Rook l/V-?^/ 
 
ORATION 
 
 ON THE « _ 
 
 2.9 X 
 Cto0 iDunDiPt anH JTiftitfl) annftitrsarp ^9^ 
 
 LANDING 
 
 PILGRIM FATHERS AT PLYMOUTH. 
 
 21 December, 1870. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., 
 
 'I 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE MASS ■! I ' ETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 1871. 
 

 
 jP, li. 1909 
 
 /P 
 
 /i'^'/ 
 
 
nPHERE can be no true New England heart 
 which does not throb to-day with something 
 of unwonted exultation. There can be no true 
 American heart, I think, which has not found itself 
 swelling with a more fervent gratitude to God, and 
 a more profound veneration for the Pilgrim Fathers, 
 as this morning's sun has risen above the hill-tops, 
 in an almost midsummer glory, and ushered in, 
 once more, with such tr,anscendent splendor, our 
 consecrated Jubilee. 
 
 When we reflect on the influence which has 
 flowed, and is still flowing, in ever fresh and cease- 
 less streams, from yonder Rock, which two centuries 
 and a half ago was struck for the first time by the 
 foot of civilized. Christian man* when we reflect 
 how mightily that influence has prevailed, and how 
 widely it has pervaded the world, — inspiring and 
 aiding the settlement of Massachusetts, and, through 
 Massachusetts, of all New England, and, through 
 New England, of so large a part of our whole wide- 
 spread country, and thus, through the example of 
 
our country and its institutions, extending the prin- 
 ciples of civil and religious freedom to the remotest 
 regions of the earth, leaving no corner of Christen- 
 dom, or even of Heathendom, unvisited or unre- 
 freshed, — we should be dead, indeed, to every 
 emotion of gratitude to God or man, were we not 
 to hail this Anniversary as one of the grandest in 
 the calendar of the ages. 
 
 We are here, my friends, to celebrate the Fifth 
 Jubilee of what is now known emphatically, wher- 
 ever the history of New England, or the history of 
 America, is read, as " The Landing." No other 
 landing, temporary or permanent, upon our own or 
 upon any other shore, can ever usurp its title, or ever 
 supersede or weaken its hold upon the world's 
 remembrance and regard. 
 
 There have been other landings, I need hardly 
 say, which have left a proud and shining mark on 
 the historic page: Landings of discoverers; land- 
 ings of conquerors; landings of kings or princes, 
 called by right of restoration or revolution to take 
 possession of time-honored thrones ; landings of 
 organized Colonies, from large and well-appointed 
 fleets, on conspicuous coasts, to occupy territories 
 opened and prepared, in some degree, for human 
 habitation. 
 
 Not such was the landing which we commemo- 
 rate to-day. Not such the event which has ren- 
 dered this shortest day of all the year so memorable 
 
5 
 
 for ever in the annals of human freedom. It was 
 the landing of a few wear}' and wave-worn men 
 from a single ship, — nay, from a single shallop, — 
 on a bleak and desolate shore, amid the storms and 
 tempests of a well-nigh arctic winter, with none to 
 welcome, none even to witness it. I might, indeed, 
 be almost pardoned for saying, that the sun itself 
 stood still in the heavens to behold it ! But there 
 were, certainly, no other witnesses, save those wit- 
 nesses to each other's constancy and courage who 
 were themselves the actors in the scene, and that 
 all-seeing, omnipresent God, who guided and 
 guarded all their steps. 
 
 Turn back with me to that epoch of the winter 
 solstice, just two hundred and fifty years ago, and let 
 us spend at least a portion of this flying hour in 
 attempting to recall the precise incidents which 
 then occurred on the spot on which we are assem- 
 bled, with some of their immediate antecedents and 
 consequences. There have been, and will be, other 
 occasions for boasting, if any one desires to boast, 
 of what New England has accomplished, directly 
 or indirectly, for herself or for mankind, in later 
 times. There have been, and will be, other oppor- 
 tunities for a general glorification of New England 
 principles, New England achievements, New Eng- 
 land inventions and discoveries, past or present, 
 remote or recent. We recognize them all to-day, 
 — all, at least, that are worthy of being recognized 
 
at all, — as the legitimate result and development of 
 this day's doings. We count and claim the progress 
 of our country, in its best and worthiest sense, as the 
 " Pilgrims' Progress ; " — as the grand and glorious 
 advance upon a line of march in which they were 
 the pioneers, and for which they, in their own 
 expressive phrase, literally as well as metaphori- 
 cally, were the instruments "to break the ice for 
 others." 
 
 To them the honors of this day are due. To their 
 memories this Anniversary is sacred. Once in fifty 
 years, certainly, we may well refresh our remem- 
 brance of what they did and suffered, and still more 
 of the aims and ends of all their doino^s and suffer- 
 ings. It is an old stor}^, it is true; but there are 
 some old stories which are almost forgotten into 
 newness. There are some old stories which are 
 actually new to every rising generation, and of 
 whose real interest and nobleness thousands of 
 young hearts receive their first vivid impression 
 from what may be said or done on some occasion 
 like the present. There are some old stories, too, 
 of which even those who hold them in fondest and 
 most familiar remembrance are never weary; and 
 the appetite for which no repetitions can ever clo}', 
 or even satisfy. There are some old stories, let 
 me add, — and this is eminently one of them, — 
 around which a haze, or it may be a halo, of legend 
 and romance is gradually allowed to gather and 
 
thicken with the lapse of years, and which require 
 and demand to be set forth afresh, from time to 
 time, in their true simpHcity and grandeur. 
 
 But there is no longer an excuse for doubt or 
 uncertainty as to any substantial statement relating 
 to the Pilgrim Fathers. Tradition, legend, romance, 
 can find "no jutt}', frieze, buttress, nor coigne of van- 
 tage, for their pendent bed and procreant cradle," 
 in that solid structure of fact and truth which has 
 recently been built up, — let me rather say, which 
 has recently been discovered and unveiled, in all 
 the simple beauty of its original proportions, — by 
 the loving students and diligent investigators of 
 Pilgrim history. 
 
 It is, indeed, a peculiar advantage of all young 
 countries like our own, that, originating in a period 
 of written and printed records, they may trace back 
 the current of their career to its primal source and 
 spring, without leaving room for any intermixture 
 of myth or fable. Yet written or even printed 
 records may disappear, or be overlooked and for- 
 gotten for a time, — awaiting such a search and 
 such a scrutiny as Grote and Niebuhr, and Merivale 
 and Mommsen, have recently brought to the history 
 of Greece or Rome ; or as Froude, even more re- 
 markably, has just given to the history of England's 
 Qiieen Elizabeth. 
 
 Even such a search and such a scrutiny have of 
 late been applied to the history of the little band 
 
whose landing we are here to commemorate, and 
 most richly have they been rewarded. Since the 
 last Jubilee of the Pilgrims was celebrated, fifty 
 years ago, — when that grand discourse of New 
 England's grandest orator and statesman summoned 
 the attention of the world so emphaticall}' to their 
 sublime but simple story, — antiquarians at home and 
 abroad, pious and painstaking students, American 
 travellers in foreign lands not forgetful of their own, 
 one and all, have seemed inflamed with a new zeal 
 to subject that story to the closest examination ; to 
 sift out from it everything conjectural and legendary; 
 and to investigate the Pilgrim track, footstep by 
 footstep, wherever it could be found, in the Old 
 World as well as in the New. Nothing has been 
 too minute or trivial to elude their search; nothing 
 too seemingly inscrutable to repel or discourage 
 their pursuit; nothing too generally credited to sat- 
 isfy their eagerness for positive proof and authentic 
 verification. As the marvellous growth of that ma- 
 jestic perennial, of which the Mayflower supplied 
 the seed, has been developed and displayed, with 
 all its myriad leaves for the healing of the nations, 
 and all its magic branches for sweetening so many 
 bitter fountains, and all its rich and varied fruits for 
 ourselves and for mankind, they have been more and 
 more incited to trace back that seed to- its native 
 bed; to analyze with almost chemical exactness its 
 smallest seminal principles; and to ascertain pre- 
 
cisely by what culture, and by what hands, it was 
 made so to take root upon a rock, and to bud and 
 blossom and bear so abundantly in a wilderness. 
 
 We owe these laborious investigators a deep debt 
 of gratitude, and it is fit that we should not for- 
 get them, this day, as we avail ourselves of their 
 researches. I need but name the late admirable 
 Judge Davis, whose excellent edition of " Morton's 
 Memorial " led the way in the later illustrations of 
 Pilgrim history. I need but name the late Reverend 
 Dr. Alexander Young, whose "Chronicles of Plym- 
 outh " ought to be fresh in the memory of every son 
 and daughter of the old Colony. But let me recall 
 more deliberately a venerable antiquary of Old Eng- 
 land, whom it was my good fortune to meet at the 
 breakfast-table of the celebrated historian Hallam, 
 nearly a quarter of a century ago, — the late Rev- 
 erend Joseph Hunter ; who, having diversified his 
 routine of service, in her Majesty's Public Record 
 Office, by tracts illustrative of the great triumphs of 
 his own country in arms and in literature, — tri- 
 umphs by the sword of Henry V. at Agincourt, and 
 triumphs by the pens of Shakspeare and Milton in 
 the fields of epic or dramatic poetry, — turned to the 
 Pilgrims of Plymouth, and to the Puritans of Massa- 
 chusetts, for the latest and best themes of his un- 
 wearied investigations. To him we primarily owe 
 it that we can follow back that little band, to which 
 the name of Brownists had been contemptuously 
 
lo 
 
 given, to the very hive from which they first 
 swarmed, — that little circle in Yorkshire and Not- 
 tinghamshire, and not far from Lincolnshire, around 
 which he so fitly inscribed the legend, " Maximse 
 gentis incunabula," — the cradle of the greatest 
 nation. By the light of his antiquarian torch we 
 are able to fix the precise locality and surround- 
 ings of the old Manor Place of Scrooby, — formerly 
 a palace of the Archbishops of York,, and which had 
 often been the residence of at least one of them, 
 " that he might enjoy the diversion of hunting " 
 in the neighboring chase of Hatfield; which was 
 occupied as a refuge for many weeks by the great 
 lord Cardinal Wolsey, when, having " ventured in a 
 sea of glory, but far beyond his depth," he had at 
 last been left, " weary and old with service, to the 
 mercy of a rude stream," which was for ever to hide 
 him ; and which, not many years afterwards, Henry 
 the Eighth himself had selected for a resting-place, 
 during one of his Royal progresses to the north; — 
 but which, half a century later, had become the home 
 of one, whose occupation of it, even for an hour, 
 would have given it a celebrity and a sanctity in our 
 remembrance and regard, which neither Archbish- 
 ops, nor Cardinals, nor Kings, could have imparted 
 to it in a lifetime. 
 
 There, in that " manor of the Bishops," of which, 
 alas ! hardly a fragment is now left, lived William 
 Brewster, — one of the noblest of the men whom 
 
II 
 
 we are here to commemorate, and not unworthy to 
 be named first of all, on such an occasion as this. 
 Educated at the University of Cambridge, and hav- 
 ing served as the faithful Secretary of the accom- 
 plished Davison (Queen Elizabeth's Ambassador in 
 Holland, and afterwards one of her Secretaries of 
 State), — until Davison's too prompt and implicit 
 obedience to the orders of his Royal Mistress in the 
 matter of poor Mary, Queen of Scots, had afforded 
 a pretext for discarding him, — Brewster had retired 
 with disgust from the pomps and vanities, the capri- 
 ces and cruelties, of the Court, and had given him- 
 self up to religious meditation and study. Deeply 
 impressed with the corruptions and superstitions, 
 the prelatical assumptions and tyrannies, of the 
 English Church, as it then existed, in those earlier 
 transition stages of the Reformation, he had united 
 himself with one of the little bodies of Separatists 
 from that communion, and soon became " a special 
 help and stay to them." At his house, — this very 
 "manor of the Bishops," which Mr. Hunter helped 
 us to identify, — we learn that the members of the 
 church of which the sainted Robinson was the pas- 
 tor, the church of our Plymouth Pilgrims, "ordi- 
 narily met on the Lord's Day; and with great love 
 he entertained them when they came, making pro- 
 vision for them to his great charge; and continued 
 so to do while they could stay in England." 
 
 Our mother country has many spots within her 
 
12 
 
 dominions which are dear to the hearts of the lovers 
 of rehgious and of civil liberty in both hemispheres: 
 The plain of Runn3^mede, the Lollard's Tower, the 
 Tower of London, the Martyrs' Monument at Ox- 
 ford, the glorious Abbey of Westminster, the grand 
 Cathedrals in almost every county; but I know of 
 none more worthy of being visited with pious rever- 
 ence, by every American traveller certainly, than 
 that old original site of Brewster's residence in Not- 
 tinghamshire; nor one which more deserves to be 
 marked, not indeed by any ostentatious or sumptu- 
 ous structure, out of all keeping with the plain and 
 frugal character of those who have made it mem- 
 orable for ever, but by some appropriate monument, 
 a chapel or a school-house, erected by the care and 
 at the cost of the sons and daughters of New Eng- 
 land. We all remember that John Cotton's chapel 
 at Old Boston was restored, not many years ago, by 
 the contributions of a few of the generous sons of 
 New Boston. The place where Robinson and 
 Brewster gathered that first Pilgrim Church is cer- 
 tainly not less worthy of commemoration. 
 
 But it is not only the residence of Brewster which 
 the researches of good Mr. Hunter, the very Nim- 
 rod of Antiquaries, have revealed to us. There, 
 within that charmed circle — the cradle of the great- 
 est nation — he helped us to discover a birthplace, 
 which owing to a blundering misprint had so long 
 baffled the most eager search; the birthplace of one 
 
13 
 
 who miofht almost contest with Brewster himself the 
 right to be named first at any commemoration of 
 the Pilgrim Fathers, — their Governor for thirty 
 years, their Historian, their principal writer both in 
 prose and verse, and second to no one of them, from 
 first to last, in the fidelity and devotion with which 
 he sustained and illustrated their principles. There, 
 within that same charmed circle, of which the little 
 market town of Bawtry is the centre, and the greater 
 part, if not the whole, of which is now the property 
 of one whose recent title, as a peer, has not obliter- 
 ated our remembrance of his name as a poet, and 
 who may be recalled with the more pleasure at this 
 hour as one of the few among the English nobility 
 who sympathized with the North in our late war for 
 the Union, — there, in the record book of the little 
 church of Austerfield, still standing, has been found 
 the distinct entry, "William, son of William, Brad- 
 fourth, baptized the XIX'!! day of March, Anno Dni 
 1589." 
 
