Chapter VIII: The Pilgrim Church and Plymouth Colony (1)

BY FRANKLIN B. DEXTER,

_Professor of American History in Yale College._

THE preceding chapter has outlined the growth of Separatism in England, and prepared the way for the story of the fortunes of that remarkable congregation which has given a new significance to the name “Pilgrim.”

Elizabeth’s policy of Uniformity, so sternly pursued by her last Archbishop of Canterbury, Whitgift (1583-1604), was ostentatiously adopted by her successor, James I., at the Hampton Court Conference held in his presence by learned men of the Puritan and High Church parties in the first year of his reign; and when this conference was quickly followed by the elevation of Bancroft, a more arbitrary Whitgift, to Whitgift’s vacant place, those who were earnest in the opposite opinions were forced to choose between persecution and exile.

[This cut follows an engraving in Bartlett’s _Pilgrim Fathers_, p. 40, representing the scene about thirty years ago. Raine, _Parish of Blyth_, p. 129, referring to the time of Edwin Sandys, raised to the archiepiscopal throne of York in 1576, says: “Under him a family of the name of Brewster occupied the manor-house, which had gradually and insensibly dwindled down from a large mansion to a moderately sized farmhouse;” and Raine gives for a frontispiece a view of the remaining fragment, which is copied by Dr. Dexter in _Sabbath at Home_, 1867, p. 135. Mr. Deane says of it, “It may have been originally connected with the manor-house, which has long since passed away.” (_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ xi. 404.) Dr. Dexter gives a plan of the neighborhood.—ED.]]

There were doubtless other neighborhoods where the Separatists maintained thriving congregations for a longer or shorter time after the King’s policy became known; but by far the most zealous company of which accounts remain was one formed by residents “of sundry towns and villages, some in Nottinghamshire, some of Lincolnshire, and some of Yorkshire, where they border nearest together.” In 1602, or thereabout, these people, from places at least eight or ten miles apart, gathered themselves into a church,—probably at Gainsborough, a market-town in Lincolnshire, on the Trent; at least we know that when the original congregation divided, in 1605 or 1606, into two,—perhaps for greater security, as well as for local convenience,—it was at Gainsborough that one branch remained, which soon chose John Smyth, a Cambridge graduate, who had been some time with them, to be its pastor, and that with him many of this portion of the parent stock migrated in 1606 to Amsterdam.

The western division of the original company appears to have been formed into a distinct church in the summer of 1606, and, according to the testimony of Governor Bradford, in his notice of Elder Brewster, “they ordinarily met at his [Brewster’s] house on the Lord’s day (which was a manor [_i. e._ manor-house] of the Bishop’s), and with great love he entertained them when they came, making provision for them, to his great charge.”

[No wholly authenticated signature of Robinson is known. Dr. Dexter, in his _Congregationalism as seen in its Literature_, pp. xx, 359, gives the upper of these two, as from a book in the British Museum, “believed by the experts of that institution to have belonged to him.” It is evidently by the same hand as the lower of the two, which, with another very like it, is upon the title of Sir Edwin Sandys’s _Relation of the State of Religion_, London, 1605, belonging to Charles Deane, Esq., of Cambridge. Hunter, _Founders of New Plymouth_, p. 155, has pointed out how parts of this book show its author to have been “much in advance of his time,” and that there is “a correspondency in some parts with the celebrated Farewell Address of Robinson.” It is easy to suppose, therefore, that Robinson once owned the little treatise. Hunter errs in assigning 1687 as the date of its first edition. That of 1605 is called in the 1629 edition a surreptitious one, and there is a copy in the Boston Athenæum, with MS. annotations said to be by the author. Dr. Dexter points out 1629 as the year of the first authorized edition, and there were others in 1632, 1633, 1638, and 1673. (_Congregationalism_, App. nos. 299, 568; Palfrey, _New England_, i. 191.)—Ed.]]

William Brewster, the chief layman of this congregation, was postmaster, or “post,” as the usual term was, at Scrooby, a small village in the northern part of Nottinghamshire, ten miles west of Gainsborough. Though Scrooby was a mere hamlet, its station on the London and Edinburgh post-road gave Brewster full occupation, especially after the two capitals were united under one king, as it was his duty to provide food and lodging for all travellers by post on Government business, as well as relays of horses for them and for the conveyance of Government despatches. He was a native of the village, and had matriculated in 1580 at the University of Cambridge, where he came under Puritan influence; he soon, however, quitted his books to enter the service of William Davison, Elizabeth’s upright and Puritan Secretary of State, whose promising career was sacrificed to her duplicity in the matter of the execution of Mary Stuart. Under Davison, Brewster had experience both at court and in foreign embassies; he remained with his master for a year or two after the fall of the latter in 1587, and then retired to his native village. There he assisted his father, who was then postmaster, until the latter’s death in 1590; and after a brief interval the son, then about twenty-three years of age,[475] succeeded to the father’s place through the intercession of his old patron, Davison.[476]

In 1603 his annual stipend from the Government was raised from £30 to £36, the two sums corresponding in present values to perhaps six and seven hundred dollars respectively. The manor-house of Scrooby, built originally as a hunting-seat for the Archbishops of York, though in Brewster’s time “much decayed,”[477] had been occupied for many years by his father as bailiff for the archbishops, and as representative of their vested interests in the surrounding property, which was leased to Sir Samuel Sandys, of London.

