The Beginners of a Nation Part 17

[Sidenote: Note 1, page 146.]

The eccentricities, moral and mental, of Browne were a constant resource of those who sought to involve all Separatists in his disgrace. Odium has always been a more effective weapon than argument in a theological controversy. Browne's enemies alleged that even while on the gridiron of persecution his conduct had not been free from moral obliquity. I have not been able to see Bernard's charges on this score, but John Robinson, in his Justification, etc. (1610), parries the thrust in these words: "Now as touching Browne, it is true as Mr.

B[ernard] affirmeth, that as he forsook the Lord so the Lord forsook him in his way; ... as for the wicked things (which Mr. B. affirmeth) _he did in the way_ it may well be as he sayeth, ... as the more like he was to returne to his proper centre the Church of England, where he should be sure to find companie ynough in any wickednesse." Edition of 1639, p. 50. One of the most learned accounts of Browne is to be found in H. M. Dexter's Congregationalism, the lecture on Robert Browne. It is always easy to admire Dr. Dexter's erudition, but not so easy to a.s.sent to his conclusions. See also Pagitt's Heresiography, p. 56 and _pa.s.sim_; Fuller's Church History, ix, vi, 1-7; and Hanbury's Memorials, p. 18 and following.

[Sidenote: Note 2, page 146.]

John Robinson, in Justification of Separation from the Church of England, p. 50, edition of 1639, says: "It is true that Boulton was (though not the first in that way) an elder of a Separatist church in the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's dayes, and falling from his holy profession recanted the same at Paul's Crosse and afterwards hung himself as Judas did." Compare Cotton's The Way of the Congregationall Churches Cleared, p. 4, and various intimations in Hanbury's Memorials, which imply the existence of Independent congregations in London and elsewhere in the early years of Elizabeth's reign. But Hanbury's handling of the valuable material he collected with commendable a.s.siduity is sometimes so clumsy that the reader is obliged to grope for facts bearing upon most important questions. One gets from Hanbury's notes and some older publications a vague notion that the Flemish Protestants, recently settled in England in great numbers, exerted an influence in favor of Independency. Robert Browne began his secession in Norwich, a place where the people from the Low Countries were nearly half the population, and Browne was even said to have labored among the Dutch first. Fuller, ix, sec. vi, 2.

[Sidenote: Note 3, page 156.]

Robinson's character may be judged from his works. His good qualities are very apparent in the wise and tender letters addressed to the Pilgrims when they were leaving England and after their arrival at Plymouth, which will be found in Bradford's Plimoth Plantations, 63, 64, 163. See Bradford's character of him, ibid., 17-19. See also Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrims, 473-482. Ainsworth's tribute is in Hanbury's Memorials, 95. See also Winslow's Brief Narration in Young's Chronicles, 379. George Sumner, in 3d Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Collections, ix, has a paper giving the result of his investigations in Leyden. He quotes Hornbeeck as saying, twenty-eight years after Robinson's death, that he was the best of all the exiles as well as the most upright, learned, and most modest. Hornbeeck's words are: "Optimus inter illos." "Vir supra reliquos probus atque eruditus."

"Doctissimi ac modestissimi omnium separatistorum."

CHAPTER THE THIRD.

_THE PILGRIM MIGRATIONS._

I.

[Sidenote: Accession of James I.]

[Sidenote: Neal, ii, 28. Compare Burns's Prel. Diss. to Wodrow, lxxiv.]

The accession of James of Scotland to the English throne in 1603 raised the hopes of the Puritans. James had said, in 1590: "As for our neighbour kirk of England, their service is an ill-said ma.s.se in English; they want nothing of the ma.s.se but the liftings." Later, when the prospect of his accession to the English throne was imminent, James had spoken with a different voice, but the Puritans remembered his lifelong familiarity with Presbyterian forms, and his strongly expressed satisfaction with the Scottish Kirk. They met him on his way to London with a pet.i.tion for modifications of the service. This was known as the Millinary Pet.i.tion, because it was supposed to represent the views of about one thousand English divines.

[Sidenote: Hampton Court conference.]

[Sidenote: Svmme and Svbstance, _pa.s.sim_.]

[Sidenote: Prel. Diss. to Wodrow, lxxiv.]

[Sidenote: Ch. Hist., x, vii, 30.]

[Sidenote: Nugae Antiquae., i, 181.]

