wilderness blossom as the rose. At their first landing they had agreed,
like the colonists of Virginia, to own their land and work it in
common; but they were much quicker than the Jamestown folk to perceive
the inexpediency of this plan, and reformed it by giving each man or
family a private plot of ground. Agriculture then developed so rapidly
that corn enough was raised to supply the Indians as well as the
English; and the importation of neat cattle increased the home look as
well as the prosperity of the farms. There was also a valuable trade in
furs, which stimulated an abortive attempt at rivalry. None could
compete with the Pilgrims on their own ground; for were they not
growing up with the country, and the Lord--was He not with them? More
troublesome than this effort of Weston was the obstruction of the
Company in England, and its usurious practices; the colonists finally
bought them out, and relied henceforth wholly on themselves, with the
best results. As years went by their numbers increased, though but
slowly. They did not invite the co-operation of persons not of their
way of thinking, and the world was never over-supplied with
Separatists. On the other hand, they were active and full of
enterprise, and sent out branches in all directions, which shared the
vitality of the parent stock. Every man of them was trained to
self-government, and where he went order and equity accompanied him. A
purer democracy could not be framed; for years the elections were made
by the entire body of the assembled citizens; His Dread Majesty, King
James, never sent them his royal Charter, but the charter provided by
their own love of justice and solid good sense served them far better.
Their governors were responsible directly to the people, and were
further restrained by a council of seven members. This political basis
is that upon which our present form of government rests; but it is
strange to see what Daedalian complications, and wheels within wheels,
we have contrived to work into the superstructure. A modern ward heeler
in New York could have taken up the whole frame of government in
Seventeenth Century New England by the butt end, and cracked it like a
whip--provided of course the Pilgrim fathers had allowed him to attend
the primaries.
But it is more probable that the ward heeler would have found himself
promptly in the presence of one of those terrific magistrates whose
grim decrees gave New England naughty children the nightmare a century
after the stern-browed promulgators of them were dust. The early laws
against crime in New England were severe, though death was seldom or
never inflicted save for murder. But more irksome to one used to the
lax habits of to-day would have been the punctilious rigidity with
which they guarded the personal bearing, speech, and dress of the
members of their community. Yet we may thank them for having done so;
it was a wise precaution; they knew the frailties of the flesh, and how
easily license takes an ell if an inch be given it. Nothing less iron
than was their self-restraint could have provided material stanch
enough to build up the framework of our nation. One might not have
enjoyed living with them; but we may be heartily glad that they lived;
and we should be the better off if more of their stamp were alive still.
But these iron people had their tender and sentimental side as well,
and the self-command which they habitually exercised made the
softening, when it came, the more beautiful. One of the love romances
of this little colony has come down to us, and may be taken as the
substantial truth; it has entered into our literature and poetry, and
touches us more nearly even than the tale of Pocahontas. Its telling by
our most popular poet has brought it to the knowledge of a greater
circle of readers than it could otherwise have reached; but the
elaboration of his treatment could add nothing to the human charm of
it, or sharpen our conception of the leading characters in the drama.
Miles Standish had been a soldier in the Netherlands before joining the
Pilgrims, and to him they gave the military guardianship of the colony,
with the title of captain. He was then about thirty-six years of age, a
bluff, straightforward soldier, whom a life of hardship had made older
than his years. He had known little of women's society, but during the
long voyage he came to love Priscilla Mullens, and when the spring came
to the survivors at Plymouth, he wished to marry her. But he would not
trust, as Othello did, to the simple art of a soldier to woo her; and
Priscilla was probably no Desdemona. But there was a youth among the
colonists, just come of age, whom Standish had liked and befriended,
and who, though a cooper and ship-carpenter by trade, was gifted with
what seemed to Standish especial graces of person and speech. Alden had
not been one of the original pilgrims; he had been hired to repair the
"Mayflower" while she lay at Southampton, and decided to sail on her
when she sailed; perhaps with the hope of making his fortune in the new
world, perhaps because he wished to go where Priscilla went. She was a
girl whom any man might rejoice to make his wife; vigorous and
wholesome as well as comely, and endowed with a strong character,
sweetened by a touch of humor. John had never spoken to her of his
love, any more than Miles had; whether Priscilla's clear eyes had
divined it, we know not; but it is likely that she saw through the
cooper and the soldier both.
