"We

the old men, how many Separatists had been executed? know certainly of six," replied the ancient men, "that were publicly executed, besides such as died in prisons. . . . Two of them were condemned by cruel Judge Popham, whose countenance and carriage was very rough and severe towards them, with many sharp menaces. But God gave them courage to bear it, and to make this answer:

“My Lord, your face we fear not,

And for your threats we care not,

And to come to your read service we dare not.""

Nor did King James depart from the footsteps of his predecessor in the religious policy of his administration. Though from his Scotch education and connections, and from the opinions which he had openly avowed before coming to the English throne, he had seemed pledged to a career of liberality and toleration, yet no sooner was he fairly seated on that throne than he, too, set about vindicating his claim to his new title of " Defender of the Faith," and enforcing conformity to the rites and ceremonies of the English Church. And he cut short a conference at Hampton Court, between himself and the Puritan leaders, got up at his own instigation, in the vainglorious idea that he could vanquish these heretics in an argument, with this summary and most significant declaration" If this be all they have to say, I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land."

The idea of banishment was full of bitterness to those to whom it was thus sternly held up. They loved their native land with an affection which no rigor of restraint, no cruelty of persecution could quench. Death itself, to some of them at least, seemed to have fewer fears than exile. "We crave," was the touching language of a Petition of sixty Separatists, in 1592, who had been committed unbailable to close prison in London, where they were allowed neither meat, nor drink, nor lodging, and where no one was suffered to have access to them, so as no felons or traitors or murderers were thus dealt with, "We crave for all of us but the liberty either to die openly or to live openly in the land of our nativity. If we deserve death,

it beseemeth the majesty of justice not to see us closely murdered, yea, starved to death with hunger and cold, and stifled in loathsome dungeons. If we be guiltless, we crave but the benefit of our innocence, that we may have peace to serve our God and our Prince in the place of the sepulchres of our fathers."

But there were those among them, notwithstanding, to whom menaces, whether of banishment or of the block, even uttered thus angrily by one, who, as he once well said of himself, "while he held the appointment of Judges and Bishops in his hand, could make what law and what gospel he chose," were alike powerless, to prevail on them to conform to modes and creeds which they did not of themselves approve. They heard a voice higher and mightier than James's, calling to them in the accents of their own consciences, and saying, in the express language of a volume, which it had been the most precious result of all the discoveries, inventions, and improvements of that age of wonders to unlock to them" Be ye not conformed, but be ye transformed"— and that voice, summon it to exile, or summon it to the grave, they were resolved to obey.

Foiled, therefore, utterly in the first of his alternatives, the King resorted to the last. It was more within the compass of his power, and he did harry them out of the land. Within three years after the utterance of this threat, (namely, in 1607,) it is recorded by the Chronologist, that Messrs. Clifton's and Robinson's church in the north of England, being extremely harassed, some cast into prison, some beset in their houses, some forced to leave their farms and families, begin to fly over to Holland for purity of worship and liberty of conscience.

Religions, true and false, have had their Hegiras, and institutions and empires have owed their origin to the flight of a child, a man, or a multitude. Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh; but he returned to overwhelm him with the judgments of Jehovah, and to build up Israel into a mighty people. Mahomet with his followers fled from the magistrates of Mecca; but he came back, with the sword in one hand and the Koran in the other, and the empire of the Saracens was soon second to none on the globe. "The young child and his mother" fled from the fury of Herod; but they returned, and the banner of the Cross

was still destined to go forth conquering and to conquer. The Pilgrim Fathers, also, fled from the oppression of this arbitrary tyrant, and, although their return was to a widely distant portion of his dominions, yet return they did, and the freedom and independence of a great republic, delivered from the yoke of that tyrant's successors, date back their origin, this day, to the principles for which they were proscribed, and to the institutions. which they planted.

But let us follow them in their eventful flight. They first settle at Amsterdam, where they remain for about a year, and are soon joined by the rest of their brethren. But finding that some contentions had arisen in a church which was there before them, and fearing that they might themselves become embroiled in them, though they knew it would be very much "to the prejudice of their outward interest" to remove, yet "valuing peace and spiritual comfort above all other riches" they depart to Leyden, and there live "in great love and harmony both among themselves and their neighbor citizens for above eleven years."

