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RICHARD HENRY DANA. A Biography. With

Portraits Revised Edition. 2 vols, crown 8vo,

gilt top, ^4.00.
THREE EPISODES OF MASSACHUSETTS

HISTORY. With two Maps. 2 vols, crown

8vo, gilt top, $4.00.

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & COMPANY,
Boston and New York.

uention Scanner:
Foldout in Book!

THREE EPISODES OF
MASSACHUSETTS HISTORY

THE SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON BAY

THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY

A STUDY OF CHURCH AND TOWN GOVERNMENT

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS

VOLUME I

BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

(grbe iaitcrsiDe ^Srcsj^, Cambriboc

1892

SECOND EDITION.

The Riverside Press, Cambridge, Mass., U. S. A.
£21ectrotyped and Printed by H. O. Uougbton & Co.

PREFACE.

Fifty years ago, the late Richard Frothingham
undertook to write a history of Charlestown. The
book was published in numbers, which appeared with
sufficient regularity until the narrative reached the
eventful 17th of June, 1775. The author then found
himself irresistibly drawTi from the smaller to the
larger field, and the History of the Siege of Boston
superseded the History of Charlestown, which remains
to this day unfinished.

Eighteen years ago, the town of Weymouth had
occasion to celebrate the two hundred and fiftieth
anniversary of its settlement, and I was invited to de-
liver an historical address in commemoration of the
event. In preparing it, my attention was first drawn
to the early settlement of the region about Boston
Bay ; the rest naturally followed, and step by step I
found myself drawn into a study of the history of the
town in which I lived.

My experience differed from Mr. Frothingham's in
this respect : his narrative enlarged into an episode
of general history after a century and a half of local
history had been covered ; my narrative began with
an episode of general history, — an episode involving

IV PREFACE.

not only mueli of that which is most interesting in the
story of the settlement of ^lassachusetts, but also the
concurrent course of events in England and Scot-
land.

When this part of the narrative was disposed of,
it again immediately merged itself in another episode
of general history, than which none connected with
early New England is more interesting or charac-
teristic, — more dramatic, more curious or more
contested. As Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Thomas
Morton passed off the little local stage. Mistress Anne
Hutchinson and young Sir Henry Vane appeared
upon it. And so they played their parts.

When they disappeared, it might naturally be sup-
posed the slow, uneventful course of local narrative
began. I did not find it so. On the contrary, the
whole succession of events in the quiet Massachu-
setts town, — from the 16th of September, 1639, when
a church was gathered, to the 11th of June, 1888,
when the town voted to become a city, — the whole
succession of these events, with no effort on my part,
— indeed, I might almost say in spite of me, — seemed
to lift itself up until it became sublimated and typi-
cal. It was the story, not of a town, but of a people.

Properly, therefore, and in a narrow sense, this book
is a History of the Town of Quincy, in Massachusetts ;
in reality, it is what its title says, " Three Episodes
of Massachusetts History."

CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS.

Boston, February 1, 1892.

CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

THE SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON BAY.

CHAPTEB PAGE

I. " A New Found Golgotha " 1

II. The Argonauts of Boston Bay . . . .13

III. Squanto's Story 23

rV. Weston's "Rube Fellows" 45

V. The Wessagusset Hanging 69

VI. The Smoking Flax Blood-quenched . . .84
VII. Sir Ferdinando Gorges and the Council for New

England 10.5

VIII. "MoNS Parturiens" 130

IX. The "Ridiculus Mus " 141

X. " Thomas Morton op Clifford's Inn, Gent." . 162

XI. The May-pole of Merry-Mount .... 174

XII. Nantasket and Thomson's Island .... 183

XIII. Morton's Arrest 194

XIV. Boston founded 209

XV. The First Assault on King Charles' Charter 240

XVI. The Assault renewed 268

XVII. Exit Gorges 294

XVIII. The Fate of Sir Ferdinando's "People and

Planters" 321

XIX. Of the Subsequent Fortunes of Thomas Morton,
Walter Bagnall and Edward Gibbons, once
OF Merry-Mount 343

THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY.
I. The Rev. John Wheelwright of " The Mount " . 363
11. Mistress Anne Hutchinson 381

VI CONTENTS OF VOL. I.

III. A Quarrel in a Vestry 407

IV. A Province in a Turmoil 418

V. The Fast-day Sermon 432

VI. A Hou.se divided against Itself .... 451

VII. V^ ViCTis 468

VIII. The Trial of a Seventeenth-century Prophetess 483

IX. The Excommunication 50'J

THE SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON BAY,

THE SETTLEMENT OF BOSTON BAY.

CHAPTER I.

Throughout the years 1616 and 1617 the hand
of death lay heavily on those then dwelling in the
eastern portions of what is now the State of Massa-
chusetts. The savages died, as a writer of that time
phrased it, " like rotten sheep ; " though what particu-
lar form in modern nomenclature the fatal sickness
took has never been ascertained. Those who wrote
about it shortly after called it " a plague," with which
the inhabitants were " sore afflicted ; " but in the sev-
enteenth century the name '' plague " was a conven-
ient one, popularly used in connection with any fatal
epidemic the nature and symptoms of which physicians
did not understand.^ There is no reason to suppose
that the Massachusetts sickness bore any resemblance
to the Black Death, which swept over Europe in the
fourteenth century ; or to the Sweating Sickness,
which ravaged England in the fifteenth. Neither
could it have been the plague of Florence and Lon-

1 See Bradford, 102, 326 ; Johnson, Wonder [Vorking Providence,
16 ; Young, Chron. of Pilg. 183, n.

2 «/l NEW FOUND GOLGOTHA." 1616-17.

don, which Boccaccio and Defoe have described ; for
that seems to have been a disease which, wherever
generated, was incident to the filth of mediaBval cities,
and at home only in the midst of it.

It has been suggested that the epidemic of 1616-17
was a visitation of yellow fever.^ This conjecture is
based chiefly on the description of one of its symptoms,
given long afterwards by Indians, then old, but, at the
time of the sickness, young, who, speaking from dis-
tant recollection, said that '' the bodies all over were
exceeding yellow, both before they died and after-
wards." 2 Yet that it was not the yellow fever is made
clear by two facts : its ravages were confined, as a rule,
to the aborigines, and did not extend to Europeans ;
and, moreover, unlike most forms of plague, so called,
as well as yellow fever, it was not stayed by frost.
This appeared in the course of the winter 1616-17.
During that season a few Europeans were kept on the
coast of Maine. The cold they found intense ; but,
though they " lay in the cabins with those people that
died, some more, some less mightily, not one of them
ever felt their heads to ache while they stayed there." ^
And again, when in 1634 a similar mortality befell
the Indians of the Connecticut, a few Dutch from
New York, who had found their way into those parts
to trade, and were trying to pass the winter there,
almost starved "before they could get away for ice
and snow." ^ Clearly, therefore, whatever the disease
may have been, it was not yellow fever.

Other authorities have, upon the whole, concluded
that it was an epidemic of smaU-pox.^ But this could

1 Barry, i. 25. ^ m. Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 57.

2 I. Mass. Hist. Coll. i. 148. ^ Bradford, 325.

^ Dr. Holmes in the Mass. Hist. So. Lowell Inst. Lectures, 1869,

1616-17. ''AN INFECTIOUS FEVER.'' 3

hardly have been the case. Small-pox was a disease
with which all Englishmen of the seventeenth cen-
tury had a terrible familiarity. Probably one face
in four they laid their eyes on was seamed and pitted
with pock-marks. They knew its every symptom.
They were themselves liable to it. Yet Richard Vines
and his companions, though they " lay in the Cabbins
with those People that dyed," ^ neither had the disease
themselves nor described it as small-pox. Thomas
Dermer, also, a captain who sailed along the coast in
1619-20, and who must have recognized a pock-mark
as soon as he saw it, spoke of the disease as " the
plague ; " though, wrote he, " we might perceive the
sores of some that had escaped, who described the
spots of such as usually die." ^ Nor is this all the evi-
dence against the small-pox hypothesis. When the
disease raged on the Connecticut, in 1634, it also
made its appearance at Plymouth, sweeping away
" many of the Indians from all the places near ad-
joining ; " and now it attacked the Europeans also,
so that Bradford described it as " an infectious fever,
of which many fell very sick, and upwards of twenty
persons died, men and women, besides children." ^
Among these was Deacon Samuel Fuller, the first
New England physician, who had all his mature life
been tending the sick. Dr. Fuller could hardly have
seen the Indians dying of " an infectious fever," and
then have died of it himself among his dying neigh-
bors, and never have identified the malady as small-
pox, if it had been small-j)ox. But in 1633-34 the

p. 261 ; Green, Centennial Address before the Mass. Med. Society^
June 7, 1881, p. 12.

^ Gorg-es, Briefs Narration (Prince Soc. ed.), chap. x.

2 Purchas, iv. 1778. ^ Bradford, 314.

4 ".1 x\EW FOUND GOLGOTHA.'' 1G14.

sinall-pox dill rage among the New England Indians,^
and Bradford, recognizing it at once, gives a fearfully
grapliic account of their sufferings ; and he adds,
''they fear [the small-pox] more than the plague."
This last would seem to be decisive. A man who
had seen both forms of disease, and who was thor-
oughly familiar with small-pox, distinguishes the In-
dian epidemic from it as an " infectious fever," and
as the less dreaded malady of the two. The great
Massachusetts pestilence of 1616-17 could, therefore,
hardly have been small-pox.

Whatever the epidemic was, it made clean work
within the limits of the narrow region to which its
ravages seem to have been confined. In fact, it prac-
tically swept out of existence that entire tribe of the
Algonquin race known as the Massachusetts, while
for the time it apparently left untouched their neigh-
bors, the hostile Tarratines at the north, and the Nar-
ragansetts and Pequots to the south and west.

Before this final calamity fell upon them, all ac-
counts concur in representing the Massachusetts as a
numerous people, and it is even said they were able
to muster in time of war as many as three thousand
fighting men.2 This would indicate a total population
of at least five times that number, and was about the
supposed strength of the Pequots when, twenty years
later, they sustained a not wholly unequal struggle
with the combined colonies of Massachusetts, Plym-
outh and Connecticut. Captain John Smith, who in
161 1 voyaged along the coast trading and exploring,

1 It is a singnlar fact, noted by both Bradford (p. 327) and Win-
throp (i. *120), that the English, who daily ministered to the savages
during this epidemic, did not contract the disease.

2 I. Mass. Hist Coll. I 148.

1614. THE MASSACHUSETTS. o

saw something of the Massachusetts as they then were,
and he describes them as a " goodly, strong and well-
proportioned people," dwelling in a region which im-
pressed itself upon him as " the paradise of all those
parts ; for here are many isles all planted with corn,
groves, mulberries, salvage gardens, and good har-
bors." He speaks of them, also, as " very kind, but
in their fury no less valiant ; for, upon a quarrel we
had with one of them, he only with three others
crossed the harbor of Quonahassit [Cohasset] to cer-
tain rocks whereby we must pass, and there let fly
their arrows for our shot, till we were out of danger."
There can be little doubt that, during this expedi-
tion. Smith entered, and to some extent explored, Bos-
ton Bay, especially its southern portions. His map,
on which Quincy and Weymouth bays are very clearly
indicated, is sufficient evidence of this. But if, as he
says, he found the Massachusetts a " very kind " peo-
ple, they certainly did not always so demean them-
selves. They were savages like the rest, and, as will
presently appear, could upon occasion show themselves
as treacherous as they were cruel; though for that
matter they, too, had their own wrongs to avenge.
The traders along the coast were not only " stuberne
fellows," but rough and lawless as well, and there had
been repeated cases of kidnapping, one at least of
which had been accompanied by unprovoked and
wholesale killing.^ If vessels from unknown shores
had then visited the coast of England or of France,
or were now to sail into the harbors of Massachusetts,
and, on departing, carried off, never to be heard of
again, such visitors as could be enticed on board, it is
safe to say that those coming in other vessels of appar-

1 Bradford, 97 ; Smith, Gen. Hist. 204.

6 "^ NEW FOUND GOLGOTHA:' 1611.

ently similar character thereafter visiting those shores
would not be kindly received. This was the exact case
of the savages of the New England coast ; but his-
tory has recorded not much on their side of the story.
Saying little of their wrongs, it dwells at length on
their treachery, their cruelty, and their extermination.

Smith mentions a French trading-vessel which had
preceded him on the coast in 1614. There are traces
among the early traditions of Boston Bay of two
other vessels of the same nationality ; one of which
was cast away upon Cape Cod, while the other came
into Boston harbor to trade, and did not again leave
it. The dates of these two occurrences cannot be
fixed, but there seems reason to believe that both of
them happened somewhere between the time of
Smith's visit, in 1614, and the breaking out of the pes-
tilence, two years later.

The mariners of the wrecked vessel, it would seem,
succeeded in saving not only their lives, but a consid-
erable portion of their goods and stores, which they
endeavored to conceal on the sandy shores of Cape
Cod. As soon as their presence became known the
savages began to gather, and finally set upon them,
killing all but a few, and compelling the survivors to
disclose the whereabouts of their property. These
survivors were five in number, and their captors dis-
tributed them about in wretched captivity. Sent
from one sachem to another to be made sport of, they
were fed with the food of dogs, while as hewers of
wood and drawers of water they experienced a fate
worse than that of slaves. So Governor Bradford re-
ported ; ^ whether the fate of these unfortunate French
sailors was worse than that of the " silly savages "

1 Bradford, 98.

1614-19. INDIAN CAPTIVES. 1

whom Captain Thomas Hunt, in 1614, kidnapped and
sold at Malaga " for a little private gain for rials of
eight," will never be known. But whether worse or
not, the fate of the Frenchmen was bad enough ; and
it can readily be believed that, first and last, as the
ancient record expresses it, " they weept much." Of
the five, two were at last redeemed from captivity by
Captain Dermer as late as 1619 ; while another, more
fortunate than the rest in respect to the chief into
whose hands he fell, adapted himself to his new con-
ditions, and even had a squaw bestowed upon him, by
whom he left a child. Of yet another there has a
tradition come down through two wholly disconnected
sources ^ that he had saved a book, apparently a copy
of the Bible, in which he often read ; and that finally
he learned enough of their language to rebuke his
tormentors, and to predict for them God's displeasure
and the coming of a race which should destroy them.
Subsequently to the wreck on Cape Cod, the other
of the two French vessels which have been referred to
had found its way into the outer roads of Boston har-
bor, and cast anchor off Peddock's Island.^ While
she lay there, those on board of her apparently wholly
unsuspicious of danger, the savages conceived the idea
of her capture. Several years later one of those con-
cerned in the affair, Pecksuot by name, exultingly
recounted its details to some trembling, half-starved
settlers, whose attention was doubtless not a little
quickened by the well-grounded anticipation of a not
dissimilar fate in near reserve for themselves at the
hands of their informant. It is probable that the
story lost nothing either in the telling or in its long-

1 N. E. Canaan, B. I. ch. iii. (Prince Soc. ed. 131, 132, n.)

2 Ibid. (Prince Soc. ed. 130, n.)

8 "A NEW FOUND GOLGOTHA." 1615.

subsequent repetition ; but there is a vivid pictu-
resqueness about it.^

The plot was no less ingeniously devised than skil-
fully executed. Throwing a quantity of furs into sev-
eral canoes, the savages paddled out to the anchored
vessel. As they approached, their aspect was, as
Smith expresses it, " very kind," and no weapons of
any sort, either bow or arrow, club or hatchet, were
anywhere visible ; but, concealed under their robes
and belted about their loins, they carried their knives.
As they came alongside the trader they flung their
beaver skins upon its deck, and, in the usual way, pro-
ceeded to chaffer for their price ; watching mean-
while, with savage cunning, until they might take
their victims wholly unaware. Then, at a given sig-
nal, the attack began, and they thrust their " knives
in the French mens Bellys." The surprise was com-
plete. Most of the vessel's crew were butchered on
the spot ; but the master, whose name has come down
to us as Ffinch, less fortunate than the others in that
he was only wounded, crawled down into the vessel's
hold, whither his assailants did not dare to follow him.
There for a time he concealed himself. The savages
then cut the cable, and, the tide setting that way,
their prize soon drifted ashore, and " lay upon her
sid and slept ther." Presently the unfortunate mas-
ter, whether overcome by persuasion or driven by hun-
ger, wounds and despair, came up from his place of
refuge. He, too, was then despatched. Subsequently,
after the sachem had divided among his followers
everything easily movable, they destroyed the stranded
vessel, and " it mad a very great fier." A number of
years later, in 1631, an early settler in Dorchester,
1 IV. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 480.

1616-20. A DOOMED RACE. 9

while digging in order to lay the foundations of a
house, turned up some French coins, one of which
bore the date of 1596.^ They were embedded deep
in the soil, and were in all probability part of the pos-
sessions of the unfortunate French mariners, which
subsequently had served a purpose as the ornament of
some Indian woman or the plaything of her child.

The tribe of the Massachusetts was thus in the
full pride of savage manhood when under the very
shadow of their doom. A " tawny " race of " tall
and strong-limbed people," they were the possessors
of " large corn-fields," and dwelt in the plantations
which then covered the islands in Boston Bay. They
felt their strength, and naturally enough exulted in it,
meeting the suggestion of disaster with the boast that
" they were so many, that God could not kill them."
Two years later the pestilence came, and, as if by
magic, " the country was in a manner left void of
inhabitants." Hardly, it was afterwards estimated,
did one in twenty escape ; ^ and though this probably
was an exaggeration, yet an explorer who came upon
the coast after the pestilence, comparing what he then
saw with his recollections of a previous visit, wrote
that as he passed along he found " some ancient plan-
tations, not long since populous, now utterly void." ^
When, also, Samoset came into the settlement at
Plymouth, he told those there to the same effect, that
the place where they were was " called Patuxet, and
that about four years ago all the inhabitants died of
an extraordinary plague, and there [was] neither
man, woman, nor child remaining."

No language of modern description could compare

1 Winthrop, i. *o9. 2 Young, Chron. ofPilg. 258.

8 Prince Soe. Pub. Gorges, i. 219 (n. 276).

10 *M NEW FOUND GOLGOTHA." 1G16-21.

in picturesque vigor with the simple words in which
those who shortly after visited the scene described the
all-pervading character of the mortality, or the com-
pleteness of the destruction it worked. It seems to
have begun its ravages in 1616, and to have worn
itself out, for want of fresh material rather than for
any other cause, in 1617. Five years are not incon-
siderable in the lapse of time, and the scars of distem-
per are, as a rule, rapidly effaced ; while, even if the
shattered nerves of the survivors have in that interval
failed to recover their tone, the dead at least, it might
be supposed, would crumble into the soil. In the
case of the Massachusetts Indians we know, from the
evidence of Robert Cushman,^ that five years later the
spirit of the tribe was crushed, for, writing early in
1622 of its wasted condition, he said that " those that
are left have their courage much abated, and their
countenance is dejected, and they seem as a people
affrighted." Neither had the lapse of those five years
sufficed to obliterate even the physical reminders of
death. The country was not only swept wellnigh
clean of the living, and in some places absolutely
clean, but it was full of bleaching bones. When in
July, 1621, Governor Winslow made the first consid-
erable excursion from Plymouth into the interior, pen-
etrating as far as the northern limits of Rhode Island,
he noted, as he crossed the Taunton River, that the
land was very fertile, and had been for the most part
under cultivation. " Thousands of men," he reported,
" have lived there, which died in a great plague not
long since ; and pity it was and is to see so many
goodly fields, and so well seated, without men to dress
and manure the same." They had perished so rap-

1 Young, Chron. of Pilg. 183, 206, 258.

1622. "A VERY SAD SPECTACKLE." 11

idly, and the terror among the living had been so
great, that they were not '' able to burie one another ;
ther sculs and bones we found in many places lying
still above ground, where their houses and dwellings
had been ; a very sad spectackle to behoidd ; " ^ and
another writer speaks of the wigwams as lying " full
of dead corpses," while ^' howling and much lamenta-
tion was heard among the living, who, being possest
with great feare, of times left their dead unburied." ^

The plague centre would seem to have been Boston
Bay. Apparently there were not more than five hun-
dred inhabitants, of whom some forty were fighting
men, left in all that region, and this handful of sur-
vivors cannot be said to have occupied the country in
any sense of the term. The disease swept the islands
in the harbor wholly clear of inhabitants, and drove
the sachem Chickatabot from his plantation at Pas-
sonagessit, now Mt. Wollaston, overlooking Quincy
Bay. The first white occupant of the abandoned
plantation thus described what he saw in the region
round about during the summer of 1622 : —

" They [had] died on heapes, as they lay in their houses ;
and the living, that were able to shift for themselves, would
runne away and let them dy, and let there Carkases ly above
the ground without buriall. For in a place where many
inhabited, there hath been but one left a live to tell what
became of the rest ; the livinge being (as it seemes) not able
to bury the dead, they were left for Crowes, Kites and ver-
min to pray upon. And the bones and skulls upon the sev-
erall places of their habitations made such a spectacle after
my comming into those partes, that, as I travailed in that
Forrest nere the Massachussets, it seemed to mee a new
found Golgatha." *

1 Bradford, 102. 2 „. Mass. Hist. Coll ii. 66.

^ New English Canaan, Book I. chap, iii (See notes in Prince Soc
ed. 130-134.)

12 "/I NEW FOUND GOLGOTHA:* 1614-16.

And in this way, as that eminent Christian divine
and close student of the precepts of his Master, the
Rev. Cotton Mather, charitably observed eighty years
later, " the woods were almost cleared of those perni-
cious creatures, to make room for a better growth." ^

1 Magnalia, B. I. cli. ii. § 6.

CHAPTER II.

THE ARGONAUTS OF BOSTON BAY.

On the afternoon of the i^ of September, 1621,
shortly before sunset, an open boat, or shallop as it
was then called, entered Boston harbor, coming up
along the shore from the direction of Plymouth. In
it were thirteen men, ten Europeans and three sav-
agesj under the immediate command of Captain Miles
Standish ; and their purpose was to explore the coun-
try in and about Massachusetts Bay, as Boston harbor
was then called, and to open a way to some inter-
course with those inhabiting thereabout.^ The party
had left Plymouth with the ebb tide shortly before
the previous midnight, expecting to reach their des-
tination at a o^ood hour in the mornino- : but the dis-
cs o

tance had proved greater than they supposed, and
their progress slower ; so that the nine leagues upon
which they had calculated seemed to them more like
twenty than the thirteen they really were. Once
within the entrance of the harbor they steered directly
for what looked to them like " the bottom of the bay,"
and came to anchor off Thomson's Island, passing the
night on board the shallop. Either that evening or

1 The account of this expedition is contained in Mourt's Relation,
57-60. This has been reprinted in n. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. 57. Dr.
Young included it in his Chronicles of Plymouth (pp. 224-229) ;
and subsequently, in 1865, the Relation.^ very carefully annotated by
Dr. H. M. Dexter, was made the first publication in the Library of
New England History.

14 THE ARGONAUTS OF BOSTON BAY. Sep.

early the next inornin^, Standish, with others of the
party, hiiided on the island, and named it Trevore,
from William Trevore, one of their number.^

Having left Plymouth Tuesday night and passed
almost the whole of AVednesday in getting to their
destination, it was Thursday, the ^, before Standish
and his companions were ready to extend their ex-
plorations to the mainland. Betimes that morning
they seem to have crossed the narrow channel which

^ The course taken by Standish's party has given rise to much
question among' the commentators. The words used by Mourt are,
"We came into the bottom of the bay." To one accustomed to sail-
ing in Boston harbor and familiar with its entrances, this phrase,
used in connection vnih. a boat coming up from Plymouth and making
the harbor by Point Allerton, can hardly bear a doubtful meaning.
The view from the channel off Point Allerton in the direction of
Thomson's Island is unbroken, while towards Boston it is obstructed
by a succession of islands. Any stranger so entering the harbor in a
small boat would naturally make for the open water near the mouth
of the Xeponset, the apparent " bottom of the bay."

Moreover, Standish had Indian pilots and a distinct destination.
Unquestionably, also, he had Smith's chart of 1614. He was in search
of the principal sachem of the Massachusetts tribe. That tribe he
supposed lived near what Smith had called " the high mountain of
Massachuset," and set down as such on his map. Before the great
pestilence the sachem of the Massachusetts had dwelt at a place
called the Massachusetts Fields. (Young, Chron. of Mass. 305, 395.)
His Indian pilots would naturally have directed Standish's course
towards where they knew these fields were, and in going there he had
Smith's "high mountain" directly before him. The Massachusetts
Fields lay just behind the Squantum headland, in what is now the
town of Quincy ; and Thon^ison's Island is the nearest point to them,
not on the main shore.

In a deposition made long after, in relation to the ownership of
Thomson's Island, Standish stated that he visited this island in com-
pany with William Trevore the year he came into the country. {N.
E. Hist, and Gen. Reg. ix. 248 ) It could only have been on this oc-
casion ; and apparently they must have landed on the island either
the evening of their arrival or early the next morning, as after
that the whole time of the explorers is accounted for in other direc-
tions.

1621. SQUANTUM. 15

separates Thomson's Island from the bold and pictu-
resque promontory of Squantum, and, there landing,
found upon the beach a number of lobsters thrown in
a pile ready to be carried off. Off these they made
a breakfast. This done, Standish posted a couple of
men behind the cliff on the landward side to guard
the shallop, and then went inland looking for inhabit-
ants, taking with him four others, with Squanto, one
of his three Indians, for a guide. The party had not
gone far when they met an Indian woman coming
for the lobsters they had eaten. Giving her some-
thing for them, they questioned her as to the where-
abouts of her people. Though Chickatabot then, and
long afterwards, was the chief sachem on that side of
the Neponset, and is reputed to have lived on a little
cedar-covered hummock, still traditionally known as
the Sachem's Knoll, not far from where they were,
the woman seems to have belonged to the following of
a sagamore called Obbatinewat, who is mentioned in
the early records only in connection with Standish's
present visit. Accordingly it is not known where he
made his home, and at this time he may have been
lurking in the neighborhood of Savin Hill or Dor-
chester Heights. He certainly seems to have been
somewhere north of the Neponset ; for, instead of
guiding the explorers to him, as she would have done
had he been south of that river, the woman pointed
out the place where he was, and then, taking Squanto
with her, left Standish and the others to return to the
shallop. She had apparently come across the bay to
the headland in a canoe. Retracing their steps to
where they had left their boat, Standish and the rest
made haste to follow her.

They found Obbatinewat at the place she had

16 THE ARGONAUTS OF BOSTON BAY. Sep.

pointed out, and, Squanto acting as interpreter, he
described to them apparently how he belonged further
to the north, but added that he was then living in such
mortal terror of the Tarratines that he did not dare
stay long in any fixed place. He further told them
that the Squaw Sachem, by which title he seems to
have designated the widow and successor of Nane-
pashemet, the lately slain chief of the Massachusetts,
was likewise hostile to him. Taking advantage of the
hunted creature's terror, Standish explained to him
how several sachems had already professed allegiance
to King James, and promised that if he would do the
same he should be protected against his enemies.
Obbatinewat readily enough assented to this proposal,
and then offered to guide the explorers to the place,
on the other side by the bay, where the Squaw Sachem
lived. Accordingly, taking him with them on the
shallop, the party made their way among the islands,
the great number of which they now with astonish-
ment seemed first to realize, and entered the inner
harbor. That afternoon they came to anchor, appar-
ently on the Charlestown or Chelsea shore, near the
mouth of the Mystic, and sent out their guides to
look for savages. None were to be found ; and again
the party passed the night on their shallop, appar-
ently not caring to run the risk of sleeping on the
shore.

The next day they landed and pushed up into the
country, in the direction, it would seem, of Medford
and Winchester.^ Presently, after marching about
three miles, they came to an abandoned village ; and,
a mile further on, to the place where Nanepashemet

1 The localities visited by the explorers from this point forward are
very closely followed by Dexter in his notes to Mourt, pp. 127-9.

1621. NANEPASHEMETS HOUSE. 17

had lived, and where his house was still standing, a
description of which they give. In a swamp, not far
from this, they found the dead sachem's stronghold,
being an Indian palisadoed fort, some forty or fifty
feet in diameter, of the usual circular construction,
with a single entrance by means of a bridge crossing
the two ditches, tile one within and the other without;
and " in the midst of this palisado stood the frame of
a house, wherein, being dead, he lay buried."

The explorers went but a mile beyond the stockade.
They had then come to Nanepashemet's home, where
he had been surprised by the Tarratines, about a year
before as it is supposed, and killed. The house, if it
can so be called, was another stockade, much like the
one they had already seen, but standing on a hilltop.
It had not been occupied since the sachem's death.
Here the party stopped, and two of" their guides were
sent out to find the frightened Indians ; for, as they
marched along, it was evident the rumor of their ap-
proach had gone before, and the savages had fled to
their hiding-places, leaving behind them only the poles
of their hastily stripped wigwams, and, in one place,
a pile of corn covered with a mat.

Presently their guides found some Indian women at
a spot not far off, and thither the party went. The
poor creatures had evidently taken refuge there, and
in great alarm were trying to hide themselves, having
brought with them such of their supplies as they could
carry, for the unburied corn lay about in heaps. It
was not without difficulty that their fears were quieted ;
but at last the friendly bearing of the strangers pro-
duced its effect, and the squaws took heart sufficiently
to provide for them such food as they could. No
males had yet been seen ; but at length, after much

18 THE ARGONAUTS OF BOSTON BAY. Sep.

seiuliiig- ami coaxing, a warrior was induced to show
himself, '' shaking and trembling for fear." He, too,
was at last made to understand that the explorers meant
him no harm, but wished rather to trade with him for
his furs, and finally he gained confidence enough to
promise to deal with them. They then asked him as
to the whereabouts of the Squaw Sachem, but on this
point seem to have got little satisfaction. They could
learn nothing except that she was " far from thence."

The day being now spent, the party made ready to
go back to their boat, and Squanto took the opportu-
nity to urge upon them the propriety of plundering
the Indian women of their furs and what little else
they had ; " for, said he, they are a bad people, and
have oft threatened you." To this proposal Stan-
dish and his companions made answer that, were they
never so bad, " we would not wrong them, or give
them any just occasion against us: for their words,
we little weighed them ; but if they once attempted
anything against us, then we would deale far worse
then he desired." By this time the women had grown
very friendly; so friendly, in fact, that they accom-
panied the party the whole distance back to the shal-
lop, where at last the spirit of trade proved so strong
that they even " sold their coats from their backs,
and tied boughs about them, but with great shame-
facedness, for indeed they are more modest than some
of our English women are." Then the explorers, " the
wind coming fair, and having a light moon, set out at
evening, and, through the goodness of God, came safely
home before noon the day following."

The party were gone from Plymouth four days,
from Tuesday midnight to Saturday noon, during
what is now the end of September and early October.

1621. A ^'PARADISEr 19

They had also been most fortunate in their weather ;
and on this point the slowness of the voyage up, and
the wind coming fair with a light moon on the
return, tell, in connection with the season, the whole
story. The record of a weather bureau would only
confirm it. They had first seen Boston harbor with
its islands and the region thereabout during the finest
season of the New England year, — the season of
clear, windless, autumn days, while the leaves, yet
scarlet and golden, are thick on the trees. Every-
thing then conveys a sense of ripeness, with hardly a
suggestion of death, and the atmosphere, mild and yet
exhilarating, hangs like a veil over the landscape,
giving it a soft aspect, in strong contrast with the
sharp-cut brilliancy of the ordinary New England
day. It was during two of these rare days that
Standish and his companions rambled over the Squan-
tum headland and the Medford hills, and along the
shores of the Mystic. In the distance they saw the
Blue Hills, hazy and shadowy against the sky, while
the swelling, forest-clad outline of the nearer land-
scape glowed with a dying verdure. It was not un-
natural, therefore, that when they got home the Plym-
outh shore seemed to them tame and flat, and they
spoke in regretful terms of the broad harbor they had
just seen, and the beautiful region about it, and
wished '' they had been ther seated."

It was now seven years since Smith's visit to that
region. He had been there at a different season of
the year, but had been impressed in the same way,
and had pronounced the vicinity of Boston Bay " the
paradise of all those parts." Otherwise no stronger
contrast could be imagined than between what he re-
ported and what Standish saw ; for, in place of the

20 THE ARGONAUTS OF BOSTON BAY. Sep.

" great troops " of " j:^oo(lly, strong, and well-propor-
tioned people," whom Smith found "very kind, but in
their fury no less valiant," Standish and his compan-
ions could only hunt up the skulking Obbatinewat,
who '' durst not then remaine in any setled place,"
and the poor, cowering wretch who was coaxed in to
them, " shaking and trembling for feare." The is-
lands, too, in the country of the Massachusetts, which
Smith saw planted with cornfields, groves, mulberries,
and salvage gardens, — these islands the Plymouth
explorers reported had been " cleared from end to end,
but the people were all dead or removed."

Many points in Boston harbor bear names of
Plymouth origin. Point Allerton, for instance, com-
memorates Isaac Allerton, who was for many years
deputy-governor under Bradford ; while the Brewsters,
opposite, were so called after the elder of the Plym-
outh church. While it is not known precisely when
these names were given, — whether by the explorers
of 1621, or by others at a later day, — Bradford says
that the Charles River was first identified on this oc-
casion, " supposing that was it which Captaine Smith
in his mapp so named." The island Trevore soon
lost the designation given it by Standish, and has, since
1626, been known a^ Thomson's Island ; but the pe-
ninsula opposite has always retained its original name,
perpetuating the memory of the Indian interpreter
who guided the first party of Europeans that ever set
foot upon it. It has been suggested that it was then
and there called Squantum by Standish or Bradford
or Winslow, just as the name Trevore had been given
a few hours earlier ; but of this there is no evidence.
The name is a familiar one in the Indian dialect,
being that of a god ; by some said to be the good, as

1621. "A SPETIALL INSTRUMENT:' 21

opposed to the evil one, though the word itself would
seem to imply a god of wrath. It may therefore have
been the Indian name for the peninsula from time im-
memorial, just as Nahant was the name of the other
peninsula opposite to it, witho-ut the harbor ; but it
is certain that Squantum has been known by that
name, or as Squanto, ever since the first European
lived near it, and that practically it does perpetuate
the memory of the Indian guide, and not that of the
Indian deity.^

That this should be so is, too, in every way fit and
proper. Squanto has not had his due place in New
England history given to him ; for if human instru-
ments are ever prepared by special providence for a
given work, he was assuredly so prepared for his.
Governor Bradford on behalf of the Pilgrims wrote
his best epitaph in these words : — " [He] was their
interpreter, and was a spetiall instrument sent by God
for their good beyond their expectation. He directed
them how to set their corne, wher to take fish and to
procure other comodities, and was also their pilott to
bring them to unknowne places for their profitt, and
never left them till he dyed." ^

Squanto, in fact, was for a time perhaps the most

^ A derivation of the name, as grotesque and far-fetched as it is
absurd, was at a later period found in the ubiquitous Lover's-leap le-
gend. An Indian woman was supposed to have put an end to herself
by spring-ing- from the bold crag whieh forms the peninsula s east-
ern extremity, and is still known as Squaw Rock. (See Memorial
History of Boston, i. 64.) Thence the name Squaw's Tumble, cor-
rupted into Squantum. Even John Adams, writing in 1762, speaks
of " the high, steep rock from whence the squaw threw herself who
gave the name to the place." Works, ii. 136. See, also, Drake, In-
dians, 106 ; Shurtleff, Boston, 505 ; Young, Chron. of Filg. 191, n. ;
Young, Chron. of Mass. 257 ; iii. Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 176; Wonder
Working Providence, 16 ; Dexter, Mourt, 99, n. ; N. E. Canaan, 93.

2 Bradford, 95.

22 THE ARGONAUTS OF BOSTON BAY. 1621-2.

essential factor to the prolonged existence of the
Plymouth colony, for it was he who showed the starv-
ing and discouraged settlers how to plant and tend
that maize, without their crop of which the famine of
the second winter would have finished those few who
survived the exposure of the first. Not only, also, is
his name perpetuated by a promontory in Quincy
Bay, but the story of his life affords almost the best
introduction possible to an account of the settlement
of the region thereabout. Full of the spirit of the
time, it tastes also of the soil.

CHAPTER III.

SQUANTO'S STORY.

Squanto, or Tisquantum, as he was indiscrimi-
nately called, was of the Pokanoket tribe, which had
once occupied all the region between the Narragan-
setts and the Massachusetts, and had been sufficiently
powerful to hold its own against both. The tradi-
tion ran that at one time it could muster three thou-
sand warriors.^ Squanto was a native of Patuxet, as
Plymouth was called in the Indian dialect. It is not
known when he was born ; but in 1614, when Smith
came to New England, he had in company with hi^n
one Captain Thomas Hunt, who, when Smith set out
on his return voyage, remained behind to load his ves-
sel with dried fish for the Spanish market. When
ready to sail, this man apparently conceived the idea
of supplementing his legitimate cargo by kidnaj^ping
a number of natives, with a view to selling them as
slaves. This he proceeded to do, and, enticing a score
or so of the Pokanokets on board his vessel, put to
sea. Among them was Squanto.^ Off Cape Cod he
later kidnapped others of the Nauset tribe.

1 I. Mass. Hist. Coll. i. 148.

2 The time and place of the kidnapping of Squanto have given the
authorities a great deal of trouble. There are two distinct statements
on the subject. Bradford (p. 95) says he was " carried away with
divers others by one Hunt," and that he was " a native of this place "
(Plymouth). Sii* Ferdinando Gorges, on the other hand, says that Cap-
tain Weymouth happened to come into Plymouth in July, 1605, from

24 SQUANTO'S STORY. 1605^14.

Hunt seems to have then gone to Malaga, where he
proceeded to dispose of his cargo, both dried fish and

his voyage to the Penobscot, " from whence he brought five of the
natives, three of -whose names were Manida, Skettwarroes, and Tas-
quantura, whom I seized upon." (Briefe Narration, ch. ii., Prince
Soc. ed. ii. 8, n.) Accordingly Drake {Book of Indians, 71) says that
" it is impossible that JSir Ferdinando should have been mistaken "
in this matter; and Dr. Dexter (Moiirt, DO, n.), after saying that
Squanto was clearly one of Weymouth's five captives, ventures the
supposition that he somehow got back from the kidnapping of lOOo,
and was kidnapped again in 1614. (JSee, also, Bryant and Gay, United
States, i. 401; Young, Chron. of Pilg. 190, n.)

Nevertheless there can be no doubt that Gorges was mistaken in
his statement, and that the Patuxet savage was not kidnapped at
Pemaquid. In the first place, it is not supposable that a member of
the Pokdnoket tribe would be passing the summer of 1605 in a visit
among his deadly enemies the Tarratines, whose language even was
not intelligible to him (ui. Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 59 ; Palfrey, i. 23, n.),
and be captured as one of a party of them in the way described by
Rosier (iii. Mass. Hist. Coll. viii. 144). In the second place, Gorges
throughout is singularly careless in the references he makes to his
Indians. He mentions by name seven in all. He then, for instance^
in the Brief Eelation, says he sent out two of them, Epenow and
Manawet, with Captain Hobson, in 1614 (ri. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. 5).
Afterwards, in the Briefe Narration, he says he sent out, not two, but
three, and gives their names as Epenow, Assacomet, and Wenape (iii.
Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 60) ; then, two pages further on (p. 62), he includes
Squanto among them. Again he speaks of Epenow as having been
taken with twenty-nine others, who were sold for slaves in Spain, —
very clearly referring to Hunt's proceeding in 1614 (ib. 58) ; and im-
mediately afterwards (p. 60) he says he sent liim out as a guide and
interpreter to an expedition some months earlier in the same year.
Finally, as respects Squanto, Gorges distinctly contradicts himself.
It is in the Briefe Narration, printed in 1658, and written at least as
late as 1637, that he names Tasquantum among the savages captured
by Weymouth. Meanwhile, in the Brief Relation, printed in 1622,
fifteen years nearer the event, he speaks of Tasquantum as ' ' one of
those savages that formerly had been betrayed by the unworthy
Hunt." (n. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. 7.)

Apparently the names of the five Weymouth savages were Manida,
Sketwarroes (iii. Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 50, 51), Assacomet, Wenape
(ib. 60), and Manawet (ii. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. 5). Epenow was a
Martha's Vineyard Indian, kidnapped earlier than 1614 by Captain

1615-19. DERMER'S VOYAGES. 25

Indians ; but before the latter were all sold, the pro-
ceeding came to the notice of the church, when the
priests interfered, seizing upon the savages as heathen
meet for conversion. Whether Squanto was one of
those thus saved from Spanish servitude, or whether
Hunt, finding him useful, kept him in his own hands,
does not appear ; but he is next heard of in England,
where, towards the end of 1614 or the beginning of
1615, he was domesticated in the house of '' the Wor-
shipfull John Slany, of London, Merchant," dwell-
ing in Cheapside, and one of the undertakers and
treasurer of the Newfoundland plantation. By him
Squanto next seems to have been sent out to New-
foundland, probably with Captain John Mason, who
went there as governor, as he was called, though more
properly as the resident business manager of the
company. In 1615 Captain Dermer, an explorer in
Gorges' interest, visited Newfoundland, and there
found Squanto. Talking with him, he received the
usual glowing account which exiled savages are wont
to give of their native places, and conceived a strong
desire to explore the region thus described. Accord-
ingly he wrote to Gorges in relation to the matter,
and, the next year, when he returned to prepare for
his voyage, he took Squanto back to England with
him.

Early in the season of 1619 Dermer, still accom-
panied by Squanto, sailed in one of Gorges' vessels

Edward Harlow (Smith, Gen. Hist. ii. 174), and picked up in London
by one Captain Harley, who carried him to Gorges (ni. Mass. Hist.
Coll. vi. 58). Squanto alone was one of Hunt's victims, and Gorges
first heard of him in Captain Mason's service in Newfoundland, through
Captain Dermer, in 1618 (n. Mass. Hist. Coll. ix. 7). On this point
see, also, the notes (146, 255, 293, 300) in Baxter, Sir Ferdinando
Gorges, in the Prince Society Publications.

26 SQUANTO'S STORY. 1619.

bouiul for the Maine fishing stations. Leaving this
vessel at ]\Ionhegan, they set out on the 19th of May,
in an open five-ton pinnace, and coasted along the
shore to Plymouth. But it was now nearly five years
since the kidnapping of Squanto, and in the mean time
the great plague of 1616-17 had ravaged all those
parts ; so they found the place void of inhabitants.
They were all dead. Leaving Plymouth, Dermer
next touched at Cape Cod, where he redeemed from
captivity one of the French crew shipwrecked there
three years before, and then on the ~ of June he
reached a large island south of that cape. Turning
back, he then returned to Monhegan, arriving at that
place on the |JJ of the same month.

After refitting, and sending home an account of
what he had seen, Dermer now started for Virginia,
still in his pinnace. While off Cape Ann he came
very near being wrecked ; and at Cape Cod he fell
into the hands of the Indians, and barely escaped
with his life, being saved by Squanto, who, as Dermer
wrote, " entreated hard for me." Squanto seems now
to have left him, but apparently only for a short time,
while Dermer himself, having continual trouble with
the natives, went on to Martha's Vineyard. Here he
fell in with Epenow, another of Gorges' Indians, who,
a number of years before, had been kidnapped and
taken to England by Captain Edward Harlow. Un-
like Squanto, Epenow seems to have been an ingrained
savage, crafty and cruel. Being a captive in London,
he had in the summer of 1614 effected his deliverance
in a very clever way ; for, exciting the cupidity of
Gorges and Captain Harley by wonderful stories of
the hidden wealth of his native place, he had induced
them to fit out a vessel on which he went as inter-

1619-20. EPENOW. 27

preter and guide. He was to lay open to them the
mmes of Martha's Vineyard. They were not without
suspicions of the wily fellow, and he was kept under
close watch, being clad " with long garments, fitly to
be laid hold on if occasion should require." Never-
theless, when they reached Martha's Vineyard, and his
friends in their canoes were lying about the vessel, he
suddenly slipped overboard and made his escape, " al-
though he was taken hold of by one of the company ;
yet, being a strong and heavy man, could not be
stayed." A combat ensued, in which the Europeans
do not seem to have had the advantage. "And thus,"
wrote Gorges, " were all my hopes of that particular
made void and frustrate, and they returned without
doing more."

When, therefore, Dermer came to Martha's Vine-
yard in 1619, and there met him, Epenow had been
for five years in the enjoyment of his recovered lib-
erty ; but on this occasion he apparently treated Der-
mer well, giving him, as Dermer himself says, " very
good satisfaction in everything almost I could desire."
Continuing his voyage, the explorer seems to have
passed through Long Island Sound and Hell Gate,
where he was nearly wrecked, and at last reached
Jamestown. There he passed the winter.

The next season, having in the mean time put a deck
to his pinnace. Captain Dermer again sailed for Cape
Cod. Squanto was now certainly with him. Land-
ing on Martha's Vineyard, he once more, according to
Gorges, encountered Epenow, who now showed the
other side of his character. The statement of Gorges
is not to be implicitly accepted ; but whether Epenow
had any connection with the affair or not, Dermer's
party was certainly attacked by the Indians, and all

28 SQUANTO'S STORY. March,

of them killed, excepting one man who had been left
in the boat, and Dermer himself, who was grievously
wounded. In fact. Gorges says, he received fourteen
wounds ; while, according to Bradford, the savages
would have " cut off his head upon the cuddy of hi?
boat, had not the man rescued him with a sword.'
Notwithstanding his hurts he made shift to get to Vir-
ginia, where, to the great discouragement of Gorges,
he subsequently died.^

The conflict between Dermer and the Indians, which
resulted so disastrously for the former, must have
taken place in the summer of 1620, and only a very
few months before the arrival of the Mayflower at
Cape Cod. Bradford says that at the time Squanto
was with Dermer, but it does not ai^pear when he sep-
arated from him. It may have been then ; or he may
have gone back to Virginia with Dermer, and, after
the death of the latter, found his way to his own coun-
try in some trading vessel. In any event, having thus
had no little experience as a voyager along that coast,
he was living in the winter of 1620-1 with the rem-
nants of the Pokanokets within the territory of Mas-
sasoit ; and on Thursday, the -^ of g^, a very fair,
warm day, at about one o'clock in the afternoon, he
walked into the Plymouth settlement in company with
Samoset.

It has already been mentioned ^ that during the five
years of Squanto's absence the pestilence had literally
exterminated his tribe. Scarce any had been left
alive, and he was the only surviving native of Patuxet.
It is probable, therefore, that he now actually felt
more at home among the settlers than among his fel-
lows, and certainly he never afterwards showed the

1 Brief Relation, 19, Prince Soe. ed. i. 219, n. ^ Supra, 26.

1021. MASSASOIT. 29

slightest disposition to return and cast in his lot with
the latter. When he came into the settlement it was
as a sort of herald to announce the coming of Massa-
soit with his train of sixty men ; but the next day,
when the rest went away, he remained, and to good
purpose ; for the Plymouth people had none too much
to eat then, and it probably was in consequence Oi
this painfully apparent fact that " Squanto went at
noone to fish for Eeles. At night he came home
with as many as he could well lift in one hand, which
our people were glad of. They were fat and sweet.
He trod them out with his feete, and so caught them
with his hands, without any other instrument."

Squanto died towards the close of November, 1622,
and his connection with the Plymouth settlement
extended, therefore, over a period of only twenty
months ; but those months covered the crucial period
for Plymouth, and during them his services were in
constant requisition. Early in Apnl, about four
weeks after Squanto made his appearance, the May-
flower sailed for home, and Bradford then goes on to
describe how —

" Afterwards they (as many as were able) began to plant
ther corn, in which servise Squanto stood them in great
stead, showing them both the nianer how to set it, and after
how to dress and tend it. Also he tould them, excepte they
gott fish and set with it (in these old grounds), it would
come to nothing ; and he showed them that in the midle
of Aprill they should have store enough come up the
brooke, by which they begane to build, and taught them how
to take it, and wher to get other provissions necessary for
them ; all which they found true by triall and experience.
Some English seed they sew, as wheat and pease, but it
came not to good."

30 SQUANTO'S STORY. July,

No sooner was it possible to dispense a little with
Squanto's services as a planter than they were called
into requisition as an interpreter for, "haveing in
some sorte ordered their bussines at home," the mag-
istrates bethought themselves of Massasoit's visit to
them in March, and determined to send a return em-
bassy to him with suitable presents. Stephen Hop-
kins and Edward Winslow were made choice of for
this service, and on Monday, i|^ July they set out
under Squanto's guidance, bearing with them as pro-
pitiatory gifts " a Horse-man's coat of red Cotton, and
laced with a slight lace," and a " copper Chayne."
Massasoit's home was on the Narragansett Bay, a
distance of some forty miles from Plymouth by the
road they took, but Squanto, telling the ambassadors
what they should do in each exigency as it arose,
pressed them on so energetically that the journey was
finished betimes on the second day. Then, his work
as guide being done, he acted as interpreter and
master of ceremonies.

" Having delivered our foresayd Message and Presents,
and having put the Coat on his backe, and the Chayne
about his necke, [Massasolt] was not a little proud to be-
hold himself e, and his men also to see their King so bravely
attyred."

This took place on a Wednesday. The next day
Massasoit entertained his guests, and was very ear-
nest with them to stay longer, —

" But wee desired to keepe the Sabboth at home : and
feared we should either be light-headed for want of sleepe,
for what with bad lodging, the Savages barbarous singing
(for they use to sing themselves asleepe), lice and fleas
within doores, and Muskeetoes without, wee could hardly
sleepe all the time of our being there ; we much fearing,

1621. JOHN BILLINGTON. 31

that if wee slioukl stay any longer, we should not be able to
recover home for want of strength. So that on the Fry day
morning [July ^] before Sun-rising we took our leave and
departed."

Bradford adds that the ambassadors " came both
weary and hungrie home," having " found but short
commons." Squanto they had left behind, for Massa-
soit had retained him for the time being, to send
from place to place in search of beaver skins ; so, hav-
ing served as a planter, a guide and an interpreter,
he was now doing active duty as a commercial agent.

A few weeks after the return of Winslow and Hop-
kins, in the early part of August, a boy named John
Billington, the son of one of the settlers, lost himself
in the woods and wandered off in a southerly direc-
tion until he came to an Indian village, at what is
now Sandwich, some twenty miles from Plymouth.
He was thence taken to Eastham, and, his where-
abouts having been discovered by the magistrates
through the aid of Massasoit, it was determined to
send a party to recover him. As usual, Squanto ac-
companied the party as its guide and interpreter, —
Tokamahamon, another Indian, also going along, —
and the next morning they landed at Barnstable.
Here an incident occurred which throws a strong
gleam of light on the kidnapping proceedings of Wey-
mouth, Hunt and the rest along that coast, showing
as it did the harsh afflictions heaped on the doomed
and plague-stricken race. It can be told only in the
words of the historian of the exj^edition : —

" One thing was very grievous unto us at this place ;
There was an old woman, whom we judged to be no lesse
than an hundred yeeres old, which came to see us because
shee never saw English, yet could not behold us without

82 SQUANTO'S STORY. Aug.

breaking forth into great passion, weeping and crying ex-
cessively. We demaunding the reason of it, they told us,
she had three sons, who when master Hunt was in these
parts went aboord his Ship to trade with him, and he car-
ried them Ca])tives into Spaine, (for Tisquantum at that
time was carried away also,) by which meanes shee was de-
prived of the comfort of her children in her old age. . . .
So we gave her some small trifles, which somewhat ap-
peased her."

From Barnstable the party moved along the shore
to Eastbam, and there, remaining on board their boat
as a precaution against any possible hostilities on the
part of the savages, who swarmed in great numbers
about it, they sent Squanto on shore to negotiate for
the return of the lost boy. This he did successfully.

"After Sun-set, Aspinet came with a great traine, and
brought the boy with him, one bearing him through the
water : hee had not lesse then an hundred with him, the
halfe whereof came to the Shallop side unarmed with him,
the other stood aloofe with their bow and arrowes. There
he delivered us the boy, behung with beades, and made
peace with us, wee bestowing a knife on him, and likewise
on another that first entertained the Boy and brought him
thither. So they departed from us."

During this expedition alarming rumors had reached
the ears of those engaged in it of an attack on the
friendly Massasoit by the powerful tribe of Narragan-
setts, who, unreduced in numbers by the great plague
of 1617, occupied the country to the west. It ap-
peared that among Massasoit' s sachems was one called
Corbitant. This chief, more jealous if not more far-
seeing than the rest, did not fancy the neighborhood
of the Plymouth colony, and consequently was now
allying himself with the Narragan setts. Corbitant

1621. HOBAMACK. 33

seems to have appreciated at their true importance
the services Squanto was rendering the Europeans ;
for he declared that if Squanto " were dead, the Eng-
lish had lost their tongue," and, to use the language in
Mourt, he spoke "disdainfully of us, storming at the
Peace between Nauset, Cummaquid and us, and at
Tisquantum the worker of it." Accordingly, with
savage directness, Corbitant sought the first occasion
to destroy Squanto. He did not have long to wait.

At about this time another Indian, Hobamack by
name, had cast in his fortunes with the Europeans.
Though unacquainted with the English tongue, Hoba-
mack proved an important acquisition to the settle-
ment, for among the savages he was a warrior of
known prowess. Later he professed Christianity, and
received an allotment of land in Plymouth ; neither,
more fortunate than Squanto in this respect, has his
fidelity to his new friends ever been called in question,
for "though he was much tempted by enticements,
scoffs, and scorns from the Indians, yet could he
never be gotten from the English, nor from seeking
after their God, but died amongst them, leaving some
good hopes in their hearts that he went to rest."

Shortly after the return of the Eastham expedition
Squanto and Hobamack were despatched among the
Indians to ascertain the facts about the rumored at-
tack on Massasoit. Corbitant, learning of their pres-
ence, surprised them at an Indian settlement some
fourteen miles west of Plymouth, in what is now Mid-
dleborough, and at once proceeded to pick a quarrel
with them, presently drawing his knife ; upon which
Hobamack fled, leaving his companion behind, and
made his way in great terror to Plymouth, where he
appeared, " aU sweating," and spread the news of

34 SQUANTO'S story. 1G21

Squanto's danger. A meeting of the settlers was at
once held, and energetic action decided upon. It was
resolved to send Standish with a strong party of four-
teen men to make a night surprise, with instructions,
if they found that Squanto had indeed been killed,
" to cut off Corbitant's head." Meanwhile they were
also to seize another sachem, of doubtful friendliness,
and hold him as a hostage until definite word could
be obtained as to the safety of Massasoit. The party
set out on the ^ of August, and succeeded the next
night in surprising the village, though they failed to
secure Corbitant, who, it appeared, after threatening
Squanto, had gone away with his followers without in-
juring him. In the panic of the surprise some of the
Indians made an attempt to escape, and were badly
wounded. The next morning, after making loud
proclamation of the vengeance they would inflict on
Corbitant if he did not desist from his acts of hos-
tility, or if Massasoit was injured, Standish and his
party returned to Plymouth, bringing with them the
wounded of the previous night and the rescued Indian.
A month later took place that expedition to Boston
Bay which has already been described, when the pe-
ninsula of Squantum was visited and perhaps so named.
This closed the season; and; being now well recov-
ered in health and strength, the little colony, reaping
the natural fruits of their own prudent energy, or, as
Bradford more piously phrased it, finding that the
Lord was with them in all their ways, began to gather
in their small harvest and to make ready their dwell-
ings against the winter. Thanks chiefly to Squanto,
during all that summer there had been no want felt.
And now, when autumn came, there came with it
great flocks of water-fowl and of wild turkeys, nor did

1621. A CHALLENGE. 35

they want of venison or meal or Indian corn ; " which
made many afterwards write so largly of their plenty
hear to their f reinds in England, which were not fained,
but true reports."

In November the ship Fortune arrived, bringing its
welcome addition to the numbers of the colony ; and,
being immediately loaded, was despatched on her re-
turn voyage a fortnight later. Part of her return
cargo, and apparently the most valuable part of it,
was two hogsheads of beaver and other skins ; and
for these also the settlers were indebted to their Indian
friend, for, as Bradford writes, there was not "any
amongst them that ever saw a beaver skin until they
came hear and were informed by Squanto."

Some time in December, not long after the sailing
of the Fortune, an Indian messenger appeared in the
settlement in company with the friendly Tokamaha-
mon, and inquired for Squanto. It was a messenger
from Canonicus, chief of the Narragan setts. On
being informed that Squanto was not then at home,
the messenger seemed to be rather relieved than other-
wise, and, leaving for him a bundle of new arrows
encased in a rattlesnake's skin, prepared to return at
once, but was detained until the next morning, the
settlers hoping to learn something further. Failing
in that, they then dismissed him, with a threatening
message to his chief, and he took himself off in a vio-
lent storm without tasting food, thankful apparently
to escape with a whole skin. Presently Squanto got
back, and, the arrows being shown him, he was called
upon to interpret their significance. This he did, say-
ing that they and the rattlesnake's skin, sent in that
manner, imported enmity ; that, in fact, it was a chal-
lenge. Thereupon the arrows were taken from the

36 SQUANTO'S STORY. 1621-2.

skin, and the famous return challenge of powder and
shot sent back in it to Canonicus, to that chieftain's
infinite alarm.

Nothing further calculated to excite fears of any-
immediate danger happened at that time, but subse-
quently, so far as Squanto was concerned, these events
assumed another meaning in the minds of the settlers.
The winter wore slowly away. The little settlement
was always in readiness against attack, but there was
comparative plenty in the land, and, with a sufficiency
of food, there was little sickness. That this plenty
was largely due to the active intervention of him who
had "directed them how to set their corne, wher to
take fish, and to procure other comodities," and in
whose death a year later " they had a great loss," the
governor of the colony is witness. Yet Bradford's
testimony has not prevented modern authorities from
reaching the conclusion that all this time " Squanto
was in the interest of Corbitant, and lived among the
English as a spy." ^ This startling conclusion seems
to be based entirely on certain occurrences which be-
fell during the six months between the first visit of
the Plymouth people to Boston Bay in Sej)tember,
1621, and their second visit in the succeeding April.
While those occurrences, as will be seen, do not justify
the inference in regard to Squanto which has been
drawn from them, they do afford a notable illustra-
tion of the innate childishness of the Indian charac-
ter, and of the shrewd cunning with which the Plym-
outh elders played upon it.

Naturally enough, as their earliest friend and in-
terpreter, Squanto plumed himself greatly on his im-
portance to the English settlement, and regarded with
^ Drake, Book of Indians, 103.

1622. AN INDIAN INTRIGUE. 37

no friendly eyes the growing estimate in which Hoba-
mack was there held. Squanto was, in fact, jealous of
Hobamack ; and his jealousy was reciprocated. But
Massasoit was a personage of far more consequence to
the Plymouth people than Squanto even ; and Hoba-
mack stood in much closer relations to Massasoit than
Squanto. His rival, therefore, shone with a borrowed
light most painful to Squanto. Consequently he seems
to have set to work, much as an intriguing boy might
do at school, to undermine both Hobamack and Mas-
sasoit, so as to leave himself supreme in the eyes of
his brother savages as the white man's Indian. His
plot was a perfectly transparent one, and a good occa-
sion for its development presented itself at the time
of the April expedition of 1622, to Boston Bay.

Hobamack had already intimated to the magistrates
his suspicion of the Massachusetts Indians, repeating
rumors as to some alliance between them and the
Narragansetts, and hinting that suspicious whisper-
ings were going on between Squanto and his friends
outside. In this way he .seems by degrees to have
conjured up a conspiracy, with Squanto for the prime
mover in it, the purpose of which was to get Standish
and his party, during the expedition to the Massachu-
setts, away from their boat to some Indian village,
under a pretence of trading, and to fall upon them
there. There is no evidence that any such conspiracy
ever existed except in the jealous brain of Hobamack ;
and indeed the story of the subsequent settlement
of Boston Bay shows very clearly that at this time
it could not have existed. Nevertheless, naturally
enough, considering the remote and oppressive soli-
tude of the Plymouth settlement, the nervousness
proved contagious, and even the magistrates took the

38 SQUANTO'S STORY. April,

alarm so that a meeting of notables was held and the
situation fully discussed. At this meeting Standish's
counsels seem to have prevailed, and a bold, even an
outwardly defiant, course was decided upon. The ex-
pedition to Boston Bay was not to be abandoned or
even postponed ; on the contrary, it was to be sent off
at once, and both Squanto and Hobamack were to go
with it as guides. Accordingly, early in April, Stan-
dish set sail, taking with him ten men and the two
Indians.

Then at last Squanto's plot, the result of his whis-
perings and his mysterious comings and goings, re-
vealed itself. Scarcely had the departing boat
rounded the Gurnet, shaping its course to the north-
ward, than an Indian of Squanto's family, panting
for breath and with the blood trickling from a fresh
wound on his face, came running in from the woods.
Meeting some of the settlers who chanced to be out-
side of the village, and looking back as if he expected
to see the pursuers close at his heels, he called upon
them to get within the defences. He was immedi-
ately taken to Governor Bradford, and made out to say-
that not only the dreaded Corbitant but their sup-
posed friend Massasoit were both close at hand, in
league with a body of Narragansetts to attack the
place in Standish's absence. Immediately the gates
were closed, every one repaired to his post, and three
guns were fired as a signal for the expedition, if still
within hearing, to return. Fortunately, the breeze
having died away, Standish's party had found them-
selves becalmed just beyond the Gurnet, and had
there come to anchor. As soon as they heard the
alarm, therefore, they took to their oars and rowed
back to the town, arming themselves and making
ready for the fight.

1622. A FALSE ALARM. 39

Presently they landed, and the wounded Indian
was confronted with Hobamack. Then the truth began
to leak out. Squanto had not calculated on the dying
away of the wind before he and Hobamack were
fairly off for the Massachusetts, and he had hoped ap-
parently to embroil the settlers and the savages before
matters could be explained, thus kindling " such a
flame as would not easily be quenched." If this was
his plan, the return of Hobamack effectually spoiled
it ; for no sooner did the latter hear the pretended
fugitive's story than he stoutly insisted that it was
false, declaring that, if any such conspiracy as that
alleged reaUy were on foot, he could not but have
known it. Accordingly, as no hostile savages made
their appearance, the alarm gradually subsided, and
Hobamack's squaw was sent out to make her way
to Massasoit's village and ascertain what was going
on. Arriving there, she not only found everything
perfectly quiet, but, apparently without in any way
extenuating Squanto's conduct, she told the sachem
of what had taken place at Plymouth, and thereby
excited his extreme indignation. Squanto's shallow
scheme thus recoiled on himself. His object was,
and is, apparent enough. He had gone about to
breed suspicion and fear between the colonists and
Massasoit. He wanted no rivals near the Plymouth
throne. His conduct was not that of a spy ; indeed,
it showed clearly enough that he was acting in collu-
sion neither with Corbitant nor with Massasoit. He
was simply a very shallow intriguer who had got up
an alarm, the utter groundlessness of which even he
should have seen could not long be concealed. Nat-
urally he was the chief sufferer from it ; for, not only
did it shake the confidence of the settlers in him, but

40 SQUANTO'S STORY. May,

through it he incurred the dangerous enmity of Mas-
sasoit ; and this, as by degrees the advantage he had
taken of the credulity of his less sophisticated fellows
came to light, just failed of costing Squanto his life.

He had " sought his owne ends, and plaid his owne game,
by putting the Indeans in fear, and drawing gifts from
them to enrich himselfe ; making them beleeve he could stur
up warr against whom he would, and make peece for wliom
he would. Yea, he made them beleeve they kept the plague
buried in the ground, and could send it amongs whom they
would, which did much terifie the Indeans, and made them
depend more on him, and seeke more to him than to Mas-
sasoyte.'*

But in the matter of worldly cunning the God-fear-
ing elders of Plymouth, with all their simplicity, were
far more than a match for any savage ; so when, a
little later on, it came to the question of surrendering
Squanto to Massasoit under the provisions of their
treaty with the latter, they contrived to evade the
obligation. At the same time they sedulously stimu-
lated the jealousy between their two Indian guides,
Squanto cleaving to Bradford for protection against
Massasoit, while Hobamack attached himself to Stan-
dish, so that " the governor seemed to countenance the
one, and the captain the other, by which they had bet-
ter intelligence, and made them both more diligent."

The alarm into which Plymouth had been thrown
resulted, therefore, in nothing except the loss to
Squanto of much of the prestige he prized so highly,
for Governor Bradford reproved him sharply, and all
the neighboring Indians were cautioned against giving
any credence to him. Nevertheless he was altogether
too useful a person to be lightly cast off. He could
not yet be spared ; and so, when a few weeks later the

1622. MASSASOIT'S ENMITY. 41

expedition again set out for the Massachusetts, he
went with it. On its return after a successful but
somewhat tempestuous voyage, Massasoit himself was
found to be at Plymouth, having come there to ex-
plain away the suspicions against himself, and at the
same time to take vengeance on Squanto. Governor
Bradford did his best to pacify his savage ally, but
was only very moderately successful in his efforts ;
for, though Massasoit went away himself, he no sooner
got home than he sent back a messenger asking that
Squanto might be put to death. When this request
was not complied with, the persistent savage seems to
have again sent the messenger back to Plymouth, this
time in company with others on a sort of formal em-
bassy, demanding the delivery to them of Squanto in
conformity with the articles of the treaty entered into
between the Plymouth people and himself a year be-
fore. Things now assumed a very serious look for
Squanto. The question of his delivery apparently
rested with Governor Bradford, who seems not only
to have felt the weight of the treaty obligations, but
to have hesitated greatly at the danger of incurring
the enmity of Massasoit as the price of saving to the
settlement even so useful an instrument as its single
interpreter. The Indian messengers would not be put
off; they said that the sachem had sent them there
with his own knife to kill Squanto, and they were en-
joined to bring back his head and hands as evidence
of his death. Seeing that the governor hesitated,
they offered a great number of beaver skins to obtain
his consent. These he declined ; but none the less
Bradford seems to have made up his mind that
Squanto could not be saved, and he even took steps
preparatory to abandoning him to his fate. Squanto

42 SQUANTO'S STORY. May,

meanwhile seems to have demeaned himself in true
Indian fashion. Being sent for, he made no effort to
fly or hide, but came out, and, before the assembled
community and his savage pursuers, boldly accused
Hobamack of being the worker of his overthrow ; and
then yielded himself to the magistrates to be deliv-
ered up or not, as they should decide.

They decided to give him up ; but, just as he was
about to be surrendered into the hands of his execu-
tioners, to the utter amazement of every one a strange
boat was seen in the distance coming out from behind
the Gurnet, and slowly making its way across the har-
bor's mouth. A miracle could hardly have been more
opportune for Squanto, or excited greater surprise
among those who were deliberating over his fate ; for
it was now nearly eighteen months that the little com-
munity had been gazing in their deep isolation to sea^
ward, and once only during that time had their eyes
been gladdened by the gleam of an unfamiliar sail.
So the sudden appearance of a mere boat in the offing
at just this time naturally excited unbounded surprise
and hardly less alarm ; it seemed as if it must have
some hidden connection with Massasoit's demand, and
a rumor crept about the excited and anxious throng
that the boat contained Frenchmen from the Narra-
gansett Bay, allies of the hostile savages; and Gov-
ernor Bradford told the emissaries that he must be
sure what its presence might signify before the pris-
oner could be delivered to them. Fortunately for
Squanto, they had by this time grown impatient ; per-
haps, also, the appearance of the strange sail may
have excited apprehensions in their minds as well ; in
any event, " being mad with rage, and impatient at
delay, they departed in great heat."

1622. A PILOT. 43

Squanto's escape was a narrow one, and due to the
merest chance; for, as will presently be seen, the
strange boat contained merely some pioneers of tlie
party destined a few months later to attempt the first
abortive settlement on the shores of Boston Bay, and
its appearance had no connection with anything then
going on at Plymouth. It was none the less most
opportune, and Massasoit does not seem to have
again attempted to molest Squanto in Plymouth ; and
Squanto took good care that he should have no oppor-
tunity to lay hands on him outside of the settlement.
None the less, Squanto's time was approaching. The
events which have been described took place in May,
1622. In July following, the party arrived which has
just been referred to as attempting the first settlement
on Boston Bay, and established itself there in the
early autumn ; but, as will presently be seen, the im-
providence of those composing it soon brought them
to the verge of starvation. Nor were the Plymouth
people, owing to the shortness of their own harvest,
in position to supply the wants of others. Under
these circumstances, towards the close of 1622, a joint
expedition in search of supplies was agreed upon,
which Squanto undertook to pilot round Cape Cod to
the as yet unvisited south coast. According to his
own account, he had twice before rounded the cape,
once with Dermer, and again, as he asserted, with a
French party of which there is no record. He now
seems to have piloted the expedition safely as far as
the shoals off Orleans, when the angry look of the
ocean in front terrified the master, and he hurriedly
put into Chatham harbor, — Squanto, who had been
there three years before with Dermer, giving some
slight direction. Here the voyage ended. Squanto

44 SQUANTO'S STORY. Nov.

was still confident that he could take the vessel across
the shoals; and in this he had the support of the
natives, who said that large vessels had gone through.
It was accordingly determined to make one more at-
tempt. But it was not to be. Squanto was the staff
and the stay of the expedition, — its pilot, its inter-
preter, its mediator. Without him it was impossible
to proceed further, " because the master's sufficiency
was much doubted, and the season very tempestuous,
and not fit to go upon discovery, having no guide to
direct." And now, in the simple language of Brad-
ford, —

" In this place Squanto fell sick of an Indean feavor,
bleeding much at the nose (which the Indeans take for a
simptome of death), and within a few days dyed ther ; de-
siring the Governor to pray for him, that he might goe to
the Englishmen's God in heaven, and bequeathed sundrie
of his things to sundry of his English freinds, as remem-
brances of his love ; of whom they had a great loss."

CHAPTER IV.

Weston's " rude fellows."

Those in the boat, the sudden appearance of which
off the entrance to Plymouth harbor had saved
Squanto's life, were the forerunners of a larger party
sent out by one Thomas Weston, "a merchant of Lon-
don," to establish a plantation, or trading post, on
the shores of Boston Bay. Thomas Weston was well
known to the Plymouth people, for he had been one
of the active promoters of the commercial enterprise
which had led to their coming to New England, though
his connection with it, being of the pure money-mak-
ing kind, was, as the result showed, to the advantage of
no one. He seems to have been a man of a type not
uncommon in the days of Elizabeth and James L, —
English adventurers, half traders and half explorers,
who probably required the inducement only to ripen
into something closely resembling a freebooter. His
head was full of schemes for deriving great and sud-
den gain from the settlement of the North American
coast, in regard to the possibilities of which he shared
to the full all the sanguine faith of Raleigh, Gorges
and Smith. Though he does not seem to have ever
himself visited the country prior to his coming in the
year 1623, there can be little doubt that he was fa-
miliar with the published accounts of it ; and in all
probability he had been concerned in fishing and
trading ventures to the Banks of Newfoundland and

46 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS:' 1620.

the neighboring coasts. He may have prospered in
them. At all events, in 1620 he was possessed of
some means, and was eager to try his fortune in those
parts in a more systematic way, and, for that time,
on a considerable scale.

He is first mentioned in the early chronicles of the
Plymouth colony in connection with the proposed
transfer of a portion of the Kev. John Robinson's lit-
tle congregation from their place of refuge in Holland
to some point in North America. Weston was then
(1619-20) the treasurer, as well as the agent and mov-
ing spirit, of the company calling itself the Merchant
Adventurers of London. As such, and in its behalf,
he was lookins* about for the material with which to
effect a permanent settlement for trading purposes
somewhere within the Virginia patent. He was not
without personal knowledge of Robinson's people,
having had dealings with certain of them in previ-
ous years ; and, though he could hardly have had
any deep sympathy either with their religious view^s
or their social aspirations, he had in some way be-
friended them. Being now refugees in Holland, they
were considering a scheme of settling under the Dutch
jurisdiction at New Amsterdam, as New York was
then called, when Weston, coming over to Leyden from
London for the purpose, dissuaded them, making, on
the part of the Merchant Adventurers, liberal prom-
ises of aid in both ships and money as inducements for
them to cooperate with him and his associates. Sub-
sequently the negotiation was transferred to London ;
but it did not move smoothly, and it required Mr.
Treasurer Weston's utmost efforts to save the project
from complete abandonment. His associates among
the Merchant Adventurers evidently had no confi-

1620. THE MAYFLOWER. 47

dence in it, and, under one pretence or another, with-
drew their support. He was himself, in his utter dis-
couragement and disgust, repeatedly on the point of
doing the same; and if he had, there can be little doubt
that the Plymouth settlement would not have been
effected when and where it was. Thus, whether what
is now one of its most striking pages was to be alto-
gether omitted from the history of America, depended
through long weeks of the spring and summer of 1620
on the wavering action of a London trader and specu-
lator, — vulgar, obscure and mercenary.

But at last, seeing the extent to which both himself
and the Leyden exiles were involved, Weston, in the
words of Governor Bradford, " gathered up himself a
litle more," and in conjunction with Robert Cushman,
the agent of the exiles in London, took the decisive
step of chartering the Mayflower. It was already
the middle of June, and six weeks more of " going up
and downe, and wrangling and expostulating," were
to try the patience of all before the Speedwell, on
what is now the first day of August (1620), was got
under weigh at Delft-Haven to join the Mayflower at
Southampton, where the final details of the joint con-
tract between the parties to the enterprise were to be
agreed upon. A paper had been drawn up at an
early stage of the negotiation, in which the amounts
to be contributed and the rights reserved on each ^le
had been set down ; but Weston and his associates
were disposed to take every advantage they could of
the necessities of the Leyden people. Step by step
their demands became unconscionable, and Cushman,
acting under a conviction that his so doing was abso-
lutely necessary to secure their further cooperation,
assumed the responsibility of altering the preliminary

48 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS." 1G20-1.

agreement in several important respects. Though
Carver was in England at the time with Cushman, the
changes thus assented to by the latter do not seem
to have come to his knowledge, or been communicated
to the others, until the whole outward bound party
reached Southampton ; then they refused point-blank
to approve the agreement as altered. Weston, there-
upon deeply incensed, returned to London, after
plainly notifying the emigrants that they need look
for no further assistance from those whom he repre-
sented, but must now " stand on their owne leggs."
He was as good as his word ; and this, their first diffi-
culty with Thomas Weston, cost the Pilgrims dear;
for, being in sad w^ant of funds and wholly unable to
wait, they were compelled, in order to go on with their
voyage, to sell a part of their stores, finally setting
out with scarcely " any butter, no oyle, not a sole to
mend a shoe, nor every man a sword to his side,
wanting many muskets, much armoure, &c."

At last, though not until after what is now the
middle of September, the Mayflower got finally well
under weigh. Weston seems then to have waited in
the firm belief that the lapse of a few weeks would
witness her return, freighted with the products of the
New World ; but it was eight long months before she
brought back anything from Plymouth, and then
noAing more substantial than tidings. Those whom
she carried out, struggling through the long winter
against disease, due to want and aggravated by expo-
sure, — seeing in the vast, dark wilderness which sur-
rounded and crushed them not even the face of a sav-
age, — had naturally found little opportunity to trade.
This, Weston in no way realized ; and accordingly by
the next vessel, the Fortune, which set sail in July,

1621. A HARSH REBUKE. 49

a few weeks after the return of the Mayflower, he did
not fail to send out a long letter in which he again
recounted his grounds of complaint. Especially did
he dwell on the return of the Mayflower empty, —
the last, and in his eyes the most inexcusable, short-
coming of the Pilgrims.

" That you sent," he wrote, " no lading in the ship is
wonderfull, and worthily distasted. I know your weaknes
was the cause of it, and I beleeve more weaknes of judg-
mente then weaknes of hands. A quarter of the time you
spente in discoursing, arguing and consulting would have
done much more. . . . And consider that the life of the
bussines depends on the lading of this ship, which, if you
doe to any good purpose, that I may be freed from the
great sums I have disbursed for the former, and must doe
for the later, I promise you I wiU never quit the bussines,
though all the other adventurers should."

The vulgar adventurer addressed this harsh rebuke
to the gentle and high-minded Carver ; but, when he
wrote it, Carver had been already three months dead.
Bradford had succeeded him as governor, and as such
he returned to Weston's missive a pathetic and digni-
fied reply : —

" At great charges in this adventure, I confess you have
beene, and many losses may sustaine ; but the loss of his
[Carver] and many other honest and industrious mens lives
cannot be vallewed at any prise. Of the one, ther may be
hope of recovery, but the other no recompence can make
good. But I will not insiste in generalls, but come more
perticulerly to the things themselves. You greatly blame
us for keping the ship so long in the countrie, and then to
send her away emptie. She lay five weks at Caj^-Codd,
whilst with many a weary step (after a long journey) and
the indurance of many a hard brunte, we sought out in the
foule winter a place of habitation. Then we went in so

50 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS^ 1621.

tedious a time to make provission to sheelter us and our
goods, aboute wliicli labour many of our amies and leggs can
tell us to this day we were not necligent. But it pleased
God to vissite us then, with death dayly, and with so generall
a disease, that the living were scarce able to burie the dead ;
and the well not in any measure sufficiente to tend the sick.
And now to be so greatly blamed, for not fraighting the
shij), doth indeed goe near us, and much discourage us.
But you say you know we will pretend weaknes ; and doe
you think we had not cause ? Yes, you tell us you beleeve
it, but it was more weaknes of judgmente, then of hands.
Our weaknes herin is great we confess, therefore we will
bear this check patiently amongst the rest, till God send us
wiser men. But they which tould you we spent so much
time in discoursing and consulting, &c., their harts can tell
their toungs, they lye."

At the close of the letter to which this was the
reply, Weston had called upon the settlers to assent
to the agreement, about the terms of which there had
been so much dispute at Southampton. Cushman,
who had come over in the Fortune and seems always
to have acted with Weston, urged them to comply,
and he was supported by letters from those at Ley-
den : so at last, in the hope of getting further aid in
their present sore need, Bradford and the rest yielded
the points at issue. They signed their names to the
amended agreement, and sent it out by the Fortune,
which was despatched on her return voyage upon the
13th of December ; nor, in their eager desire to con-
ciliate their London partners, did they fail to find a
return carsro for her. She went back loaded with
clapboards, besides two hogsheads filled with the skins
of the beaver and otter. But so far as Weston was
concerned, both the signing of the agreement and the
strenuous effort to load the vessel resulted in nothing ;

1622. A PIONEER PARTY. 51

for, in spite of his strong assurances of continued aid,
**h* was the first and only man that forsook them,
and that before he so much as heard of the return of
this ship or knew what was done."

It was the middle of February, 1621-2, before the
Fortune reached England, and Weston had then al-
ready severed his connection with the Merchant Ad-
venturers. The cause of his so doing is neither clear
nor of moment, though there would seem to have been
trouble in the organization, and a probably not un-
founded distrust of Treasurer Weston. He, too, was
evidently alarmed at the extent to which he had per-
sonally become involved in the Plymouth enterprise,
and was not indisposed to secure himself from loss,
— if need be, at the cost of his partners. His idea
seems to have been to send out a private expedition
of his own, with a view to reaping the benefit, on his
individual account, of whatever those of Plymouth
had acquired in the way either of experience or of
profit. Accordingly, as early as January, 1621-2,
he and one other of the Adventurers, a Mr. Beau-
champ by name, purchased a small vessel, called the
Sparrow, and fitted her out for a fishing and trading
voyage ; designing her to be the forerunner of a more
considerable expedition which they proposed to send
out a few weeks later. The company on board the
Sparrow included a few men who were engaged to
leave the vessel on her arrival at the fishing stations
on the coast of Maine, and thence to find their way
by boat to Plymouth, looking up as they went along
some convenient place in which to fix a settlement.

The Sparrow arrived at the Damariscove Islands
early in May, and the party destined for Plymouth
prepared to finish their voyage in an open boat.^ The
1 IV. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 478.

52 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS:' May,

reckless want of foresight which characterized all
Weston's undertakings then became manifest,*- for
none of the men composing this party knew anything
of the coast they were to skirt along, nor had any-
pilot been provided. Not only were they expected to
find their own way to Plymouth, but it had been taken
for granted that they would there be supplied with
whatever they might need until the arrival of the main
expedition. The master of the Sparrow not being able
to procure any pilot, his mate, who seems to have been
a dare-devil English sailor, volunteered, and under his
guidance the pioneers set out. They touched at the
Isles of Shoals, and then at Cape Ann. Thence they
struck across to Massachusetts, or Boston, Bay, where
they passed some four or five days exploring. They
now selected for the proposed plantation a site on the
south side of the bay, as in that vicinity they found
the fewest natives ; and then, becoming gradually op-
pressed by the vastness of the surrounding solitude,
which day by day seemed to bring home to them a
more realizing sense of the smallness of their own
number, the party determined to go on to Plymouth.
From lack of acquaintance with the coast the har-
bor's mouth was missed ; but, as the boat was crossing
from the Gurnet to Manomet, it was sighted in the
offing, and guns were fired as a signal. Hearing
them, the adventurers changed their course and stood
in. They had arrived just in time to be the acciden-
tal means of saving Squanto's life, in the way already
described.

The sense of relief at Plymouth was naturally great
when -it became known that the sudden apparition of
the strange boat had no connection with any Indian
troubles. Those who came in it, too, brought letters

1622. SHORT COMMONS. 63

and tidiugs from home, thus breaking a silence of
nearly a year ; so, destitute though the newcomers
were, they were cordially welcomed by the scarcely less
destitute settlers. But the letters, long looked for,
were found, when read, to contain cold comfort, — so
cold, indeed, that the magistrates kept it to themselves.
They brought tidings of dissension among the Mer-
chant Adventurers, and made it plain that little fur-
ther assistance was to be looked for from that source.
There was also a vagueness, a " shufling" as Bradford
expressed it, in the tone of these letters, suggestive
of something underhand ; while Weston's scheme for
securing to himself, by means of another and rival
settlement, the fruits of their own patient endurance,
was but thinly veiled under professions of friendliness
and mutual assistance.

Nevertheless, for the time being there was but one
thing to do. It was out of the question to bid the
newcomers be gone; so they were kindly received,
and still further reduced the short commons then pre-
vailing at Plymouth. Indeed, the immediate necessi-
ties were at this time so pressing that it was decided a
party under Edward WinsloW should accompany the
Sparrow's shallop on its return to the Damariscove
fishing stations, and endeavor there to procure some
supplies. Nor was this mission wholly unsuccessful.
The fishing vessels were, it was true, not over-well
provided themselves ; but the story of want and pa-
tient endurance, now told, so moved the not over-ac-
tive sympathies of the rough mariners that they vied
with each other in sending the settlers, without price,
everything they could possibly spare ; and the provi-
sion thus obtained sufficed, when doled out under the
careful husbanding of the magistrates, to keep the

64 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS." 1622.

settlement alive until after the harvest. Besides sav-
ing Squanto's life, therefore, the arrival of Weston's
shallop had served still another useful end. It was a
revelation, as it were, to the Plymouth people of a
new and before apparently undreamed-of means of
communication with mankind. The Damariscove sta-
tions were only some forty leagues from Plymouth,
and each season they were resorted to by as many as
thirty sail. The forlorn Pilgrims now for the first
time learned their way thither. Subsequently they
not only opened through this channel a tolerably reg-
ular intercourse with their friends in London and
Leyden, but at a somewhat later day they established
a permanent station of their own on the Kennebec,
where Augusta now is, and there for years carried on
a profitable trade.

Meanwhile, in London, his associates in the Mer-
chant Adventurers had got rid of Weston by buying
out his interest in the company, and he was busy fit-
ting out his own expedition ; though, as usual, with
more energy than judgment. He bought two vessels,
the Charity, of one hundred tons, and the Swan, of
thirty. His plan was to have the Charity make voy-
ages to and fro across the Atlantic ; she was to carry
men and supplies out, bringing back fish, furs and the
other products of his New England El Dorado. The
smaller vessel meanwhile was to remain at his pro-
posed settlement, to enable his agents there the better
to trade along the coast. So far his scheme was well
devised ; but, when it came to organizing it, he showed
both lack of discretion and complete ignorance of the
conditions essential to success. Himself an ingrained
adventurer, eager for gain and over-confident in all
things, he was out of all patience with the discoursing,

1622. ''STOUT KNAVES." ' 55

arguing and consulting of the Plymouth people. He
cared nothing for religious freedom in the present,
or an empire's future growth. What he wanted was
trade ; and he wanted it now. He was convinced, ac-
cordingly, that the Ley den expedition had been made
up of unsuitable material, and organized on a wrong
plan. Not only had it been encumbered with women
and children, but its material outlook had been subor-
dinated to religious considerations. In his own enter-
prise he proposed to have no repetition of these mis-
takes. No families, no women and children, were to
be sent out ; only able-bodied men. These, too, were
to be under the immediate direction of his own agents,
who were to have a constant eye to trade, and trade
alone.

As he did not propose to go out himself until an-
other year, he put the expedition under the charge of
his brother Andrew, and his brother-in-law, one Rich-
ard Greene. Of Greene nothing is known. Andrew
Weston is described ^ as a headstrong, hot-tempered
young fellow, very prejudiced, on his brother's ac-
count, against both the Plymouth people and the
Merchant Adventurers. Clearly he was without ex-
perience, and in no way fitted for the work in hand.

Having thus provided a head for his enterprise,
Weston next went to work on its bone and sinew.
Apparently he proceeded much after the fashion of a
recruiting-officer, or some ship-agent picking up a
large crew, for he seems to have sent out into the
streets and alleys of London, and engaged all the
able-bodied men who, having nothing else to do, of-
fered themselves. He himself referred to his com-
pany as being largely made up of "rude fellows,"

1 Bradford, 120.

66 WESTON'S "RUDE FELLOWS." 1622.

whose profaneness might scandalize their outward
voyage ; while Thomas Morton, who probably accom-
panied the party, described them as " stout knaves "
and "men made choice of at all adventures," or, in
other words, as a gang of vagabonds collected at hap-
hazard.i Meanwhile the London correspondents of
the Plymouth people took care to advise them of the
impending visitation.

As it was Weston's plan to trade exclusively on his
own account, it was obviously his interest to cultivate
friendly relations with the colonists, for if possible he
wanted to prevent their looking upon his enterprise
as in any way antagonistic to their own. Accordingly
he seems to have tried to prevent any letters or infor-
mation reaching those at Plymouth by his vessels ;
but, in this, he was overreached by two of his former
associates in the company of Merchant Adventurers,
Edward Pickering and William Greene, who, getting
hold of one of his men, induced him to take charge
of a letter from them to Bradford, warning the latter
of Weston's probable design, and of the low and
mercenary character of his people. For the purpose
of more surely concealing this missive, its bearer was
directed to buy a pair of shoes, and sew it in between
the soles. In some way Weston got wind of the
thing and intercepted the letter, which he did not
hesitate to open and read,^ and there found himself
described as one whom his former associates in the

1 N. E. Canaan, 106, 117.

2 It will not do to regard the opening of this letter as additional
evidence of Weston's low and unscrupulous character. That method
of gaining information seems in the seventeenth century to have been
regarded as perfectly justifiable. On certain noteworthy occasions
neither Bradford nor Governor Winthrop hesitated to have recourse
to it. (See Bradford, 173, and Winthrop, i. *57.)

1622. "A GOOD PAWNE." 67

Merchant Adventurers' Company were glad to be rid
of, — " being a man that thought himselfe above the
general!, and not expresing so much the fear of God
as was meete," — while his brother Andrew was set
down as " a heady yong man, and violente." His
purpose, it was further explained, was to get anything
which might be in readiness for shipment at Plymouth
into his vessels, and to appropriate it to his own use.
Though he opened this letter, Weston neither sup-
pressed nor destroyed it. On the contrary, content-
ing himself with an indignant denial of the impu-
tations on his purpose and good faith, he forwarded
letter and commentary together to those to whom the
first was addressed. One other letter was also smug:-
gled over at the same time. It was from Robert
Cushman to Governor Bradford, though it had the
appearance of being written by a wife in England to
her husband at Plymouth, and found its way to its
destination without being intercepted. It confirmed
the warning intimations of Pickering and Greene. In
this letter, too, Weston's former ally, not to say tool,
in his hagglings with the Plymouth people, evinced a
shrewd, trading instinct altogether in advance of any-
thing of the sort which Weston was disposed to con-
cede to his old associates. Said he : — " If they [Wes-
ton's people] off err to buy anything of you, let it be
shuch as you can spare, and let them give the worth
of it. If they borrow anything of you, let them leave
a good pawne." On the back of the same letter was
a postscript from another friendly hand, in which the
estimate held by Weston and Morton of those com-
posing their company was further confirmed ; the writer
describing them as " so base in condition (for the most
parte) as in aU apearance not fitt for an honest mans
company."

68 WESTON'S "RUDE FELLOWS:' June,

The fact of Weston's forwarding the letter from
Pickering and Greene after it once came into his
hands is strong evidence that he never had any such
knavish phm as they imputed to him. It would rather
seem to have been his purpose from the beginning to
establish a plantation and private trading-post some-
where in what was then known as the Massachusetts
Bay ; and he certainly had a patent covering a grant
of territory there, obtained probably, though it is not
extant and nothing is now known regarding it, from
the Council for New England. Bradford says that
Weston's attention had been drawn to Boston Bay
through letters from Plymouth in which Standish's
September explorations there had been described. He
had also undoubtedly heard of it from William Tre-
vore. This man, it will be remembered, was among
Standish's companions in the expedition of 1621. He
had come out in the Mayflower, not as one of the
Plymouth company, but under an engagement to stay
in the country a year ; and, his year ending in No-
vember, 1621, he returned to England on the Fortune,
reaching London some time in February, 1621-2.
The Sparrow, carrying Weston's advanced party, had
sailed a month before, and the Charity and Swan, with
his main company, followed about two months later.
In all probability, therefore, Weston's patent was taken
out in March in consequence of information obtained
from Trevore, who at about the same time also de-
scribed the places he had visited to David Thomson,
an agent of the Council for New England, likewise
then turning over in his mind a plan of emigration.^
There can, accordingly, be little doubt that Weston's
expedition was destined to Boston Bay; and it may
1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. May, 1876, 361, 373.

1622. THREESCORE ''LUSTY'' MEN. 59

even have been something more than chance which,
during the mouth of May, carried to those parts the
advance party from the Sparrow, though they un-
doubtedly had left England before any news of Stan-
dish's explorations could have reached there.

The Charity and the Swan left London in company
about the middle of April, 1622, and reached Plym-
outh towards the end of June, or during the early
days of July. Andrew Weston was apparently in
charge of the larger ship ; and there is reason to sup-
pose that he took with him Thomas Morton, already
mentioned, a sport-loving lawyer of Clifford's Inn, as
well as a born adventurer and humorist. The Char-
ity was bound for Virginia as well as Plymouth;
and, stopping at the latter place only long enough to
land her portion of the threescore " lusty " men
who made up the body of Weston's company, she pro-
ceeded on her voyage. Whether Andrew Weston
went in her docs not appear ; but Richard Greene re-
mained at Plymouth, and speedily started off in the
Swan to Boston Bay for the purpose of there arrang-
ing for the reception of the others, while Morton, who
had also remained, apparently accompanied him.^
The great body of their followers they left at Plym-
outh, where they soon began to show themselves for
what they were, — a helpless, improvident, and un-
ruly crew. A number of them were sick and required
to be nursed, — a new burden imposed upon the al-
ready overworked women, — while the rest developed

1 Morton's statement is as follows : " In the Moneth of lune,
Anno Saliitis 1G22, it was my chaunce to arrive in the parts of New
Eng-land with 30. Servants, and provision of all sorts fit for a plan-
tation : and whiles our howses were huilding-, I did indeavour to take
a survey of the Country." {New English Canaan, 59; see, also,
Prince Soc. ed. 6.)

60 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS.'' July,

a decided disinclination for labor, combined (for it
was now July) with a marked appreciation of Indian
corn, which they found, though green and unprofit-
able, very " eatable and pleasant to taste ; " not that
those who planted the corn were negligent in watch-
ing it, or that the magistrates were slow in meting out
punishment to the transgressors, but, " though many
were well whipt for a few ears of corne, yet hunger
made others to venture." Under these circumstances,
what with sickness and fasting and flogging, there
was nothing to occasion surprise in the fact that
neither planter nor pilgrim thereafter recalled the
memory of that summer at Plymouth with gratifica-
tion. The latter looked anxiously forward to the day
when God in his providence would disburden them of
the former ; while the former requited with a language
rather of reviling than of gratitude the stern, unsym-
pathetic care expended upon them.

At length, apparently some time in August, the
Swan reappeared from Boston Bay. Greene and his
party had, it would seem, been received in the most
friendly way by the Indians, who, few in numbers and
cowed in spirit, gladly welcomed those whom they
hoped would prove their protectors against still pow-
erful neighbors ; for their dealings with the Plymouth
people had removed from the minds of the Massachu-
setts all fears of the whites, and they were sincerely
anxious to have a permanent settlement near them ;
indeed, they had already begged Standish to establish
one. Weston's agents therefore, so far as a location
was concerned, had but to choose.^ Exchanging pres-
ents with Aberdecest, the local sachem, they finally
chose for their place of settlement a site known by the
1 Young, Chron. of Pilg. 298 ; iv. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 481.

1622. WESSA GUSSE T. 61

Indians as Wessagusset, near the mouth of a little
stream called the Monatiquot, which empties into one
of the southern estuaries of Boston Bay.^ While the
fewness of the Indians in the immediate vicinity was
undoubtedly a consideration, the choice of this spot
was probably due quite as much to the fact that it lay
south of all the principal streams separating the Mas-
sachusetts from the Plymouth territory, thus making
intercourse by land between the settlements compara-
tively easy. The site of the new plantation having
been fixed upon and the necessary preparations made,
prompt measures were taken for the transfer thither
of all those of the company who were well enough to
be moved ; for a number of them had still to be left
behind under the care of that Samuel Fuller already
mentioned, who, from the time of the first landing to
1634, was the surgeon and physician at Plymouth,
and, as such, was "a great help and comforte unto
them ; as in his facultie, so otherwise, being a deacon
of the church, a man godly and forward to doe good."
Dr. Fuller's treatment seems in the present case to
have proved successful ; for, later in the season, the
invalids joined their companions at Wessagusset. The
Charity had meanwhile returned from Virginia ; and
now Weston's enterprise might be looked upon as
fairly started.

But scarcely were the newcomers seated in the place
they had chosen than ominous rumors began to reach
Plymouth, the poor Massachusetts complaining bit-
terly of them, alleging abusive treatment and theft.
It was not in the power of the Plymouth magistrates

1 The site of Weston's settlement was found indicated on Win-
throp's map of 1634, discovered in London by Henry F. Waters. It
was immediately north of the g-laeial ridge known as Hunt's Hill on
the south side of the Weymouth Fore-river. Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc.
Series II. vii. 24-30.

62 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWSr Nov.

to do more in the premises than offer anxious remon-
strances ; and these, it hardly needs to be said, were
of little avail. Thus matters went on until early in
October. The Charity then returned to England,
Andrew Weston and Thomas Morton, it would seem,
going in her, while Richard Greene was left in charge
of the plantation. He was, it is said, fairly provided
with supplies ; but he does not seem to have been
competent, and his followers were wasteful. Accord-
ingly while the Charity was still almost within sound-
ings, and before the winter's ice had begun to make,
there was scarcity at Wessagusset. Realizing at last
the situation, and his own lack of capacity to deal
wdth it, Greene wrote to Bradford proposing a joint
expedition in search of food, — he furnishing the
vessel, while the Plymouth people were to provide
commodities for barter. A written agreement was
entered into on this basis, and by the middle of Octo-
ber everything was in readiness for a voyage to the
south side of Cape Cod. But the expedition seemed
fated. At first Greene, who had gone down to Plym-
outh on the Swan, fell suddenly ill there and died.
He was succeeded in command at Wessagusset by a
man named John Saunders, who was apparently even
more incompetent than his predecessor. Still, realiz-
ing the pressure of growing want, Saunders' first act
in authority seems to have been the writing of another
letter to Plymouth urging the immediate prosecution
of the voyage. So, as soon as might be after burying
Greene, the Swan was started off, Standish going in
command and Squanto acting as pilot. This was the
expedition referred to at the close of the preceding
chapter, — that in the course of which Squanto died.
It did not start until after the month of November

1622. "DANGEROUS SHOULDS." 63

had begun, according to the present calendar, and the
season was late for a passage round Cape Cod. The
Swan therefore encountered easterly winds and heavy-
weather, and was forced to put back. Again the
party started ; and again it was compelled to return.
The combined exposure, fatigue and anxiety seem to
have proved too much even for Standish, who now
broke down under an attack of fever and gave up the
command, Bradford taking his place. The outlook
was bad. Though it was yet not the close of Novem-
ber, — though the winter was wholly before them, —
the want was hardly less severe at Plymouth than at
Wessagu^et. Indeed, it is probable that the scarcity
was greatest at Plymouth ; but in that patient, frugal
and well-ordered community everything was eked out
to the utmost, while at Wessagusset little thought was
bestowed on the morrow. But frugality and patience
could only mitigate the growing need, and the Plym-
outh people required no urging from without to be-
stir themselves ; so once more the expedition started,
but only to give those composing it a rough experi-
ence of the " dangerous shoulds and roring breakers "
which two years before had frightened the captain of
the Mayflower into Provincetown, and which have
since made what is called the back side of Cape Cod
a terror to mariners. At last they found themselves
off Monomoy Point, on Pollock's Rip, and were in no
little danger of foundering ; but the wind and tide
apparently favored them, and the master of the Swan,
thoroughly frightened, was glad enough to find him-
self safe in Chatham harbor. Here a party landed,
and Bradford, through the medium of Squanto, en-
deavored to establish friendly relations with the Indi-
ans. These were few in number, and at first very

64 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS^ Nov.

shy ; but when at last they were persuaded the stran-
gers only wished to trade, they overcame their fear
sufficiently to give them some venison and other food,
and in the course of a day or two their bartering in-
stincts were sufficiently worked, upon to induce them
to part with eight hogsheads of corn and beans from
their scanty store. Encouraged by this success, the
party determined to attempt once more the southern
passage, but Squanto's illness and sudden death,
which have already been described, put an end to the
project by depriving the party at once of its pilot and
its interpreter ; so, the wind setting in the right quar-
ter, they rounded Cape Cod again and laid their
course directly for Boston Bay. Here they got noth-
ing. Not only did they find the savages suffering
from a new outbreak of the pestilence, but the poor
creatures were bitter in their complaints of the Wes-
sagusset people. They were not only dying daily, but
they were daily robbed. Nor was this all. Weston's
outspoken contempt for the trading capacity of Plym-
outh people to the contrary notwithstanding, it was
apparent that the ignorance of his own representatives
had spoiled the market. They gave as much for a
quart of corn as had before sufficed to buy a beaver
skin.

