PLYMOUTH.
"What constitutes a state?
Not high raised battlements or labored mound,
Thick walls or moated gate."
Plymouth is the American Mecca. It does not contain the tomb of the
Prophet, but the Rock of the Forefathers, their traditions, and their
graves. The first impressions of a stranger are disappointing, for the
oldest town in New England looks as fresh as if built within the
century. There is not much that is suggestive of the old life to be seen
there. Except the hills, the haven, and the sea, there is nothing
antique; save a few carefully cherished relics, nothing that has
survived the day of the Pilgrims.
Somehow monuments--and Plymouth is to be well furnished in the
future--do not compensate for the absence of living facts. The house of
William Bradford would have been worth more to me than any of them. Even
the rusty iron pot and sword of Standish are more satisfying to the
common run of us than the shaft they are building on Captain's Hill to
his memory. They, at least, link us to the personality of the man. And
with a sigh that it was so--for I had hoped otherwise--I was obliged to
admit that Old Plymouth had been rubbed out, and that I was too late by
a century at least to realize my ideal.
[Illustration: MAP OF PLYMOUTH.]
The most impressive thing about Plymouth is its quiet; though I would
not have the reader think it deserted. There are workshops and
factories, but I did not suspect their vicinity. Even the railway train
slips furtively in and out, as if its rumbling might awaken the
slumbering old sea-port. Although the foundation of a commonwealth, the
town, as we see, has not become one of the centres of traffic. It has
shared the fate of Salem, in having its commercial marrow sucked out by
a metropolis "opulent, enlarged, and still increasing," leaving the
first-born of New England nothing but her glorious past, and the old
fires still burning on her altars.
Court Street is a pleasant and well-built thoroughfare. It runs along
the base of three of the hills on whose slopes the town lies, taking at
length the name of Main, which it exchanges again beyond the town square
for Market Street. If you follow Court Street northwardly, you will find
it merging in a country road that will conduct you to Kingston; if you
pursue it with your face to the south, you will in due time arrive at
Sandwich. Trees, of which there is a variety, are the glory of Court
Street. I saw in some streets magnificent lindens, horse-chestnuts, and
elms branching quite across them; and in the areas such early flowering
shrubs as forsythia, spiraea, pyrus japonica, and lilac.
Many houses are old, but there are none left of the originals; nor any
so peculiar as to demand description. On some of the most venerable the
chimneys are masterpieces of masonry, showing curious designs, or, in
some instances, a stack of angular projections. The chimney of Governor
Bradford's house is said to have been furnished with a sun-dial.
[Illustration: PILGRIM HALL.]
Pursuing your way along Court Street, you will first reach Pilgrim Hall,
a structure of rough granite, in the style of a Greek temple, the
prevailing taste in New England fifty years ago for all public and even
for private buildings. Within are collected many souvenirs of the
Pilgrims, and of the tribes inhabiting the Old Colony. Lying in the
grass-plot before the hall is a fragment of Forefathers' Rock,
surrounded by a circular iron fence, and labeled in figures occupying
the larger part of its surface, with the date of 1620. In this place it
became nothing but a vulgar stone. I did not feel my pulses at all
quickened on beholding it.
[Illustration: BREWSTER'S CHEST, AND STANDISH'S POT.]
One end of the hall is occupied by the well-known painting of the
"Landing of the Pilgrims," by Sargent. To heighten the effect, the
artist has introduced an Indian in the foreground, an historic
anachronism. A tall, soldierly figure is designated as Miles Standish,
who is reported as being short, and scarce manly in appearance. The
canvas is of large size, and the grouping does not lack merit, but its
interest is made to depend on the figures of Governor Carver and of
Samoset, in the foreground--both larger than life. We do not recognize,
in the crouching attitude of the Indian, the erect and dauntless Samoset
portrayed by Mourt, Bradford, and Winslow. This painting, which must
have cost the artist great labor, was generously presented to the
Pilgrim Society. I have seen a painting of the "Landing" in which a boat
is represented approaching the shore, filled with soldiers in red
coats.[171] The late Professor Morse also made it the subject of his
pencil.
[Illustration: LANDING OF THE PILGRIMS, FROM SARGENT'S PAINTING.]
There are on the walls portraits of Governor Edward Winslow, Governor
Josiah Winslow and wife, and of General John Winslow, all copies of
originals in the gallery of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The
original of Edward Winslow is believed to be a Vandyke. There is also a
portrait of Hon. John Trumbull, presented by Colonel John, the
painter.[172]
[Illustration: CARVER'S CHAIR.]
[Illustration: BREWSTER'S CHAIR.]
The cabinets contain many interesting memorials of the first settlers,
their arms, implements, household furniture, and apparel. I refer the
reader to the guide-books for an enumeration of them. The chairs of
Governor Carver and of Elder Brewster are good specimens of the
uncomfortable yet quaint furnishing of their time; as the capacious iron
pots, pewter platters, and wooden trenchers are suggestive of a
primitive people, whose town was a camp. I fancy there were few
breakages among the dishes of these Pilgrims, for they were as hard as
their owners; nor were there serious deductions to be made from the
maids' wages on the day of reckoning. I confess I should have liked to
see here, instead of the somewhat confusing jumble of articles
pertaining to Pilgrim or Indian, an apartment exclusively devoted to the
household economy of the first-comers, with furniture suitably arranged,
and the evidences of their frugal housewifery garnishing the walls.
[Illustration: MINCING-KNIFE.]
[Illustration: PEREGRINE WHITE'S CABINET.]
Many of the articles said to have been brought over in the _Mayflower_
are doubtless authentic, but the number of objects still existing and
claiming some part of the immortality of that little bark would freight
an Indiaman of good tonnage. There is a still pretty sampler,
embroidered by the spider fingers of a Puritan maiden, with a sentiment
worth the copying by any fair damsel in the land:
"Lorea Standish is my name.
