USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > West Bridgewater > Proceedings of the 250th anniversary of Old Bridgewater, Mass. at West Bridgewater, Massachusetts, June 13, 1906 > Part 3
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"The deep pulsations of the world,
Æonian music measuring out the Steps of Time, the Shocks of Chance, The blows of Death."
can perceive that those pilgrims were following the path of des- tiny, that they were transferring from Europe to America the struggle of the centuries between that theory of government in church and state which holds that the head of each is the source of all authority therein, and that which holds that all govern- ment is of the people, for the people, by the people ; in other words, between absolutism and democracy.
A brief survey of the political and ecclesiastical condition of Europe at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th
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centuries, and of the events which preceded and marked that epoch, will reveal the causes which produced the remarkable band of men and women who pointed out the westward course of liberty as well as of empire in the wilderness. It will afford a dark background against which the shining virtues and characters of the pilgrims stand forth with vividness.
The barbarian hordes which from the north and east swept in successive waves over the Roman empire, gradually dissolved the political bonds which for centuries held together the subject races and tribes of that vast empire in one system of govern- ment, at length wrought its downfall.
Under Roman rule national life and spirit were gradually extinguished in the subject provinces. Consequently when that rule was over-thrown confusion worse confounded prevailed. All Europe was divided into a vast number of petty princi- palities, mutually hostile and belligerent. The church was the only bond which seemed capable of holding human society together. In this chaos of barbarism, ignorance and super- stition, the light of civilization was almost extinguished. The art of war alone flourished, all other arts were lost and well-nigh forgotten. The introduction of feudalism completed the work of destroying the rights and liberties of the masses and created a privileged and ruling class.
In England the Norman conquest did two things of great value and importance which greatly mitigated the evils of feudal rule which it introduced. It gradually welded together the warring Teutonic tribes into a nation, and it created in that country, out of the chief men of the Saxons, Angles and Danes, the finest middle class which the world has ever seen. These were the men who opposed their somewhat dull but sturdy and powerful intellects to the haughty, keen aggressive Norman and by patient endurance won for themselves and for their posterity the liberties which England and America now enjoy. It was to this class that the Pilgrim Fathers belonged. There is probably not a name of Norman origin in the list of Mayflower passen- gers, and not one among the names of the first settlers of Bridgewater.
The diffusion of knowledge which followed the discovery of
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the art of printing, about the middle of the 15th century, gave a mighty impulse to the cause of civil and religious freedom. The printing press in the hands of the advocates of liberty proved a powerful engine for promoting the spread of liberal ideas. In the end it triumphed over the rack and scaffold and all the devilish enginery of torture, the sight of which now exhibited in the museums and unused dungeons of Europe fills the soul with horror and pity, not only for the men who suffered by, but also for the men who used, such human instruments of oppres- sion.
Contemporaneous with the discovery of the art of printing happened an event in a distant quarter of the world which indirectly gave the death blow to decaying feudalism in Europe and aroused the nations from drowsy medievalism to the keen, vigorous life of modern times. It added tenfold power to the printing press as a means of human enlightenment. The capture of Constantinople by the Turks in the middle of the fifteenth century drove to western Europe and especially to Italy a multitude of scholars and artists who, congregated in that remote metropolis, the gateway of the east and west, had preserved Greek philosophy, learning and art which had made Rome illustrious but which had been well nigh blotted out by the overwhelming disasters of the early centuries of the Chris- tian era. A great revival of learning at once sprang up. Popes, kings and princes like the Medici at Florence, eagerly welcomed the new movement and lent it their powerful aid, little recking that they were developing forces that would soon shake their thrones and ultimately destroy absolutism in church and state.
