The Plymouth colonists were men of active enterprise. They were miserly of time, and hoarded their hours. They were also anxious to please the Merchant-adventurers. So now, as quickly as might be, the “Anne” was laden with clapboards, beaver-skins, and divers furs; letters whose every line was a loving pulsation, were indited to the lingering absentees at Leyden and to home circles in England; and on the 10th of September, 1623, the vessel sailed, carrying with her Edward Winslow, who was sent over to report progress, and to procure such necessities as were demanded by the imperious wants of the expanding colony.[463]
After watching the “Anne” until she dipped below the horizon, the pilgrims returned from the shore and prepared to go into the harvest field. This season “God gave them plenty, and the face of things was changed, to the grateful rejoicing of all hearts.” The granaries were filled. Some of the abler and more industrious had to spare, and the perturbed ghost of famine, which had so long haunted Plymouth, was definitively laid.[464]
Many attributed this plenteous harvest to the partial abandonment of the communal plan, and in consequence the desire for complete emancipation from its thraldom became more general and earnest.[465]
Some of the late comers had sailed not under articles of agreement with the company of Merchant-adventurers, but on their individual account; so they landed free from those conditions which shackled the elder settlers. Under these circumstances it was thought fit, ere these outsiders were received and permitted to settle and build in Plymouth, to exact of them certain specified conditions precedent. So reasonable a requisition won ready assent, and an agreement was signed to this effect: The colony on its part, the outsiders on theirs, covenanted to show each the other all reasonable courtesies; all were to be alike subject to such laws and orders as were already made, or might thereafter be made, for the public good; the outsiders were freed and exempted from the general employments which the communal condition required of its participants, except for purposes of defence and such work as tended to the lasting welfare of the colony; they were taxed for the maintenance of the government, and debarred from traffic with the Indians for their individual profit, until the expiration of the seven years which tied the colonists to the communality.[466]
Towards the middle of September, while the Pilgrims were in the midst of their harvest labors, Robert Gorges, a son of Sir Ferdinand Gorges, famous as a voyageur and discoverer, sailed into Plymouth bay.[467] He had recently returned from the Venetian wars, and now came armed with a commission from the New England council as governor-general of the territory from Acadia to Narragansett Bay.[468] With him were families of emigrants equipped to commence a settlement, and a learned and worthy clergyman of the English church, William Morrel, an important item of whose mission was to “exercise superintendence over the New England churches.”[469]
Gorges tarried at Plymouth about a fortnight, receiving friendly and cordial entertainment.[470] He had been advised to select Admiral West, Christopher Levett, and the existing governor of Plymouth, as his advisers. This he did; and in this body was vested the full authority to administer justice in all cases, “capital, criminal, and civil,” throughout the province of New England.[471] This arranged, Gorges sailed for Wessagusset, the site of Weston’s discomfiture, and, landing his colonists, essayed to plant on that inauspicious coast a permanent settlement.[472]
This colony, like its predecessor, was fated. Hardly surviving its birth, it lingered through a twelvemonth, and then dissolved. Sir Ferdinand Gorges and his company, discouraged by the opposition of the Parliament to their New England schemes, would adventure nothing.[473] In the spring of 1624 he summoned his son home; and a little later Morrel, who had made no effort to exercise his superintendency, followed him, and this gave the second settlement at Wessagusset its coup de grâce.[474]
Morrel was not spoiled by his disappointment. “I shall always be desirous for the advancement of those colonies,” he said.[475] And in a Latin poem addressed to the New England Council, he wrote:
But while “unmerciful disaster followed thick and followed faster” this enterprise of Gorges and several kindred ones,[477] smiting them into early graves, Plymouth, clasping hands with God, strengthened daily, and walked forward to assured success. Early in 1624, the annual election occurred. Governor Bradford, anxious to retire, pleaded hard for “rotation in office,” and alleged that that was the “end of annual elections.” But the Pilgrims rightly regarded him as a pivotal-man, and with rare good sense they reëlected him unanimously.[478] When the election was over the “Little James” was well victualed and despatched to the eastward on a fishing expedition. On reaching Damarin’s cove “there arose such a violent and extraordinary storm that the seas broke over such places in the harbor as were deemed absolutely secure, and drove the vessel against great rocks, which beat a hole in her hulk that a horse and cart might have gone through, and afterwards drove her into deep water, where she sank. The master was drowned; the rest of the men, except one, saved their lives with much ado; and all the provisions, salt, tackle, and what else was in her, was lost.”[479] Saddened by this mishap, but undismayed, the Pilgrims now commenced their preparations for planting. “A great part of liberty,” says Seneca, “is a well-governed belly, and to be patient in all wants.”[480] And Corbett, borrowing the same idea, put it into homely English by affirming that “the stomach is the cause of civilization.” He meant that hunger begets labor to satisfy its cravings. “Wants awaken intellect. To gratify them disciplines the mind. The keener the want, the lustier the growth.”[481]
The famine of the past had revealed to the Pilgrims the weakness and inefficiency of the communal plan. It educated them; for on an individual basis they reaped plenty. They overcame hunger by patience. They flanked famine by a skilful social arrangement. Now, as before, each man broke ground for himself.[482] There was no longer an Elysium for sluggards; each reaped as he had sown.
In March, 1624, Winslow returned to Plymouth, after an absence of eight months.[483] He brought with him three heifers and a bull—the first neat cattle that came into New England.[484] The exiles could no longer say, “We are without cattle, and we have no Egypt to go to for corn.”[485] Cattle they now had, and they created an Egypt.
Winslow also brought some “clothing and other necessaries; a carpenter, who died soon, but not until he had rendered himself very useful;” a “salt-man,” who proved “an ignorant, foolish, self-willed fellow,” and only made trouble and waste; and “a preacher, though none of the most eminent and rare”—to whose transportation Cushman wrote that he and Winslow had consented only “to give content to some in London.”[486] Winslow informed his coadjutors of a sad “report that there was among the Merchant-adventurers a strong faction hostile to Plymouth, and especially set against the coming of the rest from Leyden”[487]—which explains the long tarry of Robinson and his flock in Holland.
“It will be remembered,” remarks Palfrey, “that the London adventurers were engaged in a commercial speculation. Several of them sympathized more or less in religious sentiment with the Pilgrims; but even with most of these considerations of pecuniary interest were paramount, and they were, besides, a minority when opposed to the aggregate of those adventurers who had no mind to interest themselves in religious dissensions to the damage of their prospect of gain. Under such circumstances, the policy of the English partners would naturally be to keep in favor with the court and with the council for New England, of which Sir Ferdinand Gorges and other churchmen were leaders. This it was that occasioned the thwarting embarrassments which were persistently interposed to frustrate Robinson’s wish to collect his scattered flock in America. Neither the Virginia Company, nor the Merchant-adventurers as a body, would have preferred to employ Separatists in founding American colonies, and giving value to their land. But the option was not theirs. At the moment, no others were disposed to confront the anticipated hardships, and none could be relied upon like these to carry the business through. This was well understood on both sides to be the motive for the engagement that was made.
“If Separatists were per force to undertake the enterprise, it was desirable that they should be persons not individually conspicuous, or obnoxious to displeasure in high quarters; and when Brewster, and not Robinson, accompanied the first settlers to New England, it was a result, if not due to the intrigues of the Adventurers, certainly well according with their policy. Brewster was forgotten in England; nor had he ever been known as a literary champion of his sect. The able and learned Robinson was the recognized head of the Independents, a rising and militant power. He had an English, if indeed it may not be called a European reputation. No name could have been uttered in courtly circles with worse omen to the new settlement. The case was still stronger when, having lost their way, and in consequence come to need another patent, the colony was made a dependency of the Council for New England, instead of the Virginia Company. In the Virginia Company, laboring under the displeasure of the king, and having Sandys and Wriothesley for its leaders, there was a leaven of popular sentiment. The element of absolutism and prelacy was more controlling in the councils of the rival corporation.
