About 600 years before the birth of Christ, Nephi had a most remarkable vision of events that would take place more than 2,000 years later.  He saw Columbus and the Gentiles who would follow him to the promised land.

Those Gentiles were my ancestors.  Today we refer to them variously as the Pilgrims, or settlers, or Separatists, and Puritans, or the colonists.  Nephi might also have used those terms, but did not.  He had a different term.  He called them “the Gentiles who had gone forth out of captivity.”  He used that terminology five times in 1 Nephi 13.  (1 Nephi 13: 13, 16, 19, 29, 30).

Given the difficulty of engraving anything on metal plates, one would think that Nephi might have made his job easier by shortening the phrase to simply say “Gentiles.”  But Nephi and the Lord wanted to make a point—the point being that my forefathers were in captivity, and fled to the New World to escape tyranny.

The prophet Alma’s forefathers were also in captivity.  He many times exhorted his sons, and us, to remember the captivity of our fathers.

“I would that ye should do as I have done, in remembering the captivity of our fathers; for they were in bondage, and none could deliver them except it was ... God ...”  (Alma 36:2).

“Yea ... he has also, by his everlasting power, delivered them out of bondage and captivity, from time to time even down to the present day; and I have always retained in remembrance their captivity; yea and ye also ought to retain in remembrance, as I have done, their captivity.”  (Alma 36:29).

It’s profitable that we would do this because our forefathers truly were in captivity, and the freedoms that we enjoy today are because of their sacrifices and the Lord’s deliverance.

My eleventh great grandfather was William Brewster.  He is remembered today as “the ruling elder” among the little group of Pilgrims who fled Europe in 1620 on the Mayflower.

William Brewster was described as “of a very cherfull spirite, very sociable & pleasante amongst his friends, ... peaceable by nature and soft-spoken, of an humble and modest mind, given to depreciating his own ability and overrating that of others.  Toward the poor and unfortunate he was ‘tender-harted,’ with an always open purse to ease their sufferings.  Only those offended him who put on airs and carried themselves haughtily ... Altogether a wise, discreet, and extraordinarily gentle man, Brewster did more in a year to advance the Christian faith and spread the even broader gospel of simple human kindness than most men in a lifetime, patiently ‘doeing ye best he could and walking according to ye light he saw, till ye Lord reveiled further unto him.’”  (Saints and Strangers, by George F. Willison, Reynal & Hitchcock, New York, 1945, pp. 43-44).

In England the good man became disenchanted with Catholicism and what he considered to be its equally odious successor, the Anglican Church.  He and like-minded Separatists began holding their own meetings which brought down upon them the wrath of the established church and also that of king James I.  Many such protesters were put in prison, fined, hung, burned at the stake, or drawn and quartered for being “disobedient in matters of religion.”  (Ibid, pg. 54).

William Brewster was arrested, jailed, and fined $1,000, a huge sum for that day.

A law was passed “forbidding any subject to leave the realm without permission of the Crown.”  (Ibid, pg. 55).  The heavy hands of the church and of the government left Brewster’s friends with the choice of either conforming to the will of the bishops and the king, or of planning an escape to Holland where it was said that there was freedom of religion.  Going to Holland meant abandoning farms and homes, having no way to earn a living in a new country, learning a strange new language, and being in danger of arrest while trying to slip out of England.

But that is what the group elected to do.  To stay in England was both intolerable and dangerous.  Arrangements were made for a ship to pick them up under cover of darkness.  A 60-mile trek on foot was made to the seacoast.  The ship was a day or two late.  The group gratefully boarded the ship, paid the agreed-upon fees, and was promptly betrayed into the hands of the authorities who stripped them of all valuables and hustled them off to jail.

Brewster was bound over to stand trial, but was never indicted, and after a time, released.  A year later, in 1608, Brewster and his companions were able to successfully slip out of England as individuals or in small groups, and arrived in Amsterdam with only the coats on their backs, and with perhaps not a penny in their pockets.

