Mistress Bradstreet

by Charlotte Gordon

  But it seems that Anne only fully realized how near they were to leaving when, a few months after she and Simon had moved to the Countess of Warwick’s estate, they received shocking news from Sempringham. Charles’s persecution of Puritans had finally spread to Lincolnshire, and Theophilus had been thrown into the dreaded Tower of London for resisting the king’s demands of additional tax money, or a “loan” to the royal coffers, as Charles called it. Dudley himself, as a close adviser of the earl’s, was in danger of arrest.

  To make the situation even more threatening, in the midst of the chaos of Theophilus’s imprisonment, someone at Sempringham had published an abridged version of the English statutes on the people’s rights, proving that the king’s request for additional funds from his nobles was illegal. Although it is not known for sure who wrote this pamphlet, it might well have been the dowager countess or the strong-willed Thomas Dudley himself. Whoever it was, the household now faced almost certain retribution from the king for harboring the unknown culprit. And yet the defiant Puritan stronghold did not back down. Dudley himself resisted the royal demand for money, as one informer whispered to officials: “Mr. Dudlye beynge reported to have 300 per annum, some say 400, refused upon our earnest request to bear 30 shillings towards the loan.” In fact, contemporary witnesses reported that all of Lincolnshire appeared to be in “open rebellion” against “the Royal Commissioners.”19

  Conversations at Sempringham and the Countess of Warwick’s estate now centered on the earl’s fate. What would become of Theophilus? What would happen to his properties and family? What actions would the king take against Theophilus’s allies and servants? Although Anne heard about these events secondhand, she followed them closely and, young matron that she was, sympathized with the women close to the earl, especially the dowager and Arbella.

  Knowing her father as she did, Anne was not surprised when he proclaimed that it was the moment for Puritans to act. By 1629 everyone at Sempringham and in the surrounding neighborhood agreed that with Theophilus in the king’s grip, it was time to set things in motion, to forge a New England colony far away from the king’s tyranny. Ministers stirred their flocks with pronouncements that the Puritans were the chosen people and must be as brave as the Israelites leaving Egypt.

  It was during this crisis that Arbella’s husband, Isaac, proving that he was indeed the worthy choice of his visionary bride, created as thorough a business plan as he could devise. In 1628 he and several associates had formed the New England Company on the basis of their Sempringham meetings, but now he created the wealthier, more powerful Massachusetts Bay Company in order to facilitate a hasty “remove.” He and Dudley invited other distinguished Puritans to help plan their emigration, most notably the clergyman Roger Williams, whose passionate idealism would inspire others to flee England, and the solid, experienced solicitor, John Winthrop, who would become the most important political leader of the colony.

  Williams was an eager and intelligent participant in these meetings and gave no evidence of the extremist zeal that would appall his friends in years to come. Winthrop, who came from Suffolk, had some difficulty making his way through the marshy countryside to the manor house in Sempringham. He recorded that “my horse fell under me in a bogge in the fennes, so as I was allmost to the waiste in water.”20 Perhaps the difficulty of his journey through Lincolnshire contributed to his initial resistance to the plan. But Johnson and Dudley persuaded him to give the matter some thought, and before long he, too, had decided to join the venture. After extensive meetings, the group easily procured the king’s permission to settle a rocky swath of land along the northern New England coast. Why should Charles stand in the way of their departure? He must have been glad to see the first boatload of troublemaking Puritans take leave of England.

  In 1629 Isaac and Arbella put up the cash for an advance expedition to the area of their claim. This hardy band of explorers arrived safely on the shores of America and established the flimsy settlement that would so dismay Anne and her family when at last they arrived in New England twelve months later. But none of the planners of the migration had any inkling of what was to come. In fact their hopes could only rise when Francis Higginson, the minister of this experimental journey, wrote home a thrilling letter of discovery that fired the Puritans’ determination: “Both land and sea abound with a state of blessings for the comfortable sustenance of man’s life in New England.” He went on to declare that “a sup of New England’s air is better than a whole draught of old England’s ale.”21 The excitement generated by these words echoed throughout the Dudley and Bradstreet homes, confirming Thomas Dudley’s dreams of what the New World would be like. Now he knew he was embarking on the right adventure. The only problem was that as the months passed, they never heard from Higginson again.

