John Robinson, the Pilgrim pastor

Front matter

JOHN ROBINSON THE PILGRIM Pastor

■ ■ O • S ■ D AV I

Cornell University Library

Introduction

Peinciples become attractive through their illustration in human lives; and any movement, whether religious or political, which is founded on great principles, is fortunate if it has a commanding personaUty associated with its initiation. In a Washington one sees embodied that which was noblest in the American Revolution, and in a similar way a Luther or a Wesley is typical and illustrative of the great movements associated with their names. In studying their lives we best understand the causes for which they labored, and gain most of inspiration for ourselves. Congregationalism has no one man who stands so supreme in the story of its beginnings as Wesley in those of Methodism or as Knox in the leadership of the Scotch Reformation. It bears the name of no single compelling leader as Lutheranism does, for none of its founders stood in quite the relationship to it that Luther bore to the German Reformation. But if it has had, thus, no one leader of such conspicuous preeminence, Congregationalism has had its founders, its martyrs and its exiles, to whom it delights to pay its reverence; and of these early worthies none was more attractive in his character, more wide-reaching in his influence, or more deserving of lasting remembrance, than John Robinson. Several of the leaders of early Congregationalvi INTRODUCTION

ism were men in whom allegiance to the truths for which they labored and sacrificed was associated with intolerance and a considerable degree of uncharitableness of judgment towards opponents, faults of temper, largely explainable, indeed, by reason of the strenuous and unequal contest in which they were engaged and the bitterness of the opposition which they encountered. One of the founders of Congregationalism, Robert Browne, made his peace with the enemies of the principles for which he for a time strenuously contended, and died repudiated by early Congregationalists, who refused to be called by his name or to be considered his disciples.

No such imperfections meet us in the character of John Robinson. Broad-minded, charitable for his age, far-visioned, he stood firmly for the truths for which he endured exile, and yet thought charitably and kindly of those who differed from him in belief. He was a strong, sweet, earnest, simple, brave, self-sacrificing pastor. In him early Separatist Congregationalism appeared at its best, and in studying him one sees revealed what was truest and noblest in its principles. Nor is it simply the charm of his own pergonal character that makes Robinson attractive to the student of his career. He, beyond any other leader of early Congregationalism, was the moulding force in the training of the founders of Plymouth. From the time when he first threw in his lot with the Congregational worshipers at Scrooby, probably in

INTRODUCTION vii

1604, till the day on which he bade farewell to the emigrants about to sail on the "Speedwell" for their long voyage to the new world, his was the most potent influence in the spiritual education of the Pilgrim Church. A man of ripe scholarship, a graduate himself of the University of Cambridge, and a respected, if humble, member of the community of scholars gathered about the University at Leyden, he was well equipped to be the intellectual leader of the company of which he was pastor. But his moulding influence upon them was even more that of the temper and the spirit than of the intellect, for the personal qualities of Robinson became through his example and teaching largely those of the Pilgrim congregation itself. To have been under his ministry was, to such men as Bradford, a training in firmness of purpose, in single-minded devotion to truth, and, above all, in kindliness of feeling. In this way he helped to make the story of the beginnings at Plymouth one in which all lovers of New England delight.

Though Robinson never beheld the new land to which he sent so large a part of the congregation that he had guided and whither he himself earnestly desired to go, and though he died in the city of his Dutch exile before the colony across the sea had fully demonstrated its power to live in its new environment, he was, as truly as any man who crossed the Atlantic, one of the fathers of New England. One viii INTRODUCTION

may justly say of him that if we reckon importance by influence, by encouragement of associates, by the spirit which he instilled into a great enterprise, no other founder of the Pilgrim colony has higher claims to grateful remembrance than this leader who never set foot upon its soil. Others courageously executed the task for which his patient ministry had done much to fit them; and the inspiration to their endeavor was largely his work. As such, whether viewed from the standpoint of one interested in the development of a branch of the Christian Church, or of one investigating the beginnings of American colonization and political life, the career of John Robinson is of permanent significance.

