History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900, Part 3

Author: Bedford (N.H. : Town)
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Concord, N. H. : The Rumford Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1202

USA > New Hampshire > Hillsborough County > Bedford > History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900 > Part 3

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we got mended by the skill and courage of Captain Andrew Agnew, a godly passenger, and tore our foresail, five or six of our champlets, and a great beam under the gunner's room-door broke; seas came in over the round-house, and broke a plank or two on the deck, and wet all that was between the decks; we sprang a leak, that gave us seven hundred, in the two pumps, in the half-hour glass. Yet we lay at hull a long time, to beat out the storm, till the master and company came, one morning, and told us that it was impossible to hold out any longer, and although we beat out that storm, we might be sure, in that season of the year, to forgather with one or two more of that sort, before we could reach New England."

The account goes on to state "that amidst all the fears and dan- gers, the most part of the passengers were very cheerful and confi- dent; yea, some, in prayers, expressed such hopes, that rather than the Lord would suffer such a company, in such sort, to perish, he would put wings to our shoulders and carry us safe ashore." Sev- eral of the passengers were sickly; an aged person and one child died; one child was born on shipboard. It was baptized by Mr. Livingston and called "Seaborn." After a long and most anxious consultation, with a fervent prayer to Almighty God for wisdom to direct them, the passengers agreed to yield to the earnest solicita- tions of the master. The ship was put about, and reentered the harbor of Loch Fergus on the 3d of November, having been absent about eight weeks.

The Eagle Wing left the shores of Ireland, as did the Mayflower those of Holland, with the same high purpose of finding a new habitation, where there was " freedom to worship God." The May- flower succeeded in reaching this continent, though, it is said, through the treachery of her master, at a point very distant from that to which she was destined. The Eagle Wing was compelled by stress of weather to return again to the land of religious intolerance.

The company of pious and devoted ministers, and their congrega- tions, who left Ulster in this vessel with flattering hopes for the future, and who returned disheartened and cast down, had yet, in the Providence of God, a great work entrusted to their agency. " This company of men," as Dr. Foote says, "were, subsequently, the efficient agents in the hands of God of embodying the Presbyte- rians of Ireland, of spreading their principles far and wide, and mar- shaling congregation after congregation, whose industry made Ulster blossom as the rose. It was better that God's wise Providence sent them back to Ireland, and shut them up to the work-and last, it was best of all, that they laid the foundation of that church, which may claim to be the mother of the American Presbyterian Church, the worthy child of a worthy mother."

We must now leave, for a while, this little group of passengers, who composed the freight which the Eagle Wing was too feeble to bear across the broad Atlantic, during the autumnal gales of 1636. We are obliged to leave them in bad company, and under circum-

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stances most inauspicious ; for we leave them to the tender mercies of the faithless Charles I; to the uncertain and dangerous discretion of the shrewd, ambitious and unforgiving Oliver Cromwell; to the reckless and shameful profligacy of Charles II; and to the knavery and stupidity of the bigoted James II. Meanwhile, we must hasten to the consideration of some passages in their subsequent history immediately connected with their actual emigration to this coun- try.

Pass on with me now for the space of fifty-two years, from 1636 to 1688. James II, the great-grandson of Mary, Queen of Scots, whom Elizabeth may almost be said to have murdered from envy, and the son of Charles I, who perished on the scaffold because he kept faith with no party, had abdicated the throne of England. He had previously sent his wife, Mary of Modena, and his infant and only son, to France. All his relatives had deserted him. Even his daughter, Anne, and her husband, the Prince of Denmark, had fled from his palace in the night. He, himself, having seized the great seal of state, stole from his bedchamber at early dawn, hastened to a boat, in readiness for him, and threw the seal into the Thames, and escaped down that river. After some further difficulties and delays, he reached Paris in safety. His eldest daughter, the offspring of his first wife, and her husband, William of Orange, were now pro- claimed jointly king and queen of England.

James, being in France, was urged and entreated by the Catholic Louis to return to Ireland, from which he had lately heard reports favorable to his cause, and to make a struggle to regain his crown. He at last complied, though with great reluctance, and being pro- vided with twelve thousand French troops, a train of artillery, and a supply of money, he landed in Kinsale, Ireland, in March, 1689. Stopping, for a very short time, at Dublin, he hastened to the north of Ireland, to our Ulster, with his foreign allies, and sat down before Londonderry, then in a state of siege.

