Failure to secure formal toleration. To meet the views of the Leyden people, Sandys endeavored by the intervention of a more acceptable courtier to gain assurance from the king, under the broad seal, that their religion should be tolerated if they migrated to Virginia. But James's peculiar conscience recoiled from this. He intimated that he would wink at their practices but he would not tolerate them by public act. And, indeed, the Pilgrims reflected afterward that "a seale as broad as the house flore would not serve the turne" of holding James to his promise. At the king's suggestion the archbishops were applied to, but neither would they formally approve such an arrangement. Nor can one wonder at their unwillingness, since the most profound, liberal, and far-seeing thinker of that age, Lord Bacon himself, was so far subject to the prejudices of his time that he could protest against allowing heretics to settle a colony, and could support his position by a mystical argument fit to be advanced by the most fantastic theologian. "It will make schism and rent in Christ's coat, which must be seamless," he says. Bacon's Advice to Villiers. He even goes so far as to group Separatists with outlaws and criminals, and to advise that if such should transplant themselves to the colonies they should be "sent for back upon the first notice," for "such persons are not fit to lay the foundation of a new colony." Much more fit than is a speculative philosopher to draw the lines on which practical undertakings are to be carried forward. The transplanting of English speech and institutions to America would have languished as French colonization did, if none but orthodox settlers had been allowed to fell trees and build cabins in the forest. Ever since the age of stone hatchets colony planters have been drawn from the ranks of the uneasy. Archdale's Carolina, 26. An early Quaker governor of South Carolina puts the matter less elegantly but more justly than Bacon when he says: "It is stupendious to consider, how passionate and preposterous zeal, not only vails but stupefies oftentimes the Rational Powers: For cannot Dissenters kill Wolves and Bears as well as Churchmen?"
VII.
Relations with the Virginia Company. The liberal and practical mind of Sir Edwin Sandys harbored none of the scruples of Bacon, and his more wholesome conscience knew nothing of the fine distinctions of James and the archbishops between formal toleration and a mere winking at irregularities. He embraced the cause of the Pilgrims and became their steadfast friend, passing through the Virginia Company successively two charters in their behalf, and the general order which allowed the leaders of "particular plantations"—that is, of such plantations as the Leyden people and others at that time proposed to make—to associate the sober and discreet of the plantation with them to make laws, orders, and constitutions not repugnant to the laws of England. MS. Rec. Va. Co., Feb. 2, 1620. This was a wide door opening toward democratic government. The patent given to the Pilgrims was also a liberal one, and it was even proposed to put into their hands a large sum of money contributed anonymously for the education of Indian children, but to this it was objected that the newcomers would lack the confidence of the savages. One of the Virginia Company, possibly Sandys himself, lent to the Leyden people three hundred pounds without interest for three years. Winslow's Briefe Narration, Young, 383. When we consider that the Pilgrims had to pay in their first year of settlement thirty and even fifty per cent, interest on their debts, and that this three hundred pounds, the use of which they received without interest, would be equal in purchasing power to five or six thousand dollars of our money, we may readily believe that this loan and the semi-independence offered them under their "large patent" from the company, were the considerations that decided them in favor of emigration after the English Government had refused a guarantee of toleration, and the Dutch Government had declined to assure them of protection against England.
Authors of the Plymouth Government. That group of liberal English statesmen who were charged with keeping "a school of sedition" in the courts of the Virginian Company founded the two centers of liberal institutions in America. The Earl of Southampton, the Ferrars, Sir John Danvers, and above all and more than all, Sir Edwin Sandys, were the fathers of representative government in New England by the charter of February 2, 1620, as they had been of representative government in Virginia by the charter of November 13, 1618. When the Pilgrims found themselves, upon landing, too far north to use their "large patent" from the Virginia Company, they organized a government on the lines laid down in the general order of the company. The government established by them in their famous Compact was precisely the provisional government which the Virginia Company in the preceding February had given them liberty to found "till a form of government be here settled for them." [Note 4.] Under this compact they proceeded to confirm the election of the governor, already chosen under the authority derived from the charter, now invalid.
Charges against Sandys. The enemies of Sir Edwin Sandys did not fail to make use of his friendship for the Leyden people to do him injury. It was afterward charged that he was opposed to monarchical government, and that he had moved the Archbishop of Canterbury "to give leave to the Brownists and Separatists to go to Virginia, and designed to make a free popular state there, and himself and his assured friends were to be the leaders." Duke of Manchester, papers, Royal Hist. MSS. Comm. viii, II, 45. That Sandys thought of emigration is hardly probable, but he succeeded in establishing two popular governments in America which propagated themselves beyond all that he could have hoped to achieve. [Note 5.]
VIII.
The farewell to Europe. "Small things," wrote Dudley to the Countess of Lincoln in the first months of the Massachusetts settlement—"small things in the beginning of natural or politic bodies are as remarkable as greater in bodies full grown." The obscure events we have recited above are capital because they had a deciding influence on the fate of the Pilgrim settlement. It is not within our purpose to tell over again the pathetic story of that brave departure of the younger and stronger of the Pilgrims from Leyden to make the first break into the wilderness, but courage and devotion to an idea are not common; courage and devotion that bring at last important results are so rare that the student of history, however little disposed to indulge sentiment, turns in spite of himself to that last all-night meeting in Pastor Robinson's large house in the Belfry Lane at Leyden. Plimoth Plantation, 59. "So," says Bradford, as if penning a new holy scripture, "they lefte that goodly and pleasante citie, which had been ther resting place near 12 years; but they knew they were pilgrimes and looked not much on those things, but lift up their eyes to the heavens, their dearest cuntrie and quieted their spirits." Nor is it easy to pass over the solemn parting on the quay at Delft Haven, where, as the time of the tide forced the final tearful separation, while even the Dutch spectators wept in sympathy, the voice of the beloved Robinson in a final prayer was heard and the whole company fell upon their knees together for the last time.
Robinson's influence. These things hardly pertain, perhaps, to a history of life such as this. It is with the influences that are to mold the new life while it is plastic that we are concerned. Chief of these is Robinson himself, a Moses who was never to see, even from a mountain top, the Canaan to which he had now led his people. He must stay behind with the larger half of the church. Rising to the occasion, his last words to this little company are worthy his magnanimous soul. Winslow's Briefe Narration, Young, 397. He eloquently charged them "before God and his blessed angels to follow him no further than he followed Christ." ... He was confident "the Lord had more truth and light to break forth out of his holy word." In whatever sense we take them these were marvelous words in the seventeenth century. Robinson understood the progressive nature of truth as apprehended by the human mind in a way that makes him seem singularly modern. In the same address he declared it "not possible that ... full perfection of knowledge should break forth at once." He bade them not to affect separation from the Puritans in the Church of England, but "rather to study union than division." [Note 6.]
Admirable man! Free from pettiness and egotism. Fortunate man, who, working in one of the obscurest and dustiest corners of this noisy and self-seeking world, succeeded in training and sending out a company that diffused his spirit and teachings into the institutions and thoughts of a great people!