 I hold in my hand a photographic picture of that 
 ancient edifice, and one, too, of the registered entry 
 of Bradford's baptism, given me two or three 3''ears 
 ago by Lord Houghton, — Monckton Milnes that 
 was, — now Lord of the Manor, I believe, — and 
 which I would gladly deposit in your Pilgrim Mu- 
 seum, if they are not there already. 
 
 The font from which Bradford was christened, 
 and the altar-rails at which his parents doubtless 
 
kneeled — for he must have been baptized according 
 to the rites, and by a pastor of the Church of Eng- 
 land — are still preserved. But neither pastor nor 
 parents could have dreamed, as the infant boy winced, 
 perhaps, from the coldness of that sprinkled water, 
 and shrunk, it ma}' be, from the signing with the sign 
 of the cross upon his tiny forehead, how sturdy and 
 uncompromising a hater he was to become, in his 
 mature life, of all mere forms and shows and cere- 
 monies of religion; and, at the same time, how 
 earnest and ardent and devoted a lover and upholder 
 of the great truths and doctrines of which these were 
 but the outward and visible signs. 
 
 Bradford and Brewster, if I mistake not, are the 
 only two of our Pilgrim leaders, who can be dis- 
 tinctly identified with that little church at Scrooby, 
 of which the venerable Richard Clifton and the 
 zealous John Robinson were the associated pastor 
 and teacher, and out of which came this first per- 
 manent settlement of New England. Bradford, 
 indeed, was but a boy in age, at that early period, — 
 hardly more than sixteen years old, an orphan boy, 
 — and must have been like a son to Brewster, who 
 was thirty years his senior; but he was a boy who 
 seems to have known " little more of the state of 
 childhood but its innocency and pleasantness," and 
 who was capable, even then, of rendering no feeble 
 aid and comfort to his maturer leader and friend. 
 Together they braved persecution. Together they 
 
15 
 
 bore the taunts and scoffs of neighbors and relatives. 
 Together they embraced exile. Together they were 
 cast into prison at old Boston in Lincolnshire. 
 Together, after a brief separation, — for Bradford 
 was liberated first on account of his youth, — they 
 found refuge in Holland. Together they embarked 
 in the Mayflower. Together they were associated 
 for three and twenty years, — for Brewster lived in 
 a vigorous old age till 1643, — in establishing and 
 ruling the Pilgrim plantation here at New Plym- 
 outh. 
 
 Brewster and Bradford, the ^neas and Ascanius 
 of our grand Pilgrim Epic, — I might better have 
 said, the Paul and Timoth}^, or be it Titus, of our 
 New England, Plymouth, Separatist Church, — both 
 of them laymen, but both of them, by life and 
 word, by precept and example, showing forth the 
 great doctrines of Christ, their Saviour, with a 
 power and a persuasiveness which might well have 
 been envied by any pastor or preacher or lordly prel- 
 ate of that or any other day : — For ever honored 
 be their names in New England historj^and in New 
 England hearts! Alas! that no portrait of either of 
 them is left, — if, indeed, in their simplicity and 
 modesty, they would ever have allowed one to be 
 taken, — so that their image, as well as their names 
 and their example, might be held up to the contem- 
 plation of our country and of mankind for endless 
 generations ! 
 
i6 
 
 But the little church of which they were mem- 
 bers was able, as we know, to maintain its precari- 
 ous and perilous existence at Scrooby, for hardly 
 more than a single 3'ear, certainly for not more than 
 two years. It could find indeed no safe refuge or 
 resting-place in Old England; and having heard that 
 in the Low Countries, as they were then called, 
 there was freedom, or at least toleration, for differ- 
 ences of religious faiths and forms, its members 
 resolved to fly from persecution and establish them- 
 selves in Holland. I will not attempt to describe 
 the perils they encountered, and the sufferings they 
 endured, in that flight; — the separations of children 
 from parents, and of wives from husbands; the 
 arrests and examinations, the fines and imprison- 
 ments, to which so many of them were subjected; 
 the " hair-breadth 'scapes " of one large party of 
 them during a tempestuous voyage of fourteen days, 
 in crossing the German Ocean, in an almost sinking 
 ship. The whole story is familiar to you. It is 
 enough that we find them all at last safely in Amster- 
 dam, where they are free to enjoy their pure and 
 simple worship, and where they remain quietly for 
 another year. 
 
 Not a trace is left of their residence in that then 
 mighty mart, almost a second Venice; born of the 
 sea, "built in the very lap of the floods, and encir- 
 cled in their watery arms; " and claiming the whole 
 ocean, from the Baltic to the Levant, not only as the 
 
17 
 
 field of its enterprise, but almost as its own right- 
 ful inheritance and domain. Not, a trace of them 
 is left there. We only know that, finding they 
 were in danger of being involved in contentions 
 about women's dresses and men's starched bands, 
 and other such vital matters, which had sprung up 
 in another little church of English Separatists which 
 had fled there before them, and thus of being robbed 
 of that harmony and peace which the}' prized above 
 all earthly things, and which they had abandoned 
 home and kindred and country to enjoy, — they 
 thought it best to remove once more, and establish 
 themselves at the neighboring inland city of Leyden. 
 It was a great epoch in Dutch history, when 
 the Pilgrims took up their abode in Holland, and 
 began to habituate themselves to its '^ strange and 
 uncouth " customs and language. It was the precise 
 period at which, as the close and consummation of 
 " the most tremendous war for liberty ever waged," 
 our own Motley has terminated his admirable ac- 
 count of "The United Netherlands," — to begin it 
 again, we trust, at no distant day, and then to show 
 us precisely what was going on in that interest- 
 ing country while our Fathers were witnesses and 
 partakers of its fortunes. Within a year after 
 they reached Amsterdam, and the very year they 
 removed to Leyden, the grand twelve years' truce 
 between Spain and her revolted Colonies had been 
 negotiated and ratified. Those Colonies had now 
 
i8 
 
 virtually established their freedom and independ- 
 ence. Olden Barneveldt and Prince Maurice had 
 reconciled their animosities and rivalries for a time; 
 and the great Republic — henceforth, though not 
 for ever, to be known and recognized as the United 
 States of the Netherlands — was enjo3'ing internal 
 as well as external peace and rest, after a fearful 
 struggle of forty years' duration. 
 
 It is a charming coincidence, certainly, that the 
 coming of the Pilgrims was thus simultaneous with 
 the commencement of that blessed truce, which 
 was destined, too, by its own limitation, to last dur- 
 ing the precise period of their stay there. One 
 might almost picture the bow of peace and promise, 
 lifting itself in all its many-colored glories, and over- 
 arching that blood-stained soil, to welcome the little 
 band of fugitives for conscience' sake to their tem- 
 porary repose, and to assure them that war should 
 crimson its fields no more while they should bless 
 it with their presence! 
 
 At Leyden, they find, as Bradford says, "a fair 
 and beautiful city, and of a sweet situation, but made 
 more famous by the University wherewith it is 
 adorned, in which of late had been so many learned 
 men." That was, certainly, a noble University, 
 erected as a monument to the heroism of those who 
 had fought and fallen in the dreadful siege which 
 the city had endured so grandly in 1574, — erected 
 in the same spirit in which our Memorial Hall has 
 
19 
 
 recently been founded at Cambridge by the Alumni 
 of Harvard. Famous professors, and famous schol- 
 ars also, it had indeed enjoyed. The learned 
 Arminius had died just as the Pilgrims arrived 
 there, but his teachings and doctrines were left to 
 be the subject of endless disputation. The marvel- 
 lous Joseph Scaliger, too, had died the same year; 
 but his not less marvellous pupil, Hugo Grotius, 
 was only at the outset of his great career, having 
 published his Latin Tragedy, " The Suffering 
 Christ," the very year of their arrival at Amster- 
 dam, and his " Mare Liberum " the year of their 
 removal to Leyden. 
 
 The youthful Bradford may not, perhaps, have 
 been much in the way of taking note or notice of 
 what was going on at this great seat of learning, 
 as, in default of other means of support, he had put 
 himself as an apprentice to a French Protestant, 
 and was acquiring the art of dyeing silk. But Brews- 
 ter had found employment as a tutor to some of the 
 youth of the city and the University, and was teach- 
 ing them the English language by a grammar of his 
 own construction; while, at the same time, he had set 
 up a printing-press, and " was instrumental in pub- 
 lishing several books against the hierarchy, which 
 could not obtain a license in England." To him the 
 University and its learned professors, and all their 
 proceedings and lectures, must have been as famil- 
 iar as they were interesting. His revered friend 
 
20 
 
 and pastor, Robinson, moreover, — as we learn from 
 the researches of an accomplished and lamented 
 New England scholar and traveller (the late Mr, 
 George Sumner), — was formalh^ admitted to the 
 privileges of a member or subject of the University 
 four or tive years after his arrival at Leyden. By 
 the investigations of Mr. Sumner, too, and of a late 
 American Minister at the Hague, the Hon. Henry 
 C. Murphy, we have been enabled to identify the 
 very spot, in the Cathedral Church of St. Peter, where 
 the precious remains of this holy man, whose mem- 
 ory is so dear to New England, were at least tem- 
 porarily deposited; while the record of that burial 
 has also most happily helped us to fix the exact 
 place of his residence as long as he lived there. In 
 that residence, — and not in any church edifice, for 
 they had none, — there is the best reason for think- 
 ing that the Pilgrims worshipped; and thanks to the 
 pious pains of the Rev. Henr}^ Martyn Dexter, of 
 Boston, whose labors in the cause of Pilgrim his- 
 tory I may find further cause for acknowledging, a 
 plate has been affixed to the walls of the building 
 which now stands on that site, inscribed, " On this 
 spot lived, taught and died, John Robinson, 
 1611-1625." 
 
 I cannot forget that I lingered in Leyden, for some 
 hours, two or three years ago, for the single pur- 
 pose of visiting that site, and the place of the 
 grave of him who made it so memorable for ever; 
 
21 
 
 but I could find no one at hand to point either 
 of them out for me; and, but for the record of Mr. 
 Sumner and the inscription of Dr. Dexter, I might 
 have missed all that there is there to recall the 
 memory of the Fathers of New England. For, in- 
 deed, this is all, — the place of a temporary grave 
 and the site of a dwelling long ago levelled to the 
 ground, — this is absolutely all which can be iden- 
 tified of the Pilgrims' home at Leyden for eleven 
 years. Yet no New Englander, I think, can visit 
 that city on an early autumn or a late summer's day, 
 and behold the ancient buildings on which their 
 eyes must have been accustomed to look; and gaze 
 on the countless canals, and on the flowing river, on 
 the bosom of which they must so often have sailed, 
 and on the banks of which they must so often have 
 rested ; and drink in that soft, hazy, golden sunshine, 
 which one of the great masters of that region 
 (Cuyp), not far from the very time and place at 
 which they were enjoying it, was engaged in making 
 the chief charm of not a few of his most exquisite 
 landscapes, — without being conscious of the inspi- 
 ration of the scene; nor without feeling and acknowl- 
 edging that there is, and will forever be, a magnetic 
 sympathy between Leyden and Plymouth Rock, 
 which no material batteries or tangible wires are 
 needed to kindle and keep alive. 
 
 Leyden must indeed have been, as we know it 
 was, most dear to the hearts of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
 
22 
 
 There they found rest and safety. There, to use 
 their own language, they enjoyed " much sweet and 
 delightful society and spiritual comfort together in 
 the ways of God," and " lived together in peace and 
 love and holiness." But there, too, they were joined 
 by not a few of those who were to be most service- 
 able and most dear to them in their future experi- 
 ences and trials. 
 
 There they were joined by John Carver, of 
 whom we know enough for his own glory, and for 
 his perpetual remembrance among men, in know- 
 ing almost nothing except that he was counted 
 worth}' to be chosen the first Governor of the 
 little band, and that he died, here at Pl3^mouth, 
 after a brief career, in the faithful discharge of that 
 office. 
 
 There Robert Cushman joined them, who, in 
 spite of some infirmities of temper and some infelic- 
 ities of conduct, and though at one time he seemed 
 to have "put his hand to the plough and to have 
 looked back," and was missing from the group 
 whose advent we celebrate to-day, came over not 
 long afterwards, reinstated in the confidence of 
 those with whom he had been so prominently asso- 
 ciated at Leyden; delivered, in the Common House 
 of the Plantation, that memorable sermon on Self- 
 Love, the first printed sermon of New England, if 
 not of our whole continent; and, after a perhaps pre- 
 mature return home, continued to watch carefully 
 
23 
 
 over the interests of the Pilgrims in England, writ- 
 ing letters remarkable alike for the beauty of their 
 style and for the prudence of their counsel; and was 
 lamented by Bradford, when he heard of his death 
 in 1624, as "a wise and faithful friend." 
 
 There they were joined by Miles Standish, the 
 intrepid soldier and famous captain of New Eng- 
 land; who, having served on the side of the Dutch 
 in the armies of England in the war against Spain, 
 and having now been released by the great truce 
 from further campaigning in the Old World, united 
 himself with the Pilgrims, and, though not a mem- 
 ber of their church, followed their fortunes, and 
 fought their battles gallantly to the end. A little 
 man himself, — hardl}^ more than five feet high, 
 — the grand army with which he performed "his 
 most capital exploit" was probably the smallest 
 which was ever mustered for a serious conflict in 
 the annals of human warfare, — only eight men 
 besides their leader. But, "in small room large 
 heart inclosed," he had acquired, not perhaps 
 from Caesar's Commentaries, his favorite study, but 
 certainly from some other source, a knowledge 
 which some of the ruthless warriors of the present 
 day have failed to exhibit, — the knowledge where 
 to stop, as well as when to strike; and, having 
 secured a signal victory, he brought home in safety 
 every man whom he carried out. Honor to Miles 
 Standish, " the stalwart captain of Plymouth," of 
 
24 
 
 whose restrained wrath, when the Puritan influence 
 had come in to temper the profanity for which there 
 was a proverbial Hcense in Flanders, our charming- 
 Longfellow would seem to have caught the very 
 accent and cadence, when he says of it, — 
 
 " Sometimes it seemed like a prayer, and sometimes it sounded like 
 swearing ; " 
 
 and whose threefold accomplishments he so tersely 
 sums up, when he describes him as doubting 
 
 "Which of the three he should choose for his consolation and comfort, 
 Whether the wars of the Hebrews, the famous campaigns of the 
 
 Romans, 
 Or the artillery practice, designed for belligerent Christians." 
 
