The Romantic Story Of The Mayflower Pilgrims Part 7

John Tilley accompanied his wife and daughter Elizabeth; the parents died the first winter, but the daughter survived and married John Howland.

Thomas Tinker, with his wife and son, died the first winter.

John Turner had with him two sons, but the party succ.u.mbed to the hardships of the first season.

William Trevore entered as a sailor on the Mayflower, and returned to England on the Fortune in 1621.

William White went out with his wife Susanna, and son Resolved. A son, Peregrine, was born to them in Provincetown Harbour, who has been distinguished as being the first child of the Pilgrims born after the arrival in the New World. This is his strongest claim, as his early life was rather disreputable, though his obituary, in 1704, allowed "he was much reformed in his last years." William, the father, died on February 21, 1621; his widow married, in the May following, Edward Winslow, who had recently lost his wife.

Resolved White married (1) Judith, daughter of William Va.s.sall; he lived at Scituate, Marshfield, and lastly Salem, where he married, (2) October 5, 1674, widow Abigail Lord, and died after 1680. He was a member of the Scituate military company in 1643.

Roger Wilder died the first winter, and Thomas Williams also died the first season.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

THE MILES STANDISH MONUMENT, DUXBURY]

Edward Winslow, an educated young English gentleman from Droitwich, joined the brethren at Leyden in 1617, and accompanying them to New England, was the third to sign the compact on board the Mayflower, Carver and Bradford signing before, and Brewster after him, then Isaac Allerton and Miles Standish. Winslow was one of the party sent to prospect along the coast. Before leaving Holland, he married at Leyden, in 1618, Elizabeth Barker, who went out with him, but died March 24, 1621, and as we have seen, he shortly afterwards married widow Susanna (Fuller) White. Winslow proved himself a man of exceptional ability and character, and gave the best years of his life to the service of the Colony. While on a mission to England in its interests in 1623, he published an account of the settlement and struggles of the Mayflower Pilgrims, under the t.i.tle "Good News for New England, or a relation of things remarkable in that Plantation." Later he wrote (and published in 1646). "Hypocrisie Unmasked; by a true relation of the proceedings of the Governor of Ma.s.sachusetts against Samuel Groton, a notorious Disturber of the Peace," which is chiefly remarkable for an appendix giving an account of the preparations in Leyden for removal to America, and the substance of John Robinson's address to the Pilgrims on their departure from Holland. Winslow was Governor of the Colony in 1633, 1636, and 1644, and at other times a.s.sistant. In 1634 he went to England again on colonial business, and before sailing accepted a commission for the Bay Colony which required him to appear before the King's Commissioners for Plantations. Here he was brought face to face with Archbishop Laud, who could not resist the opportunity of venting his wrath upon the representative of the Plymouth settlement, about whose sayings and doings he had been duly informed. Winslow was accused of taking part in Sunday services and of conducting civil marriages. He admitted the charges, and pleaded extenuating circ.u.mstances; but Laud was not to be appeased and committed the bold Separatist to the Fleet Prison, where he remained for seventeen weeks, when he was released and permitted to return to America, wounded in his conscience by the cruel wrong done him and impoverished by legal expenses. In October, 1646, against the advice of his compatriots, Winslow undertook another mission to the old country, this time in connection with the federation of the New England Colonies, and, accepting service under Cromwell, sailed on an expedition to the West Indies, caught a fever, and died, and was buried at sea on May 8, 1655.

Gilbert Winslow, another subscriber to the compact in the Mayflower's cabin, returned subsequently to England and died in 1650.

Apart from the events of their after lives, the spirit which possessed the Mayflower Pilgrims and guided their leaders in exile is well expressed by Mrs. Hemans when she says, in her stirring lines--

They sought a faith's pure shrine!

Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they found-- Freedom to worship G.o.d.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW

_The only authentic Portrait of a Mayflower Pilgrim_]

FOOTNOTES:

[11] The murderer Billington, sad to relate, was one of those who signed the historic compact on board the Mayflower. He was tried, condemned to death, and executed by his brethren in accordance with their primitive criminal procedure. At first, trials in the little colony were conducted by the whole body of the townsmen, the Governor presiding. In 1623 trial by Jury was established, and subsequently a regular code of laws was adopted. The capital offences were treason, murder, diabolical conversation, arson, rape, and unnatural crimes. Plymouth had only six sorts of capital crime, against thirty-one in England at the accession of James I, and of these six it actually punished only two, Billington's belonging to one of them. The Pilgrims used no barbarous punishments.

Like all their contemporaries they used the stocks and the whipping-post, without perceiving that those punishments in public were barbarizing. They inflicted fines and forfeitures freely without regard to the station or quality of the offenders. They never punished, or even committed any person as a witch. Restrictive laws were early adopted as to spirituous drinks, and in 1667 cider was included. In 1638 the smoking of tobacco was forbidden out-of-doors within a mile of a dwelling-house or while at work in the fields; but unlike England and Ma.s.sachusetts, Plymouth never had a law regulating apparel.

VI

NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by Battershill, Plymouth_

MAYFLOWER TABLET ON THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND]

VI

NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES

pilgrim shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined.--LONGFELLOW.

Memories of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers were actively revived when, in July, 1891, during the Mayoralty of Mr. J. T. Bond, a number of the Pilgrims' descendants and their representatives from the New World visited Old World Plymouth, and with an interest whole-hearted and profound inspected the scene, famous in the annals and traditions of our race, which witnessed their forbears' last brief sojourn on English soil--a place where the Fathers, as they never tired of testifying, in the days when Thomas Townes was Mayor, were "kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling," and whence the st.u.r.dy little Mayflower sailed to the West with its precious human freight, to lay the foundation of the New England States.

