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John Eliot (search for this): chapter 2
o races and the doom of the native. The noble savage note may be found in John Rolfe, the husband of Pocahontas, with whom, poor fellow, his best thoughts are so intangled and enthralled. Other Virginians, like Smith, Strachey, and Percy, show close naturalistic observation, touched with the abounding Elizabethan zest for novelties. To Alexander Whitaker, however, these naked slaves of the devil were not so simple as some have supposed. He yearned and labored over their souls, as did John Eliot and Roger Williams and Daniel Gookin of New England. In the Pequot War of 1637 the grim settlers resolved to be rid of that tribe once for all, and the narratives of Captain Edward Johnson and Captain John Mason, who led in the storming and slaughter at the Indians' Mystic Fort, are as piously relentless as anything in the Old Testament. Cromwell at Drogheda, not long after, had soldiers no more merciless than these exterminating Puritans, who wished to plough their fields henceforth in
M. C. Tyler (search for this): chapter 2
English biographical writing of that century. Winthrop is perhaps more varied in tone, as he is in matter, but he writes throughout as a ruler of men should write, with decent plainness and manly freedom. His best known pages, justly praised by Tyler and other historians of American thought, contain his speech before the General Court in 1645 on the nature of true liberty. No paragraphs written in America previous to the Revolution would have given more pleasure to Abraham Lincoln, but it is the pulses of every succeeding generation. The close of King Philip's War, 1676, coinciding as it does with Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, marks an era in the development of our independent life. The events of that year, in the words of Professor Tyler, established two very considerable facts, namely, that English colonists in America could be so provoked as to make physical resistance to the authority of England, and, second, that English colonists in America could, in the last resort, pu
John Winthrop (search for this): chapter 2
Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay, with John Winthrop as governor. Bradford and Winthrop haveWinthrop have left journals which are more than chronicles of adventure. They record the growth and government of a commonwealth. Both Bradford and Winthrop were natural leaders of men, grave, dignified, solid, rit that bred confidence. Each was learned. Winthrop, a lawyer and man of property, had a higher srrow sense of that word, neither Bradford nor Winthrop seems to have thought of literary effect. Yenglish biographical writing of that century. Winthrop is perhaps more varied in tone, as he is in mt is to be feared that Lincoln never saw Governor Winthrop's book, though his own ancestor, Samuel Lincoln of Hinglam, lived under Winthrop's jurisdiction. The theory of government held by the domHooker, such men were aristocrats, holding John Winthrop's opinion that Democracy is, among most ci the sentence of admonition against her, says Winthrop, with much zeal and detestation of her errors[2 more...]
Spenser (search for this): chapter 2
e Sunday sermons and the week-day lectures served as oratory, poetry, and drama. These outpourings of the mind and heart of their spiritual leaders were the very stuff of human passion in its intensest forms. Puritan churchgoers, passing hours upon hours every week in rapt absorption with the noblest of all poetry and prose in the pages of their chief book, the Bible, were at least as sensitive to the beauty of words and the sweep of emotions as our contemporaries upon whose book-shelves Spenser and Milton stand unread. It is only by entering into the psychology of the period that we can estimate its attitude towards the poetry written by the pioneers themselves. The Bay Psalm book (1640), the first book printed in the colonies, is a wretched doggerel arrangement of the magnificent King James Version of the Psalms, designed to be sung in churches. Few of the New England churches could sing more than half-a-dozen tunes, and a pitch-pipe was for a long time the only musical inst
Burton E. Stevenson (search for this): chapter 2
y and expense. George Sandys, scholar and poet, finds his solace during a Virginia exile in continuing his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Colonel Norwood, an adventurer who belongs to a somewhat later day, since he speaks of having read Mr. Smith's travels, draws the long bow of narrative quite as powerfully as the redoubtable Smith, and far more smoothly, as witness his accounts of starvation on shipboard and cannibalism on shore. This Colonel is an artist who would have delighted Stevenson. All of these early tellers of Virginia tales were Englishmen, and most of them returned to England, where their books were printed and their remaining lives were passed. But far to the northeast of Virginia there were two colonies of men who earned the right to say, in William Bradford's quiet words, It is not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again. One was the colony of Pilgrims at Plymouth, heade
