“Behold, they come, those sainted forms,Unshaken through the strife of storms;Heaven’s darkest cloud hangs coldly down,And earth puts on its rudest frown;But colder, ruder was the hand,That drove them from their own dear land.”Sprague.
“Behold, they come, those sainted forms,Unshaken through the strife of storms;Heaven’s darkest cloud hangs coldly down,And earth puts on its rudest frown;But colder, ruder was the hand,That drove them from their own dear land.”Sprague.
“Behold, they come, those sainted forms,
Unshaken through the strife of storms;
Heaven’s darkest cloud hangs coldly down,
And earth puts on its rudest frown;
But colder, ruder was the hand,
That drove them from their own dear land.”
Sprague.
“These are the living lights,That from our bold, green heights,Shall shine afar,Till they who name the nameOf freedom, towards the flameCome, as the Magi cameTowards Bethlehem’s star.”Pierpont.
“These are the living lights,That from our bold, green heights,Shall shine afar,Till they who name the nameOf freedom, towards the flameCome, as the Magi cameTowards Bethlehem’s star.”Pierpont.
“These are the living lights,
That from our bold, green heights,
Shall shine afar,
Till they who name the name
Of freedom, towards the flame
Come, as the Magi came
Towards Bethlehem’s star.”
Pierpont.
While the Plymouth Pilgrims, through these initial years, were engaged in a stern tussle with unkempt nature, in a wrestling-match with froward men, and in an essay to survive the “thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to” in new settlements, writingvictoria sine cladeon every page of the struggle, the Scripture party in England was floundering in a “slough of despond.” Charles I. was that most strange and baleful of anomalies, a treacherous moralist. He was the painting of a virtue. Outwardly he was Cato; inwardly he was Iago. “This prince,” says Bolingbroke, “had sucked inwith his mother’s milk those absurd principles which his father was so industrious, and, unhappily, so successful in propagating.”[581]Back of him stood a powerful faction, omnipotent in the church, regnant in the state, as wedded as himself to the tenets of absolutism, and eager to cry Amen to his most doubtful acts—often, indeed, instigating them.
Both the king and his backers were enamoured of that formal Pharisecism which made broad its phylactery, and wrote “holier than thou” upon its forehead. Of course, then, they could not but hate those godly Puritans, both inside and outside of the national Establishment, who, like a reproving Nathan, constantly inveighed against self-righteous ceremonialism, and sought to inaugurate a purer and more spiritual ecclesiasticism. The Conformists had the power, as they had the will. Elizabeth had commenced this crusade against the “Gospellers;” James I. had continued the “harry;” but Charles I. outdid Termagant, and he did out-Herod Herod. Puritanism was girt with a penal code; and now, choked almost purple, it gazed with an agony of interest across the water to America, to see if haply it might here find an asylum. The chances of a successful colonization of these Western wilds were ardently canvassed. The progress of the Pilgrim settlement was closely watched, and the spirits of the English Puritans were at high or ebb tide in proportion as that test enterprise seemed to oscillate towards success or eclipse. As yet onlythe low premonitory moanings of the revolution of 1641 were heard. Throughout the island, godly men began to think of seeking safety and freedom of conscience in exile; and in this they were encouraged by theexperimentum crucisof Plymouth. “I pray you,” wrote Shirley, the English agent of the Pilgrims, “subordinate all temporal things to success, that you may disappoint the hopes of our foes, and keep open an asylum into which we may all soon crowd, unless things mend in this now stricken island.”[582]
But “things did not mend,” and multitudes began to prepare for emigration. And here mark a singular fact. We have seen how disastrously those enterprises failed which bottomed colonization simply on the greed of gain. The victor’s bays were only for the brow of moral pioneers. It was as though God had said, “No; I will not plant men in New England who count religion only twelve and the world thirteen.” The only successful colonists of the northeastern coast-line of the Atlantic were men whose motive for emigration was religion, and who based their action on an idea—faith.
