Milton in America, page 22
I summoned an assembly, in front of which I rose in great fear and agitation. “You have heard,” I said to them, “that the mountebank has been crowned king? Have we fled from the bondage of regal tyranny, to find it once again at our very door? We know these kings. We know how Kempis will try to bring the sum of things under one man, and reduce this land to slavery.” They saw me rage, and knew that some great moment had come upon them. “What do we have beside us now but a strong and sequestered power, filled with evil and licentious men who are trained up and governed by papish counsels? Oh, never can it be. Never can it be.” Ezekiel wiped my face with a linen cloth. “I am fearful for our commonwealth, good citizens. Who is to say that these inhuman papists will not secretly stir up and hire the mercenaries of some other armed nation? Who knows if they will swarm in at our casements? Why, they might bring a fleet to the harbors of New England and let out a filthy crew of Irish papists!” It was sweet then to hear them sing snatches of the Twenty-eighth Psalm. “And there is worse. They have other allies. They have the savages.” Then did they chatter like swallows, and murmur like cranes. “I heard it from the lips of that charlatan Kempis, who was so crazed in the brain that he once thought to debate with me. What a vain wretch is he! No beast is more void of sense! The sot confessed to me that the Jesuit hyenas have been traveling among the Indians, intilling their heathenish principles into them. They have taught them image worship, which even the savages once condemned as horrid. Such a snowball could be gathered, rolling through these cold and dark provinces of ignorance and lewdness, that might threaten us all. Well, masters, how do you like their game?” Seaborn Jervis was moved to speak some verses of Revelation, in which I joined.
Then the question came from Preserved Cotton. “You have spoken before of armies and garrisons, sir. Do you tell us now that we must truly levy war to subdue them?”
“What can be more noble and useful, good Preserved, than to contest the enemies of true-born Englishmen?”
“It is a grave choice, Mr. Milton.”
“Yet it will be justly done. Tyrants must be punished according to the intent and wrath of God. Our liberties must not be snatched away by an army of papists. Do you wish our righteousness to be trampled underfoot?” I came to a sudden stop. “And I tell you something beside, which must terrify us beyond all other cause. You all know Ezekiel, I trust? He found God among us and, since his deliverance from the devil, has worked unceasingly on our behalf. Now he has discovered such a secret in Mary Mount that it cries to heaven for vengeance! Speak out, Ezekiel Kuttowonck!”
My Indian took a step forward, folded his arms, and placed his hand upon my shoulder. “This is the man,” he said, “that knows all and speaks truth.”
“Thank you, good Ezekiel. He has brought to me certain intelligence of a vast and malignant treachery by the demon Kempis. That vile man is about to offer a universal league with all the Indians, to the intent that they might join in to extirpate the godly brethren from this region!” Never had there been such a roaring and groaning; for a moment it seemed that I heard the voices of Pandemonium. But I mastered my own fear, and commanded them, “Be still! Still!”
Accepted Lister, sitting close before me, shouted out, “Sir, these are locusts under our feet. They cannot be reasoned with. They must be trod upon!”
“I agree with you, Accepted. They are indeed vile vermin who endeavor to raise enemies against us. But be more cheerful. The high dispensations of God have given us a protection from the injuries of men, and I dare to say that His favor has rendered us almost sacred. But we must also act for ourselves. Kempis and his hellish crew are not to be repressed without a set war. Do we all assent?”
There were great cries of “Yes!” and “We do!” which were sweeter to me than all the myrrh of Hebron.
“Yet we are not so blind as to believe that even our women and boys would be able to rouse and chase them. I will go upon a journey, while there is yet time. I will travel to all the greatest towns of New England, and seek a confederacy with the other Churches of Christ. I will find the magistrates and tell them of their present danger. I will address the freemen, and the deputies who are in charge of their soldiers. I will raise an army of the Lord utterly to destroy these papists. Their arrows borrowed from the savages will lose their golden heads, their purple robes will untwine, their silken beads will slip their knots. God’s people of New England will clean out that hole of Satan in our midst. The chosen race will be saved!”
