USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Bridgeport > Reports and papers. Fairfield County Historical Society, Bridgeport, Conn. 1882-1896-97 > Part 21
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*Bancroft.
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one month later, Monday, Dee. 21, they landed upon Ply- mouth Rock, and the history of the Plymouth Colony began. This was the vanguard of the Leyden Church, future migra- tions brought the rest in installments, and accessions from England as well, some desirable, some by no means so. It was the pioneers, however, who gave its character to the settlement, and moulded its destinies. Of these, at the date of the landing, Brewster was a man between fifty-five and sixty, Allerton was thirty-seven, Standish was in his thirty- sixth year, Bradford in his thirty-second, Carver was thirty, Dr. Fuller about that and Winslow twenty-five. These were the real beginners of New England, and a remarkable group they were. They had all been in Leyden, though not all had been in the original Serooby Church. Indeed, Standish nev- er joined the Church at all. But they were one in their counsel, and their work. "Let it not be grievous to you," it was written to them from England, "Let it not be grievous to yon, that you have been instruments to break the ice for others. The honor shall be yours to the world's end." Yes, the honor is theirs forever!
Now as to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. The transporta- tion of the Pilgrim Fathers from Leyden to New England, was of course an operation which had its business aspect. The financial burden of it had to be assumed like any other busi- ness operation, by competent parties. It was assumed by certain parties in London, who became partners in the under- taking, and bound the Emigrants by an agreement with them through which they expected to derive a share in the ultimate profits of the settlement. The relation of these Adventurers, as they were styled, to the enterprise was wholly a commer- cial one, yet naturally gave them not a little power to influ- ence the development of it. Some of these gentlemen were Puritans, who disrelished the fact that the Mayflower compa- ny were Separatists, from the first, and as time went on, in- creasingly so. When the Colony was an accomplished fact, they desired, and intrigued, to capture it, and bring it under Puritan control. They made repeated attempts in this diree- tion. They sent out Emigrants not in sympathy with the
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Pilgrims. They prevented John Robinson from joining the Colony. They sent out with their endorsement, a minister of their own selection, John Lyford, through whom they hoped to counter-work Robinson's influence, and carry their point. This was in 1624. The endeavor collapsed through the caution of the Church, and through the break-down of the moral character of the emissary. At length the Puritan Adventurers withdrew their cooperation, and the company broke up, and the Pilgrims finally bought out their London partners. But the success of the Plymouth Colony, and their persistent adherence to their Separatist principles led to the projection of another Colony, one that should be of the right sort, a Puritan Colony out and out. The times were favor- able for the enterprise. The Stuarts' tyranny was making many men in England ready for a migration, and thus the affair took shape, and it prospered. A charter was ob- tained for "the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay," many men of character and substance identified them- selves with it, and thus came about the settlement of Naum- keag, or Salem as it is now ealled, and the great Puritan exodus which laid the foundation of the State of Massachus- etts. I have nothing to say about the promoters of this movement to-night, except to emphasize that they were Puritans, resolutely determined to keep themselves beyond the reproach of Separation from the National Church of England. They came with a Royal charter, a body politic in virtue of that fact. They were careful to organize their Church by the authority of the government they had set up. They were careful to maintain the legal fiction of their Na- tionalism, even when they were resolved to practice "the positive part of Church reformation," as they said. which they had been forbidden to do in England. The Plymouth people looked on with some amusement, but cordially ten- dered to the new Church the right hand of fellowship. The antipathy of Puritan to Separatist in England had been very bitter. On this side of the Sea such an antipathy could not be maintained. There was nothing to feed it. John Robin- son had ventured upon a prediction. " There will be no dif-
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ferenee" he said, "between the conformable ministers and you, when they come to the practice of the ordinances out of the Kingdom of England." His words proved true, although he did not live to see the day. But the fact is not altered that at the outset. while the Plymouth men held on their way, the Bay Colonists made their own way. and exhibited both the excellences and the narrowness of their Puritan principles. They established an aristocracy, as truly as did the Virginia Colony, but it rested on a different basis. The suffrage was restricted to Church members. It was intended that only Christian men should be entrusted with power. The purpose was good, but it proved impracticable. In due course Demoeraey supplanted it, in effeet the Plymouth De- mocracy. All I wish to emphasize is the difference at the start. The Puritans eame in greater numbers, their Colony outran the Plymouth Colonyin political importance, and after one and seventy years absorbed it. But the Pilgrims were the pioneers, their point of departure from the Old World life was distinct, and the ideas which they brought with them and the institutions they inaugurated, time proved to be the more sagacious, the more liberal, the more enduring, the more expansive. Although their Colony became ultimately a town in Massachusetts, the Pilgrims' polity and the Pilgrims' pol- iey proved to have in them the greater vitality and the great- er adaptability, and supplanted in American life the narrower notions of the later comers. In this fact, as well as in their ten years' priority, lies the Pilgrims' claim to be the real founders of this Republic, and the fact becomes more and more elearly seen. That was correctly said which is written of them, " in pursuit of religious freedom, they established eivil liberty, and meaning only to found a church, gave birth to a nation, and in settling a town commeneed an empire." This must be their everlasting distinction.
