Anabaptistry, and from that to Quakerism, with its rejection alike of a professional ministry and of the sacraments, became, under the Commonwealth, a frequent and contagious phenomenon. Robinson's own son, out in Plymouth Colony, spent his latter years as a Quaker. Tendencies of this nature must soon have made themselves felt by Robinson's congregation. Bradford says of certain Separatists who immediately preceded the Scrooby group in going to Holland: These afterwards falling into some errors in the Low Countries, there, for the most part, buried themselves and their names.' But history does not dispose so easily as did Bradford of John Smith the Se-baptist.' John Smith matriculated at Cambridge six years before Robinson, and at the old universities a few years make a great difference in 'seniority'; in the midst of later controversies Robinson shows, again and again, how much he had been accustomed to look up to him. He became the pastor of the Separatist Church at Gainsborough, of which the Scrooby Church was apparently an offshoot; and both groups found a friend and helper in Thomas Helwys, a neighbouring squire. It was Helwys who made the arrangements for the migration to Holland. Smith with Helwys went first, with the Gainsborough group, to Amsterdam, and there for a time remained. Brewster and Robinson went over a little later. And it must have been a painful shock to them when next year both Smith and Helwys fell victims to the Wiles of Anabaptistry,' and reconstituted their Church on the basis of adult baptism. It was a still more painful shock when they learnt that their old leader and friend had succumbed to Arminianism also. Smith and Helwys began to fire off pamphlets at their former allies, and Robinson was not slow in replying.

We may pass over the thrust and counter-thrust concerning infant baptism. More instructive is Robinson's attitude towards the abandonment of Calvinism. Helwys had been bold enough to say that the sacrifice of Christ doth not reconcile God unto us, who did never hate us, nor was our enemy, but reconcileth us unto God, and slayeth the enmity and hatred which is in us against God.' This, pronounces Robinson, 'is most untrue, and

indeed a very pernicious doctrine, destroying the main fruit of Christ's sacrifice and death.'

Against such alarming dangers-especially that arising from working-class Anabaptistry-Robinson must have seen that pamphlets were but a poor defence. In 1617 an Independent of Amsterdam tells us that the Anabaptist error greatly spreadeth, both in these parts and, of late, in our own country.' It was in 1617 that the leaders of Robinson's people first made overtures to the Virginia Company. The Pilgrims went to New England to practise their religion in peace-in peace, they surely must have desired, as much from those who went further than themselves on the Separatist road as from those who refused to enter upon it at all.

It may be remarked that in Robinson's own voluminous treatises there is little clear indication of any further movement of thought after he had once taken up the Calvinist Independent position. The two bits of evidence often cited for something of a prophetic vision on Robinson's part are much too weak to build upon, in the absence of confirmation from his own writings. One is that, according to Bradford, the Church covenant of the Nottinghamshire Separatists contained an agreement to walk in all the ways of the Lord, 'made known or to be made known unto them.' The phrase in italics was an addition to the usual covenant formula. We find it used by Jacob, who broke away from Robinson in 1616; and it was not unusual apparently among English Separatists somewhat later. But Robinson himself gives the formula in one of his books in the earlier form, without the 'forward-looking' addition; and it was in that form that the Massachusetts churches took it over from Plymouth Colony. It is probable that Bradford's memory misled him; but, if not, it must be remembered that in those earliest days in Nottinghamshire Smith was a leader, and Robinson had not yet joined them. The other piece of evidence is found in what has come to be known as Robinson's Farewell Address to the Pilgrims. In this occur the words: He was very confident that the Lord had more light and truth yet to break forth out of His holy Word.' But this so-called Address is only given by Winslow in a pamphlet written so long after as 1646-a pamphlet

written with an eye on contemporary English controversies, and designed to show that Robinson was not as 'rigid' a Separatist from everything like a national Church, properly reformed, as many supposed.

To return to the decision to seek a less troubled home across the Atlantic. To obtain the tacit consent of the English government and the financial support of some of the wealthy Conformist-Puritan merchants of England, Robinson and his friends so far bowed to circumstances as to state their position in terms which have caused a pained surprise among their modern admirers. The document, when interpreted by a skilled casuist, may not completely surrender any fundamental Independent principle. Yet for Robinson and Brewster to 'judge it lawful for His Majesty to appoint bishops, civil officers, or officers in authority under him. to oversee the Churches and govern them civilly,' and to explain further that they agreed wholly and on all points with the French Reformed Churches touching the ecclesiastical ministry,' although the French Reformed Church was quite distinctly not congregational in polity, was to use phraseology which could easily be misunderstood. It gave occasion afterwards to some of their financial backers, when the Plymouth Colony was not turning out a commercial success for the home investor, to accuse them of duplicity.