The honest soldier was a fool, and saw nothing but Priscilla, and felt
nothing but his love for her. He took John Alden by the arm, and,
leading him apart into the forest, proposed to him to go to young
Mistress Mullens and ask her if she would become the wife of Captain
Standish. Alden was honest, too; but he was dominated by his older
friend, and lacked the courage to tell him that he had hoped for
Priscilla for himself; he let the critical moment for this explanation
pass, and then there was nothing for it but to accept the Captain's
commission. We can imagine how this situation would be handled by the
analytic novelists of our day; how they would spread Alden's heart and
conscience out on paper, and dry them, and pick them to pieces. The
young fellow certainly had a hard thing to do; he must tread down his
own passion, and win the girl for his rival into the bargain. To her he
went, and spoke. But the only way he could spur himself to eloquence
was to imagine that he was Standish, and then woo her as he would have
done had Standish been he.
Maidens of rounded nature, like Priscilla, pay less attention to what a
man says than to the tones of his voice, the look in his eyes, and his
unconscious movements. As Alden warmed to his work, she glanced at him
occasionally, and not only wished that Heaven had made her such a man,
but decided that it had. So, when the youth had finished off an ardent
peroration, in which the Captain was made to appear in a guise of
heroic gallantry that did not suit him in the least, but which was the
best John could do for him: there was a pause, while the vicarious
wooer wiped his brow, and felt very miserable, remembering that if she
yielded, it would be to Miles and not to him. She divined what was in
his mind, and sent him to Heaven with one of the womanliest and
loveliest things that ever woman said to man: "Why don't you speak for
yourself, John?" she asked, gazing straight at him, with a quiver of
her lips that was half humor and half the promise of tears.
John still had before him a bad quarter of an hour with the Captain; it
was as hard to make him understand that he had not played the traitor
to him as it had been to persuade Priscilla to do what she had not
done; but the affair ended without a tragedy, which would have spoiled
it. Captain Standish, when Priscilla married, went to live in Duxbury;
and a year or two later worked off his spleen by slaying the Indian
rascals who were plotting to murder the Weston settlers at Weymouth. He
and his men did not wait for the savages to strike the first blow; they
made no pretense of exhausting all the resources of diplomacy before
proceeding to extremities. They walked up to the enemy, suddenly seized
them by the throat, and drove the knives which the Indians themselves
wore through their false hearts. There was no more trouble from Indians
in that region for a long time; and Captain Standish's feelings were
greatly relieved. As for John and Priscilla, they lived long and
prospered, John attaining the age of eighty-seven, which indicates
domestic felicity. They had issue, and their descendants live among us
to this day in comfort and honor.
