title: The Pilgrims in their three homes, England, Holland, America,
text: mi /He r JL0R1M5 INTMErlRThREEtlOMES BY WH '. iAM-E:L,L10T-6f\rFIS S' ^'^^ ^^ ^x. -%^> A'^ tf . A - \\ ^>-'* o' .H /■ v-^" ^ % •* ^. .<N^' ' ^ >^ v^^ '^^ <^^. s v.-'>o:''-;c;^^ V I 8 ^ -^ ^^ '^T^^ 0' /^*.. f.-^: /' .^ -^^^ '^.,i >^% .<^ **^ c a"* - * -c<v "-fim^^ o. :,^<^ ^^ .^ -^C. % i\ .. ^ c A^' V6 c " -^ ^' \ ^ . .r ^ ^ -n^ %^^ -/>: ^'^• ..^" "^^. -hoofed bp SmtUiam €» (0nffi6, £).^. THE LILY AMONG THORNS. A Study of the Biblical Drama entitled The Song of Songs. i6mo, $1.25 ; white cloth, gilt top, #1.50- MATTHEW CALBRAITH PERRY. A Typical American Naval Officer. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, gilt top, $2.00. JAPAN: IN HISTORY, FOLK-LORE, AND ART. In Riv- erside Library for Young People. Small i6mo, 75 cents. BRAVE LITTLE HOLLAND, AND WHAT SHE TAUGHT US. Illustrated. i6mo, #1.25. In Riverside Library for Young People. Small i6mo, 75 cents. TOWN SEND HARRIS, First American Envoy in Japan. With portrait. Crown 8vo, $2.00. THE PILGRIMS IN THEIR THREE HOMES, — ENG- LAND, HOLLAND, AND AMERICA. Illustrated. i6mo, $1.25. In Riverside Library for Young People. Small i6mo, 75 cents. HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY, Boston and New York. THE PILGRIMS IN THEIR THREE HOMES ENGLAND, HOLLAND, AMERICA BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS ^eufi! ittit BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 2nd COPY, 1898. ..0 COPIES RECEIVED. 4295 COPYKIGHT, 1898, BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS ALL EIGHTS EESERVED / 19.0 HP IN GRATEFUL MEMORY OF MY ENGLISH ANCESTORS OF NOTTINGHAM AND DEVON THE SHIRES MOST CLOSELY CONNECTED WITH PILGRIM HISTORY AND IN HEARTY ADMIRATION OF THE MIGHTY ENGLAND WHICH IS AND THE NOBLER ENGLAND THAT IS YET TO BE PEEFACE On Monday evening, the 24th of February, 1890, at its meeting in Horticultural Hall, the Congregational Club of Boston voted, upon the recommendation of the Hon. Samuel R. Thayer, a New Englander, and then Minister Plenipoten- tiary of the United States at the Hague, to erect a memorial at Delfshaven, as follows : — Whereas, Eemembering the hospitaHty of the free republic of Holland, so generously bestowed upon the Pilgrims, who, after twelve years' residence in Amster- dam and Leyden, sailed from Delfshaven on a voyage which was completed at Plymouth Rock, it is fitting that we, members of Congregational Clubs throughout the United States, should unite in grateful recognition of Dutch hospitality and at Delfshaven raise some durable token of our appreciation of both hosts and guests, — calling upon all Americans who honor alike the principles and the founders of the two republics to join in the enterprise. Therefore be it Resolved, That the Club heartily approves of the erection of such a commemorative monument. IV PBEFACE When the committee appointed "to act with full power in conjunction with committees of other Congregational clubs, and of any other appropri- ate organizations, to obtain the necessary funds, and to secure the erection of such a memorial," began their work, they encountered an amount of sectional and sectarian opposition which was sur- prising to Americans and Christians who honor men of other religion, ancestry, and nationality than their own. There seemed to be a deter- mination to ignore facts in American history and to make of the story of New England's origins a panegyric only. The author of this book, seeing the need of a restatement of the facts, determined to re-visit the three homes of the Pilgrims and so study their story, and also the Dutch language, as to be free from the necessity of taking second-hand opinions and statements from any one. Considering historic truth as sacred as that in any other form, and inheriting from my English ancestors a love of fair play, I have tried to tell the story of the Pilgrims, though in very con- densed form ; for the limitations of the book and series do not allow of notes or of the citation of authorities. I have tried to state only the facts PREFACE V or to give expression to well-grounded inferences ; but knowing, from some experience as a student of both Oriental and Occidental history, how diffi- cult it is to keep out what is not and to keep in what is strictly true, I shall be grateful to any one for corrections of inaccuracies or of proved errors. The first founders of Massachusetts were not merely representatives of church polity. They were men and women of beautiful life and of attractive character. If they had the infirmities and limitations of other mortals, they also showed the touches of nature which make the whole world kin. I have tried to depict them amidst the hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, of their daily environment in three lands. Besides studying critically the autograph writ- ings of the Pilgrim leaders, repeatedly perusing Bradford's " History of Plimouth Plantation," I have read much in English and Dutch state papers and statute law, the letters of Earl Leicester, Sir Dudley Carleton, and others prominent in politics during the Pilgrim period, as well as many of the writings of the enemies of the Separatists. I have made grateful use also of the published pro- ceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, VI PREFACE the Koningiijke Akaclemie at the Hague, and the Nederlaiidsche Archief voor Kerklijke Ge- schiedenis, the original archives of the city of Leyden, and the researches of the English, Dutch, and American