You will pardon me, I feel assured, for recalling to your recollec- tions some of the incidents connected with the "siege of Derry," when you reflect upon the important bearing which it had upon the character and destinies of our Presbyterian friends in the north of Ireland, and their posterity here and elsewhere.

I confine myself to Graham's account of it. On the 3d of Decem- ber, 1688, an alarm was spread throughout the island that the Cath- olic Irish had determined to rise and murder indiscriminately the Protestants on the next Sabbath. The messenger, who carried this news to Derry, reported that on his way he had passed the Catholic troops, and that their advance guard was close upon the city. All was consternation and dismay. There were no military preparations for defense. The citizens ran together, each eagerly and anxiously inquiring what could be done. Many advised to open the gates and give their invaders an honorable reception. A few, bolder and with better judgment, insisted that the gates should be shut and that the

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soldiers should be resisted to the death. Among these were the Rev. James Gordon, of Clondormet, and Horace Kennedy, one of the sheriffs. At length there assembled a group of the "appren- tices " to the manufacture of linen (a large business at that time in Derry). These spirited apprentice boys heard the discussion of the public authorities and perceived the danger to which the city was exposed. The soldiers began to cross the river and approach the walls of the town. A few of the leaders of the apprentices imme- diately seized the keys, and rushing to the gates shut them in the face of the enemy.

The siege was now commenced. The entire space, inclosed within the walls, was only two thousand feet in its longest diameter and six hundred in its smallest. And yet there were shut up in this city, twenty-seven thousand persons, who were doomed to endure for eight long months, famine and pestilence, constant exposure to the fire from the enemy's batteries, and all the concurrent horrors which the imagination can conceive to exist under such circumstances. So feeble did the defenses of the city appear to De Rosen, the French officer who came over with James, when he first saw it, that he exclaimed with a disgusting oath, that "his men should bring it to him stone by stone." The French general was mistaken,-he knew little of the determined energy of the men, women, and apprentice boys, with whom he had to contend. Exasperated, at length, that no offer to capitulate was made, he resorted to the brutal expedient of col- lecting from Belfast (distant a hundred miles from Derry) and its neighborhood over four thousand men, women, and children of the Protestant party, without regard to condition, robbed them of their food and clothing, and drove them like so many cattle under the walls of Derry to perish in view of their friends.

To prevent this inhuman and barbarous destruction of life, the authorities of Derry erected a gallows on the walls of the town, sent to De Rosen for a priest to confess the prisoners (some of them dis- tinguished French officers), assuring the general that they should be hung one by one, until there were no more to execute, unless he per- mitted the multitude under the walls to depart. This retaliatory measure produced the desired effect. The Belfast people were re- leased, but not till hundreds had perished from starvation and ex- posure. In all the agony and despair of these unfortunate beings, while held by the infamous order of De Rosen, there was none of them but what urged their friends within the walls to hold on and hold out, and not to yield in sympathy to the sufferings of those on the outside. But I must not continue these horrible details. It suffices to say, that after having been reduced to the extremity of eating horseflesh, of feeding upon dogs, cats, rats, and mice, and when at last there remained but half a pint of meal to a man per day, when the soldiers began to glare upon the citizens and upon each other with the famished look of starving cannibals, the long hoped for relief came. The ships of King William hove in sight

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with men and supplies. The siege was raised, the army departed, but not until the Catholic party had lost nine thousand of their sol- diers and more than two hundred of their officers.

It would be difficult to find in the whole history of modern war- fare an example of such endurance, of so much personal suffering, of such devotion to the cause in which they were engaged, as was ex- hibited by these resolute Presbyterians in the defense of their homes and their religion, at the siege of Derry.

The vast importance to the cause of Protestantism and the Eng- lish government, of the successful defense of this fortress, will be appreciated when it is understood that James anticipated its speedy reduction, and had made his arrangements to cross directly over to Scotland, join the infamous Claverhouse, make a rapid descent upon England, and drive his son-in-law, William, back to his native Nas- sau. The names of these apprentice boys who so nobly shut the gates, and thus defeated the ultimate purposes of the besieging party, as Graham says, " deserve to be preserved in letters of gold." Many, very many, of their descendants are now to be found in this country. They are known to be in Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana, here in New Hampshire, and doubtless in many other states of the Union. The leaders, and more prominent of these young men, were William Crookshanks, Robert Sherrad, Daniel Sherrad, Alex- ander Irwin, James Stewart, Robert Morrison, Alexander Conning- ham, William Cairns, and Samuel Harvey.