The clerical leaders of the church, meeting in the great hall or chapel under Brewster’s roof, were Richard Clyfton and John Robinson. The former had been instituted in 1586, at the age of thirty-three, rector of Babworth, a village six or seven miles southeast of Scrooby, and had continued there until the undisguised Puritanism of his teachings caused his removal, probably in connection with Archbishop Bancroft’s summary proceedings against Nonconformist ministers at the end of 1604. His associate, Robinson, apparently a native of the neighborhood, had entered Cambridge University in 1592, and after gaining a Fellowship had spent some years in the ministry in or near Norwich; but about 1604 he threw up his cure on conscientious grounds, and returning to the North, allied himself with Separatists in Gainsborough. He was, by the testimony of an opponent (Robert Baillie), “the most learned, polished, and modest spirit among the Brownists.”

[This cut follows a photograph owned by Mr. Charles Deane, who also furnished a photograph, after which the accompanying fac-simile of the registry of the baptism of Bradford, preserved in this church, is made; see _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ x. 39. The view of the church given in the title of Bartlett’s _Pilgrim Fathers_ is the one followed by Dexter in _Sabbath at Home_, 1867, p. 131, and in _Harper’s Magazine_, 1877, p. 183. Raine, in his _Parish of Blyth_, Westminster, 1860, gives a larger view; and Bartlett, p. 36, gives the old Norman door within the porch.—ED.]]

The other members of the Scrooby congregation were of humble station, and have left little trace even of their names; most notable to us is young William Bradford, born in 1590 in Austerfield, a hamlet two and a half miles to the northward, within the limits of Yorkshire.

After they had covenanted together in church relations, “they could not long continue in any peaceable condition, but were hunted and persecuted on every side.... For some were taken and clapped up in prison; others had their houses beset and watched night and day, and hardly escaped their hands; and the most were fain to fly and leave their houses and habitations. ... Seeing themselves thus molested, and that there was no hope of their continuance there, by a joint consent they resolved to go into the Low Countries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men.”

The remedy of exile was not new to a generation that could remember the emigration of Robert Browne’s followers from Norwich to Zealand in 1581, and had witnessed the transfer of their Gainsborough neighbors to Holland shortly after their own organization. “So, after they had continued together about a year, and kept their meetings every Sabbath in one place or other, ... seeing they could no longer continue in that condition, they resolved to get over into Holland as they could.” A large number attempted, in the latter part of the year 1607, to embark at Boston in Lincolnshire, the most convenient seaport for them, though fifty miles distant from Scrooby. But emigration, except with a license, was in general prohibited by an early statute (A. D. 1389), and the ship’s captain, who had engaged to take them, found it to his interest to betray them in the act of embarking; so that the only result for most of them was a month’s detention in Boston jail, and the confiscation of their goods, while seven of the leaders, including Brewster, were kept in prison still longer. In a new attempt the following spring, an unfrequented strip of sea-coast in northeastern Lincolnshire, above Great Grimsby, was selected, and a bargain made with a Dutch captain to convey the party thence to Holland; then, perhaps, taking advantage of the Idle, a sluggish stream flowing near their doors, tributary to the Trent, and so to the Humber, the women and children, with all the household goods, were in that case despatched by water, while the men marched some forty miles across country to the rendezvous. But after a part of the men (who arrived first) had embarked, on the appearance of armed representatives of the law the captain took alarm and departed; some of those left on shore fled, and reached their destination by other means; but the women and children, with a few of the men and all their valuables, were captured. Another season of suspense followed; but at length the absurdity of detaining such a helpless group began to be felt, the magistrates were glad to be rid of them, and by August, 1608, the last of the straggling unfortunates got safely over to Amsterdam.

They found there the church of English Separatists transplanted under Francis Johnson upwards of twenty years before, as well as that of John Smyth and his Gainsborough people; but the church from Scrooby appears to have kept its separate organization, and their experience is calmly recounted by their historian, Bradford, as follows: “When they had lived at Amsterdam about a year, Mr. Robinson, their pastor, and some others of best discerning, seeing how Mr. John Smyth and his company was already fallen into contention with the church that was there before them, and no means they could use would do any good to cure the same; and also that the flames of contention were like to break out in the ancient church itself (as afterwards lamentably came to pass),—which things they prudently foreseeing, thought it was best to remove, before they were anyway engaged with the same; though they well knew it would be much to the prejudice of their outward estates, both at present and in likelihood in the future,—as, indeed, it proved to be.”

For these, with other reasons, in the winter after their arrival they asked the authorities of Leyden, an inland city, twenty miles or more southwest from Amsterdam, and the next in size to it in the province, to allow their congregation, of about one hundred English men and women, to remove thither by May 1, 1609.[478] The application was granted, and the removal to that beautiful city was accomplished, probably in May; but their senior pastor, Clyfton, being oppressed with premature infirmity, preferred to remain in Amsterdam.

[This little cut is a fac-simile of one given by Mr. Murphy in the _Historical Magazine_, iii. 332, following a bird’s-eye map of the city, dated 1670, when this part of the town was unchanged from its condition in the Pilgrims’ time. More of the same plan is given by Dr. Dexter in _Hours at Home_, i. 198. No. 1 is the bell turret, no longer standing, of the cathedral which stood at 2, and beneath which Robinson was buried. No. 10 is the house in which Robinson lived, with a garden on the hither side, the front being at the other end of the building, on the Klog-steeg, or Clock-alley, marked 5; a building now on the spot, bearing the date 1683 as that of its erection, has also borne since 1866 another tablet, placed there by the care of Dr. Dexter, which reads: “_On this spot lived, taught, and died_ JOHN ROBINSON, 1611-1625.” See Dexter in _Hours at Home_ i. 201-2, and in _Congregationalism as seen in its Literature_, p. 387.—ED.]]