 A higher tribute to the fidelity, vigilance, and 
 courage of the old Plymouth captain could hardly 
 have been paid, than when the late venerable Judge 
 Davis, — a Pl3^mouth man, and full of the original 
 Plymouth spirit, — not many years before his death, 
 unwilling to be wanting to the volunteer patrol 
 service, in Boston, on some occasion of real or 
 imaginary peril, made solemn application to our 
 old Massachusetts Historical Society for the use 
 of one of his reputed — albeit somewhat rusty — 
 swords, and walked the midnight round with that 
 for his trusty and all-sufficient companion. 
 
 But there, too, at Leyden, they were joined, — by 
 the accidents of travel, as it would seem, — in 1617, 
 by one of the very noblest of our little band, who 
 was soon associated most leadingly and lovingly 
 
25 
 
 with all their spiritual as well as temporal concerns; 
 their Governor for three years, when Bradford had 
 " by importunity got off ; " the narrator and chron- 
 icler of not a few of the most interesting passages 
 of their histor}'; the leader of not a few of their 
 most important enterprises; a man of eminent activ- 
 ity, resolution, and bravery; who did not shrink from 
 offering himself as a hostage to the savages, while 
 a conference was held and a treaty made with one 
 of their barbarous chieftains; who did not shrink 
 from imprisonment, and the danger of death, in con- 
 fronting, as an agent of Plymouth and Massachusetts, 
 the tyrannical Archbishop Laud; who earned a 
 gentler and more practical title to remembrance as 
 the importer of the first neat cattle ever introduced 
 into New England; an earnest and devoted friend 
 to the civilization of the Indian tribes and their con- 
 version to Christianity; the chief commissioner of 
 Oliver Cromwell in his warlike designs upon an 
 island, which our own hero President has so recently 
 attempted to secure by peaceful purchase : — Edward 
 WiNSLOW, — the only one of the Pilgrim Fathers of 
 whom we have an authentic portrait; whose old 
 seat of Careswell, at Marshfield, was the chosen 
 home of Webster; and whose remains, had they not 
 been committed to the deep, when he died so sadly 
 on the sea, at the close of his unsuccessful expedi- 
 tion to St. Domingo, would have been counted 
 among the most precious dust which New England 
 could possess. 4 
 
26 
 
 Leyden must indeed have been dear to the Pil- 
 grims, as the place where so many of these leading 
 spirits first entered into their association, and first 
 pledged their lives and fortunes to the sacred 
 enterprise. 
 
 But Leyden, and the whole marvellous land of 
 which it was at that day one of the most interesting 
 and enlightened cities, had a charm for our Fore- 
 fathers far above all mere personal considerations. 
 It was a land to which the great German poet, 
 dramatist, and historian, Schiller, in his " Revolt of 
 the Netherlands," gave the noblest testimony, in say- 
 ing that " every injury inflicted by a tyrant gave a 
 right of citizenship in Holland." It was a land to 
 which that quaint old Suffolk Count}'^ essayist, 
 Owen Felltham, paid a still higher tribute when he 
 described it as " a place of refuge for sectaries of 
 all denominations." "Let but some of our Separa- 
 tists be asked," said he, with evident reference to 
 our English exiles of whom he was a contemporary, 
 " let but some of our Separatists be asked, and they 
 shall swear that the Elysian Fields are there." " If 
 you are unsettled," says he in another place, " if 
 you are unsettled in your religion, you ma}^ trj^ here 
 all, and take at last what you like best. If you 
 fancy none, you have a pattern to follow of two 
 that would be a church by themselves." 
 
 Yes, that was exactly it, — "a Church by them- 
 selves;" and there, in that church by themselves, 
 
27 
 
 our Pilofrlm Fathers first tasted the sweets of civil 
 and religious freedom, and enjoyed that liberty to 
 worship God, according to the dictates of their 
 own consciences, which to them was worth every 
 sacrifice and above all price. There, too, just 
 as they removed from Amsterdam to Leyden, the 
 extraordinary sound was heard, — from the lips 
 of a Roman Catholic, and in behalf of his Roman 
 Catholic brethren, — of an appeal for liberty of 
 conscience which was never surpassed by the 
 founders of Rhode Island, Maryland, or Pennsyl- 
 vania. " Those," said President Jeannin, most forci- 
 bly and eloquently, on taking leave of the States 
 General, " those cannot be said to share any enjoy- 
 ment from whom has been taken the power of serv- 
 ing God according to the religion in which they 
 were brought up. On the contrar}^, no slavery is 
 more intolerable nor more exasperates the mind 
 than such restraint. You know this well, my Lords 
 States; you know, too, that it was the principal, 
 the most puissant cause that made 3^ou fly to arms 
 and scorn all dangers, in order to effect your deliv- 
 erance from this servitude. You know that it has 
 excited similar movements in various parts of Chris- 
 tendom, and even in the kingdom of France, with 
 such fortunate success everywhere as to make it 
 appear that God had so willed it, in order to prove 
 that religion ought to be taught and inspired by the 
 movements which come from the Holy Ghost, and 
 not by the force of man." 
 
28 
 
 We know not precisely how far the ears of the 
 Pilgrims may have been regaled, and their hearts 
 encouraged and strengthened, by this grand appeal 
 from so unaccustomed a source. Brewster, who, 
 as we have seen, had been in the Low Countries 
 before, as Secretary to the English Ambassador, 
 may hardly have been ignorant of it. But, at all 
 events, it affords most significant testimony to the 
 spirit of religious liberty which pervaded the land 
 in which such words at that period could have been 
 uttered; and, coming from the lips of a Romanist, it 
 must have put to shame any Protestant bigotr}^ or 
 intolerance, if any such were lurking there, which 
 might have restrained the full freedom of our Eng- 
 lish exiles. Dr. Belknap, in his American Biogra- 
 phy, may, perhaps, have anticipated events in stating, 
 as he does, that Robinson himself, about this time, 
 after a friendly conference with one upon whose name 
 he had recently made a petulant pun, in an angry 
 controversy, — changing it reproachfully from Ames 
 to Amiss, — relaxed the rigor of his Separatism ; 
 published a book, allowing and defending the lawful- 
 ness of communicating with the Church of England; 
 "allowed pious members of the Church of England, 
 and of all the reformed churches, to communicate 
 with his church; and declared that he separated 
 from no church, but from the corruptions of all 
 churches." But the statement was substantially 
 true of a later period, if not of this. The book, he 
 
29 
 
 adds, gained him the title of a Semi-Separatist, and 
 was so offensive to the rigid Brownists of Amster- 
 dam that they would scarcely hold communion with 
 the Church of Leyden. 
 
 But, alas! more serious dissensions than these 
 were soon to agitate again that whole united Repub- 
 lic, and to involve it in a crime of which all the 
 multitudinous seas which surround it could hardly 
 wash out the stain. The successor to the chair of 
 Arminius in the University of Leyden (Vorstius) 
 had not only stirred up " hearts of controversy " in 
 his own land by teaching and preaching the peculiar 
 doctrines of his master, but had roused the special 
 indignation of the Royal theological polemic and 
 titular Defender of the Faith across the channel, — 
 that same James I., who a few years before had cut 
 short a conference with the Puritan leaders, at 
 Hampton Court, by declaring that " he would make 
 them conform or he would harry them out of the 
 land," and who, in this respect certainly, had been 
 as good as his word. The recent assassination 
 of his glorious fellow-sovereign, Henry IV. of 
 France, had revived and quickened his antipathy not 
 to Roman Catholics only, but to all religionists 
 who did not agree with himself; and he had the 
 insolence now to demand that the obnoxious Pro- 
 fessor of Leyden should be dismissed from his chair 
 and banished from the States, — leaving it, also, to 
 their " Christian wisdom " whether he should not be 
 
30 
 
 burned at the stake for " his atheism and blasphe- 
 mies." The States were compelled to comply, and 
 did most humiliatingly comply, with this demand; 
 but the banishment of Vorstius only the more 
 inflamed the theological strife which raged through- 
 out their dominions. Prince Maurice and Olden 
 Barneveldt were again at each other's throats; the 
 former as the leader of the Calvinist party, and the 
 latter as the leader of the Arminians, with Grotius 
 as his second. And, incredible as it seems to us at 
 this hour, the controversy was only terminated by 
 one of the most infamous judicial murders which 
 pollute the annals of mankind; taking its loath- 
 some place in the calendar of crime by the side of 
 the execution of Sir Walter Raleigh, the year before, 
 and of Algernon Sydney and Lord William Russell 
 half a century later. On the 13th of May, 1619, 
 Olden Barneveldt, the noble patriot and benefactor, 
 second to no one among the founders of the Repub- 
 lic and the authors of its liberties, was condemned 
 to death and beheaded at the Hague; while Grotius 
 was sentenced to perpetual imprisonment, — from 
 which, however, the ingenuity of his wife happily 
 released him at the end of two years. 
 
 I would gladly have found some allusion to these 
 monstrous outrages in some of the journals or letters 
 of the Pilgrims. Occurring, as they did, during the 
 very last year of their residence there, I would 
 gladly believe that some abhorrence of such crimes 
 
31 
 
 may have mingled with their motives for seeking 
 another place of refuge. Although their religious 
 sympathies were strongly with the Calvinist party, 
 and their pastor, Robinson, had disputed publicly 
 against the doctrines of Arminius, — putting his 
 antagonist Episcopius, the Arminian Professor, to 
 " an apparent nonplus," as Bradford tells us, " not 
 once only, but a second and third time, before a 
 great and public audience, and winning a famous 
 victory for the truth," and " much honor and respect 
 for those who loved the truth," — yet he and Brews- 
 ter and Bradford and Winslow must have shrunk 
 with horror from this atrocious murder. There is 
 good reason for believing that Brewster, indeed, left 
 Leyden with his family not many weeks afterwards; 
 and I will not doubt that such events increased the 
 eagerness of them all once more to change the 
 place of their habitation, and hastened their negotia- 
 tions with the merchant adventurers in London. 
 
 But their purpose of quitting Holland had been 
 conceived nearly two years before this terrible 
 tragedy was enacted. As early as the autumn of 
 1617, Robert Cushman and John Carver had been 
 sent as their agents to attempt an arrangement for 
 their removal to America with the Virginia Com- 
 pany in London; and in 16 18 the Church of Ley- 
 den — with a view to removing the objections, and 
 conciliating the favor of the King and others — had 
 adopted those memorable Seven Articles, first pub- 
 
32 
 
 lished in 1856 by our accomplished historian Ban- 
 croft, in which the authority of his Majesty and of 
 his Bishops is acknowledged, with an unqualified 
 assent "to the confession of faith published in the 
 name of the Church of England and to every article 
 thereof" The adoption of these " Seven Articles," 
 and the appeals addressed to Sir Edwin Sandys and 
 others by Brewster and Robinson, at length elicited 
 an assurance that " both the King and the Bishops 
 had consented to wink at their departure." 
 
 " Conniving at them and winking at their depart- 
 ure " were all the assurances they could wring from 
 Royalty. " To allow or tolerate them by his public 
 authority, under his seal, they found it would not 
 be." And though the Virginia Compan}^ were 
 strongly desirous to have them go to America under 
 their auspices, and willing to grant them a patent 
 with as ample privileges as they could grant to any 
 one, the feuds and factions in the council of the 
 Company occasioned such delays that no patent was 
 sealed until the 9th of June, 16 19; and, after all the 
 labor and cost of procuring it, it was never made 
 use of. An agreement, however, was entered into 
 with Thomas Weston and other merchant adven- 
 turers; the Mayflower was hired to await them at 
 Southampton; the Speedwell was bought to take 
 them over to England, and keep them company 
 afterwards; a day of solemn humiliation was spent, 
 — after a parting sermon from Robinson, who was 
 
33 
 
 to remain behind with half the members of his 
 church, — " in pouring out prayers to the Lord with 
 great fervency mixed with abundance of tears," and 
 so they proceeded to Delft Haven; and after another 
 most touching parting scene, all kneeling in prayer 
 and taking leave of each other, " with mutual em- 
 braces and many te^rs," the sail was hoisted, and 
 with a prosperous wind they came in a short time 
 to Southampton. There they found "the bigger 
 ship come from London, lying read}^, with all the 
 rest of their company." A few days more are 
 occupied in dealing with their agents and the mer- 
 chant adventurers; a noble farewell letter from 
 Robinson is received and read; and once more they 
 set sail. A leak in the Speedwell compels them to 
 put in at Dartmouth, and then again, after they had 
 gone above a hundred leagues beyond Land's End, 
 to put back to Pl3'mouth, and to abandon the Speed- 
 well altogether. At last, " these troubles being 
 blown over, and now all being compact together in 
 one ship, they put to sea again with a prosperous 
 wind;" and on the i6th day of September, 1620, 
 Old England is parted from for ever. The May- 
 flower, and its one hundred and two passengers, 
 have entered on the voyage, which is to end not 
 merely in founding a more memorable Plymouth 
 than that which they left behind, but in laying the 
 corner-stone of a mightier and freer nation than the 
 
 sun in its circuit had ever before shone upon. 
 
 5 
 
34 
 
 England at the moment took no note of their 
 departing. Her philosophers and statesmen and 
 poets had not quite yet begun to appreciate the 
 losses which religious persecution was entailing 
 upon her. Lord Bacon, indeed, "the great Secre- 
 tary of Nature and all learning," as Isaac Walton 
 called him, had already foreshadowed the glory 
 which was to be gained by some of his Suffolk and 
 Lincolnshire neighbors, when, in one of his cele- 
 brated essays, he assigned the first place, "in the true 
 marshalling of the degrees of sovereign honor," to the 
 ^^ conditores imperiorum, — the founders of States and 
 Commonwealths." But it was more than ten years 
 afterwards before the saintly Herbert published those 
 noted lines, which the Vice-Chancellor of Cambridge 
 had so much hesitation about licensing : — 
 
 " Religion stands on tiptoe in our land, 
 Readie to passe to the American strand." 
 