Alexander Pope (search for this): chapter 2
sodic ecstasy in the meditations of Jonathan Edwards. John Cotton, the third of the mighty men in the early Colonial pulpit, owes his fame more to his social and political influence than to his literary power. Yet even that was thought commanding. Trained, like Hooker and Shepard, at Emmanuel College, and fresh from the rectorship of St. Botolph's in the Lincolnshire Boston, John Cotton dominated that new Boston which was named in his honor. He became the Pope of the theocracy; a clever Pope and not an unkindly one. He seems to have shared some of the opinions of Anne Hutchinson, though he pronounced the sentence of admonition against her, says Winthrop, with much zeal and detestation of her errors. Hawthorne, in one of his ironic moods, might have done justice to this scene. Cotton was at heart too liberal for his r61e of Primate, and fate led him to persecute a man whose very name has become a symbol of victorious tolerance, Roger Williams. Williams, known today as a frie
John Pory (search for this): chapter 2
a hint to Shakespeare for the storm-scene in The Tempest. In either case it is admirable writing, flexible, sensitive, shrewdly observant. Whitaker, the apostle of Virginia, mingles, like many a missionary of the present day, the style of an exhorter with a keen discernment of the traits of the savage mind. George Percy, fresh from Northumberland, tells in a language as simple as Defoe's the piteous tale of five months of illness and starvation, watched by those wild and cruel Pagans. John Pory, of the strong potations, who thinks that good company is the soul of this life, nevertheless comforts himself in his solitude among the crystal rivers and odoriferous woods by reflecting that he is escaping envy and expense. George Sandys, scholar and poet, finds his solace during a Virginia exile in continuing his translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses. Colonel Norwood, an adventurer who belongs to a somewhat later day, since he speaks of having read Mr. Smith's travels, draws the long bow
John Robinson (search for this): chapter 2
e other was the Puritan colony of Massachusetts Bay, with John Winthrop as governor. Bradford and Winthrop have left journals which are more than chronicles of adventure. They record the growth and government of a commonwealth. Both Bradford and Winthrop were natural leaders of men, grave, dignified, solid, endowed with a spirit that bred confidence. Each was learned. Winthrop, a lawyer and man of property, had a higher social standing than Bradford, who was one of the Separatists of Robinson's flock at Leyden. But the Pilgrim of the Mayflower and the well-to-do Puritan of the Bay Colony both wrote their annals like gentlemen and scholars. Bradford's History of Plymouth plantation runs from 1620 to 1647. Winthrop's diary, now printed as the History of New England, begins with his voyage in 1630 and closes in the year of his death, 1649. As records of an Anglo-Saxon experiment in self-government under pioneer conditions these books are priceless; as human documents, they ill
William Hubbard (search for this): chapter 2
e of the Lancaster massacre and her subsequent captivity, and the loud-voiced Captain Church's unvarnished description of King Philip's death. The King, shot down like a wearied bull-moose in the deep swamp, fell upon his face in the mud and water, with his gun under him. They drew him through the mud to the upland; and a doleful, great, naked dirty beast he looked like. The head brought only thirty shillings at Plymouth: scanty reward and poor encouragement, thought Captain Church. William Hubbard, the minister of Ipswich, wrote a comprehensive Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians in New England, bringing the history down to 1677. Under the better known title of Indian Wars, this fervid and dramatic tale, penned in a quiet parsonage, has stirred the pulses of every succeeding generation. The close of King Philip's War, 1676, coinciding as it does with Bacon's Rebellion in Virginia, marks an era in the development of our independent life. The events of that year, in the
Thomas Shepard (search for this): chapter 2
om Hawthorne's The Minister's black Veil and The Scarlet letter. Yet it must be said that men like Hooker and Cotton, Shepard and Norton, had every instinct and capacity for leadership. With the notable exception of Hooker, such men were aristocne of Hooker's successors has called him a son of thunder and a son of consolation by turns. The same may be said of Thomas Shepard, another graduate of Emmanuel College in the old Cambridge, who became the soul-melting preacher of the newer Cambridial and political influence than to his literary power. Yet even that was thought commanding. Trained, like Hooker and Shepard, at Emmanuel College, and fresh from the rectorship of St. Botolph's in the Lincolnshire Boston, John Cotton dominated t-enduring and beneficent life in the flourishing town of Providence in 1684. He had already outlived Cotton and Hooker, Shepard and Winthrop, by more than thirty years. Inevitably men began, toward the end of the century, to take stock of the great
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