To return to Earl Simon, we see that it was just in that wonderful thirteenth century, when the Roman idea of government might seem to have been attaining its richest and most fruitful development, that the richer and more fruitful English idea first became incarnate in the political constitution of a great and rapidly growing nation. It was not long before the struggle between the Roman Idea and the English Idea, clothed in various forms, became the dominating issue in European history. We have now to observe the rise of modern nationalities, as new centres of political life, out of the various provinces of the Roman world. In the course of this development the Teutonic representative assembly is at first everywhere discernible, in some form or other, as in the Spanish Cortes or the States-General of France, but on the continent it generally dies out. Only in such nooks as Switzerland and the Netherlands does it survive. In the great nations it succumbs before the encroachments of the crown. The comparatively novel Teutonic idea of power delegated by the people to their representatives had not become deeply enough rooted in the political soil of the continent; and accordingly we find it more and more disused and at length almost forgotten, while the old and deeply rooted Roman idea of power delegated by the governing body to its lieutenants and prefects usurps its place. Let us observe some of the most striking features of this growth of modern nationalities. [[Sidenote: Conflict between Roman Idea and English Idea begins to become clearly visible in the thirteenth century]
The reader of medieval history cannot fail to be impressed with the suddenness with which the culmination of the Holy Roman Empire, in the thirteenth century, was followed by a swift decline. The imperial position of the Hapsburgs was far less splendid than that of the Hohenstauffen; it rapidly became more German and less European, until by and by people began to forget what the empire originally meant. The change which came over the papacy was even more remarkable. The grandchildren of the men who had witnessed the spectacle of a king of France and a king of England humbled at the feet of Innocent III., the children of the men who had found the gigantic powers of a Frederick II. unequal to the task of curbing the papacy, now beheld the successors of St. Peter carried away to Avignon, there to be kept for seventy years under the supervision of the kings of France. Henceforth the glory of the papacy in its political aspect was to be but the faint shadow of that with which it had shone before. This sudden change in its position showed that the medieval dream of a world-empire was passing away, and that new powers were coming uppermost in the shape of modern nationalities with their national sovereigns. So long as these nationalities were in the weakness of their early formation, it was possible for pope and emperor to assert, and sometimes to come near maintaining, universal supremacy. But the time was now at hand when kings could assert their independence of the pope, while the emperor was fast sinking to be merely one among kings.
As modern kingdoms thus grew at the expense of empire and papacy above, so they also grew at the expense of feudal dukedoms, earldoms, and baronies below. The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were as fatal to feudalism as to world-empire and world-church. A series of wars occurring at this time were especially remarkable for the wholesale slaughter of the feudal nobility, whether on the field or under the headsman's axe. This was a conspicuous feature of the feuds of the Trastamare in Spain, of the English invasions of France, followed by the quarrel between Burgundians and Armagnacs, and of the great war of the Roses in England. So thorough-going was the butchery in England, for example, that only twenty-nine lay peers could be found to sit in the first parliament of Henry VII in 1485. The old nobility was almost annihilated, both in person and in property; for along with the slaughter there went wholesale confiscation, and this added greatly to the disposable wealth of the crown. The case was essentially similar in France and Spain. In all three countries the beginning of the sixteenth century saw the power of the crown increased and increasing. Its vast accessions of wealth made it more independent of legislative assemblies, and at the same time enabled it to make the baronage more subservient in character by filling up the vacant places with new creations of its own. Through the turbulent history of the next two centuries, we see the royal power aiming at unchecked supremacy and in the principal instances attaining it except in England. Absolute despotism was reached first in Spain, under Philip II.; in France it was reached a century later, under Louis XIV.; and at about the same time in the hereditary estates of Austria; while over all the Italian and German soil of the disorganized empire, except among the glaciers of Switzerland and the dykes of the Netherlands, the play of political forces had set up a host of petty tyrannies which aped the morals and manners of the great autocrats at Paris and Madrid and Vienna. [[Sidenote: Increasing power of the crown]
As we look back over this growth of modern monarchy, we cannot but be struck with the immense practical difficulty of creating a strong nationality without sacrificing self-government. Powerful, indeed, is the tendency toward over-centralization, toward stagnation, toward political death. Powerful is the tendency to revert to the Roman, if not to the Oriental method. As often as we reflect upon the general state of things at the end of the seventeenth century—the dreadful ignorance and misery which prevailed among most of the people of continental Europe, and apparently without hope of remedy—so often must we be impressed anew with the stupendous significance of the part played by self-governing England in overcoming dangers which have threatened the very existence of modern civilization. It is not too much to say that in the seventeenth century the entire political future of mankind was staked upon the questions that were at issue in England. To keep the sacred flame of liberty alive required such a rare and wonderful concurrence of conditions that, had our forefathers then succumbed in the strife, it is hard to imagine how or where the failure could have been repaired. Some of these conditions we have already considered; let us now observe one of the most important of all. Let us note the part played by that most tremendous of social forces, religious sentiment, in its relation to the political circumstances which we have passed in review. If we ask why it was that among modern nations absolute despotism was soonest and most completely established in Spain, we find it instructive to observe that the circumstances under which the Spanish monarchy grew up, during centuries of deadly struggle with the Mussulman, were such as to enlist the religious sentiment on the side of despotic methods in church and state. It becomes interesting, then, to observe by contrast how it was that in England the dominant religious sentiment came to be enlisted on the side of political freedom.