Lord, guide my hart that I may doe thy will;
Also fill my hands with such convenient skill
As may conduce to virtue void of shame;
And I will give the glory to thy name."
[Illustration: STANDISH'S SWORD.]
And here is the carnal weapon of Miles Standish, the living sword-blade
of the colony. It lacks not much of an English ell from hilt to point,
and looks still able to push its way in the world if well grasped. The
weapon has a brass cross and guard, and resembles those trenchant
Florentine blades of the sixteenth century, with its channels, curved
point, and fine temper. The sword figures in Mr. Longfellow's "Courtship
of Miles Standish," where we may hear it clank at the captain's heels as
he goes from his wrathful interview with John Alden, slamming the door
after him, no doubt, like the tempestuous little tea-pot he was. The
inscription on the blade has baffled the _savans_. For such a
hot-tempered captain it should have been that engraved on the Earl of
Shrewsbury's sword,
"I am Talbot's, for to slay his foes."
It could hardly have been this legend, with a point inscribed on a
broadsword of the seventeenth century:
"_Qui gladio ferit_
_Gladio perit._"
Speaking of swords, I am reminded that the first duel in New England was
at Plymouth, in the year 1621. It was between Edward Doty or Doten, and
Edward Leister, servants of Steven Hopkins. They fought with sword and
dagger, like their betters, and were both wounded. Having no statute
against the offense, the Pilgrims met in council to determine on the
punishment. It was exemplary. The parties were ordered to be tied
together, hand and foot, and to remain twenty-four hours without food or
drink. The intercession of their master and their own entreaties
procured their release before the sentence was carried out.
[Illustration: THE OLD COLONY SEAL.]
In the front of the court-house is a mural tablet, with the seal of the
Old Colony sculptured in relief. The quarterings of the shield represent
four kneeling figures, having each a flaming heart in its hands. On one
side of the figures is a small tree, indicative, I suppose, of the
infant growth of the plantation. The attitude and semi-nude appearance
indicate an Indian, the subsequent device of Massachusetts, and are at
once significant of his subjection, hearty welcome, and ultimate
loyalty. The colony seal is said to have been abstracted from the
archives in Andros's time, and never recovered.[173] Its legend was
"Plimovth Nov-Anglia, Sigillvm Societatis," with the date of 1620 above
the shield. The union with Massachusetts, in 1692, dispensed with the
necessity for a separate seal.
I saw, in the office of the Register, the records of the First Church of
Plymouth, begun and continued by Nathaniel Morton to 1680. The court
records, as well as the ancient charter, on which the ink is so faded as
to be scarcely legible, are carefully kept.
But the compact, that august instrument, I did not see, nor is the fate
of the original known. Its language bears an extraordinary similitude to
the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, in its spirit and
idea. The name of the king is there in good set phrase; but the soul of
the thing is its assumption of sovereignty in the people. See now how
King James figures at the head and the tail of it, and then look into
the heart of the matter:
"In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the
loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by
ye grace of God, of Great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland, King,
defender of ye faith, &c., haveing undertaken, for ye glorie
of God and advancemente of ye Christian faith and honour of
our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye
Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly &
mutualy in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant
and combine our selves togeather in a civill body politick, for
our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends
aforesaid; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and
frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions
& offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete &
convenent for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we
promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes wherof we
have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11 of
November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord,
King James of England, Franc, & Ireland ye eighteenth & of
Scotland ye fiftie fourth, Ano: Dom. 1620."
Bradford says the bond was partly due to the mutinous spirit of some of
the strangers on board the _Mayflower_, and partly to the belief that
such an act might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more
sure. It is impossible not to be interested in the lives of such men;
they were deeply in earnest.
In 1630 the first public execution took place in Plymouth. The culprit
was John Billington, who, as Bradford wrote home to England, was a
knave, and so would live and die. Billington had waylaid and shot one of
the town,[174] and was adjudged guilty of murder. The colony patent
could not confer a power it did not itself possess to inflict the death
penalty, so they took counsel of their friends just come into
Massachusetts Bay, and were advised to "purge the land of blood."
In 1658, the crime of adultery appears to be first noticed in the laws.
The punishment of this offense was two whippings, the persons convicted
to wear two capital letters "A. D." cut in cloth and sewed on their
uppermost garment, on their arm or back; if they removed the letters,
they were again to be publicly whipped. Another law, that would bear
rather hardly on the present generation, was as follows: Any persons
"who behaved themselves profanely by being without doors at the
meeting-houses on the Lord's day, in time of exercise, and there
misdemeaning themselves by jestings, sleepings, or the like," were first
to be admonished, and if they did not refrain, set in the stocks; and if
still unreclaimed, cited before the court.
Josselyn, writing of the old "Body of Laws of 1646," says, "Scolds they
gag and set them at their doors for certain hours, for all comers and
goers by to gaze at." And here is material for the "Scarlet Letter:" "An
English woman suffering an Indian to have carnal knowledge of her was
obliged to wear an Indian cut out of red cloth sewed upon her right arm,
and worn twelve months." Swearing was punished by boring through the
tongue with a hot iron; adultery with death.
The chronicles of the Pilgrims have undergone many strange vicissitudes,
but are fortunately quite full and complete. It would be pleasant to
know more of their lives during their first year at Plymouth than is
given by Bradford or Morton. Governor Bradford's manuscript history of
Plymouth plantation was probably purloined from the New England Library
deposited in the Old South Church of Boston, during the siege of 1775.
It found its way to the Fulham Library in England, was discovered, and a
copy made which has since been printed, after remaining in manuscript
more than two hundred years. The letter-book of Governor Bradford has a
similar history. It was rescued from a grocer's shop in Halifax, after
the destruction of half its invaluable contents.