specialists, Hunter, Bartlett, Scott, Brown, Arber, Kist, De Hoop Scheffer, Swalue, Young, Dexter, Murphy, Davis, and others. I made three leisurely visits also to the three homes of the Pilgrims in England, Holland, and Amer- ica : in 1891, 1892, and 1895. My thanks are especially due to those libra- rians in England and Netherland, whose courtesy I gladly acknowledge, and to the Eev. Dr. Wil- liam H. Cobb, of Boston, the Eev. M. G. Hansen, of East Orange, N. J., and William Nelson No- ble, Esq., of Ithaca, whose criticisms and sugges- tions have been of great value. May passing time but brighten, and added truth but illuminate, the inspiring Pilgrim story. W. E. G. Ithaca, N. Y., February 10, 1898. CONTENTS. Chapter. I. Introduction and Comparison II. AUSTERFIELD AND THE PiLGRIM DISTRICT III. SCROOBY AND ItS HisTORY IV. Nottingham and the Robin Hood Country V. William Brewster VI. William Bradford VII. " Into a New World " — Amsterdam. VIII. "A Fair and Beautiful City" — Leyden IX. Love, Courtship, and Marriage. X. Work and Play in Leyden XL Life under a Federal Government. XII. The Dkbatb upon Emigration. XIII. Westward Ho ! XIV. The Compact at Cape Cod -/,. XV. In Their Third Home .... XVI. The First Families of America XVII. Sickness and Health, War and Diplomacy XVIII. Politics: Domestic and Foreign XIX. A Visit from Manhattan XX. Law and Punishment ..... XXI. Food, Dress, and Social Life XXII. Customs and Superstitions XXIII. The New England Confederation Index . , Page 1 14 26 35 45 60 72 84 97 117 133 149 162 177 187 199 210 228 242 254 263 275 285 291 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Page Departure from Delfshavbn . . . Frontispiece AUSTERFIBLD ChURCH DoOR 24 ScROOBY Church and Grounds in 1890 . . . 30- The Great North Road in 1890 56- " Old Hundredth " in Ainsworth's Psalm Book . 82- A Dutch Home on Santa Glaus Morning (Dec. 6) . 122 Sir Dudley Carleton 134- Homes and Journeys of the Pilgrims . . . 168- Edward Winslow 204- Robinson's Family Record in Leyden City Census, 1622 241- Pilgrim Relics at Plymouth, Mass. . . . 264 « Facsimile from a Page of Bradford's Manuscript . 276 ^ THE PILGRIMS IN THEIR THREE HOMES CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON All English-speaking people ought to know the difference between the Pilgrims and the Puri- tans. The Pilgrims separated Church and State. They believed in the right and power of Christian people to govern themselves, and they believed this when, even in England, it was dangerous to breathe such an idea. They were hunted out of their home-land into the Dutch republic, where conscience was free. Thence they crossed the stormy ocean, and began on American soil the experiment of self-government. To-day their descendants, direct and collateral, may number a million. They are found in all the States of the Union, and among Christians of every name. By them the heroic Pilgrim ances- tors have been transfigured, their story has been embalmed in art and poetry, and kept alive in monuments and in celebrations. Descent from a 'A INTRODUCTION AND COMPABISON Pilgrim father or mother is like a patent of nobil- ity. New England societies, Congregational clubs and churches of many names, from Sandy Hook to the Golden Gate, from the fresh-water ocean to the hot salt gulf, annually recount their merits, and retell the old story. In all lands where the English tongue is sweet to the ear, their name is honored. Whittier, in order to make known the German Pastorius, who first in the region of the United States protested against slavery, has to call him " The Pennsylvania Pilgrim." Tens of thousands of tourists each year visit the old historic spots at Plymouth. The boulder from the far north, which in history was only a threshold, has become in rhetoric mountain-large, though as keepsake and paper-weight as small as a scarab. By Longfellow the poet, Hawthorne the romancer, Boughton the painter, historiogra- phers by the score, a library of books concerning them, great pictures in the national Capitol ro- tunda at Washington, and vignettes on the na- tional bank-notes, the Pilgrims are well advertised. A mighty shaft on Plymouth heights, with its ped- estal cuirassed with bas-reliefs, surmounted and flanked with sculptures, and another of lesser pro- portions at Provincetown overlook the sands of their third home. Bronze tablets at Scrooby, Ley den, Provincetown, and the two Plymouths serve to keep bright their memory. Relics of stone, on which their feet may have trodden, are INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON 6 built into tlie facades and walls of great churches. The two great English-speaking people thrill when the miscalled " Log of the Mayflower " — the book of Genesis in the history of Massachusetts — recrosses the ocean. Their fame has gone through- out the world, and their glorious testimony to the ends of the earth. Their story is worth telling without fear or favor, in simple style for young people, as I shall try to tell it. Strange to say, their place of origin was not known to living men until half a century ago. Not only during their own lives, but long after they had passed away, the Pilgrims, now immortal in American history and in the story of human progress, were like the " poor wayfaring man of grief," so far as their king or country cared. When they left England, nobody recked wdiither they went. In Holland few inquired whence they came. James Stuart, their "dread sover- eign," was only sorry that he could not lay violent hands on them while in their Dutch asylum. They