Robinson's importance has long been recognized by writers on the beginnings of New England or the story of Congregationalism. His works were collected and printed and his life made the subject of a brief biographical sketch by Robert Ashton.^ Dr. Henry M. Dexter presented his portrait at considerable length in his monumental volume on the beginnings of Congregationalism. ^ But not a little remains for the patient gleaner in this field, and Dr. Davis' investigations and discussions show in how large a measure the life of this noble Congregational leader still may reward the study de-

' " The Works of John Robinson." London. 1851. ^ " The Congregationalism of the last Three Hundred Years, as Seen in its Literature." New York. 1880.

INTRODUCTION ix

voted to it, and is still fruitful in lessons of permanent value as inspiration for self-sacrificing Christian consecration.

WILLISTON WALKER.

Preface

This study of a personality rich in significance to the religious history of England and America has been carried on in the midst of a pastorate, and has formed for five years an avocation of increasing profit and delight. It rests upon an investigation of the sources in Robinson's preserved writings and in available contemporary hterature. The writer's purpose has been to set the living man in true relationship to his own time, and to estimate his real contribution to the history of the church with which his name is most closely associated.

It is not an easy task to vitalize a controversy which has been dead for more than two centuries. And it is difficult for us to realize the intensity with which such a bygone issue could assert its paramount importance to the mind of one who thought and acted so long ago. We must awaken imagination before we can set ourselves sympathetically into the first quarter of the seventeenth century. The writer sincerely hopes that he has not introduced so many details that the imagination of any reader of this biography will be clogged through their excess. There are many events in the story of John Robinson's life which we have been unable to rescue from oblivion; yet the main lines along which his life moved are clear. Behind all these controversies.

xll PREFACE

now forgotten and dusty, is a real man. We have to do with a character who struggles and grows. Many specific details that concern dates and places are obscure; the conflict and triumph of the living man are plainly evident. This person we have sought to bring forward into the light.

Without the assistance and encouragement of Rev. W. H. Cobb, D.D., Librarian of the Congregational Library in Boston, Massachusetts, and Professor Williston Walker of Yale University, the work never could have been completed. This debt the writer gratefully acknowledges here. His heartiest thanks are also extended to Mr. Herbert R. Gibbs and Miss Sarah L. Patrick for their invaluable aid in the preparation and publication of the manuscript.

Nkwtonville, Massachusetts.

Table Of Contents

Chapter Pages

I The Anglican Reformation and its Results

II Separatist Congregations in Gainsborough

Chapter I The Anglican Reformation And Its Results In The Year 1606

In any effort to understand a person in history two factors must be reckoned with. One of these is the world in which the person lived. A child is born into a social order; he comes into it bringing with him positive tendencies which shape his character and influence his choices. This inheritance is a part of his environment. The whole sphere in which he finds himself also acts upon his choices, and enters into the entire process of his growth. Hereditary tendencies and changing surroundings are necessary keys if we are to open the doors which allow us to enter the secret chambers of a person's soul. Something far more important than these is necessary, however. When one knows the ancestry and the times of Luther or of Lincoln one is far from ready to attempt to interpret the man to us. Every personality is acted upon; but he acts. There is in him a mighty energy of personal and peculiar force by means of which he impresses himself upon his time. This mighty fact of the free spirit of man, which often defies all the laws of heredity and environment, so far at least as they have yet been framed, is the supreme factor in the effort to understand a person. The last detail in regard to the inherited traits of John Robinson might be known ; the conditions of life and thought in that far-away time when he lived might be comprehended; and still we might be far from an adequate understanding of the man himself. We should still need to enter into the motives which he shaped for himself to control his action. We should require an insight into the ideals toward the realization of which he strove. We should need to see the real man acting upon his time with something which seems almost like creative energy.

