Chapter III: Part 3

Cradock’s letter, enclosing the order of the Council for the return of the charter, reached Boston in July. Winthrop was then no longer governor, having been displaced by Dudley at the previous May election. As is well known to all students of New England history, the famous parchment, still in the office of the secretary of the Puritan Commonwealth, was not sent back.[129] It is unnecessary, however, to here repeat the story of the struggle over it. Presently Governor Edward Winslow of Plymouth was despatched to England, as the joint agent of the two colonies, to look after their endangered interests. He reached London in the autumn of 1634, bringing with him an evasive reply to the demand contained in Cradock’s letter.

Winslow sailed in the middle or latter part of July, and a few days later, on the 4th of August,[130] Jeffreys came over from Wessagusset to Boston, bringing to Winthrop the letter which he had shortly before received from Morton. It was the first intimation the magistrates had of the Commission and of the appointment of a governor-general. Winthrop communicated the news to Dudley and the other members of the Council, and to some of the ministers; and, doubtless, for a time they all nursed an anxious hope that the exaggerations in the letter were even greater than they really were. The General Court met on the 25th of August. While it was still in session, vessels arrived bringing tidings which dispelled all doubt, and confirmed everything material that Morton had said. He whom the magistrates had so ignominiously punished, and so contemptuously driven away, was evidently in a position to know what those in authority intended. It began to be evident that the Massachusetts magistrates had underestimated an opponent.

A full copy of the Order in Council establishing the board of Lords Commissioners of Plantations, was now received, and the colonists were further advised, through their private letters, that ships were being furnished, and soldiers gotten ready for embarkation in them. It was given out that these troops and vessels were intended for Virginia, whither a new governor was about to be sent; but Winthrop wrote that in Massachusetts the preparation was “suspected to be against us, to compel us by force to receive a new governor, and the discipline of the church of England, and the laws of the commissioners.[131]”

The answer which best expressed the spirit of the colony, in reply to Laud’s threats, was now found, not in the missive which Winslow had in charge, but in the act of Morton’s old oppressor, Endicott, when a few weeks later at Salem he cut the red cross from the standard. It was an act, however, which seemed to indicate that there was more truth than Winthrop was disposed to admit in Gardiner and Morton’s charge that “the ministers and people did continually rail against the state, church and bishops.”[132] Six months of great alarm and strenuous preparation now ensued. Steps were taken to get together arms and ammunition, and defences were ordered at Dorchester and Charlestown, as well as at Castle Island. The magistrates were even empowered to impress laborers for the work. In January the ministers were summoned to Bolton, and the question formally submitted to them: “What ought we to do if a general governor should be sent out of England?” The reply was that “we ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions if we are able.” In April a rumor of strange vessels hovering off Cape Ann threw the whole province into a tumult. It was supposed that Governor-general Gorges, with Morton in his train, was at the harbor’s mouth. It proved to be a false alarm, and after that the excitement seems gradually to have subsided.

This was in the spring of 1635. Meanwhile Winslow had reached England sometime early in the previous autumn. Though he had not brought the charter with him, its production does not seem to have been again immediately called for. He probably held out confident assurances that it would be sent over in the next vessel, as soon as the General Court met; but it is also probable that, in view of the course which had now been decided upon, an examination of it was no longer deemed necessary. The ensuing spring, that of 1635, had been fixed upon by Gorges and Mason as the time for decisive action. The charter was then to be vacated, and Gorges was to go out to New England with a force sufficient to compel obedience. All this, however, implied considerable preparation. Shipping had to be provided in the first place. A large vessel was accordingly put upon the stocks. Rumor said, also, that the new governor-general was to take out with him a force of no less than one thousand soldiers.[133] Whether this was true or not, there can be little doubt that all through the winter of 1634-5 active preparations were on foot in England intended against the Massachusetts colony.

Besides watching these proceedings Winslow had other business in London which required his appearance before the Lords Commissioners. He had presented to them a petition on behalf of the two colonies for authority to resist certain Dutch and French encroachments. This proceeding Winthrop had not thought well advised,[134] as he very shrewdly argued that it implied an absence of authority without such special authorization, and might thus be drawn into a precedent. Winslow, however, had none the less submitted the petition, and several hearings were given upon it. Fully advised as to everything that was going on before the Lords Commissioners, Gorges did not favor this move. It authorized military or diplomatic action, the conduct of which by right belonged to him as governor-general of the region within which the action was to be taken. He accordingly went to work to circumvent Winslow. What ensued throws a great deal of light on Morton’s standing at the time, and the use that was made of him; and it also explains the significance of certain things in the _New Canaan_.

