WOLVES IN THE SHEEPFOLD.
“I, under fair pretence of friendly ends,
With well-placed words of glozing courtesy,
Baited with reason not unplausible,
Wind me into the easy-hearted man,
And hug him into snares.”
MILTON’S _Comus_.
The Plymouth colonists were men of active enterprise. They were
miserly of time, and hoarded their hours. They were also anxious to
please the Merchant-adventurers. So now, as quickly as might be, the
“Anne” was laden with clapboards, beaver-skins, and divers furs;
letters whose every line was a loving pulsation, were indited to the
lingering absentees at Leyden and to home circles in England; and on
the 10th of September, 1623, the vessel sailed, carrying with her
Edward Winslow, who was sent over to report progress, and to procure
such necessities as were demanded by the imperious wants of the
expanding colony.[463]
After watching the “Anne” until she dipped below the horizon, the
pilgrims returned from the shore and prepared to go into the harvest
field. This season “God gave them plenty, and the face of things was
changed, to the grateful rejoicing of all hearts.” The granaries were
filled. Some of the abler and more industrious had to spare, and the
perturbed ghost of famine, which had so long haunted Plymouth, was
definitively laid.[464]
Many attributed this plenteous harvest to the partial abandonment
of the communal plan, and in consequence the desire for complete
emancipation from its thraldom became more general and earnest.[465]
Some of the late comers had sailed not under articles of agreement
with the company of Merchant-adventurers, but on their individual
account; so they landed free from those conditions which shackled the
elder settlers. Under these circumstances it was thought fit, ere
these outsiders were received and permitted to settle and build in
Plymouth, to exact of them certain specified conditions precedent.
So reasonable a requisition won ready assent, and an agreement was
signed to this effect: The colony on its part, the outsiders on
theirs, covenanted to show each the other all reasonable courtesies;
all were to be alike subject to such laws and orders as were already
made, or might thereafter be made, for the public good; the outsiders
were freed and exempted from the general employments which the
communal condition required of its participants, except for purposes
of defence and such work as tended to the lasting welfare of the
colony; they were taxed for the maintenance of the government, and
debarred from traffic with the Indians for their individual profit,
until the expiration of the seven years which tied the colonists to
the communality.[466]
Towards the middle of September, while the Pilgrims were in the
midst of their harvest labors, Robert Gorges, a son of Sir Ferdinand
Gorges, famous as a _voyageur_ and discoverer, sailed into Plymouth
bay.[467] He had recently returned from the Venetian wars, and
now came armed with a commission from the New England council as
governor-general of the territory from Acadia to Narragansett
Bay.[468] With him were families of emigrants equipped to commence a
settlement, and a learned and worthy clergyman of the English church,
William Morrel, an important item of whose mission was to “exercise
superintendence over the New England churches.”[469]
Gorges tarried at Plymouth about a fortnight, receiving friendly and
cordial entertainment.[470] He had been advised to select Admiral
West, Christopher Levett, and the existing governor of Plymouth,
as his advisers. This he did; and in this body was vested the full
authority to administer justice in all cases, “capital, criminal, and
civil,” throughout the province of New England.[471] This arranged,
Gorges sailed for Wessagusset, the site of Weston’s discomfiture,
and, landing his colonists, essayed to plant on that inauspicious
coast a permanent settlement.[472]
This colony, like its predecessor, was fated. Hardly surviving its
birth, it lingered through a twelvemonth, and then dissolved. Sir
Ferdinand Gorges and his company, discouraged by the opposition
of the Parliament to their New England schemes, would adventure
nothing.[473] In the spring of 1624 he summoned his son home; and
a little later Morrel, who had made no effort to exercise his
superintendency, followed him, and this gave the second settlement at
Wessagusset its _coup de grâce_.[474]
Morrel was not spoiled by his disappointment. “I shall always be
desirous for the advancement of those colonies,” he said.[475] And in
a Latin poem addressed to the New England Council, he wrote:
“If these poor lines may win that country love,
