Financing the Plymouth Colony
The Pilgrims decide to emigrate to America
Of the motives which prompted the founding of New Plymouth, the search
of the members of John Robinson’s little English congregation at Leyden
for an assured religious freedom was certainly the foremost. If this
had been their only prospect, it appears that they might have remained
in Holland without persecution. They were dissatisfied, however,
with their hard economic lot. The most diligent labor brought them
little security even in the midst of the prosperous urban life of
the Netherlands. There were “fair and beautiful cities flowing with
abundance of all sorts of wealth.... Yet it was not long before they
saw the grim and ugly face of poverty coming upon them like an armed
man, with whom they must buckle and encounter....” The university town
of Leyden proved to be “not so beneficial for their outward means of
living and estate,” yet they “fell to such trades and employments as
they best could,” until they attained “a competent and comfortable
living ... with hard and continual labor.”
Most of those who emigrated from Leyden to Plymouth, like their friends
who remained behind, were artisans; several performed some operation
in clothmaking. William Bradford, for example, was a fustian weaver,
Robert Cushman was a wool-comber, and Isaac Allerton, formerly from
London, earned his bread as a tailor. Among the handicraftsmen were
watchmakers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, and makers of tobacco pipes.
Of all who took part in the Plymouth venture, less than a handful had
either the experience or capital to be a merchant or, as one might
call it, a capitalist. Edward Pickering, who did not take part in the
exodus, George Morton, and John Carver, who died in the colony’s first
year, were exceptions in having trading experience and some means.
Two of the leaders with a special competence in theological learning,
William Brewster and Edward Winslow, were printers.
As they went about their tasks, respected, yet earning only modest
incomes, the members of the English congregation at Leyden worried
about their children’s future prospects in a foreign country. The
young men were “oppressed with their heavy labours” and attracted
to soldiering and other occupations their parents considered full
of worldly temptation. They also dreaded renewal of the Dutch war
with Spain. Deeply aware that they were “men in exile and in a poor
condition,” they dreamed of a more satisfying life in “those vast and
unpeopled countries of America....” Some were eager to take up again
the familiar tasks of husbandry and looked forward to acquiring their
own houses and land. William Bradford, the historian of Plymouth,
asserts that while religious ideals were always basic to the founding
of their own community, an economic urge was also behind their fateful
decision. Pastor Robinson, on the other hand, feared that in removing
to America, his flock would “much prejudice both (their) ... arts and
means.”[1]
They obtain a patent and seek financial backing
The future emigrants now had to make several decisions. First, in
what part of the New World should they plant their colony; secondly,
how would they defray the heavy costs of shipping stores of food and
equipment required for a new settlement? By the time they sent two
agents to London in 1617, they had plunged deep into these questions.
Very likely the inexpensive contemporary pamphlets which extolled the
benefits of different parts of America helped the leaders at Leyden
to fix upon a site. They probably read, for example, the descriptive
brochures which the Virginia Company of London had issued in connection
with drives to raise money. Robert Harcourt’s _A Relation of a Voyage
to Guiana_ (1614) may have seriously tempted them to put to the test
the fruitful promise of tropical South America, but they were put off
by its unhealthy climate. Captain John Smith’s tract on New England
(1616), which Elder Brewster had in his library at the time of his
death, was consulted. Later, the Captain attributed the hardships
suffered at Plymouth to the settlers’ parsimony in using his “books
and Maps ... better cheap” than employing him in person as a guide
and counsellor. In the long discussions which preceded any action, it
was objected that settling too near the colony at Jamestown ran the
risk of Anglican religious persecution; on the other hand, it might be
dangerous to be far from help in case the Spaniards, the persistent
enemies of English expansion, attacked their infant colony. In the end,
“the Lord was solemnly sought in the Congregation by fasting and prayer
to direct us ...,” and it was decided to plant inside the bounds of
Virginia.[2]
John Carver and Robert Cushman, trusted members of the group, were the
agents selected to approach the political authorities and the Virginia
Company in London. They had to negotiate first the delicate matter
of how much religious toleration they would be allowed if they went
to Virginia. They sought help from influential friends in the inner
circle of the Company. Sir Edwin Sandys and Sir John Wolstenholme
intervened with the King and Privy Council to secure approval of a
statement of religious beliefs forwarded from Leyden to London. Sandys,
a leading colonial promoter, was treasurer of the Company after 1619.
As a wealthy merchant, whose financial interests included the colony
in Virginia, Wolstenholme was often consulted by the government on
commercial matters. Even the good offices of these important men
were not enough to win the approval of the royal or ecclesiastical
authorities. Not that the King himself, James I, was entirely
unfriendly to their plans. In a conversation with his Secretary of
State he is reported to have asked how the colony intended to support
itself. At the reply, “By fishing,” he was said to have exclaimed;
“So God have my soul, ’tis an honest trade, ’twas the apostles’ own
calling.”[3]
In spite of rebuffs, the agents from Leyden kept trying to secure
a patent for land from the Virginia Company. Crushing financial
difficulties had recently forced this body to give up underwriting
the Virginia colony by a single joint stock. Instead, small groups of
associates or partners were authorized to invest in separate stocks for
special purposes, such as selling supplies to the settlers. Several
groups of partners were also applying to the Company for grants of
land they meant to settle at their own expense. In fact, a few such
financially independent “private plantations” had already sent over
tenants and servants whom they were permitted to direct. It was
probably on such terms that the Leyden group hoped to obtain land and
to share in its control until the investors were paid off.
At the time of their first application to the Virginia Company the
little band of emigrants were depending upon certain “merchants and
friends” who had agreed to adventure with them, for the provision of
shipping and means. Bradford’s obscure chronology makes it puzzling as
to who these men were. Writing his _History_ much later than the events
he described, he seems to place in about February 1620 the offer of
support by Thomas Weston they finally accepted, although Weston must
have been associated with earlier plans. Several months before, the
Virginia Company had already granted them a patent in the name of John
Wincob, but the discouragement over the religious negotiations and the
state of turmoil in the Virginia Company’s management had made some
people withdraw their original promise to help. Meanwhile, two members
of the Leyden congregation, William Brewster and Thomas Brewer, were
in trouble with the English government for illegally publishing some
religious tracts. The danger of their capture was disheartening, as was
the news about Francis Blackwell, an elder of the English congregation
at Amsterdam, who had conducted a group to settle in Virginia. Together
with most of his shipmates Blackwell had perished in a vessel so
crowded that the 180 passengers were “packed together like herrings.”[4]
Some London merchants offer to invest in the colony
Fortunately, there now appeared in Leyden the venturesome fellow
countryman whose encouraging new proposals soon gave a lift to low
spirits. This was Thomas Weston, a London merchant who had trading
interests in the Low Countries. He persuaded the congregation to reject
the offers the Dutch West India Company had made to induce them to
plant in their territory. He promised, instead, that if the Virginia
Company failed to assist, he and his partners would do so.
Weston had served his apprenticeship and been admitted to the
Ironmongers Company, one of the London livery companies. A citizen of
London, he was altogether a minor figure in the English business world.
He engaged in the somewhat hazardous task of selling cloth and other
wares to the Low Countries as an “interloper,” that is, a trespasser
on the tight monopoly the Merchant Adventurers Company of London held
there. Although not an investor in Virginia, he evidently shared the
fever which was stimulating dreams of profit even in highly speculative
colonial ventures, and was willing to shift part of his funds to the
relatively untried business of shipping settlers to fish and trade in
the New World. It is also likely that he had some sympathy with the
religious views of the Leyden group.