In such an inquiry we have nothing to do with the truth or falsity of any system of doctrines, whether Catholic or Protestant. The legitimate purposes of the historian do not require him to intrude upon the province of the theologian. Our business is to trace the sequence of political cause and effect. Nor shall we get much help from crude sweeping statements which set forth Catholicism as invariably the enemy and Protestantism as invariably the ally of human liberty. The Catholic has a right to be offended at statements which would involve a Hildebrand or a St. Francis in the same historical judgment with a Sigismund or a Torquemada. The character of ecclesiastical as of all other institutions has varied with the character of the men who have worked them and the varying needs of the times and places in which they have been worked; and our intense feeling of the gratitude we owe to English Puritanism need in nowise diminish the enthusiasm with which we praise the glorious work of the mediaeval church. It is the duty of the historian to learn how to limit and qualify his words of blame or approval; for so curiously is human nature compounded of strength and weakness that the best of human institutions are likely to be infected with some germs of vice or folly. [[Sidenote: Beginnings of Protestantism in the thirteenth century]
Of no human institution is this more true than of the great medieval church of Gregory and Innocent when viewed in the light of its claims to unlimited temporal and spiritual sovereignty. In striking down the headship of the emperors, it would have reduced Europe to a sort of Oriental caliphate, had it not been checked by the rising spirit of nationality already referred to. But there was another and even mightier agency coming in to curb its undue pretensions to absolute sovereignty. That same thirteenth century which witnessed the culmination of its power witnessed also the first bold and determined manifestation of the Protestant temper of revolt against spiritual despotism. It was long before this that the earliest Protestant heresy had percolated into Europe, having its source, like so many other heresies, in that eastern world where the stimulating thought of the Greeks busied itself with the ancient theologies of Asia. From Armenia in the eighth century came the Manichaean sect of Paulicians into Thrace, and for twenty generations played a considerable part in the history of the Eastern Empire. In the Bulgarian tongue they were known as Bogomilians, or men constant in prayer. In Greek they were called Cathari, or "Puritans." They accepted the New Testament, but set little store by the Old; they laughed at transubstantiation, denied any mystical efficiency to baptism, frowned upon image-worship as no better than idolatry, despised the intercession of saints, and condemned the worship of the Virgin Mary. As for the symbol of the cross, they scornfully asked, "If any man slew the son of a king with a bit of wood, how could this piece of wood be dear to the king?" Their ecclesiastical government was in the main presbyterian, and in politics they showed a decided leaning toward democracy. They wore long faces, looked askance at frivolous amusements, and were terribly in earnest. Of the more obscure pages of mediaeval history, none are fuller of interest than those in which we decipher the westward progress of these sturdy heretics through the Balkan peninsula into Italy, and thence into southern France, where toward the end of the twelfth century we find their ideas coming to full blossom in the great Albigensian heresy. It was no light affair to assault the church in the days of Innocent III. The terrible crusade against the Albigenses, beginning in 1207, was the joint work of the most powerful of popes and one of the most powerful of French kings. On the part of Innocent it was the stamping out of a revolt that threatened the very existence of the Catholic hierarchy; on the part of Philip Augustus it was the suppression of those too independent vassals the Counts of Toulouse, and the decisive subjection of the southern provinces to the government at Paris. Nowhere in European history do we read a more frightful story than that which tells of the blazing fires which consumed thousand after thousand of the most intelligent and thrifty people in France. It was now that the Holy Inquisition came into existence, and after forty years of slaughter these Albigensian Cathari or Puritans seemed exterminated. The practice of burning heretics, first enacted by statute in Aragon in 1197, was adopted in most parts of Europe during the thirteenth century, but in England not until the beginning of the fifteenth. The Inquisition was never established in England. Edward II. attempted to introduce it in 1311 for the purpose of suppressing the Templars, but his utter failure showed that the instinct of self-government was too strong in the English people to tolerate the entrusting of so much power over men's lives to agents of the papacy. Mediaeval England was ignorant and bigoted enough, but under a representative government which so strongly permeated society, it was impossible to set the machinery of repression to work with such deadly thoroughness as it worked under the guidance of Roman methods. When we read the history of persecution in England, the story in itself is dreadful enough; but when we compare it with the horrors enacted in other countries, we arrive at some startling results. During the two centuries of English persecution, from Henry IV. to James I., some 400 persons were burned at the stake, and three-fourths of these cases occurred in 1555-57, the last three years of Mary Tudor. Now in a single province of Spain, in the single year 1482, about 2000 persons were burned. The lowest estimates of the number slain for heresy in the Netherlands in the course of the sixteenth century place it at 75,000. Very likely such figures are in many cases grossly exaggerated. But after making due allowance for this, the contrast is sufficiently impressive. In England the persecution of heretics was feeble and spasmodic, and only at one moment rose to anything like the appalling vigour which ordinarily characterized