Chapter 24

From his earliest association with this feeble and despised communion, William Bradford was zealous in his readiness to stand boldly for his faith, whatever the risk involved. He was one of the first to appreciate the real meaning of the struggle; he saw that dissent implied not alone a religious opposition, but a political defiance as well, and that its followers, braving the will of England's royal bigot, James Stuart, and denying his assumption of the divine right of kings, would ere long do open battle in the cause of the people against despotism, and stand for that deeper question of liberty which the Pilgrims of Scrooby and Leyden first fully grasped.

Bradford was one of that venturesome company which, in 1607, embarking at Boston, in Lincolnshire, sought to flee from English tyranny, and find a home in Holland. They were betrayed, turned back, and imprisoned. The next year this young eighteen-year old enthusiast escaped from his jailers, and made his way to Amsterdam. Here he apprenticed himself to a silk-weaver, and became an efficient member of the association of English exiles in Holland.

Upon his coming of age in 1610, he sold off the Austerfield lands that had descended to him upon the death of his father, and entered upon an unsuccessful business investment in Amsterdam. This failing, he joined himself to the Pilgrim colony that Brewster and Robinson, the Pilgrim preachers, had established at Leyden.

When those far-seeing reformers awoke to the fact that an English-speaking community in Holland must, in time, become Dutch in manners, speech, and life, and looked across the western ocean with the dream of founding a religious republic of English-speaking folk in the New World, Bradford was one of the most earnest in adopting and carrying out their views, and was one of that famous company which, on September 16, 1620, sailed from Plymouth in England, to cast anchor, three months later, in the harbor of the new Plymouth in New England.

It has been said that if William Brewster was the Aaron of the Plymouth enterprise, William Bradford was its Moses. Certainly he was, almost from its inception, its leader and deliverer. It was his brain that conceived and his hand that executed that memorable compact which the forty-one earnest men signed in the cabin of the Mayflower, as she rode at anchor in Provincetown harbor--"the first instrument of civil government ever subscribed as the act of the whole people." It was into his hands, when Carver, the first governor, died of sunstroke in the spring of 1621, that the colonists gave the guidance of their affairs, electing him governor of the Plymouth colony on April 21, 1621--"the first American citizen of English race who bore rule by the free choice of his brethren." More than this, we may look upon William Bradford, so says Mr. Doyle, the English historian of the Puritan colonies, "as heading that bead-roll of worthies that, from his day, America has never wanted--men who, with no early training in political life, and lacking much that the Old World has deemed needful in her rulers, have yet, by inborn strength of mind and lofty public spirit, shown themselves in all things worthy of high office."

Certainly William Bradford showed himself worthy the trust and confidence of his fellows. For nearly forty years he filled the office of governor of the Plymouth colony. His hand guided it through the perils of its early years, his brain planned that systematic development of its slender resources that made it the one successful episode in America's beginnings. His treatment of the Indians was always firm but friendly; his dealings with the grasping "London adventurers," whose greed would have seriously crippled the colony had it not been for his restraining hand, were courteous but convincing; it was Bradford who led the colony from the unsatisfactory communism of its first years to the system of individual property that, from 1623, held sway, and turned an uncertain venture into a career of industrial prosperity. Always tolerant, never injudicious, and alike pure-minded, liberty-loving, courageous, and wise, no hand could have better guided than did his, or have more systematically shaped, the destinies of the infant State. The testimony of contemporaries and the judgment of historians unite in crediting to William Bradford that rare combination of intelligence and industry, of judicial and executive ability, by which a small and obscure band of persecuted fugitives laid in an unexplored wilderness the foundations of a great and prosperous commonwealth.

His methods were as simple as was his own noble nature. Each advance was the outgrowth of his own observation and the colony's necessities, and while the corner-stone of the community was religion, he stood himself for religious liberty, and never permitted the zeal of his associates to degenerate into intolerance and persecution. While other of the early American colonies were narrow, bigoted, and vindictive, it is to the credit of the Pilgrim colony of Plymouth that the cargo of the Mayflower contained no seeds of persecution, and throughout the long administration of Governor William Bradford the colony he guided had, in his time at least, a clear comprehension of the meaning of religious and political freedom, and did not descend into the harrying of so-called heretics, the scourging of Quakers, nor the burning of witches. Whatever intolerance of this sort may, at a later day, have stained the records of the colony, was of foreign growth and contrary to the heritage of charity left by William Bradford.