But, although during all this time they had been courteously entertained and lovingly respected by the people, and had quietly and sweetly enjoyed their church liberties under the States, yet finding that, owing to the difference of their language, they could exert but little influence over the Dutch, and had not yet succeeded in bringing them to reform the neglect of observation of the Lord's day as a Sabbath, or any other thing amiss among them, that owing, also, to the licentiousness of youth in that country and the manifold temptations of the place, their children were drawn away by evil examples into extravagant and dangerous courses, they now begin to fear that Holland would be no place for their church and their posterity to continue in comfortably, and on those accounts to think of a remove to America. And having hesitated a while between Guiana and Virginia, as a place of resort, and having at last resolved on the latter, they send their agents to treat with the Virginia Company for a right within their chartered limits, and to see if the King would give them liberty of conscience there. The Company they found ready enough to grant them a patent with ample privileges, but liberty of conscience under the broad

seal King James could never be brought to bestow, and the most that could be extorted from him, by the most persevering importunity, was a promise that he would connive at them, and not molest them, provided they should carry themselves peaceably.

Notwithstanding this discouragement, however, they resolved to venture. And after another year of weary negotiation with the merchants who were to provide them with a passage, the day for their departure arrives. It had been agreed that a part of the church should go before their brethren to America to prepare for the rest, and as the major part was to stay behind, it was also determined that their pastor, the beloved Robinson, should stay with them. Not only were the Pilgrims thus about to leave" that goodly and pleasant city which had been their resting place above eleven years," but to leave behind them also the greatest part of those with whom they had been so long and lovingly associated in a strange land, and this to encounter all the real and all the imaginary terrors which belonged to that infancy of ocean navigation, to cross a sea of three thousand miles in breadth, and to reach at last a shore which had hitherto repelled the approaches of every civilized settler! Who can describe the agonies of such a scene? Their Memorialist has done it in language as satisfactory as any language can be, but the description still seems cold and feeble.

"And now the time being come when they were to depart," says he, "they were accompanied with most of their brethren out of the city unto a town called Delft Haven, where the ship lay ready to receive them. .. One night was spent with little sleep with the most, but with friendly entertainment and Christian discourse, and other real expressions of true Christian love. The next day, the wind being fair, they went on board, and their friends with them, where truly doleful was the sight of that sad and mournful parting, to hear what sighs and sobs and prayers did sound amongst them, what tears did gush from every eye, and pithy speeches pierced each other's hearts, that sundry of the Dutch strangers, that stood on the Key as spectators, could not refrain from tears. But the tide (which stays for no man) calling them away that were thus loath to depart,

their reverend pastor falling down on his knees, and they all with him, with watery cheeks commended them with most fervent prayers unto the Lord and his blessing; and then, with mutual embraces and many tears, they took their leave of one another, which proved to be the last leave to many of them."

1

Such was the embarkation of the New England Fathers! Such the commencement of that Pilgrim voyage, whose progress during a period of five months I have already described, and whose termination we this day commemorate! Under these auspices, and by these instruments, was at last completed an undertaking which had so long baffled the efforts of statesmen and heroes, of corporations and of kings! Said I not rightly that the Pilgrims had a power within them, and a Power over them, which were not only amply adequate to its accomplishment, but which were the only powers that were thus adequate? And who requires to be reminded what those powers were?

I fear not to be charged with New England bigotry or Puritan fanaticism in alluding to the Power which was over the Pilgrims in their humble but heroic enterprise. If Washington, in reviewing the events of our Revolutionary history, could say to the American armies, as he quitted their command, that "the singular interpositions of Providence in our feeble condition were such as could scarcely escape the attention of the most unobserving," and again to the American Congress, on first assuming the administration of the Union, that "every step by which the people of the United States had advanced to the character of an independent nation, seemed to have been distinguished by some token of Providential agency," how much less can any one be in danger of subjecting himself to the imputation of indulging in a wild conceit, or yielding to a weak superstition, by acknowledging, by asserting, a Divine intervention in the history of New England colonization. It were easy, it is true, to convey the same sentiment in more fashionable phraseology to disguise an allusion to a wonder-working Providence under the name of an extraordinary fortune, or to cloak the idea of a Divine appointment under the title of a lucky accident. But I should feel that I dishonored the memory of our New