Rancour between the Politico-Religious Parties--Spanish Intrigues
Inconsistency of James--Brewster and Robinson's Congregation at
Leyden--They decide to leave for America--Robinson's Farewell Sermon
and Prayer at Parting.
During this dark and mournful winter the internal dissensions and, as a
matter of course, the foreign intrigues had become more dangerous than
ever. While the man who for a whole generation had guided the policy of
the Republic and had been its virtual chief magistrate lay hidden from
all men's sight, the troubles which he had sought to avert were not
diminished by his removal from the scene. The extreme or Gomarist party
which had taken a pride in secret conventicles where they were in a
minority, determined, as they said, to separate Christ from Belial and,
meditating the triumph which they had at last secured, now drove the
Arminians from the great churches. Very soon it was impossible for these
heretics to enjoy the rights of public worship anywhere. But they were
not dismayed. The canons of Dordtrecht had not yet been fulminated. They
avowed themselves ready to sacrifice worldly goods and life itself in
defence of the Five Points. In Rotterdam, notwithstanding a garrison of
fifteen companies, more than a thousand Remonstrants assembled on
Christmas-day in the Exchange for want of a more appropriate place of
meeting and sang the 112th Psalm in mighty chorus. A clergyman of their
persuasion accidentally passing through the street was forcibly laid
hands upon and obliged to preach to them, which he did with great
unction. The magistracy, where now the Contra-Remonstrants had the
control, forbade, under severe penalties, a repetition of such scenes. It
was impossible not to be reminded of the days half a century before, when
the early Reformers had met in the open fields or among the dunes, armed
to the teeth, and with outlying pickets to warn the congregation of the
approach of Red Rod and the functionaries of the Holy Inquisition.
In Schoonhoven the authorities attempted one Sunday by main force to
induct a Contra-Remonstrant into the pulpit from which a Remonstrant had
just been expelled. The women of the place turned out with their distaffs
and beat them from the field. The garrison was called out, and there was
a pitched battle in the streets between soldiers, police officers, and
women, not much to the edification certainly of the Sabbath-loving
community on either side, the victory remaining with the ladies.
In short it would be impossible to exaggerate the rancour felt between
the different politico-religious parties. All heed for the great war now
raging in the outside world between the hostile elements of Catholicism
and Protestantism, embattled over an enormous space, was lost in the din
of conflict among the respective supporters of conditional and
unconditional damnation within the pale of the Reformed Church. The
earthquake shaking Europe rolled unheeded, as it was of old said to have
done at Cannae, amid the fierce shock of mortal foes in that narrow
field.
The respect for authority which had so long been the distinguishing
characteristic of the Netherlanders seemed to have disappeared. It was
difficult--now that the time-honoured laws and privileges in defence of
which, and of liberty of worship included in them, the Provinces had made
war forty years long had been trampled upon by military force--for those
not warmed by the fire of Gomarus to feel their ancient respect for the
magistracy. The magistracy at that moment seemed to mean the sword.
The Spanish government was inevitably encouraged by the spectacle thus
presented. We have seen the strong hopes entertained by the council at
Madrid, two years before the crisis now existing had occurred. We have
witnessed the eagerness with which the King indulged the dream of
recovering the sovereignty which his father had lost, and the vast
schemes which he nourished towards that purpose, founded on the internal
divisions which were reducing the Republic to impotence. Subsequent
events had naturally made him more sanguine than ever. There was now a
web of intrigue stretching through the Provinces to bring them all back
under the sceptre of Spain. The imprisonment of the great stipendiary,
the great conspirator, the man who had sold himself and was on the point
of selling his country, had not terminated those plots. Where was the
supposed centre of that intrigue? In the council of state of the
Netherlands, ever fiercely opposed to Barneveld and stuffed full of his
mortal enemies. Whose name was most familiar on the lips of the Spanish
partisans engaged in these secret schemes? That of Adrian Manmaker,
President of the Council, representative of Prince Maurice as first noble
of Zealand in the States-General, chairman of the committee sent by that
body to Utrecht to frustrate the designs of the Advocate, and one of the
twenty-four commissioners soon to be appointed to sit in judgment upon
him.
