
submission to civil authority. But the tendency of party division is
to push both sides to more positive ground. There arose in the last
years of Elizabeth a school of High-churchmen led by Bancroft,
afterward primate, who turned away from Hooker's moderation and
assumed a more aggressive attitude. Like the Presbyterians and the
Independents and the Catholics, these in turn maintained that their
favorite system of church economy was warranted by divine authority,
and that all others were excluded.
[Sidenote: Failure of Elizabeth's policy.]
When the High-church leaders had reached the dogmatic assertion of
apostolic succession and a divinely appointed episcopal form of
government as essentials of a Christian church, the fissure between
the two ecclesiastical parties in England was complete. Each had
settled itself upon a supposed divine authority; each regarded the
other as teaching a theory contrary to the divine plan. Elizabeth's
policy of repression had produced a certain organic uniformity, but
the civil war of the seventeenth century was its ultimate result.
VIII.
[Sidenote: Bitterness of the debate.]
The controversy between the two Protestant parties naturally grew more
bitter as time went on. The silencing of ministers, the Fleet Prison,
the inquisitorial Ecclesiastical Commission, and other such
unanswerable arguments did not sweeten the temper of the Puritans. The
bitterness of the controversy reached its greatest intensity in 1588,
when there appeared a succession of anonymous tracts, most of them
signed Martin Marprelate. They seem to have been written mainly by the
same hand, but their authorship has been a matter of debate to this
day.
[Sidenote: The Marprelate tracts.]
[Sidenote: 1588.]
[Sidenote: The Marprelate tracts in Lenox Library.]
The sensation produced by these violent assaults is hardly conceivable
now. There were no newspapers then, and there was but little popular
literature. Here were little books printed no one knew where, written by
no one knew whom, concerning a religious controversy of universal
interest. They were couched in the phrase of the street, in the very
slang and cant of the populace, and were violent and abusive, sometimes
descending to sheer blackguardism. Marprelate went gunning for large
game; his deadliest abuse he let fly as from a blunderbuss at the very
heads of the English church. The Dean of Salisbury he calls "Doctor of
Diviltrie and Deane of Sarum." It was the first time in the history of
polemics that any one had addressed a high dignitary of the church with
such irreverent titles as "You grosse beaste!" "You block, you!"
Sometimes Martin bends his knees with mock reverence, as when he calls
the clergy "right poysond, persecuting and terrible priests." He blurts
out epithets against "the sinful, the unlawful, the broken, the
unnatural, false, and bastardly governours of the church; to wit,
archbishops and bishops"; and addresses them as "you enemies to the
state, you traytors to God and his worde, you Mar-prince, Mar-land,
Mar-magestrate, Mar-church, and Mar-commonwealth." The spice of the
books, that which gave them their popularity, was doubtless their
rollicking impudence. "Wo--ho, now, Brother London!" he cries to the
Bishop of London. "Go to, you Asse!" is a kind of kennel eloquence
relished by the populace. Martin seems even to giggle and sneer and hiss
in type in such expressions as "tse, tse, tse."
[Sidenote: An Admonition to the People of England, p. 25.]
The little books went everywhere. The Bishop of Winchester sadly
confessed that these "slanderous pamphlets, freshe from the presse,"
were "in men's hands and bosoms commonly." The queen and courtiers
read them, and students had nothing better to laugh at. Who will not
stop in the street to hear one clown rail cleverly at another? But to
see the bishops collectively and the primate and others severally put
into a pillory and pelted in this daring fashion by a man who knew
that his life would pay the forfeit for his libel if he could by any
means be discovered, was livelier sport than bull-baiting.
[Sidenote: Nugæ Antiquæ, ii, 89, 90.]
Dr. Cooper, Bishop of Winchester, replied to the first pamphlet
somewhat ponderously, as became a bishop who feels that the
proprieties forbid his being too interesting. Marprelate wanted
nothing better than a bishop for an antagonist; and while the whole
constabulary force of the kingdom was hunting him for his life, the
nimble Martin was chuckling over the excitement made by a new tract of
his, headed with the well-known street cry of a tub-mender, which
played derisively on Bishop Cooper's name, "Hay any worke for Cooper?"
This tract professed to be "printed in Europe not farre from some of
the Bounsing priestes." In this paper Martin shows to what depth a
religious debate in Elizabeth's time could descend; he stoops to make
the bishop ridiculous by twitting him with the infidelity of his wife,
a scandal which the unfortunate prelate had treated with "Socratical
and philosophical patience."
[Sidenote: Lenox Collection, N. Y. Pub. Library.]
[Sidenote: Comp. Bacon's An Advertisement touching Controversies,
etc.]
There were not wanting many imitators of Martin's grossness on the
other side of the controversy, who were just as libelous but for the
most part less clever. One of the tracts in reply was called An Almond
for a Parrat. The author says he had heard that Martin was dead, or,
as he expressed it, "that your grout-headed holinesse had turned uppe
your heeles like a tired jade in a medow and snorted out your
sorrowefull soule, like a mesled hogge on a mucke-hille." This is
beastly without being vivacious. While the press and the stage were
occupied with coarse retorts on Martinism, there appeared tracts in
favor of peace. There are other evidences of the existence of a
moderate party that lamented the excesses of both sides in this
debate.
IX.
[Sidenote: Advance of Puritan opinions.]
Puritanism was evolutionary from the beginning. Its earlier disputes
about vestments and litanies grew by degrees to a rejection of all
liturgies as idolatrous. Even the reading of the Bible as a part of
the service came at last to be reprehended by extremists, and the
repetition of the Lord's Prayer was thought dangerously liturgical.
The advanced Puritans sought to exclude from Christian worship
everything pleasing to the æsthetic sense, confounding bareness with
simplicity. Compromises continued to be made inside the church, but in
the ultimate ideal of Puritan worship there remained, besides the
sermon, nothing but long extemporary prayers and the singing by the
untrained voices of the congregation of literal versions of the Hebrew
Psalms--doggerel verse in cobblestone meters.
X.
[Sidenote: Opposition to May-poles.]
[Sidenote: 1549.]
[Sidenote: Rushworth, Pt. III, vol. ii, 749. A. D. 1644.]
In its early stages Puritanism was a crusade against idolatry, and
drew its inspiration in this, as in nearly everything else, from the
Old Testament. To the word "idolatry" it gave an inclusiveness not
found in the Jewish Scriptures, and puzzling to a mind accustomed to
modern ways of thinking. There was hardly any set observance of the
church in which constructive idolatry did not lie concealed. All holy
days except Sunday were abhorred as things that bore the mark of the
Beast. Even in the reign of Edward VI, long before the name of
Puritanism was known, the May-poles round which English people made
merry once a year were denounced as idols in a sermon preached at
Paul's Cross by Sir Stephen--the "Sir" being a polite prefix to a
clergyman's name. This Stephen, curate of St. Catherine Cree, was a
forerunner of Puritanism, who sometimes defiantly preached from an elm
tree in the chuchyard and read the service standing on a tomb on the
north side of the church. He wanted the saintly names of churches and
the heathen names of days of the week changed, so keen was his scent
for idolatry. The parish of St. Andrew Undershaft had received its
distinctive name from a very tall May-pole that overtopped the church
steeple. This pole was erected annually, and it rested from one May to
another on hooks under the eaves of a row of houses and stalls. In the
newborn Protestant zeal against idols Sir Stephen denounced
especially the lofty shaft of St. Andrew. The people in their rage
took it from the hooks and sawed it in pieces, and its sections were
appropriated by the several householders who had given it shelter and
who presently heaped its parts upon one great bonfire. Puritanism kept
up its Don Quixote battle against May-poles until there was hardly one
standing to seduce the people to idolatry. When the Puritan party came
into power, nearly a hundred years after the days of Sir Stephen of
St. Catherine Cree, one of its earliest laws ordered that all
May-poles--"an heathenish vanity generally abused to superstition and
wickedness"--be taken down.
XI.
[Sidenote: Austerity in morals.]
From denouncing constructive idolatry in organ music, litanies, and
May-poles, the transition to attack on the more real and substantial
evils in ordinary conduct was inevitable. History has many examples of
this pervasiveness of scrupulosity. The Puritan conscience had been
let loose to tear in pieces the remnants of old superstitions. It was
certain to break over into the field of conduct. Having set out to
reform the church, it took the world by the way.
[Sidenote: Pickering's ed., p. 172.]
As early as 1583 Philip Stubbes, a Puritan lawyer, issued his hot
little book, The Anatomie of Abuses. It deals with the immoralities
and extravagances of the time. Stubbes repeats the early Puritan
objection to the May-pole: it is a "stinckyng idol," he declares,
which the people bring from the woods, "followyng it with greate
devotion." And when they have set it up they "leape and daunce aboute
it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles." But
Stubbes takes a step forward and objects to the all-night May frolics
on account of their immorality. He says, "I have heard it credibly
reported by men of great gravitie, credite and reputation, that of
fourtie, three score, or a hundred maides goyng to the woods over
night, there have scarcely the third parte of them returned home
againe undefiled." As men of "great gravitie, credite and reputation"
were not likely to know the facts in this case, some of the immorality
with which Stubbes charges the young people may have been as fanciful
as the heathenism attributed to them. Imputed unrighteousness was a
part of the Puritan system. He denounces the wild excesses in dress
and the other follies of the time with a lack of a sense of proportion
which already foreshadows later Puritanism.
This secondary development of Puritanism by which its energies were
turned toward the regulation of conduct, as the disputes of the
Reformation period lost their violence, gave to the name Puritan a new
and higher sense. It is a phase of its history more important than all
its primary contentions over gowns and liturgies and hierarchies, or
its later debates about the five points of Calvinism and a sabbatical
Sunday. One may easily forget its austerity and extravagance, for by
the reform of manners this movement made the English race its debtor.
In no succeeding reaction have English morals reverted to the
ante-Puritan level. It is only by the religious ferments infused
successively by new sects and movements, of preaching friars,
Lollards, Puritans, Quakers, Methodists, Salvationists, that the great
unleavened mass of men is rendered gradually less sodden.
XII.
[Sidenote: Puritan decline.]
[Sidenote: _Supra_, page 115.]
[Sidenote: Rogers's Pref. to the 39 Articles.]
The last years of Elizabeth's long reign were years of apparent
Puritan decline. The old bugbear of popery was receding into the past,
and a new generation had come on the stage that had no memory of the
struggles of the reigns of Henry and Edward and Mary. The danger from
the Armada had brought English patriotism to the point of fusion. Even
the persecuted Catholics rallied to the support of the queen against
Philip. The government of Elizabeth rose to the zenith of its
popularity on the overthrow of the Armada. It was just at this
inopportune moment, when the nation had come to feel that the England
of Elizabeth was the greatest England the ages had known, that there
came forth from a small coterie of the oppressed ultra-Puritans the
Martin Marprelate tracts. However effective these may have been at
first in making the bishops ridiculous, there followed a swift
reaction. The Puritans were dubbed Martinists, and henceforth had to
bear the odium of the boisterous vulgarity and libelous exaggeration
of the Marprelate lampoons. The queen's government, stronger now than
ever in the affection of the people, put in force severe
ecclesiastical measures against nonconformists in the church, and sent
Brownists, or Separatists, to die by the score in loathsome prisons.
Half a dozen of their leaders were dispatched by the shorter road of
the gallows. The long reign of the queen had by this time discouraged
those who hoped for a change of policy at her death. Hooker's
masterful and delightful prose, informed by a spirit of winning
moderation, was arrayed on the side of the Anglicans by the
publication of parts of his Ecclesiastical Polity in 1594 and 1597.
But Puritanism suffered most from the persistence of Archbishop
Whitgift and others in efforts to suppress all nonconformity in the
church. These champions of Anglicanism, in the swaggering words of one
of them, "defended the prelacy, stood for the power of the state, put
the new doctors to the foil, profligated the elders, set upon the
presbytery, and so battered the new discipline as hitherto they could
never nor hereafter shall ever fortify and repair the decay thereof."
The presbyteries which Cartwright and his friends had formed within
the Church of England were swept out utterly by the archbishop's
broom. The Puritan movement which had begun almost simultaneously with
Elizabeth's reign seemed to be doomed to languish and die with the old
queen who had been its resolute and lifelong antagonist.
XIII.
[Sidenote: Seeking a positive ground.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
For the first thirty years or more of its existence Puritanism was
mainly a bundle of negations, and no bundle of mere negations is a
sufficient reason for maintaining a party. No vestments, no
ceremonies, no bishops, were effective cries in the hot Reformation
period. But the new generation had ceased to abhor these left-overs of
Romanism. Bishops, gowns, prayer books, had become Protestant to most
of the people by association. To find additional reasons for differing
from Anglican opponents was a party necessity. The new debates which
sprang up in the last years of the sixteenth century were not
deliberately planned by the Puritans, as some of their opponents
asserted. They came by a process of evolution. But a period of
temporary decline in a movement of this sort hastens its natural
unfolding. The leaders are forced to seek the advantage of such new
issues as offer when the old ones fail. In the last years of
Elizabeth, Puritanism was molting, not dying.
XIV.
[Sidenote: The Puritan Sabbath.]
The great reformers of the sixteenth century had sought to strip from
the Christianity of their time what they deemed the second-hand
garments of Judaism. Along with the theory of a priesthood they
declared also against a doctrine known in the church at least from the
fifth century, that the fourth commandment enforced on Christians the
keeping sacred in some sense of Sundays and other church holy days.
Luther maintained that a commandment to keep the Sabbath "literally
understood does not apply to Christians, for it is entirely outward,
like other ordinances of the Old Testament." He thought a festival day
important for rest and for attending religious worship; but with
characteristic oppugnancy he says: "If anywhere the day is made holy
for the mere day's sake, ... then I order you to dance on it, and
feast on it, to do anything that shall remove this encroachment on
Christian liberty." The Augsburg Confession makes a similar statement
of the Protestant position. Calvin considered the fourth commandment
binding on Christians only in a sense mystical and highly Calvinistic.
It signified that "we should rest from our own works" under the
Christian dispensation. He even suggested that some other day of the
week might be chosen as a day of rest and worship at Geneva for an
exhibition of Christian liberty in this regard. His practice was
conformed to his theory. It is incidentally related that when John
Knox once visited the Genevan reformer on Sunday, he found him playing
at bowls. Knox was not more a sabbatarian than Calvin.
XV.
[Sidenote: Rise of the strict Sabbath.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: Compare Marsden's Early Puritans (1850) page 242, where
Becon's Catechism and Coverdale are quoted.]
[Sidenote: Robert's Social Hist. of the Southern Counties, p. 239.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
Writers on this subject have generally agreed in dating the rise of
the Puritan Sabbath from the appearance, in 1595, of Dr. Bownd's book
on The Sabbath of the Old and of the New Testament. But the doctrine
of the strict keeping of Sunday may be traced farther back. In truth,
the difference between the English and the Continental Sunday dates
from the Reformation. The protests of Luther and Calvin go to show
that Sunday had in the church before the Reformation, theoretically if
not in practice, the sanctity of a church feast. The English
Reformation was conservative, like all other English revolutions.
English reformers retained the Catholic Sunday, as they did the
vestments and national hierarchy of the old church. Thomas Hancock has
been styled "the Luther of the southwest of England." He was the great
preacher of Poole in the days of Edward VI. That he, like other
English reformers, did not agree with Luther in rejecting the
obligation to rest on Sunday is shown by the record, for the voice of
Poole was the voice of Hancock. About 1550 the juries in the Admiralty
Court of Poole were charged to inquire into Sunday fishing; and so
advanced was the premature Puritanism of Edward's time that even the
leaving of nets in the sea over Sunday was to be investigated. Here
was a strictness unknown in Catholic times.
XVI.
[Sidenote: _Supra_, page 16.]
[Sidenote: Early English Text Society Reprint, 106, 107, 108.]
The word Sabbath does not occur in these early entries. But in the
troubles among the Marian exiles at Frankfort, where so many other
traits of Puritanism first came above the horizon, it is significant
that one finds Sunday called the Sabbath. Sabbath as applied to Sunday
occurs first in literature, perhaps, in 1573, and then it is
considered necessary to explain it. Bullein's Dialogue against the
Fever Pestilence, a work of considerable popularity, first appeared as
early as 1564. In the edition of 1573 there was inserted a new passage
not found in the earlier issue. Mendax is relating incredible tales of
travel in lands unknown, after the manner of David Ingram and other
returned adventurers. Up to this point all is pure lying merely for
the fun of the thing, or perhaps to ridicule the exaggerations of
travelers. But the interpolated passage is not of a piece with the old
garment into which it is patched. It is less grotesque and humorous,
and it smacks of incipient Puritanism in several flavors. It treats
first of all of the "Kepyng of the Saboth Daie," "whiche is the
seventh daie, that is sondaie," in the imaginary city of "Nodnol," an
anagram of London. The gates are shut, and nobody is allowed to "goe,
neither ride forth of the Citie duryng that daie, except it be after
the euenyng praier; then to walke honestlie into the sweete fieldes,
and at every gate in the time of service there are warders." "What so
ever hee be he muste kepe hollie the Sabboth daie, and come to the
churche both man, woman, young and olde." "There were no people
walking abroad in the service tyme; no, not a Dogge or catte in the
streate, neither any Taverne doore open that daie, nor wine bibbyng
in them, but onely almose, fasting and praier." This is perhaps the
oldest extant statement of an early Puritan ideal of Sabbath-keeping.
XVII.
[Sidenote: Cox's Literature of the Sabbath Question, _sub anno_.]
[Sidenote: Robert's Southern Counties, pp. 238, 239.]
[Sidenote: 1583.]
[Sidenote: 1588.]
Scruples regarding recreations on Sunday come distinctly into view in
the title of a sermon preached at Paul's Cross in 1576. In 1580 the
magistrates of London secured from the queen a prohibition of the
performance of plays within the limits of the city on Sundays. In
other municipalities--Brighton, Yarmouth, and Lyme--ordinances were
made about this time against such offenses as the prosecution on
Sunday of the herring fisheries, cloth working, and other labors, and
even against the Sunday practice of archery, formerly thought a
patriotic exercise. There are other evidences of a movement,
especially in the south of England, in favor of a stricter Sabbath in
these and the following years. Stubbes does not fail to denounce
"heathnicall exercises upon the Sabbaoth day, which the Lorde would
have consecrated to holy uses." The Puritan mode of Sabbath-keeping
already existed among the chosen few. "The Sabboth daie of some is
well observed," says Stubbes, "namely, in hearing the blessed worde of
God read, preached, and interpreted; in private and publique praiers;
in reading of godly psalmes; in celebrating the sacraments; and in
collecting for the poore and indigent, which are the true uses and
endes whereto the Sabbaoth was ordained." He records the opposite
belief of his opponents that Sunday was ordained "onely to use what
kinde of exercises they thinke good themselves." In practice this was
the rule of the English people at large. These opposite opinions come
into view when Martin Marprelate a few years later berates the Bishop
of London for playing at bowls on Sunday.
XVIII.
[Sidenote: Bownd on the Sabbath.]
[Sidenote: 1595.]
[Sidenote: 1592.]
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
Dr. Bownd's book on The Sabbath of the Old and the New Testament,
which, if we may believe its opponents, was nearly ten years "in the
hammering," was the outcome of a sentiment already rising among the
Puritans, and not wholly confined to that party. It was preceded by a
little work of Richard Greenham which seems to have been circulated
for some years in manuscript after a fashion of that time, and to have
had at first more influence on practice than Bownd's formal treatise.
Greenham was Bownd's stepfather, and his work was the parent of
Bownd's, which is distinctly more extreme. But Dr. Bownd's book is
none the less memorable as a point of departure, because in it the
opinions on this subject which have since prevailed so generally in
all English-speaking lands "were for the first time broadly and
prominently asserted in Christendom"; at least, they were here first
systematically propounded and defended. Bownd held that the fourth
commandment is partly moral, in the phrase of the casuists. He
shifted the obligation to the first day of the week by arguments now
familiar, and he laid down rules for the observance of the day. Honest
recreations and lawful delights he flatly forbids on Sundays, but he
rather obsequiously makes some allowance for the "feasts of noblemen
and great personages on this day." People of rank do not wholly escape
him, however, for he points a moral with the story of a nobleman whose
child was born with a face like that of a dog, because the father had
hunted on the Lord's Day. He allows the ringing of only one bell to
call the people to church on Sunday. Chimes were quite too pleasing to
accord with a severe Sabbath.
XIX.
[Sidenote: Spread of Bownd's opinions.]
[Sidenote: Cartwright's Admonition to Parliament, 1572.]
[Sidenote: Robert's Southern Counties, pp. 37, 38.]
Such rigor fell in with the passion of that age for formal observance
and with the exigent temper of the Puritans by whom Bownd's views were
rapidly and universally accepted. The stricter divines might well be
glad of a new lever for reforming the old English Sunday, which was
devoted, out of service time, to outdoor games, to the brutally cruel
sports of bull and bear baiting, to merry morris-dances, in which the
performers were gayly decked and hung with jingling bells in different
keys, as well as to coarse farces called interludes, which were played
on stages under booths and sometimes in the churches. As an austere
reaction against frivolity, Puritanism pushed Sabbath-keeping to its
extreme, reprobating even the most innocent and domestic recreations,
and changing a day of rest and refreshment into one of alternate
periods of application to religious devotion and of scrupulous
vacuity. Bownd's rather ultra propositions were carried yet further
when reproduced by high-strung preachers. It is said that some of
these declared that the ringing of more than one bell to call people
to church on the Sabbath was as great a sin as murder, adultery, or
parricide. The lack of a sense of proportion is the specific
distinction of the zealot and the polemic. This lack was not peculiar
to the Puritans, however. Joseph Hall, afterward a well-known bishop,
could address men so worthy as John Robinson and his colleague in such
words as these: "Your souls shall find too late ... that even
whoredoms and murders shall abide an easier answer than separation."
Perhaps one may rather say that a lack of the sense of proportion in
morals was a trait of that age, an age of zealots and polemics.
XX.
[Sidenote: Prevalence of the strict Sabbath.]
[Sidenote: Fuller's Ch. Hist. of Britain, book ix, sect. viii, 20,
21.]
In such a time Dr. Bownd's book easily captivated the religious
public, and there arose a passion for a stricter Sabbath. According to
Fuller, the Lord's Day, especially in towns, "began to be precisely
kept, people becoming a law to themselves, forbearing such sports as
yet by statute permitted; yea, many rejoicing at their own restraint
herein. On this day the stoutest fencer laid down the buckler; the
most skillful archer unbent the bow, counting all shooting beside the
mark; May-games and morris-dancers grew out of request; and good
reason that bells should be silenced from jingling about men's legs,
if their very ringing in steeples were adjudged unlawful." Some
learned scholars were impressed by Bownd's argument, and others who
did not agree with his conclusions thought it best not to gainsay
them, "because they tended to the manifest advance of religion." And
indeed the new zeal for Sabbath-keeping must have incidentally
promoted morals and good order in so licentious an age.
[Sidenote: Opposition to Bownd.]
[Sidenote: Fuller's Church History, book ix, sect. viii, 21.]
[Sidenote: Note 11.]
But a violent opposition quickly arose. Some opposed the book as
"galling men's necks with a Jewish yoke against the liberty of
Christians," and many of the clergy of the new high-church type
resented the doctrine of a Christian Sabbath, asserting that it put
"an unequal lustre on the Sunday on set purpose to eclipse all other
holy days to the derogation of the authority of the church." There
were those who asserted that the "brethren," as they styled them, had
brought forth Bownd's book, intending by this "attack from an odd
corner" to retrieve lost ground. The manifest advantage to Puritanism
from the shifting of the ground of debate, aroused Archbishop
Whitgift. In 1599 he made the tactical mistake of ordering the book
called in, and in 1600 Chief-Justice Popham forbade the reprinting of
it. The price of the work was doubled at once, and it was everywhere
sought for, books being "more called on when called in," as Fuller
says. When it could not be had in print, it was transcribed by
enthusiastic admirers and circulated "from friend to friend" in
manuscript. As soon as Whitgift's "head was laid," a new and enlarged
edition was published.
[Sidenote: Note 12.]
[Sidenote: 1611.]
[Sidenote: Note 13.]
The theory of a Sunday-Sabbath, which from the first was not confined
to the Puritans, permeated English and American thought and life. But
from that time forward the Puritans made rigid Sabbath-keeping the
very mark and password of the faithful. From England the theory spread
northward to Scotland, where it found a congenial soil. The strict
observance of Sunday was embodied in those Laws, Divine, Moral, and
Martial, under which Sir Thomas Dale oppressed Virginia, years before
the earliest Puritan migration carried it to the coast of New England.
On that coast Bownd's Sabbath took on its deepest hue, becoming at
last as grievous an evil, perhaps, as the frivolity it had supplanted.
XXI.
[Sidenote: Effect on Puritanism.]
The Puritans protesting against Hebraism in vestments, in priesthood,
in liturgy, and in festivals, fell headlong into the Pharisaism of the
rigid Sabbath. History records many similar phenomena. To escape from
the spirit of one's age is difficult for an individual, impossible
perhaps for a sect or party. Nevertheless, the Sabbath agitation had
given a new impulse to the Puritan movement--had, indeed, given it a
positive party cry, and had furnished it with a visible badge of
superior sanctity.
[Sidenote: The new Puritanism.]
The Calvinistic controversy which broke out almost simultaneously
with that about the Sabbath and prevailed throughout the reign of
James I, added yet one more issue, by making Puritanism the party of
a stern and conservative orthodoxy, as opposed to the newer
Arminianism which spread so quickly among the High-Church clergy.
From all these fresh developments Puritanism gained in power and
compactness, if it lost something of simplicity and spirituality.
Standing for ultra-Protestantism, for good morals, for an ascetic
Sabbath, for a high dogmatic orthodoxy, Puritanism could not but win
the allegiance of the mass of the English people, and especially of
the middle class. It was this new, compact, austere, dogmatic,
self-confident Puritanism, when it had become a political as well as
a religious movement, that obliterated Laud and Charles and set up
the Commonwealth. And in studying the evolution of this later
Puritanism we have been present at the shaping of New England in Old
England.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 99.]
Evelyn's Diary, pp. 4, 5; date, 1634: "My father was appointed Sheriff
for Surrey and Sussex before they were disjoyned. He had 116 servants
in liverys, every one livery'd in greene sattin doublets. Divers
gentlemen and persons of quality waited on him in the same garbe and
habit, which at that time (when 30 or 40 was the usual retinue of a
High Sheriff) was esteem'd a great matter.... He could not refuse the
civility of his friends and relations who voluntarily came themselves,
or sent in their servants." Compare Chamberlain's remarks about Sir
George Yeardley, whom he styles "a mean fellow," and says that the
king had knighted him when he was appointed Governor of Virginia,
"which hath set him up so high that he flaunts it up and down the
streets in extraordinary bravery with fourteen or fifteen fair
liveries after him." Domestic Correspondence, James I, No. 110,
Calendar, p. 598. The propriety of keeping so many idle serving men is
sharply called in question in a tract entitled Cyuile and Vncyuile
Life, 1579, and an effort is made to prove the dignity of a serving
man's position, while its decline is confessed in A Health to the
Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, 1598. Both of these tracts are
reprinted in Inedited Tracts, etc., Roxburghe Library, 1868. The
serving man was not a menial. He rendered personal services to his
master or to guests, he could carve on occasion, and as a successor to
the military retainers of an earlier time he was ready to fight in any
of his master's quarrels; but his principal use was to lend dignity to
the mansion and to amuse the master or his guests with conversation
during lonely hours in the country house. Among the first Jamestown
emigrants were some of these retainers, as we have seen.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 100.]
The Anatomie of Abuses, by Philip Stubbes, 1583, Pickering's reprint,
pages 16, 17: "It is lawfull for the nobilitie, the gentrie and
magisterie to weare riche attire, euery one in their callyng. The
nobility and gentrie to innoble, garnish, and set forth birthes,
dignities, and estates. The magisterie to dignifie their callynges....
But now there is suche a confuse mingle mangle of apparell, and suche
preposterous excesse thereof, as euery one is permitted to flaunt it
out in what apparell he lusteth himself, or can get by any kinde of
meanes. So that it is very hard to know who is noble, who is
worshipfull, who is a gentleman, who is not; for you shal haue those
which are neither of the nobilitie, gentilitie nor yeomanrie ... go
daiely in silkes, veluettes, satens, damaskes, taffaties and suche
like; notwithstanding that they be bothe base by birthe, meane by
estate, and seruile by callyng. And this I compte a greate confusion,
and a generall disorder in a Christian common wealth."
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 106.]
A Brieff Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankfort, 1564, is the
primary authority. It is almost beyond doubt that Whittingham, Dean of
Durham, a participant in the troubles, wrote the book. The Frankfort
struggles have been discussed recently in Mr. Hinds's The Making of
the England of Elizabeth, but, like all writers on the subject, Hinds
is obliged to depend almost solely on Whittingham's account. The
several volumes of letters from the archives of Zurich, published by
the Parker Society, give a good insight into the forces at work in the
English Reformation. See, for example, in the volume entitled Original
Letters, 1537-1558, that of Thomas Sampson to Calvin, dated
Strasburgh, February 23, 1555, which shows the Puritan movement half
fledged at this early date when Calvin's authoritative advice is
invoked. "The flame is lighted up with increased vehemence amongst us
English. For a strong controversy has arisen, while some desire the
book of reformation of the Church of England to be set aside
altogether, others only deem some things in it objectionable, such as
kneeling at the Lord's Supper, the linen surplice, and other matters
of this kind; but the rest of it, namely, the prayers, scripture
lessons and the form of the administration of baptism and the Lord's
Supper they wish to be retained."
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 106.]
There are many and conflicting accounts of the origin of the name. In
the Narragansett Club Publications, ii, 197-199, there is an
interesting statement of some of these by the editor of Cotton's
Answer to Roger Williams, in a note.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 111.]
That the Puritans early made common cause with the suffering tenantry
is not a matter of conjecture. Philip Stubbes, in 1583, in the
Anatomie of Abuses, pp. 126, 127, writes: "They take in and inclose
commons, moores, heathes, and other common pastures, where out the
poore commonaltie, were wont to haue all their forrage and feedyng for
their cattell, and (whiche is more) corne for themselves to liue vpon;
all which are now in most places taken from them, by these greedie
puttockes to the great impouerishyng and vtter beggeryng of many
whole townes and parishes.... For these inclosures bee the causes why
riche men eate vpp poore men, as beastes dooe eate grasse." One might
cite recent economic writers on the effect of inclosures, but the
conservative laments of the antiquary Aubrey, in his Introduction to
the Survey of Wiltshire, written about 1663, give us a nearer and more
picturesque, if less philosophical, view. He says: "Destroying of
Manours began Temp. Hen. VIII., but now common; whereby the mean
People live lawless, no body to govern them, they care for no body,
having no Dependance on any Body. By this Method, and by the Selling
of the Church-Lands, is the Ballance of the Government quite alter'd
and put into the Hands of the common People." Writing from what he had
heard from his grandfather, he says: "Anciently the Leghs i. e.
Pastures were noble large Grounds.... So likewise in his Remembrance
was all between Kington St. Michael and Dracot-Ferne common Fields.
Then were a world of labouring People maintained by the Plough....
There were no Rates for the Poor in my Grandfather's Days ... the
Church-ale at Whitsuntide did the Business.... Since the Reformation
and Inclosures aforesaid these Parts have swarm'd with poor People.
The Parish of Caln pays to the Poor 500£ _per annum_.... Inclosures
are for the private, not for the publick Good. For a Shepherd and his
Dog, or a Milk-Maid, can manage Meadow-Land, that upon arable,
employ'd the Hands of several Scores of Labourers." Miscellanies on
Several Curious Subjects, now first published, etc., 1723, pp. 30-33.
It will fall within the province of another volume of this series to
treat of the systems of landholding brought from England, and I shall
not go further into the subject of inclosures here. A portion of the
agricultural population seemed superfluous in consequence of
inclosures, and colonization was promoted as a means of ridding the
country of the excess of its population.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 112.]
In the matter of Church government Puritanism passed through three
different periods. In the reign of Elizabeth the Church-Puritan was
mainly Presbyterian under Cartwright's lead. But there was even then a
current that set toward Independency. Separatism was the outward
manifestation of this tendency, and according to Ralegh's estimate,
cited in the text, there were about twenty thousand declared
Separatists in England in 1593. After the suppression of the
presbyteries within the Church in the last years of Elizabeth, and the
crushing out of the Separatists by rigorous persecutions, questions
of the particular form of Church government fell into abeyance among
the Puritans for about forty years. "Indiscriminate anti-prelacy was
the prevailing mood of the English people," says Masson, "and the
distinction between Presbyterianism and Independency was yet caviare
to the general." Life of Milton, ii, 590. Richard Baxter, the Puritan
divine (as quoted by Masson), confesses in 1641 that until that year
he had never thought what Presbytery or Independency was, or ever
spoke with a man who seemed to know it. See also Hanbury's Memorials,
ii, 69. Writers on this period do not seem to recognize the fact that
the two views were in some rivalry among the early Puritans, and that
the theory of the independence of the local church seems to have been
at least foreshadowed in the opinions at Frankfort. But there was a
long generation in which these differences among the Puritans were
forgotten in their life-and-death conflict with the Episcopal party.
Then, as Puritanism came into power, the example of other Protestant
European countries drew England toward Presbyterianism, while the
voice of New England came from over the sea pleading for
Congregationalism.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 123.]
A letter of Sandys, afterward Archbishop of York, to Bullinger, quoted
by Marsden, Early Puritans, 57, shows that though Puritanism by 1573
had become something other than it was at Frankfort, it was still
mainly negative. Sandys writes: "New orators are rising up from among
us; foolish young men who despise authority and admit of no superior.
They are seeking the complete overthrow and uprooting of the whole of
our ecclesiastical polity; and striving to shape out for us I know not
what new platform of a church." He gives a summary under nine heads.
The assertion that each parish should have its own "presbytery" and
choose its own minister, and that the judicial laws of Moses were
binding, are the only positive ones. No authority of the magistrate in
ecclesiastical matters, no government of the Church except by
ministers, elders, and deacons, the taking away of all titles,
dignities, lands, and revenues of bishops, etc., from the Church, the
allowing of no ministers but actual pastors, the refusal of baptism to
the children of papists, fill the rest of this summary. One misses
from this skeleton the insistence on Sabbath-keeping, church-going,
"ordinances," and ascetic austerity in morals that afterward became
distinctive traits of the party.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 125.]
Augustine and other early doctors of the Church held to a
Sunday-Sabbath in the fifth century, basing it largely on grounds
that now seem mystical. Compare Coxe on Sabbath Laws and Sabbath
Duties, 284, note, and Cook's Historical and General View of
Christianity, ii, 301, cited by Coxe. The question was variously
treated during the middle ages, St. Thomas Aquinas and other schoolmen
taking the prevalent modern view that the fourth commandment was
partly moral and partly ceremonial. There is a curious story, for
which I do not know the original authority, of Eustachius, Abbot of
Hay, in the thirteenth century, who on his return from the Holy Land
preached from city to city against buying and selling on Sundays and
saints' days. He had with him a copy of a document dropped from heaven
and found on the altar of St. Simon, on Mount Golgotha. This paper
threatened that if the command were disobeyed it should rain stones
and wood and hot water in the night, and, as if such showers were not
enough, wild beasts were to devour the Sabbath-breakers. That there
was a difference of opinion in that age is shown by the fact that
Roger Bacon, later in the thirteenth century, thought it worth while
to assert that Christians should work and hold fairs on Sunday, while
Saturday was the proper day for rest. He showed no document from
heaven, but, like a true philosopher of that time, the learned friar
appealed to arguments drawn from astrology. Hearne's Remains, ii, 177,
cites Mirandula. Legislation by Parliament regarding Sunday observance
was rare before the Reformation. A statute of 28 Edward III
incidentally excepts Sunday from the days on which wool may be shorn,
and one of 27 Henry VI forbids the keeping of fairs and markets on
Sundays, Good Fridays, and principal festivals except four Sundays in
harvest. In 4 Edward IV a statute was passed forbidding the sale of
shoes on Sundays and certain festivals.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 125.]
In the "Injunctions by King Edward VI," 1547, Bishop Sparrow's
Collection, edition of 1671, p. 8, there is a remarkable statement of
what may be called the Edwardean view of Sunday as distinguished from
the opinions and practice that had come down from times preceding the
Reformation: "God is more offended than pleased, more dishonoured than
honoured upon the holy-day because of idleness, pride, drunkenness,"
etc. The religious and moral duties to which the "holy-day," as it is
called, should be strictly devoted are there specified. But, true to
the position of compromise, halfwayness, and one might add paradox,
which the English Reformation took from the beginning, there is added
in the same paragraph the following: "Yet notwithstanding all Parsons,
Vicars, and Curates, shall teach and declare unto their Parishioners,
that they may with a safe and quiet conscience, in the time of
Harvest, labour upon the holy and festival days and save that thing
which God hath sent. And if for any scrupulosity, or grudge of
conscience, men should superstitiously abstain from working upon those
days, that then they should grievously offend and displease God." See
also "Thacte made for thabrogacion of certayne holy-dayes," in the
reign of Henry VIII, 1536, in the same black-letter collection, p.
167. In this act "Sabboth-day" occurs, but apparently with reference
to the Jewish Sabbath only. "Sonday" is used for Sunday.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 129.]
Dr. Bownd's Sabathum Veteris et Novi Testamenti is exceedingly rare.
There is a copy in the Prince Collection of the Boston Public Library.
It is the only one in this country, so far as I can learn. I am under
obligations in several matters to Cox's Literature of the Sabbath
Question, to the same author's Sabbath Laws and Sabbath Duties, and to
Hessey's Bampton Lectures for 1860.
[Sidenote: Note 11, page 131.]
It is Thomas Rogers, the earliest opponent of the doctrine of Greenham
and Bownd, who sees a deep-laid plot in the publication of their
books. "What the brethren wanted in strength they had in wiliness," he
says. "For while these worthies of our church were employing their
engines and forces partly in defending the present government
ecclesiastical, partly in assaulting the presbytery and new
discipline, even at that very instant the brethren ... abandoned quite
the bulwarks which they had raised and gave out were impregnable:
suffering us to beat them down, without any or very small resistance,
and yet not careless of affairs, left not the wars for all that, but
from an odd corner, and after a new fashion which we little thought of
(such was their cunning), set upon us afresh again by dispersing in
printed books (which for ten years' space before they had been in
hammering among themselves to make them complete) their Sabbath
speculations and presbyterian (that is more than kingly or popely)
directions for the observance of the Lord's Day." Preface to
Thirty-nine Articles, paragraph 20. He also says, with some wit, "They
set up a new idol, their Saint Sabbath."
[Sidenote: Note 12, page 132.]
The doctrine of a strict Sabbath appears to have made no impression in
Scotland until the seventeenth century was well advanced. In the
printed Burgh Records of Aberdeen from 1570 to 1625 there is no
sabbatarian legislation in the proper sense; but there are efforts to
compel the people to suspend buying and selling fish and flesh in the
market, the playing of outdoor games and ninepins, and the selling of
liquors during sermon time only. Take as an example the following
ordinance--as curious for its language as its subject--dated 4th
October, 1598, twenty-four years after Knox's death:
"Item, The prouest, bailleis, and counsall ratefeis and approves the
statute maid obefoir, bering that na mercatt, nather of fische nor
flesche salbe on the Sabboth day in tyme cumming, in tyme of sermone,
vnder the pane of confiscatioun of the same; and lykvayes ratefeis the
statute maid aganis the playeris in the linkis, and at the kyillis,
during the time of the sermones; ... and that na tavernar sell nor
went any wyne nor aill in tyme cumming in tyme of sermone, ather on
the Sabboth day or vlk dayes, under the pane of ane vnlaw of fourtie
s., to be vpliftit of the contravenar als oft as they be convict."
[Sidenote: Note 13, page 132.]
New England Puritanism took a position more ultra even than that of
Bownd. Thomas Shepard, of Cambridge, Mass., developed from some
Sermons on the Subject a work with the title, Theses Sabbaticæ, or the
Doctrine of the Sabbath. After a considerable circulation in
manuscript among New England students of divinity, it was printed at
London in 1650 by request of all the elders of New England. From the
time of Augustine the prevailing theory of advocates of a
Sunday-Sabbath has been that the fourth commandment is partly moral,
partly ceremonial; but Shepard, who does not stick at small logical or
historical difficulties, will have it wholly moral, by which means he
avoids any option regarding the day. The rest of the Sabbath,
according to this authoritative New England treatise, is to be as
strict as it ever was under Jewish law, and is to be rigidly enforced
on the unwilling by parents and magistrates. In the spirit of a
thoroughpaced literalist Shepard argues through fifty pages that the
Sabbath begins in the evening. He admits that only "servile labour" is
forbidden, but he reasons that as "sports and pastimes" are ordained
"to whet on worldly labour," they therefore partake of its servile
character and are not tolerable on the Sabbath. It appears from his
preface that there were Puritans in his time who denied the sabbatical
character of Sunday and spiritualized the commandment.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
_SEPARATISM AND THE SCROOBY CHURCH._
I.
[Sidenote: Importance of the Separatists.]
To the great brotherhood of Puritans who formed a party within the
church there was added a little fringe of Separatists or "Brownists,"
as they were commonly called, who did not stop with rejecting certain
traits of the Anglican service, but spurned the church itself. Upon
these ultraists fell the merciless hand of persecution. They were
imprisoned, hanged, exiled. They were mostly humble people, and were
never numerous; but by their superior boldness in speech and writing,
by their attempts to realize actual church organizations on apostolic
models, they rendered themselves considerable if not formidable. From
this advance guard and forlorn hope of Puritanism, inured to hardship
and the battle front, came at length the little band of New England
pioneers who made a way into the wilderness over the dead bodies of
half their company. The example of these contemned Brownists led to
the Puritan settlement of New England. Their type of ecclesiastical
organization ultimately dominated the Congregationalism of New England
and the nonconformity of the mother country. For these reasons, if
for no other, Brownism, however obscure it may have been, is not a
negligible element in history.
II.
[Sidenote: Nonconformity in the Church.]
The great body of the Puritans seem to have agreed with Bishop Hall
that it was "better to swallow a ceremony than to rend a church," and
they agreed with him in regarding Separatism as criminal. They were,
indeed, too intent on reforming the Church of England to think of
leaving it. They made no scruple of defying ecclesiastical regulations
when they could, but in the moral code of that day schism was the
deadliest of sins.
[Sidenote: Scrambler, Bishop of Peterborough, to Burghley, 13th April,
1573, in Wright's Elizabeth and her Times.]
[Sidenote: Rogers's Preface to Articles. Parker Soc. ed., p. 10.]
In the early part of Elizabeth's reign, before the beginning of the
rule of Whitgift and the High Commission Courts, Puritan divines
slighted or omitted the liturgy in many parishes. This became more
common after the rise of Cartwright and the Presbyterian movement,
about 1570. For example, in the town of Overston, in 1573, there was
no divine service according to the Book of Common Prayer, "but
insteade thereof two sermons be preached" by men whom the bishop had
refused to license. The village of Whiston was also a place of Puritan
assemblage, "where it is their joye," writes the Bishop of
Peterborough, "to have manie owte of divers parishes, principallie
owte of Northampton towne and Overston aforesaid, with other townes
thereaboute, there to receive the sacramentes with preachers and
ministers to their owne liking, and contrarie to the forme prescribed
by the publique order of the realme." Thomas Rogers says, "The
brethren (for so did they style them-selves) would neither pray, nor
say service, nor baptize, nor celebrate the Lord's Supper, nor marry,
nor bury, nor do any other ecclesiastical duty according to law."
At this time some of the Puritan divines held high positions in the
church. Whittingham, who had been on the Puritan side of the quarrels
in Frankfort, and who had received only a Genevan ordination,
succeeded in holding his deanery of Durham until his death, in 1579.
In 1563 Dr. Turner was sneering at bishops as "white coats" and
"tippett gentlemen," while himself Dean of Durham.
[Sidenote: The Semi-Separatists.]
[Sidenote: Bancroft in Barlowe's Svmme and Svbstance.]
[Sidenote: Heresiography, p. 82.]
But Elizabeth after a while filled the bishoprics with men to her
liking, whose heavy hands made the lot of Puritans in the church
harder and harder. Many ministers were silenced, but there were many
who, by evasion or by straining their consciences, held their
benefices. Some Puritan clergymen, when they were to preach, preferred
"to walk in the church-yard until sermon time rather than to be
present at public prayer." Some Puritan laymen had their own way of
conforming to the church. "There is a sort of Semi-Separatist," says
Pagitt, as late as 1646, "that will heare our Sermons but not our
Common-prayers; and of these you may see every Sunday in our streets
sitting and standing about our doores; who, when Prayers are done,
rush into our Churches to hear our Sermons."
III.
[Sidenote: Causes of Separatism.]
[Sidenote: Thomas Scott in Pagitt, 80.]
[Sidenote: Plimoth Plantation, p. 8.]
The growth of Separatist churches was due to two causes. An almost
incredible reverence for the letter of the Scriptures had taken the
place of older superstitions. There was a strong tendency to revert to
the stern spirit of the Old Testament and to adopt the external forms
of the New. Religious idealists saw a striking contrast between the
discipline of the primitive and almost isolated bands of enthusiastic
believers in the apostolic time and the all-inclusive parishes of the
hierarchical state church. And in that age of externalism the
difference in organic form between the Anglican church and the little
synagogues of Christian seceders founded by Paul in the Levant weighed
heavily upon the minds of earnest people. It did not occur to them
that this primitive organization was probably brought over from the
neighboring Jewish congregations from which the converts had
withdrawn, and that there might not be any obligation to imitate it
under different skies and in a remote age. The Separatist was an
idealist. "He lives by the aire," said an opponent, "and there he
builds Castles and Churches; none on earth will please him; ... he
must finde out Sir Thomas More's Utopia, or rather Plato's Community,
and bee an Elder there." But Separatism was undoubtedly promoted by
persecution. Bradford says that the sufferings inflicted on them by
the bishops helped some of the Puritans "to see further into things by
the light of the word of God. How not only these base and beggerly
ceremonies were unlawfull, but also that the lordly and tiranous power
of the prelats ought not to be submitted unto." Drawn thus by the
letter of the biblical record, while stung by cruel oppression and
galled by the opposition of the constituted authorities to what they
deemed the truth divine, it is not strange that religious enthusiasts
began to long for societies organized like those of the apostolic age,
from which the profane should be excluded by a strict discipline.
IV.
[Sidenote: Robert Browne and Brownism.]
[Sidenote: 1581 to 1586.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
The beginning of Separatism has been commonly attributed to Robert
Browne, a contentious and able advocate of Separatist doctrines. After
a brief and erratic career as an advocate of these opinions, and after
suffering the penalty of his zeal and proving the sincerity of his
belief in thirty-two different prisons, in some of which he could not
see his hand at noonday, Browne at length began to waver--now inclined
to return to the church, now recoiling toward dissent. Worn out in
nerves by controversy and persecution, this eccentric man was so
alarmed by a solemn sentence of excommunication from a bishop, that he
repented and made peace with the English church. He accepted a
benefice, but employed a curate to preach for him. Browne lingered on
to an unhonored age, imperious and contentious, not able to live with
his wife, and held in no reverence by churchmen, while he was despised
by Separatists. He died at eighty, in Northampton jail, to which he
had been carried on a feather bed laid in a cart. The old man had been
committed to prison this thirty-third time in his life for striking a
constable who sought to collect a rate.
[Sidenote: Rise of Separatism.]
[Sidenote: Barclay's Inner Life, pp. 13, 53.]
[Sidenote: Dialogue of 1593 quo. by Waddington.]
[Sidenote: Bradford's Dialogue.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
[Sidenote: Josias Nichols, The Plea for the Innocent, 1602, in
Hanbury, i. 3.]
[Sidenote: Stephen Breadwell, 1588, in Dexter, 255.]
Separatism in some form existed before Browne's zeal made it a thorn
in the side of the bishops. Something like a separation existed in
1567. In 1571 there was an independent church of which we know little
but the pastor's name. Bradford even dates independency back to the
reign of Mary. In truth, the rise of this sect, from which came the
earliest New England colony, appears to be lost in obscurity.
Significant movements are usually cradled in rustic mangers, to which
no learned magi think it worth their while to journey. The beginning
of Separatism was probably in the little conventicles held by devout
Puritans who, in the words of one of their own writers, "met together
to sing a psalm or to talk of God's word." But Browne, so far as we
know, was one of the earliest to organize independent churches, with
officers named and classified after those of the petty hierarchies of
the early Christian congregations, or rather according to such
deductions regarding them as he was able to make from the Epistles of
Paul. Separatism, though it owed something to Browne's activity, was
not founded by him. Browne's labors began about 1581, and his fiery
career as a Brownist had lasted only four or five years when he began
to vacillate. A great part of this time was spent in exile, much of it
in prison, and very little of it about London. But before 1587 London
seems to have been the center of the Separatists, from which they had
"sparsed their companies into severall partes of the Realme."
[Sidenote: H. M. Dexter's Congregationalism, 255-257.]
It seems that their rise in London came from the devout meetings of
those who had begun to repudiate the Church of England as
antichristian. Without any officers or organization apparently, these
people, when we first get sight of them, were wont to assemble in the
summer time in the fields about London, sitting down upon a bank while
the Bible was expounded now by one and now by another of the company.
In the winter it was their custom to spend the whole Sunday together
from five o'clock in the morning, eating dinner in company and paying
for it by a collection. They responded in prayer only by spontaneous
groans or sobs, much after the fashion of the early Quakers,
Methodists, and other enthusiasts of a later time. If one of their
members returned to a parish assembly, they pronounced him an apostate
and solemnly delivered him over to Satan until he should repent.
V.
[Sidenote: Barrowism.]
When they began to organize themselves formally into a church the
London Separatists in their turn resorted to the apostolic epistles.
These had already been treated like the magician's bottle that is made
to yield white wine or red at pleasure. From them whatsoever form of
discipline was desired by Anglican, Presbyterian, or Brownist had been
derived, and now a still different discipline was deduced, a mean
betwixt Presbyterian and Brownist theories. This is known now as
Barrowism. It was the form of church government brought by the
Pilgrims to Plymouth, and substantially that which prevailed in New
England throughout the seventeenth century.
[Illustration: The cradle of the Pilgrims.]
[Sidenote: Separatists in Amsterdam, 1593.]
The London Separatists suffered miserably from persecution. Many of
them languished and died in prison. Barrow and Greenwood, their
leaders, were hanged at Tyburn. A part of them migrated to Amsterdam,
while the rest maintained a furtive church in London. Those in
Amsterdam, having no lingering abuses of the English church to reform,
set every man's conscience to watch his neighbor's conduct. Having
seceded from the communion of the Church of England on account of
scandals, they were scandalized with the least variation from their
rigorous standard by any of their own church members, and they were
soon torn asunder with dissensions as the result of this vicariousness
of conscience. The innocent vanity of the pastor's wife who could
never forego a "toppish" hat and high-heeled shoes was the principal
stumbling-block.
Though Separatism had been almost extirpated from England by the close
of Elizabeth's reign, there remained even yet one vigorous society in
the north which was destined to exert a remarkable influence on the
course of history.
VI.
[Sidenote: The cradle of the Pilgrims.]
On the southern margin of Yorkshire the traveler alights to-day at the
station of Bawtry. It is an uninteresting village, with a rustic inn.
More than a mile to the southward, in Nottinghamshire, lies the
pleasant but commonplace village of Scrooby. About a mile to the north
of Bawtry is Austerfield, a hamlet of brick cottages crowded together
along the road. It has a picturesque little church built in the middle
ages, the walls of which are three feet thick. This church will seat
something more than a hundred people nowadays by the aid of a rather
modern extension. In the seventeenth century it was smaller, and there
was no ceiling. Then one could see the rafters of the roof while
shuddering with cold in the grottolike interior. The country around is
level and unpicturesque.
[Sidenote: Hunter's Founders of New Plymouth, 24, 25.]
But one is here in the cradle of great religious movements. In Scrooby
and in Austerfield were born the Pilgrims who made the first
successful settlement in New England. A little to the east lies
Gainsborough, from which migrated to Holland in 1606 the saintly
Separatist John Smyth, who gave form to a great Baptist movement of
modern times. A few miles to the northeast of Bawtry, in Lincolnshire,
lies Epworth, the nest from which the Wesleys issued more than a
hundred years later to spread Methodism over the world. Religious zeal
seems to have characterized the people of this region even before the
Reformation, for the country round about Scrooby was occupied at that
time by an unusual number of religious houses.
The little Austerfield church and the old church at Scrooby are the
only picturesque or romantic elements of the environment, and on these
churches the Pilgrims turned their backs as though they had been
temples of Baal. In the single street of Austerfield the traveler
meets the cottagers of to-day, and essays to talk with them. They are
heavy and somewhat stolid, like most other rustic people in the north
country, and an accent to which their ears are not accustomed amuses
and puzzles them. No tradition of the Pilgrims lingers among them.
