Who were the Pilgrims?

by William T. Davis

Who Were the Pilgrims?

by

William T. Davis

Harpers New Monthly Magazine

Volume LXIV Number 380

January, 1882

The Pilgrims were Separatists from the English Church, and the offspring of Puritanism. Puritanism was the child of the Reformation. It may be well in a few preliminary words to follow the various prominent steps by which that stage of the Reformation was reached from which the passage to Puritanism and thence to Separatism became easy and natural.

As early as the year 1350, Bradwardine, the chaplain of Edward the Third, somewhat infected with the doctrine of Walter Lollard, who was burned for heresy at Cologne in 1322, induced his royal master to resist the encroachments of Clement the Sixth on the religious liberties of England, by passing what was called the Statute of Provisors, by which imprisonment or banishment was decreed for all who should procure from the court of Rome any presentation of benefices in the English Church.

In 1377, Wycliffe, a professor of divinity in the University of Oxford, came out in open rebellion against the authority of the Pope, and not only quickened the sluggish blood of the ancient establishment of the English Church, then well-nigh dead, but increased its current, and enlarged the channels through which it flowed. In 1393, under Richard the Second, the Act of Provisors was renewed, and it was also enacted that whoever should bring into England, receive, publish, or execute there any papal bull, excommunication, or other like document, should be out of the King’s protection, and forfeit goods, chattels, and liberty. This was called the Statute of Præmunire, which signified a statute fortifying the royal power against foreign assault. Thus for a time the supremacy of the Pope was technically overthrown in England. During the succeeding reigns of the houses of York and Lancaster, papal intrigue succeeded in rendering these statutes a dead letter, and the old encroachments and usurpations again crept in. It is doubtful whether these encroachments would have been resisted by Henry the Eighth if they had not placed obstacles in the way of his divorce from Catherine. But owing to the determination of Clement to oppose his wishes in this respect, Henry shook off allegiance to Rome, and declared himself the head of the Church. Afterward, provoked into new attitudes of hostility to the Pope, and finally exasperated by a retaliatory excommunication, he extended the breach between himself and Rome, already too wide to be healed, until the last span was broken in the bridge which connected them. Monasteries were suppressed, saintly shrines were demolished, the worship of images was disallowed, and Wolsey, a prince of the Roman Church, was arrested under the Act of Præmunire, and tried for treason. The clergy were dismayed at these royal acts, but opposed them in vain. The arrest of their cardinal brought them to terms, for the acts of which he had been found guilty had been shared by them, and their only safety lay in a recognition of the ecclesiastical supremacy of the King.

But Henry remained a Catholic nevertheless, and though he had overthrown the power of Clement within his realm, he was practically the Pope himself. He issued a bull, whose provisions in 1538 became a law, called the Statute of the Six Articles, or Bloody Statute, or the Whip with Six Strings. This article declared: