Who were the Pilgrims?

by William T. Davis

Pending the settlement of this vexed question the Reformation went on. The doctrine of the Church was yet to be remodelled. Under the direction of Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley, forty-two articles were framed upon the chief points of Christian faith, which, after correction and approval by other bishops and divines, received the royal sanction. These articles are, with some alterations, the same as those now in use, having been reduced to thirty-nine at the beginning of the reign of Elizabeth. The final work of reformation in Edward’s reign was a second revision of the Book of Common Prayer, by which some new features were added, and some of those which had proved oppressive to advanced reformers struck out. Thus ended, in 1553, the reign of Edward, the boy King, whose death at the age of sixteen dashed the well-grounded hopes of the nation for a gradual but in the end a thorough reform.

It is unnecessary to speak of the reign of Bloody Mary. Of course the reformatory laws of Edward were repealed, and Romanism was once more triumphant; but only for a season. Her reign was short—of only five years’ duration—and perhaps by the persecutions which characterized it was in one respect the means of advancing the Protestant cause more vigorously than would have been possible if Edward had continued on the throne. It is doubtful whether, in the progress of that gradual abandonment of Romish doctrine and Romish forms upon which Edward had entered, the ritual prescribed by him would not have been finally divested of enough of its objectionable features to make it acceptable to the whole body of reformers. But on the accession of Mary, Protestants were forced in large numbers into exile, and subjected in other lands to new and potent influences. The current of Protestantism which flowed toward the Continent to escape her persecutions became divided there by the opposite teachings of Frankfort and Geneva, and flowed back after the accession of Elizabeth in separate streams, one to buoy up and sustain the English Church with all the forms with which the new Queen had invested it, and the other to sweep away, if possible, every vestige of Romanism in its ritual. The contumacy of John Hooper was but a single Puritan wave, which met a yielding barrier and disappeared. With the return of the exiles from Geneva a new tide of Puritanism set in, with an ocean of resolute thought behind it, which no royal hand could stay. It began its career, as was the case with Hooper, with a simple protest against forms of worship—a protest which, when conformity was demanded by the bishops, gradually extended to a denial of the power which demanded it. The more urgent the demand, the greater the resistance, until at last, like blows on yielding metal, which only serve to weld and harden it, persecution converted objection to a ritual into a conscientious contempt of prelatical power. Nor did it stop here. The sword which had been sharpened for the necks of the Catholics became two-edged in the hands of Elizabeth, and was wielded with equal force against nonconforming Protestants. Barrow and Greenwood and Ap-Henry felt it to-day, and to-morrow the Romish priests Ballard and Maud suffered a martyr’s death. To-day the death of Mary was demanded to protect a Protestant throne from the insidious attacks of Philip of Spain, and to-morrow Thomas Settle and Peter Wentworth were sent to prison to quench the spirit of Protestant liberty, which threatened the foundations of ecclesiastical power.

It is not necessary to describe in detail the oppression and persecution of the Puritans under Elizabeth. The great body of them, however, remained in the Church, simply protesting against its objectionable features, but tolerating them as long as they were prescribed by law. The result was a natural one. As the demands of the bishops had given birth to a protest against prelatical tyranny, so the bloody hand of the Queen at last inaugurated a denial of regal supremacy in the affairs of the Church. Hence, though the great body of Puritans remained within the ranks of episcopacy, desirous only of its reform, here and there were those who claimed the right to set up churches of their own, with their own church government, their own pastors and elders, subject to no control or interference either from the bishops or the crown.

