The Interruptions of the Services.
Though the Puritans were such a decorous, orderly people, their religious
meetings were not always quiet and uninterrupted. We know the torment they
endured from the "wretched boys," and they were harassed by other
annoying interruptions. For the preservation of peace and order they made
characteristic laws, with characteristic punishments. "If any interrupt
or oppose a preacher in season of worship, they shall be reproved by the
Magistrate, and on repetition, shall pay £5, or stand two hours on a block
four feet high, with this inscription in Capitalls, 'A WANTON GOSPELLER.'"
As with other of their severe laws the rigid punishment provoked the crime,
for Wanton Gospellers abounded. The Baptists did not hesitate to state
their characteristic belief in the Puritan meetings, and the Quakers or
"Foxians," as they were often called, interrupted and plagued them sorely.
Judge Sewall wrote, in 1677, "A female quaker, Margaret Brewster, in
sermon-time came in, in a canvass frock, her hair dishevelled loose like a
Periwig, her face as black as ink, led by two other quakers, and two other
quakers followed. It occasioned the greatest and most amazing uproar that I
ever saw." More grievous irruptions still of scantily clad and even naked
Quaker women were made into other Puritan meetings; and Quaker men shouted
gloomily in through the church windows, "Woe! Woe! Woe to the people!"
and, "The Lord will destroy thee!" and they broke glass bottles before
the minister's very face, crying out, "Thus the Lord will break thee in
pieces!" and they came into the meeting-house, in spite of the fierce
tithingman, and sat down in other people's seats with their hats on their
heads, in ash-covered coats, rocking to and fro and groaning dismally, as
if in a mournful obsession. Quaker women managed to obtain admission to the
churches, and they jumped up in the quiet Puritan assemblies screaming out,
"Parson! thou art an old fool," and, "Parson! thy sermon is too long," and,
"Parson! sit down! thee has already said more than thee knows how to say
well," and other unpleasant, though perhaps truthful personalities. It is
hard to believe that the poor, excited, screaming visionaries of those
early days belonged to the same religious sect as do the serene,
low-voiced, sweet-faced, and retiring Quakeresses of to-day. And there is
no doubt that the astounding and meaningless freaks of these half-crazed
fanatics were provoked by the cruel persecutions which they endured from
our much loved and revered, but alas, intolerant and far from perfect
Puritan Fathers. These poor Quakers were arrested, fined, robbed, stripped
naked, imprisoned, laid neck and heels, chained to logs of wood, branded,
maimed, whipped, pilloried, caged, set in the stocks, exiled, sold
into slavery and hanged by our stern and cruel ancestors. Perhaps some
gentle-hearted but timid Puritan souls may have inwardly felt that the
Indian wars, and the destructive fires, and the earthquakes, and the dead
cattle, blasted wheat, and wormy peas, were not judgments of God for small
ministerial pay and periwig-wearing, but punishments for the heartrending
woes of the persecuted Quakers.
Others than the poor Quakers spoke out in colonial meetings. In Salem
village and in other witch-hunting towns the crafty "victims" of the
witches were frequently visited with their mock pains and sham fits in the
meeting-houses, and they called out and interrupted the ministers most
vexingly. Ann Putnam, the best and boldest actress among those cunning
young Puritan witch-accusers, the protagonist of that New England tragedy
known as the Salem Witchcraft, shouted out most embarrassingly, "There is
a yellow-bird sitting on the minister's hat, as it hangs on the pin in the
pulpit." Mr. Lawson, the minister, wrote with much simplicity that "these
things occurring in the time of public worship did something interrupt me
in my first prayer, being so unusual." But he braced himself up in spite
of Ann and the demoniacal yellow-bird, and finished the service. These
disorderly interruptions occurred on every Lord's Day, growing weekly
more constant and more universal, and must have been unbearable. Some few
disgusted members withdrew from the church, giving as reason that "the
distracting and disturbing tumults and noises made by persons under
diabolical power and delusions, preventing sometimes our hearing and
understanding and profiting of the word preached; we having after many
trials and experiences found no redress in this case, accounted ourselves
under a necessity to go where we might hear the word in quiet." These
withdrawing church-members were all of families that contained at least
one person that had been accused of practising witchcraft. They were thus
severely intolerant of the sacrilegious and lawless interruptions of the
shy young "victims," who received in general only sympathy, pity, and even
stimulating encouragement from their deluded and excited neighbors.