 And it was nearly ten years later still, when John 
 Milton, in his treatise " Of Reformation in England," 
 exclaimed, " What numbers of faithful and free-born 
 Englishmen, and good Christians, have been con- 
 strained to forsake their dearest home, their friends 
 and kindred, whom nothing but the wide ocean, and 
 the savage deserts of America, could hide and shel- 
 ter from the fury of the bishops! Oh, sir, if we 
 could but see the shape of our dear mother England, 
 as poets are wont to give a personal form to what 
 they please, how would she appear, think ye, but in 
 
35 
 
 a mourning weed, with ashes upon her head, and 
 tears abundantly flowing from her eyes, to behold 
 so many of her children exposed at once, and thrust 
 from things of dearest necessity, because their con- 
 science could not assent to things which the bishops 
 thought indifferent! " 
 
 But the time was to come when England was to 
 make signal recognition of this memorable Exodus. 
 Little did they imagine, — those pious, humble, 
 simple-hearted men and women, as they stood on 
 the deck of their little bark of only one hundred and 
 eighty tons' burthen, and looked wistfully upon their 
 native shores receding from their moistened eyes, — 
 little did they imagine that the scene of that embarka- 
 tion, before two centuries and a half had passed away, 
 should not only be among the most cherished orna- 
 ments of the Rotundo of the American Capitol, but 
 should be found, as it is found this day, among the 
 most conspicuous frescoes in the corridors of the 
 Parliament Houses of Old England. Still less could 
 the haughty Monarch and the bigoted Prelates, who 
 had reluctantly been induced "to connive and wink 
 at their departure," have dreamed, that such a picture 
 should ever be warranted and welcomed by their 
 successors, as one of the appropriate scenes for 
 inspiring and for warning them, as they should 
 sweep along, through the grand galleries of State, to 
 their places on the throne or the Episcopal bench, 
 in that gorgeous Chamber of the temporal and 
 spiritual Lords of Great Britain. 
 
36 
 
 But this would not be the only souvenir of the 
 Pilgrim Fathers which might suffuse the cheeks of 
 a Bancroft, a Wren, or a Laud, could they be per- 
 mitted to revisit the scenes of their old prelatical 
 intolerance and arrogance. 
 
 The suburban residence of the Bishop of London 
 at Fulham has many charms. Its velvet lawn, its 
 walks upon the Thames, its grand old oaks and 
 cedars of Lebanon, its fine historical portraits, its 
 rare library, its beautiful modern chapel, and, above 
 all, its antique hall, recently restored, — in which the 
 cruel Bonner and the noble Ridley may have succes- 
 sively held their councils during the struggles of the 
 Reformation, and where Bancroft and Laud may have 
 concerted their schemes of bigotry and persecution, — 
 render it altogether one of the most interesting places 
 near London, and hardly less attractive than Lambeth 
 itself. I have been privileged to visit it on more 
 than one of those delicious afternoons of an English 
 June, when the apartments and the grounds were 
 thronged by all that was most distinguished in the 
 society of the Metropolis, assembled to pay their 
 respects to one whose exalted character, and earnest 
 piety, and liberal churchmanship, and unsparing 
 devotion to the humblest as well as the highest 
 duties of his station, have won for him universal 
 esteem, respect, and affection, and who has recently 
 been called by the Queen to the Primacy of all 
 England. But I need hardly say, that to an Ameri- 
 
37 
 
 can, or certainly to a New England eye, there was 
 nothing in all the treasures of art, or of antiquity, or 
 of literature, which that palace contained, — nothing 
 in all the loveliness of its natural scenery and sur- 
 roundings, nothing in all the historical associations 
 of the spot, nothing in all the beauty and accom- 
 plishments and titled or untitled celebrity of the 
 company gathered beneath the roof or scattered 
 upon the lawn, — which could compare for a moment 
 with the interest of an old manuscript volume, which 
 strangely enough had found its way there, of all 
 places in the world, and which had rested for three 
 quarters of a century almost unidentified and unrec- 
 ognized on its library-shelves. You will all have 
 anticipated me when I say that it is the long-lost 
 manuscript volume, of which but a small portion had 
 ever been printed or copied, written by the hand of 
 William Bradford himself, and giving the detailed 
 story of the Pilgrim Fathers from their first gather- 
 ing at Scrooby down to the year 1647. 
 
 My valued friend, Mr. Charles Deane, to whom, 
 above almost all others, we are indebted for throw- 
 ing light upon the early history of New England, in 
 the edition of this volume which he so admirably 
 prepared and annotated for the Collections of the 
 Massachusetts Historical Society, has sufficiently 
 described the circumstances of its discovery. When 
 the glad tidings first reached us, I did not fail to 
 sympathize with those who felt that a more rightful 
 
38 
 
 as well as more congenial and appropriate place for 
 such a manuscript might be found on this side of 
 the Atlantic. But after a little more reflection, and 
 after we had secured an exact and complete trans- 
 cript of it for publication, I could not help feeling 
 that there was something of special fitness and feli- 
 city in its being left precisely where it is. There 
 let it rest, as a remembrancer to all who shall suc- 
 ceed, generation after generation, to that famous 
 See and its charming palace, of the simple faith, the 
 devoted piety, the brave obedience to the dictates 
 of conscience, of those who led the way in the col- 
 onization of New England, and who endured so 
 heroically the persecutions and perils which that 
 great enterprise involved! 
 
 How it would have gratified the honest heart of 
 Bradford himself, could he have known where his 
 precious volume should at length be found, and in 
 what estimation it should be held after it was found! 
 How it would have delighted him to know that 
 instead of being set down in some " Index Expur- 
 gatorius," or burned at St. Paul's Cross, as com- 
 pounded of heresy and blasphemy, — as it would 
 have been by those who dwelt or congregated at 
 Fulham at the time it was written, — it should be 
 sacredly guarded among the heirlooms of the palace 
 and its successive occupants! How much more it 
 would have delighted him to know that so much of 
 the simplicity and liberality of form and faith which 
 
39 
 
 it portrayed and inculcated, would be cherished and 
 exemplified by more than one of those under whose 
 official custody it was in these latter days to fall ! 
 
 Few persons, I presume, will doubt that had the 
 Church of England, between 1608 and 1620, been 
 what it is to-day, and its Bishops and Archbishops 
 such in life and in spirit as those who have recently 
 presided at London and Canterbury, Brewster and 
 Bradford would hardly have left Scrooby, and the 
 Mayflower might long have been employed in less 
 interesting ways than in bringing Separatists to 
 Plymouth Rock. As that church and its prelates 
 then were, let us thank God that such Separatists 
 were found! An Episcopalian myself, by election 
 as well as by education, and warmly attached to the 
 forms and the faith in which I was brought up ; believ- 
 ing that the Church of England has rendered inesti- 
 mable service to the cause of religion in furnishing 
 a safe and sure anchorage in so many stormy times, 
 when the minds of men were " tossed to and fro, 
 and carried about with every wind of doctrine;" 
 and prizing that very prayer-book, — which was dis- 
 owned and discarded by Bradford and Brewster, 
 and by Winthrop, too, — as second only to the Bible 
 in the richness of its treasures of prayer and praise; 
 I yet rejoice, as heartily as any Congregationalist 
 who listens to me, that our Pilgrim Fathers were 
 Separatists. 
 
 I rejoice, too, that the Puritan Fathers of Mas- 
 
40 
 
 sachusetts, who followed them to these shores 
 ten years afterwards, — though, to the last, they 
 " esteemed it their honor to call the Church of 
 England their dear mother, and could not part from 
 their native country, where she specially resideth, 
 without much sadness of heart and many tears," — 
 were, if not technically and professedly, yet to all 
 intents and purposes. Separatists, also; — Semi- 
 Separatists at least, as Robinson himself was called 
 when he wrote and published that book which so 
 offended the Brownists. I rejoice that the prelatical 
 assumptions and tyrannies of that day were re- 
 sisted. The Church of England would never have 
 been the noble church it has since become, had 
 there been no seasonable protest against its cor- 
 ruptions, its extravagant formalism, and its over- 
 bearing intolerance. The earliest Separatists were 
 those who separated from Rome; and when some- 
 thing more than a disposition was manifested to 
 return towards Rome, in almost every thing except 
 the acknowledgment of its temporal supremacy, 
 another separation could not have been, ought 
 not to have been, avoided. A serious renewal of 
 such manifestations at this day, I need not say, 
 would rend the Anglican Church asunder ; and its 
 American daughter would, under similar circum- 
 stances, deservedly share its fate. Pretensions of 
 human infallibility need not be proclaimed by an 
 Ecumenical Council in order to be offensive and 
 
41 
 
 abhorrent. It does not require a conclave of Cardi- 
 nals to render assumptions and proscriptions and 
 excommunications odious. Convocations and Con- 
 ventions, and even Synods and Councils and Confer- 
 ences, will answer just as well. When so much of 
 the discipline of the English Church was devoted to 
 matters of form and ceremony; when spiritualism 
 was in danger of forgetting its first syllable, and of 
 degenerating into an empty ritualism; when godly 
 ministers were silenced for "scrupling the vest- 
 ments," or for preaching an evening lecture, and men 
 and women and children were punished for not bow- 
 ing in the Creed, or kneeling at the altar, or for hav- 
 ing family pra3^ers under their own roof, — separation 
 — call it Schism, if you will — was the true resort 
 and the only remedy. For the sake of the church 
 itself, but a thousand-fold more for the sake of 
 Christianity, which is above all churches, it was 
 needful that a great example of such a separation 
 should be exhibited at all hazards and at any sacri- 
 fice. The glorious Luther, to whose memory that 
 majestic monument has so recently been erected at 
 Worms, had furnished such an example in his own 
 day and land, and with relation to the church of 
 which he had once been a devoted disciple. No 
 name ma}^ be compared with his name in the grand 
 calendar of Separatists. But our Pilgrim Fathers 
 were humble followers in the same path of Protes- 
 tantism, and thanks be to God that their hearts were 
 
42 
 
 inspired and emboldened to imitate his heroic 
 course. 
 
 I would not seem too harsh towards those old 
 prelates of the English Church, by whom Pilgrims 
 or Puritans were persecuted. Sir James Mackin- 
 tosh, I think, has somewhere said, that if the United 
 Netherlands had erected a statue to the real author 
 of all their liberties, it would have been to the Duke 
 of Alva, whose abominable tyranny goaded the 
 Dutch to desperation, and drove them into re- 
 bellion. I am not sure that, on this principle. New 
 England might not well include Bancroft and Laud 
 in her gallery of eminent benefactors. We must 
 never forget, however, that almost all great move- 
 ments are but the resultants of opposing forces; and 
 that, in impressing upon them their final shape and 
 direction, those who resist are hardly less effective 
 than those who support and urge. Nor can it be 
 forgotten that, in the turn of the wheel of England's 
 fortunes, poor Laud was himself destined to per- 
 secution and martyrdom. It must have been a grim 
 joke, when Hugh Peters and others proposed to send 
 him over to New England for punishment, as his 
 Breviate tells us they did; and it might be a matter 
 for curious conjecture what would have happened to 
 him, had he come here then. But the meekness 
 and bravery and Christian heroism with which he 
 bore his fate, when so wantonly and barbarously 
 brought to the block, after four years of imprison- 
 
43 
 
 ment in the Tower, are almost enough to make us 
 forget that he was ever so haughty and insolent and 
 cruel, and quite enough to extinguish all resentment 
 of his wronofs. 
 
 But let me not longer delay to acknowledge, on 
 this occasion, the deep debt which New England and 
 our whole country owes to the Congregationalism 
 which the Pilgrims established on our soil, and of 
 which the very first church in America was planted 
 by them here at Plymouth. My whole heart is in 
 sympathy with the celebration of this Jubilee to be 
 held in my native city, this evening, by the Con- 
 gregationalists of our land. They would wrong 
 themselves, indeed, as well as all who are not of 
 their own communion, were they to celebrate it in 
 any narrow, controversial spirit, and to turn a 
 national into a merely denominational anniversary. 
 But it would be doing them deep injustice to suggest 
 or imagine such a thing. They have a right to cele- 
 brate it, and they will celebrate it, as a day whose 
 associations and influences have far outreached every 
 thing sectarian and every thing sectional, and which 
 are as comprehensive as the land they live in, and 
 as all-embracing as the Christianity they profess 
 and cherish. 
 
 Few persons, if any, can hesitate to agree with 
 them, that no other system of church government 
 than Congregationalism could have been successful 
 in New England at that day. No other system 
 
44 
 
 could have done so much for religion ; no other 
 S3'stem could have done so much for liberty, re- 
 ligious or civil. "The meeting-house, the school- 
 house, and the training field," said old John Adams, 
 "are the scenes where New England men were 
 formed." He did not intend to omit the town- 
 house, for no one was more sensible than himself 
 how much of New England education and charac- 
 ter was owing to our little municipal organizations, 
 and to the free consultations and discussions of our 
 little town meetings. But he was right in naming 
 " the meeting-house " first. Certainly, for the cause 
 of religious freedom, no other security could have 
 compared with the independent system of church 
 government. Independent churches prepared the 
 way for Independent States and an Independent 
 Nation; and formed the earliest and most enduring 
 barriers and bulwarks at once against hierarchies 
 and monarchies. 
 