The tale seems too monstrous for belief, nor is it to be admitted with
certainty, that Manmaker and the other councillors implicated had
actually given their adhesion to the plot, because the Spanish emissaries
in their correspondence with the King assured him of the fact. But if
such a foundation for suspicion could have been found against Barneveld
and his friends, the world would not have heard the last of it from that
hour to this.
It is superfluous to say that the Prince was entirely foreign to these
plans. He had never been mentioned as privy to the little arrangements of
Councillor du Agean and others, although he was to benefit by them. In
the Spanish schemes he seems to have been considered as an impediment,
although indirectly they might tend to advance him.
"We have managed now, I hope, that his Majesty will be recognized as
sovereign of the country," wrote the confidential agent of the King of
Spain in the Netherlands, Emmanuel Sueyro, to the government of Madrid.
"The English will oppose it with all their strength. But they can do
nothing except by making Count Maurice sovereign of Holland and duke of
Julich and Cleve. Maurice will also contrive to make himself master of
Wesel, so it is necessary for the Archduke to be beforehand with him and
make sure of the place. It is also needful that his Majesty should induce
the French government to talk with the Netherlanders and convince them
that it is time to prolong the Truce."
This was soon afterwards accomplished. The French minister at Brussels
informed Archduke Albert that du Maurier had been instructed to propose
the prolongation, and that he had been conferring with the Prince of
Orange and the States-General on the subject. At first the Prince had
expressed disinclination, but at the last interview both he and the
States had shown a desire for it, and the French King had requested from
the Archduke a declaration whether the Spanish government would be
willing to treat for it. In such case Lewis would offer himself as
mediator and do his best to bring about a successful result.
But it was not the intention of the conspirators in the Netherlands that
the Truce should be prolonged. On the contrary the negotiation for it was
merely to furnish the occasion for fully developing their plot. "The
States and especially those of Zealand will reply that they no longer
wish the Truce," continued Sueyro, "and that they would prefer war to
such a truce. They desire to put ships on the coast of Flanders, to which
the Hollanders are opposed because it would be disagreeable to the
French. So the Zealanders will be the first to say that the Netherlanders
must come back to his Majesty. This their President Hanmaker has sworn.
The States of Overyssel will likewise give their hand to this because
they say they will be the first to feel the shock of the war. Thus we
shall very easily carry out our design, and as we shall concede to the
Zealanders their demands in regard to the navigation they at least will
place themselves under the dominion of his Majesty as will be the case
with Friesland as well as Overyssel."
It will be observed that in this secret arrangement for selling the
Republic to its ancient master it was precisely the Provinces and the
politicians most steadily opposed to Barneveld that took the lead.
Zealand, Friesland, Overyssel were in the plot, but not a word was said
of Utrecht. As for Holland itself, hopes were founded on the places where
hatred to the Advocate was fiercest.
"Between ourselves," continued the agent, "we are ten here in the
government of Holland to support the plan, but we must not discover
ourselves for fear of suffering what has happened to Barneveld."
He added that the time for action had not yet come, and that if movements
were made before the Synod had finished its labours, "The Gomarists would
say that they were all sold." He implored the government at Madrid to
keep the whole matter for the present profoundly secret because "Prince
Maurice and the Gomarists had the forces of the country at their
disposition." In case the plot was sprung too suddenly therefore, he
feared that with the assistance of England Maurice might, at the head of
the Gomarists and the army, make himself sovereign of Holland and Duke of
Cleve, while he and the rest of the Spanish partisans might be in prison
with Barneveld for trying to accomplish what Barneveld had been trying to
prevent.
The opinions and utterances of such a man as James I. would be of little
worth to our history had he not happened to occupy the place he did. But
he was a leading actor in the mournful drama which filled up the whole
period of the Twelve Years' Truce. His words had a direct influence on
great events. He was a man of unquestionable erudition, of powers of mind
above the average, while the absolute deformity of his moral constitution
made him incapable of thinking, feeling, or acting rightly on any vital
subject, by any accident or on any occasion. If there were one thing that
he thoroughly hated in the world, it was the Reformed religion. If in his
thought there were one term of reproach more loathsome than another to be
applied to a human creature, it was the word Puritan. In the word was
subversion of all established authority in Church and State--revolution,
republicanism, anarchy. "There are degrees in Heaven," he was wont to
say, "there are degrees in Hell, there must be degrees on earth."
