Who and what were the Pilgrims and in what way did they differ from
the Puritans? They both were English and both lived in the same
generation. The Pilgrims were a small band of staunch men, women
and children who came to America for religious freedom. They were a
part of a great movement. The Protestant Reformation, set on foot in
England during the reign of Henry VIII, was finally accomplished in
1588 by the defeat of the Spanish Armada. It did not secure freedom
of action or worship, however. There was no country then where such
liberty was allowed; in fact, such a thing had never been thought of.
The Reformation made the Sovereign, instead of the Pope, the head
of the church in England, and there were changes in doctrine and
ceremonials, but everyone was required to attend church whether he
wished to or not and was also taxed to support it. The Bible had just
been translated from Latin into English, and for the first time it
was being generally circulated (1557-60).
Among the Protestant reformers there were many who were not satisfied
with the doctrines and ritual of the English church. They wished
to simplify the government of the church and drop some of the
ceremonies. This they considered purifying the church, which gave
them the name of Puritans. Most of them had no thought or intention
of leaving the Established Church. They wished to stay and be a part
of it, but to change it according to their ideas.
[Illustration: EDWARD WINSLOW, third Governor of Plymouth Colony.
Great-grandfather of Edward Winslow, builder of The Mayflower Society
House. Painted during a visit to England. Winslow is the only Pilgrim
of whom there exists an authentic picture]
Early in 1567 a number of ministers, despairing of getting the
desired changes, made up their minds to separate from the church and
hold religious services of their own. Robert Brown was one of them
and went about the country advocating this policy of separation.
Those who adopted it became known as Separatists or Brownists. They
did not believe in having bishops rule over them. Some denied that
the queen was head of the church. This was called treason. These were
the people who became Pilgrims. The Puritans also questioned the
spiritual authority of the bishops and claimed the right to worship
as they saw fit, but they did nothing in particular about it.
The Separatists, or better, Independents, which describes them
accurately, established a little church in the hamlet of Scrooby,
near Lincoln, where a congregation listened to the eloquent preaching
of John Robinson. English laws provided imprisonment for those who
refused to attend the Established Church, or were present at unlawful
assemblies, with the further penalties, that the convicted must
conform within three months or leave the country. If he refused, he
should be deemed a felon and put to death without the benefit of
clergy. The little church at Scrooby could not continue under these
conditions. Some of the Separatists had given their lives, some were
in prison, and others were in exile. Brown had fled the country, and
so its members determined to cross to Holland. Under existing laws a
family could not migrate without a license, and they were denied one.
It was as dangerous to remain as it was to attempt to leave secretly.
Meetings were held, and Separatists from Scrooby, Bristol, Exeter,
Boston, and sundry other places planned to flee.
In October 1607 they made their first attempt to leave from Boston in
a chartered ship. They were seized, searched, and imprisoned. After a
month all but seven of the principal men were released.
The next year they arranged with a Dutch ship to meet them at a port
near Grimsby at the mouth of the Humber, but the cautious skipper
got scared and after taking a few of the women and children aboard,
cast off, leaving the husbands and a majority to be seized by the
sheriff and his men. Following this, there was no mass effort to
cross to Holland, but, with much difficulty and by departing one or
two at a time, all got over. After a short stay in Amsterdam they
made their way to Leyden. Here they were joined by other refugees
from England, until there were more than a thousand. The Pilgrims
remained in Leyden for eleven years (1609 to 1620). Brewster became
a printer, Robinson entered the University, and all found work in
different occupations. They labored hard and continuously. They
found in Holland peace and the religious freedom they had left
their English homes for, but there were other factors which made
them, after a decade, seriously consider leaving Holland. They
wished the protection of the English flag; they were losing the
English language, and their children were marrying among the Dutch.
After careful consideration they decided that the Virginia Colony,
extending from Florida to New York, offered the best opportunity.
Because of their separation from the Established Church, the King
would not guarantee them protection, but agreed not to molest them,
and under this agreement they obtained a patent from the London
Company to settle on the New Jersey Coast.
It was necessary to secure financial aid, and this they obtained from
a group of London merchants, known as the Adventurers. The contract
was an oppressive one and became more so as the colonists built their
houses; but it cannot be called unfair, considering the financial
risk involved. It provided that for seven years the income of the
colony should go into a common fund and from this the colonists
would get their living. At the end of the period the investment and
profits, real and personal, should be equally divided between the
Adventurers and the Planters in accordance with the number of shares
each held. Its effect was to establish a community life which, long
before the seven years were up, resulted in embarrassment and open
disaffection, and a compromise between the parties was effected by
which the Adventurers were to be paid the sum of eighteen hundred
pounds sterling 26 November 1626. Here was Communism pure and simple,
and it was a monumental failure and was given up after three years.