It happened, in 1624, that Roger Conant, “a most religious, prudent, worthy gentleman,” and a Puritan, but not a Separatist, somewhat dissatisfied with the rigid rule of Bradford, left Plymouth in the crisis of the Lyford muddle,[583]and entering his pinnace,sailed across the bay to Nantasket.[584]Tarrying there but a twelvemonth, he pushed on to Cape Ann; where, finding a knot of fishermen who resided there permanently, occupying themselves in curing fish in the absence of the smacks of their fellow-voyageurs, he resolved to pause. While sojourning here, the English merchants who had sent out these fishermen who here stood huddled together on the cape, appointed Conant their agent; whereupon he, “not liking the present site, transported his company to Naumkeag, some five leagues distant, to the southwest of Cape Ann.”[585]
But neither removal nor Conant’s energy saved this venture from financial collapse;[586]and the brave pioneer, in 1625, found himself deserted by most of his companions and without an occupation, in the midst of the tenantless huts of frustrated trade. Then religious sentiment came to his rescue. “To the eye of faith, mountains are crystal, distance may be shaken hands with, oceans are nothing.” So now old John White of Dorchester, in England, “a famous Puritan divine of great gravity, presence, and influence,” zealous to “spread the gospel and to establish his way,” looking across theAtlantic, descried Conant, a lonely sentinel of Puritanism on the northern shore.[587]The sagacious pastor saw in Naumkeag apoint d’appui. He at once wrote Conant: “I have been apprized of the failure of the merchants; but do not desert your post. I promise that if you, with Woodbury, Balch, and Palfrey, the three honest and prudent men lately employed in the fisheries, will stay at Naumkeag, I will procure a patent for you, and likewise send you whatever you write for, either men, or provisions, or goods wherewith to begin an Indian trade.”[588]
Surprised and reinvigorated, Conant prevailed, though not without difficulty, on his companions to remain with him, and they all “stayed at the peril of their lives.”[589]
In 1627, Woodbury sailed for England in quest of supplies.[590]Meantime “the business came to agitation in London; and being at first approved by some and disliked by others, by dint of much argument and disputation, it grew to be well known; insomuch that, some men showing affection for the work, and offering the help of their purses if fit men might be procured to go over, inquiry was made whether any would be willing to engage their persons in the voyage. Thus it fell out that at last they lighted, among others, on John Endicott, aman well known to divers persons of good repute. He manifested much willingness to accept of the offer as soon as it was tendered, which gave great encouragement to such as were still doubtful about setting on this work of erecting a new colony on an old foundation.”[591]
Under the patronage of Dudley, and Saltonstall, and Eaton, and Pyncheon, and Bellingham, men of substance and “gentlemen born,” men willing and able to offer “the help of their purses,” reinforced by the good wishes of Puritanism at large, the new scheme soon got upon its working feet, and walked forward to success. But so far the project rested on parchment. It must be vivified, and sheltered beneath theimprimaturof a hostile government. “Many riddles must be resolved,” said old Shirley, “and many locks must be opened by the silver, nay, the golden key.”[592]So they purchased of the Council for New England “a strip of land, in width three miles, north of the Merrimack, and three miles south of the Charles river, and running back from the Atlantic to the Western ocean; so that they were not likely to be crowded.”[593]Thus, though it might say as the chief captain Lysias said to Paul, “With a great sum of money obtained I this freedom,” the new colony had “a local habitation and a name” ere it was launched.
It has been well said, that Endicott was just the man to lead this venture; firm, rugged, hopeful,zealous, devout, he knew no such word as fail. So on the 20th of June, 1628, he took his wife and children, and “not much above fifty or sixty other persons,” and plunged across the water.[594]
They reached New England in the autumn[595]—that hazy, glowing, golden season, when the woods hang out their myriad-tinted banners to the wind, when the streams gurgle most laughingly, when Nature claps her hands with joy, and the
“Hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,”
“Hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,”
“Hills, rock-ribbed and ancient as the sun,”
smooth their wrinkled fronts into unwonted softness. Endicott must have had quite a different idea of the western wilds from that which stern, icy December daguerreotyped upon the minds of Bradford and his coadjutors.