it in countries where the Inquisition was firmly established. Now among the victims of religious persecution must necessarily be found an unusual proportion of men and women more independent than the average in their thinking, and more bold than the average in uttering their thoughts. The Inquisition was a diabolical winnowing machine for removing from society the most flexible minds and the stoutest hearts; and among every people in which it was established for a length of time it wrought serious damage to the national character. It ruined the fair promise of Spain, and inflicted incalculable detriment upon the fortunes of France. No nation could afford to deprive itself of such a valuable element in its political life as was furnished in the thirteenth century by the intelligent and sturdy Cathari of southern Gaul. [[Sidenote: The Cathari, or Puritans of the Eastern Empire] [[Sidenote: The Albigenses] [[Sidenote: Effects of persecution; its feebleness in England]
The spirit of revolt against the hierarchy, though broken and repressed thus terribly by the measures of Innocent III., continued to live on obscurely in sequestered spots, in the mountains of Savoy, and Bosnia, and Bohemia, ready on occasion to spring into fresh and vigorous life. In the following century Protestant ideas were rapidly germinating in England, alike in baron's castle, in yeoman's farmstead, in citizen's shop, in the cloistered walks of the monastery. Henry Knighton, writing in the time of Richard II., declares, with the exaggeration of impatience, that every second man you met was a Lollard, or "babbler," for such was the nickname given to these free-thinkers, of whom the most eminent was John Wyclif, professor at Oxford, and rector of Lutterworth, greatest scholar of the age. [[Sidenote: Wyclif and the Lollards]
The career of this man is a striking commentary upon the difference between England and continental Europe in the Middle Ages. Wyclif denied transubstantiation, disapproved of auricular confession, opposed the payment of Peter's pence, taught that kings should not be subject to prelates, translated the Bible into English and circulated it among the people, and even denounced the reigning pope as Antichrist; yet he was not put to death, because there was as yet no act of parliament for the burning of heretics, and in England things must be done according to the laws which the people had made.1Pope Gregory XI. issued five bulls against him, addressed to the king, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the university of Oxford; but their dictatorial tone offended the national feeling, and no heed was paid to them. Seventeen years after Wyclif's death, the statute for burning heretics was passed, and the persecution of Lollards began. It was feeble and ineffectual, however. Lollardism was never trampled out in England as Catharism was trampled out in France. Tracts of Wyclif and passages from his translation of the Bible were copied by hand and secretly passed about to be read on Sundays in the manor-house, or by the cottage fireside after the day's toil was over. The work went on quietly, but not the less effectively, until when the papal authority was defied by Henry VIII., it soon became apparent that England was half-Protestant already. It then appeared also that in this Reformation there were two forces cooperating,—the sentiment of national independence which would not brook dictation from Rome, and the Puritan sentiment of revolt against the hierarchy in general. The first sentiment had found expression again and again in refusals to pay tribute to Rome, in defiance of papal bulls, and in the famous statutes ofpraemunire, which made it a criminal offence to acknowledge any authority in England higher than the crown. The revolt of Henry VIII. was simply the carrying out of these acts of Edward I. and Edward III. to their logical conclusion. It completed the detachment of England from the Holy Roman Empire, and made her free of all the world. Its intent was political rather than religious. Henry, who wrote against Martin Luther, was far from wishing to make England a Protestant country. Elizabeth, who differed from her father in not caring a straw for theology, was by temperament and policy conservative. Yet England could not cease to be Papist without ceasing in some measure to be Catholic; nor could she in that day carry on war against Spain without becoming a leading champion of Protestantism. The changes in creed and ritual wrought by the government during this period were cautious and skilful; and the resulting church of England, with its long line of learned and liberal divines, has played a noble part in history. [[Sidenote: Political character of Henry VIII's revolt against Rome]
But along with this moderate Protestantism espoused by the English government, as consequent upon the assertion of English national independence, there grew up the fierce uncompromising democratic Protestantism of which the persecuted Lollards had sown the seeds. This was not the work of government. [[Sidenote: The yeoman, Hugh Latimer]
By the side of Henry VIII. stands the sublime figure of Hugh Latimer, most dauntless of preachers, the one man before whose stern rebuke the headstrong and masterful Tudor monarch quailed. It was Latimer that renewed the work of Wyclif. and in his life as well as in his martyrdom,—to use his own words of good cheer uttered while the fagots were kindling around him,—lighted "such a candle in England as by God's grace shall never be put out." This indomitable man belonged to that middle-class of self-governing, self-respecting yeomanry that has been the glory of free England and free America. He was one of the sturdy race that overthrew French chivalry at Crecy and twice drove the soldiery of a tyrant down the slope of Bunker Hill. In boyhood he worked on his father's farm and helped his mother to milk the thirty kine; he practised archery on the village green, studied in the village school, went to Cambridge, and became the foremost preacher of Christendom. Now the most thorough and radical work of the English Reformation was done by this class of men of which Latimer was the type. It was work that was national in