Their words of “War! War then!” were like waves around me. One of the godly called out “No submission!” and another proclaimed for “Open war!” Thus had I prevailed.
On the following morning, upon my instruction, letters were sent by fast messenger to all the principal towns and settlements of our region. “For the sake of the Christian world in New England,” I wrote, “we should all be united in a most strict and solemn confederacy.” I suggested that we should name ourselves the United Colonies of New England, and that articles of association should be agreed and concluded within the space of one month. “The Indian savages,” I told the brethren of our region, “may soon be converted by the papists into a warlike and subtle nation, and become like so many Irishmen loosed upon us. Act with all speed. Farewell.”
On the same evening, after the letters had been dispatched, it was reported to me that a comet or falling star was seen to cross the sky; it bent its blaze towards the west in the manner of a fiery pillar, and was taken as a sign portending much to the commonwealth. Certain other brethren, working to burn and clear part of the forest near New Milton, insisted to me that they heard all around them the sound of a great cannon and then the loud reports of short guns; a few moments later they heard drums in the air, passing westward, while invisible troops of horse rode among the trees and bushes of the dark wood. It is the beginning, dear Reginald, of a great change.
THIRTEEN
I took horse with Ezekiel Kuttowonck, and began our journey towards New Plymouth. It was an occasion for exhortation and good fellowship with the elder sister of all the united colonies, to raise arms and men against the horned beast of Revelation, and so I determined that the pious native should dress in English garb. It would have done your heart good, dear Reginald, to see him in plain jacket of cambric cloth, with a white band around his neck and a broad-brimmed hat upon his savage head.
My presence in these territories, my history and my reputation, were known well enough to the elders of New Plymouth. So they gathered and listened with due gravity when I spoke to them of King Ralph and his Indian army. “The Church of Christ,” I told them, “was planted here eight years before any other in New England. So first I call upon you to serve under the standard of the Lord, and to muster up all your forces against the Antichrist.” There was such zeal among them that I almost wept. They promised me a regiment of fifty men and sent an emissary south, to Connecticut, to implore military assistance in our common cause.
We then traveled further, to exhort the brethren of Hingham ham, on the seacoast; there are only eighty families worshiping here, but their town is being continually wasted by the sea, and they are therefore much regarded for their courage and endurance. There had been a dispute among them on the question of a militia election—even among the chosen are there divisions—but at my urging twelve young men agreed to serve under the Lord’s banner. From Hingham we traveled a short distance to Weymouth; it was once known to Ezekiel as Wessagusset, he informed me, being the region where his own people were accustomed to dwell in previous times. I praised God that, where there had once been native swamps, the brethren had cultivated neat pasture and meadowland. Here, in a field nicely hedged and ditched, I exhorted the people to fight the good fight. From Weymouth we crossed the Fore River and rode into Braintree beside Mount Wollaston. “You have great store of land in tillage here,” I told them. “Be sure, then, to guard yourself against the creatures which come in the night and waste it.” Yet more volunteers flooded to the good old cause. We crossed the Neponset and journeyed on to Dedham, where Ezekiel described to me all of its well-watered fields and garden fruits. “You are given to husbandry here,” I declared to them. “But now you must tend to the vine of Christ.” After they had pledged themselves to my army, I turned to Ezekiel. “Come, good servant,” I said aloud. “Now we must look to the young plants of Dorchester.”
Yet as we approached it Ezekiel whispered to me that it seemed to take the form of a serpent. He observed that its main street wound its head northward towards Tompson’s Island, while the houses of the brethren lay thickly in the middle like the body and wings of a beast. The tail of orchards and gardens was so long that the town could hardly have drawn it after herself. I ordered him to rein in the horses. “It cannot be,” I said. “We cannot ride into the maw of the serpent’s image.” He understood me at once, and we changed our path towards Roxbury. I exhorted the senior brethren in that pious spot and, after very few words, persuaded them to lend me their company of soldiers. I conversed afterwards with their teaching elder, John Eliot, who is known as “the apostle of the Indians” because of his pastoral care. I sensed that he was too familiar with the savages, even as he spoke to me. “So you are sure of this conspiracy with the Indians, Mr. Milton?”
