My father, a wise and grave man, gave me serious and excellent counsel
against what he foresaw was my design. He called me one morning into his
chamber, where he was confined by the gout, and expostulated very warmly
with me upon this subject. He asked me what reasons, more than a mere
wandering inclination, I had for leaving father’s house and my native
country, where I might be well introduced, and had a prospect of raising
my fortune by application and industry, with a life of ease and pleasure.
He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring,
superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise
by enterprise, and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out
of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or
too far below me; that mine was the middle state, or what might be called
the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience,
was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness, not
exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and sufferings of the
mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury,
ambition, and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might
judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing—viz. that this was
the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have
frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great
things, and wished they had been placed in the middle of the two
extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his
testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have
neither poverty nor riches.
He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of
life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the
middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many
vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not
subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind,
as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the
one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or
insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by
the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station
of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments;
that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune; that
temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable
diversions, and all desirable pleasures, were the blessings attending the
middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly
through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the
labours of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for
daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the
soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy,
or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy
circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the
sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and
learning by every day’s experience to know it more sensibly.
After this he pressed me earnestly, and in the most affectionate manner,
not to play the young man, nor to precipitate myself into miseries which
nature, and the station of life I was born in, seemed to have provided
against; that I was under no necessity of seeking my bread; that he would
do well for me, and endeavour to enter me fairly into the station of life
which he had just been recommending to me; and that if I was not very
easy and happy in the world, it must be my mere fate or fault that must
hinder it; and that he should have nothing to answer for, having thus
discharged his duty in warning me against measures which he knew would be
to my hurt; in a word, that as he would do very kind things for me if I
would stay and settle at home as he directed, so he would not have so
much hand in my misfortunes as to give me any encouragement to go away;
and to close all, he told me I had my elder brother for an example, to
whom he had used the same earnest persuasions to keep him from going into
the Low Country wars, but could not prevail, his young desires prompting
him to run into the army, where he was killed; and though he said he
would not cease to pray for me, yet he would venture to say to me, that
if I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I should
have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when
there might be none to assist in my recovery.
I observed in this last part of his discourse, which was truly prophetic,
though I suppose my father did not know it to be so himself—I say, I
observed the tears run down his face very plentifully, especially when he
spoke of my brother who was killed: and that when he spoke of my having
leisure to repent, and none to assist me, he was so moved that he broke
off the discourse, and told me his heart was so full he could say no more
to me.
I was sincerely affected with this discourse, and, indeed, who could be
otherwise? and I resolved not to think of going abroad any more, but to
settle at home according to my father’s desire. But alas! a few days
wore it all off; and, in short, to prevent any of my father’s further
importunities, in a few weeks after I resolved to run quite away from
him. However, I did not act quite so hastily as the first heat of my
resolution prompted; but I took my mother at a time when I thought her a
little more pleasant than ordinary, and told her that my thoughts were so
entirely bent upon seeing the world that I should never settle to
anything with resolution enough to go through with it, and my father had
better give me his consent than force me to go without it; that I was now
eighteen years old, which was too late to go apprentice to a trade or
clerk to an attorney; that I was sure if I did I should never serve out
my time, but I should certainly run away from my master before my time
was out, and go to sea; and if she would speak to my father to let me go
one voyage abroad, if I came home again, and did not like it, I would go
no more; and I would promise, by a double diligence, to recover the time
that I had lost.
This put my mother into a great passion; she told me she knew it would be
to no purpose to speak to my father upon any such subject; that he knew
too well what was my interest to give his consent to anything so much for
my hurt; and that she wondered how I could think of any such thing after
the discourse I had had with my father, and such kind and tender
expressions as she knew my father had used to me; and that, in short, if
I would ruin myself, there was no help for me; but I might depend I
should never have their consent to it; that for her part she would not
have so much hand in my destruction; and I should never have it to say
that my mother was willing when my father was not.
Though my mother refused to move it to my father, yet I heard afterwards
that she reported all the discourse to him, and that my father, after
showing a great concern at it, said to her, with a sigh, “That boy might
be happy if he would stay at home; but if he goes abroad, he will be the
most miserable wretch that ever was born: I can give no consent to it.â€
It was not till almost a year after this that I broke loose, though, in
the meantime, I continued obstinately deaf to all proposals of settling
to business, and frequently expostulated with my father and mother about
their being so positively determined against what they knew my
inclinations prompted me to. But being one day at Hull, where I went
casually, and without any purpose of making an elopement at that time;
but, I say, being there, and one of my companions being about to sail to
London in his father’s ship, and prompting me to go with them with the
common allurement of seafaring men, that it should cost me nothing for my
passage, I consulted neither father nor mother any more, nor so much as
sent them word of it; but leaving them to hear of it as they might,
without asking God’s blessing or my father’s, without any consideration
of circumstances or consequences, and in an ill hour, God knows, on the
1st of September 1651, I went on board a ship bound for London. Never
any young adventurer’s misfortunes, I believe, began sooner, or continued
longer than mine. The ship was no sooner out of the Humber than the wind
began to blow and the sea to rise in a most frightful manner; and, as I
had never been at sea before, I was most inexpressibly sick in body and
terrified in mind. I began now seriously to reflect upon what I had
done, and how justly I was overtaken by the judgment of Heaven for my
wicked leaving my father’s house, and abandoning my duty. All the good
counsels of my parents, my father’s tears and my mother’s entreaties,
came now fresh into my mind; and my conscience, which was not yet come to
the pitch of hardness to which it has since, reproached me with the
contempt of advice, and the breach of my duty to God and my father.
All this while the storm increased, and the sea went very high, though
nothing like what I have seen many times since; no, nor what I saw a few
days after; but it was enough to affect me then, who was but a young
sailor, and had never known anything of the matter. I expected every
wave would have swallowed us up, and that every time the ship fell down,
as I thought it did, in the trough or hollow of the sea, we should never
rise more; in this agony of mind, I made many vows and resolutions that
if it would please God to spare my life in this one voyage, if ever I got
once my foot upon dry land again, I would go directly home to my father,
and never set it into a ship again while I lived; that I would take his
advice, and never run myself into such miseries as these any more.
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