were plucked, like fowls for the spit, by the Mer- chant Adventurers. Besides utterly neglecting Dutch history, few Americans, except John Adams, took the trouble to visit their old home in Leyden. Until near the year 1850, their de- scendants, and our own and the English nation, could not place the Pilgrims' cradle-land. This was finally discovered to be just where 4 INTRODUCTION AND COMPABISON William Bradford, their historian, who wrote the first book of American history, said it was. Brad- ford's work, dubbed by the English newspapers " The Log of the Mayflower," but by the author entitled the " History of Plimouth Plantation," is the written volume which our English friends in 1897 restored to us. It was the property of the Old South Church of Boston, from whose library it had been taken in Revolutionary days. Our first ambassador to Great Britain, Thomas Fran- cis Bayard, brought it across the sea, and on Wednesday, the twenty-seventh of May, 1897, it was delivered to the State of Massachusetts, in the archives of which it now rests. Bradford, writing between the years 1640 and 1650, says that these people of three homes and two continents were originally " of several towns and villages, some in Nottinghamshire, some in Lincolnshire, and some in Yorkshire, where they bordered nearest together." Yet although this statement was copied by Prince in his annals, and though Cotton Mather, in a sketch of Bradford's life, writes that he was born at A?isterfield, there was a riddle which for over two centuries stood like a sphinx in American literature. The puz- zle was not solved till an American and an Eng- lishman put their heads together, and penetrated the mystery. That little misprinted letter n was as the sym- bol X in algebra, — an unknown quantity which INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON 5 baffled those who tried to solve the problem. No such place could be found in all England, ancient or modern. Instead of an 7i it ought to have been a u. When Mr. James Savage, of Massachusetts, the genealogist, in 1842 visited the Rev. John Hunter, a native and an historian of Yorkshire, this Eno'lish sfentleman discovered Austerfield and the baptismal record of William Bradford. In 1849, in a little book, he told what he had found out about the "Founders of New Plym- mouth." Even before this, however, the Leyden profes- sor, N. C. Kist, and the Mennonite scholar, Dr. J. G. D. Scheffer, of Amsterdam, who had read the Dutch records of two cities, discovered much of delightful interest ; for Holland is rich in Pil- grim memories. After these have come a host of wise men from both west and east of the Atlan- tic, who have searched diligently to find where the young Pilgrim republic was born. Every year the twilight becomes more like day and mysteries vanish. The hidden church now shines forth. The story is luminous and nearly complete. New links of interest bind us as Americans to the mother-country of England and the fatherland of Holland. " History is a resurrection." To understand why these North Country folk left " Merrie England," we must ride backward on the winged wheel of imagination to the opening of the sixteenth century. Three hundred years b INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON ago everything, except human nature and the ocean and sky, were quite different from what we see in our time. Dress and food, manners and customs, 23olitics and religion, houses and the way of living, farming and crops, the relations of land and water, and the outlook of people on the great world and the countries beyond, were not as now. Think of living, even in cities, where there were no newspapers, railways, telegraphs, telephones, photographs, matches, fire engines, water pipes, tinware, china dishes, tea or coffee. Fancy vil- lages where brick houses and iron ploughs, under- clothing and starch, — " the Devil's liquid," as the Puritan Stubbes called it, — were just begin- ning to come into fashion, and where these novel- ties from the continent were hardly more than curiosities. Then paved roads, fenced or hedged fields, post- offices, postage stamps, and letters carried by government for the people were unknown. Then England was a weak and sparsely populated coun- try of about four million people. In large por- tions of it, and even where is now good farm-land, were great areas of swamp, heath, and forest. Most of the eastern counties consisted of reedy marshes, above which uncounted wild fowl wheeled in the air, while only here and there were patches of ploughed land. Then the seven states of the Dutch republic had only eight hundred thousand inhabitants. All of what is now the United States INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON 7 of America was but a savage wilderness inhabited by possibly a third of a million of Indians, and a few hundred Spaniards in New Mexico and Flor- ida. How strange it must have been to live in those times, and how hard to imagine now how people got along then I Fortunately for the present writer, this is not so very difficult a thing for him to do. I can hold up a mirror and draw from experience. Even in this nineteenth century, I lived during four years in an island empire much like Great Britain. During one whole year, while in a city of forty thousand people, rich in castle towers, drawbridges, moats, guilds, and things mediaeval and feudalistic, I saw no newspaper, milk wagon, telegraph, telephone, railway, horse carriage or wagon, gas lamp, iron or terra cotta water pipe, sta- tionary