“You have experience of them, sir. You must know them to be a cruel and implacable people who would not scruple to slay us all in our beds.”
“I have seen many of them come to Christ, sir.”
“That is well done, Mr. Eliot, but the preponderance of them are still heathen.”
“In time—”
“Time? We have no time. The danger is present and menacing.”
“But where is your proof, sir?”
“Proof? My proof is my word.” I bowed to him, but turned at once to Ezekiel Kuttowonck. “Come, faithful follower. We must ride on to doughty and undoubtful Boston.”
I was greeted there by Outspoken Mather, who had already corresponded with me in godly and fulsome terms. We met outside the Church of Christ, and embraced with great tenderness. “You see before you, Mr. Milton, a town wonderfully changed under the Lord’s guidance. Oh. Beg pardon.”
“No apology, Mr. Mather. I see everything with inward sight, which is better far.”
“Exquisitely spoken, if I may say so. No doubt your inward sight is like a mirror glass.”
“As bright and strong as my heart, sir.”
“Oh, aptly spoken again! Did you know that our great city is taken to be in the form of a heart, since it nestles between three hills?”
I reflected upon the shape of the serpent within Dorchester, together with the shape of the heart in this place, and for a moment, dear Reginald, the whole land of New England seemed to me as the painted body of an Indian. I shuddered, and shook off the devil’s image. “But you have cleared away the native wilderness, I trust. You have removed any malignancy.”
“Oh yes, indeed. On this paved street, where we are standing, there was once a great swamp. Where once the bears and the wolves nursed their young, now we have our pious children sporting up and down.”
“All this to me, Mr. Mather, presages some sumptuous city. I thank God for it.”
“That is a delightful reflection, which I shall share with the brethren next Sunday.”
“But are you well defended against the savages who come in the night? Where are your garrisons and barricades?”
“Oh, Mr. Milton, as I informed you in my dispatch, we are fully prepared for feats of war. We have cannons and engines enough for any godly battle.”
“You wrote to me, did you not, that you can rescue the Lord from the mouth of the lion and the paw of the bear?”
“I did indeed.”
“It was well written. Woe to you, Antichrist! God guides every bullet that is shot at you!” Outspoken exuded a faint odor of faded linen which was not displeasing to me. “You know the nature of my mission, Mr. Mather?”
“Of course. The troop of Boston men, led by Captain George Hollies, is ready for your command. You know we have other regiments in this region, sir. I have arranged that bands should come from Cambridge, Sudbury, Concord, Woburn, Watertown, and other places hereabouts. They have been preparing for this moment, sir, ever since they were given arms.”
“This pleases me.”
“I mention Cambridge first, Mr. Milton, for you have an invitation there. You know of our college?”
“I have heard many good reports of its Christian learning.”
“The men there are precious esteemed instruments, sir. Our former president became entangled in the snares of Anabaptism—”
“Oh! No more!”
“But now the college has returned to the Lord’s work. The whole lump is holy.”
“Well put, Mr. Mather.”
“The fountains of learning have been unstopped—”
“—and the sweet waters of Shilo’s streams flow forth.” I knew the passage well and, if he had not spoken again, I would have ventured a commentary upon it.
“On Friday six young men proceed to be bachelors, and it was suggested that you might speak to them?” I assented, of course, and put my hands together as if in prayer. “Our college is less than thirty years old, but they have been trained in all good learning. A library has been bequeathed—”
“A library?” It was the first reported to me in this land, and I could scarcely conceal my astonishment. “Of what kind?”
