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seemed possible to James. Take heed, Laud; for you ken not the stomach of that people!

III. The Foreign Chaplaincies. As early as the fifteenth century there had been factories or agencies of the English "merchantadventurers" in the chief towns of northern Germany and the Netherlands. The influx of Protestant and then of Puritan refugees from England and Scotland had increased the British ingredient in these towns; and, finally, English and Scotch regiments, sent over by Elizabeth and James for continental service in the war of the Netherlands against Spain, had left their relics where they had been stationed. There were thus, in many of these continental towns, English and Scotch congregations, requiring the services of English or Scotch pastors. Milton's preceptor, Young, had been chaplain to the British merchants in Hamburg; and Hamburg was but one of several German towns similarly provided. In Hamburg, says Neal, "the English church," protected by the tolerant policy of the city, "managed its affairs according to the Geneva discipline, by elders and deacons." But it was in the Low Countries, and more particularly those provinces which were under the singularly free government of the States General of Holland, that the British churches abroad attained their greatest development. Calvinistic in the main themselves, but with other sects among them in sufficient numbers to ensure a liberty of religious difference such as existed nowhere else in the world, the Dutch welcomed the English Puritan ministers who came among them, and gave them all the rights of their own clergy, including state support. By the year 1632, there were English or Scotch congregations in Amsterdam, Arnheim, Bergen-op-Zoom, Bois-le-Duc, Breda, Brille, Campvere, Delft, Dordrecht, Flushing, Gorcum, Haarlem, the Hague, Leyden, Middleburg, Rotterdam, and Utrecht. Left entirely to themselves, these congregations had, in most cases, adopted the Presbyterian forms in their worship, and had become more and more alienated from episcopacy. It was in Holland, and especially in the great commercial city of Amsterdam, that the Brownists or Independents found shelter, and that those books and tracts were printed, which, being sent over to England, tended to diffuse the new ingredient of Independency or Congregationalism through the popular English Puritanism. Only one or two of the congregations, however, were Brownist and the rest were so far from advocating pure congregationalism that they had formed themselves, with the consent of the States, into a regular Presbyterian organization with the name of "The Synod of the English and Scotch Clergy in the United Provinces." This name occurs in Dutch histories of the period as well

as in English state documents. After Charles had ascended the throne, however, the existence of a body so composed, and with such a name, attracted the hostile attention of the English government; and Laud had already attempted to stretch his hand across the water so as to seize those Dutch rats. On the 19th of May, 1628, a letter was addressed in the King's name to the clergy of the Dutch synod, requiring them to abstain from the use of any other liturgy than that of England; to abstain from ordaining pastors for themselves, or receiving among them any pastors except such as had been ordained in the mother countries; to introduce no novelties in worship or in doctrine; to watch over the issue from the Dutch press of publications derogatory to the Church of England; and finally, in all matters of doubt, to have recourse to the English ambassador for advice. The synod, in reply, urged that, though English subjects, they were amenable to the laws of the country which supported them; defended themselves meekly in some points; but stoutly maintained their privilege of ordaining pastors. After this, little more is heard of the matter till Laud's elevation to the archbishopric, when he returned to the charge in a bolder fashion, requiring all chaplains, whether English or Scotch, in the Low Countries, to be "exactly conformable to the Church of England." Fortunately, the emigrants were safe within the Dutch laws; and not only prior to 1632, but through the whole of Laud's rule, the Low Countries were the chief refuge of the English Puritans. Here, on the quays of the great Dutch ports, by the sides of docks of green water, where ships were unloading and merchants and sailors. going about with pipes in their mouths, or, in more inland towns, by the sides of lazy canals flowing amid quaint red and white houses, there walked in those years many an exiled minister, free from all fear of Laud. Some of these clergymen remained all their lives in Holland, growing daily more Dutch in their figures and their theology; others made but a flying visit of a year or two, and then, tired of the red and white houses, the canals, and the flat Dutch scenery, resigned their charges and returned home. There are English and Scotch congregations at this day in some of the Dutch towns, the lists of whose pastors are unbroken from the year 1610.1 IV. The Colonial Church. We give the benefit of this modern name to the early Puritan settlements in America. There, across the roar of the Atlantic, was the true refuge of the oppressed — a

1 See Neal, II. 227, 228; Rushworth, II. 249, 250; and, more particularly, a historical account of the British Churches in the Netherlands, appended to a "History of the Scot

tish Church, Rotterdam," by the Rev. William Steven, himself some time minister of that Church. (Edinburgh and Rotterdam, 1832.)

continent left vacant from of old by God himself, to be shone upon by the sun and blown upon by the winds, with but a sprinkling of Red Indians to tend it, in order that, when the fulness of time was come, and this side of the earth had begun to teem with more than it could or would contain, there might be fresh space and growing-ground for what it cast out. The beginning had already been made. In 1608, or a century after the Spaniards had been familiar with America, the first British colony was permanently established in Virginia. This colony, having been planted in the mere spirit of commercial adventure, had no special attractions for the English Puritans; and it was not till several years later that they conceived the idea of planting colonies for themselves on the more northern portion of the American coast known as New England. The first colony there, that of New Plymouth, was founded in 1620 by a band of between one and two hundred persons, chiefly from among the British Independents of Holland, who, having raised funds and obtained the necessary patent from James, set sail in two detachments, one from Delfthaven, in Holland, the other from London. "If God reveal anything to you by any other instrument of his," was the advice given to these emigrants by John Robinson, of Leyden, the founder of Independency, as he prayed with them and took farewell of them at Delfthaven, "be as ready to receive it as ever you were to receive any truth by my ministry; for I cannot sufficiently bewail the condition of the reformed Churches, who are come to a period in religion, and will go at present no farther than the instruments of their reformation. The Lutherans cannot be drawn to go beyond what Luther saw; and the Calvinists, you see, stick fast where they were left by that great man of God, who yet saw not all things. This is a misery much to be lamented; for, though they were burning and shining lights in their times, yet they penetrated not into the whole counsel of God; but, were they now living, would be as willing to embrace further light as that which they first received. I beseech you remember it as an article of your Church-covenant, that you be ready to receive whatever truth shall be made known to you from the written Word of God. But I must herewithal exhort you to take heed what you receive as truth; examine it, consider it, and compare it with other Scriptures of truth before you receive it; for it is not possible the Christian world should come so lately out of such thick anti-Christian darkness, and that perfection of knowledge should break forth at once." Here was a principle which certainly required new ground-almost new physical as well as new civil