In Leyden they were forced to adapt themselves, as they had begun to do hitherto, to conditions of life very unlike those to which they had been trained in their own country; and so far as we can trace them, a majority of the flock seem to have found employment in the manufacture of the woollen goods for which the city was famous. Upon the public records the church appears as an organized body early in 1611, when Robinson with three others purchased for 8,000 guilders (corresponding in our currency to perhaps $10,000 or $12,000) a valuable estate in the centre of the city, including a spacious house for the pastor, used also for Sunday worship, and at the back of the garden an area large enough for the subsequent erection of twenty-one small residences for church members.

Among additional reasons which had led the studious Robinson to favor the removal to Leyden, may be counted the fact that it was the site of a university already famous, and so furnished ample opportunities of intercourse with learned men and of access to valuable libraries. The sharp controversy between the occupants of the chair of theology, Gomarus and Arminius, involving no personal risk to the English spectators, was an added attraction; and before long Robinson himself appeared as a disputant on the Calvinist side in the public discussions, and so successfully that by Bradford’s testimony “the Arminians stood more in fear of him than [of] any of the University.” This perhaps opened the way for his admission to membership of the University, which took place in September, 1615, and secured him valuable civil as well as literary privileges. Such an honor was justified also by the activity of his pen while in exile. Between 1610 and 1615 he published four controversial pieces, of nearly seven hundred quarto pages, the most important being a popularly written Justification of Separation from the Church of England. In the same field of argument were the other treatises; while in 1619, when public attention was absorbed with the Synod of Dort, he brought out in Latin a brief but telling _Apologia_, or Defence of the views of the Separatists, in distinction from those of the Dutch churches.

[This follows a plan given by Bartlett in his _Pilgrim Fathers_, p. 79. No. 1 is Saint Peter’s Church, where Robinson was buried in 1625. Bartlett also gives, p. 88, a view of the interior. No. 2 is Saint Pancras church. No. 3 is the Town Hall. Bartlett also gives a view, p. 83. from the tower of this building.—ED.]]

These outside discussions, in which their pastor took such interest, left undisturbed the steady growth of the Pilgrim church, in the government of which Brewster, as ruling elder, was associated with Robinson, after the removal to Leyden. In these years “many came unto them from divers parts of England, so as they grew a great congregation,” numbering at times nearly three hundred communicants. Among these new-comers were some who ranked thenceforth among their principal men: John Carver, an early deacon of the church, and leader of the first migrating colony; Robert Cushman, Carver’s adjutant in effecting that migration; Miles Standish, the soldier of the company; and Edward Winslow, a young man probably of higher social position than the rest, who shared with Bradford, after Carver’s death, the main burden of sustaining the infant colony.

But though some recruits were attracted by Robinson’s gifts and by a prospect of freedom from prelatical oppression, yet the condition of the Leyden people was in general one of struggling poverty, with little hope of amendment. It were vain to expect that their language or their peculiarities of religious order could gain a secure foothold on Dutch soil, or that a Government on friendly terms with England could show active good-will to a nest of outcasts which England was anxious to break up. The increase of numbers had come in spite of the hardships attending the struggle for a livelihood in a foreign city; but as the conditions of the struggle were better understood, the numbers fell off. Time was also bringing a new danger with the approaching expiration of the twelve years’ truce (April, 1609-April, 1621) between Spain and the Netherlands.

As years passed, the older generation among the exiles who clung loyally to the English name and tongue began to realize that a great part of their aims would be frustrated if their children should, by intermarriage with the Dutch and other outside influences, wander from their fathers’ principles, and be absorbed in the Dutch people. These dangers being recognized, and the major part of the company being agreed that it was best to avoid them by a removal, it became necessary to select a new asylum, where Englishmen might preserve their nationality undisturbed. To the new continent of America, which best satisfied the conditions, all thoughts turned as early as the summer of 1617; and the respective claims were weighed of tropical Guiana on the one hand, which Raleigh had described in 1595 as the true Eldorado, and Virginia on the other, conspicuous as the seat of the first successful English colony. A little consideration excluded Guiana, with its supposed wealth of gold tempting the jealousy of the Spaniard; and so the choice was limited to the territory somewhat vaguely known as Virginia, within the bounds assigned to the two companies chartered by King James in 1606. The objection was duly weighed “that if they lived among the English which were there planted [_i.e._ on the James River], or so near them as to be under their government, they should be in as great danger to be troubled or persecuted for the cause of religion as if they lived in England; and it might be worse. And if they lived too far off, they should neither have succor nor defence from them.”

There were risks either way; but they decided, under the advice of some persons of rank and quality at home,—friends, perhaps, of Brewster’s when at court, or of Winslow’s,—to dare the dangers from wild beasts and savages in the unsettled parts of Virginia, rather than the dangers from their own bigoted countrymen, and to ask the King boldly for leave to continue as they were in church matters.

