iSif/BJKfei irTTtt THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR HISTORY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO • DALLAS ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO MACMILLAN & CO., Limited LONDON • BOMBAY • CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR HISTORY. BY ROLAND G. USHER, Ph. D. Professor of History, Washington University, St. Louis. Author of the Reconstruction of the English Church, Pan-Germanism, Etc. NEW YORK, Published by The Macmillan Company , igi8. AU rights reserved. * V Copyright, 1918 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1918. HENRY MOrtSC STg-PHEHff * I xr. TO HER WHOSE STEADFAST AFFECTION HAS STRENGTHENED AND INSPIRED ME WHOSE HIGH IDEALS HAVE UPLIFTED AND GUIDED ME MY MOTHER 509828 PREFACE I have attempted a new study of the Pilgrims and their history from the sources. While I was unable to find much new evidence of prime importance, I have perhaps been able to exclude from further consideration the possibility of ascertaining information about the Pilgrims from the evidence concerning the Puritan Movement in England from 1580 to 16 10, and from that regarding the history of the Established Church for the same period. But I have been able to place the older material about the Pilgrims in its relation to the more recent evidence concerning English church history, and have as well utilized for the first time the Plymouth First Church records and many Plymouth wills, which contain much of great value on economic and social history. No further accession of evidence is now probable and it is therefore an important fact, though due to no merit of mine, that the narrative presented in these pages possesses a certain aspect of finality. A new study of old evidence and the use of some new material has made possible certain differences in interpretation, in emphasis, and in judg- ment, the importance of which must not be unduly exaggerated. I have felt it possible to show that the Pilgrims were not subject to active persecution in Eng- land from Church or State; that Robinson's Congrega- tion at Leyden was considerably smaller than most students have estimated; and that the really significant achievement was not the emigration itself, but the economic success of the years 1621 to 1627. Indeed, the Plymouth wills make it now possible to claim that the viii Preface colony was an economic success in the literal sense of the word and that poverty and hardship did not continue at Plymouth as long as has not infrequently been implied. It has also been possible to define rather more exactly the relation of the Pilgrim Church to the Puritans in England and to other Protestant Sects in New England. At the same time, perhaps the chief excuse for this volume lies in the lack hitherto of a consistent attempt to present the story as a whole, with serious attention to proportion, emphasis, and perspective. Such valuable books as those of Dexter, Arber, or Ames have empha- sized only one period or one aspect of the story, while in other books the genealogical information has fairly dwarfed the narrative. I have therefore sought to treat each section of the narrative adequately, and in particular to devote considerable space to the period after 1627, partly because the heritage of most importance to us seems to be that of this particular period, and partly because comparatively little attention has hitherto been paid to it. While our genealogical information about the Pilgrims' immediate descendants is vast in bulk and frequently entertaining and vital, I have felt it important to emphasize the political narrative and to subordinate all genealogical detail. The conclusions of most importance are frequently to be reached only by elaborate inference and deduction from indirect evidence and are sometimes in the end no better than presumptions and probabilities resting upon a lengthy process of conjecture. To attempt to give, even in important instances, the whole train of logic and the evidence on which it is based, is to create a critical apparatus of quotations, references, and speculations wearisome and vexatious to the general reader and not Preface ix really necessary for critical students. In such a mass of inference, the Pilgrims and their history have sometimes been lost to sight. It has become increasingly common in books on the Pilgrims to reproduce as many of the old abbreviations and contractions as can be provided in modern type with the result that a familiar and simple idea is presented to the reader in such strange guise that he fails to recognize it. Nor does such meticulous accu- racy serve any real purpose. I am not aware of any passage the meaning of which is in doubt or from which additional information can thus be extracted. Fre- quently, too, such reproductions raise in the minds of readers unskilled in research a presumption of a critical judgment and of an extent of information in the author which are not always realized. I have preferred to subordinate the critical apparatus to the narrative proper and to reproduce in citations what Bradford or others would have had printed rather than exactly what they wrote. This is the fifth in a series of related monographs which I am attempting to write on the constitutional and ad- ministrative history of the Tudor and Stuart periods in England. This particular volume, though not without relation to my previous books, the Reconstruction of the English Church and the High Commission, is primarily a part of the treatment of the period between 1610 and 1640, upon which my studies have already been pros- ecuted at considerable length, but on which as yet noth- ing has been published, partly because the war has temporarily suspended access to the English archives, and partly because it has also made difficult the publication of technical books which appeal only to a very limited number of readers. I am venturing thus to call attention x Preface to my continued interest in Stuart history because the character of the research itself, aside from fortuitous interference, may require some years of work still before the more important volumes can be finished. I have already made repeated acknowledgments in my previous books of my indebtedness to many foreign scholars and archivists, but I cannot close this preface without acknowledging once more, in this of all books, the influence upon me as a student of Edward Channing. To no single man, out of many in Europe or America to whom my indebtedness is great, do I owe so much. Roland G. Usher. Washington University, Easter, 191 8. CONTENTS Chapter Page i. scrooby and austerfield i II. The Exodus from England 17 III. The Hardness of Life in Holland 33 IV. The Critical Decision 45 V. Ways and Means 56 VI. The Voyage 68 VII. The First Year 83 VIII. The Problem of Subsistence 94 IX. Standish and the Problem of Defence no X. The Tares in the New English Canaan 127 XI. The Year of Deliverance — 1627 142 XII. The Great Achievement 157 XIII. New Plymouth in New England, 1627-1657 168 XIV. The Dominant Note at Plymouth 183 XV. Government and Administration, 1627-1657 202 XVI. Economic Privilege, 1627-1657 220 XVII. Social Life, 1627-1657 239 XVIII. Tendency after the Death of Bradford 256 XIX. The Loss of Political Independence 275 Appendix 293 Index 3°5 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Manor House at Scrooby Frontispiece Map of the Scrooby Region Facing page 6 Portion of Capt. John Smith's Map of New England, 1614 " " 48 Contemporary Cut of Ships of the May- flower Type " " 64 The Mayflower Compact: from Bradford's History " " 74 Elizabeth Paddy Wensley " " 176 Madame Padishal " " 250 Edward Winslow. Painted in London in 1 651 " " 256 THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR HISTORY THE PILGRIMS AND THEIR HISTORY CHAPTER I SCROOBY AND AUSTERFIELD In the autumn of x£oj5, about fifty or sixty men and women began to gather weekly for devotional exercises in the chapel of an old Manor House at Scrooby, in northern England, about forty-five miles south of the city of York. They thanked God that they had been vouchsafed a glimpse of the true Light and walked no longer in darkness; that they were separated from that abomination of Anti-Christ, the Church of Eng- land. They assured each other of their ability and willingness to bear with all fortitude the persecution and travail sure to be entailed by this obedience to "the Ordinances of God." There were among them none of wealth, birth, or learning as those words were then or are now used; they professed religious ideas maintained by a few hundreds at most in the British Isles, if not in the world; they lived in a part of Eng- land not then considered important; they were simple farmers, tilling the open fields of an old hunting park, between moors and fens alive with game. Their little assembly was too insignificant to attract the attention of the Puritans in southern England or to rouse the officials of the Established Church to more than a spasmodic and perfunctory hostility. But they took 2 The Pilgrims and their History courage from the words in Ecclesiastes : "the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of under- standing, nor yet favor to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." And they were right. Among them were the leaders of a mighty movement — the emigration of Englishmen to the New World in search of homes. They were the true progenitors of the westward march of the Anglo-Saxon race, a group of men and women worthy of becoming the ancestors of a virile nation of one hundred millions of souls. The spiritual origin of the Pilgrim movement * lay in the impulse toward freedom of thought which was itself the root of the Protestant Reformation. The historical and literary study of antiquity, the new knowledge of the classic languages, the new texts of the Scriptures proved to Lutherans and Calvinists that the^iPapacy of 152 1, its hierarchy and usages, was not warranted by the Scriptures. Christianity had been defiled, its pristine purity sullied by the introduc- tion through the agency of the Popes of pagan ritual and ceremony. The task of the reformers was clear: to reject the innovations of the Pope, to abjure him as 1 "As applied specifically to the early settlers at Plymouth, Pilgrim first appeared in 1798 and Pilgrim Fathers in 1799." Bradford and others had used the word pilgrim, but not as a generic historical designation. From about 1800 till the middle of the nineteenth century, the term was applied indiscriminately to all early New England settlers, but was then by more critical students limited to Plymouth colonists. This usage of the term Pilgrim has been consistent for not more than forty years. See interesting information on this point collected by Albert Mat- thews in Publications of the Colonial Society of Mass., XVII, 293-392. Scrooby and Austet 'field 3 the Man of Wrath, and to establish once more on earth in all its pristine purity the primitive Church of Christ. In convincing their own followers of the verity of this great discovery, they found the most cogent evidence in the Scriptures themselves. Read the Bible, they besought the men of their own time. Read and see that there is nowhere mention of Pope or hierarchy, of this ceremony or that practice, of copes or indul- gences. Read and see that we are right and that the Pope is wrong and a usurper, the untrustworthy serv- ant in the vineyard of the Lord, who shall be thrown out by the servants when the Lord shall come. It became, however, speedily necessary that the re- formers themselves should define with some precision what form of discipline and doctrine Christ had insti- tuted. Once this definition had been promulgated, once Calvin, Luther, and Zwingli, Knox, Cranmer, and Whitgift had made up their minds, they becan. 3 one and all convinced that the Scriptures could be understood only by those to whom God had vouchsafed the truth. Accordingly, the new reformed organizations insisted upon a conformity with their own particular practice and belief no less rigid than that against which they protested, and each expelled from its ranks without mercy or hesita- tion those who ventured to differ from it in the interpreta- tion of primitive Christianity. In England the peculiar circumstances under which the Reformation was begun, the character of Henry VIII and of his daughter, Eliza- beth, the peculiar temperament of the English people, resulted in a compromise between the old forms and the new platform. After a good deal of hesitation, a few sweeping changes in doctrine and discipline were affirmed, but, while many of the observances of the Roman 4 The Pilgrims and their History Catholic Church were definitively abandoned, in out- ward appearance the old service and the old discipline still predominated in the observances of the Established Church of Elizabeth. The Pope was expelled but the hierarchy remained. The little group of people, who separated from the Established Church with such consecration and serious- ness in the autumn of 1606, had thoroughly grasped the injunction of the reformers to read the Scriptures for themselves. Their strong and practical minds quickly appreciated the inconsistency of a liberty of thought and expression which permitted the laity to find in the Scriptures only the material they were told was there, and which denominated all further examination into the truth as " unholy prying." They opened their eyes and saw in the Bible proof that the Church was not yet purified, that the reformers were no more infallible in their interpretation of Scripture, no more consistent in practice, nor more liberal in attitude than the " Bishop of Rome" whom they rejected with such determination. The Reformation had not been thorough, the Pope him- self had been abjured but not his " detestable enormities." They found in the Scripture no more warrant for the bishops and deans of the English Established Church than for the Pope and his cardinals. They saw no more proof in the New Testament of the validity of a prayer- book and canons than they found for the mass and indulgences. Scrooby was hardly a favorable environment for so radical a Protestant movement. Situated about forty- five miles south of the city of York and about fifty miles north of Lincoln, along the great highway leading from London to Edinburgh, within easy ride of the old Sher- Scrooby and Auster field 5 wood Forest long connected by legend with Robin Hood, there lay to the north and west of Scrooby great districts in which the Roman Catholics were at the time of Elizabeth's death in the overwhelming majority. In the immediate vicinity of Scrooby were powerful Catholic families. From this district had come the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Rising of the North. From it the leaders of the Bye Plot had confidently expected support and it was not yet certain in 1605 that the fears of a Catholic rising were entirely groundless. Indeed, the Protestants in the North of all descriptions had commonly preferred to bury their own differences and present a determined front to the Catholic majority who had not yet accepted the fact of the Reformation. About Scrooby we know a great deal, thanks to its location upon the great highway between London and Edinburgh. 1 The officials who collected the information for Domesday Book recorded its existence as a part of the property of the Archbishopric of York, but it was not in 1606 and indeed never had been since the Norman Conquest an agricultural or industrial district in any proper sense of the word. It was in fact a hunting lodge, located upon a tongue of fenny land, thrown out in the midst of the moors, broad lakes, and swamps of the lower Trent valley. It was also a sort of halfway-house used by official travelers, north and south, and an occasional residence of the Archbishop of York or his officials when occupied with affairs in the southern part of the Province. A good many notables, first and last, slept there from the Conquest down to the time when Margaret Tudor paused overnight on her journey north to marry James IV, from which marriage was to spring the union of England 1 See the notes at the end of the Chapter. 6 The Pilgrims and their History and Scotland. In the early sixteenth century there was a good deal of hunting at Scrooby. Wolsey himself spent a whole month in the house. The custom had been for the Archbishop to travel with his servants, furniture, linen, and plate and set up for a time his establishment in the great Manor House, and, when His Grace pleased, he departed bag and baggage and left the empty house and its outbuildings in the care of a Receiver or Bailiff. The population at Scrooby consisted therefore of the small tenant farmers and their laborers, connected more or less immediately with this estate of the archbishops, and living around the Manor House, subject in civil as well as in economic matters to the authority of the Archiepiscopal Receiver or Bailiff. There was of course no leisured class; men of any education at all were few; and the little district boasted no residents of wealth, birth, or station. ' For all that it was a place of some consequence and of considerable size. Leland, the official historian of Henry VIII, found at Scrooby a great house of two courts, built of timber and brick, standing on a plot of some six or seven acres, the whole surrounded by a deep moat, As the years elapsed, the Manor House fell into decay, perhaps because the game became less abundant and the House less used; toward the middle of the century the number of buildings were certainly fewer; and, when James I on his progress to London in 1603 noted it as a useful hunting lodge, he also remarked upon its "exceeding decay." There is today little left at Scrooby to tell of these times. Except for the slender gray spire of St. Wilfred's Church and a few parts of the present stone farmhouse, there is nothing left which the eyes of Brewster or Brad- ford might have seen of the great estate on which Wolsey MAP OF THE SCROOBY REGION Scrooby and Austerfield 7 amused himself and which Elizabeth and James I coveted. The very earth is different. The moors and fens have been drained and ploughed; the game has departed, leaving only the lark and the cuckoo behind; the tangled thickets are now waving fields of grain, dotted by scarlet poppies and fringed with hawthorn, wild roses, and honeysuckle. Here and there only is an untamed spot, where the brilliant yellow of the gorse against the dark green of its own foliage gives us a suggestion of the sort of landscape the first Pilgrims left behind them. In this town of Scrooby, there had come to live about 157 1 a certain William Brewster and his wife, with a small son some five years old. About him we know noth- ing prior to his appointment by Archbishop Grindal in 1575 to the office of Receiver and Bailiff of the Manor of Scrooby and "all liberties of the same in the County of Nottingham. " He became not only the Archbishop's agent in the management of his farms and in the collec- tion of rents, but also the civil authority, for this par- ticular district was legally and administratively exempt from the County of Nottingham. He must also have exercised such ecclesiastical jurisdiction as there was when the Archbishop and his commissaries were not themselves present. Some seventeen little groups of people in villages lived on the large domain and of them his position made him practical ruler. Although Grindal agreed to pay him only £3 6s. 8d. in money a year, the position was calculated to be worth not less than £170 a year, the equivalent today of about $4000. In 1588, this William Brewster was appointed Postmaster under the Crown; Scrooby was made a posthouse on the road to York and it became his duty to provide horses for the Queen's messengers, and such privileged travellers as 8 The Pilgrims and their History rode post, and to keep an inn where they might remain until it became convenient to pursue their journey. It is obvious therefore that the father of the famous William Brewster was a man of some substance and position, easily the most prominent individual in the little village and its immediate environment. The boy tasted somewhat of this modest affluence, was prepared somehow or other for the University, and matriculated at the college of Peterhouse at Cambridge in December, 1580. He began residence at the great Puritan Univer- sity of England, although not at its most radical college nor under the instruction of the most erudite and mag- netic of Puritan teachers. But its atmosphere was electric at just this time with radical tendencies. Peter Baro, eminent as a Calvinist, was Professor of Divinity; William Perkins, whose books Brewster later owned, was lecturing at this time; and at least four notable Puritans and Separatists were in residence — Udall, Penry, Green- wood, and George Johnson. There is no record that Brewster ever received a degree and it is indeed not clear whether he remained at the University two years or only a few months. We do know from Bradford l that he achieved there a firm knowledge of Latin and "some insight into Greek," that he there became inoculated with radical religious ideas, and was " first seasoned with the seeds of grace and vertue." This probably denotes Brewster's own belief that his radical views originated in Cambridge. The autumn of 1583, however, saw him in London as a member of the household of William Davi- son, at this time a man of some consequence at Court, serving in various administrative and diplomatic capac- ities. How Brewster became connected with him, 1 See the note at the end of the chapter on the Bradford History. Scrooby and Auster field 9 exactly in what capacity he "served" him, we do not know. Bradford is our only informant, and, while he makes it clear that the relationship was close, he does not show good reason to suppose that Brewster was anything more than a sort of confidential attendant, something better than a valet but a good deal less im- portant than a secretary, a position which, if not menial, could hardly be called official. Certainly, he won Davison's confidence and demonstrated a certain ability. How closely he followed his patron in his many expedi- tions and journeys we have no means of knowing. He must have seen a good deal of England and Scot- land, something of court life, much of London, and certainly accompanied Davison on one or more of his important diplomatic missions to the Netherlands in 1584 and 1585-86. Bradford alludes in an account written half a century later to a long ride across the Eastern Counties on the way back from Holland, when Davison placed around Brewster's neck the great gold chain presented to the Ambassador by the States Gen- eral, and bade him wear it as they fared on towards London. Undoubtedly, this was one of the few incidents of that time which stuck clearly in Brewster's own memory, and which he told and retold in those long evenings of quiet and amiable conversation at Plymouth. In 1587, on the disgrace of Davison after the execution of Mary Stuart, Brewster remained with him for some little time — perhaps attending him while he was in the Tower — and then returned to Scrooby, urged apparently by the illness of William Brewster, Senior. At any rate he was acting as his father's deputy in January, 1588-89, and at his father's death in 1590 continued to dis- charge the functions of Master of the Post and of Re- \ 10 The Pilgrims and their History ceiver and Bailiff. After some little misunderstanding and difficulty, he was confirmed in the position of Master of the Post, which he retained until 1608. He married in 1 59 1 or 1592 and had three children before the exodus to Holland, the first, born about 1593, named Jonathan, a Biblical name not then common as a Christian name; a second child, born about 1600, called Patience; and a third, who seems to have been born just before the flight to Holland, named Fear. Both girls lived to reach Plymouth. About this time Brewster's mother, Pru- dence, died. Other relatives he does not seem to have had. There is little reason to doubt that Brewster was the leading spirit in gathering the little group of people which was afterwards organized as a Church and which finally took up its permanent abode at Plymouth. Exactly how and when it was organized we do not know. The usual form of Puritan growth in southern England was the gathering of a classis of ministers who then proceeded to convert the laity and to draw them together into churches. In many cases some wealthy man or woman of rank appointed to benefices, of which they owned the advowson, Puritan clergymen whose energy and mag- netism soon converted the laity. Possibly the influence of two radical ministers was responsible for the group at Scrooby. Richard Clifton was minister at Babworth, some seven or eight miles south of Scrooby, and had developed as early as 1595 pronouncedly radical ideas. About ten miles east of Scrooby, at Gainsborough, was located John Smyth, once Fellow of a Cambridge College, who professed even more radical notions about govern- ment and doctrine. 1 Members of the later Scrooby group 1 Much information about Clifton and Smyth will be found in Scrooby and Auster field n certainly worshipped from time to time with these groups in the ten years following 1595; probably both ministers officiated occasionally in the Manor House at Scrooby, but the nucleus of the famous Plymouth Church was a little group of laymen gathered together by the magnetism and high personal example of Brewster himself. They did not at first renounce the Established Church nor refuse to attend its services, and had for the first ^ » j ! The Critical Decision 49 subsistence was not to depend upon the efforts of the colonists in America. 1 This was indeed a sound plan, entirely in accordance with the experience of Europeans in Northern America, and merely demanded of the Pil- grims the ability to do what others had done before them. Such examination as they made convinced them that the outlay of money, ordinarily involved in such a trading venture, was small and such as they them- selves and their immediate friends could subscribe. The financing of the expedition was therefore not the as- pect about which they needed most to concern them- selves. The vital issue seemed rather to be their ability to establish in the New World the kind of a political and ecclesiastical community they had in mind, free from interference from Europe or from resident authority in America. Argue as they would, they could not con- vince themselves that some kind of formal permission from the King would not be essential to ensure any degree of religious toleration. Their presence in the New World could hardly be kept secret and they feared that, if they landed without authorization, subsequent investigation would entail supervision and claims to the exercise of civil and ecclesiastical authority, which they had no intention of recognizing. Better to stay in Holland or return to England than incur the perils and expense of a voyage to America, only to find themselves under that same comparative constraint, from which 1 This important point has not been sufficiently emphasized. See Bradford's own statements, History, 55, 72; the conditions with the Adventurers, quoted, id., 57; Robinson's letter, quoted id., 60; Cushman's letters, quoted, id., 65, 67; Winslow, Hypocrisy Unmasked, 89, 90, London, 1646. 5 t^*c « ^ S * * £ i\ * c ? { i Mi i "wis?* 4 ' N« ^V The Voyage 75 for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye n. of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James, of England, France, & Ireland ye eighteenth, and of Scotland ye fiftie fourth. An p : Dom. 1620. On November 11-21, the Mayflower anchored safely in Provincetown Harbor and the leaders began definite consideration of the sort of location required for the future colony. They were to establish a permanent trading post, which should maintain itself by fishing and bartering beads, toys, and cloth with the Indians of the district. Astonishing to relate, not one of the passengers had ever fished nor, so far as we know, with the exception of Standish, had any of them fired a gun by anything better than accident. All had been farmers in England, accustomed to the open fields and broad- cast sowing, and in Holland all had followed some trade or other. They were indeed so ignorant that they dis- covered spices in the thickets of Cape Cod and in the first few weeks shot a bird which they took to be an " eagle" and were frightened by "lions." They were absolutely unprepared for the conditions they actually found and brought really nothing except good constitu- tions, loyalty to each other, good sense, patience, for- bearance, and devotion to a high religious ideal. They lacked everything but virtue. Nor had they brought with them the most necessary supplies. Food they could not bring in large quantities and they expected to depend upon the Indian corn or maize, and were aware that they must obtain a supply for planting from the Indians. They brought, however, peas, beans, and seed for growing onions, turnips, pars- 76 The Pilgrims and their History nips, and cabbages. There was also a large stock of salt, some clothing, some trinkets, and presents for the Indians, and a few boots and shoes, brought by Mullins, the father of Priscilla. Simple culinary utensils of pewter or woodenware they brought with them, andirons, candle molds, and the like. For wood cutting, cooper- ing, and carpentry they brought an elaborate set of tools, as well as equipment for a blacksmith's shop, and an anvil. Guns, swords, and powder, with some side- armor, breastplates, and cannon they also brought. Everything considered, a remarkably adequate supply. For agriculture they possessed only a few hand tools. They brought no beast of burden, no plows, carts, or harness of any description. For fishing they were pro- vided only with nets and hooks so large that they could not catch cod with them. Indubitably they were not adequately equipped to found a colony, which would depend entirely for subsistence upon what it might raise in the New World. They were equipped to build houses, cultivate gardens, catch fish in nets, and trade with the Indians for furs. To find a location for such a colony was now their task. This can not be too carefully borne in mind. Had they been looking for a site for a settle- ment colony, which should depend primarily upon its own labor in America for subsistence, they would prob- ably not have pitched upon Plymouth. They went ashore at once, and, wading and splashing through the shallow water, first set foot on the soil of the New World. 1 Fifteen or sixteen of the adult men, 1 In the eighties appeared in London an historical work by the author of Jzdamerk, a Mrs. J. B. Webb-Peploe, en tided, the Pilgrims of New England. Some notion of the possibilities of historical ignorance can be had from it. They land upon a pre- The Voyage 77 well-armed, wandered about the shores of Provincetown Harbor for the greater part of the day, and we may well imagine with what mingled curiosity, elation, expect- ancy, and alarm these agricultural laborers and artisans from the domestic industry of Holland went out in the guise of explorers, adventurers, and soldiers. The loca- tion, however, was neither romantic nor adventurous. They soon saw that the land was a narrow neck of sand, interspersed with marshes and large ponds, certainly not the place for their settlement. On the thirteenth, they brought out the shallop and found many days' labor required before it could be seaworthy. Meanwhile the women washed clothes in the ponds, the men and children took exercise on shore, and several expeditions were made in the neighborhood. 1 The first, on No- vember 15, led by Standish, Bradford, and Hopkins saw traces of game, of Indians, of previous Europeans, and marched up hill and down dale with great toil and fatigue. The unaccustomed armor chafed them, the weight of the guns tired them, and breaking through the heavy underbrush "tore our very armor to pieces." Some Indian fields, an Indian grave, the planks of a wrecked ship made into a rude house, an iron ship cipitous granite strewn shore amid dashing surf, mountains high, in which the authoress instinctively bathes deep; they hunt wild horses (of which there were none, wild or tame in English America before 1624), and elect Carver President. The hero is an English- man with sons named Heinrich and Ludovico! J The winters of 1620-1622 were exceptionally mild; so were those of 1630-163 1, while in 1645-1646 plowing was going on in February. The winters of 1637-38 and of 1641-42 were the coldest in forty years. Plymouth harbor was frozen solid and was crossed by oxen and carts for five weeks. It is fortunate they did not meet this sort of weather that first year. 78 The Pilgrims and their History kettle, such were the specific evidences of human habita- tion. Several caches of corn which they found, they took, for which they afterwards scrupulously paid. Finally the shallop was ready and on November 27 the first trip was made under the leadership of the cap- tain of the Mayflower, Weather conditions were highly unfavorable; snow fell, a cold wind chilled their bones, and the rowers in the boat were soon covered with ice from the driving spray and sleet. They coasted along to the Pamet River, which they at first thought a good site, found more caches of corn, more woods, sand bars, and ponds, and returned impressed more than ever with the unsuitability of the neighborhood and with the necessity of finding at once a permanent site. On December 6-16, the second expedition departed, in weather so cold that the spray from the oars froze on their clothes and one of their number nearly died of exposure. Far down Cape Cod they sailed and, after seeing more Indians in the distance, investigating empty wigwams, graves, and further caches of corn, they landed for the night and barricaded themselves, a little company of eighteen men, six of whom were from the crew of the Mayflower. At midnight they were dis- turbed by dreadful noises which they took to be those of wolves, but at daybreak further outcries aroused them and soon Indians were upon them. They were unpre- pared. Most of them had carried their armor and guns down to the water's edge in preparation for sailing and only Standish, Bradford, and a couple more had re- tained their fire arms. Two of them fired, checking the Indians for a moment, the other two holding themselves in readiness. The rest in considerable disorder and fear hurried for their own weapons, which they recovered The Voyage 79 without real difficulty, the Indians manifesting no real desire to meet the White Man in the open. From the trees the Indians continued to shoot arrows. From their own cover the Pilgrims returned musket fire. The chief of the Indians stood well forward under a tree and de- liberately shot at the leaders with his arrows. They took equally deliberate aim at him, and after three misses, finally hit the tree above his head, whereupon he gave a great "shrike" and took to his heels. This ended the first encounter, as they called it, a fact which thrilled these simple countrymen inexpressibly. December 8-18 was a hard day. They stood along the coast, steered toward the mountain of Manomet, which the sailors had pointed out from the ship at Provincetown as the landmark of the good harbor indicated on Smith's map. After some two hours' snowfall, the sea grew rough and the waves sufficiently violent by the middle of the afternoon to break the hinges of the rudder, so that two men with oars steered the shallop. At length, the look- out cried that he saw the harbor, and, crowding on more sail in an attempt to make the harbor before dark, they overtaxed the rigging; the mast split in three pieces, the sail dragged overboard, and they barely escaped cap- sizing. They were however near the entrance of Plym- outh harbor and their diligence at the oars and the flood tide carried them through the harbor's entrance. Again they found themselves imperilled by the breakers, but the presence of mind of one of the sailors, who told them to pull sharply, the promptness of their own action, once more saved the little craft, and they soon ran into calm water under the lee of Clark's Island. After some hesitation, a few of the bolder spirits ventured ashore and, despite the sleet and wind, kindled a fire, of which 80 The Pilgrims and their History they were presently extremely glad, for the wind shifted about midnight, the temperature fell sharply, and they had all been wet to the skin for the greater part of the day. This was Friday, December 8-18. All night it rained. In the morning the rain con- tinuing, apparently they marched around Clark's Island and there stayed all day. On Sunday, December 10-20, they rested. It was not until Monday December 11, Old Style, December 21, New Style, that they landed from the shallop somewhere on Plymouth harbor. Astronom- ical calculation shows that the tide was flood and that they could, despite the flats, have landed anywhere along the sandy shore. This date has been accepted for the greater part of the nineteenth century as the technical landing of the Pilgrims. 1 The weather was mild and sunny, there was no snow, and the ground was not even frozen. All the women and children and the great bulk of the men being still at Provincetown on the Mayflower, only eighteen men went ashore from the shallop on this day, of whom ten were Pilgrims: Standish, Bradford, Carver, Winslow, John and Edward Tilley, Howland, Warren, Steven Hopkins, and Edward Dotte. There were with them also two hired seamen not of the May- flower crew, two of the mates of the ship, the master gunner, and three sailors. After sounding the harbor and exploring the shore at some length, they concluded that they had found a satisfactory location and returned to Provincetown, arriving December 13-23. Two days 1 The anniversary speeches delivered at various dates are by no means devoid of interest and value and many will well repay a reading. A very nearly complete list has been compiled by Albert Matthews, and was printed in the Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, XVII, 387-392. The Voyage 81 later the Mayflower sailed for Plymouth, but, because of the contrary wind, was unable to make harbor until December 16-26. The next day was Sunday, the first day of worship at Plymouth, conducted certainly on shipboard by Elder Brewster, and consisted no doubt of the singing of psalms, of heartfelt prayers, of the reading of the Scriptures and the expository work which was all that Brewster attempted. Thus ended the long pil- grimage from the Old World to the New. " May not and ought not the children of these fathers rightly say" wrote Bradford, "our faithers were Englishmen which came over this great ocean and were ready to perish in this willdernes but they cried unto the Lord and he heard their voyce and looked on their adversitie." Bibliographical Notes Appearance of the Pilgrims. There is nothing which the student so much regrets as the entire absence of information as to the personal appearance of the Pilgrims. It is not merely true that we have no accurate or extensive informa- tion, we have literally not a suggestion as to whether Brad- ford was tall or short, thin or stout, black haired or light complexioned. Nor do we know what clothes they wore when they landed. Certainly not the hats, cloaks, and shoes characteristic of England half a century later. The numerous pictures can not longer be considered correct in detail and some of them represent scenes which can not now be shown to have taken place at all. One authentic portrait only exists, — of Edward Winslow, painted in London in 1651, five years after leaving Plymouth. The women, of whom so much has been written and imagined, appear in the contemporary ac- counts of Bradford and Winslow as mere names. From their own contemporaries we have not the slightest hint as to their character, influence, intelligence, or appearance. The 82 The Pilgrims and their History critical scholar must confess this entire absence of material for the little details so much desired by posterity. Yet, after all, remarkable characters for sanity, intelligence, high devotion to Christian ideals are limned for us by the authentic narrative. The knowledge of their stature, weight, costume, and the color of their hair could add nothing to our estimate of their true worth. Genealogical Bibliography. — Those who are anxious posi- tively to establish their descent from the Pilgrims will do well to attempt no researches themselves, unless already skilled at such work, but to communicate with G. E. Bowman, 53 Mt. Vernon St., Boston, who has made the study of Pilgrim families and genealogy his life work. For those, however, willing to be content with something less than certainty, the Mayflower Descendant, a quarterly journal; Pilgrim Notes and Queries, eight monthly issues a year, both edited by Mr. Bow- man, will usually give some clue to family relationships. Goodwin's Pilgrim Republic gives commonly full data cover- ing the immediate descendants of known Pilgrims. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Peirce's Colonial Lists, Boston, 1881, the (English) Congregational Historical Society's Transactions, London, 1901, the various publica- tions of the Massachusetts Historical Society, of the Amer- ican Antiquarian Society, of the Colonial Society of Mas- sachusetts, of the Old Colony Historical Society, are all valuable. There are also the Pilgrim Newsletter, Providence, R. I., published since 1909; and the Society of Mayflower Descendants of Illinois, which has published material since 1900. Much use must be made of the histories of great Eng- lish and American families, of state, town, and county records, all too numerous to be mentioned here, as well as of all the Pilgrim sources which have been and will be referred to in this volume. Such researches commonly lead the student far afield into unexpected places, which is their chief charm for most genealogists. CHAPTER VII THE FIRST YEAR The first stage of the great enterprise thus successfully accomplished, the difficulties in their path one after another surmounted, a greater problem now loomed before them — how could the transition from ship to shore be safely made and the colony established on the soil of the New World. 1 Monday, December 18, found the Pilgrims early ashore. That day and the two suc- ceeding were consumed in eager and thorough explora- tions of the harbor, the rivers, the forests, and the soil. On the twentieth a vote was taken and the majority elected to build the new settlement on what Bradford called the "first site," evidently that selected by the leaders who came in the shallop a week or more previous. The name, Plymouth, they found on Smith's map of New England and retained it. The site was well adapted for a permanent fishing and trading factory. Though the Mayflower was compelled to lie in the outer harbor on account of the shallow water at low tide, the harbor was deep enough for a ship of no 1 Our information for this section of the narrative is singularly full and reliable. They sent back to England in the Fortune a detailed Relation of all that had happened since landing. It was printed in 1622 and was almost certainly written by Winslow and Bradford. It is conveniently reprinted in Arber's Story of the Pilgrims, together with Winslow's Good News from New England. Bradford's History adds important information on points not covered by these narratives, and on others, like the "general sick- ness," which they deemed it better to omit in 162 1. 83 84 The Pilgrims and their History more than eighty tons to anchor near the shore. The second fact which impressed them was the number of fish they saw and the larger amount they conjectured would be present in the proper season. Whales they had seen off Provincetown; they had been told by the crew of the vast profit from the sale of the oil, and they judged in the sublimity of their ignorance that it would be easy to kill one. Seals also they saw and deemed valuable. Thus two prime requisites were answered. The amount of cleared land, on either side of what came to be called the Town Brook, also attracted them to the site. A good many acres of corn fields of the Patuxets, dead from the plague of three years before, were unused, and, after testing the soil, they concluded it to be rich and suffi- ciently deep. The small rivers and brooks emptying into the harbor provided an abundance of water, while at a distance of one-eighth of a mile stood abundant timber for their houses and for the cut lumber, which they ex- pected to export to England, where wood was scarce and expensive. Furthermore, the site was protected by Nature, for on the east the harbor, and on the south the town brook in a little ravine prevented attack by the Indians. On the west an abrupt hill, one hundred and sixty-five feet high, gave them a location for their cannon commanding the only easy approaches to the new town from the open fields to the north. After two days of storm and rain they set to work, on December 23, and for three days cut timber with great diligence. The difficulties of their task were considerable, for their headquarters, the Mayflower, was one and one- half miles from shore, and they must row back and forth constantly. They were compelled to carry the timber itself an eighth of a mile from the woods without draught The First Year 85 animals to assist. There were in all only forty-four adult men, many of whom were by this time ill. The first Christmas therefore was spent in hard work, for, like most Protestant bodies of the time, the Pilgrims declined to celebrate the day because they could find no warrant for it in the Scriptures. Two more days of rain interfered with the work, but on the twenty-eighth they laid out the town along the brook, and assigned locations for a "common house," to be used as an assembly hall, and for several dwelling houses. After more rain and cold during the first week in January, the work went on at a more rapid rate and without intermission. Jones and his men went out in the shallop and after some ado caught three seals and one codfish. Apparently an expedition, whose prime object was the catching of fish, had arrived with no practical knowledge of the sort of fishing which New England afforded. On January 7, to facilitate the work, the company was divided into nine- teen "families," thus putting the boys and servants under the supervision of the older married men. So rapidly had they worked that by January 9, the frame of a "common house," twenty feet square, had been built of rough logs and the cracks filled in with mud. The roof they built in the succeeding days of thatch, after a fashion still common at Scrooby and Austerfield. On the fourteenth at about six in the morn- ing, the lookouts on the Mayflower saw the new house on shore afire, but, the tide being out, the shallows and the high wind prevented their sending aid for some little time. A spark from a match in the house had set fire to the thatch, the high wind produced a quick blaze, which soon burned itself out without damage to the roof tim- bers or the frame. The house was packed with the beds of 86 The Pilgrims and their History the majority of adult men, including several, like Carver and Bradford, who were very sick. All escaped from the burning building and regarded it as a special act of Providence, that the loaded muskets beside most of the men had not been discharged by the fire. The day being Sunday, no work could be done to repair the roof, and the rain poured dismally from a cheerless sky upon them, shivering in their roofless house throughout that long Sabbath. A week later the roof had been replaced and service was held on land by Elder Brewster for the first time. Gradually now as the weather permitted, and as the sheds and log cabins on shore were finished and thatched, the stores were moved from the ship to the shore, carried up the steep bank, and placed as they believed in safety. On the twenty-first of February, two cannon were gotten ashore by the help of the crew and located on the hill. Traces of Indians had been seen and the colony was alarmed. Meanwhile, — indeed ever since the landing at Prov- incetown — a considerable number had been ill, and by February what Bradford calls the "general sickness " had stricken practically all the members. As their surprisingly good health on the voyage had been the result of the extremely careful arrangements, so now the cause of the "general sickness" seems to have been careless exposure, though not to the severity of New England weather, for the winter of 1620-162 1 and the two succeeding winters were singularly open and mild. Both Provincetown and Plymouth harbors were so shallow that the Mayflower was anchored a long distance .from shore, and a considerable number of Pilgrims waded back and forth, to the small boats every day, became thoroughly wet in the process, and had no satisfactory The First Year 87 method of drying their clothes. The women, again, misled by the mild weather, washed clothes several days in the ponds at Provincetown and caught severe colds. The explorations in the open boat, the expeditions on the wet shore, resulted in further exposure. The result seems to have been tuberculosis of a surprisingly contagious and rapid type, called sometimes galloping consumption. 1 Whatever it was, the Pilgrims certainly caught it from one another and in December, six died, in January, eight more, in February, seventeen, and in March, thirteen. So dire was their distress that, during these months, no more than six or seven were well at a time, and only Brewster and Standish entirely escaped illness. On some days two or three died, and tradition has it that the graves accumulated so fast, that the Pilgrims leveled them with care, lest the Indians should be able to count and discover how greatly the little colony was weakened. Their devotion to each other during these exceedingly trying months is beyond all praise. Those who were able labored unsparingly night and day, carrying wood, making fires, preparing food, making beds, washing clothes, performing, as Bradford says, "willingly and cheerfully services which dainty stomachs could hardly endure to hear named." The crew of the ship showed little sympathy for the Pilgrims in their extremity and even denied them a share of the few comforts they themselves possessed. Bradford therefore notes with considerable satisfaction the godless conduct of the crew when the disease fell upon them. The Pilgrims now ministered to their needs as best they 1 Edward E. Cornwall, M. D., in New England Magazine, New Series, XV, 662-667. They were also much troubled by sciatica, rheumatism, and inflammatory rheumatism. 88 The Pilgrims and their History could, and so affected the boatswain, who, as Bradford notes, had often "cursed and scoffed at the passengers," that he cried out to them, "O, saith he, you I now see show your love as Christians unto one another, but we let one another lie and die like dogs." In all, forty-six died and only fifty-six were left alive of the original company. At the end of the first year, the number of survivors was fifty-one, twenty-three adults: — Bradford, Edward and Gilbert Winslow, Brewster and his wife, Allerton, Standish, Hopkins and his wife, Fuller, the surgeon, John Alden, and twelve others. Only one of the nine servants survived; only four out of fourteen wives; but ten out of eleven girls and fifteen out of twenty-one boys. About the middle of March, when many had barely recovered from the worst ravages of disease, the men met at the common house to decide what action, if any, should be taken in regard to the Indians. Suddenly they saw walking down their little street, a solitary Indian, who advanced boldly and called out to them in English, welcome. He was entirely naked except for a leathern girdle and carried only a bow and two arrows. They stopped him as he was about to enter the common house, but he explained in broken English that he was a chief of Monhegan in Maine, where he had learned English from the crews of the fishing vessels. His name was, he said, Samoset. He talked with them pleasantly and at great length, and as the wind began to be sharp, they put a cloak about him. Presently he asked for beer. They took him to dinner and gave him some "strong water," with biscuit, butter, cheese, something they called pudding, and some duck, all of which surprised him not at all. He proceeded to tell them after dinner a great The First Year 89 deal about the Indians of the district. In particular that the Indian name of Plymouth was Patuxet, that the whole tribe had died in a plague four years before, and that their nearest neighbors were a tribe of about sixty warriors. At night they would gladly have gotten rid of him, but, as he showed no inclination to leave, they determined to send him aboard the Mayflower. They were unable to get the shallop across the flats, and so lodged him with Steven Hopkins and watched him with care. In the morning he departed with many friendly ex- pressions. Two weeks later he returned with five tall savages, whom the Pilgrims entertained as best they could, much embarrassed because the day was Sunday and the Indians insisted upon dancing and singing. After a short but very friendly visit, they departed, Samoset remaining again overnight. On March twenty-second, a fine spring day, he came back once more, bringing with him the sole survivor of the Indian tribe which had formerly lived at Plymouth, a man called Squanto by Bradford, and Tisquantum by Winslow. 1 He had been captured some years before by an English captain, carried to London, brought back by the English to Newfoundland, whence Captain Dermer in a voyage the year before the Pilgrims landed had brought him back to Cape Cod. The two Indians brought news that Massasoit, the sachem of the tribes of Pokanoket, was on his way with his warriors to pay a ceremonial visit. After about an hour of great excitement, some sixty 1 Goodwin, Arber, and others have chosen to follow Winslow instead of employing the more familiar Squanto. I see no valid reason for supposing Winslow more accurate than Bradford in transliterating the Indian's name or in representing Pilgrim practice. 9 victory was his, proceeded to make the most of it, but with a restraint and moderation admirable in contrast with the intemperate language of Oldham and Lyford. 134 The Pilgrims and their History He acknowledged calmly the opening of their letters, but justified such an exercise of authority on the ground of public necessity. To demonstrate the truth of his assertion, the extremity of the need, and the justification of strict dealing with Lyford, he read the various com- plaints which Lyford had made and answered them. The complaints were clear proof of Lyford's guilt, but his suggestions for the future conduct of the Adventurers were damning and conclusive. They must at all odds, he said, prevent the emigration of Robinson and the rest of the Leyden congregation, and in particular must watch that they were not taken on board ship without the Ad- venturers' knowledge. It would also be an excellent idea for the Adventurers to ship to Plymouth enough people to outvote the Pilgrims in the General Court. This would be compassed easily enough by giving each bond servant, whose passage they paid, an indenture for a re- ceipt of the amount of the passage, thus making him a free man and a citizen, in exchange for an assignment of the covenant to the merchants. This would give the servants power to vote at Plymouth without depriving the merchants of their services. A military man should also be sent, "for this Captain Standish looks like a silly boy and is in utter contempt." The evident effect of the reading of the letters was such that Lyford felt it best to say, that the information contained in them he had received from the members of the Pilgrim company themselves. They charged him accordingly to produce his witnesses. When he gave the names, they promptly asked the men to testify, but they denied that they had ever said such things. The victory of Bradford was complete. Not one of the abetters of Lyford and Oldham stood the test. Indeed they seem The Tares in the New English Canaan 135 to have come forward to add further condemnatory facts. By vote of the court, both men were censured and ex- pelled. Oldham was to leave at once, though his wife and family were to be allowed to remain throughout the winter, or until he could make provision for them. Ly- ford was to be allowed to remain six months longer, with intimation that, if he should entirely reform, the sentence of expulsion might be revoked. Thereupon, after some time he made public confession in Church, and, if Brad- ford is to be believed, wept copiously the while, reproach- ing himself for all manner of evil against them and con- fessing "pride, vainglory, and self-love." Indeed they were inclined to believe in the sincerity of his professions, until a couple of months later another letter fell into their hands, written subsequent to his conviction, and which was meant to confirm to his friends in England the main tenor of the previous letters. In particular, he stressed the number of people who were not members of the Pilgrim Church, whom the Pilgrims would not permit to become members, and whom he declared to be there- fore without the means of salvation. There was, he averred, no minister at Plymouth at all. He had nothing much to say when accused with this epistle, and they washed their hands of him. They fully intended to ex- pel him as soon as the winter was over, satisfied with their victory and with the anxiety of most of his assistants to humble themselves before the Governor and their willingness to join the Church. It seemed as if the in- cident had served to unify the little colony and to produce a greater degree of cooperation between them than had ever existed before. In the spring of 1625, Oldham returned without per- mission, apparently in the hope of finding support once 136 The Pilgrims and their History more. As usual their calm, diplomatic behavior was too much for his fiery passion to endure, and he presently- put himself thoroughly in the wrong by abusing them with strong language and insulting gestures. They lost no time with him, arrested him promptly, and put him in seclusion for a while. They then arranged to send him to the harbor side through a double file of musketeers, each of whom in Indian fashion was to hit him a blow with the musket end as he went by. While this scene was being enacted, a ship came in from England bearing Winslow with the news that the worst was only too true about both Oldham and Lyford. They hesitated there- fore no longer about expelling him, the less because his wife had already confessed to some of them, that he had been guilty on more than one occasion of licentious con- duct, which the Pilgrims deemed unbecoming in any one, much less a minister. To her confessions was added the information Winslow brought of the great scene in the Merchant Adventurers' Council in England. Winslow had been much berated for having accused Lyford and a meeting had been called to hear the case and to decide upon the accusation which Lyford's friends proposed to bring against Winslow. Meantime the latter somehow procured knowledge of Lyford's past, and arranged with two witnesses to be present at the meeting. When therefore the Adventurers had assembled in great numbers to try this exciting scan- dal, when the moderators had been chosen and the case was well under way, Winslow brought forward his wit- nesses and proved an astonishing and shocking case, wherein Lyford had ruined a girl while minister of a Puritan congregation in Ireland. The case was, indeed, if the facts were as Bradford reports, shocking, and the The Tares in the New English Canaan 137 effect upon the meeting was all that the Pilgrims could have asked. Their charges against Lyford were so in- finitely less grave than this and so entirely what might be expected of a man sufficiently depraved to commit this other crime, that Lyford's own friends were com- pelled to censure him. He now left Plymouth and went further north, lived for a while at Salem, emigrated eventually to Virginia, and there died. And so, piously and triumphantly Bradford concludes, "I leave him to the Lord." The connotation as to Bradford's belief about Lyford's future habitation is indisputable. In this same year, 1625, there came over Captain Wollaston, with some three or four assistants and a considerable number of indented servants, well supplied with tools and provisions, for the founding of a trading and fishing post of the type the Pilgrims themselves had intended to erect. Things, however, went badly with them and Wollaston took a considerable part of the servants to Virginia, where he sold his interest in their future labor for the seven years of their service. Having gotten what he believed to be good prices, he wrote to the partner left in Massachusetts to bring the rest of the band to Virginia. One of his assistants was Thomas Morton, one of the most interesting and dramatic characters in early Massachusetts history. He seems to have had some slight education in the classics, to have practiced law, certainly in a desultory way and perhaps a not altogether responsible manner, and to have pos- sessed an unnecessarily liberal assortment of vices. The idea occurred to him of securing a colony of his own by the very simple expedient of stealing his partners' servants. These men had all signed indentures in England, 138 The Pilgrims and their History agreeing to work for seven years in return for their passage money, and they still owed some five or six years of service. Morton seems to have gotten them thor- oughly drunk and then to have pointed out to them, that, if they submitted to the authority of Wollaston and went to Virginia, their time would there be sold to the planters, and they would be compelled to work five or six years more. The simpler course was for them to decline to go and remain with him as partners and equals. They would thus become free at once and enjoy the fruits of an enterprise of their own. The idea com- mended itself to the laborers and they accordingly mutinied and turned out the assistants of Wollaston. Morton thus acquired a colony without expense, but also a colony in which he had no more authority than anybody else, and in which his lusty fellows promptly betook themselves to the vices of civilization. Merri- mount, as they presently christened the settlement, became a sort of a drunkard's resort and gambling hell, very much of the type which were found on the frontier in the early days of the West. Drink flowed freely; licentious conduct with Indian women became the rule; and rogues and desperate white men, rascally Indians, and runaway servants began to drift into Merrimount from all parts of the coast. It became indeed a rendez- vous for adventurers and piratical rascals and was in itself dangerous to the existence and welfare of the little settlement of honest men nearby at Plymouth. Morton had however a really clever idea, despite its danger and unscrupulous character. He had realized of course at first that the Indians would sell beaver a good deal quicker for "strong water" than they would for trinkets, and that they would work a good deal The Tares in the New English Canaan 139 harder to collect beaver enough for a complete drunk than they would for any other reward that the white man could offer. For a time he collected in this way a considerable amount of fur. He then saw that the In- dians were greatly hampered in hunting by the primitive nature of their weapons and that if they could only be armed with guns and be taught to use those weapons skilfully, they would become deadly hunters, with a consequently amazing profit to him. He therefore began systematically to provide the Indians of the district with arms, powder, and shot and to teach them care- fully how to use them, assuring them that all the alluring evils of civilization would be their reward after a suc- cessful hunt. The profits were all that he thought they might be, but a very obvious danger to the small bodies of whites in the vicinity became no less clear. The Pilgrims had been reasonably safe, because their few firearms were immensely superior to the Indian bows and arrows, and because their stockade and fort protected them from any assault the Indians could very well make. There were however on the coast a con- siderable number of small trading factories, many of which numbered no more than a dozen or a score of men, and these found themselves seriously threatened by the bands of well-armed Indians, thoroughly skilled in the use of guns, who began presently to roam the woods of Massachusetts. There were therefore many good counts against Morton and many excellent reasons for disposing of him, beside the crowning iniquity of which the Pilgrims complained, the erection of a Maypole at Merrimount, which was duly celebrated in song and drunken ribaldry by Morton and his crew. Concerted action was planned by the Pilgrims and the other settle- 140 The Pilgrims and their History ments on the coast, and, after summoning him twice by letter to reform his ways and forbear arming the Indians, they finally decided to deal with him by force. Standish accordingly set out for Merrimount with a body of Pilgrims, well armed, and, if Morton is to be believed, captured him some eight miles from Merri- mount and took him to a nearby house. Here, as Mor- ton tells it, 1 they ate and drank heavily and slept there- fore unduly soundly. Up got Morton in the middle of the night, stepped carefully over the keepers supposed to be guarding him, and escaped. The banging of the door roused them. "O! he's gon, he's gon, what shall wee doe, he's gon. The rest (halfe a sleepe) start up in a maze and like rames ran theire heads one at another full butt in the darke. Theire grande leader, Captaine Shrimp, tooke on most furiously and tore his clothes for anger, to see the empty nest, and their bird gone. The rest were eager to have torne theire haire from theire heads; but it was so short that it would give them no hold." Morton hurried through the woods back to Merrimount, where he made ready to receive Standish, whom he knew would follow promptly. Bradford as was to be expected, gives a somewhat different flavor to the final incident. The Pilgrims landed at Merrimount from their boat and found that Morton had barricaded himself in the house and had armed his men. After a sort of Homeric battle of words and epithets between the two parties through the door, Morton and some of his crew came out to fight, but 1 New English Canaan, ed. by C. F. Adams, for the Prince Society, 284-285. This is the most entertaining and amusing account of early New England and is certainly responsible for much of the attention Morton has received from students. The Tares in the New English Canaan 141 proved to be so exceedingly drunk that they were un- able to keep their heavy muskets upon the rests which they set up in front of them when they fired. Morton, with a musket crammed half full with powder and shot, attempted to kill Standish, but the fiery little captain pushed the gun aside with his hand and arrested him. Neither, says Bradford, "was ther any hurte done to any of either side, save that one was so drunke that he rane his owne nose upon the pointe of a sword that one held before him as he entred the house, but he lost but a litle of his hott blood." Morton they brought to Plymouth, and presently shipped him to England with letters tell- ing of his deeds. The worst characters of his colony were disbanded and dispersed, and, though Morton returned somewhat later, he bothered the Pilgrims no more. For, after a brief stay at Plymouth, he went to Massa- chusetts, where the Puritans recently come dealt with him with extreme severity. Thus were the tares up- rooted in the New English Canaan. CHAPTER XI THE YEAR OF DELIVERANCE — 1627 The year 162^ seems to be the turning point in Pilgrim annals, the year in which the solution of the problem of subsistence became permanent, and in which the future of the colony was practically assured. 1 The anomalous contract with the Adventurers was cancelled and replaced by an agreement which freed the Pilgrims from economic bondage. The leaders undertook the payment of the outstanding debt, and, though not without misgivings, did possess a real confidence in their ability to discharge it from the proceeds of the really profitable trade they had already established. The individual allotments of lands and houses, already temporarily made, were at this time confirmed, and the members of the colony were able for the first time to know that what they had worked so hard to create was theirs in fact. The beginnings of a herd of live stock and of draught animals had been made and the allotments of cattle this year to groups of in- dividuals was an important step in the improvement of agriculture and of the hitherto severe conditions of domestic life. Though not obtained until three years later, a part of this notable settlement was certainly the new patent of 1630, which vested in the Pilgrims them- selves the title to their land. Surely no year, not even the first, records more significant and more important changes than the year 1627. The position of the Pilgrims on landing at Plymouth 142 The Year of Deliverance — 1627 143 was peculiar. The patent from the Virginia Company they had brought with them was void of value at Plym- outh. The contract they had signed with the Merchant Adventurers at Leyden had been repudiated by the latter, while the contract signed by the latter and Cush- man had been repudiated by the Pilgrims. The land they stood on was not theirs. The tools and materials they worked with did not belong to them and were to be paid for by seven years of labor, like those of Jacob for Rachel, the conditions of which were yet to be agreed upon. Their associates in England, when the return of the Mayflower made their whereabouts known, at once procured from the Council for New England a new patent bearing the date June first, 162 1. 1 This was granted to John Peirce, his associates, heirs, and assigns, the same in whose name as trustee the previous patent issued by the Virginia Company had been drawn. It gave him and his associates rather limited rights, without definite boundaries and with certain qualifications and conditions. The settlers under it were empowered to take up one hundred acres of land for every person transported from England in the original colony, if the colony persisted three whole years at one or at several times, and one hundred acres of land for all additional colonists, trans- ported or transporting themselves during seven years and remaining three years thereafter " with intent to inhabit." The hundred acre plots were to adjoin each other, and were not to be, as the patent said, "stragglingly." An additional fifteen hundred acres might be appropriated to maintain churches, schools, hospitals, and the like. 1 The original is now at Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. An accurate reprint, with notes by Charles Deane, is in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th Series, II, 156-163. 144 The Pilgrims and their History Definitely this was a grant of a settlement colony, not for a trading factory, and knew no limit of location in New England other than that the land chosen should not at the time be inhabited by other Englishmen. Under it they might remain at Plymouth and move else- where. They had by this time seen Boston Harbor but evidently did not choose to move thither. They were graciously permitted to ''truck, trade, and traffique with the Salvages," and "to hunt, hawk, fish, or fowle." They were also licensed to expel from their territory by force of arms and "by all wayes and meanes whatsoeuer," all persons who settled on their lands without special permission. A grant of incorporation was promised with power to govern the people transplanted, and in the meantime they should get along "by consent of the greater part of them." Feoffment was to be made when due notification of the location of the land had been legally certified. The Fortune brought this patent in the autumn of 162 1. Robert Cushman came as the agent of the Adventurers to secure the consent of the Pilgrims to the amended articles which had been rejected in England before sailing. After considerable debate and argument, the articles were accepted. Cushman thus returned to England with their promise to work a whole week in the interests of the Adventurers throughout the period of the seven years for which the contract ran. He was also to remain the agent of the colonists in England, and was to see that the new emigrants sent out to them and the goods intended for them were of proper quality and quantity. From the first the association of the Pilgrims with the merchants had been highly unsatisfactory to both, and, as time went on, the dissatisfaction grew The Year of Deliverance — 162 7 145 greater rather than less. 1 That the Mayflower had brought back no cargo disgruntled the merchants in England exceedingly, with the result that the Fortune brought colonists but no food. The Pilgrims loaded the ship with clapboards and some furs, but it was captured by a French privateer on the way back to England, the whole cargo was taken off and thus lost. In 1622, there having been no return from the colony, its real straits not at all appreciated, the fact that a cargo had been shipped on the Fortune not yet known, the merchants met, disagreed, quarreled, and sent no supplies. Weston and Beauchamp broke with their associates, hired two ships themselves which they loaded with cargo, with a number of emigrants, and a patent for a settlement. The fortunes of the men sent to settle we have already seen, and the venture, so far as profit was concerned, proved a total loss. Later in the year 1622, news of the value of the cargo the Fortune had carried revived the interest of the Ad- venturers, who contributed enough during the following winter to equip the Anne and the Little James, to pay the passage of more colonists, and to send with them sufficient food to carry them over till the next harvest. They deemed it wise not to rely wholly upon the energy of the Pilgrims in collecting a cargo, and provided that the two ships should make a fishing voyage after they x The relations with the Adventurers are told by Bradford at great length in the History. There is also a fragment of his orig- inal Letter Book, containing some additional material, printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st Series, III. A long letter, written by Bradford and Allerton on Sept. 8, 1623, has been printed in the American Historical Review, VIII, 294, and affords confirmatory details. This is the only original letter of this period which seems to have survived. 146 The Pilgrims and their History had deposited their colonists, and should thus collect their own cargo. When the Anne arrived at Plymouth in 1623, the courageous decision to abandon the common stock had already been taken. They loaded the Anne with dressed lumber and sent Winslow back to England on the ship, bearing a letter to the Adventurers, and with instructions to borrow money on the Pilgrims' ac- count for the purchase of goods and cattle. The greatness of the need and the feeble hopes they entertained of real assistance were clearly writ in the letter. "We wishte you would either roundly suply us or els wholy forsake us, that we might know what to doe." They had, they said, no intention of making an agreement with another group of merchants, but would, if the Adventurers did desert them, do the best they could for themselves. To anticipate a little, in 1625 Standish borrowed £150 at fifty per cent interest and bought trading goods for exchange with the Indians. In the year following Aller- ton was sent to England to procure £100 for two years. He secured £200 at thirty per cent and a considerable stock of goods. In 1626 Bradford and the leaders were bold enough to purchase the whole stock of a trading post at Monhegan, which had failed and was for sale. A French ship was also wrecked on the coast and they bought such of its cargo as could be saved. These facts will make clear the extent of the Pilgrims' confidence in themselves and the definite belief after 1623 that nothing was to be expected from the Adventurers. The letters of the latter were so contradictory, confused, and luke- warm, that Bradford and the leaders were unable to make up their minds as to the real status of the venture. Nothing illustrates more vividly the discouragements and difficulties which the Pilgrims and the Adventurers The Year of Deliverance — 1627 147 both had to experience than the ill-fated voyages of the Little James, a small two-masted craft of forty-four tons, sent over by the Adventurers in 1623 in the hope of executing the original plan of fishing and trading from Plymouth as a base, in a vessel large enough to keep the seas. Bradford had immediate doubts of the sailors, whom he thought rude, and of the master whose honesty he seems to have doubted. His fears were only too well founded, for the crew had understood that the ship was to be a privateer, to cruise against French and Spanish vessels, and that they were to receive a considerable share of the prize money. The Little James did have a com- mission to capture ships, but the real intent had been to catch fish on the Grand Banks. When therefore the crew received orders from Bradford to undertake a fish- ing voyage, they threatened to mutiny and were finally pacified only by being paid wages out of the Pilgrims' meagre purse. The latter stocked the ship with great difficulty with trading goods and sent her around to Connecticut and Rhode Island, but the Dutch had fore- stalled them, the Indians had sold most of their furs, and the ship returned practically empty. Just before enter- ing Plymouth Harbor, a storm broke upon her, the anchors failed to hold, and the crew saved her from going ashore on one of the shoals by sacrificing the main mast. During the winter, with great difficulty she was refitted and, after pinching and paring to the utmost, the colonists managed to procure enough to send her on a fishing voyage along the Maine coast. There she ran into a storm, stove a hole upon a rock "as a horse and cart might have gone in" and sank. Sometime later, the captains of the summer fishing fleet offered to 148 The Pilgrims and their History raise the vessel, if the Pilgrims would bear the expense. This offer they accepted and after considerable trouble the ship was floated, repaired, and sent back to England in 1624. There one of the adventurers, Thomas Fletcher, promptly seized her for a debt the others owed him. In 1625, in hopes of making good his expenses, he sent her with a much larger ship, the Jacob, to procure a cargo of fish at Cape Cod. 1 This time the fishing was successful. Though the larger ship was ordered to carry her fish to Spain, the rumors of war led the captain to return to England, where the cargo arrived inopportunely and was sold at a loss. The Little James was captured in the English Channel by a Barbary pirate and was carried to Sallee where the captain and seamen were sold into slavery. Needless to say, Thomas Fletcher was by this time hopelessly bankrupt. In 1624 the Adventurers, who still hung together, sent out the ship Charity with a shipwright and salt-maker, as well as some cattle and a patent for land at Gloucester, Massachusetts. The shipwright was to build more coast- ing vessels for the Pilgrims, in particular a ship large enough to keep the sea during a storm and decked over, while the salt-maker brought salt pans to make salt by evaporation for sale to the shipping fleet which came annually to the Grand Banks. The expectation nat- urally was that the profit on the sale of the salt would be very great. The shipwright however died of fever; the salt-maker seemed to the Pilgrims a vain and con- ceited fellow, who tried to make them think that boiling sea water in a pan required some mysterious skill. They were therefore not surprised when he made so hot a fire 1 Some of the goods on this voyage were not to be sold for less than seventy per cent profit. Thr Year of Deliverance — 1627 149 underneath his pans that he burned the house, ruined the pans, and thus ended that part of the venture. The Charity also made poor work of fishing. The explanation to the Pilgrims was simple; the captain was "a very drunken beast and did nothing (in a maner) but drink & gusle, and consume away the time & his victails and most of his company followed his example. " The judg- ment of God was upon such and they were only too definitely punished for their lack of temperance. When the news of these misfortunes finally reached London, the Adventurers came to the conclusion that they could do no more. It was better to lose what they already invested than to throw more good money after bad. The Pilgrims had failed; fishing trips had failed, to say nothing of pirates and privateers. Accordingly in December, 1624, they wrote the Pilgrims and formally declared the partnership dissolved. 1 The causes they assigned were their losses at sea and the various debts they had been compelled to contract to support the colony in addition to the original venture. They also stated that for a year or two several of them had objected strenuously to extending further support to the Pilgrims on the ground that they were Brownists. They therefore stood in the way of the emigration to Plymouth of the rest of the Leyden congregation and had in particular prevented Robinson from leaving for America. The reasons were not so interesting to the Pilgrims as the tacit expectation that the Pilgrims were to pay the in- debtedness of such Adventurers as still remained, which they computed to be £1400. Nothing definite was said as to future relationship between them and Bradford is silent upon the reasons why the Pilgrims judged it inex- 1 Bradford quotes the letter in full, History, 240. 150 The Pilgrims and their History pedient merely to allow the matter to drop, as this letter seems to have supposed it would. Good reasons therefor are not far to seek. The ex- istence of the debt, originally incurred by the emigration itself as well as by subsequent expenses, was a legal lien upon the lands, goods, and profits of the colony, and, even if the Merchant Adventurers showed no present intention to collect the money or to enforce their claims, they might later at some inopportune moment insist upon them, or what was worse, might sell them to others. The Adventurers indeed were not a company nor incor- porated, and an elaborate search of English records has shown no trace of anything more formal than a purely voluntary agreement between some seventy men. The Pilgrims, however, felt it essential to extinguish all claims upon them or upon their future labor. So many shifts and changes had taken place; so many of the Adventurers had abandoned their claims to which others had suc- ceeded; some had sold to others; some had sold to the Adventurers as a whole, that there was considerable doubt as to what the legal situation was. Nor should it be forgotten for a moment that the Adventurers at this time held title to the land of Plym- outh. The patent which had been obtained in June, 162 1, in the name of Peirce had been quietly changed by the latter in the following year to an obsolete English land form known as a Deed Pole, which was written to him, his heirs, associates, and assigns. It had the effect of making him proprietor of Plymouth, lord paramount, lord of the manor, after a fashion. The settlers were to be his tenants; their lands, goods, and houses would be his; and they would be subject to him as feudal lord and to his courts and laws. The Adventurers, when they The Year of Deliverance — 1627 151 learned of this stroke, were exceedingly indignant and tried to buy him out, but his price of £500 seemed to them exorbitant. In December, 1622, he fitted out an expedition to take possession of his new principality, but the ship was badly damaged by a storm and was forced to return. In February, 1623, another start was made, with additional passengers and freight crowded in, in the hope of recouping the losses from the delay. For two weeks the ship was at the mercy of a great storm in the Atlantic, her main mast was lost, much of her bulwarks torn away, and with very great difficulty she made her way back to England. The Adventurers themselves had expended on this particular voyage some £640, Peirce having undertaken the transportation of colonists and goods. Now he surrendered his stock as Adventurer to his associates and assigned his patent to the com- pany. The Pilgrims thus became literal tenants of the Ad- venturers with neither title nor rights in their own land, and were utterly dependent upon the latter for securing any in the future. It was now essential to make definite and clear their relation to the Adventurers. Somehow or other the title to the land and the right to govern must be vested in the Pilgrims themselves and that they realized could not take place until some settlement satisfactory to the merchants had been reached. Another reason of real significance also urged them to come to an agreement with the latter. They saw that until they had somehow or other freed themselves from these financial shackles, and had legally severed their connection with these men, it would be difficult if not impossible to bring to Plymouth the remainder of the Leyden congregation. The Adventurers stood in the way of the execution of the 152 The Pilgrims and their History original plan and it was feared that they would continue to do so. Allerton accordingly was sent to England in 1626 to borrow money, to bring back goods, and to reach some- how an agreement with the Adventurers. 1 This he successfully did on October 26, at a meeting to which the great majority of those concerned in the venture had been invited. They sold to the Pilgrims " all and every the said shares, goods, lands, marchandice, and chattels to them belonging." The document in which this transaction was recorded was intended to transfer completely the whole bundle of legal rights of any sort or description, which the Adventurers had or might acquire, in consideration for a sum of eighteen hundred pounds sterling to be paid in London in instalments of two hundred pounds a year for nine years beginning with Michaelmas, 1628. Some forty-two names were signed to the document. Even- tually, further documents were signed and the bargain was bound and sealed on parchment. The Pilgrims further stipulated that the bargain was not to become void if they should default payment on the particular day and hour; they might be prevented by the weather or by enemies from reaching London in time and should not be penalized unless the fault were their own. They were therefore to forfeit thirty shillings a week for every week of delay. Thus, exulted Bradford, "all now has become our own as we say in the proverb when our debts were paid. . . . This wholly dashed all the plans and devices of our enemies both there and here who daily expected our ruin, dispersion, and utter subversion by the same." x It may be that the proposition to buy off the Adventurers originated with James Shirley. See his letter to Bradford of December 27, 1627. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st Series, III, 49. The Year of Deliverance — 1627 153 How should the money be paid? After considerable discussion among the leaders, Bradford, Standish, Aller- ton, Winslow, Brewster, Howland, Alden, and Prence engaged to make the entire payment of eighteen hundred pounds within six years, and to provide the colony in the meantime with necessities from England, to be exchanged for corn at the rate of six shillings a bushel, if the entire trading privileges of the colony and all the facilities and stock of goods should be turned over to them for the purpose. This agreement, signed in July, 1627, gave them the name Undertakers. To the eight were added in November of 1628, four Londoners, Shirley, Beauchamp, Andrews, and Hatherly, who were to be the London agents of the colony. Isaac Allerton was to travel back and forth supervising the sale of the cargo and the pur- chase of new goods at both ends, being in each case the accredited representative of the parties absent. The Undertakers at once received possession of the shallops and the new trading sloop, of the fishing stage at Cape Anne, of the station on the Kennebec, and the trading station at Cape Cod, with a considerable stock of beads, hatchets, knives, and the like. This change was less radical than it seems at first sight because Bradford, Allerton, Winslow, and Alden seem practically to have managed the entire business of the colony since 1623, when the common stock was abandoned. It then became evi- dent that if the majority were to work in the fields raising corn, they would not be able to trade or fish, and that it was better the majority should support some few of the men who would do what they could by trading toward raising money to meet their debt to the Adventurers. In 1627 therefore an arrangement was made explicit and legal which had already persisted for some little time. 154 The Pilgrims and their History It now became possible to make permanent the tem- porary agreements of earlier years in the division of land and houses. In 1623, it will be remembered, small plots of land, apparently not uniform in size, had been allotted to various individuals and families. In 1624 one acre had been allotted each family "for continuance" during seven years; no more than one acre had been granted in order that the colony might remain compact "for safety and for religion." Now in 1627 the horned cattle, which had come to the colony in the last three years, were as- signed to twelve groups of people, who were among them to care for the beast and enjoy such use of it and per- quisites from it as there might be. Abuse and neglect were to be charged against the whole group. Early in the next year the division of land was continued. Three hundred and fifty-six fields were laid out, covering some five square miles, and ranging from the Jones River to the Eel, with the village of Plymouth in the middle. Each family retained in the town the one acre plot al- ready assigned to it and in most cases the house upon it, if there was one; the Governor and a number of the lead- ers received their houses and plots in recognition of their services to the colony. The large farms of some twenty acres each were now distributed by lot with some at- tempt to compensate those who drew the most distant. The meadows and fields upon which grass was growing were retained in common, and the poorer land seems not to have been distributed at all. Thus was permanency attained to general satisfaction. The status was also formally recognized of those who were in the colony but not of it, being either non-church members or adherents of other forms of non-conformity. While it is doubtful whether the right of these "Purchasers," as they were The Year of Deliverance — 162 7 155 called, to the ownership of land was at this time recog- nized, their right of occupancy was conceded of lands to be assigned them, a definite recognition of their property in goods or chattels was promised, and their partnership in the enterprize admitted. Each head of a family and each self-supporting bachelor might by certain for- malities become a "Purchaser," and accepted in return for his privileges one equal share in such part of the debt as the Undertakers did not discharge. One of the most considerable tasks which the leaders now assumed, great in view of their other financial obligations, was the financing of the emigration of the remainder of the Leyden Congregation, now much re- duced since the death of Robinson in 1625. The plans were made at Plymouth in 1627 as soon as the settlement with the merchants was complete, were prosecuted by Allerton and Shirley in London during 1628, with the happy result that in August, 1629, the first contingent of thirty-five came on the Mayflower and in the following May sixty more came on the Handmaid. The total cost reached £550. Only forty-seven, however, of the new- comers were from Leyden, the other colonists on these ships emigrating from England direct. Thus were the survivors at last reunited after so many troubles and losses both in America and in Holland. Scarcely less significant and important an element in the new settlement was the patent secured from the Council for New England in 1629 and sealed on Jan- uary 13, 1629-1630. This put an end to doubts about the Pilgrim title. It granted to William Bradford, his heirs, associates, and assigns a certain definite territory, prac- tically identical with the present counties of Plymouth, Bristol, and Barnstable, omitting Bingham and Howe 156 The Pilgrims and their History and including a part of eastern Rhode Island. The grant was made of course with reference to the Indian names and was intended really to include the entire territory of the Pokanoket Confederacy, an exceedingly vague dis- trict, and one whose bounds the names quoted in the charter did not satisfactorily define, as the Pilgrims later discovered to their disquietude. A tract of land on the Kennebec near the site of the present Augusta, some thirteen miles long and fifteen miles wide, on either side of the river, was confirmed to them. The land was granted in fee simple, and the language was so broad and inclusive as to confer upon them every right possessed by the Council itself, including the power of government over the inhabitants and the authority to deal with intruders. The only reservations were the coining of money and shares of gold and silver for the Crown and Council for New England, which, needless to add, never accrued. The Council appointed Standish its attorney to deliver possession to Bradford or his representatives. The cer- emony was probably performed by the transference of the turf, twig, and water of the most formal feoffment of medieval law. The question however was later raised by those anxious to dispute the Pilgrim title as to whether such feoffment was capable of transfering the power to govern and the right to enact and enforce laws. The attempt in the following year to secure a royal charter, confirming the grant of land and with an equally liberal grant of authority, failed. In 1640 Bradford assigned the Patent and all rights under it to the entire body of free- men of the colony. CHAPTER XII THE GREAT ACHIEVEMENT The Pilgrims had convincingly demonstrated no less significant a proposition than the practicality of the colonization of the New World. Posterity has dwelt upon their high moral qualities, upon their courageous daring, upon their religious idealism; their contempora- ries were impressed chiefly by their economic success. Contrary to an impression only too widespread, the Pil- grims were not the first religious enthusiasts to sail for America, nor the first body of men and women of high quality and consecration to land in the New World. In the sixteenth century had come the Huguenots; several congregations of Separatists seem to have cherished the idea of emigration; Blackwell and a number of the Pil- grims' friends had actually sailed for the Chesapeake in 1618-1619. But just as there had been many predeces- sors of Columbus who had believed that the world was round and that one might sail from West to East, so the Pilgrims had had progenitors. Like Columbus, they were the first to succeed, the first to demonstrate the practicality of colonization. They planted the first permanent, independent settlement in the New World, in which the initiative lay with the emigrants and not with capitalists or kings. They were the first organized body of people to leave the Old World in expectation of con- tinuing the life of their organization in the new. They proved that a small body of men and women, without capital or resources, and without governmental support, 157 158 The Pilgrims and their History could maintain themselves in New England from the product of their own labor on the soil of the country with- out systematic assistance from England. They proved that even a small body of poverty stricken men and women could cut loose from Europe and safely take up residence in the New World, with every probability of being able to live without enduring too much physical hardship, and with every prospect of practical freedom from European interference. This was the economic fact the Pilgrims demonstrated. The essential element was their undoubted weakness and poverty. There had come to New England in 1620 one hundred and two people, without equipment, ex- pecting to be maintained from England and not from the proceeds of their own labor. They had expected to fish and to collect furs, to cut lumber, to export to the mother country materials whose sale would make possible the purchase of necessities they would consume in the New World. The whole project failed. The original plan was from the outset abandoned. Maintenance from the proceeds of their own labor in America became essential, even though the necessary tools and supplies had not been provided. Sickness came; half of them died. The promised aid from England did not materialize as promptly and as regularly as was imperative. The commercial ventures from which so much had been ex- pected went wrong from the first. The Mayflower could carry no cargo; the Fortune was captured by pirates; supplies sent to them were lost at sea; their cargoes re- turned were unfortunately sold at a loss. It scarcely seemed possible that any body of men and women could have struggled with more adverse fortune or have re- ceived less effective assistance than they. The Great Achievement 159 And yet, somehow, the little colony survived. Houses built by their own hands rose in considerable number, built of hewn plank with well thatched roofs. Behind them busy hands created gardens. Beyond in the fields the same untiring energy sowed corn and grain; in the woods lumber was cut to be exported; furs were bought from the Indians to be sold in England. By 1627 the accumulated misfortunes of the Pilgrims, the unsatis- factory support of the merchants, the efforts of wind, sea, and pirates had somehow not been able to prevent the little colony from prospering. They had landed deeply in debt, without any adequate store of even the necessities of life, with only a few carpenters' tools and rude agricultural implements, and a few guns and pow- der. And they had built a town, owned fields and trading stations, and had begun to accumulate a herd of cattle. Food, shelter, and clothing were assured them beyond doubt; profit even they knew they would make in the future. After the first great sickness the mortality had been small. One hundred and two had come in 1620 on the Mayflower; thirty-five had been brought by the Fortune in 162 1, sixty by the Anne and the Little James in 1623, and of the one hundred ninety-nine there were alive in 1627, one hundred fifty-six besides some twenty or thirty laborers and indented servants who did not have the status of free men. 1 To be sure, some of those who came in the ships named had moved from Plymouth to other parts of New England or Virginia; some few originally in other parties had made their way to Plym- 1 One hundred ninety-nine came; sixty-eight were born at Plymouth; fifty-eight had died; fifty- three had removed elsewhere; leaving one hundred fifty-six. Fifty-two had died in the first year and only six during the following six years. 160 The Pilgrims and their History outh and had there found welcome. There were fifty- seven men, twenty-nine women, thirty-four boys, and thirty-six girls at Plymouth in 1627 when the common stock was brought to an end and "the Purchasers" were , organized. Forty-two of these people had come in the Mayflower. They possessed in common four cows, seven young heifers, four young bulls, eighteen goats, and, if Captain John Smith can be believed, a good many swine and poultry. A Dutch agent from New Amster- dam who visited Plymouth in this year for the purpose of opening trade, was particularly impressed by its general aspect of solidity, comfort, and prosperity. He thought on the whole they were materially better off than the Dutch and English colonists whom he had seen on the coast. Their morale and discipline were un- doubtedly better and all augured well for the future. What impressed their contemporaries was the essential fact which has made a place for the Pilgrims in history. They came to America to make homes, came with a % definite determination not to return, 1 with a motive for residence more vital than commercial profit. In a pam- phlet printed by Brewster in 16 19, their purpose in leaving for America was denned: "That they might make way for and unite with others what in them lieth, whose consciences are grieved with the state of the Church in England." 2 A little later Winslow declared that they were leaving to show other Separatists "where they might live and comfortably subsist, and enjoy the like liberties with ourselves, being freed from antichris- 1 Robinson and Brewster to Sandys, Dec. 15, 161 7. Arber, Pilgrim Fathers, 285-286. 2 Euring, An Answer to Ten Counter Demands, quoted by Dexter, England and Holland of the Pilgrims, 578. The Great Achievement 161 tian bondage; keep their names and nation; and not only be a means to enlarge the dominions of our State, but of the Church of Christ also." 1 Of their extraordinary qualifications as home makers, they were thoroughly conscious, and Robinson and Brewster, writing to Sir Edwin Sandys on December 15, 161 7, enumerated them as an inducement to the Virginia Company to assist the enterprize. "We are well weaned/ ' said they, "from the delicate milke of our mother country; and enured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land: which yet, in a great parte we have by patience overcome. The people are, for the body of them, industrious & frugall, we thinke we may safly say, as any company of people in the world. ... It is not with us as with other men whom small things can discourage or small discontentments cause to wish them selves at home againe." They knew they were different in principle and in quality from the great bulk of men and women who had come to Amer- ica. They augured well from the fact. They felt that colonies had failed in America hitherto because men had come to live in factories and trading settlements, meant to be permanent, but not regarded either by the settlers or by the authorities in England as homes, as desirable residences. Those who came were lured by hope of profit, by love of adventure rather than by the expectation of a hard but useful life in a new country. 2 They had not severed themselves from the Old World nor yet thought of themselves as no longer part of it. They had failed because they had come as sojourners only and because their motives were sordid. Some indeed had been worthy, but they had failed for one 1 Winslow, Hypocrisy Unmasked, 89. 2 Bradford, History, 35. 1 62 The Pilgrims and their History reason or another to gain a foothold. The Pilgrims came to succeed in founding a home or to die in the attempt. 1 Even the Merchant Adventurers who financed them seem to have been impressed with this phase of the Pilgrim venture, and urged them, even in their own moments of greatest discouragement, to hold out and demonstrate that colonization was possible. "You have been instruments," they wrote in 1623, "to breake the ise for others who come after with less difficulty; the honour shall be yours to the world's end." 2 "We are still perswaded," they declared in December, 1624, in the discouraging letter that severed relations between them and the Pilgrims; "you are the people that must make a plantation in those remoate places when all others faile and returne." 3 They were right. The Pil- grims did succeed. They taught the English people to look upon America as a habitable and desirable home for those dissatisfied in England. In that fact lay the true germ of the United States of America. One other fact almost equally significant they also established. They came not at all to continue the sort of life they had led in Europe, to reproduce the same institutions they had known there, but to create a new commonwealth, "to live as a distincte body by them selves," as Bradford said, 4 to become, in the words of Robinson, "a body politic." 5 They brought with them 1 "Yea, though they should loose their lives in this action, yet might they have comforte in the same, and their endeavours would be honorable." Bradford, 35. See also, 96, 97. 2 Letter from thirteen of the Adventurers, Bradford, 174. 3 Bradford, 242. 4 History, 37. 5 Robinson's final letter of counsel spoke of "your intended course of Civil Community;" "whereas you are to become a Body The Great Achievement 163 the ideal of a new state, of a new "civil community," in which conditions political, religious, and legal should be different from those they had known in Europe. From their experience the Puritan leaders of the great emigra- tion to Boston drew in 1627 the conclusion that the English authorities were ready to grant practical local autonomy to intending colonists. The Pilgrims indeed had been seven years in New England and neither the English King or the English Church had evinced the slightest intention to interfere with their conduct of their own affairs. The Council of New England, their imme- diate superior, had put forth certain pretensions but had made no consistent attempt to make them good. Here lay the germ of the future independence of the United States. At the same time, we shall do well as students to recognize that neither the Pilgrims nor their contem- poraries in the least anticipated such an independent political community as the United States was in 1789. If we suppose that the Pilgrims came to forget that they . were Englishmen, to disavow their English allegiance, and to establish a state which should not fly the English flag or recognize the English King, we shall fall into a most grievous error. Indeed, was not their main object in leaving Holland to return to the English allegiance, to establish a community where their English habits and ways could be perpetuated under the English flag? The real difficulty lies in our failure to appreciate the fact that the notion of political independence and of popular Politic, using among yourselves Civil Government." Arber, Pilgrim Fathers, 404. The plan for the colony under Dutch aus- pices speaks of the Pilgrims' desire "to plant there a new Com- monwealth." Arber, 98. See also Hist. Mss. Com., 8th Report , Appendix, Part II, 45. 164 The Pilgrims and their History sovereignty, which underlay the constitution of the United States in 1789, was utterly foreign to the political thinking of seventeenth century England. There were perhaps a few students of Buchanan and Bodin who had some vague notion of sovereignty, 1 but the rank and file still thought in feudal terms, and their concept of in- dependence was based upon a distinction difficult for the modern world to appreciate. The Pilgrims were familiar with the manorial custom of Scrooby and with the practical immunity which they had enjoyed under the feudal Liberty, or exemption, owned by the Archbishop, from royal officers and courts and from county officers and courts. Allegiance they owed the King undoubtedly, as did the Archbishop; English citizens they clearly were; English nationality, language, habits they proudly owned; and saw no in- constancy in a frank and ready admission of all this feudal fealty with an entire autonomy in practical gov- ernment. This same practical immunity from active rule by royal officials they expected to achieve in America by reason of the distance, and saw in it no seeds of political independence nor of popular sovereignty, nor dreamed of a written constitution and legislation. That they would be a civil community of a new type they seem to have known; that their relation to the English crown would be perhaps anomalous they realized, but that it implied any disloyalty or any renunciation of fealty, they denied strenuously to those who complained that they were seeking to be "several lords and kings of themselves." 2 But they did prove that practical autonomy in civil government was to be had in the new 1 Brewster possessed a copy of Bodin. 2 Captain John Smith, True Travels, ed. 1629, 46. The Great Achievement 165 world, that it would carry with it a lack of control and supervision in ecclesiastical matters, a very real exemp- tion from anything more than nominal taxation. Em- boldened by their example, the Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony attempted a government literally independent of the Crown save for allegiance. The legal concept of the relation of those first colonies to the Crown, as they themselves conceived it, was that of free and common socage, of feudal relationship, of the old tenure, not of a new political expedient. Their economic success and their establishment of a civil government of their own were the direct causes of the colonization of New England on a great scale by the Puritans in the decade following 1627. Both proved to the Puritan leaders that men of wealth, of ability, of foresight, could easily, with the lessons of the Pilgrims to guide them, establish themselves in the New World safely and without apprehension of interference. The problem was simple, success was positive for a group as powerful and as wealthy as theirs, if as weak and poverty stricken a group as the Pilgrims had been able to survive. If therefore the founding of Boston and the expansion of New England became definitive facts in the history of the United States, if the strength of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its size became a guarantee of the per- manence of the English grasp of North America, the Pilgrims were their cause. With the motives leading individual Puritans to leave England, the Pilgrims had no immediate connection. They were themselves prod- ucts of the economic and ecclesiastical history of England" in the previous century, and not its cause. But it is perhaps not too much to say that had they not come, and had they not succeeded, the energy of the great emigra- 1 66 The Pilgrims and their History tion to Massachusetts would have expended itself else- where and the history of the world might perhaps have been different. The direct influence of the Pilgrims upon the leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony is definitely and clearly established. 1 Six, and in all probability nine, of the guarantors of the Bay Colony had been members of the Merchant Adventurers who financed the Pilgrims and who knew therefore intimately the whole story. Goffe was an intimate friend of Winthrop. Pocock came to the Colony and was Deputy Governor in Massachusetts under Winthrop. There can be no doubt that Cradock and other leaders of the Boston Colony corresponded with the Pilgrims, 2 saw Allerton in England, and secured details from him in regard to conditions in America. There was also Endicott at Salem, who was intimately acquainted with the Pilgrims for nearly two years before the Boston Colony sailed. Anyone who will read even casually the minutes of the meetings of the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay for 1628-1629, and who will study the elaborate lists of necessary materials to be brought for a settlement colony, will have no doubt that the experience of the Pilgrims was the essential fact guid- I ing those preparations. It is through Massachusetts, f through New England, and through all that New Eng- land stands for, that the influence of the Pilgrims has * been greatest. 1 Ames, Log of the Mayflower, 56-58; Arber, Pilgrim Fathers, 322. 2 Cradock sent a letter to Endicott by Allerton, Feb. 16, 1628, 1629, Young. Chronicles of Massachusetts Bay, 132. See also the General Instructions to Governor & Company, id., 156. See also, "A Catalogue of such needefull things as every Planter doth or ought to provide to go to New England," in Higginson's New England's Plantation. Salem, 1908, pp. 113-114. The Great Achievement 167 Many great achievements have been the work of men who understood vaguely if at all the significance of what. they had accomplished. Not so the Pilgrims. Even before they sailed the leaders seem to have had an inkling of the possible influence their success might have. In later years Bradford rejoiced " That with their miseries they opened a way to these new lands; and after these stormes, with what ease other men came to inhabite in them, in respecte of the calamities these men suffered." 1 Winslow, in 1623, writing back to England, declared "That when I seriously consider of things, I cannot but think that God hath a purpose to give that land, as an inheritance, to our nation." 2 Exultant, they quoted from Isaiah: "A little one becomes a thousand and a small one a great nation." 1 History, 165. Under the year 1630, he wrote: "So the light here kindled both to many, yea in a sorte to our whole nation," id., 332. Sherley wrote to Bradford on June 24, 1633, "For had not you and we joyned and continued togeather, New England might yet have been scarce knowne, I am persuaded, not so re- plenished and inhabited with honest English people, as now it is," id., 369. In 1654, Bradford indited a poem, which has been printed in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 1st Series, XI, 479, in which the following stanza occurs: "But them a place God did provide In wilderness, and did them guide. Unto the American shore Where they made way for many more. They broke the ice themselves alone And so became a stepping stone For all others, who in like case Were glad to find a resting place." 2 Written in 1623. Arber, Pilgrim Fathers, 581. CHAPTER XIII NEW PLYMOUTH IN NEW ENGLAND, 1627-1657 Unquestionably the period from 1627 to the death of Bradford in 1657 was that most characteristic of life in the Old Colony, as it now came to be called. The ideal of the leaders had been realized; they had established a commonwealth in accordance with God's Ordinances and saw around them positive assurance of its future pros- perity. The Adventurers had been bought out; title to the land was theirs; interference from King and Bishops had been avoided. The foundations of the Church seemed at last absolutely secure. They now undertook to shape the little community consciously in all its affairs and observances, political, economic, and social, as well as ecclesiastical, in accordance with what they under- stood to be God's direct commands. This is the char- acteristic period of life at Plymouth, the years in which the idealism of the earlier decades was impressed upon those men and women whose descendants so faithfully transmitted that abundant heritage to a great nation. To the study of that heritage we must presently devote considerable space. For three decades there is little to tell beyond the tale of a slow, steady growth during peaceful years given over to the developing of the land, to the raising of cattle, to the improvement of agriculture, and to the founding of new towns. Gradually, better houses re- placed those first erected; better furniture appeared; 168 New Plymouth in New England, 162J-1657 169 clothing improved in quality and in amount; many of the little luxuries of English life became more and more common. To the Pilgrims themselves nothing could well have been more important or satisfying than this dis- appearance of the evidences of long, grinding poverty, but those who come to study it later are inclined to pass it impatiently by, intent on wars and rumors of wars which afford more dramatic material. A few landmarks should be mentioned and beyond them there is little to tell of happenings at Plymouth. In 1629 the first minis- ter was "called" by the Pilgrims, an event in their eyes of stupendous import. In 1635, something like a code of law was attempted and in 1636 the form of government was crystallized, and laws embodying it were enacted by the General Court. From these years the political " constitution " of the colony dates. In 1638, came the Pequod War, to which the Pilgrims sent troops, by far the most important single venture undertaken in New England during that decade. The years 1639 and 1640 saw boundary disputes with Massachusetts, not settled for some decades, and the year 1640 the assignment of the Patent by Bradford to the freemen as a whole. The Undertakers also signified their willingness to surrender the monopoly of the Indian trade. The formation of the New England Confederation in 1643 regularized and stimulated constitutional relations with the more recent colonies. Beyond doubt the events next in importance were the loss of the four leaders to whom the colony had owed so much. Brewster died in 1643; Winslow left for England, never to return, in 1646; Standish died in 1656; and Bradford in 1657. Bradford's passing marked the end of an era in Pilgrim history and signified the triumph of changes in the character of life in the colony, * 170 The Pilgrims and their History which had been developing for two decades, but which had hitherto never been really apparent, much less dominant. The causes for the disappearance of the old Plymouth and for the rise of the new were fundamental and will presently engage our attention. There can be little question that the most important event in Pilgrim annals during this important period from 1627 to 1657 — far more significant in its effect upon Pilgrim life and ideals than anything which hap- pened within the limits of the Old Colony — was the founding and rapid growth of Massachusetts Bay and of the other New England colonies. Not infrequently we come to realize that the really momentous influences in the development of a people are events in the history of other nations, questions of relative rather than of posi- tive growth, the reflex and indirect results of vital happenings elsewhere, the relation of one community to those around it. It is not too much to say that the found- ing of Massachusetts Bay promptly altered in every conceivable respect the position of the Pilgrims at Plym- outh, and established beside them a new community of such vigor, size, and intellectuality as to dominate in- sensibly and in time to transform the ecclesiastical, political, and social ideals of the older but smaller and weaker entity. No direct influence or conscious dicta- tion was attempted, and the Pilgrims jealously watched for the slightest evidence of a disposition to interfere with their political or ecclesiastical independence and sternly, though politely, declined unsolicited offers of aid and assistance. The mere existence of the other colonies is the fact of which we must ever be conscious; Plymouth was no longer the largest settlement north of Jamestown, and that alone altered the value of every New Plymouth in New England, 1627-16 57 171 element in the economic, governmental, and ecclesiastical equation. New settlements sprang up on all sides of Plymouth after 1628. New England soon counted people by the hundred, cattle by the thousand, worldly goods and sup- plies by the shipload. In the twelve years subsequent to 1628 no less than two hundred vessels brought emigrants, cattle, property. As early as 1634, four thousand in- habitants were grouped in about twenty towns and villages near Boston, with not less than fifteen hundred head of cattle grazing in the fields and four thousand goats browsing on the hillsides. By 1640, there were in the Massachusetts Bay Colony alone sixteen thousand people. Thriving and populous towns had sprung up along the Connecticut River, around New Haven, in Central Massachusetts, while others only less populous were located on Rhode Island, at Providence, and in what is now New Hampshire and Maine. The significant fact is not alone the great number of people who came and the extent of their worldly possessions; the area of the land they preempted and the extent of it they were able to utilize is scarcely less remarkable. In twelve years the new colonies became so numerous and powerful that the combined influence of the French, the Dutch, the Indians was seen to be clearly unable to make head- way against them. The English language, English law and institutions became paramount on the soil of North America. As the Pilgrim colony was the first to seek a home in the New World, so this great exodus of the Puritans to America was the decisive and final step in its preemption for an English speaking nation. They came as literally complete communities, already possessed of all classes, 172 The Pilgrims and their History kinds, and sorts of people. Administrators, lawyers, doctors, clergy are well known to have come, but there were also farmers familiar with the soil, craftsmen to produce the necessary articles of husbandry and to do blacksmithing and iron work, artisans capable of under- taking most of the simple processes of manufacturing. Industry in any proper sense or manufacturing for ex- port they could hardly attempt for generations, but the new communities had been gathered together with a foresight, which made them ready to perform any task then regarded by Englishmen of that period as essential to life and happiness. Where at Plymouth, Fuller, the doctor, was the only one with professional training and he none too well educated as a doctor, even for that day, the professional men in Massachusetts were soon num- bered by the score. Alden was the only man at Plym- outh who really answered the description of mechanic, and he was at best no more than a cooper, and was quite incapable of undertaking the finer types of iron work. In Boston there were many able to perform most of the essential processes of blacksmithing and forging. We cannot be quite sure but Brewster seems to have been the only Pilgrim with a college career and he did not receive a degree, whereas in the first shiploads that came to Boston were many university men, and by 1639 about seventy university graduates, many of them men of real distinction, are known to have been in New England. In 1636 Harvard College was founded, at a time when it is probable that at Plymouth children were still being taught by Elder Brewster and some of the women, and taught nothing beyond the rudiments. Strong per- sonalities, rare at Plymouth, soon became numerous in the Puritan colonies. John Cotton, Roger Williams, New Plymouth in New England, 1627-1657 173 John Davenport, Thomas Hooker, John Eliot, were all ministers of more commanding ability, magnetism, and influence than any of the clergymen the Pilgrims were able to attract, while Winthrop, Dudley, Eaton, and Endicott were only a few of many laymen able to com- mand respect by their intelligence and grasp of legal and administrative issues. Indeed, more definite constitu- tional progress was made at Massachusetts Bay in four years than at Plymouth in twenty. The size of the colony alone forced the development of political institu- tions at Boston and brought to the fore instantly prob- lems which the small size of Plymouth allowed to remain dormant for decades. The effect of the expansion of New England upon New Plymouth was striking. Until 1630, the Pilgrim settle- ment had been the one stable and prominent colony along the coast, the one reliance of the many factories, where a few adventurers with perhaps a score of indented serv- ants were seeking to collect furs or to dry fish. To Plym- outh all these had looked for protection, for guidance, and, what was still more difficult for the Pilgrims to pro- vide, for supplies of food, of goods to trade with the Indians, and for guns and powder. So rapid was the change that within a year or two after the founding of Boston, New Plymouth found itself no longer a leader and scarcely an equal, already pushed somewhat to one side. Ten years later it was the smallest and least power- ful of a "congregation of plantations/' most of which already deserved the name of states, and the wealth, numbers, and ability of each of which were far greater than the Pilgrims ever dreamed of possessing. One would have expected this disparity to have awakened real jealousy and discontent at Plymouth. While we find 174 The Pilgrims and their History Bradford, Winslow, and Prence insisting upon due re- spect and theoretical equality in the various colonial councils, we find them all rejoicing at such growth and displaying genuine satisfaction that they themselves had been its cause. The history of New England is not a part of the sub- ject of this book. We are concerned only with the in- fluence of the Pilgrims on the other new New England colonies, and with the reciprocal influence of the newer colonies on the Pilgrims themselves. In a sense the re- mainder of our study will be concerned with this inter- action and reaction, but it may be well to indicate here that the direct influence of the Pilgrims on the other New England colonies and upon their institutions after 1630 was slight, though perhaps far from negligible. On the other hand, the influence of Boston upon Plymouth was very great, gaining in importance as the century con- tinued. Indisputably, the tendency was for the larger, abler, more wealthy, and better organized unit to impose insensibly and unconsciously something of its methods of thought and procedure upon the smaller, weaker, and less wealthy community. The loss of political independ- ence by New Plymouth in 169 1 was after all only the official recognition of a gradual absorption of the colony into Massachusetts Bay which became clearer and clearer after the death of Brewster and Bradford. It was not exactly that the authorities at Boston set out to influence New Plymouth or felt that conquest, eco- nomic, social, or ecclesiastical was desirable, but the characteristic differences between the smaller and the larger units, which were so clear in 1630, began in the decades after 1650 gradually to disappear. Something must presently be said as to the claim frequently made New Plymouth in New England, 1627-16 57 175 that the church organization of the other New England colonies was adopted or adapted from the organization v at Plymouth. Here in all probability the Pilgrim idea predominated. The resultant unit, the Massachusetts of the Revolution, was neither Puritan nor Pilgrim, but a fusing of the two. The founding of Boston at once changed beyond all recognition the problems of defense, of subsistence, and of profit at Plymouth. The size and importance of the Bay Colony made the problem of defense for evermore subsidiary and unimportant. As for subsistence, there was now always within easy reach food and European supplies more than sufficient to meet any possible de- mands of the Pilgrims. Starvation and want became impossible. Indeed, so much greater were the resources * of the Bay Colony that the Pilgrims might easily have drawn from it luxuries in an overabundance had they been inclined or able. There was again created at once at their door a market for what the Pilgrims themselves had to sell and a source of supply for what they wished to buy. The dependence of Plymouth on England was practically ended and the failure of one voyage or the miscarriage of plans could no longer have serious results. Very soon indeed an active interchange of visits and trade sprang up between Plymouth and the Bay Colony towns. 1 The relations between the two were dominated 1 The evidence for the extent and character of the relations of the Pilgrims with the other New England colonies is more frag- mentary, casual, and scattered than we could wish, but of itself, considering the extraordinary fulness of the records of the Bay Colony, must indicate a connection by no means extensive, regular, or systematic. This is precisely what we might expect from the- rigid "separatism" attempted at Plymouth and the anxiety there to maintain absolute equality and independence with the newer 176 The Pilgrims and their History by the spirit of cooperation between brothers and equals. There was a certain amount of dispute and bickering over boundaries and over fishing rights at Cape Ann and in Maine, but on the whole the Pilgrims had little to com- plain of in the treatment accorded them by the new- comers. Winthrop and Dudley manifested the utmost respect for Bradford's counsel and advice, and Bradford was not slow himself to call upon Winthrop for legal suggestion in the case of Billington, who was accused of murder and was eventually executed. Fuller was sent to aid the sick at Salem in 1628-1629 and the Pilgrims on occasion received aid in dealing with undesirable char- acters, and, on occasion, gave it. Morton of Merrimount reappeared; Sir Christopher Gardner and Samuel Gorton were dealt with by cooperative action. A brisk trade in cattle very soon sprang up and the purchase in Boston by the Pilgrims of European goods, paid for in cattle and grain. Winslow seems to have developed something like a business in pasturing cattle and swine, sent down cross country from Boston. Before long the Pilgrims were paying merchants in England with bills of exchange drawn on Boston. As the years went on this method of exchange became more and more common. Indeed, from the first travel between the various little groups in New England had been active. Many of the first fur-trading groups visited Plymouth and the Pil- grims themselves looked in during the first year or two but stronger colonies. Bradford tells us a good deal in a casual way and something more can be gleaned from the letters of Brad- ford and Winslow to Winthrop in the Winthrop Papers, printed in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th Series, VI, 156-184. The records and histories of the Bay Colony itself are singularly lacking in references to Plymouth. ELIZABETH PADDY WENSLEY New Plymouth in New England, 162J-165J 177 upon all of the settlements on the New England coast. As soon as the Bay Colony was founded various mem- bers of both began changing residence. There was the whole wilderness to choose from, so that a man, dis- satisfied with the land, water, woods, or companions in one place, found it a simple matter to transport himself and his goods to another. The population was really % much more fluid in early New England than we com- monly credit. A good many men were born in Plymouth, grew up in Boston or Lynn, lived a while in Rhode Island, Connecticut, or New York, paid a visit to Virginia, and died somewhere else. The movement which founded New England was distinctly and decidedly one of immigration on a large scale, and was characterized by the movement of large, groups of people rather than of individuals. Whole communities arose in England and transplanted them- selves bodily with such of their possessions as could be moved. Towns, already settled and organized near Boston, grew dissatisfied and moved themselves and their belongings to the Connecticut River Valley. Noth- ing short of this movement of great masses of people and the resort to them in a continual stream of smaller groups could have created so rapidly such considerable colonies. Of this type of movement nearly all the New England colonies except Plymouth were the result. Even Rhode Island grew faster in numbers than Plym- outh, which to the end was primarily the result of the slow, natural growth of a population, which came in the first years, and of the slow development of the natural resources of the district by the labor of its first comers. The original investment in money and goods was cal- culated in 1627 at about £7000, and after 1630 there was 178 The Pilgrims and their History only a very gradual accession of people or of capital. Plymouth was the result of the unremitting toil of a small group of people upon a definite location. Unquestion- ably, it was an economic success, a fact regarding which more will be said presently, but the rate of growth in population and in wealth, in the increased acreage of farms and in the size of the fur trade could not be greater without the accession of large numers of people. Ship- load after shipload came from England and settled else- where. Why did these immigrants not come to Plym- outh? This is perhaps the most fundamental and essential inquiry in Pilgrim history. Why should only individuals have resorted to Plymouth? * Why should the little body of men and women who began the colony have been the only large group of settlers, and the men and women of 1691, with few exceptions, people of the second generation, themselves born in America? The inquiry is by no means simple, and contains the secret of the history of the colony after 1630. The first fact to emphasize — though perhaps not neces- sarily the most important in answer to this question — is the alteration of the strategic position of Plymouth by 1 This distinction should not be exaggerated into the statement, that there was no emigration to Plymouth. There were always a considerable number of newcomers in the colony, but the ma- jority did not remain there, migrating more or less promptly to Boston or Connecticut, less commonly to Rhode Island. In the western parts of the patent, thriving towns grew up but were founded usually by settlers from the Bay Colony who introduced Puritan ideas and institutions. The Pilgrims looked at them askance, for they truly saw them to be aliens whose increase would endanger the predominance of the town of Plymouth, if not the perpetuation of the ideas for which they had already sacrificed so much. New Plymouth in New England, 1627- 1657 179 the expansion of New England. Its economic oppor- tunities were not comparable after 1630 with those to be found elsewhere. It occupied no strategic position for trading, for agriculture, or for communication. The location had been selected without relation to the future development of the country and to the part which the colony might play in it. Indeed, the Pilgrims were at first seeking seclusion and hoped to locate at a distance from other colonies, on a spot which others would not wish to utilize; and, though at first in a hurry to find some place to winter, did not later, when they could easily have done so, move the settlement to some better loca- tion. Once more we find the clue in the original plan of founding a colony to be maintained from England with the proceeds of the fish, furs, and lumber sent back from America. No great accession of people was expected or desired. Agriculture on a large scale was not contem- plated until the colony was already deeply rooted. Plymouth itself had been selected chiefly because the first comers were too few and too weak to clear a large acreage of new land. Its fields were for that very reason "old land." The soil, never perhaps very fertile, had been exhausted by constant cropping and only by regular and perhaps excessive fertilization could be made to yield at all. Around Plymouth itself there was abundant good water, but the rest of the land granted by the patent was too level to drain well, and there were in consequeifce a good many marshes and bogs, as well as a goodly area of sand. There was too much better land elsewhere in New England for agriculturists to seek Plymouth in great numbers. For their first purposes the harbor had seemed ex- cellent and strategically located. They had expected 1 80 The Pilgrims and their History to use nothing larger than small sailing ships of from thirty to eighty tons and for such craft Plymouth har- bor was deep enough and large enough. But it was too shallow and too small to be used as a rendevous for fishing or trading fleets and never could become an emporium for trade with England or with the Atlantic Coast. Nor was it located strategically in relation to the supply of fish and fur after 1640. The Indian population of Massachusetts had been sadly decimated in 161 7 and the gatherers of furs were few; the fur-bearing animals themselves had never been numerous and a decade of constant hunting between 1620 and 1630 had depop- ulated the woods; and the newer colonies occupied better positions than Plymouth for the control of such fur- trade as there was left. The Pilgrims were at once thrown back upon their fishing station at Cape Ann and upon the fur-trading station in Maine. They were now unable to export to England from their own immediate vicinity, and other colonies were better placed than they for the trade of the Grand Banks and of the Maine coast. Nor was Plymouth on the natural line of communica- tions which emigration itself from one spot to another could follow. The Charles River valley was the true road to the interior of Massachusetts and Boston controlled it. The Merrimac valley was the true road to the interior of northern Massachusetts and New Hampshire, and Salem and Newburyport controlled it. The direct road between the Charles River valley and Narragansett Bay passed Plymouth by. The colony was therefore unable to benefit from the passage of settlers elsewhere, to serve as an outlet for their trade, or as a rendezvous for ships directed to them. Nor must the limited area assigned by the patent of 1630 be forgotten. There was not within New Plymouth in New England, 1627-16 57 181 its limits room for any considerable number of people, nor within the whole district enough arable land of good quality to have made possible the reception at Plym- outh of such a colony as Hooker's, or even the ad- dition of such a group as Williams soon gathered at Providence. The extent of the disadvantages of the first site had become clear to Standish and Alden as early as 163 1 and they had in consequence removed to more fertile land at Duxbury, in the teeth of strenuous opposition from their associates. They carried with them Brewster's two children, Collier, already a wealthy man, and others of importance. Brewster himself soon followed them. The General Court decreed in the following year that Plym- outh should always be the seat of Government and that the Governor should reside there, but the removals and defections continued. Bradford stood stoutly for the maintenance of Church and Government at Plymouth and for the time prevailed. But year by year the agita- tion was renewed; and finally in 1644, after long and u vehement debates, the majority voted to abandon the old site altogether and move to Nauset. Bradford, though outvoted, though deprived of the support of the other leaders already themselves deserters, determined to end his days at Plymouth, if he lived there alone. Thereupon, a goodly number decided to abide with him. The remainder, led by several men of prominence, in- cluding Prence, Bradford's real successor, did leave Plymouth and founded the town of Eastham, upon a location fully as disadvantageous as Plymouth ex- cept for the quality of the soil. Of the leaders, Bradford and Howland alone were left in the first settlement. Bradford's sorrow over this exodus found 182 The Pilgrims and their History expression in a poem, "A Word to Plymouth," written in 1654. "O Poor Plymouth, how dost thou moan, Thy children are all from thee gone, And left thou art in widow's state, Poor, helpless, sad and desolate." This lack of strategic position — the immediate result of the founding of the other New England colonies — was not the most important or most significant fact in ex- plaining the failure of immigrants to settle at Plymouth itself or within the limits of the colony. The true reasons were ecclesiastical, governmental, economic, and social, and deserve treatment at considerable length. CHAPTER XIV THE DOMINANT NOTE AT PLYMOUTH The ecclesiastical ideas of the Pilgrims are the key to the comprehension of their history and can be properly understood only in the light of the history of dissent in England both before and after the Pilgrim exodus. They alone explain the fundamental problems in Pilgrim an- nals — the emigration to Holland and to America; the aloofness of Plymouth from the other New England colonies; the failure of large bodies of new immigrants to locate under the Pilgrim patent; the peculiar features of political, social, and economic life; the inclusion of Plym- outh within Massachusetts in 1691. The dominant note of Plymouth was struck by the Church and not by the State. There was to be a commonwealth founded upon "God's Ordinances" and not upon the devices of men. The Pilgrims were not merely Separatists but a peculiar variety of Separatists. The truth seems to be that at the time they left England they represented the radical wing of English Protestant dissent. Immediately after their exodus, both wings of the dissenting party ceased to develop along the lines they had chosen and espoused ideas either more conservative or more radical than theirs. The object of the Pilgrims was in fact to crystallize and perpetuate in the New World what we now see to have been a transitional phase of the Puritan movement in England. It is only in recent years that the necessary evidence has come to light for the study of this first phase of the 183 184 The Pilgrims and their History Puritan movement. 1 Its first effective form was the Classis Movement of 1582 to 1592. They felt that the true interpretation of primitive Christianity had then been found and vested the governmental authority in the Classis of ministers, which was to define doctrine, to perform various acts of discipline, to choose and con- secrate new ministers, to appoint them to their places, and the like. The Classis on the whole assumed the duties which the Bishops had performed, but for the laity there was as little place as in Episcopacy. If they had been ruled, directed, and instructed by the Bishops, they were to be none the less subordinate to the Classis. While there was in these early years a very general feeling that the Episcopacy was without warrant of Scripture and was therefore to be denounced and supplanted, there was also an almost universal belief that the Church could and should be transformed rather than destroyed. The method which seems to have met most favor was the vesting of Episcopal authority in the Classis, of which the Bishop should become a fellow member on terms of substantial equality with the ministers. A variety of suggestions and changes were considered which made him something better than an equal, but in general the Classis, and not the Bishop, was to exercise the authority. The characteristic element in this phase of the Puritan movement lay however in the retention, substantially intact, of the existing Church organization and of the great bulk of the existing observances and ritual. Stress was laid upon the change or toleration of "things in- 1 Usher, R. G., Presbyterian Movement in the Reign of Queen Elizabeth, London, 1905; and Reconstruction of the English Church, 2 vols. New York and London, 1910; Burrage, C, Early English Dissenters, 2 vols., Cambridge, 191 2. The Dominant Note at Plymouth 185 different," such as the sign of the cross in Baptism, the use of the ring in marriage, the wearing of the surplice, as changes highly desirable but perhaps not vital. For this transformation of Church government and for this change of practice and doctrine, the Puritan movement agitated with more or less energy and directness from about 1582 to 1604, when this phase of the movement culminated in the presentation of the Puritan cause at the Hampton Court Conference. This definition of aims by the bulk of the Puritan party promptly led to the espousal of more radical ideas by the minority, which itself split up into several groups led by Brown, Ainsworth, Johnson and others. Most of them urged the rejection of Bishops altogether and the separation from the Church as a thing unworthy and unclean. There should be no paltering or compromising with the heritage of Popes. It should all be swept away and something better put in its place. The new Church government espoused by the radicals made place for the opinions of the laity in the choice of the ministers and even in the formulation of the creed, a fact of the utmost consequence. To these radical groups the Scrooby Church belonged. It was, however, organized at a period when many of these radicals had already left England for Holland and had separated not only from the Church but from the main body of the Puritans as well. It was a time moreover when the majority of the Puritans were to be tested for the staunchness of their faith, and when they were about, as the Pilgrims themselves would have said, to sell their Master for thirty pieces of silver and be branded with the mark of the Beast. In 1 604- 1 605, Archbishop Bancroft forced the issue of separation from the Church or conformity to its ob- 1 86 The Pilgrims and their History servances upon the reluctant Puritans. Those who would not conform were to be deprived of their benefices and there should be little if any toleration of tender con- sciences. Thus went forth the fiat. There is no fact in Pilgrim annals so important as the conformity of the overwhelming majority of the Puritan party at this time. They did accept the laws and observances of the Established Church. They found that they preferred to remain within it, even at some little cost, rather than to leave it. The few who were deprived, the more con- siderable number who were threatened with deprivation, nearly all conformed within three years, read the prayer- book, wore the surplice, followed the observances of the Church, and retained their benefices. The Puritan movement in England therefore continued as a movement within the Church and the gulf between them and the Pilgrims was already in 1608 impassable, for the Pilgrims regarded as the very foundation of ecclesiastical polity the separation from the English Church. As time went on the main body of the Puritans came to feel an attach- ment for the Established Church just as the Pilgrim de- testation of it was intensified; came to possess a real ap- proval of its position, doctrine, and observances as the Pilgrim disapproval became more and more vehement. Those who came to New England in 1630 and after from the main body of the Puritans were not men who could sympathize with the views of the Pilgrims on Church government or whom the Pilgrims on their own part were willing to see settle at Plymouth. The minority of the Puritan party had already by 1608 split up into a number of groups, some of which were already abroad, and all of which continued to develop doctrinal ideas which had not been approved, and in the The Dominant Note at Plymouth 187 majority of instances not even considered, by the Eng- lish parties in the decade 1595 to 1605, in which the Scrooby Church seems to have had its origin. One and all these radicals maintained an entire separation from the English Church. With practical unanimity they accorded the laity a share in Church government and discipline, and in particular in the choice of the ministry gave them voice. But, while the Pilgrims clung with an almost passionate devotion to the essentially negative doctrinal platform of the years 1590 and 1605, all other English sects, who could bring themselves to separate from the Church, proceeded to divagate in doctrine from the Church itself, from the main body of the Puritan party still in England, and from their own earlier doc- trinal ideas. Questions of Baptism by immersion, the nature of the Eucharist, and a number of other issues of the first importance and complexity kept these little groups constantly in turmoil and dissension. Already before the Pilgrims reached Leyden, the earlier doctrinal position was assailed in the English Churches at Amster- dam and the change continued apace in the years the Pilgrims were in Holland. Indeed, they left Amsterdam to escape contamination and eventually departed for New England that they might be alone to develop their own particular ideas, choosing the wilderness because it seemed impossible to find anywhere in England or Hol- land a body of people who thought exactly as they did. The potent fact is that none of those reaching the New World after 1620 professed that precise variety of dissent which the Pilgrims themselves were seeking to crystallize and perpetuate. The Pilgrims represented a transitional phase of the great Protestant movement, one whose duration in England itself was short, and they found V 1 88 The Pilgrims and their History themselves isolated, stranded, pushed to one side by the subsequent development of Protestantism both in Eng- land and in America. They maintained unflinchingly at Plymouth an ideal which had long ceased to have a numerous following in England. Here is the secret of that lack of numerical growth at Plymouth: there was no normal constituency in England or America from which they could draw adherents. Other religious malcontents found there no congenial atmosphere. On the other hand, there were plenty of colonies willing to absorb the Pilgrims' own dissenters. The Pilgrims seem to have caught up a passing phase of the religious transition in England at a time when events were moving rapidly. They had found them- selves at Scrooby practically isolated from other Puritan bodies and had therefore continued the primary impulse without subsequent modification by the thought and controversy which changed so greatly the other Puritan bodies. They were not part of the Puritan movement and disliked it. When they found at Amsterdam that contact with the English Churches there was likely to modify their ideas, they fled. They developed at Leyden quite alone and again at Plymouth quite alone. They had thus nourished in isolation a position which was itself a negation, nothing more than an uncompromising hostility to the Established Church of England and to the ordination of Bishops. They had also reached the con- clusion that certain practices observed in England must not be performed, but otherwise in discipline, doctrine, and observances, they waited for further illumination. Their position was at once too uncompromising and too fluid. They had rejected the one Church and declined to accept the substitutes. The Dominant Note at Plymouth 189 Nor did they occupy in America a logical and defensi- ble position. In England, face to face with an Estab- lished Church, the denial of its principles and of its diving authority was a practical creed, capable of creating a tie of association, but in the New World, far from Estab- lished Churches, far from Bishops who were not menacing them, who had indeed forgotten about them, it became artificial and forced. Always a disruptive tendency rather than a cohesive force, it had separated them from the English Church rather than established them in a position of their own. It looked backward and not for- , ward; it was destructive rather than constructive of a vital entity, endowed with energy of its own. For the generation of Bradford the old contention had real meaning, but for the second and third generations the bond became too weak to retain their allegiance, and certainly could not provide attractions for others looking for a positive and not a negative Christianity. Nowhere does this isolation of the Pilgrims reveal itself more clearly than in their difficulties in finding a minister. In accordance with the agreement, Robinson, the pastor, had remained at Leyden and those who sailed on the Mayflower had been accompanied by Elder Brewster as Teacher. He expounded the Scriptures and held services of prayer and praise, but was forbidden by their previous conclusions to expound doctrine, to baptize, or to cele- brate the communion. As Robinson's departure from Leyden was year by year deferred, and as the desirability of celebrating the "communion at Plymouth became more and more obvious, Brewster wrote to inquire from Robinson whether he might not in the interim safely perform this vital service for the Pilgrim community. Robinson had replied with an unequivocal negation: no 190 The Pilgrims and their History teacher might arrogate to himself the function of a minister. 1 When the news of Robinson's death in 1625 dashed the hope so long deferred, it is surprising that the Pilgrims did not exercise their power as a Church to call Brewster to the ministry. We know directly nothing whatever, but it seems probable that Brewster himself opposed the step and there was no other Pilgrim who possessed even primary qualifications. The Church organization of the Pilgrims was indeed flexible. They considered themselves possessed of the power to ordain a minister and to choose all Church officers, to draw up for themselves a creed and to enact all necessary ecclesiastical legislation. They distin- guished sharply,, however, between the Church and the congregation. The former consisted of those adults who had been accepted by the others as consecrated to the service of God and able to give testimony of their faith. The congregation on the other hand included all in- habitants who did not decidedly espouse some other worship. The Church was the governing and disciplinary body and governed the rest. Its organization was voluntary and it seems to have possessed at Scrooby, at Leyden and in the early years at Plymouth, no financial organization. Contributions were made for the minister's support at Plymouth in land, food, and clothes, but there is no evidence that Brewster or any other worker was paid in the ordinary sense of the word until 1655. 2 None the less the Pilgrims were nonplussed to find a 1 Bradford, History, 200. 2 S. S. Green, Use of the Voluntary System in the Maintenance of Ministers in the Colonies of Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay, American Antiquarian Society Proceedings, April, 1886. Sep- arately printed, Worcester, Mass., 1886. The Dominant Note at Plymouth 191 minister. When Allerton went to England on business in 1626-1627, he was to find a clergyman, but experienced such difficulties in securing anyone whose views seemed to harmonize with theirs, that he finally brought back with him a man who soon gave clear proof of insanity. Early in 1629 a boat load of Pilgrims, returning from a trading expedition, found a Mr. Ralph Smith at a strag- gling settlement on the coast. He had migrated from England with his family and was much discontented where he was, and, understanding that he had once been a minister, they brought him to Plymouth and allotted him a house and land. After some months they chose him minister. He was an eminently good and respectable man, but infinitely inferior to Brewster and to Winslow, who seems on occasion to have officiated. A few years later there came a man of "many precious parts" in the person of Roger Williams. He had landed at Boston, where having some words with Winthrop and others, packed up his goods and departed. At Plymouth he was well received; he liked the people and was liked. He speedily proved his ability as a clergyman and was called to the ministry. For a while all went well, but soon he seems to have taken it upon himself to administer some "sharp admonitions and reproofs" to the leaders, and to have propounded some of those opinions for which he was later expelled from Massachusetts Bay and for which he became famous at Providence. He was " Godly and zealous" the Pilgrims agreed, but "very unsettled in judgment," and after a time migrated to Salem. 1 Brad- ford charitably concludes his account in his History with 1 He left behind him an unpaid debt to Fuller, the Pilgrim doc- tor, for professional services, which Fuller "freely presented to him" in his will. Mayflower Descendant, I, 28, 1633. 192 The Pilgrims and their History the words, "He is to be pitied and prayed for and so I shall leave the matter and desire the learned to shew him his errors and reduse him into the way of truth and give him a setled judgment and constancie in the same; for I hope he. belongs to the Lord and that he will shew him mercie." For some time after Williams' departure, they were without other ministrations than those of Smith and finally, perhaps growing tired of him, perhaps coming to some difference of opinion with him, they induced John Reynor to emigrate from England and become their clergyman. After a short trial, rinding him like his predecessor mediocre in ability and temperament, they induced a really capable and magnetic personality, Charles Chauncey, to come to them from England. Un- questionably a learned and able man, the very sort of a man they needed most at Plymouth, he at once proved, like other energetic characters, to have proceeded in his thinking in a somewhat "irregular" direction. Soon he began to preach the necessity of baptism by immersion. They argued with him at great length, loath to let him go ; called upon the Boston and Connecticut clergy for assist- ance. They were quite willing that he should hold such views about baptism as he wished, but he would not agree to stay with them, unless they were willing to admit that the tenet was as essential as he thought it to be. He went to Scituate where after a time of prosperity his Church again fell into controversy and dissolved. Reynor stayed with the Plymouth Church until 1654, when for thirteen years there was at Plymouth itself no pastor, Elder Cushman holding services as Brewster had in the first years. It is hardly possible to overemphasize the importance The Dominant Note at Plymouth 193 of the fact that the Plymouth Church was an attempt to crystallize a transitional step in the development of English dissent. Consequently they found themselves isolated, unable to increase their strength because there was no larger body of believers from whom they might draw adherents. So far as they could discover after 1630, there was not in all England one man of real ability who believed as they did, nor were there any laymen of real ability who came to Plymouth in any number to strengthen the Pilgrim state. True, the ability and commanding personality of Brewster and of Bradford was sufficient to maintain the original position during their lives, and to make Plymouth a decidedly uncomfortable spot for able men of different ecclesiastical persuasion, but the result could only be to preserve the position dur- ing their lives to lose it beyond a peradventure at their deaths. They bequeathed both Church and State to men who were intellectually too weak and too lacking in magnetism to maintain their peculiar ecclesiastical posi- tion against the strong current of opinion in the other New England Churches, there exemplified, as in England itself, by men of the first caliber. Of Pilgrim practice and belief aside from Church government we have comparatively few reliable indica- tions. About Robinson's ideas both before and after the exodus, we have the fullest possible details, but Robin- son's opinions changed from year to year and exactly what version of them Brewster taught at Plymouth we do not know. Of the precise theological angle of Smith and Reynor we know still less. The first Church cov- enant of the Pilgrims we have, but it does not greatly assist us. "In the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ and in obedience to his holy will and divine ordinances. Wee 194 The Pilgrims and their History being by the most wise and good providence of God brought together in this place and desirous to unite our selves into one congregation or church under the Lord Jesus Christ our Head, that it may be in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath redeemed and sanc- tifyed to himselfe, wee doe hereby solemnly and relig- iously (as in his most holy presence) avouch the Lord Jehovah the only true God to be our God and the God of ours and doe promise and binde ourselves to walke in all our wayes according to the Rule of the Gospel and in all sincere conformity to His holy ordinances and in mutuall love to and watchfullnesse over one another, depending wholly and only upon the Lord our God to enable us by his grace hereunto." 1 No doubt the majority of these statements refer to Church government and there is certainly as far as doctrine is concerned nothing in it explicit. We do know that the Pilgrims were stout Calvinists of a conservative angle, believed in predestina- tion, and in the doctrine of the elect, and in all implied by both. 2 Brewster possessed a considerable library, chiefly of expository works; 3 several men owned Cahirfs 1 This the First Church declared in 1676 was the original Church Covenant, so far as men alive remembered it or notes or letters could establish it. Plymouth First Church Records, I, printed in full in Mayflower Descendant, V, 214-215. 2 John Cotton, Jr., wrote to Mather on December 11, 1676, be- wailing " the power of Satan in hurrying soules to hell through di- vine permission." It would seem that the conservatism of Robinson before 1620 had not been forgotten. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th Series , VIII, 241. 3 A careful reprint of the original list is in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 2nd Series, III, 261-274. In Ibid., V, 37-85, is a careful identifica- tion of these entries by H. M. Dexter. There were three hundred and two English books and sixty- two Latin; ninety-eight exposi- tory, sixty-three doctrinal, sixty-nine practical religious books, The Dominant Note at Plymouth 195 Institutes, the writings of St. Augustine, and the majority of theological tracts published in England of Puritan and Separatist persuasion before 1620, with some books of later date. Unfortunately, the libraries were too varied in character to enable us to conclude anything in regard to the theological views of the men who owned them. Of their ideas regarding the Godhead, the Trinity, the substances in the communion (the word eucharist they deemed Popish and offensive) we know nothing. 1 While they objected to the surplice, their ministers and elders wore a black gown with a white band, after the fashion of the French and Genevese. Winslow was imprisoned in England in 1635 for marrying people by virtue of his authority as mag- istrate. 2 We are quite sure that they "called" their ministers and made Fuller, the doctor, deacon, 3 but by what pre- twenty-four historical, thirty-six "ecclesiastical," six philosophical, fourteen poetical, fifty-four miscellaneous. The dates of publica- tion seemed to Dr. Dexter most significant: fully seventy-five per cent were earlier than 1620, but the remainder were published in the years between 162 1 and 1643, every year being represented except 1639 and 1642, and prove that Brewster continued to buy books. There was a treatise on timber, another on silk-worms (at Plymouth!), a volume of George Wither's poetry, Bodin, Bacon, Aristotle, Machiavelli, but no Shakespeare. x In 1666, complaint was made to the Court of the "horrible blasphemy" "that Christ as God is equall with the Father but as Mediator the Father is greater than hee." This is not very solid ground for deductions covering Pilgrim belief on the Trinity. Plymouth Colony Records, IV, 112. The Records to 1650 contain nothing on such points. 2 Bradford, History, 390-393. 3 Over this, Morton made very merry in his New English Canaan (Prince Soc), 297. They chose a man "that long time had bin nurst up in the tender bosome of the Church; one that had speciall 196 The Pilgrims and their History cise ceremony we do not know. There is every reason to believe that the real calling consisted in the trying test of long weeks and months of association, and not in any particular event. No doubt the candidate also made public confession of his faith, answered questions put to him by the older men at some stated and formal meeting, at which his calling was to be ratified. Surely their minds had been made up about the candidate before the formal election. Undoubtedly they judged his efficiency from such information as they had and tol- erated no opinions other than their own. Previous ordination was for them worthless. The laity were ad- mitted to fellowship in the Church only after stringent tests in private and in public. If we can judge at all from what was said in a later generation when the prac- tice was abandoned, one qualification upon which they rigidly insisted was the ability of the candidate to give an account of his faith publicly and orally, assuredly a trying test for many a good soul. The religious meetings were held first in the cabin of the Mayflower, probably throughout the first winter, though the first service was held on shore in the Common House in March, 162 1. Then they used the lowest story of the new fort, which they finished in 1623, until about 1648, when the first meeting house was built at the back of Bradford's garden at the foot of the hill below the fort. The room or meeting house must have been simple in the extreme. We have no knowledge of the use of a pulpit at first; the Teacher or Minister probably stood and his congregation sat around him on stools or benches. gifts: hee could wright and reede; nay more: he had tane the oath of abjuration which is a speciall stepp, yea and a maine degree unto preferment." The Dominant Note at Plymouth 197 He prayed with his head uncovered, they stood with bowed heads, and they all closed their eyes during the prayer, a practice which visitors remarked as unusual. 1 For the Communion they probably used a table, brought from some one's house perhaps, though whether they knelt to receive or sat we have no authentic hint. Some dissenting bodies did, others did not. Baptism was per- formed in any part of the Church convenient, from some ordinary basin or dish. The use of a particular vessel would have seemed to them to smack of the ceremonies of the Established Church. The head of the child or adult was sprinkled with a little water from the fingers of the minister, who probably did not touch the child and certainly did not make the sign of the cross. They used in service the Geneva version of the Bible and Ains- worth's Psalms, which they sang in unison without the accompaniment of any musical instrument. The Dutchman, De Rasieres, told of their method of marching to service on Sundays and holidays. "They assemble by beat of drum, each with his musket or fire- lock in front of the captain's door; they have their cloaks on and place themselves in order three abreast and are led by a sergeant without beat of drum; behind comes the Governor in a long robe; beside him on the right hand comes the Preacher with his cloak on, and on the left hand, the Captain with his side-arms and cloak on, and with a small cane in his hand; and so they march in good order and each sets his arms down near him." 2 This was in 1627. A few years later Governor Winthrop, x Arber, Pilgrim Fathers, 294; Bradford, History, 493; Morton, New English Canaan, Prince Soc, 334. This is a very obscure point, however. 2 Reprinted in full in Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, 308. 198 The Pilgrims and their History Pastor Winslow of the Boston Church, and some others, paid a visit to Plymouth and attended Church on Sunday forenoon. During the afternoon a further service was held, at which the guests from Boston listened with such composure as they might to Roger Williams, who had left them under somewhat strained circumstances the year before. Williams "propounded" a question in Puritan phrase. Pastor Smith then "expounded" it, after which Williams "prophesied," that is to say, preached. Bradford spoke and was followed by Elder Brewster and other Pilgrims. Winthrop was then in- vited to speak and was followed by Pastor Winslow. Deacon Fuller then reminded the people of the blessed- ness of giving; whereupon Bradford solemnly rose, proceeded to the Deacon's seat, deposited his offer- ing, and the others in order of prominence followed him. In the modern sense of the word, the Pilgrims were perhaps not tolerant, but surely a great deal of miscon- ception has prevailed about their intolerance, and an amount of praise has been accorded others which they do not deserve. Certainly they did not allow people of all shades of opinion, of all walks of life, and of all va- rieties and conditions to reside permanently within their jurisdiction. In fact no man or woman was allowed to remain overnight without explicit permission, and those who proved themselves obnoxious in any way were promptly expelled without hesitation or delay. The Quakers received no charitable handling at Plymouth. At the same time the Pilgrims were hospitable to a fault and did give temporary refuge readily to all sorts, kinds, and conditions of men. If their rule seems unyielding, must be remembered that it was enforced by Bradford The Dominant Note at Plymouth 199 in a very elastic and flexible way, with a serious attempt to mete out justice to all. So far as we know, while the Pilgrims were the only considerable settlement on the coast, no one was turned away, however unworthy, and many were kept for months of whom the Pilgrims would have been glad to rid themselves. In later years, when the other settlements outnumbered the Pilgrims ten to one, and there was little if any chance of people not finding refuge, the Pilgrims were less ready to permit those of whom they did not approve to make more than temporary visits to the jurisdiction. They were cer-\ tainly as tolerant as any men of their time and under the circumstances perhaps more so than others. At the same time, we shall much misrepresent them, if we suppose for an instant that they came to America in order to promulgate the idea that anyone might come to Plymouth and think what he liked, or to found a refuge for people who wished to disagree with them. On the contrary, they came to escape the necessity of tolerating those who disagreed with them, in the hope that they might be able to erect in America a temporal organization sufficiently strong to keep divergent minds at something better than arm's length. With that in- tention the age was entirely in sympathy. Toleration was not then believed to be a virtue and the conduct of Bradford at Plymouth is the exact counterpart of that of Winthrop at Boston, of Eaton and Davenport at New Haven, and of Oliver Cromwell in England. Toleration was then in the making and these men were making it. To it none contributed more than the Pilgrims, but they themselves did not know it, and would have denied it with asperity and vehemence, if they had been charged with it. 200 The Pilgrims and their History Bibliographical Notes Pilgrim Church History. The excessive fear of interference from England and the determination to provide no prima facie evidence of failure to conform to the requirements of the Established Church perhaps explains the decision of the Pilgrims to keep no church records. The first section of the records of Plymouth First Church consists of the manuscript of Morton's New England's Memorial, most of which was based upon Bradford's History and the rest of which is utterly unreliable. The records proper begin in 1667 with Cotton's pastorate and have been printed in the Mayflower Descendant, IV, V, VIII, etc. The histories and literature of the New England Churches in general either omit Plymouth altogether or barely mention it. Neither Lechford's Plaine Dealing (Trumbull's Ed.) nor Morton's New English Canaan (Prince Soc.) distinguished between Pilgrim and Puritan practice, and devote only brief paragraphs to the former. There is some material in J. Cotton, Way of the Churches of Christ in New England, London, 1645, but the extent and accuracy of his information on Plymouth is open to question. John Cotton's Account of the Church of Christ in Plymouth, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., IV, no, was not written until 1760, and refers principally to the period after 1667. It quotes freely from Morton and the Church Records, though without acknowledgments. H. M. Dexter's The Church Polity of the Pilgrims the Polity of the New Testament, pp. 82, Boston, 1870, is polemical rather than historical, assumes the identity of Pilgrim Church government and that of the Congregational churches of his own day, and attempts to prove from the New Testament that such was primitive Christianity. Cotton's Magnolia, Book V, Part II, contains the Platform of Church Discipline of the Synod of Cambridge of 1649 which seems to have been approved at Plymouth in the last decades. Explicit, direct, first-hand evidence on Pilgrim ecclesiastical history, The Dominant Note at Plymouth 201 we lack for nearly all points of first importance. From Brad- ford we see clearly the issue of Church government, the domination of the State by the Church, and get personal de- tails about the ministers and their troubles. But upon doc- trine, ceremony, discipline, we must infer, deduce, and piece together scattered fragments. CHAPTER XV GOVERNMENT AND ADMINISTRATION, 1627-1657 The relation of Church and State at Plymouth was singularly close and significant. Already in Holland the Pilgrim leaders had seen that their failure to control the economic and political situation would ultimately result in a failure to maintain their ecclesiastical position and they left Leyden fully determined to create a state which should maintain and protect the Church. From the first therefore ecclesiastical necessity influenced the form of civil government and the temporal policy of the leaders. The perpetuation of God's Ordinances became literally the cornerstone of civil polity. At all costs the unity of the Church must be preserved, and no consid- erable accession of people to the little colony should be permitted, likely to outnumber and outvote those whose loyalty to the ecclesiastical ideal was already assured. Practically interpreted, this meant that the constitution of the State was to vest in the leaders authority over all existing colonists, a power to limit newcomers in number to a minority of the total population, and to exclude all those who did not seem likely to amalgamate in time with the Pilgrim Church. The experience with Oldham and Lyford confirmed the necessity and expediency of this decision and erected it into a cornerstone of con- stitutional law. Such a civil policy was necessarily antagonistic to the physical growth of the colony. The leaders insensibly feared the accession of members, an increase in the Government and Administration, 1627-16 ff 203 number of towns, a division of the Plymouth Church into several Churches as tantamount to the disruption of the colony and the downfall of religion itself. Able and ener- getic personalities they came to suspect and were chary of granting them a share of political power. The coming of the Puritans to Boston, they realized, afforded them much needed support and temporal assistance and they could not, despite themselves, but feel that these were their brethren. At the same time they wished no large accession of Puritans within the boundaries of Plymouth and they therefore framed a government and created a definition of political privilege, which should so far as possible discourage and hamper immigration. Naturally, the type of civil government established at Plymouth, conditioned by this assumed necessity of defending State and Church from outside influence, vested practically unlimited discretionary authority in the hands of the Governor. 1 This they had at once concluded was essential, though they also appreciated the advisability of entire discretion in its use. This broad and flexible authority was conferred upon William 1 The authorities for this topic are Bradford's History, the only source of much value for the period to 1636; the Plymouth Colony Records, 12 vols.; Brigham, Laws of New Plymouth, and the Records of the various towns. On the whole, the material for the constitutional history of Plymouth is singularly fragmentary and elusive in character and administrative practice as well as legal theory is peculiarly difficult to determine. The critical apparatus upon which this chapter is based became too elaborate and tech- nical to permit its inclusion in footnotes. Some of the statements in the text are perhaps more positive than the direct evidence war- rants, but attempts to qualify and explain made a chapter, even now somewhat long, entirely out of proportion to the rest of the book and resulted in an account which lacked clarity for the general reader. 204 The Pilgrims and their History Bradford in April, 162 1. He promptly proceeded to perform such executive work as seemed necessary, usu- ally after consultation with "a few"; and to arraign and punish such offenders as he and the few he consulted deemed essential. For the first three years the govern- ment at Plymouth scarcely deserved the name, for all functions seem to have been united in the person of the Governor, and those exercised were not primarily ad- ministrative at all. The fact of the Common Stock and the Agreement with the merchants imposed upon him the duty of regulating the labor of the community as well as the apportionment of the proceeds. He was in fact more an overseer of work, a foreman in the fields, a storekeeper who portioned out the common supplies and put away what had been collected or raised, than a civil officer of any recognized type. We are told that the whole body of settlers * met several times in those first years to consider public affairs and that a variety of decisions were reached, but no formal record was kept of what those decisions were, nor was any record kept for some fifteen years beyond such notes as Bradford saw fit to make. This fusion of executive, administrative, and judicial power in the hands of the Governor, this lack of formality, this unlimited discretion provided exactly that type of government best adapted to the needs of the Church. Whatever was required in its in- terests could be done promptly and without hesitation, and without permitting argument over its legality. Until the leaders knew better what regulations and forms the situation demanded, they proposed to hamper their discretion as little as possible. Such a government was unquestionably an extraordi- 1 Possibly with some exceptions; we cannot be sure. Government and Administration, 1627- 1657 205 nary tribute to the personal rectitude, the impartiality, the diligence, and the ability of William Bradford. By general consent all possible governmental power was vested for one year in one man, whose discretion was left practically untrammeled, except for such matters as he himself of his own free will saw fit to submit to the whole assembly, or dealt with in accordance with the advice of others. Such complete power over any com- munity has rarely been vested in one individual for any length of time with that community's consent. Bradford held it with brief intervals from 1621 to 1657. The fact that his own History is our only authority for many aspects of life in the first years at Plymouth and the fact that his modesty led him to subordinate his share in the direction of events long concealed the extent of his influence. 1 Surely his energy must have been vast, his discretion remarkable, his ability commanding, or those stern and uncompromising men and women would scarcely have permitted him to regulate their affairs at discretion so long. To be sure, such a government was possible only in a small community of homogeneous people, who agreed thoroughly upon the general aims of private and public life, and whose conduct was so invariably orderly that the amount of government required was reduced to a minimum. It is no disparagement of Bradford's ability or discretion to say that in most affairs the little colony 1 When the Old Colony Club at Plymouth held its first solemn celebration of the landing of the Pilgrims in 1770, toasts were drunk "to pious ancestors," Carver, Morton, Standish, Massas- soit, Cushman, but neither Bradford, Brewster, Winslow, nor Alden. This shows the very real ignorance about Pilgrim history which the traditions of Elder Faunce had allowed to develop at Plymouth itself. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 2nd Series, III, 400-401. 206 , The Pilgrims and their History certainly governed itself and ordered its own ways, with such complete regard to the common interest and to the proper share in it of each individual, that there was not a great deal of governing to be done. There was perhaps only one William Bradford, but quite as certainly there was probably never gathered together in one community, before or since, a body of men and women who averaged higher in diligence, in spirituality, and in law-abiding qualities than the Pilgrim fathers and mothers. Some who were with them, but not of them, gave Bradford uneasy moments, but the great majority certainly did not require to be governed. At the same time, there can be no doubt that the ascendency of Bradford was so complete at Plymouth as to render the colony unattractive, for that reason alone, to those energetic leaders who emigrated from England after 1630 at the head of numerous colonists. There was room at Plymouth for but one Bradford and while he occupied the stage there could be no space on it for men who also felt themselves capable of directing large af- fairs and who were conscious of great ambitions. The leaders as well as the rank and file found Plymouth politically unattractive. Truth to tell, neither he nor the Pilgrim leaders dared share the direction of affairs with aggressive personalities nor even with the majority of the Plymouth Church. The ascendency of the Gov- ernor came to stand in their eyes for the supremacy of the Church over the State, for the protection and per- petuation of the Church itself; it became the visible sign of success in their great design in coming to the New World. To diminish that ascendency or attack it was to shake the foundations of religion and to disobey the Ordinances of God. Government and Administration, 1627-16 57 207 The unlimited authority exercised by the Governor was granted to him for a year by the whole body of those possessed of political privilege at the General Court of Elections, which met annually at the close of the year — according to the Old Style of dating used by the Pil- grims — about March 25. In practice, this General Court of Elections possessed what we should call today the sovereign power, for it exercised without appeal the supreme executive, legislative, and judicial authority. At the same time, it is abundantly clear that the Pilgrims did not look upon this as executive and that as legislative; there was so much to be done and they did it without bothering about constitutional subtleties. Not one of them had had a legal education and Brewster's expe- rience with Davison had been diplomatic rather than ad- ministrative. It is scarcely less anachronistic to repre- sent Bradford and Winslow invoking the sovereignty of the people or thinking in terms of the separation of powers than to imagine them diverting the Indians with moving pictures or exploring Plymouth Harbor in a submarine. The parties of the Civil Wars in England were about to work a revolution in political thinking, but the great majority in England were as yet uncon- scious of it when the Pilgrims were shaping their flexible and elastic constitution in the decades between 1620- 1640. The leaders consulted the majority less because of' preconceived theories than because of the logic of facts. The acquiescence of the majority was absolutely essential and they deemed it wiser to assure themselves of it by putting questions of importance to a vote in an assembly, of which all men of any ability or position were members, and in which they were invited, nay exhorted, to express 208 The Pilgrims and their History their opinions and preferences. It was easier to deal with the known than with the unknown and the " con- spiracy' ' of Lyford and Oldham was crushed by the simple expedient of publicity. Two strong precedents, familiar to them all, sanc- tioned this practice and strengthened their belief in its expediency. They had long discussed affairs of common interest in the Great House on the Kloksteeg at Leyden, where no less significant issues had been put to majority vote, after vigorous and free discussion, than the voyage to America, the location of the proposed settlement in North America, whether the Pastor should go, and the contract with the English merchants. The governmental issues at Plymouth were not essentially different in char- acter and were intrinsically less important. The Pilgrim ecclesiastical organization, based upon Luther's priest- hood of all believers and Calvin's right of the individual to judge for himself, contained the fertile seed of future American democracy; but those who first used it scarcely thought of it as governmental and recked little of sanc- tions and sovereignty. While the administrative traditions of the rank and file were both vague and mixed, those predominant in Brewster's mind were the traditions of the Manor of Scrooby, where he had ruled autocratically as Steward, with the assistance of the majority of the inhabitants, who owed suit of court at the Court Leet. As Steward he had possessed a combination of powers very similar to those the Governor exercised at Plymouth; he had been responsible to an Archbishop who rarely interfered and had owed an allegiance to the King, which was satisfied in the sixteenth century by bare affirmations, for the " liberties" of the manor freed him and its in- Government and Administration, 1627-165'/ 209 habitants from all immediate responsibility to the royal courts and officers. The laws of England he and the suitors had construed in their own sense at the Court Leet and they had been accustomed to adopt such regu- lations for their own affairs as they deemed convenient, all without thought of disloyalty, independence, or sov- ereignty of the people. Their background was feudal and not modern, but it did provide them with clear enough precedent for their own right to manage their own affairs without royal interference and at the same time in entire consonance to the law. They were to obey the laws of England but they might interpret them themselves. We shall do well not to strain our analogies, but is it not more probable that we hear the voices of the suitors of the old Court Leet in the Pilgrim Compact and in the legislation of 1636 than a conscious creation of a new constitution, made by a people thoroughly awake to modern ideas of popular sovereignty, and already im- bued with a belief in their political independence of England? In practice, this decision to protect the Church at all costs and thoroughly to test the loyalty and ecclesiastical conformity of the newcomers before admitting them to a. share in the privileges of the State resulted in certain differentiations in political status, which were not demo- cratic as we understand the word. Political equality never existed in the strict sense of the word at Plymouth during the lifetime of Bradford. The General Court possessed sovereignty but the leaders carefully provided that too many should not be members. No other def- inition of political privilege existed for many years than membership in this Court and the qualifications for admission were not definite nor made public. Nominally, 210 The Pilgrims and their History new-comers were admitted with the consent of those already possessed of privilege, but the share of the forty- one signers of the Pilgrim Compact in government was from the first residual rather than direct or immediate. Bradford and Allerton, writing back to England in 1623 in answer to certain charges made against them by their enemies, declare "touching our governmente, you are mistaken if you think we admite weomen and children to have to doe in the same, for they are excluded, as both reason and nature teacheth they should be; neither doe we admite any but such as are above the age of 21 years and they also but in some weighty matters, when we thinke good." 1 The few, in reality, were to govern at Plymouth and Bradford was their executive head and officer and the controlling influence among them. Just how many these were, we do not know. Undoubtedly the eight Under- takers were members, but how many more sat with them in the inner council we cannot say, probably not above fifteen in these earlier years. Membership in the General Court depended upon the ability of the man to convince them of his desirability or to prove to them, in their phrase, that he was godly, sober, and discreet. This meant that he must be eminently industrious, of quiet habits and ways, submissive and deferential to Bradford and other leaders, a Church member in posse, and one able to meet the rigid tests of moral conduct sure to be imposed upon him. After a time the members of the General Court came to be known as freemen, although the practice did not become general until after 1630 and was perhaps adopted as a result of the influence of Massachusetts. In 1633, when the first list of freemen 1 American Historical Review, VIII, 299. Government and Administration, 1627-16 57 211 was recorded, it contained sixty-eight names; twenty- three more were apparently admitted freemen in the following two years, but in 1659, despite the growth of Plymouth in the meantime, the electorate of the whole colony was less than two hundred. Below the Freemen were the Inhabitants, who pos- sessed civil and legal equality with the freemen but had no political privilege. They included the heads of fam- ilies and property owners, who had been accepted as permanent residents, and who were potential freemen. They paid taxes, were compelled to attend Church, were liable for military service, and possessed definite prop- erty rights, both to the use of land and to the personal property they accumulated. Although they could not serve as members of a jury, they had a right to be tried by one. Wives, all unmarried adult women, and all minor children took the legal status of the husband or father. Below the Inhabitants were the Sojourners, who possessed neither legal rights nor civil equality and could not hope to attain political privilege. They comprised those who had not yet been granted by the authorities the right of permanent residence, but who lived on from week to week at the Governor's discretion, and who might in time become Inhabitants, and after due period of probation Freemen. During the first decade, Bradford seems to have possessed personally the right to permit a stranger to sojourn, and to extend it or terminate it at discretion, without the formality of consulting the other leaders. All of these three classes, Freemen, Inhabitants, and Sojourners, were to our thinking free men. They were masters of their own time, able to go where they would. Below them in the Pilgrim scale were the unfree, those 212 The Pilgrims and their History who did not possess legally the control of their own destinies. These comprised indented servants, who had hired themselves out to others, either in England or in America, for a term of years, in order to pay their pas- sage or to discharge debts accumulated in America. With them, though not exactly of their class, ranked domestic servants, of whom there were a few at Plym- outh, and those who had hired themselves out as servants, though not for a specified term of years or by a written contract. There were also a number of apprentices, mostly minors, the number of whom in- creased considerably as time went on. There were be- sides many Indian servants and a few Indian slaves, mostly captives taken in war. Not improbably the un- free at Plymouth were as many as one-quarter or one- third of the total population and in the early years per- haps a more considerable proportion. The crystallization of constitutional law and practice at New Plymouth was slow, primarily because the leaders found elaborate formalities unnecessary in so small a colony, but in large measure because they feared the effect upon the welfare of the Church of surrendering their discretionary power. From 1621 to 1624 the only constituted authority was the Governor and one As- sistant (Allerton). In 1624, at the request of Bradford, four new Assistants were created and elected, making a Governor and a Council of five, in which the former had a double vote. In 1633, the growth of the colony and the additional administrative work led them to add two more Assistants to the Council, making seven in all. The Governor remained, however, as before, almost supreme depository of authority and was at once Execu- tive, Treasurer, Secretary of State, and Judge, for the Government and Administration, 1627-16 57 213 power of the Assistants to act upon their own initiative seems to have been either non-existent or exceedingly small. Explicit provision was made that these " offices were annual," that is to say, the grant of power was ap- parently renewed each year and the office itself would have lapsed but for the vote of the Court continuing it. Not until 1636 was any definition of the powers of the Governor or Assistants attempted or any codification of what they understood the law to be written on paper. The definitions now provided by no means deprived the Governor of his old discretionary authority. He was to execute the laws and ordinances; he was empowered personally to arrest and imprison at discretion any citi- zen or stranger, and to examine all persons whom he felt to be suspicious. No limitations upon this authority were imposed, no more exact definition attempted. He was expected speedily to bring to trial before the Court of Assistants, or before the General Court at his dis- cretion, such persons as he might apprehend or such cases as he did not feel he could settle himself. The As- sistants were his deputies, might take his place tempo- rarily, but possessed individually no executive authority, except as he might from time to time see fit to delegate it to them. Sitting collectively with the Governor, they possessed the right to advise him, and probably had the right to be consulted, though the law did not say so. The legislation of 1636, if it deserves the name, did not alter the discretionary aspect of government at Plym- outh nor did it perceptibly reduce the power of the Governor. It was in fact little more than a statement of what the practice had become during the regime of Bradford. After 1633, the latter was not Governor every year, but he continued to be one of the Assistants when 214 The Pilgrims and their History he was not Governor, and, until his death in 1657, exercised a controlling influence in the state. The judicial power at Plymouth rested in the early- years with the Governor. He decided himself such cases as he felt he could and received such assistance as he asked for, but apparently no such aid was compulsory. Whether or not in the first years a case could have been appealed from Bradford himself to the Governor and Assistants and from them to the General Court on the initiative of the defendant is exceedingly doubtful. The method of trial in these first years is sufficiently clear from the cases of Lyford, Morton, Billington, and others. There were apparently no lawyers at Plymouth and no defence in our sense of the word was attempted. The Governor or his deputy was at once judge and prosecuting attorney. There were no set examinations and no definite legal forms were observed. None of the Pil- grims had had legal training and they could not therefore very well observe English forms with which they were not familiar. The practice of the Manorial Court at Scrooby Brewster knew and no doubt they followed it as closely as they could. In criminal cases, an oral charge was made by the Governor or his deputy of the case against the prisoner. An oral reply was permitted him, and the ques- tion and answer continued quite without restriction and without formal oaths, taken for judicial effect, and with- out anything that would have been considered in Eng- land pleading to the jurisdiction. Written pleadings were not essential but witnesses were informally called by the Court or by the accused without restriction. Civil cases, where two parties appeared, were appar- ently tried by the parties themselves, each of whom stated his case to the Governor or to such aids as the Government and Administration, 1627-16 57 215 Governor had asked to sit with him. No plaintiff or defendant can have had much difficulty in getting before the Court and the little community at large the true facts about his case. It must be remembered that judi- cial work in a tiny community, where everyone's goings and comings and practically his inmost thoughts were known to the community as a whole, was a comparatively simple matter. In 1634, the General Court provided that actions of debt or trespass involving less than forty shillings value should be tried by the Governor and Assistants. This was little more than a definition of what had always been true and had chiefly the effect of preventing appeals of such cases to the General Court itself. This raises the presumption that such appeals had become common. In 1636, the judicial competence of the Governor and two Assistants was affirmed for the trial of civil cases under forty shillings and of all criminal cases where the penalty was a small fine. Provision was made for the empanelling of a Grand Jury to present offences and the Governor was formally denominated Prosecuting Attorney. In 1666, this minor jurisdiction was handed over to the Selectmen of the towns. In 165 1, the Governor was empowered to create one of the Assistants Deputy-Governor. This, however, was merely the confirmation of an existing practice and was due per- haps to the growing infirmity of Bradford. Not until 1679 was a Deputy-Governor formally elected. Serious crimes at Plymouth seem to have been few. Murder, arson, burglary, as distinguished from pocket- picking and the stealing of tools, were very rare. A few cases of vagrancy are reported but seem rather to have been what we would call laziness or a technical charge by which to apprehend a man, otherwise undesirable, 216 The Pilgrims and their History than real crimes. Inasmuch as one of the capital crimes at Plymouth was " diabolical conversation," some lat- itude of interpretation of the criminal law was essential. This throws considerable light upon the Pilgrim " criminal code" in the absence of what were elsewhere regarded as serious crimes. There is evidence on every page of the records of a serious attempt at fairness, justice, and mercy. A spirit of general forbearance is evident, which one would not expect to find, considering what has been so often said about the Pilgrims and about the intol- erance of Bradford and his followers in particular. They did not follow the letter of the law too strictly and they were far from heartless. Many complaints were dis- charged; many penalties were mitigated; many fines never collected. The relationship between the colony of Plymouth, the Pilgrim Church, the town of Plymouth, and the other various towns and Churches of the colony is one of the most abstruse of all the difficult problems in Pilgrim in- stitutional history. Bradford unquestionably intended that colony, Church, and town should be one and the same, and always opposed a grant of authority to a new town or the recognition of a new Church as a tendency sure to diminish the authority of the leaders at Plymouth and certain in time to disintegrate the original Pilgrim Church. Until 1630 there seems to have been no attempt to leave either the Church or the town of Plymouth which was not easily and immediately suppressed by the leaders. The foundation of Duxbury in 163 1 by Standish and Alden, and its recognition as a town in the succeeding year, seems promptly to have resulted in the creation of a government for the town of Plymouth separate from that of the colony. In 1633 a Constable was chosen Government and Administration, 162J-165J 217 for the town, and in the following year persons were appointed to lay out highways. In 1643 raters of taxes appeared, but not until 1649 were Select men chosen, and not until then therefore was there a real executive for the town of Plymouth and work performed there by other officers than the colonial government itself. There were by that time several towns in the colony, all of which recognized the authority of the General Court, the major- ity of which consisted still of the freemen of Plymouth itself. It exercised an instant and searching supervision over the new towns from the very first, and so far as possible seems to have restricted their competence to the allotment of land and of cattle, the repairing of fences, the hiring of men to herd cattle, and the like. How much further their powers might have extended at this early period the records of these towns do not tell us. In all probability the work required was simple in the extreme and did not comprise more than the primary common interests just mentioned. As early as 1638, six towns beside Plymouth had al- ready come into existence and a good deal of opposition was apparent to the "sovereign power" exercised by the General Court of Elections, on the ground that the majority of freemen were resident in Plymouth anyway, and that the freemen resident in other towns could attend only at so great a sacrifice to themselves as practically to leave the political authority with the leaders in Plym- outh. Indeed, there can be little question that the leaders had hoped that this situation would retain men at Plym- outh and prevent the foundation of other towns. Their attempts to supervise stringently the constitutional arrangements of the new towns had been probably under- taken to discourage the resort of people thither and to 218 The Pilgrims and their History bring those who had already gone back to Plymouth, if it were possible. They deemed it best to agree how- ever in 1638 to the formation of an assembly of towns, in which Plymouth should have four votes and the other towns two each, to be cast by delegates elected by the freemen. The new Assembly was to legislate but found its power considerably circumscribed by the necessity of propounding a law at one court and of considering it at the next. Probably this was due to the desire of the delegates to discuss the measure with their constituents at home and to return to the next meeting with instruc- tions for action, but it inevitably resulted in delay and obstruction. The new Assembly was to sit four times a year, and the Governor and Assistants, now called the "Bench," were to form a sort of upper house. The mem- bers from the towns, called at first "committees" and afterwards "deputies," formed the lower house. ^~-The two houses, however, commonly sat and voted to- gether, the decision being by majority vote, the "bench" being counted with the "deputies," a practice which persisted until the end of the colony. The General Court of Elections retained its sovereignty, and its relation to the new Assembly is difficult to explain, for it certainly still retained the power of passing laws itself, and still annually chose the Governor, Assistants, and Treasurer, when that office was presently created, and, after 1643, the Plymouth Commissioners of the New England Con- federation. The General Court sometimes repealed the laws passed by the Assembly, although it became pres- ently more common for the latter to legislate, and for the work of the General Court to be restricted to the election of officers. Except for the towns, there were no other sub-divisions in the colony until 1685, when three counties Government and Administration, 1627- 1657 219 were created, whose boundaries were substantially those of the present counties of Plymouth, Barnstable, and Bristol. The control therefore remained to the death of Bradford substantially in the hands of the freemen of Plymouth itself, who used the General Court as their principal constitutional weapon. Here again was a fruitful source of discontent among those resident in the colony and a frequent cause of dissatisfaction among newcomers. CHAPTER XVI ECONOMIC PRIVILEGE, 1627-1657 The Pilgrim leaders early saw that the possession of economic privilege must be the reward of orthodoxy. It should be the visible pearl of great price which alone could compensate the Elect of God for the toil and effort necessary to establish His Church in the New World. Nor were they slow to realize that it would be an influence by no means to be despised in leading the timid and ig- norant to investigate with a whole heart the ecclesiastical propositions they held to be so true. The withholding of economic privileges must be the gleaming sword with which the faithful could and should defend and preserve the purity of the Church and the integrity of the State. It was the one weapon which definitely reached the worldly, the selfish, and the objectionable. To make living difficult for them at Plymouth, to make profit impossible, was the one means of rendering Plymouth so unattractive that they would depart voluntarily, and thus relieve the leaders of the necessity of a forcible expulsion, which was only too likely to attract attention from Bishops and royal officials whose inquiries it might be impossible to avoid and equally impossible to satisfy. Economic privilege, therefore, like civil rights, was to be dependent upon Church membership. The period, both in Europe and in America, was one of strict economic regulation on the part of the state and the maintenance was universal of a great variety of exclusive privileges and concessions.. Economic regulation was not new to Economic Privilege, 1627-1657 221 those at Plymouth. There was no place indeed in New England where economic privilege was not dependent upon conformity to the Church, but there were few colonies where the ecclesiastical and civil prerequisites of a share in the economic privileges were as stringent or as consistently and rigidly enforced. The small size of the colony throughout its history, the fact that it in- cluded for more than ten years only one town, made a degree of regulation possible which could not have been maintained in a larger community, differently placed and differently governed. The one thing of value in early Plymouth was land. Ownership was impossible, because the title was vested in the Adventurers till 1629 and then till 1640 in Brad- ford, finally reaching the whole body of freemen as a corporation, not as individuals, in 1640. The first al- lotments of land for individual use were made by the Governor, with the confirmation of the General Court. Probably the dispensations were for the most part Brad- ford's personal judgment, perhaps because any division of land prior to 1627 was contrary to the agreement with the merchants and the majority were quite willing to let him shoulder the responsibility of a breach of that agreement. LUntil 1640, the vast majority of people therefore did not own land, but possessed instead tempo- rary rights of occupancy .3 These had been assigned an- nually to the various individuals by the Governor and Assistants, and then, as towns were organized, by the town authorities. This allotment of land became the most important event of the year, the surest method of reward or punishment for past conduct, the effective measure of an individual's status and rights. Attempts to evade it or to supply omissions from it were not un- 222 The Pilgrims and their History common and were ordinarily occupancy without per- mission or purchase from Indians. The latter transac- tions were invariably denied validity, unless the previous consent of the General Court had been obtained. It was quite obvious that to recognize the possibility of such purchase by individuals was to accept the superiority of the Indian title to their own patents from the King. They claimed later that they had originally bought the land as a whole from the Indians and therefore could not accept subsequent purchases from individual Indians as valid. Cases however appeared every few years and were always dealt with sternly. 1 LThe monopoly of the trading rights also was vested in the leaders, certainly until 1640.] The Indian trade was never open to the main body of settlers during the first twenty years of its history and perhaps not for two or three decades thereafter. The Common Stock had provided for its monopoly in the joint interest of the merchants and the settlers and for its control until 1627 by the leaders, who were to allow the majority absolutely no individual share in it whatever. Between 1627 and 1634 the leaders continued to hold this monopoly as Undertakers, or until the debt to the merchants should be finally paid. This clearly involved more responsibility than privilege on their part. They assumed a supposedly crushing financial burden without obtaining a privilege then estimated as a fair equivalent. After 1634, for some years they continued to control the trade for a variety of reasons. To their monopoly of the land, of the fishing, and of the fur trade, the leaders promptly added a stringent control of such other economic priv- ileges of value as appeared. 1 Plymouth Colony Records, IV, 44, 49, 58, 59, etc. Economic Privilege, 162 7- 1657 223 The first commodity exported to England was dressed lumber, and when, after the allotment of land and the practical abolition of the general stock in 1623, individ- uals were free to work as they pleased, the General Court decreed that no one should sell or transport lumber without the permission of the Governor and Assistants, that no handicraftsmen, tailors, shoemakers, carpenters, joiners, smiths, or sawyers should do any work, either in Plymouth or outside, for any strangers until the needs of the Colony itself had been met. The Governor and Assistants were to accord the necessary permission, when in their judgment the condition of the colony warranted it. The General Court again decreed in 1626 that no corn, beans, or peas should be transported or sold out of the colony without the Governor's and Assistants' permission. After live stock was imported, the regula- tion promptly appeared that no animals were to be sold out of the colony. 1 From the first in all probability the Governor had regulated prices of most goods produced in the colony as well as of all goods imported from Eng- land. Wages had also been fixed by the Governor and Assistants, and in January, 1635-36, the General Court confirmed this power, but required them to consult with and secure the consent of certain men named. 2 In practice these regulations covered the entire economic activity of the colony. Nothing was done or could be done which was not subject to the direct control of the leaders. Nor did the leaders hesitate to increase, diminish, or withhold the shares of various individuals in accordance with their estimate of the man, and in particular of his orthodoxy. Four degrees of economic privilege are very 1 Plymouth Colony Records, I, 13. 2 Ibid., 36. \ 224 The Pilgrims and their History sharply outlined. There were first the leaders themselves, a group of from eight to fifteen, sometimes larger or smaller. They allotted themselves the best land, the best cattle, the best meadows for hay, and kept in their hands for nearly twenty-five years the entire trade with the Indians and all fishing rights. A second group con- tained the remainder of the Church members, to whom were made allotments of land and cattle entirely desir- able, and in the main such as they wished, located where they on the whole preferred, unless too many chose the same spot. These seem to have had, after the first fifteen years, the option of sharing in the Indian trade, if they were also willing to assume a corresponding part of the financial responsibilities of the colony. They seem ordinarily to have preferred to leave both the trade and the debts to the leaders. A third group, definitely in- ferior, were the Inhabitants. These were the potential Church members, people deemed sufficiently sober, godly, and discreet to be allotted land and to be permitted to pursue agriculture under such restrictions as the leaders deemed necessary, but with no chance to share in the trade of the colony. Below them were a fourth group — the unprivileged — those who were not considered as possible Church mem- bers or citizens, who received no land, who had no right to cut hay on the town meadows, who were to work as directed and who were to be ruled. These included all temporary residents of the colony, all people on probation pending a decision by the leaders as to their desirability, and all the servants, bond servants, apprentices, minor children, and slaves. In a considerable number of in- stances, the leaders seem to have concluded that some individuals could never be anything better than servants Economic Privilege, 1627-16 57 225 and they did not hesitate to require them either to work for some freeman of the colony and thus to cease " living disorderly," or to leave the jurisdiction. The time of probation before an Inhabitant might become a Freeman, or one of the unprivileged might become an Inhabitant, was entirely discretionary with the leaders. There was apparently no rule about it, and there were certainly no formal, written, or publicly acknowledged qualifications of wealth or status, the attainment of which automat- ically conferred right to examination and election. The requirements were highly elastic and clearly varied with the individual. Sometimes they had no hesitation at all and acted promptly on a newcomer's arrival. In other cases, men stayed for months or perhaps years without even receiving an allotment of land. Some bond servants, having served their five or seven years, were then told that they were undesirable and could never become Inhabitants. No legislation was ever necessary; no executive or judicial enforcement needed; it was a per- fectly simple matter to pass over the individual when the next allotment was made, and a failure to obtain land was equivalent to degradation to the status of serv- ant or to banishment. 1 The lengths to which the leaders were prepared to go is shown most clearly by the case of the town of Sand- wich. This was one of the towns founded in the 30's and recognized with reluctance. It was based upon a grant of land to certain Freemen and Church members of Plymouth, who proposed themselves to form the nucleus of the town. They gathered around them a considerable number of people, allotted land, admitted men as free- 1 The Colony and Town records give these annual allotments in great detail. 226 The Pilgrims and their History men, and completed their organization in such ways as seemed to them expedient. In 1639 the General Court proceeded to investigate their conduct. The record states that "they have not faythfully discharged that trust reposed in them, by receiveing into the said towne divers persons unfitt for church societie, which should have beene their chiefe care in the first place, and have disposed the greatest part of the landes there already, and to very few that are in Church societie or fitt for the same, so that without speedy remedy our cheifest end wilbe utterly frustrate." One can scarcely have a clearer statement of the basis of society at Plymouth nor more definite proof of the object with which the leaders still believed the colony had been founded. A month later the General Court passed sentence. No more people were to be admitted to the town of Sandwich without the consent of the Min- ister and the Church. Such of the Inhabitants as had already been admitted, but had been adjudged unde- sirable, were to sell and leave. Nor was any more land to be allotted by the town without the approval of one of the Assistants of the colony, from whom the Freemen of the town should receive advice and direction. 1 The leaders of the colony practically cancelled the entire arrangement, which the Freemen to whom the grant had been made had already instituted. On the whole there seems to be good reason to believe that the people accepted this dictation of economic privilege by the leaders without much objection and cer- tainly without open revolt. There are throughout Pilgrim history signs that individuals disliked and dis- approved of this policy and of its results. From Weston, 1 Records, I, 131, 134. Economic Privilege, 1627-16 ff 227 Oldham, and Lyford, we pass to Morton, Christopher Gardiner, Samuel Gorton, and a considerable number of less distinguished individuals. These were however all newcomers, the majority of whom left of their own accord. From the people of Plymouth themselves for more than fifteen years, we have practically no trace of resistance or even of a determination to share in the regulation. After 1634 a certain amount of discontent seems to have gradually made headway among the free- men and Church members, upon whose votes the leaders depended and whose acquiescence was essential in the conduct of the colony's affairs. When the original grant to the Undertakers expired in 1634, the privilege was continued from year to year and from court to court, apparently without opposition, the records indeed in- dicating that the leaders believed the trade not very valuable and that the great majority at Plymouth did not wish to follow it at all. 1 At the same time the leaders punished those who infringed upon their privilege with promptitude and stringency. In March, 1639, however, the Grand Jury, impanelled for the usual purposes, brought in what was tantamount to an impeachment of the leaders. " 1. Wee desire to be informed by what vertue and power the Governor and his Assistantes doe give and dispose of lands either to particular persons or towneshipps and plantacons. 2. Wee further desire to be informed what landes are to be had or is reserved for the purchasers as hath beene formerly agreed in Court too. 3. Wee further desire to be informed of the under- takers of the trade what wilbe allowed to the colony for the use of the said trade during the years past. 1 Records, I, 31, 32, 54, 62, 126. 228 The Pilgrims and their History 4. Wee further desire to be informed why there is not a Treasurer chosen for this yeare, as other officers." l At the next General Court, Bradford and his partners, so the record states, notified the colony that they would not pursue the trade longer than the following November. They seem to wish to convey the impression that they had in the meantime been doing the colony a distinct favor by holding the privilege at all. Of the discontent and dissatisfaction which the Grand Jury record undoubtedly revealed, we hear nothing further, perhaps because in December, 1640, it was agreed that any freeman who wished to trade with the Indians might make the colony an offer for the privilege. 2 If no suitable offer was made, the Governor and such persons as he should select were to hold the privilege. Apparently the leaders themselves retained the right, though it was not now one to which they attached great significance or from which they made much profit. There seems to be no better place than this to record the fate of the Undertakers in their final dealings with the English merchants. They assumed in 1627 the whole debt of the colony — some £1800 — which none but them- selves at that time believed could be paid. They also shouldered the entire expense of transporting to Plym- outh the rest of the Leyden Congregation, some £55o, 3 for which the colony never reimbursed them. The privileges they received included the fishing post which had been in operation near Gloucester ever since 1623; the fur- trading post on the Kennebec which had proved profitable for several years; and a trading route across 1 Records, I, 119, March 5, 1638-1639. 2 Ibid., II, 4. 3 Bradford, History, 297, 299. Economic Privilege, 1627- 1657 229 Cape Cod to Narragansett Bay by which they reached the Indian tribes on Long Island Sound. With the Dutch also arrangements for an exchange of commodities had been made in 1627. 1 The rebuilding of one of the shallops in 1626 had provided them for the first time with a vessel decked over and large enough to venture into Massachusetts Bay and around Cape Cod. 2 The following year they established a trade in wampum, which seems hitherto to have been unknown to the Massachusetts Indians, and which turned out to be ex- ceedingly profitable. 3 This and the trade with the Dutch led them to give up the attempt to supply the English fishing fleet, which came annually to the Grand Banks, and also the trade they had pursued with the struggling planters up and down the Massachusetts coast. Conditions, they complained bitterly, were changing. Where they had at first been able, with a yard of cloth or a few cheap English trinkets, to buy a fine skin or several bushels of corn, they now found that the Dutch and French had " demoralized' ' the Indians by paying a real equivalent, a wicked practice which the Pilgrims much deplored as showing a lack of imagination and a proper degree of business acumen. The Indians were demanding hatchets, knives, iron kettles, powder, guns, with the result that the degree of profit in the trade had fallen off considerably. 4 They now launched forth in 1628 and 1629 upon a series of costly ventures, all of which failed. One was Bradford, History, 281; Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1st Series, III, 52, 55, 56. 2 Bradford, History, 253. 3 Ibid., 281. 'Ibid., 283, 287. 230 The Pilgrims and their History their own fault, a fishing voyage undertaken without sufficient calculation or judgment and pursued without the necessary knowledge of fishing essential to success. 1 As Bradford said, fishing had always been fatal, and indeed out of it from first to last they seem never to have made a farthing. Allerton, whom they had made their agent in England, now brought back to Plymouth a considerable bill of goods which they had not ordered. For the most part these were clothes and household utensils, which ranked as luxuries. They had strictly ordered him to purchase only a moderate amount of trading goods to exchange with the Indians for more beaver, and felt that to buy more for themselves was highly inexpedient. 2 They were anxious to devote every pound of money to the extinction of the debt. He not only failed to do this, partly through the importunity of Shirley, one of the English partners, but he also impli- cated them in a venture on the Penobscot by one Ash- ley. 3 He then borrowed in England considerable sums of money at fifty per cent interest 4 which he invested in trade; he chartered one ship and purchased another for trading voyages to New England. 5 The whole involved a total expenditure of something over £7000, an aggre- gate sum, borrowed and invested by one man in two years, as large as the entire sum which they calculated had been spent in creating the colony up to that time. In 1628 their debts, outside the main debt to the Adventurers of £1800, were not over £400. In 1630 1 Bradford, History, 312-313, 319-320, 324-325. 2 Ibid., 292-294, 303-304. 3 Ibid., 309-310. 4 Ibid., 311. 5 Ibid., 320, 325, 327. Economic Privilege, 1627-1657 231 they were not less than £4000, and in all probability more. 1 In the meantime, Allerton had also obtained for them as partners, four English merchants to whom goods could be consigned and who would purchase and ship to them in return whatever they wished. The association was from the first unfortunate and disappointing and grew more so as the years elapsed. In 1630, the Pilgrims were driven to renounce Allerton as their agent, though with misgiving and regret because of his marriage to Brewster's daughter, and their very great concern for Brewster's feelings. 2 They applied themselves at once diligently to the collection of beaver and its shipment to the English partners, Winslow undertaking Allerton's task and performing it with extraordinary tact, ability, and care. In 1633, they set up a trading post on the Connecticut River, 3 much to the disgust of the Dutch, who believed themselves to have secured already a right to that trade. They threatened to fire upon the Pilgrim ship, if she should attempt to go up the river and estab- lish a post above them, thereby intercepting the Indian trade. This however the Pilgrims courageously did and derived some considerable satisfaction from the discom- fiture of the Dutch. It must be added that they viewed that type of proceeding very differently when an English- man attempted to create a trading post on the Kennebec above their own. Him they suppressed and unfortunately one of his company was killed. Now came a series of misfortunes. In 1635 the French 1 Bradford, History, 347. 2 Ibid., 305, 329. On final episodes of his history see pp. 348-349, 358-359. 3 Ibid., 372-373. The trade was very lucrative during 1633-1634; ibid., 375, 385, 409, 410. 232 The Pilgrims and their History captured the post on the Penobscot, which the Pilgrims had continued after the bankruptcy of Ashley, and an expedition which they equipped to retake it was a ludicrous failure. 1 In 1636, there appeared around the post on the Connecticut the first of the Massachusetts colonists. They denied the validity of the Pilgrim pur- chase from the Indians and were with much ado gotten at last to permit them to retain a small fraction of the land, though, apparently without any scruple, they ap- propriated the whole Indian trade. 2 Now came the crowning misfortune of all. The Pilgrims learned that Shirley, chief of their English partners, had not been honest with them. They calculated that they had shipped him beaver to the value of £i2,i5o, 3 that their indebtedness on the score of Allerton's failures was not in excess of £4000, the original indebtedness to the Ad- venturers was £1800, and they were therefore astounded to discover that the other three English partners had not received any of the proceeds of the sale of the beaver during the last few years, and that Shirley himself re- garded them as still in his debt. Protest they did, but they deemed it better to extinguish his claims and paid him in 1642 £i2oo. 4 Even then they were not entirely freed from charges and claims. In 1646, however, they at last owed no man. The difficulty seems to have lain in the fact that they 1 Bradford, History, 350, 396-398. 2 Ibid., 407. 3 Ibid., 412-413. Bradford, like so many of his contemporaries, was a poor mathematician. The true total was £ 12,530, as- suming the annual totals were correct. 4 Bradford, History, 446-448, 477-486. Bradford gives a mul- titude of details on this dreary business failure, but it has not seemed wise to devote space to them. Economic Privilege, 1627-1657 233 believed others as far above taking advantage of them in business as they were themselves incapable of dis- honesty. Allerton, Shirley, and Beauchamp professed what the Pilgrims believed to be "true religion," were all Church members, and the Pilgrim leaders simply could not conceive that these men would try to over- reach them. They made Allerton legally their agent in a document so sweeping that they were bound by every- thing he did, without the possibility of an explanation or renunciation. When they broke with him, they de- manded the return of the document. He was unable to produce it; but, instead of demanding from him a written release, they accepted his verbal promise to ob- tain it from Shirley in England. Shirley retained the paper, the Pilgrims never did receive it, and on the strength of it Shirley eventually forced them to pay a very considerable sum of money for an undertaking into which Allerton entered after they had disowned him. The most unfortunate of Allerton's ventures had been explained to them at Plymouth by Allerton and Hatherly in terms which completely convinced them of the former's innocence. They accepted his verbal state- ment that they were not bound to accept the venture as their own if they did not wish to, and that he and the London partners would be entirely responsible for it, if they in turn would allow them to dispose of the cargo which the ship had brought. Accordingly the Pilgrims paid him a considerable sum for part of the goods, and allowed him to sell the remainder in Boston. Some- what later they received a letter from Shirley and a statement from Winslow declaring that the responsibility had been theirs and not Allerton's in the first place and that the loss was now theirs in the second place. Nor 234 The Pilgrims and their History would the English partners make allowance for the money paid Allerton in accordance with the verbal agreement. Such was the result of a failure to insist upon written documents in every case, and to insist upon a strict and prompt accounting every year, instead of allowing the English partners to keep the books as they pleased and have an accounting at the end of a term of years. Indeed, the ignorance of the Pilgrims about business seems al- most incredible, and their carelessness would seem al- most criminal, if it were not so entirely obvious that it proceeded from inexperience and from guileless faith in the integrity of all Church members. They attempted literally to deal with Allerton and Shirley in accordance with the Golden Rule, and, even after it became clear that Shirley was robbing them, gave him the benefit of the doubt, and sent two or three more shiploads of beaver, all of which he promptly appropriated to his own use. Not only were the Pilgrims out at pocket, but they never entirely regained their confidence in their fel- lowmen. Before 1640, the fur trade had fallen off considerably and was no longer particularly profitable. The settle- ment of New England had driven out the fur-bearing animals and the hunters upon whom the Pilgrims had depended. The Kennebec had been sold by the colony to individuals; the post on the Penobscot had been cap- tured by the French; the Connecticut trade had been lost by the settlement of the Valley Towns; the trade route across Cape Cod was no longer profitable because the Rhode Island and Connecticut colonies entirely absorbed the trade of the Indians on Long Island Sound. To Salem and Gloucester had come Puritan emigrants, who Economic Privilege, 1627-1657 235 promptly took possession of the fishing stage on Cape Ann, and drew to themselves as well the trade of the annual English fishing fleet. Fortunately, the settlement of New England had also created an extremely brisk market for cattle and corn with such large profits that the leaders gave up the Indian trade and went to cattle raising. 1 In 1640 came a sudden fall in the prices of cattle which they were all at a loss to explain. 2 Truth was that the cessation of the Great Emigration, due to events in England, caused a fall in the hitherto unprecedented demand. Partly too the fall in prices was due to the sudden increase of supply at Plymouth and elsewhere, which had been stimulated by the abnormal prices of the past few years. Nevertheless, cattle continued throughout the history of the colony to be one of the chief sources of wealth. The economic structure never became highly developed and seems, never during the period of the colony's independence to have achieved the basis of a money economy. John Cotton Junior's salary was paid him as late as 1677, one- third in wheat, butter, tar, or shingles; one-third in rye, peas, or malt; and one-third in Indian corn, each valued in money but not paid in money. "It is further agreed that if any will pay their Rates or part thereof in money they shall have liberty so to do." 3 They repaired the Minister's house at a cost of £60 and provided that one- half of the assessment should be paid in any kind of corn or in tar, provided the tar was salable and provided it could be accepted at twelve pence per barrel cheaper than 1 Bradford, History, 436. 2 Ibid., 448, 458. See also on cattle values the notes in Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, 296. 3 Records of the Town of Plymouth, 154. 236 The Pilgrims and their History the market price in Boston. The other half was to be paid in wheat, barley, peas, butter, or money. 1 Industry in the modern sense of the word never devel- oped at Plymouth at all. 2 As early as 1639, every house- holder was compelled to sow one square rod of hemp and flax. A supply of bog iron was discovered and worked up at Taunton by the Brothers Leonard, which was dur- ing colonial days of some importance. Saw-mills, grist- mills, brick-yards appear gradually during the century, but beyond a very moderate manufacture of materials immediately useful at Plymouth, industry as such did not appear during the colony's independence. There was indeed, except the limited supply of iron and tar, no raw material which could have been manufactured. It was simpler, easier, more profitable to raise cattle, to sell dressed lumber and tar in Boston, than it was to attempt to make articles which could be bought much cheaper in Boston or in England. The colonies in gen- eral depended down to the American Revolution upon the purchase of manufactured goods in England, and Plymouth was no exception to the rule. There were of course made at Plymouth, as in all parts of America, rough cloth, candles, soap, woodenware, and simple furniture, but such goods were commonly made to order rather than for general sale in the open market at a profit. The accumulation of wealth at Plymouth never ap- proached that of the Bay Colony. The total was in- finitely less and the proportion per capita was also 1 Records of the Town of Plymouth, 58. 2 There are a few notes in Weeden, Economic History of New England, I; Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic; and the histories of the town of Plymouth by Davis and Baylies. Something can be gleaned from the colony and town records. Economic Privilege, 162J-165J 237 smaller. The tendency has therefore been to regard Plymouth as an economic failure. No error could be greater. Seven decades proved the colony an undoubted economic success, a real demonstration of what could be done in the wilderness with practically no capital at all. It must be remembered that the Pilgrims started heavily in debt, owing the merchants for everything except the clothes on their backs and the shoes on their feet. What- ever they created at Plymouth was wrung from a poor soil in an unfavorable situation by the labor of their own hands. Nor did the colony grow by great accessions of colonists who brought with them accumulated wealth from England. Plymouth in 1691 represented the labor of the Pilgrims themselves and of their descendants and certainly was an economic success. The wills of the first comers, who landed practically without anything, show that they had not only supported themselves at Plym- outh during life, and paid their indebtedness, but had accumulated what would have ranked in England at the time as a comfortable property for farmers or artisans. Standish, for instance, had landed without property as a paid employee of the Merchants, and had migrated to Duxbury in 163 1 with one cow and some little personalty. He died in 1656 worth £140 in land and buildings and £358 7s. in personalty. His one cow had become five horses and colts, four oxen, ten cows and calves, eleven sheep, and fourteen swine. 1 Howland, who had also come so far as we know without property, died possessed of £157 of personalty, including three horses, seventeen cows and oxen, thirteen swine, forty-five sheep, and 1 Many Plymouth wills have been printed in full in the Mayflower Descendant and are a mine of economic and social information hitherto little worked. Standish's will is in vol. Ill, 155. 238 The Pilgrims and their History nearly two whole pounds in ready money. 1 The Browns, who arrived from England in 1634 with some property, died in 1662 worth £655 and £350 respectively. 2 The elder had ten oxen, four bulls, twenty cows, twenty young cattle, eighteen sheep, eleven pigs, and nine horses. His personalty included red leather chairs, a silver bowl, " Eight India table clothes," and a bed "in the Parlour," estimated at £24, but only six shillings in money. Even the poorer were able to bequeath in their wills from twenty-five to fifty pounds of personalty as early as 1633, and within five years after the enumeration and division of twelve cattle in 1627, most people had at least one cow or heifer, with a number of goats, swine in the tens, and great numbers of poultry. 3 The evidence of the Plymouth wills is absolutely conclusive : Plymouth was a decided economic success and the growth of wealth after 1627 was rapid and permanent. Each decade the wills bequeath decidedly more and after 1660 the amounts become really considerable and indicate real comfort and prosperity. 1 Mayflower Descendant, II, 73. *Ibid., XVIII, 15-22. 3 See the wills in the Mayflower Descendant, I, 29, 65, 79, 82, 83, 154, 157, 197, 203. Compare with these those of the later period, ibid., II, 14, 25, 39; XI, 198; XVIII, 41. Steven Hopkins died in 1644, owner of the chief inn or hotel, and left in cash — six pence. CHAPTER XVII SOCIAL LIFE, 1627-1657 If there was one fact clearer to the Pilgrims than an- other, it was their duty to practice in daily life the truth as they felt God had revealed it to them. In the Bible were recorded, if only they could comprehend them, the infallible directions for individual conduct; they had but to read and obey. Were they so sunk in ignorance and indifference as not to know the unreality and falsity of this life as compared with the glory and splendor of the life to come? Had they not been assured that only he who loses his life shall find it, and that he who putteth his hand to the plow must not look back? Social life at Plymouth was an attempt to live literally in accordance with the teachings of the Scriptures. Because of their inability to create the sort of social atmosphere in which they wished their children to grow up, they had left Holland. Now that God had vouchsafed them success in their experiment, had assured them of the correctness of their interpretation of His intentions, they could pro- ceed in confidence to live and act in accordance with His Word. As year followed year and found the colony growing in strength and prosperity, their joyous belief in the Divine approval grew into a certainty which no logic could strengthen nor argument shake. They were accordingly to use their authority in Church and State to live a serious purposeful life such as befitted God's elect, to aid those who had not yet seen the Light to comprehend it, and to assist them in keeping their feet 239 240 The Pilgrims and their History from the paths of unconscious wrongdoing. Conscious evil none should do. The machinery of Church and State should repress the wicked and reclaim the way- ward, whose trustees the leaders believed themselves to be. The most difficult thing for us of the twentieth century to grasp about the Pilgrims is the literal domination of temporal life by the spiritual. Their history is much more nearly a study in the psychology of religion and its relation to the necessities of political and economic life than a political history in the ordinary sense of the word. We must become accustomed to looking through the temporal fact to the spiritual truth behind it, in- herent in it. Of the many facts which must be spiritual- ized to be understood, none is more essential than that minute regulation of daily life, which seems to us as we read about it so intolerable and incomprehensible. It was to them a consecration and a God given oppor- tunity never to return. They might indeed repent one day of the shortcomings of the day before, but never again in the whole of eternity would they have the op- portunity to live that day as they should have. They attempted to apply an unmnching and uncompromising idealism to the problems of daily life, to the economic problems of existence, and to methods for administering the State. The system was an end in itself, not a means to an end, unless indeed that end be the future life. They lived it because they believed that in that way life should be lived. They urged others to live it because they believed it the method by which all must satisfy God. If we can almost certainly see in their political ordinances the evidence of ulterior purpose, if we feel that the economic life was consciously shaped to further Social Life, 1627-1657 241 the ecclesiastical and political, to make difficult the existence at Plymouth of those not deemed suitable In- habitants, we must not bring to their social system, if such it may be called, any such feeling of ulterior pur- pose. It was in no sense intended simply for the repres- sion of those who disagreed with them. It was an end in itself — life as they loved to live it, as they loved to think that others would want to live it. While in many respects Plymouth was democratic, the social life in the colony moved along definite lines of caste, sharply outlined and rigidly observed. These repro- duced no social status in the Old World, for none of them had possessed in England or Holland anything there recognized as social status. They had been simple tenant farmers/not even yeomen; or quite undistinguished ar- tisans and tradesmen, not even in the seventeenth cen- tury sense, merchants. The new caste was rather a fact than a system, was seen to exist rather than was called into existence. In the first rank were the leaders, who arrogated to themselves social as well as civil and ec- clesiastical leadership, and who assumed gradually titles with which they had been familiar in England, but which had in the main at Plymouth no such connotation as the English attached to them. In the list of Freemen of the colony entered in the records under the year 1636, there are one hundred and thirteen names. After four- teen of these we have the abbreviation "Gn," signifying, beyond a doubt, "gentleman." This first rank of the Pilgrim hierarchy was possessed by Bradford, Winslow, Prence, William Collier, John Alden, Timothy Hather- ley, John Jenney, Steven Hopkins, John Browne, William Brewster, John Atwood, Ralph Smith, and Isaac Aller- ton. Standish is called Captain, but not Gentleman, 242 The Pilgrims and their History and Howland simply by his name. One is indeed sur- prised to note how far down the list William Brewster is and how far up the list are Prence, Collier, and Alden. Twelve names bear the prefix "Mr.," the English equiv- alent for Master. Several of these were clergymen, among them Reynor. Smith, however, was called Gentleman. These titles are repeated in the records with consider- able fidelity wherever these names appear, although the lesser Gentlemen sometimes become Master. This is never the case with Bradford, Winslow, and Prence, who no doubt had much to do with the editing of the records. The rest of the Freemen had no titles in this list, but we find several of them elsewhere referred to as yeomen. 1 It is scarcely necessary to add that none of these men possessed any of the English qualifications for Gentle- man or Master, and that the best of them scarcely pos- sessed that financial competence and long freedom from anything resembling service in the feudal sense which distinguished the yeoman in England. Over the question whether or not the English term, Goodman, should be- come a third grade in the social hierarchy, there was considerable controversy between Williams, Smith, and the leaders. The latter were inclined to adopt it. The two clergymen objected to it vehemently, on the ground that it was sinful to call any man good, with the obvious inference that in their opinion the men to whom it was to be applied were quite the contrary. All of this shows us quite clearly that social distinctions were prized and valued at Plymouth far more than one would have sup- posed. 2 1 Plymouth Colony Records, I, 41, 64, 75, 106. 2 For a case at Swansea, see Baylies, Plymouth, II, 245-246. Social Life, 1627-1657 243 In accordance with the Calvinistic system, the inter- ference of the leaders in the daily life of the majority was constant, searching, minute, and inquisitorial. It must not be supposed for a moment that they were less strict with themselves than with others or that they hesitated to accuse and punish each other on occasion. Bradford indeed expressed his amazement that any punishment or any regulation should be necessary in a group of people like the Pilgrims, that any misconduct of any sort should occur, to say nothing of the occasional commission of serious crime. But, he reflected quite sagely and truly, it did not portend a greater proportion of evil at Plymouth than elsewhere nor a more consider- able degree of wrongdoing, but merely the fact that the inquisitorial system was so exceedingly stringent that every minute deviation from the strict rule set up by the Church was promptly discovered and incon- tinently punished. 1 Indeed there was perhaps no single task to which the Pilgrim community set itself with greater diligence and enjoyment than that of watching each other, nor was there any phase of their manifold duties which they per- formed with greater assiduity than that of complaining about each other. The ecclesiastical and civil system sanctified and encouraged tale-bearing, spying, and accusations. In a small colony, where everyone lived very much together and could not get far apart, where everyone's affairs were conducted under everybody else's eyes, there was no possibility of escape. The whole community seem to have derived a grim satisfaction from thus investigating each other's affairs and punishing each other's peccadillos. Attendance at Church was 1 History, 459-461. 244 The Pilgrims and their History compulsory for all, whether Church members or not, but was scarcely a hardship in a community where the rule against Sabbath breaking was enforced with the utmost severity by the civil authorities. Not many infringed it. One man persisted in working in his garden, another in the tar pits; one was punished for hunting deer on Sun- day; another was " sharply reproved" for writing a letter on Sunday, "at least in the evening somewhat too soon." l Steven Hopkins was accused in 1637 of allowing men to drink in his inn "on the Lord's day, before the meeting be ended" and allowing servants and others, both before and after meetings, to drink "more than for ordinary refreshing." 2 But such cases were rare. The Pilgrims observed no holidays. Christmas, Easter, and the ordinary Church festivals were an abom- ination to them because they smacked of Papacy. The King's birthday they naturally did not celebrate. There seems indeed to have been but one attempt at the cel- ebration of a European holiday. The first Christmas the whole colony worked in entire harmony very hard all day. The second Christmas, some of those just come upon the Fortune were called by Bradford on Christmas morning to their work in the fields as usual, and "excused themselves and said it wente against their consciences to work on that day," an answer which nonplussed the leaders not a little. But they went away and left them. When they came home at noon to dinner, they found them in the street, pitching the bar, playing stool ball, and other good old English games. Bradford went 1 Plymouth Colony Records, I, 86; II, 140, 156. The authorities admitted that drawing eel pots on Sunday might be necessary. Ibid., II, 4. 2 Ibid., L 68. Social Life, 1627-1657 245 straight 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 gaming or revelling in the streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way, at least openly." } Smoking the Pilgrims practiced. Tobacco was grown at Plymouth to some extent, more was bought from the Indians, and after the first decade was imported from Virginia. But the regulations for smoking were strict and men were fined again and again "for drinking tobacco in the heighway." 2 Apparently, a man might smoke in his own house or in the fields, but he might not smoke in Plymouth streets nor in the meeting house. The most considerable body of regulations of a social character were those regulating marriage and the rela- tion of the sexes. The Pilgrims never could understand why there should be any deviation from strict morality and invariably punished with almost brutal severity the slightest infraction. Dorothy Temple, dishonored by one of the undesirables of the colony and her crime re- vealed by the birth of her child, was publicly whipped until she fainted under the lash. Men honorable enough to marry the women they had ruined, were publicly whipped, often more than once, while the wife sat in the stocks. One Mr. Fels came to Plymouth in 1627 and had in his house a comely maidservant, about whose relations with him scandal was presently whispered. Although the Pilgrims were unable to prove anything, they so frightened him and his whole family that, when after- 1 Bradford, History, 134-135. 2 Records, I, 106; IV, 47. 246 The Pilgrims and their History wards it appeared that the maid was with child, they all decamped in a small boat, panic-stricken. They nearly lost their lives in the attempted flight and were forced to return to Plymouth, where they were dealt with with the greatest severity. 1 There were in the whole history of Plymouth until 1691, only six divorces and not many cases of any sort, type, or variety of immoral conduct. 2 The regulation of individual conduct further provided that no man should strike his wife, and that no woman should beat her husband under the penalty of the fine of £10. One woman indeed was presented "for beating and reviling her husband and egging her children to healp her, biding them knock him in the head and wishing his victials might coake him." The significant entry in the margin follows — "Punished att home." 3 One Thomas Williams, a bond-servant, fell into a dispute with his mistress, apparently because he was unwilling to per- form some task or had failed to do so to her satisfaction. She tried to clinch the matter by exhorting him to fear God and to do his duty. He answered that he neither feared God * ' nor the diuell." For this horrible blasphemy he was brought into court, witnesses collected, and an infinity of trouble taken. Bradford would have had him soundly whipped, but the majority disagreed and he was simply reprimanded. 4 How to regulate the relation of the sexes in courtship puzzled the Pilgrim fathers considerably. Finally in 1638 a law was passed that no man should propose to a girl without first getting the consent of her parents or of 1 Bradford, History, 265. 2 Goodwin, Pilgrim Republic, 596-597, 590-600. 3 Records, III, 75, 1654-1655. 4 Ibid., I, 35, 1635. Social Life, 1627-1657 247 her master, in case she were a bond servant. There were a good many cases of men punished for making offers of marriage " irregularly " and of girls similarly punished for accepting them. 1 The most celebrated is that of Arthur Howland, Jr., who found the daughter of Gov- ernor Prence pleasant to look upon, and apparently quite willing to receive his advances. There can be no doubt whatever that he courted her in an eminently respectable and sober way, and, like a good American, finally asked her to marry him. The father was furious with rage, brought the swain before the Court of Assistants, and accused him with having " disorderly and unrighteously endeavored to obtain the affections" of his daughter Elizabeth. Howland was compelled to pay a fine of £5, to produce sureties for good behavior, and to deposit a bond of £50 that he would not again propose to the girl in that same fashion. Some months later he felt it wise " solemnly and seriously" to engage himself never to approach her in any way again. No doubt this was the result of the fact that the young people were not quite able to take their eyes off of each other, nor to keep en- tirely apart in so small a colony. In the end Prence re- lented and the couple were married. 2 The general impression which we have been given of Pilgrim life as dire, sad, and forbidding, is certainly wrong. Proper conduct was expected of everyone, and the social machinery, as well as that of Church and State, was devised to aid the individual to keep his feet in the narrow path of rectitude, but it is by no means true that life at Plymouth was so exceedingly unpleasant as we have been taught to believe. At the same time 1 Records, I, 97 ; III, 5. 2 Ibi4-, IV, 140-141, March 5, 1666-1667; July 2, 1667. 248 The Pilgrims and their History neither the letters nor the records give us even a glimpse of anything resembling society or anything mildly ap- proaching dinners, parties, or entertainments, serious or otherwise. For the upper ranks of the social hierarchy, a quiet evening of conversation on serious and suitable themes, enlivened with a studiously moderate portion of beer, ale, or wine, seems to have been all they allowed themselves. This too in the privacy of their homes, with none present but the Elect. Candles, too, were expen- sive; the hours of work long for everybody, certainly until 1640; and only in the long winter afternoons and evenings can the leaders have permitted themselves such relaxation. Such intercourse must be what Bradford had in mind when he wrote that Brewster was of "a very cherfull spirite, very sociable and pleasante amongst his freinds.' , l But among the lower ranks of the social hierarchy, for the Inhabitants and the unprivileged, es- pecially for the servants, there was an abundance of simple amusement, such as they had been accustomed to have in England. 2 This the leaders tolerated and condoned as harmless for those not possessed of suffi- cient intelligence and mentality to devote themselves entirely to spiritual contemplation. Out-of-door games like bowls and pitch bar seem to have been commonly played. Inns and taverns were licensed by the author- ities, 3 at which beer, wine, and strong waters were to be had, and in these a good many really hilarious scenes 1 Bradford, History, 492. 2 The most cursory reading of the Records will leave no doubt on this point. 3 James Leonard, innkeeper of Taunton, lost his wife by death, and was straightway deprived of his license on the ground that he was now unfitted to keep an inn! Social Life, 1627-1657 249 were enacted by servants and apprentices. Cards are not infrequently mentioned in the court recoroVttnd the fact that one man was fined for playing cards on Sunday raises the presumption that he might have played on a week day without breaking the ordinance. 1 Dancing 2 seems not to have been countenanced. In fact, it is one thing to realize that Plymouth was a place where literal idealism was attempted and a very real conformity to the ordinances expected in letter and spirit, and quite another to make out of it an impossible abode for human beings. The sins against which the leaders legislate point to a fairly normal English social life for all except Church members, 3 and both legislation, and the punishment meted out to enforce it, were in the nature of regulation rather than of repression or prohibition. They must not amuse themselves on Sun- day and they must come to Church. They must drink only for "refreshing" and not to bestiality. There seem indeed to have been numerous grades of offence with liquor, leading all the way from excess "upon refreshing" to plain drunkenness, beastly drunkenness, filthy drunk- enness, and a drunkenness of so extreme a degree that the details were necessarily related to the court. In 1636 a definition was made of the proper consumption of liquor, which provided that wine or strong water should 1 Records, IV, 42, 1663. 2 Mercy Tubbs was to answer for "mixed dancing." Was there another variety which was permissible? Records, III, 5, 165 1- 1652. 3 It is interesting to note that the Widow Ring possessed in 163 1 these works: "1 bible 1 dod. 1 plea for Infants 1 mine of Rome 1 Troubler of the Church of Amsterdam 1 Garland of vertuous dames." This last seems not thoroughly ecclesiastical in tone. Mayflower Descendant, I, 34. 250 The Pilgrims and their History not be sold or drunk except at a licensed inn. There the innkeeper should not sell the townsmen any strong liquor at all and only one Winchester quart of beer, which re- tailed at two pence. To strangers at their first coming, he might sell strong water to the extent of two pence worth. 1 Here is very evidently the definition of drinking for " refreshing" only. This strict control and this in- quisitorial system proved very distasteful to a good many who came to Plymouth beside Oldham and Mor- ton of Merrimount. The strictness of regulation was far greater than in Massachusetts and Connecticut, and the colony was so much smaller that its enforcement was simple and punishment for infractions certain. The social atmosphere was one reason why people did not like Plymouth, but it was after all merely a corollary of a dislike founded, like the system itself, on a lack of agreement with the Church and a desire for civil and economic privilege without fulfilling the ecclesiastical prerequisites. There is no reason to believe that the social ordinances at Plymouth were disagreeable to the overwhelming majority or that it was necessary at any time to enforce them, by means of civil authority, upon more than an insignificant minority. Seventeenth century Calvinism was unquestionably hostile to the aesthetic in life, to the beautiful in music, in art, in furniture, or in clothing. Its influence on social life and social environment was almost as great at Plymouth as in Scotland and at Geneva. At the same time the very real simplicity at Plymouth was not wholly the result of choice. Poverty is a powerful dic- tator of frugality, though the Pilgrims did not, when they could, purchase luxurious clothes or furniture, or 1 Records, I, 38. i\ „/. V- : _« /?^l B&f* < ^-> BM^Lj j WKg^jbl V /y/ 'jnB 1^. > *M ^p? '# ' - ^^ E^J ■Br Ji Ifc. Jit M*Ej$ jMB ' : v - : - ;** 'jj?™^y»ffiniB jL MADAME PADISHAL Social Life, 1627-16 57 251 attempt the cultivation of music or the fine arts. But Plymouth was by no means made intentionally ugly, nor did they attempt to make themselves unbecoming in appearance or uncomfortable. The hostility to the aesthetic was a tendency rather than a literal fact. Probably no Puritans or Pilgrims ever wore at any time such garb as modern artists have placed upon them. There is no evidence that the early Puritans at the time of Elizabeth and James I wore any distinctive clothes. The Pilgrims themselves were poor country people and certainly never wore "stylish" clothes in England or Holland. A simple smock and trousers of coarse cloth, a simple gown of ample folds for the women, heavy shoes, and either no hats at all or caps of skins must have been the rule in the first years. Close cut hair the men wore as in England and Holland, where it was the rule for the lower classes, long hair being the mark of the gentleman only and indicating not only wealth, but social status. There is no reason to suppose that the Pilgrims and Massachusetts Puritans before 1650 wore the sort of clothes common in England after the Civil Wars had produced a distinctive dress for the Parlia- mentarians different from that worn by the Cavaliers. Nor was Plymouth clad in black and gray, with tall, ugly hats for the men and hoods for the women of un- attractive design, void of ribbons or laces. On Sunday indeed the dignitaries wore black gowns, as was the rule in the Calvinist Churches abroad. But Elder Brewster's wardrobe contained a violet-colored cloth coat, a pair of black silk stockings, a doublet, and various other gar- ments such as a fairly well-to-do Englishman of no par- ticular rank might have worn. Since there were tailors and their apprentices at Plymouth, there can be little 252 The Pilgrims and their History doubt that they made clothes. We also hear of red silk stockings obtained in Boston l and find in the inventories of the effects of persons deceased all sorts of garments of silk, satin, woolen, cotton, and linen, of a variety of shades and hues which we by no means would consider "sad" or sombre. Red, blue, purple, violet, and green were common, besides the expected grays, browns, whites, and blacks. We should not have expected to see, however, any such number of people possessed of laces, ruffs, and petticoats, of napkins, tablecloths, sheets, and handkerchiefs. 2 The wills published in the last ten years have altered very much our conception of dress and household luxury at Plymouth. A very poor woman owned a looking glass, 3 for which, if tradition were dependable, the Pil- grim mothers had no uses. But looking glasses were common and presume articles of dress to be adjusted with their aid and some degree of attention to appear- ances. One Mistress Ann Atwoods left a total estate worth £24 and nevertheless had a "turky Mohear petty- 1 Records, I, 93. Bradford speaks of Brewster's dislike of those who became haughty "being rise from nothing and haveing litle els in them to comend them but a few fine cloaths." History, 492. 2 One poor man died in 1633, possessed of a "satten sute," two ruffs, an embroidered silk garter, and a "cap with silver lace on it." Mayflower Descendant, I, 83. Another, who was so poor that he owned only three-quarters of a cow, had in 1633 a feather bed, bolster, blankets, a green rug, sheets, tablecloths, napkins, "pillowbeeres," cushions, a chair bed, and sundry pots and kettles. The whole was valued at £71. Ibid., I, 157. A woman, whose whole property was worth in 1633 only £20, had aprons, napkins, a tablecloth, and towels. Ibid., I, 82. 3 Godbert Godbertson and wife, 1633. Mayflower Descendant, I, 154-155- Social Life , 1627-165'/ 253 coat/' "a silke Mohear petticoat," a " green phillip and Chyna petticoat"; "one old silk grogrum (GroGrain?) gowne," with red broadcloth, French serge, and green aprons. There were also four lace handkerchiefs, four pairs of lace cuffs, a whole dozen of stomachers, six "head clothes," a lace scarf, a "velvet muffe," a riding suit, with much linen, napkins, tablecloths, many sheets and pillow cases. There were as well silver bowls and spoons, glass bottles, much pewter, brass, and iron, with cushioned chairs and stools. 1 The houses were simple, plain, substantial, but by no means poverty stricken. They were built of hewn plank and those erected after 1628 had plank roofs in- stead of thatch. The first chimneys seem to have been of sticks plastered with clay, but, proving inflammable, they were forbidden, and the later chimneys were prob- ably of rough stone, laid in clay, as the majority of New England chimneys have been since. Some were of brick, for there was in Plymouth as early as 1639 a bricklayer with an apprentice. The furniture probably did not come from England, but was made up by carpenters in Plymouth. It was comfortable, substantial, and plen- tiful after 1630. For the first decade nothing beyond the indispensable was probably to be had, although some of the leaders may have imported from England some pieces of oak furniture. Earthenware was not common until the eighteenth century and there was certainly no Delftware on the Mayflower. Pewter dishes and spoons, wooden bowls and iron knives with some glass of poor quality probably completed the table equipment of most Pilgrims. There were some silver bowls and 1 Mayflower Descendant, XI, 200-206. See also effects of Widow Ring in 1631, ibid., I, 29. She owned a "mingled petticoat!" 254 The Pilgrims and their History spoons. Forks they certainly did not use in the seven- teenth century. While the influence of the wilderness was not very clear in the clothes, the houses, or utensils, its effect upon the food was striking. Corn bread instead of wheat bread was practically universal, beef, mutton, and veal were not to be had for many decades because the animals were too valuable for other purposes to be killed for meat. After 1630, milk, butter, and cheese seem to have been plentiful and within the reach of nearly everyone. Fish and game from the first had been always obtainable al- though not much eaten. Oysters, clams, and mussels the Pilgrims disliked and even in the years of the starva- tion they had to be hungry indeed before they would resort to them. Beans and pumpkins were common staples from the garden, where also were grown peas, squash, turnips, parsnips, and onions. Apple and pear trees were brought from England and the former were cultivated with some success, though the latter did not do well. The wild fruits, grapes, huckleberries, and strawberries, were used freely. Cranberries, the typical product of Cape Cod and the Plymouth district today, were not known. Beer was brewed from barley and rye and its use was universal. Cider was soon made from apples and a homemade wine from wild grapes. After 1640, however, French and Spanish wines, Dutch and English "strong waters" were common, although sold under strict rules. There can be also no doubt that they were used with extreme temperance. Tea, coffee, cocoa, and potatoes, seem not to have been known at Plymouth before 1691. Pie, the traditional New England dish in the minds of the ignorant, was certainly not made in the seventeenth century. On the other hand, hasty pudding, Social Life, 1627-16 57 255 made of corn meal boiled in water or milk, was the almost universal breakfast dish. Beans baked with pork was also a Pilgrim staple. Puddings or bread made of rye meal (perhaps a forerunner of New England brown bread) were common. So were soups made of peas and beans. Boiled peas, squash, and other vegetables were common adjuncts of Pilgrim meals, in which fresh meat appeared less frequently than we should have supposed. Wild game within easy hunting range of Plymouth seems to have been killed off comparatively early. Fishing the Pilgrims never enjoyed, but after a while fresh fish became one of the staples of diet. On the whole, there is no reason to doubt that life at Plymouth, while never in one sense luxurious, was vastly more comfortable than the life these same people had led in England. They had more to eat and wear and of better quality. They lived in better houses than at Scrooby, and had more land, more cattle, and a future better assured. There is no hint that they were not well satisfied with the results. They deemed their social life adequate, pleasant, and far above their deserts or station, as the laws of God might define the one or the social code of England the other. CHAPTER XVIII TENDENCY AFTER THE DEATH OF BRADFORD The political history of Plymouth from the death of Bradford until its absorption into Massachusetts Bay in 1 69 1 is if anything more quiet than the decades imme- diately preceding. For two or three years some little trouble was experienced with Quakers who attempted to migrate to the colony or to pass through its jurisdic- tion. In 1663 Governor Prence, who had succeeded Bradford, moved his residence from Eastham to Plym- outh, an event of real importance for the rehabilitation of the influence of Plymouth proper. In 1664 came the visit of Royal Commissioners to investigate the colony. A certain rephrasing of political privilege immediately preceded and followed that visit. In 1667 the reorganiza- tion of the Church in the town of Plymouth was under- taken by John Cotton, Jr. In 1676 came King Philip's War. Eight years later the New England Confederation held its last session; 1686 saw the beginning of the jurisdiction of Andros and a general government over all New England, which was presently overturned by the Glorious Revolution of 1689 and the new Charter of 1691. Such is a fairly inclusive list of events of importance in Pilgrim history for this period. The death of Bradford marked the end of an epoch. The old leaders had passed away. Brewster had died in 1644 and from his loss the Church never entirely recovered. Winslow had left in 1646 for England on a mission for the Massachusetts Bay colony, despite the 256 BpPP^^^JlH mfss Pfw fa (>^tiZL ik- B) * . -. I^H Hi- 1kg %•' Hc£^^*,, SiflyHii EDWARD WINSLOW Painted in London in 165 1 Tendency after the Death of Bradford 257 opposition of Bradford and others. There he had been well received and had found a regime thoroughly con- genial. Cromwell seems to have regarded him as a use- ful man, for he was made in 1652 chairman of a joint commission to award damages for vessels destroyed by the Dutch in neutral Denmark. In 1655 he was made the chief of three commissioners, his associates being none other than Admiral Venable and Admiral Penn, father of the noted Quaker, who were to lead an expedi- tion to the West Indies. There Winslow died of fever May, 1655. In the next year Standish died. He had left Plymouth proper in 1631 and had lived at Duxbury ever since. He had not only been the military leader of the Pilgrims, their very best scholar in the Indian lan- guages, the man best able to deal with the Indians on their behalf, but he had also been an exceedingly useful man in government, thoroughly trusted and respected. In the spring of 1657 Bradford died and then indeed was the older generation gone. There were left of the orig- inal group of leaders only Howland, who lived till 1673, and Alden, who died in 1687, neither of whom, despite their long and continued usefulness in administration, had ever shown capacity for leadership. They did not at this time possess the confidence of the little colony. William Bradford, Jr., who ^Siis'to have been a man of some ability, became Assistant fh§ year after his father's death and was reelected for twenty-four years. He was also for several years Deputy- Governor but was not able to fill the place that his father left. The mantle of Bradford fell upon Thomas Prence, who became autocrat of Plymouth accordingly and held the reins until his death in 1673. He had come to Plymouth in 162 1 on the Fortune and had early become one of the 258 The Pilgrims and their History leaders. In 1634 he had married the daughter of William Collier, the richest man in the colony. In 1657, ne na d already been Assistant for many years, Governor twice, and had held many of the lesser offices. The records of the First Church describe him as " excellently qualified for the office of Governor. He had a countenance full of majesty and therein as well as otherwise was a terror to evil doers." "God made him a repairer of breaches and a meanes to setle those shakings that were then threatening." l Prence was succeeded as Governor, after a few years' interim, by Thomas Hinckley, who had been, like Prence himself during Bradford's long reign, Assistant from 1658 to 1680. Hinckley ruled from 1680 until the end of the political independence of Plymouth. The first problem with which the new regime had to deal was that of the Quakers. In March, 1657, one of this brotherhood entered the jurisdiction from Rhode Island and was promptly ejected. Several weeks later another appeared and was also ejected, both without violence or penalty. In the following year, two others appeared and seem to have received some kind of trial before the General Court. One of them constantly in- terrupted Governor Prence, — the majesty of whose ap- pearance we may well remember in this connection for the Quaker seems not to have been terrified by it, — with a constant flow of such remarks as "thou liest," "Thomas, thou art a malicious man," "thy clamorous tongue I regard no more than the dust beneath my feet." The pair declined to take the oath of fidelity to England, but seem to have alleged no scruple about the oath itself, and, having defied the Court to do its worst, were ac- 1 Mayflower Descendant, IV, 216. He was also declared "amiable* and pleasant in his whole conversation." Tendency after the Death of Bradford 259 cordingly whipped and sent on their way, writing from Rhode Island a letter prophesying for Prence all sorts of calamities. Another they wrote to Alden, upbraiding him for having renounced his former tolerance; a hint interesting to us. They also begged Alden not to be a "self conceited fool" because called magistrate. In 1658 several other Quakers appeared, some of whom were whipped. In 1659 the famous Mary Dyer visited Plym- outh, but was promptly sent to Rhode Island and the cost of her deportation, with true Yankee shrewdness, was collected. In all, some ten were deported and some five were whipped. No Quaker suffered death at Plym- outh or extended ill-treatment. There is, however, no evidence that the more characteristic of Quaker demon- strations took place at Plymouth. It is perhaps advisable to mention here that the witch- craft delusion, which swept through the colony of Massa- chusetts Bay somewhat later, never secured credence at Plymouth. There seem to have been only two cases. In 1 65 1 Dinah, the wife of one Sylvester of Scituate, claimed to have seen a neighbor, the wife of a man named Holmes, in conversation with the devil, who had for this colloquy assumed the form of a bear. Holmes brought suit for slander. The lady was convicted and ordered to confess and to pay £5 damages. The fact that she chose to do so seems to have considerably dis- couraged witch hunting. The second case was in 1677 and resembles somewhat the famous cases at Salem. An elderly lady was charged with bewitching a young girl and with causing her to fall on the ground in violent fits. She was tried by a jury, Governor Josiah Winslow pre- siding as Judge, and to their everlasting honor the ver- dict was brought in of "not guilty." 260 The Pilgrims and their History The tendency of the political development at Plymouth was revealed immediately after the death of Bradford by a prompt attempt to reduce the autocratic power of the Governor and to provide some sort of formula, by which freemen might be more easily and frequently ad- mitted to the privilege. 1 The change indeed was less one in the structure of government than of emphasis. It was not less essential than before to be a Church member, but it was easier to become one. The ecclesi- astical line was less rigid and had great effect in extending political privilege. No doubt too the fact that the new leaders (until 1663) did not reside at Plymouth em- phasized the growth of other towns in jurisdiction, led to an increase in the power of the town authorities and to a more considerable freedom of the towns from the colonial dictation, as well as a considerable weakening of the political leadership of Plymouth itself. The dis- cretionary power of the Governor and Assistants seems to have been less freely used than by Bradford and their administration followed more closely certain stere- otyped and routine lines. The autocratic power, which had been retained by the General Court to combat the Assembly, in order to preserve and enhance the influence of Plymouth, indeed in order to preserve a degree of influence in the colony to which the physical size of Plymouth no longer entitled it, now had precisely the opposite effect from that originally intended. The over- whelming majority of the freemen had migrated to the 1 These conclusions are unavoidably deductions and inferences from the formal records, for there seems to be no direct evidence as to the policy or intentions of the leaders. The majority of ex- plicit facts and laws referred to can be readily found under the date in the Records. Tendency after the Death of Bradford 261 other towns and the very power of the General Court militated now against Plymouth. In general, however, the tendency was, so far as we can make out from the fragmentary records, for the General Court to become more and more a Court of Elections, for the Assembly of Deputies to arrogate supremacy in legislation, and for the Governor and Assistants to secure in practice control of the judicial machinery. The increase in the colony's population to over 7000 in 1690 made the rep- resentative system, for which the Assembly of Deputies stood, more important, more logical, and more useful. Taxation, hitherto hardly systematic at Plymouth, was reorganized after 1657. In 1646, excise taxes had been levied on wines, beer, and strong waters, and were soon extended to tobacco and oil. After 1662, the principal revenue came from export taxes on exports of boards, plank, staves, and headings, tar, oysters, and iron. Some revenue came from the lease of the trading rights on the Kennebec 1 and from a lease of the mackerel fishery off Cape Cod, which the colony attempted to monopolize as early as 1646. A barrel of oil from each drift whale was also demanded. Exactly how the revenue was collected and for what it was spent we cannot be sure, for salaries as such seem not to have been paid before 1690, though presents and expense accounts were authorized, and grants of land were made to officials. The people remained divided as before into Freemen, x An attempt was made during the Commonwealth to secure the grant of the whole of the Kennebec, which was finally agreed to for seven years. There was of course in 1660 no disposition on their part to call attention to it. Interregnum Entry Book, XCIV, pp. 425-526; CLXI, pp. io-ii. The entries relating to the Pil- grims in the English manuscript archives for the period subsequent to 1620 are few and unimportant. V 262 The Pilgrims and their History Inhabitants, Sojourners, and the non-privileged, but it became decidedly easier to become a Sojourner and reside in the jurisdiction, to secure a grant of land, and therefore to become an Inhabitant. Some attempt now was made to provide a less rigid statement of the require- ments for political privilege. In 1656 it was voted that the freemen of the towns should be permitted to " pro- pound" new candidates to the General Court for ad- mittance. Two years later it was amended to read that the man should be accepted by the Court "upon satisfy- ing testimony from freemen of his town." He should then ■" stand propounded" for a year, and then be con- sidered a freeman "if the Court shall not see cause to the contrary." Knowing as we do the powerful forces at work to break down the rigid lines of the older priv- ilege, we shall perhaps not be far wrong if we see in these provisions an attempt to admit men to political privi- lege who were vouched for by men from their own town, and against whom within a year nothing serious should be alleged. It seems almost as if a vote by the General Court as to whether they should be accepted was pre- cluded. In 1658 an oath of fidelity was required of all citizens and certain classes of men were defined who should not be admitted freemen, among whom were enumerated Quakers, "opposers of the good and whole- some laws of this colony," or " manifest opposers of the true worship of God, or such as refused to do the country service being called thereunto." All existing freemen who were Quakers or encouragers of Quakers were to lose their privilege, and all likewise who were adjudged "gravely scandalous," as "liers, drunkards, swearers, etc." It may be that the new regime was less strict than the old, but it seems nevertheless to have possessed a Tendency after the Death of Bradford 263 certain stringency of its own. At the same time it is very clear that the importance of these provisions lay in the spirit in which they were interpreted. In 1664 Plymouth received a visit from the Royal Commissioners, who came thither from Boston after what must have been for them a sorely trying experience. The suavity and cordiality of their welcome at Plymouth made therefore a great impression upon them. Prence indeed thoroughly appreciated the fact that, as against the King, the little colony possessed no rights of govern- ment. There had been considerable doubt whether the Council for New England had been able to convey any rights of government by the patent of 1630, and now that the Council had surrendered its powers to the King, those doubts were very certainly ended so far as the royal authority was concerned. The Commissioners invited complaints against the jurisdiction and received but one, from a man who had attempted to purchase land from the Indians on his own authority. They seem to have been entirely satisfied with what they saw and heard, and made indeed only four recom- mendations : that all householders should swear allegiance and the courts act in the King's name; that all men of competent estate and civil conversation be admitted as freemen to vote and to hold office; that all of orthodox opinions and civil lives be admitted to the Lord's Supper and their children to Baptism, either in the existing con- gregations or in such as they might form ; that any laws or legal phrases disrespectful to the King should be changed. The General Court replied that the first two points represented the colony's constant practice, while for the last, there were none. To the third they replied at great length, alleging in substance that all of orthodox 264 The Pilgrims and their History opinion were already welcome in their churches, that they forbade none the right to pursue such worship as they preferred, and merely required that, pending the institu- tion of some regular worship of their own, they should support and attend the Churches in existence. The Commissioners were well satisfied with the reply, and the letter, which the King later sent to Plymouth, seemed to the Pilgrims to augur well for their future cordial relations with the Crown. In 1671 they adopted the suggestion of the Commissioners and provided that all should be freemen, who were twenty-one years old, possessed of £20 of ratable property, and were as well "of sober and peaceable conversation," and "orthodox in religion. " There was still ample warrant in these phrases to withhold privilege from anyone whom they disliked, but the tendency seems to have been to in- crease the number of freemen rather than to restrict it. The trend of economic development at Plymouth emphasized those interests complementary to Massachu- setts Bay. An economic structure closely related to the larger colony had been developing for some time, and gradually independent trade with England and the other American colonies ceased and Plymouth bought from the Bay and sold to it. This was naturally enough the result of the founding of towns in the western part of the Plym- outh patent by settlers from the Bay colony itself, in locations better suited to agriculture than Plymouth proper. This district became gradually the predominant economic section of the little state, and naturally, being upon the high road from Boston to Rhode Island and in closer proximity indeed to Boston than to Plymouth, grew more and more nearly a part of the economic struc- ture of which Boston was the centre, and tended more Tendency after the Death of Bradford 265 and more to sever its connections with Plymouth itself. Indeed, the Plymouth area did not form an independent economic unit nor did it occupy a natural geographical subdivision of Massachusetts Bay. On the contrary, it was itself economically a part of a larger unit whose nat- ural centre was Boston. More and more the economic and social influence of the Bay Colony transformed the greater number of Plymouth towns. The old system of rigid seclusion gradually broke down. The old scrutiny of newcomers was less and less maintained. While this assisted in a way the breakdown of the older ecclesiastical lines, it was itself in turn assisted by the general failure of the Plymouth Church to maintain its old-time ascend- ency. While it was perhaps never easy for a stranger to secure a grant of land and economic privilege in the Old Colony or in Massachusetts, the two ceased, certainly after 1660, to regard each other with the old suspicion. A man of good standing in the one could without great difficulty transport himself to some part of the other's jurisdiction and there secure privilege. The economic and ecclesiastical results of King Philip's War give it now practically its only title to a place in Plymouth annals. Time was when Philip occupied a romantic and prominent place in Pilgrim history, but the more recent students have united to strip this war of its glamor and of its importance. 1 They point out to us 1 Palfrey and Goodwin are particularly emphatic. It should perhaps be said that the more romantic idea of Philip involves the very decided guilt of the Pilgrims for ill-treatment, undue en- croachments, selfishness, and cruelty. Everything else we know about Plymouth leads us to reject such an idea as inconsistent with Pilgrim character and ideals as well as with their professions, and with the evidence in their Records of their previous treat- ment of Indians. 266 The Pilgrims and their History that Philip was no king and was not even an intelligent Indian; that he lived in squalor and possessed no par- ticular property of which the white man could deprive him. As a figure typifying the downfall of a proud race, protesting against the loss of its independence before the ever encroaching white man, Philip was a name with which to conjure. As a dirty, quarrelsome, treacherous, degenerate Indian, bent upon making trouble for the Pilgrims, who had done their best to protect his land and property, he ceases to occupy in history a position of im- portance. The later students have put the blame for the war squarely upon the Indians, have denied continued and unfair encroachments by the whites, and have re- duced the war to a series of Indian raids, destructive of life and property, chiefly because of the carelessness of the whites and of the failure of Massachusetts and Plymouth to cooperate promptly. So far as Plymouth was concerned, the influence of the war was indirect and lay in its economic and ecclesiastical results rather than in its inception or its happenings. The latter are not particularly interesting nor instructive and a detailed narrative seems out of proportion here in so brief an account of the Pilgrim story. The economic loss, which the war entailed, nevertheless was for so weak a colony a serious matter. No exact estimate is available, but certainly several towns were burned and several hundred houses, while several hundred people were killed and a good many thousand pounds' worth of property was destroyed, including some thousands of cattle. The public debt which the colony incurred in putting down the rising amounted to twenty-seven thousand pounds, a staggering sum considering their resources, but one which was eventually paid to the Tendency after the Death of Bradford 267 penny. The existence of this debt and the comparative lack of means for paying it, was apparently one of the reasons which led Hinckley to favor secretly the inclusion of Plymouth within the Massachusetts patent. The outbreak of the war caused a " searching of con- sciences" at Plymouth and a renewal of the Covenant of the Church with God. They felt that in one way or another it indicated the wrath of God upon them for their shortcomings, and that the weakness of the Church at Plymouth was due to their own lack of spiritual strength. A great day of fasting and humiliation was held and, as the Church records add, " within a month after our solemne day," Philip was slain. Thus prompt > was the indication of divine approval of their repentance. The leadership of the Church at Plymouth had been dis- turbed by the foundation of various towns after 1630 and by the removal of Elder Brewster from Plymouth as early as 1633. The difficulty was increased by the fact that the newer towns in the majority of cases possessed a minister abler than the incumbent at Plymouth itself, and was doubly accentuated by the death of Bradford and by the lack of any minister at all at Plymouth from 1654 to 1667. During those years all pretence of leader- ship was lost by the Plymouth Church. The calling of John Cotton, Jr., son of the famous Boston minister, trained at Harvard College, and a man of real ability and energy was an important event in the history of the colony. This was in 1667, but it was not until 1676 and 1677 that the real reorganization of the Church was begun and an active spirit of cooperation engendered among the people themselves. The mere presence of Cotton at Plymouth was defin- itive proof that the old line between the Plymouth 268 The Pilgrims and their History and Massachusetts Churches had disappeared. Truth to tell, the Bay Churches had accepted the Pilgrims' standpoint. They no longer maintained the Tightness of the Church of England nor the desirability of connec- tion with it. They no longer claimed as they had in the first decade the right to attend its communion on their visits to England. The Pilgrims themselves were not more assured of its inadequacy than the Massachu- setts ministers in 1667. An entire generation had passed away since they had first come to the New World, during which they had been separated from the Mother Church not only in distance but in time. A new generation had risen in New England, born on the soil, which knew neither Joseph nor Pharoah, and had long been accus- tomed to formulate its own policy in ecclesiastical af- fairs. For nearly two decades, moreover, Episcopacy had been abolished in England, and the renunciation of Bishops and canons in the mother land had made illogical any attachment to them by the Puritans of New Eng- land. The change was probably in no sense a conscious adoption by the Bay Colony of the Pilgrim Separatist belief, but the work of circumstances over which neither of the colonies in New England had any control. Nor must it be forgotten that the negative character of Pilgrim theology, its insistence on the observances of the transitional period, made difficult its maintenance against the more positive theology of later years. The presence in the Bay Colony, too, of so many abler min- isters and of so many laymen, intellectually more capable than the majority at Plymouth, insensibly in the course of decades produced an impression. New colonists had begun in 1631 to drift into the Pilgrim jurisdiction by twos and threes from the Bay Colony and remained Tendency after the Death of Bradford 269 naturally more favorable to its traditions than to the original Pilgrim ideals. Gradually, as the leaders at Plymouth and the older generation had died, the newer generation had grown up in other towns than Plymouth, in close connection with immigrants from Massachusetts, and in most cases outnumbered by them. It cannot be said that the Pilgrim Church was absorbed into the Massachusetts system, nor yet perhaps that the Massa- chusetts system transformed itself in accordance with the Pilgrim example. The two Churches seem to have grown toward each other and away from what they had both originally been, and merged into a product different from either and better than both. 1 As in the State so in the Church, the reorganization under Cotton was actuated by a desire to strengthen the Church by a broader and more tolerant policy, by a lessening of the rigidity of the older ecclesiastical re- quirements. Something of the precise changes we know. 2 Cotton and the deacons had undertaken in 1667 a house to house visitation of the whole town and had inquired "into the state of souls." A change was made at once in the method of admission to the Church. It had hitherto been essential, not only for the individual to satisfy the authorities of his orthodoxy, but for him also to state orally before the Church as a whole the grounds of his faith and to answer such questions as were put to him, a terrifying ordeal which had no doubt 1 The issue was somewhat debated at the time. John Cotton Senior and Bradford both disclaim any conscious attempt to model the Bay Churches on the Pilgrim idea. See a discussion of this point in C. Burrage, Early English Dissenters, I, 357-368. 2 The Records of Plymouth First Church tell us much of in- terest. They have been printed in full in the Mayflower Descend- ant, IV, V, VIII, etc. 270 The Pilgrims and their History kept many from Church membership. This was now no longer required. The authorities were to satisfy them- selves by private conversation with the candidate of his orthodoxy and fitness. Undoubtedly this was responsi- ble for the admission of so many new members at this time and for the continued accessions in the years after 1676. There had been forty-seven members in 1669; twenty-seven more had been admitted in that year; fourteen in 1670; seventeen in 1671; and six in 1672. This will give some idea of the previous stringency. The members also solemnly renewed their covenant in 1676 and entered into a further definite agreement to revive the active life of the old Church. The service too had been calculated to make partici- pation difficult rather than easy for those unable to read or not possessed of a ready memory. Books no doubt were scarce, but the psalms had been sung straight through, without any such assistance, as was already common in Massachusetts, as giving out the line before it was sung. This practice was introduced at Plymouth in 1 68 1, and was then changed to the reading of the psalm by the Pastor with an exposition of it, before the Deacon proceeded to give it out, line by line, for singing. Ainsworth's Psalms, hitherto used at Plymouth, was after a time abandoned for the Bay Psalm Book. Thus was new life introduced into the Plymouth Church. \S At this time, too, education at Plymouth received se- rious attention. From the first they had been solicitous about it, and, even in the earliest years, the children had received some instruction. As early as 1624, Brad- ford hints at something like a school, and after 1630 there were certainly several schools in the colony. It was not until 1662, however, that a law was passed by the Tendency after the Death of Bradford 271 General Court charging each town to employ a school- master, and not until 1677 that schools were made compulsory. Laws were passed holding masters and parents responsible in case the children were not trained in reading, writing, and arithmetic. Some inducement was offered after 1670 for the establishment of a classical school, and probably in 1674 the first free school estab- lished in New England by law was opened at Plymouth. There had long been free' schools in Massachusetts Bay, but they had not the sanction of law or were not sup- ported by taxes. For anything beyond the elements, however, it was essential to resort to the schools of the Bay Colony and to Harvard College. Secular education, indeed, the Pilgrims did not en- tirely approve of. University learning seemed to them unnecessary beyond the rudiments, for the true enlight- enment of the mind was to be derived from the study of the Bible and not from the classics as taught by col- leges. There was to this opposition a certain ecclesiastical tinge. The Established Church made much of college degrees and exacted from clergymen for ordination re- quirements which could be fulfilled only in colleges. For the ordination of that Church, the Pilgrims had the most supreme contempt and any requirements which it made they placed in the same category. 1 They were unwilling to accept the contention that a man might not be entirely learned without having "saluted a Uni- versity" or peered between the covers of a Greek Gram- mar. To admit that college education was essential* would have been to condemn their own opinions and 1 An amusing commentary on this attitude by Morton in his New English Canaan, Prince Soc. ed., 282, is our chief direct evi- dence of its existence. 272 The Pilgrims and their History accept those of the college professors and college-trained Clergy whom they had left behind in England, and whose learning they had rejected as unavailing for salvation. The true Light had come to them without education. The educated of their own day seemed not to see the Light. They were therefore not anxious to teach their children anything beyond the rudiments of that education, which seemed so powerless to confer upon its possessor spiritual guidance and insight. It is quite clear that after 1660 a great change came over social conditions at Plymouth; not that the main outlines of the social structure were seriously changed nor its main purpose altered, but the spirit and tendency of life were freer. 1 The individual was less subject to scrutiny and greater latitude was allowed him. With this later Plymouth we are less interested, though we know about it comparatively more than about the earlier Plymouth of the forefathers. It is interesting chiefly as the first stage in the breaking down of a system which time was to prove incompatible with its own chief tenets. The Pilgrims preached the responsibility of the individual to God for his own salvation, and his par- amount responsibility for informing himself of religious 1 The members of the First Church agreed in 1676 that they had been "listlesse and sluggish" in attendance at Church; had not kept the Sabbath strictly; had "set our hearts upon the world and creature comforts and vanities and have too much conformed to the world." "Wee have bin a proud generation — haughty in spirit, in countenance, in garbe and fashion, and have too much delighted to follow the vaine and sinfull customs of an evil world." The Elders told the Church that "some of the brethren walked disorderly, in sitting too long together in publick houses and with vaine company and drinking." Mayflower Descendant, V, 216; VIII, 215, 217. We must certainly not interpret such utterances too literally. Tendency after the Death of Bradford 273 truth. They taught without deviation or compromise that none but he could save his soul, that priests, churches, ministers, and friends were unavailing to do more than offer him some little assistance and enlightenment. In Europe, they had preached freedom to act, freedom to think, freedom to read, with the full comprehension that it meant freedom to disobey statutes, to renounce the Pope, to absent themselves from the service of the Established Church, and, so long as they had remained in Europe, this new freedom of the individual which they preached had remained merely freedom to disregard certain former requirements of the old order, so con- spicuously thrust into the foreground by Church and State as to conceal the fact that real freedom to think and act was equally withheld from the Pilgrims by their own system. At Plymouth, far removed from Europe and its Churches and kings, the Pope become already a dim myth, and Bishops and canons unrealities, the system involved a control of the individual by society and the church which was entirely incompatible with its own primal tenet, his freedom to think and act in accord- ance with his own information and not in accordance with that of others. Theoretically, the Church members accorded to each other the right to investigate and con- clude, but they never even in theory extended that right to their wives, their children, their servants, and their apprentices. A minority of the community attempted to coerce the majority on the basis of an intellectual pre- tension to dictate their conduct as well as their beliefs, to dictate their civil, economic, and social status as well as the road to salvation. It was a system inconsistent with itself, which denied its own tenet, which crushed the individual instead of freeing him, which subjected him 274 The Pilgrims and their History to a yoke far heavier than any Bishops or Pope had laid upon him, and manyfold more stringently enforced. I"*"" Time could not fail to reveal the inconsistency. Men began to see that they had freedom only to agree with the strictest Calvinists and to act in social affairs in accord with Bradford's and Brewster's consciences. They might, it was true, leave the colony; but they came in the end to realize that the fundamental tenets of the system itself endowed them with the right to follow their own consciences, and with the same right to resist dictation from the leaders as from the Pope. Dimly, unconsciously, something of this seems to have been appreciated toward the close of Pilgrim history. This was unquestionably the leaven at work at Plymouth, as at Boston, in England, and elsewhere. The process of evolution was to be long. Real toleration was still many decades distant, and the freedom of social life from ecclesiastical direction was not to come within the span of Plymouth's political independence. The Plymouth of 169 1 would scarcely have pleased the original settlers. Long before Bradford died, he began to suspect something of the real trend of events. To him the gradual disappearance of the sharp ecclesiastical antagonism between Plymouth and the other colonies, the growth in population, the founding of new towns, the increase in the number of churches were proof that the end for which he had striven throughout his life would not be achieved. Had he but known it, the diffusion of population, the apparent breaking down of the barriers surrounding Plymouth, were but the signs that the in- fluence of the Pilgrims was extending, was leavening a larger lump than Plymouth, and was about to become the heritage, not of a Church but of a nation. CHAPTER XIX THE LOSS OF POLITICAL INDEPENDENCE It was not until January, 1687, some little time after the establishment of a General Governor for the New England colonies at New York and Boston, that Sir Edmund Andros found time to take the necessary legal steps for the abolition of the old government at Plymouth and the institution of his own. 1 The last session of the old General Court occurred October 5, 1686, and the new Government lasted until April 22, 1689, though the next entry in the Plymouth records is October 8, 1689. There is not much to tell about the Andros regime at Plymouth. It seems to have been rather an interim than a radical change of any sort. The ecclesiastical, social, and economic life of the colony seems to have gone on as before; local government in the hands of the towns con- tinued, even though an intention to change it had been expressed; only the central authority was suspended, and, inasmuch as no very considerable activity of any of its parts was common, it betokened no great change of significance that for three years neither the Governor and Assistants, the General Court, nor the Assembly held their accustomed sessions. 1 Sewall duly noticed that on December 30, 1686, "the gentle- men from Plymouth and Rhode Island" came to Boston to take oaths to the new government. Diary, Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 5th Series, V, 163. This famous source is disappointing, for it con- tains only a very few perfunctory notices about Plymouth. Nor does the considerable volume of contemporary material on the Andros regime much better reward perusal. 275 276 The Pilgrims and their History Indeed, nothing of importance seems to have been attempted by Andros at Plymouth. The same polity he tried to apply in the other colonies was outlined; the land titles in particular were declared invalid, and announcement was made that new and thoroughly legal titles and documents were to be had upon payment of fee. Clark's Island, which had long been rented out by the colony for the benefit of the poor, was granted by the new Government to Nathaniel Clark, a Plymouth man, and one of Plymouth's seven members in the new Governor's Council. He seems to have been the only Plymouth citizen to whom Andros listened, and the only one who in any whole hearted way gave his allegiance to the new regime. He could however accomplish little in so short a time, whatever his intentions, and there is some doubt whether he ever secured possession of the island. Andros and his henchmen were too busy with the other colonies to give much time to the affairs of the smallest and least troublesome part of his jurisdiction, particularly as no open or avowed opposition was at- tempted, and where even expressions of disapproval seem to have been relatively guarded. There was, too, the ob- vious question whether the owners of Plymouth estates were able to pay the new fees. Hinckley, ex-Governor, declared them incapable. This no doubt gave Andros pause. Hinckley, the old Governor, Nathaniel Clark, the old Secretary, who had been educated and trained by Mor- ton, himself for so many years Secretary of the colony, became members of Andros's council, Clark, in all prob- ability to further his own nefarious endeavors, Hinckley to perform the public service of thwarting Andros's schemes regarding Plymouth in the Council itself before The Loss of Political Independence 277 they should mature. 1 At any rate he could surely dis- cover what was intended, and, being forewarned, might in some way or other frustrate the execution of the measure, if not its inception. He could certainly give the men at Plymouth plenty of time in which to make their preparations for resistance, in case such should seem expedient. Some protest to the King against the new measures Hinckley made, but with so little opposition possible in the Council, with nothing better than half- hearted support from the other members, he felt it in- expedient to organize any resistance at Plymouth. It is perhaps due to his efforts that nothing of importance was executed at Plymouth. When Andros was impris- oned at Boston and the regime fell with a crash on the receipt of the news of the Glorious Revolution in Eng- land, Hinckley and the officers who had been in power at Plymouth in 1686 quietly resumed office, without comment or official action. Clark to be sure they im- prisoned. The whole incident produced no effect now traceable on Plymouth life or institutions; no important event happened at Plymouth during these years worth chronicling; and what is still more surprising no vital change in the rights or privileges of Plymouth, in the attitude of the colony to the Crown, or of the Crown to the colony can be discovered. The policy of submission which Hinckley represented and for which at the time he was criticised somewhat sharply was really a continuation of what the Pilgrims in the earliest times had determined was their only ex- pedient attitude toward the Crown, and indeed, toward 1 The Hinckley Papers contain a considerable amount of in- formation on Plymouth from about 1675 to 1692. Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th Series, V. / 278 The Pilgrims and their History any in England or America possessed of unquestioned authority. They themselves never possessed by patent or otherwise any political authority which was not seriously open to question, and they therefore from the first deemed it wiser not to have that question raised, or, if it were, it should not be pushed by them to an open issue or a trial of strength. The loss of the political independence of Plymouth is intelligible only when studied in the light of its previous economic and ecclesi- astical development, and in the light of its previous re- lations to the English Government and to the other New England colonies. When they landed, they were without authorization of any kind, but nevertheless in the Compact of 1620 utilized phrases, which have since seemed to many to betoken an intention of downright independence. 1 They bound themselves "into a civill body politik " " to enacte, constitute, and frame such just and equall lawes, ordi- nances, actes, constitutions and offices, from time to time as shall be thought most meete and convenient for the general good of the Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience." This Brad- ford declared was as valid and useful a document, so far as they were concerned, as the patent they brought with them from the Virginia Company, and no doubt he considered it as valuable as the one which their associates got from the Council for New England. They themselves certainly possessed no title to land and surely no rights of government until the Warwick Patent is- sued to Bradford in 1630. In the meantime West had 1 Professor Cbanning emphatically declares the Compact only a temporary arrangement without the "slightest thought of in- dependence." History of the United States, I, 309. The Loss of Political Independence 279 arrived as Admiral of New England and Gorges as Governor of New England, both with commissions from the Council for New England, and both of them seem to have assumed the inferiority of the Plymouth jurisdic- tion. Gorges in particular issued definite orders to them and demanded that they execute warrants for the arrest of Weston, which implied very definitely their sub- ordinate political authority. While aware of the im- plication, they judged it best to yield, when they saw that he also appreciated it. From these apprehensions however they were soon free. Scarcely had the new patent to Bradford been issued, and the first murder occurred at Plymouth by Billing- ton than a very active discussion took place as to the possession by the colony of the power to execute him, indeed as to the possession by the colony of any gov- ernmental authority at all. There were not a few who seemed to feel that the patent conferred nothing but titles to land, and so the majority of the Pilgrims seem to have thought. They consulted Winthrop and Dudley, newly come to Boston and better acquainted with Eng- lish law, and received from them advice to assume that they possessed such powers of government, and to exer- cise them accordingly, a decision based no doubt upon expediency rather than law. They executed Billington and proceeded to act otherwise in matters of government as if full authority were theirs. To this presently by Sir Christopher Gardiner, Gorges, and others objection was raised in 163 1 and 1632, and formal complaint made to the Privy Council in London. Winslow however suc- cessfully explained matters to the Privy Council in January, 1633, and a formal statement under seal was issued to approve all of their previous practices. It also 280 The Pilgrims and their History spoke in a very encouraging way of the importance of the venture and the desire of the royal Government to further it. They now began to write in the records l of the "Freemen of this society of New Plymouth" and later write of "this government" and of "the Commonweale" ; 1636 found them enacting a law which might have been interpreted to imply a disregard of the royal authority. "No imposition, law, or ordinance be made or imposed upon or by ourselves or others, at present or to come, but such as shall be made or imposed by consent, ac- cording to the free liberties of the state and kingdom of England, and no otherwise." Not long after news must have come of the surrender in 1635 to the Crown of the patent and rights of the Council for New England, the grantor of their own patent, and which made the King at once paramount over them. This seems to have caused somewhat greater circumspection at Plymouth for we find the records promptly began to run in the name of the King. In 1639 an entry begins "Whereas our soueraigne lord the King is pleased to betrust us, T. P., W. B., E. W., etc. with the gouernment of so many of his subjectes as doe or shal be permitted to Hue within this gouernment of New Plymouth." 2 They were careful moreover that everything should hereafter be done, even coroners' in- quiries and other minor judicial matters, "on the behalf of our sovereign lord the King," for all which in due time they had reason to be thankful. In 1642, at the out- 1 Plymouth Colony Records, I, 5, 22, 52, etc. 2 Plymouth Colony Records, I, 113. The use of the King's name begins as early as the winter of 1636 in a case of coroner's jury, to inquire into the death of , "in the behalf e of our soveraigne Lord the King." Ibid., I, 39. See also pp. 48, 49, 91, 105, 107, etc., etc. The Loss of Political Independence 281 break of the Civil War, the success of the Long Parlia- ment was not as reassuring to the men at Plymouth as it was to those at Boston, and the downfall and capture of Charles in 1646 was still more puzzling. In June, 1649, they voted that "whereas things are mutch un- seteled in our natiue cuntry in regard of the affairs of the state (so much for poor Charles Fs head!) whereby the Court cannot so clearly prosseed in election as formerly," all officers and magistrates were to continue for a year as before and Bradford and John Brown were requested to act as Commissioners, "who condescended thereto." l No further action seems to have been taken and when the Royal authority was restored in 1660, the colony still continued its administration as before, with circumspect and loyal expressions of their reasonable satisfaction at His Majesty's restoration to his kingdom. They dis- creetly neglected to call attention to their previous days of prayer and thanksgiving for the Parliament and the Commonwealth of England after the news of Dunbar and Worcester. When the Royal Commissioners arrived in 1664, they had reason to congratulate themselves upon this circumspection. Their writs had run in the name of the King and the records proved it. They had not excluded men from political privilege on the score of loyalty to the Crown in the past two decades, nor were there any laws on the books hostile to the King. This attitude pleased the Crown and so apparently matters continued during the reign of Charles II. This policy of deference and submission to whatever took place in England, this caution and fear of raising the awkward question, whether or not they possessed 1 PlymotUh Colony Records, II, 139. 282 The Pilgrims and their History authority, was precisely the policy which led Hinckley to accept the rule of Andros, to take a seat upon his Council, and, after the Glorious Revolution, to attempt no very strenuous opposition to the inclusion of Plym- outh in the Massachusetts Charter of 169 1. He saw that it was idle for them to expect consideration from William III, on the score of such past legal rights as the Mas- sachusetts colonists unquestionably had. It was entirely within the law for the King's officials to claim that the Plymouth colonists had never possessed authority. Nor was the choice before them apparently that of continued independence or annexation to Massachusetts. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New York were all apparently anxious to absorb them and had been for some consider- able time. These pretensions to superior authority over Plymouth on the part of the other colonies, these claims that the Plymouth territory was included in the patents already granted to others, were old and not infrequently asserted in the past. In 1634 an attempt was made by an Englishman to proceed above the Plymouth grant on the Kennebec, and there establish an Indian trading post which would intercept the trade before it reached the Pilgrim territory. The Pilgrims forbade him to go but he was determined to proceed, and in an endeavor to prevent him perhaps by some little hustling and pushing, a musket was discharged and a man killed. Some little excitement was caused in Boston by the news, and, when one of the Plymouth ships put in to Boston Harbor some- what later, the authorities imprisoned Alden, although they allowed the ship to proceed. This was an evident claim of jurisdiction over the Plymouth men, who were nonplussed to know what to do. After deliberation, they sent Standish to Boston with letters demanding Alden's The Loss of Political Independence 283 release, and explaining their rights on the Kennebec. Alden was indeed allowed to go free but was required to give bond for further appearance, and Standish as well was bound to appear at the next session of the Massachu- setts Court, and was ordered to produce a copy of the patent and testify in regard to the affair. There could have been no conceivably clearer claim of jurisdiction and superiority than this. After some correspondence and visiting, a great deal of explaining and insisting, the Mas- sachusetts Colony was gotten to accept the Pilgrim's explanation, although no definite withdrawal of their assumed rights seems to have been made. 1 Two years later Hooker's colonists appeared on the Connecticut and proceeded to occupy as waste land a considerable tract which the Pilgrims had bought from the Indians. It was furthermore entirely outside the Massachusetts boundaries, though this fact was prob- ably not known at the time. Despite the protestations of Jonathan Brewster, the Pilgrim agent on the spot, the Connecticut men settled the land and had no primary intention to leave the Pilgrims any of it. After much ado, with protests and visits, they were finally gotten to recognize the Pilgrim title, on condition that the Pil- grims should immediately transfer it to them, reserving only a small portion as a basis for their trade. However satisfactory this technical endorsement of the Pilgrim jurisdiction may have been, it was certainly disconcerting to find colonists of their own race and religious per- suasion, entirely unwilling to recognize their legal posi- tion in the new country. Considerable bitterness long re- mained at Plymouth over this, as Bradford is forced to 1 Bradford relates the affair at some length. History, 377-379, 382. 