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THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
( The Old First Church of Scrooby, Holland, the Mayflower, and Plymouth)
NINE HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS
Selected and edited by GEORGE N. MARSHALL from the writings of John Cuckson, Floyd J. Taylor, J. Ellsworth Kalas, Henry W. Royal, Arthur Lord, George N. Marshall, Arthur B. Whitney, Alfred Rodman Hussey, and Fred A. Jenks
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01829 7967
GC 974.402 P74PLM
THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
The Church of the Pilgrim Fathers
Selected and edited by
GEORGE N. MARSHALL from the writings of
JOHN CUCKSON, FLOYD J. TAYLOR, J. ELLSWORTH KALAS, HENRY W. ROYAL, ARTHUR LORD, GEORGE N. MARSHALL, ARTHUR B. WHITNEY, ALFRED RODMAN HUSSEY, and FRED A. JENKS
BrP
Boston .
THE BEACON PRESS
1950
Copyright 1950 THE BEACON PRESS
Printed in U.S.A.
Contents
EDITOR'S NOTE .
vii
·
ILLUSTRATIONS .
ix
FOREWORD: "Old First"
.
xvii
I: GENESIS OF THE PILGRIM CHURCH
3
by John Cuckson
II: JOHN ROBINSON: TWO MODERN STUDIES
SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY LIBERAL
20
by Floyd J. Taylor
THE MAN WHO TAUGHT THE PILGRIMS .
25
by J. Ellsworth Kalas
III: THE PILGRIMS AND EARLY PLYMOUTH
33
by Henry W. Royal
IV: THE PILGRIMS' CHURCH IN PLYMOUTH
46
by Arthur Lord
V: THE HISTORICAL PILGRIM CHURCH AND THE
MODERN WITNESS
67
.
.
by George N. Marshall
VI: THE NATIONAL MEMORIAL PILGRIM CHURCH .
86
by Arthur B. Whitney and George N.
Marshall
VII: WHY A UNITARIAN CHURCH?
100
by Alfred Rodman Hussey
APPENDIX: SOME HISTORICAL NOTES ON THE FIRST
CHURCH
·
111
by Fred A. Jenks
SUGGESTED READING LIST
137
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHORS
138
INDEX .
.
141
V
Editor's Note
WHEN THE BEACON PRESS first suggested that I venture to prepare a new manuscript on the Pilgrims' legacy as mir- rored through the church they founded, I was enthusiastic about the prospect. Turning to the older efforts I became convinced that what was most needed was a new gathering of existing material, told by master scholars and historians who had given the better part of their lives to the study, rather than a new effort by a single person. This volume is therefore commended to the general public as the fruit of a group of scholars and Plymouth historians rather than as the work of one man. Although each essay was originally written to stand alone, and there is some repetitive ma- terial, the essays will be found to complement one another with their individual approaches to occasionally similar subject matter.
Arthur Lord's work is most adequately covered in the essay included. His little book of Colver Lectures deliv- ered at Brown University in 1920 is still the single most important book on Plymouth and the Pilgrims. John Cuckson was a scholar of great distinction; his historical interest brought him to Plymouth at the height of his career. He along with the five succeeding ministers of the First Parish - the whole of its twentieth-century ministry up to date - are represented here. Also included in this volume are Fred A. Jenks, a research historian of Plym- outh; and Henry W. Royal, who served for a quarter- century as the clerk of the First Parish, and a quarter-
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EDITOR'S NOTE
century as secretary of the Pilgrim Society and curator of Pilgrim Hall.
The compiler, who is the present minister, is greatly indebted to Henry W. Royal, Miss Rose Briggs, Miss Katharine Lord, and Miss Marion Park for reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions. Miss Briggs, daughter of Dean Briggs of Harvard College, is considered the most authentic source of Pilgrim data in Plymouth; Miss Lord, president emeritus of the Winsor School, and one time faculty member at Bryn Mawr College, is a Plymouth resident with the virtue of complete integrity for fact; so also is Miss Marion Park, president emeritus of Bryn Mawr College. While much that is worthwhile in this compilation is due to their valuable suggestions, in matters of preference and in decisions regarding the in- clusion of a few incidents in the compiler's own essays, the author has reserved to himself the right of final decision. Consequently he alone is responsible for the final form of the manuscript.
Valuable aid in checking the manuscript was given by Bruce F. Smith who generously undertook the arduous task of reading the proofs and advising on consistency throughout the various chapters.
