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ANNE BRADSTREET AND HER TIME
BY
HELEN CAMPBELL
AUTHOR OF "PRISONERS OF POVERTY," "MRS. HERNDON'S INCOME," "MISS
MELINDA'S OPPORTUNITY," ETC.
A BOOK FOR "MISS ICY."
INTRODUCTION.
Grave doubts at times arise in the critical mind as to whether
America has had any famous women. We are reproached with the fact,
that in spite of some two hundred years of existence, we have, as
yet, developed no genius in any degree comparable to that of
George Eliot and George Sand in the present, or a dozen other as
familiar names of the past. One at least of our prominent literary
journals has formulated this reproach, and is even sceptical as to
the probability of any future of this nature for American women.
What the conditions have been which hindered and hampered such
development, will find full place in the story of the one woman
who, in the midst of obstacles that might easily have daunted a
far stouter soul, spoke such words as her limitations allowed.
Anne Bradstreet, as a name standing alone, and represented only by
a volume of moral reflections and the often stilted and unnatural
verse of the period, would perhaps, hardly claim a place in formal
biography. But Anne Bradstreet, the first woman whose work has
come down to us from that troublous Colonial time, and who, if not
the mother, is at least the grandmother of American literature, in
that her direct descendants number some of our most distinguished
men of letters calls for some memorial more honorable than a page
in an Encyclopedia, or even an octavo edition of her works for the
benefit of stray antiquaries here and there. The direct ancestress
of the Danas, of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, Wendell Phillips, the
Channings, the Buckminsters and other lesser names, would
naturally inspire some interest if only in an inquiry as to just
what inheritance she handed down, and the story of what she failed
to do because of the time into which she was born, holds equal
meaning with that of what she did do.
I am indebted to Mr. John Harvard Ellis's sumptuous edition of
Anne Bradstreet's works, published in 1867, and containing all her
extant works, for all extracts of either prose or verse, as well
as for many of the facts incorporated in Mr. Ellis's careful
introduction. Miss Bailey's "History of Andover," has proved a
valuable aid, but not more so than "The History of New England,"
by Dr. John Gorham Palfrey, which affords in many points, the most
careful and faithful picture on record of the time, personal
facts, unfortunately, being of the most meager nature. They have
been sought for chiefly, however, in the old records themselves;
musty with age and appallingly diffuse as well as numerous, but
the only source from which the true flavor of a forgotten time can
be extracted. Barren of personal detail as they too often are, the
writer of the present imperfect sketch has found Anne Bradstreet,
in spite of all such deficiencies, a very real and vital person,
and ends her task with the belief which it is hoped that the
reader may share, that among the honorable women not a few whose
lives are to-day our dearest possession, not one claims tenderer
memory than she who died in New England two hundred years ago.
NEW YORK, 1890.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I. THE OLD HOME
CHAPTER II. UPHEAVALS
CHAPTER III. THE VOYAGE
CHAPTER IV. BEGINNINGS
CHAPTER V. OLD FRIENDS AND NEW
CHAPTER VI. A THEOLOGICAL TRAGEDY
CHAPTER VII. COLONIAL LITERARY DEVELOPMENT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
CHAPTER VIII. SOME PHASES OF EARLY COLONIAL LIFE
CHAPTER IX. ANDOVER
CHAPTER X. VILLAGE LIFE IN 1650
CHAPTER XI A FIRST EDITION
CHAPTER XII. MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
CHAPTER XIII. CHANCES AND CHANGES
CHAPTER XIV. A LEGACY
CHAPTER XV. THE PURITAN REIGN OF TERROR
CHAPTER XVI. HOME AND ABROAD
CHAPTER XVII. THE END
ANNE BRADSTREET AND HER TIME.
CHAPTER I.
THE OLD HOME.
The birthday of the baby, Anne Dudley, has no record; her
birthplace even is not absolutely certain, although there is
little doubt that it was at Northhampton in England, the home of
her father's family. She opened her eyes upon a time so filled
with crowding and conflicting interests that there need be no
wonder that the individual was more or less ignored, and personal
history lost in the general. To what branch of the Dudley family
she belonged is also uncertain. Moore, in his "Lives of the
Governors of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay," writes: "There
is a tradition among the descendants of Governor Dudley in the
eldest branch of the family, that he was descended from John
Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who was beheaded 22 February,
1553." Such belief was held for a time, but was afterward
disallowed by Anne Bradstreet. In her "Elegy upon Sir Philip
Sidney," whose mother, the Lady Mary, was the eldest daughter of
that Duke of Northumberland, she wrote:
"Let, then, none disallow of these my straines,
Which have the self-same blood yet in my veines."