Their first care was for the regular sanction of the Virginia Company in London to the settlement of the proposed colony on their territory; and with this object Carver and Cushman were despatched to England as agents, apparently in September, 1617. They took with them, for use in conciliating the sentiments which any petition from a community with their history would awaken at court, a memorable declaration in seven articles, signed by the pastor and elder, which professed their full assent to the doctrines of the Church of England, as well as their acknowledgment of the King’s supremacy and of the obedience due to him, “either active, if the thing commanded be not against God’s Word, or passive [_i.e._ undergoing the appointed penalties], if it be.” The same articles, in carefully guarded language, recognized as lawful the existing relations of Church and State in England, and disavowed the notion of authority inhering in any assembly of ecclesiastical officers, except as conferred by the civil magistrate. In any estimate of the Pilgrims, it is necessary to give full weight to this deliberate record of their readiness to tolerate other opinions.

The two messengers found the Virginia Company in general well disposed, and gained an active friend in Sir Edwin Sandys (a prominent member of the Company and brother of Sir Samuel Sandys, the lessee of Scrooby Manor), who, though no Puritan, was a firm advocate of toleration; but as he was also a leader of the Parliamentary Opposition, his friendship was a doubtful recommendation to royal favor. Their report, on their return in November, was so encouraging that Carver and another were sent over the next month for further negotiations with the Virginia Company and with the King. But the former business still halted, because of the prejudice in official minds against their independent practices in church government. Sir Edwin Sandys, Sir Robert Naunton (one of the Secretaries of State), and other friends labored early in 1618 with the King for a guarantee of liberty of religion; but the ecclesiastical authorities were strong in their opposition, there was a suspicion abroad that the design was “to make a free popular State there,”[479] and the delegates returned to Leyden to propose that a patent be taken on the indirect assurance of the King “that he would connive at them and not molest them, provided they carried themselves peaceably.” It seemed wisest to proceed, and Brewster (now fifty-two years of age, one of the oldest and most experienced of the congregation) and Cushman were commissioned in the spring of 1619 to procure a patent from the Virginia Company, and to complete an arrangement with some London merchants who had partially agreed to advance funds for the undertaking. The business was delayed by a crisis in the Virginia Company’s affairs, connected with the excited canvass attending the election (April 28 [May 8], 1619) of Sir Edwin Sandys as Governor; but at length the patent was granted (June 9/19, 1619), being taken by the advice of friends, not in their own names, but in that of Mr. John Wincob (or Whincop), described by Bradford as “a religious gentleman then belonging to the Countess of Lincoln, who intended to go with them.”[480]

When the patent was secured, Brewster appears to have returned to Leyden at once, leaving Cushman for a time to negotiate with the merchants; but so little was done or perhaps hoped for in this direction, that an entirely new project was started the next winter under Robinson’s auspices. Certain Amsterdam merchants, already interested in the rich fur-trade on and near the Hudson River, presented a memorial to the States-General, Feb. 2/12, 1620, from which it appears that Robinson had signified his readiness to lead a colony of over four hundred English families to settle under the Dutch in New Netherland, if assured of protection. The memorial asked for assurances on this last head, and for the immediate despatch of two ships of war to take formal possession of the lands to be reserved for such a colony.

While this memorial was awaiting its (unfavorable) answer, Thomas Weston, one of those London merchants with whom there had already been consultations, came to Leyden as their agent, to propose a new arrangement for a settlement in North Virginia. For some reason, not now clear, the Pilgrims showed peculiar deference to his advice; and accordingly the negotiations with the Dutch were broken off and articles of agreement with the London merchants drawn up, embodying the conditions propounded by Weston. By these conditions a common stock was formed, with shares of ten pounds each, which might be taken up either by a deposit of money or of goods necessary for the undertaking; and Carver and Cushman were sent to England to collect subscriptions and to make purchases and preparations for the voyage. In this service, while Carver was busy with the ship in Southampton, Cushman took the responsibility of conceding certain alterations in the agreement, to please the “merchant adventurers,” as they were styled, whose part in the scheme was indispensable. The original plan was for a seven years’ partnership, during which all the colonists’ labor—except for two days a week—was to be for the common benefit; and at the end of the time, when the resulting profits were divided, the houses and improved lands in the colony were to go to the planters: but the changes sanctioned by Cushman did away with the reservation of two days in the week for each man’s private use, and arranged for an equal division, after seven years, of houses, lands, and goods between the “merchant adventurers” and the planters. Dr. Palfrey has well observed that “the hardship of the terms to which the Pilgrims were reduced shows at once the slenderness of their means and the constancy of their purpose.” About seventy merchants joined in the enterprise, of whom only three—William Collier, Timothy Hatherly, and William Thomas—became sufficiently interested to settle in the colony.

Notwithstanding discouragements, the removal was pressed forward, but the means at command provided only for sending a portion of the company; and “those that stayed, being the greater number, required the pastor to stay with them,” while Elder Brewster accompanied, in the pastor’s stead, the almost as numerous minority who were to constitute a church by themselves; and in every church, by Robinson’s theories, the “governing elder,” next in rank to the pastor and the teacher, must be “apt to teach.”

