The Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims - And Its Place in the Life of To-day

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Title: The Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims - And Its Place in the Life of To-day
Author: Addison, Albert Christopher
Language: English
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[Illustration

THE ROMANTIC STORY
_of the_
MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS

ALBERT CHRISTOPHER ADDISON]

[Illustration

Well worthy to be magnified are they
Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay.

Wordsworth]

[Illustration

The breaking waves dash'd high
On a stern and rock-bound coast;
And the woods, against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches toss'd.

Mrs. Hemans]

THE ROMANTIC STORY _of
the_ MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS

AND ITS PLACE IN THE
LIFE OF TO-DAY

_High ideals in the conduct of life are what survive, and that is why
the Pilgrim Narrative stands forth in the pages of every history as one
of the great events of the time._--SENATOR LODGE, _at the dedication of
the Pilgrim Memorial Monument at Provincetown, August 5th 1910_.

[Illustration:

_Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_
_From the Painting by W. F. Halsall_

THE MAYFLOWER IN PLYMOUTH HARBOUR]

THE

ROMANTIC STORY

OF THE MAYFLOWER

PILGRIMS

AND ITS PLACE IN THE

LIFE OF TO-DAY

BY
A. C. ADDISON

AUTHOR OF "OLD BOSTON: ITS PURITAN SONS
AND PILGRIM SHRINES," ETC.

WITH NUMEROUS ORIGINAL ILLUSTRATIONS

[Illustration]

BOSTON
L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
MDCCCCXI

FIRST IMPRESSION, SEPTEMBER, 1911

THE·PLIMPTON·PRESS·NORWOOD·MASS·U·S·A

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I. OLD WORLD HOMES AND PILGRIM SHRINES 1

II. THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO
HOLLAND 27

III. LIFE IN LEYDEN--ADIEU TO PLYMOUTH--THE
VOYAGE TO THE WEST 47

IV. "INTO A WORLD UNKNOWN"--TRIALS AND
TRIUMPH 71

V. THE PILGRIM ROLL CALL--FATE AND FORTUNES
OF THE FATHERS 123

VI. NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD
SHRINES 159

INDEX 189

THE PUBLISHERS WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE THE COURTESY OF MR. A. S. BURBANK, OF
PLYMOUTH, MASS., IN AUTHORIZING THEIR USE OF HIS PHOTOGRAPHS,
REPRODUCTIONS OF WHICH FORM A CONSIDERABLE PORTION OF THE ILLUSTRATIONS
OF THIS BOOK

ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGE

The Mayflower in Plymouth Harbour _Frontispiece_

The Cells, Guildhall, Boston xi

A Bit of Old Gainsborough 5

The Old Manor House, Scrooby, where William Brewster was
born.--Scrooby Church 9

The Cottage at Austerfield where William Bradford was born 13

The Old Hall, Gainsborough, in which the Separatist Church
was founded in 1602 17

Guildhall and South Street, Boston 21

The Old Courtroom, Guildhall, Boston 25

The River Witham, Boston 29

The Pilgrim Cells, Guildhall, Boston, showing the Kitchen
beyond 33

Old Town Gaol, Market-place, Boston 37

Trentside, Gainsborough 41

Elder William Brewster 45

John Robinson's House, Leyden, where the Pilgrim Fathers
worshipped 49

St. Peter's Church, Leyden 53

Bust of Captain John Smith 57

The Embarkation of the Pilgrims 61

Model of the Mayflower 65

Plymouth Harbour, as seen from Cole's Hill 69

The Landing of the Pilgrims 73

The March of Miles Standish 77

The Canopy over Plymouth Rock 81

The Old Fort and First Meeting-House 85

Pilgrims going to Church 89

The Departure of the Mayflower 93

Captain Miles Standish 97

Governor William Bradford 101

The Pilgrim Memorial Monument at Provincetown 105

Plymouth Rock 109

A Bit of Old Boston 113

The Site of the Old Fort, Burial Hill, Plymouth 117

First Church, Plymouth 121

The Pilgrim Fathers' Memorial, Plymouth 125

John Alden.--Priscilla Mullins 129

Governor Bradford's Monument, Burial Hill, Plymouth 133

Governor Carver's Chair and Ancient Spinning Wheel 137

Elder Brewster's Chair and the Cradle of Peregrine White 141

The Grave of John Howland 145

The Grave of Miles Standish, Duxbury 149

The Miles Standish Monument, Duxbury 153

Governor Edward Winslow 157

Mayflower Tablet on the Barbican, Plymouth, England 161

Scrooby Village 165

The Ancient Kitchen, Guildhall, Boston 169

Robinson Memorial Church, Gainsborough 173

Tablet in Vestibule of Robinson Memorial Church,
Gainsborough.--Memorial Tablet on St. Peter's Church,
Leyden 177

Design by R. M. Lucas for the Tercentenary Memorial at
Southampton 181

The Font, Austerfield Church.--The Font, Primitive Methodist
Chapel, Lound 185

PREFACE

By a strange yet happy coincidence, on the very day the writer of these
lines sat silent in a Pilgrim cell at Boston--the Lincolnshire town
where the Pilgrims were imprisoned in their first attempt to flee their
native country--pondering on the past and inscribing his humble lines to
the New World pioneers, the President of the American Republic was at
Provincetown, Massachusetts, dedicating a giant monument to the planters
of New Plymouth, the last of the many memorials erected to them. The
date was the fifth of August, 1910. President Taft in his address at the
commemoration ceremonies declared very truly that the purpose which
prompted the Pilgrims' progress and the spirit which animated them
furnish the United States to-day with the highest ideals of moral life
and political citizenship. Three years before, another American
President, Mr. Roosevelt, at the cornerstone laying of this monument,
enlarged on the character of their achievement, and in ringing words
proclaimed its immensity and world-wide significance.

Down through the years the leaders of men have borne burning witness to
the wonderful work of the Pilgrim Fathers. Its influence is deep-rooted
in the world's history to-day, and in the life and the past of our race
it stands its own enduring monument.

The object of the present narrative is to give to the reader an account
of the Mayflower Pilgrims that is concise and yet sufficiently
comprehensive to embrace all essentials respecting the personality and
pilgrimage of the Forefathers, whom the poet Whittier pictures to us in
vivid verse as:

those brave men who brought
To the ice and iron of our winter time
A will as firm, a creed as stern, and wrought
With one mailed hand and with the other fought.

In the pages which follow, the Old World homes and haunts of the Pilgrim
Fathers are depicted and described. The story has the advantage of
having been written on the scene of their early trials, concerted plans
of escape, and stormy emigration, by one who, from long association, is
familiar with the history and traditions of Boston and the quaint old
sister port of Gainsborough, and perhaps imparts to the work some
feeling of the life and local atmosphere of those places in the days
that are dealt with, and before. The Pilgrims are followed into Holland
and on their momentous journey across seas to the West. The story aims
at being trustworthy and up-to-date as regards the later known facts of
Pilgrim history and the developments which reflect it in our own time.
It does what no other book on the subject has attempted: it traces the
individual lives and varying fortunes of the Pilgrims after their
settlement in the New World; and it states the steps taken in recent
years to perpetuate the memory of the heroic band. The tale that is told
is one of abiding interest to the Anglo-Saxon race; and its
attractiveness in these pages is enhanced by the series of illustrations
which accompanies the printed record. Grateful acknowledgment is made of
much kindly assistance rendered during the preparation of the work,
especially by the Honourable William S. Kyle, Treasurer of the First
(Pilgrim) Church at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

_Men they were who could not bend;
Blest Pilgrims, surely, as they took for guide
A will by sovereign Conscience sanctified._

* * * * *

_From Rite and Ordinance abused they fled
To Wilds where both were utterly unknown._

--WORDSWORTH, "_Ecclesiastical Sonnets,"
Part III. Aspects of Christianity in
America, I. The Pilgrim Fathers._

_In romance of circumstance and the charm of personal heroism the story
of the Pilgrim Fathers is pre-eminent._

--J. A. DOYLE'S "_English in America_."

_The coming hither of the Pilgrim three centuries ago ... shaped the
destinies of this Continent, and therefore profoundly affected the
destiny of the whole world._

--PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT, _at the laying
of the corner-stone of the Pilgrim
Memorial Monument at Provincetown,
Massachusetts, August 20th, 1907_.

[Illustration: THE CELLS, GUILDHALL, BOSTON _With winding staircase to
court-room above_]

FROM A PILGRIM CELL

THE PILGRIMS' CELLS,
GUILDHALL, BOSTON, LINCOLNSHIRE.

This is written in a Pilgrim cell, one of those dark and narrow dungeons
which the Pilgrim Fathers tenanted three hundred and four years ago, in
the autumn of 1607, and behind the heavy iron bars of which men have for
generations delighted to be locked in memory of their lives and deeds.
The present-day gaoler, less terrible than his predecessor of Puritan
times, has ushered me in and closed the rusty gate upon me, and left me
alone, a willing prisoner for a space. I look around, but do not start
and shrink in mortal dread as must once the hapless captives here
immured.

'Tis a gloomy place as a rule; but just now some outer basement doors,
flung open, admit the autumn sunlight, which floods the hall floor and
penetrates to the cell where I am seated. To get here I have stooped and
sidled through an opening a foot and a half wide and five feet deep, set
in a whitewashed wall fourteen inches thick. I stand with arms
outstretched, and find that the opposite walls may be pressed with the
finger-tips of each hand. The cell extends back seven feet, and the
height is the same between the bare stone floor and the roughly boarded
roof. All is dingy, cobwebbed, musty, and silent as the grave. Like the
neighbouring tenement it is cold, mean, melancholy, fit only to be
shunned. Yet its associations are dear indeed. For this is holy ground,
a hallowed spot, a Mecca of modern pilgrims. It has a history held
sacred in two hemispheres, that of religious persecution, of loyal
resolution, of physical fetters and spiritual freedom.

Such is the story inscribed upon these walls, a record which may be read
in all their time-worn stones, on every inch of their rusted bolts and
bars. For they are the cells of the Pilgrim Fathers. Here was the first
rude break in their weary worldly progress, a journey which was to
continue with affliction into Holland, thence back to Plymouth, and,
after a last adieu there to English soil, on in the little Mayflower to
New Plymouth and a New England.

Alone in a Pilgrim cell! What thoughts the situation kindles; how
eagerly the imagination shapes and clothes them; what scenes this mouldy
atmosphere unfolds. The very solitude is eloquent with pious
reminiscence; the void is filled again, peopled with those spectres of
an imperishable past; their prayers and praise fall on the listening
ear, a soft appeal for grace and strength, the lulling notes of a rough
psalmody; then answering dreams and visions of the night.

THE AUTHOR.

1911.

OLD WORLD HOMES AND PILGRIM SHRINES

THE ROMANTIC STORY _of the_ MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS

OLD WORLD HOMES AND PILGRIM SHRINES

_View each well-known scene:
Think what is now and what hath been._--SCOTT.

Lincolnshire stands pre-eminent among the English shires for inspiriting
records of trials borne and conflicts waged for conscience' sake. The
whole country, from the lazy Trent to the booming eastern sea, teems
moreover with religious interest. To read what happened between the
births of two famous Lincolnshire men--Archbishop Langton in the twelfth
century; and Methodist John Wesley in the seventeenth--is like reading
the history of English nonconformity. The age of miracles was long since
past; yet Stephen Langton, Primate of England and Cardinal of Rome, was
a champion of the national liberties. He aided, nay instigated, the
wresting of Magna Charta from King John. That was not the result of his
education; 'twas the Lincolnshire blood in his veins. For the outrage on
the Romish traditions the Archbishop was suspended by the Pope.
Probably he would have been hanged if they could have got at him.

But we can go back farther even than Langton's time. Not many miles from
Gainsborough is the Danish settlement of Torksey, rich in ecclesiastical
lore. Here Paulinus baptised the Lindissians on the sandy shore of the
Trent, in the presence of Edwin, King of Northumbria. Hereabout, they
say, King Alfred the Great was married to the daughter of Etheldred, and
the old wives of Gainsborough used to recite tales of Wickliffe hiding
on the spot where once stood the dwelling-place of Sweyn and of Canute.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Brocklehurst, Gainsborough_

A BIT OF OLD GAINESBOROUGH]

Lincolnshire has always had the courage to bear religious stress, and
strange things are read of it. It was near Louth that the insurrection
known as "The Pilgrimage of Grace" began. Eighty-five years before the
sailing of the Mayflower, and thirty years before William Brewster was
born, the ecclesiastical commissioners for the suppression of
monasteries (which were plentiful in Lincolnshire) went down to hold a
visitation at Louth. But the excursion was not to their pleasure. As one
of them rode into the town he heard the alarm bell pealing from the
tower, and then he saw people swarming into the streets carrying bills
and staves, "the stir and noise arising hideous." He fled into the
church for sanctuary, but they hauled him out, and with a sword at his
breast bade him swear to be true to the Commonwealth. He swore. That
was the Examiner. When the Registrar came on the scene he was with scant
ceremony dragged to the market cross, where his commission was read in
derision and then torn up, and he barely escaped with his life. For the
same cause there were risings at Caistor and Horncastle--two of the
demurest of modern towns. The Bishop's Chancellor was murdered in the
streets of Horncastle and the body stripped and the garments torn to
rags; and at Lincoln the episcopal palace was plundered and partially
demolished.

But Lincolnshire need rest no fame upon such merits as these. Greater
honour belongs to the county, for it was Lincolnshire that made the most
important of all contributions to the building of America when it sent
forth the Pilgrim Fathers, and afterwards the Puritan leaders, who met
for conference in the eventful days of the movement in Boston town, in
Sempringham manor house, or in Tattershall Castle, to lay the
foundations of the Massachusetts settlements. And, as Doyle in his
"English in America," truly says, "In romance of circumstance and the
charm of personal heroism the story of the Pilgrim Fathers is
pre-eminent. They were the pioneers who made it easy for the rest of the
host to follow." Their colony was the germ of the New England States.

Amid the quiet pastures threaded by the Ryton stream, where the counties
of York and Lincoln and Nottingham meet, are two small villages, the
homes of the only Pilgrim Fathers satisfactorily traced to English
birthplaces. A simple, pathetic interest clings to these secluded spots.
At Scrooby is the manor house wherein William Brewster, the great heart
of the pilgrimage and foremost planter of New Plymouth, was born.
Archbishops of York had found a home here for centuries; Wolsey, at the
close of his strangely checkered career, lodged there and planted a
mulberry tree in the garden; Bishop Bonner dated a letter thence to
Thomas Cromwell. And when William Brewster became Elder Brewster,
pensive Puritans often gathered there to worship, "and with great love
he entertained them when they came, making provision for them to his
great charge." His condition was prosperous and he could well afford to
do it. A Cambridge man, Brewster early took his degree at Peterhouse; he
next saw service at Court, and accompanied Secretary Davison to the
Netherlands; afterwards succeeding his father and grandfather as post on
the great North Road at Scrooby, a responsible and well-paid office,
which he filled for nearly twenty years.