“The founder, John Harvard, has left us two hundred and sixty volumes. Divinity, law and astronomy. We look within and without.”
“Harvard was a London man, was he not?”
Outspoken seemed to hesitate. “His father was a butcher in Southwark.”
“Truly? Wolsey was also a butcher’s son. There must be something in the meat.” Yet my mind already wandered among books. “This library must have grown since the time it was bequeathed to you?”
“A reverend minister, Theophilus Gale, left us a godly estate of treatises. But surely, sir, you will come?”
So it was, dear Reginald, that Ezekiel Kuttowonck lodged within a family of “Praying Indians” while Outspoken Mather and I took the ferry across the river to Charles Town. “When I first came here,” Mather informed me as we stood upon the deck, “we used to cross in flatboats.”
I put my face to the breeze, and my heart lifted. “The flatboats of contentment.”
“What was that, sir?”
“Nothing. I was dreaming of my youth beside the Thames.”
“Yes. Mr. Chauncy says he knew of you then.”
“How is this?”
“Oh, Mr. Milton, I was saving up this news. Charles Chauncy is the president of our college. He was once Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge University. He tells me that you were scholars there together.”
“Chauncy? We will be well met, Mr. Mather, after such an interval!” This was great and welcome news for me—to meet a man of books, and an old companion, was so unexpected and delicious a surprise that I laughed aloud. “Not Hebrew alone, but Greek. How long is our journey now?”
It was not long. Soon enough I was walking upon a spacious and even green in New Town, or Cambridge as it is called now, when I savored the presence of learning. “Surely, Mr. Mather, my nose detects the library!”
“It does, sir. There is the hall of our college. There are the three houses for our fellows and students. Excuse me, I know you cannot—”
“Go on.”
“Between them is our library. Oh, and here is Mr. Chauncy waiting to greet us.”
“John Milton!”
“Is it you?”
We clasped hands, and then we embraced. “Well met by sunlight, John. Now you are returned to Cambridge!”
“But is it the old world or the new?”
“Both, John. It is both.” Charles was ever a tall boy, and a tall man, and I sensed the familiar comfort of his companionship. “Come in now, and eat. You must eat!”
And so, Reginald, we sat together after our meat and talked of earlier times. He had been a blue coat of the Christ’s Hospital, while I had been a pigeon of Paul’s, before we ever journeyed to Cambridge. “Do you remember the game, John? Salve tu quoque, placet tibi mecum disputare?”
“Placet.” Oh those London days, when we disputed among the wagons and the porters. “We used to meet in Cornhill.”
“No, you forget. It was Bucklesbury. Where the barges were.”
“Where Tom Jennings fell. Do you recall if he was drowned?”
“Unfortunately not. He became one of the King’s Bench, and hanged a great many.” Chauncy grew silent, and I could hear him swallowing the water from his cup. “So you come with terrible news, John. I have heard of Kempis and his crew.” I had been contemplating the days of my youth, when I walked the City walls and dreamed of great deeds; at that name, I was startled into wakefulness. “Is there to be a war?”
“It cannot be averted.” I was more harsh with him than I had intended. “He means to destroy or enslave us all.”
“But we have our bands of soldiers. We have so many cannon he could not think of taking us.”
“I tell you, Charles, he has the savages with him. He intends to raise them all in armed rebellion against us.”
“It is not possible—”
“Yes!” I rose in righteous anger, and then resumed my seat. “It can be done. I have seen them. Your scholars are exempt by statute. They need not serve.”
“I fear a conflagration, John, which will envelop scholars and all.”
“The poisoned air of Mary Mount will be purged by burning.”
“When we were young, we always spoke of peace. Do you recall how we read Utopia?”
“Thomas More was a papist. We must put away childish things now—”
“But to start a war in this new land!”
“I seek to start nothing. I wish merely to protect that which we have all gained. Liberty. Faith.”
“I cannot believe that there is anyone in this vast land who truly intends to destroy such things.”