 That work fully and finally accomplished, and 
 civil and religious freedom securely established, we 
 may all be more than content, we all ought to 
 rejoice, as we witness the association and the pros- 
 perous advancement, under whatever name or form 
 they may choose to enroll themselves, of "all who 
 profess and call themselves Christians," — studying 
 ever, as Edward Winslow tells us the sainted 
 Robinson studied, towards his latter end, " peace 
 and union as far as might agree with faith and a 
 
45 
 
 good conscience." Let those who will, indulge in 
 the dream, or cherish the waking vision, of a single 
 universal Church on earth, recognized and accepted 
 of men, whose authority is binding on every con- 
 science and decisive of every point of faith or form. 
 To the' eye of God, indeed, such a Church may be 
 visible even now, in "the blessed company of all 
 faithful people," in whatever region they may dwell, 
 with whatever organization they may be connected, 
 with Him as their head, "of whom the whole family 
 in earth and heaven is named." And as, in some 
 grand orchestra, hundreds of performers, each with 
 his own instrument and his own separate score, strike 
 widely variant notes, and produce sounds, some- 
 times in close succession and sometimes at length- 
 ened intervals, which heard alone would seem to 
 be wanting in every thing like method or melody, 
 but which heard together are found delighting 
 the ear, and ravishing the soul, with a flood of 
 magnificent harmony, as they give concerted ex- 
 pression to the glowing conceptions of some mighty 
 master, like him, the centennial anniversary of 
 whose birthday has just been commemorated, — 
 even so, — even so, it may be, — from the differing, 
 broken, and often seemingly discordant strains of 
 sincere seekers after God, the Divine ear, upon 
 which no lisp of the voice or breathing of the heart 
 is ever lost, catches only a combined and glorious 
 anthem of prayer and praise! 
 
46 
 
 But to human ears such harmonies are not vouch- 
 safed. The Church, In all its majestic unity, shall 
 be revealed hereafter. The "Jerusalem, which is 
 the mother of us all, is above;" and we can only 
 humbly hope that, in the providence of God, its gates 
 shall be wider, and its courts fuller, and its members 
 quickened and multiplied, by the very differences of 
 form and of doctrine which have divided Christians 
 from each other on earth, and which have created 
 something of competition and rivalry, and even of 
 contention, in their efforts to advance the ends of 
 their respective denominations. Absolute religious 
 uniformity, as poor human nature is now constituted, 
 would but too certainly be the cause, if it were not 
 itself the consequence, of absolute religious indiffer- 
 ence and stagnation. 
 
 Pardon me, fellow-citizens and friends, for a 
 digression, — if it be one, — in which I may almost 
 seem to have forgotten that I have been privileged 
 to occupy this pulpit only for a temporary and 
 secular purpose, and to have encroached on the pre- 
 rogative of its stated incumbent; but coming here, 
 at your flattering call, to unite in the commemoration 
 of those whose special distinction it was to have 
 separated from the communion to which I rejoice 
 to belong, I could not resist the impulse to give 
 utterance to thoughts which are always uppermost 
 in my mind, when I reflect on this period of New 
 England history. I hasten now to resume and to 
 
47 
 
 finish the thread of that Pilgrim narrative which is 
 the legitimate theme of my discourse. 
 
 I must not detain you for a moment by the details 
 of that perilous voyage across the Atlantic, w^ith its 
 " many fierce storms, with which the ship was 
 badly shaken and her upper works made very leaky; 
 and one of the mainbeams in the midships bowed 
 and cracked." I must not detain you by dwelling 
 on that " serious consultation " in mid-ocean about 
 putting back, when " the great iron screw which 
 the passengers brought out of Holland " was so 
 providentially found " for the buckling of the main- 
 beam," and "raising it into his place." All this is 
 described in the journal of Bradford with a pathos 
 and a power which could not be surpassed. 
 
 I must not detain you either by attempting to 
 portray, in any words of my own, their arrival, on the 
 2ist of November, within the sheltering arm of 
 yonder noble Cape, — "the coast fringed with ice — 
 dreary forests, interspersed with sandy tracts, filling 
 the background;" — "no friendly light-houses, as 
 yet, hanging out their cressets on your headlands; 
 no brave pilot boat hovering like a sea-bird on the 
 tops of the waves, to guide the shattered bark to its 
 harbor; no charts and soundings making the secret 
 pathways of the deep plain as a gravelled road 
 through a lawn." All this was depicted, at the 
 great second-centennial celebration of the settle- 
 ment of Barnstable, by my lamented friend Edward 
 
48 
 
 Everett, with a grandeur of diction and imagery 
 which no living orator can approach. They seem 
 still ringing in my ear from his own lips, — for I 
 was by his side on that occasion, and no one who 
 heard him on that day can ever forget his tones or 
 his words, as, " with a spirit raised above mere 
 natural agencies," he exclaimed, — " I see the moun- 
 tains of New England rising from their rocky 
 thrones. They rush forward into the ocean, settling 
 down as they advance, and there they range them- 
 selves, a mighty bulwark around the heaven-directed 
 vessel. Yes, the everlasting God himself stretches 
 out the arm of his mercy and his power in substan- 
 tial manifestation, and gathers the meek company 
 of his worshippers as in the hollow of his hand! " 
 
 Nor will I detain you for a moment on the sim- 
 ple but solemn covenant which the Pilgrim Fathers 
 formed and signed in the cabin of the Mayflower on 
 that same 2 1 st of November, — the earliest " original 
 compact " of self-government of which we have any 
 authentic record in the annals of our race. That 
 has had ample illustration on many other occasions, 
 and has just been the subject of special commem- 
 oration by the New England Historic-Genealogical 
 Society in Boston. 
 
 I turn at once to what concerns this day and this 
 hour. I turn at once to that third exploring party 
 which left the Mayflower — not quite blown up by 
 the rashness of a mischievous boy, and still riding 
 
49 
 
 at anchor in Cape Cod harbor — on the i6th of 
 December; and for whose wanderings in search of 
 a final place of settlement our friend Dr. Dexter has 
 supplied so precise a chronological table. I turn to 
 those "ten of our men," with "two of our seamen," 
 and with six of the ship's company, — eighteen in 
 all, — in an open shallop, who, after spending a 
 large part of two days "in getting clear of a sandy 
 point, which lay within less than a furlong of the 
 ship," — "the weather being ver}' cold and hard," 
 two of their number " ver}^ sick " and one of them 
 almost " swooning with the cold," and the gunner 
 for a day and a night seemingly " sick unto death," 
 — found "smoother water and better sailing" on 
 the 17th, but "so cold that the water froze on their 
 clothes and made them many times like coats of 
 iron;" who were startled at midnight by "a great 
 and hideous cry," and after a fearful but triumphant 
 " first encounter," early the next morning, with a 
 band of Indians, who assailed them with savage 
 yells and showers of arrows, and after a hardly less 
 fearful encounter with a furious storm, which " split 
 their mast in three pieces," and swept them so far 
 upon the breakers that the cry was suddenly heard 
 from the helmsman, " About with her, or else we are 
 all cast away," found themselves at last, when the 
 darkness of midnight had almost overtaken them, 
 "under the lee of a small island, and remained all that 
 night in safety," " keeping their watch in the rain." 
 
;o 
 
 There thev passed the 19th. exploring t±ie island, 
 and perhaps repairing their shattered mast. The 
 record is brief but suggestive : " Here we made 
 our rendezvous all that day, being Saturday.*^ But 
 briefer still, and how much more suggestive and 
 significant, is the entry of the following day I — 
 
 '* 10. (20) of December, on the Sabboth day wee 
 rested/^ 
 
 I pause, — I pause for a moment, — at that most 
 impressive record. Among all the marvellous con- 
 cisenesses and tersenesses of a Thucydides or a Taci- 
 tus, — condensing a whole chapter of philosophy, or 
 the whole character of an individual or a people, into 
 the compass of a motto, — I know of nothing terser 
 or more condensed than this ; nor any thing •which 
 develops and expands, as we ponder it, into a fuller 
 or finer or more characteristic picture of those whom 
 it describes. ^ On the Sabbath day we rested." It 
 was no mere secular or physical rest. The day 
 before had sufficed for that. But alone, upon a 
 desert island, in the depths of a stormy winter : well- 
 nigh without food, wholly without shelter: after a 
 ■week of such experiences, such exposure and hard- 
 ship and sutFering, that the bare recital at this hour 
 almost fi*eezes our blood; without an idea that the 
 morrow should be other or better than the day 
 before ; ivith every conceivable motive, on their own 
 account, and on account of those whom they had 
 left in the ship, to lose not an instant of time, but 
 
51 
 
 to hasten and hurry forward to the completion of 
 the work of exploration which they had undertaken, 
 — they still " remembered the Sabbath day to keep 
 it holy.'' " On the Sabbath day we rested.'' 
 
 It does not require one to sympathize with the 
 extreme Sabbatarian strictness of Pilgrim or Puri- 
 tan, in order to be touched by the beauty of such 
 a record and of such an example. I know of no 
 monument on the face of the earth, ancient or 
 modern, which would appeal more forcibly to the 
 hearts of all who reverence an implicit and heroic 
 obedience to the commandments of God, than would 
 an unadorned stone on yonder Clark's island, with 
 the simple inscription, "20 Dec. 1620 — On the 
 Sabbath day we rested." There is none to which 
 I would myself more eagerl}' conti'ibute. But it 
 should be paid for by the penny contributions of 
 the Sabbath-school children of all denominations 
 throughout the land, among whom that beautiful 
 Jubilee Medal has just been distributed. 
 
 And what added interest is given to that record, 
 what added force to that example, by the immediate 
 sequel I The record of the very next day runs, — 
 " On Monday we sounded the harbour and found it 
 a very good harbour for our shipping; we marched 
 also into the land, and found divers corn-fields and 
 little running brooks, a place very good for situation; 
 so we returned to our ship again with good news to 
 the rest of our people, which did much comfort 
 their hearts." 
 
52 
 
 That was the day, my friends, which we are here 
 to commemorate. On that Monday, the 21st of 
 December, 1620, from a single shallop, those "ten 
 of our men," with "two of our seamen," and with 
 six of the ship's company, landed upon this shore. 
 The names of almost all of them are given, and 
 should not fail of audible mention on an occasion 
 like this. Miles Standish heads the roll. John 
 Carver comes second. Then follow William Brad- 
 ford, Edward Winslow, John Tilley, Edward Tilley, 
 John Rowland, Richard Warren, Steven Hopkins, 
 and Edward Dote3^ The " two of our seamen " 
 were John Alderton and Thomas English; and the 
 two of the ship's company whose names are recorded 
 were Master Copin and Master Clarke, from the 
 latter of whom the Sabbath island was called. 
 
 They have landed. They have landed at last, 
 after sixty-six days of weary and perilous naviga- 
 tion since bidding a final farewell to the receding 
 shores of their dear native country. They have 
 landed at last; and when the sun of that day went 
 down, after the briefest circuit of the year, New 
 England had a place and a name — a permanent 
 place, a never to be obliterated name — in the his- 
 tory, as well as in the geography, of civilized 
 Christian man. 
 
 " They whom once the desert beach 
 Pent within its bleak domain, — 
 Soon their ample sway shall stretch 
 O'er the plenty of the plain ! " 
 
53 
 
 I will not say that the corner-stone of New 
 England had quite yet been laid. But its sym- 
 bol and perpetual synonyme had certainly been 
 found. That one grand Rock, — even then with- 
 out its fellow along the shore, and destined to be 
 without its fellow on any shore throughout the 
 world, — Nature had laid it, — The Architect of the 
 Universe had laid it, — " when the morning stars sang 
 together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 There it had reposed, unseen of human eye, the 
 storms and floods of centuries beating and breaking 
 upon it. There it had reposed, awaiting the slow- 
 coming feet, which, guided and guarded by no mere 
 human power, were now to make it famous for ever. 
 The Pilgrims trod it, as it would seem, uncon- 
 sciously, and left nothing but authentic tradition to 
 identify it. "Their rock was not as our rock." Their 
 thoughts at that hour were upon no stone of earthly 
 mould. If they observed at all what was beneath 
 their feet, it may indeed have helped them still 
 more fervently to lift their eyes to Him who had 
 been predicted and promised "as the shadow of a 
 great rock in a weary land;" and may have given 
 renewed emphasis to the psalm which perchance 
 they may have recalled, — " From the end of the 
 earth will I cry unto thee, when my heart is over- 
 whelmed: lead me to the rock that is higher than I." 
 Their trust was only on the Rock of Ages. 
 
 We have had many glowing descriptions and not 
 
54 
 
 a few elaborate pictures of this day's doings; and it 
 has sometimes been a matter of contention whether 
 Mary Chilton or John Alden first leapt upon the 
 shore, — a question which the late Judge Davis pro- 
 posed to settle by humorousl}'^ suggesting that the 
 friends of John Alden should give place to the lady, 
 as a matter of gallantry. But the Mayflower, with 
 John Alden, and Mary Chilton, and all the rest of 
 her sex, and all the children, was still in the harbor 
 of Cape Cod. The aged Brewster, also, was on 
 board the Mayflower with them; and sorely needed 
 must his presence and consolation have been, as 
 poor Bradford returned to the ship, after a week's 
 absence, to find that his wife had fallen overboard 
 and was drowned the very day after his departure. 
 
 I may not dwell on these or any other details, 
 except to recall the fact that on Friday, the 25th, 
 they weighed anchor, — it was Christmas Day, 
 though they did not recognize it, as so many of us 
 are just preparing to recognize it, as the brightest 
 and best of all the days of the year; — that on Satur- 
 day, the 26th, the Mayflower " came safely into a 
 safe harbour; " and that on Monday, the 28th, the 
 landing was completed. Not only was the time 
 come and the place found, but the whole company 
 of those who were for ever to be associated with that 
 time and that place were gathered at last where we 
 are now gathered to do homage to their memory. 
 
 I make no apology, sons and daughters of New 
 
55 
 
 England, for having kept always in the foreground 
 of the picture I have attempted to draw^, the relig- 
 ious aspects and incidents of the event we have 
 come to commemorate. Whatever civil or political 
 accompaniments or consequences that event may 
 have had, it was in its rise and progress, in its incep- 
 tion and completion, eminently and exclusively a 
 religious movement. The Pilgrims left Scrooby as 
 a church. They settled in Amsterdam and in 
 Leyden as a church. They embarked in the May- 
 flower as a church. They came to New England 
 as a church; and Morton, at the close of the intro- 
 duction to Bradford's History, as given by Dr. Young 
 in his Chronicles, entitles it " The Church of Christ 
 at Plymouth in New England, first begun in Old 
 England, and carried on in Holland and Plymouth 
 aforesaid." They had no license, indeed, from 
 either Pope or Primate. It was a church not only 
 without a bishop, but without even a pastor; with 
 only a layman to lead their devotions and administer 
 their discipline. A grand layman he was, — Elder 
 Brewster: it would be well for the world if there 
 were more laymen like him, at home and abroad. 
 In yonder Bay, it is true, before setting foot on Cape 
 Cod, they entered into a compact of civil govern- 
 ment; but the reason expressly assigned for so doing 
 was, that " some of the strangers amongst them 
 {i. e., not Leyden men, but adventurers who joined 
 them in England) had let fall in the ship that when 
 
S6 
 
 they came ashore they would use their own liberty, 
 for none had power to command them," or, as else- 
 where stated, because they had observed " some not 
 well affected to unity and concord, but gave some 
 appearance of faction." They came as a Church: all 
 else was incidental, the result of circumstances, a 
 protection against outsiders. They came to secure 
 a place to worship God according to the dictates of 
 their own consciences, free from the molestations 
 and persecutions which they had encountered in 
 England; and free, too, from the uncongenial sur- 
 roundings, the irregular habits of life, the strange 
 and uncouth language, the licentiousness of youth, 
 the manifold temptations, and " the neglect of obser- 
 vation of the Lord's day as a Sabbath," which they 
 had so lamented in Holland. 
 