The first separation from the Church worthy of note took place in 1567. After the failure of a new attempt in Parliament to pass a bill “touching reformation of matters of religion and church government,” a body of worshippers, to the number of a hundred or more, occupied a hall in London, in Anchor Lane, belonging to the company of the Plumbers, and held service in accordance with their own methods. The clergymen present were John Benson, Christopher Coleman, Thomas Rowland, and Robert Hawkins, all of whom had been deprived of their livings for nonconformity. Among the prominent laymen was William White, who is described as a “sturdy citizen of London, and a man of fortune.” The inquiry naturally suggests itself whether William White, the Mayflower Pilgrim, may not have belonged to the same family, and been perhaps his son. The discovery, however, by the writer of this article, some years since, in Doctors’ Commons in London, of the will of Bishop John White, dated 1621, in which allusion is made to an unnamed son, who had left his country and his Church, suggests a more probable parentage of the father of the infant Peregrine. Thirty-one of these worshippers were sent to prison, and the next day carried for examination before the commissioners of the Queen. At the close of the examination the prisoners were exhorted to forbear their religious assemblies; but it being evident that they would not yield, they were sent to Bridewell prison at the command of the Queen. After ten and a half months’ imprisonment they were warned of greater severity should they repeat their factious and disorderly behavior, and then discharged.

But the dispersion of these devoted Separatists far from extinguished the fire they had kindled. In 1576, John Copping, Elias Thacker, and Robert Brown, all clergymen of the Established Church, who had been deprived of their livings by the bishops, appeared on the scene, and by their zeal re-enforced the growing sentiment of Separatism. Brown was a man of high family, related to Lord Treasurer Burleigh, and chaplain to the Duke of Norfolk. Brown fled to Holland, where he became pastor of a Separatist congregation composed of English exiles. He there wrote two books, one entitled A Book which showeth the Life and Manners of all true Christians, and how unlike they are unto Turks, and Papists, and Heathen Folk, and the other, A Treatise of Reformation without tarrying for Any; and of the Wickedness of those Preachers who will not reform Themselves and their Charge because they will tarry till the Magistrate command and compel Them. These books, laying down substantially the platform on which seceding Separatists planted themselves, though exhibiting something of the exuberant zeal which characterized their author, were surreptitiously distributed in England, to the infinite annoyance of the Queen and her councillors. At the time of their publication Copping and Thacker were in prison for nonconformity, and in some way managed to aid in their circulation. For this offense they were transferred from the hands of the bishops to the secular power, and tried in June, 1593, under a charge of sedition. In the same month both died on the gallows, and thus while the dissenting flame was burning with increasing zeal, two sparks only were extinguished by royal power. In 1585 Brown returned to England, relying for immunity from punishment on those kind offices of his relation, Lord Burleigh, which had often before stood him in need. In 1588 he underwent the sentence of excommunication in a bishops’ court for contempt in not responding to a citation, whereupon he suddenly recanted, and submitting himself to the order and government established in the Church, was restored to good standing, and in 1591 was the recipient of a living at the hands of those whose power he had so long denied and resisted. During his eventful career he had stamped on his followers the name of Brownists, which was applied, without regard to minor differences of opinion in matters of doctrine and church government, to all who had separated themselves from the Established Church. It was disgust at his recantation and not opposition to his views which led Robinson at a later day to warn his followers to throw off and reject the name.

But the fate of Thacker and Copping, while it perhaps deterred the timid like Brown who were not made of martyrs’ stuff, failed to check the onward movement of Separatism. The martyrdom of Barrow and Greenwood and Ap-Henry followed soon after, and added fuel instead of water to the flame, for resistance to prelatical tyranny found ampler justification in the cruelty with which the tyrannical hand dealt its blows.

Henry Barrow was a graduate of Cambridge, a member of the legal profession in London, and “was sometime a frequenter of the court” of Queen Elizabeth. John Greenwood, also a graduate of Cambridge, had been ordained in the Church, and had served as chaplain in the family of Lord Rich, a Puritan nobleman of Rochford in Essex. John Ap-Henry, or Penry, as he is generally called in history, was a Welshman, who took his first degree in Cambridge, and the degree of Master of Arts at Oxford. They had all passed rapidly through the mild stage of Puritanism, which they found no fit resting-place, and by pen and voice had entered with zeal into the cause of Separatism.