For some years Weston’s agent at Amsterdam had been Edward Pickering,
a merchant married to a member of the Leyden congregation. He had left
England for religious reasons and enjoyed a reputation for honesty
and success as Weston’s factor. Perhaps it was during a routine visit
of Weston to his shop in Amsterdam that Pickering informed him of the
plans for emigration. None of the leaders at Leyden suspected that in
the long run Weston’s conduct would not bear out the brisk confidence
and easy promises with which he soon persuaded them to accept his
promise of assistance. Indeed, in a short time Pickering himself was
unable to obtain a proper reckoning of accounts with his employer
without returning to England and suing him for a large sum. Weston’s
finances finally became so crippled by debts, including those to some
of the partners in the Plymouth venture, that he left the country and
turned to small fishing voyages in New England.[5] This is looking
ahead of our story, however.
Weston had come to discern in the colonizing scheme commercial
prospects attractive enough to induce several other London businessmen
to join in an unincorporated company to send the Leyden congregation
overseas. Besides evidence to be presented later that to a certain
extent Puritan religious inclination prompted this support, it is
likely that the slump in the trade in woolen cloth, the traditional
mainstay of English commerce abroad, was also a factor influencing
their decision. The disturbance in the course of that trade due partly
to its reorganization by the Crown in 1614 helped favor an interest in
various new money-making projects. In the rapid growth and dislocation
characteristic of early seventeenth-century London relatively
few merchants had heard of New England, but Virginia’s financial
difficulties were well known. Captain John Smith had appealed in 1616
to investors in London and the ports of southwestern England to support
colonies to produce profits from the fish and furs of New England.
Fishermen, some sent by Londoners, already were sailing off the coast,
but Smith recommended settling there so that permanent posts could
lengthen the fishing season and permit cargos to be prepared for the
arrival of the fleets in the spring. Weston and his partners may have
regarded the Pilgrims as the human material to carry out such a plan.
Perhaps he suggested planting further north than Jamestown.
Be that as it may, this promoter was welcomed with enthusiasm when he
came to confer with Pastor Robinson and to reassure the discouraged
that there was no want of shipping or money. The next step was to
persuade his Leyden friends to draw up an agreement with his “merchant
adventurers,” and set forth in black and white the terms under which
they would receive aid and he could persuade his fellow-investors to
contribute.
1620--Pilgrims and merchants form a joint stock company
The discussions in England and Leyden over the articles of agreement
were protracted. Robert Cushman, as intermediary, thought he closed
a hard bargain with the “grasping” merchants. The terms of July 1,
1620, were not unlike those of other colonial enterprises tried in
Virginia and Bermuda. The entire capital, including lands, was to be
a joint stock fund, divided into shares. Every person over the age of
sixteen going to the new colony was rated at £10, and £10 was accounted
a single share. Any emigrant outfitting himself with £10 worth of
provisions was considered worth £20 or a double share. For example,
William Mullins, a well-to-do investor-planter, who died in the first
year, left in his will his stock of £40 worth of boots and shoes,
expecting it to increase to nine shares at the end of seven years. The
adventurers who contributed only money and stayed at home, and the
planters, were to continue the joint stock for seven years during which
time all profits from “trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing,
or any other means” must remain in the common stock. Then they would
divide equally the capital and profits, viz., lands, houses, and goods.
The common stock would furnish food, apparel, and provisions.
A good deal of controversy arose when it was learned that the
adventurers insisted on harsher terms than those in the original
agreement. The assets of the common stock, it was claimed, had not
included the houses and home lots of the settlers, nor were they to
work seven days a week, two days having been reserved for employment
for their own families. The future planters had some right here, for
they were the full partners and not the servants of the company. Robert
Cushman, who seems to have concealed the stiffer terms, nevertheless
vigorously defended them. When criticized by Pastor Robinson, who
considered him “... (though a good man and of special abilities in
his kind) yet most unfit to deal with other men by reason of his ...
too great indifferency for any conditions ...,” Cushman retorted to
Carver: “... what it is you would have of me I know not; for your
crying out, ‘Negligence, negligence,’ I marvel why so negligent a man
was used in the business.” If the disheartening new conditions insisted
on made many “ready to faint and go back,” he could only say that the
adventurers, other than Weston, would have withdrawn their help if he
had not altered the original ones. With much irritation he objected
to the “querimonies and complaints against me, of lording it over my
brethren and making conditions fitter for thieves and bondslaves than
honest men....” Bradford suggests that Carver never forwarded this
heated letter to Leyden, but its indignant tone suggests the vexations
which fretted the Pilgrims in their undertaking.[6]
The emigrants objected to the new articles and upon arrival in
Southampton from Holland rejected Cushman’s pleas. This refusal, even
though backed by their friends at Leyden and held to until Cushman
secured their adherence to the terms in 1621, unfortunately embittered
relations with the adventurers. Weston, coming down to Southampton to
see them off, “was much offended and told them they must then look to
stand on their own legs.” Bradford saw in this episode the origin of
the “discontent” which later developed between the planters and their
chief financial backer.
Despite difficulties and controversy, the colonists set sail
The preparation of the voyage presented practical problems the Pilgrims
were ill equipped to solve. The small number who sold their Leyden
property to convert it into shipping and stores, had no experience
along this line, and their ineptitude made Mr. Weston “merry with our
endeavours about buying a ship....” Edward Pickering was the most
knowledgeable of them in trade, but his money was not forthcoming,
even though Cushman and Weston had expected him to furnish “many
hundred pounds.” Pastor Robinson gave voice to pained surprise when he
discovered that at the time his flock had turned over the money raised
from their scanty possessions, Weston still withheld his own money and
had taken absolutely no steps to provide shipping.
The preparations in England bogged down while three purchasing agents
scattered their efforts to round up supplies, Cushman in London and
Kent, and Carver and Christopher Martin at Southampton. Martin was an
Essex man, a newcomer chosen to represent the “strangers” from Essex
and London whom the adventurers had recruited to swell the ranks of
the planters. He had taken part in settling the terms and was charged
with keeping track of matters at Southampton. This was a poor choice,
for Martin insulted the Leyden people, whose ways he probably despised.
When Cushman later called for an accounting and took up cudgels for
the complainers, Martin called them “froward and waspish, discontented
people.”[7]
In spite of all the “clamours and jangling” about the business end
of the voyage, there was one important accomplishment during the few
anxious months before the _Mayflower_ (180 tons) and the _Speedwell_
(60 tons) sailed from Southampton on August 5, 1620. Between £1200
and £1600 was raised to cover the expedition’s costs. Carver spent
£700 of this at Southampton. Unfortunately we do not know how much
was supplied by any particular investor. The £50 put in by Martin,
Cushman considered insignificant. £500 which the Ferrars, probably
John and Nicholas, prominent in the Virginia Company, had promised and
then, for some reason, withdrawn, is the only single large investment
mentioned. The amount John Carver furnished is not specified, but
he was credited by a later writer with having put in most of his
considerable substance. With seventy-odd “Gentlemen ... Merchants ...
[and] handy craftsmen” subscribing to the partnership, most investments
are likely to have been small. At the last minute the party had to sell
butter worth £60 to pay off a debt of £100. They left port dangerously
short of supplies, a fact which, as Cushman predicted, added to their
hardships in the New World.