Nor was it an accident. They did what they had been carefully prepared to do. Deep and solid foundations had been laid in the character and the convictions of the Pilgrim Fathers, upon which were to be builded not alone the super- structure of their own personal lives and fortunes in a new
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country, but of a social fabric in many particulars a far ad- vance upon any ideals men had as yet attempted to realize. Very remarkable were their religious and their political aspir- ations, very thoroughly matured their plans ; and both these were the ripe result of a special and a varied experience. They had suffered oppression until they became possessed by a burning desire of liberty. They had made sacrifices to their conscientious convictions of truth and duty, until those convictions were endeared to them beyond all price. They had become used to hardships and difficulties through a long exile, and had waxed strong of heart and of will in the process. They had been agriculturists in one land, and arti- zans and tradesmen in another, and in both had been indus- trious and frugal, and had lived beyond reproach. They had become firmly bound together by ties of brotherhood and of mutual obligation, and were profoundly impressed with the necessity of unity and order. They had been for half a gen- eration instructed, counselled, educated by a pastor of a large mind, a large heart, a liberal spirit, a wide culture, wonder- ful force of character and strength of purpose, until they were men of spiritual enlightenment, and of faith that no misgivings could weaken, no perils could daunt. They were men not so much prompted to adventure by the desire of personal advantage. as tilled with the conviction that they had a common service to render to their own generation, aud to coming generations, and to the Kingdom of Christ. With good reasons may it be doubted if there ever was such a com- pany of Colonists before or since, so wonderfully and vari- ously prepared for the precise task to which they were called in the Providence of God, or so conspienously enabled of God in the face of all difficulties, antagonismus and losses, to persist unto its accomplishment.
Some of the contributions of these pioneers to American civilization can never be forgotten by intelligent and patriotic American citizens. "Government of the people for the peo- ple by the people, " was Mr. Lincoln's apt description of De- mocracy. Where did it originate ? When and where did it begin ? History answers in the cabin of the Mayflower, on
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the 21st of Nov. 1520, when the Fathers made and signed their compaet combining themselves into a civil body. This was done in accordance with the counsels and instructions contained in John Robinson's farewell letter, and in face of the manifest necessity of their situation. It is a most inter- esting instrument, the first constitution of civil authority on American soil, the first written constitution of civil authority anywhere, resting government primarily and wholly upon the .consent and covenant of the governed : the germ of the con- stitution of this Republic, and the constitutions of its forty- seven States. It is impossible to overstate the significance of this great transaction to the future of the American people. The Colony had no royal charter until long after, and the charter when it came found it a self-complete society. Justly does Mr. Bancroft deelare the signing of the compact " the birth-hour of popular constitutional liberty." If in the eyes of Kings and Cabinets, and great Municipal Corporations that little organization in the cabin of the Mayflower would have seemed a subject for mirth, time has revealed that there was in it solemnity enough to make it memorable while the world stands ; the beginning of what was to fill and master a continent, and " shall never perish from the earth."