washstand, or house furnished with water, other than from wells. There were very few of the modern things or ideas. The condition of society, state, and church was like that of six- teenth-century Europe. There were castles and cathedrals, abbots and armed men. All gentle- men wore swords. The land was not owned by those who worked it, but was rented, through many grades of rank, from the sovereign to lords tem- poral and spiritual. Except the yeomen, or frank- lins, who were freeholders, the agricultural labor- ers were not much better than serfs. The king was hedged about with divinity, and 8 INTBODUCTION AND COMPARISON supposed to get all liis power direct from Heaven. When he appeared in public, common folks fell down on their knees. Religion was a matter of the state, governed by the court and the politi- cians. People who did not agree with the state church were persecuted, thrown into prison, or put to death. Yet, paradoxical as it may seem, these nineteenth-century heretics, or separatists, were not allowed to leave the country. Exactly as in sixteenth-century England, a large part of the best land was owned by the monasteries, which like the monks and nuns were very numerous, a great ecclesiastical corporation controlled human life from the cradle to the grave, and the " tor- tures of hell were graded according to the money " paid the priests in temple, monastery, or chantry, who had charge of masses. The j)riests had sharp ej^es upon the deathbed of the wealthy. These who would not give or will much property to the religious corporations were pretty sure to be damned. In this country, in which I dwelt nearly four years, torture was used in the courts, just as in Europe, and even in England, until the reign of William III. In law and science the people were no better off than in religion. Strange and curi- ous superstitions fettered the minds of both learned and unlearned in matters of building, crops, the weather, and household and social life, just as in the old Europe where our pagan and our Clu-is- INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON ^ tian forefathers lived. Here, also, were witch- craft, sorcery, plague, pestilence, and famine, be- sides pretty material for legend and fairy tale. Outwardly the different classes of people were marked by their dress. The bishops, as well as the nobles, abbots, and priests, wore peculiar uni- forms. Nobles of church or state had many idle followers, retainers, and servants, who were attired in their masters' livery. Parades and shows made fine sights for the people, who were fleeced by these gayly dressed fellows ; for king, princes, earls, dukes, marquises, barons, and all degrees of nobility and gentry lived off " the commons,'* among whom were yeomen, farmers, mechanics, and others little better than slaves. There were craftsmen's guilds and trade monopolies, just as in old Euroj)e. The merchant was socially of small account. The noblemen, priests, and gentlemen made society. The tenant farmer was respected, but was ground down to support those above him. People in each grade of society dressing in a dif- ferent way, there was a great variety of costume. Matters of clothes and etiquette, splendor and show, old customs and festivities, were of vast importance. There was nothing of what we call underclothing, though there was plenty of silk and gay equipment, but the majority of the people lived very plainly as to dress and food. There were no brick houses. Ploughs and other farm tools were of a very rude sort. 10 INTRODUCTION AND COMPARISON When the reformation came, which has made a new nation of these island dwellers, and the revenues of the monasteries were confiscated, there were insurrections of the rudely armed peo- ple led by reactionary and impoverished nobles, gentlemen and priests, wonderfully like the " Pil- grimage of Grace " and the " Uprising in the North," as in old England of the sixteenth cen- tury. The description of one country will do for the other. In a word, this country in which I lived was surprisingly like sixteenth-century England at a thousand points, whether we look at the landscape, which had few or no fences or hedges, but plenty of feudal castles, monasteries, and nunneries, or at the oddly dressed characters going up and down the horse tracks and footpaths, — for there were few roads, in the modern sense of the term. All around were shrines and objects of religion and superstition, with plenty of beggars, lepers, and miserably poor folk. Instead of post-offices, there were, besides inns for meals and beds, relays, where people in government employ could secure horses or burden bearers, exactly as on the great North Road between London and Edinburgh. Curiously enough also, these times, during which I lived at the capital of a baron, among his retain- ers and under the shadow of his castle near a monastery, were politically just like the times of Queen Elizabeth. In the matter of social changes, INTRODUCTION AND COMPABISON 11 economic progress, the introduction of foreign notions and machines and people to work them, and of the transformation of the whole nation from an agricultural to a commercial and manu- facturing people, the country of my sojourn was just like Elizabethan England. A closer union was being formed between the throne and the people. The court peers, landed nobles, and lords spiritual were becoming of less importance. The merchants were rising in social dignity. The old life was everywhere being modified because of foreign ideals, customs, and