The Landing of the Pilgrims (2 page)

Later Master Brewster asked Clyfton to preach on Sundays in the great hall at Scrooby Manor. The Postmaster invited friends and neighbors to come and hear Mr. Clyfton preach. It was not long before many people began attending regularly every Sunday. Folks said Mr. Clyfton’s discourses
woke them up to understand the Scriptures. They came away from these meetings happy and comforted. They began to read and to study their Bible and to try and practice its teaching in their daily lives. Master Brewster explained that in this simple way the first Christian churches began in ancient times.

Within a year the congregation at Scrooby Manor decided to form a church of their own. It was to be entirely separate from the State Church of England, and would have no bishops or ceremonies. For this reason they would call themselves Separatists. They would also separate themselves from the Puritans, who wanted to reform the Church of England but not to separate from it.

When young William Bradford announced to his friends that he would leave the church in which he had been baptized and join the Separatists, people were shocked. His uncles pointed out that he would certainly come to a bad end. Already men had been hanged for holding onto such ideas. Friends and relatives argued, pleaded, threatened, warned, but to no purpose. He calmly replied:

Plainly the boy was mad.

Spies and informers began to watch the homes and to dog the steps of the members of the Separatist Church. The congregation now met secretly at different times and places. One member was arrested and tried by the Archbishop’s Court at York. He was imprisoned and then released. Five more members, including Master Brewster, were summoned to appear before the court. William did not need to seek abroad for adventure. Danger waited for him around every corner.

It was becoming clear to the Separatists that there could be no freedom for their religion in England. They must shake off the dust of the corrupt land and seek for freedom of pure religion elsewhere. Already one congregation of Protestants had gone to Holland. Master Brewster said that it was a land where there was perfect freedom of religion, as he had seen in his travels.

The Scrooby Separatists decided to go to Holland, as Master Brewster had advised. However, they knew that no one could leave England or take out goods and money without permission from the government. This meant that they would have to
flee secretly, like criminals. It was a hard and cruel thing to leave one’s home and country in this way and seek a living in a strange land.

Mr. Brewster and the few who owned land sold their possessions. Secretly, arrangements were made with a Dutch ship captain to meet them at the coast and carry them to Amsterdam. There would be no farewells to their neighbors, for their leaving must be kept as quiet as possible.

The women, with their few belongings, would float in a barge to the coast. The men would walk across country a distance of fifty miles to the meeting place.

(1608)

The first streak of dawn was breaking on the horizon. A chill east wind blew across the marshes near the coast. The women in the barge were seasick from the rough voyage they had made to the meeting place. They were worried, too, for neither the Dutch ship nor their own men had arrived.

Their craft had put into an inlet to be sheltered from the rough sea, but now the tide was going out. Soon the water in the inlet was so low that the barge was left stranded on a sand bar. Not until noon would the tide rise enough to float them off.

As the sky brightened, the women heard familiar voices calling. Their men had come at last! The walk across country to the coast had taken them two days.

It was light now, and the men from Scrooby
could see the Dutch ship off shore. They could start boarding the ship at once, but the women and children would have to wait until noon when the rising tide would free their barge.

The Dutch ship’s boat came ashore to take on passengers. She returned to the ship with the first boatload of men. Among them was William Bradford, now a young man of nineteen years.

Suddenly those still on shore heard shouting and excited cries from the ship. As they looked out to sea, she began putting up her sails. Now she was hauling up her anchors! Slowly the huge sails filled. The ship was putting out to sea.

On shore women screamed and men shouted wildly. They had been abandoned—left on shore while the rest of their party sailed off to Holland. It was a heartbreaking end to their hopes and plans.

Those who were left behind could now see a band of men coming toward them across the marshes, with light glinting from their armor and pikes. It had been foolish to suppose that a hundred people marching across country for fifty miles would not be seen by the spies and informers. There was time for most of the men ashore to escape. A few at Brewster’s command remained with the women.

The King’s soldiers marched the unhappy group of deserted men, women and children back to the nearest town. The magistrates were at a loss over
what to do with them. There was no charge that could really be brought against the women, as they had only followed their husbands. To send the women and children to jail would merely arouse sympathy for the Separatists. They could not be sent home because all their homes had been sold. As friends were found who would give them temporary shelter, they were released.

