Part 683

The congregation of John Robinson, at Leyden, having, after long efforts, procured from the London Company for Virginia a patent or grant of land which proved useless to them, and having closed a hard bargain with certain merchants of London who supplied to some limited extent the means necessary for their emigration and settlement (see INDEPENDENTS, OR SEPARATISTS: A. D. 1617-1620), were prepared, in the summer of 1620, to send forth the first pilgrims from their community, across the ocean, seeking freedom in the worship of God. "The means at command provided only for sending a portion of the company; and 'those that stayed, being the greater number, required the pastor to stay with them,' while Elder Brewster accompanied, in the pastor's stead, the almost as numerous minority who were to constitute a church by themselves; and in every church, by Robinson's theories, the 'governing elder,' next in rank to the pastor and the teacher, must be 'apt to teach.' A small ship,—the 'Speedwell,'—of some 60 tons burden, was bought and fitted out in Holland, and early in July those who were ready for the formidable voyage, being 'the youngest and strongest part,' left Leyden for embarkation at Delft-Haven, nearly 20 miles to the southward,—sad at the parting, 'but,' says Bradford, 'they knew that they were pilgrims.' About the middle of the second week of the month the vessel sailed for Southampton, England. On the arrival there they found the 'Mayflower,' a ship of about 180 tons burden, which had been hired in London, awaiting them with their fellow passengers,—partly laborers employed by the merchants, partly Englishmen like-minded with themselves, who were disposed to join the colony. Mr. Weston, also, was there, to represent the merchants; but, when discussion arose about the terms of the contract, he went off in anger, leaving the contract unsigned, and the arrangements so incomplete that the Pilgrims were forced to dispose of sixty pounds' worth of their not abundant stock of provisions to meet absolutely necessary charges. The ships, with perhaps 120 passengers, put to sea about August 5/15, with hopes of the colony being well settled before winter; but the 'Speedwell' was soon pronounced too leaky to proceed without being overhauled, and so both ships put in at Dartmouth, after eight days' sail. Repairs were made, and before the end of another week they started again; but when about a hundred leagues beyond Land's End, Reynolds, the master of the' Speedwell,' declared her in imminent danger of sinking, so that both ships again put about. On reaching Plymouth Harbor it was decided to abandon the smaller vessel, and thus to send back those of the company whom such a succession of mishaps had disheartened. … It was not known till later that the alarm over the 'Speedwell's' condition was owing to deception practised by the master and crew. … At length, on Wednesday, September 6/16, the Mayflower left Plymouth, and nine weeks from the following day, on November 9/19, sighted the eastern coast of the flat, but at that time well-wooded shores of Cape Cod. She took from Plymouth 102 passengers, besides the master and crew; on the voyage one man-servant died and one child was born, making 102 (73 males and 29 females) who reached their destination. Of these, the colony proper consisted of 34 adult males, 18 of them accompanied by their wives and 14 by minor children (20 boys and 8 girls); besides these, there were 3 maid-servants and 19 men-servants, sailors, and craftsmen,—5 of them only half-grown boys,—who were hired for temporary service. Of the 34 men who were the nucleus of the colony, more than half are known to have come from Leyden; in fact, but 4 of the 34 are certainly known to be of the Southampton accessions. … And whither were they bound? As we have seen, a patent was secured in 1619 in Mr. Wincob's name; but 'God so disposed as he never went nor they ever made use of this patent,' says Bradford,—not however making it clear when the intention of colonizing under this instrument was abandoned. {2098} The 'merchant adventurers' while negotiating at Leyden seem to have taken out another patent from the Virginia Company, in February, 1620, in the names of John Peirce and of his associates; and this was more probably the authority under which the Mayflower voyage was undertaken. As the Pilgrims had known before leaving Holland of an intended grant of the northern parts of Virginia to a new company,—the Council for New England,—when they found themselves off Cape Cod, 'the patent they had being for Virginia and not for New England, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do,' they changed the ship's course, with intent, says Bradford, 'to find some place about Hudson's River for their habitation,' and so fulfil the conditions of their patent; but difficulties of navigation and opposition from the master and crew caused the exiles, after half a day's voyage, to retrace their course and seek a resting-place on the nearest shore. … Their radical change of destination exposed the colonists to a new danger. As soon as it was known, some of the hired laborers threatened to break loose (upon landing) from their engagements, and to enjoy full license, as a result of the loss of the authority delegated in the Virginia Company's patent. The necessity of some mode of civil government had been enjoined on the Pilgrims in the farewell letter from their pastor, and was now availed of to restrain these insurgents and to unite visibly the well-affected. A compact, which has often been eulogized as the first written constitution in the world, was drawn up. … Of the 41 signers to this compact, 34 were the adults called above the nucleus of the colony, and seven were servants or hired workmen; the seven remaining adult males of the latter sort were perhaps too ill to sign with the rest (all of them soon died), or the list of signers may be imperfect. This needful preliminary step was taken on Saturday, November 11/21, by which time the Mayflower had rounded the Cape and found shelter in the quiet harbor on which now lies the village of Provincetown; and probably on the same day they 'chose, or rather confirmed,' as Bradford has it, … Mr. John Carver governor for the ensuing year. On the same day an armed delegation visited the neighboring shore, finding no inhabitants. There were no attractions, however, for a permanent settlement, nor even accommodations for a comfortable encampment while such a place was being sought." Some days were spent in exploring Cape Cod Bay, and the harbor since known as Plymouth Bay was chosen for the settlement of the colony. The exploring party landed, as is believed, at the famous Rock, on Monday December 11/21. "Through an unfortunate mistake, originating in the last century, the 22d has been commonly adopted as the true date. … Tradition divides the honor of being the first to step on Plymouth Rock between John Alden and Mary Chilton, but the date of their landing must have been subsequent to December 11 [N. S. 21]." It was not till the end of the week, December 16/26, that the Mayflower was anchored in the chosen haven. "The selection of a site and the preparation of materials, in uncertain weather, delayed till Monday, the 25th [January 4, N. S.] the beginning of 'the first house for common use, to receive them and their goods.' Before the new year, house-lots were assigned to families, and by the middle of January most of the company had left the ship for a home on land."