The next best thing to be done is probably to go at once to the top of
Burial Hill, which is here what the Hoe is to English Plymouth. Here, at
least, are plenty of memorials of the Pilgrims, and here town and harbor
are outspread for perusal. Seen at full tide, the harbor appears a
goodly port enough, but it is left as bare by the ebb as if the sea had
been commanded to remove and become dry land. Nothing except a broad
expanse of sand-bars and mussel shoals, with luxuriant growth of
eel-grass, meets the eye. Through these a narrow and devious channel
makes its way. The bay, however, could not be called tame with two such
landmarks as Captain's Hill on Duxbury side, and the promontory of
Manomet on the shoulder of the Cape.
[Illustration: MAP OF PLYMOUTH BAY.]
Plymouth Bay is formed by the jutting-out of Manomet on the south, and
by the long-attenuated strip of sand known as Duxbury Beach, on the
north. This beach terminates in a smaller pattern of the celebrated
Italian boot that looks equally ready to play at foot-ball with Sicily
or to kick intruders out of the Mediterranean. The heel of the boot is
toward the sea, and called The Gurnet; the toe points landward, and is
called Saquish Head. Just within the toe of the boot is Clark's Island,
named from the master's mate of the _Mayflower_; then comes Captain's
Hill, making, with the beach, Duxbury Harbor; and in the farthest reach
of the bay to the westward is Kingston, where a little water-course,
called after the master of the _Mayflower_,[175] makes up into the land.
In the southern board Cape Cod is seen on a clear day far out at sea; a
mere shining streak of white sand it appears at this distance.
Plymouth harbor proper is formed by a long sand-spit parallel with the
shore, that serves as a breakwater for the shallow roadstead. It is
anchored where it is, for the winds would blow it away else, by wooden
cribs on which the drifting sands are mounded; and it is also tethered
by beach-grass rooted in the hillocks or downs that fringe the
harbor-side. Now and then extensive repairs are necessary to make good
the ravages of a winter's sea-lashings, as many as six hundred tons of
stone having been added to the breakwater at the Point at one time.
Brush is placed in the jetties, and thousands of roots of beach-grass
are planted to catch and stay the shifting sands. The harbor is lighted
at evening by twin lights on the Gurnet, and by a single one off
Plymouth Beach. The latter is a caisson of iron rooted to the rock by a
filling of concrete, and is washed on all sides by the waters of the
harbor.
Sand is everywhere; the "stern and rock-bound coast" of Mrs. Hemans
nowhere. Except one little cluster by the northern shore of the harbor,
the Forefathers' is the only rock on which those pious men could have
landed with dry feet. A few boulders, noticeably infrequent, are
scattered along the beach as you approach from Kingston. The hills on
which the town is built appear lean and emaciated, as if the light
yellow earth with which they are furnished were a compromise between
sand and soil. The gardens and house-plots, nevertheless, thrive if they
have moisture enough. Few vessels were lying in the harbor, for Plymouth
has at present little or no commerce; yet of these, two small colliers
were larger than the little _Mayflower_ that carried a greater than
Caesar and his fortunes.[176]
The Pilgrims brought the name of their settlement along with them,
though Captain John Smith gives it first the Indian name of Accomack,
changed by Prince Charles to Plimouth, as it appears on the map
accompanying "Advertisements for the Unexperienced." The port was,
however, earlier known to both French and English. Samoset told the
Pilgrims, at his first interview with them, the Indian name was
Patuxet.[177] Prince, indeed, assigns a date (December 31st) for the
formal assumption of the English name.[178]
Plymouth, England, from which the Pilgrims finally set sail on the 6th
of September, 1619, is situated at the extreme north-west corner of
Devonshire, and is divided from Cornwall only by the river Tamar. The
name has no other significance than the mouth of the river _Plym_.
Exmouth and Dartmouth have the like derivation. Plymouth was long the
residence of Sir Francis Drake, and was the birthplace of Sir John
Hawkins; also of the painters Northcote, Prout, and B. Haydon. Captain
John Davis, the intrepid navigator, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, Queen
Elizabeth said, was a "man of noe good happ by sea," were also of
Devonshire. It is of the two rivers upon which the "Three Towns" stand
that old Michael Drayton writes:
"Plym that claims by right
The christening of that Bay, which bears her noble name."
In spite of historic antecedents, English Plymouth was distasteful to
Lord Nelson, who says, in one of his letters to Lady Hamilton, "I hate
Plymouth." American Plymouth should owe no grudge to his memory, for he
did a very noble act to one of her townsmen. While cruising on our coast
in the _Albemarle_, in 1782, Nelson captured a fishing schooner
belonging to Plymouth. The cargo of the vessel constituted nearly the
whole property of Captain Carver, the master, who had a large family at
home anxiously awaiting his return. There being no officer on board the
_Albemarle_ acquainted with Boston Bay, Nelson ordered the master of the
prize to act as pilot. He performed the service to the satisfaction of
his captor, who requited him by giving him his vessel and cargo back
again, with a certificate to prevent recapture by other British
cruisers. Sir N. Harris Nicolas relates that Nelson accompanied this
generous act with words equally generous: "You have rendered me, sir, a
very essential service, and it is not the custom of English seamen to be
ungrateful. In the name, therefore, and with the approbation of the
officers of this ship, I return your schooner, and with it this
certificate of your good conduct.[179] Farewell! and may God bless you."
