A. C. Addison

“ We can imagine with what wondering awe and mingled hopes and fears the Pilgrims looked out over the sea upon that strange New World, with its great stretch of wild, wooded coast and panorama of rock and dune and scrub, wintry bay and frowning head-land, to which destiny and the worn white wings of the Mayflower together had brought them. ”

“ William Brewster more than any man was entitled to be called the Founder of the Pilgrim Church. It originated in his house at Scrooby, where he was born in 1566, and he sacrificed everything for it. He was elder of the church at Leyden and Plymouth, and served it also as minister for some time after going out. Through troubles, trials, and adversity, he stood by the Plymouth flocks, and when his followers were in peril and perplexity, worn and almost hopeless through fear and suffering, he kept a stout heart and bade them be of good cheer. ”

“ Appropriately the spot was named New Plymouth, after the last port of call in Old England.
The Pilgrims landed on a huge boulder of granite, the Pilgrim Stone, still reverently preserved by their descendants: a rock which was
to their feet as a doorstep
Into a world unknown—the cornerstone of a nation! [5]
The early struggles of the Plymouth planters and the hardships they endured form a story of terrible privation and suffering on the one hand and heroic endurance and self-sacrifice on the other. ”

“ 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 associates 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 passage from Boston to The Netherlands. ”

“ By a strange yet happy coincidence, on the very day the writer of these lines sat silent in a Pilgrim cell at Boston—the Lincolnshire town where the Pilgrims were imprisoned in their first attempt to flee their native country—pondering on the past and inscribing his humble lines to the New World pioneers, the President of the American Republic was at Provincetown, Massachusetts, dedicating a giant monument to the planters of New Plymouth, the last of the many memorials erected to them. ”

“ 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 shores 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 shore. ”

“ The warships that are here with their cannon to testify to its national character typify the strength of that Government whose people have derived much from the spirit and example of the heroic band. Governor Bradford, Elder Brewster, Captain Miles Standish are the types of men in whom as ancestors, either by blood, or by education and example as citizens, the American people may well take pride. ”

“ Having laid the cornerstone, Mr. Bayard sketched the early life of John Robinson, on from his Cambridge career to his harassed ministry at Norwich, his withdrawal to Lincolnshire in 1604 and the inception of the Scrooby congregation, [Pg 176] 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. ”

“ Affecting also was the parting of the emigrants with those they were leaving behind. They had need of all their courage and patience.
They sailed with British cheers and a sounding volley fired as salute, and made a brave enough show on quitting land; but troubles dogged them on the waters. Delays and disappointments soon set in. The Speedwell brought them to Southampton, where, anchored off the West Key, they found the Mayflower of London, a bark of one hundred and eighty tons burden, Captain Thomas Jones, and several passengers, some of them merchants' craftsmen. ”

“ Death reaped a rich harvest in their midst. Every second day a grave had to be dug for one or other of them in the frozen ground. Sometimes, [Pg 83] during January and February, two or three died in a single day. So rapid was the mortality that at last only a mere handful remained who were able to look after the sick. William Bradford was at this time prostrated, and it is pathetic to note the expression of his gratitude to his friend William Brewster and Miles Standish and others who ministered to his needs and those of the fellow-sufferers around him. ”

“ Robinson was a Lincolnshire man. Gainsborough claims him, and on Gainsborough his first solid memorial has been raised. Many are familiar with Gainsborough who have never seen the town. Up the Trent sailed Sweyn, the sanguinary Dane, to conquest; and his son Canute—he that ordered back the rising tide, and got a wetting for his pains—was at Gainsborough when he succeeded him as King of England. ”

“ The memorial and the circumstances 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. ”

“ Miles Standish, that romantic figure in the Pilgrim history, did good service for the Colony, and practically settled the question whether the Anglo-Saxon or the native Indian was to predominate in New England. Born in Lancashire about 1584, and belonging to the Duxbury branch of the Standish family, he obtained a lieutenant's commission in the English army and fought in the wars against The Netherlands and Spain. His taste for military adventure led to his joining the Pilgrims at Leyden, and when the Mayflower reached Cape Cod, he led the land exploring parties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is interesting to reflect that when, a decade and more after the Pilgrim Fathers had landed in America, some hundreds of Puritan colonists embarked for Massachusetts, many of the leading burgesses of the then only Boston—that Old Boston, scene of the Pilgrims' detention and suffering—were of the number. ”

“ 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 associated 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. ”

“ The Pilgrims are followed into Holland and on their momentous journey across seas to the West. The story aims at being trustworthy and up-to-date as regards the later known facts of Pilgrim history and the developments which reflect it in our own time. It does what no other book on the subject has attempted: [Pg ix] it traces the individual lives and varying fortunes of the Pilgrims after their settlement in the New World; and it states the steps taken in recent years to perpetuate the memory of the heroic band. The tale that is told is one of abiding interest to the Anglo-Saxon race ”

“ The town cannot claim a contribution to the Mayflower, but it has a boast as proud, for it was because the ancient seaport sent so large a contingent of Puritans to America that it was ordered "that Trimountain," the site overlooking the sheltered waters and the island group which delighted Pilgrim eyes, "shall be called Boston." ”

