farther information is necessary that is in my power to give you, you may command me. "I am, with respect, sir,

"Your obedient humble servant,

"Rev. Dr. Belknap."

"JOHN FOSTER WILLIAMS.

Weymouth's voyage is memorable only for the discovery of Penobscot River, and for the decoying of five of the natives on board his ship, whom he carried to England. Three of them were taken into the family of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, then governor of Plymouth, in Devonshire. The information which he gained from them, corroborated by Martin Pring, of Bristol, who made a second voyage in 1606 (and prosecuted the discovery of the rivers in the District of Maine), prepared the way for the attempt of Sir John Popham and others to establish a colony at Sagadahock in 1607, an account of which attempt, and its failure, is already given in the Life of Sir Ferdinando Gorges.*

In the early accounts of this country we find the names of Mavoshen and Norumbega. Mavoshen was a name for the whole District of Maine, containing nine or ten rivers, the

* Vol. ii., p. 52.

westernmost of which was Shawakotock (written by the French Chouakoet, and by the English Sâco). The easternmost was Quibequesson,* which I take to be eastward of Penobscot, but cannot say by what name it is now called. Norumbega was a part of the same district, comprehending Penobscot Bay and River, but its eastern and western limits are not described.†

It is also to be noted that the River Penobscot was sometimes called Pemaquid, though this latter name is now restricted to a point or neck of land which lies about six leagues to the westward. Penobscot is called by the French Pentagoet.

This confusion of names occasions no small perplexity to inquirers into the geography and early history of this country.

* Purchas, v., 1873.

VOL. II.-Y

† Ib., v., 1625, 1638.

XVII. JOHN ROBINSON.

THE first effectual settlements of the English in New-England were made by those who, after the Reformation, dissented from the establishment of the Episcopal Church, who suffered on account of their dissent, and sought an asylum from their sufferings. Uniformity was insisted on with such rigour as disgusted many conscientious ministers and people of the Church of England, and caused that separation which has ever since subsisted. Those who could not conform to the establishment, but wished for a more complete reformation, were at first distinguished by the name of Puritans; and among these the most rigid were the Brownists, so called from Robert Brown,* "a fiery young clergy

* [Brown was descended from an ancient and honourable family in Rutlandshire, and born, I think, at Tolethorp, in that shire, and was nearly related to William Cecil, the lord-treasurer. He was educated at Cambridge, where, says Fuller (Church History of Britain, book ix., § vi., 2), "the vehemency of his utterance passed for zeal among the common people, and made the vulgar to admire, the wise to suspect him." He afterward passed some time in Zealand, whence he returned "with a full cry against the Church of England, as, having so much of Rome,

man," who in 1580 headed a zealous party, and was vehement for a total separation. But

she had nothing of Christ in her discipline. In 1580 he "perched in the city of Norwich," in Norfolk. Here he soon became obnoxious to the ecclesiastical authority, and was committed to the custody of the sheriff of Norfolk, but was released at the instance of his kinsman Cecil. Vaughan, who says he settled there in 1581, is probably in error, as Cecil's letter to the Bishop of Norwich is dated April 21st, 1581. Being thus harassed at home, he fled to Middleburgh, in Zealand, where he collected a church, and published a treatise on Reformation. The design of this publication was to persuade the people to act on their own views of church-polity, without tarrying "till the magistrate command and compel them." In 1585 Brown appeared again in England, where he was not long without calling for the renewed vigilance of the bishop's pursuivants. Cecil once more interceded with Whitgift, then Archbishop of Canterbury, and procured the release of his disorderly relative, who for some three or four years after remained silent, though still resolute in his nonconformity. Resuming his itinerant labours at the close of that period, and still vehement in his invectives "against bishops, ceremonies, ordination of ministers, and what not," he was publicly excommunicated by the Bishop of Peterborough. He is said to have been so much affected by this sentence as earnestly to have implored absolution, which he obtained on easy terms, probably through the influence of Lord Burleigh. He was even preferred to a valuable living in Northamptonshire, which he retained till his death; and, “though against them in judgment, was perchance pleased to take the tithes of his own parish." The last forty years of his life were passed in obscurity and contempt. He used to boast that he had been committed to thirty-two prisons. Fuller, who in his youth had often seen him, says "he was of an imperious nature; offended if what he affirmed but in common discourse were not received as an oracle." He adds that he was rather free both in judg

his zeal, however violent, was void of consistency, for in his advanced years he conformed ment and practice, having a wife "with whom for many years he never lived, and a church wherein he never preached." When above eighty years old, he in a passion struck a constable, who required the payment of a tax of him, and, being stubborn before the magistrate, "as if ambitious to renew his ancient acquaintance with the prison," was carried on a feather-bed in a cart to the jail in Northampton, where he died in 1630.-See Vaughan's Memorials of the Stuart Dynasty, vol. i., p. 304–306, and Fuller's Church History, lib. ix., § 6, 2-8.

Neither by learning, nor weight of character, nor by any historical evidence, can he be considered the founder of that sect of ultra Puritans which has borne his name. The sect had existed in much privacy long before him, and were called Brownists not so much from their own choice as from the purpose of their enemies to bring reproach upon them, by identifying, in the popular opinion, the whole body with the excesses and weakness of that restless and unstable man.

The following sketch of their principles is abridged from Vaughan, i., 297, 298, who is not too unfavourably inclined towards them: "They considered every properly-constituted church as a strictly voluntary association, of such only as made a credible profession of the Gospel; and as the object of their union was purely religious, they claimed an entire independence of the magistrate, to whom they looked for protection from injury on account of their religious opinions, and for nothing more. They also claimed to be entirely independent of the jurisdiction of the prelates. They chose from among themselves the pastors who should administer the ordinances of the New Testament, and deacons or elders who should manage their few temporal mat ters. They discarded forms of prayer, but retained the practice of church censures; and, appealing to the Bible as the only rule of their faith and obedience, they spoke of their peculiarities as those of the first Christians, and sanctioned by the Word of God.