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for his apprehension, which he eluded, by seeking an asylum in Scotland. But returning to London soon after the execution of Barrow and Greenwood, he was speedily apprehended; and he appears to have foreseen from that moment all that would follow. Lord Chief Justice Popham passed sentence of death upon him, on the ground of certain papers found in his possession, which were construed as seditious. It was pleaded by the accused that no public use had ever been made of those papers, that some of them were not his own, and had not even been more than very slightly examined by him. But defence was vain. He was admonished that his case admitted of no plea that could avail him. From his prison Penry addressed a protestation to the lord-treasurer, containing the following characteristic passages:'I am a poor young man, bred and born in the mountains of Wales. I am the first, since the last springing of the gospel in 'this latter age, that publicly laboured to have the blessed seed 'thereof sown in those barren mountains. I have often rejoiced 'before my God, as he knoweth, that I had the favour to be born ' and live under her Majesty for the promoting of this work. And 'being now to end my days before I am come to the one-half of my years in the likely course of nature, I leave the success of my labours unto such of my countrymen as the Lord is to raise ' after me. An enemy unto any good order or policy, either in 'church or commonwealth, was I never. All good learning and ' knowledge of the arts and tongues I laboured to attain unto, and to promote unto the uttermost of my power. Whatsoever I 'wrote in religion, the same I did simply for no other end than the bringing of God's truth to light. I never did anything in this cause (Lord, thou art witness!) for contention, vain-glory, or to draw disciples after me, or to be accounted singular. 'Whatsoever I wrote or held beside the warrant of the written ' word, I have always warned all men to leave. And wherein I 'saw that I had erred myself, I have, as all this land doth now know, confessed my ignorance. Far be it that either the saving ' of an earthly life, the regard which in nature I ought to have to the desolate outward state of a poor friendless widow, and four poor fatherless infants which I am to leave behind me, or any other outward thing, should enforce me, by the denial of God's truth, contrary to my conscience, to sell my own soul. The Lord, I trust, will never give me over to this sin. Great things in this life I never sought for, not so much as in thought. A mean and base outward state, according to my mean condition, • I was content with. Sufficiency I have had, with great outward 'troubles, but most contented I was with my lot, and content I am, and shall be, with my undeserved and untimely death,

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beseeching the Lord that it be not laid to the charge of any 'creature in this land. For I do, from my heart, forgive all 'those who seek my life, as I desire to be forgiven in the day of 'strict account, praying for them as for my own soul, that 'although upon earth we cannot accord, we may yet meet in 'heaven, unto our eternal comfort and unity. Subscribed with 'the heart and the hand which never devised or wrote anything to the discredit or defamation of my sovereign Queen Elizabeth, I take it on my death as I hope to have a life after this. By 'me, John Penry.'

Penry wrote in terms equally noble-hearted and devout to the brethren of the fugitive church adhering to his principles, and still existing in London. On the eighth day after his trial, a warrant was issued for his execution; and on that same day, preparations were made for giving it effect. He was taken in a cart from the Queen's Bench prison, Southwark, to St. Thomas Waterings, the place where the gallows then stood. All had been done with indecent haste. No crowd had assembled to stimulate him to manhood by their presence, or to greet him with their sympathies. No friend stood near to drop one word of council or encouragement. He had his place alone. To God only-the last refuge of those deserted by man-could he look. The life in his veins flowed in its full vigour, for he was still in the thirty-fourth year of his age. of his age. But the power to which he was subject had no pity; the rope was placed about his neck; the signal was given, and for a cause which scarcely merited punishment at all, he hung there until dead-the scholar, and the man of piety, consigned to the same doom with the murderer.

But the good people of England, and especially of the metropolis, had their musings and speeches about these proceedings. The men so dealt with were known to be sound protestants,-men of piety, loyalty, and learning; and concerning the government, the prelates, and, above all, concerning Whitgift, the archbishop of Canterbury, and the great patron of these measures, much was said, which conveyed a meaning that could not have been welcome in those quarters. From this time the punishment of such alleged offences by hanging was deemed inexpedient. It was accounted more safe to pursue the same course by means of imprisonment or banishment. The instincts of humanity have often risen up in this form, as a monitory and controlling power, which even the strongest despotism has not reckoned it prudent wholly to disregard. The most successful tyrants have been thus made to learn that there is a point beyond which outraged humanity must not be expected to be silent or submissive.

But imprisonment in those times, from its duration and its

miseries, was hardly less terrible, to those who really knew what it meant, than capital punishment; and the long-harassed people to whom we refer began to think very generally of voluntary exile as their wisest expedient. Even this course, however, was beset with difficulty. They could escape only by secret means; to be detected was to fall into the snare they were so much concerned to avoid. But the thought of the religious freedom which might be enjoyed in Holland was so welcome, that for that object numbers became willing to bear the pains of separation from their native land, and to brave the dangers of attempting to withdraw from it. Many made that attempt with success, but some were less fortunate. An instance of the latter kind is recorded in the history of Robinson, a clergyman, who had embraced the principles of the Brownists, but who so far modified those principles on some points as to bring them more into the form of modern congregationalism, and who, on that account, is generally regarded as the father of the English Independents. Robinson, and a large company, contracted with the master of a ship for a passage to Holland. They were to embark at Boston, in Lincolnshire, on a certain day, and from a point agreed upon. The captain was not punctual. At length, however, the vessel arrived, and, under cover of the night, the men, and women, and children, all reached the ship in safety. But the captain was a villain. He betrayed them to the officers of the port. The passengers and their goods were immediately removed from the vessel to several boats in waiting to receive them. All their property was turned over and examined, and not a little of it rifled. The persons of the men were searched 'even to their shirts,' and the women were treated with indelicacy and rudeness. When these unhappy people reached the town, crowds assembled to gaze upon them, and many mocked and derided them. Nor was their condition improved when brought before the magistrates. Several were bound over to the assizes, and all were committed to prison. Some were released after the confinement of a few weeks, others after a longer period.