Laud, it will be remembered, was the head and moving spirit of the Lords Commissioners. His word was final in the Board. Upon him Gorges depended to work all his results; which included not only his own appointment as governor-general, with full power and authority as such, but also the necessary supply of men and money to enable him to establish his supremacy. To secure these ends it was necessary to play continually on the Primate’s dislike of the Puritans, and his intense zeal in behalf of all Church forms and ceremonies, including the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The whole political and historical significance of the _New Canaan_ lies in this fact. It was a pamphlet designed to work a given effect in a particular quarter, and came very near being productive of lasting results. Dedicated in form to the Lords Commissioners, it was charged with attacks on the Separatists, and statements of the contempt shown by them to the Book of Common Prayer. Finally it contained one chapter on the church practices in New England, which was clearly designed for the special enlightenment of the Archbishop.[135] In this chapter it is set down as the first and fundamental tenet of the New England church “that it is the magistrate’s office absolutely, and not the minister’s, to join the people in lawful matrimony;” next, that to make use of a ring in marriage is a relic of popery; and then again “that the Book of Common Prayer is an idol; and all that use it idolaters.” It now remains to show how cunningly, when it came to questions of state, Laud was worked upon by these statements, and what a puppet he became in the hands of Gorges and Morton.

Winslow’s suit had prospered. He had submitted to the Lords Commissioners a plan for accomplishing the end desired without any charge being imposed on the royal exchequer, and he was on the point of receiving, as he supposed, a favorable decision. Suddenly the secret strings were pulled. Bradford best tells the story of what ensued.

“When Mr. Winslow should have had his suit granted, (as indeed upon
the point it was,) and should have been confirmed, the Archbishop
put a stop upon it, and Mr. Winslow, thinking to get it freed, went
to the Board again. But the Bishop, Sir Ferdinando and Captain Mason
had, as it seems, procured Morton to complain. To whose complaints
Mr. Winslow made answer to the good satisfaction of the Board,
who checked Morton, and rebuked him sharply, and also blamed Sir
Ferdinando Gorges and Mason for countenancing him. But the Bishop had
a further end and use of his presence, for he now began to question
Mr. Winslow of many things, as of teaching in the church publicly, of
which Morton accused him and gave evidence that he had seen and heard
him do it; to which Mr. Winslow answered that sometimes (wanting a
minister) he did exercise his gift to help the edification of his
brethren, when they wanted better means, which was not often. Then
about marriage, the which he also confessed, that, having been called
to place of magistracy, he had sometimes married some. And further
told their lordships that marriage was a civil thing, and he found
nowhere in the word of God that it was tied to ministry. Again they
were necessitated so to do, having for a long time together at first
no minister; besides, it was no new thing, for he had been so married
himself in Holland, by the magistrates in their Stadt-House. But
in the end, to be short, for these things the Bishop, by vehement
importunity, got the Board at last to consent to his commitment. So
he was committed to the Fleet, and lay there seventeen weeks, or
thereabout, before he could get to be released. And this was the end
of this petition and this business; only the others’ design was also
frustrated hereby, with other things concurring, which was no small
blessing to people here.”[136]

For the time being, however, “the others’ design,” as Bradford describes Gorges’s scheme, so far from being frustrated, moved on most prosperously. All the friends and agents of the colony were now driven from the field. Cradock, Saltonstall and Humfrey had departed the council-chamber with “a pair of cold shoulders.” Winslow was a prisoner. Morton had demonstrated that his boast in the letter to Jeffreys, that he would make his opponents “sing _clamavi_ in the Fleet,” was not an idle one. He had not exaggerated his power. Gorges’s course was now clear, and his plan developed rapidly. At a meeting of those still members of the Council for New England, held at Lord Gorges’s house on the 3d of February, 1635, the next step was taken. The redivision of the seacoast was agreed upon. It was now divided into eight parcels, instead of twenty as at the original abortive division of 1623; and these parcels were assigned to eight several persons, among whom were the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the Earls of Arundel, Carlisle and Sterling. Arundel alone of these was one of the Lords Commissioners. Gorges received Maine as his portion; and Mason got New Hampshire and Cape Ann. Massachusetts, south of Salem, was assigned to Lord Gorges.

The division thus agreed on was to take effect simultaneously with the formal surrender by the Council of its great patent. Ten weeks later, on the 18th of April, at another meeting at Lord Gorges’s house, a paper was read and entered upon the records, in which the reasons for surrendering the patent were set forth. At a subsequent meeting on the 26th a petition to the King was approved, in which it was prayed that separate patents might be issued securing to the associates in severalty the domains they had assigned to each other. A declaration from the King was also then read, in which the royal intention of appointing Sir Ferdinando Gorges governor-general of New England was formally announced. Speaking by the mouth of the King, the Primate did not propose “to suffer such numbers of people to run to ruin, and to religious intents to languish, for want of timely remedy and sovereign assistance.” Curiously enough, also, this typically Laudian sentiment was enunciated at Whitehall the very day, the 26th of April, 1635, upon which, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Marblehead fishermen had brought in word of strange vessels hovering mysteriously upon the coast, causing the Governor and assistants to hurry to Boston and an alarm to be spread through all the towns.[137]

Before proceeding to eject the present occupants of the New England soil, or to force them to some compromise as an alternative thereto, it remained for the grantees of the now defunct Council to perfect their new titles. Proceedings to this end were not delayed. The division had been agreed upon on the 3d of February, and on the 26th of April the new patents had been petitioned for. Ten days later Thomas Morton was “entertained to be solicitor for confirmation of the said deeds under the great seal, as also to prosecute suit at law for the repealing of the patent belonging to the Massachusetts Company. And is to have for fee twenty shillings a term, and such further reward as those who are interested in the affairs of New England shall think him fit to deserve, upon the judgment given in the cause.” A month later, on the 7th of June, 1635, the formal surrender of its patent by the Council took place.[138]