Leaving Boston Bay, the expedition now went to
the inside of Cape Cod, to see if anything could be
picked up along the shores of what are now the towns
of Eastham, Yarmouth and Barnstable. The stormy
weather continued, and the Swan was at one time in
no little danger of being cast away ; indeed, the shal-
lop which the Plymouth people had brought along, to
carry what was bought from the shore to the* vessel,
was swept off, and so damaged that, when found al-

1622-3. A MIDWINTER TRAMP. 65

most buried in the sand, it was no longer serviceable.
As there was no carpenter in the party, it became
necessary to leave both corn and boat in charge of the
natives until at some other time they could return and
fetch them away. The partners now separated. In-
asmuch as some twenty-eight or thirty hogsheads of
corn and beans had been secured, the expedition
could not, in view of the rough weather which had
been encountered, be considered otherwise than suc-
cessfid. It would seem, nevertheless, that either the
discomfort on board the Swan must have been very
great, or the company little congenial ; for, rather than
go back in her. Governor Bradford and his party,
sending word to those on board to meet them at
Plymouth, set out on foot for a fifty-mile midwinter
tramp home. They presently arrived there safe,
though weary and footsore, and, three days later, the
Swan made her appearance. An equal division was
made of the food the expedition had secured, and the
Wessagusset party returned to their plantation ; but
in January another joint expedition started for East-
bam, Standish, who had meanwhile recovered, being
now in command. Besides being stormy, it was bit-
terly cold, and the suffering from exposure was aggra-
vated by insufficiency of food ; but the shallop lost in
November was recovered, and a portion of the supplies
then collected was secured. Another division was
made, and once more the Swan returned to her moor-
ings in the Weymouth fore-river.

Affairs at Wessagusset now rapidly went from bad
to worse. From the beginning to the end, those living
there merely demeaned themselves after the manner
of their kind. Upon their first arrival, seeing the
weakness of the plague-stricken savages and conscious

66 WESTON'S ''RUDE FELLOWS." 1623.

of their own strength, they had been arrogant and
abusive. It was said that they meddled with the
Indian women ; what was far worse in the savages'
eyes, they had certainly stolen their corn. As the win-
ter increased in its severity, so did the scarcity, and
at last gaunt famine stared the settlers in the face.
Meanwhile their bearing towards the savages had
passed from one extreme to the other. Day by day
their arrogance and self-confidence vanished, until,
ceasing by degrees to be careless purchasers, they ap-
peared as naturally as possible in the more congenial
character of cunning thieves. Stricken, and but the
shadows of their former selves though they were, the
Massachusetts Indians soon realized what this change
meant, and their demeanor altered accordingly. From
cowering before the whites they began to despise them
and domineer over them.

Alarmed at the threatening aspect of affairs, Saun-
ders towards the middle of February renewed his ef-
forts to purchase food. The Indians refused to sell,
saying — no doubt truly enough — they had none to
spare. Then he determined to take by force what he
could get in no other way, and began to prepare for
the hostilities sure to ensue. The plantation at Wes-
sagusset, like that at Plymouth, seems to have con-
sisted of a few rude log buildings surrounded by a
pale, or stockade, in which were several entrances pro-
tected by gates. This stockade was now strengthened
and perfected, and all the entrances save one secured.
But, before resorting to open violence, Saunders had
sufficient good sense to let the Plymouth people know
what he intended. They had at least to be put upon
their guard. Accordingly he sent a letter to Gov-
ernor Bradford informino: him of the severe straits

1623. A REMONSTRANCE. 67

they were in at Wessagusset, and of what they pro-
posed to do. Restitution at some future time of what-
ever might now be taken was, of course, promised.

Such an unprovoked outrage as that now suggested
could not fail to complicate very dangerously the rela-
tions between the Plymouth people and the natives.
Seriously alarmed. Governor Bradford at once called
the elders into council, and among them they drew up
an answer to Saunders' communication, but addressed
to his company as a whole, which they all signed. In
it they labored in characteristic fashion to divert
those to whom they were writing from the course pro-
posed. They gravely pointed out that this course was
not only in contravention of the laws of God and of
nature, but that it was calculated to bring to nought
King James' policy, both as respects the enlargement
of his dominions and " the propagation of the know-
ledge and law of God, and the glad tidings of salva-
tion " among the heathen. Leaving high considera-
tions of state and religion, they then came to particu-
lars. The attention of those at Wessag^usset was
called to the fact that their case was no worse, if so
bad, as that of Plymouth, where they had but little
corn left, and were compelled to sustain life on ground-
nuts, clams and mussels ; " all which they [at Wessa-
gusset] had in great abundance, — yea, oysters also,
which we [at Plymouth] wanted." Therefore, it was
argued, the plea of necessity could not be maintained.
But, finally, those who put their names to the paper
came to the real point in the case, and flatly informed
their neighbors that, in case recourse was had to vio-
lence, those guilty of the violence would have to take
care of themselves, and need look for no support from
Plymouth ; and, moreover, if they escaped the savages

68 WESTON'S "RUDE FELLOWS." March.

they would not escape the gallows as soon as some
special agent of the crown should come over to inves-
tigate the proceeding. In addition to this general
and public reply, Bradford by the same messenger
wrote privately to Saunders, warning him that he, as
the recognized head of the company, would be held to
a personal accountability, no matter who else might
escape ; and so, in a friendly way, advised him to de-
sist in time.

These energetic remonstrances had the desired ef-
fect, and, abandoning all idea of force, Saunders now
determined to start at once for the fishing stations at
Monhegan, there to procure food. Before doing so
he first went to Plymouth ; and the utterly destitute
condition of his jiarty was made plain by the fact that
the supplies on hand did not suffice to victual a crew
for the Swan on a short voyage of some forty leagues
to the coast of Maine. Leaving her, therefore, at
Wessagusset, Saunders set out, though the winter
could not- yet be said to be over, in an open shallop,
Governor Bradford letting him have a small supply
of corn. Considering the season, the coast and the
frail craft in which he went, the attempt was a peril-
ous one, and whether he ever reached his destination
does not appear, for his name is not again mentioned.
Certainly he never returned to Wessagusset. Per-
haps, finding himself unable to obtain supplies at the
fishing stations, he had stayed there awaiting the ar-
rival of the fleet, rightly thinking it worse than use-
less for him to go back empty-handed.

CHAPTER V.

THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING.

A FEW days after Saunders left for Monhegan,
Standish set out on another of his winter excursions
in search of food, going to Manomet, in what is now
Sandwich. During the expedition of the previous
November, Governor Bradford had bought some corn
at this place, but, owing to the loss of the shallop, had
been unable to ship it. He had accordingly left it in
charge of the savages ; and this corn Standish now
meant to bring away. Leaving some two or three
men in charge of his shallop, and taking with him as
many more, he landed and went some distance inland
to the habitation of Canacum, the local sachem. He
had not been there loug before he noticed that he was
much less hospitably treated than Bradford had been,
and presently a couple of Massachusetts Indians made
their appearance, — one of whom, Wituwamat by
name, the Plymouth men well knew. A significant
interview between him and Canacum then took place
in Standish' s presence.

Talking violently and incoherently in his Indian
dialect, Wituwamat drew a knife, which hung about
his neck, from its sheath, and presented it to his host.
He spoke, as it subsequently appeared, of the outrages
perpetrated on the natives at Wessagusset, and of a
conspiracy which had been formed to destroy the set-
tlement there. The object of his visit now was to in-

70 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

duce the Cape Cod Indians to join in it, and he was
urging Canacum to take advantage of the occasion,
which so unexpectedly offered, to cut off Standish and
his party. The knife about his neck was one which
he had obtained from Weston's people.^

It is, of course, impossible to form any estimate of
the military capacity of Miles Standish, for it was
never his fortune to have the conduct of any consid-
erable affair. His field of operations and the forces
under his control were always small, and it may well
be that he would have proved unequal to anything
larger. Nevertheless, both on this and on other occa-
sions presently to be described, he showed himself
something more than merely a born fighter; for he
rose to an equality with difficult and dangerous situa-
tions, and he did it through the easy, because instinc-
tive, exercise of one of the most important attributes
of all great comananders, — a correct insight into the
methods and characteristics of the men immediately
opposed to him. He knew what the occasion called
for when the occasion presented itself. He did not
need time to think the thing out ; nor, seeing what
the occasion called for, did he hesitate. He acted as
quickly as he thought. With him it was not a word
and a blow, it was a glance and a blow : but the eye
was true and the blow well directed and hard ; for, in
advance of delivering it, he had measured his oppo-
nent correctly.

Before he came to New England the Plymouth cap-
tain had never seen a savage : but, once he came in
contact with a savage, his instinct told him, and told
him correctly, how a savage should be dealt with ;
and he seems never to have made a mistake. In the

1 Young-, Chron. of Pilg. 310-12.

1623. MILES STANDISH. 71

presence of savages he always bore himself boldly.
He seems to have been gifted by nature with a quick
ear as well as eye, for he was already more familiar
than any one else at Plymouth with the Indian speech ;
but now he could make nothing of Wituwamat's fierce
harangue. It sounded to him like gibberish ; but gib-
berish or not, he saw that harm was intended. It
was his custom always to treat the Indians he met in
friendly fashion, but he suffered no liberties to be
taken, and above all never evinced the slightest sign
of fear. If they stole from him, he compelled imme-
diate restitution ; if they insulted him, he fiercely re-
sented it. The neglect with which he was now treated
by Canacum was in strong contrast to the considera-
tion which the sachem showed towards Wituwamat.
It was an Indian insult. Accordingly, expressing
himself in angry and defiant fashion, Standish made
ready to return to his boat. Nothing further seems
to have taken place at the moment, and the Indian
women were induced by some trifling reward to carry
the corn down to the shore. There the party had to
wait until morning, and the night which followed was
probably as anxious a night as Standish ever passed.
The air bit shrewdly and it was very cold. Against
Wituwamat in particular he was, as the sequel showed,
meditating dire vengeance, and the wrath he was nurs-
ing may to a degree have counteracted the effects of
the piercing wind from which he in vain sought shel-
ter ; but the events of the afternoon had alarmed him,
and he wanted to get back to Plymouth with the least
possible delay. The immediate situation, also, was
by no means free from danger. A mere handful of
men, far from home on an exposed coast in the dead
of winter, they were surrounded by savages bent on

72 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

their destruction. Nor were they alone. Among the
others gathered at Canacum's lodge was a Paomet,
or Cape Cod, Indian, whom they had seen before, but
the oppressive friendliness of whose carriage now was
extremely suspicious. Not only had he insisted on
coming down to the shore with them, but he had vol-
untarily even carried some of the corn, an ignomin-
ious act for a male Indian. Neither, after so doing,
had he returned to Canacum's lodge in company w^th
the women ; but, making a pretext of the cold, he re-
mained with the Plymouth party, crouching before
their fire. Under the circumstances it is not matter
for wonder, therefore, that Standish rested not at all
that night, " but either walked or turned himself to
and fro at the fire ; " nor that, when the waking sav-
age asked him why he did not sleep, he answered him
that — " He knew not well, but had no desire at all to
rest." But the watches even of that long winter night
slowly wore themselves away without further cause for
alarm ; and, the next day, the wind coming fair, the
party got safely back to Plymouth.

Meanwhile, during Standish's absence, tidings had
come of the dangerous sickness of Massasoit. Wins-
low was at once despatched to visit him, with the In-
dian Hobamack as a guide, and arrived only just in
time to save his life. The unfortunate man was lying
in his habitation, blind and almost unconscious, while
six or eight women were violently ctiafing his arms,
legs and thighs to keep heat in him, and a crowd of
men, engaged in their incantations, were, as Winslow
described it, " making such a hellish noise as it dis-
tempered us that were well, and therefore unlike to
ease him that was sick." With the aid of a little
sensible treatment, nature got the better of the dis-

1623. THE CONSPIRACY. 73

order ; but Massasoit, naturally attributing his recov-
ery to the skill of his visitors, could not sufficiently
express his gratitude. The sense of it was still fresh
when, on the morning of the fourth day of his visit,
Winslow prepared to set out on his way back to
Plymouth. Seeing him about to depart, Massasoit
then took aside Hobamack, who was one of his own
men, and told him of a conspiracy which had been
formed to destroy the Wessagusset settlement. All
the tribes of southeastern Massachusetts, he said, had
been induced to join in it, and he had himseK been
earnestly solicited to do so during the earlier days of
his sickness. Among others concerned in this plot,
he named the people of Paomet and Manomet. In
true Indian style he now urged decisive action, advis-
ing the Plymouth people " to kill the men of Massa-
chusetts who were the authors of this intended mis-
chief." All this Hobamack, as he was bid, repeated
to Winslow on the way back ; so that, when the latter
reached home and there met the party just returned
from Manomet, the presence of the two Massachusetts
men at Canacum's lodge was accounted for. The full
significance of the treatment Standish had received
became apparent.

There could no longer be any doubt of the exist-
ence of a widespread Indian conspiracy. As yet it
was directed only against the Wessagusset settlement ;
but it needed neither Wituwamat's defiant action nor
Massasoit' s warning to awaken the Plymouth people
to the fact that their own fate was involved in the
fate of their neighbors. Should the war whoop ring
in triumph over the smoking ruins of Wessagusset,
the woods back of Plymouth would not long be quiet.
To appreciate the effect of this sudden revelation of

74 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

danger upon the minds and nerves of the settlers, it
must be remembered that the Virginia massacre had
occurred exactly one year before, and that all its har-
rowing details, freshly brought by the Charity and
other vessels on their return from the scene of it,
must have been uppermost in the mind of every one
within the Plymouth stockade, and the constant theme
of discussion. They knew whatever history now tells
of the incidents of that dread 22d of March, 1622,
when at one and the same instant a merciless blow,
which had been planned with impenetrable secrecy,
fell upon an unsuspecting people.^ They knew how
indiscriminate the murder had been, how neither age
nor sex had been spared, what atrocities had been
committed on the quick and the dead. The Virginia
community at the time it sustained this blow was a
large one compared to what their own was now. The
very dead in the massacre exceeded the whole number
of the Plymouth settlers by nearly threefold ; and yet,
up to the hour of the Virginia attack, the savages had
cunningly borne the aspect of friendliness.

So great and abiding had been the alarm caused at
Plymouth by the knowledge of these things that, with
the famine of the past winter and forebodings for the
next never absent from their minds, the people there
during that summer of want and weakness had de-
voted half their time and strength to building a fort
of refuge. But, even when their fort was completed,
they remained at most but a pitiful handful, — not
sevenscore, all told, — a speck, as it were, of civilized
life between the sea on the one side and that impen-
etrable forest, within which lurked the savage, on the
other. It was true the pestilence had left but few
1 Bancroft, i. 142 (ed. 1876).

1623. FOREWARNING. 75

Indians in their immediate vicinity ; but not far away
were the Narragansetts, an unscathed and warlike
tribe, whose missive of '^ arrows lapped in a rattle-
snake's skin " had already come to them as a chal-
lenge, and in regard to whose movements and inten-
tions rumor was constantly busy.

There is something appalling in the consciousness
of utter isolation. The settlers at Plymouth were but
men and women, and their children were with them,
and it was impossible they should not exaggerate
rather than diminish the danger. Fortunately they
were a stolid, unimaginative race ; and, even though
directly from the busy life and complete security of
Holland, the neighborhood of the forest seems to have
soon become a thing customary and little alarming to
them. Simple, straightforward * and self-reliant, to
them sufficient unto the day were the labors and dan-
gers thereof. Above all else, perhaps, they were held
up by that strength of endurance — that staying
power, if so it may be called — which is always found
associated with any deep religious feeling bred of in-
dependent thought. The grateful Massasoit, more-
over, had now done for them what another of his race
had done for Jamestown ; and, with the experience of
Jamestown fresh in mind, to be forwarned at Plym-
outh was to be forearmed.

By this time it was the end of March, and the day
for the annual election of magistrates was at hand.
When it came about, Governor Bradford made known
the situation in open court, and it was there anxiously
debated. Finally, without reaching any decision in
public meeting, the matter was left in the hands of
three men, Bradford the governor, Isaac AUerton the
assistant, and Miles Standish ; and these three were

76 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

authorized to call into their councils whomsoever else
they saw fit, and to do whatever the common safety
might seem to require. They decided on immediate
and decisive action. Having so decided, they dis-
missed all scruples from their minds and determined
to deal with the savages after a savage's own fashion.
Plot was to be met with plot.

The plan of campaign was a simple one. Staudish
was to go at once to Wessagusset, taking with him as
many men as he thought sufficient to enable him to
hold his own against all the Massachusetts. When
there, pretending that he was come, as he had repeat-
edly come before, to trade, he was first to make known
his purpose to the settlers, and then, acting in concert
with them, was to entrap the conspirators and kill
them. The last words of his instructions showed
clearly enough that they were framed by himself, and
that, as revengeful as he was choleric, he retained a
fresh recollection of the scene in the lodjre of the sa-
chem of Manomet. He was enjoined to forbear his
blow, if possible, " till such time as he could make
sure [of] Wituwamat, that bloody and bold villain be-
fore spoken of; whose head he had order to bring
with him, that he might be a warning and terror to
all of that disposition."

While these events were taking place at Plymouth,
there was at Wessagusset a complete and wretched
unconsciousness of impending disaster. Under the
pressure of suffering, all pretence even at order and
discipline would seem to have been abandoned after
Saunders left for Monhegan. Those composing the
company no longer lived together within the stockade ;
but, hunger overcoming the sense of fear, they had
divided themselves, and were scattered about near the

1623. EXPOSURE AND DEATH, 77

Indian villages, in which, for a handful of food, they
performed the most menial of services, degrading
themselves into mere hewers of wood and drawers of
water. Some had already bartered away their clothes
and their blankets ; and soon, of course, insufficient
food and exposure brought on disease. Gradually
many of them became so weakened that they could
hardly continue the search for something wherewith
life might be sustained. What in the way of nourish-
ment they could have found at that season it is not
easy to make out, for the wdnter had been a severe
one, and the ground, full of frost, was covered with
snow and ice. It is said they lived mainly on nuts
and shell-fish, and that one miserable wretch, while
digging for the latter, got caught in the mud, and, not
having strength to extricate himself, was drowned by
the rising tide. Yet, judging by the mortality among
them, their sufferings, as compared with those of the
Mayflower's people during the winter of their arrival,
would not seem to have been great. At Plymouth,
out of more than one hundred persons who composed
the entire company in December, 1620, scarce fifty
remained alive in April, 1621. At Wessagusset, dur-
ing the winter of 1622-3, ten only out of sixty are
reported to have died. It is true that in the one case
there were many women and children, while in the
other all were able-bodied men ; yet, under the cir-
cumstances, the proportion of one to six cannot be
looked upon as an excessive or, indeed, even as a
large mortality. Considering who they were, and
what they had to go through, it is, perhaps, rather
matter for surprise that all of them did not die.

The bearing of the savages had meanwhile become
such as was naturally to be expected. " Rude fel-

78 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

lows " at best, Weston's people were never calcnlated
to command respect, and it was some time since they
had ceased to inspire fear. Now they were objects of
mere hatred and contempt. They counted the greater
number, but the savages were the masters. As mas-
ters, too, these latter did not confine themselves to
threats and insults. On the contrary, " many times
as they lay thus scattered abroad, and had set on a pot
with ground-nuts or shell-fish, when it was ready the
Indians would come and eat it up. And when night
came, whereas some of them had a sorry blanket, or
such like, to lap themselves in, the Indians would take
it and let the other lie all niglit in the cold." If
treatment of this kind was resented, the savages
threatened the settlers, or flung dust in their faces, or
even struck at them with their knives.

The natives, moreover, on their side, had good
grounds of complaint. Wretchedly poor, even for
New England Indians, they had nothing but a few furs,
and hardly food wherewith to sustain life. Yet they
had been outraged, and they were still robbed. They
had complained to the Plymouth people, but their
wrongs were unredressed. Under these circumstances
the Indians showed in their conduct a self-restraint
and respect for persons which, had the position been
reversed, would assuredly have been looked for in
vain among Europeans. When pilferers were caught
in the very act of stealing the hidden seed-corn, in-
stead of inflicting punishment themselves on the spot,
the Massachusetts brought the wrong-doers to the
plantation, and delivered them up to be dealt with by
their own people. But whippings and confinement
could not hold in restraint thieves who were starving.
Again the hidden stores were broken into, and again

1623. ''A parliament:' 79

with angry threats the malefactor was brought back
to the block-house. Thoroughly frightened now, the
settlers told the savages to take their prisoner and to
deal with him as they saw fit. This they refused to
do, insisting that the settlers should punish their own
thieves. His companions thereupon took the culprit
out, and, in full sight of those he had robbed, hanged
him before their stockade.

This was that famous Wessagusset hanging, which
passed into literature as a jest, and then, received
back into history as a traditional fact, was long used
as a gibe and reproach against New England. It
happened in this wise : — Thomas Morton, who, as it
has already been surmised,^ came out with young
Weston in the Charity in June and returned to Eng-
land in her with him in October, published, some
fifteen years later, an account of his experiences in
New England. Though he did not, it would appear,
care to dwell upon his connection with Weston's abor-
tive enterprise, for the obvious reason that he was
then, as will presently be seen,^ a hanger-on of those
with whom the very name of Weston was a scandal,
he could hardly fail at times incidentally to refer to it.
Of this particular episode of the hanging he gave the
following characteristic account : —

" One amongst the rest, an able bodied man that ranged
the woodes to see what it would afford, lighted by accident
on an Indian barne, and from thence did take a capp full
of come ; the salvage owner of it, finding by the foote some
English had bin there, came to the Plantation and made
complaint after this manner.

" The cheife Commander of the Company one this occa-
tion called a Parliament of all his people, but those that
1 Supra, 59. 2 j^jy^, iq-^^ ^^^ 268, 277.

80 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

were sicke and III at ease. And wisely now they must con-
sult upon this huge complaint, that a privy knife or stringe
of beades would well enough have qualified, and Edward
lohnson was a spetiall judge of this businesse ; the fact was
there in repetition ; construction made that it was fellony,
and by the Lawes of England punished with death, and this
in execution must be put for an example, and likewise to
appease the Salvage ; when straight wayes one arose, mooved
as it were with some compassion, and said hee could not
well gaine say the former sentence, yet hee had conceaved
within the compasse of his braine an Embrion, that was of
spetiall consequence to be delivered and cherished ; hee said
that it would most aptly serve to pacifie the Salvages com-
plaint, and save the life of one that might, (if neede should
be,) stand them in some good steede, being younge and
stronge, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might
come unexpected for any thinge they knew. The Oration
made was liked of every one, and hee intreated to proceede
to shew the meanes how this may be performed : sayes hee,
you all agree that one must die, and one shall die ; this
younge mans cloathes we will take of, and put upon one
that is old and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape
death, such is the disease one him confirmed that die hee
must ; put the younge mans cloathes on this man, and let
the sick person be hanged in the others steede : Amen
sayes one, and so sayes many more.

*' And this had like to have prooved their finall sentence,
and, being there confirmed by Act of Parliament to after
ages for a precedent. But that one, with a ravenus voyce,
begunne to croake and bellow for revenge, and put by that
conclusive motion, alledging such deceipts might be a
meanes hereafter to exasperate the mindes of the complain-
inge Salvages, and that by his death the Salvages should
see their zeale to lustice ; and therefore hee should die :
this was concluded : yet neverthelesse a scruple did repre-
sent itself unto their mindes, which was, — how they should

1623. "HUDIBRAS." 81

doe to get the mans good wil ? This was Indeede a spe-
tiall obstacle : for without that, they all agreed, it would be
dangerous for any man to attempt the execution of it, lest
mischiefe should befall them every man ; hee was a person
that in his wrath did seeme to be a second Sampson, able to
beate out their branes with the jawbone of an Asse : there-
fore they called the man, and by perswation got him fast
bound in jest ; and then hanged him up hard by in good
earnest, who with a weapon, and at liberty, would have put
all those wise judges of this Parliament to a pittifull non
plus (as it hath beene credibly reported), and made the
cheife ludge of them all buckell to him." ^

Thirty years after the publication of the " New Eng-
lish Canaan," when its author had long been dead and
the book itself was forgotten, Butler's famous satire
of " Hudibras " appeared. In speaking of this work
Hallam has remarked, in his " Literary History of Eu-
rope," that the inexhaustible wit of the author " is sup-
plied from every source of reading and observation.
But these sources are often so unknown to the reader
that the wit loses its effect through the obscurity of
its allusions." ^ The truth of this criticism was strik-
ingly illustrated in the present instance. Either the
author of " Hudibras " had at some time in the
course of his reading come across the " New English
Canaan," or he had met Thomas Morton and heard
him tell the story, which, as a highly utilitarian sug-
gestion of vicarious atonement, appealed to Butler's
sense of humor and thereafter lingered in his memory.
Moreover, while in 1664 the Puritans of New Eng-
land were fair game, whatever Samuel Butler found
was his ; and so, making, as a thing of course, those

1 N. E. Canaan, B. III. ch. iv.

2 Lit. Hist, of Europe, Part IV. ch. v. § 23.

82 THE WESSAGUSSET HANGING. March,

improvements of fact which literary exigencies de-
manded, the incident, as finally transmuted by his
wit, appeared in the following form in what long con-
tinued to be one of the most popular and generally
read of English books : —

" Our Brethren of New-England use
Choice malefactors to excuse,
And hang the Guiltless iu their stead,
Of whom the Churches have less need;
As lately 't happened : In a town
There liv'd a Cobler, and but one,
That out of Doctrine could cut Use,
And mend men's lives as well as shoes.
This precious Brother having slain.
In times of peace, an Indian,
(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an Infidel),
The mighty Tottipottymoy
Sent to our Elders an envoy.
Complaining sorely of the breach
Of league held forth by Brother Patch,
Against the articles in force
Between both churches, his and ours,
For which he craved the Saints to render
Into his hands, or hang th' offender ;
But they maturely ha\ang weigh'd
They had no more but him o' th' trade,
(A man that served them in a double
Capacity, to teach and cobble),
Resolv'd to spare him ; yet to do
Tlie Indian Hoghan Moghan too
Impartial justice, in his stead did
Hang an old Weaver that was bed-rid."

But the real humor of the thing was yet to come.
The actual hanging took place in 1623. When,
nearly half a century later, its memory was thus ac-
cidentally revived, the Cavalier reaction was at its
height ; and everything which tended to make the
Puritans and Puritanism either odious or contempti-
ble was eagerly laid hold of. They had become the

1623. SOME HISTORICAL FICTIONS. 83

target for ribald jesting, — the standing butt of the
day. The New England provinces also, and Massa-
chusetts in particular, were known chiefly as the place
of refuge of the chosen people ; — there alone did they
retain a secure ascendency. Morton's absurd fiction,
as improved and embellished by Butler, was accord-
ingly not only laughed over as a good jest forever,
but, gradually passing into a tradition, it seems at
last ^ to have even assumed its place as one of those
historical incidents, vaguely but currently accepted as
facts, which periodically reappear in spite of every
effort to put an end to them. Such were, and are,
the famous Blue Laws of Connecticut ; ^ and, again,
that limitation which prevented lords of the manor in
feudal times from killing more than two serfs, after
the hunt, for foot-warming purposes ; ^ or, finally (a
yet more familiar example in later history), that dra-
matic sinking of the Vengeur, which not even Car-
lyle's exposure has sufficed to exorcise.*

1 N. E. Canaan, Prince Society Publications, 96, 251, n.

2 Trumbull, Blue Laws True and False, 44.

^ Carlyle, French Revolution, B. I. ch. 2 ; New York Nation (No.
338), December 21, 1871, p. 400. " Was it ' Serf or ' Cerf ? "
* Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea, P. II. ch. 20.

CHAPTER VI.

THE SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED.

It has already been mentioned that the winter of
1622-3 was one of at least the averag^e New Encrland
severity. Beginning with a succession of storms in
November, the harbors had been filled with ice until
early March, while the snow still lay upon the ground
in April. 1 In all its leading features, the wintry scene
at Wessagusset must then have been what it now is.
The rolling hills into which the country is broken
stood out against each other and the sky, offering to
the view stretches of dazzling snow against which
black masses of the leafless forest were sharply out-
lined. Groves and clumps of savin fringed the shore
and crested the hills to the south and west ; while
northward lay the island-studded bay, an expanse of
snow and ice, broken here and there by patches of
water, which, according as the sky was obscured or
clear, showed inky blackness or a cold steel-blue. Im-
mediately in front of the plantation, the swift flow and
ebb of the tide must, for long weeks, have now lifted
the ice until it was high upon the marshes, and then
let it fall until it rested on the flats, or lay piled in
hugje, broken cakes in the inlets or upon the beach.
The solitude and the silence were intense ; for at that
season both the forest and the air were devoid of
animal life, unless now and again the stillness was
1 Young, Ckron. of Pilg. 302, 308 ; iv. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 482-3.

1623. A WINTER SCENE. 85

broken by the howl of a wolf, or a flock of carrion-
crows were seen to wing their clumsy way in search
of food.

Neither, in the case of Weston's settlement, was the
presence of ice and snow merely a cause of tedium and
discouragement ; for, while the latter lay among the
trees, making it very difficult to search for nuts and
roots, the former so covered the salt marshes and
beach that it must for considerable periods have been
quite impossible to get at the shell-fish. While the
Wessagusset people were thus cut off from their two
principal sources of supply, their stock of powder had
also run low ; nor, mere fifteenth century London
vagabonds, were they familiar with the haunts and
habits of game. So there was little left for them to
do through the long winter months but to hang, hun-
gry and shivering, about the fires in their log-huts, the
mud-sealed walls of which offered but a poor pro-
tection against the outer cold. And so, with the ice-
bound river before them and the snow-clad wilderness
behind, they awaited, with what patience men both
freezing and starving could, the slow approach of
spring.

The settlers mingled freely with the Indians, hang-
ing about their villages by day and sleeping in their
huts at night, thus affording them every possible
advantage in case of sudden attack; but, when the
feelings of hostility which had slowly been excited at
length ripened into a plot, it was not only cunningly
devised, but also well concealed. The utter destruc-
tion of the settlement was proposed; and to assure
this it was necessary for the savages to seize, at one
and the same moment, not only the stockade and the
block-house within it, but also the Swan, which lay at

86 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. March,

her raoorinofs iu the river. There would then be no
place of refuge for the scattered settlers, and they
could be destroyed in detail and at leisure. In fur-
therance of their design the Indians, it would seem,
gradually edged up towards the stockade, moving their
wiofwams nearer and nearer to it. At the same time
they were busy constructing canoes, in which l^ter
work they were aided by some of their intended
victims.-^ By this time one at least of the settlers had
become thoroughly alarmed. ^ This was Phinehas
Pratt, who, coming over in the Swallow, had been
among the six who afterwards in May reached Plym-
outh in the shallop. He was now bent on making
his escape from Wessagusset. The journey he pro-
posed for himself was both difficult and dangerous.
The distance was not great, — hardly, indeed, more
than twenty-five miles, — but the way was through
so complete a wilderness that a few years later this
region became known throughout the province as the
Ragged Plain, it was such a " strange labyrinth of un-
beaten bushy wayes in the wooddy wildernes." ^ It
had apparently been completely depopulated by the
plague of 1617 ; and since then the underbrush had
not been burned away, the frequent watercourses stop-
ping such fires as were set. Accordingly it was now
become a tangled undergrowth of bushes and brambles
growing over an upland country, interspersed with
swamps and cut by running streams.

Pratt may possibly have made the same journey
before, though this is not probable ; and now, as will
be seen, he almost immediately lost his way. He had

1 Young, Chron. of Pilg. 342.

2 IV. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 482.
8 Wood, Prospect, 13, 61.

1623. PHINEHAS PRATT. 87

neither a guide nor a compass. It was the end of
March, it is true, and the rigor of the winter was
broken ; but great belts of snow were still lying on
the north sides of the hills and in the hollows, and he
was not only insufficiently clad, but weak from want
of food. The sense of danger overcoming all fear, he
made up a small pack and got ready to set out. His
first object was to steal away unobserved by the
savages. Taking a hoe in his hand, therefore, as if he
were going out in search of nuts or to dig for clams,
he very early on the morning of what is now the
first of April left the stockade, and made his way
directly towards some wigwams standing not far off
and close to the edge of a swamp. When near
enough to see any movement wdiich might be going
on, he made a pretence of digging, which he kept up
until he had satisfied himself that no one was stirring ;
then, slipping into the thicket, he hurried off towards
the south. Euuning and walking by turns, he made
all the progress he could during the morning, but was
often obliged to go out of his way to avoid the snow ;
though at some points he could not go around, and so
was obliged to cross it, — to his great alarm, for his
footprints were almost sure to reveal his course. He
seems soon to have lost his way ; and this probably
saved his life, for when his absence became known to
the savages, and they sent one of their number after
him, he escaped simply from the fact that his pursuer
followed the direct trail. Until about noon the sk}^
appears to have been sufficiently clear to enable him
to make out in a general way the direction he was to
take, but, as is apt to be the case in the early New
England April, the clouds gathered as the day wore on,
until at length the sun became so obscured that the

88 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

fugitive wholly lost his way, and for a time wandered
aimlessly about. Later in the day it cleared again,
and the glow of the setting sun both gave his bear-
ings to the frightened wanderer, and restored to him
a degree of hope and heart. Going on once more, he
soon came to the North River, which he found deep
and full of rocks. There was no help for it ; he had
to ford the icy stream, which he only succeeded in
doing with much difficulty. Getting at last to its
southern bank, he found it too dark to go further. His
condition was indeed pitiable. Weak and wet, cold
and hungry, — worn out with his long day's tramp, —
he had but a handful of parched corn to eat, and his
fear of pursuit was so great that he did not dare to
light a fire. He at last came to a deep hollow in the
woods, in which many fallen trees had lodged ; and
here he ventured to kindle a feeble blaze, before
which he passed the night listening to the wolves as
they howled in the forest about him. Fortunately the
sky became clear, and he was able to make out the
pole star, thus assuring himself of the direction he was
to take.

The next morning he attempted to go on, but,
whether from being too foot-sore and weary, or be-
cause of the cloudiness of the sk}^ he soon found him-
self unable to do so, and returned to his resting-place
of the previous night. The third day of his journey
broke clear, and once more he started on his way;
but it was not until about three o'clock in the after-
noon that, emerging suddenly from the forest, he found
himself, to his great joy, on the outskirts of Plymouth.
He had made his way by bearing to the south and east,
skirting the marshes, and had come out at some point
in what is now Diixbury. His escape was a narrow

1623. ''ALL MEANS TO CRUSH." 89

one, for the next day his pursuers were lurking in
the neighboring woods. Having assured themselves
that their quarry had eluded them, they then turned
aside and pursued their way southward, apparently in-
tending to notify their confederates of what had hap-
pened.

Pratt had reached Plymouth on the third of April,
or March 24th as it then was, the day after the annual
election. The course to be pursued in crushing out
the conspiracy had already been decided on, and the
whole available force of the settlement placed at the
disposal of Standish, who was well acquainted with
the field in which he was to operate. His plan was
to stamp the danger out at once ; he did not propose
to simply scare the conspirators into a temporary
aspect of friendliness. Above all, it would appear,
he was bent on killing Wituwamat ; for Wituwamat
had affronted him in presence of savages, and Stan-
dish meant by making an example of him to restore
his own prestige in Indian eyes. Cost what it might,
that prestige he proposed to maintain. Accordingly
Standish now preferred to incur additional risk rather
than do anything likely to excite suspicion, and so
prevent the complete carrying out of his plan. He
knew that the Massachusetts were scattered, and at
most did not number more than thirty or forty fight-
ing men ; but they had been in the custom of seeing
the Plymouth leader come on his trading expeditions
with a few companions only, and if he now appeared
with a large armed force they might be put on their
guard, and the prime movers in the conspiracy at
least would be careful not to trust themselves within
his grasp. So he chose but eight men to go with him,
and when Pratt arrived the preparations were all com-

90 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

pleted and the party ready to set out. The news
brought by the refugee was simply confirmatory of
what the Plymouth peojile already knew, though the
account he gave of the condition of affairs at Wes-
saousset revealed the imminence of the danji^er. The
necessity for instant action was clearer than ever.
Whatever was to be done must plainly be done at
once. The weather was wet and threatening, — in
fact a dreary easterly storm, such as is not unusual
in a New England spring, would seem to have pre-
vailed. Regardless of this, on Monday (then the
25th of March, but now the 4th of April) Standish
ordered his party on board their shallop and got un-
der weigh for Wessagusset. The force consisted of
ten men in all, including in the number Standish him-
self and the Indian Hobamack. Pratt was too weak
from the effects of his journey to accom]3any them.

As they sailed with a fair as well as a strong wind,
the party must have reached Weymouth River on the
afternoon of the same day on which they left Plym-
outh. The}^ soon made out the Swan lying quietly
at her moorings, and went alongside of lier, but found
no one on board ; nor was any one in sight on the
beach. Alarmed apparently at this absence of all
movement, and for the moment afraid that the blow
they came to avert had already fallen, instead of at
once landing at the stockade they fired a musket to
attract the notice of any one on the shore near by.
In answer to their signal a few stragglers, among
whom was the master of the Swan, soon showed them-
selves, abandoning for the moment their anxious search
for nuts. In reply to Standish's inquiry, how they
dared leave the vessel so unprotected, they explained
to him that they did not consider any precautions

1623. PREPARATION. 91

necessary, — that they had no fear of the Indians, and
indeed lived with them, suffering them to come and
go in the settlement with perfect freedom. Learning
further that those whom Saunders had left in charge
upon his departure were at the plantation, Standish
landed and went thither. Finding them, he forth-
with proceeded to explain the purpose of his coming.
Thoroughly alarmed at what he told them, Weston's
people at once became obedient, promising to do as
Standish should bid, and thereupon, assuming general
command, he went to work maturing the details of his
counter-plot. Enjoining strict quiet and secrecy he
sent out messengers to call in the stragglers, w^ho
amounted to a third part of the company, and at the
same time gave notice that any one who left the stock-
ade without permission would be put to death. Then
out of his own slender supplies, taken from the little
reserve kept for seed at Plymouth, the new com-
mander rationed the entire place, causing a pint of
corn a day to be served out to each man.

As the stormy weather still continued, the work of
getting in the stragglers proved a somewhat long one,
and an Indian meanwhile came into the plantation
with some furs, ostensibly to trade, but in reality it
was supposed to see what was going on. He reported
Standish's arrival to the other Indians, who seem to
have suspected the purpose of his coming, but failed
to realize with how formidable an opponent they had
now to reckon ; and, moreover, it would appear that
the demoralized conduct of Weston's party had in=
spired the savages with a feeling of contempt for Euro-
peans generally, which had been strengthened by the
apparent impunity with which Wituwamat had in-
sulted Standish in Canacum's lodge. Accordingly,

92 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

when others of them presently came into the stockade,
they did not hesitate to indulge in threats and insult-
ing gestures, even flourishing their knives in the faces
of the whites. Wituwamat himself, little aware of
the decree which had gone out against him, was among
those who thus tempted fate. Indeed, he seems to
have reenacted with variations that Manomet per-
formance which was soon to cost him his head ; for,
dauntingiy drawing his knife, which he carried slung
about his neck, he held it up before Standish's eyes,
and bade him take note of the face of a woman carved
on the handle. Then he added that at home he had
yet another knife on which was the face of a man ; by
and by the two should marry. With those knives, he
boasted, he had already killed both English and
Frenchmen ; and presently the knife he held in his
hand should see and act, but it should not speak.
Pecksuot, another brave of great size and strength,
a companion of Wituwamat, was also there ; and, not
to be outdone in bravado, he taunted Standish, in true
Indian style, on the smallness of his stature, and com-
pared it with his own ; for, though not a sachem, he
boasted himself a warrior of courage and repute.

The next day (our 6th of April as it would seem),
Pecksuot and Wituwamat, accompanied by two other
savages, one of them a younger brother of the latter,
again came into the stockade, and were permitted to
enter the principal block-house. Standish was there
with some four or five of his own company. His hope
had been to get a larger number of the savages to-
gether before he fell upon them, but he had begun to
doubt whether he could succeed in so doing. And
now the two most dangerous of them were fairly within
his grasp, and he seems suddenly to have resolved to

1623. A DEATH-GRAPPLE. 93

seize the occasion. To each his work was assigned,
and a signal had been agreed upon. AVatching his
chance to take his man unawares, with a stealth which
exceeded that of the savages, Standish, suddenly giv-
ing the signal, sprang upon Pecksuot. He was the
largest and most formidable of them all. Instantly
the door was flung to and made fast. The strug-
gle had begun. It was a short fierce death-grapple.
Standish had snatched the knife at Pecksuot's neck
from its sheath and driven it into him. The others
had fallen upon Wituwamat and his companions.
Though taken wholly by surprise and at a fearful dis-
advantage, the savages neither cried out, nor tried to
fly, nor asked for quarter. Catching at their weapons
and vainly resisting, they struggled to the last. It
was incredible, Winslow afterwards wrote, how many
wounds the two warriors received before they died.
Three out of the four were despatched on the spot ;
while the other one, Wituwamat' s brother, and scarcely
it would seem more than a boy, was overpowered and
bound fast.

It remained to complete the work thus bloodily
begun. A messenger was hurried off to a party at
another point, bidding them at once despatch any
Indian men in their power. They killed two. His
boy prisoner Standish hung out of hand, killing also
one more Indian found elsewhere. There were a few
women in the camp. These Standish made prison-
ers, placing them under the charge of some of the
Wessagusset people ; but they were subsequently re-
leased without any further harm being done them.
Another Indian, through "the negligence,'* as it is
expressed, of the man who should have murdered him,
escaped and spread the alarm, thus preventing the full

94 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

accomplishment of Standish's purpose, which seems to
have been the indiscriminate killing of all the males
of the tribe.

Having thus disposed of those within his reach,
Standish the next day took with him a party, some
half dozen in number, and went out, under the guid-
ance of Hobamack, in search of the sachem Aber-
decest and the main body of his people. Word of
the massacre had reached the sachem's village during
the previous night, and all the men, taking their
weapons, had left it. Standish had not gone far
before he discovered them, apparently making their
way in the direction of Wessagusset. Both parties,
getting sight of each other at about the same time,
hurried to secure the advantage of a rising ground
near by. Standish got there first, and the Indians,
seeking at once the protection of the trees, let fly their
arrows. The skirmish was hardly worthy of the
name. The savages had lost their leading warriors
the day before, and when Hobamack, uttering his
war-cry and casting aside his garment of furs, ran
upon them tomahawk in hand, they turned and fled in
terror to a swamp near by, in the mire and under-
growth of which they found a hiding-place. One only
of them seems to have been injured, his arm having
been shattered by a ball from Standish's musket. It
was not easy to get at the panic-stricken creatures,
and neither taunts nor challenges could induce them
to show themselves ; nor, indeed, is it surprising that
the poor wretches were reluctant to come out and be
killed. Their further pursuit was therefore aban-
doned, and the party returned to the stockade.^

1 These are the incidents described by Longfellow in the Seventh
Part of his poem, The Courtship of Miles Standish. In using- his ma^

1623. A HOMERIC EPISODE. 95

Though the object of the expedition was now ac-
complished, before Standish returned with his own
company to Plymouth the course to be pursued by
Weston's people had to be decided upon. They could
remain where they were ; if they did not wish to

terials it cannot be too much regretted that Mr. Longfellow did not see
fit to adhere more closely to the facts as they stand recorded. It cer-
tainly does not appear that for poetical effect he has improved upon
them. His poem is a New England classic. Probably at least nine
people out of ten, who know of these incidents at all, know of them
through it. This also will continue to be the case. Nothing certainly
can be more Homeric and picturesque than Pratt's struggle through
the wilderness, — than Standish's voyage in his open boat to Wessa-
gusset, along the bleak surf-beaten shore, in the stormy eastern
weather, — than the fierce hand to knife death -grapple in the rude
log-house within the Wessagusset stockade. The whole is, in the
originals, full of life, simplicity and vigor, needing only to be turned
into verse. But in place of the voyage we have in Longfellow's
poem a march through the woods, Avhich never took place and con-
tains in it nothing characteristic, — an interview before an Indian
encampment " pitched on the edge of a meadow, between the sea and
the forest," at which the knife scene is enacted, instead of in the rude
block-house, — and finally, the killing takes place amid a discharge
of firearms, and " there on the flowers of the meadow the warriors"
are made to lie ; whereas in fact they died far more vigorously, as
well as poetically, on the blood-soaked floor of the log-house in which
they were surprised, "■ not making any fearful noise, but catching at
their weapons and striving to the last." And as for " flowers," it was
early in April and there was still snow on the ground.

Reading The Courtship of Miles Standish, and looking at the paint-
ings upon the walls of the Memorial Hall at Plymouth and of the
Capitol at Washington, it is impossible for any one at all imbued
with the real spirit of the early colonial period not to entertain a hope
that the time may come when a school of historical poets and painters
shall arise who will deal truthfully and vigorously with these scenes,
studying the localities and the authorities carefully and in a realistic
spirit, instead of evolving at once facts, dress, features and scenery from
an inner and where not a weak at least a grotesque consciousness. In
our early New England scenes the real facts are good enough, strong
enough and picturesque enough for any one, be he historian, poet or
painter. They certainly have not yet been, nor are they likely soon
to be, improved upon.

96 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

do that, they might either follow Saunders to the
eastward, or, accepting an offer made by Bradford
through Standish, return with the latter to Plymouth.
As to the last proposition, it would seem that even the
hardships of the recent winter had failed to obliterate
from the memory of those " profane fellows " the
severe justice, the long j^rayers and the short commons
of the preceding summer. They evinced small incli-
nation to return to Plymouth. As to remaining where
they were, Standish contemptuously assured them that
he would not fear to do so with a smaller force than
theirs ; but they were not Standishes, and felt no call
to the heroic. Moreover, they were thoroughly out of
conceit with the wilderness, and especially with a
New England wilderness in winter. All their hopes
and anticipations at coming had been disappointed, and
they were tired of looking for Weston's appearance
and the supplies that were to come with him. Doubt-
less, too, they were terrified at the murderous deeds in
which they had just taken part ; and, weak and few
as they knew the Indians to be, they were afraid of
them. They dreaded the day of savage reckoning
which might come after their energetic ally should be
gone. In short, the single desire with most of them
was to get away from the hateful place, and that as
directly and quickly as possible ; but in doing so they
not unnaturally wished to go where there was a chance
of finding something to eat. The majority therefore
determined to follow Saunders, — hoping either to
meet Weston at the fishing stations, or, if they failed
in that, to at least work their way back to England.
Following his instructions, Standish then proceeded to
supply the Swan as well as he could for her short
voyage ; and so scant was his store, that when he had

1623. A GHASTLY FREIGHT. 97

done this, he scarcely had food enough left for his own
party until they could get back to Plymouth. The
Swan and the Plymouth shallop set sail from Wessa-
gusset in company ; but when they came to the har-
bor's mouth they stood away on different courses, the
former going off to the north and east, while the latter
followed the familiar trend of the shore to the south.
Standish had obeyed to the letter the stern instruc-
tions which he had himself inspired at his setting
forth ; for, safely stowed away in his boat, a ghastly
freight, he bore back with him the gory head of
Wituwamat, "that bloody and bold villain before
spoken of."

Such was the ignominious end of the first attempt
at European settlement on the shores of Boston Bay.
When he heard of it at Plymouth the sedate Bradford
gave evidence that though he was a Pilgrim and a
Separatist he was also a human being, for he sent a
grim chuckle of exultation after Thomas Weston's
vanishino: and vao:abond crew. " This was the end
of these that sometime hosted of their strength," he
wrote, " and what they would doe and bring to pass, in
comparison of the people hear ; . . . and said at their
first arrivall, w^hen they saw the wants hear, that they
would take another course, and not to fall into such a
condition as this simple people were come too. But
a mans way is not in his owne power ; God can make
the weake to stand ; let him also that standeth take
heed least he fall." Weston's attempt at a plantation
certainly had fallen, for there remained of it at
Wessagusset nothing but some deserted block-houses.
A few stragglers, three probably in all, including one
man who had thrown his lot in with the savages,
abandoning civilized life and taking unto himself a

98 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

squaw, were left behind when the others went away.
They had disregarded the summons to come in, and
after the massacre could not be reached ; but the
Plymouth people subsequently *did what they could to
save them. The savage who had followed Pratt, and,
instead of stopping at Plymouth, gone on further
south, had, on his return, come into the settlement and
at once been secured. In manacles and under strict
guard, he was confined in the new fort, that being the
first day that ever any watch was there kept. When
Standish safely returned, and Wituwamat's head was
perched in triumph on the roof of the captive's prison,
he " looked piteously " at it, and, being asked whether
he recognized it, answered " Yea." Doubtless he
expected his own head would soon keep it company.
But Governor Bradford, rightly concluding that
enough in the way of severity had now been done,
ordered the prisoner's release, sending through him a
message to the sachem Aberdecest to the effect that
he must at once deliver up in safety the three captive
settlers, and see that no damage was done to the build-
ing's at Wessag'usset. The buildino's remained undis-
turbed : but, before Bradford's message reached Aber-
decest, the captives had already been despatched. The
messenger thereupon did not dare return to Phonouth ;
and, indeed, such was the terror felt among the Massa-
chusetts lest the revenge they took on these men should
be visited on their own heads, that for a time no one
among them dared show himself. A woman at last
came in bringing a very humble message. She said
that Aberdecest would fain be at peace with Plymouth,
and that in obedience to their commands he would
have sent the captives had they not been already dead
when those commands reached him. It would seem,

1623. INDIAN CAPTIVES, 99

also, that their killing was not unaccompanied by that
ino:enious refinement of torture which ever made death
preferable to Indian captivity ; for afterwards, speak-
ing of their fate, one of the savages said, — " When
we killed your men they cried and made ill-favored
faces." 1

Some months later the news of the Wessagusset affair
reached Ley den, and by it the beloved pastor of- the
Plymouth church was sorely moved. He wrote an
earnest letter to his people in which he took the side
of the natives, and expressed himself in a way whicb
shows at once the high moral tone both of him who
wrote the letter and of those to whom it was written.
It contained all that could now, in the ripe philan-
thropy of two centuries and a half later, be said in
condemnation of what had been done.

" Concerning the killing of those poor Indians, of which
we heard at first by report, and since by more certain rela-
tion, oh ! how happy a thing had it been, if you had con-
verted some before you had killed any ; besides, where blood
is once begun to be shed, it is seldom staunched of a long
time after. You will say they deserved it. I grant it ; but
upon what provocations and invitements by those heathenish
Christians ? Besides, you, being no magistrates over them,
were to consider, not what they deserved, but what you
were of necessity constrained to inflict. Necessity of this,
especially of killing so many, (and many more, it seems,
they would, if they could,) I see not. Methinks one or two
principals should have been full enough, according to that
approved rule, The punishment to the few, and the fear to
many. Upon this occasion let me be bold to exhort you
seriously to consider of the disposition of your Captain,
whom I love, and am persuaded the Lord in great mercy
and for much good hath sent you him, if you use him aright.

1 IV. Mass. Hist. CM. iv. 486 ; Young, Chron. of Pilg. 344.

100 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

He is a man humble and meek amongst you, and towards
all in ordinary course. But now if this be merely from an
human spirit, there is cause to fear that by occasion, espe-
cially of provocation, there may be wanting that tenderness
of the life of man (made after God's image) which is meet.
It is also a thing more glorious in men's eyes, than pleasing
in God's, or convenient for Christians, to be a terror to
poor, barbarous people ; and indeed I am afraid lest, by
these occasions, others should be drawn to affect a kind of
ruffling course in the world. I doubt not but you will take
in good part these things which I write, and as there is
cause make use of them."

That the Wessagusset killing amounted to a massa-
cre, and a cold blooded one, — that it failed to include
all the male Indians thereabouts simply because they
could not be so entrapped that they might all be
slaughtered at once, — that, so far as it went, it was a
butchery, — all this admits of no doubt. The savages
were the first occupants of the soil ; they had sus-
tained many and grievous wrongs at the hands of
those newcomers whom they had welcomed ; there
was for them in this world no redress. Had the situ-
ation been reversed, and the Indians, after similar
fashion, set upon the Europeans in a moment of un-
suspecting intercourse, no language would have been
found strong enough to describe in the page of history
their craft, their stealth and their cruelty. In this,
as in everything, the European has had the last word.
He tells the tale. Under these circumstances, while
it is impossible to deny, it is contemptible, as is so
often done, to go about to palliate. Yet, admitting
everything which in harshest language modern phi-
lanthropy could assert, there is still no reasonable
doubt that, in the practical working of human events,

1623. INDIAN CHARACTER. 101

the course approved in advance by the Plymouth
magistrates, and ruthlessly put in execution by Stan-
dish, was in this case the most merciful, the wisest and,
consequently, the most justifiable course. The essen-
tial fact was, and is, that the settlers were surrounded
by Indians and had to deal with them ; and Indians
were not Europeans. They could be dealt with suc-
cessfully, either in the way of kindness or severity, only
by dealing with them as what they were, — partially
developed, savage, human beings. Now it has already
been observed that Standish understood the Indian
character, and correctly measured the savage as an
antagonist. He understood the Indian, too, through
no process of reasoning, for it may well be questioned
whether reasoning was exactly Miles Standish's strong
point. It was with him evidently a matter of intui-
tion. In other words, he had the same natural faculty
for dealing with Indians which some men have for
dealing with horses, and others with dogs ; and this
natural faculty caused him at the outset to realize that
truth which Parkman says the French, — both soldiers
and priests, — though more successful than any other
Europeans in dealing with the savages, learned only
slowly and through bitter experience, — the truth,
namely, that " in the case of hostile Indians no good
can come of attempts to conciliate, unless respect is
first imposed by a sufficient castigation." ^

That the Indians in this case, however made so,
were hostile, that a widespread conspiracy existed,
and that their plague-stricken condition alone pre-
vented the ill-ordered proceedings at Wessagusset
from ending in a general and on the part of the sav-
ages most justifiable Indian war, can admit of no
1 Old Regime, 183.

102 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April,

doubt. If the Massachusetts were weak, the Narra-
gansetts and the Pequots were strong. The movement,
once successfully started, might well set the whole im-
measurable wilderness in commotion. The course of
true wisdom, therefore, w^as to extinguish the spark,
and to extingTiish it completely, — not to wait to fight
the flame. Least of all was the time meet for making
proselytes. Stung by the wrongs they had endured,
and despising those at whose hands they had suffered,
the savages were in a frame of mind little receptive
of gospel truths. They were thinking rather of scalps
and the war-path than of conversion. Chastisement
had to precede conciliation ; and consequently, in the
perilous case in which those composing it at Plymouth
then were, John Robinson's flock stood more in need
of Miles Standish, however fierce and unreasoning,
than of himself, however forbearing and saintly.

It is far nobler to preach and to convert than to
strike ; but there are times when a blow is necessary,
and then it is well if one blow sufficeth. Standish
struck the savages at Wessagusset in the way they
best understood. Stealth, it is to be remembered, is
to the Indian what strategy is to the European. It
is his method of conducting war. In 1623 he saw
nothing in it that was cowardly, nothing that was
brutal ; and he sees nothing now. On the contrary
he dealt in concealments, in conspiracies, in deceits
and in surprises. To take your enemy unawares, and
kill him, was in his eyes the great warrior's part. To
attack him openly was in his eyes folly ; to have mercy
on him when vanquished was weakness. Standish
therefore merely beat them, and he beat them terribly,
with their own weapons. He showed himself more
stealthy, more deceitful, more ferocious and more

1623. ''LIKE MEN DISTRACTED:' 103

daring than he among them whom, in all these regards,
they most admired. With his own hand he had killed
their strongest and fiercest warrior, who was also the
most cunning of them all, their master in treacheries ;
and he had killed him with the knife snatched from
the warrior's own neck. Hence the Indian's fear of
Standish now knew no bounds. Those implicated in
the conspiracy against Wessagusset were at once con-
science and panic stricken. Aberdecest in his terror
forsook his habitation and removed daily from place
to place. Canacum, remembering the scene in his
wigwam, hid himself in the swamp, and there died of
privation and exposure. Yet another sachem, hoping
to ingratiate himself with the avenger, sent a canoe
laden with peace-offerings to Plymouth. Near the
mouth of the harbor it was cast away, and three of
his emissaries were drowned. Thomas Morton wrote
that such a terror was Standish, after this event, " that
the savao^es durst never make to a head ao^ainst them
any more ; " ^ while the historian of Plymouth said
that " this sudden and unexpected execution, together
with the just judgment of God upon their guilty con-
sciences, hath so terrified and amazed [the savages]
as in like manner they forsook their houses, running
to and fro like men distracted, living in swamps and
other desert places, and so brought manifold diseases
on themselves, whereof very many are dead." ^

Thus at the cost of seven lives, ruthlessly, treacher-
ously taken, immediate Indian hostilities were averted,
and the inevitable life and death struggle with the
aborigines was deferred for half a century, when it
had to result in the swift destruction of the inferior
race. That it should also have resulted in consionino:

1 N. E. Canaan, 108. 2 Young, Chron. of Pilg. 344-5.

104 SMOKING FLAX BLOOD-QUENCHED. April

to hopeless West Indian slavery the infant grandchild
of that Massasoit whose friendly caution now saved
Plymouth, must remain a blot on New England his-
tory in comparison with which the Wessagusset killing
was an act of mercy. He, at least, might have been
saved and converted, that he might have become to a
Massachusetts progeny what Pocahontas is to one of
Virginia. For a New-Englander to trace a descent
from Massasoit would indeed be matter of family
pride.^

Meanwhile the Wessagusset killing was Standish's
last combat with the Indians, for from that time for-
ward, as long as he lived, there was peace between
them and the Plymouth colony. At Wessagusset
also a few straggling settlers a little later lived for
years buried deep in the solitude, and the savages
did not molest them. In fact, so far as the dying
tribe of the Massachusetts was concerned, the fierce
blow struck in those early days of April, 1623, was a
final one. They could not rally from it. Out of less
than twoscore warriors seven had been taken off.
Massacre thus completed the work of pestilence. It
may have been necessary, — almost certainly it was
best ; but, thinking of the terrible wasting which the
broken-spirited tribe had so recently undergone at the
hand of Providence, it must be admitted that, on this
occasion at least, the Plymouth Fathers broke the
bruised reed and quenched the smoking flax.

^ See the volume entitled Indian History^ Biography and Genealogy :
Pertaining to the good Sachem Massasoit, prepared by Gen. E. W. Pearce
and published at North Abing-ton, Mass., in 1878, by Mrs. Zerviah
Gould Mitchell. Mrs. Mitchell, who claimed to be a descendant in
the seventh generation from Massasoit, was in 1888 still living- at Bet-
ty's Neck on the Indian reservation in Middleboroug-h, Mass. She
had children. The family is Indian.

CHAPTER VII.

SIR FERDINANDO GORGES AND THE COUNCIL FOR
NEW ENGLAND.

"The pale and houses at Wessagusset," which
Bradford cautioned the savages not to destroy, were
destined to remain unoccupied a few months only ;
for Weston's company departed early in April, 1623,
and b}^ the middle of September following the place
was taken possession of by others. Captain Robert
Gorges, the individual at the head of those composing
the new enterprise, was a very different person from
Thomas Weston, and yet in his way quite as little
calculated to grapple successfully with the hard prob-
lem of New England colonization. Weston was a
merchant adventurer, a man of the city and a trader ;
Gorges was a gentleman adventurer, a man of the
court and a soldier. The object of the former had
been the establishment of a plantation and trading-
post. The dream of the latter was to find a species
of palatinate for himself, a little principality of his
own, in the New World.

Robert Gorges was the younger of the two sons of
that Sir Ferdinando already mentioned in connection
with Squanto's European experience. Like Raleigh
and Smith, only in less degree, the elder Gorges re-
mains one of the picturesque characters in the settle-
ment of English-speaking America. He stands out
among the rest with the face and bearing of a cava-

lOo SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. 1566-97.

lier. Though lils name had a Spanish sound, there
was no Spanish blood in the Gorges veins ; on the
contrary, himself a typical Englishman of the Eliza-
bethan period. Sir Ferdinando came of old West
Country stock, of pure English descent, being con-
nected with the Russells and the Ealeighs. Of his
early life scarce anything is known, even the date of
his birth, which took place somewhere between 1566
and 1569, being uncertain. For some reason it seems
not to have been recorded.^ When quite young, Sir
Ferdinando devoted himself to that half naval, half
military career so common among the men of that
time, and followed it steadily for more than half a
century. The first mention made of him is as a cap-
tain in the force sent to the relief of Sluys, when that
place was besieged by the Duke of Parma in the
spring of 1587. The next year he was a j^risoner of
war at Lisle. In 1589 he was engaged in the siege
of Paris, and, it is said, was borne wounded from the
breach by Henry of Navarre himself. Two years af-
terwards he is heard of again as one of the officers of
the contingent sent over by Elizabeth under the com-
mand of the Earl of Essex to assist the Huguenots,
and with that force he took an active part in the siege
of Rouen.2 A few years later he was made military
governor of Plymouth, and when, in 1597, the Ferrol
expedition was sent out against Spain, Gorges was
appointed one of the counsellors of Essex, who was
in chief command, with the rank of sergeant-major.
He sailed in command of the Dreadnaught ; but
when, shortly after setting out, the unlucky fleet was

1 Baxter, Memoir of Gorges (Prince Society Publications), 3.

2 Devereux, Earls of Essex, i. 271 ; Markham, The Fighting Veres;
IV. Mass. Hist. Coll. vu. 342.

1600. ROBERT, EARL OF ESSEX. 107

dispersed by a gale, he returned with the others to
port. The expedition refitted and again set sail, but
this time ill-health compelled Gorges to remain be-
hind, and he did not rejoin it. Recognized as one of
Essex's officers, he seems to have been warmly at-
tached to that unfortunate nobleman ; and, indeed, at
a little later day, it was in connection with Essex's
mad attempt at an insurrection that the name of Sir
Ferdinando finds its only mention in English history,
— a mention which he himself would gladly have fore-
gone. The incident, as will presently be seen, had a
remote but not unimportant bearing on the subsequent
course of events in the settlement of Massachusetts.
In that settlement the two opposing forces in church
and state, which then divided England, were again
confronted ; there, too, Cavalier was opposed to Puri-
tan, and on the Cavalier side Gorges was the central,
it might almost be said the only leading figure. Es-
sex was the popular Puritan hero, and Gorges' connec-
tion with him affected the whole subsequent life and
political standing of the latter. It becomes in this
way a part of American history.

Hot-headed, generous, attractive and shallow, Robert
Devereux, the second Earl of Essex, was the favorite
of Queen Elizabeth's later years. She demeaned her-
self towards him, after her wont. First she raised
him, when hardly more than a boy, to high commands
for which he was not fitted ; then she rebuked his
petulance by soundly boxing his ears in presence of
her counsellors ; finally she signed his death warrant,
and, having done so, ever afterwards mourned for him.
When, after his disastrous Irish failure in 1600, Essex
returned in hot haste to court. Gorges was military
governor of Plymouth. Failing to obtain the redress

108 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. Feb.

he demanded at the Queen's hands, the Earl a year
later summoned all his friends to London. To Gorges
among others, though there had been no communica-
tion between them for two years previous, he wrote a
letter full of complaints of the treatment he had re-
ceived. Gorges responded in person ; and, coming
up to London, took part in the treasonable confer-
ences held at Essex-house during the first week of
February, 1601. When finally, on Sunday the 8th,
apparently more because he knew not what else to do
than with any definite plan, Essex sallied out into the
Strand on foot at the head of his band of friends and
retainers and made his bootless insurrectionary rush
into the city. Gorges was at his side. After the hope-
lessness of exciting even a tumult became apparent,
the Earl tried to make his way back to Essex-house,
in which he had left Popham the Chief Justice and
Egerton the Lord Keeper (sent in the morning by the
Queen to command him to desist from his purposes)
locked up and under guard ; but the return was not
so easy as the going forth. At Ludgate the now
panic-stricken and fast dwindling party found their
path obstructed by a chain drawn across the street,
and guarded by a company of soldiers. A parley
took place, followed by a futile effort to force the way.
Gorges then bethought himself of a plan by which
the Earl might possibly yet be extricated from his
desperate position. The utter failure of the move-
ment from Essex-house was not yet known at court,
where the tumult occasioned by it in the city had
probably caused alarm if not panic. It was, there-
fore, barely possible that souie terms might be ob-
tained, could the friends of Essex but communicate
with the court at once, before the alarm subsided.

1621. INSURRECTIO UNIUS DIEI. 109

The charge subsequently made against Gorges was
that, in doing what he now did, he acted solely on
his own responsibility, and with a view to his own
safety. He, on the contrary, always asserted that
before leaving Essex he told the Earl of his scheme,
and was authorized to do something in that way if he
could. This seems wholly probable. It is to be re-
membered that everything was in confusion. Some-
thing had to be done, and that immediately. There
was no time for discussion. Essex himself was so
bewildered and agitated that the sweat flowed from
him like water, and he was capable neither of receiv-
ing counsel nor of giving orders. Under these cir-
cumstances, in the midst of the flight from Ludgate,
Gorges, it would seem, hurriedly proposed something
to his bewildered leader. The latter did not well un-
derstand what it was, but it seemed to hold out a
chance ; so he assented to it, as he would have as-
sented to anything else. Gorges then slipped away,
and succeeded in getting back to Essex-house.

His idea was to release Popham, the Chief Justice,
with whom his personal relations were close, and go
with him at once to Westminster, there to make,
through his intervention, such terms as might be pos-
sible for the Earl. Unfortunately Chief Justice Pop-
ham was a sturdy Englishman whose nerves were not
easily disturbed. He had been improving his hours
of confinement with his eye at a keyhole,^ taking

1 Popham presided as Chief Justice at the trial of some of the con-
spirators. In the course of the proceedings as reported in the case of
Sir Christopher Blunt {State Trials^ ed. 1766, vii. 52), appears the
following- : — " The Lord-Chief -Justice hereupon asked Sir Christo-
pher Blunt, why they stood at the great chamber-door, with muskets
charged and matches in their hands ; which, through the key-hole, the
Lord-Chief- Justice said, he discerned."

110 ^7A' FERDINANDO GORGES. Feb.

observations of those of the conspirators having him
in charge ; and now, though quite willing to leave
Essex-house, he wholly refused to do so unless the
Lord Keeper, the companion of his mission, left it
with him. Gorges had to act on his own responsibil-
ity and instantly, for moments were precious. Doing
so, he ordered the release of the Lord Keeper likewise,
and, hurrying the two into a boat at the riverside,
started for Westminster. As they went he put the
best face he could on the situation. He represented
the tumult in the city as formidable, and tried to im-
press on Chief Justice and Lord Keeper the necessity
of something being done at once to appease it. His
scheme was, perhaps, as feasible as any which could
then have been devised, had there but been time in
which to carry it out ; for, in reality, the alarm all
day at court had been much greater and more general
than he could have supposed. The Queen alone had
maintained her composure. But before Gorges reached
the council chamber the panic had already begun to
subside, for tidings were fast coming in of Essex's
complete failure and the growing difficulties of his
position. It was known that the Earl's capture had
become a question of merely a few hours. Her fallen
favorite's insurrectio unms diei, as Elizabeth con-
temptuously called it, never achieved the proportions
of a good-sized city riot.

Essex meanwhile, after his repulse from the chain
at Ludgate, turned back into the city, and, getting
down to the riverside, succeeded at last in making his
way back to Essex-house by water ; but only to find
himself there surrounded, with both the Chief Justice
and the Lord Keeper released and gone. In his utter
desperation he and those about him seem to have sup-

1621. A STATE TRIAL. Ill

posed that some use as hostages might now have been
made of those two high officials ; but it is not easy
to see what this use could have been. There was
nothing for the Eaii and his followers to do except to
surrender themselves. This both they and those who
held them surrounded knew perfectly well. It would
have been a distinct aggravation of their offence if,
when they surrendered, the two highest officials of
the law had been found still prisoners in their hands.
As a matter of fact, therefore, the release by Gorges
of Egerton and Popham in no way made worse a
situation which was already hopeless. As it grew to-
wards night the unfortunate Earl gave himself up,
having continued to the very end a pitiable spectacle
of hesitating irresolution.

Ten days later the trial took place. Of the guilt
of Essex there could be no doubt ; but the evidence
chiefly relied upon against him was contained in the
written examinations of certain of his associates,
prominent among whom was Gorges. It was in con-
nection with Gorges also that the most striking and
painful incident of the proceedings occurred, — the
incident which imj)ressed itself most vividly on the
memories of all present. Up to the point at which
Gorges' examination was produced, no witnesses had
been called or oral evidence given. But when the
counsel for the crown read from this paj^er the state-
ment that, as a result of the February conferences at
Essex-house, the decision as to the course to be pur-
sued had been left wholly with the Earl, who had
thereupon on Saturday evening " resolved the next
day to put in practice the moving of his friends in
the city," — when this statement was read Essex was
greatly moved. He at once demanded that the wit-

112 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. Feb.

ness should be produced, in order that he might inter-
roi^ate hini face to face. Goro^es was at the time a
prisoner in the Gate house. He was sent for and
brought into Westminster Hall, where the Lords were
sitting as a court for the trial of a peer ; and there,
after he had repeated his statement, adding further
" that he advised the Earl, at his return out of the
city to his house, to go and submit himself to her
Majesty," the following painful colloquy ensued : —

Essex. Good Sir Ferdinand©, I pray thee speak openly
whatsoever thou dost remember ; with all my heart I de-
sire thee to speak freely ; I see thou desirest to live, and
if it please her Majesty to be merciful unto you, I shall be
glad and will pray for it ; yet I pray thee, speak like a
man.

Sir F. Gorges. All that I can remember I liave delivered
in my Examination, and further I cannot say.

Essex. Sir Ferdinand©, I wish you might speak any-
thing that might do yourself good ; but remember your
reputation, and that you are a gentleman ; I pray you
answer me, did you advise me to leave my enterprise ?

Sir F. Gorge. My Lord, I think I did.

Essex. Nay, it is no time to answer now upon thinking ;
these are not things to be forgotten ; did you indeed so
counsel me ?

Sir F. Gorge. I did.

Essex. My Lords, look upon Sir Ferdinando, and see if
he looks hke himself. All the world shall see, by my death
and his life, whose testimony is the truest.^

Even this meagre abstract of what passed shows
that it was the most striking episode of the whole trial.
Essex had before been wrangling fiercely with Coke ;
and later there was a bitter passage between him and

1 Jardine, Criminal Trials, i. 334.

1601. CONFRONTED. 113

Bacon, a passage which history has not forgotten.^
But Coke and Bacon were lawyers and counsel for the
crown ; with Gorges it was different. In Gorges, Es-
sex was confronted with his own familiar friend, the
confidant of his schemes, now turned state's evidence
against him. Those present at the trial reported that
Sir Ferdinando was in appearance pale and discom-
posed ; and, indeed, this is still apparent in his replies ;
while, on the other hand, the mingled pathos, haughti-
ness and despair of Essex ring through his questions.
The " remember that you are a gentleman," following
hard on the " I see thou desirest to live," and end-
ing in the passionate cry, "look upon Sir Ferdinando,"
all combined to make up a scene which Englishmen of
that day never forgot.

All else in Gorges' connection with Essex's mad
folly and unhappy fate admits of extenuation or ex-
cuse. That trial scene does not. It is final and
fatal. Gorges never got over it, and it cannot now
be explained away. His answers to the other charges
which were, subsequently to the Earl's death, made
against him, are clear and satisfactory. It was alleged
that early on the morning of the fatal Sunday he had
met Sir Walter Raleigh in a boat on the Thames, and
had betrayed to him Essex's design ; but Gorges an-
swered very truly, that the meeting took place before
witnesses, and with the Earl's knowledge and con-
sent, while Raleigh was already fully informed as to
all that was going on, and indeed had sought the in-
terview, in consequence of this knowledge, for the
express purpose of warning his kinsman, Sir Ferdi-
nando, to look after his own safety while he yet could.

^ Macaulay, Essays, Lord Bacon; Campbell, Lives of Lord Chan-
cellors, ch. liii.

114 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. Feb.

So as to the release of the imprisoned Chief Justice
and Lord Keeper, the supposed hostages. Gorges
well replied to the charge of treachery in this matter,
that he acted with such consent of the Earl as the
hurry and tumult of the situation permitted, and that
at least, in what he did, he meant for the best. But
when at last it came to the scene in Westminster
Hall, with Essex and Gorges face to face, it was not
possible to extenuate. It was plain that his impris-
onment and the fear of a traitor's death had so
wrought upon Gorges' mind that he could not resist
the temj^tation to save, if he could, his own head by
giving evidence which bore hard on his chief.

His shortcoming stopped there, and his attitude
then and afterwards, whe'n compared with the ig-
noble bearing of Bacon in the same memorable pro-
ceedings, almost commands respect. Gorges failed to
remember that he was a gentleman ; perhaps, even, he
was a cowardly apostate, — but an eager one he was
not. What he did, he at least did to save his life.
Unlike Bacon, he did not seem to feel a joy in the
work of pressing down his falling patron ; nor later
did he seek to insure his own safety by traducing the
memory of his friend. On the contrary, while freshly
smarting under the stigma of treachery with which the
Earl had forever branded him, — while yet a prisoner
in the Gate house, trembling for his head, — he wrote
of Essex, and took his own appeal to the verdict of
posterity, in words so manly, direct and pathetic that
they seem rather to belong to the nineteenth century
than to the sixteeenth. Certainly Gorges never wrote
so well again.

" Like will to like, and every man will keep company
with such as he is himself ; he was of the same profession

1601. THE PURITAN'S EARL. 115

that T was, and of a free and noble spirit. But I must say
no more, for he is gone, and I am here ; I loved him alive,
and cannot hate him being dead; he had some imperfec-
tions — so have all men ; he had many virtues — so have
few ; and for those his virtues I loved him ; and when time;
which is the trial of all truths, hath run his course, it shall
appear that I am wronged in the opinion of this idle age.
In the mean time, I presume this that I have said is suffi-
cient to satisfy the wise and discreet : for the rest, whatever
I can do is but labor lost, and, therefore, I propose not to
trouble you nor myself at this time any further." ^

The appeal was taken in vain. The popularity of
Essex with his countrymen is one of the inexplicable
things in English history. His biographer confesses
himself unable to account for it ; ^ yet in 1626, a quar-
ter of a century after the Earl's death, the Duke of
Buckingham, exulting in the glory he felt sure was to
come to him from the Isle of Rhe expedition, could
think of no stronger way of expressing his hopes than
by boasting that " before midsummer he should be
more honored and beloved by the commons than ever
was the Earl of Essex." ^ By the Puritans especially
Essex was wellnigh adored ; he was looked upon not
only as their patron and protector, but as one of them-
selves. So strong, indeed, was the hold he had on the
hearts and memories of this most tenacious and vin-
dictive of all types of men, that it was still plainly
to be seen forty years later, when they and the King
came to blows. The secretary of the Long Parlia-
ment, in writing its history,* mentions the popularity

1 Sir Ferdinando Gorges, ii. 117, 118, Prince Society Publications.
^ Devereux, Earls of Essex, ii. 102.

3 Disraeli, Curiosities of Literature (ed. 1863), iii. 458. See, also,
Birch, Memoirs of the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, B. XII.

4 May, Hist, of Long Pari. 162.

116 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. 1601.

of the father as a principal reason for the appoint-
ment to chief military command of his son, — another
Earl of Essex, without the assistance of whose great
name Clarendon does not scruple to say it would have
'' been utterly impossible for the two houses of Parlia-
ment to have raised an army then.'' ^

It was this darling of the people, this protector of
the Puritans, that Sir Ferdinando Gorges was thought
to have betrayed. When a vague general impression
of this kind in regard to any individual takes posses-
sion of the public mind, it is almost impossible to dis-
lodge it. If this is true even now, when counter evi-
dence can be spread before the eyes of every one, it
was much more true in 1601. So far as the people
and the Puritans were concerned. Gorges might as
well have spared himself the trouble of his disavow-
als. He never again found any favor in their eyes.
On the contrary, as will presently be seen,^ twenty
years later, at the very moment when the enterprise
which was the dream of his life seemed nearest to suc-
cess, Gorges found himself confronted and thwarted
by a Puritan House of Commons, acting under the
strong lead of the most vindictive man of that vin-
dictive time, — a man who must have remembered
him chiefly in connection with the dramatic scene in
AVestminster Hall, at the crisis of the trial of the two
Earls.

Queen Elizabeth survived Essex a little over three
years. AVith her death the cloud of royal displeas-
ure, which had cast a dark shadow of uncertainty on
the lives of all the Earl's associates, disappeared, and
when in March, 1603, James ascended the throne they
found themselves once more at liberty and even in fa-
1 Rebellion, B. V. § 33. ^ i^fra, 126-9.

1601-6. THE GOVERNOR OF PLYMOUTH. 117

vor. Gorges, who had been released from prison in Jan-
uary, 1601, was now reappointed to his old government
at Plymouth. He was there, rusting away in the dull
routine of arsenal life, as a man of active mind needs
must, when in 1605 Weymouth returned from his voy-
age to the coast of Maine. The deep interest w^iich
his explorations and reports of the country excited in
the mind of the governor of Plymouth have already
been alluded to.^ Possessing much of his kinsman
Raleigh's love of adventure and craving for the un-
known. Sir Ferdinando then went systematically to
work informing himself in every possible way of that
new country beyond the seas, to occupy which became
thereafter the labor as well as the dream of his long
life. In season and out of season he was instant upon
it. Nothing sufficed to draw away his mind from it.
He had, too, a long life still before him ; for in 1605
he could not yet have reached his fortieth birthday,
and he survived his misadventure with Essex through
nearly half a century.

The Penobscot savages brought over by Weymouth
remained three years under Gorges' protection. They
had then become more or less familiar with his lan-
guage, and had enlightened him so far as they could
as to the region of which they were natives. He be-*
lieved their fanciful stories ; and gradually his mind
became absorbed in plans for preempting, as it were,
all modern New England. Sir John Popham was
still Chief Justice, and Gorges' relations with him
would seem to have been of the most intimate char-
acter ; for he interested Sir John in his schemes,
and the Chief Justice was a man of substance. In
the spring of 1G06 two royal patents were obtained,^

^ Supra, 24-5. ^ Baxter, Gorges, ii. 12.

118 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. 1606-8.

through Popham's influence, incorporating the First
and Second Colonies, as they were designated, or the
London and Plymouth Companies, as they were sub-
sequently called, from the j^laces at which their meet-
ings were customarily held. Though not named among
the patentees of either, Popham and Gorges attached
themselves to the latter, or Plymouth Company, the
grant to which covered all the territory along the coast,
and for fifty miles inward, between the mouth of the
Potomac and the northern extremity of what is now
the island of Cape Breton. During the same spring
of 1606 preliminary exploring parties were sent out,
one by Gorges and another by Poj)ham. The first of
these resulted disastrously, for the vessel was captured
by the Spanish, and the release of its company was at
last obtained only with great difficulty and through
Popham's influence at court. The other, or Popham
expedition, was more fortunate ; and the favorable
reports brought back by it so encouraged the adven-
turers that early in the summer of 1607 they sent out
and established on the coast of Maine what has since
been known as the Popham Colony. The experiment
was pretentious and short-lived. A single winter at
the mouth of the Kennebec sufficed ; and before the
•autumn of 1608 was ended, the President being dead,
the Admiral, the Commander of the Forces, the Mas-
ter of the Ordnance, and all the other high-titled
functionaries of the little trading-post, made haste
back to England.

In the mean time Popham had died, and Gorges
was thus deprived of his influence and wealth. The
loss was the heavier because his own means had been
much reduced by the failure of 1606. As he himself
expressed it of another, his " hopes were frozen to

1608-20. FUTILE EFFORTS. 119

death . . . and [he] was necessitated to sit down with
the loss he had undergone." His associates now all
fell away from him ; nevertheless for the next twelve
years Gorges continued his explorations and ventures,
— sometimes alone, sometimes in partnership with
others. Purchasing a vessel, he became himself a pri-
vate trader, sending it out to the Banks and coast for
fish and furs, a good market for which was always to
be found. He even kept a party of men permanently
established through several seasons among the Penob-
scot savages. The business apparently was not un-
profitable, but the scale upon which he was compelled
to conduct it was small and lacking in system ; or, as
Gorges expressed it, " what I got one way I spent an-
other, so that I began to grow weary of that business,
as not for my turn till better times." In 1614, in part-
nership with Shakespeare's patron and his own old
confederate in the Essex treason, the Earl of South-
ampton, he sent out under Captain Hobson the expe-
dition to hunt for gold mines in Martha's Vineyard,
under the guidance of Epenow.^ He naturally se-
cured no fruits from this venture, except a convincing
experience that the Indian was as cunning as the in-
formation to be obtained from him was unreliable.
A year later another expedition was sent out, this
time under the command of Captain John Smith ; but
again ill-fortune waited on Sir Ferdinando. What
between stress of weather, which dismasted one vessel,
and the French, who captured the other, the enter-
prise was a total failure.

Thus things went on until 1620, the profits made in
fishing and trading being eaten up in futile attempts
at colonization. But all the while Gorges was acquir-
1 Supra, 26-7.

120 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. 1608-20.

ing information and experience. In these respects he
was indefatigable. He got together all the journals,
letters and charts he could lay his hands on, and care-
fully studied them. He took possession of each new
savage he heard of in England, and rejoiced greatly
when accident again threw in his way one whom he
formerly had, and then for a time lost sight of. The
stock of information he laid in from all these sources
must, from a purely trading point of view, have been
sufficiently reliable, for most of it was derived from
actual experience at the trading stations and on the
fishing grounds ; but when, through the reports of his
Indian captives, he sought to learn something of the
interior of the land, the result was ludicrously decep-
tive. The Lake Irocoise, as Champlain was called,
then became less than an hundred miles from the sea,
and in it were four islands full of pleasant woods and
meadows, the home of the deer, the elk, the beaver
and the martin. The waters of the lake were alive
with the choicest species of fish ; and on its shores, it
was hinted, were mines of gold and precious stones.
All the surrounding region was made accessible by
great rivers, flowing gently through a pleasant coun-
try, in which broad plains and fertile valleys were
studded with noble trees.^ The singular feature about
the ideal was that it came so near to the reality, and
yet was so very different from it. The lake, the
rivers, the valleys, the trees, the fish and the game,
even the mines, were there ; only it so chanced that
when taken all together, and with winter thrown in,
instead of making up that inviting Laconia which his
savages described and Gorges imagined, they resulted
in repellent New England. The picture was true
1 Belknap, Am. Biog. i. 376-7.

1622. THE COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND. 121

enough so far as it went ; merely the shadows had
not been put hi.

However deceptive it may have been, this brilliant
vision dwelt in Gorges' mind, the residt of years of
patient toil and experience and inquiry ; and in 1620
he seems to have thought the time had at last come
for another effort on a larger scale. He accordingly
gathered himself up for it. The thing first to be done
was to secure a new royal patent. The Plymouth
Company was not in the right hands. It did not rep-
resent enough capital, or enterprise, or power. Its
charter was, moreover, defective in several important
respects. Territorially, it covered the seacoast and
fifty miles only into the interior ; and the company
had never made any regulation to secure to itself the
exclusive right of fishing in the adjacent waters. In
other words, inasmuch as it had secured the exclusive
enjoyment of only what was valueless, as a monopoly
it was not a success.

His old associates of the Essex faction being now
in high favor at court. Gorges had no great difficulty
in securing a fresh charter such as he desired. In
those days a domain across the Atlantic, larger than
a first-class European kingdom, was as carelessly as-
signed away to some body of petitioning adventurers
as, under similar views of title, — could they but be
imagined, — a like territory in the centre of Africa
might now be granted to a company proposing to con-
struct a railroad across the desert of Sahara. Neither
in his new attempt did Gorges mean to find himself
without such assistance as high rank and court influ-
ence could bring him. He caused, therefore, the
names of many of the most prominent characters in
the kingdom to be associated with his own in his new

122 SIR FERDI NANDO GORGES. Nov.

pateut.^ There were forty of them in all, and the list
reads like an abstract from the Peerage. First among
" our risrht trusty and well beloved cousins and conn-
cillors " came the Duke of Lenox, '' Lord Steward of
our Household," followed by " our High Admiral,"
Buckingham, Pembroke, the " Lord Chamberlain of
our Household," Hamilton, Arundel, Bath, South-
ampton, Salisbury, Warwick, Haddington and Zouch,
" Lord Warden of our Cincque Ports," — a duke,
two marquises, six earls, a viscount, three barons and
nineteen knights, besides the Dean of Exeter.

All of these, and a few more who claimed no title
higher than the modest one of Esquire, were incorpo-
rated under the name and style of " the Council es-
tablished at Plymouth, in the county of Devon, for the
planting, riding, ordering and governing of New-Eng-
land, in America." The grant to them covered all
the territory, from sea to sea, between the 40th and
48th degrees of latitude, — in other words, the whole
vast belt between a line on the south carried through
from Philadelphia to the Pacific, and a parallel line
from Chaleur Bay at the north and east, across Can-
ada and Lake Superior, and thence, a single degree
only south of the present northw^estern boundary of
the United States, from the Lake of the Woods to
Puget's Sound. It practically included the whole of
what are now known as the Northern States of the
Union, as well as the best portion of Canada and the
Pacific States. At the time, nothing of course was
known of the interior, for Drake's adventurous voy-
age, during which he wintered in San Francisco Bay
and followed the coast as far up as the 48th parallel
in search of a northwestern passage, had occurred but
1 Hazard, i. 103-18.

1620. " A MOXOPOL Y OF WIND AND SUN.' 123

forty-two years before. This iiDknown domain was
now, on the third day of November in the year of
grace 1620, turned over by James Stuart — so far as
it could be turned over — to the governor of the
arsenal at Plymouth, as a private domain, to be par-
celled out between himself and some thirty-nine other
persons whom he chose to associate with him. The
truly singular feature in the whole, episode is that
this bit of parchment, so ignorantly and so carelessly
signed, proved thereafter to be the Great Charter of
New England ; and to this day that parchment is the
foundation of territorial bounds and real-estate hold-
ings in three states of the Union and in several of the
British provinces.

As regards exclusive privileges, the deficiencies of
the old charter were effectually cured, and the patent-
ees at least had no grounds now for complaint. The
new charter carried with it complete jurisdiction, civil,
martial and maritime, criminal and ecclesiastical,
" not only within the precincts of the said Collony,
but also upon the Seas in going and coming to and
from the said Collony." It further gave the patent-
ees full power and authority to encounter, resist and
repel, take and surprise " by Force of Arms, as well
by Sea as by Land," all persons with "their Ships,
Goods and other Furniture, trafficking in any Har-
bour, Creeke, or Place, within the limits " granted.
The vessels of those concerned in this trafficking, to-
gether with their cargoes and apparel, were liable to
forfeiture, half to the crown and half to the company.
It does not need to be pointed out that, if enforced,
this s:rant excluded the fishermen on the Grand Banks
from the necessary use of the shore. Not only could
they no longer trade along the coast for furs, but,

124 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. Nov.

unlass specially licensed, tliey could not use its harbors
and inlets for such necessary purposes of their calling
as stations for refreshment, the curing of their fish,
or the hauling or mending of their nets. Everything
thereafter was to be done under a permit, and that
permit was to be paid for. Never was there, as Lord
Coke vigorously put it, a more audacious attempt at
" a monopoly of the wind and sun."

Such exclusive privileges as these could not even in
those times be expected to pass unchallenged, and ex-
ception to them was in the first place taken by the old
South Virginia Compaffy9«v Those interested in that
compan}^ found themselves deprived of the right to
fish in the North Atlantic. They at once lodged
their complaint before the King in Council ; and a
long contest ensued, during which the significance
of Gorges' selection of patentees became apparent.
Buckingham was King James' " Steenie," — the un-
scrupulous, all-powerful favorite ; Lenox, Clarendon
tells us, was " used to discourse with his Majesty in
his bed-chamber rather than at the council-board ; "
Pembroke " was the most universally loved and es-
teemed of any man of that age ; " Hamilton " more
out-faced the law, in bold projects and pressures upon
the people, than any other man durst have presumed
to do ; " Arundel " was never suspected to love any-
body, nor to have the least propensity to justice, char-
ity or compassion," but, next to the officers of state,
in his own right and quality he preceded the rest of
the Council ; Salisbury, '' born and bred in court,"
and descended from " a father and grandfather, wise
men and great ministers, whose wisdom and virtues
died with them, and their children inherited only their
titles. ... No man so great a tyrant in his country,

1620. ^A" OMINOUS ASSURANCE. 125

or was less swayed by any motives of justice or honor."
These and men like these made up the list of patent-
ees of the Council for New England ; and they were
not only potent at court, but themselv^es members of
the Privy Council. The consciences of those about
King James were far from nice. In sitting on the
complaint of the Virginia Company, Buckingham,
Salisbury and the rest were sitting in their own case ;
and before them Gorges had no difficulty in holding
his ground. His grant was triumphantly sustained.
But the other party did not propose to remain quiet
under this defeat ; and, in the hour of his success,
Gorges received an ominous assurance that, his vic-
tory before the Lords of the Privy Council notwith-
standing, he should hear more of the matter in the
next parliament.

On the day when the charter of the Plymouth Com-
pany bore date, the voyage of the Mayflower was
nearly two months old, and exactly eight days later
her anchor was dropped in Provincetown harbor.
The soil on which the weary Pilgrims were about to
land had thus, since their departure from Southamp-
ton, become the private property of a knot of hangers-
on about Whitehall. Still, there was no danger that
a resting-place would be denied them. On the con-
trary, their opportune arrival was a great piece of
good luck for Gorges, and so regarded by him. For
years he had in vain been trying to induce settlers to
go to the New England coast, and now at last these
people had gone there of their own accord. A pros-
pect therefore unexpectedly opened itself to those in-
terested in the new company of having some occu-
pants for their domain other than wild animals and
wild men. Accordingly, a few months later, a patent
was very readily issued to the Plymouth partners.

126 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. 1621.

But it was not until the next summer that Gorges
knew of the settlement at Plymouth. In the interim
his hands were full of work at home ; for at last, after
nearly twenty years of dragging, political events in
England began to move more rapidly. On the 30th
of January, 1621, that new parliament met, with the
advent of which the patentees of the Council for New
England had been threatened at the close of the
contest before the Privy Council. It was the third
parliament of King James, the second having been
dissolved nearly seven years before, and the leaders
of his Majesty's opposition in it lodged temporarily
in the Tower. It was to j^rove, also, a very famous
parliament in history ; for not only did it impeach
Bacon, but it was instant in the presentation of griev-
ances, and with it began that movement which twenty-
eight years later, as old Auchinleck is said to have
expressed it to Dr. Johnson, "gart kings ken that
they had a lith in their neck."

The Puritan movement, now more than half a cen-
tury old, had, since the death of Essex, acquired a
greatly increased momentum, and in this parliament
its representatives crowded the benches of the Com-
mons. The one thing they probably knew of the
representative man of the Council for New England
was Essex's despairing cry, — " My Lords, look upon
Sir Ferdinando, and see if he looks like himself."
But this was not for Gorges all, nor even the worst.
While the parliament of 1621 might well be known as
the Grievances Parliament, it might even better be
known as Sir Edmund Coke's Parliament. The attor-
ney-general, who at the trial of twenty years before
had so ferociously pressed law and evidence against
Essex, had since then risen to be Chief Justice of the

1621. COKE'S PARLIAMENT. 127

King's Bench ; and, five years before the parliament
met, he had been ignominiously dismissed from that
high position by royal command. The natural vindic-
tiveness of Coke's temper had been thoroughly roused
by undeserved disgrace. Indeed, he now mainly lived
to revenge it. He had been returned to the new par-
liament; and the high office he had formerly held,
as well as his known hostility to the court, pointed
him out as a leader of the opposition. Hitherto he
had professed high-church principles ; he now placed
himself at the head of the Puritans. Twenty years
before, as attorney-general of the crown, he had
browbeaten Essex when struggling for his life. Al-
ways good at browbeating, he was now to have an
opportunity to obliterate from the minds of his fol-
lowers the recollection of what he had then done in
that line, as attorney-general, by showing them what
he could still do in it as Speaker of the Commons.
But, instead of Essex, that man was to stand before
him whom the Puritans looked upon as having been to
Essex what Judas was to Christ.

Parliament met on the 30th of January. Those
interested in the South Virginia Company were as
good as their word ; and Gorges found himself at an
early day summoned to the bar of the Commons, sit-
ting as a committee of the whole on grievances. Sir
Edmund Coke scowled from the Speaker's chair. A
long hearing ensued, — first before the whole House,
and then before a special committee, — in which, both
alone and with the aid of counsel, Gorges did the best
he could in defence of his charter. While his lawyers
confined themselves to the legal points involved, he
vigorously pressed general considerations on the com-
mittee. He claimed the territory granted, by right of

128 SIR FERDINANDO GORGES. 1621.

discovery and exploration, — by occupancy even. He
urged the systematic enlargement of England's do-
main, together with the proj^agation of the gospel, —
both, he claimed, " matters of the highest consequence,
and far exceeding a simple and disorderly course of
fishing," the interruption of which was now com-
plained of. Then he proceeded to show, —

" That the mischief e already sustained by those disorderly
Persons, are inhumane and intoUerable ; for, first, in their
manners and behaviour they are worse than the very Sav-
ages, impudently and openly lying with their Women, teach-
ing their Men to drinke drunke, to sweare and blaspheme
the name of GOD, and in their drunken humour to fall to-
gether by the eares, thereby giving them occasion to seek
revenge ; besides, they couzen and abuse the Savages in
trading and trafficking, selling them Salt covered with But-
ter instead of so much Butter, and the Hke couzenages and
deceits, both to bring the Planters and all our Nation into
contempt and disgrace, thereby to give the easier passage
to those People that dealt more righteously with them ; that
they sell unto the Savages Musquets, Fowling-PIeces, Pow-
der, Shot, Swords, Arrow-Heads, and other Armes, where-
with the Savages slew many of those Fisher-Men, and are
grown so able and so apt, as they become most dangerous
to the Planters." ^

That Gorges pleaded his cause with knowledge is
wholly probable ; and he says himself that in his
delivery he " did express more passion than ordinary."
It was wholly in vain. Apart from all question of
monopoly, it may well be doubted whether any cause
identified with and championed by Sir Ferdinando
Gorges would have stood a chance with that parlia-
ment. As it was, when at last Coke reported a list

^ Brief e Narration, B. I. ch. xx.

1621. SIR FERDINANDO LOOKED UPON. 129

of public grievances on behalf of the Commons, as
Gorges expressed it, *' that of the patent of New-Eng-
land was the first."

Fortunately for the patentees, James soon came to
an open issue with the Commons. The King wanted
subsidies ; they, reforms. Parliament paid small heed
to words from the throne when it met ; for though, to
use James' own expression, he often piped to them,
the members would not dance. The King doubtless
would willingly enough have sacrificed Gorges and
his patent, a mere pawn in the game, if by so doing
he could have gained a point ; and, indeed, it would
inevitably have come to this, had not the pretensions
of Coke, backed by the Commons, become so high.
But at last, wearying, as he himself put it, with hav-
ing his " words sent back as wind spit into my own
face," the King in June caused parliament to ad-
journ ; and, when it again met in November, it was
only to be dissolved in January. Nothing had been
done in the matter of the Council for New England,
and Gorges breathed more freely. Nevertheless, as
be subsequently found and bitterly confessed, the
public declaration which had been made of the Com-
mons' " dislike of the cause shook off all my adven-
turers for plantation, and made many of the patentees
to quit their interest, so that in all likelihood I must
fall under the weight of so heavy a burden." He did
fall. Though he struggled on for a time, not realiz-
ing it. Gorges' project had received a death-blow.
The Puritan Parliament had looked on Sir Ferdi-
nando, and Essex was avenged.

CHAPTER Yin,

"MONS PARTURIENS."

Parliament had been dissolved in January, and
during the same month Weston sent out his advanced
party in the Sparrow. In the course of the next
month the Fortune, having both Cushman and the
sailor William Trevore on board, reached London.
Weston was then busy preparing his larger expedition,
which sailed two months later, and it must have been
during the six weeks which followed that he took out
his patent.^

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Lowell Inst. Lectures (1869), 147, 154 As nothing
is known of Weston's patent except that it was taken out {supra, 58),
there is no means of fixing upon the territory covered by it. There
can be no doubt that Trevore was lavish of his information, and that
the story of what he saw lost nothing- in the telling. He talked freely
to Weston (Bradford, 122), and described Boston Bay to Thomson
(N. E. Hist, and Geneal. Reg. ix. 248), and undoubtedly to Thomson's
superior in office, Gorges. Yet, though Weston's party established
itself at Wessagusset, it does not follow that his patent covered that
region, or that it was based on information as to localities derived
from Trevore. On the contrary, the site of his plantation was fixed, as
Pratt asserts (iv. Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 478 ; supra, 52), by the small
advance party which had sailed the month preceding Trevore's return
to London. That this party should by chance have selected that very
site on the whole coast which Weston's patent, based on Trevore's
talk, subsequently covered, is to the last degree improbable. It
would seem far more likely that Weston, from the reports of Smith
and the captains of his own fishing vessels, already had some know-
ledge of Boston Bay ; that the advance party was directed to go
there ; and that when a little later he applied for a patent, in the
light of such local information as he could obtain from Trevore, he

1622. THE COUNCIL FOR NEW ENGLAND. 131

Gorges at this time was no less busy than Weston.
His hopes revived with the dissolution of the parlia-
ment, and he was actively at work organizing. The
record of the business meetings of the Council for
New England begins in May, 1622, the month suc-
ceeding that in which Weston's larger expedition set
sail, and, significantly enough, the very first entry re-
lates to a complaint against Weston, and a petition to
the Privy Council for the forfeiture of his ship to the
company's use. Nothing apparently came of either
complaint or petition. Though the meetings of the
Council were now frequent, the attendance was not
large, more than six or seven rarely being present.
Gorges and Dr. Barnaby Gooch, the treasurer, were
nearly always there ; but the titled patentees scarce
ever showed themselves, though the Duke of Lenox
and the Earls of Arundel, Pembroke and Warwick did
so now and then. The company apparently never had
any office or regular place of meeting, but the patent-
ees were called together at Whitehall, or at its treas-
urer's rooms, or elsewhere as might prove convenient.
It is doubtful whether it ever had even a chest for its
books, though at its third meeting on July 12, 1622,
an order was passed for procuring one. Its treasury
would rarely seem to have been otherwise than empty.

