company as usual in such cases, he burst into a flood of tearsand thus "set them all a-weeping with Paul's friends, while they thought of seeing the faces of each other no more in the land of the living." In his parting discourse, Cotton said to the exiles, "Be not unmindful of our Jerusalem at home, whether you leave us or stay at home with us. O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee." Their real feelings will appear in their farewell declaration to their brethren:-"We esteem it an honour to call the Church of England, from whence we rise, our dear Mother, and cannot part from our native country, where she specially resideth, without much sadness of heart and many tears of our eyes, ever acknowledging that such hope and part as we have obtained in the common salvation we have received in her bosom and sucked it from her breasts." ." This, however, can only fairly be understood as alluding to the Puritanical portion of the Church, since it was from their rooted aversion to the Prelatical party that Winthrop and his companions determined to emigrate; and as soon as they were settled in the New World, they speedily cast off all allegiance to the ecclesiastical establishment of England, and framed churches for themselves after the fashion of the Plymouth settlers. Cotton himself was destined to follow them within a short time afterwards. For upwards of twenty years he had been allowed to preach unmolested in the sumptuous church of Boston, but Laud had now determined to enforce conformity, and pursuivants were sent to convene him before the Court of High Commission. He fled to London, and by the assistance of his friends eluded the search of the ecclesiastical bloodhounds. They had orders, however, to spare no efforts to apprehend him, and for this purpose went down to the Isle of Wight, where they expected that the ship would touch: but in the meantime he had been smuggled on board in the Downs, and finally succeeded in making his escape to America, where he became "a burning and a shining light" in the midst of the newly-founded E 58 ATTEMPT AT ESCAPE. community, as a quaint inscription to his memory sufficiently evidences : "A living, breathing Bible, tables where Both covenants at large engraven were. Gospel and law in's heart had each its column His head an index to the sacred volume; His very name a title-page; and next His life a commentary on the text. O what a monument of glorious worth But to resume the thread of our story. The first disappointment of the fugitives, bitter as it was, could not restrain them from making fresh attempts to escape. The year after their Boston failure, they met with a Dutch skipper at Hull, having a ship of his own belonging to Zealand, and secretly agreed with this foreigner to convey them thither-hoping, with Bradford, who was evidently an eye-witness and sharer of the whole affair, "to find more faithfulness in him than in the former, of their own nation." Moreover, to avoid the risks of a large seaport, they bargained with him to take them on board at a lonely common on the flat coast, somewhere between Grimsby and Hull. Every precaution was taken to avoid surprise; the men were to steal their way to the appointed rendezvous by land, while the women and children, with the goods, were to be conveyed thither in a small bark. On reaching the spot the ship had not yet come up, and, as the sea was rough, and the women and children were suffering greatly from sickness, they prevailed with the seamen to put into a small creek for shelter, where at low water the vessel lay upon the mud. Here they remained in the utmost anxiety till the next day, when the ship made its appearance. But this trifling delay proved fatal to the scheme; for during the interval the gathering had by some means attracted notice, and information had been given to the magistrates. As THE FUGITIVES ARRESTED. 59 the tide was out, and the small bark could not go off to the ship, the skipper sent to fetch off the passengers, but scarcely had he got the first boat-load on board, and was preparing to go for others, when he suddenly perceived in the distance a tumultuous gathering of horsemen and footmen armed with guns and bills, raising the hue and cry, and hurrying down to the shore to apprehend the unhappy fugitives. At this sight, the panicstricken Dutchman swore a tremendous oath, and, fearing to be implicated in the consequences, and having the wind fair, hastily weighed anchor, hoisted sail, and his ship was soon a speck on the horizon. The agony of those on board was intense, principally on account of their wretched wives and families, thus left without protectors, and made prisoners before their very eyes; also at finding themselves thus carried off without even a change