its scope, arousing to fervent heat the strong religious and moral sentiment of the people, and hence it soon quite outran the cautious and conservative policy of the government, and tended to introduce changes extremely distasteful to those who wished to keep England as nearly Catholic as was consistent with independence of the pope. Hence before the end of Elizabeth's reign, we find the crown set almost as strongly against Puritanism as against Romanism. Hence, too, when under Elizabeth's successors the great decisive struggle between despotism and liberty was inaugurated, we find all the tremendous force of this newly awakened religious enthusiasm cooperating with the English love of self-government and carrying it under Cromwell to victory. From this fortunate alliance of religious and political forces has come all the noble and fruitful work of the last two centuries in which men of English speech have been labouring for the political regeneration of mankind. But for this alliance of forces, it is quite possible that the fateful seventeenth century might have seen despotism triumphant in England as on the continent of Europe, and the progress of civilization indefinitely arrested. [[Sidenote: The moment of Cromwell's triumph was the most critical moment in history]
In illustration of this possibility, observe what happened in France at the very time when the victorious English tendencies were shaping themselves in the reign of Elizabeth. In France there was a strong Protestant movement, but it had no such independent middle-class to support it as that which existed in England; nor had it been able to profit by such indispensable preliminary work as that which Wyclif had done; the horrible slaughter of the Albigenses had deprived France of the very people who might have played a part in some way analogous to that of the Lollards. Consequently the Protestant movement in France failed to become a national movement. Against the wretched Henry III who would have temporized with it, and the gallant Henry IV who honestly espoused it, the oppressed peasantry and townsmen made common cause by enlisting under the banner of the ultra-Catholic Guises. The mass of the people saw nothing in Protestantism but an idea favoured by the aristocracy and which they could not comprehend. Hence the great king who would have been glad to make France a Protestant country could only obtain his crown by renouncing his religion, while seeking to protect it by his memorable Edict of Nantes. But what a generous despot could grant, a bigoted despot might revoke; and before another century had elapsed, the good work done by Henry IV. was undone by Louis XIV., the Edict of Nantes was set aside, the process of casting out the most valuable political element in the community was carried to completion, and seven percent of the population of France was driven away and added to the Protestant populations of northern Germany and England and America. The gain to these countries and the damage to France was far greater than the mere figures would imply; for in determining the character of a community a hundred selected men and women are more potent than a thousand men and women taken at random. Thus while the Reformation in France reinforced to some extent the noble army of freemen, its triumphs were not to be the triumphs of Frenchmen, but of the race which has known how to enlist under its banner the forces that fight for free thought, free speech, and self-government, and all that these phrases imply. [[Sidenote: Contrast with France; fate of the Huguenots]
In view of these facts we may see how tremendous was the question at stake with the Puritans of the seventeenth century. Everywhere else the Roman idea seemed to have conquered or to be conquering, while they seemed to be left as the forlorn hope of the human race. But from the very day when Oliver Cromwell reached forth his mighty arm to stop the persecutions in Savoy, the victorious English idea began to change the face of things. The next century saw William Pitt allied with Frederick of Prussia to save the work of the Reformation in central Europe and set in motion the train of events that were at last to make the people of the Teutonic fatherland a nation. At that same moment the keenest minds in France were awaking to the fact that in their immediate neighbourhood, separated from them only by a few miles of salt water, was a country where people were equal in the eye of the law. It was the ideas of Locke and Milton, of Vane and Sidney, that, when transplanted into French soil, produced that violent but salutary Revolution which has given fresh life to the European world. And contemporaneously with all this, the American nation came upon the scene, equipped as no other nation had ever been, for the task of combining sovereignty with liberty, indestructible union of the whole with indestructible life in the parts. The English idea has thus come to be more than national, it has become imperial. It has come to rule, and it has come to stay. [[Sidenote: Victory of the English Idea]
We are now in a position to answer the question when the Roman Empire came to an end, in so far as it can be answered at all. It did not come to its end at the hands of an Odovakar in the year 476, or of a Mahomet II in 1453, or of a Napoleon in 1806. It has been coming to its end as the Roman idea of nation-making has been at length decisively overcome by the English idea. For such a fact it is impossible to assign a date, because it is not an event but a stage in the endless procession of events. But we can point to landmarks on the way. Of movements significant and prophetic there have been many. The whole course of the Protestant reformation, from the thirteenth century to the nineteenth, is coincident with the transfer of the world's political centre of gravity from the Tiber and the Rhine to the Thames and the Mississippi. The whole career of the men who speak English has within this period been the most potent agency in this transfer. In these gigantic processes of evolution we cannot mark beginnings or endings by years, hardly even by centuries. But among the significant events which prophesied the final triumph of the English over the Roman idea, perhaps the most significant—the one which marks most incisively the dawning of a new era—was the migration of English Puritans across the Atlantic Ocean, to repeat in a new environment and on a far grander scale the work which their forefathers had wrought in Britain. The voyage of the Mayflower was not in itself the greatest event in this migration; but it serves to mark the era, and it is only when we study it in the mood awakened by the general considerations here set forth that we can properly estimate the historic importance of the great Puritan Exodus. [[Sidenote: Significance of the Puritan Exodus]
