Historic Towns of New England

It must be confessed that, in 1732, Concord was hardly so constituted as naturally to give birth to Washingtons; indeed, Virginia produced but this one, amid all her great men. The extreme narrowness of Puritan opinion, even when modified by Baptists and Quakers, was not favorable to the rise of men like the great Virginians of the eighteenth century. A milder intellectual climate, a temper less given to disputes about faith and works, election and reprobation, was needful to produce characters so broad, so moderate, and yet so firm, as Washington’s. New England did give birth to Franklin, in the very midst of Mathers and Sewalls; but he had to slip away to Philadelphia, in order to grow into his full stature as philanthropist and philosopher. The intolerance of New England deprived us, for more than a century, of the opportunity to produce genius and the gentler forms of heroism. We had the Adamses to set the Revolution on foot, the soldiers of New Hampshire and rural New England to fight its battles; but its noblest leader must come to us from the Potomac, and take us back there, when the long fight was won, to establish our government beside its waters, in sight of his own broad domain. It was not till this century, now declining, that Concord could show an intellectual Washington; and Emerson must be born in Boston, less provincial than our meadowy village, our “rural Venice,” as Thoreau called it in times of river-freshet.

Naturally, when men appear on earth of Washington’s or of Emerson’s stamp, there has been a long preparation for their advent. They are not found among Hottentots or corn-crackers, ‘longshoremen or cowboys; but in some long-tilled garden of the human species, where certain qualities have been inbred by descent and betterment for many generations. Poverty may be their birthright, as in the case of that greatest of Washington’s successors, Abraham Lincoln, but the experiences that are transmuted by descent into greatness are quite as often those of poverty as of wealth. Self-reliance, veracity, courage, and the gift of command are essentials in the founders and preservers of nations; these are fostered in all new colonies, and therefore were common qualities in New England, as in Kentucky and Virginia, in their early years. But among the planters of Virginia there grew up a form of society, now forever extinct there, in which these high qualities, together with courtesy and breadth of view, were cultivated and flourished to an extent which the Calvinistic rigors and enforced economies of New England never knew. That petty system of inquiring into creeds and points of doctrine which our ancestors brought with them from the Puritan parishes of England, and which was increased here by infusions from Scotland, and the tyranny of ecclesiastical control in Massachusetts and Connecticut, was not wholly unknown in Virginia; but its ill effects were dissipated by the customs of large landholding, outdoor sports, and certain traditions of honor and breeding which the best of the Virginians brought with them from England, and kept up by their habit of frequent intercourse with the mother-country.

It was no sin in Virginia to dance and play the fiddle; the Anglican Church, while prescribing a formal creed, did not concern itself to inquire every Sunday, or every Thursday, into all the dogmatic abstractions of the Westminster Assembly’s Catechism, longer or shorter; men’s minds were left to take the course most natural to them. But in New England, along with much acute speculation (the best type of which is Jonathan Edwards), there went a morbid conscientiousness, turning its eyes upon inward and even petty matters, and leading to numberless quarrels about Original Sin, Half-way Covenants, Justification by Faith, etc. Concord was less infested by this carping, persecuting, quarrelsome spirit than most of New England; yet the church records, and the collections of old Dr. Ripley, show there was much of it. Emerson declares, and justly, that good sense has marked our town annals: “I find no ridiculous laws, no eaves-dropping legislators, no hanging of witches, no ghosts, no whipping of Quakers, no unnatural crimes.” But the spirit which led to these mischiefs in other regions of Massachusetts and Connecticut was all about us; and it narrowed the minds and the opportunities of Concord before the Revolution. It was chiefly in New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont, where ecclesiastical domination was less rigid, that mental freedom manifested itself. In the other colonies of the North, wealth and culture were apt to be on the side of England, when our troubles began; in Virginia and the Carolinas, and to some extent in New Hampshire and Maine, wealth took the colonial side.

We may call the imaginative force and breadth of the Concord authors “Shakespearian” for lack of a better word; but there was a man of singular mental penetration sometimes visiting here, – Jones Very, of Salem, – who once made a wider generalization – whether wisely or not. When Very was asked to discriminate betwixt Wisdom and Genius, he said, “Wisdom is of God; Genius is the decay of Wisdom”; adding in explanation, “To the pre-existent Shakespeare, wisdom was offered; he did not accept it, and so he died away into genius.” We had a superior sage here (Bronson Alcott), who had little of the Shakespearian genius, but much of that mystic wisdom which Very thought older and nobler than genius. Religion was his native air, – the religion of identity, not of variety; he could not be polytheistic, as many Christians are, even while fancying themselves the most orthodox worshippers of the One God. He had that intense application of the soul to one side of this sphere of life, which led him to neglect the exercise of intellectual powers that were amply his. His gift it was, not to expand our life into multiplicity, – which was the tendency of Emerson, as of Goethe and Shakespeare, – but to concentrate multiplicity in unity, seeking ever the one source whence flow these myriad manifestations. His friends used to call him, in sport, the “Vortical philosopher,” because his speculations all moved vortically toward a centre, or were occupied with repeating one truth in many forms. He was a votary of the higher Reason; not without certain foibles of the saint; but belonging unmistakably to the saintly order. Of course he was the mock of the market-place, as all but the belligerent saints are; but he was a profound, vivifying influence in the lives of the few who recognized his inward light.