At once fraternizing with Conant’s sentinel squad—apprized of their coming by Woodbury, who had returned ere Endicott sailed—the new-comers proceeded to put up additional cottages; and they called the nascent hamletSalem, “for thepeacewhich they had and hoped in it.”[596]Like their brothers at Plymouth, they immediately began to explore the surrounding country. Imagine their surprise when, on one occasion, they stumbled across “an English palisaded and thatched house.” Approaching cautiously, they heard the ringing music of an anvil. Here, in the heart of the wilderness, lived Thomas Walford, a hermit smith who hadwon wide favor with the Indians by his skill in working metals.[597]
From this and kindred incidents, historians have loved to draw a moral, depicting the excess of individuality which marks the Teutonic races. The Saxon inevitably individuates. He can stand alone; is self-reliant and aggressive; asks only, with the old cynic, that intruders shall get out of his sunlight. He does not gather into cities because he is weak, nor because he is social. He is willing, for a purpose, to go out from men, and to create a society patterned on his own model. ’Tis a high quality when properly attempered, making individuals kings and nations independent. It explores and subdues unknown and dreaded continents, and is the father of that marvellous enterprise which to-day realizes Puck’s prophecy, and “puts a girdle round the earth in forty minutes.”
Walford’s hermitage was in Mishawam. The locality seemed favorable for a settlement. The explorers returned to Salem with their report; and ere long “a portion of the colonists established themselves around the forge of the sturdy blacksmith; and with the old patriotic feeling, which neither wrongs nor sufferings could altogether root out, they named the new settlementCharlestown, in honor of a king whose severities had driven them from the land of their fathers.”[598]
The report of Endicott’s successful colonization,which reached England early in 1629, encouraged White, “the main promoter and chief organizer of this business,” to plant the adventure upon a broader, firmer foundation. The original company was but a voluntary, unincorporated partnership.[599]This was now “much enlarged” by recruits from the Puritans “disaffected to the rulers in church and state.”[600]The next step was, to get a charter and an incorporation. This was solicited, and after some little difficulty and delay, obtained. On the 4th of March, 1629, Charles I. affixed the royal seal to a parchment which erected White’s coterie into a body politic, under the title of “The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, in New England.”[601]
“The patent passed the seals a few days only before Charles I., in a public state paper, avowed his design of governing England without a Parliament.”[602]It was cherished by the colonists for more than half a century as a most precious boon; and the old charter[603]is the germ of that “bright, consummate flower,” the later constitution.[604]
“The administration of the affairs of this puissant corporation,” remarks Bancroft, “was intrusted to a governor, a deputy, and eighteen assistants,who were to be annually elected by a general vote of the members of the body politic. Four times a year, or oftener if desired, a general assembly of the freemen was to be held; and to these assemblies, which were invested with the necessary powers of legislation, inquest, and superintendence, the most important matters were referred. No provision required the assent of the king to render the acts of the colonial authorities valid. In his eye it was but a trading corporation, not a civil government. Its doings were esteemed as indifferent as those of any guild in England; and if grave powers of jurisdiction in America were conceded, it was only because successful trade demanded the concession.”[605]
Nothing was said of religious liberty. The crown may have relied on its power to restrain it; the emigrants may have trusted to distance or obscurity to protect it.[606]But enough was gained. The charter necessitated full liberty. “If you plant an oak in a flower-vase,” says Goethe, “either the oak must wither or the vase must crack.” The Puritans meant to let it crack. It is singular that neither Charles nor his lynx-eyed ministers should have detected the freedom or scented the heresy which lurked in the broad terms of the glorious old parchment.
In the old legend, a fisherman took a casket out of the sea, and found on its cover theseal of Solomon. He broke it, and out of the slender casketrose a giant till he lifted into colossal shape, and raised his right hand to crash the interloper. So now Charles broke the Solomon-seal of his coercion, and enabled this young giant of the West to rise to its legitimate proportions, clutching in its right hand the wholesome sceptre which should crush all obstacles to progressive liberty. In the fable, the fisherman, by a cunning story, lured the giant to go back into the casket, which he then tossed back again into the sea. But neither Charles nor his successors could ever persuade America to go back into the box.