CHAPTER XIV.

THE FATHERS OF NEW ENGLAND.

THE PURITANS UNDER JAMES I. - SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE ENGLISH, AT THE BEGIN NING OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. - THE SEPARATISTS OF NORTH NOTTINGHAMSHIRE. - BREWSTER AND THE EPISCOPAL RESIDENCE AT SCROOBY. - PERSECUTION OF THE PURITANS. THEIR ATTEMPTS TO ESCAPE FROM ENGLAND.-LONG EXILE IN HOLLAND. MOTIVES FOR A PROPOSED REMOVAL TO AMERICA.-PETITION TO KING JAMES.-NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE DUTCH.-EMBARKATION OF THE PILGRIMS AT DELFT-HAVEN. - FINAL DEPARTURE OF THE "MAY FLOWER" FROM ENGLAND. -ARRIVAL AT CAPE COD. - FORM OF GOVERNMENT ADOPTED. - -EXPLORATIONS ALONG THE COAST.-SITE FOR A COLONY SELECTED.-CONFUSION OF FACTS AND DATES AS TO THE LANDING AT PLYMOUTH. —THE FIRST WINTER. - SUFFERINGS AND DEATHS.

THE moral, political, and, in some sense, the material training which the colonists on the James River, in Virginia, were twelve years in acquiring, as a necessary preparation for future success, the Pilgrims were, during the same period, subjected to

The lessons of exile.

in Holland. "We are well weaned," said the pastor, Robinson, after nine years of exile, "from the delicate milk of our mother countrie, and enured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land." Poverty in Amsterdam and Leyden was not, indeed, quite so irremediable as in the American wilderness, but the lesson it taught did not greatly differ in either place. As exiles in strange lands with no dependence but upon themselves, the necessity of self-denial and self-reliance for the sake of self-preservation would grow alike in both places; in the circumstances of both was the same stimulus to the most active use of all the powers of mind and body; isolation, whether from absolute solitude, or from being surrounded by an alien people, would produce the same sense of mutual interest, of the necessity of mutual help, and of a mutual regard for each other's rights, which is the only sure foundation for political self-government.

1603.]

THE PURITANS UNDER JAMES I.

371

While, however, this preparatory education of events was thus, in some measure, the same for the founders of the first two English colonies on the American coast, the Pilgrims had this great advantage over their countrymen in Virginia, - that a bond of unity in deep-seated religious convictions was strengthened by a brotherhood of social relations growing out of the peculiar circumstances of their flight from their native land.

The issue

between the

Church and

the Separa

The accession of James I. to the throne of England did not bring, as they hoped it would, relief to those devout and devoted believers, who, through the preceding reign, had contended for religious freedom. From the time of Mary, "the one side laboured," says Bradford, "to have the right worship of God and discipline of Christ established in the Church, according to the simplicitie of the Gospell, without the admixture of men's inventions, and to have, and to be ruled by, the laws of God's word dispensed in those offices, and by those officers of Pastors, Teachers, and Elders, etc., according to the Scripturs. The other partie, though under many colours and pretences, endevored to have the episcopall dignitie (after the popish mañer) with their large power and jurisdiction still retained; with all those courts, cannons, and ceremonies, together with all such livings, revenues, and subordinate officers, with other such means as formerly upheld their antichristian greatnes, and enabled them with lordly and tyranous power to persecute the poore servants of God." In this succinct statement is the very pith of the matter in that religious controversy which followed the Reformation; and one of its important results, hardly noticed, and almost unknown at the time, was, that it banished, early in the seventeenth century, a ship-load of yeomen from England.

tists.

At a conference held in 1603, to consider the grievances of this class of his subjects, James I. boasted, in a letter to a friend in Scotland, that he had "kept such a revel with the Puritans these two days, as was never heard the like; where I have peppered them so soundly as ye have done the Papists."2 There was nothing to be hoped from this son of a mother who had been led to the block for her adherence to the ancient faith, as well as for her crimes against the state. It was equally amusing to James to "pepper" Puritans in public debate, and to remember that Catholics had lost their heads for their devotion to the religion in which they believed.

There were many of these persecuted dissenters throughout the

1 History of Plymouth Plantation, by William Bradford, the Second Governor of The Colony.

2 Strype's Life of Whitgift, App. No. 46. Quoted in Palfrey's History of New England, vol. ii., p. 130.

Kingdom, sometimes gathered into societies of their own, especially in London; sometimes bearing alone a silent but painful testimony against the undoubted immoralities connived at in the church, and the vain ordinances as they deemed them which they were called upon to share in and to sanction. But in no rural district were they so numerous or so well organized as in that part of England where the borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire met. More than one earnest preacher in that neighborhood had called and held together by his eloquence and zeal a little knot of followers as firm in the faith as he, and ready to follow whithersoever his higher light should lead.

