The Romantic Story Of The Mayflower Pilgrims Part 8

First the pilgrims drove to Scrooby, Bawtry, and Austerfield, where they inspected Brewster's house and Bradford's cottage and other objects of absorbing interest linked with the lives of the exiled Separatists. They then entered Gainsborough--that "foreign-looking town," subject of George Eliot's romantic pen, birthplace of John Robinson--where an address was presented to Mr. Bayard at the Town Hall, and luncheon was partaken of at the Old Hall, one of Gainsborough's most cherished antiquities, where John Smyth and his brethren held services and John Wesley many times preached. A move was next made to the site of the future Robinson Memorial Hall, a building at once a tribute to a worthy Englishman and an agency for the development of Christian work in the home of the Pilgrim Fathers. The proceedings were under the presidency of the Reverend J. M. Jones, chairman of the Congregational Union of England and Wales. To Mr. Bayard was handed a silver trowel, the gift of the congregation of the Gainsborough church, bearing an inscription and engravings of the Mayflower and of Delfshaven, on whose beach Robinson knelt in prayer with the Pilgrim band ere they set out on their long and checkered voyage. Having laid the cornerstone, Mr. Bayard sketched the early life of John Robinson, on from his Cambridge career to his hara.s.sed ministry at Norwich, his withdrawal to Lincolnshire in 1604 and the inception of the Scrooby congregation, whose faith found cause for hope and cheerful courage in the dark hours of their persecution, adversity, and affliction. He went on to picture the blessings of civil and religious liberty which we are apt to accept and enjoy without giving much heed to the generations that in bygone years toiled and suffered to secure them for us. How small, said he, the measure of our grat.i.tude and infrequent our recognition of those who

Beyond their dark age led the van of thought.

Well, reasoned Mr. Bayard, on such a scene and such an occasion as this, might the words of Whittier be repeated--

Our hearts grow cold, We lightly hold A right which brave men died to gain; The stake, the cord, The axe, the sword, Grim nurses at its birth of pain.

It was the momentous issues raised by the invasion of liberty of conscience that drove John Robinson and his a.s.sociates forth. As William Bradford has recorded, "Being thus molested and with no hope of their continuance there, by a joynte consent they resolved to go into ye low countries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men." Then it was that they made the attempted pa.s.sage from Boston to The Netherlands.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TABLET IN VESTIBULE OF ROBINSON MEMORIAL CHURCH, GAINSBOROUGH]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MEMORIAL TABLET ON ST. PETER'S CHURCH, LEYDEN]

Glancing at the history of the arbitrary and cruel measures taken to prevent the departure of the congregation, which finally, in broken detachments, distressed, despoiled, imperilled by land and sea, a.s.sembled at Amsterdam, moving thence to Leyden, Mr. Bayard paid grateful recognition to the country which, in their hour of sore need, extended to exiles welcome protection and generous toleration in an age of intolerance, and recited the familiar incidents connected with their sailing for America. "It is clear and plain to us now that the departure from England of this small body of humble men was a great step in the march of Christian civilisation. It contained the seed of Christian liberty, freedom of enquiry, freedom of man's conscience." As for John Robinson, between whose grave and the colony he was the means of planting, washes the wide ocean he never crossed. His memory is a tie of kindred--a recognition of the common trust committed to both nations to sustain the principles of civil and religious liberty of which he was a fearless champion, and under which he has so marvellously fulfilled the prophesy "A little one shall become a thousand, and a small one a great nation." And the seed of Christian liberty, sown in adversity but on good soil, has become a wide-spreading tree in whose sheltering branches all who will may lodge.

Six years after this stone-laying, in June, 1902, the tercentenary of the founding of the Gainsborough church, a tablet was unveiled in the vestibule of the new building to commemorate the world-wide co-operation in honouring one "the thought of whom stirs equal reverence in English and American hearts."

What the American Amba.s.sador so well said at Gainsborough was a fitting prelude to the excursion which his countrymen, continuing their itinerary, made to the Pilgrim scenes in Holland where, in 1891, the English Plymouth memorial year, they had erected on St. Peter's Cathedral at Leyden, under which lie his bones, a tablet to John Robinson, pastor of the English church worshipping "over against this spot," whence at his prompting went forth the Pilgrim Fathers to settle New England.

[Ill.u.s.tration: DESIGN BY R. M. LUCAS FOR THE TERCENTENARY MEMORIAL AT SOUTHAMPTON, TO BE UNVEILED ON AUGUST 15TH, 1912]

The Gainsborough ceremony and the visits to Plymouth and Boston forged further links in the chain of sympathy and brotherhood between England and America. Fresh evidence has since been forthcoming that the religious zeal and love of manly independence which induced the Mayflower Pilgrims to expatriate themselves and found a mighty empire across the Atlantic have their abiding influence to-day. We have seen how these New World pilgrimages to Old World shrines rekindled dormant affections on both sides.[13] No doubt the journeys will be renewed again and again over much the same ground in the days to come.