The parish church, "not big, but very well builded," as Leland said; the
quaint old vicarage; the parish pound, and all that remains of the
parish stocks: these stand witness to the antiquity of Scrooby. A little
railway station and rushing Northern expresses are almost the only signs
of twentieth century activity.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

THE OLD MANOR HOUSE, SCROOBY, WHERE WILLIAM BREWSTER WAS BORN]

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

SCROOBY CHURCH]

The Scrooby community was an off-shoot from that at Gainsborough, the
first Separatist church formed in the North of England, of which the
pastor was John Smyth, a graduate of Cambridge, an "eminent man in his
time" and "well beloved of most men." Smyth preached at Gainsborough
from 1602 to 1606, when he was driven into exile. The members of his
church gathered from miles around to its services, crossing into
Gainsborough by the ferry-boat on the Trent. This continued for two or
three years, until at length "these people became two distinct bodies or
churches, and in regard of distance did congregate severally; for they
were of sundry towns and villages."

Richard Clyfton, once rector of Babworth near Retford--"a grave and
reverend preacher"--was the first pastor at Scrooby; and with him as
teacher was "that famous and worthy man Mr. John Robinson," another
seceder from the English Church, who afterwards was pastor for many
years "till the Lord took him away by death."

Next to Brewster, William Bradford was the most prominent of the lay
preachers among the Scrooby fraternity. He became Governor Bradford of
the Plymouth Colony--"the first American citizen of the English race who
bore rule by the free choice of his brethren"--and the historian of the
Plymouth Plantation. Bradford, a yeoman's son with comfortable home
surroundings, lived at Austerfield, an ancient agricultural village
about three miles from Scrooby on the Yorkshire side. The pretty cottage
of his birth is still shown by the roadside near the Norman church, and
the parish register bears the record of his baptism, on March 19, 1589.
A youth of seventeen years, he walked across the fields to join the
Scrooby brethren in their meetings. He and Brewster, the two men who
were to impress their individuality so powerfully upon the religious
life of the American people, became firm friends, and, says their later
historian,[1] that friendship, "formed amid the tranquil surroundings of
the North Midlands of their native land, was to be deepened by common
labours and aspirations, and by common hardships and sufferings endured
side by side both in the Old World and the New."

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

THE COTTAGE AT AUSTERFIELD WHERE WILLIAM BRADFORD WAS BORN]

But it was Robinson to whom they jointly owed much guidance. When, in
Bradford's own words, "They could not long continue in any peaceable
condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side;" when "some
were taken and clapt up in prison, and others had their houses beset and
watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands;" and when "the
most were fain to fly and leave their homes and habitations and the
means of their livelihood," it was John Robinson, the devout and learned
pastor, who led them out of Nottinghamshire into Holland, and there
inspired within them the vision of complete earthly freedom in the
new country across the Atlantic.

Robinson was a Lincolnshire man. Gainsborough claims him, and on
Gainsborough his first solid memorial has been raised. Many are familiar
with Gainsborough who have never seen the town. Up the Trent sailed
Sweyn, the sanguinary Dane, to conquest; and his son Canute--he that
ordered back the rising tide, and got a wetting for his pains--was at
Gainsborough when he succeeded him as King of England.

Gainsborough is the St. Ogg's of "The Mill on the Floss," and the Trent
is the Floss, along which Tom and Maggie Tulliver "wandered with a sense
of travel, to see the rushing spring-tide, the awful Ægir, come up like
a hungry monster"--the inrush of the first wave of the tide, a
phenomenon peculiar at that time to both the Trent and the Witham.

What George Eliot wrote of St. Ogg's describes old Gainsborough
to-day--"A town which carries the trace of its long growth and history
like a millennial tree, and has sprung up and developed in the same spot
between the river and the low hill from the time when the Roman legion
turned their backs on it from the camp on the hillside, and the
long-haired sea-kings came up the river and looked with fierce eyes at
the fatness of the land."

And in sketching the history of St. Ogg's the novelist remembered that
time of ecclesiastical ferment now written about, when "Many honest
citizens lost all their possessions for conscience' sake, and went forth
beggared from their native town. Doubtless there are many houses
standing now," she said, "on which those honest citizens turned their
backs in sorrow, quaint gabled houses looking on the river, jammed
between newer warehouses, and penetrated by surprising passages, which
turn at sharp angles till they lead you out on a muddy strand
over-flowed continually by the rushing tide." Did not Maggie Tulliver,
in white muslin and simple, noble beauty, attend an "idiotic beggar" in
the still existing Old Hall, where the Fathers worshipped and John Smyth
taught--"a very quaint place, with broad, jaded stripes painted on the
walls, and here and there a show of heraldic animals of a bristly,
long-snouted character, the cherished emblems of a noble family once the
seigniors of this now civic hall"?

In this Old Hall the Separatist church was founded in 1602, and here it
had the friendly protection of the Hickman family, Protestants whose
religious sympathies had brought them persecution and exile in the past.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

THE OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH, IN WHICH THE SEPARATIST CHURCH WAS FOUNDED
IN 1602]

But the "foreign-looking town" which George Eliot endowed with romance
had, like the neighbouring estuary town of Boston, which her language
might have served almost as well to paint, been the abode of hard,
historic fact. We can imagine the Scrooby brethren crossing the ancient
ferry to bid their friends at Gainsborough farewell. For in 1607 we
read, this "groupe of earnest professors of religion and bold assertors
of the principle of freedom and personal conviction in respect to the
Christian faith and practice" had formed the resolution to seek in
another country the liberty they found not at home.[2] But it was as
unlawful to flee from their native land as to remain in it without
conforming, for the statute of 13 Richard II, still in force, made
emigrating without authority a penal crime.

Not Gainsborough alone in the North and East appeals to the never-ending
stream of reverent New World pilgrims to Old World shrines. On an autumn
day of the year above named came Elder Brewster to the famed new borough
of Boston. There he cautiously looked about him, and made a bargain with
the captain of a Dutch vessel to receive his party on board "as
privately as might be." But they were betrayed, arrested, stripped of
their belongings and driven into the town, a spectacle for the gaping
crowd, then haled before the justices at the Guildhall and "put into
ward," there to await the pleasure of the Privy Council concerning them.

Boston is a unique old shrine--a place "familiar with forgotten years,"
as George Eliot says; a town, as already hinted, resembling Gainsborough
in many outward features, but even wealthier in associations dear to the
hearts of New World pilgrims. Boston and Gainsborough are regarded as
the two most foreign-looking towns in England. Many of Boston's
inhabitants still hold the brave spirit which enabled their ancestors to
endure the religious stress of the seventeenth century. It has been a
cradle of liberty since that idea first held men's thoughts and roused
them to action.

The quaint buildings, the ancient towers of Hussey and of Kyme, the
Guildhall, the Grammar School, the great church with its giant tower all
crusted o'er with the dust of antiquity: these stood when Bradford and
Brewster and their companions in search of freedom were arraigned before
the magistrates for the high crime and misdemeanor of trying to leave
their native land.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

GUILDHALL AND SOUTH STREET, BOSTON]

They must have had secret friends in the place; for some time after
their Boston adventure the Government sent down Commissioners to make
serious inquiry as to who had cut off the crosses from the tops of the
maces carried before the Mayor to church "on Sundays and Thursdays and
solemn times." John Cotton, the Puritan vicar, openly condemned the act.
Suspicion fell upon churchwarden Atherton Hough. But he denied it,
though "he confessed he did before that year break off the hand and arm
of a picture of a Pope (as it seemed) standing over a pillar of the
outside of the steeple very high, which hand had the form of a church in
it." The confession seems to have been safely made, and doubtless
churchwarden Hough was proud of it. He might have been better employed
at that moment; but if any be tempted to censure his Puritan zeal, let
them remember the temper of the times in which he lived. There was
something more than wanton mischief behind it all. It was not in fact a
"picture" of a Pope, but an image much more innocent. But the
resemblance was sufficient for Atherton Hough.

The venerable Guildhall, where Brewster and the rest faced the justices,
stands in a street containing the queerest of riverside warehouses. One
of them, old Gysors' Hall, was once the home of a family belonging to
the merchant guilds of Boston, which gave to London two Mayors and a
Constable of the Tower in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The
Guildhall itself dates from the thirteenth century; the image of St.
Mary which once adorned its front shared the fate of the "picture" on
the church tower, with the difference that the Virgin vanished more
completely than the "Pope." The hall is regularly used by the public;
and local authorities with long and honourable history still deliberate
in the ancient court-room, with its wagon roof, its arch beams, its
wainscoted walls, and the Boston coat-of-arms and the table of Boston
Mayors since 1545 proudly displayed to view. Except for its fittings and
furniture the chamber presents much the appearance now that it did when
the Pilgrim Fathers, brought up from the cells which exist to-day just
as when they tenanted them, stood pathetic figures on its floor and were
interrogated by a body of justices, courteous and well-disposed, but
powerless to give them back their liberty.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

THE OLD COURTROOM, GUILDHALL, BOSTON

_Where the Pilgrims' Fathers faced the Justices. In the floor on the
left is the trap door to the staircase leading down to the Cells. The
Court ceased to be held here in 1843_]

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Dr. John Brown in "The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their
Puritan Successors."

[2] "Seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no hope of
their continuance there, they resolved to go into y^e Low Countries,
wher they heard was freedome of religion for all men; as also how
Sundrie from London, and other parts of y^e land had been exiled and
persecuted for y^e same cause, and were gone thither and lived at
Amsterdam and in other places of y^e land, so affter they had continued
togeither about a year, and kept their meetings every Saboth, in one
place or other, exercising the worship of God amongst themselves,
notwithstanding all y^e dilligence and malice of their adversaries, they
seeing they could no longer continue in y^t condition, they resolved to
get over into Hollad as they could which was in y^y year
1607-1608."--Bradford's "History of Plymouth Plantation."

THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND

[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

THE RIVER WITHAM, BOSTON]

THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND

_Well worthy to be magnified are they
Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay._

WORDSWORTH.

Great things were destined to result from that none too joyous jaunt of
Elder Brewster's when, late in 1607, charged by the Scrooby community to
find them a way out of England, he went down to Boston and chartered a
ship. William Bradford was of the Boston party. Everything was quietly
done. In all likelihood the intending emigrants never entered the town,
but gathered at some convenient spot on the Witham tidal estuary where
the rushing Ægir hissed.

Whether the Dutch skipper was dissatisfied with the fare promised him,
or he feared detection and punishment, cannot be told. Yet, when the
fugitives were all on board his vessel, and appeared about to sail, they
were arrested by minions of the law. Bitter must have been their
disappointment; stern, we may be sure, their remonstrance. But they
could do nothing more than upbraid the treacherous Dutchman. They were
not kept long in doubt as to their fate. Put back into open boats, their
captors "rifled and ransacked them, searching them to their shirts for
money, yea, even the women further than became modesty, and then carried
them back into the town, and made them a spectacle and wonder to the
multitude who came flocking on all sides to behold them." A goodly sight
for this curious Boston mob. "Being thus first by the catchpole officers
rifled and stripped of their money, books, and much other goods,"
proceeds the account, with an honest contempt for the writings of the
law, "they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers were sent
to inform the Lords of the Council of them; and so they were committed
to ward."

The basement cells in which the prisoners were placed had been in use at
that time for about sixty years, for "in 1552 it was ordered that the
kitchens under the Town Hall and the chambers over them should be
prepared for a prison and a dwelling-house for one of the sergeants."
There must have been more cells formerly. Two of them now remain. They
are entered by a step some eighteen inches high; are about six feet
broad by seven feet long; and in lieu of doors they are made secure by a
barred iron gate.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

THE PILGRIM CELLS, GUILDHALL, BOSTON, SHOWING THE KITCHEN BEYOND]

Into these dens the captives were thrust. Short of a dungeon
underground, no place of confinement could have been more depressing.
Only the heavy whitewashed gate, scarce wide enough to allow a man to
enter, admits the light and air; and the interior of each cell is dark
as night. We can imagine the misery of men fated to inhabit for long
such abodes of gloom; it must have been extreme. They look as if they
might have served as coal cellars for feeding the great open fireplaces
which, with their spits and jacks and winding-chains, still stand there
in the long open kitchen much as they did when they cooked the last
mayoral banquet or May Day dinner for the old Bostonians.

A curious winding stair (partly left with its post), terminating at a
trapdoor in the court-room floor, was the way by which prisoners
ascended and descended on their passage to and from the Court above.

Now these justices who had the dealing with the Pilgrim Fathers were
humane men, and were not without a feeling of sympathy for the unhappy
captives. It is therefore reasonable to suppose that during some portion
of this time, when their presence was not required by the Court, they
may have found them better quarters than the Guildhall cells. There was
a roomy ramshackle pile near the church in the market-place, half shop,
half jail, of irregular shape, with long low roof, which in 1584 was
"made strong" as regards the prison part, though in 1603--four years
before the date under notice--it was so insecure that an individual
detained there was "ordered to have irons placed upon him for his more
safe keeping," with a watchman to look after him! And thirty years later
the jail, "and the prison therein called Little-Ease," were repaired.

We know what "Little-Ease" means well enough; and so did many a wretched
occupant of these barbarous places. The Bishop of Lincoln, in the old
persecuting days, had at his palace at Woburn "a cell in his prison
called Little-Ease," so named because it was so small that those
confined in it could neither stand upright nor lie at length. Other
bishops possessed similar means of bodily correction and spiritual
persuasion.

This was worse than the Guildhall cells, with all their gloomy horror;
and if the magistrates entertained their unwilling guests at the town
jail, we may rest satisfied they did not eat the bread of adversity and
drink the water of affliction in Little-Ease, but in some more spacious
apartment. We have no evidence that they did so entertain them, and the
traditional lodging-place of these intercepted Pilgrims is the Guildhall
and nowhere else. It is probable, all the same, that a good part of
their captivity was spent in the town prison.

[Illustration: _From a Drawing by the late William Brand, F. S. A._

OLD TOWN GAOL, MARKET-PLACE, BOSTON]

Although the magistrates, from Mayor John Mayson downward, felt for the
sufferers and doubtless ameliorated their condition as far as they
could, it was not until after a month's imprisonment that the greater
part were dismissed and sent back, baffled, plundered, and
heart-broken, to the places they had so lately left, there to endure the
scoffs of their neighbours and the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline.

Seven of the principal men, treated as ring-leaders, were kept in prison
and bound over to the assizes. Apparently nothing further was done with
them. Brewster is said to have been the chief sufferer both in person
and pocket. He had eluded a warrant by leaving for Boston, and we know
this was in September, because on the fifteenth of that month the
messenger charged to apprehend Brewster and another man, one Richard
Jackson of Scrooby, certified to the Ecclesiastical Court at York "that
he cannot find them, nor understand where they are." On the thirtieth of
September also the first payment is recorded to Brewster's successor as
postmaster at Scrooby.

