WAS MILES STANDISH A CATHOLIC?
In the quaint old town of Leyden, somewhere in the year 1619, an English soldier, who had seen service on the battle-fields of the Continent, came in contact with a little community of men of his own country, hard-working, unhappy people, who had left England to enjoy greater freedom in the practice of their religious ideas than they could expect at home. But if the people of the United Provinces harmonized with them in doctrinal standards and principles, their lives and practice were far from unison with the English refugees, and these last were planning a settlement beyond the Atlantic.
The soldier did not share their religious views. He did not join the church at Leyden or swell the number of the worshippers in the church of the Beguines, which, on the principle of religious liberty as they understood it, the Dutch had wrested from the Sisters to give to the strangers. But, how or why no one knows, the hot-tempered, good-hearted soldier contracted a strong friendship for Robinson, the pastor of the English flock, and that sturdy upholder of Puritan views seems to have entertained a warm affection for the soldier.
When the Mayflower, after breasting the waves of the Atlantic, neared at last the shore on which the colony proposed to begin a settlement in midwinter, daring in the worst season of the year what many had failed to effect with all the advantages of the balmiest spring, a compact for civil government was drawn up and signed by the chief
men of the expedition. On the list is the name of Miles Standish. He landed with them; became their military leader; his exploits as an Indian fighter are known to all the children in our schools. He is the type of those who from the beginning of the seventeenth century have done battle with the red man. He died at last, at a ripe old age, in the colony he helped to found, but died without joining the church established by the pilgrims of Plymouth Rock, though conformity was as a rule required from all.
New England historians and scholars seem puzzled to account for the fact of his never having joined the church. His life was beyond reproach. He brought from his experience of camp and garrison no habits to shock the sober, rigid men with whom his career was cast. It could not be, they admit, that the Pilgrims found any objection to his admission. He evidently never sought it. He was no hypocrite to seek admission as a church-member like Captain Underhill, whose life set morality at defiance, or like Mayor Gibbons, whose questionable dealings with pirates show his unworthiness. Contrasted with these men, Standish stands out as a noble, consistent figure. As Dr. Ellis remarks: “Of the two captains in the early Indian warfare, and in the straits of dangerous enterprise, the uncovenanted Standish is to be preferred.” He is comparing him with Underhill; the comparison will still hold good in regard to Gibbons or Patrick.
Some years since, the writer threw
out in our American Notes and Queries the suggestion that Miles Standish, the military hero of the Mayflower, of the Pilgrims, and of Plymouth Rock, was a Catholic. A correspondent, using the initials J. W. T., which seem to denote an historical scholar of no mean repute in New England, one who has shown real research and sound judgment, lost all self-command at the suggestion, and raved in this style: “If Miles Standish was a Roman Catholic, he was also a hypocrite; till proof of the latter, he must be considered what the Pilgrims believed him to be—and never before doubted—a Protestant and an honest man. Miles Standish was not the man to sail under false colors. He was bold, brave, impetuous, open as the day, and not double-faced. His memory should have been safe from insult.”
No distinct assertions are made, and the grave historical scholar forgot to cite authorities. The language infers that the Pilgrims believed Standish to be a Protestant, and that he professed to be one. But there is no evidence at all to sustain this. The late S. G. Drake, whose acquaintance with the sources of New England history was certainly very great, expressly says on this point: “I do not remember ever having seen it stated that he belonged to any church,” and no one has ever cited an authority that connects him with any Protestant church. Governor Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts (vol. ii., p. 411), says: “It seems Standish was not of their church at first, and Mr. Hubbard says he had more of his education in the school of Mars than in the school of Christ. He acquired, however, the esteem of the whole colony.” Baylies, in his History of Plymouth, says:
“What induced him to connect himself with the Pilgrims does not appear. He took up his residence among them at Leyden, but never joined the church” (part ii., p. 21). Palfrey, the author of the History of New England, with all the researches of the present century, says of Standish: “He was not a member of the Leyden Church, nor subsequently of that of Plymouth, but appears to have been induced to join the emigrants by personal good-will, or by love of adventure, while to them his military knowledge and habits rendered his companionship of great value” (vol. i., p. 161). Later on in the same work, Palfrey reiterates the assertion: “Standish was no religious enthusiast. He never professed to care for, or so much as to understand, the system of doctrine of his friends, though he paid it all respect as being theirs. He never was a member of their church” (vol. ii., p. 407-8). At the laying of the corner-stone of the Standish monument on Captain’s Hill, Duxbury, Oct. 7, 1872, the Rev. Dr. Ellis, endeavoring as a clergyman on that day to say all that could be said, makes him only a sort of “proselyte of the gate,” but admits distinctly that “he was not a man of ‘professions,’ nor, so far as we know, of ‘confessions.’ He was never ‘sealed’ or ‘covenanted.’ We are at a loss for the explanation of this fact, considering the standard and the expectations of his associates.”[180] On the same occasion, Charles Deane, who certainly did not speak without examination of his subject, said: “He was not a member of Plymouth Church, and there are strong suspicions that the doctrine of the perseverance of the
saints had not taken strong hold of him.”[181]
It was not that Standish preferred the platform of Massachusetts Bay. He went to Boston, but never seemed to harmonize with them or relish their system of management. He was no adherent of Mrs. Hutchinson, Roger Williams, or the Baptists; no one ever claimed him as a disciple of Fox; no treasured Book of Common Prayer or any other proof of adherence to the Church of England has been preserved to justify Episcopalians in claiming him.