This willingness to serve, to spend and be spent, is apparent throughout the whole story of Bradford's life. It displayed itself in the boyish spirit of renunciation that led him to join the Scrooby society, and held him loyal to his association even through imprisonment and persecution, through exile, flight, and emigration. Again and again through his long service as governor of the Plymouth colony, he wished to lay aside the burden, but always yielded to the wishes of his comrades. Elected by the suffrages of his associates, he himself restricted his own authority by the formation, in 1624, of the governor's council of five members, increased in 1633 to seven, in which the only privilege held by the governor was a double vote. In 1624 he with seven of his associates assumed, what was for that day and the uncertainties involved, a great risk, and bought out the "London Adventurers" who had so feebly backed the colonists. In 1629 he obtained a patent that conferred upon himself, his associates, and assigns the title to the whole Plymouth tract, and in 1640 he conveyed this valuable title to the colony, reserving only his personal proportion as a settler.

It was this unselfishness of disposition, this loyalty to duty--accepting honors as trusts and burdens as obligations--this union of justice and faith that made William Bradford great and kept him noble.

"With malice toward none, with charity for all," even as had that great American of two centuries later, Bradford could keep the even tenor of his way in the midst of obstacles and discouragements. Unmoved by the ingratitude of Weston, the insolence of Morton, the treachery of Oldham and Lyford, and the selfishness of Allerton; calm amid the controversies brought about by the arrogance of the greater colony of Massachusetts Bay, the encroachments of the French in Maine, and of the Dutch on the Connecticut, he could yet, when occasion demanded, display that stern justice that meted out the extreme penalty of the law to offenders, and condemned to death Billington, the first murderer in the colony, and Peach, the assassin of a defenceless Indian.

William Bradford is one of the most interesting figures in the history of New England. He is the noblest of the Puritans--a type of their best element, an exponent of their highest effort, a pioneer in their struggle for liberty for justice, and for law. The boy who could brave opposition and contumely for conscience's sake, could also be of gentlest manners and serenest mood when called to lead and govern those who put their trust in him; the same native courage and independence that held him loyal to his convictions in his early years made him, when responsibilities multiplied and burdens were laid upon him, the very staff and hope of the Pilgrim colony of Plymouth.

He combined with executive ability other notable gifts. Though bred to the soil in an age when the farmer was a drudge and had no ambition beyond his crops, he yet, when opportunity offered, applied himself to study with such good results that he was learned in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and conversed in French and Dutch. He was acquainted with the history and philosophy of his day, was deeply versed in theology, and even attempted poetry. He wrote much and well. His most important production was his "History of the Plymouth Plantations"--a detailed chronicle of the history of the Pilgrims from 1608 to 1646. Carried away from the old South Church by British soldiers, it was completely lost, until almost providentially discovered, though partially destroyed, in the shop of a Halifax grocer, and to-day it tells us almost all that we know of the Plymouth settlers, from the day when they left Lincolnshire till they became a prosperous commonwealth in America.

Of this important contribution to American history, Mr. Doyle, the English historian, says: "Gratitude is quickened when we compare the simple, vigorous, and picturesque chronicle set before us by Bradford, with the tedious and pedantic writings from which so much of the later history of New England has to be extracted.... His work is in the true sense scholarly. The language is like the language of Bunyan, that of a man who trained himself not merely to speak but to think in the words of Scripture. Every expression is simple and effective, never far-fetched, never mean nor common. The substance is worthy of the style. Faults no doubt there are ... yet with all its defects Bradford's writings still remain the worthy first-fruits of Puritan literature in its new home. They are the work of a wise and good man, who tells with a right understanding the great things that he and his brethren have done."

The wise governor was loyal to his colony to the last. He resisted the ambition to take larger holdings of land and become great estate owners that influenced Standish and Brewster, Alden and Winslow, and other of his Mayflower companions, drawing them away from Plymouth to the broader acres at Duxbury and Scituate and Marshfield. The governor deplored this withdrawal as a desertion on the part of his old friends, and a menace to the welfare of the colony. He lived on in Plymouth, where his home on Leyden Street, still standing, gradually outgrew its early primitive dimensions as became the house of the governor of Plymouth. Here he died on May 9, 1657, "lamented by all the colonists of New England as a common blessing and father to them all," and the only special memorial that tangibly recalls his fame is the unpretentious obelisk on Burial Hill.

As Miles Standish and John Alden had a romance in their lives that has made them historic, so this Puritan governor of Plymouth had his. His first wife, gentle Dorothy May, was drowned in Cape Cod harbor while her husband was away exploring the new-found coast. He had married her in Leyden in 1613 and less than three years after her death, on August 14, 1623, he married Mistress Alice Carpenter Southworth, who in earlier days, it is alleged, had been young William Bradford's "dearest love." She came across the sea--at his call--a widow, to marry the widowed governor of Plymouth and thus complete the unwritten romance begun in his earlier years.

A self-made man, a scholar of repute, a writer of renown, an upright and fearless magistrate, a model citizen, a courageous leader, gentle, just and generous, practical and wise, William Bradford stands in history as the essence and exponent of what was best in the Puritanism of his day, the architect and builder of a God-fearing, independent, and progressive community that, throughout the ages, remains the most notable because the most typical of the foundation-stones that underlie the mighty structure of the Republic of the United States of America.

