“We will renew the times of truth and justice,Condensing into a fair free commonwealth,Not rash equality, but equal rights,Proportioned like the columns of the temple,Giving and taking strength reciprocal,And making firm the whole with grace and beauty,So that no part could be removed withoutInfringement of the general harmony.”Byron’sDoge of Venice.
“We will renew the times of truth and justice,Condensing into a fair free commonwealth,Not rash equality, but equal rights,Proportioned like the columns of the temple,Giving and taking strength reciprocal,And making firm the whole with grace and beauty,So that no part could be removed withoutInfringement of the general harmony.”Byron’sDoge of Venice.
“We will renew the times of truth and justice,
Condensing into a fair free commonwealth,
Not rash equality, but equal rights,
Proportioned like the columns of the temple,
Giving and taking strength reciprocal,
And making firm the whole with grace and beauty,
So that no part could be removed without
Infringement of the general harmony.”
Byron’sDoge of Venice.
The success of Endicott and the supplementary success of the detachments despatched to reinforce him—success which at the very outset had left the older settlement at Plymouth, plodding on under a heavy load of debt and odium, far behind—stirred English Puritanism as with the blast of a trumpet. So intense was the interest in the new colony, throughout the realm, that a tract descriptive of New England, written by Higginson, and sent over to England, in manuscript, was printed, and ran through three editions in as many months.[653]In every hamlet, on every street-corner, eager groups met and discussed the right and the policy of emigration; and the most scrupulous consciences met the query, “Is it permitted that men fly from persecution?” by responding, “Yes; for persecution may lead our posterity to abjure the truth.”
Soon this stir had an effect. Some of the purest, wealthiest, and best-educated men in England agreed to embark for America. One thing only had made them hesitate; the colonial government resided in England, and was only sifted into New England by delegation. The charter empowered the company, and not the colonists, to transport persons, establish ordinances, and settle government.[654]It was a chrysalis; it had the face of a commercial corporation, but was pregnant with the essence of an independent provincial government. Like the mermaid, it had a human head, but its body was the body of a fish. This puissant possibility—who should evoke it? Who should utter the talismanic words fit to set free the hidden spirit of self-government? Matthew Cradock, the governor of the company, pronounced the “open sesame.” He saw, as did other sagacious men, that the residence of the corporate authority in England embarrassed emigration, barred prosperity, and opened the door to discord. The colonists sighed for a real governor, not one in masquerade; and all began to realize that a government three thousand miles away could not successfully legislate for a settlement whose growing necessities came as quickly and changed as rapidly as the combinations of a kaleidoscope.
So Cradock, with generous self-abnegation, himself proposed the transfer of the charter to such of the freemen of the company as should themselvesinhabit the colony.[655]A heated debate ensued. Bothprosandconshad their say, and the formers of the project strengthened their argument by pointing to such men as Winthrop, Saltonstall, Johnson, Dudley, and Humphrey, all of whom had recently bound themselves at Cambridge to sail for Massachusetts Bay, accompanied by their families, provided the colonial government should be transferred to the Plantation.[656]
This decided the company, and a general assent was given to the alienation of the patent.[657]Then came an obstacle. The crown lawyers said, “It is not so nominated in the bond; you have no right, standing under this corporation charter in London, to transfer your power.” Our fathers replied: “King Charles has granted us certain authority, but our charter does not bind us to exercise that authority in England; locality is not specified. We choose to vote that emigrants shall be freemen, and to summon a meeting beyond the Atlantic. You say this was not contemplated; but where is it forbidden? If you can quibble, so can we. If we have not the right, we will create it. In the light of our success lawyers may read the reason and hunt up a precedent fifty years hence.”
It was thus that Puritanism, strong in faith, bold in emergencies, met the exigencies and trod down the difficulties of its epoch. “The corporation did not sell itself—it emigrated. The patent could notbe assigned; but the patentees could call a legal meeting in the metropolis, or on board ship in an English harbor; and why not in the port of Salem as well as at the Isle of Wight? in a cabin or under a tree at Charlestown as well as at the house of Goffe in London?”