King James, like other spiteful and weak men, had a long memory, and
amid the many things that engaged his attention he did not forget the
colonists of Plymouth, who had exiled themselves without a charter from
him. In the same year which witnessed their disembarkation at Plymouth
Rock, he incorporated a company consisting of friends of his own, and
gave them a tract of country between the fortieth and the forty-eighth
parallels of north latitude, which of course included the Plymouth
colony. In addition to all other possible rights and privileges, it had
the monopoly of the fisheries of the coast, and it was from this that
revenue was most certainly expected, since it was proposed to lay a tax
on all tonnage engaged in it. All the new company had to do was to
grant charters to all who might apply, and reap the profits. But the
scheme was fated to miscarry, because the pretense of colonization
behind it was impotent, and the true object in view was the old one of
getting everything that could be secured out of the country, and
putting nothing into it. The fisheries monopoly was powerfully opposed
in Parliament and finally defeated; small sporadic settlements, with no
sound principle or purpose within them, appeared and disappeared along
the coast from Massachusetts to the northern borders of Maine. One
grant conflicted with another, titles were in dispute, and lawsuits
were rife. The king sanctioned whatever injustice or restriction his
company proposed, but his decrees, many of them illegal, were
ineffective, and produced only confusion. Agriculture was hardly
attempted in any of the little settlements authorized by the company,
and the only trade pursued was in furs and fishes. The rights of the
Indians were wholly disregarded, and the domain of the French at the
north was infringed upon. All this while the Pilgrims continued their
industries and maintained their democracy, undisturbed by the feeble
machinations of the king; and in 1625 the death of the latter
temporarily cleared the air. Charles affixed his seal to the famous
Massachusetts Charter four years later; and though Gorges and some
others continued to harass New England for some time longer, the plan
of colonizing by fisheries was hopelessly discredited, and the
development of civil and religious liberties among the serious
colonists was assured.
The experiments thus far made in dealing with the new country had had a
significant result. The Plymouth colony, going out with neither charter
nor patronage, and with the purpose not of finding gold or making
fortunes, but of establishing a home wherein to dwell in
perpetuity--which was handicapped by the abject poverty of its members,
and by the severities of a climate till then unknown--this enterprise
was found to hold the elements of success from the start, and it
steadily increased in power and influence. It suffered from time to
time from the tyranny of royal governors and the ignorance or malice of
absentee statesmanship; but nothing could extinguish or corrupt it; on
the contrary, it went "slowly broadening down, from precedent to
precedent," until, when the moment of supreme trial came to the
Thirteen Colonies, the descendants of the Pilgrims and the Puritans,
and the men who had absorbed their ideas, put New England in the van of
patriotism and progress. It is a noble record, and a pregnant example
to all friends of freedom.
In suggestive contrast with this was the Jamestown enterprise. As we
have seen, this colony was saved from almost immediate extinction
solely by the genius and energy of one man, whom his fellow members had
at first tried to exclude altogether from their councils and
companionship. Belonging to a class socially higher and presumably more
intelligent than the Pilgrims, and continually furnished with supplies
from the Company in England, they were unable during twelve years to
make any independent stand against disaster. In a climate which was as
salubrious as that of New England was rigorous, and with a soil as
fertile as any in the world, they dwindled and starved, and their
dearest wish was to return to England. They were saved at last (as we
shall presently see) by two things; first, by the discovery of the
value of tobacco as an export, and of its usefulness as a currency for
the internal trade of the country; and secondly, and much more, by the
Charter of 1618, which gave the people the privilege of helping to make
their own laws. That year marked the beginning of civil liberty in
America; but what it had taken the Jamestown colonists twelve weary and
disastrous years to attain, was claimed by the pious farmers of
Plymouth before ever they set foot on Forefather's Rock. Willingness to
labor, zeal for the common welfare, indifference to wealth,
independence, moral and religious integrity and fervor--these were some
of the traits and virtues whose cultivation made the Pilgrims
prosperous, and the neglect or lack of which discomfited the Virginia
settlers. The latter, man for man, were by nature as capable as the
former of profiting by right conditions and training; and as soon as
they obtained them they showed favorable results. But in the meantime
the lesson was driven home that a virgin country cannot be subdued and
rendered productive by selfish and unjust procedure: a homely and
hackneyed lesson, but one which can never be too often quoted, since
each fresh generation must buy its own experience, and it often happens
that a situation essentially old assumes a novel aspect, owing to
external modifications of time and place.
The Plymouth Colony, after remaining long separate and self-supporting,
consented to a union with the larger and richer settlements of
Massachusetts. The charter secured by the latter, and the manner in
which it was administered, were alike remarkable. The granting of it
was facilitated by the threatened encroachments of other than
Englishmen upon the New England domain; it was represented to Charles
that it was necessary to be beforehand with these gentry, if they were
to be restrained. Charles was on the verge of that rupture with law and
order in his own realm which culminated in his dismissal of Parliament,
and for ten years attempting the task of governing England without it.