To reach this deepest-hidden but most important factor the necessary way of approach is through intimate knowledge of the world in which he lived, as acting upon him and acted upon by him. The first task before us, therefore, is to attempt to set the life of John Robinson, who is commonly known as the " Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers," closely into its vital connection with the movements of religious thought and action in England and Holland between the years 1575 and 1625. This will not be so difficult or complex an effort as might seem at first thought. Robinson's life was bound up very closely with one religious movement. He was absorbed in one line of activity. He lived in the radical movements of the Anglican Reformation.

We must sketch briefly, then, the growth of the Protestant Reformation in England until the accession of King James I, in 1603, and also outline the general plan of organization assumed by the Church of England when the policy of this king had become fixed, say in the year 1606.

England was peculiarly adapted to the spread of the Protestant movement. The claims of Rome had never been so thoroughly acknowledged in the island kingdom as they had been on the continent. The Bible had been translated early, and was read extensively both in churches and among the common people. The English, too, were by nature peculiarly loyal to their monarch in the matter of all claims which he might make for freedom from external authority. When King Henry VIII inherited the kingdom which his father had organized with consummate skill in the interests of absolutism, he found everything at the feet of the crown except the Church. The reorganization of the Church which was effected during his reign was really made possible by this independent temper of the English people. And the Act of Supremacy, passed in November, 1534, by which the king was declared to be "the only supreme head in earth of the Church of England, called Anglicana Ecclesia, " ^ did not involve any radical changes in doctrine or deeply concern the Roman Catholic subjects in the king's realm. For Henry VIII could not be called a Protestant. He won his title "Defender of the Faith'' by an attack on Luther. It is a rather grim commentary on the general inconsistency of the situation that, by the royal sanction, Protestants who denied Ptoman Catholic doctrine, and Roman Catholics who denied the royal supremacy were burned or hanged at the same time. The Six -Articles, passed, after a discussion in which the king himself participated, by Convocation and Parliament in 1539, sanctioned the doctrine of transubslantiation ; declared that communion in both bread and wine is not necessary to all persons; affirmed that priests might not marry; that vows of chastity and widowhood must be observed ; that private masses were to be continued; and that auricular confession was expedient and necessary. So far as there was a party whose policy was to advance still farther along lines of Protestant

' The Act is in Gee and Hardy, "Documents Illustrative of English Church History," London, Macmillan, 1896, pp. 243,244. I shall cite his collection hereafter as "G. & H. "

doctrine, it was not permanently successful in its efforts under the leadership of Thomas Cromwell. But on the accession of King Edward VI (1547- 1553), the Protestant movement found a larger possibilit}'- for supremacy opening before it. An Act was passed January 21, 1549, in which the use of a book of Common Prayer was prescribed for the whole realm. ^ This secured uniformity in respect to a book. The form enjoined was modeled more closely after those used in Sarum than according to any other use. It was a most important event for the history of the Anglican Church, ^ and marks the growth of Protestant influences in its development. These influences were exerted not only in the direction of polity, but also upon the formal doctrine of the Church. This deliberate attempt to get rid of obnoxious Roman Catholic doctrine was persistent from the time of the death of King Henry VIII. '^ In a Second Act* of Uniformity in 1552, a changed form of Common Prayer was imposed upon the people. This act also prescribed penalties against

2 See Wakeman, *'Aii Introduction to the History of the Church of England. " Rivington, Loudon, 1897, p. 274 ff .

^ "The Condition of Morals and Religious Belief in the Reign of Edward VI. " By the Rev. Nicholas Pocock. English Historical Review. July, 1895, pp. 417-445.

all laymen who should refuse to attend services at which the form was used. Thus action against recusants began.

Under the lead of Cranmer, meantime, a confession of faith, catechism and primer were being compiled. Forty-two articles of faith were published by royal authority in 1553. These subsequently became the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Anglican Church.