The publication at Nuremberg, about the end of the same century, of Copernicus' work, "The Revolution of the Heavenly Bodies," followed by the teaching of Bruno and the discoveries of Gallileo in the same field, completely revolutionized men's ideas of the nature of the universe and greatly enlarged the field of human knowledge. Moreover, the stout and prolonged resistance which the church made to the new astronomy whereby the earth was proved not to be the center of the universe, and to be round and to rotate upon its axis, weakened its hold upon intelligent men and strengthened the spirit of
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free inquiry.
The discovery of America by Columbus and the exploration of its coasts by Americus Vespucci, the circumnavigation of the globe by Magellan and the voyages of the Cabots, revealing a new world as a field for exploration and possession, powerfully stimulated human thought and enterprise.
In no part of the world did the great movement for the intellectual emancipation of mankind set in motion and impelled by these epoch-making events, more powerfully affect the political, social and religious life of the people than in England. The new learning introduced into England from Italy by John Colet and others greatly flourished. Oxford became the rival of Padua and Bologna. The cause of liberal learning was warmly espoused and supported by Warham, Archbishop of Canterbury, Primate of England, of whom Greene says, "Few men realized so thoroughly as Warham, the new conception of an intellectual and moral equality before which the old social distinctions of the world were to vanish away."
The expansion and diffusion of knowledge for a few years was rapid and extensive. It is said that during the last thirty years of the fifteenth century ten thousand editions of books and pamphlets were published throughout Europe.
But the fair dawn of this auspicious day was soon overcast with clouds. Others besides Warham were not long in discov- ering the tendencies of the Renaissance. The spirit of personal independence and the assertion of the right of the individual to exercise his judgment upon questions of church and state which had begun to appear did not long escape the notice of those whose power was dependent upon a totally different conception of the rights of the people. Then began the mighty conflict which for the greater part of two centuries made all Europe an armed camp and drenched the land with rivers of blood. All the resources of powers long entrenched in law and custom were brought to bear to crush the new and, to them, dangerous ideas. To that end massacres, slaughters, proscriptions assassi- nations, tortures and all the methods which cunning and cruelty could devise were employed. But all in vain.
In vain did Catherine de Medici prevail upon her weak son
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to issue the order which has made St. Bartholomew's day a day of horror and execration.
In vain did Charles V and his son, Philip II, of Spain, in a mighty effort to establish the supremacy of absolutism throughout Europe, summon to their cause all their allies and drain their treasury in long wars against Holland and Germany.
In vain did Philip, when baffled and defeated, procure the assassination of William of Nassau, the foremost military com- mander, and most liberal minded statesman of his day, an earlier Washington, who, like him, was called the father of his country.
In vain did the same monarch for years tax to the utmost resources of his realm in building and equipping the Great Armada and launching it against England, whose aid and support was preserving the existence of the Dutch nation.
But no, not in vain were the death and sufferings of the martyrs of liberty during those weary years of horror ; not in vain did William of Nassau cut the dykes and cover his country with a new deluge that he might sail to the relief of Leyden ; not in vain was the stubborn and desperate resistance of the Dutch; not in vain did Philip exhaust his resources in his gigantic attempt to crush stout hearted Elizabeth and destroy the liberties of her people.
The cause of humanity hung on the issuse of that conflict. The triumph of the champions of liberty was our triumph.
The crippling of the Spanish empire in that conflict presaged its downfall as a world power and cleared the way for English colonists on American shores. It taught England the momentous lesson also that her safety and her empire lay in her navy. The raids of Sir Francis Drake upon the Spanish possessions in America demonstrated the weakness of Spain and the superiority of British ships and seamen. Thenceforth English colonists had less cause to fear the fate of the Huguenot colony in Florida slaughtered by Spaniards.
But although a great contest for liberty had been won, the conflict was by no means ended. The events of the 17th century, though enacted on a smaller stage, were no less impor- tant than those preceeding it. No one has described this
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conflict more fairly than the late John Fiske, who says : "It is not too much to say that in the 17th century the entire political future of mankind was staked upon the questions which were at issue in England. To keep the sacred flame of liberty alive required such a concurrence of conditions that had our fore- fathers then succumbed in the strife, it is hard to imagine how or where the failure could have been repaired."
