Smith having successfully accomplished the purposes of his voyage, set sail homeward, leaving the second ship, commanded by one Thomas Hunt, to complete its lading and follow; but, as had been so often the case before, no sooner was Smith gone than mischief befell. Hunt, under pretence of trade, decoyed four-and-twenty Indians on board, and carried them away to Malaga, where he sold most of them for £20 a man as slaves, and would have sold them all, had not, says Cotton Mather, “the friars in those parts, learning whence they came, took away the rest of them, that so they might nurture them in the Christian religion.” This base action so incensed the natives, that for some time it was dangerous to the English to touch upon the shore; nevertheless, God, who frequently allows good to be produced from evil, overruled this outrage to the subsequent benefit of his people. Squanto, one of the poor Indians, escaping from bondage, fled to London; and after five years being restored to his country, became useful to the colonists as an interpreter.
Encouraged by the commercial success of his voyage, Smith was sent out in the following year, still in the employment of the Plymouth company, to establish a colony in New England; but through the violence of tempests he was compelled to give up the endeavour. Again he went out, but his crew mutinied, and he was finally captured by French pirates and carried into France. But the spirit of this brave man never forsook him; he escaped alone from Rochelle in an open boat, and arrived in England, where he devoted himself with all that ardour which was natural to his character to excite an enthusiasm towards his favourite scheme of the colonisation of New England. He published a map and description of the country, and visited in person the gentry and merchants of the West of England, suiting his promises of success to the character of the classes whom he addressed; to the merchant he proposed commercial enterprise and the establishment of cities, to the nobleman vast and wealthy dominion, and to the lover of leisure and indulgence presented pictures of an Arcadian life, with the pleasures of “angling and crossing the sweet air,” as he himself words it, “from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea;” but from all, with a blameable want of candour, he concealed dangers and difficulties.
He succeeded in arousing a spirit of enterprise. New plans of colonisation were formed, and Smith was appointed admiral of the country for life. So far was comparatively easy; great difficulties, however, arose in the obtaining a charter for the new undertaking. The London company, jealous of a rival, threw difficulties and impediments in the way. It was not till two years had passed that a charter could be obtained. In November, 1620, King James granted what is distinguished among the New England historians as the “Great Patent,” by which the whole of North America, from the 40th to the 48th degree of north latitude, “excepting such places as were already possessed by any other Christian prince or people,” was granted wholly and entirely, with full rights of jurisdiction, traffic and settlement, to forty noblemen and merchants, incorporated as “The Council established at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the planting, ruling, ordering and governing of New England, in America.” Such a grant, which was intended to comprise everything, and secure and hasten colonisation, defeated its own object, and led to nothing but disputes. The English nation itself remonstrated, through its members in the House of Commons, on such an exercise of royal prerogative for the benefit of private individuals; and the French, who had already for seventeen years had possession of various trading stations on the coast, ridiculed and defied this wholesale appropriation.
God, however, in his marvellous providence, had other purposes in view for New England than the profit of the merchant or the aggrandisement of the nobleman. As he had sifted out the baser elements by suffering, death and much sorrow before the colonisation of Virginia was permitted to take deep root and flourish, so now, more memorably in the case of New England, was his arm stretched forth to prevent and counteract its appropriation by any but those for whom it was intended, and who there might remain for ages to become a purer and better people;—for those who, though they had not yet attained to the glorious accomplishment of Christianity in its perfect law of love, were yet the great and shining lights of God’s truth at that time. Whilst therefore the national and the private companies were disputing about the objects and spirit of the new charter, the people of God, persecuted and trodden down as they had been for ages, were following the guidance of a new voice sounding from the wilderness, and, without charter or royal licence, were taking permanent possession of the soil. The Puritans were the true colonisers of New England.
But before the Pilgrims land on Plymouth Rock we must take a summary view of the growth of puritanism in England.
