The Romantic Story of the Mayflower Pilgrims
And its Place in the Life of To-day
By A. C. Addison
Boston
L. C. Page & Company
MDCCCCXI

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.

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.

CONTENTS
I. OLD WORLD HOMES AND PILGRIM SHRINES
II. THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND
III. LIFE IN LEYDEN -- ADIEU TO PLYMOUTH -- THE
VOYAGE TO THE WEST
IV. "INTO A WORLD UNKNOWN" -- TRIALS AND TRIUMPH
V. THE PILGRIM ROLL CALL -- FATE AND FORTUNES OF
THE FATHERS
VI. NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES

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, 1. The Pilgrim Fathers.

In romance of circumstance and the charm of personal beroism 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.

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 presentday 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 timeworn 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.

THE ROMANTIC STORY of the MAYFLOWER PILGRIMS

I  OLD WORLD HOMES AND PILGRIM SHRINES

View each well-known scene:
Think what is now and what bath 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.

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 Mayjlower, 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 we ll
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.

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,'[fn. 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."

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 aand 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 springtide, the
awful AEgir, 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 overflowed 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 the re 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.

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. [fn 1] 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 (4as 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
Gaiftsborough 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.

[ fn. 1] Seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no
hope of their continuance there, they resolved to go into [the] Low
countries, wher they heard was freedome of religion for all men; as
also how Sundrie from London, and other parts of [the] land had
been exiled and persecuted for [the] same cause, and were gone
thither and lived at Amsterdam and in other places of [the] 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 [the]
dilligence and malice of their adversaries, they seeing they could
no longer continue in [that] condition, they resolved to get over
into [Holland] as they could which was in [the ] year 1607-1608."
-- Bradford's "History of Plymouth Plantation." 

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.

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 ce nsure 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 codt-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.

II  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
AEgir 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.

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 courtroom 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.

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 ringleaders, 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.

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 d
evoted sect, including Richard CIyfton, "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 verse s
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.

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

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 16o8 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.

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 16ig Smith, who
was then unemployed at home, volunteered to lead out the
Pilgrims to North Virginia, but nothing came of the offer.

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 unsatisfactor . 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 Ircinany 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 finan ce
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 stouthearted 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." 

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 [fn. 1];
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!

[ fn. 1] New style, which is that adopted for the dates of sailing,
and arrival and landing in North American.

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 passengersand 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.

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 whi ch
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 2 1, 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.

IV  "INTO A WORLD UNKNOWN"    TRIALS AND TRIUMPH

The breaking waves dash'd high
On a stem 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 headland, 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 [fn. 1] 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.

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.

[ fn 1] 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."

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! [fn. 1]

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.


[ fn. 1] Longfellow, "The Courtship of Miles Standish."

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.

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. Ond house, the first finished, was set apart as a hospital. The
hill above the beach was converted into a burial-ground, [fn. 1]
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

[ fn. 1] 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.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.

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 hillfort, 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 g round. 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 [fn. 1] written by Isaac de Rassieres, 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 fireIock, 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."

[ fn. 1] The letter was addressed by De Rassieres to Herr
Blommaert, a director of his company, after his return to Holland,
where the Royal Library became possessed of it in 1847.

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.

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 i s 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-Iunged
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 sometimeess 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-shelf. 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 [fn. 1] 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 P lymouth Company on February 21, 1620, authorising the
planters to establish their colony near the mouth of the Hudson
river.

[ fn. 1] 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.

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.

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