Their financial difficulties also caused a fateful delay in beginning
their voyage. The August departure date was already too late to allow
time for crossing the Atlantic and building shelter in mild weather.
When the _Speedwell_, leaky and overmasted, forced the ships to put
back to land, a score of discouraged passengers withdrew from the
voyage. The _Mayflower_, now crowded with the entire group, departed
from Plymouth, leaving Robert Cushman behind to serve as chief agent
with the adventurers.
Contrary to their patent, the Pilgrims settle at Plymouth
The location where the Pilgrims planned to settle, and their rights to
it, were directly related to their future livelihood. Bradford says
that when they first made a landfall at Cape Cod they “resolved to
stand for the southward ... to find some place about Hudson’s River for
their habitation.” One of the earliest visitors to New Plymouth, John
Pory, wrote they had set out for Virginia with letters for the Governor
to “give them the best advise he could for trading in Hudson’s river.”
He blamed the master’s faulty navigation for bringing them to Cape Cod,
where the rough weather of early December forced them to decide not to
go southward, but to select a sheltered site nearby.[8] This turned out
to be New Plymouth.
The Pilgrims carried with them the patent John Peirce, an adventurer we
shall meet again, had taken out from the Virginia Company in February
1620. Realizing that it did not apply as far north as New England, the
chief colonists drafted the “Mayflower Compact” to avoid disputes over
the colony’s powers of government. The leaders probably knew before
they sailed that the old North Virginia Company had been revived under
Sir Ferdinando Gorges as the Council for New England. His grant had
been authorized in July 1620 but was not sealed until the _Mayflower_
was at sea. If before its departure there was any discussion of heading
north, Weston and his associates may have pointed out that later they
could solicit a grant from the Council in the Pilgrims’ behalf. When
the letters with the news of planting at Plymouth reached England
the next spring, they promptly secured such a grant. John Peirce was
again named as grantee in the indenture, dated June 1, 1621. Its terms
permitted Peirce and his associates to lay out 100 acres of land for
every person shipped over, and 1500 for public purposes. Besides giving
freedom to fish and trade along the coast, it underwrote the colony’s
authority to make laws. No boundaries were mentioned; a formal patent
was expected to specify them at a later date.[9]
New Plymouth struggles with hardship and debt
A successful relationship with the partners in England now lay at
the heart of the welfare of the infant colony. Even though some of
the London businessmen sympathized with the religious aims of the
Pilgrims, they expected the investment of their capital to yield a
return, and that rather quickly. Promotion of colonial ventures was new
and risky. Weston and the later leaders of the merchant adventurers
had not learned from the bitter experience of the large, incorporated
Virginia Company that a long time must elapse before any profit could
be expected from a colonial undertaking. They failed to calculate that
even if the colonists engaged promptly in trading furs or catching
fish, their initial task must be to build permanent dwellings and to
feed themselves and a fair number of women and children. They knew
that ships set forth annually by merchants had fished along the New
England coast for several years. These usually erected fishing stages
and sometimes traded for furs. They required only a modest outlay
by the investors in them and wound up their accounts at the end of
each voyage. It was much more costly, on the other hand, to uphold
a permanent settlement until it was self-sustaining. When even the
wealthy backers of Virginia and Bermuda complained about delayed
profits, the small group of capitalists supporting the Pilgrims
certainly could not afford to sink large funds for supplies year
after year without receiving goods in return. At the beginning they
apparently underestimated the extent of their task and seem to have
neglected consistently the necessary provision for the Plymouth colony.
The urgency of sending returns to these investors pressed on the
Pilgrims from the start. When the _Mayflower_ sailed home in 1621
without a profitable lading, Weston wrote a sharp criticism to the
Governor. He had been informed about how the high death rate and short
supplies had weakened the colony during the first dreadful winter,
yet he charged the settlers with greater “weakness of judgment than
weakness of hands. A quarter of the time you spend in discoursing,
arguing and consulting would have done much more.... The life of the
business depends upon the lading of this ship, which if you do to any
good purpose, that I may be freed from the great sums I have disbursed
for the former and must do for the latter [the _Fortune_], I promise
you I will never quit the business....”
Robert Cushman, the business agent in England, brought this rebuke
from the partners in November 1621. He came in the _Fortune_ to
inspect the colony briefly and to persuade the colonists to agree to
the conditions the adventurers had insisted on. He returned at once
to report his findings. The accomplishments of the first year appear
in the lively narrative, _Mourt’s Relation_ or _A Relation of the
beginning ... of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth_, printed
in 1622. Cushman, George Morton, William Bradford, and Edward Winslow
compiled this little tract to encourage the investors about the
colony’s progress. Although a bit rosy in coloring, it relates what
Cushman found.
New Plymouth was situated on a good harbor with plenty of fish and
woods close at hand. The settlers had built a fort at the top of the
hill and common storehouses containing the first harvest, the colony’s
precious arsenal and supplies from England. In the small, sturdy, frame
houses with roofs of thatch, scattered along the street running up the
hill, lived the survivors of the first winter’s illness and privation.
Their Indian friends, Squanto and Samoset, had helped them conciliate
the neighboring Indians and begin trade with them. William Bradford had
succeeded Governor Carver, with Isaac Allerton as his assistant.[10]
Yet an undercurrent of discontent and friction _Mourt’s Relation_ did
not mention disturbed the settlers. The system of sharing equally in
all the arduous labor and what it produced, was one source of unrest.
Upon the unloading of thirty-five newcomers sent in the _Fortune_
without proper clothing or “so much as a biscuit-cake or any other
victuals,” the most stout-hearted had a right to murmur at the addition
of extra consumers before another crop could be harvested. A gap
persisted between the Leyden immigrants and religious exiles, who had
ventured their persons and savings, and the London contingent, some of
them merely hirelings of the company. Bradford himself wrote Weston
about being “yoked with some ill-conditioned people who will never do
good....”
Since these strains threatened the successful execution of the
conditions with the London backers which he had just persuaded the
Pilgrims to sign, Cushman preached a sermon the Sunday before he left
on the text, “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth”
(1 Corinthians 10:24). Urging his hearers not to labor for self-love or
self-profit, he said: “Let there be no prodigal person to come forth
and say, Give me the portion of lands and goods that appertaineth to
me, and let me shift for myself.” No one must think of gathering riches
for himself until “our loving friends, which helped us hither, and now
again supplied us ...,” were paid off.[11]
Certainly the leaders of the colony had not been unmindful of their
responsibilities to the adventurers. Cushman’s ship was freighted with
good clapboard and two hogsheads of beaver and otter, a return cargo
they judged worth £500. Bad luck assailed them, however, in the first
of a series of disasters. A French privateer seized the vessel on its
way home and pillaged the returns they had collected with so much
effort.
Even so, it is hard for us to understand why the Pilgrims were
forced to endure such bitter hardship, indeed, at times, virtual
starvation, for a period of about two years after the _Fortune_’s
visit. They were continually disappointed at the failure to receive
replenishment of their scanty provisions, yet they had to share these
with newcomers whose arrival they did not expect. The explanation for
these harsh circumstances is to be found not so much in the colony as
among the partners in England. The situation was the result of three
major events: the defection of Thomas Weston from the ranks of the
adventurers; a quarrel with John Peirce over their patent; and the
irreparable rift developing inside the partnership itself, which was to
precipitate its final dissolution.
