(1584-1656)
[Footnote 19: Copyright, 1894, by Selmar Hess.]
[Illustration: Relics of Miles Standish.]
Three hundred years ago the house of Standish was a notable one in
England. The family had numerous possessions; their Lancashire estate
of Duxbury Hall, in the shadow of Rivington Pike and the Pennine
Hills, was pleasant and extensive, and there they had lived for
generations, as there they live to-day. Of this Lancashire home was
that John Standish, "squire to the king," who killed Wat Tyler, the
agitator, on that memorable June day of 1381 when the boy-king of
England, Richard the Second, so pluckily faced his rebellious subjects
on the plain of Smithfield; of it was that Sir John Standish who
fought under the leopard-banner of King Edward at the stone mill of
Crecy; and of it was that gallant soldier Miles Standish, the Puritan
captain, the first commissioned military officer of New England,
famous in American history, song, and story, as the stay and bulwark
of the Pilgrims of Plymouth in their days of struggle and beginning.
Miles Standish (or Myles, as the old spelling has it) was born in
Lancashire, presumably in the family manor house of Duxbury Hall, in
the year 1584. The story of his life is simple. The absolute facts
upon which it is based are meagre, but enough is known to warrant the
assertion that Miles Standish was heir to the name and estates of the
Standishes of Lancashire, from which, by some device not on record, he
was, as he sturdily maintained in his will, "surreptitiously"
defrauded.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the provinces of the
Netherlands were battling for life against the tyranny of Spain. The
Protestant Elizabeth of England gave help and support to the
Protestant Stadtholder Maurice, and many of her fighting men carried
pike or arquebus at the sack of Cadiz, fought at Nieuport and Ostend,
or served the guns in the great sea-fight off Gibraltar that, in 1607,
broke the power of Spain. Among these fighting-men was young Miles
Standish, and he fought so stoutly and to such good purpose that,
before he was twenty-one he had attained the rank and title of
captain, and was known to Englishmen in the Low Countries as a brave
and gallant soldier. In 1609 came the twelve years' truce between
tired Spain and not less wearied Holland, that gave way in 1621 to the
stubborn and bloody Thirty Years' War. It was, probably, in the early
years of this truce that Captain Miles Standish, a born fighter, went
back to England to battle for his heritage. Not being the match for
the law men in England that he was for Spanish dons in Holland, he was
forced to retire from the unequal contest, defeated but not conquered.
This belief in his rights to the inheritance of the Standishes he
sturdily maintained to the last; for, dying forty years after in the
new land his sword had helped to conquer and his wisdom to found, he
left by his last will and testament unto his son and heir, Alexander:
"Ormistic, Bonsconge, Wrightington, Maudeslay, and the estates in the
Isle of Man"--none of which he nor his descendants were ever to occupy
or hold.
It was after this unsuccessful struggle for his heritage that he
crossed again to Holland and, from some cause not apparent--perhaps
his disgust at English law, perhaps the attractions of one who, later,
became Mistress Rose Standish, may supply the motive--settled among
the self-exiled English folk in Leyden who, because of religious
differences with the established Church, had left their English homes
and, calling themselves Pilgrims because of their wanderings, had made
a settlement in the Dutch city of Leyden, "fair and beautiful and of a
sweet situation."
Although not of the religious faith and following of the Pilgrims of
Leyden--indeed the story runs that the fiery little captain had been,
at one time, a Romanist--he must have been settled among them for
years, for, on the eve of their emigration to America, we find him as
one of their leaders, accepted and commissioned as the military
adviser of the colonists. The time of his life in Leyden was one of
religious unrest in Europe; and in Holland, during that twelve years'
truce with Spain, the theological disputes between Calvinists and
Arminians ran so high as to bring John of Barneald to the scaffold,
and to drive Grotius the scholar into exile. These days of stern
dispute may have had their influence on the sturdy English soldier
living in the midst of Dutch life and Dutch disputations, and made him
lean to the side of Puritanism, even if never openly avowing it as his
religious faith. It is, indeed, a singular fact that the mainstay and
chief protector of the first Puritan colonists of America was neither
of their communion nor of their connection, and is openly censured by
Puritan writers as one who, so says Hubbard, "had been a soldier in
the Low Countries and had never entered the school of our Saviour
Christ or of John the Baptist." But his companions and associates seem
not to have permitted the dissociation to have had special weight with
them. They gladly welcomed Captain Standish and his wife, Rose, among
the little company of exiles that set out from Delft Haven for
Virginia, and gave their names place on that memorable passenger list
of the little schooner Mayflower, which, leaving the harbor of old
Plymouth, in England, in September, 1620, finally dropped anchor in
the harbor of new Plymouth, in New England, in December following.