Or kind compassion in the English move,
Or painful men to a good land invite,
Whose holy works the natives may enlight,—
If Heaven grant this, to see there built I trust,
An English kingdom from the Indian dust.”[476]
But while “unmerciful disaster followed thick and followed faster”
this enterprise of Gorges and several kindred ones,[477] smiting them
into early graves, Plymouth, clasping hands with God, strengthened
daily, and walked forward to assured success. Early in 1624, the
annual election occurred. Governor Bradford, anxious to retire,
pleaded hard for “rotation in office,” and alleged that that was
the “end of annual elections.” But the Pilgrims rightly regarded
him as a pivotal-man, and with rare good sense they reëlected him
unanimously.[478] When the election was over the “Little James”
was well victualed and despatched to the eastward on a fishing
expedition. On reaching Damarin’s cove “there arose such a violent
and extraordinary storm that the seas broke over such places in
the harbor as were deemed absolutely secure, and drove the vessel
against great rocks, which beat a hole in her hulk that a horse and
cart might have gone through, and afterwards drove her into deep
water, where she sank. The master was drowned; the rest of the men,
except one, saved their lives with much ado; and all the provisions,
salt, tackle, and what else was in her, was lost.”[479] Saddened
by this mishap, but undismayed, the Pilgrims now commenced their
preparations for planting. “A great part of liberty,” says Seneca,
“is a well-governed belly, and to be patient in all wants.”[480]
And Corbett, borrowing the same idea, put it into homely English by
affirming that “the stomach is the cause of civilization.” He meant
that hunger begets labor to satisfy its cravings. “Wants awaken
intellect. To gratify them disciplines the mind. The keener the want,
the lustier the growth.”[481]
The famine of the past had revealed to the Pilgrims the weakness
and inefficiency of the communal plan. It educated them; for on
an individual basis they reaped plenty. They overcame hunger by
patience. They flanked famine by a skilful social arrangement. Now,
as before, each man broke ground for himself.[482] There was no
longer an Elysium for sluggards; each reaped as he had sown.
In March, 1624, Winslow returned to Plymouth, after an absence of
eight months.[483] He brought with him three heifers and a bull—the
first neat cattle that came into New England.[484] The exiles could
no longer say, “We are without cattle, and we have no Egypt to go to
for corn.”[485] Cattle they now had, and they created an Egypt.
Winslow also brought some “clothing and other necessaries; a
carpenter, who died soon, but not until he had rendered himself very
useful;” a “salt-man,” who proved “an ignorant, foolish, self-willed
fellow,” and only made trouble and waste; and “a preacher, though
none of the most eminent and rare”—to whose transportation Cushman
wrote that he and Winslow had consented only “to give content to some
in London.”[486] Winslow informed his coadjutors of a sad “report
that there was among the Merchant-adventurers a strong faction
hostile to Plymouth, and especially set against the coming of the
rest from Leyden”[487]—which explains the long tarry of Robinson and
his flock in Holland.
“It will be remembered,” remarks Palfrey, “that the London
adventurers were engaged in a commercial speculation. Several of them
sympathized more or less in religious sentiment with the Pilgrims;
but even with most of these considerations of pecuniary interest were
paramount, and they were, besides, a minority when opposed to the
aggregate of those adventurers who had no mind to interest themselves
in religious dissensions to the damage of their prospect of gain.
Under such circumstances, the policy of the English partners would
naturally be to keep in favor with the court and with the council for
New England, of which Sir Ferdinand Gorges and other churchmen were
leaders. This it was that occasioned the thwarting embarrassments
which were persistently interposed to frustrate Robinson’s wish to
collect his scattered flock in America. Neither the Virginia Company,
nor the Merchant-adventurers as a body, would have preferred to
employ Separatists in founding American colonies, and giving value to
their land. But the option was not theirs. At the moment, no others
were disposed to confront the anticipated hardships, and none could
be relied upon like these to carry the business through. This was
well understood on both sides to be the motive for the engagement
that was made.