How the imprisoned Separatists fared, there is nothing to show. No
assize record exists. The Privy Council Register, which could have
thrown light on the matter, was destroyed in the Whitehall fire of 1618;
and the Boston Corporation records, which doubtless contained some entry
on the subject that would have been of the greatest interest now, are
also disappointing, as the leaves for the period, the first of a volume,
have disappeared.

Eventually the prisoners were all liberated. That dreary wait of many
weeks was a weariness of the spirit and of the flesh. Patiently they
bore the separation, and by and by they met to make more plans. Next
spring they agreed with another Dutchman to take them on board at a
lonely point on the northern coast of Lincolnshire, between Grimsby and
Hull, "where was a large common, a good way distant from any town." This
spot has been located as Immingham, the site of the new Grimsby docks.

The women, with the children and their goods, came to the Humber by boat
down the Trent from Gainsborough; the men travelled forty miles across
country from Scrooby. Both parties got to the rendezvous before the
ship, and the boat was run into a creek. This was unfortunate, as when
the captain came on the scene next morning the boat was high and dry,
left on the mud by the fallen tide, and there was nothing for it but to
wait for high water at midday.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Bocklehurst, Gainsborough_

TRENTSIDE, GAINSBOROUGH]

Meanwhile the Dutchman set about taking the men on board in the ship's
skiff, but when one boatload had been embarked he saw to his dismay, out
on the hills in hot pursuit, "a great company, both horse and foot, with
bills and guns and other weapons," for "the country was raised to take
them." So the laconic historian says, "he swore his country's
oath--Sacramente," and heaving up his anchor sailed straight away with
the people he had got. Their feelings may be imagined; and their plight
was aggravated by a violent storm, which drove them out of their course
and tossed them about for a fortnight, until even the sailors gave up
hope and abandoned themselves to despair. But the ship reached port,
at last, and all were saved.

The scene ashore meantime had been scarcely less distressing than that
at sea. Some of the men left behind made good their escape; the rest
tarried with the forsaken portion of the party. The women were
broken-hearted. Some wept and cried for their husbands, carried away in
the unkindly prudent Dutchman's ship. Some were distracted with
apprehension; and others looked with tearful eyes into the faces of the
helpless little ones that clung about them, crying with fear and quaking
with cold.

The men with the bills and guns arrested them; but, though they hurried
their prisoners from place to place, no Justice could be found to send
women to gaol for no other crime than wanting to go with their husbands.
We know not what befell them. The most likely suggestion is that "they
took divers ways, and were received into various houses by kind-hearted
country folk." Yet this we do know. They rallied somewhere at a later
day, and John Robinson and William Brewster, and other principal members
of the devoted sect, including Richard Clyfton, "were of the last, and
stayed to help the weakest over before them;" and Bradford tells us with
a sigh of satisfaction that "notwithstanding all these storms of
opposition, they all gatt over at length, some at one time and some at
another, and some in one place and some in another, and mette togeather
againe according to their desires, with no small rejoycing"--to take
part in the wonderful movement, begun by the Pilgrims and continued by
the Puritans, that gave to a new land a new nation. Thus, wrote Richard
Monckton Milnes, in some verses dated "The Hall, Bawtry, May 30th,
1854"--

Thus, to men cast in that heroic mould
Came Empire, such as Spaniard never knew--
Such Empire as beseems the just and true;
And at the last, almost unsought, came gold.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1904, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

ELDER WILLIAM BREWSTER]

III

LIFE IN LEYDEN--ADIEU TO PLYMOUTH--THE VOYAGE TO THE WEST

[Illustration: _Photograph by W. P. Demmenie, Leyden_

JOHN ROBINSON'S HOUSE, LEYDEN, WHERE THE PILGRIM FATHERS WORSHIPPED]

III

LIFE IN LEYDEN--ADIEU TO PLYMOUTH--THE VOYAGE TO THE WEST

_Then to the new-found World explored their way,
That so a Church, unforced, uncalled to brook
Ritual restraints, within some sheltering nook
Her Lord might worship and His Word obey
In Freedom._--WORDSWORTH.

The first stage of the pilgrimage from the Old England to the New was
now accomplished. Before the end of 1608 the whole body of the fugitives
had assembled at Amsterdam. Two Separatist communities were already
there, one from London, of which Francis Johnson was pastor and Henry
Ainsworth teacher, and the other from Gainsborough under John Smyth. But
these brethren were torn with dissensions, and the Scrooby Pilgrims,
seeking peace, moved on to Leyden, where, by permission of the
authorities, they settled early in 1609. Here they embarked upon a
prosperous period of church life, and after awhile purchased a large
dwelling, standing near the belfry tower of St. Peter's Church, which in
1611 served as pastor's residence and meeting-house, while in the rear
of it were built a score of cottages for the use of their poor.

Eleven quiet years were spent in Holland. Governor Bradford says they
continued "in a comfortable condition, enjoying much sweet and
delightful society and spiritual comfort," and that they "lived together
in love and peace all their days," without any difference or disturbance
"but such as was easily healed in love."

The conditions of life were stern and hard, but they bore all
cheerfully. With patient industry they worked at various handicrafts,
fighting poverty and gaining friends. William Bradford was a fustian
worker when, in 1613, at the age of twenty-three, he married Dorothy May
of Wisbech; the marriage register which thus describes him is preserved
in the Puiboeken at Amsterdam. Brewster, who was chief elder to John
Robinson, now sole pastor of the congregation since Richard Clyfton had
remained behind at Amsterdam, at first earned a livelihood by giving
lessons in English to the students at the University. Then, in
conjunction with Thomas Brewer, a Puritan from Kent, he set up a
printing press, and they produced books in defence of their principles,
such as were banned in England. Similar literature, emanating from the
Netherlands, had excited the wrath of King James, who still possessed
sufficient influence with the States of Holland to enable him to reach
offending authors there. This James attempted to do in the case of Elder
Brewster through Sir Dudley Carleton, then English ambassador at the
Hague. The result was ludicrous failure.

[Illustration: ST. PETER'S CHURCH, LEYDEN]

Brewster quitted Leyden for a time and went to London, not as was
thought to elude the vigilance of the Ambassador, but to arrange with
shipmasters for a voyage to the West, which the Pilgrims had begun to
think about. While Brewster was being sought by the Bishop of London's
pursuivants, Sir Dudley Carleton, unaware of the hunt proceeding in
London, was actively searching for him at Leyden, and at last
triumphantly informed Secretary Naunton that he had caught his man. But
as it turned out, the bailiff charged with the arrest, "being a dull,
drunken fellow," had seized Brewer instead of Brewster! The prisoner was
nevertheless detained, and after some ado consented to submit himself
for examination in England, on conditions which were observed. Nothing
came of it however. Brewster returned free and unmolested and Brewer
remained in Leyden for some years, when, venturing back to England, he
was thrown into prison and kept there until released by the Long
Parliament fourteen years later.

Events were meanwhile shaping the destiny of the little Pilgrim
community. Holland, though a welcome temporary asylum, was no permanent
place for these English exiles, and their thoughts turned before long
towards a settlement in North America. By good fortune this was a
country then being opened up, and it appeared as a veritable Land of
Promise to these refugees in search of a new home.

The first attempt to found an English colony on the mainland of North
America was made in 1584, when Sir Walter Raleigh took possession of the
country and named it Virginia in honour of his Queen. Nothing came of
this venture, but in 1607 a company of one hundred and five men from
England, sailing in three small ships, had landed on the peninsula of
Jamestown in Chesapeake Bay, and the first permanent settlement was
established.

The chief of this Virginian enterprise was the redoubtable John Smith, a
Lincolnshire man, the first of those sons of empire to go out from the
East to the West. Strange that this pioneer in the wilderness, who gave
to New England its name, should have come from a country which was to
contribute so much to the peopling of the New England States. It is upon
record that in 1619 Smith, who was then unemployed at home, volunteered
to lead out the Pilgrims to North Virginia, but nothing came of the
offer.

[Illustration: _Photograph by James, Louth_

BUST OF CAPTAIN JOHN SMITH

_Presented by General Baden-Powell to the Louth Grammar School_]

The Leyden brethren in their hour of need turned to the Virginia
Company, and the negotiations for a settlement in the chartered
territory were not altogether unsatisfactory. The obstacle was their
religion. On the Council of the Company they had good friends; but its
charter not only enforced conformity, but provided stringent measures of
church government. Yet, though the Pilgrims could obtain no formal grant
of freedom of worship, the presumption that they would not be disturbed
was so strong that they accepted the conditions and were about to
embark when the Merchant Adventurers in London with whom they were
associated secured powers from the Plymouth Company, and they decided to
sail for New England instead of for Virginia.

Arrangements were not completed without "many quirimonies and
complaints;" but the exiles were saddled with such substantial
difficulties as want of capital and means of transport, and the
bargaining was all in favour of the merchants who were to finance and
equip the expedition. At length the compact was made and preparations
for the voyage were pushed forward, and the eventful day arrived when
the Pilgrims were to make the long, lone journey across the seas.

Pastor Robinson and a portion of his flock were to stay behind at Leyden
until the first detachment had secured a lodgment on the American
continent; and those about to sail, the majority of the little
community, went on board the Speedwell, a vessel of sixty tons. The
Pilgrims embarked included such stout-hearted pioneers as Brewster and
Bradford, John Carver, Edward Winslow, Isaac Allerton, Samuel Fuller,
and John Howland, all "pious and godly men;" also Captain Miles
Standish, who, though not a member of the congregation then or
afterwards, was a valiant soldier whose military experience and
well-tried sword would, it was suspected, prove of service in a country
where "salvages" were known to exist in large numbers and might have to
be encountered with the arm of flesh.

That was a touching scene and one which stands out boldly in the history
of the movement when, on a bright sunny morning in July, 1620, the
Pilgrim Fathers knelt on the seashore at Delfshaven and Mr. Robinson,
his hands uplifted and his voice broken with emotion, gave them his
blessing. Affecting also was the parting of the emigrants with those
they were leaving behind. They had need of all their courage and
patience.

They sailed with British cheers and a sounding volley fired as salute,
and made a brave enough show on quitting land; but troubles dogged them
on the waters. Delays and disappointments soon set in. The Speedwell
brought them to Southampton, where, anchored off the West Key, they
found the Mayflower of London, a bark of one hundred and eighty tons
burden, Captain Thomas Jones, and several passengers, some of them
merchants' craftsmen.

Here some anxious days were spent in patching up the compact with the
Adventurers, and while the vessels lay detained letters written by
Robinson arrived from Leyden, one for John Carver conveying the pastoral
promise--never, alas! redeemed--to join them later, and the other, full
of wise counsel and encouragement, addressed to the whole company, to
whom it was read aloud and "had good acceptance with all and after-fruit
with many."

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

_From the Painting by Weir_

THE EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS]

With ninety people in the Mayflower and thirty in the Speedwell, and a
governor and assistants appointed for each company, the two vessels
dropped down Southampton water on August 15[3]; but they were scarcely
in the Channel when the smaller craft began to leak, and they had to run
into Dartmouth and overhaul her. The repairs occupied eight days. At
the end of that time the ships again stood out to sea; but, when nearly
three hundred miles past the Land's End, Reynolds, master of the
Speedwell, reported that the pinnace was still leaking badly, and could
only be kept afloat by the aid of the pumps. So there was nothing for it
but to turn back a second time, and the vessels now put into Plymouth,
the Pilgrims landing at the Old Barbican.

At Plymouth the Speedwell was abandoned and sent back to London to the
Merchant Adventurers, and with her went eighteen persons who had turned
faint-hearted, among them Robert Cushman, a chief promoter of the
emigration, and his family. Finally, after much kindness and hospitality
extended to them by the Plymouth people, of whom they carried a grateful
remembrance across the Atlantic, the Pilgrim Fathers said adieu, and all
crowded on board the Mayflower, which, with its load of passengers,
numbering one hundred and two souls, followed by many a cheering shout
and fervent "God-speed" from the shore, set sail alone on September 16
on its dreary voyage to the West. The weighing of the anchor of that
little ship changed the ultimate destiny of half the English-speaking
race!

We have to remember that a trip like this in such a vessel as the
Mayflower, crowded for the most part with helpless people, was a
hazardous undertaking. The dangers of the deep were dreaded in those
days for all-sufficient reasons, and here was a tiny craft, heavily
submerged, making a winter voyage on a stormy ocean to a destination
almost unknown. It must have required the strongest resolution, both of
passengers and crew, to face the perils of the venture; the step was a
desperate one, but, urged on by circumstances and an indomitable spirit,
they took it unfalteringly, having first done what they could to make
the lumbering little ship seaworthy.

[Illustration: _Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution_

MODEL OF THE MAYFLOWER]

The weather was cold and tempestuous, and the passage unexpectedly long.
Half way across the Atlantic the voyagers incurred the penalty of those
early delays, which now left them still at sea in the bad season. Caught
by the equinoctial gales, they were sadly buffeted about, driven hither
and thither by boisterous winds, tossed like a toy on the face of great
rolling, breaking billows, the decks swept, masts and timbers creaking,
the rigging rattling in the hard northern blast. One of the violent seas
which struck them, unshipped a large beam in the body of the vessel,
but by strenuous labour it was got into position again, and the
carpenters caulked the seams which the pitching had opened in the sides
and deck. Once that sturdy colonist of later years, John Howland,
venturing above the gratings, was washed overboard, but by a lucky
chance he caught a coil of rope trailing over the bulwark in the sea,
and was hauled back into the ship. A birth and a death at intervals were
also events of the passage. It was not until two whole months had been
spent on the troubled ocean that glad cries at last welcomed the sight
of land, and very soon after, on November 21, sixty-seven days out from
Plymouth, the Mayflower rounded Cape Cod and dropped anchor in the
placid waters of what came to be Provincetown Harbour.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1890, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

PLYMOUTH HARBOUR, AS SEEN FROM COLE'S HILL]

FOOTNOTES:

[3] New style, which is that adopted for the dates of sailing, and
arrival and landing in North American.

"INTO A WORLD UNKNOWN"--TRIALS AND TRIUMPH

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

_From a Painting_

THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS]

"INTO A WORLD UNKNOWN"--TRIALS AND TRIUMPH

_The breaking waves dash'd high_
_On a stern and rock-bound coast;_
_And the woods, against a stormy sky,_
_Their giant branches toss'd._--MRS. HEMANS.

We can imagine with what wondering awe and mingled hopes and fears the
Pilgrims looked out over the sea upon that strange New World, with its
great stretch of wild, wooded coast and panorama of rock and dune and
scrub, wintry bay and frowning head-land, to which destiny and the worn
white wings of the Mayflower together had brought them. With thankful
hearts for safe deliverance from the perils of the sea, mindful of the
past and not despairing for the future, they turned trustfully and
bravely to meet the dangers which they knew awaited them in the unknown
wilderness ashore.