They have never heard that anybody ever went out of Austerfield to do
anything historical. They listen with a bovine surprise if you speak
to them of this exodus, and they refer you to the old clerk of the
parish, who will know about it. The venerable clerk is a striking
figure, not unlike that parish clerk painted by Gainsborough. This
oracle of the hamlet knows that Americans come here as on a
pilgrimage, and he tells you that one of them, a descendant of
Governor Bradford, offered a considerable sum for the disused stone
font at which Bradford the Pilgrim was baptized. But the traveler
turns away at length from the rustic folk of Austerfield and the
beer-drinkers over their mugs in the inn at Bawtry, and the villagers
at Scrooby, benumbed by that sense of utter common-placeness which is
left on the mind of a stranger by such an agricultural community. The
Pilgrims, then, concerning whom poems have been written, and in whose
honor orations without number have been made, were just common country
folk like these, trudging through wheat fields and along the muddy
clay highways of the days of Elizabeth and James. They were just such
men as these and they were not. They were such as these would be if
they were vivified by enthusiasm. We may laugh at superfluous scruples
in rustic minds, but none will smile at brave and stubborn loyalty to
an idea when it produces such steadfast courage as that of the
Pilgrims.
[Sidenote: Magnalia, Book II, chap. i, p. 2.]
And yet, when the traveler has resumed his journey, and recalls
Scrooby and Bawtry and Austerfield, the stolid men and gossiping
women, the narrow pursuits of the plowman and the reaper, and
remembers the flat, naked, and depressing landscape, he is beset by
the old skepticism about the coming of anything good out of Nazareth.
Nor is he helped by remembering that at the time of Bradford's
christening at the old stone font the inhabitants of Austerfield are
said to have been "a most ignorant and licentious people," and that
earlier in that same century John Leland speaks of "the meane townlet
of Scrooby."
VIII.
[Sidenote: Elder Brewster.]
But Leland's description of the village suggests the influence that
caused Scrooby and the wheat fields thereabout to send forth, in the
beginning of the seventeenth century and of a new reign, men capable
of courage and fortitude sufficient to make them memorable, and to
make these three townlets places of pilgrimage in following centuries.
[Sidenote: Itinerary, i, 36, in Hunter's Founders, p. 20.]
[Sidenote: Bradford, 410.]
[Sidenote: _Supra_, Book I, chap. ii, iii.]
[Sidenote: Plimoth Plantations, 411.]
"In the meane townlet of Scrooby, I marked two things"--it is Leland
who writes--"the parish church not big but very well builded; the
second was a great manor-place, standing within a moat, and longing to
the Archbishop of York." This large old manor-place he describes with
its outer and inner court. In this manor-place, about half a century
after Leland saw it, there lived William Brewster. He was a man of
education, who had been for a short time in residence at Cambridge; he
had served as one of the under secretaries of state for years; had
been trusted beyond all others by Secretary Davison, his patron; and,
when Elizabeth disgraced Davison, in order to avoid responsibility for
the death of Mary of Scotland, Brewster had been the one friend who
clung to the fallen secretary as long as there was opportunity to do
him service. Making no further effort to establish himself at court,
Brewster went after a while "to live in the country in good esteeme
amongst his freinds and the good gentle-men of those parts, espetially
the godly and religious." His abode after his retirement was the old
manor-place now destroyed, but then the most conspicuous building at
Scrooby. It belonged in his time to Sir Samuel Sandys, the elder
brother of Sir Edwin Sandys, whose work as the master spirit in the
later history of the Virginia Company has already been recounted. At
Scrooby Brewster succeeded his father in the office of "Post," an
office that obliged him to receive and deliver letters for a wide
district of country, to keep relays of horses for travelers by post on
the great route to the north, and to furnish inn accommodations. In
the master of the post at Scrooby we have the first of those
influences that lifted a group of people from this rustic region into
historic importance. He had been acquainted with the great world, and
had borne a responsible if not a conspicuous part in delicate
diplomatic affairs in the Netherlands. At court, as at Scrooby, he was
a Puritan, and now in his retirement his energies were devoted to the
promotion of religion. He secured earnest ministers for many of the
neighboring parishes. But that which he builded the authorities tore
down. Whitgift was archbishop, and the High Commission Courts were
proceeding against Puritans with the energy of the Spanish
Inquisition. "The godly preachers" about him were silenced. The
people who followed them were proscribed, and all the pains and
expense of Brewster and his Puritan friends in establishing religion
as they understood it were likely to be rendered futile by the
governors of the church. "He and many more of those times begane to
looke further into things," says Bradford. Persecution begot
Separatism. The theory was the result of conditions, as new theories
are wont to be.
IX.
[Sidenote: The Scrooby Church.]
[Sidenote: Magnalia, Book ii, c. i, 2.]
Here, as elsewhere, the secession appears to have begun with meetings
for devotion. By this supposition we may reconcile two dates which
have been supposed to conflict, conjecturing that in 1602, when
Brewster had lived about fifteen years in the old manor-house, his
neighbors, who did not care to attend the ministry of ignorant and
licentious priests, began to spend whole Sundays together, now in one
place and now in another, but most frequently in the old manor-house
builded within a moat, and reached by ascending a flight of stone
steps. Here, Brewster's hospitality was dispensed to them freely. They
may or may not have been members of the Separatist church at
Gainsborough, as some have supposed. It was not until 1606 that these
people formed the fully organized Separatist church of Scrooby. It was
organized after the Barrowist pattern that had originated in
London--it was after a divine pattern, according to their belief.
Brewster, the nucleus of the church, became their ruling elder.
[Sidenote: The ruling elder.]
[Sidenote: Bradford's Plimoth Plantation, 408-414.]
[Sidenote: Hunter's Founders, _passim_.]
[Sidenote: Winsor's Elder William Brewster, a pamphlet.]
[Sidenote: F. B. Dexter in Narrative and Crit. Hist., iii, 257-282.]
It was in these all-day meetings at the old manor-house that the
Separatist rustics of Scrooby were molded for suffering and endeavor.
The humble, modest, and conscientious Brewster was the king-post of
the new church--the first and longest enduring of the influences that
shaped the character of these people in England, Holland, and America.
Brewster could probably have returned to the court under other
auspices after Davison's fall, but as master of the post at Scrooby,
then as a teacher and as founder of a printing office of prohibited
English books in Leyden, and finally as a settler in the wilderness,
inuring his soft hands to rude toils, until he died in his cabin an
octogenarian, he led a life strangely different from that of a
courtier. But no career possible to him at court could have been so
useful or so long remembered.
X.
[Sidenote: John Robinson.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
But Brewster was not the master spirit. About the time the Separatists
of Scrooby completed their church organization, in 1606, there came to
it John Robinson. He had been a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
and a beneficed clergyman of Puritan views. He, too, had been slowly
propelled to Separatist opinion by persecution. For fourteen years
before the final migration he led the Pilgrims at Scrooby and Leyden.
Wise man of affairs, he directed his people even in their hard
struggle for bread in a foreign country. He was one of the few men, in
that age of debate about husks and shells, who penetrated to those
teachings concerning character and conduct which are the vital and
imperishable elements of religion. Even when assailed most roughly in
debate he was magnanimous and forbearing. He avoided the bigotry and
bitterness of the early Brownists, and outgrew as years went on the
narrowness of rigid Separatism. He lived on the best terms with the
Dutch and French churches. He opposed rather the substantial abuses
than the ceremonies of the Church of England, and as life advanced he
came to extend a hearty fellowship and communion to good men in that
church. Had it been his lot to remain in the national church and rise,
as did his opponent, Joseph Hall, to the pedestal of a bishopric or to
other dignity, he would have been one of the most illustrious divines
of the age--wanting something of the statesmanly breadth of Hooker,
but quite outspreading and overtopping the Whitgifts, Bancrofts, and
perhaps even the Halls. Robert Baillie, who could say many hard things
against Separatists, is forced to confess that "Robinson was a man of
excellent parts, and the most learned, polished, and modest spirit
that ever separated from the Church of England"; and long after his
death the Dutch theologian Hornbeeck recalls again and again his
integrity, learning, and modesty.
Shall we say that when subjected to this great man's influence the
rustics of Scrooby and Bawtry and Austerfield were clowns no longer?
Perhaps we shall be truer to the probabilities of human nature if we
conclude that Robinson was able to mold a few of the best of them to
great uses, and that these became the significant digits which gave
value to the ciphers.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 146.]
The eccentricities, moral and mental, of Browne were a constant
resource of those who sought to involve all Separatists in his
disgrace. Odium has always been a more effective weapon than argument
in a theological controversy. Browne's enemies alleged that even while
on the gridiron of persecution his conduct had not been free from
moral obliquity. I have not been able to see Bernard's charges on this
score, but John Robinson, in his Justification, etc. (1610), parries
the thrust in these words: "Now as touching Browne, it is true as Mr.
B[ernard] affirmeth, that as he forsook the Lord so the Lord forsook
him in his way; ... as for the wicked things (which Mr. B. affirmeth)
_he did in the way_ it may well be as he sayeth, ... as the more like
he was to returne to his proper centre the Church of England, where he
should be sure to find companie ynough in any wickednesse." Edition of
1639, p. 50. One of the most learned accounts of Browne is to be found
in H. M. Dexter's Congregationalism, the lecture on Robert Browne. It
is always easy to admire Dr. Dexter's erudition, but not so easy to
assent to his conclusions. See also Pagitt's Heresiography, p. 56 and
_passim_; Fuller's Church History, ix, vi, 1-7; and Hanbury's
Memorials, p. 18 and following.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 146.]
John Robinson, in Justification of Separation from the Church of
England, p. 50, edition of 1639, says: "It is true that Boulton was
(though not the first in that way) an elder of a Separatist church in
the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's dayes, and falling from his holy
profession recanted the same at Paul's Crosse and afterwards hung
himself as Judas did." Compare Cotton's The Way of the Congregationall
Churches Cleared, p. 4, and various intimations in Hanbury's
Memorials, which imply the existence of Independent congregations in
London and elsewhere in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. But
Hanbury's handling of the valuable material he collected with
commendable assiduity is sometimes so clumsy that the reader is
obliged to grope for facts bearing upon most important questions. One
gets from Hanbury's notes and some older publications a vague notion
that the Flemish Protestants, recently settled in England in great
numbers, exerted an influence in favor of Independency. Robert Browne
began his secession in Norwich, a place where the people from the Low
Countries were nearly half the population, and Browne was even said to
have labored among the Dutch first. Fuller, ix, sec. vi, 2.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 156.]
Robinson's character may be judged from his works. His good qualities
are very apparent in the wise and tender letters addressed to the
Pilgrims when they were leaving England and after their arrival at
Plymouth, which will be found in Bradford's Plimoth Plantations, 63,
64, 163. See Bradford's character of him, ibid., 17-19. See also
Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 473-482. Ainsworth's tribute is in
Hanbury's Memorials, 95. See also Winslow's Brief Narration in Young's
Chronicles, 379. George Sumner, in 3d Massachusetts Historical
Collections, ix, has a paper giving the result of his investigations
in Leyden. He quotes Hornbeeck as saying, twenty-eight years after
Robinson's death, that he was the best of all the exiles as well as
the most upright, learned, and most modest. Hornbeeck's words are:
"Optimus inter illos." "Vir supra reliquos probus atque eruditus."
"Doctissimi ac modestissimi omnium separatistorum."
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
_THE PILGRIM MIGRATIONS._
I.
[Sidenote: Accession of James I.]
[Sidenote: Neal, ii, 28. Compare Burns's Prel. Diss. to Wodrow,
lxxiv.]
The accession of James of Scotland to the English throne in 1603
raised the hopes of the Puritans. James had said, in 1590: "As for our
neighbour kirk of England, their service is an ill-said masse in
English; they want nothing of the masse but the liftings." Later, when
the prospect of his accession to the English throne was imminent,
James had spoken with a different voice, but the Puritans remembered
his lifelong familiarity with Presbyterian forms, and his strongly
expressed satisfaction with the Scottish Kirk. They met him on his way
to London with a petition for modifications of the service. This was
known as the Millinary Petition, because it was supposed to represent
the views of about one thousand English divines.
[Sidenote: Hampton Court conference.]
[Sidenote: Svmme and Svbstance, _passim_.]
[Sidenote: Prel. Diss. to Wodrow, lxxiv.]
[Sidenote: Ch. Hist., x, vii, 30.]
[Sidenote: Nugæ Antiquæ., i, 181.]
In January, 1604, the king held a formal conference at Hampton Court
between eleven of the Anglican party on one side, nine of them being
bishops, and four Puritan divines, representing the petitioners.
Assuming at first the air of playing the arbiter, James, who dearly
loved a puttering theological debate, could not refrain from taking
the cause of the churchmen out of their hands and arguing it himself.
The reports of the conference are most interesting as showing the
paradoxical qualities of James, who, by his action at this meeting,
unwittingly made himself a conspicuous figure in the history of
America. The great churchmen were surprised at the display made by the
king of dialectic skill. They held Scotch learning in some contempt,
and were amazed that one bred among the "Puritans" should know how to
handle questions of theology so aptly. James, though he had declared
the Church of Scotland "the sincerest kirk in the world" because it
did not keep Easter and Yule as the Genevans did, now had the face to
assure the prelates that he had never believed after he was ten years
old what he was taught in Scotland. His speeches in the conference are
marked by ability, mingled with the folly which vitiated all his
qualities. Quick at reply and keen in analysis, he even shows
something like breadth of intelligence, or at least intellectual
toleration, but without ever for a moment evincing any liberality of
feeling. His manifest cleverness is rendered futile by his narrow and
ridiculous egotism, his arrogance in the treatment of opponents, and
his coarse vulgarity in expression. "In common speaking as in his
hunting," says Fuller, "he stood not on the cleanest but nearest way."
The Puritans were no more able to answer the arguments of the king
than was Æsop's lamb to make reply to the wolf. Laying down for his
fundamental maxim "No bishop, no king," he drew a picture of the
troubles that would beset him when "Jack and Tom and Will and Dick"
should meet and censure the king and his council. He would have no
such assemblage of the clergy until he should grow fat and pursy and
need trouble to keep him in breath, he said. It could not occur to his
self-centered mind that so grave a question was not to be settled
merely by considering the ease and convenience of the sovereign. "He
rather usede upbraidinges than argumente," says Harrington, who was
present. He bade the Puritans "awaie with their snivellinge," and, in
discussing the surplice, made an allusion that would be deemed a
profanation by reverent churchmen of the present time.
[Sidenote: The king and the bishops.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Compare Nugæ Antiquæ, ii, 25, 26.]
With characteristic pedantry he spoke part of the time in Latin, and
his clever refutation of the hapless Puritans sounded like the wisdom
of God to the anxious bishops. In spite of the downright scolding and
vulgar abuse with which the king flavored his orthodoxy, the aged
Whitgift declared that undoubtedly his Majesty spoke by the special
assistance of God's Spirit; but one of the worldly bystanders
ventured, in defiance of the episcopal dictum, to think that whatever
spirit inspired the king was "rather foul-mouthed." Bancroft, Bishop
of London, theatrically fell on his knees and solemnly protested that
his heart melted within him with joy that Almighty God of his singular
mercy had given them such a king "as since Christ's time the like
hath not been seen." The king in his turn was naturally impressed with
the sagacity of a bishop who could so devoutly admire his Majesty's
ability, and, when soon afterward a fresh access of paralysis carried
off Whitgift, it was not surprising that Bancroft should be translated
from London to Canterbury over the heads of worthier competitors. From
the moment of Bancroft's accession to the primacy the lot of the
Puritans and Separatists became harder, for he plumed himself
doubtless on being the originator of the high-church doctrine, and he
was a man whose harsh energy seems not to have been tempered by an
intimate piety like that of Whitgift.
[Sidenote: Results.]
[Sidenote: Svmme and Svbstance, 35.]
[Sidenote: Compare Bacon's Certain Considerations touching the better
Pacification of the Church of England.]
When James rose from his chair at the close of the debate on the
second day he said, "I shall make them conform themselves, or I will
harry them out of this land, or else do worse"; and he wrote to a
friend boasting that he had "peppered the Puritans soundly." But the
king had missed, without knowing it, the greatest opportunity of his
reign--an opportunity for conciliating or weakening the Puritan
opposition, and consolidating the church and his kingdom. James could
think of nothing but his own display of cleverness and browbeating
arrogance in a dispute with great divines like Reynolds and Chaderton.
The conference had been for him a recreation not much more serious
than stag-hunting. That it was pregnant with vast and far-reaching
results for good and evil in England and the New World he, perhaps,
did not dream. By his narrow and selfish course at this critical
moment he may be said to have sealed the fate of his son, if not the
doom of his dynasty; and his clever folly gave fresh life to the
bitter struggle between Anglican and Puritan which resulted in the
peopling of New England a quarter of a century afterward.
II.
[Sidenote: The storm of persecution.]
[Sidenote: Bacon's Observation on a Libel.]
Every proscription of the Puritans within the church was accompanied
by a crusade against the Brownists without, who were counted sinners
above all other men. Though Ralegh in 1593 had estimated the Brownists
at twenty thousand, they were by this time in consequence of
oppression "about worn out," as Bacon said. Upon those who remained
the new persecution broke with untempered severity. Badgered on every
side by that vexatious harrying which King James and his ecclesiastics
kept up according to promise, the little congregation at Scrooby in
1607 resolved to flee into Holland, where they would be strangers to
the speech and to the modes of getting a living, but where they might
worship God in extemporary prayers under the guidance of elders of
their own choice without fear of fines and prisons.
[Sidenote: Toleration in the Low Countries.]
[Sidenote: Errours and Induration, p. 27.]
That which is most honorable to the Low Countries, from a historical
point of view, namely, that their cities were places of refuge for
oppressed consciences, was esteemed odious and highly ridiculous in
the seventeenth century. In one of the plays of that time there is a
humorous proposition to hold a consultation about "erecting four new
sects of religion in Amsterdam." The Dutch metropolis was called a
cage of unclean birds, and a French prelate contemned it as "a common
harbor of all opinions and heresies." At a later period Edward
Johnson, the rather bloodthirsty Massachusetts Puritan, inveighs
against "the great mingle mangle of religion" in Holland, and like a
burlesque prophet shrieks, "Ye Dutch, come out of your hodge podge!"
Robert Baylie, in a sermon before the House of Lords as late as 1645,
says of the toleration by the Dutch, that "for this one thing they
have become infamous in the Christian world."
[Sidenote: Flight of the Pilgrims.]
To the asylum offered by the Low Countries the Scrooby Separatists
resolved to flee. The pack of harriers let loose by James and Bancroft
were in full cry. The members of the Scrooby church found themselves
"hunted and persecuted on every side," having their houses watched
night and day, so that all their sufferings in times past "were but as
flea bitings in comparison." But the tyranny that made England
intolerable did its best to render flight impossible. In various
essays to escape, the Separatists were arrested and stripped of what
valuables they had, while their leaders were cast into prison for
months at a time.
[Sidenote: The Pilgrims in Amsterdam.]
[Sidenote: Bradford's Plimoth Plantation 16.]
At length by one means or another the members of this battered little
community got away and met together in Amsterdam. To plain north
country folk this was indeed a strange land, and one can see in the
vivid and eloquent language of Bradford of Austerfield, who was a
young man when he crossed the German Ocean, the memory of the
impressions which these cities of the Low Countries made on their
rustic minds. But "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."
III.
[Sidenote: Removal to Leyden.]
[Sidenote: Bradford's Plimouth Plantation.]
[Sidenote: Winslow's Relations.]
Robinson discovered that he was not of a piece with those Separatists
who had preceded him to Amsterdam. In one division of these, questions
of whalebone in bodices, of high-heeled shoes and women's hats,
distracted scrupulous minds. In the other, which came from the same
part of England as Robinson's church, the agitations were of a
theological nature. Questions about the baptism of infants and the
inherent righteousness of man and the portion of his nature that
Christ derived from his mother, with discussions of the right of a man
to be a magistrate and a church member at the same time, were seething
in the heated brain of the scrupulous but saintly pastor. Robinson saw
that these controversies would involve the Scrooby church if it
remained in Amsterdam. In Robinson the centrifugal force of Separatism
had already spent itself, and his practical wisdom had set bounds to
the course of his logic. To leave the Dutch metropolis for a smaller
place was to reduce the Scrooby exiles to still deeper poverty, but
nevertheless the Pilgrims fled from discord as they had fled from
persecution, and removed to the university city of Leyden, called by
its admirers "the Athens of the Occident." After their departure
English Separatism in Amsterdam went on tearing itself to pieces in a
sincere endeavor to find ultimate theological truth, but Robinson's
people in spite of their poverty were united, and were honored by
those among whom they sojourned. Others, hearing of their good report,
came to them from England, and the exiled church of Leyden was fairly
prosperous.
IV.
[Sidenote: Danger of extinction.]
But when ten years of exile had passed the outlook was not a pleasant
one. The life in Leyden was so hard that many chose to return to their
own land, preferring English prisons to liberty at so dear a rate. The
"tender hearts of many a loving father and mother" were wounded to see
children growing prematurely decrepit under the weight of hard and
incessant toil; "the vigor of Nature being consumed in the very bud as
it were." Some of the young people were contaminated by the
dissoluteness of the city, others joined the Dutch army or made long
voyages at sea, acquiring habits very foreign to the strictness of
their parents. The result of a contest between the rigid Puritanism of
the little church and the laxity prevalent in Holland was not to be
doubted. Human nature can not remain always at concert pitch.
Intermarriages with the Dutch had already begun, and all that was
peculiar in the English community was about to be swallowed up and
lost forever in the great current of Dutch life which flowed about it.
[Sidenote: Emigration planned.]
[Sidenote: Compare Winslow in Young, 387.]
Puritanism was in its very nature aggressive, even meddlesome. It was
not possible for a Puritan church, led by such men as Robinson, and
Brewster, and Carver, and Bradford, and Winslow, to remain content
where national prejudices and a difference in language barred the way
to the exertion of influence on the life about them. With destruction
by absorption threatening their church, these leaders conceived the
project of forming a new state where they "might, with the liberty of
a good conscience, enjoy the pure Scripture worship of God without the
mixture of human inventions and impositions; and their children after
them might walk in the holy ways of the Lord."
V.
[Sidenote: Puritans and American settlements.]
[Sidenote: Waddington's Cong. Hist., ii, 113, 114.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
What suggested in 1617 the thought of migration to America we do not
know. Just twenty years earlier, in 1597, some imprisoned Brownists
had petitioned the Privy Council that they might be allowed to settle
"in the province of Canada," an indefinite term at that time. Francis
Johnson with three others went out in that same year to look at the
land. The voyage was an unlucky one, and the settlement of Johnson as
pastor of the church in Amsterdam was the result. The persecutions
which followed the accession of Bancroft to the archbishopric had
started as early as 1608 a widespread agitation among the Puritans in
favor of emigration to Virginia, but, when only a few had got away,
the primate secured a proclamation preventing their escape from the
means of grace provided for them in Courts of High Commission.
[Sidenote: Condition of Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
[Sidenote: Inventory of books.]
[Sidenote: Winsor's pamphlet on Elder Brewster.]
The year 1617, in which the agitation for emigration began among the
Pilgrims, was the year after Dale's return with highly colored reports
of the condition of the Virginia colony. It is noticeable that among
the books owned by Elder Brewster at his death was a copy of
Whitaker's Good Newes from Virginia, published in 1613. Whitaker was
minister at Henrico in Virginia, and was the son of a Puritan divine
of eminence who was master of St. John's College, Cambridge. It is
possible that he was known to Brewster, who had been at Cambridge, or
to Robinson, who had resigned a fellowship there to become a
Separatist. Whitaker himself was Puritan enough to discard the
surplice. His Good Newes is an earnest plea for the support of the
colony for religious reasons. "This plantation which the divell hath
so often troden downe," he says, "is revived and daily groweth to more
and hopeful successe." At the very time when the Pilgrims first
thought of migrating there was beginning a new and widespread interest
in Virginia. This was based partly on religious enthusiasm, such as
Whitaker's book was meant to foster, and partly on the hope of new and
strange commodities, particularly silk. Even this silk illusion may
have had its weight in a secondary way with the Leyden people, for
Bradford, afterward governor at Plymouth, was a silk-weaver in Leyden,
and there were two books on silkworms in Brewster's library at his
death.
[Sidenote: Alternatives.]
To European eyes all America was one; even to-day the two Americas are
hardly distinguished by most people in Europe. The glowing account of
Guiana given by Ralegh helped to feed the new desire for an American
home; and it was only after serious debate that North America was
chosen, as more remote from the dreaded Spaniard and safer from
tropical diseases. One can hardly imagine what American Puritanism
would have become under the skies of Guiana. Not only did the Pilgrims
hesitate regarding their destination, but there was a choice of
nationalities to be made. England had not been a motherly mother to
these outcast children, and there was question of settling as English
subjects in America, or becoming Dutch colonists there.
VI.
[Sidenote: Application to Sandys.]
[Sidenote: Hunter's Founders of New Plymouth, pp. 22, 23.]
The Pilgrims preferred to be English, notwithstanding all. But they
wished to stipulate with England for religious liberty. In this matter
they had recourse to Sir Edwin Sandys, the one man who would probably
be both able and willing to help them. Brewster had lived, as we have
seen, in an old episcopal manor at Scrooby. Sandys, Archbishop of
York, had transferred this manor by a lease to his eldest son, Sir
Samuel Sandys, who was Brewster's landlord and brother of Sir Edwin
Sandys. Of Sir Edwin the great liberal parliamentary statesman, Fuller
says, "He was right-handed to any great employment." In 1617 he was
already the most influential of the progressive leaders of the
Virginia Company, its acting though not yet its nominal head, and in
1619 he was elected governor of the Company. Brewster's
fellow-secretary under Davison was a chosen friend of Sandys, and, in
view of both these connections, we may consider it almost certain that
the two were not strangers. To Sir Edwin Sandys was due much of the
new interest in Virginia. He and his group seem to have been already
striving to shape the colony into a liberal state.
[Sidenote: Failure to secure formal toleration.]
[Sidenote: Bacon's Advice to Villiers.]
[Sidenote: Archdale's Carolina, 26.]
To meet the views of the Leyden people, Sandys endeavored by the
intervention of a more acceptable courtier to gain assurance from the
king, under the broad seal, that their religion should be tolerated if
they migrated to Virginia. But James's peculiar conscience recoiled
from this. He intimated that he would wink at their practices but he
would not tolerate them by public act. And, indeed, the Pilgrims
reflected afterward that "a seale as broad as the house flore would
not serve the turne" of holding James to his promise. At the king's
suggestion the archbishops were applied to, but neither would they
formally approve such an arrangement. Nor can one wonder at their
unwillingness, since the most profound, liberal, and far-seeing
thinker of that age, Lord Bacon himself, was so far subject to the
prejudices of his time that he could protest against allowing heretics
to settle a colony, and could support his position by a mystical
argument fit to be advanced by the most fantastic theologian. "It will
make schism and rent in Christ's coat, which must be seamless," he
says. He even goes so far as to group Separatists with outlaws and
criminals, and to advise that if such should transplant themselves to
the colonies they should be "sent for back upon the first notice," for
"such persons are not fit to lay the foundation of a new colony." Much
more fit than is a speculative philosopher to draw the lines on which
practical undertakings are to be carried forward. The transplanting of
English speech and institutions to America would have languished as
French colonization did, if none but orthodox settlers had been
allowed to fell trees and build cabins in the forest. Ever since the
age of stone hatchets colony planters have been drawn from the ranks
of the uneasy. An early Quaker governor of South Carolina puts the
matter less elegantly but more justly than Bacon when he says: "It is
stupendious to consider, how passionate and preposterous zeal, not
only vails but stupefies oftentimes the Rational Powers: For cannot
Dissenters kill Wolves and Bears as well as Churchmen?"
VII.
[Sidenote: Relations with the Virginia Company.]
[Sidenote: MS. Rec. Va. Co., Feb. 2, 1620.]
[Sidenote: Winslow's Briefe Narration, Young, 383.]
The liberal and practical mind of Sir Edwin Sandys harbored none of
the scruples of Bacon, and his more wholesome conscience knew
nothing of the fine distinctions of James and the archbishops
between formal toleration and a mere winking at irregularities. He
embraced the cause of the Pilgrims and became their steadfast
friend, passing through the Virginia Company successively two
charters in their behalf, and the general order which allowed the
leaders of "particular plantations"--that is, of such plantations as
the Leyden people and others at that time proposed to make--to
associate the sober and discreet of the plantation with them to make
laws, orders, and constitutions not repugnant to the laws of
England. This was a wide door opening toward democratic government.
The patent given to the Pilgrims was also a liberal one, and it was
even proposed to put into their hands a large sum of money
contributed anonymously for the education of Indian children, but to
this it was objected that the newcomers would lack the confidence of
the savages. One of the Virginia Company, possibly Sandys himself,
lent to the Leyden people three hundred pounds without interest for
three years. When we consider that the Pilgrims had to pay in their
first year of settlement thirty and even fifty per cent, interest on
their debts, and that this three hundred pounds, the use of which
they received without interest, would be equal in purchasing power
to five or six thousand dollars of our money, we may readily believe
that this loan and the semi-independence offered them under their
"large patent" from the company, were the considerations that
decided them in favor of emigration after the English Government had
refused a guarantee of toleration, and the Dutch Government had
declined to assure them of protection against England.
[Sidenote: Authors of the Plymouth Government.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
That group of liberal English statesmen who were charged with keeping
"a school of sedition" in the courts of the Virginian Company founded
the two centers of liberal institutions in America. The Earl of
Southampton, the Ferrars, Sir John Danvers, and above all and more
than all, Sir Edwin Sandys, were the fathers of representative
government in New England by the charter of February 2, 1620, as they
had been of representative government in Virginia by the charter of
November 13, 1618. When the Pilgrims found themselves, upon landing,
too far north to use their "large patent" from the Virginia Company,
they organized a government on the lines laid down in the general
order of the company. The government established by them in their
famous Compact was precisely the provisional government which the
Virginia Company in the preceding February had given them liberty to
found "till a form of government be here settled for them." Under this
compact they proceeded to confirm the election of the governor,
already chosen under the authority derived from the charter, now
invalid.
[Sidenote: Charges against Sandys.]
[Sidenote: Duke of Manchester, papers, Royal Hist. MSS. Comm. viii,
II, 45.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
The enemies of Sir Edwin Sandys did not fail to make use of his
friendship for the Leyden people to do him injury. It was afterward
charged that he was opposed to monarchical government, and that he had
moved the Archbishop of Canterbury "to give leave to the Brownists and
Separatists to go to Virginia, and designed to make a free popular
state there, and himself and his assured friends were to be the
leaders." That Sandys thought of emigration is hardly probable, but he
succeeded in establishing two popular governments in America which
propagated themselves beyond all that he could have hoped to achieve.
VIII.
[Sidenote: The farewell to Europe.]
[Sidenote: Plimoth Plantation, 59.]
"Small things," wrote Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln in the first
months of the Massachusetts settlement--"small things in the beginning
of natural or politic bodies are as remarkable as greater in bodies
full grown." The obscure events we have recited above are capital
because they had a deciding influence on the fate of the Pilgrim
settlement. It is not within our purpose to tell over again the
pathetic story of that brave departure of the younger and stronger of
the Pilgrims from Leyden to make the first break into the wilderness,
but courage and devotion to an idea are not common; courage and
devotion that bring at last important results are so rare that the
student of history, however little disposed to indulge sentiment,
turns in spite of himself to that last all-night meeting in Pastor
Robinson's large house in the Belfry Lane at Leyden. "So," says
Bradford, as if penning a new holy scripture, "they lefte that 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 the heavens, their dearest cuntrie and
quieted their spirits." Nor is it easy to pass over the solemn parting
on the quay at Delft Haven, where, as the time of the tide forced the
final tearful separation, while even the Dutch spectators wept in
sympathy, the voice of the beloved Robinson in a final prayer was
heard and the whole company fell upon their knees together for the
last time.
[Sidenote: Robinson's influence.]
[Sidenote: Winslow's Briefe Narration, Young, 397.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
These things hardly pertain, perhaps, to a history of life such as
this. It is with the influences that are to mold the new life while it
is plastic that we are concerned. Chief of these is Robinson himself,
a Moses who was never to see, even from a mountain top, the Canaan to
which he had now led his people. He must stay behind with the larger
half of the church. Rising to the occasion, his last words to this
little company are worthy his magnanimous soul. He eloquently charged
them "before God and his blessed angels to follow him no further than
he followed Christ." ... He was confident "the Lord had more truth and
light to break forth out of his holy word." In whatever sense we take
them these were marvelous words in the seventeenth century. Robinson
understood the progressive nature of truth as apprehended by the human
mind in a way that makes him seem singularly modern. In the same
address he declared it "not possible that ... full perfection of
knowledge should break forth at once." He bade them not to affect
separation from the Puritans in the Church of England, but "rather to
study union than division."
Admirable man! Free from pettiness and egotism. Fortunate man, who,
working in one of the obscurest and dustiest corners of this noisy and
self-seeking world, succeeded in training and sending out a company
that diffused his spirit and teachings into the institutions and
thoughts of a great people!
IX.
[Sidenote: The landing.]
[Sidenote: Morton's Memorial, 6th edition, p. 22, note.]
[Sidenote: Compare Asher's History of W. I. Company in Bibl. Essay.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
On a chain of slender accidents hung the existence of New England. Had
the claims of Guiana prevailed, had the tempting offers of the Dutch
changed the allegiance of the Robinsonian Independents, had the
Mayflower reached her destination in what is now New Jersey, the
current of American history would not have flowed as it has. A South
American New England, a Dutch New England, or a non-peninsular
community of English Puritans west of the Hudson with good wheat
fields and no fisheries or foreign trade, would have been different in
destiny from what we call New England, and its influence on events
and national character could not have been the same. It will always
remain doubtful whether or not Jones, the captain of the Mayflower,
was bribed by the Dutch, as the Plymouth people came to believe.
Nothing could be more probable in view of the general bad character of
the seamen of that time and the eagerness of one political party in
Holland to secure a foothold for the Dutch in America; but whether
Jones, who seems to have borne a bad reputation, was bribed, or, as he
pretended, became entangled in the shoals of Cape Cod and turned back
in real despair of finding his way, is of no moment. He turned back
and came to anchor in Provincetown Harbor. Here the threats of the
brutal seamen, unwilling to go farther, and the clamor of the
overcrowded and sea-weary passengers did the rest. To continue longer
closely cabined in the little ship was misery and perhaps death. Here
was land, and that was enough. And so, after exploration of the whole
coast of Cape Cod Bay, the place already named Plymouth on John
Smith's map was selected for a settlement. Here the landing was made
on the 10th of November, O.S., 1620.
[Sidenote: Elements of New England.]
Camden has preserved to us an old English saying accepted in the days
of the Pilgrims, to the effect that "a barren country is a great whet
to the industry of a people." It was the wedding of an austere creed
to an austere soil under an austere sky that gave the people of New
England their marked character, and the severe economic conditions
imposed by the soil and climate were even more potent than Puritanism
in producing the traits that go to make up the New England of history.
X.
[Sidenote: Earlier attempts to colonize New England.]
The unwise management that ruined nearly all projects for colonization
in that age and that produced such disasters in Virginia, had defeated
every earlier attempt to plant English people on the New England
coast. Gosnold had taken a colony to Elizabeth Island in Buzzard's Bay
in 1602, but the men went back in the ship in order to share the
profit of a cargo of sassafras. Captain George Popham was the head of
a party that undertook to colonize the coast of Maine in 1607, but
having suffered "extreme extremities" during the winter, the colonists
returned the following year. In 1615 Captain John Smith himself set
out with sixteen men, only to be taken by a French privateer. These
and other attempts ending in failure, and many disastrous trading
voyages, led to a belief that the Indian conjurers, who were known to
be the devil's own, had laid a spell on the northern coast to keep the
white people away. This enchanted land might long have lain waste if
Captain Jones of the Mayflower, sailing to Hudson River or the region
south of it, had not run foul of the shoals of Cape Cod.
[Illustration: Coast explored by the Pilgrims.]
XI.
[Sidenote: Sufferings at Plymouth.]
The Pilgrims suffered, like their predecessors, from the prevailing
unskillfulness in colony-planting. They had escaped from the horrors
of the Mayflower, but how much better was the wild land than the wild
sea; the rude, overcrowded forest cabins than the too populous ship?
"All things stared upon them with a weather-beaten face," says
Bradford. The horrors of the first winter in Virginia were repeated;
here, as at Jamestown, nearly all were ill at once, and nearly half of
the people died before the coming of spring. The same system of
partnership with mercenary shareholders or "adventurers" in England
that had brought disaster in Virginia was tried with similar results
at Plymouth, and a similar attempt at communism in labor and supply
was made, this time under the most favorable conditions, among a
people conscientious and bound together by strong religious
enthusiasm. It resulted, as such sinking of personal interest must
ever result, in dissensions and insubordination, in unthrift and
famine.
[Sidenote: Bradford.]
The colony was saved from the prolonged misery that makes the early
history of Virginia horrible by the wise head and strong hand of its
leader. William Bradford, who had been chosen governor on the death of
Carver, a few months after the arrival at Plymouth, had been a youth
but eighteen years old when he fled with the rest of the Scrooby
church to Holland. He was bred to husbandry and had inherited some
property. In Holland he became a silk worker and on attaining his
majority set up for himself in that trade. He was still a young man
when first chosen governor of the little colony, and he ruled New
Plymouth almost continuously till his death--that is, for about
thirty-seven years. He was of a magnanimous temper, resolute but
patient, devotedly religious, but neither intolerant nor austere. He
had a genius for quaintly vivid expression in writing that marked him
as a man endowed with the literary gift, which comes as Heaven pleases
where one would least look for it.
XII.
[Sidenote: Abolition of communism.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
After two years of labor in common had brought the colony more than
once to the verge of ruin, Bradford had the courage and wisdom to cut
the knot he could not untie. During the scarce springtime of 1623, he
assigned all the detached persons in the colony to live with families,
and then temporarily divided the ancient Indian field on which the
settlement had been made among the several families in proportion to
their number, leaving every household to shift for itself or suffer
want. "Any general want or suffering hath not been among them since to
this day," he writes years afterward. The assignment was a
revolutionary stroke, in violation of the contract with the
shareholders, and contrary to their wishes. But Bradford saw that it
was a life-and-death necessity to be rid of the pernicious system,
even at the cost of cutting off all support from England. In his
history he draws a very clear picture of the evils of communism as he
had observed them.
XIII.
[Sidenote: Significance of Plymouth.]
Why should the historian linger thus over the story of this last
surviving remnant of the "Brownists"? Why have we dwelt upon the
little settlement that was never very flourishing, that consisted at
its best of only a few thousand peaceful and agricultural people, and
that after seventy years was merged politically in its more vigorous
neighbor the colony of Massachusetts Bay? Historical importance does
not depend on population. Plymouth was the second step in the founding
of a great nation. When Bradford and the other leaders had at last
successfully extricated the little settlement from its economical
difficulties, it became the sure forerunner of a greater Puritan
migration. This tiny free state on the margin of a wilderness
continent, like a distant glimmering pharos, showed the persecuted
Puritans in England the fare-way to a harbor.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 162.]
Sir John Harington says: "The bishops came to the Kynge aboute the
petition of the puritans; I was by, and heard much dyscourse. The
Kynge talked muche Latin, and disputed wyth Dr. Reynoldes, at Hampton,
but he rather usede upbraidinges than argumente; and tolde the
petitioners that they wanted to strip Christe againe, and bid them
awaie with their snivellinge: moreover, he wishede those who woud take
away the surplice mighte want linen for their own breech. The bishops
seemed much pleased and said his Majestie spoke by the power of
inspiration. I wist not what they mean; but the spirit was rather
foule mouthede." Nugæ Antiquæ, i, 181, 182. James took pains to put an
example of his bad taste on paper. In a letter on the subject he brags
in these words: "We haue kept suche a reuell with the Puritainis heir
these two dayes as was neuer harde the lyke, quhaire I haue pepperid
thaime as soundlie as ye haue done the papists thaire.... I was forcid
at the last to saye unto thaime, that if any of thaim hadde bene in a
colledge disputing with their skollairs, if any of their disciples had
ansoured thaim in that sorte they wolde haue fetched him up in place
of a replye, and so shoulde the rodde haue plyed upon the poore boyes
buttokis." Ellis Letters, Third Series, iv, 162. The principal
authorities on the Hampton Court Conference are, first, "The Svmme and
Svbstance of the Conference, which it pleased his excellent Majestie
to have," etc., "Contracted by William Barlovv, ... Deane of Chester";
second, Dr. Montague's letter to his mother, in Winwood's Memorials,
ii, 13-15; third, the letter of Patrick Galloway to the Presbytery of
Edinburgh, in Calderwood, vi, 241, 242; and, fourth, a letter from
Tobie Mathew, Bishop of Durham, to Hutton, Archbishop of York, in
Strype's Whitgift appendix, xlv. Compare Nugæ Antiquæ, 181, 182, and
the king's letter to Blake, in Ellis's Letters, third series, iv, 161,
which are both cited above. Mr. Gardiner has shown (History of
England, i, 159) that this letter is addressed to Northampton. There
are several documents relating to the conference among the state
papers calendared by Mrs. Greene under dates in January, 1604. Of the
vigorous action taken against the Puritans after the conference, some
notion may be formed by the letter of protest from the aged Matthew
Hutton, Archbishop of York, to Lord Cranborne, in Lodge's
Illustrations of British History, iii, 115, and Cranborne's reply,
ibid., 125.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 168.]
Stith has not the weight of an original authority, but he is justly
famous for accuracy in following his authorities, and he had access to
many papers relating to the history of Virginia which are now lost.
Under the year 1608 he says: "Doctor Whitgift, Arch-Bishop of
Canterbury, ... having died four Years before this, was succeeded to
that high Preferment by Dr. Richard Bancroft.... He had very high
Notions with Relation to the Government of both Church and State; and
was accordingly a great Stickler for, and Promoter of, the King's
absolute Power, and failed not to take all Occasions, to oblige the
Puritans to conform to the Church of England. This Prelate's Harshness
and Warmth caused many of that People to take the Resolution this Year
of settling themselves in Virginia, and some were actually come off
for that Purpose. But the Arch-bishop, finding that they were
preparing in great Numbers to depart, obtained a Proclamation from the
King, forbidding any to go, without his Majesty's express Leave."
History of Virginia, 1747, p. 76.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 168.]
For Whitaker's filiation, Neill's Virginia Company, 78. Whitaker's
Good Newes from Virginia is no doubt intended by the entry in the
inventory of Brewster's goods, "Newes from Virginia." I know no other
book with such a title. That Alexander Whitaker was himself touched
with Puritanism, or at least was not unwilling to have Puritan
ministers for colleagues, is rendered pretty certain from passages in
his letters. For instance, he writes to Crashaw from Jamestown, August
9, 1611, desiring that young and "godly" ministers should come, and
adds, "We have noe need either of ceremonies or bad livers." British
Museum, Additional MSS., 21,993. (The letter is printed in Browne's
Genesis, 499, 500.) In a letter given in Purchas and in Neill, 95,
dated June 18, 1614, he says that neither subscription nor the
surplice are spoken of in Virginia. It has escaped the notice of
church historians that Whitaker's semi-Puritanism seems to have left
traces for many years on the character and usage of the Virginia
church. The Rev. Hugh Jones writes as late as 1724 in his Present
State of Virginia, p. 68, that surplices were only then "beginning to
be brought in Fashion," and that the people in some parishes received
the Lord's Supper sitting.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 173.]
The late Dr. Neill was the first, I believe, to call attention to this
fact, though he did not state it quite so strongly as I have put it in
the text. It is worth while transferring Neill's remarks from the New
England Genealogical Register, vol. XXX, 412, 413: "The action of the
passengers of the Mayflower in forming a social compact before landing
at Plymouth Rock seems to have been in strict accordance with the
policy of the London Company, under whose patent the ship sailed. On
June 9, 1619, O.S., John Whincop's patent was duly sealed by the
Company, but this which had cost the Puritans so much labor and money
was not used. Several months after, the Leyden people became
interested in a new project. On February 2, 1619-'20, at a meeting at
the house of Sir Edwin Sandys in Aldersgate, he stated to the Company
that a grant had been made to John Peirce and his associates. At the
same quarterly meeting it was expressly ordered that the leaders of
particular plantations, associating unto them divers of the gravest
and discreetest of their companies, shall have liberty to make orders,
ordinances, and constitutions for the better ordering and directing of
their business and servants, provided they be not repugnant to the
laws of England." Bradford, in his Plimouth Plantation, 90, says they
"chose or rather confirmed Mr. John Carver, ... their Governour for
that year"--that is, for 1620. Mr. Deane, the editor of Bradford, has
lost the force of this by misunderstanding a statement in Mourt's
Relation, so called. See Deane's note, page 99, of Bradford. The
statement in Mourt is under date of March 23d. I quote from the
reprint in Young, 196, 197: "and did likewise choose our governor for
this present year, which was Master John Carver," etc. Young applies
Bradford's words, "or rather confirmed," to this event, and Deane also
supposes that Bradford confuses two elections. Carver was no doubt
chosen in England or Holland under authority of the charter to serve
for the calendar year, and confirmed or rechosen after the Compact was
signed. What took place on the 23d of March was that a governor was
elected for the year 1621, which, according to the calendar of that
time, began on the 25th of March. For the next year they chose Carver,
who was already "governor for this present year," and whose first term
was about to expire. Both Deane and Young failed to perceive the
pregnant fact that Carver was governor during the voyage, and so lost
the force of the words "or rather confirmed." Bradford, in that
portion of his History of Plimouth Plantation which relates to this
period, gives several letters illustrating the negotiations of the
Pilgrims with the Virginia Company. The MS. Records of the Company in
the Library of Congress, under dates of May 26 and June 9, 1619, and
February 19, 1620 (1619 O.S.), contain the transactions relating to
the Whincop Charter, which was not used, on account of Whincop's
death, and the Pierce Charter, which the Pilgrims took with them.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 174.]
The charge against Sandys is in the Duke of Manchester's papers, Royal
Historical MS. Commission viii, II, 45. It is remarkable that the
dominant liberal faction in the Virginia Company is here accused of
seeking to do what the Massachusetts Company afterward did--to wit, to
found a popular American government by virtue of powers conferred in a
charter. That liberal government in New England had its rise in the
arrangements made with the London or Virginia Company before sailing,
and not, as poets, painters, and orators have it, in the cabin of the
Mayflower, is sufficiently attested in a bit of evidence, conspicuous
enough, but usually overlooked. Robinson's farewell letter to the
whole company, which reached them in England, is in Bradford, 64-67,
and in Mourt's Relation. It has several significant allusions to the
form of government already planned. "And lastly, your intended course
of civill communitie will minister continuall occasion of offence."
The allusion here seems to be to the joint-stock and communistic
system of labor and living proposed. In another paragraph the allusion
is to the system of government: "Whereas, you are become a body
politik, using amongst your selves civill governmente, and are not
furnished with any persons of spetiall emencie above the rest, to be
chosen by you into office of governmente," etc., "you are at present
to have only them for your ordinarie governours, which your selves
shall make choyse of for that worke." That the government under the
Virginia Company was to be democratic is manifest. The compact was a
means of giving it the sanction of consent where the patent and the
general order did not avail for that purpose.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 176.]
Winslow's Briefe Narration appended to his Hypocrisie Vnmasked is the
only authority for Robinson's address. Dr. H. M. Dexter has with
characteristic wealth of learning and ingenuity sought to diminish the
force of these generous words of Robinson in his Congregationalism,
403 and ff. But the note struck in this farewell address was familiar
to the later followers of Robinson's form of Independency. Five of the
ministers who went to Holland in 1637 and founded churches, published
in 1643 a tract called An Apologeticall Narrative Humbly Submitted to
the Honourable Houses of Parliament. By Thomas Goodwin, Phillip Nye,
Sidrach Simpson, Jer. Borroughs, William Bridge. London, 1643. From
the copy in the British Museum I quote: "A second principle we carryed
along with us in all our resolutions was, Not to make our present
judgment and practice a binding law unto ourselves for the future
which we in like manner made continuall profession of upon all
occasions." On page 22 Robinson's words are almost repeated in the
phrase "they coming new out of popery ... might not be perfect the
first day." Robinson's early colleague, Smyth, the unpractical,
much-defamed, but saintly "Anabaptist," says in a tract published
after his death, "I continually search after the truth." Robinson
wrote a reply to a portion of this tract. See Barclay's Inner Life,
appendix to Chapter V, where the tract is given. This holding of their
opinions in a state of flux, this liberal expectancy of a further
evolution of opinion, was a trait to be admired in the early
Separatists in an age when modesty in dogmatic statement was
exceedingly rare.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 177.]
Neill, in the Historical Magazine for January, 1869, and the New
England Genealogical Register, 1874, identifies the Mayflower captain
with Jones of the Discovery, who was accounted in Virginia
"dishonest." But honest seamen were few in that half-piratical age.
That he was hired by the Dutch to take the Pilgrims elsewhere than to
Hudson River is charged in Morton's Memorial, and is not in itself
unlikely. But the embarrassments of Cape Cod shoals were very real; a
trading ship sent out by the Pilgrims after their settlement, failed
to find a way round the cape.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 177.]
Early New England writers were not content with giving the Pilgrims
the honor due to them. Hutchinson asserts that the Virginia Colony had
virtually failed, and that the Pilgrim settlement was the means of
reviving it. This has been often repeated on no other authority than
that of Hutchinson, who wrote nearly a century and a half after the
event. The list of patents for plantations in Virginia as given by
Purchas, in which appears that of Master "Wincop," under which the
Pilgrims proposed to plant, is a sufficient proof that Virginia was
not languishing. "These patentees," says Purchas, "have undertaken to
transport to Virginia a great multitude of people and store of
cattle." Virginia had reached the greatest prosperity it attained
before the dissolution of the company, in precisely the years in which
the slender Pilgrim Colony was preparing. It is quite possible to
honor the Pilgrims without reversing the order of cause and effect.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 181.]
Bradford's Plimouth Plantation, 135, 136: "The experience that was had
in this commone course and condition, tried sundrie years, and that
amongst godly and sober men, may well evince the vanitie of that
conceite of Platos and other ancients, applauded by some of later
times--that the taking away of propertie, and bringing in communitie
into a comone wealth, would make them happy and florishing; as if they
were wiser than God. For this communitie (so fare as it was) was found
to breed much confusion and discontent, and retard much imployment
that would have been to their benefite and comforte. For the yong-men
that were most able and fitte for labour and service did repine that
they should spend their time and streingth to worke for other mens
wives and children with out any recompence. The strong, or man of
parts, had no more in devission of victails and cloaths, then he that
was weake and not able to doe a quarter the other could; this was
thought injuestice. The aged and graver men to be ranked and equalised
in labours, and victails, cloaths, &c., with the meaner and yonger
sorte, thought it some indignite and disrespect unto them. And for
mens wives to be commanded to doe servise for other men, as dresing
their meate, washing their cloaths, &c., they deemd it a kind of
slaverie, neither could many husbands well brooke it. Upon the point
all being to have alike, and all to doe alike, they thought them
selves in the like condition, and one as good as another; and so if it
did not cut of those relations that God hath set amongest men yet it
did much diminish and take of the mutuall respects that should be
preserved amongst them. And would have bene worse if they had been men
of another condition."
CHAPTER THE FOURTH.
_THE GREAT PURITAN EXODUS._
I.
[Sidenote: Result of the Pilgrim settlement.]
Men who undertake a great enterprise rarely find their anticipations
fulfilled; they are fortunate if their general aim is reached at last
in any way. The Pilgrims had migrated, hoping to be "stepping-stones
to others," as they phrased it. They thought that many like-minded in
matters of religion would come to them out of England, but the
Separatist movement had been worn out by persecution. There were few
open dissenters left, and the Pilgrims, by their long exile, had lost
all close relations with their own country. Among those that came to
Plymouth from England were some whose coming tended to dilute the
religious life and lower the moral standards of the colony. The fervor
of the Pilgrims themselves abated something of its intensity in the
preoccupations incident to pioneer life. The hope of expanding their
religious organization by the rapid growth of the colony was not
fulfilled; discontented Puritans were not eager to settle under the
government of Separatists, and ten years after their migration the
Plymouth colony contained little more than three hundred people.
[Sidenote: The religious motive.]
None the less the hope of the Pilgrims was realized; they became
stepping-stones to thousands of others. Captain John Smith laughed at
the "humorous ignorances" of these "Brownist" settlers, but, humorous
or not, ignorant or not, the "Brownists" remained on the coast while
other emigrants retreated. In spite of their terrible suffering none
of the Pilgrims went back. This is the capital fact in their history.
A new force had been introduced into colonization. Henceforth
persecuted or discontented religionists, prompted by a motive vastly
more strenuous and enduring than cupidity, were to bear the main brunt
of breaking a way into the wilderness.
[Sidenote: Commercial settlements.]
[Sidenote: John White's The Planter's Plea, in Young's Chronicles of
Mass.]