“From these circumstances the quick instinct of trade took its lesson. To the favor of the Council for New England, with Sir Ferdinand Gorges at its head, and the king taking its part against Sir Edward Coke and the House of Commons, the Merchant-adventurers were looking for benefits which some of them had no mind to hazard by encouraging their colony to exhale any offensive odor of schism. This gives us an insight into the policy of that action to which Robinson referred when, in a letter to Brewster, now brought by Winslow, he wrote: ‘I persuade myself that for me, they of all others are unwilling I should be transported, especially such of them as have an eye that way themselves, as thinking if I come there their market will be marred. And for these Adventurers, if they have but half the wit to their malice, they will stop my course when they see it intended.’
“In these circumstances, also, we find an explanation of the selection of a minister ‘not the most eminent and rare,’ and such as Cushman and Winslow could agree to take only ‘to give content to some in London.’ To send a clergyman avowedly of the state church was a course not to be thought of. The colonists could not be expected to receive him. The best method for their purpose was, to employ some one of a character and position suited to get possession of their confidence, and then use it to tone down their religious strictness, and, if circumstances should favor, to disturb the ecclesiastical constitution which they had set up.
“As the financial prospects of the colony faded, the more anxious were the unsympathizing London partners to relieve it and themselves from the stigma of religious schism. The taunt that their colonists were Brownists depressed the value of their stock. It was for their interest to introduce settlers of a different religious character, and to take the local power, if possible, out of the hands of those who represented the obnoxious tenets. To this end it was their policy to encourage such internal disaffection as already existed, and to strengthen it by the infusion of new elements of discord. A part even of the ‘Mayflower’ emigrants, without religious sympathy with their superiors, and jealous of the needful exercise of authority, were fit subjects for an influence adverse to the existing organization. The miscellaneous importation in the ‘Fortune’ followed; and the whole tenor of the discourse of Cushman, who came out and returned in her, shows that there were ‘idle drones’ and ‘unreasonable men’ mixed with the nobler associates of the infant settlement. The ‘Anne’ and her partner, the last vessels despatched by the Adventurers, brought new fuel for dissension in those of that company who came ‘on their particular’ account. Nor does it seem hazardous to infer, alike from the circumstances of the case and from developments which speedily followed, that some of these persons, in concert with the ‘strong faction among the Adventurers,’ came over on the errand of subverting the existing government and order.”[488]
The clergyman now sent over, and mentioned in the home-letters, was John Lyford. He was the seed of many and sad disturbances. “When he first came ashore,” says Bradford, “he saluted the colonists with such reverence and humility as is seldom seen, and indeed made them ashamed, he so bowed and cringed unto them; he would have kissed their hands, if they had suffered it. Yet all the while, if we may judge by his after-carriage, he was but like him mentioned by the psalmist,[489] that croucheth and boweth that heaps of poor may fall by his might. Or like that dissembling Ishmael[490] who, when he had slain Gedeliah, went out weeping, and met them that were coming to offer incense in the house of the Lord, saying, ‘Come to Gedeliah,’ when he meant to slay them.”[491]
The Pilgrims received Lyford cordially, giving him the warmest of welcomes and the heartiest. A larger allowance out of the general store was allotted him than any other had; and as the governor was wont, “in all weighty affairs, to consult with Elder Brewster as well as with his special assistants, so now, from courtesy, he called Lyford also to advise in all important crises.”[492]