Thus it was that a unique and daring construction transformed a trading company into a municipality—a change fraught with momentous consequences. Before this decision all hesitation fell. The Cambridge friends announced their readiness to sail, and the old authorities of the Company at once resigned, in order that their offices might be filled by the chief emigrants.[658]John Winthrop was elected governor; John Humphrey was appointed deputy; and these were reinforced by eighteen assistants.[659]Just on the eve of embarkation, Humphrey’s place was supplied by Thomas Dudley, he being for a space unavoidably detained in England.[660]
Winthrop at once accepted the charge; and when he informed his son of the decision, the younger Winthrop replied: “I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends. Therefore herein I submit myself to God’s will and yours, and dedicate myself to Heaven and the Company, with the whole endeavors both of mind and body. The motives for emigration are unimpeachable; and it cannot but be a prosperous action which is so well allowed by thejudgment of God’s prophets, undertaken by so religious and wise worthies in Israel, and indented to God’s glory in so special a service.”[661]
And now preparations for an extensive emigration were ardently pushed. The finances of the Company were put on a new basis. All contributors to the fund wereipso factoentitled to a share in the profits of the colonial trade and to a grant of Massachusetts land.[662]“The outlay was distributed in such proportions that it was not burdensome in any quarter. The richer emigrants submitted to it joyfully, from public spirit; the poorer as a panacea for existing evils.”[663]
Early in the spring of 1630, ten vessels were ready to weigh anchor. Richer than the argosies of the old Venetian or Genoan merchants, this fleet was freighted with the seed of a future empire; with the planters of a renovated England, secure in freedom, firm in religion; with the builders of a transatlantic Saxon state, bound to realize in its beneficent order the noblest dreams of English patriots and sages. Troops of ministering angels hovered round it to ward off danger, and God’s own benediction sealed and sanctified the daring venture.
Let us descend into the little cabin of the “Arbella,” and scan the faces and take the hands—if we are worthy—of some of the most famous personages of this august Company of devoutvoyageurs. The cabin is long, and low, and dark. But ’tislighted now, somewhat dingily, indeed, yet still sufficiently to enable us to discern a table covered with maps and legal parchments, round which are ranged a score of deeply-interested talkers.
That tall, handsome, gentlemanly man, who sits at the head of the table, is John Winthrop, the new governor. See what an easy grace there is in his every movement; he has the port of one habituated to command, yet he is very gentle withal. His hair is just touched with silver, and he is in the prime of life—just forty-two, ripe and mellow. Winthrop is not a needy, sour adventurer; he comes of an ancient family long seated at Groton, in Suffolk, where he has a property whose income yields him six or seven hundred pounds a year—the equivalent of at least ten thousand dollars now-a-days. Evidently he quits England from some higher motive than to fatten his exchequer. This is he whom Cotton Mather terms the “Lycurgus of New England;” “as devout as Numa, but not liable to any of his heathenish madnesses; a governor in whom the excellences of Christianity made a most imposing addition unto the virtues wherein even without these he would have made a parallel for the great men of Greece and Rome whom the pen of Plutarch has eternized.”[664]A calm, unobtrusive, able gentleman, Winthrop had “studied that book, which, professing to teach politics, had but three leaves, and on each leaf but one word—MODERATION.” He had been initiated into the mysteries of state-craft whena boy, for from his youth he had moved in the circles where the highest questions of English policy were discussed and elaborated by the familiar associates of Whitgift, and Bacon, and Essex, and Cecil Burleigh.[665]
At the right of Winthrop and chatting pleasantly with him, stands Thomas Dudley. He is short and thickset in stature, and stern in expression; a man fit to lead a forlorn hope. Quick and irascible in temper, uncompromising when he esteems himself in the right, every word he utters has the ring of authority. He is a man who speaks bullets. His head is grayer than Winthrop’s, but he is still robust, and he walks with a martial air—and no wonder, for he is a soldier. Thirty years before he had borne arms under Henri Quatre in the ranks of the Huguenots, a service which had indoctrinated him in the love of civil and religious liberty;[666]and he was old enough to have seen Sir Philip Sidney, heard Spencer recite verses to Elizabeth, and lent a shrill voice to the wild huzza at the defeat of the Spanish Armada.[667]
But who is this that glides up to Winthrop, and, touching him upon the shoulder, speaks a word in his ear? It is John Humphrey, “a gentleman of special parts, of learning and activity, and a godly man.”[668]He does not sail now, but is here to bid his friends God-speed.