Complaints as to the disorderly doings of the fish-
arranged to have it cover the region on the south side of the bay. If
this was the case, it may fairly be surmised that the Robert Gorges
patent, issued a few months later, covered adjoining territory. In
that case the peninsula of Boston, and the townships of Dorchester
and Quincy as well as Weymouth, may liave been included in the
Weston patent. Cushman surmised (Bradford, 122) that it covered
a region south of Cape Cod. He evidently knew nothing about it ;
and not only the course of Weston's advanced party, but his whole
plan of action, makes this improbable. Fortunately the question is
one of little interest, and apparently of no historical significance.

132 ^'MONS PARTURIENSr . 1622.

ermen and traders on the North Athintic coast, upon
which Gorges in his argument before the committee
laid so much stress, continued to come in, and it was
necessary to do something in relation to them. Prob-
ably also the active members of the Council thought
the present a favorable time to begin to raise a reve-
nue from their exclusive privileges. The work of po-
licing the coast of half a continent was expensive ; and
if it had to be done, it seemed but right that those
who frequented the coast should pay for it. Accord-
ingly, at a meeting of the Council on the 5th of July,
four members being present, steps were taken to pro-
cure the issuing of a royal proclamation against all
unlicensed trading, and other infringements of the
rights of the patentees. On the 6th of the following
November the desired proclamation was published. It
was a document sweeping in its terms. It forbade all
persons without the license of the Council, which was
merely another name for Sir Ferdinando Gorges'
permit, from either trading with the natives or visit-
in er the coast of North America between Delaware
Bay and the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The penalty was
forfeiture of vessel and cargo. In anticipation of this
Order in Council, the company had, at its meeting on
the 28th of October, considered what would be a fair
charge for a license, and " it was thought fitt to de-
mand from [the fishermen] five fishes out of every
hundred." Two weeks later at another meeting, the
proclamation having in the mean time appeared, an
order w^as passed providing that it, and the regulations
of the Council for New England in pursuance thereof,
should be posted " uppon the mayne Mast of every
Shipp to bee obedient hereunto." ^

1 The Proclamation of November 6, 1622, is in Hazard, i. 151. The

1622.

CAPTAIN ROBERT GORGES. 133

The plan for the better enforcement of these regu-
lations which naturally suggested itself was to send
out some person clothed with authority to represent
the Council on the spot, and Gorges doubtless intended
at the proper time to fill this position himself; but
that time had not yet come. He was the mainstay of
the enterprise, and his presence in England now was
indispensable to it ; but he had two sons, and it nat-
urally occurred to him that here was an excellent
opening for one of them. Of these two son§, the sec-
ond, Robert by name, had adopted his father's calling.
Young and anxious to see service, Robert Gorges, it
would seem, did not share in Sir Ferdinando's disgust
at seeing the " free spirits " of the time willing " ser-
vilely to be hired as slaughterers in the quarrels of
strangers," and accordingly he had sought experience
and pay in the Venetian service. He now came back
to England, probably recalled by his father, and

records of the Council for New England are in the Proceedings of the
American Antiquarian Society for April, 1867, and October, 1875.
Smith, in his True Travels, says (p. 47) that the charge for licenses
to fish were fixed by the Council " for every thirty tons of shipping to
pay them five pounds ; besides, upon great penalties, neither to trade
with natives, cut down wood for their stages, without giving satisfac-
tion . . . ; with many such other pretences for to make this country
plant itself, by its own wealth." He implies also that this policy was
sufficiently enforced to cripple trade. There is nothing in the records
of the Council showing that any such regular tariff as five pounds for
each thirty tons was ever established ; it is not, however, at all im-
probable that this was about the rate ordinarily attempted to be
charged. Some Barnstable merchants had sent out three vessels, ag-
gregating two hundred and twenty-five tons, in ignorance of the proc-
lamation. They paid forty pounds in composition for licenses. {Rec-
ords, Feb. 4, 1622.) A license was granted to another Barnstable
owner, for one vessel, for which he paid £6 13s. 4d. (lb. May 5,
1623.) These sums, however, would seem to have been exacted only
while the just issued proclamation was fresh in men's minds. It was
soon disregarded.

134 '^MONS PARTURIENSr 1G22.

turned his thoughts towards America. The prospect
was certainly alluring. He was young, adventurous
and unoccupied. He was offered a position of conse-
quence and authority. The performance of his duties
would carry him to a world across the sea, — a world
full of adventure and novelty. His father knew more
of it than any other Englishman except Captain John
Smith; and to his father it was a region of surpassing
natural attraction, though in winter perhaps a little
" over cold." Smith, who had been there, was to the
full as enthusiastic as Sir Ferdinando, who knew of
it only by report. Six years before, Smith had pub-
lished his "Description of New England," and now,
as young Robert Gorges turned its pages over, he
came across such passages as these : —

" And surely by reason of those sandy clits, and clits of
rocks, both which we saw so planted with gardens and corn-
fields, and so well inhabited with a goodly, strong and well-
proportioned people, besides the greatness of the timber
growing on them, the gi'eatness of the fish, and the mod-
erate temper of the air, who can but approve this a most
excellent place, both for health and fertility ? And of all
the four parts of the world that I have yet seen, not in-
habited, could I have but means to transport a colony, I
would rather live here than anywhere. And if it did not
maintain itself, were we but once indifferently well fitted,
let us starve. . . .

" Here nature and liberty affords us that freely, which in
England we want, or it costeth us dearly. What pleasure
can be more than being tired with any occasion ashore, in
planting vines, fruits, or herbs, in contriving their own
grounds to the pleasure of their own minds, ... to recre-
ate themselves before their own doors in their own boats
upon the sea, where man, woman and child, with a small hook
and line, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent fish

1622. "SWEET AIR" AND ''SILENT streams:' 135

at their pleasures ? . . . And what sport doth yield a more
pleasing content, and less hurt and charge, than angling
with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle,
over the silent streams of a calm sea ? . . .

" For gentlemen, what exercise should more delight them
than ranging daily these unknown parts, using fowling and
fishing for hunting and hawking? . . . For hunting, also,
— the woods, lakes and rivers afford not only chase suffi-
cient for any that delights in that kind of toil or pleasure?
but such beasts to hunt, that besides the delicacies of their
bodies for food, their skins are so rich as they will recom-
pense thy daily labor with a captain's pay." ^

To a country thus described by him who had most
experience of it, young Captain Robert Gorges was
importuned to go in chief command, and the owner of
a principality. It would not have been in human
nature to reject the offer.

It was no part of the plan of either the elder or the
younger Gorges, that the latter should go out to his
new government unattended. On the contrary he was
to o'o in some state, as befitted the Lieutenant of the
Council for New England. He was also to take a
body of settlers with liim, who were to serve as the
pioneers of that larger body with which Sir Ferdinando
hoped himself to follow in the succeeding year. But
to get ready and equip the pioneer party required
both time and money; and, while money could only
with difficulty be raised, the disorders on the coast
called for immediate action. A temporary arrange-
ment was accordingly made, and at a meeting of the
Council on November 8, 1622, a commission was
granted to Captain Francis West to go to New Eng-
land as " Admirall for that Coast during this Voyage."
1 GeneraU Historie, 209, 219.

136 "MONS PARTURIENS." Dec.

Captain Thomas Squibb, or Squeb, as the name is
spelled in the more familiar records, was appointed
his assistant. West's commission bore date the last
day of November.

Of this voyage of Captain Francis West little is
known, except that he made his appearance at Plym-
outh towards the latter part of June of the next year ;
but where he had been or what he had been doing in
the intermediate time does not appear. That "the
Admirall for that Coast " had but indifferent suc-
cess in his efforts to restrain interlopers, and enforce
the regulations of the Council would appear from
Bradford's remark that " he [the Admirall] could
doe no good of them, for they were to stronge for
him, and he found the fisher men to be stuberne fel-
lows."

Exactly a month after the execution of West's com-
mission a i^atent for land was issued to Robert Gorges.^
The territory covered by it lay on the northeast side
of Boston Bay, having a sea-front of ten straight
miles, and included all islands within a league of the
shore. It extended thirty miles into the interior.
This grant, subsequently pronounced void by the law-
yers as being " loose and uncertain," ^ covered appar-
ently the whole territory between Nahant and the
mouth of the Charles, including Lynn and the most
populous portions of what is now Middlesex County
as far west as Concord and Sudbury. There can be
little doubt it was located on information received
from Trevore, and was intended to include the pleasant
region through which he had rambled in company
with Standish a little more than a year previous.^

1 m. Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 75. ^ Hutchinson, i. 6.

^ Knowing how indefatigable Sir Ferdinando Gorges was in collect-

1622. NO FUNDS. 137

His destination and private domain being thus fixed,
Robert Gorges set to work getting together those who
were to compose his company. Such difficulties as he
had to encounter were due wholly to the want of
means, but these were very considerable. Sir Ferdi-
nando's private resources, never great, had already
been taxed to the uttermost. The Council for New
England was rich in titles and influential at court ;
but, when it came to levying assessments, the dukes
and marquesses and earls, whose names mounded so
well in the patent, could not be induced to respond to
the amount of a poor hundred pounds apiece. In fact
they were not there themselves to supply money.
They were there to make sure of the favor of the
Privy Council, and to act as stool-pigeons ; and in the
latter capacity they served their turn as poorly as in
the former they served it well. The city had been
tried, but to no purpose. The London men of capital
were Puritans, and as such had neither fondness for
Sir Ferdinando Gorges nor confidence in his projects.
A scheme for raising X100,000 in that quarter had
been discussed at the first meeting of the company,
but at its second meeting it was " respited in regard
of the Difficulty of findeing security." A ship for
the company's use was building at Whiteby, in York-
shire. It was probably the vessel in which subse-
quently Eobert Gorges went out; but the greatest dif-
ficulty was naw found in raising the funds necessary
to finish and equip her, and she lay for several months

ing information in reg-ard to New England from every conceivable
source, it is unreasonable to suppose that he had not questioned
Trevore closely in regard to the whole region explored in the Septem-
ber excursion of 1621 {supra, 16-18), and was not fully informed as to
its advantages, and the mistake the Plymouth people had made in
not settling there.

138 ''MONS PARTURIENS." 1623.

idle at Whiteby, receiving " great prejudice " and at
" heavy charge." At last, in June 1623, it was found
necessary to mortgage her to such of the patentees as
were willing to advance the money needed to complete
her equipment.

Notwithstanding these discouragements, Robert
Gorges, all through the winter and spring of 1623,
went on actively with his preparations. At last things
seemed to be in a promising state of forwardness, and
Sir Ferdinando then seems to have resolved on a great
effort, — a final coup de theatre^ as it were.^ The
ground on which the majority of the patentees excused
themselves from paying in the XllO, which had been
fixed as the contribution of each, was that they had
nothing to show for their money. Something more
tangible than the mere receipt of a treasurer was
asked for. The number of adventurers, moreover, was
not full. The charter required forty, and there were
but a few over a score. Under these circumstances,
as the season of 1623 suitable for the despatch of an
expedition slipped away, a reorganization was deter-
mined upon. It was resolved to give new life to the
enterprise, — life sufficient at least to send the Lieu-
tenant of the Council out to his government w^th a
certain prestige. Accordingly, on Sunday the 29th
of June, a meeting of the Council was called at
Greenwich. The object of the meeting was to allot
the territory, covered by the patent, . in severalty
among the patentees. Each was to have his domain
marked out upon the map so that he could see what
it was, with his own name written against it. Gorges
evidently spared no effort to make the occasion im-
pressive, and King James himself was induced to be

1 Proc. Am. Ant. Soc Oct. 1875, 90.

1623. NEW ENGLAND ALLOTTED. 139

present. Of the patentees eleven attended, and the
arrangement was that twenty lots of two shares each
were to be drawn, — those who drew these double
shares parting with one of them to some other person,
so that the full number of forty might be secured.
Of the eleven members present ten drew for them-
selves, and ten othgr lots were drawn for absent
members. The King drew for Buckingham. Copies
of the map jon which this drawing was recorded are
still extant. Smith says ^ it was one of his maps, —
the same which, in 1616, he had submitted to Prince
Charles, — but this statement, like many others made
by the famous " President of Virginia and Admiral
of New England," has failed to bear examination.
The map in reality made use of on this historic oc-
casion was one essentially different from Smith's, pre-
pared by Sir William Alexander and first published
in the following year, 1624.^ Upon this map, or
" plot," were now written down, just within the coast-
line from the St. Croix to Buzzard's Bay, the names of
the new proprietors, — twenty in number. The Earl
of Arundel drew the easternmost allotment, and next
to him came Sir Ferdinando. Mt. Desert fell to Sir
Robert Mansell, and Casco Bay to the Earl of Hol-
derness. Buckingham drew the region about Ports-
mouth ; and the Earl of Warwick, Cape Ann. The
site of Boston and all its neighboring cities and towns
was assigned to Lord Gorges, while the country bor-=
dering on Buzzard's Bay went to Dr. Gooch.

And in this way, on a Sunday afternoon in June of

^ True Travels, ch. xxiii. 47 ; Advertisements, ch. x. 22.

^ Deane, Froc. Am. Ant. Soc. Oct. 1875 ; Sir William Alexander
(Prince Soc. Pub.), 123, 196, 216 ; Winsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist, of Am.
iii. 305, 341.

140 '^MONS parturient:' June.

the year 1623, at Greenwich near London, was New
England parcelled out among twenty persons ; of
whom, as Captain John Smith remarked, " never one
of them had been there," while half of them did not
deem the thing of sufficient importance to be present
at the parcelling.

CHAPTER IX.

THE "RIDICULUS MUS."

The meeting of the Council for New England at
Greenwich, in the presence of King James himself,
was the send-off, so to speak, of Robert Gorges and
his company ; for a month later, or in the early days
of August, 1623, they set sail and reached their des-
tination in Boston Bay about the middle of Septem-
ber. Captain Gorges was commissioned by the Coun-
cil " as their Lieutenant, to regulate the state of their
affairs," ^ but for the rest the official style of his new
attempt showed that Sir Ferdinand o had not been
unmindful of the experience of the past. As respects
the number of accompanying officials, their titles and
dignity, the fiasco of 1607 at Fort St. George was not
reenacted. For his assistance in his n(iw government
Robert Gorges was simply provided with a council,
consisting of Captain Francis West (the admiral of
the company then upon the coast), Christopher West
(also then engaged in a voyage to New England, an
account of which he subsequently wrote), and the
Governor of Plymouth, ex officio. He was further
authorized to add others to these in his discretion.

So far as jurisdiction was concerned, the powers,
civil and criminal, entrusted to young Gorges were of

1 Bradford (p. 149) speaks of him as having " a commission from
the Counsell of New England, to be generall Governor of the cun-
trie."

142 THE ''RIDICULUS MUS." July,

the amplest description, for lie was authorized to ar-
rest, imprison and punish, even capitally. Nor was
this all ; he was clothed with ecclesiastical as well as
civil authority. Sir Ferdinando was a professor of
high-church principles, and the Council for New Eng-
land had no sympathy with Puritans. In all its plans
a special prominence had been given to the propaga-
tion of the gospel, and the present was distinctly to be
a Church settlement in the Massachusetts Bay, as
contrasted with the Separatist settlement already ef-
fected at Plymouth. Robert Gorges accordingly took
with him at least two ordained clergymen, one of
whom, William Morell, bore an ecclesiastical commis-
sion conferring on him general powers of visitation
and superinteudency over the churches of New Eng-
land.^ As there was but one church — that at Plym-
outh — then in New England, the significance of this
commission was apparent. Not impossibly, though
it is a mere surmise unsustained by evidence, the Rev.
William Blackstone, the ordained companion of Mo-
rell, may originally have been designed to take charge,
under the power of superinteudency just referred to,
of the Plymouth pulpit, while Morell himself was to
minister at the Bay.

The mere suggestion of such a commission as Mo-
rell was armed with, could not but have revived in the
minds of any and all of Robinson's flock terrifying
memories of Scrooby and of Archbishop Bancroft,
Not without cause might they, in their fear, have
asked themselves if the earth did indeed contain no
wilderness so remote that an Established Church could
not follow them into it to persecute. But fortunately
force, or at least a semblance of force, is essential to
all active persecution ; and, as respected force, the
1 Bradford, 154.

1623. CHURCH AND STATE. 143

representative of the Church was in this case but in-
differently supplied. Moreover, notwithstanding the
apprehension that a knowledge of their presence and
authority would have excited, neither Morell nor Black-
stone seem to have been men of a persecuting turn of
mind, though this could not have become apparent
until later ; nor even though they might have been
liberally inclined, did it necessarily follow that their
civil superior. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, was so like-
wise : and Sir Ferdinando under the new order of
things always loomed up as the possible governor-gen-
eral in a near future.

When it left England, therefore, in the midsum-
mer of 1623, the Robert Gorges company represented
something more than a possible realization at last of
Sir Ferdinando's life dream, — something more even
than the dignity and authority of the Council for New
England. Patronized by King James and commis-
sioned by his Primate, it also represented, however
feebly, the seventeenth century church and state of
England. Insignificant as respects numbers in it-
self, it went out in the full belief that it was a mere
forerunner of a much more considerable movement;
for the elder Gorges proposed himself to follow the
next year, bringing with him '' so great a number well
fitted for such purpose " as would " quickly make this
to exceed all other Plantations." ^ Robert Gorges'
own following, moreover, though small, seems to have
been composed of good material, fairly well selected
for the work in hand. There were families in it as
well as single men, — mechanicts, farmers and traders,
as well as gentlemen and divines.^

^ Sir William Alexander (Prince Society Publications), 196.

2 It hardly admits of question that a record of this expedition, and

144 THE "RIDICULUS MUSr Sep.

Before the party reached their destination the days
were becoming short and the nights chill ; for, the
month of September being well advanced, the season
of growth was wholly over, while the forest glowed
with the mellow tints of autumn. It only remained
to prepare as rapidly as possible for the winter now
close at hand. Instead, therefore, of at once seeking
a place of settlement within the limits of his own grant
on the northeastern- side of the bay, Gorges seems to
have been glad to take advantage of the immediate
protection offered by Weston's deserted buildings,
which had now been vacant about six months. At
Wessagusset, accordingly, his party landed, and there
a portion of them permanently remained. The con-
tinuous occupancy by Europeans of the region about
Boston Bay dates from the latter days of September,
1623.

Notifying the authorities at Plymouth by letter of
his arrival, the new " generall Governor of the cun-
trie " almost immediately started for the coast of
Maine. He did not even await the appearance of
Bradford at Wessagusset, in prompt response to his
missive. As the vessel Gorges came in was bound

the subsequent settlement effected by it, was kept by Blackstone.
Such a record. Winthrop alludes to in his History (i. *48 ; and, see also,
Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1878, p. 197) ; and when Blackstone
died in 1G75, at Cumberland, R. I., there was included in the inven-
tory of his library the item of '' 10 paper books." (ll. Mass. Hist.
Coll. X. 172.) These paper books were lost in the general destruction
of Blackstone's movables, the year after his death, at the outbreak
of King Philip's War. They probably contained the record referred
to by Winthrop. In addition to Morell and Blackstone, Robert Gor-
ges was accompanied, according to his father, by certain " of his kins-
men of his own name, with many other private friends" (in. Mass.
Hist. Coll. vi. 70) ; while Phinehas Pratt remembered him as coming
" with six gentlemen attending him, and divers men to do his labor
and other men with their families." (iv Mass. Hist. Coll. iv. 486.)

1623. "A SHROWD CHECKS 145

to Virginia, he probably wished, in view of the late-
ness of the season, to delay her in her voyage as little
as possible ; and yet he wanted at once to hunt up
Weston, against whom the anger of his father and of
the Council for New England was hot. The cause
of complaint does not seem to have arisen out of the
disorders of the Wessagusset plantation so much as
from some irregular proceedings of Weston's nearer
home. Exactly what these were cannot now be as-
certained; but England was then at war with the
Emperor, and the usual strict regulation had been
made against the export of munitions. A favorite
method of evading this regulation was to send the
munitions out of the country under pretence that they
were for use in the colonies, and then to change their
destination. Against this practice several of the or-
ders of the Council for New England were directed.
It would seem that Weston had obtained from the
Council a license for the export of a considerable
amount of ordnance and munitions, under pretence
that he required them for arming his vessels and forti-
fications in America. He had then disposed of them
on the Continent.! Naturally the English authorities
were very indignant over this proceeding, and Sir
Ferdinando Gorges had been sharply censured on ac-
count of it, — received " a shrowd check," as his son
expressed it to Governor Bradford. ^ It would even
appear that warrants were out against Weston, and
that, while his settlement was struggling to its end in
New England, the former treasurer of the Merchant
Adventurers of London was himself in hidino- at home.

Eluding the officers, Weston disguised himself as a

1 Records of Council, May 31 and Feb. 18, 1622.

2 Bradford, 150.

146 THE '^RIDICULUS MUS:* 1623.

blacksmith, and came over in one of the early fishing
vessels of 1623 to join his company. Keaching the
stations in Maine some time in March, he learned of
the severe strait in which those at Wessagusset then
were, and, indeed, he very probably may hav.e there
met Saunders, who must have got to the stations
direct from Wessagusset, if he got to them at all,
about the same time as Weston. If such was the case,
the doleful winter's tale of his plantation must then
have become known to him, though the Swan, with
the main body of his company, had not yet arrived at
Monhegan. Evidently hoping to reach Wessagusset
in time to prevent further disaster, Weston set out in
a shallop accompanied by one or two men, — very pos-
sibly taking Saunders back in the same boat in which
he had come. But Weston was now not so fortunate
as Pratt and his companions had been the previous
year ; for, while feeling his way along the coast, the
adventurer was overtaken by a gale and cast away
near the mouth of the Merrimack. He succeeded in
struggling ashore only to fall into the hands of the
savages, who stripped him of everything he had, even
to the clothes on his back. Making his escape from
them, Weston at last, though more than half naked,
found his way to Piscataqua, where he chanced upon
David Thomson with his little party, who must have
just landed from the Jonathan, and were then busy
getting themselves some shelter.^ Thomson had ap-
peared before the Privy Council less than a year
before, on behalf of the Council for New England, to
urge a complaint against Weston, and consequently
knew him well ; nevertheless, now taking pity on his
former opponent, Thomson supplied him with clothes

^ Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc. May, 1876, pp. 362-^.

1623. '' THIS UNSTABLE WORLD:' 147

and other necessaries sufficient to enable him at last
to find his way to Plymouth. The sudden appear-
ance in such a plight of the man whom, only three
years before, they had looked upon as a patron, and
who in fact had settled their destinies, excited no little
astonishment in the minds of the Pilgrims. As usual,
too, they indulged in some moralizing on the " Strang
alteration ther was in him to such as had seen and
known him in his former florishing condition ; so un-
certaine are the mutable things of this unstable world !
And yet men set their harts upon them, though they
dayly see the vanity thereof."

His present low estate evidently made Weston feel
only more keenly the different positions he and his
present hosts had once occupied towards each other ;
but, curbing his tongue, he now asked them to lend
him some beaver skins, the only merchantable com-
modity they had. He assured them that he had a ship
coming over ladened with supplies, and that when it
arrived they should be repaid. Great as were their own
necessities, the Governor and the assistants finally let
their former patron have one hundred skins, though
they had to do it in an underhand way ; for they seem
actually to have feared that the giving away, as it
were, at such a time as that, of the only thing they had
of value might " make a mutinie among the people,
seeing ther was no other means to procure them foode
which they so much wanted, and cloaths allso." Get-
ting his beaver skins, Weston returned to the fishing-
stations, where, at last, he found the Swan. His
company had already scattered, but, gathering a few
of them together, and bartering his skins for sup-
plies, he next seems to have embarked as a trader on
the coast. In this capacity he found his way into

148 THE 'IRIDIC ULUS MUS." Oct.

Plymouth harbor shortly after the arrival of Robert
Gorges at Wessagusset.

But the Lieutenant of the Council had meanwhile
started for the coast of Maine in search of Weston
himself. Before he had gone far Gorges was over-
taken by a storm, and, realizing that he was on his
way to unknown waters without a pilot, he put about
and ran into Plymouth. He was still lying there
when the man he was in search of also made his
appearance. Organizing at once a species of council,
the new Governor of New England summoned the
late Treasurer of the Merchant Adventurers before it.
There were two grounds of complaint against the lat-
ter ; one related to the disorderly doings at his Wes-
sagusset plantation, and the other to the illicit-arms
transaction in England. The first charge was easily
met, for Weston had not been at Wessagusset at the
time of the misdoings in question, and, indeed, had
been the greatest sufferer by them ; but, when it came
to the second charge, he had no satisfactory defence to
oifer. Nevertheless, through the intervention of Brad-
ford young Gorges seems to have been mollified, and
the whole proceeding would have amounted to nothing,
had not Weston, when he saw how satisfactorily things
were going, thought proper to indulge in various pro-
voking sarcasms. This led to an explosion on the
part of Gorges, who seems to have been an indiscreet,
hot-headed youth ; and he now angrily declared that
he would either curb Weston there, or, if he could
not, he would send him under arrest back to England.
The last alternative seems to have frightened Weston
thoroughly, who took an early opportunity to sound
Bradford as to whether the proceedings against him
really meant anything, or whether he was correct in

1623. SANCHO PANZA AT PLYMOUTH, 149

supposing that they were all taking parts in a farce,
— a harmless reproduction, in f act, at Plymouth, of
the famous scene in the island of Barataria, with Rob-
ert Gorges enacting the part of Sancho Panza.^ Nei-
ther Bradford nor his assistant Allerton were men
much given to jesting on serious subjects ; and ac-
cordingly, to his very considerable dismay, Weston
was assured that, if Gorges, as Lieutenant of the
Council, decided to send him back a prisoner to
England, they had no power to hinder the so doing.
They further very plainly told Weston that his unruly
tongue was fast getting him into serious trouble. The
prisoner's demeanor thereupon underwent a marked
change. From being defiant he became humble, and
supplicated Bradford's good offices in his own behalf.
For some reason which does not appear, — it may
have been a sense of gratitude for services formerly
rendered, or it may have been an unwillingness to
have events take such a course as would lead to any
exercise of authority at Plymouth by a representative
of the Council for New England, or it may, and not
improbably was, from the conscientious desire to serve
as peacemakers, — for some reason the Plymouth
magistrates seem in this case to have been anxious
to prevent matters from going to extremes. Brad-
ford, therefore, again interceded. This time he had
more trouble, but at last he so far mollified Gorges
that Weston was discharged on his simple promise to
appear whenever he might be sent for.

Altogether Robert Gorges passed about two weeks

^ It is not very probable that Weston had ever heard of Don Qui-
xote. The second part of that work had, however, appeared in 1615,
eight yeai-s before the events here recorded, and Thomas Morton at
least was already familiar with it. See N. E. Canaan, 128, 142.

150 THE <'RIDICULUS MUSy Nov.

at Plymouth, and when he returned to Wessagusset
it was by hmd, his ship being left at Plymouth to
be made ready to continue her voyage to Virginia.
Later, the presence there of this and Weston's vessel
nearly caused the destruction of the settlement ; for, as
the seamen of the two were making merry ashore on
Guy Fawkes' day, the weather being quite cold, they
succeeded in setting the house they were in on fire.
The flames spread rapidly, and for a time the common
storehouse was in danger. This was saved, and the
great Plymouth fire of November 5, 1623, was at last
got under control, after it had destroyed three or four
buildings, together with everything in them : but, had
the common storehouse gone, the settlement must have
been abandoned ; for the winter was close at hand,
and, under the circumstances, the disaster would have
entailed famine. Even as it was, several families,
losing everything they possessed, were compelled to
go back to England in Gorges' vessel. Since then
there have been many great conflagrations in Massa-
chusetts, and untold destruction of wealth thereby, —
notably one conflagration in Boston two hundred and
forty-nine years later, almost to a day ; but not one
of these compared, in the extent of proportional loss
and alarm occasioned by it, with that Plymouth fire
of 1623, which was due to the " rude company " which
belonged to those two ships of Gorges and Weston.

Shortly after the fire the Gorges vessel sailed for
Virginia ; but the Swan was destined to pass a sec-
ond winter at Wessagusset, and, indeed, had at this
time been seized by order of Robert Gorges, and was
in charge of one of his officers. While it may have
been that, upon reflection, the Lieutenant of the Coun-
cil was not wholly satisfied with the result of his

1623. WINTER DREARINESS, 151

•arraignment of Weston, it is possible, also, that when
he returned to Wessagusset and found himself there
buried in the solitude of an autumnal wilderness, the
possession, even for a season, of Weston's vessel, oc-
curred to him as desirable. In any event, he hardly-
got back to his company before he issued a warrant
for the arrest of Weston and the seizure of the Swan,
and sent one Captain Hanson, as he was called, to
Plymouth with it. Bradford still did his best to
shield Weston, taking exception to the form of the war-
rant and refusing to allow its service. An intimation
was at the same time given to Weston that he had
better be gone. But Weston was now apparently at
the end of his resources ; for he had a numerous and
unruly crew on the Swan, whose wages were in ar-
rears, his supplies were nearly exhausted, and the win-
ter was on him. He seems to have concluded there-
fore that, upon the whole, for him to be arrested and
have his vessel seized was as good a solution of the
sea of troubles in which he found himself submerged,
as was likely to offer. So when, shortly after, a new
warrant came from Wessagusset, with written instruc-
tions for its immediate service, no further objection
was made, and both vessel and prisoner were removed
to Boston Bay.

This exercise of authority on the part of Gorges
seems to have resulted exactly as Bradford antici-
pated. There were no provisions on board the Swan,
and the crew were clamorous for their wages. Even
if he did not pay them their wages, Gorges, retaining
the vessel, had to feed them. He seems to have made
no attempt to send Weston to England.

Thus, as the winter wore itself away, its utter
dreariness to Gorges and his personal companions can

152 THE '^RIDICULUS MUS:' 1623-4

easily be imagined. They had come to enjoy the pleas-
ures of the wilderness. Locked up in a desert of ice
and snow, — inhabiting a log hut on the edge of a salt
marsh, with a howling, unexplored forest behind and
round about them, — well might they, with the mer-
cury at zero, ask themselves where was that " moder-
ate temper of the air," where '* those silent streams of
a calm sea," which Smith had pictured ? — Young men
accustomed to the soft winter climate of Devon were
exposed to the blasts of Greenland. Where, too, was
the " fowling: and fishino: " ? — The waters were covered
with ice, and the woods were impassable with snow.
And so Robert Gorges got through the long winter as
best he could, probably cursing John Smith for a liar,
and heartily wishing himself back in the Venetian
service, or even the dreary tedium of Plymouth.
Towards spring he went to the eastward fishing sta-
tions in the Swan, taking Weston along, apparently
as his pilot. On his way the returning Lieutenant
stopped at Thomson's Piscataqua plantation, and there
met Christopher Levett, who was associated with Gor-
ges as one of his Council, and had only arrived from
England a few weeks before. From Levett, and from
the fishing vessels which were then reaching the sta-
tions. Captain Gorges received letters from his father,
and tidings of events as late as the beginning of the
year. The news was all bad. Nothing had come
of Sir Ferdinando's efforts ; the patentees would not
respond to the calls for money; his resources were
exhausted ; his friends had withdrawn themselves ; a
new parliament was impending; and, altogether, as
the elder Gorges afterwards wrote, " these crosses did
draw upon us such a disheartened weakness as there
only remained [of the Council for New England] a

1624. ROBERT GORGES RETURNS. 153

carcass in a manner breathless." Under these cir-
cumstances Sir Ferdinando advised his son to return
home "till better occasion should offer itself unto
him."

When he received these tidings it did not take
Robert Gorges long to decide upon his course. Pos-
sibly his health was already failing, for he is said to
have died not long after he got back to England ; but,
whether failing in health or not, he was thoroughly
disgusted with his experience in the ^vilderness, — and
not without reason. Besides the hardships incident
to the climate, and the cruel disenchantment on that
score which he had undergone, the representative of
the Council for New England had found his official
position one of little consideration and no encourage-
ment. His single attempt to exercise any authority
had resulted only in the miserable wrangle with Wes-
ton; and, as for the interlopers he had come to re-
strain, whether fishermen or traders, it was plain that
they were "to stronge" for him, as they had been
before for " Admirall " West, and so he was fain to
leave such " stuberne fellows " severely alone. It was
small matter of surprise, therefore, that, as Bradford
contemptuously expressed it, young Gorges did not
find " the state of things hear to answer his quallitie
and condition," and that he returned to England
" having scarcly saluted the cuntrie in his Gover-
mente." He took with him a portion of his compan}^
probably his personal friends and relations, but the
rest he seems to have left under the charge of the
Rev. Mr. Morell. Had Robert Gorges sailed on his
homeward voyage directly from Wessagusset, it is
very possible the settlement there would have then
been finally abandoned ; but as he apparently went

154 THE ^'RIDICULUS MUSV 1624.

back by way of the Maine fishing stations, the bulk
of those composing it remained behind and only dis-
persed by degrees. Later some returned to England,
while others went on to Virginia. A few were con-
tent to abide at Wessagusset, and for another year the
Rev. William Morell continued there with them.

But little more remains to be said of Robert Gorges
or Thomas Weston. Before they parted, a settlement
considerably to the advantage of the latter seems
to have been effected between them. Not only was
W^eston released from arrest, but his vessel was re-
stored to him, and compensation made in kind for
whatever loss he had sustained. He thereupon once
more reappeared at Plymouth, and thence went to
Virginia. Subsequently he seems for a time to have
been engaged in trading along the coast, but for how
long, and whether to good purpose or otherwise, does
not appear. The only further mention found of him
in Bradford is in connection with the mutinous spirit
of discontent in the crew of the pinnace called the
Little James, which at about this time was sent out
for the service of the Plymouth Colony. Weston was
suspected of having given them bad advice. He at
last drifted back to England, where long afterwards,
in the sj)ring or summer of 1645, about the time of
the battle of Naseby, he died at Bristol, a victim of
the plague.^

Robert Gorges had died long before. The two thus
vanish. Both were men of the most ordinary type, —
the one by nature a coarse English huckster, the other
an ambitious and apparently brainless boy : but in
history they must each of them always continue to be
mentioned as inseparably connected with very consid-

1 Bradford, 153, n. ; Clarendon, Hist, of the EebeUion, ix. §§ 16, 43.

1624. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN! 155

erable events. Gorges was at the head of the first
permanent settlement on the shores of Boston Bay.
Though as a settlement it resulted in so litde that it
wholly failed to influence the course of subsequent
events, and has been deemed worthy of but scant
notice in history, yet it was a distinct and organized
attempt replete with possibilities. The key-point to
the eastern coast of Massachusetts was then waiting
for a first occupant. Had the resources and business
capacity of the elder Gorges been at all equal to his
activity and persistence ; had he been able to control,
of ready money, a few thousand pomids more ; had
his son been a man of a little stronger will or more
robust body, — Endicott, Winthrop and Saltonstall
would, seven years later, have found the place in which
they then sat down so effectually closed against their
movement that they must necessarily have been forced
to go elsewhere.

It is scarcely profitable to waste conjecture over
what might have been, had the events of the past
been other than they were : but, as will presently be
seen, it was years before the Gorges claim ceased to
be a cause of anxiety to tlie later Puritan settlers.
At one time it threatened them with dangers which it
seemed impossible to escape, — dangers which made
doubtful the peace and even the permanence of the
colony ; yet in the end it came to nothing. Time and
the course of larger events disposed of it. In half a
century more, nothing remained of the work of Gor-
ges, or of the Council for New England, but some
parchment titles which were extinguished after infi-
nite litigation and at considerable cost.

It was not so with Thomas Weston. His work re-
mained. He was just that blind instrument of fate

156 THE ^^RIDICULUS MUSr 1624-5.

which Gorges failed to be, and so blundered uncon-
sciously into a small part in a great drama. He per-
formed it wretchedly ; but the part was none the less
his, it was essential to the development of the drama,
and it must always remain an indisputable historical
fact that the individual cooperation of Thomas Wes-
ton was at one period indispensable to events which
compose the second page in the history of a conti-
nent. The mark of the adventurer — vulgar, mer-
cenary, broken - down though he was — will forever
continue indelibly fixed on that page. He was one
of those who, without ever knowing it, become neces-
sary instruments in the hands of fate for the immedi-
ate working out of great events.

The number of those whom Robert Gorges left
behind in Weston's plantation is at most merely a
matter of antiquarian interest, nor is it probable it
will ever be known. They were certainly few.
Bradford mentions the fact that they received some
assistance from Plymouth to enable them to overcome
the hardships always incident to new settlements ; but
otherwise, for the year immediately succeeding the
departure of Gorges, there is no record of them. In
the spring of 1625, Morell also returned to England,
having passed the intervening twelve months among
his own people at Wessagusset, though he took ship
from Plymouth. It was then he first informed the
authorities there of the ecclesiastical commission which
he held ; for, during his sojourn in Massachusetts he
seems to have passed his time in a quiet, unobtrusive
way, attending to his own duties and troubling no one,
while a priest of another description would almost
assuredly have proved a mischief-maker. Being a
good classical scholar, as well as a man of observing

1G24-5. ^'THE PLACE IS COMPLEATr 157

mind and gentle tastes, he whiled away the tedium
of Wessagusset by composing a Latin poem, which,
together with a rough metrical translation of it, he
published after his return to England.^ Unfortunately
he indulged himself only in poetic generalities, and
made no attempt to describe what he himself saw, or
the events \)f which he was a part, and accordingly
what he wrote has comparatively little either of per-
manent value or of interest. Yet one thing is ap-
parent from it. A spring and summer at Wessagusset
had effaced, from his mind at least, the first impres-
sions made by a New England winter. He was,
indeed, as much charmed by the natural beauties of
the region about Boston Bay as he was disgusted with
the aborigines who inhabited it. He speaks in terms
as glowing as Captain John Smith's of "her sweet
ayre, rich soile, blest seas," where, as he renders his
more melodious Latin,

" The fruitfull and well watered earth doth glad
All hearts, when Flora 's with her spangles clad,
And yeelds an hundred fold for one,
To feede the hee and to invite the drone.

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.

The ayre and earth if good, are blessings rare,
But when with these the waters blessed are,
The place is compleat ; here each pleasant spring
Is like those fountains where the muses sing.
The easie channels gliding to the east,
Unlesse oreflowed then post to be releast,

1 Both poem and translation are reprinted in i. Mass. Hist. Coll. \.
125.

158 THE ^'RIDICULUS MUS." 1624-^.

The ponds and places where the waters stay,
Content the fowler with all pleasant prey.
Thus ayre and earth and water give content,
And highly honor this rich continent." ^

But when he came to dealing with the noble red
man, Morell is free in his expressions of disgust : —

" They 're wondrous cruell, strangely base and vile.
Quickly displeased, and hardly reconcild.

Themselves they warme, their ung-irt limbes they rest
In straw, and houses, like to sties.''

With the Indian women he was far more favorably
impressed, and gives a pretty picture of their " baskets
wrought with art and lyne," and the straw hangings
in which they wove

*' Rare stories, princes, people, kingdomes, towers,
In curious finger-worke, or parchment flowera."

In regard to the settlement of which he was a part,

1 The greater felicity of the Latin version, which has a remote ring
of the Georgics, may be inferred from the following specimens : —

*' Est locus oceiduo procul hinc spaciosus in orbe,
Plurima regna tenens, populisque ineognitus ipsis.
Felix f rugif eris suleis, simul sequore f elix :
Praedis perdives variis, et flumine dives.
Axe satis calidus, rigidoque a frigore tutus.

Prospera tranquillus conting-it littora portus,
Altus, apertus, ubi valeant se condere naves,
Invitis ventis, securfe rupe et arena,
^quora multiplices pra^bent tranquilla marinas
Temporibus solitis pr^das retentibus hamis :
Halices, fagros, scombros, cancrosque locustas,
Ostrea curvatis conchis, conehasque trigones,
Cete, etiam rhombos, sargos, cum squatina asellos.
His naves vastas onerat piscator honestus :
His mercator opes cumulat venerabilis almas,
His pius ampla satis faciat sibi lucra colonos."

1625-8. A WRONG LOCATION. 159

one thing only can be inferred from Morell's pamphlet.
Before he left, it had become apparent to those com-
posing the little community that a great mistake had
been made in placing them at Wessagusset. In the
preface to his poem Morell accordingly speaks, with
something like feeling, of the hard lot of men who
are " landed upon an unknown shore, peradventure
weake in number and naturall powers, for want of
boats and carriages ; " being for this reason compelled,
with a whole empty continent behind them, " to stay
where they are first landed, having no means to re-
move themselves or their goods, be the place never so
f ruitlesse, or inconvenient for planting, building houses,
boats, or stages, or the harbors never so unfit for fish-
ing, fowling, or moving their boats."

The settlers at Wessagusset were, in fact, repeating
on a smaller scale the experience of those at Plymouth.
They had chanced to put themselves in a wrong loca-
tion. Through trade alone, in the absence of any
comprehensive scheme of colonization, could they hope
to obtain those supplies from abroad absolutely essen-
tial to their continued existence ; but for trading pur-
poses neither Plymouth nor Wessagusset were favora-
bly placed. The furs, which were the only product
of the country, came from the interior. The single
means of communication with the interior was by the
rivers ; the canoe was the only conveyance. Wessa-
gusset, it is true, was at the mouth of the little Mona-
tiquot ; but the Monatiquot was hardly more than a
brook, and certainly could not have been navigable
for five miles, even by a birch-bark canoe. Mean-
while the Neponset, the Charles and the Mystic all
flowed into Boston Bay, and each of them afforded
considerable access to the interior. Into them the

IGO THE 'IRIDIC ULUS MUSr 1626-8.

brooks, the ponds and the swamps, which were the
haunt of the beaver, the otter and the mink, emptied
or drained.

Neither was Wessagusset more advantageously sit-
uated as respects the ocean. 'A large fleet, numbering
not less than fifty sail, then traded annually along the
coast, and Boston Bay was so well known as a place
of resort that the appearance of vessels there had
long since ceased to excite surprise among the In-
dians; but Wessagusset was accessible to these ves-
sels only by a narrow and devious river-channel, wind-
ing among shoals and tidal flats. Ships visiting the
bay could, indeed, rarely have attempted to follow the
channel, but, lying at the anchorage below, must have
communicated with the settlers by boat. From the
outset, probably, Hull was used as a meeting-point.

There is, accordingly, some reason to suppose that,
about the time Morell returned to England, those
whom he left behind at Wessagusset began to do on a
small scale what the Plymouth people shortly after
did on a much larger scale.^ These latter, having no
facilities for trade at home, first sent out expeditions
from time to time to Boston Bay, and then established
a permanent trading station at Hull. Later they
reached out further, and established a similar station
on the Kennebec ; and finally, in 1633, they attempted
one even on the Connecticut. From these came what
little prosperity they had, for their soil at home
yielded them at best but a scant subsistence. In the
same way, in 1625, those whom Morell had left at
W^essagusset began to reach out to the more favored
points in Boston Bay. Blackstone moved across to
the north shore, and finally established himself, where

1 Mem. Hist, of Boston, i. 78.

1624-«. FORERUNNERS. 161

five years later Winthrop found him, on the western
slope of the peninsula of Shawmut, opposite the
mouth of the Charles. Thomas Walford, an English
blacksmith, who probably came as a mechanic with
Robert Gorges, presently went over, taking with him
his wife, and built himself an " English palisadoed
and thatched house," near the mouth of the Mystic,
at Mishawum, as what is now Charlestown was called.
Finally, Samuel Maverick, being then a young man of
22,^ came over in 1624,^ bringing with him his wife,
Amias,^ and built at Winnisimmet, or Chelsea, a
house which thirty-five years later was still standing,
" the Antientist house in the Massachusetts Govern-
ment." The following year he fortified this house
" with a Pillizado and fflankers, and gunnes both
belowe and above in them, which awed the Indians
who at that time had a mind to Cutt off the English.
They once faced it, but, receiveing a repulse, never
attempted it more." This stronghold of Maverick's
probably served also as the common trading station.
William Jeffreys, John Bursley and some few others
remained at Wessagusset. In this way the little col-
ony by degrees distributed itself about the shores of
the bay, Maverick and Walford only being within the
limits of the Robert Gorges grant.'^ They were all
that was left of the expedition which when it departed
from England in August, 1623, supposed itself to be
the mere advance guard of a great system of coloniza-
tion which was to establish the party of Church and
Kinor on the soil of the New World.

1 Savage, Gen. Diet.

2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 236, 372 ; iv. Mass. Hist. Coll.
vii. 318.

^ Sumner, £!ast Boston, 161.
* Young, Chron. of Mass. 51, n.

CHAPTER X.

" THOMAS MORTON OF CLIFFORD'S INN, GENT."

At or about the time Morell left Wessagnsset to
follow Robert Gorges back to England, a Captain
Wollaston sailed into Boston Bay in command of a
vessel which there completed its voyage. On board
of it was a little company of adventurers, consisting
of three or four men of some substance, having with
them thirty or forty servants, as they were called, or
persons who had sold their time for a period of years.
Those in control of the expedition, of whom Wollas-
ton was chief, seem to have had no object in view ex-
cept immediate gain, which they, like Weston, thought
to secure by establishing a plantation, trading-post
and fishing station on the shores of Massachusetts
Bay. Of Captain Wollaston himself almost nothing
at all, not even his Christian name, is known. A ver-
itable bird of passage, he flitted out from an English
obscurity, rested for a brief space upon a hillock on
the shore of Boston Bay, giving to it his name as a
memorial forever, and then forthwith disappeared into
the oblivion from which he came. Among the Plym-
outh people, Bradford says, he bore the reputation of
being " a man of pretie parts," and of "• some emi-
nencie ; " and beyond this nothing is now known of
him.^

1 See Introduction to the N. E. Canaan, Prince Soc. ed. 1-2.

1625. CAPTAIN WOLLASTON. 163

With one exception, that exception being Thomas
Morton of Clifford's Inn, Gent., as he was pleased to
describe himself, even less is known of Wollaston's
companions. Of Thomas Morton it will remain to
speak more at large presently, but it needs only here
be said it was probably from Morton that Wollaston
and his companions derived such knowledge as they
had of the region in which they proposed to sit down.
Otherwise they were as ignorant of it as Weston or
Robert Gorges ; or more probably they, like Gorges,
misknew it, so to speak, through deceptive descrip-
tions from the imaginative pen of Captain John Smith.
But, as compared with Thomas Morton, Smith was
tame and matter-of-fact in his enthusiasm over New
England.

Morton, it has already been seen,^ was probably a
companion of young Andrew Weston when the latter
came over to New England on his brother's ship, the
Charity, in June, 1622. The Charity, it will be re-
membered, after disembarking the AVessagusset com-
pany, went on to Virginia, whence she presently came
back to Massachusetts, and, towards the end of Sep-
tember or early in October, sailed on her return voy-
age to England. Morton landed with Green and the
rest, and apparently remained with them at Wessa-
gusset during the summer, returning with Andrew
Weston to England in the early autumn.^ If such

1 Supra, 59.

2 Morton, in his book, never refers to himself as having- been in
Weston's company, or as having- had any connection with him. Un-
der the circumstances this silence on his part is not difficult to ac-
count for. At the time he wrote the New English Canaan, Morton
was a dependent on Gorg-es and the CoKncil for New England. Wes-
ton's expedition had left a very bad reputation behind it, and a pecul-
iarly disagreeable association in Gorg-es' mind. Morton, therefore, had
every inducement to ignore his own connection with it. None the less,

164 THOMAS MORTON. 1625.

was indeed his experience, it is little cause for sur-
prise that he was enamoured with New England, for
he saw it under its most agreeable aspect. With a
keen love of nature, he found himself for a whole sea-
son rambling in a virgin wilderness. Passionately
fond of sport, the bay was alive with fish, and the
forest with bird and beast, — and all for him. There
was no suggestion of winter. It was indeed in every
aspect what Smith had described, — fresh, primeval,
tree-covered New England. He had come to it also
while it shone with the freshness of June ; and, roam-
ing through its unoccupied forest wilderness during
the months of July and August, he had gone away
just as the full ripeness of the summer was mellowing
into rich autumnal tints. Accordingly it had seemed
to him an earthly paradise, nor could he find language
glowing enough in which to do justice to it : —

" And when I had more seriously considered of the
beauty of the place, with all her fair endowments, I did
not think that in all the known world it could be par-
alleled ; for so many goodly gi-oves of trees, dainty, fine,

his own statement is curiously precise, and is consistent only with the
theory of his visit of 1623, set forth in the text : " In the Moneth of
lune, Anno Salutis, 1622, It was my chaunce to arrive in the parts of
New Eng-land with 30 ^^ervants, and provision of all sorts fit for a
plantation : And whiles our howses were building, I did indeavour to
take a survey of the Country." The Charity was the only vessel
which came to New England in June, 1622. Weston's was the only
party. At Wessagusset only did such a party build any houses
While those houses were building, Morton rambled about the coun-
try. The Charity returned to England " in the end of September or
beginning of October.*' No mention is made of Morton in the subse-
quent winter experiences at Wessagusset. Had he remained there,
some mention could hardly fail to have been made of him. Conse-
quently it would seem that he must have gone back in the Charity.
See Savage's note to Winthrop, i. *34 ; Young, Chron. of Pilg. 334, n. ;
Introductory matter to Prince Soc ed. of New English Canaan, passim.

1625. *' NATURE'S MASTER-PIECE:' 165

round, rising hillocks, delicate, fair, large plains, sweet
crystal fountains, and clear running streams, that twine in
fine meanders through the meades, making so sweet a mur-
muring noise to hear as would even lull the senses with de-
light asleep ; so pleasantly do they glide upon the pebble
stones, jetting most jocundly where they do meet, and, hand
in hand, run down to Neptune's Court to pay the yearly
tribute which they owe to him as sovereign Lord of all the
springs. Contained within the volume of the land [are]
fowls in abundance, fish in multitudes, and [I] discovered,
besides, millions of turtle-doves on the green boughs, which
sat pecking of the full, ripe, pleasant grapes that were sup-
ported by the lusty trees, whose fruitful load did cause the
arms to bend ; while, here and there dispersed, you might
see [also] lilies of the Daphnean tree, which made the land
to me seem Paradise ; for in mine eye 't was Nature's mas-
ter-piece, — her chiefest magazine of all, where lives her
store. If this land be not rich, then is the whole world
poor ! "

Going back to England, he was eager to return to
America : for not only v^^as he fascinated with the
country as a sportsman and Igver of nature, but he
confidently believed that a most profitable trade with
the savages might be opened ; and, in the absence of all
evidence bearing directly on the origin and move-
ments of the WoUaston company, it may fairly be in-
ferred that he who thus described this paradise of
" lilies of the Daphnean tree," guided that company
to a destination in Boston Bay, naturally directing his
own and his companions' course to those places which
he so vividly recalled. Wessagusset the newcomers
found still occupied by the remnants of Gorges' com-
pany, who had now been there nearly two years.
Necessarily, therefore, they had to look elsewhere for
an abiding-place. A couple of miles or so north

IGG THOMAS MORTON. 1625.

of Wessagusset, on the other side of the Monatoquit
and within the limits of what is now the city of
Quincy, was a place called by the Indians Passona-
gessit. The two localities were separated from each
other not only by the river, which at its mouth widens
out into a spacious tidal estuary, but by the numerouL.
salt-water creeks and basins which here indent the
shore, and into which drained the tangled and then
impassable swamps. At Passonagessit the newcomers
established themselves, and the place has ever since
been known as Mt. WoUaston. For the purposes of
the adventurers, Passonagessit was in many respects
a better location than Wessagusset. They had come
to trade. However it may have been with the others,
in Morton's mind at least the plantation was, in all
probability, a mere incident to the more profitable
dealing in furs ; and consequently a prominent posi-
tion on the shore, in plain view of the entrance to the
bay, would be with him an important consideration.
This was found at Passonagessit. It was a spacious
upland, rising gently from the beach, and, an eighth
of a mile or so from it, swelling into a hill. No con-
siderable stream connected it with the interior, but it
lay at the mouth of a creek which emptied into a
quiet tidal bay formed by two promontories a couple
of miles apart. Beyond lay the islands of Boston
Harbor, in apparently connected succession, among
which the ship channel threaded its devious way.
But Passonagessit, as those who now occupied it
doubtless soon found out, labored under one serious
disadvantage. There was no deep water near it, and,
except at the flood of the tide, it could be approached
only in boats. Nevertheless, among and behind the
neighboring islands there were good and ample an-

1625. PASSONAGESSIT. 167

chorage grounds, and, so far as planting was con-
cerned, the spot they had chosen, lying as it did close
to " the Massachusetts fields," had some years before
been cleared of trees by the sachem Chickatabot, who
had there made his place of dwelling until the time
of the great pestilence, when he had abandoned it.
At Passonagessit he had buried his mother.

The adventurers built their house nearly on the
centre of the summit of the hill, where it slopes gently
away from the water to the west and south, and from
it they commanded a wide view in all directions. On
the side towards the bay every entrance to the harbor
was in plain sight, so that no vessel could enter with-
out its presence being instantly known. On the other
side, at the distance of a mile or so, the land towards
the interior began to rise into round, swelling heights,
beyond which lay the heavily wooded range referred to
by Smith as "the high mountaine of Massachusit," and
named on his map the Chevyot Hills. To the north,
across the marshes and a shallow tidal bay, was
Squantum, where Standish had first landed ; and still
further, on the other side of the Neponset, Mattapan.
The hills of Shawmut — on the western side of the
laro^er of which Blackstone was even then buildinsf the
first house of future Boston — could be seen still
further to the north, and deep in the recesses of the
harbor, though not more than four or five miles away.
Wessagusset lay to the south, and, except for the
woods which covered the uplands, within easy view.
Between it and Mt. Wollaston were the river, the
tidal basin, and the mai-shes intersected by creek. All
the region in the immediate vicinity of the shore was
interspersed with swamps, full of vermin and impas-
sable except when solid with frost, but through and

168 THOMAS MORTON. 1626.

among which ran gravel ridges, affording to those ac-
quainted with them easy means of passage. Except
where comparatively small patches of land had been
cleared for Indian cultivation, the country was cov-
ered by a dense forest growth.

A season must have passed away while the party
were engaged in building their houses and laying out
a plantation. The winter followed. One winter on
that bleak shore seems to have sufficed for Captain
Wollaston, as it had sufficed for Robert Gorges, and
in the course of it he came to the conclusion that
for him there was little profit and no satisfaction to
be got out of New England. Accordingly, early in
1626, he determined to go elsewhere ; and, taking with
him a number of the articled servants, he set sail for
Virginia, leaving one of his associates, Rasdall by
name, in charge of the plantation. If he did not find
in Virginia a place of settlement to his liking. Cap-
tain Wollaston there found at least a ready market for
his servants ; and it is said he soon sold the time of
those he took with him on terms satisfactory to him-
self. He then sent back directions to Rasdall to turn
the government of the plantation over to another of
the associates, named Fitcher, and himself to come at
once to Virginia, bringing with him another detach-
ment of the servants. These, also, Wollaston disposed
of. But now the presence of Thomas Morton began
to make itself felt at Mt. Wollaston. His associates
apparently intended to break up the enterprise and
abandon the plantation. Such a course in no way
commended itself to him. He liked the country, and
he seems to have felt satisfied that a longer stay in it
would be not only to his taste, but could be made ex-
tremely profitable.

1626. "A PROUD INSOLENT MAN:* 169

Of this man's earlier life, before he came to Amer-
ica, nothing whatever is now known. He had cer-
tainly received a classical education of some sort ; for,
though he could not write English, he yet throughout
all the odd jumble of his composition shows, amid
an elaborate display of that pedantry then so much in
vogue, some familiarity with the more common Latin
writers. In his letter to the Countess of Lincoln,
Governor Dudley speaks of him as " a proud insolent
man," who had been " an attorney in the West coun-
tries while he lived in England: " and he further in-
timates that Morton had been there implicated in some
foul crimes, on account of which warrants were out
against him. Nathaniel Morton, in his " Memorial/
pieces out this indictment by intimating that the crime
thus referred to was the killing of a partner concerned
with Thomas Morton in his first New England ven-
ture ; and Thomas Wiggin, of Piscataqua, corroborates
Nathaniel Morton to some extent by stating, on the
authority of Thomas Morton's " wife's sonne and
others," that he had fled to New England " upon a
foule suspition of murther." ^ But in accepting charges
made against Thomas Morton by the magistrates of
Plymouth or Massachusetts, or by those sympathizing
with them, it is necessary to make allowances and ex-
ercise much caution, for in their eyes he was not only
a profane man, a scoffer and a wine-bibber, but he
was also a thorn in their sides. Moreover, he was a
spy, and in league with their enemies. They had
treated him with Puritan severity, and he in turn an-
swered with intrigue and reviling. They accordingly
believed anything that was said against him, and did

1 See introductory matter to the Prince Soc. ed. of N. E. Canaan,
passim.

170 THOMAS MORTON. 1626.

not hesitate to record rumors as facts. Yet, so far as
the stories of his heinous crimes in England were con-
cerned, it is very clear that, though twice they sent
hiui back a prisoner to answer for them, no proceed-
ings were ever taken against him, nor could he even
be kept in confinement.^

1 A disposition has been recently evinced, by certain WTiters of
Church of England proclivities, to adopt Morton's cause and take up
the cudgels on his behalf as against the New England sectarians.
Morton was a bora Bohemian and reckless libertine, without either
morals or religion, and he probably cared no more for the Church of
England than he did for that of Rome. The New English Canaan
speaks both for itself and its author. From beginning to end. it is sat-
urated with revelry and scoffing. But in his quarrel with his Puri-
tan neighbors Morton found himself thrown into close alliance with
Gorges and Laud. His only chance of getting either revenge or jus-
tice lay through them. Accordingly he posed to them, as well as he
knew how, as a Church of England martyr. The part Avas not a very
congenial one, and he made an odd piece of work with it ; but still he
did masquerade as a devotee, after a fashion. His method of putting
the matter is by no means one of the least characteristic passages of
his most amusing book. He had been describing with immense gusto
the revelries, drunkenness and debauchery at Mt. Wollaston, — how a
barrel of excellent beer and "a case of bottles" had been provided
for all comers, and " the good liquor " had been " filled out ; " how
the " lasses in beaver coats " had been " welcome to us night and
day ; " how " he that played Proteus (with the helpe of Priapus) put
their noses out of joynt as the Proverbe is," — he had just been de-
scribing these scenes, when, on the next page, his tone changes. The
people at Plymouth, he goes on to say, planned to subvert his plantar
tion, ' ' 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 termes : en-
veyiiig against the sacred booke of common prayer, and mine host
that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family, as a practise of
piety."

This comical allusion to the Church of England and the " sacred
booke of common prayer" was enough. The amusing old debauchee
and tippler became a devout martyr at once, or at least as nearly the
semblance of one as he could make himself. Such references to him
as the following are then found : " It still remains for Massachusetts
to do justice to Morton, who had his faults, though he was not the

1G26. A ''KIND OF PETIE-FOGGER." 171

That Morton had been married would appear from
the letter of Wiggin which has just been referred to.
He says of himself, also, that he was " bred in so
genious a way " that in England he had the common
use of hawks in fowling, so that he was unquestion-
ably an accomplished sportsman after the fashion of
that day. Whatever the experiences of his earlier life
may have been (and the chances are that they were
sufficiently varied), Bradford says that, when he came
to America, Morton was a '' kind of petie-fogger of
Furne veil's Inne," while ten years later, when he pub-
lished the " New English Canaan," he describes him-
self in its title-page as " of Clifford's Inn, Gent." It
is, therefore, fairly to be inferred that he was more
or less a lawyer. That he was not wholly without

man his enemies, and notably Bradford, declared him to be." (Pre-
face to White's Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church, p. xxii. n.)
" The text-books used [at the Merry -Mount school of atheism] were
the Bible and Common Prayer," and "it is undeniable that Morton
became an object of aversion largely for the reason that he used this
Prayer Book." {Mag. of Am. History, yiiu 83.) "Boston, however,
was resolved, and accordingly they invented the charge of cruelty
against the Indians, as well as insinuations respecting [Morton's]
treatment of their women, whom, in reality, he had sought to instruct
in the principles of religion." (lb. 89.) Again the same author, in
a paper on William Blackstone, in The Churchman of September 25,
1880, says : " The first mention of Blackstone is that of June 9, 1628,
when he was assessed twelve shillings towards the expense of arrest-
ing Morton of Merry-Mount, though there is nothing to prove that he
paid the tax or sympathized with the proceeding.' ' This statement is
incorrect. There is certainly evidence to prove that Blackstone both
paid the tax and sympathized in the proceeding, though the suffi-
ciency of that evidence may be questioned. Bradford mentions Black-
stone by name as one of those siibscribing to the letter to the Council
for New England, sent to England with Morton, and also as one of
those contributing to the charge of the arrest (i. Mass. Hist. Coll.
iii. 63). No evidence could be more direct. See, also, the ingenious
version of the whole episode of Merry-Mount given by Oliver in his
Puritan Commonwealth (pp. 37-39).

172 THOMAS MORTON. 1626.

means is evident from the fact that he owned an in-
terest in the Wollaston venture ; though here again
Bradford takes pains to say that the share he repre-
sented C of his owne or other mens ") was small, and
that he himself had but little respect amongst the ad-
venturers, and was slighted by even the meanest ser-
vants. But whether he had means of his own or not,
and with whatever lack of consideration he may have
been treated by his companions, there can be no doubt
that Morton was a man of convivial temper and a
humorist. That his moral character was decidedly
loose is apparent from his own statements, and such
religious views as he had must have been mixed in
character; yet, withal, he was a close observer, and
his strange, incoherent, rambling book contains one of
the best descriptions of Indian life, traits and habits,
and of the trees, products and animal life of New
England, which has come down to us. The man had,
in fact, an innate love of nature, and an Englishman's
passion for field sports. What, except love of adven-
ture, ever originally brought him to New England, is
not likely to be known; but, when once he got there,
he was never able to take himself off, nor could
others drive him away. At home he was probably a
disreputable London lawyer, not . unfamiliar with the
Alsatian life which Scott has depicted in his " For-
tunes of Nigel." As such he was fonder of the tavern
than of chambers, and felt much more himself when
ranging the fields with hawk or hound than when rum-
maging law books ; for he seems really to have been
an adept in the mysteries of falconry, and probably
Thomas Morton is the only man who ever flew bird
at quarry in Massachusetts. Indeed, he grows warm
and almost lucid as, in his description of the country,

1626. A WAIF IN A WILDERNESS. 173

he tells of its falcons and goshawks and lannerets, —
of hood, bells and lures ; and describes how, on his
first coming, he caught a lanneret which he " reclaimed,
trained and made flying in a fortnight, the same
being a passinger at Michuelmas." This man — born
a sportsman, bred a lawyer, ingrained a humorist and
an adventurer — by some odd freak of destiny was
flung up as a waif in the wilderness on the shores of
Boston Bay. For him his lines had then fallen in
pleasant places ; nor was it strange he liked the life,
being robust of frame, eager in the chase and fond of
nature. He was of those whom the harsh, variable
New England climate, with its brilliant skies, its bra-
cing atmosphere, its rasping ocean winds and its ex-
tremes of heat and cold, does not kill, — and such it
exhilarates. So, not even a succession of winters
passed on the bleak summit of his seaside hill ever
made Thomas Morton swerve from his belief that
New England was "Natures Master-peece," without
a parallel in all the world. He was of one mind with
the Rev. Francis Higginson of Salem when he wrote,
" A sup of New Englands Aire is better than a
whole draught of old Englands Ale."

CHAPTER XI.

THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY-MOUNT.

It would seem most probable that Rasdall, with the
second detachment of servants, had followed Wollas-
ton to Virginia some time during the summer of 1626.
The company had then been at Passonagessit over a
year ; and, as supplies were running short, the general
spirit of the settlement was far from being one of con-
tentment. Morton did not fail to take advantage of
this condition of affairs,^ gradually instilling into the
minds of those few of the servants who still remained
unsold a suspicion, for which doubtless there were
very sufficient grounds, that it would be their turn
next to go to Virginia. He then suggested that, if
they would make him the head of the little settlement,
they could all dwell together as equals, protecting one
another, and deriving profit from planting and from
trade. Exclusive of Pitcher, who was now in charge,
there were but seven left at the plantation. All of

1 It is a noticeable feature in the New English Canaan that Morton
never once mentions Wollaston's name, or makes any reference to the
facts connected with the change in the control at Mt. WoUaston de-
scribed by Bradford. Yet Bradford must have derived his knowledge
of these facts from Fitcher, or from those neighbors of Fitcher's
among whom he was forced "to seeke bread to eate, till he could get
passages for England." Morton subsequenth' also, at two different
periods, passed a considerable time at Plymouth, where undoubtedly
the proceedings at Merry-Mount were common town-talk. His silence,
therefore, on the earlier incidents connected with his life in New Eng-
land is extremely suggestive of an unwillingness to talk about them.

1626-7. ''MA~RE MOUNTS 175

these Morton won over to his views, and at last a
species of mutiny broke out, as the result of which
Captain Wollaston's deputy was fairly put out-of-doors,
and compelled to seek food and shelter at Wessagus-
set. Then began at Mt. WoUaston a singular episode
in connection with New England history, — an episode,
the bizarre effect of which it is not easy to describe.

Morton had come to New England with two very
distinct ends in view, — the one, enjoyment, the other,
profit ; and he was equally reckless in his methods of
obtaining each. It will be necessary later on to refer
to his methods as a trader, in regard to which he pre-
serves in his book a discreet silence ; but his pleasures,
and the enjoyment he found in that free country life,
— these he dilates upon with a free hand and running
pen. He delighted in wandering, fowling-piece in
hand, over all the neighboring hills, or sailing in his
boat on the bay. With the Indians, he was evidently
the most popular of Englishmen ; for not only did they
act as his huntsmen and guides, but they participated
in his revels, — and not the men only, but the women
also. Indeed, one of the principal allegations subse-
quently made against Morton referred to the very
anomalous relations existing between himself and the
neighboring squaws. Finally his taste for boisterous
enjoyment culminated in a proceeding which scandal-
ized the coast.

The winter of 1626-7 at last wore itself away.
As the spring advanced towards the first of May,
great preparations were on foot at Mt. Wollaston,
though to the dwellers there the place was no longer
known either by that name or as Passonagessit. It
was Ma-re Mount now ; and in the name of Ma-re
Mount, too, lay thinly concealed a play upon words of

17C THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY-MOUNT May,

some significance, — for, whereas Merry-Mount would,
in its avowed gracelessness, have been well calculated
to stir the pious indignation of the Plymouth Separa-
tists, and to be held up against the neighboring plan-
tation as proof sufficient of the evil practices there in
vogue, Ma-re Mount, if the name were so pronounced
and spelled, was simply an ajipropriate as well as a
highly characteristic display of Latinity. Having de-
cided upon the name, it only remained to confirm it
by suitable ceremonies as a memorial ; and, when it
came to doing this, it hardly needs to be said that
Morton was a stout friend of the rough, open-air
amusements which still cause the England of those
days to be referred to in ours with the pleasant prefix
of " merrie." So, now, on May-day, a pole was to be
reared at Ma-re Mount, with revelry, games and re-
joicings after the English wont.

Of what actually took place at Mt. WoUaston, on
this May-day of 1627, we know through the account
left us by Morton, — himself "mine host" of the oc-
casion, or Lord of Misrule, — and, whether it be
strictly accurate in all respects or not, that account
lacks neither minuteness nor picturesque effect. Ab-
stinence, except in Puritan circles, was not a virtue of
the time. On the contrary, the reign of James I. was
a period of " heavy-headed revel, east and west," dur-
ing which drunkenness, whether in man or woman,
was looked upon as hardly worse than an amiable
weakness. Morton was no reformer. A barrel of
strong beer and a liberal supply of bottles containing
yet stronger fluids were, therefore, part of the good
cheer made ready for all comers on the festal day.
The May-pole was the stem of a pine-tree, eighty feet
in length, wreathed with garlands and made gay with

1627. THE MAY-POLE. 177

ribbons, while, near its top, were nailed the spreading
antlers of a buck. When at last the holiday came,
this pole was dragged, amid the noise of drums and
the discharge of firearms, to the summit of the mount,
and there firmly planted ; the savages, who had flocked
in to see the white man's revels, lending a willing hand
in the work. After the fashion of the period, Morton
was fond of scribbling verses, in which it is not easy
now to detect poetry or rhythm or sense ; so for this
occasion he had what he called a poem in readiness, a
copy of which was affixed to the pole.^ Of it the
author wrote that although it had reference to then
current events, yet it " being Enigmattically composed
pusselled the Seperatists most pittifully to expound
it." Time certainly has failed to cast any new light

1 THE POEM.

Rise CEdipeus, and if thou canst unfould,

What meaues Caribdis underneath the mould,

When Scilla soUitary on the ground,

(Sitting in forme of Niohe) was found ;

Till Amphitrites Darling did acquaint.

Grim Neptune with the Tenor of her plaint,

And causd him send forth Triton with the sound.

Of Trumpet lowd, at which the Seas were found.

So full of Protean formes, that the hold shore,

Presenteth Scilla a new parramore,

So stronge as Sampson and so patient,

As Job himselfe, directed thus, by fate,

To comfort Scilla so unfortunate.

I doe professe by Cupids beautious mother,

Heres Scogans choise for Scilla, and none other ;

Though Scilla's sick with greife because no signe.

Can there be found of vertue masculine.

Esculapius come, I know right well,

His laboure 's lost when you may ring her Knell,

The fatall sisters doome none can withstand,

Nor Cithareas powre, who poynts to land,

With proclamation that the first of May,

At Ma-re Mount shall be kept liollyday.

178 THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY-MOUNT. May,

upon its meaning. Bradford says that these " rimes "
affixed to this ''idle or idoll May-pole" tended ''to
the detraction and scandall of some persons;" but
who those persons were he fails to specify, and Mor-
ton denied the charge. In any event, with the excep-
tion of the two last lines, in which the first of May is
proclaimed a holiday at Ma-re Mount, tliis earliest of
all American efforts at lyric verse is a hodge-podge of
pedantry, which the author's own commentary fails to
make intellimble.

Nevertheless, such as it was, "the poem" was
ready; and no sooner did the May-pole stand erect
than the scrawl was fastened to it, and then the revels
and the merriment began. Joining hands, the whole
company circled in rude dance round about the ant-
lered and garlanded pine, making the shore ring with
their shouts and laughter. They had also a song ^ of

1 THE SONGE.

Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes ;
Let all your delig-ht be in the Hymens ioyes ;
lo to Hymen, now the day is come,
About the merry Maypole take a Roome.

Make greene garlons, bring bottles out

And fill sweet Nectar, freely about.

Vneover thy head and feare no harme.

For hers good liquor to keepe it waime.
Then drinke and be merry, &c.
16 to Hymen, &c.

Nectar is a thing assign' d.

By the Deities owne minde,

To cure the hart opprest with greif e,

And of good liquors is the chiefe.
Then drinke, &c.
lo to Hymen, &c.

Give to the Mellancolly man

A cup or two of 't now and than ;

This physick will soone revive his bloud,

And make him be of a merrier moode.

1627. A GLEAM OF SUNLIGHT. 179

a highly Bacchanalian character, another of Morton's
productions ; and this he says was sung by one of the
company, who also acted as a Ganymede, filling out
the good liquor to his companions as they at intervals
struck into the chorus. These verses Bradford ap-
parently looked upon as '' tending to lasciviousness ; "
but, though rather less unintelligible, they were hardly
more harmonious or better worth preserving than
" the poem," except that one line, that in which ref-
erence is made to "lasses in beaver coats," has some
significance as throwing a gleam of light on the make-
up of the motley crew which gambolled about the
May-pole.

Allowing for the difference between the old and
new styles. May-day, in the year 1627, fell upon what
is now the eleventh of the month. It is, therefore,
more probable than it otherwise would be that the
occasion at Merry-Mount resembled in some respects
the sweet English anniversary, the observance of
which it was thus sought to transplant ; but, whether
the Massachusetts May-day of 1627 resembled the
ideal English May-day or not, the episode which has
given it a place in history now breaks in upon the
leaden gloom of the early New England annals like a
single fitful gleam of sickly sunlight, giving the chill
surroundings a transient glow of warmth, of cheerful-
ness, of human sympathy. Before that May-day at

Then drinke, &c.
16 to Hymen, &c.

Give to the Nymphe thats free from scome

No Irish stuff nor Scotch over worne.

Lasses in beaver coats come away,

Yee shall be welcome to us night and day.
To drinke and be meiTy &c.
lo to Hvmen, &c.

180 THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY-MOUNT. May,

Mt. WoUaston, there is a record of but one single
attempt to introduce into New England those games
and sports which were peculiar to certain anniversa-
ries of the mother land. The result of that attempt
was not propitious. The incident is familiar, but it
will always bear repetition. It occurred at Plymouth,
in December 1621.

The first year in the life of the little settlement was
then just drawing to its close. A few weeks before, a
small vessel had arrived in which were thirty-five im-
migrants, most of whom, as Bradford expresses it,
" were lusty yonge men, and many of them wild
enough, who litle considered whither or aboute what
they wente." They were not Puritans, and much less
were they Separatists ; but, when landed, they were
in due time disposed of among the several families.
Presently came Christmas-day, the day in all the year
from time immemorial associated in the English mind
with thoughts of home and kindliness and goodwill
to men, — a day set apart for games, feasting and
jollity. On this Christmas morning at Plymouth the
Governor arose, and, as was the custom on other days,
called the men together to go out to work. Most of
the newcomers, liking not the innovation, excused
themselves on the ground of conscientious scruples
against labor on that day. The Governor, in a pas-
sage " rather of mirth than of waight," which carries
with it still the echoes of a grim chuckle, thus goes on
to tell in his own language of the ready wit with
which he discomfited the revellers. They had alleged
conscientious scruples : —

"So the Governor tould them that if they made it
mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were
better informed. So he led-awav the rest and left them •

1627. THE FEAST OF FLORA. 181

but when they came home at noone from their worke, he
found them in the streete at play, openly; some pitching
the barr, and some at stoole-ball, and shuch like sports. So
he went to them, and tooke away their implements, and
tould them that was against his conscience, that they should
play and others worke. If they made the keeping of it
mater of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther
should be no gameing or revelling in the streets. Since
which time nothing hath been attempted that way, at least
openly." ^

Thus early the psalm drowned the stave in New
England. The sudden breaking in of Morton's rol-
licking chorus on that solemn silence seems, therefore,
like a thing arranged. There is much fitness in it,
also, for it sounds like a protest of human nature at
the attempted suppression of its joyous and more at-
tractive half. When the faint echoes of that chorus
reached Plymouth, language in which adequately to
express their reprehension of such doings wholly failed
the people there. Neither were their feelings quite
so inexplicable or so wholly without reason as might
now at first appear, for May-day was, in the reigns of
Elizabeth and James, by no means the innocent, joy-
ous welcoming of spring which tradition represents it.
That was essentially a gross and immoral, as well as
an intemperate period. Christmas was at least a
Christian festival. May-day was not. It was of dis-
tinctly Pagan origin, whether traced back to the Dru-
ids or to the Romans. It represented all that was

^ One of the formal '' objections against the laws of New England,"
submitted to the Lords of the Council for Trade and Plantation in
1677 as a part of the proceedings instigated by Randolph, was in
these words : " Whosoever shall observe such a day as X'mas by for-
bearing labor, feasting, &c., shall forfeit 5\" v. Mass. Hist. Coll. i.
502.

182 THE MAY-POLE OF MERRY-MOUNT. 1627.

left of the worship of Flora ; ^ and in the last half of
the sixteenth century there was a great deal of that
worship left. As Philip Stubs, writing in 1585, says,
" of fourtie, threescore, or an hundred maides going
to the wood [a-Maying] there have scarcely the third
part of them returned home againe as they went."
This then was what May-day represented, not only to
Bradford and his people, but to Morton and his crew.
It was a day of incontinence.

Incongruous and laughable, the situation had its
dramatic features also. It was not a vulgar modern
instance of the frontier dance-hall under the eaves of
a conventicle. There was a certain distance and
grandeur and dignity about it, — a majesty of soli-
tude, a futurity of empire. On the one hand, the
sombre religious settlement ; on the other, the noisy
trading-post, — two germs of civilized life in that
immeasurable wilderness, unbroken, save at Merry-
Mount and Plymouth, from the Penobscot to the
Hudson. Yet that wilderness, though immeasurable
to them, was not large enough for both. Merry-
Mount was roaring out its chorus in open defiance of
Plymouth, and Plymouth was so scandalized at the
doings at Merry-Mount that, when he heard of them,
Governor Bradford thus expressed himself : —

" They allso set up a May-pole, drinkinjr and dancing
aboute it many clays togeather, inviting the Indean women,
for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither, (like so
many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practises. As if
they had anew revived and celebrated the feasts of the Ro-
man Goddes Flora, or the beasly practieses of the madd
Bacchinalians."

^ Mather, Testimony against Prophane and Superstitious Customs,
Preface.

CHAPTER XII.

NANTASKET AND THOMSON'S ISLAND.

Between the year 1625, when Wollastoii landed
his company, and 1627, when Morton set up his May-
pole, two new settlements, if such they deserve to be
called, had been effected on Boston Bay. One of
these was at Nantasket, or Hull ; the other at Thom-
son's Island and Squantum.

It would seem that a sort of outlying trading-post,
" something like an habitation," was established at
Nantasket as early as 1622, the season following
Miles Standish's first visit, and in consequence of it ;
though in all probability it was nothing more than
one of those shore stations which, located at various
points on the coast, especially in Maine, were occupied
during certain seasons of each year by the fishermen
and traders. It has also been stated ^ that in this year
three men, named Thomas and John Gray and Walter
Knight, purchased Nantasket of Chickatabot, and
there settled themselves. The next addition to their
number, if these persons did indeed sit down at Hull
at this time, came in a very questionable and far from
heroic or triumphant way.

The episode of John Lyford and John Oldham, the
next dwellers, though only temporary, at Hull, is one
of the most characteristic and entertaining in the
early history of Plymouth. Both had come over early,

1 Drake, Boston, 41.

184 NANTASKET AND THOMSON'S ISLAND. 1624

— Oldham in the Anne, which arrived in July, 1623,
a couple of months before the coming of Robert Gorges,
and Lyford in the spring of 1624, some nine months
later. Neither of them belonged to the general body,
as it was called, of the Plymouth associates. Oldham
came on his own account, it being agreed that indi-
vidual holdings should be assigned to him and others,
and that they should be subject merely to the general
government ; while Lyford, who was an Episcopalian
clergyman, was sent over, apparently, at the instance
of a portion of the London adventurers. Oldham
was a strong-willed man of violent temper, restless,
adventurous and eager of gain, — "a mad Jack in
his mood," as Morton called him. Lj^ord was com-
mended by those who sent him out as " an honest
plaine man, though none of the most eminente and
rare," but he proved to be a disreputable, broken-down
elerg}Tnan, of loose morals and no self-respect. Before
Lyford' s arrival, Oldham had already begun to cause
trouble, spreading discontent among those in the gen-
eral body, and sending back to England very discour-
aging accounts of the condition of things. Bradford
describes Lyford's landing as follows : —

" When this man first came a shore, he saluted them with
that reverence and hiimilitie as is seldome to be seen, and
indeed made them ashamed, he so bowed and cringed unto
them, and would have kissed their hands if they would have
suffered him ; yea, he wept and shed many tears, blessing God
that had brought him to see their faces ; and admiring the
things they had done in their wants, &c., as if he had been
made all of love. . . . After some short time he desired to
joyne himselfe a member to the church hear, and was ac-
cordingly received. He made a large confession of his faith,
and an acknowledgemente of his former disorderly walkuig,

1624. INTERCEPTED LETTERS. 185

and his being intangled with many corruptions, which had
been a burthen to his conscience, and blessed God for this
opportunitie of freedom and libertie to injoye the ordinan-
cies of God in puritie among his people, with many more
such like expressions."

Poor creature as he was, Lyford seems to have been
received at Plymouth with great consideration, and
consulted by the magistrates on the more important
matters of public concernment. Thus all went on
smoothly for a while ; but, presently, began indications
of trouble, which, of course, assumed the form of fac-
tion. All the perverse and discontented elements of
the little community centred about Oldham and Ly-
ford, and it was at Plymouth as it might have been
in a boys' school. But the story of what ensued can
only be told in Bradford's own words : —

" At lenght when the ship was ready to goe, it was ob-
served Liford was long in writing, and sente many letters,
and could not forbear to communicate to his intimats such
things as made them laugh in their sleeves, and thought
he had done ther errand sufficiently. The Governor and
some other of his freinds knowing how things stood in Eng-
land, and what hurt these things might doe, tooke a shalop
and wente out with the ship a league or two to sea, and
caled for all Lifords and Oldums letters. Mr. William
Peirce being master of the ship, (and knew well their evill
dealing both in England and here,) afforded him all the
assistance he could. He found above twenty of Lyfords
letters, many of them larg, and full of slanders, and false
accusations, tending not only to their prejudice, but to their
ruine and utter subversion. Most of the letters they let
pas, only tooke copys of them, but some of the most ma-
teriall they sent true copyes of them, and kept the originalls,
least he should deney them, and that they might produce
his owne hand against him. . . . This ship went out

186 NANTASKET AND THOMSON'S ISLAND. 1624

towards evening, and in the night the Governor returned.
They were somwaht blanke at it, but after some weeks,
when they heard nothing, they then were as briske as ever,
thinking nothing had been knowne, but all was gone cur-
rente, and that the Governor went but to dispatch his owne
letters. The reason why the Governor and rest concealed
these things the longer, was to let things ripen, that they
might the better discover their intents and see who were
their adherents. And the rather because amongst the rest
they found a letter of one of their confederats, in which
was writen that Mr. Oldame and Mr. Lyford intended a
reformation in church and commone wealth ; and, as soone
as the ship was gone, they intended to joyne togeather, and
have the sacrements, &c.

" For Oldame, few of his letters were found, (for he was
so bad a scribe as his hand was scarce legible,) yet he was
as deepe in the mischeefe as the other. And thinking they
were now strong enough, they begane to pick quarells at
every thing. Oldame being called to watch (according to
order) refused to come, fell out with the Capten, caled him
raskell, and beggerly raskell, and resisted him, drew his
knife at him ; though he offered him no wrong, nor gave
him no ille termes, but with all fairnes required him to doe
his duty. The Governor hearing -j^he tumulte, sent to
quiet it, but he ramped more like a furious beast then a
man, and cald them all treatours, and rebells, and other
such f oule language as I am ashp^itned to remember ; but
after he was clapt up a while, he came to him selfe, and
with some slight punishmente was let goe upon his behav-
iour for further censure.

" But to cutt things shorte, at length it grew to this esseue,
that Lyford with his complicies, without ever speaking one
word either to the Governor, Church, or Elder, withdrewe
them selves and set up a publick meeting aparte, on the
Lord's Day ; with sundry such insolente cariages too long
here to relate, begining now publikly to acte what privatly
they had been long plotting."

1624. " UNSAVORIE SALTE:' 187

This brought matters to a crisis, and a General
Court, which was but another name for a Plymouth
town-meeting, was summoned, before which Lyford
and Oldham were arraigned on general charges of con-
spiracy, civil and spiritual, with intent to disturb the
peace. Lyford of course met these charges with a
sweeping denial of their truth : —

" Then his letters were prodused and some of them read,
at which he was struck mute. But Oldam begane to rage
furiously, because they had intercepted and opened his let-
ters, threatening them in very high language, and in a most
audacious and mutinous maner stood up and caled upon
the people, saying, My maisters, wher is your harts ? now
shew your courage, you have oft complained to me so and
so ; now is the time, if you wiU doe any thing, I will stand
by you, &c. "

The appeal fell on deaf ears. Whether his sympa-
thizers were, indeed, " strucken with the injustice of
the thing," as Bradford says, or whether they wisely
realized that they were in a small minority, matters
but little ; but when called upon by Lyford, at a later
stage of the proceedings, they one and all denied him.
Even Billington, the confirmed reprobate of the settle-
ment, who at a later day committed a murder and was
hanged for so doing on the first gallows ever erected
in Massachusetts, — even this man, when appealed
to, protested against being supposed to have anything
to do with the faction of the accused.

"■ Then they delte with him aboute his dissembling with
them aboute the church, and that he professed to concur
with them in all things, and what a large confession he made
at his admittance, and that he held not him selfe a minister
tiU he had a new calling, &c. And yet now he contested
against them, and drew a company aparte, and sequestred

188 NANTASKET AND THOMSON'S ISLAND. 1624.

him selfe ; and would goe minister the sacrements (by his
Episcopall caling) without ever speaking a word unto them,
either as magistrats or bretheren. In conclusion, he was
fully convicted, and burst out into tears, and 'confest he
feared he was a reprobate, his sinns were so great that he
doubted God would not pardon them, he was unsavorie
salte, &c. ; and that he had so wronged them as he could
never make them amends, confessing all he had write against
them was false and nought, both for matter and manner.'
And all this he did with as much fullnes as words and tears
could express."

In fact, while Oldham was something of a man,
Lyford was a canting, hypocritical priest. He was
also, as afterwards appeared, a wolf in sheep's cloth-
ing. Both of them were ordered to leave Plymouth ;
but, while Oldham was to go at once, Lyford had per-
mission to remain six months ; and he did not fail to
take advantage of the opportunity thus afforded him
to give the government of the little community such
further trouble as he could.

The trial before the General Court would seem to
have taken place at midsummer. In August a vessel
was despatched to England, and by her Lyford sent
another letter " in great secrecie, but the party in-
trusted with it gave it the Governor." This letter
being " brefer than the former " the Governor inserted
in his history. It is signed " John Lyford, Exille : "
but for the rest, though it finished the writer's chances
of making his peace at Plymouth, it now reads like
a sufficiently moderate statement of discontent. Nev-
ertheless the odium tJieologicum had now been ex-
cited, and, through all the following months, not only
the little community in New England, but the com-
pany of adventurers in London, was torn by dis-

1624. " OYLE TO THE FIRE:' 189

sension. Unfortunately for Lyford, the controversy
brought to light facts of a very unpleasant nature
affecting his moral character, — facts which Bradford
took a grim satisfaction in spreading upon his pages
with cruel particularity. The preacher's domestic re-
lations do not seem to have been happy or exemplary.
Nevertheless he and his family remained at Plymouth
through the winter.

About the 20th of March of the next year Oldham
suddenly reappeared, in company with some others.
It had been part of his sentence that he should not
return without leave first obtained, but in his angry,
self-willed way he paid no regard to this.

" And not only so, but suffered his unruly passions to
rune beyond the Hmits of all reason and modestie ; in so
much that some strangers which came with him were
ashamed of his outrage, and rebuked him ; but aU reprofes
were but as oyle to the fire, and made the flame of his col-
ler greater. He caled them all to nought, in this his mad
furie, and a hundred rebells and traytors, and I know not
what. But in conclusion they committed him till he was
tamer."

The finale of this whole episode is told even better
in the words of Thomas Morton than in those of Gov-
ernor Bradford. It includes, furthermore, all that
needs to be said of Lyford, as well as his companion
in persecution and exile. The angry and abusive Old-
ham, it will be remembered, had been "clapt up a
while," and then, with an injunction to "goe and
mende his manners," he was again dismissed into
exile, as Morton says, —

" After a solemne invention in this manner : A lane of
Musketiers was made, and hee compelled in scorne to passe
along betweene, and to receave a bob upon the bumme by

190 NANTASKET AND THOMSON'S ISLAND. 1625-6.

every musketier, and then aboard a shallop, and so con-
vayed to Wessaguscus shoare, and staid at Massachussets,
to whom lohn Layford and some few more did resort,
where Master Layford freely executed his office and
preached every Lords day, and yet maintained his wife
and children fonre or five, upon his industry there, with
the blessing of God and the plenty of the Land, without
the helpe of his auditory, in an honest and laudable man-
ner, till hee was wearied and made to leave the Country."

This happened at about the time of WoUaston's ar-
rival ; and, not improbably during the same season,
Blackstone and others of the Wessagusset settlement
moved across to the north side of Boston Bay. The
exiles from Plymouth found Nantasket to be but an
" uncoth place," as Bradford subsequently termed it,
and a year later a portion of them, Lyford being of
the number, were easily induced by the Dorchester
company to move over to Cape Ann, and there sat
down, with others sent over for the purpose, where the
town of Gloucester now stands, then a place, as the
historian Hubbard enigmatically describes it, " more
convenient for those that belong to the tribe of Zebu-
lun than for those that chose to dwell in the tents
of Issachar." ^ Lyford was to minister spiritually to
the new settlement ; but it proved a short-lived affair,
and subsequently he made his way with his family to
more congenial Virginia, where presently he died.
Oldham meanwhile, with some others, stayed at Nan-
tasket, preferring to trade on his own account, inde-
pendent of all companies ; though later he found his

^ " Zebulun shall dwell at the haven of the sea ; and he shall be for
an haven of ships ; and his border shall be unto Zidon. Issachar is
a strong ass couching down between two burdens : and he saw that
rest was good, and the land that it was pleasant." Genesis xlix.
13-15.

1623-4. DAVID THOMSON. 191

way back to Plymouth, where he will presently be met
with again. In the mean time the settlement at Nan-
tasket, such as it was, had become apparently perma-
nent.i

Of David Thomson, the first occupant of Squantum
and the " Farm-school island," not much, but suf-
ficient, is known. Morton speaks of him as a Scottish
gentleman, both a traveller and a scholar, who had
been quite observant of the habits of the Indians.^
Before coming to America he had been in some way
connected with Gorges, if not indeed a dependent upon
him ; for his name repeatedly appears in the records of
the Council for New England, to which he apparently
served as an agent or messenger, representing it in
matters before the Privy Council. A patent covering
a considerable grant of land was issued to him by the
Council in November, 1622 ; and it has already been
mentioned that in the February preceding he had
learned something of the country from the sailor,
William Trevore, whose name Standish says he gave
to the island upon which Thomson subsequently set-
tled, and where he died. There is, indeed, some
reason for believing that Thomson, availing himself
of the information thus obtained from Trevore, either
at this time or a little later on, secured from the Coun-
cil for New England an additional patent covering
Squantum and the adjacent islands.^ However this
may have been, Thomson seems to have come over to
New England early in 1623, bringing with him his
wife, and a number of articled servants. He was as-
sisted in his enterprise, which was of much the same

1 Mem. Hist, of Boston, 79.

2 New English Canaan (Prince Soe. ed.), 128, n.
8 Supra, 58 ; Bradford, 208, n.

192 NANTASKET AND THOMSON'S ISLAND. 1625-8.

general character as WoUaston's, by some Plymouth
merchants, and, according to Samuel Maverick,^ he
established himself on a point of land at the entrance
to Piscataqua River, now known as Little Harbor,
where he " built a Strong and Large House, enclosed
it with a large and High Palizado and mounted Gunns,
and being stored extraordinarily with shot and Am-
munition was a Terror to the Indians, who at that
time were insulting over the poor weake and impover-
ished Planters of Plymouth." It must have been very
shortly after Thomson's party landed at the moutli
of the Piscataqua, that Thomas Weston, wrecked,
tumbled ashore and stripped by the savages to his
shirt, found his way to them ; while, a little later on,
in the spring of 1624, their plantation was visited by
Levett and Robert Gorges.^ Apparently not fancy-
ing the region about the mouth of the Piscataqua,
Thomson, two years later, in 1626, moved down to
Boston Bay, and there established himself on the island
which has ever since been known by his name. There
he lived until his death, which occurred not later than
1628. Johnson, in his " Wonder-Working Provi-
dence," asserted that Thomson, j^robably in 1627, had
aided Samuel Maverick in building a small fort on
Noddle's Island, now East Boston, " placing therein
four murtherers to protect him from the Indians," but
other records show that this common place of refuge,
and probable storehouse and trading-post, was built
as early as 1625 and was at Winnisimmet, or Chelsea,
and not on Noddle's Island. David Thomson ac-
cordingly could not have aided in its construction.^

1 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 234.

2 Supra, 152; Winsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist, of Am. iii. 326, 366.
^ Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 366-73.

1G27. ''THE STRAGLING PLANTATIONS." 193

When Thomson died, he left a widow and infant son,
and to this son the General Court of Massachusetts
at a later day confirmed the title to Thomson's Island.^
Mt. Wollaston lay just midway between Wessagus-
set and Thomson's Island, and a mile or so in a
straight line from each, all three places being on the
same side of the bay and quite accessible to each
other. Nantasket and the settlements on the north
shore were, on the contrary, across the bay, and could
at that time be easily reached by the others only by
water. Of the number of those dwelling in the sev-
eral plantations, except in the case of Merry-Mount,
we have no knowledge. At Merry-Mount there were
seven, all men. At Wessagusset and at Hull both,
there were probably several families. Thomson, Mav-
erick and Walford were married, and each had one
or more children. How many servants they and the
others had, we have no means of knowing, but at the
outside there may have been, in 1627, somewhere in
the neighborhood of fifty human beings, of all ages
and both sexes, dwelling in seven separate communi-
ties, on the shores of Boston Bay.^

1 Infra, 342.

2 The different authorities for the above dates, statements, etc., will
be found cited in the paper in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. June, 1878,
194-206, and in Mem. Hist, p/ Boston, i. 63-86.

CHAPTER XIII.

Morton's arrest.

Had " mine host of Ma-re Mount," as Morton loved
best to style himself, been content with the sports of
the fieid, or with making observations on the habits of
the Indians and the products of the country, he might
probably have lived his life out at Passonagessit.
Certainly such neighbors as he had in 1627 at the
quiet Plymouth settlement forty miles away would
have been unlikely to disturb him, and the strag-
gling planters more immediately about the bay would
have had neither the disposition nor the power to do
so. He might even have erected a new May-pole
with every recurring spring, and danced about it with
his followers, white and red, to his heart's content ;
and his scandalized compatriots would at most only
have remonstrated with him over his ungodly courses.
But these were only Morton's amusements ; and, while
he was in America for amusement, he was there also
for business. He was fully alive to the large profits
which were to be made out of the fur trade, and in
carrying on that trade he was restrained by no scru-
ples. The furs, of course, came from the interior and
from the Indians ; and in his dealings with the In-
dians Morton adopted a policy natural to him, but
which imperilled the very existence of the infant set-
tlements along the coast. The two things the savages
most coveted were spirits and guns, — fire-water and

1628. INDIAN HUNTSMEN. 195

firearms. Beads and knives and hatchets and col-
ored cloth were very well at first, but these soon lost
their attraction. Guns and rum never did. For
them they would at any time give whatever they pos-
sessed. The trade in firearms had been strictly for-
bidden by King James' proclamation issued at the
instance of the Council for New England in 1622,
shortly after the granting of the great patent.^ The
companion trade in spirits, less dangerous to the
whites but more destructive to the savages, though
scandalous, was not under the ban of law ; but Mor-
ton cared little either for law or scandal, and the
savages flocked to him as to their natural ally. They
hung about his plantation and acted as his guides ;
and he probably treated them well ; for they certainly
participated in his revels, though he emphatically de-
nied that he was in the custom of selling them spirits.
They were also his huntsmen, and, though the charge
was vehemently urged against him, he nowhere denies
that he put guns into their hands and instructed them
in the use of firearms. They proved apt pupils. Thor-
oughly familiar with the haunts and habits of every
description of game, they were swift of foot and quick
of sight, and, learning how to use their new weapons,
the Indians soon realized what effective arms they
were, and naturally became eager to possess them.

There had for j^ears been a petty trade in firearms
carried on by the traders and fishermen as they
trucked along the coast, but it had never taken any
regular shape, nor, indeed, assumed formidable pro-
portions. It would seem, also, to have been con-
fined to the coast of Maine ; for in the whole record
of the Plymouth settlement, from the time of the first

1 Supra, 132.

196 MORTON'S ARREST. May,

skirmish with the Cape Cod savages in December,
1620, to the Wessagusset killing, no gun was ever
found in an Indian's hand. The bow and the knife
were his only weapons, and he stood in mortal terror of
gunpowder. It now seemed as if Morton was about
to reduce this dangerous trade to a regular system.
In cheap exchange for his surplus weapons, there
poured into the store room at Merry-Mount a profu-
sion of furs of the bear and the otter, the marten and
the beaver, together with those choicer deer skins
which the savages valued at three or four beaver skins,
and the robes of the black woK, one of which was
looked upon as the equal of forty beavers, and as
being a gift worthy of the acceptance of a j^rince.

The profit of the traffic in furs was as large then
as it was nearly two centuries later, when upon it the
foundations of the Astor fortune were securely laid,
and for a time trade at Merry-Mount was brisk. In-
deed, Morton says that in the course of five years one
of his servants was thought to have accumulated,
through his dealings in beaver skins, no less than a
thousand pounds ; and in those days a thousand
pounds was the equivalent of more than ten thousand
now. This was doubtless an exaggeration ; yet it is
evident that at ten shillings a pound in England, —
which Morton names as the current price, while Brad-
ford says that he never knew it less than fourteen, —
beaver skins, which cost almost nothing in America,
afforded a margin of profit sufficiently large to excite
the cupidity of any one. It certainly excited Mor-
ton's ; so he gave the Indians all the firearms he could
spare, in unequal exchange for their furs, and then
took steps to replenish his stock from England against
the next season's trade, for, according to Bradford,

1628. "^ SCHOOLE OF ATHISME." 197

lie sent out for " above a score " of weapons. Thus
Merry-Mount " beganne to come forward," as Morton
himself expressed it, and its reputation, such as it
was, spread far up and down the coast. The masters
of the trading vessels were also a lawless set, and
naturally the}'^ preferred to deal with men of their
own kind, while the fleet w^s a considerable and rap-
idly growing one, numbering already over fifty sail,^
more and more of which probably every season looked
into Boston Bay for barter and refreshment. Things,
indeed, went prosperously with the remnant of the
vanished WoUaston's party, and those of them who had
put their trust in Morton's promises doubtless felt for
a time that their faith was justified by the event.
They looked forward to a life of pleasant license, com-
bined with an ever-increasing profit ; and the money
they easily made was recklessly spent.

