John Lothrop; he removed to Barnstable, where he died October 31, 1683,
having many descendants.
Dr. Samuel Fuller, brother of Edward, was the first physician; he
married (1) Elsie Glascock, (2) Agnes Carpenter, (3) Bridget Lee; he
died in 1633. His descendants of the name are through a son, Samuel, who
settled in Middleboro.
Richard Gardiner, mariner, was at Plymouth in 1624, but soon
disappeared.
John Goodman, unmarried, died the first winter.
John Hooke died the first winter, as did also William Holbeck.
Giles Hopkins, son of Stephen, married in 1639 Catherine Wheldon; he
moved to Yarmouth and afterwards to Eastham, and died about 1690.
Stephen Hopkins went out with his second wife, Elizabeth, and Giles and
Constance, children by a first wife. On the voyage a child was born to
them, which they named Oceanus, but it died in 1621. He was an
assistant, 1634-35, and died in 1644. His wife died between 1640 and
1644. Constance, daughter of Stephen, married Nicholas Snow. They
settled at Eastham, from which he was a Deputy in 1648, and he died
November 15, 1676; she died in October, 1677, having had twelve
children. Damaris, a daughter, was born after their arrival and married
Jacob Cooke.
John Howland married Elizabeth, daughter of John Tilley. He was a Deputy
in 1641, 1645 to 1658, 1661, 1663, 1666-67, and 1670; assistant in 1634
and 1635; also a soldier in the Plymouth military company in 1643. He
died February 23, 1673, aged more than eighty years, and his widow died
December 21, 1687, aged eighty years.
John Langemore died during the first winter.
William Latham about 1640 left for England, and afterwards went to the
Bahamas, where he probably died.
Edward Leister went to Virginia.
[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_
THE GRAVE OF JOHN HOWLAND]
Edmund Margeson, unmarried, died in 1621.
Christopher Martin and wife both died early; his death took place
January 8, 1621.
Desire Minter returned to England, and there died.
Ellen More perished the first winter.
Jasper More removed to Scituate, and his name is said to have become
Mann. He died in Scituate in 1656; his brother died the first winter.
William Mullins shipped with his wife, son Joseph, and daughter
Priscilla, who married John Alden. The father died February 21, 1621,
and his wife during the same winter, as did also the son.
Solomon Power died December 24, 1620.
Degory Priest married in 1611, at Leyden, widow Sarah Vincent, a sister
of Isaac Allerton; he died January 1, 1621.
John Rigdale went out with his wife, Alice, both dying the first winter.
Joseph Rogers went with his father, Thomas Rogers, who died in 1621. The
son married, and lived at Eastham in 1655, dwelling first at Duxbury and
Sandwich. He was a lieutenant, and died in 1678 at Eastham.
Harry Sampson settled at Duxbury, and married Ann Plummer in 1636. He
was of the Duxbury military company in 1643, and died there in 1684.
George Soule was married to Mary Becket. He was in the military company
of Duxbury, where he resided, and was the Deputy in 1645-46, and
1650-54. He was an original proprietor of Bridgewater and owner of land
in Dartmouth and Middleboro; he died 1680, his wife in 1677.
Ellen Story died the first winter.
[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_
THE GRAVE OF MILES STANDISH, DUXBURY]
Miles Standish, that romantic figure in the Pilgrim history, did good
service for the Colony, and practically settled the question whether the
Anglo-Saxon or the native Indian was to predominate in New England. Born
in Lancashire about 1584, and belonging to the Duxbury branch of the
Standish family, he obtained a lieutenant's commission in the English
army and fought in the wars against The Netherlands and Spain. His taste
for military adventure led to his joining the Pilgrims at Leyden, and
when the Mayflower reached Cape Cod, he led the land exploring parties.