In the preceding chapter I endeavoured to set forth and illustrate some of the chief causes which have shifted the world's political centre of gravity from the Mediterranean and the Rhine to the Atlantic and the Mississippi; from the men who spoke Latin to the men who speak English. In the course of the exposition we began to catch glimpses of the wonderful significance of the fact that—among the people who had first suggested the true solution of the difficult problem of making a powerful nation without sacrificing local self-government—when the supreme day of trial came, the dominant religious sentiment was arrayed on the side of political freedom and against political despotism. If we consider merely the territorial area which it covered, or the numbers of men slain in its battles, the war of the English parliament against Charles I. seems a trivial affair when contrasted with the gigantic but comparatively insignificant work of barbarians like Jinghis or Tamerlane. But if we consider the moral and political issues involved, and the influence of the struggle upon the future welfare of mankind, we soon come to see that there never was a conflict of more world-wide importance than that from which Oliver Cromwell came out victorious. It shattered the monarchical power in England at a time when monarchical power was bearing down all opposition in the other great countries of Europe. It decided that government by the people and for the people should not then perish from the earth. It placed free England in a position of such moral advantage that within another century the English Idea of political life was able to react most powerfully upon continental Europe. It was the study of English institutions by such men as Montesquieu and Turgot, Voltaire and Rousseau, that gave shape and direction to the French Revolution. That violent but wholesome clearing of the air, that tremendous political and moral awakening, which ushered in the nineteenth century in Europe, had its sources in the spirit which animated the preaching of Latimer, the song of Milton, the solemn imagery of Bunyan, the political treatises of Locke and Sidney, the political measures of Hampden and Pym. The noblest type of modern European statesmanship, as represented by Mazzini and Stein, is the spiritual offspring of seventeenth-century Puritanism. To speak of Naseby and Marston Moor as merely English victories would be as absurd as to restrict the significance of Gettysburg to the state of Pennsylvania. If ever there were men who laid down their lives in the cause of all mankind, it was those grim old Ironsides whose watchwords were texts from Holy Writ, whose battle-cries were hymns of praise. [[Sidenote: Influence of Puritanism upon modern Europe]
It was to this unwonted alliance of intense religious enthusiasm with the instinct of self-government and the spirit of personal independence that the preservation of English freedom was due. When James I. ascended the English throne, the forces which prepared the Puritan revolt had been slowly and quietly gathering strength among the people for at least two centuries. The work which Wyclif had begun in the fourteenth century had continued to go on in spite of occasional spasmodic attempts to destroy it with the aid of the statute passed in 1401 for the burning of heretics. The Lollards can hardly be said at any time to have constituted a sect, marked off from the established church by the possession of a system of doctrines held in common. The name by which they were known was a nickname which might cover almost any amount of diversity in opinion, like the modern epithets "free-thinker" and "agnostic." The feature which characterized the Lollards in common was a bold spirit of inquiry which led them, in spite of persecution, to read Wyclif's English Bible and call in question such dogmas and rites of the church as did not seem to find warrant in the sacred text. Clad in long robes of coarse red wool, barefoot, with pilgrim's staff in hand, the Lollard preachers fared to and fro among the quaint Gothic towns and shaded hamlets, setting forth the word of God wherever they could find listeners, now in the parish church or under the vaulted roof of the cathedral, now in the churchyard or market-place, or on some green hillside. During the fifteenth century persecution did much to check this open preaching, but passages from Wyclif's tracts and texts from the Bible were copied by hand and passed about among tradesmen and artisans, yeomen and plough-boys, to be pondered over and talked about and learned by heart. It was a new revelation to the English people, this discovery of the Bible. Christ and his disciples seemed to come very near when the beautiful story of the gospels was first read in the familiar speech of every-day life. Heretofore they might well have seemed remote and unreal, just as the school-boy hardly realizes that the Cato and Cassius over whom he puzzles in his Latin lessons were once living men like his father and neighbours, and not mere nominatives governing a verb, or ablatives of means or instrument. Now it became possible for the layman to contrast the pure teachings of Christ with the doctrines and demeanour of the priests and monks to whom the spiritual guidance of Englishmen had been entrusted. Strong and self-respecting men and women, accustomed to manage their own affairs, could not but be profoundly affected by the contrast. [[Sidenote: Work of the Lollards]
