[LIBRARY | UNIVERSITY OF OfcjfOimiA 0? THE APPRENTICESHIP OP WASHINGTON AND OTHER SKETCHES OF SIGNIFI- CANT COLONIAL PERSONAGES THE APPRENTICESHIP OF WASHINGTON AND OTHER SKETCHES OF SIG- NIFICANT COLONIAL PERSONAGES BY GEORGE HODGES NEW YORK MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY 1909 Copyright, 1909, by MOFFAT, YARD AND COMPANY NEW YORK All Eights Reserved Published, February, 1909 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I. THE APPRENTICESHIP OF WASHINGTON . 7 II. THE HANGING OF MARY DYER .... 41 III. THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 91 IV. THE EDUCATION OF JOHN HARVARD . . 149 V. THE FOREFATHERS OF JAMESTOWN . . .187 THE APPRENTICESHIP OF WASHINGTON THE APPRENTICESHIP OF WASHINGTON THE Continental Congress which sat in Philadelphia in the late spring and early summer of 1775 had among its able members one who was distinguished from the others by the infrequency of his speeches and by the color of his coat. He sat for the most part in attentive silence, well satisfied with the arguments of his neighbors, content to forward the purposes of the convention by serving diligently on the committee which was charged with the arrangements for the raising of an army. But he wore his uniform. He appeared not in the attire of a legislator or of a man of peace, but in the garments of war, in the colonel's coat which he had worn in military service. This dress was of itself 8 THE APPRENTICESHIP a speech. Buff is defined in the * ' Century Dictionary " as "a yellow color deficient in luminosity." The buff of that partic- ular uniform, however, was by no means deficient in luminosity. It shone with meaning, as the blue sky shines in the sun. Everybody who saw it knew that its wearer was convinced that war was in- evitable. When John Adams made his notable speech in which he put that convic- tion into words, and declared that the time had come to choose a commander over the colonial forces, he pointed to the man in buff and blue. There, he said, is the gen- eral for us. At that moment a career began with which we are all measurably familiar. Washington the general, we know; Wash- ington the president, we know ; with Wash- ington the colonel, however, we are not so well acquainted. I propose, accord- ingly, to recount some of the exploits of Colonel Washington. This I do partly be- cause this period of his life is not so well OF WASHINGTON 9 established in the memory of most of us; and partly because of the interest and value which naturally inhere in the begin- nings of things, and specially in the begin- nings of noble lives. For biography ap- peals to our ambition. We read the life of a great man not only for the pleasure which we get from his society but for the sake of learning, if possible, how to be- come great. What was there in him and about him which thus exalted him above his fellows? How did he go to work to attain the high purposes of his life? Through what sort of training did he pass into his might and his fame? While we are still at such an age that the major part of our life seems to be before us rather than behind us, we secretly hope that we may somehow share in the spirit of the great. We may not venture to solicit the mantle of Elijah, but we think it quite within the possibilities that at least the shadow of Peter passing by may helpfully overshadow us. 10 THE APPRENTICESHIP My subject, accordingly, is the " Ap- prenticeship of Washington, " and my pur- pose is to consider some of the experiences which served to fit him to respond to the call of the Continental Congress, to lead our armies, and finally to establish us as a people upon enduring foundations. It is plain that young Washington lived a large part of his life under the open sky. He was born and brought up in the coun- try. There is nothing impossible in the tradition of the cherry tree or in the tradi- tion of the breaking of the colt. The im- probable element in these stories is the extraordinary conversation which accom- panies them. The talk which goes on be- tween the lad and the father is as far re- moved from reality as the conferences be- tween Adam and Eve which are reported by John Milton. Adam, as M. Taine ob- serves, is a graduate of the University of Oxford, and has a seat in the Long Parlia- ment. And Mr. Lodge makes a similar re- mark concerning the Washington of Par- OF WASHINGTON n son Weems's stories. This young person, he says, is a near relative of Sanford and Merton and of Harry and Lucy. He is one of Miss Maria Edgeworth's and Miss Hannah More's good boys. The truth is that Parson Weems, knowing nothing about Washington's boyhood, but knowing well that the purchasers of his book would wish to be informed regarding that period of his career, told these pleasant tales to show that the great man began to exhibit remarkable qualities at a tender age. Un- fortunately, at the moment of writing, the ideal of a perfect child was that which was set forth by the maiden ladies to whom I have referred. The proper child of that day was a good deal of a prig. Washing- ton, so far as the historians can discover, had nothing of the prig about him. I do not applaud him for lying or for swearing; but there is a certain wholesome satisfac- tion to be derived from the fact that he did occasionally tell a lie, when it seemed to serve his purpose; especially in his early 12 THE APPRENTICESHIP years, when he dealt with Indians. I sup- pose it was considered necessary to lie to Indians. He also was able, when the situa- tion appeared to demand unusual empha- sis, to use quite vigorous language. He was a very human person, with a hot and hasty temper. It is to be noticed, however, even in these apocryphal stories, that the scene is laid out of doors, and that the prig, their hero, has either a hatchet or a halter in his hand; never a book. It does not anywhere ap- pear that the young Washington took kind- ly to books, or that he was ever at any period of his life given to reading. It is true that in 1748 he noted in his diary that he " read to the reign of King John " and " in the Spectator read to 143,'* but these are isolated items. It is doubtful if he ever got in the Spectator to 144, or in the history to the reign of the third Henry. He was certainly well acquainted with the reign of the third George, which is more to the purpose. No, the items which he OF WASHINGTON 13 records with far more frequency and with much more interest are such as these: " Went a hunting with Jack Custis and catched a fox after three hours' chase; found it in the creek." " February 12th, catched two foxes." " February 13th, catched two more foxes." Books entered of necessity into the day's work of the boy. Hobby, the sexton of the parish church, taught him his letters, and guided the first uncertain motions of the handwriting which was afterwards so strong and dignified. Williams, the school- master of Bridge's Creek, gave the re- mainder of his formal education. That was all that the schools did for him. The most that he got, beyond the essential rudi- ments, was some sort of idea of the world in which he lived, and a good knowledge of applied mathematics. The fact that he spelled well shows that he attended to his lessons. His mother was a particularly bad speller, even in a day when private judgment and academic authority were 14 THE APPRENTICESHIP still contending at the point of everybody's pen. Whatever culture he had in his early years came from the high-minded and courteous society of the neighborhood. Thackeray said that colonial Virginia was the most aristocratic country in the world. The remark was made in a novel but it had a good foundation in fact. The land was sparsely settled, being for the most part divided into great estates. Each of these estates had its manor house, with many large rooms, built for generous hospitality, flanked by the slaves' quarters, and stand- ing in the midst of gardens and fertile fields. One still catches a glimpse of such noble mansions in a journey down the James Eiver. Washington's own house at Mount Vernon is the most familiar exam- ple. These places were inhabited by men and women of excellent English stock, who maintained the pleasant and honest Eng- lish traditions. They managed their house- holds and their herds, entertained continu- OF WASHINGTON 15 ally, were forever riding back and forth on horses along the wood roads making visits, going to dancing parties, and to church on Sundays. The young men were fond of hunting and competed one with another in rough sports. They were also fond of the young women, following the good fashion of the race. It is recorded of Washington that although he was for the most part a pretty steady boy, he once * ' surprised his schoolmates by romping with one of the largest girls." Indeed, it is remembered of him that he had a habit of falling in love, and he is known to have entertained tender thoughts of several large girls before he met the widow Custis. This too contrib- uted much to his education. On the whole, however, the distinctive feature of all this life, as I said at the be- ginning, was that it was lived under the open sky. The society of the neighborhood was indeed aristocratic, but it was an aris- tocracy mitigated by manual labor. Most of the great people were land poor. All of 16 THE APPRENTICESHIP them worked with their hands, the women in the kitchen and the men in the barn. A lad who grew to manhood under these con- ditions knew how to do things. He was a competent person, who could ride a horse, and milk a cow, and break a colt, and mend a roof, and make a bridge. Washington lived out of doors all his life. He was on horseback nearly every day. The eques- trian statues represent him characteris- tically. He was engaged in overseeing things, first his estates, then his soldiers, then the nation. He had the clearness of sight which comes from dealing in a large way with nature. His nerves were sea- soned in the sun. He had an executive habit. The lad's first ambition was to go to sea. He knew nothing about the sea, and it had therefore a strong attraction for him. He wanted to get on board a tobacco ship, and go out in search of his fortune. Happily, his young energies were set to work in the business of surveying. This direction he OF WASHINGTON 17 owed in great part to a valuable friend and kinsman, Thomas, Lord Fairfax. Lord Fairfax was then sixty years of age, an Oxford scholar and man of the world, who had turned his back upon a society which had disappointed him, and had come over here to look after his great possessions. It was probably Fairfax who had set young Washington to reading the Spectator, to which he himself is said to have contrib- uted a number. The old man took the boy into his heart. They used to ride and hunt and talk together. Now he suggested that he should go out into the forest, and sur- vey the Fairfax lands, beyond the Blue Eidge. Washington was by this time of the age of sixteen years. I copy Mr. Lodge's ac- count of his appearance. " He was tall and muscular, approaching the stature of more than six feet which he afterwards at- tained. He was not yet filled out to manly proportions, but was rather spare, after the fashion of youth. He had a well- 18 THE APPRENTICESHIP shaped, active figure, symmetrical, except for the unusual length of his arms, indicat- ing uncommon strength. His light brown hair was drawn back from his broad fore- head, and grayish-blue eyes looked hap- pily, and perhaps soberly, on the pleasant Virginia world about him. The face was open and manly, with a square, massive jaw, and a general expression of calmness and strength. Fair and florid, big and strong, he was, taking him for all in all, as fine a specimen of his race as could be found in the English colonies." Thus he set out upon the first day's task of his young manhood. It was in the month of. March, and there was much rain, swell- ing the streams, over which there were no bridges. The boy and his companion slept in settlers' huts, or under the trees. Some- times they went hungry ; sometimes, as the surveyor says in his journal, they had a good dinner, " wine and rum punch in plenty, and a good feather bed with clean sheets." Once they met thirty Indians OF WASHINGTON 19 coming from war. " We had some liquor with us, ' ' he says, * ' of which we gave them part. It elevated their spirits, put them in the humor of dancing, of whom we had a war dance, ' ' which he describes. The jour- nal shows that he looked about him atten- tively. A man who lives in the woods must keep his eyes open. But Washington saw other sights than trees and animals, and knew how to set down what he saw briefly and clearly. This appears more noticeably in the journal which he kept when he went shortly after this to the Barbadoes with his brother Lawrence. He has an eye for the pursuits and pleasures of the people, for the crops and the condition of the.markets, for the administration of the government. One characteristic of his account of his sur- veying is the small importance which he attaches to the hardships of the journey. This is the proper result of the sturdy training of a lad bred in a new country, 1 ' expecting accidents, ' ' like Sancho Panza. On his visit to the Barbadoes he caught the 20 THE APPRENTICESHIP smallpox, an experience to which he gives some two lines of his journal. Washington spent but a month in this particular survey, but he was busy for three years as public surveyor, surveying lines which stand true to this day. Mean- while, this frontier life was making him ready for his next notable undertaking. News kept coming from the settlements be- yond the mountains that the French were trespassing on English land. This, indeed, was a part of a concerted plan. The Eng- lish had built their colonies along the coast, the French had made theirs on the banks of the rivers. It would seem at first as if there was enough room in the great unset- tled continent for both these companies of colonists. This, however, was a view at variance with the theories upon which land titles at that time proceeded. The English theory was that the possession of land along the sea entitled the owner to all the country which lay westward back of his farm to the Pacific Ocean. The French, on OF WASHINGTON 21 the other hand, maintained that the discov- ery of a river entitled the discoverer to all the regions drained by that river and by its remotest tributaries. Under this the- ory, the French held the St. Lawrence and the Mississippi, and they claimed every- thing which lay between the Alleghenies in the east and the Eockies in the west. The point where these claims, English and French, came first into actual conflict was at the headwaters of the Ohio. News came that the French were settling in those parts, and were asserting their rightful possession of them. It was neces- sary to send out somebody to learn what the situation was. The Governor of Vir- ginia chose Washington. The mission in- volved a journey of five or six hundred miles through wild woods, in peril of hos- tile Frenchmen and possibly hostile sav- ages for the delivery of a message which might lead very speedily to a declaration of war. Washington was now of the age of twenty-one years. Out he set, then, upon 22 THE APPRENTICESHIP this expedition, having with him his old fencing-master to act as interpreter in his dealings with the French, and an experi- enced and daring trader, Christopher Gist, to be their guide. They found the Indians wavering between friendship with the French and friendship with the English, but rather inclined at that moment to side with the English. The French, they sus- pected, were intending to take away their lands. Washington went to the remotest limits of diplomatic circumlocution to pre- vent the Indians from entertaining a like suspicion of the English, and on the whole, with some assistance from the contents of various persuasive black bottles, he was successful. With the French the same arrangements availed at least to disclose the thoughts of their hearts. " The wine, as they dosed themselves pretty plentiful with it, soon banished the restraint which at first ap- peared in their conversation. . . . They told me that it was their absolute design to OF WASHINGTON 23 take possession of the Ohio. ' ' During this exercise of diplomacy by intoxication, Washington sat by, very sober and very attentive. He looked about him with the eye of a frontiersman and with the instinct of a soldier. He noted the point of land where the Allegheny and the Monongahela meet, now the site of Pittsburgh, and re- marked its strategic importance. While the French commandant was writing his polite statement of the claims of his nation, Washington was making a sketch of the fort, and learning how many men and guns were there. It was in December when the ambassa- dorial party came back through the long forests, and a hard time they had of it in the rain and snow. They found the rivers full of floating ice, and fell into the middle of one of them, spending the night on an island in their frozen clothes. But they made their way at last to Williamsburg, the capital of Virginia. Here Washington de- livered his message. Here he printed both 24 THE APPRENTICESHIP the reply of the French commander and his own journal of the expedition. This document presently arrived in England, where it was much read and commented upon. It was evident to discerning minds in England as well as in the colonies that the time was approaching when another cam- paign must be undertaken in that long war which under various names had been fought since first the barbarians assailed the walls of Eome. The Teuton and the Latin, even in those early days, repre- sented radically different ideas. The Latin stood for the centralization of power, the Teuton for its distribution. The Latin po- litical idea was that one man constituted the state: the king was the rightful pos- sessor of all land and the rightful master of all people. The Teuton political idea was that in the state every man counted one : power was delegated by the people to rulers who were their representatives. These ideas pervaded and determined all OF WASHINGTON 25 life. They made the north of Europe dif- ferent from the south of Europe not only politically but ecclesiastically and socially. The Teutonic principle is essentially demo- cratic. It implies private judgment rather than authority. It works out naturally into a republican form of government and into Protestantism. It is significant that the Protestant reformation succeeded in the Teutonic nations and failed in the Latin nations. The wars which accompanied the ecclesiastical revolution were but another campaign in the long race struggle. The same is true, in a way, of the civil strife in England which resulted in the Com- monwealth of Oliver Cromwell; the de- bate was as to the possession of power, whether it belonged to the king or to the people. The fight between the French and the English for the possession of this continent was therefore a contest charged with the most serious and profound consequences. The political, the religious, and the social 26 THE APPRENTICESHIP life of our people depended upon the