The choice of the site of Plymouth by the Pilgrims was due rather to the
pressing necessities of their situation than to a well-considered
determination. Arriving on our coast in the beginning of winter, after
nearly six weeks passed in explorations that enfeebled the hardiest
among them, they found their provisions failing, while the increasing
rigor of the season called for a speedy decision. As it was not their
destination, so it may readily be conceived they were not prepared
beforehand with such knowledge of the coast as might now be most
serviceable to them. Cheated by their captain, they had thrown away the
valuable time spent in searching the barren cape for a harbor fit for
settlement. Smith, in his egotism, administers a rebuke to them in this
wise:
"Yet at the first landing at _Cape Cod_, being an hundred passengers,
besides twenty they had left behind at _Plimouth_ for want of good take
heed, thinking to find all things better than I advised them, spent six
or seven weeks in wandering up and downe in frost and snow, wind and
raine, among the woods, cricks, and swamps, forty of them died, and
three-score were left in a most miserable estate at New Plimouth, where
their ship left them, and but nine leagues by sea from where they
landed, whose misery and variable opinions, for want of experience,
occasioned much faction, till necessity agreed them."
It is not easily understood why they should have remained in so
unpromising a location after a better knowledge of the country had been
obtained. To the north was Massachusetts, called by Smith "the paradise
of those parts." South-west of them was the fertile Narraganset country,
with fair Aquidneck within their patent. In thirteen or fourteen years
the whole of Plymouth colony would not have made one populous town. But
there are indications that a removal was kept in view. Their brethren in
Leyden, who saw the hand of God in their first choice, advised them not
to abandon it. In 1633 they established a trading-house on the
Connecticut, and when afterward dispossessed by Massachusetts, alleged
as a reason for holding a post there that "they lived upon a barren
place, where they were by necessity cast, and neither they nor theirs
could long continue upon the same, and why should they be deprived of
that which they had provided and intended to remove to as soon as they
were able?"[180] Yet, like fatalists they continued on the very shores
to which Providence had directed them.
When the Pilgrims explored the bay, they were at first undetermined
whether to make choice of Clark's Island, the shores of the little river
at Kingston, or the spot on the main-land which became their ultimate
abode. The high ground of Plymouth shore, the "sweete brooke" under the
hill-side, and the large tract of land ready cleared for their use,
settled the question; the high hill from which they might see Cape Cod,
and withal very fit for a citadel, clenched their decision.
It did not seem to occur to the Pilgrims that to pitch their residence
in a place desolated by the visitation of God was at all ill-omened. In
their circuit of the bay they did not see an Indian or an Indian wigwam,
though they met with traces of a former habitation. Added to the sadness
and gloom of the landscape, the frozen earth, the bare and leafless
trees, was a silence not alone of nature, but of death. The plague had
cleared the way for them; they built upon graves.
This terrible forerunner of the English is alluded to by several of the
old writers. It swept the coast from the Fresh Water River to the
Penobscot, with a destructiveness like to that witnessed in London a few
years later. Sir F. Gorges tells us that the Indians inhabiting the
region round about the embouchure of the Saco were sorely afflicted with
it, "so that the country was in a manner left void of inhabitants."
Vines, Sir Ferdinando's agent, with his companions, slept in the cabins
with those that died; but, to their good fortune, as the narrative
quaintly sets forth, "not one of them ever felt their heads to ache
while they stayed there." This was in the year 1616-'17. Levett says the
Indians at "Aquamenticus" were all dead when he was there. Samoset
explains, in his broken English, to the Pilgrims that the lawful
occupants of Patuxet had, four years before, been swept away by an
extraordinary plague. The Indians had never seen or heard of the disease
before. Villages withered away when the blight fell upon them; tribes
were obliterated, and nations were reduced to tribes. Doubtless, this
disaster had much to do with the peaceable settlement of Plymouth,
Salem, and Boston. Had the Pilgrims been everywhere resisted, as at
Nauset, they could hardly have planted their colony in Plymouth Bay.
There was another cause to which the English owed their safety, as
related to them by many aged Indians. A French ship had been cast away
on Cape Cod. The crew succeeded in landing, but the Indians, less
merciful than the sea, butchered all but three of them. Two were
ransomed by Dermer, one of Sir F. Gorges's captains. The other remained
with the savages, acquired their language, and died among them. Before
his death he foretold that God was angry, and would destroy them, and
give their heritage to a strange people. They derided him, and answered
boastfully, they were so strong and numerous that the Manitou could not
kill them all. Soon after the pestilence depopulated the country. Then
came the Englishmen in their ships. The savages assembled in a dark
swamp, where their conjurors, with incantations lasting several days,
solemnly cursed the pale-faces, devoting them to destruction. Thus the
English found safety in the superstitious awe of the natives. The story
of the terrible plague is as yet unwritten. Governor Bradford says that
when Winslow went to confer with Massasoit, he passed by numbers of
unburied skulls and bones of those who had died.
Captain Levett is corroborative of the Pilgrims' settled intention to
depart from their original place of settlement. He observes in his
"Voyage into New England:" "Neither was I at New Plymouth, but I fear
that place is not so good as many others; for if it were, in my conceit,
they would content themselves with it, and not seek for any other,
having ten times so much ground as would serve ten times so many people
as they have now among them. But it seems they have no fish to make
benefit of; for this year they had one ship fish at Pemaquid, and
another at Cape Ann, where they have begun a new plantation, but how
long it will continue I know not."
It is evident from the testimony that the settlement at Plymouth was
ill-considered, and that the Pilgrims were themselves far from satisfied
with it. In this, too, we have the solution of the rapid overshadowing
of the Old Colony by its neighbors, and the fading away of its political
and commercial importance.
There is no manner of doubt that Plymouth had been visited by whites
long before the advent of the _Mayflower's_ band. Hutchinson erroneously
says De Monts "did not go into the Massachusetts bay, but struck over
from some part of the eastern shore to Cape Ann, and so to Cape Cod, and
sailed farther southward." Definite is this!