  With the notable exception of Anne, the enthusiasm of the Puritans mounted, and as preparations continued, they began to feel that they were stranded in England and far from their real and rightful home in the New World. As Edward Johnson wrote, “Oh yes! oh yes! oh yes! All you, the people of Christ that are here oppressed, imprisoned and scurrilously derided, gather yourselves together . . . for planting the united colonies of New England.”22

  Not that Anne was entirely alone in her reluctance. Many Reformers knew that the fascinating accounts of “Penobscot to Cape Cod” might be unreliable, as they were written by financiers to encourage investment in New World mercantile projects. Although Higginson’s report sealed the matter as far as they were concerned, Puritan leaders still continued to seek out information about the condition of the Pilgrims, who had settled in Plymouth in 1620. Again, all seemed promising. Travelers to the fledgling colony noted the “healthfulness” of the settlers. One wrote, “I know of no place in the world that can match it,” listing the plentiful bounty: “delicate plums,” “five several sorts of grapes,” as well as “much plenty both of fish and foul everyday in the year.” As they readied for the voyage, the preparations for which would take almost a year, Dudley had plenty of opportunity to read these reports aloud to his family and send them on to Anne and Simon. Life would be delicious there, proponents for the journey argued, with lots of “good cheer” to go around.23

  But there were also the less appealing reports, from rumors of French Catholics who attacked Puritan settlers to man-eating Indians. As early as 1607, an English settlement in Maine had failed miserably, prompting those who survived to describe New England as “a cold, barren, mountainous, rocky desert.”24 In 1623 a pioneering group of traders had tried to settle a colony on Cape Ann, but most of them had died of disease or starvation within a few years, though a few stragglers did remain in Salem, living as traders, fishermen, and hunters. In fact these were the old planters who would help the Puritans establish their initial colonies. Although Anne’s father and his friends were aware of the struggles of these men, they still felt eager to voyage to a world “as gorgeously garnished with all . . . pregnant nature ravishing the sight with variety.”25

  This was not the life Anne had envisioned for herself when she left her sickroom for marriage to Simon. Not only had her father plunged her and her family into this New World expedition, but they were to become leaders of the venture. Dudley was voted deputy governor, second in command under Winthrop. Simon, who was always happy to follow in his father-in-law’s footsteps, agreed to serve as secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Company. Anne, who was now eighteen, continued to resist her father’s decision, but only in the privacy of her own heart. She had been well trained by her mother and knew better than to complain to either Simon or her father. Whether she liked it or not, Anne and her willing young husband were bound for New England. She was a daughter, not a father; a wife, not a husband. Hers was not the deciding voice.

  Chapter Six

  Preparedness

  We must . . . wait all the days of our appointed time till our change shall come.

  — ANNE BRADSTREET,“Meditation 53”

  The certainty that
that time will come, together with the uncertainty, how, where, and when, should make us so to number our days as to apply our hearts to wisdom, that when we are put out of these houses of clay we may be sure of an everlasting habitation that fades not away.

  — ANNE BRADSTREET,“Meditation 70”

  IN THE EARLY MONTHS OF 1629, no one, not even Anne’s father, could predict exactly when the journey would begin, and so, as far as Anne was concerned, the voyage hung in the air like an impending storm. Preoccupied as she was with the idea of her own death, having already experienced two close calls, the expedition that lay ahead could only exacerbate the eighteen-year-old’s anxieties.

