Nooks and Corners of the New England Coast

The Pilgrims brought the name of their settlement along with them, though Captain John Smith gives it first the Indian name of Accomack, changed by Prince Charles to Plimouth, as it appears on the map accompanying "Advertisements for the Unexperienced." The port was, however, earlier known to both French and English. Samoset told the Pilgrims, at his first interview with them, the Indian name was Patuxet.[174 - Mourt.] Prince, indeed, assigns a date (December 31st) for the formal assumption of the English name.[175 - I do not find any exact authority for this.]

Plymouth, England, from which the Pilgrims finally set sail on the 6th of September, 1619, is situated at the extreme north-west corner of Devonshire, and is divided from Cornwall only by the river Tamar. The name has no other significance than the mouth of the river Plym. Exmouth and Dartmouth have the like derivation. Plymouth was long the residence of Sir Francis Drake, and was the birthplace of Sir John Hawkins; also of the painters Northcote, Prout, and B. Haydon. Captain John Davis, the intrepid navigator, and Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who, Queen Elizabeth said, was a "man of noe good happ by sea," were also of Devonshire. It is of the two rivers upon which the "Three Towns" stand that old Michael Drayton writes:

    "Plym that claims by right
    The christening of that Bay, which bears her noble name."

In spite of historic antecedents, English Plymouth was distasteful to Lord Nelson, who says, in one of his letters to Lady Hamilton, "I hate Plymouth." American Plymouth should owe no grudge to his memory, for he did a very noble act to one of her townsmen. While cruising on our coast in the Albemarle, in 1782, Nelson captured a fishing schooner belonging to Plymouth. The cargo of the vessel constituted nearly the whole property of Captain Carver, the master, who had a large family at home anxiously awaiting his return. There being no officer on board the Albemarle acquainted with Boston Bay, Nelson ordered the master of the prize to act as pilot. He performed the service to the satisfaction of his captor, who requited him by giving him his vessel and cargo back again, with a certificate to prevent recapture by other British cruisers. Sir N. Harris Nicolas relates that Nelson accompanied this generous act with words equally generous: "You have rendered me, sir, a very essential service, and it is not the custom of English seamen to be ungrateful. In the name, therefore, and with the approbation of the officers of this ship, I return your schooner, and with it this certificate of your good conduct.[176 - "This is to certify that I took the schooner Harmony, Nathaniel Carver, master, belonging to Plymouth, but, on account of his good services, have given him up his vessel again."Horatio Nelson."Dated on board H.M. ship Albemarle, 17th August, 1782."] Farewell! and may God bless you."

The choice of the site of Plymouth by the Pilgrims was due rather to the pressing necessities of their situation than to a well-considered determination. Arriving on our coast in the beginning of winter, after nearly six weeks passed in explorations that enfeebled the hardiest among them, they found their provisions failing, while the increasing rigor of the season called for a speedy decision. As it was not their destination, so it may readily be conceived they were not prepared beforehand with such knowledge of the coast as might now be most serviceable to them. Cheated by their captain, they had thrown away the valuable time spent in searching the barren cape for a harbor fit for settlement. Smith, in his egotism, administers a rebuke to them in this wise:

"Yet at the first landing at Cape Cod, being an hundred passengers, besides twenty they had left behind at Plimouth for want of good take heed, thinking to find all things better than I advised them, spent six or seven weeks in wandering up and downe in frost and snow, wind and raine, among the woods, cricks, and swamps, forty of them died, and three-score were left in a most miserable estate at New Plimouth, where their ship left them, and but nine leagues by sea from where they landed, whose misery and variable opinions, for want of experience, occasioned much faction, till necessity agreed them."

It is not easily understood why they should have remained in so unpromising a location after a better knowledge of the country had been obtained. To the north was Massachusetts, called by Smith "the paradise of those parts." South-west of them was the fertile Narraganset country, with fair Aquidneck within their patent. In thirteen or fourteen years the whole of Plymouth colony would not have made one populous town. But there are indications that a removal was kept in view. Their brethren in Leyden, who saw the hand of God in their first choice, advised them not to abandon it. In 1633 they established a trading-house on the Connecticut, and when afterward dispossessed by Massachusetts, alleged as a reason for holding a post there that "they lived upon a barren place, where they were by necessity cast, and neither they nor theirs could long continue upon the same, and why should they be deprived of that which they had provided and intended to remove to as soon as they were able?"[177 - Governor Bradford's "History of Plymouth."] Yet, like fatalists they continued on the very shores to which Providence had directed them.