Soon he was elected military captain of the Colony, and with a small
force he protected the settlers against Indian incursions until the
danger from that quarter was past. When they were made peaceably secure
in their rights and possessions, and warlike exploits and adventures
were at an end, Standish retired to his estate at Duxbury, on the north
side of Plymouth Bay: but in peace, as in war, he was still devoted to
the interests of the Colony, frequently acting as Governor's assistant
from 1632 onward, becoming Deputy in 1644, and serving as treasurer
between that year and 1649. His wife Rose, who sailed with him in the
Mayflower, died January 29, 1621, but he married again, and had four
sons and a daughter. He died on October 3, 1656, honoured by all the
community among whom he dwelt, and his name and fame are perpetuated in
history, in the poetry of Longfellow and Lowell, and by the monument
which stands upon what was his estate at Duxbury, the lofty column on
Captain's Hill, seen for miles both from sea and land.
Edward Thompson died December 4, 1620.
Edward Tilley and his wife Ann both died the first winter.
John Tilley accompanied his wife and daughter Elizabeth; the parents
died the first winter, but the daughter survived and married John
Howland.
Thomas Tinker, with his wife and son, died the first winter.
John Turner had with him two sons, but the party succumbed to the
hardships of the first season.
William Trevore entered as a sailor on the Mayflower, and returned to
England on the Fortune in 1621.
William White went out with his wife Susanna, and son Resolved. A son,
Peregrine, was born to them in Provincetown Harbour, who has been
distinguished as being the first child of the Pilgrims born after the
arrival in the New World. This is his strongest claim, as his early life
was rather disreputable, though his obituary, in 1704, allowed "he was
much reformed in his last years." William, the father, died on February
21, 1621; his widow married, in the May following, Edward Winslow, who
had recently lost his wife.
Resolved White married (1) Judith, daughter of William Vassall; he lived
at Scituate, Marshfield, and lastly Salem, where he married, (2) October
5, 1674, widow Abigail Lord, and died after 1680. He was a member of the
Scituate military company in 1643.
Roger Wilder died the first winter, and Thomas Williams also died the
first season.
[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_
THE MILES STANDISH MONUMENT, DUXBURY]
Edward Winslow, an educated young English gentleman from Droitwich,
joined the brethren at Leyden in 1617, and accompanying them to New
England, was the third to sign the compact on board the Mayflower,
Carver and Bradford signing before, and Brewster after him, then Isaac
Allerton and Miles Standish. Winslow was one of the party sent to
prospect along the coast. Before leaving Holland, he married at Leyden,
in 1618, Elizabeth Barker, who went out with him, but died March 24,
1621, and as we have seen, he shortly afterwards married widow Susanna
(Fuller) White. Winslow proved himself a man of exceptional ability and
character, and gave the best years of his life to the service of the
Colony. While on a mission to England in its interests in 1623, he
published an account of the settlement and struggles of the Mayflower
Pilgrims, under the title "Good News for New England, or a relation
of things remarkable in that Plantation." Later he wrote (and published
in 1646). "Hypocrisie Unmasked; by a true relation of the proceedings of
the Governor of Massachusetts against Samuel Groton, a notorious
Disturber of the Peace," which is chiefly remarkable for an appendix
giving an account of the preparations in Leyden for removal to America,
and the substance of John Robinson's address to the Pilgrims on their
departure from Holland. Winslow was Governor of the Colony in 1633,
1636, and 1644, and at other times assistant. In 1634 he went to England
again on colonial business, and before sailing accepted a commission for
the Bay Colony which required him to appear before the King's
Commissioners for Plantations. Here he was brought face to face with
Archbishop Laud, who could not resist the opportunity of venting his
wrath upon the representative of the Plymouth settlement, about whose
sayings and doings he had been duly informed. Winslow was accused of
taking part in Sunday services and of conducting civil marriages. He
admitted the charges, and pleaded extenuating circumstances; but Laud
was not to be appeased and committed the bold Separatist to the Fleet
Prison, where he remained for seventeen weeks, when he was released and
permitted to return to America, wounded in his conscience by the cruel
wrong done him and impoverished by legal expenses. In October, 1646,
against the advice of his compatriots, Winslow undertook another
mission to the old country, this time in connection with the federation
of the New England Colonies, and, accepting service under Cromwell,
sailed on an expedition to the West Indies, caught a fever, and died,
and was buried at sea on May 8, 1655.
Gilbert Winslow, another subscriber to the compact in the Mayflower's
cabin, returned subsequently to England and died in 1650.