 We cannot be too often reminded that it was 
 religion which effected the first permanent settle- 
 ment in New England. All other motives had 
 failed. Commerce, the fisheries, the hope of dis- 
 covering mines, the ambition of founding Colonies, 
 all had been tried, and all had failed. But the Pil- 
 grims asked of God; and "He gave them the 
 heathen for their inheritance, and the uttermost 
 parts of the earth for their possession." Religious 
 faith and fear, religious hope and trust, — the fear 
 of God, the love of Christ, an assured faith in the 
 Holy Scriptures, and an assured hope of a life of 
 bliss and blessedness to come, — these, and these 
 
57 
 
 alone, proved sufficient to animate and strengthen 
 them for the endurance of all the toils and trials 
 which such an enterprise involved. Let it never 
 be forgotten that if the corner-stone of New Eng- 
 land was indeed laid by the Pilgrim Fathers, two 
 centuries and a half ago to-day, it was in the cause 
 of religion they laid it; and whatever others may 
 have built upon it since, or may build upon it here- 
 after, — "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, 
 stubble," — God forbid that on this Anniversary the 
 foundation should be ignored or repudiated! 
 
 As we look back ever so cursorily on the great 
 procession of American History as it starts from yon- 
 der Rock, and winds on and on and on to the present 
 hour, we may descry many other scenes, many other 
 actors, remote and recent, in other parts of the 
 Union as well as in our own, of the highest interest 
 and importance. There are Conant and Endicott 
 with their little rudimental plantations at Cape Ann 
 and at Salem. There is the elder Winthrop, with 
 the Massachusetts Charter, at Boston, of whom the 
 latest and best of New England Historians (Dr. 
 Palfrey) has said " that it was his policy, more than 
 any other man's, that organized into shape, animated 
 with practical vigor, and prepared for permanency, 
 those primeval sentiments and institutions that have 
 directed the course of thought and action in New 
 England in later times." There is the younger 
 Winthrop, not far behind, with the Charter of Con- 
 
S8 
 
 nectlcut, of whose separate Colonies Hooker and 
 Haynes and Hopkins and Eaton and Davenport and 
 Ludlow had laid the foundations. There is Roger 
 Williams, " the Apostle of soul freedom," as he has 
 been called, with the Charter of Rhode Island. 
 There is the brave and generous Stuyvesant of the 
 New Netherlands. There are the Catholic Calverts, 
 and the noble Quaker Penn, building up Maryland 
 and Pennsylvania alike, upon principles of toleration 
 and philanthropy. There is the benevolent and 
 chivalrous Oglethorpe, assisted by Whitefieldand the 
 sainted Wesleys, planting his Moravian Colony in 
 Georgia. There is Franklin, with his first proposal of 
 a Continental Union, and with his countless inven- 
 tions in political as well as physical science. There 
 is James Otis with his great argument against Writs 
 of Assistance, and Samuel Adams with his inexor- 
 able demand for the removal of the British regi- 
 ments from Boston. There are Quincy with his 
 grand remonstrance against the Port Bill, and War- 
 ren, offering himself as the Proto-martyr on Bunker 
 Hill. There is Jefferson with the Declaration of 
 Independence fresh from his own pen, with John 
 Adams close at his side, as its " Colossus on the 
 floor of Congress." There are Hamilton and Madi- 
 son and Jay bringing forward the Constitution in 
 their united arms; and there, leaning on their 
 shoulders, and on that Constitution, but towering 
 above them all, is Washington, the consummate 
 
59 
 
 commander, the incomparable President, the world- 
 honored Patriot. There are Marshall and Story as 
 the expounders of the Constitution, and Webster as 
 its defender. There is John Quincy Adams with 
 his powerful and persistent plea for the sacred 
 Right of Petition. There is Jackson with his Proc- 
 lamation against Nullification. There is Lincoln 
 with his ever memorable Proclamation of Emanci- 
 pation. And there, closing for the moment that 
 procession of the dead, — for I presume not to mar- 
 shal the living, — is George Peabody, with his world- 
 wide munificence and his countless benefactions. 
 Other figures may present themselves to other eyes 
 as that grand Panorama is unrolled. Other figures 
 will come into view as that great procession ad- 
 vances. But be it prolonged, as we pray God it may 
 be, even " to the crack of doom," first and foremost, 
 as it moves on and on in radiant files, — "searing 
 the eyeballs " of oppressors and tyrants, but rejoic- 
 ing the hearts of the lovers of freedom throughout 
 the world, — will ever be seen and recognized the 
 men whom we commemorate to-day, — the Pilgrim 
 Fathers of New England. No herald announces 
 their approach. No pomp or parade attends their 
 advent. "Shielded and helmed and weapon'd with 
 the truth," no visible guards are around them, 
 either for honor or defence. Bravely but humbly, 
 and almost unconsciously, they assume their peril- 
 ous posts, as pioneers of an advance which is to 
 
6o 
 
 know no backward steps, until, throughout this 
 Western hemisphere, it shall have prepared the 
 way of the Lord and of liberty. They come with 
 no charter of human inspiration. They come with 
 nothing but the open Bible in their hands, leading a 
 march of civilization and human freedom, which 
 shall go on until time shall be no more, — if only 
 that Bible shall remain open, and shall be accepted 
 and reverenced, by their descendants as it was by 
 themselves, as the Word of God! 
 
 It is a striking coincidence that while they were 
 just taking the first steps in the movement which 
 terminated at Plymouth Rock, that great clerical 
 Commission was appointed by King James, which 
 prepared what has everywhere been received as the 
 standard English version of the Holy Scriptures; 
 and which, though they continued to use the Geneva 
 Bible themselves, has secured to their children and 
 posterity a translation which is the choicest treasure 
 of literature as well as of religion. Nor can I fail 
 to remember, with the warmest interest, that, at this 
 moment, while we are engaged in this Fifth Jubilee 
 Commemoration, a similar Commission is employed, 
 for the first time, in subjecting that translation to the 
 most critical revision; — not with a view, certainly, 
 to attempt any change or improvement of its incom- 
 parable style and language, but only to purge the 
 sacred volume from every human interpolation or 
 error. 
 
6i 
 
 No more beautiful scene has been witnessed in 
 our day and generation, nor one more auspicious 
 of that Christian unity which another world shall 
 witness, if not this, than the scene presented in 
 Westminster Abbey, in the exquisite chapel of 
 Henry VII., by that Revision Commission, in imme- 
 diate preparation for entering on tlieir great task, on 
 the morning of the 22d of June last; — "such a 
 scene," as the accomplished Dean Alford has well 
 said, " as has not been enacted since the name of 
 Christ was first named in Britain." I can use no 
 other words than his, in describing it: "Between 
 the latticed shrine of King Henry VII. and the flat 
 pavement tomb of Edward VI. was spread ^ God's 
 board,' and round that pavement tomb knelt, shoul- 
 der to shoulder, bishops and dignitaries of the 
 Church of England, professors of her Universities, 
 divines of the Scottish Presbyterian and Free 
 Churches, and of the Independent, Baptist, Wes- 
 leyan. Unitarian Churches in England, — a repre- 
 sentative assembly, such as our Church has never 
 before gathered under her wing, of the Catholic 
 Church by her own definition, — of ^ all who profess 
 and call themselves Christians.' " It was a scene to 
 give character to an age; and should the commis- 
 sion produce no other valuable fruit, that opening 
 Communion will make it memorable to the end of 
 time. 
 
 Yes, the open Bible was the one and all-sufficient 
 
62 
 
 support and reliance of the Pilgrim Fathers. They 
 looked, indeed, for other and greater reformations 
 in religion than any which Luther or Calvin had 
 accomplished or advocated; but they looked for 
 them to come from a better understanding and a 
 more careful study of the Holy Scriptures, and not 
 from any vainglorious human wisdom or scientific 
 investigations. As their pastor Robinson said, in 
 his farewell discourse, " He was confident the Lord 
 had more truth and light yet to break forth out of 
 his Holy Word." 
 
 Let me not seem, my friends, to exaggerate the 
 importance to our country of the event which we 
 this day celebrate. The Pilgrims of the Mayflower 
 did not establish the earliest permanent English set- 
 tlement within the territories which now constitute 
 our beloved country. I would by no means over- 
 look or disparage the prior settlement at Jamestown 
 in Virginia. The Old Dominion, with all its direct 
 and indirect associations with Sir Walter Raleigh, 
 and with Shakspeare's accomplished patron and 
 friend, the Earl of Southampton, — with Pocahon- 
 tas, too, and Captain John Smith, — must always be 
 remembered by the old Colony with the respect 
 and affection due to an elder sister. " I said an 
 elder, not a better." Yet we may well envy some of 
 her claims to distinction. More than ten years 
 before an English foot had planted itself on the soil 
 of New England, that Virginia Colony had effected 
 
63 
 
 a settlement ; and more than a year before the 
 landing of the Pilgrims, — on the 30th of July, 
 1619, — the first Representative Legislative Assem- 
 bly ever held v^'ithin the limits of the United States 
 was convened at Jamestown. That Assembly 
 passed a significant Act against drunkenness; and 
 an Act somewhat quaint in its terms and provis- 
 ions, but whose influence might not be unwhole- 
 some at this day, against "excessive apparel," — 
 providing that every man should be assessed in 
 the church for all public contributions, " if he be 
 unmarried, according to his own apparel; if he 
 be married, according to his own and his wife's, 
 or either of their apparel." Such a statute would 
 have been called puritanical, if it had emanated 
 from a New England Legislature. It might even 
 now, however, do something to diminish the di- 
 mensions, and simplify the material, and abate the 
 luxurious extravagance, of modern dress. But that 
 first Jamestown Assembly passed another most 
 noble Act, for the conversion of the Indians and 
 the education of their children, which entitles Vir- 
 ginia to claim pre-eminence, or certainly priority, 
 in that great work of Christian philanthropy, for 
 which our Fathers, with glorious John Eliot at their 
 head, did so much, and for which their sons, alas! 
 have accomplished so little, — unless, perhaps, 
 under the new and noble Indian policy of the last 
 twelve months. The political organization of Vir- 
 
64 
 
 ginia was almost mature, while that of New England 
 was still in embryo. 
 
 Again, I do not forget that the Pilgrims of the 
 Mayflower built up no great City or Commonwealth. 
 Within the first three months after their landing, 
 one-half of their number had fallen victims to the 
 rigors of the climate and the hardships of their 
 condition; and at the end of ten years the whole 
 population of the Colony — men, women, and chil- 
 dren — did not exceed three hundred. The}'^ were 
 but as a voice in the desert; but it was a glorious 
 voice, and one which was destined to reverberate 
 around the world, and ring along the ages with 
 still increasing emphasis. Other Colonies, by the 
 inspiration and encouragement of their example, 
 soon succeeded them, and did the substantial work 
 for which they only prepared the wa}'; for which 
 they, as they said themselves, were but " stepping- 
 stones." The great " Suffolk Emigration " of 1630, 
 — " The Governor and Company of the Massachu- 
 setts Bay," — coming over in eleven ships, with the 
 whole government and its Charter, were the main 
 founders and builders of the grand old Common- 
 wealth, of which the Plymouth Colony, sixty years 
 afterwards, became an honored part. 
 
 It is pleasant to remember how harmoniously 
 and lovingly the two Colonies lived together. It is 
 pleasant to remember that parting charge of John 
 Cotton to the Massachusetts Company, at South- 
 
65 
 
 ampton, "that they should take advice of them at 
 Plymouth, and do nothing to offend them." I can- 
 not forget, either, the cordial visit of Governor 
 Bradford to Governor Winthrop in 163 1; nor that 
 Winthrop soon afterwards subjected himself to 
 reproach for supplying the Pilgrims with powder, 
 at his personal cost, in a moment of their urgent 
 danger and distress. Still less can I forget that 
 October day in 1632, when Governor Winthrop 
 returned Bradford's visit, coming a large part of 
 the way here on foot, and crossing the river on the 
 back of his guide; and when Bradford and Brews- 
 ter and Roger Williams and Winthrop, with John 
 Wilson, the first pastor of Boston, were together 
 on this spot, engaging in religious discourse, 
 and partaking of the Sacrament together. That 
 most impressive and memorable Communion was 
 at once the harbinger and the pledge, the predic- 
 tion and the assurance, of the peace and harmony, 
 the co-operation and concord, which were long 
 to prevail between the infant Colonies of New 
 England. 
 