From Alcott, in his old age, – he was in his eightieth year when the experiment began, – came the impulse to that later manifestation of the same spirit which had led Emerson and his youthful friends to the heights and depths of Transcendentalism. I speak of the Concord School of Philosophy, which, in the last years of Emerson and Alcott, and with the co-operation of disciples of other philosophic opinion, gave to the town a celebrity in some degree commensurate with its earlier reputation. It began in the library of Alcott’s Orchard House, where his genial daughter, Louisa, had written several of her charming books; it was continued in a chapel, built for the purpose, under the lee of Alcott’s pineclad hill, and amid his orchard and vineyard. It brought to reside in Concord that first of American philosophers, Dr. W. T. Harris; and it gathered hundreds of eager or curious hearers to attend the lectures and debates on grave subjects which a learned body of teachers gave forth. It continued in existence from the summer of 1879 to that of 1888, when its lessons were fitly closed with a memorial service for Bronson Alcott, its founder, who had died in March, 1888. As was said by the Boston wit of the fight on the 19th of April, – “The Battle of Lexington; Concord furnished the ground, and Acton the men,” – so it might be said of this summer university, that Concord provided chiefly the place in which St. Louis and Illinois, New York and Boston, Harvard and Yale, held converse on high topics. Yet Concord gave the school hospitality, and several of its famous authors took part in the exercises, – sometimes posthumously, by the reading of their manuscripts, as in the case of Thoreau.

Along with the events and the literature that have given our town a name throughout the world, there has flowed quietly the stream of civil society, local self-government and domestic life; broadened at critical times by manifestations of political energy, in which families like those of Hoar, Heywood, Barrett, Whiting, Robinson, Gourgas, etc., have distinguished themselves. Benefactors like Munroe, who built the Public Library, Dr. Ripley, who for half a century filled the pulpit and took pastoral care, and John Tileston, who brought the public schools to their present useful form; soldiers of the Civil War, like Colonel Prescott and Lieutenant Ripley, and hundreds of unnamed soldiers in the battle of life, – women no less than men, – have given their innumerable touch of vigor and grace to the ever-building structure of Concord life. Painters of our own have added color, and sculptors like French, Elwell and Ricketson have adorned the town with art. And so we pass on into the new century, with no conscious loss of vital power, – yet with a keen regret for the great men who have gone from among us.

PLYMOUTH

THE PILGRIM TOWN

By ELLEN WATSON

“Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to right the wrong; —
Nay, but she aimed not at glory, no lover of glory she;
Give her the glory of going on, and still to be.”

    Tennyson’s Wages.
TO the stout-hearted Pilgrims who landed here in 1620 this “glory of going on, and still to be” has been meted in lavish measure. For nearly three hundred years the fire first kindled in far-away Scrooby in the hearts of John Robinson, Elder Brewster, Richard Clyfton, the youthful William Bradford and their devoted followers has burned with a clear flame; the torch of truth there lit by them has been handed on from generation to generation.

For the many latter-day pilgrims who visit the shrines of New England, the gray boulder on Clarke’s Island where the weary voyagers rested after their stormy cruise in the shallop; the humble rock on our shore where they at length found shelter; our noble statue of “clear-eyed Faith” and the not far distant monument on Bunker Hill, will ever bear like testimony to the courage of that little band of independent thinkers. Meeting in secret in the Manor-House of Scrooby, these far-sighted heroes, when they “shooke of the yoake of antichristian bondage” of the Church of England, made possible for their descendants a later Declaration of Independence!

And every year, with the new knowledge it brings, adds to the pathos of that early endeavor after religious and civil liberty. Many English scholars, generously overlooking the Separation of 1776, have traced on the mother soil of Old England the very beginnings of the Separatist movement, and thanks to their careful study of musty records and yellow parchments we now have a satisfactory, though still incomplete, record of those few eventful lives to which we proudly owe our present freedom.

