HUNTER'S TRACT ON THE FIRST COLONISTS OF DEW ENGLAND. * MR.
HUNTER is well known as a skilful and experienced professional an- tiquarian. What is more rare, he combines with the lore of the archaeo- logist a just appreciation of the bearing and uses of the facts comprised under the general name of archeology. He possesses the power of closely and aptly applying his knowledge to the illustration of English history and biography, and has sufficient skill and tact to appeal success- fully to such general readers as take an interest in the subjects of which he treats, and without which interest all skill is useless. Among the various books on the genealogy and biography of Shakspere that have appeared of late years, Mr. Hunter's is the widest in its range, and the most specific if not the fullest in its facts.
The essay before us is the second number of a series of " Critical and Historical Tracts," of whose scope and purpose we are uninformed, not having seen either the prospectus or the first number. The subject of the present tract is the English family, character, and native place of the Pilgrim Fathers, the first settlers of New England, and in some sense the founders of the United States. Their doings in Holland, their enterprises in America, form no part of Mr. Hunter's theme. These are recorded by their own pens, or by those of others ; and if insufficiently, it is not his cue to dig in those foreign fields. His object is to clear up the obscurity which, owing to the vaguely general style of Governor Bradford, hangs over his account of himself, his great ecclesiastical assistant Brewster, and of some clergymen who contributed to that separation from the • Collections concerning the Early History of the Founders of New Plymouth, the First Colonists of New England. By Joseph Hunter, F.S.A., Assistant Keeper of the ;Public Records. (Critical and Historical Tracts, No. II.) Published by Russell Smith. Church of England that ended in originating Independency, and perhaps the Anglo-Saxon empire of the West. All this is clearly and convia. tingly accomplished, with the sagacity and patience of a Red Indian upon the trail. Trifling facts, that seem nothing to other eyes than those of the antiquary, turn into "confirmations strong as proofs of Holy Writ" when brought together and marshalled hi order by the author's practised acumen and skill. The First Colonists of New England is interest. ing as exhibiting the status, locality, and probable career of the flacon- scions founders of a great state ; but to English readers it is perhaps more interesting as a display of trained acumen and learned skill. Nve cannot pursue the subject at length, but we will give an illustrative ex. ample or two.
So general is Bradford's style, that he does not name the place of Brewster's residence, or any particular neighbourhood ; though one would think that was easier than saying "several religious people near the join- ing borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, and Yorkshire, finding their pious ministers," &c. Who were these religious people ? what is the par. titular district in- which they met? Cotton Mather answers the list question by placing it in the North of Yorkshire ; Hubbard more generally still, in " the North of England." Some later inquirers hold to Lincoln- shire ; and one fixes it " at or near Thorne in Yorkshire."
" But a passage in Bradford's account of Brewster enables us to fix not only the town or village at which the church held its meetings, but the very house in which they assembled; and to proceed at once to the removal of this uncertainty, I add, that it is manifest to any one who has an intimate knowledge of those parthe kingdom, that the seat and centre of the church, while it remained inking_ land, was at the village of Scrooby, in Nottinghamshire, and in the principal man- sion of that village, the house which had been for centuries a palace of the Arch- bishops of York, but which was in those days held under one of the many leases of episcopal lands granted by Archbishop Sandys.
" Scrooby will be found in the maps about a mile and a half South of Bawtry, a market and post town situated on the borders of Yorkshire and Nottingham_ shire. The nearest point of the county of Lincoln is distant six or seven miles.
" The passage in Bradford's writings which first led to the discovery of this new fact in the history of the colonists is this= After they were joined together in communion, he (meaning Brewster) was a special stay and help to them. They ordinarily met at his house on the Lord's Day, which was a manor of the Bishop's; and with great love he entertained them when they came, making provision for them to his great charge, and continued so to do while they could stay in Eng- land." Manor does not here mean, what it is commonly used to denote, and esit appears to be understood by one of the American writers upon this subject, a district throughout which certain feudal privileges are enjoyed. It here means a mansion ; just as we have Worksop Manor, Winfield Manor, Sheffield Manor, Brier- ley Manor, and many others in the North of England. It is an abbreviation of Manor Place,' a term of perpetual occurrence in Leland, and applied by him to this very Scrooby Manor. A tenant or agent describes himself in his will, dated 1574, thus—' Thomas Wentworth, of Scrooby Manor, Esquire.' " I can speak with confidence to the fact that there is no other episcopal manor but this which at all satisfiet the condition of being near the borders of the three counties. Here, then, we fix the site of the church; and, as a necessary conse- quence, we are to look to the country around Scrooby as having been the residence of the persons who composed the religious community which, with various ao- ereseences during its residence in Holland, were the Fathers of New England. " That no hesitation may remain respecting this, which is the cardinal point of the pfesenitreatise, I shall anticipate what wilt afterwards come more fully before us, and state that we find a Brewster assessed tousubsidygranted to Queen Eliza- beth, in the township of Scrooby-cum-Ranskill; and that in 1608, when a fine was imposed upon William Brewster by the Commissioners for ecclesiastical
causes, he is described as being of Scrooby. «
" The Brewsters must have been under-tenants of the family of Sandys. The manor was after them inhabited by a son of Sir Samuel, who was named Martin. and probably by others of the family; but the house fell by degrees into decay. No portion of it is now standing, yet the site may be traced by a few irregularities in the surface of the ground."
This subject of Brewster, in his own biography and that of some of his relations, is pursued at considerable length, by dint of legal and parochial records, or little-read contemporary works. His coadjutor and biogra- pher Bradford is also traced to his birth-place, and his family and English biography are in like manner investigated : we will extract only one carious point.
"Not only is Brewster to be tracked to this little village adjacent to Bawtry, but his fellow labourer and fellow sufferer Bradford is also to be traced to the village of Ansterlield, which is about as far to the North-east of Bawtry as &mob), is to the South. That Bradford was born at this village has been a fact long concealed from public view, owing to an unfortunate but very excusable mis- take of the author or printer of the Magnolia; who, in the valuable notice which he has left us of the life of Bradford, calls the place of his birth Aneterfield. Endless have been the searches for Ansterfield ; but the whole villare of England presents no place of that name; and as we proceed, most ample proof will be given of the residence of a family named Bradford at Austerfield, and of the birth in it at the proper time of a William Bradford. A new interest is thus thrown over this little district."
The biography of Robinson, the received founder of the sect of Inde- pendents, is also examined, as well as that of several other divines con- nected with these first Dissenting churches, and a fuller light thrown upon all. There is also some incidental information to be gathered from the tract respecting the religious feeling of those times, the persecutions to which the Puritans were exposed, the rather questionable manner in which some of them, like very religious persons of modern times, seemed to bend their conscience to their interest, and of the way in which bishops dealt with the property of the sees. The more philosophic reader, too, will be able to mark the men fitted to contend with savages and the wilder- ness in the sturdiness that gave up home, comforts, and country, to a conviction. It is this determination of mind, this sacrifice of every thing to the end in view without regard to ease or interest, that forms the heroic character and the founder of states.
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