The Landing of the Pilgrims Read online

  Copyright © 1950 by James Daugherty. Copyright renewed 1978 by Charles M. Daugherty. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

  www.randomhouse.com/teens

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Daugherty, James Henry. The landing of the pilgrims. Reprint of the 1950 edition published by Random House, New York, in series: Landmark books, SUMMARY: In order to escape religious persecution, a group of English Separatists set sail for America in 1620, hoping to establish a new colony. 1. Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Pilgrims (New Plymouth Colony)—Fiction. 2. Massachusetts—History—New Plymouth, 1620–1691—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.D2625Lan 1981 [Fic] 80-21430

  eISBN: 978-0-307-77873-4

  RANDOM HOUSE and colophon and LANDMARK BOOKS and coloph on are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  v3.1

  The Pilgrims had fought starvation and won.

  No Indian attacks had been made on them from the threatening forests.

  For all this there was a price. Half of their company lay in unmarked graves. Each day they must labor, and watch by night against hunger and danger. Each day for a year, their tired eyes had watched the naked horizon and never a sail had come to bring them the promised supplies.

  Had they been utterly forgotten? Was there still an England?

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Part 1

  Not as Other Men (1607–1620)

  The Boy and the Postmaster

  How Will Made a Great Decision

  How Persecution Came upon the Separatists at Scrooby

  Departure

  Leyden Years

  The Press

  Delfthaven Farewell

  Aboard the Mayflower

  Part 2

  Between Two Worlds (1620–1621)

  How Master Christopher Jones Brought the Mayflower Across the Furious Ocean

  Landfall

  How the Mayflower Came to Anchor at Cape Cod

  Of the Adventure in the Shallop

  The Third Discovery and the First Encounter

  How the Discoverers Sought Thievish Bay and Found Plymouth Harbor

  How the Mayflower Came to Plymouth Harbor

  Lost in the Forest

  How the Spring Came and How Samoset Came out of the Forest

  Of the Visit of That Great Chief, Massasoit

  Part 3

  New England Adventure (1621–1623)

  The Return of the Mayflower

  How Mr. Winslow Brought a Scarlet Coat to Massasoit

  How Squanto Was Avenged

  Of the Arrival of the Ship Fortune

  Of the Strange Message from Canonicus

  Thanksgiving, 1621

  Of a Strange Plot

  Of How They Built a Strong Fort for Their Defense

  Concerning the Coming of the Charity and the Swan

  How Massasoit Disclosed a Most Villainous Plot

  How Witawamat Lost His Head

  How Began Free Enterprise

  How Came the Good Ship Anne and the Pinnace Ye Little James

  The Sailing of the Anne and of the Great Fire

  Good News from New England

  Twenty Years Later

  About the Author

  Part 1

  Not As Other Men

  (1607-1620)

  The Boy and the Postmaster

  (1607)

  The blast of the courier’s horn sounded gaily across the fields. The post riders were nearing the town of Scrooby on the great North Road from London. The dogs barked, and children ran out shouting. A few villagers hurried toward the big house called the Manor. All were eager to see the post riders change horses in the Manor courtyard.

  Young Will Bradford heard the noise and broke into a run. If he hurried now he would be just in time to see the riders gallop in. As Will came panting into the courtyard, the stable boys led out the two fresh horses. The animals were saddled and all ready to be mounted by the post riders who were about to arrive.

  In a few moments the horn sounded again. The two riders came pounding over the drawbridge on their lathering horses, and through the gate to the Manor courtyard.

  The post rider in his high boots and scarlet coat leaped from his horse and quickly unstrapped the two leather mail bags.

  At that moment, William Brewster, the Postmaster of Scrooby, came down the stone steps of the Manor to receive the mail. While Brewster entered the contents of the post bags in his books of registry, the post rider and his bugler were guzzling their dinner of cold mutton and beer. In fifteen minutes they must be riding their fresh mounts north on the road toward York.

  Having finished the meal, they swung into the saddle and were off. The gay notes of the postman’s horn faded sweetly into the distance. The village again settled back into the drowsy dullness of a long afternoon.

  Not so William Brewster, who, with his many duties, found little time for idleness. Brewster, as Postmaster at Scrooby, was the great man of the countryside. He was Steward of the Manor and collected the rents from the tenants of the wide domain of the Archbishop of York. He was the administrator of law and justice for the district. A man of learning, Brewster had attended Cambridge in his youth, where he had studied Greek and Latin.

  Later, in the service of Queen Elizabeth, he had accompanied one of her ambassadors on an important mission to the Low Countries. He had seen the great world, yet he had come back to this remote corner of England to be Postmaster at Scrooby where his father had held the same office.

  Although Brewster had moved among the great ones of his day, he was neither proud nor vain. He was respected by his neighbors for his wisdom and godliness. When a neighbor was sick or in trouble and needed the help of a friend, he knew that he could find it at the hands of the Postmaster of Scrooby Manor.