He approved the charter without adequately realizing the full breadth
and pregnancy of its provisions, which, in effect, secured civil and
ecclesiastical emancipation to the settlers under it. But what was
quite as important was the consideration that it went into effect at a
time incomparably favorable to its success. The Plymouth colony had
proved that a godly and self-denying community could flourish in the
wilderness, in the enjoyment of spiritual blessings unattainable at
home. The power of English prelacy did not extend beyond the borders of
England: idolatrous ceremonies could be eschewed in Massachusetts
without fear of persecution. Thousands of Puritans were prepared to
give up their homes for the sake of liberty, and only waited assurance
that it could be obtained. The condition of society and education in
England was vicious and corrupt; and though it might become brave and
true men to suffer persecution in witness of their faith, yet there was
danger that their children might be induced to fall away from the
truth, after they were gone. Martyrdom was well, but it must not be
allowed to such an extreme as to extirpate the proclaimers of the
truth. Many of those who were prepared to take advantage of the charter
were of the best stock in England, men of brains and substance as well
as piety; graduates of the Universities, country gentlemen, men of the
world and of affairs. A colony made of such elements would be a new
thing in the earth; it would comprise all that was strong and wise in
human society, and would exclude every germ of weakness and frailty.
The sealing of the charter was like the touching of the electric button
which, in our day, sets in motion for the first time a vast mechanical
system, or fires a simultaneous salute of guns in a hundred cities.
King Charles I., who was to lose his anointed head on the block because
he tried to crush popular liberty in England, was the immediate human
instrument of giving the purest form of such liberty to English exiles
beyond the sea.
The charter constituted an organization called the Governor and Company
of Massachusetts Bay in New England. The governor, annually elected by
the members, was assisted by a deputy and assistants, and was to call a
business meeting monthly or oftener, and in addition was to preside
four times a year at an assembly of the whole body of the freemen, to
make laws and determine appointments. Freedom of Puritan worship was
assured, in part explicitly, in part tacitly. The king had no direct
relation with their proceedings, beyond the general and vague claims of
royal prerogative; and it was an open question whether Parliament had
the power to override the authority of the patentees.
It will be seen that this charter was in no respect inharmonious with
the system of self-government which had grown up among the Plymouth
colonists; it was a more complete and definite formulation of
principles which must ever be supported by men who wish so to live as
to obtain the highest social and religious welfare. It was the stately
flowering of a seed already obscurely planted, and though it was to be
now and again checked in its development, would finally bear the fruit
of the Tree of Life.
CHAPTER THIRD
THE SPIRIT OF THE PURITANS
Among the characteristic figures of this age, none shows stronger
lineaments than that of John Endicott. He was, at the time of his
coming to Massachusetts, not yet forty years of age; he remained there
till his death at six-and-seventy. He was repeatedly elected governor,
and died in the governor's chair. In 1645 he was made Major-general of
the Colonial troops; nine years before he had headed a campaign against
the Pequot Indians. His character illustrated the full measure of
Puritan sternness; he was an inflexible persecutor of the Quakers, and
was instrumental in causing four of them to be executed in Boston. In
his career is found no feeble passage; he was always Endicott. He was a
man grown before he attained, under the ministrations of Samuel Skelton
of Cambridge, in England, the religious awakening which placed him in
the forefront of the Puritan dissenters of his time; and it may be
surmised that the force of nature which gave him his self-command
would, otherwise directed, have opened still wider the gates of license
and recklessness which marked the conduct of many in that period. But,
having taken his course, he disciplined himself to the strictest
observances, and required them of others. He was a man of perfect moral
and physical courage, austere and choleric; yet there was in him a
certain cheerfulness and kindliness, like sunshine touching the
ruggedness of a granite bowlder. An old portrait of him presents a full
and ruddy countenance, without a beard, and with large eyes which gaze
sternly out upon the beholder. When the Massachusetts Company was
formed, it contained many men of pith and mark, such as Saltonstall,
Bellingham, Eaton, and others; but, by common consent, Endicott was
chosen as the first governor of the new realm, and he sailed for Boston
harbor in June, 1628. He took with him his wife and children, and a
small following of fit companions, and landed in September.