The point reached by the voyagers was considerably north of the intended
place of settlement, the vicinity of the Hudson River; but whether
accidental or designed--and some evidence there certainly was which
seemed to show that the master of the Mayflower had been bribed by the
Dutch[4] to keep away from Manhattan, which they wanted for
themselves--the variation was a happy one for the colonists, inasmuch as
it saved them from the savages, who were warlike and numerous near the
Hudson, while in this district they had been decimated and scattered by
disease.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1906, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

_From a Painting_

THE MARCH OF MILES STANDISH]

Now the Pilgrims were a prudent as well as a pious and plucky people,
and while yet upon the water they set about providing themselves with a
system of civil government. Placed as they were by this time outside the
pale of recognized authority, some fitting substitute for it must be
established if order was to be maintained. The necessity for this was
the more imperative as there were some on board--the hired labourers,
probably--who were not, it was feared, "well affected to peace and
concord." Assembled in the cabin of the Mayflower, we accordingly have
the leaders of the expedition, preparing that other historical incident
of the pilgrimage. There they drew up the document forming a body
politic and promising obedience to laws framed for the common good. This
was the first American charter of self-government. It was subscribed by
all the male emigrants on board, numbering forty-one. Under the
constitution adopted, John Carver was elected Governor for one year.

The Mayflower rode at anchor while three explorations were made to
discover a suitable place of settlement, one of them on shore under
Captain Miles Standish, and two by water in the ship's shallop, which
had been stowed away in pieces 'tween decks on the voyage. On December
21st an inlet of the bay was sounded and pronounced "fit for shipping,"
and the explorers on going inland found "divers cornfields and little
running brooks," and other promising sources of supply. They accordingly
decided that this was a place "fit for situation," and on December 26th
the Mayflower's passengers, cramped and emaciated by long confinement on
board, leaped joyfully ashore. Appropriately the spot was named New
Plymouth, after the last port of call in Old England.

The Pilgrims landed on a huge boulder of granite, the Pilgrim Stone,
still reverently preserved by their descendants: a rock which was

to their feet as a doorstep
Into a world unknown--the cornerstone of a nation![5]

The early struggles of the Plymouth planters and the hardships they
endured form a story of terrible privation and suffering on the one hand
and heroic endurance and self-sacrifice on the other. They were late in
arriving, and the season, midwinter, was unpropitious. The weather was
unusually severe, even for that rigorous climate, and the Pilgrims found
themselves in sorry plight on that bleak New England shore. Cold and
famine had doggedly to be fought, and the contest was an unequal one.
Cooped up for so long in the Mayflower, and badly fed and sheltered on
the voyage, the settlers were ill-fitted to withstand the stress of the
new conditions. For a time it was a struggle for bare existence, and the
little colony was brought very near to extinction.

The first care was to provide accommodation ashore, and for economy of
building the community was divided into nineteen households, and the
single men assigned to the different families, each of whom was to erect
its own habitation and to have a plot of land. These rude homesteads of
wood and thatch, and other buildings, eventually formed a single street
beside the stream running down to the beach from the hill beyond. The
soil of the chosen settlement appeared to be good, and abounded with
"delicate springs" of water; the land yielded plentifully in season, and
life teemed upon the coast and in the sea.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1906, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE CANOPY OVER PLYMOUTH ROCK]

But many of the Pilgrims never lived to enjoy this provision of a
bountiful Providence. Worn out, enfeebled in health, insufficiently
housed ashore, they were a prey to sickness. Death reaped a rich harvest
in their midst. Every second day a grave had to be dug for one or other
of them in the frozen ground. Sometimes, during January and February,
two or three died in a single day. So rapid was the mortality that at
last only a mere handful remained who were able to look after the sick.
William Bradford was at this time prostrated, and it is pathetic to note
the expression of his gratitude to his friend William Brewster and Miles
Standish and others who ministered to his needs and those of the
fellow-sufferers around him. One house, the first finished, was set
apart as a hospital. The hill above the beach was converted into a
burial-ground,[6] and one is touched to the quick to read of the graves
having to be levelled and grassed over for fear the prowling Indians
should discover how few and weak the strangers were becoming!

With March came better weather, and for the first time "the birds sang
pleasantly in the woods," and brought hope and gladness to the hearts of
the struggling colonists. But, by that time, of the hundred or more who
had landed three short months before, one-half had perished miserably.
John Carver succumbed in April, and his wife quickly followed him to
the grave. Bradford, by the suffrages of his brethren, was made Governor
for the first time in Carver's place. He had himself sustained a heavy
bereavement, for, while he was away in the shallop with the exploring
party, Dorothy May, the wife he had married at Amsterdam, fell overboard
and was drowned. Many men of the Mayflower also died that dreadful
winter as the ship lay at anchor in the bay, including the boatswain,
the gunner, and the cook, three quartermasters and several seamen.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

_From a Painting_

THE OLD FORT AND FIRST MEETING HOUSE]

To other troubles were allied the ever menacing peril of the Indians,
which resulted in the famous challenge of the bundle of arrows wrapped
in a rattlesnake's skin, and Bradford's effective reply to it with a
serpent's skin stuffed with powder and shot; also, less happily, that
return of Miles Standish and his men bearing in triumph a sagamore's
head; and the building of the hill-fort, with cannon brought ashore from
the Mayflower mounted on its roof, where also they worshipped till the
first church was built at the hill fort in 1648. Here it was that the
Pilgrims perpetuated the church founded at Scrooby in England. A
building erected for storage and public worship in the first days of the
colony took fire soon after its completion and was burnt to the ground.
Of the refuge on the hill Bradford writes: "They builte a fort with good
timber, both strong and comly, which was of good defence, made with a
flatte rofe and batilments, on which their ordnance was mounted, and
where they kepte constante watch, especially in time of danger. It
served them also for a meeting-house, and was fitted accordingly for
that use." The fort was large and square, and a work of such pretentions
as to be regarded by some of the Pilgrims as vainglorious. Its provision
was fully justified by the dangers which threatened the settlers, and it
became the center of both the civic and religious life of the little
colony.

An excellent idea of the scene at Sunday church parade is given in a
letter[7] written by Isaac de Rassières, secretary to the Dutch colony
established at Manhattan, the modern New York, in 1623, describing a
visit he paid to the Plymouth Plantation in the autumn of 1627. After
speaking of the flat-roofed fort with its "six cannon, which shoot iron
balls of four and five pounds and command the surrounding country," the
writer says of the Pilgrims meeting in the lower part: "They assemble by
beat of drum, each with his musket or firelock, in front of the
captain's door; they have their cloaks on, and place themselves in order
three abreast, and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum. Behind
comes the Governor in a long robe; beside him, on the right hand, comes
the Preacher with his cloak on, and on the left the Captain with his
sidearms and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand; and so they
march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are
constantly on their guard, night and day."

The spectacle may not have been strictly that witnessed at every service
on "Sundays and the usual holidays," for this was a state visit to the
Colony, with solemn entry and heralding by trumpeters, and the Pilgrims
probably treated the occasion with more form than was their wont. Still
it is an instructive picture, full of romantic suggestion.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

_From the Painting by G. H. Boughton_

PILGRIMS GOING TO CHURCH]

And then the service itself. For some notion of this we must turn to a
visit paid to the Plantation five years later, in the autumn of 1632,
when we are introduced to another scene in the fortified church. From
the "Life and Letters" of John Winthrop, Governor of the neighbouring
Colony of Massachusetts Bay, we gather that, at the time stated,
Winthrop and his pastor, John Wilson, came over to Plymouth, walking the
twenty-five miles. "On the Lord's Day," we read, "there was a sacrament,
which they did partake in." Roger Williams was there as assistant to
Ralph Smith, the first minister of Plymouth church, and in the afternoon
Williams, according to custom, "propounded a question," to which Mr.
Smith "spake briefly." Then Mr. Williams "prophesied," that is he
preached, "and after, the Governor of Plymouth spake to the question;
after him, Elder Brewster; then some two or three men of the
congregation. Then Elder Brewster desired the Governor of Massachusetts
and Mr. Wilson to speak to it, which they did. When this was ended the
deacon, Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their duty of
contribution; whereupon the Governor and all the rest went down to the
deacon's seat, and put into the box, and then returned."

There is nothing here about the music of the services, such as it was,
vocal only, rugged, but not without melody. We know, however, that the
Pilgrims used that psalter, brought over by them to New England, with
its tunes printed above each psalm in lozenge-shaped Elizabethan notes,
which Longfellow so grandly describes in "The Courtship of Miles
Standish" as

the well-worn psalm-book of Ainsworth,
Printed in Amsterdam, the words and the music together,
Rough-hewn, angular notes, like stones in the walls of a churchyard,
Darkened and overhung by the running vine of the verses.

The duty of "tuning the Psalm," as they designated the performance, in
the young colonial days, before choirs or precentors were dreamt of, was
delegated to some lusty-lunged brother present, and, judged by the
testimony which has come down to us, it was an onerous one, trying to
his patience and his vocal power when, as sometimes happened, the
congregation carried another tune against him. They were called to
Sabbath worship in the earlier times by sound of horn or beat of drum
or the blowing of a large conch-shell. At Plymouth we have seen it was
by drum beat, probably from the roof, that the people were assembled at
the meeting-house.

When the Mayflower left them to return home in the spring, the settlers
must have felt they were desolate indeed, for their nearest civilised
neighbours were five hundred miles to the north and south of them, the
French at Nova Scotia and the English in Virginia. Seven months later,
in November, came the Fortune, bringing thirty-five new emigrants,
including William Brewster's eldest son; John Winslow, a brother of
Edward; and Robert Cushman, who had turned back the year before at Old
Plymouth. In addition to her passengers, the Fortune brought out to the
colonists, from the Council of New England, a patent[8] of their land,
drawn up in the name of John Pierce and his associate Merchant
Adventurers in the same way as the charter granted them by the Plymouth
Company on February 21, 1620, authorising the planters to establish
their colony near the mouth of the Hudson river.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

_From the Painting by A. W. Bayes_

THE DEPARTURE OF THE MAYFLOWER]

When the Fortune sailed back to England, she carried a cargo of
merchandise valued at five hundred pounds. This was intended for the
Adventurers, but they never received it, for when nearing port, the
vessel was captured by the French and the cargo seized. The ship was
allowed to proceed, and Cushman, who returned in her, secured the papers
on board, among them Bradford and Winslow's Journal, known as Mourt's
Relation, and a letter from Edward Winslow to his "loving and old
friend" George Morton, who was about to come out, giving seasonable
advice as to what he and his companions should bring with them--good
store of clothes and bedding, and each man a musket and fowling-piece;
paper and linseed oil for the making of their windows (glass being then
too great a luxury for a New England home), and much store of powder and
shot.

Soon arrived further parties from Leyden and stores from the Adventurers
in London in the Anne and the Little James pinnace, the people including
such welcome additions as Brewster's two daughters, Fear and Patience;
George Morton and his household; Mrs. Samuel Fuller; Alice Carpenter,
widow of Edward Southworth, afterwards the second wife of Governor
Bradford; and Barbara, who married Miles Standish. Then from the Leyden
pastor came letters for Bradford and Brewster. The writer was dead--had
been dead a year--when those letters reached their destination, but this
they only knew when Standish gave them the tidings on his return from a
voyage to England. John Robinson passed away at the age of forty-nine on
March 1, 1622, in the old meeting-house at Leyden, and they buried him
under the pavement of St. Peter's Church. Brewster lost his wife about
the time the sad news was known, and the messenger who brought it had
further to tell of the death of Robert Cushman. Truly the tale of
affliction was a sore one.

By the July of 1623 a total of about two hundred and thirty-three
persons had been brought out, including the children and servants, of
whom one hundred and two, composed of seventy-three males and
twenty-nine females, eighteen of the latter wives, were landed from the
Mayflower. At the close of that year not more than one hundred and
eighty-three were living. The survivors bravely persevered. Gradually
the Pilgrim Colony took deep root. The New Plymouth men were a steady,
plodding set, and the soil, if hard, was tenacious. They got a firm
foothold. They suffered much, for their trials by no means ended with
the first winter; but their cheerful trust in Providence and in their
own final triumph never wavered. By 1628 their position was secure
beyond all doubt or question. The way was now prepared; the tide of
emigration set in; and the main body of the Puritans began to follow in
the track of their courageous and devoted advance-guard.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1904, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

CAPTAIN MILES STANDISH]

Out there in the West these Pilgrims, or first-comers, settled
themselves resolutely to the task which lay before them. They were no
idle dreamers, though their idealism was intense, and they were united
by the bonds of sympathy and helpfulness, one towards another. Their
works were humble, their lives simple and obscure, their worldly success
but small, their fears many and pressing, and their vision of the future
restricted and dim. But they consistently put into practise the
conceptions and ideals which dominated them and were to be the
inheritance of the great Republic they unconsciously initiated and
helped to build up. They established a community and a government
solidly founded on love of freedom and belief in progress, on civil
liberty and religious toleration, on industrial cooperation and
individual honesty and industry, on even-handed justice and a real
equality before the laws, on peace and goodwill supported by protective
force. They were more liberal and tolerant in religion than the Puritan
colonists of Massachusetts Bay, and more merciful in their punishments;
they perpetrated no atrocities against inferior peoples, and cherished
the love of peace and of political justice.

Although at first the relations of the Pilgrims with their Puritan
neighbours were none of the best, a better state of feeling before long
prevailed. We have seen how John Winthrop and his pastor plodded over to
Plymouth to attend its Sunday worship. Three years earlier, in 1629,
Bradford and some of his brethren went by sea to Salem to an ordination
service there, and, says Morton in his "Memorial," "gave them the right
hand of fellowship." There were other visits, letters of friendship, and
reciprocal acts of kindness. We read of Samuel Fuller, physician and
deacon, going to Salem to tend the sick, and of Governor Winthrop
lending Plymouth in its need twenty-eight pounds of gunpowder.

This good feeling strengthened as time went on, and drew together the
Plantations of Plymouth, Massachusetts, and Connecticut for mutual
support and protection; and in May, 1643, the deputies of these
Colonies, meeting at Boston, subscribed the Articles of Confederation
which created the first Federal Union in America. This league prospered
well until 1684, when the Colonial charter was annulled and a Crown
Colony was established under an English governor. Less than a decade
later Massachusetts became a Royal province, and that period in American
history was entered upon which ended with the Declaration of
Independence and the creation of the United States.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1904, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

GOVERNOR WILLIAM BRADFORD]

While the federation of 1643 did much for the United Colonies, it
overshadowed, but could not obscure, Plymouth and the unique annals and
traditions which have preserved for it a foremost place in all American
history. With the order of things inaugurated in 1692 the body politic
framed by the men of the Mayflower ceased to have separate existence,
but it remains deep in the foundations of the nation which absorbed it.
In the modest language of William Bradford used in his day, "As one
small candle may light a thousand, so the light here kindled hath shone
to many, yea, in some sort to our whole nation," a truth which has a far
wider application now than it had in Bradford's time.