The first effect of the slender success at Plymouth was to stimulate
speculative and merely adventurous migration. From 1607 until the
arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620 no English colony had landed on the
northern coast; but after the Pilgrims came, fish-drying and
fur-buying stations began to appear on the banks of the Piscataqua and
the coast eastward in 1622 and 1623. These tiny settlements were germs
of New Hampshire and Maine, the only New England plantations begun
without any admixture of religious motives. A commercial colony was
tried in Massachusetts Bay as early as 1622, but it failed. There were
other like attempts. In 1624 some men of Dorchester, headed by John
White, the "Patriarch" Puritan clergyman, sent out a colony to Cape
Ann. The members of this company were to grow maize to supply fishing
ships, and in the season the same men were to lend a hand on board the
ships, which would thus be saved the necessity for carrying double
crews. But this plausible scheme proved a case of seeking strawberries
in the sea and red herrings in the wood. Farmers were but lubbers at
codfishing, and salt-water fishermen were clumsy enough in the
cornfield. Losses of several sorts forced the Dorchester Company to
dissolve. Four members of their futile colony, encouraged by a message
from White, remained on Cape Ann. Removing to the present site of
Salem, they waited at the risk of their lives for the coming of a new
colony from England.
[Sidenote: Individual settlers.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
Solitary adventurers of the sort known on nearly every frontier were
presently to be found in several places. The scholarly recluse was
represented by Blackstone, who had selected for his secluded abode a
spot convenient to a spring of good water where the town of Boston was
afterward planted; the inevitable Scotch adventurer was on an island
in Boston Harbor; Samuel Maverick, a pattern of frontier hospitality
and generosity, took up his abode on Noddle's Island; while the
rollicking and scoffing libertine was found in Thomas Morton, who with
some rebellious bond servants got possession of a fortified house in
what is now Braintree. Here Morton welcomed renegade servants from
Plymouth and elsewhere. He wrote ribald verses which he posted on his
Maypole, and devised May-dances in which the saturnine Indian women
participated. He broke all the commandments with delight, carried on
a profitable trade in selling firearms to the savages in defiance of
royal proclamations, and wrought whatever other deviltry came within
his reach, until his neighbors could no longer endure the proximity of
so dangerous a firebrand. Little Captain Standish, whom Morton
derisively dubbed "Captain Shrimp," descended on this kingdom of
misrule at last and broke up the perpetual carnival, sending Morton to
England.
The settlement of New England was thus beginning sporadically and
slowly. If the Massachusetts Puritans had not come, these feeble and
scattered plantations might have grown into colonies after a long
time, as such beginnings did in New Hampshire and Maine, and later in
North Carolina, but having no strong neighbor to support them, it is
likely that they would all have been driven away or annihilated by
some inevitable collision with the Indians.
II.
[Sidenote: Puritanism at the accession of Charles I.]
English Puritanism throughout the reign of James I had been the party
of strict morals, of austere and Pharisaic scrupulosity, of rigid
Sabbath observance, and of Calvinistic dogmatism. During that reign it
had passed through its last transformation in becoming a political
party--the party of anti-Catholic politics at home and abroad. Because
Parliament was on its side, the mere course of events had made the
Puritan party favor the predominance of Parliament, and this brought
it to represent liberalism in politics. By his unconcealed
partisanship, James had contrived to make the Puritans a permanent
opposition suspected of disliking monarchy itself. Charles I was even
more the antagonist of Puritanism than James.
[Sidenote: Later Puritanism conservative.]
In one other respect the position of Puritanism had been gradually
changed by mere parallax. In Elizabeth's reign it had been the party
of innovation. It was no longer the party of change in religion when
Charles came to the throne. The adoption of the Arminian system of
doctrine by many of the High-churchmen, and the reactionary
innovations now proposed by ecclesiastics like Laud, had left
Puritanism to stand for Protestant conservatism. It was immeasurably
the gainer with the mass of slow-moving people by this change of
relative position. The parliamentary struggle with James and Charles
added to the religious Puritans a numerous body of political Puritans
who, without much care about religion, were fain to ally their
political discontent with the discontent of those who resisted
ecclesiastical retrogression. This compact party, powerful after all
its defeats, was bound by its position to cherish every aspiration for
the improvement of morals, every indignant movement for the
suppression of abuses, and it became the ally of every popular
resentment against royal absolutism or episcopal encroachment, and the
advocate, almost to fanaticism, of an anti-Spanish foreign policy, and
a domestic policy in which repression and persecution of Roman
Catholics held first place.
III.
[Sidenote: Rise of Laud.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
But the king and the High-churchmen were the party in possession.
Buckingham, in the first years of Charles, was more than ever dominant
at court, and Buckingham's favorite, just rising above the horizon,
was Dr. Laud, Bishop of St. Davids at the death of James, and soon
afterward translated to Bath and Wells and then to London. It soon
came to be understood that he was only waiting for the death of his
opponent, Archbishop Abbott, to take the primacy, much of the power of
which he had already contrived to grasp. On the death of Buckingham,
Laud succeeded him as chief favorite at court. The one great and real
service which this able and indefatigable divine rendered the world is
the last he would have chosen. He was the main spur to the settlement
of Puritan colonies in New England.
[Sidenote: Character of Laud.]
[Sidenote: Letter to Selden in Chalmers, art. Laud.]
Do our best, we moderns shall hardly avoid injustice in our opinion of
Laud. The changes of time and the advance of ideas have rendered a
sympathetic judgment of him difficult. Ecclesiastic above all, he was
not, like Whitgift and Bancroft, a Protestant High-churchman. He
sought to make the English church Catholic and mediæval, yet he would
on no account attach it to Rome. Like Whitgift, he made the church
dependent on royal authority, and in this he was far removed from the
earlier churchmen. There was nothing spiritual in his nature; his
personal devotion had neither agony nor exaltation. He had none of the
mediæval enthusiasm that prompted the vigils of his contemporary,
Nicholas Ferrar, for example, and elevated the master of Little
Gidding to a saintship, amiable and touching. Notwithstanding the
energy of Laud's devotion, his nature was as shallow and objective as
it was sincere. It has been remarked that when Laud spoke of the
beauty of holiness he meant no more than decorum in public worship,
the beauty of a well-ordered church and of proper intonation and
genuflexion. He seemed to touch a modern note when he proposed to
suppress the futile debate between Calvinists and Arminians because it
tended to disturb Christian charity; but Laud's Christian charity,
like his holiness, was purely external; it was merely quiet submission
to one ritual and one form of discipline. His relentless, vindictive,
and even cruel temper toward opponents showed him incapable of
conceiving of charity in any spiritual sense. He disliked controversy
because it put obstacles in the way of uniformity, and he had no taste
for speculative debate because it tended to undermine authority. His
intellect was utterly practical and phenomenally acute. It was
incredibly energetic, and its energy was intensified by its
narrowness. His attachment to the church had no relation to the
beneficent utilities of the church. The church was a fetich for which
he was ready to die without a murmur. In his zeal he was reckless of
personal danger and sometimes unmindful of the moral complexion of his
actions. His egotism was so interblended with his zeal that he could
not separate one from the other, nor can the student of his character.
A disservice to him was an affront to Almighty God. The very honesty
of such a man is pernicious; a little duplicity might have softened
the outward manifestations of his hard nature. Unhappily, there was
not even indolence or self-indulgence to moderate his all but
superhuman activity, which pushed his domination to its possibilities,
and, with a vigilance aspiring to omniscience, penetrated to the
minutest details in the administration of church and state. He even
filed papers giving the elements of the debates on good works as an
evidence of sanctification carried on between Hooker and Cotton in the
cabin meeting-houses of New England. For the rest he presents the
paradoxes one expects in so marked a character. While he had no taste
for the credulous dogmatism of his time, he showed a certain relish
for superstitions in recording dreams and omens, yet he had none of
the timidity of superstition. He was, moreover, fearless in peril, and
he faced unpopularity without flinching. Stubborn and inflexible with
the clergy and the populace, obdurate and pitiless with those who had
offended him or his king or his church, he was flexible and
insinuating in his relations with those in power. His unworthy
yielding to his early patron, the Earl of Devonshire, in a matter
which concerned his ecclesiastical conscience, gave him a bitter and
lifelong repentance. His complacence to Buckingham, and his servile
devotion to Charles, seem a little despicable. He was even willing at
the last to make terms with Parliament, when it became plain that
Parliament was the new master. Though obsequious, he was the farthest
possible from a coward, and he accepted death on the scaffold with the
serene composure of a martyr.
IV.
[Sidenote: Political conditions promote emigration.]
[Sidenote: Gorges's Briefe Narration.]
The great migration to New England set in soon after the beginning of
Laud's ascendency in the ecclesiastical government of England. It
waned as he declined, and ceased forever with his fall. There is a
witty justness in the phrase by which a colonial historian dubs Laud
"the father of New England." Other archbishops had contented
themselves with crushing the Separatists, but, with characteristic
boldness and logical thoroughness, Laud struck at the powerful Puritan
party which had contrived for more than half a century to remain in
the Church of England while protesting against the discipline and
service of the church. The arbitrary government of the new king, the
dissolution of Parliament, and the imprisonment of liberal leaders cut
off hope of securing church reform or a relaxation of oppressive laws.
High-church pulpits resounded with arguments in favor of the king's
absolute authority and the duty of unquestioning obedience, while the
declared principles of the king and his court left the property,
liberty, and life of the subject exposed to the rapacity or the
vindictiveness of those in power. In view of these things, some of the
Puritans began to think the American wilderness a better place of
residence than England.
V.
[Sidenote: Religious motives for Puritan emigration.]
The state of the church was even more a reason for removal than the
oppressions of the government. Persecution had failed to drive Puritan
ministers or their followers into what they deemed the capital sin of
schism. They hated the domination of the bishops, communion with the
ungodly, and the absence of a rigid discipline. But they had been
sustained through long years of waiting by the hope of delivering the
church from those who oppressed and defiled her. They proposed,
whenever they could gain power, to winnow the chaff from the wheat,
and they probably destined the chaff to swift destruction. But the
hope of seeing a church without spot or wrinkle, prayer book or
bishop, died under the reactionary policy of Buckingham and Laud, and
many came to look with favor on a project whose full import was only
whispered in the ear, to found in the wilds of America a "particular
church," as they phrased it--a new church with a right of priority in
a new land and backed by the sanction of the government of the
country. It was no modern generalized love of liberty, civil or
religious, but a strenuous desire to find a place where they might
make real their ideal of church organization that brought the Puritans
out of their comfortable nests in England to dwell in poor cabins in a
wilderness. It is a motive for braving dangers by sea and land hard of
comprehension in our Sadducean age.
[Sidenote: Fear of judgments.]
[Sidenote: Life and Letters of Winthrop, i, 390, 313.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
There was one other consideration still more difficult for men of our
day to understand. Political and military reverses had apparently
well-nigh wrecked Protestantism on the Continent. Many Protestants in
the Palatinate and elsewhere were making peace by becoming Roman
Catholics. "All other churches of Europe are brought to desolation, &
our sinnes, for which the Lord beginnes allreaddy to frowne upon us &
to cutte us short, doe threatne evill times to be comminge upon us."
These words are set down in the Reasons for New England as the second
consideration. In another part of the same paper it is urged that the
"woefull spectacle" of the ruin of "Churches beyound the Seas," "may
teach us more wisdome to avoide the Plauge when it is foreseene & not
to tarry as they did till it overtake us." The dominance of Old
Testament ideas is easily seen here. But this fleeing from judgments
that were to fall not on the lives or possessions of men, but on the
churches themselves--judgments of a spiritual nature, apprehended only
by inference--was a refinement of Hebraism never known to the Hebrews.
The delusion that Laud meant to hand over the English church bound
hand and foot to Rome may have made such judgments seem visibly
imminent.
VI.
[Sidenote: Rise of the Massachusetts Company.]
[Sidenote: Compare The Planter's Plea.]
The project for a Puritan colony languished at first on account of the
failure of the semi-Puritan, semi-commercial Dorchester farming and
fishing colony on Cape Ann; but White of Dorchester continued to
agitate the planting of a colony. He had, no doubt, efficient help in
the proceedings against the Puritan clergy. From Dorchester the plan
was carried to London, where it soon became, in the phrase of that
time, "vulgar," or, as we should say, popular. Its countenance to the
world, and especially toward the government, was that of a commercial
venture like the planting of Virginia, but in its heart it was a
religious enterprise. In March, 1628, the Council for New England gave
to the Massachusetts projectors a patent for lands extending from the
Merrimack to the Charles and three miles beyond each river. The
western boundary of this tract was the Pacific Ocean, for holders of
grants could afford to be generous in giving away the interior of an
unexplored continent about which nothing was known but that it
abounded in savages.
VII.
[Sidenote: Leadership and character of Endecott.]
[Sidenote: 1628.]
[Sidenote: Bentley's Description of Salem.]
[Sidenote: Eliot's Biography, 195.]
In June a small colony was sent to Massachusetts under John Endecott.
The next year another company of emigrants was added. Endecott, who
was one of the patentees, loved a bold enterprise, and readily
consented to take charge of the forerunners of the colony. He lacked
the moderation and saneness needed in a leader, and his long career in
connection with Massachusetts was marked from the beginning by
mistakes born of a rash temper and impulsive enthusiasm. Two of the
gentlemen emigrants who had been named by the company in London as
members of the local Council were not willing to go to the unexpected
lengths Endecott favored in the organization of the Salem church,
though they were probably Puritans of a moderate type. They held a
separate service with a small company, using the prayer book. Endecott
appears to have made no effort at conciliation; he promptly shipped
John and Samuel Browne, pack and prayer book, back to England. This
was precisely the course that even Lord Bacon advised in the treatment
of schismatics who should contrive to gain access to a colony, and
there is no occasion for surprise that a quixotic enthusiast like
Endecott did not hold broader views than those of a philosopher of the
same period. But Endecott's rash action endangered the whole
enterprise, which required at this stage the extreme of prudence. The
alarmed managers in England contrived to settle with the Brownes in
private, and the affair had no other result than to ruin Endecott's
reputation for prudence. Endecott, however, went on fighting the
Lord's battles against the Apollyons of his fancy, regardless of
results. Soon after his arrival he marched to the den of Morton, the
profligate master of "Merrymount." In the absence of Morton he hewed
down the profane Maypole in God's name, and solemnly dubbed the place
Mount Dagon, in memory of the Philistine idol that fell down before
the ark of the Lord. At a later period he cut one arm of the cross out
of the English colors of the Salem trainband, in order to convert the
Union Jack to Protestantism. One of the many manifestations of his
pragmatical conscience was his Tartuffian protection of modesty by
insisting that the women of Salem should keep their faces veiled at
church. He was also a leader in the crusade of the magistrates against
the crime of wearing wigs. A strange mixture of rashness, pious zeal,
genial manners, hot temper, and harsh bigotry, his extravagances
supply the condiment of humor to a very serious history--it is perhaps
the principal debt posterity owes him. But there was a side to his
career too serious to be humorous. Bold against Maypoles and prayer
books and women who presented themselves in church immodestly
barefaced, and in the forefront against wigs, he was no soldier either
in prudent conduct or vigor of attack. When intrusted with the command
of an expedition to demand satisfaction of the Pequots, he proved
incapable of anything but a campaign of exasperation. When late in
life he was governor of Massachusetts, and had become, after the death
of Winthrop and Dudley, the dominant political leader, the putting to
death of Quakers left an ineffaceable blot on the history of the
colony he had helped to found. When the colony was brought to book in
England for this severity, Endecott showed himself capable of writing
one of the most cringing official letters on record, as full of cant
as it was of creeping servility. In him we may clearly apprehend
certain unamiable traits of Puritanism and of the early seventeenth
century which appear in his character in exaggerated relief. This
hearty and energetic bigot must have been representative of a large,
though not of the better, element in Massachusetts Puritanism, for he
was chosen to the governorship oftener than any other man during the
continuance of the old charter government.
VIII.
[Sidenote: Leadership of Winthrop.]
It is a pleasure to turn from Endecott to one who was, like him, a
seventeenth-century man, and who did not escape the scrupulosity and
ridiculosity of Puritanism, but whose amiable personality,
magnanimity, and qualities of leadership made him the principal figure
in the Puritan migration. Winthrop, like two or three of the
conspicuous actors in our later history, owes his distinction to the
moral elevation of his character quite as much as to his considerable
mental gifts; for character multiplied into sagacity is better than
genius for some kinds of work.
[Sidenote: Rise of the great migration of 1630.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
He was a late comer in the enterprise. In the year after Endecott had
brought over a colony composed mostly of servants of the company and
of the individual patentees, a second company of emigrants had been
sent over with a commission to Endecott as governor on the place,
assisted by a council. A church had been formed at Salem. Now set in a
larger agitation in favor of migration to New England. The course of
events in England was so adverse to Puritanism that those who were
devoted to that purified church, which was as yet invisible, except to
the eye of faith, began to look toward America. Every door for public
action in state or church was closed to the Puritans in England,
closed and barred by Courts of High Commission, by the Star Chamber,
and by the Tower. Into one of the gloomiest rooms of the latter had
lately gone, at the arbitrary command of the king, that high-spirited
martyr to constitutional liberty, Sir John Eliot. Finding no way by
which to come out again except a postern of dishonor, Eliot
deliberately chose to languish and die in prison. The almost hopeless
outlook at home, the example set by Endecott's emigration to New
England in 1628, and by that of Higginson's company in 1629, perhaps
also the ever-active propagandism of "Father White" of Dorchester, set
agoing among the Puritans a widespread interest in the subject. Some
of the leading minds thought it a noble work to organize a reformed
church in a new country, since, in their view, the Church of England,
under Laud, had taken up its march backward. This purpose of planting
a Puritan church in America now began to take the first place; even
the conversion of the Indians, which had been the chief avowed purpose
hitherto, fell into the background.
[Sidenote: Winthrop's paper.]
The manuscript paper entitled Reasons for New England, to which
reference has already been made, was widely but secretly circulated,
and frequently copied, after a fashion of that time, prevailing
especially in the case of tracts or books of a kind to shrink from
print. It contained arguments in favor of removing to New England,
with answers to the various objections made against emigration.
Several copies of these Reasons, or Considerations, have come down to
us in various handwritings, and the authorship has been attributed now
to one, now to another; to Winthrop, to White of Dorchester, to Sir
John Eliot himself. It appears to have been in its earliest form the
production of Winthrop. There were horseback journeys, some of them by
night, made about this time for the purpose of secret consultation.
[Sidenote: His character.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
Winthrop, a country gentleman of Groton, in Suffolk, and an attorney
in the Court of Wards, was a strict Puritan, desiring above all a
reformed church and "the ordinances of God in their purity," as the
phrase of the time went. Precocious in everything, and inclined to
ideal aims, he had been religious from boyhood, had married at a
little over seventeen years of age, and had been made a justice of the
peace while still very young. He studied divinity, and only the
dissuasion of friends kept him from entering the ministry. Of judicial
temper, he came to be often consulted upon points of conscience, which
gave much trouble in that age of casuistry and abounding scruples. His
kindly visits to those who were in any trouble of spirit were highly
prized. He himself makes much of the corruptions of his own nature and
of his juvenile aberrancy, but generosity and purity of spirit like
his are born and not acquired. His devoutness, accompanied by a habit
of self-criticism in the presence of Infinite Justice, doubtless gave
additional vigor to his virtues. For the rest, he was a man of
independent estate, of prudent and conciliatory carriage, of a clear
but not broad mind. What, as much as anything else, fitted him for his
function was, that all his virtues were cast in Puritan molds and all
his prejudices had a Puritan set.
[Sidenote: His influence.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
When the question of emigration was under discussion other gentlemen
who thought of going turned to Winthrop as the natural leader,
declaring that they would remain in England if he should desert them.
He was not only the official head, but he was indeed the soul, of the
migration of 1630, and he went to America confident of a call divine
like that of Moses.
IX.
[Sidenote: Cradock.]
It is a fact worthy of note that the three primary steps toward the
establishment of free government in America were due to Englishmen
who did not themselves cross the sea. The Great Charter of 1618 to the
Virginia colony, and the "large patent" to the Plymouth Pilgrims, were
granted, as we have seen, under the leadership of Sir Edwin Sandys,
Governor of the Virginia Company of London. The third of the measures
which placed colonial government on a popular basis was due to the
governor of another corporation engaged in colony planting.
[Sidenote: Cradock's plan.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Records, July 29, 1629.]
[Sidenote: Sainsbury's Calendar, May 17, 1626.]
On the 28th of July, 1629, while Winthrop and his friends were
debating their removal to New England, Mathew Cradock, a wealthy and
liberal merchant, who held the office of governor, or, as we should
say, president, of the Massachusetts Company, read in a "general
court" or meeting of the company "certain propositions conceived by
himself," as it is carefully recorded. He proposed "that for the
advancement of the plantation, the inducing and encouraging persons of
worth, quality and rank to transplant themselves and families thither
and for other weighty reasons"--reasons which probably it was not
thought best to spread upon the records, but which were the core of
the whole matter--for these reasons Cradock proposed to "transfer the
government of the plantation to those that shall inhabit there," and
not to continue it in subordination to a commercial company in London.
The sorrows of the Virginia colony under the administration of Sir
Thomas Smyth and the disagreements between the Pilgrims and their
"adventurers" in London had taught a wholesome lesson. Three years
earlier Sir Francis Wyatt, the best of all the early governors of
Virginia, had set forth in an elaborate report that the principal
cause of the "slow proceeding of the growth of the plantation" was
that the government had been divided between England and Virginia.
Massachusetts escaped from this embarrassment.
X.
[Sidenote: Evolution of the Mass. government.]
[Sidenote: Hubbard, chap. xviii.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
The evolution of the Massachusetts government may now be traced
through its several stages. A company was formed, partly of Dorchester
men, but chiefly of residents of London. This company secured a patent
to lands in Massachusetts Bay from the Council for New England. The
patentees intended both a commercial enterprise and a Puritan
settlement. They sent Endecott, one of their number, as agent or
superintendent, with a company of servants and others, to prepare the
way for the migration of other patentees. In March, 1628, they secured
a liberal charter from the king, which gave them the right to
establish in Massachusetts a government subordinate to the company.
The plan was to settle a government in the form rendered familiar by
that of the Virginia Company. The Massachusetts Company in London sent
a commission to Endecott as governor on the place, subject to the
orders of the company in England. A council of assistants was
associated with him, but there was as yet no provision for giving the
people a voice in the government.
[Sidenote: The change of plan.]
Winthrop and his coterie of gentlemen appear to have been dissatisfied
with the prospect of living under a government directed from England,
and thus subject to English stockholders and liable to interference
from the court. Cradock had been a leader and the most liberal
investor in the enterprise. He, no doubt, readily foresaw the great
advance that the colony would make if Winthrop and his friends should
embark their lives and fortunes in it, and he may have intended to
emigrate himself. The annulling of the charter of the Virginia Company
on frivolous pretexts had shown how easily the Massachusetts charter
might meet the same fate in a reign far more devoted to arbitrary
government than that of James and entirely hostile to Puritanism.
There could hardly be a doubt that the charter would be revoked as
soon as its projectors should develop their true purpose before the
all-observing eyes of Laud, who was now rising rapidly to dominant
influence in the government. It was at this juncture probably that
Cradock conceived his ingenious plan. He would resign his place and
have the officers of the company chosen from gentlemen about to embark
for the plantation. The charter prescribed no place of assembling to
the company, which had been left free apparently to make its
headquarters at its birthplace in Dorchester or at its new home in
London. It was also free to meet in any other place. The meetings of
the company might therefore be held in Massachusetts, where the
Puritanism of its proceedings would attract less attention. The
governor and other officers would then be chosen in the colony; the
company and the colony would thus be merged into one, and the charter
transported to Massachusetts would perhaps be beyond the reach of
writs and judgments.
XI.
[Sidenote: The Cambridge agreement.]
[Sidenote: 1629.]
No doubt the influential company of friends who were debating a
removal to New England were informed of Cradock's proposition before
it was mooted in the company on the 28th of July. The plan was
probably thought of in consequence of their objection to emigration
under the Virginia system. Cradock's proposition was at least the
turning point of their decision. Nearly a month later, on the 26th of
August, the leaders of Winthrop's party assembled to the number of
twelve, at Cambridge, and solemnly pledged themselves, "in the
presence of God who is the searcher of all hearts," "to pass the Seas
(under God's protection) to inhabit and continue in New England." The
preamble states the object of this migration. It was not civil
liberty, the end that political Puritans had most in view, and
certainly there is no hint of a desire for religious liberty. Even the
conversion of the Indian is not uppermost in this solemn resolve.
"God's glory and the church's good" are the words used. This has the
true ring of the Puritan churchman. The whole pledge is couched in
language befitting men who feel themselves engaged in a religious
enterprise of the highest importance.
This pledge contained a notable proviso. The signers agreed to
emigrate only on condition that "the whole government together with
the patent for said plantation" should be transferred and legally
established in the colony by order of the General Court of the
Company, and that this should be done before the last of the ensuing
month. There was opposition to the removal of the government, and this
peremptory condition was necessary. Three days later, after a debate,
the company voted that its government should be transferred to
Massachusetts Bay.
[Sidenote: Removal of the charter.]
[Sidenote: 1629.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: Compare Palfrey, i, 371, and Deane's note in Mass. Hist.
Soc. Proc. 1869, p. 185.]
[Sidenote: Hutchinson's Hist. Mass., p. 31.]
On the 20th of October Cradock resigned his governorship and Winthrop
was chosen in his stead. Puritan ministers were at once elected to the
freedom of the company, in order that its proceedings might not want
the sanction of prayer. The next year the charter crossed the wide
seas, and in 1630 a court of the company was held in the wilderness at
Charlestown. But a subordinate government "for financial affairs only"
was maintained in London, with Cradock, the former president, at the
head. This seems to have been an effectual blind, and probably the
king's government did not know of the flight of the charter until the
Privy Council in 1634 summoned Cradock to bring that document to the
Council Board. Thomas Morton, the expelled master of Merrymount,
writes of the wrath of Laud, who had been foiled by this pretty ruse:
"My lord of Canterbury and my lord privy seal, having caused all Mr.
Cradock's letters to be viewed and his apology for the brethren
particularly heard, protested against him and Mr. Humfries that they
were a couple of imposturous knaves." Laud had thought to crush the
government of Massachusetts by destroying the company, whose office
remained in London, with Cradock still apparently its head. The
archbishop found too late that he had eagerly pounced upon a dummy. He
devised many things afterward to achieve his purpose, but the charter
remained over seas.
XII.
From the point of view of our later age, the removal of the charter
government to America is the event of chief importance in this
migration of Winthrop's company. The ultimate effect of this brilliant
stroke was so to modify a commercial corporation that it became a
colonial government as independent as possible of control from
England. By the admission of a large number of the colonists to be
freemen--that is, to vote as stockholders in the affairs of the
company, which was now the colony itself, and a little later by the
development of a second chamber--the government became representative.
[Sidenote: The main purpose.]
But we may not for a moment conceive that the colonists understood
the importance of their act in the light of its consequences. In their
minds the government was merely a setting and support for the church.
The founding of a new church establishment, after what they deemed the
primitive model, was the heart of the enterprise. This is shown in
many words uttered by the chief actors, and it appears in strong
relief in an incident that occurred soon after the arrival of
Winthrop's company. Isaac Johnston, the wealthiest man of the party,
succumbed to disease and hardship, but "he felt much rejoiced at his
death that the Lord had been pleased to keep his eyes open so long as
to see one church of Christ gathered before his death." Here we have
the Puritan passion for a church whose discipline and services should
realize their ideals--a passion that in the stronger men suffered no
abatement in the midst of the inevitable pestilence and famine that
were wont to beset newly arrived colonists in that time.
XIII.
[Sidenote: Influence of Plymouth.]
One salient fact in the history of the Massachusetts Bay colony is the
dominant influence of the example of Plymouth. The Puritans of the
Massachusetts colony were not Separatists. No one had been more severe
in controversy with the Separatists than some of the Puritans who
remained in the Church of England. They were eagerly desirous not to
be confounded with these schismatics. When the great migration of 1630
took place, the emigrants published a pathetic farewell, protesting
with the sincerity of homesick exiles their attachment to the Church
of England, "ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have
obtained in the common salvation we have received in her bosom and
sucked at her breasts."
[Sidenote: Differences among the Puritans.]
It is to be remembered that these Puritans did not agree among
themselves. Puritanism was of many shades. There were some, like the
Brownes whom Endecott sent out of the colony, that were even unwilling
to surrender the prayer book. The greater part of the earlier Puritans
had desired to imitate the Presbyterianism of Scotland and Geneva, and
in Elizabeth's time they had organized presbyteries. Nothing seemed
more probable beforehand than the revival in New England of the
presbyteries of the days of Cartwright. But what happened was
unexpected even by the Puritans. The churches of Massachusetts were
formed on the model of John Robinson's Independency.
[Sidenote: Effect of emigration.]
[Sidenote: Roger Clap's Memoirs, 40.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
There must have been a certain exhilarant reaction in the minds of the
Puritans when at last they were clear of the English coast and free
from the authority that had put so many constraints upon them. There
were preachings and expoundings by beloved preachers with no fear of
pursuivants. The new religious freedom was delightful to intoxication.
"Every day for ten weeks together," writes one passenger, they had
preaching and exposition. On one ship the watches were set by the
Puritan captain with the accompaniment of psalm-singing. Those who
all their lives long had made outward and inward compromises between
their ultimate convictions and their obligations to antagonistic
authority found themselves at length utterly free. It was not that
action was freed from the restraint of fear, so much as that thought
itself was freed from the necessity for politic compromises. Every
ship thus became a seminary for discussion. Every man now indulged in
the unwonted privilege of thinking his bottom thought. The tendency to
swing to an extreme is all but irresistible in the minds of men thus
suddenly liberated. To such enthusiasts the long-deferred opportunity
to actualize ultimate ideals in an ecclesiastical vacuum would be
accepted with joy. What deductions such companies would finally make
from the hints in the New Testament was uncertain. The only sure thing
was that every vestige of that which they deemed objectionable in the
English church would be repressed, obliterated, in their new
organization.
[Sidenote: Rise of the Congregational form in New England.]
[Sidenote: Cotton to Salonstall in Hutch. Papers.]
[Sidenote: Hubbard's Hist. of New Eng., 117.]
With the evils and abuses of the English church more and more
exaggerated in their thoughts, the sin of separation readily came to
seem less heinous than before. There was no longer any necessity for
professing loyalty to the church nor any further temptation to think
ill of those at Plymouth, who, like themselves, had suffered much to
avoid what both Separatists and Puritans deemed unchristian practices.
A common creed and common sufferings, flight from the same oppression
to find refuge in what was henceforth to be a common country, drew
them to sympathy and affection for their forerunners at Plymouth. The
Plymouth people were not backward to send friendly help to the
newcomers. The influence of the physician sent from Plymouth to
Endecott's party in the prevailing sickness soon persuaded the
naturally radical Endecott to the Plymouth view of church government.
Winthrop's associates, or the greater part of them, drifted in the
same direction, to their own surprise, no doubt. There was a lack of
uniformity in the early Massachusetts churches and some clashing of
opinion. Some ministers left the colony dissatisfied; one or more of
the churches long retained Presbyterian forms, and some stanch
believers in presbyterial government lamented long afterward that New
England ecclesiastical forms were not those of the Calvinistic
churches of Europe. But the net result was that Robinsonian
independency became the established religion in New England, whence it
was transplanted to England during the Commonwealth, and later became
the prevailing discipline among English dissenters.
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
Thus the church discipline and the form of government in Massachusetts
borrowed much from Plymouth, but the mildness and semi-toleration--the
"toleration of tolerable opinions"--which Robinson had impressed on
the Pilgrims was not so easily communicated to their new neighbors who
had been trained in another school.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 191.]
Morton's settlement has become the subject of a literature of its own,
and of some rather violent and amusing discussion even in our times.
Morton's New English Canaan has been edited by Mr. C. F. Adams for the
Prince Society. His defensive account of himself leaves the impression
that the author was just the sort of clever and reckless rake who is
most dangerous to settlements in contact with savages, and who might
be expelled neck and heels from a frontier community holding no
scruples of a Puritan sort. The Royal Proclamation in Rymer's Foedera,
xvii, 416 (and Hazard's State Papers, i, 151), 1622, sets forth the
evil of the sale of arms to the savages, but it was leveled at earlier
offenders than Morton. Compare Sainsbury's Calendar, September 29 and
November 24, 1630, pp. 120, 122. There are also references, more or
less extended, to Morton in the Massachusetts Records, Winthrop's
Journal, Bradford's Plimouth Plantation, Dudley's Letter to the
Countess of Lincoln in Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, and in
other early accounts.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 193.]
Abbott's account of Laud's rise, Rushworth, i, 440, is traced with a
bitter pen, no doubt, but the student Laud, as Abbott draws him, is so
much like his later self that one can not but believe that the
description of him picking quarrels with the public readers and
carrying information against them to the bishop has a basis of fact.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 199.]
Rushworth, writing under the later date of 1637, says: "The severe
Censures in Star Chamber, and the greatness of the Fines, and the
rigorous Proceedings to impose Ceremonies, the suspending and
silencing Multitudes of Ministers, for not reading in the Church the
Book for Sports to be exercised on the Lord's day, caused many of the
Nation, both Ministers and others, to sell their Estates, and to set
Sail for New England (a late Plantation in America), where they hold a
Plantation by Patent from the King." Part II, vol. i, p. 410.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 204.]
"We trust you will not be unmindful of the main end of our Plantation,
by endeavouring to bring the Indians to a knowledge of the Gospel."
Cradock's letter to Endecott, February 16, 1629, Young's Chronicle,
133; also the official letter, ibid., page 142, where the "propagation
of the Gospel" among whites and Indians is the "aim." The Royal
Charter itself declared that "to win and invite the natives of the
country to the knowledge and obedience of the only true God and
Saviour of mankind ... is the principal end of this Plantation." (A
similar provision was inserted in the Connecticut Charter in 1662, in
imitation of that of Massachusetts.) The common seal of the
Massachusetts colony, sent over in 1629, bore an Indian with the
inscription, "Come over and help us." Young's Chronicles of
Massachusetts, 155, Instructions to Endecott. The paper of "Reasons,"
attributed to Winthrop, keeps the conversion of the Indians in view,
but it is blended with that which was in his mind the main end, the
founding of a Puritan church. The first paragraph reads, "It will be a
service to the Church of great consequence to carry the Gospell into
those parts of the world, to helpe on the comminge of the fullnesse of
the Gentiles, & to raise a Bulworke against the kingdome of
Ante-Christ which the Jesuites labour to reare up in those parts."
Life and Letters of Winthrop, i, 309. The copy of this paper in Sir
John Eliot's handwriting has a preamble written in a nervous style
that may well be Eliot's own. This preamble goes back to the
conversion of the Indians as a main purpose. The Antapologia of T.
Edwards, 1644, declares that White of Dorchester and others had the
conversion of the Indians in view in promoting emigration to New
England. Edwards says, page 41, that the establishing of
Congregational churches "was not in the thoughts of them that were the
first movers in that or of the ministers that were sent over in the
beginning." The statement is quite too strong, but the ecclesiastical
purpose seems to have grown rapidly when the number of emigrants
revealed the greatness of the opportunity.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 204.]
Cotton Mather says, Magnalia, Book II, chap. iv, 3, that Winthrop was
made a justice at eighteen, but Mather's account of anything marvelous
needs support. Winthrop held his first court at Groton Hall several
months after he had attained his majority. Life and Letters, i, 62.
Compare page 223 of the same volume.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 205.]
Of his election to the governorship he wrote to his wife, "The onely
thinge that I have comforte of in it is, that heerby I have assurance
that my charge is of the Lorde & that he hath called me to this
worke." Life and Letters, i, 340.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 208.]
The government of the colony under Endecott was substantially that
prescribed for "particular plantations" in the general order of the
Virginia Company at the time the charter for the Pilgrim colony was
granted, and like that which was formed at Plymouth under the Compact.
The Massachusetts form may have been borrowed from Plymouth. This may
be considered the primary form of colony government in the scheme of
the Virginia Company. The plan antedates the formation of the Virginia
Company by at least twenty years, for it was a form proposed by Ralegh
when, in 1587, he organized his colony under the title: "The Governor
and Assistants of the city of Ralegh in Virginia." The secondary form
of government was that prescribed for Virginia in the charter of 1618,
which added a lower house elective by the people. This fully developed
government could come only when the population had become large enough
to render a representative system possible.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 210.]
It has been maintained by several writers that the charter had been
worded with a view to removal. See, for example, Palfrey's New
England, i, 307. But a paper read before the Massachusetts Historical
Society, and printed in the Proceedings for December, 1869, by the
late Charles Deane, shows that such a presumption is groundless. In
calling the subordinate government of Endecott "London's Plantation in
Massachusetts Bay in New England," the company showed that it proposed
to keep its headquarters in London. It is open to question, however,
whether Deane does not go too far in denying that the charter gave
authority for the transfer. In that technical age the letter of the
instrument would probably be counted more conclusive than at present,
and the evidence of the dockets would have less weight. The removal of
the government was not one of the charges made in the _quo warranto_
proceedings against the company. On the main question compare also the
very significant treatment of the subject by Winthrop in his paper on
Arbitrary Government, Life and Letters, ii, 443, where he expressly
says that it was intended to have the chief government in England,
"and with much difficulty we gott it abscinded." It is to be
remembered that the exercise of governmental functions by a commercial
corporation was not a novel spectacle in that age. In 1620 the English
and Dutch East India Companies, after having been at war while the two
nations were allies, concluded a treaty of peace. No doubt the
exercise of such powers by trading companies had been made familiar by
the mingling of the functions of government with those of commerce by
the merchants of the Hanse cities. The East India and the Hudson Bay
Companies continued to exercise territorial jurisdiction until a very
recent period.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 214.]
This rebound from their previous attitude of compromise is well
exemplified in the church covenant adopted at Dorchester, Mass., in
1636, under the lead of Richard Mather, which contains these words:
"We do likewise promise by his Grace assisting us, to endeavour the
establishing amongst ourselves all His Holy Ordinances which He hath
appointed for His church here on Earth, ... opposing to the utmost of
our power whatsoever is contrary thereto and bewailing from our Hearts
our own neglect hereof in former times and our poluting ourselves
therein with any Sinful Invention of men." Blake's Annals of
Dorchester. Robinson of Leyden, in his Justification of Separation,
1610, declared that the Puritans would soon separate if they might
have the magistrates' license; and Backus, who quotes the passage (i,
pp. 2, 3), remarks on the confirmation which the history of
Massachusetts gives to Robinson's theory of conformity.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 215.]
In his Way of the Churches Cleared, controversial necessity drove
Cotton to assert that Plymouth had small share in fixing the
ecclesiastical order of Massachusetts, but he is compelled to admit
its influence. "And though it bee," he says, "very likely, that some
of the first commers might helpe their Theory by hearing and
discerning their practice at Plymmouth: yet therein the Scripture is
fulfilled, 'The Kingdome of Heaven is like unto leaven,'" etc., pp,
16, 17.
BOOK III.
CENTRIFUGAL FORCES IN COLONY-PLANTING.
CHAPTER THE FIRST.
_THE CATHOLIC MIGRATION._
I.
[Sidenote: Centrifugal forces.]
At every new stage in the history of the American settlement, we are
afresh reminded that colonies are planted by the uneasy. The
discontent that comes from poverty and financial reverse, that which
is born of political unrest, and that which has no other cause than
feverish thirst for novelty and hazardous adventure, had each a share
in impelling Englishmen to emigrate. But in the seventeenth century
religion was the dominant concern--one might almost say the dominant
passion--of the English race, and it supplied much the most efficient
motive to colonization. Not only did it propel men to America, but it
acted as a distributing force on this side of the sea, producing
secondary colonies by expelling from a new plantation the discontented
and the persecuted to make fresh breaks in the wilderness for new
settlements. Connecticut and Rhode Island were secondary plantings of
this kind. Religious differences also made twain the Chesapeake
region, the first home of the English in America, one of the two rival
colonies being intolerantly Protestant, the other a home for Catholic
refugees.
II.
[Sidenote: Character of George Calvert.]
George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, who projected the Maryland
colony and left it to his son to carry forward, belonged to the order
of men who are shrewd without being creative--men of sagacity as
differentiated from men of ideas. The man in whose mind there is a
ferment of original ideas has theories to promulgate or expound.
Sagacity has small necessity for speech--its very reticence gives an
advantage in the conduct of affairs. The parliamentary antagonist and
political rival who confronted Calvert was no other than our old
acquaintance Sir Edwin Sandys, of the Virginia Company. Calvert and
Sandys were alike men of rare accomplishments, and both were
interested in schemes for colonization; otherwise they were antipodal.
Sandys was a statesman of advanced ideas, creative, liberal, and
original, fitted to be the founder of representative government in the
English colonies. In that age of worn and brittle institutions it was
not deemed wholly safe to suffer so robust a thinker as Sandys to be
always at large, and it was one of Calvert's most difficult duties, as
the king's secretary and chosen intermediary, to explain to Parliament
why its leader was under restraint. Sandys, as we have already said,
was described as "right-handed to every great employment"; when
Calvert came upon the scene, he was aptly characterized as "a forward
and knowing person in matters relating to the state." The phrase
denotes, perhaps, clever adroitness within the limits of that
mediocrity which in those perilous times was a safeguard to the man
who ventured into politics. After having started well at court, Sandys
had fallen into irretrievable disfavor by his resolute advocacy of the
liberties of his countrymen. The message to the Virginia Company,
already recited, "Choose the devil, but not Sir Edwin Sandys,"
expressed the depth of the king's antipathy. But if Sandys seemed to
the king a devil, Calvert became for him a convenient angel. Notions
about human rights and the liberty of Parliament did not obstruct
Calvert's career. Not that he was a man to prove unfaithful to his
convictions, as did his bosom friend Wentworth, or to suppress liberal
opinions in order to smooth an ascending pathway, as did his great
contemporary Bacon. Calvert played a far simpler part and one less
dishonorable. It was his fortune to be a man of facile mind, naturally
reverential toward authority. The principles enunciated by his
sovereign and the measures by which those in power sought to attain
the end in view were pretty sure to seem laudable or at least
excusable to him. Such a mind can not be called scrupulous, neither is
it consciously dishonest. The quality most highly esteemed at the
court of James was fidelity, unswerving devotion to the interests of
the king and of one's friends. And this, the dominant virtue of his
time and of his class--this honor of a courtier--Calvert possessed in
a high degree; it is a standard by which he has a right to be judged.
To a French ambassador he seemed an honorable, sensible, courteous,
well-intentioned man, devoted to the interests of England, but without
consideration or influence.
[Sidenote: Calvert's rise.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
Whatever his lack of influence in councils of state, Calvert's
fidelity, useful abilities, and many accomplishments won the
friendship of James, and in that lavish reign when all the fairy
stories came true at a court which was "like a romance of knight
errantry," as the Spanish minister declared, the favor of the king was
sure to result in good fortune to the favorite. From being secretary
to Burleigh, Calvert rose to be principal Secretary of State, was
knighted, and at last ennobled. Grants of estates in Ireland and of
great unexplored tracts of territory in the wilderness of America,
pensions, sinecure offices, grants of money out of increased customs
fees, and presents from those who had ends to serve at court, were the
means by which a successful courtier bettered his estate, and by some
or all of these Secretary Calvert thrived. That he did thrive is
proved by the great sum he was able to lose in his futile attempt to
plant a colony in Newfoundland. It was believed that he had accepted a
share of the money dispensed lavishly in presents and pensions to
English courtiers by Spain, but this Calvert denied, and one can
believe that a man of his fidelity to king and country would be able
to resist a temptation to which others succumbed.
III.
[Sidenote: The colony of Avalon.]
[Sidenote: Cal S. P. America, pp. 25, 26, March 16, 1620.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
Calvert was very early interested in colonization. He was a member of
the Virginia Company in 1609, and later one of the councilors for New
England. In 1620 he was one of a commission appointed to settle the
affairs of a Scotch company for colonizing Newfoundland, and in the
next year he dispatched his first colony to the southeastern peninsula
of that island which he had bought from Sir William Vaughan. In this
latter year (1621) he secured a grant of the whole vast island, but in
1622 he accepted a re-grant of the peninsula alone, and this became
his first proprietary colony. Captain Whitbourne's pamphlet on
Newfoundland was just then circulating gratuitously by the aid of
collections made in the churches with the sanction of royal authority.
It described a Newfoundland of Edenic fruitfulness. Even cool-headed
statesmen like Calvert appear to have been captivated by the stories
of this veteran seaman and weather-beaten romancer. Calvert called his
new province Avalon. The name signifies the land of apples--that is,
the fruitful country. In old British mythology it was the paradise of
the blessed, the island in the western seas to which King Arthur was
translated in the famous legend. This name of promise suited the
situation of the new island state, and fitted well the enthusiastic
tales of Whitbourne and the groundless hopes of Calvert. The bleak
Newfoundland coast had already blossomed with fanciful names; there
was the Bay of Plesaunce and the Bay of Flowers, Robin Hood's Bay and
the River of Bonaventure; there was the Harbor of Formosa and the
Harbor of Heartsease. Avalon, the earthly paradise, was but the
complement of these.
IV.
[Sidenote: The charter of Avalon.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
Sir George Calvert probably drafted with his own hand--the hand of an
expert and accomplished man of the court--the charter of April 7,
1623, that conferred on him an authority little short of sovereignty
over his new territory. This masterpiece of dexterous charter-making
afforded a model for other proprietary charters, and Calvert himself
bettered it but little in the Maryland charter of a later date. The
ambiguous passages in the Maryland charter, which have been accounted
evidence of a design to make way for the toleration or even the
possible dominance of Roman Catholicism, appear already in the charter
of Avalon. Was the colony of 1621 or its charter of 1623 intended to
supply a refuge, if one should be needed, for Englishmen of the
Catholic faith? The question is not easily answered. The primary
design of the Avalon colony was, no doubt, to better the fortunes of
Sir George Calvert and to lift him and his successors into the
authority and dignity of counts-palatine in the New World. But there
can hardly be a doubt that, before the charter of 1623 was granted,
Secretary Calvert was already a Catholic, secretly or latently, if not
overtly. His charter of Avalon naturally left open a door for the
toleration of the faith to which he was already attached, or toward
which he was tending.
V.
[Sidenote: Calvert's conversion.]
Calvert's conversion was almost inevitable. He favored the project for
the Spanish match, and he was, like some other courtiers, under the
influence of Gondomar, a consummate master of intrigue. He was bound
by ties of friendship, and later by the marriage of his son, to Lord
Arundel of Wardour, a Catholic, and the constitution of his mind and
all the habits of a lifetime made him a lover of authority in church
and state. Under favoring circumstances such a man becomes a Roman
Catholic by gravitation and natural affinity.
[Sidenote: Petition in Rushworth, Part I, i, 141. Compare Neal, Part
II, c. ii.]
There was a Catholic revival in England at this time, especially among
the courtiers and upper classes. In 1623 there was a large influx to
England of priests and Jesuits. English Romanists flocked to the
vicinage of London, and resorted in great numbers to the mass in the
houses of foreign ambassadors; and in many English country houses the
mass was openly celebrated in defiance of law. The Commons, in alarm,
adopted what James fitly called "a stinging petition against the
papists."
VI.
[Sidenote: His resignation.]
[Sidenote: 1624.]
[Sidenote: 1625.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
Calvert had staked his hopes for himself and for English Catholicism
on the Spanish match. This otherwise pliant courtier was intractable
where his religious convictions were concerned. He scrupled to draw
back at the bidding of Charles and Buckingham, when drawing back
involved a violation of the treaty oath of the king and council, the
plunging of England into a Spanish war, the sacrifice of the interests
of the Catholic church, and a fresh exposure of his co-religionists in
England to a harsh persecution. Calvert was one of that party in the
junta for Spanish affairs which was unwilling to break a solemn treaty
in order to gratify the wounded vanity of Buckingham and Charles, and
he paid dearly for his firmness. To bring about his resignation, his
antagonists diverted business from his office, thus reducing his fees
and subjecting his pride to mortification. Under this treatment it was
noted by a letter writer of the time that Mr. Secretary Calvert
"droops and keeps out of the way." It was reported that he was ill,
and then that he had been rebuked by the king and the prince, and it
was known that he wished to sell his office to some one acceptable to
Buckingham. Calvert's cleverness as a courtier did not fail him in his
fall. He succeeded at the last in mollifying Buckingham, whose consent
he gained to the sale of the secretaryship. After nearly a year of the
prolonged agony of holding office in disfavor, he resigned in
February, 1625, receiving six thousand pounds for his office, which
was worth to the incumbent two thousand a year. He was at the same
time raised to the Irish peerage as Baron Baltimore. He made his
religious scruples the ostensible reason for his resignation, and he
was already known to be "infinitely addicted to the Catholic faith."
He made no secret of his proscribed religion; he exposed to visitors
the altar, chalice, and candlesticks in his best room; and he
catechised his children assiduously in the doctrines of the ancient
church. At the accession of Charles he retired from the Privy Council
rather than take an oath offensive to his conscience.
VII.
[Sidenote: Calvert deserts Newfoundland.]
[Sidenote: Letters of Wynne, Daniel, and Hoskins, in Whitbourne's
second ed.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
During the period of his decline from court favor Calvert's colony of
Avalon probably suffered from neglect. He now gave his new leisure to
the work of rescuing it. In 1627 he made a voyage to Newfoundland,
taking a company of Catholic settlers and two priests. He went again
in 1628. From Newfoundland he wrote to one of the Jesuits in England a
letter of affection, declaring his readiness to divide with him "the
last bit" he had in the world. In Avalon began the long chapter of the
troubles of the Baltimores with the Puritan opposition. Besides his
contentions with Puritan settlers, who abhorred the mass as a Jewish
prophet did idolatry, he found it necessary to fight with French
privateers bent on plunder. By the time the almost interminable
Newfoundland winter had begun, he discovered that Avalon was not the
earthly paradise it appeared in the writings of pamphleteers and in
the letters of his own officeholders interested only in the
continuance of their salaries. The icy Bay of Plesaunce and the bleak
Bay of Flowers mocked him with their names of delight; of little avail
was the fast-bound River of Bonaventure to its unlucky lord, or the
Harbor of Heartsease to him who had sunk a fortune of thirty thousand
pounds in the fruitless attempt to plant a settlement on a coast so
cold. Ill himself, and with half his company down with scurvy, some of
them dying, Baltimore turned his thoughts toward Virginia, now, after
all its trials, prosperous under a genial sun.
[Sidenote: Sails to Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Rymer's Foedera, tom. vii, iv, 147.]
He knew the conditions of that colony and the opportunities it
afforded. A member of the Virginia Company during nearly all the years
of its stormy existence, he had been made one of the fifty-six
councilors that took over its effects at its demise, and he was one of
the eight who constituted the quorum, and who probably transacted the
business of this Council for Virginia. Even under the government of
the Company there had been precedents for the establishment of a
"precinct" within Virginia independent of the Jamestown government.
Such a plantation had been that of Captain Martin and that proposed by
Rich and Argall, and a charter for such had been given to the Leyden
pilgrims. Baltimore wrote to ask for a precinct, pleading the king's
promise already made that he might choose a part of Virginia. Here he
would still be the head of a little independent state--a state in
which the mass might be said without molestation. Before another
winter set in he abandoned Avalon to fishermen and such hardy folk,
and took ship for the James River, where he arrived in October, 1629.
VIII.
[Sidenote: Virginia antagonism.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
Baltimore's reception in Virginia was most inhospitable. He had
perhaps counted on his former relation to the colony as a councilor to
assure him a welcome. But the Virginians of that time were Sandys and
Southampton men. They may have remembered that Calvert had been
Sandys's enemy and political rival, and that he belonged to the
faction of Sir Thomas Smyth in the company. The members of that
faction had been the executioners of the company when they could no
longer control it. Calvert was one of the later council, which had
tried to take away insidiously the privileges granted to Virginians by
their charter from the Virginia Company. This attack on their
liberties they had stoutly resisted, even to cutting off a piece of
one of the ears of the clerk of their own assembly for abetting it.
Now a nobleman of the detested faction, an advocate of absolute
government and a close friend of the king, had come among them.
Baltimore might easily expect to secure the governorship of Virginia
itself. Perhaps it is hardly necessary to go even so far afield for a
motive. The prospect of a settlement of Roman Catholics within the
limits of the colony was in itself enough to excite the opposition of
the Virginia churchmen. Baltimore's party of Catholics was not the
only one repelled from Virginia about this time. Soon after Lord
Baltimore's visit, perhaps, or just before, the Virginians refused
permission to a company of Irish Catholics to settle within their
bounds. These appear to have gone afterward to the island of St.
Christopher's, where again Protestant fellow-colonists fell out with
them about religion, so that they were finally sent to settle the
neighboring island of Montserrat.
[Sidenote: Character of the early Virginians.]
[Sidenote: Leah and Rachel, and De Vries Voyages, _passim_.]
The Virginians, after all their sufferings, were now prosperous in a
gross way, reaping large profits from tobacco, and living in riotous
profusion after the manner of men beginning to emerge from the
hardships and perils of a pioneer condition into sudden opulence.
Their rude living did not at all prevent the colonists from being
fastidious about their religion--it was the seventeenth century. Most
of the Virginia clergy at this period were as reckless in life as the
people, but the Protestantism of the colony was incorruptible. Some of
the rabble even showed their piety by railing at the newly arrived
papist nobleman.
[Sidenote: Expulsion of Baltimore.]
[Sidenote: MS. Book of Instructions, Library of Congress, folio 136.]
