Old Times in the Colonies. Charles Carleton Coffin
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she came to the throne, re-established the Church which her father had founded, making herself the head. James I., who succeeded Elizabeth, endeavored to make everybody conform to the ritual which the bishop had written out. Those who refused to do this were called Non-conformists. In the “Story of Liberty” is an account of the persecutions endured by the people of Scrooby and Austerfield, because they held meetings of their own on Sunday in an old manor-house, listening to the preaching of John Robinson; how they fled to Holland, and finally sailed to America in the Mayflower.
Some of the ministers of the Church of England did not like to make the sign of the cross when they baptized a child, and there were other things distasteful to them in the ritual which the bishop had established. They desired a purer form of worship, and so were called Puritans by those who ridiculed them. They were not Separatists, like those plain farmers of Scrooby and Austerfield, but remained in the Church. When James came to the throne, several hundred Puritans requested a change in the ritual. He answered them rudely:
“I will have,” he said, “one doctrine, one discipline, one religion; I alone will decide; I will make you conform, or I will harry you out of the land, or else do worse — hang you.”‘
Convictions of what is right and true are forces for good which oppression and tyranny never can suppress. Obedience to such convictions led the men and women of Scrooby to flee from their pleasant homes to Holland, and from thence to America, to find peace and quiet in the solitude of the wilderness. Conviction of what was right and true also led the Puritans — some of whom lived in fine houses, with spacious halls, where they entertained their friends in princely style — to turn their backs upon all the comforts and refinements of life to which they had been accustomed, and make their humble homes in the wilderness, laying the foundations of a State which, though small in area, has wielded a wonderful influence on the history of our country.
In obedience to this conviction, George Fox preached in the fields, the streets, entered churches unbidden, wearing his hat, and dressed in sheepskin clothes. He preached that men should always be guided by the “inner light” which God would reveal to every honest heart. The justices sent him to prison as a fanatic and disturber of the peace; but as soon as he was out he resumed his preaching, making many converts to his ideas.
On other pages of this volume we shall read of the persecutions, sufferings, and obloquy endured by the Quakers; of their fanaticism and mistakes, and also the founding of the State of Pennsylvania by the follower of George Fox.
How strange that the firing of a gun on the shore of Lake Champlain should set in motion a train of events which have had a mighty influence upon the destiny of our country! In another chapter we shall accompany a hardy pioneer from France (Samuel Champlain) along the shore of the lake that bears his name. He will fire a gun whose echoes have not yet ceased to reverberate through the wilderness. Insignificant the event; but it will set the Mohawks, Onondagas, Senecas, Canandaiguas, and Cayugas — the five tribes composing the Iroquois Nation — forever against the French. They will make their power felt in the great struggle between France and England for supremacy in America.
Such are some of the forces that gave direction to the early history of our country. It is a history not designed by man; for the men of one generation cannot lay a plan for the generation that succeeds it. Every person exercises his own individual will; and it is only a Divine hand that out of the greed, selfishness, avarice, ambition, and passions of the multitude — out of their blunders, mistakes, and crimes — out of all the turmoils and conflicts of centuries — can mould a great Republic in which law, order, liberty, and an exalted sense of justice and right shall be supreme.
Chapter III
First Settlements
The century of discovery closed, and the period of settlement, began. Elizabeth was Queen of England, Henry IV. King of France, and Philip II. of Spain. A great fleet of vessels crossed the ocean every year from England and Brittany to the Banks of Newfoundland to obtain fish. The hardy sailors moored their little craft upon the banks, rode out fearful gales, or, when the storms came on, hoisted sail and ran to the harbor of Newfoundland for shelter. Some of the fishermen passed through the Straits of Canso into the Gulf of St. Lawrence. Others coasted along Nova Scotia, and dropped anchor in the harbor of Maine— the sailors opening trade with the Indians, purchasing a large pile of beaver skins with a few knives, fish-hooks, or bits of tin; carrying the furs to France, and selling them to the hatters, making quite as much money on their furs as on their fish.
A gentleman of Brittany, the Marquis de la Roche, resolved to capture and keep to himself a goose that would lay no end of golden eggs, by obtaining from the king the exclusive privilege of trading with the Indians. The King of France had no claim to America, except through the discoveries made by John Verrazani and Jacques Cartier; but he granted De la Roche’s request, and made him Governor of Canada, Newfoundland, and Labrador — a vast undefined territory — with power to raise troops, declare war, build cities and forts; to give away the land to whomsoever he pleased. The marquis tried to induce the people of Brittany to emigrate to Canada, but they preferred to remain at home and enjoy the comforts of life in their native villages. Not being able to get any settlers, De la Roche obtained leave to ship criminals from the prisons, and set sail with forty thieves and murderers. It was not a promising beginning, for the villains pummeled and pounded one another fearfully on the voyage. One morning they beheld the long yellow beaches of Sable Island, off the shore of Maine. As De la Roche had not decided where to make a settlement, he landed the criminals, and sailed away to explore the coast; but a storm came on, and the north-west winds blew so furiously that he was swept nearly across the Atlantic, and found himself so near home that he returned to St. Malo.
Forty thieves, with no one to govern them, no law — no authority — what will they do? what will become of them?
A vessel had been wrecked on the island years before, and the hulk lay half buried on the beach; from its planks they built some huts. Herds of wild horses cropped the stunted grass in the meadows, and the sea was alive with fish, so that they would not lack food. There were troublesome times in France, and De la Roche could not visit them. Five years went by, when a vessel approached the island and sent a boat on shore. Twelve men, wearing clothes made from the skins of foxes, were all that remained: the others had been killed, or had died from exposure or homesickness. The weak had gone down before the strong; might had made right. So ended the first attempt of the French to make a settlement in America.
The merchants of Bristol, England, began to turn their eyes to the New World, and sent Bartholomew Gosnold on a voyage of discovery. He sailed in 1602, in the ship Concord, descrying first the white granite ledges of Cape Ann. Turning southward, he discovered a sandy promontory, which he named Cape Cod. He dropped anchor in the harbor of Provincetown, caught many fish, sailed south once more around the cape to the islands of Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, entered Buzzard’s Bay, and landed on an island which the Indians called Cuttyhunk. He was charmed with the country, the tall forest-trees, the grapevines which grew along the shore; built a fort, intending to leave six men, but was so short of provisions that he was obliged to abandon the project. He loaded his ship with sassafras, which was greatly esteemed in London, the doctors using it as a medicine, and hastened away, having only a single biscuit left when he reached England.
The next year the Bristol merchants sent Martin Pring to see what he could discover. He sailed along the coast of Maine, entered Casco Bay, Kennebunk Harbor, the Saco, and Piscataqna. It was midsummer, and the fields on the west shore of the Piscataqna were so red with strawberries that he named it Strawberry Bank. The quaint old town of Portsmouth now covers the ground where the sailors feasted themselves upon red, ripe berries.
Captain Pring was so enthusiastic over what he had seen, upon his return to England, that Richard Hakluyt, one of the ministers of Bristol, became greatly interested, and wrote letters to influential friends — Sir George Somers, Edward Wingfield, and others in London — telling them that ‘it was the duty of Englishmen to do something to checkmate Spain, who had already obtained possession of