The Beginners of a Nation Part 18

IV.

[Sidenote: Danger of extinction.]

But when ten years of exile had pa.s.sed 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 wors.h.i.+p of G.o.d 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 pet.i.tioned 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 fellows.h.i.+p 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 a.s.surance 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 inst.i.tutions 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 pa.s.sionate 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, pa.s.sing 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 a.s.sociate the sober and discreet of the plantation with them to make laws, orders, and const.i.tutions 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 a.s.sure 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 inst.i.tutions 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 friends.h.i.+p 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 a.s.sured friends were to be the leaders." That Sandys thought of emigration is hardly probable, but he succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng 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 Ma.s.sachusetts 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 c.u.n.trie and quieted their spirits." Nor is it easy to pa.s.s 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 G.o.d 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 inst.i.tutions and thoughts of a great people!