A weapon of defense against Baltimore was ready to hand. Three years
before his coming instructions had been sent from England to Yeardley
to proffer the oath of supremacy "to all such as come thither with an
intention to plant and reside, which, if any shall refuse, he is to be
retorned or shipped from thence home." This order may not have been
intended for so great a personage as a nobleman of the Court. It may
have been meant only to head off humble Irishmen like those who
settled Montserrat, or it may have been merely a fence against
Separatists. But it served the turn of the alarmed colonists. Pott and
Mathews, Claiborne and Roger Smyth, who led the opposition, offered
the oath to Baltimore. Baltimore had sacrificed his place in the Privy
Council rather than take this oath so contrary to his conscience, and
he now again stood by his religious convictions, and took ship for
England as ordered by the Virginia Council. He was disappointed and
already shaken in health. The members of the council, appalled at
their own boldness, perhaps, wrote to the king in self-defense. There
is still extant an old manuscript record book of the seventeenth
century which contains the instructions to Yeardley. Immediately
following, as if to put it under the shelter of royal authority, is
the report of the council, without date or signature, that the oath
had been offered to Baltimore and refused.
IX.
[Sidenote: Baltimore's seal.]
Baltimore's hardships during two voyages to Newfoundland, and a winter
in the rude abodes of pioneers there, his illness during that winter,
the constant spectacle of sickness and death about him, and the
disappointment caused by his rude reception in Virginia, were enough,
one would think, to have broken his resolution. He went back to
England "much decayed in his strength," as he confessed; but,
strangely enough, this accomplished man of the world, whose career had
been that of a courtier, was far from living in ease and quietness as
his friends had expected him to do. He was possessed of a passion for
peopling the wilderness. He had written to the king from America that
he was resolved to spend "the poore remaynder" of his days in
colony-planting, his "inclinations carrying him naturally" to such
work. To what extent he was prompted by a desire to leave to his heir
the semi-sovereignty of a principality, and how far he was carried by
a naturally adventurous temper hitherto latent, we have no means of
deciding; but one can hardly resist the conclusion that a fervent
religious zeal was the underlying spring of a resolution so
indomitable. Like many another man of that time, Calvert was lifted
from worldliness to high endeavor by religious enthusiasm. The king
felt obliged to interpose his authority; he forbade Baltimore's
risking his life in another voyage, but he granted him a charter for a
new palatinate on the north side of the Potomac.
[Sidenote: Death of the first Lord Baltimore.]
Lord Baltimore was doomed never to see the desire of his eyes. He died
on the 15th of April, 1632, before the charter had passed, leaving the
planting of Maryland to be carried forward by his son and heir,
Cecilius. The charter of Maryland passed the seals on the 22d of the
following June in favor of Cecilius, the second Lord Baltimore.
X.
[Sidenote: The charter of Maryland.]
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
[Sidenote: Rushworth, Part I, vol. i, 141, 1623.]
[Sidenote: Note 11.]
[Sidenote: Note 12.]
The Maryland charter was no doubt the work of George Calvert's own
hand. Its main provisions are identical with those of Avalon; but it
put the proprietary in a still better position. He held Avalon by
knight's service, Maryland in free and common soccage, and the
holdings of Maryland settlers would be under the proprietary, not
under the crown. In fact, the crown retained practically no rights of
value in Maryland beyond the bare allegiance of the settlers. Larger
privileges of trade were conceded to Maryland than had been given to
Avalon. In one respect the liberties of the future settlers were
apparently better guarded in the Maryland charter, for there is a
faint promise of a representative government in its phraseology. But
even this was not definitely assured. In a single regard the charter
of Maryland appears less favorable to the Catholic religion than its
predecessors. Historic specialists with a religious bias, doing their
small best to render the current of history turbid, have not failed to
convince themselves by means of the new clause that Maryland was a
Protestant colony. The patronage and advowsons of all churches had
been conferred on the proprietary in the Avalon charter, and a like
concession is made in the Maryland grant; but to this, in the Maryland
charter, is attached a sort of "lean-to"--a qualifying clause that
appears to limit the ecclesiastical organization of the colony to
Anglican forms. "Together with license and power," runs the charter,
"to build and found Churches, Chapels and Oratories in convenient and
fit places within the premises, and to cause them to be dedicated and
consecrated according to the ecclesiastical laws of our kingdom of
England." In 1632 the Baltimore family was openly Catholic. The
Puritans were raging against every indulgence shown by the court to
Romanists. The clamor of the Catholic-baiters did not stop with a
demand that Romanists should be expelled from England. The Commons had
a few years earlier petitioned the King that they be excluded from
"all other Your Highness's dominions." The founding of an English
colony that might make a home for English and Irish Romanists was a
more difficult project in the reign of Charles than it had been in the
time of James when Avalon was granted. The clause which allowed
Baltimore to dedicate his churches according to the ecclesiastical
laws of England excites admiration. It graciously permitted an
Anglican establishment in Maryland; it did not oblige Baltimore to do
anything at all, nor did it, in fact, put any constraint whatever on
his actions in this regard. The impotent clause which seemed to limit,
but did not limit, the ecclesiastical organization was breathlessly
followed by one far from impotent--a masterpiece of George Calvert's
skill. It gave to the proprietary the legal power exercised from
ancient times by the Bishops of Durham as counts-palatine. The
regalities of Durham having been pared down by Henry VIII, the charter
somewhat furtively reached back after the local absolutism of the
middle ages by giving Baltimore all the temporal power ever possessed
by any Bishop of Durham. But if alarm should be taken at the giving of
powers so vast to a Roman Catholic subject, there might be reassurance
for timid souls in a clause in imitation of older charters than
Calvert's, which stipulated that no interpretation should be put upon
the charter by which God's holy and true Christian religion might be
prejudiced. Ambiguity spread from the charter to some of the early
Maryland laws, which wore a Protestant or a Catholic face according to
the side from which they were approached.
XI.
[Sidenote: Condition of English Catholics.]
[Sidenote: An act for the better discovering and repressing of popish
recusants. Also, An act to prevent, etc., 3 Jac. I, chaps. iv and v.]
When George Calvert projected his new southern colony he had every
reason to suppose that it would be quickly supplied with settlers from
the discontented English and Irish Catholics. The statute enacted in
the third year of James, soon after the Gunpowder Plot, put those who
adhered to the Roman communion in a precarious and exasperating
situation. For the first year that a Catholic wholly neglected the
sacraments of the English church he must pay twenty pounds. This was
raised to forty the second year, and to sixty for every year of
conscientious abstention thereafter. If he did not attend the parish
church at all, the luxury of a conscience cost him twenty pounds a
month, which, as money then went, was a large sum. If he were a rich
landholder, the king might take the use or rentals of two thirds of
his land until he should conform. The oath of allegiance by which he
was to be tested was made ingeniously offensive to a Catholic
conscience. If a Romanist should persuade a Protestant to accept his
own faith he was guilty of treason, as was also his convert. The man
who harbored a Roman Catholic neglecting to attend the parish church
was to be fined ten pounds a month. Marriage by a Romish priest
invalidated accruing land tenures. The Catholic was not suffered to
send his children beyond seas for an education, nor yet to keep a
schoolmaster of his own faith; he could not serve as an executor; he
might not have the charge of any child; his house might be searched
for Catholic books; he was not allowed to keep weapons; and when at
last his vexed and troubled life was over, his dead body might not be
buried among the graves of his forefathers in the parish churchyard.
[Sidenote: Administration of the law.]
[Sidenote: Lingard, viii, 189, cites Rymer, xxii, 13; Hardwicke
Papers, 1446, and a private letter.]
The administration of this law was attended by many aggravations. The
pursuivants took the very cattle and household goods of the poor; from
the rich they exacted large payments, failing which, they pounced on
valuable plate and jewels, which they seized under pretense that these
were articles of superstition or the concealed property of Jesuits.
It is said that James derived a revenue of thirty-six thousand pounds
a year from the fines of lay Catholics. To the several Scotch
favorites of the king were assigned certain rich recusants from whom
they might squeeze whatever could be got by the leverage of the law.
[Sidenote: Influence of foreign policy.]
[Sidenote: 1583, reprinted 1688.]
[Sidenote: 1609, sm. 4to, pp. 112.]
[Sidenote: Ellis Collection, first series, iii, 128.]
[Sidenote: Neal, ii, ch. ii. Rapin, 215, 2d ed.]
Very embarrassing to the foreign policy of England was the severity of
English laws against Catholics, and Lord Treasurer Burleigh found it
needful to publish in Elizabeth's time, for circulation in all the
courts of Europe, a treatise on The Execution of Justice in England
and the Maintenance of Public Order and Christian Peace; and in the
following reign James himself turned pamphleteer and published an
Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance. There were periods when pressure
from abroad softened the administration of the law. But it was only
irregularly and intermittently that the Government could be brought to
grant indulgences that roused the pious wrath of Puritans and reduced
the revenue of the king and his favorites. If Spain, and afterward
France, made it a condition precedent to a marriage treaty that the
penal laws against English recusants should be relaxed, Parliament,
resenting foreign dictation, demanded of the king a renewal of the
severities against papists. Twenty-four Catholics suffered capitally
in James's reign, before 1618; and when in 1622 it was necessary to
condone Catholicism in order to conciliate Spain, it is said that four
hundred Jesuits and priests were set free on bail at one time. The
number of Catholics, lay and cleric, released in this year is put at
four thousand, but this may be an exaggeration.
XII.
[Sidenote: Catholic emigration small.]
[Sidenote: Harl. Miscell., ii, 492, and following, where passages from
contemporary writers are quoted.]
In 1627, and again in 1628, Lord Baltimore took Catholics with him to
Newfoundland and settled priests there. The English court was just
then sailing on a Protestant tack, and England had allied itself with
the Huguenots of La Rochelle. Another of the good works by which the
government of Charles and Buckingham was endeavoring to prove its
sanctification was the enforcement of the penal statutes against Roman
Catholics. It is notable that Baltimore sailed with the first Catholic
emigrants to Avalon about the time of the setting in of the movement
toward Massachusetts which swelled at length into the great Puritan
exodus. The five years of delay caused by the change from Avalon to
Maryland, and also perhaps by the exhaustion of Baltimore's resources
and his death, was unfavorable to the project of a Catholic province.
The English government by 1634 had grown more lenient toward
Romanists, the co-religionists of the queen. The work at which Laud
kept all hands busy just then was the suppression of Puritanism, and
thousands of Puritans were by this time shaking the dust of England
from their feet and seeking a home in the western wilderness,
persuaded that the Church of England under Laud had all sails set for
Rome. This illusion regarding the purposes of the archbishop and his
party, which alarmed the Puritans, heartened the Catholics, who
naturally preferred to stay at home where a flood tide seemed to be
setting toward Catholicism. The small Catholic migration to Maryland
was not to be compared with that stream of Puritan emigration that
about this time poured into New England twenty thousand people in a
decade. The fall of Laud and the rise of the Puritans to power put a
complete stop to the New England migration, but it failed to quicken
the Catholic movement, for Maryland herself had become sadly involved
in the civil commotions of the time.
[Sidenote: Baltimore's partners.]
[Sidenote: Note 13.]
Cecilius Calvert undoubtedly counted on a large migration of Catholic
recusants, and the documents show that the Jesuit order in England
took great interest in the movement. The second Lord Baltimore was
joined by partners in the financial risks of the venture, and though
we meet with more than one allusion to these adventurers whose
interest in the colony was apparently still active twenty years after
its beginning, they were profoundly silent partners; their names are
nowhere recorded, and we are left to conjecture the origin of their
interest in Maryland.
XIII.
[Sidenote: The religious aim.]
"The first and most important design of the Most Illustrious Baron,
which ought also to be the aim of the rest, who go in the same ship,
is, not to think so much of planting fruits and trees in a land so
fertile, as of sowing the seeds of religion and piety." This was Lord
Baltimore's authoritative declaration, and because it varies in form
from the stock phrases so common at the time, it bears an air of some
sincerity, though it is diplomatically ambiguous.
[Sidenote: Efforts to obstruct the ships.]
[Sidenote: Letters of Baltimore to Wentworth in Strafford papers,
_passim_.]
[Sidenote: Note 14.]
Baltimore's opponents made great exertions to prevent the departure of
the Ark and the Dove, which were to bear faithful Catholics across the
flood to a new world. A story was started that these ships were
carrying nuns to Spain, and another tale that found believers was that
they had soldiers on board going to France to serve against the
English. It was told that Calvert's men had abused the customs
officers at Gravesend, and sailed without cockets in contempt of all
authority, the people on board refusing the oath of allegiance. The
Ark was stopped and brought back by order of the Privy Council, and
the oath of allegiance was given to a hundred and twenty-eight
passengers. But the ships came to again at the Isle of Wight, and when
they got away at last there were near three hundred passengers on
board, including Jesuit priests. Most of the passengers were "laboring
men"; how many were Catholic and how many Protestant it is impossible
now to tell. That the leaders and the gentry were, most of them,
Catholics there is every reason to believe. The passengers called
Protestants were rather non-Catholics, precisely the kind of
emigrants that would give the Jesuits the converts of which they tell
exultantly in their letters. There was no Protestant minister on
board, nor was there the slightest provision for Protestant worship,
present or future.
XIV.
[Sidenote: Toleration.]
[Sidenote: Note 15.]
Toleration was the Baltimore policy from the beginning. It was no
doubt in the original plan of George Calvert and his associates,
whoever they were. The Provincial of the Society of Jesus privately
furnished Baltimore with arguments in defense of this policy before
the first colony sailed. The founders of Maryland were men of affairs
shaping plan to opportunity, and the situation was inexorable.
Toleration and protection was all that English Roman Catholics could
hope to find in traveling thus to the ends of the earth.
[Sidenote: Toleration a policy.]
Cecilius gave positive instruction that on shipboard acts of the Roman
Catholic religion should be performed with as much privacy as
possible, so as not to offend the Protestant passengers "whereby any
just complaint may hereafter be made by them in Virginia or in
England." There is no pretense of theory here; all is based on the
exigency of the situation and sound policy. The policy was George
Calvert's, whose school was the court of James, and whose whole career
shows that he entertained no advanced views of human liberty. Had he
held toleration as a theory of government, his doctrine would have
been more liberal than that of Ralegh and Bacon and far in advance of
that of contemporary Puritan leaders. They quite misunderstand the man
who regard him as a progressive thinker; he was a conservative
opportunist. Still less was Cecilius a man likely to act on general
principles.
XV.
[Sidenote: Religious observance at sea.]
[Sidenote: Relatio Itineris, p. 10.]
[Sidenote: Note 16.]
[Sidenote: Relatio Itineris, 16, 17.]
We have seen how religiously the Puritans passed their time at sea in
long daily expositions of Scripture and other devotions, and that
sometimes even the watch was set with a psalm. Not less religious were
the Catholic pilgrims, and though the form is strikingly different,
the believing and zealous age is the same. To make things safe, the
Jesuit fathers committed the principal parts of the ship in some
detail to the protection of God in the first place, and then to that
"of His Most Holy Mother and of St. Ignatius and of all the angels of
Maryland." These angels to whom the safety of Maryland was committed
were kept busy by special spiritual opponents. A dangerous storm was
raised on one occasion by all the "malignant spirits of the tempest
and all the evil genii of Maryland." But Father White circumvented
this combination of ordinary storm spirits with imps of Protestant
proclivities by setting forth to Christ and the Blessed Virgin, while
the storm was at its worst, "that the purpose of this journey was to
glorify the Blood of our Redeemer in the salvation of the Barbarians,
and also to build up a kingdom for the Saviour and to consecrate
another gift to the Immaculate Virgin his mother." The last clause
apparently refers to Maryland, as if it were named in honor of the
Virgin. The representation was effective; the good father had scarcely
ceased speaking when the storm began to abate.
[Illustration: The colony at St. Mary's.]
[Sidenote: The arrival.]
The Puritans when using a geographical name that began with the word
"saint" scrupulously uncanonized it by leaving off the prefix. But
these devout pilgrims of the Roman faith, when once the saints and
guardian angels of Maryland had piloted them safe in spite of the
malice of storm spirits and evil genii into landlocked waters and the
bounds of Lord Baltimore's grant, proceeded to sanctify the whole
region by sprinkling it with the names of saints and angels from
Michael the archangel downward. The ancient Indian designations were
marks of a heathenism they purposed to overthrow, and they began by
trying to get rid of the whole "bead roll of unbaptized names." No
convenient island, creek, river, bay, or cape escaped Christian
baptism. On Annunciation Day, 1634, they landed on Heron Island, in
the Potomac, which they named appropriately for St. Clement, who was
martyred by being thrown into the sea attached to an anchor, and here
the sacrifice of the mass was celebrated, the worshipers reflecting
that "never before had this been done in this part of the world."
After the mass they took upon their shoulders a great cross hewn out
of a tree and advanced in order to the place appointed, where the
governor and his assistants took part in its erection. The
Catholics of the party, seeing this symbol of the faith erected in a
new land, knelt upon the ground and recited the litanies of the cross
in a kind of religious ecstasy. Here in another form was that tender
attachment to their faith that one finds among the more devout
Protestant exiles, and in the nobler natures there was doubtless that
element of the heroic and the saintly often evolved in the religious
sufferings and activities of that day--a relief to the pettiness of
the debates and the irksomeness of the bigotries of the age.
XVI.
[Sidenote: A Catholic colony.]
[Sidenote: Compare Clarke's Gladstone and Maryland Toleration.]
[Sidenote: Maryland Archives, i, 23.]
[Sidenote: Excerpta de Diversis Literis, etc., 56-60.]
The colony had been named Maryland by King Charles in honor of his
wife Henrietta Maria; at least there was assigned to the king
responsibility for a name that, like nearly everything else about
Maryland, was ambiguous. But the phrase _Terra Mariæ_ in the charter,
though represented there to be the equivalent of Maryland, was
significant to a devout Catholic of something better than a compliment
to a Catholic queen. The Indian village which with its gardens and
cornfields had been bought for the germinal settlement and capital,
took the name of St. Mary's, and the whole infant colony is called the
Colony of St. Maries, by its own Legislative Assembly in 1638, as
though by Maryland were intended the land of Mary. Notwithstanding the
manifest care of the second Lord Baltimore to hold the missionaries
within the limits of worldly prudence, the zealous fathers lived and
labored in a spirit of other-worldliness. They set themselves first of
all to convert those sheep without a shepherd, the Protestants of
Maryland. Some of these appear to have been men of reckless and
immoral lives, who were greatly bettered by an acceptance of religious
restraint. Those non-Catholics who were ill, and those who found
themselves languishing and dying in the wilderness without the
consolations of their own religion, were zealously visited and
converted _in extremis_ by the Jesuits. The servants and mechanics
employed by or apprenticed to the missionaries were brought under
their constant influence and were readily won. Nearly all the
Protestants who arrived in 1638 were swiftly brought over to the faith
of the missionaries, and twelve converts were joyously reckoned as
fruits of the Jesuit labors in 1639. There was more than one instance
of the miraculous, or at least of the marvelous, to help on this work.
One man of noble birth, who had by dissipation brought himself to
desperate straits, and then sunk until he became at length a bond
servant in Maryland, embraced Catholicism. After the death of this
convert a very bright light was sometimes seen burning about his place
of burial, and even those who were not Catholics were permitted to see
this wonder. The horrible punishments that resulted from the Divine
wrath against those who scoffingly rejected the Catholic faith in
Maryland remind one of the equal calamities that befell those who
were unfaithful to Puritanism in New England. Seventeenth-century
Englishmen with sky-wide differences in opinion were one in the traits
that belonged to their age. Father White was sure that the destruction
of Indians in Maryland was specially ordered by God to provide an
opening "for His own everlasting law and light"; but not more sure
than were the Puritans that the cruel plague which exterminated whole
villages on the Massachusetts coast was sent to open a way for the
planting of Calvinistic churches. Each division of Christians in turn
reduced the Almighty Creator to the level of a special tutelary
divinity, sometimes to that of a rather vindictive genius of the
place.
[Sidenote: Note 17.]
In this work of propagandism the missionaries did not forget the red
men. Their labors among the aborigines were fairly successful at
first, then interrupted by relapse and by war. Such is the history of
Indian missions. Much was made of the solemn profession and baptism of
an Indian "king," at which the governor and other distinguished men
"honored by their presence the Christian sacraments," the governor
marching behind the neophyte in the procession. Maryland was in fact
openly a Catholic colony until after 1640.
[Sidenote: Failure to make a Catholic state.]
[Sidenote: Note 18.]
[Sidenote: Note 19.]
But as a Catholic colony it was a failure. In fear of the rising
Puritan tempest in England, or the violent opposition on several
grounds of its stronger neighbor Virginia, and of the mutinous
bigotry of its own Puritan settlers, who regarded Baltimore's
government as a "Babylon" to be overthrown, it was never able to
afford to Catholics perfect security, much less was it able to promise
them domination. But the Catholics included most of the rich and
influential families, and it was a Jesuit boast that they were
superior to other American settlers in breeding and urbanity. As they
had choice of the best land in the province, the Catholic families
remained during the whole colonial period among the most prominent
people of Maryland. There is also evidence that the Catholics were
numerically considerable in proportion to the population, though the
reports on the subject are vague and conflicting. In 1641 they were
about one fourth of the whole. The ranks of the early Catholic
settlers, both of the rich and poor, seem to have been recruited from
Ireland as well as from England, but the Maryland government in Queen
Anne's Protestant time passed acts levying an import tax of twenty
pounds on each Irish Catholic servant, in order that the bond servants
and even the transported convicts in Maryland should be orthodox
Protestants.
XVII.
[Sidenote: Opposition to Maryland.]
George Calvert, the first Baron Baltimore, molded the Maryland
enterprise until the drafting of the charter, and his spirit was felt
in it after his death. Cecilius, his son, was a man of a somewhat
different sort, and his traits became more apparent as time went on.
He was strongly supported at court by Strafford, his father's most
devoted and obliged friend, and no doubt also by the queen, who was
godmother to Maryland. The opposition to Maryland was probably
embittered by the hatred to Strafford and the jealousy of a Catholic
queen.
[Sidenote: The second Lord Baltimore and Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 20.]
On his enemies in Virginia the younger Baltimore took ample vengeance.
He got one of the queen's household appointed treasurer of the colony,
and the Virginians found themselves obliged to pay the quitrents,
which had been neglected and apparently forgotten. Other officers of
the colony were nominated by Baltimore. Harvey, the governor, hoping
to collect money due him from the royal treasury by Baltimore's
assistance, was his obsequious tool, to the bitter indignation of the
Virginians, who hated Baltimore not only because he was a Romanist,
but also because he had divided the first colony and cut off the
northern Indian trade from Virginia. In consequence of the quarrel
between Harvey and the Virginians over Maryland there ensued a
revolution in Virginia; Harvey was shipped to England by the same bold
men who had sent the first Lord Baltimore packing. But Harvey was sent
back again by the king, and by this counter revolution the colonial
constitution of Virginia was modified for the worse. It was altogether
an exquisite revenge.
[Sidenote: Baltimore seeks to control Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Note 21.]
Cecilius meditated even a bolder stroke. He schemed through Windebank
to have himself made governor of Virginia, promising to wring out of
it eight thousand pounds more of revenue for the king from some
neglected sources. To achieve this, he proposed a scheme by which
Windebank was to impose on the king's credulity. Secretary Windebank
may have recoiled from the part he was to play; it is certain that
Charles was not persuaded to hand over Virginia bound hand and foot
into the power of the proprietary of the rival colony.
XVIII.
[Sidenote: Cautious policy of Baltimore.]
[Sidenote: Baltimore's instructions, 15 Nov., 1633, Calvert Papers.]
Intolerance on the part of the authorities of Maryland directed toward
Protestants might have brought a swift overthrow of the whole project.
The instructions given for the first voyage already cited show
throughout the need for extreme caution in the face of extreme peril.
It is required of the governor and commissioners that "they be very
careful to preserve the peace amongst all the passengers on shipboard,
and that they suffer no scandal nor offense to be given to any of the
Protestants." The rulers are to instruct the Catholics to be silent
"upon all occasions of discourse concerning matter of religion," and
those in authority are to "treat the Protestants with as much mildness
and favor as justice will permit." These instructions were to hold
good after landing, and in one notable case of religious dissension
after the arrival in Maryland, justice was meted out against the
Catholic offender in a way that showed a disposition to observe this
policy of conciliation toward Protestants at the expense of some
unfairness toward Catholics. Very early a proclamation was issued for
the suppression of all religious disputes, and Copley, the business
administrator of the Jesuits, thought they ought to be put down for
fear the writings should be sent to the governor of Virginia.
[Sidenote: Necessary ambiguity.]
[Sidenote: Note 22.]
The ambiguous charter of Maryland was a necessary hypocrisy. The plan
of toleration was also inevitable, and it was carried no further than
necessity required, for in that age, when toleration was odious, a
liberal policy had also its perils. The Act for Church Liberties of
1639 was a fine example of the studied ambidexterity of the Maryland
government. It was enacted "that Holy Church within this province
shall have all her rights, liberties, and immunities, safe, whole, and
inviolate in all things." Holy Church here is a deliberate
substitution for "the Church of England" in a similar phrase of Magna
Charta. Such an act was worthy of Bunyan's Mr. Facing-both-ways.
Interpreted by judges holding office at the will of a Catholic
proprietary, it could have but one meaning. For the outside world it
might bear another sense. It did all that could be done in the
circumstances for the Roman Catholic religion and for Catholic
ecclesiastics.
XIX.
[Sidenote: Puritan settlers invited.]
[Sidenote: Note 23.]
[Sidenote: Winthrop's Journal, ii, 148, 149.]
In 1643, Parliament, dominated by Puritans, could not let the distant
Maryland province rest in peace. It passed an ordinance making the
Earl of Warwick Governor in Chief and Lord High Admiral of all the
plantations in America. This act contained covert allusions to
papists, Spaniards, and governors recently appointed by the king.
Baltimore met the rising tempest in a way characteristic of him. If he
could settle a portion of his province with Puritans they might serve
to shield him from the storm. Besides, the Catholic emigration had not
proved large, and his province needed inhabitants. He wrote to a
Captain Gibbons, of Boston, sending him a commission under the
Maryland government, and offering "free liberty of religion and all
other privileges" to such of the New England people as were willing to
remove to Maryland. There were those in New England in that day who
longed for a more genial climate, but to settle under the authority of
a papist was to them much like pitching a tent on the confines of
perdition.
[Sidenote: Puritans from Virginia.]
[Sidenote: 1643.]
Though Puritans could not be induced to move from New England, it
happened that the Puritans living in Virginia were persecuted in this
same year by that stanch cavalier and retrograde churchman, Sir
William Berkeley, who wanted his parsons to read prayers, but did not
like preaching ministers of any sort. He was new to his government,
and had brought over with him plenty of hostility to the party that
had affronted his royal master in England. Virginia Puritans had no
choice but to suffer or depart, and Maryland was convenient. They
began soon after this to seek a refuge under the protection of a
proprietary who was a papist and who practiced toleration--two things
almost equally hateful to the Puritans. Mr. James, a Puritan minister,
tarried in Maryland a short time, as early as 1643; he was probably
the only Protestant minister that set foot on Maryland soil before
1650. But the Puritan was never easy unless he was uneasy, and he was
sure to be uneasy within when there was none to molest from without.
To take an oath of fidelity to a papist was to him swearing fealty to
antichrist; but so desirous was Baltimore of Puritan settlers that
even the Maryland oath of fidelity was modified, and a saving clause
was inserted for the ease of the Puritan conscience. The coming of
Puritans who were in sympathy with the Parliament in England and who
abhorred a tolerant papist, contributed something to the multifarious
turmoils of the following years.
XX.
[Sidenote: Maryland turmoils.]
[Sidenote: Note 24.]
What we know of the petty civil wars of Maryland is tedious and
perplexing. The broils before 1649 sprang from diverse sources, some
of which we know, others we may easily conjecture. There was the old
claim of Claiborne to jurisdiction over Kent Island; there was a
disposition on the part of some of the Marylanders to relieve the
tedium of existence by taking a hand in the great struggle against
royal authority which was rending England; there was the tendency
common in frontier communities to carry debates to a violent issue;
there was perhaps a natural proneness to insurrection on the part of
bond servants and men lately out of service; and there was an innate
hunger for spoil of any sort in the seamen of that age and in the
rougher class on shore. But by 1648 the tempest had passed for the
time; order had been reestablished; the Catholic and the Puritan were
living in peace like the lion and the lamb of Hebrew prophecy; and the
Catholic proprietary, always promptly bending before the storm, had
delegated his authority to a Protestant governor who took the
Parliament side.
XXI.
[Sidenote: The Act of 1649.]
[Sidenote: Note 25.]
Before this epoch Maryland toleration had been merely a practical
fact. It had not been theoretically stated; it had not been a matter
of legislation at all; its extent and limitations were unknown. But
now that this colonial home of Catholics was to be a land of
Protestants, and particularly of Puritans, it was necessary to
formulate the principle of toleration, the more, that Baltimore's own
co-religionists were to be put under a Protestant governor. Governor
and high officers of state were required to swear that they would
molest on account of religion no person professing to believe in
Jesus Christ, "and in particular no Roman Catholic." By the mere march
of events it had come to pass that in the state founded by Catholics
as a cradle for the Roman Catholic religion, the Catholic was now
compelled to secure as best he could the toleration of his religion at
the hands of the heretic. Part of Baltimore's plan for this new
settlement of affairs involved the sending over of a code of perpetual
laws to be adopted by the Assembly. The proprietary gave orders that
the governor should not assent to any of these laws if all were not
passed; but the Assembly of Maryland farmers was too cunning to be
entrapped into passing laws which it thought inconvenient and unjust.
A humble letter was sent from the members to the lord proprietary
complaining that they were "illeterate" and "void of that
Understanding and Comprehension" necessary to the discussion of such a
code, and that in April they were too busy with their "necessary
employment in a Crop" to give attention to it. They selected certain
acts out of the code which they passed, among which was the famous Act
of Toleration of 1649. That this was part of the code sent from
England there can be no doubt; the "illeterate" colonists were not
capable of framing it, and it bears the character-mark of the
Baltimore policy throughout. Here is no philosophic theory of
toleration, no far-reaching conclusion like that of Roger Williams,
that the magistrate may not take cognizance of merely religious
offences. Williams was a thinker, a doctrinary, too far in advance of
his age to be the successful organizer of a new state. Baltimore, on
the other hand, accepted a practical toleration as an expedient--he
may even have come to believe in it as a theory by force of his own
situation. But he was not primarily a thinker at all. Even here, where
Baltimorean toleration reaches high tide, no philosophic congruity is
sought. The Jew and the Unitarian who deny the divinity of Christ are
to be put to death. Only so much toleration is granted as is needful
to the occasion. And even this toleration is not put upon any other
ground than public policy; the forcing of conscience in religion "hath
frequently fallen out to be of dangerous consequence"; therefore this
law is made "to preserve mutual love and amity amongst the
inhabitants." The provisions against such offences as blasphemy and
Sabbath-breaking and religious disputes precede those for toleration.
Very politic is the arrangement by which reviling of God is made a
capital offence, while reviling the Virgin Mary is adroitly associated
with speeches against the "holy apostles or evangelists" as a sort of
second-class blasphemy, a finable offence.
[Sidenote: Vicissitudes of toleration.]
And yet it was toleration, and the law was all the more influential as
an example, perhaps, because it was only practical and quite
incongruous. It was eminently prudent and statesmanlike. That it was
not perpetually effective was the fault not of Baltimore but of the
times. Puritan ideas were rampant. The government of the proprietary
was overthrown; the Jesuits fled to the inhospitable Virginia, where
they lived concealed in a low hut like a cistern or a tomb, not
lamenting their physical privations so much as the lack of wine which
deprived them of the consolation of the sacrament. The new government
of Maryland, five years after Baltimore's famous "act concerning
Religion," passed a new act with the same title--an act brusque and
curt, a law with its boots and spurs on. "That none profess and
exercise the papist religion" is its rude forbidding. The tables are
turned; it is no longer the nonresident Jew and the hypothetical
Unitarian who are excepted. But the wheels rolled swiftly once more,
and in three years Cecilius, absolute lord and proprietary, was again
master of Maryland, and the beneficent act of 1649 resumed its sway.
It protected the Catholic element, which, though always rich and
influential, came to be in latter colonial times but about a twelfth
of the population. Toleration also served to make Maryland an early
dwelling place for abounding Quakers and others holding religious
views not relished in colonies less liberal.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 223.]
"Voto a Dios que la Corte d'Inglatierra es como un libro de cavalleros
andantes." Quoted by Chamberlain in Birch, i, 413. In view of the
swift mutations of fortune among courtiers, Dudley Carleton the
younger wrote on December 18, 1624, "He is happiest who has least to
do at court"--a truth which Calvert probably had come to appreciate by
that time.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 224.]
"The third man who was thought to gain by the Spaniard was Secretary
Calvert; and as he was the only secretary employed in the Spanish
match, so undoubtedly he did what good offices he could therein for
religion's sake, being infinitely addicted to the Roman Catholic
faith, having been converted thereunto by Count Gondomar and Count
Arundel.... Now this man did protest to a friend of his own that he
never got by the Spaniards so much as a pair of pockets; which it
should seem is a usual gift among them, being excellently perfumed,
and may be valued at twenty nobles or ten pounds price." Goodman's
Court of King James, i, 376, 377.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 225.]
Whitbourne gives these names. Those who believe that Calvert was
already actuated by religious zeal, remind us that Glastonbury (by a
curious legendary confusion of names) was also called Avalon, and that
in the Christian legend Joseph of Arimathea began at Glastonbury the
planting of the Christian religion in Britain. See Anderson's Church
of England in the Colonies, second edition, i, 325, 326. This
interpretation of Calvert's intention in naming his colony was early
given. British Museum, Sloane MSS. XXG. 3662, folio 24, date 1670.
When Calvert's first colony was sent out the Scotch settlement in
Newfoundland was of twelve years' standing, while the Bristol colony
had been seated there five years. Calvert's enterprise seems to have
been pushed with more energy and with a more liberal expenditure than
its predecessors. Compare Whitbourne _passim_ with the statement of
Sir William Alexander in his Encouragement to Colonies, 1624, p. 25.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 225.]
Among the papers at Landsdowne House which I was permitted to examine
by the kindness of Lord Edmund Fitzmaurice, there is an unpublished
work by James Abercromby, written in 1752. It discusses with acuteness
the nature of the several colonial governments. I shall refer to it
hereafter under the title of Abercromby's Examination, Landsdowne
House, 47. Abercromby was, so far as I know, the first to point out
the apparently intentional ambiguity of the passages in the Maryland
charter that have to do with religion.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 226.]
It is interesting that in 1622, the year preceding the division of New
England by lot, three shares were laid off and no more. They were at
the extreme north of the territory divided the next year, and were
assigned respectively to the Duke of Lenox, the Earl of Arundel, and
Sir George Calvert. A "grand patent" was then in preparation for a
colony on the coast of Maine to be called Nova Albion. Calendar
Colonial Documents, July 24, 1622. It seems probable, from the charter
of Avalon, that Calvert intended it to be a colony that should harbor
Catholics, but on the other hand the first settlers were chiefly
Protestants, with a clergyman of their own faith, and there seem to
have been few Romanists or none in Avalon until the arrival of a
company with the lord proprietary in 1627.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 228.]
Fuller's oft-quoted account of the circumstances of Calvert's
resignation, Worthies, Nuttall's edition, iii, 417, 418, gives
probably the commonly received story, and shows that the religious
motive was popularly accepted as the reason for his leaving office.
Archbishop Abbot was better informed though less impartial. His letter
is in the curious work entitled "The Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe in
his Embassy to the Ottoman Porte from the Year 1621 to 1628," etc.,
published in 1740. Abbot says: "Mr. secretary Calvert hath never
looked merily since the prince his coming out of Spaine: it was
thought hee was muche interested in the Spanishe affaires: a course
was taken to ridde him of all imployments and negotiations. This made
him discontented; and, as the saying is, _Desperatio facit monachum_,
so hee apparently did turne papist, whiche hee now professeth, this
being the third time that hee hath bene to blame that way. His Majesty
to dismisse him, suffered him to resigne his Secretaries place to Sir
Albertus Moreton, who payed him three thousand pounds for the same;
and the kinge hath made him baron of Baltimore in Ireland; so hee is
withdrawn from vs, and having bought a ship of 400 tuns, hee is going
to New England, or Newfoundlande, where hee hath a colony." Page 372.
The letters preserved among the state papers are the main authority,
especially those addressed to Sir Dudley Carleton, who desired to buy
Calvert's place. See, _passim_, the Calendar of Domestic Papers for
1624 and 1625 to February 12th. The circumstantial account given in
the Salvetti correspondence, though cited as authority by Mr.
Gardiner, has never been printed, for which reason it is here given in
the original from the British Museum Additional MSS. 27962 C.: "Il
Signor Cavalier Calvert primo Segretario et Consigliero di Stato,
credendosi, doppo la rottura de' trattati, che si haveva con Spagna,
(che per comandamento di sua Maestà haveva lui solo maneggiati,)
d'essere eclipsato nell' oppinione del Sig{r}. Principe et Signor
Duca, et di non essere più impiegato con quella confidenza, che
solevano ricorse pochi giorni sono dal Signor Duca di Buchingam per
fargli intendere la sua risolutione, la quale era, che vedendo di non
potere godere della buona grazia dell' Eccellenza sua nella medesima
forma che godeva avanti della sua andata in Spagna era risoluto di
rittrarsi dalla Corte, et di mettere in sua mano, come di presente
faceva, la sua carica, perchè ne disponasse ovonque le piacesse con
molte altre parole tutte piene di valore et magnanimita:
soggiugnendoli di più come dicono, che essendo risoluto per l'avvenire
di vivere et morire Cattolicamente, conosceva di non poterlo fare nel
servizio dove era senza gelosia dello stato et pericolo del
Parlamento. Il Signor Duca ancorche non amasse questo Cavaliero, ne
nessuno altro che ha hauto le mani nel parentado di Spagna, con tutto
ciò vedendo un atto cosi honorato, gli rispose: che non potera negare
che non gli fusse stato da non so che tempo in qua nemico; ma che hora
vedendo la franchezza et nobiltà d'animo, col rispetto che gli haveva
mostrato, l'abracciava per amico, per mostrargliene gli effeti, sempre
che ne havesse occasione, con assicuratione de più che operrebbe con
sua Maesta gli fusse confermato le suoi pensioni, et di più dato
honorevole ricompensa per la sua carica di segretario. Et che quanto
alla sua religione egli l'havrebbe protetto quanto fusse mai stato
possibile," etc. Salvetti, Correspondence, iii, February 6, 1624-'25.
The letter of the 28th February (O.S.) in the same volume gives an
account of the formal resignation to the king, and states that the
greater part of the money paid to Calvert was from his successor, and
that it was paid _denari contanti_, "cash down," and adds
sympathetically that "this good lord will be able to live easily and
quietly" hereafter.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 229.]
Calvert attributes his deception to interested letters. The principal
motives to settle in Newfoundland may be seen by the reader who has
patience enough to thread his way through the jumble of mythology,
allegory, political economy of a certain sort, verse in English and
Latin, theology, satire, and an incredible number of what-nots besides
"for the generall and perpetuall good of Great Britain," found in
Vaughan's Golden Fleece, published in 1626. The nearness of
Newfoundland to Ireland and the comparative cheapness of
transportation thither, but especially the well-established value of
its fisheries and the market they afforded for the produce of the
colony, were the most plausible reasons for settling a colony there.
Probably there was a lurking purpose to turn the shore fishery into a
monopoly such as was contemplated by projectors for the New England
coast. The fact was insisted upon that part of Newfoundland was "equal
in climate," or at least in latitude, to "Little Britain in France,"
or Brittany. Then, too, Newfoundland is an island, and Vaughan at
least persuaded himself that "Ilanders should dwel in Ilands." As some
of the apostles were fishermen, "Newfoundland the grand port of
Fishing was alloted to Professors of the Gospell." Golden Fleece, Part
Third, pp. 5 and 6 and _passim_.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 230.]
Lord Baltimore may have had the governorship of Virginia in view.
Cecilius, his son, sought to have himself made governor in 1637.
Colonial Papers, ix, 45, Record Office. See an earlier communication
on the same subject in Sainsbury, 246, under the date of February 25,
1637. It is almost the only petition of the second Lord Baltimore that
was not granted. See also section xvii of the present chapter, and
note 21 below.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 231.]
I have ventured to conjecture so much on evidence not complete. Father
White, who was cordially entertained by the Governor of St. Kitts in
1634, speaks of the people of Montserrat as "pulsos ab anglis Virginiæ
ob fidei Catholicæ professionem." White's choice of words does not
necessarily imply, I suppose, an actual banishment from Virginia, but
at least a refusal of permission to come. Neither Edwards nor Oldmixon
mention this fact; but as White visited St. Kitts only two years after
the settlement at Montserrat, which was made immediately from St.
Kitts (according to Edwards) and was subject to the same governor, his
information was doubtless correct. There seems to have been another
project to plant Catholics in Virginia about this time, unless, as is
rather probable, we meet the same plan in another form. Sir Pierce
Crosby offered to plant ten companies "of the Irish Regiment into a
fruitful part of America not yet inhabited." To make the proposal
acceptable, it was stated, somewhat diplomatically perhaps, that the
major part of the officers and many of the soldiers were Protestants.
Sainsbury's Calendar, p. 95, where the conjectural date is 1628.
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 235.]
The translation quoted is that published by Cecilius Calvert in the
Relation of 1635. The original reads: "Unacum licencia et facultate
Ecclesias Capellas et Oratoria in locis infra premissa congruis et
idoneis Extruendi et fundandi eaque dedicari et sacrari juxta leges
Ecclesiasticas regni nostri Anglie facendas." Maryland Archives.
[Sidenote: Note 11, page 235.]
Sir Edward Northey, Attorney-General of England in the following
century, gave this decision: "As to the said clause in the grant of
the province of Maryland, I am of opinion the same doth not give him
power to do anything contrary to the ecclesiastical laws of England."
This is as ingeniously ambiguous as the clause itself. The
attorneys-general and solicitors-general during the eighteenth century
set themselves to the task of subordinating colonial government to
parliamentary authority by a series of opinions in which they make
rather than explain law. In the present instance Northey was more
modest than usual, for he reaches a purely negative and impotent
conclusion, which Neill turns into a positive one in his text.
Founders of Maryland, 99. There is a collection of opinions on
colonial subjects rendered by the attorneys and solicitors-general in
the first half of the eighteenth century, in a volume at Landsdowne
House which I have examined. This collection was made, or at least
furnished, for the use of Lord Shelburne. Before Northey's opinion was
given the English Parliament had assumed power to override some
provisions of the Maryland charter, as is pointed out in Abercromby's
Examination, MS. at Landsdowne House, 47. How slowly the Church of
England grew in the colony may be inferred from the statement made in
1677, that four clergymen have plantations and settled "beings" of
their own--a phrase sufficiently obscure. Others were sustained by
voluntary contributions. Colonial Papers, No. 49, Record Office,
folios 54, 55. This is Baltimore's reply to the paper at folio 56, the
order of which is evidently reversed. The population of the province,
it is stated, was composed at that time chiefly of dissenters of
various sects, Catholics and Anglicans being the smallest bodies.
[Sidenote: Note 12, page 236.]
As early as 1752 it was remarked that the Maryland charter contained
"the most extensive power of any charter in British America."
Abercromby's Examination, MS., Landsdowne House. In Collier's
Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, vol. ix, is the writ of
Edward III, A. D. 1327, by which the regalities of the bishopric of
Durham are confirmed after a trial in parliament.
[Sidenote: Note 13, page 240.]
Cecilius, Lord Baltimore, wrote to Strafford, 10 January, 1633-'34,
that he had sent "a hopeful colony into Maryland with a fair and
probable Expectation of Success, however without Danger of any great
prejudice unto myself, in Respect that many others are joined with me
in the Adventure"--that is, in the financial risk. Strafford Papers,
i, 179. Twenty years later Cromwell writes to Bennet, Governor of
Virginia, "We have therefore at the request of Lord Baltimore and of
divers other persons of quality here who are engaged in great
adventures in his interest," etc. Thurloe, i, 724. A tradition of this
co-operation may have remained in Maryland a century later, for in
1755 or 1756 there was presented to the Lord Baltimore of that day,
who was a Protestant, a petition from Roman Catholic residents of
Maryland in which this assertion occurs: "The money and persons of
this persuasion contributed chiefly to the settling and peopling of
this colony." British Museum MS. 15,489.
[Sidenote: Note 14, page 242.]
The statement of Father Henry More, in 1642, that "in leading the
colony to Maryland by far the greater number were heretics," is not
conclusive, though it is relied on by General Bradley T. Johnson and
others. More was Provincial of the Jesuits in England, and he is no
doubt repeating loosely the information contained in Father White's
letter of the year before, which says, "Whereas three parts of the
people in four at least are heretics"--a statement true, no doubt, in
1641, when the Kent Islanders and newcomers were counted, but not
true, probably, of the company of 1634, as Bancroft seems to say.
[Sidenote: Note 15, page 242.]
The original document is in the Stoneyhurst MSS., Anglia, vol. iv. It
is reprinted in full in General Bradley T. Johnson's "The Foundation
of Maryland." It tends to show that the emigration of many recusants
was confidently expected.
[Sidenote: Note 16, page 243.]
"Nubes, terrificum in morem excresentes, terrori erant intuentibus
antequam discinderentur: et opinionem faciebant prodiisse adversùm nos
in aciem, omnes spiritus tempestatum maleficas, et malos genios omnes
Marylandiæ." Relatio Itineris, 15.
[Sidenote: Note 17, page 247.]
See _passim_, Letters of Missionaries. A letter of Copley, the Jesuit,
to Lord Baltimore, in Calvert Papers, p. 165, implies the possibility
of Catholic incumbents of Maryland parishes. He is complaining of the
law of the Assembly of 1638 relating to glebe land: "In euery Mannor
100 acres must be laid out for Gleabe lande, if then the intention to
bind them to be pastors who enjoy it, we must either by retaining so
much euen of our owne land undertake the office of pastors or lesse
euen in our owne Mannor maintaine pastors, both which to us would be
uery Inconuenient."
[Sidenote: Note 18, page 248.]
Letters of Missionaries, p. 77. "The Catholics who live in the colony
are not inferior in piety to those who live in other countries; but in
urbanity of manners, according to the judgment of those who have
visited the other colonies, are considered far superior to them." More
than a hundred years later the Catholics retained a superiority,
according to Updike's Appendix to McSparran, 1752: "The Catholics,
having the start in point of time of the after settlers, are also to
this day ahead of them in wealth and substance; by which means the
first and best families are for the most part still of the Roman
communion," p. 492.
[Sidenote: Note 19, page 248.]
The act passed in 1704 was renewed in 1715 and still in force in
1749. I cite from Ogle's Account of Maryland, of the latter date, a
manuscript at Landsdowne House, numbered 45, folio 199. In No. 61 at
Landsdowne House is a decision of the Attorney-General in England in
1605 that Jesuits may be expelled from Maryland by order of the
queen if aliens, but not if they are subjects. The various
eighteenth-century enactments against Catholics will be found in
Bacon's Laws of Maryland, _passim_. MS. 15,489, British Museum,
cites some of these severe laws and the proceedings taken under
them. Strong petitions against these measures were signed by Charles
Carroll and others.
[Sidenote: Note 20, page 249.]
Gabriel Hawley, Robert Evelin, and Jerome Hawley, appointed to places
in Virginia, appear to have been Catholics and partisans of Baltimore.
Aspinwall Papers, i, page 101, note.
[Sidenote: Note 21, page 250.]
Baltimore's letter bears date February 25, 1637, and is in the Record
Office, Colonial Papers, xiv, No. 42. The memorial apparently sent
with it is No. 49 in the same volume. Baltimore proposes to reward
Windebank for his assistance, and he sets down the very manner in
which the secretary is to approach the king with a diplomatic
falsehood. Both the letter and memorial are printed in Maryland
Archives, Council Proceedings, pp. 41, 42.
[Sidenote: Note 22, page 251.]
The act was one of those that for some reason of expediency was never
read a third time, but was condensed into what would now be called an
omnibus bill. The act is given in Bacon's Laws, and is compared by
Bozman with Magna Charta. Bozman regards this law of 1639 as an
attempt to establish the Roman Catholic religion.
[Sidenote: Note 23, page 252.]
A copy of the ordinance as printed separately at the time is in the
Lenox Library. It is reprinted in Churchill's Voyages, viii, 776.
[Sidenote: Note 24, page 254.]
It is extremely curious that, in the letters of one of the Jesuits
reporting the attack upon them in 1645, he should have used an
expressive word hitherto supposed to be very modern and American. He
says that the assault was made "by a party of 'rowdies' or marauders."
From the way in which the sentence is printed in the Records of the
Society of Jesus, iii, 387, I suppose that in the original manuscript
the English word "rowdies" is given and explained by a Latin
equivalent.
[Sidenote: Note 25, page 256.]
Charles, the third Lord Baltimore, writes in defense of the Maryland
policy of toleration under date of March 26, 1678: "That at the first
planteing of this Provynce of my ffather--Albeit he had an absolute
Liberty given to him and his heires to carry thither any Persons out
of any the Dominions that belonged to the Crown of England that should
be found Wylling to goe thither, yett when he comes to make use of
this Liberty He found very few who were inclyned to goe and seat
themselves in those parts But such as for some Reasons or other could
not Lyve with ease in other places, And of these a great parte were
such as could not conforme in all particulars to the severall Lawes of
England relateing to Religion. Many there were of this sort of people
who declared their Wyllingness to goe and Plant themselves In this
Provynce soe as they might have a generall toleracon settled there by
a Lawe by which all of all sorts that professed Christianity in
Generall might be at liberty to worship God in such manner as was most
agreeable with their respective Judgments and Consciences without
being Subject to any Penaltyes whatever for their soe doing." Colonial
Papers, vol. xlix, Record Office. Compare Leah and Rachel, p. 23,
where the author also implies that the Act of Toleration was a
concession to Puritan demands.
CHAPTER THE SECOND.
_THE PROPHET OF RELIGIOUS FREEDOM._
I.
[Sidenote: Centrifugal forces in Massachusetts.]
The centrifugal force of religious differences acted with disastrous
results in Maryland, because the Catholic party, which had always a
controlling negative there through the proprietary, was in the
minority. The Massachusetts people, on the other hand, were fairly
homogeneous in religious opinion, and their government was admirably
compacted. In Massachusetts religious sentiment was a powerful
centripetal force. Magistrates and ministers were nicely poised, and
each order relied upon the other to maintain existing conditions. If
the magistrates were perplexed or were seriously opposed, the elders
were called in to advise or to lend a powerful ecclesiastical sanction
to the rulers. When any disturbance of church order was threatened,
the magistrates came to the front and supported the clergy with the
sharp smiting of the secular arm. In the magistracy and in the ranks
of the clergy were men of unusual prudence and ability. If the little
Puritan commonwealth seemed a frail canoe at first, it was
navigated--considering its smallness one might rather say it was
paddled--most expertly. But in Massachusetts, as well as in Maryland,
religious opinion was the main source of disturbance. The
all-pervading ferment of the time could not be arrested, and more than
once it produced explosion. Now one and now another prophet of novelty
or prophet of retrogression arose to be dealt with for religious
errors; there were divergences from the strait path of Puritanism in
the direction of a return to Church of England usage, divergences in
the direction of extreme Separatism, in the direction of the
ever-dreaded "Anabaptism," in the direction of Arianism, and of
so-called Antinomianism. In the case of the Antinomians, the new
movement was able to shelter itself under the authority of the younger
Vane, then governor, and for a while under the apparent sanction of
the powerful Cotton. But no other religious disturbance was ever
allowed to gather head enough to become dangerous to the peace and
unity of the little state. Dislike as we may the principles on which
uniformity was enforced, we must admire the forehanded statesmanship
of the Massachusetts leaders in strangling religious disturbances at
birth, as Pharaoh's midwives did infant Hebrews.
II.
[Sidenote: Early life of Roger Williams.]
[Sidenote: N. Eng. Hist., Gen. Reg., July, 1889.]
[Sidenote: Indorsement of Mrs. Sadleir on Williams's letter,
transcript, Lenox Library; also in Narragansett Club, Pub. VI.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
One of the most formidable of all those who ventured to assail the
compact phalanx presented by the secular and religious authorities of
Massachusetts was Roger Williams. Williams was the son of a merchant
tailor of London. He manifested in boyhood that quickness of
apprehension which made him successful in acquiring languages later in
life. Before he was fifteen the precocious lad was employed in the
Star Chamber in taking notes of sermons and addresses in shorthand,
and his skill excited the surprise and admiration of Sir Edward Coke.
Coke had found time, in the midst of a tempestuous public career and
the arduous private studies that brought him permanent renown, to
defend the legacy which founded the new Sutton's Hospital, later known
as the Charter-House School. Of this school he was one of the
governors, and he appointed young Roger Williams to a scholarship
there, Williams being the second pupil that ever gained admission to
that nursery of famous men. His natural inclination to industry in his
studies was quickened by the example and encouragement of Coke, who
was wont to say that he who would harrow what Roger Williams had sown
must rise early. From the Charter House Williams went to Pembroke
College, Cambridge. He early manifested sincere piety and a tendency
to go to extremes in his Puritan scruples. Even in his father's house
he had begun to taste the bitterness of persecution. His eager temper
transformed his convictions into downright passions; his integrity was
an aggressive force, and there was a precipitation in his decisions
and actions that was trying to his friends. From an early period he
showed a conscience intolerant of prudent compromises. Puritanism had
contrived to exist and to grow to formidable strength within the
church by means of such compromises. Hooker and Cotton, two of the
greatest luminaries of that party and afterward the lights that
lightened New England, one day urged on the impetuous Williams the
propriety of temporarily conforming in the use of the common prayer.