Appreciation is also extended to the Beacon Press for conceiving the original plan. Much laborious work was done in the transcribing of earlier manuscripts and in preparing the final draft by Miss Doris Ambrose. To her, as to my wife, Barbara A. Marshall, my sincerest apprecia- tion is extended.
GEORGE N. MARSHALL
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Illustrations
THE FLAVOR OF THE PILGRIM SAGA may never be adequately captured in pictures because of the dearth of contemporary illustrations. Only one authentic portrait of a Pilgrim Father is known, that of Edward Winslow in Pilgrim Hall. We pre- sent here a few pictures of buildings and places familiar to them, and others that mark the continuing stream of their church throughout the subsequent centuries.
Three English photographs are included: the Scrooby Manor House, where the Pilgrim congregation met and worshiped; the Old Hall, Gainsborough, where the original Separatist group of Clyfton and Robinson met in 1602; and the quaint doorway of the church in Austerfield, in which William Bradford was christened and reared, and which was the inspiration for the doorway of the present meetinghouse. of the Pilgrim memorial church of the First Parish.
The Dutch photographs include the church in Delftshaven (whose threshold is now in the First Parish church in Plym- outh), where the Pilgrims worshiped before sailing for the New World; and a waterfront scene at Delftshaven, the point of embarkation for the New World. The John Robinson memorial is typical of the many in Leyden to the Pilgrim sojourn there.
The four meetinghouse pictures are self-explanatory. The drawings, made by Mrs. Mary Drew Davis, hang in the First Church. The first sketch, that of the building of 1683, is a copy of an ancient drawing in Pilgrim Hall, formerly in the possession of the family of William S. Russell.
The photographs of the present meetinghouse, and of the central windows depicting the signing of the Mayflower Com-
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X
ILLUSTRATIONS
pact, were made by Walter Rosenblum. The spirit captured in the Compact window, rising above the open Bible on the John Howland pulpit, and flanked by the religious-liberty and civil-liberty windows, brings to mind the spirit of John Robin- son: "The. Lord hath more truth and light yet to break forth from out his Holy Word."
The windows in the front of the church building were photographed by Joseph T. Dickson. The three-paneled window of the Pilgrim embarkation from Delftshaven - with John Robinson preaching his farewell sermon and the Speed- well about to sail - is a truly inspiring sight. The smaller win- dows carry the story of the Pilgrim enterprise to the shores of New Plymouth. We see the landing on Plymouth Rock, the signing of the peace treaty with Massasoit, and the scene of the first trial by jury in the Western Hemisphere. From another panel of windows, we have selected that of the de- struction of the Pilgrim press in Choir Alley, Leyden - an early instance of restriction of the press, when the English forced the Dutch government, by terms of a treaty for mutual protection, to disband a press considered scurrilous to the English crown. This event convinced the Pilgrims that they must flee even farther to escape the long arm of the British king. These last four windows are made from English medieval glass. All the stained or colored glass windows in the church were designed by the American artist Edward Peck Sperry.
The church auditorium, shown during a service of worship, was photographed by John Armstrong, who also photographed the re-enactment of the Pilgrim walk to church, coming up Town Square just in front of the church. Each Friday after- noon in August, this simple and significant pageantry is per- formed by the townspeople. It is popularly called the "Pilgrim Progress." The procession goes to the site of the Fort on top of the hill, where words of Pilgrim faith and courage are read.
OLD HALL, GAINSBOROUGH
THE BRADFORD DOORWAY
SCROOBY MANOR
30.20
IN MEMORY OF JOHN ROBINSON
PASTOR OF THE ENGLISH CHURCH IN LEYDEN
1609 1625 HIS BROADLY TOLERANT MIND GUIDED AND DEVELOPED THE RELIGIOUS LIFE OF
THE PILGRIMS OF THE MAYFLOWER
OF HIM THESE WALLS ENSHRINE ALL THAT WAS MORIAL HIS UNDYING : SPIRIT>
STILL DOMINATES THE CONSCIENCES OF A MIGHTY NATION IN THE LAND BEYOND THE SEAS
NHÀ TABLET MAS TNICIED BY THE GENERAL SOCIETY OF MAYFLENVER TO THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A.D. 1928.
,A LEYDEN MEMORIAL
--
***********
DELFTSHAVEN CHURCH
POINT OF EMBARKATION
um
1683
1
20
1744
1831
1899
SIGNING OF THE COMPACT
JOHN ROBINSON'S FAREWELL SERMON
THE LANDING
TREATY WITH MASSASOIT
FIRST TRIAL BY JURY
DESTRUCTION OF THE PILGRIM'S PRESS IN LEYDEN
THE MODERN CHURCH
JOHN MORGAN CỤ
Sy.