Where, then, is his Protestantism? He certainly avowed himself a member of no Protestant denomination whatever, and made no professions of the kind; so that, if he really was a Catholic, there can be no charge of hypocrisy, for there is not the slightest tittle of evidence that he ever pretended to be a Protestant. He was an extremely valuable man to the little community at Plymouth, and rendered important services. At that time, to have proclaimed himself a Catholic would have compelled the Pilgrims to exclude him, and exposed himself to annoyance when visiting other colonies or England. That the leaders knew him to be a Catholic, too firm in his faith to be shaken, would explain much that seems now inexplicable to New England writers.
The question, then, comes up, whether there is any direct ground for supposing the famous Captain of the Pilgrims to be a Catholic. In his will, he left to his eldest son, Alexander, “all my lands as heir aparent, by lawfull decent, in Ormistock, Boscouge, Wrightington, Maudsly, Newburrow, Crawston, and in the Isle of Man, and
given to me as right heir by lawfull decent, but sereptuously detained from me, my grandfather being a second or younger brother from the house of Standish of Standish.”[182]
This gives a clue to his family, and another is found in the name of the town which he planted—Duxbury. Some of the earlier writers of this century made a fanciful derivation for this. Duxbury, according to them, was from Dux, captain; that Duxbury meant Captain’s town, and was an allusion to his position in the colony.[183] But turning to English authorities, we find at once in Lancashire an ancient family of Standish, of which there are two branches, Standish of Standish Hall, and Standish of Duxbury. Their arms—three silver plates on a field azure—meet you on tombs and on the churches erected by them centuries ago.
When the young king Richard II. rode out to meet Wat Tyler at the head of his rebels, John Standish was one of the king’s esquires—the very one who slew Tyler. A Sir John Standish won fame by his prowess at Agincourt, and the name occurs frequently during the French wars of Henry V. and Henry VI. When the eighth King Henry sought a divorce from his faithful wife, Queen Catharine, Henry Standish, a Franciscan, Bishop of St. Asaph’s (1519-1535), a most learned man, assisted the unhappy queen throughout the shameful trial. After the change of religion, the Standish family adhered to the old faith, one of them writing vigorously in its defence; and down to this day they are reckoned among the Catholic families of England. Standish Hall, the seat of the elder branch, is
close to Wigan, twenty miles northeast of Liverpool; and Duxbury Hall, the seat of the younger branch, is only two miles distant from Standish Hall. There have been frequent litigations between the two branches, and in one of these, doubtless, the immediate ancestor of the Plymouth soldier lost the property alluded to in his will.
The family remained Catholic, and after the fall of James II. was among his sturdy adherents. The famous Lancashire plot, formed in 1692 with the object of replacing James on the throne of England, was hatched in Standish Hall.