By conceding so much to the judgment of his revered elders, Williams
would have removed the only obstacle to his advancement, for
preferment was offered to the clever and exemplary _protégé_ of Coke
in the universities, in the city, in the country, and at court. But
neither interest nor example could sway the impractical young
minister. He took refuge, like other extreme Puritans, in a private
chaplaincy, and refused all compromise, in order, as he afterward
declared, to keep his "soul undefiled in this point and not to act
with a doubting conscience." Most men feel bound to obey conscience
only where it clearly commands or forbids; good men may act on the
balance of probabilities where there is doubt; but this young man
would not do anything concerning which his moral judgment felt the
slightest halting. Here is the key to his whole career; his strength
lay in his aspiration for a soul undefiled; his weakness, in that he
was ever a victim to the pampered conscience of an ultraist. Property
of some thousands of pounds, that might have been his had he been
willing to make oath in the form required in chancery, he renounced to
his scruples. It certainly seemed rash in a young man just setting
out in life, with a young wife to care for, to indulge in such
extravagant luxury of scruple.
III.
[Sidenote: Flight of Williams from England.]
[Sidenote: Williams's letter to Mrs. Sadleir, as above.]
Laud succeeded in hunting the non-conforming Puritans from their
lectureships and chaplaincies. It became with Williams no longer a
question of refusing preferments on both hands with lavish
self-denial, but of escaping the harsh penalties reserved for such as
he by the Courts of High Commission and the Star Chamber. There was
nothing left but to betake himself to New England for safety. He fled
hurriedly across country on horseback, feeling it "as bitter as death"
that he dared not even say farewell to his great patron Sir Edward
Coke, who detested schism.
[Sidenote: Arrival in New England.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
Here, as in after life, the supreme hardship he suffered was not mere
exile, but that exile of the spirit which an affectionate man feels
when he is excommunicate of those he loves. His escape by sea was
probably the more difficult because he was unwilling to "swallow down"
the oath exacted of those who emigrated. But he succeeded in sailing
with his young wife, and in 1631 this undefiled soul, this dauntless
and troublesome extremist, landed in New England. He was invited to
become one of the ministers of the Boston church. But Williams was
conscientiously a Separatist, and he refused to enter into communion
with the Boston congregation because of its position with reference to
the church in England.
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
This protest by withdrawal of communion was a fundamental principle of
Separatism. It was not, as it appears on the surface, a manifestation
of uncharitableness toward persons, but a solemn protest by act in
favor of a principle. Never was any man more forgiving,
long-suffering, and charitable toward opponents than Williams, but
never was a man less inclined to yield a single jot in the direction
of compromise where his convictions were involved, whatever might be
the evils sure to result from his refusal.
IV.
[Sidenote: Williams at Salem.]
[Sidenote: Winthrop's Journal, i, 63, 12th April, 1631.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
Williams repaired first to Salem, the north pole of Puritanism, where
the pioneer church of Massachusetts had a more Separatist tone than
any other. In the phrase of the time, no other churches in the world
were so "pure" as the New England churches, and Salem was accounted
the "purest" church in New England. Its surviving minister, Skelton,
and its principal layman, Endecott, both tended to extreme
Congregationalism; but the General Court of the colony protested
against the selection of Williams to be one of the ministers of the
Salem church. Skelton's Separatist tendencies, Endecott's impetuous
radicalism, and Salem's jealous rivalry with the younger town of
Boston, were already sources of anxiety to the rulers. The addition of
Williams to these explosive forces was alarming. Williams's
ecclesiastical ideals were not those which the leaders of the colony
had devoted their lives and fortunes to establish. Had this young
radical been less conscientious, less courageous, less engagingly good
and admirable, there would not have been so much reason to fear him. A
letter was written to Endecott protesting against Williams's
ordination, because he had refused communion with the church at
Boston, and because he denied the power of the magistrate to enforce
duties of the first table--that is, duties of religion. Here at the
very outset of his American life we find that Williams had already
embraced the broad principle that involved the separation of church
and state and the most complete religious freedom, and had
characteristically pushed this principle to its logical result some
centuries in advance of the practice of his age. The protest of the
court prevented his ordination. He yielded to the opposition and soon
after removed to Plymouth, where the people were Separatists, modified
by the conservative teachings of John Robinson, somewhat modified also
by the responsibility of founding a new state, and perhaps by
association with Puritans of the neighboring colony.
[Sidenote: Williams at Plymouth.]
[Sidenote: Maverick's Description of New England, 25.]
[Sidenote: Williams to Winthrop, 1632.]
At Plymouth the young idealist "prophesied" in his turn, but did not
take office in the church, which already had a pastor in Ralph Smith,
the Separatist, who had been suffered to come over in a Massachusetts
ship only on his giving a promise not to preach in that jurisdiction
without leave. The congregation at Plymouth was poor, and Roger
Williams mainly supported himself by hard toil "at the hoe and the
oar"--that is, perhaps, in farming and fishing. His body seems to have
been vigorous, and no physical fatigue abated anything of his mental
activity. The Pilgrims had passed more than twelve years in Holland,
and almost every adult in Plymouth must have known Dutch. Those of
Roger Williams's own age, who were children when they migrated to
Leyden and men when they left, probably spoke it as well as they did
their mother tongue. The Plymouth people, indeed, were styled
"mungrell Dutch" a quarter of a century later. It is probable that
Williams, with his usual eagerness to acquire knowledge, now added
Dutch to his stock of languages; it is certain that he afterward
taught Dutch to John Milton. But he was still more intent on learning
the language of the natives, that he might do them good. He resolved
not to accept office as pastor or teacher, but to give himself to work
among the Indians. Perhaps his tendency to individualism made this
prospect pleasing to him. He may have begun already to realize in a
half-conscious way that there was scant room in any organization for
such as he. The learning of the Indian language was an arduous toil in
more ways than one. "God was pleased to give me a painful patient
spirit," wrote Williams long after, "to lodge with them in their
filthy, smoky holes to gain their tongue." He afterward wrote an
excellent treatise on the dialect of the New England Indians.
[Illustration: Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth.]
[Sidenote: Writes against the royal patents.]
[Sidenote: Bradford, 310.]
[Sidenote: Knowles's Life of Williams, 53.]
[Sidenote: Williams returns to Salem.]
At Plymouth Williams spoke, as he had at Salem, without restraint from
any motive of expediency or even of propriety. Separatist Plymouth,
whose days of advance were over, was a little disturbed by his speech.
In his own sweet, reckless way he sometimes sharply rebuked even the
revered Bradford when he thought him at fault. And in the interest of
the aborigines and of justice Williams laid before Governor Bradford a
manuscript treatise which argued that the king had no right to give
away, as he had assumed to do in his grants and charters, the lands of
the Indians merely because he was a Christian and they heathen. That
it was right to wrong a man because he was not orthodox in belief
could find no place in the thoughts of one whose conscience was wholly
incapable of sophistication. Bradford accepted candidly the rebukes of
Williams and loved him for his "many precious parts." But as governor
of a feeble colony he was disturbed by Williams's course. In
spirituality, unselfish fearlessness, and a bold pushing of Separatist
principles to their ultimate logical results, Roger Williams reminded
the Pilgrims of the amiable pastor of the Separatist church in
Amsterdam whose change step by step to "Anabaptism," the great bugbear
of theology in that time, had been a tragedy and a scandal to the
Separatists of Leyden. Elder Brewster feared that Williams would run
the same course. Williams wished to return to Salem, where he might
still devote himself to the neighboring Indians, and assist
Skelton, now declining in health. Brewster persuaded the Plymouth
church to give him a letter of dismissal. The leading Pilgrims felt
bound to send "some caution" to the Salem church regarding the extreme
tendencies of Williams. On the other hand, some of the Plymouth people
were so captivated by his teachings and his personal character that
they removed with him. This following of an approved minister was
common among Puritans; an acceptable preacher was of as much value to
a town as good meadows, broad pastures, and pure water.
V.
[Sidenote: The town system.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
To understand the brief career of Williams at Salem and its
catastrophe, we must recall the character of colonial life in
Massachusetts at the time. There were already sixteen settlements or
"towns" on the shores of Massachusetts Bay, with an indefinite stretch
of gloomy wilderness for background, the dwelling place of countless
savages and wild beasts. The population of all the settlements may
have summed up five thousand people--enough to have made one
prosperous village. The inhabitants of the various towns of the bay
were from different parts of England; their dress and dialect were
diverse, and their Puritanism was of various complexions. The town
system, at first a reproduction on new soil of the township field
communes that had subsisted in parts of England from ages beyond the
fountain heads of tradition, gave some play to local peculiarities
and prejudices. There is evidence that the central government relieved
itself from strain by means of this rural borough system. The ancient
town system in turn appears to have taken on a new youth; it was
perhaps modified and developed by the local diversity of the people,
and it lent to Massachusetts, at first, something of the elasticity of
a federal government.
[Sidenote: Life in the Massachusetts settlements.]
[Sidenote: 1630 to 1640.]
This community of scattered communes was cut off from frequent
intercourse with the world, for the sea was far wider and more to be
feared in that day of small ships and imperfect navigation than it is
now. The noise of the English controversies in which the settlers had
once borne a part reached them at long intervals, like news from
another planet. But most of the time these lonesome settlements had no
interest greater than the petty news and gossip of little forest
hamlets. The visitor who came afoot along Indian trails, or by water,
paddling in a canoe, to Boston on lecture day, might bring some news
of sickness, accident, or death. Sometimes the traveling story was
exciting, as that wolves had slaughtered the cattle at a certain
place, while yet cattle were few and precious. Or still more
distressing intelligence came that the ruling elder of the church at
Watertown had taken the High-church position that Roman churches were
Christian churches, or that democratic views had been advanced by
Eliot of Roxbury. A new and far-fetched prophetical explanation of a
passage in the Book of Canticles, and a tale of boatmen wrecked in
some wintry tempest, might divide the attention of the people. Stories
of boats capsized, of boatmen cast on islands where there was neither
shelter nor food, of boats driven far to sea and heard of no more,
were staples of excitement in these half-aquatic towns; and if the
inmates of a doomed boat had been particularly profane, these events
were accounted edifying--divine judgments on the ungodly. When the
governor wandered once and lost himself in the forest, passing the
night in a deserted wigwam, there was a sensation of a half-public
character. That a snake and a mouse had engaged in a battle, and that
the puny mouse had triumphed at last, was in one budget of traveling
news that came to Boston. To this event an ominous significance was
given by John Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, maker of anagrams,
solemn utterer of rhyming prophecies which were sometimes fulfilled,
and general theological putterer. Wilson made the snake represent the
devil, according to all sound precedents; the mouse was the feeble
church in the wilderness, to which God would give the victory over
Satan. Thus enhanced by an instructive interpretation from the prophet
and seer of the colony, the story no doubt took up its travels once
more, and now with its hopeful exegesis on its back. The Massachusetts
mouse was an auspicious creature; it is recorded by the governor, and
it was no doubt told along the coast, that one got into a library and
committed depredations on a book of common prayer only, nibbling every
leaf of the liturgy, while it reverently spared a Greek Testament and
a Psalter in the same covers.
In a petty state with a range of intellectual interests so narrow, the
conflict between Williams and the General Court took place.
VI.
[Sidenote: Self-consciousness of the Massachusetts community.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
It was a community that believed in its own divine mission. It traced
the existence of its settlements to the very hand of God--the God who
led Israel out of Egypt. The New England colonists never forgot that
they were a chosen people. Upon other American settlers--the Dutch in
New Netherland, the Virginia churchmen, the newly landed Marylanders,
with their admixture of papists--they looked with condescension if not
with contempt, accounting them the Egyptians of the New World. The
settlers on the Bay of Massachusetts were certain that their
providential exodus was one of the capital events in human history;
that it had been predesigned from eternity to plant here, in a virgin
world, the only true form of church government and to cherish a church
that should be a model to the Old World in turn, and a kind of
foreshadowing of the new heaven and the new earth. Some dreamed that
the second coming of Christ would take place among the rocky woodlands
of New England. The theocratical government was thought to be the one
most pleasing to God, and a solemn obligation was felt to import into
this new theocracy the harsh Oriental intolerance which had marked
that fierce struggle in which the Jewish tribes finally shook off
image worship.
[Sidenote: John Cotton, 1633.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
The apostle of theocracy who arrived soon after Williams's return to
Salem was John Cotton, a Puritan leader in England, in whom
devoutness was combined with extreme discretion, a dominant will
with a diplomatic prudence and a temper never ruffled. Cotton's
ingenious refinements made him a valuable apologist in an age of
polemics, but they often served to becloud his vision of truth and
right. He was prone to see himself as he posed, in the character of
a protagonist of truth. He gave wise advice to the Massachusetts
Puritans at their departure from England. When, a few years later,
Laud's penetrating vigilance and relentless thoroughness made even
Cotton's well-balanced course of mild non-conformity impossible, he
fled from his parish of Boston, in Lincolnshire, to London, and
escaped in 1633 with difficulty to the new Boston in New England. As
John Cotton had been the shining candle of Puritanism in England,
his arrival in America was hailed with joy, and from the time of his
settlement in the little capital his was the hand that shaped
ecclesiastical institutions in New England, and he did much also to
mold the yet plastic state. Though he usually avoided the appearance
of personal antagonism, every formidable rival he had left
Massachusetts early. Williams, Hooker, Davenport, and Hugh Peter all
found homes beyond the bounds of the colony. There can not be two
queen bees in one hive, nor can there well be more than one master
mind in the ecclesiastical order of a petty theocratic state. It was
the paradox of colonial religious organization that the Episcopal
colonies had parishes almost independent of all supervision, while
the New England Congregationalists were, from the arrival of Cotton,
subject to the dominance of ministers who virtually attained to the
authority of bishops.
VII.
[Sidenote: Salem refractory.]
Salem, the oldest town of the commonwealth, was the most ready to
pursue an independent course and it was attached to Williams, whose
ability attracted new settlers and who maintained a position of
independence toward Cotton and the authorities at Boston. To subdue
the refractory Salem was no doubt one of the secondary purposes of the
proceedings against Williams. There seems to have been no personal
animosity toward Williams himself; his amiable character and his
never-doubted sincerity were main obstacles to his punishment.
[Sidenote: Collision inevitable.]
The return of Roger Williams to such a place as Salem was naturally a
matter of alarm to the ministers and magistrates of Massachusetts.
Collision was not a matter of choice on either side. The catastrophe
was like one that comes from the irresistible action of physical
forces. In a colony planted at great cost to maintain one chosen form
of worship and subordinating all the powers of government to this
purpose, a preacher who asserted the necessity for a complete
separation of religion and government in the interest of soul liberty
had no place. His ideal was higher than the prevailing one, but that
age could not possibly rise to it.
VIII.
[Sidenote: The book against the patent.]
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
[Sidenote: Reply to Cotton, 276, 277.]
Williams was yet only a private member of the church in Salem, but in
the illness of the pastor he "exercised by way of prophecy"--that is,
preached without holding office. An alarming report was soon in
circulation that he had written a book against the king's patent, the
foundation of the colonial authority. This treatise, we have said, was
written in Plymouth for the benefit of Governor Bradford. Like many of
the manuscript books that have come down to us, it appears to have
been a small quarto, and, if it resembled other books of the sort, it
was neatly stitched and perhaps even bound by its author in the
favorite pigskin of the time. Williams sent his book promptly to be
examined. Some of the "most judicious ministers much condemned Mr.
Williams's error and presumption," and an order was made that he
"should be convented at the next court." In the charges no fault was
found with the main thesis of the book, that the king could not claim
and give away the lands of the Indians; but it was thought that there
were disloyal reflections cast upon both James and Charles--at least
those eager to condemn construed the obscure and "implicative phrases"
of Williams in that sense--and these supposed reflections were the
subject of the charges. Williams wrote a submissive letter, and
offered his book, or any part of it, to be burned after the manner of
that time. A month later, when the governor and council met, the whole
aspect of the affair had changed. Cotton and Wilson, the teacher and
the pastor of the Boston church, certified, after examination of
Williams's quarto, that "they found the matters not so evil as at
first they seemed." It was decided to let Williams off easily. There
are some things unexplained about the affair; the eagerness of the
"judicious ministers" and court to condemn without due examination,
the failure even to specify the objectionable passages at last, and
the unwonted docility of Williams--all leave one to infer that there
was more in this transaction than appears. Laud and his associates
were moving to have the Massachusetts charter vacated, and it may have
seemed imprudent for the magistrates to found their authority on a
base so liable to disappear. If the charter had been successfully
called in, Williams's ground of the sufficiency of the Indian title to
lands might have proved useful as a last resort. Williams asserted,
long afterward, that before his troubles began he had drafted a letter
addressed to the king, "not without the approbation of some of the
chiefs of New England," whose consciences were also "tender on this
point before God." This letter humbly acknowledged "the evil of that
part of the patent which relates" to the gift of lands. Had the letter
been sent to its destination it would have cut a curious figure among
the worldly-minded state papers of the time.
[Sidenote: An abstract principle.]
It is probable that most of the land of the colony had been secured
from the natives by purchase or by treaty of some sort; at least the
Indians were content, and the little quarto had at that time no
practical bearing whatever, but that did not matter to Williams. The
more abstract a question of right and wrong, the more he relished a
discussion of it. It was of a piece with his exquisite Separatism, a
mere standing up in the face of heaven and earth for an abstract
principle. His purpose was not to right a specific and concrete wrong,
for there had been none, but to assert as a broad principle of
everlasting application that a Christian king may not dispose of the
land owned by heathens merely because of his Christianity. Williams
was not a judge or a lawgiver; he was a poet in morals, enamored of
perfection, and keeping his conscience purer than Galahad's.
IX.
[Sidenote: The alarm.]
[Sidenote: 1634.]
It was in the winter of 1633-'34 that the book about the patent was
called in question. Skelton, pastor of Salem, died in the following
August, and the Salem people, in spite of an injunction from the
magistrates, made Williams their teacher in his stead. The country was
now full of alarm at news from England that the charter was to be
revoked, that a general governor of New England was to be appointed,
and that a force was to be sent to support his authority. Laud was put
at the head of a commission for the government of the colonies in
April, 1634. There could be no doubt of the meaning of this measure.
For more than a year the alarm in Massachusetts continued. The
ministers were consulted regarding the lawfulness of resistance to
force. A platform was constructed on the northeast side of Castle
Island, and a fortified house was proposed to defend the platform. The
trainbands were drilled, muskets, "bandeleroes" or cartridge belts,
and rests were distributed to the several towns, and pikemen were
required to learn to use the cumbrous musket of the time. Puritans in
England, angry that Laud, the new archbishop and old persecutor,
should stretch a long arm to America, sent powder and cannon to their
co-religionists, the object of whose military vigilance could easily
be covered by dangers from the savages, from the French, or from the
Spaniards.
[Sidenote: Debates not appeased.]
But these assiduous preparations, under the supervision of a military
commission which had "power of life and limb," did not abate in the
least the discussion of questions of doctrine and casuistry.
Refinements of theology were quite as real and substantial to the
Puritan mind as trainbands and fortifications. Sound doctrine and a
scrupulous observance of the "ordinances" conciliated God; they were
indeed more important elements of public safety than drakes and
demi-culverins.
[Sidenote: Reform in dress.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Records, 3d September, 1634.]
[Sidenote: Compare Ward's Simple Cobbler, _passim_.]
The General Court of September, 1634, undertook to provide for the
public safety in both respects. Along with regulations and provisions
of a military nature, it set out to remove those flagrant sins that
had provoked the divine wrath. The wearing of silver, gold, and rich
laces, girdles, and hatbands was forbidden; slashed clothes were also
abolished, "other than one slash in each sleeve and another in the
back"; ruffs and beaver hats, which last were apparently a mark of
dudishness, were not to be allowed. Long hair and other fashions
"prejudicial to the general good" were done away with in this hour of
penitence. Men and women might wear out the clothes they had, except
their "immoderate great sleeves, slashed apparel, immoderate great
rayles, long wings," which were to go at once without reprieve or
ceremony. The use of tobacco, socially and in public, or before
strangers was made an offense. If taken secretly or medicinally, the
Court did not take cognizance of it.
X.
[Sidenote: The fast-day sermon.]
[Sidenote: 1634.]
Seeing that the millinery sins recounted in this act had cried to
Heaven, and that, beside the danger from England, there was the desire
of Hooker's party to remove to the Connecticut, and a dissension
concerning the power of the Upper House that threatened trouble, the
Court appointed the 18th of September a solemn fast-day, hoping by
repentance, prayer, and the penance of hunger to avert the manifold
disasters that threatened them. Roger Williams was sure to speak like
a prophet on such an occasion. He did not stop at slashed garments,
great sleeves, and headdresses with long wings; he preached on eleven
"public sins" that had provoked divine wrath. We have no catalogue
left us. The list may have included some of those amusing scruples
that he held in common with other Puritans, or some of those equally
trivial personal scruples that Williams cherished so fondly. But no
sermon of his on public sins could fail to contain a declaration of
his far-reaching and cherished principle of religious freedom,
including perhaps a round denunciation of the petty inquisition into
private opinion which had been set up in Massachusetts. The Sabbath
law, the law obliging men to pay a tax to support religious worship,
the requirement that all should attend religious worship under
penalty, and the enforcement of a religious oath on irreligious and
perhaps unwilling residents, the assumption of the magistrate to
regulate the orthodoxy of a church under the advice of the ministers,
were points of Massachusetts law and administration that he denounced
at various times; and some of them, if not all, were no doubt put in
pillory in this fast-day sermon in the early autumn of 1634. Judged
by modern standards, the sermon may have had absurdities enough, but
it was no doubt a long way in advance of the General Court's mewling
about lace, and slashes, and long hair, and other customs "prejudicial
to the general good." To this sermon, whatever it was, Williams
afterward attributed the beginning of the troubles that led to his
banishment.
XI.
[Sidenote: Williams dealt with ecclesiastically.]
[Sidenote: Note 10.]
Winthrop, just but gentle, narrow-minded but ever large-hearted, had
been superseded in the governorship by Dudley, open and zealous
advocate of religious intolerance. Dudley, who was always
hot-tempered, was for proceeding out of hand with the bold "teacher"
of the church in Salem, but he felt bound to consult with the
ministers first, since Williams was an "elder," and even among
Puritans there was a sort of benefit of clergy. Cotton had developed a
complete system of church-state organization hammered out of, or at
least supported by, Bible texts linked by ingenious inferences, and
from the time of Cotton's arrival there was a strong effort to secure
uniformity. But Cotton was timid in action, and he was nothing if not
orderly and ecclesiastical. Williams was an elder, entitled as such to
be proceeded with "in a church way" first. As leader and spokesman of
the clergy Cotton expressed his charitable conviction that Williams's
"violent course did rather spring from scruple of conscience than
from a seditious principle." The clergy proposed to try to convert him
by argument, not so much, perhaps, from hope of success as from a
conviction that this was the orderly and scriptural rule. Dudley,
impatient to snuff out Williams at once, replied that they "were
deceived in him if they thought he would condescend to learn of any of
them." But the "elders" now proceeded in the roundabout way prescribed
by Cotton's system ingeniously deduced from Scripture. The individual
church must deal with its own member; the sister churches might
remonstrate with a church. Cotton and Wilson, for example, could
appeal to the Boston church to appeal to the Salem church to appeal to
Williams, and in this order much of the correspondence went on.
[Sidenote: The governor's verse.]
It was, perhaps, when his desire to act promptly against the Salem
heretic was thus foiled by Cotton's prudent and intricate orderliness
in procedure that Dudley relieved his emotions by what is happily the
only example of his verse that has survived:
[Sidenote: Eliot's New England Biography, 156, 157.]
Let men of God in courts and churches watch
O'er such as do a toleration hatch,
Lest that ill egg bring forth a cockatrice
To poison all with heresy and vice.
If men be left and otherwise combine,
My epitaph's I die no libertine.
XII.
[Sidenote: Note 11.]
The most substantial grievance of the rulers against Williams was his
opposition to "the oath." In order to make sure of the loyalty of the
residents in this time of danger a new oath of fidelity to be taken by
residents had been promulgated. Practical men are wont to put aside
minor scruples in time of danger. David eats the sacred shew-bread
when he is famishing: but Williams would rather starve than mumble a
crumb of it. He did not believe in enforced oaths; they obliged the
wicked man to a religious act, and thus invaded the soul's freedom.
Cotton says that Williams's scruples excited such an opposition to the
oath that the magistrates were not able to enforce it. He thus
unwittingly throws a strong light on the weakness of the age, and
extenuates the conduct of Williams as well as that of the rulers. The
age was in love with scrupulosity, and Williams on this side was the
product of his time. In such an age a scruple-maker of ability and
originality like Williams might be a source of danger.
[Sidenote: Scruples small and great.]
During the year following Williams was several times "convented"
before the Court. He was charged with having broken his promise not to
speak about the patent, with opposing the residents' oath, with
maintaining certain scruples in opposition to the customs of the
times, as that a man should not return thanks after a meal, or call on
an unregenerate child to give thanks for his food. These were not
more trivial certainly than half a hundred scruples then prevalent,
but they chanced to be unfashionable--a damning fault in a scruple.
The sense of proportion was feeble in religionists of that day, and
neither Williams nor his opponents understood the comparative
magnitude of his greater contentions, and the triviality of those
petty scruples about which, like the whole Puritan world, he was very
busy. Religious freedom and the obligation of grace after meat could
then be put into the same category. As years went by, although the
mind of Williams was never disentangled from scrupulosity, he came to
see clearly what was the real battle of his life. No better fortune
can befall a great spirit than such a clarification of vision. The
extended works of Williams's later life are written mainly to
overthrow the "bloody tenent of persecution." It was this championship
of soul liberty as the weightiest matter of the law that lifted him
above all others who paid tithes of their little garden herbs.
[Sidenote: Williams inflexible.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop's Journal, i, 81.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Rec., i, 135, 136.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Rec., i, 156, 157. Winthrop's Journal, i, 194.]
Williams was certainly incorrigible. Richard Brown, the ruling elder
of the church at Watertown, seems to have submitted to the
remonstrance of the magistrates against his too charitable judgment of
the Roman churches. Eliot, of Roxbury, afterward the Indian apostle,
advanced peculiar opinions also, but he was overborne and convinced.
Stoughton, who had denied that the "assistants" of a corporation were
scriptural magistrates, was brought to book about this time, and he
retracted. Salem itself was forced to bend its stiff neck at last.
The town had been refused its land on Marble Neck because of its
ordination of Williams, and having, under Williams's leadership,
protested in a letter to the churches against the injustice of
spiritual coercion by financial robbery, the deputies of Salem were
now summarily turned out of the court. Endecott, with characteristic
violence, protested further against the double injustice to Salem. He
was promptly put under arrest, and this severity brought swift
conviction to his mind, so that he humbly apologized and submitted the
same day. The only bond of unity between the rash Salem leader and
Williams was a common tendency to go to extremes. In spirit, the
heroic, long-suffering Williams, who rested in what he called the
"rockie strength" of his opinions in spite of penalties and
majorities, was far removed from a leader who bent before the first
blast, and who became in later life the harshest persecutor in the
commonwealth.
XIII.
[Sidenote: Williams's trial.]
[Sidenote: Note 12.]
Williams remained the one resolute, stubborn, incorrigible offender.
Eliot, Stoughton, and Endecott, and even Williams's fellow-elder,
Sharpe, and the whole church at Salem, might be argued into conformity
by the sharp dialectics of the clergy, or bullied out of their
convictions by the sharper logic of the magistrates, but Roger
Williams could not be overborne. Individualist in his very nature, his
self-reliant spirit was able to face isolation or excommunication.
The great Hooker was set to dispute with him. Hooker's refined
arguments were drawn out by inferences linked to inferences. He proved
to the satisfaction of everybody but the culprit that it was not
lawful for Williams, with his opinions, to set food before his
unregenerate child, since he did not allow an irreligious child to go
through the form of giving thanks. But the wire-drawn logic of Hooker,
though Williams could not always answer it, had no more influence with
him than the ingenious sophistications of the pious Cotton; Williams
constantly fell back upon the "rockie strength" of his principles. On
the 9th of October, 1635, he was sentenced to banishment. After the
manner of that curious age, his banishment was based on charges of
great importance mixed with charges utterly trivial. His denial of the
authority of the magistrate to regulate the orthodoxy of the churches
and the belief of individuals is, however, made one of the cardinal
offenses in all the trustworthy accounts given at the time. With this
were joined in the proceedings, but not in the sentence, such things
as the denial of the propriety of grace after meat. All the elders but
one advised his banishment.
[Sidenote: Williams banished.]
[Sidenote: Note 13.]
[Sidenote: Note 14.]
[Sidenote: Note 15.]
[Sidenote: Note 16.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop, i, 209, 210.]
The magistrates, though deeply "incensed" against him, probably felt
at the last some reluctance to banish such a man. Six weeks were
accorded him in which to leave. Winthrop, who was Williams's friend,
and who seems to have been loath to consent to his banishment, wrote
to him to "steer his course for Narragansett Bay," where there was
territory beyond the bounds of Massachusetts and Plymouth. The forest
journeys or boat voyages to Boston and back, the bitter controversies
there, and the uproar of indignation which was produced in Salem by
the news of the verdict, the desertion of Williams by Endecott,
convinced by force, and by Sharpe, the ruling elder, who had been also
dealt with, the natural yielding of the Salem church after a while to
the pressure from the General Court, and to the desire of the townsmen
to secure the lands at Marble Neck, put a strain on Williams which,
added to his necessary toil in the field, broke his health and he fell
ill. The General Court probably also felt the recoil of its act. When
six weeks had expired consent was given that Williams should remain
during the winter provided he would refrain from preaching. But
Williams was in Salem, and in Salem he was the center of
interest--just now he was the center of explosion. It was impossible
for the great Separatist to be silent. A few faithful friends,
come-outers like himself, clave to him and repudiated as he did
communion with the church at Salem, which could condone the offenses
of the magistrates for the sake of "these children's toys of land,
meadows, cattle, and government." These fellow-Separatists, some of
whom perhaps had removed from Plymouth out of love for this unworldly
saint, loved him none the less for his courage and his sorrows. They
frequented his house on Sunday as he convalesced. Indeed, the
attachment to him was so great that the "ordinances" which had been
appointed by the magistrates and enforced on Salem as the price of the
common land on Marble Neck, were neglected and almost deserted.
Williams could not refrain from speech with this concourse of
visitors, and at length word came to Boston that more than twenty
persons had definitely adhered to the opinions of their former
teacher, unconvinced by the argument of the rod of justice applied to
Endecott and Sharpe, or by the valuable land on Marble Neck. These
disciples proposed to remove in the spring with Williams to the shores
of Narragansett Bay. This might meet the approval of the sagacious and
kindly Winthrop, who had directed Williams's attention to that
promising place, and who foresaw perhaps the usefulness of such a man
in the dangerous Indian crisis now threatening the colony. But to
devotees of uniformity, the prospect of a community on the very border
of the land of the saints tolerating all sorts of opinionists was
insufferable. When once the civil government weights itself with
spiritual considerations, its whole equilibrium is disturbed. Liberty
and justice seem insignificant by the side of the immensities. The
magistrates, or a part of them, were alarmed at the prospect of a
settlement of the followers of Williams at Narragansett Bay, "whence
the infection would easily spread into these churches, the people
being, many of them, much taken with an apprehension of his
godliness." It was therefore agreed to send him to England on a ship
soon to sail.
XIV.
[Sidenote: Escape to the Indians.]
The hardships of such a voyage in midwinter in his state of health
might prove fatal, and his arrival in England would almost certainly
deliver him into the hands of Laud. But what is justice or mercy when
the welfare of churches and the rescue of imperiled souls is to be
considered? A warrant was dispatched ordering him to Boston within a
certain time. Probably knowing what was in store for him, he protested
that it would be dangerous for him, in view of his health, to make the
journey, and some of the Salem people went to Boston in his behalf,
and, as was natural in the circumstances, made exaggerated
representations regarding his physical condition. But the magistrates
had other information. They sent the valiant and notorious Captain
Underhill, in whom were mingled about equally devoutness, military
courage, and incorrigible lewdness, to bring Williams by sea in a
shallop. Williams was probably informed of their purpose, for, while
Underhill in his little craft was beating up to Salem in wintry seas
on an errand so congenial, expecting perhaps to come upon his quarry
unawares, Williams was fleeing from one hamlet of bark wigwams to
another. Here among the barbarians he was sure of faithful friends and
secure concealment. Underhill found on his arrival that the culprit
had disappeared three days before he got there, and nobody in Salem,
that could, would tell whither the fugitive had gone.
[Sidenote: Williams founds Providence.]
Meantime Williams was, to use his own figure of speech, "steering his
course" "in winter snow" toward Narragansett Bay. "I was sorely tossed
for one fourteen weeks in a bitter winter season," he says, in his
vivid and hyperbolic fashion of speech, "not knowing what bed or bread
did mean." He began one settlement on the eastern bank of the Seekonk
River after getting land from the Indians, but his old enemies the
royal patents now had their revenge. Winslow, governor of Plymouth, a
kind-hearted, politic man, the one born diplomatist of New England,
warned him that he was within the bounds of Plymouth, and asked him to
remove to the other side of the water, because they "were loath to
displease the Bay." It was not enough to drive a heretic from the
bounds of Massachusetts; the pragmatic Puritanism of the time would
have expelled him from the continent had its arm been long enough.
Williams had already begun to build and to plant, but he removed once
more to the place which he named Providence. He planted the germinal
settlement of the first state in the world that founded religious
liberty on the widest possible basis, reserving to the law no
cognizance whatever of religious beliefs or conduct where the "civil
peace" was not endangered.
[Illustration: The early settlements on Narragansett Bay.]
XV.
[Sidenote: Williams's banishment an act of persecution.]
[Sidenote: Note 17.]
Local jealousy and sectarian prejudice have done what they could to
obscure the facts of the trial and banishment of Williams. It has been
argued by more than one writer that it was not a case of religious
persecution at all, but the exclusion of a man dangerous to the state.
Cotton, with characteristic verbal legerdemain, says that Williams was
"enlarged" rather than banished. The case has even been pettifogged in
our own time by the assertion that the banishment was only the action
of a commercial company excluding an uncongenial person from its
territory. But with what swift indignation would the Massachusetts
rulers of the days of Dudley and Haynes have repudiated a plea which
denied their magistracy! They put so strong a pressure on Stoughton,
who said that the assistants were not magistrates, that he made haste
to renounce his pride of authorship and to deliver his booklet to be
officially burned, nor did even this prevent his punishment. The
rulers of "the Bay" were generally frank advocates of religious
intolerance; they regarded toleration as a door set open for the devil
to enter. Not only did they punish for unorthodox expressions; they
even assumed to inquire into private beliefs. Williams was only one of
scores bidden to depart on account of opinion.
[Sidenote: Intolerance as a virtue.]
[Sidenote: Note 18.]
[Sidenote: Note 19.]
[Sidenote: Simple Cobbler of Agawam, pp. 3 and 6.]
The real and sufficient extenuation for the conduct of the
Massachusetts leaders is found in the character and standards of the
age. A few obscure and contemned sectaries--Brownists, Anabaptists,
and despised Familists--in Holland and England had spoken more or less
clearly in favor of religious liberty before the rise of Roger
Williams, but nobody of weight or respectable standing in the whole
world had befriended it. All the great authorities in church and
state, Catholic and Protestant, prelatical and Puritan, agreed in
their detestation of it. Even Robinson, the moderate pastor of the
Leyden Pilgrims, ventured to hold only to the "toleration of tolerable
opinions." This was the toleration found at Amsterdam and in some
other parts of the Low Countries. Even this religious sufferance which
did not amount to liberty was sufficiently despicable in the eyes of
that intolerant age to bring upon the Dutch the contempt of
Christendom. It was a very qualified and limited toleration, and one
from which Catholics and Arminians were excluded. It seems to have
been that practical amelioration of law which is produced more
effectually by commerce than by learning or religion. Outside of some
parts of the Low Countries, and oddly enough of the Turkish Empire,
all the world worth counting decried toleration as a great crime. It
would have been wonderful indeed if Massachusetts had been superior to
the age. "I dare aver," says Nathaniel Ward, the New England
lawyer-minister, "that God doth no where in his word tolerate
Christian States to give tolerations to such adversaries of his Truth,
if they have power in their hands to suppress them." To set up
toleration was "to build a sconce against the walls of heaven to
batter God out of his chair," in Ward's opinion.
XVI.
[Sidenote: The casuistry of Cotton.]
[Sidenote: Note 20.]
[Sidenote: Hutchinson Papers, 496.]
[Sidenote: Note 21.]
[Sidenote: Controversie concerning Liberty of Conscience.]
[Sidenote: Character of Puritanism.]
[Sidenote: Note 22.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop, i, 211-214.]
This doctrine of intolerance was sanctioned by many refinements of
logic, such as Cotton's delicious sophistry that if a man refused to
be convinced of the truth, he was sinning against conscience, and
therefore it was not against the liberty of conscience to coerce him.
Cotton's moral intuitions were fairly suffocated by logic. He declared
that men should be compelled to attend religious service, because it
was "better to be hypocrites than profane persons. Hypocrites give God
part of his due, the outward man, but the profane person giveth God
neither outward nor inward man." To reason thus is to put subtlety
into the _cathedra_ of common sense, to bewilder vision by
legerdemain. Notwithstanding his natural gift for devoutness and his
almost immodest godliness, Cotton was incapable of high sincerity. He
would not specifically advise Williams's banishment, but having
labored with him round a corner according to his most approved
ecclesiastical formula, he said, "We have no more to say in his
behalf, but must sit down"; by which expression of passivity he gave
the signal to the "secular arm" to do its worst, while he washed his
hands in innocent self-complacency. When one scrupulous magistrate
consulted him as to his obligation in Williams's case, Cotton
answered his hesitation by saying, "You know they are so much incensed
against his course that it is not your voice nor the voice of two or
three more that can suspend the sentence." By such shifty phrases he
shirked responsibility for the results of his own teaching. Of the
temper that stands alone for the right, Nature had given him not a
jot. Williams may be a little too severe, but he has some truth when
he describes Cotton on this occasion as "swimming with the stream of
outward credit and profit," though nothing was further from Cotton's
conscious purpose than such worldliness. Cotton's intolerance was not
like that of Dudley and Endecott, the offspring of an austere temper;
it was rather the outgrowth of his logic and his reverence for
authority. He sheltered himself behind the examples of Elizabeth and
James I, and took refuge in the shadow of Calvin, whose burning of
Servetus he cites as an example, without any recoil of heart or
conscience. But the consideration of the character of the age forbids
us to condemn the conscientious men who put Williams out of the
Massachusetts theocracy as they would have driven the devil out of the
garden of Eden. When, however, it comes to judging the age itself, and
especially to judging the Puritanism of the age, these false and harsh
ideals are its sufficient condemnation. Its government and its very
religion were barbarous; its Bible, except for mystical and
ecclesiastical uses, might as well have closed with the story of the
Hebrew judges and the imprecatory Psalms. The Apocalypse of John,
grotesquely interpreted, was the one book of the New Testament that
received hearty consideration, aside from those other New Testament
passages supposed to relate to a divinely appointed ecclesiasticism.
The humane pity of Jesus was unknown not only to the laws, but to the
sermons of the time. About the time of Williams's banishment the
lenity of John Winthrop was solemnly rebuked by some of the clergy and
rulers as a lax imperiling of the safety of the gospel; and Winthrop,
overborne by authority, confessed, explained, apologized, and promised
amendment. The Puritans substituted an unformulated belief in the
infallibility of "godly" elders acting with the magistrates for the
ancient doctrine of an infallible church.
XVII.
[Sidenote: Character of Williams. His scruples.]
[Sidenote: New England Firebrand Quenched, 246.]
[Sidenote: Williams to Winthrop, 1637, Narr. Club, vi.]
[Sidenote: Note 23.]
In this less scrupulous but more serious age it is easy to hold
Williams up to ridicule. Never was a noble and sweet-spirited man
bedeviled by a scrupulosity more trivial. Cotton aptly dubbed him "a
haberdasher of small questions." His extant letters are many of them
vibrant with latent heroism; there is manifest in them an exquisite
charity and a pathetic magnanimity, but in the midst of it all the
writer is unable to rid himself of a swarm of scruples as pertinacious
as the buzzing mosquitoes in the primitive forest about him. In
dating his letters, where he ventures to date at all, he never writes
the ordinary name of the day of the week or the name of the month,
lest he should be guilty of etymological heathenism. He often avoids
writing the year, and when he does insert it he commits himself to the
last two figures only and adds a saving clause. Thus 1652 appears as
"52 (so called)," and other years are tagged with the same doubting
words, or with the Latin "_ut vulgo_." What quarrel the tender
conscience had with the Christian era it is hard to guess. So, too, he
writes to Winthrop, who had taken part in his banishment, letters full
of reverential tenderness and hearty friendship. But his conscience
does not allow him even to seem to hold ecclesiastical fellowship with
the man he honors as a ruler and loves as a friend. Once at least he
guards the point directly by subscribing himself "Your worship's
faithful and affectionate in all _civil_ bonds." It would be sad to
think of a great spirit so enthralled by the scrupulosity of his time
and his party if these minute restrictions had been a source of
annoyance to him. But the cheerful observance of little scruples seems
rather to have taken the place of a recreation in his life; they were
to him perhaps what bric-a-brac is to a collector, what a
well-arranged altar and candlesticks are to a ritualist.
[Sidenote: Williams becomes a Seeker.]
[Sidenote: Note 24.]
Two fundamental notions supplied the motive power of every
ecclesiastical agitation of that age. The notion of a succession of
churchly order and ordinance from the time of the apostles was the
mainspring of the High-church movement. Apostolic primitivism was the
aim of the Puritan and still more the goal of the Separatist. One
party rejoiced in a belief that a mysterious apostolic virtue had
trickled down through generations of bishops and priests to its own
age; the other rejoiced in the destruction of institutions that had
grown up in the ages and in getting back to the primitive nakedness of
the early Christian conventicle. True to the law of his nature, Roger
Williams pushed this latter principle to its ultimate possibilities.
If we may believe the accounts, he and his followers at Providence
became Baptists that they might receive the rite of baptism in its
most ancient Oriental form. But in an age when the fountains of the
great deep were utterly broken up he could find no rest for the soles
of his feet. It was not enough that he should be troubled by the
Puritan spirit of apostolic primitivism; he had now swung round to
where this spirit joined hands with its twin, the aspiration for
apostolic succession. He renounced his baptism because it was without
apostolic sanction, and announced himself of that sect which was the
last reduction of Separatism. He became a Seeker.
[Sidenote: The Seekers.]
Here again is a probable influence from Holland. The Seekers had
appeared there long before. Many Baptists had found that their search
for primitivism, if persisted in, carried them to this negative
result; for it seemed not enough to have apostolic rites in apostolic
form unless they were sanctioned by the "gifts" of the apostolic
time. The Seekers appeared in England as early as 1617, and during the
religious turmoils of the Commonwealth period the sect afforded a
resting place for many a weatherbeaten soul. As the miraculous gifts
were lost, the Seekers dared not preach, baptize, or teach; they
merely waited, and in their mysticism they believed their waiting to
be an "upper room" to which Christ would come. It is interesting to
know that Williams, the most romantic figure of the whole Puritan
movement, at last found a sort of relief from the austere externalism
and ceaseless dogmatism of his age by traveling the road of literalism
until he had passed out on the other side into the region of devout
and contented uncertainty.
XVIII.
[Sidenote: Moral elevation of Williams]
In all this Williams was the child of his age, and sometimes more
childish than his age. But there were regions of thought and sentiment
in which he was wholly disentangled from the meshes of his time, and
that not because of intellectual superiority--for he had no large
philosophical views--but by reason of elevation of spirit. Even the
authority of Moses could not prevent him from condemning the harsh
severity of the New England capital laws. He had no sentimental
delusions about the character of the savages--he styles them "wolves
endued with men's brains"; but he constantly pleads for a humane
treatment of them. All the bloody precedents of Joshua could not make
him look without repulsion on the slaughter of women and children in
the Pequot war, nor could he tolerate dismemberment of the dead or the
selling of Indian captives into perpetual slavery. From bigotry and
resentment he was singularly free. On many occasions he joyfully used
his ascendency over the natives to protect those who kept in force
against him a sentence of perpetual banishment. And this
ultra-Separatist, almost alone of the men of his time, could use such
words of catholic charity as those in which he speaks of "the people
of God wheresoever scattered about Babel's banks either in Rome or
England."
[Sidenote: Superior to the age.]
Of his incapacity for organization or administration we shall have to
speak hereafter. But his spiritual intuitions, his moral insight, his
genius for justice, lent a curious modernness to many of his
convictions. In a generation of creed-builders which detested schism
he became an individualist. Individualist in thought, altruist in
spirit, secularist in governmental theory, he was the herald of a time
yet more modern than this laggard age of ours. If ever a soul saw a
clear-shining inward light not to be dimmed by prejudices or obscured
by the deft logic of a disputatious age, it was the soul of Williams.
In all the region of petty scrupulosity the time-spirit had enthralled
him; but in the higher region of moral decision he was utterly
emancipated from it. His conclusions belong to ages yet to come.
[Sidenote: His prophetic character.]
This union of moral aspiration with a certain disengagedness
constitutes what we may call the prophetic temperament. Bradford and
Winthrop were men of high aspiration, but of another class. The reach
of their spirits was restrained by practical wisdom, which compelled
them to take into account the limits of the attainable. Not that they
consciously refused to follow their logic to its end, but that, like
other prudent men of affairs, they were, without their own knowledge
or consent, turned aside by the logic of the impossible. Precisely
here the prophet departs from the reformer. The prophet recks nothing
of impossibility; he is ravished with truth disembodied. From Elijah
the Tishbite to Socrates, from Socrates to the latest and perhaps yet
unrecognized voice of our own time, the prophetic temperament has ever
shown an inability to enter into treaty with its environment. In the
seventeenth century there was no place but the wilderness for such a
John Baptist of the distant future as Roger Williams. He did not
belong among the diplomatic builders of churches, like Cotton, or the
politic founders of states, like Winthrop. He was but a babbler to his
own time, but the prophetic voice rings clear and far, and ever
clearer as the ages go on.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 268.]
Sir William Martin, an early friend of Williams, describes him as
passionate and precipitate, but with integrity and good intentions.
Hutchinson Papers, 106. See also, for example, the two letters of
Williams to Lady Barrington, in New England Genealogical Register,
July, 1889, pp. 316 and following.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 269.]
Letter to John Cotton the younger, 25th March, 1671. "He knows what
gains and preferments I have refused in universities, city, country
and court," etc. Williams's enthusiastic nature gave a flush of color
to his statement of ordinary fact, the general correctness of which,
however, there is never reason to doubt.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 270.]
Letter to John Cotton the younger, Narragansett Club Publications, vi,
356. There is no account of this event elsewhere, but the church
records of that early date are imperfect, and there is every reason to
accept the circumstantial statement of Williams. That he refused to
enter into membership with the church is confirmed by Winthrop's
Journal, 12th April, 1631, and such refusal must have had some such
occasion.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 271.]
"We have often tried your patience, but could never conquer it," were
Winthrop's words to Williams, who gave to Massachusetts lifelong
service in return for its lifelong severity toward him. The sentence
is quoted in Williams's letter to the younger Cotton, cited above,
which is itself a fine example of his magnanimity of spirit.
Narragansett Club Publications, vi, 351-357.
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 272.]
There is difference of opinion on this point, but certain words of
Williams himself seem to bear on it. After his retirement from Salem
to Plymouth he received a letter from Winthrop, which appears to have
intimated that no man under twenty-five ought to be ordained. Williams
explains in reply that he is "nearer upwards of thirty than
twenty-five," but avers, "I am no elder in any church ... nor ever
shall be, if the Lord please to grant my desires that I may intend
what I long after, the natives souls." Williams's Letter, Narragansett
Club Publications, vi, 2. Of course, these words might have been
written if he had resigned the eldership before leaving Salem, but
they would have had much less pertinency.
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 276.]
Mr. Straus, in his Life of Roger Williams, says aptly that
Massachusetts was under a government of congregations rather than of
towns, since only church members could vote. A fuller discussion of
the source and evolution of the town system is deferred to a later
volume of this series.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 278.]
David Pieterzen de Vries, in his Voyages, reports this feeling of
superiority as freely expressed at Hartford in 1639. There is a quaint
humor in what he says of it that is enhanced by the naïve Dutch phrase
in which it is set down: "Dit Volck gaven haer uyt det sy Israëliten
waren, ende dat wy aen onse colonie Egyptenaren waren, end' Engelsen
inde Vergienies waren mede Egyptenaren," p. 151.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 279.]
"And such was the authority ... Mr. Cotton had in the hearts of the
people, that whatever he delivered in the pulpit was soon put into an
Order of Court, if of a civil, or set up as a practice in the church,
if of an ecclesiastical concernment." Hubbard, History of
Massachusetts, 182.
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 281.]
Knowles's Life of Williams, 58, note, quotes from a letter of
Coddington's appended to Fox's reply to Williams, in which Coddington,
who was one of the magistrates that examined the treatise, charges
Williams with having "written a quarto against the King's patent and
authority."
[Sidenote: Note 10, page 288.]
Cotton's Answer to Williams's Examination, 38. I have followed Cotton
implicitly here, but without feeling sure that his memory can ever be
depended on where his polemical feeling is concerned. On the next page
he is guilty of a flagrant but no doubt unconscious suppression of an
important fact. "It pleased the Lord to open the hearts of the Church
to assist us," etc., he says, putting out of sight the sharp dealing
by which the Salem church was brought to ignominious subjection.
[Sidenote: Note 11, page 289.]
Cotton's Answer to Williams, 29. Compare also Massachusetts Records of
4th March, 1633, where a mercenary inducement to take the oath is
offered by making the regulations for recording the lands of freemen
apply also to the lands of "residents" presumably not church members
and ineligible to the franchise, but only to the residents "that had
taken or shall hereafter take their oathes." Backus supposes that
Williams saw some incidental result from the oath that would be
prejudicial to religious freedom. This is to suppose that Williams
needed a practical consideration to stir him to action--it is to
suppose that Williams was not Williams. Practical men were afraid the
independence of Massachusetts would be lost; Roger Williams was only
afraid that Massachusetts would commit a public sin in trying to
escape the impending evil. A conscience undefiled was his objective
point in private and public life; safety, public or private, was
secondary.
[Sidenote: Note 12, page 292.]
There has been much ingenious and rather uncandid effort by Cotton
first of all, and by other defenders of the General Court since, to
prove that Williams's views on toleration were not a cause of his
banishment. If those views had been the sole cause, the decree would
have been more comprehensible and defensible in view of the opinions
of the age. But the question about the validity of the patent, the
question of the protest written against the course of the magistrates
in blackmailing Salem into a refusal to support him, the question of
the freeman's oath, and, what seems to have been deemed of capital
importance, the question of grace after meat, are all involved at one
time or another. The formal charges in what may be considered the
beginning of the banishment proceedings, the trial in July, as given
by Winthrop, our most trustworthy authority, are: 1. That the
magistrates ought not to punish for a religious offense--"the breach
of the first table"--except where it disturbed the civil peace. 2.
That the magistrate ought not to tender an oath to an unregenerate
man. 3. That a man ought not to pray with an unregenerate person. 4.
That thanks were not to be given after the sacrament and after meat.
Savage's Winthrop, i, 193, 194. In the final proceedings in October,
the letters growing out of the refusal to confirm to Salem its
outlying land entered into and embittered the controversy. Winthrop,
i, 204. The recorded verdict makes the divulging "of dyvers newe and
dangerous opinions against the aucthoritie of the magistrate" the
first offense, and the "letter of defamacion" the second. Williams
says that a magistrate, who appears to have been Haynes, the governor,
summed up his offenses at the conclusion of the trial under four
heads: 1. The denial of the authority of the patent. 2. The denial of
the lawfulness of requiring a wicked person to take an oath or pray.
3. The denial of the lawfulness of hearing the parish ministers in
England. 4. The doctrine "that the Civill Magistrates' power extends
only to the Bodies and Goods and outward State of men." Against the
evidence of Williams, Winthrop, and the records, I can not attach any
importance to the halting accounts given years afterward, for
controversial purposes, by Cotton, from what he thought was his
memory.
[Sidenote: Note 13, page 292.]
"Whereas Mr. Roger Williams, one of the elders of the church at Salem,
hath broached and dyvulged dyvers newe and dangerous opinions, against
the aucthoritie of magistrates, as also writt letters of defamacion
both of the magistrates & Churches here, & that before any conviccion,
& yet maintaineth the same without retraccion, it is therefore ordered
that the said Mr. Williams shall departe out of this jurisdiccion
within sixe weekes now nexte ensueing, which if hee neglect to
performe it shall be lawfull for the Gouernour & two of the
magistrates to send him to some place out of this jurisdiccion, not to
returne any more without license from the Court." Massachusetts
Records, i, 161.