_F. B. Dexter, The Pilgrim Church and Plymouth Colony (Narrative and Critical History of America, volume 3, chapter 8, with foot-notes)._

"Before the Pilgrims landed, they by a solemn instrument founded the Puritan republic. The tone of this instrument and the success of its authors may afford a lesson to revolutionists who sever the present from the past with the guillotine, fling the illustrious dead out of their tombs, and begin history again with the year one. These men had been wronged as much as the Jacobins. 'In the name of God. Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread Sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain and Ireland, defender of the faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honour of our king and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and of one another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic for our better ordering and preservation, and for the furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to exact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances and acts, constitutions and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet for the general good of the colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.' And then follows the roll of plebeian names, to which the Roll of Battle Abbey is a poor record of nobility. There are points in history at which the spirit which moves the whole shows itself more clearly through the outward frame. This is one of them. Here we are passing from the feudal age of privilege and force to the age of due submission and obedience, to just and equal offices and laws, for our better ordering and preservation. In this political covenant of the Pilgrim fathers lies the American Declaration of Independence. From the American Declaration of Independence was borrowed the French Declaration of the Rights of Man. France, rushing ill-prepared, though with overweening confidence, on the great problems of the eighteenth century, shattered not her own hopes alone, but nearly at the same moment the Puritan Republic, breaking the last slight link that bound it to feudal Europe, and placing modern society firmly and tranquilly on its new foundation. To the free States of America we owe our best assurance that the oldest, the most famous, the most cherished of human institutions are not the life, nor would their fall be the death, of social man; that all which comes of Charlemagne, and all which comes of Constantine, might go to the tombs of Charlemagne and Constantine, and yet social duty and affection, religion and worship, free obedience to good government, free reverence for just laws, continue as before. They who have achieved this have little need to talk of Bunker's Hill."

