“And when our children turn the pageTo ask what triumphs marked our age—What we achieved to challenge praise,Through the long line of future days—This let them read, and hence instruction draw:‘Here were the many blest,Here found the virtues rest,Faith linked with Love, and Liberty with Law.’”Sprague’sCentennial Ode.
“And when our children turn the pageTo ask what triumphs marked our age—What we achieved to challenge praise,Through the long line of future days—This let them read, and hence instruction draw:‘Here were the many blest,Here found the virtues rest,Faith linked with Love, and Liberty with Law.’”Sprague’sCentennial Ode.
“And when our children turn the page
To ask what triumphs marked our age—
What we achieved to challenge praise,
Through the long line of future days—
This let them read, and hence instruction draw:
‘Here were the many blest,
Here found the virtues rest,
Faith linked with Love, and Liberty with Law.’”
Sprague’sCentennial Ode.
The progress of population at Plymouth was slow for a decade. The lands in the vicinity were not fertile. Still the plantation had struck deep root and was bound to spring up and bear a hundred fold.[535]If the colonial prosperity was not imposing, it was thriving. A little earlier than this Smith learned in Virginia that there were on this New England slope “about a hundred and eighty persons; some cattle and goats; many swine and a good store of poultry; and thirty-two dwelling-houses; forming a town which was impaled about half a mile’s compass, with a fort built of wood, loam, and stone; also a fair watch-tower; and able to freight a ship of a hundred and eighty tons burden.”[536]
Fifty ships were on the coast engaged in fishing, every one of which was an enlargement of theirmarket for the sale and purchase of essential commodities.[537]
“It pleased the Lord,” says Bradford, “to give the plantation peace, and health, and contented minds, and so bless the labors of the colonists that they had provisions in plenty, and to spare; and this without receiving any food from home at any time, except what they brought out in the Mayflower.”[538]
Owing to the competition in the fishing waters, the Pilgrims esteemed it wiser now to forego that pursuit and to turn their whole attention to “trading and planting.” “To every person,” says Bradford, “was given an acre of land, and only an acre to them and theirs, as near the town as might be, and they had no more till the contract with the London partners was bought up. The reason was, that all might be kept close together both for better safety and defence, and the better improvement of the common employments. This condition of theirs did make me think of what I once read in Pliny[539]of the Romans and their beginnings in Romulus’ time, when every man contented himself with two acres of land and had no more assigned him; how it was thought a great reward to receive a pint of corn at the hands of the Roman people; how, long after, the greatest present given to a captain who had gotten them a victory over their enemies, was as much ground as he could till in one day; he being counted not a good but a dangerous man, who could not content himselfwith seven acres of land; as also how they did pound their corn in mortars, as these colonists did many years before they could get a mill.”[540]
In turning from fishing to agriculture the settlers were decided gainers, and “ere the close of the year 1626 they had nearly extricated themselves from debt, including the obligation lately incurred for them by Standish, and had besides stored ‘some clothing for the people and some commodities beforehand.’”[541]
The winter of 1626-7 was given to trading, and purchases were made of merchandise from some Englishmen stationed at Monhegan, and from a French ship wrecked off their coast. For several months they had the society of the passengers and crew of a vessel bound to Virginia, but which, losing her reckoning, and falling short of provisions, had moored under Cape Cod and sent to them for succor.[542]
Just before winter closed in the Pilgrims had despatched one of their number, Mr. Allerton, to England with authority to continue the negotiations for a transfer of title opened by Standish with the Merchant-adventurers.[543]Allerton found the plague—which had somewhat retarded the movements of Standish, and carried off some of the most efficient supporters of the colony[544]—quite abated. He also learned that James I., the pedantic bigot who had threatened to “harry” the Puritans out of England,was dead, and that he had been succeeded by his son Charles I., the fated prince who afterwards fell under Cromwell’s axe on the Whitehall scaffold.
The Plymouth agent was successful, though “the curse of usury, which always falls so heavily upon new settlements, did not spare” the Pilgrims, since they were compelled to borrow money at an exorbitant interest. Allerton had carried out nine bonds, each for two hundred pounds—eighteen hundred pounds being the price at which the partnership held their mortgage. These bonds were given by eight of the most prominent Pilgrims,[545]and were made payable in nine equal annual instalments, commencing in 1627.[546]Thus it was that a bevy of patriotic colonists purchased the rights and assumed the responsibilities of the “Company of Merchant-adventurers.” They were known in the phrase of that day as “The Undertakers,” and they emancipated Plymouth from its harassing thraldom to a greedy horde of money-changers.
