Book: The Beginnings of New England

J >> John Fiske >> The Beginnings of New England




When, therefore, upon the news of Elizabeth's accession to the throne,
the Protestant refugees made their way back to England, they came as
Calvinistic Puritans. Their stay upon the Continent had been short, but
it had been just enough to put the finishing touch upon the work that
had been going on since the days of Wyclif. Upon such men and their
theories Elizabeth could not look with favour. With all her father's
despotic temper, Elizabeth possessed her mother's fine tact, and
she represented so grandly the feeling of the nation in its
life-and-death-struggle with Spain and the pope, that never perhaps in
English history has the crown wielded so much real power as during the
five-and-forty years of her wonderful reign.

One day Elizabeth asked a lady of the court how she contrived to retain
her husband's affection. The lady replied that "she had confidence
in her husband's understanding and courage, well founded on her own
steadfastness not to offend or thwart, but to cherish and obey, whereby
she did persuade her husband of her own affection, and in so doing did
command his." "Go to, go to, mistress," cried the queen, "You are
wisely bent, I find. After such sort do I keep the good will of all
my husbands, my good people; for if they did not rest assured of some
special love towards them, they would not readily yield me such good
obedience." [2] Such a theory of government might work well in the hands
of an Elizabeth, and in the circumstances in which England was then
placed; but it could hardly be worked by a successor. The seeds of
revolt were already sown. The disposition to curb the sovereign was
growing and would surely assert itself as soon as it should have some
person less loved and respected than Elizabeth to deal with. The queen
in some measure foresaw this, and in the dogged independence and
uncompromising enthusiasm of the Puritans she recognized the rock on
which the monarchy might dash itself into pieces. She therefore hated
the Puritans, and persecuted them zealously with one hand, while
circumstances forced her in spite of herself to aid and abet them with
the other. She could not maintain herself against Spain without helping
the Dutch and the Huguenots; but every soldier she sent across the
channel came back, if he came at all, with his head full of the
doctrines of Calvin; and these stalwart converts were reinforced by the
refugees from France and the Netherlands who came flocking into English
towns to set up their thrifty shops and hold prayer-meetings in their
humble chapels. To guard the kingdom against the intrigues of Philip and
the Guises and the Queen of Scots, it was necessary to choose the most
zealous Protestants for the most responsible positions, and such men
were more than likely to be Calvinists and Puritans. Elizabeth's great
ministers, Burleigh, Walsingham, and Nicholas Bacon, were inclined
toward Puritanism; and so were the naval heroes who won the most
fruitful victories of that century, by shattering the maritime power of
Spain and thus opening the way for Englishmen to colonize North America.
If we would realize the dangers that would have beset the Mayflower and
her successors but for the preparatory work of these immortal sailors,
we must remember the dreadful fate of Ribault and his Huguenot followers
in Florida, twenty-three years before that most happy and glorious
event, the destruction of the Spanish Armada. But not even the devoted
men and women who held their prayer-meetings in the Mayflower's cabin
were more constant in prayer or more assiduous in reading the Bible than
the dauntless rovers, Drake and Hawkins, Gilbert and Cavendish. In the
church itself, too, the Puritan spirit grew until in 1575-83 it seized
upon Grindal, archbishop of Canterbury, who incurred the queen's
disfavour by refusing to meddle with the troublesome reformers or to
suppress their prophesyings. By the end of the century the majority
of country gentlemen and of wealthy merchants in the towns had become
Puritans, and the new views had made great headway in both universities,
while at Cambridge they had become dominant. [Sidenote: Elizabeth's
policy, and its effects] [Sidenote: Puritan Sea-rovers]

