menu_book Chapter 2

Part II of Chapter 1 of A Student's History of American Literature by William Simon. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Reading by Matt Perard. Chapter 1. Early Colonial Literature,

1607 to 1700. Part II. Pilgrims and Puritans in New England. Historical and descriptive writers. William Bradford, John Winthrop,

Francis Higginson, William Wood, Thomas Morton. In the northern settlements, conditions socially and intellectually were very different from those existing in the South. The men who colonized New England represented a unique type. Their ideals, their purpose, were essentially other than those which inspired the settlers at Jamestown and the later colonizers of Virginia.

The band of pilgrims who landed from the Mayflower at Plymouth in December 1620 were not bent on mere commercial adventure lured to the shores of the New World by tales of his fabulous wealth. They were not in search of gold. They were looking for a permanent home and had brought their wives and children with them. Their ideals were of the most serious sort. Their deep religious feeling

colored all their plans and habits of life. The pilgrims were a congregation of separatists or non-conformists who had already endured hardness for conscience sake before they had ever left the old home. Under the leadership of the Reverend John Robinson and Elder William Brewster, they had fled to Holland in 1608. For ten years, this community of Englishmen had lived peacefully in the Dutch city of Leiden.

Earning their own living and enjoying the religious liberty they craved. But they felt themselves aliens in a foreign land and saw that their children were destined to lose their English birthright. After long deliberation, they determined as pilgrims to seek in the New Continent a home where they might still possess their cherished freedom of worship while living under English laws and following the customs and traditions of their motherland. This company of men

obtained a grant from the London Company under the same charter as that which had been given to the Virginia colony. They finally set sail from Plymouth in England, September 16th, 1620. It was in the early winter when the Mayflower sited the shores of Cape Cod. The story of New England's trials, first told in the narrative of Captain John Smith, is as romantic as that of the Jamestown Colony and even more impressive.

Of the 41 adult males who signed the famous compact on board the Mayflower, only 12 bore the title of gentleman. They were a sober-minded, sturdy band of true colonizers, familiar with labor and inspired with the conviction that God was leading them in their difficult way. Although half the colony perished in the rigor of that first winter for which they had been wholly unprepared, the spirit of the pilgrims spoke in the remarkable words of their leader, Burster.

It is not with us as with men whom small things can discourage or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again. The companies of settlers who followed the pilgrims within the next few years were composed of the same sturdy independent class of thoughtful high-minded men. They were Puritans, for the most part well-to-do, prosperous people.

Many of them had been educated in the universities and brought the reverence for education with them. If God make thee a good Christian and a good scholar, thou hast all that thy mother ever asked for thee, said a Puritan maitre to her son. The colonists, who within the next 50 years dotted the New England coastline with their thrifty settlements, were idealists. As Professor Tyler puts it, they established not an

agricultural community nor a manufacturing community, nor a trading community. It was a thinking community. Moral earnestness characterized every action. In 1636, the General Court of Massachusetts voted to establish a college at Newtown. John Harvard, dying two years later, bequeathed his library and half his estate to the school,

which was then named Harvard College in his honor. In 1639, the first printing press in America was set up at Cambridge, as Newtown was then named out of compliment to the numerous graduates of the English University, then settled in this vicinity. The colonists had their grammar schools, which prepared for college, and by 1650, public instruction was compulsory in four of the five New England colonies,

Rhode Island being the exception. The earliest literary efforts among the New England colonists, like the beginnings in Virginia, were historical and narrative writings, some in the form of journals, a few more ambitious, representing real attempts at formal history. William Bradford, for whom the title Father of American History may well be claimed,

was a native of Yorkshire, and at 17, a member of the Reverend John Robinson's famous Congregation, fled with his brethren into Holland. He was prominent among the Pilgrims at the time of their arrival in America, and at 32 was elected governor of Plymouth. Until his death, he continued to fill this honorable office, except as he was permitted to break the period of his service for intervals at five several times.

Bradford was a plain, sensible, truthful man, an able leader under severe conditions. He felt the immense significance of what was then taking place, and sought to provide a record which should preserve a faithful picture of the settlement. No sooner had the Mayflower sited land than Bradford began, conjointly with Edward Winslow, to keep a journal of all occurrences.