Quarrels develop among the London merchants
Up to now Weston had been the Pilgrims’ chief supporter in all the
business dealings with the London group. He had promised never to
fail them if only they signed the onerous terms required by the
latter. Before the plundered _Fortune_ returned to port, this giver of
plausible assurances was the first to desert them. One reason probably
was the dispute with his former factor in the Low Countries, Edward
Pickering. Near the end of 1621 Pickering left Amsterdam and broke off
dealings with Weston. In the suit about accounts connected with their
Dutch business, he asserted that Weston owed him hundreds of pounds. A
protracted legal wrangle, continued even after Pickering’s death and
after Weston had departed for New England, revealed the latter’s word
to be far from reliable. One witness claimed that he heard Weston’s
brother promise to give some kind of an accounting, not necessarily a
true account. Arbitrators investigating the contradictory claims of
both parties finally concluded that a matter of some £200 prevented a
settlement, but Weston, stubborn and contentious, filed a countersuit
against Pickering for a bond of £1500. It seems clear that other
adventurers for Plymouth agreed with Pickering in this contest, since
John Fowler, James Sherley, and Richard Andrews, as his executors,
continued the case after his death.
Weston meanwhile had written Bradford that he disagreed with the rest
of the adventurers over their course of action, reproaching them for
their “parsimony” in waiting for favorable receipts before they sent
provisions. Then he and another stockholder, John Beauchamp, sent out a
group of settlers on their own account as a private venture, entirely
distinct from the general stock. Weston’s men not only brought no
victuals for the colony, but relied on the Pilgrims to furnish them
necessary shelter and obliged them to dip into their own precious
stores of seed corn and salt.
Weston’s break with the company in London soon followed. The
adventurers held a meeting early in 1622, when the majority agreed to
put into the common fund what we might call an additional assessment
of one third of their original holding of stock. Those anxious to
go on with the business believed it should not be hindered by the
laggards, so they resolved to break off the joint stock as soon as the
shareowners in the colony should agree. This report of a decision to
break up came from Weston and his supporters, but it proved premature,
as indeed Bradford suspected so strongly that he did not show their
letter to more than a handful of intimates in counsel. Instead, Weston
got out. He wrote in April 1622: “I have sold my adventure and debts
unto them so as I am quit of you, and you of me....” The company’s
reaction was that they were “very glad they are freed of him, he being
judged a man that thought himself above the general....” Not unrelated
to his coming in person to New England in disguise and under an assumed
name may have been a large debt he owed the Crown for alum; a Treasury
warrant accused him of withdrawing beyond the seas with the purpose of
taking his estate after him.
Weston’s subsequent projects for colonizing and trading in New England
for some time created problems for the settlement at Plymouth. The
Pilgrims’ leaders more than repaid him for his early support by
receiving his men kindly and rescuing his rival colony on Massachusetts
Bay from imminent destruction by the Indians. When the promoter himself
arrived at their door, virtually destitute, but convincing in his
excuses, they fitted him out with enough furs to begin trade again.
Master John Peirce was the next to quarrel with his fellow adventurers
in London. A member of the Clothworkers’ Company, Peirce claimed that
he once employed more than a hundred persons. He was the merchant
who had received patents for the Leyden settlers from the Virginia
Company in 1620 and later from the Council for New England. He had
helped negotiate the terms of agreement between the merchants and the
planters. It was under his name that they held the right to take up
land around Plymouth. This had made him important enough for Cushman
to dedicate _Mourt’s Relation_ to him. In April 1622, according to the
story Bradford told, a version accepted uncritically by many writers,
Peirce secretly obtained from the Council for New England a new grant,
making the associates hold the lands at Plymouth as his tenants, rather
than of the Council. The London adventurers objected and forced him to
assign the grant to their Treasurer, now James Sherley, in return for
which Peirce demanded £500. The impression is left that Peirce deceived
the company and that they were justified in breaking with him.
Peirce, on the other hand, presented his side in a lawsuit in
Chancery against Sherley and the other New Plymouth adventurers. It
is unfortunate that the answers to the charges do not survive. Peirce
claimed an investment of £300 in the colony, reporting that when the
adventurers, “being moved by the distressed condition of the Planters
... in that place foreign to them and a vast desert,” wished to furnish
relief, they couldn’t raise the money. At the request of Sherley,
Peirce then tried to sustain the plantation by putting up funds to
outfit the ill-starred _Paragon_. This vessel, hired from Peirce by
the adventurers, sailed twice in the fall and winter of 1622–23 with
freight and passengers, chiefly women and children. When wintry seas
forced her to turn back the second time, Peirce said that, although
the adventurers had promised that he should not suffer any losses from
the voyage, contrary to such agreement, he bore the entire loss. After
Peirce was unable to refit his ship at Portsmouth quickly enough to
suit the adventurers, the latter sent a writ from Admiralty to arrest
him for £600. Under his brother Richard’s bond, the merchant returned
to London, where the adventurers “made a great clamour against ...
[him] for some supposed unjust dealing....” They attempted to buy out
his indenture, ultimately succeeding in obtaining from Peirce’s brother
a £500 bond to deliver it. This compelled Peirce to sign it over to
Sherley; besides he lost the chance to recoup his loss by another
voyage. In spite of a complex series of legal maneuvers (Bradford
wrote that Peirce “sued them in most of the chief courts in England
... [and] brought it to the Parliament”), he was unable to regain his
investment and reported that he suffered such inconvenience and damaged
reputation that he emerged a poor man.
While John Peirce held the title to the Plymouth lands “in trust,”
he seems to have acted within his legal rights in his maneuver to
exchange the indenture of 1621 for a new patent, but his purpose in
doing so without informing his associates in London and New Plymouth
is not clear. It evidently so angered them that when they found out
they stubbornly refused to settle with him and pay the £500 fee he
demanded. They probably were not unwilling to ruin him. Bradford, on
the other hand, gave short shrift to the fact that the _Paragon_ sailed
at Peirce’s charge and clearly accepted the opinion of the adventurers
that God had directed her mishaps against him because of his action on
the patent.[13]
The joint stock company breaks up
Meanwhile the most active of the remaining adventurers had determined
to forget the fiasco of the _Paragon_ and prepared two vessels, the
_Anne_ and the _Little James_, to carry a “large and liberal” supply
and a contingent of passengers intending to settle. Both arrived in
Plymouth in the summer of 1623. A great part of the adventurers’ hope
for profit rested in the _Little James_, a small pinnace built to
remain in the colony for its use. Bradford said “the adventurers did
overpride themselves in her,” for her troubles began even on the way
over. Because her commission allowed her to capture prize vessels, when
the captain failed to seize a French vessel, the crew became “rude” and
mutinous, claiming they were hired on shares for privateering, and not
for employment in fishing or trade. Before they would sail on colony
business, Bradford was obliged to negotiate wage contracts with them.