In January, 1604, the king held a formal conference at Hampton Court between eleven of the Anglican party on one side, nine of them being bishops, and four Puritan divines, representing the pet.i.tioners.

a.s.suming at first the air of playing the arbiter, James, who dearly loved a puttering theological debate, could not refrain from taking the cause of the churchmen out of their hands and arguing it himself.

The reports of the conference are most interesting as showing the paradoxical qualities of James, who, by his action at this meeting, unwittingly made himself a conspicuous figure in the history of America. The great churchmen were surprised at the display made by the king of dialectic skill. They held Scotch learning in some contempt, and were amazed that one bred among the "Puritans" should know how to handle questions of theology so aptly. James, though he had declared the Church of Scotland "the sincerest kirk in the world" because it did not keep Easter and Yule as the Genevans did, now had the face to a.s.sure the prelates that he had never believed after he was ten years old what he was taught in Scotland. His speeches in the conference are marked by ability, mingled with the folly which vitiated all his qualities. Quick at reply and keen in a.n.a.lysis, he even shows something like breadth of intelligence, or at least intellectual toleration, but without ever for a moment evincing any liberality of feeling. His manifest cleverness is rendered futile by his narrow and ridiculous egotism, his arrogance in the treatment of opponents, and his coa.r.s.e vulgarity in expression. "In common speaking as in his hunting," says Fuller, "he stood not on the cleanest but nearest way."

The Puritans were no more able to answer the arguments of the king than was aesop's lamb to make reply to the wolf. Laying down for his fundamental maxim "No bishop, no king," he drew a picture of the troubles that would beset him when "Jack and Tom and Will and d.i.c.k"

should meet and censure the king and his council. He would have no such a.s.semblage of the clergy until he should grow fat and pursy and need trouble to keep him in breath, he said. It could not occur to his self-centered mind that so grave a question was not to be settled merely by considering the ease and convenience of the sovereign. "He rather usede upbraidinges than argumente," says Harrington, who was present. He bade the Puritans "awaie with their snivellinge," and, in discussing the surplice, made an allusion that would be deemed a profanation by reverent churchmen of the present time.

[Sidenote: The king and the bishops.]

[Sidenote: Note 1.]

[Sidenote: Compare Nugae Antiquae, ii, 25, 26.]

With characteristic pedantry he spoke part of the time in Latin, and his clever refutation of the hapless Puritans sounded like the wisdom of G.o.d to the anxious bishops. In spite of the downright scolding and vulgar abuse with which the king flavored his orthodoxy, the aged Whitgift declared that undoubtedly his Majesty spoke by the special a.s.sistance of G.o.d's Spirit; but one of the worldly bystanders ventured, in defiance of the episcopal dictum, to think that whatever spirit inspired the king was "rather foul-mouthed." Bancroft, Bishop of London, theatrically fell on his knees and solemnly protested that his heart melted within him with joy that Almighty G.o.d of his singular mercy had given them such a king "as since Christ's time the like hath not been seen." The king in his turn was naturally impressed with the sagacity of a bishop who could so devoutly admire his Majesty's ability, and, when soon afterward a fresh access of paralysis carried off Whitgift, it was not surprising that Bancroft should be translated from London to Canterbury over the heads of worthier compet.i.tors. From the moment of Bancroft's accession to the primacy the lot of the Puritans and Separatists became harder, for he plumed himself doubtless on being the originator of the high-church doctrine, and he was a man whose harsh energy seems not to have been tempered by an intimate piety like that of Whitgift.

[Sidenote: Results.]

[Sidenote: Svmme and Svbstance, 35.]

[Sidenote: Compare Bacon's Certain Considerations touching the better Pacification of the Church of England.]

When James rose from his chair at the close of the debate on the second day he said, "I shall make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of this land, or else do worse"; and he wrote to a friend boasting that he had "peppered the Puritans soundly." But the king had missed, without knowing it, the greatest opportunity of his reign--an opportunity for conciliating or weakening the Puritan opposition, and consolidating the church and his kingdom. James could think of nothing but his own display of cleverness and browbeating arrogance in a dispute with great divines like Reynolds and Chaderton.