* * * * *

Such is the story of the Mayflower Pilgrims, romantic, heroic, idyllic,
based also upon the principles which have molded and maintained a mighty
free nation. Its place in the life of to-day is honoured and
conspicuous, and rests upon the rock of a people's gratitude.

During the nineteenth century it was proclaimed by many orators, among
them John Quincy Adams, Daniel Webster, Edward Everett, Robert Charles
Winthrop, and George Frisbie Hoar--to name only the century's dead--who
as New Englanders and lovers of liberty were well fitted to voice the
virtues of the Pilgrim Fathers, the hardships they endured, their high
merits as colonists compared with other colonists of ancient and modern
times, and the immense issues springing from their devout, laborious,
and self-sacrificing lives.

Passing on to the twentieth century we have the story taken up by one
American President and continued by another at the cornerstone laying
and dedication of a combined tribute of State and Nation to the lives
and work of the Forefathers. This was the Pilgrim Memorial Monument,
erected at Provincetown on a commanding site above the harbour in whose
waters the Mayflower dropped her anchor nearly three centuries ago.

The gatherings there of 1907 and 1910 stand out prominently in Pilgrim
history, especially so that of August 5 of the latter year, which was
grandly impressive alike in its magnitude and its purpose and character.
President Taft, the successor of President Roosevelt, arrived in his
yacht Mayflower with imposing naval display amid rejoicing and the
booming of guns. He was greeted by Governor of the State Eben S. Draper,
Captain J. H. Sears, president of the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial
Association, and members of the local committee. Accompanying him were
Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer, United States Senators Henry
Cabot Lodge and George Peabody Wetmore, and Justice White of the United
States Supreme Court. The scene and the ceremonies, soul-stirring and
significant, are worthy of permanent record.

Escorted by a company of bluejackets, of whom two thousand, with marines
from the warships, lined the street from the wharf, President Taft and
the other guests were driven up the hill to the Monument, where, from
the grandstand at its base, Captain Sears reviewed the plans which
resulted in its erection.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE PILGRIM MEMORIAL MONUMENT AT PROVINCETOWN]

President Charles W. Eliot of Harvard University gave an historical
address. In graphic language he contrasted the desolate prospect
confronting the Pilgrims at Cape Cod with the picture upon which the
present concourse gazed, a happy and prosperous population filling the
smiling land and in the harbour traversed by the Mayflower a varied
throng of ships, "with them numerous representatives of a strong naval
force maintained by the eighty million free people who in nine
generations from the Pilgrims have explored, subdued, and occupied that
mysterious wilderness so formidable to the imagination of the early
European settlers on the Atlantic coast of the American continent."

With force and pathos Dr. Eliot spoke of the debt they all owed to the
Pilgrim Fathers. "We are to hear the voices of the Chief Magistrate of
this multitudinous people and of the Governor of the Commonwealth
acknowledging the immeasurable indebtedness of the United States and of
the Colony, Province, and State of Massachusetts to the adult men and
the eighteen adult women who were the substance or seed-bearing core of
the Pilgrim company; and we, the thousands brought hither peacefully in
a few summer hours by vehicles and forces unimagined in 1620 from the
wide circuit of Cape Cod--which it took the armed parties from the
Mayflower a full month to explore in the wintry weather they
encountered--salute tenderly and reverently the Pilgrims of the
Mayflower, and, recalling their fewness and their sufferings, anxieties
and labours, felicitate them and ourselves on the wonderful issues in
human Joy, strength, and freedom of their faith, endurance, and
dauntless resolution."

Dr. Eliot was followed by M. Van Weede, chargé d'affaires of the
Netherlands Legation at Washington, whose Government was represented on
this occasion because the Pilgrims sailed from Holland. (The cornerstone
laying three years before was attended by the British Ambassador.)

Formal transfer of the Monument from the National Commission, which
directed its construction, to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the
Pilgrim Memorial Association, was made on behalf of the United States
Government by Senator Lodge, who enlarged upon the two great political
principles embodied in the Mayflower compact, the conception of an
organic law and of a representative democracy, and on the noble
purpose--that of securing freedom of worship and the preservation of
their nationality and native language--of the little band of exiles who
signed the document and settled there.

William B. Lawrence of Medford accepted the Monument on behalf of the
Memorial Association, and a quartet sang "The Landing of the Pilgrims,"
by Mrs. Felicia Hemans.

Congressman James T. McCleary of Minnesota, who supported the bill in
Congress for a Government appropriation to assist in the building of the
Monument, also spoke.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

PLYMOUTH ROCK]

Governor Draper then introduced the President. "This Monument," he said,
"shows that our people and our State and National Government honour and
revere the Pilgrims and the great principles of government they
enunciated," and for that reason, he added, "It is most fitting that
this Monument, whose cornerstone was laid by one President, should be
dedicated by another."

President Taft declared that the spirit which animated the Pilgrim
Fathers had made the history of the United States what it was by

furnishing it with the highest ideals of moral life and political
citizenship. "It is meet therefore," said he, "that the United States,
as well as the State of Massachusetts, should unite in placing here a
Memorial to the Pilgrims. The warships that are here with their cannon
to testify to its national character typify the strength of that
Government whose people have derived much from the spirit and example of
the heroic band. Governor Bradford, Elder Brewster, Captain Miles
Standish are the types of men in whom as ancestors, either by blood, or
by education and example as citizens, the American people may well take
pride."

The ceremonies were brought to a close by Miss Barbara Hoyt, a
descendant of Elder Brewster, unveiling a bronze tablet over the door of
the Monument facing the harbour which bears an appropriate inscription
written by Dr. Eliot.

And so this magnificent Monument stands as a landmark which, seen from
afar across the ocean, will remind the traveller of the small beginnings
of New England when, in the words of Dr. Eliot, fired and led by the
love of liberty, the Mayflower Pilgrims here "founded and maintained a
State without a king or a noble, and a Church without a bishop or a
priest."

* * * * *

It is upon record that in the early days of the Plymouth Plantation an
expedition was made in the Mayflower's shallop, a big boat of about
fourteen tons, to a point lower down on the coast, where the party made
friends with the Shawmut Indians and found a fine place for shipping,
and forty-seven beautiful islands, which they greatly admired as they
sailed in and out amongst them. This was the future Boston Harbour.

It is interesting to reflect that when, a decade and more after the
Pilgrim Fathers had landed in America, some hundreds of Puritan
colonists embarked for Massachusetts, many of the leading burgesses of
the then only Boston--that Old Boston, scene of the Pilgrims' detention
and suffering--were of the number. The town cannot claim a contribution
to the Mayflower, but it has a boast as proud, for it was because the
ancient seaport sent so large a contingent of Puritans to America that
it was ordered "that Trimountain," the site overlooking the sheltered
waters and the island group which delighted Pilgrim eyes, "shall be
called Boston."

[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

A BIT OF OLD BOSTON]

It was in the spring of 1630 that the main body of Puritan emigrants,
John Winthrop's party, sailed from Southampton. A year before that the
Massachusetts Bay Company dispatched to the West an expedition of five
ships, and one of them was our old friend the wonderful little
Mayflower, of immortal memory, which nine years earlier had carried out
the Plymouth Pilgrims and was now assisting in the settlement of
Massachusetts!

Among the Bostonians and their friends who sailed with or in the wake of
Winthrop were Richard Bellingham, Recorder of the town (Nathaniel
Hawthorne in "The Scarlet Letter" draws Governor Bellingham of the New
Boston); bold Atherton Hough aforementioned, Mayor of the borough in
1628; Thomas Leverett, an alderman, "a plain man, yet piously subtle";
Thomas Dudley and young John Leverett, who became Governors of
Massachusetts; William Coddington, father and governor of Rhode Island;
and John Cotton, the far-famed Puritan preacher of Boston church, who
became one of the leading religious forces of New England life.

And Old Boston, we have seen, is still much as it was outwardly over
three hundred years ago, when the Pilgrim Fathers gazed upon it, and
later Cotton preached long but edifying sermons in the vast church, and
the Puritan warden struck the Romish symbol from the hand of a carven
image on the noble tower.

The first days of the Trimountain Colony resembled in some of their
features those of the planting of New Plymouth. Although their shelter
was of the scantiest, the settlers had not, like the settlers of
Plymouth, to face at the outset the rigors of a Western winter. The
Pilgrims arrived in December, on the shortest day of the year, whereas
the day of the Puritans' landing was the very longest. Sickness and
famine had nevertheless to be fought. Disease quickly carried off twenty
per cent. of the people. About a hundred others returned home
discouraged. The rest persevered, and proved themselves worthy followers
of the New Plymouth Pilgrims. The Colony was, moreover, recruited by
fresh comers from the old country; and through many vicissitudes,
dissensions, and set-backs, much that was blasting to the spiritual and
moral life and development of the Colony, it prospered materially and
gathered strength. And there grew up the New England States.

* * * * *

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE SITE OF THE OLD FORT, BURIAL HILL, PLYMOUTH]

On the slope of Burial Hill,[9] surrounded by memorials of the Pilgrim
Fathers and with the graves of their dead in the background; facing down
that stream-skirted street of the Pilgrims once bordered by their humble
dwellings and echoing to the tread of their weary feet; looking out upon
the waters which bore to this haven, long years ago, the storm-tossed
Mayflower and her eager human freight, there stands to-day a church
which through the centuries has preserved unbroken records and
maintained a continuous ministry. This is the First Church in Plymouth
and the first church in America, the church of Scrooby, Leyden, and the
Mayflower company, the church of Brewster and Bradford, of Winslow and
Carver, whose first covenant, signed in the cabin of the little emigrant
ship, is still the basis of its fellowship. Here Roger Williams, the
banished of Boston and missionary of Rhode Island--a man according to
Bradford of "many precious parts, but very unsettled in
Judgment"--ministered for a time under Ralph Smith in the early stormy
days of the sister colony; and here John Cotton, son of the famous
Boston teacher and preacher--"a man of scholarly tastes and habits,
somewhat decided in his convictions, diligent and faithful in his
pastoral duties"[10]--was pastor for nearly thirty years from 1669.

As the First Church in Boston is the fifth of its line, so is the First
Church in Plymouth the fifth meeting-house used by the Pilgrim
community. Its predecessor, a shrine of Pilgrim history around which
precious associations clustered, was destroyed by fire in 1892; from
the burning ruins was rescued the town bell cast by Paul Revere in
1801, and this sacred relic hangs and tolls again in the tower of the
present edifice.

Amid such scenes as these well may we of to-day pause and reflect. For
on this hallowed spot, with its historic environment and its striking
reminders of a great and honoured past, was rocked the cradle of a
nation of whose civil and religious liberty it was the first rude home.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

FIRST CHURCH, PLYMOUTH

_The entrance to Burial Hill is shown on the Right_]

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Morton in his "New England's Memorial," declares that the Dutch
fraudulently hired the captain of the Mayflower to steer to the north of
what is now New York, and adds: "Of this plot between the Dutch and Mr.
Jones I have had late and certain information."

[5] Longfellow, "The Courtship of Miles Standish."

[6] This is the Cole's Hill of the present day, the spot where half the
Mayflower Pilgrims found their rest during the first winter. Five of
their graves were discovered in 1855, while pipes for the town's
waterworks were being laid, and two more (now marked with a granite
slab), in 1883. The bones of the first five are deposited in a
compartment of the granite canopy which covers the "Forefathers' Rock"
on which the Pilgrim Fathers landed.

[7] The letter was addressed by De Rassières to Herr Blommaert, a
director of his company, after his return to Holland, where the Royal
Library became possessed of it in 1847.

[8] This document, preserved still in the Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth, is
dated June 1, 1621, and bears the signatures and seals of the Duke of
Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, and Sir Ferdinando
Gorges, a name for many years prominent in American history. The patent
only remained in force a year. That issued by the Council eight years
later was transferred by Governor Bradford to the General Court in 1640.

[9] Burial Hill was the site of the embattled church erected in 1622,
and contains many ancient tombstones and the foundations of a watchtower
(1643), now covered with sod.

[10] John Cuckson, "History of the First Church in Plymouth." Dying in
1699, two years after his resignation at Charleston, South Carolina,
Cotton was "buried with respect and honour by his old parishioners, who
erected a monument over his grave."

THE PILGRIM ROLL CALL--FATE AND FORTUNES OF THE FATHERS

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE PILGRIM FATHERS' MEMORIAL, PLYMOUTH]

THE PILGRIM ROLL CALL--FATE AND FORTUNES OF THE FATHERS

_On Fame's eternall beadroll worthie to be fyled._
EDMUND SPENSER.

_There were men with hoary hair_
_Amidst that pilgrim band:_
_Why had they come to wither there,_
_Away from their childhood's land?_

_There was woman's fearless eye,_
_Lit by her deep love's truth;_
_There was manhood's brow serenely high,_
_And the fiery heart of youth._

So sings Mrs. Hemans in her famous poem "The Landing of the Pilgrim
Fathers in New England." That devoted little Pilgrim band comprised,
indeed, the Fathers and their families together, members of both sexes
of all ages. When the compact was signed in the Mayflowers cabin on
November 21, 1620, while the vessel lay off Cape Cod, each man
subscribing to it indicated those who accompanied him. There were
forty-one signatories, and the total number of passengers was shown to
be one hundred and two. What became of them? What was their individual
lot and fate subsequent to the landing on Plymouth Rock on December 26?
For long, long years the record as regards the majority of them was
lost to the world. Now, after much painstaking search, it has been
found, bit by bit, and pieced together. And we have it here. It is a
document full of human interest.

John Alden, the youngest man of the party, was hired as a cooper at
Southampton, with right to return to England or stay in New Plymouth. He
preferred to stay, and married, in 1623, Priscilla Mullins, the
"May-flower of Plymouth," the maiden who, as the legend goes, when he
first went to plead Miles Standish's suit, witchingly asked, "Prithee,
why don't you speak for yourself, John?" Alden was chosen as assistant
in 1633, and served from 1634 to 1639 and from 1650 to 1686. He was
treasurer of the Colony from 1656 to 1659; was Deputy from Duxbury in
1641-42, and from 1645 to 1649; a member of the Council of War from 1653
to 1660 and 1675-76; a soldier in Captain Miles Standish's company 1643.
He was the last survivor of the signers of the compact of November,
1620, dying September 12, 1687, aged eighty-four years.

Bartholomew Allerton, born in Holland in 1612, was in Plymouth in 1627,
when he returned to England. He was son of Isaac Allerton.

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1904, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

JOHN ALDEN]

[Illustration: _Copyright, 1904, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

PRISCILLA MULLINS]

Isaac Allerton, a tailor of London, married at Leyden, November 4, 1611,
Mary Norris from Newbury, Berkshire, England. He was a freeman of
Leyden. His wife died February 25, 1621, at Plymouth. Allerton
married Fear Brewster (his second wife), who died at Plymouth, December
12, 1634. In 1644 he had married Joanna (his third wife). He was an
assistant in 1621 and 1634, and Deputy Governor. He was living in New
Haven in 1642, later in New York, then returned to New Haven. He died in
1659.