As might naturally have been expected, Morton's
neighbors watched his proceedings with a disfavor
which soon quickened and deepened into alarm. At
first they were merely scandalized at his antics, and
disposed to complain because his people, like Wes-
ton's before him, by their reckless way of dealing, de-
moralized trade. The savages were getting a more
correct idea of the value of their wares. Nothing
now had any attraction in their eyes except firearms
and ammunition ; but, in the strong language of Gov-
ernor Bradford, " they became madd, as it were, after
[these], and would not stick to ^ive any prise they
could attaine too for them." But the injury done
in a trading point of view, great as this was, be-
came insignificant when compared with those other
consequences to which the presence on the coast of
^ Young-, Chron. of Mass. 5, n.

198 MORTON'S ARREST. May,

such a place as Merry-Mount must inevitably lead.
Here was a vast country without any pretence of a
police. It was the yearly resort of a most lawless
class, caring only for immediate gain. Once let such
a gathering place as Morton's become established,
and it woidd indeed become a nest of unclean birds.
Desperate characters, runaway servants, criminals
who did not dare to go back to civilization, would
flock to it and there find a refuge, until, as Bradford
pointed out, the outnumbered settlers would " stand
in more fear of their lives and goods from this wicked
and debauched crew than from the savages them-
selves."

The danger was indeed imminent. It mattered little
whether Morton realized what he was doing and fore-
saw its consequences, or failed to realize it and fore-
saw nothing. The infant settlements had quite as
much to dread now from the gathering scum of civili-
zation as they ever had to dread from anything except
sickness, fire and famine. They were to run the
gauntlet of all dangers. Moreover, unlike the adven-
turers at Mt. WoUaston, those composing these set-
tlements had come to New England to stay. They
had brought with them their wives and children, and
were living at best in feeble communities, on the verge
of an unknown wilderness far removed from human
protection. Comj^aratively speaking, the Plymouth
people were organized and numerous, for they counted
as many as two hundred, dwelling together in some
twoscore houses within a stockade half a mile in cir-
cumference. The others were but straggling planta-
tions composed of solitary families, as in the cases of
Maverick, Walford and Thomson, or even of single
individuals, as in Blackstone's case, with perhaps a

1628. " VJLANIE." 199

servant or two. How great the sense of common dan-
ger was, is apparent from the fact that from Ports-
mouth to Boston it brought all together ; and when
Governor Bradford came to recording these events in
his history, he gave vent to an outburst of indigna-
tion and alarm which is in curious contrast with the
usual moderation of his language ; —

" 0 the horibhies of this vilanie I how many both Dutch
and English have been latly slaine by those Indeans, thus
furnished ; and no remedie provided, nay, the evill more
increased, and the blood of their brethren sould for gaine,
as is to be feared ; and in what danger all these colonies
are in is too well known. Oh I that princes and parlements
would take some timly order to prevente this mischeefe, and
at length to suppress it, by some exemplerie punishmente
upon some of these gaine thirstie murderers, (for they de-
serve no better title,) before their collonies in these parts be
over throwne by these barbarous savages, thus armed with
their owne weapons, by these evill instruments, and traytors
to their neigbors and cuntrie."

Elsewhere, too, ne declared that at a later day the
savages were better supplied with firearms and ammu-
nition than the Europeans themselves, and that some-
how they were provided with powder and shot when
the English were unable to get them, — a fact which
has often since been noted in the annals of Indian
warfare. Indeed, Bradford's language, just quoted,
is but the commencement of a long refrain — a lamen-
tation and an ancient tale of wrono^ — which has o:one
up from the frontier for two centuries and a half. It
is as clearly heard through the reports of the War
Department of the last half of the nineteenth century
as through the pages of the annalist of the first half
of the seventeenth.

200 MORTON'S ARREST. May,

Morton's neiglibors had now become thoroughly
alarmed, for Indians with guns in their hands were
prowling through the woods. It was currently be-
lieved that along the entire coast there were no less
than sixty weapons in their possession, and a single
trader was reported to have sold them during the
season of 1627 as many as twenty, with an hundred
weight of powder. The savages were as yet in pur-
suit only of game and furs, but to men living in such
absolute solitude as those early planters, even the poor
survivors of the Massachusetts tribe were a cause for
apprehension ; while behind the imjDcnetrable veil of
the forest were the dreaded Narragansetts. Rumors of
what they were intending were always in the air. The
Indian may be cowed, but he does not change his na-
ture, and it was now five years since Wituwamat's
ghastly head had been perched on the top of the
Plymouth block-house. The lesson taught at Wessa-
gusset might be forgotten ; the wrong inflicted there
might- yet be avenged.

The situation grew daily more precarious, and the
instinct of self-preservation told the planters plainly
enough that such a condition of affairs could not long
continue ; either illicit trade must be checked, or the
straggling settlers must leave the country. But the
course to be pursued to remedy the evil was not
equally clear, for, if it came to a trial of strength, the
master of Merry -Mount, even without his Indian
allies, was more than a match for all the settlers about
Boston Bay combined. His retainers as yet were few ;
but the place was young, and as its existence became
known it would increase both in numbers and in ill-
repute, so that before long it might be beyond the
power even of the Plymouth colony to abate the grow-

1628. ''SCURILLOUS TERMESr 201

iiigf nuisance. Under these .circumstances their fears
compelled the heads of the various plantations to ar-
range a meeting at which they might take counsel for
the common safety. This meeting seems to have taken
place in the early spring of 1628, the Hiltons from
Dover, and Conant, Balch and Palfrey from Salem,
as well as those seated about Boston Bay, either
participating in it, or joining in the action decided
upon. It was determined to ask the comparatively
powerful Plymouth settlement to take the matter in
hand, and letters setting forth the facts in the case,
and the sense of common danger, were accordingly
written and taken to Plymouth. After full considera-
tion the magistrates there made up their minds to do
as they were desired, and so a joint communication
was drawn up and forwarded to Morton by a messen-
ger, through whom he was asked to return his reply.
This document, Bradford says, was friendly and neigh-
borly in tone ; but in it Morton was admonished to
forbear his evil practices. The result of the inter-
view which followed would seem to have been any-
thing but satisfactory to the remonstrants, for Mor-
ton undertook to carry things with a high hand ;
indeed, he sent back word to the Plymouth magistrates
that they were meddling in matters which did not con-
cern them, that they had no jurisdiction over him or
his plantation, and that he proposed to trade with the
Indians in any way he saw fit. With this reply,
which probably was not unlooked for, the discomfited
messenger returned home.

The course now pursued by the Plymouth people
was highly characteristic and strictly Scriptural : —

" They sente to him a second time, and bad him be better
advised, and more temperate in his termes, for the countrie

202 MORTON'S ARREST. May,

could not l)eare the injure- he did; it was against their
coinone saftie, and against the king's proclamation. He
answered in high terms as before, and that the king's proc-
lamation was no law ; demanding what penaltie was upon
it. It was answered, more then he could bear, his majesties
displeasure. But insolently he persisted, and said the king
was dead and his displeasure with him, and many the like
things ; and threatened withall that if any came to molest
him, let them looke to themselves, for he would prepare for
them."

This downright defiance, also, the master of Merry-
Mount seems to have emphasized by a liberal use of
expletives (" oaths and other contumelies "), which
were probably far more frequently heard in the neigh-
borhood of his May-pole than under the shadow of
the Plymouth meeting-house.

However it may have been with the morality of the
transactions complained of, Morton, in the position he
took, showed himself better versed than his admon-
ishers in the law of England. On the first point
made by him he Avas clearly right. The proclamation
of 1622 was not law. That had been settled fifteen
years before by the Court of King's Bench, under the
lead of Chief Justice Coke ; and now, to enforce King
James' proclamation of 1622 against Morton, the
Plymouth magistrates must have had recourse to King
Charles' Star Chamber, — the last tribunal on earth
for them, of all men, to appeal to, though there an
illegal penalty, for the violation of a proclamation
which was not law, could in certain cases at that time
have been exacted. As regards his second point, that
the King's proclamation died with him, though Hume
in his history asserts that this diiference between stat-
utes and proclamations did exist, — the former being

1628. TRAPPED! 203

perpetual, and the latter expiring with the sovereign
who emitted them, — yet Lord Campbell says that he
was unable to find a trace of such a distinction any-
where in the books. ^ On this point, therefore, the
law of Thomas Morton was probably as bad as that
of David Hume.

But, whether Morton's views as to the legality of
King James' proclamation were sound or otherwise,
was not then to be debated. The question with the
neighboring settlers was one of self-preservation, and
the Plymouth magistrates had now gone too far to
hesitate about going* further. If they did hesitate,
there was plainly an end to all order in New England,
for, conscious that he had browbeaten them, Morton's
insolence would in future have known no bounds.
They decided, therefore, to send Miles Standish to
Boston Bay with a sufficient force to insure Morton's
summary arrest.

This conclusion was reached probably in May,
1628. Acting, it would seem, on information obtained
from Morton's neighbors and in conjunction with
them, Standish, towards the end of the month, set out
for Boston Bay, taking eight men with him. He
found Morton at Wessagusset, to which place he was
in the habit of resorting, as he himself expressed it,
" to have the benefit of company," though, on the
present occasion, it would seem more than probable
he had been beguiled there under some pretence, in
order to make surer his arrest. In any event, there
Standish found and secured him. As soon as Morton
realized that he was trapped, his whole tone and de-
meanor seem to have undergone a surprising change,

1 Campbell, Chief Justices, i. 273-5 (London, 18-19) ; New English
Canaan (Prince Soc. ed.), 26-7.

204 MORTON'S ARREST. June,

and from being profane and defiant he became sud-
denly virtuous and astonished, innocently inquiring
as to the reason of his being subjected to such vio-
lence. In reply he was reminded of the criminal acts
to which his attention had twice been called ; where-
upon he at once, with sublime impudence, wished to
know who was the author of the charges against him.
His custodians declining to give him the desired in-
formation, Morton stood upon his rights as an English-
man, and, peremptorily refusing to answer the charges,
demanded that he should forthwith be set at liberty.
Naturally Standish did not take this view of the case,
and prepared to remove the prisoner early the next
morning to Plymouth, while measures were taken to
secure him over night. To this end six men were, as
Morton asserts, put on guard over him, — one of
them, the better to prevent any chance of escape, lying
on the bed by his side. According to the prisoner's
account of what followed, his captors, thoroughly
elated with the successful execution of their plan, in-
dulged during the evening in some grim festivities
with their Wessagusset hosts, festivities in which Mor-
ton, notwithstanding his general disjiosition that way,
felt no heart to participate. The sleep of those spe-
cially entrusted with the safe-keeping of the prisoner
was in consequence of the soundest ; so that pres-
ently the wakeful Morton contrived to slip quietly off
the bed, and succeeded in passing two doors without
being detected ; but, as he went out, the last or outer
door shut so violently as to awaken his guard. What
is then supposed to have ensued can be adequately
described only in " mine host's " own language : —

"The word which was given with an alarme, was, — d,
he 's gon ! — he 's gou ! — what shell wee doe, he 's gon ! —

1628. THE ESCAPE. 205

the rest (lialfe a sleepe) start up in a maze, and, like rames,
ran tlieire heads one at another full butt in the darke,
Their grand leader, Captaine Shrimp, tooke on most furi-
ously, 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."

Morton was once more at liberty. It was in the
dead of night and a storm was gathering, so he imme-
diately vanished in the darkness. It was useless to
try to follow him. In a direct line he was but a mile
or two away from Mt. Wollaston, but the Monatoquit
ran between him and it. He had no means of cross-
ing the river, and was, therefore, compelled to take
the longer way about, following the streamlet up until
he came to a fording-place, which increased the dis-
tance he had to go to about eight miles. But, know-
ing the country well, he easily found his way, being,
moreover, aided in so doing by the bursting of a thun-
der-storm, the incessant lightning of which revealed
to him the path. He hurried along, resolved on forci-
ble resistance.

As soon as he reached his house he set actively to
work making preparations for defence. There was,
indeed, no time to be lost. Standish and his party
would, with the early day, be in search of him ; and
they had but to cross the Monatoquit, or round a
headland in the bay, and a short walk across the open
upland would bring them to his door. At this time
Morton's company consisted, all told, of seven men,
but five of these were then away from home, — prob-
ably inland looking for furs. This was fortunate for
Standish, though it would seem more than likely that
he was well aware of the fact, and had timed his

206 MORTON'S ARREST. June,

coming accordingly. The available force at Merry-
Mount was thus reduced to three, — Morton and two
others. Nothing daunted by this disparity of num-
bers, these three got ready such guns as they had on
hand, four in all, with an ample supply of powder
and ball. Having then made fast the doors, they pro-
ceeded to defy the enemy over their cups.

They had not long to wait, for a friendly savage
soon made his appearance with tidings that the pur-
suers had left Wessagusset and were close at hand.
Soon they came in sight, and, in contemptuous disre-
gard of any preparations which might have been made
to resist them, walked defiantly up to the door of the
fortified house, — or, as Morton described it, " they
came within danger like a flock of wild geese ; [or]
as if they had been tailed one to another, as colts to
be sold at a fair." None the less this display of cool-
ness evidently had its effect, for, of the garrison of
three, one was frightened, while another had, in his
efforts to keep up his courage, become hopelessly and
helj^lessly drunk. Morton's means of defence were,
therefore, now reduced to his own unaided strength ;
but still he did his best to keep up appearances, and
met Standish's call to surrender with a scoffing defi-
ance, until the latter proceeded to break in the door ;
whereupon Morton sallied bravely out, musket in
hand, followed hard by his single staggering retainer,
and even made as if he would fire on the Plymouth
captain. The struggle that ensued was brief and
ludicrous, for, pushing aside the carbine, Standish
seized Morton, w^ho, as his weapon w^as subsequently
found to be charged half-way to the muzzle, was
himself probably the worse for the healths which he
says he had just drunk with his two followers " in

1628. ^'THIS OUTRAGIOUS RIOTJ' 207

good rosa so^/.s," and consequently little capable of
resistance. While this was going on, Morton's reel-
ing comrade completed his master's overthrow by
running '' his owne nose upon the pointe of a sword
that one held before him as he entred the house ; "
but even he sustained no great injury, as Bradford
goes on to say that ''he lost but a litle of his hott
blood." The result of "this outragious riot," as Mor-
ton termed it, was that the master of Ma-re Mount
again became a prisoner, and this time with small
prospect of escape.

Morton was at once removed to Plymouth, where a
council was held to decide on the disposition to be
made of him. According to the prisoner's own ac-
count, a part of the magistrates were in favor of exe-
cuting him out of hand, and so making an end of
the matter. They were not disposed, by sending him
to England to answer for his misdemeanors, to run
the risk of having him there make trouble for them.
Standish, Morton asserts, was of this mind, and, indeed,
was so enrao^ed at the suo:o:estion of more moderate
treatment that he threatened to kill the prisoner with
his own hand sooner than have him sent away ; but the
milder counsels of the others prevailed. It was early
June, and no vessel was then expected to sail from
Plymouth ; so, either because it was not convenient
to keep their prisoner among them there, or because
an outward-bound vessel was more likely to be found
at the fishing stations, the prisoner was taken to the
Isles of Shoals, from whence, a month later, a chance
was found of sendino^ him to Enj^land. He went in
charge of John Oldham, who a year or two before
had made his peace with Plymouth, and since been
at '• libertie to goe and come, and converse with them

208 MORTON'S ARREST, 1628.

at his pleasure," and who now was commissioned to
represent the associated planters in this matter. Old-
ham was sent at the common charge, and supplied
with two letters ; one to the Council for New Eng-
land, signed by some of the principal men of each
plantation, the other from the Plymouth magistrates
to Sir Ferdinando Gorges. These letters were dated
the 9th of June, and in them Morton's offences were
clearly set forth, — especially the traffic in firearms,
and his maintaining a house which was a receptacle
of loose persons "living without all fear of God or
common honesty ; some of them abusing the Indian
women most filthily, as it is notorious."

CHAPTER XIV.

BOSTON FOUNDED.

Eighteen montlis passed away before Thomas
Morton made his way back again to Merry-Mount,
and he then found such few of his followers as still
remained about the place sobered and discouraged.
Ma-re Mount had in the intervening time become
Mount Dagon, and the May-pole was level with the
ground. Between the early summer of 1628 and the
autumn of 1629 certain events had taken place on the
shores of Massachusetts Bay, small in themselves but
big with remote results.

On the 6th of September, just three months after
Miles Standish's energetic abatement of the Merry-
Mount nuisance, and probably about the time that
Oldham, having Morton in charge, reached England,
John Endicott landed at Salem. The patent under
which he claimed a title to the soil had been issued by
the Council for New P^ngland, and bore date March
19, 1628, covering a large portion of the territory ad-
jacent to Boston Bay ; and the party he brought with
him to occuj)y the grant was the advance guard of a
migration. The whole coast from St. Croix to Buz-
zard's Bay, covered by the great patent of 1620, had,
it will be remembered, been divided in severalty at
the royal Greenwich drawing of Sunday the 29th of
June, five years before ; and the particular portion
of it now again granted away had fallen to the lots of

210 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1628.

the Earl of Warwick, Lord Gorges and others. But,
as the Greenwich drawling was merely one of Gorges'
schemes for infusing new life into his project, and put-
ting some money into the treasury of the Council,
when it failed to accomplish those ends it was quietly
dropped from memory. No further mention of it was
made, and, except in the case of Lord Sheffield, nothing
seems ever to have been done to confirm the grants
which it was intended should result from the drawing ;
and, as no patents were ever issued, there were none to
surrender. The scheme, like so many others of Sir
Ferdinando before and after, had come to nothing.

Meanwhile the request for a grant to Endicott and
his associates now reached Gorges through an influ-
ential channel, — " the thrice-honored Lord of War-
wick." Sir Ferdinando was at Plymouth when the
Earl's missive came to him ; but he readily assented to
the request contained in it, and, apparently without
further formalities, a patent was issued under the seal
of the Council. It may have been owing to the fact
that this patent was issued at the request of the Earl
of Warwick that it was made to cover the region
against which the name of that nobleman was inscribed
on Alexander's map, after the Greenwich drawing,
for the patent under which Endicott claimed covered
generally the territory between the Merrimack and the
Charles rivers, though its precise bounds could not
possibly be fixed. They extended "from the Atlan-
tick and Westerne Sea and Ocean on the East Parte,
to the South Sea on the Weste Parte," and covered
everything within the space of three English miles
to the northward of the Merrimack, and to the south-
ward of the Charles, " or of any or everie parte " of
either of those streams ; also everything lying within

1628. "MOUNTE-DAGON:' 211

the space of three miles to the southward of the south-
ernmost part of Massachusetts, meaning Boston, Bay.
Whatever, therefore, might be exckided from it, it was
clear that the whole region in which Wessagusset,
Mount Wollaston, Thomson's Island and Shawmut
were situated, was included in it.

Morton's establishment was thus brought clearly
within the jurisdiction of Endicott. The existence
and character of the Wollaston trading-post must have
been known in England, and it is not at all improbable
that its prompt suppression had been there decided
upon ; but, whether this was so or not, John Endi-
cott, that typical Puritan magistrate, must certainly
have learned, as soon as he landed at Naumkeag, of
the decisive action taken by the Plymouth people
three months before. That action doubtless, also,
commended itself to him, though probably he re-
gretted that more condign punishment had not been
meted out to the evil-doer ; nor did he delay taking
such steps as were still in his power to make good
this shortcoming. Accompanied by a small party he
crossed the bay, and, making his appearance among
Morton's terrified followers, he hewed down the May-
pole, rebuked them sternly for their profaneness, and
" admonished them to looke ther should be better
walking. So they now, or others, changed the name
of their place againe, and called it Mounte-Dagon,"
after that sea-idol of the Philistines, at whose mem-
orable feast at Gaza

" The morning trumpets festival proclaim'd
Through each high street."

After this visit of Endicott's no mention whatever is
found of those settled about Boston Harbor until the
next summer, though, in the mean time, events were

212 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1628-9.

taking place in England calcnlated to hasten forward
the long; delayed occupation of those parts. John
Oldham, having Thomas Morton in his custody, had
landed at Plymouth during the later summer or early
autumn of 1628, having passed the outward-bound
Endicott in mid-ocean. As Oldham bore letters to
Gorges, there can be no question that, landing at
Plymouth, he there met Sir Ferdinando at once ; and
it is also probable that Oldham, who was an enterpris-
ing man, had come out to England with some scheme
of his own for obtaining a patent from the Council for
New England, and establishing a trading connection.
Robert Gorges was then dead, and the title to his
grant on the northeast side of Massachusetts Bay had
passed to his brother Johu.^ So the result of Oldham's
interviews with Sir Ferdinando and John Gorges was
that the latter conveyed to him the whole district be-
tween the Charles and the Saugus rivers, for a dis-
tance, into the interior, of five miles on the former and
three on the latter. This deed not improbably may
have borne the same date, January 10, 1629, as a sim-
ilar deed of a yet larger tract, out of the same grant,
which John Gorges executed to Sir William Brereton.
The lands thus conveyed were distinctly within the
limits covered by the grant of the Council to Endi-
cott and his associates. Sir Ferdinando subsequently
claimed that the later grant was made with a distinct
reservation on his part of all rights conveyed to his
son Robert under the earlier one, nor does there seem
to be any reason to doubt that such was the inten-
tion ; but the business of the Council for New Eng-
land was always transacted in a careless, slipshod way.
Grants were made, equal in extent to half-a-dozeu

1 Mass. Hist. Soc. Lowell Institute Lectures (1869), 154.

1629. THE MASSACHUSETTS CHARTER. 213

English counties, and patents, of which no copies
seem to have been kept, issued for them.^ To these
grants, accordingly, no great attention was paid.
Nevertheless, the formal conveyance to John Oldham
by John Gorges of a very considerable tract, in the
heart of the Massachusetts Bay concession, at once
raised a serious question of title.

The ideas and projects of those associated with En-
dicott had now become much enlarged. Less active-
minded and scheming than Gorges, they represented
what he did not, — some property, and a large num-
ber of men and women bound together by a strong
common feeling, and ready to leave their country, not
as adventurers temporarily absenting themselves, but
never to come back to it. The leaders of this move-
ment had gone on from step to step, their vision
widening as they went. They, as well as the Council
for New England, had friends at court ; and now, see-
ing how doubtful a title they held under the grant of
the Council, — confronted already by claimants under
earlier gi-ants, — they went directly to the throne. A
royal confirmation of their patent was solicited, and,
through the intervention of Lord Dorchester, obtained.
On the 4th of March, 1629, King Charles' charter of
the colony of Massachusetts Bay passed the seals.

This whole proceeding could not but have been ex-
tremely offensive to Gorges. Apart from any ques-
tion affecting his son's title to territory now in dis-
pute, the granting of the charter by the crown seemed
to cast a doubt on the validity of the grant by the
Council for New England, if it did not supersede its

1 For a list of the grants made, or alleg-ed to have been made, by
the Council, see Palfrey, i. 397 ; and Dr. Haven's history of these
grants already referred to, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Lowell Inst. Lectures.

214 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1629.

authority. It must besides have mortified the Gov-
ernor of Plymouth greatly to find himself outgener-
alled at court, for there, at least, he had been accus-
tomed to make things take the shape he wanted. In
any case, from that time forward, however he might
dissemble and by speech or letter pretend to seek its
welfare, the infant colony had to count Sir Ferdinando
as its most persistent and, the result soon showed, its
most dangerous enemy, — an enemy in whose cunning
hands king, primate and attorney-general in turn be-
came puppets. Fortunately for Massachusetts, while
Gorges was poor. King Charles was needy.

Oldham, probably now acting in collusion with
Gorges, entered into active negotiations with the rep-
resentatives of the Massachusetts company, and en-
deavored to secure a position of trust and confidence
in their service. Cradock and his associates were at
first disposed to listen to him ; but, whether Oldham
himself believed in what he said or not, — though,
judging by the character of the man, it is altogether
probable he did, — he decidedly overshot his mark.
He promised too much. He was not now dealing
with the sanguine, speculative Gorges, but with a
company of slow, hard-headed men of affairs ; and
a promise of a threefold return on their venture, in as
many years, only shook faith in the maker of such a
promise. All that Oldham asked was that the man-
agement of the new company's trade in furs should be
left in his hands : were this but done he wanted no pay
for himself, if only he might have the surplus made
over a profit of three hundred per cent, in the three
years ; and he who held out these glowing hopes was
not only an experienced American planter, as the first
settlers were called, but he had a title hardly less good

1629. ".4 MAD JACK." 215

than the company's own to a considerable portion of
its grant. Governor Cradock and his assistants seem,
therefore, to have been so really anxious to reach an
understanding with Oldham that continual meetings
took place, and the matter was under discussion all
through the spring months of 1629. Taking his stand
apparently on the grant from John Gorges, Oldham
tried to compel the company either to entrust to him
the exclusive management of its trading affairs, or else
to leave him at complete liberty to trade as he saw fit
within the limits conveyed to him by Gorges, — and
this, not only on his own account, but in company with
any one else he chose. In fact, Oldham asserted his
practical independence of the Massachusetts company.
By degrees, as the defects of temper and judgment,
which Oldham had already manifested at Plymouth,
showed themselves again, Cradock, Venn and the rest
got to know the kind of man with whom they had to
deal. Enterprising as a trader, and by temperament
daring, John Oldham belonged to a type still common
enough among the English and in New England, — a
type in which the characteristic good qualities of the
race are spoiled by being developed in excess. A
human bull-dog, or, as Morton well described him, " a
mad Jack in his mood," he was obstinate, factious and
violent. Once he had made up his mind, nothing
could change him ; he must either have his way or
fight. The fact that the majority, as during the Ly-
ford troubles at Plymouth, were all the other w^ay,
only served to make him more headstrong, and, if need
be, more outrageous. Standing on what he considered
his rights, he recognized on the other side force only,
— nor that, even, until his every effort at resistance
had been put down. So now, in dealing with a com-

216 BOSTON FOUNDED. April,

mittee of the Massachusetts company, Oldham showed
himself wholly impracticable. Nothing could be done
with him. The trade in beaver skins was the most
immediately valuable privilege which the company
possessed, and it proposed to retain that trade in its
own hands ; indeed, the profits to be derived from it
had already been set aside as a fund, out of which
the common defence and public worship were to be
provided for.^ Oldham's proposition was, therefore,
out of the question.

Still it was not until April that all hopes of reach-
ing an understanding were abandoned. Then, when
committee after committee had tried its hand and
failed to make the smallest progress, the matter was
at last referred to coimsel, and the company was ad-
vised to treat the Robert Gorges grant as void in law,
on the ground that it was not sufficiently definite ;
and in pursuance of this advice, it was decided to
have nothing more to say to Oldham, leaving him to
take his own course. But the great value of posses-
sion in all disputes about title was as well understood
then as now, and so Cradock, under instructions,
forthwith wrote out to Endicott, informing him of the
course that had been decided on, and that Oldham
was himself at that very time trying to fit out a vessel
in which he proposed to go over and take independent
possession of his claim. Endicott was then instructed,
as the deputy of the company on the spot, to deal
summarily with the interlopers if they made their ap-
pearance ; but, above all, he was enjoined to send at
once a strong party of forty or fifty persons to effect
an actual occupation of the disputed territory.

These instructions bore date the 17th of April,

^ Young, Chron. of Mass. 148-

1629. MISHA WUM. 217

1629. Three vessels were then lying in the Thames,
load ins: with emio'rants and their stores destined for
New EDO-land. As soon as the instructions were

ready, one of these, the George, was hurried away in
advance of the rest, having " special and urgent cause
of hastening her passage." Before negotiations were
openly broken off, and Oldham given to understand
that the company would have nothing more to do with
him, the George had been already a month on her
way. Oldham had been outwitted, and, for the time
at least, he was powerless.

The George reached Salem on the 20th of June,
and Endicott acted promptly. Some of those who
came over at this time had emigrated at their own
expense, and among these were three brothers named
Sprague, the sons, it is said, of a Dorsetshire fuller.
Instead of settling at Salem, the Spragues and a few
others, acting as it may be supposed with something
more than the " joint consent and approbation " of
Endicott, started off through the woods and made their
way towards the region which five months before had
been conveyed by John Gorges to Oldham. After
going about twelve miles, they halted at a spot on the
north side of the Charles, where they found a num-
ber of Indians belonging to that tribe, of which Stan-
dish and his party had there met some women in the
visit of seven years before.^ The sachem of these
Indians, afterwards known by the English as Sagar-
more John, was a son of the Nanepashemet whose
grave had then been visited. With Sagamore John's
willing consent, the newcomers established themselves
on a hill in the place called Mishawum, " where they
found but one English palisadoed and thatched house,
wherein lived Thomas Walford, a smith."

^ Supra, 18.

218 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1629.

The Spragiies were soon followed b}^ another and
larger party from Salem, under the charge of Thomas
Graves, the engineer of the company, especially " en-
tertained " by it '' to survey and set forth lands," and
" to fortify and build a town." Evidently Endicott
had wasted no time, for Graves could not have reached
Salem before the 20th of June ; and yet on the 24th
of that month, or the 4th of July according to the
calendar now in use, he and his party were at the
mouth of the Mystic, where, in the course of the sum-
mer, a place was laid out under his direction, upon a
plan approved by Endicott, and a large house built,
which place was named Charlestown, and was intended
to be the seat of government of the Massachusetts
Bay.^ The single great house, now put up by the ser-
vants of the company to accommodate such as were
then expected shortly to come over, afterwards became
the Charlestown meeting-house. In the autumn of
1629 about one hundred persons are supposed to have
been living in the neighborhood of it.

The settlement of Charlestown was, therefore, no
accident. Decided upon in England, it was intended
to forestall a question of title, so far as such a ques-
tion could be forestalled through actual occupation.
It was a step taken, also, in pursuance of a policy
which threatened to affect seriously the situation of
the old planters about the bay, — those who had then
been living there six years, and might be considered
as securely established. The Massachusetts Bay com-
pany professed itself eager to deal fairly with these
men ; but it had its own rules and regulations, not
lacking in stringency, while Endicott, a man of dom-
ineering temper, who stood ready at any time to have

1 Mem Hist, of Boston, i. 385.

1G29. TOBACCO GROWING. 219

recourse to the j^illory and the whipping-post, was in-
structed to enforce those rules. They related ex-
pressly to the trade in beaver and the cultivation of
tobacco. So far as the trade in furs was concerned,
there can be no question that it was the only really
profitable trade open to the old planters. They were
all engaged in it. Indeed, to such an extent were
they engaged in it that in Massachusetts beaver skins
were used as currency, just as tobacco was used in
Virginia. Of this trade, it has been stated already the
new colony proposed to make a government monopoly,
and, in the language of the letter of instructions writ-
ten to Endicott by Cradock, on behalf of himself and
the Assistants, they would not willingly " permit any
to appropriate that to their own private lucre which
we, in our religious intentions, have dedicated to the
common charge of building houses for God's worship,
and forts to defend such as shall come thither to in-
habit."

So, also, as respects tobacco. Strange as it now
seems, those who first cultivated the soil on the shores
of Boston Bay seem to have looked upon the grow-
ing of tobacco as the most j^rofitable use to which
they could put their labor. The promoters of the
new company, on the other hand, appear to have
shared, to the full extent, in King James' horror of
that weed, and some of the principal among them
even went so far as to declare themselves absolutely
unwilling to have any hand in the undertaking if it
was intended to permit tobacco to be grown. They
apparently looked upon it then much as opium is
looked upon now. When, therefore, the old planters
earnestly petitioned that they might not be cut off
from what they considered their most profitable crop,

220 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1629.

the utmost concession they could get was that they
might go on cultivating it for the present, in such man-
ner and under such restrictions as Endicott and his
council should think fitting, " having an especial care,
with as much conveniency as may be, utterly to sup-
press the planting of it, except for mere necessity."

Under these circumstances, feeling the iron hand of
Puritan authority at the very outset restricting, where
it did not utterly suppress, the two branches of indus-
try which they had always enjoyed, and which alone
made life possible in the wilderness they had subdued
and during years had occupied, — feeling this, and
strongly suspecting that the title to the very land they
tilled might next be called in question, it was small
matter for wonder that the old planters looked with
jealous eyes on their new neighbors. Indeed, certain
of these ancient settlers did not hesitate in their ap-
prehension to speak of themselves as slaves ; ^ and, as
the sequel showed, their fears, so far as some of them
were concerned, did not prove to be groundless. Es-
pecially was this true of Thomas Walford.

While the tract granted to John Gorges was being
occupied and Charlestown laid out in America, John
Oldham, left far behind in the race for actual posses-
sion, seems to have fretted the time away in London.
He was probably casting about in the effort to organ-
ize, with such aid as the Gorges family could give
him, an expedition of his own ; but, if this was the
case, he was doomed to disappointment. The means
with which to equip a vessel evidently were not forth-
coming, and gradually the idea of an expedition, coun-
ter to that of the Massachusetts company, had to be

^ Young, Chron. of Mass. 145 ; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i.
239-40.

1629. OLDHAM <^ FOOLD^ 221

abandoned ; but it was not until the next year that
Oldham found his way back to America. He then
seems to have accepted the situation, settling down at
Watertown as one of the freemen of the colony, and
in quiet subordination to its authority.

Meanwhile Thomas Morton was lost sight of.
Bradford says that Morton " foold " Oldham and es-
caped, for aught they could learn at Plymouth, with-
out so much as a rebuke even. This is very possible ;
for it would seem not at all unlikely that when he
found himself, after his arrival at Plymouth, involved
in negotiations with both John Gorges and the Mas-
sachusetts Bay company, Oldham had little time or
thought to give to Morton, though Morton himself
tells the story differently. According to his account
the agent of the Plymouth people, whether Oldham
or another, did his best and " used no little diligence "
to have the deported prisoner proceeded against.
Lawyers were consulted, and, as Morton expresses it,
"a heape of gold" was laid before them; but they
could find nothing to take hold of against him. Gor-
ges undoubtedly could have brought any vendor to
Indians of guns and ammunition to severe reckoning
before the Star Chamber if nowhere else ; and, fur-
thermore, it was in the present instance his place to
do it, for he was the representative man of the Coun-
cil for New England, and to him, as such, Morton
had been sent. In his defence of his patent before
the House of Commons Gorges had especially dwelt
on the heinousness of traders selling arms to the In-
dians, and, a little later, he had procured from the
Privy Council a royal proclamation forbidding it ;
and now the chief offender in selling arms, who had
treated the proclamation with contempt, denying even

BOSTON FOUNDED. 1629.

that it was law, had been arrested and delivered to
him a prisoner. The Court of Star Chamber was but
another name for the Privy Council. Gorges was a
power in it. Undoubtedly, therefore, in the Star
Chamber he could have taught Morton that royal
proclamations, even if they were not law, at that time
and so far as he was concerned, had much the force of
law. But Gorges, apparently, had something else in
view.

It has already been mentioned that, as Oldham had
landed in Plymouth, where Gorges was royal gov-
ernor, there can be no doubt that Bradford's letter
was at once delivered to the lattei, and the offences of
which Morton stood charged explained to him. There
can be equally little doubt that Gorges, after his
wont, then proceeded to get all the information he
could as to what was going on in New England from
both Oldham and Morton. At first he may have
been, and probably was, very indignant with the lat-
ter, and intent on having him punished ; but if such
was the case his anger soon cooled. The growing dif-
ficulties between the Massachusetts company and the
Council for New England have just been described,
and it called for no great degree of cunning on Mor-
ton's part to take advantage of these difficulties for
the purpose of ingratiating himself with Gorges. That
he did so appears clearly from the course of sub°
sequent events. Like all the hangers-on at court;
Gorges w^as a high-churchman ; the promoters of the
Massachusetts company were Puritans ; the Plymouth
people were Separatists. Under such circumstances
Morton's course was clear. In giving his account of
the events which had resulted in his appearing a pris-
oner at Plymouth, he represented himself as a victim

1629. "LOSSE OF LABOURED 223

of religious persecution ; and it was not difficult then
for him to show to the old knight and his son that he
and they were interested together, as opposed to the
old comers at Plymouth and the new comers at Salem.

Oldham, meanwhile, was at this very time taking
from John Gorges a conveyance of territory, and
could therefore hardly have seen his interest in press-
ing matters against Morton in that quarter. In this
way it probably was that the master of Merry-Mount
escaped without so much as a rebuke. Nevertheless
there is reason to believe that his case was brought to
the notice of the Governor and Assistants of the Mas-
sachusetts company, and that they now quietly made
their arrangements to deal with him under certain
future contingencies. None the less, for the i3resent
Morton was not only safe from all fear of molestation,
but he was free to return to America. He was not
slow in doing so.

At this time Isaac Allerton was in London as the
agent of the Plymouth colony. The principal busi-
ness he had in hand was to secure a new patent for
the Plymouth people, covering by correct bounds a
grant on the Kennebec ; but, besides this, he was com-
missioned to obtain if possible a royal charter for
Plymouth like that of the Massachusetts Bay com-
pany. In regard to the Kennebec patent he had to
deal with the Council for New England ; the charter
could be obtained only from the King. The business
gave Allerton much trouble. Indeed, as a correspon-
dent wrote to Bradford, he " was so turrmoyled about
it, as verily I would not nor could not have undergone
it, if I might have had a thousand pounds." He found,
too, that at King Charles' Court " many locks must
be opened with the silver, nay, the golden key." He

224 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1629.

could make no headway except through favor, and the
influence of Sir Ferdiuando Gorges had to be secured.
In securing it, not impossibly Morton proved himself
a convenient go-between. In any event, when AUer-
ton returned to New England in 1629 he astonished
and scandalized the Plymouth community by bringing
Morton back with him, " as it were to nose them," as
Bradford indignantly put it. Allerton then lodged
Morton in his own house, employing him as a clerk
or scribe ; an additional reason for inferring that he
had in England been employed in a similar confi-
dential way. It is easy as well as ludicrous to im-
agine the mixed disgust and dismay with which the
sedate elders of Plymouth eyed the roystering lawyer
as, like a counterfeit coin, he was returned on their
hands ; but it was in vain they protested at this undo-
ing of the work of the previous year, and objected to
Morton that he had not yet answered the charges laid
to his door, for " hee onely made this modest reply,
that hee did perceave they were willfuU people, that
would never be answered ; and derided them for their
practises and losse of laboure."

It does not appear how long Morton now remained
at Plymouth ; but it could not have been more than a
few weeks before Allerton, who himself went back to
England during the season, was, as Bradford puts it,
" caused to pack him away." He then returned to
Mt. WoUaston, where he found such of his old com-
pany as had not been dispersed by Standish, or fright-
ened away by Endicott, — the more modest of them
and those who had looked to their better walking ;
but hardly was he well back among them before he
was in trouble with Endicott. It could not have been
otherwise. For a loose, reckless roysterer, like Mor-

1629. ''GOD'S WORD." 225

ton, to hope to live quietly side by side with the se-
vere, God-fearino- ofeneration which had now sat down
at Salem was manifestly out of the question. In Vir-
ginia he would have been in his element ; in New
York he would have been unmolested ; indeed, any-
where else in the English colonies Morton would have
lived unnoticed and died unremembered. Fate threw
him among the intolerants of New England, and the
inevitable had to follow.

The first difficulty arose out of the jealousy which
the old settlers entertained towards the new. The
chief apprehension the leaders of the Massachusetts
company had felt in regard to what Oldham might do
had related to this jealousy. They feared he might
work on it, " and draw a party to himself, to the great
hindrance of the common quiet." This was exactly
what Morton now attempted. In the midst of the
scattered little community he was a Gorges intriguer
and a mischief-maker. As such he soon made his
presence felt. Some time in the latter part of 1629,
Endicott, in pursuance of instructions from London,
seems to have summoned all the settlers to meet to-
gether in a general court at Salem. There he doubt-
less informed them as to the general policy which the
company proposed to pursue ; and Morton says that
he then tendered to all present, for signature, certain
articles which he and the Rev. Samuel Skelton had
drawn up together. The purport of these articles
was that in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as political,
the tenor of God's word should be followed. The al-
ternative was banishment.

Morton claims that he alone of all those present
refused to put his hand to this paper, insisting that a
proviso should first be added in these words, — " So as

226 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1629.

nothing be done contrary, or repugnant to the Lawes
of the Kingdome of England." This is ahnost the ex-
act language of King Charles' charter which had been
granted some six months before, and with the phrase-
ology of which Morton was probably acquainted.
Whether the amendment thus proposed was accepted
by Endicott does not appear. It probably was,
though it is not difficult to imagine the grim dissatis-
faction with which the sujju'estion of it must have been
received in view of the quarter from which it came.
The subject of regulating the trade in beaver skins
was next brought up, and it v/as projiosed to enter
into a general partnership for the term of one year.
Morton says that on this matter also he stood out, and
it seems altogether probable that he did, for he was
there to make trouble on behalf of Gorges and Old-
ham. On the other hand, Endicott's instructions were
explicit. He was to see to it that " none be partakers
of [the company's] privileges and profits, but such as
be peaceable men, and of honest life and conversation,
and desirous to live amongst us, and conform them-
selves to good order and government." And further,
if any factious spirit developed itself, he was enjoined
" to suppress a mischief before it take too great a
head, . . . which if it may be done by a temperate
course, we much desire it, though with some inconven-
ience, so as our government and privileges be not
brought into contempt. . . . But if necessity require
a more severe course, when fair means will not prevail,
we pray you to deal as in your discretions you shall
think fittest." Instructions like these, in the hands
of a magistrate like Endicott, boded ill for such as
Thomas Morton.

Matters soon came to a crisis. Morton was proba-

1629. AN EMPTY NEST. 227

bly emboldened to take the course he now took by the
belief that he would be supported in it by powerful
influence in London. He may have confidently hoped
to see Oldham's vessel appear at any time, with him on
board, come to take actual possession of the Robert
Gorges gi'ant on the shore of the bay opposite to Mt.
Wollaston. In any event he refused to be bound by
the company's trade regulations, and seems to have
gone back to the less objectionable, at least, of his
old courses, — dealing with the savages as he saw fit,
openly exjDressing his contempt for Endicott's au-
thority, and doing all he could to breed discontent
among the old planters. His own profits at this time
were, he says, six and seven fold. Such a state of
things could not continue. The affront daily put
upon the Governor was flagrant, and would have
stirred the anger of a patient man ; and John Endi-
cott was not conspicuous for patience. Had he ig-
nored it, he might feel sure that his oj^ponent would
take heart, and be emboldened to do him a far greater
injury thereafter. Accordingly, as the year drew to
its close, Endicott made an effort to arrest Morton ;
but the latter had learned by experience, and was not
to be twice caught in the same way. So, in some
way getting notice in advance of what was intended,
he concealed his ammunition and most necessary goods
in the forest ; and when the messengers, sent across
the bay to seize him, landed on the beach before his
house, he was nowhere to be found. The bird was
flown. This is his account of what then ensued : —

" The Commissioners entred the howse, and wilfully bent
against mine honest Host, that loved good hospitality.
After they had feasted their bodies with that they found
there, they carried all his corne away, with some other of

228 BOSTON FOUNDED.

his floods, contrary to the Lawes of hospitality : a smale
parcell of refuse come only excepted, whicli they left mine
Host to keepe Christmas with.

"But when they were gone, mine Host fell to make use
of his gunne, (as one that had a good faculty in the use of
that instrument,) and feasted his body neverthelesse with
fowle and venison, which hee purchased witli the helpe of
that instrument, the plenty of the Country and the commo-
diousnes of the place affording meanes, by the blessing of
God ; and hee did but deride Captaine Littleworth, [Endi-
cott] that made his servants snap shorte in a Country so
much abounding with plenty of foode for an industrious
man, with greate variety."

Could Endicott now have laid hands on him,
there can be no doubt that Morton would have found
himself dealt with in summary fashion ; but for the
present the Governor's attention was otherwise oc-
cupied, for this was that winter of 1629-30, during
which famine and sickness were rife at Salem. A
quarter part of those there died, and it was question-
able whether the remainder, reduced by disease and
want of food, could struggle through until the coming
spring brought succor from England. Under such
circumstances, the magistrate had no time to think of
Morton. But not for that reason did he forget him.

With the following summer the great change came.
On the w of Si the Mary & John, a ship of four
hundred tons measurement, commanded by Captain
Squeb, anchored off Hull, at the entrance of Boston
Bay. She had sailed from Plymouth on the |^I of
the previous March, having on board about a hun-
dred and twenty passengers from the West of Eng-
land. The agreement was that they were to be landed
at the mouth of the Charles River, Mishawum appar-

1630. ''GODLY FAMILIES:' 229

ently being the place intended ; for those on board of
the Mary & John belonged to the Massachusetts
company, and must have been perfectly informed as
to what had already been done, and what was pro-
posed. They were, in fact, the advance of the larger
body of emigrants who had embarked with Win-
throp on the fleet at Southampton only two days
after Captain Squeb had got under weigh from Plym-
outh. The voyage of the Mary & John had been
entered upon by the " godly families," many in num-
ber and of good rank, who composed the bulk of the
passengers, by a solemn day spent in preaching and
praying and fasting, and had proved one of fair aver-
age quickness for those times, occupying seventy days.
They had come " through the deeps comfortably, hav-
ing preaching or expounding of the word of God every
day for ten weeks together by [their] ministers."

Having now reached the entrance to the bay, the
captain informed the passengers that the voyage was
ended, and that they and their effects would be put on
shore there. Nantasket beach and the bold, swelling
headland of Hull must always in the month of June
have been an attractive place, and in 1630, as now,
the white, cool surf rolled in upon the sands at the
foot of hills green with the verdure of spring, amid
which wild strawberries ripened in profusion. As
the sea-wearied emigrants climbed to the summits of
those hills they beheld from them a view of almost
unsurpassed beauty. On the one side lay the broad
harbor interspersed with green islands covered with
trees, while on the other was a boundless expanse of
ocean, the deep blue of which was here and there near
the shore broken by white waves rolling over isolated
rocks. Beyond the harbor lay the forest-clad uplands

230 BOSTON FOUNDED. June,

of the promised land, with the Blue Hills looming
up hazily and yet boldly against the western horizon.
The air was soft and pure ; the skies were serene.
Yet however attractive the place may have seemed to
those West of England rustics, cramped and wearied
by their long voyage, as a j)ermanent home it was
manifestly far from inviting. A vivid glimpse of it,
as it then appeared to longer sojourners, is obtained
through a little episode which took place the year be-
fore Squeb's coming, and which is not only pictur-
esque in itself, but full of suggestiveness in connection
with the early daj's of Massachusetts. As such it de-
serves to be told in detail.

This was the experience of Ralph Smith, a clergy-
man who had come over to Salem in company with
those who, in 1629, reinforced Endicott and settled
Cbarlestown. Smith wished to emigrate to New Eng-
land, and the company readily enough granted him
permission to do so ; but when his family and effects
were already embarked, and it was too late to put
him ashore, it came out that he differed *' in judgment
in some things " from the company's own ministers.
Under the circumstances he was allowed to proceed,
but at the same time orders were sent to Endicott in
these words, — " Unless he will be conformable to
our government, you suffer him not to remain within
the limits of our grant." The unfortunate clergyman
had, in consequence, hardly landed at Salem when he
was shipped off again with his family and effects.
Bradford then takes up the narrative as follows : —

" Ther was one Mr. Ralf e Smith, and his wife and fami-
lie, that came over into the Bay of the Massachusets, and so-
journed at presente with some stragling people that lived at
Natascoe ; here being a boat of this place putting in ther on

1630. ''AN UNCOTH PLACE:' 231

some occasion, he ernestly desired that they would give
him and his, passage for Plimoth, and some such things as
they could well carrie ; having before heard that ther was
liklyhood he might procure house-roome for some time, till
he should resolve to setle ther, if he might, or els-wher as
God should disposs ; for he was werie of being in that un-
coth place, and in a poore house that would neither keep
him nor his goods drie. So, seeing him to be a grave man,
and understood he had been a minister, though they had no
order for any such thing, yet they presumed and brought
him. He was here accordingly kindly entertained and
housed, and had the rest of his goods and servants sente
for, and exercised his gifts amongst them, and afterwards
was chosen into the ministrie, and so remained for sundrie
years."

The incident not only reveals Nantasket, in 1629,
as an " uncoth place," occupied by " some stragling
people," but it vividly sets forth the difference, so
far as Christian toleration was concerned, between the
Separatists of Plymouth and the Puritans of Massa-
chusetts Bay. The former kindly entertained the un-
fortunate outcast ; and among them he exercised his
gifts, such as they were, for many years, being chosen
into their ministry. The latter, with much the same
idea of toleration as that court of High Commission
from which they had fled, cast him and his little chil-
dren out into the wilderness, even as Sarah cast out
Hagar.

Such had been a newcomer's experience at Nantas-
ket the summer before Caj)tain Squeb landed there
his living freight of men, women and children. He,
at least, knew perfectly well that the place where he
had come to anchor was not the mouth of the Charles.
It was, indeed, roughly represented as being so on

232 BOSTON FOUNDED. June,

Smith's map ; but Squeb was no sti'anger on that coast.
For years he had been connected with the Council for
New England. In 1622 he had been formally com-
missioned by it as aid and assistant to its Admiral,
Francis West, and had come out in command of the
John & Francis of London. It is true, he had then
apparently explored Mt. Desert ; but there can be
little doubt that, if he himself had not before been
in Boston harbor, some of his present crew had been
there, and when he landed his passengers at Hull he
knew he was not fulfilling his contract. Nevertheless,
land them there he did, and it only remained for them
to huddle on the beach and shift for themselves. Bor-
rowing a boat from the old settlers, the remnant of
Oldham and Lyford's plantation, a well-armed party
set out, a day or two after the landing, in search of
their true destination. It would not be possible to
recount the experience of this party in any language
so expressive as that of Roger Clapp, one of its num-
ber : —

" We went in [the boat] unto Charlestown, where we
found some wigwams and one house ; and in the house
there was a man which had a boiled bass, but no bread,
that we see. But we did eat of his bass, and then went up
Charles river until the river grew narrow and shallow, and
there we landed our goods with much labor and toil, the
bank being steep ; and night coming on, we were informed
that there were hard by us three hundred Indians. One
Englishman, that could speak the Indian language, (an old
planter,) went to them, and advised them not to come near
us in the night ; and they hearkened to his counsel, and
came not. I myself was one of the sentinels that first
night. Our captain was a Low Country soklier, one Mr.
Southcot, a brave soldier. In the morning, some of the In-

1630. DORCHESTER. 233

dians came and stood at a distance ofp, looking at ns, but
came not near us. But when they had been a while in
view, some of them came and held out a great bass towards
us ; so we sent a man with a biscuit, and changed the cake
for the bass. Afterwards, they supplied us with bass, ex-
changing a bass for a biscuit cake, and were very friendly
unto us. . . .

" We had not been there many days, (although by our
diligence we had got up a kind of shelter to save our goods
in,) but we had order to come away from that place, which
was about Watertown, unto a place called Mattapan, now
Dorchester, because there was a neck of land fit to keep
our cattle on. So we removed and came to Mattapan.
The Indians there also were kind unto us."

The old planter here referred to, who could speak
the Indian tongue, was probably Blackstone, though
it may have been Walford, at whose house at Misha-
wum they apparently stopped. One or the other of
the two must, it would seem, have gone with them up
the Charles as a guide. The place where they landed
and encamped is supposed to have been the spot since
occupied as a United States Arsenal in Watertown,
and long known as the Dorchester fields. The local-
ity to which they were recalled, and where the whole
company finally settled down, was the historical Dor-
chester heights, now better known as South Boston.

Scarcely were they established here when, on the
Jy^ of June, Governor Winthrop, who had arrived at
Salem five days before, came into the harbor, and
went up the Mystic in search of a suitable place for
settlement. Two days later, having sufficiently ex-
plored the country, as he thought, he returned to Sa-
lem, stopping on his way at Nantasket. The body of
those who had come over in the Mary & John would

234 BOSTON FOUNDED. July,

still seem to have been there, as Winthrop says that
he ^' sent for Captain Squib ashore and ended a dif-
ference between him and the passengers." Whereat
the captain seems to have experienced quite a sense of
relief, as he gave the Governor a salute of five guns
as the latter headed away to Salem.

Winthrop had found the Charlestown settlers of the
previous year in quite as severe straits as he had, a
few days before, found the Salem peojile. Their sup-
plies were wholly exhausted and they were reduced to
living on mussels, fish and, when they could get it,
Indian corn. But it was too late to consider what
should be done, for the planting season was already
over, the summer being now well advanced, and all
that could at best be accomplished was to provide
shelter against the rigor of the coming winter. Bos-
ton, or, as it was then called, Massachusetts Bay, had
been fixed upon as the place where those who came with
Winthrop were to land, and some provision for them
had already been made at Charlestown. To Charles-
town, therefore, the several vessels, twelve in num-
ber, came, and there the passengers and cargoes of
household goods were at last put on shore. In the
course of the month of July, the whole of the hiU
about the building which had been put up by Graves
the year before was covered thick with tents, wig-
wams, booths and cottages. Governor Winthrop with
his family, and Isaac Johnson, whose wife, the Lady
Arbella, daughter of the Earl of Lincoln, had been
left at Salem, probably occupied the one house, to-
gether with Mr. Wilson, the clergyman, and Increase
No well, the elder. They had no church, and the
preaching was in the open air under the sheltering
leaves of a large tree.

1G30. UNACCLIMATED IMMIGRANTS. 235

A state of thinsfs better calculated to breed sickness
could not well have existed. Several hundred men,
women and children were crowded together in a nar-
row space, almost without shelter, and with unaccus-
tomed and improper food. Never in their lives
having seen anything but their English homes, they
knew nothing of frontier life, to the new and strange
conditions of which they were, after the manner of
their race, unable readily to adapt themselves. Nor
was this all. When they arrived they had been living
for months on shipboard, fed on that salt meat which
was then the only sea fare. Their systems had become
reduced, and the scurvy had broken out. They were
in no condition to bear exposure. Then, landed sud-
denly in midsummer, they had their first experience
of a climate quite different from that which they had
known before, — a climate of excessive heat and sud-
den change. Their clothing was not adapted to it.
As a matter of course, dysentery and all sorts of
bowel complaints began to appear. These they did
not know how to treat, and they made things worse by
the salt food to w^hich they doubtless recurred when
they found that an improper use of the berries and
natural fruits of the country caused the disorders
under which they suffered. Their camp, too, could
not have been properly policed. We know what the
sanitary condition of London and all large towns was
in the first half of the seventeenth century, and how
little attention was paid to growing piles of filth, even
in the oldest and best-ordered communities. By de-
grees the hill at Charlestown, covered with decaying
vegetable and animal matter, became unfit for human
habitation ; the air reeked with foul odors. It was
easier to move away from the place than to cleanse it.

236 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1630.

Unfortunately, Wiutlirop's contemporaneous account
of this period of great trial has not been preserved.
It was contained in the letters written to his wife, who
had remained behind in England, while his whole
journal record of the eighty-two days which intervened
between his going to " Mattachusetts to find out a
place for our sitting down," on the ITth of June, and
the 7th of September, when the order was passed that
'' Trimountain shall be called Boston," fills but thirty-
six printed lines, and nearly all of the memoranda
contained even in those lines were made at a subse-
quent time. There were no days in Winthrop's life
more trying to him, or of greater historical interest,
than these ; but their story was one of only discour-
agement and endurance. In the course of a few
months, as he wrote to his wife, he lost twelve in his
own family, including in the phrase " family " the ser-
vants he brought with him. AVhen the ships returned
to England in July, nearly one hundred went back in
them, and at a later day others removed to Gorges'
and Mason's plantation at Piscataqua. Those who re-
mained do not seem to have been at all supplied with
medicines, and their only doctor, " Mr. Gager, a right
godly man, a skilful chirurgeon and one of the deacons
of [the] congregation," himself died in September.
The worthy Dr. Samuel Fuller, of Plymouth, visited
the bay at this time, though he seems to have gone in
his capacity of deacon rather than as a physician.
The account he gave of the condition of affairs was
graphic. The hand of God, he wrote back to
Plymouth, was upon them, visiting them with sickness
and not sparing the righteous. " Many are sick, and
many are dead, the Lord in mercy look upon them !
... I here but lose time and long to be at home. I

1G30. PESTILENCE. 237

can do them no good, for I want drugs and things fit-
ting to work with." Perhaps it was as well that Dr.
Fuller did go back to Plymouth, for the copious blood-
letting, to which in the absence of drugs he seems to
have had recourse,^ could only have still further weak-
ened sj^stems already too much reduced. As human
aid could not be procured or seemed unavailing, the
divine protection was invoked, and, after the Puritan
fashion, days were set aside for fasting, humiliation
and prayer, the severe observance of which by individ-
uals doubtless aggravated any tendency to disease
latent in them. The prevailing malady soon, of course,
became epidemic, and was supposed to be infectious.
The people of the poorer class, as being the less well
fed and the more exposed, naturally suffered the most
from it, and it fell heavily on the young ; though the
more mature and the better-conditioned were by no
means exempt. The unfortunate Lady Arbella John-
son, coming direct " from a paradise of plenty and pleas-
ure into a wilderness of wants," sickened in August
and early in September was dead. Her husband, one
of the Assistants, as they were called, or directors of
the company, followed her a month later. Another of
the Assistants, Edward Rossiter, died in October.
Coddington and Pynchon, also Assistants, lost their
wives ; so did the Rev. George Phillips, pastor of the
church at Watertown, and George Alcock, deacon of
the church at Dorchester.

Under these circumstances, there being no family in
which there was not one dead, while in some families
there were many, a strong feeling of discontent with
the locality in which the settlers found themselves
placed naturally began to manifest itself. There were

1 I. Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. 74.

238 BOSTON FOUNDED. 1630.

in the neighborhood no living springs or running water,
such as they remembered at home ; and to this fact
the sickness was in great degree attributed. The single
brackish water-source in the sands near the beach, to
which they all went, did not half suffice to supply the
general need. Accordingly, as the season advanced and
the regions thereabout were more thoroughly explored,
those at Charlestown broke up into small parties, seek-
ing out different places of settlement. Some went to
Medford, and sat down by the Mystic ; others to Rox-
bury, attracted by the fresh, clear waters of Smelt
Brook. Watertown and Dorchester were already oc-
cupied. All this time William Blackstone, who had
now been in the country seven years, was living alone
as a hermit on the western slope of the peninsula, the
three hills of which, across the channel to the south
and west of Charlestown, lifted up their heads, bare
of trees, in a neighborhood " very uneven, abounding
in small hollows and swamps, covered with blueberries
and other bushes." Knowing well, of course, the sit-
uation of affairs amongst the newcomers, and hearing
the complaints of the insufficient supply of water,
Blackstone's sympathies seem to have been moved,
and he called AVinthrop's attention to a fine spring on
his own peninsula. Judging by the subsequent loca-
tion of Winthrop's house and of the first church, this
spring was slightly to the rear and on the east of the
spot upon which the Old South Meeting-house was
built a century later. It was fenced in at an early
day, and the familiar name of " the Spring-gate " was
long retained by its place of entrance ; ^ and later the
passage-way across where the spring once flowed was
called Spring Lane, the name it still retains. Black-

1 Shurtleff , Description of Boston, 389.

1630. SHA WMUT. 239

stoue now urged the Governor to move across and es-
tablish himself and his people there. Whereupon,
early in October, much to the dissatisfaction of some
of those who had with much labor got dwellings ready
at Charlestown, Winthrop caused the frame of the
house that was to have been built for him at Cam-
bridge to be moved bodily to Shawmut, and set up op-
posite the southern corner of the present junction of
School Street with Washington Street. With him
went the Rev. Mr. Wilson and the greater part of
his congregation. There they '' began to build their
houses against winter ; and this place was called Bos-

CHAPTER XV.

THE FIRST ASSAULT ON KING CHARLES' CHARTER.

Famine, sickness and death at Salem ; tlie confu-
sion of settlement, together with the terror which
accompanied and the sense of bereavement which fol-
lowed pestilence, at Charlestown, — all these had
given a reprieve to Thomas Morton ; so, through the
months of July and August, 1630, he lived undis-
turbed in his house at Mt. WoUaston. It was, indeed,
a full year since his return there from Plymouth,
when at last the hour for dealing with him cauie. Not
improbably his was looked upon as a species of test
case, through their treatment of w^iich the magistrates
of the new colony were to demonstrate to the old
planters the fact that they, as magistrates, not only
had the power to deal summarily with all whom they
were pleased to regard as interlopers, but they would
not hesitate to use that power. The spirit of discon-
tent which smouldered among those who yet continued
in the land, remnants of the Gorges failure of 1623,
has already been referred to. If one or two of them
were punished, it was felt that these would serve for
an example to the others and reduce them at once to
conformity. Morton was to furnish this example.

The first formal session of the magistrates, after
the arrival of Winthroj) at Charlestown, was not held
until the 1 of g^- There can be little question
that they met in the great house at Charlestown, and

1(330. MORTON ARRAIGNED. 241

the Governor, Deputy Governor Dudley, Sir Richard
Saltonstall, Pynchon, Bradstreet and others of the
Assistants whose names are less familiar, were pres-
ent. In disposing of business in hand, provision was
first made for the lodging and maintenance of the
clergy ; and it was then ordered '' that Morton, of
Mount AVoolison, should presently be sent for by pro-
cesse." Of the circumstances of his arrest, under
the warrant thus issued against him, Morton has left
us no account ; but, two weeks later, on the -^ of Sep-
tember, he was arraigned before the magistrates again
in session. In addition to those at the previous meet-
ing, Isaac Johnson — whose wife, the Lady Arbella,
then lay on her deathbed — and Endicott were there,
the latter having probably come from Salem expressly
to attend to the case of Morton. To the prisoner it
must have been apparent from the first that the tri-
bunal was one from which he had nothing to hope.
Of Endicott he had already had experience ; and now,
at Endicott's side, sat the narrow-minded, intolerant
Dudley, with Pynchon and Bradstreet, all stern men
and harsh, typical Puritan magistrates. Winthrop
was in the governor's chair. Some business of detail
was first disposed of, and the officers then produced
their prisoner. The proceedings which ensued could
not well have been more summary had they taken
place in the Star Chamber, or the Court of High
Commission ; and Morton was soon made to realize
that he was not there to defend himself, but to re-
ceive, as best he might, a sentence which had already
been decided upon. In vain did he challenge the ju-
risdiction of the court ; in vain did he seek to humble
himself before its authority. Neither challenge nor
submission was regarded. Nor did the magistrates

242 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. Sep.

waste their time in listening to a prolix defence. On
the contrary the argument of the accused, like his
protest and his submission, was peremptorily cut short
by impatient exclamations, and he was sternly bidden
to hold his peace and listen to the governor, while he
pronounced the decision of the court. And, indeed,
the prisoner could not but have listened in speechless
amazement and indignation while the following root-
and-branch sentence was passed upon him : —

" It is ordered by this present Court, that Thomas Mor-
ton, of Mount WolHston, shall presently be set into the bil-
boes, and after sent prisoner into England, by the ship
called the Gift, now returning thither ; that all his goods
shall be seized upon to defray the charge of his transporta-
tion, payment of his debts, and to give satisfaction to the
Indians for a canoe he unjustly took away from them ; and
that his house, after his goods are taken out, shalt be burnt
down to the ground in the sight of the Indians, for their
satisfaction, for many wrongs he hath done them from time
to time."

This sentence spoke for itself then. It speaks for
itself now. Unfortunately Winthrop's admonitory
remarks in announcing it have not been handed down
to us, though we get in Morton's account of the pro-
ceedings a faint, far-away echo of what those remarks
were. It comes in the expression, which he makes a
part of the judgment, that his house was to be burned
" because the habitation of the wicked should no more
appear in Israel." This phrase could hardly but have
been Winthrop's. It has in it the true Puritan ring,
— the "thus saith the Lord" refrain. It was Bible
law, also, and illustrated to Morton in his own case
the significance of that Salem covenant, to which dur-
ing the previous year he had refused to set his name,

1630. A ROOT-AND-BRANCH SENTENCE. 243

that " in all causes, as well Ecclesiasticall, as Politi-
cal!, wee should follow the rule of God's word."

Neither was the sentence now promulgated an idle
one ; and, indeed, the Puritan magistrate was apt in
such cases to be as good as his word. The Master of
Merry-Mount — Sachem of Passonagessit as he loved
to call himself, and Lord of Misrule as those of Plym-
outh called him — was ignominiously set in the stocks
before the great house at Charlestown, in the face of
the whole infant settlement; and there, he tells us
himself, the *' harmeles salvages (his neighboures) "
came, " poore silly lambes," to look at him in blank
astonishment, wondering what it was all about. The
sentence included, also, his banishment, and the burn-
ing of his house to the ground. It was literally exe-
cuted, though not without some delay. The prisoner
was not sent back to England in the Gift, for the rea-
son that the master of that vessel decKned to take him,
on what ground does not appear ; nor was it until the
end of December — nearly, if not quite, four months
after his arrest — that a passage was obtained for him
in the Handmaid. Even then, obdurate to the last,
Morton refused to go on board the vessel, declaring
that he had no call to go there, and so he had to be
hoisted on board by a tackle. On the passage over,
also, he was nearly starved, no provision, except a
very inadequate one from his own stores, having been
made for his support, wliile the burning of his house
seems to have been dramatically arranged with that
curious vindictiveness which was characteristic of the
Puritans. " The habitation of the wicked should no
more appear in Israel ; " but the destruction of it was
reserved until the " wicked " man was on his way into
banishment, and then nt was burned down in his sight,

244 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1630.

drearily lighting his outgoing path, " and nothing did
remain but the bare ashes as an emblem of their cru-
elty."i

The justice, and even the propriety, of Morton's
first arrest by the Plymouth authorities in 1628, can-
not be successfully challenged. His own subsequent
pretence, that it was merely the means adopted by
them for breaking up a disagreeable competition in
the fur trade, is deserving of no more weight than his
other suggestion, that they disturbed him because of
much " enveying against the sacred booke of common
prayer, and mine host that used it in a laudable man-
ner amongst his family, as a practise of piety." The
measure was, whether technically legal or not, a meas-
ure of self-preservation, pure and simple. That the
establishment at Mt. Wollaston was a disorderly one,
is apparent in every line of Morton's account of it.
A trade in firearms was there carried on. This was
distinctly charged, and Morton never, at the time or
later, denied it. That he would have denied it quickly
and emphatically enough, had it not been susceptible
of easy proof, admits of no doubt. In taking vigor-
ous measures to suppress this traffic, by arresting and
sending to England the responsible promoter of it,
the Plymouth magistrates did only what they were

1 There seems no question on this point. Samuel Maverick, writing-
thirty years afterwards to the Earl of Clarendon, says : " They fur-
ther ordered, as he was to sail in sight of his house, that it shoxild be
fired" {Coll N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1869, p. 40); while Morton himself
wrote that he " a f arre of abourd a ship did there behold this wof uU
spectacle." (New English Canaan, 164.) The sentence, that the
house should be " burnt down to the ground in the sight of the In-
dians," was passed at the session of the magistrates held on Septem-
ber 7 {liecords, i. 75), and not until the close of December did the
Handmaid set sail. (Young, Chron. of Mass. 321.) See, also, Proc
Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 238.

1630. PURGING THE LAND. 245

compelled to do ; and, in doing it, they acted with mod-
eration and self-restraint. Their descendants, eight
generations removed and upon a less remote frontier,
would have disposed of the whole matter in a far
more summary way, — in the way, in fact, which Mor-
ton says Miles Standish threatened to adopt.

Neither was the second arrest, that of 1630, under
Winthrop's process, in itself a thing to be criticised.
According to Morton's own account, he had been a
thorn, both sharp and rankling, in Endicott's side ;
not only had he refused to enter into any covenants,
whether for trade or government, but he had openly
derided the magistrate and eluded his messengers.
This would not do. The company was right when it
formally instructed Endicott that "all must live under
government and a like law." It was necessary, there-
fore, that Morton should in good faith give in his sub-
mission, or that he should be compelled to take him-
self off. This position would have been correct ; but
this position the magistrates did not take. Nothing
was said in the sentence of any disregard of authority
or disobedience to regulation. No reference was made
to illicit dealings with the Indians. The trade in fire-
arms the company had explicitly forbidden, directing
that any one guilty of it should forthwith be appre-
hended and sent to England for punishment. But no
renewal of this forbidden trade was now even charged
against Morton. Again, the punishment inflicted
upon him was one of extreme severity. He was set
in the stocks ; his whole belongings were confiscated ;
his habitation was burned to the ground before his-
eyes ; and he was banished the country. It could
only be said that he was not whipped and he was not
mutilated. Nothing less than a stubborn refusal to

246 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1630.

obey the authority of the colony would seem to have
justified such severity.

On the other hand the charges actually made against
him, and recited in his sentence, were of the most
trivial character, — manifestly, trumped-up charges
to serve a purpose. He had unjustly, it stands al-
leged, taken away a canoe from some Indians ; he had
fired a charge of shot among a troop of them, who
would not bring a canoe across a river to him, wound-
ing one and tearing a hole in the garments of another;
he was " a proud, insolent man," against whom a
" multitude of complaints were received " for injuries
done by him both to the English and the Indians.
Those specified, it is to be presumed, are examples of
the rest. They amount absolutely to nothing. Sam-
uel Maverick, writing long afterwards to Lord Clar-
endon, very fitly characterized them as mere pretences.
Apparently conscious of this, Dudley, the deputy
governor, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln,
adds that Morton was sent to England " for that my
Lord Chief Justice there so required, that he might
punish him capitally for fouler misdemeanours there
perpetrated." Bradford, in his reference to this mat-
ter, further adds that Morton " was vehemently sus-
pected for the murder of a man that had adventured
moneys with him, when he came first into New Eng-
land."

There would seem to be no doubt that there was a
warrant in Winthrop's hands against Morton, bearing
the sign manual of Nicholas Hyde, who at that time
• disgraced the office of Lord Chief Justice of the King's
Bench; but, in view of Morton's subsequent immu-
nity from all punishment, or even, so far as is known,
from any criminal prosecution, a surmise would not

1630. FILIAL FALLACIES. 247

be forced that this paper had been procured, upon
some rumor of criminal conduct, by the lawyers of
the company before the fleet of 1630 set sail, in order
to have it ready for the contingency in which it was
actually used. In all historical probability, it was
nothing more or less than a seventeenth century Eng-
lish substitute for the French lettre de cachet.

Moreover, such a requisition, though it might have
warranted the return of Morton as a prisoner to Eng-
land, certainly did not warrant the confiscation of his
goods and the burning of his house, in advance of
trial and conviction there. The confiscation and the
burning were unmistakable acts of high-handed op-
pression. As will frequently appear in these pages, it
is far too customary with the school of New England
historians to defend this, and the whole long record
of not dissimilar acts which disfigure the early annals
of Massachusetts, upon grounds which they are not
quick to accept when advanced in excuse of Went-
worth, of Williams, or of Laud. It is argued that
the Puritans of the great migi^ation were just. God-
fearing men, who had suffered persecution at home.
They had come to New England a weak, struggling
colony. Then it is assumed that unity of thought, as
well as of purpose and of action, was essential to the
existence of this colony. Freedom of opinion, it is
further assumed, was in those days synonymous with
internal dissension ; and internal dissension would
have jeopardized, if it had not destroyed, the colony.
Therefore the stern bigotry and savage intolerance
which made a hideous travesty of law and justice,
when exemplified in Archbishop Laud and his asso-
ciates in the Court of High Commission, became not
only excusable in Governor Winthrop and his brother

248 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1630.

magistrates, seated at their table in Boston, but con-
stitute for them a new title to veneration.^

1 " Religious intolerance, like every other public restraint, is crim-
inal wherever it is not needful for the public safety ; it is simply self-
defence, whenever tolerance would be public ruin. . . . And the right
[to exclude] becomes of yet more value, and the duty more impera-
tive and inevitable, when the good in question is one of such vast
worth as religious freedom, to be protected by the possessor, not only
for himself, but for the myriads, living and to be born, of whom he
assumes to be the pioneer and the champion." (Palfrey, i. 300, 301.)

" But, without detracting in the slightest degree from the lofty and
enviable claims which have been made for [the younger Vane], it
may well be more than doubted whether his views [of civil and reli-
gious liberty] were applicable to the condition of the colony at the
time, and whether the little Commonwealth could have been held to-
gether in peace and prosperity — if held together at all — by any
other policy than that which Winthrop defended.

' ' It was admirably said by the late Josiah Quincy on this subject,
in his Centennial Discourse in 1830, that ' had our early ancestors
adopted the course we at this day are apt to deem so easy and obvious,
and placed their government on the basis of liberty for all sorts of
consciences [the basis which Henry IV. adopted to a modified extent
in the edict of Nantes], it would have been, in that age [what it was
not found to be at all in France], a certain introduction of anarchy,
[which was the exact argument advanced by Philip II., Louis XIV.,
and other historical persecutors].' " (R. C. Winthrop, in the Mem.
Hist, of Boston, i. 127.)

The other side is always worth hearing. Referring to the language
used by Prynne and Burton, Hook, Dean of Chichester, in his Life of
Laud (187), says: ''In the days of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary
and Elizabeth, persons who ventured thus to speak of the constituted
authorities would have been put to death. Papists had, when in
power, executed Protestants, and Protestants had executed Papists;
and Scotch Reformers, out of power, had recommended assassination.
How the Pmitans and ultra-Protestants in power were determined to
act. their murder of Charles and of Laud, their king and their arch-
bishop, would be sufficient to show. But the principles of the Puri-
tans are more strongly marked in the laws they ordained for New
England, where the intolerance of presbytery, the madness of the
Anabaptists, and the extravagance of the Independents and Brownists
reigned supreme. But they were in stern earnest, and their severity
was not against religious errors, as they deemed them, only, but also
against social crime. Capital punishment was adjudged for adultery,

1630. FRONTIER JUSTICE. 249

But the question of religious tolerance is not now
to be discussed ; and, so far as Morton is concerned,
it does not then appear to have entered into the
question. His was a case of civil persecution only.
The man before them was a poor, lawless creature at
best, and the Massachusetts magistrates had made up
their minds in advance. They meant, in the preach-
er's holy phrase, to purge him from the land. He
was not only what they termed a " libertine," but his
presence at Mt. Wollaston was a standing menace to
the company. The best use to which he could be de-
voted was that of an example to others. Doubtless,
also, they suspected him even now of being an emis-
sary of Gorges ; for they must, through Oldham, have
known of the relations betw^een the two during Mor-
ton's recent sojourn in England. If Winthrop and
the rest entertained any such surmise, they were also
quite correct in it. Morton was even then in corre-
spondence with Sir Ferdinando. That he was an un-
desirable character to have about an infant colony,
such as that presided over by Endicott and Win-
throp, does not admit of question, and it was the
avowed policy of the company to permit none re-
garded in this light to remain. Similar methods of
dealin«»with improper and undesirable characters
have since been not uncommon among the mining
communities of the interior and the Pacific slope ; but
it is somewhat singular that the rough camp-law there
practised should find its earliest precedent on the first
page of the records of Massachusetts Bay.

perjury and blasphemy. Those who lied, drank, or danced were to
be publicly whipped. Heavy fines were laid upon such as swore or
broke the Sabbath. At the same time, any Romish priest returning^
to the colony after banishment would be put to death." {Lives of the
Archbishops of Canterbury (New Series), vi. 293.)

250 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1630.

Whether Winthrop and his associates were or were
not justified in summarily banishing Morton in the
way they did, the so doing was none the less, as events
subsequently showed, a serious blunder. Their posi-
tion was wholly different from that of the struggling
settlers of three years earlier. As Endicott had al-
ready shown, the magistrates of the company were
now perfectly able to enforce every regulation, whether
wise and necessary or the reverse, and they could sup-
press summarily all disorder. Under these circum-
stances they had much better have left Morton alone
under the harrow of their authority. At Mt. Wollas-
ton, he was at worst nothing more than a nuisance.
They shipped him off to England, and at Whitehall
he rose to the large proportions of a formidable en-
emy. In New England he was under Winthrop's eye
and within reach of Endicott's hand ; in London he
became the ready tool of Gorges and insj^ired the
malignity of Laud.

Upon his arrival in England, Morton was com-
mitted to Exeter jail, but would not seem to have long
remained there. He probably communicated at once
with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, letters from whom to
him were then on their way to New England, and Sir
Ferdinando undoubtedly had sufficient influence to
procure the prisoner's speedy release. In any event,
the next year he was at liberty and busily concerned
in Gorges' intrigues for the overthrow of the Massa-
chusetts colony ; and, in his efforts to accomj^lish that
result, he received the active assistance of two other
victims of New England's summary procedure. These
were Sir Christopher Gardiner and Philip Ratcliff.

There is no more singular and incongruous episode
in the first history of Massachusetts, save only that of

1630. SIR CHRISTOPHER GARDINER. 251

the May-pole of Merry-Mount, than the episode of Sir
Christopher Gardiner. Who the man was, whence or
why he came, and whither he afterwards went, are
matters which have hitherto been wrapped in a mys-
tery which is not likely ever to be solved. He seems
to have been of a Gloucester family, and he made
some claim of kinship to that famous Stephen Gar-
dyner. Bishop of Winchester in the days of Queen
Mary, whom Shakespeare has branded as a man of
" a cruel nature and a bloody." The kinship thus
claimed is not impossible ; though it could scarcely
have been so near as that of uncle and nephew,
seeing that a full century, at least, must have in-
tervened between the births of the two.^ However
related, Gardiner was evidently a man of education
and culture, and he had been an extensive traveller.
He appears to have received degrees, such as they
were, at some university ; and, having been a Protes-
tant, he had, at some time before coming to New Eng-
land, joined the Church of Rome. His title was of a
doubtful character, and at times he is spoken of as a
Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and then, again, as of
the Order of the Golden Melice ; but that he had a
right to some title would seem to be established by
the fact that at a later day he was referred to in Eng-
land by Gorges, and in official proceedings, as Sir
Christopher Gardiner, Knight.

Whencesoever he may have received his title, he
first suddenly appeared in America, bearing it, about
a month before the arrival of Winthrop and his com-

^ The Bishop of Winchester was born at Bury St. Edmunds in
1483. (Campbell, Loid Chancellors, oh. xl.) Sir Christopher Gardi-
ner may have been forty-eig-ht at the time of his misadventures in
New England in 1631. (Young, Chron. of Mass. 335.)

252 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1630-1.

pany, having been hurried over probably, an agent of
Gorges, in advance of the colonists, in some vessel of
the fishing fleet. If he was such an agent, — and there
can be little doubt of the fact, — the exact purpose of
his coming at this time can only be surmised. It is
probable that he was commissioned to act for Sir Fer-
dinando, and to do whatever circumstances might re-
quire, or occasion make possible, to keep the Gorges
claims alive. He brought over with him a servant or
two, and was also accompanied by another companion,
'^a comly yonge woman," as Bradford reports her,
whom he represented as being his cousin, but who
seems, in fact, to have been his mistress. For some
time after his first arrival he does not appear to have
been in any way molested. He came to the neighbor-
hood of Boston Bay, and built for himself some sort of
a dwelling, though exactly where is not known. Dep-
uty Governor Dudley simply says that it was seven
miles from Boston, and on the further side of a river.
Judging by the direction which Gardiner afterwards
took in his flight, it would seem most probable that
he lived on the Neponset, not far from its mouth, and
in close vicinity to the former " Massachusetts fields."
If he did live there, he was in the midst of Gorges'
adherents ; for Jeffreys and Morton were but a few
miles away, the former at Wessagusset and the latter
at Mt. Wollaston, while Blackstone, Maverick and
Walford were immediately across the bay about the
peninsula of Shawmut. It would further seem that
Gardiner could hardly have failed to meet Morton in
London during the summer of 1629, when both were
there and in constant communication with Gorges,
with whom, also, both were now in correspondence.
The presence of a man like Sir Christopher in the

1630-1. A MUCH MARRIED KNIGHT. 253

neighborhood of a young settlement was an event
which could not but attract notice. Furthermore, it
called for explanation, as every one there had to give
some account of himself. Gardiner claimed that he
had come to the New World simply because he was
weary of the Old, — that he sought here no prefer-
ment, but was willing to earn his living with the rest ;
and he even professed himself as desirous of joining
some one of the churches. This account of himself
seems to have been accepted as satisfactory ; perhaps,
also, the magistrates were too much occupied to give
much thought to him, and, not impossibly, they were
awaiting further developments from their friends and
agents in England. These came at last in March,
1631, about three months after Morton had been sent
away, and from them it appeared that Gardiner was
far from being a man of godly life. Two women
claimed to be married to him, one of whom he had
abandoned in Paris, the other in London. The for-
mer had then, apparently in hunting him up, found
the latter, and a comparison of notes followed. It
was known to them that Gardiner had gone to New
England, and naturally the agents of the Massachu-
setts company were applied to for information as to
his whereabouts. In due course of time letters from
both wives were transmitted to Governor Wiuthrop,
advising him of the facts in the case ; the first or
Paris wife desiring her husband's return to her in
hopes of his conversion to better things, while the sec-
ond, or London, Lady Gardiner sought nothing less
than the knight's " destruction for his foul abuse, and
for robbing her of her estate, of a part whereof she
sent an inventory hither, comprising therein many
rich jewels, much plate, and costly linen." This wife

254 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. March,

of Sir Christopher further advised the Puritan magis-
trates that tlie '' conily yonge woman whom he caled
his cousin " was a '' known harlot," Mary Grove by
name, whose immediate sending back to England, in
company with her husband, she also greatly desired.
Altogether it was a scandalous case.

Accordingly, at a court held on February |, 1631,
it was ordered that '' Sir Christopher Gardiner shal
be sent as prisoner into England by the shipp Lyon,
no we returneing thither," and steps were taken for his
immediate apprehension. But it would seem that it
was not in vain Sir Christopher had travelled in many
lands and joined himself to the Church of Rome ; for,
apparently, he now had his own means of knowing
what information came out from England, and what
was proposed in Winthrop's council chamber. So he
was on the watch ; and when he saw the officers cross-
ing the river, half a mile from his abode, he quietly
put on his weapons and betook himself to the w^oods.
Probably Morton's experience was fresh in his mind.
His companion, Mary Grove, — if such was indeed
her name, — the officers arrested, and took before the
magistrates for examination, who found her an unwill-
ing witness. A rigid questioning elicited little from
her, and nothing at all to the detriment of Sir Chris-
topher, except the fact that she was not married to
him ; which, indeed, had not been pretended. An
order was accordingly made " to send her to the two
wives in Old England, to search her further ; " which
order was not carried into effect.

Gardiner himself, meanwhile, lay concealed in the
forest. The magistrates offered a reward for his cap-
ture, and, as the Massachusetts Indians asserted, gave
them authority to kill him. This is improbable ; but

1631. FLIGHT AND CAPTURE. 255

in any event he had gone beyond their reach, and was
among what was left of the Pokanoket tribe, who, be-
fore the great sickness, occupied the region watered by
the Taunton River, and lying between that stream and
Massachusetts Bay. He was accordingly within the
Plymouth jurisdiction. It is not very clear what his
plan was, if, indeed, he had any. The Massachusetts
magistrates thought that if he did not perish, as the
chances were he would, from cold and hunger, he
might try to make his way to Piscataqua or the sta-
tions in Maine ; but he himself seems afterwards
to have intimated that his idea was to get to New
York and the Dutch settlement there. If such was
his purpose, he soon found it impracticable ; and
so, for nearly a month, he wandered about in the
neighborhood of the Taunton River, in what are
now the towns of Middleborough and Bridgewater.
At length some of the Indians living thereabouts,
hearing of the price set upon him, went to Plymouth
and told Governor Bradford where he was, asking if
they might kill him : —

" But the Governor tould them no, they should not kill
him, but watch their opportunitie and take him. And so
they did, for when they light of him by a river side, he got
into a canowe to get from them, and when they came nere
him, whilst he presented his peece at them to keep them of,
the streame carried the canow against a rock, and tumbled
both him and his peece and rapier into the water ; yet he
got out, and having a litle dagger by his side, they durst
not close with him, but getting longe pols, they soone beat
his dagger out of his hand, so he was glad to yeeld ; and
they brought him to the Governor. But his hands and
amies were swolen and very sore with the blowes they had
given him. So he used him kindly, and sent him to a lodg-
ing wher his armes were bathed and anoynted, and he was

256 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. May,

quickly well againe, and blamed the Indeans for beating
him so much. They said that they did but a litle whip
him with sticks."

Meanwhile word of Gardiner's capture was sent to
Winthrop, and presently Captain John Underbill and
his lieutenant, Samuel Dudley, appeared to take charge
of him. By them he was taken back in custody,
reaching Boston on the ^ of ^.

It is not clear what now ensued. In his letter of
acknowledgment to Bradford, written the day after
Underbill got back with Gardiner, Winthrop denied
that he ever " intended any hard measure to him, but
to respect and use him according to his qualitie ; "
and, though Gardiner seems to have been kept for a
time under close watch, he certainly never was tried or
had any sentence inflicted upon him, nor was he even
shij^ped back to England ^ under the magistrate's

1 In his notes to Winthrop (ed. 1853, 65, n.) Savage says that the
magistrates sent Mary Grove " for examination to London, in the same
ship with Saltonstall, Coddington and Wilson." Palfrey (i. 329) says
that it was " intended " to send Gardiner over in that vessel, but " the
master of the Lion could not be persuaded to take charge of him,
and it was some months longer before he could be gotten rid of." (lb.
830.)

The thing is of no historical consequence whatever ; but these state-
ments are not correct. The Lion sailed from Salem April 1st (Young's
Chron. of Mass. 340, n.), and Gardiner did not reach Boston in custody
until May 4th. Gardiner was not " gotten rid of " either then, or some
months later, but, as Winthrop himself says, " was kindly used, and
dismissed in peace " (ii. 232). Finally, Mary Grove not only stayed
in New England, but married at Boston, and not improbably descend-
ants of hers may be living in Maine now. (in. Mass. Hist. Coll. viii.
321.)

Both Savage's and Palfrey's error arose from allowing themselves
to infer too much from the entry in the Colony Records, and from
Dudley's remark, in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, that " we
have taken order to send her to the two wives in England." Savage
inferred that the woman was accordingly sent at once, naming the

1631. ''AN ILL-WILLER." 251

order of February J^. On the contrary, when, six
weeks later, a sentence savage in its severity was
under the pressure of Endicott's influence imposed on
an offender, the execution of it was mitigated through
the intercession of Gardiner with Winthrop.

A few days after this, on J^^i?, a shallop reached
Boston from Piscataqua, bringing a package of letters
to Sir Christopher under cover to Governor Winthrop.
The confidence thus reposed in him the governor did
not hesitate to violate, any more than, seven years be-
fore, his brother governor at Plymouth had hesitated
to inform himself of the contents of the letters written
by the Rev. John Lyford. Doubtless, too, Winthrop
held himself fully justified in so doing, for not only
was Gardiner a professed "ill-wilier" to the colony,
but the magistrates, knowing that he belonged to the
Church of Rome, had inferred he was also an emissary
of the Pope, and engaged in some dark conspiracy
against " the poore churches here." He was a snake
hiding in the tender grass, and to circumvent him all
means were justifiable. So, receiving the letters,
Winthrop opened them. The true significance of
Gardiner's presence in New England was then re-
vealed. The letters were from Sir Ferdinando Gorges,
and addressed to Gardiner as his agent, and in them
he referred to his claim to the land included in the

very vessel she was sent in ; while Palfrey, including- Gardiner also in
the order, apparently confused his case for the moment with that
of Morton, and the master of the Lion with the master of the Gift ;
and, finally, in his general disapproval of Gardiner, caused the Boston
magistrates to be, as a matter of course, even more summary in their
way of disposing of him than they actually were.

In regard to Sir Christopher Gardiner and Mary Grove, and the sin-
gular body of poetry and romance which has g^rown up about them,
see the paper in the Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc xx. 60-88.

258 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1631-2.

patent of 1622 to liis son Robert, upon which land
the whole settlement at Charlestown and the gov-
ernor's own farm of Ten Hills were located. A letter
from Gorges to Morton was also in the package.

It would seem altogether probable that Winthrop,
who was never deficient in shrewdness, now began to
realize that it was better not to send Gorges' agent
back to him full charged with anger and mischief.
Imjiressed by Gardiner's apparent rank, and Gorges'
recognition of it, the governor may also have thought
that it would be dangerous to provoke the knight too
far ; but, whatever the cause for leniency, matters
were not apparently further pressed against Sir Chris-
topher, nor was he long deprived of his liberty of ac-
tion. About this time Thomas Purchase, who had
come over in 1624, and later had settled on the An-
droscoggin, in what is now the town of Brunswick,
had occasion to be in Boston. He was a man of good
standing, and, whatever her previous relations with
Gardiner may have been. Mistress Mary Grove found
favor in his eyes. They were accordingly married in
Boston, some time in August, 1631. Purchase and his
wife then returned to his home in Maine, accompanied
by Gardiner, who, Winthrop says, was " dismissed in
peace," and professed himself under " much engage-
ment for the great courtesy " with which he had been
treated. He remained at Brunswick, or thereabouts
in Maine, about a year longer, still acting, it is to be
presumed, as the agent of Gorges ; and then, return-
ing to England, landed at Bristol on the |jj of Au-
gust, 1632. His former companion apparently threw
in her lot with New England, as Thomas Purchase's
wife Mary is recorded as having died in Boston on
the 7th of January, 1656.

1631. PHILIP RATCLIFF. 259

It has been mentioned that in June, six weeks after
his capture on the Taunton River, Gardiner had ex-
erted himself in Boston to secure the mitigation of a
sentence in course of execution on a criminal. This
criminal was Philip Ratcliff, a servant of Governor
Matthew Cradock. The offence for which he was
punished was apparently committed at Salem, and,
as recited in his sentence, was the *' uttering malli-
tious and scandulous speeches against the government
and the church " there. In another place it is referred
to as a " most horible blasphemy," while Winthrop
says he was " convict, ore tenus, of most foul scanda-
lous invectives." The probability would seem to be
that the poor wretch was a bondsman in a strange
land and under a hard rule, — a man of unsettled
mind, and no Puritan or religionist, — a coarse, crazy,
homesick Englishman.^ Morton, no very reliable au-
thority on the point, gives a characteristic turn to the
affair. He says that Ratcliff was a member of the
Church of England : —

" And (to the end they might have some color against
him) some of them practised to get into his debt ; which
he, Hot mistrusting, suffered: and gave credit for such
commodity as he had sold at a price. When the day of
payment came, instead of moneys, he being at that time
sick and weak, and stood in need of the Beaver he had
contracted for, he had an epistle full of zealous exhortations
to provide for the soul, and not to mind these transitory
things that perished with the body ; and to bethink himself
whether his conscience would be so prompt to demand so
great a sum of Beaver as had been contracted for. . . .
The perusal of this (lap'd in the paper) was as bad as a
potion to the creditor, — to see his debtor, Master Subtilety,

^ In a letter from Edwards Howes to J. Winthrop, Jr., he is spoken
of as " the lunatic man." (Savage in note to Winthrop, i. 5(3.)

2G0 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. June,

a zealous professor, as he thought, to deride liim in this ex-
tremity, — that he could not choose, in admiration of the
deceit, but cast out these words : — •

" ' Are these your members ? — If they be all like these,
I believe the Devil was the setter-up of their Church.' "

Unfortunately for him, Ratcliff had to do with En-
dicott, and that magistrate seems at this time to have
been having a great deal of trouble. His methods
were peculiar. A few weeks before, he had got in a
wrangle with "goodman" Thomas Dexter at Salem.
Dexter is best known for his subsequent purchase of
Nahant, for a suit of clothes, from the Indian Black
William, who was afterwards hanged at Richmond's
Island for having a hand in the murder there of one
Walter Bagnall, " a wicked fellow [that] had much
wronged the Indians." Dexter himself does not seem
to have been a mild-mannered man ; for once, a few
years later, meeting on the road his neighbor Samuel
Hutchinson, between whom and himself there was
trouble, he jumped from his horse and bestowed on
the spot '* about twenty blows " on his adversary's
" head and shoulders." However formidable he might
be to ordinary men like Hutchinson, Dexter was no
match for Endicott, who, as the result of their wran-
gle, gave him a beating out of hand. When called
to account for thus executing his own process, the
Salem magistrate had excused himself on the ground
of excessive aggravation, declaring to Winthrop that
" if you had seen the manner of his carriage, with
such daring of me with his arms on kembow, &c., it
would have provoked a very patient man." Neverthe-
less, he expressed his regret at having punished Dex-
ter as he did, though he added significantly, — " If it
were lawful to try it at blows, and he a fit man for

1631. "HIS ARMS ON KEMBOW." 261

me to deal with, you should not hear me complain."
The Court of Assistants took a different view of the
matter, and a jury impanelled at the session of April
23d found the irate magistrate guilty of "battry,"
and fined him forty shillings.^

These proceedings, which had occurred but a short
time before, and must have occasioned no little talk
at Salem, may have emboldened Ratcliff to set his
"arms on kembow," also, and to indulge in a little
" daring " of Endicott on his" own account. If such
was the case, he reckoned badly. The magistrate did
not take the law into his own hands, but, with char-
acteristic vehemence, he did carry the case before the
Court of Assistants, demanding, as Morton states it,
that the accused should be '' made an example for all
carnall men, to presume to speake the least word that
might tend to the dishonor of the Church of Salem ;
yea, the mother Church of all that holy Land." An
example he was certainly made ; for he was sentenced
to be whipped, have his ears cut off, pay a fine of
forty pounds, and to be banished without the jurisdic-
tion. So far the sentence passed upon him admits of
no doubt ; but Morton adds that he was also to have
his tongue bored through, his nose slit, and his face
branded, and it was in these last respects that, through
Gardiner's expostulations with Winthrop, the sen-
tence was mitigated in execution.

That for angrily inveighing against the church gov-
ernment and the magistracy of Salem this man was
whipped and banished, after being mutilated and
heavily fined, is matter of record, for Winthrop says
he was so sentenced, and that the sentence " was pres-
ently executed." ^ There has been, and very deservedly,

1 Lewis, Hist, of Lynn, 39 ; Palfrey, i. 327, n 2 History, i. 56.

262 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. 1631.

a considerable amount of denunciation expressed by
modern historians of a certain sentence passed shortly
after this time on one William Prynne by the Court
of Star Chamber, in England. Prynne had published
a book against the theatre, the tendency of which, ac-
cording to Hallam, was more tiresome than seditious.
For this he was ordered to stand twice in the pillory,
to be branded on the forehead, to lose both his ears,
to pay a fine of £5,000, and to suffer perpetual im-
prisonment. Prynne's sentence, like the very similar
one i^assed on Rateliff, was brutal in its cruelty. For
it Archbishop Laud has most properly been held re-
sponsible ; and for it he is now gibbeted in history :
but the historians of New England have not felt
called upon to visit the same severity of criticism
upon the punishment inflicted on Rateliff, or the ma-
gistrates who ordered it.^

1 Palfrey, for instance, simply mentions the sentence in the ■words
of the Records (vol. i. 351). Savage, in his notes to Winthrop, in-
dulges in a note upon the subject, in which he finds himself " com-
pelled to regret the cruelty of the punishment " (i. GS). In describ-
ing affairs and events then taking place on the other side of the
Atlantic, these same authorities declare that this was the time when
" the Star Chamber was rioting in barbarities." (Palfrey, i. 370.) In
Massachusetts, " Thomas Fox is sentenced to be whipped for uttering
scandalous speeches against the court" (ib. 326) ; Henry Lyon is
" whipped and banished for writing into England falsely and mali-
ciously against the execution of justice here " (ib. 352), etc., and
these episodes are cited apparently to show how " minute and multi-
farious were the cares of the primeval magistrates of Massachusetts
Bay." (Ib. 353.) In another place (ib. 563), the similarly barbarous
outrages inflicted by Laud in the cases of Lilburne, Prynne and
Leighton are described at length as examples of the "exasperating
and ix-tolerable abuses of ecclesiastical authority." But, while
" Laud's special province lay in the enforcement of severe laws of
uniformity " (ib. 562), Endicott, in pursuing an exactly similar course
towards Morton, Rateliff, Fox and Lyon, was protecting "religious
freedom " by measures which were " simply self-defence," where tol-
erance would have been "public ruin." (Ib. 300.)

1632. «i\ro BISHOP, NO KING!'' 263

Thus Morton, Gardiner and Ratcliff had been dealt
with in the space of a twelvemonth, — between Sep-
tember, 1630, when the first was set in the stocks,
and June, 1631, when the last stood at the whipping-
post. A year later they were all in England, bitterly
denouncing the colony of Massachusetts Bay, and
clamoring before the Privy Council for redress.

Nor, in dealing with them in a manner so summary
and severe, could the Massachusetts magistrates have
supposed that they had to do merely with obscure per-
sons whose complaints were most unlikely ever to
reach, much less affect, those high in English authority.
On the contrary, it was well known that both Morton
and Gardiner were in direct communication with
Gorges, and they, of course, would secure for more
obscure complainants a ready access to him. Under
these circumstances, the course now pursued by Win-
throp and his associates was little less than an open
and intentional defiance of the Council for New Enjr-
land. Certainly the presence at this time in London
of Morton, Gardiner and Ratcliff was a veritable
godsend to Gorges, who, in company with Captain
John Mason, the patentee of New Hampshire, was
then exerting himself to the utmost to get the charter
of the Massachusetts company revoked. The house
in which Sir Ferdinando lived, as formerly it had
been the point of gathering of all who had visited the
coast of America, or could add anything to the stock
of information concerning it, now became a head-
quarters for those who had any complaint to make or
charges to prefer against the magistracy of Massachu-
setts.

