Read Online Mistress Bradstreet by Charlotte Gordon - Free Book Online

liked and countenanced by men of might,
    The Gospel trodden down and hath no right;
    Church offices were sold and bought for gain,
    That Pope had hope to find Rome here again.
24
    Instead of regarding the colonists as an inspiration, England acknowledges that the New Englanders “wert jeered . . . / Thy flying for the truth was made a jest.” As for the venerable Puritan ministers, who had attempted to point out the corruption of their mother country, Old England admits:
    I mocked the preachers . . .
    The sermons yet upon record do stand
    That cried destruction to my wicked land;
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    Some lost their livings, some in prison pent,
    Some find, from house and friends to exile went.
25
    Under pressure from her daughter, the mother admits she deserves her punishment. “Their silent tongues to heaven did vengeance cry, / Who say their wrongs and hath judged righteously / And will repay it sevenfold in my lap.” But New England cannot sit idly by as her mother plunges into despair; the fates of parent and child are intertwined. As Old England says, “If I decease, doth think thou shalt survive?” 26
    Anne understood all too well the resentment that often lies between mothers and daughters. At last New England dispenses with the customary reverence that children are supposed to feel toward parents and takes over the poem with a shocking ferocity. The daughter’s final speech outlines what Old England would have to do (with New England’s help) to save herself from destruction.
    These are the days the Church’s foes to crush,
    To root out Popelings head, tail, branch, and rush;
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    . . . thine armies brave send out
    To sack proud Rome and all her vassals rout;
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    Bring forth the beast that ruled the world with’s beck,
    And tear his flesh and set your feet on’s neck;
    . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
    This done, with brandished swords to Turkey go,
    For then what is’t but English blades dare do,
    And lay her waste for so’s the sacred doom.
27
    Truly, this was Dudley’s daughter writing. Anne poured all of her pent-up anger and fear about the current political situation into these stanzas. England could save herself only through righteous warfare against the infidel, and the enemy was everywhere—Rome, Turkey, Palestine. It was not enough for England to redeem herself and purify her own church and state. She would have to launch herself into the world to spread the true beliefs of the dissenter and vanquish the “idolatries” of all other faiths.
    A manuscript version of this poem was probably passed among the friends of the Bradstreet-Dudley clan long before it was published. If so, Anne’s words about the righteousness of New England would have gratified her fellow New World Puritans who had chosen not to return to England to fight the king. Such men could read her poem and feel that they had chosen the right side in the conflict. Not until England had purged herself of her sin and corruption should her colony feel impelled to help her. Those who remained in New England could see themselves as righteous instead of cowardly.
    An astute reader could also have seen that Anne was firmly on the side of Parliament, a dangerous position for a colonial to assert. Although she qualified her attack on Charles by saying that anyone who was “false to king” or who “hurt . . . his crown” should be “expell[ed],” she was also blunt about which side was England’s “better part”; it was Parliament who “showed their intent, / To crush the proud . . . / To help the Church.” Indeed, in Anne’s poem Charles seems sulky rather than wise—“The King, displeased, at York himself absents”—and he blocks Parliament’s attempts at righting England’s wrongs. 28
    This was an exciting poem to read, packed as it was with bloodshed, predictions of the future, and a long,