One very pleasing interruption,--no, I cannot call it by so severe a
name,--one very pleasing diversion of the attention of the congregation
from the parson was caused by an innocent custom that prevailed in many a
country community. Just fancy the flurry on a June Sabbath in Killingly, in
1785, when Joseph Gay, clad in velvet coat, lace-frilled shirt, and white
broadcloth knee-breeches, with his fair bride of a few days, gorgeous in a
peach-colored silk gown and a bonnet trimmed "with sixteen yards of white
ribbon," rose, in the middle of the sermon, from their front seat in the
gallery and stood for several minutes, slowly turning around in order to
show from every point of view their bridal finery to the eagerly gazing
congregation of friends and neighbors. Such was the really delightful and
thoughtful custom, in those fashion-plateless days, among persons of
wealth in that and other churches; it was, in fact, part of the wedding
celebration. Even in midwinter, in the icy church, the blushing bride would
throw aside her broadcloth cape or camblet roquelo and stand up clad in a
sprigged India muslin gown with only a thin lace tucker over her neck, warm
with pride in her pretty gown, her white bonnet with ostrich feathers and
embroidered veil, and in her new husband.
The services in the meeting-house on the Sabbath and on Lecture days
were sometimes painfully varied, though scarcely interrupted, by a very
distressing and harrowing custom of public abasement and self-abnegation,
which prevailed for many years in the nervously religious colonies. It was
not an enforced punishment, but a voluntary one. Men and women who had
committed crimes or misdemeanors, and who had sincerely repented of their
sins, or who were filled with remorse for some violation of conscience, or
even with regret for some neglect of religious ethics, rose in the Sabbath
meeting before the assembled congregation and confessed their sins, and
humbly asked forgiveness of God, and charity from their fellows. At
other times they stood with downcast heads while the minister read their
confession of guilt and plea for forgiveness. A most graphic account of one
of those painful scenes is thus given by Governor Winthrop in his "History
of New England:"--
"Captain Underhill being brought by the blessing of God in this
church's censure of excommunication, to remorse for his foul sins,
obtained, by means of the elders, and others of the church of Boston, a
safe conduct under the hand of the governor and one of the council to
repair to the church. He came at the time of the court of assistants,
and upon the lecture day, after sermon, the pastor called him forth and
declared the occasion, and then gave him leave to speak: and in
it was a spectacle winch caused many weeping eyes, though it afforded
matter of much rejoicing to behold the power of the Lord Jesus in his
ordinances, when they are dispensed in his own way, holding forth the
authority of his regal sceptre in the simplicity of the gospel
came in his worst clothes (being accustomed to take great pride in his
bravery and neatness) without a band, in a foul linen cap pulled close
to his eyes; and standing upon a form, he did, with many deep sighs
and abundance of tears, lay open his wicked course, his adultery, his
hypocrisy, his persecution of God's people here, and especially his
pride (as the root of all which caused God to give him over to his
other sinful courses) and contempt of the magistrates.... He spake
well save that his blubbering &c interrupted him, and all along he
discovered a broken and melting heart and gave good exhortations to
take heed of such vanities and beginnings of evil as had occasioned his
fall; and in the end he earnestly and humbly besought the church to
have compassion of him and to deliver him out of the hands of Satan."
What a picture! what a story! "Of all tales 'tis the saddest--and more sad
because it makes us smile."
Captain John Underhill was a brave though somewhat bumptious soldier, who
had fought under the Prince of Orange in the War of the Netherlands, and
had been employed as temporal drill-master in the church-militant in New
England. He did good service for the colonists in the war with the Pequot
Indians, and indeed wherever there was any fighting to be done. "He thrust
about and justled into fame" He also managed to have apparently a very good
time in the new land, both in sinning and repenting. When he stood up on
the church-seat before the horrified, yet wide-open eyes of pious Boston
folk, in his studiously and theatrically disarranged garments, and
blubbered out his whining yet vain-glorious repentance, he doubtless acted
his part well, for he had twice before been through the same performance,
supplementing his second rehearsal by kneeling down before an injured
husband in the congregation, and asking earthly forgiveness. I wish I
could believe that this final repentance of the resilient captain were
sincere--but I cannot. Nor did Boston people believe it either, though that
noble and generous-minded man, Winthrop, thought he saw at the time of
confession evidences of a truly contrite heart. The Puritans sternly and
eagerly cast out the gay captain to the Dutch when he became an Antinomian,
and he came to live and fight and gallant in a town on the western end of
Long Island, where he perhaps found a church-home with members less severe
and less sharp-eyed than those of his Boston place of martyrdom, and a
people less inclined to resent and punish his frailties and his ways of
amusing himself.