See, yonder, leaning with graceful negligence against the wainscot of the cabin, lounges a pale, thoughtful, intellectual young man, with a fine head and a face whose expression is that of lovable seriousness. This is Isaac Johnson, the wealthiest of the Pilgrims, a land-owner in three counties.[669]But profoundly impressed with the importance of emigration, and aware of the necessity of an example, he has risen from the lap of artificial and patrician life and flung away the softness of a luxurious home to battle with the rigors of a wilderness. Like Humphrey, who now approaches to shake hands with him, he is a son-in-law of the earl of Lincoln, the head in that day of the now ducal house of Newcastle,[670]and also, like his relative, he has been the familiar companion of the patriotic nobles.[671]
Johnson now goes out as one of Winthrop’s assistants, as does also Sir Richard Saltonstall, of Halifax, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a bountiful contributor to the finances of the emigration.[672]This little man, whose keen, searching eyes take in every thing without an effort, as he sits quietly on the left side of the table, is Theophilus Eaton, an eminent London merchant, but accustomed to courts, as he had resided at Copenhagen as English minister to Denmark.[673]That grave, sedate gentleman, directly opposite Eaton, is Lucien Bradstreet, son of a dissenting minister in Lincolnshire, and grandsonof a “Suffolk gentleman of fine estate,” and was graduated at Emanuel College, Cambridge. By his side sits William Vassall, an opulent West India proprietor.[674]These, and some others known to fame, now stood clustered in the cabin of the “Arbella”—a little ship of three hundred and fifty tons burden[675]—forming one of the grandest collections of friends on any historic canvas.
Nor were they alone. Many of the settlers had their families with them.[676]The enterprise was still further hallowed by the unshrinking devotion of unselfish women. These, inspired by piety and love, gave up all that is most dear and most essential to their lives, “security and the comfort of homes in England, to brave the stormy, frightful sea, to land on these bleak, wild shores, to front the miseries and trials of pioneer life, and to sink into untimely graves, as so many did. These were the martyrs who laid down their lives for freedom and for us; to them, therefore, let us uncover our heads.”[677]
“By fairy hands their knell is rung,By forms unseen their dirge is sung;There Honor comes, a Pilgrim gray,To bless the turf that wraps their clay;And Freedom shall awhile repairTo dwell, a weeping hermit there.”
“By fairy hands their knell is rung,By forms unseen their dirge is sung;There Honor comes, a Pilgrim gray,To bless the turf that wraps their clay;And Freedom shall awhile repairTo dwell, a weeping hermit there.”
“By fairy hands their knell is rung,
By forms unseen their dirge is sung;
There Honor comes, a Pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay;
And Freedom shall awhile repair
To dwell, a weeping hermit there.”
Foremost among these noble women, in position, in culture, and in sacrifice, stood the Lady Arbella[678]Johnson. Her heroism has thrown a halo of poetry around a venture which needed no additional ray to make it bloom in immortal verse. The daughter of Earl Lincoln, the idol of her associates, she was yet a Puritan. Married to Isaac Johnson, she was indeed ahelpmeet, sharing in his feelings and animating him to loftier exertions. When her husband resolved to emigrate, she determined to share his peril, and though ill-fitted to brave the rigors of an inclement wilderness by her delicate nature, she answered all objections by saying, “God will care for me, and I must do my duty.” An exile voyage was her wedding tour; and so touched were the Pilgrims by her devotion, that they named their vessel after her, the “Arbella.”[679]
Such was the character, such the home position, of Winthrop and his coadjutors. Even the prejudiced and reluctant pen of that high Tory, Chalmers, though essaying a sneer, had half of its curse turned into a blessing, for he was compelled to write, “The principal planters of Massachusetts were English country gentlemen of no inconsiderable fortunes; of enlarged understandings, improved byliberal education; of extensive ambition, concealed under an appearance of religious humility.”[680]
On the 29th of March, 1630, the “Arbella” sailed from Cowes, off the Isle of Wight, and speeding down the channel, stopped at Yarmouth to join her consorts, the “Talbot,” the “Jewel,” the “Ambrose,” and the rest.[681]Here the self-banished devotees penned a farewell to their brothers in the faith who remained in England. Their noble letter concludes thus: “Wishing our heads and hearts may be as fountains of tears for your everlasting welfare, when we shall be in our poor cottages in the wilderness, overshadowed by the spirit of supplication, through the manifold necessities and tribulations which may not altogether unexpectedly, nor, we hope, unprofitably, befall us, we shall ever rest assured friends and brethren.”[682]
This done, all was done; then, in the early days of April, favored by the breath of budding spring—fit season in which to sail—the flotilla lifted anchor and left Yarmouth, where the feet of these Pilgrims pressed the soil of their dear England for the last time.[683]“Sadness was in their hearts, and tears dimmed their eyes, for they loved the land of their fathers; they could not forget the tender associations of youth, nor the holier associations of manhood, when leaving it for ever. But ‘as the hartpanteth for the water-brook,’ so their souls longed for Liberty and God, and they went out full of hope. With a fair wind they passed the Needles, St. Albans, Portland, Dartmouth, and the Eddystone, with its fiery eye, watching for ships over the broad sea. The Lizard, and at last the Scilly Islands disappeared, went down day by day in the blue distance, and were left with the past, till, on Sunday, the 11th of April, 1630, the little fleet stood out bravely into the stormy Atlantic.”[684]