Life was very difficult, but the group helped one another.  William Brewster was enterprising, and believed deeply in his cause.  He worked hard and was eventually able to prosper enough to set up a print shop where he printed a book which was most offensive to the established church.  Copies were sent to England.  The origin of the book was traced to his shop, and Brewster became a wanted man.  He went into hiding.  Authorities hunted him up and down both coasts of the English Channel.  His crime was more than double that committed by a Scottish minister, Alexander Leighton, so we can assume his punishment, if caught, would have been double, too.  Leighton “was sentenced to pay a fine of 100,000 pounds, to be whipped and pilloried ... to have one ear sliced off and his nose split, to have branded upon his forehead the letters ‘SS’ (stirrer of sedition), to be whipped and pilloried again ‘at some conveniente later time,’ to have his other ear cut off, and to be imprisoned for life ...”  (Ibid, pg. 101).

Brewster managed to stay out of the hands of the authorities.  Members of his Pilgrim group (not to be confused with Puritans, who were another group entirely) banded together with a group of strangers, and together were able to assemble sponsors who put them aboard the Mayflower, and sent them to America.  William Brewster somehow managed to slip aboard and became one of the the 102 passengers who made the trip.  His wife, Mary, was also aboard.  Also on board were 30 or more crewmen.  The Separatist group itself numbered only about 41 of the 102.

Because of many unfortunate delays the Mayflower’s departure for America was very late in the season.  It wasn’t until 10 November that land was sighted.  Then there were more delays as a suitable townsite was searched for and finally decided upon.  It wasn’t until Christmas day, six weeks later, that work finally began on constructing the first buildings in the town.

That any of them survived is a miracle.  The weather was bad (though not as bad as most winters), Indians were a constant worry, and sickness was epidemic.  At the time of their greatest distress only six or seven of the group were well enough and strong enough to be up and around and able to care for the rest.  One of these was William Brewster.  (Ibid, pg. 168).  Six died in December, eight in January, 17 in February, and 13 in March, not counting others who died at sea.  At the end of March 1621, the old records state:  “Of a hundred persons, scarce fifty remain, the living scarce able to bury the dead.”  (Ibid, pg 166).  Half of the crew, who were to sail the Mayflower back to England, also perished.

The sacrifices and the suffering of these people is beyond our comprehension.  They were cold and wet and hungry, persecuted, hunted, and hated.  None of them should have survived.  Yet Nephi beheld that they “did humble themselves before the Lord; and the power of the Lord was with them,” and they “were delivered by the power of God.”  (1 Nephi 13: 16, 19).

But what a price they paid!

Here I am in my warm, spacious house with below-zero temperatures and three feet of snow outside.  I have plenty to eat, and can drive 15 miles to church in just 20 minutes where I can worship as I please without the least thought of being hindered in my practice of religion.  I owe these blessings to them.

William Brewster was surely one of the Gentiles seen in vision by Nephi 2,000 years before his birth.

Alma asked a pointed question that we must all carefully consider:

“Have you sufficiently retained in remembrance the captivity of your fathers?  Yea, and have you sufficiently retained in remembrance his mercy and long-suffering towards them?  And moreover, have ye sufficiently retained in remembrance that he has delivered (them) ...?

“Behold, they were in the midst of darkness; nevertheless, their souls were illuminated by the light of the everlasting word; yea, they were encircled about by the bands of death, and the chains of hell, and an everlasting destruction did await them.

“And now I ask of you ... were they destroyed?  Behold, I say unto you, Nay, they were not.

“And again I ask, were the bands ... broken, and the chains of hell which encircled them about, were they loosed?  I say unto you, Yea, they were loosed, and their souls did expand, and they did sing redeeming love.  And I say unto you that they are saved.”  (Alma 5:6-9).

I am grateful to William Brewster and his companions.  I’m grateful for their courage, their steadfast adherence to their principles, and for making it possible for me to be where I am, rather than being in bondage and captivity as they were.  It will be profitable for us to always retain in remembrance the captivity of our fathers.