This allusion to the universities may serve to introduce the very
interesting topic of the geographical distribution of Puritanism in
England. No one can study the history of the two universities without
being impressed with the greater conservatism of Oxford, and the greater
hospitality of Cambridge toward new ideas. Possibly the explanation
may have some connection with the situation of Cambridge upon the East
Anglian border. The eastern counties of England have often been remarked
as rife in heresy and independency. For many generations the coast
region between the Thames and the Humber was a veritable _litus
haereticum._ Longland, bishop of Lincoln in 1520, reported Lollardism as
especially vigorous and obstinate in his diocese, where more than two
hundred heretics were once brought before him in the course of a single
visitation. It was in Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Essex, and
among the fens of Ely, Cambridge, and Huntingdon, that Puritanism was
strongest at the end of the sixteenth century. It was as member and
leading spirit of the Eastern Counties Association that Oliver Cromwell
began his military career; and in so far as there was anything sectional
in the struggle between Charles I. and the Long Parliament, it was a
struggle which ended in the victory of east over west. East Anglia was
from first to last the one region in which the supremacy of Parliament
was unquestionable and impregnable, even after the strength of its
population had been diminished by sending some thousands of picked men
and women to America. While every one of the forty counties of England
was represented in the great Puritan exodus, the East Anglian counties
contributed to it far more than all the rest. Perhaps it would not be
far out of the way to say that two-thirds of the American people who can
trace their ancestry to New England might follow it back to the East
Anglian shires of the mother-country; one-sixth might follow it to those
southwestern countries--Devonshire, Dorset, and Somerset--which so
long were foremost in maritime enterprise; one-sixth to other parts of
England. I would not insist upon the exactness of such figures, in a
matter where only a rough approximation is possible; but I do not think
they overstate the East Anglian preponderance. It was not by accident
that the earliest counties of Massachusetts were called Norfolk,
Suffolk, and Essex, or that Boston in Lincolnshire gave its name to the
chief city of New England. The native of Connecticut or Massachusetts
who wanders about rural England to-day finds no part of it so homelike
as the cosy villages and smiling fields and quaint market towns as he
fares leisurely and in not too straight a line from Ipswich toward Hull.
Countless little unobtrusive features remind him of home. The very names
on the sign-boards over the sleepy shops have an unwontedly familiar
look. In many instances the homestead which his forefathers left, when
they followed Winthrop or Hooker to America, is still to be found,
well-kept and comfortable; the ancient manor-house built of massive
unhewn stone, yet in other respects much like the New England farmhouse,
with its long sloping roof and gable end toward the road, its staircase
with twisted balusters running across the shallow entry-way, its low
ceilings with their sturdy oaken beams, its spacious chimneys, and its
narrow casements from which one might have looked out upon the anxious
march of Edward IV. from Ravenspur to the field of victory at Barnet
in days when America was unknown. Hard by, in the little parish church
which has stood for perhaps a thousand years, plain enough and bleak
enough to suit the taste of the sternest Puritan, one may read upon
the cold pavement one's own name and the names of one's friends and
neighbours in startling proximity, somewhat worn and effaced by the
countless feet that have trodden there. And yonder on the village green
one comes with bated breath upon the simple inscription which tells of
some humble hero who on that spot in the evil reign of Mary suffered
death by fire. Pursuing thus our interesting journey, we may come at
last to the quiet villages of Austerfield and Scrooby, on opposite
banks of the river Idle, and just at the corner of the three shires of
Lincoln, York, and Nottingham. It was from this point that the Puritan
exodus to America was begun. [Sidenote: Puritanism was strongest in the
eastern counties] [Sidenote: Preponderance of East Anglia in the Puritan
exodus]

It was not, however, in the main stream of Puritanism, but in one of its
obscure rivulets that this world-famous movement originated. During the
reign of Elizabeth it was not the purpose of the Puritans to separate
themselves from the established church of which the sovereign was the
head, but to remain within it and reform it according to their own
notions. For a time they were partially successful in this work,
especially in simplifying the ritual and in giving a Calvinistic tinge
to the doctrines. In doing this they showed no conscious tendency toward
freedom of thought, but rather a bigotry quite as intense as that which
animated the system against which they were fighting. The most advanced
liberalism of Elizabeth's time was not to be found among the Puritans,
but in the magnificent treatise on "Ecclesiastical Polity" by the
churchman Richard Hooker. But the liberalism of this great writer, like
that of Erasmus a century earlier, was not militant enough to meet the
sterner demands of the time. It could not then ally itself with the
democratic spirit, as Puritanism did. It has been well said that while
Luther was the prophet of the Reformation that has been, Erasmus was the
prophet of the Reformation that is to come, and so it was to some extent
with the Puritans and Hooker. The Puritan fight against the hierarchy
was a political necessity of the time, something without which no real
and thorough reformation could then be effected. In her antipathy to
this democratic movement, Elizabeth vexed and tormented the Puritans
as far as she deemed it prudent; and in the conservative temper of the
people she found enough support to prevent their transforming the church
as they would have liked to do. Among the Puritans themselves, indeed,
there was no definite agreement on this point. Some would have stopped
short with Presbyterianism, while others held that "new presbyter was
but old priest writ large," and so pressed on to Independency. It was
early in Elizabeth's reign that the zeal of these extreme brethren,
inflamed by persecution, gave rise to the sect of Separatists, who
flatly denied the royal supremacy over ecclesiastical affairs, and
asserted the right to set up churches of their own, with pastors
and elders and rules of discipline, independent of queen or bishop.
[Sidenote: Puritanism was not intentionally allied with liberalism]

