A MUCH-MARRIED MAN.
The spring had ripened into midsummer, and under the sad and foreboding
eyes of Governor Bradford a most ominous hegira of some of his dearest
friends and Plymouth’s most valued townsmen had taken place, nominally
for the summer only, but as Bradford too plainly foresaw not to end
with the summer.
Standish’s house upon the foot of his own hill was complete, and not
far away Jonathan Brewster, the Elder’s oldest son, had put up a summer
cottage and established his wife and children. This might have passed,
but when the Elder himself, with his two sons Love and Wrestling, also
built a cottage close beside Jonathan’s upon a pretty inlet called
Eagle’s Creek, the governor’s heart sank within him, and, calling a
Court of the People, he proposed a legal enactment to the effect that
those colonists who should build houses outside the town limits for
the convenience of grazing or farming should return to the town at the
beginning of winter, and abide there until spring; also, that they
should week by week come into town to attend divine service on the
Lord’s Day.
To this all consented, even Winslow, who, in spite of his frequent and
protracted absences in England, had found time to view the land beyond
Duxbury, and to appropriate a lovely and fertile tract at Green Harbor
in what is now Marshfield. Building a temporary cottage here, he named
the estate Careswell after his ancestral home in England, and in true
family spirit gathered around him his brothers: John, now husband of
Mary Chilton, Josias, and Kenelm, who, married to Ellinor Newton of the
Fortune, settled upon a gentle eminence by the sea in a spot so fertile
and so beautiful that it was fitly named Eden.
Where Standish chose to lead, John Alden was in the habit of following,
nor was this migration to Duxbury an exception, for in this very summer
of 1631 Alden took up a large tract of land on the south side of
Bluefish River, and built his house upon a pleasant rise of land near
Eagletree Pond; and although two other houses have at different dates
replaced the one he built, his children of the eighth generation live
to-day upon the spot where Betty Alden grew into her fair maidenhood,
and brothers and sisters made home happy, and life a quiet joy.
All these things and more had William Bradford been rehearsing to
his friend Captain William Pierce of the Lyon, who had looked into
Plymouth to leave some passengers and merchandise before proceeding
upon his voyage to England, until the sailor, sorry for the depression
and foreboding Bradford did not disguise from him, cast about for some
pleasanter topic, and finally cried,--
“Oh, let me tell you, Governor, of the hornets’ nest I found myself
caught in, awhile ago in Lun’on; and by the way, Master Isaac Allerton
was in it as well. Didn’t he tell you here of the two wives of Sir
Christopher Gardiner?”
“Nay, we have had but little pleasant converse with Master Allerton
for a long time past,” replied Bradford heavily, and Pierce hastened to
proceed:--
“I know, I know, it would seem as if Allerton with all his pious texts
had never learned that the man who faileth to care for his own is worse
than a beast; for he cozened his own old father as much as he did you.
But this is another matter. It was in February that I was stopping at
the Three Anchors down by Wapping Old Stairs, and Allerton came in and
said he had a message from a woman calling herself Lady Gardiner, who
fain would have speech with him because he came out of New England;
but he, prudent man, would go to see no fair ladies unknown to himself
without a reputable witness to his honest intent, and so he was come
for me. Be sure, Bradford, I did not let the chance slip to pass some
merry jests upon our sour-visaged friend, and brought the blood to his
tallow cheeks as it has not been seen for many a day; but in the end I
gave my word to go and protect him as best I might from any designing
Lindabrides who might assail him. So at once we went to the address
written on the billet that was sent him, smelling of musk and ambergris
and civet, worse than the hold of the Lyon after a ten weeks’ voyage.
Coming to the house in the Strand, we found in a very fair lodging not
one but two fair dames; and the merry jest of it is that both the one
and the other are honest women, and married by ring, book, and bell to
this same gay knight whom Winthrop found living so meekly in the woods
of Neponset River with his cousin Mary Grove.”
“Nay, Pierce, but this passes a jest!” exclaimed Bradford, much
disturbed as he recalled his little sister’s pale face, and his wife’s
anxieties on her account. But the jolly mariner mopped his red face
and laughed amain while he replied,--
“Nay, nay, Governor, I’m no church-member, and I suppose you saints
were men before you were saints, and how can you help to see the mirth
of it?”
“Well, tell me how it was.”
