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Fraught with a spell no angels know,
His steps to guide, his soul to shield
Thou, Saviour, art his charmed bower,
His magic ring, his rock, his tower."

Thus do I feel, and thus others have felt, as the eye now gazes with tears, or turns away with terror, while the glittering sword, and the blazing brand, and the fatal rope, dismisses the patient glorified victim to yonder Temple, where his spirit joins the band of souls already beneath the altar.

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"I WILL make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land, or else worse," was the exclamation of King James respecting the Puritans, at the mock conference held in the old withdrawing-room of Hampton Court, that monument of Wolsey's pride and fall, of ecclesiastical despotism and humiliation. "I will harry them out of the land," was the merciful resolve of that orthodox prince, before whom, at the close of the second day's conference, Bancroft fell upon his knees, and said, "I protest, my heart melteth for joy, that Almighty God, of his singular mercy, has given us such a king as since Christ's time has not been." James," adds Daniel Neale, somewhat drily, was as good as his word." Many a conscientious Puritan was driven from the shores of his fatherland to seek an asylum in a foreign country, and thus England lost some of her richest jewels, if citizens of integrity and uprightness be a nation's wealth, and some of her best royal blood, if there be truth in the lines of one of the bards of James's native land

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"The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor,

Is king of men for a' that."

The Low Countries, as to religious liberty far surpassing the rest of Europe, afforded cities of refuge for the victims of persecution. The fact was then thrown in the

teeth of Holland as a reproach, and it formed the spice of many a piece of wit at the Dutchmen's expense, but their conduct redounded to their everlasting honor. Many of the Puritans of the Presbyterian school sought a home in Holland, and formed churches there upon their own principles and the peculiar pressure of the persecuting times on the men who held the system of Independency, might well constrain them to seek a resting place in the same free land.

There was a little flock of persecuted ones who dwelt in that part of England where Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, border on each other. They had a grave and reverend preacher, Mr. Richard Clyfton, who had been an instrument in the conversion of many, and among their number there was "that famous and worthy man, Mr. John Robinson, and also Mr. William Brewster, a reverend man, who was afterwards chosen an elder of the Church."* Robinson, whose intimate connection with the Pilgrim Fathers will bring him prominently before us in this chapter, had been a clergyman in the Church of England, and had held a benefice near Yarmouth, in Norfolk, where he was often molested by the Bishop's officers, while his friends were almost ruined in the ecclesiastical courts; and as to Brewster, it may be remarked that he had held offices of trust under Secretary Davison, the unfortunate person whom Elizabeth made a scapegoat in the melancholy affair of Mary Queen of Scots. He had retired into the country, where he lived respected, and had been by degrees led to espouse the principles of Independency, upon which he opened his house as a place of worship for the persons we have mentioned. But they felt

* Young's Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, p. 453. Robinson was born in 1573, but the place of his birth is unknown. He was probably educated in the University of Cambridge.

themselves in peril from their Argus-eyed persecutors, and resolved to seek religious freedom under the government of Holland.

On one occasion, a company of these freedom-seeking exiles appointed as a place of rendezvous the town of Boston, in Lincolnshire, at which port they were to embark in a vessel they had hired for the purpose. The party arrived, but the ship did not appear. Day after day they waited in the place with anxious hearts, till at length news reached them that the ark of refuge they were longing for would be ready to take them away at the appointed time at night for greater safety. They and their goods were taken on board, when, to their unutterable surprise and agony, they found themselves betrayed by the unprincipled captain into the hands of their enemies, who entered the vessel, took them prisoners, rifled them of their money, searched their persons, treated the women with the rudest indelicacy, and then led the whole party in triumph through the streets of Boston, for a gazing-stock and a reproach. Brought before the magistrates, these innocent victims of intolerance found favor in their sight, though they were put in ward; but as soon as an order of council could be obtained, the greater part were dismissed; seven of these persons, however, among whom was Brewster, were cruelly detained in prison till the next assizes.

This happened in 1607; in the spring of the following year some of the same parties, in connection with others like minded, made a further attempt to escape from oppression in their native land. But this time they would not trust an Englishman. They met with a Dutch captain at Hull, who had a ship of his own, and they arranged with him for their passage. A solitary part of the beach, between Grimsby and Hull, far away from any town, was selected as the place of embarkation. The women and

children, it was arranged, should go thither by sea, in a small vessel, the men by land. The former reached their destination the day before the Dutch ship arrived, and put into a little creek, where lying at low water they found protection from the ocean's swell, and some relief from their distressing sea-sickness. In that condition they spent the night. How comfortless! the loud winds sweeping over them, the hollow moaning of the waves at the midnight hour, (for the sea was rough,) deepening the melancholy feelings that agitated their breasts. The next morning the longed-for ship arrived. Gladly was it welcomed by the women and children in their little bark, and by the fathers and husbands, too, who had been walking up and down the shore with deep anxiety. A boat was sent off from the ship, and it was thought best to take some of the men on board first. A party of them were conveyed there accordingly, and the boat returned to receive another load, when, to the terror of all present, a number of persons, some on horse, some on foot, armed with guns and other weapons, were seen approaching the spot, evidently for the purpose of arresting the fugitives. The Dutch captain was alarmed, swore by the sacrament he would not stay, and spreading his sails to a favorable wind, which had risen, weighed anchor, and was soon out of sight. With what aching hearts did the poor exiles in the vessel look towards the receding shores, to their disconsolate companions, and their precious wives and children, who stood there "crying for fear and quaking with cold." The men had no property on board, not even a change of raiment, and scarcely a penny in their pockets; but the loss of their possessions was nothing to the cruel stroke which severed them from those they best loved on earth. As the wide field of waters spreads between these separated ones, we hardly know which most

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