The Pilgrim (4 page)

For weeks to come, I lost myself in my labour. I became a gardener sorting seeds, a thresher in the barn trying the strength of his flail, a mower whetting his scythe, a husbandman scouring his plow. I hedged, fenced, sowed, reaped, and gleaned until, by the grace of God, I was tormented no more by the thought of Jane Fuller's naked breasts, with their round, roseate buds.

But Satan was hard at work upon the farm. I have mentioned the shepherd, Peter Patch, who with his dog, Hal, tended my uncle Roger's flock of two hundred and thirty-three sheep. Patch drove the sheep twice each day between the hill pastures and the fields. He fed his flock, gathered the lambs, carried them in his bosom, and gently led those that were with young. He smeared Stockholm tar upon the leg wounds of his sheep; it never failed to heal them.

He knew not his own age. I reckoned that he was about five-and-thirty years old. He suffered from sciatica that made him limp upon his left leg. His father was my grandfather's shepherd; his mother, who had lived idly and wandered about the country, went into London and disappeared when Peter was a child.

In the summer, using sprinkled water and smoke, Patch acquired honey for the household from a hive in the hollow oak on the Ridge. It was there at the end of July that I espied him buggering a ewe. His breeches were down about his ankles. He stood half-naked behind the ewe, between her hind legs, which he held by the hooves close to his hips. The ewe, with her rear end in the air, stood upon her front legs. Then Patch saw me and dropped her hind legs. The ewe ran away.

Patch pulled up his breeches and said, “If you tell what you have seen me do this day, they will surely hang me, master, on Gallows Hill.”

Tears trickled down his cheeks. He said, “Do not let them hang me, master. Report me not to the constable. But if you must, and they do hang me, I beg a favor of you, master. Soon as I hang there, give my legs a tug and break my neck. Will you do that for me? Do not let me slowly strangle. Hasten my death! Promise me as a godly Christian!”

Said I, “I cannot promise you.”

God forgive me, but I could not bring myself to denounce Peter Patch. It pleased the Lord to forgive my transgression, for it was some months thereafter that Christ brought me into His chambers, wherein I rejoiced in His love.

This happened on my twentieth birthday, at about seven of the clock on Friday evening of the tenth of March in the year of Christ 1615, whilst I read to my uncle Roger from Scripture. I had reached the introduction to chapter V of the Second Book of Esdras from the Apocrypha, viz., “In the latter time, truth shall be hid. Unrighteousness and all wickedness shall reign in the world.”

My uncle interrupted me, saying, “Read to me instead of the love of Christ for His Elect and ours for Him in the verses of that most excellent Song which was Solomon's.” He belched.

I read aloud, “Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,” and was filled with a sense of Christ's love and presence. The God of Israel was with me; I was wholly His. He was my soul's husband, my unspeakable love, my exceeding great reward.

I saw no shape but heard a voice only, saying, “Thou art cleansed from the blood and filth of thy sins.”

I laughed and wept. The following day, my uncle set Esau to harrow the New Field and bade me have a rake's head repaired at a blacksmith in Winterbourne, wherein I also bought a pound of nails. I then returned to the farm and chopped wood until night. I rejoiced in being saved by the grace of my soul's Beloved.

By earnest prayer, I sought counsel of God, the giver of all good gifts. My father, whose pious judgment and knowledge I much trusted, said to me, “Your rebirth in Christ hath divinely appointed you to serve Him as His Minister. You must take a Bachelor of Divinity degree at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.”

I said, “Sir, I must needs confess to you that, even for Christ's sake, I'm loathe to matriculate as a poor sizar obliged to pay my way by waiting upon my fellow students of good rank and quality. To serve them food and drink like a common servant, to fetch and carry for them. I cannot. Not even for Christ's sake! Such is my pride. Help me conquer my satanical pride!”

We bowed our heads, and he bade me pray from Psalm 36:11, “Let not the foot of pride come against me.”

I could not conquer my pride. But God forgave me. My uncle said to me that he would pay my full cost of living at the University, in the amount of about forty-five pounds per annum, so that I could matriculate as a pensioner and live in a manner befitting the nephew of a prosperous yeoman such as he. His pride—or perhaps his love for me—overcame his habitual parsimony.