The whole countryside had heard of their misfortune and of their courage in the face of persecution. It increased the people’s sympathy for the Separatists.

In the meantime the unhappy Englishmen aboard the Dutch ship were bound for Holland. They had neither money nor clothes, and they were miserably anxious for their wives and children left behind. They knew that the captain had had to hasten his departure because of the oncoming soldiers, but this knowledge was of small comfort to them.

Bradford was at last on the ocean, but it was very different from his boyhood dreams. For a week the ship ran before a lashing gale. At times it seemed that she would surely sink. When the weather cleared they had been blown to the coast of Norway.

When they finally arrived at Amsterdam, they found that the ship had been given up as lost. People said that their survival was a miracle. On landing, William Bradford was promptly arrested.
The agent of the King of England had told the Dutch government that Bradford was an escaped criminal. In a few days he was able to prove that he was a religious refugee. Immediately he was freed, and welcomed by the English Protestant exiles who were then living in Holland.

By degrees, the rest of the refugees arrived in small groups from England until the entire Scrooby congregation was again united in this foreign land. The last to come was Master Brewster. He had been jailed, and when released, had aided the remaining families to find passage to Holland.

For the first time these English country folk were in a big city. They gawked with wide eyes at the well-dressed crowds, the soldiers posted at the gates and walls, the crowded docks, the overflowing markets, and the rows of handsome dwellings.

Best of all, they had at last found freedom to worship God as they chose. They openly attended church on Sundays without fear of spies. Soon they joined the reformed English Church already established in Amsterdam and set about finding ways to make their living in the trades and industries of the busy city.

Master Brewster now became unhappily aware of a new threat to their religion—a threat that was even more dangerous than persecution. It did not take the one-time Postmaster of Scrooby long to discover that the Amsterdam Church was divided
with controversy and personal quarrels. There were accusations, slander, and backbiting everywhere among the members. This, Master Brewster thought, was not living the Christian teachings of the Bible.

To escape becoming entangled in these mean quarrels and feuds, the Scrooby Separatists decided to move on again. As pilgrims, they would journey to the city of Leyden. This city attracted them because it was famous throughout the world for its University and its brave resistance to the Spaniards.

When the Scrooby folk were ready to make this second move, they had a grave disappointment. At the last moment their pastor, Richard Clyfton, refused to leave the Amsterdam Church. They chose their beloved teacher, John Robinson, to be their pastor in his stead.

(1608-1620)

They made the pleasant twenty-four-mile journey from Amsterdam to Leyden by canal boat, passing through level land that stretched like a garden to the horizon. In the distance, church spires rose and everywhere were windmills with their great sails turning in the fresh sea wind.

At the city gate of Leyden, the guard examined their papers. Then the newcomers passed under the deep arch into the ancient city which was to be their home.

Leyden was called, by the many who loved her, the fairest and most civilized city in the world. It was a prosperous city too, and there the strangers soon found employment as weavers, hatters, printers, carpenters and craftsmen in a dozen other trades. Their pay was usually small and their hours long, but in time they were able to buy a
large house for their pastor in Bell Alley near the cathedral. A plot of land was purchased, and houses for the church members were built around a quiet court.

This colony became a peaceful bit of England planted in a corner of the friendly Dutch city. Here they welcomed other English refugees to the freedom and peace of their new home, and the congregation grew in number and strengthened in faith. Their wise and loving Pastor John Robinson became a father to them, and his congregation grew in grace and mutual love.

Elder Brewster taught English in the University. It was a popular course, and he was able to provide comfortably for his wife and three children.

Young Bradford became a maker of corduroy. As he prospered, he courted and married Dorothy May of Wisbeach, England. Their wedding took place at the Leyden city hall. According to the Separatists, marriage was performed by the magistrates and not by the Church.

Soon Bradford could speak Dutch like a Hollander, and French like—well, he could manage it somehow. He became a good Latin and Greek scholar and loved to study Hebrew with the hope that someday he would be able to read the Bible in the original tongue. He made many friends among the hospitable Hollanders and became a Dutch citizen.

On peaceful Sundays, Bradford and the other
English exiles walked along brick-paved streets under the delicate linden trees that bordered the quiet Razenbutts Canal. They marveled at the great cathedral and the handsome Stadhouse. Prosperous Dutch burghers and their wives strolled by dressed in silks and fine linen.