The _Little James’_ first voyage to the Narragansett country returned
without success, because she was not equipped with trading goods to
match what the Dutch could offer the Indians. A series of calamities
assailed her; she lost her mast, and later, through negligence, sank
off the Maine coast. The loss of this voyage and the cost of raising
her came to about £400 or £500. In the next step of her unhappy career,
she was seized on her return to England by one of the adventurers for a
debt owed him by the others.[14]
Emmanuel Altham, the _Little James’_ captain, himself an adventurer,
expressed the hopes of the English businessmen for the little
plantation. He had observed the efforts of the “honest men” of Plymouth
to “do, in what lies in them, to get profit to the adventurers,” and
he anticipated that fishing voyages, collection of beaver, as well as
of timber, were all ways of raising their returns. Yet he warned those
back home that provisions for twelve months at least were needed to
allow the settlers time for building houses and making a success of
these different enterprises.[15]
New Plymouth at first had expected to engage in fishing, by now the
source of successful returns to many small West Country merchants whose
ships were cruising up and down the New England coast and then carrying
dried fish to market in southern Europe. The colony’s most ambitious
attempt in this direction did, indeed, secure a patent for Cape Ann
from Lord Sheffield, taken in the names of Robert Cushman and Edward
Winslow. Yet the hope that the Pilgrims “could fall once into the right
course” for profitable fishing and saltmaking proved unfounded. The
first fishing season was a failure; the boatmaker died; the saltmaker
turned out to be incompetent. The colony almost lost to rivals the
fishing stage erected on Cape Ann. Even the title to the land had flaws
in it. In short, this ended “that chargeable business” and added only
bitterness to the adventurers’ cup.[16]
The seven-year partnership between the London adventurers and the
planters at Plymouth, unless renewed, as once had been suggested,
was to end about 1627 or 1628. In fact, the succession of blighted
hopes and dissensions just described dissolved it earlier. Several
innovations prepared the way for a new arrangement satisfactory both to
the colonists and to their English supporters.
After two harvests the colony itself had decided that the task of
raising food for the settlers would prosper only if it was separated
from that of earning profits for London. In 1623 a parcel of land was
allotted to each man to till for his family and to maintain those who
were exempt from agricultural employment because of other duties. In
abandoning the “common course and condition” everyone worked harder
and more willingly. The food problem was ended, and after the first
abundant harvest under individual cultivation, the Pilgrims did not
have to endure the meager rations of the first years. The plots
assigned them permanently in 1624 became privately owned in 1627.
Three heifers and a bull sent over by the adventurers in response to
Bradford’s request throve and multiplied, so there was cattle to be
divided among the households when the general stock was terminated.[17]
[Illustration:
Print by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1644
reproduced here through the courtesy of the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
]
The alliance between the London adventurers and the colony began to
crack as early as 1623, when several men arrived in Plymouth “upon
their own Particulars.” This meant they were not financed by the joint
stock and thus had no share in the land or profits common to the
company; they were also free from employment for the common good. John
Oldham and his associates, arriving in the _Anne_, were the first.
Those of the “particulars” who accepted Bradford’s terms and stayed
soon displayed jealousy over the details providing for their inclusion
as members of the colony. The Reverend John Lyford, a Puritan clergyman
sent over by the adventurers, probably to restrain the Separatist
tendency of the Pilgrims, succeeded in fanning to flame the friction
smoldering among the colonists who held different religious views.
While Bradford’s scathing condemnation of Lyford is clearly biased,
it must be admitted that the minister was a malcontent and hypocrite,
to specify some of his more mentionable sins. He and Oldham secretly
wrote letters full of disgruntled complaints to the company about
how things were run. For example, the “particulars” disliked their
exclusion from the fur trade and the restrictions giving them so
small a voice in government. Fortunately, Bradford intercepted their
letters and held them until the elements of ferment gave rise to a
public display of the Oldham-Lyford opposition. The Governor skillfully
suppressed the dissidents, but when Lyford’s friends among the
adventurers in England heard about it, their distrust of the Pilgrims’
independent religious polity boiled over into indignation. Other
controversial issues, such as whether to send Pastor Robinson to join
his flock in Plymouth, coming together with all the financial losses,
now brought about such a gaping chasm in the company that it “broke in
pieces.”[18]
One group of the adventurers, led by Treasurer Sherley, remained
sympathetic to the Pilgrims and wrote that they did not care whether
the colony yielded worldly riches, provided it was rich in grace and
walking with God. Sherley, especially, defended it against the charges
of waste and inefficiency brought by its attackers. Perhaps he made
allowances based on the same information as reported by Emmanuel Altham
that “the burden lieth on the shoulder of some few who are both honest,
wise and careful. And if it were not for them few, the plantation would
fall, and come to nothing--yea, long before this time....” Altham
blamed the company for sending over so many helpless people and for the
fact that the planters had not enough “good trucking stuff to please
the Indians.”
When the dissolution took place, Sherley reported as the chief reason
“the many crosses and losses and abuses by sea ... which have caused
us ... so much charge, and debts ... as our estates ... were not able
to go on without impoverishing ourselves, and much hindering if not
spoiling our trades and callings....” Even the faction deserting on
the pretense of Brownism in the colony, suffered from the same want of
money which was “such a grievous sickness now-a-days ... that it makes
men rave and cry out....”[19] He referred, of course, to the depressed
economic conditions carried over into the reign of Charles I.
The Pilgrims agree to purchase the merchants’ interests in the company
It took two years of negotiations before the adventurers agreed with
Isaac Allerton to accept the following terms for winding up the
old stock. They signed them in London on November 16, 1626. Then,
reluctantly but courageously, the members of the colony known as the
“Undertakers” pledged their own credit to carry them out. The forty-two
adventurers signing the composition in London[20] consented to sell to
their associates in New Plymouth all the shares of the stock in the
lands or merchandise up to now belonging to them both. The “generality”
in Plymouth in turn undertook to pay £1800 in annual installments of
£200 each, to be paid at the west side of the Royal Exchange in London,
beginning in September 1628. The five merchants designated to receive
the payments were John Pocock, John Beauchamp, Robert Keane, Edward
Bass, and James Sherley. The Pilgrims also assumed £600 remaining of
the debts of £1400 which Sherley reported the company owed in 1624.
How this compared as a return with the original sums invested in the
plantation at Plymouth, we do not know. Captain John Smith reported in
1624 that altogether £7000 had been spent, and it has been suggested
that £5600 of this was share capital, and £1400 debts, so that in
repaying £1800 the colony was giving back to the London adventurers
only one third of the share capital.[21]
The London investors were linked by common associations
As we move beyond the period dominated by the company of merchant
adventurers, how are we to characterize this group? What was their
usual form of business, and had they other colonial interests besides
Plymouth? Did they sympathize with the religious aims of the emigrants,
or were they simply indifferent to them as long as profits beckoned?
Captain John Smith’s statement that Plymouth was financed by “... about
70. some Merchants, some handy-crafts men, some adventuring great sums,
some small, as their estates and affections served,” is revealing, but
to discover answers to these questions requires close analysis of the
names of the individual subscribers.
This is the complete list of merchants known to have invested in
the Colony. It includes the signers of the composition of 1626 as
Bradford recorded them in his Letterbook, and, in brackets, five
other persons. Names have been rearranged alphabetically. Spellings
follow Bradford.