The Pilgrims were much gratified by this success, though they knew that their undertaking was not without grave hazard. “They knew not well,” remarks Bradford, “how to raise this yearly payment, besides discharging their other engagements and supplying their annual wants, especially since they were forced by necessity to take up money at such high interest. Yet they undertook it.”[547]
Of course, this purchase of the right of the home company necessitated a new organization, and a redistribution of property at Plymouth. After mature deliberation, it was decided to erect a commonwealth, in which each settler should own a share, but under an agreement that trade should be managed as before until the total discharge of the debt incurred for liberty.[548]
The division was at once made of the stock and land heretofore the joint estate of the adventurers and their partners in the soil. Every man had a share; and “every father of a family was allowed to purchase one share for his wife and one for each child living with him.”[549]One cow and two goats were assigned by lot to every six shareholders, “and swine, though more in number, yet by the same rule.” In addition to the land which each already held, “every person had twenty acres allotted him; but no meadows were to be laid out; nor were they for many years after, because they were straitened for meadow land. Every season each was given a certain spot to mow in proportion to the cattle owned.”[550]The houses became the private property of their respective tenants by an equitable assignment,[551]and henceforward there were to be New England freeholders. The vassalage to foreign merchants was ended.[552]
It should not be forgotten that in the allotment of land, there was a grant to the Indian Habbamak.He held by the Pilgrims and by their God, spite of enticements and obstacles, and died “leaving some good hopes in the settlers’ hearts that his soul had gone to rest.”[553]
“The first coveted luxury of the emancipated plantation was a reunion with their long-detained comrades in Holland. Hitherto the pleasure of others might decide who should join them. That embarrassment was now happily withdrawn. Their tender mutual recollections had naturally been refreshed by the common moaning for their ‘loving and faithful pastor;’” so now “the Plymouth governor and some of his chiefest friends had serious consideration, not only how they might discharge the engagements which lay so heavily upon them, but also how they might—if possibly they could—devise means to help their friends at Leyden over to them, these desiring to come as heartily as they to have them. To effect this they resolved to run a high course and of great venture, not knowing otherwise how to compass it; which was, to hire the trade of the colony for six years, and in that time to undertake the liquidation of the whole impending debt, so that when the specified time was ended the plantation should be set free, with freedom of trade to the generality.”[554]
Allerton was again sent to England with full power “under the hand and seal” ofthe Undertakers, to close the old bargain and to negotiate “with some of the special friends of the colony to join withthem[555]in this trade.”[556]The mission was promptly completed. In the spring of 1628, Allerton returned, “bringing a reasonable supply of goods.” He reported that he had paid the first instalment to the Adventurers, delivered the bonds for the residue of the debt, and obtained the due conveyance and release; also that he had engaged a quartette of friends[557]to accept an interest in the six years’ hire of the colonial trade, in return for which they had agreed to charge themselves with the transportation of the Leyden congregation. Lastly, he had obtained from the New England Council a patent for land on the Kennebec, which was at once turned to account by the erection of a block-house “in that river, in the most convenient place for Indian trade” and a traffic with the Maine fishermen.[558]
At this same time Allerton brought out with him a young minister named Rogers, the first, save Lyford, if we may dignify him by that name, possessed by the Plymouth Pilgrims.[559]But he proved only a vexation and an expense; for, being “crazed in the brain,” he was sent back to Britain ere a twelvemonthhad elapsed, and the plantation had recourse once more to stout old Brewster.[560]
By this time the charge ofBrownismand bigoted exclusiveness, so often levelled at the Pilgrims, was well-nigh laid in England. Hard-fisted facts had smitten that slander so often in the face that it lost its hardihood. Indeed, remembering the character of that age, the Plymouth church was singularly catholic. Winslow cites many instances of the admission to its communion of communicants of the French, the Dutch, and the Scotch churches, merely by virtue of their being so.[561]He says: “We ever placed a wide difference betwixt those who grounded their practice on the word of God, though differing from us in their exposition and understanding of it, and those who hate reformers and reformation, running into anti-Christian opposition and persecution of the truth.” He adds: “’Tis true, we profess and desire to practiseseparationfrom the world; and as the churches of Christ are all saints by calling, so we desire to see the grace of God shining forth—at leastseemingly, leaving secret things to God—in all whom we admit to church-fellowship, and to keep off such as openly wallow in the mire of their sins, that neither the holy things of God, nor the communion of saints, may be leavened or polluted thereby. And if any joining us, either formerly at Leyden, or since our New England residence, have with the manifestation of faith and the professionof holiness, held forth therewith separation from the church of England, I have divers times, both in the one place and in the other, heard either Mr. Robinson, our pastor, or Mr. Brewster, our elder, stop them forthwith, showing them that we required no such thing at their hands; but only to hold forth Christ Jesus, holiness in the fear of God, and a submission to the Scripture ordinances and appointments.”[562]
Such were the simple tenets of the Plymouth church under the instructions of Brewster—change of heart and a life regulated by the sacred writ the only tests.