[Signature of the author.]

CHARLES I. OF ENGLAND

By F. HINDES GROOME

(1600-1649)

Charles I. was born at Dunfermline, November 19, 1600, was a sickly child, unable to speak till his fifth year, and so weak in the ankles that till his seventh he had to crawl upon his hands and knees. Except for a stammer, he outgrew both defects, and became a skilled tilter and marksman, as well as an accomplished scholar and a diligent student of theology. He was created Duke of Albany at his baptism, Duke of York in 1605, and Prince of Wales in 1616, four years after the death of his dear brother, Prince Henry, had left him heir to the crown of three kingdoms. A Spanish match had been mooted as early as 1614; but it was not till February 17, 1623, that, with Buckingham, his inseparable friend, Charles started on the romantic incognito journey to Madrid, its objects to win the hand of the Infanta, and to procure the restitution of the Palatinate to his brother-in-law, Frederick. Both he and his father swore to all possible concessions to the Catholics, but nothing short of his own conversion would have satisfied the Spanish and papal courts; and on October 5th he landed again in England, eager for rupture with Spain.

The nation's joy was speedily dashed by his betrothal to the French princess, Henrietta Maria (1609-69); for the marriage articles pledged him, in violation of solemn engagements to Parliament, to permit her and all her domestics the free exercise of the Catholic religion, and to give her the up-bringing of their children till the age of thirteen.

On March 27, 1625, Charles succeeded his father, James I.; on June 13th he welcomed his little bright-eyed queen at Dover, having married her by proxy six weeks earlier. Barely a twelvemonth was over when he packed off her troublesome retinue to France--a bishop and 29 priests, with 410 more male and female attendants. Thenceforth their domestic life was a happy one; and during the twelve years following the murder of Buckingham (1592-1628), in whose hands he had been a mere tool, Charles gradually came to yield himself up to her unwise influence--not wholly indeed, but more than to that of Stafford even, or Laud. Little meddlesome Laud, made archbishop in 1633, proceeded to war against the dominant Puritanism, to preach passive obedience, and uphold the divine right of kings; while great Stafford, from championing the Petition of Right (1628), passed over to the king's service, and entered on that policy of "Thorough" whose aim was to make his master absolute. Three Parliaments were summoned and dissolved in the first four years of the reign; then for eleven years Charles ruled with but one, in its stead, with subservient judges, and the courts of Star Chamber and High Commission. In 1627 he had blundered into an inglorious French war; but with France he concluded peace in 1629, with Spain in 1630. Peace, economy, and arbitrary taxation were to solve the great problem of his policy, how to get money, yet not account for it. Not that Charles cared for money in itself, or had far-reaching projects of tyranny (he failed to enter into Stafford's scheme); but he had inherited a boundless egoism, and content with his own petty self, had little sympathy with the dead heroism of the Tudor age, none at all with the nascent ardor of democracy. The extension of the ship-tax to the inland counties was met by Hampden's passive resistance (1637); Laud's attempt to Anglicize the Scottish Church, by the active resistance of the whole northern nation. Once more Charles had to call a Parliament; two met in 1640--the Short Parliament, which lasted but three weeks, and the Long, which outlasted Charles.

It met to pronounce Stafford's doom; and his plot with the army detected, Charles basely sacrificed his loyal servitor, his own kingly word, to fears for the queen's safety; no act weighed heavier on him afterward. The same signature that sent Stafford to the block gave assent to a second bill, by which the existing Parliament might not be dissolved without its own consent. That pledge, as extorted by force, Charles purposed to disregard; and during his visit to Edinburgh, in the autumn of 1641, he trusted by lavish concessions to bring over the Scots to his side. Instead, he got entangled in dark suspicions of plotting the murder of the covenanting lords, of connivance even in the Ulster massacre. Still, his return to London was welcomed with some enthusiasm, and a party was forming in the Commons itself, of men who revolted from the sweeping changes that menaced both church and state. Pym's "Grand Remonstrance" justified their fears, and Charles seemed to justify the "Grand Remonstrance" by his attempt to arrest the five members (January 4, 1642); but that ill-stricken blow was dictated by the knowledge of an impending impeachment of the queen herself. On August 22d he raised the royal standard at Nottingham; and the four years civil war commenced, in which, as at Naseby, he showed no lack of physical courage, and which resulted at Naseby in the utter annihilation of his cause (June 14, 1645).