The attack was made on the 19th of December,
1632, and was a formidable one. It assumed the

264 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. Dec.

shape of a petition to the Privy Council, asking the
Lords to inquire into the methods through which the
royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay had been
procured, and the abuses which had been practised
under it. Beside many injuries inflicted on individ-
uals in their property and persons, the company was
also charged with seditious and rebellious designs,
subversive alike of church and state. The various
allegations were based on the affidavits of three wit-
nesses, — Morton, Ratcliif and Gardiner, — and be-
hind the allegations was the active influence of Gorges.
Had this petition been preserved, it could scarcely
have failed to throw a strange gleam of light on the
other and now unseen side of early Massachusetts
history ; unfortunately, it is lost. It would have
been more peculiarly interesting from its curious in-
sight into the future. In referring to it afterwards,
Winthrop said that it contained '' some truths misre-
peated." Apart from severe judgments on individual
wrong-doers, taking the form of frequent whippings,
setting in the stocks, branding, ear-cropping, fining
and banishment, the real burden of charge lay in the
alleged disposition of the colony to throw off its alle-
giance to the mother country. There was in that wil-
derness already a church without a bishop ; and it was
asserted in the petition that there was soon to be a
state without a king.

A harsh coloring was, doubtless, given to every-
thing. So far as rebellion or independence was con-
cerned, nothing is more certain than that neither the
leaders nor the common people of the Massachusetts
colony then entertained any thought of it ; but it is
equally certain that the leaders, at least, were a stub-
born, unyielding race of Commonwealth's-men, stern

1632. THE HEARING. 265

of temper and with bitter tongues, who did continually
rail against state and church. That even now they
only needed a little more consciousness of strength to
ripen on occasion into rebels, was probably asserted
in the lost document ; and, however Winthrop might
deny it, the developments of three years later showed
conclusively that this assertion was true. In the light
of their sympathies and sufferings, Gardiner and
Morton probably saw the real drift of what they had
heard said and seen done in New England a good
deal more clearly than Winthrop.

The result of the Gorges and Gardiner petition was
the appointment of a committee of twelve Lords of
the Council, to whom the whole matter was referred
for investigation and report. The committee was em-
powered to send for persons and papers, and a long
and apparently warm hearing ensued. The friends of
the company bestirred themselves at once. Cradock
was, of course, in England ; for, though he was at
one time governor of the company, he never went to
America. Sir Richard Saltonstall was also there,
having returned in April of the year before. With
them was John Humphrey, formerly deputy-governor,
and one of the original patentees of the company,
who had married a daughter of the Earl of Lincoln
and sister of the Lady Arbella, and was then prepar-
ing to come out to New England.^ Cradock, also,

1 John Humphrey was subsequently one of the early settlers of
Swampscott. His wife, the Lady Susan, was never contented to live
in America, and at a later day the two returned to England, leaving
their children, among whom were ungrown daughters, here, — a pro-
ceeding which ultimately resulted in one of those loathsome scandals
with the details of which the pages of Winthrop and Bradford are
unpleasantly replete. The early settlers of New England were a
highly moral and correct race. They were none the less men and wo-

266 THE ASSAULT ON THE CHARTER. Dec.

was Ratcliff's master, which fact was not without its
bearing on the case. These three filed a written an-
swer to the complaint ; and at the hearing they re-
ceived further assistance from Emanuel Downing,
Winthrop's brother-in-law and a resident in London,
and from Thomas Wiggin, who lived at Piscataqua,
and had often been in Boston, but now most oppor-
tunely chanced to be in England.^

As Gorges had learned to his cost three years be-
fore, when at a critical moment the charter had been
evoked, as by swift magic, from the innermost re-
cesses of the palace, the company of Massachusetts
Bay was by no means without influence in high quar-
ters ; and now recourse was had to every means of
privately influencing the members of the committee.
These unseen agencies were, in the London of the
time of Charles I., and at his court, far more potent
than written answers or counter allegations; nor, in
the present instance, did the friends of the company
labor in vain, for, to the astonishment of every one,
the result of the proceedings was, that Gorges and his
associates took nothing by them. The committee re-
ported against any interference at that time, some-
what sophistically attributing to the " faults or fancies
of particular men " those grounds of complaint which
did not admit of explanation, but which they declared

men ; and *' wikednes being' here more stopped by strict laws, and the
same more nerly looked unto, so as it cannot rune in a comone road of
liberty as it would, and is inclined, it searches every wher, and at last
breaks out wher it g-etts vente." (Bradford, 385.) The details of
the Humphrey scandal are given in Winthrop (ii. 45). See, also,
Lewis, Lynn (p. 75), in which there is a very droll plate, supposed to
represent Lady Susan Humphrey in the act of parting from her
children.

1 ni. Mass. Hist. Coll viii. 320.

1632. "JiV ABUNDANTE REJOYSINGr 267

were "in due time to be inquired into." This report,
when made, was approved by King Charles, who had
evidently also been labored with through the proper
channels, inasmuch as he seems to have gone out of
his way to further threaten with condign punishment
those "who did abuse his governor and the planta-
tion."

The immediate danger which threatened the infant
settlement was thus averted : but the cloud, though it
proved a passing one, had for a time looked black and
ominous, nor was the more than possible outcome of
it underestimated in Massachusetts. This Winthrop
gave proof of through his actions ; for when, in May,

1633, exact intelligence of the final action of the Coun-
cil reached him, he at once wrote a letter gravely jubi-
lant thereon to Governor Bradford at Plymouth, in-
forming him of the glad tidings, and inviting him to
join " in a day of thanks-giving to our mercifull God,
who, as he hath humbled us by his late correction, so
he hath lifted us up, by an abundante rejoj^sing, in
our deliverance out of so desperate a danger." ^

1 Bradford, 297. See, also, for facts and authorities connected with
the Council for New Eng^land and the conflict over King- Charles' charter
of 1629, Mr. Deane's two papers, " The Council for New England,"
"NVinsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist, of Am. iii. ch. ix. ; and " The Strug-gle
to Maintain the Charter of King- Charles I.," Mem. Hist. Boston, i. ch. x.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE ASSAULT RENEWED.

Sir Christopher Gardiner now disappears from
the record. After the Privy Council hearing of Jan-
uary, 1633, his name is no more met with, and not
improbably he again wandered off on his travels.
Philip Ratcliff, on the contrary. Gorges would seem
to have kept within easy reach, and at a later day he
appeared again as a witness before the Council, — at
least Thomas Morton says that he did so, and that on
this occasion " he was comforted by their lordships
with the cropping of Mr. Winthrop's ears." ^ Morton
also was himself instant, active and persistent, for to
return to New England remained henceforth the dream
of his life ; but, as he eould hope to return there only
after the ruin of the Massachusetts Bay colony, he
now devoted himself to the work of accomplishing that
ruin. To that end he became a hanger-on of Sir Fer-
dinando Gorges, whose fortunes for the rest of his life
he seems in some degree to have shared ; and, in shar-
ing them, he at one time not without reason believed
that the hour of triumph and of revenge was for him
close at hand.

This was in 1634. During the fifteen months which
had then passed since the attack on the charter in the
winter of 1632-3, events had moved rapidly on both
sides of the Atlantic. In New England, the colony

1 Winthrop, ii. *191.

1634. BOSTON TOWN. 269

of Massachusetts Bay had taken firm hold of the soil,
and already far exceeded in wealth and population the
older settlement at Plymouth. In place of the strag-
gling planters who lived in solitude about the bay in
1629, there were now upwards of four thousand Eng-
lish people distributed among twenty Massachusetts
hamlets. Boston had grown into the semblance of a
town, though it was still little more than a collection
of log-huts and rude frame-houses built in straggling
fashion on streets and lanes laid out regardless of
symmetry, as the rough nature of the ground and the
uneven holdings made convenient. The principal edi-
fice was the meeting-house, as the place of worship was
called, — a large, square building made out of rough-
hewn lumber, the interstices of which were sealed with
mud. It had no spire, and its sloping roof, like those
of aU the dwellings, was thatched with coarse grass cut
from the marshes ; it stood on one side, and close to
the head of the short main street which led down to
the principal wharf or landing-place of the town.
Winthrop, still governor, though his hold on the office
was weakening, dwelt not far from the meeting-house
and nearly opjDosite the town spring, about which the
better houses clustered. Above and behind the little
town, in which may have lived some six or eight hun-
dred souls, rose the bare, round top of Sentry Hill,
on the back side of which, facing Charles River and
the west, Blackstone still dwelt alone. The days of
famine, sickness and trial were ended. The settlers
had grown accustomed to their new surroundings, and
the place was an active and prosperous one, — the
seat of government of a colony which was full of
confidence in its capacity to take care of itself in any
contingencies likely to arise.

270 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1634.

On the other side of the Atlantic, King Charles
had now fairly entered upon his struggle with the peo-
ple of England. In March, 1629, he had dissolved
his third parliament ; nor did he now mean ever to
call another. He proposed to govern his kingdom as
Philip II. had before governed Spain, and as Louis
XIV. subsequently governed France. The king was
to be the state. To bring this about he was having
recourse to various extra-constitutional tribunals, —
the Council of the North, the Star Chamber, the Court
of High Commission. Questions relating to the colo-
nies had hitherto been disposed of in the Privy Coun-
cil, for they did not frequently arise and were regarded
as of little account ; but recently the large emigra-
tion to New England of ''persons known to be ill-
affected and discontented, as well with the civil as
ecclesiastical government," had excited attention, and
was looked upon with alarm. It was regarded as the
gathering of a new plague-spot, from which deadly
contagion might spread ; for, both in Old and in New
England fear was at the root of intolerance to a
greater degree than either intellectual conviction or
theological hate.^ So, when in February, 1634, the
fact was brought to the notice of the Council that
several vessels loaded with passengers and stores
destined for New England were then lying in the
Thames, an order-in-council was issued staying the
sailing of these vessels, and calling upon Cradock to
produce the company's charter. Cradock replied that
the charter was not in his possession, — that Winthrop
had taken it with him to New England four years
before. He was directed to send for it at once.
Meanwhile the friends of the company in the Coun-
cil prevailed so far that the vessels were allowed to
1 Gardiner, England, 1603-1642, vii. 318; viii. 164-8.

IQM. A ROYAL COMMISSION. 271

sail, their masters entering into bonds to have the
Book of Common Pra^'er used, during the voyage, at
morning and evening service.

As s]3ecial tribunals were now greatly in vogue, it
was in certain quarters deemed best to organize one
to take charge of colonial matters. The idea of such
a tribunal seems to have grown out of the February
order-in-council, and it was designed almost exclu-
sively for the management of the affairs of New Eng-
land, where " scandals " both in church and state were
most rife. The year before, Laud had been made
Archbishop of Canterbury, and now he was engaged
with a whole heart in his lifelong war on Puritan-
ism. In the Star Chamber and the High Commission
his influence was supreme ; and when, on the rrfu of
April, a commission passed the great seal establishing
a board with almost unlimited powers to regulate plan-
tations, he was naturally at the head of it. There
would even seem to be good reason for supposing that
this tribunal was created at Laud's suggestion, and in
consequence of the unsatisfactory action of the Privy
Council in the matter of the vessels, two months be-
fore. A further inference from what went before and
what followed is, that Laud's action in the matter was
shaped and directed by Gorges. In other words, the
organization of this colonial board, through Laud's in-
fluence and with Laud supreme in it, was Gorges' first
move in the new attack he was now meditating on
the charter of the Massachusetts Bay.

The historians of New England have exercised
much ingenuity in devising reasons of state why King
Charles granted the charter of 1629 at all, — why the
attack upon it of 1632 came to nothing, — and why,
two years later, it was renewed with so different result.

272 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1634.

"Considering the character of the King on the one hand,
and the provisions of the charter on the other, it seems ne-
cessary to conclude, either that its tenor was not well known
to him when it received his assent, or else that his purpose
in granting it was to encourage the departure of Puritans
from England, at the time when he was entering upon
measures which might bring on a dangerous conflict with
that party. . . .

" The charter of the Massachusetts Company had passed
the seals almost simultaneously with the King's ^.nnuncia-
tion, after an exciting controversy with tliree Parliaments,
of his purpose to govern without Parliaments in future. It
might well appear to him, that, in the contests which per-
haps were to follow, his task would be made easier if num-
bers of the patriots could be tempted to absent themselves
from the kingdom ; and when he should have succeeded,
and the laws and liberties of England should be stricken
down, there would be nothing in his past grants to embar-
rass him in his treatment of the exiles, and his arm would
be long enough to reach and strong enough to crush them
in their distant hiding place. Or, if no scheme so definite
as this was entertained, the grant of the charter, inviting
attention to a distant object, might do something for his
present relief, by breaking up the dangerous concentration
of the thoughts of the Puritans on the state of affairs at
home." ^

In writing history, as in dealing with the actual
affairs of life, it is as dangerous to see too far as
not to see far enough ; and the historian who philoso-
phizes as to the possible deep motives of state which
may have influenced the action of a ruler, always pre-
supposes that the ruler in question was indeed in-
fluenced by deep motives. Of this in the case of
Charles I. there is no evidence. It would have been
1 Palfrey, i. 391-2.

1634. CHARLES I. 273

natural enough that broad and far-sighted considera-
tions like those suggested should have entered into
the mind and influenced the policy of Wentworth, for
he was a man of capacity, a statesman of the Riche-
lieu and Bismarck type. Laud also, though not a
statesman, was a man who in his public action worked
on a plan and to a given result. But there is nothing
to connect Wentworth at any time with the course
pursued by Charles in reference to the plantations in
New England ; and not until 1634 did Laud give any
attention to them. In February, 1634, the Primate
became the head of the tribunal then organized to at-
tend to colonial affairs, and from that time forward
the royal policy was clearly enough defined. A guid-
ance both of head and hand becomes then apparent ;
but in 1629, when the charter was granted, Bucking-
ham, who was as incapable of a consecutive policy as
Charles himself, had been assassinated only the year
before, and the place beside the throne made vacant by
his death was not yet filled. Wentworth, just bought
off from the patriot side, was busy in the North.
Laud, still Bishop of London, was occupied with his
ecclesiastical reforms. Thus, for the time being, the
King governed by his own hand.

The character of Charles I. has been sufficiently
discussed, nor is it necessary to speak of it here.
An ordinary English gentleman of his time, correct
in deportment and gifted with no little ajjpreciation
of finer thino^s, he walked according: to his lig-hts in
the sphere in which he was born. Unfortunately for
him, he was born in the purple. Narrow-minded by
nature, he was, except in matters of deportment, ut-
terly unequal to his position ; but this he never real-
ized. Accordingly, feeling himself a king, he never

274 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1634.

questioned his own capacity to rule ; and, after the
manner of small, obstinate men, believing in few
things he believed in them intensely. Chief among
these was his own right divine. At his court all
things went by royal favor. As a matter of course,
such a very finite creature as he being the source of all
bounties, the palace became from top to bottom a nest
of corrupt intrigues ; and, under these circumstances,
it almost goes without saying that considerations of
state policy had nothing to do with such trifles as the
granting of the charter of the Massachusetts Bay
company, or the outcome of the first assault upon it.
As Allerton, while representing the Plymouth people
in London at this very time, found out to their cost,
when any favor at Whitehall was wanted, "by the
way many riddles must be resolved, and many locks
must be opened with the silver, nay, the golden key."
So, when the charter of the Massachusetts company
was granted, it was probably granted without partic-
ular consideration. The Earl of Warwick and Lord
Dorchester, or more probably the Earl of Warwick
through Lord Dorchester, asked for it, and the in-
fluence of the latter at court easily secured it. It
may well be questioned whether the King gave a
moment's serious thought to the matter. His idea
of New England was probably much what ours of
Alaska is now. It was a remote wilderness beyond
the seas ; and if any one, especially Puritans, wanted
to try the experiment of living there, they were wel-
come to do so. They might also manage their affairs
in their own way.

In like manner, after the charter was thus carelessly
gi'anted, and when the attack of 1632 was made, it
again became a mere question of influence at court.

16^4. COURT INTRIGUES. 275

The King himself neither knew nor cared anything
about the matter. His thoughts were absorbed in
questions of tonnage and poundage, and royal monop-
olies ; he was pondering over the war with Spain, and
what Wentworth was doing in Ireland ; he was devis-
ing vengeance against the opposition in England, and
meditating upon the church system he meant to intro-
duce into Scotland. So when Gardiner's and Mor-
ton's complaint was stirred before the Privy Council
by Gorges, the decision turned not upon the right or
wrong of the matter, or any possibilities of future
empire beyond the seas, but it was a struggle for in-
fluence in the King's audience chamber. Cradock
and Saltonstall and Downing there showed themselves
better befriended than Gorges ; and so the latter now
suffered another " shrowd check."

But in this field of operations Sir Ferdinando was
an opponent not safe to despise. The palace of White-
hall was a house with many ante-chambers, and if
Warwick had influence in some of these, Gorges could
secure it in others. He had been working through
influence at court all his life. By means of it he had
extricated himself from the Essex treason in 1601 ;
and if influence at court could have brought it about,
he would have become the ruler of a trans- Atlantic do-
main in 1623. As he had been in 1601 and in 1623, so
was he in 1634. His plan of operations was, too, well
conceived. He still meant to possess for himself and
his descendants a principality in America, and to rule
there as a royal governor. To bring this about he
had to be strong at court ; and he went to work to
make himself strong at court just as he had gone to
work twelve years before. He had then sought to in-
fluence James through Buckingham. He now influ-

276 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1634.

encecl Charles through Laud. He secured the ear of
the Primate, who hated a Puritan ; and once he had
secured the ear of the Primate he was sure of that of
the King.

For thirty years Gorges had been ruining himself
in futile efforts to plant New England ; and now the
planting of New England was accomplishing itseK
not only without any aid from him, but in a way
which threatened his interests. As he expressed it,
" people of all sorts flocked thither in heaps ; " and
those people, not content with refusing to recognize
his title to a domain, mutilated and abused his agents,
and drove them into exile. The Council for New
England was clearly not equal to the task of dealing
with such a crisis as this. It was necessary to pro-
ceed through some other agency, — to have recourse to
new expedients. The following scheme seems accord-
ingly to have been devised : — The entire territory
still held under the grant of 1620, extending from
Maine to New Jersey, was to be again divided in sev-
eralty among the remaining members of the Council
for New England, and the letters-patent of the Coun-
cil were then to be surrendered to the King, who
was to confirm the division just made. The Coun-
cil being thus relegated to the domain of things for
which no further use exists, the King was to assume
the direct government of the whole territory, and ap-
point a governor-general to rule over it. Sir Ferdi-
nando Gorges was then to be appointed the King's
governor-general. He would thus go out to his prov-
ince clothed with full royal authority ; and the ques-
tion would then be, not between the settlers of
Massachusetts Bay, armed with a charter from the
King, and that " carcass in a manner breathless " the

1634. A WELL-DEVISED SCHEME. 277

Council for New England, but between a small body
of disobedient colonists and the King's own represen-
tative. It was a well-devised scheme.

Here, at last, was a definite policy in regard to New
England, and it was a policy which fitted in natu-
rally with the great scheme of prerogative government
which Wentworth and Laud were then welding into
shape for the whole British Empire. It was " Thor-
ough " applied to the colonies. Gorges was to do on
a small scale in Massachusetts what Wentworth was
already doing on a large scale in Ireland. The first step
in carrying out the new policy — that policy which had
its origin in the greed of Gorges, and found its motive
force in Laud's bigotry — was the appointment of the
royal commission for regulating plantations, with the
Archbishop at its head. Save the lack of enforcing
power, there was no limit to its authority. It could
revoke charters ; it could remove and appoint govern-
ors ; it could even break settlements up if deemed
best ; it could inflict punishment upon all offenders,
either by imprisonment " or by loss of life or mem-
ber." It was, in fact, a commission after Charles'
own heart, for it represented Right Divine. In it the
kingly authority stood out clean cut and absolute ; no
earthly power intervened between the people and the
royal will. The letters-patent bore date the 10th of
April, 1634, and the new tribunal provided for in
them was not slow in proceeding to its appointed
work; while the extent of Gorges' influence in it
may be inferred from the fact that three weeks later
Thomas Morton, Gorges' dependant, wrote to New
England that the Massachusetts charter had already
been brought in view, and, for manifest abuses there
discovered, declared to be void. He further stated

278 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. April,

that a general governor was to be sent over at once,
and with him he, Morton, was to return to America.
It is not quite clear whether the decisive hearing
which resulted in this decision took place before the
Privy Council and led to the appointment of the
commission, or whether it took place before the com-
mission itself.^ Wherever it took place, it seems to
have savored strongly of Star Chamber and High
Commission methods ; and Cradock, Saltonstall and
Humphrey had there learned that influences were
at work not to be controlled by them. Indeed, the
first and last named would seem to have been be-
rated by Laud, in true High Commission stjde, as
a couple of impostors and knaves, and they " had
departed the council chamber with a pair of cold
shoulders." Ratcliff had again told his tale of wrong
and shown his scars to a tribunal, the members of
which, though not slow themselves in cropping of ears,
seem to have looked upon that form of mutilation
as a prerogative of their own. So far as Ratcliff

1 R'^ferring to the failure of the complaint to the Privy Council in
1634. Morton's language is : — "I have at this time taken more deliber-
ation and brought the matter to a better pass. And it is thus brought
about, that the King hath taken the business into his own hands. The
Massachusetts patent, by order of the Council, was brought in view ;
the privileges there granted well scanned upon, and at the Council
Board in public, and in the presence of Sir Richard Saltonstall and
the rest, it was declared, for manifest abuses there discovered, to be
void. The King hath reassumed the whole business into his own
hands, appointed a committee of the board, and given order for a
general governour of the whole territory to be sent over. The com-
mission is passed the privy seal ; I did see it, and the same was 1 mo.
Maii sent to the Lord Keeper to have it pass the great seal for confir-
mation" (Winthrop, ii. *190.)

This letter was dated the 1st of May. The hearing was presum-
ably before the Privy Council, and the committee here spoken of
was the Laud Commission.

1634. THE CROPPING OF EARS. 279

was concerned, they certainly had the will, and they
did not seem to lack the power, to avenge him. He
had described, apparently, the forms of marriage and
the methods of preaching in use at Boston. It is.
needless to say that this had acted as a hot incentive
on the Primate, who seems thereupon to have flamed
forth in one of his outbursts of nervous anger, in
which " he looked as though blood would have gushed
out of his face, and did shake as if he had been
haunted with an ague fit." In his wrath he now on the
spot promised the witness, in retaliation for liis own
ears, the cropping of those of Governor Winthrop.
Fortunately for John Winthrop and Jghn Endicott
the ocean rolled between Canterbury and themselves.
The production of the charter had already been
ordered by a vote of the Privy Council of the 21sfc of
February, — two months and a half before. Of this
the Lord Conuuissioners were, of course, aware. In
obedience to the injunction then laid upon him, Cra-
dock had transmitted the order of the Council, accom-
panied by a letter of his own to Winthrop, who
received both letter and order in July. Then began
that struggle for the possession of the charter which
continued for fifty years, and until the decisions of an
English court had destroyed its political value. But
the charter never went back to England. When this
first demand for it reached him, Winthrop was no
longer governor, for at the election in the previous
May, Dudley had been chosen to supersede him. The
new governor laid Cradock's letter, together with the
order of the Council, before the Assistants, and after
grave deliberation it was resolved to procrastinate.
So the letter was treated as an unofficial one, and as
such answered to Cradock ; but as for the charter, it

280 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1634

was replied that it could be transmitted only under
the authority of the General Court of Massachusetts,
which was not to meet until September. This missive
was then entrusted to Governor Edward Winslow, of
Plymouth, who at that time went out as joint agent
of the two colonies, reaching London in the early
autumn.

It was in Winslow's power only to say that he had
not brought the charter ; but its production does not
seem to have been again immediately called for. Pos-
sibly the Lords Commissioners may have expected that
the General Court would at its September session
order it to be sent over ; more probably, in view of
the course which had then been decided upon, an ex-
amination of it was no longer considered necessary.
The next spring, that of 1635, had been fixed upon
by Gorges and Mason as the time for decisive action,
when the charter was to be vacated, and Gorges, in
the mean time appointed governor-general, was to go
out to New England with a force sufficient to compel
obedience. But all this implied a considerable equip-
ment, and consequent outlay of money. Shipping
had in the first place to be provided, and a large vessel
was accordingly put upon the stocks. Rumor said,
also, that the new governor-general was to take out
with him a force of no less than a thousand soldiers.
Whether this was true or not, there can be little doubt
that all through the winter of 1634-5 active prepara-
tions were going on.

Meanwhile Winslow had other business in hand
which took him before the Lords Commissioners of
Plantations. He laid before them a petition on be-
half of the colonies for authority to resist certain
Dutch and French encroachments, — a proceeding

1634. "A SMOOTH TONGUED FELLOW:' 281

which the cautious Winthrop thought not well ad-
vised, as it might seem to imply that such action on
the part of the colonies needed to be authorized, and
in this way it could be drawn into a precedent. Wins-
low none the less presented his petition, and several
hearings were had upon it. Fully informed as to
everything that went on before the Lords Commission-
ers, Gorges did not view this move with favor. It
looked to military or diplomatic measures to be taken
within his proposed jurisdiction, and the conduct of
which should clearly be entrusted to him as governor-
general. He accordingly went to work to circumvent
Winslow, and what ensued threw a great deal of light
on other things which took place at that time. It
showed what a puppet Laud in these matters was in
Gorges' hands, and how cunningly the latter pulled
the strings.

Winslow, who long afterwards was described by
Samuel Maverick ^ as " a Smooth tongued Cunning
fellow, who soon got himselfe into Favour of those
then in Supreame power, against whom it was in
vaine to strive," apparently managed well the busi-
ness he now had in hand. His suit prospered ; for he
submitted to the Lords a plan for accomplishing the
end desired, without any charge being imposed on the
royal exchequer, and was on the point of receiving a
favorable decision. Suddenly the voice of the Arch-
bishop was heard. What followed was intensely char-
acteristic, but Bradford best tells the story : —

" When Mr. Winslow should have had his suit granted,
(as indeed upon the point it was), and should have been
confirmed, the Archbishop put a stop upon it, and Mr-

^ Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 240.

282 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. Feb.

Winslow, thinking to get it freed, went to the board again ;
but the Birshop, Sir Ferdinando, and Captain Mason, had,
as it seems, procured Morton (of whom mention is made
before, and his base carriage,) to complain ; to whose com-
plaints Mr. Winslow made answer to the good satisfaction
of the board, who checked Morton and rebuked him sharply,
and also blamed Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Mason, for
countenancing him. But the Bishop had a further end and
use of his presence, for he now began to question Mr.
Winslow of many things ; as of teaching in the church
publicly, of which Morton accused him, and gave evidence
that he had seen and heard him do it ; to which Mr. Wins-
low answered, that some time (wanting a minister) he did
exercise his gift to help the edification of his brethren, when
they wanted better means, which was not often. Then
about marriage, the which he also confessed, that, having
been called to the place of magistracy, he had sometimes
married some ; and further told their lordships that mar-
riage was a civil thing, and he found nowhere in the Word
of God that it was tied to ministry. Again, they were
necessitated so to do, having for a long time together at first
no minister ; besides it was no new thing, for he had been
so married himself in Holland, by the magistrates in their
State-House. But in the end (to be short), for these things,
the Bishop, by vehement importunity, got the board at last
to consent to his commitment ; so he was committed to the
Fleet, and lay there seventeen weeks, or thereabouts, before
he could get to be released. And this was the end of this
petition and this business."

The friends and agents of the colonies being thus
disposed of, — Cradock, Saltonstall and Humphrey
having departed the Council Chamber witli *' a pair of
could shoulders," and Winslow, the " Smooth tongued
Cunning fellow, . . . against whom it was in vaine
to strive," being laid safely by the heels in the Fleet
prison, — the way for Gorges seemed clear. His plan

1G35. NEW ENGLAND AGAIN APPORTIONED. 283

was now rapidly developed. At a meeting of those
still composing the Council, held at Lord Gorges'
house on the 3d of February, a redivision of the sea-
coast of New England was agreed upon. Sir Ferdi-
nando and Captain Mason both were present, but,
since the Gardiner-Ratcliff attack on the Massachu-
setts Bay company two years before, the Earl of War-
wick had apparently withdrawn from all connection
with Gorges.^ He was not, therefore, included in the
redivision. This, like the original partition at the
Greenwich lot-drawing of 1623, covered the entire
North Atlantic coast, from New Jersey to Nova Sco-
tia, all which was now divided into eight parcels and
assigned to as many persons, among whom were the
Marquis of Hamilton, and the Earls of Lenox, Surrey,
Carlisle and Stirling. The coast of Massachusetts,
from Narragansett Bay to Salem, fell to Lord Gorges ;
Sir Ferdinando received Maine as his share ; and
Captain Mason, New Hampshire and Cape Ann.

The division thus agreed upon was to take effect
simultaneously with the surrender of the charter. Ten
weeks later, at another meeting at Lord Gorges'
house, a paper was read and entered upon the records,
in which the reasons for surrendering the charter were
stated at length. At a subsequent meeting, held on
the 26th of April at the Earl of Carlisle's chamber
at Whitehall, a petition to the King was submitted
and approved, praying that separate patents might
be issued securing to the associates in severalty the
domains assigned them. A declaration from the King
was also then read, in which his intention of appoint-
ing Sir Ferdinando Gorges governor-general was for-
mally announced ; for the Primate of England and

1 Winsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist, of Am. iii, 309, 370.

284 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. July,

Chief of the Lords Commissioners for Plantations,
speaking by the mouth of the King, did not propose
'' to suffer such numbers of people to runn to mine,
and to religious intents to languish for want of timely
remedye and soveraigne assistance." New England
was thus once more platted out among certain of the
nobility and gentry about King Charles' court ; and
it only remained to pass the deeds before proceed-
ing to eject the present occupants, — unless, indeed,
these last should recognize the new titles, and make
such compromise with their possessors as might yet be
possible. In the matter of perfecting the new titles,
matters were not allowed to rest. The details of the
division had been arranged on the 3d of February, and
on the 26th of April patents were petitioned for. Ten
days later, Thomas Morton was " entertained to be
Solliciter for confirmation of the said Deeds under the
Great Scale, as also to prosecute suite at Law for the
repealing of the Patent belonging to the Massachu-
setts Company. And is to have for fee twenty shil-
lings a terme, and such further reward as those who
are interested in the affaires of New England shall
thinke him fitt to deserve upon the Judgement given
in the Cause." A month afterwards, on the 7th of
June, 1635, the formal resignation of the grand patent
took place.

Keturnins: now to the course of simultaneous events
in New England, where great alarm prevailed, no
sooner had Winslow, bearing the letter to Cradock,
started on his voyage in July, 1634, than Governor
Dudley and his brother magistrates went down to
Castle Island, with "divers of the ministers and
others," and took steps towards fortifying the en-
trance to Boston Harbor. The deputy, Koger Lud-

1634. ''KING WINTHROP." 285

low, was appointed to oversee the work. A week
later, William Jeffrey came up from Wessagusset,
and, going to Winthrop's house, gave him a letter
which he had shortly before received from Thomas
Morton. It was dated on the 1st of May, — more
than two months after Cradock's letter, — and, writ-
ten in a tone of high jubilation, contained new and
startling information. The writer began by address-
ing Jeffrey as " My very good Gossip," and doubtless
he had known him well in the olden days, when " the
owner of Passonagessit, to have the benefit of com-
pany, left his habitation in the winter and reposed at
Wessaguscus." The man to whom Morton exultingly
wrote had been one of those who contributed to the
charge of his first arrest by Standish, but now Mor-
ton gave him all the news, and most correctly, too.
Clearly the writer of the letter was in a position to be
well informed. Referring to the order for the im-
mediate production of the charter, he described the
scenes before the Lords Commissioners. He declared
that the King had even then — a year before the
event took place — given order for a general governor
to be sent over ; " and I," he added, " now stay to re-
turn with the governour, by whom all complainants
shall have relief." Then he exclaimed, — " Repent,
you cruel separatists, repent, there are as yet but forty
days. If Jove vouchsafe to thunder, the charter and
kingdom of the separatists will fall asunder. Repent,
you cruel schismatics, repent." ^ He speaks signifi-

1 It would seem that Morton intended this letter should reach Win-
throp. It would also seem that the New English Canaan was not
written until after this letter, as in the last lines of the book he ap-
parently alludes to it, repeating the very words quoted in the text
and adding- that he used them in " letters returned into new Canaan,*'
referring' doubtless to this letter to Jeffrey, dated May 1, 1634.

286 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 16^4.

cantly of Cradock's and Humphrey's " great friends,"
alluding, doubtless, to the Earls of Lincoln and of
"Warwick, who had been unable longer to protect
them; and disclosed the source of his own influence
with the Archbishop by referring to '' King Win-
throp, with all his inventions and his Amsterdam
fantastical ordinances, his preachings, marriages, and
other abusive ceremonies, which do exemplify his de-
testation to the Church of England, and the contempt
of his Majesty's authority and wholesome laws."

There was a good deal of exaggeration in these tid-
ings. Things only planned were, for instance, repre-
sented as having actually occurred. Doubtless, too,
as they read and re-read the letter, the magistrates
nursed themselves in the belief that the exaggerations
in it must be even greater than they really were. If
they did, they but deluded themselves. The General
Court met on the 25th of August, and, while it was
still in session, vessels arrived bringing despatches
which confirmed everything material that ]\Iorton had
written. A full copy of the order-in-council establish-
inor the Lords Commissioners of Plantations was re-
ceived, and private letters further advised the colonists
that ships were being fitted out. and soldiers got ready
for embarkation. Though ostensibly provided to send
a new governor to Virginia, these, as Winthrop wrote,
were " suspected to be against us, to compel us, by
force, to receive a new governour, and the discipline
of the Church of England, and the laws of the Com-
missioners."

Stirred by these tidings, the General Court took up
the matter of fortifications in a vigorous spirit. The
regular drilling of the train bands was provided for.
A council was chosen " for the managing and order-

1634-5. BE AC OX HILL. 287

ing of any war that might befall for the space of a
year next ensuing." Steps were taken to get arms
and ammunition together. Defences were ordered at
Dorchester and Charlestown, as well as at Castle
Island, and the magistrates were empowered to im-
press laborers to hurry them to completion.

It was in Xovember, a few weeks after this court
adjourned, that Endicott mutilated the royal banner
at Salem, cutting from it the red cross. '' Much mat-
ter," Winthrop \vi*ote. ** was made of this, as fearing
it would be taken as an act of rebellion, or of like
hio^h nature, in defacins; the Kino;'s colors : thouo'h
the truth were it was done upon this opinion, that the
red cross was given to the King of England by the
Pope as an ensign of victory, and so a superstitious
thing and relique of Antichrist." ^ None the less it
was a characteristic act, and the fittest answer Massa-
chusetts could have made to the threatened encroach-
ments of the Crown. Then, in January, just before the
Council for New Englandiuet in Londo*n to take the
steps which were to precede the surrender of its char-
ter, all the ministers were summoned to Boston to hold
solemn conference with the Governor and the Assist-
ants. The question was formally submitted to them, —
" What ought we to do if a general governor should
be sent out of England ? '' — and the clergy replied
with one voice that '' we ought not to accept him, but
defend our la\\-ful possessions if we are able." In
March, when the General Court met again, it was
ordered that the works on Castle Island should be
completed at once, and cannon mounted there. Up
to that time, the loftiest and most prominent of the
three rounding hills which composed in largest part

1 Wintlirop, i. *146.

288 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. April,

the peninsula on which Boston now stood, — that one
of the three which, rising behind and between the
other two, whose broken bluffs shouldered the tide on
the bay front, gave from its triple peaks its original
name of Tri mount to the place,^ — this had been
known as Sentry Hill. It was now ordered that
" there should be forthwith a beacon set upon it," to
give notice to the country of any danger, and it was
thereafter known as Beacon Hill. At the same time
a military commission was established, with arbitrary
powers extending even to life and death, and the free-
man's oath was exacted of every one. Maverick, who
still lived at Noddle's Island, and whose connection
with Gorges was not forgotten, under penalty of an
hundred pounds was ordered to remove himself and
his family to Boston ; and he was forbidden to enter-
tain any stranger for more than a single night without
the leave of an Assistant. Shortly after April came
in " There was an Alarme presently given, [the town]
being informed by a Shallop that they had seen a
great shipe, and a smaller one goe into Cape Ann
Harbour, and early in the Morning, being Sabbath
day, all the Traine Bands in Boston, and Townes ad-
jacent were in Armes in the streets, and posts were
sent to all other places to be in the same posture, in
which they continued untill by their scouts they found
her to be a small shipe of Plymouth and a shallope
that piloted her in. The generall and Publick report
was that it was to oppose the landing of an Enemie,
a Governour sent from England, and with that they
acquainted the Commanders." ^ It was but a false
alarm ; but, none the less, the prompt action taken

1 Shurtleff, Description of Boston, 41 ; Mem. Hist, of Boston, i. 524.

2 Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 240.

1635. ''GOD'S CHOSEN PEOPLE." 289

showed the sense of imminent danger which then
prevailed. Meanwhile, all through these events and
preparations a significant silence was preserved on
the subject of the charter. The order for its im-
mediate transmission to England lay on the table of
the General Court ; but that body met in session after
session and took no notice of it. The people and the
deputies, of one mind with the magistrates and the
ministers, projiosed to '* defend their lawful posses-
sions, if they were able."

So matters stood on either side of the ocean in
1635. Koyal prerogative was arrayed against actual
possession ; but Sir Ferdinando Gorges was not des-
tined to realize the dream of his life, and Winthrop
saw in the failure a direct interposition of God's hand.
The Lord, he said, " preserved and prospered his peo-
ple here beyond ordinary ways of providence ; " and
then he pointed out how Mason, " a man in favor at
court," had seen all his designs frustrated, and died
bewailing his enmity against God's chosen people;
and how Gorges never prospered, but, after being at
large expense on account of his province here, "he
lost all." The probability is that, in this last state-
ment, the pious Governor touched on the true, though
matter-of-fact, explanation of Gorges' failure and his
own safety. Gorges kept attempting that which he
did not have the means to carry out ; and so failed,
and " lost all." In this commonplace way, and in no
other, " the Lord frustrated their design." The effort
of 1634-5 was a mere repetition, on a somewhat larger
and more resounding scale, of the effort of 1623. The
latter had resulted in the expedition under Robert
Gorges, and the former set all the courts in England
in noisy motion. Neither of them brought anything

290 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1635.

about. They both failed, too, from the same cause,

— want of money. The machinery in each case was
imposing, and there was a great deal of it ; but, when
it came to doing anything in a practical way, it was ap-
parent that behind the machinery there was nothing
but Sir Ferdinando Gorges, — an active-minded, ad-
venturous soldier, skilled in court ways, persistent and
full of resource, but to the last degree impecunious.
And so, when action was at last necessary, the move-
ment stopped in 1635, just as it haxl stopped in 1623.
In the later attempt Gorges had enlisted with him the
energetic Mason, and, probably through him, a ship
was to be provided. The building of this ship, with-
out doubt, strained the resources of the two to the ut-
most ; and when, in launching, it suffered a mishap, —
again probably from insufficient means, — they could
not repair the damage it had sustained. From the
King they could get commissions and commissioners,

— from the Archbishop they could get blessings for
themselves and bannings for their opponents, — but
when it came to men, to money and to supplies, nei-
ther King nor Archbishop had any to spare. Charles
was then seeking to keep the royal exchequer from
being absolutely empty by deriving an uncertain reve-
nue from the illegal imposition of taxes on trade, and
by the exaction of fines levied upon the great nobles
for encroachments on the royal forests ; indeed, it was
in this very year, 1635, that the ship-money writs
were issued, and, the next year, public offices were
sold.i Yet notwithstanding all this the treasury of
the King was hardly less empty than that of the
Council for New England ; and so Gorges found once
more that he had no one but himself to rely on. He

1 Gardiner, Hist, of Eng., 1603-1642, chs. Ixxiv., Ixxxii.

1635. THE QUO WARRANTO. 291

could go just so far, but no step further. His noble
associates would accept the domains he assigned them
on paper, but they would venture nothing for actual
possession. The hands of the King w^ere full at home,
and the Primate was powerless out of England.

Of that '' strong, new-built ship [which] in the very
launching fell all in pieces, no man knew how," ^ no-
thing more was heard. It probably was sold for debt,
and repaired with no great trouble by its purchaser.
The King's governor-general did not go out to New
England ; and he failed to go out for the simple reason
that he had not the means to go out, or, if he should
go out, the strength to sustain himself when he got
there. So the angry cloud in the east, after turning
Massachusetts into an armed camp, gradually van-
ished away in a distant rumble of harmless thunder
in the English courts of law.

In June, 1635, the attorney-general filed in the
King's Bench a writ of quo warranto against the
Massachusetts Bay company. This was the work
which Thomas Morton had a month before been " en-
tertained to prosecute," and the promptness of the
attorney-general's action would seem to indicate that
the new agent for the Council had earned his fee for
that term at least, and even deserved some " further
reward." The scheme was to set the charter aside,
not because of any abuse of the powers lawfully con-
ferred by it, but as being void ah initio. Every title
to land held under it would be thus vitiated. In due
course of law certain of the patentees appeared, deny-
ing the alleged usurpation on their part, and formal
judgments were entered against them. Cradock made
default, and was convicted of the usurpation charged.

1 D'Ewes, Autobiography, ii. 118.

292 THE ASSAULT RENEWED. 1635.

Judgment was then entered that the franchises should
be taken into the King's hands. The patentees in
New England made no appearance, and were out-
lawed. In the eye of the law, therefore, the charter
was no longer anything more than a worthless parch-
ment. In point of fact it was all that it had ever
been ; for the colonists disregarded the decision at
Westminster, and Gorges was powerless. As for the
King and the Primate, they were occupied with mat-
ters of more pressing urgency.

The summer of 1635 passed away, and the autumn
found Gorges no nearer his governorship ; but hope
sprang eternal in his breast. Towards the end of No-
vember, a meeting of the associates of the dissolved
Council for New England was held at the house of
Lord Stirling, and a vote was passed that steps should
be taken for getting particular patents issued as soon
as possible for the land divisions agreed upon in the
previous February. Morton was, in fact, reminded
that things were not moving rapidly enough. It was
also ordered that a petition be drawn, for presentation
to the King in the Council's name, for an " allowance
to be made for the maintenance and supportation of
the Governour in such estate as might sort with the
honour thereunto belons^ino:."

But a heavy blow was now impending over Gorges.
Captain John Mason, of New Hampshire, at this time
died. Not improbably the meeting of the Council of
November 26, and its action to hasten the issuing of
the patents, was had in view of his condition, for his
will is dated on that same day.^ He died within the
following month, and his death lopped away the right
hand of Gorges' enterprise. Doubtless, after his na^

1 Tuttle. Captain John Mason, 407.

1635. A BATTLE LOST. 293

ture, the old soldier, though now somewhat stricken
in years, for in 1635 he was already verging towards
threescore and ten, kept up a stout heart and looked
forward to his departure to his government with each
recurring spring. It was not to be. King Charles
never had any money to spare to furnish forth expe-
ditions against his stubborn subjects of the Massa-
chusetts Bay. Their battle was to be fought out in
England.

CHAPTER XVII.

EXIT GORGES.

What has since come to be known as the solidarity
of the nations was not dreamed of in the state lore of
the seventeenth century ; but, none the less, between
the years 1630 and 1640 it made itself very potently
felt. The insignificance of the Massachusetts colony
at the Whitehall of Charles I. has already been re-
ferred to.i That colony was, indeed, of such little
moment in the minds and eyes of the English people
and the English court, that few, except those engaged
in navigation, or for other reasons specially informed,
could have placed it on the map. Even Scotland was
then looked upon as a remote and unimportant region,

— so remote and so unimportant that Clarendon says,

— " No man ever inquired what was doing in Scot-
land, nor had that kingdom a place or mention in one
page of any gazette, so little the world heard or thought
of that people." Yet it is not possible to understand
why things chanced for Massachusetts as at this time
they did, without bearing constantly in mind the par-
allel course of events in England ; w^iile the course
of events, and the reason of men's action in England,
become enigmas quite insoluble, unless a key to them
is sought in the course of events in Scotland. Thus,
between 1635 and 1640 it was in Scotland that the

1 Supra, 274.

1634-5. SHIP-MONEY. 295

immediate future of New England was receiving its
shape.

To understand the sequence of the history now to
be narrated it is necessary, therefore, to have clearly
in mind the events that were taking place at the same
time in several countries. It will be remembered that
the Board of Lords Commissioners for Foreign Plan-
tations, the origin and policy of which has just been
described, was organized in April, 1634, and at the
same time it had been decided to send out a governor-
general to New England. Morton's jubilant letter to
Jeffreys, announcing the fact, was written a few days
later, on May ^. At this very time Attorney-Gen-
eral Noy was turning over the musty bundles of rec-
ords in the Tower, hunting up precedents for his new
scheme of a ship-money tax, — " thinking that he
could not give a clearer testimony that his knowledge
in the law was greater than all other men's, than by
makins: that law ^vhich all other men believed not to
be so." 1 He died during the next summer, but Sir
John Finch took the thing where the other left it,
" and, being a judge, carried it up to that pinnacle
from whence he almost broke his own neck." It was
on the 20th of the following October that the first
ship-money writ was issued ; and on the 27th of the
following month the Assistants met at Governor Dud-
ley's house " to advise about the defacing of the cross
in the ensign at Salem " by Endicott. Seven months
later, in June, 1635, the Council for New England
surrendered its patent, and King Charles, in accept-
ing the surrender, declared it his intention to ap-
point Sir Ferdinando Gorges his governor-general.
Simultaneously with this the attorney-general, Sir
1 Clarendon (Oxford, 1849), B. I. §§ 157, 158.

296 EXIT GORGES. 1637.

John Banks, instituted his quo warranto proceedings
against the Massachusetts company, to effect the over-
throw of its charter; though it was two years later,
and near the close of 1637, before judgment was
entered up on these proceedings and the charter de-
clared vacated. At the same term of the courts at
which this judgment was entered, the great twenty-
shilling ship-money case, in which Hampden was de-
fendant, was argued through two entire weeks before
the twelve judges ; and, the succeeding month of
June, judgment was rendered for the Crown. Be-
tween the argument in the ship-money case and the
judgment, the tenor of which last was everywhere per-
fectly well known in advance, the Lords Commission-
ers for Plantations had sent out to Boston peremptory
orders for the immediate transmission to London of
the now vacated charter.

The direct issue had at last been made, and, to out-
ward seeming, all things were moving smoothly to the
desired end ; but, in reality, grave doubts as to what
was to be the outcome of all their efforts must already
have crossed the minds of Gorges and Morton. Their
confidence had touched full flood the year before ; and,
indeed, during the early months of that year all things
had promised well for them. They, at least, had made
no error of calculation, had fallen into no mistake of
judgment, for they had attached themselves unreserv-
edly to the party of Laud ; and, whether in church or
in state, the Primate was now supreme. They had
done more than attach themselves to Laud's party ;
they had so played upon his prejudices as to enlist
him heart and soul in their cause. Had the council
chamber at Boston been within reach of the pursui-
vants of the High Commission, all matters would soon

1037. ARCHBISHOP LAUD. 297

have been settled in complete accordance with the
views of Kin"- Chaiios' '' Governour Generall " and
the " Sollicitor " of the Council for New England.
But, in addition to being far removed from Massa-
chusetts, the Archbishop at this time had a great
deal to think of. There was, indeed, little in the
three kingdoms, touching either church or state, to
which he was not giving his personal attention.^ He
was regulating the most minute details of university
discipline at Oxford, as its chancellor. He was also
chancellor of the University of Dublin, for the better
ordering of which he was securing a new charter and
body of statutes. He was making it extremely un-
comfortable for the foreign religious congregations in
England on the one side, and for the Puritans on the
other. In respect to both, he was allowing full swing-
to his passion for conformity. Then, he was in the
heat of a great controversy in regard to the proper
position of the communion-table in the churches ; but,
nevertheless, he found time to attend to the important
questions of copes, genuflexions and painted windows.
He was in frequent correspondence with Wentworth,
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, on affairs of state ; with
Bishop Juxon, also, whom he had uiade Lord-Treas-
urer ; with the merchants of London, on questions of
finance and trade. He was further causing a body of
church canons to be prepared for Scotland, which
kingdom he had decided must now be made to con-
form. In fact, when one reads the memoirs of those
seething times, it seems as if there was nothing in
which the venerable, well-meaning University Don
did not concern himself : and he always went to his

^ Gardiner, England, 160.3-1642, chs. xiv., Ixix., Ixxiii., Ixxviii.,
Ixxxiii. ; Green, Hist of English People, B. VII. ch. vi.

298 EXIT GORGES. 1G37.

work with that conscious rectitude of purpose, and in-
finite belief in his own wisdom, which ever have been
and ever will be the staff and the stay of the genuine
priest and inquisitor. Acute as well as vigorous in-
tellectually, he was the product of the cloister, placed
by his own unfortunate good fortune in the chair of
state. Devout and of untiring industry, he did his
whole duty, as he understood it, nor ever once flinched ;
while, with that faith in regulating which is native to
men of little mind, he meddled with everything, and
marred everything with which he meddled. In the
broad, strong light of subsequent events, he seems to
have been put just where he was put by a providential
dispensation ; for he was exquisitely calculated to lash
into open frenzy the latent tendencies of his time.^ By
nature and in purpose the most conservative of men,
he was fated to be one of the most revolutionary fac-
tors of a revolutionary time.

As the head of the Board of Lords Commissioners
it, of course, devolved on the Archbishop to regulate
New England. Fortunately for New England and
the English-speaking race, — most unfortunately for
himself, — he at the same time undertook to regulate
Scotland. The result was as if a thunderbolt had
fallen from a clear sky. In the spring of 1637, when
the quo icarranto proceedings against the Massachu-
setts company were drawing to their foregone conclu-
sion in the Court of King's Bench, the cause of Eng-
lish constitutional government .seemed fairlj^ desperate.
The chances were at best heavily against it. No par-
liament had sat for eight years. It was believed that
none would ever sit again. It was a misdemeanor
even to petition the King to call one ; and the country
1 Gardiner, England, ii. 126.

1637. A MITRED MARPLOT. 299

meanwhile was enjoying a season of prosperity such
as there was no record of before. The leading pa-
triots, having abandoned hope, were meditating volun-
tary exile. The Earl of Warwick secured the propri-
etorship of the Connecticut Valley ; Hampden bought
a tract of land on Narragansett Bay ; Lord Say and
Seale made arrangements to emigrate. The judges
had given their opinion in advance in favor of ship-
money ; and Wentworth, sujireme in Ireland, had
written to Laud, that, " since it is lawful for the King-
to impose a tax for the equipment of the navy, it
must be equally so for the levy of an army : and the
same reason which authorizes him to levy an army to
resist, will authorize him to carry that army abroad
that he may prevent invasion. Moreover, what is law
in England is law also in Scotland and Ireland. The
decision of the judges will, therefore, make the King
absolute at home and formidable abroad." In June,
1637, King Charles and his court believed that he
was thenceforth free to govern at his will.^

One thing only was necessary, and that thing the
energetic, clear-seeing Wentworth fully appreciated
and emphasized in his letters : '■ — " Let [the King] only
abstain from war for a few years that he may habitu-
ate his subjects to the payment of that tax." A brief
period of foreign peace and domestic plenty, — that
would clinch the matter. It was just this which Laud
was there to prevent. Without the slightest neces-
sity for so doing, but acting after his nature, he sud-
denly broke, and broke forever, the spell of deathly
quiet which lay brooding over the kingdom. Busy-
body that he was, this, of all possible times, was the
time he selected for establishing in Scotland the
Church of England ceremonial.

^ Green, Hist, of Eng. People, iii. 175.

300 EXIT GORGES. July,

Sunday, the 23d of Jidy, 1637, was fixed upon for
the trial of the experiment. The result does not need
to be retold here. AVhen Jenny Geddes flung that
mythical stool at the head of the Dean of Edinburgh
in the high church of St. Giles, she settled many
things besides the fate of episcopacy in Scotland.
Among those things was the danger then threaten-
ing the Massachusetts colony. Jenny Geddes' stool
struck Sir Ferdinando Gorges and Thomas Morton
quite as effectively as if the old crone had flung it
at them. It is one of the familiar incidents of the
history of that time that when Laud, on hearing the
first tidings of "Stony Sabbath,"^ hurried over from
Lambeth to Whitehall to confer with Charles, he met
in the ante-chamber Archie Armstrong, the King's
jester, who saluted the angry Primate with the ques-
tion,— "Who's the fool now, my Lord?" As the
jester soon found, to his cost, the author of that day's
mischief was in no mood to be joked about it ; nor
did it turn out for either of the two fools — him of
the mitre, or him of the cap-and-bells — a laughing
matter. But it may well be questioned whether from
the day Laud was thus addressed, forward to the days
when he and the King both mounted the scaffold, any
adviser of Charles I. ever gave one hour's serious and
consecutive thought to the affairs of New England,
or what was going on there. As the Rev. John Cot-
ton well put it in one of his discourses, — " God then
rocqued three nations, with shaking dispensations,
that he might procure some rest unto his people in
this wilderness." ^

A few months before the " Casting of the Stools,"

^ Or "Stonie-field Day." Fairfax Correspondence, i. 331.
2 Alagnalia, B. III. ch. i. § 33.

1637. ''STONIE-FIELD DAY." 301

probably in anticii^ation of the results of Sir John
Banks' q^io warranto proceedings, some sort of a
commission seems to have been prepared, by order of
the Lords Commissioners, creating a provisional gov-
ernment for New England, to act until final order
should be made as to the governor-generalship. A
copy of this commission was sent over to New Eng-
land through one George Cleeve, who subsequently
played a part of sufficient prominence in the early
history of Maine to be now mentioned in it as " an
equivocal character," who in certain land transactions
"' acted with great duplicity." ^ Cleeve arrived at
Boston on the 26th of June, in the same ship wdth
the young Lord Ley, a youth of " lowly and familiar
carriage," son and heir of the Earl of Marlborough,
who had come over moved by curiosity to see the
country. In addition to a copy of the commission for
the general government of New England, which was
probably addressed to Winthrop and others of the
colonial notables, Cleeve brought two other commis-
sions. One of these seems to have originated with
Morton, who at this time was in the pay of Cleeve,
as well as in that of the Council for New England.^
It was a patent under the privy seal, authorizing its
bearer to discover the great Lake Erocoise, of which
a most glowing account had been given in the " New-
English Canaan." The other was a commission from
Sir Ferdinando Gorges, empowering five or six of the
Massachusetts magistrates by name to govern his prov-
ince of New Somersetshire in Maine, which extended
from Casco Bay to the Kennebec, and withal to over-
see his servants and private affairs. The last docu-

1 Williamson, Hist, of yfaine, i. 668.
^ IV. Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. 331.

302 EXIT GORGES. 1637

ment had decidedly the aspect of a missive from a
governor-general in possibility to his humbler but
faithful associates, and was looked on much askance
by Winthrop, who noted it " as a matter of no good
discretion." Whenever he did not wish to recognize
or obey a distasteful mandate, it was the custom of
the first governor of Massachusetts to take advantage
of any irregularity he could find in the form or super-
scription of the document, and pass it by in respect-
ful silence. In this case the name of one of those men-
tioned in the commission was " mistaken, and another
[had] removed to Con.iecticut ; " so he excused " our
not intermeddling," adding moreover, in his dryest
manner, " that it did not appear to us what authority
he had to grant such a commission."

If this commission was, as seems probable, issued
some time in April, 1637, Gorges had then for full two
years been publicly designated as the governor-general
for New England, and was only awaiting the close of
the quo warranto proceedings to be formally ap-
pointed. Had events then taken a different turn, and
the ship-money tax become actually leviable, instead
of merely declared legal, there can be little question
that he would speedily have come over in person on a
king's vessel. He probably now looked forward to
this with the utmost confidence, and the commission
which Cleeve bore to Winthrop and the rest, to over-
see his private estate and affairs, Sir Ferdinando in-
tended as a sort of vice-regal intimation of his confi-
dence and friendliness of spirit. Three months later
the St. Giles liturgy riot took place in Scotland, and
from that time forward the King had no ships to spare
for New England. There are some indications that
the old courtier was now attempting a double and

1637-8. MORTON '^WHOLELY CASHEERD:' 803

well-nigh impossible game ; having the Primate on
one side, and his future lieges in America on the
other, he sought to play upon the antipathy to all
Puritans of the former, and yet was most anxious to
conciliate the latter. The ''New English Canaan"
was just issued from the press ; and, while its effect
on the Archbishop would be most beneficial, it could
not fail deeply to incense the friends of the Massa-
chusetts colony, who would be sure to transmit word
of it to New England. Accordingly, in September,
we find Gorges writing to Winthrop in a most con-
ciliatory tone. There is in his letter no suggestion of
the governor-generalship. On the contrary " Ferde :
Gorges " assures his " much respected freindes," among
whom is " John Winthropp," that the former knows
nothing and can learn nothing of the commission for
governing New England, while as to Morton, he de-
clares that the former " Sollicitor "is " wholely cash-
eerd from inter medlinge with anie our affaires here-
after." 1 But that such was really the case is, as will
presently be seen, at least open to doubt. It is far
more probable that in thus writing, the old knight
made use of a little of that Stuart kingcraft, which
in his younger days had been so much in vogue.

A year now elapsed during which Gorges made no
apparent headway. It was not in his nature to be in-
active, but such plans as from time to time he formed,
he must needs have unfolded to anxious and inatten-
tive ears ; while of any futile attempts he may have
made at action, no record remains. At last, in the
spring' of 1638, a few months after the close of the
quo warranto proceedings, the Board of Lords Com-
missioners gave feeble signs of life. On the 4th of
1 iv, Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. 331.

304 EXIT GORGES. 1638.

April it met at Whitekall. The Primate sat at the
head of the table, and among those about it were the
Lord-Keeper Coventry, the Lord-Treasurer Juxon,
and the elder Vane, whose son had then recently
returned from New England. Calling to mind the
futile demand which four years before had been sent
through Cradock to Winthrop, and taking official
notice of the issue of the quo warranto proceedings,
the Board now passed an order directing the clerk
in attendance to send out to Governor Winthrop a
peremptory command for the immediate surrender of
the charter. It was to come back to London by the
return voyage of the ship which took the command
out, — *' It being resolved," so the missive ran, " that,
in case of any further neglect or contempt by them
shewed therein, their lordships will cause a strict
course to be taken against them, and will move his
Majesty to reassume into his hands the whole planta-
tion." 1

This language certainly was not lacking in clear-
ness ; but the effect of it on those to whom it was
addressed must have been considerably impaired by
the fact that the ship which carried the missive to
New England was one of the fleet which also brought
out tidings of the fierce tiunnlt of enthusiasm which
accompanied the signing of that solemn and famous
Leao^ue and Covenant which worked the overthrow
of episcopacy in Scotland.^ The signing of the Cove-
nant had preceded the order for the return of the
charter by just one month.

None the less, when, in the early summer of 1638^

1 Hutchinson, State Pajjers, 105 ; lb. History, i. 86-7 ; Winthrop,
Life and Letters, ii. 224-8.

2 Gardiner, England, 1603-1642, ch. Ixxxvi.

1638. '^SPINXE SEVEN YEARS OUT.'' 305

the mandate of the Lords Commissioners reached Bos-
ton, it created no little alarm. There was nothing for
it but to procrastinate ; but to procrastinate meant a
great deal when six months had to elapse between each
step of a process. Winthrop, also, was an adept in
delay. With him in the governor's chair there was
reason in the colonists' boast, that they could " easily
spinne seven years out with writing at that distance,
and before that be ended a change [might] come." ^
This work of fence exactly suited his calm, cautious
tone of mind. Accordingly, when the order reached
him, he at first merely placed it on file, — acting on
the precedent established in the case of the similar
order of four years before, that nothing could be done
in the matter save by authority of the General Court,
which did not meet until the following September, it
being then perhaps the middle of June. When at
last September came, bringing with it the General
Court, " it was resolved to be best not to send [the
patent], because then such of our friends and others
in England would conceive it to be surrendered, and
that thereupon we should be bound to receive such a
governour and such orders as should be sent to us,
and many bad minds, yea, and some weak ones, among
ourselves, would think it lawful, if not necessary, to
accept a general governour."

The latter portion of the reasons here assigned
would have had a pecidiar interest for Sir Ferdinando
Gorges, but it is unnecessary to say that they were not
incorporated in the formal reply, which was couched in
the most humble and respectful language. There was
about it no suggestion of disobedience, — not the most
distant ring of defiance. Time and opportunity to
1 N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll. 1869, 85.

306 EXIT GORGES. 1638.

answer any charges which might be advanced against
the colony were asked for, and the utmost confidence
was expressed that all charges could be satisfactorily
met. Finally, five several reasons were given why a
return of the charter should not be insisted on. Two
of these were significant. If the colonists, it was
argued, were forced to abandon their settlements, the
country would fall into the hands of the French or
Dutch ; or else (aud in this alternative lay the sig-
nificance) the " common people " would conceive that
they were freed from their allegiance and proceed
to confederate themselves under a new government,
" which will be of dangerous example unto other plan-
tations and perilous to ourselves of incurring his
Majesty's displeasure, which we would by all means
avoid."

The reply, when framed, was signed by Edward
Rawson, the secretary of the colony, and would seem
to have been despatched early in September, for it
bore date as of the ^ of that month. In that case it
may have reached England in November. If it did,
it probably received small attention there ; for it was
in that same November, five months after the formal
decision of the twelve judges had been rendered
against Hampden in the ship-money case, that the
King and Primate, to their utter surprise and discom-
fiture, found themselves forced, for the moment at
least, to yield to the Scotch insurgents. Neither
money nor troops were available ; so the Covenant had
to be allowed, the liturgy was revoked, and a General
Assembly was summoned to meet at Glasgow. It
met, — and, having met, would not submit to be dis-
solved. So Charles and Laud, nursing their wrath
against a better occasion, had to look on from London

1639. THE BEGINNING OF THE END. 307

and see the patient work of years all undone in a
day. They, of course, at such a time gave no thought
to the Massacliusetts charter, nor cared one straw
whether it was brought to London or was kept in
Boston. In all probability Gorges and Morton alone
conned over Wiuthrop's cautious reply as it lay on
the clerk's desk in the office at Whitehall.

AYhen the next June came about, and the spring
fleet began to reach Boston, the Governor and all
his advisers were much concerned as to what answer
these vessels might bring to the reply of the previous
September. They knew well enough that complaints
had been frequently made, and that the deep displeas-
ure of the Archbishop had been excited against them.
Rumors of his threats had reached their ears. " But
the Lord wrought for us beyond all expectation, for
the petition which we returned in answer of the order
sent for our patent, was read before the lords and \rell
accepted . . . ; and ships came to us, from England
and divers other parts, with great store of people and
provisions of all sorts." As for the good acceptance
of the petition, it would have required far more than
the skill in composition on which Winthrop here so
quietly plumed himself to have turned Laud a hair's
breadth from the path he had marked out, had circum-
stances been other than they were. But they were
what they were ; and at the very time Winthrop in
Boston was complacently writing the words just quoted
from his journal, that ignominious military fiasco was
being enacted at Kelso, in Scotland, which proved for
both Charles and Laud the grotesque beginning of a
tragic end.

The first series of assaults on King Charles' char-
ter had come to an end, and nothinoj more was heard

308 EXIT GORGES. 1635-7.

of the royalist plan of a general governorship. Not
that Gorges then dismissed from his mind the dream
of the latter, for to do so was not in his nature. He
must have remained sanguine to the end ; and even as
late as 1640 we find him still deferring a visit to New
England which he had confidently proposed for the
spring of that year/ just as he had almost every year
since 1623 deferred similar visits proposed with equal
confidence. But Sir Ferdinando was now a man of
over seventy years, and his remaining time was short.
Nothing but a favorable turn in royal affairs could
have helped him, and of that, after the summer of
1639, the prospect ever grew less. The idea of going
out to New England in semi-royal state being in abey-
ance, his mind now characteristically turned to the
development of his own private domain, — that region
in Maine called New Somersetshire, which had fallen
to his lot in the distribution of 1635. He had then
sent out his nephew, William Gorges, in the capacity
of governor to represent him there ; and William
Gorges had established himself at Saco, the most
flourishing place north of the Massachusetts, and sup-
posed to have then contained some one hundred and
fifty inhabitants. He there, in 1636, organized the
first regular government which went into operation
within the limits of what, nearly two centuries later,
became the State of Maine. His jurisdiction seems
to have extended from what is now York to Penobscot
Bay, within which region, it has been estimated, there
already dwelt some fifteen hundred souls.

Governor William Gorges remained in America
about two years, during which he showed himself to
be a man of judgment and capacity, but in 1637 he

1 Baxter, Gorges, i. 181 ; iii. 295-6.

1639. THE PROVINCE OF MAINE. 309

had returned to England. After his return, and pre-
sumably acting upon his advice, Sir Ferdinando ex-
erted himself to procure a royal patent covering a yet
larger domain, and in this he at last succeeded ; for,
upon the 3d of April, 1639, he, his heirs and assigns,
were by letters patent created absolute Lords Pro-
prietors of the Province, or County, of Maine. The
region thus conferred covered sixty miles of seacoast
between the Piscataqua and the Kennebec, and ex-
tended one hundred and twenty miles into the interior.
It was equal in extent to a sixth part of the present
State. The powers and privileges enumerated in the
charter were of the largest description, — larger, it
has been asserted, than were ever granted by the
crown to any other individual.^

The old man now gave free rein to his love of regu-
lating; he showed that, had he ever been Governor-
General of New England, he would in this respect
have vied with his patron, the Archbishop. He divided
his entire wilderness into " eight bailiwicks, or counties,
and these again into sixteen several hundreds, conse-
quently into parishes and tithings." He provided for
a lieutenant, or deputy governor, to be the chief
magistrate in his own absence, a chancellor, a treas-
urer, a marshal, an admiral, a master of the ordi-
nance and a secretary. To these officials, all holding
authority directly from himself as lord proprietor, he
added eight deputies to be elected by the freeholders.^
A mere paper government it was, of course, utterly
unfitted for the time and place. But, such as it was,
he sent it out to America, in 1640 ; and shortly after,

^ Williamson, Hist, of Maine, i. 275; Baxter, Gorges, i. 180; iL
123.

2 Briefe Narration, B IE. clis. 3, 4.

810 EXIT GORGES. 1640.

Thomas Gorges — who, in a style regally grandiose,
he refers to as " my trusty and well beloved cousin "
— followed it, with a commission to be deputy-gov-
ernor. This gentleman, the son of Sir Ferdinando's
cousin Henry Gorges, was then twenty-two years of
age and had just finished his legal studies ; ^ he im
pressed Winthrop on his arrival in New England as
being " sober and well disposed," and, stopping a few
days in Boston before going to his government, he
sought the advice of the magistrates there. When
he got to Maine, he found everything in a bad way,
• — as bad indeed as well could be ; for an individual
known as the Rev. George Burdet had established
himself in supreme control. This Burdet — a most
unsavory character — had come to Salem in 1634,
where it is reported he at first made a favorable im-
pression and preached for a year or more, " his natural
abilities [being] good, his manners specious, and his
scholarship much above mediocrity." Getting into
trouble there, he went to New Hampshire, and roundly
denounced the Massachusetts colony in letters to Arch-
bishop Laud. In reply he was assured by that prelate
that he proposed at his first leisure moment to redress
the disorders referred to. As New Hampshire became
presently too warm for him, Burdet next moved into
Maine, where he soon managed to get the control of
everything into his hands. It would seem that he no
longer preached, as, selecting for his companions " the
wretchedest people of the country," he passed his
leisure time " in drinkinge, dauncinge [and] singinge
scurrulous songes." He had, in fact, "let loose the
reigns of liberty to his lusts, [so] that he grew very
notorious for his pride and adultery." At Agamen-

^ Baxter, Gorges, ii. 186.

1642. GORGEANA. 311

ticus, also, Deputy-Governor Gorges found the Lords
Proprietors' buildings, — which had cost a large sum
of money, and were intended to serve as a sort of gov-
ernment house, — not only dilapidated but thoroughly
stripped, " nothing of his household-stujffi remaining
but an old pot, a pair of tongs, and a couple of cob-
irons." ^

It was on Agamenticus, now York, the seat of gov-
ernment of his domain, that Sir Ferdinando next
exercised his skill as a maker of charters. By an
instrument bearing date April 10, 1641, he erected it
into a town, or borough ; and by a further exercise of
proprietary favor he the next year, March 1, 1642,
created it a city, — the first on the American conti-
nent. He named it Gorgeana. Its magistracy was
to consist of a mayor, twelve aldermen, twenty-four
common-councilmen, and a recorder ; and, as Palfrey
remarks, " probably as many as two thirds of the adult
males were in places of authority." The forms of pro-
cedure in the recorder's court were to be copied from
those of the British Chancery. This grave foolery
was continued through more than ten years.^ One,
and not the least interesting point in connection with
this charter, is that Thomas Morton attested it ; from
which fact it may not unfairly be inferred, — for in
Gorges' eyes the countersigning of his charter was no
meaningless thing, — that Morton was then not at all
in that disfavor which had been indicated in Sir Fer-
dinando's letter to Winthrop of four years before.^

Governor Thomas Gorges soon grew weary of his
experience in the wilderness. His first trial of

1 Williamson, Maine, 270, 283 ; Hubbard, Neiv England, 263 ;
Winthrop, ii. *10 ; iv. Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. 335.

2 Palfrey, New England, i. 528. 3 Supra, 303.

312 EXIT GORGES. 1642-3.

strength was with Burdet, and in this he soon showed
that he possessed energy, character and decision ; for
he caused the reverend transgressor to be promptly
arrested, and secured his conviction of divers offences,
— such as adultery, breaches of the peace, and
slanderous speeches. He in fact purged the country
of him, for Burdet shortly after went to England
breathing vengeance against his judges ; but, get-
ting there after the outbreak of the Civil War, he
took the Royalist side, which resulted in his being at
once imprisoned by the Parliament.^ Like so many
others, he then disappeared forever beneath the trou-
bled waters. Having rid the country and himself
of this troublesome character. Gorges addressed him-
self in earnest to the work of his government, but
evidently found it a hopeless as well as a thankless
task. He held courts and punished offenders. Ruth
Gouch had to do penance " in a white sheet, publicly in
the congregation at Agamanticus, two several Sabbath
days." John Lander was fined " for swearing two
oaths," and Ivory Puddington for being drunk. The
general christening of all unbaptized children was or-
dered. While everything which related to the inter-
nal administration of his government was thus petty
and vexatious, the condition of external affairs was
perplexing. The Indians were restless ; there were
questions continually arising with the French ; a rival
title was set up to the easternmost portion of the
Lord Proprietors' domain. Under these circumstances,
when his commission as a deputy-governor expired, in
1643, Governor Thomas Gorges could not be induced
to remain longer in America.^ Returning to England
he found the Civil War at its height; for in July of

^ Winthrop, ii. 10. ^ Baxter, Gorges, ii. 186.

1643. A VETERAN. 313

that year Prince Rupert carried Bristol by assault,
and in September Lord Falkland was slain at New-
bury.

The struggle now going on had, of course, brought
all of Sir Ferdinando's projects to an end. He could
no longer entertain any idea of going out to New
England as its governor-general, and, indeed, all emi-
gration thither had stopped. He could do nothing
towards peopling his domain. At home, it would
seem as if there could be no question as to which party
the old courtier would range himself with ; yet later
on he is found writing that he had been for a time
"fearful to side with either party, as not able to judge
of so transcendent a difference ; " ^ but when he wrote
this the struggle was over, and he had made his sub-
mission, so it still remains open to question whether
the former political adherent of Laud and Strafford
had hesitated long in the beginning. Yet his age
might have excused him ; for, at the breaking out of
the Great Rebellion he could not have been less than
seventy-five, and it was now over fifty years since, in
the days of Elizabeth, he had led the soldiers of Essex
into the trench at Rouen. ^ Yet in 1641 he seems to
have taken some part in the military operations about
Bristol, in which town he dwelt when not at his coun-
try house at Ashton, five miles away ; and two years
later, in the summer of 1643, he planned in a letter to
King Charles the Royalist attack on Bristol, and Sir
Ferdinando's house was the farthest point reached by
the assailing forces, which there maintained them-
selves until forced to retreat. Subsequently Prince
Rupert captured the place ; but when, after Naseby,

1 Baxter, Gorges, i. 196 ; iii. 298.

2 Devereux, Earls of Essex, i. 271.

314 EXIT GORGES. 1643.

on the S of September, 1645, Bristol was retaken by-
Fairfax with " fierce and resolute storm," Gorges was
dwelling there, and became a prisoner of war.^ Plun-
dered and put in confinement, he seems, though then
a man of nearly eighty, to have shared to the fuU the
hard fortunes of his Royalist friends ; but later on he
found a protector in Fairfax, by whom his submission
was readily accepted, and he was allowed to return to
his home at Ashton.

But his troubles were not over. His title to the
larger portion of the province of Maine had been
called in question. There was a patent, called " the
Plough Patent," from the name of the ship in which
it was brought to New England, issued by the Council
for New England, earlier in date than Gorges' own
patent of 1639, and covering much of the same terri-
tory. Representing only what was characterized as a
" broken tytle," this buried and forgotten patent was
resuscitated by George Cleeve, who in some way got
scent of it in the course of his fruitless search for the
great Lake Erocoise. Cleeve had then gone to Eu-
rope, apparently for the express purpose of finding a
purchaser for the Lygonia claim, as it was called, and
finally induced Sir Alexander Rigby to buy it.- Sir
Alexander was a gentleman of wealth, who, besides
being a strong Puritan, was a member of the Long
Parliament, and at one time held the commission of
colonel in the Commonwealth army. Later on Cleeve

1 Baxter, Gorges, i. 192-3 ; ii. 202 ; Belknap, Am. Biog. i. 389.

2 " The Plough patent " is one of the enigmas of New Eng-land his-
tory, and continued so until, in the words of Winthrop applied to its
holders, it " vanished away." In regard to it see the New English
Canaan (Prince Soc. ed.), 84-5, n. ; Baxter, Cleeve of Casco Bay, 116-
20, and map of patents, 150; Winsor, Nar. and Crit. Hist, of Am. iii.
322-3. Also, Banks, Sir Alexander Rigby, 27-39.

1643-6. THE PLOUGH PATENT. 315

returned to America, as Rigby's agent ; and, laying
claim to the territory covered by the patent, at once
brought about a collision of authority with the repre-
sentative of Gorges. Meanwhile, in 1643, a parlia-
mentary tribunal had succeeded to the powers of the
Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations. At the
head of this board sat, not Archbishop Laud, who was
then a prisoner in the Tower, but Gorges' old associate
in the Council for New England, the Puritan Earl of
Warwick, with the title of governor-general. Among
the members of the board were Say and Scale, Hazel-
rig, the younger Vane and Pym, and to it the ques-
tion of the disputed title was referred. There could
be little question as to what the decision of such a tri-
bunal would be ; as opposed to the Puritan colonel and
member of Parliament, the broken-down old cavalier
and prisoner of war had little consideration to expect.
In the hands of its present holders the Plough Patent
was of less than doubtful validity. In March, 1646,
the commissioners rendered their decision accordingly,
sustaining the Rigby title, and the Lord Proprietor-
ship of Maine was at one swoop shorn of its fair pro-
portions, — "a huge half -moon, a monstrous cantle
out."i

In May of the following year Sir Ferdinando died
at Long Ashton. He did not own the place ; but for
sixteen years he had lived there as the husband of
Dame Elizabeth, relict of Sir Hugh Smith, who, re-
ceiving Long Ashton as her jointure, had in 1629
married Sir Ferdinando, himself a widower. He left

^ The Gorges patent, of 1639, covered the region lying- hetween the
Piseataqua and the Kennebec; the Plough patent, of 1()35, that be-
tween Cape Porpoise and Cape Elizabeth ; the whole of the latter
claim being- included in the limits of the former. Deane, in Nar. and
Crit. Hist, of Am. iii. 322-3; Baxter, Gorges, ii. 125 ; lb. Cleeve, 150.

316 EXIT GORGES.

to his heirs what remained of his province, — the
region lying between the Piseataqua and Cape Por-
poise, including the northernmost of the Isles of
Shoals. The subsequent history of the Gorges fam-
ily, and of their Maine patent, is comj^licated and far
from interesting ; neither is it a necessary part of the
present narrative. It is sufficient to say that the va-
lidity of the grant was recognized, and long contro-
versies arose between the Gorges family and the Mas-
sachusetts colony. At last, when Sir Ferdinando had
been thirty years in his grave, these controversies, and
the apparently endless litigation to which they gave
rise were brought to an unexpected close. A grand-
son, who also bore the name of Ferdinando, in consid-
eration of the sum of £1,250, conveyed by deed, bear-
ing date March 13, 1677-8, aU his title and interest
under the patent, to the Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay, which thus became Lord Para-
mount of Maine. This <£1,250 represented what re-
mained as a net result to his descendants from Sir
Ferdinando's forty years of energetic devotion to his
American life-dream, backed by an actual expenditure
of over twenty thousand pounds sterling in money.^

The character of Gorges has been sufficiently por-
trayed in the course of this narrative. He belonged
to the time of Elizabeth, not to that of the Stuarts ;
and of the time of Elizabeth he was typical. At the
hands of the historian he has received scant justice,
for the dramatic intensity of the scene in Westminster
Hall when he was confronted with the despairing
Essex has burned itself into the record, and in doing
so has obliterated all else ; ^ it is forgotten that, more

1 Baxter, Gorges, ii. 202, 204, 214.

2 Doyle, English in Am.; Puritan Colonies, i. 21-3.

1587-1647. AN ELIZABETHAN. 317

than twenty years later, the same Sir Ferdinando who
the Lords were then adjured by Essex to " look
upon," indignantly as an Englishman and a Protest-
ant refused to obey when ordered before Rochelle to
deliver the ship under his command to the officers of
Richelieu to be used against the Huguenots, and, de-
spite the guns of his admiral, brought the Neptune,
alone of all the fleet, back in triumphant mutiny to
England. Nor had Buckingham, all powerful as he
then was, dared to call him to account for the auda-
cious act.i Then and alway about Sir Ferdinando
Gorges there is something of the picturesqueness of
Essex and Sidney and Raleigh, and he seems out of
place in the company of Governor Winthrop, Mr.
Hampden and General Fairfax. The whole scheme
of his life was Elizabethan, — large, undefined, ad-
venturous. There was about it no Puritan detail, —
no matter-of-fact, hard sense. He dreamed of found-
ing a ready-made empire ; accordingly he failed when
it came to planting a settlement. To say that the
failure was inherent in the plan, is but to repeat an
historical commonplace. Gorges built up, in his own
mind, an imaginary Mexico or Peru in New England.
In his confident belief, all that was required was once
to break the shell ; and it took him his whole life to
find out that the thing did not exist. None the less
he carried on through thirty years a sustained and
gallant struggle against fate ; and, if his efforts could
not result in anything good for himself, they did very
nearly result in turning awry the course of New Eng-
land history at a time when the colony was yet liter-
ally " but in the gristle and not yet hardened into the
bone " of even its infancy. It has already been ob-

1 Gardiner, England, v. 394.

318 EXIT GORGES. 1646.

served that, so far as America was concerned, Gorges
represented Charles' policy of prerogative, Laud's
conformity, and Wentworth's Thorough. His scheme
of the governor-generalship and his attack on the
charter were the New England features of the Koyal-
ist programme. They were as much part and parcel
of it as was the Court of High Commission or ship=
money, and came to nothing simply because both extra-
judicial tribunal and arbitrary tax were together bro-
ken down. That these would have been broken down
had a Richelieu instead of a Laud shaped the King's
policy, is inconsistent with all that we now know of
the real condition of affairs in England at that time.
The scheme was a good scheme : but it was badly
handled ; and the handling of it was largely matter of
chance. The world in no part of Europe had, in
1643, yet clearly outgrown the ancient order of things,
and there were no inherent conditions which caused
events in the British isles to take the course there
which they took elsewhere only a whole century and a
half afterwards. For the time being it was through-
out eastern Europe merely a question as to which
of two not unequally balanced but contending forces
most quickly evolved individual leadership and execu-
tive ability ; and, while Cromwell appeared on one
side of the Straits of Dover, on the other side of " the
silver thread " Richelieu stood forward. Hence the
scene which took place in front of the Banqueting
House at Whitehall on the 30th of January, 1649,
was not reenacted in the Place de la Revolution until
the 21st of January, 1793.

But, even as it was, the scales of English fate long
trembled in the balance ; nor was the bad handling
which wrecked Stafford's well devised scheme of

1646. WHAT MIGHT HAVE BEEN. 319

" Thorough " seen in the execution of the New Eng-
land portion of the plan. No mistake was made
there. The courts did their work, and the charter
was vacated. The governor-general was designated.
Everything was ready ; and then the other, and less
distant, portions of the one great scheme collapsed.
Pushed too far on a petty side issue, it met a stub-
born obstacle, and at once it became apparent that
the head and hand of him upon whom the conduct
of the thing perforce devolved were unequal to the
work. But nowhere was the danger greater than
in New England. The infant settlement kept up a
brave front, and would have kept it up to the end.
It might even have put forth a feeble effort at resist-
ance ; but, in speaking of the Gorges schemes, a man
as well informed on the true condition of those early
New England affairs as Hutchinson does not hesitate
to say ; —

" We may make some conjectures what would have been
the consequence of taking away the charter at this time.
It is pretty certain, the body of the people would have left
the country. Two years after, merely from a dissatisfac-
tion with the soil and the climate, many did remove, and
many more were on tip-toe and restrained only by the con-
sideration of their engagements to stand by and support one
another ; but where they would have removed is the ques-
tion. ... It is most likely they would have gone to the
Dutch at Hudson's River. They had always kept up a
friendly correspondence with them. In their religious
principles and form of worship and church government,
they were not very distant from one another. ... If they
had failed with the Dutch, such was their resolution, that
they would have sought a vacuum doTnicilluTn (a favorite
expression with them) in some part of the globe where
they would, according to their apprehensions, have been

320 EXIT GORGES. 1646.

free from the control of any European power. In their
first migration most of them could say, 07nnia mea mecum
porto. All the difference as to the second would have been
that, so far as they had lessened their substance, so much
less room would have been necessary for the transportation
of what remained. Such a scheme would have consisted
very well with their notions of civil subjection."

The thought of America with Puritan New Eng-
land left out is suggestive. But Sir Ferdinando
Gorges missed his destiny. He fought with the stars
in their courses.

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE FATE OP SIR FERDINANDO'S " PEOPLE AND

It remains to speak of the subsequent fate of those
adherents of Gorges, — " servants, and certain other
undertakers and tenants belonging unto some of us,"
the companions of Captain Robert Gorges in his ex-
pedition of 1623, and left by him in " charge and cus-
tody " of his " setled plantation " when he returned to
England in the spring of 1624,^ — the Episcopalian
advance guard of the Puritan migration, those com-
posing which had, when Winthrop first sailed into
Boston Bay, already for seven years been living on
its shores. The sites occupied by them have already
been indicated. Starting from Wessagusset, where
the main body still remained, individual settlers had
built their dwelling-places and established themselves
with their families and servants at Charlestown, East
Boston and Boston ; while Thomson's widow dwelt at
Squantum, or on the island which still bears her hus-
band's name. Morton's house at Mt. WoUaston was
destroyed in the winter of 1630-1, in the way which
has already been described, though he was himself
destined to return to America to reckon again with
Winthrop and the magistrates of Massachusetts. Sir
Christopher Gardiner was a mere bird of passage.

1 Becords of Council for N. E. April 18, 1635.

322 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1625.

A peculiar interest must always attach to William
Blackstoue as the first European occupant of the pe-
ninsula on which Boston stands, but of his life after
the settlement not much is known. When he pointed
out to Winthrop the spring of fresh, pure water which
welled out from the base of the hill on the opposite
side of which he lived, he was a man of thirty-five.
Winthrop was eight years older. Blackstone had
then been some five years at Shawmnt. For over three
years more, until 1634, he continued to live in his hut
on the west slope of Sentry Hill, as Beacon Hill was
called, quite removed from the little community which
clustered near the water and about the spring on the
opposite slope, a mile or so away. At first the new
settlers did not press upon him, and he seems to have
held friendly relations with Winthrop and the rest,
who were in the habit of questioning him about the
climate, the products of the soil, and the character of
the country and of its natives. On the 18th of May,
1631, he took the oath as a freeman. But presently
population increased, and the original settler began
to feel its growing nearness. Questions of title, also,
arose. Mather says that "by happening to sleep
first in an hovel, upon a point of land there, [Black-
stone] laid claim to all the ground, whereupon there
now stands the metropolis of the whole English
America, until the inhabitants gave him satisfac-
tion." ^ Whether or no he did indeed, as thus as-
serted, lay claim to " all the ground," no such claim
was ever allowed ; for at a court holden on the 1st of
April, 1633, it was "agreed, that Mr. William Black-
stone shall have fifty acres of ground set out for him
near to his house in Boston, to enjoy for ever."
1 Magnalia (Hai-tford, 1855), i. 243.

1634. WILLIAM BLACKSTONE. 323

The next year affairs did not improve. Population
was crowding more and more upon the recluse. He
did not belong to the church ; he wore his old canoni-
cal gown. He was in fact '' without ; " not of the
Lord's people. As Mather goes on to say : — " This
man was, indeed, of a particular humor, and he would
never join himself to any of our churches, giving his
reason for it : ' I came from England because I did
not like the lord-bishops ; but I can't join with you,
because I would not be under the lord-brethren.' "
Accordingly, in 1634, reserving to himself only the
six acres immediately about his hut, he sold to the
town all his interest in the rest of the peninsula, in-
cluding the fifty acres granted to him the year before.
The consideration paid him was £30, which was raised
by levying a rate of six shillings on each householder,
" some paying less and some considerably more."
Edmund Quincy, the first of the name in Massachu-
setts, was at the head of the committee appointed to
assess this rate, as also at the same time " a rate for
the cowes keeping, a rate for the goates keeping," etc.
The tract of land thus purchased was subsequently
devoted to public use as the town common. ^

With a portion of the purchase-money of his land
Blackstone bought some cattle, and then, packing his
books and household goods upon them, he turned his
face to the wilderness. He seems to have felt little
disposition to go " further from the sun," as Hutchin-
son expressed it ; though at the time of his removal,
or soon afterwards, he seriously thought of accepting
an invitation to take charge of the church at Agamen-

1 In regard to the location of Blackstone's dwelling- and the bounds
of the grant made to him, see Memorial History of Boston, i. 84, n.,
552.

324 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1634.

ticus. Indeed, the people there claimed that he prom-
ised to do so, but afterwards decided otherwise, his
hopes being " fed with the expectation of far greater
profit by his husbandry [in Khode Island] then he
should have had by his ministry [in Maine] ; which
God only knows." ^ In any event, when he left Bos-
ton driving his little herd across the Neck through
Roxbury, he turned his back on the '' very good house,
with an inclosure to it, for the planting of corn ; and
also a ^stipend of twenty pounds per annum," which
awaited his acceptance at Agamenticus, and directed
his steps southward out of the limits of the Massachu-
setts colony. Passing through the territory of the
Plymouth colony, he at last found a spot which pleased
him, on the banks of a river which emptied, at no great
distance further on, into Narragansett Bay. There,
setting himself down, he built another house and
planted a new orchard ; and there he passed the re-
mainder of life. He revisited Boston several times,
riding, as tradition says, on a trained bull ; and on
one of these visits, in 1659, he took to himself, as
wife, the widow of John Stephenson, living in School
Street, not far from the house in which Governor
Winthrop had died ten years before.^ They were
married on the 4th of July, Governor Endicott offi-
ciating as the magistrate, Blackstone being over sixty
at the time, while his wife could have been no longer
young, as her oldest child, by her former husband,
had been born sixteen years before. The two, never-
theless, had offspring. Blackstone's married life lasted

1 rv. Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. 196.

2 It is a singular fact that, though allusion is apparently once or
twice made to Blackstone by -Winthrop in his history, no mention of
Blackstone name is there found.

1675. THE HERMIT OF STUDY HILL. 325

fourteen years, his wife dying before him in June,
1673, while he survived her nearly two years, until the
26th of May, 1675. Koger Williams, writing a few
days later to Governor John Winthrop, Jr., of Con-
necticut, gives these details of his end : —

" About a fortnight since your old acquaintance Mr.
Blackstone departed this life in the fourscore year of his
age ; four days before liis death he had a great pain in his
breast, and back, and bowells : afterward he said he was
well, had no paines, and should live, but he grew fainter,
and yealded up his breath without a groane." ^

He had been in America, at the time of his death,
a few months only less than fifty-two years, forty of
which he had passed at Study Hill, — by which name
he called his Rhode Island home. At Study Hill, as
at Boston before, he seems to have led a quiet, peace-
able life ; yet, quiet as his life was, and much given up
to that meditation of which he was so fond, it could
not have been otherwise than laborious. Coming to
America as he did, a young man of studious habits, —
a graduate of a college, bringing his library with him,
— it may be taken for granted that in those days he
did not come unattended. He must have had one or
more servants ; and, indeed, traditions to that effect
survive. Yet he had to build houses and to exact a
living from the soil. This implied labor ; and his
days could not have been either wholly or in chief
part given up to reading or to reflection. We also
know that it was his custom in his latter years occa-
sionally to preach at Providence, though what his ex-
act tenets were does not appear; except that, though
living near Roger Williams, he was reputed to be " far
from his opinions." ^

1 IV. Mass. Hist. Coll. vi. 299. 2 m. ^ass. Hist. Coll. iii. 97.

326 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1675.

Not a little has since been said and written of Black-
stone, to the effect that he was " a memorable man,"
that lie was " centuries in advance of the age " in
which he lived, that his motto was " Toleration," and
he *' possessed qualifications which, under other cir-
cumstances, might have made him one of the foremost
men of New England." This may or may not be so,
but the simple fact is we have no means of forming
any definite judgment about Blackstone's opinion, or
intellectual power. He was a singular man ; and, as
is apt to be the case with singular men when dead, he
excites curiosity. The graduate of a university, he
crossed the ocean almost immediately after taking his
degree, and he carried with him into the wilderness
his books and his studious habits. He then chanced
to make his home on the site of a future great city,
where he lived the life of a devout recluse, — almost a
hermit. He disliked restraint and society ; but there
is no reason whatever to suppose that he had a pecul-
iarly active or a peculiarly vigorous mind. If he was
gifted in that way, he succeeded most effectually in
hiding his light from the world.

He died in good time. Just one month later King
Philip's War broke out, and his home, with every-
thing it contained, was among the first that went in
the general destruction. Those rare Bibles, those
large English and Latin folios, those quartos and duo-
decimos, more than one hundred and sixty in number,
which had been the companions of a whole life of soli-
tude, — and which would now, could they but have
been preserved, be the most precious treasures of the
library so fortunate as to possess them, — all perished.
Not a leaf was saved. With the rest went " ten paper
books " which in the inventory of the dead man's

1675. " TEN PAPER BOOKS:' 327

property were valued at five shillings, or sixpence each.
It is not unfair to presume that these were the manu-
script records of his life, — that at least they contained
that weather register which Winthrop referred to, as
his first winter's experience in Massachusetts was
drawing to a close. Had they been preserved, these
might have been among the most valuable and inter-
esting of all the documents relating to early Ameri-
can history ; but it is equally probable that consisting,
as has been suggested, wholly or in part of sermons of
his own composition,^ they would have been among
the most disappointing. As a rule the meditations of
devout hermits have not proved peculiarly edifying to
subsequent generations. Morell and Blackstone, cer-
tainly companions, not improbably were also kindred
spirits, and Morell's poem would teach us not to put
too high a value on Blackstone's " paper books."

Blackstone himself seems never to have had trouble
with the Indians. He had lived all his life among
them, and, speaking their language, he understood
their character. Apparently, also, he possessed that
faculty of morally impressing himself on savage na-
tures, which has since been so highly developed in
African explorers of the Livingstone type. It is
therefore possible, though hardly probable, that, had
he not died when he did, he and his might have es-
caped harm at the hands of Philip's people. Black-
stone left a son and a daughter, neither of whom, at
the time of his death, could have been over fifteen
years of age. Both subsequently married, and the son
proved no credit to his parentage. A man of intem-
perate habits, he, with his wife Katherine, was in
1713 warned out of the town of Attleborough. He
1 Amory, William Blaxton, Coll. of Bostonian Society, i. 5.

328 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1675.

must then have been more than fifty years of age.
Subsequently he settled in Connecticut, and, dying,
left descendants who still perpetuate the Boston her-
mit's name ; but that will always be preserved in con-
nection with the river whose waters, tired with mov-
ing the wheels of well-nigh innumerable factories,
flow forever by the spot which, through more than
forty years, was Blackstone's wilderness home and the
scene of his meditations.^

Much more is known of Samuel Maverick after the
settlement than is known of Blackstone, for at a later
period the former played a prominent part in the his-
tory of the colonies. To the end he retained the
church-and-state bias of the Gorges movement ; and,

^ The facts in relation to Blackstone have been collected with much
care by Bliss in his History of Rehoboth (pp. 1-14), and by the Rev. F.
B. Da Costa, in his two papers printed in the Churchman of September
25 and October 2, 1880, and reprinted in pamphlet. A comprehen-
sive list of other authorities relating to him is to be found in the ed-
itor's note in the Memorial History of Boston, i. 84. In regard to
Blackstone's English origin and descendants in America, see also Mr.
Amory's paper in Coll. Bostonian Society, i. 3-2.5. There is quite a
remarkable letter from the Rhode Island genealogist, S. C Newman,
about Blackstone and his descendants, in the Appendix 0, of the sec-
ond volume (p. 568) of Arnold's Rhode Island. In it the writer says :
" William Blackstone was descended from a family of some distinc-
tion, who had long inhabited the vicinity of Salisbury, in the west of
England ; he was born in 1595 ; entered Emanuel College, Cambridge,
England, and in 1017, took the degree of A. B. ; in 1621, received
the degree of A. M , and entered into Episcopal orders ; in 1623,
came to America with the expedition of Robert Gorges, whose ob-
jects were to establish an Episcopal colony."

This letter is dated December 3, 1850. It contains no reference to
authorities for the facts so absolutely stated in it, some of which have
been established only by documents published since the letter was
written. Williams' letter, for instance, in which he says that Black-
stone died at fourscore in 1675, was first printed in 1863. In view of
these facts the accuracy of Mr. Newman's statements, so far as they
can yet be verified by generally attainable authorities, is most re-
markable.

1624. SAMUEL MAVERICK. 329

indeed, he became its last, as he was its most formi-
dable, representative. But a brief sketch of the man's
life will here suffice.^ Born in 1602, in the county of
Cornwall, when he came over to America Maverick
was twenty-two years old, and he was but twenty-eight
when Winthrop landed on the Charlestown shore.
That when he came he was already married, and
brought his young wife, Amias, with him, may be in-
ferred from the fact that in 1648 he executed a deed
of land to a son, who, being then of age, must have
been born at least as early as 1627. Maverick prob-
ably came out to New England very much as David
Thomson came out at nearly the same time. They
were both young men, and both newly married ; but,
while Thomson established himself alone at Piscata-
qua, Maverick, more closely connected with the Gorges
movement, went at once to Boston Bay ; though it
would appear he did not leave England in company
with Robert Gorges, in 1623, but a year later.^ Sub-
sequently the two couples became near neighbors, and
a first child may have been born at about the same
time to each. It has been surmised that the Thomson
child was born in 1625.^

Whether he came to New England in search of ad-
venture, or looking for a home, it is clear that Maver-
ick remained to trade. A man of gentle birth and
good education, he was, as will presently be seen,
noted for his hospitality ; and his letters are as well

^ All the facts and documents in relation to Samuel Maverick have
heen most patiently collected and sifted out by W. H. Sumner, in his
History of East Boston. To him and his descendants that author de-
votes no less than a hundred pag^es of his work. Where no other au-
thorities are indicated, reliance is placed, therefore, in the present
account, on Mr. Sumner's book.

2 Supra, 161.

» Deane in Proc. Mass. Hist. Sac. 1875-6, 373.

330 FA TE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1630-5.

written as those of Winthrop or Bradford, or even as
that famous History of the Kebellion, with the author
of which Maverick carried on, at a later day, an active
official correspondence. A generous liver, he was not
himself a Puritan : nor does he ever seem to have had
any liking for Puritans ; as, certainly, they had none
for him.

It has already been told how, when Winthrop and
his party first sailed into Boston Bay, on the ^ day of
June, 1630, they found Maverick living in his fortified
house at Winnisimmet, as what is now Chelsea was
then called,^ and the Governor passed the night with
the " old planter," being entertained in a " very lov-
ing and courteous " manner. Though Maverick made
application to be admitted a freeman on the -^ of
October, 1631, he for some reason did not take the
oath until the ^ of October of the next year. His
" being strong for the Lordly Prelaticall power " may
have stood in his way. Then, and long after, he was
actively engaged in commerce, owning vessels and
himself trading in them up and down the coast. He
held, under a patent from Gorges, a tract of land on
the Agamenticus ; and in 1635-6 he passed an entire
year in Virginia, coming back with his vessels loaded
with goats and heifers, and telling the credulous Win-
throp wonderful stories of the things he had seen. At
other times, both Winthrop and Dudley were partners
with him in his ventures.

There was evidently some connection between the
long absence of Maverick in Virginia at this time,
and the treatment he had undergone at the hands of
the magistrates and colony during the governor-gen-
eralship panic of March, 1634. It will be remem-

1 Supra, 161.

1636-8. JOHN JOSSELYN. 331

berecl ^ that he had then not only been forbidden to
entertain strangers, but had been ordered by the Gen-
eral Court to prepare to remove from his house at
Noddle's Island to Boston. As the alarm passed
away this order was rescinded, and it was during the
next year, while Gorges was still at work in London,
that Maverick went to Virginia. Returning in Au-
gust, 1636, he would seem to have resumed his old life
and hospitable ways 5 for when, in Jidy, 1637, during
the full bitterness of the Hutchinsonian controversy,
Governor Winthrop invited young Harry Vane, whom
he had shortly before succeeded in office, to meet
the Lord Ley at a dinner given in honor of the lat-
ter, not only did the petulant and excitable heir of
Raby Castle refuse " to come (alleging by letter that
his conscience withheld him), but also, at the same
hour, he went over to Noddle's Island to dine with
Mr. Maverick, and carried the Lord Ley with him."

