The Pilgrim (14 page)

“Meanwhile, you will lodge amongst us in our homes without payment of rent. We pay no wages here. We have no use for ready money. We buy and sell nothing but rather exchange our labour for necessaries. All of our assets are equally divided. Our victuals are equally apportioned amongst us from what we call our common house, or general rendezvous, for goods. Some of you will help us weed and hill our Indian corn, of which we have twenty-six acres, as well as six acres of barley and pease. Some of you will help us build our fort atop the hill at the head of the Street. Some of you will draw water and gather firewood for the common use. Others will fish in the Bay for cod and catch crabs, which are, by the grace of God, very abundant hereabouts in the summer season. You shall, like us, gather clams and mussels from the shore or ground nuts and acorns from the forest floor.

“A few of you, who are marksmen, will go a-fowling or a-hunting for deer. The divers game that you take will be equally divided amongst yourselves and the sick members of the colony.

“Once a week, on Saturday, like us, all of you will be recompensed for your labor by our gunsmith and metal worker, William Basset, who is also in charge of our common house. You will receive from him what each of us receive: a peck of Indian corn, some salt, a peck of white pease, and a large bowl of oil of olive, along with gunpowder and whatever shellfish, cod, acorns, and ground nuts that he will apportion you in equal amounts from the common house. Take heed! You must boil the ground nuts and the acorns before you eat them, for they are very bitter to the taste.”

Weston's men murmured. One of them called out, “Not as bitter to us as thy words!” Bradford ignored the outcry and said, “Our store of victuals is in perilous short supply. Only God's grace is abundant in these parts. You shall live here, like the rest of us, by the sweat of your brow. We have no oxen, no horses to relieve us from the most oppressive labours.”

William Butts yelled, “I did not cross the sea to become a beast of burden!”

Bradford said, “I see, sirrah, that you are clad in filthy rags. You will be provided at no cost with clean and patched apparel from our common house.”

One of Weston's men could not stop coughing.

Governor Bradford said, “Good surgeon, Master Fuller, raise thy hand.” A bald man in the crowd raised his right hand.

Weston's man coughed and coughed. Governor Bradford said, “Your cough, sirrah, will be treated without a fee by our surgeon, Samuel Fuller. Be so good as to raise thy hand once more, Master Fuller.”

Then Governor Bradford said, “We of the Plymouth Plantation have taken what I call this common course out of necessity. We are a poor Christian community, struggling, with God's help, to survive until we achieve greater prosperity and can disseminate an understanding of the Lord among the savage Indians that surround us. For it is by the knowledge of the Lord that they and we are saved.

“We have no Minister here. We are governed instead in spiritual things by Master William Brewster, who was chosen to be our Church Elder in Leyden, whilst we sojourned in the Low Countries for twelve years.”

Master Brewster, who was the man with the grey beard, said, “Man is altogether vanity. He passeth away as a shadow. His only true home is Heaven. Strangers and pilgrims are we on the earth. Still the spot on which we stand, this shore, this whole land, is dear to us. We are here in obedience to God's commands.

“We are living our lives as close as we are able to the rules of the early, apostolic church—that sacred time to which the Reformation harkens back—when the Hebrew followers of Jesus became the first Christians. Like them, we celebrate the Sabbath from the setting of the sun to the setting of the sun. And, like them, we are forbidden by Scripture to work or play on the Lord's Day. As you shall see, we spend it praying together and singing Psalms, with love and joy and fear, in praise of the Lord. We keep the Sabbath just as strictly as ever did the Jew.

“We have here neither crosses nor surplices, nor kneeling at the Sacrament, nor the Book of Common Prayer, nor any other behavior but reading the Word, singing of Psalms, and prayer before and after sermons with catechism.”

My eyes filled with tears of joy. It was of a sudden all so clear. Providence had brought me across the ocean to the Plymouth Colony, wherein, with God's grace, I shall discover that I was predestined to be one of the elect.

Master Brewster said, “We believe that the equal sharing of our necessaries from the common house will make us happy and flourishing. The strong man here hath no more in division of victuals and clothes than he that is weak. Even I have but one cloak.”