In 1567 the first congregation of this sort, consisting of about a
hundred persons assembled in a hall in Anchor Lane in London, was
forcibly broken up and thirty-one of the number were sent to jail and
kept there for nearly a year. By 1576 the Separatists had come to be
recognized as a sect, under the lead of Robert Brown, a man of high
social position, related to the great Lord Burleigh. Brown fled to
Holland, where he preached to a congregation of English exiles, and
wrote books which were smuggled into England and privately circulated
there, much to the disgust, not only of the queen, but of all parties,
Puritans as well as High Churchmen. The great majority of Puritans,
whose aim was not to leave the church, but to stay in it and control
it, looked with dread and disapproval upon these extremists who seemed
likely to endanger their success by forcing them into deadly opposition
to the crown. Just as in the years which ushered in our late Civil War,
the opponents of the Republicans sought to throw discredit upon them by
confusing them with the little sect of Abolitionists; and just as the
Republicans, in resenting the imputation, went so far as to frown upon
the Abolitionists, so that in December, 1860, men who had just voted for
Mr. Lincoln were ready to join in breaking up "John Brown meetings" in
Boston; so it was with religious parties in the reign of Elizabeth. The
opponents of the Puritans pointed to the Separatists, and cried, "See
whither your anarchical doctrines are leading!" and in their eagerness
to clear themselves of this insinuation, the leading Puritans were as
severe upon the Separatists as anybody. It is worthy of note that in
both instances the imputation, so warmly resented, was true. Under the
pressure of actual hostilities the Republicans did become Abolitionists,
and in like manner, when in England it came to downright warfare the
Puritans became Separatists. But meanwhile it fared ill with the little
sect which everybody hated and despised. Their meetings were broken up
by mobs. In an old pamphlet describing a "tumult in Fleet Street, raised
by the disorderly preachment, pratings, and prattlings of a swarm of
Separatists," one reads such sentences as the following: "At length they
catcht one of them alone, but they kickt him so vehemently as if they
meant to beat him into a jelly. It is ambiguous whether they have kil'd
him or no, but for a certainty they did knock him about as if they meant
to pull him to pieces. I confesse it had been no matter if they had
beaten the whole tribe in the like manner." For their leaders the
penalty was more serious. The denial of the queen's ecclesiastical
supremacy could be treated as high treason, and two of Brown's friends,
convicted of circulating his books, were sent to the gallows. In spite
of these dangers Brown returned to England in 1585. William the Silent
had lately been murdered, and heresy in Holland was not yet safe from
the long arm of the Spaniard. Brown trusted in Lord Burleigh's ability
to protect him, but in 1588, finding himself in imminent danger, he
suddenly recanted and accepted a comfortable living under the bishops
who had just condemned him. His followers were already known as
Brownists; henceforth their enemies took pains to call them so and twit
them with holding doctrines too weak for making martyrs. [Sidenote:
Robert Brown and the Separatists]

The flimsiness of Brown's moral texture prevented him from becoming the
leader in the Puritan exodus to New England. That honour was reserved
for William Brewster, son of a country gentleman who had for many
years been postmaster at Scrooby. The office was then one of high
responsibility and influence. After taking his degree at Cambridge,
Brewster became private secretary to Sir William Davison, whom he
accompanied on his mission to the Netherlands. When Davison's public
career came to an end in 1587, Brewster returned to Scrooby, and soon
afterward succeeded his father as postmaster, in which position he
remained until 1607. During the interval Elizabeth died, and James
Stuart came from Scotland to take her place on the throne. [Sidenote:
William Brewster]