Ere long he professed to desire to unite with the Pilgrim church. He was accordingly received, and “made a large confession of his faith, and an acknowledgment of his former disorderly walking and entanglement with many corruptions, which had been a burden to his conscience; so that he blessed God for this opportunity of liberty to enjoy the ordinances of God in purity among His people.”[493]
For a time all things went comfortably and smoothly; but in this calm, Lyford contracted an intimacy with one John Oldham, who had come out in the “Anne” on his own account, and had been a factious bawler from the outset.[494] From so congenial an association, evil could not but be begotten. The bully and the hypocrite soon nursed it and set it afoot. Both Oldham and Lyford grew very perverse—though just before Oldham also had been received as a member of the Plymouth church, “whether from hypocrisy or out of some sudden pang of conviction God only knows”—and “showed a spirit of great malignancy, drawing as many into faction as they could influence. The most idle and profane they nourished, and backed in all their lawlessness, so they would but cleave to them and revile the Pilgrim church. Private meetings and back-stair whisperings were incessant among them, they feeding themselves and others with what they should bring to pass in England by the faction of their friends among the Adventurers, which brought both themselves and their dupes into a fools’ paradise. Outwardly they set a fair face on things, yet they could not carry things so closely but much both of their sayings and doings was discovered.”[495]
Finally, when the vessel in which Winslow had returned was laden, and ready to hoist anchor and spread sail for home, it was observed that Lyford and his coadjutors “were long in writing and sent many letters, and communicated to each other such things as made them laugh in their sleeves, thinking they had done their errand efficiently.”[496]
Scenting mischief, Bradford watched them closely; and when the ship left the harbor, he followed her in the shallop, and demanded Lyford’s letter-bag. The captain, who was friendly to the colonial government, and cognizant of the plot afoot, both in Britain and at Plymouth, to overreach the Pilgrims, at once acceded. Above twenty letters, many of them long, and pregnant with slanders, false accusations, and malicious innuendoes, tending not only to the prejudice, but the ruin and utter subversion of the settlement, were found. Most of these Bradford let pass, contenting himself with abstracts. But of the most material true copies were taken, and then forwarded, the originals being detained, lest their writer should deny his work, in which case he would now be compelled to eat his own penmanship.[497]
The ship had sailed towards evening; in the night the governor returned. Lyford and his faction “looked blank when they saw Bradford land; but after some weeks, as nothing came of it, they were as brisk as ever, thinking that all was unknown and was gone current, and that the shallop went but to despatch some well-nigh forgotten or belated letters. The reason why Bradford and the rest concealed their knowledge was, to let affairs drift to a natural development, and ripen, that they might the better discover the intentions of the malcontents, and see who were their adherents. And they did this the rather, because they had learned from a letter written by one of the confederates, that Oldham and Lyford intended an immediate reformation of the church and commonwealth, and proposed at once, on the departure of the ship, to unite their forces, and set up a worship on the English model.”[498]
The Pilgrims had not long to wait. Oldham, with the natural instinct of a bully, picked constant quarrels, refused to mount guard, and pelted Standish with vile epithets. Lyford, a more cautious knave, had no heart for fisticuffs, but he set up another worship on the Sabbath, and openly celebrated sacraments[499] which were to the Pilgrims instinct with vicious tyranny and idolatrous significance; and to escape from which, they had crossed the channel into Holland, and plunged across the Atlantic into the winter wilderness.