Concluding his speech Master Brewster said, “Amen!”

And I repeated the Hebrew word that impregnates our English prayers with sanctity: “Amen!”

Captain Miles Standish was the last of the three men who addressed us. He was of such short stature that his coat of mail reached almost to his knees.

He said, “I am in command of military affairs in the Plymouth Colony and have accordingly equally divided our eight-and-forty men into four companies. Each company is armed with twelve muskets. Fifteen armed men at a time stand watch over the stockade every night.

“We muster for training every Wednesday afternoon at three of the clock in the glade on the west bank of the Town brook. Our enemies are our next bordering neighbors, the Narraganset Indians, who are over sixty strong and are much incensed and provoked against us. We fear that they have become confederates of the Massachusetts Indians, whose towns lie a few days' march north from here. They are about two hundred strong.

“The Narragansets worship a devil whom they call
Hobbamock
. The Massachusetts call him
Hobbamoqui
. All the savages sacrifice little children to him. He appears in sundry forms unto the savages, as in the shape of a man, a deer, an eagle, &c., but more ordinarily a snake. He appears only to the chiefest and most judicious amongst them—the
powohs
or priests—though all of them strive to attain to that hellish height of honor.”

“The
powohs
say that some of them can cause the wind to blow fiercely. They can raise storms and tempests, which they usually do when they intend the death or destruction of their enemies.

“Thus, in these dark forests of New England, we Englishmen wrestle not only against savages of flesh and blood, but against their dark sovereign princes and their dark powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, and against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Edward Winslow, Governor Bradford, Isaac Allerton, the assistant governor, Master Brewster, and Andrew Weston gathered together in the common house, where they spent the rest of the day assigning Weston's sixty men to lodge in each of Plymouth's six-and-twenty households. Of the eight men left over, three were lodged in the beasts' house among the chickens, goats, and swine; three more were lodged in the common house, while two slept in sail-cloth tents. Some of Captain Green's thirty sailors lodged aboard the
Swan
, while the rest slept under sail-cloth tents within the Plymouth stockade's north gate. Abigail and Henry, as they had been promised, lodged with Edward, his wife, Susanna, and their babe, Peregrine.

Edward Winslow told Brewster that I had studied at Emmanuel College in Cambridge, and Brewster therefore invited me, Rigdale, and Martin Hook to lodge with his family. It consisted of Master Brewster, his wife, Mary, and their sons, Wrestling and Love.

Master Brewster said to me, “I understand from Edward Winslow that you are a Separatist.”

“That is true, sir.”

“And you, Master Rigdale?”

“I am also.”

“And you, Master Hook?” Master Brewster said. “To what church do you belong?”

“Wherever I am set down to pray, sir.”

Brewster said, “I herewith charge Mister Wentworth to keep watch over thy behavior in our church, particularly during the Sabbath service. We do not use the Book of Common Prayer.”

“I do not use it, either, sir,” said Hook.

“God give you joy,” Master Brewster said.

Hook said, “The truth is, sir, I cannot read anything.”

“You have ears, have you not?”

“Aye, sir, by my faith, sir. I have big, hairy ears like an ass, as you can see.”

“Then use 'em and listen when the Word of God is read to thee.”

Hook said, “Oh, I do, sir, but I have no more understanding of Scripture than a malt-horse. The Word of God is wasted on an animal such as me.”

Master Brewster said, “First an ass and then a malt-horse. Nay, sirrah, you are not a beast of burden. You are a man with an immortal soul.”

And Hook said, “I have been used as a beast of burden my whole life.”

Wrestling, Love, Hook, Rigdale, and I slept that night in our canvas beds stuffed with fresh straw upon the earthen floor of the Brewsters' house. Master and Mrs. Brewster slept in the loft. The whole house smelled of smoke, drying herbs, and full chamber pots.

Before breakfast, Master Brewster bade us to fetch wood from a pile without the south gate and then draw two buckets of water from the Town brook. I carried a charged musket. We startled a milk-white fowl, with a very black head, that fluttered into the air. The sun shining upon its white wings was a fine sight to see. I missed my shot.

At breakfast, I savoured my first taste of Indian corn pudding.