Robert Allden
Emm. Alltham
Richard Andrews
Thomas Andrews
Lawrence Anthony
Edward Bass
John Beauchamp
Thomas Brewer
Henry Browning
William Collier
[Christopher Coulson]
Thomas Coventry
Thomas Fletcher
Thomas Goffe
[William Greene]
Peter Gudburn
Timothy Hatherley
Thomas Heath
William Hobson
Robert Holland
Thomas Hudson
Robert Kean
Eliza Knight
John Knight
Myles Knowles
John Ling
Thomas Millsop
Thomas Mott
Fria. Newbald
[John Peirce]
William Penington
William Penrin
[Edward Pickering]
John Pocock
Daniel Poynton
William Quarles
John Revell
Newman Rookes
Samuel Sharp
James Sherley
John Thorned
Matthew Thornhill
Joseph Tilden
Thomas Ward
[Thomas Weston]
John White
Richard Wright
If Smith’s figure of seventy is correct, the survival of a partial
list of subscribers is a handicap, for about one third are completely
unknown. Thomas Weston, John Peirce, Edward Pickering, Christopher
Coulson, and William Greene should be added to the list. A little
less than half have been identified as London merchants, but their
major contribution to the Colony’s support entitles them to close
inspection. John White was a Puritan lawyer in London, while Emmanuel
Altham belonged to a family of landed gentry. Many names are so
obscure that it has not proved practicable to seek them out. It may be
inferred, however, that the nonmercantile adventurers included some
with background in a craft, such as that of the printer, Thomas Brewer.
At the time of the _Mayflower_’s expedition most of the sponsors
were relatively young and attained maturity during the two or three
decades after 1620, when some became prominent in the City and in the
parliamentary opposition to Charles I.
Just as the threads in a tapestry vary in color, but the pattern of
the weave repeats itself, so with the detailed circumstances of the
careers of the adventurers. Most of those we know belonged to one of
London’s livery companies and were citizens. They held company or
City offices; some were listed in a particular ward as wealthy enough
to be noted by Crown officials as men of substance. One rose to the
important role of Lord Mayor. The merchants were engaged in foreign
trade and kept a shop or place of business in the heart of London. The
crowded, narrow streets and lanes adjoining the widest thoroughfare,
Cheapside, or close to the river, near London Bridge, then “replenished
on both sides with fair and beautiful buildings, inhabitants for the
most part rich merchants,” were their surroundings. They met to settle
debts and accounts in the arcades of the handsome building of the Royal
Exchange in Cornhill or in one of the taverns. The shipowners among
them said goodbye to their captains from the wharves lining the Thames,
the famous waterway connecting London with the sea. Some traveled on
business to the Netherlands. The members of companies could attend
meetings and feasts in a well-appointed hall, such as the Goldsmiths’
in Foster Lane, or on occasion one of the great banquets the Lord
Mayor gave at the Guildhall. They worshiped in the numerous parish
churches, and doubtless others, besides Robert Keane, often heard
lecturers or noted Puritan preachers, such as Hugh Peter. Sherley and
Beauchamp, at least, had an additional residence across the river in
Surrey; others held lands at some distance from the City. Like all
merchants of their time, they were apt to have connections with the
gentry; Thomas Andrews was himself knighted by Cromwell for service to
the parliamentary cause.
Thomas Andrews, in fact, was one of the most notable merchants attached
to the Puritan and parliamentary cause in the English Civil Wars.
Although not a member of an older family of wealth, he succeeded in
acquiring riches and a leading role in politics and finance under
the Commonwealth and Protectorate. In 1638 he became master of the
Leathersellers, his company. A share in collecting customs revenue
for the Crown provided him with what was usually a profitable
investment. Subsequently, he served the City as alderman and arrived
at the pinnacle of office as Lord Mayor in 1649. At the beginning of
the conflict with the King, this ambitious merchant served on the
City’s all-important Militia Committee, which, besides controlling
London forces, was “largely responsible for organizing money for the
parliamentary army.” One of the committees he served as treasurer,
collected about £1,000,000. He helped manage money raised for putting
down the Irish Rebellion and by selling lands confiscated from the
King and Royalists. Andrews himself contributed huge sums to the
parliamentary forces. Both Edward Winslow, a Plymouth colonist, and
James Sherley were his fellow members on other commissions, one to
judge treasons against the Commonwealth and the other to dismiss
ministers and schoolmasters thought to be “insufficient,” i.e., not
conforming to Puritan standards. In the later political struggle
between the Independents and Presbyterians, Andrews belonged to
the Independent party. It is difficult to explain in a short space
how these groups differed about church government and politics.
Roughly speaking, an English Independent developed ideas of religious
toleration, self-government for each congregation, and opposition to a
state church, which were rejected by Presbyterians. New Englanders, on
the other hand, enforced the congregational form of church government.
It is probable that a London merchant who had arrived at the position
of Independency by the 1640s would have sympathized earlier with the
religious views of the settlers of New England.
Andrews’ business interests were widely scattered in trade,
colonization, land speculation, and finance. He joined the effort
of the Massachusetts Bay Company to found a Puritan refuge in New
England; he agreed to lend it £25 and later became one of a group of
“Undertakers” who took over its debts in 1634. In the 1640s he had
a crucial role in financing new trades pioneered by the East India
Company. As a director of that Company for many years, he was required
to own at least £1000 of stock. At one time he invested in a rival
syndicate which traded on the Malabar Coast of India; another of its
schemes was to plant a colony on the West Coast of Africa. Eventually,
Andrews came to co-operate with the Company and rose to be its
governor.[22] These varied mercantile enterprises, and they could be
extended into land dealings, suggest that the young Thomas Andrews was
induced to support the Plymouth venture by calculations of profit as
well as initial approval of its religious aims.
On the whole, however, the religious bonds of the London backers of
Plymouth Colony have received too little attention and their mercenary
objectives have been contrasted too sharply with the purity of motive
of the Pilgrims. In the Massachusetts Bay Company, on the other hand,
it is acknowledged that the investors shared “Puritan” religious and
political ends inspiring them to encourage colonial ventures. This
company included among its members nine Londoners who previously had
been adventurers in the founding of Plymouth. These were Richard
Andrews, Thomas Andrews, just described, Christopher Coulson, Thomas
Goffe, Robert Keane, John Pocock, John Revell, Samuel Sharpe, and John
White.[23] Let us glance at the background of each and consider its
relation to his participation in both plantation schemes.
Richard Andrews persisted in a business career rather than sharing the
prominence of his brother in government affairs. He remained interested
in Plymouth even after 1626, becoming a partner with the “Undertakers.”
Thus, he certainly was not one of the adventurers whom Treasurer
Sherley described as offended by the Colony’s form of religious
worship. His enthusiasm for New England extended to Massachusetts Bay.
He, too, lent it money and entered the syndicate of those who furnished
supplies after 1634. He was a member of the Haberdashers’ Company,
a renowned sponsor of Puritan preachers. His business was conducted
at the sign of the Mermaid near the Cross in Cheapside; this was a
well-known tavern in Bread Street with an entrance from Cheapside. Late
in the 1620s he owned shares in the ships _Rebecca_ (200 tons), the
_Jane_ (200 tons), and the _Roebuck_ (80 tons), all of which received
letters of marque to capture pirates. Another of his ships prepared
to undertake a voyage to Massachusetts early in 1645. Most of his
trading probably was with the Netherlands, where in 1632 his factor ran
afoul of Sir Paul Pindar, a wealthy merchant who shared in collecting
customs revenue and was privileged to hold a patent for alum. Andrews
and the factor were charged with bringing in some alum contrary to
Pindar’s patent. In the 1640s Andrews spent several years in Rotterdam,
where there was a trading center of the Merchant Adventurers; he may
have been a member of that organization selling English cloth abroad.
