II
THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND
Photograph by Hackford, Boston
The River Witham, Boston
II
THE ARREST AT BOSTON AND FLIGHT TO HOLLAND
Well worthy to be magnified are they
Who, with sad hearts, of friends and country took
A last farewell, their loved abodes forsook,
And hallowed ground in which their fathers lay.
Wordsworth.
Great things were destined to result from that none too joyous jaunt of Elder Brewster's when, late in 1607, charged by the Scrooby community to find them a way out of England, he went down to Boston and chartered a ship. William Bradford was of the Boston party. Everything was quietly done. In all likelihood the intending emigrants never entered the town, but gathered at some convenient spot on the Witham tidal estuary where the rushing Ægir hissed.
Whether the Dutch skipper was dissatisfied with the fare promised him, or he feared detection and punishment, cannot be told. Yet, when the fugitives were all on board his vessel, and appeared about to sail, they were arrested by minions of the law. Bitter must have been their disappointment; stern, we may be sure, their remonstrance. But they could do nothing more than upbraid the treacherous Dutchman. They were not kept long in doubt as to their fate. Put back into open boats, their captors "rifled and ransacked them, searching them to their shirts for money, yea, even the women further than became modesty, and then carried them back into the town, and made them a spectacle and wonder to the multitude who came flocking on all sides to behold them." A goodly sight for this curious Boston mob. "Being thus first by the catchpole officers rifled and stripped of their money, books, and much other goods," proceeds the account, with an honest contempt for the writings of the law, "they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers were sent to inform the Lords of the Council of them; and so they were committed to ward."
The basement cells in which the prisoners were placed had been in use at that time for about sixty years, for "in 1552 it was ordered that the kitchens under the Town Hall and the chambers over them should be prepared for a prison and a dwelling-house for one of the sergeants." There must have been more cells formerly. Two of them now remain. They are entered by a step some eighteen inches high; are about six feet broad by seven feet long; and in lieu of doors they are made secure by a barred iron gate.