The wrong of which the gallant soldier of Plymouth complained was one that he could have had redressed promptly, even if not in accordance with the rules of justice. Had he appeared as a Protestant claimant for the broad acres of an old Catholic house, courts and juries would have bent law and fact to place him in possession. How the feeling operates we have seen by instances in our own day. The feeling in favor of the Tichborne claimant in England was deeply imbued with the desire to place the heritage of an old and well-known Catholic family in the hands of one who was to all intents and purposes a Protestant—one whose Catholicity, if he ever had any, had completely vanished in a brutalizing Australian life. In the claim of Earl Talbot, a Protestant, to the earldom of Shrewsbury, so long identified with the Catholic cause, we see what slight evidence, or show of evidence, satisfied the House of Peers. Had the circumstances been reversed, a Catholic claiming a Protestant peerage, the doubts of the tribunal would have required tenfold proof, and the investigation lasted a generation.
Miles Standish, by his own avowal, belonged to an ancient Catholic family, which has clung to the faith to this day. He evidently scorned to change his religion to enable him to recover what he deemed his just rights. Such seems to be a position that solves all difficulties. Among the old Catholic families of the British Isles, after the change of religion was completed, and the line of distinction between Protestant and Catholic sharply drawn, it became a matter of honor and pride to adhere, during the evil days of the penal laws and the butchery of the clergy, to the faith so heroically retained.
Here and there, one who gave the reins to his wild passions, some man sunk in vice like Mervyn, Lord Audley, or the Duke of Norfolk at the close of the last century, would conform to the state church, though every decent Protestant shrank from contact with them; or some nobleman deprived of his estates, like Lord Baltimore, would renounce his faith to recover a province like Maryland, wrongfully detained from him; or, like Lord Dunboyne, give up the faith, even after teaching it for years as an honored priest, in order to live as seemed to become his title; or, led by ambition, to rise at court like Waldegrave; but for one to join a body of dissenters there is on record scarcely an example.
Descendants of old Catholic families emigrating to America, like the Dongans, Townleys, and others, fell away; but in the Old World a sense of honor made them cling to the oppressed faith when to desert it seemed to imply cowardice or vice. The opening words of Moore’s Travels of an Irish Gentleman in Search of Religion embody this feeling.
As a necessary consequence, the
conversion of one of the members of an ancient Catholic house by the Protestant party was a triumph, and the new-comer was well rewarded. The conversion of one of the Standishes would have found mention somewhere among the events of the day, and there would be some trace of office or rank bestowed on the man who at last conformed. Yet the county annals of Lancashire and the memoirs of the time chronicle no such defection on the part of Miles Standish, and it is equally evident that no post was bestowed upon him as a reward.
That Miles Standish was one who, turning his thoughts to the great religious questions then rife, fell into doubts as to the solidity of the claims of the Catholic Church, and with all zeal and fervor embraced some form of Protestantism, is a theory too wild for consideration. The whole mass of Pilgrim testimony establishes the fact that he was one who took no interest in the religious systems of Protestantism; that he was utterly devoid of any such enthusiasm in them as would mark a convert from conviction.
From what we know of his origin, the presumption is strong that he was and always remained a Catholic, and we cannot shield his memory from insult except by adopting this presumption. Neither a life of vicious indulgence nor ambitious hopes, and certainly no conviction, led him to renounce the religion of his family and embrace Protestantism.
Let us, then, gather what is known of the life of this Catholic soldier of early New England annals.
He was born about 1584, at Duxbury, in Lancashire, England, as is supposed, from the fact that he preserved the name in the town he established;
but was, as he claims in his will, great-grandson of a second or younger brother of the house of Standish of Standish. This is a well-known Catholic house in Lancashire, known as early as the reign of Edward I., the elder branch of two in that county, the other being the Standishes of Duxbury. With this last he claims no connection, although the inference is probable that he was born at that place. As his just inheritance at Standish was, he asserts, surreptitiously detained from him, it may be that his father, unjustly deprived of his patrimony, took refuge at Duxbury under the protection of the other branch. Both branches were Catholic, John Standish being a distinguished writer against the Reformation. A Robert Standish figures in Parliament in 1654; Captain Thomas Standish, of the Duxbury house, was killed at Manchester fighting bravely for the king. The Standishes of Duxbury, as their genealogy shows, intermarried with the old Catholic houses of Howard and Townley. Richard Standish was made a baronet after the Restoration, in 1676.
The estates to which he asserts his rights lay, as expressed in the will, in Ormistock, Bouscouge, Wrightington, Maudsley, Newburrow, Cranston, and in the Isle of Man.