  No one would have thought to soothe Anne’s fears. Instead most of the potential emigrants were instructed by their ministers to meditate on their own “destruction” before they even began the undertaking. This activity made sense to someone like Anne not only because of the dangers she would confront but also because the process of closing one’s affairs and bidding farewell to England seemed a kind of rehearsal for permanent departure from earthly affairs. She must also have secretly wondered if she would be able to survive a journey about which a contemporary had said “the weak bodies of women . . . could never be able to endure.”1

  Few journeys of any magnitude actually start with departure, and the sailing of the first ship in the Great Migration to America would be no exception. It was not a simple proposition, this climactic break from civilization. More than seven hundred men, women, and children had signed on for the trip. Although the Arbella would carry around three hundred of these pioneers, ten other, smaller ships were necessary to carry the remaining passengers and to help transport livestock and supplies. Three of these vessels would depart with the Arbella, and seven more would follow. This venture to the New World would be on a scale unlike any other, not only in the lives of the Lincolnshire Puritans, but also in human history, and therefore there were few precedents to follow. Only fiercely devout men like Dudley and John Winthrop, who believed that God had ordained this plan—the passage of so many unweathered civilians across more than three thousand miles of ocean—would have dared embark on such a terrifying experiment. But these were pragmatic men as well as visionaries, and so they did not set forth impetuously.

  Anne’s father and his colleagues devoted themselves to planning their journey, not only because of the practical benefits of such careful measures, but also because this was one of the requirements of their spiritual notion of “preparedness.” This ideal held that you should aspire toward a perpetual anticipation of Judgment Day—a daunting task. Getting ready for the voyage, however, was as difficult spiritually as it was physically, since it involved one sacrifice after another; Anne soon found that her willingness to submit to her father’s dream was constantly put to the test. She would have to weed out unnecessary luxuries from her household and pack what they hadn’t sold—blankets, linens, pewter, clothing, and smaller boxes of food—in large wooden chests that were so heavy many men would be needed to hoist them aloft when it was time to leave.

  Before sailing, they had to complete what were essentially the tasks of a dying person—selling cattle, houses, and furniture and transferring beloved items to people who were staying behind—and each activity naturally assumed a funereal hue. In a kind of mute acceptance of their fate, most Puritans who had not yet done so wrote their wills in the months before they sailed for America.2

  To make matters worse, non-Puritan neighbors often mocked what seemed to them a foolish venture. In a much later poem, “The Flesh and the Spirit,” Anne would capture the scoffing voices whose jeers echoed her own doubts: “Dost [thou] dream of things beyond the moon, / And dost thou hope to dwell there soon?” and “Art fancy sick, or turned a sot / To catch at shadows which are not?”3 Anne could triumph over these insults in her poems, declaring, “I’ll stop mine ears” against all insults, but at the time, lonely, sad, and terrified of what lay ahead, she had little choice but to worry: What if her tormenters were right and her father was wrong? What if the voyage to the New World turned out to be a disaster?

  Still, despite her reservations about the enterprise, Anne remained devoted to her father, and so when disapproving neighbors asked why she and her family were deserting England, she knew exactly what to say and how to promote his vision. The colony in New England would one day take care of England, Anne had been taught. In the years to come she would have New England actually speak in one of her poems, asking a disease-ridden Old England, “What medicine shall I seek to cure . . . [your] wound?”4 Anne would also have been able to cite one of the famous arguments for the exodus articulated most forcefully by the minister Richard Mather: “It was right,” he declared, “to remove from a corrupt church . . . because by staying voluntarily in places corrupt we endanger ourselves to be corrupted.”5

  But Anne remained uninspired by the prospect of the move, and even her mother’s stalwart example did not help. While they sorted and packed or sold one possession after another—including, no doubt, the artifacts of her childhood: the cradle used by all of the Dudley children and their few toys—to friends who were staying behind or to strangers in the busy Boston marketplace, Dorothy remained steadfastly organized and calm. It was her duty to bend cheerfully to her husband’s wishes, and she would have had little patience for Anne’s anxieties.

  There was no sympathy to be had from her father either. Dudley acknowledged that the journey to America was not to be undertaken by the fainthearted but remained firm in his decision to bring his children with him. Winthrop, on the other hand, reflected the more ordinary person’s approach to the journey, leaving his wife and young child behind to save them from the dangers of the wilderness and the ocean voyage. They could join him later, he decided, once he had established a home where they could dwell in comfort and safety.