All these changes, however, rested upon most insecure foundations. The mass of the people were not ready for any radical alterations in the doctrine or polity of the Church, and when King Edward VI was succeeded by Queen Mary in 1553, an intense Roman Catholic reaction was brought about quite easily. The first proclamation of the queen, published August 18, 1553, ^ announced the faith which she held, and expressed the wish, which every one knew was her will, that her loving subjects should quietly embrace it. This proclamation was quickly followed by her first Act of Repeal, ^ in which acts passed during the reign of King Edward VI were repealed, and the religious constitution of the realm was practically restored to that obtaining when King Henry VIII died in 1547.

But the queen did not pause here. Late in 1554 her second Act of Repeal ^ was passed. This restored the ecclesiastical conditions of the year 1529. England was a Roman Catholic country. Protestant heretics were exiled, imprisoned and executed. It seems very unlikely that there were any congregations organized according to the model of King Edward VI, which maintained their existence in England secretly during the reign of Queen Mary. The line of development which we must follow is to be taken up in those cities of the continent to which the Protestant leaders and members of their congregations fled during the Roman Catholic reaction effected by the queen.

Following out this line of development, we find ourselves concerned with the action of one of these congregations which was composed of families who settled at Frankfort-on-the-Main in 1554. They were using in their worship the Prayer-Book of King Edward VI, but did not adhere strictly to all its requirements. They used no surplice, dispensed with the litany, and allowed the people to make no responses after the minister. For this they were taken to task by their English brethren settled in Swiss cities, and they defended their practice by claiming that ^ these omissions and changes were exactly in line with those which had been intended by the leaders of the reform movements in England during the reign of King Edward VI, but had been cut short by the changes which came with the accession of Queen Mary. The movement perpetuated by these English exiles in continental cities, therefore, represented the natural development of the Anglican reformation toward a simpler form of worship and greater freedom from Roman Cathohc doctrine.

Queen Mary died in 1558. Princess Elizabeth came to the throne. The exiles returned. Again the form of the national religion underwent a change. Queen Elizabeth was conservative and the key-note of her policy was compromise. She desired to be the head of a national church, which should be neither so Protestant as to repel her Roman Catholic subjects, nor so Roman Catholic that her Protestant subjects would separate from it. Therefore, according to her instructions, the severe language against the pope was stricken out of the litany, and certain vestments which had

^ The correspondence and an account of the entire trouble is contained in "A Brieff Diacours off the troubles begonne at Franckford in Germany Anno Domini 1554. " 1575, p. xxi. Copy in Congregational Library, Boston. Reprint, London, 1846, p. xxi.

been abandoned during the reign of King Edward were restored. ^

Queen Elizabeth's Supremacy Act, ^ passed in January, 1559, repealed the Act of Repeal of Queen Mary, and revived a part of the acts of King Henry VIII and King Edward VI relating to the religious condition of the realm. Immediately after the above came the sti'ingent Act of Uniformity, which restored the Book of Common Prayer, changed slightly from the form in which it had been fixed under King Edward VI. The terms of this act were \'ery strict regarding the use of the Book, attendance at church, and the penalties attending any transgression of the statute. ^ The Prayer-Book was accepted by the majority of the queen's bishops, not because they all thoroughly approved of it as it then was, but for what a part of them hoped to make of it by future changes.

Queen Elizabeth had no sympathy with the type of Calvinism which had been brought home by the exiles from the cities of the continent. She was ready to use their counsel, but she did not propose that these Protestants should carry out the policy which they had endeavored to realize

^ Elizabeth retained the crucifix in her chapel and the use of the cope was continued. This scandalized especially the returned exiles. See Wakeman, pp. 329-333.

at home under King Edward VI, and which they had perpetuated and intensified during their enforced residence in the centers of Protestant thought abroad. Her policy mediated between these Protestants on the one hand and the leaders of her Roman Catholic subjects on the other.