The latest history of Lancashire, by Baines, unfortunately gives no detailed pedigree of the house of Standish of Standish, that of Duxbury being given to some extent, though not in the line of descent of the younger sons. As, however, he does not claim at all to have belonged to the Duxbury branch, it is useless to look there for him.
Standish Hall, the seat of the branch from which he was descended, “is a large brick house, irregular
in form, to which is attached an ancient Catholic chapel, still used for that purpose” (Baines, Hist. Lancashire, iii., p. 505). Standish forms a parish in the Hundred of Leyland. “The extensive and fertile township of Duxbury, at the northern extremity of the parish of Standish, stands on the banks of the Yarrow, by which the township and parish is divided from the parish of Chorley” (Ib., p. 517).
Ormistock is evidently Ormskirk, an adjoining parish, in which Baines mentions that there are two Catholic chapels (iv., p. 244). In the Buscouge of the Plymouth record we easily recognize Burscough, where once flourished a famous priory, suppressed by Henry VIII. The Lancashire historian notes that there was formerly a Catholic chapel at Burscough Hall (iv., p. 256). Of the next place mentioned in Standish’s will, Baines says: “Adjoining Wrightington Hall stands a small Catholic chapel for the use of the family” (iii., p. 481); Mawdsley or Mawdesley is an extensive flat and fertile township between Croston and Wrightington (iii., p. 404); Newbury and Croston are in the same Hundred (iii., 171, 391-5).
He was thus of Catholic stock, and born and brought up amid families where the old faith is still cherished to this day. Almost every place mentioned in his will is linked with Catholic life in his time and the present.
Of his early life not a tradition or trace has been preserved. In that day the younger men of Catholic families constantly went abroad to gain an education and to seek service in the Continental armies, many too to study for the priesthood, and return to England, unawed by the terrible fate that awaited them if they fell into the
hands of the myrmidons of English law.
That Miles Standish should have sought service abroad is therefore natural. Ignoring his Catholic origin, New England writers have sought to explain his military career on the Continent. All seem to assume that he served in the Low Countries. Baylies, in his History of Plymouth (part ii., p. 21), says explicitly that “he served as an officer in the armies of Queen Elizabeth in the Low Countries, when commanded by her favorite, the Earl of Leicester.”
Captain Wyman, at the laying of the corner-stone in 1872, goes further: “In early life he was trained to the hardships and trials of war, having been commissioned at the age of twenty a lieutenant in the army serving in the Low Countries against the armies of the Inquisition.” The Rev. G. E. Ellis and Charles Deane on the same occasion limit themselves to the assertion that he served in the Low Countries (pp. 21, 24).
Palfrey is less positive, as he was writing history, not pronouncing eulogies. “The ‘cautionary towns’ of the Netherlands had been garrisoned by British regiments for thirty years, and Miles Standish had probably been employed on this service” (History of New England, i., p. 161). “Probably while serving in an English regiment in the Netherlands he fell in with the company of English peasants” (ii., pp. 407-8).
There seems to be no really authentic foundation for all this theory. Standish died in 1656, aged 72, and must have been born, according to this, in 1584. Leicester was sent to the Low Countries with eleven thousand men in 1585-7; but we can scarcely believe that this precocious
scion of a Catholic house served as an officer in this campaign when only one year old, or three at the most.
The assertion that the Catholic soldier was commissioned a lieutenant at the age of twenty, that is, in 1604, when James was ruining the Catholic families by extorting all the arrears of fines, and producing the spirit of exasperation which culminated in the Gunpowder Plot, can scarcely find any support in sober history. The armies of the Inquisition which James was fighting in 1604 elude research.
Savage, in his Genealogical Dictionary, though on what authority we know not, says that Standish had been at Leyden some years before 1620. All that is positively known is that he had seen military service on the Continent, and was living in Leyden with his wife Rose when the followers of Robinson proposed to emigrate. A strong friendship, not based on harmony of religious views, existed between Miles Standish and the pastor of the exiles. Writing subsequently to Plymouth after receiving tidings of Standish’s first Indian fight, Robinson says: “Let me be bould to exhorte you seriously to consider ye dispossition of your Captaine, whom I love, and am persuaded ye Lord in great mercie and for much good hath sent you him, if you use him aright. He is a man humble and meek amongst you; and towards all in ordinarie course.”[184] This strong feeling of personal friendship was reciprocal. In his will Standish writes: “Further, my will is that Marrye Robenson, whom I tenderly love for her grandfather’s sacke, shall have three pounds in som thing to goe forward for her two yeares after my decease.”