John Allerton, a sailor, died before the Mayflower made her return
voyage. Mary Allerton, a daughter of Isaac, was born in 1616. She
married Elder Thomas Cushman. She died in 1699, the last survivor of the
Mayflower passengers. Remember Allerton was another daughter living in
Plymouth in 1627. Sarah Allerton, yet another daughter, married Moses
Maverick of Salem.

Francis Billington, son of John and Eleanor, went out in 1620 with his
parents. In 1634 he married widow Christian (Penn) Eaton, by whom he had
children. He removed before 1648 to Yarmouth. He was a member of the
Plymouth military company in 1643. He died in Yarmouth after 1650.

John Billington was hanged[11] in 1630 for the murder of John Newcomen.
His widow, Eleanor, who went over with him, married in 1638 Gregory
Armstrong, who died in 1650, leaving no children by her. John
Billington, a son of John and Eleanor, born in England, died at Plymouth
soon after 1627.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

GOVERNOR BRADFORD'S MONUMENT, BURIAL HILL, PLYMOUTH]

William Bradford, baptised in 1589 at Austerfield, Yorkshire, was a
leading spirit in the Pilgrim movement from its inception to its
absorption in the Union of the New England Colonies. We have seen how,
on the death of John Carver, he became the second Governor of Plymouth
Colony, and he five times filled that office, in 1621-33, 1635, 1637,
1639-44, and 1645-47, as well as serving several times as Deputy
Governor and assistant. A patent was granted to him in 1629 by the
Council of New England vesting the Colony in trust to him, his heirs,
associates and assigns, confirming their title to a tract of land and
conferring the power to frame a constitution and laws; but eleven years
later he transferred this patent to the General Court, reserving only to
himself the allotment conceded to him in the original division of land.
Bradford's rule as chief magistrate was marked by honesty and fair
dealing, alike in his relations with the Indian tribes and his treatment
of recalcitrant colonists. His word was respected and caused him to be
trusted; his will was resolute in every emergency, and yet all knew that
his clemency and charity might be counted on whenever it could be safely
exercised. The Church was always dear to him: he enjoyed its faith and
respected its institutions, and up to the hour of his death, on May 9,
1657, he confessed his delight in its teachings and simple services.
Governor Bradford was twice married, first, as we know, at Leyden in
1613 to Dorothy May, who was accidentally drowned in Cape Cod harbour on
December 7, 1620; and again on August 14, 1623, to Alice Carpenter,
widow of Edward Southworth. By his first wife he had one son, and by his
second, two sons and a daughter. Jointly with Edward Winslow, Bradford
wrote "A Diary of Occurences during the First Year of the Colony," and
this was published in England in 1622. He left many manuscripts, letters
and chronicles, verses and dialogues, which are the principal
authorities for the early history of the Colony; but the work by which
he is best remembered is his manuscript "History of Plymouth
Plantation," now happily, after being carried to England and lost to
sight for years in the Fulham Palace Library, restored to the safe
custody of the State of Massachusetts.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

GOVERNOR CARVER'S CHAIR AND ANCIENT SPINNING WHEEL]

William Brewster more than any man was entitled to be called the Founder
of the Pilgrim Church. It originated in his house at Scrooby, where he
was born in 1566, and he sacrificed everything for it. He was elder of
the church at Leyden and Plymouth, and served it also as minister for
some time after going out. Through troubles, trials, and adversity, he
stood by the Plymouth flocks, and when his followers were in peril and
perplexity, worn and almost hopeless through fear and suffering, he kept
a stout heart and bade them be of good cheer. Bradford has borne
touching testimony to the personal attributes of his friend, who, he
tells us, was "qualified above many," and of whom he writes that "he was
wise and discrete, and well-spoken, having a grave and deliberate
utterance, of a very cheerful spirite, very sociable and pleasante among
his friends, of an humble and modest mind, of a peaceable disposition,
under-valewing himself and his own abilities and sometimes
over-vallewing others, inoffensive and innocent in his life and
conversation, which gained him ye love of those without, as well as
those within." Of William Brewster it has been truly said that until
his death, on April 16, 1644, his hand was never lifted from Pilgrim
history. He shaped the counsels of his colleagues, helped to mould their
policy, safeguarded their liberties, and kept in check tendencies
towards religious bigotry and oppression. He tolerated differences, but
put down wrangling and dissension, and promoted to the best of his power
the strength and purity of public and private life. Mary Brewster, wife
of William, who went out with him, died before 1627.

Love Brewster, son of Elder William, born in England, married (1634)
Sarah, daughter of William Collier. He was a member of the Duxbury
company in 1643, and died at Duxbury in 1650.

Wrestling Brewster, son of Elder William, emigrated at the same time; he
died a young man, unmarried.

Richard Britteridge died December 21, 1620, his being the first death
after landing.

Peter Brown probably married the widow Martha Ford; he died in 1633.

William Button, a servant of Samuel Fuller, died on the voyage.

John Carver, first Governor of the Plymouth Colony, landed from the
Mayflower with his wife, Catherine, and both died the following spring
or summer. Carver was deacon in Holland. He left no descendants.

Robert Carter was a servant of William Mullins, and died during the
first winter.

James Chilton died December 8, 1620, before the landing at Plymouth, and
his wife succumbed shortly after. Their daughter Mary, tradition states,
romantically if not truthfully, was the first to leap on shore. She
married John Winslow, and had ten children.

Richard Clarke died soon after arrival.

Francis Cook died at Plymouth in 1663.

John Cook, son of Francis Cook by his wife, Esther, shipped in the
Mayflower with his father. He married Sarah, daughter of Richard Warren.
On account of religious differences he removed to Dartmouth, of which he
was one of the first purchasers. He became a Baptist minister there. He
was also Deputy in 1666-68, 1673, and 1681-83-86. The father and son
were both members of the Plymouth military company in 1643.

John Cook died at Dartmouth after 1694.

Humility Cooper returned to England, and died there.

John Crackston died in 1621; his son, John, who went out with him, died
in 1628.

Edward Dotey married Faith Clark, probably as second wife, and had nine
children, some of whom moved to New Jersey, Long Island, and elsewhere.
He was a purchaser of Dartmouth, but moved to Yarmouth, where he died
August 23, 1655. He made the passage out as a servant to Stephen
Hopkins, and was wild and headstrong in his youth, being a party to the
first duel fought in New England.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

ELDER BREWSTER'S CHAIR AND THE CRADLE OF PEREGRINE WHITE]

Francis Eaton went over with his first wife, Sarah, and their son,
Samuel. He married a second wife, and a third, Christian Penn, before
1627. He died in 1633.

Samuel Eaton married, in 1661, Martha Billington. In 1643 he was in the
Plymouth military company, and was living at Duxbury in 1663. He removed
to Middleboro, where he died about 1684.

Thomas English died the first winter.

One Ely, a hired man, served his time and returned to England.

Moses Fletcher married at Leyden, in 1613, widow Sarah Dingby. He died
during the first winter.

Edward Fuller shipped with his wife, Ann, and son, Samuel. The parents
died the first season.

Samuel Fuller, the son, married in 1635 Jane, daughter of the Reverend
John Lothrop; he removed to Barnstable, where he died October 31, 1683,
having many descendants.

Dr. Samuel Fuller, brother of Edward, was the first physician; he
married (1) Elsie Glascock, (2) Agnes Carpenter, (3) Bridget Lee; he
died in 1633. His descendants of the name are through a son, Samuel, who
settled in Middleboro.

Richard Gardiner, mariner, was at Plymouth in 1624, but soon
disappeared.

John Goodman, unmarried, died the first winter.

John Hooke died the first winter, as did also William Holbeck.

Giles Hopkins, son of Stephen, married in 1639 Catherine Wheldon; he
moved to Yarmouth and afterwards to Eastham, and died about 1690.

Stephen Hopkins went out with his second wife, Elizabeth, and Giles and
Constance, children by a first wife. On the voyage a child was born to
them, which they named Oceanus, but it died in 1621. He was an
assistant, 1634-35, and died in 1644. His wife died between 1640 and
1644. Constance, daughter of Stephen, married Nicholas Snow. They
settled at Eastham, from which he was a Deputy in 1648, and he died
November 15, 1676; she died in October, 1677, having had twelve
children. Damaris, a daughter, was born after their arrival and married
Jacob Cooke.

John Howland married Elizabeth, daughter of John Tilley. He was a Deputy
in 1641, 1645 to 1658, 1661, 1663, 1666-67, and 1670; assistant in 1634
and 1635; also a soldier in the Plymouth military company in 1643. He
died February 23, 1673, aged more than eighty years, and his widow died
December 21, 1687, aged eighty years.

John Langemore died during the first winter.

William Latham about 1640 left for England, and afterwards went to the
Bahamas, where he probably died.

Edward Leister went to Virginia.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE GRAVE OF JOHN HOWLAND]

Edmund Margeson, unmarried, died in 1621.

Christopher Martin and wife both died early; his death took place
January 8, 1621.

Desire Minter returned to England, and there died.

Ellen More perished the first winter.

Jasper More removed to Scituate, and his name is said to have become
Mann. He died in Scituate in 1656; his brother died the first winter.

William Mullins shipped with his wife, son Joseph, and daughter
Priscilla, who married John Alden. The father died February 21, 1621,
and his wife during the same winter, as did also the son.

Solomon Power died December 24, 1620.

Degory Priest married in 1611, at Leyden, widow Sarah Vincent, a sister
of Isaac Allerton; he died January 1, 1621.

John Rigdale went out with his wife, Alice, both dying the first winter.

Joseph Rogers went with his father, Thomas Rogers, who died in 1621. The
son married, and lived at Eastham in 1655, dwelling first at Duxbury and
Sandwich. He was a lieutenant, and died in 1678 at Eastham.

Harry Sampson settled at Duxbury, and married Ann Plummer in 1636. He
was of the Duxbury military company in 1643, and died there in 1684.

George Soule was married to Mary Becket. He was in the military company
of Duxbury, where he resided, and was the Deputy in 1645-46, and
1650-54. He was an original proprietor of Bridgewater and owner of land
in Dartmouth and Middleboro; he died 1680, his wife in 1677.

Ellen Story died the first winter.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE GRAVE OF MILES STANDISH, DUXBURY]

Miles Standish, that romantic figure in the Pilgrim history, did good
service for the Colony, and practically settled the question whether the
Anglo-Saxon or the native Indian was to predominate in New England. Born
in Lancashire about 1584, and belonging to the Duxbury branch of the
Standish family, he obtained a lieutenant's commission in the English
army and fought in the wars against The Netherlands and Spain. His taste
for military adventure led to his joining the Pilgrims at Leyden, and
when the Mayflower reached Cape Cod, he led the land exploring parties.
Soon he was elected military captain of the Colony, and with a small
force he protected the settlers against Indian incursions until the
danger from that quarter was past. When they were made peaceably secure
in their rights and possessions, and warlike exploits and adventures
were at an end, Standish retired to his estate at Duxbury, on the north
side of Plymouth Bay: but in peace, as in war, he was still devoted to
the interests of the Colony, frequently acting as Governor's assistant
from 1632 onward, becoming Deputy in 1644, and serving as treasurer
between that year and 1649. His wife Rose, who sailed with him in the
Mayflower, died January 29, 1621, but he married again, and had four
sons and a daughter. He died on October 3, 1656, honoured by all the
community among whom he dwelt, and his name and fame are perpetuated in
history, in the poetry of Longfellow and Lowell, and by the monument
which stands upon what was his estate at Duxbury, the lofty column on
Captain's Hill, seen for miles both from sea and land.

Edward Thompson died December 4, 1620.

Edward Tilley and his wife Ann both died the first winter.

John Tilley accompanied his wife and daughter Elizabeth; the parents
died the first winter, but the daughter survived and married John
Howland.

Thomas Tinker, with his wife and son, died the first winter.

John Turner had with him two sons, but the party succumbed to the
hardships of the first season.

William Trevore entered as a sailor on the Mayflower, and returned to
England on the Fortune in 1621.

William White went out with his wife Susanna, and son Resolved. A son,
Peregrine, was born to them in Provincetown Harbour, who has been
distinguished as being the first child of the Pilgrims born after the
arrival in the New World. This is his strongest claim, as his early life
was rather disreputable, though his obituary, in 1704, allowed "he was
much reformed in his last years." William, the father, died on February
21, 1621; his widow married, in the May following, Edward Winslow, who
had recently lost his wife.

Resolved White married (1) Judith, daughter of William Vassall; he lived
at Scituate, Marshfield, and lastly Salem, where he married, (2) October
5, 1674, widow Abigail Lord, and died after 1680. He was a member of the
Scituate military company in 1643.

Roger Wilder died the first winter, and Thomas Williams also died the
first season.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE MILES STANDISH MONUMENT, DUXBURY]

Edward Winslow, an educated young English gentleman from Droitwich,
joined the brethren at Leyden in 1617, and accompanying them to New
England, was the third to sign the compact on board the Mayflower,
Carver and Bradford signing before, and Brewster after him, then Isaac
Allerton and Miles Standish. Winslow was one of the party sent to
prospect along the coast. Before leaving Holland, he married at Leyden,
in 1618, Elizabeth Barker, who went out with him, but died March 24,
1621, and as we have seen, he shortly afterwards married widow Susanna
(Fuller) White. Winslow proved himself a man of exceptional ability and
character, and gave the best years of his life to the service of the
Colony. While on a mission to England in its interests in 1623, he
published an account of the settlement and struggles of the Mayflower
Pilgrims, under the title "Good News for New England, or a relation
of things remarkable in that Plantation." Later he wrote (and published
in 1646). "Hypocrisie Unmasked; by a true relation of the proceedings of
the Governor of Massachusetts against Samuel Groton, a notorious
Disturber of the Peace," which is chiefly remarkable for an appendix
giving an account of the preparations in Leyden for removal to America,
and the substance of John Robinson's address to the Pilgrims on their
departure from Holland. Winslow was Governor of the Colony in 1633,
1636, and 1644, and at other times assistant. In 1634 he went to England
again on colonial business, and before sailing accepted a commission for
the Bay Colony which required him to appear before the King's
Commissioners for Plantations. Here he was brought face to face with
Archbishop Laud, who could not resist the opportunity of venting his
wrath upon the representative of the Plymouth settlement, about whose
sayings and doings he had been duly informed. Winslow was accused of
taking part in Sunday services and of conducting civil marriages. He
admitted the charges, and pleaded extenuating circumstances; but Laud
was not to be appeased and committed the bold Separatist to the Fleet
Prison, where he remained for seventeen weeks, when he was released and
permitted to return to America, wounded in his conscience by the cruel
wrong done him and impoverished by legal expenses. In October, 1646,
against the advice of his compatriots, Winslow undertook another
mission to the old country, this time in connection with the federation
of the New England Colonies, and, accepting service under Cromwell,
sailed on an expedition to the West Indies, caught a fever, and died,
and was buried at sea on May 8, 1655.