My aunt Eliza protested his decision, but he was resolute. He likewise gave me a goodly pair of red gloves of kid from his shop, and, for travel apparel, his old black stockings, black breeches, jerkin, and his warm blue cloak. Then he hired a tailor to make me a black suit and doublet with silver buttons to wear at Emmanuel, wherein, according to my father, the students wore neither clerical cap nor gown. My uncle said to me, “I want you to do me proud amongst all them high and mighty gentlemen.”

My uncle Roger wrote a new will, leaving his farm and glover's shop to Tom Foot. Foot got drunk to celebrate in The Sign of the Bull.

I was admitted to Cambridge for the following Michaelmas term. My father wrote a letter to his friend and former chamber mate at Christ Church, the Rev. William Barstow, who was the rector of All Angels Church, in Ashford in the Weald of Kent; he was the sole surviving heir of two nearby manors, managed by a steward. The Barstows were one of the most ancient of Kentish families. In the years since college, Barstow and my father had met regularly at the annual Commencement festivities held every July. Barstow's son, Robin, aged fifteen, was in his second year as a pensioner at Emmanuel. He hoped to take a Bachelor of Arts, become a Fellow, and one day teach Latin there. His father prayed he would be converted by Emmanuel's godly tutors and abandon his design. He wanted Robin to take a Bachelor of Divinity and become a Minister. Our fathers arranged for Roger and me to live together in a chamber near the library and share the same tutor, whose name was Charles Morton.

I first saw Robin seated by the window in his study, reading a volume of the
Aeneid
. He gazed upon me over the pages of his book and asked in Latin, with a Kentish accent, “How well do you know your Virgil?”

And I rejoined, likewise in Latin, “Passing fair.” (“
Satis
certe
.”) We Cambridge men spake together only in Latin, Hebrew, or Greek.

Robin said, “Then tell me this: how long did Alcestes live, and how many jars of Sicilian wine did he give to the Trojans?”

“I cannot say.”

Said he, “Well, neither can I.”

We laughed together. With his blue eyes, his ruddy complexion, his fair hairs, Robin Barstow was the comeliest youth I have ever known.

He joined with me and a company of six or eight others to pray together every evening and discourse about religion, presided over by our tutor in his chamber.

Robin said, “I have need of continual under-proppings to hold up my soul.”

When I told him about my conversion, he answered, “Nothing like that hath ever happened to me. I feel that God is at a great remove from my soul. How I envy thee! My father was converted some twenty years ago in Ashford and said that he trembled from the Divine Majesty and holiness which shone within him. The great weight of uncertainty was lifted from his soul. Like you, he knew he was saved! I live in hope of salvation. Be my soul's companion. Help me reach out to God.”

At my suggestion, he and I fasted upon every Sabbath. We prayed together every night before we went to sleep. Sometimes during the day I came upon him praying alone. Tears hung upon his long lashes and trickled down his ruddy, beardless cheeks. He confessed to me that he was much tormented by the sin of Onan. Then he cried out, “Save me, O my God. Save my corrupt soul.”

Our fellow chamber mates, both from Sussex, were likewise studying Divinity; they hoped to get a nobleman's chaplaincy or a lectureship in London paid for by a rich merchant or Company. There was much talk amongst them of one of the College Fellows receiving a lectureship at St. Sepulchre, in the amount of thirty pounds a year given by a wealthy chandler.

All of us Cambridge men kept a Commonplace Book. I have mine with me to this day. Toward the end of my first Lenten term, I noted how I spent my days of the week:

Item.
Chapel every morning at five of the clock. Private devotions.

Item.
Breakfasts are breakstudies. I abjure all but a draught of College beer and a morsel of bread.

Item.
The rest of the forenoon, disputations with tutor, lectures by Dons, which I copy out, word for word, in Swiftwriting; divers variants of same used by other students. Monday, Wednesday, Friday, lectures on Dialectics (Aristotle's
On
Sophistical
Refutations
), Rhetoric (Cicero's
Topics
), music. Tuesday, Thursday, likewise in the forenoon, lectures on Greek grammar (the Greek
Testament
), on Hebrew grammar (the Hebrew
Scriptures
), and on ethics (Aristotle's
Nicomachean
Ethics
).