A small ship,—the “Speedwell,”—of some sixty tons burden, was bought and fitted out in Holland, and early in July those who were ready for the formidable voyage, being “the youngest and strongest part,” left Leyden for embarkation at Delft-Haven, nearly twenty miles to the southward,—sad at the parting, “but,” says Bradford, “they knew that they were pilgrims.” About the middle of the second week of the month the vessel sailed for Southampton, England. On the arrival there, they found the “Mayflower,” a ship of about one hundred and eighty tons burden, which had been hired in London, awaiting them with their fellow-passengers,—partly laborers employed by the merchants, partly Englishmen like-minded with themselves, who were disposed to join the colony. Mr. Weston, also, was there, to represent the merchants; but when discussion arose about the terms of the contract, he went off in anger, leaving the contract unsigned and the arrangements so incomplete that the Pilgrims were forced to dispose of sixty pounds’ worth of their not abundant stock of provisions to meet absolutely necessary charges.

The ships, with perhaps one hundred and twenty passengers, put to sea about August 5/15, with hopes of the colony being well settled before winter; but the “Speedwell” was soon pronounced too leaky to proceed without being overhauled, and so both ships put in at Dartmouth, after eight days’ sail. Repairs were made, and before the end of another week they started again; but when above a hundred leagues beyond Land’s End, Reynolds, the master of the “Speedwell,” declared her in imminent danger of sinking, so that both ships again put about. On reaching Plymouth Harbor it was decided to abandon the smaller vessel, and thus to send back those of the company whom such a succession of mishaps had disheartened. Those who withdrew were chiefly such as from their own weakness or from the weakness of their families were likely to be least useful in the hard labor of colonization; the most conspicuous desertion was that of Cushman, smarting under criticism and despairing of success. The unexpected parting between those who disembarked and those who crowded into the “Mayflower” was sad enough. It was not known till later that the alarm over the “Speedwell’s” condition was owing to deception practised by the master and crew, who repented of their bargain to remain a year with the colony, and took this means of dissolving it.

At length, on Wednesday, September 6/16, the “Mayflower” left Plymouth, and nine weeks from the following day, on November 9/19, sighted the eastern coast of the flat, but at that time well-wooded, shores of Cape Cod. She took from Plymouth one hundred and two passengers, besides the master and crew; on the voyage one man-servant died and one child was born making 102 (73 males and 29 females) who reached their destination. Of these, the colony proper consisted of 34 adult males, 18 of them accompanied by their wives and 14 by minor children (20 boys and 8 girls); besides these, there were 3 maid-servants and 19 men-servants, sailors, and craftsmen,—5 of them only half-grown boys,—who were hired for temporary service.

It is thought that the autographs of all who came in the “Mayflower,” whose signatures are known, are included in this group, except that of Dorothy May, who at this time was the wife of William Bradford, and whose maiden signature Dr. Dexter found in Holland, as well as the earliest one known of Bradford, attached to his marriage application at Amsterdam, in 1613, when he was twenty-four years old.

(See Dexter’s _Congregationalism_, p. 381.) Resolved White was then but a child, and his brother Peregrine was not born till the ship had reached Cape Cod Harbor.

John Cooke, son of Francis Cooke, was the last male survivor of the “Mayflower” passengers.—ED.]

Of the thirty-four men who were the nucleus of the colony, more than half are known to have come from Leyden; in fact, but four of the thirty-four are certainly known to be of the Southampton accessions. The ruling motive of the majority was, therefore, that which had impelled the church in Leyden to this step, modified, perhaps, to some small extent by their knowledge of the chief reason, as Bradford alleges, in the minds of Weston and the others who had advanced them money, “for the hope of present profit to be made by the fishing that was found in that country” whither they were bound.

And whither were they bound? As we have seen, a patent was secured in 1619 in Mr. Wincob’s name; but “God so disposed as he never went nor they ever made use of this patent,” says Bradford,—not however making it clear when the intention of colonizing under this instrument was abandoned. The “merchant adventurers” while negotiating at Leyden seem to have taken out another patent from the Virginia Company, in February, 1620, in the names of John Peirce and of his associates; and this was more probably the authority under which the “Mayflower” voyage was undertaken. As the Pilgrims had known before leaving Holland of an intended grant of the northern parts of Virginia to a new company,—the Council for New England,—when they found themselves off Cape Cod, “the patent they had being for Virginia and not for New England, which belonged to another Government, with which the Virginia Company had nothing to do,” they changed the ship’s course, with intent, says Bradford, “to find some place about Hudson’s River for their habitation,” and so fulfil the conditions of their patent; but difficulties of navigation and opposition from the master and crew caused the exiles, after half a day’s voyage, to retrace their course and seek a resting-place on the nearest shore. Near half a century after, a charge of treachery was brought against Mr. Jones, the master of the “Mayflower,” for bringing the vessel so far out of her course; but the alleged cause, collusion with the Dutch, who desired to keep the English away from the neighborhood of New Netherland, is incredible.

But their radical change of destination exposed the colonists to a new danger. As soon as it was known, some of the hired laborers threatened to break loose (upon landing) from their engagements, and to enjoy full license, as a result of the loss of the authority delegated in the Virginia Company’s patent.

The necessity of some mode of civil government had been enjoined on the Pilgrims in the farewell letter from their pastor, and was now availed of to restrain these insurgents and to unite visibly the well-affected. A compact, which has often been eulogized as the first written constitution in the world, was drawn up, as follows:—

“In the name of God, amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal subjects of our dread sovereign lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, etc., having undertaken, for the glory of God and advancement of the Christian faith, and honor of our King and country, a voyage to plant the first colony in the northern parts of Virginia, do by these presents solemnly and mutually, in the presence of God and one of another, covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation and furtherance of the ends aforesaid; and by virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame such just and equal laws, ordinances, acts, constitutions, and offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witness whereof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cape Cod the 11th of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland, the eighteenth, and of Scotland the fifty-fourth. Anno Dom. 1620.”

