Pierpont.
While the Plymouth Pilgrims, through these initial years, were engaged in a stern tussle with unkempt nature, in a wrestling-match with froward men, and in an essay to survive the “thousand natural ills that flesh is heir to” in new settlements, writing victoria sine clade on every page of the struggle, the Scripture party in England was floundering in a “slough of despond.” Charles I. was that most strange and baleful of anomalies, a treacherous moralist. He was the painting of a virtue. Outwardly he was Cato; inwardly he was Iago. “This prince,” says Bolingbroke, “had sucked in with his mother’s milk those absurd principles which his father was so industrious, and, unhappily, so successful in propagating.”[581] Back of him stood a powerful faction, omnipotent in the church, regnant in the state, as wedded as himself to the tenets of absolutism, and eager to cry Amen to his most doubtful acts—often, indeed, instigating them.
Both the king and his backers were enamoured of that formal Pharisecism which made broad its phylactery, and wrote “holier than thou” upon its forehead. Of course, then, they could not but hate those godly Puritans, both inside and outside of the national Establishment, who, like a reproving Nathan, constantly inveighed against self-righteous ceremonialism, and sought to inaugurate a purer and more spiritual ecclesiasticism. The Conformists had the power, as they had the will. Elizabeth had commenced this crusade against the “Gospellers;” James I. had continued the “harry;” but Charles I. outdid Termagant, and he did out-Herod Herod. Puritanism was girt with a penal code; and now, choked almost purple, it gazed with an agony of interest across the water to America, to see if haply it might here find an asylum. The chances of a successful colonization of these Western wilds were ardently canvassed. The progress of the Pilgrim settlement was closely watched, and the spirits of the English Puritans were at high or ebb tide in proportion as that test enterprise seemed to oscillate towards success or eclipse. As yet only the low premonitory moanings of the revolution of 1641 were heard. Throughout the island, godly men began to think of seeking safety and freedom of conscience in exile; and in this they were encouraged by the experimentum crucis of Plymouth. “I pray you,” wrote Shirley, the English agent of the Pilgrims, “subordinate all temporal things to success, that you may disappoint the hopes of our foes, and keep open an asylum into which we may all soon crowd, unless things mend in this now stricken island.”[582]
But “things did not mend,” and multitudes began to prepare for emigration. And here mark a singular fact. We have seen how disastrously those enterprises failed which bottomed colonization simply on the greed of gain. The victor’s bays were only for the brow of moral pioneers. It was as though God had said, “No; I will not plant men in New England who count religion only twelve and the world thirteen.” The only successful colonists of the northeastern coast-line of the Atlantic were men whose motive for emigration was religion, and who based their action on an idea—faith.
It happened, in 1624, that Roger Conant, “a most religious, prudent, worthy gentleman,” and a Puritan, but not a Separatist, somewhat dissatisfied with the rigid rule of Bradford, left Plymouth in the crisis of the Lyford muddle,[583] and entering his pinnace, sailed across the bay to Nantasket.[584] Tarrying there but a twelvemonth, he pushed on to Cape Ann; where, finding a knot of fishermen who resided there permanently, occupying themselves in curing fish in the absence of the smacks of their fellow-voyageurs, he resolved to pause. While sojourning here, the English merchants who had sent out these fishermen who here stood huddled together on the cape, appointed Conant their agent; whereupon he, “not liking the present site, transported his company to Naumkeag, some five leagues distant, to the southwest of Cape Ann.”[585]
But neither removal nor Conant’s energy saved this venture from financial collapse;[586] and the brave pioneer, in 1625, found himself deserted by most of his companions and without an occupation, in the midst of the tenantless huts of frustrated trade. Then religious sentiment came to his rescue. “To the eye of faith, mountains are crystal, distance may be shaken hands with, oceans are nothing.” So now old John White of Dorchester, in England, “a famous Puritan divine of great gravity, presence, and influence,” zealous to “spread the gospel and to establish his way,” looking across the Atlantic, descried Conant, a lonely sentinel of Puritanism on the northern shore.[587] The sagacious pastor saw in Naumkeag a point d’appui. He at once wrote Conant: “I have been apprized of the failure of the merchants; but do not desert your post. I promise that if you, with Woodbury, Balch, and Palfrey, the three honest and prudent men lately employed in the fisheries, will stay at Naumkeag, I will procure a patent for you, and likewise send you whatever you write for, either men, or provisions, or goods wherewith to begin an Indian trade.”[588]
Surprised and reinvigorated, Conant prevailed, though not without difficulty, on his companions to remain with him, and they all “stayed at the peril of their lives.”[589]
In 1627, Woodbury sailed for England in quest of supplies.[590] Meantime “the business came to agitation in London; and being at first approved by some and disliked by others, by dint of much argument and disputation, it grew to be well known; insomuch that, some men showing affection for the work, and offering the help of their purses if fit men might be procured to go over, inquiry was made whether any would be willing to engage their persons in the voyage. Thus it fell out that at last they lighted, among others, on John Endicott, a man well known to divers persons of good repute. He manifested much willingness to accept of the offer as soon as it was tendered, which gave great encouragement to such as were still doubtful about setting on this work of erecting a new colony on an old foundation.”[591]
Under the patronage of Dudley, and Saltonstall, and Eaton, and Pyncheon, and Bellingham, men of substance and “gentlemen born,” men willing and able to offer “the help of their purses,” reinforced by the good wishes of Puritanism at large, the new scheme soon got upon its working feet, and walked forward to success. But so far the project rested on parchment. It must be vivified, and sheltered beneath the imprimatur of a hostile government. “Many riddles must be resolved,” said old Shirley, “and many locks must be opened by the silver, nay, the golden key.”[592] So they purchased of the Council for New England “a strip of land, in width three miles, north of the Merrimack, and three miles south of the Charles river, and running back from the Atlantic to the Western ocean; so that they were not likely to be crowded.”[593] Thus, though it might say as the chief captain Lysias said to Paul, “With a great sum of money obtained I this freedom,” the new colony had “a local habitation and a name” ere it was launched.
It has been well said, that Endicott was just the man to lead this venture; firm, rugged, hopeful, zealous, devout, he knew no such word as fail. So on the 20th of June, 1628, he took his wife and children, and “not much above fifty or sixty other persons,” and plunged across the water.[594]