He forbade the Calvinist Churches of Scotland to hold their customary
Synod in 1610, passionately reviling them and their belief, and declaring
"their aim to be nothing else than to deprive kings and princes of their
sovereignty, and to reduce the whole world to a popular form of
government where everybody would be master."
When the Prince of Neuburg embraced Catholicism, thus complicating
matters in the duchies and strengthening the hand of Spain and the
Emperor in the debateable land, he seized the occasion to assure the
agent of the Archduke in London, Councillor Boissetot, of his warm
Catholic sympathies. "They say that I am the greatest heretic in the
world!" he exclaimed; "but I will never deny that the true religion is
that of Rome even if corrupted." He expressed his belief in the real
presence, and his surprise that the Roman Catholics did not take the
chalice for the blood of Christ. The English bishops, he averred, drew
their consecration through the bishops in Mary Tudor's time from the
Pope.
As Philip II., and Ferdinand II. echoing the sentiments of his
illustrious uncle, had both sworn they would rather reign in a wilderness
than tolerate a single heretic in their dominions, so James had said "he
would rather be a hermit in a forest than a king over such people as the
pack of Puritans were who overruled the lower house."
For the Netherlanders he had an especial hatred, both as rebels and
Puritans. Soon after coming to the English throne he declared that their
revolt, which had been going on all his lifetime and of which he never
expected to see the end, had begun by petition for matters of religion.
"His mother and he from their cradles," he said, "had been haunted with a
Puritan devil, which he feared would not leave him to his grave. And he
would hazard his crown but he would suppress those malicious spirits." It
seemed a strange caprice of Destiny that assigned to this hater of
Netherlanders, of Puritans, and of the Reformed religion, the decision of
disputed points between Puritans and anti-Puritans in the Reformed Church
of the Netherlands.
It seemed stranger that his opinions should be hotly on the side of the
Puritans.
Barneveld, who often used the expression in later years, as we have seen
in his correspondence, was opposed to the Dutch Puritans because they had
more than once attempted subversion of the government on pretext of
religion, especially at the memorable epoch of Leicester's government.
The business of stirring up these religious conspiracies against the
magistracy he was apt to call "Flanderizing," in allusion to those
disastrous days and to the origin of the ringleaders in those tumults.
But his main object, as we have seen, was to effect compromises and
restore good feeling between members of the one church, reserving the
right of disposing over religious matters to the government of the
respective provinces.
But James had remedied his audacious inconsistency by discovering that
Puritanism in England and in the Netherlands resembled each other no more
than certain letters transposed into totally different words meant one
and the same thing. The anagrammatic argument had been neatly put by Sir
Dudley Carleton, convincing no man. Puritanism in England "denied the
right of human invention or imposition in religious matters." Puritanism
in the Netherlands denied the right of the legal government to impose its
authority in religious matters. This was the great matter of debate in
the Provinces. In England the argument had been settled very summarily
against the Puritans by sheriffs' officers, bishops' pursuivants, and
county jails.
As the political tendencies, so too the religious creed and observances
of the English Puritans were identical with that of the
Contra-Remonstrants, whom King James had helped to their great triumph.
This was not very difficult to prove. It so happened that there were some
English Puritans living at that moment in Leyden. They formed an
independent society by themselves, which they called a Congregational
Church, and in which were some three hundred communicants. The length of
their residence there was almost exactly coeval with the Twelve Years'
Truce. They knew before leaving England that many relics of the Roman
ceremonial, with which they were dissatisfied, and for the discontinuance
of which they had in vain petitioned the crown--the ring, the sign of the
cross, white surplices, and the like--besides the whole hierarchical
system, had been disused in the Reformed Churches of France, Switzerland,
and the United Provinces, where the forms of worship in their view had
been brought more nearly to the early apostolic model. They admitted for
truth the doctrinal articles of the Dutch Reformed Churches. They had not
come to the Netherlands without cause. At an early period of King James's
reign this congregation of seceders from the establishment had been wont
to hold meetings at Scrooby in Nottinghamshire, once a manor of the
Archbishop of York, but then the residence of one William Brewster. This
was a gentleman of some fortune, educated at Cambridge, a good scholar,
who in Queen Elizabeth's time had been in the service of William Davison
when Secretary of State. He seemed to have been a confidential private
secretary of that excellent and unlucky statesman, who found him so
discreet and faithful as to deserve employment before all others in
matters of trust and secrecy. He was esteemed by Davison "rather as a son
than a servant," and he repaid his confidence by doing him many faithful
offices in the time of his troubles. He had however long since retired
from connection with public affairs, living a retired life, devoted to
study, meditation, and practical exertion to promote the cause of
religion, and in acts of benevolence sometimes beyond his means.