If Communism cannot succeed under these conditions, with the type
of people the Pilgrims were, speaking the same language, governed
by the same laws, with common history, tradition, and memories, how
could Communism possibly prove a success under far less favorable
circumstances today?
The conditions upon which the Pilgrims secured their transportation
to America indicate the exhausted state of their finances, and they
probably never would have given their assent to the conditions
imposed, if not absolutely forced to do so. The famous Captain
John Smith wrote in 1624 that the Adventurers who raised the money
to begin and supply the Plymouth plantation were about seventy in
number, some merchants, some handicraftsmen, some risking great
sums, some small, as their affection served. They dwelt mostly
about London, knit together by a voluntary combination in a
society, without constraint or penalty, aiming to do good and plant
religion. The sad intelligence conveyed by the _Mayflower_ on her
return to London of the sufferings, sickness, and death, produced a
disheartening effect in the most zealous friends, and the necessary
supplies required by the infant colony were refused, though they had
been promised.
After the Pilgrims had secured financial aid the little band (July
1620) left Leyden and sailed from Delfts-haven in Holland in the
_Speedwell_, which they had bought for the purpose, to Southampton
where the _Mayflower_ was awaiting them with friends. Two weeks later
the _Mayflower_ and the _Speedwell_ left Southampton for America. The
_Mayflower_ of one hundred and eighty tons burden (the _Queen Mary_
of today is over eighty-three thousand tons) had been chartered to
transport a part of the Leyden congregation to America.
Before they were out of the English Channel the _Speedwell_ began
leaking badly and they ran into Dartmouth for repairs. 2 September
they made a second start, but trouble developed and they returned
this time to Plymouth. Here they reorganized the expedition. The
_Speedwell_ was left behind, some of her passengers were taken on the
_Mayflower_ and the others left in England. On 16 September 1620 the
_Mayflower_ sailed again and ten weeks later, after a voyage filled
with hardships and peril, having been driven far off her course,
came to anchor in Cape Cod Harbor. When the Cape was sighted it was
decided to sail south for a permanent home, but before the day was
over they found themselves in dangerous shoals and roaring breakers
and turned back to settle beyond the limits of their patent.
Only about one half of the passengers on the _Mayflower_ were
members of the Leyden congregation. Other motives, without thought
of religious dissent or separation from the Established Church of
England, had added many strangers to the company, and there arose
mutterings of discontent among them.
It became evident, therefore, that some means should be devised
to maintain law and order as they were out of the jurisdiction of
their patent. To accomplish this the members of the Pilgrim Company
met in the cabin of the _Mayflower_ off the shores of Cape Cod on
21 November 1620 and banded themselves together by the now famous
document known as the Mayflower Compact.
The Mayflower Compact is a great contribution to civil liberty and
democracy; it ranks with the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution of the United States. Our democracy was based on it
from the landing of the Pilgrims. The Pilgrims established what they
planned. The Plymouth settlement was the start of religious freedom.
We owe them a great debt of gratitude. They were unimportant people,
and their departure attracted little or no attention. Some were
educated, others were not; some had means, most little or nothing,
but all had character and courage. We call them ordinary people,
but their accomplishment made history. When they wrote and signed
the Compact they gave the world a new political idea for government
by the people, and when, under the Compact, they organized the
government of Plymouth, they laid the foundation of political liberty
for this nation.
Students of governmental history the world over, as well as
statesmen, now know of the Mayflower Compact and discuss it. It
cannot receive too much publicity, and there is no better place to
reprint it than here in this story of the “House of Edward Winslow”
where it can be easily and frequently perused.
In no part of the world up to then did there exist a government of
just and equal laws. It is the first incident where a government was
formed by the governed, by their consent in writing at one time.
One hundred and fifty years later its principles really framed the
Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United
States, and our laws today are interwoven with the ideals of this
band of Pilgrims.
One month after the signing of the Compact, the exploring party
of eighteen men in the ship’s shallop that had left the ship 16
December, landed at Plymouth. Plymouth was not just what they wanted,
but as Brewster said, it was the best they had seen. They returned to
the ship and on 26 December 1620 the _Mayflower_ and her passengers
reached Plymouth. It was 31 March that the last of them went ashore
for good.
On 15 April 1621 the _Mayflower_ sailed on her return trip, leaving
every one of the survivors of the Pilgrim Company behind. It was a
more striking picture than her departure from England. A situation
more discouraging for the Pilgrims could hardly be conceived.
