1607

WILLIAM BRADFORD.

43

historian. To him is due almost all that we know of the Plymouth settlers from the day when they left Lincolnshire till they became a firmly rooted and prosperous commonwealth in America.

Gratitude is quickened when we compare the simple, vigorous, and picturesque chronicle set before us by Bradford with the tedious and pedantic writings from which so much of the later history of New England has to be extracted. There is nothing to show that Bradford was a widely-read man, nor is there in his writings any striving after literary effect. Yet his work is in the true sense scholarly. The language is like the language of Bunyan, that of a man who trained himself not merely to speak but to think in the words of Scripture. Every expression is simple and effective, never farfetched, never mean nor common. The substance is worthy of the style. Faults no doubt there are. At times there is a disappointing lack of detail and precision. Occasionally we feel that in the aims and hopes which Bradford assigns to himself and his fellow-workers at the outset of their enterprise, he is unconsciously winning the easy success of a retrospective prophecy. Yet with these and it may be other defects, Bradford's writings still remain the worthy first-fruits of Puritan literature in its new home. They are the work of a wise and good man who tells with a right understanding the great things that he and his brethren have done.1

In 1607 the congregation at Scrooby made its first attempt to escape into Holland. They had actually Attempted found a ship and embarked at Boston, when 1607.2 through the treachery of the master they were arrested and imprisoned. According to Bradford's

flight in

1

1 It is evident from more than one passage in which Bradford refers to subsequent events that his history was not written from year to year in the form of a diary or chronicle. See, for example, p. 180. 2 Bradford, p. 8.

own admission they were for the most part treated leniently, but the scheme of departure was for the present overthrown.

The attempt was renewed in the following year. An entry in the Exchequer returns of ecclesiastical fines throws some light on the proceedings which led to this flight. We find that in 1608 three alleged Brownists or Separatists' were summoned before two Ecclesiastical Commissioners at Southwell, and fined twenty pounds each for refusing to attend. One of the offenders was Brewster, and we can hardly doubt that the attack upon him was accompanied by proceedings against his friends and fellow-worshippers. It is also to be noticed that he had ceased to hold the office of postmaster in the preceding autumn.2

Flight to

In 1608 the actual flight to Holland was made. The emigrants, doubtless out of caution and because they were too many for one ship to carry, decided Holland.3 to go in detachments. The fate of the first party seemed to bode ill for the project. During the midst of their embarcation, when many of the men were on board, but while the women and all the clothes and furniture were yet on land, an alarm was raised that the officers of the law were coming with a great company to seize the fugitives. The master, through cowardice or indifference, weighed anchor, and the little band was thus miserably parted; the women deserted and unprotected, the men on board without any goods save the clothes they wore and ignorant of what might befall those whom they had left. To the sufferings which the fugitives had already undergone were added the perils of the sea. A fearful storm arose; the ship was driven to the coast of Norway, and only reached 2 lb. p. 68.

1 Hunter, p. 131.

3 The flight of the Pilgrims to Holland and their stay there is told in the second and third chapters of Bradford.

1608-9

THE PURITANS IN HOLLAND.

45

Amsterdam after fourteen days of terror, during half of which time neither sun, moon, nor stars could be seen. The wives and children who had been left behind, after being hurried from one place to another and from one justice to another and thus turmoiled a good while,' were at last set free through the very weariness of their persecutors, and, probably with other members of the Scrooby congregation, joined the first fugitives in Holland.

tans in

Holland.

The sojourn of the exiles in the Low Countries is described by Bradford with singular pathos and simpliThe Puri- city. He tells how they saw many goodly and fortified cities strongly walled and guarded with troops of armed men; how they heard a strange language and beheld the different manners and customs of the people with their strange fashions and attires, all so far differing from that of their plain country villages wherein they were bred and had so long lived, as it seemed they had come into a new world.' After staying a year in Amsterdam they removed to Leyden, a fair and beautiful city and of a sweet situation,' and there' fell to such trades and employments as they best could, valuing peace and spiritual comfort above all riches whatsoever. And at length they came to raise a competent and comfortable living, but with hard and continual labour.' Thus they continued for many years in a comfortable condition, enjoying much sweet and delightful society and spiritual comfort together.' The little colony formed a refuge for Nonconformists from various parts of England, till it became a great congregation. The honesty and industry of the exiles gained them employment, and so peaceful was their life that the magistrates held them up as an example to the turbulent Walloons.

One would gladly know something more of their ecclesiastical discipline and of the process by which their capacity for self-government was trained and perfected.

We can easily see in how many ways the change of life must have tended to beget that spirit of enterprise and invention needful for the success of colonists. The man who had learnt to speak a strange tongue, to make his bargains in a strange currency, and to adapt his life and mode of work to the habits of a foreign country, was far better fitted for the career of an emigrant than one who had been confined to the common tasks of a farm labourer, a small yeoman, or a handicraftsman in a country village. Moreover the emigration to Holland must have acted as a process of selection, by which the most venturesome and those endowed with the most steadfast faith in their peculiar doctrines were chosen out as the seed of a new commonwealth. The men who in the cause of religion forsook their English homes for an unknown land, and who were again willing to abandon their new-won peace and prosperity for the terrors of the wilderness, were like the twice-chosen band of Gideon.

In other ways their stay in Holland must have served to confirm and intensify those peculiar features of character which had come into existence in England and were further developed in America. Holland was then torn in pieces with theological conflict. As in the Eastern Empire during the great controversies of early Christendom, the whole community was marshalled in two dogmatic sects. The English Puritans could not fail to be drawn into the struggle. Indeed we know that Robinson, though unwilling to take up arms, did actually play a distinguished part as a combatant.1 Thus the tendency of the English Puritan to look at all questions, moral, metaphysical, and even political, from a theological point of view, was confirmed and increased. Moreover, the life of a small isolated community was fitted to beget the self-reliance and the strong sense of 1 Bradford, p. 15.

1609-17

Project for

PROJECT FOR EMIGRATION.

47

mutual dependence needed by colonists, and so fully manifested in the Puritan settlements of New England. Before they had dwelt many years in their new home the project of a fresh emigration presented itself to the Puritan exiles. Holland gave emigration. them a refuge where they could enjoy religious freedom and subsist by hard toil, but it offered nothing more. Many of the usages which they saw about them, especially the lack of Sabbath observance, were repugnant to their religious feelings. They found difficulties in giving their children suitable training, and the future of their posterity seemed far from hopeful. They must either submit to a life of unremitting toil and hardship, or else become soldiers or sailors, or betake themselves to some other secular calling, whereby they would be swallowed up in the mass of the population. Some, too, retained love enough for their country to wish to recover their position as English citizens, if they might do so without forfeiting their freedom of worship.1

Bradford, we may well believe, expressed the views of himself and his more ardent and far-sighted brethren, though scarcely those of the whole community, when he says that they had a great hope and inward zeal of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for the propagation and advancing the gospel of the kingdom of Christ in those remote parts of the world.' 2

Relations with the Virginia

There were other circumstances which may have specially inclined the Leyden congregation towards the idea of American colonization. Despite the influence of Ferrars the views of the more Company. moderate Puritans were strongly represented in the Virginia Company. Sandys was both by personal and hereditary sympathy connected with that 2 Bradford, p. 16.

1 Winslow in Young, p. 381.