Apart from the events of their after lives, the spirit which possessed
the Mayflower Pilgrims and guided their leaders in exile is well
expressed by Mrs. Hemans when she says, in her stirring lines--
They sought a faith's pure shrine!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found--
Freedom to worship God.
[Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_
GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW
_The only authentic Portrait of a Mayflower Pilgrim_]
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The murderer Billington, sad to relate, was one of those who signed
the historic compact on board the Mayflower. He was tried, condemned to
death, and executed by his brethren in accordance with their primitive
criminal procedure. At first, trials in the little colony were conducted
by the whole body of the townsmen, the Governor presiding. In 1623 trial
by Jury was established, and subsequently a regular code of laws was
adopted. The capital offences were treason, murder, diabolical
conversation, arson, rape, and unnatural crimes. Plymouth had only six
sorts of capital crime, against thirty-one in England at the accession
of James I, and of these six it actually punished only two, Billington's
belonging to one of them. The Pilgrims used no barbarous punishments.
Like all their contemporaries they used the stocks and the
whipping-post, without perceiving that those punishments in public were
barbarizing. They inflicted fines and forfeitures freely without regard
to the station or quality of the offenders. They never punished, or even
committed any person as a witch. Restrictive laws were early adopted as
to spirituous drinks, and in 1667 cider was included. In 1638 the
smoking of tobacco was forbidden out-of-doors within a mile of a
dwelling-house or while at work in the fields; but unlike England and
Massachusetts, Plymouth never had a law regulating apparel.
VI
NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES
[Illustration: _Photograph by Battershill, Plymouth_
MAYFLOWER TABLET ON THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND]
VI
NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES
pilgrim shrines,
Shrines to no code or creed confined.--LONGFELLOW.
Memories of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers were actively revived
when, in July, 1891, during the Mayoralty of Mr. J. T. Bond, a number of
the Pilgrims' descendants and their representatives from the New World
visited Old World Plymouth, and with an interest whole-hearted and
profound inspected the scene, famous in the annals and traditions of our
race, which witnessed their forbears' last brief sojourn on English
soil--a place where the Fathers, as they never tired of testifying, in
the days when Thomas Townes was Mayor, were "kindly entertained and
courteously used by divers friends there dwelling," and whence the
sturdy little Mayflower sailed to the West with its precious human
freight, to lay the foundation of the New England States.
To commemorate this visit, and the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers two
hundred and seventy years before, the site of the historic embarkation
was marked by the Mayflower Stone and Tablet placed on the Barbican at
Plymouth, the stone in the pavement of the pier adjacent to the ancient
causey trod by the Pilgrims' departing feet and destroyed a few years
later, and the tablet on the wall of the Barbican facing it.
The memorial and the circumstances of its erection formed a fitting
tribute to the New England pioneers; and the story told by these stones
should serve to remind all who behold them of the devoted lives, the
splendid achievement, and the romantic history of the Mayflower
Pilgrims. They are at once a landmark and a shrine honoured by the
English and American peoples.
In June, 1896, another company of New World pilgrims landed at
Plymouth, and proceeded to worship in spirit at Old World shrines.
During two weeks they wandered about the dear old country--"Our Old
Home," as Nathaniel Hawthorne calls it in his book of English
reminiscences--lingering on the scenes associated with the lives of
their forefathers: quiet villages wherein they were born; quaint,
half-forgotten boroughs in which they lived; the metropolis in which
they taught; the sombre East Anglia, where many of them died "for the
testimony." But chief of all were the places where these sojourners
could look on the homes of the grave, brave men who gathered together
the people who sailed in the Mayflower, and led the way to the New
World.
[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_
SCROOBY VILLAGE]
We still call them "the Pilgrim Fathers," in spite of what the Reverend
Joseph Hunter, an esteemed native of South Yorkshire, wrote in his
book.[12] "There is something of affectation in this term," he finds,
"which is always displeasing to me." "It appears to me," says he, "to be
philologically improper." And then he explains. "An American who visits
the place from which the founders of his country emigrated is a pilgrim
in the proper sense of the word, whether he finds an altar, a shrine, or
a stone of memorial, or not. But these founders, when they found the
shores of America, were proceeding to no object of this kind, and even
leaving it to the winds and the waves to drive them to any point on an
unknown and unmarked shore."