importations. The simple industries carried on in dwelling-houses were changing to multiplied and varied activities. The weavers, potters, and mechanics, instead of having looms, wheels, and anvils in their own houses, were being assembled into factories. Life from 1870 to 1874 in this island empire, at one end of the earth's greatest land division, appeared, as in a theatre, to be the reproduction on a stage of the life on that island empire at the other end, at a time when the founders of Massachusetts were boys and girls in England. Old Japan illustrated Old England, and New Japan, New England. Race and color of skin and form of relisfion might be different, but human nature was the same. Note also two strange coincidences. Just when the Pilgrim fathers and mothers in the May- flower were leaving their old home-land, which 12 INTRODUCTION AND COMPABISON had been shut against them, to open a new world, the ancient empire was expelling the Jesuits, wel- coming the Dutch at Deshima, and barring its gates against all other foreigners. Over two centuries later, in 1848, exactly when Mr. Hunter was discovering the Pilgrims' home and Bradford's baptismal record, the shipwrecked American sailor, Ronald McDonald, from Sag Harbor, New York, became the first teacher of the English language in the sealed empire, and thus the real founder of her new national education. The whaling ship which carried him to Japan was named Plymouth. When the star of Perry's broad pennant was mirrored in the clear waters of Yedo Bay, his oldest ship bore the same name, Plymouth. When Japanese officers asked pri- vate sailor and plenipotentiary commodore the supreme source of authority in the United States, both answered " The people." The Pilgrim faith had but deepened and ex- panded. Come then, fellow Americans and speakers of the English tongue, subjects of King Shakespeare and inheritors of the Pilgrim idea of government, and let us visit England at about the latitude, though not in the climate of Labrador, between the fifty-third and fifty-fourth degrees, where Not- tinghamshire and Lincolnshire adjoin. We shall stand upon Gringley-on-the-Hill, over which the lad Will Bradford used to walk in going to church INTRODUCTION AND GOMPABISON 13 at Gainsborough, and from which the view is fine and far. We select him as our typical Pilgrim. His life comprehends the whole of the poetic and heroic period of the Pilgrim story. After him, we name Brewster. For convenience, to avoid circumlocutions and to save space, I shall at once and throughout this book speak of the company led by Brewster, Robinson, and Bradford as " The Pilgrims." Of my four visits to Scrooby, the home of Brewster, the first was made with a great com- pany. It was in 1891, when to the International Council in London it seemed as if " dear mother England " were calling back her outcast children. Few Englishmen had then visited the place, or knew where it was. On " Bank Holiday " in 1892, desiring a second leisurely sight of the Pil- grim cradle-land, I started from Lincoln. I asked at this station, which is on a great railway and within thirty miles of the village, for a ticket to Scrooby. The agent knew not the name of the place. He compelled me to repronounce and S23ell the word, but was still incredulous as to the exist- ence of such a station. So I " booked " for Baw- try, and then walked up to Scrooby. The hamlet is now visited annually by scores, perhaps hun- dreds of Americans. Worksop, the home of my Eyre ancestors, is a few miles to the southwest. CHAPTER II AUSTERFIELD AND THE PILGRIM DISTRICT Many things have changed in our fathers' old home — dear and mighty England — since the flight of the Pilgrims from Scrooby. Even the very memory of their exodus to Holland died out long ago from this region. Yet the landscape is much the same, though that too has changed in respect of surface water, which is far less than then. On all the slope from the central hills of the island toward the North Sea and the Wash, the ground was once very wet and swampy, and much more liable to overflow from the Humber, the Ouse, and the Trent rivers, than it is now. Indeed, the whole line of eastern counties from Essex to York formed a great fen region, full of standing as well as of flowing water, with only here and there hard ground which served as roads, sites for towns, and soil for cultivation. Ely got its name because it was an eely place, and the telltale terminations of many j^laces ending in " wick," " beach," " holme," " beck," and " hoe," suggesting low places near or on water, show what they were formerly. Names ending in "ford" and "bridge," in- AUSTEBFIELD 15 dicating that there had to be some way for get- ting across the water, are plentiful. For the traveler, there was always " one more river to cross." John Bunyan, in his " Pilgrim's Pro- gress," Defoe, in his " Tour through the Eastern Counties," Jean Ingelow, in her " High Tide on the Coast of Lincolnshire," and Charles Kingsley, in his classic paper on " The Fens," have made wonderful word-pictures of this sunken land. Not a few old churches in this region were once built on islands, and approached by causeways. To this day, as one alights from Scrooby railway station, he notices, first of all, drains and cul- verts. As he walks to the village, past the old manor fields on the right, his pathway is upon timber raised above the oft-flooded road. Since the great drainage operations in the form of canals, causeways, and dykes, made chiefly by the Dutch engineers in the seventeenth and eigh- teenth century, the whole face of the country has changed. The area of fertile soil having vastly increased, population has doubled, tripled, and quadrupled. Land once under water and given to breeding malarial diseases now smiles with grain and gardens, and is rich in cattle and men. Where two rabbits used to fight for one blade of grass, there are now a hundred stalks. John Wesley in 1703 opened his eyes on the island formed by three rivers, Trent, Idle, and Don, which in Pilgrim days was a pestilential marsh. 