One enthusiast even finds the earliest evidences of this movement in the concerted action of certain rebellious weavers of the twelfth century – thirty weavers of the diocese of Worcester – who were summoned before the Council of Oxford to answer a charge of making light of the sacraments and of priestly power. Though they answered that they were Christians and reverenced the teachings of the apostles, they were driven from the country as heretics, to perish of cold. This “pious firmness” on the part of the council, writes the short-sighted chronicler, not only cleansed the realm of England from the pestilence which had crept in, but also prevented it from creeping in again. But the pestilence did creep in again and again and the weeds grew apace, for which thanks are chiefly due to John Wyclif and his followers.

Even before the Reformation Foxe tells of “secret multitudes who tasted and followed the sweetness of God’s Holy Word, and whose fervent zeal may appear by their sitting up all night in reading and hearing.” But we must be content to trace our ancestry and our love of liberty to the early years of the seventeenth century, at which time, as we may now all read in the clear lettering of Bradford’s own pen, “truly their affliction was not smale; which notwithstanding they bore sundrie years with much patience, till they were occasioned to see further into things by the light of y

word of God. How not only these base and beggerly ceremonies were unlawfull, but also that y

lordly & tiranous power of y

prelats ought not to be submitted unto; which thus, contrary to the freedome of the gospell, would load & burden mens consciences, and by their compulsive power make a prophane mixture of persons and things in the worship of God. And that their offices & calings, courts and cannons &c. were unlawfull and antichristian; being such as have no warrante in y

word of God; but the same that were used in poperie & still retained.”

So these brave men, whose hearts the Lord had touched with heavenly zeal for His truth, “as y

Lords free people joined them selves into a church estate, in y

felowship of y

gospell, to walke in all his wayes, made known, or to be made known unto them, according to their best endeavours, whatsoever it should cost them, the Lord assisting them. And that it cost them something this ensewing historie will declare.”

The charming scene of these secret meetings is now well known. In the little village of Scrooby, where the three shires of Nottingham, York and Lincoln join their borders, then stood a stately manor-house, once the favorite hunting-seat of the archbishops of York. Under this hospitable but already somewhat crumbling roof William Brewster, who had been appointed “Post” of Scrooby in 1590, welcomed these sufferers for conscience sake. Hither they stole through the green country lanes, from far around to listen to the “illuminating ministry” of Richard Clyfton, “a grave & reverêd preacher who under God had been a means of y

conversion of many. And also that famous and worthy man, Mr. John Robinson, who afterwards was their pastor for many years till y

Lord tooke him away by death.”

Here, too, from the neighboring hamlet of Austerfield, came the lad William Bradford, already eager for spiritual guidance.

Walking under the elm-trees of the highroad, and through the yellow gorse, across green meadows and by the banks of the placid Idle, he stopped perhaps to admire the mulberry-tree planted there by the world-weary Cardinal Wolsey. That arch-enemy of the Reformation little thought that a branch of this tree would one day cross the Atlantic, to be preserved with Pilgrim relics by friends of that “new, pernicious sect of Lutherans,” against which he warned the king!

Near Bradford’s birthplace in Austerfield now stands, completely restored, the twelfth-century parish church where he was baptized in 1590, and from which he “seceded” when about seventeen years old. Did the quaint old bell-cote with the two small bells, the beautiful Norman arch of the southern doorway with its rich zigzag ornament and beak-headed moulding, the wicked-looking dragon on the tympanum, with the tongue of flame – did this perfect picture of Old-World beauty flash across his memory when, some thirty years later, he helped build the rude fort on our Burial Hill, which served as the first “Meeting-House” in New England?

We like to believe that Bradford belonged to the honest yeoman class, that he “was used to a plaine country life & the innocente trade of husbandrey”; we know that he had a natural love of study which led him, despite the many difficulties he met, to master the Dutch tongue as well as French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew, which latter tongue he studied the more, “that he might see with his own eyes the ancient oracles of God in all their native beauty.”

Associated as teacher here with the venerable Richard Clyfton, “the minister with the long white beard,” and succeeding him as pastor, we have found the eloquent John Robinson, that winner of all men’s hearts, that helper of all men’s souls. A youthful student at Cambridge, living in an age and in an atmosphere of religious questioning, he was deeply troubled with scruples concerning conformity. He tells us “had not the truth been in my heart as a burning fire shut up in my bones, I had never broken those bonds of flesh and blood wherein I was so straitly tied, but had suffered the light of God to have been put out in mine unthankful heart by other men’s darkness.” Happy in finding congenial spirits in the new community at Scrooby, Bradford tells us he soon became “every way as a commone father unto them.” “Yea, such was y

mutuall love and reciprocall respecte that this worthy man had to his flocke and his flocke to him that it might be said of them as it once was of that famouse Emperour, Marcus Aurelious and y

people of Rome, that it was hard to judge wheather he delighted more in haveing such a people, or they in haveing such a pastor. His love was greate towards them, and his care was all ways bente for their best good, both for soul & body.” Under his inspiring guidance, and with William Brewster as their especial stay and help, they were mercifully enabled to “wade through things.” Some twenty-three years older than Bradford, we learn from that modest chronicler, who wrote “in a plaine stile, with singuler regard unto y

simple trueth in all things,” that Brewster had also a wider experience of the world.