 True, there were some shades of difference in the 
 religious sentiment and in the civil administration 
 of the various plantations, as they were successively 
 developed. The charges of intolerance, bigotry, 
 superstition, and persecution, which there seems to 
 have been a special delight, in some quarters, of late 
 years, in arraying against our New England Fathers 
 
66 
 
 and founders, apply without doubt more directly to 
 other Colonies, than to that whose landing we this 
 day commemorate. The Pilgrims in their narrow 
 retreat of rock and sand were but little disturbed 
 by " intruders and dissentients," — as my friend 
 Dr. Ellis has so well classified them, — and could 
 afford to be less rigid in their admissions and ex- 
 clusions. Their leaders, too, were perhaps of a 
 somewhat more lenient and liberal temper than 
 those who settled elsewhere. Let them have all 
 the honor which belongs to them; and let censure 
 and condemnation fall wherever it is deserved! 
 I am not here to justify or excuse all the extrava- 
 gances, superstitions, or persecutions of the Puritan 
 Colonists. But still less am I here to pander to the 
 prurient malignity of those who are never weary 
 of prying into the petty faults and follies of our 
 Fathers, and who seem to gloat and exult in holding 
 them up to the ridicule and reproach of their chil- 
 dren. As if those great hearts, whether of 1620 
 or 1630, had fled into the wilderness to assert and 
 vindicate a broad, abstract, unqualified doctrine of 
 religious liberty, or even of religious toleration, to 
 which they had afterwards proved recreant them- 
 selves! As if the precarious circumstances of their 
 condition — with savage foes watching to extirpate 
 them, with famine ever staring them in the face, 
 with disease and death menacing them in every 
 shape and at every turn — did not constrain and 
 
67 
 
 compel them, in the earlier stages of their career, 
 to adopt the principle of excluding from their 
 community any and all who were bent upon intro- 
 ducing contention and discord, and of enforcing 
 among themselves something of that stern martial 
 rule which belongs to a besieged camp! Why, 
 even Roger Williams himself was forced to intro- 
 duce a right of exclusion, or non-admission, into 
 his original articles of settlement at Providence. 
 We can never too often recall the language of the 
 late venerable Josiah Quincy, — the last man of our 
 day and generation — I had almost said of any day 
 and generation — to palliate real bigotry or wanton 
 intolerance, — when he said, in his masterly Dis- 
 course on the Second Centennial Anniversary of the 
 Settlement of Boston in 1630: "Had our early 
 ancestors adopted the course we at this day are 
 apt to deem so eas}^ and obvious, and placed their 
 government on the basis of liberty for all sorts of 
 consciences, it would have been, in that age, a 
 certain introduction of anarchy. . . . The non- 
 toleration which characterized our early ancestors, 
 from whatever source it may have originated, had 
 undoubtedly the effect they intended and wished. 
 It excluded from influence, in their infant settle- 
 ment, all the friends and adherents of the ancient 
 monarchy and hierarchy; all who, from any mo- 
 tive, ecclesiastical or civil, were disposed to disturb 
 their peace or their churches. They considered it 
 
68 
 
 a measure of ^self-defence.' And It is unquestion- 
 able that it was chiefly instrumental in forming the 
 homogeneous and exclusively republican character 
 for which the people of New England have, in all 
 times, been distinguished; and, above all, that it 
 fixed irrevocably in the country that noble security 
 for religious liberty, the independent system of 
 Church Government." 
 
 But whatever may have been the differences or 
 disagreements of the first planters of Plymouth and 
 Massachusetts Bay, of New Haven and of Con- 
 necticut, at the outset, we all know that in the 
 summer of 1643 these four original Colonies estab- 
 lished that noble New England Confederation, — the 
 model and prototype of the Confederation of 1778, 
 which "blended the many-nationed whole in one," 
 and carried the thirteen American Colonies through 
 the War of Independence, — whose grand and 
 comprehensive preamble is alone an ample reply 
 to all who would magnify one Colony at the ex- 
 pense of another: — 
 
 "Whereas we all came into these parts of Amer- 
 ica with one and the same end and aim, namely, to 
 advance the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ and 
 to enjoy the liberties of the Gospel in purity with 
 peace: And whereas in our settling (by a wise 
 providence of God) we are further dispersed upon 
 the Seacoasts and Rivers than was at first intended, 
 so that we cannot according to our desire with 
 
69 
 
 convenience communicate in one Government and 
 Jurisdiction: And whereas we live encompassed 
 with people of several Nations and strange lan- 
 guages, which hereafter may prove injurious to us 
 or our posterity: And forasmuch as the Natives 
 have formerly committed sundry insolences and 
 outrages upon several plantations of the English, 
 and have of late combined themselves against us: 
 And seeing by reason of those sad distractions in 
 England which they have heard of, and by which 
 they know we are hindered from that humble way 
 of seeking advice, or reaping those comfortable 
 fruits of protection which at other times we might 
 well expect : We therefore do conceive it our 
 bounden duty without delay to enter into a present 
 Consociation amongst ourselves, for mutual help and 
 strenpfth in all our future concernments: That as in 
 Nation and Religion so in other respects we be 
 and continue One, according to the tenor and true 
 meaning of the ensuing Articles: Wherefore it is 
 full}^ agreed and concluded by and between the 
 parties or Jurisdictions above-named, and they 
 jointly and severally do by these presents agree 
 and conclude. That they all be and henceforth be 
 called by the name of The United Colonies of 
 New England." 
 
 The very next clause of this remarkable Ordi- 
 nance provided as follows : " The said United 
 Colonies for themselves and their posterities do 
 
70 
 
 jointly and severally hereby enter into a firm and 
 perpetual league of fi-iendship and amity for offence 
 and defence, mutual advice and succour, upon all 
 just occasions both for preserving and propagating 
 the truth and liberties of the Gospel and for their 
 own mutual safety and welfare." And another 
 article provided for intrusting the whole manage- 
 ment of the Confederation to two Commissioners 
 from each of the four Jurisdictions, carefully add- 
 ing, " all in Church fellowship with us," — thus 
 leaving no shadow of doubt upon the point that it 
 was a " Consociation " for religious as well as for 
 political peace and unity. 
 
 Accordingly we find among the proceedings of the 
 Commissioners at New Haven in 1646 — a meeting 
 at which neither Bradford nor Winslow nor either of 
 the Winthrops was present, but at which all of the 
 four Colonies were fully represented, and to whose 
 proceedings all of them ultimately subscribed — 
 that most memorable Declaration as to the " Spread- 
 ing nature of Error and the dangerous growth and 
 effects thereof," " under a deceitful colour of liberty 
 of conscience," which recommended, among other 
 things, that " Anabaptism, Familism, Antinomian- 
 ism, and generally all errours of a like nature," "be 
 seasonably and duly suppressed; " and which con- 
 cluded with that glowing prediction for New Eng- 
 land: " If thus we be for God, he will certainly 
 be with us; and though the God of the world (as 
 
71 
 
 he is styled) be worshipped, and by usurpation set 
 upon his throne in the main and greatest part of 
 America, yet this small part and portion may be 
 vindicated as by the right hand of Jehovah, and 
 justl}^ called Emmanuel's land." 
 
 I do not forget that, in reference to the clause 
 recommending the suppression of errors, the Pl}^!!- 
 outh Commissioners " desired further considera- 
 tion;" but the whole Declaration is entered upon 
 the Plymouth Records as agreed upon, and was 
 ultimately subscribed alike by the Commissioners 
 of all the Colonies. 
 
 I do not forget, either, that all New England was 
 not included in that Confederation. All that there 
 was of New Hampshire was indeed within the 
 jurisdiction of Massachusetts. But we miss Rhode 
 Island from the historic group. We miss Clarke 
 and Coddington and Roger Williams from the roll 
 of the Commissioners. It must be borne in mind, 
 however, that it was not because the Plantations 
 at Providence and the Islands were opposed to the 
 Confederation or any of its articles, that they were 
 not members of it. Both of them desired and 
 solicited admission. " There was yet another, a 
 fifth New England Colony (said John Quincy 
 Adams in 1843), denied admission into the Union, 
 and furnishing, in its broadest latitude, the demon- 
 stration of that conscientious, contentious spirit, 
 which so signally characterized the English Puri- 
 
72 
 
 tans of the seventeenth century, the founders of 
 New England, of all the liberties of the British 
 Nation, and of the ultimate universal freedom of 
 the race of man. The founder of the Colony of 
 Rhode Island (adds he) w^as Roger Williams, a 
 man who may be considered the very impersona- 
 tion of this combined conscientious, contentious 
 spirit." 
 
 Rhode Island may w^ell afford to bear with equa- 
 nimity any charges against the early contentiousness 
 of her founders, in view of the glory which that 
 very contentiousness has acquired for her on the 
 page of history. "Roger Williams (says Bancroft) 
 was the first person in modern Christendom to 
 assert in its plenitude the doctrine of the liberty of 
 conscience, the equality of opinions before the law; 
 and in its defence he was the harbinger of Milton, 
 the precursor and superior of Jeremy Taylor." 
 The man upon whose tombstone such an inscrip- 
 tion, — even with some allowances for rhetorical 
 exaggeration, — may be justly written, need fear no 
 strictures to which other peculiarities of character 
 or conduct may subject him. I have an hereditary 
 disposition, too, to be not only just but tender 
 towards his memory, for Williams and the Win- 
 throps of old, in spite of all differences, were most 
 loving friends from first to last. I would palliate 
 not a particle of the persecution or cruelty which 
 he suffered; from whatever source it may have 
 
73 
 
 proceeded, or by whomever it may have been 
 prompted. There was an heroic grandeur in his 
 endurance and fortitude; there was an unsparing 
 self-devotion in his care for the Indians; there was 
 a simplicit}', sincerity, and earnestness in his whole 
 career and character, — which must ever command 
 our warmest sympathy and admiration. 
 
 But it would be gross injustice to our other New 
 England Fathers, and especiall}^ to our Massa- 
 chusetts Fathers, not to admit that the conduct of 
 Williams, in some of its earlier manifestations, 
 was too precipitate and turbulent to be compatible 
 with the peace and safety of the infant Colonies, — 
 denying, as Winslow says he did, the lawfulness 
 of a public oath, refusing " to allow the colors of 
 our nation," and holding forth the unlawfulness of 
 the patent from the king; — while the condition 
 and temper of the plantations of Rhode Island — 
 a State which we now so honor and love, and to 
 which we owe more than one of our most valued 
 citizens — were such, at that time, as to cause even 
 the Plymouth rulers and elders to say: "Concerning 
 the Islanders, we have no conversing with them, 
 nor desire to have, further than necessity or hu- 
 manity may require." 
 
 But with the exception of these Rhode Island 
 Plantations, which were still very small and scat- 
 tered, New England was then one; one, not only 
 as the multiplied States of our American Union 
 
 10 
 
74 
 
 are one at this day, for civil, political, and military 
 purposes; but one, also, in a unity to which our 
 Federal Constitution presents no counterpart; — 
 one for the preservation and propagation of Relig- 
 ion; a Union for the defence and diffusion of pure, 
 Protestant Christianity, such as the w^orld had 
 hardly ever v^ritnessed before, and may hardly ever 
 vv^itness again. It was a grand Experiment, con- 
 ceived and instituted for the glory of God and 
 the welfare of man's estate. But a hiorher than 
 human power had long ago emphatically declared, 
 "My Kingdom is not of this world;" and the re- 
 sult gave abundant evidence that, on this Continent 
 at least, the Temporal and Spiritual power were 
 not destined to be wielded successfully by the 
 same hands. Church and State were never meant 
 to thrive together on American soil. It remains 
 to be seen how long they are to thrive together 
 anywhere. 
 
 I hasten to the conclusion of this discourse. I 
 may not attempt to pursue the thread of Pilgrim 
 history further on this occasion. We all know 
 what New England has been doing since the days 
 of that Confederation. We all know how her sons 
 and her daughters, besides founding and building 
 up noble institutions within her own limits, have 
 sought homes in other parts of the country, near 
 and remote, and how powerfully their influence 
 and enterprise have everywhere been felt. It 
 
75 
 
 may safely be said that there is hardly a State, or 
 county, or town, or village, on the Continent, in 
 which New England men and women are not 
 turning their faces towards Plymouth Rock to- 
 day with something of the affectionate yearning 
 of children towards an ancestral, or even a parental, 
 home. We all know what contributions they have 
 made to the cause of Education, of Learning, of 
 Literature, of Science, and of Art. We all know 
 what they have done for Commerce on the ocean, 
 and for Industry on the land, vexing every sea with 
 their keels, and startling every waterfall with their 
 looms. We all know what examples of Patriotism 
 and Statesmanship they have exhibited in every 
 hour of Colonial or National trial. We do not fail 
 to remember that New England led the march to 
 Independence at Lexington and Concord and 
 Bunker Hill, and that the bones of her sons were 
 mingled with almost every soil on which the bat- 
 tles of the Revolution were fought. Still less can 
 we forget with what alacrit}' and heroic self-sacri- 
 fice her bravest and best rushed forth, — so many 
 of them, alas ! never to return, — for the defence 
 of the Union, in the great struggle which has so 
 recently terminated. 
 
 But we are not here to-day to boast of our own 
 exploits, or to deal with the events of our own day. 
 It becomes us rather to remember our own short- 
 comings and our own unworthiness, in view of the 
 
76 
 
 sublime examples of piety, endurance, and heroic 
 valor which were exhibited by those " holy and 
 humble men of heart " by whom our Colonies were 
 planted. We sometimes assume to sit in judgment 
 upon their doings. We often criticise their faults 
 and failings. There is a special proneness of late 
 years to deride their superstitions and denounce 
 their intolerance. And certainly we may well 
 rejoice that the days of religious bigotry and pro- 
 scription are over in our land. But is it not even 
 more true at this hour, than when no less liberal a 
 Christian than John Quincy Adams uttered the 
 warning, thirty years ago, that the intensely religious 
 feelings and prejudices of our infancy have not only 
 given way to universal toleration, but " to a liberality 
 of doctrine bordering upon the extreme of a falter- 
 ing faith"? God forbid that our own religious 
 freedom should ever be described as Gibbon 
 described that of the age of Antoninus, from which 
 he dates the decline and fall of the Roman Empire : 
 " The various modes of worship (says he) which 
 prevailed in the Roman world were all considered 
 by the people as equally true; by the philosophers 
 as equally false; and by the magistrates as equally 
 useful. And thus toleration produced not only 
 mutual indulgence, but even religious concord." 
 Such a spirit of toleration, — such religious liberty 
 as that, — even in an age of Paganism, gradually led 
 to the overthrow of the great Empire of the Old 
 
. 77 
 
 World. What else but overthrow can it accom- 
 plish in a Christian age for the great Republic of the 
 New World? 
 
 May it not be wise and well for us all sometimes 
 to reflect — and may I not be pardoned for con- 
 cluding this discourse by summoning the sons and 
 daughters of New England, here and everywhere, 
 to reflect this day — what judgment would be pro- 
 nounced upon us by our Pilgrim and our Puritan 
 Fathers, could they be permitted to behold and to 
 comprehend the grand expansion and development 
 which we now witness of the institutions which 
 they planted ? Could they descend among us, at this 
 moment, in bodily presence, and with organs capa- 
 ble of embracing at a glance a full perception and 
 understanding of every thing which has been accom- 
 plished on this wide-spread continent, since they 
 were withdrawn from these earthly scenes and 
 entered into their rest, — what would they think, 
 what would they sa}^ ? 
 