I said to Master Brewster, “I like your victuals.”

Then he led us all in prayer. Hook, Rigdale, Wrestling, and I went to work weeding the fields of Indian corn, which was south of the brook to the baywards. Some of the goodly ears of corn were yellow, some red, and some mixed with blue. We crawled on all fours down the rows in the hot sun. I wore my gloves of kid, given me by my uncle Roger, to protect the sharp leaves from slicing my fingers with fine cuts. My knees were rubbed raw. I wrapped them in bloody rags.

I asked Wrestling why each stalk of corn was surrounded about its base by a pile of soil, about a foot in diameter and almost a foot in height.

He said, “Two or three herrings are buried there as manure. An Indian named Squanto taught my father how to grow corn in this barren soil. You will meet him bye and bye.”

“Does he worship the devil?”

“He does,” said Wrestling.

Hook said to Wrestling, “Tell me, good sir. What kind of Christian name is Wrestling?”

Wrestling replied, “When my father named me, he was thinking of Jacob. He who wrestled with the angel of God.”

Hook said, “Pray tell me who is this Jacob the Wrestler?”

Wrestling said, “There was once a godly Hebrew named Jacob who wrestled with an angel of the Lord all through one night. And when the angel saw that he prevailed not against Jacob, he touched the hollow of Jacob's left thigh and put it out of joint. Though Jacob was sorely in pain, he wrestled with the angel until dawn. Finally the angel cried out, ‘Let me go, for the day breaketh.' But Jacob said, ‘I will not let thee go save thou bless me.' The angel said unto him, ‘What is thy name?' And Jacob replied, ‘My name is Jacob.' And the angel said, ‘Thy name shall not be called Jacob any more. Henceforth thou shall be called Israel. For as a prince thou hast wrestled with God and with men and hast prevailed.' Israel halted painfully on his left leg all the remaining days of his long life.”

Hook asked Wrestling, “And you, sir, have you wrestled with the Lord our God?”

Wrestling said, “I would not know how to do so. But I'll tell you this: to be called ‘wrestling' by the world these past five-and-twenty years hath made it hard for me. ‘Good morrow, Master Wrestling,' people say to me. ‘Didst thou prevail against the Lord this morning?'”

Hook asked, “And what do you say to that?”

“I answer, ‘God hath not manifested Himself to me in any way. My poor soul is quiescent.'”

Hook said, “What doth ‘quiescent' mean?”

Wrestling said, “Something quiet, something motionless, something still.”

Hook replied, “Better than poor Annie Watts in Worksop. She tormented herself day and night as to whether she be damned or saved. She could not bear not knowing, so she threw her four-month-old babe, Clyde, down a well, wherein he drowned. Said Annie, ‘'Tis better to know that I am damned than not to know what God plans for my soul throughout eternity.' They hanged her.”

That evening, Master Brewster and I spake together for a while in Latin.

He said, “I was a pensioner at Peterhouse, wherein I dined every day upon a joint of roasted beef, mutton, or veal. In truth, I am weary of dining here upon Indian pudding, mussels, and clams (
placenta
indica, mituli, et sponduli
).

We talked about Peterhouse's popish altar.

Brewster said, “Everyone bowed and cringed to it upon entering and leaving the chapel. That repelled me, but being young, I accepted the Romish practices of my elders in the hope of winning their approval.

“I converted to Separatism after I left Cambridge. Pastor John Robinson converted me in the autumn of 1600. At the time, like my father before me, I was the steward and bailiff of Scrooby Manor in Nottingham. I attended services at St. Wilfrid's. The altar, caps, surplices, and crucifixes disgusted me. The tyranny of bishops against godly preachers and people made me look further into things and see the unlawfulness of their callings. But I knew not where to turn.

“Then by the grace of God, Pastor Robinson visited me. I had known him in Cambridge.

“I told him of my plight. He recited to me 2 Corinthians, 6:17, ‘Wherefore come out from among them and separate yourselves, sayeth the Lord. And touch none unclean thing, and I will receive you.'

“Pastor Robinson said, ‘The Church of England is the unclean thing that blights our land. Separate thyself from it, and Christ will receive you as one of His Saints.'