With the second edition of her poems, however, her faith had
changed. This may have been due to a growing indifference to
worldly distinctions, or, perhaps, to some knowledge of the
dispute as to the ancestry of Robert Dudley, son of the Duke, who
was described by one side as a nobleman, by another as a
carpenter, and by a third as "a noble timber merchant"; while a
wicked wit wrote that "he was the son of a duke, the brother of a
king, the grandson of an esquire, and the great-grandson of a
carpenter; that the carpenter was the only honest man in the
family and the only one who died in his bed." Whatever the cause
may have been she renounced all claim to relationship, and the
lines were made to read as they at present stand:
"Then let none disallow of these my straines
Whilst English blood yet runs within my veines."
In any case, her father, Thomas Dudley, was of gentle blood and
training, being the only son of Captain Roger Dudley, who was
killed in battle about the year 1577, when the child was hardly
nine years old. Of his mother there is little record, as also of
the sister from whom he was soon separated, though we know that
Mrs. Dudley died shortly after her husband. Her maiden name is
unknown; she was a relative of Sir Augustine Nicolls, of Paxton,
Kent, one of His Majesty's Justices of his Court of Common Pleas,
and keeper of the Great Seal to Prince Charles.
The special friend who took charge of Thomas Dudley through
childhood is said to have been "a Miss Purefoy," and if so, she
was the sister of Judge Nicolls, who married a Leicestershire
squire, named William Purefoy. Five hundred pounds was left in
trust for him, and delivered to him when he came of age; a sum
equivalent to almost as many thousand to-day. At the school to
which he was sent he gained a fair knowledge of Latin, but he was
soon taken from it to become a page in the family of William Lord
Compton, afterward the Earl of Northumberland.
His studies were continued, and in time he became a clerk of his
kinsman, "Judge Nicholls," whose name appears in letters, and who
was a sergeant-at-law. Such legal knowledge as came to him here
was of service through all his later life, but law gave place to
arms, the natural bias of most Englishmen at that date, and he
became captain of eighty volunteers "raised in and about
Northhampton, and forming part of the force collected by order of
Queen Elizabeth to assist Henry IV. of France, in the war against
Philip II. of Spain," He was at the siege of Amiens in 1597, and
returned home when it ended, having, though barely of age, already
gained distinction as a soldier, and acquired the courtesy of
manner which distinguished him till later life, and the blandness
of which often blinded unfamiliar acquaintances to the penetration
and acumen, the honesty and courage that were the foundations of
his character. As his belief changed, and the necessity for free
speech was laid upon him, he ceased to disguise his real feelings
and became even too out-spoken, the tendency strengthening year by
year, and doing much to diminish his popularity, though his
qualities were too sterling to allow any lessening of real honor
and respect. But he was still the courtier, and untitled as he
was, prestige enough came with him to make his marriage to "a
gentlewoman whose Extract and Estate were Considerable," a very
easy matter, and though we know her only as Dorothy Dudley, no
record of her maiden name having been preserved, the love borne
her by both husband and daughter is sufficient evidence of her
character and influence.
Puritanism was not yet an established fact, but the seed had been
sown which later became a tree so mighty that thousands gathered
under its shadow. The reign of Elizabeth had brought not only power
but peace to England, and national unity had no further peril of
existence to dread. With peace, trade established itself on sure
foundations and increased with every year. Wealth flowed into the
country and the great merchants of London whose growth amazed and
troubled the royal Council, founded hospitals, "brought the New
River from its springs at Chadwell and Amwell to supply the city
with pure water," and in many ways gave of their increase for the
benefit of all who found it less easy to earn. The smaller
land-owners came into a social power never owned before, and
"boasted as long a rent-roll and wielded as great an influence as
many of the older nobles.... In wealth as in political consequence
the merchants and country gentlemen who formed the bulk of the House
of Commons, stood far above the mass of the peers."
Character had changed no less than outward circumstances. "The
nation which gave itself to the rule of the Stewarts was another
nation from the panic-struck people that gave itself in the crash
of social and religious order to the guidance of the Tudors."
English aims had passed beyond the bounds of England, and every
English "squire who crossed the Channel to flesh his maiden sword
at Ivry or Ostend, brought back to English soil, the daring
temper, the sense of inexhaustable resources, which had bourn him
on through storm and battle field." Such forces were not likely to
settle into a passive existence at home. Action had become a
necessity. Thoughts had been stirred and awakened once for all.