“Why, the first fair dame,--and a pretty creature she was, with soft
eyes like those of your wife’s pet doe, and yellow hair, but a mouth
too sad for kisses, and a cheek too thin and white for my taste,--she
showed us her marriage lines, and told how she was married some six
years ago to this Sir Christopher in Paris, and there abode until a
few weeks before that speaking, when, hearing strange rumors of her
husband’s proceedings, she came over to seek him in Lun’on, and found
the scent warm indeed, but Master Reynard fled over seas; and as she
sought him up and down, her quest crossed that of this other lady, who
had been indeed more deeply wronged than herself. And at that word,
Number Two, a fine bouncing well-set-up figure of a woman, black eyes
and hair, and a cheek like a sturdy rose, and a mouth I’d rather have
seen at peace than trembling with rage, she took up the word, and told
how not six months before, she too had wed Sir Christopher Gardiner,
and she too showed her marriage lines, which if not so binding as
the first ones had at least the merit of being writ in English; and
furthermore she showed us schedules of jewels and coin, and silver-
and goldsmith’s work, and much rare and costly apparel both for men
and women, for she was a widow, and all of it gone over seas with Sir
Christopher, who, it seems, after sending her for a day or two to visit
friends in the country, had made a clean sweep of everything, and the
same night set sail for Monhegan with Mary Grove, for whom, poor wench,
she could find no name vile enough, laying all the blame, as is the
wont of women, upon her, and making Sir Kit a victim of her wiles.”
“You saw the marriage lines of both these women?” asked Bradford,
leaning his forehead upon his hand as he sat beside the table, and
sighing heavily.
“Oh, yes,” returned Pierce, wondering at the effect of his story, but
rather attributing it to the morbid sensitiveness of a church-member.
“Yes, they were both of them as safe as a chain-cable; and though Sir
Kit does seem to have slipped them, he couldn’t have parted them so
long as the anchor of common law found holding-ground. Well, both women
were clamoring to have us two catch the man and bring him back; but
while the soft sweet first wife would have him brought back to duty
and gently wooed into a better life, the full-rigged to’-gallant-s’il
gallant buccaneer of a second wife only yearned to get him within
reach that she might write the ten commandments on his face with her
pretty little nails, and if she couldn’t recover her jewels, plate,
and apparel, she would have the worth of them out of his hair and
hide, and as for Mary Grove,--wow! man, you should have heard her! The
ducking-stool, and the bilboes, and the white sheet, and the cart’s
tail, and I know not what, were but the beginning of the blessings she
longed to pour upon that poor little sinner’s head, oh me, oh me!”
And again the sailor, recalling the scene, threw back his head and
laughed aloud, but meeting no response checked himself suddenly and
continued:--
“Well, Allerton and I, when we might be heard, assured both the one and
the other dame that we compassionated their sad estate most heartily
and would willingly see them avenged, but that we had no power except
to bring the matter before Governor Winthrop, within whose jurisdiction
Sir Christopher had settled, and in the end both ladies resolved to
write to His Excellency, and promised to send the letters betimes next
day to the Three Anchors at Wapping; which, to cut the yarn short, they
did, and I gave them to Winthrop, and he as you know coursed the hare,
or rather, hunted the fox, and ran him down, here at Plymouth.”
“But he has not been sent home, or so I heard the other day!” exclaimed
Bradford.
“No; and why, I know not,” replied Pierce. “They kept him clapt up
for a while, but finding nothing worse against him than that he is a
friend to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who wants the Massachusetts lands for
himself, they gave him the run of the town, and he has been vaporing up
and down there for months more than one or two. But now, Bradford, now
here’s a merry jest that even you cannot but smile at if there’s a drop
of red blood in your veins.
“A week or two ago a stalwart fellow called Thomas Purchase, who has
taken up land at the eastward at a place called Sagadahoc, on the
Kennebec River,--or is it the Androscoggin?”
“Both, since they come to a confluence. We have been thither trading
for beaver, and will have a port there soon, if God will.”
“Well, this Purchase is a big man down there, and meaning to be bigger;
so, having a house, he came to Boston to purvey himself a wife; and who
should he pick from among all the fair and godly maids and widows of
that pious village but Mary Grove, who has been waiting there until
the magistrates should settle within their own minds which of the Lady
Gardiners might claim the plucking of her feathers. Yes, sir; Thomas
Purchase, with his eyes and his ears open, chose Mary Grove to be his
wife, Sir Christopher gave his consent and his blessing, and the lord’s
brethren, as Blackstone calls them, hailed with joy so clear a course
out of the muddle they’d fallen into with this woman. So Winthrop
himself married them, and Purchase, having his boat at hand, well
stocked with the barter of the beaver he had brought up, carried his
bride aboard, and also,--now mark you well, for here’s the very moral
of the jest,--also he took aboard Sir Christopher Gardiner himself,
and away they all sailed for Sagadahoc. There, what think you of that,
gossip?”
“I think Master Thomas Purchase a singularly charitable man,” replied
Bradford with a dry smile. “But let us hope that Mary Grove convinced
him that she was more sinned against than sinning, and had not done the
wrong this villain’s second wife imputed to her.”
“Ay, ay, doubtless you as a church-member are bound to find some such
way out of the thing; but to the mind of a plain old sea-dog like Bill
Pierce ’tis a marvelous merry tale, with no moral tacked to the end
on’t.”
And possibly this conversation had something to do with the fact that
when Thanksgiving Day came round, Priscilla Carpenter became the wife
of William Wright.