result. The French and Indian war was incompa- rably the most important contention which has taken place in the whole course of our history. The war lasted about seventy-five years, beginning in 1689. This is the date which Mr. Fiske sets as the end of the primitive period and the beginning of the mediaeval period of American history. The mediaeval period ended and the modern period began exactly a century later, with the adoption of the Constitution in 1789. The French and Indian war fell into four campaigns. The first campaign was called King Wil- liam's war; it was made notable by the valor and ability of the French commander Frontenac, and the French had the best of it. The second campaign was called Queen Anne's warj and the French had tne worst of it. The third campaign was King George's war, during which the men of New England captured Louisburg. The fourth campaign was the Seven Years' OF WASHINGTON 27 war; it involved most of the nations of Europe: England and Prussia fought against France, Austria, Russia, and Spain. At the end of this last campaign, the English had taken from the French every acre of their American possessions. The first shot in this decisive war was fired by Colonel Washington. The declaration of French claims which Washington brought back from the Ohio called for an immediate answer, and the Governor of Virginia raised troops to carry it. He made Washington a colonel. He sent Captain Trent to fortify the stra- tegic junction of the rivers to whose impor- tance the young diplomat had called atten- tion. In April, 1754, leaving a superior officer to follow with the main body of troops, Washington pushed forward with two companies to find presently that the French had fallen upon Trent's fort, turned out the garrison with hard words rather than with hard blows, and taken possession. Washington determined at 28 THE APPEENTICESHIP once to march his hundred and fifty men against them. Thus they arrived at Great Meadows, where natural banks of earth made the beginnings of an entrenchment which they named Fort Necessity. The clearing away of the bushes made it, as Washington remarked, * ' a charming place for encounter." Then word came that a company of Frenchmen had left the fort at the point now called Fort Duquesne, and were coming in their direction. Wash- ington, with his soldiers and some friendly Indians, marched to meet them, found them encamped in the early morning after a black night of rain, and promptly fired upon them with tragic effect. That was the shot which set all Europe blaz- ing, and began a war which lasted seven years. Washington, as I have remarked, was not given to talking much about himself, but upon this occasion he said some things which he afterwards repented. " I flatter myself, ' ' he writes to his governor, * ' [that OF WASHINGTON 29 I have] resolution enough to face what any man durst, as shall be proved when it comes to the test, which I believe we are on the borders of. ' ' To which he added, * * I heard the bullets whistle and, believe me, there is something charming in the sound." George the Second, to whom this sentence was re- peated, said " very sensibly," that the young man " would not say so if he had been used to hear many." But he had not at that time been used to hear many, and he did say so. He thought it and said it. That is, this colonel of twenty-two had fighting blood in his veins. The old instinct asserted itself in him which has ever, in all races, sent men out with weapons in search of their neighbors. Strange as it may seem to us peaceful persons, to most of whom the nearest approach to war has been in the columns of the newspapers, some of whom cannot even fire a gun at a tree without shutting their eyes, this young man loved to fight. He delighted in the peril of his life. At this time he had no prudence, and 30 THE APPRENTICESHIP made no calculation of the difference in numbers between himself and the enemy. The thing seems not to have entered into his mind. He was eager to get into action and kill somebody. News of this encounter came to Fort Duquesne, and Fort Necessity was pres- ently besieged by a force greatly superior. Washington was for fighting them in the open, in the convenient clearing, but they preferred the local custom and fired from the shelter of the trees. And it rained very hard, till in the fort the men were ankle- deep in mud. Finally, Washington had to surrender, and marched back along the trail through the woods defeated. He left his hostages, one of them his old fencing- master, and the other a Scotchman named Stobo, who was taken to Quebec, and, one day, making his escape, showed General Wolfe a path which led up to the Plains of Abraham. During this expedition Washington had complained bitterly about his pay. He OF WASHINGTON 31 would prefer, lie said, the glory of serving for nothing rather than the ignominy of serving for next to nothing. He did not complain of danger or of hardship, but seriously objected to whatever seemed to him to be unjust. Thus though he greatly desired a part in the impending war, he re- fused to take a position where as a colonial officer he would be outranked by any petty captain who belonged to the regular army. It was one of the common grievances. The matter was got over by an invitation from General Braddock to join his staff. Braddock was the new Commander-in- Chief who had come from England to pun- ish the insolence of the French. He was a good soldier, who had seen some service, but he was absolutely ignorant in all mat- ters which pertained to the woods. His acquaintance with trees was wholly con- fined to tame trees. Braddock was, more- over, a very conservative person. He had learned how to fight under competent mas- ters, and had read books upon the subject. 32 THE APPRENTICESHIP He knew by heart all the rubrics and can- ons of conventional and respectable war. He had pronounced convictions on the sub- ject of uniforms, and on the true order of a martial procession. He was a military ritualist. This precise person now issued forth to fight Indians. Washington, on the natural ground of acquaintance with the country, offered him advice, but he declined it. He did not propose at his age to take instruction from a youth in buckskin re- garding the art of war. That was the heart of the whole matter. So they made their way along the hard roads and across the rivers, a good little army. They forded the Monongahela near the present site of the Carnegie steel works, purposing to march thence to the French fort. Everybody knows what hap- pened. The French and Indians fought from behind the trees. Braddock had never in his life fought from behind a tree. He compelled his men to fight in platoons, as men were accustomed to fight in Europe. OF WASHINGTON 33 The result was that seven hundred men and sixty-two out of their eighty-six officers were killed or wounded. Braddock himself fell, aware at last of his tragic blunder, saying, too late, * ' I will do better another time." Washington, who had two horses shot under him and four bullets through his coat, rallied the fugitives, read the prayer-book service over the dead general, and conducted the retreat. Thereafter, the war was waged in other places, ending at Quebec. Washington had little to do with it. He had learned his lesson. He had observed that frontiers- men were able to meet regular soldiers and overcome them. He had served his ap- prenticeship. For a dozen peaceful years he managed his estates, looked after his slaves, administered local affairs as a mem- ber of the vestry, and colonial affairs as a member of the Virginia assembly. He rode up across the country to New York, and thence to Boston, where he attended a ses- sion of the Great and General Court, was 34 THE APPRENTICESHIP asked to dinner at all the great houses, and went to a dancing party every evening. It is not likely that it occurred to him that he might presently interrupt these gay fes- tivities. Everybody was glad to meet the gallant and handsome young colonel. His cloak of white and scarlet brightened all the countryside as he rode along with his aides and his servants. It is pleasantly remembered of him that he was particular about his dress. In his orders to the haber- dashers and other tradesfolk of London he showed an interest in being in the mode. He had a keen sense of the fitness of things, which afterwards made him the most dignified of our Presidents. No other of our chief magistrates has carried him- self so like a king. This did not prevent him from falling temporarily in love with Mary Philipse, as he passed through New York ; nor did it in- terfere with his falling permanently in love with Martha Custis. He met her one day at dinner which was then a midday meal OF WASHINGTON 35 spent the afternoon in her cheerful so- ciety, and stayed to tea. The next day in the morning he made his dinner-call, and before noon the young colonel and the young widow were happily engaged to be married. They do not look it in the sedate pictures, but that is how it happened. At the wedding ' ' the bride was attired in silk and satin, laces and brocade, with pearls on her neck and in her ears, while the bride- groom appeared in blue and silver trimmed with scarlet, and with gold buckles at his knees and on his shoes." So they rode away after the ceremony, the bride in a coach and six, her husband riding beside her, mounted on a splendid horse and fol- lowed by all the gentlemen of the party. Here we take leave of him, on the porch of Mount Vernon. His next residence was Craigie House, in Cambridge. Looking back now, over this period of apprenticeship, we perceive that Washing- ton learned his most notable lessons under the tuition of defeat. Defeat imparts an 36 THE APPRENTICESHIP instruction and even an inspiration of its own, and is sometimes more significant and more effective than victory. Leonidas and Ms Spartans were defeated at Thermopy- lae; Warren was defeated at Bunker Hill; that tall shaft marks a battleground from which our men were driven. The news of that encounter reached Washington on his way to Boston. " Did the militia fight? " he said. And when he learned that they stood their ground and fought well, " Then," he exclaimed, " the liberties of the country are safe." He had learned by his own experience that there is a differ- ence between defeat and defeat. Washington learned at Great Meadows that courage is not enough for the winning of a battle: the soldier must be properly equipped. He learned at Braddock's Field that even courage and equipment together are not enough; the soldier must under- stand the situation and adapt himself to it. Strong in the strength of these lessons, with the advantage of a sound body, a con- OF WASHINGTON 37 fident spirit, and a clear conscience, he en- tered upon that stage of his career wherein he was revealed to all people for all time a great soldier, and a great citizen, and a great man. THE HANGING OF MARY DYER n THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 1 /COTTON MATHER, in the " Magna- v^ Ha," makes no mention of the name of Mistress Anne Hutchinson. He gives an account of her opinions, but omits her name out of regard for her relatives, among whom, he says, there are so many worthy and useful persons. He calls her an Erroneous Gentlewoman. He says that she had a haughty carriage, a busy spirit, and a voluble tongue; but he cannot deny that she had also a competent wit. This wit she exercised in the organization and maintenance of a Woman's Club. Mrs. Hutchinson was the first person in the country to perceive the importance of assembling the women of the neighborhood for mutual cultivation of mind and for the direction of public opinion. Mather says 1 This Paper was the Founder's Lecture at Bryn Mawr College, 1908. 42 THE HANGING OF MARY DYEE that these meetings used to be called " Gos- sipings," but the gossiping was of a very serious and improving sort. The sixty or eighty women who met every week at Mrs. Hutchinson's house in School Street came to listen to her exposition of the sermon which Mr. John Cotton had preached on the previous Sunday. She would repeat the sermon, point by point, by way of re- freshing the memory of her hearers ; and " after the Bepetition," says Mather, ' ' she would make her Explicatory and Ap- plicatory Declamations." These Explica- tory and Applicatory Declamations soon brought Mrs. Hutchinson and her club under the censure of the church. For the interpreter allowed herself a large liberty of difference. Sometimes she agreed with the preacher, but sometimes she found him in error. Of Mr. Cotton she approved ; but when Mr. Wilson, his colleague, preached, she did not hesitate to show the women of the congregation the weak places in his ser- mon, nor to subject his theology to her THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 48 lively criticism. She divided both the clergy and the laity of the colony into two classes conventional Christians, who were living under a Covenant of Works, to the peril of their souls, and genuine Chris- tians, who were living under a Covenant of Grace. And she finally told the club that of all the ministers of the neighborhood only two Mr. Cotton and Mr. Wheelwright, her brother-in-law were under the Covenant of Grace. Mrs. Hutchinson's " Scandalous, Dan- gerous, and Enchanting Extravagancies," to quote again from the "Magnalia," went straight in the face of the Puritan theory of government. The men of Massachusetts Bay had in mind the constitution of the Jewish people after their return from ex- ile, when they were ruled not by princes but by priests. They had established, ac- cordingly, an administration of God, in the form of a state wherein the franchise was restricted to the members of the church and among whose officers the ministers had 44 THE HANGING OF MAEY DYER high places. They endeavored, in consist- ence with this ideal, to surround the per- son of the minister with all respect and reverence. He was to be heard with pro- found attention ; his voice was to be obedi- ently heeded, as a voice from heaven. The stability of both church and state was felt to rest upon the devout submission of the people to the mind of the clergy. That, at least, was the opinion of the clergy. And here, of a sudden, was Mrs. Hutchinson, with her competent wit and her enchant- ing extravagancies, differing from the preacher, and saying so with all freedom and force of language to more than sixty women every week. It was not only an heretical and schismatical position, but was fairly revolutionary. It undermined the universal foundations. Indeed, it came out clearly as a very practical peril when the Pequot war arose, and the men of Boston were called to aid in fighting the Indians, and many of them were perplexed in con- science, and doubtful whether to go or stay, THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 45 because Mrs. Hutchinson said that their chaplain, the Eev. Mr. Wilson, was under a Covenant of Works. Finally, a council was held at Cambridge to decide what to do with Mrs. Hutchinson, and she was formally condemned and ex- communicated, and the first woman's club in this country was ignominiously dis- solved and forbidden to meet again. Mrs. Hutchinson and her friends were found to be guilty of " eighty-five erroneous opin- ions and nine unwholesome expressions." The statistics show the thoroughness with which the examination of Mrs. Hutchin- son 's theology was conducted. Pope Pius X, looking over the whole field of modern thought, notices only sixty-five erroneous opinions ! The Cambridge meeting-house was crowded on that March day in 1638. All the authorities, civil and ecclesiastical, had each his separate word of malediction. Anne Hutchinson sat silent. Dudley, the Deputy Governor, remarked that though 46 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER she had repented in writing, there was no repentance in her face; probably not. Finally, John Wilson pronounced the sen- tence: " Therefore, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the name of the church, I do not only pronounce you worthy to be cast out, but I do cast you out ; and in the name of Christ, I do deliver you up to Satan, that you may learn no more to blas- pheme, to seduce and to lie; and I do ac- count you from this time forth to be a Heathen and Publican, and so to be held of all the Brethren and Sisters of this congre- gation and of others ; therefore I command you in the name of Jesus Christ and of this church as a Leper to withdraw yourself out of this congregation." The formula was not so long nor so anatomically explicit as the major excommunication, but it was quite as effective. As Anne Hutchinson, in obedience to the terms of this imprecation, made her soli- tary way out of the meeting-house, one woman rose up and took her hand and THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 47 walked out with her. This woman was Mary Dyer. It is probable that Mary Dyer would have done as much as that for any perse- cuted woman, out of the kindness of her heart and because of her instinctive sympa- thy with the unpopular and the oppressed. But she was Mrs. Hutchinson's particular friend and disciple. Her distress on Mrs. Hutchinson's account had already brought upon her a domestic grief which, in that coarse age, had subjected her to the jeers of her neighbors. The two had suffered together, and together they had found strength, and solace in sorrow, in the doc- trine of the Inward Light. The doctrine of the Inward Light has been believed among Christians since the day when the apostles said, " It seemed good to the Holy Ghost and to us." That bold sentence is the classic expression of it. The apostles and brethren thereby affirmed a direct communication between God and themselves, and a sense of duty derived 48 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER from that divine disclosure. They de- clared, therefore, that though they knew very well what the Church said and what the Bible said, they proposed to do other- wise. The question under debate was the obligation of the law of Moses. There was no doubt about the law ; there it was, plain as the blue sky. But they decided not to enforce it. They resolved unanimously that a man might be a good Christian with- out the ceremonies or the sacraments which were enjoined in the Bible and universal in the Church. It was the most radical action ever taken by any body of reasonable Christians. The Lutheran omission of the bishops, and the Quaker omission of the sacraments, were conservative in compari- son with it. This action, thus contradicting all authority, was taken in obedience to the Inward Light. The assurance of the Inward Light has always been the reinforcement of the indi- vidual against the dominance of the institu- tion. The institution looms up high as the THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 49 hills and wide as the horizon, demanding the submission and abasement of the indi- vidual ; you must do as we say, and believe as we teach. But the individual rises in protest and revolt. In the days of the Early Church he is a Montanist, saying, " We lay folk are priests as well as