Part 3

“All ore that maine the vernant trees abound, Where cedar, cypres, spruce and beech are found. Ash, oake and wal-nut, pines and junipere; The hasel, palme and hundred more are there. Ther’s grasse and hearbs contenting man and beast, On which both deare, and beares, and wolves do feast.”

When he comes to deal with the noble savage, however, his enthusiasm rapidly wanes:--

“They’re wondrous cruell, strangely base and vile, Quickly displeas’d, and hardly reconcil’d; * * * * *

“Whose hayre is cut with greeces, yet a locke Is left; the left side bound up in a knott: * * * * *

“Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin Of deare or bever, with the hayre-side in; * * * * *

“A kind of _pinsen_ keeps their feet from cold, Which after travels they put off, up-fold, Themselves they warme, their ungirt limbes they rest In straw, and houses, like to sties.”

The Rev. William Morell, however, the next year (1624), abandoned both the wilderness and the savages, returning to England; and with him Episcopacy, that exotic in New England, withdrew for many years from these shores. The settlement at Weymouth was not for all that wholly broken up. This statement now admits of conclusive proof; for while previous to Robert Gorges’ arrival at Weymouth the region about Boston Bay had been wholly unoccupied, from that time forward there is evidence of scattered plantations upon its islands and along its shores. The Plymouth annals distinctly state that some few of his people remained behind when he withdrew, and were assisted from thence.[35] Two years later, the next settlers in that vicinity find them still at Wessagusset.[36] Two years later yet they re-appear in history, as we shall presently see. In 1631, or three years later, the persons through whom the place thus re-appears take the oath as freemen on the settlement of Boston.[37] In 1632, Governor Winthrop visited Wessagusset and was liberally entertained by those residing there.[38] The next year, the place is described as a “small village”;[39] and finally, in 1636, it sends as a deputy to the General Court one of those who had been prominent in connection with events there in 1628.[40] There is, therefore, but one year, 1624, unaccounted for, between the Gorges’ settlement and the incorporation of the town in 1635. But the evidence does not stop here. When Captain Gorges returned to England, the records of the Council of New England state that he left his plantation in charge of certain persons, who are referred to as “his servants, and certain other Undertakers and Tenants.”[41] Shortly after, Robert Gorges died and his brother John succeeded to the grant. He undertook to convey a portion of it to one John Oldham, and accordingly wrote to William Blackstone and William Jeffries, two of the settlers on Boston Bay, to put his grantee in possession.

And now we come to a most interesting point in connection with the earliest records of Boston. When Winthrop and his company landed in Charlestown in 1630, they found this William Blackstone already settled on the opposite peninsula in what is now Boston.[42] He had then been there some five or six years, but how he got there or from whence has always been a mystery. There he was, however. Now when John Gorges proposed to make over to Oldham his brother’s grant of land, he naturally would have sent his directions to those “servants,” “undertakers” or “tenants,” who had been left in possession of it by his brother. As a matter of fact he did send his instructions to Blackstone and Jeffries, and the last named then was living at Wessagusset, while both were within the limits of the patent. The inference is difficult to resist that both had belonged to the Gorges settlement,--that one had remained on its site, while the other had moved away about a year after Gorges left to a locality which pleased him better. That Jeffries was settled at Weymouth admits of no question, for when that place next appears in the authentic records of the time it is under a double name, both as Wessagusset and as Jeffries and Burslem’s plantation.

The whole chain of connected evidence, therefore, not only tends to shew the continuing settlement of Weymouth after September, 1623, but it also establishes the strong presumption that Boston itself was first occupied by a straggling recluse from what is now called the village of Old Spain.