16 AUSTERFIELD Vermuyden and his Dutchmen had drained it, making of it rich and dry soil. On Axelhohne, once the swamp island, sprang up Ej)Worth. To this day the Dutch accent and blood are notice- able in Lincolnshire. No region is more inter- esting to Americans than these eastern counties. Study the names of places, and this part of England fronting Denmark and Friesland will tell stories as fascinating as fairy tales. Here has been the great battlefield of invading Briton, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Frisian, and Dane. On every square mile they have fought, camped, or settled, made beacons on its hills, cut paths, and built roads. We recognize the names which each nation left behind it, and often as easily and as clearly as we tell the difference between the hoof- mark of a horse, the paw-print of a dog, or the track of a pigeon's pink toes. The Keltic " pen " and " combe " and " ock " appear and reappear. Count up the Roman's " castra " or camps, as in Doncaster, and note his " colonia," as in Lincoln. These and other Latin words have suffered a slight change of form. Of Anglo-Saxon names there is an abundance, as in " ham," which means home, such as Rotherham ; in " field," such as Sheffield and Austerfield ; and in " try," the name of a town, such as Coventry and Bawtry. After Frisians and Anglo-Saxons came the Danes, whose town names ended in " by " and " ing," as we see in Scrooby and Reading. AUSTEBFIELD 17 These Danes or Norsemen, our ancestors, were famous old pagans. Like the rest of their Scan- dinavian brethren, they remained " heathen " after the Frisians and Anglo-Saxons, both on the con- tinent and in England, had become Christian. They worshiped Woden and Thor, whose names we preserve in Wednesday and Thursday. Woden was the god that knew everything, because two ravens, wisest of birds, flew out into all the world during the day, and came back at night to perch on his shoulder, and whisper in his ear, telling him everything. These ravens, Munin and Hugin, perception and reflection, helped to make Woden omniscient. When the Norsemen went out on the deep sea without chart or compass, they not only worshiped Woden, but honored the raven as his wise servant, using the bird at sea as a pilot, and on land as an indicator of the god's will. Very probably from this Norse mythology, Edgar A. Poe borrowed the idea of his talking bird, the raven of dark memory with its accusing " Never- more." The Danes were more than pirates. They were bold navigators, discoverers, and colonizers. Com- ing up the Humber and Trent rivers, they made this part of England especially theirs. They di- vided the country into " ridings," and enjoyed local government. Gainsborough is probably the place where Canute's followers wanted him to turn back the waters of the sea. Wherever the Danes got 18 AUSTERFIELD a foothold in England, there and only there do we find names of places ending in "by" and "ing," while other settlements of theirs have " raven " or " ran " in their names, such as Rans- kill, the hamlet next to Scrooby ; that is, the raven's knoll, or hill. It is not merely an acci- dent that over the Austerfield church door are carved a dragon, the lightning zigzag of Thor, and the raven's beak of Woden's servants, conven- tional in form though they be. These Norsemen, who were kinsmen of the later and more civilized Normans, not only robbed, burned, and killed, like our Saxon forefathers before them, but they loved to go into Christian churches to defile and burn them. But woe to them when they were caught I They were flayed alive, and their skins were fixed to the church doors. In more peaceful centuries bits of human skin found under the old nail-heads of oaken church doors have been deposited in the British Museum. It is well to pay attention to these names, be- cause like bones, nerves, and organs, whether of a man or a monkey, of a geological horse with toes or a modern horse with hoofs, as well as the fea- tures of plants and vegetables, they reveal early history, through heredity and evolution, far better than any later traditions or writings or ortho- doxies possibly can do. They are original docu- ments, which we can interpret without prejudice AUSTEBFIELD 19 or heresy. To understand what kind of men and women lived in the Pilgrim district we must study their composite ancestry, the physiognomy of the country, and know the superstitions and beliefs of the people who lived on the soil. Neither Calvinism nor Puritanism nor Anglicanism can bleach out the stains of the primitive paganism of our Teutonic fathers. Just as the Spaniards chased the shadows of ancient myths in Florida and Mexico, so into North America Pilgrim and Puritan brought the legends and superstitions of northern Europe. What we call the Pilgrim district is in the very heart of the Danish region. It lies chiefly along the steel tracks of the Great Northern Railway over which the lightning train called the " Flying Scotchman " whizzes on