During the summer of 1638 an English gentleman
of ancient family and good education, John Josselyn
by name, visited America. He was a son of Sir
Thomas Josselyn of Kent, and had a brother, one of
Gorges' people, living at Scarborough, Maine. This
brother he was on his way to visit when he arrived at
Boston on the ^ July. In his account of what he
saw there at this time, he gives quaint glimpses of
Samuel Maverick. Arriving upon the —^ he says
that a week later, on the ~ : —

"I went ashore upon Noddles Island to Mr. Samuel
Maverick (for my passage) the only hospitable man in all
the Countrey, giving entertainment to all Comers gratis. . . .
Having refreshed myself for a day or two upon Noddles-
Island, I crossed the Bay in a small Boat to Boston, which

1 Supra, 288.

332 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1G38.

then was rather a Village, than a Town, there being not
above Twenty or thirty houses ; and presenting my respects
to Mr. Winthorpe, the Govern our, and to Mr. Cotton the
Teacher of Bostoii Church, to whom I delivered from Mr.
Francis Quarles the poet, the Translation of the 16, 25, 51,
88, 113, and 137 Psalms into English Meeter, for his ap-
probation ; being civilly treated by all I had occasion to
converse with, I returned in the Evening to my lodging."

Remaining in Boston only two days at this time,
Mr. Josselyn, on the ^ of July, set out for the east-
ward, where he passed the next two months, anchor-
ing in Boston Harbor again on the ^ of

September
October

"The Thirtieth day of September [Oct. 10, n. s.], I
went ashore upon AWtZ/es-Island, where when I was come
to Mr. Mavericks he would not let me go aboard no more,
until the Ship was ready to set sail. . . .

"In the afternoon I walked into the Woods on the back
side of the house, and happening into a fine broad walk
(which was a sledgway) I wandered till I chanc't to spye
a fruit, as I thought, like a pine Apple plated wath scales, it
was as big as the crown of a Womans hat ; I made bold to
step unto it, with an intent to have gathered it, no sooner
had I toucht it, but hundreds of Wasps were about me ; at
la,st I cleared myself from them, being stung only by one
upon the upper lip, glad I w^as that I scaped so well ; But
by that time I was come into the house my lip was swell'd
so extreamly that they hardly knew me but by my Gar-
ments."

Eight days later Josselyn sailed for England. This
occurred during the autumn of 1638, and, for the next
six or eight years, Maverick continued to live on Nod-
dle's Island, getting on with his neighbors as best he
could ; but, in this matter, the best was badly enough.
An outspoken member of the Church of England, he

1640-8. "AN INQUISITION-LIKE COURSE:' 333

was living in the midst of Independents; and, among
ascetics, he maintained a sometimes too generous hospi-
tality. His relations with Wintlirop were of the most
friendly character, but he was so conscious of the hostile
feeling which existed towards him generally that, as
early even as 1640, he had made up his mind to follow
the example of Blackstone, and, through a voluntary
exile to escape the society of the " lord-brethren." ^
He did not then carry out this plan, and six years
afterwards the always latent ill-feeling gathered to a
head, taking the form of active persecution. This
was in 1648, when the movement in direction of a
reformed franchise and larger religious liberty first
made itself felt in Massachusetts, finding expression
in what is known as the Dr. Kobert Childs memorial ;
and the ruthless way in which it was met and sup-
pressed, by the constituted authorities, is one of those
episodes in New England history which yet remain to
be impartially recounted.

Maverick's name was one of those signed to tke

^ There is something' almost touching- in the isolation of one genial
man in that intolerant and frozen social atmosphere, as revealed in the
following extract from a letter which Maverick wrote to Winthrop at
this time : — "I know there want not those which hunt after anything
which may redound to my discredit. Yourself, ever honored Sir, and
honest Capt. Gibbons, are the only men which ever dealt plainly with
me, by way of reproof and admonition, when you have heard of any-
thing in which I have been faulty, which I hope hath not been
water spilt xapon a stone, and by it you have much obliged me. There
are those which take an inquisition-like course, by endeavoring to
gather what they can from malcontented servants, or the like ; which
course I conceive is not warrantable ; the former course is more com-
mendable, and will work better effects. I hope God will enable me
in some measure to walk inoffensively, but finding by ten years' ex-
perience that I am ever sore to divers here, I have seriously resolved
to remove hence. . . . My well wishes shall ever attend the Planta-
tion, and yourself and yours in particular, however. Be pleased to
pass by my too long neglect of visiting you, having not been in Boston
these four months." iv. Mass. Hist. Coll. vii. 308.

334 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1630.

Childs memorial, and he had probably taken an active
part in the political agitation, if such it could be
called, which led to it. In any event, he soon found
himself in serious trouble, for not only was he impris-
oned, but he was ordered to pay a heavy fine. This
he refused to do, and, as matter of precaution, gave
a deed of Noddle's Island to his son. A little later,
in 1650, he sold the island outright, and seems then
at last, a man verging on fifty, to have moved away
from the place which had been his home for twenty-
five years. It does not appear where he passed the
next ten years ; but, when the Restoration took place,
he found his way to England, and there labored stren-
uously at the court of Charles II. to have a commis-
sion ajDpointed to supervise on the sjDot the affairs of
the American colonies. It was the revival, in another
form, of Gorges' scheme of the governor-generalship.

This time the effort was crowned with success, and
in July, 1664, Maverick landed for the second time in
New England, one of four royal commissioners, sent
out with vessels of war and soldiers, to visit the col-
onies, and, in the King's name, to hear and determine
all matters of complaint.

The proceedings of the Commission of 1664 are a
portion of New England history, and it is not neces-
sary to recount them here. As Maverick well knew
when he came, he had to deal with a stubborn race.
Doubtless he confidently believed that he should suc-
ceed, and that his former persecutors would at last
submit their necks to the yoke ; but, if he did indeed
cherish any such belief, he was doomed to bitter disap-
pointment. Not only did the magistrates and people
of the Massachusetts Bay refuse the yoke, but, on the
24th of May, 1665, a trumpet was sounded at certain

1664-76. " WITH SOUND OF TRUMPETS 335

conspicuous points in the streets of Boston, and Mav-
erick and his colleagues were publicly denounced in
their own hearing as usurpers. This, too, was done
by order of the General Court, and the commissioners
were powerless ; for, with the whole community arrayed
against them, they had with them no armed alien force
sufficient to compel obedience. So, presently, it was
they who had to submit and go elsewhere, — probably
deeming it more prudent in dealing with Massachu-
setts to bide their time. Their time never came.

His official duties as commissioner ultimately car-
ried Maverick to New York, and he does not seem to
have again made Boston his permanent home. Some-
where about 1668 the Duke of York, in consideration
of his services and fidelity to the King, gave him a
house "in the Broadway." Its exact locality is not
known, but in it the stout-hearted old Episcopal roy-
alist is supposed to have lived out the balance of his
days. The exact time of his death is not known, but
it was before the year 1676. He left, by his wife
Amias, two sons and a daughter, whose descendants
multiplied in the land which their ancestors were
among the first to occupy.

Social lines were distinctly marked in the seven-
teenth century. Winthrop, in his state papers, writ-
ing as governor, talked of " the common people."
The " common people " were whipped and set in the
stocks when they misbehaved themselves ; the gentry
were fined and admonished.^ Blackstone and Maver-
ick were men of family, education and property, —

1 "43 No man shall be beaten with above forty stripes, nor shall
any true g'entlemen, nor any man equall to a gentleman, be punished
■with whipping-, unless his crime be very shameful, and his course of
life vitious and profligate." Body of Liberties, 1641, lu. Mass. Hist.
Co//, viii. 224.

336 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1G30-1.

gentlemen. They were called planters, and they
owned servants. This was not the case with Thomas
Walford. He was a blacksmith, — one of Winthrop's
"common people." While, therefore, the Puritan
magistrates showed some hesitation in their methods
of dealing with the two former, they seem to have
shown none whatever towards the latter. He was an
Ejjiscopalian. That he was also a worthy man, and
had in him the making of a good citizen, is evident
from the fact that afterwards, through thirty years
and until his death in 1660, he was much esteemed at
Portsmouth, to which place he moved when compelled
to leave Charlestown. At Portsmouth he found a
refuge and a welcome ; grants of land were made to
him, and in due time he was chosen one of the select-
men, and a warden of the church. Very different
seems to have been his treatment by the Massachu-
setts colony, the severity of which, though passed over
as not deserving of remark by some of the historians
of New England, has by the more liberal of them
been referred to as an incident which " must be re-
gretted." 1 Walford had lived long in that wilderness,
and built himself a home there, in which he and his
family dwelt in a rude and secure independence, and
now, probably, he declined to conform ; for he liked
not the ways of the newcomers, and would not readily
submit to their severe authority, — exercised in the
most trivial matters, and especially in regard to Sab-
bath observances. Very possibly he had been brought
up in the Sabbath observances, far from Puritanic,
recommended in King James' Book of Sports. Ac-
cordingly, it was not long before he found himself in
trouble, and at a court held on the ^^ of May, 1631,

^ Savage in notes to Winthrop, i *53.

1631-4. THOMAS WALFORD. 337

after ordering John Legge to be " severely whipped
this day at Boston, and afterwards, soe soone as con-
veniently may be, at Salem," the magistrates took up
the case of Thomas Walford. It was disposed of as
follows : —

" Tho : Walford, of Charlton, is ffyned 40 shillings, and
is injoyned, hee and his wife, to departe out of the lymits
of this pattent before the 20th day of October nexte, under
paine of confiscacion of his goods, for his contempt of au-
thoritie, and confrontinge officers, &c."

Then, after ordering Thomas Bartlett to be whipped,
and John Norman to be fined, the court had a jury
impanelled, and proceeded to dispose of the famous
assault and battery case of Dexter against Endicott,
which has already been alluded to.^

The fine Walford settled by killing a wolf ; but the
order of banishment does not seem to have been at
that time enforced, for, twenty-eight months later, the
court again orders " that the goods of Thomas Wal-
ford shal be sequestred, and remaine in the hands of
Anchient Gennison, to satisfie the debts hee owes in the
Bay to severall persons." On the 9th of the subse-
quent January (1634), his name still appears in the
list of inhabitants of Charlestown. Nevertheless, at
or about this time, Walford and his family left for-
ever " the English palisadoed and thatched house "
which, " a little way up from Charles river side," had
for nearly ten years been their home, and journeyed
north to find, if a less congenial clime, more tolerant
at least if not more sympathetic neighbors.

The little settlement at Wessagusset would mean-
while seem to have pursued the even tenor of its life,
1 .Supra, 260.

338 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. Nov.

undisturbed by the presence of the larger community
which had established itself on the other side of the
bay. The two were separated from each other by ten
miles of unbroken wilderness, through which ran one
not inconsiderable river, and the communication be-
tween them was wholly by water. In winter they
were practically cut off from each other. It was
years, also, before the intervening region began to fill
up ; so that in September, 1634, Winthrop noted the
following incident in his journal : —

" About this time one Alderman, of Bear Cove [Hing-
ham], being about fifty years old, lost his way between Dor-
chester and Wessaguscus, and wandered in the woods and
swamps three days and two nights, without taking any food,
and, being near spent, God brought him to Scituate ; but he
had torn his legs much."

In this remote, secluded little hamlet, dwelt a few
families, who in 1630 had been there seven years.
William Jeffreys and John Bursley were apparently
the two leading men of the place, and their names
only, among those of its inhabitants, have come down
to us. They neither of them seem to have had any
trouble with the Puritan authorities, and at a later
day Bursley was more than once a member of the
General Court, while Jeffreys acted as commissioner.
None of their descendants of the same name are now
to be found in Weymouth.

The first mention of the village, after the migration
of 1630, is met with in connection with a formal visit
made by the Massachusetts magistrates on those of
Plymouth. It took place between Ztl^'l and No-
vember -l^, 1632, and Winthrop has left an account of
it. On the morning of the first-named day, he being
then governor, the Kev. Mr. Wilson and others went

1632. ''HUE'S folly:' 339

aboard the Lyon, a vessel recently from England
and lying- in the harbor, and Mr. Pierce, its master,
thereupon took them in a shallop, to Wessagusset.
There they all passed the night, being " bountifully "
entertained with store of turkeys, geese, ducks, etc.
The next day Captain Pierce returned to his vessel, —
in which, by the way, he was wrecked a few days la-
ter, on the capes of Virginia, — while Winthrop and
the others trudged on to Plymouth, arriving there on
the evening of the "-^ of l'T,Z>^,. Returning, the party
left Plymouth on the morning of the J-^J of J^,,
Governor Bradford, with the pastor and elder of the
Plymouth church, " accompanying them near half a
mile out of town in the dark ; " for, in order to finish
their journey to Wessagusset that day, they had to
start an hour before daylight : —

" When they came to the great river, they were carried
over by one Luddam, their guide (as they had been when
they came, the stream being very strong, and up to the
crotch) ; so the governour called that passage Luddam's
Ford. Thence they came to a place called Hue's Cross.
The governour, being displeased at the name, in respect
that such things might hereafter give the Papists occasion
to say that their religion was first planted in these parts,
changed the name, and called it Hue's Folly. So they came
that evening to Wessaguscus, where they were entertained
as before, and the next day came safe to Boston."

A year after this, Wessagusset was described, by
one who then visited it, as " but a small village ; yet
it is very pleasant, and healthful, very good ground,
and is well timbered, and hath good store of hay-
ground." 1 In September, 1635, it was, by order of
the General Court, made a plantation under the name

^ Young, Chron. of Mass. 395.

340 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1635-8.

of We}Tnouth, and twenty-one families from England
were allowed there to establish themselves under the
ministry of the Rev. Mr. Hull ; but, even with this
addition to its inhabitants, the place was the next
year referred to in the records of the General Court
as " a very small town:" Exactly what this meant at
that time, it is impossible now to say ; but one year
afterwards, during the Pequot War, Weymouth, as
its portion of the general levy, was assessed X27 in
money, and called upon to furnish five men. Under
the system of computation adopted by the best New
England authorities, this would indicate a total pop-
ulation of about three hundred and fifty souls.^ A
year later, in 1638, the little community came in for
even more than its full share of the religious troubles
of the i^eriod.

Indeed, for several years it seems to have existed
in a state of incessant theological turmoil. A strong
alien element made its presence felt, — other Black-
stones, Mavericks and Walfords, — who would not
take themselves off. The Rev. Mr. Hull and his
families were newcomers, and not of the original set-
tlement. Accordingly Mr. Hull soon found himself

^ In 1634, the population of Massachusetts Bay is estimated to
have been " between three and four thousand." (Palfrey, i. 388.)
Winthrop, writing- in May of that year, said, " in all, about four thou-
sand souls and upward." (Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc December 14,
1882.) The great miration took place during the next few years.
In June, 1634, there arrived in Boston " fourteen great ships, and one
at Salem." (Winthrop, i. 134.) In one day in June, 1635, eleven
ships came into the bay. {lb. 192.) In 1640 the migration came to
an end, and about four thousand families in all, or twenty-one thou-
sand souls, had then come over (Palfrey, i. 584), of which fifteen
thousand were settled in Massachusetts. It seems fair to estimate
that three fourths of these came over before 1638. In that case, if the
levy of Weymouth in 1637 was fairly proportionate (5:160), its total
population would have been as stated in the text.

1637-44. THE WEYMOUTH CHURCH. 341

confronted in his ministry by a rival, the Rev. Mr.
Jenner. Then, in 1637, the Rev. Mr. Lenthal put in
an appearance, followed in the succeeding year by the
Rev. Mr. Newman. So grievous was the trouble that
in January, 1638, a party of elders from the Boston
church visited Weymouth in the role of peace-makers,
and although they were reported to have "had good
success of their prayers," it was only three months
later that the General Court itself took the matter in
hand. Its method of procedure was not wanting in
vigor, and the Rev. Mr. Lenthal was made to see rea-
son why he should publicly recant. One of his fol-
lowers was fined, and another whipped ; while yet a
third was significantly notified that the General Court
was " weary of him, unless he reform." But it is not
necessary to here enter with any detail into the vexed
history of the Weymouth church.^ The policy of the
colony was a simple one, — those wdio would not con-
form could be silent, or they might go away. Massa-
chusetts was no place for dissentients. Accordingly,
as the Wessagusset people either could not or would
not go away, their conforming was a mere question of
time ; and, as they were few in number and all plain,
simple folks, the process of absorption, when measured
in years, did not take long. In 1644 it was over. A
short experience of the pastoral care of one superior
man — the learned, faithful and devout Samuel New-
man — had sufficed, and Weymouth contentedly
merged itself in the Puritan community which was
pressing upon it from either side. As years went on,
it even passed from memory that the original settle-

1 But see the paper entitled "Conference of the Elders of Massa-
chusetts," by J. Hammond Trumbull, relating to the Lenthal church
troubles in Weymouth, in Congregational Quarterly Rev. (April,
1877), xix. ^^2-48.

342 FATE OF SIR FERDINANDO'S PEOPLE. 1666.

ment under Robert Gorges had proved a permanent
one, and the closest historical scrutiny failed to detect,
in record or tradition, a trace of Episcopal teachings.
The leaven had been wholly worked out.

What became of the widow of David Thomson,
after the settlement, nowhere appears. Apparently
she continued in the occupation of the island which
still bears her husband's name. Subsequently, in
1648, it was regularly granted by the General Court
to her son, John Thomson, who had then recently
attained his majority. He does not seem to have
prospered ; for, three years later, the island thus
granted was seized for debt, and, after being sold twice
or more in the intermediate time, it at length passed,
in the year 1666, into the hands of the Lynde family,
who held it for over a century.^

Like Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, Jeffreys, Burs-
ley and all the other Gorges planters, David Thomson
left descendants, who became merged for all time in
the general Anglo-American community.

1 Lynde Diaries, 32, n.

CHAPTER XIX.

OF THE SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES OF THOMAS MORTON,
WALTER BAGNALL AND EDWARD GIBBONS, ONCE
OF MERRY-MOUNT.

With three exceptions nothing is known of the
subsequent lives of those who in 1625 sat down with
Captain Wollaston at Passonagessit. These three
were Thomas Morton, Walter Bagnall, of Richmond
Island, Me., and Edward Gibbons, afterwards a prom-
inent member of the Puritan community, and the
commander-in-chief of its military establishment. It
has already been noticed that Wollaston himself was
a mere bird of passage.^ Nothing more is heard of
him, or of those who came with him, whether his part-
ners and associates or his hired servants, excepting
only the three who have been named.

Whether Gorges really did turn Morton adrift in
1637, as he asserted to Winthrop, or only professed to
have done so, as would be inferred from the attestation
of the Agamenticus charter of 1641, there can be little
doubt that the fortunes of the latter steadily waned
after the publication of the New English Canaan. ^
What became of him during the next few years does
not appear, though probably he hung about London, a
poor dependent on Gorges. Possibly when the Civil

1 Supra, 162.

2 For authorities, etc., in relation to Morton, see introductory matter
to New English Canaan, Prince Soc. ed.

344 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1641-3.

War broke out, aacl Sir Ferdinando sided with the
King, Morton may, in the complications arising out of
the Plough Patent, have turned against his old patron
and attached himself to the Parliamentarians, Rigby
and Cleeve ; for, as early as 1637 Gorges speaks of
him as Cleeve's agent, and at that time Morton would
seem to have sent Cleeve to America in crazy search
of " the great lake Erocoise." A certain amount of
plausibility is given to the theory that he did thus
desert Gorges, and seek the favor of his enemies, by
the fact that Morton is next met with in Plymouth,
pretending to be the agent of Rigby, the Puritan
colonel and member of Parliament, and to hold from
him a commission to look after his affairs in America.
Morton even produced certain papers, claiming that
he had a protection from the Parliament ; but he took
good care not to allow them to be examined. This
was in the summer of 1643. His reap23earance at
Plymouth after thirteen years of absence naturally
excited no little remark ; for though there was ap-
parently no copy of the New English Canaan in the
Plymouth colony, the character of the book was per-
fectly well known, and it was considered " infamouse
and scurillous." It would, indeed, have been not un-
natural if the friends of Dr. Fuller, who had now been
dead nine years, should have held the references to
him in lively recollection. Governor Winslow, also,
was then at Plymouth, and it is not probable that he
had forgotten the seventeen weeks in the Fleet prison
for which he was indebted to the author of the book.

The former Master of Mare-Mount and Lord of
Misrule had, it would seem, now taken good care not
to put himself within reach of the Massachusetts
magistrates by landing at Boston ; and even at Plym-

1644. '^ CONTENT TO DRINKE WATERS 345

outli his petition that he might be permitted to tarry
there for a time was by no means acceded to as a mat-
ter of course. One party was in favor of sending the
" petie-fogger of Furnefells Inne " out of the province
forthwith ; but Governor Bradford, more merciful,
gave way so far as to consent that his old enemy might
pass the winter at Plymouth, but only on condition
that he took himself off with the opening of spring.
So there Morton remained. It was twenty-one years
since he had first landed in New England, and he must
now have been well on in life. He had been a wan-
derer and a free-liver. His health was broken. He
was poor too, — so poor that at Plymouth he was glad
to live " meanely at four shillings per week and con-
tent to drinke water, so he [might] dyet at that price."
Though he thus no longer enjoyed the good cheer of
Merry-Mount, the old man seems still to have retained
his love of field sports ; and once more he excited the
fierce wrath of Miles Standish by wandering gun in
hand over the Duxbury marshes.

Though the territory which Sir Alexander Rigby
claimed, and of which subsequently the Parliamen-
tary commission put him in possession, lay wholly in
Maine, Morton either now was, or pretended to be,
engaged in some scheme of settlement at New Haven
or on the Narragansett. His ostensible business at
Plymouth was to interest others in this project. If
we accept Winslow's statement that he secured the
" promise of but one person who is old, weak and de-
crepid, a very atheist and fit companion for him," his
success was limited.

The next spring, in compliance apparently with the
condition imposed by Bradford, Morton left Plymouth.
He went at first to Maine, where the royalist party

346 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1644.

was showing some signs of life, and on his way he
even ventured within the ^Massachusetts jurisdiction,
going by water to Gloucester. Endicott was on the
watch, ready to pounce upon him like a hawk, and a
warrant for his apj^rehension was quickly on its way
to Cape Ann ; but the bird seems to have taken flight
to Maine in time to escape it. How long Morton re-
mained at the eastward, or what he did there, does not
appear, and he is next, in August of the same summer,
heard of in Rhode Island, claiming now to be for the
King, and glad to find there so many cavaliers. Win-
throp all this time was watching him with curious
eyes, and when the author of the Xew Canaan is
next heard of he is within his old persecutor's gi-asp.
What brought him to Boston now — whether he ven-
tured there of his own free will, or was caught passing
through the jurisdiction — is not known ; but, under
date of September /2!^ 1644, five weeks after Cod-
dington had spoken of him as being in Rhode Island,
Winthrop wrote : —

" At the court of assistants, Thomas Morton was called
forth presently after the lecture, that the country might
be satisfied of the justice of our proceeding against him.
There was laid to his charge his complaint against us at the
council board, which he denied. Then we produced the
copy of the bill exhibited by Sir Christopher Gardiner,
etc., wherein we were charged with treason, rebellion, etc.,
wherein he was named as a party or witness. He denied
that he had any liand in the information, only was called as
a witness. To convince him to be the principal party, it
was showed : 1. That Gardiner had no occasion to complain
against us, for he was kindly used, and dismissed in peace,
professing much engagement for the great courtesy he found
here. 2. Morton had set forth a book against us, and had
threatened us, and had prosecuted a quo warranto against

leU. JOVE THCXLERS. 347

115. 3. His letter was produced, wriiten soon after to Mr.
Jeffery, his old acquaiotance and intimate friend/'

Then followed Morton's jubilant letter of ten years
before, in which he tells of his assured and immediate
triumph, and of how Ratcliff '• was comforted by their
lordships with the cropping of Mr. "Winth:

Since that letter was written, many things „ :qy-

peued. •• My Lord Canterbury." who then sat easily
first among •• their lordships at the council board,"
had been nearly four years in the Tower, and was
on trial for his life. Instead of subjecting Cradock
and Hmnphreys to his brutalities, the Archbishop was
now in his turn subjected to the even greater brutali-
ties of Huo^h Peters.^ Gorsfes. then desigriated bv the
King as his governor-general in all America, was in
arms with Prince Rupert : and — exactly ** forty
days " before — ** Jove " had indeed '* Touchsafed. to
thunder." for, at Marston Moor, King Charles had
been overthrown by Cromwell. And here, in Boston,
was Morton. — not returning •* with the govemour,
by whom all complainants [were to] hare relief.*' but
alone and penniless, confronting as best he might
"King Winthrop," sitting at the ites' table,

over which John Endicott — ** tutr ^-eat swelling
fellow of Littleworth " of the Xew Canaan — presided
as goTemor. with the fatal letter to Jeffreys in his
hand. A notable opportunity was thus offered for a
homily on the text, — ** Let him that thinketh he
standeth take heed lest he fall."

There is something singularly naif and characteris-
tic in Winthrop' s record of what now took place, and
it illustrates very clearly one respect in which the early
Massachusetts magistrates enjoyed, a marked advan-

- Hook. Archbishops, tL 363.

348 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1644.

tage over their successors. They carried the great
body of the law, especially of the criminal law, locked
up in their own breasts.^ They were at once law-mak-
ers, law-expounders and the executors of the law. In
the same breath, as it were, they declared the crime,
condemned the criminal and inflicted the penalty. It
was small cause for wonder, therefore, that *' the peo-
ple . . . thought their condition very unsafe, while so
much power rested in the discretion of the magis-
trates." ^ In the case now in hand the prisoner at-
their bar had fourteen years before been arrested, im-
prisoned and banished ; he had been set in the stocks,
fined to the extent of everything he possessed, and seen
his house burned down before his eyes. He had been
sent back to England, nominally to stand his trial for
crimes it was alleged he had committed ; and had
there been released from imprisonment, no accuser
appearing. Having returned to New England he was
now again arrested, and publicly arraigned before the
magistrates, " that the country might be satisfied of
the justice of our proceeding against him." As the
result of this "proceeding" he was imprisoned again
indefinitely, heavily fined, and narrowly escaped a
whipping. And what was the charge against him ? —
It was that he had made " a complaint against us at
the council board " !

" The council board," be it remembered, repre-
sented in those days the King in council. The com-
plaint, therefore, in this case charged to have been
made, was made directly to the power from whence

^ " In all eriminall offences, where the law hath prescribed no cer-
taine penaltie, the judges have power to inflict penalties, according to
the rule of Gods word." Fundamentals of Mass. 12 ; Hutchinson,
State Papers, 205.

^ Palfrey, L 442.

1644. ''THE RULE OF GODS WORD:' 349

the charter of the colony emanated. It seems as if it
would have puzzled Winthrop and his associates, mas-
ters of political casuistry as they were, to point out to
the prisoner, or to the country they proposed to sat-
isfy, any prescriptive law, much less any penal statute,
which made a criminal offence out of a representation
concerning them addressed to the acknowledged head
of the state. The thing charged, be it remembered,
was not an appeal in a judicial proceeding. Such
appeals the colonial magistrates always disallowed, and
claimed under their charter a right to disallow. The
thing charged was simply a " complaint " addressed
to the crown.

That any such view of the matter as the above ever
suggested itself to the mind of the court now sitting
in judgment is highly improbable ; nor does any such
view seem to have even been urged by the prisoner.
In point of fact, however it might be in reason or
in law, any questioning of the colonial magistrates,
whether in the way of appeal or otherwise, before king
or court or parliament, was then and long after looked
upon and treated in Massachusetts as a crime, and as
such was punished. Law or no law, the colonial ma-
gistrates did not propose to recognize any jurisdiction
superior to their own. To be fined, scourged, muti-
lated, imprisoned and banished, on the mere dictum
of a board of magistrates who pointed to no statute,
might be trying ; but such was the practice in early
New England, and as a matter of fact no one ever
improved matters for himself by carrying his com-
plaints across the ocean. This Morton found out
now ; and Maverick and Childs found it out a little
later on. It certainly was not law ; perhaps it was
not justice. The stubborn spirit of independence be-

850 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1644-6.

hind it was none the less what made New England ;
and, even in writing history, something must be par-
doned to the spirit of liberty. Yet would Verres
have dared to make a crime of the complaint a Ro-
man citizen had proffered to the Senate and People
of Rome ?

The rest of Morton's story can be briefly told.
Winthrop is the principal authority, and what he says
throws a gleam of curious light on the thrift, as well
as the charity, of those early times. To speak it
plainly, Morton now was, in all human probability, a
broken-down, disreputable sot; — he could not " i)ro-
cure the least respect amongst our people," is what
Winslow says of him. He was certainly old, destitute
and friendless, and Winthrop records the little that is
known further of him in the following words : —

" Having been kept in prison about a year, in expectation
of further evidence out of England, he was again called
before the court, and after some debate what to do with
him, he was fined one hundred j^ounds, and set at liberty.
He was a charge to the country, for he had nothing, and we
thought not fit to inflict corporal punishment upon him, be-
ing old and crazy, but thought better to fine him and give
him his liberty, as if it had been to procure his fine, but in-
deed to leave him opportunity to go out of the jurisdiction,
as he did soon after, and he went to Acomenticus, and living
there poor and despised, he died within two years after."

Morton himself asserted that the harsh treatment
he endured in prison, while waiting for that evidence
from England which was to convict him of some crime,
broke down his health and hastened his end. This,
too, may well have been the case if he was indeed, as
was subsequently charged, kept in jail and in fetters
through a whole New England winter, without either

1627-31. WALTER BAGNALL. 351

fire or bedding, even " to the decaying of his limbs." ^
How he survived such exposure would seem to be the
only cause for wonder.

When describing in the New English Canaan the
forest beasts of New England, Morton incidentally
refers to a servant of his, who was reputed to have
made a thousand pounds in five years in the fur trade. ^
He had then died, and Morton intimates that his pos-
sessions had mysteriously disappeared. This servant,
there is little room for doubt, was Walter Bagnall.^ In
1627, and possibly a little earlier, Morton had visited
the coast of Maine, trading successfully for furs on
the Kennebec, and passing some time at Richmond
Island, near the entrance to Casco Bay. Indeed, it
would seem probable that he even then had a sort of
branch trading-station on this island, for he speaks
with much feelinfj of the rio:or of its winter climate.
At the time of the arrest of Morton by jNIiles Stan-
dish, Bagnall was probably one of the four of the
Merry-Mount company who were away from home;

1 Writing fifteen years later, Samuel Maverick said, — " Morton
"was banished, his house fired before his face, and he sent prisoner to
England, but for what offence I know not ; who, some years after
(nothing- being laid to his charge) returned for New England, where
he was soon after apprehended and kept in the common Goale a whole
winter, nothing laid to his Charge but the writing of a Booke entituled
New Canaan, which indeed was the truest discription of New England
as then it was that ever I saw. The ofifence was he had touched them
too neere. They not proveing the charge, he was sett loose, but soone
after dyed, haveing as he said, and most believed, received his bane
by hard lodging and fare in prison. This was done by the Massachu-
setts Magistrats." Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. Series II. i. 240.

2 Prince Society edition of New English Canaan, 206, n., 218, n.

2 In regard to Bagnall, in addition to the notes in the Prince Soci-
ety edition of the New -English Canaan, already refeired to, see also
Baxter's George Cleeve of Casco Bay, in the publications of the Gorges
Society.

352 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1631.

and when he returned and found the place practically
broken up, he was among those described as " the
worst of the company," who dispersed, " the more
modest " only remaining to keep the house.^ Going
back to Richmond Island, a dreary place some two
hundred acres in extent, Bagnall there established
himself ; and there he remained until 1631, engaged
in trade with the savages, and known along the coast
as " Great Watt." Winthrop describes him as " a
wicked fellow [who] had much wronged the Indians,"
and the probabilities would seem to be that he carried
the Merry-Mount methods with him to Maine, being
wholly unscrupulous in his dealings. In any event,
he prospered greatly, for at the time of his death he
had amassed, according to Winthrop's estimate, —
more reasonablo than Morton's, though still large
enough, — X400, mainly in goods. He was looking,
also, to a larger and more permanent trade, and shortly
before had made application for a patent to the Coun-
cil for New England. On the 2d of December, 1631,
just two months after he was killed, his request was
granted, and Richmond Island, with fifteen hundred
acres in addition thereto on the neighboring main-
land, was allotted to him. Morton had then been nine
months in England, and not improbably it was through
his agency that Bagnall pressed his claim on Gorges.

On the 3d of October, 1631, an Indian called
Squidrayset, a sagamore of the Casco tribe, was at
Richmond Island with a party of his people. Whether
he went there bent on violence, or to trade away his
furs, is not known ; but possibly he already had
wrongs to avenge, and a sudden quarrel on some new
provocation may have arisen. Whatever the cause,
1 Bradford, 243.

1631-2. ''GREAT WATT." 353

the result was that Bagnall, and the one other man
who lived on the island with him, the initial letter of
whose name alone is known, were set upon and mur-
dered. The savages then burned the house and went
away, carrying off their victims' arms and goods.
When, a few days later, Captain Thomas Wiggin,
then at Piscataqua, received word of this outrage, he
hurried off a messenger to the Massachusetts magis-
trates, asking them at once to send a force of men
to avenge it; but they, excusing themselves on the
gi'ound of the season and want of boats, showed small
disposition to follow the matter up. It was only a
year since they had finally suppressed the mother es-
tablishment at Mt. Wollastou, and, scarce nine months
before, Morton's house had by their orders been burned
to the ground ; so now they evidently felt no great
call to disturb themselves if the savages had disposed
of the branch establishment on the coast of Maine in
a way not much more summary. Upwards of a year
afterwards, some pinnaces were sent out, carrying an
armed force to capture a gang of pirates then infest-
ing the waters of the Kennebec. In January they
returned, the cold putting a stop to an unsuccessful
search ; but, on their way back, they landed on Rich-
mond Island, and finding there Black Will, a Lynn
Indian, hanged him out of hand. So far as now ap-
pears, there would not seem to have been any reason
to suppose that Black Will was concerned in the mur-
ders of fifteen months before, the real perpetrators of
which are said to have been at Presumpscot Falls, not
five miles away, at the very time of his hanging ; but,
in accordance with the frontier code, one outrage was
thus offset against another. Bagnall's goods had dis-
appeared among the Indians ; but, fSore than two cen-

354 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1G28.

tinies after his death, the ploughshare turned up, on
Richmond Island, a stone pot of ancient form, in which
were found some forty pieces of money of Elizabethan
and Stuart coinage. Those most competent to judge
were strong in the belief that this money was a por-
tion of the murdered Englishman's hoard.

Edward Gibbons was more fortunate than his com-
panions, Morton and Bagnall. The career of this man
was, indeed, so varied and curious, — so strangely
illustrative of early colonial life and manners, — that
it is well worth while to recount it in the language, so
far as may be, of the time. It is merely necessary to
premise that Gibbons was probably not one of those
who came in Captain Wollaston's company, or an ori-
ginal member of it. He may have been a relative of
Ambrose Gibbons of Piscataqua, and would seem to
have lived there for a time. Bradford intimates that
Morton's establishment became the resort of " all the
scume of the countrie," and Edward Gibbons was a
young man of reckless, roving disposition ; so that,
a kindred spirit, he may have found his way to Merry-
Mount during the time of Morton's ascendency there.

However this may be. Gibbons was, in all proba-
bility, like BagnaU, absent from Mt. Wollaston at the
time of Morton's arrest in 1628 ; and after that he
may have been accounted one of " the more modest "
of the crew, who remained about the place. If so, he
must have been a looker-on at the hewing down of the
May-pole, under Endicott's eye, in the ensuing Sep-
tember, and hearkened also to the magistrate's stern
admonition that he and his companions should " look
there should be better walkingf." But even before
that event. Gibbons would seem to have experienced
a change of heart. On this subject, Joshua Scottow,

1629. ''MAJOR GENERAL GIBBINS." 355

who wrote about forty years after Gibbons' death, and
referred to a manuscript he had left behind him, is the
principal authority. He is as quaint as he is inco-
herent, and, referring to the famous gathering of the
Salem church on the i||J of August, 1629, he tells
the story thus : —

" At which Convention, the Testimony which the Lord of
all the Earth bore unto it, is wonderfully memor-
able, by a Saving Work upon a Gentleman of Qual- General
ity, who afterwards was the Chieftain and Flower
of New EnglancVs Militia, and an Eminent Instrument
both in Church and Commonwealth ; he being the younger
Brother of the House of an Honourable Extract, his Ambi-
tion exceeding what he could expect at home. Rambled
hither : Before one Stone was laid in this Structure, or our
Van Currier's Arrival, he was no Debauchee, but of a Jo-
cund Temper, and one of the Merry Mount Society, who
chose rather to Dance about a May pole, first Erected to
the Honour of Stvumpet Flora, than to hear a good Ser-
mon ; who hearing of this Meeting, though above Twenty
Miles distant from it, and desirous to see the Mode and
Novel of a Churches Gathering ; with great studiousness, he
applyed himself to be at it ; where beholding their orderly
procedure, and their method of standing forth, to declare
the Work of God upon their Souls, being pricked at the
Heart, he sprung forth among them, desirous to be one of
the Society, who though otherwise well accomplished, yet
divinely illiterate, was then convinc'd and judged before all ;
the secrets of his heart being made manifest, fell down and
Worshipped God, to their astonishment, saying. That God
was in them of a truth."

Subsequent and more reliable authorities add that,
though the Salem preachers encouraged their pros-
elyte in his good intentions, they very prudently
" chose to have some evidence of his sincerity ; " ^ and
1 Eliot, Biog. Diet. 216.

356 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1631^.

the next record concerniDg the convert is indicative of
backsliding, and seems quite to justify this hesitation
on the preachers' part, savoring far more of Merry-
Mount than of the Salem church. At the Court of
Assistants held at Boston on the 16th of August,
1631,

" It is ordered, that Mr Shepheerd and Robte Coles
shalbe ffyned 5 marks a peece, and Edward Gibbons XX°,
for abuseing themselves disorderly with drinkeing to much
stronge drinke aboard the Frendshipp, and att Mr. Maver-
icke his howse at Winettsemet."

In connection with this most unmistakable debauch,
it is interesting to know, on the authority of Gov-
ernor Bradford, that the " stronge drinke " in ques-
tion was " meatheglin," — a liquor made of honey and
water, boiled and fermented, — of which there were
two hogsheads in the cargo of the Friendship. This
liquor belonged to Plymouth parties, but, the Friend-
ship going to Boston, the contents of the hogsheads
were there transferred into wooden " fiackets." '' But
when these fiackets came to be received [at Plymouth]
ther was left but six gallons of the two hogsheads, it
being drunke up under the name leackage, and so
lost." ^ How large a portion of this " leackage " Gib-
bons and his friends were responsible for, does not
appear; but it would seem to have been enough to
lead to their " abuseing themselves disorderly."

Afterwards Gibbons married, became a selectman
and commissioner, and was frequently a delegate to
the General Court, besides being one of the most ac-
tive merchants in Boston. His military turn began
to show itself as early as 1634, and in 1645 he was

1 Bradford, 269.

1637. A BOSTON BUCCANEER. 357

captain of the Boston train-band. Meanwhile, it is
very much to be feared that he for a time tried his
hand at buccaneering. Certainly, in 1636-7, he
passed a number of months in the West Indies, in a
small pinnace of thirty tons, those aboard of which,
for some unexplained reason, did not dare to touch at
any inhabited place ; preferring to land in unfre-
quented harbors, and subsist on turtles and hogs.
Gibbons had been given up for lost in Boston, when
suddenly he reappeared there, in June, 1637, bring-
ing with bim a vessel, his possession of which he ac-
counted for in a most singular way, for he asserted
that, being forced into some harbor of the West Indies,
he would infallibly have been captured by a French
man-of-war lying there, had not the captain of the
man-of-war, " one Petfree," who had formerly lived at
Piscataqua, been acquainted with him.^ Accordingly^
instead of being captured, Gibbons found himself
"used curteously," his commodities exchanged for a
home freight, and his vessel finally sent back to Bos-
ton, taking with her a prize belonging to the French
captain, which Gibbons was authorized by its captor
to sell " for a smaU price to be paid in New England."
Winthrop adds that Gibbons on this occasion brought
home an "aligarto, which he gave the governour."
Though the explanation thus given must naturally have
suggested further inquiry, not only does it seem to have
passed unchallenged in Boston, but time subsequently
gave to it a sort of religious coloring, — what might,
perhaps, be termed a New England theological glow ;
and it was recorded by Cotton Mather in his Mag-
nalia among remarkable sea-deliverances, as " the tcon-
derful story of Major Gibbons." ^ According to this
1 Palfrey, iL 226, n. j Winthrop, i. 270. 2 b. I. ch. i. § 3.

358 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1637-46.

version, Gibbons' vessel, owing to the continuance of
contrary winds, got out of provisions, and those on
board would have been reduced to the necessity of
eating each other, had not God, in answer to " their
importunate prayers," caused first " a mighty fish "
to leap into their boat, and then " a great bird " to
light upon its mast. Both of these were captured,
and then, as the still famishing company was about to
have recourse " to the heart-breaking task of slaying
the person under designation," a third miracle occurs,
and they fall in with the courteous " French pirate,"
and so made " a comfortable end of their voyage."
Satisfied with the results of this singular experience.
Gibbons does not appear to have had anything further
to do with either pirates or piracy ; but, settling down
as a merchant in Boston, he had a house on what is
now Washington Street, opposite the foot of Cornhill,
and a farm in the country at Pullen Point, as Point
Shirley was then called.^ At a later day he was
concerned in the LaTour d'Aulnay complications in
Acadia ; and when, in 1645, d'Aulnay captured La
Tour's fort at St. John "by assault and scalado,"
Major Gibbons, who had involved himself in La Tour's
schemes to the extent of more than £2,000, " by this
last was now quite undone." He still seems, none
the less, to have been a man of substance, for, in a
very life-like description of a visit of d'Aulnay to
Boston in August, 1646, Winthrop says the French
guests lodged at " the house of Major Gibbons, where
they were entertained that night."

D'Aulnay's visit to Boston took place in October,
1646, at which time Gibbons had risen to be command-
ing officer of the Suffolk Regiment, with the title of
1 Mem. Hist, of Boston, i. 578, n.

1644-52. "OF A RESOLUTE SPIRIT." 359

sergeant-major. He had then held the position for
two years, having been chosen to it in 1644, when the
militia was first organized and the office created ; for
there were now four regiments altogether in the col-
ony, each commanded by a sergeant-major, and the
whole by a major-general. Thomas Dudley was the
first to hold the latter position, " whose faithfulness
and great zeal and love to the truths of Christ, caused
the people to choose him to this office, although he
were far stricken in years." Dudley the next year
(1645) was chosen governor, and John Endicott was
appointed major-general in his place. He, also, was
chosen governor, in 1649, and then Sergeant-major
Gibbons succeeded to the major-generalcy, and held
the office until his death, on the 9th of December,
1652.

His only approach to active service seems to have
been in 1645, when " it clearly appeared that God
called the Colonies to a war " with the Narragan setts.
A force of three hundred men, whereof Massachusetts
furnished one hundred and ninety, was then put into
the field, with Major, Gibbons in supreme command.
Among his lieutenants were the redoubtable Captain
Miles Standish, of Plymouth, and the no less redoubt-
able Captain John Mason, of Connecticut, each in
command of a contingent of forty men ; but the mere
spectacle of so formidable an array proved too much
for the savages, and the frightened sons of Canonicus
made haste to send in their submission. Thousfh he
saw no active fighting, Major-General Gibbons, none
the less, impressed his contemporaries as a soldier of
prowess ; and Captain Edward Johnson, of Woburn,
has handed him down to posterity, through the Won-
der-Working Providence, as

360 SUBSEQUENT FORTUNES. 1644-52.

" A man of a resolute spirit, bold as a Lion, being wholly
tutor'd up in New-England Discipline, very generous, and
forward to promote all military matters ; his forts are well
contrived, and batteries strong, and in good repair, his great
Artillery well mounted, and cleanly kept, half Canon, Cul-
verins and Sakers, as also field-pieces of brass very ready
for service."

II.

THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY,

THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY.

CHAPTER I.

THE REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT OF " THE MOUNT."

Thomas Morton's bouse at Merry-Mount was
burned to the ground in December, 1630, and its oc-
cupants were driven away. For several years there-
after the region between the Neponset and the Mona-
toquit — the seaward slope of the Blue Hill range —
was without other inhabitants than the few Indians of
Chickatabot's following, who, the sole representatives
in those parts of the Massachusetts tribe, flit to and
fro across the pages of the record, and haunt " the
Massachusetts Fields," the mere ghosts of their race.
Indeed, for a short space of time, and yet one meas-
ured by years, the Neponset seems to have been looked
upon as practically the southern boundary of Massa-
chusetts. Starting from Salem, and making their
first lodgment on the shores of Boston Bay at Charles-
town, the outposts of what is known in New England
history as the Great Migration had pushed their way
up the valleys of the Charles and the Mystic, and
south as far as the Neponset ; but at the Neponset the
southerly movement paused. It was a barrier in the
way, — the first and the smallest of many barriers of
the same kind which New England civilization was
destined to surmount.

364 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1634.

It was in this unoccupied region — a region some
five miles or so across, between Dorchester on the
north and Wessagusset on the south — that in 1634
Alderman of Bear Cove, as Hingham was then called,
losing his way, wandered through woods and swamps
for three days and two nights without encountering
a human being ; ^ for, though it was known to have a
fertile soil, clear of trees, and to be well adapted to
farming purposes, the border land, as it then was,
seems to have been under a sort of ban. Morton's
doings had given it an evil name. It was no fit home
for godly families.

This state of affairs was not likely to continue long.
The early settlers of Massachusetts Bay, unlike those
of Plymouth, were many of them men of substance.
At home the associates of Carver and Bradford had
been plain people, while, of those who came with
Winthrop and Saltonstall, many had belonged to the
gentry ; and these last brought with them to the New
World the English passion for landed possessions, —
that land-hunger which they inherited direct from
Germanic and Norman ancestors, and which they
left unimpaired and unsatisfied to their descendants.
Every man of mark among them was eager, as soon
as he set foot in New England, to secure a domain for
himself and his descendants. The peninsula of Bos-
ton was smaU, — " too small to contain many," as
Wood described it only three years after the settle-
ment ; so that those living there were " constrained to
take farms in the country." Accordingly, Governor
Winthrop had the Ten-Hill farm of 600 acres in
Medford, besides some 1,200 acres more " about six
miles from Concord northwards." Governor Dudley

1 Supra, 337.

1634. ''CONVENIENT ENLARGEMENT:' 365

had 1,700 acres, — 200 on the west side of the Charles
over against Cambridge, 500 on the easterly side of
the river, above the falls, and 1,000 from Concord
northwards. Sir Richard Saltonstall had 1,600 acres,
part in Watertowu, part in Natick, and, later, part in
Springfield. So it went on ; and it naturally resulted
that, as immigration increased, the land-hunger, which
was quite as well developed in the new as in the old
comers, could find in more remote parts only that on
which to feed.

Then it was that people began to look across the
Neponset ; and accordingly, at the session of the Gen-
eral Court, held in May, 1634, it was ordered " that
Boston shall have convenient enlargement at Mt.
Wollaston." Six months later that territory was
formally annexed to Boston as a sort of outlying de-
pendency, Dorchester intervening between the two,
and the process of dividing it up among private own-
ers, in estates of from 200 to 700 acres, was begun.
On the 14th of December a committee of five was
appointed to go out and assign " what may be suffi-
cient for William Coddington and Edmund Quincy
to have for their particular farms there." Quincy
was the progenitor of the family after a member of
which the town in which the Mount lay received its
name a century and a half later ; Coddington after-
wards became the father of Ehode Island. The Mt.
Wollaston bay-front was now assigned to the two, —
the place where Morton's house had stood subsequently
falling to Coddington, though it finally passed by pur-
chase and descent into the hands of a Quincy.

Allotments to others were at* the same time made,
but they are not to the present purpose. It is neces-
sary to pass over a couple of years before coming to

366 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1636.

two names — AVilliain Hutchinson and John Wheel-
wright ^ — which are associated not only with holdings
at the Mount, but with controversies that for a time
seemed to threaten the very existence of the colony.
Its life was spared ; but through more than a century
and a half its history bears the deep pit-marks of
those controversies, much as men of those early days
bore from childhood scars of the smallpox.

Theological controversies are as a rule among the
most barren of the many barren fields of historical
research; and the literature of which they were so
fruitful may, so far as the reader of to-day is con-
cerned, best be described by the single word impos-
sible. Among modern writers Hallam had to acquaint
himseK with it in at least a general way ; and even
Hallam, who was not wont to flinch at an array of
books and authors, was appalled, not more by the
mass than by the aridity of those devoted to this
particular branch of learning. More than once he
refers to the subject, with a touch of sadness as well
as a warmth of imagery not usual with him. '" Our
public libraries," he in one place remarks, " are cem-
eteries of departed reputation ; and the dust accu-
mulating upon their untouched volumes speaks as

1 The allotment to William Hutchinson was made by votes of Jan-
uary /j, 1636 and January -9^, 1637, and included 600 acres of land,
lying in what is now North Quincy, " betwixt Dorchester bounds and
Mount Woollistone ryver." {Second Report of Boston Record Corn's,
(1877), 7, 14.) The Wheelwrig-ht allotment was made by vote of
?^^;^^, and April -^5, 1637. It included 250 acres lying south of Mt.
Wollaston, and "extended into the countrye." (lb. 15, 17, 45,46.)
The Rev. John Wilson's and the Rev. John Wheelwright's holdings
at " the Mount " seem to have been contiguous, and what Lech-
ford remarked of Blackstone and Williams might have been re-
marked of "Wheelwright : — "He lives neere master Wilson, but is far
from his opinions." (Supra, 325.)

1637. THE ANTINOMIAN CONTROVERSY. 367

forcibly as the grass that waves over the ruins of
Babylon ; " and again, speaking of the wordy " cham-
pions of a long war," he declares of their writings that
'' they belong no more to man, but to the worm, the
moth, and the spider. Their dark and ribbed backs,
their yellow leaves, their thousand folio pages, do not
more repel us than the unprofitableness of their sub-
stance."

So far as its substance was concerned, the great
New England religious controversy of 1637 forms no
exception to the general truth of Hallam's criticism.
Not only were the points in dispute obscure, but the
discussion was carried on in a jargon which has be-
come unintelligible ; and, from a theological point of
view, it is now devoid of interest. At most, it can
excite only a faint curiosity as one more example of
that childish excitement over trifles by which com-
munities everywhere and at all times are liable to be
swept away from the moorings of common sense. But
the, so-called, Antinomian controversy was in reality
not a religious dispute, which was but the form it
took. In its essence that controversy was a great deal
more than a religious dispute ; it was the first of the
many New England quickenings in the direction of
social, intellectual and political development, — New
England's earliest protest against formulas. The
movement of sap in a young tree was not more natural,
and the form the quickening took, and the individuals
who participated in it were the only matters of chance.
It was designed by no one. No one at the time real-
ized its significance. It was to that community just
what the first questioning of an active mind is to a
child brought up in the strictest observance of purely
conventional forms. So viewed, the mis-called Anti-

368 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1637.

nomian controversy becomes, in the light of subsequent
history, full of interest. As an illustration of the
men and manners and modes of thought of a civiliza^
tion wholly unlike any which now exists, it is replete
with life and incident.

John Wheelwright was the third minister of the
gospel who regularly preached within the limits fixed
in the Massachusetts patent south of the Neponset.
William Monell and Joseph Hull of Weymouth alone
preceded him; and when Wheelwright's voice was
first heard in that wilderness, the voice of Monell had
been silent for more than twelve years, while Hull had
taken up his work only a twelvemonth before. Wheel-
wright was in his day esteemed a learned and eloquent
divine, and he was also a very famous one ; for it was
his fortune, by a discourse delivered on a day of pub-
lic fasting and prayer in January, 1637, to throw the
Massachusetts community into a state of commotion
without a parallel in its history. It was, perhaps, the
most momentous single sermon ever preached from the
American pulpit; and, indeed, in this respect to be
compared only with the yet more famous Sacheverell
sermons, preached seventy years later in London.

The author of this memorable fast-day deliverance
was born in 1592 at Saleby, a little hamlet of the
market-town of Alford, some twenty-four miles from
the English Boston, in the region known as the fens
of Lincolnshire. This region has the reputation of
being one of the least interesting in England. Satu-
rated with water through one half of the year, through
the other half it is a dreary flat ; and yet, towards the
close of the sixteenth century, the fens of Lincolnshire
seem to have been somewhat prolific of men destined
to play prominent parts in the settlement of America.

1592-1623. A BORN CONTROVERSIALIST. 369

The names of all the fen hamlets terminate with by,
indicative of their Danish origin ; and at Willoughby,
only a few miles from Saleby, and a little over thirty
from the yet more famous Scrooby, in the next county
of Notts, John Smith was born thirteen years before
Wheelwright. Of the latter's youthful days not much
is known. His father, a landholder of the middle class,
gave the son a good education, and in due course of
time he became a student at Cambridge. There is a
tradition that he and Oliver Cromwell knew each other
well in their college days. The story is to the effect
that in later years the Protector once said : — "I re-
member the time when I was more afraid of meeting
Wheelwright at football than I have been since of
meeting an army in the field, for I was infallibly sure
of being tripped up by him." This, like most utter-
ances resting on tradition, has an apocryphal ring;
but it is an established fact that Cromwell esteemed
Wheelwright highly, and showed him marked favor
at a subsequent time.^ Taking his degree at Cam-
bridge in 1618, Wheelwright five years later, in 1623,
having married in the meanwhile, succeeded his wife's
father in the vicarage of Bilsby, one of a cluster of
hamlets close to the spot of his birth. The great re-
ligious movement against dogmas and ritualism was
then fast developing in England, and assuming more
and more strongly the Puritan phase. Wheelwright
was married, possessed of some property, and secure
in a comfortable living ; but he was a born controver-
sialist, and seems to have entered into the spirit of
the rising protest with all the superfluous energy of

^ Bell, John Wheelwright, Prince Society Publications. Where
other authorities are not specified, reference for statements relating to
Wheelwright should be made to Bell's work.

370 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1636.

youth. Before 1633 the crisis with him had come ; he
was already silenced for non-conformity, and, though
he had neither resigned nor been removed, his vicar-
age had been treated as vacant, and into it a successor
inducted. During the next three years he ministered
privately, but with an ever-increasing reputation, and
in April, 1636, embarked for New England.

Before this Wheelwright's first wife had died, and
he had married Mary, a daughter of Edward Hutch-
inson of Alford, and sister of one William Hutchin-
son. This William Hutchinson had, with his wife
Anne, gone to America in 1634, and landed in Boston
in September, thus preceding Wheelwright by about
two years. Arriving on the ^oi '^, 1636, on the IJ
of the next month Wheelwright was admitted to the
church, being then in his forty-fifth year. In 1636,
and, indeed, for years after that, there was but one
meeting-house in Boston, — the rude, one-story bar-
rack already described. In this edifice were gathered
together each Sabbath and lecture-day all the inhab-
itants of Boston w^ho were neither too young profitably
to attend divine worship, nor incapacitated for some
good and sufficient reason. The Eev. John Wilson,
first pastor of the church, ministered to the flock,
though somewhat overshadowed by the greater emi-
nence in public estimation of his colleague, — or teach-
er, as he was called, — the Rev. John Cotton.

Wheelwright had not been many weeks a member
of the church before some of its more active members
began to agitate the question of installing him by
Cotton's side as an additional teacher. The sugges-
tion was first publicly made on Sunday, November yf ,
1636, at the church-meeting which regularly followed
the services ; and a week later it assumed formal shape.

1634-6. "YOUNG SIR HARRY VANE." 371

A decided opposition was at once developed, at the
head of which were Wilson, the pastor, and Winthrop,
the ex-governor, while the whole movement, as was
natural enough in so small a community, soon con-
nected itself with the political situation. To under-
stand how this came about, and the close bearing it
had on all that followed, a retrospect is necessary.

The popularity of Winthrop, not only in the colony
at large but in his own town and church of Boston,
had for some time been on the decline. This was due
to no fault of his; but would rather seem to have
been one of those inexplicable, temporary eclipses
which nearly every prominent public man is at some
time in the course of his career fated to pass through.
With or without cause the community wearies of him,
and then, perhaps, presently returns to him; nor in
either case can any one say why. The smaller the
community, also, the more liable it is to this ebb and
flow of popular favor. Accordingly, at the election of
1634, the freemen, without ostensible reason, but in
supposed reply to a famous discourse of John Cotton's
on the tenure of office by magistrates, had quietly rel-
egated Winthrop to private life, and chosen Dudley
governor in his stead. A year later again they chose
Haynes, who had then only recently come over, to
succeed Dudley.

Among the many newcomers during the terms of
these two governors were three persons destined to play
parts of especial prominence in the early history of
the colony ; these three were Anne Hutchinson, Henry
Vane and Hugh Peters. It will be necessary to speak
in some detail of Mrs. Hutchinson at a later point in
the narrative, and her presence in Boston was not at
once felt. With the other two it was different. From

372 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1635-7.

the moment tliey set foot on Massachusetts soil, both
Vane and Peters became leading factors in the devel-
opment of the colony.

Naturally enough both the people of Massachusetts
and Massachusetts writers have always taken a pe-
culiar interest in the younger Vane. He figiires in the
list of those who were governors of the Colony and
the State, and not only was he subsequently promi-
nent among the statesmen of the English Common-
wealth, but the romance which hangs about his death
on the scaffold casts a strong gleam of light as well
as a tragic shadow upon what is otherwise rather a
matter of fact and commonplace record of names,
few indeed of which are more than locally remem-
bered. The hand of either the assassin or the heads-
man is apt, also, to exercise a perturbing and, at
times, even a transmuting influence on the judgments
of history ; and this has been especially so in the case
of Vane. At best, his personality is far from being of
the distinct kind ; if, indeed, so far as Massachusetts
is concerned, he has not so long been held up as the
ideal of an etherealized Puritan, youthful and poetic,
gracefully wearing his halo of martyrdom, that at last
effusiveness of sentiment has had more to do with
the popular estimate in which he is held, than calm
judgment backed by adequate knowledge. Judged, on
the other hand, in the ordinary way and by what he did
and what he left behind him, " young Sir Harry Vane "
was a born parliamentary leader, and an administrator
who on occasion did not fear to combine with his en-
ergy a sufficiency of guile ; while, as a thinker and
writer, he was undoubtedly a man of large and aspiring
mind, nourishing lofty ideas far in advance of his time,
but with a faculty of expression by no means equal-

1635. A YOUNG PATRICIAN. 373

ling the fineness of his thought. Consequently his
writings are not only mystical, but they are so in-
volved and dull that Hume was fully justified in pro-
nouncino^ them unintellioible and devoid of common
sense ; and now they are read only by the closest stu-
dents of political history, nor always clearly under-
stood even by them. In the minds and memories of
the great majority of well-informed persons of his own
country. Vane is associated chiefly with the sonnet ad-
dressed to him by Milton, and with Cromwell's ejacu-
lation, as characteristic as it was contemptuous, when
he turned the Long Parliament out of doors. It is
also remembered that he met with calm courage a
death no less cruel than early and undeserved.

When he landed in Boston, in October, 1635, young
Vane was scarcely more than a boy. He would seem
to have been what in ordinary life is known as an
ingenuous youth, in eager sympathy with the most
advanced thought of his day. As such he was full of
high purpose ; but his judgment was by no means
mature, and accordingly he was petulant and indis-
creet,— at times overbearing. From the outset he
impressed himself deeply on the colonists. There
was a glamour about him. A solemn sedateness of
manner was then in vogue ; but the winning faculty
none the less made itself felt, and Vane was in person
a handsome young patrician, — a man of unusual as-
pect, as Clarendon phrases it. His zeal and youthful
piety, his manifest simplicity and directness of pur-
pose, won aU hearts. Furthermore, at this time Mas-
sachusetts was sorely pressed by the machinations of
Gorges and Laud, and stood in utmost need of friends
at court ; Vane was the son of a privy-councillor, one
of the King's most influential advisers, and, naturally

374 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1635.

enough, the colonists, overwhelmed by a sense of their
own littleness, were inclined to magnify out of all
due proportion any possible influence at Whitehall.
Everything therefore contributed and combined to
lend importance to young Vane. His father's son, he
represented also Lords Brooke and Say, the Puritan
patentees of Connecticut ; and he had come to New
England upon the express license and command of
King Charles. The result was, that before this " no-
ble young gentleman of excellent parts," as Winthrop
describes him, had been two months in America, the
inhabitants of Boston, at a general meeting upon
public notice, agreed that none of them should sue one
another at law " before that Mr. Henry Vane and the
two elders have had the hearing and deciding of the
cause, if they can." It is no matter for wonder if
such adulation turned the head of the recipient, espe-
cially when that recipient was a youth yet in his
twenty-fourth year.

Hugh Peters, the companion of Vane in his out-
ward voyage, was a man of wholly different stamp.
While " young Sir Harry " was innately a patrician,
Peters, though he had been educated at Cambridge,
was of the people. There was more than an absence
of natural fineness in his composition ; he was coarse-
grained. Over ten years Vane's senior, tall and thin,
nervous and active both in mind and in body, Peters
was voluble in speech and afraid of nothing. With
his strong voice and fiery zeal, he was looked upon in
his day as the typical Puritan fanatic and preacher ;
and already, before coming to New England, he was
famous for the success with which he swayed great
audiences. He had himself experienced persecution ;
yet it was not in his nature to brook opposition from

1599-1660. HUGH PETERS. 375

others. Not long after his arrival at Boston, the ban-
ishment of Roger Williams made vacant the Salem
pulpit, and Peters was called to fill it. This he did
most acceptably through five years, making himself
conspicuous not only for the strict church discipline
he enforced upon his people, but for the bustling out-
door energy with which he devised new business out-
lets for them. Subsequently, in 1641, he was sent back
to England as a sort of agent of the colony, and dur-
ing the Civil War he became a fighting chaplain in the
army of the Parliament. Eliot says that he then " beat
the pulpit drum " for Cromwell ; and Burnet describes
him as " a sort of an enthusiastical buffoon preacher."
He certainly fought, preached and carried despatches
by turns; now stimulating the soldiery by his wald
eloquence, and now rushing in with them to the sack
of Winchester and Basing House. When Laud, a
broken, weak old man, was leaving the peers' cham-
ber after his arraignment, Peters overwhelmed him
with abuse, and, had he not been restrained, would
have struck him. He preached by special appoint-
ment before Cromwell and the Commons at the Solemn
Fast during the sittings of the High Court of Justice,
and during the trial he was conspicuous for his exer-
tions among the soldiery to incite them to clamor for
the execution of the King. Whatever it may have been
at Salem, his oratory at this time was famous for its
extravagance of language, and for the coarse, familiar
interpretations of Scripture by means of which he
was wont to stir his audience and raise a solemn
laugh. At the funeral of the Protector, he walked by
Milton's side. Thus, when the Restoration took place,
he had won for himself a dangerous prominence, and
was even looked upon as " the most notorious incen-

376 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1635.

diary of all the rebels." As such he was marked for
destruction. His trial may be read among those of
the Regicides, and he was butchered at Charing Cross
on the 16th of October, 1660.1

Landing in Boston in October, Vane was admitted
to membership of the Boston Church on the ^ of
November, and during the same month Peters was
preaching a sort of commercial crusade in Boston and
at Salem, moving the country to organize a fishing
company. In January the two, acting apparently in

1 The word " butchered " is here used advisedly, for the details
of the execution are incredible in their brutality. John Cook and
Hugh Peters were tried and executed together. Tliey were dragged
from the gaol to the scaffold on hurdles, the head of Harrison, who
had been executed before, being fastened on Cook's hurdle, looking
towards him. Peters' courage, alone of those that suffered, did not
rise to the occasion. ' ' He was in great amazement and confusion,
sitting upon the hurdle like a sot all the way he went, and either
plucking the straws or gnawing the fingers of his gloves; " and " he
was observed all the while to be drinking some cordial liquors to keep
him from fainting." Cook suffered first, bearing himself exultingly,
but expressing the wish that Peters * ' might have been reprieved for
some time, as not being prepared or fit to die." When Cook was
" cut do\wi and brought to be quartered, one they called Colonel Tur-
ner called to the .sheriff's men to bring Mr. Peters near, that he might
see it, and by and by the hangman came to him, all besmeared in
blood, and rubbing his bloody hands together, he (tauntingly) asked,
' Come, how dto you like this, Mr. Peters ? How do you like this
work ? ' To whom he replied, ' I am not (I thank God) terrified at
it, you may do your worst.' " Presently he ascended the ladder, and,
" after he had stood stupidly for a while, he put his hand before his
eyes and prayed for a short space ; and the hangman often remem-
bering him to make haste by checking him with the rope, at last, rery
im willingly he was turned off the ladder."

Another account says that '' he smiled when he went away," but
what he said ' ' either in speech or prayer, it could not be taken, in
regard his voice was low at that time, and the people uncivil."

Such was a public political execution at Charing Cross, in the most
crowded streets of London, in the year of grace, 1660. See, also, on
this subject note (5) in Baxter's Memoir of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, 6.

1633-6. « THEY FELL INTO BITTERNESS." 377

concert, went still further in their efforts for the well-
being of the colony. " Finding some distraction in
the Commonwealth, arising from some difference in
judgment, and withal some alienation of affection
among the magistrates and some other persons of
quality, they procured a meeting at Boston of the
governor [Haynes], the deputy [Bellingham] , Mr.
Cotton, Mr. Hooker, Mr. Wilson, and there was pres-
ent Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Dudley and themselves." The
real cause of the trouble thus mysteriously referred
to, though well understood by all, could not readily be
set forth in an open, public way, for it was nothing
more nor less than Dudley's jealousy of Winthrop.
This had broken out as early as 1633, and had then
culminated in the famous interview at Charlestown, at
which the former charged the latter with exceeding
his authority as governor. Winthrop, in reply, chal-
lenged his critic to show wherein he had so exceeded,
" and speaking this somewhat apprehensively, the dep-
uty began to be in a passion, and told the governor
that, if he were so round, he woulcj be round too. The
governor bad him be round, if he would. So the
deputy rose up in great fury and passion, and the
governor grew very hot also, so as they both fell into
bitterness." A half reconciliation was then effected
through the mediation of the clergy, but the two men
were of different disposition, and Dudley could not
well help criticising Winthrop ; for while Winthrop,
of a calm temper and naturally tolerant, inclined to
the ways of mercy and forbearance, Dudley, a man of
thoroughly intolerant nature, was ever harsh and severe.
Narrow in mind and rough of speech, with all a
narrow-minded man's contempt for opinions different
from his own, " the deputy " was as outspoken as he

S78 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1633-6.

was courageous. Accordingly in the Charlestown in-
terview of 1633 he had not hesitated to attack Win-
throp for the too great leniency of his administration.
Heavier fines, severer whippings, more frequent ban-
ishments, were called for ; and as this view strongly
commended itself to the average Puritan, and espe-
cially to the average Puritan divine, it had contrib-
uted in no small degree to the decline of Winthrop's
popularity, and Dudley's final substitution for him in
the position of governor.^ And so, as Winthrop put
it, " factions began to grow among the people, some
adhering more to the old governor, and others to the
late governor, Mr. Dudley, — the former carrying
matters with more lenity, and the latter with more
severity."

The meeting now arranged by Vane and Peters

^ Winthrop has been regarded by most of the native New England
historians, and notably by Palfrey, with a veneration which has im-
paired respect for their judgment whenever the authority of the first
governor is invoked. They see things only through his eyes, and the
ordinary scrutiny of modem historical criticism is laid aside where he
is involved. Repeated instances of this indiscriminate adulation wUl
be referred to in the course of this narrative. Nevertheless the diffi-
culty of Winthrop's position, and the skill and high-minded rectitude
with which he ou the whole demeaned himself, should always be borne
in mind. On this point the evidence of a foreign student and investi-
gator carries more weight than that of one to the manor born : — '' Every
page in the early history of New England bears witness to the pa-
tience, the firmness, the far-seeing wisdom of Winthrop. But to esti-
mate these qualities as they deserve, we must never forget what the
men were with whom, and in some measure by whom, he worked. To
guard the Commonwealth against the attacks of courtiers, church-
men and speculators, was no small task. But it was an even greater
achievement to keep impracticable fanatics like Dudley and Endicott
within the bounds of reason, and to use for the preservation of the
state those headstrong passions which at every turn threatened to
rend it asunder." Doyle, English in America ; the Puritan Colonies,
i. 165.

1635.

OVERMUCH lenity:' 379

with a view to healing these factions was highly char-
acteristic. The Lord was first sought. The prayer
over, Yane declared the occasion of the meeting and
the result sought to be obtained from it ; which he
described as "a more firm and friendly uniting of
minds, especially of Mr. Dudley and Mr. Winthrop."
It must at first have been somewhat awkward for
the officious youth, as both Winthrop and Dudley pro-
fessed an utter unconsciousness of any ill-feeling or
jealousy. They did not deny that there had been
something of the sort long previous, but Winthrop
professed " solemnly that he knew not of any breach
between his brother Dudley and himself : " while Dud-
ley comfortably remarked " that for his part he came
thither a mere patient ; and so left it to others to
utter their own complaints." Fortunately for Vane,
the existing governor, Haynes, then came to his aid,
and, after a certain amount of clumsy circumlocution,
proceeded, '' as his manner ever was," to deal with
Winthrop "openly and freely," specifying certain
cases in which the latter had, as he expressed it,
" dealt too remissly in point of justice." To this
Winthrop replied, and, after partly excusing and ex-
plaining, came at last to the real point at issue. He
" professed that it was his judgment that, in the in-
fancy of plantation, justice should be administered
with more lenity than in a settled state, because people
were then more apt to transgress, partly of ignorance
of new laws and orders, partly through oppression of
business and other straits ; but, if it might be made
clear to him that it was an error, he would be ready
to take up a stricter course." The aid of the clergy
was then invoked. The matter was referred to the
ministers present, — Cotton, Hooker and Wilson, —

380 REV. JOHN WHEELWRIGHT. 1636.

to be considered overnight, and the next day they
were to report a rule for the future guidance of the
magistrates ; and this they did, all agreeing in one
conclusion, "that strict discipline, both in criminal
offences and in martial affairs, was more needful in
plantations than in a settled state, as tending to the
honor and safety of the gospel." Winthroj) there-
upon professed himself satisfied. He admitted that
he had theretofore " failed in overmuch lenity and
remissness," but promised that he would "endeavor
(by God's assistance) to take a more strict course
hereafter. Whereupon there was a renewal of lov^
amongst them."

This took place on January | and g, 1636, and in
the following May young Yane was chosen governor
to succeed John Haynes. He was chosen on the 25th
of the month, or what is now the 4th of June. The
day following John Wheelwright landed in Boston.

CHAPTER II.

MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON.

When Wheelwright found himself on New Eng-
land soil, it must have been to the house of his brother-
in-law, William Hutchinson, that he first directed
his steps. It was the reunion of a family ; for not
only was Mrs. Wheelwright a sister of Hutchinson,
but their mother also had now come over. Nor was
Wheelwriofht himself welcomed there as a relative
merely ; he was looked upon as another eminent man
added to the colony, — a new pulpit light. He at
once plunged into whatever of religious or political
life the little settlement contained ; for of that life
the house of William Hutchinson, or rather the house
of his wife, Anne Hutchinson, had then for some time
been the centre.

It has already been mentioned that the Hutchin-
sons had come over to New England in 1634, about
two years before Wheelwright. Of this couple their
contemporaries tell us that the husband was " a man
of very mild temper and weak parts, and wholly
guided by his wife ; " while she was a woman " of
a haughty and fierce carriage, of a nimble wit and
active spirit,^ and a very voluble tongue, more bold
than a man, though in understanding and judgment
inferior to many women." This vigorous bit of por-
traiture is from the pen of the Rev. Thomas Weld,

1 " Of a ready wit and bold spirit." Winthrop, i. 239, 296.

382 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

the UDfortunate gentlewoman's most, malignant en-
emy, and it is not necessary here to inquire as to its
truth to nature. Suffice it now to say that during the
two years which intervened between her own arrival
in Boston and the arrival of her husband's brother-
in-law, Mistress Anne Hutchinson, as she was called,
slowly, skilfully, conscientiously, had been accumulat-
ing, in the heart of the little, nascent community into
which she had come, that mass of combustible mate-
rial which was soon to kindle into a fierce blaze.
Wittingly or unwittingly, though probably the latter,
she had entered ujDon a desperate undertaking, which
she was destined to carry forward with a degree of
courage and persistence, combined with feminine
tact, which made the infant commonwealth throb
through its whole being. She had attempted a pre-
mature revolt against an organized and firmly-rooted
oligarchy, of theocrats.

The early Massachusetts community was in its es-
sence a religious organization. Church and state
were one ; and the church dominated the state. The
franchise was an incident to church membership.
The minister — the " unworthy prophet of the Lord "
— was the head of the church. There was a deep sig-
nificance, as there may have been a bitter sneer, in
Blackstone's parting shot as he left Boston, in which
the " lord-bishops " were joined with " the lord=
brethren." At the point it had now reached, the
Reformation of the previous century had resulted in
practically substituting for a time many little poj^es
and little bishops for the one pope and the few great
bishops. The fundamental principle of that Refor-
mation had been the paramount authority of the Holy
Scriptures as a rule or guide in life, as opposed to the

1636. ''HIS WORD." 383

dictation of popes, synods and councils. The human
mind after centuries of implicit obedience had re-
volted ; and, in the revolt, the reaction as usual was
complete. Instead of unquestioning submission to
human authority, no human authority whatever was
allowed to intervene between man and God's Word.
The issue could not be put more forcibly than it was
by John Knox in one of his discussions with Queen
Mary. She said to him : — " You interpret Scripture
after one manner, the Pope and cardinals after an-
other : whom shall I believe, or who shall be judge ? "

— and Knox at once replied — " Ye shall believe God,
that plainly speaketh in His Word ; and further than
the Word teaches you, ye neither shall believe the
one nor the other. The Word of God is plain ; and
if there appear any obscurity in one place, the Holy
Ghost, which is never contrarious to Himself, explains
the same more closely in other places ; so that there
can remain no doubt but unto such as obstinately
remain ignorant."

Thus God's Word was beyond question, and it only
remained to interpret it and declare its meaning in
any given case ; but the interpreting and the declar-
ing were the function of the clergy. The " lord-breth-
ren " had thus been substituted for the " lord-bishops,"

— many local popes for the one at Rome. The casu-
istry to which the early New England clergy gravely
had recourse in defending the position thus assumed
might have moved the admiration of a Jesuit. When
earnestly adjured by brethren, more liberal as well as
more logical, not to make men hypocrites by compel-
ling an outward conformity, thus practising that in
exile which they themselves went into exile to escape,

— when thus adjured, they replied that they had fled

384 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

from man's inventions ; but there was a wide differ-
ence between man's inventions and God's institutions,
and they compelled a conformity only to the latter,
^he institution being of God, the sin was not in the
magistrate who compelled, but in his perverse will
who stood in need of compulsion.^ And so the final
''thus saith the Lord" had passed from Kome to
Massachusetts. Priest and inquisition had given way
to bishop and high-commission, and they in their turn
to minister and magistrate.

It is true, this system, unlike that of Rome, carried
within it the seeds of its own decay, for it rested on
discussion, and no final, inspired authority was recog-
nized when irreconcilable differences of opinion arose.
The minister carried with him only such weight as
belonged to his individual character and learning,
and to his ordained position ; though " the unworthy
prophet of the Lord," God had not touched that
prophet's lips with fire, nor did he claim to be in
direct communication with Him. Neither were any
intermediates recognized. Early New England ab-
jured all Saints. But when it came to the interpre-
tation of the Scriptures, — the inspired Word, the
one guide both on earth and heavenward, — though
open and almost endless discussion was allowed and
even encouraged, and that discussion, bristling with
dialectics and casuistry, was overlaid with a rubbish
of learning, yet it has not in the result always been
at once apparent wherein the minister differed from

1 " Christ doth not persecute Christ in New England. . . . For
though Christ may and doth afflict his own members ; yet he doth
not afflict (much less persecute) Christ in them, but that which is
left of old Adam in them, or that which is found of the seed of
the serpent in them." Cotton, in Publications of N arragansett Club,
ii. 27-8-

1636. COWL AND BANDS. 385

the priest. Both priest and minister had recourse to
civil persecution to compel religious conformity ; and,
while the fagots that consumed Servetus and Savon-
arola were not unlike, they forever bear witness to a
strong family resemblance between Romish cowl and
bands of Geneva.

Not unnaturally, therefore, it has of late been some-
what the fashion to ignore this difference between
priest and clergyman, and, indeed, some have even
been disposed to deny its existence. Like Milton,
they have claimed that after all, — " New Presbyter
[was] but old Priest ^vrit large." And yet, practi-
cally and in point of fact, the difference was not to
be measured, for in itself it was o-reat, and in its loo^i-
cal consequences vital. It was the same difference
in spiritual matters which exists politically between
an absolute ruler under right divine, and a civil au-
thority exercised under the restrictions of a written
constitution. In the spiritual contests of the six-
teenth and seventeenth centuries the Pope represented
divine right ; the Bible, the written constitution.
The constitution was, it is true, indisputably vague,
and everything depended on the construction given
to its provisions. Except in certain small localities
like Holland, or among a few most advanced thinkers
of the day, who, like Roger Williams, were looked
upon as visionaries, the conception of spiritual free-
dom and religious toleration had no more footing in
the mind of the seventeenth century than the idea
of freiedom in crime and immunity from its legal pen-
alties has now. Human thought had not yet grasped
the distinction between personal liberty where the
rights of others are not involved, and license where
those rights are involved ; so far, indeed, from having

386 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

grasped this distinction, one of the plainly stated con-
tentions of tlie more advanced advocates of religious
tolerance was, if a man conscientiously disbelieved in
the right of any human authority, he ought not to be
forced to obey it. None the less, the first great step
towards educating the human mind to the difference
between spiritual freedom and criminal license was
taken when Bible law was substituted for papal dic-
tum. The written word then became matter for ju-
dicial construction ; but, like any other written law,
when once construed and its meaning ascertained by
competent and recognized authority, it was held by
common consent to be the rule in force. It only re-
mained to compel obedience to it, just as now obe-
dience is compelled to the criminal law. When,
therefore, Cotton argued that, while it was wrong to
persecute man against conscience, no man's conscience
compelled him to reject "the truth ; and therefore to
force the truth upon him could be no violation of con-
science, — when he argued in this way he uttered that
which to us is foolishness ; but, from his standpoint
of time and light, he was merely asserting that on
points of doubtful construction the law must be estab-
lished by the tribunal of last resort, and, when once
established, must be uniformly obeyed by all or en-
forced upon all. The fallacy which lurked between
his premises and his conclusion did not suggest itself
to him. A sjjiritual authority and a spiritual law
were deemed just as necessary as a criminal authority
and a criminal law.

Nevertheless, though the divine of the reformed
church of the sixteenth century did set himself up as
the ordained expounder of the written law, the impor-
tance of the ground gained when a written law was

1636. THE THEOLOGICAL MACHINE. 387

substituted for an inspired dictum must not be lost
sight of. All else followed in due time. In the
searching discussion which ensued, the learning, the
common sense, and finally even the authority and
commission of those who comprised the tribunal, were
questioned ; and at last the law itself, and the necessity
of any law, or of general conformity to it, was openly
denied. " This was some time a paradox, but now
the time gives it proof ; " but two centuries and a half
ago, to the early New England Puritans, it was worse
than a paradox, — it was a blasphemy. As well doubt
the existence of God himself as question the binding
authority of His Word.

The Hebrew Bible was, then, the fundamental re-
ligious law — the spiritual constitution, as it were —
of the Puritan community. The clergy were the or-
dained and constituted expounders of that law, — the
Supreme Theological Court. Before them and by them
as a tribunal each point at issue was elaborately and
learnedly discussed ; reasons were advanced and au-
thorities cited for each decision they rendered. Behind
their decisions was the Word ; and behind the Word
was God and His Hereafter. The spiritual organiza-
tion was complete.

The religion of the Puritan was, also, realistic in all
its parts, — so realistic, indeed, as to be a practical
piece of machinery, — human, mundane machinery.
There was God, the Constitution and the Court —
and the clergy were the Court. But to the men and
women composing the Puritan community, the Court
was no more a reality — hardly more a visible thing
— than the Supreme Being himself ; for in those days
religion meant a great deal. It was no sentiment or
abstraction. The superstition which prevailed is to

388 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1630.

the modern mind well-nigh inconceivable. All shared
in it. Sleeping and waking, at bed and board, in the
pnlpit, in the field or at the work-bench, God and his
providences, the Devil and his snares, were ever pres-
ent. Their direct interposition was seen in events
the most trivial. A harmless reptile crawls bewil-
dered among the elders at a synod and is killed by-
one of them, " and out of doubt the Lord discovered
somewhat of his mind in it ; " so the serpent personi-
fied the Devil, and the synod the churches of Christ,
while Faith was represented by that elder who crushed
the head of the Evil One. There takes place " a great
combat between a mouse and a snake, in the view of
divers witnesses ; " and the pastor of the first church
of Boston interprets the portent to his people, while
the governor of the colony records his words. The
snake is again the Devil, while the mouse becomes
" a poor contemptible people, which God had brought
hither, which should overcome Satan here and dispos-
sess him of his kingdom." Two unfortunate men are
drowned while raking for oysters ; " it was an evident
judgment of God upon them, fOr they were wicked
persons." The hand of God was heavy also on those
who spake " ill of this good land and the Lord's peo-
ple here ; " some were taken by the Turks, and they
and their wives and their little ones sold as slaves ;
others were forsaken of their friends, or their daugh-
ters went mad or were debauched, or their children
died of the plague, or their ships blew up with all on
board. Soon or late, some ill befell them or theirs ;
and through that ill the finger of the Lord was re-
vealed. A poor barber, called hastily to perform a
dentist's ofBce, and bewildered in a storm of snow
between Boston and Roxbury, is found frozen to

1636. ''GATHERING PROVIDENCES:' 389

death ; and presently it is remembered he had been
a theological adherent of Mrs. Hutchinson. There
befalls a great freshet, and the Indians " being povv-
wcwing in this tempest, the Devil came and fetched
away five of them." A father, industrious or inter-
ested in his task, works one hour after Saturday's
sunset, and the next day his little child of five years
is drowned ; and he sees in his misfortune only '' the
righteous hand of God, for his profaning His holy
day against the checks of his own conscience." A
wife is suspected of the murder of her husband, a
mother of killing her illegitimate child, and as they
touched them " the blood came fresh " into the dead
faces, and the bodies *' bled abundantly." And when
the most terrible misfortunes incident to maternity be-
fell Anne Hutchinson and her friend, the no less un-
happy Mary Dyer, the grave magistrates and clergy,
gloating in blasphemous words over each lying detail
of the monstrous fruit of their wombs, saw therein
" God himself bring in his own vote and suffrage
from heaven."

But it is needless to multiply instances. The
records of the time are full of them ; for even angry
men in their disputes would treasure up in memory
every trivial or ludicrous mishap which befell their
ojjponents, and, while so doing, they were said to be
busy " gathering Providences." The finger of an om-
nipresent Almighty was thus visible everywhere and
at all times ; now meting out rewards and punish-
ments while reversinjj the action of the wind and
tide, and then revealing itself in terror through
strange portents in the sky.

Among a people educated to this high pitch of fer-
vor, theological controversy was the chief end towards

890 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

which the higher branches of education were directed.
The Scriptures, and the volumes of commentary upon
them, were the sole literary nutriment ; while they
were studied only that scholars might, with gloomy
joy, dispute over the unknowable. Not that there were
then no other books in the world. It is true, there
was no light current literature in the modern sense of
the term ; but the great body of the classics existed,
and every man and every woman of good education
had a familiarity with them now j30ssessed by few.
They were " the humanities " of the time. Of the
great names in modern letters, also, the greatest were
already known. Boccaccio, Dante, Ariosto and Tasso
were familiar in the Italian. Don Quixote is alluded
to in the New Canaan as a book with which every
one was acquainted. Rabelais had died nearly a
century before, and the third reprint of Montaigne's
Essays, in its English translation, had appeared in
1632. Bacon, Shakspeare, Spenser and Ben Jonson
had done their work : Milton was doing his, for it was
in 1634 that Com us was set upon the stage : but, to
the New England Puritan, Spenser was an idle rhyme-
ster, Jonson a profane scoffer, and Shakspeare a wan-
ton playwright. As to Boccaccio and Rabelais, copies
of their works would in primitive Massachusetts have
been rooted out as Devil's tares. That there w^ere
French books, as well as Latin, in Governor Win-
throp's library, we know ; and it is possible to im-
agine him sitting in his library in primitive Boston
with a volume of Montaigne in his hand ; but to En-
dicott or Dudley and the rest, while those writings of
Cotton, which to us are as devoid of life as they are
of value, were full of interest, the pages of the French
humorist would have seemed idle words. Fanaticism

1G36. INTELLECTUAL ARIDITY. 391

is no less destructive to the capacity of general liter-
ary enjoyment than a diseased appetite is to a delicate
taste. Drunkards crave alcohol, and communities ex-
alted with religious fervor care only for books on
theolog}^ Early New England had no others. Some
adequate idea of the utter intellectual aridity which
consequently prevailed may be derived from the Sew-
all diary. Sixty years after the Antinomian contro-
versy, Pole's Synopsis, and the expositions of Calvin
and Caryl, were the companions of the reading man's
leisure, while the Theopolis Americana and the Mag-
nalia were the ripe fruits of the author's brain.

Fortunately, the New Englander came of a hard-
headed stock. Though individuals at times lashed
themselves into a state of spiritual excitement bor-
dering close upon insanity, and occasionally crossed
the line, this was not common. When all was said
and done, there was in the early settlers a basis of
practical, English common sense, — a habit of com-
posed thought and sober action, which enabled them
to bear up with steady gait under draughts of fanat-
icism sufficiently deep and strong to have sent more
volatile brains reeling through paroxysms of delirium.
Only twice or thrice in all their history have New
Englanders as a mass lost their self-control ; and be-
cause they lost it then, other communities, with whom
losing it has been matter of too frequent occurrence
to excite remark, have never forgotten those occa-
sions, nor allowed New Englanders to forget them.
Such an occasion was the Antinomian controversy,
and such again was the witchcraft mania.

Among this people, — strong, practical, self-con-
tained and tenacious, burning with a superstitious zeal
which evinced itself in no sharp, fiery crackle, but in a

392 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

steady glow, as of white heat, which two centuries did
not suffice wholly to cool, — among this people stood
the clergy, a class by themselves, almost a caste.
Learned in things theological, highly moral, deeply im-
bued with a sense both of the dignity and the duties
of their calling, the first generation of New England
divines was no less bigoted as a class than men with
minds at once narrow and strong are wont to be. That
they were to the last degree intolerant needs not be
said, for all men are intolerant who, in their own con-
ceit, know they are right ; and upon this point doubt
never entered the minds of the typical divines of that
generation. Their pride of calling was intense. Not
only in their pulpits, but in their daily lives they
were expected to and did make a peculiar sanctifica-
tion obtrusively manifest. They were not as other
men ; and to this, not only their garments, but their
Scriptural phrase and severe \4sage bore constant wit-
ness. And in these last characteristics — the dress,
the speech and the faces of the clergy — lay the heart
and the heat of the great Antinomian controversy.
The ministers were the privileged class of that commu-
nity, — " God's unworthy prophets," as they phrased
it. Living in the full odor of sanctity among God's
people, — His chosen people, whom He " preserved
and prospered beyond ordinary ways of Providence,"
— they constituted a powerful governing order. And
now, suddenly, a woman came, and calmly and per-
sistently intimated that, as a class, God's prophets in
New England were not what they seemed. No longer
were they unworthy in their own mouths alone.

Though she is said to have been a cousin of John
Dryden, little is known of Mrs. Hutchinson's ante,
cedents in England; nor is it necessary that much

163G. A MAGNETIC WOMAN. 393

should be known. Her husband was the owner of an
estate at Alford, and descended from a family the
genealogy of which has since been traced with results
more curious than valuable. Though Alford was so
far from the English Boston that Mrs. Hutchinson
could hardly have been a constant attendant at St.
Botolph's Church, she seems to have been such an
ardent admirer of the Rev. John Cotton that, when
" he kept close for a time, and fitted himself to go to
New England," she prepared to follow. Born about
the year 1600, during the time she lived in Boston —
a little less than four years — Anne Hutchinson was
a woman in the full vigor of life. She had a strong
religious instinct, which caused her to verge closely on
the enthusiast, and a remarkably well-developed con-
troversial talent. But above all else Anne Hutchin-
son, though devoid of attractiveness of person, was
wonderfully endowed with the indescribable quality
known as magnetism, — that subtle power by which
certain human beings — themselves not knowing how
they do it — irresistibly attract others, and infuse them
with their own individuality. Among the many well-
kno^vn phases of emotional religion, that of direct in-
tercourse with the Almighty has not been the least
uncommon ; and, if Mistress Hutchinson did not actu-
ally pretend to this, she verged dangerously near it.
She certainly in moments of deep spiritual enthusiasm
felt movements which she professed to regard as direct
divine revelations. Not that she actually claimed to
be inspired, or to speak as one prophesying ; but at
intervals she professed to feel that the Spirit of God
was upon her, and then she was not as her ordinary
self, or as other women. The exact line between this
and inspiration is one not easy to draw ; yet probably

394 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

some shadowy line did exist in her mind. However
this may be, the mere suggestion of such a thing was
enough with the early Massachusetts divines. The
doctrine of an inward light was to them peculiarly
hateful, and they regarded such a light rather as a
gleam of hell fire than as a heaven-born beam. That
they themselves were not in any way inspired was a
cardinal point in their religious faith.^ They had for
their guide the written Word; and that only. For
any one to claim to have more, — to be in direct spir-
itual communication with the Almighty, — was to as-
sert a su^Deriority in v»hat was the very soul of their
calling. They were " unworthy prophets " of the
Lord ; and here was one who claimed to be more
nearly thatt they in the Master's confidence. But the
God they worshipped was that same Jehovah with
whom direct and personal intercourse had been held
by the prophets of old. He was not a metaphysical
abstraction. Freely pictured in glass and on canvas^
the awe with which a finer sense has since surrounded
Him did not surround Him then. Always present,
always in that human form in which He revealed him-
self to Moses, his face might well be seen at any
moment, even as his voice was often heard and his
hand felt. But to them, his servants. He had given
only his Scriptures through which to ascertain his
will. When, therefore. Mistress Hutchinson claimed,
through a process of introspection, to evolve a know-

^ This was explicitly set forth in the Westminster Confession of
1643: "The whole Council of God concerning- all things necessary
for his own Glory, Men's Salvation, Faith and Life, is either expressly
set down in Scripture, or by good and necessary Consequence may be
deduced from Scripture : Unto which nothuig at any time is to be
added, whether by new Revelations of the Spirit, or Traditions of
Men." See, also, Ellis, The Puritan Age in Massachusetts, 124-166.

1636. AN ELOQUENT MYSTIC. 395

ledge of the divine will from her own inner conscious-
ness, she not only, in the eyes of the ministers, began
to share in the blasphemies of KnipperdoUing and
John of Leyden, but she did so through the assertion
of a most impudent and irritating superiority. If she
did not directly say it, her every act was a repetition
of the phrase, " I am holier than thou ! "

Thus Mrs. Hutchinson's whole course in Massachu-
setts was a direct and insulting challenge to the body
of the clergy. Bad enough in itself from their point
of view, it was aggravated by the feminine ingenuity
with which she made herself disagreeable. She be-
longed to a type of her sex for the production of
which New England has since achieved a considerable
notoriety. She seems to have been essentially trans-
cendental. She might perhaps not inaptly be termed
the great prototype of that misty school. She knew
much; but she talked out of all proportion to her
knowledge. She had thought a good deal, and by
no means clearly; having not infrequently mistaken
words for ideas, as persons with more inclination than
aptitude for controversy are wont to do. To confute
her was not easy, for her disputation was involved in
a mist of language which gave the vagueness of a
shadow to whatever she might be supposed to assert.
Nevertheless, here v/as this eloquent mystic lifting up
her voice under the very eaves of the sanctuary, and
throwing the subtle charm of her magnetism over the
hearts of God's people.

Boston was in 1637 the village capital of an infant
colony. It was a very small place, — so small that
when Josselyn visited it, a year later, he spoke of it as
containing not above twenty or thirty houses. In this
he must have been mistaken, as a stranger often is, in

896 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1G3G.

roughly estimating the size of a town new to him ; for,
even then, Boston must have numbered about two
thousand inhabitants of all ages.^ The original huts
and cabins, of rough>hew^n logs, were fast giving place
to a better class of frame houses, the Elizabethan
fronts and overhanging gables of which looked out on
crooked, unpaved lanes, something more than cow-
paths, but not yet streets. No building in the town
was eight years old, and the new brick house of Mr.
Coddington, the treasurer of the province, was the
only one of the kind. It was a hard-working little
community; but, when work was done, only religion
remained upon which social and intellectual cravings
could expend themselves. There were no newspapers,
— no dances, parties, concerts, theatres or libraries.
They had the Sabbath services, followed by the church-
meetings, and the Thursday lectures. The wedding
was a civil service ; the funeral a sombre observance.^
In a state of society such as this it was inevitable that
the love of excitement, common to all mankind, should
take a morbid shape. There must be religious sensa-
tions, seeing there could be no other; and the place

1 It is difficult to see how, with the strict church attendance then
exacted, so large a population could have been accommodated in one
meeting-house. Yet in 1(338 Boston was called upon to furnish
twenty-six men for the Pequot War, out of a total levy of one hun-
dred and sixty. The population of Massachusetts in 1637 could not
well have been less than twelve thousand, (See supra, S-iO,n.) It was
probably more than that. If the levy was proportional, it would in-
dicate for Boston a population of at least one thousand nine hundred
and fifty.

'^ '' Marriages are solemnized and done by the Magistrates, and not
by the Ministers. At burials, nothing is read, nor any funeral Sermon
made, but all the neighborhood, or a good company of them, come
together by tolling of the bell, and carry the dead solemnly to his
grave, and there stand by him while lie is buried. The ministers are
not commonly present." Leehford, Plain Dealing, 94.

163G. A SOCIAL LEADER. 397

was so small that a moderate-sized sensation absorbed
it wholly. Though the stage was far from large, Mrs.
Hutchinson found it admirably prepared for her ; the
audience craved excitement, every eye was upon her,
her voice filled the theatre.

During her earlier life in Boston she seems to have
acquired a well-deserved popularity by her considerate
spirit and skill as a nurse and adviser in cases of child-
birth, and ailments peculiar to her sex. She was evi-
dently gentle, and by nature sympathetic. Then she
began to meddle with theology, to which, from the
first, she had shown herself much inclined. Even on
her voyage her utterances had excited doubts as to her
orthodoxy in the mind of the Rev. Zachariah Symmes, a
devout man who had come wath her ; and his warnings
to the magistrates for a time delayed her admission to
the church. But admitted she was at last, and about
two years later she began to make her presence felt.
Her husband's house stood in what might be called
the fashionable quarter of the town, — a good stone's
throw to the south of the church and behind it, not far
from the town spring, and nearly opposite the house
of Governor Winthrop.^ Here, and at the homes of
certain of her acquaintances, she presently began to
hold a series of exclusively female gatherings, and
later of gatherings composed of both sexes. At the
earlier of these she herself presided, and in all she was
the leading spirit. These meetings were numerously
attended, and at those held exclusively for women,
forty, sixty, and even eighty would be present. The
original idea was to recapitulate, for the benefit of

1 It occupied the Old Corner Bookstore lot, now so called, on Wash-
ing-ton and School streets, extending up the latter to the present City
Hall enclosure. Memorial History of Boston, i. 174, n., 579, n.

398 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1G36.

such as had been unable to attend Sabbath services,
the substance of the recent discourses of the clergy,
and more particidarly of Cotton. Small private gath-
erings of a similar character had been not uncommon
ever since the beginning of the settlement ; but, though
the idea was not new with Mrs. Hutchinson, she de-
veloped it. Under her inspiration the germ grew
rapidly ; or, as she might herself have said, it came
up in a night, even as the gourd came up which God
prepared for Jonah. The woman was in fact a born
social leader. Her meetings were the events of a prim-
itive season.

At first the elders and magistrates favored them
and smiled upon her. It looked like an awakening ;
souls were being drawn to Christ. It soon became
what would now be known as a revival. But Anne
Hutchinson was light-headed as well as voluble. She
had an unruly tongaie as well as an insatiable ambition,
and, not long contenting herself with the mere repeti-
tion of sermons, she began to comment upon them, to
interpret and to criticise. In other words, she set up
as a preacher on her own account. The women were
not accustomed to hear one of their own sex " exer-
cise," and she was popular among them ; so they
flocked to her more and more. A community living
in a state of religious exaltation is of course predis-
posed to mental epidemics. Accordingly, to the utter
dismay of the clergy and the old magistrates, every one
near enough to feel her influence was soon running
after the new light. " It was a wonder," wrote Win-
throp, " upon what a sudden the whole church of Bos-
ton (some few excepted) were become her new con-
verts, and many also out of the church, and of other
churches also ; yea ! many profane persons became of

163G. A PROPHETESS. 399

her opinion." And in another place he asserts that
" she had more resort to her for counsell about matter
of conscience than any minister (I might say all the
elders) in the country." To the same effect the Rev.
Thomas Weld declared that she " had some of all sorts
and quality in all places to defend and patronize " her
opinions ; " some of the magistrates, some gentlemen,
some scholars and men of learning, some burgesses of
our General Court, some of our captains and soldiers,
some chief men in towns, and some men eminent for
religion, parts and wit." Then Mrs. Hutchinson's
head turned. She had a calling to be a religious en-
thusiast, and it would seem that visions of political
greatness also began to float before her. In imag-
ination she saw her husband seated in the chair of
Winthrop and of Vane, with herself by his side, " a
prophetess, raised up of God for some great work now
at hand, as the calling of the Jews."

Unfortunately for Mistress Hutchinson, what has
since been known as " the emancipation of woman "
had not in the first half of the seventeenth century
been formulated among political issues, and the more
conservative soon began to look upon her much as
Governor Winthrop subsequently looked on crazy
Mistress Ann Hopkins, — "a godly young woman
and of special parts," who had lost her understanding
" by occasion of her giving herself wholly to read-
ing and writing ; " whereas, " if she had attended her
household affairs, and such things as belong to women,
and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle
in such things as are proper for men, whose minds
are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might
have improved them usefully and honorably in the
place God had set her."