[This is a reduction of part of a map, which is given by Dr. H. M. Dexter in his edition of _Mourt’s Relation_. He has carefully studied the topography of the region in connection with the record, and he possessed certain advantages in such study over Dr. Young, who has similarly investigated the matter in his _Chronicles of the Pilgrims_. There were three expeditions from the ship, and Dr. Dexter’s interpretation is followed. The women were set ashore to wash at _a_, and while the carpenter was repairing their shallop, Standish and sixteen men started on the 15th November (O. S.) on the first expedition. At _b_ they saw some Indians and a dog, who disappeared in the woods at _c_, and later ran up the hill at _d_. The explorers encamped for the night at _e_, and the next day, where they turned the head of the creek, they drank their first New England water. Then at _g_ they built a fire as a signal to those on the ship. At _h_ they spent their second night; at _j_ they found plain ground fit to plough; at _k_ they opened a grave; at _l_ dug up some corn; at Pamet River they found an old palisade and saw two canoes. They then retraced their steps, and at _i_ Bradford was caught in a deer-trap. They reached the ship on the 17th. When the shallop was ready, ten days later, a party of thirty-four started in her with Jones, the captain of the “Mayflower,” as leader, and the expedition, called the second on the map, lasted from the 27th to the 30th November. The third expedition, likewise in the shallop, started on the 6th of December. Farther south than the map carries the dotted line, they landed at the modern Eastham, and had their first encounter with the natives on the 8th, and the same day reached Plymouth Harbor in the evening, as narrated in the text. On the 12th the shallop, sailing directly east across the bay, returned to the “Mayflower,” which on Saturday, the 16th, reached the anchorage depicted on the map on the following page.—ED.]]

Of the forty-one signers to this compact, thirty-four were the adults called above the nucleus of the colony, and seven were servants or hired workmen; the seven remaining adult males of the latter sort were perhaps too ill to sign with the rest (all of them soon died), or the list of signers may be imperfect.[481]

This needful preliminary step was taken on Saturday, November 11/21, by which time the “Mayflower” had rounded the Cape and found shelter in the quiet harbor on which now lies the village of Provincetown; and probably on the same day they “chose, or rather confirmed,” as Bradford has it (as though the choice were the foregone conclusion of long previous deliberation), Mr. John Carver governor for the ensuing year. On the same day an armed delegation visited the neighboring shore, finding no inhabitants. There were no attractions, however, for a permanent settlement, nor even accommodations for a comfortable encampment while such a place was being sought. After briefer explorations, an expedition started on Wednesday, December 6/16, to circumnavigate Cape Cod Bay in search of a good harbor, and by Friday night was safely landed on Clark’s Island (so called from the ship’s mate, who was of the party), just within what is since known as Plymouth Bay. On Saturday they explored the island, on the Sabbath day they rested, and on Monday, the 11th,[482] they sounded the harbor and “marched also into the land, and found divers cornfields and little running brooks, a place very good for situation.”[483]

[This is reduced from a map given in Dr. Dexter’s edition of _Mourt’s Relation_. The Common House of the first comers was situated on Leyden Street, which left the shore just south of the rock and ran to the top of Burial Hill, and it is the lots on the south side of this street that Bradford marked out in the fac-simile of the first page of the record given on another page. The “highway” as marked on that plan led to the south to the Town Brook. The Common House, if it had been designated on that draft, would have been put next “Peter Brown;” on the plan here given it would be on the north side of the brook, about where the meridian crosses it, though the engraver has put the designation on the opposite side of the water. It was not till about 1630, or ten years after their landing, that the Plymouth settlers began to spread around the bay, beyond the circuit of mutual protection. Still for a year or two they scattered merely for summer sojourns, to work lands which had been granted them. About 1632 Duxbury began to receive as permanent residents several of the “Mayflower” people. Standish settled on the shore southeast of Captain’s Hill, thus attaching his military title to the neighboring eminence, and though his grave is not known, it is probable that he was buried, in 1656, on his farm. His house stood, it is supposed, nearly ten years longer, and was probably enlarged by his son, Alexander Standish, who was, there is some reason to believe, a trader, and he may have been the town clerk of Duxbury. Its records begin in 1666, and the tradition that connects the destruction of the earlier records with that of this house derives some color from the traces of fire which have been discovered about its site. (_Sabbath at Home_, May, 1867.) The house now known as the Standish house was built afterwards by Alexander, the son. Elder Brewster became Standish’s neighbor a little later, and lived east of the hill.

Alden settled near the arm of the sea just west of Powder Point, and George Soule on the Point itself; Peter Brown also settled in Duxbury. Still farther to the north, beyond the scope of the map, Edward Winslow established his estate of Careswell, where in our day Daniel Webster lived and died, in Marshfield. John Howland found a home at Rocky Nook. Isaac Allerton removed to New Haven, and Governor Bradford during his last years was almost the only one of those who came in the first ship who still lived in the village about the rock. (Cf. _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._ xi. 478.)—ED.]]