In justice to Underhill (or perhaps to show his double-dealing) I will say
that he left behind him a letter to Hanserd Knollys, complaining of the
ill-treatment he had received; and in it he gives a very different account
of this little affair with the Boston Church from that given us by Governor
Winthrop. The offender says nothing about his hypocrisy, his public and
self-abasing confession, nor of his sanctimonious blubbering and wishes for
death. He explains that his offence was mild and purely mental, that in an
infaust moment he glanced (doubtless stared soldier-fashion) at "Mistris
Miriam Wildbore" as she sat in her "pue" at meeting. The elders, noting his
admiring and amorous glances, thereupon accused him of sin in his heart,
and severely asked him why he did not look instead at Mistress Newell or
Mistress Upham. He replied very spiritedly and pertinently that these dames
were "not desiryable women as to temporal graces," which was certainly
sufficient and proper reason for any man to give, were he Puritan or
Cavalier. Then acerb old John Cotton and some other Boston ascetics
(perhaps Goodman Newell and Goodman Upham, resenting for their wives the
_spretæ injuria formæ_) at once hunted up some plainly applicable
verses from the Bible that clearly proved him guilty of the alleged
sin--and summarily excommunicated him. He also wrote that the pious church
complained that the attractive, the temporally graced Mistress Wildbore
came vainly and over-bravely clad to meeting, with "wanton open-worked
gloves slitt at the thumbs and fingers for the purpose of taking snuff,"
and he resented this complaint against the fair one, saying no harm could
surely come from indulging in the "good creature called tobacco." He would
naturally feel that snuff-taking was a proper and suitable church-custom,
since his own conversion,--dubious though it was,--his religious belief had
come to him, "the spirit fell home upon his heart" while he was indulging
in a quiet smoke.
The story of his offences as told b his contemporaries does not assign to
him so innocuous a diversion as staring across the meeting-house, but the
account is quite as amusing as his own plaintive and deeply injured version
of his arraignment.
Other letters of his have been preserved to us,--letters blustering as
was Ancient Pistol, and equally sanctimonious, letters fearfully and
phonetically spelt. Here is the opening of a letter written while he
was under sentence of excommunication from the Boston Church, and of
banishment. It is to Governor Winthrop, his friend and fellow-emigrant:--
"Honnored in the Lord,--
"Your silenc one more admirse me. I Youse chrischan playnnes. I know you
love it.... Silene can not reduce the hart of youer lovd brother: I would
the rightchous would smite me espechah youerslfe & the honnered Depoti to
whom I also dereckt this letter.... I would to God you would tender me
soule so as to youse playnnes with me. I wrot to you both but now answer: &
here I am dayli abused by malishous tongue. John Baker I here hath wrot to
the honnored depoti how as I was drouck & like to be cild & both falc, upon
okachon I delt with Wannerton for intrushon & finddmg them resolutli bent
to rout all gud a mong us & advanc there superstischous ways & by boystrous
words indeferd to fritten men to accomplish his end. & he abusing me to
my face, dru upon him with intent to corb his insolent & dastardli
sperrite.... Ister daye on Pickeren their Chorch Warden caim up to us with
intent to make some of ourse drone as is sospeckted but the Lord sofered
him so to misdemen himslfe as he is likli to li by the hielse this too
month.... My homble request is that you will be charitable of me.... Let
justies and merci be goyned.... You may plese to soggest youer will to this
barrer you will find him tracktabel."
My sense of drollery is always most keenly tickled when I read Underhill's
epistles, with their amazing and highly-varied letter concoctions, and
remember that he also--wrote a book. What that seventeenth-century printer
and proof-reader endured ere they presented his "edited" volume to the
public must have been beyond expression by words. It was a pretty good book
though, and in it, like many another man of his ilk, he tendered to his
much-injured wife loud and diffuse praise, ending with these sententious
words, "Let no man despise advice and counsel of his wife--though she be a
woman."
And yet, upon careful examination we find a method, a system, in
Underhill's orthography, or rather in his cacography. He thinks a final
tion should be spelt chon--and why not? "proposichon," "satisfackchon,"
"oblegachon," "persekuchon," "dereckchon," "himelyachon"--thus he spells
such words. And his plurals are plain when once you grasp his laws:
"poseschouse" and "considderachonse," "facktse," and "respecktse." And
his ly is alwajs li, "exacktli," "thorroli," "fidelliti," "charriti,"
"falsciti." And why is not "indiered," as good as 'endeared,' "pregedic,"
as 'prejudice,' "obstrucktter" as 'obstructer,' "pascheges," and
"prouydentt," and "antyentt," just as clear as our own way of spelling
these words? A "painful" speller you surely were, my gay Don Juan
Underbill, as your pedantic "writtingse" all show, and the most dramatic
and comic figure among all the early Puritans as well, though you scarcely
deserve to be called a Puritan; we might rather say of you, as of Malvolio,
"The devil a Puritan that he was, or anything constantly but a
time-pleaser ... his ground of faith that all who looked on him loved him."