Whether he had served in the Spanish armies or the Dutch, or in English garrison, he was to all appearance simply a resident of Leyden when this friendship grew up. It evidently led to the proposal or offer to accompany those of Robinson’s flock who were to venture to make the first attempt at colonization in North America.
His wife Rose, of whom we know only her name, agreed evidently to join him in the voyage. True wife of a brave man, she was ready to face all danger and to share all hardships with him. Nothing is recorded from which to glean whether she was some fair English girl from his own Lancashire, or some one whom he won on the Continent. Her name, her faith, and her country are alike unknown. We know that they embarked together at Delft Haven, and formed part of the memorable body on the Mayflower. Among them Miles Standish was a man of importance. When the compact for their government in America was drawn up, he signed it, and the place of his signature shows the esteem in which he was held and his recognized position among them.
That document is purely a civil one, and contains nothing that could not be signed by the strictest Catholic.
Reaching in November the poorest, sandy part of the coast, the little colony had a fearful career of hardship. Standish was one of the pioneers in exploring the land. After they landed at Plymouth Rock in December, he saw his companions sink under their hardships and breathe their last. Though his own rugged health triumphed over everything, his wife Rose sank beneath the unwonted trials, and died on the 29th day of January, 1621, leaving him alone in the diminishing
body of settlers, without a tie to bind him to them or the settlement which they had undertaken. But he was not one to falter or easily give up.
During that winter of terrible suffering so heroically borne he was one of the six or seven who were untouched by disease, and his care and devotion to the sick and afflicted are mentioned with gratitude. When spring at last gladdened them, and they resolutely set about the labors of building, cultivating, and otherwise preparing for a permanent residence, Miles Standish had been made the first military commander of the colony, and, as we may infer from some statements, he turned his engineering skill to a peaceful channel, laying out the lines of the new town and surveying the plots taken up by the settlers. The first military organization of Plymouth dates from February, 1621. It was not formidable in numbers, but it was necessary to make it as imposing as possible. Standish felt all this. He threw up defensive works, a little fort on the hill above the dwellings mounted with five guns, and prepared to make the Indians respect the power of the settlers.
As the best linguist, he was sent out to meet the deputations of Indians who came to observe the new-comers; and he was constantly sent to explore the country or test the feelings of the natives. It was doubtless a specimen of Standish’s style of correspondence with them that we find recorded in Governor Bradford’s reply to arrows hid in a snake-skin which Canonicus sent to the settlement. The snake-skin filled with powder and ball was an answer which announced to the savages that Standish was ready to meet them.
The settlements of Weston’s lawless people near them increased ill-feeling among the Indians, and apparently gave them a poor opinion of the courage and power of the Plymouth settlements. Standish in his excursions soon became aware of this, and felt convinced that a general conspiracy against the colonists was on foot. An attempt on his own life at Manomet, now Sandwich, confirmed this belief. A minister named Lyford, who came over, sought to have him superseded in office, declaring that he looked like a silly boy. And outside the little community of Plymouth slighting views prevailed of this offshoot of a fighting race.
From his slight frame, the Weston people at Wessagusset (now Weymouth) seem to have given Standish the nickname of Captain Shrimp, and the Indians had taken up the slighting tone and openly braved him. Feeling that the danger was imminent, Standish went in March, 1623, to Wessagusset with eight men, to suppress the plot by striking a blow that would convince the Indians of his prowess and of the force of the colony. He found the warrior who had attempted to take his life, and when the Indian taunted Standish, he with two of his men attacked the Indian party without firearms, and after a desperate struggle Standish despatched his antagonist with his own weapon wrested from his hand, and the whole band was cut off. This encounter established Standish’s reputation. The Weston colony broke up, and an ascendency was soon acquired over the Indians.
It was on receipt of the intelligence of this first collision with the natives that Robinson, after deploring the fact that they had not converted some Indians before killing
any, expressed his affection to Standish, and urged the leaders of the colony not to molest him, as though there were some ground, which he did not care to express, why he anticipated that in some way their military leader might not be altogether at ease in the place.