“After he had attained some learning, viz., the knowledge of the Latin tongue and some insight into the Greek, and spent some small time at Cambridge, and then being first seasoned with the seeds of grace and virtue, he went to the Court, and served that religious and godly gentleman, Mr. Davison, divers years, when he was Secretary of State, who found him so discreet and faithful, as he trusted him above all others that were about him, and only employed him in matters of greatest trust and secrecy.”

After the innocent Davison was committed to the Tower by the treacherous “Good Queen Bess,” Brewster retired to Scrooby, where he greatly promoted and furthered their good cause: “he himself most commonly deepest in the charge, and sometimes above his ability, and in this estate he continued many years, doing the best he could, and walking according to the light he saw, until the Lord revealed further unto him.”

But these assemblies, however humble and secret, could not long escape the vigilant eye of the law. They were now “hunted and persecuted on every side, so as their former afflictions were but as flea-bitings in comparison of these which now came upon them. For some were taken and clapt up in prison, others had their houses besett & watcht night and day, & hardly escaped their hands; and y

most were faine to flie and leave their howses and habitations, and the means of their livelihood.” “Seeing them selves so molested, and that ther was no hope of their continuance ther, by a joynte consente they resolved to goe into the Low-Countries, wher they heard was freedome of Religion for all men.”

This quitting their native soil, their dear friends and their happy homes to earn their living, they knew not how, in a foreign country, was indeed considered by many of them to be “an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable, & a misserie worse than death.” But after many betrayals, many delays, many hardships by land and sea, they finally weathered all opposing storms. At Amsterdam, that friendly city of the Netherlands Republic, whose Declaration of Independence dates from July 26, 1581, they met together again, with no small rejoicing.

But in the midst of the wealth of this fair city they soon saw “the grime and grisly face of povertie coming upon them like an armed man, with whom they must bukle and incounter, and from whom they could not flye.” For this reason, and to avoid religious contentions already rife there, in a year’s time they decided to remove to Leyden, “a fair and bewtifull citie, & of a sweete situation.” Here the story of the long siege of Leyden, bravely sustained in 1573, must have excited their ready sympathy, and the city’s choice of a university, offered by William of Orange, instead of the exemption the city could have had from certain imposts, must have won the admiration of these scholarly men.

The stay of the English exiles here of some twelve years – the period of the truce between Holland and Spain – was, though trying, no doubt a good preparation for the greater hardships they were to endure. While Bradford wove fustian and his fellow-workers carded wool, made hats and built houses, Brewster printed “heretical” books, and taught English “after y

Latin manner.” The harmony of their peaceful and industrious lives attracted many friends, until some three hundred kindred spirits joined John Robinson in his prayers for “more light.”

One who soon proved himself to be an invaluable member of the community was Edward Winslow, a highly educated gentleman from Worcestershire. His energy, his diplomacy and practical experience of the world, his influence with Cromwell and other powerful friends in high places, removed many difficulties in the way of the struggling colony that was to be. Four times he was their chosen agent in England, and was thrice elected governor.

Here John Carver, a trusted adviser, who later became the first governor of New Plymouth, was chosen deacon of their church.

Serving in the troops sent over by Elizabeth to aid the Dutch in maintaining the Protestant religion against the Spaniards was the valiant soldier, Myles Standish, of the Dokesbury branch of the Standishes of Lancashire, who date from the Conquest. There the beautiful Standish church still bears on its buttresses the family shield – three standing dishes argent on a field azure – and Standish Hall is still hung with portraits of warriors in armor, beruffed lawyers with pointed beards, and gay courtiers of the Queen – the Roman Catholic ancestors of our plain fighter! Luckily for us all, he cast in his lot with the plucky workers he met in Leyden, and his cheery presence and courage must have been of great service in planning the perilous voyage on which they were about to embark.

For, as the truce with Spain drew to a close, and as the older among them began to consider the uncertain future that lay before their children, they longed to take refuge on some freer soil, however far away. As Bradford writes, with a courage at once humble and sublime:

“Lastly (and which was not least) a great hope and inward zeall they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make some way thereunto, for y

propagating and advancing y