It was about this time that Mr. Bayard was instrumental in restoring to the State of Ma.s.sachusetts William Bradford's ma.n.u.script "History of Plymouth Plantation." About the middle of the eighteenth century this valuable record was deposited in the New England Library, in the tower of the Old South Church in Boston, but it disappeared, and found its way to England. By some it was thought that Governor Hutchinson carried it off; others believed that it was looted by British soldiers when Boston was evacuated. Anyhow it vanished, and was given up for lost. But by a lucky chance it was discovered. It was not until 1855 that certain pa.s.sages in Wilberforce's "History of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America," printed in 1846, professing to quote from "a ma.n.u.script History of Plymouth in the Fulham Library," revealed the whereabouts of the priceless folios. These quotations were identified as being similar to extracts from Bradford's History made by earlier annalists--Nathaniel Morton, who used it freely in his "New England's Memorial," published 1669; Thomas Prince, in his "Annals" printed in 1736; and Governor Hutchinson, the last man known to have seen the ma.n.u.script, who used it in the preparation of his "History of Ma.s.sachusetts" (second volume), in 1767. The story of the return of the ma.n.u.script has been told by the Honourable George F. h.o.a.r, the venerable Senator of Ma.s.sachusetts who, during a visit to England, interviewed the Bishop of London on the subject, and, when the History had been recovered through the good offices of Mr. Bayard, had the satisfaction of handing it over to Governor Wolcott on May 24, 1897. Ten years subsequently, after Mr.

Bayard's death, another Bishop of London, engaged on a mission to America, presented to President Roosevelt the original deed appointing Colonel Coddington first Governor of Rhode Island. This doc.u.ment was found in the muniment room at Fulham Palace; it bears the seal of the Cromwellian Government and the signature of Bradshaw.

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

THE FONT, AUSTERFIELD CHURCH

_For a long time it was believed that this font was used at the baptism of William Bradford_]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE FONT, PRIMITIVE METHODIST CHAPEL, LOUND

_The font that was probably used at the baptism of William Bradford_]

Those Americans who visited the district of Bawtry for the purpose of seeing the Pilgrim village of Austerfield would be surprised ten years later, in August, 1906, to hear that the font in the old parish church, which had so often been pointed to as that at which William Bradford was baptised, was not in reality what it had been represented to be. For some time there was a heated controversy in the district, and this revealed certain strange facts concerning the font which go to prove that the Norman font used at Bradford's baptism is at the present time in a small Primitive Methodist chapel at Lound near Retford, Nottinghamshire. It seems that about fifty years ago the s.e.xton, one Milner, was ordered to clear certain rubbish out of the church at Austerfield, and sell it. Among the objects thus disposed of was the font. A farmer, John Jackson, became the purchaser, and a few years later the font pa.s.sed to his son, who for some time kept it in his garden as an ornament. In 1895 the farm changed hands, the new tenant being a Mr. Fielding, and included in the fixtures he took over was the font, described in the auctioneers' valuation award, dated April 15, 1895, as "Garden--Stone baptismal font (formerly in Austerfield Parish Church)." Having no wish to keep the font Mr. Fielding gave it to his mother, a native of Austerfield, and she in turn handed it over to the trustees of the chapel at Lound, where it still remains, jealously guarded in the incongruous surroundings of its alien home. It is noted that when, years ago, the clergyman at Austerfield discovered what s.e.xton Milner had done, he sent for him and told him of the great loss the church had sustained. It was little use locking the stable door when the steed had gone, but the s.e.xton, being a man of resource, thought he saw a way out of the difficulty. So to avoid further trouble he brought a trough from his own farmyard and subst.i.tuted it for the lost font!

That was a very impious kind of fraud indeed, but it seems quite clear that it was perpetrated. The church authorities, it must be admitted, have done their best to atone for the faults of the past in the direction of trying to restore the ancient font to its original place.

Unfortunately they have not succeeded, for though good offers were made to Mrs. Fielding and the chapel trustees, they resolutely refused to part with the precious relic. The fear was then entertained that a wealthy American would some day buy the font, and thus deprive the district of one of its most historic possessions. It is questionable, however, if that fate would be worse than the one that has already overtaken the font. Should the failure to restore it to its rightful place unhappily continue, the more satisfactory alternative would appear to be its purchase and presentation, say, to the Pilgrim Church at New Plymouth.

FOOTNOTES:

[12] "Collections Concerning the Early History of the Founders of New Plymouth." Mr. Hunter was a.s.sistant-keeper of H.M. Records, and after the village had remained for more than two centuries in oblivion, located Scrooby as the birthplace of the Pilgrim Church. His sole guide in the search were the brief statements in Bradford's History that the members of the church "were of several towns and villages, some in Nottinghamshire, some in Lincolnshire, and some in Yorkshire, where they bordered nearest together," and that "they ordinarily met at William Brewster's house on the Lord's day, which was a manor of the bishop's."

The inquiry which led to this important discovery was instigated by the Honourable James Savage while on a visit to England. The key was supplied by Governor Bradford, Mr. Savage detected it; Mr. Hunter unlocked the hidden and forgotten door.

[13] In another part of England, in 1910-11, Americans were joining hands with the people of Southampton in raising on the old West Quay of that port a Pilgrim shrine to the men of New Plymouth who, as we know, sailed thence in the Mayflower on their interrupted voyage to the West, on August 5 (O.S.), 1620. It was proposed to unveil this memorial on August 15, 1912.

THE END.