Prepared to report favorably, the explorers returned to the ship, which by the end of the week was safely anchored in the chosen haven. The selection of a site and the preparation of materials, in uncertain weather, delayed till Monday, the 25th, the beginning of “the first house, for common use, to receive them and their goods.” Before the new year, house-lots were assigned to families, and by the middle of January most of the company had left the ship for a home on land. But the exposures incident to founding a colony in the dead of a New England winter (though later experience showed that this was a comparatively mild one) told severely on all; and before summer came one half of the number, most of them adult males, had fallen by the way.[484] Yet when the “Mayflower” sailed homewards in April, not one of the colonists went in her, so sweet was the taste of freedom, even under the shadow of death.

An avowed motive of the emigration was the hope of converting the natives; but more than three months elapsed before any intercourse with the Indians began. Traces of their propinquity had been numerous, and at length, on March 16/26, a savage visited the settlement, announcing himself in broken English as Samoset, a native of “the eastern parts,” or the coast of Maine, where contact with English fishermen had led to some knowledge of their language. From Samoset the colonists learned that the Indian name of their settlement was Patuxet, and that about four years before a kind of plague had destroyed most of the inhabitants of that region, so that there were now none to hinder their taking possession or to assert a claim to the territory. They learned also that their nearest neighbors were the Wampanoags, the headquarters of whose chief sachem, Massasoit, were some thirty miles to the southwestward, near the eastern shore of Narragansett Bay. The next week Samoset brought in Squanto, formerly of Patuxet, who had been taken to England in 1614 by Hunt, and who was now willing to act as interpreter in a visit from Massasoit; the latter followed an hour later and contracted unhesitatingly a treaty of peace and alliance, which was observed for fifty-four years.

[This group is preserved in the cabinet of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and all but two of the swords are associated with Plymouth history. The middle sword is that of Governor Carver. On the left, descending, are those of General John Winslow, Captain Miles Standish, and Governor Brooks of Massachusetts. On the right are those, in a like descending order, of Sir William Pepperrell, Elder Brewster, and Colonel Benjamin Church, the Plymouth hero of Philip’s War. Another Standish sword is preserved in Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth, and is figured in the group of Pilgrim relics on another page, as well as in Bartlett’s _Pilgrim Fathers_, p. 177. Concerning those above represented, see _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, i. 88, 114.—ED.]]

With the beginning of a new civil year (March 25) Carver was re-elected governor, and some simple necessary laws were established; on Carver’s sudden death the following month, Bradford was chosen his successor, under whose mild and wise direction the colony went on as before. As Bradford was then enfeebled by illness, Isaac Allerton was at the same time appointed Assistant to the Governor.

After a summer and autumn of prosperous labor and harvest, they were cheered, November 11/21, by the arrival of the “Fortune” from London, bringing as a visitor Robert Cushman, their former associate, and thirty-five additions to their feeble number, twenty-five of them adult males,—the majority, however, not from Leyden. The ship brought also a patent, granted June 1/11,[485] by the President and Council of New England—within whose territory the new settlement lay—to the same John Peirce and his associates in whose names the merchants fathering this venture had secured a patent the year before from the Virginia Company for the use of the “Mayflower” colonists. Without fixing territorial limits, the new grant allowed a hundred acres to be taken up for every emigrant, with fifteen hundred acres for public buildings, and empowered the grantees to make laws and set up a government.

By the delivery of this patent a sufficient show of authority was conferred for immediate need and for eight and a half years to come. It is true that in April, 1622, Peirce obtained surreptitiously for his private use a new grant with additional privileges, to be valid in place of the grant just described; but the trick was soon discovered, and the associates were reinstated by the Plymouth Company in their rights.

Taking these eight and a half years under the first patent as a separate period, the progress made in them may be briefly stated.

The settlement is first called “New Plymouth” in a letter sent back to England by the “Fortune” in December, 1621, and printed in the second edition of Captain John Smith’s _New England’s Trials_, in 1622. That it was so called may have been suggested as much by the name Plymouth on Smith’s map of this region (1614) as by the departure of the “Mayflower” from Plymouth, England, or by the knowledge that the colony was the first within the limits of the newly incorporated Plymouth Company. Later, the town was called simply Plymouth, while the colony retained the name New Plymouth.

In numbers they increased from less than fifty at the arrival of the “Fortune,” to near three hundred on the reception of the second charter in May, 1630. The most important accessions were in July, 1623,—about sixty persons, a few of them from Leyden; and about as many more—all from Leyden—in 1629-30.

In the second year at New Plymouth, because of threats from the Narragansett tribe of Indians about Narragansett Bay, the town was enclosed with a strong palisade, and a substantial fort (used also on Sundays as a meeting-house) was erected on the hill which formed so conspicuous a feature of the enclosure. The mode of life which John Smith described in his _Generall Historie_ in 1624,—that “the most of them live together as one family or household, yet every man followeth his trade and profession both by sea and land, and all for a general stock, out of which they have all their maintenance,”—was modified the same year, to the great advantage of all, by the assignment to each head of a family of an acre of ground for planting, to be held as his own till the division of profits with the London merchants. While this taste of proprietorship tended to increase the restlessness of the planters, the vanishing prospect of large returns was simultaneously disheartening the “merchant adventurers,” so that many withdrew, and the remainder agreed to a termination of the partnership, in consideration of the payment of £1,800, in nine equal annual instalments, beginning in 1628. This arrangement was effected in London in November, 1626, through Isaac Allerton, one of the younger of the original Leyden emigrants, who had been commissioned for the purpose; and to meet the new financial situation, the resident adult males (except a few thought unworthy of confidence) were constituted stockholders, each one being allowed shares up to the number of his family. Then followed an allotment of land to each shareholder, the settlement of the title of each to the house he occupied, and a distribution of the few cattle on hand among groups of families,—all these possessions having hitherto been the joint, undivided stock of the “merchant adventurers” and the planters. At the same time eight leading planters (Bradford, Standish, Allerton, Winslow, Brewster, Howland, Alden, and Prince), with the help of four London friends, undertook to meet the outstanding obligations of the colony and the first six annual payments on the new basis, obtaining in return a monopoly of the foreign trade.