[Sidenote: Note 14, page 293.]
Neal's History of New England, i, 143. "Sentence of banishment being
read against Mr. Williams, the whole town of Salem was in an uproar;
for such was the Popularity of the Man and such the Compassion of the
People ... that he would have carried off the greatest part of the
Inhabitants of the Town if the Ministers of Boston had not
interposed." Neal appears to derive these facts, which wear a
countenance of probability, from an authority not now known.
[Sidenote: Note 15, page 293.]
The phrase occurs in Williams's noble letter to Major Mason, 1st
Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, i, 275 and following.
The magnanimity shown toward those opposed to him in this letter is
probably without a parallel in his age; it has few in any age.
[Sidenote: Note 16, page 294.]
"The increase of the concourse of people to him on the Lord's days in
private, to the neglect or deserting of publick Ordinances and to the
spreading of the Leaven of his corrupt imaginations, provoked the
Magistrates rather than to breed a winters Spirituale plague in the
Countrey, to put upon him a winter's journey out of the Countrey."
Master John Cotton's Answer to Master Roger Williams, 57.
[Sidenote: Note 17, page 297.]
The main original authorities on the banishment of Williams are
Winthrop's Journal and the Massachusetts Records of the period. Some
facts can be gathered from the writings of Williams, whose
autobiographical passages always have an air of truth while they are
sometimes vague and often flushed by his enthusiastic temper.
Cotton's memory is less to be trusted; some of his statements are in
conflict with better authorities. He no doubt believed himself to be
truthful, but his ingenious mind was unable to be precise without
unconscious sophistication. Hubbard was of Presbyterian tendencies and
totally opposed to all forms of Separatism. He appears to have
recorded every exaggerated rumor cherished by Williams's antagonists
to his discredit. Neither in this nor in other matters can we rely
much on Hubbard's testimony. No critical student of history puts
unquestioning confidence in Cotton Mather. His strange mind could
never utter truth unvarnished. In a case like this, where family
pride, local feeling, and sectarian prejudice were all on one side,
and where he had a chance to embroider upon traditions already two
generations old, it is better to disregard the author of the Magnalia
entirely. Bentley's Historical Account of Salem, in 1st Massachusetts
Historical Society Collections, vi, is a paper that excites admiration
for its broadmindedness. It contains information not elsewhere to be
found, but it is impossible to tell how far Bentley depended upon
sources not now accessible and how far he relied on ingenious
inferences drawn from his large knowledge of local history. The
publications of the Narragansett Club contain the whole controversy
between Cotton and Williams and all the letters of the latter now
known to be extant. I have in some cases referred to the originals, in
others I have used these careful reprints. Williams has been rather
fortunate in his biographers. Mr. Oscar S. Straus, approaching the
subject from a fresh standpoint, has produced the latest Life of
Williams, written in a judicial temper and evincing a rare sympathy
with its subject. The character of Williams has never been better
drawn than by Mr. Straus, pp. 231-233. The life by T. D. Knowles is
perhaps the best of the older biographies, Arnold's History of Rhode
Island contains a sketch of Williams, and Elton's brief biography has
a value of its own. Gammell's Life in Sparks's Biography is generally
fair. "As to Roger Williams," by the late Dr. Henry Martyn Dexter, is,
what it pretends to be, a partisan statement of the case against
Williams. It shows characteristic thoroughness of research, it clears
up many minor points, and is as erudite as it is one-sided.
[Sidenote: Note 18, page 298.]
Baylie's Sermon before the House of Lords, on Errours and Induration,
accuses the Dutch of mere worldly policy in toleration. Williams
alludes to the charge, Bloudy Tenent yet more Bloudy, p. 8. But the
toleration of Holland may rather be traced to that decay of bigotry
and that widening of view which are beneficent results of an extended
trade. Williams in the Bloudy Tenent yet more Bloudy, p. 10, complains
of the exclusion of Catholics and Arminians from toleration in the
Netherlands. It would carry us beyond the range of the present work to
inquire how far the toleration of Amsterdam was related to that
"meridian glory" which Antwerp reached as early as 1550 by making
itself a place of refuge for the persecuted of England, France, and
Germany. The Articles of Union, adopted at Utrecht in 1579, which have
been often called the Magna Charta of the Dutch, go to show that
political and commercial considerations counted in favor of
toleration, but they also show that some notion of the sacredness of
the free conscience had been adopted among the Dutch. Article XIII of
the Union provides that the states of Holland and Zealand shall
conduct their religious affairs as they think good. More qualified
arrangements are made for the other states, as that they may restrict
religious liberty as they shall find needful for the repose and
welfare of the country. But this significant provision is added, that
every man shall have freedom of private belief without arrest or
inquisition: "Midts dat een yder particulier in syn Religie vry zal
moghen blyven, ende dat men niemandt, ter cause van de Religie, zal
moghen achterhalen, ofte ondersoecken." Pieter Paulus Verklaring der
Unie van Utrecht, i, 229, 230. Compare Van Meteren, Nederlandsche
Historie etc., iii, 254, 255, and Hooft Nederlandsche Historie, etc.,
Book IX, where the full text of Article XIII is given.
[Sidenote: Note 19, page 298.]
Barclay, in his Inner Life of the Religious Societies of the
Commonwealth, p. 97, cites Peter John Zwisck, a Mennonite of West
Frisia, as the author, in 1609, of The Liberty of Religion, in which
he maintains that men are not to be converted by force. In 1614 one
Leonard Busher petitioned James I in favor of liberty of conscience,
and Barclay conjectures that he was a member of that Separatist or
General Baptist church returned from Holland, of which Helwyss had
been pastor. In 1615 this obscure and proscribed congregation
professed a great truth, yet hidden from the wise and prudent, namely,
that "earthly authority belonged to earthly kings, but spiritual
authority belonged to that one Spiritual king who is king of kings."
In more than one matter Roger Williams showed himself attracted to the
doctrines of the Mennonites and their offshoot the English General
Baptist body. Whether directly through his reading of Dutch
theological works or indirectly through English followers of Dutch
writers, Williams probably derived his broadest principles, in germ at
least, from the Mennonites or Anabaptists of the gentler sort, as he
did also some of his minor scruples. For the connection between the
Mennonites of the Continent and the English cognate sects the reader
is referred to Barclay's Inner Life, a valuable work of much research.
See also the petition of the Brownists, 1641, cited in Barclay, p.
476, from British Museum, E 34-178, tenth pamphlet.
[Sidenote: Note 20, page 299.]
Another delightful example of the far-fetchedness of Cotton's logic is
his justification of the sentence of banishment against Williams by
citing Proverbs xi, 26: "He that withholdeth corn, the people shall
curse him." This text, says Cotton, "I alledged to prove that the
people had much more cause to separate such from amongst them (whether
by Civill or church-censure) as doe withhold or separate them from the
Ordinances or the Ordinances from them, which are the bread of life."
Reply to Williams's Examination, 40. The reference in the text is to
the same work, 37. "Much lesse to persecute him with the Civill Sword
till it may appeare, even by just and full conviction, that he sinneth
not out of conscience but against the very light of his own
conscience." But in Cotton's practice those who labored with the
heretic were judges of how much argument constituted "just and full
conviction." This logic would have amply sheltered the Spanish
Inquisition.
[Sidenote: Note 21, page 300.]
Cotton's Answer to Williams's Examination, 38, 39. Cotton confesses to
having had further conversation of a nature unfavorable to Williams,
but he is able to deny that he counseled his banishment. Even Cotton
could hardly have prevented it, and he confesses that he approved the
sentence. The only interest in the question is the exhibition of
Cotton's habitual shrinking from responsibility and his curious
sinuosity of conscience.
[Sidenote: Note 22, page 301.]
In an unpublished work by Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public
Library, which I have been kindly permitted to read, and which is a
treatise on the election sermons mostly existing only in manuscript,
the author says: "The early discourses were full of ecclesiasticism, a
great deal of theology, some politics; ... but of humanity, brotherly
kindness, and what we understand by Christianity in the human
relations, I have been able to discern very little."
[Sidenote: Note 23, page 302.]
Many of Roger Williams's scruples were peculiar, but his scrupulosity
was not. Cotton takes pains to call pulpits "scaffolds," to show that
they had no sacredness. The scruple about the heathen names of days of
the week was felt by many other Puritans. It is evident in Winthrop,
and it did not wholly disappear from Puritan use until about the end
of the seventeenth century.
[Sidenote: Note 24, page 303.]
Barclay, Inner Life, etc., 410, 411, cites Sebastian Franck's Chronica
of 1536, from which it appears that the Seekers in fact if not in name
existed about a century before Williams adopted their views. "Some
desire to allow Baptism and other ceremonies to remain in abeyance
till God gives another command--sends out true laborers into the
harvest.... Some others agree with those who think the ceremonies
since the death of the Apostles, are equally departed, laid waste and
fallen--that God no longer heeds them, and also does not desire that
they should be longer kept, on which account they will never again be
set up but now are to proceed entirely in Spirit and in Truth and now
in an outward manner." The relation of Seekerism to Quakerism is
manifest. "To be a Seeker is to be of the best Sect next to a finder,"
wrote Cromwell in 1646.
CHAPTER THE THIRD.
_NEW ENGLAND DISPERSIONS._
I.
[Sidenote: Importance of the Rhode Island colony.]
The removal of Roger Williams and his friends was the beginning of
dispersions from the mother colony on Massachusetts Bay. The company
that settled Providence was too small in number at first to be of
great importance. The emigration of Williams and his followers to the
Narragansett country was an example that may have turned the scale
with Hooker and his party in favor of a removal to the Connecticut
instead of to some place in the Massachusetts wilderness. Williams
certainly prepared a harbor for most of the Hutchinsonians, and
pointed the way to Gortonists, Baptists, Quakers, and all others of
uneasy conscience. Providence Plantation, and at times all Rhode
Island, fell into disorders inevitable in a refuge for scruplers and
enthusiasts established by one whose energies were centrifugal and
disintegrating. But when at length it emerged from its primordial
chaos the community on Narragansett Bay became of capital importance
as an example of the secularization of the state, and of the congruity
of the largest liberty in religion with civil peace. The system which
the more highly organized and orderly commonwealths of Massachusetts
and Connecticut labored so diligently to establish--a state propping
and defending orthodoxy and church uniformity--was early cast into the
rubbish heap of the ages. The principle on which the heterogeneous
colony of religious outcasts on Narragansett Bay founded itself, was
stone rejected that has become the head of the corner.
II.
[Sidenote: The Connecticut migration.]
The emigration to the Connecticut River was already incubating when
Williams sat down with his radical seceders in the Narragansett woods.
The Connecticut settlement was impelled by more various and
complicated motives than that of Williams, and its origins are not so
easy to disentangle. But it, too, has an epic interest; one dominant
personality overtops all others in this second of venturesome westward
migrations into the wilderness.
[Sidenote: Early life of Hooker.]
[Sidenote: 1630.]
We can trace nothing of Hooker to his birthplace, a little hamlet in
Leicestershire, except that the imagery of his discourses in after
life sometimes reflected the processes of husbandry he had known in
childhood. But that he passed through Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
while Chaderton was master, is more significant, for Emmanuel was the
cradle of Puritan divines, the hatching-place of Puritan crotchets,
the college whose chapel stood north and south that it might have no
sacred east end, a chapel in which "riming psalms" were sung instead
of the hymns, and where lessons different from those appointed in the
calendar were read. Hooker was presented to the living of Chelmsford,
in Essex. Here his eloquence attracted wide attention, and unhappily
attracted at the same time the notice of his diocesan Laud, then
Bishop of London, who drove the preacher from his pulpit. Hooker
engaged in teaching a school four miles from Chelmsford, where Eliot,
afterward the Indian apostle, became his usher and disciple. But Laud
had marked him as one to be brought low. He was cited before the Court
of High Commission, whose penalties he escaped by fleeing to Holland.
Thus early in his career Laud unwittingly put in train events that
resulted in the founding of a second Puritan colony in New England.
III.
[Sidenote: Hooker's company.]
[Sidenote: Walker's First Church in Hartford, 40.]
[Sidenote: Dudley's Letter to Countess of Lincoln, Young's Chron. of
Mass., 320.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Records, 14 June, 1631, and 3 February, 1632.]
[Sidenote: Holmes's Hist. Cambridge, 1st Mass. Hist. Coll., vii, 6-8.]
The persecution of Hooker made a great commotion in Essex, dividing
attention with the political struggle between the king and the people
about tonnage and poundage. While Hooker was an exile in Holland a
company of people from Braintree and other parts of Essex, near his
old parish of Chelmsford, emigrated to New England, chiefly, one may
suppose, for the sake of good gospel, since they came hoping to tempt
Hooker to become their pastor. This company settled at Newtown, now
Cambridge, which had been projected for a fortified capital of the
colony, that should be defensible against Indians and out of reach if
a sea force should be sent from England to overthrow the government.
Newtown was palisaded and otherwise improved at the expense of the
whole colony. Hooker's company were perhaps ordered to settle there
because no place was appropriate to the great divine but the new
metropolis.
IV.
[Sidenote: Failure of Newtown as a metropolis.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop, i, 98, 99. 1632.]
But a metropolis can not be made at will, as many a new community has
discovered. It had been arranged that all the "assistants" or ruling
magistrates of Massachusetts should live within the palisades of
Newtown, but Winthrop, after the frame of his house was erected,
changed his mind and took down the timbers, setting them up again at
Boston. This was the beginning of unhappiness at Newtown, and the
discontent had to do, no doubt, with the rivalry between that place
and Boston. It is probable that there was a rise in the value of
Boston home lots about the time of the removal of the governor's
house. Trade runs in the direction of the least resistance, and
peninsular Boston was destined by its situation to be the metropolis
of New England in spite of the forces that worked for Salem and
Newtown.
[Sidenote: Wonder-working Providence, ch. xxviii.]
[Sidenote: Wood's N. E. Prospect, 1634. Young, 402.]
[Sidenote: October, 1632.]
Newtown, or Cambridge, to call it by its later name, was a long,
narrow strip of land, "in forme like a list cut off from the
Broad-cloath" of Watertown and Charlestown. The village was compactly
built, as became an incipient metropolis, and the houses were
unusually good for a new country. In one regard it was superior to
Boston. No wooden chimneys or thatched roofs were allowed in it. To
this town came Hooker, and if it had continued to be the capital,
Hooker and not Cotton might have become the leading spirit of the
colony. But a capital at a place to which only small vessels could
come up, was not practical, and the magistrates in the year before
Hooker's arrival decided by general consent that Boston was the
fittest place in the bay for public meetings.
[Sidenote: Hooker's arrival, 1633.]
[Sidenote: Wood's N. E. Prospect.]
[Sidenote: Young, 397, 398.]
The hopes of Newtown were perhaps not wholly extinct for some time
after. The arrival of Hooker must have been a great encouragement to
the people. But Boston was on the alert. That town had neither forest
nor meadow land. Hay, timber, and firewood were brought to its wharf
in boats. From the absence of wood and marsh came some advantages--it
was plagued with neither mosquitoes nor rattlesnakes, and what cattle
there were on the bare peninsula were safe from wolves. Not to be
behind in evangelical attractions it secured Cotton to balance
Newtown's Hooker, when both arrived in the same ship. That Boston was
now recognized as the natural metropolis was shown in the abortive
movement to pay a part of Cotton's stipend by a levy on the whole
colony.
V.
[Sidenote: Discontent at Newtown.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Rec., _passim_.]
[Sidenote: Wonder-working Providence, ch. xxxiii.]
[Sidenote: Compare Holmes's History of Cambridge, 1 Mass. Hist. Coll.,
vii, pp. 1, 2.]
[Sidenote: 2d Mass., vii, 127.]
"Ground, wood, and medowe" were matters of dispute between Newtown and
its neighbors as early as 1632, and the frequent references to questions
regarding the boundary of Newtown go to show dissatisfaction in the
discarded metropolis, the number of whose people was out of proportion
to its resources. Cattle were scarce in the colony. Each head was worth
about twenty-eight pounds, the equivalent of several hundred dollars of
money in our time. The Newtown people saw no prospect of foreign trade,
and found the plowable plains of Cambridge dry and sandy. They had given
up trying to coax fortunes from the stony hill land of the town with
hand labor, and turned their attention to the more profitable pursuit of
cattle-raising. They took unusual pains to protect their valuable herd
from the wolves by impaling a common pasture. Natural meadow was the
only resource for hay in the English agriculture of the seventeenth
century, and the low grounds of Cambridge yielded a poor grass. Shrewd
men in Newtown already saw that as an agricultural colony Massachusetts
was destined to failure, and one Pratt, a surgeon there, was called to
account for having written to England that the commonwealth was "builded
on rocks, sands, and salt marshes."
VI.
[Sidenote: Cotton and Hooker.]
[Sidenote: Compare Walker's First Church of Hartford, 129-132.]
There is good authority for believing that a rivalry between Hooker
and Cotton had quite as much to do with the discontent as straitened
boundaries and wiry marsh grass. Hooker was the greatest debater,
perhaps, in the ranks of the Puritans. His theology was somewhat
somber, his theory of Christian experience of the most exigent type.
To be saved, according to Hooker, one must become so passive as to be
willing to be eternally damned. In other regards he was a Puritan of a
rather more primitive type than Cotton. He knew no satisfactory
evidence of a man's acceptance with God but his good works. Cotton was
less logical but more attractive. His Puritanism grew in a garden of
spices. He delighted in allegorical interpretations of the Canticles,
his severe doctrines were dulcified with sentiment, and his conception
of the inward Christian life was more joyous and mystical and less
legal and severe than Hooker's. He was an adept in the windings of
non-committal expression, and his intellectual sinuosity was a
resource in debate or difficulty. Hooker, on the other hand, had a
downrightness not to be mistaken. With an advantage in temperament and
the additional advantage of position in the commercial and political
center, it is not surprising that Cotton's ideals eloquently and
deftly presented soon dominated the colony and that he became the
Delphic oracle whose utterances were awaited by the rulers in
emergencies.
[Sidenote: Theological differences.]
[Sidenote: Note 1.]
[Sidenote: Note 2.]
Theological differences were early apparent in the teachings of the
two leaders. Trivial enough to the modern mind are these questions
concerning works as an evidence of justification and concerning active
and passive faith in justification. Hooker maintained all by himself
that there was "a saving preparation in a Christian soule before unyon
with Christ." The other ministers pretended to understand what he
meant by this, and at first opposed him unanimously. No doubt, too,
Hooker and his disciples found some fault with the outer form of the
church as shaped by Cotton. Certain it is that Hooker's theories of
civil government were more liberal and modern than Cotton's, though
like Cotton's they were hung upon texts of Scripture. Hooker lacked
Cotton's superfluity of ingenuity; he had less imagination and less
poetic sentiment than Cotton, but his intellect was more rugged,
practical, and virile. He was not a man to have visions of a political
paradise; he did not attempt to limit citizenship to church members
when he framed a constitution for the Connecticut towns. Nor did he
give so much power and privilege to the magistrate as was given in
Massachusetts. He disapproved of Cotton's aristocratic theory of the
permanence of the magistrate's office, as he did apparently of the
negative vote of the upper house and of the arbitrary decisions which
the Massachusetts magistrates assumed the right to make.
VII.
[Sidenote: Attractions of Connecticut.]
One other potent motive there was. Stories of the fertility of the
"intervale" land on the Connecticut River came by the mouth of every
daring adventurer who had sailed or tramped so far. There one might
find pasture for the priceless cattle and hay to last the long winter
through, and in that valley one might cultivate plains of great
fertility.
VIII.
[Sidenote: Obstacles to removal.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop, i, 167, 168.]
There were dangerous Pequots on the Connecticut, it is true, and the
Dutch had already planted a trading house and laid claim to the
territory. The Plymouth people who traded there were also claimants.
And, more than all, leaving Massachusetts in a time of danger from the
machinations of Laud would seem desertion. The government of the
Massachusetts Bay colony was anomalous; it partook of the character of
the commercial company from which it sprang, yet it had traits of a
religious or at least a voluntary society. It was the accepted opinion
that those who had taken the freeman's oath were "knit" together "in
one body," and that none of them ought to leave the colony without
permission. Hooker's party gained the consent of a majority of the
representative members of the General Court, but not of a majority of
the assistants. This precipitated a debate in the colony on the
constitutional question of the right of the assistants, or
magistrates, to form an upper house and veto a decision of the chosen
deputies of the towns.
IX.
[Sidenote: Attempts to prevent removal.]
It is no part of our purpose to unravel the tangle of ecclesiastical
and civil politics in which the proposed emigration had now become
involved. The Dorchester church and a part of that of Watertown were
ready to follow the lead of Hooker and Newtown. Days of fasting and
prayer were appointed to prevent the removal of these "candlesticks,"
as the churches were called, out of their places; but in spite of
humiliations and of Cotton's persuasive eloquence, which at one time
almost charmed away the discontent, the emigration set in,
stragglingly at first.
[Sidenote: Explorers and pioneers.]
[Sidenote: 1633.]
John Oldham, an adventurous man of a rather lawless temper--one of
those half-ruffians that are most serviceable on an Indian
frontier--had been expelled from Plymouth. He was now a resident of
Watertown, one of the centers of discontent and next neighbor to
Newtown. He had gone with three others on a trading expedition to the
westward overland. Walking along trails from one Indian village to
another they discovered a large river, which they found to be the
Fresh River of the Dutch and the Connecticut of the Plymouth traders.
They probably brought back to Watertown accounts that produced a fever
for removal. Oldham was not a man to stand on the manner of his
emigration. Waiting for nobody's consent, he led out a small company
from Watertown the next year. These settled at what is now
Wethersfield. From Dorchester, which had no alewife fishery with which
to enrich its fields, settlers removed in 1634 to the Connecticut,
where the soil did not need to be "fished." In 1635 the number of
emigrants was larger, and there was much suffering during the
following winter and many of the cattle perished.
X.
[Sidenote: Emigration by churches.]
[Sidenote: 1636.]
[Sidenote: Note 3.]
But the unit of New England migration was the church. No doubt the
cohesiveness of the townships, and of the churches which were the
nuclei of the towns, was re-enforced by provincial differences between
the several communities. In 1636 Hooker, the real founder of
Connecticut, and his congregation of Essex people, sold their houses
and meadows and home lots and acre rights in the commonage in
Cambridge to a new congregation led by Thomas Shepard. From Newtown
and from Dorchester the churches emigrated bodily--pastors, teachers,
ruling elders, and deacons--carrying their organization with them
through the wilderness like an ark of the covenant. New churches were
soon afterward formed in the places they had left. Naturally, town
government became the principal feature of civil organization in
states thus planted by separate and coherent groups.
XI.
[Sidenote: The new government.]
[Sidenote: Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., i, 20, 21.]
[Sidenote: Conn. Hist. Soc. Coll., i, 3, and ff.]
The Connecticut rulers acted at first as a government subordinate to
Massachusetts; but the settlements, except that of people from Roxbury
at Springfield, were south of the line of the Massachusetts colony,
and it was not in the nature of things that Hooker and Haynes should
subordinate themselves to Cotton and Winthrop. There was indeed no
little exasperation between the two colonies. An independent
constitution was adopted in Connecticut, on principles which Hooker
thought he found in the first chapter of Deuteronomy, and which were
not exactly those that Cotton had managed to deduce from Scripture in
his Model of Moses his Judicials. The Massachusetts people, whose
government aspired to dominate all New England, seem to have been
angered by Hooker's secession and by his refusal to subordinate the
new state to their own. Massachusetts asserted its authority over
Springfield, which was within its limits, and every effort possible
was made to prevent new emigrants who landed at Boston from going to
the west. Even in England accounts adverse to Connecticut were
circulated. Hooker, the real head of the new state, resented this in a
letter of great vigor and some passion.
XII.
[Sidenote: Instability of a theocracy.]
In its early years Massachusetts had no rest. Three profound
disturbances--the expulsion of Williams, the secession of Hooker and
his followers, and the Hutchinsonian convulsion--followed one another
in breathless succession, and a dangerous Indian war ran its course at
the same time. That the early settlements were founded on "rocks and
sands and salt marshes" was not the chief misfortune of the Bay
colony. Its ecclesiastical politics proved explosive, to the
consternation of its pious founders, who like other settlers in Utopia
had neglected to reckon with human nature.
XIII.
[Sidenote: Severity of Puritanism.]
It has been the habit of modern writers on the subject to dismiss the
Hutchinsonian controversy as a debate about meaningless propositions
in an incomprehensible jargon. Yet there was in it but the action of
well-known tendencies in human nature which might almost have been
predicted from the antecedent circumstances. Puritanism had wrapped
itself in the haircloth of austerity, it took grim delight in harsh
forbiddings, and heaped up whole decalogues of thou-shalt-nots. Nor
did it offer, as other intense religious movements have done, the
compensation of internal joys for the gayety it repressed.
Theoretically Calvinist, it was practically an ascetic system of
external duties and abstentions, trampling on the human spirit without
ruth.
[Sidenote: Reaction toward a subjective joyousness.]
[Sidenote: Magnalia B. III, c. I, 32.]
[Sidenote: Compare Cotton's Fountain of Life, 35.]
[Sidenote: Note 4.]
[Sidenote: Note 5.]
[Sidenote: Shepard's Memoirs in Young, 505.]
But the heart will not be perpetually repressed; kept from natural
pleasures, it will seek supernatural delights. Men were certain sooner
or later to soften the iron rigidity of Puritanism by cultivating
those subjective joys for which Calvinism provided abundant materials.
While preachers like Hooker were scourging the soul into a
self-abasement that could approve its own damnation, and while
ingenious scribes were amassing additional burdens of scruple for
heavy-laden shoulders, there arose in England a new school of Puritan
pietists. These shirked none of the requirements of the legalists, but
their spirits sought the sunnier nooks of Calvinism, and they
preached the joy of the elect and the delight of a fully assured
faith. Cotton, whose fair complexion, brown hair, and ruddy
countenance attested a sanguine temperament, belonged by nature to
this new order. He rejoiced that he had received the "witness of the
Spirit" on his wedding day, and he delighted to draw out Scripture
imagery to a surprising tenuity in describing the "covenant of
marriage" and the intimacy of the "covenant of salt" or of friendship
between God and the soul of the believer. Preachers of the same sort
brought relief to multitudes in various towns of England. The people,
tired of churchly routine on the one hand and of legalism on the
other, thronged to hear such divines "filling the doores and windows."
It was the evangelicalism of the following century sending up its
shoots prematurely into a frosty air. The old-fashioned Puritan had
always conceived of religion as difficult of attainment. It was a
paradoxical system wherein men were saved by the works they
theoretically abjured. Conservative Puritans complained of the
preachers who spread a table of "dainties," as though it were
meritorious to sustain the soul on a rugged diet of rough doctrine. In
Thomas Shepard's Memoirs of his own Life we may overhear "a godly
company" of the time in familiar "discourse about the wrath of God and
the terror of it, and how intolerable it was; which they did present
by fire, how intolerable the torment of that was for a time; what,
then, would eternity be?"
XIV.
[Sidenote: Cotton's revivalism.]
[Sidenote: Winthrop's Journal, i, 144.]
[Sidenote: Report of Record Com. ii, 5. Boston Town Records, 1635.
Hutchinson Papers, p. 88.]
Cotton professed that he loved to sweeten his mouth with a piece of
Calvin before he went to sleep. His emotional rendering of Calvinistic
doctrines wrought strongly on the people of the new Boston, and his
advent was followed by widespread religious excitement. More people
were admitted to the church in Boston in the earlier months of
Cotton's residence than to all the other churches in the colony.
Boston seems to have become religious in a pervasive way, and in 1635
measures were taken to prevent persons who were not likely to unite
with the church from settling in the town. In this community, which
had no intellectual interest but religion, and from which ordinary
diversions were banished, there were sermons on Sunday and religious
lectures on week days and ever-recurring meetings in private houses.
The religious pressure was raised to the danger point, and an
explosion of some sort was well-nigh inevitable. Cotton's enthusiasms
were modulated by the soft stop of a naturally placid temper, but when
communicated to others they were more dangerous.
XV.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Hutchinson's character.]
[Sidenote: Wonder-working Providence, ch. lxii.]
[Sidenote: Note 6.]
[Sidenote: Short Story, etc., p. 31.]
[Sidenote: Cotton's The Way of the Churches Cleared, Part I, p. 51.
Short Story, 31.]
[Sidenote: Short Story, 34.]
Mrs. Anne Hutchinson had been one of Cotton's ardent disciples in old
Boston. She crossed the sea with her husband that she might sit under
his ministry in New England. She was a woman cursed with a natural
gift for leadership in an age that had no place for such women. "This
Masterpiece of Womens wit," the railing Captain Johnson calls her, and
certainly her answers before the Massachusetts General Court go to
show that she was not inferior in cleverness to any of the magistrates
or ministers. Winthrop, whose antipathy to her was a passion, speaks
of her "sober and profitable carriage," and says that she was "very
helpful in the time of childbirth and other occasions of bodily
infirmities, and well furnished with means to those purposes." In the
state of medical science at that time such intelligent and voluntary
ministration from a "gentlewoman" must have been highly valued. Almost
alone of the religionists of her time she translated her devotion into
philanthropic exertion. But a woman of her "nimble and active wit"
could not pass her life in bodily ministrations. Power seeks
expression, and her native eloquence was sure to find opportunity.
Mrs. Hutchinson made use of the usual gathering of gossips on the
occasion of childbirth to persuade the women to that more intimate
religious life of which she was an advocate. It was the custom to hold
devotion at concert pitch by meetings at private houses for men only;
women might be edified by their husbands at home. Mrs. Hutchinson
ventured to open a little meeting for women. This was highly approved
at first, and grew to unexpected dimensions; fifty, and sometimes
eighty, of the principal women of the little town were present at her
conferences.
XVI.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Hutchinson's doctrines.]
[Sidenote: Compare Whelewright's Sermon in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc.,
1866, 265. Cotton's Sermon on the Churches Resurrection, 1642.]
In these meetings she emphasized Cotton's favorite doctrine of "a
covenant of grace." Her sensitive woman's nature no doubt had beat its
wings against the bars of legalism. She was not a philosopher, but
nothing could be more truly in accord with the philosophy of character
than her desire to give to conduct a greater spontaneity. Cotton
himself preached in the same vein. In addition to the Reformation, of
which Puritans made so much, he looked for something more which he
called, in the phrase of the Apocalypse, "the first resurrection."
Mrs. Hutchinson, who was less prudent and more virile than Cotton, did
not hesitate to describe most of the ministers in the colony as
halting under a "covenant of works." Her doctrine was, at bottom, an
insurrection against the vexatious legalism of Puritanism. She carried
her rebellion so far that she would not even admit that good works
were a necessary evidence of conversion. It was the particular
imbecility of the age that thought of almost every sort must spin a
cocoon of theological phrases for itself. Spontaneity of religious and
moral action represented itself to Mrs. Hutchinson and her followers
as an indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the believer and as a personal
union with Christ whom they identified with the "new creature" of
Paul. Such a hardening of metaphor into dogma is one of the commonest
phenomena of religious thought.
XVII.
[Sidenote: Vane's arrival, 1635.]
[Sidenote: His election as governor, 1636.]
Sir Henry Vane the younger, who had become an ardent Puritan in spite
of his father, landed in Boston in October, 1635. He had already shown
those gifts which enabled him afterward to play a considerable part in
English history. His high connections made him an interesting figure,
and though only about twenty-six years of age he was chosen governor
in May, 1636. Ardent by nature, and yet in his youth when he "forsook
the honors and preferments of the court to enjoy the ordinances of
Christ in their purity," nothing was more natural than that he should
be captivated by the seraphic Cotton and that he should easily adopt
the transcendental views of Mrs. Hutchinson. Winthrop, the natural
leader of the colony, having given place in 1635 to Haynes, perhaps in
order that Hooker's party might be conciliated and the Connecticut
emigration avoided, was a second time thrust aside that a high-born
youth might be honored. Winthrop was utterly opposed to Mrs.
Hutchinson, in whose teachings his apprehensive spirit saw
full-fledged Antinomianism, and, by inference, potential anabaptism,
blasphemy, and sedition. The Hutchinsonians were partisans of Vane,
who adhered to their doctrine. The ministers other than Cotton and
Whelewright, stung by the imputation that they were under "a covenant
of works," rallied about Winthrop. Political cleavage and religious
division unfortunately coincided.
XVIII.
[Sidenote: Arrogance of the Hutchinson party.]
[Sidenote: 1636.]
[Sidenote: Cotton's Churches Resurrection, p. 27.]
Supported by the prestige of the young governor and of some
conspicuous citizens and inspired by Cotton's metaphorical and
mystical preaching, which was interpreted with latitude, the
enthusiasm of the Hutchinsonians tended to become fanaticism. We have
to depend mainly on the prejudiced account of their enemies, but there
is little reason to doubt that the advocates of "a covenant of grace"
assumed the airs of superiority usually seen in those who have
discovered a short cut to perfection. The human spirit knows few
greater consolations than well-disguised self-righteousness. The
followers of Mrs. Hutchinson, if we may believe the witnesses,
sometimes showed their sanctity by walking out of meeting when a
preacher not under "a covenant of grace" entered the pulpit. They even
interrupted the services with controversial questions addressed to the
minister. Wilson, pastor of the Boston church, was condemned by them
as being under "a covenant of works," and also incidentally criticised
for his "thick utterance." Nor can one find that Cotton interposed his
authority to protect his less gifted colleague. It is quite
conceivable that he looked with some satisfaction on the progress of
affairs in Boston. The heavenly minded young governor who had chosen
to suffer reproach with the people of God was his disciple. The
brilliant woman who was easily the leader of the town was the very
apostle of his doctrine. The superiority of his opinions on a union
with Christ that preceded active faith as compared with those of
Hooker and the lesser divines was enthusiastically asserted by the
great majority of the Boston church, led by Mrs. Hutchinson. Seeing so
much zeal and sound doctrine he may have felt that the first or
spiritual resurrection of which he was wont to prophesy from the
Apocalypse, had already begun in his own congregation, and that among
these enthusiasts were those who had learned to "buy so as though they
bought not"--those who had been lifted into a crystalline sphere where
they had "the Moone under their feet. And if we have the Moone under
our feete, then wee are not eclipsed when the Moone is Eclipsed." Thus
did Cotton's imagination revel in cosmical imagery.
XIX.
[Sidenote: Bitterness of the debate.]
[Sidenote: Overthrow of Vane, 1637.]
The arrogance of the elect is hard to bear, and it is not wonderful
that the debate waxed hot. The concentrated religiousness of a town
that sought to shut out unbelieving residents made the dispute
dangerous. In the rising tempest a ballast of ungodly people might
have been serviceable. But in Boston there were few even of the
indifferent to be buffers in the religious collision. While the
covenant-of-grace people made themselves offensive, their
opponents,--Winthrop, the slighted ex-governor, Wilson, the unpopular
pastor, and the ministers accused of being under a covenant of
works--resorted to the favorite weapons of polemics. They hatched a
brood of inferences from the opinions Mrs. Hutchinson held, or was
thought to hold, and then made her responsible for the ugly bantlings.
They pretended to believe, and no doubt did believe, that Mrs.
Hutchinson's esoteric teaching was worse than what she gave out. They
borrowed the names of ancient heresies, long damned by common consent,
to give odium to her doctrine. That the new party should be called
Antinomian was plausible; the road they had chosen for escape from
Puritan legalism certainly lay in that direction. But Antinomianism
had suffered from an imputation of immorality, and no such tendency
was apparent, unless by logical deduction, in the doctrines taught in
Boston. The hearers of Mrs. Hutchinson were also accused of having
accepted the doctrines of the so-called Family of Love which had of
old been accused of many detestable things, and was a common bugaboo
of theology at the time. The whole town of Boston and the whole colony
of Massachusetts was set in commotion by the rude theological brawl.
Such was the state of combustion in Boston that it was thought
necessary by the opponents of Vane and Mrs. Hutchinson to hold the
court of elections at the former capital, Newtown. The excitement at
this court was so great that the church members, who only could vote,
were on the point of laying violent hands on one another in a contest
growing out of a question relating to the indwelling of the Holy
Ghost. Vane was defeated, and Winthrop again made governor.
XX.
[Sidenote: The Synod of 1637.]
[Sidenote: Short Story of the Rise, Reign, etc., _passim_.]
[Sidenote: Winthrop's Journal, i, 284, and following.]
[Sidenote: Cotton's Way of the Churches Cleared, _passim_.]
A great synod of elders from all the New England churches was
assembled. All the way from Ipswich and Newbury on the east and from
the Connecticut on the west the "teaching elders" made their way by
water or by land, at public expense, that they might help the
magistrates of Massachusetts to decide on what they should compel the
churches to believe. For more than three weeks the synod at Cambridge
wrestled with the most abstruse points of doctrine. The governor
frequently had to interpose to keep the peace; sometimes he adjourned
the assembly, to give time for heats to cool. A long list of errors,
most of which were not held by anybody in particular, were condemned.
A nearly unanimous conclusion on certain fine-spun doctrines was
reached at length by means of affirmations couched in language vague
or ambiguous. Cotton, who had been forced after debate to recant one
opinion and modify others, assented to the inconclusive conclusions,
but with characteristic non-committalism he qualified his assent and
withheld his signature.
XXI.
[Sidenote: The persecution.]
[Sidenote: Mass. Rec., i, 207.]
The field was now cleared for the orderly persecution of the
dissentients. Whelewright, Mrs. Hutchinson's brother-in-law, had been
convicted of sedition in the preceding March on account of an
imprudent sermon preached on a fast day. But his sentence had been
deferred from court to court, apparently until after the synod. At the
November court following the synod Whelewright was banished, and those
who had signed a rather vigorous petition in his favor many long
months before were arraigned and banished or otherwise punished. The
banished included some of the most intelligent and conspicuous
residents. Not until this November court had her opponents ventured to
bring Mrs. Hutchinson to trial. Whelewright, standing by his
hot-headed sermon, had just been sentenced; the abler but more timid
Cotton had already been overborne and driven into a safe ambiguity by
the tremendous pressure of the great synod. Vane had left the colony,
and the time was ripe to finish the work of extirpation. The elders
were summoned to be present and advise.
XXII.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Hutchinson's trial, 1637.]
[Sidenote: Hutchinson's Hist. of Mass. Bay, ii, appendix.]
[Sidenote: Note 7.]
During a two days' trial, conducted inquisitorially, like an English
Court of High Commission, Cambridge presented the spectacle of a
high-spirited and gifted woman, at the worst but a victim of
enthusiasm, badgered by the court and by the ministers, whose dominant
order she had attacked. Cotton, with more than his usual courage,
stood her defender. The tough-fibered Hugh Peter, who made himself
conspicuous in several ways, took it on him to rebuke Cotton for
saying a word in defense of the accused. Endecott and Hugh Peter,
mates well matched, browbeat the witnesses who appeared in Mrs.
Hutchinson's behalf, and Dudley, the conscientious advocate of
persecution, was rude and overbearing. Winthrop acted as chief
inquisitor, the narrow sincerity and superstition of his nature
obscuring the nobler qualities of the man.
[Sidenote: Mrs. Hutchinson is excommunicated.]
[Sidenote: Note 8.]
[Sidenote: Rise, Reign, Ruine, etc., and Winthrop's Journal, i, 309,
310.]
Mrs. Hutchinson defended herself adroitly at first, refusing to be
trapped into self-condemnation. But her natural part was that of an
outspoken agitator, and her religious exaltation had been increased,
doubtless, by persecution, for combativeness is a stimulant even to
zeal. On the second day she threw away "the fear of man," and declared
that she had an inward assurance of her deliverance, adding that the
General Court would suffer disaster. For this prophesying she was
promptly condemned. Cotton had prophesied notably on one occasion,
Wilson, his colleague, was given to rhyming prophecies, and Hooker had
made a solemn prediction while in Holland. In this very year the plan
of the Pequot campaign had been radically changed in compliance with a
revelation vouchsafed to the chaplain, Stone. But these were
ministers, and never was the ministerial office so reverenced as by
the Puritans, who professed to strip it of every outward attribute of
priestliness. Above all, for a woman to teach and to have revelations
was to stand the world on its head. "We do not mean to discourse with
those of your sex," etc., said Winthrop severely to Mrs. Hutchinson
during the trial. She was sentenced to banishment, but reprieved, that
the church might deal with her. On the persuasion of Cotton and
others, Mrs. Hutchinson wrote a recantation apologizing for her
assumption to have revelations, and retracting certain opinions of
which she had been accused. But she added that she had never intended
to teach or to hold these opinions. For this falsehood, as it was
deemed, she was summarily excommunicated. Yet nothing seems more
probable than that her hyperbolic utterances under excitement had not
stood for dogmatic opinions. Under Cotton's fine-spun system of church
government a member could not be excommunicated except by unanimous
consent. Many of Mrs. Hutchinson's friends were absent from the
colony, others had prudently changed sides or stayed away from the
meeting. But her sons ventured to speak in her behalf. Cotton at once
admonished them. The effect of putting them under admonition was to
disfranchise them; it was one of Cotton's ingenuities of the
sanctuary. The sons out of the way, the mother was cast out
unanimously--a punishment much dreaded among the Puritans, who
believed that what was thus bound on earth was bound in heaven. It was
a ban that forbade the faithful even to eat with her. But the
melancholy under which Mrs. Hutchinson had suffered vanished at once,
and she said as she left the church assembly, "Better to be cast out
than to deny Christ."
XXIII.
[Sidenote: Omens and auguries.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop's Journal, i, 313, 316; ii, 11, and Short
Story of Rise and Reign of Antinomianism.]
[Sidenote: Winthrop, i, 316.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop, i, 326.]
[Sidenote: Death of Mrs. Hutchinson.]
Mrs. Hutchinson and most of her party settled on Rhode Island, where
they sheltered themselves at first in caves dug in the ground. Here
she again attracted attention by the charm of her eloquent teaching,
and some came from afar to hear the "she Gamaliel," as her opponents
called her. Such gifts in a woman, and in one who had been
excommunicated by the authority vested in the church, could be
accounted for only by attributing her power to sorcery. Winthrop sets
down the evidence that she was a witch, which consisted in her
frequent association with Jane Hawkins, the midwife, who sold oil of
mandrakes to cure barrenness, and who was known to be familiar with
the devil. At length "God stepped in," and by his "casting voice"
proved which side was right. Mary Dyer, one of the women who followed
Mrs. Hutchinson, had given birth to a deformed stillborn child. This
fact became known when Mrs. Dyer left the church with the
excommunicated Mrs. Hutchinson. Winthrop had the monstrosity exhumed
after long burial had rendered its traits difficult to distinguish. He
examined it personally with little result, but he published in England
incredible midwife's tales about it. God stepped in once more, and
Mrs. Hutchinson herself, after she went to Rhode Island, suffered a
maternal misfortune of another kind. The wild reports that were
circulated regarding this event are not fit to be printed even in a
note; the first editor of Winthrop's journal felt obliged to render
the words into Latin in order that scholars might read them
shamefacedly. But Cotton, who was by this time redeeming himself by a
belated zeal against the banished sectaries, repeated the impossible
tale, which was far worse than pathological, to men and women, callow
youths, young maidens, and innocent children "in the open assembly at
Boston on a lecture day," explaining the divine intent to signalize
her error in denying inherent righteousness. The governor, who was
more cautious, wrote to the physician and got a correct report, from
which the divine purpose was not so evident, and Cotton made a
retraction at the next lecture. We are now peering into the abyss of
seventeenth-century credulity. Here are a grave ruler and a divine
once eminent at the university, and now renowned in England and in
America, wallowing in a squalid superstition in comparison with which
the divination of a Roman haruspex is dignified.
[Sidenote: Note 9.]
Having suffered the loss of her husband, and hearing of efforts on the
part of Massachusetts to annex Rhode Island, Mrs. Hutchinson removed
to the Dutch colony of New Netherland with her family. Here she and
all her household except one child were massacred by the Indians. This
act of Providence was hailed as a final refutation of her errors, the
more striking that the place where she suffered was not far removed
from a place called Hell Gate.
XXIV.
[Sidenote: Results of ecclesiastical government.]
This famous controversy lets in much light upon the character of the
age and the nature of Puritanism. It is one of many incidents that
reveal the impracticability of the religious Utopia attempted in New
England. The concentration of religious people undoubtedly produced a
community free from the kind of disorders that are otherwise
inseparable from a pioneer state and that were found abundantly in New
Netherland, in Maryland, and in Virginia and on the eastward fishing
coast. "These English live soberly," said a Dutch visitor to Hartford
in 1639, "drinking but three times at a meal, and when a man drinks to
drunkenness they tie him to a post and whip him as they do thieves in
Holland." But while some of the good results to be looked for in an
exclusively Puritan community were attained, it was at the cost of
exaggerating the tendency to debate and fanaticism and developing the
severity, the intolerance, and the meddlesome petty tyranny that
inheres in an ecclesiastical system of government. During the lifetime
of one generation Massachusetts suffered all these, and it is doubtful
whether regularity of morals was not purchased at too great a
sacrifice of liberty, bodily and spiritual, and of justice. Certainly
the student of history views with relief the gradual relaxation that
came after the English Restoration and the disappearance from the
scene of the latest survivors of the first generation of New England
leaders.
[Illustration: New England after the dispersions.]
XXV.
[Sidenote: The New Haven colony.]
During the period of the greatest excitement over the Hutchinson case
John Davenport, a noted Puritan minister of London, had been in
Massachusetts. Like many other emigrant divines of the time he brought
a migrant parish with him seeking a place to settle. Davenport arrived
in June, 1637, and took part against the Antinomians in the synod.
After examining every place offered them in Massachusetts, he and his
friends refused all and resolved to plant a new colony. The people
were Londoners and bent on trade, and Massachusetts had no suitable
place for their settlement left. The bitterness of the Hutchinson
controversy may have had influence in bringing them to this decision,
and the preparations of Laud to subject and control Massachusetts
perhaps had weight in driving them to seek a remoter settlement.
Davenport had ideals of his own, and the earthly paradise he sought to
found was not quite Cotton's nor was it Hooker's. He and his followers
planted the New Haven colony in 1638. In this little colony church and
state were more completely blended than in Massachusetts. The
government was by church members only, to the discontent of other
residents, and in 1644 New Haven adopted the laws of Moses in all
their rigor. The colony was united with Connecticut by royal charter
at the Restoration, after which the saints no longer sat upon thrones
judging the tribes of Israel.
CONCLUSION.
[Sidenote: Later English emigrations to New England.]
[Sidenote: Lord Maynard to Laud, 17 March, 1638, in Sainsbury.]
[Sidenote: Savage's Winthrop's Journal, i, 319, 320, 322.]
[Sidenote: Rushworth, i, Part II, 409, 718.]
[Sidenote: Josselyn's Rarities, 108.]
The emigration to New England from the mother country was quickened by
the troubles that preceded the civil war. In 1638 it reached its
greatest height, having been augmented perhaps by agricultural
distress. Fourteen ships bound for New England lay in the Thames at
one time in the spring of that year. There was alarm at the great
quantity of corn required for the emigrants, lest there should not be
enough left in London to last till harvest. "Divers clothiers of great
trading" resolved to "go suddenly," in which we may see, perhaps,
evidence of bad times in the commercial world. Some parishes it was
thought would be impoverished. Laud was asked to put a stop to the
migration; but the archbishop was busy trying to compel the Scots to
use the prayer book. Most of the lords of the Council were favorable
to New England; the customs officers purposely neglected to search for
contraband goods, and the ships, twenty in all, got away with or
without license, and brought three thousand passengers to Boston. But
the tide spent itself about this time, and by 1640 emigration to the
New England colonies had entirely ceased. About twenty-one thousand
two hundred people had been landed in all.
[Sidenote: Cavalier emigration to Virginia.]
[Sidenote: Petition to House of Lords, 15 Aug., 1648. Royal Hist. MS.,
Com. Rept., vii, 45.]
[Sidenote: Sainsbury, 360.]
The swing of the political pendulum in England that served to check
the Puritan exodus gave impetus to a new emigration to Virginia and
Maryland. During the ten years and more before 1640 few had gone to
that region but bond servants. There were in that year not quite eight
thousand people in Virginia. It is the point of time at which the
native Virginians began to rear a second generation born on the soil.
The waning fortunes of the king sent to the colony in the following
years a large cavalier emigration, and the average character of the
colonists was raised. Better ministers held the Virginia parishes and
better order was observed in the courts. In 1648 four hundred
emigrants lay aboard ships bound for Virginia at one time, and in 1651
sixteen hundred royalist prisoners seem to have been sent in one
detachment.
[Sidenote: Prospective ascendency of the English colonies.]
By the middle of the seventeenth century the English on the North
American continent were in a fair way to predominate all other
Europeans. From the rather lawless little fishing villages on the
coast of Maine to the rigorous Puritan communes of the New Haven
colony that stretched westward to pre-empt, in advance of the Dutch,
land on the shores of Long Island Sound, the English held New England.
English settlers "seeking larger accommodations" had crossed to Long
Island and were even pushing into the Dutch colony. The whole
Chesapeake region was securely English. Already there were Virginians
about to break into the Carolina country lying wild between Virginia
and the Spanish colony in Florida. The French and the Dutch and the
Spaniards excelled the English in far-reaching explorations and
adventurous fur-trading. But the English had proved their superior
aptitude for planting compact agricultural communities. A sedentary
and farming population where the supply of land is not limited reaches
the highest rate of natural increase. At a later time, Franklin
estimated that the population of the colonies doubled every
twenty-five years without including immigrants. The compactness of
English settlement and the prolific increase of English people decided
the fate of North America. The rather thin shell of Dutch occupation
was already, by the middle of the seventeenth century, feeling the
pressure under stress of which it was soon to give way. A century
later collision with the populous and ever-multiplying English
settlements brought about the collapse of the expanded bubble of New
France.
ELUCIDATIONS.
[Sidenote: Note 1, page 321.]
There is a paper on this debate in the British Record Office indorsed
by Archbishop Laud, "Rec: Octob: 7. 1637," "Propositions wch have
devided Mr. Hooker & Mr. Cotton in Newe England. 1. That a man may
prove his justification by his works of sanctification, as the first,
best, and only cheife evidence of his salvation. 2. Whither fayth be
active or passive in justification. 3. Whither there be any saving
preparation in a Christian soule before his unyon with Christ. This
latter is only Hooker's opinion, the rest of the ministers do not
concurr with him: Cotton and the rest of the contrary opinion are
against him and his party in all." Colonial Papers, ix, 71. In the
next paper in the same volume, also indorsed by Laud, the controversy
is more fully set forth. Copies of both are in the Bancroft collection
of the New York Public Library. Laud indorsed these papers
respectively October 7 and 15, 1637. The Cambridge Synod, which met
August 30th, had adjourned late in September, and the debates which
divided the two divines must have preceded it, and perhaps preceded
the migration of Hooker to Connecticut in 1636. When Haynes was
Governor of Massachusetts he had pronounced the sentence of banishment
against Williams. But some years later, while Governor of Connecticut,
he relented a little and wrote to Williams: "I think, Mr. Williams, I
must now confesse to you, that the most wise God hath provided and cut
out this part of his world for a refuge and receptacle for all sorts
of consciences. I am now under a cloud, and my brother Hooker, with
the bay, as you have been, we have removed from them thus far, and yet
they are not satisfied." Quoted by Williams in a letter to Mason, 1st
Massachusetts Historical Collections, i, 280.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 322.]
The abstract of Hooker's sermon of May 31, 1638, as deciphered and
published by Dr. J. Hammond Trumbull, is in the Collections of the
Connecticut Historical Society, i, 20, 21, and the Fundamental Laws of
1639 are in Hinman's Antiquities, 20, and ff., and in Trumbull's Blue
Laws, 51. Compare also the remarkable letter of Hooker to Winthrop in
Connecticut Historical Society Collections, i, 3-15. Hooker objects
strongly to the right of arbitrary decisions by the magistrate: "I
must confess, I ever looked at it as a way which leads directly to
tyranny, and so to confusion, and must plainly profess, if it was in
my liberty, I would choose neither to live nor leave my posterity
under such government." This letter exhibits Hooker's intellect to
great advantage. One is inclined to rank him above most of his New
England contemporaries in clearness and breadth of thought.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 325.]
The selling of half-developed homesteads to newcomers by older
settlers was of constant occurrence in all the colonies during the
colonial period. It was a notable practice on the frontiers of
Pennsylvania down to the Revolution, and perhaps later. Hubbard thus
describes what went on in every New England settlement: "Thus the
first planters in every township, having the advantage of the first
discovery of places, removed themselves into new dwellings, thereby
making room for others to succeed them in their old." General History
of New England, 155.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 328.]
The existence in England of a doctrine resembling that of the
followers of Cotton and Mrs. Hutchinson is implied in Welde's preface
to the Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruine of Antinomianism.
"And this is the very reason that this kind of doctrine takes so well
here in _London_ and other parts of the kingdome, and that you see so
many dance after this pipe, running after such and such, crowding the
Churches and filling the doores and windowes."
[Sidenote: Note 5, page 328.]
Giles Firmin's Review of Davis's Vindication, 1693, quotes from a
letter of Shepard of Cambridge, Massachusetts: "Preach Humiliation,
labor to possess Men with a Sence of Misery and wrath to come. The
Gospel Consolations and Grace which some would have only disht out as
the Dainties of the times and set upon the Ministry's Table may
possibly tickle and ravish some and do some good to some which are
Humbled and Converted already. But if Axes and Wedges be not used
withal to hew and break this rough unhewn bold but professing age, I
am Confident the Work and Fruit ... will be but meer Hypocrisie."