While they were thus led more and more to appeal to the Bible as the divine standard of right living and right thinking, at the same time they found in the sacred volume the treasures of a most original and noble literature unrolled before them; stirring history and romantic legend, cosmical theories and priestly injunctions, profound metaphysics and pithy proverbs, psalms of unrivalled grandeur and pastorals of exquisite loveliness, parables fraught with solemn meaning, the mournful wisdom of the preacher, the exultant faith of the apostle, the matchless eloquence of Job and Isaiah, the apocalyptic ecstasy of St. John. At a time when there was as yet no English literature for the common people, this untold wealth of Hebrew literature was implanted in the English mind as in a virgin soil. Great consequences have flowed from the fact that the first truly popular literature in England—the first which stirred the hearts of all classes of people, and filled their minds with ideal pictures and their every-day speech with apt and telling phrases— was the literature comprised within the Bible. The superiority of the common English version of the Bible, made in the reign of James I., over all other versions, is a fact generally admitted by competent critics. The sonorous Latin of the Vulgate is very grand, but in sublimity of fervour as in the unconscious simplicity of strength it is surpassed by the English version, which is scarcely if at all inferior to the original, while it remains to-day, and will long remain, the noblest monument of English speech. The reason for this is obvious. The common English version of the Bible was made by men who were not aiming at literary effect, but simply gave natural expression to the feelings which for several generations had clustered around the sacred text. They spoke with the voice of a people, which is more than the voice of the most highly gifted man. They spoke with the voice of a people to whom the Bible had come to mean all that it meant to the men who wrote it. To the Englishmen who listened to Latimer, to the Scotchmen who listened to Knox, the Bible more than filled the place which in modern times is filled by poem and essay, by novel and newspaper and scientific treatise. To its pages they went for daily instruction and comfort, with its strange Semitic names they baptized their children, upon its precepts, too often misunderstood and misapplied, they sought to build up a rule of life that might raise them above the crude and unsatisfying world into which they were born. [[Sidenote: The English version of the Bible]
It would be wrong to accredit all this awakening of spiritual life in England to Wyclif and the Lollards, for it was only after the Bible, in the translations of Tyndall and Coverdale, had been made free to the whole English people in the reign of Edward VI. that its significance began to be apparent; and it was only a century later, in the time of Cromwell and Milton, that its full fruition was reached. It was with the Lollards, however, that the spiritual awakening began and was continued until its effects, when they came, were marked by surprising maturity and suddenness. Because the Lollards were not a clearly defined sect, it was hard to trace the manifold ramifications of their work. During the terrible Wars of the Roses, contemporary chroniclers had little or nothing to say about the labours of these humble men, which seemed of less importance than now, when we read them in the light of their world-wide results. From this silence some modern historians have carelessly inferred that the nascent Protestantism of the Lollards had been extinguished by persecution under the Lancastrian kings, and was in nowise continuous with modern English Protestantism. Nothing could be more erroneous. The extent to which the Lollard leaven had permeated all classes of English society was first clearly revealed when Henry VIII. made his domestic affairs the occasion for a revolt against the Papacy. Despot and brute as he was in many ways, Henry had some characteristics which enabled him to get on well with his people. He not only represented the sentiment of national independence, but he had a truly English reverence for the forms of law. In his worst acts he relied upon the support of his Parliament, which he might in various ways cajole or pack, but could not really enslave. In his quarrel with Rome he could have achieved but little, had he not happened to strike a chord of feeling to which the English people, trained by this slow and subtle work of the Lollards, responded quickly and with a vehemence upon which he had not reckoned. As if by magic, the fabric of Romanism was broken to pieces in England, monasteries were suppressed and their abbots hanged, the authority of the Pope was swept away, and there was no powerful party, like that of the Guises in France to make such sweeping measures the occasion for civil war. The whole secret of Henry's swift success lay in the fact that the English people were already more than half Protestant in temper, and needed only an occasion for declaring themselves. Hence, as soon as Catholic Henry died, his youthful son found himself seated on the throne of a Protestant nation. The terrible but feeble persecution which followed under Mary did much to strengthen the extreme Protestant sentiment by allying it with the outraged feeling of national independence. The bloody work of the grand-daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, the doting wife of Philip II., was rightly felt to be Spanish work; and never, perhaps, did England feel such a sense of relief as on the auspicious day which welcomed to the throne the great Elizabeth, an Englishwoman in every fibre, and whose mother withal was the daughter of a plain country gentleman. But the Marian persecution not only increased the strength of the extreme Protestant sentiment, but indirectly it supplied it with that Calvinistic theology which was to make it indomitable. Of the hundreds of ministers and laymen who fled from England in 1555 and the two following years, a great part found their way to Geneva, and thus came under the immediate personal influence of that man of iron who taught the very doctrines for which their souls were craving, and who was then at the zenith of his power. [[Sidenote: Secret of Henry VIII.'s swift success in his revolt against Rome] [[Sidenote: Effects of the persecution under Mary]