_Goldwin Smith, On the Foundation of the American Colonies (Lectures on the Study of History)._

ALSO IN: _W. Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation (Massachusetts Historical Society Collection, 4th series, volume 3), book 1._

_Mourt's Relation, or Journal of the Plantation at Plymouth; edited by H. M. Dexter._

_J. S. Barry, History of Massachusetts, volume 1, chapter 3._

{2099}

MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1621. The first year of the Plymouth Colony and its sufferings. The Pierce patent. The naming of Plymouth.

"The labor of providing habitations had scarcely begun, when sickness set in, the consequence of exposure and bad food. Within four months it carried off nearly half their number. Six died in December, eight in January, seventeen in February, and thirteen in March. At one time during the winter, only six or seven had strength enough left to nurse the dying and bury the dead. Destitute of every provision, which the weakness and the daintiness of the invalid require, the sick lay crowded in the unwholesome vessel, or in half-built cabins heaped around with snow-drifts. The rude sailors refused them even a share of those coarse sea-stores which would have given a little variety to their diet, till disease spread among the crew, and the kind ministrations of those whom they had neglected and affronted brought them to a better temper. The dead were interred in a bluff by the water-side, the marks of burial being carefully effaced, lest the natives should discover how the colony had been weakened. … Meantime, courage and fidelity never gave out. The well carried out the dead through the cold and snow, and then hastened back from the burial to wait on the sick; and as the sick began to recover, they took the places of those whose strength had been exhausted." In March, the first intercourse of the colonists with the few natives of the region was opened, through Samoset, a friendly Indian, who had learned from fishermen on the more eastern coast to speak a little English. Soon afterwards, they made a treaty of friendship and alliance with Massasoit, the chief of the nearest tribe, which treaty remained in force for 54 years. On the 5th of April the Mayflower set sail on her homeward voyage, "with scarcely more than half the crew which had navigated her to America, the rest having fallen victims to the epidemic of the winter. … She carried back not one of the emigrants, dispiriting as were the hardships which they had endured, and those they had still in prospect." Soon after the departure of the Mayflower, Carver, the Governor, died. "Bradford was chosen to the vacant office, with Isaac Allerton, at his request, for his Assistant. Forty-six of the colonists of the Mayflower were now dead,—28 out of the 48 adult men. Before the arrival of the second party of emigrants in the autumn, the dead reached the number of 51, and only an equal number survived the first miseries of the enterprise. … Before the winter set in, tidings from England had come, to relieve the long year's lonesomeness; and a welcome addition was made to the sadly diminished number. The Fortune, a vessel of 55 tons' burden, reached Plymouth after a passage of four months, with Cushman and some 30 other emigrants. The men who now arrived outnumbered those of their predecessors who were still living. … Some were old friends of the colonists, at Leyden. Others were persons who added to the moral as well as to the numerical strength of the settlement. But there were not wanting such as became subjects for anxiety and coercion." The Fortune also brought to the colonists a patent from the Council for New England, as it was commonly known—the corporation into which the old Plymouth Company, or North Virginia branch of the Virginia Company, had been transformed (see NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1620-1623). "Upon lands of this corporation Bradford and his companions had sat down without leave, and were of course liable to be summarily expelled. Informed of their position by the return of the Mayflower to England in the spring, their friends obtained from the Council a patent which was brought by the Fortune. It was taken out in the name of 'John Pierce, citizen and cloth-worker of London, and his associates,' with the understanding that it should be held in trust for the Adventurers, of whom Pierce was one. It allowed 100 acres of land to every colonist gone and to go to New England, at a yearly rent of two shillings an acre after seven years. It granted 1,500 acres for public uses, and liberty to 'hawk, fish, and fowl'; to 'truck, trade, and traffic with the savages'; to 'establish such laws and ordinances as are for their better government, and the same, by such officer or officers as they shall by most voices elect and choose, to put in execution'; and 'to encounter, expulse, repel, and resist by force of arms' all intruders. … The instrument was signed for the Council by the Duke of Hamilton, the Duke of Lenox, the Earl of Warwick, Lord Sheffield, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges. … The precise time of the adoption of the name which the settlement has borne since its first year is not known. Plymouth is the name recorded on Smith's map as having been given to the spot by Prince Charles. It seems very likely that the emigrants had with them this map, which had been much circulated. … Morton (Memorial, 56) assigns as a reason for adopting it that 'Plymouth in Old England was the last town they left in their native country, and they received many kindnesses from some Christians there.' In Mourt, 'Plymouth' and 'the now well-defended town of New Plymouth' are used as equivalent. Later, the name Plymouth came to be appropriated to the town, and New Plymouth to the Colony."

