The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum,
Delivering o’er to executors pale
The lazy, yawning drone.”
Shakspeare’s Henry V.
From the year 1630—before that, but more perceptibly after—the advancing march of civilization carried all before it in New England. There were, indeed, occasional oscillations in its career of triumph; but always, when its genius seemed to balk, it ended by bearing off a trophy.
At Plymouth, all the social and religious forces had “settled down into fixed ways.” Justice was administered, order was preserved, education was provided for.[763] The old town began to prosper. The busy hum of men and the laughter of successful trade echoed through the streets; and Bradford wrote, “Though the partners have been plunged into great engagements and oppressed with unjust debts, yet the Lord has prospered our traffic so that our labor is not for naught. The people of this plantation begin to grow in their outward estates, by reason of the flowing of many into the province, especially into the settlements on Massachusetts Bay; by which means corn and cattle have risen to a great price, whereby some are much enriched, while commodities grow plentiful.”[764]
As property and a sense of security increased, the Plymouth Pilgrims began to show a disposition to disperse, for the convenience of better pasturage and ampler farm-room. So the three hundred inhabitants, esteeming themselves crowded, separated, and a new church and hamlet were planted on the north shore of the shallow harbor.[765] “The town in which all had lived very compactly till now,” observes the old Plymouth governor somewhat ruefully, “was left very thin by this move.” In Bradford’s eyes, it was the beginning of a movement pregnant with evil.[766] He thought, somewhat plausibly, that strength and safety lay in the close union of the scattered colonists. Yet that idea was fatal to colonization, and bolder theorists determined to educate communities by responsibility, the best of school-masters. They said,
“Out of this nettle, danger, we pluck this flower, safety.”
For several years the church at Plymouth had enjoyed the ministrations of an ordained clergyman. That Separatist, Mr. Smith, who had crossed the water with Higginson and Skelton in 1629, perceiving that he was looked upon with some suspicion by his brother Pilgrims on account of his “come-outism,” an aroma which they were not then prepared to exhale, went immediately to Nantasket, sojourning there “with some stragglers” for several months.[767] One day a Plymouth boat happened to touch at that port, whereupon Mr. Smith “earnestly besought the crew to give him and his, with such things as could be readily carried, passage to Plymouth, as he had heard that there was likelihood that he might there find house-room until he could determine where to settle; for he said he was weary of the uncouth place in which he found himself, where his house was so poor that neither himself nor his goods could keep dry.”[768]
He was brought to Plymouth, where he “exercised his gifts”—which were rather “low”[769]—being “kindly entertained and sheltered,” and finally “chosen into the ministry;”[770] so that Brewster once again found respite. A little later, Smith’s labors and gifts were supplemented by Roger Williams—why and how long we shall in due time discover.