Never were a people more unfortunate, after all their efforts, than were these brave Presbyterians. They had held the troops of James in check, while they defended successfully the last stronghold of King William in Ireland, and until Claverhouse had been attacked and destroyed in Scotland. They had freely mingled their blood with the waters of the Boyne. They had consecrated the "billowy Shannon," that "river of dark mementos," by the sacrifice upon its banks of their dearest friends, before the gates of Limerick and Aithlone. They had, in short, expelled James and his allies from the land, and were looking with great confidence for something like tolerance in religious belief and religious worship from William of Nassau and his Protestant wife. But. they were doomed to the sorest disappointment, and ultimately became so disgusted with the calculating and selfish policy of William, his unreasonable and unjust demands of rents and tythes, as well as with the exactions and per- secutions of the Anglican church, which now came to be regarded by them as little better than the Roman Catholic, that they deter- mined, once and forever, to abandon their country and seek refuge in the wilds of America.

The tide of emigration now began to flow towards this country. " Shipload after shipload " sailed from Ulster with better success than had attended the Eagle Wing. These vessels reached our shores in safety, and the descendants of the immigrant passengers, whom they bore hither, may be counted to-day by the thousands

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and tens of thousands on the broad fields of Pennsylvania, in Vir- ginia, in the Carolinas ; in every portion of the sunny South. Away across the mountains, in Kentucky, Tennessee, Indiana, and every- where in the mighty West; and here among our own granite hills, and, indeed, in greater or less numbers, throughout the entire Union ; the same conscientious, determined, unyielding, persevering men and women, as were their fathers and mothers, who sacrificed every earthly comfort in defense of that cause, the nearest and dearest to their hearts, the principles of the religion of Calvin and Knox.

The first Presbyterian minister who came to America was Francis Mackemie, and the first Presbyterian church on this continent was gathered by his exertions in Accomac county, in Virginia. He as- sisted, also, in organizing churches in Maryland. The precise time is not known, but it must have been just at the close of the seventeenth century. His name indicates his origin. He also was from Ulster, and Scotch-Irish. Mather says there were "Presbyterian ministers residing in New England before Mackemie's time." But if there were such ministers, they very soon adopted the "Congregational form of discipline." We know of no earlier churches of the Pres- byterian denomination in New England than that in Londonderry, in this state, which commenced with the town itself in 1719; and the Federal Street church, in Boston, gathered in 1727, the members of both of which came from the same common stock, the Scotch- Irish in Ulster. The Congregational form of government was adopted in the Federal Street church in 1786. It is the same church over which Dr. Belknap, the historian of New Hampshire, was set- tled in 1787, and subsequently the late celebrated Dr. Channing, and is now under the pastoral care of Dr. Gannett.

Mackemie's churches were certainly organized more than twenty years before either of these. Mackemie was ordained at Lagan, Ire- land, as early as 1682. He went first to Barbadoes, and thence to Virginia and Maryland. He at one time officiated as minister in the church which he had assisted to organize at Snowhill, in Worcester county, Md. He was a man of extraordinary intellectual powers, and was universally beloved by the people of his charge. Irving Spence, Esq., in his letters on the early history of Presbyterianism, says, " The memory of no gospel minister was ever held in higher honor by an American congregation than that of Mackemie at Snow-Hill. Tradition has made a record of his many excellencies, and one generation has uttered his praises in the ears of its succes- sor, and you may ever yet hear its echo." In the village of Reho- both, Md., near the Virginia line, there is at this day a Presby- terian church organized in the time of Mackemie. Dr. Foote, to whom I am indebted for this sketch of the father of Presbyterianism in America, says, "You may find now in Accomac, Virginia, a con- gregation of Presbyterians, rising, Phenix-like, from the ashes of those who heard Mackemie preach and pray."

Mackemie revisited his native country in 1704, and induced other

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Presbyterian ministers to come and settle in this country. Two of these ministers were McNish and Hampton.