This policy of the queen found its ardent supporters among those who had been loyal to the general cause of the Reformation in England. They formed the Anglican party. On the other hand were those who desired to press forward to still greater reforms both in the doctrine and in the practice of the church. They desired to purify public worship of all' the ceremonies which, to them, stood for obnoxious Romish doctrines, of which they were supposed to be rid already. They strove for the elevation in moral character of the clergy and members of the national Church. For this they were named Puritans. The root of this Puritan movement was ethical, not doctrinal. Nothing could be farther from the truth than to imagine that the English Puritans or their Separatist successors were malcontents and incorrigibles, who found it by nature impossible to abide in the same spiritual household with other men. They were champions of righteousness and men of intense ethical earnestness. This was the prime motive in all their activity. Puritanism Was practical, not doctrinal, so far as its initial incentives were concerned. It found a buttress in the theology of Calvin, but it sprang from the ethical passion for a purer life. ■'

The movement which is thus named Puritanism has always been at work in the Church. It manifested itself in the Netherlands before it did in England. Bishop Hooper, who "scrupled" the vestments in the reign of King Edward, was the father of Puritanism in England. But the clear definition of the movement came chiefly from the writings of Thomas Cartwright, Professor in the Universitjf of Cambridge, from which position he was ejected in 1571 for so-called erroneous teaching.

Cartwright was a follower of Calvin both in doctrine and in polity. His teaching stood in positive opposition to that of the Anglican party. He held that the State and the Church are independent in administration; that the Scriptures teach an authoritative system of polity, of which the diocesan episcopate forms no part; that the members of the Church ought to have a share in the selection of their officers. The membership

^ See "Puritanism in the Old World and in the New," by J. Gregory, 1896, p. 2.

of the Church, he taught, is composed of all baptized persons who are not excommunicated, and the duty of the ministry is to train this body of church members to holiness of life. He believed that the magistrate ought to suppress heresy and compel uniformity in worship. The true reformer, he maintained, must remain within the Church, work there for its purification, and never separate from its communion. Separation he held to be a grievous sin. Cartwright was the founder of the party of Presbyterian Puritanism, between which and the Anglican party there was sharp stress throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth.

Under the strain of this contention each party intensified its emphasis upon its peculiar doctrines. The great opponent of Cartwright, Archbishop Whitgift, sought to maintain simply that episcopacy is the more a^ncient and desirable form of church government. In 1589, Bancroft maintained that episcopacy is of divine authority, and in 1593 Bilson asserted that episcopacj? and apostolic succession are essential to the very existence of the Church. Thus the breach widened. Even the gradual passing away of the common foe, Roman Catholicism, seemed to intensify the strife between Puritan and Anglican. ^

^ See Williston Walker ' 'A History of the Congregational Churches in the United States," 1894, pp. 19-24.

Puritanism, as outlined by Cartwright, had within itself certain unfulfilled conditions which were inevitably bound to carry some of its followers to the extent of separation from the national church as established by law. It was a policy of ethical and ecclesiastical reformation. This reformation, according to Cartwright, was bound up with the civil power, and it was necessary to wait for the initiative of the civil magistrates in undertaking practical reform. The reformer is by nature a man impulsive in purpose and impatient of delay. The end which he seeks seems to him so righteous and so necessary that he cannot control his zeal while he waits for the slow operation of the elaborate machinery of civil administration. The time was bound to come when men of this stamp would face the question, Has the Anglican Church the power resident within it to reform the abuses which are involved in its present constitution? If the answer to that question were a negative, a second question was bound also to arise : Is it, then, the duty of those who hold fast to the holy character of the members of the true Church to remain in the commiunion of the Church of England? Cartwright 's teaching became a school in which men were trained to advance beyond their teacher. He opened a door which other men entered who believed him inconsistent because he did not go to the full length of separation.