Among all the great benefactors of mankind the figure of Calvin is perhaps the least attractive. He was, so to speak, the constitutional lawyer of the Reformation, with vision as clear, with head as cool, with soul as dry, as any old solicitor in rusty black that ever dwelt in chambers in Lincoln's Inn. His sternness was that of the judge who dooms a criminal to the gallows. His theology had much in it that is in striking harmony with modern scientific philosophy, and much in it, too, that the descendants of his Puritan converts have learned to loathe as sheer diabolism. It is hard for us to forgive the man who burned Michael Servetus, even though it was the custom of the time to do such things and the tender-hearted Melanchthon found nothing to blame in it. It is not easy to speak of Calvin with enthusiasm, as it comes natural to speak of the genial, whole-souled, many-sided, mirth-and-song-loving Luther. Nevertheless it would be hard to overrate the debt which mankind owe to Calvin. The spiritual father of Coligny, of William the Silent, and of Cromwell must occupy a foremost rank among the champions of modern democracy. Perhaps not one of the mediaeval popes was more despotic in temper than Calvin; but it is not the less true that the promulgation of his theology was one of the longest steps that mankind have taken toward personal freedom. Calvinism left the individual man alone in the presence of his God. His salvation could not be wrought by priestly ritual, but only by the grace of God abounding in his soul; and wretched creature that he felt himself to be, through the intense moral awakening of which this stern theology was in part the expression, his soul was nevertheless of infinite value, and the possession of it was the subject of an everlasting struggle between the powers of heaven and the powers of hell. In presence of the awful responsibility of life, all distinctions of rank and fortune vanished; prince and pauper were alike the helpless creatures of Jehovah and suppliants for his grace. Calvin did not originate these doctrines; in announcing them he was but setting forth, as he said, the Institutes of the Christian religion; but in emphasizing this aspect of Christianity, in engraving it upon men's minds with that keen-edged logic which he used with such unrivalled skill, Calvin made them feel, as it had perhaps never been felt before, the dignity and importance of the individual human soul. It was a religion fit to inspire men who were to be called upon to fight for freedom, whether in the marshes of the Netherlands or on the moors of Scotland. In a church, moreover, based upon such a theology there was no room for prelacy. Each single church tended to become an independent congregation of worshippers, constituting one of the most effective schools that has ever existed for training men in local self-government. [[Sidenote: Calvin's theology in its political bearings]
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."2Such 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 veritablelitus 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.3Melville 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 willmakethem 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.4In 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]
It was too late in the world's history to carry out such a scheme upon European soil. Every acre of territory there was appropriated. The only favourable outlook was upon the Atlantic coast of America, where English cruisers had now successfully disputed the pretensions of Spain, and where after forty years of disappointment and disaster a flourishing colony had at length been founded in Virginia. The colonization of the North American coast had now become part of the avowed policy of the British government. In 1606 a great joint-stock company was formed for the establishment of two colonies in America. The branch which was to take charge of the proposed southern colony had its headquarters in London; the management of the northern branch was at Plymouth in Devonshire. Hence the two branches are commonly spoken of as the London and Plymouth companies. The former was also called the Virginia Company, and the latter the North Virginia Company, as the name of Virginia was then loosely applied to the entire Atlantic coast north of Florida. The London Company had jurisdiction from 34 degrees to 38 degrees north latitude; the Plymouth Company had jurisdiction from 45 degrees down to 41 degrees; the intervening territory, between 38 degrees and 41 degrees was to go to whichever company should first plant a self-supporting colony. The local government of each colony was to be entrusted to a council resident in America and nominated by the king; while general supervision over both colonies was to be exercised by a council resident in England. [[Sidenote: The London and Plymouth companies]
In pursuance of this general plan, though with some variations in detail, the settlement of Jamestown had been begun in 1607, and its success was now beginning to seem assured. On the other hand all the attempts which had been made to the north of the fortieth parallel had failed miserably. As early as 1602 Bartholomew Gosnold, with 32 men, had landed on the headland which they named Cape Cod from the fish found thereabouts in great numbers. This was the first English name given to any spot in that part of America, and so far as known these were the first Englishmen that ever set foot there. They went on and gave names to Martha's Vineyard and the Elizabeth Islands in Buzzard's Bay; and on Cuttyhunk they built some huts with the intention of remaining, but after a month's experience they changed their mind and went back to England. Gosnold's story interested other captains, and on Easter Sunday, 1605, George Weymouth set sail for North Virginia, as it was called. He found Cape Cod and coasted northward as far as the Kennebec river, up which he sailed for many miles. Weymouth kidnapped five Indians and carried them to England, that they might learn the language and acquire a wholesome