Some interesting occurrences which happened on board the _Mayflower_
during the trip, are taken from the manuscript of “Prince’s Annals,”
in his handwriting. Prince had drawn his pen diagonally across the
passages, and they do not appear in his published work. They were
first printed in the April number 1847 the _New England Historical
and Genealogical Register_. It reads:
“In a mighty storme a lustie yonge man called John Howland came
upon some occasion above ye gratings, was with a seele of ye ship
throwne into ye sea; but it pleased God yt he caught hould of ye
top saile halliards, which hung overboard and rane out at length;
yet he held his hould (though he was sundrie fadomes under water)
till he was hald up by ye same rope to ye brink of ye water and
then with a boat hook and other means got into ye shipe again,
and his life saved, and though he was somewhat ill with it, yet
he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both of
church and comonwelth.”
And the manuscript goes on to tell of a proud, very profane young
man, one of the seamen of husky and able body, which made him the
more haughty, who was always annoying the poor people in their
sickness by cursing them daily and telling them he hoped to help cast
half of them overboard before they came to their journey’s end and if
he ever, by any was gently reproved, he would curse and swear most
bitterly. But it pleased God to smite this young man with a grievous
disease, of which he died in a desperate manner and so was himself
the first to be thrown overboard.
John Carver, who had been chosen Governor, died the first winter,
and William Bradford succeeded him. The Colony grew slowly. By 1630
it had but 300 persons in it, but it had paid the London merchants.
There is little question that the contract was burdensome and
oppressive. But as proof that the Pilgrims harbored no resentment is
this laudable act: the Plymouth Colony General Court in 1660 ordered
that twenty pounds should be sent to a Mr. Ling, one of the Merchant
Adventurers, “who had fallen to decay and had felt great extremity
of poverty, the same twenty pounds being bestowed on him towards his
relief and if it was not given voluntarily that the amount that fell
short ‘bee’ made up out of the ‘Countrey stocke’ by the Treasurer.”
The Colony made a treaty with Massasoit, Chief of the Wampanoag
Indians, which lasted until broken by his son in 1675. By 1640 the
population had increased to over 3000.
As for the Puritans, they became powerful in England and comprised
many men of wealth and culture and social standing. Little bodies of
them, encouraged by the example of the Pilgrims, began to settle upon
the shores of Massachusetts. In 1628 John Endicott and a shipload
took command of the place the Indians called Naumkeag and gave it
the Bible name of Salem, or Peace. When they arrived they found
Roger Conant and his followers, who were, after several years of
struggling, happily settled. Endicott practically kicked them out.
Within a few years all of Conant’s followers had moved across the
river and established new homes in what became Beverly.
In 1629 a number of leading Puritans in England bought of the
Plymouth Company a large tract of land, bounded by the Charles
and Merrimac Rivers and stretching inland indefinitely. They got
a charter from Charles I and incorporated as the Governor and
Company of Massachusetts Bay. Under John Winthrop, a wise and able
man, they came over to Salem, bringing 1000 persons, with horses
and cattle, and during that year Charlestown, Chelsea, and a small
hilly peninsular, called by the Indians Shawmut and by the English
Trimountain, or Tremont, and soon changed to Boston, from which the
leading settlers had come, were settled. By 1634 nearly 4000 settlers
had arrived from England, coming usually in congregations, led by
their minister and settled together in parishes or townships until
there were about twenty.
In 1636 it was voted to establish a college three miles from Boston
at a place called New Town, now Cambridge. A young clergyman, John
Harvard, bequeathed his books and half his estate and the new college
was called by his name.
The colonization of New England was a complicated affair. The
Massachusetts Bay Colony was the largest. South of it was the
Plymouth Colony, the oldest. Then there was Rhode Island and
Providence Plantation and the Connecticut Colony. In 1643 these
four Colonies formed a confederation for defense called the United
Colonies of New England. In 1692 King William arranged things to
his liking; he annexed the Plymouth Colony to the Massachusetts Bay
Colony, but let Connecticut and Rhode Island keep their beloved
charters, and so the Plymouth Colony forever after remained a part of
Massachusetts.
The establishment of the New England Confederacy, the division of
the ancient church, the annexation to the Massachusetts Bay Colony,
the loss of wealth and population, marked the end of Plymouth as an
independent Colony, but not of the great influence which the Plymouth
Colony and the Pilgrims have exerted, and, we hope, will continue
to exert with increasing force, in perpetuating, as it originally
established, our democratic form of government.
[Illustration: (decorative icon)]
[Illustration: The signing of the Mayflower Compact in the cabin
of the Mayflower]