The Colony looks to the fur trade to pay its debts § Three London
merchants agree to continue as Plymouth’s partners § The Pilgrims
encounter difficulties in the fur trade § Plymouth obtains a new
patent to protect its trading rights § Plymouth’s business agent
is dismissed for a “conflict of interest” § The colony and its
London partners dispute over their accounts § The London partners
quarrel among themselves § Through arbiters, Plymouth and London
reach a financial settlement § 1645--Plymouth’s debts, “hopeful and
desperate,” at last are discharged
Notes 69
Bibliography 79
Index of Personal Names 85
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank all those who have assisted me with this
study. For careful reading of the manuscript and helpful suggestions,
I am particularly grateful to: Professor Bernard Bailyn, Harvard
University; Mr. Henry Hornblower II, President, Mr. David B. Freeman,
Director, and Mr. Arthur G. Pyle, Education Director, Plimoth
Plantation; Miss Juliette Tomlinson, Director, Connecticut Valley
Historical Museum; Dr. A. M. Millard, London, England.
I wish to give special thanks to Mrs. Millard for aid in research
in the Public Record Office, London, and to Professor Norma Adams,
Mount Holyoke College. The following persons were especially kind
in permitting use of the records in their custody: Miss Rose T.
Briggs, Director, and Mr. Warren Sampson in the Library, Pilgrim
Hall, Plymouth, Massachusetts; Mr. W. Wallace Austin, Curator, Old
Colony Historical Society, Taunton, Massachusetts; Miss Susan M.
Hare, Librarian, Goldsmiths’ Hall, London; Mr. John Bromley, Deputy
Librarian, Guildhall Library, London.
For permission to reproduce the engraving of the Royal Exchange of
London, I am indebted to Harper and Row, Inc., New York.
R. A. M.
Foreword
The story of Plymouth’s founding has been told many times, its simple
details transformed into a national legend. To reinterpret it and see
it in a new light is difficult, if not impossible. Yet the business
side of the Pilgrims’ undertaking is a relatively neglected aspect,
though Governor Bradford himself devoted many chapters to it. The
story has several familiar episodes--the support of Thomas Weston and
the company of merchant adventurers, the break-up of the company, and
the efforts of the leaders in Plymouth to pay its debts. The London
adventurers have often been described as hard-hearted profiteers, whose
innocent victims, the Pilgrims, were governed by religious enthusiasm
and without any business sense. We can understand better the real
financial problems in planting Plymouth by examining each one in turn.
We must begin with events in Holland and England and conclude with the
payment of all debts at the end of several decades.
The commercial affairs of this small colony have their own importance,
even if they are less acclaimed than the religious and political
experiment of the Pilgrims. They, too, reflect a constancy of purpose
and eventual success in mastering the practical requirements of the
first permanent settlement in New England. Regardless of hardships,
Plymouth held firm and survived, whereas earlier efforts to colonize
the rugged coasts to the north of Virginia had failed. As a business
venture, the colony provides an early example of business integrity and
responsibility.
Where does this venture belong in the larger canvas of English
expansion into the New World? An Englishman wrote recently[A] that
the Pilgrims’ importance has been greatly exaggerated. This is bound
to be the point of view of the mother island, from whose shores, in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there scattered in various
directions a multitude of explorers, traders, and colonizers. Compared
with their total accomplishment, the work of the small band of
emigrants to Plymouth and of their petty capitalist backers appears
insignificant. To the American, on the other hand, their victory over
Plymouth’s starkness and meager resources, together with the leaders’
articulate faith and common sense, have taken on a symbolic quality
which tends to magnify their place in his early history. In fact,
students both of English expansion and of American origins find in the
materials for Plymouth’s history a rare opportunity to observe from
within the operation of one of the kind of small business partnerships
which originated many early English settlements.
[A] A. L. Rowse, _The Elizabethans and America_ (London, 1959), 130.