respect for the arts of civilization and the resistless power of white men. His glowing accounts of the spacious harbours, the abundance of fish and game, the noble trees, the luxuriant herbage, and the balmy climate, aroused general interest in England, and doubtless had some influence upon the formation, in the following year, of the great joint-stock company just described. The leading spirit of the Plymouth Company was Sir John Popham, chief-justice of England, and he was not disposed to let his friends of the southern branch excel him in promptness. Within three months after the founding of Jamestown, a party of 120 colonists, led by the judge's kinsman George Popham, landed at the mouth of the Kennebec, and proceeded to build a rude village of some fifty cabins, with storehouse, chapel, and block-house. When they landed in August they doubtless shared Weymouth's opinion of the climate. These Englishmen had heard of warm countries like Italy and cold countries like Russia; harsh experience soon taught them that there are climates in which the summer of Naples may alternate with the winter of Moscow. The president and many others fell sick and died. News came of the death of Sir John Popham in England, and presently the weary and disappointed settlers abandoned their enterprise and returned to their old homes. Their failure spread abroad in England the opinion that North Virginia was uninhabitable by reason of the cold, and no further attempts were made upon that coast until in 1614 it was visited by Captain John Smith. [[Sidenote: First exploration of the New England coast]
The romantic career of this gallant and garrulous hero did not end with his departure from the infant colony at Jamestown. By a curious destiny his fame is associated with the beginnings of both the southern and the northern portions of the United States. To Virginia Smith may be said to have given its very existence as a commonwealth; to New England he gave its name. In 1614 he came over with two ships to North Virginia, explored its coast minutely from the Penobscot river to Cape Cod, and thinking it a country of such extent and importance as to deserve a name of its own, rechristened it New England. On returning home he made a very good map of the coast and dotted it with English names suggested by Prince Charles. Of these names Cape Elizabeth, Cape Ann, Charles River, and Plymouth still remain where Smith placed them. In 1615 Smith again set sail for the New World, this time with a view to planting a colony under the auspices of the Plymouth Company, but his talent for strange adventures had not deserted him. He was taken prisoner by a French fleet, carried hither and thither on a long cruise, and finally set ashore at Rochelle, whence, without a penny in his pocket, he contrived to make his way back to England. Perhaps Smith's life of hardship may have made him prematurely old. After all his wild and varied experience he was now only in his thirty-seventh year, but he does not seem to have gone on any more voyages. The remaining sixteen years of his life were spent quietly in England in writing books, publishing maps, and otherwise stimulating the public interest in the colonization of the New World. But as for the rocky coast of New England, which he had explored and named, he declared that he was not so simple as to suppose that any other motive than riches would "ever erect there a commonwealth or draw company from their ease and humours at home, to stay in New England." [[Sidenote: John Smith]
In this opinion, however, the bold explorer was mistaken. Of all migrations of peoples the settlement of New England is preeminently the one in which the almighty dollar played the smallest part, however important it may since have become as a motive power. It was left for religious enthusiasm to achieve what commercial enterprise had failed to accomplish. By the summer of 1617 the Pilgrim society at Leyden had decided to send a detachment of its most vigorous members to lay the foundations of a Puritan state in America. There had been much discussion as to the fittest site for such a colony. Many were in favour of Guiana, which Sir Walter Raleigh had described in such glowing colours; but it was thought that the tropical climate would be ill-suited to northern men of industrious and thrifty habit, and the situation, moreover, was dangerously exposed to the Spaniards. Half a century had scarcely elapsed since the wholesale massacre of Huguenots in Florida. Virginia was then talked of, but Episcopal ideas had already taken root there. New England, on the other hand, was considered too cold. Popham's experience was not encouraging. But the country about the Delaware river afforded an opportunity for erecting an independent colony under the jurisdiction of the London Company, and this seemed the best course to pursue. Sir Edwin Sandys, the leading spirit in the London Company, was favourably inclined toward Puritans, and through him negotiations were begun. Capital to the amount of £7000 was furnished by seventy merchant adventurers in England, and the earnings of the settlers were to be thrown into a common stock until these subscribers should have been remunerated. A grant of land was obtained from the London Company, and the king was asked to protect the emigrants by a charter, but this was refused. James, however, made no objections to their going, herein showing himself less of a bigot than Louis XIV. in later days, who would not suffer a Huguenot to set foot in Canada, though France was teeming with Huguenots who would have been glad enough to go. When James inquired how the colonists expected to support themselves, some one answered, most likely by fishing. "Very good," quoth the king, "it was the Apostles' own calling." He declared that no one should molest them so long as they behaved themselves properly. From this unwonted urbanity it would appear that James anticipated no trouble from the new colony. A few Puritans in America could not do much to annoy him, and there was of course a fair chance of their perishing, as so many other colonizers had perished. [[Sidenote: The Pilgrims at Leyden decide to make a settlement near the Delaware river]