This journal was carefully continued to the end of the first year. Ten years after the arrival, Governor Bradford began his notable History of the Plymouth Plantation, on which he labored for 20 years. His purpose, as he avowed, was to write in a plain style, with singular regard unto the simple truth in all things. His story goes back to the persecutions in England, and details the causes of the flight into Holland,

describes the sojourn there, and explains the reasons for the second exodus to the shores of the New World. What follows consists of a contemporaneous narrative of the experiences of the colony, set down in simple chronicle without much regard to proportion or unity. But the unmistakable touch of his own, homely, honest personality, and the vigor of his blunt,

realistic style impart a distinct literary flavour to this primitive history of Plymouth, which adds to its obvious value as the first detailed report of the New England settlements. An illustration is found in the writer's account of the pilgrims, and their perilous situation upon their arrival in the New World. Being thus arrived in a good harbour and brought safe to land,

they fell upon their knees and blessed the God of Heaven, who had brought them over the vast and furious ocean, and delivered them from all the perils and miseries thereof, again to set their feet on the firm and stable earth, their proper element. But here I cannot but stay and make a pause, and stand half amazed at this poor people's present condition, and so I think will the reader too, when he well considers the same.

Being thus past the vast ocean and a sea of troubles before in their preparation, they had now no friends to welcome them, nor ends to entertain or refresh their weather-beaten bodies, no houses, or much less towns to repair to, to seek for succor. It is recorded in scripture, as a mercy to the apostle and his shipwrecked company, that the barbarians showed them no small kindness in refreshing them, but these savage barbarians, when they met with them,

were readier to fill their sides full of arrows than otherwise. And for the season it was winter, and they that know the winters of that country know them to be sharp and violent, and subject to cruel and fierce storms, dangerous to travel, to known places, much more to search an unknown coast. Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness full of wild beasts and wild men?

And what multitudes there might be of them they knew not. Neither could they, as it were, go up to the top of Pisgah to view from this wilderness a more goodly country to feed their hopes. For which way, soever they turned their eyes, save upward to the heavens, they could have little solace or

contempt and respect of any outward objects. For summer being done, all things stared upon them with a weather-beaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hue. If they looked behind them, there was the mighty ocean which they had passed,

and was now a main bar and gulf to separate them from all the several parts of the world. May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say, Our fathers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean and were ready to perish in this wilderness, but they cried unto the Lord, and he heard their voice

and looked on their adversity. Let them therefore praise the Lord because he is good and his mercies endure forever. The manuscript of Bradford's history has itself had a rather interesting story. At the death of its author, it fell to the possession of his nephew Edward Morton, who made liberal use of it in his own New England's Memorial,

1669. It then came into the hands of Reverend Thomas Prince, who wrote A Chronological History of New England, 1736. During the occupation of Boston by the British troops in 1775 through 76, the manuscript was lost with many other valuable documents preserved in Prince's library, which was in the tower of the Old South Church.

In 1855, this valuable document was discovered in the Library of the Bishop of London, was copied and published in this country, and in 1897, the original itself was restored to America. It is kept in the Massachusetts State Library at the State House in Boston. Among the company of English Puritans who, in 1630, settled on the shore of Massachusetts Bay, the foremost figure was that of John Winthrop, already appointed governor of the colony.

His family was well known in his home cheer of Suffolk, a family of property and position. Winthrop himself was a man of noble character, conscientious, Puritan, yet Catholic in spirit beyond some of his associates, possessing the tastes and accomplishments of culture. During his voyage to America, he had busied himself in the composition of a little treatise, which was characteristic of this broad-minded man.

A model of Christian charity is the title of his essay, and in it he presents a plea for the exercise of an unselfish spirit on the part of all the members of this devoted band, now standing on the threshold of an experience which could not but be trying in the extreme on the nerves and temper of all. We must be knit together in this work as one man was his cry. John Winthrop's history of New England is the contemporaneous record

preserved in his journal of occurrences in the colony observed by him or reported to him. The busy governor made a brave effort to keep up with the march of events, notwithstanding the press of official duties, which more than filled his days. He persevered with his journal, which commences with the beginning of the voyage and comes down to a date only some few weeks

previous to his death in 1649. There are gaps in the chronicle and a significant brevity in the records of particular incidents, some of these records passing from the trivial to the pathetic with ludicrous conciseness. A cow died at Plymouth and a goat at Boston with eating Indian corn. The fact is recorded as faithfully as a previous item mentioned with sparkly brevity.