To commemorate this visit, and the sailing of the Pilgrim Fathers two hundred and seventy years before, the site of the historic embarkation was marked by the Mayflower Stone and Tablet placed on the Barbican at Plymouth, the stone in the pavement of the pier adjacent to the ancient causey trod by the Pilgrims' departing feet and destroyed a few years later, and the tablet on the wall of the Barbican facing it.

The memorial and the circ.u.mstances of its erection formed a fitting tribute to the New England pioneers; and the story told by these stones should serve to remind all who behold them of the devoted lives, the splendid achievement, and the romantic history of the Mayflower Pilgrims. They are at once a landmark and a shrine honoured by the English and American peoples.

In June, 1896, another company of New World pilgrims landed at Plymouth, and proceeded to worship in spirit at Old World shrines.

During two weeks they wandered about the dear old country--"Our Old Home," as Nathaniel Hawthorne calls it in his book of English reminiscences--lingering on the scenes a.s.sociated with the lives of their forefathers: quiet villages wherein they were born; quaint, half-forgotten boroughs in which they lived; the metropolis in which they taught; the sombre East Anglia, where many of them died "for the testimony." But chief of all were the places where these sojourners could look on the homes of the grave, brave men who gathered together the people who sailed in the Mayflower, and led the way to the New World.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

SCROOBY VILLAGE]

We still call them "the Pilgrim Fathers," in spite of what the Reverend Joseph Hunter, an esteemed native of South Yorkshire, wrote in his book.[12] "There is something of affectation in this term," he finds, "which is always displeasing to me." "It appears to me," says he, "to be philologically improper." And then he explains. "An American who visits the place from which the founders of his country emigrated is a pilgrim in the proper sense of the word, whether he finds an altar, a shrine, or a stone of memorial, or not. But these founders, when they found the sh.o.r.es of America, were proceeding to no object of this kind, and even leaving it to the winds and the waves to drive them to any point on an unknown and unmarked sh.o.r.e."

Perhaps Mr. Hunter is right, philologically; but apart from his history (which may be challenged, because the master of the Mayflower knew where he was going if the Pilgrims did not, and a map and description of the region had been published by Captain John Smith, the name-giver of New England), the designation stands, and will ever be cherished by those familiar with the spots these faithful Fathers left when, pilgrims and wanderers, they set forth they scarcely knew whither, and finally crossed the little-known sea. And the most historic of such shrines are in Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire.

When the New World pilgrims arrived at Plymouth for the journey through the old country, by a curious arrangement they travelled backwards; for Plymouth was the last place the Pilgrim Fathers touched, and the haunts they took in turn were those which saw the rise and earlier efforts of those grave and reverend seekers for religious freedom. Soon they reached Boston--dreamy, old-world, tide-washed, fenland-locked Boston--scene of deep interest to them all, filled with hallowed memories of the Pilgrim Fathers and founders of the Western States.

The party numbered nearly fifty, a dozen at least of whom could lay claim to be lineal descendants of the Mayflower Pilgrims. Their leader was the Reverend Dr. Dunning of Boston, Ma.s.sachusetts, and among them were representatives of the National Council of American Congregational churches.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by Hackford, Boston_

THE ANCIENT KITCHEN, GUILDHALL, BOSTON]

Boston, like Plymouth, gave them a warm welcome. The cordiality of their reception to the old town was acknowledged on behalf of the pilgrims by Dr. Dunning. "Our fathers found it difficult to get away from Boston," said he, "and from the kindness you have shown us we are much afraid that you are planning to detain us also." The character of the "detention" was very different with nearly three centuries intervening, and this Dr. Dunning and his friends abundantly realised.

The visitors were taken over the old parish church, and were duly impressed by its size and grandeur as a whole; and the scene was most striking and memorable when, gathered within its beautiful chancel, these representative New World men, many of them with the blood of the Pilgrim Fathers in their veins, joined in singing together the n.o.ble hymn, "O G.o.d, our help in ages past." Next the Guildhall was visited.

Here the disused sessions-court, where the fugitives were arraigned in 1607, and other upper rooms were scrutinised.

But most attractive were the kitchen and prison beneath. The cells must in fact have had more "prisoners" in them that day than they had held for a long time, for there was scarcely a member of the company who was not shut up in at least one of them during the inspection. They thus realised something of what their forefathers actually endured; the taste of the bitterness was slight, and wanting in the old-time flavour which the prisoners' treatment imparted, but it was sufficient to call forth expressions of abhorrence at the thought of continued confinement in such a place.

At last the pilgrims said farewell to a town crowded with precious memories and entrained for Lincoln, where their welcome by the Free Churches and Cathedral authorities was in keeping with that extended to them everywhere on their route. At Lincoln they received an address. "We feel," said the Nonconformists there, "that in welcoming you to this county of ours, we are welcoming you back to your ancestral home, for Lincolnshire people never forget that their county is inseparably a.s.sociated with the history of the Pilgrim Church. We claim the great John Robinson, the pastor of the Pilgrim church, as our own, and the neighbouring town of Gainsborough boasts of having been for some time the church's home. We are proud of the men, of the testimony they bore, of the work they did. All England is debtor to the men of the Pilgrim Church for their heroic witness in behalf of a pure and Scriptural faith and freedom of conscience worship."

And "the neighbouring town of Gainsborough," home of the Pilgrim Church, gave itself up at this time to a ceremonial stone-laying of the Robinson Memorial Church, a function which the American pilgrims attended, together with the Honourable T. F. Bayard, the United States Amba.s.sador, who made a journey into Lincolnshire to lay this stone, and Congregationalists gathered from all parts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by Welchman Bros., Retford_

ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH, GAINSBOROUGH

_The corner-stone of the church was laid by Mr. Bayard in June, 1896_]