Gilbert Winslow, another subscriber to the compact in the Mayflower's
cabin, returned subsequently to England and died in 1650.

Apart from the events of their after lives, the spirit which possessed
the Mayflower Pilgrims and guided their leaders in exile is well
expressed by Mrs. Hemans when she says, in her stirring lines--

They sought a faith's pure shrine!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found--
Freedom to worship God.

[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW

_The only authentic Portrait of a Mayflower Pilgrim_]

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The murderer Billington, sad to relate, was one of those who signed
the historic compact on board the Mayflower. He was tried, condemned to
death, and executed by his brethren in accordance with their primitive
criminal procedure. At first, trials in the little colony were conducted
by the whole body of the townsmen, the Governor presiding. In 1623 trial
by Jury was established, and subsequently a regular code of laws was
adopted. The capital offences were treason, murder, diabolical
conversation, arson, rape, and unnatural crimes. Plymouth had only six
sorts of capital crime, against thirty-one in England at the accession
of James I, and of these six it actually punished only two, Billington's
belonging to one of them. The Pilgrims used no barbarous punishments.
Like all their contemporaries they used the stocks and the
whipping-post, without perceiving that those punishments in public were
barbarizing. They inflicted fines and forfeitures freely without regard
to the station or quality of the offenders. They never punished, or even
committed any person as a witch. Restrictive laws were early adopted as
to spirituous drinks, and in 1667 cider was included. In 1638 the
smoking of tobacco was forbidden out-of-doors within a mile of a
dwelling-house or while at work in the fields; but unlike England and
Massachusetts, Plymouth never had a law regulating apparel.

NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES

[Illustration: _Photograph by Battershill, Plymouth_

MAYFLOWER TABLET ON THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND]

NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES

pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined.--LONGFELLOW.

Memories of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers were actively revived
when, in July, 1891, during the Mayoralty of Mr. J. T. Bond, a number of
the Pilgrims' descendants and their representatives from the New World
visited Old World Plymouth, and with an interest whole-hearted and
profound inspected the scene, famous in the annals and traditions of our
race, which witnessed their forbears' last brief sojourn on English
soil--a place where the Fathers, as they never tired of testifying, in
the days when Thomas Townes was Mayor, were "kindly entertained and
courteously used by divers friends there dwelling," and whence the
sturdy little Mayflower sailed to the West with its precious human
freight, to lay the foundation of the New England States.

To commemorate this visit, and the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers two
hundred and seventy years before, the site of the historic embarkation
was marked by the Mayflower Stone and Tablet placed on the Barbican at
Plymouth, the stone in the pavement of the pier adjacent to the ancient
causey trod by the Pilgrims' departing feet and destroyed a few years
later, and the tablet on the wall of the Barbican facing it.

The memorial and the circumstances of its erection formed a fitting
tribute to the New England pioneers; and the story told by these stones
should serve to remind all who behold them of the devoted lives, the
splendid achievement, and the romantic history of the Mayflower
Pilgrims. They are at once a landmark and a shrine honoured by the
English and American peoples.

In June, 1896, another company of New World pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, and proceeded to worship in spirit at Old World shrines.
During two weeks they wandered about the dear old country--"Our Old
Home," as Nathaniel Hawthorne calls it in his book of English
reminiscences--lingering on the scenes associated with the lives of
their forefathers: quiet villages wherein they were born; quaint,
half-forgotten boroughs in which they lived; the metropolis in which
they taught; the sombre East Anglia, where many of them died "for the
testimony." But chief of all were the places where these sojourners
could look on the homes of the grave, brave men who gathered together
the people who sailed in the Mayflower, and led the way to the New
World.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

SCROOBY VILLAGE]

We still call them "the Pilgrim Fathers," in spite of what the Reverend
Joseph Hunter, an esteemed native of South Yorkshire, wrote in his
book.[12] "There is something of affectation in this term," he finds,
"which is always displeasing to me." "It appears to me," says he, "to be
philologically improper." And then he explains. "An American who visits
the place from which the founders of his country emigrated is a pilgrim
in the proper sense of the word, whether he finds an altar, a shrine, or
a stone of memorial, or not. But these founders, when they found the
shores of America, were proceeding to no object of this kind, and even
leaving it to the winds and the waves to drive them to any point on an
unknown and unmarked shore."

Perhaps Mr. Hunter is right, philologically; but apart from his history
(which may be challenged, because the master of the Mayflower knew where
he was going if the Pilgrims did not, and a map and description of the
region had been published by Captain John Smith, the name-giver of New
England), the designation stands, and will ever be cherished by those
familiar with the spots these faithful Fathers left when, pilgrims and
wanderers, they set forth they scarcely knew whither, and finally
crossed the little-known sea. And the most historic of such shrines are
in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.

When the New World pilgrims arrived at Plymouth for the journey through
the old country, by a curious arrangement they travelled backwards; for
Plymouth was the last place the Pilgrim Fathers touched, and the haunts
they took in turn were those which saw the rise and earlier efforts of
those grave and reverend seekers for religious freedom. Soon they
reached Boston--dreamy, old-world, tide-washed, fenland-locked
Boston--scene of deep interest to them all, filled with hallowed
memories of the Pilgrim Fathers and founders of the Western States.

The party numbered nearly fifty, a dozen at least of whom could lay
claim to be lineal descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Their leader
was the Reverend Dr. Dunning of Boston, Massachusetts, and among them
were representatives of the National Council of American Congregational
churches.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

THE ANCIENT KITCHEN, GUILDHALL, BOSTON]

Boston, like Plymouth, gave them a warm welcome. The cordiality of their
reception to the old town was acknowledged on behalf of the pilgrims
by Dr. Dunning. "Our fathers found it difficult to get away from
Boston," said he, "and from the kindness you have shown us we are much
afraid that you are planning to detain us also." The character of the
"detention" was very different with nearly three centuries intervening,
and this Dr. Dunning and his friends abundantly realised.

The visitors were taken over the old parish church, and were duly
impressed by its size and grandeur as a whole; and the scene was most
striking and memorable when, gathered within its beautiful chancel,
these representative New World men, many of them with the blood of the
Pilgrim Fathers in their veins, joined in singing together the noble
hymn, "O God, our help in ages past." Next the Guildhall was visited.
Here the disused sessions-court, where the fugitives were arraigned in
1607, and other upper rooms were scrutinised.

But most attractive were the kitchen and prison beneath. The cells must
in fact have had more "prisoners" in them that day than they had held
for a long time, for there was scarcely a member of the company who was
not shut up in at least one of them during the inspection. They thus
realised something of what their forefathers actually endured; the taste
of the bitterness was slight, and wanting in the old-time flavour which
the prisoners' treatment imparted, but it was sufficient to call forth
expressions of abhorrence at the thought of continued confinement in
such a place.

At last the pilgrims said farewell to a town crowded with precious
memories and entrained for Lincoln, where their welcome by the Free
Churches and Cathedral authorities was in keeping with that extended to
them everywhere on their route. At Lincoln they received an address. "We
feel," said the Nonconformists there, "that in welcoming you to this
county of ours, we are welcoming you back to your ancestral home, for
Lincolnshire people never forget that their county is inseparably
associated with the history of the Pilgrim Church. We claim the great
John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim church, as our own, and the
neighbouring town of Gainsborough boasts of having been for some time
the church's home. We are proud of the men, of the testimony they bore,
of the work they did. All England is debtor to the men of the Pilgrim
Church for their heroic witness in behalf of a pure and Scriptural faith
and freedom of conscience worship."

And "the neighbouring town of Gainsborough," home of the Pilgrim Church,
gave itself up at this time to a ceremonial stone-laying of the Robinson
Memorial Church, a function which the American pilgrims attended,
together with the Honourable T. F. Bayard, the United States Ambassador,
who made a journey into Lincolnshire to lay this stone, and
Congregationalists gathered from all parts.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH, GAINSBOROUGH

_The corner-stone of the church was laid by Mr. Bayard in June, 1896_]

First the pilgrims drove to Scrooby, Bawtry, and Austerfield, where they
inspected Brewster's house and Bradford's cottage and other objects of
absorbing interest linked with the lives of the exiled Separatists. They
then entered Gainsborough--that "foreign-looking town," subject of
George Eliot's romantic pen, birthplace of John Robinson--where an
address was presented to Mr. Bayard at the Town Hall, and luncheon was
partaken of at the Old Hall, one of Gainsborough's most cherished
antiquities, where John Smyth and his brethren held services and John
Wesley many times preached. A move was next made to the site of the
future Robinson Memorial Hall, a building at once a tribute to a worthy
Englishman and an agency for the development of Christian work in the
home of the Pilgrim Fathers. The proceedings were under the presidency
of the Reverend J. M. Jones, chairman of the Congregational Union of
England and Wales. To Mr. Bayard was handed a silver trowel, the gift of
the congregation of the Gainsborough church, bearing an inscription and
engravings of the Mayflower and of Delfshaven, on whose beach Robinson
knelt in prayer with the Pilgrim band ere they set out on their long and
checkered voyage. Having laid the cornerstone, Mr. Bayard sketched the
early life of John Robinson, on from his Cambridge career to his
harassed ministry at Norwich, his withdrawal to Lincolnshire in 1604 and
the inception of the Scrooby congregation, whose faith found cause for
hope and cheerful courage in the dark hours of their persecution,
adversity, and affliction. He went on to picture the blessings of civil
and religious liberty which we are apt to accept and enjoy without
giving much heed to the generations that in bygone years toiled and
suffered to secure them for us. How small, said he, the measure of our
gratitude and infrequent our recognition of those who

Beyond their dark age led the van of thought.

Well, reasoned Mr. Bayard, on such a scene and such an occasion as this,
might the words of Whittier be repeated--

Our hearts grow cold,
We lightly hold
A right which brave men died to gain;
The stake, the cord,
The axe, the sword,
Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

It was the momentous issues raised by the invasion of liberty of
conscience that drove John Robinson and his associates forth. As William
Bradford has recorded, "Being thus molested and with no hope of their
continuance there, by a joynte consent they resolved to go into ye low
countries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men." Then
it was that they made the attempted passage from Boston to The
Netherlands.

[Illustration: TABLET IN VESTIBULE OF ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH,
GAINSBOROUGH]

[Illustration: MEMORIAL TABLET ON ST. PETER'S CHURCH, LEYDEN]

Glancing at the history of the arbitrary and cruel measures taken to
prevent the departure of the congregation, which finally, in broken
detachments, distressed, despoiled, imperilled by land and sea,
assembled at Amsterdam, moving thence to Leyden, Mr. Bayard paid
grateful recognition to the country which, in their hour of sore need,
extended to exiles welcome protection and generous toleration in an age
of intolerance, and recited the familiar incidents connected with their
sailing for America. "It is clear and plain to us now that the departure
from England of this small body of humble men was a great step in the
march of Christian civilisation. It contained the seed of Christian
liberty, freedom of enquiry, freedom of man's conscience." As for John
Robinson, between whose grave and the colony he was the means of
planting, washes the wide ocean he never crossed. His memory is a tie of
kindred--a recognition of the common trust committed to both nations to
sustain the principles of civil and religious liberty of which he was a
fearless champion, and under which he has so marvellously fulfilled the
prophesy "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great
nation." And the seed of Christian liberty, sown in adversity but on
good soil, has become a wide-spreading tree in whose sheltering branches
all who will may lodge.

Six years after this stone-laying, in June, 1902, the tercentenary of
the founding of the Gainsborough church, a tablet was unveiled in the
vestibule of the new building to commemorate the world-wide co-operation
in honouring one "the thought of whom stirs equal reverence in English
and American hearts."

What the American Ambassador so well said at Gainsborough was a fitting
prelude to the excursion which his countrymen, continuing their
itinerary, made to the Pilgrim scenes in Holland where, in 1891, the
English Plymouth memorial year, they had erected on St. Peter's
Cathedral at Leyden, under which lie his bones, a tablet to John
Robinson, pastor of the English church worshipping "over against this
spot," whence at his prompting went forth the Pilgrim Fathers to settle
New England.

[Illustration: DESIGN BY R. M. LUCAS FOR THE TERCENTENARY MEMORIAL AT
SOUTHAMPTON, TO BE UNVEILED ON AUGUST 15TH, 1912]

The Gainsborough ceremony and the visits to Plymouth and Boston forged
further links in the chain of sympathy and brotherhood between England
and America. Fresh evidence has since been forthcoming that the
religious zeal and love of manly independence which induced the
Mayflower Pilgrims to expatriate themselves and found a mighty empire
across the Atlantic have their abiding influence to-day. We have seen
how these New World pilgrimages to Old World shrines rekindled dormant
affections on both sides.[13] No doubt the journeys will be renewed
again and again over much the same ground in the days to come.

It was about this time that Mr. Bayard was instrumental in restoring to
the State of Massachusetts William Bradford's manuscript "History of
Plymouth Plantation." About the middle of the eighteenth century this
valuable record was deposited in the New England Library, in the tower
of the Old South Church in Boston, but it disappeared, and found its way
to England. By some it was thought that Governor Hutchinson carried it
off; others believed that it was looted by British soldiers when Boston
was evacuated. Anyhow it vanished, and was given up for lost. But by a
lucky chance it was discovered. It was not until 1855 that certain
passages in Wilberforce's "History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in
America," printed in 1846, professing to quote from "a manuscript
History of Plymouth in the Fulham Library," revealed the whereabouts of
the priceless folios. These quotations were identified as being similar
to extracts from Bradford's History made by earlier annalists--Nathaniel
Morton, who used it freely in his "New England's Memorial," published
1669; Thomas Prince, in his "Annals" printed in 1736; and Governor
Hutchinson, the last man known to have seen the manuscript, who used it
in the preparation of his "History of Massachusetts" (second volume), in
1767. The story of the return of the manuscript has been told by the
Honourable George F. Hoar, the venerable Senator of Massachusetts who,
during a visit to England, interviewed the Bishop of London on the
subject, and, when the History had been recovered through the good
offices of Mr. Bayard, had the satisfaction of handing it over to
Governor Wolcott on May 24, 1897. Ten years subsequently, after Mr.
Bayard's death, another Bishop of London, engaged on a mission to
America, presented to President Roosevelt the original deed appointing
Colonel Coddington first Governor of Rhode Island. This document was
found in the muniment room at Fulham Palace; it bears the seal of the
Cromwellian Government and the signature of Bradshaw.