But Standish seems to have had no idea of abandoning his associates. The ship Anne, bearing the third body of emigrants, had among the number a young woman named Barbara, whom he subsequently married, and thus formed new ties in the land. He is said first to have sought the hand of Priscilla Mullins, but, having sent Alden to open the matter for him, found that he had acted unwisely, as the lady bade Alden speak for himself. Longfellow bases on this incident his “Courtship of Miles Standish.” He was elected one of the governor’s assistants, and for nineteen years held that responsible position. De Rasiere leaves us a pen-picture of the colony assembling by beat of drum at Standish’s door, “each with his musket or firelock. They had their cloaks on, and placed themselves in order three abreast, and were led by a sergeant. Behind came the governor in a long robe; beside him on the right hand came the preacher with his cloak on, and on the left hand the captain, with his side-arms and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand; and so they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him. Thus they are constantly on their guard night and day.” This military organization was Standish’s work.
But his labors were not confined to organizing the colony for military purposes, or maintaining peace with Indian neighbors or troublesome white neighbors. In 1625, he
was despatched to England to obtain a supply of goods, and learn what terms could be made to obtain a release from the English merchants who had advanced money as partners in the undertaking. He reached London to find it ravaged by the plague. He negotiated with some advantage for the colony with the English partners, and in spite of the disordered condition of affairs he obtained advances, and brought over some goods for trading, and other most needful commodities as he knew requisite for their use. He heard, however, of the death of his old friend Robinson at Leyden, and was the bearer of that sad intelligence to the colony.
We next find him as a trader. To put the settlement on a better financial footing, after releasing themselves through his exertions from the London partners, Standish, with seven other settlers, in July, 1627, entered into an agreement with the colony to farm its trade for a term of six years. They assumed the debts of the colony, and agreed to bring over certain goods annually, in consideration of a small payment in corn or tobacco from each colonist. They put up a house on the Kennebec, and made it the centre of a prosperous trade.
In 1630, leaving Plymouth, he crossed to the north side of the harbor, and took up his residence on a spot still called Captain’s Hill, where his house has stood till our day, and the spring remains as kerbed with stone in his time. This place, probably after his birth-place in England, he called Duxbury, a name it still retains.
We find him reducing Morton; marching to defend the Pokanokets, allies of Plymouth, against the Narragansetts; going to Boston to maintain his colony’s rights to the
Kennebec trade after a collision there with a Boston trader; sent in 1635 to recover Penobscot from the French; commanding the Plymouth quota in the Pequot war; engaged against the Narragansetts in 1651, against the Mohawks and their allies in New York; and finally, in 1653, when very old, appointed to command the troops which Plymouth raised in anticipation of hostilities with the Dutch of New Netherland.
This was his last public service. He died in his house at Duxbury, October 3, 1656, leaving several sons, and his widow Barbara. His descendants at the present time must be many. “Nature endowing him with valor, quickness of apprehension, and good judgment, had qualified him for business or war. Of his other peculiarities, nothing has been recorded except that he was of small stature and of hasty temper. He had no ambition except to do for his friends whatever from time to time they thought fit to charge him with—whether it was to frighten the Narragansett or Massachusetts natives, to forage for provisions, or to hold a rod over disorderly English neighbors, or to treat with merchants on the London exchange. In the misery of the early settlement especially, the reader does not fail to reflect what relief must have been afforded by reliance on a guardian so vigilant and manful” (Palfrey).
On the 7th of October, 1872, the Standish Monument Association, incorporated by the State of Massachusetts, laid the corner-stone of a monument to this Catholic soldier, a round tower, to be surmounted by a bronze figure of the first captain of Plymouth colony. The Ancient and Honorable Artillery
Company of Boston were there, Freemasons, Odd Fellows, Good Templars, military delegations, the governor, magistrates, Protestant clergymen, and citizens; but there is no record that any bishop or clergyman of the faith professed by the Standishes of Standish assisted at the ceremony. The Catholic element was ignored. It should have been safe from insult.