The colonists at once acted. Oldham was tamed. “After being clapped up awhile, he came to himself.” Lyford was formally impeached. A court was convened, and the settlers at large were summoned to attend. Bradford himself conducted the prosecution in this primitive trial. He said that, “being greatly oppressed in Britain, the Pilgrims had come to America, here to enjoy liberty of conscience; and for that they had passed through frightful hardships, and planted this settlement on the sterile rocks. The danger and the charge of the beginning were theirs. Lyford had been sent over at the general expense, and both himself and his large family[500] had been maintained from the common store. He had joined their church, and become one of themselves; and for him to plot the ruin of his entertainers was most unjust and perfidious. As for Oldham and his crew, who came at their own charge and for their particular benefit, seeing they were received in courtesy by the plantation, when they came only to seek shelter and protection under its wings, not being able to stand alone, they were like the fable of the hedgehog whom the cony, in a stormy day, from pity welcomed into her burrow; but who, not content to take part with her, in the end, with her sharp pricks forced the poor cony to forsake her own burrow, as these do now attempt to do with us.”[501]
Here Lyford denied that he had been guilty of any wrong. Bradford at once “put in” his intercepted letters as evidence. The unmasked hypocrite was dumb. But Oldham, mad with rage, attempted to rouse an émeute on the spot.[502] No hand was uplifted at his appeal, and Bradford caused the whole parcel of letters to be read; after which, resuming his speech, he reminded Lyford of his humble confession on being received into the church, of his solemn promise not to attempt to perform the functions of a clergyman until he had another call to that sacred office; in open violation of which, he had assumed the clerical garb, in virtue of his ordination, drawn aside a small clique, and by attempting to officiate at the Lord’s table on the Sabbath, broken his solemn pledge and disturbed the public peace.[503]
The proof was so patent, the falsehoods which impregnated the insolent letters were so bold, that the factionists were absolutely dumb. No voice was raised in extenuation of the roguery. Conviction was speedy. Oldham and Lyford were both sentenced to banishment.[504]
Oldham at once left Plymouth, and repaired to Nantasket, where the Pilgrims had a station to accommodate the Indian trade.[505] But Lyford, as weak as he was vicious, burst into tears, and “confessed that he feared he was a reprobate, with sins too heavy for God to pardon;” and he promised amendment with such emphasis, and pleaded so piteously for forgiveness, that the kind and merciful settlers consented to keep him on probation for six months.[506]
But he was an ingrained knave, and amendment was not in him. Not long after this scene, he wrote a second letter to the Merchant-adventurers, in which he justified all his former charges, and elaborated them. Unhappily for him, the messenger to whom he intrusted this precious missive surrendered it into the hands of Bradford, who simply filed it for the present, and let his just wrath accumulate.[507]
In the mean time the ship, with Lyford’s batch of letters aboard, dropped anchor in the Thames. The lies of their masquerading agent were eagerly conned by the London partners. A conclave was held. The inimical adventurers pointed triumphantly to Lyford’s testimony. But, fortunately for the Pilgrims, Winslow, who had returned to London, had become acquainted with certain disreputable and damning facts in Lyford’s home-career, both in England and in Ireland, where he had officiated as pastor, which proved him to be a lecher and a swindler, who soiled the surplice and the cope. With these facts, and followed by grave and unimpeachable witnesses, Winslow hurried into the room where the merchants were assembled, and made his exposé, which “struck Lyford’s friends with sudden dumbness, and made them shame greatly.”[508]
But these reports, together with their disappointment in not harvesting an immediate fortune, impelled two thirds of the original members of the London Company to withdraw from the venture; “and as there had been a faction and siding amongst them for two years, so now there was an utter breach and sequestration.”[509]
Some of the partners, however, remained friendly; and these, assuming the debt of the colony—amounting to some fourteen hundred pounds sterling—fitted out a ship for another voyage, wrote in terms of comfort and cheer, and sent out cattle, tools and clothing, which they sold to the planters, despite their friendly professions, at an exorbitant advance on the market value.[510]
In the spring of 1625, Winslow came back with this ship thus freighted; and he brought with him besides, the news of the disaffection among the Merchant-adventurers. On landing, he was the surprised witness of a strange ceremony. In the village street was drawn up a guard of musketeers in two files, between which a man was running. As he passed, each soldier gave him a thump behind with the but of his musket.[511] This was called “running the gauntlet,” and was a custom borrowed from the Indians. So engrossed were the settlers in this odd sport, and so convulsed were the soberest of them with laughter at the victim’s odd grimaces on being struck and bidden “mend his manners,” that Winslow advanced quite up to the crowd ere he was discovered and recognized. He then learned that the sufferer of this singular punishment was Oldham, who, despite his banishment, had ventured to return to Plymouth and revile his judges.[512]
Winslow at once informed the clustering colonists of the effect of Lyford’s letters in England, and repeated his exposé of that bad man’s abhorrent private character.[513] The Pilgrims were not surprised. Lyford’s own wife, “a grave matron of good carriage,” had herself, in the sorrow of her heart, disclosed some secrets and uncloaked some crimes which led them to believe Lyford capable of perpetrating any villany.[514]
Now, since his probationary time had expired, and he was a more dangerous rascal than before, he was ordered to quit the colony. This he did, joining Oldham at Nantucket; whence, a little later, he wandered into Virginia, dying there very miserably.[515]
Eventually Oldham repented of his evil conduct, and became reconciled to the Pilgrims; “so that he had liberty to come and go, and converse with them at pleasure,” until, some years later, the Indians, in a petty quarrel, knocked his brains out with a tomahawk.[516]
Thus ended the “Lyford troubles.” Led by God, the Plymouth colonists safely surmounted one more obstacle, the insidious assault of masqueraders who “stole the livery of heaven to serve the devil in.”