Andrews’ search for profit doubtless helped direct him to invest
in New England, but his gifts to the poor and to the ministers of
Massachusetts substantiate John Winthrop’s claim that the donor was a
“godly man,” consistently dedicated to Puritan causes. He even sent a
gift to the Indians to be distributed by John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew.
This included “8 little books against swearing,” “3 books against
drunkenness,” and “2 dozen of small books called the rule of the New
Creature,” all summoning up Puritan themes.[24]
Christopher Coulson was named in Peirce’s suit as an assistant of the
New Plymouth Company, but he had withdrawn before the composition.
While deciding not to participate in Isaac Allerton’s investment in the
Maine fur trade, he did become an assistant of the Bay Company. Coulson
was a dyer of cloth. As one of the well-to-do citizens of Dowgate Ward,
he served on the City’s Common Council and, with Thomas Andrews, on the
Militia Committee.[25]
Too deep an involvement in colonial ventures was likely to harm one’s
credit. The first deputy governor and treasurer of the Massachusetts
Bay Company, Thomas Goffe, sank into heavy debt for a time, part
contracted for Winthrop personally and part for the Company. Goffe
complained bitterly when, in a difference with Winthrop, he received
no payment. As a shipowner with a share in the _Welcome_ and in two
other vessels which seem to have crossed the Atlantic, he wrote that
his shipowning was far from successful in 1630, the year of the initial
Winthrop voyage. His affairs were “in an ambiguous and desperate
estate” until some of his creditors, pitying him, took over part of
the plantation debts and lent him enough capital to begin trading
again. Though he suffered financial loss from the Puritan venture in
Massachusetts, Goffe perhaps derived a greater measure of satisfaction
from his donation to another Puritan cause. Along with a number of
other Londoners he supported a daily lecture at the Church of St.
Antholin’s. This afforded Puritan ministers and lecturers a platform
for their views until the government suppressed the society, known as
the Feoffees of Impropriations, which had been active in raising money
to encourage a preaching ministry in London and elsewhere.[26]
By investing in the Pilgrims’ colony, John Pocock began what was a
long association with New England. John Peirce called this merchant a
leader in its support, and even after the composition Pocock extended
it credit. Recruited as an officer in the Bay Company, he continued his
generosity to that colony for about a quarter of a century. In fact,
after Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter had concluded a mission in England in
Massachusetts’ behalf, Pocock succeeded them as London agent; he also
offered his shop in Watling Street, where he conducted business as a
merchant taylor and woolen draper, to exhibit their disputed accounts.
A fifteen years’ wait for payment of about £150 worth of cloth he had
sent in 1641 to assist Massachusetts, did not deter him from investing
substantially in John Winthrop Jr.’s project for establishing ironworks
at Braintree, Massachusetts. Pocock fully sympathized with Puritanism
and the parliamentary opposition to the King, as demonstrated by his
contributions to the St. Antholin’s lectureship and his inclusion
among the promoters of the London scheme to raise money for troops to
help crush the Irish Rebellion. Parliament next made him one of the
officials to whom were entrusted the Anglican church revenues so that
they might be converted to the use of new Puritan preachers.[27] John
Pocock’s range of activities indicates that he, too, looked kindly on
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay as outposts of Puritan influence.
Three of the merchants who had subscribed to the Plymouth venture,
Robert Keane, John Revell, and Samuel Sharpe, actually emigrated to
Massachusetts. The first to come over was Samuel Sharpe, who arrived in
Salem as a member of the council chosen to assist Governor Endecott and
to serve as business agent for the merchant, Matthew Cradock. In fact,
Sharpe carried over the copy of the Company’s new patent. Had Endecott
died, he was one of two designated to take over the government of the
colony. Sharpe settled in Salem and became a freeman in 1632.[28]
John Revell’s part in financing the early Bay venture was clearly more
important, however. Not only was he an assistant of the Massachusetts
Bay Company, but he took a one-sixteenth share in a large ship for the
transport of passengers and supplies to New England the Company could
not afford. He also contributed £40 for freight during preparation for
the 1630 fleet of vessels. He came aboard Winthrop’s vessel for dinner
during the crossing, returning to his own under the salute of a volley
of three shots. It is not known why he returned to England after a few
weeks. He must have planned to stay, as his wife and children were with
him. Back in London he belonged to the group of “Undertakers” supplying
the Massachusetts plantation.[29]
The mind and temper of the final emigrant, Robert Keane, is clearer
to us than that of any other adventurer in New Plymouth, with the
possible exception of James Sherley. No career could illustrate better
the compatibility of a calculated design to add to one’s wealth in the
New World with the satisfaction of a sensitive Puritan conscience. At
the same time that he was improving his worldly estate in London and
Boston, Keane was walking the paths of salvation, he hoped, leaving
in the interesting document, his last will and testament, a full
discussion of both objectives. His account books, numerous as they
were, can hardly have exceeded in bulk the handwritten ledgers he
filled with comments on Scriptural books and on the sermons he had
heard. In London, he laboriously noted in 1627 and 1628 the contents
of discourses in several churches, including the famed St. Stephen’s,
Coleman Street, where he listened to Mr. John Davenport, and one at
Hackney visited by Master Hugh Peter. He attended some of the lectures
at St. Antholin’s but most often, service at what he calls “Cornhill,”
probably either St. Michael, Cornhill, or St. Peter’s, Cornhill.
Between attending several services a month and writing down what was
said, he gave a good deal of earnest thought to religion.
In his business career, Keane asserted that he was “self-made,” with
no inheritance from his father. After apprenticeship in the Merchant
Taylors’ Company, he took a shop in Birchin Lane, a street where the
sellers of clothing displayed their wares. Either because of his
fortunate marriage to the daughter of a gentleman or, more likely,
because of success in business which enabled him to accumulate an
estate of some £2000 or £3000, he enjoyed the modest rewards of a
prosperous citizen, such as membership in the Honourable Artillery
Company of London. His routine business included supplying liveries for
the pages and footmen of the Lord Chamberlain. Keane was associated
with James Sherley and the other merchants who furnished Plymouth
with capital and direction. With Sherley he signed a letter to the
colonists in 1624, and Peirce mentions him as an “assistant.” In the
list of 1626, Keane was among the five designated to receive the £1800
to be paid by the Colony. In the Massachusetts Bay Company he was one
of the inner ring of “Undertakers.” Keane was also the leading spirit
in the organization of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of
Massachusetts. He served as the first captain of this military company,
the earliest to be chartered in America.