THE PILGRIMS WALK AGAIN
Foreword
"OLD FIRST"
THE PILGRIM TRADITION is strong throughout America, and in churches of many faiths references and names are often used to suggest the Pilgrim heritage. Undoubtedly this is as it should be, for the Pilgrim tradition is the basis of our democratic culture in America. The Mayflower Com- pact was the original American instrument of democratic government. The town-meeting concept was established by the Pilgrim Fathers, as was the annual election of offi- cers. They sought to establish religious freedom and safe- guard it with civil liberty. They held the first trial by jury in the western hemisphere in 1624. The civil and religious principles to which they bore witness have so greatly in- fluenced the evolution of American thought, that the Pilgrim Fathers have come to typify some of the elements of our common heritage which we hold closest to our hearts.
If the Pilgrim colony at Plymouth had not become the core of the New England settlements - the first and central settlement - it is entirely probable that the colonization of America, and the type of settlements evolving, might have been organized in an undemocratic fashion, and hence shaped our heritage in a far different way. We recall that the Massachusetts Puritans who followed the Pilgrims and settled in the Boston Bay area embraced a concept dif-
xvii
xviii
FOREWORD
ferent from that of the Pilgrim Separatists. Aboard ship, their minister, Francis Higginson, preached: "We will not say as the Separatists were wont to say at their leaving of England, Farewell Babylon! Farewell Rome! But we will say, Farewell, dear England. Farewell, the church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of Eng- land. . . . "
And yet, when the Puritans organized their church in Salem that year, and installed their ministers without bene- fit of bishops, but with the aid of Deacon Samuel Fuller of Plymouth Colony, they had departed from the original premise of their effort, as did the First Church of Boston (Charlestown) immediately afterward. Governor Brad- ford, Elder Brewster, and Deacon Fuller participated in the installation of the Salem church, and were instrumental in having the Book of Common Prayer banished from use. For objecting to this, two members of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were promptly returned to England as "schis- matiques" when they recalled their earlier intentions. So quickly was "the Pilgrim saddle on the Bay horse," as one of their members remarked not too long afterward.
There is reason, therefore, for the general acceptance of the Pilgrim tradition as our indigenous and common birth- right. It gives us a liberal, progressive and democratic tradition as old as the New England adventure itself. Not as liberal nor as progressive nor as democratic as we today, perhaps, but certainly far more so than any other religious or civil venture of that time. And as the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, New Haven, Rhode Is- land, and the northern settlements and outposts grew up around it, its influence radiated. The Plymouth colony
xix
FOREWORD
was to work as a leaven, for it was still significant that the Pilgrim and Puritan did not become identical move- ments. The Puritans became conformists in religious doctrine and manners. The Pilgrims never sacrificed their individual rights. The Puritans rapidly became Calvinis- tic; the Pilgrims followed the liberal tradition of their first pastor, John Robinson. Edward Winslow recorded Robin- son's farewell sermon thus:
[Robinson] took occasion also miserably to bewail the state and condition of the Reformed Churches who were come to a period in their religion and would go no further than the in- struments of their reformation. As for example: the Lutherans they could not be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; for whatever part of God's will he had further imparted or re- vealed to Calvin, they would rather die than embrace it. And so also, saith he, you see the Calvinists they stick where he left them, - a misery much to be lamented. . .
To borrow that wonderful phrase of Emerson's, Calvinism was but "a whip to the mind" of the Pilgrims.
The history of their church was to emphasize this liberal- ity. The Pilgrims were stern, but also humane and gener- ous. They allowed differences of theological opinion to exist, so long as moral conduct was maintained. They permitted ministers to vary in the administration of the sacraments, so long as there were clergymen to minister to those of different convictions. They asked ministers to agree to honor the contrary religious practices of members of the congregation. Roger Williams served them for a while, and though some considered his views unstable, he departed the parish an honored teacher, at his own desire, and the Pilgrims would gladly have welcomed him back
XX
FOREWORD
following his banishment from the Massachusetts Bay Colony.
The church of the Pilgrim Fathers has continued from the earliest settlement to the present time, and flourishes still. Though Governor Bradford wrote despairingly of "this poore church left like an ancient mother, growne olde, and forsaken of her children . . . " as members withdrew to establish the distant settlements of Duxbury, Marsh- field, and Eastham, the "poore mother" continued and in time renewed herself.
