Part 6 (1/2)

THE ”STARVING TIME.”

LORD DELAWARE ARRIVES.

DALE DOES AWAY WITH THE COMMON STOREHOUSE.

TOBACCO AND THE PLANTATION.

THE NAVIGATION LAWS INJURE THE PLANTERS.

BERKELEY ACTS LIKE A TYRANT.

THE INDIANS USE THE FIREBRAND AND THE TOMAHAWK WITH TELLING EFFECT.

NATHANIEL BACON LEADS A FORCE AGAINST THE INDIANS.

HE IS ELECTED TO THE a.s.sEMBLY.

HIS CAPTURE AND ESCAPE.

HE GETS HIS COMMISSION.

HE ATTACKS BERKELEY AT JAMESTOWN.

HIS DEATH.

A STRIKING RESULT OF BACON'S REBELLION.

TO THE PUPIL

1. What important thing was done by Sir Thomas Dale?

2. What were the Navigation Laws, and how did they affect the planters?

3. Describe Berkeley. What do you admire in Bacon?

4. Write a paragraph on each of the following topics: Bacon leads a force against the Indians; Bacon elected to the a.s.sembly; his capture and escape; he gets his commission; he attacks Berkeley at Jamestown.

5. Review the following dates: 1492, 1541, and 1607. Add to these 1676.

CHAPTER VI

Miles Standish and the Pilgrims

[1584-1656]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Miles Standish.]

Only thirteen years after Jamestown was settled, a colony of Englishmen, very different in character from the gold hunters of Virginia, landed on the Ma.s.sachusetts coast. These men came not to seek fortunes but rather to establish a community with high ideals of political and religious life. With them they brought their wives and children, and a determination to build for themselves permanent homes in the new world.

Before tracing their fortunes in America, let us glance backward a few years and see them as they were in their English homes.

At the present time people can choose their own church and wors.h.i.+p as they please, but it was not always so, even in England. In that country, during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, there was much religious disturbance, and many people were punished because they would not wors.h.i.+p as the law required. There were Englishmen who, while loving the English Church, wished to make its services more simple or, as they said, purify its forms and ceremonies. These people were for this reason called _Puritans_. Others disliked the ceremonial and doctrines of the Church so much that they wished to form a separate body and wors.h.i.+p after their own ideas. These were called _Separatists_, or _Independents_.

The Separatists met for service on the Lord's Day in the home of William Brewster, one of their chief men, in the little village of Scrooby. For a year they tried to keep together and wors.h.i.+p as an independent body.

But as the laws of England required that all should wors.h.i.+p in the Established Church, they found they could not do this without being hunted down, thrown into prison, and sometimes beaten and even hanged.

They endured these persecutions as long as they could, and then some of them decided to leave their own land and seek a home in Holland, where they would be free to wors.h.i.+p G.o.d as they pleased. James I, then King of England, being unwilling that they should go, they had much difficulty in carrying out their plan, but in 1608 they escaped and went to Amsterdam. From Amsterdam they went to Leyden, and finally from Leyden to America, by way of England. By reason of their wanderings they became known later as Pilgrims.