They never punished, or even committed any person as a witch. Roger Williams always had the free range of their Colony, and freedom of speech in it. Though their faith was positive and strong, they laid down no formal creed. John Robinson taught them that "the Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth out of his holy word," and their covenant was "to walk in all his ways made known, or to be made known, unto them."2 At the Lord's table they communed with pious Episcopalians, with Calvinists of the French and Dutch Churches, and with Presbyterians, and recognized the spiritual fraternity of all who hold the faith. The following review, sometimes minute and sometimes very general, will aim to present the Pilgrim Fathers in the light of recent discoveries and developments. Impartiality will require that some things be recorded which the panegyrist would rather ignore and the sectarian distort. Yet the plain facts will doubtless lead the candid reader to the conclusion that the Pilgrim Fathers were great in their goodness, and wise beyond their generation; that in an era of superstition they groped, not unsuccessfully, for something better; and however small their own advance, they bequeathed to their successors the spirit of inquiry and progress. Men must be judged by the age in which they lived and by the special influences which surrounded them; thus before forming an estimate of the Pilgrims it becomes necessary to consider the condition of their mother-country, the leader of intelligence in that generation. In 1620, when the "Mayflower" sailed from England, the world was practically, if not entirely, ignorant of steam-power, electricity, photography, chemistry, geology, the barometer, thermometer, and pendulum, and of a vast number of principles, inventions, and appliances essential to modern life and expelled from that Colony. Plymouth had only five classes of capital crime; and of these she actually punished but two. 2 Bradford's Hist., 9. 1 Chron. Pil., 397. comfort, even in the lowest social sphere. The philosophy of gravitation was awaiting its far-off Newton; the learned world was divided between the Ptolemaic and the Copernican theories of the solar system. Of the functions of the stomach, brain, and nerves, the skin and kidneys, nothing was known. Harvey, following Servetus, was preparing to demonstrate the circulation of the blood; but the best medical men of the day had not mastered it. Charms, amulets, incantations, magical preparations, and the touch of the king's hand,' were common in the medical treatment of even the most learned divines and statesmen; 2 astrology and alchemy were common pursuits of the erudite, while divination and necromancy had no lack of believers in all circles of life. The mental resources of the less-educated classes must have been few indeed, when even the scanty science known was not generally diffused among the learned, when there were no secular lectures, no newspapers, no public mails, and no public vehicles. Cruelty to man and beast was common; judicial sentences were often barbarous in the extreme, and their most cruel infliction, on men and women alike, drew dense crowds of eager spectators from the refined and select as well as from the coarse and low. The King set at naught even the laws 1 Particularly, scrofula, or King's-evil," was supposed to be curable by the royal touch. Edward the Confessor began the practice in 1058. Charles II. touched 92,107 persons, and according to Dr. Wiseman, court physician, they were nearly all cured. Good Queen Anne announced officially in the “London Gazette" of March 12, 1712, that she would "touch" publicly. This "faith cure was dropped as a royal custom by George I., 1714. " 2 In Elizabeth's time the sick in high life swallowed "salts of gold" and powdered diamonds, coral, pearls, and many such things, for medicines. Pov erty was fortunate in having to limit itself to herbs, and these were gathered with incantations and under certain planets or phases of the moon (New Englanders have not yet entirely lost a reverence for the latter). Bleeding was resorted to under almost all circumstances, but the operation was performed by barbers, not surgeons. The Queen herself gave great attention and obe dience to her astrologer, Dr. Dee. Palmistry ranked as a science, and learned professors triumphantly answered sceptics by quoting scripturally: "He hath placed signs in the hands of all men, that every man may know his work." For long afterward, anatomical researches were thought sacrilegious, and the elementary facts of geology blasphemous. 8 The law for burning heretics was not repealed in England until 1677, and to which he had given his specific approval, and the pulpit declared that no earthly restraint could be placed upon him, with or without his consent. With no authority of law, the government was in the habit of torturing suspected people, to wring from them evidence against themselves and their friends; prisoners charged with felony were not allowed to have counsel, nor had they the privilege of calling sworn or reluctant witnesses; juries were often driven by the menaces of judges to convict those whom they had already declared "not guilty;" the treatment of common prisoners was horrible, and the ravages of jail-fever were frequent and terrible. Under Elizabeth, learned and pious men had been hanged for advocating Congregationalism; and under James, exemplary and able scholars were burned alive for holding to then not because