you." In the Middle Ages he is a mystic, going straight to God without the mediation of rites or persons. In later times, he is a Quaker, keeping devout silence that he may hear God speaking in his soul. The followers of the Inward Light have always been obnoxious to the established order. Men in authority have plainly per- ceived that these are of a non-conforming spirit, holding the law of their own souls above all laws made by courts ecclesiastical or civil, and defying the oppression of uni- formity. The Franciscan friar, who both in public and in private abused the very name of St. Catherine, and scorned her " with so orgulous a mind/' and the other Franciscan who, while his brethren were in 50 THE HANGING OF MAEY DYER the choir of San Domenico after dinner, catching sight of St. Catherine in the church in an ecstasy, being in a trance as she prayed, " came down and pricked her in many places with a needle," thus re- vealed by word and deed the instinctive irritation and enmity of the conservative mind against the person who claims to talk with God. Wilson and Dudley and Win- throp and Shepard felt the same way. When Mrs. Hutchinson affirmed that ' ' her Faith was not produced and scarce ever strengthened by the public Ministry of the Word, but by her own private Meditations and Revelations," every public Minister of the Word felt himself personally affronted. And when she compared herself to Daniel, and likened the magistrates to the presi- dents and princes who cast Daniel into the den of lions, the magistrates were of the same mind with the ministers. And both agreed with him who said, as touching Mrs. Hutchinson, that ' * one would hardly have guessed her to be an Antitype of Daniel, THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 51 but rather of the lions, after they were let loose." But to Mrs. Hutchinson and Mrs. Dyer the religion of the magistrates and min- isters was cold and hard and formal. They found God by a way more direct and imme- diate, entering into the consciousness of His presence in the sanctuary of their own souls. And what they heard from Him in such blessed intimacy, that they spoke and followed. Mary Dyer came to this country with her husband in 1635. They had lived in Lon- don, where William Dyer had been a mil- liner in the New Exchange. Mrs. Dyer is described by a Dutch writer, Gerald Croese, as " a person of no mean extract and parentage, of an estate pretty plenti- ful, of a comely stature and countenance, of a piercing knowledge in many things, of a wonderful sweet and pleasant dis- course, so fit for great affairs that she wanted nothing that was manly, except only the name and the sex." George 52 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER Bishop, whose book, " New England Judged," was written the next year after her death, depicts her as " a comely grave Woman, and of a goodly Personage, and one of good Report, having a Husband of an Estate, fearing the Lord, and a Mother of Children." Even Governor Winthrop admits that she was " a very proper and fair woman," though he adds that she was " notoriously infected with Mrs. Hutchin- son's errors, and very censorious and troublesome, she being of a very proud spirit, and much addicted to revelations." The fact, which appears in such writing of hers as remains, that she was better edu- cated than was then the custom of women, may have increased the suspicion and dis- like with which she was regarded by the Governor. For it was Winthrop who said of poor Ann Hopkins, " a godly young woman, and of special parts, ' ' who was re- ported to have lost her wits ' ' by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing," that " if she had attended her THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 53 household affairs, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her." William and Mary were at once admitted to membership in the Boston church, of which John Wilson was the pastor and John Cotton the teacher. The next year Mrs. Hutchinson began her meetings, hav- ing the Dyers among her intimate friends and followers. When Mr. Wheelwright was condemned, preparatory to the excommuni- cation of Mrs. Hutchinson, William Dyer was one of the signers of a protest which maintained that by his condemnation the church in Boston had condemned the truth of Christ. He was therefore disfranchised and disarmed. Presently, when the Hutch- insons went into exile, the Dyers went with them. They were among the eighteen founders of Portsmouth, Ehode Island, in 1638, and among the eight founders of 54 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER Newport in 1639. William Dyer was shortly made secretary of Portsmouth and Newport, and thereafter held various re- sponsible and honorable offices, becoming attorney general of the colony in 1649. Two years after he went to England on public business. Thither his wife had pre- ceded him. He returned, but she remained for five years. During that time she be- came a Quaker. The Quakers were related to the Puri- tans as the Abolitionists were related to the friends of freedom before the Civil War. They were extreme persons who were determined to carry the principles of Protestantism to their logical conclu- sions. The Puritans complained that the Church of England had stopped halfway in the work of reformation ; but the Quak- ers made the same complaint of the Puri- tans. Thereupon the Puritans answered the Quakers in the same terms in which they themselves had been answered by the Churchmen, in terms of expulsion and THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 55 prohibition, enforced by fine and imprison- ment. The fact is of interest as interpret- ing the contention in which Charles and Laud had played a part so reprobated by the Puritan historians. When we find the same part played again upon a smaller stage by Endicott and Wilson, we perceive that it was no particular fault of either Churchman or Puritan, but belonged to the tune and represented the common mind of men. It was the habit of that age to think of religion under conditions of uni- formity, as we think of the world to-day under conditions of gravitation or evolu- tion. The notion that the Puritans came over here to establish freedom to worship God, in the sense in which that phrase is understood by us at present, is without foundation in fact. They came to escape a uniformity which they disliked, in order to set up another uniformity of their own construction. They had no intention of es- tablishing in Massachusetts a free church in a free state, which should carry with it 56 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER a hospitable recognition of dissent. They detested dissent. They dealt with Roger Williams as the Church of England had dealt with John Cotton. When Governor Winthrop said to Mrs. Hutchinson, " We must restrain you from taking this course. We are your judges and not you ours. We must compel you to it," every exiled min- ister in the company heard an echo of his own trial. This consensus of ecclesiastical opinion is to be taken into account in our judgments of both the Puritans and the Churchmen of that time. It is to be re- membered in our estimates of James and Charles on one side of the sea, and of Win- throp and Endicott on the other side. They were alike convinced of the essential importance of uniformity. Against this uniformity, the Quakers op- posed themselves. And against the dis- senting and disturbing Quaker, the Puri- tans in England and New England lifted the hard hand of authority. It was while Mary Dyer was in the midst of her visit THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 57 to England that George Fox reckoned that there seldom were fewer than a thousand Quakers in the English jails. She knew that, when she became a Quaker. It was probably one of the arguments which at- tracted and convinced her. The Quakers differed from other Puri- tans in their emphasis on simplicity and immediacy. They proposed to return to the primi- tive simplicity of Christian behavior. They found themselves in a society which, from their point of view, was deplorably formalized and secularized. They deter- mined to be absolutely honest with them- selves and with their neighbors; and as a symbol of that honesty, they refused to ad- dress a single person with a plural pro- noun. They disused the conventions of formal courtesy; they wore their hats in the presence of princes and magistrates. They disdained the passing modes of dress ; when George Fox made him a stout suit of leather, he intended to wear it in 58 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER defiance of all fashions to the end of his days. They disliked even such stated ar- rangements of services as the Puritans had retained, disused the sacraments, dis- missed the ministers, and prayed not only in such words but at such times as the Spirit gave them utterance. All this was for the sake of simplicity, and it attracted people with the unfailing attraction of the simple life. To this they added the doctrine of imme- diacy. Cotton Mather, in the * ' Magnalia, ' ' is, of course, a prejudiced witness as to the teaching of the New England Quakers. He wrote in a day of sharp and discourte- ous controversy. " Reader," he says, " I can foretell what usage I shall find among the Quakers for this chapter of our Church History : for a Worthy Man that writes of them has observed, ' For Pride and Hypoc- rosie and Hellish Eevilings against the painful Ministers of Christ I know no peo- ple that can match them. ' " And he quotes from contemporary Quaker pam- THE HANGING OF MARY DYEE 59 phlets a considerable list of the epithets which he may expect: such as, " Thou Fiery Fighter and Green-headed Trump- eter/' " thou Mountebank priest," " thou Mole, thou Tinker, thou Lizzard, thou Bell of no Metal but the tone of a Kettle, thou Whirlpool, thou Whirligig, thou Wheelbar- row." These are not the conditions of weather in which to look for clear skies, and to see truth in the serene light of day. But when we find Mather, in reprobation, saying of the Quakers that " they made themselves to be Christ's as truly as ever was Jesus the Son of Mary," that " the whole History of the Gospel they beheld as Acted over again every day as Literally as it ever was in Palestine," and that " every Day is the Lord's Day," we perceive in his opponents the true spirit of the mystic. To them religion was a present reality. God was in all life, and their communica- tion with Him was constant and intimate. They believed in Mrs. Hutchinson's dis- tinction; they were a Covenant of Grace, 60 THE HANGING OF MAEY DYER and outside lay the world in a Covenant of Works. Out of this fatal formalism and remote- ness from God they purposed to awaken the society about them. That was their mission. They were possessed, or ob- sessed, with the necessity of bearing their witness. They were essentially aggres- sive. They could not be silent. Herein they differed from some of their prede- cessors, the mystics, who were content to withdraw themselves from the world. They were Protestants of the Protestants, and protested daily. And this they did in ways which were very inconvenient to the community. The eccentricities of the Quakers have been unduly multiplied and magnified by a natural process of exaggeration. A few of them behaved themselves in so dramatic a manner that the things which they did got into the general memory, and have never been forgotten. And these acts came to be regarded as characteristic of the THE HANGING OF MAEY DYER 61 Quakers, the impression being that they happened every day. It was only one Quaker, however, on a single occasion, who walked about the streets having on his head a pan of fire and brimstone. Only one dressed herself in sackcloth and blackened her face and in that prophetic guise pre- sented herself in the congregation at serv- ice time. Lydia Wardwell and Deborah Wilson behaved themselves in a manner even more disconcerting, but they had no imitators. Sarah Gibbons and Dorothy Waugh rose up in meeting and bore their emphatic witness to the emptiness of the sermon ; they broke some empty bottles by banging them together ; one would imagine from some writers that it was a part of the regular business of the sexton to sweep up broken glass from the floor of the meeting- house every Sunday morning ; but this was a rare occurrence. The Quakers did in- terrupt a good many Puritan sermons with frank and unsympathetic comments; they did rise up a good many times, after 62 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER the sermon was over, and proceed to ex- pound the text in their own way ; they did gather crowds about them and preach to them in the streets ; being altogether unin- structed in theology, they did say things which were as erroneous as they were of- fensive; they gave criticism the long end of the handle. But these were exceptions to a general rule of modest and grave de- meanor. The unpardonable sin of the Quakers was that they refused to agree with the Puritans, and they greatly aggra- vated the offence by trying to convert the Puritans to their own opinion. They were mightily in earnest about it, and the Puri- tans on their side were mightily in earnest also. That is the heart of the situation. The first Quakers who came to Massa- chusetts arrived in July, 1656. That was the year in which George Fox said that a thousand Quakers lay in English jails. It was a month after a public day of hu- miliation appointed by the General Court of Massachusetts " to seek the face of God THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 63 in behalf of our native country in refer- ence to the abounding of errors, especially those of the Eanters and Quakers." Un- der these strained conditions came Ann Austin and Mary Fisher, for the purpose of teaching Quaker doctrine, bringing with them a hundred Quaker books. To the Puritan mind at that time, this was an im- portation of the plague, and the authori- ties dealt with it accordingly. Governor Endicott was absent, in Salem, but Deputy Governor Bellingham encountered the in- vaders. He had the missionaries seized while yet they were on board the ship, searched their bags and boxes, and took possession of their books and of their per- sons. The books he caused to be burned by the common hangman in the market-place of Boston ; the Quakers he shut up in jail. They were kept in close confinement, not suffered to speak nor to be spoken to, pen and ink and candle taken from them to prevent them from writing, and a board nailed across the window to keep anybody 64 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER from as much as seeing them. After being examined for witch marks, they were put on board the next ship and sent to the Bar- badoes. Endicott, when he came back, said that had he been there he would have had them whipped, but the authorities after- ward took some credit to themselves for self-restraint and gentleness. Hardly had Ann Austin and Mary Fish- er got out of sight of land when there came eight missionaries more, four men and four women. They were immediately im- prisoned, and after eleven weeks were sent to England in the same ship which had brought them. It became plain to the authorities of church and state that they were to be beset with Quakers, and they proceeded to en- act laws by which to defend the colony against this peril. " Whereas," they said, " there is a cursed sect of heretics lately risen up in the world, which are commonly called Quakers, who take upon themselves to be immediately sent of God infallibly THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 65 assisted by the Spirit to speak and write blasphemous opinions, despising govern- ment and the order of God in church and commonwealth, speaking evil of dignities, reproaching and reviling magistrates and ministers, seeking to turn the people from the faith and gain proselytes to their per- nicious ways, this court doth hereby or- der," thus and so: namely, that the cap- tain of any vessel bringing Quakers shall be fined a hundred pounds; that every Quaker coming into this jurisdiction shall be forthwith committed to the house of correction, soundly whipped at entrance, and thereafter kept at hard labor during the term of his imprisonment, and with lesser penalties for possessing Quaker books and defending Quaker opinions. The first Quakers to arrive after the pas- sage of this law were Ann Burden and Mary Dyer. They seem, however, to have escaped its severer provisions, for they came on business of their own, and not as missionaries : Ann Burden to collect some 66 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER debts remaining from her former resi- dence, and Mary Dyer to rejoin her hus- band in Ehode Island. The next arrivals felt the whip. Mary Clark had twenty stripes with a scourge of three cords. Christopher Holder, being moved of the Lord to go to Salem, and speaking a few words in meeting, after the sermon, was " haled back by the hair of the head, and his mouth violently stopped with a glove and a handkerchief thrust thereinto with much fury," by one of the church members. He and his companion, John Copeland, were brought to Boston and given thirty stripes apiece. They were afterwards kept nine weeks in prison in the cold winter without a fire, and then banished. Samuel Shattuck, who pulled away the hand of the church member who was choking Christopher Holder, was brought to Boston and laid under bonds to have no communication with Quakers, and presently was whipped and banished. This was the Samuel Shattuck who afterwards, THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 67 in 1661, had the satisfaction of bringing from England the royal decree which for the moment opened all jail doors and stopped the persecution of the Quakers ; as may be read in Whittier's verse, in " The King's Missive." Lawrence Southwick and Cassandra his wife, who had lodged the Quakers in Salem, aged persons and church members, were admonished and fined, and ceasing thereafter to attend the meetings of the congregation were whipped as a warning to others. Continuing obsti- nate in their refusal to go to church under these conditions, they were repeatedly fined till their property was gone; and then, for non-payment of church fines, their two children, a son and a daughter, were seized to be sold as slaves in Virginia or the Barbadoes; but happily no ship- master could be found to take them. A year after the passage of the first law against the Quakers, the General Court en- acted a second, ' * as an addition to the late order in reference to the coming or bring- 68 THE HANGING OF MARY DYEE ing in any of the cursed sect of Quakers into this jurisdiction." It was now pro- vided that anybody who should lodge a .Quaker should be fined for such offence at the rate of forty shillings for every hour of such entertainment or concealment; also, that every Quaker man who after be- ing once punished and banished should pre- sume to return should have one of his ears cut off for the first offence, and for a sec- ond offence his other ear, and for a third offence should have his tongue bored through with a hot