The pastor of the Scrooby Church, one John Robinson, a graduate of
Cambridge, who had been a benefited clergyman in Norfolk, was a man of
learning, eloquence, and lofty intellect. But what were such good gifts
in the possession of rebels, seceders, and Puritans? It is needless to
say that Brewster and Robinson were baited, persecuted, watched day and
night, some of the congregation often clapped into prison, others into
the stocks, deprived of the means of livelihood, outlawed, famished,
banned. Plainly their country was no place for them. After a few years of
such work they resolved to establish themselves in Holland, where at
least they hoped to find refuge and toleration.
But it proved as difficult for them to quit the country as to remain in
it. Watched and hunted like gangs of coiners, forgers, or other felons
attempting to flee from justice, set upon by troopers armed with "bills
and guns and other weapons," seized when about to embark, pillaged and
stripped by catchpoles, exhibited as a show to grinning country folk, the
women and children dealt with like drunken tramps, led before
magistrates, committed to jail; Mr. Brewster and six other of the
principal ones being kept in prison and bound over to the assizes; they
were only able after attempts lasting through two years' time to effect
their escape to Amsterdam. After remaining there a year they had removed
to Leyden, which they thought "a fair and beautiful city, and of a sweet
situation."
They settled in Leyden in the very year in which Arminius was buried
beneath the pavement of St. Peter's Church in that town. It was the year
too in which the Truce was signed. They were a singularly tranquil and
brotherly community. Their pastor, who was endowed with remarkable
gentleness and tact in dealing with his congregation, settled amicably
all their occasional disputes. The authorities of the place held them up
as a model. To a Walloon congregation in which there were many
troublesome and litigious members they said: "These English have lived
among us ten years, and yet we never had any suit or accusation against
any of them, but your quarrels are continual."
Although many of them were poor, finding it difficult to earn their
living in a foreign land among people speaking a strange tongue, and with
manners and habits differing from their own, and where they were obliged
to learn new trades, having most of them come out of an agricultural
population, yet they enjoyed a singular reputation for probity. Bakers
and butchers and the like willingly gave credit to the poorest of these
English, and sought their custom if known to be of the congregation. Mr.
Brewster, who had been reduced almost to poverty by his charities and
munificent aid to his struggling brethren, earned his living by giving
lessons in English, having first composed a grammar according to the
Latin model for the use of his pupils. He also set up a printing
establishment, publishing many controversial works prohibited in England,
a proceeding which roused the wrath of Carleton, impelling him to do his
best to have him thrown into prison.
It was not the first time that this plain, mechanical, devout Englishman,
now past middle age, had visited the Netherlands. More than twenty-five
years before he had accompanied William Davison on his famous embassy to
the States, as private secretary.
When the keys of Flushing, one of the cautionary towns, were committed to
the Ambassador, he confided them to the care of Brewster, who slept with
them under his pillow. The gold chain which Davison received as a present
from the provincial government on leaving the country was likewise placed
in his keeping, with orders to wear it around his neck until they should
appear before the Queen. To a youth of ease and affluence, familiar with
ambassadors and statesmen and not unknown at courts, had succeeded a
mature age of obscurity, deep study, and poverty. No human creature would
have heard of him had his career ended with his official life. Two
centuries and a half have passed away and the name of the outlawed
Puritan of Scrooby and Leyden is still familiar to millions of the
English race.