It was the object of De Monts to examine the coast, and his pilot seems
to have kept in with it as closely as possible, making a harbor every
night where one was to be found. The Indian pilot proved to have little
knowledge of the shores or of the language of the tribes to the westward
of the Saco; for on being confronted with the natives of the
Massachusetts country, he was not able to understand them. Gorges
recounts that his natives from Pemaquid and from Martha's Vineyard at
first hardly comprehended each other.
Hutchinson, it is probable, saw the edition of "Champlain's Voyages" of
1632, contenting himself with a cursory examination of it. An attentive
reading of the text of the edition of 1613 would have undeceived him as
to the movements of De Monts. Although the reprint of 1632 gives the
substance of the voyage, it is so mutilated in its details as to afford
scanty satisfaction to the student.
After leaving Cape Ann, De Monts entered Boston Bay and saw Charles
River, named by his company "Riviere du Gas," in compliment to their
chief. From thence they continued their route to a place that has for
the moment a greater interest. Given the latitude, the physical
features, and the distance from Cape Ann, we are at no loss to put the
finger on Plymouth Bay, of which the geographer of the expedition is the
first to give us a description.
The wind coming contrary, they dropped anchor in a little
roadstead.[181] While lying there they were boarded by canoes that had
been out fishing for cod. These, going to shore, notified their
companions, who assembled on the sands, dancing and gesticulating in
token of amity and welcome. A canoe from the bark landed with a few
trifles with which the simple natives were well pleased, and begged
their strange visitors to come and visit them within their river. The
man-stealers had not yet been among them. They offered a simple but
sincere hospitality.
[Illustration: CHAMPLAIN'S MAP.--PORT CAPE ST. LOUIS.]
Let us have recourse to the musty pages and antiquated French of
Champlain, following in the wake of the bark as it weathers the Gurnet,
and doubles Saquish, with the cheery cry of the leadsman, and the eyes
of De Monts, Champlain, and Champdore fixed on the shores of coming
renown:
"Nous levames l'ancre pour ce faire, mais nous n'y peusmes
entrer a cause du peu d'eau que nous y trouvames estans de
basse mer et fumes contrainctes de mouiller l'ancre a l'entree
d'icelle. Je decendis a terre ou j'eu vis quantite d'autres qui
nous receurent fort gratieusement: et fus recognoistre la
riviere, ou n'y a vey autre chose qu'un bras d'eau qui s'estant
quelque peu dans les terres qui font en partie desertees:
dedans lequel il n'y a qu'un ruisseau qui ne peut porter
basteaux sinon de pleine mer. Ce lieu peut avoir une lieue de
circuit. En l'une des entrees duquel y a une maniere d'icelle
couverte de bois et principalement de pins qui tient d'un coste
a des dunes de sable, qui font assez longues: l'autre coste est
une terre assez haute. II y a deux islets dans lad. Baye, qu'on
ne voit point si l'on n'est dedans, ou autour la mer asseche
presque toute de basse mer. Ce lieu est fort remarquable de la
mer; d'autant que la coste est fort basse, hormis le cap de
l'entree de la Baye qu'avons nomme le port du cap St. Louys
distant dud. cap deux lieues et dix du Cap aux Isles. Il est
environ par le hauteur du Cap St. Louys."
TRANSLATION.[182]
We raised the anchor to do this, but we could not enter therein
by reason of the little water which we found there, being low
sea, and were constrained to let go the anchor at the entrance
of it. I went ashore, where I saw numbers of natives who
received us very graciously, and surveyed the river, which is
nothing more than an arm of water that makes a little way in
the lands which are in part deserted, within which it is only a
rivulet that can not float vessels except at full sea. This
place may be a league in circuit. At one of the entrances is a
sort of island, which is covered with wood, principally pines,
which holds to a coast of sandy downs of some length; the other
shore is pretty high land. There are two isles in the said Bay
which are not perceived until you are within, which the sea
leaves almost entirely at low tide. This place is very
remarkable from the sea, inasmuch as the coast is very low,
except the cape at the entrance of the Bay, which we have named
Port Cape St. Louis, distant from the said Cape two leagues,
and ten from the Cape of Islands. It is about the latitude of
Cape St. Louis.[183]
In this description the Gurnet and Manomet stand out for easy
recognition. The sandy downs of Duxbury Beach, the shallow harbor, the
river, even the soundings establish the identity of Port St. Louis with
Plymouth; and the two islands become further evidence, if more were
needed.
To account for the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the Cape when the
Pilgrims were reconnoitring there, it is only necessary to cite a few
facts. Cabot stole three savages and carried them to England, where,
says Stow, in ludicrous astonishment, after two years' residence they
could not be told from Englishmen. In 1508, it is said, Thomas Aubert, a
pilot of Dieppe, excited great curiosity by bringing over several
natives to France. Cartier took two back with him to France, but with
their own consent; and they were eventually, I believe, restored to
their native country. Weymouth, in 1605, seized five at Pemaquid;
Harlow, in 1611, five more; and Hunt, the greatest thief of them all,
kidnaped in this very harbor of Plymouth, in the year 1614, twenty-four
of those silly savages, and sold them in Spain for reals of eight. After
such treachery it is not strange the red men looked on these new-comers
as their natural enemies. It is more extraordinary that Samoset, on
entering their weak village some months after their landing, should have
greeted them with the memorable "Welcome, Englishmen!"
The Pilgrims saw in the evidences of prior intercourse with Europeans,
that they were not the pioneers in this wilderness of New England. They
found implements and utensils of civilized manufacture, though no
fire-arms. These articles were probably obtained by barter with the
fishing or trading ships.
