The Pilgrim fathers of New England

by W. Carlos Martyn

It was thus that Puritanism, strong in faith, bold in emergencies, met the exigencies and trod down the difficulties of its epoch. “The corporation did not sell itself—it emigrated. The patent could not be assigned; but the patentees could call a legal meeting in the metropolis, or on board ship in an English harbor; and why not in the port of Salem as well as at the Isle of Wight? in a cabin or under a tree at Charlestown as well as at the house of Goffe in London?”

Thus it was that a unique and daring construction transformed a trading company into a municipality—a change fraught with momentous consequences. Before this decision all hesitation fell. The Cambridge friends announced their readiness to sail, and the old authorities of the Company at once resigned, in order that their offices might be filled by the chief emigrants.[658] John Winthrop was elected governor; John Humphrey was appointed deputy; and these were reinforced by eighteen assistants.[659] Just on the eve of embarkation, Humphrey’s place was supplied by Thomas Dudley, he being for a space unavoidably detained in England.[660]

Winthrop at once accepted the charge; and when he informed his son of the decision, the younger Winthrop replied: “I shall call that my country where I may most glorify God and enjoy the presence of my dearest friends. Therefore herein I submit myself to God’s will and yours, and dedicate myself to Heaven and the Company, with the whole endeavors both of mind and body. The motives for emigration are unimpeachable; and it cannot but be a prosperous action which is so well allowed by the judgment of God’s prophets, undertaken by so religious and wise worthies in Israel, and indented to God’s glory in so special a service.”[661]

And now preparations for an extensive emigration were ardently pushed. The finances of the Company were put on a new basis. All contributors to the fund were ipso facto entitled to a share in the profits of the colonial trade and to a grant of Massachusetts land.[662] “The outlay was distributed in such proportions that it was not burdensome in any quarter. The richer emigrants submitted to it joyfully, from public spirit; the poorer as a panacea for existing evils.”[663]

Early in the spring of 1630, ten vessels were ready to weigh anchor. Richer than the argosies of the old Venetian or Genoan merchants, this fleet was freighted with the seed of a future empire; with the planters of a renovated England, secure in freedom, firm in religion; with the builders of a transatlantic Saxon state, bound to realize in its beneficent order the noblest dreams of English patriots and sages. Troops of ministering angels hovered round it to ward off danger, and God’s own benediction sealed and sanctified the daring venture.

Let us descend into the little cabin of the “Arbella,” and scan the faces and take the hands—if we are worthy—of some of the most famous personages of this august Company of devout voyageurs. The cabin is long, and low, and dark. But ’tis lighted now, somewhat dingily, indeed, yet still sufficiently to enable us to discern a table covered with maps and legal parchments, round which are ranged a score of deeply-interested talkers.

That tall, handsome, gentlemanly man, who sits at the head of the table, is John Winthrop, the new governor. See what an easy grace there is in his every movement; he has the port of one habituated to command, yet he is very gentle withal. His hair is just touched with silver, and he is in the prime of life—just forty-two, ripe and mellow. Winthrop is not a needy, sour adventurer; he comes of an ancient family long seated at Groton, in Suffolk, where he has a property whose income yields him six or seven hundred pounds a year—the equivalent of at least ten thousand dollars now-a-days. Evidently he quits England from some higher motive than to fatten his exchequer. This is he whom Cotton Mather terms the “Lycurgus of New England;” “as devout as Numa, but not liable to any of his heathenish madnesses; a governor in whom the excellences of Christianity made a most imposing addition unto the virtues wherein even without these he would have made a parallel for the great men of Greece and Rome whom the pen of Plutarch has eternized.”[664] A calm, unobtrusive, able gentleman, Winthrop had “studied that book, which, professing to teach politics, had but three leaves, and on each leaf but one word—MODERATION.” He had been initiated into the mysteries of state-craft when a boy, for from his youth he had moved in the circles where the highest questions of English policy were discussed and elaborated by the familiar associates of Whitgift, and Bacon, and Essex, and Cecil Burleigh.[665]

At the right of Winthrop and chatting pleasantly with him, stands Thomas Dudley. He is short and thickset in stature, and stern in expression; a man fit to lead a forlorn hope. Quick and irascible in temper, uncompromising when he esteems himself in the right, every word he utters has the ring of authority. He is a man who speaks bullets. His head is grayer than Winthrop’s, but he is still robust, and he walks with a martial air—and no wonder, for he is a soldier. Thirty years before he had borne arms under Henri Quatre in the ranks of the Huguenots, a service which had indoctrinated him in the love of civil and religious liberty;[666] and he was old enough to have seen Sir Philip Sidney, heard Spencer recite verses to Elizabeth, and lent a shrill voice to the wild huzza at the defeat of the Spanish Armada.[667]

But who is this that glides up to Winthrop, and, touching him upon the shoulder, speaks a word in his ear? It is John Humphrey, “a gentleman of special parts, of learning and activity, and a godly man.”[668] He does not sail now, but is here to bid his friends God-speed.