Morton, however, was not destined to land at Boston in the train of Governor-general Gorges. The effort of 1634-5 was a mere repetition, on a larger and more impressive scale, of the effort of 1623. The latter had resulted in the abortive Robert Gorges expedition, and the former now set all the courts at Westminster in solemn action. Neither of them, however, came to anything. They both failed, also, from the same cause,--want of money. The machinery in each case was imposing, and there was a great deal of it. Seen from New England it must have appeared simply overpowering. The King, the Primate, the Lords Commissioners, the Attorney General, the Court of King’s Bench, the Great Seal, and a governor-general representing the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton and the Earls of Arundel, Carlisle and Sterling, royal proprietors, were all at work together to bring about the destruction of an infant colony. When, however, it came to accomplishing anything in a practical way, it grew apparent by degrees that behind all this tremendous display of machinery there was nothing but Sir Ferdinando Gorges,--an active-minded, adventurous soldier, skilled in Court ways, persistent and full of resource, but with small means of his own, and no faculty of obtaining means from others. When it became therefore a question of real action, calling for the sinews of war, the movement flopped dead in 1635, just as it had stopped in 1623. In 1635 it is true, Gorges had the assistance of Captain John Mason, who was an energetic man with means at his command, and it was through him that a ship was to be provided.[139] The building of this ship, however, without doubt strained to the utmost the resources of all concerned; and when, in launching, it suffered a mishap, again probably from insufficient means, they could not make the damage good. The royal exchequer was then as empty as Gorges’s own purse. The King was living on benevolences, and on fines levied upon the great nobles for encroachments on the royal forests. The writs to collect ship-money were issued in this very year. The next year public offices were sold. Under these circumstances no assistance could for the present be looked for from Charles or Laud. As for the noble associates, among whom the New England coast had just been parcelled out, while perfectly willing to accept great domains in America, they would venture nothing more to take actual possession of them in 1635 than they had ventured in 1623. Nothing at all was to be obtained from that quarter. Speaking of Gorges and Mason, and the failure of their plans at this time, Winthrop wrote, “The Lord frustrated their design.” This was the pious way of putting it. In point of fact, however, the real safety of Massachusetts now depended on more homely and every-day considerations. Gorges and Mason could not raise the money absolutely necessary to carry their design out.

Nevertheless, though this delay was disappointing, there was no occasion for despair. Things moved slowly; that was all. Gorges represented the New England part of that royal system which was to stand or fall as a whole. In the spring and summer of 1635 it looked very much as if it was destined to stand. There was then no thought of a parliament at Court, or expectation of one among the patriots. The crown lawyers were hunting up precedents which would enable the King to levy taxes to suit himself. Wentworth had brought Ireland into a state of perfect subjection. Laud was supreme in England. The prospects for “Thorough” were never so good. If “Thorough” prevailed in England it would in Massachusetts. There could be no doubt of that. Meanwhile, though lack of ready means had put it out of Gorges’s power to go to New England at once, there was no break or delay in legal proceedings. In June, 1635, the attorney-general filed in the King’s Bench a writ of _quo warranto_ against the Massachusetts Bay Company. This was the work which Thomas Morton had a month before been “entertained to prosecute,” and the promptness of the attorney-general would seem to indicate that on Morton’s part at least there was no failure in activity. The plan was to set the charter aside, not because of any abuse of the powers lawfully conferred in it, but on the ground that it was void _ab initio_. Every title to land held under it would thus be vitiated. In answer to the summons some of the original associates came in and pleaded, while others made default. Cradock made default. In his case, therefore, judgment was given at the Michaelmas, or September term, 1635, and the charter was declared void, all the franchises conveyed in it being resumed by the King.[140] This portion of the legal work in hand, therefore, that more particularly entrusted to Morton, seems to have been promptly and efficiently done. As respects the patents for the domains granted under the last partition, things do not seem to have moved so rapidly, for towards the close of November a meeting of the associates of the now dissolved Council was held at the house of Lord Sterling, and a vote passed that steps should be taken to get patents to the individual patentees passed the seals as soon as possible. Morton was in fact reminded of his duties.

A heavy blow was however impending over Gorges. He himself was now an elderly man, verging close upon seventy years.[141] He could not have been as active and as energetic as he once had been, and even his sanguine disposition must have felt the usual depressing influence of hope long deferred. Mason had of late been the mainstay of his enterprise. Only a year before, that resolute man had sent out a large expedition, numbering some seventy men, to Piscataqua, and he was contemplating extensive explorations towards Lake Champlain. Morton eulogized him as a “very good Commonwealth’s man, a true foster-father and lover of virtue,”[142] and Winthrop referred to him as “the chief mover in all the attempts against us.”[143] In December, 1635, Mason died,[144] and not improbably it was the anticipation of his death which led to that meeting of the Council at which the speedy issuing of the individual patents was urged. However this may be, the loss of Mason seems to have been fatal to Gorges’s hopes; it was the lopping off of the right arm of his undertakings. From that time forward there was obviously no source from which he could hope to get the money necessary to enable him to effect anything, except the royal treasury. Of this, for two or three years yet, until the Scotch troubles destroyed the last chance of the success of the ship-money scheme, there seemed a very good prospect. Gorges, however, could not afford to wait. His remaining time was short. Accordingly, after Mason’s death, little is heard of him or of the Lords Commissioners.