This happened in 1602. In the following spring, Robinson and his friends resolved on making a second attempt of this nature. They made an arrangement for this purpose with a Dutch captain; and their plan now was, that the men should assemble on a large common, between Grimsby and Hull, a place chosen on account of its remoteness from any town; while the women, the children, and the property of these parties, were to be conveyed to that point of the coast in a barque. The men made their way to the place of rendezvous, in small companies, by land. But the barque reached its destination a day before the

ship. The swell of the sea was considerable, and as the females were suffering greatly from that cause, the sailors ran the barque into the shelter of a small creek. The next morning the ship arrived, but through some negligence on the part of the seamen, the vessel containing the women, their little ones, and the property, had run aground. The men stood in groups on the shore, and that no time might be lost, the captain of the ship sent his boat to convey some of them on board. But by this time, so considerable a gathering of people in such a place, and in a manner so unusual, had attracted attention; information had been conveyed to persons of authority in the neighbourhood; and as the boat which had taken the greater part of the men to the ship was proceeding again towards the shore, the captain saw a large company, armed with swords and muskets, and consisting of horse and foot, advancing towards the point where the barque was still ashore, and where the few remaining men had grouped together. Fearing the consequences of his illicit compact, the captain_ returned to the ship, hoisted sail, and was speedily at sea. Robinson-honest and able general as he was in every sense-had resolved to be the last to embark. He was a witness, accordingly, of the scene of distress and agony which ensued. The outburst of grief was not to be restrained. Some of the women wept aloud, others felt too deeply, or were too much bewildered, to indulge in utterance of any kind; while the children, partly from seeing what had happened, and partly from a vague impression that something dreadful had come, mingled their sobs and cries in the general lamentation. As the sail of that ship faded away upon the distant waters, the wives felt as if one stroke had reduced them all to widowhood, and every child that had reached the years of consciousness, felt as one who in a moment had become fatherless. But thus dark are the chapters in human affairs in which the good have often to become students, and from which they have commonly had to learn their special lessons. The ship soon encountered foul weather, and after being driven far along the coast of Norway, all hope of saving her being at one time abandoned, she at length safely reached Holland. In the meanwhile, persecution at home was found to have become a more tedious and odious affair than formerly, and it so happened, in consequence, that by the year 1608, Robinson and the remainder of his company succeeded in leaving their native country, and in obtaining a quiet settlement in Leyden.

In that city the church under the care of Robinson increased until it numbered more than three hundred members, consisting almost wholly of English exiles. Robinson himself was greatly

respected by the clergy of Leyden, and by the professors in the university, and on more than one occasion the pastor of the congregational church in that city gave public proof that his piety, his amiableness, and his eminently practical understanding, were allied with sound scholarship, and with much intellectual vigour and acuteness. He succeeded, also, in communicating much of his own well-regulated temper to his charge. We have good reason to believe that no church in Europe in that age exhibited more of the wise simplicity of a primitive church, or more of that correctness of habit by which we suppose the primitive churches to have been distinguished.

But there are affinities between certain seeds and certain soils, and where these are wanting, the husbandman may labour never so wisely, and still reap only a small return. It is with the mental in this respect as with the physical. This fact is illustrated in the history of Independency in Holland. In the hands of Robinson that system was exhibited with every advantage, but the Hollanders were not to be attracted by it. On the contrary, the intermarriages between the exiles and the Dutch, the necessity laid upon many of the young to quit the homes of their parents, and some other causes, tended to diminish the number of the Independents, so that, after the lapse of ten years, it began to be apprehended that if some new course were not taken, the principles of the settlers, so far, at least, as Holland was concerned, were likely to become extinct; and, which was more painful still, there was as little prospect as ever of those principles finding any friendly shelter in England. It was this state of things which suggested the expediency of attempting a settlement in the New World. Persecution in England, and apathy in Holland, seemed to point to that course. Nor were the feelings of loyalty without their influence in this matter. Even in the land of the stranger, this much-injured people never failed to evince some pride in speaking of King James as their natural prince;' and they manifestly shrunk from the thought of seeing their children cease to be subjects of the British crown. England was still their mother-land; its institutions were the bequests of their own noble-hearted fathers; and, after all their ill treatment, to no spot on earth did the generous nature of these exiles turn with so much force of affection. Their fear, they say, was, 'that their 'posterity would in a few generations become Dutch, and so lose their interest in the English nation;' while their own desire rather was, 'to enlarge his majesty's dominions, and to live under their natural prince. Moreover, a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or, at least, to make some way thereunto for the propagating and advancement of the

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