iron. Quaker women were to be punished with whipping instead of the loss of ears, but for a third offence they must suffer like the men. In May, 1658, a third law ordained that every person " professing any of their pernicious ways, by speaking, writing, or by meetings on the Lord's Day, or at any other time, to strengthen themselves, or to seduce others to their diabolical doc- trines " shall for every such transgression be fined ten shillings. THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 69 A fourth law, dated October, 1658, affixed to the sentence of banishment the provi- sion that a return after such expulsion should be punished with the pain of death. It was according to this law that Mary Dyer was hanged. These four laws, issued within a space of two years, indicate the anxiety of the au- thorities. To them the Quakers were sheer anarchists, subversive of both government and religion. In deporting such persons when they appeared in the colony, in ban- ishing such as adopted their opinions, and in fining and imprisoning such as shel- tered them, the Puritans were clearly within their rights. This belonged to their province as magistrates. That some dif- ficulties arose in their own, consciences and in the minds of their constituents appears in the fact that the General Court thought it wise to issue a formal vindication of themselves. In this document they dealt particularly with the matter of banishment upon pain of death. They declared that 70 THE HANGING OF MARY BYER the doctrine of the Quakers was destruc- tive to the fundamental truths of religion. They showed that the behavior of the Quakers was in contradiction to that re- spect to magistrates which is commanded in the Bible. They cited the example of wise Solomon, who, having confined Shimei to the city of Jerusalem upon pain of death, promptly beheaded him when he came out of bounds. This colony, they said, is our house; anybody who breaks into it may properly be slain in self-defence. If in such violent and bold attempt the Quak- ers lose their lives, they may thank them- selves as the blamable cause and authors of their own death. This colony, they added, is our family. " Who can make question but that a man that hath children and family ought to preserve them from the dangerous company of persons in- fected with contagious, noisome and mor- tal diseases? and if such persons shall offer to intrude into the man's house amongst his children and servants, can THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 71 any doubt but that in such a case the father of the family, if otherwise he can- not keep them out, may kill them? " Thus they stated their case, calling for approval both from common prudence and from Holy Scripture. Indeed, they were but exercising one of the prerogatives of nations. They were keeping the Quak- ers out of the colony, as we endeavor to exclude undesirable citizens at our ports. On the other hand, the Quakers in com- ing were following the clear guidance of the Inward Light. They were within their proper province as missionaries. They honestly believed that the Puritans were in the darkness of ignorance and sin, and they came to illuminate them. They felt, as the apostles had felt before them, that they must obey God rather than man. They entered Boston as Paul and Silas en- tered Philippi, and if their mission in- volved an imprisonment in the inner jail and a fastening of their feet in the stocks, 72 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER they accepted this, after the pattern of the apostles, as a part of the day's work. If in the delivery of the message which God had given them they must face death, that also they did gladly, even eagerly, for His sake in whose name they spoke. They de- serve the commendation of the faithful missionary and the praise of the martyr. In the noble army of martyrs they stand to all time, William Eobinson with St. Po- thinus, Mary Dyer with St. Perpetua ; and in their company the three whose right ears were cut off, the forty or fifty who were whipped with knotted cords, and the unnumbered others who suffered the spoil- ing of their goods. " Margaret Brew- ster," says the clerk of the court, " you are to have your clothes stripped off to the middle, and to be tied to a cart's tail at the South Meeting-house, and to be drawn through the town and to receive twenty stripes upon your naked body." " The will of the Lord be done," says Margaret Brewster, * ' I am contented. ' ' And in that THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 73 grave, serene, and Christian manner, so spoke they all. Thus an irresistible force encountered an immovable body. Thus two sacred and imperative rights came into collision. Of course, the verdict of subsequent his- tory has condemned the Puritans. It has found them guilty of two serious misun- derstandings. They misunderstood hu- man nature, and they misunderstood the Quakers. They were in error as to human nature in thinking that the argument of violence is of avail against the convictions of con- science. For every man who tries to stop his neighbor's mouth with a glove and a handkerchief, there will be another man to pull away his arm; and whippings at carts' tails, and even hangings are great, appeal- ing arguments. We are so made that the nobler spirits among us rise up instinct- ively at the sight of such suffering and ally themselves with the sufferers. Thus it has been since the day when Stephen 74 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER was stoned and Saul became a Christian. The blood of the martyr is the seed of the church. The Quakers proved it. The effect of the Puritan method was to in- crease the Quakers, as the effect of the same method at the hands of Queen Mary was to increase the Protestants, and the effect of the same method at the hands of Archbishop Laud was to increase the Puritans. This we see clearly, with the wisdom which follows the event. Also the Puritans were in error as to the Quakers and their conception of re- ligion and of government. It seemed as if a storm of heresy and schism, with hail- stones and coals of fire, were beating upon Protestant Christendom from all points of the compass at the same time. Every ship which sailed into Boston Bay brought the news of the birth of a new ism. The blessed liberty for which the reformers had con- tended had fallen into license. The most essential doctrines of religion, the most sacred institutions of society, were set at THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 75 naught. The colonists were not only anx- ious but nervous. And then the Quaker missionaries came. That the Puritans should have failed to understand them was inevitable. To-day the immediate asso- ciation of the name of " Quaker " is with peace, and quietness, and serenity of soul. Nothing could have been further from the minds of the neighbors of Mary Fisher or of Mary Dyer. Mary Dyer had now been living in Rhode Island for ten years. Under the large tol- erance established by Eoger Williams, that was a comfortable colony for Quakers. But the Quakers were not contented to be comfortable. In June, 1659, William Rob- inson and Marmaduke Stevenson were moved of the Lord to pay a visit to Boston, and Nicholas Davis and Patience Scott went with them. Patience was eleven years of age. She came of good, stout, non-conforming stock, her mother hav- ing been a sister of Anne Hutchinson. Mrs. Scott had already experienced the 76 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER rigors of the law. "A Mother of many Children, one that had lived with her Hus- band, of an nnblameable Conversation, and a Grave, Sober and Ancient Woman, and of good Breeding," she had come up to Boston upon the occasion of the cutting off of three right ears, and speaking her mind with some righteous freedom concerning that matter had been thrown into prison, and given ten stripes with a three-fold knotted whip, and promised that if she came again she should be hanged. This did not deter her from sending her little daughter on the perilous errand of bear- ing witness against a persecuting spirit. Davis came on business, seeking opportu- nity to barter corn with the heathen. Eob- inson had been a merchant in London; Stevenson had been a ploughman in York- shire. " I was at the plough," says Ste- venson, " in the East-parts of Yorkshire, in Old-England, and as I walked after the plough I was filled with the Love and Pres- ence of the Living God, which did Eavish THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 77 my Heart when I felt it; and as I stood a little still, with my Heart and Mind stayed on the Lord, the Word of the Lord came unto me in a still, small Voice, which I did hear perfectly, saying to me in the Secret of my Heart and Conscience, 'I have ordained thee a Prophet unto the Nations.' " These four being immediately put in prison, Mary Dyer was moved of the Lord to visit them, and was seized and impris- oned with them. There they lay for three months until the 12th of September. On that day they were brought before the court. The child was dismissed ; the others were given two days to get out of the com- monwealth. Should they be found within the jurisdiction of the court after the lapse of forty-eight hours, they were to be put to death. Thereupon, Nicholas Davis and Mary Dyer departed, one to Plymouth and the other to Rhode Island; but Robinson and Stevenson were "constrained in the love and power of the Lord" not to depart 78 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER but to try the bloody laws unto the death. Then, from the four winds, zealous Quak- ers started for Boston. First came Chris- topher Holder, and was at once thrust into prison. On the 8th of October, came Mary Dyer to visit him, and was imprisoned also. After them came Hope Clifton, and Mary Scott, and Robert Harper, and Daniel Gold, and Henry King, and Hannah Phelps, and Mary Trask, and Margaret Smith, and Provided Southwick. On the 13th, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson returned, and with Mrs. Alice Cowland, " who came to bring linen wherein to wrap the dead Bodies of those who were to Suffer." The roll of linen in the arms of Alice Cowland evidenced the grim spirit in which the principals in this tragedy entered upon their parts. ' ' These all came together," says the Quaker chron- icle, ' ' in the Moving and Power of the Lord, as one, to look your Bloody Laws in the Face, and to accompany those who THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 79 should suffer by them." They were bent upon a perfectly definite purpose, to break the law into a thousand pieces by endur- ing its hideous penalty. They desired to show to all good people what manner of law it was, whereby the enormities of the reign of Bloody Mary were enacted by Puritan ministers and magistrates in Massachusetts. This desire was promptly gratified. On the 19th of October, Eobinson and Ste- venson and Mary Dyer were had before the court and demanded why they came again, being banished upon pain of death. They replied that the ground and cause of this coming was of the Lord and in obedience to Him. The governor, manifestly reluc- tant to proceed, sent them back to prison. But the next day was a prayer day, with a sermon by John Wilson. He was the pastor whom Anne Hutchinson had in- stinctively detested ; when she saw that he was to be the preacher of a Sunday morn- ing, she had on several occasions risen up 80 THE HANGING OF MAKY DYER at the announcement of the text and marched out of the meeting-house. He had assaulted Obadiah Holmes, the Baptist, in the court-room, striking him in the face, and cursing him in the name of Jesus. He had flung Quaker books into the hangman's fire, saying, "From the devil they came, to the devil they go." He had declared that the best way to convert the Quakers was to kill them, drawing his hand across his throat. It was the misfortune of the commonwealth that this man, coarse and hard and malignantly orthodox, was in a position of influence and authority. He preached an appropriate sermon. After the sermon and the service were ended, the governor sat again upon the judgment seat, and in a faint voice, as a man sick either in body or at heart, spoke to this effect: "We have made many laws, and endeavored by several ways to keep you from us, and neither whipping nor impris- onment, nor banishment upon pain of death will keep you from among us. I desire not THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 81 your death. ' ' Nevertheless, he pronounced their sentence: "You shall be had back to the place from whence you came, and from thence to the place of execution, to be hanged on the gallows till you are dead." Robinson asked leave to read a statement, but was refused. Stevenson was permitted to make a brief speech. Mary Dyer said: " The will of the Lord be done." " Take her away, marshal," ordered the governor. " Yea," she an- swered, " joyfully shall I go." During the week which intervened be- tween the sentence and the execution so much excitement appeared among the peo- ple, and so many crowded about the prison windows, that a military guard was set against a possible rescue and release. On the day appointed, after prayers, with beat of drums and escort of soldiers, the three condemned persons were taken to the Com- mon. So great was the crowd that, after the execution was over, the bridge which then connected Boston with the mainland 82 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER at the North End, broke with their weight. The Quakers would have addressed them, but as often as they tried to speak, the drums were beaten. Mr. Wilson derided them, shaking his fist in their faces, say- ing "Shall such folks as you come before authority with your hats on? " But the three were already uplifted in spirit above the contentions of the world. As they came on, hand in hand, Mary Dyer between the two men, she said, "It is an hour of the greatest joy I can enjoy in this world. No eye can see, no ear can hear, no tongue can speak, no heart can understand, the sweet incomes and refreshings of the spirit of the Lord which now I enjoy." The gal- lows was a stout elm, traditionally the " Great Tree," which, till 1876, stood be- side the Frog Pond. The prisoner, having the noose about his neck, climbed by a lad- der to a branch, and the ladder was pulled away. Thus died William Eobinson, say- ing, "I suffer for Christ, in whom I lived and for whom I die." Thus died Marma- THE HANGING OF MARY DYER 83 duke Stevenson, saying, " Be it known to all this day that we suffer not as evil-doers, but for conscience sake." Mary Dyer sat at the foot of the tree, beholding the martyrdom of her friends. Then her arms were bound, her skirts were tied about her feet, her face was covered with Mr. Wilson's handkerchief, and she was lifted to the ladder. And there stand- ing, having suffered already the severest pangs of death, having died to the world, she was suddenly informed that she was re- prieved. Her son in Ehode Island had petitioned for her release, and the petition had been granted. She was to be sent home. This fruitless agony of expectation had been privately ordered by the court for the sake of its impression on her mind. For a moment Mary Dyer knew not what to say or do. "Waiting on the Lord to know His pleasure is so sudden a change, having given herself up to die." But she had no choice. She was taken back to prison, whence she wrote a letter refusing 84 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER to accept her life. The next day, she was put on horseback and conveyed out of the commonwealth. She spent the winter on Shelter Island, "Where, ocean-walled and wiser than his age, The lord of Shelter scorned the bigots' rage." There her name, with those of others who found like shelter on that island, is in- scribed on a memorial stone erected by Professor Horsford. She avoided her fam- ily, not for lack of love, but that she might not be prevented by them from her firm de- termination. When the spring was green, she made her way secretly to Providence. In the middle of May, she presented her- self with all boldness in Boston. The law of banishment on pain of death was still in force. The martyrdom of Rob- inson and Stevenson had not availed for its repeal. The authorities had justified their course in a public statement, and the peo- ple had accepted the situation. The great work was still to be done. The hideousness THE HANGING OF MARY DYEE 85 of the law was still to be demonstrated. Mary Dyer went to demonstrate it. She was under no illusion. She knew by awful experience that the court would keep its word. She had died once, and in the name of God and of the cause and truth for which she stood, she went to die again. ''Are you the same Mary Dyer," asked the governor, " that was here before?" " I am the same Mary Dyer that was here at the last General Court." " You will own yourself a Quaker, will you not I ' ' * ' I own myself to be reproachfully so called." " Sentence was passed upon you," said the governor, "at the last Gen- eral Court, and now likewise. You must return to the prison, and there remain till to-morrow at nine o 'clock ; then thence you must go to the gallows, and there be hanged till you are dead." "This is no more," said Mary Dyer, "than what thou saidst before." "But now," said the governor, "it is to be executed. Therefore, prepare yourself to-morrow at nine o'clock." "I 86 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER came," said she, "in obedience to the will of God at the last General Court, desiring you to repeal your unrighteous laws of banishment on pain of death; and that same is my work now, and earnest desire, although I told you that if you refuse to repeal them, the Lord would send others of His servants to witness against them." "Away with her!" cried the governor. "Away with her!" Thus she had her will and offered her- self, our New England Iphigeneia, a sacrifice for the common good. Even as she stood upon the ladder, they told her that she should be set free if she would go home and stay there. But she would ac- cept no deliverance. "Nay," she said, "I cannot ; for in obedience to the will of the Lord God I came, and in His will I abide faithful unto death." In the Friends' Records of Portsmouth, Ehode Island, they made this entry: "Mary Dyer, the wife of William Dyer of Newport in Ehode Isl- and: She was put to death at the Town THE HANGING OF MARY D'f ER 87 of Boston with ye like cruel hand as the martyrs were in Queen Mary's time, and then buried upon ye 31 day of ye 3' mo. 1660." The persecution of the Quakers in Mas- sachusetts extended over a term of twenty- one years, beginning with the deportation of Ann Austin and Mary Fisher in 1656, and ending with the flogging of Margaret Brewster and others in 1677. In addition to the penalties of fine and imprisonment, it presented to the Christian community the spectacle of some fifty public whip- pings, many of the sufferers being women, in some instances the victims being dragged through the streets of towns at the tails of carts, the hangman beating them as they went. Three Quakers