During the next seven years, consequently, the traces of Morton are few. There is a passing glimpse obtained of him in March, 1636, through a letter from Cradock to Winthrop,[145] from which it appears he was then in London and actively scheming against the Massachusetts Company. He would seem at this time to have been in the pay of one George Cleaves, a man of some importance and subsequently quite prominent in the early history of Maine. Cleaves apparently had proposed some scheme to Cradock touching the Massachusetts Company, and Morton came to see him about it. Thereupon Cradock says, “I having no desire to speak with Morton alone put him off a turn or two on the exchange, till I found Mr. Pierce,” etc. Further on in the same letter he speaks of his “greyffe and disdayne” at the abuse heaped on the Company, and of the “heavey burdens, there lode on me by T. M.;” and adds, “God forgive him that is the cause of it.”

Early in 1637, and in consequence probably of the _quo warranto_ proceedings, a commission of some sort would appear to have been granted to certain persons in New England for the government of that country.[146] How or under what circumstances this was obtained is nowhere told. There is a mystery about it. Gorges afterwards assured Winthrop that he knew nothing of it,[147] and only a copy ever reached America, the original, Winthrop says, being “staid at the seal for want of paying the fees.” He further says that Cleaves procured this commission, as also a sort of patent, or, as he calls it, “a protection under the privy signet for searching out the great lake of Iracoyce.” From all this it would appear that the whole thing was some impotent and inconsequential move on the part of Morton; for not only does Winthrop say that the document was “staid at the seal,” but Cradock wrote that the matter in reference to which Morton wanted to see him, on behalf of Cleaves, related to paying the charge “in taking out somewhat under the seale.” Gorges speaks of Morton as being at that time Cleaves’s agent; and in the _New Canaan_, which either had just been published or was then in the press, there is a glowing account of the “great lake Erocoise,” and its boundless wealth of beaver,[148] to which apparently the imaginative author had directed Cleaves’s attention sufficiently to induce him to take out the “protection” which Winthrop alludes to.

The year 1637 was the turning-period in the fortunes of King Charles and of Archbishop Laud, and consequently of Gorges and Morton. Up to that time everything had gone sufficiently well, if not in Massachusetts, at least in England, Ireland, and even Scotland. Now, however, the system began to break down; giving way first, as would naturally enough be the case, at its weakest point. This was in Scotland, where the attempt to force Episcopacy on the people resulted in the famous “stony Sabbath” on the 23d of July. The _New Canaan_ was probably going through the press during the deceitful period of profound calm which preceded that eventful day. Though now published, there is strong internal evidence that the book was written in 1634. Not only does this appear from the extract from its last page in the letter to Jeffreys, already referred to,[149] but in another place[150] there is reference to the expedition of Henry Josselyn for the more complete discovery of Lake Champlain, which is mentioned as then in preparation. Henry Josselyn left England about the time Morton was writing to Jeffreys, or a little earlier, and reached Piscataqua in June, 1634.[151] Mason, on the other hand, is mentioned as then living, and as having fitted out the expedition of Josselyn. Mason, however, it has already been seen, died in December, 1635. Written consequently after May, 1634, the _New Canaan_, it would seem, received no revision later than 1635. It represented Morton’s feelings during the time when he was most confident of an early and triumphant return to New England. It was published just when the affairs of Charles and Laud were at their full flood, and before the tide had begun to ebb.

No mention is found of the _New Canaan_ at the time of its publication. It is not known, indeed, that a single copy was sent out to New England. Though it must have caused no little comment and scandal among the friends and correspondents of the colonists, there is no allusion to it in their published letters or in the documents of the time, and in 1644 Winthrop apparently had never seen it. Bradford energetically refers to it as “an infamouse and scurillous booke against many godly and cheefe men of the cuntrie; full of lyes and slanders, and fraight with profane callumnies against their names and persons, and the ways of God.”[152] A copy of it may, therefore, have been brought over to Plymouth by one of the agents of the colony, and there passed from hand to hand. It does not appear, however, that at the time it attracted any general or considerable notice in America; while in England, of course, it would have interested only a small class of persons.