Henry VIII., when resolved to obtain his divorce from Catharine of Arragon, denied the supremacy of the Pope, and insisted on his clergy doing the same, and in this measure puritanism had its rise. A door was opened by the king for the admission of the principles of the Reformation; and though he himself was never anything but a Catholic in spirit, yet his marriage with Anne Boleyn and his quarrel with the Pope gave the more intelligent portion of the English people liberty to think and judge for themselves. The Bible was no longer a sealed book constituting merely a portion of the church ceremonial; Henry VIII. had caused it to circulate in its English translation among the people. It was read by all classes with eagerness, and the more it was read the more was undermined the mere traditional teaching of religion. The human mind began to think and to ask important questions, and amid this questioning, the rottenness and insufficiency of old systems became more and more apparent. With a new heart and a new life, a new and simpler mode of religious instruction was requisite; this was what the Bible taught them to seek for, and bold in the spirit of the Bible, it was not long before it was demanded. But it was not in Henry’s spirit to grant what the Bible dictated; the reformed English Church retained a hierarchical constitution and nearly the whole Romish ceremonial. Henry in his latter years forbade the general reading of the Scriptures, limiting the privilege to noblemen and merchants, and died a Catholic in heart. But light had been let in—the light of divine truth and knowledge—and no human power could henceforth wholly obscure it.
The accession of Edward VI. favoured the establishment of protestantism in England. He died. With Mary papacy was restored, and all the more virulently in consequence of the hold which protestantism had taken in the nation. John Rogers and Bishop Hooper, both Puritans, and many other pious and enlightened men, suffered martyrdom. Burleigh asserts that nearly 400 persons perished by imprisonment and at the stake. The earnest, steadfast, uncompromising spirit of puritanism showed itself early. Whilst Cranmer and others sought by recantations and prayers to escape the pangs of martyrdom, the Puritan made no concession, asked no favour, but died rejoicing to be accounted worthy to suffer for Christ’s sake. Multitudes of the married clergy and others fled, during this terrible storm of persecution, to the continent of Europe, as many others had already done in the previous reigns; and carrying abroad with them their spirit of inquiry and controversy, they differed in some points, and became split into the two sects of Lutherans and Calvinists. At Frankfort the two parties had a public quarrel; and when the death of Mary allowed the protestant exiles—most of whom during her reign had taken up their abode among the Calvinists of Geneva—to return to their native land, they brought home the bitterness of their contention.
With Elizabeth, the Reformation, which had commenced in the reign of Edward VI., was in some measure re-established. Many exiled Puritans returned full of hope, and with yet more inveterate abhorrence of papacy and papistical vestures and ceremonial, to discover, however, that the great queen, the champion of protestantism, was herself only half reformed, and that every bias of her character and inclination was in favour of royal prerogative and established authority. A true daughter of Henry VIII., Elizabeth regarded herself as head of the church, and ruled it with a despotic will.
In January, 1563, a convocation of the clergy drew up the Thirty-nine Articles; which, however, were not confirmed by act of parliament till nine years later. But the measure for the continuance of the ceremonies, and of the square cap and the surplice, of which the queen was a resolute supporter, was carried by one vote. The bishops urged the clergy to subscribe the liturgy and the ceremonies as well as the articles; Coverdale, Fox, Gilpin, and others refused, and this was the commencement of Nonconformity.
A great number of conscientious and excellent ministers were thus excluded from their pulpits. To them these requirements of the law were rank papacy, and they would not conform. Some in consequence became physicians; some were received into private families, holding views similar to their own, as chaplains; many fled to Scotland or the continent, and many others with their families were reduced to beggary. “The churches,” says an historian, “were shut; the public mind was inflamed; 600 persons repaired to a church in London to receive the sacrament; the doors were closed, no minister would officiate. The cries of the people reached the throne; but the throne was inexorable, and the archbishop preferred that his flock should perish rather than dispense with the clerical robes of the Church of Rome.”