On William Wood's map of 1634,[184] Old Plymouth is laid down on the
eastern shore of Narraganset Bay, while New Plymouth has its proper
position. "New Plimouth" is placed on Blauw's map at the head of a small
bay, into which a large river flows. One of the headlands of the bay is
named C. Blanco Gallis, and the bay itself Crane Bay. Josselyn has also
this reference to Old Plymouth:
"At the farther end of the bay, by the mouth of Narraganset River, on
the south side thereof was Old Plymouth plantation, _Anno_ 1602." He may
have borrowed his itinerary in part from Wood, who, as I take it,
referred to Gosnold's attempt at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay. In his
summary, under date of 1607, Josselyn notes, "Plimouth plantation in New
England attempted."
I spent some hours among the grave-stones on Burial Hill. Here, as in
the streets of the living inhabitants, the old familiar names of the
_Mayflower's_ passengers are to be met with. And in every burial-place
in the land, I make no doubt, are to be found Howlands and Winslows,
Bradfords and Brewsters, side by side. I have felt myself much moved in
thinking on the story of those stern men and self-contained, trustful
women. Their whole lives might justly be called a pilgrimage. Consider
their gathering in the Old England they loved so well; then their
dispersion, suffering, and hurried flight into Holland; afterward the
staking their all on the issue of their venture in the New World, and
the painful, anxious lives they led; despoiling the young of their
youth, and the elders of a peaceful old age.
This spot, as is well known, was not the Pilgrims' original place of
interment. They who first died were buried on Cole's Hill, nearer the
shore, and to the strait limits of their little hamlet. They lost one
half their number during the first dismal winter, and there was room
enough without going far to make their graves. Tradition says that,
fearing their wretchedness might inspire the Indians with the hope of
exterminating them, those early graves were first leveled and then
planted upon in order to conceal their losses. It is said that sixty
years elapsed before a grave-stone with an inscription was set up in
Plymouth; certain it is that none older has been found than that of
Edward Gray, merchant, who died in 1681.
The obliterated grave-yard on Cole's Hill, which was nothing more than a
sea-bluff overhanging the shore, was flooded by a freshet about 1735,
laying bare many of the graves, and carrying along with it to the sea
many of the remains. It is the supposed resting-place of Carver, the
first governor of Plymouth, and of his wife, who did not long survive
him. It contained the ashes of fifty of the one hundred and two that had
landed in December. In the time of the first winter's sickness, says
Hutchinson, there were not above seven men capable of bearing arms. And
yet, when they were almost too few to bury their own dead, they talked
of war with Canonicus as if it were mere bagatelle, answering defiance
with defiance. I fancy those Pilgrims were of the right stuff!
On Burial Hill is a monument to the memory of Governor Bradford, who
succeeded Carver, and was annually chosen from 1621 until his death, in
1657--except during the years 1633, 1636, 1638, and 1644, when Edward
Winslow, and in 1634, when Thomas Prence, administered the colony
affairs. In seventy years there were only six different persons
governors of Plymouth. Roger White, the friend of Bradford, writes him a
letter from Leyden, December, 1625, counseling rotation in office, more
than hinting that the constant re-election of himself to the chief
office in the colony tended to an oligarchy.[185] Bradford was among the
earliest to go into Holland for conscience' sake. He was of good estate,
and had learned the art of silk-dyeing in Amsterdam. His residence in
the New World began in affliction, for, before a site for settlement had
been fixed upon, his wife, Dorothy May, fell from the vessel into the
sea and was drowned. His monument was erected, some years ago, by
descendants.
In a conspicuous position is the monument raised, in 1858, by the
descendants of Robert Cushman, and of Thomas Cushman, his son, for
forty-three years ruling elder of the church of the Pilgrims. Of all the
original memorial tablets in this old cemetery, those of Thomas Cushman,
who came in 1621, in the _Fortune_, and of Thomas Clark, a passenger by
the _Ann_, in 1623, alone were remaining. The grave of John Howland, an
emigrant of the _Mayflower_, has been identified, and furnished with a
handsome head-stone. In some instances boards bearing simply the name
and age of the deceased have replaced the aged and no longer legible
stones, as in the cases of Elder Thomas Faunce, William Crowe, and
others. The stone of Thomas Clark was the most curious I saw, and in
general the inscriptions do not possess other interest than the
recollections they summon up. The grave of Dr. Adoniram Judson is also
here.
Burial Hill is also memorable as the site of the second[186] regular
church edifice in New England, built to serve the double purpose of
church and citadel. From this cause the eminence was long called Fort
Hill. By February, 1621, after the defiance of Canonicus, the town was
inclosed within a palisade, taking in the top of the hill under which it
was situated. In 1622 the colonists built their church-fortress; it
should have been dedicated with Luther's anthem:
"God is a castle and defense,
When troubles and distress invade,
He'll help and free us from offense,
And ever shield us with his aid."
Ever willing to turn an honest penny, the Dutch, in 1627, opened a
correspondence between Fort Amsterdam and Plymouth, with offers of
trade. They followed it with an embassy in the person of Isaac de
Rasieres, who, says Bradford, was their chief merchant, and second to
their governor. He came into Plymouth "honorably attended with a noise
of trumpeters." It is in a letter of De Rasieres, found at The Hague by
Mr. Brodhead, that we obtain a circumstantial account of town and
fortress as they then existed.
"Upon the hill," he writes, "they have a large, square house, with a
flat roof, made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams, upon the
top of which they have six cannons, which shoot iron balls of four and
five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they
use for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual
holidays."[187]
A looker-on here in 1807 found in this burying-ground and on the summit
of the hill the remains of the ditch that surrounded the ancient
fortification erected in 1675, on the approach of Philip's war. This was
a work of greater magnitude than that of the first adventurers,
inclosing a space one hundred feet square, strongly palisaded with
pickets ten and a half feet high. As late as 1844 the whole circuit of
this work was distinctly visible.[188] The head of Wittuwamet, one of
the chiefs killed by Standish's party at Weymouth in 1623, was set up on
the battlements of the fort, as was afterward that of the renowned King
Philip. The vaunting, the exasperating mockery of a savage, is in these
lines:
'Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?'
