The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Even at a later date in the rather hungry little Pilgrim colony at
Plymouth almost as much ceremony was observed, though the people were
extreme Puritans without rank. At beat of drum on Sunday morning the
men came to Captain Standish's door with their cloaks on, each bearing
a musket or matchlock. They proceeded to church three abreast, led by
a sergeant. In the rear walked the governor, in a long robe. On his
right was Elder Brewster, wearing a cloak. On the governor's left was
Captain Miles Standish, who also wore a cloak and side arms, and
carried a small cane as a sort of baton of authority perhaps. Thus
"they march in good order, and each sets his arms down near him."
[Sidenote: Puritanism an outgrowth of the time.]
It was only in an age such as this that resistance to the celebration
of rites and the observance of forms could be made a capital article
of faith by the Puritan, and later by the Quaker. The wearing of a
surplice, the propriety of doffing the hat on certain occasions, was a
matter for scruple and violent debate, for the grave consideration of
the lawgiver and magistrate, and for severe penalties.
III.
[Sidenote: Origin of the Puritan movement.]
[Sidenote: Fuller's Ch. Hist., book v, sec. iv, 27, 28.]
[Sidenote: 1536.]
In the brief Protestant reign of Edward VI there were those who
objected to "the vestments," and one may even find what were afterward
called Puritan opinions condemned among current errors in the
twenty-eighth year of Henry VIII; but Puritanism--as a party protest
against pomp and ceremonialism in religious worship--had its origin in
the persecution of Queen Mary's time. The English Protestants who
fled from that fiery ordeal found refuge chiefly in Protestant cities
of the Continent. Strasburg, Frankfort, Basel, Zurich, and Geneva were
the places to which these English exiles mainly resorted. Zurich and
Strasburg became cities of refuge for many of those who were to become
leaders of the Anglican or Conservative party, while others who tended
to what were afterward called Puritan views went sooner or later to
Geneva, where Calvin was the dominant influence.
[Sidenote: A. D. 1553.]
[Sidenote: The English exiles.]
In the cities in which they found safety the exiles organized English
churches. More remarkable religious communities were never gathered
into single congregations. Five bishops and five deans of the English
Church, and more than fifty eminent doctors of divinity, with younger
men who were destined to play a leading part in the future, were
comprised in these little churches. Such communities soon became
centers of animated discussion and debate.
[Sidenote: Outbreak of dissension.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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