1 Neal, II. 120, 121.

conditions in which to plant itself; and, with this principle in their hearts, accompanied by the sensible advice from the same lips, that they should "abandon, avoid, and shake off the name of Brownists, as a mere nickname and brand for making them odious," the stout little company crossed the ocean. Miserable was their first winter; but New Plymouth survived, to receive year after year accessions from the mother country. Hearing that the colony had contrived to live, the Puritans at home resolved, at the time when Laud's oppressive policy began, to found another on a larger scale. A charter having been obtained from Charles (March 4, 1628-9) by some persons of substance in London, forming them into a corporation and body-politic by the name of "The Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay, in New England," a fleet of six vessels, with Puritan families on board to the number of about 350 persons, set sail in May 1629, and landed in the following month at Naumkeag or Salem, near Boston. They took with them as their pastors or chaplains, Mr. Higginson, a silenced minister of Leicestershire, and Mr. Skelton, a silenced minister of Lincolnshire; and in a covenant which they drew up and signed before sailing, they professed all lawful obedience to those that were over them "in Church or commonwealth," at the same time giving themselves "to the Lord Jesus Christ and to the word of his grace for the teaching, ruling and sanctifying" them "in matters of worship and conversation," and rejecting "all canons and constitutions of men in worship." Above a hundred of the colonists died the first winter, including Mr. Higginson; but the colony weathered through, and was reinforced the next summer by about two hundred more pilgrims, with several ministers among them. In taking farewell of England, these pilgrims desired the prayers of the Church, promising that when they should be "in their poor cottages in the wilderness," they would remember the brethren at home. From that time forward, New England received an increasing succession of Puritan emigrants, including ministers deprived or threatened by Laud-Eliot, the apostle of the Indians; Mr. John Cotton; Mr. Richard Mather; Mr. Charles Chauncy; Mr. Davenport, the feoffee, after a brief intermediate residence in Holland; and many more. Before the end of Laud's rule in 1640 (by which time, however, the colonies of Connecticut and New Haven had been added to those of Plymouth and Massachusetts), about four thousand persons, including seventy-seven divines, "all of whom were in orders in the Church of England," had transported themselves to New England.1

1 Neal, II. 203-207.

"Religion stands a-tiptoe in our land,

Ready to pass to the American strand,"

Herbert had written in one of his poems as early as 1632; and the words, used by Herbert in a sense of his own, were taken up and repeated by the Puritans. In the end, as we shall see, Laud was to exert himself in this matter too, and to try to coerce the American Church, or at least prevent its increase; but, on the whole, whoever, about the year 1632, desired liberty of conscience, could have it in full measure across the Atlantic. Alas! at what a cost! Where now the great American Republic receives the ships of the world into its northern harbors, these few hundreds of outcast Puritans, the first founders of its strength, had to raise their psalms of thanksgiving on bleak and unknown headlands, amid cold and hunger and ague, the graves of their little ones who had perished lying around them, Red Indians hovering near on the one side, and, on the other side, the eternal sea-line which severed them from dear cruel England, and the long low plash of the sullen waves.

"Church-outed by the prelates" at home, and not so zealously bent on the ministerial office as to embrace any of those alternatives by which his contemporaries in similar circumstances were enabled to pursue that office out of the sway of prelacy, Milton had to resolve on some totally distinct course of life. There is evidence in several allusions in his subsequent writings, that he at least thought of the profession of the law. But though the

1 In addition to the evidence indicated in the text, there yet exists, Mr. Hunter informs us (Milton Gleanings, pp. 21-23), a copy of Fitz-Herbert's "Natura Brevium," which belonged to Milton's widow. Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert was a famous lawyer and judge of the reign of Henry VIII. His "Natura Brevium," according to Wood (Athenæ, I. 111), "was esteemed an exact work, excellently well penned, and hath been much admired by the noted men in the common law." There were several editions of it. That under notice is of the year 1584; and the volume is still in "its original binding of dark-brown calf." (In 1830 it was in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Stedman, whose father, the Rev. Mr. Stedman, of St. Chad's, Shrewsbury, had it presented to him as a curiosity by Mr. Joshua Eddowes, a bookseller of Shrewsbury, born in 1724, and having relations at Nantwich.) On the title-page, says Mr. Hunter, is this inscription in Milton's beautiful handwriting:

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'Det Christus studiis vela secunda tuis.'" "We can hardly doubt," continues Mr. Hunter, that this was written "by the father, with whose handwriting I am not acquainted." Mr. Hunter adds, "It is remarkable that this copy of Fitz-Herbert appears to have been in the possession of another poet of the time, these words appearing on a later fly-leaf,

'John Marston oeth this Book."" Whoever the "John Marston 99 was, he must have preceded Milton as the owner of the book. The poet Marston died in 1634; but there were several John Marstons-one, the poet's father, who was a lawyer.

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