The most important of those conditions as we can now clearly perceive, was the enlistment of the religious sentiments of the people on the side of freedom.
When Henry the VIII threw off all allegiance to the Church of Rome and established the Church of England, he succeeded not by reason of his personal influence which was then not great, but because the English people were ready for the change ; because the doctrines which Wickliffe long before had taught and disseminated throughout England by his lay preachers still lived in the minds of the common people, and because they were unwilling to submit to any rule, civil or ecclesiastical, which would deprive them of their ancient rights and liberties won with infinite effort from successive kings and embodied in Magna Charta and other charters, the parliament and the statutes of praemunire which forbade the acknowledg- ment of any earthly authority to be higher than the English crown.
It was certainly most unfortunate and deplorable that religious strife was added to civil dissensions, but the facts need not be passed over in silence, especially when it is considered that the Catholic colonists of Maryland who also suffered perse- cution by the Church of England, equalled, if they did not surpass, the Protestants of Plymouth in religious toleration. It was Protestantism mainly adopted by the middle classes which upheld the throne of Henry VIII and Elizabeth against foreign assaults and in the next century overthrew the throne of Charles I and established representative and constitutional government on broad and firm foundations which have never since been shaken.
Of all Protestants the most advanced in their ideas of political and religious liberty were the Separatists, or as they
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were called by their enemies, the Brownists, though they them- selves earnestly repudiated the name. The spiritual lineage of this folk has been traced back to Wickliffe. His doctrines were carried to their logical conclusions by them. They were the Puritans of the Puritans. Yet when the Church of England in its turn became the opponent of civil and religious freedom, and persecuted even to the death those who advocated the very · principles which gave birth to that church, the Puritans within that church stood aloof and saw unmoved Elizabeth and James mercilessly persecute and harry the independents or Separatists and drive them from their homes in England which they loved
so well. But that band of pilgrims who came from Scrooby and Gainsborough to Boston in a vain attempt to take ship for Holland, whose leaders were imprisoned in the narrow cells of the gaol beneath the ancient guildhall, at least suggested, if they did not inspire, the Puritan emigration from that city to the Boston of New England about twenty-five years later. All things conspired to compel the exodus of the Pilgrims from England. Cast out from their homeland, they knew that an asylum awaited them across the narrow sea to the south. Already many Englishmen of the same faith had sought refuge in that land of freedom. At least two Separatist congregations had been formed in Amsterdam, one of which was composed of men from the same part of England.
Of their repeated and finally successful attempts to escape from their native country, of their stay in Holland, for a short time in Amsterdam, then for eleven years in Leyden, of their toils and privations, of their industry, integrity and orderly conduct whereby they won the respect of the Hollanders, of the high honor to which some of them like John Robinson and William Brewster attained, of how they dwelt together in harmony and mutual helpfulness, so that strangers of high degree like Edward Winslow and Miles Standish were drawn to them, the limitations of this address do not permit a full recital.
Though they had experienced a hearty welcome and kind treatment by the people of Leyden, yet there were many considerations which impelled them to depart. They were Englishmen and did not like the prospect of being absorbed by
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foreign people. The conditions of life there were hard. Their unaccustomed occupations bore hard upon them, especially upon the young who were permaturely aged thereby. Some of the young people were drifting away and enlisting in the Dutch army and navy and others were in danger of being corrupted by the loose manner of their neighbors. The twelve years' truce of Holland with Spain was drawing near its expiration and already Prince Maurice was preparing his armies for a renewal of the conflict. Religious strive, a thing hateful to the Pilgrims, was rife among the Dutch people. The hope of returning to England was blasted by the fatuous policy of King James I, who was striving to turn back the hands of the clock of human progress and restore the unlimited sovereignty of the throne. Moreover a motive far transcending the desire for mere material betterment, inspired them with a high and holy ambition. Bradford in "Showing ye reasons and causes of their removal," says, "Lastly (and what was not least) a great hope and zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing ye gospel of ye kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world ; yea, though they should be but even as stepping-stones unto others for ye performing of so great a work."