In another aspeet the little Colony at Plymouth was most noteworthy. There was to be seen for the first time just that relation between Church and State which exists in this Re- public to-day, by virtue of its constitution. There was a free Church and a free State. * "There was no identification of the one with the other : no subjection of either, in its own sphere. There was a free Church dependant upon the State for nothing but protection ; a free State in which the Church had no control otherwise than through its legitimate influ- ence in quickening and enlightening the moral sense of the people," Theoretically they were a detachment of the Church in Leyden, in charge of an Elder of that Church, who was a layman. Practically, as they were authorized to receive new members, and eleet new officers, they were what afterwards they became, the Church in Plymouth. Theoretically and
*Dr. L. Bacon.
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practically, they were a body politic, a civil society in Ply- mouth, with Carver or his successor, as their magistrate. The constituents were not identical, but of course the most of the men were members of the Church and of the State, but it was in the clear and definite apprehension that in the one relation their head was Christ, and in the other their head was King James, and between the two relations there was a coordination, but a mutual independence. Nor was this a legal fietion, but a reality. This idea of the independence and self-completeness of every body of believers, organized of its own impulse, and by its own act ; the idea that such a body is a true church, and as such is responsible to Christ alone, this largest conception of the inherent rights of be- lievers, and the sovereignty of the individual conscience ; this conception taking shape in the freest, and by consequence the most Catholic of all types of Christian communion, was unmistakably the ruling idea of the Mayflower men. It was that idea to which under Robinson's guidance they had suf- fered, and thought and felt their way. And it is this Demo- cratic Congregationalism of the Plymouth men which has survived and has been perpetuated, and not the aristocratie Congregationalism of the Puritans of the Bay. The measure of the influence which this conception of the Church exerted over the Plymouth men is seen in their superior tolerance. After the Puritan Church was organized at Salem, two heads of families protested against the departure from English usage upon which the Church had resolved. They were loyal members of the Church of England, and they preferred to adhere to the Prayer-book. They had their choice given them, of conforming to the Church in the Colony or return- ยท ing to England. They declined to conform and they were sent back. That was consistent with Puritan principles, but it could not have happened at Plymouth. I have said that Standish never was a member of the Pilgrim Church. There is some reason to believe that he was a Roman Catholic. But he was the trusted and beloved military leader of the Colony, none the less, and in all respects as free as any man. Nor was he the only member of the Plymouth community not
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connected with the Pilgrim Church. In rejoinder to a letter in which it had been reported to them that their enemies said they would have among them none but their own sort, they officially pronounced the assertion false, and declared that any honest men who would live peaceably and seek the com- mon good were welcome there, and that there were many among them, not members of their Church whom they liked well and of whose company they were glad. All they asked was that themselves should not be oppressed in the place whither they had come so far to find freedom. This liberal- ity of the Plymouth men was abundantly shown toward Roger Williams, and received ample acknowledgement by him in his letters, as it has in later times by the historians of Rhode Island.
This for example is what is said to this point by Arnold's History of Rhode Island. "The spirit of Robinson appeared to watch over his feeble flock on the coast of New England, long after his body was mouldering beneath the Cathedral Church at Leyden. Again their twelve year's residence in Holland had brought the Pilgrims in contact with other sects of Christians and given them a more Catholic spirit than pertained to those whose stay in England had been embittered by the strife of contending factions in the Estab- lished Church. The records show, that as they were distinct from the Puritans in England, and had been long separated from them in Holland, so did they preserve that distinction in America. The Pilgrims of Plymouth were more liberal in' feeling, and more tolerant in practice than the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay."
The appearance of the Quakers in New England was so much later than the era of the Pilgrim Fathers-thirty tive years after the Mayflower's coming-that it seems like an anachronism to speak of the two together; but it remains true that there never was any statute against Quakers in the Plymouth Colony, and when in 1659, an effort was made to have measures taken against them, by the Commissioners of the United Colonies, Isaac Robinson, the son of Pastor John Robinson, who was then one of the Commissioners on behalf
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of the Plymonth Colony, refused, and was removed from his office for befriending them. Cudworth, also, and Hatherly -Plymouth Colony men-suffered the same deprivation, and the former was deprived of his military rank. for the same reason. "I told them, " he says, " that as I was no Quaker, so I would be no persecutor."