Mackemie assisted in forming the first Presbytery in America, at Philadelphia, probably in 1705; though the first leaf of the records of that body is missing, and the precise time cannot now be known. The first Presbytery in New England was formed in Londonderry, N. H., April 16, 1745, by John Morehead of Boston, James McGre- gore of Londonderry, and Robert Abercrombie of Windham, with an elder from each of these churches. The first Synod in New England was formed at Seabrook, N. H., May 31, 1775; the first meeting of this Synod was held at Londonderry, N. H., September 4, 1775. It was composed of three Presbyteries, namely, the Pres- bytery of Salem, the Presbytery of Londonderry, and the Presby- tery of Palmer; the church of Bedford was represented there by Rev. Mr. Houston, and belonged to the Presbytery of Palmer.

In 1706, Mackemie and his friend and fellow-laborer, Hampton, commenced a journey from Virginia to Boston. On their way they stopped in New York to pay their respects to Lord Cornbury, then the governor of that province; they were treated courteously, and, upon invitation, dined with his excellency at the castle. Afterwards they were invited to preach by some Presbyterians settled in New York, and they did preach; Mackemie in the dwelling-house of William Jackson, in Pearl street, and Hampton, on the same day, at Newton, Long Island. For this they were both arrested by Thomas Cardale, sheriff, on a warrant signed by Lord Cornbury, charging them with having taken it upon them to preach in a private house, without having obtained a license for so doing, contrary to the known laws of England; and being likewise informed that they were gone into Long Island with intent there to spread their perni- cious doctrines and principles, to the great disturbance of the church by law established ; and directing the sheriff to bring the bodies of Mackemie and Hampton to Fort Anne. They were both arrested and imprisoned in the fort; indicted by the grand jury, and after suffering a long confinement were brought to trial. The prose- cuting attorney called four witnesses who had heard Mackemie preach ; but the defendant told him they need not be sworn. "I own," said Mackemie, "the matter of fact as to preaching, and more than these gentlemen could declare on oath; for I have done noth- ing therein of which I am ashamed or afraid, but will answer it not only before this bar, but before the tribunal of God's final judgment."

Attorney .- You own then that you preached and baptized a child at William Jackson's ?

Mackemie .- I did.

Attorney .- How many hearers had you ?

Mackemie .- I have other work to do, Mr. Attorney, than to num- ber my auditory when I am about to preach to them.

Attorney .- Were there above five hearing you ?

Mackemie .- Yes, and five to that.

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Attorney .- Did you use the rites and ceremonies enjoined by and prescribed in the Book of Common Prayer by the Church of Eng- land ?

Mackemie .- No; I never did, nor ever will, till I am better satis- fied in my conscience.

The trial proceeded, and, in spite of all the efforts of Cornbury and his officers, they were both acquitted by the petit jury and set at liberty, not, however, till they had been compelled to pay an exor- bitant bill of costs.

Would any one believe now, without evidence which cannot be impeached, that such a scene as this was exhibited in Protestant New York, under the reign of Queen Anne, not one hundred and fifty years ago, while in Catholic Maryland a man might live in peace, whether Jew, Mohammedan, or Pagan,-whether Atheist, Deist, or Polytheist, provided he neither molested his neighbor nor endangered the public morals. The truth is, that "great moral cataclysm of the Reformation," as it was called, so far as all the Tudors and Stuarts were concerned, from Henry VIII to Anne, amounted substantially to this and nothing more,-it was a transfer of spiritual power from Rome to London; from the Vatican to St. James'; from the pope to the monarch of England. Protestantism was a matter of convenience merely to the crown. Elizabeth is said to have married Protestantism and to have taken its name; but, it

is added, "most of the court Protestantism of her time was of a damaged character." It was assumed that the sovereign of Great Britain, whoever it might chance to be, man or woman, boy or girl, was, jure divino, the head of the church ; from whom emanated, and in whom centered, all spiritual power, and all ecclesiastical authority ; the head of the church and of the state was one and identical. The immediate government of the church was committed to the bishops, the lordly prelatical bishops, as they were called by the Puritans,- the higher order of the clergy. The Anglican church, thus consti- tuted, became, as it was fitly denominated, the "queen, mistress, or nothing," and withal was a tremendous political engine with which to govern and control the nation. Henry VIII wielded this power with a frightful energy; "he burned as heretics those who avowed the tenets of Luther, and hung as traitors those who owned the power of the Pope." He required unconditional submission to his authority, as self-constituted head of the church. His successors, down to the period of which we are treating, at least, followed his example so far as they had the ability, and circumstances would permit.