Where lay the land in which their great design could be executed ? Many and prolonged were the dicussions in which that question was agitated.
About fifty years earlier a scheme for deporting Puritan Separatists to Ireland was seriously discussed by the ministry of Queen Elizabeth, as is shown by a state paper dated 1572, brought to light in recent year. That paper states that "they are a great people and daily increasing, consisting of all degrees from the nobility to the least," and that they numbered 3,000, far too low an estimate. But at the time when the emigration from Holland was being planned, it was too late to find a place in Ireland or elsewhere in Europe for planting a colony.
America seemed to invite them with one hand and to repel them with the others. Glowing accounts had been brought to England by Raleigh and others of the immense resources of that country. Guiana he had described as a veritable Eldorado.
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But in the south the cruel Spaniard was still predominant and tropical diseases threatened them. The experiences of Gosnold in Buzzards Bay and of Sir John Popham's colony on the Kennebec, had caused New England to be regarded as uninhabitable by Europeans.
The English settlement at Jamestown, in Virginia, was maintaining a precarious existence.
The disastrous attempt of Francis Blackwell, sent out from Amsterdam to plant a colony on Delaware Bay, was fresh in their minds. Bradford says of it, "Heavy news it is, and I would be glad to hear how far it will discourage." Later he writes that instead of causing discouragement it made them resolve to "amend that wherein we had failed." The pronoun "we" shows that the Leyden community was interested in some way in the success of that expedition.
The long and vexatious negotiations which were carried on between their representatives and the ministers of King James regarding their ecclesiastical rights in America taxed their patience to the utmost. Earnestly, but in vain, they pleaded for some guaranty which would protect them in the exercise of that liberty of conscience and form of worship which they, in common with the Reformed churches in Holland, enjoyed. All that they could hope for was that the king, in his desire to gain a permanent foothold in the new world, would conveniently fail to notice things done there which he would not tolerate in England.
Meanwhile the Dutch were making overtures and offering large inducements to them to join their colony at the mouth of the Hudson. On the other hand, the London Adventurers, who, in the language of a later day, financed the expedition, were exacting hard terms and conditions by which they would receive the lion's share of the proceeds of the industry of the colonists.
But they were not cast down by these discouragements. Their pastor, Robinson, wrote these never-to-be forgotten words : "All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages."
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By the discussion of the important and perplexing questions which arose from those circumstances and the decision of them, the Pilgrims were educated and trained for their future life in America. What opportunities were afforded for dissension and division in settling those questions ! Yet what patience, for- bearance and self-restraint, virtues most necessary in a republic, they practiced !
Every question was decided by the will of the majority.
Thus after many supplications to Almighty God for guid- ance, they decided that the new colony should be planted on Delaware Bay within the jurisdiction of the Virginia company, and they prepared to depart, but not all, for a sifting of the people already sifted out as the choicest wheat of England, was necessary. It was deemed prudent for a part to go and the rest to remain to receive again those departing if the expedition proved unsuccessful. Only the young and the strongest of the company sailed in the little Speedwell from Delfthaven on the 22d day of July, 1620, to meet the Mayflower at Southampton.
There was another sifting at Plymouth when the Mayflower was about to sail for the third time for these shores, the Speedwell having been abandoned as unseaworthy.
Then after having experienced the dangers and discomforts of the deep, an opportunity was offered to the faint-hearted to return to London. But only eighteen remained and the rest numbering one hundred and two passengers, crowded upon the Mayflower, bade a final farewell to England on September 6.
Thus by heart-breaking delays was their departure deferred until the time when
"Descends on the Atlantic The gigantic Storm wind of the equinox."