Many tales are told of the doings of Endicott in Massachusetts. Like
those of all strong men, his deeds were often embellished with
legendary ornaments, but the exaggerations, if such there be, are
colored by a true conception of his character. At the time of his
advent, there was at Merrymount, or Mount Walloston, now within the
boundaries of Quincy, near Boston, a colony which was a survival of the
one founded by Thomas Weston, through the agency of Thomas Morton, an
English lawyer, who was more than once brought to book for
unpuritanical conduct. Here was collected, in 1628, a number of waifs
and strays, and other persons, not in sympathy with the rigorous habits
of the Puritans, whose proceedings were of a more or less licentious
and unbecoming quality, calculated to disturb the order and propriety
of the realm. Endicott, on being apprised of their behavior, went
thither with some armed men, and put a summary end to the colony;
Morton was sent back to England, and the "revelries" which he had
countenanced or promoted were seen no more in Massachusetts. The era
for gayeties had not yet come in the new world. Endicott would not be
satisfied with crushing out evil; he would also nip in the bud all such
lightsome and frivolous conduct as might lead those who indulged in it
to forget the dangers and difficulties attending the planting of the
reformed faith in the wilderness.
More impressive yet is the story of how he resented the project of
Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, and the most zealous supporter of the
follies and iniquities of King Charles, to force the ritual of the
orthodox church upon the people of Massachusetts. When Endicott
received from Governor Winthrop the letter containing this news, whose
purport, it carried out, would undo all that the Puritans had most
passionately labored to establish; for which they had given up their
homes and friends, and to the safe-guarding of which they had pledged
their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor:--he was deeply
stirred, and resolved that a public demonstration should be made of the
irrevocable opposition of the people to the measure. He was at that
time captain of the trained band of Salem, which was used to meet for
drill in the square of the little settlement. It had for a long time
disquieted Endicott and other Puritan leaders that the banner of
England, under which, as Englishmen, they must live and fight, should
bear upon it the sign of the red cross, which was the very emblem of
the popery which their souls abhorred. It had seemed to them almost a
sin to tolerate it; and yet it was treason to take any liberties with
the national ensign. But Endicott was now in a mood to encounter any
risk; since, if Laud's will were enforced, there would be little left
in New England worth fighting for.
Accordingly, on the next training day, when the able men of Salem were
drawn up in their breastplates and headpieces, with the Red-Cross flag
floating over them, and the rest of the townspeople, with here and
there an Indian among them, looking on: Endicott, in his armor, with
his sword upon his thigh, spoke in passionate terms to the assembly of
the matter which weighed upon his heart. And then, as a symbol of the
Puritan protest, and a pledge of his vital sincerity, he took the
banner in his hand, and, drawing his sword, cut the cross out of its
folds. The unparalleled audacity and rashness of this act, which might
have brought upon New England a revocation of her charter and
destruction of the liberties which already exceeded those vouchsafed to
Englishmen at home, alarmed Winthrop, and sent a thrill throughout the
colony. But the deed was too public to be disavowed, and Endicott and
they must abide the consequences. Information of the outrage was
carried to Charles; but he was fortunately too much preoccupied at the
moment with the struggle for his crown at home to be able to take
proper action upon the slight put upon his authority in Salem. No
punishment was inflicted upon the bold soldier, who thus anticipated by
nearly a century and a half the step finally taken by the patriots of
1776.