its way be- tween London and Edinbursfh. As on the silk threads of a double rosary, we can string most of the towns famous in Pilgrim story, either on this railway, or on the North Road, which, from Newark to Bawtry, at the end of Notting- ham, is close to it. In Roman days the legions tramped towards the North Star, and the mer- chants transported their goods, over ground much the same, called the Fosse Way, or Ermine Street. In Elizabethan England, so soon as one got beyond the cities and towns, there were, roughly speaking, nothing better than unfenced paths. The highway to Scotland was little else 20 AUSTEEFIELD than a horse track, though we shall find that it is the main geographical thread of our story. This horse track but a few feet wide, on which kings, nobles, and armies traveled, was called the Great Northern Road. It was the artery by which the people in this quiet agricultural region were connected with the mighty world beyond, through which they felt the throbs of England's life and the pulses of the continent. The Pilgrim country is plain, and the scenery, though pretty, is not bold, striking, or romantic. It is mostly lowland, in the valleys formed by the Ryton and the Idle, — little rivers whose united flood helps to swell the Trent. Each of these three streams takes its source on the westward slopes of the famous Sherwood Forest. The Pil- grim district lies mostly in the valley of the southern Trent, which further north unites with the Ouse to form the river Humber. It was never very thickly populated, nor is it now, for its soil is not particularly fertile. Bawtry, the town lying between Austerfield and Scrooby, is one hundred and fifty-three miles north of Lon- don. The Idle, which forms part of the boundary line between York and Notts, is usually a rush- ing stream and not at all lazy. Its name means " flowing through grain fields." The upper limit of the Pilgrim district is Austerfield. Take for its lower limit East Retford on the right, AUSTERFIELB 21 with Worksop (the home of the writer's an- cestors) on the left, and we have a triangle, whose sides are, roughly, eleven, seven, and nine miles long. York, where the archbishop lived, was forty-six miles northward. Southward, Not- tingham is thirty-five miles, and Newark upon Trent (where the writer's ancestor. Sir Gervaise Eyre, in command of the castle of King Charles I., was slain in the civil war), about twenty-five miles distant. Eastward, Gainsborough is twelve miles, Lincoln thirty-one miles, and Boston sixty- seven miles away. The traveler must remember that the roads, as they now appear, are of modern construction. Such a thing as a wheeled wagon was quite un- common in the early years of Henry VIII. Plea- sure carriages were not seen until introduced from the continent. When the first one was driven abroad in London, people thought it was some Oriental shrine or curiosity. In all pic- tures and prints of the time, we see lords and ladies riding on horseback, but never in a car- riage. " Palfrey," meaning an extra post-horse, was the common term for the animal carrying a lady. Fond of jewelry as they were in the age of Elizabeth, when the gold and spices and silks of the East and the wonderful things from Amer- ica were getting to be well known in England, it was not uncommon to see " a lady on horseback " with peaked headdress, very long veil, skirts 22 AUSTERFIELD sweeping to the rear and upheld by pages, or even with " rings on her fingers and bells on her toes." Mother Goose's Melodies contain some very clear and very wonderful pictures of the England of long ago. Scrooby and Austerfield, though small and mean places, were not the least among the north- ern villages. Near Austerfield is an old Roman earthwork linked with the name of the imperial general Ostorius, though the name (spelled Ousterfield in the Domesday book and Auster- field in early Yankee printing) is most probably Teutonic for Easternfield. Anglo-Saxon Austerfield had a little church in which a great question was settled for all Britain by a synod held in the year 702. A great con- troversy had arisen about the celebration of Easter. One party favored the British and the other the Roman date. Wilfrid, the handsome and eloquent Bishop of York, made a journey to Rome to find what the Pope thought. He was shipwrecked on the coast of Friesland, but the language on both sides of the North Sea being the same, he preached the gospel and introduced Christianity into the Netherlands. After seeing Rome, he returned to England and became a hot partisan of the southern style and time. He built many churches in England, but was always on the Roman side, taking his politics, as well as his dogmas, from the Tiber. He quarreled with AUSTERFIELD 23 King Egfrid and his queen of Northumbria, who deposed him from the bishopric. He once more went to Rome and appealed to the Pope, who decided in his favor : but when he returned to England, the Saxon king snapped his fingers at the Italian bishop's decision, and imprisoned Wilfrid. He, however, escaped to Sussex, and there was successful as a missionary preacher. He still hoped to get back the bishopric of York, but even after Egfrid's death this king's father, Aldfrid, refused to reinstate the now aged prelate. At the great synod which met at Austerfield in 702, King Aldfrid, the Archbishop Berthwald of Canterbury, and the bishops of almost all Briton assembled in this most central spot to hear the complaint of Wilfrid. Despite the pleadings of Wilfrid's brother, Archbishop of