It stands today, a mighty witness to the power of faith and to the Pilgrim spirit. On the slope of the hill where the Pilgrims first worshipped in that bleak December of 1620, in its fifth meeting house, its records unbroken, and its services continuous, the Plymouth Church stands, having spanned the turbulence of over three and a quarter cen- turies of social growth and upheaval.
It is often forgotten that the Pilgrim Fathers who founded a colony in the name of their faith, were the founders of a church and a parish; and that this same church and parish exist today, the continuing flame of that original gathering. It is a church of unbroken witness and continuity of faith with those founding fathers, rededicated to its purpose in every generation. Its present congregation maintains a successive continuity of worship with the Pil- grim band of the Mayflower. It is, today, the oldest organi- zation of any kind in America.
G. N. M.
THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
I The Genesis of the Pilgrim Church
BY JOHN CUCKSON
THE STORY OF THE GENESIS of the Pilgrim movement, its rise in England, the flight of its founders to Holland, the perilous voyage across the Atlantic, the founding of a new colony in America in the depths of winter and among hostile savages, the annals of persecution, suffering and death, constitute one of the most interesting and inspiring epics in the history of religion. It began at the opening of the seventeenth century. England had officially renounced the ecclesiastical authority of Pope Clement VII and ac- cepted that of Henry VIII. But, as the ideas, principles and habits of a nation in religious matters are not easily transplanted, the incipient Protestantism of the age was only a crude growth. The passage from the political theology of the Vatican to the theological politics of Lambeth Palace was but a short step towards the complete enfranchisement of the individual mind and conscience, which is the logical result of the Protestant principle. People who had been disciplined for ages to mistrust their
Adapted from A Brief History of the First Church in Plymouth (Boston, 1901) ; reissued in 1920 (Beacon Press, Boston) .
3
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THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
own faculties in religious thinking were slow to leave what seemed to them safe anchorage, and to trust their souls to the unauthorized guidance of unconventional re- formers, and their churches to the secular power. Many of them parted from the Papacy with reluctance, only to cling to Episcopacy which, at that time, was the nearest approach to it - the outer line of freedom, beyond which was nothing but chaos. Others, like the Presbyterians, Brown- ists, Anabaptists and Independents felt and acted more courageously, and moved as if they were marching on a road with numerous hostelries, but where there was no rest for their feet short of complete liberty for the in- dividual conscience.
The reigns of Mary and Elizabeth were spotted with all sorts of heresies and schisms, and it was not strange, there- fore, that the bishops of Rome and the New Church of England looked upon the Reformation in Europe and the British Isles as an ecclesiastical Frankenstein, over which they might lose control to the lasting harm of the Christian religion. It appeared to them, in all its crude shapes, as a many-headed monster which they were forced to combat even unto death, and with whatever weapons they could command.
The translation of the Scriptures into the vernacular, and the slow dissemination of biblical knowledge among the people had led independent and vigorous minds to read and think for themselves, and to study the Bible with- out gloss or comment. They brought to this study an eager thirst for the truth, and an unwarped judgment which no creed could inspire. To know that they were privileged to read the sacred message themselves, and with such light as God had given them, and to feel that it was their su-
5
THE GENESIS OF THE PILGRIM CHURCH
preme duty to stand firmly by their own convictions and the dictates of conscience, gave them that moral confidence in the divineness of their mission, which in larger measure filled the souls of Luther, Melancthon, Calvin and Knox, when they took their faith undiluted from the Gospels. There was a reality to their convictions when they read the clear and simple language of the Scriptures, a reality which did not come to them as they listened to the second- hand jargon of the creeds. At last they were satisfied that the teachings of the New Testament and the early cen- turies of Christianity were, in a marked degree, different from the conflicting and confusing dogmas of later ages. No wonder, then, that so many of them decided to re- nounce "the traditions of the elders," the mere husks of doctrinal controversy, and take their faith from the Gos- pels themselves, and their ecclesiastical polity from the book of Acts and St. Paul's Epistles. The Bible, as they under- stood it, thus became the charter of their religious belief, and in its exposition, they were satisfied that neither church nor priest held exclusive rights or privileges. Christianity as Christ and the Apostles taught it, with individual free- dom of mind and conscience, and without coercion and persecution, became the watchword of thousands of sturdy Protestants on whom the light of the Reformation was dawning.