Perhaps Mr. Hunter is right, philologically; but apart from his history
(which may be challenged, because the master of the Mayflower knew where
he was going if the Pilgrims did not, and a map and description of the
region had been published by Captain John Smith, the name-giver of New
England), the designation stands, and will ever be cherished by those
familiar with the spots these faithful Fathers left when, pilgrims and
wanderers, they set forth they scarcely knew whither, and finally
crossed the little-known sea. And the most historic of such shrines are
in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.
When the New World pilgrims arrived at Plymouth for the journey through
the old country, by a curious arrangement they travelled backwards; for
Plymouth was the last place the Pilgrim Fathers touched, and the haunts
they took in turn were those which saw the rise and earlier efforts of
those grave and reverend seekers for religious freedom. Soon they
reached Boston--dreamy, old-world, tide-washed, fenland-locked
Boston--scene of deep interest to them all, filled with hallowed
memories of the Pilgrim Fathers and founders of the Western States.
The party numbered nearly fifty, a dozen at least of whom could lay
claim to be lineal descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Their leader
was the Reverend Dr. Dunning of Boston, Massachusetts, and among them
were representatives of the National Council of American Congregational
churches.
[Illustration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_
THE ANCIENT KITCHEN, GUILDHALL, BOSTON]
Boston, like Plymouth, gave them a warm welcome. The cordiality of their
reception to the old town was acknowledged on behalf of the pilgrims
by Dr. Dunning. "Our fathers found it difficult to get away from
Boston," said he, "and from the kindness you have shown us we are much
afraid that you are planning to detain us also." The character of the
"detention" was very different with nearly three centuries intervening,
and this Dr. Dunning and his friends abundantly realised.
The visitors were taken over the old parish church, and were duly
impressed by its size and grandeur as a whole; and the scene was most
striking and memorable when, gathered within its beautiful chancel,
these representative New World men, many of them with the blood of the
Pilgrim Fathers in their veins, joined in singing together the noble
hymn, "O God, our help in ages past." Next the Guildhall was visited.
Here the disused sessions-court, where the fugitives were arraigned in
1607, and other upper rooms were scrutinised.
But most attractive were the kitchen and prison beneath. The cells must
in fact have had more "prisoners" in them that day than they had held
for a long time, for there was scarcely a member of the company who was
not shut up in at least one of them during the inspection. They thus
realised something of what their forefathers actually endured; the taste
of the bitterness was slight, and wanting in the old-time flavour which
the prisoners' treatment imparted, but it was sufficient to call forth
expressions of abhorrence at the thought of continued confinement in
such a place.
At last the pilgrims said farewell to a town crowded with precious
memories and entrained for Lincoln, where their welcome by the Free
Churches and Cathedral authorities was in keeping with that extended to
them everywhere on their route. At Lincoln they received an address. "We
feel," said the Nonconformists there, "that in welcoming you to this
county of ours, we are welcoming you back to your ancestral home, for
Lincolnshire people never forget that their county is inseparably
associated with the history of the Pilgrim Church. We claim the great
John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim church, as our own, and the
neighbouring town of Gainsborough boasts of having been for some time
the church's home. We are proud of the men, of the testimony they bore,
of the work they did. All England is debtor to the men of the Pilgrim
Church for their heroic witness in behalf of a pure and Scriptural faith
and freedom of conscience worship."
And "the neighbouring town of Gainsborough," home of the Pilgrim Church,
gave itself up at this time to a ceremonial stone-laying of the Robinson
Memorial Church, a function which the American pilgrims attended,
together with the Honourable T. F. Bayard, the United States Ambassador,
who made a journey into Lincolnshire to lay this stone, and
Congregationalists gathered from all parts.