[Sidenote: Note 6, page 330.]
Notwithstanding his early imprudence during the partisan excitement in
Boston, Whelewright was a man of sound judgment, and his testimony
regarding his sister-in-law is the most important we have. "She was a
woman of good wit and not onely so, ... but naturally of a good
judgment too, as appeared in her civill occasions; In spirituals
indeed she gave her understanding over into the power of suggestion
and immediate dictates, by reason of which she had many strange
fancies, and erroneous tenents possest her, especially during her
confinement ... attended by melancholy." Mercurius Americanus, p. 7.
[Sidenote: Note 7, page 338.]
Hugh Peter, after his return to England, adopted the views in favor of
toleration beginning to prevail there. Nine years after he had
obtruded himself so eagerly to testify against Mrs. Hutchinson, he was
writing to New England earnest remonstrances against persecution. 4
Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi, where the letters are given.
[Sidenote: Note 8, page 338.]
There were those who wished to give time for a second admonition
before excommunication, but they were overruled, probably by Wilson.
Winthrop, i, 310. It would, perhaps, have been in better form to take
the other and less eager course. There is a Latin paper in the British
Public Record Office, dated 3 March, 1635, which professes to give a
brief and orderly digest of the canons of government constituted and
observed in the reformed New England churches. I am unable to trace
its authority. From this I quote; "Qui pertinacitur consistorii
admonitiones rejecerit a coena domini suspendatur. Si suspensus, post
iteratus admonitiones nulla poenitentiæ signum dederit ad
excomunicationem procedat Ecclesia."
[Sidenote: Note 9, page 341.]
It would be a waste of time to controvert the ingenious apologies
which have been written to prove that an inexorable necessity
compelled the banishment of the Antinomians. The Massachusetts
government was in its very nature and theory opposed to religious
toleration, as we may see by the reference of the case of Gorton and
his companions to the elders, and their verdict that these men, not
residents of the jurisdiction, ought to be put to death for
constructive blasphemy, a decision that the magistrates by a majority
vote would have put in execution if the "deputies" or representative
members of the assembly had not dissented. Savage's Winthrop's
Journal, ii, 177. The doctrine of intolerance is ingeniously set forth
in Cotton's "The Powring Ovt of the Seven Vials, ... very fit and
necessary for this Present Age," published in 1642. Cotton compares
Jesuits and heretics to wolves, and says, "Is it not an acceptable
service to the whole Country to cut off the ravening Wolves?" The
Puritans of New England from their very circumstances were slower to
accept the doctrine of religious liberty than their coreligionists in
England.
INDEX
Abbot, Abp., on Calvert's resignation, 259, n. 6.
Abercromby's Examination, 258, n. 4; 262, n. 11; 263, n. 12.
Aberdeen Burgh Records, no Sabbatarian legislation in, 140, n. 12;
quaint ordinance from, 140, n. 12.
Accidents, New England hung on a chain of slender, 176.
Act, for Church Liberties, 1639, 251; 265, n. 22;
for discovering popish recusants, 237, m.;
of Toleration, 1649, 255, 256;
act to prevent, etc., 237, m.
Activity, intellectual, men excited to unwonted, 1.
Adam's needle and thread, garments woven of fiber of, 79;
efforts to cultivate, 80.
Admonition to the People of England, 115, m.
Advertisements for Planters of New England, 27, m.
Age of romance and adventure, an, 1, 20;
of colony beginnings, 92;
dramatic and poetic to its core, 100.
Agrarian and industrial disturbance aids the Puritan movement, 111.
Ainsworth wrote tractate on the Jewish ephod, 108.
Alexander, William, Encouragement to Colonies, 258, n. 3.
Alleghanies deemed almost impassable, 11.
Almond, an, for a Parrat, 116.
America excited the most lively curiosity, 2;
notion that it was an Asiatic peninsula, 3;
search for a route through, lasted one hundred and fourteen years, 8;
a Mediterranean Sea sought in the heart of, 11;
fact and fable about, 14;
excepted from the Deluge, 20;
treasure from flowing into Spanish coffers, 74;
Hakluyt spreading sails for, in every breeze, 76;
all one to European eyes, 169.
Amer. Antiqu. Soc. Trans., 22, n. 4.
Amsterdam, Separatists migrated to, 148;
called a common harbor of all opinions, 164.
Anabaptism, divergencies in direction of, in Mass., 267.
Anarchy and despotism the inevitable alternatives of communism, 26.
Anderson's Church of England in the Colonies, 258, n. 3.
Anderson's Commerce, 22, n. 5; 75, m.; 76, m.; 95, n. 3.
Anglican and Puritan party lines not sharply drawn at first, 110.
Anglican Church party, leaders at Zurich and Strasburg, 104;
held to the antique ritual, 106;
content with moderate reforms, 109;
must have a stately liturgy and holy days, 110;
becomes dogmatic, 113;
aided by Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity, 122.
Anglican zeal founded a nation of dissenters, 91.
Animals, notions about American, 18;
too many kinds for Noah's ark, 20.
Animals for breeding, stock of, 48;
sold by Argall, 50.
Antinomianism, divergencies in direction of, in Mass., 287;
found by Winthrop in Mrs. Hutchinson's teachings, 332.
Antinomians sheltered by Vane and Cotton, 267;
Davenport took part against, in the synod, 343;
banishment of the, 349, n. 9.
See also HUTCHINSON, MRS. ANNE, and HUTCHINSONIAN CONTROVERSY.
Antwerp, a place of refuge for the persecuted, 312, n. 18.
Apocalypse of John, the, received hearty consideration from the New
England Puritans, 301.
Apostolic primitivism, aim of the Puritan, 303;
goal of the Separatist, 303.
Apostolic succession asserted as essential, 113.
Archdale's Carolina, 171, m.
Archer, Gabriel, wounded by the Indians, 28;
hostile to Smith, 37;
character of, 64, n. 3;
a ringleader in disorders, 63, n. 3;
a paper on Virginia by, 96, n. 7.
Archery on Sunday prohibited, 127.
Arctic continent, an, 2.
Argall, Captain, the first Englishman to see the bison, 24, n. 10, 50;
sent to the Bermudas, went to the fishing-banks for food, 42;
to Mt. Desert for plunder, 47;
bad record and government, 50;
robbed Company and colonists, 50, 52;
fitted out a ship for piracy, 51;
charter procured for a new plantation to protect, 51, 68, n. 13;
escaped in nick of time, 52.
Argonauts of the New World set sail, 25.
Arianism, divergencies in direction of, in Massachusetts, 267.
Ark, The, and The Dove, efforts to prevent departure of, 241;
no Protestant minister or worship on board, 242.
Armada, the Spanish, patriotism aroused by the danger from, 121.
Armenian silk-raisers brought to Virginia, 78.
Arminian Nunnery, 93, m.
Arminianism spreads among the High-Church clergy, 133, 192.
Arminians and Calvinists, Laud attempts to suppress debate between, 194.
Arminians excluded from toleration in the Netherlands, 298, 312, n. 18.
Arnold's History of Rhode Island, 311, n. 17.
Articles of Union, the, provided for freedom of private belief, 312,
n. 18.
Arundel, Lord, a friend of Sir George Calvert, 226;
territory assigned to, 259, n. 5.
Asher's History of West India Company, 177, m.
Asia, efforts to reach, 3.
Aspinwall Papers, 56, m.; 70, n. 15; 264, n. 20.
Aubrey's Survey of Wiltshire, 136, n. 5.
Augustine on the Sunday-Sabbath, 137, n. 8; 140, n. 13.
Austerfeld, a cradle of the Pilgrims, 149;
the stolid rustics of, 150;
the font at which Bradford was baptized, 151;
inhabitants at Bradford's birth a most ignorant people, 152.
Austerity in morals a Puritan characteristic, 119.
Auxiliary societies formed, 53.
Avalon, Calvert's province in Newfoundland called, 224, 258, n. 3;
charter of, 225, 234;
primary design of the colony, 225; 259, n. 5;
troubles of Baltimores and Puritans in, 228;
abandoned by Calvert, 230;
Catholic emigrants to, 239.
Bacon, Lord, objects to heretics settling a colony, 171.
Bacon's Lord, An Advertisement touching Controversies, 117, m.;
Advice to Villiers, 171, m.;
Certain Considerations, 162, m.;
Essay on Plantations, 27, m.;
Observation on a Libel, 163, m.;
Speech in reply to the Speaker, 25, m.
Bacon's Laws of Maryland, 264, n. 19; 265, n. 22.
Bacon, Nathaniel, 60, n. 1.
Bacon, Roger, on the Sunday question, 138, n. 8.
Baillie, Robert, on John Robinson, 156.
Baltimore, first Baron. See CALVERT, GEORGE.
Baltimore, Letters to Wentworth, 241, m.
Baltimore, second Baron. See CALVERT, CECILIUS.
Bancroft, Richard, Bishop of London, theatrical adulation of King
James, 161;
as primate persecutes the Puritans, 162;
stops emigration to Virginia, 168, 183, n. 2.
Baptist Church, the General, on earthly and spiritual
authority, 312, n. 19.
Baptists, Williams and his followers become, 303.
Barclay's Inner Life, 146, m.; 186, n. 6; 312, n. 19; 314, n. 24.
Barlow's Svmme and Svbstance, 143, m.; 160, m.; 162, m.; 182, n. 1.
Barrow hanged at Tyburn, 148.
Barrowism a mean between Presbyterianism and Brownism, 148;
the model for the church at Scrooby, 154.
Bawtry, the station near Scrooby, 149, 150, 151.
Baylie, Robert, condemns the toleration of the Dutch, 164, 311, n. 18.
Baylie's Errours and Induration, 164, m.; 311, n. 18.
Bell, ringing of only one, to call people to church, 129;
of more than one a sin, 130.
Bentley's Description of Salem, 200, m.;
Historical Account of Salem, 311, n. 17.
Berkeley, Sir William, persecution of Puritans in Virginia by, 252.
Bermudas, Gates and Somers shipwrecked on the, 40;
birds and wild hogs at the, 41, 65, n. 6;
marvelous escape from the, 41, 65, n. 6.
Beste, George, 2, m.; 4;
on the New World, 21, n. 2.
Biard on Dale's severity to French prisoners, 66, n. 9.
Bible, reading the, as part of the service, reprehended by the
extremists, 117.
Birch's Court of James I, 68, n. 10; 69, n. 14; 72, n. 19; 258, n. 1.
Bishoprics filled by Elizabeth, 143.
Bishops, effect of the hostility of the, to the Puritans, 112;
attacked by the Mar-Prelate tracts, 115;
reaction in favor of, 121;
had become Protestant to most people, 123.
Bison found near the Potomac, 50.
Blackstone, William, first settler at Boston, 190.
Blake's Annals of Dorchester, 219, n. 9.
Boston chosen as fittest place for public meetings, 319;
secured Cotton to balance Newton's Hooker, 319.
Boston church, Roger Williams refused to become a minister of, 270.
Boston Town Records, 329, m.
Boulton, a Separatist, recanted and hung himself, 157, n. 2.
Bowling in the streets the daily work at Jamestown, 44.
Bowls, Calvin playing at, on Sunday, 124;
Mar-Prelate berates the Bishop of London for playing, 128.
Bownd's, Dr., Sabbath of the Old and the New Testament, 124, 128;
views rapidly accepted, 129;
ultra-propositions exceeded, 130;
captivated the religious public, 130;
opposition to, 131;
new edition published, 132, 139, n. 10.
Bozman, 265, n. 22.
Bradford, William, a silk-weaver in Leyden, 169;
chosen governor at Plymouth, 179;
abolishes communism, 180;
of high aspiration restrained by practical wisdom, 306.
Bradford's Dialogue of 1593, 146, m.;
Plimoth Plantation, 145, m.; 153, m.; 154, m.; 155, m.; 158, n. 3;
165, m.; 166, m.; 175, m.; 184, n. 4; 186, n. 9; 274, m.
Brewster, William, at court, 152;
master of the post at Scrooby, 153;
secured ministers for neighboring parishes who were silenced, 153;
the host and ruling elder of the Scrooby church, 154;
useful career of, 155;
project of forming a new state, 167;
books owned by, 168.
Briefe Declaration, MS., 27, m.; 40, m.; 43, m.; 44, m.; 45, m.;
46, m.; 47, m.; 66, n. 9.
Brieff Discourse of the Troubles begun at Frankfort, 135, n. 3.
Briggs, Henry, on the nearness of the Pacific, 10, 22, n. 6.
Bristol colony in Newfoundland, 258, n. 3.
British Museum, MS., 42, m.; 44, m.
Broughton wrote a tractate on the Jewish ephod, 108.
Brown, Richard, submitted to remonstrance, 290.
Browne, John and Samuel, sent back to England by Endecott, 200.
Browne, Robert, leader of the Separatists, 145;
despised for recanting, died in prison, 146;
career lasted only four or five years, 147;
John Robinson's justification of, 157, n. 1;
authorities on, 157, n. 1; 158, n. 2.
Brownists. See SEPARATISTS.
Brown's Genesis of the United States, 94, n. 1; 183, n. 3.
Bruce's Economic History of Virginia, 95, n. 3.
Buckingham dominant at court, 193;
consents to sale of Calvert's secretaryship, 227.
Bull and bear baiting on Sunday, 129.
Bullein's Dialogue against the Fever Pestilence, 23, n. 8; 126.
Burgesses, House of, in Virginia, 55.
Burk's History of Virginia, 69, n. 13.
Burleigh, Lord Treasurer, treatise on Execution of Justice in England
published by, 238.
Burns's Prel. Diss. to Woodrow, 159, m.; 160, m.
Busher, Leonard, petitioned James I for liberty of
conscience, 312, n. 19.
Cabins at Jamestown, 29.
Cabot, John, discovers America, 3;
his ships retarded by codfish, 18;
Deane's voyages of, 21, n. 1;
Harrisse on, 21, n. 1.
Cabot, Sebastian, not a discoverer, 21, n. 1;
a doubtful authority, 24, n. 9.
Calendar of Colonial Documents, 70, n. 15; 96, n. 5; 259, n. 5.
Calendar of Domestic Papers, 259, n. 6.
Calendar of Domestic State Papers James I, 77, m.
Calendar of State Papers America, 224, m.
Caliban suggested by popular interest in savages, 17.
Calvert, Cecilius, second Lord Baltimore, son of George Calvert, 234;
expected large Catholic migration, 240;
religious aim of, 240;
partners in financial risks, 240, 263, n. 13;
policy of toleration, 242;
orders the Catholic service to be conducted privately on
shipboard, 242;
a conservative opportunist, 243;
supported at court by Strafford, 249;
schemes against Virginia, 249, 264, n. 21;
seeks to be governor, 250;
offer to New England people, 252;
had Maryland oath of fidelity modified for Puritans, 253;
yielded office of governor to Protestant, 254;
again master of Maryland, 257.
Calvert, George, character of, 221;
his rise in power, 223;
denied being bribed by Spain, 223, 258, n. 1;
member of Virginia Company, 1609, 224, 229;
councilor for New England, 224;
establishes colony in Newfoundland, 224, 239;
his conversion to Catholicism, 226;
intractable, 225;
resigned secretaryship and made Baron Baltimore, 228, 259, n. 6;
in Newfoundland, 228, 229;
sails to Virginia, 229;
not received hospitably, 230;
refuses to take oath of supremacy, and leaves Virginia, 232;
religious enthusiasm, 233, 258, n. 3;
passion for planting colonies, 233;
death of, 233.
Calvert Papers, 250, m.; 264, n. 17.
Calvin, John, the dominant influence at Geneva, 104;
on the Sabbath, 124;
Cotton a follower of, 329.
Calvinism, materials for subjective joys provided by, 327.
Calvinistic churches, efforts to assimilate the Church of England
to the, 112;
controversy adds another issue, 133;
doctrines popular, 328, 329, 347, n. 4.
Calvinists and Arminians, Laud's attempt to suppress debates
between, 194.
Cambridge settled under the name of Newtown, 317.
Cambridge pledge, the, of Winthrop and others, 209.
Camden's Elements of New England, 177, m.
Canada, Brownists ask leave to settle in, 167.
Cannibalism at Jamestown, 39;
denied by Gates, 65, n. 5.
Cape Anne, failure of Dorchester Company's colony on, 189, 199.
Cape Cod shoals turn back the Mayflower, 177, 186, n. 7.
Carlisle's treatise, 75, m.
Cartwright, leader of the Presbyterians, 112, 136, n. 6.
Cartwright's Admonition to Parliament, 129, m.
Carver, John, chosen governor, 173, 184, n. 4.
Castle Island, platform constructed on, 284.
Catholic conscience, oath made offensive to the, 237.
Catholic migration, the, 220;
revival in England, 226;
settlers in Newfoundland, 228, 239;
Baltimore family openly, 228, 235;
migration to Maryland small, 240;
pilgrims very religious, 243, 244, 245;
tax on Catholic servants in Maryland, 248;
colony in Maryland until after 1640, 247;
at peace with Puritans in Maryland, 254;
element protected in Maryland, 257;
party in minority in Maryland, 266.
Catholicism condoned, to conciliate Spain, 238;
tide toward, in England, 240.
Catholics, Irish, not allowed to settle in Virginia, 231;
Baltimore's party of, repelled from Virginia, 231;
harsh laws in England against, 236, 237, 238;
enforcement of penal statutes against, 239;
co-religionists of queen, 239;
toleration and protection to English Catholics in Maryland, 242;
no perfect security for, in Maryland, 248;
rich and influential families of, in Maryland, 264, n. 18;
conciliation to Protestants at expense of fairness toward, 251;
papist religion forbidden, 257;
excluded from toleration in the Netherlands, 298, 312, n. 18.
Catlet, Colonel, reaches the Alleghanies, 11.
Cattle, scarce in Massachusetts colony, 320;
perished in Connecticut, 324.
Cavalier emigration to Virginia, 345.
Cedar timber exported, 45.
Ceremonies, observance of pompous, 101;
bitter debates about, 108;
ceased to be abhorrent, 123.
Certayne Qvestions concerning the high priest's ephod, 108, m.
Chapman, Jonson and Marston's Eastward, Ho! 23, n. 8.
Charles I, coronation robe of silk for, from Virginia, 78;
obliterated by Puritanism, 133.
Charles II wore silk raised in Virginia, 78.
Charter, the Great, granted by the Virginia Company, 55, 173, 206;
only information concerning, 70, n. 15.
Charter for a private plantation obtained by Warwick, 51, 68, n. 13.
Charter of New England, 1620, 173;
of the Massachusetts Company, 210, 218, n. 7;
of Avalon, April 7, 1623, 225;
for precinct in Virginia granted to Leyden pilgrims, 229;
for new palatinate on north side of the Potomac granted to
Baltimore, 233;
of Maryland passed, 234;
terms of the, 234, 235, 236;
compared with those of Avalon, 234;
ambiguous, 251.
Charter-House School founded by legacy as Sutton's Hospital, 268;
attended by Roger Williams, 268.
Chesapeake Bay mapped by Captain John Smith, 36.
Chesapeake region securely English, 345.
Chimes not in accord with a severe Sabbath, 129.
Church, a "particular," Puritans desire to found, 197;
the unit of New England migration, 325.
Church at Jamestown enlarged, 42, 65, n. 7.
Church economy, each system of, claimed divine authority, 113.
Church, English, Laud sought to make Catholic, 193.
Church government, three periods of, 112, 136, n. 6;
questions of, fell into abeyance, 137, n. 6;
Barrowism, the form of, brought to New England, 148;
Puritans desire to make real their ideal of, 198;
Puritan passion for, 212.
Church of England repudiated as antichristian, 147;
divergencies in direction of, in Massachusetts, 267.
Church of the exiles at Frankfort, the factions in developed into two
great parties, 105.
Church quarrels at Strasburg and Frankfort, 105;
reform, no hope of securing, 196, 197.
Churches of Massachusetts formed on model of Robinson's
Independency, 213;
lack of uniformity in the early, 215;
borrowed discipline and form of government from Plymouth, 215.
Churchill's Voyages, 265, n. 23.
Churchmen, High, aggressive, 113.
Cities of refuge on the Continent, 104;
English churches organized in, 104.
Civet cat, Hariot thought, would prove profitable, 19.
Claiborne, claim of, to Kent Island, 253.
Clap's, Roger, Memoirs, 213, m.
Clarendon Papers, 67, n. 9.
Clarke's Gladstone and Maryland Toleration, 245, m.
Clergymen most active writers in favor of colonization, 91;
some preach sermons but stay away from public prayer, 143;
supported by magistrates in Massachusetts if church order
was disturbed, 266;
men of unusual prudence in ranks of, 266.
Climate of Great Britain not favorable to raising products
of the Mediterranean, 75.
Coddington's Letter, 308, n. 9.
Code of Lawes, Divine, Morall, and Martiall, by Sir Thomas
Smyth, 70, n. 16; 132.
Codfish, multitude of, on coast of Newfoundland, 18.
Coxe, Sir Edward, defended legacy which founded Charter-House
School, 268;
appointed Roger Williams to a scholarship, 268;
schism detested by, 270.
College proposed and endowed, 91.
Collier's Ecclesiastical History of Great Britain, 263, n. 12.
Colonial Constitution of Virginia modified for the worse, 249.
Colonial Papers, 68, n. 11; 71, n. 18; 262, n. 11; 264, n. 21;
265, n. 25; 346, n. 1.
Colonial proprietors, 70, n. 15.
Colonial Records of Virginia, 70, n. 15.
Colonies, secondary, 220.
Colonists, efforts of friends to succor, thwarted, 47;
loss of life among, in Virginia, 58.
Colonization, English, the fate of, settled by the experiments
on the James River, 58;
promoted, to get rid of excess of population, 136, n. 5;
unwise management ruined many projects for, 178.
Colony, English, rise of the first, 1;
motives for founding, 73.
Colony government, primary and secondary forms of, 218, n. 7.
Colony of St. Maries, 245.
Colony-planters drawn from the ranks of the uneasy, 171, 220.
Colony-planting, Hakluyt's tireless advocacy of, 5;
John Smith on, 37;
spurred by three motives, 74;
kept alive by delusions, 74;
first principles of, not understood, 76;
an economic problem, 84;
the religious motive most successful in, 189, 220;
centrifugal forces in, 220, 266.
Commandment, the fourth, held to be partly moral, partly ceremonial,
138, n. 8; 140, n. 13;
Shepard holds it to be wholly moral, 140, n. 13.
Commerce with the Orient, the hope of, retarded settlement, 4.
Commissions, forged, to "press" maidens, 72, n. 19.
Commodities, sixteen staple, exhibited from Virginia, 49;
production of, the main hope of wealth for Virginia, 75, 97, n. 9.
Commons inclosed, 111, 135, n. 5.
Commons Journal, 71, n. 18.
Communion, withdrawal of, a fundamental principle of Separatism, 271.
Communism at Jamestown, 26, 42;
abolished, 56;
attempted at Plymouth, 169, 185, n. 4;
abolished by Bradford, 180;
evils of, 186, n. 9.
Compact, the, of the Pilgrims, 173, 183, n. 4; 185, n. 5.
Company's Chief Root of Differences, the, 52, m.;
authors of, 69, n. 13.
Congregationalism, rise of, in New England, 214.
Connecticut, a secondary colony, 220;
the migration to, has an epic interest, 316;
independent constitution adopted by, 325;
accounts adverse to, circulated in England, 326.
Connecticut Historical Society Collections, 326, m.; 347, n. 2.
Connecticut River, stories of the fertility of the intervale land
on the, 322;
dangerous Pequots on the, 323;
soil did not need to be "fished," 324.
Consciences, oppressed, places of refuge for, in the Low Countries, 163.
Conservative and radical, difference between constitutional, 109;
churchman limited his Protestantism, 109.
Constitutional government, starting point of, in the New World, 55.
Continent, an arctic and antarctic, 2;
crossed by Ingram in a year, 14.
Controversie concerning Liberty of Conscience, 300, m.
Conversion of the Indians, desired for the sake of trade, 16, 90,
216, n. 4;
orders for the, 42;
interest in, becomes secondary, 204, 209;
authorities on the, 216, n. 4;
by the Catholics, 247.
Convicts asked for by Dale, 47.
Cook's Historical View of Christianity, 138, n. 8.
Cooper, Dr., Bishop of Winchester, answered first Mar-Prelate tract, 116.
Copley, business administrator of Jesuits, 251, 264, n. 17.
Corn not planted at proper season, 44, 60, n. 2;
ground for, cleared, 48;
more raised by private than by public labor, 49.
Cotton, John, apparent sanction of Antinomianism by, 267;
one of the greatest luminaries of the Puritans and one of the lights
of New England, 269;
apostle of theocracy, shaped ecclesiastical affairs in New
England, 279, 308, n. 8;
his rivals left Massachusetts, 280;
virtually attained a bishop's authority, 280;
on Williams's book, 282;
complete system of church-state organization, 287;
verbal legerdemain on Williams's banishment, 297;
casuistry of, 299, 313, n. 20; 321;
attitude toward Williams's banishment, 299, 300, 313, n. 21;
source of his intolerance, 300;
belongs among the diplomatic builders of churches, 306;
uncandid and halting accounts of Williams's trial, 309, 310, n. 12;
311, n. 17;
curious sinuosity of conscience, 313, n. 21;
secured by Boston to balance Newtown's Hooker, 319;
rivalry with Hooker, 320;
Puritanism of, grew in a garden of spices, 321;
of a sanguine temperament, 328;
his advent followed by widespread religious excitement, 329;
theological differences between his teachings and those of Hooker,
346, n. 1;
Model of Moses his Judicials, 326;
opinions recanted and modified by, 336;
defends Mrs. Hutchinson, 337;
persuades her to recant, 339;
disfranchises her sons, 339;
belated zeal of, against the sectaries, 341;
wallows in superstition, 341.
Cotton planted, 29.
Cotton's Answer to Williams's Examination, 308, n. 10, 11; 310, n. 16;
313, n. 20, 21;
Fountain of Life, 328, m.;
Sermon on the Church's Resurrection, 331, m.; 334, m.;
Way of Congregational Churches, 157, n. 2; 219, n. 10; 330, m.; 336, m.
Council for New England grants a patent to the Massachusetts projectors,
199, 207.
Councilors of estate in Virginia, 55.
Counter-Blaste to Tobacco, 84, m.
Country, a barren, a great whet to industry, 177.
Courtier, the honor of a, possessed by Calvert, 223;
the happiest has least to do at court, 258, n. 1.
Courts of High Commission, penalties of, 270.
Covenant of grace _vs._ covenant of works, 331, 334, 335.
Cox, Richard, followers of, dispute with those of John Knox, 105.
Cox's Literature of the Sabbath Question, 127, m.; 138, n. 8;
139, n. 10.
Cradock, Mathew, Governor of the Massachusetts Company, proposes
transfer of the government, 206, 208, 209;
resigned his governorship, 210;
denounced by Laud, 211;
letter to Endecott, 216, n. 4.
Credulity about America, 2, 20;
abyss of seventeenth century, 341.
Customs, low, advocated by Captain John Smith, 37.
Cyuile and Vncyuile Life, 134, n. 1.
Dainties, preachers who spread a table of, complained of, 328, 348, n. 5.
Dainty, Argall's voyage in the, 50.
Dale, Sir Thomas, sent to Virginia, 43;
tyranny of, 45-47;
horrible cruelties of, 46;
services, 47;
theatrical return, 48, 68, n. 10;
glowing reports of the country, 49, 168;
cruelties of, proved, 66, n. 9;
his severity, 67, n. 9;
various authorities on, 67, n. 9.
Danvers, Sir John, interested in the Virginia Company, 54;
in power, 71, n. 17;
one of the fathers of representative government in America, 173.
Darien, Isthmus of, 6.
Davenport, John, took part in the synod, 343;
with his followers planted the New Haven colony, 343.
Days of the week, scruples about the heathen names of the, 302,
314, n. 23.
Days of fasting and prayer appointed, 324.
De Costa, in Mag. of Amer. Hist., 23, n. 8.
De la Warr, Lady, plundered by Argall, 50.
De la Warr, Lord, sends expedition for gold, 13;
arrival of, regretted by the old settlers, 41;
governor at Jamestown, 41;
resides at the falls of the James, 43;
flight of, from the colony, 43;
nominally governor, 44;
ceremonious landing at Jamestown, 101;
escorted to church by gentlemen and guards, 102.
Deane, Charles, Voyages of Cabot, 21, n. 1;
misunderstood a statement by Bradford, 184, n. 4.
Debate, the Puritan, 108;
bitterness of the, 114;
new issues, 123;
advantage of new ground of, to the Puritan, 131.
Debates, theological, concerned with speculative dogmas, 108.
Declaration of Virginia, 95, n. 3.
Delft Haven, the parting at, 175.
Delusions in colony-planting, 74.
Deptford, gold-refining works at, 13.
De Rasieres's letter, 103, m.
Dermer, seeking the Pacific, is driven into Long Island Sound, 9.
Description of the Now-discovered river and Country of Virginia,
96, n. 7.
Desertion, Dale's punishment for, 46.
Devil worship, Indian, belief in, 16.
De Vries's Voyages, m., 231.
Dexter, F. B., in Winsor's Narrative and Critical History, 155, m.
Dexter's H. M., Congregationalism, 147, m.; 157, n. 1; 185, n. 6;
"As to Roger Williams," as erudite as it is one-sided, 311, n. 17.
Discontent, numerous causes for, 111, 135, n. 5.
Discourse of the Old Virginia Company, 54, m.; 66, n. 9; 68, n. 11;
70, n. 16.
Discovery, the pinnace, 25.
Dispersions from the mother colony, 315.
Display, love of, in Elizabeth's time, 98;
greatness declared itself by, 100, 134, n. 2.
Dissension, outbreak of, among the English Protestant exiles, 104.
Dividends, Dale's aim to make the colony pay, 45.
D'Ogeron supplied buccaneers with wives, 71, n. 18.
Dogs as food, 8.
Domestic Correspondence, James I, 134, n. 1.
Dorchester Company, failure of colony of, on Cape Ann, 189, 199.
Dorchester, Mass., church covenant, 219, n. 9;
ready to follow the lead of Hooker, 323;
settlers remove from to Connecticut, 324;
church emigrated bodily, 325.
Drama, the age of the, 99.
Dress, inordinate display in, 134, n. 2;
laws to repress, 100;
excesses in, denounced, 120;
regulations against, in Massachusetts, 285.
Drunkenness, punishment for, 342.
Dudley, a zealous advocate of religious intolerance, 287;
impatient to snuff out Williams, 288;
verse by, 288;
rude and overbearing, 338.
Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln, 174, 317, m.
Durham, legal power of Bishops of, given to proprietor of Maryland,
236, 263, n. 12.
Dutch Government declined to assure the Pilgrims of protection
against England, 173;
made tempting offers to the Independents, 176;
despised for showing toleration, 298, 311, n. 18;
laid claim to the Connecticut, 323;
occupation giving way, 346.
Duties, heavy, on tobacco, 85, 96, n. 8.
Dyer, Mary, misfortune of, 340.
East India Company's agents, cruelty of, 67, n. 9.
East Indies, desire for a short passage to the, 3, 4, 5, 12, 22, n. 5.
Eastward, Ho! the play of, 23.
Ecclesiastical Commission, the inquisitorial, 114.
Ecclesiastical extension desired by the English Church, 90;
organization of the Brownists dominant, 141;
politics explosive in Massachusetts, 326;
system of government, petty tyranny that inheres in, 342.
Economic success of the Virginia colony assured, 49;
adverse conditions more deadly than an ungenial climate, 78;
problems solved by homely means, 84.
Edwards, T., Antapologia, 217, n. 4.
Eliot, Sir John, confined in the Tower, 203.
Eliot, John, convinced of error, 290, 291;
usher and disciple of Hooker, 317.
Eliot's Biography, 201, m.; 288, m.
Elizabeth, Queen, jeweled dresses of, 98;
gorgeous progresses of, 99;
could not compel uniformity, 109;
threatens to unfrock a bishop, 110;
molded the church to her will, 112;
her policy of repression resulted in the civil war, 114;
greatest popularity in last years of her reign, 121.
Elizabethan age, the, 1;
prodigal of daring adventure, 20.
Ellis Letters, The, 182, n. 1.
Ellis collection, first series, 238, m.
Elton's brief biography of Roger Williams, 311, n. 17.
Emigrants sail for Virginia, 25;
bad character of the, 27, 59.
Emigration to New England quickened by troubles that preceded the
civil war, 344;
reached greatest height in 1638, 344;
ceased entirely in 1640, 344;
to Virginia and Maryland, received impetus from check of Puritan
exodus, 344, 345.
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the cradle of Puritan divines, 316.
Endecott, John, leadership and character of, 200;
cut arm of cross from English colors, 201;
put Quakers to death, 202;
impetuous radicalism of, 271;
protested against the double injustice to Salem, 291;
arrested, apologized, and submitted, 291;
witnesses for Mrs. Hutchinson browbeaten by, 338.
England, danger from, feared in Massachusetts, 284, 285.
English, character of the, at the period of Elizabeth and James, 20;
sober living of, 342;
superior aptitude of, for planting agricultural communities, 346;
compactness of settlement and increase of, decided the fate of
North America, 346.
English knowledge and notions of America, 1;
first protest against oppression, 56;
jealousy of Spain, 74, 94, n. 1;
ecclesiastics reproached by Roman Catholics, 90, 97, n. 11;
Church leaders not content while Spanish priests converted
infidels, 90;
eminent clergy among the exiled, 104;
churches organized in cities of refuge, 104;
beginning of two parties in the Church, 107;
heads of the Church attacked by Mar-Prelate, 115;
laws against Catholics embarrass the foreign policy, 238;
rise of the first of the colonies, 1;
prospective ascendency of the colonies, 345.
English Protestantism. See PROTESTANTISM, ENGLISH.
Ephod of Jewish high priest, discussion of material of, 108.
Epworth, the nest of Methodism, 150.
Esquimaux kidnapped by Frobisher, 17.
Eustachius and his document dropped from heaven, 138, n. 8.
Evans, Owen, accused of "pressing" maidens, 72, n. 19.
Evelyn's Diary, 18, m.; 134, n. 1.
Excerpta de Diversis Literis, 246, m.
Excommunication dreaded by the Puritans, 339.
Exiles, the English, 104;
return of, 107;
results of their squabbles, 107.
Exploration, American, the history of, a story of delusion and
mistake, 3;
retarded settlement, 4.
Extravagance of Indian tales, 8.
Factions at Jamestown, 36, 64, n. 4.
Fairs and markets on Sundays, 138, n. 8.
Faith, devotion to, 245.
Families, the colony a camp of men without, 42;
a plantation can never flourish without, 57;
some, sent to Virginia with De la Warr, 65, n. 8.
Family of Love, Anne Hutchinson accused of accepting the doctrines
of the, 335.
Famine at Jamestown, 38, 65, n. 5.
Fast day, a, appointed in Massachusetts, 286.
Ferrar, John, election of, 71, n. 17;
deputy governor, 91.
Ferrar, Nicholas, Jr., deputy governor of Virginia Company, 91;
established a religious community at Little Gidding, 92;
austere discipline of, 93;
mediæval enthusiasm of, 194.
Ferrar, Nicholas, Sr., courts of Virginia Company held at house of, 91;
gave money for educating infidels in Virginia, 91.
Ferrars, the, among the founders of liberal institutions in America, 173.
Firearms, sale of, to the savages, 191, 216, n. 1.
Firmin's, Giles, Review of Davis's Vindication, 348, n. 5.
Fisheries, American, importance of, foreseen, by Capt. John Smith, 37;
of Newfoundland, 261, n. 7.
Fishing on Sunday, ordinances against, 127.
Fishing seasons in the James River learned, 49.
Fleet, Henry, only survivor of Spelman's party, 22, n. 7.
Fleet's Journal, 23, n. 7.
Flemish Protestants favored independency, 158, n. 2.
Font, the stone, at which Bradford was baptized, 151.
Food, bad and insufficient, 45, 46.
Force, men not to be converted by, 312, n. 19.
Formalities, proper, never omitted, 41, 101;
at Plymouth, 102.
Founding of a state a secondary end, 73.
Fox, Luke, sails to the northwest, 10.
Franck's, Sebastian, Chronica, 314, n. 24.
Frankfort, disputes in the church at, produced great results, 105;
character of debates at, 105;
rapid changes produced by the, 106, 135, n. 3.
Freemen's oath extended to residents, 289, 308, n. 11;
opposed by Williams, 289, 309, n. 12.
Fresh River of the Dutch, the Connecticut, 324.
Frobisher's, Sir Martin, voyages, 2, 4, n. 1;
brilliant failure, 5;
attempt to plant a colony, 7;
finds "gold eure," 13;
Voyages, 21, n. 1.
Fuller, Thomas, judgment of Captain John Smith, 63, n. 3.
Fuller's Church History, 103, m.; 131, m.; 157, n. 1; 160, m.;
Worthies, 259, n. 6.
Gainsborough, the hamlet of, 150.
Gammell's Life of Roger Williams, 311, n. 17.
Gardens, private, apportioned in Virginia, 48, 49, 68, n. 12.
Gates, Sir Thomas, wrecked on the Bermudas, 40;
abandoned the wreck of Jamestown, 41, 101;
sent to England for cattle, 41;
denied that human flesh was eaten, 65, n. 5;
installed governor in proper form, 101.
General Court of Massachusetts protested against selection of Williams
as a minister of the Salem church, 271;
prevented his ordination, 272, 307, n. 5;
makes regulations for dress, 285;
appointed a fast day, 286;
promulgated a new resident's oath, 289;
"convented" Williams several times, 289;
forced Salem into submission, 291, 293;
tried and banished Williams, 292;
fearing his settlement at Narragansett Bay, agreed to send him
to England, 294;
banished scores for their opinions, 297;
the real extenuation for the conduct of the, 297;
character of the age forbids condemnation of, 300.
Geneva, the city of refuge for the Puritans, 104;
differences between exiles at, and those at Zurich, 107.
Gibbons, Captain, of Boston, commission sent to, 252.
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, on a northwest passage, 5;
attempt to plant a colony, 7.
Glass-blowers ran away to the Indians, 83.
Glass, window, not used in the colony, 65, n. 7.
Glass-works established near Jamestown, 83, 95, n. 5.
Glastonbury, also called Avalon, 258, n. 3.
Glover in Phil. Trans., 11, m.
Godspeed, The, 25.
Gold and silver, exportation of, restrained by law, 75.
Gold, belief in finding, in North America, 12, 14, 22, n. 7; 75.
Gold-hunting, 7, 12;
in Virginia, 13, 23, 42.
Gold mines of the Hudson River, 23.
Gondomar's spies in the Virginia Company, 87;
influence over Calvert, 226, 258, n. 2.
Goodman's Court of King James, 258, n. 2.
Goodwin, Thomas, and others, Apologetical Narrative, 185, n. 6.
Gorges's Briefe Narration, 196, m.
Gowns and litanies, squabbles about, 107.
Gosnold, agitating for a new colony, 33;
failure of colony in Buzzard's Bay established by, 178.
Government, democratic, established by the Pilgrims before sailing,
185, n. 5;
three primary steps for, in America, due to Englishmen who did
not cross the sea, 205.
Government, representative form of, established, 55, 89;
faint promise of, in Maryland charter, 234.
Governmental functions exercised by commercial corporations, 218, n. 8.
Grace after meat opposed by Williams, 289, 290, 292, 309, n. 12.
Greenham's, Richard, MS. on the Sabbath, 128.
Greenwood, leader of the Separatists, hanged at Tyburn, 148.
Grenville, Sir Richard, sent to Virginia by Ralegh, 21, n. 3.
Guiana or North America, Pilgrims choose between, 169.
Guicciardini on use of spices, 22, n. 5.
Guilds, dissolution of the, 111.
Haies in Hakluyt's Voyages, 5, m.
Hakluyt, Richard, a forerunner of colonization, 5;
belief of, in a passage to the Pacific, 6;
stories of gold, 12;
of mulberry trees, 76.
Hakluyt's Discourse on Western Planting, 6, m.; 94, n. 1; 97, n. 11;
Voyages, 2, 5, m.; 8, m.; 12, m.; 23, n. 8.
Hamor, Raphe, secretary under Dale, a signer of the Tragicall
Relation, 66, n. 9;
True Discourse, 66, n. 9; 68, n. 12; 70, n. 16; 95, n. 3.
Hampton Court conference, 159;
authorities on the, 182, n. 1.
Hanbury's Memorials, 157, n. 1, n. 2; 158, n. 3.
Hancock, Thomas, the Luther of England, 125.
Hanging clemency, 46;
preferred to transportation to Virginia, 54;
and to the old tyranny, 56.
Hardwicke Papers, 238, m.
Hariot's Briefe and True Report, 80, m.
Harleian Miscellany, 240, m.
Harrington's Nugæ Antiquæ, 116, m.; 161, m.; 162, m.; 182, n. 1.
Harrisse's, Henry, John Cabot, the Discoverer of America, 21, n. 1.
Hartlib's Reformed Virginia Silkworm, 79.
Harvey, Sir John, sends expedition for gold, 13;
Governor of Virginia, 249;
quarreled with Virginians, 249;
counter-revolution, 249.
Hawkins, Jane, Mrs. Hutchinson an associate of, 340.
Hawkins, Sir John, lands luckless seamen in Mexico, 14.
Haynes, Governor of Massachusetts, 332;
pronounced sentence against Williams, 347, n. 1;
letter to Williams while Governor of Connecticut quoted, 347, n. 1.
Health to the Gentlemanly Profession of Servingmen, 134, n. 1.
Hearne's Langtoft's Chronicle, 93, m.
Hening's Statutes, 78, m.; 79, m.; 97, n. 9.
Henrietta Maria, Maryland named for, 245;
godmother to Maryland, jealous of Calvert, 249.
Henry, Prince, interested in Virginia colony, 43.
Henry, William Wirt, Address, 63, n. 3.
Hessey's Bampton Lectures, 139, n. 10.
Hind's Making of the England of Elizabeth, 135, n. 3.
Hinman's Antiquities, 347, n. 2.
Hogs, brood, of the colony eaten, 38;
wild, in the Bermudas, 41, 65, n. 6.
Holinshed's Chronicles, 22, n. 5.
Holland, the "mingle mangle of religions" in, 164.
Holmes's History of Cambridge, 318, m.; 320, m.
Home, Virginia for the first time a, 58.
Home-makers sent to Virginia, 57, 58.
Homesteads at Newtown sold to newcomers, 325, 347, n. 3.
Hooft, Nederlandsche Historie, 312, n. 18.
Hooker, Thomas, one of the greatest luminaries of the Puritans, 269;
desire of his party to move to Connecticut, 285, 315;
set to dispute with Williams, 292;
early life of, 316;
driven from his pulpit by Laud, 317;
fled to Holland, 317;
a company of his people settled at Newtown, 317;
arrival at Newtown, 319;
rivalry with Cotton, 320;
somber theology of, 320;
difference between his teachings and those of Cotton, 321, 346, n. 1;
theories of civil government more liberal than Cotton's, 322;
limited the power of the magistrate, 322, 347, n. 2;
the real founder of Connecticut, 325.
Hornbeck on John Robinson, 158, n. 3.
Horses eaten, 38.
Houses burned for firewood, 40.
Hubbard's History of Massachusetts, 308, n. 8;
History of New England, 207, m.; 215, m.; 347, n. 3;
testimony of, unreliable, 311, n. 17.
Hudson, Henry, influenced by Captain John Smith, seeks the South Sea, 9.
Hudson River gold, 23, n. 7.
Huguenots of La Rochelle, England allied with, 239.
Humming birds exported, 18.
Hundreds or plantations, 54, 55.
Hunt, Robert, first minister in Virginia, 90.
Hunter, Rev. Joseph, on Shakespeare's Tempest, 65, n. 6.
Hunter's Founders of New Plymouth, 150, m.; 152, m.; 155, m.; 170, m.
Hutchinson, Mrs. Anne, an ardent disciple of Cotton in old Boston, 329;
character of, 329, 330;
"masterpiece of womens wit," 330;
meetings for women opened by, 330;
doctrines of, 331;
the very apostle of Cotton's doctrine, 333;
brought to trial by her opponents, 337;
adroit defense, 338;
condemned by the General Court, 338;
sentenced to banishment, 339;
recanted, but was excommunicated, 339, 348, n. 8;
her sons disfranchised, 339;
settled in Rhode Island with her party, 340;
accused of witchcraft by Winthrop, 340;
wild reports about, 340, 341;
massacred by Indians at New Netherland, 341.
Hutchinson on the Virginia Colony, 186, n. 8.
Hutchinson Papers, 215, m.; 299, m.; 307, m.; 329, n. 1.
Hutchinson party partisans of Vane, 332;
arrogance of the, 333;
Pastor Wilson condemned by, 333.
Hutchinson's History of Massachusetts Bay, 211, m.; 337, m.
Hutchinsonian controversy, the, 326, 327;
the debate waxed hot, 334.
Hypocrites better than profane persons, 299.
Idolatry, Puritanism a crusade against, 118.
Illusions of discoverers, 3, 75.
Inclosures, effects of, 135, n. 5;
for private not the publick good, 136, n. 5.
Independency, tendency toward, 112, 136, n. 6;
foreshadowed at Frankfort, 137, n. 6;
dated back to reign of Mary, 146;
favored by Flemish Protestants, 158, n. 2;
Robinsonian, the established religion in New England, 215.
Independents in early years of Elizabeth's reign, 158, n. 2.
Indian children, rewards to colonists for educating, 91.
Indian conjurers laid spell on the coast, 178.
Indian exhumed and eaten at Jamestown, 39.
Indians plot destruction of the colonists, 8;
curiosity regarding the, 15;
desire to convert, 16, 90;
kidnapped and exhibited, 17;
attack those first landing in Virginia, 28;
constant fear of attack from, 30;
supply food to Jamestown, 31,
Smith trades with, 34, 36;
devilish ingenuity in torturing, 38;
outrage the dead, 38, 64, n. 4;
slay gold hunters, 43;
no danger from, while Dale was in charge, 47;
taken to England by Dale, 49, 68, n. 10;
unnecessary cruelty to, 64, n. 4;
reverence for their sacred house, 64, n. 4;
endowed school established for, 83, 91;
schemes for educating obliterated, 92;
treachery of, emulated by the settlers, 92;
destruction of, in Maryland and in Massachusetts divinely ordered, 247;
right of the king to give away lands of, questioned, 274, 282, 283;
land secured from, by purchase, 283.
Industrial disturbance aids the Puritan movement, 111.
Infallibility of "godly" elders, 301.
Ingram, Davy, crosses the continent, 14;
statement, 14, 23, n. 8.
Injunctions by King Edward VI, 138, n. 9.
Interludes sometimes played in churches, 129.
Intolerance sanctioned by logic, 299.
Iron works established at Falling Creek, 83;
failure of, 96, n. 6.
Isthmus in latitude 40°, belief in an, 10.
James I framed code of laws and orders for the Virginia colony, 26;
Covnter-Blaste to Tobacco, 84;
obstinacy of, 87;
his accession raised the hopes of the Puritans, 159;
paradoxical qualities of, 160;
dialectic skill at Hampton Court conference, 160;
refutes the hapless Puritans, 161;
boasts that he had peppered the Puritans, 162, 182, n. 1;
results of his folly, 162;
would wink at but not publicly tolerate the Pilgrims, 170;
refused guarantee of toleration, 173;
friendship with George Calvert, 223;
revenue from fines of lay Catholics, 238;
Apologie for the Oath of Allegiance, 238.
James, Puritan minister in Maryland, 253.
James River discovered by the accident of a storm, 27;
settlement near the falls of the, 37.
James River experiments, the, 25;
their story the overture to the history of life in the United
States, 58.
Jamestown, causes of suffering at, 13;
founded, 29;
at first a peninsula, 29;
abandoned, 41;
population in 1616, 49;
in 1889, 59, n. 1;
some drawings of, 60, n. 1.
Jamestown Company, the. See VIRGINIA COMPANY, THE.
Jamestown emigrants instructed to explore rivers to the northwest, 9.
Jesuits flock to England, 226;
set free, 239;
interested in migration to Maryland, 240;
the provincial of the Society of Jesus favored toleration, 242;
religious observances of, at sea, 243;
conversion of non-Catholics in Maryland by, 246;
fled to Virginia, 257.
Jesus, the humane pity of, unknown to the laws and sermons of the
time, 301, 313, n. 22.
Johnson, Bradley T., Foundation of Maryland, 263, n. 15.
Johnson, Edward, the bloodthirsty Massachusetts Puritan, 164;
his Wonder-working Providence, 318, m.; 320, m.; 330, m.
Johnson, Francis, voyage of, to America, 167;
pastor at Amsterdam, 168.
Johnston, Isaac, of Winthrop's company, death of, 212.
Jones, captain of The Mayflower, conduct of, 177;
identified with Jones of The Discovery, 186, n. 7.
Jones's, Rev. Hugh, Present State of Virginia, 183, n. 3.
Josselyn's Rarities, 344, m.
Judgment, present, not a binding law, 185, n. 6.
Judgments, divine, fear of, 198.
Kent Island, Claiborne's claim to, 254.
Knowles's Life of Williams, 274, m.; 308, n. 9;
the best of the older biographies, 311, n. 17.
Knox, John, followers of, dispute with the Coxans at Frankfort, 105;
not more a sabbatarian than Calvin, 124.
Labor, common-stock system of, at Jamestown, 26;
abolished by distribution of land, 56;
failure of, at Plymouth, 179;
evils of, 186, n. 9.
Labor, private, more productive than common-stock system, 49;
prohibited on Sundays, 127.
Laborers, twelve so-called, in the Virginia colony, 27.
Land, division of, in Virginia, 48, 49, 56, 68, n. 12.
Land grants, various, in Virginia, based on the Grand Charter,
56, 70, n. 15.
Lane, Ralph, governor of Ralegh's first colony, 7, 21, n. 3;
seeks gold and the South Sea, 8;
account in Hakluyt, iii, 8, m.;
hopes for his Roanoke colony, 74;
to Sydney and Walsingham, 74, m.
Latitude of 40°, belief of a westward passage in, 9, 10.
Laud, Archbishop, obliterated by Puritanism, 133;
one great service of, to the world, 193;
character of, 193;
fearless in peril, 195;
dubbed "the father of New England," 196;
Letter to Selden, 196;
Abbott's account of Laud's rise, 216, n. 2;
fails to crush the Massachusetts Company, 211;
suppressing Puritanism, 239;
fall of, 240;
non-conforming Puritans hunted from lectureships and chaplaincies
by, 270;
drove John Cotton to New England, 279;
moving to vacate the Massachusetts charter, 282;
made head of a commission to govern the colonies, 284;
drove Hooker from his pulpit at Chelmsford, 317;
preparations to control Massachusetts made by, 343;
asked to stop emigration to New England, 344;
tries to compel Scots to use prayer book, 344.
Laws, divine, moral, and martial, under which Dale oppressed
Virginia, 45, 70, n. 16; 132.
Leah and Rachel, 79, m.; 265, n. 25.
Lederer, voyage of, from Virginia, 11, m.
Legislative body established by the Great Charter, 55.
Leland, John, Itinerary, 152, m.
Lenox, Duke of, territory assigned to, 259, n. 5.
Letters of complaint intercepted, 47.
Letters of Missionaries, 264, n. 17, n. 18.
Leyden, Scrooby exiles remove to, 166;
Pilgrims set out from, 174.
Liberty in religion congruous with civil peace, 315.
Lingard, 238, m.
Little Gidding, Ferrar's community at, 92;
devastated by the Puritans, 93.
Liturgy, a, purified of human tradition, 106;
omitted in many parishes, 142.
London Separatists, 147;
organize a church, 148;
miserably persecuted, some flee to Amsterdam, 148.
Long Island Sound, Dermer storm-driven into, 9.
Long Island, English settlers on, 345.
Lord's Prayer, repetition of the, thought dangerously liturgical, 117.
Lotteries of the Virginia Company, 69, n. 14;
abolished, 53, 70, n. 14.
Low Countries, toleration in the, 163;
condemned by Baylie, 164.
Luther, Martin, on the Sabbath, 124.
Machyn's Diary, 99, m.
Magellan's Strait, 2, 9.
Magistrates aided by clergy in Massachusetts, 266;
men of unusual ability, 266;
right of, to punish for a religious offense, denied by
Williams, 272, 286;
or to regulate the orthodoxy of churches and the belief of
individuals, 292, 309, n. 12; 310, n. 13.
Magna Charta, the, of America, 55.
Maids by the shipload sent to Jamestown, 57;
not coerced into going, 72, n. 19.
Maine, French driven out of, 50;
first English colony in, 189;
fishing villages of, 345.
Manchester, Duke of, papers, 71, n. 18; 174, m.; 184, n. 5.
Manuscript Book of Instructions, 71, n. 18; 72, n. 19; 80, m.;
96, n. 6; 97, n. 9; 232, m.
Manuscript Records, Virginia Company, 52, m.; 61, n. 3; 67, n. 9;
69, n. 13, 14; 70, n. 15; 71, n. 18; 72, n. 19; 81, m.; 82, m.;
95, n. 3; 97, n. 9, 10; 172, m.; 184, n. 4.