of raiment or hardly a penny in their pockets. But still more deplorable was the case of these forlorn women-some frantically weeping for their husbands carried off in the ship, others sunk in the stupor of despair, or distracted by the screams of their poor children, half-frozen and terrified out of their lives. Some few of the men remained behind to protect them; but the greater part, on catching sight of the approaching posse, consulted their safety by flight. "The women," says Bradford, "being thus apprehended, were hurried from one place to another, and from one justice to another, until, in the end, they knew not what to do with them: for to imprison so many women and innocent children for no other cause than that they would go with their husbands seemed to be unreasonable, and all would cry out at them; and to send them home was as difficult, for they alleged (as the truth was) that they had no homes to go to-for they had sold or otherwise disposed of their lands and livings." Thus haled about from justice to justice, and from constable to constable, they endured a world of misery and privation; until their persecutors being wearied out, they were suffered to escape, and at last found another opportunity of rejoining their relatives in Holland. 60 THEY REACH HOLLAND. Perhaps it was almost a mercy that these poor women were delayed behind, for the ship that had carried off their husbands was beaten about for fourteen days, and driven to the coast of Norway by a tremendous tempest, in which they narrowly escaped foundering. So severe had been the storm that, on reaching the land, the people came running down to congratulate them upon their escape. There is little doubt, as before said, that Bradford, who, young as he was, appears to have been married, was among the number of those on board, and scarcely had he escaped the perils of the sea, when he was menaced with imprisonment on shore, one of the passengers having maliciously misrepresented him as a criminal fugitive from England. As soon, however, as the Dutch magistrates learned that he had sought their shores in quest of the religious liberty denied him at home, they dismissed him with every honour, and he repaired to Amsterdam in quest of his fellow-fugitives. Such were a few of the trials and distresses-for we are assured there were many a bitter stroke of which no account was preserved-endured by the Pilgrims in their endeavour to effect their escape from England. The cruelty of their sufferings, and the constancy with which they endured them, made, we are assured, a deep impression upon many witnesses, and induced them to make searching inquiry into the pretensions of those who persecuted them. Their cause became famous, and many a convert was thus won over, who, but for the tyranny of the bishops, would have remained either hostile or indifferent. And though some few among them at first shrank back from these trials, yet others came on with fresh courage to "confirm the feeble hands, and strengthen the feeble knees;" so that-in spite of all attempts to prevent them-one by one, or in small parties, they slipped through the fangs of their tormentors, and eventually, to their no small comfort, met together on the shores of Holland. CHAPTER II. The Exiles in Holland. STATE OF HOLLAND AT THE TIME OF THEIR ARRIVAL.-STRUGGLE WITH SPAIN. -AMSTERDAM.-ITS COSMOPOLITAN CHARACTER. JOHNSON'S CHURCH. DISSENSIONS.-POVERTY OF THE PILGRIMS.-THEIR REMOVAL TO LEYDEN.RECENT SIEGE OF THAT CITY.-ESTABLISHMENT OF THE CHURCH.-ROBINSON, THEIR PASTOR.-DESCRIPTION OF LEYDEN.-UNIVERSITY.-PILGRIM LOCALITIES. STATE OF THE PILGRIMS AT LEYDEN.-BREWSTER, A PRINTER, HUNTED DOWN BY JAMES I.-ARRIVAL OF WINSLOW AND STANDISH.-HENRY JACOB.-CONDITION OF THE PILGRIMS. THEIR POVERTY.-PROPOSALS TO RESOLUTION.-NEGOTIATIONS WITH THE EMIGRATE.-DISCUSSIONS.-FINAL ENGLISH GOVERNMENT.-PURCHASE OF THE SPEEDWELL.-DEPARTURE FROM LEYDEN.-THEIR COURSE TO DELFTHAVEN.-FINAL EMBARKATION FOR AMERICA. The fugitives for conscience sake, whose further adventures we are now to trace, had fled from England at a most remarkable period, for the agitation had already commenced which, in the following reign, was to convulse the country and turn its peaceful fields into an arena of civil conflict. The Dutch, though enjoying a temporary truce, were at that time in a state of hostility with Spain. Their protracted and tremendous struggle against the most powerful monarch of Europe had already been maintained for some time. Myles Standish, as before observed, was among the English soldiers sent over by Elizabeth to the assistance of the Dutch. One of the most terrible scenes of that drama had just been enacted at Leyden, which had sustained one of those fearful sieges which will never be forgotten |