Old Times in the Colonies. Charles Carleton Coffin
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should be compelled to testify against himself, but the judges and bishops disregarded it. Two men were brought before the bishops for not conforming to the ritual, and to answer other charges.
“We will not take an oath to testify against ourselves,” they said.
The bishops sent them to prison; but they appealed to the judges of another court for a writ of habeas corpus, which means “to have the body;” that is, the judges of the other court had power to order the sheriff to take the two men from prison, and bring them before their court for examination; and they could order their release if they pleased, or send them to prison again. Mr. Fuller argued the case before the judges of the King’s Bench.
“They ought to be released,” he said, “because the High Commission has not been empowered by law to fine or imprison, neither to administer oaths.”
That was a blow at the authority of the bishops, who summoned Fuller to appear before them; and, when he refused to take the oath, they threw him into prison, and compelled him to pay a fine of one thousand dollars. The judges of the King’s Bench did not interfere, and the Star-chamber and High Commission went on with their oppression. Men were put into prison, whipped, branded on the cheek, or had their noses and ears cut off for not conforming to the ritual, or for denying the authority of the bishops.
For light offences men were subjected to cruel punishments. In every village there was a whipping-post, pillory, and stocks. If a woman scolded her husband or neighbors, she was put in the pillory, or whipped, or tied to the ducking-stool and soused in a pond. If a man spoke disrespectfully of the bishops or king, he was flogged. For stealing or breaking into houses, men were hung.
It was a ghastly spectacle that the passengers across London Bridge beheld — skeletons hanging in chains and swinging in the wind. Those who passed beneath the Temple gate saw rows of skulls grinning upon them from the parapet.
It was believed that unless bodily pain was inflicted; unless offenders were whipped, or had their noses cut off; unless they were imprisoned or hung, there would not be a proper administration of justice, and society would not be secure. The laws were brutal, because the people were brutal. What we call the spirit of the age, is only our own spirit. When criminals were hung, thousands flocked to behold the hanging, and made sport when the sheriff swung them off. The multitude experienced a savage pleasure in seeing Jack Ketch cut off a man’s head.
The judges had a great deal to say about the majesty of the law. Bishops claimed the right to compel everybody to believe as they believed and worship as they worshipped, and had power to punish by fines, flogging, and imprisonment all who would not obey their commands.
Will the people who cross the Atlantic to settle America, who have been subject to persecution, at once become charitable? Change of place cannot change the spirit of an age. Time alone can do it.
Chapter V
The Beginning of Two Civilizations
A coach blazing with gold, with white lilies on its panels — the arms of France — rumbled through a narrow street in Paris on the afternoon of July 14th, 1610. In the coach was a gray-haired man, with a hooked nose, sharp chin, wrinkled face, and stiff gray mustache. Fifty-seven years had passed since his birth in an old stone castle at Pau, in the Pyrenees, where his fond grandfather poured wine and garlic down his throat to make him strong (see “Story of Liberty”); twenty years had gone by since his white plume, waving in the thickest of the fight at Ivry, had won a great victory for the Huguenots — toleration for them and peace to France — through the Edict of Nantes, that alike protected Catholic and Huguenots. Henry IV., beloved by the people, hated by the Jesuits, was riding alone through the narrow street, where the quaint old houses, jutting story over story, shut out the sunlight. Two carts blocked the way, and the coach came to a standstill. A stout man with red whiskers, deep-set, wolfish eyes, the Jesuit Ravaillac, wearing a cloak, stepped up to the window. A dagger gleamed in the air, and then was buried to the handle in the heart of the king. A gasp, a gargling in the throat, a sinking of the body upon the cushions, and all is over. He is gone; gone also the peace of Europe, the tranquillity of France, the hope of the Huguenots; but there is rejoicing in convents and nunneries, for no more will the Jesuits be thwarted in their plans by Henry IV.
Marie de Medicis, pliant, unprincipled, wicked — regent for her little son till he shall become king — will be a supple tool in their hands; whatever they ask she will grant, and they will train the son to follow in the footsteps of the mother.
What glorious news! The red men of America all becoming Christians! Young Biencourt, son of Baron Pontrincourt, brings the intelligence.
Four years had passed since the abandonment of Port Royal by Sieur de Monts, who, having lost much money, sold all his rights in Acadia to Baron Pontrincourt, who hastened across the sea to take possession of his purchase. There was rejoicing in the wigwams of the Indians when his vessel dropped anchor in Port Royal. The houses and the furniture remained just as Sieur de Monts had left them. Membertu, the Indian chief, who was very old, welcomed his friends the French once more.
“ I have served the devil all my life, and now I want to be good,” he said.
Possibly he remembered the dinners he had eaten in the great hall with Sieur de Monts, and would like to partake of other feasts.
“I would like to accept the white man’s God, and my squaws and children will also accept him.”
On the day of St. John the Baptist there was an imposing scene at Port Royal. Baron Pontrincourt and the other gentlemen of the expedition, wearing glittering breastplates and plumed hats, guarded by soldiers, keeping step to the drum-beat, marching in procession, escorted the Jesuit priests from the little log church to the sea-shore. The sailors and colonists gathered in groups around, greatly interested in all that was going on; also the dusky warriors who had come to see their old chief and his wives become Christians. Membertu and his family kneeled upon the pebbled beach, the priest sprinkled them with holy-water, a Te Deum was sung, the cannon thundered on ship and shore.
“Henceforth you will be called Henri,” said the priest to Membertu, naming him for the King of France.
“I give you the name of Marie,” said the priest to wife No. 1, bestowing upon her the name of Marie de Medicis.
Another thundering of cannon, and the old chief and all his family were Christians.
Indians far away heard that Membertu had accepted the Frenchman’s religion, and hastened to Port Royal to be baptized.
“Will they have such good dinners in the next world as you give here?” they asked.
Captain John Smith the while was exploring Chesapeake Bay, travelling in an open boat three thousand miles up the eastern and down the western shore, and up the Potomac, till stopped by the falls above Washington. We may believe that the thought never came to him that upon the northern bank would one day stand the capitol of a great republic.
Several hundred new colonists arrived at Jamestown, sent out by the London Company. An historian of Virginia has given this description of the new-comers:
“They were gentlemen reduced to poverty by gaming and extravagance, too proud to beg, too lazy to dig; broken tradesmen with some stigma of fraud yet clinging to their names; fortune-hunters who had expended in their mother country the last shred of honest reputation they had ever held; rakes consumed by desires, and shattered by the service of impurity; libertines whose end of sin was yet to run; and unruly sparks packed off by their friends to escape worse destinies at home.”
“Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?”
The greatest of all teachers put this question eighteen hundred years ago, and history has always confirmed his answer. States are not built of such material.
The merchants of London had not grasped the idea that Industry, Thrift, Economy, Virtue. Intelligence, Integrity,