Canterbury, on his behalf, the king was sustained in his action. The synod of Austerfield excom- municated Wilfrid and his companions. So thoroughly was this work done that if any of the abbots or priests of Wilfrid's party said grace be- fore meat in a man's house and signed the food with the sign of the cross, it was ordered to be cast forth as though offered to idols. The pith and meaning of this ancient Auster- field matter is that in England the party backed by the Pope was beaten and the spirit of inde- pendence prevailed. The English won the day, 24 AUSTERFIELD preferring to regulate their religion in their own way. The twelve hundredth anniversary of this famous synod of Austerfield, which deposed Saint Wilfrid, will occur in 1902. Nevertheless, Wilfrid got back his see before he died, and after his death this twice-deposed bishop and stanch upholder of Romish customs was canonized as a saint, while the church of Scrooby, built of stone, was named after him. It is Saint Wilfrid's church in which the Pilgrims first worshiped and which we see to-day. In the Norman era, after the year 1088, Thomas of Bayeux became Archbishop of York. In crusading times, the lady Idorea de Vipont or her father, John de Busli, gave the whole village of Austerfield for the support of a chap- lain to pray, and to celebrate, in the house at Lon- don, masses for the soul of Robert de Vipont. In the reign of Henry II. this John de Busli or Builli (1154-1189) built the new chapel at Aus- terfield, attaching it, as well as the chapel at Bawtry, to the convent at Blyth. The edifice was thus originally a " chantry," erected for the bene- fit of a " soul in purgatory." It is still standing and is called the Chapel of St. Helen. It was in this little house of worship, with its quaint port and double arched entrance carved with the Norsemen's symbols of the lightning's zigzag, raven's beak ornament, and a rude sort of dragon such as Saint George may have slain, that Wil- AUSTERFIELD CHURCH DOOR AUSTERFIELD 25 liam Bradford was baptized March 19, 1590. Within the building some alterations, including new pews, have been made, but the outside of it was much the same as in Pilgrim days, until 1897, when a process of restoration began. CHAPTER III SCROOBY AND ITS HISTORY SCROOBY was originally a Danish settlement, and had a close relationship with York, that wonderful place of Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Nor- man, and English fame. York is one of the most ancient of British cities, and was renowned for Jewish wealth as well as for clerical ambition. It had been the reputed birthplace of one Roman emperor, Constantine, the dwelling-place of another, Hadrian, and here Severus died. It was the seat of the first English parliament, and in this august body the abbot of the York monas- tery had a seat and wore a mitre. Though the archbishop dwelt in magnificence at York, he moved from place to place while attending to political and religious matters. At Scrooby was one of his summer palaces, hunting lodges, or places of abode, where he could also give lodging to his retainers. In comparison with the cottages around it, the episcopal residence at Scrooby was a palace. Be- cause it stood on a manor or estate owned by the prelate, it was also called a manor house, and in it on the 12th of January, 1535, there were SCROOBY AND ITS HISTORY 27 thirty-nine chambers or apartments. According to an inventory there were in the great hall three screens, six tables, nine benches, and one cup- board. The furniture of the chapel consisted of a timber altar and two superaltars, or stone tops, to lay upon the wood, a reading-desk, a pair of organs, and a clock, possibly from Freiburg, but out of repair, lacking weights and cords. Shake- speare, in " Love's Labour 's Lost," makes Biron poke fun at the German clocks, " still a repair- ing ; ever out of frame." Probably the handsomest of all the apartments was the refectory, or dining-room, which was lined on ceiling and walls with carved oak panels and beams. The dining-chamber was " ceiled and dressed with ' wainscot,' " — which is an old Dutch word for the finest oak without knots or flaws. Many of these oaken beams are now to be found in the roof supports of the cow-houses and stables on the old site. As with most old castles and manors in those days, there was a moat or ditch around the four-sided inclosure, which was crossed by a drawbridge. The gate was on the east side. There were three fish-ponds, in which " Friday food " was kept swimming ; for no meat was eaten on the day named after the old goddess Freyja, and on which Christ is believed to have been crucified. Old John Leland, librarian and chaplain to Henry YIII., tells us about Scrooby of Tudor 28 SCROOBY AND ITS HISTORY days. He received the king's commission to ex- plore the cathedrals, colleges, abbeys and priories, and antiquities of his realm. He made a journey on horseback from Gainsborough westward over the Trent River into Nottinghamshire to the village of Mattersey. " Thence I rode a mile, in low wash and somewhat fenny ground ; and a mile further or more by higher ground, to Scrooby." Besides the church, he " noted a great Manor Place ... all builded of timber ; saving the front of the hall, that is of brick, to which one ascends over cut-stone steps." After this, he forded the unbridged Ryton River, " and so betwixt the pales of two parks belonging to Scrooby," he came to Bawtry. On this we may remark that probably the only bricks in the village were upon the Hall front. 