When the Pilgrims explored the bay, they were at first undetermined whether to make choice of Clark's Island, the shores of the little river at Kingston, or the spot on the main-land which became their ultimate abode. The high ground of Plymouth shore, the "sweete brooke" under the hill-side, and the large tract of land ready cleared for their use, settled the question; the high hill from which they might see Cape Cod, and withal very fit for a citadel, clenched their decision.

It did not seem to occur to the Pilgrims that to pitch their residence in a place desolated by the visitation of God was at all ill-omened. In their circuit of the bay they did not see an Indian or an Indian wigwam, though they met with traces of a former habitation. Added to the sadness and gloom of the landscape, the frozen earth, the bare and leafless trees, was a silence not alone of nature, but of death. The plague had cleared the way for them; they built upon graves.

This terrible forerunner of the English is alluded to by several of the old writers. It swept the coast from the Fresh Water River to the Penobscot, with a destructiveness like to that witnessed in London a few years later. Sir F. Gorges tells us that the Indians inhabiting the region round about the embouchure of the Saco were sorely afflicted with it, "so that the country was in a manner left void of inhabitants." Vines, Sir Ferdinando's agent, with his companions, slept in the cabins with those that died; but, to their good fortune, as the narrative quaintly sets forth, "not one of them ever felt their heads to ache while they stayed there." This was in the year 1616-'17. Levett says the Indians at "Aquamenticus" were all dead when he was there. Samoset explains, in his broken English, to the Pilgrims that the lawful occupants of Patuxet had, four years before, been swept away by an extraordinary plague. The Indians had never seen or heard of the disease before. Villages withered away when the blight fell upon them; tribes were obliterated, and nations were reduced to tribes. Doubtless, this disaster had much to do with the peaceable settlement of Plymouth, Salem, and Boston. Had the Pilgrims been everywhere resisted, as at Nauset, they could hardly have planted their colony in Plymouth Bay.

There was another cause to which the English owed their safety, as related to them by many aged Indians. A French ship had been cast away on Cape Cod. The crew succeeded in landing, but the Indians, less merciful than the sea, butchered all but three of them. Two were ransomed by Dermer, one of Sir F. Gorges's captains. The other remained with the savages, acquired their language, and died among them. Before his death he foretold that God was angry, and would destroy them, and give their heritage to a strange people. They derided him, and answered boastfully, they were so strong and numerous that the Manitou could not kill them all. Soon after the pestilence depopulated the country. Then came the Englishmen in their ships. The savages assembled in a dark swamp, where their conjurors, with incantations lasting several days, solemnly cursed the pale-faces, devoting them to destruction. Thus the English found safety in the superstitious awe of the natives. The story of the terrible plague is as yet unwritten. Governor Bradford says that when Winslow went to confer with Massasoit, he passed by numbers of unburied skulls and bones of those who had died.

Captain Levett is corroborative of the Pilgrims' settled intention to depart from their original place of settlement. He observes in his "Voyage into New England: " "Neither was I at New Plymouth, but I fear that place is not so good as many others; for if it were, in my conceit, they would content themselves with it, and not seek for any other, having ten times so much ground as would serve ten times so many people as they have now among them. But it seems they have no fish to make benefit of; for this year they had one ship fish at Pemaquid, and another at Cape Ann, where they have begun a new plantation, but how long it will continue I know not."

It is evident from the testimony that the settlement at Plymouth was ill-considered, and that the Pilgrims were themselves far from satisfied with it. In this, too, we have the solution of the rapid overshadowing of the Old Colony by its neighbors, and the fading away of its political and commercial importance.

There is no manner of doubt that Plymouth had been visited by whites long before the advent of the Mayflower's band. Hutchinson erroneously says De Monts "did not go into the Massachusetts bay, but struck over from some part of the eastern shore to Cape Ann, and so to Cape Cod, and sailed farther southward." Definite is this!

It was the object of De Monts to examine the coast, and his pilot seems to have kept in with it as closely as possible, making a harbor every night where one was to be found. The Indian pilot proved to have little knowledge of the shores or of the language of the tribes to the westward of the Saco; for on being confronted with the natives of the Massachusetts country, he was not able to understand them. Gorges recounts that his natives from Pemaquid and from Martha's Vineyard at first hardly comprehended each other.