“If Separatists were per force to undertake the enterprise, it was
desirable that they should be persons not individually conspicuous,
or obnoxious to displeasure in high quarters; and when Brewster,
and not Robinson, accompanied the first settlers to New England,
it was a result, if not due to the intrigues of the Adventurers,
certainly well according with their policy. Brewster was forgotten
in England; nor had he ever been known as a literary champion of
his sect. The able and learned Robinson was the recognized head of
the _Independents_, a rising and militant power. He had an English,
if indeed it may not be called a European reputation. No name could
have been uttered in courtly circles with worse omen to the new
settlement. The case was still stronger when, having lost their way,
and in consequence come to need another patent, the colony was made
a dependency of the Council for New England, instead of the Virginia
Company. In the Virginia Company, laboring under the displeasure of
the king, and having Sandys and Wriothesley for its leaders, there
was a leaven of popular sentiment. The element of absolutism and
prelacy was more controlling in the councils of the rival corporation.
“From these circumstances the quick instinct of trade took its
lesson. To the favor of the Council for New England, with Sir
Ferdinand Gorges at its head, and the king taking its part against
Sir Edward Coke and the House of Commons, the Merchant-adventurers
were looking for benefits which some of them had no mind to hazard
by encouraging their colony to exhale any offensive odor of schism.
This gives us an insight into the policy of that action to which
Robinson referred when, in a letter to Brewster, now brought by
Winslow, he wrote: ‘I persuade myself that for me, they of all others
are unwilling I should be transported, especially such of them as
have an eye that way themselves, as thinking if I come there their
market will be marred. And for these Adventurers, if they have but
half the wit to their malice, they will stop my course when they see
it intended.’
“In these circumstances, also, we find an explanation of the
selection of a minister ‘not the most eminent and rare,’ and such as
Cushman and Winslow could agree to take only ‘to give content to some
in London.’ To send a clergyman avowedly of the state church was a
course not to be thought of. The colonists could not be expected to
receive him. The best method for their purpose was, to employ some
one of a character and position suited to get possession of their
confidence, and then use it to tone down their religious strictness,
and, if circumstances should favor, to disturb the ecclesiastical
constitution which they had set up.
“As the financial prospects of the colony faded, the more anxious
were the unsympathizing London partners to relieve it and themselves
from the stigma of religious schism. The taunt that their colonists
were Brownists depressed the value of their stock. It was for their
interest to introduce settlers of a different religious character,
and to take the local power, if possible, out of the hands of
those who represented the obnoxious tenets. To this end it was
their policy to encourage such internal disaffection as already
existed, and to strengthen it by the infusion of new elements of
discord. A part even of the ‘Mayflower’ emigrants, without religious
sympathy with their superiors, and jealous of the needful exercise
of authority, were fit subjects for an influence adverse to the
existing organization. The miscellaneous importation in the ‘Fortune’
followed; and the whole tenor of the discourse of Cushman, who came
out and returned in her, shows that there were ‘idle drones’ and
‘unreasonable men’ mixed with the nobler associates of the infant
settlement. The ‘Anne’ and her partner, the last vessels despatched
by the Adventurers, brought new fuel for dissension in those of that
company who came ‘on their particular’ account. Nor does it seem
hazardous to infer, alike from the circumstances of the case and from
developments which speedily followed, that some of these persons, in
concert with the ‘strong faction among the Adventurers,’ came over on
the errand of subverting the existing government and order.”[488]
The clergyman now sent over, and mentioned in the home-letters, was
John Lyford. He was the seed of many and sad disturbances. “When he
first came ashore,” says Bradford, “he saluted the colonists with
such reverence and humility as is seldom seen, and indeed made them
ashamed, he so bowed and cringed unto them; he would have kissed
their hands, if they had suffered it. Yet all the while, if we may
judge by his after-carriage, he was but like him mentioned by the
psalmist,[489] that croucheth and boweth that heaps of poor may fall
by his might. Or like that dissembling Ishmael[490] who, when he had
slain Gedeliah, went out weeping, and met them that were coming to
offer incense in the house of the Lord, saying, ‘Come to Gedeliah,’
when he meant to slay them.”[491]
The Pilgrims received Lyford cordially, giving him the warmest of
welcomes and the heartiest. A larger allowance out of the general
store was allotted him than any other had; and as the governor was
wont, “in all weighty affairs, to consult with Elder Brewster as well
as with his special assistants, so now, from courtesy, he called
Lyford also to advise in all important crises.”[492]
Ere long he professed to desire to unite with the Pilgrim church.