From the outset of this novel "adventure"--itself a turning-point in
American history--this soldier of fortune was given place and
prominence in the councils of a community which seems to have enlisted
his support, not so much on its religious as on its adventurous side;
and to this "dissenter from dissent" was intrusted the defence of a
company of religious enthusiasts, sailing upon what they deemed a
divine mission, only in the practical side of which did their military
adviser find occupation or interest.
The up-bringing of Miles Standish had been such as to fit him for
leadership, and this he assumed early in the history of the
enterprise. Even on the deck of the Mayflower, he was recognized as
one whose counsels were wise and whose actions were inspiring, and
when in the cabin of the Mayflower, in the harbor of Provincetown, the
famous compact was drawn up, said to be "the first written
constitution in the world," the bold signature of "Myles Standish" was
the clearest of the forty-one Pilgrim autographs that were affixed to
that famous document. It was Captain Standish who, with his sixteen
"well-armed men," made a thorough exploration of the Provincetown
peninsula; he organized and headed the party of observation which,
later, sailed the shallop and marched with watchful eyes along the
shores of Cape Cod, seeking the best place for settlement; and, on
December 6th following, he sailed with a picked party across
Massachusetts Bay and, in much peril and with many adventures, spied
out the land and determined upon the harbor of Plymouth as the best
spot for permanent settlement. It was to Captain Standish's knowledge
as to the best locations and to his skill as a surveyor, that the
colonists were indebted for the selection of their town site and the
laying-out of their town; as, later, the same skill came in play when
were laid out the new towns that followed after the Plymouth
beginnings. Through all that dreary and dreadful first winter, when
half their number died, Captain Standish was their mainstay, as one
whose word was ever reassuring and whose arm was as ready for
protection as was his brain for planning methods of defence. Though
his wife, Mistress Rose Standish, was one of the early victims of that
bitter winter of death, his courage never faltered, his vigilance
never slackened. And when, in the midst of all the peril and
suffering, in February, 1621, Miles Standish was appointed military
captain of the colony, confidence was restored and courage renewed in
the bosoms of that suffering but heroic and indomitable band; so that
when spring came and the Mayflower sailed for England, not one of the
settlers returned in her, nor would desert the cause to which they had
pledged themselves.
It is customary to credit the final success of the Pilgrims of
Plymouth to the religious element that held sway over them, making
them patient, persistent, uncompromising, faithful, and earnest. But
the wisdom of Carver, the genius of Bradford, the fervor of Brewster,
the zeal of Winslow, would have been of small avail had they not been
backed by the decision, the resolution, the courage, the constancy,
and the forethought of their brave captain, Miles Standish, "the John
Smith of New England" as he has been called, the man of helpful
measures and of iron nerves, who could "hew down forests and live on
crumbs."
From first to last he was the loyal supporter and trusty defender of
the Plymouth colony. No danger unnerved him, no duty staggered him.
With but eight men he started out, in 1623, to overawe and subdue the
Indians of Massachusetts--then an unknown and perplexing quantity;
single-handed he checked the conspiracy at Weymouth and turned the
tables upon the savage plotters, by himself assassinating the
assassins--a deed that saved the colony from Indian massacre, but
called forth the mild protest of the Pilgrim preacher at Leyden, Mr.