Hutchinson, it is probable, saw the edition of "Champlain's Voyages" of 1632, contenting himself with a cursory examination of it. An attentive reading of the text of the edition of 1613 would have undeceived him as to the movements of De Monts. Although the reprint of 1632 gives the substance of the voyage, it is so mutilated in its details as to afford scanty satisfaction to the student.

After leaving Cape Ann, De Monts entered Boston Bay and saw Charles River, named by his company "Rivière du Gas," in compliment to their chief. From thence they continued their route to a place that has for the moment a greater interest. Given the latitude, the physical features, and the distance from Cape Ann, we are at no loss to put the finger on Plymouth Bay, of which the geographer of the expedition is the first to give us a description.

The wind coming contrary, they dropped anchor in a little roadstead.[178 - Green's Harbor, perhaps.] While lying there they were boarded by canoes that had been out fishing for cod. These, going to shore, notified their companions, who assembled on the sands, dancing and gesticulating in token of amity and welcome. A canoe from the bark landed with a few trifles with which the simple natives were well pleased, and begged their strange visitors to come and visit them within their river. The man-stealers had not yet been among them. They offered a simple but sincere hospitality.

Let us have recourse to the musty pages and antiquated French of Champlain, following in the wake of the bark as it weathers the Gurnet, and doubles Saquish, with the cheery cry of the leadsman, and the eyes of De Monts, Champlain, and Champdoré fixed on the shores of coming renown:

"Nous levames l'ancre pour ce faire, mais nous n'y peusmes entrer à cause du peu d'eau que nous y trouvames estans de basse mer et fumes contrainctes de mouiller l'ancre à l'entrée d'icelle. Je decendis à terre où j'eu vis quantité d'autres qui nous reçeurent fort gratieusement: et fus recognoistre la rivière, où n'y a vey autre chose qu'un bras d'eau qui s'estant quelque peu dans les terres qui font en partie desertées: dedans lequel il n'y a qu'un ruisseau qui ne peut porter basteaux sinon de pleine mer. Ce lieu peut avoir une lieue de circuit. En l'une des entrées duquel y a une manière d'icelle couverte de bois et principalement de pins qui tient d'un coste à des dunes de sable, qui font assez longues: l'autre coste est une terre assez haute. II y a deux islets dans lad. Baye, qu'on ne voit point si l'on n'est dedans, où autour la mer asséche presque toute de basse mer. Ce lieu est fort remarquable de la mer; d'autant que la coste est fort basse, hormis le cap de l'entrée de la Baye qu'avons nommé le port du cap St. Louys distant dud. cap deux lieues et dix du Cap aux Isles. Il est environ par le hauteur du Cap St. Louys."

TRANSLATION.[179 - Followed as literally as possible, to preserve the style.]

We raised the anchor to do this, but we could not enter therein by reason of the little water which we found there, being low sea, and were constrained to let go the anchor at the entrance of it. I went ashore, where I saw numbers of natives who received us very graciously, and surveyed the river, which is nothing more than an arm of water that makes a little way in the lands which are in part deserted, within which it is only a rivulet that can not float vessels except at full sea. This place may be a league in circuit. At one of the entrances is a sort of island, which is covered with wood, principally pines, which holds to a coast of sandy downs of some length; the other shore is pretty high land. There are two isles in the said Bay which are not perceived until you are within, which the sea leaves almost entirely at low tide. This place is very remarkable from the sea, inasmuch as the coast is very low, except the cape at the entrance of the Bay, which we have named Port Cape St. Louis, distant from the said Cape two leagues, and ten from the Cape of Islands. It is about the latitude of Cape St. Louis.[180 - Named by De Monts, and supposed to be Brant Point.]

In this description the Gurnet and Manomet stand out for easy recognition. The sandy downs of Duxbury Beach, the shallow harbor, the river, even the soundings establish the identity of Port St. Louis with Plymouth; and the two islands become further evidence, if more were needed.

To account for the hostility of the Indians inhabiting the Cape when the Pilgrims were reconnoitring there, it is only necessary to cite a few facts. Cabot stole three savages and carried them to England, where, says Stow, in ludicrous astonishment, after two years' residence they could not be told from Englishmen. In 1508, it is said, Thomas Aubert, a pilot of Dieppe, excited great curiosity by bringing over several natives to France. Cartier took two back with him to France, but with their own consent; and they were eventually, I believe, restored to their native country. Weymouth, in 1605, seized five at Pemaquid; Harlow, in 1611, five more; and Hunt, the greatest thief of them all, kidnaped in this very harbor of Plymouth, in the year 1614, twenty-four of those silly savages, and sold them in Spain for reals of eight. After such treachery it is not strange the red men looked on these new-comers as their natural enemies. It is more extraordinary that Samoset, on entering their weak village some months after their landing, should have greeted them with the memorable "Welcome, Englishmen!"

