Part 2 (1/2)

We know what ”Little-Ease” means well enough; and so did many a wretched occupant of these barbarous places. The Bishop of Lincoln, in the old persecuting days, had at his palace at Woburn ”a cell in his prison called Little-Ease,” so named because it was so small that those confined in it could neither stand upright nor lie at length. Other bishops possessed similar means of bodily correction and spiritual persuasion.

This was worse than the Guildhall cells, with all their gloomy horror; and if the magistrates entertained their unwilling guests at the town jail, we may rest satisfied they did not eat the bread of adversity and drink the water of affliction in Little-Ease, but in some more s.p.a.cious apartment. We have no evidence that they did so entertain them, and the traditional lodging-place of these intercepted Pilgrims is the Guildhall and nowhere else. It is probable, all the same, that a good part of their captivity was spent in the town prison.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _From a Drawing by the late William Brand, F. S. A._

OLD TOWN GAOL, MARKET-PLACE, BOSTON]

Although the magistrates, from Mayor John Mayson downward, felt for the sufferers and doubtless ameliorated their condition as far as they could, it was not until after a month's imprisonment that the greater part were dismissed and sent back, baffled, plundered, and heart-broken, to the places they had so lately left, there to endure the scoffs of their neighbours and the rigours of ecclesiastical discipline.

Seven of the princ.i.p.al men, treated as ring-leaders, were kept in prison and bound over to the a.s.sizes. Apparently nothing further was done with them. Brewster is said to have been the chief sufferer both in person and pocket. He had eluded a warrant by leaving for Boston, and we know this was in September, because on the fifteenth of that month the messenger charged to apprehend Brewster and another man, one Richard Jackson of Scrooby, certified to the Ecclesiastical Court at York ”that he cannot find them, nor understand where they are.” On the thirtieth of September also the first payment is recorded to Brewster's successor as postmaster at Scrooby.

How the imprisoned Separatists fared, there is nothing to show. No a.s.size record exists. The Privy Council Register, which could have thrown light on the matter, was destroyed in the Whitehall fire of 1618; and the Boston Corporation records, which doubtless contained some entry on the subject that would have been of the greatest interest now, are also disappointing, as the leaves for the period, the first of a volume, have disappeared.

Eventually the prisoners were all liberated. That dreary wait of many weeks was a weariness of the spirit and of the flesh. Patiently they bore the separation, and by and by they met to make more plans. Next spring they agreed with another Dutchman to take them on board at a lonely point on the northern coast of Lincolns.h.i.+re, between Grimsby and Hull, ”where was a large common, a good way distant from any town.” This spot has been located as Immingham, the site of the new Grimsby docks.

The women, with the children and their goods, came to the Humber by boat down the Trent from Gainsborough; the men travelled forty miles across country from Scrooby. Both parties got to the rendezvous before the s.h.i.+p, and the boat was run into a creek. This was unfortunate, as when the captain came on the scene next morning the boat was high and dry, left on the mud by the fallen tide, and there was nothing for it but to wait for high water at midday.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by Bocklehurst, Gainsborough_

TRENTSIDE, GAINSBOROUGH]

Meanwhile the Dutchman set about taking the men on board in the s.h.i.+p's skiff, but when one boatload had been embarked he saw to his dismay, out on the hills in hot pursuit, ”a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons,” for ”the country was raised to take them.” So the laconic historian says, ”he swore his country's oath--Sacramente,” and heaving up his anchor sailed straight away with the people he had got. Their feelings may be imagined; and their plight was aggravated by a violent storm, which drove them out of their course and tossed them about for a fortnight, until even the sailors gave up hope and abandoned themselves to despair. But the s.h.i.+p reached port, at last, and all were saved.

The scene ash.o.r.e meantime had been scarcely less distressing than that at sea. Some of the men left behind made good their escape; the rest tarried with the forsaken portion of the party. The women were broken-hearted. Some wept and cried for their husbands, carried away in the unkindly prudent Dutchman's s.h.i.+p. Some were distracted with apprehension; and others looked with tearful eyes into the faces of the helpless little ones that clung about them, crying with fear and quaking with cold.

The men with the bills and guns arrested them; but, though they hurried their prisoners from place to place, no Justice could be found to send women to gaol for no other crime than wanting to go with their husbands.

We know not what befell them. The most likely suggestion is that ”they took divers ways, and were received into various houses by kind-hearted country folk.” Yet this we do know. They rallied somewhere at a later day, and John Robinson and William Brewster, and other princ.i.p.al members of the devoted sect, including Richard Clyfton, ”were of the last, and stayed to help the weakest over before them;” and Bradford tells us with a sigh of satisfaction that ”notwithstanding all these storms of opposition, they all gatt over at length, some at one time and some at another, and some in one place and some in another, and mette togeather againe according to their desires, with no small rejoycing”--to take part in the wonderful movement, begun by the Pilgrims and continued by the Puritans, that gave to a new land a new nation. Thus, wrote Richard Monckton Milnes, in some verses dated ”The Hall, Bawtry, May 30th, 1854”--

Thus, to men cast in that heroic mould Came Empire, such as Spaniard never knew-- Such Empire as beseems the just and true; And at the last, almost unsought, came gold.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Copyright, 1904, by A. S. Burbank, Plymouth_

ELDER WILLIAM BREWSTER]

III

LIFE IN LEYDEN--ADIEU TO PLYMOUTH--THE VOYAGE TO THE WEST

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Photograph by W. P. Demmenie, Leyden_

JOHN ROBINSON'S HOUSE, LEYDEN, WHERE THE PILGRIM FATHERS WORs.h.i.+PPED]

III

LIFE IN LEYDEN--ADIEU TO PLYMOUTH--THE VOYAGE TO THE WEST

_Then to the new-found World explored their way, That so a Church, unforced, uncalled to brook Ritual restraints, within some sheltering nook Her Lord might wors.h.i.+p and His Word obey In Freedom._--WORDSWORTH.