Item.
Recreation every afternoon until dinner at five of the clock.

Item.
I reserve an hour after evening prayers in my study for translating a few lines of Plato's
Phaedrus
or Homer's
Odyssey
.

Item.
Before bedtime, prayers and discourse about religion, supervised by my tutor.

Item.
Saturday, in the forenoon, lectures on Divinity (Masculus's
Commonplaces
of
Christian
Religion
), Philosophy (Verro's
Ten
Books
of
Natural
Philosophy
), Latin poetry (Virgil's
Aeneid
) with emphasis upon grammar.

Item.
The Sabbath. Three divine services, conducted by College Fellows. Emmanuel's Head Master, Laurence Chaderton, did not conform to Hampton Court Conference with King James upon his accession in 1603. Hence, with impunity because of Chaderton's friends at Court, we follow a private course of prayer after our own fashion. Communion twice a month. Fellows never wear surplices, nor do we communicants kneel to receive communion, but are seated instead around the communion table, passing bread and cup from hand to hand.

(If I may be so bold, the latter is a godly example of how communion might be served, when the Plymouth Church acquires a Minister.)

Robin and I passed our afternoons together. It was the most precious time of the day to me. We walked along the Cam, feeding the swans, wandered the streets of Cambridge, or sat and talked under the walnut tree in the northeast corner of the Emmanuel Quadrangle. He told me about his three elder brothers, his younger sister, and his mother, who regularly sent him a jug of strong, Kentish cider, which he shared with me. We were both much troubled by constipation. My father sent me money to buy suppositories, which I shared with Robin. Our intimacy was much noted by many of our fellow students, who called us “David and Jonathan.”

One warm, spring evening after supper, under the walnut tree, Robin said to me, “Dear brother, I await in despair for Christ to regenerate me,” and I said, “Dear brother, God is withdrawing His presence from me a little more each day. My own regeneration seems at times like a dream.”

My recurring spiritual anguish bound me closer to him.

• • •

When I returned home for my summer vacation, I went fowling with my uncle upon the Downs. I aimed the musket, loaded with goose-shot, at a gander in a flock of grey geese flying toward me above a thorn thicket, and pulled the trigger. The musket blew up in my hands. I cannot recall a noise; it seemed to me I was at the center of a great flash of light, and the next I knew, I was laid out upon my back with sundry fragments of the piece scattered about me. The barrel was burst in twain. Thanks be to God, I was unhurt, excepting a slight burn on my right wrist.

I knew that there are no such things as accidents. Was my escape from death a special interposition of Providence? Was it a sign that God was not departing from me as I feared? My ignorance tormented me.

Toward the end of my second Michaelmas term, there were grievous sins in Trinity College; a woman was carried from chamber to chamber in the night. The eight culpable students were caught by the College Head Porter, who brought them before Trinity's High Master the following morning. The youngest student, fifteen years of age, was thrashed; one was fined, and the others were sent down.

Robin said to me, “I too long for women. Would that I longed so for God's grace!”

That night, I dreamed about Jane Fuller's breasts. I related this to my tutor, Charles Morton, who said, “God help us, since the Fall we are defenceless against Satan in our dreams.”

As the year progressed, Robin spake so longingly of his hope for grace that I loved him better than before. Our summer vacation drew nigh; my father wrote me a letter, inviting Robin to spend two weeks with us in Winterbourne. Robin accepted.

Because of my fear of horses, Robin and I traveled in a carrier wagon; he had never been west of London. He gazed at length upon Salisbury Cathedral and said, “Let us build such churches in our hearts.”

We journeyed over a week, far spent in drink. It was a slow going we had of it because of the heavy rain. Our roof leaked through numerable rents in the canvas. I wrapped my sodden cloak about Robin and myself, and we clung to each other for hours. He guzzled sack and praised the rich soil, the fertile pasture lands, and the lush fields of divers corn. In Dorset, the other traveler in our wagon remarked that the heath surrounding us was a tedious view of furze, fern, and heather.