“Whose tongue
Outvenomed all the worms of Nile.”
The statesman and the priest carried it with a high hand;[617] and the time was not yet when Cozens could say, “The king has no more authority in ecclesiastical matters than the boy who rubs my horse’s heels.”[618]
The suffering Non-conformists, “meted and peeled” at home, heard with rapture of that Puritan colony in the wilderness, governed by men whose opinions accorded with their own, and sheltered beneath the ægis of a royal charter. Emigration began to assume unprecedented proportions;[619] and the Company might have its pick of the best men in the island. But much good seed was left; enough to grow Cromwell, and nourish Hampden, and succor Pym.
By the middle of April, 1629, six ships were ready to sail; and under license from the Lord Treasurer, these were freighted with “eighty women and maids and twenty-six children”—hostages of the fixed attachment of the emigrants to the New World—“and two hundred men, with victuals, arms, tools, and necessary wearing apparel.”[620] They also took on board “one hundred and forty head of cattle, and forty goats.”[621]
As this was a religious enterprise, care was taken “to make plentiful provision of godly ministers.”[622] Four clergymen now embarked for Massachusetts Bay. Two of these made no figure on the north shore of New England. Bright was a strict Conformist; and not liking the ecclesiastical proceedings of his comrades, he returned to England in the succeeding summer.[623] Smith was a Separatist; and since these Puritans were not yet “Come-outers,” they were shy of him, so that in landing he went to Nantasket,[624] where we shall meet him again. The remaining two were Mr. Higginson and Mr. Skelton; the first of Leicestershire, the other of Lincolnshire.[625] They were both ardent Puritans, who had held livings in the Church of England, and been silenced for non-conformity.[626] On receiving an invitation to accompany this expedition, they had “esteemed it a call from heaven,” and joyfully assented.[627] “Both of these men,” says Cotton Mather, “were eminent for learning and virtue; and being thus in a sense driven out of England, they sought graves on the American strand, whereon the epitaph might be inscribed that was on Scipio’s: Ingrata patria, ne mortui quidem habebis ossa.”[628] But unlike the ill-used pagan, they had no taunts for their erring country. “We will not say,” cried Francis Higginson, as he stood on deck off the Isle of Wight, and looked back on the receding shores of the fast-anchored island—“We will not say, Farewell, Babylon, Farewell, Rome! but, Farewell, dear England!”[629]
“England did not regret the departure of these Christian heroes, because she did not know her best men. What nation does? To materialists and politicians, these Pilgrims seemed to be visionaries and idealists; impracticable, and in the way. Yet this class is always the life of a nation. We can look back upon them, and surfeit them with praise; but we cannot easily see their mates walking amongst us, treading our own sidewalks, and so learn to cherish, and not kill the prophets.”[630]
Higginson, Skelton, and their future parishioners, landed at Salem “in the last days of June.”[631] Their friends already on the spot gave them a hearty pioneer welcome. Higginson employed his first leisure moments in writing home a transcript of the situation: “When we came first to Naumkeag, we found about half a score of cottages, and a fair house built for the governor. We found also abundance of corn planted by those here, very good and well-liking. The two hundred passengers whom we brought were, by common consent of the old planters, combined together into one body politic, under the same governor. There are in all of us, both old and new planters, about three hundred; whereof two hundred are planted at Naumkeag, now called Salem, and the rest have settled at Massachusetts Bay, beginning to build a town there, which we call Charlestown. But that which is our greatest comfort, and our means of defence above all others, is, that we have here the true religion and holy ordinances of Almighty God taught amongst us. Thanks be to God, we have here plenty of preaching and diligent catechizing, with strict and careful exercise and good and commendable order to bring our people into a Christian conversation with those with whom we have to do withal. And thus we doubt not but God will be with us; and if God be with us, who can be against us?”[632]
On their arrival at Salem, these Massachusetts Pilgrims found no church. It was their first care to erect one; and in the prosecution of this work, they had recourse to the devout Plymouth colonists, their brothers in the faith. Cordial greetings had already been exchanged between these sister colonies. About the time of the arrival of Higginson, “an infection had spread among the northern pioneers, of which many died; some of the scurvy, others of a hectic fever.”[633] Endicott had sent a missive to Plymouth at this time, requesting medical aid, as he had no leech with him. Bradford immediately sent Thomas Fuller, physician to his plantation, and the first in New England—for he was a comer in the “Mayflower”—to the relief of the Salem sufferers, and armed him with an affectionate letter of condolence and Christian sympathy.[634]