The story of how the Pilgrims got themselves carried over the Atlantic and equipped with the stock necessary for a plantation, and how they shook themselves free from the industrial bondage in which they were held by the investors at home, is a significant chapter in the economic history of the times. The more, however, the recesses of plantation history are explored, the less singular does their venture become. A self-governing colony of quite commonplace Anglican Conformists had made a success of the Virginian settlement at Jamestown ten years before. Many ships were going to and fro between the Old and the New World; and many ventures, half of settlement, half of trading or fishing posts, were made on that Atlantic coast in the years immediately before and after 1620. Only the year before, another English Separatist congregation had gone in a body

from Amsterdam, and had mostly perished miserably on the voyage. Some Walloon congregations in Holland, rebuffed by the Pilgrims when they begged to be allowed to go with them, followed them three years later, and prospered in the New Netherlands from the very first. Except for the 'general sickness' due to imprudent exposure, the Pilgrims benefited by an extraordinary streak of good luck. The winter was unusually mild, and they came in for a crop of maize planted by an Indian tribe which had been conveniently removed by plague a year or so before. They showed plenty of English pluck, and their intense religious feeling doubtless helped to sustain them. But quite as wonderful is the courage of many a contemporary band of adventurers on those coasts who had only the unemotional and undogmatic faith of the ordinary Englishman to support them.

With 1627, when the Plymouth Colony may be regarded as permanently established and free from imminent danger of starvation, the heroic period of the Pilgrims comes to an end; their venture 'fades into the light of common day.' In 1630 came the great exodus of more moderate Puritans, up to that time more or less conforming, who established the colony of Massachusetts; and into this, in two or three decades, Plymouth Colony was absorbed, ecclesiastically and politically. It is possible that the influence of Plymouth hastened somewhat the adoption by Massachusetts of the Congregational system of Church government, though even this is not certain. In any case, the Massachusetts system never quite so sharply emphasised the self-sufficiency of the several local Churches as did early English Independency. It was for this very reason that the term 'Congregational' was preferred in America. 'Independency is not a fit name,' writes Cotton, the Boston divine, in 1648, 'of the way of our Churches. In some respects it is too strait and in others too large.' New England Congregationalism, in fact, was long characterised by a system of 'consociation of churches,' which gave to Councils, representing the churches of a district, the right to advise erring congregations, and, if need be, to renounce fellowship with them-a system which clearly represents a compromise between Independency and Presbyterianism.

Soon Plymouth, with its daughter-towns, was indistinguishable from the rest of Massachusetts. They were slow in following the example of Massachusetts-to this we shall return-in maintaining their ministers from town taxes, but they fell into line in 1655; and Congregationalism was the 'established' religion of the whole state well into the 19th century. Like Massachusetts, Plymouth identified Church and State by confining, down to 1692, the political franchise to male Church members. And the researches of the historians of Quakerism have shown that Plymouth was just as intolerant of other forms of the Christian religion as was Massachusetts proper; though, as no particularly troublesome Friends happened to come into Plymouth, it was spared the shame of putting a Quaker to death.

It is sometimes said that all this was the sad effect of Massachusetts influence. But this is not clear. Robinson's views of the problem was this. If the preaching of the Word (as Calvin understood it) and the practice of the Holy Discipline were unhindered, those Christians who were predestined to salvation would spontaneously group themselves by mutual covenant into self-governing Churches. The magistrates, convinced, by the same preaching, that this was the only justifiable regiment of the Church, would be in duty bound to suppress everything else from Prelacy to Anabaptism-as contrary to Holy Writ. And, while it would certainly be wrong to compel men to profess themselves believers, it would clearly be the duty of the magistrate to compel every one to attend the preaching of the Truth. On this point Robinson did but echo the words of Barrow, the Independent martyr. More than thirty years later, all the leading Independent ministers in England submitted a scheme to the House of Commons for compulsory attendance at the public preaching of the Gospel every Lord's day, and for making illegal all public preaching against the Fifteen Christian Fundamentals.

With regard to the public maintenance of the ministry, Robinson himself no doubt definitely accepted the 'voluntary principle.' But the early Separatist pastors had abundant opportunity to learn how little dependence they could place upon the voluntary