_J. G. Palfrey, History of New England, volume 1, chapter 5, and foot-note._

ALSO IN: _J. A. Goodwin, The Pilgrim Republic, chapters 9-16._

_F. Baylies, Historical Memoir of the Colony of New Plymouth, volume 1, chapters 5-6._

_A. Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers._

MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1622-1628. Weston at Wessagusset, Morton at Merrymount, and other settlements.

"During the years immediately following the voyage of the Mayflower, several attempts at settlement were made about the shores of Massachusetts bay. One of the merchant adventurers, Thomas Weston, took it into his head in 1622 to separate from his partners and send out a colony of seventy men on his own account. These men made a settlement at Wessagusset, some twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. They were a disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, and soon got into trouble with the Indians; after a year they were glad to get back to England as best they could, and in this the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them. In June of that same year 1622 there arrived on the scene a picturesque but ill understood personage, Thomas Morton, 'of Clifford's Inn, Gent.,' as he tells on the title-page of his quaint and delightful book, the 'New English Canaan.' Bradford disparagingly says that he 'had been a kind of petiefogger of Furnifell's Inn'; but the churchman Samuel Maverick declares that he was a 'gentleman of good qualitie.' {2100} He was an agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and came with some thirty followers, to make the beginnings of a royalist and Episcopal settlement in the Massachusetts bay, He was naturally regarded with ill favour by the Pilgrims as well as by the later Puritan settlers, and their accounts of him will probably bear taking with a grain or two of salt. In 1625 there came one Captain Wollaston, with a gang of indented white servants, and established himself on the site of the present town of Quincy. Finding this system of industry ill suited to northern agriculture, he carried most of his men off to Virginia, where he sold them. Morton took possession of the site of the settlement, which he called Merrymount. There, according to Bradford, he set up a 'schoole of athisme,' and his men did quaff strong waters and comport themselves 'as if they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddes Flora, or the beastly practices of ye madd Bachanalians.' Charges of atheism have been freely hurled about in all ages. In Morton's case the accusation seems to have been based upon the fact that he used the Book of Common Prayer. His men so far maintained the ancient customs of merry England as to plant a Maypole eighty feet high, about which they frolicked with the redskins, while furthermore they taught them the use of firearms and sold them muskets and rum. This was positively dangerous, and in the summer of 1628 the settlers at Merrymount were dispersed by Miles Standish. Morton was sent to England, but returned the next year, and presently again repaired to Merrymount. By this time other settlements were dotted about the coast. There were a few scattered cottages or cabins at Nantasket and at the mouth of the Piscataqua, while Samuel Maverick had fortified himself on Noddle's Island, and William Blackstone already lived upon the Shawmut peninsula, since called Boston. These two gentlemen were no friends to the Puritans; they were churchmen and representatives of Sir Ferdinando Gorges."

_J. Fiske, The Beginnings of New England, chapter 3._

ALSO IN: _C. F. Adams, Jr., Old Planters about Boston Harbor (Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings, June, 1878)._

_C. F. Adams, Jr., Introduction to Morton's New English Canaan (Prince Society, 1883)._

MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623. Grant to Robert Gorges on the Bay.

See NEW ENGLAND: A. D. 1621-1631.

MASSACHUSETTS: A. D. 1623-1629. Plymouth Colony. Land allotments. Buying freedom from the adventurers at London. The new patent.