My son Henry Winthrop was drowned at Salem. In the following passage, we get a curious glimpse into the Puritan mind, the pathos of the original note is almost lost in the unconscious humor of the historian's wise deductions. Mr. Hopkins, the governor of Hartford-upon-Connecticut, came to Boston and brought his wife with him, a godly young woman out of special parts,

who was fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her diverse years by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing, and had written many books. Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her, but he saw his error when it was too late,

for if she had attended her household affairs and such things as belonged to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honorably in the place God had set her. He brought her to Boston and left her with her brother,

one Mr. Yale, a merchant, to try what means might, be had, here for her, but no help could be had. There are more momentous records than these in the annals, and Winthrop's history shares with that of Bradford in interest and in importance. Through these straightforward, plain-spoken men, we get our clearest vision of the rugged, hazardous, pioneer life, its heroism, its fortitude, its romance, its curiously contradictory

display of self-sacrificing sympathy and fanatical intolerance, its superstition and narrowness, its petty trials and large tribulations, its splendid faith, its aggressive energy of zeal. It is well for the student of literature as for the student of history to feel the spirit of these early New England histories. Just as the Virginia settlers developed on the fertile plantations of the South a civilization

which reflected the aristocratic traditions of the Cavaliers, so on the rock-bound coasts of Massachusetts Bay, these northern colonists stamped their descendants with a grave, stern, persistent type of Puritan character. There were not wanting in the colony those who found delight in studying and describing the natural wonders of this new land, the impressive grandeur of the forest, the fertility of the virgin soil,

nature's luxuriant abundance redeemed from the wilderness, the strange picturesqueness of the savage natives, the wild things of the woods, so much that was new and wonderful in their environment. All this made its appeal to the imagination of some among these hard-headed, practical pioneers.

Such and one was Reverend Francis Higginson, 1567 to 1630, a gifted and eloquent man who came from England in 1629 to serve the community at Salem as its minister. It was in June that the voyagers landed and the glories of a New England summer colored the impressions of the newly arrived

clergyman with a promenade of splendor. He had written a narrative of his voyage and now he began a description of the country itself. His little book of observations is a bright and genial picture. Under the title New England's Plantation, it was published in London in 1630. A sup of New England's air is better than a whole drop of Old England's ale, declares its author.

The woods, the flowers, the plants delighted him. Here are also abundance of other sweet herbs, he wrote, delightful to the smell whose names I know not and plenty of single damask roses, very sweet. Even the stern rigidity of the Puritans could bend above the beauty of the sweet briar and gratefully inhale its fragrance. The chill breath of the New England winter does not blight his enthusiasm.

The great hearth fires in the cabins and the inexhaustible supply of wood to feed the flames rejoice his heart. There is good living for those who love good fires, he exclaims. Something of a naturalist was William Wood who published in 1634 his New England's Prospect, an interesting description of the country in which he had made his home. A little of a poet also. He enlivened his account by putting some of his observations into verse, as for example,

The beasts be as followeth, the canely lion and the strong armed bear, the large-limbed mooses with the tripping deer, quill darting porcupines and raccoons be, castled in the hollow of an aged tree, the skipping squirrel, rabbit, purplined hare, emmered in the self-named Castle R. Concerning lions, I will not say that I ever saw any myself, but some affirm that they have seen a lion at Cayman,

which is not above six leagues from Boston. Some likewise, being lost in woods, have heard such terrible roaring as have made them much aghast, which must either be devils or lions. There being no other creatures which used to roar, saving bears, which have not such a terrible kind of roaring.

No record of early New England life can fail to take account of the experiences of Thomas Morton, a royalist who, in 1626, established himself with some 30 boon companions on an estate not far from the Plymouth settlement. The presence of this lively neighbor proved anything but agreeable to the strict and godly residents of Plymouth and of Boston, who were scandalized by the goings-on at Marymount. Here were sports and revelings which were viewed by the Puritans with consternation, and then with righteous indignation.

When Morton's little company had increased to a considerable number, for varied, congenial spirits had been added to the group, these stern moralists rose in their wrath, hewed down with axe and sword the lofty maypole around which their rollicking neighbors had rehearsed the dances and revels of Mary England, and banished Morton with his followers from the country. Back in his native land, he wrote his New English Canon, 1637, turning the shafts of ridicule upon his victorious enemies. While the work in itself is of slight importance,

the incident is a diverting one, and gives a humorous glow to the supercute picture of the somber Puritan age. End of part two, chapter one.