COMMENCEMENT OF THE VOYAGE. 61 their leaves one of another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them." 66 They had a prosperous voyage to London; but many more troubles were yet before them. On the 5th of August the two ships sailed in company, but as they dropped down the Channel the smaller ship leaked so greatly, that they were forced to put in to Dartmouth to refit. After losing much time there in the necessary repairs, they again set sail; but after proceeding about " a hundred leagues without the Land's End," the same cause sent them back to Plymouth. Here, after consultation, they determined to leave behind, for the present year, the faulty ship and part of their company. There were many willing to be left, some out of feare and discontent, others as unfite, in regard of their owne weakness and charge of many yonge children, to bear the brunte of this hard adventure." Thus, says their chronicler, "like Gedions armie this small number was devided, as if the Lord, by this worke of His Providence, thought these few too many for the great worke He had to doe." The letter of one of the leaders in the expedition, written whilst they lay at Dartmouth, gives a lively picture of one of those who stayed willingly behind at Plymouth, out of the "feare he had conceived of the ill success of the voiage." "Our pinass will not cease leaking, els I thinke we had been halfe waye at Virginia : 1 Fulham Ms. History. G our viage hither hath been as full of crosses as ourselves have been of crokedness. We put in here to trimme her; and I thinke if we had stayed at sea but three or four houres more, shee would have sunke right downe. Shee is as open and leakie as a seive; there was a borde a man might have pulled off with his fingers, two foote longe, where the water came in as at a mole-hole. Our victuals will be halfe eaten up, I thinke, before wee go from the coast of England. I see not how we shall escape even the gasping of hunger-starved persons. Poore W. King and myselfe doe strive dayly who shall be meate first for the fishes." All this does not bespeak the bold heart which such an adventure needed, especially when we learn that the fear of the party had been practised on by artful men as to the apparent danger of the lesser vessel. But there were amongst them some braver spirits; and, after a fatiguing voyage, one ship's company landed on the 9th of November, wearied and exhausted, on Cape Cod. The record of this landing is still kept alive in an engraving on the certificate of membership, as used at this day by the "Pilgrim Society" of Plymouth. They had been brought thus far to the north by the treachery of their captain, who had been bribed by their Dutch neighbours to leave the more promising banks of the Hudson open for an intended colony of their 1 Buckingham's America, vol. iii. p. 566 in FIRST PURITAN SETTLEMENT. 63 own. On this inhospitable shore winter soon set upon them with extreme severity. In the depths of its frosts, however, they explored enough of the coast to fix upon another site for their intended settlement; and finding a commodious harbour at the bottom of the bay, they all removed thither, and laid the first foundation of the future town of Plymouth. Here their first winter was spent in the endurance of hardships which wore away 66 more than half their whole company," so that scarcely fifty lived to the ensuing spring. The spot where the dead were laid still maintains the name of Burial Hill. It was ploughed up and sowed by the earliest colonists, lest its graves should make their fearful losses known, and so invite the hostile violence of the surrounding Indians. In the course of the next year their numbers were increased by a new detachment of their friends from Holland; but their supplies were yet scanty, and their perils extreme. Still, however, they held to their purpose, and a stir was now made for them at home. In 1624, several leading Puritans were interested in their undertaking. In 1627 they had purchased for them from the company, in whom title to the land was vested by the crown, part of New England which lyes between a great river called Merrimack, and a certain other river there called Charles River, in the bottom of the Massachusetts Bay." And in the following year a royal charter was granted to them, with power to "that elect yearly their own magistrate's; and the intention was openly avowed of " letting the non-conformists, with the grace and leave of the king, make a peaceable secession, and enjoy the liberty and the exercise of their own persuasions about the worship of the Lord Jesus Christ." 66 The grant of this charter greatly helped on their cause; and for the next twelve years many very deserving persons transplanted themselves and their families to New England," amongst whom were "gentlemen of ancient and worshipful families, and ministers of the Gospel then of great fame at home, and merchants, husbandmen, and artificers, to the number of some thousands." It was reckoned that 198 ships were employed, at a cost of 192,000l., to carry over these emigrants, who for these "twelve years kept sometimes dropping, and sometimes flocking into New England." By the year 1640, the settlers were supposed to have amounted to 4000 persons, who are said in fifty years to have multiplied into 100,000. As their numbers increased, they branched out into the surrounding country, until, in 1637, the neighbouring territory of Connecticut was occupied by men of the same sentiments; and, along the sea-coasts of that pleasant bay" began another colony, which soon "surprised the sight with several notable towns," and even extended itself to Long Island, following strictly in religious matters the " use of Massachussetts." To the north, 66 1 Cotton Mather's Magnalia, book i. PURITAN SETTLEMENTS. 65 also, and east, New Hampshire and the state of Maine began to receive some straggling settlers, who adopted almost the same model in religious matters. 66 Many trials waited on these little bands, which, toiling through thickets of ragged bushes, and clambering over crossed trees, made their way along Indian paths" to the new sites on which they fixed. "The suffering settlers burrowed for their first shelter under a hill-side. Tearing up roots and bushes from the ground, they subdued the stubborn soil with the hoe, glad to gain even a lean crop from the wearisome and imperfect culture. The cattle sickened on the wild fodder; sheep and swine were destroyed by wolves; there was no flesh but game. The long rains poured through the insufficient roofs of their smoky cottages, and troubled even the time for sleep; yet the men laboured willingly, for they had their wives and little ones about them; the forest rung with their psalms, and, the poorest people of God in the whole world, they were resolved to excel in holiness.' Such was the infancy of a New-England village." 6 Thus, then, were these wide districts first settled; and with their very first texture were thus interwoven the threads of congregational dissent. The name of Independents they eschewed.2 Their especial features were a rejection of episcopacy, of the use of "common prayer," and of the ceremonies Bancroft's United States, vol. i. p. 382. 2 Cotton Mather's Magnalia. |
