Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1891-01-16
Pilgrim Notes.
BY REV G. e. TowNE.

plan for erecting monument "to COM
the stay and training in Hol-
and of the Pilgrims" on the ground that
the Pilgrims were at least stimulated in
Holland to some of their noblest purposes
n education, liberation and what may
now be called the main features of the
American commonwealth" that 'tths Eng
ish Pilgrim was tempered and mellowed
in Holland;" that "what part Holland had
in developing these Scrooby farmers and
Nottingham weavers into builders of q free
has not been yet clearly
shown" that "men yearning for liberty
Of conscience found it in the Netherlands
during the great truce of 1909 1921" that
''while Robinson was absorbed in writing
these to controvert prelatism and to up
hold Dordacene Calvinism, the young men
of his congregation were more given to
Dutch politics and municipal methods"
and that thus "the Pilgrims had been edu-
Gated in statecraft and knew how to begin
q nation;" having in Holland, ''by noble
reversion," gone back to "ancient leu
tonic ideas'' of community in land, as
pointed out by DR.. Herbert Adams in his
"Germanic Origin of tho New England
Towns" All this would DO very in
teresting if it were true, but the
sources from which the Tribune has drawn
information have betrayed it. DR.. R. s..
Storrs, to whom it refers as warmly sup
porting the Delftsh aven scheme, showed in
his great discourse in Boston year ago an
entire lack of correct knowledge of the dis
To &c h ia
tory. The large views which he offered,
the ideals which he held up as Puritan,
were his own, reflected upon the history,
and were in serious respects unhistorioal.
The late DR.. Henry M. Dexter was just and
accurate when he said of the proposed
Delftshaven monument, "We have nc
money to waste upon any monu-
ment, whether it be at Delftshaven
or elsewhere, In commemoration of a fancy
which is in the face of the history" Tc
the same effect DR.. George L. Walker
made an elaborate report to the Congrega
tional club at Hartford, December % last
declaring, after elaborate recital of facts
that "the Delftshaven enterprise postu.
lates an historic error" that it proposes
"to build monument to mistake" 6
mere "fiction of Dutch hospitality" the
real fact having been that no special favor
whatever was shown to the Pilgrim
church under Robinson, not even the
courtesy of assigning them place of wor
ship, because as non-church indie
pendent Puritans in England, radica
come-outers, Pilgrims out of their ma
tional church, they had incurred the pen.
alties of sedition, as contemning the stat
church, and were under the ban of eve,
the church Puritans of England, the SAM
Ybo Lot riu IF fho oh
and made the Puritan emigration to New
England, 162S-1640, after the Pilgrims hat
broken the ice for them; so that tn
Dutch, having an eye to feeling in Eng
land, Royal Episcopal, and Puritan even
dared not show the Pilgrim radicals any
favor, not even as Calvinists, when Cal
vinism in Holland was raging against non
Calvinism, and when they had used Rob
inson as a chief public disputant on thei
side.
The story is most explicit, how Robin
son obtained great fame and some unive1
sity recognition and privileges by the sue
cess he had, above all the Leyden divines
in the public theological debates, but how
although he had responded to most urgen
appeals to give his help, nothing came o
it, to him or to his people, except that ''b
some of no mean note it was said tina
were it not for giving offence to the stat
of England, they would have preferre
him otherwise if he would, and Above
them some public favor" What bette
evidence could exist that the Dutc
authorities of the time did nc
preferment to Robinson, because the
stood in ignoble fear of England2 Robin
son and three others owned large hous
opposite the great St. Peters church, an
on the borders of it's ample grounds WEI
built twenty-one Pilgrim cottages, so tbs
twenty-five families lived together in on
of the most conspicuous situations
Leyden. Robinson and Brewster wei
Cambridge university men of the qualit
| of Dean Stanley and John Bright in on
| time. Bradford, Carver, Winslow an
Standish were English types far abov
| the common and of rank very nea
| them were others who had nothing rusti
or merely artisan about them, howeve
modest their outward circumstances ha
been.
The young men given to Dutch polite
is pure fiction. Bradford says that on
of their reasons for leaving Holland wa
that their young men had no chance ther
but grinding toll, degrading influences an
dangerous temptations. The picture G
Dutch Calvinism is grotesque invention
His latest book he called ''New Essays,
with an eye to Bacon's Essays. and he wa
quite Bacon's equal, nay his superior, il
the largeness of his outlook, an
narrow dogmatism, in the breadth of hi
scholarship. There is more than hint o
his kinship with Shakespeare in his state
ment that he had drawn his observation
largely tout of the great volume of men
manners" Robert Bay1ie, who wrot
against Independency in 1915, designate,
Robinson as the author of that church ba
sis, in distinction from what was know
as rigid Separation, and said that he wa
''the most learned, polished and modes
spirit that ever separated from the Churcl
of England" and that he "ruined tho rigi,
separation" which was absorbed in anti
prelatism.
1t is inaccurate to refer Pilgrim democ
racy to "Congregationalism," but Robin
sons theory of "a free people," indepen
denter ct immediate sub christie, was
pure English ideal totally unknown to tn
Dutch, which on purely English lines tn
Pilgrims worked out in their common
wealth. Not only did the Pilgrims not ge
their ideal of education from the Dutch
leaving Holland was the consideration
stated by Winslow, chow like we were t.
lose our language and our nam
of English, how little good we die
or were like to do to the Dutch in reform
ing the Sabbath, and how unable to Civ
such education to our children as we our
selves had received" It is expressly sale
by Edward Winslow, one of their hes
spirits, that the case in these respects wa
so bad that Robinson and Brewster icon
ceived that if they could have place
though in America, for like liberty, unde
English rule, and make there refuge TO-
others to enjoy the like liberties, it woult
be much better than Holland"
The reference to Dutch example in tn,
matter of liberation goes most extraordi
narily in the face of all the facts
There had been remarkable ear
lier development of liberal cultur
in Holland, and an early period of tolera
ties, but when these necessities were les
urgent, and liberal culture took the form
of the Arminian New Departure from Cal
vanism, both state and church in HOLLAND
worked up heat of intolerance, which
for the later Pilgrim years in Leyden, wa
one of the worst examples the world eve
saw, and was especially an example which
Disguised Robinson and his people ant
made them feel that savage America ever
was "much better than Holland" On
of the charges, in execution O.
which Barneveldt was judicially muir
dered, was that of recommend
ing liberation on the five disputed point
regarding predestination.n From 1919
the repatriation of great numbers of tn
best of his people, the condemnation o