But it may be asked, how can we claim Miles Standish as a Catholic? He was of a known Catholic family, then, since, and now Catholic. Though associated with Robinson’s flock, he never became a member of their church in Leyden, Plymouth, or Duxbury. His Catholic convictions give the simplest reason for this, which one of the New England historians regards as “an anomaly in human nature” (Baylies). If amid all the temptations from the associations around him he thus persistently declined to connect himself even nominally with the Protestant Church, it shows that he still clung to that of his family.
But why should a Catholic thus isolate himself from all the ministrations of the church, and throw himself into a Protestant community? Deprived of the heritage he claimed, he had to seek his fortune elsewhere. In England, the number of Catholics in proportion to the population was less than in Holland; but he probably found life more congenial with these countrymen of another faith than with men of the same faith but of another country. Circumstances, too, control our paths in life. Catholics count in this country by millions, yet there is many a Catholic thrown almost entirely into Protestant circles.
But Standish, it may be said,
married out of the church, and allowed his children to be brought up as Protestants. So did Gerard, one of the founders of Maryland, although there were priests in the colony and no Protestant minister; so did Matthew Carey; so did Chief-Justice Taney—yet all are regarded as Catholics, though we regret their indifference to the salvation of their children. It will not do on these grounds to deny his Catholicity.
There was not, so far as we know, a single apostate Catholic in the community at Plymouth, not one who, having tasted the pure Gospel, known the divinely given faith and the divinely instituted worship, turned to wallow in the mire of man-made creeds and worship devised by shallow men. Standish cannot be accused of being in league with known apostates. Yet even had he been guilty of such a step, we cannot judge him too harshly, for even in our days one may address a notorious and scandalous apostate in terms of eloquent welcome, and yet be deemed Catholic enough to lecture before pre-eminently Catholic bodies, and address the young graduates of our literary institutions as one fit to guide their future career.
But, it may be said, he must have lived in utter neglect of his duties as a Catholic. Who can tell this? Like Le Baron, the French surgeon wrecked and captured on the coast, he may have clung to the faith to the end, performed his devotions as he might, and died with the crucifix over his heart. The opportunities for approaching the sacraments from time to time were given him, and his position gave him greater ease in embracing those opportunities. The trading-houses of Plymouth in Maine stood near
similar French posts, where Capuchins and Recollects were maintained. The report of Mgr. Urban Cerri and the French colonial documents show that, for the benefit of Catholics in New England, English-speaking priests were sent to those points and maintained in Canada on the frontiers. Who can say that Standish, who was frequently in Maine on colonial matters and for trade, meeting these priests and speaking French, for his powers as a linguist are mentioned, did not avail himself of the opportunity of hearing Mass and approaching the sacraments. It is not likely that when he did he went with a file of soldiers and a drum-beating, or that he made a special report to the Plymouth government. It would be a fact of which evidence would not be heralded.
In his last days, 1651, Father Druillettes visited Boston and Plymouth with his Plymouth friend Winslow, where he must have met the aged Standish.
His library, it may be urged, as shown by the inventory, contains no Catholic works, and several devotional and doctrinal works of the Puritan school. As his wife was a Protestant, we may well suppose this part of the family library to have been her reading. Surely, when all New England authorities concur in admitting “that he never cherished any strong impressions of their religion,” or took any interest in it, we may put down Rogers’ Seaven Treatises, Wilcock’s works, Burrough’s Christian Contentment, Davenport’s Apology, and the Comentary on James Ball Catterkesmer, as her reading and not his; while we readily recognize the soldier’s taste in Cæser’s Comentaryes, Banft’s Artillery, the History of the World, Turkish History, Chronicle of England,
Ye History of Queen Elizabeth, The State of Europe, the Garmon (German) History, and Homer’s Iliad.
The whole case is now before the reader. Miles Standish has been always classed as a Protestant, but there is certainly grave doubt on the point. He never renounced the Catholic faith in which he was undoubtedly born; and therefore, we Catholics have some claim to his name and fame. No descendant of his, to the writer’s knowledge, is now a Catholic, but some have been in our day pupils of Catholic institutions. These will, we trust, follow up our labors, and bring from the records of the past more conclusive evidence of the lifelong Catholicity of Miles Standish.
[180] Historical Magazine, April, 1873, p. 251.
[181] Standish Monument, Boston, 1873, pp. 21, 25.
[182] Hist. Mag., March, 1871, pp. 273, 274.
[183] Howe’s Massachusetts Collections.
[184] Bradford’s History.