Apart from the events of their after lives, the spirit which possessed the Mayflower Pilgrims and guided their leaders in exile is well expressed by Mrs. Hemans when she says, in her stirring lines-- They sought a faith's pure shrine! Ay, call it holy ground, The soil where first they trod; They have left unstained what there they found-- Freedom to worship God. [Illustration: _Photograph by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_ GOVERNOR EDWARD WINSLOW _The only authentic Portrait of a Mayflower Pilgrim_] FOOTNOTES: [11] The murderer Billington, sad to relate, was one of those who signed the historic compact on board the Mayflower. He was tried, condemned to death, and executed by his brethren in accordance with their primitive criminal procedure. At first, trials in the little colony were conducted by the whole body of the townsmen, the Governor presiding. In 1623 trial by Jury was established, and subsequently a regular code of laws was adopted. The capital offences were treason, murder, diabolical conversation, arson, rape, and unnatural crimes. Plymouth had only six sorts of capital crime, against thirty-one in England at the accession of James I, and of these six it actually punished only two, Billington's belonging to one of them. The Pilgrims used no barbarous punishments. Like all their contemporaries they used the stocks and the whipping-post, without perceiving that those punishments in public were barbarizing. They inflicted fines and forfeitures freely without regard to the station or quality of the offenders. They never punished, or even committed any person as a witch. Restrictive laws were early adopted as to spirituous drinks, and in 1667 cider was included. In 1638 the smoking of tobacco was forbidden out-of-doors within a mile of a dwelling-house or while at work in the fields; but unlike England and Massachusetts, Plymouth never had a law regulating apparel. VI NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES [Illustration: _Photograph by Battershill, Plymouth_ MAYFLOWER TABLET ON THE BARBICAN, PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND] VI NEW WORLD PILGRIMS TO OLD WORLD SHRINES pilgrim shrines, Shrines to no code or creed confined.--LONGFELLOW. Memories of the Mayflower and the Pilgrim Fathers were actively revived when, in July, 1891, during the Mayoralty of Mr. J. T. Bond, a number of the Pilgrims' descendants and their representatives from the New World visited Old World Plymouth, and with an interest whole-hearted and profound inspected the scene, famous in the annals and traditions of our race, which witnessed their forbears' last brief sojourn on English soil--a place where the Fathers, as they never tired of testifying, in the days when Thomas Townes was Mayor, were "kindly entertained and courteously used by divers friends there dwelling," and whence the sturdy little Mayflower sailed to the West with its precious human freight, to lay the foundation of the New England States.