The winter of 1624-5 had passed without any special occurrence save this Lyford affair; and here see one strange thing: “Many who before stood something off from the church,” says Bradford, “now, seeing Lyford’s unrighteous dealing and malignity against it, came forward and tendered themselves as members, professing that it was not out of any dislike of any thing that they had stood so long aloof, but from a desire to fit themselves better for such a connection, and that now they saw that the Lord called for their help. So that Lyford’s crusade had quite a contrary effect from that hoped; which was looked at as a great work of God, who drew men on by unlikely means, and by occurrences which might rather have set them farther off.”[517]
Lyford had complained to the Merchant-adventurers that the Pilgrims had no regularly ordained minister. To this charge Bradford made a fine retort: “We answer, the more is our wrong, that our pastor is kept from us by these men’s means, who then reproach us for it. Yet have we not been wholly destitute of the means of salvation, as this man would have the world believe; for our reverend elder, Mr. Brewster, hath labored diligently in dispensing the word of God unto us; and, be it spoken without ostentation, he is not inferior to Mr. Lyford—and some of his betters—either in gifts or learning, though he would never be persuaded to take higher office upon himself.”[518]
Brewster taught twice every Sabbath powerfully and profitably, and without stipend, which he steadily declined, working for his bread with his own hands, and earning it in the sweat of his brows, thus approximating to the early Christian practice. “He did more in one year,” asserts old John Cotton, “than many who have their hundreds per annum do in all their lives.” So it seems that there is one brilliant exception to the Indian maxim, “Poor pay poor preach.” The good elder had a singular gift in prayer, “yet was seldom wordy or prolix.” Without the afflatus of ordination, he was so much better than most ministers with it, that, though destitute of “consecrated ministrations,” the colonists did not suffer much, and mainly regretted the absence of sacraments, which Brewster, unordained, was not competent to celebrate.[519]
Prince gives a summary of the religious tenets of the Plymouth church:
I. “It held that nothing is to be accounted true religion but what is taught in the Holy Scriptures.”
II. “It held that every man has the right of private judgment, of testing his belief by the sacred writ, and of worshipping God in his own way as that text directed.”[520]
On this doctrine the Pilgrims thrived. “Brown bread and the gospel is good fare,” they said to one another.[521] Indeed it was; and there on the desolate coast, where wheat froze and the bitter winter congealed six months of the twelve, men grew. “At last,” says Elliott, “in the beginning of the seventeenth century, we see a church with no priest, with no hierarchy, with no forms; none like it since that at Corinth; none so entirely free to work out its ideas into life and action. It was a religious democracy. Its doctrines and practices were the outcome of the time, and were decided on by the votes of the members as men. In theory, the majority ruled in the Plymouth church. ’Tis a noticeable thing in human history, and it has had its influence in both church and state. The day had come when a few brave men could take this step in advance towards freedom, and not be swallowed up and lost. The day had come when democracy was possible in the church, foretelling its speedy coming in the state.”[522]