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!
Ay, call it holy ground,
The soil where first they trod;
They have left unstained what there they found—
Freedom to worship God.
Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth
Governor Edward Winslow
The only authentic Portrait of a Mayflower Pilgrim
FOOTNOTES:
[11] The murderer Billington, sad to relate, was one of those who signed the historic compact on board the Mayflower. He was tried, condemned to death, and executed by his brethren in accordance with their primitive criminal procedure. At first, trials in the little colony were conducted by the whole body of the townsmen, the Governor presiding. In 1623 trial by Jury was established, and subsequently a regular code of laws was adopted. The capital offences were treason, murder, diabolical conversation, arson, rape, and unnatural crimes. Plymouth had only six sorts of capital crime, against thirty-one in England at the accession of James I, and of these six it actually punished only two, Billington's belonging to one of them. The Pilgrims used no barbarous punishments. Like all their contemporaries they used the stocks and the whipping-post, without perceiving that those punishments in public were barbarizing. They inflicted fines and forfeitures freely without regard to the station or quality of the offenders. They never punished, or even committed any person as a witch. Restrictive laws were early adopted as to spirituous drinks, and in 1667 cider was included. In 1638 the smoking of tobacco was forbidden out-of-doors within a mile of a dwelling-house or while at work in the fields; but unlike England and Massachusetts, Plymouth never had a law regulating apparel.