The feelings with which the late queen had regarded Puritanism were mild
compared with the sentiments entertained by her successor. For some
years he had been getting worsted in his struggle with the Presbyterians
of the northern kingdom. His vindictive memory treasured up the day when
a mighty Puritan preacher had in public twitched him by the sleeve and
called him "God's silly vassal." "I tell you, sir," said Andrew Melville
on that occasion, "there are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland.
There is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the Kirk, whose subject
James VI. is, and of whose kingdom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head,
but a member. And they whom Christ hath called to watch over his kirk
and govern his spiritual kingdom have sufficient power and authority so
to do both together and severally." In this bold and masterful speech
we have the whole political philosophy of Puritanism, as in a nutshell.
Under the guise of theocratic fanaticism, and in words as arrogant as
ever fell from priestly lips, there was couched the assertion of the
popular will against despotic privilege. Melville could say such things
to the king's face and walk away unharmed, because there stood behind
him a people fully aroused to the conviction that there is an eternal
law of God, which kings no less than scullions must obey. [3] Melville
knew this full well, and so did James know it in the bitterness of his
heart. He would have no such mischievous work in England. He despised
Elizabeth's grand national policy which his narrow intellect could not
comprehend. He could see that in fighting Spain and aiding Dutchmen and
Huguenots she was strengthening the very spirit that sought to pull
monarchy down. In spite of her faults, which were neither few nor small,
the patriotism of that fearless woman was superior to any personal
ambition. It was quite otherwise with James. He was by no means
fearless, and he cared more for James Stuart than for either England or
Scotland. He had an overweening opinion of his skill in kingcraft. In
coming to Westminster it was his policy to use his newly acquired
power to break down the Puritan party in both kingdoms and to fasten
episcopacy upon Scotland. In pursuing this policy he took no heed of
English national sentiment, but was quite ready to defy and insult it,
even to the point of making--before children who remembered the Armada
had yet reached middle age--an alliance with the hated Spaniard. In such
wise James succeeded in arraying against the monarchical principle the
strongest forces of English life,--the sentiment of nationality, the
sentiment of personal freedom, and the uncompromising religious fervour
of Calvinism; and out of this invincible combination of forces has been
wrought the nobler and happier state of society in which we live to-day.
[Sidenote: James Stuart and Andrew Melville]

Scarcely ten months had James been king of England when he invited
the leading Puritan clergymen to meet himself and the bishops in a
conference at Hampton Court, as he wished to learn what changes they
would like to make in the government and ritual of the church. In the
course of the discussion he lost his temper and stormed, as was his
wont. [Sidenote: King James's view of the political situation]

The mention of the word "presbytery" lashed him into fury. "A Scottish
presbytery," he cried, "agreeth as well with a monarchy as God and the
Devil. Then Jack and Tom and Will and Dick shall meet, and at their
pleasures censure me and my council and all our proceedings .... Stay,
I pray you, for one seven years, before you demand that from me, and if
then you find me pursy and fat, and my windpipes stuffed, I will perhaps
hearken to you .... Until you find that I grow lazy, let that alone."
One of the bishops declared that in this significant tirade his Majesty
spoke by special inspiration from Heaven! The Puritans saw that their
only hope lay in resistance. If any doubt remained, it was dispelled by
the vicious threat with which the king broke up the conference. "I will
_make_ them conform," said he, "or I will harry them out of the land."