Consciously for the few, unconsciously for the many, "for a
hundred years past, men had been living in the midst of a
spiritual revolution. Not only the world about them, but the world
within every breast had been utterly transformed. The work of the
sixteenth century had wrecked that tradition of religion, of
knowledge, of political and social order, which had been accepted
without question by the Middle Ages. The sudden freedom of the
mind from these older bonds brought a consciousness of power such
as had never been felt before; and the restless energy, the
universal activity of the Renaissance were but outer expressions
of the pride, the joy, the amazing self-confidence, with which man
welcomed this revelation of the energies which had lain slumbering
within him."
This was the first stage, but another quickly and naturally
followed, and dread took the place of confidence. With the
deepening sense of human individuality, came a deepening
conviction of the boundless capacities of the human soul. Not as a
theological dogma, but as a human fact man knew himself to be an
all but infinite power, whether for good or for ill. The drama
towered into sublimity as it painted the strife of mighty forces
within the breasts of Othello or Macbeth. Poets passed into
metaphysicians as they strove to unravel the workings of
conscience within the soul. From that hour one dominant influence
told on human action; and all the various energies that had been
called into life by the age that was passing away were seized,
concentrated and steadied to a definite aim by the spirit of
religion. Among the myriads upon whom this change had come, Thomas
Dudley was naturally numbered, and the ardent preaching of the
well-known Puritan ministers, Dodd and Hildersham, soon made him a
Non-conformist and later an even more vigorous dissenter from
ancient and established forms. As thinking England was of much the
same mind, his new belief did not for a time interfere with his
advancement, for, some years after his marriage he became steward
of the estate of the Earl of Lincoln, and continued so for more
than ten years. Plunged in debt as the estate had been by the
excesses of Thomas, Earl of Lincoln, who left the property to his
son Theophilus, so encumbered that it was well nigh worthless, a
few years of Dudley's skillful management freed it entirely, and
he became the dear and trusted friend of the entire family. His
first child had been born in 1610, a son named Samuel, and in 1612
came the daughter whose delicate infancy and childhood gave small
hint of the endurance shown in later years. Of much the same
station and training as Mrs. Lucy Hutchinson, Anne Dudley could
undoubtedly have written in the same words as that most delightful
of chroniclers: "By the time I was four years old I read English
perfectly, and having a great memory I was carried to sermons....
When I was about seven years of age, I remember I had at one time
eight tutors in several qualities, languages, music, dancing,
writing and needle work; but my genius was quite averse from all
but my book, and that I was so eager of, that my mother thinking
it prejudiced my health, would moderate me in it; yet this rather
animated me than kept me back, and every moment I could steal from
my play I would employ in any book I could find when my own were
locked up from me."
It is certain that the little Anne studied the Scriptures at six
or seven, with as painful solicitude as her elders, for she writes
in the fragmentary diary which gives almost the only clue to her
real life:
"In my young years, about 6 or 7, as I take it, I began to make
conscience of my wayes, and what I knew was sinful, as lying,
disobedience to Parents, etc., I avoided it. If at any time I was
overtaken with the like evills, it was a great Trouble. I could
not be at rest 'till by prayer I had confest it unto God. I was
also troubled at the neglect of Private Duteys, tho' too often
tardy that way. I also found much comfort in reading the
Scriptures, especially those places I thought most concerned my
Condition, and as I grew to have more understanding, so the more
solace I took in them.
"In a long fitt of sickness which I had on my bed, I often
communed with my heart and made my supplication to the most High,
who sett me free from that affliction."
For a childhood which at six searches the Scriptures to find
verses applicable to its condition, there cannot have been much if
any natural child life, and Mrs. Hutchinson's experience again was
probably duplicated for the delicate and serious little Anne.
"Play among other children I despised, and when I was forced to
entertain such as came to visit me, I tried them with more grave
instruction than their mothers, and plucked all their babies to
pieces, and kept the children in such awe, that they were glad
when I entertained myself with elder company, to whom I was very
acceptable, and living in the house with many persons that had a
great deal of wit, and very profitable serious discourses being
frequent at my father's table and in my mother's drawing room, I
was very attentive to all, and gathered up things that I would
utter again, to great admiration of many that took my memory and
imitation for wit.... I used to exhort my mother's words much, and
to turn their idle discourses to good subjects."