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The two hundred and fifty-first year of the consecutive settlement of Weymouth will, therefore, as I conceive, be completed during the month of September next; nor can I find any sufficient authority for the generally accepted statement that an additional body of settlers arrived during the year 1624, from the town of the same name in England, having with them the Rev. Mr. Barnard, who died here after a ministration of eleven years.[43] With the departure of Captain Robert Gorges the Wessagusset settlement practically vanishes from the page of cotemporary history, only to re-appear again four years later in connection with a very famous incident. By one authority only during the intervening time do I find its name mentioned. Mr. Thomas Morton of Merry Mount, he of cobbler atonement memory, refers to it as a place to which he had recourse in winter “to have the benefit of company”;[44] and he seems to have been upon tolerably familiar terms with those living there, as several years after he wrote to William Jeffries, addressing him as “My very good gossip.”[45] These visits of Morton were made between the years 1625 and 1628. Once only does he refer to the place in connection with any clergyman, and then it is with one notorious enough in the early annals, but of a different stripe from what the Rev. Mr. Barnard is supposed to have been.[46] With this single exception, Wessagusset, between 1623 and 1628, is referred to by the chroniclers of the day only as included in several weak and scattered plantations. In 1628, however, it again asserted an existence. It happened in this wise. The year after Captain Robert Gorges had retired in disgust, a certain Captain Wollaston had made his appearance in Boston Bay, in company with several associates, bringing with him a party of hired people with a view to establishing a permanent trading post. He selected, as best adapted for his purpose, the rising ground over against Wessagusset to the north, which in his honor was called Mount Wollaston, the name by which it has ever since been known. This spot had some time previously been the home of Chicatabot, the greatest sagamore of the neighborhood, by whom it had been cleared of trees.[47] He, however, had abandoned it some eight years before, at the time of the great plague. Then, as now, that portion of the bay was very shallow, so that ships could not ride near the shore, nor boats approach it when the tide was out. There was, however, an abundance of beaver in the vicinity, and here Wollaston’s party established itself. After a brief trial, however, Wollaston himself seems to have liked the prospect no better than Captain Gorges, for he departed for Virginia with a portion of his company, leaving the remainder behind in charge of a Mr. Rassdall, one of his partners. Presently he summoned Rassdall to follow him with yet others of the party, and one Mr. Fitcher was left in command of the remainder. Among these was Mr. Thomas Morton. This individual had a very well developed talent for mischief, which speedily found room for exercise at the expense of Lieutenant Fitcher, who was deposed from his command, expelled from the settlement and left to shift for himself with the aid of the neighboring settlers. Then Mount Wollaston became Merry Mount, with Thomas Morton for its presiding genius. According to all showing they seem to have been a drunken, dissolute set, trading with the savages for beaver-skins, holding very questionable relations with the Indian women, and generally leading a wild, reckless existence on the bleak and well-nigh uninhabited New England shore. Their house stood very near the present dwelling of Mr. John Q. Adams, and they scandalized the whole coast by erecting near it a May-pole, which Morton describes as having been some eighty feet in height, with a pair of buckhorns nailed to the top. Upon this pole the retired barrister seems to have been in the custom of fastening copies of verses of his own production, while he and his companions conducted noisy revels about it. All this was bad enough and sufficiently well calculated to stir the gall of the severe elders of Plymouth. But the mischief did not stop here. The business of this precious company, in the intervals of merriment, was to trade; and in conducting their business they were by no means scrupulous. Liquor, fire-arms and ammunition were freely exchanged for furs, and the unsophisticated savage evinced a decided appreciation of the first and a dangerous aptitude in the use of the last. Thus the solitary settlers about Boston harbor soon found themselves in danger of their lives, as they espied armed Indians prowling about their habitations. The trade, however, was so profitable that Morton, regardless of consequences, was preparing to develop it on a larger scale when his neighbors met together and took counsel one with another. The Mount Wollaston settlement was, indeed, the first recorded instance of what in later Massachusetts history is technically known as “a liquor nuisance,” and the neighbors determined that considerations of public safety required that it should be abated. Those were primitive times. They enjoyed few of the advantages of our more developed civilization, and while there were no ladies of the vicinage to wait upon the then lord of Merry Mount in a spirit of prayerful remonstrance, there was also no State constabulary before whom the “rumseller” trembled and fled. As the best substitute for these moral and legal agencies, and after fruitless efforts at reform through written admonishments which the carnal Morton received in a most unsatisfactory spirit of contumely, the men of the vicinage called upon the fathers of Plymouth.[48] These at once despatched the redoubtable Miles Standish to the scene of trouble, with directions to set matters to rights there once more, even as he had done five years before in the days of Pecksuot. Weymouth was the scene of a portion of the succeeding operations, which were of a nature too delightfully humorous to be told in any language except that of the actors and of the time; besides the accounts furnish a very beautiful illustration of the discrepancies in authority which it becomes the painful duty of the historian to reconcile. And first, Thomas Morton shall tell his own story:

“They set upon my honest host [Morton] at a place, called Wessaguscus, where (by accident) they found him. The inhabitants there were in good hope, of the subvertion of the plantation at Mare Mount (which they principally aymed at); and the rather, because mine host was a man that indeavoured to advance the dignity of the Church of England; which they (on the contrary part) would laboure to vilifie; with uncivile terms: enveying against the sacred booke of common prayer, and mine host [Morton] that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family, as a practise of piety....

“In briefe, mine host [Morton] must indure to be their prisoner, untill they could contrive it so, that they might send him for England (as they said), there to suffer according to the merrit of the fact, which they intended to father upon him....