I submit that men who were tolerant of religious diversity on principle, who were censured by their contemporaries for being tolerant in practice, who were acquitted of nny intoler- ant spirit by such as were the special victims of intolerance elsewhere, and who refused under severe pressure, to become a party to intolerant measures originating elsewhere-it is grossly unjust to brand with intolerance, because their Puri- tan contemporaries were intolerant. It is about time to learn to distinguish men who so widely differed! So far as the Pilgrim Fathers were concerned, it may be confidently af- firmed that Mrs. Hemans' lines are literally true of them :
"They left unstained what there they found,
Freedom to worship God."
The measure of the influence which the Democratic Con- gregationalism of the Pilgrims has exerted in the development of the religious life of America is by no means to be estimat- ed from the number of Congregational Churches, or of Con- gregationalists to be found in any denominational list. There is no Church polity on this continet to-day-I do not except from this remark the Roman Catholic-which is not modified by the free American atmosphere in which it stands, and this atmosphere you will not account for until you find that men breathed it first in the little commonwealth which the Pil- grims founded. Indeed, I seem to myself to recognize the exhalation of it in the writings of John Robinson himself.
A Connecticut Poet whom some of us remember with ven- eration, sings in lines with which we are all familiar :
" Laws, Freedom, Truth and Faith in God, Came with those exiles o'er the sea."
About the " laws," the " freedom," and the " faith," there can be no question. If there be any rhetorical exaggeration in saying truth was a passenger in the Mayflower, one thing
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must be recognized as beyond a peradventure; there came with the exiles a love of truth, a reverenee for her sanetity, and a delight in her pursuit, which became a permanent ele- ment of the society they founded, and have persisted to a wonderful degree in their descendants. I was extremely in- terested some two years sinee in a study by Dr. H. M. Dexter of the sworn inventory of Elder Brewster's library, which he brought to light from the Colonial Records, and illustrated with the wealth of his Bibliographieal learning. It was most interesting thus to get access to the intellectual life of this leader of the Pilgrim Fathers, and get a glimpse of that with which it was busied. One is surprised by the bulk of the collection, by its richness for its times, and by the fact that in only two years out of the twenty-three of Brewster's life at Plymouth, did he fail to add to it some fresh importations from England. The faet is set in the clearest light that this man was in touch with the best thought and learning of his age. He was but one of this Colony, but he was one, and doubtless in some sense a representative one. The leaders of the Pilgrims were unmistakably all of tl.em men of intelleet- ual foree, lovers of knowledge, and firm believers in educa- tion. And in this respect one need elaim no precedence for them as compared with the men of the Bay. But they were in no respeet behind them either. They made their own mark upon the intellectual life of New England. Is it an ae- eident that their sueeessors and representatives have been recognized as among the intellectual leaders of their time ? It was said a few years ago of the Congregational denomina- tion by one outside of it, that it was undoubtedly the fore- most intellectual power on the Continent of America. The president of a college presented to the Congregational Club of Boston, a year or more ago, a paper entitled " The Denom- ination which Educates." This paper brought out the fact that the Churches so described had been far in advance of any others in the founding of educational institutions, and had justified the claim on their behalf that they had been preeminently the educators of the American people. They have in these United States seven Theological Seminaries,
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and between forty and fifty Colleges, they have established an Academy or a Seminary for girls within easy reach of every Church of their order in the land, and now maintain eighty schools in the South and thirty-one in the far West. In foreign lauds these same American Congregationalists keep up fourteen Theological Schools, sixty-six Colleges and High Schools for boys, fifty-six similar institutions for girls, and nearly nine hundred common schools. I need not speak in the presence of this audience of the unequalled influence and prestige of the great University in our own neighborhood, nor of its origin in an Association of Congregational ministers. But it is in point to say that the example of these far-sighted founders of nearly two hundred years ago is still followed with unflinching courage, and unhesitating self sacrifices_in every new State in which Congregational ministers find a footing. A school in every district, a Church in every village, and a College within reach, is still the motto of these pioneers of Christian civilization. The old blood runs still, the old aspirations burn still, the old and ever new hopes sustain their advance. The sons of the Pilgrims and of the Puritans of the Bay, cannot forget that their fathers loved learning, and coveted for their descendants the facilities for acquiring it, with a passion only surpassed by their love of liberty it- self. I ask again, is this an accident, or is it the persistence of a certain type of moral force ?