Given to exhortation as some of the time may have been, and drab-
colored as most of the days certainly were, there were, bright
passages here and there, and one reminiscence was related in later
years, in her poem "In Honour of Du Bartas," the delight of
Puritan maids and mothers;
"My muse unto a Child I may compare,
Who sees the riches of some famous Fair,
He feeds his eyes but understanding lacks,
To comprehend the worth of all those knacks;
The glittering plate and Jewels he admires,
The Hats and Fans, the Plumes and Ladies' tires,
And thousand times his mazed mind doth wish
Some part, at least, of that brave wealth was his;
But seeing empty wishes nought obtain,
At night turns to his Mother's cot again,
And tells her tales (his full heart over glad),
Of all the glorious sights his eyes have had;
But finds too soon his want of Eloquence,
The silly prattler speaks no word of sense;
But seeing utterance fail his great desires,
Sits down in silence, deeply he admires."
It is probably to one of the much exhorted maids that she owed
this glimpse of what was then a rallying ground for the jesters
and merry Andrews, and possibly even a troop of strolling players,
frowned upon by the Puritan as children of Satan, but still
secretly enjoyed by the lighter minded among them. But the burden
of the time pressed more and more heavily. Freedom which had
seemed for a time to have taken firm root, and to promise a better
future for English thought and life, lessened day by day under the
pressure of the Stuart dynasty, and every Nonconformist home was
the center of anxieties that influenced every member of it from
the baby to the grandsire, whose memory covered more astonishing
changes than any later day has known.
The year preceding Anne Dudley's birth, had seen the beginning of
the most powerful influence ever produced upon a people, made
ready for it, by long distrust of such teaching as had been
allowed. With the translation of the Bible into common speech, and
the setting up of the first six copies in St. Pauls, its
popularity had grown from day to day. The small Geneva Bibles soon
appeared and their substance had become part of the life of every
English family within an incredibly short space of time. Not only
thought and action but speech itself were colored and shaped by
the new influence. We who hold to it as a well of English
undefiled, and resent even the improvements of the new Version as
an infringement on a precious possession, have small conception of
what it meant to a century which had had no prose literature and
no poetry save the almost unknown verse of Chaucer.
"Sunday after Sunday, day after day, the crowds that gathered
round the Bible in the nave of St. Pauls, or the family group that
hung on its words in the devotional exercises at home, were
leavened with a new literature. Legend and annal, war song and
psalm, State-roll and biography, the mighty voices of prophets,
the parables of Evangelists, stories of mission-journeys, of
perils by the sea and among the heathens, philosophic arguments,
apocalyptic visions, all were flung broadcast over minds
unoccupied for the most part by any rival learning. The disclosure
of the stores of Greek literature had wrought the revolution of
Renaissance. The disclosure of the older mass of Hebrew
literature, wrought the revolution of the Reformation. But the one
revolution was far deeper and wider in its effects than the other.
No version could transfer to another tongue the peculiar charm of
language which gave their value to the authors of Greece and Rome.
Classical letters, therefore, remained in the possession of the
learned, that is, of the few, and among these, with the exception
of Colet and More, or of the pedants who revived a Pagan worship
in the gardens of the Florentine Academy, their direct influence
was purely intellectual. But the language of the Hebrew, the idiom
of the Hellenistic Greek, lent themselves with a curious felicity
to the purposes of translation. As a mere literary monument the
English version of the Bible remains the noblest example of the
English tongue, while its perpetual use made it from the instant
of its appearance, the standard of our language.
"One must dwell upon this fact persistently, before it will become
possible to understand aright either the people or the literature of
the time. With generations the influence has weakened, though the
best in English speech has its source in one fountain. But the
Englishman of that day wove his Bible into daily speech, as we weave
Shakespeare or Milton or our favorite author of a later day. It was
neither affectation nor hypocrisy but an instinctive use that made
the curious mosaic of Biblical words and phrases which colored
English talk two hundred years ago. The mass of picturesque allusion
and illustration which we borrow from a thousand books, our fathers
were forced to borrow from one; and the borrowing was the easier and
the more natural, that the range of the Hebrew literature fitted it
for the expression of every phase of feeling. When Spencer poured
forth his warmest love-notes in the 'Epithalamion,' he adopted the
very words of the Psalmist, as he bade the gates open for the
entrance of his bride. When Cromwell saw the mists break over the
hills of Dunbar, he hailed the sun-burst with the cry of David: 'Let
God arise, and let his enemies be scattered. Like as the smoke
vanisheth so shalt thou drive them away!' Even to common minds this
familiarity with grand poetic imagery in prophet and apocalypse,
gave a loftiness and ardor of expression that with all its tendency
to exaggeration and bombast we may prefer to the slip-shod
vulgarisms of today."