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left
hand,
Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the handle,
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning,
'I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle;
By-and-by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children.'
According to Edward Winslow, the English stood to their guns when
Indians came among them. To allay distrust in the minds of the savages,
they were told it was an act of courtesy observed by the English, both
on land and sea. The sentinel who paced his lonely round here in 1622
should have had steady nerves. The nearest outpost was his
fellow-watcher on the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam. He could hardly pass
the word on "All's well!" to Jamestown or Saint Augustine, or hear the
challenge from Port Royal, in Acadia. Behind him was the wilderness, out
of which it was a wonder the Indians did not burst, it was so easy to
overwhelm the devoted little band of Englishmen and brush them away into
the sea. I make no account of the few scattered cabins along the
northern coast, and the Pilgrims made no account of them. Thus they
lived for ten years within the narrow limits of an intrenched camp, a
picket lodged within an enemy's country, until the settlement in
Massachusetts Bay enabled them to draw breath. Why might they not say to
those after-comers,
"We are the Jasons; we have won the fleece?"
The procession of the Pilgrims to their church was a sight that must
have exceedingly stirred the sluggish blood of the Dutch emissary. He
found them attentive to proffers of trade; acute, as might be expected
of the first Yankees, where profits were in question; but there was no
doubt about the quality of their piety. At the hour of worship the
silent village was assembled by drum-beat, as was befitting in the
Church Militant. At this signal the house-doors open and give passage to
each family. The men wear their sad-colored mantles, and are armed to
the teeth, as if going to battle. Silently they take their places in
front of the captain's door, three abreast, with matchlocks shouldered.
The tall, stern-visaged ones, we may suppose, lead the rest. In front is
the sergeant. Behind the armed men comes Bradford, in a long robe. At
his right hand is Elder Brewster, with his cloak on. At the governor's
left marches Miles Standish, his rapier lifting up the corner of his
mantle, and carrying a small cane in his hand. The women in sober gowns,
kerchiefs, and hoods, their garments poor, but scrupulously neat, follow
next; the lowlier yielding precedence to those of better condition. At
command, they take their way up the hill in this order, and, entering
within the rude temple they have raised, each man sets down his musket
where he may lay hand upon it. "Thus," says De Rasieres, "they are on
their guard night and day."
Thomas Lechford, "of Clement's Inn, Gent," in his "Plain Dealing," says
he once looked in the church-door in Boston where the sacrament was
being administered. He thus noted down what he saw: "They come together
about nine o'clock by ringing of a bell. Pastor prayed for a quarter of
an hour. The teacher then readeth and expoundeth a chapter; then a psalm
is sung, which one of the ruling Elders dictates. Afterward the pastor
preaches a sermon, or exhorts _ex tempore_."
This is the way in which they made contributions: "On Sundays, in the
afternoon, when the sermon is ended, the people in the galleries come
down and march two abreast up one aisle and down the other, until they
come before the desk, for pulpit they have none. Before the desk is a
long pue where the elders and deacons sit, one of them with a money-box
in his hand, into which the people, as they pass, put their offering,
some a shill, some 2s., some half a crown, five s., according to their
ability. Then they conclude with a prayer."
Lechford adds that the congregation used to pass up by the deacon's
seat, giving either money, or valuable articles, or paper promises to
pay, and so to their seats again, the chief men or magistrates first.
The same author describes the method of excommunication practiced in
some of the New England churches. "At New Haven, _alias_ Quinapeag," he
says, "where Master Davenport is pastor, the excommunicate is held out
of the meeting, at the doore, if he will heare, in frost, snow, and
raine."
The Pilgrims are often called Puritans, a term of reproach first applied
to the whole body of Dissenters, but in their day belonging strictly to
those who renounced the forms and ceremonies while believing in the
doctrines and sacraments of the Church of England. Boston was settled by
Puritans, who, according to Governor Winthrop, adhered to the
mother-church when they left Old England. It is curious to observe that
the Boston Puritans became rigid Separatists, while the Plymouth
Separatists became more and more moderate. The Pilgrims were originally
of the sect called Brownists, from Robert Brown, a school-master in
Southwark about 1580, and a relation of Cecil, Lord Burghley.[189]
Cardinal Bentivoglio erroneously calls the Holland refugees a distinct
sect by the name of Puritans. Hutchinson, usually well informed,
observes, "If all in England who called themselves Brownists and
Independents at that day had come over with them (the Pilgrims), they
would scarcely have made one considerable town." Yet in 1592 there were
said to be twenty thousand Independents in England.
The Church of the Pilgrims, formed, in 1602, of people living on the
borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, made their way,
after innumerable difficulties, into Holland. Their pastor, John
Robinson, is usually regarded as the author of Independency. A residence
on the scene of the Reformation softened, in many respects, the
inflexible religious character of the Brownists. They discarded the name
rendered odious on many accounts. It is stated, on the authority of
Edward Winslow, that Robinson and his Church did not require
renunciation of the Church of England, acknowledging the other reformed
churches, and allowing occasional communion with them. It is also
evident from what Bradford says that the Pilgrims chose the Huguenots as
their models in Church affairs.[190]
Both in regard to civil and ecclesiastical affairs the Pilgrims were
placed in a situation of serious difficulty. The King of England
promised not to interfere with them in religious matters, but would not
acknowledge them by any public act under his hand and seal. Some of the
most influential of the company of English merchants, by whom they were
transported to New England, did not sympathize with them in their
religious views, and at length broke off from them, and left them to
struggle on alone as best they might. This is apparent in the plan to
prevent the remnant of the Church of Leyden from coming over. It is also
clear that neither the motives nor the intentions of the Pilgrims were
well understood by the adventurers at the outset, and that as soon as
these were fully developed, the merchants, or a majority of them,
preferred to augment their colony with a more pliant and less obnoxious
class of emigrants than the first-comers had proved. In examining the
charges and complaints of the one, and the explanations of the other, it
is difficult to avoid the conclusion that a good deal of duplicity was
used by the Pilgrims to keep the breath of life in their infant
plantation.