The most memorable and characteristic fact about the Mayflower men is that they crossed the sea, and founded their Colony. asserting the sacred right of a free society to act for itself by the major vote, according to the light given it, in things saered and things secular, and in their own ex- ereise of this right revealed a political sagacity and a religious liberality whiel command the highest admiration. They were in advance of their contemporaries, they showed the path npon which their posterity have advanced into the larg- est civil and religious liberty as yet enjoyed by mankind. Beyond a question, it seems to me, they were the true begin- ners of this magnificent Republic.
Extraordinary sometimes is the contrast between the meas-
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ures adopted by human wisdom and those chosen in the counsels of God. The sailing of the invincible Armada from the coast of Spain, in the end of May, 1588, for the conquest of England, was an event most imposing. It was fitted out by the greatest empire of the age. To the eyes of that day the ships which composed it seemed enormous. The number of them seemed immense. The preparations for this expedi- tion had been costly, and the expectations concerning it were vast. It set out in the midst of impressive religious ceremo- nies. It was deemed sufficient not only easily to overwhelm England, but to conquer the worid. Now that sort of enter- prise would commend itself to human wisdom. That looked like business. From such an endeavor men would anticipate great results. But from the little vessel crowded to discom- fort, which dropped out of the port of Plymouth in England. on the 6th of Sept. 1620, for a voyage across the ocean to an unknown wilderness, which they would reach in the depth of winter, who would have anticipated any distinguished per- formance ? Who would have believed that in her went the seeds of empire ! How foolish would have seemed the pre- diction that her passengers would accomplish a task vastly more significant to mankind than any measure of state then engaging the Cabinet of England or of Spain either! But the Armada in a few weeks met its fate in a disastrous over- throw, which filled Spain with mourning, and became the mockery of her foes ; and the Mayflower brought to Plymouth Rock the Pilgrim Fathers, whose landing is commemorated in the Palace of the British Parliament, and in the Capitol at Washington, as one of the most memorable scenes of history, and unmistakably was the most fruitful event of the seven- teenth century. Verily the weakness which is of God is stronger than the might which is of men.
Some of the Pilgrim Fathers lived to exult in what they had wrought, or as they would piously have said, in what God had wrought by them. But it is interesting to reflect how little they imagined the actual measure of their work. Far-sighted as they were, how impossible was it for them to apprehend the dimensions unto which it has expanded al-
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ready, not to speak of what the future shall reveal. "They builded better than they knew," yes, indeed, but they builded. They " did the duty that they saw." in magnanmity and her- oism, and the issue has crowned their work. Men who have never shown a thousandth part their moral earnestness, or wrought a millionth part their service to mankind, find it easy to gibe at them. Critics having with microscopie observa- tion examined the record of their lives and labors, and found them not in all respects correspondent with the highest ideals of the last quarter of the nineteenth century, make haste to decry them, and find the ears of the self-indulgent more than ready to listen. But this surprises no one, and signifies nothing. The world in the long run does justice to the men of deeds. The men of quips and carping words are soon for- gotten. The heroes of a great fight can easily endure the mockery of carpet knights. And as generations pass, and the centuries roll on, there stands out ever more clearly upon the page of history the fact that among the mighty souls lifted by God's grace, and guided by God's providence to great and important services to the world's progress, and to Christ's Kingdom on earth. the men of the Mayflower are en- titled by what they dared and suffered, and wrought, and founded, to rank among the largest minded, the bravest, the noblest, the most worthy of remembrance. Within the past year men have set up new memorials of them, among these a monument on the spot their feet last trod in old Plymouth, has been erected by that Municipality. Greener grows their memory and fairer their fame. But after all, the best com- memoration of them is the continuance in the life of the American people of the spiritual forces which were generated by their love of truth, their jealousy for freedom, their rev- erence for law, their zeal in behalf of righteousness, their all conquering faith in God. This is as they would have it. Though long dead, they yet speak, to say to their posterity, "Not unto us, not unto us, but unto God be all the glory!"
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