To this church organization and this form of church government, the Presbyterians dissented from the beginning, toto coelo. They never could, nor ever did, admit but one Great Head of the church, the Saviour of the world. They never could, nor ever did, admit the unscriptural assumption of different grades of the clergy. They never could, nor ever did, admit the right of the mother church to

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prescribe the forms of prayer and supplication which should be offered at the throne of our Heavenly Father.

For this non-conformity to the will of the bishops they have been hunted down, like wild beasts among their native mountains; they have been chained to the seashore at low water, and left to drown by the sure reflux of the tide; they have been subjected to the ex- cruciating torture of the "iron boot," or to the still more exquisite and horrible pains of the thumbkin. For this non-conformity, in matters purely of conscience, they have "suffered extremities that tongue cannot describe, and which heart can hardly conceive, from hunger, nakedness, lying in damp caves and in the hollow clefts of naked rocks, without shelter, covering, fire, or food.". They fell by the hand of the assassin ; were slaughtered by thousands in battle. They have been fastened together, like dogs in leaches, and driven as a spectacle through the country. People have been put to death for daring even to speak to them in their distress. Fathers have been persecuted for supplying the wants of their children, and children for nourishing their parents; husbands for harboring their wives, and wives for cherishing their husbands. In all these trials, suffer- ings, privations, tortures, and even in the agonies of death itself, they were sustained by their own approving consciences, by a steady and unshaken reliance upon the promises of God, and, above all, by the great example of the patient endurance of Him who died for us all on Mount Calvary. These men and women had subscribed the national "solemn league and covenant," that "copious and poetical creed," that great declaration of the independence of the church. They had proclaimed their eternal separation, in spiritual matters, from the civil government of the land; and like the fathers of this American republic, they had pledged their lives, their fortunes, and all that was dear to them to the fulfilment of these sacred engage- ments.

Were the descendants of such a people, and especially was Francis Mackemie, one of the most talented and able and conscientious of their sons, to be deterred by the threats or hindered by the malice of a petty colonial governor, from fulfiling his mission of preaching the gospel, in its simplicity and truth, upon the continent of America ?

But the time was very soon to arrive when neither Lord Cornbury, nor the government of Virginia, nor the legislative or executive power of any of the colonies, nor all of them combined, could hinder or prevent the free and unrestrained promulgation of the doctrines of Presbyterianism throughout the length and breadth of the land. This church was about to arise, and in her strength to stand boldly forth and assert her rights and defend her doctrines. The people were beginning to gather around her ministers, and to listen with more interest and increased attention to their instructions. Soon some of her ablest advocates and most eminent teachers were to take the field ; soon was to arise the first of that series of "Log Colleges," which afterwards proved of incalculable advantage to the church

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and to the people, as the nurseries of sound learning and piety ; soon were to appear the Tennents, father and sons, the Blairs, that " Apostle of Virginia," Samuel Davis, our own Macgregors, the Smiths, Stanhope, and a host of other able and popular preachers and "men of mark." The Presbyterian faith and its legitimate fruits came to be better understood and more highly appreciated,- the immediate government of every church by elders, chosen by its own members, the perfect equality of the clergy, those spiritual judi- catories, the church session or consistory, the Presbytery or classis, the Synod and the general assembly, rising regularly and gradually one above another, each exercising only such powers as are specially delegated by its own legitimate constituency, and all operating as a system of checks and balances upon each other, present to the mind a model of republicanism which it would be difficult to excel in framing a civil code, based upon the representative principle, for any people.

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History of Bedford, New Hampshire, from 1737 : being statistics compiled on the occasion of the one hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town, May 15, 1900, Part 3

Author: Bedford (N.H. : Town) Publication date: 1903 Publisher: Concord, N. H. : The Rumford Printing Co. Number of Pages: 1202

Author: Bedford (N.H. : Town)
Publication date: 1903
Publisher: Concord, N. H. : The Rumford Printing Co.
Number of Pages: 1202