He was accordingly received, and “made a large confession of his
faith, and an acknowledgment of his former disorderly walking and
entanglement with many corruptions, which had been a burden to his
conscience; so that he blessed God for this opportunity of liberty to
enjoy the ordinances of God in purity among His people.”[493]
For a time all things went comfortably and smoothly; but in this
calm, Lyford contracted an intimacy with one John Oldham, who had
come out in the “Anne” on his own account, and had been a factious
bawler from the outset.[494] From so congenial an association, evil
could not but be begotten. The bully and the hypocrite soon nursed it
and set it afoot. Both Oldham and Lyford grew very perverse—though
just before Oldham also had been received as a member of the Plymouth
church, “whether from hypocrisy or out of some sudden pang of
conviction God only knows”—and “showed a spirit of great malignancy,
drawing as many into faction as they could influence. The most idle
and profane they nourished, and backed in all their lawlessness, so
they would but cleave to them and revile the Pilgrim church. Private
meetings and back-stair whisperings were incessant among them, they
feeding themselves and others with what they should bring to pass
in England by the faction of their friends among the Adventurers,
which brought both themselves and their dupes into a fools’ paradise.
Outwardly they set a fair face on things, yet they could not carry
things so closely but much both of their sayings and doings was
discovered.”[495]
Finally, when the vessel in which Winslow had returned was laden,
and ready to hoist anchor and spread sail for home, it was observed
that Lyford and his coadjutors “were long in writing and sent
many letters, and communicated to each other such things as made
them laugh in their sleeves, thinking they had done their errand
efficiently.”[496]
Scenting mischief, Bradford watched them closely; and when the
ship left the harbor, he followed her in the shallop, and demanded
Lyford’s letter-bag. The captain, who was friendly to the colonial
government, and cognizant of the plot afoot, both in Britain and
at Plymouth, to overreach the Pilgrims, at once acceded. Above
twenty letters, many of them long, and pregnant with slanders,
false accusations, and malicious innuendoes, tending not only to
the prejudice, but the ruin and utter subversion of the settlement,
were found. Most of these Bradford let pass, contenting himself with
abstracts. But of the most material true copies were taken, and then
forwarded, the originals being detained, lest their writer should
deny his work, in which case he would now be compelled to eat his own
penmanship.[497]
The ship had sailed towards evening; in the night the governor
returned. Lyford and his faction “looked blank when they saw Bradford
land; but after some weeks, as nothing came of it, they were as
brisk as ever, thinking that all was unknown and was gone current,
and that the shallop went but to despatch some well-nigh forgotten
or belated letters. The reason why Bradford and the rest concealed
their knowledge was, to let affairs drift to a natural development,
and ripen, that they might the better discover the intentions of the
malcontents, and see who were their adherents. And they did this
the rather, because they had learned from a letter written by one
of the confederates, that Oldham and Lyford intended an immediate
reformation of the church and commonwealth, and proposed at once,
on the departure of the ship, to unite their forces, and set up a
worship on the English model.”[498]
The Pilgrims had not long to wait. Oldham, with the natural instinct
of a bully, picked constant quarrels, refused to mount guard, and
pelted Standish with vile epithets. Lyford, a more cautious knave,
had no heart for fisticuffs, but he set up another worship on the
Sabbath, and openly celebrated sacraments[499] which were to the
Pilgrims instinct with vicious tyranny and idolatrous significance;
and to escape from which, they had crossed the channel into Holland,
and plunged across the Atlantic into the winter wilderness.