had their right ears cut off, four were hanged. The result was the abolition of the Puri- tan theocracy. Established in the enthusi- asm of high ideals, maintained by men of conscience in the fear of God, excluding from the franchise of the commonwealth 88 THE HANGING OF MARY DYER all who are not members of the church, it set its face toward a realization of the kingdom of heaven. But it broke the su- preme divine law of brotherly love, and fell thereby into the iniquities of persecu- tion. And it came to an end in consequence. The death of Mary Dyer, with other con- temporary cruelties, was brought to the attention of the King. While he was read- ing the report, the news arrived of the hanging of William Leddra. In came Ed- ward Burrough, the Quaker, and said to the King, " There is a vein of innocent blood opened in thy dominions which if it be not stopped, will over-run all." The King said, * * I will stop that vein. ' ' And he did. There were floggings after that, but no more hangings. Liberty of conscience and freedom of honest speech were no longer punishable in Massachusetts with banish- ment on pain of death. That was the su- preme achievement of the martyrdom of Mary Dyer. THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH Ill THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH THE baptismal register of Chorley Church, in Lancashire, contains a leaf which nobody can read. The entries which precede and which follow are plain enough : ink was good in the sixteenth cen- tury. But this blurred leaf presents so worn and dim an aspect that they have reason on their side who claim that fingers more hasty and tangible than those of the hand of time have touched it. It looks as if the records of 1584 and 1585 had been inten- tionally rubbed out. It is a common guess that one of the names thus unhappily erased was that of Myles Standish. At all events the name is gone, and with it has disappeared the necessary proof to establish the claims of the Standishes of America to the pleasant possessions of the 91 92 THE ADVENTURES OF Standishes of Standish. That such a claim has reasonable foundation appears in Myles Standish 's will, in which "I give," he says, "unto my son and heir apparent, Alexander Standish, all my lands as heir apparent by lawful descent in Ormistick Bousconge, Wrightington, Maudsley, New- burrow, Cranston and in the Isle of Man, and given to mee as right heire by lawful descent, but surreptitiously detained from mee, my grandfather being a second or younger brother from the house of Stan- dish of Standish." The house of Standish was of good an- tiquity, and had possessed its Lancashire estates for centuries. The origin of the name is involved in the obscurity which is unfortunately common to origins. There is a rumor that in the uneffaced pages of the Chorley register is the ancient name of Milo Standanaught ; Milo being plainly from the Latin for "soldier," and Stand- anaught meaning " Stand-at-no thing. " And there are those who guess that from CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 93 these sturdy syllables came the name of the Puritan captain. On the other hand, the armorial bearings of the family are 1 ' an azure shield with three standishes ar- gent"; and the word " standish," thus used, is simply stand-dish. In the diction- aries this dish is used for pens and ink: Dean Swift speaks of his silver standish. But in the London Times report of Queen Victoria's coronation mention is made of standishes upon the altar, meaning silver plates or patens. Thus they appear upon the family shield. Standish, however derived, was the name. Thurston de Standish, who was liv- ing in 1222, is the eldest recognizable an- cestor; his son was Ealph, and Ealph's sons, living in 1306, were Hugh and Jordan. These two divided the estates between them, and their families became respec- tively the Standishes of Duxbury and the Standishes of Standish. The family houses of Standish and Duxbury are pictured in Johnson's " Exploits of Myles Stan- 94 THE ADVENTURES OF dish." They are dignified, large, square buildings, surrounded by trees and exten- sive grounds. Standish Hall is reproduced from a photograph and may show the place as it is at present. The house is connected by a timbered corridor with a chapel which has a cross at the gable. Duxbury Hall is copied from a painting, without date; deer are grazing on the lawn, and a group of gentlemen on horseback are standing by the porch. The two branches of the family chose different sides in the religious contention which presently disturbed the land. The Standishes of Duxbury accepted the Prot- estant Beformation; the Standishes of Standish continued in the unreformed religion. The Catholic Standishes took a lively part in the disturbances of the time. Henry Standish, a Franciscan friar and bishop of St. Asaph, sided with Queen Katherine in the matter of the divorce. And when the contention between the reformed and CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 95 the unreformed religions was renewed late in the seventeenth century, in the time of James the Second, the Standishes of Stan- dish were enthusiastic Jacobites. It was at Standish Hall that the " Lancashire Plot " was made for the King's restoration. This connection of the family with the Roman religion has since given rise to an interesting theory that Myles Standish was a Koman Catholic. It would be pleasant to have this theory confirmed. That Standish was not a member of the Plym- outh church is commonly asserted. Dr. Jeremy Belknap, in his "American Biogra- phy, ' ' says in so many words, though with- out reference to authority, that he was " not a member of their church "; and he presently quotes from the manuscript of the Eev. William Hubbard's " History of New England," " He had been bred a sol- dier in the Low Countries, and had never entered into the school of Christ, or of John the Baptist." This, indeed, may mean no more than that the writer did not approve 96 THE ADVENTURES OF of the captain's martial activity; for he adds, ' ' or, if ever he was there, he had for- got his first lessons, to offer violence to no man." Still, it is more likely that he intended to make apology for Standish on the ground that he was not a church member. That was twenty years after Standish 's death. Hubbard was, therefore, a contemporary; and, though he lived at Ipswich, he would not be likely to be mistaken in regard to an ecclesiastical position so exceptional, at that time, as Standish 's. Accordingly, there appear two facts: first, that Standish 's family was of the Roman Catholic faith; and, secondly, that Standish himself did not belong to the Puritan Church. Was he a Roman Catholic? It is certain that Myles Standish fought in the Netherlands on the Protestant side in a war which was essentially a war of religion. It is certain that he cast in his lot with CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 97 the Puritan emigrants, and was ever trusted and esteemed by them. They hated Papists. Bradford, in his " History of Plymouth Plantation, ' ' shows how they felt even about the Church of England, how they detested " ye ceremonies, and serv- ise books, and other popish and unchristian stuff e." It is certain that Myles Standish's li- brary, as appears in the inventory made at his death, was as Protestant as a lot of books can be. It was like the collection of an orthodox country parson, Calvin's In- stitutes, Preston's Sermons, Burrough's 11 Earthly-Mindedness and Christian Con- tentment," Dod on the Lord's Supper, a reply to Dr. Cotton on Baptisms, * ' Sparkes Against Heresie," Ball on " Faith," " Na- ture and Grace in Conflict," together with "3 old Bibles," not one of them in the Douay version. It is true that some of these excellent books may have been presented to him in Leyden by Pastor Eobinson, or in Plymouth by Elder Brewster, for the im- 98 THE ADVENTURES OF proving of his mind and the saving of his soul; but it is more likely that he bought them himself. That was what he liked to read. There is evidence on those shelves of a serious disposition and a religious spirit, but there is no smallest trace of any di- vergence from the opinions common in Plymouth. Not one of these books could have stood consistently upon a Eoman Catholic shelf. We may reasonably infer from such facts as these that Myles Standish, who was by family a Eoman Catholic, by baptism, in Chorley Church, an Episcopalian, and by association a Puritan, was a person of independent mind who did not further com- mit himself. That he was a Eoman Cath- olic, either in practice or opinion, during his life in Plymouth, there is not the least ground for belief. The life of Standish is divided into two almost exactly equal portions by the sail- ing of the Mayflower. Born, so near as we can tell, in 1584, he died in 1656. The year CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 99 1620 is midway between these dates pre- cisely. Of the first part of his career scarce anything is known. Morton, in his " New England's Memorial," tells us all that he knows about it in half a sentence. 11 In his younger time," he says, " he went over into the Low Countries, and was a soldier there, and came acquainted with the church at Leyden." The lad became a soldier, naturally. The surreptitious detaining of his inheritance indicates family dissensions, and it may have been the discomfort or compulsion of them which drove him from home. He was probably glad to go. It was a day of ad- venture. Men who had no cause for which to fight at home went abroad seeking occu- pation for their swords. It was Sir Philip Sidney who said, ' ' Whenever you hear of a good war, go to it "; and he had himself followed his own advice, going into the Netherlands for the joy of the fray. Young Standish's mind would respond to this gallant counsel: to the wars he went. 100 THE ADVENTURES OF Spain and Holland were still fighting. In 1584, the year of Myles's birth, William the Silent was assassinated. In 1604, Eliz- abeth having died, and James having suc- ceeded her upon the throne of England, the English forces which had been helping Holland were withdrawn. As Standish was at that time but twenty years of age, it is plain that he had not seen any extended service. The most notable military event of that time was the siege of Ostend, which came to an end in that year. It is a fair guess that the young soldier had a part in that foolish tragedy. Of his " three muskets, four carbines, two small guns, one fowling piece, a sword, a cutlass and three belts," some, it is likely, were used in this campaign, and were tried against the Spaniards before they were directed against the Indians. It was probably at this time, also, that he purchased his copies of " Cesar's Commentarys" and " Bariff's Artillery," which he could hardly have desired for counsel in his CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 101 dealings with the Massachusetts or the Narragansetts. Two swords are still shown, one in Bos- ton and the other in Plymouth, which are said to have belonged to him. The Plym- outh sword, in Pilgrim Hall, has an Arabic inscription on its blade, which car- ries its history out of the bounds of knowl- edge into the camps of that Moslem enemy who, even in Standish 's time, was men- acing and molesting Europe. It may easily have belonged to some pirate Turk, taken in his ship in the English Channel, and have been sold by its captor. Myles prob- ably bought it at second-hand. Unlike his predecessor, Captain John Smith, he had no personal encounters with men whose speech was Arabic. The Boston sword, which is in the pos- session of the Massachusetts Historical Society, is supposed by Mr. Winsor to be the one which Alexander Standish inher- ited, and was handed down to Alexander's grandson, John Standish, of Plymouth, 102 THE ADVENTURES OF from whom it was borrowed on a training- day by a careless neighbor who never car- ried it back. In 1849, Mr. Winsor was in- formed by Mr. Moses Standish, of Boston, that he had seen in the house of this Cap- tain John Standish a coat of mail which had belonged to his great-grandfather. " It was a cloth garment, being thickly in- terwoven with a metallic wire,so as to make it extremely durable, and scarcely penetra- ble. The suit was complete, including a helmet and breastplate." In 1604, when England and Spain pro- fessed to be friends, it seemed as if there would be no further use for these weapons, offensive or defensive. In 1609, however, two events took place which determined where young Standish 's taste for war should find gratification. One was the es- tablishment of a general peace. In the West of Europe, though contending ar- mies, Catholic and Protestant, made a truce of twelve years, in the East of Europe, other contending armies, Christian and CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 103 Moslem, agreed to fight no more for almost twice that length of time. Thus Standish's profession offered him no future in Eu- rope ; no princes would buy his sword. The other event was the removal from Amster- dam to Leyden of a little group of English Puritan refugees. Thus, in this year or later, Standish came into acquaintance with Eobinson and Brewster, and with Carver and Bradford and Winslow. When the Puritans began presently to look across the sea, he naturally bethought himself of Walter Ealeigh and Lyon Gardner and John Smith and Ferdinando Gorges, com- panions in arms with him, who, being in his condition, without employment, had found occupation and adventure in the new world. He cast in his lot with the emigrating congregation. The Puritans had, indeed, found Leyden ' ' a fair and bewtif ul citie, and of a sweete situation," and had especially appreciated the advantages of living in the neighbor- hood of its university. They knew the per- 104 THE ADVENTURES OF ils of an untried climate. ' ' For that they should be liable," they said, " to famine, and nakedness, and ye want, in a manner, of all things. The change of aire, diate, and drinking of water would infecte their bodies with sore sickness and greevous dis- eases. And also those which should escape or overcome these difficulties, should yett be in continuall danger of ye salvage people, who are cruel, barberous and most trech- erous, being most furious in their rage and merciles where they overcome: nor being content only to kill and take away life, but delight to tormente men in ye most bloodie manner that may be; fleeing some alive with ye shells of fishes, cutting of ye mem- bers and joyntes of others peesmeale, and, broiling on ye coles, eate ye collops of their flesh in their sight whilst they live: with other cruelties horrible to be related." This was not a cheerful prospect. But the truce between Holland and Spain was nearly over, the twelve years ending in 1621, and the Indians, they may well have CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 105 thought, could not be much worse than the Spaniards. Other reasons, also, impelled them. They desired to have a country of their own, where they might bring up their children to be religious English folk. They determined to seek an abiding place in the wild lands across the sea. In the meantime, Myles Standish had been getting married. Somewhere, tradi- tion says, in the Isle of Man, he had found a young person named Rose, who was will- ing, under the safe covert of his protec- tion, to brave the possible horrors of New England. Standish was now thirty-six years old, being arrived at the middle year of his life. Longfellow tells how he looked " Short of stature he was, but strongly built and athletic, Broad in the shoulders, deep-chested, with muscles and sinews of iron ; Brown as a nut was his face, but his russet beard was already Flaked with patches of snow, as hedges sometimes in November." 106 THE ADVENTUEES OF That is as near as we can come to it. He was certainly short of stature. Master Morton, of Merrymount, in his * ' New Eng- land Canaan," wrote satirical descriptions of the colonists, and called Captain Stan- dish, " Captaine Shrimpe." " Had we been at home in our full number," he says, re- counting how Standish invaded and ar- rested the mischievous household, we " would have given Captaine Shrimpe (a quondam Drummer) such a welcome as would have made him wish for a Drumme as bigg as Diogenes' tubb, that he might have crept into it out of sight." So, too, the Indian Pecksuot told him, " Though he were a great Captain, yet he was but a little Man." William Hubbard, also, al- ready quoted, said, " A little chimney is soon fired : so was the Plymouth captain, a man of very little stature, yet of a very hot and hasty temper." There is no authentic portrait of Stan- dish, though the picture in the ' ' Standishes of America ' ' suits the part well. It shows CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 107 a sturdy person, in the stiff ruff of the pe- riod, with full black beard, and a look of stout determination in his eyes. But the compiler tells us that nothing is definitely known about this portrait prior to the year 1812. It is true that Standish was in Eng- land in the year 1625, when the picture is dated. But the times were not such as to suggest the painting of portraits : money was uncommonly scarce, and London had the plague. The Pilgrims did not sit for their pictures. The walls of their houses did not present suitable backgrounds for the hanging of paintings in oil. ' ' Wednesday, the sixth of September, the wind coming East North East, a fine small gale, we loosed from Plymouth [the English Plymouth], having been kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling : and after many dif- ficulties in boisterous storms, at length, by God's Providence, upon the 9th of Novem- ber following, by break of day, we espied land ; which we deemed to be Cape Cod, and 108 THE ADVENTURES OP so afterward it proved. " The year was 1620, and the dates, being " old style," need to be increased by ten to bring them into proper position in our present calendar. Two days later, after perilous en- counters with " dangerous shoals and roaring breakers " in a vain attempt to make what is now the harbor of New York, they dropped anchor near the end of Long Point and not far from the present village of Provincetown. They found themselves in a circling bay ' ' compassed about to the very sea with oaks, pines, juniper, sassa- fras, and other sweet wood," and so capa- cious that therein " a thousand sail of ships may safely ride." The water, how- ever, was so shallow that they could not come near the shore by " three-quarters of an English mile." They had to wade " a bow-shot or two " in " going aland "; thus getting such coughs and colds as made them ill-prepared for the rigors which awaited them. CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 109 In the cabin of the May-flower, lying thus at Provincetown, they drew up a notable compact in which they agreed to combine themselves together into a civil body poli- tic ; and by virtue thereof to make laws to which they promised all due submission and obedience. The sixth name signed to this document was that of Captain Myles Standish. Thus