The religious pressures upon a conscience like Keane’s are
unmistakable, for amidst all the troubles he suffered in Massachusetts
he described the new commonwealth, in its closeness to the Gospel, as
little different from that which had summoned him to leave England in
1635. Of those who came to Boston, he was remarkable for his wealth
and his successful application of it to new kinds of profitable
transactions, such as investment in land and trade to Bermuda or the
West Indies. In time, he installed his son, Benjamin, in Birchin Lane
in London to act as his agent and to sell cloaks. Keane’s career is
a model of the intertwining of “merchandise, reading and writing,”
all matters of importance to Puritans anxious to redeem their time on
earth.[30]
Most London Puritans whose interests embraced first Plymouth and then
Massachusetts Bay were merchants, but one was a prominent lawyer of
the Middle Temple. This was “Counsellor” John White, so called to
distinguish him from the minister, John White of Dorchester, another
leader in New England colonization. The lawyer John White became an
investor in the latter’s enterprise, the Dorchester Company. Many
activities mark him as a sympathizer with nonconformity, but his
record with the New Plymouth venture suggests that he was one of the
adventurers opposed to Separatism. While these were debating hotly the
treatment Bradford had meted out to Lyford, partly for his use of the
Book of Common Prayer, the faction favoring Lyford chose John White to
be moderator in their interest. On terminating his interest in Plymouth
in 1626, he perhaps was the lawyer John Peirce chose to arbitrate in
his behalf in the course of his lawsuit against the adventurers. By
becoming one of the Lay Feoffees, a group of trustees raising money
to support the preachers they favored in the churches, White lent his
name to one of the most dangerous of the Puritan efforts to oppose the
policy of strict conformity insisted on by English authorities. He
attended meetings of the early Massachusetts Bay Company and perhaps at
one time contemplated emigration to New England, as suggested by one
of John Winthrop’s correspondents. Remaining in London, he became a
strong influence instead in settling such difficult problems as whether
the prospective emigrants or the London merchants were to control the
joint stock. A friend of Winthrop wrote in 1640 of this consistent
friend of Massachusetts: “... there is so little money stirring to be
exc[h]anged for the Plantation and so many hands to catch for it, that
there is no hopes of obtaining any ... nor of Mr. White the Lawyer ...
it being disposed some other way....” John White’s greatest service
to Puritanism and the parliamentary cause came when he was chosen to
serve for Southwark in the Long Parliament. There he presided over
two committees, one to replace “scandalous” ministers with Puritan
preachers, and the other to care for ministers who had been “plundered”
by the preceding government. A little of the affectionate regard in
which he was held may be observed in that when he died in 1645, the
House of Commons accompanied his body to Middle Temple Church for
burial.[31]
So much for the investors in both the New England colonies. What we
know of the other New Plymouth adventurers does not contradict the
sketch set forth of men of moderate prosperity or wealth, Puritan in
religious outlook, and usually of some prominence in the City’s affairs
in the period of the Civil Wars. It remains to discuss more fully the
two merchants who, along with Richard Andrews, did most to maintain
the credit of the Plymouth “Undertakers” after 1627. These were John
Beauchamp and James Sherley.
A member of the Salters’ Company, Beauchamp was an early associate of
Thomas Weston, with whom he furnished the _Sparrow_, a small vessel
sent to Plymouth on private account in 1622. Like Weston he had traded
as an “interloper” to the Low Countries from about 1612 to 1619. In
the composition, Beauchamp was one of the five chosen to receive
payment of the settlement money, and Sherley requested that he be
joined with him as agent or factor in London for the “Undertakers.”
Another New England colonial interest of his was the Muscongus patent
in which Edward Ashley served as agent in fur trade with the Indians.
The merchant also had a share in at least one ship which received a
commission to take pirates. About 1640 he was judged to be not among
the first, but the third, rank of citizens able to contribute to the
King’s financial needs. Beauchamp lent money to various persons and
apparently was rigorous in collection, for even Sherley described
him as “somewhat harsh,” while a debtor’s widow, suing him, accused
him of “unconscionably” prosecuting her at law after her husband had
discharged his debt to him. This appears to be in character with the
attitude we shall see he assumed in the winding up of the Pilgrims’
debts.[32]
James Sherley’s career is indeed the central one among the London
merchant supporters of the colony at Plymouth. In December 1624, when
he was thought to be fatally ill, his generosity was called “the only
glue of the company.” Without his “unfeigned love” for the Pilgrims,
his patience and willingness to disregard the harsh judgments of the
dissatisfied adventurers, it was said that the project would have
failed.
Sherley was apprenticed to his father, Robert Sherley, as a goldsmith
in 1604, and became a full member of the Goldsmiths’ Company in
1612. Like several other members of his family he remained in close
association with the Company throughout his life, although it is clear
that he did not follow the craft of making plate or objects of gold and
silver. Instead, he was in trade. Yet he was first active in Company
business through his collection of Company rents, and he was chosen
to take part in the ceremonial occasions of the Goldsmiths. On Lord
Mayor’s Day, 1633, attired in a rich livery gown “furred with Foynes,”
Sherley appeared at dinner at the Guildhall to “welcome the Lords
Ladies & other guests.” On another occasion, before dining with members
of a neighboring company, he joined them in a special service at St.
Mary Woolnoth’s. Beginning with the office of assistant, and refusing
the third wardenship in 1639, he had risen to the Company’s highest
office, that of prime warden, by 1644. In this capacity he attended
frequent wardens’ and court meetings and presided over a complex amount
of Company business involving leases, loans, relations to the Mint, and
other matters. Goldsmiths’ Hall, in Foster Lane, was a busy center for
financial transactions.
Sherley’s own London address is something of a puzzle. Letters were
directed to him in 1623 both as “dwelling on London bridge at the
Golden hoospyte,” and to Crooked Lane. His brother John had a shop on
London Bridge; perhaps in early years they shared a dwelling among the
fine merchants’ houses erected there. Crooked Lane was a winding artery
in Candlewick Ward, the site of a noted Dutch tavern; this may have
been where James Sherley maintained his business address. Like many
others who had left the stench, noise, and possible plague of London,
he later had a home in Clapham, Surrey, then a rural environment. He
wrote Bradford of carrying his records there in 1636 when the plague
was raging in London.
It was from Clapham that Sherley was chosen to serve in the public
capacities then filled by men of substance. He was a member of
the Surrey committee for levying assessments for the militia.
In confirmation of the strong religious tendency evident in his
correspondence with Bradford, he was an elder in the Croydon Classis
in Surrey, formed during a reorganization of the English Church along
Presbyterian lines. The New England Company, erected to spread the
Gospel to the Indians, included him among its members. Parliament made
him one of a Surrey group appointed in 1652 to deal with the problem
of supplying proper ministers and schoolmasters in the churches of his
county. His son was granted the right to administer his will in Clapham
in 1657.[33]
Early in his business career Sherley very likely was connected with
the Netherlands trade, for he was sufficiently friendly with Edward
Pickering, Weston’s agent, who died in 1623, to be one of the executors
of his will; in 1630 he wrote that he had spent nearly three months in
Holland. In underwriting the Plymouth “Undertakers,” he perhaps was
committed financially as deeply as he could afford, for he did not join
the Massachusetts Bay Company. He did own ships in the New England
trade, however, one of which was hired by Isaac Allerton. He had a
share in the Ashley scheme in Maine and in voyages to Massachusetts
Bay. The latter colony owed him money in 1648.[34]
Nothing has been discovered about the remaining adventurers to alter
the character of the group as described above; they were chiefly
Puritan merchants, possessed of substantial means but not great wealth.
It is true that Robert Alden, a prosperous salter, at the opening of
the Civil Wars adhered to the Royalist minority of London citizens.
William Greene, described as “one of the most religious of the
adventurers,” was among those whose opposition to sending out any more
emigrants from Leyden, made him withdraw his support. Another, Thomas
Brewer, lumped together and imprisoned by the royal authorities with
Brownists, by 1640 had become Anabaptist, a sect not tolerated by the
Pilgrims.[35] For the most part, however, a consistency of business,
religious, and political purposes seems to have prevailed among those
who closed out the Company of Adventurers to New Plymouth.