400 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1G36.

But at first Mrs. Hutchinson was encouraged. In
modern language, she was even fashionable ; her se-
ances were in vogue. Not only did the thoughtful
and the half-crazed, but the very parasites flocked to
them. Side by side with young Harry Vane were
Kichard Gridley, " an honest, poore man, but very apt
to meddle in publike affaires, beyond his calling or
skill," and canny Jane Hawkins, " notorious for fa-
miliarity with the Devil." ^ Indeed, there have not
come down to us from those times many touches of
nature more life-like than Wheelwright's description
of the grounds of " goodwife Hawkins's " Antinomian-
ism. The Rev. Thomas Weld had accused her, in the
language just quoted, of being a witch ; whereupon
Wheelwright very sensibly replied that she was —

" A poore, silly woman, yet having so much wit as, per-
ceiving Mrs. Hutchinson ambitious of proselytes, to supply
her wants she attended on her weekly lecture (as it is
called), where, when Mrs. Hutchinson broached any new
doctrine, she would be the first would taste of it : And being
demanded whether it were not clear to her, though she
understood it not, yet would say, Oh yes, very clear. By
which means she got, through Mrs. Hutchinson's affection
to her, some good \dctuals, insomuch that some said she fol-
lowed Christ for loaves. Now seeing those things were so,
me thinks our Author need not have been so rigid in his
opinion of her . . . when, as it appears, she complied with
her patroness, not so much out of love to her positions as
possets, — being guilty, I think, of no other sorcery, unless
it were conjuring the spirit of Error into a Cordial." ^

1 Weld, Short Story, 31. The unfortunate Jane Hawkins' procliv-
ities to the Evil One g-ave Governor Winthrop much trouble ; for " she
grew into great suspicion to be a witch " (Winthrop, i. *2(i3). Where
no other sources of information are cited, Winthrop's History, and
Weld's Short Story are the authorities for the narrative.

2 Bell, John WheeluTight, 198.

1636. ''DUNG CAST ON THEIR FACES:' 401

For the severe old tlieocrats it was a serious matter
to have a school of criticism — a viva voce weekly
religious review, as it were — thus spring into life,
under the very eaves of the meeting-house. They had
been accustomed to have their teachings accepted as
oracles ; but those teachings now no longer passed
unchallenired- nor were the voices of the critics hushed
even at the gates of the tabernacle. On the contrary
both Mrs. Hutchinson and her disciples audaciously
carried their war into Africa. She herself publicly
left the congregation when the pastor, Wilson, rose
to preach. Others followed her example, contemp-
tuously turning their backs on their ministers ; while
it was plaintively observed that " the most of them
were women, and they pretended many excuses for
their going out, which it was not easy to convince of
falsehood in them, or of their contempt " of the pas-
tor.^ Yet others boldly and in open meeting chal-
lenged the minister's words almost before they had
passed his lips. So that the Rev. Thomas Weld was
driven lugubriously to exclaim, with a degree of feel-
ing which speaks volumes as to his own individual
experiences in that kind, —

" Now, after our sermons were ended at our public lec-
tures, you might have seen half a dozen pistols discharged
at the face of the preacher (I mean) so many objections
made by the opinionists in the open assembly against our
doctrine delivered, if it suited not their new fancies, to the
marvellous weakening of holy truths delivered. . . . Now
the faithful ministers of Christ must have dung cast on
their faces, and be no better than legal preachers, Baal's
priests. Popish factors, Scribes, Pharisees, and opposers of
Christ himself I Now they must be pointed at, as it were
with the finger, and reproached by name."
1 Cotton, Way Cleared, 01.

402 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1G3C.

The cup was indeed a bitter oue. Yet, bitter at
best, it was administered with a perverse ingenuity
which distilled it to gall. Mistress Hutchinson pro-
fessed what was called, in the theological parlance of
the time, the Covenant of Grace, as distinguished from
the Covenant of Works. Without going into any de-
tailed explanation of long-forgotten seventeenth cen-
tury theology, it is sufficient for present purposes to
say that the relations of the Creator ^vith mankind
seem in it to have been largely based on the analogy
of a human landlord and tenant. To mankind the
earth had been given ; not outright, but on certain
terms and conditions, all of which were expressed in
the Hebrew Bible. These terms, as primarily set
forth, had been violated by Adam, and the original
covenant between Creator and created, known as the
Covenant of Works, had then ceased to be binding,
and been terminated by one party to it. Under this
covenant all of the seed of Adam would have been
saved, and enjoyed after mundane death an eternity
of heavenly life. When the original Covenant of
Works was thus cancelled, the Creator, instead of, so
to speak, ejecting and destroying Adam, made, out of
a spirit of pure mercy, a new covenant with him and
his seed, under which not all of the sons of man would
be saved, but only such of them as the Creator might
see fit to spare, — the Lord's elect. And this was
known as the Covenant of Grace.^

^ " To open and clear this matter the following Positions may be
laid down.

1. " Jf has pleased God all along from the beginning of the World to
transa'-t with man in a Covenant way. This is an effect of God's good
pleasure towards him. God could be no debtor to his creature, till
he made himself so by his own promise. He might, if he had sfl
pleas'd, stood upon his Sovereignty, and challenged the Obedience

1636. ''IN A COVENANT WAY." 403

Originally, therefore, for one to be under a Cove-
nant of Works meant to be of those left under the
original and violated compact, and consequently not
included among those admitted to the benefits of the
new compact, or Covenant of Grace. In other words,
those under a Covenant of Works were the unregrn-
erate seed of Adam, — not the Lord's elect ; those
under a Covenant of Grace were the regenerate seed.
The whole question went back to the third chapter of
the book of Genesis, — the garden, the serpent, origi-
nal sin and the fall of man.

The theory of the two covenants, starting from this
far-away origin, underwent during the fierce religious
controversies of the reformation an outward change at

from him that was due to him, without eng-aging any reward for it.
But to shew his goodness and bounty to man, he has been pleas'd to
bind himself to him by Covenant.

2. ''GOD never has made but tivo Covenants with man: which are
ordinarily distinguish'd into, the Covenant of Works, and the Covenant
of Grace. The Covenant of Works, was that which God made with
Adam in a state of Innocence ; in which all his seed were compre-
hencfed with him : and under which, he as their Head stood a pro-
bationer for life, upon the condition of perfect obedience. Of this
Covenant we have an account in many places of Scripture. The
Covenant of Grace is with man fallen : the first revelation whereof was
made presently after God had past sentence upon him ; and the first
account we have of it is in that promise, Gen. 8. 1.5. And was more
and more explained as God saw fit at divers times, and in divers ways
to the fathers by the Prophets : but especially to Abraham and the
Church of Israel ; as the writings of the Prophets fully shew." Wil-
liams, Essay to Prove the Interest of the Children of Believers in the
Covenant (1727), 5-6.

Winthrop says that Mrs. Hutchinson ' ' brought over with her two
dangerous errors : 1. That the person of the Holy Ghost dwells in a
justified person. 2. That no sanctification can help to evidence to us
our justification. From these two grew many branches; as, 1, Our
union with the Holy Ghost, so as a Christian remains dead to every
spiritual action, and hath no gifts nor graces, other than such as are
in hypocrites, nor any other sanctification but the Holy Ghost him-
self." (i. *200.) This is Winthrop's first mention of Mrs. Hutchinson.

404 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 1636.

the hands of Luther. It was,. indeed, a necessary part
of the reaction ao:aiust mediaeval Romanism that heart-
piety and spiritual exaltation, or justification by faith
as it was termed, should be opposed to the tests of
confession, penance, pilgrimages, legacies to the church,
masses, Ave Marias, etc., all constituting justification
by works. In the theological parlance of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries, therefore, neither grace nor
works, as applied to the two covenants, signified what
they signified in the beginning, or what they signify
now. Grace was no longer an act of supreme mercy,
as at first, nor was it conscientious carriage in life, as
now ; but it implied a certain vague and mystic exal-
tation and serenity of soul arising from the conscious-
ness of a Heaven-directed heart, — a serenity not to
be attained by the most exact observance of the for-
malities of religion ; the word works, on the other
hand, did not imply, as now it would, the idea of a
life devoted to good deeds, as distinguished from one
of mere empty professions, but it meant simply a ygid
and exact compliance with the forms of pietism, — its
fastings, its prayers, its sanctimoniousness and harsh
discipline, — in a word, with all external observances
involving continuous mortification of soul as well as
body.^ Viewed from a modern point of view the sev-
enteenth century Covenant of Grace was as mystic, in-
definable and delusive as its Covenant of Works was
harsh, material and repulsive.

Nevertheless, there the two covenants were, the very
corner-stones of theology, — recorded and set forth
from the beginning of the world, accepted by all. The
single question was as to the elect, — which among

1 This difficult subject is fully discussed by Dr. G. E. Ellis in his
Puritan Age in Massachusetts, 300-302.

1636. ''TRUE inwardness:' 405

the living seed of Adam were, through the Covenant
of Grace, to enjoy life everlasting ? — and which, walk-
ing under the Covenant of Works, were damned to an
eternity of Hell fire ? When, dead in the flesh, the im-
mortal soul of the believer appeared before God's judg-
ment seat, how justify the life which had been lived ?
What pleas for salvation would be listened to ? And
one class of religionists insisted that a record of faith-
fully observed rules of conduct, a careful regard for
the decalogue, alms, fasts, Sabbath attendance, — all
this was but to claim the advantage of the abrogated
Covenant of Works. Hell yawned for such. On the
other hand was infinite faith, a love of Christ un-
limited, an inward sweetness and light, — and these,
in their case they proclaimed, meant a justification
through Grace.

The only certain elements in the awful problem were
death and the judgment. The situation, accordingly,
is not one conceivable now ; but it was very real among
those dwelling in Massachusetts in 1636, when Mistress
Anne Hutchinson proceeded to draw the line. With
her it may be said to have been a question of afflatus,
for she contended that the divine spirit dwelt in every
true believer ; but that the fact of any single person
— even though such person might be a minister of the
gospel, of extraordinary gifts — being a true believer,
could not with any certainty be inferred either from a
demeanor of sanctity or from conduct in life. Mrs.
Hutchinson's Covenant of Grace is, perhaps, most
nearly expressed in modern religious cant as a " con-
dition of true inwardness." But with her it further
implied the actual indwelling of the Spirit of the
Lord. He in whom that Spirit dwelt was of the elect.
He in whom it did not dwell might be a very worthy

406 MISTRESS ANNE HUTCHINSON. 163d

man, and what we would call a good conventional min-
ister ; but God's seal was not on his lips.

The conclusion to be drawn from all this was pain-
fully apparent. To say that a grave divine was under
a Covenant of Works was a gentle paraphrase for
calling him a " whited sepulchre." This certainly
was bold enough ; but Mrs. Hutchinson did not stop
here. With great cunningness of aggravation —
with an almost unsurpassed faculty of making herself
innocently offensive — she then proceeded, not to des-
ignate particular divines as being under a Covenant
of Works, but to single out two of their whole order
as walking in a Covenant of Grace. These two were
John Cotton, and, after his arrival, John W^heel-
wright. The others were necessarily left to make the
best of an obvious inference.

Looked at even after the lapse of two centuries and
a half, and in the cold perspective of history, it must
be conceded that this was more than the meekest of
human flesh could be expected quietly to endure ; but
the early clergy were not conspicuous for meekness.
Nor had they come to New England with this end in
view. On the contrary, they had come expecting
God's people to be there ruled by God's Word ; and
that Word God's ministers were to interpret. And
now, on the very threshold of this theocracy, the sanc-
tity of His mouthpiece was disputed. They loved con-
troversy dearly ; but this was no case for controversy.
God's kingdom was threatened from within ; the ser-
pent was among them. The head of the serpent must
be crushed. So they sternly girded themselves for the
fray : and opposed to them was one woman only ; but
her tongue was as a sword, and she had her sex for a
shield.

CHAPTER III.

A QUARREL IN A VESTRY.

It was not until it reached its later stages that what
has passed into New England's history as the Antino-
mian controversy involved the whole province of Mas-
sachusetts. At first it was confined to the church in
Boston, — a family affair, so to speak. Mrs. Hutch-
inson, like many other women before and since, did
not fancy her minister. He failed to appeal to her.
The cause of her dislike is not known. Most prob-
ably it lay upon the surface and was of a personal
character ; for the Rev. John Wilson, though doubtless
in his way a worthy, well-intentioned man of the com-
monplace, conventional kind, had about him little that
was either sympathetic or attractive. Harsh in feature
and thick of utterance,^ he was coarse of fibre, — hard,
matter-of-fact, unimaginative. In his home and church
life he is reputed to have been a not unkindly man,
and a " devoted friend and helper to those who needed
his love and care ; " while in his pulpit he was more
remarkable for his strength of faith and zeal for ordi-
nances than for his talents as a preacher. On the
other hand, he was by nature stern, unrelenting, big-
oted ; a man " than whom orthodoxy in New England
had no champion more cruel and more ungenerous." ^
Of his conduct and bearing in the Antinomian con-

^ Johnson, Wonder- Working Providence, 40.

2 J. A. Do^sIq, English in America: The Puritan Colonies, i. 419.

408 A QUARREL IN A VESTRY. 1588-1677.

troversy of 1637 much will need to be said in these
pages, while in the Baptist persecution of twenty years
later his zeal and passion led him to revile and even
strike prisoners being led away from the judgment
seat ; ^ and, in 1659, when the two Quakers, William
Robinson and Marmaduke Stevenson, were hanged on
Boston Common, the aged pastor of the First Church
not only denounced them fiercely from his pulpit, but
he even railed at them from the foot of the gallows.^

1 " Upon the pronouncing- of [my sentence] as I went from the Bar,
I exprest myself in these words : ' I blesse God I am counted worthy to
suifer for the name of lesus ; ' whereupon lohn Wilson (their Pastor as
they call him) strook me before the Judgment Seat, and cursed me,
saying, ' The Curse of God, or lesus, goe with thee ; ' so we were car-
ried to the Prison." Letter from Obadiah Holmes in /// N ewes from
New England, iv. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll. ii. 47.

'^ With these two was Mary Dyer, who will be often referred to in
this narrative. She was reprieved, and, when the others were hanged,
sat on the steps of the scaffold. The story is most characteristic of
the time and people under discussion, but can only be told in the
quaint langiiage of the original chronicle : —

" Then Mary Dyar was called, and your Governour said to her, to
this effect, — Mary Dyar, you shall go to the place whence you came,
an I from thence to the place of Execution, and be hanged there until
you are Dead : — To which she replied. The Will of the Lord be
done. — Then your Governour said, Take her away. Marshal : She
Answered, Yea, joyfully shall I go. — So she was brought to the
House of Correction again, and there continued, with her other two
Friends, in Prison, tUl the 27th of the same Month ; . . . And on the
27th of the 8th Month, aforesaid, ye cans' d the Drums to beat, to
gather your Soldiers together for the Execution ; and after your Wor-
ship was ended, your Drums beat again, and your Captain, James Oli-
ver, came with his Band of Men, and the Marshal, and some others,
to the Prison, and the Doors were opened, and your Marshal and Jay-
lor caird for W. Robinson and M. Stevenson, and had them out of the
Prison, and Mary Dyar out of the House of Correction, . . . and your
Captain, with liis Band of Men, led them the back way {it seems you
were afraid of the fore-way, lest it should affect the People too much)
to the Place of Executioji. and caused the Drums to beat, when they
attempted to speak (hard Work) and plac'd them near the Drums, for
that purpose, that when they spake, the People might not hear them,

1659. « YOUR OLD, BLOODY PRIEST.'' 409

In such a man as this, however useful he might be
for much of the coarser though necessary work of life,
there was little to attract a person of delicate percep-

•who in great Multitudes flock'd about them. ... I say, your Captain
caused his Drums to Beat, when they sought to speak ; and his Drums
he would not cease beating-, tho' they spake to him, whilst they were
speaking. (A Barbarous Inhumanity never heard of before in the
English Nation, to be used to suffering People.) And as he led them
to the place of Execution, your old bloody Priest, Wilson, your High-
Priest of Boston (who was so old in Blood, that he would have had
Samuel Gorton, and those with him, long ago to be put to Death, for
their Differing in Religion ; and when but one Vote parted it, was so
Mad, that he openly inveighed against them who did it, saying in the
Pulpit, Because thou hast let go the Man, whom I have appointed to
Destruction, Thy Life shall go for his Life, and thy People for his
People ; Preaching from that Text, who said, — He would carry Fire
in one Hand, and Faggots in the other, to Burn all the Quakers in
the World. — Who having some of those Peoples Books in his Hand,
as they were burning the Books of Friends by your Order, threw them
in the Fire, saying, — From the Devil they came, (Blasphemous
Wretch !) and to the Devil let them go. — He who said to ye, when
ye sat on the Blood of these Men, — Hang them,^ or else (drawing
his Finger athwart his Throat, so making Signs for it to be cut, if ye
did it not) I say, this your bloody old High-Priest, with others of his
Brethren in Iniquity, and in persecuting the Just, met them in your
Train-Field ; and, instead of having a sense upon him suitable to such
an Occasion, and as is usual with Men of any Tenderness, he fell a
Taunting at W. Robinson, and shaking his Hand in a light Scoffing
manner, said, — Shall such Jacks as you come in before Authority
with your Hats on ? — with many other taunting words. To which
W. Robinson replied, — Mind you, mind you. It is for the not putting
off the Hat, we are put to Death. — And when W. Robinson went
cheerfully up the Ladder, to the topmost round above the Gallows,
and spake to the People, — That they suffered not as evil Doers, but
as those who testified and manifested the Truth, and that this was the
Day of their Visitation, and therefore desired them to mind the Light

1 " This is that Priest Wilson, whom C. Mather, in his late History of New Eng-
land, so much commends, and with his Brother in Iniquity, John Norton (of whom
more hereafter) ranks witli John Cotton (a Man of a better Spirit, in his Day) un-
der the Title of Reverend and Renowned Ministers of the Gospel, comparing him
to David and John the Apostle ; and calls. That Great Saint and Worthy Man, that
was such an irreverent, unworthy and blood-thirsty Persecutor of the People of
God : But, let him know, That Sinners are no Saints ; nor, no Murtherer hath Eter-
nal Life abiding in him, 1 John 3. 15."

410 A QUARREL IN A VESTRY. 1635-6.

tion like Mistress Hutchinson, — nay, more, there
must have been in him much that was absolutely re-
pulsive to her. The antipathy clearly was not on the
pastor's side. Indeed, at first, in his heavy, mannish
way, he seems to have been disposed to patronize his
female parishioner, so much his intellectual superior.
He encouraged her meetings, manifesting his good-
will whenever occasion offered, and bearing cheerful
witness to the ways of free grace. He was not a man
to entertain a secret, instinctive distrust ; for, though
compounded of a clay less fine, he was by nature
frank, open and outspoken. Presently his suspicions
were aroused. He was human, too, and undoubtedly
he began to feel jealous. To the pastor, this con-
stant and public adulation of the teacher could not be
altogether grateful. Indeed, it was plainly meant to
be otherwise than grateful to him. To bear and for-
bear was not in the man's nature ; so by degrees he
passed from open approval to silent disaj^proval, and
then it was not long before he began to speak out.
So far as his side of the case was concerned, this did

that was in them, the Light of Christ, of which he Testified, and was
now going to Seal it with his Blood. — This old Priest in much Wicked-
ness said, — Hold thy Tongue, be silent, Thou art going to Dye with
a Lye in thy Mouth. . . . So, being come to the place of Execution,
Hand in Hand, all three of them, as to a Wedding day, with great
cheerfulness of Heart ; and having taken leave of each other, with
the dear Embraces of one another, in the Love of the Lord, your Exe-
cutioner put W. Robinson to Death, and after him M. Stevenson . . .
and, to make up all, when they were thus Martyr' d by your Order,
your said Priest, Wilson, made a Ballad of those whom ye had Mar-
tyr'd. . . . Three also of Priest W^Uson's Grand-Children died within a
short time after ye had put these two Servants of the Lord to Death,
as something upon his Head, who cared not how he bereaved the Mo-
ther, of her Son, and the Children, of their Father, and the Wife, of
her Husband. The Judgment of the Lord in . . . which, is to be taken
Notice of." New England Judged (1661,) pp. 122-5, 126, 136.

163G. THE YOUNG SAP. 411

not mend matters ; for as an antagonist — in what
might be called the socio-parochial fence of that day —
John Wilson was wholly at the mercy of Anne Hutch-
inson. She was as quick as he was clumsy, and his
grave censure was met with a contempt which was at
once ingenious and studied. Presently she found that
he stood in her way. In Boston there was but one
church ; and clearly that church was not large enough
for both. Cotton was Mrs. Hutchinson's favorite
preacher. At his feet she had sat at home ; when he
came to New England she soon followed. Next to
Cotton's, she set most store on the teachings of her
husband's kinsman, Wheelwright ; and when Wheel-
wright lauded in Boston her influence was at its height.
The church was already split into factions. On
the one side was the pastor, supported by Winthrop
— then deputy — and a few others ; on the other
side was Mrs. Hutchinson, carrying with her the
whole body of the members, with the governor, Yane,
at their head. The teacher, Cotton, also notoriously
inclined to her. The young sap was moving in the
tree, and Boston, at least, was ripe for revolt against
the old order of men and of things ; but hostilities had
not yet begun.

The coming of Wheelwright brought on a crisis.
It was Mrs. Hutchinson, doubtless, who now conceived
the idea — if indeed she had not already for some time
been entertaining it — of having Wheelwright in-
stalled as an assistant teacher by Cotton's side. This
could not, of course, be agreeable to Wilson, who for
some time must have had cause to realize that his own
religious influence was on the wane : just as he had
seen the poHtical influence of his life-long friend and
patron, Winthrop, wane before. He and his friends

412 A QUARREL IN A VESTRY. 1636.

accordingly, if they did not actually oppose the sug-
gestion, received it with coldness. Then Mrs. Hutch-
inson seems to have begun hostilities. She struck ;
and she struck none the less hard because the blow
was given in a woman's way. She intimated that the
pastor of the church was, after all, not an able minis-
ter of the New Testament ; he was not sealed with the
spirit ; he was under a Covenant of Works. The con-
flict now began to rage fiercely all through the little
town. Wilson was struggling for what to him was
worth more than life, — a minister, he was struggling
to sustain himself in his pulpit and before his people.
With him was Winthrop. Opposed to him was all
Boston. Indeed, the members of his parish seem even
now to have been as men infatuated ; they acted as
those might act who were subject to the wiles of a sor-
ceress.

Meanwhile, outside of Boston all was comparatively
quiet. The contagion of the new opinions had, in-
deed, spread to Roxbury and a few other of the neigh-
boring towns, church-members of which had doubtless
attended Mrs. Hutchinson's gatherings ; but, as a
whole, the rest of the province pursued the even tenor
of its way, though the air was full of rumors as to the
strange uproar going on in Boston, — the new ideas
advanced there, the dissensions in the church, the
quarrel between Mr. Wilson and his people, the dubi-
ous attitude of Cotton. The sympathies of the other
ministers were wholly with Wilson. Not only was he
a member of their order of the regular, conventional
type, but he was receiving harsh treatment ; for the
course of Mrs. Hutchinson and those who followed
her was as unprovoked and cruel as it was ingenious
and feminine.

1630. A CONCOURSE OF MINISTERS. 413

Presently, therefore, the ministers of the outlying
towns determined to intervene, in their brother's be-
half, and endeavor to restore peace to his distracted
church. A meeting of the General Court was to take
place in October, and it was arranged that the min-
isters should then come to Boston and hold a confer-
ence on these matters among themselves and with the
members of the Court. They did so Tuesday, the
25th, and. Cotton and Wheelwright both taking part
with the rest, some progress into the incomprehensible
was made. They agreed on the point of sanctification,
" so as they all did hold that sanctification did help
to evidence justification ; " but they were not all of a
mind as to the " indwelling of the person of the Holy
Ghost ; " and none of the ministers were disposed to
go the length of asserting " a union of the person of
the Holy Ghost, so as to amount to a personal union ; "
though it was understood that Mrs. Hutchinson and
Governor Vane held even this advanced tenet. How-
ever unintelligible the discussion might be in other
resj^ects, one thing was clear, — if the last proposition
was admitted, inspiration followed. The way was
open for the appearance of a brood of God's prophets
in New England.

The conference resulted in nothing, and the open
move, already referred to, was made in favor of
Wheelwright as an assistant teacher. This had al-
ready been proposed at the meeting of the Boston
church held after the services of the previous Sab-
bath : and now on Sunday, the 30th, five days after
the conference of the clergy, the proposal was brought
up for final action. The meeting was one of far more
than ordinary interest, for it was felt that something
decisive was at hand ; and presently, when the ser-

414 A QUARREL IN A VESTRY. Oct.

vices were ended, the calling of Wheelwright was for-
mally propounded. It is easy to imagine the silence
which for a brief space prevailed in the crowded meet-
ing-house. It was at last broken by Winthrop, who
rose and said that he could not give his assent to the
thing proposed. He spoke with much feeling, and
referred to the fact that the church was already well
provided with able ministers, *' whose spirits they
knew, and whose labors God had blessed in much love
and sweet peace ; " while he objected to Wheel-
wright, as being a man " whose spirit they knew not,
and one who seemed to dissent in judgment." He
then proceeded to specify certain questionable doc-
trines supposed to be entertained by the new candi-
date, having reference to a distinction between " crea-
tures " and " believers," and the relations of either, or
both, with the Holy Ghost. Vane immediately fol-
lowed on the other side, and " marvelled " at the point
just made ; quoting the high authority of Cotton in
support of the doctrine in question. This reference
naturally brought Cotton to his feet, who proceeded
to demur and define ; and in closing called upon
Wheelwright to explain himself on a few controverted
points of theology. This the latter then proceeded
to do. When he had finished, Winthrop closed the
debate, for the time being, by declaring that, although
he personally felt the utmost respect for Mr. Wheel-
wright, yet he could not consent to choose him an
associate teacher, " seeing he was apt to raise doubtful
disputations."

The matter was taken up again the next day. In
the little village community, anything which affected
the church affected every member of it. The proposal
to make Mr. Wheelwright an associate teacher, and

1636. ''DOUBTFUL DISPUTATIONS." 415

the discussion to which it had given rise, had all that
Sunday evening and the next morning been the one
subject talked about in every household and at each
street corner. A good deal of feeling was evinced
also over the position taken by Winthrop ; and more
yet at the warmth with which he had maintained it.
For the last, when the debate was renewed, he made
an ample apology. He then went on to state at con-
siderable length his views upon certain " words and
phrases, which were of human invention, and tended
to doubtfid disputation rather than to edification."
When he had finished, a profound silence seems to
have pervaded the grave, well-ordered assembly. No
one rose to reply to him, or to continue the discus-
sion ; and here the whole matter was allowed to drop.
No factious spirit was shown. According to the rule
of the Boston church, it was sufficient that grave
opposition had been expressed. The selection of
Wheelwright was urged no further.

But Wheelwright was too active and able a man to
remain long without a call, and a large and very in-
fluential portion of the Boston church was in close
sympathy with him. Among these were Codding-ton,
Hutchinson, Hough and others, who held the large
allotments, which have been referred to, at the Mount.
Those dwelling in that region, though few in number,
had for some time been complaining of the hardships
their remote and isolated position imposed upon them.
They were mainly poor men with families. Ten or
twelve miles from the meeting-house, this distance
they had to traverse each Sabbath, or else fail to j^ar-
ticipate in worship. Accordingly the gathering of a
new church at the Mount had been for some time
under discussion. The chief objection was that such

416 A QUARREL IN A VESTRY. 1636.

action would apparently defeat the very end for which
Boston had received " enlargement," — the upholding
of the town and the original church, — for the loss of
so many leading members of both, as would move
away if a new society was gathered, could not but be
severely felt. To meet this objection it had been ar-
ranged in the September previous that those dwelling
at the Mount should pay a yearly town and church
rate to Boston of sixpence an acre for such lands as
lay within a mile of the water, and threepence an acre
for such as lay inland. It was a species of non-resi-
dent commutation tax. This arrangement imposed in
turn on the Boston church a well-understood obliga-
tion to make adequate provision for the spiritual well-
fare of those thus tributary to it. In the days of
sparse settlement the situation could not but occur,
and the natural way of meeting it was to establish
branch churches, or " chappels of ease," as they were
termed in the English church, for the accommodation
of the outlying precincts.^ Some elder, or gifted
brother, was wont to hold forth, or to prophesy, as it
was phrased, at these each ordinary Sabbath, while
the sacrament was administered at stated periods in
the mother church.

As soon as Winthrop's dissent had put a final stop
to the plan of choosing Wheelwright associate teacher,
the friends of the latter from the Mount had recourse
to this plan. At the very meeting at which Win-
throp insisted on his objection, the records of the
First Church show that '' Our brother, Mr. John
Wheelwright, was granted unto for the preparing for
a church gathering at Mount WooUystone, upon a
petition from some of them that were resident there."
1 ni. Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. 75.

1036. " THE CHAPEL OF EASE." 417

This vote was passed on the 30th of October. On
the 20th of February following, an allotment of two
hundred and fifty acres of land at the Mount was
made to the new pastor, to be located " where may be
most convenient, without prejudice to setting up a
towne there." Wheelwright seems to have ministered
faithfully and acceptably to those settled immediately
beyond the Neponset, during a period of almost ex-
actly one year.

Chosen to his ministry, if such it might be called,
in what are now the earlier days of November, the
new pastor may, during the winter's inclemency, have
ministered at the homes of his little congregation, and
the following spring and summer preached "abroad
under a tree," like Phillips and Wilson at Charles-
town seven years before ; but in all probability during
the succeeding summer of 1637, for John Wheel-
wright and under his supervision, the rude meeting-
house was built, which afterwards stood for years in
Braintree " over the old Bridge " and just south of it,
on the rising ground where the road, or trail rather
as it then was, between Boston and Plymouth crossed
the little streamlet subsequently known as the town
brook.^

^ Wilson, 250fA Commemorative Services, 26, 41 ; Braintree Becords,
2, 9 ; Pattee, Old Braintree and Quincy, 228 ; Lunt, 200th Anniversary
Discourses, 121-2 ; Adams, Address in Braintree (1S53), 74.

CHAPTER IV.

A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL.

The settlement of Wheelwright at the Mount did
not serve to restore theological tranquillity either to
the Boston church or to the province. On the con-
trary, the action of the ministers at their October con-
ference, and the sympathy they had then shown for
their brother Wilson, only stimulated Mrs. Hutchinson.
Her tongue was more active than ever, and her fol-
lowers more noisily aggressive. So far from being
overawed by authority, she met authority with what
sounded very like defiance ; for now she declared that
his brethren were no better than Wilson. None of
them were sealed ; none of them were able ministers
of the New Testament. They, as well as he, were all
under a Covenant of Works ; they were Legalists, to
a man.

During the month of November, 1636, a long con-
troversy was carried on between Vane and Winthrop,
arising out of the discussion at the time of Wheel-
wright's proposed appointment. Vane, it has been
seen, went with Mrs. Hutchinson the full length of
maintaining " a personal union with the Holy Ghost."
He was not content with Cotton's belief in "' the in-
dwelling of the person of the Holy Ghost in a be-
liever." He was apparently disposed to contend that
a believer, truly justified, was himself the Holy Ghost.
The discussion turned on a metaphysical abstraction,

1636. A TEARFUL MAGISTRATE. 419

which the disputants sought to solve by quoting at
each other the English rendering of Hebrew or Greek
texts, and scraps of Patristic learning. Conducted
in writing " for the peace sake of the church, which
all were tender of," it covered the first " three hun-
dred years after Christ " and was, of necessity, abso-
lutely sterile. Both parties to it agreed that the
Holy Ghost was God, and that it dwelt in believers ;
but in what way nowhere appeared, " seeing the Scrip-
ture doth not declare it." Winthrop, therefore, ear-
nestly entreated Vane that in the phrase " indwelling
of the person of the Holy Ghost " the " word ' person'
might be forborn, being a term of human invention
and tending to doubtful disputation in this case."

As the rumors of this controversy, and of Vane's
ardent support of the new opinions, spread through
the province, Winthrop's popularity underwent a sud-
den revival. He was recognized as the champion of
the old theocracy, the defender of the true faith, the
clergy and the ancient order of things. His too great
leniency was forgotten. He was the opponent of
Vane ; he alone in Boston had been faithful found
among the faithless many. Vane, on the other hand,
was rapidly getting his first lesson in realities, and he
did not relish it. From being the umpire in all dis-
putes, — the blessed peacemaker, — he was now, every-
where outside of Boston, looked at askance, as the
great sower of the seeds of dissension in God's vine-
yard. The most scandalous motives were freely im-
puted to him ; these troubles were all to promote his
selfish ends. Conscious of the purest purpose only,
young Sir Harry was of a sensitive nature, easily
wrought upon. He probably felt his intellectual su-
periority to those about him ; he knew that his views

420 A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL. Dec.

were broader than theirs, that he had a larger and
firmer grasp of principle. But, after all, a callow
youth, he had yet to learn how to bear up successfully
against the hard, practical tests to which, fortunately,
day-dreams of human progress are wont to be sub-
jected. His nerves, therefore, soon comj^letely got the
better of his judgment ; and in December, receiving
letters from England, he informed his brother magis-
trates that his immediate return was necessary. At
once the General Court was called together to arrange
for his departure.

The magistrates and deputies being assembled at
Boston, on the ^ of December, the Governor made
known his intentions. The nature of the urgent de-
mands upon him from England were not publicly
stated, but certain of the magistrates to whom the let-
ters had been shown agreed that they were impera-
tive, " though not fit to be imparted to the whole
court." Accordingly the members of the Court, after
looking at one another for some time in grave per-
plexity, decided to hold the matter under advisement
overnight ; and so adjourned. When they met the
next morning, one of the magistrates rose and made
a speech expressive of the deep regret felt by all at
losing such a governor in a time of so great peril, re-
ferring more particularly to the Pequot troubles then
impending. This either proved too much for the ex-
citable and overwrought Vane, or it afforded him the
opportunity for which he was waiting. Suddenly,
bursting into a flood of tears before the astonished
assembly, he blurted out the true facts in the case,
declaring that the causes assigned for his departure
were not the real causes, — that even though they in-
volved his whole worldly ruin, they would not have

1636. ''AN OBEDIENT CHILD:* 421

induced him then to depart, if it were not for the
wicked accusations advanced against him, as if he
were the cause of the dissensions and differences
which rent the colony, and which he feared must soon
bring down a judgment of God upon them all. This
singular confession naturally changed the aspect of
the case. Urgent private business in England might
afford a governor sufficient reason for vacating his
office ; a conviction on his part of impending public
disaster was wholly another thing. Accordingly,
when Vane had calmed himself and wiped away his
tears, the deputies very properly said that if such
were his reasons for going, they did not feel bound to
give their assent. Vane then went on to protest that
what had escaped from him during his recent outburst
had been dictated rather by feeling than judgment, —
that the private reasons contained in his letters seemed
to him imperative, and that he must insist upon re-
ceiving leave to depart.

There can be little question that a large majority
of the Court were quite willing events should take
this course, and, indeed, would have been only too
glad to be thus rid of their too impressionable gov-
ernor. Accordingly a general and respectful silence
indicated that assent which it would have been awk-
ward, at least, formally to announce. After some fur-
ther debate it was then decided to choose a new gov-
ernor in Vane's place, instead of having the deputy
succeed him, and that day week was fixed for holding
the court of elections. The matter seemed to be dis-
posed of, and the way was open for the conservatives
quietly to resume political control. AVinthrop was to
replace Vane.

This arrangement wholly failed to meet the views

422 A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL. Dec.

of the friends of Mrs. Hutchinson. No sooner, there-
fore, were the tidings generally known in Boston,
than the town was alive with excitement. A meeting
of certain of the more prominent among the church-
members was at once held, and it was decided that
Vane must not be permitted to go, — that they did
not apprehend the necessity of his departure upon the
reasons alleged ; and a committee was appointed to
wait upon the Court, and present this view of the
case. Whereupon Vane, whether quietly or with
more tears and passion does not appear, " expressed
himself to be an obedient child to the church, and
therefore, notwithstanding the license of the court,
yet, without the leave of the church, he durst not go
away." But the fact would seem to be, that Vane's
somewhat transparent cmqy de theatre failed. The
deputies evinced an unanticipated readiness to take
him at his word ; and so his friends of the church had
to help him out of an awkward predicament.

When the day fixed for the new election came, it
was merely voted not to proceed, and the election was
deferred until the regular time in May. Meanwhile
Vane's troubles were by no means lessened by his va-
cillating and puerile course. The clergy whom he had
offended might be narrow-minded bigots ; but they
were none the less men, stern and determined. A
number of them had come to Boston, at the time the
new election was to have taken place, to advise with
Winthrop and their other friends in the Court as to
what course should now be pursued to put an end to
the dissensions. They were especially anxious to win
Cotton over from the Opinionists, as the followers of
Mrs. Hutchinson were called. They were anxious to
win him over for two reasons : not only was he the

1636. ^'PEREMPTORY CONCLUSIONS:' 423

most eminent man of their order, and as such re-
spected and even revered by them all, but his great
name and authority were a tower of strength to their
opponents, making their cause respectable and shield-
ing it from attack. So Weld, Peters and the rest
now drew up under specific heads the points on which
it was understood Cotton differed from them, and sub-
mitted the paper to him, asking for a direct answer
of assent or dissent on every point. Cotton took the
paper and promised a speedy reply.

When Vane heard of this meeting he was deeply
offended, for it had been held without his knowledge.
A day or two later the ministers and the Court met
to consider the situation. The Governor of course
presided, and opened the proceedings by stating in a
general way why they were there gathered. Then
Dudley and others, after the usual practice, exhorted
all to speak freely ; whereupon Yane pointedly re-
marked, from his place at the head of the table, that,
for his part, he would be content to do so, but "that he
understood the ministers were already settling matters
in private and in a church way, among themselves.
Then another scene took place. Hugh Peters stood
up and proceeded sternly to rebuke the Governor.
In language of the utmost plainness he told Vane that,
with all due reverence, it " sadded the ministers' spir-
its " to see him jealous of their meetings, or apparently
seeking to restrain their liberty. As the loud-voiced
fanatic began to warm in his exhortation, the unfor-
tunate young Governor realized the mistake he had
made and tried to avert the gathering tempest ; he
explained that he had spoken unadvisedly and under
a mistake. Peters could not thus be stopped, and
what ensued was intensely characteristic of the Pres-

424 A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL. Dec.

byterian and Puritan times. It vividly recalls to mind
those parallel scenes, which only a few years before had
been so common between the ministers of the Scottish
Kirk and the son of Mary Stuart, when they were
wont to scold him from their pulpits, and bid him " to
his knees;" so that once when — as Vane had now
done — James complained of some meeting of theirs as
being without warrant, " Mr. Andrew Melville could
not abide it, but broke off upon the King in so zeal-
ous, powerful and unresistible a manner that, howbeit
the King used his authority in most crabbed and
choleric manner, yet Mr. Andrew bore him down,
and uttered the commission as from the mighty God,
calling the King but ' God's silly vassal ; ' " and,
taking him by the sleeve, told him that there were
" two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland. There
is Christ Jesus the King, and his kingdom the kirk,
whose subject James the Sixth is, and of whose king-
dom not a king, nor a lord, nor a head, but a mem-
ber." • And all this he had said to him " divers times
before." So now in New England, Hugh Peters —
speaking, it may safely be assumed, after his wont,
with much vehemency — plainly told Governor Vane
that until he came, less than two years before, the
now troubled churches were at peace. Again the
Governor broke in with the text that the light of the
gospel brings a sword. In reply Peters besought
him " humbly to consider his youth and short experi-
ence in the things of God, and to beware of peremp
tory conclusions, which he perceived him to be very
apt unto." Then the Salem minister launched into
a long discourse on the causes of the new opinions
and divisions, leaving the discomforted chief magis-

1636. "^ VERY SAD SPEECH:* 425

trate of Massachusetts to meditate on the consequences
of juvenile indiscretion.^

Later in the proceedings Wilson rose and seems to
have relieved his feelings by what Winthrop describes
as " a very sad speech." It would appear indeed to
have been a veritable jeremiad. The pastor of the
church of Boston deplored the condition of things,
and predicted the disintegration of the settlement
unless existing troubles were speedily settled. He
touched upon doctrinal points, and took direct issue
with Cotton, who only that very day had, in a sermon
before the Court, laid down the principle that " sanc-
tification was an evidence of justification." Wilson
now denied this, — though apparently the metaphysi-
cal issues involved became at this point too subtle to
be grasped by Winthrop, who alone has given an
account of the debate ; and it is obvious that in this
regard the ordained theological combatants were quite
as much in the dark as those of the laity who strove
to follow them. While one learned divine asserted
a thesis beyond human intelligence to comprehend,
another denied it ; and the lay members of the con-
gregation listened, and tried to look wise over the
spiritual issues involved. As to the practical issues,
no illumination was needed and, in regard to them,
all were sufficiently in earnest ; for, when it came
to trouble in the churches, Mr. Wilson had ground
to stand upon. That did exist ; especially, as his
listeners knew, in his own church. And he attributed
it all to the " new opinions risen up amongst us."
At the conclusion of this diatribe, which evidently

^ Subsequently in England, during the time of the Commmon-
wealth, Vane and Peters would seem to have sustained very friendly
relations towards each other. (Yonge, Life of Peters, 5.)

426 A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL. Dec.

called forth marks of decided approval from the au-
dience, some expression of opinion was taken, and it
was found that all the magistrates excepting Vane,
Coddington and Hough, and all the ministers except-
ing Cotton and Wheelwright, were in sympathy with
the Boston pastor.

In the way of conferences this month of December,
1636, was a busy time in Boston. Not content with
dealing first with Cotton and then with Vane, the visit-
ing clergy appear to have gone to the fountain-head of
the trouble, seeking an exchange of views with Mrs.
Hutchinson herself.^ She was nothing loath, and the
occasion could not have been otherwise than edifying
in the extreme. Being summoned to the place where
the ministers were already met, she there found Wil-
son, Peters, Weld and others of those opposed to her;
and of her friends. Cotton, Wheelwright, Leverett
(the elder of the Boston church) and a few more.
Peters acted as spokesman for the ministers, while
Wilson busied himself with taking notes. Address-
ing Mrs. Hutchinson " with much vehemency and in-
treaty," Peters urged her, as the source from which all
difference had arisen, to explain why she conceived
that he and his brethren were different from Cotton

1 This must have been the time of the meeting-, though the date of
it nowhere appears. Peters, however, in his evidence, says : — " We
did address ourselves to the teacher of the church [Cotton] and the
court then assembled . . . our desire to the teacher was to tell us
■wherein the difference lay between him and us. . . . He said that he
thoug-ht it not according to God to commend this to the magis-
trates, but to take some other course, and so . . . we thoug-ht it g-ood
to send for this gentlewoman." (Hutchinson, ii. 490.) Here is a very
distinct reference to the conference between his brother ministers and
Cotton, which took place, as appears in the text, on December M or
^§, 1636, and was followed immediately by the interview, described at
the trial, between them and Mrs. Hutchinson.

1636. "/I DOUBLE SEAL." 427

in their ministry, and why she so openly asserted that
they taught a Covenant of Works. At first Mrs.
Hutchinson would seem, as well she might, to have
been somewhat appalled at the presence in which she
found herself, and the directness of her arraignment.
She was even disposed to deny what was charged.
But, when they offered proof, she presently recovered
her courage, and even assumed her role of prophetess,
exclaiming, — " The fear of man is a snare ; why
should I be afraid ? " Then, in reply to Peters' ques-
tions, she asserted that there was indeed a wide and
broad difference between Cotton and the others, that
he preached a Covenant of Grace, and they a Cove-
nant of Works ; and, moreover, that they could not
preach a Covenant of Grace, because they were not
sealed, and were no more able ministers of the gos-
pel than were the disciples before the resurrection of
Christ. Cotton, in whose presence all this was said,
found his position becoming uncomfortable, and ac-
cordingly broke in, objecting to the comparison. But
she insisted upon it. Then she instanced Shepard of
Cambridge and Weld of Roxbury, as neither of them
preaching a Covenant of Grace clearly. The former,
she said, w^as not sealed. " Why do you say that ? "
he asked. " Because," she replied, " you put love for
an evidence." Presently Mr. Phillips of Watertown,
observing how reckless her criticisms were, and bethink-
ing himself that she had never heard him preach,
asked her in what his ministry differed from that of
Cotton. She apparently asserted that he too was not
sealed. As Peters afterwards remarked : — " There
was a double seal found out that day," — a broad seal
and a little seal, — " which never was." Then the dis-
cussion seems to have run off into the unintellisfible j

428 A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL. Feb.

and, when at last they parted, all were not quite clear
whether what had taken place tended, as a whole, to
allay exasperation or to increase it.

But no such doubt rested on Wilson's speech before
the General Court. That had amounted to nothing
less than an angry arraignment of almost the whole
body of his own people, including both Cotton and
Vane. It excited, therefore, great anger among them,
and at once the contest was transferred back from the
General Court to the Boston church. It was there
proposed to admonish him. Again Winthrop came
to his defence, claiming that, whatever the pastor
might have said before the Court, it was general in
its application, and of a privileged nature. When
called upon to explain what he meant by his state-
ments, and to name those he referred to in them, Wil-
son did not appear well. He equivocated, in fact,
most barefacedly, professing that he had not intended
to reflect on the Boston church or its members, any
more than upon others. Every one who listened to
him knew that this was not so. Vane and Mrs.
Hutchinson were members of his church. It was
they to whom he had referred ; and what he now said
was not true.

It was at last determined to proceed against him
publicly, and on Tuesday, the ^ of ^^, the Boston
pastor was arraigned before his flock and in his own
meeting-house. Vane led the attack ; and, after his
nature at that time, he did it violently. Then the
whole congregation followed, pouring bitter and re-
proachful words upon their minister's head. Win-
throp and one or two others alone said anything in
the pastor's behalf, and in his journal Winthrop re-
marked that " it was strange to see how the common

1637. A PASTOR ADMONISHED. 429

people were led by example to condemn him in that
which, it was very probable, divers of them did not
understand, nor the rule which he was supposed to
have broken ; and that such as had known him so long,
and what good he had done for the church, should fall
upon Hm with such bitterness for justifying himself in
a good cause." Wilson bore the ordeal meekly, an-
swering as best he could, but to little purpose. The
great majority were in favor of immediately passing a
vote of censure. Throughout Cotton had sympathized
with the church, expressing himself with a good deal
of feeling ; but he had not failed to preserve a cer-
tain judgment and moderation. He now intervened,
saying that he could not at that time proceed to
censure, as the usage of the Boston church required
unanimity, and some were opposed to it ; nevertheless
he did administer a grave exhortation. That the
teacher should thus rebuke the pastor, in the presence
of the whole congregation, was probably a thing un-
exampled, and a picture at once suggests itself, of a
venerable man standing up, with white hair uncovered
before his people, to be reprimanded by his junior. It
is, therefore, well to bear in mind that the facts were
quite otherwise. Though Wilson was pastor and Cot-
ton teacher, the former was a man not yet fifty, and
with a large share of health and vigor ; while the lat-
ter was not only several years the older of the two,
but recognized by all as much the more eminent.
Nevertheless, the proceeding was outrageous and un-
justifiable. Deeply mortified as he must have been,
Wilson bore himself with manly dignity. He took
his scolding before his flock in silence, and, going
quietly on in his duties, he bided his time. And his
time came.

430 A PROVINCE IN A TURMOIL. Feb.

Throughout the next forty days the storm contin-
ued to rage with ever-increasing violence. Winthrop
and Cotton engaged in a written controversy over the
proceedings in Wilson's case, which correspondence
Winthrop says was loving and gentle, though in it he
" dealt very plainly " with the teacher. A whole brood
of new heresies was meanwhile currently alleged to
be cropping out in Boston. It was even asserted that
such opinions were publicly expressed, "as that the
Holy Ghost dwelt in a believer as he is in heaven ;
that a man is justified before he believes ; and that
faith is no cause for justification." That heresies
such as these should be tolerated in any well-ordered
Christian community was looked upon by the body of
the clerg}^ as wholly out of the question. After due
consultation among themselves, therefore, they deter-
mined to labor with Cotton once more. He himself
afterwards asserted that, through all these times, Mrs.
Hutchinson seldom resorted to him, and was never in
Vane's confidence or in his. Indeed, he added, prob-
ably with a good deal of insight into the w^oman's
character, even when Mistress Hutchinson " did come
to me, it was seldom or never, that I can tell of, that
she tarried long. I rather think she was loath to re-
sort much to me, or to confer long with me, lest she
might seem to learn somewhat from me." ^ But the
general report was otherwise ; and so his brethren
drew up another schedule of differences, this time
under sixteen heads : —

This they " gave to him, entreating him to deliver his
judgment directly [on the sixteen points ;] which accordingly
he did, and many copies thereof were dispersed about.
Some doubts he well cleared, but in some things he gave

1 Way Cleared, 88.

1637. A SCHEDULE OF DIFFERENCES. 431

not satisfaction. The rest of the ministers replied to these
answers, and at large showed their dissent, and the grounds
thereof ; and, at the next General Court, held 9th of the
1st, they all assembled at Boston, and agreed to put off all
lectures for three weeks, that they might bring things to
some issue."

CHAPTER V.

THE FAST-DAY SEKMON.

Such was the condition of affairs in Boston and
in the province of Massachusetts when the year 1637
opened. "Every occasion," says Winthrop, "in-
creased the contention, and caused great alienation of
minds ; and the members of Boston [church] , fre-
quenting the lectures of other ministers, did make
much disturbance by public questions, and objections
to their doctrines, which did any way disagree from
their opinions ; and it began to be as common here to
distinguish between men, by being under a Covenant
of Grace or a Covenant of Works, as in other coun-
tries between Protestants and Papists."

From the depths of one of the now forgotten con-
troversies in which Luther was a chief participant,
the Orthodox faction had exhumed a term of oppro-
brium to be applied to their opponents ; for then to
say that a man was an Antinomian or an Anabaptist
was even more offensive and injurious than it would
be in the present day to speak of him as a communist
or a free-lover. It was merely another way of calling
him a lawless libertine or a ferocious revolutionist.
It would be mere waste of space to go into the history
of a relio'ious sect which seems to have existed from
the earliest days of the Christian era ; suffice it to say
that the name Antinomian was coined by Luther and
applied to the adherents of John Agricola. It meant,

1637. THE ANTINOMIAN. 433

as its derivation implies, that those designated by it
set themselves against and above law and denied its
restricting force, — though law, it should be added,
meant in the religious disputations of the days of
Luther the Mosaic code as revealed in the Old Testa-
ment, and more especially set forth in the decalogue.
In other words, Antinomianism was merely another
phase of the same old dispute over the one true and
only path to salvation. The idea of the arraignment
at the bar of final judgment, universally accepted in
those days and that community, has already been
alluded to. It was in no way vague, remote or mys-
tical as it has now become. The doctrine that a pure,
straightforward, conscientious performance of duty in
this life is the best preparation for the life to come,
which, under these conditions, may safely be left to
take care of itseK, — this modern doctrine of justi-
fication and salvation had then no vogue. On the
contrary the judgment seat was a sternly realistic,
matter-of-fact tribunal, fashioned on human models,
but never absent from thought, — a living, abiding
terror. It was, in the minds of the men and women
who then lived, just as much an ordeal to be looked
forward to and be prepared for as, with certain classes,
the admission to an academy or college or a profes-
sion is looked forward to and prepared for now : only,
in the former case the question at issue was all-impor-
tant, and the decision was one from which there was
no appeal ; for behind the judgment seat were the
gates of Heaven and Hell, — life everlasting or end-
less torments. As already has been said, — What plea
in justification would be accepted at that tribunal ? —
The Church of Rome preached the doctrine of works,
— obedience to the law as expounded by authority,

434 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. 1637.

observance of ceremonies, conformity in life : — the
Lutheran, on the other hand, abjuring all forms and
ceremonials, put his trust in faith, implicit and unques-
tioning, and in divine grace.

So far all was simple. The issue was easy to com-
prehend. But the revealed Word now presented it-
self, and to it the pitiless logic of Calvin was applied.
The biblical dogmas of creation, original sin and re-
demption through God's grace had to be brought into
some accordance with the actualities of this life and
the revelation as to the life to come ; omnipotence,
omniscience, prevision and predestination were to be
accepted and disposed of. Logic gave way under the
strain, and human reason sought refuge in the incon-
ceivable. What was right and good and just among
men was, necessarily, neither just nor good nor right
with God. He was a law unto himself.

Then followed the dogma of the elect. As pre-
science was a necessary, and so admitted, attribute of
the omnipotent God, everything was ordained in ad-
vance, and consequently all men were predestined
from the beginning, — many would be lost, a few
would be saved ; — but, whether lost or saved, the de-
cision had been reached from the beginning and could
in no way be influenced. It is difficult to see how
what was called Antinomianism did not follow of
necessity from these premises. The elect were su-
perior to the restraints of law ; and this Luther dis-
tinctly asserted. Antinomianism was therefore the
ref uo^e of the libertine : — if he was destined to be
saved, he would be saved, all possible misdeeds to the
contrary notwithstanding; if he was doomed to be
lost, the rectitude of a life of restraint would avail
him nothing.

1637. THE ''ODIUM THEOLOGICUM." 435

As applied to Anne Hutchinson, Henry Vane and
John Wheelwright the term Antinomian was, there-
fore, an intentional misnomer.^ About them there
was no trace of license, no suggestion of immorality
or hypocrisy ; nor, it must be added, was there any
disposition to protestantism, or even increased liber-
ality in religion. They accepted both law and gospel.
They denied none of the tenets of Calvin. They
merely undertook to graft upon the stern, human
logic of those tenets certain most illogical, spiritual
offshoots of their own. In other words, they also,
like their teacher and prototype the transcendentalists
of that earlier day, were in their own estimation the
elect of God. Conscious of the indwelling of the
Holy Ghost, they, and they only, could look forward
with confidence to the inevitable time when, standing
before the judgment seat, they should plead in justi-
fication the Covenant of Grace.

Such was New England Antinomianism and such
was the spiritual issue the Antinomian presented, —
an issue harmless enough in our days, though not so
wholly devoid of harm then ; an issue not easy now
to comprehend, nor calculated to excite a feeling of
sympathy. Ordinarily it would be dismissed as merely
one more phase of religious exaltation. But in the
case of Anne Hutchinson and her following, with the
spiritual was combined a political issue, and with both
yet other issues, social, parochial and individual, until
together they made up a drama in which almost no
element was wanting. The theological struggle was

1 In his Fast-day sermon, now to be referred to, Wheelwright ex-
pressly enjoined his hearers and sympathizers " to have care that we
give not occasion to others to say we are libertines or Antinomians."
BeU, Wheelwright, 175.

436 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. 1637.

between Anne Hutchinson and John Wilson, and it
was over Cotton ; the political struggle was between
Vane and Winthrop. Cotton, both factions hoped
to secure. That he now sympathized with those who
preached the new Covenant of Grace, or the Anti-
noinians as their opponents designated them, was ap-
parent ; but his brother ministers looked upon him as
a very precious brand which it might yet be given
unto them to snatch from the burning. Anne Hutch-
inson, with whom the church-people of Boston were
literally infatuated, outside of Boston was regarded
with hate, — and a hate not of the mere conventional
kind, but of that exquisitely rancorous description
which has been set apart by itself and regularly classi-
fied as the odium theologicum. Though Wheelwright
had moved to Mount Wollaston, and for several weeks
been ministering to the scattered farmers thereabouts,
his position in the controversy was well understood.
Too sensible and cool-headed to go the whole length
Mrs. Hutchinson went, he did not believe in her misty
transcendental revelations ; but, as regards the dog-
mas of sanctification and the personal presence of the
Holy Ghost in the true believer, he stood in advance
probably of Cotton, and by the side of Vane. None
the less, by classing him with Cotton, as alone being
sealed and preaching a Covenant of Grace, his sister-
in-law had conferred on the minister at the Mount a
dangerous prominence. His position was not like that
of Cotton. He did not enjoy the same reputation or
equal authority. He did not even have a distinct set-
tlement of his own. He rested moreover under the
imputation of inclining to novel and questionable
doctrines. Everything combined, therefore, to centre
upon Wheelwright the angry eyes of his brethren.

1037. THE DAY OF FAST. 437

He was the representative, the kinsman, the favored
preacher of her whom they called the "virago," the
" she-Gamaliel," the " American Jezebel." She was
a woman, and her sex could not but shield her some-
what. He was a man, and a contentious one ; and as
such he invited assault. So over his head the clouds
began to gather, black and ominous. An occasion
for their bursting only was needed ; and for that his
enemies had not long; to wait.

On the ^ of January a solemn fast was held, be-
cause of " the miserable estate of the churches in Ger-
many " and in England, the growing Pequot troubles,
and the dissensions nearer home. Wheelwright may
have preached to his own people at Mount Wollaston
on the morning of that day ; but later he seems to
have gone to Boston, where in the afternoon he at-
tended church services and listened to a discourse
from Cotton. After Cotton had finished, Wheelwright
was called upon " to exercise as a private brother ; "
and he improved the occasion by delivering his famous
sermon.^ There is strong presumptive evidence that,
even on this day of penitential humiliation, certain of
God's unworthy prophets were cunningly lying in wait
one for another; for, as he held forth, some one
among those who listened to him was rapidly taking
down a verbatim report of all that he uttered.

Once hostilities are decided upon, a pretext for open
war is never far to seek. In itseK there was assuredly
nothing in that Fast-day sermon which would have
attracted any general public notice. It had a very
direct bearing on things then exercising the public
mind ; but this is usual in occasional discourses. As
a matter of taste, so sharp an arraignment of those

1 Bell, Wheelwright, 13, 15, notes 21 and 25.

438 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. Jan.

walking in a Covenant of Works was at that time
decidedly out of place, especially when preached from
Mr. Wilson's pulpit. Though the congregation, with
less than half a dozen exceptions, entirely sympathized
in it, yet they all knew, and Mr. Wilson knew, that
he, the minister of the church, was receiving an ex-
hortation. It was this apparently which gave the
affair what zest it had. In fact the whole thing would
seem to have been arranged beforehand between Mrs.
Hutchinson and Wheelwright. It bore on its face
traits highly suggestive of her handiwork. The Lord,
it was seen, might be made to deliver Wilson into the
hands of his enemies on the Fast-day ; and so Wheel-
wright stood ready to smite, and spare not.

In common with most writers of his time, and es-
pecially theological writers, Wheelwright was always
involved and obscure in expression. How, in fact?
the congregations of those days understood and fol-
lowed the pulpit utterances is incomprehensible now.
Possibly there was an inspiration of fanaticism then
about, which has since passed away ; but, more prob-
ably, much that was said was not taken in at all, and
religious fervor supplied the place of comprehension.
The Fast-day sermon is no better calculated for easy
comprehension by an audience, or for that matter by
a reader even, than are the other productions of
Wheelwright's pen. Couched in that peculiar scriptu-
ral language in which the Puritan and the Covenan-
ter delighted, and of which the most familiar specimen
— plus Arahe que V Arable — is the address of Eph-
raim McBriar after the skirmish at Drumclog, it is,
except in parts, a very dull performance ; and, if de-
livered to a modern congregation, would hardly excite
in those composing it any sensations except curiosity,

1637. A BOSTON EPHRAIM McBRIAR. 439

soon followed by drowsiness and impatience. But, so
far as phraseology and the corresponding delivery of
the speaker are concerned, the following extracts from
Wheelwright's discourse might well have been the
original which inspired the more brilliant imitation of
Scott : —

" The way we must take, if so be we will not have the
Lord Jesus Christ taken from us, is this, — We must all
prepare for a spiritual combat, — we must put on the whole
armor of God, and must have our loins girt and be ready to
fight. Behold the bed that is Solomon's ; there is threescore
valiant men about it, — valiant men of Israel. Every one
hath his sword in his hand and, being expert in war, hath
his sword girt on his thigh, because of fear in the night. If
we will not fight for the Lord Jesus Cln-ist, Christ may come
to be surprised. Solomon lyeth in his bed; and there is
such men about the bed of Solomon ; and they watch over
Solomon, and will not suffer Solomon to be taken away.
And who is this Solomon but the Lord Jesus Christ ; and
what is the bed but the church of true believers ; and who
are those valiant men of Israel but all the children of God !
They ought to show themselves vaUant ; they should have
their swords ready ; they must fight, and fight with spiritual
weapons, for the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but
spiritual. And, therefore, wheresoever we live, if we would
have the Lord Jesus Christ to be abundantly present with
us, we must all of us prepare for battle, and come out
against the enemies of the Lord ; and, if we do not strive,
those under a Covenant of Works will prevail. We must
have a special care, therefore, to show ourselves courageous.
All the valiant men of David and all the men of Israel, —
Barak, and Deborah, and Jael, — all must out and fight for
Christ. Curse ye Meroz, because they came not out to help
the Lord against the mighty ! — Therefore, if we will keep
the Lord Jesus Christ and his presence and power amongst
us, we must figlit. . . .

440 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. Jan.

" When Christ is thus holden forth to be all in all, — all
in the root, all in the branch, all in all, — this is the gospel.
This is that fountain open for the inhabitants of Judah and
Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness ; and this is the well,
of which the wells under the old testament were certain
types. This same well must be kept open. If the Philis-
tines fill it with earth, with the earth of their own inven-
tions, those that are the servants of Isaak, — true believers,
— the servants of the Lord, — must open the wells again.
This is the light that holdeth forth a gi'eat light, that lighteth
every one that cometh into the world. And if we mean to
keep Christ, we must hold forth this light.

" The second action we must perform and the second way
we must take is, — When enemies to the truth oppose the
ways of God, we must lay hold upon them, we must kill
them with the Word of the Lord. The Lord hath given
true believers power over the nations, and they shall break
them in pieces as shivered with a rod of iron. And what
rod of iron is this but the word of the Lord ; — and such
honor have all his saints. The Lord hath made us as
threshing instruments with teeth, and we must beat the
hnis as chaff. Therefore, in the fear of God handle the
sword of the spirit, the word of God ; — for it is a two-
edged sword, and this word of God cutteth men to the
heart." ^

1 In his references to Wheelwrig-ht and the Fast-day discourse, Dr.
Palfrey, in his History, evinces even more than his usual spirit of rev-
erence for the fathers of New Eng-land, and less than his usual ac-
curacy. He speaks of the sermon as " a composition of that character
■which is common to skilful agitators. Along- with disclaimers of the
purpose to excite to physical violence, it abounds in lang>uage suited
to bring about that result. . . . Another art of demagogxies Wheel-
wright perfectly understood. By exhorting his hearers to prepare
themselves to be martyrs, he gave them to understand that they were
in danger of being so, and that, if they preferred not to be, they must
take their measures accordingly." (i. 479, n.) He also remarks that
" it was perhaps well that this sermon was delivered at Braintree, and

1637. SKIRMISHING. 441

Though at the time of their delivery these utter-
ances do not seem to have excited any particular re-
mark, they did soon after afford a pretext for open
strife between the factions into which the province
was divided. As the weeks passed on, it became
apparent that a struggle was to take place in the next
General Court. This met on the j^ of March, nearly
seven weeks after the fast, and was attended by an
advisory council of clergymen. It has been seen that
all lectures were then deferred for three weeks, that

that the angry men whom it stimulated did not pass Winthrop's house
in returning- to their homes."

The fact is, the sermon was delivered^ not at Braintree, but in Bos-
ton, and within a stone's throw of Winthrop's house ; while there can
be very little doubt that Winthrop was himself among the audience
which listened to it. In their anxiety to justify the subsequent pro-
ceedings of the magistrates and clergy, the New England historians
have imagined a condition of affairs existing- in Massachusetts in
1635-7 which the evidence does not warrant. They have transformed
the self-contained little New England community into something very
like a French or German mob. The Wheelwright discourse neither
led, nor was intended to lead, to any outbreak of " angry men." In-
deed, it did not at the moment excite enough remark to cause Win-
throp, after listening to it, to make any mention of it in his journal.
It dealt in no rhetoric or figures of speech which were not usual in the
pulpit oratory of those days.

That Wheelwright was a strong-willed and ambitious divine, prone
to controversy and eager for notoriety, is evident enough ; but the
record of his earlier no less than of his later life stamps him as a
thoroughly pure and conscientious man. Every believing controver-
sialist is of necessity an agitator; but "demagogues" rarely enjoy
convictions for the sake of which they suffer, as did Wheelwright
and his friends, persecution and banishment. In the Antinomian con-
troversy the record of Wheelwright is far more creditable to him
than those of Cotton and Winthrop are to them. Finally, there is no
reason whatever to question the judgment of Mather, pronounced
long after the controversy had .subsided, that Wheelwright "was a
man of the most unspotted morals and unblemished reputation ; ' '
and that " his worst enemies never looked on him as chargeable with
the least ill practices."

442 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. March,

nothing might liinder the ministers from giving their
exclusive attention, during the sessions of the Court,
to the one subject uppermost in the minds of all.

Although the opponents of Mrs. Hutchinson con-
trolled every church, and consequently every town in
the province outside of Boston, yet the legislature —
as then organized under the governorship of Vane —
was not unequally divided. A preliminary struggle
between the two parties took place over the case of
one Stephen Greensmith, who had ventured to ex-
press, somewhere and at some time, the opinion that
all the ministers, with the exception of Cotton, Wheel-
wright, " and, as he thought, Mr. Hooker," were
under a Covenant of Works, — in other words, were
" whited sepulchres." Being adjudged guilty of this
sweeping criticism, Greensmith was fined £40, and
required to give sureties of £100 for the payment
thereof. Who the man was, or why he was thus util-
ized for example's sake, does not appear. The Court,
having in this way indicated its disapproval of the
new doctrines, next went on to emphasize its approval
of the old. The proceedings of the Boston church
against Wilson, because of his jeremiad before the
December Court, were reviewed. Winthrop says that
they " could not fasten upon such as had prejudiced
him," and would seem to imply that it was for this
reason — because they could not be fastened upon —
that these persons escaped punishment with Green-
smith. Yet Winthrop had himself recorded how, on
the 31st of December at the church-meeting, " the
governor [young Harry Vane] pressed it violently "
against the pastor. The chief offender in the case
happened, therefore, to be the presiding officer of
the Court which thus failed to " fasten upon " him.

1637. THE CONFLICT OPENS. 443

Nevertheless the subject was discussed and evidently
with warmth, for the ministers were called on to ad-
vise upon it. They took the correct ground, laying
down the principle that no member of a court, and
consequently no person by request advising a court,
could be publicly questioned elsewhere for anything
said to it. The spirit and tenor of Wilson's speech
were then approved by an emphatic majority, this ac-
tion being, of course, intended as a pointed rebuke to
Vane.

So far it was mere skirmishing. The parties were
measuring strength before they grappled over the real
issue. It had probably now been determined among
the ministers that Wheelwright was to be called to a
sharp account. His position invited attack ; and his
utterances in private, there is every reason to suppose,
as well as in public, afforded ready pretext for it.
He was the man set up against Wilson, by Wilson's
own people, in his own meeting-house. Wilson had
there been called to account for a speech made before
the Court ; and now the Court proposed to call Wheel-
wrio-ht to like account for a sermon delivered before
Wilson's church. No sooner, therefore, had the Court
approved of what Wilson had said in December, than
it went on to consider what Wheelwright had said in
January. The matter of the Fast-day sermon was
brought up. In answer to a summons Wheelwright
presently appeared, the notes of his discourse, taken
at the time of its delivery, were produced, and he was
asked if he admitted their correctness. In reply he
laid before the Court his own manuscript, and was
then dismissed. The next day he was again sum-
moned.

Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed, but dur-

444 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. March,

ing that brief space of time the Court had received a
very distinct intimation that the course upon which it
seemed to be entering was not to pass unchallenged.
It came in the form of a petition, signed by nearly all
the members of the Boston church, praying that pro-
ceedings in judicial cases should be conducted pub-
licly, and that matters of conscience might be left for
the church to deal with. The Court was, in other
words, respectfully invited to attend to the matters
which properly concerned it, and not to meddle in the
affairs of the Boston church. This paper was at once
ordered to be returned to those from whom it came,
with an indorsement upon it to the effect that the
Court considered it presumptuous. The examination
of Wheelwright was then proceeded with behind
closed doors. His sermon being produced he justified
it, and asked to be informed of what, and by whom,
he was accused. He was answered that, the sermon
being acknowledged by him, the Court would proceed
ex officio^ as it was termed. In other words, it would
examine him inquisitorially under oath. This pro-
posal immediately called forth loud expressions of
disapproval from thos& of the members who were
friendly to the accused. Voices were heard exclaim-
ing that these were but the methods of the High
Commission, and as such were associated in the minds
of all with the worst measures of that persecution
which had harried them and their brethren out of
England. Wheelwright thereupon declined to answer
any further questions, and the proceedings for the
moment came to a standstill.

The anti-clerical party in the Court now carried
their point, in so far that what more was to be done
was ordered to be done in public. This decided,

1637. A PARLIAMENTARY STRUGGLE. 445

Wheelwright, later in the day, was again summoned.
The room was now thronged, nearly all the clergy of
the colony being among those present, and, his Fast-
day discourse having been again produced. Wheel-
wright proceeded to justify it, — declaring that he
meant to include in his animadversions "all who
walked in such a way "as he had described to be a
Covenant of Works. The matter was then referred
to the ministers of the other churches, who were
called upon to state whether " they in their ministry
did walk in such a way." As a method of securing
at once evidence, and a verdict upon it, this was in-
genious, and worked most satisfactorily. There was
little room for doubt what the answer would be, and
when the Court met the next morning it was ready.
One and all, — Cotton only excepted, — the ministers
replied, they did consider they walked in such a way.

The verdict was thus rendered. But the record was
not to be made up without a further struggle. It yet
remained to declare the judgment of the Court that
Wheelwright was guilty of contempt and sedition.
The doors were again closed, and behind them a de-
bate which lasted two entire days was entered upon.
Nothing is known of its details, except that Winthrop
and Yane were the leaders of the opposing forces, and
the result hung long in the balance. For a time it
seemed as if the extremists would be thwarted by a
small preponderance of voices ; but at last, to quote
the words of one most active in the struggle, " the
priests got two of the magistrates on their side," and
so secured a majority.^

The judgment of the Coui't was announced. But
not even then did Vane abandon the struggle. He

1 Coddington to Fretwell; cited in Felt's Eccles. Hist. ii. 611.

446 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. March,

tendered a protest against the action just taken. This
protest the Court refused to spread ujDon its record, on
the ground that in it the proceedings were condemned
and the convicted divine wholly justified. Another
petition from the church of Boston was now presented,
which, at a later stage of the struggle, came into sin-
ister prominence. It was a singularly well-drawn
paper. Respectful in tone, it was simple, brief, direct
and logical. It was, of course, an earnest protest
against the action of the Court, and breathed a deep
sympathy with the condemned ; but at the time no
exception was taken to its tone. It seems to have
been received as a matter of course, and was placed
upon the files of the Court. To it were appended
above threescore names.

The conservatives had carried their point. None
the less, the struggle had been so severe, the re-
sistance at every point so obstinate and the majorities
so small, that the victors were not in a position to
follow up their success. Accordingly the sentence
upon Wheelwright was deferred to the next General
Court, before which he was ordered to appear. So
far as he was concerned, therefore, it only remained
to decide whether he should, during the interim, be
silenced as a preacher. This, also, being a question
of church discipline, the magistrates referred to the
ministers for their advice ; and they naturally hesi-
tated to have recourse to a proceeding so irresistibly
suggestive of bitter English memories. Though angry
and bigoted, they were honest ; and they could not at
once, even with Hugh Peters and Thomas Weld as
their leaders, introduce into this, their place of refuge
from Laud's pursuivants, the most odious features of
Laud's ecclesiastical machinery. Weld himself, in-

1637. '^ THAT LION!'' 447

deed, had good cause to know what it was to be si-
lenced. Six years before, in company with Thomas
Shepard who now again sat by his side, he had stood
before the hated Archbishop, even as Wheelwright
now stood before them. With what face could they
now measure out to him as " that lion " had then
meted out to them? Accordingly the magistrates
were advised not to silence Wheelwright, but to com-
mend his case to the church of Boston, to be dealt
with spiritually. In view of the remonstrance from
members of that church which had just been pre-
sented, this course certainly was a forbearing one. It
opened a door to conciliation.

As was the custom, the sessions of the Court had
been held in Boston. But Boston swarmed like an
angry ant-hill with the adherents of those who pro-
fessed the Covenant of Grace. The influence of an
intense local, though outside, public opinion, all set-
ting strongly one way, had made itself unmistakably
felt throughout the recent stormy sittings, and had
greatly modified the conclusions arrived at by the
deputies. Action taken behind closed doors had been
met within a few hours by earnest protests over long
lists of well-known names. The conservative party,
though in the majority, was none the less the opposi-
tion, so long as Vane remained governor. Naturally,
therefore, those composing it felt anxious to have aU
further operations conducted amid less uncongenial
surroundings. If it was necessary to proceed to ex-
tremities, it would be expedient, at least, to secure
the removal of the seat of government from Boston
to some other place, at any rate for a time. Accord-
ingly, when all other business was disposed of, the
final move of that session on the part of the con-

448 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. March,

servatives was made in the form of a proposition that
the next General Court shonkl meet at Cambridge,
or Newetowne as it was then called.

Though the suggestion was unprecedented, it was
by no means unjustifiable. It was fairly open to
question whether, under the circumstances of intense
excitement then prevailing, the action of the Court
could be looked upon as wholly free from outside
restraint so long as its sittings were in Boston. It
was true there had been no tumult as yet, and the
law-abiding habits of the people made tumults im-
probable. But the province, though made up of a
tolerably compact body of settlements, was without
any system of mails or public conveyance, — without
newspaper, newsletter, or printing-press. The only
means of communication was by word-of-mouth, or by
letter sent through chance occasion. The boat, the
saddle and the farm-wagon were the forms of car-
riage ; and he who could command none of these
might either find his way on foot or stay at home.
This was an important fact, not to be disregarded in
any attempt to forecast the result of an impending
election. It was true, the charter-officers of the com-
pany were no longer chosen by those only of the free-
men who were present and actually voting in the gen-
eral assembly which elected them. Heretofore this had
been the practice ; but, naturally, the inconvenience
incident to such a system had made itself more and
more felt as the settlements spread over a wider ter-
ritorial surface, and this inconvenience had been tem-
porarily met by the passage of a recent law permitting
the freemen to send in their votes by proxy, which
law was now to go into operation for the first time.
Still the votes were not to be cast in the towns where

1637. ENDICOTT PUTS THE QUESTION. 449

the freemen dwelt, and then canvassed. They were
simply held in the form of proxies to be used in the
case of formal balloting by a deliberative body. That
the coming election would be hotly contested was well
known. It was to take place, as before, in a general
assembly of the freemen ; and, in the course of a con-
tested election held in this way, it was inevitable that
points of order and procedure would arise. These
points, as they arose, would have to be decided by
those actually present, voting viva voce., or by count
of uplifted hands. If the election was held in Bos-
ton, every Boston freeman would assuredly be pres-
ent, and his vote would count. The freemen from
the other towns would be in a strange place ; they
would be overawed and silenced by the unanimity of
those who felt themselves at home. If riot or vio-
lence should occur, the case would be yet worse, for
every advantage would be on one side ; all the dis-
advantages on the other. Then, after the magistrates
were chosen, the sessions of the Court were to be
held. At these sessions matters were to be discussed
and issues were to be decided in regard to which
intense feeling existed. Under such circumstances, a
legislative assembly, which was supreme, could hardly
be expected to hold its sittings in a place where the
whole public sentiment was bitterly opposed to those
composing a majority of that assembly, and where the
local church constituted itself a sort of board of revis-
ion over any action taken.

Though all this was obvious enough. Vane declined
to see it. He was the presiding officer of the Court,
and he met a formal motion for a change of the place
in which its next sessions were to be held, not as a
governor and presiding officer should, but again with

450 THE FAST-DAY SERMON. 1637.

the angry petulance of a displeased boy. He flatly
refused to eutertain it. Apparently he had not yet
learned that those with whom he was dealing were
men, — and men quite as decided as he, and a good
deal more mature. They were of the class which
produced Eliot and Pym, Hampden and Cromwell ;
^nd it was not likely they would now be turned from
their course by childish opposition : so, when Win-
throp, the deputy-governor, hesitated to usurp the
presiding officer's functions, upon the ground that he
was himself also an inhabitant of Boston, the stern
Endicott was equal to the occasion. He submitted
the question to a vote, and declared it carried. The
Court then adjourned.

17th
S7th

CHAPTER VI.

A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF.

The charter-election was this year to be held on the
f7^ of May, and the time which intervened between
the adjournment of the Court in March and that day
was one of great excitement. Not only was each
party to the theological dispute striving to secure the
control of the government, but the fear of an impend-
ing war with the dreaded Pequot tribe was in every
mind. So far as the church of Boston was concerned,
there were no signs whatever that the dissensions
which rent it were subsiding. Mr. Wilson and Mrs.
Hutchinson could not be brought together. They
were separated by something far more insuperable
than even theological tenets, — by an extreme per-
sonal antipathy.

As the election day drew near, Winthrop and Vane
were put forward as opposing candidates, and the
adherents of neither neglected any precaution likely
to influence the result ; while the deep interest felt
in that result of itself insured not only a full vote, but
a large personal attendance. Though recorded as of
May 17, 1637, it is to be borne in mind that the
events now to be described really took place on what
is with us the 27th of the month, so that, as spring
was merging into early summer, the verdure was far
advanced. The day was clear and warm, when at one
o'clock the freemen gathered in groups about a large

452 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. May,

oak-tree which stood on the north side of what is now
Cambridge Common, where Governor Vane, in Eng-
lish fashion and beneath the open sky, announced the
purpose of the meeting, — the annual charter-election.
Most of the notabilities of the province, whether ma-
gistrates or clergy, were among the large number pres-
ent. As soon as the meeting was declared ready for
business, a parliamentary contest was opened over a
petition offered on behalf of many inhabitants of
Boston. It was in effect an appeal, in the case of
Wheelwright, taken from the deputies to the body of
freemen themselves, in General Court assembled. As
such, its presentation at that time was clearly not in
order ; for, as the day was specially set apart for the
choice of magistrates, the choice of magistrates took
precedence over everything. If other business could
be thrust on the meeting first, it was obvious an elec-
tion might in this way be defeated, and the colony
left without a government. Vane took advantage
of his place as presiding officer to insist upon having
the paper read. To this Winthrop objected, contend-
ing very properly that the special business of the day
should first of all be disposed of. As Vane stood
firm, an angry debate ensued, and the significance
of the change in locality became at once apparent.
Had the Court met in Boston, there can be little
doubt that Vane, who had forgotten the magistrate in
the party leader, would have been sustained in his
arbitrary rulings by the voices of those actually pres-
ent. The position assumed by the youthful governor
was striking and dramatic enough ; but it was also
suggestive of memories connected with that greater
and more turbulent forum, in which Gracchus and
Sulpicius appealed directly from the senate to the

1637. THE WAY TO CAMBRIDGE. 453

people of Rome. That, under the strain to which
the eager and too zealous patrician now subjected it,
the meeting did not break into riot, was due only to
the self-control and respect for law and form — the
inherited political habit — of. those who composed it.

Separated as the two places were by a broad arm
of the sea, and the adjoining flats and marshes, Boston
was then a long way from Cambridge. Indeed, it is
not easy to realize that the two cities — now so closely
connected by direct, broad thoroughfares, running be-
tween continuous rows of buildings — could, even two
centuries and a half ago, have been so far apart that
the passage from one to the other was not only long
and tedious, but at times fraught with peril. Yet
such was the fact. Only a few months after the elec-
tion of 1637, Winthrop recorded how a young man,
coming alone from Cambridge to Boston in a storm,
perished, and was found dead in his boat ; and, more
than sixty years later, the wife of the president of the
college, having her children with her, was in great
danger while making the same passage, and found her
way to Boston at last over Roxbury neck, after being
driven ashore on the Brookline marshes.^ On the
4th of July, 1711, Judge Sewall noted down that he
" went to Commencement by Water in a sloop," and
in May, 1637, the most direct way of going to Newe-
towne from the vicinity of Mr. Wilson's church, at
the head of State Street in Boston, was unquestion-
ably by boat, taken probably at Long Wharf. In a
good shallop, with a favoring breeze and a flood tide,
it was a pleasant sail ; but if the journey was to be
made by land, it would be necessary to cross over to
Charlestown, or go many miles about by way of Bos-

1 Sewall, Diary ^ ii. 74.

454 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. May,

ton neck, through Roxbury and Watertown, for there
was as yet no ferry from the foot of the hill below
William Blackstone's house. Accordingly, as had
doubtless been intended when the place was chosen, it
had proved much easier for the freemen of Roxbury,
Watertown, Charlestown and the northern towns to
assemble on Cambridge Common than for those of
Boston ; and it speedily became manifest that the
larger number of those present sided with Winthrop.
This fact held in check the friends of Vane. None
the less, threatening speeches drew forth angry words,
and a few of the more hot-headed were on the verge
of coming to blows ; some, indeed, did lay hands upon
each other. In the midst of the tumult the pastor
Wilson — his gravity of calling, the stoutness of his
person and his fifty years of age notwithstanding —
clambered up against the trunk of the spreading oak,
and, clinging to one of its branches, began vehemently
to harangue the meeting, exhorting the freemen there
present to look to their charter, and to consider of
the present work of the day, which was therein set
apart for the choosing their magistrates. In reply to
this sudden appeal, a loud cry was raised of " Elec-
tion ! Election ! ! " in response to which Winthrop, as
deputy-governor, cut the knot by declaring that the
greater number should decide on the course to be
pursued. He then put the question himself. The
response did not admit of doubt. The majority were
clearly in favor of proceeding to an immediate elec-
tion.

Vane still refused to comply. Then, at last, Win-
throp flatly told him that, if he would not go on, they
would go on without him. Remembering how Endi-
cott had dealt with him under very similar circum-

1637. A POLITICAL UPHEAVAL. 455

stances only two months before, Vane now gave way
to the inevitable, and the election was allowed to pro-
ceed. It resulted in the complete defeat of his party.
He was himself left out of the magistracy, as also
were Wheeh^T^ight's two parishioners at the Mount,
Coddington and Hough. The conservative party re-
sumed complete political control under Winthrop as
governor, with the stern and intolerant Dudley as his
deputy. As if also to indicate in a special way their
approval of Endicott's decided course throughout
these proceedings, the deputies, among their first acts
when they met, chose him a member of the standing
council for the term of his life, — an honor which a
year before, in plain defiance of the charter, had been
conferred upon Winthrop and Dudley, the governor
and deputy now elected, and which never was con-
ferred on any except these three. The reaction was
complete.

The freemen of Boston meanwhile had anxiously
watched the election, intentionally deferring the choice
of their own delegates to the new Court, in order that
they might be free to act as events should seem to
make expedient. They now at once, on the morning
of the day after the election, chose as their representa-
tives the defeated candidates for the magistracy, —
Vane, Coddington and Hough. The Court saw fit to
look upon this action as an affront, and, declaring the
election " undue," ordered a new one to be had. A
pretext for this foolish course was found in an alleged
failure to notify two of the Boston freemen of the
meeting to elect. A new warrant was immediately
issued, and notice then given by " private and par-
ticular warning from house to house," as a result of
which the contumacious town returned the same three

456 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. June,

men. And now the Court, " not finding how they
might reject them," admitted them to their seats.
This was on the .^^ of May, two days after the gen-
eral election, — so simple and prompt was the early
procedure.

The Massachusetts General Court of 1637 consisted
of eleven magistrates elected by the freemen of the
colony at large, and thirty-two deputies chosen by the
fourteen towns, and representing them. Magistrates
and deputies sat and voted together, — the separation
into two chambers, as the result of the controversy
between Goodwife Sherman and Captain Keayne over
the slaughtered hog of the latter, not taking place
until five years later, in 1642. Of this body, consist-
ing, all told, of forty-three members, the opponents of
Mrs. Hutchinson had complete control; might was
wholly on their side, for the opposition was limited to
the three Boston representatives. At first the domi-
nant party used their power sparingly, and an earnest
attempt seems even to have been made to put an end
to strife. It came, too, from influential quarters. The
clergy was not wholly made up of fanatics like Peters,
or of bigots like Weld, or of those by nature con-
tentious, like Wheelwright, and the better class of
them, men like Shepard and Cotton, now evinced a
real desire to reach some common ground. There was
no printing-press in the land, and it was only through
sermons, lectures, disputations, and manuscript writ-
ings circulating from hand to hand, that the discus-
sion could be carried on ; but, by the industrious use
of these means, the subtle questions in dispute were
reduced to so fine a point that Winthrop, tolerably
versed as he was in the metaphysico-theologies of the
time, very distinctly intimated that the issues involved

1637. METAPHYSICAL SUBTLETIES. 457

were beyond his comprehension. " Except men of
good understanding," said he, " and such as knew the
bottom of the tenets of those of the other party, few
could see where the difference was." Wheelwright
even, stubborn as he was, showed some signs of yield-
ing. And thus the stumbling-block, the single ob-
stacle which apparently stood in the way of complete
reconciliation, was reduced to this curious thesis, —
to the average modern reader, pure foolishness, —
" Whether the first assurance be by an absolute prom-
ise always, and not by a conditional also ; and whether
a man could have any true assurance, without sight of
some such work in his soul as no hypocrite could
attain unto." Translated into modern speech this
meant simply that, Yane and Cotton, representing the
Boston church, accepted the Calvinistic tenet of pre-
destination, and denied that conduct in life, or works,
could be a plea for salvation. In other words, in the
elect, salvation was not conditional ; such were born
to be saved, else Omnipotence was not prescient.
From this logic there seemed, humanly speaking, no
escape, and Antinomianism apparently followed ; but
it was then added that, practically, no one could be
of the elect, or have any real assurance of salvation,
without such genuine moral elevation as was wholly
inconsistent with hypocrisy or licentiousness in life.

There would seem to be nothing in metaphysical
subtleties of this description calculated of necessity to
render those who saw fit to indulge in them an element
of civil danger in the state. Winthrop seems to have
reached some such common-sense conclusion, and at
first his councils prevailed. So presently when, in
the order of legislative business. Wheelwright's case
was taken up, and he again presented himself before

458 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. June,

the Court, he was merely dismissed until its next
session ; though with a significant admonition that in
the interval it would be well for him to bethink him-
self of retracting and reforming his error, if he hoped
to receive favor. His answer was thoroughly charac-
teristic of the man and of the times. He boldly de-
clared that if he had been guilty of sedition he ought
to be put to death ; but that, if the Court meant to
proceed against him, he should take his appeal to the
King. As for retraction, he had nothing to retract.

Although the more moderate portion of the domi-
nant party were reluctant to go to extremes, and still
hoped that some way would open itself to peace and
reconciliation, they were not disposed to run any risk
of letting the fruits of their victory escape them.
They held the magistracy, and they did not propose
to be driven from it. The franchise, it has already
been mentioned, was an incident to church-member-
ship ; and all the churches in the province, save one
only, could safely be counted upon. Though such a
condition of affairs would seem to have afforded
assurance enough, it did not satisfy the dominant
party ; so it was determined to make assurance doubly
sure. With this end in view the General Court now
passed an alien law, which may safely be set down as
one of the most curious of the many curiosities of
partisan legislation.

As is usually the case with legislation of this nature,
the alien law of 1637 was intended to meet a particu-
lar case. Framed as a general law, it was designed
for special application. The tide of immigration to
New England was then at its flood. With the rest,
Wheelwright and his friends were looking for a large
addition to their number in the speedy arrival of a

1637. THE ALIEN LAW OF 1637. 459

portion of the church of a Mr. Brierly in England,
who possibly may have been Wheelwright's successor
at Bilsby. One party was already on its way ; for,
while the Court sat in June, in July, only a month
later, some of Hutchinson's kinsfolk landed with others
at Boston. Not improbably they were of the Brierly
church. Had they been permitted to remain within
the limits of the patent, there can hardly be any ques-
tion these people would have settled at the Mount,
where Wheelwrio^ht ministered and where William
Hutchinson's farm lay. In the existing state of pub-
lic opinion they could not, indeed, have very well set-
tled anywhere else. It was with a view to this rein-
forcement of the minority that the General Court in
May passed that alien law of 1637, which imposed
heavy penalties in case strangers were harbored or
allowed to remain in the province above three weeks
without a magistrate's permission. The peculiar point
and hardship of the law lay, of course, in the fact that
all the magistrates, without exception, belonged to one
party in the state, and were wholly devoted to it.^

1 The original germ of this law is found in the entry of 30th No-
vember, 1635, of the Boston records (Second Report of Boston Record
Commissioners, 5). But the act passed by the General Court of 1637
is so singular, and so large a body of Massachusetts town legislation
seems to have originated from it, that it is here printed in full. Its
passage led at the time to a series of papers, attacking and def ending-
it, from the pens of Vane and Winthrop. These are included in the
Hutchinson Papers. There is an abstract of the discussion in Up-
ham's Life of Vane in Sparks' American Biography (N. S. vol. iv.).
The text of the law (Records, i. 196) reads as follows : —

"It is ordered, that no towne or person shall receive any stranger,
resorting hither with intent to reside in this jurisdiction, nor shall
allow any lot or habitation to any, or entertain any such above three
weeks, except such person shall have allowance under the hands of
some one of the council, or of two other of the magistrates, upon pain
that every town that shall give or sell any lot or habitation to any

4G0 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. June,

When the body of immigrants from the Brierly
church landed, they were confronted with this new
ordinance. So far as appeared, they were all God-
fearing, well disposed, English men and women, and
in Boston their friends were in a large majority ; yet
their friends could not entertain them above three
weeks, nor could Boston give or sell them a lot or
habitation, under a heavy and recurring penalty.
Presently others came, and among them Mrs. Hutch-
inson's brother.^ A delay of four months only in the
enforcement of the law could be obtained for them
from Winthrop. At the expiration of that time they
must be without the jurisdiction. They submitted,
for they could not help themselves ; nor is it now
known where they went, though probably they settled
in Exeter, in New Hampshire.

Party feeling already ran dangerously high, evin-
cing itself in ways not to be mistaken. The debates
in the General Court had been violent and angry ;
as Winthrop says, even insolent speeches had been
delivered. When the result of the election at Cam-
such, not so allowed, shall forfeit £100 for every offence, and every
person receiving- any such, for longer time than is here expressed, (or
than shall be allowed in some special cases, as before, or in case of
entertainment of friends resorting- from some other parts of this coun-
try for a convenient time,) shall forfeit for every offence £40; and
for every month after such person shall there continue £20 ; provided,
that if any inhabitant shall not consent to the entertainment of any
such person, and shall g-ive notice thereof to any of the magistrates
within one month after, such inhabitant shall not be liable to any
part of this penalty. This order to continue till the end of the next
Court of Elections, and no long-er, except it be then confirmed."

^ Winthrop speaks of " a brother of Mrs. Hutchinson " (i. 27*^), but
he probably meant a brother-in-law. It was apparently Samuel
Hutchinson, who received permission to remain in Boston through
the winter of 1637 (Records, i. 207), and who the next spring accom.-
panied Wheelwright to New Hampshire. (Bell, Wheelivright, 34.)

1637. PARTY FEELING. 461

bridge was declared, the sergeants who, as was then
the custom, were in official attendance upon Vane,
armed with swords and halberds, refused to escort
his successor. They were all Boston men, and their
conduct is the best possible evidence of the unanim-
ity as well as the intensity of the feeling there. Lay-
ing down their halberds they went home, leaving
Winthrop, the newly elected governor, to do the same,
unattended. When at this time, also, Boston was
called upon to supply her portion of the levy for ser-
vice in the Pequot campaign, not a church-member
would consent to be mustered ; and the refusal was
based on the fact that their own pastor, selected from
among the clergy by lot as the chaplain to accompany
the contingent, walked in a Covenant of Works. Mili-
tary service, especially of a somewhat desperate char-
acter in savage warfare, is not usually coveted, and in
this case a prudent regard for their own scalps may
at the same time have dulled martial ardor and quick-
ened conscientious doubts in the minds of the church-
members in question ; but none the less this holding
back made at the time a deep impression throughout
the other towns of the province, giving "great dis-
couragement to the service," and the apologists for
the subsequent persecution have not failed to put due
emphasis on it since. ^

As the June days passed away, the alien law was
under discussion at Cambridge, and the excitement in
Boston increased rather than grew less. From the
time of his first coming, Vane had always occupied at
church a seat of honor among the magistrates, whether
he was one of them or not. But on the Sabbath after
the election, instead of taking his usual place, he
1 Palfrey, i. 492.

402 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. June,

and Codclington went and sat with the deacons, in a
way calculated to excite the utmost possible public
notice ; and when Winthrop, noticing this, cour-
teously sent to them to resume their old places, they
pointedly declined to do so. As governor, Vane had
walked to church in state, accompanied by four of
the town's sergeants. They now refused to attend
Winthrop, alleging that their attendance on his pre-
decessor had been merely out of personal devotion to
him. This could not but have been deeply mortify-
ing to Winthrop ; and it occasioned so much scandal
that the colony took notice of it, and offered to fur-
nish men, from the neighboring towns in turn, to
carry the halberds as usual. Upon this Boston pro-
fessed itself willing to furnish halberd-bearers, though
not the sergeants, and the Governor at last was fain
to use two of his own servants, and so settle the mat-
ter. Nor were Vane's discourtesies to Winthrop con-
fined to official acts or questions of church etiquette.
They touched social relations also. It has already been
seen how in June the Governor undertook to give a
dinner party to young Lord Ley, and among others
sent an invitation to Vane ; and how Vane declined
to come on the extraordinary ground that " his con-
science withheld him ; " but, at the time named for
the entertainment, " went over to Noddle's Island to
dine with Mr. Maverick, and carried the Lord Ley
with him." Besides being the recognized leader of
the opposition. Vane was a defeated candidate for
office ; and, as such, it was peculiarly incumbent upon
him to behave with dignity and self-restraint. Win-
throp had already set him a lofty example in this
respect : but Winthrop never appeared to such ad-
vantage as when bearing up against political defeat,

1637. ''HOT speeches:' 463

while Vane now demeaned himself rather like an
angry, sulking schoolboy than like the head of a party
in the state ; and his followers undoubtedly imitated
him. Consequently, all through the summer of 1637
Winthrop's position must have been most trying.
Wilson, who had he been there would have shared
the general opprobrium with him, was absent with the
soldiers of the Pequot expedition. Hence the Gov-
ernor found himself in Boston — Boston, his home
and the town he had founded — with the whole com-
munity as one man against him. Vane would not go
to his house. The town officers refused to attend
upon him. A bitter controversy was going on over
the alien law, which excited so much feeling that Cot-
ton seriously thought of moving out of the province,
while not even the relief and exultation over the tri-
umphant close of the Pequot war drew men's thoughts
away from it. Nor was this to be wondered at. The
news of Mason's victories in Connecticut and the
storming of the Pequot fort reached Boston at the
very time when Winthrop, acting under that alien
law, refused to permit Samuel Hutchinson to remain
in the province. In the hour of common triumph,
therefore, the people of Boston saw their friends, rel-
atives and sympathizers, who had just finished the
weary voyage which joined them in exile, refused even
a resting-place, much more an asylum, — and refused
it, also, merely on the ground that they were the
friends, relatives and sympathizers of the people of
Boston. Such a stretch of government authority not
only must have seemed an outrage, but it was an
outrage. It compelled a denial of those rights of
common hospitality which even savages respect, and
as persecution it was not less bitter than any prac-

464 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. Aug.

tised in England. Looked at even now, after the
lapse of two hundred years and more, to be forced to
send one's brother or sister, at their first coming into
a new land, out into the wilderness — even as Abra-
ham sent Hagar — was a sore test of patience. The
minority in Boston would have been either more or
less than human had they meekly submitted to it.
They did not meekly submit to it ; and so, when mid-
summer was come, there were " many hot speeches
given forth," and angry threats were freely made.

Early in August the posture of the opposing fac-
tions underwent a change ; Wheelwright lost a potent
friend and ally, and the party of the clericals gained
one. On the ~ Vane sailed for England, and his
friends took advantage of his departure to make a
political demonstration. The ship he was to go in
lay at anchor well dow^n the harbor, opposite Long
Island. As the hour for embarking drew near, his
political adherents and those who sympathized in his
theological views collected together, and formally ac-
companied their departing leader to his boat. They
were under arms, and some cannon had been brought
out ; and, as the barges bearing him and a company
of friends were rowed out into the stream, they were
saluted again and again by volleys of small arms and
ordnance. Winthrop was not there to bid his rival
farewell ; nor, in view of Vane's studied discourtesies
to him, was he to be blamed for his absence. None
the less he was mindful of the occasion and what was
due to it, and, as the party swept by Castle Island,
the salute from the town was taken up by the fort
and repeated.

Vane never came back to Boston ; nor, judging
by his course while there, is the fact greatly to be

1637. WINTHROP AND VANE. 465

regretted. Doubtless he improved, and, as he grew
older, he became more self -restrained ; none the less
he was born an agitator and always remained one,
and it is of men of this description that new countries
stand in least need. Unquestionably as respects the
issues involved in the so-called Antinomian contro-
versy. Vane was, in the abstract, more — much more
— nearly right than Winthrop. But, while his mind
was destructive in its temper, that of Winthrop was
constructive. In new countries everything is to be built
up, and there is little to pull down. In the Massa-
chusetts of 1637, there was nothing but the clergy.
Vane was the popular leader in the first movement
against their supremacy, and the fight he made showed
he possessed parliamentary qualities of a high order ;
but, as was apparent in the result of it, the move-
ment itself was premature. After the failure of that
movement its leader would have proved wholly out of
place in New England, while in England he found
ample field for the exercise of all his powers. In the
world's advance every one cannot be on the skirmish
line ; nor is the sharp-shooter necessarily a more use-
ful soldier than he who advances only just in front of
the solid line of battle, — even though the latter be
less keen of sight and wide of vision. As compared
with Winthrop, the younger Vane was a man of
larger and more active mind, of more varied and bril-
liant qualities. What is now known as an advanced
thinker, he instinctively looked deeper into the heart
of his subject. Winthrop, it is true, shared in the
darkness and the superstition, and even — in his calm,
moderate way — in the intolerance of his time ; but
it was just that sharing in the weakness as well as the
strength — the superstitions as weU as the faith — of

468 A HOUSE DIVIDED AGAINST ITSELF. Aug.

Lis time which made him so valuable in the place
chance called upon him to fill. He was in sympathy
with his surroundings, — just enough in the advance,
and not too much. In 1637 — persecution or no per-
secution, momentarily right or momentarily wrong —
Massachusetts could far better spare Henry Vane
from its councils than it could have spared John Win-
throp.