the new life began, under Novem- ber skies. " Being thus passed ye vast ocean," writes Bradford, in his history, " they had now no friends to wellcome them, nor inns to entertaine or refresh their weatherbeaten bodies, no houses or much less townes, to repaire too, to seek for succore. . . . And for the season, it was winter, and they that know ye win- ters of that countrie know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruell and feirce storms, dangerous to travill to known places, much more to such an unknown coast." The first task was exploration, and the 110 THE ADVENTURES OP first mention of Standish is as the leader of an expedition. i l And so with cautions, directions and instructions, sixteen men were sent out, with every man his musket, sword and corselet, under the conduct of Captain Myles Standish/' They ordered themselves in "a Single File " and marched for a mile by the sea, without meeting with an adventure, when, at last, they saw five or six persons with a dog coming towards them, who, when they es- pied this army of invasion, ran into the woods, whistling the dog after them. Stan- dish and his men followed these citizens, but were not able to overtake them, for they " ran away with might and main." Thus they went for ten miles, following their footprints. Then it grew dark, and they built a camp-fire, and setting a guard, bestowed themselves for the night. The next day they went on through the woods making their way through boughs and bushes which, as they reported, tore their very armor in pieces. About ten in the CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 111 morning, being then in what is now Truro, they found a spring, " of which," they said, " we were heartily glad, and sot us down and drank our first New England water with as much delight as ever we drank drink in all our lives." That day they found some planks laid together, where a house had been, and a ship's ket- tle, " brought out of Europe," and nearby in sand-heaps a store of corn, " some yel- low, and some red, and some mixed with blue; which was a very goodly sight." Of this they helped themselves, filling the ket- tle and their pockets. So they made their way back to the ship, with some difficulty, getting lost in the woods, and seemed to their companions as fairly laden as the men from Eshcol. Eight months after, they met the owners of this corn and paid them for it. This find of corn they called the First Discovery. On Wednesday, the 6th (16th) of De- cember, another exploring expedition, con- sisting of ten men and led, as before, by 112 THE ADVENTURES OP Captain Standish, started in search of a proper place for the settlement. The weather was very cold, the water freezing on their clothes and making them " like coats of iron." They went by water, in the shallop, landing now and then and making expeditions into the country. In the middle of the second night, as they lay on the shore by their fire, they heard " a great and hideous cry," and shot off a couple of muskets, at which the noise ceased, and they judged it had been made by wolves or foxes. But about five o 'clock the next morning, having had prayers and preparing breakfast, the cry sounded again, and one of the company came run- ning in, shouting, " They are men! In- dians! Indians!" And the sentinel was followed by a flight of arrows. The arms had already been carried to the boat, but Standish had a snap-lance ready a gun with a flint lock and he made a shot, and presently the others were ready; the In- dians meanwhile keeping up their dreadful CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 113 cry, "Woach!" they screamed, " Woach! Ha ! Ha ! Hach ! Woach ! ' ' sounding not unlike a college yell. Finally their leader * * gave an extraordinary cry and away they went all." None of the Englishmen had been hit by the discharge of arrows, nor do they record having wounded any Indian. They followed the retreating savages a little space, and then shouted ' ' all together, two several times ; and shot off a couple of muskets; and so returned. This we did that they might see that we were not afraid of them nor discouraged." Thus ended the First Encounter. Then, giving God thanks, they set sail again, looking for a harbor to which the ship's pilot had directed them; he had been there once, he said, and the savages had stolen his harpoon; he called it Thievish Harbor. Now it began to snow and rain and blow, and the sea was very rough. The rudder broke; the mast was split in three pieces. At last, after a day of peril, they " fell upon a place of sandy ground " on 114 THE ADVENTURES OF the shore of a small island. There they stayed till morning, and the next day, be- ing Sunday, they said their prayers and sang their hymns, on Clark's Island, as we call it. " On Monday they sounded ye harbor, and f ounde it fitt for shipping ; and marched into ye land & found diverse corn- fields & little running brooks, a place (as they supposed) fitt for situation; at least it was ye best they could find; and ye season and their present necessities, made them glad to accepte of it. So they returned to their shipp again with this news to ye rest of their people, which did much comforte their harts." Thus is the Landing recorded, without adjective or exclamation. The date was December 11, or, by our reckoning, the 21st, piously kept as " Forefathers' Day." No rock is mentioned, but as there is no other rock in the immediate neighborhood of their getting ashore, there is no reason to doubt that they set their feet on the boulder of tradition. It has been debated CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 115 whether John Alden or Mary Chilton was the first to land ; but that event was later, when the Mayflower followed the shallop's course into Plymouth Bay. Let us hazard the conjecture that Myles Standish, being the leader of this expedition, was himself the first to stand on " the threshold of the United States." The First Encounter had made the pil- grims thankful that they had a military man among them. They were now expectant of an Indian attack. Among their domes- tic and religious preparations for the win- ter they did not neglect those important and, as they thought, necessary precau- tions for which Standish was responsible. After two months of anxiety, during which they sometimes saw great smokes of Indian fires, but never an Indian, it happened at the end of February, that ' ' Captain Myles Standish and Francis Cooke, being at work in the woods, coming home left their tools behind them, but before they returned they were taken away by the savages." 116 THE ADVENTURES OF The next day, " in the morning," says the record in Mourt's " Relation," "we called a meeting for the establishment of military orders among ourselves; and we chose Myles Standish our captain, and gave him authority of command in affairs. And as we were in consultation hereabouts, two savages presented themselves upon the top of a hill, over against our plantation, about a quarter of a mile and less, and made signs unto us to come unto them : we like- wise made signs unto them to come unto us. Whereupon we armed ourselves and made ready, and sent two over the brook towards them, to-wit, Captain Stan- dish and Stevens Hopkins, who went to- wards them. Only one of them had a mus- ket, which they laid down on the ground in their sight, in sign of peace and to parley with them. But the savages would not tarry their coming. A noise of a great many more was heard behind the hill ; but no more came in sight. This led us to CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 117 plant our great ordnance in places most convenient." Meanwhile, in January and February, of the company of settlers half had died. ' ' In ye depth of winter, and wanting houses and other comforts, being infected with ye scurvie and other diseases, which their long voyage and their inacomodate condition had brought upon them," they died, " sometimes 2 or 3 of a day." On the 5th of February, Eose Standish died. * ' Scarce fifty remained," says Bradford, " and of these in ye time of most distress ther was but 6. or 7. sound persons, who, to their great comendations be it spoken, spared no pains, night nor day, but with abundance of toyle and hazard of their own health, fetched the wood, made them fires, dressed them meat, made their beds, washed their lothsome cloths and all this willingly and cheerfully, without any grudging in the least, shewing herein their true love unto their friends and brethren." " Two of 118 THE ADVENTURES OF these 7. were Mr. William Brewster, their reverend Elder, and Myles Standish, ther Captain and Military Commander.'' In this forlorn condition was the settle- ment, many dead and most of the others sick, the sea before them, and the menacing forest behind, when, on the Friday morning of a " fair, warm day " in March, there came in boldly " all alone and along the houses," a naked savage, crying, " Wel- come ! ' ' Samoset was himself but a visitor in these parts, being from Maine, where he had learned some English from the fish- ermen ; he was able, however, to give much information. He explained the hostility shown to Standish in the First Encounter by the fact that Captain Hunt, an English shipmaster, had stolen twenty- seven men from those shores and carried them to Spain to sell as slaves. He said that one of these captives, named Squanto, had got to England, where he had lived in London for some years with a merchant in Corn- hill, and had himself made his way home. CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 119 And he told the story of the Great Plague. Standish learned that they who had been feared as enemies, against whom he had established on the hill his Minion and his Saker, and his Bases stout cannon all were themselves vanquished, broken, and almost exterminated by pestilence. Pres- ently Samoset brought Squanto, and Samo- set and Squanto procured a conference be- tween the pilgrims and Massasoit, their nearest neighbor. Massasoit had prudently prepared him- self for this interview by getting ' ' all the Powachs of ye cuntrie, for 3. days to- gether, in a horid and divellish maner to curse and execrate them with their cun- jurations, which assambly and service they held in a dark and dismall swampe." He now came forward, Captain Standish and Master Allerton meeting him at the brook with half-a-dozen musketeers. He was con- ducted to a barn then in building, where were placed a green rug and three or four cushions. The Indian king and the 120 THE ADVENTURES OF Puritan governor kissed each other's hands. Then " the governor called for some strong water and drunk to him, and he drunk a great draught, that made him sweat all the tune after." So they made a treaty of peace, assuring Massasoit that so long as he kept it ' ' King James would es- teem of him as his friend and ally. ' ' The next day Standish and Allerton ' ' ventur- ously " returned the Indians' visit, and were regaled with groundnuts and tobacco. In spite of this polite beginning, the Pil- grims never got on well with the Indians. The contrast, in this particular, between the two colonies founded by religious per- sons and for religious purposes, Plym- outh and Pennsylvania, is very marked. William Penn lands upon the site of Phila- delphia and finds a company of Indians. They receive him cheerfully, give him food, and entertain him with games, skipping and jumping. Penn skips and jumps with them, and they are all fraternally merry together. Myles Standish lands on Cape CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 121 Cod, forms his men in single file, all in armor and carrying guns, and presently the Indians raise a great cry and come upon them with arrows. Penn had no gun. The only man harmed by the Indians of Pennsylvania during a long course of years was one who owned a gun. The Pilgrims came out with a full equipment, not only of muskets, but of cannon. This was prob- ably due to Standish's counsel; he looked after the munitions of war. It is pos- sible that if Standish had not been of the company, and the settlers had come as peaceable and friendly folk, they might have established the same relations with their savage neighbors as prevailed in Pennsylvania. On the other hand, it appears that a hos- tile feeling had preceded the settlement of Plymouth. The Indians of those parts had chiefly learned to esteem white men as enemies. They had a tradition that the great plague came from a Frenchman's curse. They remembered Hunt, the kid- 122 THE ADVENTURES OF napper. It is likely that had it not been for Captain Standish, the Pilgrims, land- ing under such conditions, among Indians of a more savage temper than those of Pennsylvania, and justly enraged, would have been summarily cut off. As it was, they had several narrow escapes. So that it may fairly be said that Standish saved the colony. Without him, it might have met the fate of other, worse defended settlements. The Plymouth people had now three val- uable Indian friends: Massasoit, the sachem; Squanto, the interpreter; and Hobamack, one of Massasoit 's warriors, a man of might. They cast in their lot with the white men. They were very jealous the one of another; and Squanto, by a childish trick, which was meant to show that he was the best friend of the white man, came near to getting the settlers into serious trouble with Massasoit. But they were faithful friends, both of them, and even their jealousy was turned to account CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 123 by taking Squanto into Governor Brad- ford's house, and Hobamack into Captain Standish 's, at which convenient distance they competed which should do the colony most good. Squanto taught the settlers how to fish and plant, and served as guide and adviser. He materially assisted Stan- dish's defensive measures by informing the Indians that the English had the plague buried in a pot under the ground, whence they were likely to bring it out on the least provocation. In August, 1621, Corbitant, one of the neighbors of Massasoit, having refused to sign the treaty of peace, seized Squanto, saying that now the English had lost their tongue. Standish felt that hesitation, or even forbearance, would now be fatal. Straight he marched with fourteen men into Corbitant 's town, beset the chief's house, and without serious bloodshed brought back the interpreter in safety. In September, with nine men of Plym- outh, and Squanto for pilot, Standish 124 THE ADVENTURES OF sailed up into Boston Bay. They spent a night in the open boat in the lee of Thomp- son's Island, and in the morning landed on the peninsula, whose name of Squantuin preserves the memory of their friend. The event is commemorated by a monument bearing the inscription, Captain Myles Standish with his men, guided by the Indian Squanto, landed here September 30, 1621. Here they found a pile of lobsters, freshly caught, on which they made their breakfast, paying for them, according to their honest custom, when they met the owners. Pres- ently they found the " governor," named Obbatinewat, who lived, as they expressed it, " in the bottom of the Massachusetts Bay. ' ' Obbatinewat, who was much afraid of his visitors, told them how he lived in terror, not only of the Tarratines, a sav- age people dwelling to the north, but of the squaw sachem, a lady of the immediate neighborhood, who was continually attack- CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 125 ing him. The Pilgrims looked about the country, crossing over to what is now Charlestown, and marching inland to what is now Medford and "Winchester. Every camp was abandoned upon their approach. All the warriors hid themselves in the woods. The great plague had not only broken their strength, but had destroyed their nerve : they had no spirit left. The visitors found many squaws, but missed the Massachusetts Queen. They came away with two impressions of Boston: first, that it was inhabited mainly by women; and, secondly, that it was the most beauti- ful place they had found in all their travels. So they returned to Plymouth, with a fair wind and a light moon. In December, the Narragansetts, of Rhode Island, the most formidable of their- neighbors, sent a messenger with a bundle of arrows wrapped in a rattlesnake's skin. Standish detained the messenger until they should learn what these symbols meant. When it was found that they threatened 126 THE ADVENTURES OF war, the men of Plymouth stuffed the skin with powder and shot, and returned polite regrets to the Narragansetts that the Eng- lish had no suitable boats in which to make them a visit, adding that if the Narragan- setts cared to come and make the first call, themselves they might be sure of a warm reception. The Narragansetts sent back the powder and shot, and did not come. But the Pilgrims, knowing how much stouter their defiance was than their de- fence, set a strong line of palings about the settlement, with gates to lock at night; and Captain Standish divided the men into four companies, and summoned a * ' general muster.' 