Robinson, who wrote of it: "Concerning the killing of these poor
Indians, oh! how happy a thing had it been, if you had converted some
before you had killed any.... Let me be bold to exhort you seriously
to consider of the disposition of your captain, whom I love. There is
cause to fear that by occasion, especially of provocation, there may
be wanting (in him) that tenderness of the life of man which is meet."
But the Pilgrims of Plymouth seem not to have questioned the decisive
measures of the man who knew when and how to act in their defence.
Alone he faced the roystering Morton at Merrymount, unarming that
vaporing rebel and putting his riotous colony upon its good behavior.
He led out the forty men of Plymouth enlisted for the Pequot War,
headed the expedition that in 1635, sailed against the encroaching
French in Penobscot Bay, and, as late as 1653, when "very auncient and
full of dolorous paines," expressed himself as ready to take the
command intrusted to him when the colony forces were about to enter
upon a struggle for the right of occupation of the Connecticut country
with the Dutch colonists of Manhattan.
He never refused any burden however heavy nor shirked any duty however
onerous; he cheerfully yielded obedience to the civil power, never
exceeding his orders, nor rashly assuming responsibilities, nor
leading his men upon unwise ventures. While always the military
commander of the colony, his counsel and help were counted as equally
valuable in matters of administration. He served repeatedly as one of
the governor's council; he was at one time assistant-governor or
deputy, and, from 1644 to 1649, was treasurer of the Plymouth colony.
He went to England as the envoy of the colonists in 1625, and in the
midst of plague, of evil times and of bitter jealousies, withstood the
tyranny of the London traders who owned the Pilgrims' labor; and
braving both heavy debt and the possibility of censure, bought out the
traders' rights in the name of his associates.
[Illustration: Departure of the Mayflower.]
The personal descriptions of this remarkable man that have come down
to us, show him as a man of small stature, quick-tempered, choleric,
sturdy and bluff. "As a little chimney is soon fired," wrote the
Puritan historian Hubbard, "so was the Plymouth captain, a man of
very little stature, yet of a very hot and angry temper." And yet his
relations with such men as the noble Bradford, the blameless Brewster,
the politic Winslow, were so close and of so personal a character that
one can hardly accept unquestioningly the story of his hot and
unreasoning temper. He was a soldier and a fighter; but he loved peace
and quiet, and his life was full of friendly offices and of kindly
deeds. On Nantasket Beach he built the first "house of refuge" and
life-saving station in America. He was a gentle nurse in the winter of
sickness, a friend and adviser to those in trouble or distress, a
loving father in the days when parents were not unfrequently tyrants,
and a forgiving spirit, as the old story of his famous "courtship"
(with sufficient foundation to warrant its acceptance) amply proves.
The communism of the early Pilgrim days gave place in time to personal
possession and, as the colony grew, certain of those who had been
leaders desired more extended holdings. Captain Standish was one of
these, and despite his friend Bradford's protests, he moved across the
bay and in 1632 occupied a large and fertile stretch north of
Plymouth, to which, still clinging to his old claim of a stolen
heritage, he gave the name of Duxbury. Here in the midst of peaceful
pursuits, but ever ready to obey the colony's call for counsel or for
leadership, he lived for over twenty years, dying October 3, 1656, at
the age of seventy-two.
A notable figure in American history, Miles Standish is a type of that
mingled spirit of adventure, liberty, and distrust that impelled
emigration across the sea and, combined with the uncompromising stand
for freedom of conscience, founded and up-built the Pilgrim Colony of
Plymouth.
His existence among these Pilgrims is in itself an anomaly. But it is
one of those strange associations and unfaltering friendships that
have left their mark for good upon the world since the days when the
Roman fighting-man stood stanchly by the side of the Christian
proselyte even to the death.
Tradition says that Miles Standish was buried between two pointed
stones in the graveyard of South Duxbury, but the question of his
burial-place is still unsettled. The tall shaft, rising from the crest
of Captain's Hill in Duxbury, and surmounted with a statue of the
famous colonial captain, fitly commemorates a life that has won a
place in the American heart that only grows stronger and more enduring
as time goes on.
[Signature of the author.]