Children caught the influence, and even baby talk was half
scriptural, so that there need be no surprise in finding Anne
Bradstreet's earliest recollections couched in the phrases of
psalms learned by heart as soon as she could speak, and used, no
doubt, half unconsciously. Translate her sentences into the
thought of to-day, and it is evident, that aside from the morbid
conscientiousness produced by her training, that she was the
victim of moods arising from constant ill-health. Her constitution
seems to have been fragile in the extreme, and there is no
question but that in her case as in that of many another child
born into the perplexed and troubled time, the constant anxiety of
both parents, uncertain what a day might bring forth, impressed
itself on the baby soul. There was English fortitude and courage,
the endurance born of faith, and the higher evolution from English
obstinacy, but there was for all of them, deep self-distrust and
abasement; a sense of worthlessness that intensified with each
generation; and a perpetual, unhealthy questioning of every
thought and motive. The progress was slow but certain, rising
first among the more sensitive natures of women, whose lives held
too little action to drive away the mists, and whose motto was
always, "look in and not out"--an utter reversal of the teaching
of to-day. The children of that generation lost something that had
been the portion of their fathers. The Elizabethan age had been
one of immense animal life and vigor, and of intense capacity for
enjoyment, and, deny it as one might, the effect lingered and had
gone far toward forming character. The early Nonconformist still
shared in many worldly pleasures, and had found no occasion to
condense thought upon points in Calvinism, or to think of himself
as a refugee from home and country.
The cloud at first no bigger than a man's hand, was not dreaded,
and life in Nonconformist homes went on with as much real
enjoyment as if their ownership were never to be questioned.
Serious and sad, as certain phases come to be, it is certain that
home life developed as suddenly as general intelligence. The
changes in belief in turn affected character. "There was a sudden
loss of the passion, the caprice, the subtle and tender play of
feeling, the breath of sympathy, the quick pulse of delight, which
had marked the age of Elizabeth; but on the other hand life gained
in moral grandeur, in a sense of the dignity of manhood, in
orderliness and equable force. The larger geniality of the age
that had passed away was replaced by an intense tenderness within
the narrower circle of the home. Home, as we now conceive it, was
the creation of the Puritan. Wife and child rose from mere
dependants on the will of husband or father, as husband or father
saw in them saints like himself, souls hallowed by the touch of a
divine spirit and called with a divine calling like his own. The
sense of spiritual fellowship gave a new tenderness and refinement
to the common family affections."
The same influence had touched Thomas Dudley, and Dorothy Dudley
could have written of him as Lucy Hutchinson did of her husband:
"He was as kind a father, as dear a brother, as good a master, as
faithful a friend as the world had." In a time when, for the
Cavalier element, license still ruled and lawless passion was
glorified by every play writer, the Puritan demanded a different
standard, and lived a life of manly purity in strange contrast to
the grossness of the time. Of Hutchinson and Dudley and thousands
of their contemporaries the same record held good: "Neither in
youth nor riper years could the most fair or enticing woman draw
him into unnecessary familiarity or dalliance. Wise and virtuous
women he loved, and delighted in all pure and holy and unblameable
conversation with them, but so as never to excite scandal or
temptation. Scurrilous discourse even among men he abhorred; and
though he sometimes took pleasure in wit and mirth, yet that
which was mixed with impurity he never could endure."
Naturally with such standards life grew orderly and methodical.
"Plain living and high thinking," took the place of high living
and next to no thinking. Heavy drinking was renounced. Sobriety
and self-restraint ruled here as in every other act of life, and
the division between Cavalier and Nonconformist became daily more
and more marked. Persecution had not yet made the gloom and
hardness which soon came to be inseparable from the word Puritan,
and children were still allowed many enjoyments afterward totally
renounced. Milton could write, even after his faith had settled
and matured:
"Haste then, nymph, and bring with thee
Jest and youthful jollity,
Quips and Cranks and wanton Wiles,
Nods and becks and wreathed Smiles,
Such as hang on Hebe's cheek
And love to live in dimple sleek;
Sports that wrinkled care derides
And Laughter holding both his sides."