There is one significant reference which would seem to indicate that the publication of the _New Canaan_ was not agreeable to Gorges. However much he might attack the charter of the Massachusetts Company, Sir Ferdinando always showed himself anxious to keep on friendly terms with the leading men of the colony. In the _Briefe Narration_ he takes pains to speak of “the patience and wisdom of Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Humphreys, Mr. Dudley, and others their assistants;”[153] and with Winthrop he was in correspondence, even authorizing him and others to act for him in Maine. He deceived no one by this, for Winthrop afterwards described him as “pretending by his letters and speeches to seek our welfare;”[154] but he evidently had always in mind that he was to go out some day to New England as a governor-general, and that it would not do for him to be too openly hostile to those over whom he proposed to rule. He regarded them as his people. When, therefore, he had occasion to write to Winthrop in August, 1637, though he made no reference to the _New Canaan_, which had probably been published early in the year, he took pains to say that Morton was “wholely casheered from intermedlinge with anie our affaires hereafter.”[155]

It is however open to question whether, in making this statement, Gorges was not practising a little of that king-craft for which his master, James I., had been so famous. In 1637 Morton may have been in disgrace with him; but if so it was a passing disgrace. Four years later, in 1641, Sir Ferdinando, as “Lord of the Province of Maine,” indulged his passion for feudal regulation by granting a municipal charter to the town of Acomenticus, now York. A formidable document of great import, this momentous state paper was signed and delivered by the Lord Paramount, much as an English sovereign might have granted a franchise to his faithful city of London; and accordingly it was countersigned by three witnesses, one of them a member of his own family. First of the three witnesses to sign was Thomas Morton.[156] He evidently was in no disgrace then.

With the exception of this signature to the Acomenticus charter, there is no trace to be found of Morton between August 1637, when Gorges wrote that he had “casheered” him, and the summer of 1643, when he reappeared once more at Plymouth. During the whole of that time things evidently went with him, as they did with Charles and Laud, from bad to worse. Once only had the Lords Commissioners given any signs of life. This was in the spring of 1638, when on the 4th of April the Board met at Whitehall. The record of the meeting states that petitions and complaints from Massachusetts, for want of a settled and orderly government, were growing more frequent. This is very possible, for the Antinomian Controversy was then at its height, and indeed, the very day the Lords Commissioners met, Mrs. Hutchinson, having left Boston in obedience to Governor Winthrop’s mandate a week before, was on her way to join her husband and friends in Rhode Island. Under these circumstances, calling to mind the futile order for the return of the charter, sent to Winthrop in 1634 through Cradock, and taking official notice of the result of the _quo warranto_ proceedings, the Board resolved upon a more decided tone. The clerk in attendance was instructed to send out to Massachusetts a peremptory demand for the immediate surrender of the charter. It was to be sent back to London by the return voyage of the vessel which carried out the missive of the Board; “it being resolved,” so that missive ran, “that in case of any further neglect or contempt by them shewed therein, their Lordships will cause a strict course to be taken against them, and will move his Majesty to reassume into his own hands the whole plantation.”[157]

If, as was probably the case, Morton was the secret mover of this action, it proved to be his last effort. It was completely fruitless also. When the order reached Boston, sometime in the early summer of 1638, it naturally caused no little alarm, for the apprehension of a general governor had not yet disappeared. Indeed, on the 12th of April, “a general fast [had been] kept through all the churches, by advice from the Court, for seeking the Lord to prevent evil that we feared to be intended against us from England by a general governor.”[158] With the missive of the Lords Commissioners, however, came also tidings of “the troubles which arose in Scotland about the Book of Common Prayer and the canons which the King would have forced upon the Scotch churches.”[159] The result was that in August, instead of sending out the charter, Governor Winthrop, at the direction of the General Court, wrote “to excuse our not sending of it; for it was resolved to be best not to send it.”[160]

Archbishop Laud molested the colony no further. Doubtless Morton yet endeavored more than once to stir him up to action, and the next year he received from New England other and bitter complaints of the same character as those which had come to him before. This time it was the Rev. George Burdet--a disreputable clergyman, subsequently a thorn in Gorges’s side as now in that of Winthrop--who wrote to him. The harassed and anxious Primate could, however, only reply that “by reason of the much business now lay upon them, [the Lords Commissioners] could not at present ... redress such disorders as he had informed them of.”[161] Events in England and Scotland were then moving on rapidly as well as steadily to their outcome, and Massachusetts was bidden to take care of itself.

Nothing more is heard of Morton until the summer of 1643. The Civil War was then dragging along in its earlier stages, before Fairfax and Cromwell put their hands to it. It was the summer during which Prince Rupert took Bristol and the first battle of Newbury was fought,--the summer made memorable by the deaths of Hampden and Falkland. Gorges had identified himself with the Royalist side, and now Morton seems to have been fairly starved out of England. When or how he came to Plymouth we do not know; but, on the 11th of September, Edward Winslow, whom he had eight years before “clapte up in the Fleete,”[162] thus wrote to Winthrop:--

“Concerning Morton, our Governor gave way that he should winter
here, but begone as soon as winter breaks up. Captain Standish takes
great offence thereat, especially that he is so near him as Duxbury,
and goeth sometimes a fowling in his ground. He cannot procure the
least respect amongst our people, liveth meanly at four shillings
per week, and content to drink water, so he may diet at that price.
But admit he hath a protection, yet it were worth the while to deal
with him till we see it. The truth is I much question his pretended
employment; for he hath here only showed the frame of a Common-weale
and some old sealed commissions, but no inside known. As for Mr.
Rigby if he be so honest, good and hopefull an instrument as report
passeth on him, he hath good hap to light on two of the arrantest
known knaves that ever trod on New English shore to be his agents
east and west, as Cleaves and Morton: but I shall be jealous on him
till I know him better, and hope others will take heed how they
trust him who investeth such with power who have devoted themselves
to the ruin of the country, as Morton hath. And for my part, (who
if my heart deceive me not can pass by all the evil instrumentally
he brought on me,) would not have this serpent stay amongst us, who
out of doubt in time will get strength to him if he be suffered, who
promiseth large portions of land about New Haven, Narragansett, &c.,
to all that will go with him, but hath a promise but of one person
who is old, weak and decrepid, a very atheist and fit companion for
him. But, indeed, Morton is the odium of our people at present, and
if he be suffered, (for we are diversely minded,) it will be just
with God, who hath put him in our hands and we will foster such an
one, that afterward we shall suffer for it.”[163]