it was thought wrong, but for fear that in the coming reign James II. might apply it to Protestants. The penalty of pressing to death (in legal phraseology "the Peine Forte et Dure") a prisoner who would not plead, existed in England in 1770. The form of execution in Elizabeth's time, and which continued to be the penalty for treason until 1814, was as follows: The victim was placed in a cart with a rope around his neck; as the cart started, the executioner caught the swinging man, and, cutting him down, removed the noose. The prisoner then, while in full possession of his senses, was disembowelled and made to see his intestines burning in a fire by his side; next his still beating heart was pulled out and burned, his body quartered, and his head set up on London Bridge or some other public place. Elizabeth at one time had three hundred heads exposed over the entrance to the bridge, while the Tower and Temple Bar had each a like horrible display (see p. 230, Chapter XXI.). The Queen was not satisfied with this savage process, but, in the case of Babington and thirteen other young Roman Catholic gentlemen, desired some punishment more severe. Her judges deciding that this would be illegal, the Virgin Queen insisted that the established form be protracted "to the extremity of pain." Her ferocity was gratified as to the first seven; but the spectators, filled with pity, compelled the executioner to let the others hang until dead, before mutilation. By a law of Nature, cruelty grows with indulgence. In Elizabeth's era barbarity soon extended from Roman Catholics to such Protestants as offended the government. Amputation of ears and hands, boring the tongue with a red-hot iron, branding cheeks and foreheads, fearful scourgings, and exposure in the pillory to every abuse short of murder, were the lot of hundreds not of sufficient impor tance for the rack and the quartering-block. Nor was the stake yet obsolete. In 1575 two Dutch Baptists of London were burned alive. The Dutch Church there pleaded for them, and Fox, the martyrologist, begged the Queen at least to substitute some milder death; but Elizabeth refused, and so incurred the full responsibility for the cruelty. Afterward at least three persons were burned as Unitarians. She who delighted her early maidenhood with bear and dog fights showed little mercy in her later years. Unitarianism. The idea of private judgment was almost everywhere denied, and the toleration of religious differences was as widely denounced by persons of every shade of opinion. Christianity had made but slight progress; the religion which bore its name and used its terms being much nearer to Judaism, and drawing its inspiration from the Pentateuch rather than from the Gospels. All sorts and conditions of men were swayed by superstition, especially a dread of witchcraft, of ghosts, of comets, and of a personal, material devil and his visitations. This summary might be much extended; but enough has been said to indicate the standard by which the Pilgrim Fathers are to be measured. If in some respects they merely made their portion of New England conform to Old England, they are not therefrom open to special credit or censure, for such was to be expected of good, common men; but so far as they rose above the influences under which they had been reared, and gave the world something better, they are entitled to no common meed of praise. It is eulogy enough to say that while in many respects they were like the world which had reared them, in others they were self-advanced from it. 1 In 1634 Lord Baltimore, the Roman Catholic patron, offered full toleration in Maryland for Protestants, except that Unitarians were punishable with death. English Conformists. CHAPTER II. -- Nonconformists, or Puritans. - Separatists. Brownists. Arrogance of the English Church. WHEN WHEN, in 1603, James I. became king of England, he found his Protestant subjects divided into three classes, Conformists, or High Ritualists; Nonconformists, or Broad-Church Puritans; and Separatists, popularly called Brownists. The Conformists and the Puritans both adhered to the Church of England, and were struggling for its control. The leading Conformists had recently begun to claim more than human authority for their Church polity and ceremonies; the King, its earthly head, they pronounced Christ's vicegerent, supreme in State as well as Church, so that neither people nor parliament had any rights or privileges which he might not take away at his pleasure, even such as he had solemnly confirmed by seal or oath. To this party belonged the King, with most of his courtiers and placemen, the higher clergy, most of the nobility, and nearly all the lowest grades of society. The Puritans objected to some of the ceremonies of the Church, such as the ring in marriage, the sign of the cross in baptism, the promises of godparents, the showy vestments, 1 So late as 1683, on the day of Lord Russell's execution, Oxford University declared "submission and obedience, clear, absolute, and without exception," to be the badge and character of the Church of England. She also went through the puerile ceremony of burning sundry books of Knox, Milton, and Baxter which advocated the rights of the people. Yet in 1688, when her Church was threatened by the lawful King, this grand old University was in the front rank of rebellion, and tendered her college plate toward the invader's expenses as he marched against "the Lord's anointed," as she had recently expressed it. |