  No one had felt the warmth of Master Brewster’s kindness more than young Will Bradford, who looked to him almost as a father. When the boy had been left an orphan and was long ill, Master Brewster had often traveled the two miles from Scrooby to Austerfield, to visit him and bring presents. As young Will slowly recovered, his friend had helped him in his studies and had given him a copy of the Bible printed in English at Geneva. This Geneva Bible was still a new and rare book in that part of England. Will spent happy hours absorbed in its wondrous pages. He and the Postmaster often talked together of its beauty and meaning. In hours of loneliness and pain the book had brought the boy a marvelous comfort and peace.

  Later when Will had visited Master Brewster at the Manor, he had heard him tell brave tales of the great world of London and of the brilliant court of Queen Bess. The lad thrilled to hear the story of how, in 1588, the year before he was born, the terrible Armada of King Philip, with all the might of Spain, had sailed against England; and of how Sir Francis Drake and his fearless sea dogs had sallied forth against the great array.

  Will felt as if he himself had been upon the English decks in all the flame and thunder of the fierce encounter. In the night, Drake had loosed the terrible fire ships blazing among the Spanish fleet. Cutting their cables, the Spaniards had put to sea, and a great wind had blown them toward the coast of Holland. There the English gunners hammered the enemy to pieces as the great hulks of Spain’s proudest ships went up in smoke and flame.

  In his imagination young Will pictured himself as a sea captain capturing treasure ships on the Spanish Main. When I become a man, he thought, I shall sail a ship across the wide ocean sea and go adventuring in w
ild America.

  Now he was in his teens and had never even seen the sea, although the coast was but fifty miles from where he lived. Perhaps he never would see it, for his uncles planned, very sensibly, that he should be a farmer and cultivate the goodly lands his father had left him.

  How Will Made a Great Decision

  For some time Will had heard people talking about a preacher at Babsworth who spoke of the Bible with great power. Because Will read and loved the Bible, he decided to hear this man. It was a twenty-mile walk to Babsworth and back, but Mr. Richard Clyfton’s preaching was worth all the trouble.

  After that first trip, Will often walked there to hear Mr. Clyfton read and expound the Scriptures. The boy seldom missed a Sunday, even if his uncles did not approve of reformist preachers.

  Later Master Brewster asked Clyfton to preach on Sundays in the great hall at Scrooby Manor. The Postmaster invited friends and neighbors to come and hear Mr. Clyfton preach. It was not long before many people began attending regularly every Sunday. Folks said Mr. Clyfton’s discourses woke them up to understand the Scriptures. They came away from these meetings happy and comforted. They began to read and to study their Bible and to try and practice its teaching in their daily lives. Master Brewster explained that in this simple way the first Christian churches began in ancient times.

  Within a year the congregation at Scrooby Manor decided to form a church of their own. It was to be entirely separate from the State Church of England, and would have no bishops or ceremonies. For this reason they would call themselves Separatists. They would also separate themselves from the Puritans, who wanted to reform the Church of England but not to separate from it.

  How Persecution Came upon the Separatists at Scrooby

  When young William Bradford announced to his friends that he would leave the church in which he had been baptized and join the Separatists, people were shocked. His uncles pointed out that he would certainly come to a bad end. Already men had been hanged for holding onto such ideas. Friends and relatives argued, pleaded, threatened, warned, but to no purpose. He calmly replied:

  “To keep a good conscience and walk in such Way as God had prescribed in his Word, is a thing which I must prefer before you all, and above life itself. Wherefore, since it is for a good Cause that I am likely to suffer the disasters which you lay before me, you have no cause to be either angry with me, or sorry for me. Yea, I am not only willing to part with everything that is dear to me in this world for this Cause but I am thankful that God hath given me heart so to do; and will accept me so to suffer for him.”

  Plainly the boy was mad.

  Spies and informers began to watch the homes and to dog the steps of the members of the Separatist Church. The congregation now met secretly at different times and places. One member was arrested and tried by the Archbishop’s Court at York. He was imprisoned and then released. Five more members, including Master Brewster, were summoned to appear before the court. William did not need to seek abroad for adventure. Danger waited for him around every corner.

  It was becoming clear to the Separatists that there could be no freedom for their religion in England. They must shake off the dust of the corrupt land and seek for freedom of pure religion elsewhere. Already one congregation of Protestants had gone to Holland. Master Brewster said that it was a land where there was perfect freedom of religion, as he had seen in his travels.

  The Scrooby Separatists decided to go to Holland, as Master Brewster had advised. However, they knew that no one could leave England or take out goods and money without permission from the government. This meant that they would have to flee secretly, like criminals. It was a hard and cruel thing to leave one’s home and country in this way and seek a living in a strange land.

  Mr. Brewster and the few who owned land sold their possessions. Secretly, arrangements were made with a Dutch ship captain to meet them at the coast and carry them to Amsterdam. There would be no farewells to their neighbors, for their leaving must be kept as quiet as possible.