“Much rejoycing was made that they had gotten their cappitall enemy, .... The Conspirators sported themselves at my honest host [Morton], that meant them no hurt; and were so joccund that they feasted their bodies, and fell to tippeling, as if they had obtained a great prize; .... Mine host [Morton] fained greefe: and could not be perswaded either to eate, or drinke, because hee knew emptines would be a meanes to make him as watchfull as the Geese kept in the Roman Cappitall: whereon the contrary part, the conspirators would be so drowsy that hee might have an opportunity to give them a slip, instead of a tester. Six persons of the conspiracy were set to watch him at Wessaguscus: But hee kept waking; and in the dead of night (one lying on the bed, for further suerty,) up gets mine Host [Morton] and got to the second dore that hee was to passe which (notwithstanding the lock) hee got open: and shut it after him with such violence, that it affrighted some of the conspirators.

“The word which was given with an alarme, was, ô he’s gon, he’s gon, what shall we doe, he’s gon? the rest (halfe a sleepe) start up in a maze, and like rames, ran theire heads one at another full butt in the darke.

“Their grand leader Captaine Shrimp [Standish] tooke on most furiously, and tore his clothes for anger, to see the empty nest, and their bird gone. The rest were eager to have torne theire haire from theire heads, but it was so short, that it would give them no hold: .... In the meane time mine Host [Morton] was got home to Ma-re Mount through the woods, eight miles, round about the head of the river Monatoquit, that parted the two Plantations: finding his way by the help of the lightening (for it thundered as he went terribly)....

“Now Captaine Shrimp [Standish] ... takes eight persons more to him, and they imbarque with preparation against Ma-re-Mount.... Now the nine Worthies are approached; and mine Host [Morton] prepared: having intelligence by a Salvage, that hastened in love from Wessaguscus to give him notice of their intent.... The nine Worthies comming before the Denne of this supposed Monster, (this seaven headed hydra, as they termed him) and began like Don Quixote against the Windmill to beate a parly, and to offer quarter (if mine Host [Morton] would yeald).... Yet to save the effusion of so much worthy bloud, as would have issued out of the vaynes of these 9. worthies of New Canaan, if mine Host should have played upon them out at his port holes (for they came within danger like a flocke of wild geese, as if they had bin tayled one to another, as coults to be sold at a faire) mine Host [Morton] was content to yeelde upon quarter; and did capitulate with them: .... But mine Host [Morton] no sooner had set open the dore and issued out: but instantly Captaine Shrimpe [Standish], and the rest of the worthies stepped to him, layd hold of his armes; and had him downe, and so eagerly was every man bent against him (not regarding any agreement made with such a carnall man) that they fell upon him, as if they would have eaten him: ....

“Captaine Shrimpe [Standish] and the rest of the nine worthies, made themselves (by this outragious riot) Masters of mine Hoste [Morton] of Ma-re Mount, and disposed of what hee had at his plantation.”[49]

So much for Mr. Thomas Morton’s account of this “outragious riot;” now let us see what Captain Standish had to say of the affair:

“So they resolved to take Morton by force. The which accordingly was done; but they found him to stand stifly in his defence, having made fast his dors, armed his consorts, set diverse dishes of powder & bullets ready on yᵉ table; and if they had not been over armed with drinke, more hurt might have been done. They som̄aned him to yeeld, but he kept his house, and they could gett nothing but scofes & scorns from him; but at length, fearing they would doe some violence to yᵉ house, he and some of his crue came out, but not to yeeld, but to shoote; but they were so steeld with drinke as their peeces were too heavie for them; him selfe with a carbine (over charged & allmost halfe fild with powder & shote, as was after found) had thought to have shot Captaine Standish; but he stept to him, & put by his peece, & tooke him. Neither was ther any hurte done to any of either side, save yᵗ one was so drunke yᵗ he rane his own nose upon yᵉ pointe of a sword yᵗ one held before him as he entred yᵉ house; but he lost but a litle of his hott blood.”[50]

Whichever of these widely divergent accounts is the more correct, upon one point they both concur, and that is, after all, the vital point, that Morton was arrested, carried to Plymouth and presently sent to England; while the Wollaston settlement was practically broken up, the liquor nuisance abated, and the trade in firearms and ammunition stopped. Peace and security were thus once more restored to Wessagusset, through the agency of Miles Standish. Nor were these blessings won at any unreasonable price, as the whole cost of the expedition was computed at £12 7_s._, of which sum £2 was assessed on the settlers at Wessagusset, and £2 10_s._ on the Plymouth colony.[51]