These words made a profound sensation in England, as well they might,
for they heralded the struggle which within half a century was to
deliver up James's son to the executioner. The Parliament of 1604 met
in angrier mood than any Parliament which had assembled at Westminster
since the dethronement of Richard II. Among the churches non-conformity
began more decidedly to assume the form of secession. The key-note of
the conflict was struck at Scrooby. Staunch Puritan as he was, Brewster
had not hitherto favoured the extreme measures of the Separatists. Now
he withdrew from the church, and gathered together a company of men and
women who met on Sundays for divine service in his own drawing-room at
Scrooby Manor. In organizing this independent Congregationalist
society, Brewster was powerfully aided by John Robinson, a native of
Lincolnshire. Robinson was then thirty years of age, and had taken his
master's degree at Cambridge in 1600. He was a man of great learning and
rare sweetness of temper, and was moreover distinguished for a broad and
tolerant habit of mind too seldom found among the Puritans of that day.
Friendly and unfriendly writers alike bear witness to his spirit of
Christian charity and the comparatively slight value which he attached
to orthodoxy in points of doctrine; and we can hardly be wrong in
supposing that the comparatively tolerant behaviour of the Plymouth
colonists, whereby they were contrasted with the settlers of
Massachusetts, was in some measure due to the abiding influence of the
teachings of this admirable man. Another important member of the Scrooby
congregation was William Bradford, of the neighbouring village of
Austerfield, then a lad of seventeen years, but already remarkable for
maturity of intelligence and weight of character. Afterward governor of
Plymouth for nearly thirty years, he became the historian of his colony;
and to his picturesque chronicle, written in pure and vigorous English,
we are indebted for most that we know of the migration that started
from Scrooby and ended in Plymouth. [Sidenote: The congregation of
Separatists at Scrooby]

It was in 1606--two years after King James's truculent threat--that
this independent church of Scrooby was organized. Another year had not
elapsed before its members had suffered so much at the hands of officers
of the law, that they began to think of following the example of former
heretics and escaping to Holland. After an unsuccessful attempt in
the autumn of 1607, they at length succeeded a few months later in
accomplishing their flight to Amsterdam, where they hoped to find a
home. But here they found the English exiles who had preceded them so
fiercely involved in doctrinal controversies, that they decided to
go further in search of peace and quiet. This decision, which we may
ascribe to Robinson's wise counsels, served to keep the society of
Pilgrims from getting divided and scattered. They reached Leyden in
1609, just as the Spanish government had sullenly abandoned the hopeless
task of conquering the Dutch, and had granted to Holland the Twelve
Years Truce. During eleven of these twelve years the Pilgrims remained
in Leyden, supporting themselves by various occupations, while their
numbers increased from 300 to more than 1000. Brewster opened a
publishing house, devoted mainly to the issue of theological books.
Robinson accepted a professorship in the university, and engaged in the
defence of Calvinism against the attacks of Episcopius, the successor
of Arminius. The youthful Bradford devoted himself to the study of
languages,--Dutch, French, Latin, Greek, and finally Hebrew; wishing,
as he said, to "see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in all
their native beauty." During their sojourn in Leyden the Pilgrims were
introduced to a strange and novel spectacle,--the systematic legal
toleration of all persons, whether Catholic or Protestant, who called
themselves followers of Christ. Not that there was not plenty of
intolerance in spirit, but the policy inaugurated by the idolized
William the Silent held it in check by law. All persons who came to
Holland, and led decorous lives there, were protected in their opinions
and customs. By contemporary writers in other countries this eccentric
behaviour of the Dutch government was treated with unspeakable scorn.
"All strange religions flock thither," says one; it is "a common harbour
of all heresies," a "cage of unclean birds," says another; "the great
mingle mangle of religion," says a third. [4] In spite of the relief
from persecution, however, the Pilgrims were not fully satisfied with
their new home. The expiration of the truce with Spain might prove that
this relief was only temporary; and at any rate, complete toleration
did not fill the measure of their wants. Had they come to Holland as
scattered bands of refugees, they might have been absorbed into the
Dutch population, as Huguenot refugees have been absorbed in Germany,
England, and America. But they had come as an organized community, and
absorption into a foreign nation was something to be dreaded. They
wished to preserve their English speech and English traditions, keep up
their organization, and find some favoured spot where they might lay the
corner-stone of a great Christian state. The spirit of nationality was
strong in them; the spirit of self-government was strong in them; and
the only thing which could satisfy these feelings was such a migration
as had not been seen since ancient times, a migration like that of
Phokaians to Massilia or Tyrians to Carthage. [Sidenote: The flight to
Holland] [Sidenote: Why the Pilgrims did not stay there]

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