All these Englishmen were not poor. Many of them occupied houses of fair
value, and were admitted to the freedom of the city. The pastor with
three of his congregation lived in a comfortable mansion, which they had
purchased for the considerable sum of 8000 florins, and on the garden of
which they subsequently erected twenty-one lesser tenements for the use
of the poorer brethren.
Mr. Robinson was himself chosen a member of the famous university and
admitted to its privileges. During his long residence in Leyden, besides
the daily care of his congregation, spiritual and temporal, he wrote many
learned works.
Thus the little community, which grew gradually larger by emigration from
England, passed many years of tranquillity. Their footsteps were not
dogged by constables and pursuivants, they were not dragged daily before
the magistrates, they were not thrown into the town jails, they were not
hunted from place to place with bows and bills and mounted musketeers.
They gave offence to none, and were respected by all. "Such was their
singleheartedness and sincere affection one towards another," says their
historian and magistrate, "that they came as near the primitive pattern
of the first churches as any other church of these later times has done,
according to their rank and quality."
Here certainly were English Puritans more competent than any men else in
the world to judge if it were a slander upon the English government to
identify them with Dutch Puritans. Did they sympathize with the party in
Holland which the King, who had so scourged and trampled upon themselves
in England, was so anxious to crush, the hated Arminians? Did they abhor
the Contra-Remonstrants whom James and his ambassador Carleton doted upon
and whom Barneveld called "Double Puritans" and "Flanderizers?"
Their pastor may answer for himself and his brethren.
"We profess before God and men," said Robinson in his Apologia, "that we
agree so entirely with the Reformed Dutch Churches in the matter of
religion as to be ready to subscribe to all and each of their articles
exactly as they are set forth in the Netherland Confession. We
acknowledge those Reformed Churches as true and genuine, we profess and
cultivate communion with them as much as in us lies. Those of us who
understand the Dutch language attend public worship under their pastors.
We administer the Holy Supper to such of their members as, known to us,
appear at our meetings." This was the position of the Puritans. Absolute,
unqualified accordance with the Contra-Remonstrants.
As the controversy grew hot in the university between the Arminians and
their adversaries, Mr. Robinson, in the language of his friend Bradford,
became "terrible to the Arminians . . . . who so greatly molested the
whole state and that city in particular."
When Episcopius, the Arminian professor of theology, set forth sundry
theses, challenging all the world to the onset, it was thought that "none
was fitter to buckle with them" than Robinson. The orthodox professor
Polyander so importuned the English Puritan to enter the lists on behalf
of the Contra-Remonstrants that at last he consented and overthrew the
challenger, horse and man, in three successive encounters. Such at least
was the account given by his friend and admirer the historian. "The Lord
did so help him to defend the truth and foil this adversary as he put him
to an apparent nonplus in this great and public audience. And the like he
did a second or third time upon such like occasions," said Bradford,
adding that, if it had not been for fear of offending the English
government, the university would have bestowed preferments and honours
upon the champion.
We are concerned with this ancient and exhausted controversy only for the
intense light it threw, when burning, on the history which occupies us.
Of the extinct volcano itself which once caused such devastation, and in
which a great commonwealth was well-nigh swallowed up, little is left but
slag and cinders. The past was made black and barren with them. Let us
disturb them as little as possible.
The little English congregation remained at Leyden till toward the end of
the Truce, thriving, orderly, respected, happy. They were witnesses to
the tumultuous, disastrous, and tragical events which darkened the
Republic in those later years, themselves unobserved and unmolested. Not
a syllable seems to remain on record of the views or emotions which may
have been excited by those scenes in their minds, nor is there a trace
left on the national records of the Netherlands of their protracted
residence on the soil.
They got their living as best they might by weaving, printing, spinning,
and other humble trades; they borrowed money on mortgages, they built
houses, they made wills, and such births, deaths, and marriages as
occurred among them were registered by the town-clerk.
And at last for a variety of reasons they resolved to leave the
Netherlands. Perhaps the solution of the problem between Church and State
in that country by the temporary subjection of State to Church may have
encouraged them to realize a more complete theocracy, if a sphere of
action could be found where the experiment might be tried without a
severe battle against time-hallowed institutions and vested rights.