Cromwell himself looked on at masques and revels, and Whitelock, a
Puritan lawyer and his ambassador to Sweden, left behind him a
reputation for stately and magnificent entertaining, which his
admirers could never harmonize with his persistent refusal to
conform to the custom of drinking healths. In the report of this
embassy printed after Whitelock's return and republished some
years ago, occurs one of the best illustrations of Puritan social
life at that period. "How could you pass over their very long
winter nights?" was one of the questions asked by the Protector at
the first audience after his return from The embassy.
"I kept my people together," was the reply, "and in action and
recreation, by having music in my house, and encouraging that and
the exercise of dancing, which held them by the eyes and ears, and
gave them diversion without any offence. And I caused the
gentlemen to have disputations in Latin, and declamations upon
words which I gave them." Cromwell, "Those were very good
diversions, and made your house a little academy."
Whitelock, "I thought these recreations better than gaming for
money, or going forth to places of debauchery."
Cromwell, "It was much better."
In the Earl of Lincoln's household such amusements would be
common, and it was not till many years later, that a narrowing
faith made Anne write them down as "the follyes of youth." Through
that youth, she had part in every opportunity that the increased
respect for women afforded.
Many a Puritan matron shared her husband's studies, or followed
her boys in their preparation for Oxford or Cambridge, and Anne
Bradstreet's poems and the few prose memorials she left, give full
evidence of an unusually broad training, her delicacy of health
making her more ready for absorption in study. Shakespeare and
Cervantes were still alive at her birth, and she was old enough,
with the precocious development of the time, to have known the
sense of loss and the general mourning at their death in 1616. It
is doubtful if the plays of the elder dramatists were allowed her,
though there are hints in her poems of some knowledge of
Shakespeare, but by the time girlhood was reached, the feeling
against them had increased to a degree hardly comprehensible save
in the light of contemporaneous history. The worst spirit of the
time was incorporated in the later plays, and the Puritans made no
discrimination. The players in turn hated them, and Mrs.
Hutchinson wrote: "Every stage and every table, and every puppet-
play, belched forth profane scoffs upon them, the drunkards made
them their songs, and all fiddlers and mimics learned to abuse
them, as finding it the most gameful way of fooling."
If, however, the dramatists were forbidden, there were new and
inexhaustible sources of inspiration and enjoyment, in the throng
of new books, which the quiet of the reign of James allowed to
appear in quick succession. Chapman's magnificent version of Homer
was delighting Cavalier and Puritan alike. "Plutarch's Lives,"
were translated by Sir Thomas North and his book was "a household
book for the whole of the seventeenth century." Montaigne's Essays
had been "done into English" by John Florio, and to some of them
at least Thomas Dudley was not likely to take exception. Poets and
players had, however, come to be classed together and with some
reason, both alike antagonizing the Puritan, but the poets of the
reign of James were far more simple and natural in style than
those of the age of Elizabeth, and thus, more likely to be read in
Puritan families. Their numbers may be gauged by their present
classification into "pastoral, satirical, theological, metaphysical
and humorous," but only two of them were in entire sympathy
with the Puritan spirit, or could be read without serious shock
to belief and scruples.
For the sake of her own future work, deeper drinking at these
springs was essential, and in rejecting them, Anne Dudley lost the
influence that must have moulded her own verse into much more
agreeable form for the reader of to-day, though it would probably
have weakened her power in her own day. The poets she knew best
hindered rather than helped development. Wither and Quarles, both
deeply Calvinistic, the former becoming afterward one of
Cromwell's major-generals, were popular not only then but long
afterward, and Quarles' "Emblems", which appeared in 1635, found
their way to New England and helped to make sad thought still more
dreary. Historians and antiquaries were at work. Sir Walter
Raleigh's "History of the World," must have given little Anne her
first suggestion of life outside of England, while Buchanan, the
tutor of King James, had made himself the historian and poet of
Scotland. Bacon had just ended life and labor; Hooker's
Ecclesiastical Polity was before the world, though not completed
until 1632, and the dissensions of the time had given birth to a
"mass of sermons, books of devotion, religious tracts and
controversial pamphlets." Sermons abounded, those of Archbishop
Usher, Andrews and Donne being specially valued, while "The
Saint's Cordial," of Dr. Richard Sibbs, and the pious meditations
of Bishop Hall were on every Puritan bookshelf. But few strictly
sectarian books appeared, "the censorship of the press, the right
of licensing books being almost entirely arrogated to himself by
the untiring enemy of the Nonconformists, Laud, Bishop of London,
whose watchful eye few heretical writings could escape.. . . Many
of the most ultra pamphlets and tracts were the prints of foreign
presses secretly introduced into the country without the form of a
legal entry at Stationers' Hall."