The destruction of the May-pole at Merry Mount took place in the early days of June, 1628, and just two years later Governor Winthrop arrived in Boston harbor and the consecutive annals of the Massachusetts Bay began. It is yet another two years, however, before we again meet with a mention of Weymouth, still under its Indian name. In August, 1632, Governor Winthrop, in company with the Rev. Mr. Wilson and other notables, took ship at Boston and landed at Wessagusset; and thence the succeeding day the distinguished party started on foot for Plymouth, completing their journey by night. Six days later, on the 31st of the same month, they returned; leaving Plymouth at five in the morning and reaching Wessagusset in the evening, where they passed the night, and finished their journey next morning by water.[52] We have Governor Winthrop’s authority for the assertion that, both going and returning, they were here most hospitably feasted on the turkeys, geese and ducks of the neighborhood.[53] Two years later again Wessagusset was summoned by the General Court to assume charge of one of its pauper inhabitants, who had seen fit to fall ill at Dorchester;[54] and in 1635 the Court established a commission to fix the boundary line between what are now Braintree and Weymouth,--then Mt. Wollaston and Wessagusset. Thus through eleven years, from 1624 to 1635, the early settlers of Weymouth only occasionally emerge from the oblivion of the past and are dimly shadowed on the mirror of New England history. But now, at last, in the year 1635, Wessagusset was by the order of the General Court made a plantation under the name of Weymouth, and the Rev. Mr. Hull, with twenty-one families from England, were allowed to establish themselves here.[55] Why the name of Weymouth was adopted I do not find recorded: it may well have been that the Rev. Mr. Hull and his party came from that place in the old country, but there does not appear to be any ground for asserting such to have been the fact.[56] With Mr. Hull, however, began the long succession of clergymen who ministered to the old first parish, of whom the present incumbent is the thirteenth. In the earlier days of New England the pastorates marked epochs in the history of the towns, much as do the reigns of kings and queens in European annals. Nor indeed were certain of the Weymouth pastorates brief in point of time, for two of them covered the long period of one entire century.

To return, however, to the political history of the town; in the same year (1635) in which it was created a plantation, Weymouth was also authorized to send a deputy to the General Court. The next year three deputies made their appearance instead of one; but, considering the size of the place they represented, the delegation with becoming modesty requested that two of their number might be dismissed, and accordingly Messrs. Bursley and Upham received leave to withdraw.[57] From that time forward, through a space of one hundred and thirty years, the political history of Weymouth moved uneventfully along,--a portion of that of the Province,--rendered noticeable only by some question of boundaries, by fines imposed because of the badness of highways or the insufficiency of the watch-house or carelessness in checking the roving propensities of swine, or by the division of a whale found stranded on its shore, or some other equally trifling incident of municipal government. The tax-collector made his annual visits, and his records seem to show that, as compared with others, the town during its earlier years was neither populous nor wealthy. Its proportion was in the neighborhood of one-fiftieth part of the whole amount levied on the colony, ranging from £4 to £10 each year; but in 1637 came the Pequod War, and during that year Weymouth was assessed for £27 in a total levy of £1,500. The town could not even then be said to rank high on the assessors’ books, being thirteenth in a list of fourteen.

As respects population during the first half century of the existence of Weymouth, there is small material on which to form an estimate. In 1637 a levy of one hundred and sixty men was made to carry on the Pequod War; of these Weymouth furnished five as her contingent. Under the system of computation adopted by the highest authority,[58] this would indicate a total of about five hundred souls, which I am inclined to think was not far from the true number. During the next century and a quarter the increase was very slow, so that in 1776 the population but little exceeded 1,400;[59] indeed, it may be said that during the century and a half which succeeded the Pequod War the increase of the town in numbers scarcely exceeded one-half of one per cent. a year. To the Weymouth of to-day,--with its population of 10,000 souls,--1,400, and much less 500, seems a somewhat sparse settlement. It did not so impress the first inhabitants. On the contrary, in 1642 the townspeople of those days thought themselves so numerous as to render expedient the removal of a portion of their number to a new settlement. This was accordingly determined on, and the Rev. Mr. Newman, the clergyman of the time, to prevent all dispute, offered either to go or to remain as his parishioners should decide. A vote was taken, which resulted in favor of the removing party; with them, therefore, he cast in his lot at the place selected for their settlement, to which the pastor gave the name of Rehoboth, which it still bears. In later years other and larger migrations took place, first to Easton and subsequently to Abington, thus accounting for the slow movement of population in the mother town, which, indeed, between 1740 and 1780 rather tended to diminish than to increase. This condition of affairs, however, in no way disturbed the inhabitants. On the contrary, four years after the Rehoboth secession, the town records under the date of April 6, 1646, contain this singular entry, with the significant words “Stand Good,” written against it in the margin:

“Whereas we find by sad experience the great inconvenience that many times it comes to pass by the permitting of strangers to come into the plantation pretending only to sojourn for a season, but afterwards they have continued a while account themselves inhabitants with us, and so challeng to themselves all such priviledges and immunitys as others do enjoy, who notwithstanding are of little use to advance the public good, but rather many times are troublesome and prove a burden to the plantation, the premises considered, together with the straightness of the place, the number of the people, and the smallness of the trade we yet have amongst us, we the townsmen whose names are subscribed for the prevention of this and the like inconveniencys, have thought good to present to consideration the insuing order to be voted by the whole Towne to stande in force as long as they in wisdome shall see just cause.

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