Perhaps they were appalled by the excesses into which men of their own
religious sentiments had been carried by theological and political
passion. At any rate depart they would; the larger half of the
congregation remaining behind however till the pioneers should have
broken the way, and in their own language "laid the stepping-stones."
They had thought of the lands beneath the Equator, Raleigh having
recently excited enthusiasm by his poetical descriptions of Guiana. But
the tropical scheme was soon abandoned. They had opened negotiations with
the Stadholder and the States-General through Amsterdam merchants in
regard to settling in New Amsterdam, and offered to colonize that country
if assured of the protection of the United Provinces. Their petition had
been rejected. They had then turned their faces to their old master and
their own country, applying to the Virginia Company for a land-patent,
which they were only too happy to promise, and to the King for liberty of
religion in the wilderness confirmed under his broad seal, which his
Majesty of course refused. It was hinted however that James would connive
at them and not molest them if they carried themselves peaceably. So they
resolved to go without the seal, for, said their magistrate very wisely,
"if there should be a purpose or desire to wrong them, a seal would not
serve their turn though it were as broad as the house-floor."
Before they left Leyden, their pastor preached to them a farewell sermon,
which for loftiness of spirit and breadth of vision has hardly a parallel
in that age of intolerance. He laid down the principle that criticism of
the Scriptures had not been exhausted merely because it had been begun;
that the human conscience was of too subtle a nature to be imprisoned for
ever in formulas however ingeniously devised; that the religious
reformation begun a century ago was not completed; and that the Creator
had not necessarily concluded all His revelations to mankind.
The words have long been familiar to students of history, but they can
hardly be too often laid to heart.
Noble words, worthy to have been inscribed over the altar of the first
church to be erected by the departing brethren, words to bear fruit after
centuries should go by. Had not the deeply injured and misunderstood
Grotius already said, "If the trees we plant do not shade us, they will
yet serve for our descendants?"
Yet it is passing strange that the preacher of that sermon should be the
recent champion of the Contra-Remonstrants in the great controversy; the
man who had made himself so terrible to the pupils of the gentle and
tolerant Arminius.
And thus half of that English congregation went down to Delftshaven,
attended by the other half who were to follow at a later period with
their beloved pastor. There was a pathetic leave-taking. Even many of the
Hollanders, mere casual spectators, were in tears.
Robinson, kneeling on the deck of the little vessel, offered a prayer and
a farewell. Who could dream that this departure of an almost nameless
band of emigrants to the wilderness was an epoch in the world's history?
Yet these were the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, the founders of what
was to be the mightiest republic of modern history, mighty and stable
because it had been founded upon an idea.
They were not in search of material comfort and the chances of elevating
their condition, by removing from an overpeopled country to an organized
Commonwealth, offering a wide field for pauper labourers. Some of them
were of good social rank and highest education, most of them in decent
circumstances, none of them in absolute poverty. And a few years later
they were to be joined by a far larger company with leaders and many
brethren of ancient birth and landed possessions, men of "education,
figure; and estate," all ready to convert property into cash and to place
it in joint-stock, not as the basis of promising speculation, but as the
foundation of a church.
It signifies not how much or how little one may sympathize with their
dogma or their discipline now. To the fact that the early settlement of
that wilderness was by self-sacrificing men of earnestness and faith, who
were bent on "advancing the Gospel of Christ in remote parts of the
world," in the midst of savage beasts, more savage men, and unimaginable
difficulties and dangers, there can be little doubt that the highest
forms of Western civilization are due. Through their provisional
theocracy, the result of the independent church system was to establish
the true purport of the Reformation, absolute religious equality. Civil
and political equality followed as a matter of course.
Two centuries and a half have passed away.
There are now some seventy or eighty millions of the English-speaking
race on both sides the Atlantic, almost equally divided between the
United Kingdom and the United Republic, and the departure of those
outcasts of James has interest and significance for them all.
Most fitly then, as a distinguished American statesman has remarked, does
that scene on board the little English vessel, with the English pastor
uttering his farewell blessing to a handful of English exiles for
conscience sake; depicted on canvas by eminent artists, now adorn the
halls of the American Congress and of the British Parliament. Sympathy
with one of the many imperishable bonds of union between the two great
and scarcely divided peoples.
We return to Barneveld in his solitary prison.