Mar-Prelate tracts, the, 114;
answers to the, 116;
effects of the reaction against, 121.
Marriage by a Roman priest invalidated accruing land tenures, 237.
Marsden's Early Puritans, 125.
Martial law under Dale, 45;
Smyth's code of, 70, n. 16; 132.
Martin, Sir William, on Roger Williams, 307, n. 1.
Martyr, Peter, Decade III, 24, n. 9.
Maryland, Baltimore's projected colony in, 236;
change to, from Avalon, 239;
small migration to, 240;
policy of toleration in, 242, 250, 265, n. 25;
committed to guardian angels, 243;
arrival of the Catholic pilgrims, 244;
ceremonies of the landing in, 244;
said to have been named by King Charles, 245;
called Colony of St. Maries, 245;
efforts to convert the Protestants in, 246;
openly a Catholic colony, 247, 264, n. 17;
import tax on Catholic servants and convicts, 248, 264, n. 19;
opposition to Maryland, 249;
Puritan settlers invited, 252;
civil wars of, 253, 254;
Act of Toleration passed, 255;
again a proprietary government under Calvert, 257;
disastrous results of religious differences in, 266.
Maryland Archives, 245, m.; 262, n. 10; 265, n. 21.
Maryland Assembly too cunning to be trapped by Baltimore, 255.
Maryland charter, ambiguity of the, designed, 225, 236, 251,
259, n. 4; 262, n. 11;
compared with charter of Avalon, 234;
provisions of, 235, 236;
extensive powers granted by, 236, 263, n. 12.
Mass celebrated in defiance of law, 226;
abhorred by the Puritans in Avalon, 228.
Massachusetts Bay, failure of commercial settlements on, 189;
patent to lands in, granted to the Massachusetts Company, 207.
Massachusetts charter, Laud's effort to vacate the, 282, 284.
Massachusetts colony, government under Endecott, 217, n. 7;
people homogenous in religious affairs, 266;
religious opinion, main source of disturbance in, 266, 267;
self-consciousness of the, 278;
preparations for resistance in, 284;
failure as an agricultural colony, 320;
three profound disturbances in, 326;
in commotion over the Hutchinson controversy, 335.
Massachusetts Company, rise of the, 199, 207;
first colony of, under John Endecott, 199, 207;
second company of emigrants, 203;
fear that the charter might be revoked, 208;
company and colony to be merged in one, 209;
transfers its government and charter to Massachusetts Bay, 210;
the commercial corporation becomes a colonial government, 211;
the colonists believed they were founding a new church, 212.
Massachusetts government, evolution of the, 207;
first court of, at Charlestown, 210;
later became representative, 211;
relieved from strain by the borough system, 276;
a government of congregations, 308, n. 6;
theocratical, 279;
religious intolerance of the, 297, 349, n. 9;
anomalous in character, 323;
angered by Hooker's secession, 326.
Massachusetts Historical Collections, 310, n. 15; 318, m.; 320, m.;
347, n. 1; 348, n. 7.
Massachusetts Records, 206, m.; 285, m.; 290, m.; 291, m.; 308, n. 11;
310, n. 13, 17; 317, m.; 320, m.; 337, m.
Massacre by the Indians put an end to all projects, 84, 92.
Masson's Life of Milton, 137, n. 6.
Mather's Magnalia, 152, m.; 154, m.; 217, n. 5; 328, m.;
authority to be disregarded, 311, n. 17.
Maverick, Samuel, on Noddle's Island, 190;
Description of New England, 273, m.
Maydstown laid off in Virginia, 72, n. 19.
Mayflower, conduct of the captain of the, 177.
Maynard to Laud, 344, m.
May-poles, opposition to, 118;
pole of St. Andrew Undershaft sawed up, 119;
law against May-poles, 119;
the frolics around charged with immorality, 120;
Morton's, at Merrymount, 190, 201.
Mediterranean Sea, a, looked for in the heart of America, 11.
Meeting, last all-night, in Pastor Robinson's house, 175.
Mennonites, Williams attracted to the doctrines of the, 312, n. 19;
derived his broadest principles from the, 313, n. 19.
Mercurius Americanus, 348, n. 6.
Merrymount, Morton's dangerous settlement at, 190, 201, 216, n. 1.
Metals, the precious, the only recognized riches, 75.
Mica mistaken for gold, 13, 30, 75.
Migration, the great, to New England, 196, 203.
Millinary Petition, the, 159.
Millinery sins, regulations against, 285.
Mills's British India, 67, n. 9.
Milton, John, learned Dutch from Roger Williams, 273.
Mines, Mexican, reports of wealth of, brought support to Ralegh's
undertaking, 74.
Ministerial office never so reverenced as by Puritans, 338.
Ministers, two, over one church, 106;
might prophesy, but not a woman, 338.
Missionary impulse, first, in the English Church, 89, 94, n. 1.
Monatesseron, the earliest English, 93.
Montserrat, island of, settled by Catholics, 231, 232, 261, n. 9.
Months, scruples about the heathen names of the, 302.
Morals, austerity in, 119;
advance of, under Puritan influence, 121;
lack of sense of proportion is a trait of the age, 130;
regularity of, purchased at a great sacrifice, 342.
More, Father Henry, 263, n. 14.
Morton, Thomas, and his deviltry, 190, 201, 216, n. 1;
Memorial, 177, m.;
New English Canaan, 216, n. 1.
Motives for founding English colonies, 73;
commercial and sentimental, 86;
religious, 89, 189.
Mount Desert, Jesuit settlement at, plundered, 47, 50.
Mourt's Relation, 184, n. 4.
Mouse and snake, battle between, 277;
interpretation of, by Pastor John Wilson, 277.
Mouse nibbles a Book of Common Prayer, 278.
Movements, significant, usually cradled in rustic mangers, 146.
Mulberries first planted in England, 76;
law for promoting the raising of, in Virginia, 77;
repealed, 79.
Muskrat skins valued for their odor, 19.
Names, fanciful, of the Newfoundland coast, 225, 229.
Names, Indian, of places changed, 244.
Nansemond, settlement at, 37;
settlers driven from, 38.
Narragansett Bay recommended to Williams by Winthrop, 293;
proposal to remove to, alarmed the magistrates, 294;
colony on, founded on the true principle, 316.
Narragansett Club Publications, 135, n. 4; 268, m.; 307, n. 3, 4, 5;
311, n. 17.
Naval stores, Virginia expected to produce, 82;
efforts to procure, in Elizabeth's time, 95, n. 4.
Neal's History of New England, 310, n. 14;
History of the Puritans, 159, m.; 226, m.; 239, m.
Neill, E. D., on the social compact, 183, n. 4;
Founders of Maryland, 262, n. 11;
Virginia Company, 67, n. 9; 183, n. 2.
Netherlands, indirect interest of the, in the Virginia colony, 44.
New England, coast of, explored by Capt. John Smith, 37;
shaped in Old England by Puritanism, 133;
pioneers of, came from the Separatists, 141, 146;
existence of, hung on a chain of accidents, 176;
elements of, 177;
early attempts to colonize, 178;
early settlements in, 189;
great migration to, 196, 203;
capital laws of, condemned by Williams, 304.
New England charter of 1620, 173.
New England colonists deemed themselves a chosen people, 278;
accounted other colonists the Egyptians of the New World,
278, 308, n. 7;
held to an intolerant theocracy, 279;
dispersions of the, 315;
relief at disappearance of the last of the leaders, 342.
New England Firebrand Quenched, 301, m.
New England Historical Gen. Reg., 267, 307, n. 1.
New England Puritanism more ultra than Bownd, 132, 140, n. 3.
New England traits due to special causes, 178.
Newfoundland, failure of colony at, 223, 224;
Capt. Whitbourne's pamphlet on, 224;
fanciful names in, 225;
not a paradise in winter, 229, 260, n. 7;
value of the fisheries, 261, n. 7.
New France bubble ready to collapse, 346.
New Haven, Davenport and his company planted colony at, 343;
colony united with Connecticut by royal charter at the
Restoration, 343;
stretching westward, 345.
New Life of Virginea, 63, n. 3.
New Plymouth, Sandys's plans for the foundation of, 88.
Newport, Vice-Admiral, reporter of Virginia affairs, 44;
threatened with the gallows by Dale, 44;
warned against Archer, 64.
Newtown, Hooker's company settled at, 317;
intended for capital and palisaded, 318;
superior to Boston in one regard, 318;
discontent at, 318, 319, 320;
questions regarding boundary, 319;
cattle-raising at, 320;
the church at, emigrated bodily to Connecticut, 325;
court of elections held at, 335.
New World, mirages of the, 2;
discovered because it lay between Europe and the East Indies, 3;
grotesque and misleading glimpses of the, 20.
New York Colonial Documents, 6, m., 43, m.
New York Hist. Soc. Coll., 23, n. 7;
second series, 70, n. 15; 80, m.
Nichols's, Josias, Plea for the Innocent, 146, m.
Nonconformists, severe measures against, 122;
in the Church, 142.
North Carolina, coast of, called Wingandacon, 21, n. 3.
Northey, Sir Edward, decision on the Maryland charter, 262, n. 11.
Northwest passage, search for a, 4, 5, 9, 10.
Nova Albion, 259, n. 5.
Nova Brittania, 82, m.
Oath of allegiance, 241;
emigration oath refused by Williams, 270;
new oath for residents opposed by Williams, 289;
magistrates unable to enforce, 289.
Ogle's Account of Maryland, 264, n. 19.
Oil to be distilled from walnuts, 83.
Oldham, John, an adventurous man of lawless temper expelled from
Plymouth, 324;
led a small company from Watertown, 324.
Opossum, the, described by Purchas, 18.
Opposition, Puritanism the party of, 110.
Original Records of Colony of Virginia, 78, m.
Overston, sermons preached in, by unlicensed men, 142.
Pacific Ocean, discovery of the, 3;
belief in a passage to the, 4, 6;
nearness to Florida, 6;
sought _via_ the James River, 8;
in latitude 40°, 9, 10;
_via_ the Delaware, 10;
proximity of, to Virginia, 10, 22, n. 6;
to North Carolina, 11.
Pagitt's Heresiography, 143, m.; 144, m.; 157, n. 1.
Palfrey's History of New England, 211, m.; 218, n. 8.
Palisades burned for firewood, 40.
Paradox, the, of colonial religious organization, 280.
Parkinson, Marmaduke, explorer, 10.
Parliamentary freedom, struggle for, 87.
Parties, the two great, of Protestantism, rise of, 106;
results, 107;
lines between, not sharply drawn at once, 110;
controversy between, grew more bitter, 114.
Party, a moderate, lamented the excesses of the extremists, 117.
Passage to the Pacific Ocean sought, 3, 4, 9, 10, 22, n. 5; 73, 74.
See also NORTHWEST PASSAGE and PACIFIC OCEAN.
Patent, royal, validity of, questioned by Williams, 274, 281, 289,
308, n. 9; 309, n. 12.
Patience, the, pinnace, built wholly of wood, 41.
Paulus, Pieter, Verklaring der Unie van Utrecht, 312, n. 18.
Pearce, Mistress, "near twenty years" in Virginia, 71, n. 18.
Pearl fisheries in Virginia waters, 95, n. 3.
Peckard's Life of Ferrar, 65, n. 5; 87, m.; 93, m.;
account of, 97, n. 10; 100, m.
Peirce, John, received a grant from the Virginia Company, 184, n. 4.
Pequot war, Williams denounced slaughter of women and children in, 305;
plan of campaign changed through a revelation, 338.
Pequots dangerous on Connecticut River, 323.
Percy, George, on the arrival at Virginia, 28;
on the sufferings at Jamestown, 30;
increased the hostility of the Indians, 38, 64, n. 4;
inefficiency as governor, 44, 60, n. 2;
succeeded by Gates, 101.
Percy to Northumberland, 46, m.;
Trewe Relacyon, 40, m.; 60, n. 2; 64, n. 4; 65, n. 5.
Perfect Description of Virginia, 11, m.
Perfume to be extracted from the muskrat, 95, n. 3.
Persecution in Queen Mary's time, 103;
spirit of, pervaded every party, 113;
of the Separatists, 141;
begot Separatism, 154, 155;
new storm of, 163, 182, n. 1;
starts agitation for emigration to Virginia, 168, 183, n. 2.
Peter, Hugh, rebuked Cotton for defending Mrs. Hutchinson, 337;
browbeat Mrs. Hutchinson's witnesses, 338;
returned to England and favored toleration, 348, n. 7.
Petition to House of Lords, 345, m.
Pharisaism of the rigid Sabbath, 132.
Philosophical Transactions, 78, m.; 79, m.
Pilgrims brought Barrowism to New England, 148;
Scrooby and Austerfeld cradles of the, 149;
no tradition of, lingers at Scrooby, 150;
common country folk, 151;
flee to Amsterdam, 164;
theological agitations drive them to Leyden, 165;
danger of extinction, 166;
intermarriages with the Dutch, 167;
emigration to Virginia under consideration, 168, 182, n. 2;
questioned whether to be Dutch or English colonists, 169;
ask aid of Edwin Sandys, in securing religious liberty, 169;
receive two charters, a general order, and a liberal patent from
the Virginia Company, 172;
their Compact under the general order, 173;
departure from Leyden, 174;
forced to land, select Plymouth, 177;
suffered for their ignorance of colony-planting, 178;
honor due, 186, n. 8;
"stepping stones to others," 188;
slender success of, stimulated commercial settlements, 189;
the "large patent" granted to the, through influence of Sandys, 206;
influence on the Massachusetts colony, 212.
Piscataqua, settlement on the, 189.
Plaine Declaration of Barmudas, 65, n. 6.
Planting, the first, at Jamestown, 29.
Plants of every clime believed to grow in Virginia, 82.
Plays, performance of, on Sundays prohibited, 127.
Pledge signed at Cambridge by Winthrop's party, 209.
Plymouth, ceremony observed at, 103;
the landing at, 177;
horrors of Jamestown repeated at, 179;
the second step in the founding of a great nation, 181;
Roger Williams "prophesied" at, 272;
people styled "mungrell Dutch," 273;
disturbed by Williams, 274;
gives him a letter of dismissal to Salem, 275.
Pocahontas, 33, 35, 37;
converted and wedded to Rolfe, 49;
taken to England, 49, 68, n. 10;
captured by Argall, 50;
dies leaving an infant son, 52.
Pocahontas story, the, 63, n. 3.
Pomp and display at the court of Elizabeth, 98;
imitation of, objected to by the Puritans, 100, 134, n. 2.
Popham, Captain George, attempt of, to colonize in Maine, 178.
Port Royal, map showing strait near, 8, 21, n. 4.
Pory's Report, 70, n. 15; 77, m.
Pots and Phettiplace, narrative, 35, 61, n. 2.
Powhatan releases Captain Smith, 33, 34, 35.
Precinct in Virginia asked for by Calvert, 229.
Presbyterianism developed under Cartwright, 112, 136, n. 6;
swept out by Whitgift, 122;
hoped for in New England, 213.
Price of commodities, rise of, promoted voyages, 22, n. 5.
Private interest, even a slave's patch of, put life into Virginia, 48.
Proceedings Mass. Hist. Soc., Wheelwright's sermon in, 331, m.
Proceedings of Virginia Assembly, 80, m.
Property, community of. See COMMUNISM; LABOUR.
Prophet, the, and the reformer, 306.
Proportion, lack of sense of, peculiar to zealots and polemics, 130.
Protestant colonists at St. Christopher's oppose Catholic
fellow-colonists, 231;
no Protestant minister or worship on ships coming to Maryland, 242.
Protestant Nunnery, Ferrar's community at Little Gidding called the, 93.
Protestantism, English, rise of the two great parties of, 106, 107;
controversy grew more bitter, 114;
incorruptible in Virginia, 231.
Protestantism on the Continent nearly wrecked, 198.
Protestants, English, find refuge on the Continent, 104;
compromises at home, dissensions in exile, 104;
the ultra wing tended to democratic church government, 106;
return after death of Mary, 107;
their petty squabbles develop into bitter feuds and struggles, 107;
widespread results, 107;
Baltimore orders no scandal nor offense to be given to, 250;
his policy of conciliation toward, in Maryland, 251.
Protestants on the Continent become Roman Catholics, 198.
Providence Plantation founded by Williams, 296;
fell into inevitable disorders, 315;
an example of the largest liberty in religion congruous with
civil peace, 315.
Provincetown Harbor, the Mayflower in, 177.
Public Records Office Colonial Papers, 54, m.
Pullein's Culture of Silk, 95, n. 2.
Punishments, various, inflicted by Dale, 46.
Purchas his Pilgrimes, 2, 12, m.; 18, 22, n. 6; 24, n. 9, n. 10;
28, m.; 29, m.; 30, m.; 64, n. 3; 65, n. 6; 69, n. 14; 80, m.;
95, n. 3; 96, n. 6; 97, n. 9; 102, m.
Purchas's stories of silver and gold, 12.
Puritan, the, never easy unless he was uneasy, 253.
Puritan community, cost of the good results attained in a, 342.
Puritan conscience, the, let loose against old superstitions, 119.
Puritan divines in high church positions, 143.
Puritan exodus, the great, 188, 239.
Puritan opinions condemned, 103.
Puritan pietists, a new school of, 327.
Puritanism, rise and development of, 98;
an outgrowth of the time, 103;
an effort to escape from formalism, 109;
gathered strength as the leading opposition, 111;
becomes dogmatic, 112;
evolutionary, 117;
importance of secondary development of, 120;
apparent decline of, 121;
begun with Elizabeth, seemed doomed to die with her, 122;
evolves new issues, 123, 137, n. 7;
opposed to Arminianism, 133;
set up the Commonwealth, 133;
threatened destruction of, at Leyden, 167;
under James I the party of opposition, 191;
conservative under Charles I, 192;
unamiable traits of, manifested in Endecott, 202;
course of events in England adverse to, 203;
suppression of, by Laud, 239;
divergencies from, in Massachusetts, 267;
existed and grew through prudent compromises, 268, 269;
Salem, north pole of, 271;
condemned by its false and harsh ideals, 300;
character of, 300, 301, 342;
an ascetic system of external duties and abstentions, 327.
Puritans, why so called, 106, 135, n. 4.
Puritans, English, contempt of the, for æsthetic considerations, 94;
reverence for Bible precepts, 109;
would have no surplices, no liturgy, 109;
banished the symbol with the dogma, 111;
importance of efforts toward the regulation of conduct, 120;
dubbed Martinists, 121;
differences forgotten in the conflict with the Episcopal
party, 137, n. 6;
omitted the liturgy, 142;
present Millinary Petition to James I, 159;
at the Hampton Court conference, 160, 181, n. 1;
not eager to join Separatist settlers, 188;
a powerful party, 192;
motives for emigration, 197;
fear of divine judgments, 198;
barred from all public action, 203;
plan for a Puritan church in America, 204;
carried out through the Massachusetts Company, 212;
differences among the, 213;
exhilarating effect of freedom from constraints, 213;
raging against indulgence to Romanists, 235, 238;
believed the church under Laud would become Roman Catholic, 239;
dropped "saint" from geographical names, 244;
rise of, to power, 240;
dominant in Parliament, 252;
could not be induced to leave New England for Maryland, 252;
persecuted in Virginia, leave there for Maryland, 253;
at peace with Catholics in Maryland, 254;
their ideas rampant in Maryland, 257;
send munitions of war to New England, 284;
conceived of religion as difficult of attainment, 328.
Puritans of the Massachusetts colony not Separatists, 212;
pathetic farewell to the Church of England, 213;
persuaded to the Plymouth view of church government, 215;
leaving England, 239;
emigration to New England, 240.
Quakers put to death by Endecott, 202;
protected in Maryland, 257.
Raccoon, the, called a monkey, 19, 24, n. 10.
Radical and conservative, difference between, constitutional, 109.
Rain, results of Puritan and Indian prayers for, 16.
Ralegh, Sir Walter, sends explorers and colonists, 7;
History of the World, 21, n. 3;
distrusts Indian tales, 21, n. 3;
a lifelong opponent of Spain, 73.
Rapin, 239, m.
Rappahannocks, dress of the chief of the, 28.
Ratcliffe, enemy of Capt. John Smith, 37;
ambuscaded and tortured to death, 38, 64, n. 4;
follower of Archer, 64, n. 3;
cruel to the savages, 64, n. 4.
Ration, a day's, pitiful allowance for, 30, 46.
Records of Virginia Company destroyed, 54, 71, n. 17.
Recreations on Sunday, scruples regarding, 127;
forbidden by Dr. Bownd, 129.
Reformers, the, of the sixteenth century declared against a
priesthood, 123;
and a Sabbath, 124.
Relatyon of the Discovery of our River, 29, m.
Religion, motive to colonization, 220.
Religious enthusiasts and the Anglican church, 144.
Religious ferments, leavening effects of, 121.
Religious freedom a cherished principle of Roger Williams, 286;
established at Providence, 296.
Religious liberty befriended by few, detested by Catholic and
Protestant, 298.
Religious service, attendance at, should be compulsory, 299.
Report of Record Com., 329, m.
Residents, new oath of fidelity for, 289;
successfully opposed by Williams, 289, 309, n. 12;
mercenary inducement offered to, to take the freeman's
oath, 308, n. 11.
Retainers, brilliant trains of, 99.
Rhode Island, a secondary colony, 220;
importance of the, 315.
Rich, Lord. See WARWICK, second Earl.
Rich's, Barnabee, Honestie of this Age, 96, n. 8.
Rites, resistance to, an article of faith, 103.
Ritual, a purified, preferred by the extreme Protestants, 106, 135, n. 3.
Ritual, the antique, desire to change as little as possible, 106,
135, n. 3.
Rivalry with Spain, 73.
Roanoke Island, first colony on, 7;
Lane's hopes for, 74.
Roanoke River, story of source of, 7.
Robert's Social History of the Southern Counties, 125, m.; 127, m.;
129, m.
Robinson hanged and quartered for extorting money from "pressed"
maidens, 72, n. 19.
Robinson, John, joins the Separatists at Scrooby, 155;
character and influence of, 156, 158, n. 3;
leads the Scrooby church to Amsterdam, 164;
to Leyden, 165;
idea of forming a new state, 167;
prayer and last words at departure of the Pilgrims, 175, 185, n. 6;
advised union rather than division, 176;
farewell letter of, 185, n. 5;
liberality and breadth of view, 176, 185, n. 6;
held to "toleration of tolerable opinions," 298.
Robinson's, John, Justification, 157, n. 1, n. 2; 219, n. 9.
Rogers, Thomas, opponent of Greenham and Bownd, 139, n. 11.
Rogers's Preface to Thirty-nine Articles, 122, m.; 139, n. 11; 143, m.
Rolfe, John, married Pocahontas, 68, n. 10;
planted first tobacco at Jamestown, 84.
Rolfe's Relation, 70, n. 16; 71, n. 17, n. 18.
Rosier's True Relation, 17, m.
"Rowdies" assault the Jesuits, 265, n. 24.
Royal Hist. MS. Comm., 88, m.
Royal Hist. MS. Com. Rept., 345, m.
Rushworth's Hist. Coll., 216, n. 2, n. 3;
petition in, 226, m.; 235, m.; 344.
Rustics, the, of Scrooby and its neighborhood, 150, 151;
influence of Brewster on, 153;
of John Robinson, 157.
Rymer's Foedera, 229, m.; 238, m.
Sabbath, the, as a holy day objected to by Luther and Calvin, 124;
rise of the Puritan, 124;
Sunday first so called in literature, 126;
passion for a stricter, 130;
doctrine of a Christian, resented, 131, 139, n. 11;
in Scotland, 132, 139, n. 12;
of deepest hue in New England, 132, 140, n. 13.
Sabbath-breakers, punishments threatened against, 138, n. 8.
Sabbath-keeping, early Puritan ideal of, 127;
pushed to its extreme, 130;
new zeal for, promoted morals, 131;
rigid, a mark of the faithful, 132.
Sadleir, Mrs., indorsement of, on Williams's letter to, 268, m.
Sainsbury's Calendar, 67, n. 9; 207, m.; 262, n. 9; 344, m.; 345, m.
Salem, north pole of Puritanism, 271;
protest of the General Court against Williams as minister at, 271;
attached to Williams and refractory toward the authorities at
Boston, 280;
made Williams teacher, 284;
deputies turned out of court in punishment, 291;
indignation at Williams's banishment, 293.
Salem church, organization of the, 200.
Salisbury, the Dean of, attacked by Mar-Prelate, 115.
Salvetti, correspondence on Calvert's resignation, 260, n. 6.
Sampson, Thomas, letter to Calvin, 135, n. 3.
Sandy Beach, no trace of, 59.
Sandys, Edwin, Archbishop of York, letter of, 137, n. 7;
transferred manor place at Scrooby to his son Samuel, 153, 170.
Sandys, Sir Edwin, interested in the Virginia Company, 54;
approved Dale's course, 67, n. 9;
arrested, 69, n. 13; 89;
chosen governor of Virginia Company, 71, n. 17; 88, 170;
proposed sending maids to Virginia, 71, n. 18;
leader of the company, 87, 89, 170;
established representative government in Virginia, 88;
plans for foundation of New Plymouth, 88;
sketch of life of, in Brown's Genesis of the United States, 97, n. 10;
tried to secure toleration for the Leyden people, 170;
one of the fathers of representative government in America, 173;
charges against, 174, 184, n. 5;
parliamentary antagonist of Calvert, 221;
in disfavor at court, 222;
Virginians friendly to, 230.
Sandys, George, would seek the South Sea overland, 10, 11;
name appended to The Tragicall Relation, 66, n. 9;
in charge of manufacturing schemes, 83.
Sandys, Sir Samuel, owned manor place at Scrooby, 153, 170.
Sassafras root exported, 45, 68, n. 10; 68, n. 11.
Savage life eagerly observed by the English, 29.
Sawmills built in Virginia, 82.
Scharf's History of Maryland, 23, n. 7.
Schism esteemed the deadliest of sins, 142, 197.
Scotch settlement in Newfoundland, 224, 258, n. 3.
Scot's Magazine, 11, m.
Scrambler, Bishop of Peterborough, to Burghley, 142, m.
Scriptures, reverence for the letter of the, 144.
Scrooby, the cradle of the Pilgrims, 149;
a region noted for religious zeal, 150;
no tradition of the Pilgrims at, 150;
called "the meane townlet" by John Leland, 152;
owners of manor place at, 153;
the church at, 154, 155.
Seamen, threats of brutal, 177.
Seekers, the, a sect, the last reduction of Separatism, 303;
in New England, probably through influence from Holland, 303;
in England as early as 1617, 304;
"a Seeker of the best Sect next to a finder," 314, n. 24.
Seekonk River, Williams removes from, to Providence, 296.
Semi-Separatists, the, 143.
Separatism and the Scrooby church, 141;
promoted by persecution, 144;
rise of, 146;
divergencies in direction of, 267;
protest by withdrawal of communion a fundamental principle of, 271.
Separatist, Roger Williams conscientiously a, 270.
Separatist tendencies of Skelton, 271.
Separatist tone of Pioneer church of Massachusetts at Salem, 271.
Separatists, number of the, 136, n. 6;
importance of the, 141;
the advance guard of Puritanism, 141;
regarded as criminals by the Puritans, 142;
causes of growth of the, 144;
idealists, 144;
rise of the, 146;
meetings of, in London, 147;
in Amsterdam, 148;
one vigorous society of, in the north, 149;
the Scrooby church of, organized, 154;
all-day meetings at Brewster's manor house, 155;
new persecution of the, 163;
the Scrooby church resolve to flee to Holland, 163, 164;
petition for leave to settle in Canada, 167;
classed with criminals by Bacon, 171;
held their opinions in a state of flux, 186, n. 6.
Servingman, the, not a menial, 134, n. 1.
Servingmen in livery, 99, 134, n. 1.
Settlements, sixteen, in Massachusetts, 275;
life in the settlements, 276.
Settlers emulate the treachery of the Indians, 92;
individual, 190.
Shakespeare's good fortune to live in a dramatic age, 99.
Shepard, Thomas, a new congregation led by, 325;
letter of, quoted, 348, n. 5;
Theses Sabbaticæ, 140, n. 13;
Memoirs in Young, 328, m.
Sheriffs had many liveried servants, 99, 134, n. 1.
Ship carpenters sent to the James River, 83.
Silk, craze for, in England, 76, 77, 169;
wearing of, prohibited in the colony, 78.
Silk culture attempted in England, 76;
in Virginia, 76, 77;
causes of failure, 77, 78;
renewed efforts for, 78, 79, 83;
authorities on these efforts, 95, n. 3.
Silk-grass craze, the, 79.
Silk manufacturing established in England, 77.
Silkworms' eggs, hatching, in one's pocket or bosom, 78, 95, n. 2.
Skelton, minister at Salem, 271;
extreme Congregationalism and Separatist tendencies of, 271;
death of, 283.
Sloane manuscripts, British Museum, 22, n. 4.
Smith, Captain John, a trustworthy topographer, 9, 34;
captured by Indians, 9;
views of geography of the continent, 22, n. 6;
becomes leader at Jamestown, 31, 36;
his character, 31, 32, 33;
story of his own life, 32, 33;
the Jonah and Ulysses of his time, 33;
explorations and narrative, 34, 35, 36;
overthrown, 36;
accused of design to wed Pocahontas, 37, 51;
later years, 37;
foresight of America's future, 37;
disabled by an accident, 37, 60, n. 2;
sent home under charges, 37, 60, n. 2;
accused of advising Indians to attack settlers at the Falls,
37, 60, n. 2;
a typical American pioneer, 38;
account of his writings, 61, n. 3;
commended by the Virginia Company, 61, n. 3;
given to romance in narration, 62, n. 3;
his practical writings and wise speeches, 62, n. 3;
examples of his exaggeration, 63, n. 3;
Thomas Fuller's judgment of, 63, n. 3;
authorities in the debates about, 63, n. 3;
refusal to share his power, 64, n. 4;
captured by the French, 178.
----, Generall Historie, 22, n. 6; 27, m.; 34, m.; 35, 36, m.;
61, n. 3; 66, n. 9; 95, n. 3.
----, New Life of Virginia, 27, m.
----, Oxford Tract, 34, m.; 35, 36, m.; 42, m.; 61, n. 3; 64, n. 3.
----, True Relation, 61, n. 3.
Smyth, John, the Separatist, migrated from Gainsborough, 150;
continually searching for truth, 186, n. 6.
Smyth, Sir Thomas, governor of Virginia Company, 70, n. 16;
resignation, 71, n. 17;
aroused the king's opposition to Sandys, 87;
resigned, 88;
sorrows of the colony under, 206;
faction of, 230;
defense, 67, n. 9.
Somers, Sir George, wrecked on the Bermudas, 40;
builds two vessels and takes provisions to Virginia, 41;
returns to the Bermudas, 41;
death of, 42;
Somers or Summer Islands named from, 65, n. 6.
South Sea delusion, the, 6, 7, 8;
an overland route to, 10;
behind the mountains, 75.
See also PACIFIC OCEAN.
Southampton, Earl of, interested in the Virginia Company, 54;
threatened by the Warwick party, 69, n. 13;
really in power, 71, n. 17;
procures silkworm "seed," 77;
elected governor of the company, 89;
imprisoned, 89;
one of the fathers of representative government in America, 173;
Virginians friendly to, 230.
Southwest passage, conjectures of a, 22, n. 5.
Spain, rivalry with, the motive for planting English colonies, 73;
England's jealousy toward, 74, 94, n. 1;
lavish of gifts to English courtiers, 223;
made England relax penal laws against English recusants, 238.
Spanish example, the influence of, on English projects, 73;
fishing-boats to be seized at Newfounde lande, 94, n. 1;
jealousy of Virginia, 94, n. 1.
Spanish match, the, favored by Calvert, 226, 227, 258, n. 2.
Speed's Prospect, 24, n. 10.
Spelman's Relation, 60, n. 2.
Spices, passion for, in Europe, 22, n. 5.
Spirit of the age, escape from the, difficult, 133.
Squirrels, flying, 18.
Standish, Captain Miles, escorts the governor to church on Sundays, 103.
Star-Chamber censures, 203, 216, n. 3;
Roger Williams as a lad employed by the, 268;
harsh penalties for Separatists, 270.
State church, notion of, not easily got rid of, 112.
St. Christopher's Island sought by Catholic refugees, 231.
Stephen, Sir, denounced May-poles as idols, 118;
wanted names of days of the week changed, 118.
Stith's History of Virginia, 51, m.; 182, n. 2.
Stoughton retracted, 290, 291;
pressure put on, 297.
Strachey's Historie of Travaile into Virginia, 24, n. 10; 36, m.;
59, n. 1; 64, n. 4; 65, n. 7; 95, n. 5; 97, n. 9; 102, m.;
True Reportory, 65, n. 6.
Strafford, friend of George Calvert and his son, 249.
Strafford Papers, 241, m.; 263, n. 13.
Strait, a, sought to the South Sea, 4, 6, 8, 9.
Strasburg and Zurich, cities of refuge for conservatives, 104.
Strasburg reformers attempt to reform church at Frankfort, 105.
Straus's Life of Roger Williams, 308, n. 6; 311, n. 17.
Stubbes's Philip, Anatomie of Abuses, 100, m.; 119, 127, 134, n. 2;
135, n. 5.
Succession, apostolic, of churchly order and ordinance the mainspring
of high-churchism, 302.
Svmme and Svbstance. See BARLOW.
Sumner, George, on John Robinson, 158, n. 3.
Sumptuary laws, 75.
Sunday had sanctity of a church feast before the Reformation, 125;
English reformers retained the Catholic, 125;
first called Sabbath in literature, 126;
scruples regarding recreations on, 127;
brutally cruel sports on the old English, 129;
strict observance of, carried to New England, 132;
in the middle ages, 138, n. 8;
legislation on, rare before the Reformation, 138, n. 8;
in time of Edward VI, 138, n. 9;
sabbatical character of, denied, 140, n. 13.
See also SABBATH.
Sunday fishing, juries inquire into, 125.
Sunday morning ceremony at Plymouth, 103.
Sunday-Sabbath, theory of a, not confined to the Puritans, 132;
Augustine on, in the fifth century, 137, n. 8; 140, n. 13.
Surplices begin to be used in Virginia, 183, n. 3.
Susan Constant, the ship, 25.
Sutton's Hospital founded by legacy, which Coke defended, later known as
Charter-House School, 268.
Swift, Lindsay, on the early election sermons, 313, n. 22.
Symonds, Dr. William, editor of second part of Smith's Oxford Tract,
61, n. 3.
Synod, the, of 1637, 336, 346, n. 1.
Tales, extravagant, of the Indians, 7, 8;
Ralegh distrusts, 21, n. 3.
Taylor's Observations and Travel from London to Hamburg, 46, m.
Tempest, Shakespeare's, 17;
suggested by the wreck of Gates and Somers, 65, n. 6.
Tenant, the copy-hold, driven to distress, 111.
Tenantry, the suffering, Puritans make common cause with, 111, 135, n. 5.
Theater, passionate love of the, 99.
Theocracy, instability of a, 326.
Thomas Aquinas, St., on the fourth commandment, 138, n. 8.
Thurloe, 263, n. 13.
Timber sought in Virginia, 82.
Tobacco, profitable cultivation of, in Virginia, 49, 84;
exported, 68, n. 10, n. 11; 96, n. 7;
more profitable than silk-raising, 78;
culture of, forbidden, 81;
King James's Covnter-Blaste to, 84;
John Rolfe planted the first, at Jamestown, 84;
heavy duties on, 85, 96, n. 8;
seven thousand shops in London, 97, n. 8;
inferiority of Indian, 97, n. 9;
large profits from, 231;
public use of, forbidden in Massachusetts, 285.
Toleration, the Baltimore policy, 242, 263, n. 15;
principle of, formulated, 254;
Act of, passed in 1649, 255, 256, 257;
intolerable to the rulers of "the Bay," 297;
limited and qualified at Amsterdam, 298;
decried as a great crime by all the world, 298;
a beneficent result of commerce, 298, 312, n. 18.
Tortures, legal, examples of, 46, 67, n. 9.
Town government, the principal feature of civil organization, 325.
Town system, the, 275.
Trade with the Indians by Captain John Smith, 34;
suspended after Smith's departure, 38;
renewed by Capt. Argall, 50.
Tragicall Relation, 40, m.; 56, m.; 66, n. 9; 68, n. 12.
Trainbands drilled, 284.
Travel, taste for books of, 2.
Treasure received by Spain from America influenced English colonial
projects, 73;
wrought mischief to England, 94, n. 1.
True Declaration of the Estate of the Colony of Virginia, 40, m.;
56, m.; 65, n. 5, n. 8.
Trumbull's Blue Laws, 347, n. 2.
Tucker, Daniel, builds boat at Jamestown, 39.
Underhill, Captain, sent after Williams, 295.
Unicorn, reported find of the, 19, 24, n. 10.
Uniformity not possible, 109.
Upper House, dissension concerning power of the, in Massachusetts, 286.
Utopia, the religious, attempted in New England, 342.
Van der Donck's New Netherland, 23, n. 7.
Van Meteren, Nederlandsche Historic, 312, n. 18.
Vane, Sir Henry, the younger, favored the Antinomians, 267;
an ardent Puritan, 332;
arrives in Boston and is elected governor, 332;
a disciple of Cotton, 333;
defeat of, 336;
leaves the colony, 337.
Vaughan's Golden Fleece, 261, n. 7.
Vessel, the first Virginia, built by Captain Argall, 50.
Vestments objected to, in reign of Edward VI, 103;
bitter debates about, 108;
ceased to be abhorrent, 123.
Virginia Assembly petitions the king, 56;
proceedings of the first, 70, n. 15.
Virginia colony, the, 8;
emigrants set sail, 25;
code of laws and orders, 26;
character of the emigrants, 27;
arrival, 27;
first meetings with the Indians, 28;
the winter of misery, 29;
fear of attack from the Indians, 30;
food bought of the Indians, 31;
five hundred colonists arrive under Archer and Ratcliffe, 36;
settlements at Nansemond and the falls of the James River, 37;
famine of 1609-'10, 38;
only sixty survivors in June, 1610, 40;
arrival of Gates and Somers, 40;
Jamestown abandoned, 41;
arrival of De la Warr, 41;
De la Warr's government, 42;
flight of De la Warr, 43;
second lease of life, 43;
inefficient government of George Percy, 44;
martial law and slavery under Thomas Dale, 45;
ten men escape, 47;
Dale's services, 47;
private gardens allowed, 48;
tobacco cultivated, 49;
Argall's government and treachery, 50-52;
the Great Charter, 1618, 55, 173;
joy at its receipt, 56;
feared re-establishment of the old tyranny, 56, 70, n. 16;
wives supplied, 57;
the first homes, 58;
whole number of colonists, 58;
four fifths perished, 59;
petition to the king, 65, n. 5;
began raising silkworms, 76;
the silk-grass craze in, 79;
glass and iron works established and failed in, 83;
planted tobacco, 84;
struck root and its life assured, 85;
gained impetus from the king's opposition, 89;
government of, passed to the Crown, 92;
reached its greatest prosperity, 186, n. 8;
inhospitable to Lord Baltimore, 230;
opposes Roman Catholics, 231, 261, n. 9;
reckless living of people and clergy, 231;
expulsion of Lord Baltimore from, 232;
new emigration to, 344;
second generation of native Virginians appears, 345;
better ministers in the parishes and order in the courts, 345.
Virginia colony, map of, by John White, 1586, 8, 21, 22.
Virginia Company, letter of, to Governor Wyatt quoted, 22, n. 5;
code of laws and orders for its colonists, 26;
swindled and robbed, 52;
fall of the lottery, 53;
revival of interest, 53;
records destroyed, 54;
change in conduct of affairs, 55;
cruelty of agents paralleled by those of the East India
Company, 67, n. 9;
overthrow of the company, 70, n. 16;
dissolved in 1624, 85, 89, 92;
organized for trading, 86;
passed out of the control of traders, 87;
King James interferes with the election, 88;
grants two charters and a liberal patent to the Pilgrims, 172;
also leave to establish a provisional government, 173;
Lord Baltimore a member and councilor of, 224, 229, 230;
attempt to take away privileges granted to the colonists, 230.
Virginia Company's Manuscript Records. See MANUSCRIPT RECORDS,
VIRGINIA COMPANY.
Virginia Richly Valued, 79, m.; 95, n. 3.
Virginians obliged to pay quitrents in Maryland, 249.
Vries, David P. de, Voyages, 308, n. 7.
Waddington's Congregational History, 167, m.
Walker's First Church in Hartford, 317, m.; 321, m.
Ward's Simple Cobbler, 285, m.; 299, m.
Warwick, second Earl, intrigues to wreck the Virginia Company,
51, 68, n. 13;
protects Argall in his plundering, 52;
has Cavendish and others arrested, 69, n. 13;
loses influence in the company, 87;
made Governor in Chief and Lord High Admiral of all plantations
in America, 252.
Waterhouse's Declaration of Virginia, 22, n. 6.
Watertown church, part of, ready to follow Hooker, 323;
one of the centres of discontent, 324.
Welde's Short Story of the Rise, Reign, and Ruine of Antinomianism,
330, m.; 336, m.; 339, m.; 340, m.; 347, n. 4.
Wentworth, friend of Calvert, 222.
West, insubordinate settlers under, 37, 60, n. 2;
Indians hostile to, 60, n. 2;
treacherous and cruel, 64, n. 4.
West India plants tried in Virginia, 82.
Weston Documents, 11, m.
Wethersfield, John Oldham and his company settled at, 324.
Weymouth kidnapped Maine Indians, 17.
Whale-fishing in Lake Ontario, 11.
Whelewright, brother-in-law of Mrs. Hutchinson, 336;
banished at November court following the synod, 337;
testimony regarding his sister-in-law, 348, n. 6.
Whelewright's sermon, 331, m.
Whincop charter not used, 184, n. 4; 186, n. 8.
Whiston, a place of Puritan assemblage, 142.
Whitaker, Alexander, praises Dale, 66, n. 9;
minister at Henrico, 168;
letters, 183, n. 3.
Whitaker's Good Newes from Virginia, 66, n. 9; 168.
Whitbourne, Captain, pamphlet on Newfoundland, 224, 258, n. 3;
letters of Wynne and others in, 229, m.
White, Father, Relatio Itineris, 243, m.; 244, m.; 263, n. 16;
on settlement of Montserrat, 261, n. 9; 263, n. 14, n. 16.
White, John, of Dorchester, an active colonizer, 189, 199, 203.
White, John, map of Virginia by, 1586, 8;
in Grenville Collection, 21, n. 4;
reproduced in the Century Magazine, 22, n. 4;
copy in Kohl Collection, 22, n. 4
White's, John, The Planter's Plea, 190, m.; 199, m.
Whitgift, Archbishop, efforts of, to suppress nonconformity, 122;
ordered Bownd's book called in, 132;
persecuted the Puritans at Scrooby, 153;
declared King James inspired, 161.
Whittingham, Dean of Durham, author of A Brieff Discourse, 135, n. 3;
on the Puritan side in Frankfort, 143.
Williams, Roger, in advance of his age, 256;
opposed the authorities in Massachusetts, 267;
early career of, 268;
refused preferments, 269, 307, n. 2;
flight of, to New England, 270;
refuses communion with the Boston church, 270, 307, n. 3;
opposed to compromise, 271, 307, n. 4;
his selection as minister at Salem opposed by the General Court,
271, 272;
removed to Plymouth, 272;
wrote a treatise on the dialect of the New England Indians, 273;
rebuked Bradford and wrote against the royal patents, 274, 281,
308, n. 9;
returned to Salem with some followers, 275;
his ideal too high for that age, 281;
preached without holding office, 281;
"convented at court," 281;
charges against, based on his book, "not so evil as at first they
seemed," 282;
the broad principle laid down by, 283;
made teacher at Salem, 284;
fast-day sermon on eleven "public sins," 286;
dealt with ecclesiastically, 287;
scruples against enforced oaths, 289;
new charges against, 289;
champion of soul liberty, 290;
incorrigible, 290, 291;
trial and banishment, 292, 309, n. 12; 310, n. 13, 14, 16;
authorities, 310, n. 17;
on account of illness permitted to remain during the winter, 293;
a few friends faithful to, 293, 294;
escape to the Indians, 295;
abandons settlement at Seekonk River and founds Providence, 296;
banishment of, an act of persecution, 297;
character of, 301, 307, n. 1;
a collector of scruples, 301, 302, 314, n. 23;
tenderness and friendship for Winthrop, 302;
became a Baptist and renounced his baptism, 303;
a Seeker, 303, 304;
his moral elevation of spirit, 304;
ascendency over the Indians, 305;
an individualist, 291, 305;
superior to his age and ours, 305;
his prophetic character, 306
a John Baptist of the distant future, 306;
enthusiastic nature of, 307, n. 2;
needed no practical consideration to stir him to action, 308, n. 11;
magnanimity without a parallel, 310, n. 15;
removal of Williams and his friends the beginning of dispersions
from the colony, 315;
prepared a harbor for all of uneasy conscience, 315.
Williams's letter to Mrs. Sadleir, 268, m.; 270, m.;
letters to Winthrop, 273, m.; 302, m.; 307, n. 5;
Reply to Cotton, 283, m.;
letters to Lady Barrington, 307, n. 1;
letter to John Cotton, the younger, 307, n. 2, 3, 4;
letter to Major Mason, 310, n. 15;
Bloudy Tenent, 311, n. 18.
Wilson, John, interprets battle of mouse and snake, 277;
on Williams's book, 282;
condemned by the Hutchinsonians, 333;
given to rhyming prophecies, 338.
Windebank, schemes of Cecilius Calvert with, 250.
Wine, efforts to produce, in Great Britain, 76;
in Virginia, 81.
Wingandacon, Indian name of the coast of North Carolina, 21, n. 3.
Wingfield deposed from leadership, 31;
recognizes Smith's services, 36;
plot against the life of, 61, n. 2;
warned Newport against Archer, 64, n. 3.
Wingfield's Discourse, 64, n. 3.
Winslow, of Plymouth, warns Williams from Seekonk River, 296.
Winslow's Briefe Narration, 172, m.; 175, m.; 185, n. 6.
Winsor's, Justin, Elder Brewster, 155, m.; 169, m.
Winsor's Narrative and Critical History of America, 21, n. 1.
Winthrop, John, principal figure in the Puritan migration, 202;
character and influence of, 204;
made a justice of the peace, 204, 217, n. 5;
elected governor, 210, 217, n. 6;
objected to a government directed from England, 208;
superseded by Dudley, 287;
recommended Narragansett Bay to Williams, 293, 294;
lenity toward Williams rebuked, 301;
moved house, begun at Newtown, to Boston, 318;
antipathy to Mrs. Hutchinson, 330;
ministers rally around, 332;
again made governor, 336;
chief inquisitor at the trial of Mrs. Hutchinson, 338;
evidence to prove Mrs. Hutchinson a witch, 340, 341;
wallows in superstition, 341.
Winthrop's Journal (Savage's), 252, m.; 272, m.; 290, m.; 291, m.;
294, m.; 301, m.; 307, n. 3; 309, n. 12; 310, n. 17; 318, m.; 323, m.;
329, m.; 336, m.; 339, m.; 340, m.; 341, m.; 344, m.; 348, n. 8;
349, n. 9.
Winthrop's Life and Letters, 198, m.; 217, n. 4, 5, 6; 218, n. 8.
Winthrop's Reasons for New England, 198, 204, 217, n. 4.
Wives for the Virginia colonists, 57, 71, n. 18;
supplied to Louisiana and Canada, 72, n. 18.
Women, proposal to send, to Virginia, 71, n. 18;
in Gates's party, 71, n. 18;
first two in the colony, 71, n. 18.
Wood, beauty of the, of certain American trees, 65, n. 7.
Woodnoth's Short Collection, 70, n. 16; 87, m.;
account of, 97, n. 10.
Wood's New England's Prospect, 18, m.; 318, m.; 319, m.
Words had the force of blows, 110.
Wright's Elizabeth and her Times, 142, m.
Wyatt, Sir Francis, name appended to The Tragicall Relation, 66, n. 9;
opinion of, on a divided government, 207.
Wyckoff, on Silk Manufacture, 95, n. 3.
Yeardley, Sir George, arrival in Virginia, 71, n. 17;
knighted, 134, n. 1;
instructed to administer oath of supremacy, 232.
Yong, Thomas, in the Delaware, 10;
seeks a Mediterranean in America, 11.
Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, 217, n. 4; 317, m.
Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 158, n. 3; 167, m.; 184, n. 4.
Yucatan, meaning of, 21, n. 3.
Yucca, clothing made from the fiber of the, 79, 80;
a "commoditie of speciall hope and much use," 80.
Zeal, passionate, often stupefies reason, 171.
Zurich and Strasburg cities of refuge for conservatives, 104;
differences between exiles at, and those of Geneva, 106, 107.
Zurich Letters, 135, n. 3.
Zwisck, Peter John, The Liberty of Religion, 312, n. 19.
CHARLES ALEXANDER NELSON.
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"A work which is destined to fill a noticeable gap in our
national annals."--_Philadelphia Bulletin._
"No better excuse for this important work could be desired
than that a navy with such a brilliant career on the whole
as has the American navy is without a full and continuous
record of its achievement.... The author has important new
facts to tell, and he tells them in a clear and graceful
literary style."--_Hartford Post._
"Mr. Maclay has deservedly won for himself an enviable place
among our American historians.... His researches have been
exhaustive and his inquiries persistent, and he has used his
wealth of material with a proper appreciation of historical
value."--_Boston Advertiser._
"Like the average young American, this author has an
enthusiastic appreciation of American valor on the high
seas, and he reproduces graphic sketches of battle scenes
and incidents in a way to insure for his book a hearty
welcome on the part of these who keenly enjoy this sort of
literature.... The illustrations of the old battle ships and
the conflicts at sea, made memorable as long as the history
of the American Republic shall live, add much to the
attractiveness of this book.... Professor Maclay has added a
substantial work to historical American
literature."--_Philadelphia Telegraph._
"It fills a place which has almost escaped the attention of
historians. Mr. Maclay's work shows on every page the minute
care with which he worked up his theme. His style is precise
and clear, and without any pretense of rhetorical
embellishment."--_New York Tribune._
_THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA._ A Study of the American Commonwealth,
its Natural Resources, People, Industries, Manufactures, Commerce, and
its Work in Literature, Science, Education, and Self-Government.
Edited by NATHANIEL S. SHALER, S. D., Professor of Geology in Harvard
University. In two volumes, royal 8vo. With Maps, and 150 full-page
Illustrations. Cloth, $10.00.
In this work the publishers offer something which is not
furnished by histories or encyclopædias, namely, a succinct
but comprehensive expert account of our country at the
present day. The very extent of America and American
industries renders it difficult to appreciate the true
meaning of the United States of America. In this work the
American citizen can survey the land upon which he lives,
and the industrial, social, political, and other
environments of himself and his fellow-citizens. The best
knowledge and the best efforts of experts, editor, and
publishers have gone to the preparation of a standard book
dedicated to the America of the present day; and the
publishers believe that these efforts will be appreciated by
those who desire to inform themselves regarding the America
of the end of the century.
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS.
Hon. WILLIAM L. WILSON, Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee,
Fifty-third Congress.
Hon. J. R. SOLEY, formerly Assistant Secretary of the Navy.
EDWARD ATKINSON, Ll. D., Ph. D.
Col. T. A. DODGE, U. S. A.
Col. GEORGE E. WARING, Jr.
J. B. McMASTER, Professor of History in the University of
Pennsylvania.
CHARLES DUDLEY WARNER, LL. D.
Major J. W. POWELL, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey and the
Bureau of Ethnology.
WILLIAM T. HARRIS, LL. D., U. S. Commissioner of Education.
LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D.
H. H. BANCROFT, author of "Native Races of the Pacific Coast."
HARRY PRATT JUDSON, Head Dean of the Colleges, University of Chicago.
Judge THOMAS M. COOLEY, formerly Chairman of the Interstate Commerce
Commission.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.
D. A. SARGENT, M. D., Director of the Hemenway Gymnasium, Harvard
University.
CHARLES HORTON COOLEY.
A. E. KENNELLY, Assistant to Thomas A. Edison.
D. C. GILMAN, LL. D., President of Johns Hopkins University.
H. G. PROUT, Editor of the Railroad Gazette.
F. D. MILLET, formerly Vice-President of the National Academy of
Design.
F. W. TAUSSIG, Professor of Political Economy in Harvard University.
HENRY VAN BRUNT.
H. P. FAIRFIELD.
SAMUEL W. ABBOTT, M. D., Secretary of the State Board of Health,
Massachusetts.
N. S. SHALER.
Sold only by subscription. Prospectus, giving detailed chapter titles
and specimen illustrations, mailed free on request.
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
[Transcriber's notes:
Obvious printer's errors have been corrected, all other
inconsistencies are as in the original. The author's spelling has been
maintained.
An entry in the index for the "Northwest passage" has been left out,
being unreadable.
Superscripts are enclosed in { }.
In the sentence "Those Adventurers & Planters by Vertue .... ", there
is a tilde on the last "c" of "Incorporacon"; and in the sentence "In
this Provynce soe as they might ...", there is a tilde on the "c" of
"toleracon".]
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