There never had been a great religious party of Anglo- Saxons, in any generation, who set the right of private judgment and the imperative duty of supreme loyalty to truth more boldly in the forefront of their lives than did our sturdy Pilgrim Fathers. False men and hypocrites crept into their ranks, but the great old leaders, who were deeply conscientious and devout, and who suffered in
6
THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
dark days, have few equals in any age of the world's his- tory. The characteristic note of their piety was the sovereign importance which it attached to truth, to the secret and free intercourse of every living soul with God, and a perfect loyalty to God's will; a piety theirs, not of holy places or of sacred ritual, or of symbols that kindled the imagination - it was a piety personal, intimate and inward; one that each man showed to his Maker, entering alone, as they put it, into covenant with God, through Jesus Christ. It was that lonely communion of man with God, in which authority demands and obedience yields, and with which no stranger was permitted to meddle that made them great, and their lives, bereft of all else, still worth living. For that, they were prepared to suffer and endure; for that, they were contented like Abraham to follow the divine behest, going out, not knowing whither they went, singlehanded, if need be; at all cost, with loss of home and possessions, if so be, they might better acquit them like men, and honor their integrity. Theirs was a serious and masterful religion, not to be kept, but with suffering and loss. It was a religion that gripped men by their consciences, and laid on their souls the awful mandate of Heaven, and ruled them by the voice of God.
But, it may be asked, did not this intensity of faith lead many of them into narrowness and fanaticism? Were they not uncomfortable people to live with? In the midst of mendacity, frivolity, immorality, yes; but, surrounded by veracity, courage, virtue, no. The Pilgrim was unhappy himself, and the source of unhappiness to others in the midst of conditions which aroused his moral indignation; but he was contented and peaceful enough, in any environ- ment, which harmonized with personal and public virtue.
7
THE GENESIS OF THE PILGRIM CHURCH
Needless to say, the stalwart fathers were not perfect. They lived without the light of modern science and learning. They did not, and could not, understand the Scriptures as they are understood today; they did not have the aid of modern scholarship to guide them in a more accurate in- terpretation of the Bible; many of them did less than justice to the natural beauties of Creation and the innocent joys of life; they set the stern sovereignty of God above the Father's love; but to say this is only to say that they did their best in a bad time. Exaggerations, limitations, mistakes cling to men in every age; but in spite of these, the great thing was that they bore their testimony to truth and asserted their freedom in an age when men cared nothing for the one, and were doing their best to crush the other. It did not occur to them to stop and parley with prudent considerations, or to wait and see what loyalty to righteousness would cost them; they heard the divine voice, and sought to make it the rule of their lives, preferring the life of heroic duty with all its hard ex- perience, to a useless enjoyment of social respectability or self-indulgence.
Our Pilgrim Fathers fled from persecution not only be- cause of their dissenting opinions, but also from the dead- ening and desolating influence of Sacerdotalism and cere- mony. The creeds had entered into the Book of Common Prayer, and religion among their contemporaries had degenerated into superstitious formality. Devotional litur- gies rested upon a framework of dogma in which they did not believe, and were full of phrases and ascriptions they could not honestly repeat. It was to get rid of this, quite as much as to escape the tyranny of false dogmas, that they reluctantly but resolutely forsook the Church, and wor-
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THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS
shipped apart in the cold shadow of despised dissent.
They were not sectaries delighting in separation. For a long period they hesitated to break away from the ancient church with its prestige and noble history. They refused to organize themselves or to ordain their own ministers until nothing else was left for them to do. The love of union and fellowship was deep and strong within them, but they felt it must be union in the midst of diversity, the fellowship of minds which cannot think alike, and not the profligate sentimentalism which on the surface, but nowhere else, looks like a love-feast of sects.
In this respect, we have much to learn from them. Our own age, which differs so widely from theirs, is yet, in the matter of religious fellowship on a broad and catholic basis, in much the same condition. If we imagine that the evils against which they contended have passed away, we imagine a vain thing. The old ecclesiastical spirit of in- tolerance and exclusion, though harmless now compared with what it was three centuries ago, is with us still. Ex- cept among comparatively few minds in every church, religion is a thing of sects and creeds, and the lines of separation are strictly drawn. The spirit of the age is in advance of the churches and rebukes bigotry every time it shows itself; but the barriers between one ecclesiastical sheepfold and another are as high and as strong as ever, ex- cept in isolated spots. The tasks which engaged our spirit- ual forefathers are yet unfinished, and the duties which shaped the action of Robinson, Brewster, Bradford, and Winslow, have lost none of their imperativeness for this generation. Love and service have not yet supplanted dogma and exclusiveness as the foundation of fellowship, although the teaching of Jesus was so clear and emphatic.
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