The Pilgrims saw in the evidences of prior intercourse with Europeans, that they were not the pioneers in this wilderness of New England. They found implements and utensils of civilized manufacture, though no fire-arms. These articles were probably obtained by barter with the fishing or trading ships.

On William Wood's map of 1634,[181 - "The south part of New England, as it is planted this yeare, 1634."] Old Plymouth is laid down on the eastern shore of Narraganset Bay, while New Plymouth has its proper position. "New Plimouth" is placed on Blauw's map at the head of a small bay, into which a large river flows. One of the headlands of the bay is named C. Blanco Gallis, and the bay itself Crane Bay. Josselyn has also this reference to Old Plymouth:

"At the farther end of the bay, by the mouth of Narraganset River, on the south side thereof was Old Plymouth plantation, Anno 1602." He may have borrowed his itinerary in part from Wood, who, as I take it, referred to Gosnold's attempt at the mouth of Buzzard's Bay. In his summary, under date of 1607, Josselyn notes, "Plimouth plantation in New England attempted."

I spent some hours among the grave-stones on Burial Hill. Here, as in the streets of the living inhabitants, the old familiar names of the Mayflower's passengers are to be met with. And in every burial-place in the land, I make no doubt, are to be found Howlands and Winslows, Bradfords and Brewsters, side by side. I have felt myself much moved in thinking on the story of those stern men and self-contained, trustful women. Their whole lives might justly be called a pilgrimage. Consider their gathering in the Old England they loved so well; then their dispersion, suffering, and hurried flight into Holland; afterward the staking their all on the issue of their venture in the New World, and the painful, anxious lives they led; despoiling the young of their youth, and the elders of a peaceful old age.

This spot, as is well known, was not the Pilgrims' original place of interment. They who first died were buried on Cole's Hill, nearer the shore, and to the strait limits of their little hamlet. They lost one half their number during the first dismal winter, and there was room enough without going far to make their graves. Tradition says that, fearing their wretchedness might inspire the Indians with the hope of exterminating them, those early graves were first leveled and then planted upon in order to conceal their losses. It is said that sixty years elapsed before a grave-stone with an inscription was set up in Plymouth; certain it is that none older has been found than that of Edward Gray, merchant, who died in 1681.

The obliterated grave-yard on Cole's Hill, which was nothing more than a sea-bluff overhanging the shore, was flooded by a freshet about 1735, laying bare many of the graves, and carrying along with it to the sea many of the remains. It is the supposed resting-place of Carver, the first governor of Plymouth, and of his wife, who did not long survive him. It contained the ashes of fifty of the one hundred and two that had landed in December. In the time of the first winter's sickness, says Hutchinson, there were not above seven men capable of bearing arms. And yet, when they were almost too few to bury their own dead, they talked of war with Canonicus as if it were mere bagatelle, answering defiance with defiance. I fancy those Pilgrims were of the right stuff!

On Burial Hill is a monument to the memory of Governor Bradford, who succeeded Carver, and was annually chosen from 1621 until his death, in 1657 – except during the years 1633, 1636, 1638, and 1644, when Edward Winslow, and in 1634, when Thomas Prence, administered the colony affairs. In seventy years there were only six different persons governors of Plymouth. Roger White, the friend of Bradford, writes him a letter from Leyden, December, 1625, counseling rotation in office, more than hinting that the constant re-election of himself to the chief office in the colony tended to an oligarchy.[182 - "Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society."] Bradford was among the earliest to go into Holland for conscience' sake. He was of good estate, and had learned the art of silk-dyeing in Amsterdam. His residence in the New World began in affliction, for, before a site for settlement had been fixed upon, his wife, Dorothy May, fell from the vessel into the sea and was drowned. His monument was erected, some years ago, by descendants.