No need here to track him through plot and counterplot with Catholics, Presbyterians, and Sectaries, with the Scots and the Irish, with the Parliament and the Army; enough that, quitting his last refuge, Oxford, he surrendered himself on May 5, 1646, to the Scots at Newark, and by them, in the following January, was handed over to the Parliament. His four months captivity at Holmby House, near Northampton; his seizure on June 3d by Cornet Joyce; the three months at Hampton Court; the fight on November 11th; the fresh captivity at Carisbrooke Castle, in the Isle of Wight--these lead up to the trial at Westminster of the tyrant, traitor, and murderer, Charles Stuart. He had drawn the sword, and by the sword he perished, for it was the Army, not Parliament, that stood at the back of the judges. Charles faced them bravely and with dignity. Thrice he refused to plead, denying the competence of such a court: and his refusal being treated as a confession, on the third day fifty-five out of seventy-one judges--sixty-four more never were present--affixed their names and seals to his death-warrant; four days later, sentence was pronounced.

No need here to tell the well-known story of his meekness toward his persecutors, of the pathetic parting from two of his younger children, of his preparation for a holy death; or how, on the morning of January 30, 1649, he passed to that death on the scaffold in front of Whitehall, with a courage worthy of a very martyr. On the snowy 7th of February they bore the "white king" to his grave at Windsor in Henry VIII.'s vault; in 1813 the Prince Regent had his leaden coffin opened. Six children survived him--Charles and James, his successors; Mary, Princess of Orange (1631-60); Elizabeth (1635-50); Henry, Duke of Gloucester (1639-60); and Henrietta, Duchess of Orleans (1644-70), the last born ten weeks after Charles's final parting from his queen. At the Restoration Charles II. appointed, on his sole authority, a form of prayer, with fasting, for the day of the martyrdom of the Blessed King Charles I., to be annexed to the Common Prayer Book, with the other state services; it kept its place there till 1859.

A far stronger man than Charles might scarcely have extricated himself from the difficulties that beset him; true, those difficulties were largely of his own creating. But was he right in abandoning Stafford? should he also have sacrificed wife, faith, and crown? If yes, then was he wholly in the wrong; if no, he was partly--for once at least--in the right. Vices, other than duplicity, he had none, as we use the word. He was vague, vacillating, obstinate, unable to lead or to be led; superstitious, heedful of omens; unsympathetic and reserved where he did not love; intolerant of opposition to his will. But he was a good husband, a good father, a good churchman--no man so good was ever so bad a king; no man so fallible believed so honestly in his infallibility. For Charles was honest to his own convictions. His very duplicity was due sometimes to schooling in "kingcraft," but oftener to inability to see two sides of a question. Now he saw one, and now the other, but never both sides at once; and, just as he saw, so he spoke. Milton's charges against him of "all manner of lewdness" rank with Milton's charge that he poisoned his father. Indeed, as a pattern of culture and purity, few princes are worthy to be named beside him.

His children all loved and respected him. His little daughter Elizabeth, held as a prisoner by his foes, wrote of him with such womanly sympathy and admiration as even now brings tears to our eyes. His last letter of advice to his son Charles is a model hardly to be improved on. Parts of it read as follows:

"I had rather you should be Charles _le bon_, than _le grand_, good, than great; I hope God hath designed you to be both; having so early put you into that exercise of His graces and gifts bestowed upon you, which may best weed out all vicious inclinations, and dispose you to those princely endowments and employments which will most gain the love, and intend the welfare of those over whom God shall place you.

"With God, I would have you begin and end, who is King of kings, the sovereign disposer of the kingdoms of the world, who pulleth down one and setteth up another.

"The best government and highest sovereignty you can attain to, is to be subject to Him, that the sceptre of His word and spirit may rule in your heart.

"The true glory of princes consists in advancing God's glory, in the maintenance of true religion and the church's good; also in the dispensation of civil power with justice and honor to the public peace.

"Piety will make you prosperous, at least it will keep you from becoming miserable; nor is he much a loser that loseth all, yet saveth his own soul at last.

"To which centre of true happiness, God (I trust) hath and will graciously direct all these black lines of affliction which He hath been pleased to draw on me, and by which He hath (I hope) drawn me nearer to Himself. You have already tasted of that cup whereof I have liberally drunk; which I look upon as God's physic, having that in healthfulness which it wants in pleasure.

"Take heed that outward circumstances and formalities of religion devour not all, or the best, encouragements of learning, industry, and piety; but with an equal eye and impartial hand distribute favors and rewards to all men, as you find them for their real goodness both in abilities and fidelity, worthy and capable of them.

"And if neither I nor you be ever restored to our right, but God, in His severest justice, will punish my subjects with continuance in their sin, and suffer them to be deluded with the prosperity of their wickedness, I hope God will give me and you that grace which will teach and enable us to want, as well as to wear, a crown, which is not worth taking up or enjoying upon sordid, dishonorable and irreligious terms.

"Keep you to true principles of piety, virtue, and honor; you shall never want a kingdom.