The colonists at once acted. Oldham was tamed. “After being clapped
up awhile, he came to himself.” Lyford was formally impeached. A
court was convened, and the settlers at large were summoned to
attend. Bradford himself conducted the prosecution in this primitive
trial. He said that, “being greatly oppressed in Britain, the
Pilgrims had come to America, here to enjoy liberty of conscience;
and for that they had passed through frightful hardships, and
planted this settlement on the sterile rocks. The danger and the
charge of the beginning were theirs. Lyford had been sent over at
the general expense, and both himself and his large family[500] had
been maintained from the common store. He had joined their church,
and become one of themselves; and for him to plot the ruin of his
entertainers was most unjust and perfidious. As for Oldham and his
crew, who came at their own charge and for their particular benefit,
seeing they were received in courtesy by the plantation, when they
came only to seek shelter and protection under its wings, not being
able to stand alone, they were like the fable of the hedgehog whom
the cony, in a stormy day, from pity welcomed into her burrow; but
who, not content to take part with her, in the end, with her sharp
pricks forced the poor cony to forsake her own burrow, as these do
now attempt to do with us.”[501]
Here Lyford denied that he had been guilty of any wrong. Bradford
at once “put in” his intercepted letters as evidence. The unmasked
hypocrite was dumb. But Oldham, mad with rage, attempted to rouse an
_émeute_ on the spot.[502] No hand was uplifted at his appeal, and
Bradford caused the whole parcel of letters to be read; after which,
resuming his speech, he reminded Lyford of his humble confession on
being received into the church, of his solemn promise not to attempt
to perform the functions of a clergyman until he had another call
to that sacred office; in open violation of which, he had assumed
the clerical garb, in virtue of his ordination, drawn aside a small
clique, and by attempting to officiate at the Lord’s table on the
Sabbath, broken his solemn pledge and disturbed the public peace.[503]
The proof was so patent, the falsehoods which impregnated the
insolent letters were so bold, that the factionists were absolutely
dumb. No voice was raised in extenuation of the roguery. Conviction
was speedy. Oldham and Lyford were both sentenced to banishment.[504]
Oldham at once left Plymouth, and repaired to Nantasket, where the
Pilgrims had a station to accommodate the Indian trade.[505] But
Lyford, as weak as he was vicious, burst into tears, and “confessed
that he feared he was a reprobate, with sins too heavy for God to
pardon;” and he promised amendment with such emphasis, and pleaded
so piteously for forgiveness, that the kind and merciful settlers
consented to keep him on probation for six months.[506]
But he was an ingrained knave, and amendment was not in him.
Not long after this scene, he wrote a second letter to the
Merchant-adventurers, in which he justified all his former charges,
and elaborated them. Unhappily for him, the messenger to whom he
intrusted this precious missive surrendered it into the hands of
Bradford, who simply filed it for the present, and let his just wrath
accumulate.[507]
In the mean time the ship, with Lyford’s batch of letters aboard,
dropped anchor in the Thames. The lies of their masquerading agent
were eagerly conned by the London partners. A conclave was held. The
inimical adventurers pointed triumphantly to Lyford’s testimony. But,
fortunately for the Pilgrims, Winslow, who had returned to London,
had become acquainted with certain disreputable and damning facts in
Lyford’s home-career, both in England and in Ireland, where he had
officiated as pastor, which proved him to be a lecher and a swindler,
who soiled the surplice and the cope. With these facts, and followed
by grave and unimpeachable witnesses, Winslow hurried into the room
where the merchants were assembled, and made his _exposé_, which
“struck Lyford’s friends with sudden dumbness, and made them shame
greatly.”[508]
But these reports, together with their disappointment in not
harvesting an immediate fortune, impelled two thirds of the original
members of the London Company to withdraw from the venture; “and as
there had been a faction and siding amongst them for two years, so
now there was an utter breach and sequestration.”[509]
Some of the partners, however, remained friendly; and these, assuming
the debt of the colony—amounting to some fourteen hundred pounds
sterling—fitted out a ship for another voyage, wrote in terms of
comfort and cheer, and sent out cattle, tools and clothing, which
they sold to the planters, despite their friendly professions, at an
exorbitant advance on the market value.[510]
In the spring of 1625, Winslow came back with this ship thus
freighted; and he brought with him besides, the news of the
disaffection among the Merchant-adventurers. On landing, he was the
surprised witness of a strange ceremony. In the village street was
drawn up a guard of musketeers in two files, between which a man was
running. As he passed, each soldier gave him a thump behind with
the but of his musket.[511] This was called “running the gauntlet,”
and was a custom borrowed from the Indians. So engrossed were the
settlers in this odd sport, and so convulsed were the soberest of
them with laughter at the victim’s odd grimaces on being struck and
bidden “mend his manners,” that Winslow advanced quite up to the
crowd ere he was discovered and recognized. He then learned that
the sufferer of this singular punishment was Oldham, who, despite
his banishment, had ventured to return to Plymouth and revile his
judges.[512]
Winslow at once informed the clustering colonists of the effect
of Lyford’s letters in England, and repeated his _exposé_ of that
bad man’s abhorrent private character.[513] The Pilgrims were not
surprised. Lyford’s own wife, “a grave matron of good carriage,” had
herself, in the sorrow of her heart, disclosed some secrets and
uncloaked some crimes which led them to believe Lyford capable of
perpetrating any villany.[514]
Now, since his probationary time had expired, and he was a more
dangerous rascal than before, he was ordered to quit the colony.