“ The [Pg 80] weather was unusually severe, even for that rigorous climate, and the Pilgrims found themselves in sorry plight on that bleak New England shore. Cold and famine had doggedly to be fought, and the contest was an unequal one. Cooped up for so long in the Mayflower, and badly fed and sheltered on the voyage, the settlers were ill-fitted to withstand the stress of the new conditions. For a time it was a struggle for bare existence, and the little colony was brought very near to extinction. ”

“ When the Mayflower left them to return home in the spring, the settlers must have felt they were desolate indeed, for their nearest civilised neighbours were five hundred miles to the north and south of them, the French at Nova Scotia and the English in Virginia. Seven months later, in November, came the Fortune, bringing thirty-five new emigrants, including William Brewster's eldest son; John Winslow, a brother of Edward; and Robert Cushman, who had turned back the year before at Old Plymouth. ”

“ They were more liberal and tolerant in religion than the Puritan colonists of Massachusetts Bay, and more merciful in their punishments; they perpetrated no atrocities against inferior peoples, and cherished the love of peace and of political justice.
Although at first the relations of the Pilgrims with their Puritan neighbours were none of the best, a better state of feeling before long prevailed. We have seen how John Winthrop and his pastor plodded over to Plymouth to attend its Sunday worship. ”

“ President Taft, the successor of President Roosevelt, arrived in his yacht Mayflower with imposing naval display amid rejoicing and the booming of guns. He was greeted by Governor of the State Eben S. Draper, Captain J. H. Sears, president of the Cape Cod Pilgrim Memorial Association, and members of the local committee. Accompanying him were Secretary of the Navy George von L. Meyer, United States Senators Henry Cabot Lodge and George Peabody Wetmore, and Justice White of the United States Supreme Court. ”

“ They established a community and a government solidly founded on love of freedom and belief in progress, on civil liberty and religious toleration, on industrial cooperation and individual honesty and industry, on even-handed justice and a real equality before the laws, on peace and goodwill supported by protective force. ”

“ I stand with arms outstretched, and find that the opposite walls may be pressed with the finger-tips of each hand. The cell extends back seven feet, and the height is the same between the bare stone floor and the roughly [Pg xiv] boarded roof. All is dingy, cobwebbed, musty, and silent as the grave. Like the neighbouring tenement it is cold, mean, melancholy, fit only to be shunned. Yet its associations are dear indeed. For this is holy ground, a hallowed spot, a Mecca of modern pilgrims. ”

“ As the First Church in Boston is the fifth of its line, so is the First Church in Plymouth the fifth meeting-house used by the Pilgrim community. Its predecessor, a shrine of Pilgrim history around which precious associations clustered, was destroyed by fire in 1892; from the [Pg 120] burning ruins was rescued the town bell cast by Paul Revere in 1801, and this sacred relic hangs and tolls again in the tower of the present edifice. ”

“ Although their shelter was of the scantiest, the settlers had not, like the settlers of Plymouth, to face at the outset the rigors of a Western winter. The Pilgrims arrived in December, on the shortest day of the year, whereas the day of the Puritans' landing was the very longest. Sickness and famine had nevertheless to be fought. Disease quickly carried off twenty per cent. of the people. About a hundred others returned home discouraged. The rest persevered, and proved themselves worthy followers of the New Plymouth Pilgrims. ”

“ 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! ”

“ The Scrooby community was an off-shoot from that at Gainsborough, the first Separatist church formed in the North of England, of which the pastor was John Smyth, a graduate of Cambridge, an "eminent man in his time" and "well beloved of most men." Smyth preached at Gainsborough from 1602 to 1606, when he was driven into exile. ”

“ Only the heavy whitewashed gate, scarce wide enough to allow a man to enter, admits the light and air; and the interior of each cell is dark as night. We can imagine the misery of men fated to inhabit for long such abodes of gloom ”

“ They look as if they might have served as coal cellars for feeding the great open fireplaces which, with their spits and jacks and winding-chains, still stand there in the long open kitchen much as they did when they cooked the last mayoral banquet or May Day dinner for the old Bostonians. ”

“ Next to Brewster, William Bradford was the most prominent of the lay preachers among the Scrooby fraternity. He became Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony—"the first American citizen of the English race who bore rule by the free choice of his brethren"—and the historian of the Plymouth Plantation. Bradford, a yeoman's son with comfortable home surroundings, lived at Austerfield, an ancient [Pg 12] agricultural village about three miles from Scrooby on the Yorkshire side. ”

“ Thomas Tinker, with his wife and son, died the first winter.
John Turner had with him two sons, but the party succumbed 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. ”

“ Passing on to the twentieth century we have the story taken up by one American President and continued by another at the cornerstone laying and dedication of a combined tribute of State and Nation to the lives and work of the [Pg 104] Forefathers. This was the Pilgrim Memorial Monument, erected at Provincetown on a commanding site above the harbour in whose waters the Mayflower dropped her anchor nearly three centuries ago. ”