[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros, Retford_

THE FONT, AUSTERFIELD CHURCH

_For a long time it was believed that this font was used at the baptism
of William Bradford_]

[Illustration: THE FONT, PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHAPEL, LOUND

_The font that was probably used at the baptism of William Bradford_]

Those Americans who visited the district of Bawtry for the purpose of
seeing the Pilgrim village of Austerfield would be surprised ten years
later, in August, 1906, to hear that the font in the old parish church,
which had so often been pointed to as that at which William Bradford was
baptised, was not in reality what it had been represented to be. For
some time there was a heated controversy in the district, and this
revealed certain strange facts concerning the font which go to prove
that the Norman font used at Bradford's baptism is at the present time
in a small Primitive Methodist chapel at Lound near Retford,
Nottinghamshire. It seems that about fifty years ago the sexton, one
Milner, was ordered to clear certain rubbish out of the church at
Austerfield, and sell it. Among the objects thus disposed of was the
font. A farmer, John Jackson, became the purchaser, and a few years
later the font passed to his son, who for some time kept it in his
garden as an ornament. In 1895 the farm changed hands, the new tenant
being a Mr. Fielding, and included in the fixtures he took over was the
font, described in the auctioneers' valuation award, dated April 15,
1895, as "Garden--Stone baptismal font (formerly in Austerfield Parish
Church)." Having no wish to keep the font Mr. Fielding gave it to his
mother, a native of Austerfield, and she in turn handed it over to the
trustees of the chapel at Lound, where it still remains, jealously
guarded in the incongruous surroundings of its alien home. It is noted
that when, years ago, the clergyman at Austerfield discovered what
sexton Milner had done, he sent for him and told him of the great loss
the church had sustained. It was little use locking the stable door when
the steed had gone, but the sexton, being a man of resource, thought he
saw a way out of the difficulty. So to avoid further trouble he brought
a trough from his own farmyard and substituted it for the lost font!
That was a very impious kind of fraud indeed, but it seems quite clear
that it was perpetrated. The church authorities, it must be admitted,
have done their best to atone for the faults of the past in the
direction of trying to restore the ancient font to its original place.
Unfortunately they have not succeeded, for though good offers were made
to Mrs. Fielding and the chapel trustees, they resolutely refused to
part with the precious relic. The fear was then entertained that a
wealthy American would some day buy the font, and thus deprive the
district of one of its most historic possessions. It is questionable,
however, if that fate would be worse than the one that has already
overtaken the font. Should the failure to restore it to its rightful
place unhappily continue, the more satisfactory alternative would appear
to be its purchase and presentation, say, to the Pilgrim Church at New
Plymouth.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] "Collections Concerning the Early History of the Founders of New
Plymouth." Mr. Hunter was assistant-keeper of H.M. Records, and after
the village had remained for more than two centuries in oblivion,
located Scrooby as the birthplace of the Pilgrim Church. His sole guide
in the search were the brief statements in Bradford's History that the
members of the church "were of several towns and villages, some in
Nottinghamshire, some in Lincolnshire, and some in Yorkshire, where they
bordered nearest together," and that "they ordinarily met at William
Brewster's house on the Lord's day, which was a manor of the bishop's."
The inquiry which led to this important discovery was instigated by the
Honourable James Savage while on a visit to England. The key was
supplied by Governor Bradford, Mr. Savage detected it; Mr. Hunter
unlocked the hidden and forgotten door.

[13] In another part of England, in 1910-11, Americans were joining
hands with the people of Southampton in raising on the old West Quay of
that port a Pilgrim shrine to the men of New Plymouth who, as we know,
sailed thence in the Mayflower on their interrupted voyage to the West,
on August 5 (O.S.), 1620. It was proposed to unveil this memorial on
August 15, 1912.

THE END.

INDEX

Adams, John Quincy, 103

Ainsworth, Henry, 51

Alden, John, 128, 147

Allerton, Bartholomew, 128

Allerton, Isaac, 59, 128-131, 147, 152

Allerton, Joanna, 131

Allerton, John, 131

Allerton, Mary, 131

Allerton, Remember, 131

Allerton, Sarah (1), 147

Allerton, Sarah (2), 131

Amsterdam, 51-52, 179

"Anne," The, 95

Armstrong, Gregory, 132

Austerfield, England, 11-12, 175, 184-187

Babworth, England, 11

Barker, Elizabeth, 152

Barnstable, Mass., 143

Bawtry, 175, 184-187

Bayard, Hon. T. J., 172, 175-180, 183-184

Becket, Mary, 147-148

Bellingham, Richard, 115

Billington, Eleanor, 131, 132

Billington, Francis, 131

Billington, John (1), 131-132

Billington, John (2), 132

Billington, Martha, 143

Blommaert, Herr, 87

Bond, J. T., 163

Bonner, Bishop, 8

Boston, England, VIII, 7, 16, 19, 39, 112, 115, 168-172, 176, 180;
Pilgrim Cells, VII, XIII-XIV, 32-36, 171;
Guildhall, 20, 23-24, 32-36, 171;
Hussey Tower, 20;
Kyme Tower, 20;
Grammar School, 20;
Church, 20, 35, 171;
Gysor's Hall, 23;
"Little Ease," 36

Boston, Mass., 100, 112, 168, 183 (_see also_ Massachusetts Bay
Colony)

Bradford, Governor William, 11-12, 19, 20, 31, 43, 52, 59, 83, 84, 88,
92, 95, 100, 103, 111, 119, 132-136, 152, 167, 175, 176, 183-184

Brewer, Thomas, 52, 55

Brewster, Fear, 95, 131

Brewster, Love, 139

Brewster, Mary, 96, 139

Brewster, Patience, 95

Brewster, William, 4, 8, 11, 12, 19, 20, 23, 31, 39, 43, 52-55, 59,
83, 88, 91, 92, 96, 111, 119, 136-139, 152, 167, 175

Brewster, Wrestling, 139

Bridgewater, Mass., 148

Britteridge, Richard, 139

Brown, Dr. John, 12

Brown, Peter, 139

Button, William, 139

Caistor, England, 7

Canute, King, 4, 15

Carleton, Sir Dudley, 52-55

Carpenter, Alice, 95, 135, 143

Carter, Robert, 139

Carver, Catherine, 83, 139

Carver, Governor John, 59, 60, 79, 83, 84, 119, 132, 139, 152

Chilton, James, 140

Chilton, Mary, 140

Clark, Faith, 140

Clarke, Richard, 140

Clyfton, Richard, 11, 43, 52

Coddington, William, 115, 184

Collier, Sarah, 139

Collier, William, 139

Connecticut Plantation, 100

Cook, Esther, 140

Cook, Francis, 140

Cook, John, 140

Cooke, Jacob, 144

Cooper, Humility, 140

Cotton, John (1), 23, 115, 119

Cotton, John (2), 119

Crackston, John (1), 140

Crackston, John (2), 140

Cromwell, Oliver, 156

Cromwell, Thomas, 8

Cuckson, John, 119

Cushman, Robert, 63, 92, 95, 96

Dartmouth, England, 63

Dartmouth, Mass., 140, 148

Davidson, 8

Delfshaven, 60, 175

Dingy, Sarah, 143

Dotey, Edward, 140

Doyle's "English in America," 7

Draper, Eben S., 104, 111

Droitwich, 152

Dudley, Thomas, 115

Dunning, Dr., 168, 171

Duxbury, Mass., 128, 139, 143, 147, 148, 151;
Standish Monument, 151

Eastham, Mass., 144, 147

Eaton, Francis, 143

Eaton, Samuel, 143

Eaton, Sarah, 143

Eliot, Charles W., 104-108, 111-112

Eliot's, George, "The Mill on the Floss," 15-16, 20, 175

Ely, One, 143

English, Thomas, 143

Everett, Edward, 103

Fielding, 187-188

Fletcher, Moses, 143

Ford, Martha, 139

"Fortune," The, 92, 95, 151

Fuller, Anne, 143

Fuller, Edward, 143

Fuller, Samuel (1), 59, 100, 139

Fuller, Samuel (2), 143

Fuller, Samuel (3), 143

Fuller, Susanna (_see_ White, Susanna)

Gainsborough, England, VIII, 4, 11, 15-19, 20, 40, 51, 172, 175-176,
180;
Old Hall, 16, 175

Gardiner, Richard, 143

Glascock (Fuller), Elsie, 95, 143

Goodman, John, 143

Grimsby, England, 40

Groton, Samuel, 155

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 115, 164

Hemans, Felicia, 108, 127, 156

Hickman Family, 16

Hoar, George Frisbie, 103, 183

Holbeck, William, 144

Hooke, John, 144

Hopkins, Constance, 144

Hopkins, Elizabeth, 144

Hopkins, Giles, 144

Hopkins, Oceanus, 144

Hopkins, Stephen, 140, 144

Horncastle, England, 7

Hough, Atherton, 23, 115

Howland, John, 59, 67, 144, 151

Hoyt, Barbara, 111

Hull, England, 40

Humber, The, 40

Hunter, Rev. Joseph, 164-167

Hutchinson, Governor, 183

Immingham, England, 40

Jackson, John, 187

Jackson, Richard, 39

James I, 52

Jamestown, Va., 56

John, King, 3

Johnson, Francis, 51

Jones, Rev. J. M., 175

Jones, Captain Thomas, 60, 75-76, 167-168

Kyle, William S., IX

Langemore, John, 144

Langton, Stephen, 3-4

Latham, William, 144

Laud, Archbishop, 155

Lawrence, William B., 108

Lee, Bridget, 143

Leister, Edward, 144

Leland, 8

Leverett, John, 115

Leverett, Thomas, 115

Leyden, 51-60, 95, 96, 119, 128, 135, 143, 147, 148, 152, 155, 179,
180;
St. Peter's Church, 51, 96, 180

Lincoln, England, 7, 172

"Little James," The, 95

Lodge, Henry Cabot, 104, 108

Longfellow's "The Courtship of Miles Standish," 79, 91

Lord, Abigail, 152

Lothrop, Jane, 143

Lothrop, Rev. John, 143

Lound, England, 184, 187

Louth, England, 4-7

Mann, Jasper, 147

Margeson, Edmund, 147

Marshfield, Mass., 152

Martin, Christopher and wife, 147

Massachusetts Bay Colony, 88, 99, 100, 112-116, 132, 155

Maverick, Moses, 131

May, Dorothy, 52, 84, 135

"Mayflower," The, XIV, 4, 60-67, 75-80, 84, 92, 96, 100, 104, 107,
112, 115, 116, 127, 131,140, 148, 151, 152, 156, 163, 164, 167, 175,
180

Mayson, Mayor John, 36

McCleary, James T., 108

Meyer, George Von L., 104

Middleboro, Mass., 143, 148

Milner, 184

Milnes, Richard Monckton, 44

Minter, Desire, 147

More, Ellen, 147

More, Jasper and his brother, 147

Morton, George, 95

Morton's "New England's Memorial," 76, 100, 183

"Mourt's Relation," 95

Mullins, Joseph, 147

Mullins, Priscilla, 128, 147

Mullins, William and his wife, 139, 147

Naughton, 55

New Plymouth (_see_ Plymouth Mass.)

Newcomen, John, 132

Norris, Mary, 128

Penn, Christian, 131, 143

Pierce, John, 92

"Pilgrimage of Grace," The, 4-7

Plummer, Ann, 147

Plymouth, England, XIV, 63, 67, 92, 163-164, 168, 180

Plymouth, Mass., VII, XIV, 8, 11, 79-103, 112, 115, 116-120, 132, 188;
Pilgrim Stone, 79, 83, 127;
Cole's Hill, 83;
The Fort, 84-87, 116;
The Church, 84, 116-119;
Pilgrim Hall, 92;
Burial Hill, 116

Power, Solomon, 147

Priest, Degory, 147

Prince, Thomas, 183

Provincetown, Mass., 67, 103-112, 151

Puritans, The (_see_ Massachusetts Bay Colony)

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 56

Rassières, Isaac de, 87

Retford, England, 11

Revere, Paul, 120

Reynolds, Captain, 63

Rigdale, Alice, 147

Rigdale, John, 147

Robinson, John, 11-15, 43, 52, 59, 60, 95-96, 155, 172, 175, 176, 179,
180

Rogers, Joseph, 147

Rogers, Thomas, 147

Roosevelt, President, VII, 103, 104, 111, 184

Ryton River, 7

Salem, Mass., 100, 131, 152

Sampson, Harry, 147

Sandwich, Mass., 147

Savage, James, 167

Scituate, Mass., 147, 152

Scrooby, England, 8, 11, 12, 16, 31, 39, 40, 51, 84, 119, 136, 167,
175

Sears, Captain J. H., 104

Sempringham, England, 7

Smith, Captain John, 56, 168

Smith, Ralph, 88, 119

Smyth, John, 11, 16, 51, 175

Snow, Damaris, 144

Snow, Nicholas, 144

Soule, George, 147-148

Southampton, England, 60, 63, 128, 180

Southworth, Edward, 95, 135

"Speedwell," The, 59-63

Standish, Barbara, 95, 151

Standish, Captain Miles, 59, 79, 83, 84, 95, 96, 111, 128, 148-151,
152

Standish, Rose, 148

Story, Ellen, 148

Taft, President, VII, 103, 104, 111

Tattershall Castle, England, 7

Thompson, Edward, 151

Tilley, Ann, 151

Tilley, Edward, 151

Tilley, Elizabeth, 144, 151

Tilley, John and wife, 144, 151

Tinker, Thomas, and wife and son, 151

Torksey, England, 4

Townes, Thomas, 163

Trent River, 3, 4, 11, 15, 40

Trevore, William, 151

Turner, John, and Sons, 151

Van Weede, M., 108

Vassall, Judith, 152

Vassall, William, 152

Vincent, Sarah, 147

Warren, Richard, 140

Warren, Sarah, 140

Webster, Daniel, 103

Wesley, John, 3, 175

Wetmore, George Peabody, 104

Wheldon, Catherine, 144

White, Justice, 104

White, Peregrine, 151-152

White, Resolved, 151, 152

White, Susanna, 151, 152

White, William, 151, 152

Whittier, VII, 176

Wickliffe, 4

Wilberforce, 183

Wilder, Roger, 152

Williams, Roger, 88, 119

Williams, Thomas, 152

Wilson, John, 88, 91, 99

Winslow, Edward, 59, 92, 95, 119, 135, 152-156

Winslow, Gilbert, 156

Winslow, John, 92, 140

Winthrop, Governor John, 88, 91, 99, 100, 115

Winthrop, Robert Charles, 103

Witham River, 15, 31

Woburn, England, 36

Wolcott, Governor, 184

Wolsey, 8

Yarmouth, Mass., 131, 140, 144

[Illustration:

Well worthy to be magnified are they
Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay.

Wordsworth]

[Illustration

The breaking waves dash'd high
On a stern and rock-bound coast;
And the woods, against a stormy sky,
Their giant branches toss'd.

Mrs. Hemans]

Transcriber's Notes:

A caron (^) indicates the letter following is superscripted, like ^e.

Images were moved to a convenient paragraph break.

Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and moved to the end of the
chapter.

The opening and closing illustrations are the same.

Old spellings in quoted text and poetry are retained from the original.

The following words are used interchangeably throughout this book:

cooperation co-operation
cornerstone corner-stone
Mayflower May-flower

Page 117

(Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth). Changed from 'Photgraph' of
the original.

Index

(Naughton, 55). This is most likely Naunton, referred to on Page 55.

*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims - And Its Place in the Life of To-day" ***

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