The same activity which filled the religious world, was found also
in scientific directions and Dr. Harvey's discovery of the
circulation of the blood, and Napier's introduction of logarithms,
made a new era for both medicine and mathematics.
That every pulse of this new tide was felt in the castle at
Lempingham is very evident, in all Anne Bradstreet's work. The
busy steward found time for study and his daughter shared it, and
when he revolted against the incessant round of cares and for a
time resigned the position, the leisure gained was devoted to the
same ends. The family removed to Boston in Lincolnshire, and there
an acquaintance was formed which had permanent influence on the
minds of all.
Here dwelt the Rev. John Cotton, vicar of the parish and already
obnoxious to the Bishops.
No man among the Nonconformists had had more brilliant reputation
before the necessity of differing came upon him, and his personal
influence was something phenomenal. To the girl whose sensitive,
eager mind reached out to every thing high and noble he must have
seemed of even rarer stuff than to-day we know him to have been.
At thirteen he had entered Emmanuel College at Cambridge, and
adding distinction to distinction had come at last to be dean of
the college to which he belonged. His knowledge of Greek was
minute and thorough, and he conversed with ease in either Latin or
Hebrew. As a pulpit orator he was famous, and crowds thronged the
ancient church of St. Mary in Cambridge whenever he preached. Here
he gave them "the sort of sermons then in fashion--learned,
ornate, pompous, bristling with epigrams, stuffed with conceits,
all set off dramatically by posture, gesture and voice."
The year in which Anne Dudley was born, had completed the change
which had been slowly working in him and which Tyler describes in
his vivid pages on the theological writers of New England:
"His religious character had been deepening into Puritanism. He
had come to view his own preaching as frivolous, Sadducean,
pagan." He decided to preach one sermon which would show what
changes had come, and the announcement of his intention brought
together the usual throng of under-graduates, fellows and
professors who looked for the usual entertainment. Never was a
crowd more deceived. "In preparing once more to preach to this
congregation of worldly and witty folk, he had resolved to give
them a sermon intended to exhibit Jesus Christ rather than John
Cotton. This he did. His hearers were astonished, disgusted. Not a
murmur of applause greeted the several stages of his discourse as
before. They pulled their shovel caps down over their faces,
folded their arms, and sat it out sullenly, amazed that the
promising John Cotton had turned lunatic or Puritan."
Nearly twenty years passed before his energies were transferred to
New England, but the ending of his university career by no means
hampered his work elsewhere. As vicar of St. Botolphs at Boston
his influence deepened with every year, and he grew steadily in
knowledge about the Bible, and in the science of God and man as
seen through the dim goggles of John Calvin.
His power as a preacher was something tremendous, but he remained
undisturbed until the reign of James had ended and the "fatal eye
of Bishop Laud" fell upon him. "It was in 1633 that Laud became
primate of England; which meant, among other things, that nowhere
within the rim of that imperial island was there to be peace or
safety any longer for John Cotton. Some of his friends in high
station tried to use persuasive words with the archbishop on his
behalf, but the archbishop brushed aside their words with an
insupportable scorn. The Earl of Dorset sent a message to Cotton,
that if he had only been guilty of drunkenness or adultery, or any
such minor ministerial offence, his pardon could have been had;
but since his crime was Puritanism, he must flee for his life. So,
for his life he fled, dodging his pursuers; and finally slipping
out of England, after innumerable perils, like a hunted felon;
landing in Boston in September, 1633."
Long before this crisis had come, Thomas Dudley had been recalled
by the Earl of Lincoln, who found it impossible to dispense with
his services, and the busy life began again. Whether Anne missed
the constant excitement the strenuous spiritual life enforced on
all who made part of John Cotton's congregation, there is no
record, but one may infer from a passage in her diary that a
reaction had set in, and that youth asserted itself.
"But as I grew up to bee about fourteen or fifteen I found my
heart more carnall and sitting loose from God, vanity and the
follys of youth take hold of me.
"About sixteen, the Lord layd his hand sore upon me and smott mee
with the small-pox. When I was in my affliction, I besought the
Lord, and confessed my Pride and Vanity and he was entreated of
me, and again restored me. But I rendered not to him according to
ye benefit received."