The Rigby referred to in this letter was Mr. Alexander Rigby, an English gentleman of wealth who, besides being a strong Puritan, was a member of the Long Parliament, and at one time held a commission as colonel in the army. Cleaves was the George Cleaves already mentioned as having come out in 1637, with a protection under the privy signet.[164] He had then appeared as an agent of Gorges, but subsequently he had got possession in Maine of the “Plough patent,” so called, under which the title to a large part of the province was claimed adversely to Gorges.[165] This patent Cleaves induced Rigby to buy, and the latter was now endeavoring to get his title recognized, and ultimately succeeded in so doing. Cleaves, as well as Morton, enjoyed the reputation of being “a firebrand of dissension,”[166] and the two had long acted together. As Gorges had joined his fortunes to the Royalist side, Morton clearly had nothing to gain by pretending at Plymouth to be his agent or under his protection. So he seems to have tried to pass himself off as a Commonwealth’s man, commissioned by Rigby to act in his behalf. Winslow was probably quite right in suspecting that this was all a pretence. Rigby’s claim was for territory in Maine. It is not known that he ever had any interests in Rhode Island or Connecticut. There can, in short, be little doubt that Morton was now nothing more than a poor, broken-down, disreputable, old impostor, with some empty envelopes and manufactured credentials in his pocket.

At Plymouth, as would naturally be supposed, Morton made no headway. But the province of Maine was then in an uneasy, troubled condition, and there was reported to be a strong party for the king in the neighborhood of Casco Bay. Thither accordingly Morton seems to have gone in June, 1644.[167] His movements were closely watched, and Endicott was notified that he would go by sea to Gloucester, hoping to get a passage from thence to the eastward. A warrant for his arrest was at once despatched, but apparently he eluded it; nor if he went there, which, indeed, is doubtful, did Morton long remain in Maine. In August he was in Rhode Island, and on the 5th of that month he is thus alluded to in a letter from Coddington to Winthrop:--

“For Morton he was [insinuating] who was for the King at his first
coming to Portsmouth, and would report to such as he judged to be of
his mind he was glad [to meet with] so many cavaliers; ... and he had
lands to dispose of to his followers in each Province, and from Cape
Ann to Cape Cod was one.... And that he had wrong in the Bay [to the]
value of two hundred pounds, and made bitter complaints thereof. But
Morton would let it rest till the Governor came over to right him;
and did intimate he knew whose roast his spits and jacks turned.”[168]

Prospering in Rhode Island no more than at Plymouth, Morton is next heard of as a prisoner in Boston. How he came within the clutches of the Massachusetts magistrates is not known; his necessities or his assurance may have carried him to Boston, or he may have been pounced upon by Endicott’s officers as he was furtively passing through the province. In whatever way it came about, he was in custody on the 9th of September, just five weeks from the time of Coddington’s letter to Winthrop, and the latter then made the following entry in his Journal:[169]--

“At the court of assistants Thomas Morton was called forth presently
after the lecture, that the country might be satisfied of the justice
of our proceeding against him. There was laid to his charge his
complaint against us at the council board, which he denied. Then we
produced the copy of the bill exhibited by Sir Christopher Gardiner,
etc., wherein we were charged with treason, rebellion, etc., wherein
he was named as a party or witness. He denied that he had any hand
in the information, only was called as a witness. To convince him
to be the principal party, it was showed: 1. That Gardiner had no
occasion to complain against us, for he was kindly used and dismissed
in peace, professing much engagement for the great courtesy he found
here. 2. Morton had set forth a book against us, and had threatened
us, and had prosecuted a _quo warranto_ against us, which he did not
deny. 3. His letter was produced,[170] written soon after to Mr.
Jeffreys, his old acquaintance and intimate friend.”

This passage is characteristic both of the man and of the time. The prisoner now arraigned before the magistrates had been set in the stocks, all his property had been confiscated, and his house had been burned down before his eyes. He had been sent back to England, under a warrant, to stand his trial for crimes it was alleged he had committed. In England he had been released from imprisonment in due course of law. Having now returned to Massachusetts, he was brought before the magistrates, “that the country might be satisfied of the justice of our proceeding against him.” As the result of this proceeding, which broke down for want of proof, the alleged offender is again imprisoned, heavily fined, and narrowly escapes a whipping. Under all these circumstances, it becomes interesting to inquire what the exact offence alleged against him was. It was stated by Winthrop. He had made a “complaint against us at the council board.”