In a conspicuous position is the monument raised, in 1858, by the descendants of Robert Cushman, and of Thomas Cushman, his son, for forty-three years ruling elder of the church of the Pilgrims. Of all the original memorial tablets in this old cemetery, those of Thomas Cushman, who came in 1621, in the Fortune, and of Thomas Clark, a passenger by the Ann, in 1623, alone were remaining. The grave of John Howland, an emigrant of the Mayflower, has been identified, and furnished with a handsome head-stone. In some instances boards bearing simply the name and age of the deceased have replaced the aged and no longer legible stones, as in the cases of Elder Thomas Faunce, William Crowe, and others. The stone of Thomas Clark was the most curious I saw, and in general the inscriptions do not possess other interest than the recollections they summon up. The grave of Dr. Adoniram Judson is also here.

Burial Hill is also memorable as the site of the second[183 - See Popham's settlement on the Kennebec; the Episcopal service was doubtless the first religious exercise in New England.] regular church edifice in New England, built to serve the double purpose of church and citadel. From this cause the eminence was long called Fort Hill. By February, 1621, after the defiance of Canonicus, the town was inclosed within a palisade, taking in the top of the hill under which it was situated. In 1622 the colonists built their church-fortress; it should have been dedicated with Luther's anthem:

"God is a castle and defense,
When troubles and distress invade,
He'll help and free us from offense,
And ever shield us with his aid."

Ever willing to turn an honest penny, the Dutch, in 1627, opened a correspondence between Fort Amsterdam and Plymouth, with offers of trade. They followed it with an embassy in the person of Isaac de Rasieres, who, says Bradford, was their chief merchant, and second to their governor. He came into Plymouth "honorably attended with a noise of trumpeters." It is in a letter of De Rasieres, found at The Hague by Mr. Brodhead, that we obtain a circumstantial account of town and fortress as they then existed.

"Upon the hill," he writes, "they have a large, square house, with a flat roof, made of thick sawn planks, stayed with oak beams, upon the top of which they have six cannons, which shoot iron balls of four and five pounds, and command the surrounding country. The lower part they use for their church, where they preach on Sundays and the usual holidays."[184 - Captain John Smith, speaking of the town in 1624, says of this fortress, there was "within a high mount a fort, with a watch-tower, well built of stone, lome, and wood, their ordnance well mounted."]

A looker-on here in 1807 found in this burying-ground and on the summit of the hill the remains of the ditch that surrounded the ancient fortification erected in 1675, on the approach of Philip's war. This was a work of greater magnitude than that of the first adventurers, inclosing a space one hundred feet square, strongly palisaded with pickets ten and a half feet high. As late as 1844 the whole circuit of this work was distinctly visible.[185 - During some excavations made on the hill, remains of the watch-tower of brick came to light, indicating its position to have been in the vicinity of the Judson monument. There also existed on the hill, until about 1860, a powder-house of antique fashion, built in 1770. It had an oval slab of slate imbedded in the wall, with a Latin inscription; and there were also engraved upon it a powder-horn, cartridge, and a cannon. – "Pilgrim Memorial."] The head of Wittuwamet, one of the chiefs killed by Standish's party at Weymouth in 1623, was set up on the battlements of the fort, as was afterward that of the renowned King Philip. The vaunting, the exasperating mockery of a savage, is in these lines:

'Who is there here to fight with the brave Wattawamat?'
Then he unsheathed his knife, and, whetting the blade on his left hand,
Held it aloft and displayed a woman's face on the handle,
Saying, with bitter expression and look of sinister meaning,
'I have another at home, with the face of a man on the handle;
By-and-by they shall marry; and there will be plenty of children.'

According to Edward Winslow, the English stood to their guns when Indians came among them. To allay distrust in the minds of the savages, they were told it was an act of courtesy observed by the English, both on land and sea. The sentinel who paced his lonely round here in 1622 should have had steady nerves. The nearest outpost was his fellow-watcher on the ramparts of Fort Amsterdam. He could hardly pass the word on "All's well!" to Jamestown or Saint Augustine, or hear the challenge from Port Royal, in Acadia. Behind him was the wilderness, out of which it was a wonder the Indians did not burst, it was so easy to overwhelm the devoted little band of Englishmen and brush them away into the sea. I make no account of the few scattered cabins along the northern coast, and the Pilgrims made no account of them. Thus they lived for ten years within the narrow limits of an intrenched camp, a picket lodged within an enemy's country, until the settlement in Massachusetts Bay enabled them to draw breath. Why might they not say to those after-comers,

    "We are the Jasons; we have won the fleece?"