This he did, joining Oldham at Nantucket; whence, a little later, he
wandered into Virginia, dying there very miserably.[515]
Eventually Oldham repented of his evil conduct, and became reconciled
to the Pilgrims; “so that he had liberty to come and go, and converse
with them at pleasure,” until, some years later, the Indians, in a
petty quarrel, knocked his brains out with a tomahawk.[516]
Thus ended the “Lyford troubles.” Led by God, the Plymouth colonists
safely surmounted one more obstacle, the insidious assault of
masqueraders who “stole the livery of heaven to serve the devil in.”
The winter of 1624-5 had passed without any special occurrence save
this Lyford affair; and here see one strange thing: “Many who before
stood something off from the church,” says Bradford, “now, seeing
Lyford’s unrighteous dealing and malignity against it, came forward
and tendered themselves as members, professing that it was not out of
any dislike of any thing that they had stood so long aloof, but from
a desire to fit themselves better for such a connection, and that
now they saw that the Lord called for their help. So that Lyford’s
crusade had quite a contrary effect from that hoped; which was looked
at as a great work of God, who drew men on by unlikely means, and by
occurrences which might rather have set them farther off.”[517]
Lyford had complained to the Merchant-adventurers that the Pilgrims
had no regularly ordained minister. To this charge Bradford made a
fine retort: “We answer, the more is our wrong, that our pastor is
kept from us by these men’s means, who then reproach _us_ for it.
Yet have we not been wholly destitute of the means of salvation, as
this man would have the world believe; for our reverend elder, Mr.
Brewster, hath labored diligently in dispensing the word of God unto
us; and, be it spoken without ostentation, he is not inferior to Mr.
Lyford—and some of his betters—either in gifts or learning, though he
would never be persuaded to take higher office upon himself.”[518]
Brewster taught twice every Sabbath powerfully and profitably, and
without stipend, which he steadily declined, working for his bread
with his own hands, and earning it in the sweat of his brows, thus
approximating to the early Christian practice. “He did more in one
year,” asserts old John Cotton, “than many who have their hundreds
per annum do in all their lives.” So it seems that there is one
brilliant exception to the Indian maxim, “Poor pay poor preach.” The
good elder had a singular gift in prayer, “yet was seldom wordy or
prolix.” Without the afflatus of ordination, he was so much better
than most ministers with it, that, though destitute of “consecrated
ministrations,” the colonists did not suffer much, and mainly
regretted the absence of sacraments, which Brewster, unordained, was
not competent to celebrate.[519]
Prince gives a summary of the religious tenets of the Plymouth church:
I. “It held that nothing is to be accounted true religion but what is
taught in the Holy Scriptures.”
II. “It held that every man has the right of private judgment, of
testing his belief by the sacred writ, and of worshipping God in his
own way as that text directed.”[520]
On this doctrine the Pilgrims thrived. “Brown bread and the gospel
is good fare,” they said to one another.[521] Indeed it was; and
there on the desolate coast, where wheat froze and the bitter winter
congealed six months of the twelve, men grew. “At last,” says
Elliott, “in the beginning of the seventeenth century, we see a
church with no priest, with no hierarchy, with no forms; none like it
since that at Corinth; none so entirely free to work out its ideas
into life and action. It was a religious democracy. Its doctrines
and practices were the outcome of the time, and were decided on by
the votes of the members as men. In theory, the majority ruled in
the Plymouth church. ’Tis a noticeable thing in human history, and
it has had its influence in both church and state. The day had come
when a few brave men could take this step in advance towards freedom,
and not be swallowed up and lost. The day had come when democracy
was possible in the church, foretelling its speedy coming in the
state.”[522]