  The women, with their few belongings, would float in a barge to the coast. The men would walk across country a distance of fifty miles to the meeting place.

  Departure

  (1608)

  The first streak of dawn was breaking on the horizon. A chill east wind blew across the marshes near the coast. The women in the barge were seasick from the rough voyage they had made to the meeting place. They were worried, too, for neither the Dutch ship nor their own men had arrived.

  Their craft had put into an inlet to be sheltered from the rough sea, but now the tide was going out. Soon the water in the inlet was so low that the barge was left stranded on a sand bar. Not until noon would the tide rise enough to float them off.

  As the sky brightened, the women heard familiar voices calling. Their men had come at last! The walk across country to the coast had taken them two days.

  It was light now, and the men from Scrooby could see the Dutch ship off shore. They could start boarding the ship at once, but the women and children would have to wait until noon when the rising tide would free their barge.

  The Dutch ship’s boat came ashore to take on passengers. She returned to the ship with the first boatload of men. Among them was William Bradford, now a young man of nineteen years.

  Suddenly those still on shore heard shouting and excited cries from the ship. As they looked out to sea, she began putting up her sails. Now she was hauling up her anchors! Slowly the huge sails filled. The ship was putting out to sea.

  On shore women screamed and men shouted wildly. They had been abandoned—left on shore while the rest of their party sailed off to Holland. It was a heartbreaking end to their hopes and plans.

  Those who were left behind could now see a band of men coming toward them across the marshes, with light glinting from their armor and pikes. It had been foolish to suppose that a hundred people marching across country for fifty miles would not be seen by the spies and informers. There was time for most of the men ashore to escape. A few at Brewster’s command remained with the women.

  The King’s soldiers marched the unhappy group of deserted men, women and children back to the nearest town. The magistrates were at a loss over what to do with them. There was no charge that could really be brought against the women, as they had only followed their husbands. To send the women and children to jail would merely arouse sympathy for the Separatists. They could not be sent home because all their homes had been sold. As friends were found who would give them temporary shelter, they were released.

  The whole countryside had heard of their misfortune and of their courage in the face of persecution. It increased the people’s sympathy for the Separatists.

  In the meantime the unhappy Englishmen aboard the Dutch ship were bound for Holland. They had neither money nor clothes, and they were miserably anxious for their wives and children left behind. They knew that the captain had had to hasten his departure because of the oncoming soldiers, but this knowledge was of small comfort to them.

  Bradford was at last on the ocean, but it was very different from his boyhood dreams. For a week the ship ran before a lashing gale. At times it seemed that she would surely sink. When the weather cleared they had been blown to the coast of Norway.

  When they finally arrived at Amsterdam, they found that the ship had been given up as lost. People said that their survival was a miracle. On landing, William Bradford was promptly arrested. The agent of the King of England had told the Dutch government that Bradford was an escaped criminal. In a few days he was able to prove that he was a religious refugee. Immediately he was freed, and welcomed by the English Protestant exiles who were then living in Holland.

  By degrees, the rest of the refugees arrived in small groups from England until the entire Scrooby congregation was again united in this foreign land. The last to come was Master Brewster. He had been jailed, and when released, had aided the remaining families to find passage to Holland.

  For the first time these Engli
sh country folk were in a big city. They gawked with wide eyes at the well-dressed crowds, the soldiers posted at the gates and walls, the crowded docks, the overflowing markets, and the rows of handsome dwellings.

  Best of all, they had at last found freedom to worship God as they chose. They openly attended church on Sundays without fear of spies. Soon they joined the reformed English Church already established in Amsterdam and set about finding ways to make their living in the trades and industries of the busy city.

  Master Brewster now became unhappily aware of a new threat to their religion—a threat that was even more dangerous than persecution. It did not take the one-time Postmaster of Scrooby long to discover that the Amsterdam Church was divided with controversy and personal quarrels. There were accusations, slander, and backbiting everywhere among the members. This, Master Brewster thought, was not living the Christian teachings of the Bible.

  To escape becoming entangled in these mean quarrels and feuds, the Scrooby Separatists decided to move on again. As pilgrims, they would journey to the city of Leyden. This city attracted them because it was famous throughout the world for its University and its brave resistance to the Spaniards.

  When the Scrooby folk were ready to make this second move, they had a grave disappointment. At the last moment their pastor, Richard Clyfton, refused to leave the Amsterdam Church. They chose their beloved teacher, John Robinson, to be their pastor in his stead.

  Leyden Years

  (1608-1620)

  They made the pleasant twenty-four-mile journey from Amsterdam to Leyden by canal boat, passing through level land that stretched like a garden to the horizon. In the distance, church spires rose and everywhere were windmills with their great sails turning in the fresh sea wind.

  At the city gate of Leyden, the guard examined their papers. Then the newcomers passed under the deep arch into the ancient city which was to be their home.