The procession of the Pilgrims to their church was a sight that must have exceedingly stirred the sluggish blood of the Dutch emissary. He found them attentive to proffers of trade; acute, as might be expected of the first Yankees, where profits were in question; but there was no doubt about the quality of their piety. At the hour of worship the silent village was assembled by drum-beat, as was befitting in the Church Militant. At this signal the house-doors open and give passage to each family. The men wear their sad-colored mantles, and are armed to the teeth, as if going to battle. Silently they take their places in front of the captain's door, three abreast, with matchlocks shouldered. The tall, stern-visaged ones, we may suppose, lead the rest. In front is the sergeant. Behind the armed men comes Bradford, in a long robe. At his right hand is Elder Brewster, with his cloak on. At the governor's left marches Miles Standish, his rapier lifting up the corner of his mantle, and carrying a small cane in his hand. The women in sober gowns, kerchiefs, and hoods, their garments poor, but scrupulously neat, follow next; the lowlier yielding precedence to those of better condition. At command, they take their way up the hill in this order, and, entering within the rude temple they have raised, each man sets down his musket where he may lay hand upon it. "Thus," says De Rasieres, "they are on their guard night and day."

Thomas Lechford, "of Clement's Inn, Gent," in his "Plain Dealing," says he once looked in the church-door in Boston where the sacrament was being administered. He thus noted down what he saw: "They come together about nine o'clock by ringing of a bell. Pastor prayed for a quarter of an hour. The teacher then readeth and expoundeth a chapter; then a psalm is sung, which one of the ruling Elders dictates. Afterward the pastor preaches a sermon, or exhorts ex tempore."

This is the way in which they made contributions: "On Sundays, in the afternoon, when the sermon is ended, the people in the galleries come down and march two abreast up one aisle and down the other, until they come before the desk, for pulpit they have none. Before the desk is a long pue where the elders and deacons sit, one of them with a money-box in his hand, into which the people, as they pass, put their offering, some a shill, some 2s., some half a crown, five s., according to their ability. Then they conclude with a prayer."

Lechford adds that the congregation used to pass up by the deacon's seat, giving either money, or valuable articles, or paper promises to pay, and so to their seats again, the chief men or magistrates first. The same author describes the method of excommunication practiced in some of the New England churches. "At New Haven, alias Quinapeag," he says, "where Master Davenport is pastor, the excommunicate is held out of the meeting, at the doore, if he will heare, in frost, snow, and raine."

The Pilgrims are often called Puritans, a term of reproach first applied to the whole body of Dissenters, but in their day belonging strictly to those who renounced the forms and ceremonies while believing in the doctrines and sacraments of the Church of England. Boston was settled by Puritans, who, according to Governor Winthrop, adhered to the mother-church when they left Old England. It is curious to observe that the Boston Puritans became rigid Separatists, while the Plymouth Separatists became more and more moderate. The Pilgrims were originally of the sect called Brownists, from Robert Brown, a school-master in Southwark about 1580, and a relation of Cecil, Lord Burghley.[186 - Robert Brown, the founder of the sect, after thirty-two imprisonments, eventually conformed. Henry Penay, Henry Barrow, and other Brownists, were cruelly executed for alleged sedition, May 29th, 1593. Elizabeth's celebrated Act of 1593 visited a refusal to make a declaration of conformity with the Church of England with banishment and forfeiture of citizenship; death if the offender returned into the realm.] Cardinal Bentivoglio erroneously calls the Holland refugees a distinct sect by the name of Puritans. Hutchinson, usually well informed, observes, "If all in England who called themselves Brownists and Independents at that day had come over with them (the Pilgrims), they would scarcely have made one considerable town." Yet in 1592 there were said to be twenty thousand Independents in England.

The Church of the Pilgrims, formed, in 1602, of people living on the borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, made their way, after innumerable difficulties, into Holland. Their pastor, John Robinson, is usually regarded as the author of Independency. A residence on the scene of the Reformation softened, in many respects, the inflexible religious character of the Brownists. They discarded the name rendered odious on many accounts. It is stated, on the authority of Edward Winslow, that Robinson and his Church did not require renunciation of the Church of England, acknowledging the other reformed churches, and allowing occasional communion with them. It is also evident from what Bradford says that the Pilgrims chose the Huguenots as their models in Church affairs.[187 - Sir Matthew Hale used to say, "Those of the Separation were good men, but they had narrow souls, or they would not break the peace of the Church about such inconsiderable matters as the points of difference were." In this country the Independents took the name of Congregationalists. They held, among other things, that one church may advise or reprove another, but had no power to excommunicate. The churches outside of Plymouth did, however, practice excommunication.]