The Pilgrim fathers of New England : $b a historyMartyn, W. Carlos (William Carlos)
History
The Pilgrim fathers of New England : $b a history
Martyn, W. Carlos (William Carlos)
Massachusetts -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775; Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)
These “fanatics” were not needed in New England. Their fellows had
already commenced to build, at Plymouth and at Massachusetts Bay, for
God and liberty. So they were detained to organize “resistance to
tyrants” in the senate-house, and to give the arbitrary principle its
death-blow at Naseby and Long Marston Moor.
But though the court, frightened at the prodigious extent of an
emigration which threatened to depopulate the kingdom, had fulminated
a decree against colonization, the departure of Pilgrims was only
hindered, not stayed. They continued to cross the water until, in
1640, this pattering emigration had rained four thousand families and
upwards of twenty thousand settlers into New England.[791] Then for
a few glorious years the exodus ceased. The prospect of reform in
England caused men to remain at home, “in the hope of seeing a new
world” without passing the Atlantic.
In the summer of this same year which witnessed the detention of
Cromwell, and Pym, and Hampden, and Hazlerigge, and Lord Brooke,
a ship was freighted for America; and with two hundred other
passengers, it bore to these shores three men who became as famous
on this side the water as the revolutionists did on the other—John
Haynes, John Cotton, and Thomas Hooker.[792] On board the “Griffin”
at this same time was another eminent minister, Mr. Stone; “and this
glorious triumvirate coming together,” remarks Cotton Mather, “made
the poor people in the wilderness say that God had supplied them
with what would in some sort answer their three great necessities;
_Cotton_ for their clothing, _Hooker_ for their fishing, and _Stone_
for their building.”[793]
Haynes, afterwards governor both of Massachusetts and Connecticut,
was “a man of very large estate, and still larger affections;
of a ‘heavenly’ mind and a spotless life; of rare sagacity and
accurate but unassuming judgment; by nature tolerant; ever a friend
to freedom, ever conciliating peace. He was an able legislator,
and dear to the Pilgrims by his benevolence and his disinterested
conduct.”[794]
Cotton and Hooker speedily became the most revered spiritual
teachers of two commonwealths; Cotton shaped and toned Massachusetts
ecclesiasticism; Hooker was the Moses of Connecticut. Both were
well born; both had been clergymen of the English church; both had
been silenced for non-conformity; both were consummate scholars—in
Mather’s strong phrase, _walking libraries_; both had won wide fame
at home, which, like Joseph’s bough, “ran over the wall” of the
Atlantic ocean, and made their names familiar in every cabin on the
eastern coast.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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