Leland saw it, there lived William Brewster. He was a man of education, who had been for a short time in residence at Cambridge; he had served as one of the under secretaries of state for years; had been trusted beyond all others by Secretary Davison, his patron; and, when Elizabeth disgraced Davison, in order to avoid responsibility for the death of Mary of Scotland, Brewster had been the one friend who clung to the fallen secretary as long as there was opportunity to do him service. Making no further effort to establish himself at court, Brewster went after a while "to live in the country in good esteeme amongst his freinds and the good gentle-men of those parts, espetially the godly and religious." His abode after his retirement was the old manor place now destroyed, but then the most conspicuous building at Scrooby. It belonged in his time to Sir Samuel Sandys, the elder brother of Sir Edwin Sandys, whose work as the master spirit in the later history of the Virginia Company has already been recounted. At Scrooby Brewster succeeded his father in the office of "Post," an office that obliged him to receive and deliver letters for a wide district of country, to keep relays of horses for travelers by post on the great route to the north, and to furnish inn accommodations. In the master of the post at Scrooby we have the first of those influences that lifted a group of people from this rustic region into historic importance. He had been acquainted with the great world, and had borne a responsible if not a conspicuous part in delicate diplomatic affairs in the Netherlands. At court, as at Scrooby, he was a Puritan, and now in his retirement his energies were devoted to the promotion of religion. He secured earnest ministers for many of the neighboring parishes. But that which he builded the authorities tore down. Whitgift was archbishop, and the High Commission Courts were proceeding against Puritans with the energy of the Spanish Inquisition. "The godly preachers" about him were silenced. The people who followed them were proscribed, and all the pains and expense of Brewster and his Puritan friends in establishing religion as they understood it were likely to be rendered futile by the governors of the church. "He and many more of those times begane to looke further into things," says Bradford. Persecution begot Separatism. The theory was the result of conditions, as new theories are wont to be. Here, as elsewhere, the secession appears to have begun with meetings for devotion. By this supposition we may reconcile two dates which have been supposed to conflict, conjecturing that in 1602, when Brewster had lived about fifteen years in the old manor house, his neighbors, who did not care to attend the ministry of ignorant and licentious priests, began to spend whole Sundays together, now in one place and now in another, but most frequently in the old manor house builded within a moat, and reached by ascending a flight of stone steps. Here, Brewster's hospitality was dispensed to them freely. They may or may not have been members of the Separatist church at Gainsborough, as some have supposed. It was not until 1606 that these people formed the fully organized Separatist church of Scrooby. It was organized after the Barrowist pattern that had originated in London— it was after a divine pattern, according to their belief. Brewster, the nucleus of the church, became their ruling elder. It was in these all-day meetings at the old manor house that the Separatist rustics of Scrooby were molded for suffering and endeavor. The humble, modest, and conscientious Brewster was the king post of the new church-the first and longest enduring of the influences that shaped the character of these people in England, Holland, and America. Brewster could probably have returned to the court under other auspices after Davison's fall, but as master of the post at Scrooby, then as a teacher and as founder of a printing office of prohibited English books in Leyden, and finally as a settler in the wilderness, inuring his soft hands to rude toils, until he died in his cabin an octogenarian, he led a life strangely different from that of a courtier. But no career possible to him at court could have been so useful or so long remembered. But Brewster was not the master spirit. About the time the Separatists of Scrooby completed their church organization, in 1606, there came to it John Robinson. He had been a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and a beneficed clergyman of Puritan views. He, too, had been slowly propelled to Separatist opinion by persecution. For fourteen years before the final migration he led the Pilgrims at Scrooby and Leyden. Wise man of affairs, he directed his people even in their hard struggle for bread in a foreign country. He was one of the few men, in that age of debate about husks and shells, who penetrated to those teachings concerning character and conduct which are the vital and imperishable elements of religion. Even when assailed most roughly in debate he was magnani mous and forbearing. He avoided the bigotry and bitterness of the early Brownists, and outgrew as years went on the narrowness of rigid Separatism. He lived on the best terms with the Dutch and French churches. He opposed rather the substantial abuses than the ceremonies of the Church of England, and as life advanced he came to extend a hearty fellowship and communion to good men in that church. Had it been his lot to remain in the national church and rise, as did his opponent, Joseph Hall, to the pedestal of a bishopric or to other dignity, he would have been one of the most illustrious divines of the age, wanting something of the statesmanly breadth of Hooker, but quite outspreading and overtopping the Whitgifts, Bancrofts, and perhaps even the Halls. Robert Baillie, who could say many hard things against Separatists, is forced to confess that "Robinson was a man of excellent parts, and the most learned, polished, and modest spirit that ever separated from the Church of England;" and long after his death the Dutch theologian Hornbeeck recalls again and again his integrity, learning, and modesty. Shall we say that when subjected to this great man's influence the rustics of Scrooby and Bawtry and Austerfield were clowns no longer? Perhaps we shall be truer to the probabilities of human nature if we conclude that Robinson was able to mold a few of the best of them to great uses, and that these became the significant digits which gave value to the ciphers. THE WILD ROSE OF PLYMOUTH. BY JONES VERY. [1813-1880.] UPON the Plymouth shore the wild rose blooms, That roved the land before the Pilgrims came, And here for ages found a dwelling place, Of whom our histories tell us but a name! Though new this hour, out from the past it springs, And happy visions of the future brings, That reach beyond, e'en to the verge of time, THE LANDING OF THE PILGRIM FATHERS. BY FELICIA D. HEMANS. [FELICIA DOROTHEA BROWNE, afterwards Hemans: born 1793, died 1835.] THE breaking waves dashed high On a stern and rock-bound coast, And the heavy night hung dark The hills and waters o'er, When a band of exiles moored their bark Not as the conqueror comes, They, the true-hearted, came; Not with the roll of the stirring drums, Not as the flying come, In silence and in fear; They shook the depths of the desert gloom With their hymns of lofty cheer. Amidst the storm they sang, And the stars heard and the sea; And the sounding aisles of the dim woods rang To the anthem of the free! The ocean eagle soared From his nest by the white wave's foam; There were men with hoary hair Away from their childhood's land? |