“The council board” thus referred to was the royal Privy Council. It represented the king, the supreme power in the state, the source from whence the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company was derived. The complaint, therefore, charged to have been made, was made to the common superior, and it alleged the abuse, by an inferior, of certain powers and privileges which that superior had granted. It would seem to have been no easy task for the magistrates to point out, either to the prisoner or to the country it was proposed to satisfy, any prescriptive law, much less any penal statute, which made a criminal offence out of a petition to the acknowledged supreme power in the state, even though that petition set forth the alleged abuse of charter privileges.

But it is not probable that this view of the matter ever even suggested itself to Winthrop and his associates. It does not seem even to have been urged upon them by the prisoner. On the contrary he appears to have accepted the inevitable, and practically admitted that a complaint to the king was in Massachusetts, as Burdet had some years before asserted, “accounted a perjury and treason in our general courts,”[171] punishable at the discretion of the magistrates. Morton, therefore, denied having made the complaint, and the magistrates were unable to prove it against him. The most singular and unaccountable feature in the proceedings is that the _New Canaan_ was not put in evidence. Apparently there was no copy of it to be had. Could one have been produced, it is scarcely possible that the avowed author of the libellous strictures on Endicott, then himself governor, should have escaped condign punishment of some sort from a bench of Puritan magistrates. But Winthrop merely mentions that he had “set forth a book against us,” and Maverick says that this was denied and could not be proved.[172] Had a copy of the _New Canaan_ then been at hand, either in Boston or at Plymouth, a glance at the titlepage would have proved who “set [it] forth” beyond possibility of denial.

The only entry in the Massachusetts records relating to this proceeding is as follows:--

“For answer to Thomas Morton petition, the magistrates have called
him publicly, and have laid divers things to his charge, which he
denies; and therefore they think fit that further evidence be sent
for into England, and that Mr Downing may have instructions to search
out evidence against him, and he to lie in prison in the mean time,
unless he find sufficient bail.”[173]

This entry is from the records of the General Court, held in November 1644. Among the unpublished documents in the Massachusetts archives is yet another petition from Morton, bearing no date, but, from the endorsement upon it, evidently submitted to the General Court of May, 1645, six months later, when Dudley was governor. This petition is as follows:--

_To the honored Court at Boston assembled:_

The humble petition of Thomas Morton, prisoner.

Your petitioner craveth the favour of this honored Court to cast back
your eies and behould what your poore petitioner hath suffered in
these parts.

First, the petitioner’s house was burnt, and his goodes taken away.

Secondly, his body clapt into Irons, and sent home in a desperat
ship, unvittled, as if he had been a man worthy of death, which
appeared contrary when he came there.

Now the petitioner craves this further that you would be pleased to
consider what is laid against him: (taking it for granted to be true)
which is not proved: whether such a poore worme as I had not some
cause to crawle out of this condition above mentioned.

Thirdly, the petitioner craves this favoure of you, as to view his
actions lately towards New England, whether they have not been
serviceable to some gentlemen in the country; but I will not praise
my selfe.

Fourthly, the petitioner coming into these parts, which he loveth,
on godly gentlemen’s imployments, and your worshipps having a former
jelosy of him, and a late untrue intelligence of him, your petitioner
has been imprisoned manie Moneths and laid in Irons to the decaying
of his Limbs; Let your petitioner finde soe much favoure, as to see
that you can passe by former offence, which finding the petitioner
hopes he shall stand on his watch to doe you service as God shall
enable him.

Upon this document, certainly humble enough in tone, appear the following endorsements:--

The house of Deputies desire the honored magistrates to return them
a reason, wherefore the petitioner came not to his triall the last
quarter Courte according to graunte (as they conceave) of a former
petition presented to the Courte by him.

ROBT. BRIDGES.

The reason why he came not to his tryall was the not cominge of
evidence out of England against him which we expect by the next ship.

THO: DUDLEY _Gov^r_

The house of Deputies have made choyce of Major Gibbons, and Captain
Jennison to treate with the honored magistrates about this petition
of Morton.

ROBT. BRIDGES.

Singularly enough the Major Gibbons to whom Morton’s petition was thus referred had, in former years, been one of his followers at Merry-Mount. He was a man of ability and energy, the whole of whose singular career, as traced in an interesting note of Palfrey’s, will not bear a too close scrutiny.[174] At the time of Morton’s arrest by Miles Standish, in 1629, Gibbons was probably one of those belonging to the Merry-Mount company who had then “gone up into the inlands to trade with the savages.”[175] During that summer he experienced religion in a quite unexpected way, and now, in 1645, while his old master was rotting in the Boston jail, Gibbons was a prosperous merchant, a deputy to the General Court, and “chief military officer of the train-band of the town.” Higher military honors and severe business vicissitudes were in store for him. It nowhere appears whether under these circumstances Major Gibbons had either the will or the ability to be of service to his former chief, and Winthrop is the only authority for what remains of Morton’s story. It is soon told.