 It is not difficult to imagine the surprise with 
 which they would contemplate the existing condition 
 of New England, and of the mighty nation of which 
 it forms a part. It is not diflficult to imagine the 
 astonishment with which they would regard the 
 great inventions and improvements of modern 
 times. It is not diflficult to imagine the eager and 
 incredulous amazement with which Miles Standish, 
 for instance, would listen to the click of a little 
 
78 
 
 machine, almost at his own old doorway, which 
 could supply him daily and hourly with the latest 
 phases of the big wars in Europe, which in his life- 
 time he could only have studied in bulletins, or 
 broadsides, or ^^ books of the news," not much less 
 than half a year old. It is not difficult to conceive 
 the wonder of Edward Winslow, as he should see, 
 or be told of, some noble ship traversing the wide 
 Atlantic, from Land's End to Cape Cod, with 
 undeviating regularity, without sails and against the 
 wind, in far less time than he could have relied on 
 crossing from one little island to another of the 
 Caribbean Sea, before he sunk so sadly beneath its 
 waters. It is not difficult to picture the bewilder- 
 ment of Brewster and Bradford as the}^ should listen 
 to the rattling and whistling and thundering, by day 
 and by night, of cars bringing more passengers than 
 the whole population of Plymouth in their day, and 
 more freight than would have sustained that whole 
 population for a winter, not merely from Boston in 
 not much more than an hour, but from the shores of 
 the Pacific Ocean in not much more than a week! 
 It is easy to conceive the consternation of them all, 
 could they see this whole assembly, by an almost 
 instantaneous flash of sunlight, grouped and pictured 
 with an exactness which the most protracted labors 
 of ancient or modern art could never have reached. 
 It is easy to conceive their rapture should they wit- 
 ness the intensest physical agonies of the human 
 
79 
 
 frame charmed to sleep by the inhalation of the 
 vapor of a few drops of ether. It is easy to under- 
 stand how astounded they would be, not merely at 
 learning that all those phenomena of the celestial 
 bodies which had so often perplexed and alarmed 
 them were now familiar to every school -boy; but 
 at being specially informed that to-morrow there 
 should be a great eclipse of the sun, total in some 
 parts of the world though hardly visible here; and 
 that Science, not satisfied with calculating, by the 
 old processes of which they may have heard some- 
 thing before, the precise instants of its beginning 
 and end, had equipped and sent out formal expedi- 
 tions to many distant lands to observe and record 
 all its phases and incidents! 
 
 We can readily suppose that such marvels as 
 these would not be taken in by them without 
 reawakening something of their old superstitious 
 fear and awe; and we might expect to hear from 
 their lips some exclamations, if not about " the old 
 Serpent," certainly about " wonders and more won- 
 ders of the invisible world." But we need not resort 
 to these miracles of science and art in order to illus- 
 trate the surprise and amazement with which our 
 Fathers would contemplate the condition of their 
 posterity. The mere extent, population, and power 
 of our countr}', its great States, its magnificent 
 cities, its vast wealth, its commerce, its crops, its 
 industr}', its education, its freedom, — no longer a 
 
8o 
 
 slave upon its soil, — all, all of all races, equal 
 before the law, — what else could they desire to 
 fill up the measure of our development, or of their 
 own delight! What more could they possibly wish 
 to complete and crown the vision of glory vouch- 
 safed to them? 
 
 Oh, my friends, have you forgotten, or can 3'ou 
 imagine that they would forget for an instant, the 
 cause in which they came here? Can you believe 
 that they would be so dazzled and blinded by the 
 glare of mere temporal success and material pros- 
 perity, or by the grandeur of intellectual triumphs 
 and scientific discoveries and philosophical achieve- 
 ments, as to lose sight and thought of that which 
 animated — and, I had almost said, constituted — 
 their whole mortal existence? Can we not hear 
 them inquiring eagerly and earnestly, as they gaze 
 upon all around them, " Is the moral welfare of the 
 country keeping pace with its material progress? 
 Has religion maintained the place we assigned it, 
 as the corner-stone of all 3'our institutions? Is the 
 Bible, the open Bible, which we brought over in 
 our hands, still reverenced of you all as the Word 
 of God? Is the Lord's Day still respected and 
 observed as a day of religious rest, as we observed 
 it on that desolate island before our feet had stept 
 upon yonder consecrated rock? Are your houses 
 of worship proportionate to your population ? Are 
 there worshippers enough, Sunday by Sunday, to 
 
fill the houses which you have? Are there no 
 temples of false prophets — no organized communi- 
 ties of licentiousness, under the color of religion — 
 in your land? Are there none among you who 
 ^ seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto 
 wizards that peep and that mutter, — for the living 
 to the dead ' ? Are you doing your full part in 
 carrying the Gospel to the heathen? Or are you 
 waiting until the heathen shall have come over into 
 your inheritance, bringing their idols with them, to 
 cheapen labor and to dilute your own civilization 
 and Christianity? Are your schools and colleges 
 still dedicated, as we dedicated at least one of 
 them, ^to Christ and the Church'? Is there no 
 fear that your science has been emboldened by its 
 triumphant successes to overleap the bounds of 
 legitimate investigation, putting Nature to the rack 
 to wring from her, if it were possible, some denial, 
 or some doubt, of that great Original, whom she 
 has always rejoiced, and still rejoices, to pro- 
 claim? Is there no fear that your philosophy has 
 been tempted to transcend the just ^ limits of relig- 
 ious thought,' and to set up some material theory, 
 or some self-styled positive system, which may se- 
 duce the deluded soul from its hope of immortality, 
 and weaken, if not destroy, its sense of the need 
 of a Saviour? Is there no fear that a sentimental, 
 sensational, licentious literature is corrupting the 
 tastes and sapping the morals of your children. 
 
82 
 
 and rendering the universal appetite for reading 
 an almost doubtful blessing? Are your charities, 
 public and private, numerous and noble as they 
 are, altogether commensurate with your w^ealth? 
 Or is the larger half of your surplus incomes ab- 
 sorbed in a cankering and debasing luxury, de- 
 structive alike to the physical, intellectual, and 
 spiritual energy of all who indulge in it? Are 
 integrity and virtue enthroned in your hearts and 
 homes? Have they a recognized and undisputed 
 sovereignty in the market-place and on the ex- 
 change ? Or are vice and crime making not a few 
 days dark, and not a few nights hideous, in your 
 crowded cities ? Is there purity and principle and 
 honor in your public servants ? Or are corruption 
 and intrigue and fraud threatening to make havoc 
 of your free institutions, rendering all things venal, 
 and almost all things, except mere party disloyalty, 
 venial, in your State and National Capitals ? " 
 
 Such questions as these, I am conscious, if com- 
 ing from any living lips, or, certainly, from any 
 living layman's lips, might be jeered at as savoring 
 of sanctimoniousness and fanaticism. I do not pre- 
 sume to ask them for myself; much less would I 
 presume to answer them. Make what allowance 
 you please for the rigid austerity and excessive 
 scrupulousness of those for whom I am only an 
 interpreter. But does any one deny or doubt that 
 they are the very questions which would be asked 
 
83 
 
 first, and most eagerly and most emphatically, by 
 those whom we this day commemorate, and by 
 those who were associated with them in founding 
 and building up New England? 
 
 Can we not hear them, at this moment, solemnly 
 warning us, lest, in the pride of our prosperity and 
 greatness, " when our silver and our gold is mul- 
 tiplied, and all that we have is multiplied," our 
 hearts be lifted up to say, each for himself, " My 
 power and the might of mine hand hath gotten 
 me this wealth," while the great lesson of our 
 stewardship, to Him to whom we owe it all, is 
 forgotten or neglected? 
 
 Can we not hear them, at this moment, solemnly 
 w^arning us, lest, in the pride of our freedom and 
 independence, we forget that "the liberty we are 
 to stand for, with the hazard not only of our 
 goods, but of our lives if need be," is "a liberty 
 for that only which is good, just, and honest," and 
 not a liberty to be used as a cloak of malicious- 
 ness and licentiousness? 
 
 Can we not hear them, at this moment, from 
 yonder hill of graves, solemnly and affectionately 
 warning us lest, in the pride of our science, while a 
 thousand telescopes and spectroscopes are ready to 
 be levelled, on the morrow, at the orb of day, — 
 to reveal its chromosphere and its photosphere, to 
 measure its tornadoes, to detect the exact nature of 
 its corona, and to mark the precise instants of its 
 
84 
 
 partial or total obscuration, — the Sun of Righteous- 
 ness, all unobserved, be dimmed and darkened in 
 our own hearts, and an Eclipse of Faith be suffered 
 to steal and settle over our land, whose beginning 
 may be imperceptible, and its end beyond calcula- 
 tion ? 
 
 Oh, let us hear and heed these warnings of the 
 fathers to the children, as they come to us to-day, 
 enforced not only by all the precious memories of 
 their faith and piety, their virtues and sacrifices and 
 sufferings, but by all the lessons and experiences 
 of the times in which we live! We need not look 
 beyond the events of the single year which is just 
 closing, — this Annus Mirabilis, compared with 
 which that of Dryden and Defoe was without sig- 
 nificance or consequence; a year, more marvellous 
 in its manifestations than almost any which has pre- 
 ceded it since the great year of our Lord, and from 
 whose calendar no form of physical, political, or 
 religious convulsion seems to have been wanting 
 to startle and confound the nations; a 3^ear, whose 
 Christmas, alas! is clouded and saddened by the 
 continuance, in a land bound to us by memories 
 not yet obliterated, of a conflict and a carnage 
 which must fill every Christian heart with horror, 
 and for the termination of which we would de- 
 voutly invoke the only Intervention which has not 
 
8s 
 
 been, and which cannot be, rejected; — we need not, 
 I say, look beyond the events of this single jubilee 
 year of the Landing, to find evidence of the vanity 
 of all human ambition and the impotence of all 
 human power, and to see renewed and startling 
 proof that while 
 
 " A thousand years scarce serve to form a State, 
 An hour may lay it in the dust." 
 
 Let us not be deaf to the warnings of the Fathers. 
 Let us not be insensible to the lessons of the hour. 
 Let us resolve that no National growth or grandeur, 
 no civil freedom or social prosperity or individual 
 success, shall ever render us unmindful of those 
 great principles of piety and virtue which the 
 Pilgrims inculcated and exemplified. Let us 
 resolve that whatever else this nation shall be, or 
 shall fail to be, it shall still and always be a Christian 
 Nation, in the full comprehensiveness and true sig- 
 nificance of that glorious term, — its example ever 
 on the side of Peace and Justice; its eagle, not 
 only with the shield of Union and Liberty em- 
 blazoned on its breast, but, like that of many 
 a lectern of ancient cathedral or modern church, 
 abroad or at home, ever proudly bearing up the 
 open Bible on its outspread wings! And then, as 
 year after year shall roll over our land, as jubilee 
 shall succeed jubilee, and our children and our 
 
86 
 
 children's children shall gather on this consecrated 
 spot to celebrate the event which has brought us 
 here to-day, those grand closing words of Webster 
 fifty years ago — the only words worthy to sum up 
 the emotions of an hour like this, and send them 
 down all sparkling and blazing to the remotest 
 posterity, — shall be repeated and repeated by 
 those who shall successively stand where he then 
 stood, and where I stand now, not with any feeble 
 expectation or faltering hope only, but with that firm 
 persuasion, that undoubting confidence, that assured 
 trust and faith, with which I adopt and repeat 
 them as the closing words of another Jubilee dis- 
 course : — 
 
 " Advance, then, }■ e future generations ! We 
 would hail you, as you rise in your long succession 
 to fill the places which we now fill, and to taste 
 the blessings of existence where we are passing, 
 and soon shall have passed, our own human dura- 
 tion. We bid you welcome to this pleasant land of 
 the Fathers. We bid you welcome to the healthful 
 skies and the verdant fields of New England. We 
 greet your accession to the great inheritance which 
 we have enjoyed. We welcome you to the bless- 
 ings of good government and religious libert}^ We 
 welcome you to the treasures of science and the 
 delights of learning. We welcome you to the 
 transcendent sweets of domestic life, to the happi- 
 
87 
 
 ness of kindred and parents and children. We 
 welcome you to the immeasurable blessings of 
 rational existence, the immortal hope of Christianity, 
 and the light of everlasting truth ! " 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 (Page 36.) 
 
 The following inscription in the Hall of the Bishop of London's 
 Palace, at Fulhara, was copied for me most kindly by my vener- 
 able friend Bishop McIlvaine, of Ohio : — 
 
 " This Hall, with the adjoining quadrangle, was erected by Bishop 
 Fitzjames in the reign of Henry VII. on the site of buildings of the old 
 Palace as ancient as the Conquest. It was used as the Hall by Bisbop 
 Bonner and Bishop Ridley, during the struggles of the Reformation, 
 and retained its original proportions till it was altered by Bishop Sher- 
 lock in the reign of George II. Bishop Howley, in the reign of 
 George IV., changed it into a private unconsecrated Chapel. It is now 
 restored to its original purpose on the erection by Bishop Tait of a 
 new Chapel of more suitable dimensions. 
 "A. D. 1866." 
 
 The Palace must have been occupied by Richard Bancroft, 
 during whose intolerant policy the Pilgrims fled to Holland ; as 
 he was Bishop of Loudon for some years before becoming Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury. It must, also, have been occupied by 
 Laud, from whose intolerance the Puritans suffered ; as he, after 
 serving as Bishop of St. David's, and of Bath and Wells, was 
 translated to London in 1G28, and continued in that See, exer- 
 cising great influence over the ecclesiastical affairs of the realm, 
 until he succeeded the more liberal Abbot as Primate of all 
 England. 
 

 ^ ORATION 
 
 Ctoo l£)unOreli anO JFiftirti) annftiecsarj? 
 
 LANDING 
 
 PILGRIM FATHERS AT PLYMOUTH. 
 
 31 December, 1S70. 
 
 o*. 
 
 BY 
 
 HON. ROBERT C. WINTHROP, LL.D., 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 1871. 
 
 k