[Illustration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_
ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH, GAINSBOROUGH
_The corner-stone of the church was laid by Mr. Bayard in June, 1896_]
First the pilgrims drove to Scrooby, Bawtry, and Austerfield, where they
inspected Brewster's house and Bradford's cottage and other objects of
absorbing interest linked with the lives of the exiled Separatists. They
then entered Gainsborough--that "foreign-looking town," subject of
George Eliot's romantic pen, birthplace of John Robinson--where an
address was presented to Mr. Bayard at the Town Hall, and luncheon was
partaken of at the Old Hall, one of Gainsborough's most cherished
antiquities, where John Smyth and his brethren held services and John
Wesley many times preached. A move was next made to the site of the
future Robinson Memorial Hall, a building at once a tribute to a worthy
Englishman and an agency for the development of Christian work in the
home of the Pilgrim Fathers. The proceedings were under the presidency
of the Reverend J. M. Jones, chairman of the Congregational Union of
England and Wales. To Mr. Bayard was handed a silver trowel, the gift of
the congregation of the Gainsborough church, bearing an inscription and
engravings of the Mayflower and of Delfshaven, on whose beach Robinson
knelt in prayer with the Pilgrim band ere they set out on their long and
checkered voyage. Having laid the cornerstone, Mr. Bayard sketched the
early life of John Robinson, on from his Cambridge career to his
harassed ministry at Norwich, his withdrawal to Lincolnshire in 1604 and
the inception of the Scrooby congregation, whose faith found cause for
hope and cheerful courage in the dark hours of their persecution,
adversity, and affliction. He went on to picture the blessings of civil
and religious liberty which we are apt to accept and enjoy without
giving much heed to the generations that in bygone years toiled and
suffered to secure them for us. How small, said he, the measure of our
gratitude and infrequent our recognition of those who
Beyond their dark age led the van of thought.
Well, reasoned Mr. Bayard, on such a scene and such an occasion as this,
might the words of Whittier be repeated--
Our hearts grow cold,
We lightly hold
A right which brave men died to gain;
The stake, the cord,
The axe, the sword,
Grim nurses at its birth of pain.
It was the momentous issues raised by the invasion of liberty of
conscience that drove John Robinson and his associates forth. As William
Bradford has recorded, "Being thus molested and with no hope of their
continuance there, by a joynte consent they resolved to go into ye low
countries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men." Then
it was that they made the attempted passage from Boston to The
Netherlands.
[Illustration: TABLET IN VESTIBULE OF ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH,
GAINSBOROUGH]
[Illustration: MEMORIAL TABLET ON ST. PETER'S CHURCH, LEYDEN]
Glancing at the history of the arbitrary and cruel measures taken to
prevent the departure of the congregation, which finally, in broken
detachments, distressed, despoiled, imperilled by land and sea,
assembled at Amsterdam, moving thence to Leyden, Mr. Bayard paid
grateful recognition to the country which, in their hour of sore need,
extended to exiles welcome protection and generous toleration in an age
of intolerance, and recited the familiar incidents connected with their
sailing for America. "It is clear and plain to us now that the departure
from England of this small body of humble men was a great step in the
march of Christian civilisation. It contained the seed of Christian
liberty, freedom of enquiry, freedom of man's conscience." As for John
Robinson, between whose grave and the colony he was the means of
planting, washes the wide ocean he never crossed. His memory is a tie of
kindred--a recognition of the common trust committed to both nations to
sustain the principles of civil and religious liberty of which he was a
fearless champion, and under which he has so marvellously fulfilled the
prophesy "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great
nation." And the seed of Christian liberty, sown in adversity but on
good soil, has become a wide-spreading tree in whose sheltering branches
all who will may lodge.
Six years after this stone-laying, in June, 1902, the tercentenary of
the founding of the Gainsborough church, a tablet was unveiled in the
vestibule of the new building to commemorate the world-wide co-operation
in honouring one "the thought of whom stirs equal reverence in English
and American hearts."
What the American Ambassador so well said at Gainsborough was a fitting
prelude to the excursion which his countrymen, continuing their
itinerary, made to the Pilgrim scenes in Holland where, in 1891, the
English Plymouth memorial year, they had erected on St. Peter's
Cathedral at Leyden, under which lie his bones, a tablet to John
Robinson, pastor of the English church worshipping "over against this
spot," whence at his prompting went forth the Pilgrim Fathers to settle
New England.