As Separatism grew, Puritanism grew also, and the nonconforming Puritan, though denouncing Separatism as a schism, and hating schism as a sin, at last found himself in the outer circle of the whirlpool, where, all unconscious of his destination, he was drifting irrecoverably into the vortex of Independentism. In illustration of this, the career of Francis Johnson, a noted convert to Separatism, was a singular one. A determined Puritan, but a bitter enemy of Separatism, he was the pastor of an English congregation at Middelburg, in Zealand, when the fact came to his knowledge that a book written by Barrow and Greenwood in prison, entitled A Brief Discovery of the False Church, was in the hands of the printers there with a view to illicit distribution in England. As a loyal though Puritan minister of the English Church, he became alarmed at the thought of the harm its circulation might cause, and notified the English ambassador of the danger. He was at once employed to intercept the publication, and performed his commission so thoroughly as to accomplish the destruction of the whole edition, excepting two copies, which he preserved, one for himself and one for a friend. “When he had done this work, he went home, and being set down in his study, he began to turn over some pages of this book, and superficially to read somethings here and there as his fancy led him. At length he met with something that began to work upon his spirit, which so wrought with him as drew him to this resolution, seriously to read over the whole book, the which he did once and again. In the end he was so taken, and his conscience was troubled so, as he could have no rest in himself until he crossed the sea and came to London to confer with the authors, then in prison.” The result of his conversion was the organization, in 1592, of a Separatist congregation in Southwark, which was the original starting-point of a society now living and flourishing. In 1616 Henry Jacob became pastor of this church, followed by John Lathrop, who came to America in 1634, and was settled over the church in Scituate. The Southwark church was until recently under the charge of Rev. John Waddington, who for many years has been assiduous in his efforts to trace back the current of Pilgrim history. Francis Johnson, soon after the organization of his church, was banished from England, and became pastor of a banished church in Amsterdam, and there “caused the same books which he had been an instrument to burn to be new printed and set out at his own charge.”

But in this onward movement of Separatism it may be asked, what was the attitude of Puritanism? It must not be supposed, because Separatists were Puritans, that Puritans were Separatists, or that there was the slightest sympathy or friendship between the two. The Separatists pushed to the extremes of reform, and denounced those who tarried by the way. The Puritans, loyal to the Church establishment, while protesting against objectionable forms, were waiting for their correction in conformity with law, and the Separatists found no opponents more vigorous or hostile than those within their ranks. In the Parliament of 1593, in which the Puritan element predominated in the Commons, the most direct and positive law was enacted which the Separatists encountered in the whole history of their persecutions. In that Parliament the spiritual lords, who held the control in the Upper House, sent down to the Commons an act imposing the severest penalties on all Nonconformists, which the Puritans succeeded in so far modifying as to exclude themselves from its operation, and to substitute for the Separatist the punishment of banishment. Up to that time persecutions had been conducted under a forced construction of the act of 23 Elizabeth, intended, when enacted, to apply to papists only, which made writing or speaking against the bishops the same as seditious matter against the Queen. The odium incurred by the bishops in consequence rendered, in their opinion, a new law necessary, which should have a direct application to that class of recusants, who in the progress of time had become more dangerous than the papists to the stability of the Church. It has been claimed, in defense of the Puritans, that this act was a compromise with the House of Lords, and really substituted in behalf of the Separatists the milder punishment of banishment for that of a felon’s death. But it was really no compromise at all. The new law was a direct and positive enactment, purporting to explain, but not repeal, the old law. The old law remained in force, and would have been as potent as ever if the Queen and the bishops had seen fit to use it as an instrument of persecution.

The new law, passed by a Puritan Commons, contributed in no small degree to swelling the flood of oppression, which was destined to sweep Separatism out of England. The Puritans could not tolerate any opposition to the old idea of ecclesiastical unity, and were willing to go as far as the farthest in suppressing it. They held that the National Church, though perhaps in some respects corrupt and unscripturally organized, contained within itself a true Church of Christ, and therefore they abhorred separation from its worship and communion as a sinful schism. They believed that Parliament might rightfully enact laws for ecclesiastical government, and for the punishment of ecclesiastical offenders. Their approval of this law, therefore, was not inconsistent with their attitude of hostility to the Separatists, and should always be borne in mind by the reader as measuring the difference between two distinct bodies of reformers, which have been ignorantly and persistently mingled and confounded.