284 The Pilgrims and their History admit. And so, too, the Pilgrims felt that the Mas- sachusetts men ought to have aided them in the expulsion of the French from the trading post on the Penobscot, seized by the latter in 1635, and which the Pilgrims failed to retake. 1 In 1638 an incident occurred which was more reassuring. 2 Four indented servants ran away from Plymouth and murdered an Indian in the western part of the jurisdiction, and, when they landed in Rhode Island, were detained for the deed upon the complaint of the Indians, who demanded justice. Williams, much to the disgust of the Plymouth people, for the deed had been committed not only by Plymouth servants but in Plym- outh territory, referred the cause to the authorities in Boston, who, mindful perhaps of the late dispute in the case of Alden, referred it back to Plymouth. Thither the men were eventually brought, tried for their crime, and executed. The following year an active dispute arose with Mas- sachusetts as to the boundaries of the colony. Bradford declared that the Pilgrims held their land by right of purchase from the Indians, confirmed by the King, to which Winthrop replied, "it was the first I heard of it and it would be hard to make their title good and as hard to proue their grant to them." 3 Indeed not only were the exact limits of the Warwick patent debated, but, as Winthrop hints, its validity to confer anything upon them was questioned. Rhode Island similarly raised a number of questions as to the ownership of particu- 1 Bradford, History, 420-422. 2 Ibid., 432. 3 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th Series, VI, 156. There are in this same volume many letters upon this aspect of Pilgrim relations. Bradford's account in the History, 439-443, is very full. The Loss of Political Independence 285 lar districts. The Plymouth men retorted by claiming Providence. They also laid claim to Shawomet (now Warwick, R. I.) ; Massachusetts men were sent to occupy it; and blows were very nearly exchanged, but the Plym- outh title was finally admitted. It was at this time, in 1639 and 1640 that the Plymouth men first became con- scious of the desire of Massachusetts and Rhode Island to annex the whole of their territory. This knowledge made them hesitate somewhat to enter into the New England Confederation which was at this time suggested. In the first meetings of the men at Boston, who thought it useful for the settling of such disputes as have just been mentioned, consideration was also given to the attaining for Massachusetts of "some preeminence." This was in 1638, and no doubt the fact and the disposition of Massachusetts to lord it somewhat over the others was thoroughly well known and appreciated. It probably explains in particular the arrival of the Plymouth delegates in 1643 for the final act of organization without power to sign. No adequate investigation of the history of the New England Confederation seems as yet to have been made, but it would be out of place in this book to detail at length the experience of Plymouth in the Confederation or attempt the story of the Confederation itself. The events in its history were not closely associated with the affairs of Plymouth nor was Plymouth able to play any very considerable part in their decision. Together with Connecticut and New Haven, the Plymouth men pretty commonly stood out solidly against the attempts of Massachusetts to dominate and direct. Frequently they were able to succeed, but, on questions of real im- portance, upon which the Massachusetts men were 286 The Pilgrims and their History thoroughly determined, the latter were unfortunately able to compel the acceptance of action by the others or to nullify the action which the others wished to under- take. So far as Plymouth is concerned, the colony seems to have entered the Confederation with the expectation that New Haven and Connecticut would assist her in the preservation of her independence and in thwarting the ambitious claims of Massachusetts. Certainly those of Rhode Island could thus be forestalled. 1 The four New England colonies thoroughly agreed in their dislike and distrust of the " Islanders." Constant attempts were made by the Massachusetts Commissioners to emphasize in one way or another their superiority over Plymouth, which were generally re- ceived quietly by the Plymouth men and pushed to one side. The question was never entirely settled but no open quarrel took place. Plymouth was never quite sure that Massachusetts accepted the legality of her authority, the reality of her independence, or the cor- rectness of the boundaries assigned her. 2 In 1660 the Restoration caused all the colonies to feel that greater circumspection was essential, and the New England Confederation, an extra-legal association, they thought likely to meet criticism in England and accordingly 1 "Concerning the Islanders," wrote Bradford to Winthrop, "we have no conversing with them, nor desire to have, furder then necessitie or humanity may require." May 17, 1642. History, 463. 2 The General Court at Boston issued an order on March 7, 1644, for the release of Randal Holden, and the New Plymouth agents, and their banishment from Massachusetts on pain of death. State Papers Colonial, XI, No. 1. See also the case of the Schism in the Church at Rehobah in 1649 in which the Massa- chusetts General Court also interfered — Goodwin, Pilgrim Re- public, 515. The Loss of Political Independence 287 they allowed it to fall somewhat into disuse. Certainly it became less active. The absorption of New Haven into Connecticut in 1667 left only three colonies, and still further weakened the position of Plymouth, though no doubt it roused its apprehensions. There was no surprise therefore in Plymouth when they learned in 1690 that the Massachusetts men were ambitious to extend the limits of their boundary on the south so as to include the Plymouth jurisdiction, and that the Rhode Island men were also anxious to secure a new patent, which would beyond doubt give them possession of Plymouth. We cannot be entirely sure, but it is probable that the authorities at Plymouth allowed it to be known in London that they preferred annexation to Massachusetts. Truth to tell the two colonies had long been practically one in many ways. Very early the economic centre of New England had shifted to Boston and the fact that Plymouth was merely a part of its economic area was soon thrust upon them. As early as 1640, Plymouth had practically ceased to trade direct with England and bought from and sold to Boston. The western towns of the jurisdiction had for the most part been settled from the Bay Colony and had their economic affiliations with it from the first rather than with Plymouth itself. There was no wrenching or tearing therefore of natural associations in 169 1. Politically Plymouth was absorbed with ease into the Massachusetts Town System and merely sent its deputies to Boston instead of to Plym- outh. Indeed the Massachusetts representative system had grown up inside the older Pilgrim system and had by 1691 taken control of it. The reality of local independence was not disturbed, and was rather better assured under the Massachusetts system than under the 288 The Pilgrims and their History previous rule of Plymouth, where the General Court had always technically possessed a paramount authority over the towns which the latter had then found it difficult to endure. So far as political leadership was concerned, too, there had been little in Plymouth Colony for some decades. Certainly the town of Plymouth had itself been incapable of the direction of affairs and the other towns were unwilling to concede it to each other. There was indeed no intellectual group of men in the jurisdic- tion capable of that degree of administrative direction needed to offset the influence of so large and admirably organized a community as the Bay Colony was. Nor was political independence any longer essential to insure the perpetuation of the prime fact of the Pilgrim creed which they had sacrificed so much to establish. Separation from the Established Church of England and the rejection of its Ordination as insufficient was already a fact in Massachusetts, and the inclusion of Plymouth within the larger jurisdiction perpetuated and strength- ened the Pilgrim ecclesiastical position. Indeed it was more than possible that the continued independence of Plymouth might have given color to an interference from the Established Church in England, which the inclusion within Massachusetts made less probable. The doctrinal differences between the Puritan and Pil- grim Churches had been from the first slight and had not been considered important by Brewster and Brad- ford. They had been thoroughly minimized and had indeed chiefly disappeared by the foundation from Massa- chusetts of the newer towns in Plymouth jurisdiction and by the fact that the great majority of ministers out- side of the town of Plymouth itself came from Massa- chusetts. The Loss of Political Independence 289 The truth seems to be that Massachusetts did not in any literal sense absorb Plymouth or Plymouth leaven Massachusetts. They had grown together in the course of a century, had not merely developed side by side, and emerged in 1700 a new political, economic, ecclesi- astical, and social entity, different from either at the beginning, certainly different from the plans originally projected by the leaders of both, and on the whole more satisfactory to the people in each than the Government of either had been before. The political independence of Plymouth had indeed become an anomaly which ig- nored the real fact that its towns were now an integral part of a new entity and as such shared in a new type of political life and activity. In this new state the control of the Church was immeasurably less. The real reason for the dominance over the State by the Church at Plymouth and of the social and economic life by both combined had now disappeared. The ecclesiastical posi- tion, which they had come to New England to establish, and which they had felt needed such protection from the State, was assured beyond a possibility of doubt. It was now obvious that civil affairs might be conducted upon the basis of temporal needs and expedient policy, that economic and social questions might now be handled without primary relation to the stability of State or Church and might hence be decided on their merits. The influx of population they no longer feared and there was not the same necessity of scrutinizing so carefully the newcomers or of a restriction of their acquisition of political, economic, and social privilege. The reason therefore for political independence had disappeared. Nor was there justifiability for the economic and political inconvenience of different boundaries and for additional 290 The Pilgrims atid their History machinery for administrative, legislative, and judicial work. Nothing in fact seems to have been lost in 1691. Nothing was destroyed. The ideal of the Pilgrim fathers was perpetuated by a larger and stronger state. It was retained not merely at Plymouth, but was spread by the outgoing of Plym- outh and Massachusetts men throughout the length and breadth of a great continent. Their example to posterity was preserved, not as they had hoped as a tiny candle burning in seclusion, but as a beacon light for the nations to see throughout the ages, taken from under the bushel and set upon a hill. Bradford quoted Second Corinthians: "As unknowen yet knowen; as dead, and behold we live." The loss of political independence de- prived the Pilgrim tradition of localism and made it a heritage of the nation as a whole. In the days of the Revolution, when the colonists came to look back into their own past and study somewhat their own origin, they all regarded Plymouth as a general possession, not merely as the tradition of one state. The extinction of formal political life at Plymouth also tended to scatter the Pilgrims throughout the United States. It diffused the blood throughout the whole and leavened the lump with the example of Plymouth. Not at Plymouth itself has been the true influence of the Pilgrims, but outside Plymouth in Massachusetts, in New England as a whole, and in those far parts beyond the mountains to which in the coming centuries so many valiant sons of the old colony were to migrate, and where so many thousands of their lineal descendants are now to be found. There are now more sons of the Pilgrims in the Mississippi Valley than in Massachusetts, more on the Pacific Coast than in Plymouth. The failure of the Pilgrims to per- The Loss of Political Independence 291 petuate the political independence of the colony is per- haps not the least important of their successes. They became not merely the progenitors of a tiny state, but the ancestors of a nation. " Verily, a little one has become a thousand; yea, a little one, a great nation." APPENDIX THE NUMBER OF ROBINSON'S LEYDEN CONGREGATION The most considerable expenditure of time and effort ever yet devoted to Pilgrim history is the attempt of Dr. Dexter and his son to ascertain the number and personnel of Robin- son's Church and Congregation at Leyden. The histories of the Pilgrims at Leyden and in America, written during the last forty years, have been based upon the assumption that the estimate of the total Congregation by the Dexters at a figure of about five hundred was reliable and authoritative. The relation of the Church to the Congregation was of course a much more difficult matter and for that the Dexters did not venture to give a definite figure. Upon the assumption that Robinson's Congregation was large, Dexter's England and Holland of the Pilgrims was based and all the calculations and figures in it regarding births, deaths, marriages, res- idence, business transactions are dependent upon the belief that the four hundred and seventy-three names given in the Appendix were the Congregation. Whether or not the people to whom these facts relate were or were not members of Robinson's Church is therefore the vital issue in dealing with the history of the Pilgrims at Leyden. Both Dr. Dexter and his son realized the extraordinary difficulties in which this calculation involved them, but it seems still worth while to discuss these critical problems. So large a figure seems not entirely consistent with the direct testimony of the Pilgrims and with other known facts. Indeed, it is possible to quote Mr. Morton Dexter against himself. In the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc, 2nd Series, XVII, 167-184, he gave the names of 117 293 294 Appendix persons of whose membership we were positive and of 91 persons almost certainly associated with them. He stated further that the Congregation probably did not exceed in 1620 two hundred people and was in all probability between one hundred and one hundred and fifty. When he came later, however, to publish the book in 1905, he printed in the Appendix a first category of 473 names who were "certainly or presumably" members of Robinson's Congregation and stated also his opinion that the total membership from 1609- 1620 cannot have fallen short of five hundred. Upon the assumption that the whole four hundred seventy-three were members, he then bases his statistics. Is it not sur- prising that he should have thus abandoned his first category of those whose connection with the Church could be pos- itively demonstrated and have based his volume upon those who were only " presumably " members? The "presumably " entirely deprives the whole list of finality. It is perhaps worth while to call attention to the fact that Dr. Dexter's results, considerable as they may seem, are de- pendent in the first place literally upon the possibility of accurately transliterating English names from the phonetic spelling used by the Dutch recorders. The significant thing to demonstrate is the reliability of the process of translitera- tion, the extent to which pure conjecture and guess work can be excluded from it. The difficulty of the work was appalling and required unlimited patience, great ingenuity, the utmost caution, to say nothing of a knowledge of both Dutch and English phonetics in the seventeenth century, neither of them subjects beyond dispute. For instance, is "Ament" Hammond; "Chinheur" Singer; "Ians" Jones? Do "So- dert," "Sodwoot" and "Houthward" all equal "South- worth" or do they stand for different individuals? The Dexters could not entirely rid themselves of the fear that Appendix 295 some proportion of these transliterations represented their own eagerness to discover at Leyden some trace of people known to have been at Plymouth. Those who have followed the Dexters will not find this difficulty insurmountable. There is every reason to suppose that the list of four hundred and seventy-three names is the maximum which science and diligence can recover. The more considerable difficulty is after all the truly significant point: the connection with Robinson's Church of English people known to have been at Leyden between 1609- 1620. Direct evidence furnishes us with relatively few iden- tifications and for the rest we must erect an elaborate struc- ture of presumptions and probabilities. For the number whose membership direct evidence substantiates are very clearly only a very small portion of the Church, and as we can perhaps be quite sure that any membership list will not include all members, certain assumptions become necessary. Dr. Dexter concluded that the wives and children of the men of the Congregation must be treated also as members; that Englishmen known to have had business or legal associations with known members of the Congregation were probably also members; and lastly, that those who could be shown to be members immediately after 1620 were in all probability mem- bers immediately before the emigration of the Pilgrims. The justice of these assumptions is obvious and the difficulties which they might involve in an attempt not to assume too much were also clear to those who have subsequently utilized this book. The Dexters' list, however, includes one hundred and twenty children, many of whom died in infancy, the majority of whom were under ten years of age in 1620, and who were therefore babes in arms for the greater part of the Leyden period. Only a relatively few of the children were old enough to be counted as active members of the Congre- 296 Appendix gation, and in an attempt to reach some notion of the real size of that body in practical affairs, we must subtract at least one hundred children. We know also from Bradford that a considerable number of the boys and girls, who attained anything resembling an age of discretion, left the Congregation, and for them too some allowance must be made. A considerable number of the adult men on this list were married more than once at Leyden, and in many cases two and in some three wives are counted in the total on the strength of their relationship to one man. Here again is a necessary deduction, if we are to reach from a total figure of members from 1 609-1 620 any approximate notion of the strength of the Congregation at any one time. It will also be clear that if the membership of a man is at all doubtful, by the time we have counted his wife and children we have multiplied our error several fold. If we accept John Jennings, we also count both of his wives, six children, the wives of his children, and his grandchildren. The son of Thomas Willet, born in 16 10, reached Plymouth in 1631. On the score of that fact Thomas Willet himself, his wife, five children, and his sister are added to the Congregation. The assumption in regard to the men who had business rela- tions with members of the Congregation is a more fruitful source of difficulty. If we accept a man or a woman who is a witness at betrothals or who guarantees for citizenship or other purposes known Pilgrims, shall we also count the other English people for whom he witnesses, and if not all of them, how many of them? If we accept those men for whom the Pilgrims themselves certify, shall we accept those for whom they in turn certify? Nor must we forget that in each case we add to the list the wives, children, brothers, sisters, and in some cases mothers and fathers of men whose sole iden- tification is the fact that they become guarantors for a man, Appendix 297 who is assumed on other grounds to have had business rela- tions with one of the lesser known Pilgrims. It seemed worth while to compute from Dr. Dexter's list the number of in- dividuals whose membership depended solely on legal rela- tions with men or women of whose membership we were not positive. This computation therefore will not include those who vouch for Brewster, Carver, Cushman, and the like, the partners in the purchase of the Great House, or the men and women for whom they directly vouched. We can perhaps afford to assume that any clear business relationship involving a certification of good character, either by the leaders or for them, raises a satisfactory presumption of membership. But what of those men and women whose mutual testimony seems to be the principal basis for considering them members at all? Fifty-four men and twelve women were witnesses of legal documents and on the strength of their membership thirty-six wives and twelve children were also included in the list, making one hundred and nineteen in all. There are also in Dr. Dexter's list seventy-five men for whose member- ship the evidence is subsequent to 1620, and with them were counted fifty-nine wives and twelve children. There were therefore in all two hundred and sixty-five out of four hundred and seventy-three whose membership is doubtful. How can we now raise a presumption as to what proportion of the doubtful cases were members? According to the first computation of Mr. Morton Dexter, only one hundred and seventeen names, including children, could be established with certainty, leaving three hundred and fifty-six more or less doubtful. According to the computation just made, two hundred and sixty-five names are really dubious. There are certain facts which will be of assistance in the raising of a more definite presumption as to the total number of the Congregation and as to its probable figure in 1620. 298 Appendix 1. Bradford and Winslow tell us that when the vote was taken on the question of migration to America, the number who decided to go was only a trifle less than those who voted to stay. Thirty-five only sailed from Ley den for Plymouth. We know also that some who had originally intended to go changed their minds in March or April, 1620, after the re- jection by the merchants in London of the terms which Weston had signed. Eighteen also returned to London on the Speedwell, some of whom certainly came from Leyden, most of whom certainly did not. If we count the entire eighteen, however, those who started number only fifty-five, and we must then assume a very considerable defection in April, if we are to predicate the original number who voted to emigrate at more than sixty-five or seventy, or believe the total Congregation at that time was over one hundred and fifty, all of these figures of course including children. We also know that the number of people of the Leyden Congregation who eventually reached Plymouth was eighty-two. Surely a first party of thirty-five and a subsequent migration of forty-seven is a very small figure for a Congregation of several hundred. If we assume that five hundred were mem- bers from 1 609-1 6 20 and that only one hundred and fifty were actually members in 1620, the personnel of the Con- gregation must have changed with a rapidity and to an ex- tent which the Pilgrim accounts do not suggest. 2. It seems probable from Bradford that the first idea was that the whole Congregation should go; that they might all embark upon one ship and might finance the venture them- selves without recourse to capitalists. The first charter they attempted to procure assumed that they would finance their own venture, which seems to have been urged in their favor to the Virginia Company. But is this not totally inconsistent with a Congregation of three hundred let us say, in 1620, Appendix 299 which would surely not be an unfair figure if the total mem- bership for ten years was five hundred? Is it probable again that the first computation contemplated taking between two hundred and three hundred people without assistance from capitalists and that they eventually with very consider- able assistance were able to provide for no more than thirty- five from Leyden and one hundred and two in all? 3. We know also from Bradford and Winslow that the Congregation failed to grow in Leyden as they felt it should. Now all calculations based upon adequate growth are de- pendent upon some definite knowledge of the number who first reached Leyden. This we lack. But a reasonable pre- sumption can be raised that not more than one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five came, because a larger number would be inconsistent with the sort of flight from England they attempted. The movement of a more considerable num- ber of people on boats down the river or walking over land would have attracted attention a good deal quicker than it did. If, then, about one hundred came and the total mem- bership within ten years reached five hundred, and the probable residuum in 1620 was perhaps not less than two hundred and fifty or three hundred, it would seem that either their expectations of growth were unreasonable or our cal- culation is somewhere in error. To have doubled the actual number in ten years would seem satisfactory for a people in exile. On the other hand, if about one hundred and twenty people had come and the actual Congregation in 1620 was between one hundred and fifty and two hundred, their com- plaint of the failure of people to resort to them would have more foundation. It is a positive fact that they felt the growth of the Congregation highly unsatisfactory and with it somehow or other our estimate of the Congregation's num- ber must agree. 300 Appendix 4. We also know that at Leyden the whole Congregation met throughout its history in one house, which they bought in 1 6 10. If they then estimated that so large a house was required and had during the next decade at least five times as many members at one time or another, is it not surprising that a larger meeting place was not required? We know also something about the house. The lot, as measured by Dexter, after inspection of the old plans, measured twenty-five feet wide on the street by one hundred and twenty-five feet deep. Behind this lot was another very much larger lot on which was eventually built twenty-one small houses. In Dr. Dexter's opinion only about half of the first lot was occupied by the "great house," which could not therefore have been larger than about twenty-five feet by seventy-five. If now we sup- pose that the entire house down-stairs was thrown into one room, we shall not get in more than three hundred people, and we can only conceivably get in between four hundred and fifty and five hundred if we assume that they sat upon benches and stools as close to one another as possible. From what we know, however, of Dutch domestic architecture, it seems not likely that the house was so constructed that the whole lower story could be made into a single room, without thoroughly re-building the house. So far as we know, this was not done. The presumption is that the size of the Con- gregation at any one time was not very much greater than the first Congregation that arrived, and that the fifty or seventy-five additional members at any one time easily found room in the same house. 5. We also get a distinct idea from the various accounts that Robinson's Congregation was not as large at any time as that of the other English Churches in Holland. While we have no very definite figures about them, the various es- timates do not run to five hundred for any of them and the Appendix 301 Ancient Church, which seems to have been the largest, was estimated by Bradford himself as possessing "at some times" three hundred members, i. e., was usually less. 6. It seemed interesting to attempt a computation, based upon Dr. Dexter's list, which should estimate the positive and probable numbers with somewhat less rigidity than his first account published in the Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. and with somewhat more rigidity than his second computation, which seems rather too inclusive. The lists which follow contain the results. The following members seem to be certain beyond a reason- able doubt: 37 men, 48 women, 67 children, total, 152. The following seem probable beyond a reasonable doubt: 24 men, 24 women, 24 children; 72 in all. Combining the two lists we have: 61 men, 72 women, 91 children, total, 224. We have to be sure counted in these figures minor children and wives who died during the decade, but the adult men, sixty-one in all, were pretty certainly alive in 1620, and, if we assume about sixty women were also alive, we shall have one hundred and twenty-one as the adult Congregation. The proportion of children is interesting and remarkable. A reasonable allowance for lack of evidence now would seem to make two hundred the probable outside figure of the actual Congregation in 1620, and perhaps three hundred and fifty as the total probable membership during the ten years. 302 Appendix ROBINSON'S LEYDEN CONGREGATION Membership positively demonstrated Allerton, Isaac, wife, five children, one grandchild. Bassett, William, three wives. Blossom, Thomas, wife, three children. Bradford, William, wife, one child. Brewer, Thomas, two wives, eight children. Brewster, William, wife, six children, son's wife, and grand- child. Butler, Mary. Carver, John, wife, two children. Crackstone, John, (widower?) two children. Cushman, Robert, two wives, three children. Cuthbertson, Cuthbert, two wives, one child. Fletcher, Moses, two wives. Fuller, Samuel, three wives, one child. Goodman, John, two wives. Jenkins, -, Jenny, John, wife, one child. Jepson, William, wife, three children. Lee, Bridget, sister of Samuel. Lee, Josephine, mother of Samuel. Lee, Samuel, three wives, one child. Morton, George, wife, four children. Morton, Thomas, brother of George, and one child. Nash, Thomas, two wives. Neal, Elizabeth, from Scrooby, married William Buckram. Peck, Ann, ward of William Brewster. Pickering, Edward, and wife. Pontus, William, wife and child. Priest, Degory, wife, and two children. Ring, William, and wife. Appendix 303 Robinson, John, wife, and nine children. Rogers, Thomas, one child. Southworth, Edward, wife, two children. Southworth, Thomas, brother of Edward. Thickins, Randall, wife, one child. Tinker, Thomas, wife and child. Tracy, Stephen, wife and child. Turner, John, and two children. White, William, wife, (Susanna Fuller), three children. Williams, Thomas. Wilson, Roger, and wife. Winslow, Edward, and wife. Wood, Henry, and wife. Membership probably demonstrated Buckram, William. Butterfield, Stephen, wife, and child. Carpenter, Alexander, (two children elsewhere counted). Carpenter, Priscilla. Ellis, John, two wives, one child. Ellis, Christopher, wife, three children. England, Thomas, (English of the Mayflower?) Fairfield, Daniel, wife, three children. Gray, Abraham. Jennings, John, two wives, three children, son's wife. Jepson, Henry, wife. Jessop, Edmond, two wives, one child. Jessop, Francis. Keble, John, wife, four children. Lisle, William, (children elsewhere counted). Masterson, Richard, and wife. Pettinger, Dorothy. 304 Appendix Peck, Robert, two wives, two children. Reynolds, John, and wife. Simmons, Roger, and wife. Smith, Thomas. Terry, Samuel, and wife. White, Nicholas. Wilkins, Roger, two wives, one child. Willett, Thomas, wife and five children. Wilson, Henry, and wife. INDEX Abbot, George, Archbishop of Canterbury, 54, 55 Administration, character of at Plymouth, 169, 202-219, 260- 264; 275-277 Ainsworth, Henry, leader of Sep- aratist congregation at Amster- dam, 33, 34, 42, 43, 185 Alden, John, 69, 88, 92, 108, 126, 153, 172, 181, 205, 241, 242, 257, 282, 283 Allerton, Isaac, 36, 68, 69, 88, 90, 92, 108, 152, 191, 212, 230-234, 241 Ames, A., notice of his Log of the Mayflower, 50, 56, 58 Amsterdam, Pilgrims at, 32-33 Andros regime at Plymouth, 256, 275-277 Anne, the ship, 94, 97, 105, 106, 107, 145, 146 Arber, Edward, notice of his Pil- grim Fathers, 50, 56 Assistants, functions of, 212, 215, 221, 223, 260-261, 275 Bancroft, Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, 20, 24-26. Billington, John, 68, 92, 131, 279 Bishops, hatred of Pilgrims for, 3-4, 22-24, 47, 186, 189; atti- tude of toward the Pilgrims, 1, 18-26; attitude of Pilgrims to- ward, 184-185; fears of interfer- ence from in America, 47-48, 51- 54, 66, 7*2 Blackwell, Francis, 54-55, 57, 64 Boston, Mass., 92, 171, 174, 259, 264, 265, 287, 288 Bradford, William, in England, 12- 13, 18; part in emigration to Holland, 28-30; personal his- tory at Leyden, 36, 41; argu- ment in favor of emigration to America, 146; his share in the exodus, 68, 69, 71, 77, 78; first months in America, 80, 81, 83, 86, 88; elected governor, 90, 91, 92; functions as governor, 203- 216; patent to, 142, 153, 155, 156; activities of at Plymouth, 120, 130-137, 146, 147, 166, 167, 169, 174, 181, 193, 198, 199, 205, 228, 241, 242, 256; estimate of, 91, 108, 193, 203-206; men- tioned or quoted passim. Bradford, William, History of Plymouth Plantation, notes on, 14, 16, 33; quoted passim. Brewster, Jonathan, son of Elder Brewster, 10, 36, 283 Brewster, William, father of Elder Brewster, 7, 8 Brewster, William, Elder of Pil- grim Church, early life in Eng- land, 7-12, 17-27, 108; exodus to Holland, 28-30; life as a printer at Leyden, 36-38; chosen Elder, 40; share in preparations for emigration to America, 50- 52, 56, 58, 61, 68, 69; religious ideas of, 189-190, 193-194; at Plymouth, 81, 86, 87, 88, 92, 131, 153, 169, 172, 181, 191, 205, 231, 241, 247, 256, 267 305 306 Index Cambridge University, England, Brewster at, 8, 9; Robinson at, 13; Smyth at, 10 Carver, John, Deacon at Leyden, 51, 68, 69; governor at Plym- outh, 80, 86, 90 Cattle, none on Mayflower, 70, 76; at Plymouth, 142, 154, 159, 160, 176, 217, 223, 224, 235, 236, 237, 238 Charity, the ship, 130, 131, 132, • 148 Chauncey, Charles, 192. Children, at Leyden, 38, 39; on Mayflower, 68, 69, 77; at Plym- outh, 88, 103-105, 160, 224,270- 271, 273 Church of England, see, England, Church of Clifton, Richard, in England, 10- 12; in Holland, 30, 34 Clothing, 81-82, 94, 97, 98, 159, 168, 169, 236-238, 250-254 Collier, William, 181, 241, 242, 258 Common Stock, the, 56-66; 95- 97, 102-105, 108, 142-153 Compact, the Pilgrim, 73-75, 210 Congregationalism, Pilgrims ex- ponents of, 4, 10, 11, 13, 14, 17, 40-45, 185, 190-191, 193, 194 Connecticut, 171, 177, 180, 231, 232, 234, 250, 283, 286 Corn, 75-79, 91, 94-109, 223, 235 Cotton, John, Jr., 194, 256, 267, 269, 270 Council for New England, 58, 128, 129, 130, 143, 155, 156, 163, 263-264, 278-279 Courts, at Plymouth, 212-215, 263 Crown, relation of Plymouth Colony to, 263, 277-282 Cushman, Robert, 36, 51, 56, 57, 63-66, 68, 103, 116, 142, 144 Delfshaven, 65 Dexter, Rev. H. M., and Morton, books on Pilgrims, 12, 33, 34, 69, 293-304 Dutch, at New Netherlands, 171, 229 Education, at Plymouth, 270-272 England, Church of, hatred of Pil- grims for, 1-4, 22-24, 186, 188, 189, 271-272; attitude of to- ward Pilgrims, 1, 15, 18-26, 186; fear of interference from, 47-48, 51-54, 66, 72 England, Reformation in, influ- ence of on Pilgrims, 3-4, 17, 22- 26, 183-189 England, relation of Plymouth Colony to, 263, 277-282 Financing of Pilgrim voyage, 48- 49, 57-64 Fishing, importance of in Pilgrim plans, 48-49, 59, 75~7o, 96-97, 179-180; experience of Pil- grims with, 85, 99-100, 144-149, 158, 228-234 Food, on Mayflower, 70-71, 75- 76; at Plymouth in first years, 93, 94-109, 113, 159; in later years, 168-169, 254-255 Fortune, the ship, 91, 94, 97, 98, 144, 145 Franchise, at Plymouth, 209-211, 225, 260, 262-264 Freemen, 156, 204, 209, 210, 221, 225, 228, 241, 260-263, 280 Fuller, Samuel, 88, 92, 172, 176, 191, 195, 198 Fur trade, importance of in Pil- grim plans, 48, 49, 59, 75, 76, 96-97, 115, 179-180; experience of Pilgrims with, 136-139, 144- 149, 158, 222, 227-228, 234 Index 307 Furniture, 70, 76, 168-169, 236- 238, 250-254 Genealogy, bibliography for Pil- grim, 82 General Court, powers and func- tions of, 169, 181, 207, 209-210, 215, 217-219, 221, 223, 226, 260-263, 271, 275 General sickness, 86-88 Governor, position and powers of, 108, 203-205, 207, 210, 212-216, 221, 223, 260-261, 275 Health of Pilgrims, 86-88 High Commission, Court of, for the Province of York, 19-22 Hinckley, Thomas, governor of Plymouth, 258, 276-277 Hobomok, 119, 124, 125 Holland, Brewster's first visit to, 9; Pilgrims in, 32-65; archives in, 15 Hopkins, Stevens, 68, 77, 80, 88- 89, 92, 117, 238, 241, 244 Howland, John, 80, 92, 153, 181, 237, 241, 257 Indians, first Pilgrim ideas of, 45- 46, no; importance of trade with, 48-49; experiences of Pilgrims with, 75-79, 88-90, 93, 95, 99, 101, 102, 110-124, 222; distribution of in New England, 1 1 3-1 15; Morton's influence upon, 137-139; trade rights with monopolized by Pilgrim leaders, 222, 228-234; "king" Philip's war, 265-266 Inhabitants, class of citizens at Plymouth, 21 1-2 12, 224, 225, 261-262 James I, King of England, 6, 24, 49, 5i> 54, 55 Johnson, George, 33, 34, 43, 55, 185 Jones [Christopher], 58, note, 65, 67, 72, 78 Juries, 214-215, 227 Kennebec, trading station on, 153, 156, 228, 231, 234, 261, 282 Land, allotments of, 103-104, 142, 149, 150, 151, 154, 221-224 Law, at Plymouth, 169, 207-209, 212-215, 249-250, 263 Leyden, Pilgrims at, 33-65; ad- vantages of, 33; disadvantages °f» 35-39; size of Robinson's congregation at, 293-304 Little James, the ship, 106, 145, 147-148 Lumber, exports of, 91-92, 223, 236, 261 Lyford, John, 130-137 Manufactures, at Plymouth, 236 Martin, Christopher, 63, 68 Massachusetts Bay Colony, rela- tion to Plymouth, 1 70-181, 202- 203, 234, 250, 259, 264-265, 267-269, 282-292 Massasoit, 89, 90, 93, 99, 1 13, 1 16- 118, 121 Mayflower, the ship, 64, 65, 67; voyage of, 68-81; description of, 69-70; in 1630, 155 Merchant Adventurers, organiza- tion of, 58-66; experiences of Pilgrims with, 95-97, 102-103, J 33-i37, 142-153, 162, 221 Morton, Thomas, 137-141 Mullins, Priscilla, 68, 126 Nauset, plan to move to, 181-182 Neville, Gervase, trial of, 20-22 3 o8 Index New England, settlement of, 165; relation to Plymouth, 165-182 New England Confederation, 169, 218, 256, 285-287 New Haven, 171, 177, 180, 234, 250, 28£ *» •; » Oldham, John, 130-137 Patent, to Wincob, 56; to Peirce, 59, 64, 72-74; to Bradford, 142, iS3, 155, 156 Peirce, John, 59, 64, 143, 150, 151 Philip, "king," 256, 265-267 Pilgrim Church, form of, at Scrooby, 11-14; at Leyden, 39- 45; at Plymouth, 183-199, 267- 270 Pilgrim Fathers, meaning of the term, 2, 62 Pilgrim Movement, place in his- tory, 1-2; relation to Protestant Reformation, 2-4 Pilgrims, proper use of term, 62, note; at Scrooby, 1-27; early religious ideas of, 1, 11-14; exodus to Holland, 27-32; at Leyden, 32-65; number of at Leyden, 293-304; economic dif- ficulties of at Leyden, 35-39; 1 religious ideas of at Leyden, 40- 44; discuss emigration to Amer- ica, 45-58; agreement with Weston, 58-61; voyage to America, 65-75; land at Pro- vincetown, 75; explorations, 76- 80; land at Plymouth, 80-81; first year at Plymouth, 83-93; solve problem of subsistence, 94-109; relations with Indians, 88-91, 1 10-125; relations with other white men in America, 125-141; relations with Mer- chant Adventurers, 142-153; experiences with fishing and trading, 145-149; achievement of, 157-567; influence of on New England, 166-167; in- fluence of New England on Plymouth, 173-182; ecclesias- tical ideas of, 51-54, 183-199; political and administrative practice of, 202-219; ideas of economic status, 220-238; ideas of social life, 239-255; bibliog- raphy of books on, 14-16; ap- pearance of, 81-82; materials for genealogy of, 82; distribu- tion of in English homes, 69; influence of in history, 1-2, 274, 287-291 Plymouth, Mass., first landing at, 79-81; reasons for its selection as site, 83-84, 144; appearance of in 1627, 159-160; allotments of land in, 154-155; strategic weakness of after 1630, 178-182; town government of, 216, 288 Plymouth Harbor, Mass., char- acter of, 79-84; permanent un- suitability of, 179-180 Plymouth, Rock, 93 Population, 68, 69, 88, in, 112, 159-160 Prence, Thomas, 153, 174, 181, 241, 242, 247, 256-258 Press, the Pilgrim, 36-38 Provincetown, Mass., Pilgrims at, 75-77, 80 Puritan party, in England, char- acteristic form of organization of, 10, condemned by Pilgrims because unseparated, 24-26, 183-189 Puritans in America, how dis- tinguished from Pilgrims, 183- 189; material prosperity of, 165, 170-173 Index 309 Quakers, 258-259, 262 Reformation, relation of Pilgrim movement to, 2-4 Reynor, John, 192, 193, 242 Rhode Island, 171, 177, 178, 180, 234, 250, 259, 264, 282, 284-286 Robinson, John, in England, 13-* 14, 23-24; at Leyden, 34, 40-43, 52, 61, 65, 66, 108; theological views of, 22-26, 193; number of congregation of at Leyden, 34- 35, 293-304; advice of to Brew- ster, 189-190; death of, 155, 190 Roman Catholics in neighborhood of Scrooby, 5-6, 17, 19 Samoset, 88-90 Sandys, Sir Edwin, 50, 52, 54, 56 Scriptures, importance of to Pil- grims, 2-4, 23-24, 51, 239-240 Scrooby, description of, 1, 4-7, 17;'' "Pilgrims" at, 1-27; other ele- ments at, 17-18; number on Mayflower from, 68 Scrooby, Manor of, influence of on Pilgrim practice, 164-165, 208- 209, 214 Separatism, as understood by the Pilgrims, 4, 10, n, 13, 14, 17, 22-26, 40-45, 183-189, 193 Servants, indentured, 63, 68, 69, 85, 103, 104, 137-141, 159-160, 211, 212, 224, 225, 249 Shirley, James, 153, 228-234 Slaves, at Plymouth, 212, 224 Smith, Captain John, 66 Smith, Ralph, Pilgrim minister, 191, 192, 193, 198, 241 Smyth, John, Separatist minister, in England, 10, n; in Holland, 33, 40-41 Sojourners, class of citizens at Plymouth, 211, 224, 262 Southampton, Pilgrims at, 66 Speedwell, the ship, 62, 64, 65, 67, 68,97 Squanto, 89-92, 11 7-1 21 Standish, Miles, 59, 68, 69, 75, 77, 78, 80, 87, 88, 90, 92, 99, 100, 108, 110-126, 134, 140, 141, 146, 153, 156, 169, 181, 205, 237, 241, 257, 282 Subsistence, importance of early seen, 48; solution of, 94-109 Taxation, 261 Thanksgiving, the first, 93 Towns, in Plymouth Colony (other than Plymouth), found- ing of, 178, 181, 216, 217, 265, 269; constitutional position of, 217-218, 225-226; administra- -tive power of , 215, 217-218, 221, 260; relation of to the Massa- chusetts town system, 287-289 Undertakers, the, 153, 169, 227- 234 Virginia, 47, 48, 50, 54, 57, 137, 138 Virginia Company, 47, 50, 51, 56, 58, 72, 73 Weather, at Plymouth, 76-93, passim, especially 77, note, 84- 86 Weston, Thomas, negotiations with the Pilgrims at Leyden, 58-61; in London, 63-66; in America, 98, 99, 102, 122-124, 127-129; supposed plot of, 72-74 Williams, Roger, at Plymouth, 191-192, 198; at Providence, 171, 177-179, 181, 242, 284 Wincob, John, Patent to, 56 Winslow, Edward, 36, 68, 69, 72, 3io Index 80, 81, 83, 88, 90, 92, 108, 117, 123, 136, 137, 146, 153, 169, 174, 191, 195, 205, 231, 241, 242, 256, 257, 279 Winthrop, John, Governor of Massachusetts Bay, 173, 176, 197-199, 279, 284 Witchcraft, 259 Women, position of at Leyden, 38- 39; on Mayflower, 68-69, 77—78; at Plymouth, 88, 103-105, 160, 210, 245-247, 250-254, 271, 273 York, Archbishop of, Lord of Manor of Scrooby, 5-7, 18-22 Zeeland, colonization of considered by Pilgrims, 58, 61 Printed in the United States of America HTHE following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan books on kindred subjects. 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