It appears that the settlers in Massachusetts Bay were not acquainted
with the form of worship practiced by the Pilgrims, as Endicott writes
to Governor Bradford from "Naumkeak, May 11th, 1629: I acknowledge
myself much bound to you for your kind love and care in sending Mr.
Fuller among us, and rejoice much that I am by him satisfied touching
your judgments of the outward form of God's worship; it is (as far as I
can yet gather) no other than is warranted by the evidence of truth, and
the same which I have professed and maintained ever since the Lord in
his mercy revealed himself unto me, being far differing from the common
reports that hath been spread of you touching that particular."[191]
I have thought it worth mentioning that the church at Salem was the
first completely organized Congregational church in America. It was
gathered August 6th, 1629, when Rev. Mr. Higginson was ordained teacher,
and Mr. Skelton pastor.[192] Governor Bradford and others deputed from
the church at Plymouth, coming into the assembly in the hour of the
solemnity, gave them the right hand of fellowship. Robinson never having
come over, Plymouth was without a pastor for some years.
Under Charles I. the Pilgrims fared little better than in the preceding
reign; but they had seated themselves firmly by the period of the Civil
War. On the day before his arrival at Shrewsbury, the king caused the
military orders to be read at the head of each regiment. Then, mounting
his horse, and placing himself in the midst, where all might hear, he
made a speech to his soldiers, in which this passage occurs:
"Gentlemen, you have heard these orders read; it is your part, in your
severall places, to observe them exactly.... I can not suspect your
Courage and Resolution; your Conscience and your Loyalty hath brought
you hither to fight for your Religion, your King, and the Laws of the
Land; you shall fight with no Enemies, but Traitours, most of them
Brownists, Anabaptists, and Atheists, such who desire to destroy both
Church and State, and who have already condemned you to ruin for being
Loyall to vs."
Here, then, were a handful of men repudiated by their king, cast off by
their commercial partners, a prey to the consequences of civil war at
home, and living by sufferance in the midst of a fierce and warlike
people, compelled at last to work out their own political destiny. What
wonder that with them self-preservation stood first, last, and always!
All other settlements in New England were made with the hope of gain
alone, few, if any, colonists meaning to make a permanent home in its
wilds. We may not withhold the respect due to these Pilgrims, who were
essentially a unit, embodying the germ of civil, political, and
religious liberty. They beheld from the beach the vanishing sail of the
_Mayflower_ as men who had accepted what fate may bring to them. They
did not mean to go back.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[171] In possession of New England Historic Genealogical Society,
Boston. It is by Corne, a marine painter of some repute in his day.
[172] Other portraits are of Dr. James Thacher, by Frothingham, and of
John Alden, great-grandson of John, of the _Mayflower_, who died at the
great age of one hundred and two years. He was of Middleborough. Dr.
Thacher, a surgeon of the old Continental army, deserves more space than
I am able to give him. He has embodied a great deal of Revolutionary
history, in a very interesting way, in his "Military Journal," having
been present at the principal battles.
[173] "Pilgrim Memorial."
[174] John Newcomen.
[175] Jones's River.
[176] The _Mayflower_ was only one hundred and eighty tons burden.
[177] Mourt.
[178] I do not find any exact authority for this.
[179] "This is to certify that I took the schooner _Harmony_, Nathaniel
Carver, master, belonging to Plymouth, but, on account of his good
services, have given him up his vessel again.
"HORATIO NELSON.
"Dated on board H.M. ship _Albemarle_, 17th August, 1782."
[180] Governor Bradford's "History of Plymouth."
[181] Green's Harbor, perhaps.
[182] Followed as literally as possible, to preserve the style.
[183] Named by De Monts, and supposed to be Brant Point.
[184] "The south part of New England, as it is planted this yeare,
1634."
[185] "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society."
[186] See Popham's settlement on the Kennebec; the Episcopal service was
doubtless the first religious exercise in New England.
[187] Captain John Smith, speaking of the town in 1624, says of this
fortress, there was "within a high mount a fort, with a watch-tower,
well built of stone, lome, and wood, their ordnance well mounted."
[188] During some excavations made on the hill, remains of the
watch-tower of brick came to light, indicating its position to have been
in the vicinity of the Judson monument. There also existed on the hill,
until about 1860, a powder-house of antique fashion, built in 1770. It
had an oval slab of slate imbedded in the wall, with a Latin
inscription; and there were also engraved upon it a powder-horn,
cartridge, and a cannon.--"Pilgrim Memorial."
[189] Robert Brown, the founder of the sect, after thirty-two
imprisonments, eventually conformed. Henry Penay, Henry Barrow, and
other Brownists, were cruelly executed for alleged sedition, May 29th,
1593. Elizabeth's celebrated Act of 1593 visited a refusal to make a
declaration of conformity with the Church of England with banishment and
forfeiture of citizenship; death if the offender returned into the
realm.
[190] Sir Matthew Hale used to say, "Those of the Separation were good
men, but they had narrow souls, or they would not break the peace of the
Church about such inconsiderable matters as the points of difference
were." In this country the Independents took the name of
Congregationalists. They held, among other things, that one church may
advise or reprove another, but had no power to excommunicate. The
churches outside of Plymouth did, however, practice excommunication.
[191] Governor Bradford's Letter-book.
[192] The teacher explained doctrines; the pastor enforced them by
suitable exhortations.
[Illustration: THE PILGRIMS' FIRST ENCOUNTER.]