And now the Pilgrim enterprise began to take a wide range; they had already acquired rights on Cape Ann, as well as an extensive domain on the Kennebec, now covered by patent; and they were the first to plant an English settlement on the banks of the silvery Connecticut.[563]All around them the lusty shouts of the pioneers were heard. They no longer stood alone on the verge of the unbroken and primeval forest. Civilization, pushing restlessly towards the setting sun, began to supplement this nucleus colony. English planters were already seated at Saco and at Sagadahoc, in Maine.[564]The red men who haunted the coast-line of Massachusetts Bay, were pushed from their marshy hunting-grounds by the Puritan colonists who followed Endicottinto the wilderness. And in the west, the patient, phlegmatic Dutch, “without haste, without rest,” had founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, a town which bathed its feet in the waters of old Hendrick Hudson’s majestic river, and which has since expanded to be the metropolis of North America.[565]
No occasion, now, to complain of a lack of company. With all the settlements amicable and cordial relations were cemented by the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth. With the Dutch planters, especially, a correspondence was had, by means of which mutually kind wishes and commercial offices were interchanged.[566]In 1627, Isaac de Rasières, “a chief merchant at New Amsterdam, and second to the Dutch governor of the New Netherlands,” visited Plymouth, where he tarried “some days,” and received friendly entertainment.[567]A neighborly business intercourse was commenced, and it was at this time that the Pilgrims became acquainted with the value and the uses ofwampum.[568]This was the Indian coin—the dollars and cents of barbarism. Itwas made of small pieces of shell, white sometimes, but often purple, and ground, polished, drilled, and strung or beaded.[569]
“Neither the English of this plantation nor of any other in these parts,” remarks Bradford, “had knowledge of wampum till now. But the settlers bought fifty pounds’ worth of it from De Rasières, who told them how vendable it was at their Indian stations, and did persuade them that they would find it so at Kennebec; and so it came to pass, for though at first it stuck, and they were two years in working off a small quantity, yet afterwards, when the inland tribes knew of it, the traders could scarce ever get enough to supply the demand, for many years together.”[570]
De Rasières was a close and shrewd observer, and nothing escaped his keen eyes at Plymouth. On his return he wrote a letter in which he described at length the salient characteristics of the Pilgrim colony. Let us take a peep into the quaint old manuscript, and see how New England in its Pilgrim babyhood looked in his eyes:
“New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the sea-shore. It has a broad street about a cannot-shot of eight hundred feet long, looking down the slope, with a street crossing this in the middle, and running northwardto a rivulet, very rapid but shallow, which there empties into the sea, and southward to the land. The houses are built of hewn planks, with gardens, also enclosed behind and at the sides by hewn planks, so that their gardens, court-yards, and houses are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against a sudden attack. At the ends of the streets there are three wooden gates. Their government is after the English form. The governor is annually elected. In inheritance they place all children in one degree, only the eldest has an acknowledgment of seniority. They have made stringent laws on the subject of adultery and fornication, and these ordinances they enforce very strictly, even among the savage tribes which live amongst them.
“Their farms are not so good as ours at New Amsterdam, because they are more stony, and consequently not so fit for the plough. They have their freedom without rendering an account to any one; only, if their king should choose to send them a governor, they would be obliged to recognize him as sovereign chief. The maize-seed which they do not require for their own use they deliver over to the governor, at three guilders the bushel, who, in his turn, sends it in sloops to the north for the traffic in skins amongst the savages. They reckon one bushel of maize against one pound of beaver-skins. They have better means of living than ourselves, since fish swim in abundance before their very doors. There are also many birds, such as geese, herons, and cranes, and other small-leggedbirds, which are seen in flocks here in the winter.