The village

in Notting

In North Nottinghamshire, in the Hundred of Basset-Lawe, is the village of Scrooby. Though little more than a hamlet, of Scrooby, it was of some importance three hundred years ago, as a hamshire. post-town on the great road from London to Scotland, and as containing a manor place belonging to the Archbishop of York, then the Archbishop Sandys, one of whose sons was that Edwin Sandys who, in 1618, was made Treasurer of the Virginia Company in London. There were historical associations connected with the archbishop's residence at Scrooby other than those for which the descendants of the "Pilgrim Fathers" may cherish its memory, and which even now are not without some interest. Here Margaret, Queen of Scotland, daughter of Henry VII., slept for a night, on the way to her own kingdom, in 1503; here, also, Henry VIII. passed a night on a northern progress in 1541; and in this manor-house Cardina Wolsey lived some weeks after his fall, ministering to the poor

H

TO

THE ENGLISH IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY.

373

1600.] deeds of charity, saying mass on Sundays, and distributing alms in meat, and drink, and money.1

This house of the archbishop was the one great house of Scrooby, for the people of the neighborhood were, for the most part, plain yeomen, who followed what Bradford, the Plymouth Governor, called the innocent trade of husbandry. In the method and manners of their lives there was no very essential difference, except that they had enough to eat and wear, from that way of life which fell to the lot of some of them in an American wilderness.

lis people of

English

common

For the habits of the common people of England at that period were exceedingly simple, and in some respects almost prim- Social conitive. Only where wood was plentiful were their houses well and solidly built of timber; elsewhere they were mere frames filled in with clay. The walls of the rich only, who could afford such a luxury, were covered with hangings to keep out the dampness, and even plastered walls were uncommon.

that period.

The floors

of these houses were of clay, and covered, if covered at all, with rushes. Chimneys had come into use in the sixteenth century, though it was common long after to have a hole in the roof for the escape of smoke, as is done in Indian wigwams. The windows were not glazed, for that was a luxury so costly that even noblemen when they left their country-houses to go to Court, had their glass-windows packed away with other precious furniture for safe-keeping. In the houses of the common people there was no better protection from the weather than panes of oiled paper.2 A pallet of straw, with a rough mat for covering, and a log for a pillow, was deemed a good bed. The food of the people was chiefly flesh, for gardening was an art confined to the very rich, for ornamental purposes, and few vegetables were cultivated. Even agriculture was in a rude state; the draining of land was almost unknown, and fever and ague consequently the common disease. A clumsy wooden plough, a wooden fork, a spade, hoe, and flail were the only agricultural implements. The bread was the coarser kind of black bread made of the unbolted flour of oats, barley, or rye, and in times of scarcity this was mixed with ground

1 See The Founders of New Plymouth, by Rev. Joseph Hunter. London, 1854. Also Bradford's History of Plymouth Plantation.

2 Winslow wrote home from Plymouth, in the early days of the colony, to those about to emigrate: "Bring paper and linseed oil for your windows."

Table-forks were unknown; the spoons and platters, where there were any, were of wood; with the use of a knife, the fingers, and a common dish, the civilities of the table were generally dispensed with.

The English

The yeomen, who lived in this rude fashion, were not called Sir or Master, as gentlemen and knights were, but plain John or yeoman. Thomas. Yet they were the "settled or staid men" from the Saxon Zeoman - the great middle class of England, the firm foundation on which the state rested; and in "foughten fields" the king remained among his yeomanry, or footmen, for on them he relied as his chief strength. The land they lived upon and cultivated was sometimes their own, and they often acquired wealth. Their sons were sent to the universities and the inns of court, and from the ranks of the yeomen great men and great names were given to England; to the class of gentry came recruits of fresh, healthy blood, quickened by new ambitions, strong in great purposes. It was good stock from which to settle a new country.

The congregation at Scrooby.

There was at Scrooby a congregation of Separatists, made up, for the most part, of people of this class; educated and enlightened enough to come to conclusions of their own upon questions of religious reformation; so stable in character as to hold firmly to convictions conscientiously formed; and endowed with enough of this world's goods to maintain their freedom of thought,

even to banishment, if need be, from their native land. A body of their faith preceded them by

some years, in emigrating to Holland, and, after their departure, the Scrooby people had no separate building in

which to congregate for religious worship. Their usual place place of

meeting was the manor-house, belonging to the Archbishop of York. The leading man among them was William Brewster, who after