The conference had been for him a recreation not much more serious than stag-hunting. That it was pregnant with vast and far-reaching results for good and evil in England and the New World he, perhaps, did not dream. By his narrow and selfish course at this critical moment he may be said to have sealed the fate of his son, if not the doom of his dynasty; and his clever folly gave fresh life to the bitter struggle between Anglican and Puritan which resulted in the peopling of New England a quarter of a century afterward.

II.

[Sidenote: The storm of persecution.]

[Sidenote: Bacon's Observation on a Libel.]

Every proscription of the Puritans within the church was accompanied by a crusade against the Brownists without, who were counted sinners above all other men. Though Ralegh in 1593 had estimated the Brownists at twenty thousand, they were by this time in consequence of oppression "about worn out," as Bacon said. Upon those who remained the new persecution broke with untempered severity. Badgered on every side by that vexatious harrying which King James and his ecclesiastics kept up according to promise, the little congregation at Scrooby in 1607 resolved to flee into Holland, where they would be strangers to the speech and to the modes of getting a living, but where they might wors.h.i.+p G.o.d in extemporary prayers under the guidance of elders of their own choice without fear of fines and prisons.

[Sidenote: Toleration in the Low Countries.]

[Sidenote: Errours and Induration, p. 27.]

That which is most honorable to the Low Countries, from a historical point of view, namely, that their cities were places of refuge for oppressed consciences, was esteemed odious and highly ridiculous in the seventeenth century. In one of the plays of that time there is a humorous proposition to hold a consultation about "erecting four new sects of religion in Amsterdam." The Dutch metropolis was called a cage of unclean birds, and a French prelate contemned it as "a common harbor of all opinions and heresies." At a later period Edward Johnson, the rather bloodthirsty Ma.s.sachusetts Puritan, inveighs against "the great mingle mangle of religion" in Holland, and like a burlesque prophet shrieks, "Ye Dutch, come out of your hodge podge!"

Robert Baylie, in a sermon before the House of Lords as late as 1645, says of the toleration by the Dutch, that "for this one thing they have become infamous in the Christian world."

[Sidenote: Flight of the Pilgrims.]

To the asylum offered by the Low Countries the Scrooby Separatists resolved to flee. The pack of harriers let loose by James and Bancroft were in full cry. The members of the Scrooby church found themselves "hunted and persecuted on every side," having their houses watched night and day, so that all their sufferings in times past "were but as flea bitings in comparison." But the tyranny that made England intolerable did its best to render flight impossible. In various essays to escape, the Separatists were arrested and stripped of what valuables they had, while their leaders were cast into prison for months at a time.

[Sidenote: The Pilgrims in Amsterdam.]

[Sidenote: Bradford's Plimoth Plantation 16.]

At length by one means or another the members of this battered little community got away and met together in Amsterdam. To plain north country folk this was indeed a strange land, and one can see in the vivid and eloquent language of Bradford of Austerfield, who was a young man when he crossed the German Ocean, the memory of the impressions which these cities of the Low Countries made on their rustic minds. But "it was not longe before they saw the grimme and grisly face of povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle and incounter."

III.

[Sidenote: Removal to Leyden.]

[Sidenote: Bradford's Plimouth Plantation.]

[Sidenote: Winslow's Relations.]

Robinson discovered that he was not of a piece with those Separatists who had preceded him to Amsterdam. In one division of these, questions of whalebone in bodices, of high-heeled shoes and women's hats, distracted scrupulous minds. In the other, which came from the same part of England as Robinson's church, the agitations were of a theological nature. Questions about the baptism of infants and the inherent righteousness of man and the portion of his nature that Christ derived from his mother, with discussions of the right of a man to be a magistrate and a church member at the same time, were seething in the heated brain of the scrupulous but saintly pastor. Robinson saw that these controversies would involve the Scrooby church if it remained in Amsterdam. In Robinson the centrifugal force of Separatism had already spent itself, and his practical wisdom had set bounds to the course of his logic. To leave the Dutch metropolis for a smaller place was to reduce the Scrooby exiles to still deeper poverty, but nevertheless the Pilgrims fled from discord as they had fled from persecution, and removed to the university city of Leyden, called by its admirers "the Athens of the Occident." After their departure English Separatism in Amsterdam went on tearing itself to pieces in a sincere endeavor to find ultimate theological truth, but Robinson's people in spite of their poverty were united, and were honored by those among whom they sojourned. Others, hearing of their good report, came to them from England, and the exiled church of Leyden was fairly prosperous.