  Still, Anne could not help but derive an odd confidence from her father’s unflagging commitment to bring her and her siblings to New England. It was really a compliment of sorts: Dudley had singled his family out for a kind of noble odyssey. And so, in her attempt to live up to his ideals as well as to please her new husband, Anne seems to have decided that she would not be like one prospective emigrant’s stubborn wife, who declared that she would rather be “a living wife in England than a dead one in the sea.”6 Only toward the end of her life, long after her father had died, did she acknowledge her misery, and even then, only briefly.

  Still, despite his overall optimism, Dudley was well aware that if they made mistakes now, the entire venture was doomed. To begin with, it was enormously expensive to undertake such a mission, and so it was important to figure out exactly what supplies had to be purchased. Dudley, who was wealthier than most prospective colonists, was worth around three hundred to four hundred pounds a year, and Simon’s income was probably somewhat less. According to best estimates, a carpenter’s income was around forty-five pounds a year. A shoemaker might make eighty pounds. Clergy usually earned less than one hundred pounds.7

  Gentlemen like Dudley, therefore, could afford the expenses of the journey with careful planning. But other working men often needed to have their passage paid for them. In general, it cost about five pounds for an individual to book passage, around twenty-five pounds to ferry a family across the ocean, fifty pounds for rudimentary household materials such as “ammunition . . . soap, candles, implements and utensils, beer, wine, and liquor . . . steel, iron, merchandise for trading with the Indians, clothing, shoes, house furnishings, sail cloth, hay for fodder, and cattle,” and perhaps an additional one hundred pounds or more to ship over the requirements of wealthy, highly placed families like the Dudleys and the Bradstreets.8 This meant that Dudley would have to shell out at least two-thirds of his yearly earnings to make the pilgrimage to America; Simon would be even more hard-pressed. For both families, the journey could only be undertaken after a complete overhaul of their holdings; luxuries such as Anne and her sisters’ fine lace collars or pearl hair ornaments would h
ave to be sold to help purchase supplies. It was fortunate, then, that their religion explained material loss as sacred gain and as a sign of devotion to God and His mission.

  This process of parting with worldly goods was not only a trial all future New Englanders had to undergo, it was also a stumbling block that prevented many of the faithful from joining the expedition. Aside from the emotional toll of “preparedness,” Anne and her family were hard-pressed to convert all of their holdings into the cash they needed to purchase their basic requirements: heavy woolen capes for the sea voyage and the freezing winters they had been warned of, as well as thick linen shirts, handkerchiefs, “Irish stockings,” extra pairs of shoes, and leather for repairs. Dudley, Simon, and Samuel each needed an extra pair of boots and also many more tools than they were accustomed to using in England.

  Contemporary lists cited spades, shovels, hatchets, axes, hoes, pitchforks, vises, brands for livestock, hammers, hand saws, grindstones, nails, locks, hooks and twists for doors, cod hooks for fishing and mackerel line, chains and locks for small boats, a bellows, scoops, pairs of wheels for carts, plows, ladders, and anything else the emigrants could afford and believed would be useful for their new lives as farmers. But the Dudleys and Bradstreets also had to assuage their fear of potential human enemies—pirates on the ocean, Indians, French Catholics in Canada—and so the men brought their armor, including helmets, shields, and swords; twenty pounds of powder each; sixty pounds of lead for bullets, pistols, muskets, and other arms. Anne and her mother prepared for their own kind of battle, as they were forewarned that to make beds they would require “ells of canvas,” and that for a working kitchen, they would need at least “one iron pot, one great copper kettle, a small kettle, a lesser kettle, one large frying pan, a small frying pan, a brass mortar, a spit, one gridiron, two skillets, platters, dishes and spoons of wood.” Then, for a family like Anne’s, there were amenities to consider like “sugar, pepper, cloves, mace, cinnamon, nutmegs.”9