The first attempt to outline the theory and practice of a separation from the Anglican Church is found in the writings and the work of Robert Browne. It was while pastor of a church of Puritan tendencies in Cambridge, about 1580, that he seems to have become convinced that the Puritan reformation was not thorough enough, and that a more radical change, without waiting longer for help either from the impotent and unwilling magistrates or from the sad minority of faithful clergy, was the sole means of purifying the Church and of avoiding personal sin. He maintained not only that the order of the Anglican Church was unscriptural, but also that the bishops in sustaining it were guilty of sin. This sin became, by participation, the personal sin of every person who remained in the false church, and therefore church relationship was a determining factor in holiness and salvation. To remain a member of the Church of England was to connive at sin and become involved in it. Separation was necessary in order to salvation. ^

From two small books issued by Browne we

1 See Dexter,' ' The Congregationalism of the Last Three Hundred Years as Seen in its Literature," New York, Harper, 18S0, pp. 61-12S for the best available^study of Browne's work.

gain an outline of his teaching, which may be gathered up under three heads:

I. A Christian church is a company of persons possessing Christian character, and united to God and to one another in the bonds of a covenant. To every such church belong all the powers necessary for self-organization, government and discipline. Such a church is a democracy, under the supreme and immediate headship of Christ, and each member is responsible to Christ for the welfare of the church to which he belongs.

II. But each church is also bound to its sister churches, and is to give and receive aid and counsel whenever these are needed.

III. The Church and the State are independent of each other, and therefore civil magistrates have no right to exercise lordship in spiritual affairs.

These doctrines were so radical that they called out a proclamation in the name of Queen Elizabeth against the books, the possession and circulation of which was so serious a charge that two men convicted of it were executed in 1583.

It remained to be seen whether Browne was a man of sufficient strength to organize an institution which could successfully realize his ideal. Great dangers were bound up with propositions so radical as those which Browne announced.

The true test of his capacity as a leader came when he endeavored to form a congregation upon the basis of those principles. He made the attempt at Middelberg. Disaster attended it. This may not have been due entirely to the inability of Browne himself to control his church. In a company where each man is made the responsible censor of his brother's opinion and conduct the peril is great. Poor human nature is too weak to endure such a strain as that unless there is a masterful personality in control, to temper men 's judgments and set a high example of kindness. The principles of Separation called for wise leadership. Browne 's congregation went to wreck and he himself, a man of no small ability, and a preacher of far more than ordinary power, was incompetent to control his congregations, even if they had been organized on a model which had less possibility and peril of disruption bound up within it. He finally returned into the communion of the Church of England, and died, an old man, scorned by Puritans and Anglicans alike.

The teachings of Browne were widely circulated. When, in 1610, Joseph Hall wrote in reply to John Robinson, who had claimed that the main positions of the Separatists were not well or commonly known, he said, —

"What Cobler or Spinster hath not heard of the maine holds of Brownisme?" ^

Thus early Browne's name was given in derision to those who advocated a Separation. They tried in vain to shake it off, but it continued many years as a term of reproach. ^

The second stage in the development of Separation may also be designated by the name of a man. Barrowism is the general name given to the teachings of Henry Barrow and John Greenwood. After the year 1586 both of these men came into prominence on account of their arrest and repeated examination for ecclesiastical misdemeanors. During their subsequent imprisonment in the Gatehouse and Clink prisons they managed to prepare and smuggle out enough manuscript to fill over nine hundred pages of exegetical and controversial literature. In these books a new statement of the Separatist principle appears.

Barrow and his friends agreed fully with Browne in his attack upon the Anglican Church in respect to the character of its members, its polity and its worship. The duty of Separation was made

' Joseph Hall, "A Common Apologie o£ the Church of England, " 1610, p. 5. '' See the popular conception mirrored in the writings of Shakespeare. ' ' I had as lief be a Brownist as a politician. "

—Twelfth Night, iii, 2, 34.