“The tribes in this neighborhood have the same customs as with us, only they are better conducted than ours, because the English treat them fairly, and give them the example of better ordinances and a better life; and also, to a certain degree, give them laws, by means of the respect they have from the very first established amongst them.”[571]
In 1629, the bulk of the long lingering Leyden exiles—among the rest the wife and two sons of John Robinson[572]—at length landed at Plymouth.[573]The reunited flock, now sadly thinned by death, greeted each other with mutual tears and caresses; and tightly-clasped hands and wet eyes told what the voice was too choked to say. But in the midst of sadness they were joyous, for
“Hope was changed to glad fruition;Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”
“Hope was changed to glad fruition;Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”
“Hope was changed to glad fruition;
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”
The expense of transporting these friends was very heavy, amounting in the aggregate to six hundred pounds, as we learn by opening Allerton’scharge roll.[574]Nor was this all; destitute and homeless, they had to be maintained the better part of fifteen months before they were able to stand on their own feet, and pay their way. They had no harvest of their own to reap. Land was given them and block-houses were run up for their shelter. Then they planted “against the coming of another season.”[575]The Pilgrims, though already overloaded with debt, did not grudge this large addition to the budget of expense, but showed herein “a rare example of brotherly love and Christian care;” for Bradford says that “even thus they were, for the most part, both welcome and useful, as they feared God and were sober livers.”[576]
But if the devout colonists of the Plymouth slope were “sober livers,” all their neighbors were not. It seems that some years before this time, perhaps in 1625, perhaps a twelvemonth earlier, an English Captain Wollaston, inoculated with the general rage for planting settlements, had attempted to drop one on that rocky height near Boston bay which still bears his name.[577]Like the foolish architect in the Bible, he built on a sandy foundation, though his colony was bottomed on a rock—so strange are the paradoxes of this mortal life. “Not finding things to answer his expectations,” he did not tarry long in his eyry, but pressed on into Virginia with a portion of his emigrants, intendingsoon to return for the rest.[578]So much for the intention. But in his absence one of his followers, Thomas Morton, “who had been a kind of pettifogger, of Fernival’s Inn,” London, and was now broken down into an uneasy bloat, ripe for mischief, obtained an ascendency over the waiting colonists, and thereby assumed control. “Then,” says the old recitor, “they fell into great licentiousness of life, in all profaneness, Morton becoming lord of misrule, and maintaining, as it were, a school of atheism. Having gotten some goods into their hands by much trading with the Indians, they spent all vainly in quaffing both wine and stronger liquors in great excess—as some have reported, as much as ten pounds’ worth of a morning. They also set up a May-pole, and danced and drank around it, frisking about like so many fairies, orfuriesrather: and worse practices they had, as if they sought anew to revive and celebrate the obscene feast of the Roman goddess Flora, or the beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians. Morton pretended withal to be a poet, and composing sundry rhymes and loose verses, some tending to lasciviousness and others to detraction and scandal, he affixed these to his idle, oridol, May-pole. The name of the height was changed; it was called ‘Merry-Mount,’ as if this jollity would have been perpetual.
“Now to maintain this riotous prodigality and profuse expenditure, Morton, esteeming himself lawless, and hearing what gain the fishermen made bytrading muskets, powder, and shot amongst themselves, decided, as head of this consortship, to begin the practice in these parts among the Indians, teaching them how to use, charge, and fire their pieces, and the kind of shot fitted to be used for different purposes, as hunting and war. Infinite was the mischief which came by this wicked man’s greed; in that, despite all laws for the restraint of selling ammunition and weapons to the natives, base covetousness so far prevailed, that the Indians became amply provided with guns, powder, shot, rapiers, and pistols, also well skilled in their use, and in the repair of defective arms.”[579]
These things, together with the debauchery of Indian women and the incitement of his flaunting and unwhipped crimes, which drew the dissolute from all directions to swell his rabble rout, filled the surrounding colonists with mingled grief and alarm. At the outset expostulation was essayed. “In a friendly and neighborly way, Morton was admonished to forbear these courses.” A peculiar characteristic reveals the man—Ex pede Herculem.The anarch refused to desist.
“Obtaining false rules prankt in reason’s garb,”
“Obtaining false rules prankt in reason’s garb,”
“Obtaining false rules prankt in reason’s garb,”
he denied the jurisdiction of Plymouth, and answered the remonstrance with an affront. A second appeal was equally futile. Then, with their accustomed stern decision, the Pilgrims acted. Standish was sent to curb this bold blasphemer. “Morton fortified his comrades with drink, barricaded hishouse, and defied assault.” But happily no blood was spilled. The reckless, graceless rake succumbed without a fight. He was taken first to Plymouth, and thence conveyed to England for trial. And so ended this experiment of immorality.[580]
This episode, with others, is convincing proof that the Pilgrims had not wandered into Utopia; nor did they seek that fabled bourne. They expected trouble, and they serenely accepted toil, thanking God just as joyfully for a little as for much. And, indeed, they felt that they walked on mercies. They “found all things working together for their good.” They had already planted a stable government, which had been severely tested by open outbreak and by insidious assault. Their friends had found their way to them across the sea; and since they had
“Informed their unacquainted feetIn the blind mazes of this tangled wood,”
“Informed their unacquainted feetIn the blind mazes of this tangled wood,”
“Informed their unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood,”
their infant state had been emancipated from the mercantile dictation of unfriendly men. The bitterness was past; the night was nearly spent. Jocund day stood a-tip-toe on the misty mountain’s top. They rested on God’s heart. Surely, they had occasion to
——“shake the depths of the desert gloomWith their hymns of lofty cheer.”
——“shake the depths of the desert gloomWith their hymns of lofty cheer.”
——“shake the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.”
They might fitly chant pæans, and sing till
——“the stars heard and the sea!And the sounding isles of the dim woods rangTo the anthem of the free.”
——“the stars heard and the sea!And the sounding isles of the dim woods rangTo the anthem of the free.”
——“the stars heard and the sea!
And the sounding isles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.”