“Having been kept in prison about a year in expectation of further
evidence out of England, he was again called before the court, and
after some debate what to do with him, he was fined 100 pounds, and
set at liberty. He was a charge to the country, for he had nothing,
and we thought not fit to inflict corporal punishment upon him,
being old and crazy, but thought better to fine him and give him his
liberty, as if it had been to procure his fine, but indeed to leave
him opportunity to go out of the jurisdiction, as he did soon after,
and he went to Acomenticus, and living there poor and despised, he
died within two years after.”[176]

Morton himself asserted that the harsh treatment he underwent in prison, while waiting for that evidence from England which was to convict him of some crime, broke down his health and hastened his end. If he was indeed, as Maverick subsequently stated,[177] kept in jail and, as he himself says, in irons, through an entire New England winter, on the prison fare of those days, and without either fire or bedding, this seems wholly probable.

* * * * *

There was about Thomas Morton nothing that was remarkable. On the contrary he was one of a class of men common enough in the days of Elizabeth and the Stuarts to have found their way into the literature of the period, as well as into that more modern romance which undertakes to deal with it. It is the Alsatian Squire and Wildrake type. Morton chanced to get out of place. He was a vulgar Royalist libertine, thrown by accident into the midst of a Puritan community. He was unable or unwilling to accept the situation, or to take himself off; and hence followed his misfortunes and his notoriety. Had he in 1625, or even in 1629, gone to Virginia or to New York, he would have lived in quiet and probably died in poverty, leaving nothing behind to indicate that he had ever been. As it is, he will receive a mention in every history of America.

More recently also certain investigators, who have approached the subject from a Church of England point of view, have shown some disposition to adopt Morton’s cause as their own, and to attribute his persecution, not to his immoral life or illicit trade, but to his devotion to the Book of Common Prayer.[178] It is another article in the long impeachment of the founders of New England, and it has even been alleged that “it still remains for Massachusetts to do justice to Morton, who had his faults, though he was not the man his enemies, and notably Bradford, declared him to be.”[179]

The _New English Canaan_ is the best and only conclusive evidence on this point. In its pages Morton very clearly shows what he was, and the nature of “his faults.” He was a born Bohemian, and as he passed on in life he became an extremely reckless but highly amusing old debauchee and tippler. When he was writing his book, Archbishop Laud was the head of the board of Lords Commissioners. On the action of that board depended all the author’s hopes. In view of this fact, there are, in the _New Canaan_, few more delightful or characteristic passages than that in which, describing his arrest by Standish, Morton announces that it was “because mine host was a man that endeavored to advance the dignity of the Church of England; which they, on the contrary part, would labor to vilify with uncivil terms; envying against the sacred Book of Common Prayer, and mine host that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family as a practice of piety.”[180]

The part he was endeavoring to play when he wrote this passage was one not very congenial to him, and he makes an awkward piece of work of it. The sudden tone of sanctimony which he infuses into the words quoted, hardly covers up the leer and gusto with which he had just been describing the drunkenness and debauchery of Merry-Mount,--how “the good liquor” had flowed to all comers, while “the lasses in beaver-coats” had been welcome “night and day;” how “he that played Proteus, with the help of Priapus, put their noses out of joint;” and how that “barren doe” became fruitful, who is mysteriously alluded to as a “goodly creature of incontinency” who had “tried a camp royal in other parts.” Though, from the point of view before alluded to, it has been asserted that the Massachusetts magistrates “invented ... insinuations respecting [Morton’s] treatment of [the Indian] women, whom, in reality, he had fought to instruct in the principles of religion,”[181]--though this and other similar assertions have been made with apparent gravity, yet it is impossible to read the third book of the _New Canaan_, saturated as it is with drunkenness, ribaldry and scoffing, without coming to the conclusion that _Don Quixote_, _Rabelais_ and the _Decameron_ are far more likely to have been in request at Merry-Mount than the Bible or the Book of Common Prayer.

Not that the _New Canaan_ is in itself an obscene or even a coarse book. On the contrary, judged by the standard of its time, it is singularly the reverse. Indeed it is almost wholly free from either word or allusion which would offend the taste of the present day. Yet the writer of the _New Canaan_ was none the less a scoffer, a man of undevout mind. As to the allegation that his devotion to the Church of England and its ritual was the cause of his arrest by the Plymouth authorities, the answer is obvious and decisive. Blackstone was an Episcopalian, and a devout one, retaining even in his wilderness home the canonical coat which told of his calling.[182] Maverick and Walford were Episcopalians; they lived and died such. The settlers at Wessagusset were Episcopalians. In the dwellings of all these the religious services of the times, customary among Episcopalians, were doubtless observed, for they were all religious men. Yet not one of them was ever in any way molested by the Plymouth people; but, on the contrary, they one and all received aid and encouragement from Plymouth. Episcopalians as they were, they all joined in dealing with Morton as a common enemy and a public danger; and such he unquestionably was. It was not, then, because he made use of the Common Prayer that he was first driven from the Massachusetts Bay; it was because he was a nuisance and a source of danger. That subsequently, and by the Massachusetts authorities, he was dealt with in a way at once high-handed and oppressive, has been sufficiently shown in these pages. Yet it is by no means clear that, under similar circumstances, he would not have been far more severely and summarily dealt with at a later period, when the dangers of a frontier life had brought into use an unwritten code, which evinced even a less regard for life than, in Morton’s case, the Puritans evinced for property.[183]