Vane's departure was none the less an irreparable
loss, almost a fatal blow, to John Wheelwright, for
by it he was deprived of his protector, and left, naked
and bound, in the hands of his enemies. Nor did
they long delay over the course they would take with
him. The Pequot war was ended ; for in July the
last remnant of the doomed tribe had been destroyed
in the swamp fight at New Haven, and now grave ma-
gistrates and elders were bringing to Boston from the
Connecticut the skins and the scalps of Sassacus and
his sachems, ghastly trophies of the savage fight. They
arrived on the ~ of August, Vane having sailed on
the i^b? ^^^ t^6 same day the party of the clericals
was reinforced by the return of Mr. Wilson. Having
been absent some seven weeks, with the Massachu-
setts contingent under Stoughton's command, he had
been sent for to return at once. In response to the
summons Stoughton — then at New London, and pre-
paring to cross over to Block Island — immediately
dismissed his chaplain, " albeit," he wrote, " we con-
ceived we had special interest in him, and count our-
selves naked without him ; " but he bethought himself
that "we could enjoy him but one Sabbath more."
And so Wilson returned by way of Providence, in
company with the Rev. Thomas Hooker and the Rev.
Samuel Stone, respectively the minister and the

1637. REFRESHED AND GRIM. 467

teacher of the church at Hartford, both close dispu-
tants as well as famous divines. All the clergy of the
province and neighboring settlements were in fact
now directing their steps towards Boston ; and the
spirit of theological controversy aroused itself, quick-
ened and refreshed by two months of thought diverted
to carnal warfare. A synod was to be held.

CHAPTER VII.

V^ VICTIS.

Synods and convocations are the last recourse of
perplexed theologians. A high authority in matters
connected with Puritan history and theology, after
referring to them as " the bane and scourge of Chris-
tendom," adds that, while "called to promote har-
mony and uniformity, they have invariably resulted
in variance, discord and a widening of previous
breaches." ^ The synod of 1637 was the first thing of
the sort attempted in America; and, under the cir-
cumstances, and in the absence of all the usual ma-
chinery for carrying on discussion, it was perhaps
as good a method of bringing opposing parties to-
gether as could have been devised. When brought
together, even if no agreement could be reached, they
might at least find out each where the other stood ;
and, if the chances were that in its results a synod
would embitter rather than allay strife, this risk had
to be taken. The meeting was fixed for the ^ of
se"pTember? ^.ud a busy thrcc weeks, crowded with meet-
ings and lectures. Days of Humiliation and Days of
Thanksgiving, preceded. Some of the elders, evi-
dently much troubled at the gravity of the situation,
busied themselves to bring • about an understanding
between Wilson and Wheelwright and Cotton. So
far as Cotton was concerned they were not unsuc-
1 Ellis, The Puritan Age, 219 ; Savage, Wintkrqp, i. *240, n.

1637. OPINIONS "PRIVATELY CARRIED:' 469

cessful, for, now that Vaue was gone, the eloquent
teacher of the Boston church began to find his posi-
tion a trying one. He had, indeed, seriously thought
of turning his back on the dust and turmoil of Bos-
ton, — political as well as theological, — and seeking
refuge and quiet elsewhere ; but the idea did not
commend itself to him. He was no longer young,
and, perhaps, his nerves gave way before the pros-
pect of again facing the wilderness, a banished man ;
perhaps also he was over-persuaded by the members
of his church. Accordingly a sensation was excited
in the Boston meeting-house when, on the Sunday
following Wilson's return, Cotton announced to the
congregation that the minister had explained certain
words, used by him in his discourse before the Court
in the previous October, as applying not to any pul-
pit doctrines uttered by the teacher himself or by
his brother Wheelwright, but to some opinions " pri-
vately carried." As it was quite well known that Mr.
Wilson had long before made this very equivocal con-
cession, the sudden change in his own mind, indicated
by Cotton's announcement, excited no little comment.
He was evidently opening a way for retreat.

The following Thursday Mr. Davenport delivered
the lecture at Boston. He was a famous controver-
sialist, and had in Holland borne earnest witness
against what he termed " promiscuous baptism," hold-
ing rigidly to the tenet that children of communicants
only should be admitted to that holy institution.
Having only recently come to New England, Mr.
Davenport had no settlement within the patent ; but,
nevertheless, out of deference to his great fame, he had
been urged to attend the Synod, and he now lectured
on the nature and danger of divisions, while at the

470 V^ VICTIS. ' Sep.

same time he " clearly discovered his judgment against
the new opinions." It was another indication of the
set of the tide. The 24th of the month was kept as a
Fast-day in all the churches ; and on the 26th, amidst
much rejoicing, Stoughton and his soldiers returned
from their Pequot campaign and were feasted. Then
came g^S^,, and the Synod.

It met at Cambridge, and was composed of some
twenty-five ministers, being " all the teaching elders
through the country," with whom were Davenport and
others freshly arrived. When to these were added
the lay members and the body of the magistrates, it
will be seen that the attendance was large. The de-
liberations were in public. Among those present
were some few of Shepard's conciliatory temper, but
the majority and the leaders were men of the type of
Ward, Weld and Peters. They were there to stamp
a heresy out ; and they proposed to do it just as
effectually in New England as Archbishop Laud, at
that same time, was proposing to do it in the mother
country. From the first, a well-developed spirit of
theological hate showed itself in easy control of every-
thing. Mather says that " at the beginning of the
assembly, after much discourse against the unscriptu-
ral enthusiasms and revelations then by some con-
tended for, Mr. Wilson proposed : ' You that are
against these things, and that are for the spirit and
the word together, hold up your hands ! ' And the
multitude of hands then held up was a comfortable
and encouraging introduction unto the other proceed-
ings." The other proceedings were in perfect keep-
ing with the introduction. There was in them no
trace of wisdom, of conciliation or of charity, — no-
thing but priestly intolerance, stimulated by blind
zeal.

1637. " UNWHOLESOME EXPRESSIONS." 471

No sooner was it organized and ready for business
than the Synod proceeded to throw out a sort of gen-
eral drag-net designed to sweep up all conceivable
heretical opinions. The work was thoroughly done,
and soon there were spread upon the record no less
than eighty-two " opinions, some blasphemous, others
erroneous, and all unsafe," besides nine " unwhole-
some expressions." ^ As all the twenty-five ministers
— with one exception, or possibly two — were of the
same way of thinking, the proceedings were reason-
ably harmonious. Certain of the lay members from
among the Boston delegates were indeed outspoken in
their expressions of ' disgust that such a huge body of
heresies should be paraded without any pretence of
their being entertained by any one ; but Wheelwright
seems discreetly to have held his peace, taking the
ground that, as they were not imputed to him, they
were none of his concern. Consequently, when the
indignant Bostonians got up and left the assembly,
he remained behind, nor jarred upon the spirit of
unbroken harmony which for a time followed their
departure. After every conceivable abstract opinion
and expression had been raked up, the entire pile was
most appropriately disposed of by the Kev. Mr. Wil-
son with one sweep of the theological dung-fork. In
reply to the gasping inquiry of one of his brethren as
to what should be done with such a dispensation of

1 As the term "unwholesome expressions" hardly conveys a clear
idea to modern readers, a statement of one of those now spread upon
the record, and of its synodical confutation, may not be out of place : —

"S. Peter more leaned to a Covenant of Works than Paul, Pauls
doctrine does more for free grace than Peters.

" Axsw. To oppose these persons and the doctrine of these two
Apostles of Christ, who were guided by one and the same Spirit in
preaching- and penning thereof, in such a point as the Covenant of
workes and grace, is little lesse than blasphemy."

472 VjE VICTIS. Sep.

heterodoxies, the pastor of the Boston church ex-
claimed, no less vigorously than conclusively : — " Let
them go to the devil of hell, from whence they came ! "
Having in this way very comfortably disposed of
preliminaries, the Synod settled itself down to real
business. The work in hand was to devise some form
of words which Cotton and Wheelwright on the one
side, and the body of their brethren on the other,
would assent to as an expression of common belief.
There were five points nominally in question, which
were subsequently reduced to three. To appreciate
the whole absurdity of the jargon, in which meta-
physics lent confusion to theology, these must be
stated in full : —

" 1. That the new creature is not the person of a believer,
but a body of saving graces in such a one ; and that Christ,
as a head, doth enliven or quicken, preserve or act the
same, but Christ himself is no part of this new creature.

" 2. That though, in effectual calling (in which the an-
swer of the soul is by active faith, wrought at the same in-
stant by the Spirit,) justification and sanctification be all
together in them ; yet God doth not justify a man, before
he be effectually called, and so a believer.

"3. That Christ and his benefits may be offered and
exhibited to a man under a Covenant of Works, but not in
or by a Covenant of Works."

It is not easy to realize now that strong, matter-of-
fact, reasoning men could ever have been educated to
the point of inflicting — and, what is far more curious,
of enduring — persecution, banishment and torture in
the propagation or in the defence of such incompre-
hensible formulas. They furnish in themselves at
once the strongest evidence and the most striking
illustration of the singular condition of religious and

1637. " THE HOST OF HELL." 473

theological craze in which early New England existed.
As the modern investigator puzzles over these articles
of a once living faith, in vain trying to find out in
what lay their importance, — even conceding their
truth, — the Synod, and the outcome of its wrestlings,
calls to mind nothing so much as that passage from
the poem of the greatest of its co-religionists, wherein,
with bitter mockery, one portion of " the host of Hell "
is represented as sitting on a hill apart, where they

" reason'd high
Of Providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fix'd fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute;
And found no end, in wand'ring mazes lost."

The difference between Milton's devils and the early
New England divines seems to have been that, while
the one and the other lost themselves in the same
mazes of the unknowable, the former evinced much
the more Christian spirit of the two in their methods
of conducting the debate. Both were suffering ban-
ishment from their former homes ; but, while the
Synod of the fallen angels in their place of exile
amicably discussed points of abstract difference, the
similar Synod of New England ministers betrayed,
throughout their proceedings, all " the exquisite rancor
of theological hate."

After much discussion, written as well as oral, of
the controverted points. Cotton, with a degree of
worldly wisdom which did credit to his head, declared
at last that he saw light. Whether he really did so
or not is of little consequence. It is clear that no one
in the assembly had any distinct conception of what
they were talking about ; and it was certainly nothing
against any one that he professed to see the nebidous
idealities, at which they were all gazing through the

474 V.E VICTIS. Sep.

dense mist of words, in the same way that the majority
saw them. Wheelwright was of a less accommodating
spirit. To him the cloud looked neither like a whale
nor like a weasel. He would not say that it did. So
far as he was concerned, therefore, the Synod resulted
exactly as his enemies desired. He was now com-
pletely isolated ; he had lost Cotton as well as Vane.

The sessions continued through twenty-four days.
At first arguments were delivered in writing and read
in the assembly, and answers followed in the same
way ; but as this method of procedure occupied too
much time, recourse was had to oral disputation.
Then the questions at issue were speedily determined.
Finally, all other business being disposed of, Mrs.
Hutchinson's female symposiums were voted a nui-
sance, or, in the language of the day, " agreed to be
disorderly and without rule ; " and then, on the ^d ^^
SoS^i the convocation broke up amid general con-
gratulations " that matters had been carried on so
peaceably, and concluded so comfortably in all love."
The result of it all was that " Mr. Cotton and they
agreed, but Mr. Wheelwright did not."

From the day of adjournment onward, therefore,
Wheelwright was to confront his opponents alone ;
and in the number of his opponents were included the
whole body of the clergy and the whole body of the
magistracy. The Synod had done its work in two
ways ; not only was Cotton saved, but, the efforts at
conciliation having failed, it only remained to leave
the refractory to be dealt with by the arm of the civil
authority. The General Court, elected at the time of
the stormy Cambridge gathering in May, had shown
little disposition to grapple in earnest with the An-
tinomian issue. As often as that issue presented itself

1637. LOWERFNG CLOUDS. 475

it was postponed ; and the course of the deputies
would seem to warrant an inference that, elected as
they had been while the parties were not unevenly
divided, the Court contained a representation of
each side sufficient to hold the other side in check.
Whether this was so or not, on the -^ of Sir^ — just-
four days after the adjournment of the Synod — the
Court, which had been elected for the entire year, was
suddenly dissolved, and a new election ordered.

The cause of so unusual a proceeding can only be
inferred ; yet it would seem but reasonable to suppose
that the legislature, as then made up, was not con-
sidered equal to doing the work in hand ; and, cer-
tainly, the new Court was a very different body from
the old one. Of the twenty-seven delegates who met
at Cambridge on the day the May Court was dis-
solved, twelve only were reelected ; and of the thirty-
three members of the Court chosen in October, no
less than twenty-one were new men. Among those
left out was Wheelwright's stanch friend and parish-
ioner, Atherton Hough ; but Coddington, Aspinwall
and Coggeshall were returned by Boston, and consti-
tuted at least a nucleus of opposition.

The new Court met on the ^ of November. Those
composing it found both Wheelwright and Mrs.
Hutchinson still obdurate. The former, just as if no
Synod had ascertained the whole everlasting truth
and expressed it in plain language, was preaching the
Covenant of Grace to all who would hear him at the
Mount ; while the latter continued her weekly female
gatherings, and put no bridle on her tongue. With
the clouds lowering heavily over them, they main-
tained a bold front. They did more than this, — they
even went out to meet the danger, openly rejecting all

476 V^ VICTIS. Nov.

thought of compromise, with a loud assertion that the
difference between them and their opponents was as
that between heaven and hell, — a gulf too deep to
fill, too wide to bridge. In later days, under simi-
lar circumstances, persons feeling in this way would
quietly have been permitted to set up a conventicle of
their own, at which they could have mouthed their
rubbish until they wearied. A schism in the church
would have restored quiet to the community. But
this was not the rule of primitive New England. That
rule was one of rigid conformity, — the rule of the
" lord-brethren " in place of the rule of the " lord-
bishops." So, as Winthrop expressed it, those in the
majority, " finding, upon consultation, that two so
opposite parties could not continue in the same body
without apparent hazard of ruin to the whole, agreed
to send away some of the principal." A somewhat
similar conclusion had previously been reached in re-
gard to Spain and the Netherlands by Philip II., and
was subsequently reached in regard to France by

Louis xiy.

Having decided upon extreme measures the leaders
of the dominant party now proceeded in a business-
like manner. Those composing the minority were to
be thoroughly disciplined. There was no difficulty
in dealing with Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson.
They were doomed. But the men who were in the
ascendant — the Welds, the Peters, the Bulkleys and
the Symmes of the colonial pulpit — had no idea of
contenting themselves with that small measure of
atonement. The heresy was to be extirpated, root
and branch. "Thorough" was then the word at
Whitehall ; and " Thorough " was the idea, if not the
word, in Massachusetts. But a species of sweep-net

1637. CONSTRUCTIVE SEDITION. 477

was now needed which should bring the followers no
less than the leaders under the ban of the law. The
successful prosecution of Wheelwright afforded the
necessary hint. Wheelwright had been brought within
the clutches of the civil authorities by a species of ex
2)ost facto legal chicanery. Even his most bitter
opponents did not pretend to allege that he had
preached his Fast -day sermon with the intent to
bring about any disturbance of the peace. They only
claimed that his utterances tended to make such a
result probable, and that his own observation ought
to have convinced him of the fact.^ Therefore, they
argued, although it was true that no breach of the
peace had actually taken place, and although the
preacher had no intent to excite to a breach of the
peace, yet he was none the less guilty of constructive
sedition. Constructive sedition was now made to do
the same work in New England which constructive
treason, both before and after, was made to do else-
where. It was a most excellent device ; and a pre-
text, or "fair opportunity," as Winthrop expresses it,
for its application was found in that remonstrance of
the 9th of tlie previous March, which, signed by sixty
of the leading inhabitants of Boston, had now quietly
reposed among the records of the colony through
four sessions of two separate legislatures. The paper
speaks for itself. ^ The single passage in it to which
even a theologian's acuteness could give a color of

1 This point is of importance, and Winthrop's language is explicit
in regard to it : — " If his intent were not to stirre up to open force and
armes (neither do we suspect him of any such purpose, otherwise than
by consequent) yet his reading' and experience might have told him,
how dangerous it is to heat people's aJEFections against their opposites."
Short Story, 5;>.

2 See Appendix ta Savag-e's Winthrop (ed. 1853), i. 481-3.

478 V^ VICTIS. Nov.

sedition was couched in these words : — " Thirdly, if
you look at the effects of his Doctrine upon the hear-
ers, it hath not stirred up sedition in us, not so much
as by accident ; we have not drawn the sword, as
sometime Peter did, rashly, neither have we rescued
our innocent brother, as sometime the Israelites did
Jonathan, and yet they did not seditiously." The last
six words are those which Governor Winthrop, and
the subsequent apologists of what now took place,^
dwell upon as in themselves sufficient to make the
drawing up or signing of this paper an offence for
which banishment was a mild and hardly adequate
penalty ; and this, too, in face of the fact that the re-
monstrance immediately went on as follows : — *' The
covenant of free grace held forth by our brother hath
taught us rather to become humble suppliants to your
Worships, and if we should not prevail, we would
rather with patience give our cheeks to the smiters."

Even had this paper been of a seditious character,
it was presented to a former Court, and not to the
one which now passed judgment upon it. The Court
elected in November, 1637, had no more to do with
the Boston remonstrance of the preceding March
than with any other paper, the character of which, as
it slept among the dusty archives, some deputy might
chance not to fancy. Those to whom it was addressed
had considered it a respectful and proper document ;
and it was reserved for a body to which it was not
addressed to hunt it up on the files, in order to de-
clare it a contempt and make it the basis of a pro-
scription.

The Court met on the ^^ of November. No sooneT
was it organized than it became apparent it was to be

1 Palfrey, i. 492.

1637. A LEGISLATIVE PURGE. 479

purged ; In it the elements of opposition were few, but
those few were to be weeded out. It has already been
mentioned that Coddington, Aspinwall and Cogges^
hall were the deputies from Boston. They were all
three adherents of the Covenant of Grace, friends of
Mrs. Hutchinson and supporters of Wheelwright ;
while Coddington's name stood first among those
affixed to the remonstrance now pronounced seditious.
Coddington was a magistrate, an old and honored
official, — a man classed, in popular estimation, with
Winthrop and Endicott as one of the founders of the
colony. Him they did not like to attack ; and there
is also reason to believe that Winthrop exerted him-
self to shield his old associate. No such safeguards
surrounded Aspinwrll and Coggeshall. The record of
the Court shows that it was at once demanded of the
former whether he still adhered to the sentiments ex-
pressed in the remonstrance. He rej^lied that he did.
A vote expelling him from his seat was immediately
passed. Indignant at the expulsion of his colleague,
Coggeshall then rose in his place and declared his
approbation of the remonstrance, though his name
was not among those signed to it ; and he added that,
if the course taken with Asj)inwall was to be followed
towards others, they " had best make one work of all."
He was taken at his word, and forthwith expelled.
Other deputies had then to be elected. The freemen
of Boston would have been indeed devoid of any feel-
ings of manliness, much more of pride, had such treat-
ment of their representatives not excited indignation
among them, and at first they proposed to return to
the Court the same deputies to whom seats had just
been refused. This action must at once have brought
on the crisis, and Cotton prevented it ; for he was

480 V^ VICTIS. Nov.

still looked upon as friendly to the defeated party, —
indeed, in heart, he was so, — and among the church-
members, who alone were freeholders, their teacher's
influence was great. Instead of Coggeshall and As-
pinwall, accordingly, William Colburn and John
Oliver were chosen, and the next day appeared to
take their seats. But an examination of the remon-
strance revealed Oliver's name upon it ; and, when
questioned, he justified the paper. Permission to
take his seat was consequently refused him, and the
election of another in his place ordered. The free-
men of Boston took no notice of the new warrant.

The Court being now purged of all his friends,
Coddington only excepted. Wheelwright's case was
taken up. He appeared in answer to the summons ;
but, when asked if he was yet prepared to confess
his errors, he stubbornly refused so to do, protesting
his entire innocence of what was charged against
him. He could not be induced to admit that he had
been guilty either of sedition or of contempt, and he
asserted that the doctrine preached by him in his
Fast -day discourse was sound; while, as to any indi-
vidual application which had been made of it, he was
not accountable. Then followed a long wrangle, reach-
ing far into the night and continued the next day,
during which the natural obstinacy of Wheelwright's
temper must have been sorely tried. At his door was
laid the responsibility for all the internal dissensions
of the province. He was the fruitful source of those
village and parish ills ; and every ground of complaint
was gone over, from the lax response of Boston to
the call for men for the Pequot war to the slight
put by his church upon Wilson, and by the halber-
diers upon Winthrop. To such an indictment de-

1637. WHEELWRIGHT BANISHED. 481

fence was impossible ; and so, in due time, the Court
proceeded to its sentence. It was disfranchisement
and exile. As it was already what is the middle of
our November, the date of the exile's departure was
at first postponed until March, when the severity of
the winter would be over ; in the mean time, as a
preacher, he was to be silenced. From this sentence
Wheelwright took an appeal to the King, which the
Court at once refused to allow. Twenty-four hours
later, after a night of reflection, he withdrew his ap-
peal, offering to accept a sentence of simple banish-
ment, but refusing absolutely to be silenced. He was
then at last permitted to return to his own house at
Mt. Wollaston, and his sentence stands recorded as
follows : —

"Mr. John Wheelwright, being formally convicted of
contempt and sedition, and now justifying himself and his
former practice, being to the disturbance of the civil peace,
he is by the Court disfranchised and banished, having four-
teen days to settle his affairs ; and, if within that time he
depart not the patent, he promiseth to render himself to
Mr. Stoughton, at his house, to be kept till he be disposed
of ; and Mr. Hough undertook to satisfy any charge that
he, Mr. Stoughton, or the country should be at."

Unlike Mrs. Hutchinson and the body of those
who were to follow him into banishment, Wheel-
wright did not direct his steps towards Rhode Island.
On the contrary, after preaching a farewell sermon
to his little congregation, in which there was no word
of retraction, he turned his face to the northward,
and with all the courage and tenacity of purpose
which throughout had marked his action, in spite of
the inclement season and the impending winter, within
his allotted fourteen days he was on his way to the

482 V^ VICTIS. Nov.

Piscataqua. He went alone through the deepening
snow, which that winter lay from November to the
end of March '' a yard deep," according to Winthrop,
beyond the Merrimac, and "the more north the
deeper," while the mercury ranged so low that the
exile himself, with a grim effort at humor, drearily
remarked that he believed had he been filled with
" the very extracted spirits of sedition and contempt,
they would have been frozen up and indisposed for
action." ^ Not until April did his wife, bringing with
her his mother-in-law and their children, undertake to
follow him to the spot where he and a few others had
founded what has since become the academic town of
Exeter. It is merely curious now to reflect on the
intense bitterness, and sense of wrong and of unend-
ing persecution which must have nerved the steps of
the former vicar of Bilsby, when, at forty-five years
of age, he turned his back on Mt. Wollaston, and
sternly sought refuge from his brethren in Christ
amid the snow and ice of bleak, unfertile New Hamp-
shire.

1 Mercurius Americanus, Bell, 228.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE TRIAL OF A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PROPHETESS.

Having disposed of Wheelwright's case the Gen-
eral Court, without stojiping to take breath, at once
proceeded to that of Mistress Hutchinson, — '' the
breeder and nourisher of all these distempers." In
the language of the time, she was "convented for
traducing the ministers and their ministry in this
country ; " and these words most happily set forth
her offence. It could not be charged against her that
she had signed the remonstrance, for her name was
not among those appended to it ; she had preached
no sedition ; being a woman, she could bear no hand
in any apprehended tumult. She had criticised the
clergy ; and for that she was now arraigned.

Though, as will presently appear, the proceedings
were in no way lacking in interest, there was about
them nothing either solemn or imposing. Indeed,
all the external surroundings, as well as the physi-
cal conditions, were so very matter-of-fact and harsh,
that any attempt at pomp or state would have been
quite out of keeping ; everything, without as well
as within, was dreary and repellent, — in a word,
New England wintry. The Court was still sitting
at Newetowne, as it was called ; for the name was
not changed to Cambridge until a year later, though
the college was at this very session ordered to be
fixed there. It was a crude, straggling settlement,

484 THE TRIAL. Nov.

made up of some sixty or seventy log-cabins, or
poor frame-houses, which only eighteen months be-
fore had been mainly abandoned by their occupants,
who, under the lead of their pastor, Thomas Hooker,
had then migrated in a body to the banks of the Con-
necticut. The Rev. Thomas Shepard, with those who
had just come over with him, had bought the empty
tenements and moved into them. An inscription cut
in the granite foundation wall of a modern bake-
house, on the busy Mt. Auburn thoroughfare, now
marks the spot where the church, or meeting-house
rather, stood on the upland, not far from the narrow
fringe of marshes which there skirted the devious
channel of the Charles. In front of it ran the main
village street, ending in a foot-bridge leading down
to low-water mark at the ferry, while a ladder was
secured to the steep further bank of the river for
"convenience of landing." Close to the meeting-
house, but nearer to the ferry, was the dwelling built
for himself by Governor Dudley in 1630, and in
which, at the breaking-up of the sh»rp winter of 1631,
he wrote his letter to Bridget, Countess of Lincoln,
" having got no table, or other room to write in than
by the fireside upon my knee." Laid out with some
regard for symmetry and orderly arrangement, Newe-
towne was looked upon as " one of the neatest and
best compacted towns in New England, having many
fair structures, with many handsome contrived
streets." The river being to the south, on the north-
ern side of the village there stretched away a com-
paratively broad and level plain, covering many
hundred acres, then used as a common pasture-
ground and fenced in by a paling of a mile and a
half in length. A year or two later, the college build-

1637. CAMBRIDGE IN 1637. 486

ing was erected on the southern limit of this plain ;
while a third of a mile or so to the north stood the
great oak under which had been held that May elec-
tion which resulted in the defeat of Vane, and in
Winthrop's return to office.^

Of the meeting-house itself no description has been
preserved. It seems to have been a rude frame build-
ing, built of rough-hewn boards, the crevices of which
were sealed with mud. Its roof, sloping down from
a long ridge-pole, on which was perched a beU, had,
it is supposed, at first been thatched, but was now
covered with slate or boards ; and the narrow dimen-
sions of the primitive edifice may be inferred from
the fact that when, a dozen years afterwards, it no
longer sufficed for a prospering community, the new
and more commodious one which succeeded it was
but forty feet square. Such as it was, the meeting-
house was the single building of a public sort in the
place, and within it the sessions of the Court were
now held, as those of the Synod had been held there
shortly before.

The season was one of unusual severity, and the
days among the shortest of the year. Though No-
vember, according to the calendar then in use, was not
yet half over, there had nearly a week before been a
considerable fall of snow, which still whitened the
ground, while the ice had begun to make, piling it-
self up along the river's bank.^ No pretence even
was made of warming the barrack-like edifice ; and,
dark at best in the November day, it could not be

^ Hig-^nson, 2o0th Ann. of Cambridge, 48 ; Mackenzie, First Church
in Cambridge, Lect. II. ; Paige, Cambridge, 18, 37 ; Young, Chron. of
Mass. 402.

2 Winthrop, i. *243-4, *264.

486 THE TRIAL. Nov.

lighted at all after dusk. Its furniture consisted
only of rude wooden benches, on which the deputies
and those in attendance sat, and a table and chairs for
the Governor and the magistrates. All told, the Court
consisted of some forty members, nine of whom were
magistrates ; but the little church was thronged, for
the outside attendance was large, almost every person
of note in the province being there. Indeed, nothing
in the history of Massachusetts, up to this time, had
ever excited so great an interest. The clergy, in
point of fact not only the prosecutors in the case
but also the witnesses against the accused, were neces-
sarily present in full ranks. Wilson and Cotton
both were there from Boston : the former bent on the
utter destruction of her who, sowing dissension be-
tween his people and himself, had, with feminine
ingenuity, strewed his path with thorns ; the latter
not yet terrified into a complete abandonment of those
who looked to him as their mentor. The fanatical
Peters had come from Salem ; and he and Thomas
Weld of Roxbury, having been the most active pro-
moters of the prosecution, were now to appear as chief
witnesses against the accused. With the pastor.
Weld, had come Eliot, the teacher at Roxbury, — now
only thirty-four, and not for nine years yet to begin
those labors among the Indians which were to earn
for his name the prefix of "the Apostle." He too
was unrelenting in his hostility to the new opinions.
There also were George Phillips of Watertown, " one
of the first saints of New England ; " ^ Zachariah

^ George Phillips was the common ancestor of that Phillips family
subsequently so prominent in the history of Boston. Cotton Mather,
with even more than his usual quaintness, says of him that "he la-
boured under many bodily infirmities : but was especially liable to
the cholick ; the extremity of one fit whereof, was the wind which

1637. THE COURT AND CULPRIT. 487

Symmes of CharlestowD, who himself knew what it
was to suffer for " conscientious nonconformity ; "
and finally Thomas Shepard of Cambridge, " a poore,
weake, pale-complectioned man" of thirty-four, but
yet " holy, heavenly, sweet-affecting and soul-ravish-
ing.'* And indeed Shepard alone of them all seems to
have borne in mind, in the proceedings which were to
follow, that charity, long-suffering and forgiveness en-
tered into the Master's precepts. Winthrop presided
over the deliberations of the Court, acting at once
as judge and j^rosecuting attorney. At his side, fore-
most among the magistrates, sat Dudley and Endi-
cott, — men whose rough English nature had been
narrowed and hardened by a Puritan education.

Such was the Court. The culi3rit before it for trial
was a woman of some thirty-six or seven years of age.
Slight of frame, and now in manifestly delicate health,
there was in her bearing nothing masculine or defiant ;
though, seemingly, she faced a tribunal — in which,
so far as now appears, she could have found but two
friendly faces — with calmness and self-possession.
She had no counsel, nor was the trial conducted ac-
cording to any established rules of procedure. It
was a mere hearing in open legislative session. Of
its details, one — himself an eminent New England
clergyman not versed in legal technicalities or familiar
with rules of evidence or the methods of courts — has
said that the treatment which the accused then under-
went " deserves the severest epithets of censure," and
that " the united civil wisdom and Christian piety of
the fathers of Massachusetts make but a sorry fig-
carried him afore it, into the haven of eternal rest, on July 1, in the
year 1044, much desired and lamented by his church at Watertown,"
Magnalia, B. lu. oh. iv. § 9

488 THE TRIAL. Nov.

ure." ^ Certainly, if what there took place had taken
place in England at the trial of some patriot or non-
conformer before the courts — ecclesiastical, civil or
criminal — of any of the Stuarts, the historians of
New England would not have been sparing in their
denunciations. But the record best speaks for itself.
From that record it will appear that the accused,
unprovided with counsel, was not only examined and
cross-examined by the magistrates, her judges, but
badgered, insulted and sneered at, and made to give
evidence against herself. The witnesses in her behalf
were browbeaten and silenced in careless disregard
both of decency and a manly sense of fair play. Her
few advocates among the members of the court were
rudely rebuked, and listened to with an impatience
which it was not attempted to conceal ; while, through-
out, the so-called trial was, in fact, no trial at all, but
a mockery of justice rather, — a bare-faced inquisito-
rial proceeding. And all this will appear from the
record.

The Court met, and presently the accused, in obedi-
ence to its summons, appeared before it. At first,
though it must have been manifest she was shortly to
become a mother, she was not even bidden to sit
down, but soon " her countenance discovered some
bodily infirmity," and a chair was provided for her.

^ Dr. George E. Ellis, in the biography of Anne Hutchinson,
(Sparks' American Biography. N. S. vi. 277.) Dr. Ellis' life of Mrs-
Hutchinson was written in 1845 ; in 1888, after an interval of over
forty years, he reviewed the whole subject of the Antinomian Contro-
versy in his work entitled The Puritan Age in Massachusetts (300-62).
He there says (336) : — " We have to fall back upon our profound im-
pressions of the deep sincerity and integrity of [Winthrop's] character
... to read without some faltering' or misgiving of approval, not to
say with regret and reproach, the method with which he conducted
the examination of this gifted and troublesome woman."

1637. THE ACCUSATION. 489

The offence of which she had been really guilty, —
the breeding of a faction in the Boston church against
the pastor, Wilson, and, when his brethren came to
his aid, not hesitating to criticise them also, — this
offence it was somewhat embarrassing to formulate in
fitting words. It could not well be bluntly charged.
AVinthrop therefore began with a general arraign-
ment, in which he more particularly accused the pris-
oner of having meetings at her house, " a thing not
tolerable nor comely in the sight of God nor fitting
for [her] sex ; " and, further, with justifying Mr.
Wheelwright's Fast-day sermon and the Boston peti-
tion. Mrs. Hutchinson now showed herself quite able
to hold her own in the casuistical fence of the time,
and this part of the case resulted disastrously for the
prosecution. Indeed, the logic made use of by Win-
throp was of a kind which exposed him badly. He
contended that the accused had transgressed the law
of God commanding her to honor her father and
mother. The magistrates were the fathers of the
commonwealth ; and therefore, in adhering to those
who signed the remonstrance, even though she did not
sign it herself, she dishonored the magistrates, and
was justly punishable. Coming from the mouth of
the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1637 this would be
pronounced sophistical rubbish ; it was equally sophis-
tical rubbish when uttered by the Governor of Mas-
sachusetts Bay for the same year. Mrs. Hutchinson
disposed of the allegation with dignity and point in
these words : — "I do acknowledge no such thing ;
neither do I think that I ever put any dishonor upon
you."

The next count in the indictment pressed upon her
related to the meetings of women held at her house.

490 THE TRIAL. Nor.

Here, too, the prosecution fared badly. Mrs. Hutchin-
son was asked by what warrant she held such meet-
ings ; she cited in reply the usage which she found
prevailing in Boston at her coming, and the Scriptural
rule in the second chapter of Titus, that the elder
women should instruct the younger. The following
altercation then ensued : —

" Governor Winthrop. You know that there is no rule
[in the Scriptures] wliich crosses another ; but this rule [in
Titus] crosses that in the Corinthians. You must therefore
take [the rule in Titus] in this sense, that the elder women
must instruct the younger about their business, and to love
their husbands, and not to make them to clash.

"Mrs. Hutchinson. I do not conceive but that it is
meant also for some public times.

*' Governor. Well, have you no more to say but this ?

" Mrs. H. I have said sufficient for my practice.

" Governor. Your course is not to be suffered ; for, be-
sides that we find such a course as this greatly prejudicial to
the State, ... we see not that any should have authority
to set up any other exercises besides what authority hath
already set up ; and so what hurt comes of this you will be
guilty of, and we for suffering you.

" Mrs. H. Sir, I do not believe that to be so.

"Governor. Well, we see how it is. We must there-
fore put it away from you ; or restrain you from maintain-
ing this course.

" Mrs. H. If you have a rule for it from God's Word,
you may.

" Governor. We are your judges, and not you ours.
And we must compel you to it.

" Mrs. H. If it please you by authority to put it down,
I will freely let you. For I am subject to your authority."

For a moment, these words as Winthrop uttered
them must have jarred with a strange and yet famil-

1637. SNEER AND REJOINDER. 491

iar sound on the ears of the listening clergy, hardly
one of whom had in England escaped being silenced
by the prelates ; and now they heard the same princi-
ples of rigid conformity laid down in their place of
refuge, — freedom of conscience was once for all there
denied. The preliminaries were now brought to a
close, and the trial proceeded to the real issue in-
volved. The charge was explicit. Mrs. Hutchinson,
it was alleged, had publicly said that Mr. Cotton
alone of the ministers preached a Covenant of Grace ;
the others, not having received the seal of the Spirit,
were consequently not able ministers of the New Tes-
tament, and preached a Covenant of Works. To this
count in the indictment against her she was at first
invited to plead guilty ; which she declined to do.
Governor Winthrop then permitted himself to indulge
in a sneer, which was met with a prompt and digni-
fied rejoinder. Both sneer and rejoinder stand thus
recorded : —

"Governor Wixthrop. It is well discerned to the
Court that Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and
when to hold her tongue. Upon the answering of a ques-
tion which we desire her to tell her thoughts of, she desires
to be pardoned.

" Mrs. HuTCHiNSOisr. It is one thing for me to come be-
fore a public magistracy, and there to speak what they
would have me to speak ; and another when a man comes
to me in a way of friendship, privately. There is a differ-
ence in that."

Possibly it was at this point in the trial that, stung
by Winthrop's slur, the anger of the accused flashed
up and found expression in hot words ; for Weld tells
us that once, " her reputation being a little touched,
. . . she vented her impatience with so fierce speech

492 THE TRIAL. Nov.

and countenance, as one would hardly have guessed
her to have been an Antitype of Daniel, but rather of
the lions, after they were let loose." However this
may be, the witnesses for the prosecution, Peters,
Weld, Eliot, Symmes and the others, who up to this
time had been watching the case in grim silence, were
now called upon, and, one after another, gave their
evidence. Though the question at issue was sufficiently
plain, the discussion then soon passed into the un-
intelligible. It has been seen that, at a certain point
in the growth of differences in the Boston church,
the ministers of the adjoining towns had been called
upon to interpose, and a conference had then taken
place between the two sides, — the visiting elders and
Mr. Wilson representing one, and Mrs. Hutchinson,
Cotton and Wheelwright the other.^ The evidence
now given related to what had then taken place. The
ministers all asserted that the conference was a formal
one of a public nature, and so understood at the time.
This Mrs. Hutchinson denied, — thus making the
point that she had been guilty of no open disparage-
ment of the clergy, but that, whatever she had said,
had been drawn from her in private discourse by
those now seeking to persecute her for it. As to the
Covenant of Works, while they asserted that she had
charged them with being under such a covenant, she
insisted that she had done nothing of the sort ; though
she admitted that she probably had said that they
*' preached a covenant of works, as did the apostles
before the Ascension. But to preach a covenant of
works, and to be under a covenant of works, are two
different things." She did not deny that she had
singled out Mr. Cotton from among them all as alone

1 Supra, 426-8.

1637. THE ROCK OF OFFENCE. 493

being sealed with the seal of the Spirit, and therefore
preaching a Covenant of Grace, which bit of jargon
was explained as meaning that one so sealed enjoyed
a full assurance of God's favor by the Holy Ghost.
Here at last, in this special assurance attributed to
Cotton, was the rock of offence from which flowed
those waters of bitterness, the cup of which Wilson
and Weld and Peters and the rest had been forced to
drain to the last drop. A woman's preference among
preachers was somehow to be transmuted into a crime
against the state.

It would be neither easy nor profitable to attempt
to follow the trial into the metaphysico-theological
stage to which it now passed. Cotton Mather says
that " the mother opinion of the [Antinomian heresy]
was, that a Christian should not fetch any evidence of
his good state before God, from the sight of any in-
herent qualification in him ; or from any conditional
promise made unto such a qualification." ^ This being
the mother opinion, and itself not translucent, all the
parties to the proceedings now began to obscure it by
talking about " witnesses of the spirit " and " the seal
of the spirit," and " a broad seal " and " a little seal,"
and the " assurance of God's favor " and " the graces
wanting to evidence it," and " the difference between
the state of the apostles before the Ascension, and
their state after it." The real difficulty lay in the
fact that the words and phrases to which they attached
an all-important significance did not admit of defini-
tion, and, consequently, were devoid of exact meaning.
They were simply engaged in hot wrangling over the
unknowable : but, while Court and clergy and accused
wallowed and floundered in the mire of their own

1 Magnalia^ B. iii. P. ii. ch. v. § 12.

494 THE TRIAL. Nov.

learning, belaboring each other with contradictory
texts and with shadowy distinctions, under it all there
lay the hard substratum of injured pride and per-
sonal hate ; and on that, as on the rock of ages, their
firm feet rested secure.

Six of the ministers testified in succession, Hugh
Peters first. Their evidence was tolerably concurrent
that Mrs. Hutchinson had at the Boston church con-
ference spoken freely, saying that they all taught a
Covenant of Works, — that they were not able minis-
ters of the New Testament, not being sealed, — and,
finally, that Mr. Cotton alone among them preached a
Covenant of Grace. This testimony, and the subse-
quent wrangle, occupied what remained of the first
day of the trial, before the growing dusk comi^elled
an adjournment. The next morning, as soon as Gov-
ernor Winthrop had opened the hearing, Mrs. Hutch-
inson stated that, since the night before, she had
looked over certain notes which had been taken at
the time of the conference, and that she did "find
things not to be as hath been alleged," and accord-
ingly she now demanded that, as the ministers were
testifying in their own cause, they should do so under
oath. This demand caused much excitement in the
Court, and was looked upon as a fresh insult heaped
upon the clergy. Winthrop held that, the case not
being one for a jury, the evidence need not be under
oath ; while other of the magistrates thought that, in
a cause exciting so much interest, sworn testimony
would better satisfy the country. The accused in-
sisted. "An oath, sir," she exclaimed to Stoughton,
" is an end of all strife ; and it is God's ordinance."
Then Endicott broke in sneeringly : — "A sign it is
what respect she has to [the ministers'] words ; " and

1637. THE MINISTERS SWORN. 495

presently again : — " You lifted up your eyes as if
you took God to witness you came to entrap none, —
and yet you will have them swear ! " Finally, Win-
throp, that all might be satisfied, expressed himself as
willing to administer the oath if the elders would take
it ; though, said he, '^ I see no necessity of an oath in
this thing, seeing it is true and the substance of the
matter confirmed by divers." The deputy-governor,
Dudley, then turned the discussion off by crying out :
— " Mark what a flourish Mrs. Hutchinson puts upon
the business that she had witnesses to disprove what
was said ; and here is no man in Court I " To which
bit of characteristic brutality the accused seems quietly
to have rejoined by saying : — " If you will not call
them in, that is nothing to me."

The ministers now professed themselves as ready
to be sworn. At this point Mr. Coggeshall, the dis-
missed delegate from Boston, apparently with a view
to preventing a conflict of evidence, ventured to sug-
gest to the Court that the ministers should confer
with Cotton before testifying. The suggestion was
not well received, and Mr. Coggeshall found himself
summarily suppressed ; indeed, three of the judges
did not hesitate to deliver themselves in respect to
him and the accused as follows : —

" Governor Wixthrop. Shall we not believe so many
godly elders, in a cause wherein we know the mind of the
party without their testimony ?

" Mr. Endicott (addressing Mr. Coggeshall). I will
tell you what I say. I think that this carriage of yours
tends to further casting dirt upon the face of the judges.

" Mr. Harlakexdex. Her carriage doth the same. For
she doth not object an essential thing ; but she goes upon
circumstances, — and yet would have them sworn ! "

496 THE TRIAL. Nov.

But before the elders were again called on to testify,
Mrs. Hutchinson was told to produce her own wit-
nesses. Of these Mr. Coggeshall was one. He rose
when his name was called, and his examination is re-
ported in full and as follows : —

" Govp:rxor Winthrop. Mr. Coggeshall was not pres-
ent [at the conference between Mrs. Hutchinson and the
elders].

" Mr. Coggeshall. Yes, but I was. Only I desired
to be silent till I should be called [to testify].

" Go\Ti:RXOR. Will you, Mr. Coggeshall, say that she
did not say [what has been testified to] ?

" Mr. Coggeshall. Yes. I dare say that she did not
say all that which they lay against her.

"Mr. Peters (interrupting). How dare you look into
[the face of] the Court to say such a word.

" Mr. Coggeshall. Mr. Peters takes upon him to for-
bid me. I shaU be silent."

The first witness for the defence having been thus
effectually disposed of, the second, Mr. Leverett, was
called. He testified that he was present at the dis-
cussion between the ministers and Mrs. Hutchinson ;
that Mr. Peters had then, "with much vehemency
and intreaty," urged the accused to specify the differ-
ence between his own teachings and those of Mr. Cot-
ton ; and, in reply, she had stated the difference to be
in the fact that, just as the Apostles themselves be-
fore the Ascension had not received the seal of the
Spirit, so Peters and his brethren, not having the
same assurance of God's favor as Mr. Cotton, could
not preach a Covenant of Grace so clearly as he.
When he had finished his statement a brief alterca-
tion took place between Weld and Mrs. Hutchinson,
at the close of which Governor Winthrop called on

1637. MISMANAGEMENT. 497

Mr. Cotton to give his recollection of what had taken
place.

Mrs. Hutchinson had been less fortunate in her
management of the latter than of the earlier portions
of her case. Since the question had turned on what
took place at the conference, she had found herself
pressed by evidence, and beyond her depth. As is
apt to be the case with voluble persons under such
circumstances, she had then had recourse to small
points, — making issues over the order in which
events occurred, or the exact words used, and press-
ing meaningless distinctions, — cavilling even, and
equivocating. By so doing she had injured her case,
giving Peters a chance to exclaim : — " We do not
desire to be so narrow to the Court and the gentle-
woman about times and seasons, whether first or
last ; " while Harlakenden had, as it has been seen,
broken out in disgust : — " She doth not object any
essential thing, but she goes upon circumstances."
The demand that the ministers should be sworn was
another mistake. It was an affront to the elders,
the most revered class in the community, and it both
angered them and shocked the audience. A blas-
phemy would hardly have angered or shocked them
more. Not only did it excite sympathy for the prose-
cutors and prejudice against the accused, but there
was nothing to be gained by it. The ministers had
not given false testimony; and she knew it. The
only result, therefore, of her demand of an oath was
that they gave their testimony twice instead of once,
and insomuch impressed it the more on the minds
and memories of all. Mrs. Hutchinson, consequently,
was fast doing the work of the prosecution, and con-
victing herself.

498 THE TRIAL. Nov.

But her cause now passed into far abler bands.
Cotton's sympathies were strongly with her, and he
seems to have been quite ready to show it. When
called upon to listen to the evidence of his brethren,
he had seated himself by Mrs. Hutchinson's side ;
and he now rose in answer to Winthrop's summons,
and proceeded to give his account of what had passed
at the conference. Silencing the accused and soothing
the Court, he soon showed very clearly that the qualities
which made him an eminent pulpit orator would also
have made him an excellent jury lawyer. With no
little ingenuity and skill he went on explaining things
away, and putting a new gloss upon them, until, when
he got through, the prosecution had very little left to
work on. In summing up, he said that at the close
of the conference it had not seemed to him " to be
so ill taken as [now] it is. And our brethren did
say, also, that they would not so easily believe reports
as they had done ; and, withal, mentioned that they
would speak no more of it. And afterwards some of
them did say they were less satisfied than before.
And I must say that I did not find her saying they
were under a Covenant of Works, nor that she said
they did preach a Covenant of Works."

A discussion then ensued between Cotton and the
other ministers, — calm in outward tone, but, on their
part at least, full of suppressed feeling. Peters took
the lead in it ; but even he was not equal to an at-
tempt at browbeating the renowned teacher of the
Boston church from the witness-stand, as he had
browbeaten Coggeshall from it a few minutes before.
Finally Dudley put this direct question : — " They
affirm that Mrs. Hutchinson did say they were not
able ministers of the New Testament." It touched

1637. ''OUT OF HER OWN MOUTHS 499

the vital point in the accusation. The whole audience
must have awaited the response in breathless silence.
It came in these words : — " I do not remember it."

The prosecution had broken down. It apparently
only remained to let the accused go free, or to con-
demn and punish her on general principles, in utter
disregard of law and evidence. Silence and discre-
tion alone were now needed in the conduct of the
defence. Then it was that, in the triumphant words
of her bitterest enemy, " her own mouth " delivered
Anne Hutchinson " into the power of the Court, as
guilty of that which all suspected her for, but were
not furnished with proof sufficient to proceed against
her." But modern paraphrase cannot here equal the
terse, quaint language of the original reports. Cot-
ton had just sat down, after giving his answer to
Dudley 's question. Some among the audience were
drawing a deep breath of relief, while others of the
magistrates and clergy were looking at one another
in surprise and dismay. The record then goes on as
follows : —

" Upon this she began to speak her mind, and to tell of
the manner of God's dealing with her, and how he revealed
himself to her, and made her know what she had to do.
The Governor perceiving whereabout she went, interrupted
her, and would have kept her to the matter in hand ; but,
seeing her very unwilling to be taken off, he permitted her
to proceed. Her speech was to this effect : —

" ' When I was in old England I was much troubled at
the constitution of the churches there, — so far troubled,
indeed, that I had liked to have turned Separatist. Where-
upon I set apart a day of solemn humiliation by myself,
that I might ponder of the thing and seek direction from
God. And on that day God discovered unto me the un-

500 THE TRIAL. Nov.

faithfulness of the churches, and the danger of them, and
that none of those Ministers could preach the Lord Jesus
aright ; for he brought to my mind this scripture : — " And
every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in
the flesh is not of God ; and this is that spirit of antichrist,
whereof ye have heard that it should come ; and even now
already it is in the world." I marvelled what this should
mean ; and in considering I found that the Papists did not
deny that Christ was come in the flesh, nor did we deny it.
Who then was antichrist ? Was it the Turk only ? Now I
had none to open scripture to me but the Lord. He must
be the prophet. And it pleased the Lord then to bring to
my mind another scripture : — " For where a testament is,
there must also of necessity be the death of the testator ; "
and he that denies the testament denies the death of the
testator. And in this the Lord did open unto me and give
me to see that every one that did not preach the new cove-
nant denies the death of the testator, and has the spirit of
antichrist. And upon this it was revealed unto me that the
ministers of England were these antichrists. But I knew
not how to bear this ; I did in my heart rise uj) against it.
Then I begged of the Lord this atheism might not be in me.
After I had begged for light a twelve-month together, the
Lord at last let me see how I did oppose Christ Jesus, and
he revealed to me that scripture in Isaiah : — " Hearken
unto me ye that are far from righteousness : I brmg near
my righteousness ; it shall not be far off, and my salva-
tion shall not tarry ; " and from thence he showed me the
atheism of my own heart, and how I did turn in upon a
Covenant of Works, and did oppose Christ Jesus. And
ever since I bless the Lord, — he hath let me see which was
the clear ministry and which the wi-ong, and to know what
voice I heard, — which was the voice of Moses, which of
John Baptist, and which of Christ. The voice of my be-
loved I have distinguished from the voice of strangers.
And thenceforth I was more choice whom I heard ; for,

1G37. <^ TAKE HEED!'' 501

after our teacher, Mr. Cotton, and my brother Wheelwright
were put down, there was none in England that I durst
hear. Then it pleased God to reveal himself to me in that
scripture of Isaiah : — " And though the Lord give you the
bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet shall not
thy teachers be removed into a corner any more, but thine
eyes shall see thy teachers." The Lord giving me this
promise, and Mr. Cotton being gone to New England, I
was much troubled. And it was revealed to me that I must
go thither also, and that there I should be persecuted and
suffer much trouble. I will give you another scripture : —
" Fear thou not, O Jacob my servant, saith the Lord : for I
am with thee ; for I will make a full end of all the nations
whither I have driven thee : but I will not make a full end
of thee ; " and then the Lord did reveal himself to me, sit-
ting upon a Throne of Justice, and all the world appearing
before him, and, though I must come to New England, yet
I must not fear nor be dismayed. And I could not be at
rest but I must come hither. The Lord brought another
scripture to me : — " For the Lord spake thus to me with
a strong hand, and instructed me that I should not walk in
the way of this people."

'• ' I will give you one more place which the Lord brought
to me by immediate revelations ; and that doth concern you
all. It is in the sixth chapter of Daniel. When the Presi-
dents and Princes could find nothing against Daniel, be-
cause he was faithfull, they sought matter against him con-
cerning the Law of his God, to cast him into the lions' den.
So it was revealed to me that they should plot against me ;
the Lord bade me not to fear, for he that delivered Daniel
and the three children, his hand was not shortened. And,
behold ! this scripture is fulfilled this day in my eyes.
Therefore take heed what ye go about to do unto me. You
have power over my body, but the Lord Jesus hath power
over my body and soul ; neither can you do me any harm,
for I am in the hands of the eternal Jehovah, my Saviour.

502 THE TRIAL. Nov.

I am at his appointment, for the bounds of my habitation
are cast in Heaven, and no further do I esteem of any mor-
tal man than creatures in his hand. I fear none but the
great Jehovah, which hath foretold me of these things, and
I do verily believe that he will deliver me out of your
hands. Therefore take heed how you proceed against me ;
for I know that for this you go about to do to me, God will
ruin you and your posterity, and this whole State.'

" Mr. Nowell. How do you know that it was God that
did reveal these things to you, and not Satan ?

" Mrs. Hutchixsox. How did Abraham know that it
was God that bid him offer his son, being a breach of the
sixth commandment ?

" Deputy-Governor Dudley. By an immediate voice.

" Mrs. Hutchinson. So to me by an immediate revela-
tion.

" Deputy-Governor. How ! an immediate revelation?

" Mrs. Hutchinson. By the voice of his own spirit to
my soul.

" Governor "Winthrop. Daniel was delivered by mira-
cle ; do you think to be delivered so too ?

" Mrs. Hutchinson. I do here speak it before the
Court. I look that the Lord should deliver me by his
providence." ^

At once, the current of the trial now took a new
direction. The dangerous topics of special revelation
and miraculous action had been opened up. The
feeling which existed with respect to these in the
Puritanic mind has already been referred to.^ That

1 The utterances of Mrs. Hutchinson as here given are taken from
both reports of the trial. That in the Short Story is at this stage
much the more detailed, and it is supplemented by that in Hutchin-
son's History. Thoug-h in this narrative the two reports have been
woven into one, nothing- has been interpolated, and the original phrases
and forms of expression have all been carefully preserved. Some of
the texts sug-g-est doubts as to the accuracy of the reports.

2 Supra, 387-9.

1637. MIRACLES AND REVELATIONS. 503

it was illogical did not matter. It was there. No one
for an instant doubted the immediate presence of the
Almighty, or his care of his Chosen People, or his
Special Providences which they so much loved to note.
In the minds of Winthrop or Dudley or Endicott, to
question that He was there at that trial in the Cam-
bridge meeting-house, guiding every detail of their
proceedings, would have fallen but little short of blas-
phemy. Had it chanced to thunder during those
November days, or had the Northern Lights flashed
somewhat brighter than was their wont. His voice
would have been heard therein, and His hand seen.
They fully believed that in the ordinary events of
daily life He shielded some, while on others He vis-
ited His wrath. But, when it came to revelations
and miracles, they drew the line distinctly and deej).
Special Providences ? yes ! Miracles ? — no ! Por-
tents?— yes! Revelations? — no! Mrs. Hutchinson
accordingly had now opened the vials of puritanic
wrath, and they were freely emptied upon her head.
Nor were they emptied on her head alone. Cotton
himself was no longer spared. At first he took no
part in the broken and heated discussion which fol-
lowed the prophetic and defiant outpouring of the
accused, but some allusion to him was soon made, and
then Endicott called on " her reverend teacher . . .
to speak freely whether he doth condescend to such
speeches or revelations as have been here spoken of."

Cotton in reply endeavored to discriminate between
utterances which were " fantastical and leading to
danger," and those which came " flying upon the
wings of the spirit." As to miracles, he said that he
was not sure that he understood Mrs. Hutchinson ;
but, he added : — "If she doth expect a deliverance

504 THE TRIAL. Nov.

in a way of Providence, then I cannot deny it." Here
Dudley interposed, exclaiming : — " No, sir, we did
not speak of that." Cotton then added : — "If it be
by way of miracle, then I would suspect it." Later
on he again recurred to the subject, now speaking
of miracles and " revelations without the Word " as
things he could not assent to and looked upon as de-
lusions ; adding kindly, " and I think so doth she too,
as I understand her." Then Dudley broke rudely in,
remarking : — " Sir, you weary me and do not satisfy
me." The current had now set strongly in one direc-
tion, and Cotton was not only powerless to stem it,
but was indeed in some danger, as Dudley's remark
showed, of himself being swept away by it. All pre-
tence of an orderly conduct of proceedings was aban-
doned, and magistrates, clergy and deputies vied with
each other in denunciation and invective, Winthrop
himself setting the bad example.

" Governor Winthrop. The case is altered and wlQ
not stand with us now, but I see a marvellous providence of
God [it will be remembered that the offence of the accused
was looking for a deliverance through a 'providence of
God'] to bring things to this pass that they are. We have
been hearkening about trial of this thing, and now the
mercy of God by a providence hath answered our desires
and made her to lay open herself and the ground of all
these disturbances to be by revelations, . . . and this hath
been the ground of all these tumults and troubles ; and I
would that those were all cut off from us that trouble us,
f jr this is the thing that hath been the root of all the mis-
chief. . . . Aye ! it is the most desperate enthusiasm in the
world, for nothing but a word comes to her mind, and then
an application is made which is nothing to the purpose, and
this is her revelations I . .

" Mr. Nowell. T think it is a devihsh delusion.

1637. '^ DESPERATE ENTHUSIASM." 505

" Governor TVixthrop. Of all the revelations that ever
I read of, I never read the like ground raised as is for this.
The Enthusiasts and Anabaptists had never the like. . . .

" Deputy-Governor Dudley. I never saw such revela-
tions as these among the Anabaptists ; therefore am sorry
that Mr. Cotton should stand to justify her.

'' Mr. Peters. I can say the same, and this runs to
enthusiasm, and I think that is very disputable which our
brother Cotton hath spoken. . . .

'• Go\TERNOR WiNTHROP. It overthrows all.

" Deputy-Governor Dudley. These disturbances that
have come among the Germans have been all grounded
upon revelations ; and so they that have vented them have
stirred up their hearers to take up arms against their prince
and to cut the throats of one another ; and these have been
the fruits of them. And whether the devil may inspire the
same into their hearts here I know not ; for I am fully per-
suaded that Mrs. Hutchinson is deluded by the devil, be-
cause the spirit of God speaks truth in all his servants.

" Governor Winthrop. I am persuaded that the reve-
lation she brings forth is delusion.

" All the Court but some two or three ministers here
cried out, — We all believe it ! We all believe it ! ! . . .

" Mr. Bartholomew. My wife hath said that Mr.
Wheelwright was not acquainted with this way until that
she imparted it unto him.

" Mr. Brown. ... I think she deserves no less a censure
than hath been already passed, but rather something more ;
for this is the foundation of all mischief ; and of all those
bastardly things which have been overthrown by that great
meeting [the Synod]. They have all come out from this
cursed fountain."

The Governor now forthwith proceeded to put the
question. As he was in the midst of doing it, Mr.
Coddington, who had hitherto preserved silence, arose
and asked to be heard. Referring then to the meet-

606 THE TRIAL. Nov.

ings at Mrs. Hutchinson's house, he asked whether,
supposing those meetings to have been designed for
the religious edification of her own family, no others
might have been present? "If," replied Winthrop,
" you have nothing else to say but that, it is pity, Mr.
Coddington, that you should interrupt us in proceed-
ing to censure." But Coddington on this occasion
showed true courage ; for, though in a hopeless minor-
ity, he went on — undeterred by Winthrop's rebuke,
and regardless of the impatience of his weary and
excited audience — to point out that absolutely no-
thing had been proved against Mrs. Hutchinson, ex-
cept that she had asserted the other ministers did not
teach a Covenant of Grace so clearly as Cotton, and
that they were in the state of the apostles before the
Ascension. " Why ! " he added, " I hope this may
not be offensive nor any wrong to them."

Then again Winthrop broke in, declaring that her
own speech, just made in Court, afforded ample
ground to proceed upon, even admitting that nothing
had been proved. Coddington then closed with these
forcible and eloquently plain words : —

" I beseech you do not speak so to force things along ;
for I do not for my own part see any equity in the Court in
all your proceedings. Here is no law of God that she hath
broken ; nor any law of the country that she hath broken.
Therefore she deserves no censure. Be it granted that
Mrs. Hutchinson did say the elders preach as the apostles
did, — why, they preached a Covenant of Grace. What
wrong then is that to the elders? It is without question
that the apostles did preach a Covenant of Grace before
the Ascension, though not with that power they did after
they received the manifestation of the spirit. Therefore,
I pray consider what you do, for here is no law of God or
man broken."

1037.

THE SENTENCE. 507

The Court had now been many hours in unbroken
session. The members of it were so exhausted and
hungry that Dudley impatiently exclaimed : — " We
shall all be sick with fasting ! " Nevertheless the
intervention of Coddington, and the scruples of one
or two of the deputies, led to the swearing of two of
the witnesses for the prosecution, and the colleagues,
Weld and Eliot, were called upon by the Governor to
take the oath. When they rose and held up their
hands, Peters rose and held up his hand also. They
testified again that at the meeting in Boston the ac-
cused had said there was a broad difference between
Cotton and themselves, — that he preached a Cove-
nant of Grace, and they of Works, and that they were
not sealed ; and, added Eliot, " I do further remem-
ber this also, that she said we were not able ministers
of the gospel, because we were but like the apostles
before the Ascension." "This," said Coddington,
" was I hope no disparagement to you. Methinks
the comparison is very good." And Winthrop then
interjected : — " Well, we see in the Court that she
doth continually say and unsay things."

The hesitating deputies now pronounced themselves
fully satisfied, and Winthrop put the question. The
record closes as follows : —

"Governor Winthrop. The Court hath already de-
clared themselves satisfied concerning the things you hear,
and concerning the troublesomeness of her spirit, and the
danger of her course amongst us, which is not to be suf-
fered. Therefore if it be the mind of the Court that Mrs.
Hutchinson, for these things that appear before us, is unfit
for our society, — and if it be the mind of the Court that
she shall be banished out of our liberties, and imprisoned
till she be sent away, let them hold up their hands.

508 THE TRIAL. Nov.

" All but tliree held up their hands.

" Those that are contrary minded hold up yours.

''Mr. Coddington and Mr. Colburn only.

" Mr. Jexxisox. I cannot hold up my hand one way or
the other, and I shall give my reason if the Court require it.

" Governor Winthrop. Mrs. Hutchinson, you hear the
sentence of the Court. It is that you are banished from
out our jurisdiction as being a woman not fit for our so-
ciety. And you are to be imprisoned till the Court send
you away.

*' ]Mrs. Hutchinson. I desire to know wherefore I am
banished.

" Governor Winthrop. Say no more. The Court
knows wherefore, and is satisfied."

In the Colony Records of Massachusetts the sen-
tence reads as follows : —

" Mrs. Hutchinson, (the wife of Mr. William Hutchin-
son,) being convented for traducing the ministers, and their
ministry in this country, shee declared voluntarily her reve-
lations for her ground, and that shee should bee delivred,
and the Court* ruined, with their posterity ; and thereupon
was banished, and the mean while was committed to Mr.
Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her."

CHAPTER IX.

THE EXCOMMUNICATION.

The case of Wheelwright had been disposed of by
the Court on what was then the 4th and is now the
14th of the month, while that of Mrs. Hutchinson
had occupied the 7th and 8th, now the 17th and 18th.
During the i^roceedings in the latter case Wheel-
wright was at his home at the Mount, and it is small
matter for surprise that when he heard of them he
made haste to quit the soil of Massachusetts. Less
able to face a winter in the wilderness, Mrs. Hutchin-
son was to wait until spring, not in Boston at her own
house and among friends and sympathizers, but at
Roxbury, under the watch and w^ard of Thomas Weld,
in the house of his brother Joseph. The remaining
events of the controversy can be quickly narrated.

Immediately after passing sentence on Mistress
Hutchinson, the Court, worn out with excitement,
long sessions, cold and fasting, seems to have in-
didged itself in a recess of several days. It met again
on the ^, and, refreshed by the brief cessation from
labor, took up its work vigorously at the point where
it had been dropped. The sergeants, -who in the pre-
vious May had laid down their halberds when Vane
failed of his reelection, and had refused to attend
Winthrop home, were " convented." The names of
both were '' on the seditious libel called a remon-
strance or petition." They were discharged from

510 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. Nov.

office, disfranchised, and fined respectively twenty and
forty pounds. One of them, Edward Hutchinson, —
he who was fined forty pounds, — turned himself con-
temptuously when his sentence was pronounced, tell-
ing the Court that if they took away his means they
must support his family. He was promptly impris-
oned ; but, after a night's reflection, humbled himself
and was released. William Balston, the other, was
apparently a man of the outspoken English type,
with the courag-e of his convictions. AVhen con-
fronted with his signature to the petition he at once
acknowledged it, and bluntly told the Court " that he
knew that if such a petition had been made in any
other place in the world, there would have been no
fault found with it." Subsequently the fines of both
were remitted on condition they departed the prov-
ince ; and they were among those who the next March
went to Khode Island.

One after another the signers of the Boston remon-
strance of the previous March were then summoned
to the bar of the Court. The choice offered them was
simple, — they could acknowledge themselves in fault
and withdraw their names from the offensive docu-
ment, or they could pass under the ban of the law.
A few, some ten in number, recanted ; some five or
six of the more obdurate were at once disfranchised.
Among these was John Underbill, then captain of the
train-band and a salaried officer of the colony. The
order now made by the Court in regard to him was
ter^ and did not admit of misconstruction. It ran
in these words, — '' Capt. Underbill, being convicted
for having his hand to the seditious writing, is dis-
franchised, and put from the captains place " ; but
ten months were yet to elapse before he was banished.

1637. THE PROSCRIPTION. 511

Throughout, UnderhilFs case was peculiar, and, as will
presently be seen, the solemn way in which Win-
throp recorded the man's religious buffoonery throws
a gleam of genuine humor over one page at least of
a dreary record.

Though not now banished, Underhill's name heads
the list of the " opinionists " of Boston, fifty-eight in
all, who were, at the same November session of the
Court which banished Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutch-
inson, ordered within ten days to bring their arms to
the house of Captain Robert Keayne, and there de-
liver them up to him. Besides the fifty-eight in
Boston, seventeen others, in five different towns, —
in all seventy-five persons, — the recognized leaders
of the minority, were disarmed, and, under a heavy
money penalty, forbidden to buy, to borrow or to have
in their possession either weapon or ammunition,
until the Court should take further action. The
ground for this measure, in which the agitation cul-
minated, was set forth in the order promulgating it.
It was a ^' just cause of suspition, that they, as others
in German}^ in former times, may, upon some revela-
tion, make some suddaine irruption upon those that
differ from them in judgment." The decree, needless
to say, excited deep indignation among those named
in it. It was in fact a mild proscription. Those
proscribed were powerless, and they proved them-
selves law-abiding. In the words of Winthrop, —
" When they saw no remed}^ they obeyed."

Plainly, also, there was " no remedy." Throughout
all the proceedings which had taken place, the Boston
church had been the stronghold of the secular faction
in the state ; and now even when generally disarmed

512 THE EXCOMMUNICATION.

marked for exile, there were those in it who were
earnest to have their brother Winthrop called to
account and dealt with in a church way for his course
as governor. Obviously, such an attempt would only
have made matters worse, and those of the elders, to
whom appeal had been made, showed no zeal in their
action, — they were not forward in the matter. Then
Winthrop, fully understanding the situation, wisely as
well as boldly took the initiative, making a formal
address to the congregation. In this he laid down
the correct rule clearly and forcibly, with numerous
scriptural references to chapter and verse in Luke and
Matthew, and fortifying himself with precedents drawn
from the action in similar circumstances of Uzzia and
Asa and Salam : — if a magistrate, he said, acting
in his private capacity, should take away the goods
of another, or despoil his servant, the church could
properly call him to account for so doing ; yet if he
was guilty of such conduct in his official character, he
was not accountable to the church, no matter how
unjust his action might be. In the present case, the
Governor went on to declare, whatever he had done
had been done by him with the advice and under the
direction of Cotton and other of the church's elders,
and he would now give but a single reason in his own
justification, — that single reason was that the breth-
ren singled out for exile were so divided from the rest
of the country in their judgment and practice that
their presence in the community was, in his opinion,
not consistent with the public peace. " So, by the
example of Lot in Abraham's family, and after Hagar
and Ishmael, he saw they must be sent away."

This action and discourse of Winthrop's was not
without importance, and it bore fruit ; for it was the

1637. ^'HAGAR AND ISHMAEL." 513

theocratic period in Massachusetts, and the church
was too much inch'ned to meddle in the affairs of state.
The clergy were now supreme. They had converted
the General Court into a mere machine for the civil
enforcement of their own inquisitorial decrees ; Mrs.
Hutchinson had been banished for *' traducing the
ministers," and it was not proposed to allow further
freedom of relio:ious thouo:ht in Massachusetts. It
was the clergy, not the churches, who constituted the
power behind the throne. The principle that the
magistrate was not amenable to the church for acts
done in his official capacity was sound, and could be
most appropriately asserted by one speaking with
authority. The enunciation of the further principle,
that the magistrate should be equally free from what
may be called a politico-theological coercion, whether
exercised by priests or ministers, was unfortunately
deferred to a long subsequent period.

Mrs. Hutchinson meanwhile, separated from her
family, was wearing away the long winter in semi-
imprisonment at Roxbury. At first she labored under
a good deal of mental depression, natural enough
under the circumstances ; for not only must the re-
action from the excitement of the trial have been
great, but she was soon fe) give birth to a child. Her
despondency did not last long ; and, indeed, she was
now thoroughly in her element. Though secluded
from the rest of the world for fear of the injury she
might do in the way of spreading pernicious heresies,
she was still the most noted woman in the province ;
and as such she was hterally beset by the clergy, and
by Mr. Thomas Weld in particular. They were far
from being done with her yet. After the manner
of their kind also, in every age and in all countries,

514 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. 1637-8.

the Massachusetts ministers, having secured an abso-
lute supremacy in the state, were now busy hunting
out " foul errors " about inherent righteousness, the
immortality of the soul, the resurrection, the sanctity
of the Sabbath, etc., etc., such heresies being very
rife ; for, as Winthrop sagely observed, it could not
be expected that " Satan would lose the opportunity
of making choice of so fit an instrument [as Mistress
Hutchinson], so long as any hope remained to attain
his mischievous end in darkenino- the savino^ truth of
the Lord Jesus, and disturbing the peace of his
churches." It was now that Cotton not only aban-
doned his old allies to their fate, but became one of
their leading persecutors. He probably knew his
brethren. At the trial at Cambridge he had seen it
wanted but little to cause Peters and Weld to throw
off all restraint, and open the cry on him as they had
upon Wheelwright. Indeed both Endicott and Dud-
ley had there addressed him in a way he was little
accustomed to, using language both insulting and
brow-beating ; while Winthrop, on one occasion at
least, seemed to feel the necessity of diverting atten-
tion from him.^ Having at the close of the Synod
ceased from all antagonism to his brethren. Cotton
had since sought to occupy a fieutral attitude as peace-
maker. He now realized that this was not enough.
He had professed he was persuaded ; he must furnish
proof of it by works also. He made up his mind to
do it. One feeble effort, as will be seen, he yet made
in behalf of Mrs. Hutchinson, and it was creditable to
him ; in other respects, from this time onward, the
position in the controversy held by the teacher of the
Boston church was simply pitiable, — the ignominious
1 Hutchinson, Massachusetts, i. 74.

1637-8. ''THEIR STALKING HORSE:' 515

page in an otherwise worthy life. He made haste to
walk in a Covenant of Works, — and the walk was a
very dirty one. None the less he trudged sturdily on
in it, now declaring that he had been abused and
made use of as a " stalking horse," and now bewailing
his sloth and credulity. And thus " did [he] spend
most of his time both publicly and privately," en-
gaged in the inquisitor's work of unearthing heretics
and heresies. A little later he even allowed himself
to be put forward as the mouthpiece of his order, to
pass judgment on his old associates and to pronounce
filial sympathy a crime.

Mrs. Hutchinson was soon found to be the one root
from whence had sprung the many heresies now un-
earthed ; when traced, they all ran back to her. Here-
upon the ministers " resorted to her many times,
labouring to convince her, but in vain ; yet they re-
sorted to her still, to the end they might either re-
claim her from her errors, or that they might bear
witness against them if occasion were." For now a
new ordeal awaited her. She was to undergo the dis-
cipline of the church in which she was a sister.

In carefiil preparation for this, a species of eccle-
siastical indictment was drawn up by the brethren, set-
ting forth the utterances of the prisoner, as taken down
from her own lips. Containing some thirty several
counts, it was altogether a formidable document.^ A

1 A few of these counts will suffice to give a general idea of the
•whole : —

" 8. The Image of God wherein Adam was made [Mrs. Hutchinson]
could see no Scripture to warrant that it consisteth in holinesse, but
conceived it to be in that he was made like to Christ's manhood."

" 12. There is no evidence to be had of our good estate, either from
absolute or conditional promises."

" 15. There is first engraffing into Christ before union, from which
a man might fall away."

516 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

copy of it was then sent to tlie church at Boston, and
that church in due course apphed to the magistrates
to allow Airs. Hutchinson to appear and answer to the
accusation. Leave was of course granted, and at
length, in what would now be the latter part of March,
Josej^h Weld's prisoner returned once more to her
own house. But her husband was not there to meet
her. He and her brother, and indeed all those whom
she could look to for countenance and support, were
away seeking out a new home, against their impending
exile ; nor did her opponents fail to attribute their
absence to " the good providence of God," who thus
removed opposition.

The proceedings were appointed for the |fj of March.
They excited the deej^est interest throughout the col-
ony, and as the day drew near, Boston was thronged
with visitors. Not only all the members of the Bos-
ton church, but many others were there assembled ;
for the whole little community was agitated to its
depths. The utter sameness of that provincial life
— in which no new excitements followed one upon
another, dividing attention and driving each other into
forgetf ulness — was for once broken. The church was
the common family, and from that common family the
elders were now to cast out the most prominent, —

"17. That Abraham was not in a saving estate till the 22 chap, of
Gen. when hee ofEered Isaac, and saveing the firmenesse of Gods
election, he might have perished, notwithstanding any work of grace
that was wrought in him till then."

" 21. That an hypocrite may have Adams righteousnesse and per-
ish, and by that righteousnes he is bound to the Law, but in union
with Christ, Christ comes into the man, and he retaines the seed and
dieth, and then all manner of grace in himself e, but all in Christ."

" 28. That so farre as a man is in union with Christ, he can doe no
duties perfectly, and without the communion of the unregenerate part
with the regenerate."

1637. THURSDAY LECTURE-DAY. 517

the best known of all the sisters. It is necessary to
think of the domestic circle to enable men or women
of to-day to bring home to themselves the intensity
of interest then aroused. An excommunication in
church or state, or even socially, is now a small mat-
ter comparatively. It causes scarcely a ripple in the
gTcat sea of life. The event of to-day, it is barely
remembered to-morrow. It was not so then. It was
as if with us a daughter, arraigned before brothers
and sisters, were solemnly admonished by the vener-
ated father and driven from the hearth at which her
childhood had been passed. In that family the event
would be the one subject of thought ; from the minds
and memories of those present no incident of the
scene would ever fade. So it was in the Boston
church. The members of that church felt and thousfht
as the members of a modern family would think and
feel of a similar episode in their home. It would be
the event not of a day, but of a life, — the family
tragedy.

When, therefore, " one Thirsday Lectuer day after
Sermon," the hour fixed for the proceedings to begin
was come, the Boston meeting-house was crowded
with a devout and expectant audience. The General
Court was sitting still at Cambridge, and the time
of the church meeting — ten o'clock in the morning —
interfered with its sessions ; leave nevertheless was
specially granted to the governor and treasurer of the
province, both members of the Boston church, to ab-
sent themselves. They were present with the rest
of the church when, two hours earlier than usual, the
services began ; but she who would have been the
observed of all was not .there. The seat reserved
for her was vacant. Sermon and prayer at length

618 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

ended, she came in, " pretending," as Winthrop ex-
pressed it, " bodily infirmity." When at last she had
taken her place, one of the elders arose and broke the
silence which prevailed. Calling the sister Anne
Hutchinson forth by name, he stated the purpose for
which she had been summoned, and read the indict-
ment prepared against her. A copy of it, to which
those who were to bear witness to the several counts
had subscribed their names, had some days before
been put in her hands.

The scene that ensued, though sufficiently interest-
ing, was, from the religious point of view, far from
edifying.^ At first the woman at bay most pertinently
asked by what precept of holy writ the elders of the
church had come to her in her place of confinement,
pretending that they sought light, when in reality they
came to entrap and betray her. Then, presently, Wil-
son, her pastor, — the man she disliked of all men,
and for whom even her dislike was probably exceeded
by her contempt, — Wilson either took some part in
the proceedings or was alluded to ; and at once her
anger flashed out in stinging words. She denounced
him for what he had uttered against her before the
Court at the time of her sentence. " ^ov what am I
banished?" — she demanded ; declaring the heretical
speeches, now attributed to her, the results of confine-
ment. Presently the discussion of the articles was
begun, and she was called upon to answer to the first ;
which was to the effect that " the souls of all men (in
regard of generation) are mortall like the beasts."
The debate then drifted into that region of barren

1 A comparatively full report of the church proceedings in Mrs.
Hutchinson's case was found in 1888 among the papers of President
Stiles in the Yale library, and is printed in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc.
Series 11. iv. 159-91.

1638. ''THIS stranger:' 519

theological abstractions in which those composing the
assembly believed themselves entirely at home. The
accused cited texts and endeavored to draw distinc-
tions ; but in reply the elders — as was natural, she
being one and they many — cited several texts, and
drew an infinite variety of distinctions to each one of
hers. " She could not give any answer to them, yet
she stood to her opinion, till at length a stranger," the
Rev. John Davenport, " being desired to speak to the
point, and he opening to her the difference between
the Soul and the Life, — the first being a spiritual
substance, and the other the union of that with the
body, — she then confessed she saw more light than
before, and so with some difiiculty was brought to
confess her error in that point. Wherein," as Win-
throp goes on to remark, not it would appear without
considerable insight as to Mrs. Hutchinson's foibles,
"it was to be observed that, though this stranger
spake to very good purpose, and so clearly convinced
her as she could not gainsay, yet it was evident she
was convinced before, but she could not give the
honour of it to her own pastor or teacher, nor to any
of the other elders, whom she had so much slighted."
It is not necessary to follow the discussion further.
Three more of the articles were propounded; and
still, in spite of the storm of texts pelted upon her.
Mistress Hutchinson persisted in her errors. She
even returned " forward speeches to some that spake
to her." By this time the day was grown old, and
the patience of the elders was exhausted. The single
woman, quick of tongue though weak of body, seemed
not only disposed to out-talk them all, but to out-
— endure them as well ; for it was not without reason
"^she had delayed coming into the assembly until ser-

520 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

mon and prayer were over. At length, as it grew
towards evening and the fourth of the twenty-nine
articles was not yet disposed of, the elders bethought
themselves to hasten matters by administering to their
erring and obstinate sister a formal admonition, the
real purport of which apparently was that she should
suffer herself to be convinced more readily. In the
course of the proceedings one of her sons had ven-
tured a natural inquiry as to the rule which should
guide him in expressing his assent or dissent; and
later on Thomas Savage, the husband of her daughter.
Faith, did himself honor by rising in his place and
saying, — " My mother not being accused of any hein-
ous act, but only for opinion, and that wherein she
desires information and light, rather than perempto-
rily to hold [to it], I cannot consent that the church
should proceed yet to admonish her for this." There-
upon Thomas Oliver, one of the ruling elders, after
declaring that it was grief to his " spirit to see these
two brethren to speak so much and to scruple the pro-
ceedings of the church," propounded the following as
a solution of the dilemma : —

" Seeing that all the proceedings of the churches of Jesus
Christ now should be according to the pattern of the primi-
tive churches ; and the primitive pattern was that all things
in the church should be done with one heart and one soul
and one consent, that any act and every act done by the
church may be as the act of one man ; — Therefore, whether
it be not meet to lay these two brethren under an admoni-
tion with their mother, that so the church may proceed on
without any further opposition."

This novel though drastic parliamentary expedient
for securing unanimity evidently commended itself
strongly to the judgment of the Rev. John Wilson,

1638. THE ADMONITION. 521

for he at once cried out from his place among the
elders, — "I think you speak very well ! It is very
meet ! " The motion was then put " and the whole
church by their silence consented." The admonition
was pronounced by Cotton, with whom also it was
left " to do as God should incline his heart " in the
matter of including Mrs. Hutchinson's " two sons or
no with herself." As, in the course of his subsequent
deliverance, the eloquent teacher took occasion to ad-
dress the " two sons," saying among other things that
" instead of loving and natural children, you have
proved vipers, to eat through the very bowells of your
mother, to her ruin, if God do not graciously pre-
vent," the inference would seem to be inevitable that
when the moment came John Cotton found his heart
inclined from above to include offspring as well as
mother in his admonitory remarks. Winthrop says,
and it may well be believed, that on this occasion
the teacher spoke with great solemnity and " much
zeal and detestation of her errors and pride of spirit."
He spake in this wise ; and

" First to her son, laying it sadly upon him, that he would
give such way to his natural affection, as for preserving her
honor he should make a breach upon the honor of Christ,
and upon his covenant with the church, and withal tear the
very bowells of his soul, by hardening her in sin. Then to
her, first, he remembered her of the good way she was in at
her first coming, in helping to discover to divers the false
bottom they stood upon in trusting to legal works without
Christ ; then he showed her how, by falling into these gross
and fundamental errors, she had lost the honor of her former
service, and done more wrong to Christ and his church than
formerly she had done good, and so laid her sin to her con-
science. He admonished her also of the height of spirit,

622 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

and charged her solemnly before the Lord, and his Angels,
and Churches there assembled to return from the error of
her way. Then he spake to the sisters of the church, and
advised them to take heed of her opinions, and to withhold
all countenance and respect from her, lest they should harden
her in sin." ^

"So she was dismissed, and appointed to appear again
that day seven-night."

It was eight o'clock of the March evening when the
hungry and wearied congregation at last broke up.
Through ten consecutive hours those composing it had
sat on the hard and crowded benches. Mrs. Hutch-
inson had been ordered to return at the close of the

1 It may not be uninteresting to quote from the report of these
proceedings and the admonitory remarks of Mr. Cotton so much as
relates to one point at issue, if only to illustrate the singular logical
intricacies into which the discussion wandered, as well as the charac-
ter of the treatment to which the accused sister was subjected : —

" Mrs. Hutchinson : — I desire you to speak to that place in I.
Corinthians xv. 37, 44. For I do question whether the same body
that dies shall rise again. . . .

" Mr. Buckle : — I desire to know of Mrs. Hutchinson, whether you
hold any other resurrection than that of . . . Union to Christ Jesus ?
— And whether you hold that foul, filthy and abominable opinion held
by Familists of the community of women.

" Mrs. Hutchinson : — I hold it not. . . .

" Mr. Davenport : — Avoid . . . Mr. Buckles question ; for it is a
right principle. For, if the resurrection be past, then marriage is
past : for it is a weighty reason : after the resurrection is past, mar-
riage is past. Then, if there be any union between man and woman,
it is not by marriage, but in a way of community.

" Mrs. Hutchinson : — If any such practice or conclusion be
drawn from it, then I must leave it, for I abhor that practice." . . .

Mr. Cotton in his admonition : — ..." If the resurrection be past,
then you cannot evade the argument that was pressed upon you by
our brother Buckle and others, that filthy sin of the community of
women ; and all promiscuous and filthy coming together of men and
women, without distinction or relation of marriage, will necessarily
follow ; and, though I have not heard, neither do I think, you have
been unfaithful to your husband in his marriage covenant, yet that
will follow upon it." . . .

1638. THE RECANTATION. 523

meeting to her place of confinement at Roxbury ; but
some intimation had been received from those supposed
to know, that her courage was giving way under the
tremendous pressure to which she had been subjected,
and that, if properly labored with now, she might be
made to yield. Accordingly, she was permitted to
remain at Cotton's house. He probably had man-
aged it, wishing to make one last effort to save, from
what he looked upon as perdition, the most gifted
of his parishioners. The Rev. John Davenport, that
" stranger " to whose authority Mrs. Hutchinson had
shown herself not indisposed to succumb in the con-
gregation, was also Cotton's guest; and, during the
intervening week, the two divines did not, it would
Seem, strive with her in vain. Indeed, they so far
prevailed that she acknowledged she had been wrong,
and even brought herself to the point of agreeing
publicly to recant. So, —

" When the day came, and she was called forth and the
articles read again to her, she delivered in her answers in
writing, which were also read ; and, being then willing to
speak to the congregation for their further satisfaction, she
did acknowledge that she had greatly erred, and that God
had now withdrawn his countenance from her, because she
had so much misprised his ordinances, both in slighting the
magistrates at the Court, and also the elders of the Church.
And she confessed that during her trial by the Court, she
looked only at such failings as she apprehended in the
magistrates' proceedings, without having regard to their
position of authority ; ^ and that the language she then used

1 " 2. For these scriptures that I used at the Court in censuring the
country, I confess I did it rashly and out of heat of spirit, and unad-
visedly, and have cause to be sorry for my unreverent carriag-e to
them ; and I am heartily sorry that any things I have said have
drawn any from hearing any of the elders of the Bay."

624 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

about her revelations was rash and without ground ; and she
asked the church to pray for her."

" Thus far," says Winthrop, " she went on well,
and the assembly conceived hope of her repentance."
Indeed, it is not easy to see what more could have
been asked of any one. A woman, — full of pride
of intellect, and of insatiable ambition, — she had
confessed herself in error, and, in the presence of her
adherents and the face of the world, humbled herself
in the dust before the enemies she despised. With all
her feminine instinct in that way, she had herself
never devised so bitter a humiliation even for John
Wilson. But this was not enough. She was not so to
elude the lord-brethren. It is apparent they meant
to rid themselves wholly of her ; nor was it any longer
difficult for them to do so. Having at last found out
her weak points they were more than a match for her,
for they knew exactly how to go to work to convict
her. They had but to provoke her to voluble speech,
and she was sure to deliver herself into their hands ;
nor, indeed, could it well have been otherwise, seeing
they were engaged discussing the unknowable, many
against one, and that one a loquacious woman.

She read her recantation from a paper, speaking
evidently with a subdued voice and bowed head. As
soon as she finished Thomas Leverett, the ruling
elder, rose, saying it was meet somebody should re-
state what she had said to the congregation, which
had been unable to hear her ; whereupon Cotton reit-
erated the heads of her "groce and fundamentall
Errors," and her humiliating admission that "the
Roote of all was the hight and Pride of her Spirit."
Then presently Wilson, her pastor, stood up before
the silent and spell-bound audience. His hour of

1638. A PASTOR'S TRIUMPH. 525

triumph and revenge had come ; and, apparently, he
proposed thoroughly to enjoy the first, and to make
complete the last. At the meeting of the previous
week Mrs. Hutchinson had made an issue with Shep-
ard and Eliot. The former of these two divines,
almost alone among his brethren, had in the Novem-
ber trial before the Court shown some degree of Chris-
tian spirit towards the accused, and afterwards he and
Eliot had labored long and earnestly with her at the
house of Joseph Weld in Roxbury. In the midst of
Cotton's admonition of the week before, Mrs. Hutch-
inson had broken in upon him with an assertion that
it was only since her imprisonment at Roxbury that
she held any of the erroneous opinions attributed to
her. No sooner had Cotton finished than Shepard
rose to declare his " astonishment " at " what Mrs.
Hutchinson did last speak, . . . that she should thus
impudently affirm so horrible an untruth and false-
hood in the midst of such a solemn ordinance of Jesus
Christ and before such an assembly." And now, a
week afterwards, the recantation being over, Wilson
called attention to the fact of its incompleteness in
that it left this question of veracity between the ac-
cused and the two ministers undisposed of. Speak-
ing with great restraint and humility Mrs. Hutchinson
replied that what she had said when she interrupted
Cotton had been spoken " rashly and unadvisedly,"
adding, — "I do not allow the slighting of ministers,
nor of the scriptures, nor anything that is set up by
God : if Mr. Shepard doth conceive that I had any
of these things in my mind then he is deceived."
This response sounds to a modern reader sufficiently
humble and subdued. It did not so souHd to the
Rev. Thomas Shepard when it was uttered in the

526 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

Boston meeting-house on what is now the 1st of April,
1638 ; on the contrary, that " sweet affecting and
soul-ravishing " divine made haste to declare himself
*' unsatisfied," saying, — " If this day, when Mrs.
Hutchinson should take shame and confusion to her-
self for her gToss and damnable errors, she shall cast
shame upon others, and say they are mistaken, and
to turn off many of those gross errors with so slight
an answer as * your mistake,' I fear it doth not stand
with true repentance."

The following coUoquy then took place : —

" Mr. Cotton : — Sister, was there not a time when once
you did hold that there were no distinct graces inherent in
us, but all was in Christ Jesus ?

" Mrs. Hutchinson : — I did mistake the word ' inher-
ent ; ' as Mr. Davenport can teU, who did cause me first to
see my mistake in the word ' mherent.'

" Mr. Eliot : — We are not satisfied with what she
saith, that she should say now that she did never deny in-
herence of Grace in us, as in a subject ; for she being by us
pressed so with it, she denied that there was no Graces in-
herent in Christ himself.

" Mr. Shepard : — She did not only deny the word ' in-
herent,' but denied the very thing itself; then I asked her
if she did believe the spirit of God was in believers.

" Mrs. Hutchinson : — I confess my expressions were
that way, but it was never my judgment."

The theological issue involved was unintelligible,
and the jargon in which the discussion was carried
on completed the confusion. The nominal point in
dispute was whether the sister on trial was not, or
had not at some time previous been, " of that judg-
ment that there is no inherent righteousness in the

1638. ''INHERENCE OF GRACE." 527

saints, but those gifts and graces which are ascribed
to them that are only in Christ as the subject." But,
while this was the apparent issue, the efforts of the
ministers were really directed towards extorting from
Mrs. Hutchinson a full and unconditioned confession
of error, — a recantation absolute and unequivocal.
Her submission was to be complete. The audience
composed of the members of the Boston church, —
her former admirers and still in their hearts her ad-
herents — were in mind. Before their wondering
eyes and to their listening ears, the woman towards
whom their hearts yet went out was to be broken
down, discredited and humiliated ; and she was to
confess herself so without one syllable of reservation.

That Mrs. Hutchinson now found herself beyond
her depth, is obvious. It is stating the case none too
strongly to say that all the disputants, — ministers,
magistrates, elders and female transcendentalist —
were hopelessly lost in a thick fog of indefinable ideas
and meaningless phrases ; but, while all groped their
way angrily, numbers and the clatter of tongues were
wholly on one side. Apparently, feeling herself hard
pressed by men hateful to her, Mrs. Hutchinson could
not bring herself to yield to them as she had yielded
in public to Davenport, and in private to Cotton. So
she adhered to her statement, — " My judgment is not
altered though my expression alters."

Then at once Wilson gave the signal and the on-
slaught began. In referring to the proceedings dur-
ing Mrs. Hutchinson's trial by the General Court at
Cambridge in November, 1637, and the treatment
the accused then received, a high authority on matters
of New England history has remarked that the re-
ports of what took place " contain evidence that her

528 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

judges did not escape the contagion of her ill-tem-
per." 1 This criticism of those composing the Court
in question certainly does not err on the side of harsh-
ness ; and not impossibly the same sense of pious de-
votion to the fathers which manifestly inspired it
miofht now see in the course of those controllinor the
action of the Boston church only another example of
the contagious character of the victim's perverse dis-
position : but to one endeavoring to look upon a scene
of ecclesiastical persecution which occurred in Boston
in 1638 with the same eyes with which he looks upon
other scenes of the same general character which oc-
curred at about that time in England, in France and
in Spain, a wholly different impression is conveyed.
In dealing with vexed questions of an historical charac-
ter it is best always to speak with studied moderation,
avoiding metaphor scarcely less than invective ; yet
it is difficult to read the report of the closing church
proceedings in the case of Anne Hutchinson without
the simile suggesting itself of some pack of savage
hounds surrounding and mercilessly hunting down a
frightened fox, driven from cover and crouching.

It was John Wilson's voice which now seemed to
raise the familiar view-hallo, and at once the kennel
oj)ened in full cry. Magistrates and ministers vied
with each other in passionate terms of hatred, oppro-
brium and contempt. Dudley, the Deputy Governor,
though neither a member of the Boston church nor an
elder, — simply a stranger present from curiosity, —
Dudley cried out, — " Her repentance is in a paper,
. . . but sure her repentance is not in her counte-
nance. None can see it there, I think." Then Pe-
ters, the minister of the Salem church, exclaimed, —
1 Palfrey, i. 486.

1638.

"THE GAME'S AFOOT/" 529

" I believe that she has vile thoughts of us, and
thinks us to be nothing but a company of Jews ; "
and again, — " You have stept out of your place.
You have rather been a husband than a wife ; and a
preacher than a hearer ; and a magistrate than a sub-
ject ; and so you have thought to carry all things in
church and commonwealth as you would." After
Peters, Shepard took up the refrain, saying to the
congregation, — " You have not only to deal with a
woman this day that holds divers erroneous opinions,
but with one that never had any true grace in her
heart, and that by her own tenet. Yea ! this day she
hath shown herself to be a notorious impostor." Wil-
son repeatedly broke in, — " One cause was ... to
set yourself in the room of God, above others, that
you might be extolled and admired and followed after,
that you might be a great prophetess ; . . . therefore
I believe your iniquity hath found you out ; ... it
grieves me that you should so evince your dangerous,
foul and damnable heresies." Then, after taking
breath, he presently began again, — "I cannot but
acknowledge the Lord is just in leaving our sister to
pride and lying. ... I look at her as a dangerous
instrument of the Devil raised up by Satan amongst
us. . . . Consider how we can, or whether we may
longer suffer her to go on still in seducing to seduce,
and in deceiving to deceive, and in lying to lie, and
in condemning authority and magistrates, still to con-
demn. Therefore, we should sin against God if we
should not put away from us so evil a woman, guilty
of such foul evils." Then Eliot, "the Apostle," —
" It is a wonderful wisdom of God ... to let her
fall into such lies as she hath done this day ; for she
hath carried on all her errors by lies." Finally Cot-

530 THE EXCOMMUNICATION. March,

ton, turning at last fairly against his former disciple,
announced that " God hath let her fall into a mani-
fest lie, yea ! to make a lie," and Shepard, eagerly
catching up the phrase, exclaimed, — " But now for
one not to drop a lie, but to make a lie, and to main-
tain a lie ! ... I would have this church consider,
whether it will be for the honor of God and the honor
of this church to bear with patience so gross an
offender."

And so at last the pitiless chase drew to a close.
Throughout all its latter stages, while it was exhaust-
ing itself by its own heat, the voice of the accused
had not been heard, — evidently she sat there, mute,
motionless, aghast. Once, after listening to a furi-
ous diatribe from Wilson, the hard-hunted creature
seems to have tried to take refuge under Cotton's
gown, exclaiming, — " Our teacher knows my judg-
ment, for I never kept my judgment from him ! "
— but already Cotton, recognizing the inevitable and
bowing to it, had abandoned her to her fate. Then
she ceased to struggle, and the yelling pack rushed in
ujjon her.

Long afterwards, in reply to the charge that he
had contrived to transfer the odious duty of excom-
municating his disciple from himself to Wilson,
John Cotton asserted ^ that he stood ready to be the
mouthpiece of the church in this matter, — no less
than he had already been in the matter of admonish-
ment, — had the task been put upon him ; and there
can be no doubt that, at the time, he gave his open
assent before the whole congregation to the course
which was pursued, and even silenced the scruples of
the few who yet clung to their prophetess, by calling

1 Way Cleared, 85.

1638. "AN IMPENITENT LIAR:' 531

to mind the precedents of " Ananias and Sapphira, and
the incestuous Corinthian." The offence now charged
against Mrs. Hutchinson was not heresy, but false-
hood persistently adhered to. An impenitent liar was
to be cast out. The matter was one touching morals,
not doctrine ; and accordingly, as Cotton claimed, lay
rather within the province of the pastor than the
teacher. It was for Mr. Wilson, therefore, to pro-
nounce the sentence of excommunication ; nor was
there any reason for delay. A few voices were,
indeed, heard timidly suggesting that the accused
might be once more admonished, and time for repent-
ance yet given her ; but she herself sat silent, asking
no respite. Then Wilson rose, and, in the hush of
the crowded assembly, solemnly put the question
whether all were of one mind that their sister should
be cast out. The silence was broken by no reply ;
and, after the custom of that church, this betokened
consent. Then the sentence of excommunication was
pronounced ; and Anne Hutchinson, no longer a sister,
listened to these words rolled out in triumph from
the mouth of John Wilson, the pastor, — " Therefore
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the name
of the church I do not only pronounce you worthy to
be cast out, but I do cast you out ; and in the name
of Christ I do deliver you up to Satan, that you may
learn no more to blaspheme, to seduce and to lie ;
and I do account you from this time forth to be a
Heathen and a Publican, and so to be held of all the
Brethren and Sisters of this congregation and of
others : therefore I command you in the name of
Christ Jesus and of this church as a Leper to with-
draw j^ourself out of the congregation."

When, in obedience to this mandate, Anne Hutch-

532 THE EXCOMMUNWAT^m. 1638.

ijispn, the outcast, moved thix)ugh the awe-stricken
throng, her disciple and devoted 'friend; Mary Dyer,^
rose up and walked by her side, and the two passed
out together. As they went forth, one standing at the
meetiiiof-house door said to Mrs. Hutchinson, — " The
Lord sanctify this unto you ; " to whom she made
answer, — " The Lord judgeth not as man judgeth.
Better to be cast out of the church than to deny
Christ." At the same time another, a stranger in
Boston, pointing with his finger at Mary Dyer, asked,
— " Who is that young woman ? " and he of whom he
asked made answer, — " It is the woman which had
the monster." ^

The records of the First Church of Boston contain
the following entry : —

"The 22d of the 1st Month 1638. Anne, the wife of
our brother, William Hutchinson, having on the 15th of this
month been openly, in the public congregation, admonished
of sundry errors held by her, was on the same 22d day cast
out of the church for impenitently persisting in a manifest
lie, then expressed by her in open congregation."

1 Supra, 408, n. ^ Winthrop, i. *263 ; supra, 386.

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Full text of "Three episodes of Massachusetts history. The settlement of Boston Bay. The Antinomian controversy. A study of church and town government;"

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