1 The most serious peril came, however, from another direction. In the summer of 1622, Master Weston, a money-making cit- izen of London, who had been concerned in the sailing of the Mayflower, established a colony at Wessagusset, near the present Weymouth. It was a trading venture, and the colonists were most of them " rude CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 127 fellows," as Western, himself called them; " stout knaves," was the name which Master Morton called them, being an associate with them. Food was very scarce both at Wessagus- set and at Plymouth ; and this scarcity the new colonists increased by foolishly paying the Indians as much for a quart of corn as the Plymouth people were wont to pay for a skin of beaver. The two settlements sent out a joint expedition that autumn in search of food; Standish being in com- mand, and Squanto acting as interpreter. The weather was very bad, and the boat was several times forced back into port. Standish fell sick of a fever, and gave up the command to Bradford. Presently, at Chatham, on the back side of Cape Cod, Squanto was suddenly taken sick and died. At last, having secured some corn, Brad- ford and his party left the Wessagusset people to bring the food to port, and walked home fifty miles, preferring that to the company of their neighbors. Even thus, 128 THE ADVENTURES OF the supply was not sufficient, and there was hunger in both colonies. Under these hard circumstances, the men of the new colony so conducted themselves as to cause the Indians to lose both fear and respect of them. In their straits, they sold the Indians their clothes and bed-cov- erings. " Others (so base were they) be- came servants to the Indeans; and would cutt their woode & fetch them water for a cap full of corne ; others fell to plaine steal- ing, both night and day, from ye Indeans, of which they greevously complained. " Thus the Indians began not only to hate but to despise them. They daily insulted the planters. " Yea, in ye end," says Bradford, " they were faine to hang one of their men, whom they could not reclaime from stealing, to give ye Indeans con- tente. ' ' Master Morton, in his ' ' New Eng- lish Canaan, " says that they put the stout thief's clothes upon another of their com- pany who was sick and not likely to live, and hanged the sick man in the well man's CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 129 place. It is the story which Butler tells in "Hudibras": " Our Brethren of New England use Choice Malefactors to excuse, And hang the Guiltless in their stead, Of whom the Churches have less need ; As lately happened : In a town There lived a Cobbler, and but one That out of Doctrine could cut Use, And mend men's lives as well as shoes. This precious Brother having slain, In times of peace, an Indian, (Not out of malice, but mere zeal, Because he was an Infidel,) The mighty Tottipottymoy Sent to our Elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league held forth by Brother Patch, Against the articles in force Between both churches, his and ours, For which he craved the Saints to render Into his hands, or hang th' Offender; But they maturely having weighed They had no more than him o' th' trade, (A man that served them in a double Capacity, to teach and cobble,) Resolv'd to spare him ; yet to do The Indian Hoghan Moghan too Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid." The right man was hanged, but even this did not give " ye Indeans contente." They 130 THE ADVENTURES OF made a plot to exterminate the white men. Few in numbers themselves, they sent mes- sengers to the Narragansetts, to the Cape Cod tribes, and, in short, to all their neigh- bors in the forest, and arranged for a gen- eral massacre. Winslow went to see Mas- sasoit, who was sick, and either by applica- tion of simple remedies or by turning out the native doctors with their tom-toms, re- covered him to health; and Massasoit disclosed the plot. Standish, at the same time, went on an- other expedition to Cape Cod for corn, and met with a cold reception from Indians who had before been friendly. He found Wituwamat there, a Massachusetts Indian, who flourished a knife, and made a wild speech, insulting the captain. That night one of the savages insisted on sleeping in Standish 's lodging, making great protesta- tions of friendship. The night was bit- terly cold, and partly by reason of the weather, partly from anxiety and sus- picion, the captain took no rest, " but CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 131 either walked, or turned himself to and fro at the fire." The Indian asked him why he did not sleep, and he answered that ' ' he knew not well, but he had no desire at all to rest." So the perilous night passed. No sooner had Win slow and Standish returned with these ill tidings, than Phin- ehas Pratt suddenly appeared from Wes- sagusset, covered with snow, fainting with fear, hunger, and weariness, and pursued by Indians. He brought information that the plot was on the eve of execution. Standish took eight men with him and proceeded straight to the heart of the peril. Nobody in the colony knew the Indians as he did. Winslow says that he could un- derstand their language better than any of the others. He knew that, under the cir- cumstances, conciliation would be impos- sible. It was a hard case. The Indians had a good deal of right on their side. A company of vagabonds gathered from the corners of London streets made most un- pleasant neighbors, whom even the Pil- 132 THE ADVENTUBES OF grims could not endure. It was natural enough that the Indians should resolve to get rid of them, and natural enough, also, that they should fail to make a fine dis- crimination and should include all the peo- ple of pale face under the ban. On the other hand, the lives of the Plymouth set- tlers were at stake, and the great cause for which they stood was in peril. Standish saw clearly that there was but one way out. And he took that way. Being arrived at the stockade at Wes- sagusset, the captain found the colonists weak and frightened, and the Indians bold and insulting. Wituwamat showed a sharp knife having a woman's face pictured on the handle. " I have another at home," he said, " wherewith I have killed both French and English, and that hath a man's face on it; and by-and-by these two must marry." Pecksuot, also, a man of great size, taunted Standish on his short stature. The next day, being the 6th of April, 1623, they came again, these braves and CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 133 a few others, the leaders and inspirers of the plot. They were allowed to enter the blockhouse. Suddenly Standish gave a signal, and upon the instant leaped on Pecksuot, seized the knife which hung at his neck, and stabbed him with it. Each of his four or five companions attacked an- other savage. The door was fastened, and for a few tragic moments, without groan or cry, the struggle went on. When the door was opened, the men who were the heart and hands of the conspiracy were all dead. On the day after there was a brief skirmish in which Hobamack put the remaining warriors to flight. When Pastor Robinson, in Leyden, heard of this encounter he was much grieved thereat, and besought the church to con- sider the disposition of their captain, who was of a warm temper, adding also, in words applicable to other campaigns of nearer date, " how happy a thing had it been that you had converted some be- fore you killed any." There is no doubt, 134 THE ADVENTURES OF however, but that Standish, by thus taking the lives of a few, saved the lives of many, both Englishmen and Indians. It was the only blood which the captain shed. There- after, his name alone was as terrible as an army with banners. One of the original settlers at Wessa- gusset was Thomas Morton. Morton was a London lawyer, an ardent sportsman and lover of nature. Massachusetts delighted him. Its " many goodly groves of trees, dainty, fine, round, rising hillocks, delicate, fair, large plains, sweet, crystal fountains, and clear running streams," with fruit and flowers and " lilies of the Daphnean tree," made the land seem to him like Paradise. He returned to England before winter came to change his mind, and be- fore the Wessagusset people entered into their misfortunes. Presently Captain Wollaston fitting out an expedition, Mor- ton came back with it; and after some months, Wollaston and most of his party having moved to Virginia, Morton put him- CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 135 self at the head of the half-dozen who remained. The settlers established themselves at Passonagessit, within the limits of. the present city of Quincy. There they built their house on the summit of one of those gentle hills which Morton liked so much, looking out over Boston Bay. They had two purposes : one was to trade with the Indians for skins; the other was to have as good a time as was possible under the circumstances. Their pursuit of these purposes made them excessively obnoxious to all their prudent and serious English neighbors. Morton, indeed, with his boisterous ideas of pleasure and his frank dislike of Puritans, represented everything that was objectionable in politics, in religion, and in manners. Bradford says that he ' ' became lord of misrule and main- tained (as it were) a school of Atheisme." Mr. Fiske, in his " Beginnings of New England," suggests that the accusation of atheism was " based upon the fact that he 136 THE ADVENTURES OP used the Book of Common Prayer. " That Morton used the Prayer Book he, himself, asserts. " Mine host," he says, meaning himself, " was a man that indeavoured to advance the dignity of the Church of Eng- land, which they (on the contrary part) would labour to vilifie with uncivile terms ; enveying against the sacred book of com- mon prayer and mine host that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family, as a practice of piety." Mr. Charles Francis Adams, in his " Three Episodes of Massa- chusetts History," thinks it likely that Morton somewhat exaggerated his cham- pionship in order to get the favor of Laud in the troubles which he presently had with the Puritans. The combination of fervent piety with Morton's marked devotion to " barrells of beere " and " lassies in beaver coats " is, to say the least, improb- able. And the spectacle of Master Morton reading the Morning Prayer with his com- panions at Merrymount passes imagina- tion. There is, at least, no doubt but that CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 137 in his trading with the Indians, he sold them guns and ammunition. That, of it- self, made him a mischievous citizen. Every colonist's life was endangered. On the May-day of 1627 the men of Mer- rymount set up a May-pole. We ' l brewed a barrell of excellente beere," says the chief offender, telling his own story, ' ' and provided for a case of bottles, to be spent, with other good cheare, for all comers of that day. ' ' And he ' ' brought the Maypole to the place appointed with drummes, gunnes, pistols and other fitting instru- ments for that purpose ; and there erected it with the help of savages, that came thether of purpose to see the manner of our Bevels." So they danced about it, the white men and the braves and the lassies in beaver coats, and were as merry as the day was long. This, the " precise separatists that lived at New Plymouth " found a " lamentable Spectacle." Twice they wrote to Morton, but he answered with high words. The 138 THE ADVENTURES OF situation became so serious that all the settlers up and down the neighboring coasts were concerned. If the Merry- mount proceedings continued, the resi- dence of decent people in those parts would become impossible. Finally, Myles Stan- dish was sent out to arrest the offending household. He took eight men with him, a number which he seems to have pre- ferred in the face of danger or difficulty, and laid hold on Morton as he was on a visit to Wessagusset. But in the night Morton got away. They had him sleep- ing between guards, but the guards slept sounder than he did. Suddenly a door slammed and they awoke to find him gone. " The word," he says, " which was given with an alarme, was, ' O, he's gon he's gon! What shell wee doe, he's gon!' the rest (halfe a sleepe) start up in a maze, and, like rames, ran their heads one at an- other full batt in the darke. Their guard leader, Captaine Shrimpe, tooke on most furiously, and tore his clothes for anger to CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 139 see the empty nest and their bird gone. The rest were eager to have torne theire haire from theire heads; but it was so short, that it would give them no hold." Standish and his men started in pursuit, and found Morton and two companions en- trenched at Merrymount, well armed with guns, but too drunk to use them. Thus they were captured, and brought down to Plymouth, whence Morton was presently shipped to England, where he wrote his " New English Canaan," and, in various ways, at the court of Charles I, did what he could to make trouble for the colony. Meanwhile the captain had comforted himself in his hardships and responsibili- ties by a second marriage. The earliest account which I can find of the romantic tradition which is associated with Standish 's memory is in the Rev. Timothy Alden's " Collection of American Epitaphs." Mr. Alden says that he had the story from those to whom it had been care- 140 THE ADVENTURES OP fully handed down. ' ' In a very short time after the decease of Mrs. Standish, the captain was led to think that if he could obtain Miss Priscilla Mullins, a daughter of Mr. William Mullins, the breach in his family would be happily repaired. He, therefore, according to the custom of those times, sent to ask Mr. Mullins 's permission to visit his daughter. John Alden, the messenger, went and faithfully communi- cated the wishes of the captain. The old gentleman did not object, as he might have done, on account of the recency of Captain Standish 's bereavement. He said it was perfectly agreeable to him, but the young lady must also be consulted. The damsel was then called into the room, and John Alden, who is said to have been a man of most excellent form, with a fair and ruddy complexion, arose, and, in a very courteous and prepossessing manner, delivered his errand. Miss Mullins listened with re- spectful attention, and, at last, after a con- siderable pause, fixing her eyes upon him, CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 141 said, * Prithee, John, why do you not speak for yourself?' " The captain's second wife was Barbara, whose other name is unknown, a passenger by the Ann. Presently he settled on his land at Duxbury, having the Captain's Hill in the middle of his farm, now crowned by his tall monument. Here he built him a house, wherein he lived to the end of his days. Here he gathered his children about him : his six boys, Alexander, Charles, John, Myles, Josiah, and a second Charles, and his daughter, Lora. The little daughter's sampler is in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, " Lora Standish is my name. Lord, guide my heart that I may do thy will; Also fill my hands with such convenient skill As will conduce to virtue void of shame, And I will give the glory to thy name." Alexander Standish married Sarah Alden, daughter of John and Priscilla. The captain continued all his life in the military command of the colony. Once he went to fight the French, who had inter- fered with the Plymouth trade on the Pen- 142 THE ADVENTURES OF obscot river, but it was a fruitless expedi- tion. Again he prepared to fight the Dutch, when there was war between Eng- land and Holland in 1652, but peace was declared before colonial hostilities began. The Narragansetts raised a force to attack the settlements, and the captain led the Plymouth company which marched with the men of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Haven to meet them, but the Indians did not fight. Standish took part also in the civil af- fairs of the colony. For twenty years he was one of the governor's assistants. Once he went, as agent of the plantation, to Eng- land, where he began the negotiations by which, later, he and seven others bought out all the interests of the Merchant Ad- venturers in the Plymouth Colony for 1,800. The year, however, was a bad one. Even within sight of England, the com- panion to Standish 's ship was captured by the Turks, and passengers and crew sold into slavery. Affairs of state were in CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 143 disorder, and the plague was in possession of London. It was no time to do business, and Standish returned, having borrowed 150 at 50 per cent, interest. Lowell, in his " Interview with Miles Standish," sits before the fire at twilight, looking reflectively upon a chair beside him, which had been conveyed to these shores in the good ship Mayfloiver. " It came out in that famous bark That brought our sires intrepid, Capacious as another ark For furniture decrepit." And as the logs burn low, and the poet's thoughts go back into those old days which he had been considering, behold the chair is occupied ; he sees "... its trembling arms enclose A figure grim and rusty, Whose doublet plain and plainer hose Were somewhat worn and dusty." And, as he wonders who his guest may be, "Just then the ghost drew up his chair And said, 'My name is Standish.' " 144 THE ADVENTURES OF Whereupon ensues a sturdy conversation, in which the captain speaks his mind on the subject of compromise with slavery. Thus he sat in his declining days, look- ing out over the green country which his strong arm had helped to win, reading his Homer's " Hiad " with an appreciation which, in these gentler days, we miss, con- sulting now his " Country Farmer," and now his " Phisition's Practice," accord- ing to the emergency, bucolic or domestic; studying his " History of the World," in whose continuing chapters he himself should have a place; and on Sundays re- freshing his soul with Borroughs' "Gos- pell Conversation," and the martial psalms of David. There is a touch of tenderness in the words of the old man's will, which seems, for a moment, to be foreign to the grim spirit of him who stabbed Pecksuot, and nailed the head of Wituwamat to the wall of the meeting-house. But the captain had a warm heart ever. He loved his friends CAPTAIN MYLES STANDISH 145 with an enduring and solicitous affection. We may not forget his faithful nursing in the first tragic winter. He desires that his body may be laid as near as conveni- ently may be to his two dear daughters, Lora his daughter, and Mary, his daughter- in-law. He commends his dear and lov- ing wife, Barbara Standish, to the Chris- tian counsel and advice of his dear friends, Mr. Timothy Hatherly and Captain James Cudworth. " Further, my will is that Marcye Kobenson, whom I tenderly love for her grandfather's sake, shall have three pounds." So he died, on the 3d day of October, 1656, with the regard of all who knew him, having rendered inestimable service to the cause of religion, of freedom, and of humanity. THE EDUCATION OF JOHN HARVARD IV THE EDUCATION OF JOHN HARVARD A ili that was known of John Harvard before the 22d of February, 1884, may be stated in two minutes. It was based on a will, a signature, a record, and a book. A will had been found in London drawn by a Eobert Harvard, one of whose sons was named John. It was possible that this John was the benefactor of New England, but there was no proof. If he was, then his father belonged to the parish of St. Saviour's, Southwark, and was by trade a butcher. A signature had been found in Cam- bridge, England, plainly that of our John when he took his degree. This showed that he studied at Emmanuel College, and was made B.A. in 1631 and M.A. in 1635. A record remaining in the annals of the 149 150 THE EDUCATION OF First Church of Charlestown, Massachu- setts, showed that John Harvard came to this country in 1637, was admitted a min- ister of God's Word in that place, died in 1638, and left to the neighboring college, newly founded, his library and half of his estate. A curious particularity in the midst of the general ignorance recorded that this contribution was 779 17s. 2d. The twopence were especially provoking. Beside the will, the signature, and these local facts, was one book remaining from the library. All the others were burned at the destruction of Harvard Hall in 1764. This volume was a stout folio entitled 11 The Christian Warfare." A borrower had it on the day when the library was destroyed. In 1882 persons interested in genealogy raised money to have English records searched for facts about New England families. The results were to be published in the " New England Historical and Genealogical Register." Mr. H. F. Waters, JOHN HARVARD 151 a graduate of Harvard interested in such matters, was intrusted with this commis- sion, and went to England and set about reading seventeenth century wills. In the midst of this business, having already con- sulted several thousands of these docu- ments, suddenly, on Washington's Birth- day, 1884, he rose up from his reading and said to his fellow antiquaries: " I have put my finger on John Harvard!" Mr. Waters had found the will of Thomas Harvard, of Southwark, cloth- worker. His