Here is the only hint as to personal appearance. "Pride and
Vanity," are more or less associated with a fair countenance, and
though no record gives slightest detail as to form or feature,
there is every reason to suppose that the event, very near at
hand, which altered every prospect in life, was influenced in
degree, at least, by considerations slighted in later years, but
having full weight with both. That Thomas Dudley was a "very
personable man," we know, and there are hints that his daughter
resembled him, though it was against the spirit of the time to
record mere accidents of coloring or shape. But Anne's future
husband was a strikingly handsome man, not likely to ignore such
advantages in the wife he chose, and we may think of her as
slender and dark, with heavy hair and the clear, thoughtful eyes,
which may be seen in the potrait of Paul Dudley to-day. There were
few of what we consider the typical Englishmen among these Puritan
soldiers and gentry. Then, as now, the reformer and liberal was
not likely to be of the warm, headlong Saxon type, fair-haired,
blue-eyed, and open to every suggestion of pleasure loving
temperament. It was the dark-haired men of the few districts who
made up Cromwell's regiment of Ironsides, and who from what Galton
calls, "their atrabilious and sour temperament," were likely to
become extremists, and such Puritan portraits as remain to us,
have most of them these characteristics. The English type of face
altered steadily for many generations, and the Englishmen of the
eighteenth century had little kinship with the race reproduced in
Holbein's portraits, which show usually, "high cheek-bones, long
upper lips, thin eyebrows, and lank, dark hair. It would be
impossible ... for the majority of modern Englishmen so to dress
themselves and clip and arrange their hair, as to look like the
majority of these portraits."
The type was perpetuated in New England, where for a hundred
years, there was not the slightest admixture of foreign blood,
increased delicacy with each generation setting it farther and
farther apart from the always grosser and coarser type in Old
England. Puritan abstinence had much to do with this, though even
for them, heavy feeding, as compared with any modern standard was
the rule, its results being found in the diaries of what they
recorded and believed to be spiritual conflicts. Then, as now,
dyspepsia often posed as a delicately susceptible temperament, and
the "pasty" of venison or game, fulfilled the same office as the
pie into which it degenerated, and which is one of the most firmly
established of American institutions. Then, as occasionally even
to day, indigestion counted as "a hiding of the Lord's face," and
a bilious attack as "the hand of the Lord laid heavily on one for
reproof and correction." Such "reproof and correction" would often
follow if the breakfasts of the Earl of Lincoln and his household
were of the same order as those of the Earl of Northumberland, in
whose house "the family rose at six and took breakfast at seven.
My Lord and Lady sat down to a repast of two pieces of salted
fish, and half a dozen of red herrings, with four fresh ones, or a
dish of sprats and a quart of beer and the same measure of wine ...
At other seasons, half a chine of mutton or of boiled beef, graced
the board. Capons at two-pence apiece and plovers (at Christmas),
were deemed too good for any digestion that was not carried on in
a noble stomach."
With the dropping of fasts and meager days, fish was seldom used,
and the Sunday morning breakfast of Queen Elizabeth and her
retinue in one of her "progresses" through the country, for which
three oxen and one hundred and forty geese were furnished, became
the standard, which did not alter for many generations. A diet
more utterly unsuited to the child who passed from one fit of
illness to another, could hardly be imagined, and the gloom
discoverable in portions of her work was as certainly dyspepsia as
she imagined it to be "the motion and power of ye Adversary."
Winthrop had encountered the same difficulty and with his usual
insight and common sense, wrote in his private dairy fifteen years
before he left England, "Sep: 8, 1612. ffinding that the variety
of meates drawes me on to eate more than standeth with my healthe
I have resolved not to eat of more than two dishes at any one
meale, whither fish, fleshe, fowle or fruite or whitt-meats, etc;
whither at home or abroade; the lord give me care and abilitie to
perform it." Evidently the flesh rebelled, for later he writes:
"Idlenesse and gluttonie are the two maine pillars of the flesh
his kingdome," but he conquered finally, both he and Simon
Bradstreet being singularly abstinent.
Her first sixteen years of life were, for Anne Dudley, filled with
the intensest mental and spiritual activity--hampered and always
in leading strings, but even so, an incredible advance on anything
that had been the portion of women for generations. Then came, for
the young girl, a change not wholly unexpected, yet destined to
alter every plan, and uproot every early association. But to the
memories of that loved early life she held with an English
tenacity, not altered by transplanting, that is seen to-day in
countless New Englanders, whose English blood is of as pure a
strain as any to be found in the old home across the sea.