What shall we say of the resolution and fortitude of the men and women who held steadfastly to their purpose in the face of such appalling discouragements and dangers ?
The voyage of that frail vessel freighted with the hopes of humanity over the vast and furious ocean, has no parallel in history. When on the 9th of November they sighted land it was the sand hills of Cape Cod which they descried, and not the shores of Delaware Bay.
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It was shrewdly suspected by their leaders that the captain of the Mayflower had been bribed by the Dutch to land the company as far away as possible from Manhattan, where they intended to plant a colony. But whether it was the craft of man or the fury of the sea which brought them to these shores, we now know that only in this region could they have found a place prepared for their habitation by the widespread destruc- tion of the native tribes by disease; that only here could they have maintained themselves against the aggression of rival French and Dutch colonies and above all that only by settling at Plymouth without the jurisdiction of the Virginia company would they have been left free to work out a scheme of self- government.
The compact signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, justly called the first written constitution, was made necessary by the fact of their landing where they did.
But it was only wise and intelligent and daring men who could thus without premeditation set up a government of their own.
Many adventurous spirits had before them braved the terrors of the sea and the dangers of the wilderness ;
"But bolder they who first offcast
Their moorings to the comfortable past,
And ventured chartless on the sea Of storm engendering liberty."
There was another sad and terrible sifting of the people during that first winter, when one-half of their number perished.
In imagination picture that scene when, just before the return of the Mayflower, the survivors met in solemn assembly, and the question being put who desired to return to England, no one responded.
Such were the men who founded Plymouth and also Bridgewater. From time to time their comrades left behind in Leyden came and rejoined them.
Exactly a year after their arrival came the Fortune with thirty-five passengers, two years later the ship Ann and pinnace Little James appeared, bringing one hundred or more recruits, including the wives and children of several of the first settlers. These shared with those who came in the Mayflower the honor of the title of firstcomers or Forefathers.
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Among them were several men who proved valuable addi- tions to the colony, and later were among the first settlers of Bridgewater. In 1629 a company of thirty-five from Leyden arrived, and in 1630 another small company.
But with these additions the colony only numbered three hundred souls. Nearly all the first inhabitants of Bridgewater were among these immigrants.
We have seen how these men developed under the hard conditions of their life in England and Holland. What traits of character did they display in the different but equally trying circumstances of their life in Plymouth and Bridgewater ?
Their boundless patience and forbearance under the cruel reproaches of the London Adventurers, because they did not when on the verge of starvation make larger returns of merchan- dise to them, are almost incredible.
Their gentle and pathetic, yet manly, remonstrances against groundless accusations of laziness and dishonesty, fill our hearts with pity and admiration.
Their generosity and magnanimity, shown even to their enemies when stranded on their shores and to those who had no claim upon them, to the extent of improverishing themselves and endangering their own lives, were unlimited.
Their exalted sense of honor and of brotherly love were displayed in assuming and paying the expenses amounting to several thousand dollars of their friends who came to them from Leyden.
Their industry and thrift are proved by the fact that at the end of seven years from their arrival they purchased the interest of their London partners, and by the year 1636, had paid every farthing of the indebtedness thus incurred.
Their scrupulous honesty was shown in meeting obligations contracted without authority, and perhaps dishonestly, by their agents in England.
Their energy and enterprise were displayed in subduing the wilderness around them and especially in establishing fishing stations and trading posts at Cape Ann and the mouth of the Kennebec, and at Windsor on the Connecticut.
The justice and self-restraint were conspicuous, not only in
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the administration of the affairs of the colony, but in their treat- ment of the native tribes, those capricious, suspicious and fickle children of nature, whose confidence they won.
Their moderation and sound judgment are apparent in their treatment of Roger Williams who, after his departure from them, was ever their firm friend, and by his influence with the Narragansetts saved the colony from destruction, and especially in their treatment of Quakers and persons accused of witch- craft, not one of whom was executed within the limits of the Old Colony.
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