[This is the only authentic likeness of any of the “Mayflower” Pilgrims. It was painted in England in 1651, when Winslow was fifty-six. It has been several times engraved before, as may be seen in the _Winslow Memorial_, in Young’s _Chronicles_, in Bartlett’s _Pilgrim Fathers_, and in Morton’s _Memorial_, Boston edition, 1855. The original, once the property of Isaac Winslow, Esq., is now deposited in the gallery of the Pilgrim Society at Plymouth. (Cf. 3 _Mass. Hist. Coll._, vii. 286, and _Proc._, x. 36.) Various relics of the Governor are also preserved in Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth. There are biographies of him in Belknap’s _American Biography_, and in J. B. Moore’s _American Governors_. A record of Governor Winslow’s descendants will be found in the _N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg._, 1850, 297 (by Lemuel Shattuck); 1863, p. 159 (by J. H. Sheppard). Of the descendants of his brother Kenelm, see L. R. Paige’s account in the _Register_, 1871, p. 355, and 1872, p. 69. An extensive _Winslow Memorial_ has been begun by David P. Holton, 1877, the first volume of which is given to all descendants (of all names) of Kenelm. See _Register_, 1877, p. 454; 1878, p. 94, by W. S. Appleton, who in the _Register_, 1867, p. 209, has a note on the English ancestry; and Colonel Chester has a similar note in 1870, p. 329. There is in Harvard College Library a manuscript on Careswell and the Winslows by the late Dr. James Thacher.—ED.]]

In these arrangements, which proved eminently wise for the public interests, one object was to facilitate further emigration from Leyden. The management of the London merchants had been unfavorable to this end, and it was a special grief that during this period of delay the beloved pastor, Robinson, had ended his life in Leyden,—Feb. 19 (March 1), 1625. The heavy expenses of transporting and providing for such as came over in 1629-30 were cheerfully borne by the new management.

The same temper in the London merchants which had hindered Robinson’s coming,—a conviction that the religious peculiarities of the Pilgrims interfered with the attractiveness and financial success of the colony,—led them to send over in 1624 a minister of their own choosing (John Lyford), who was not merely not in sympathy with the wants of the Plymouth men, but even tried to serve his patrons by false accusations and by attempting to set up the Church of England form of worship. He was expelled from the colony within a year from his arrival, and the church continued under Elder Brewster’s teaching. In 1628 Mr. Allerton on a voyage from England, without direction from the church, brought over another minister, but mental derangement quickly ended his career.

The colony began within these first years to enlarge its outlook. In 1627, to further their maritime interests, an outpost was established on Buzzard’s Bay, twenty miles to the southward; in the same year relations of friendly commerce were entered into with the Dutch of New Amsterdam, and as soon as the nearer plantations of the Massachusetts Company were begun, Plymouth was prompt to aid and counsel as occasion offered. In 1628 the attempt was made to establish more firmly the existing trade with the Eastern Indians, by obtaining a patent for a parcel of land on the River Kennebec.

[Of John Carver, the first governor, no signature is known. This group shows the autographs of all his successors, who held the office for the years annexed to their names:—

William Bradford, 1621-32, 1635, 1637, 1639-43, 1645-56.

Edward Winslow, 1633, 1636, 1644.

Thomas Prince, 1634, 1638, 1657-72.

Josiah Winslow, 1673-80.

Thomas Hinckley, 1681 to the union, except during the Andros interregnum.—ED.]]

These outside experiences were all in the way of encouragements: the most serious annoyances came, not directly from the savages, but from neighbors of their own blood. Thus in 1623 the wretched colonists sent out the year before by Thomas Weston to Weymouth, twenty miles northwest from Plymouth, had to be protected from their own mismanagement and the hostility of the natives, by which means came about the first shedding of Indian blood by the Pilgrims; and thus again, five years later, the unruly nest of Morton’s followers at Merry Mount, just beyond Weymouth, had to be broken up by force.

Of the progress of civil government in this first period we have scanty memorials. Few laws and few officials answered the simple needs of the colony. Bradford was annually elected governor, and in 1624, at his desire, a board of five Assistants was substituted for the single Assistant who had hitherto shared the executive responsibility. The people met from time to time in General Court for the transaction of public business, and in 1623 a book of laws was begun; but three pages sufficed to contain the half-dozen simple enactments of the next half-dozen years.

The next period of the colony history extends from Jan. 13/23, 1629-30, when the Council for New England granted to Bradford, his heirs, associates, and assigns, a useful enlargement of the patent for Plymouth and Kennebec, to March 2/12, 1640-41, when Bradford in the name of the grantees conveyed the rights thus bestowed to the freemen of New Plymouth in their corporate capacity.