In keen contrast to this sentimental excitement is the presence of noble
Judge Sewall, white-haired and benignant, standing up calmly in Boston
meeting, with dignified face and demeanor, but an aching and contrite
heart, to ask through the voice of his minister humble forgiveness of God
and man for his sad share as a judge in the unjust and awful condemnation
and cruel sentencing to death of the poor murdered victims of that terrible
delusion the Salem Witchcraft. Years of calm and unshrinking reflection, of
pleading and constant communion with God had brought to him an overwhelming
sense of his mistaken and over-influenced judgment, and a horror and
remorse for the fatal results of his error. Then, like the steadfast and
upright old Puritan that he was, he publicly acknowledged his terrible
mistake. It is one of the finest instances of true nobility of soul and of
absolute self-renunciation that the world affords. And the deep strain, the
sharp wrench of the step is made more apparent still by the fact of the
disapproval of his fellow-judges of his public confession and recantation.
The yearly entries in his diary, simply expressed yet deeply speaking,
entries of the prayerful fasts which he spent alone in his chamber when
the anniversary of the fatal judgment-day returned, show that no half-vain
bigotry, no emotional excitement filled and moved him to the open words of
remorse. The lesson of his repentance is farther reaching than he
dreamed, when the story of his confession can so move and affect this
nineteenth-century generation, and fill more than one soul with a nobler
idea of the Puritan nature, and with a higher and fuller conception of the
absolute truth of the Puritan Christianity.
Some very prosaic and earthly interruptions to the church services are
recorded as being made, and possibly by the church-members themselves. In
one church, in 1661, a fine of five shillings was imposed on any one "who
shot off a gun or led a horse into the meeting-house." These seem to me
quite as unseemly, irreverent, and disagreeable disturbances as shouting
out, Quaker-fashion, "Parson, your sermon is too long;" but possibly the
house of God was turned into a stable on week-days, not on the Sabbath.
In many parishes church-attendants were fined who brought their "doggs"
into the meeting-house. Dogs swarmed in the colony, for they had been
imported from England, "sufficient mastive dogs, hounds and beagles," and
also Irish wolf-hounds; and they caused an interruption in one afternoon
service by chasing into the meeting-house one of those pungently offensive,
though harmless, animals that abounded even in the earliest colonial
days, and whose mephitic odor, in this case, had power to scatter the
congregation as effectively as would have a score of armed Indian braves.
Officially appointed "Dogg-whippers" and the never idle tithingman expelled
the intruding and unwelcome canine attendants from the meeting-house with
fierce blows and fiercer yelps. The swarming dogs, though they were trained
to hunt the Indians and wolves and tear them in pieces, were much fonder of
hunting and tearing the peaceful sheep, and thus became such unmitigated
nuisances, out of meeting as well as in, that they had to be muzzled and
hobbled, and killed, and land was granted (as in Newbury in 1703) on
condition that no dog was ever kept thereon. As late as the year 1820, it
was ordered in the town of Brewster that any dog that came into meeting
should be killed unless the owner promised to thenceforth keep the intruder
out.
Alarms of fire in the neighborhood frequently disturbed the quiet of
the early colonial services; for the combustible catted chimneys were
a constant source of conflagration, especially on Sundays, when the
fireplaces with their roaring fires were left unwatched; and all the men
rushed out of the meeting at sound of the alarm to aid in quenching the
flames, which could however be ill-fought with the scanty supply of
water that could be brought in a few leathern fire-buckets and
milk-pails,--though at a very early date as an aid in extinguishing
fires each New England family was ordered by law to own a fire-ladder.
Occasionally the town's ladder and poles and hooks and cedar-buckets were
kept in the meeting-house, and thus were handy for Sunday fires.
Sometimes armed men, bearing rumors of wars and of hostile attacks, rode
clattering up to the church-door, and strode with jingling spurs and
rattling swords into the excited assembly with appeal for more soldiers to
bear arms, or for more help for those already in the army, and the whole
congregation felt it no interruption but a high religious privilege and
duty, to which they responded in word and deed. On some happy Sabbaths the
armed riders bore good news of great victories, and great was the rejoicing
thereat in prayer and praise in the old meeting-house.
But usually through the Sabbath services, though the quiet was not that
of our modern carpeted, cushioned, orderly churches, but few interrupting
sounds were heard. The cry of a waking infant, the scraping of restless
feet on the sanded floor, the lumbering noise of the motions of a cramped
farmer as he stood up to lean over the pew-door or gallery-rail, the
clatter of an overturned cricket, the twittering of swallows in the
rafters, and in the summer-time the bumping and buzzing of an invading
bumble-bee as he soared through the air and against the walls, were
the only sounds within the meeting-house that broke the monotonous
"thirteenthly" and "fourteenthly" of the minister's sermon.