estate was to be divided be- tween his widow and his living brother, John Harvard. He gave directions con- cerning his funeral at St. Saviour's, South- wark, and left forty shillings to Mr. Nich- olas Morton, the minister, in recompense of the funeral sermon. One of the execu- tors was Mr. Morton, the other was John Harvard. A note attesting the proving of the will by Mr. Morton, May 5, 1637, pro- vided for a commission to be issued to John Harvard when he should come to seek it. 152 THE EDUCATION OF Here, accordingly, was a John Harvard absent from England in 1637, at the exact time when our John Harvard was on the sea coming in this direction. This clue led the way to such discoveries that there is now no New Englander of that generation concerning whose relatives we know so much. Another dramatic moment in these genealogical adventures came at Strat- ford-on-Avon. Mr. Waters found that John Harvard's mother was Katherine Rogers, of Stratford. He went to the par- ish church there and spent a day, as he says, from matins to evensong, examining the records, learning about the Eogers's. As he walked about the town in the long English twilight, he looked with interest at the timbered front of a fine Elizabethan house, under whose second story window stood the inscription T. E. 1596 A. R. At once there came to his mind the names of Thomas Rogers and Alice, his wife. No- body in Stratford knew what the initials JOHN HARVARD 153 meant, but the records of the property veri- fied his conjecture. It was the house of John Harvard's grandfather, his mother's father. These two incidents, the clause in the will and the inscription on the house, were but more dramatic events in a process of patient research whereby the facts con- cerning John Harvard became known. These facts are centred mainly about three places, Southwark, Cambridge, and Charlestown. John Harvard was born in the London borough of Southwark, at the south end of London Bridge, in 1607, the Jamestown year. The date is determined by an entry in the parish register of St. Saviour's Church, showing that he was baptised in that year, on the 29th of November. The site of the house is located by the token books of St. Saviour's Church. According to ancient custom a token in the shape of a lead or pewter ticket was given to every communicant once a year, and was by him 154 THE EDUCATION OF returned to the vicar on the occasion of his attendance at the service. A record of these tickets was kept in the token book, wherein were entered the name and address of every communicant. The book shows that the Harvards lived in High Street, opposite the Boar's Head Inn. The father of John Harvard, like the father of Cardinal Wolsey, was a butcher. It was a good business in Southwark, ex- ceeded only, if at all, by that of inn-hold- ing; the place was filled with inns and butcher shops. For London Bridge was the great gate of London. There began the road to Winchester and to Canterbury, and to the great world in general. There was continual coming and going ; hence the demand for inns, and the demand for butchers to supply them. John Harvard's mother, Katherine Eogers, knew the Shakespeares, at Strat- ford. Her father and Shakespeare's father were aldermen together and near neighbors. From 1596 to 1611, that is, till JOHN HARVARD 155 John Harvard was four years of age, Will- iam Shakespeare had his residence in Southwark, where his Globe Theatre stood not far from the Harvard house. It is a fair guess that he visited his old friends, and that on the occasion of these visits he held John Harvard on his knee. As for Katherine, she was three times married: to Eobert Harvard, the butcher ; after his death to John Elletson, the cooper; after his death to Richard Yearwood, a grocer, having a seat in the Puritan Parliament. She was evidently a pleasant person. The money which founded Harvard College came from the earnings of these honest tradesmen. There were brothers and sisters. Mary and Eobert were older than John ; Thomas, Katherine, and Peter were younger. The town of Southwark of that day was a busy and interesting place. Standing at the door of the Harvard house and look- ing to the left one saw the Thames, crossed by London Bridge, whose formidable gate 156 THE EDUCATION OP served for the purpose of defence and for the display of heads of offenders. In a picture made in 1616, when John Harvard was of the age of nine, eighteen such heads on pikes are displayed above the gate. Looking to the right, one saw the street, gradually widening, ascend St. Margaret's hill. In the middle, almost in front of the Harvard house, were the pillory and the cage, and beyond these the bull ring, for baiting bulls. The bear garden for bait- ing bears was on the river bank, next to the Globe Theatre. The process of bait- ing was to fasten the bull or the bear be- hind and let the dogs loose upon him. The Puritans were said to object to this en- tertainment, not on account of the pain which it gave to the bear, but on ac- count of the pleasure which it gave to the spectators. In this they were quite right. Directly across the road from the Har- vard door was the Boar's Head Inn, and to the right, in almost continuous row, were nine other taverns; including the JOHN HARVARD 157 Tabard, memorable as the meeting place of the Canterbury Pilgrims, and the White Hart, where Mr. Pickwick made the ac- quaintance of Sam Weller ; and the Queen's Head, which John Harvard's mother left him in her will. Behind the Boar's Head, in large grounds, stood St. Thomas's Hos- pital. On one side of the Harvard house was the Bull's Head Inn, on the other side was the east chain gate of the churchyard of St. Saviour's Church. Near the church in the same enclosure was the Grammar School, which the church maintained. John Harvard began his schooling, ac- cording to custom, at the age of seven, and continued this form of education for a dozen years till he was prepared for col- lege. Shakespeare gives a picture of the schoolboy of John Harvard's time: "The whining schoolboy with his satchel And shining morning face, creeping like a snail Unwillingly to school." The day began in winter at seven, in sum- mer at six, and continued, with two hours 158 THE EDUCATION OF intermission for dinner, until five or six. Thus the rules required a boy to bring, not only a Bible and other books, pens, paper and ink in his satchel, but candles for the early and late hours of the dark days of winter. There was a vacation of one week at the time of the Southwark Fair. One reason why the whining schoolboy went un- willingly to school is seen by the advice given by the authorities to parents " to manage with great discretion and severity at home, which will make him love his school." Every quarter every boy paid twopence for brooms and rods; these brooms were not intended for domestic use, but were applied to the dusting of the boys' backs. The boy of seven must al- ready know the rudiments of Latin gram- mar, and be able to read Tully, his Second Epistle, and Corderius, his " Dialogues." Thence he proceeded along the ways of Latin and Greek and Hebrew. St. Saviour's Church, whose bells sounded in John Harvard's ears from his JOHN HARVARD 159 earliest infancy, had been the chapel of a priory of Augustinian monks, and was then named St. Mary Overy, which is inter- preted to mean St. Mary of the Ferry, for the church antedated London Bridge. But Henry the Eighth had suppressed the pri- ory, and, putting the two parishes together, had named the church St. Saviour's. It is still a noble sanctuary, with long aisles and clustering chapels and ancient monuments, and serves to-day as the Cathedral of Southwark. A canon of 1603 designated sixteen as the age of first communion. It is, therefore, to be inferred that John Harvard was con- firmed about the year 1623. The vicar at that time was Dr. Sutton, who is remem- bered by two incidents. He hated the theatre and attacked it in his sermons. Southwark, at that time, was the theatrical centre of London. The Globe and the Eose were both within the parish of St. Saviour's. One of Dr. Sutton 's sermons was answered with some indignation by an 160 THE EDUCATION OF actor. John Harvard's father was a church warden, and the boy probably heard both the sermon and the discussion which fol- lowed. Dr. Button was also an enemy of Eoman Catholics. In October, 1623, after the vicar 's death by drowning, a large con- gregation of Eoman Catholics, meeting in an upper room in London, heard a sermon preached by Father Drury, a Jesuit, against Luther, Calvin, and Dr. Sutton. The sea, he said, had swallowed the vicar because he was unworthy to be buried in the earth. At that moment the floor gave way and the preacher and the con- gregation were precipitated into the cellar. The bishop to whom Dr. Sutton prob- ably presented John Harvard for confirma- tion was that most devout, learned, and large-minded prelate, Launcelot Andrewes, in whose charge was the diocese of Win- chester. Thus John Harvard spent his boyhood in a good home, in an interesting town, and under the profitable instruction of church JOHN HARVARD 161 and school. The high street was of itself an education. It was a place of continual pro- cession, merchants and dignitaries from foreign lands passing daily on the way to London. And along with this went the nor- mal life of childhood. The picture which shows the heads on the pikes shows also a boy rolling a hoop, and another boy catching on behind a cart. But in 1625 the plague came. The sani- tary conditions were indescribable, and of- fered an imperative invitation to the pesti- lence. The street around the corner was named Foul Lane, and, no doubt, deserved that title. Within a space of five weeks five members of the Harvard household died: first Mary, then Eobert, four days later; then little Katherine and little Peter; finally the father. There remained the mother and her two sons, John and Thomas. It may have been this tragedy which turned young Harvard's thoughts towards the ministry. Or it may have been the in- 162 THE EDUCATION OF fluence of the Rev. Nicholas Morton, of St. Saviour's, whom we have seen already as a close friend of the family. It was prob- ably the influence of Morton which sent him to Cambridge and to Emmanuel College, of which Morton was himself a graduate. It is interesting to remember in this connec- tion that Morton's son, Charles, came afterwards to this country. He had done some tutoring in the midst of his ministry, and one of his pupils had been De Foe, the author of " Eobinson Crusoe." Charles became vice-president of Harvard College, being, perhaps, the only person who ever occupied that unusual academic position. They would have appointed him president but for the fact that he had made himself obnoxious to James U, and such honor seemed politically unwise. He became min- ister of the First Church in Charlestown. So John Harvard went to Cambridge, the Puritan University. The Reformation had divided Christianity in Europe into two distinct companies, Catholic and Protes- JOHN HARVARD 163 tant. The Catholics upheld the value of the institution, the Protestants the impor- tance of the individual. In England the two companies dwelt together in one church. Two sects had, indeed, appeared at the extremes ; on the one side, the Sep- aratists ; on the other side, the Eomanists, had separated from the Church. But the men of the Old Learning and the New Learning, as they were called at that time, the High Church and the Low Church, as they are called to-day, were still united. The time was indeed approaching when Charles and Laud in their endeavor to en- force uniformity should disrupt the church. But to the end of John Harvard's life there was no definite division. The words Puri- tan and Non-conformist, like the word Ritualist, were party names. The time came when Puritans and Non-conformists were forced out, but so long as John Har- vard lived they were simply Low-Church members of the Church of England. They subtracted from the rubrics, as the Ritual- 164 THE EDUCATION OF ists added to them, but they did not sep- arate. The loyal and affectionate words of Higginson and Winthrop express their relation to their brethren. It came to pass, indeed, in New England, partly by reason of distance, partly by reason of the attrac- tive sample of the Separatists of Plym- outh, partly on account of the extremes into which they were driven by controversy, that they set up a church order of their own. But of this John Harvard saw noth- ing in his native land. Cambridge had been an inhabited place from times immemorial. In the flat land by the little river the Britons had made a hill, heaping up the earth. Around this hill the Romans had built a fort. On the site of the Eoman fort William the Con- queror had built a castle. And nearby, in 1284, Bishop Hugh de Balsham, of Ely, had founded the first college and named it Peterhouse. Then another college had been founded and another, until, in John Harvard's time, there were sixteen, with JOHN HARVARD 165 masters, tutors, fellows, and students to the number of three thousand. It was, no doubt, the expectation in New England in 1636 that beside Harvard Col- lege would be other colleges, with other founders, as beside Peterhouse grew Kings' and Trinity, and that these, to- gether, would constitute a university. For in the minds of Englishmen of the seven- teenth century, university did not mean a combination of faculties, but a combination of colleges. The university gave examina- tions, conferred degrees, and provided cer- tain courses of lectures. The colleges pro- vided places of residence, kept men under regulation, and prepared them, each in its own fashion, to be examined. Take the fraternity houses of a small college, set in each a number of resident graduates called fellows, appoint a dean for discipline, and provide tutors, leaving the college to set the examinations and to conduct the exer- cises of commencement, and the place is transformed into a university of the Eng- 166 THE EDUCATION OF lish type. Build the chapter houses after monastic models : a central quadrangle, on one side a dormitory, on another side a re- fectory, on the third a library, on the fourth a chapel, and a group of such resi- dences will be the heart of a university town. Such was the Cambridge to which John Harvard went at the age of twenty, and in Emmanuel College, then an establish- ment of sixty or seventy men, he took up his residence. The little town lay beside the Cam as the Massachusetts Cambridge lies beside the Charles, except that the English colleges passed the banks of the river. The gardens ran green to the water. The main street in the midst of the town curved, like Brat- tle Street, with the curves of the stream, and took a new name at almost every turn. It was a narrow, ill-paved thoroughfare, and the upper stories of the houses pro- jected over the way. There were plentiful materials for the plague, and once during JOHN HARVARD 167 Harvard's residence the University had to be dismissed on account of it. Midway in the course of the main street, in the heart of the town, was St. Mary's Church, where the University sermons were preached and public meetings were held. The church fronted on th market. Out of the market-place, away from the river, a short street led to Christ's Col- lege, founded by Lady Margaret, Henry VII 's mother. Here, in the garden, is still an aged mulberry, which Milton planted in John Harvard's time. On one side of Christ's College stood Sidney Sussex, on the other side, Emmanuel. Sidney Sussex .and Emmanuel were the newest colleges, the only ones then in the University founded after the Eeformation. But they were seated in places long occu- pied by monasteries: Sidney Sussex on the site of a monastery of Franciscan Friars ; Emmanuel on the site of a monas- tery of Dominican friars. The two colleges were alike, not only 168 THE EDUCATION OF in taking their places back from the river, where no room was left, but in being founded by Puritans for the advancement of Puritanism. It seemed to the founders that the supreme need of England was god- liness, and that the means thereto was preaching. So on the mediaeval founda- tions of preaching friars they established these training places for preachers. Emmanuel College was a divinity school. Founded in the reign of Elizabeth, it con- tinued until the reign of Charles II, a sem- inary for Puritan clergymen of the Church of England. It bore over its gate an in- scription to testify that Sir Walter Mild- may had established it for the study of theology. This matter Sir Walter made unmistakable in his nineteenth statute: " I wish all to understand, whether fel- lows, scholars, or even pensioners who are admitted into the college, that the one ob- ject which I set before me in erecting this college was to render as many as possible fit for the administration of the divine JOHN HARVARD 169 word and sacraments; and that from this seed ground the English church might have those that she can summon to instruct the people and undertake the office of pas- tors, which is a thing necessary above all others. Therefore, let fellows and scholars who obtrude into the college with any other design than to devote themselves to sacred theology and, eventually, to labor in preaching the Word know that they are frustrating my hope and occupying the place of fellow or scholar contrary to my ordinance." Statutes may be put out of sight, as this one is in the present administration of the college, and ivy may grow over inscrip- tions, but in those days nobody could at- tend a service at Emmanuel without per- ceiving plainly the intention and the dis- position of the place. The founder had turned the chapel of the friars into a dining hall, and had the chapel north and south in- stead of east and west, in evident disregard of ecclesiastical tradition. As for the serv- 170 THE EDUCATION OF ice, it was described in 1636 in a report made to Laud: " Their chapel is not con- secrate. At surplice prayers they sing nothing but rhyming psalms of their own appointment instead of the hymns between the lessons. And lessons they read not after the order appointed in the calendar, but after another continued course of their own. All service is there done (psalms and hymns and all if they read any) by the minister alone. The students are not brought up nor accustomed to answer any verse at all. Before prayers begin the boys come in and sit down and put on and talk around of what they will. Their seats are placed round about and above the com- munion table. When they preach or com- monplace they omit all service after first or second lesson at the farthest." This is a graphic picture of non-conformity. These brethren were but exercising the freedom which they felt belonged to them of right as clergymen of the Church of England. JOHN HARVARD 171 Such was the little college in which John Harvard took up his studies in 1627. The course extended over four years, leading to the degree of bachelor of arts. For the master's degree men stayed three years longer. The subjects studied at Emmanuel did not differ greatly from those pursued in the other colleges,