PROGRESS.
“And when our children turn the page
To ask what triumphs marked our age—
What we achieved to challenge praise,
Through the long line of future days—
This let them read, and hence instruction draw:
‘Here were the many blest,
Here found the virtues rest,
Faith linked with Love, and Liberty with Law.’”
SPRAGUE’S _Centennial Ode_.
The progress of population at Plymouth was slow for a decade. The
lands in the vicinity were not fertile. Still the plantation had
struck deep root and was bound to spring up and bear a hundred
fold.[535] If the colonial prosperity was not imposing, it was
thriving. A little earlier than this Smith learned in Virginia that
there were on this New England slope “about a hundred and eighty
persons; some cattle and goats; many swine and a good store of
poultry; and thirty-two dwelling-houses; forming a town which was
impaled about half a mile’s compass, with a fort built of wood, loam,
and stone; also a fair watch-tower; and able to freight a ship of a
hundred and eighty tons burden.”[536]
Fifty ships were on the coast engaged in fishing, every one of which
was an enlargement of their market for the sale and purchase of
essential commodities.[537]
“It pleased the Lord,” says Bradford, “to give the plantation peace,
and health, and contented minds, and so bless the labors of the
colonists that they had provisions in plenty, and to spare; and this
without receiving any food from home at any time, except what they
brought out in the Mayflower.”[538]
Owing to the competition in the fishing waters, the Pilgrims esteemed
it wiser now to forego that pursuit and to turn their whole attention
to “trading and planting.” “To every person,” says Bradford, “was
given an acre of land, and only an acre to them and theirs, as near
the town as might be, and they had no more till the contract with the
London partners was bought up. The reason was, that all might be kept
close together both for better safety and defence, and the better
improvement of the common employments. This condition of theirs did
make me think of what I once read in Pliny[539] of the Romans and
their beginnings in Romulus’ time, when every man contented himself
with two acres of land and had no more assigned him; how it was
thought a great reward to receive a pint of corn at the hands of
the Roman people; how, long after, the greatest present given to a
captain who had gotten them a victory over their enemies, was as
much ground as he could till in one day; he being counted not a good
but a dangerous man, who could not content himself with seven acres
of land; as also how they did pound their corn in mortars, as these
colonists did many years before they could get a mill.”[540]
In turning from fishing to agriculture the settlers were decided
gainers, and “ere the close of the year 1626 they had nearly
extricated themselves from debt, including the obligation lately
incurred for them by Standish, and had besides stored ‘some clothing
for the people and some commodities beforehand.’”[541]
The winter of 1626-7 was given to trading, and purchases were made
of merchandise from some Englishmen stationed at Monhegan, and from
a French ship wrecked off their coast. For several months they had
the society of the passengers and crew of a vessel bound to Virginia,
but which, losing her reckoning, and falling short of provisions, had
moored under Cape Cod and sent to them for succor.[542]
Just before winter closed in the Pilgrims had despatched one of
their number, Mr. Allerton, to England with authority to continue
the negotiations for a transfer of title opened by Standish with
the Merchant-adventurers.[543] Allerton found the plague—which had
somewhat retarded the movements of Standish, and carried off some of
the most efficient supporters of the colony[544]—quite abated. He
also learned that James I., the pedantic bigot who had threatened to
“harry” the Puritans out of England, was dead, and that he had been
succeeded by his son Charles I., the fated prince who afterwards fell
under Cromwell’s axe on the Whitehall scaffold.
The Plymouth agent was successful, though “the curse of usury,
which always falls so heavily upon new settlements, did not spare”
the Pilgrims, since they were compelled to borrow money at an
exorbitant interest. Allerton had carried out nine bonds, each for
two hundred pounds—eighteen hundred pounds being the price at which
the partnership held their mortgage. These bonds were given by eight
of the most prominent Pilgrims,[545] and were made payable in nine
equal annual instalments, commencing in 1627.[546] Thus it was that
a bevy of patriotic colonists purchased the rights and assumed the
responsibilities of the “Company of Merchant-adventurers.” They
were known in the phrase of that day as “The Undertakers,” and they
emancipated Plymouth from its harassing thraldom to a greedy horde of
money-changers.
The Pilgrims were much gratified by this success, though they knew
that their undertaking was not without grave hazard. “They knew not
well,” remarks Bradford, “how to raise this yearly payment, besides
discharging their other engagements and supplying their annual wants,
especially since they were forced by necessity to take up money at
such high interest. Yet they undertook it.”[547]
Of course, this purchase of the right of the home company
necessitated a new organization, and a redistribution of property
at Plymouth. After mature deliberation, it was decided to erect a
commonwealth, in which each settler should own a share, but under
an agreement that trade should be managed as before until the total
discharge of the debt incurred for liberty.[548]
The division was at once made of the stock and land heretofore the
joint estate of the adventurers and their partners in the soil.
Every man had a share; and “every father of a family was allowed to
purchase one share for his wife and one for each child living with
him.”[549] One cow and two goats were assigned by lot to every six
shareholders, “and swine, though more in number, yet by the same
rule.” In addition to the land which each already held, “every person
had twenty acres allotted him; but no meadows were to be laid out;
nor were they for many years after, because they were straitened for
meadow land. Every season each was given a certain spot to mow in
proportion to the cattle owned.”[550] The houses became the private
property of their respective tenants by an equitable assignment,[551]
and henceforward there were to be New England freeholders. The
vassalage to foreign merchants was ended.[552]
It should not be forgotten that in the allotment of land, there was a
grant to the Indian Habbamak. He held by the Pilgrims and by their
God, spite of enticements and obstacles, and died “leaving some good
hopes in the settlers’ hearts that his soul had gone to rest.”[553]
“The first coveted luxury of the emancipated plantation was a reunion
with their long-detained comrades in Holland. Hitherto the pleasure
of others might decide who should join them. That embarrassment
was now happily withdrawn. Their tender mutual recollections had
naturally been refreshed by the common moaning for their ‘loving and
faithful pastor;’” so now “the Plymouth governor and some of his
chiefest friends had serious consideration, not only how they might
discharge the engagements which lay so heavily upon them, but also
how they might—if possibly they could—devise means to help their
friends at Leyden over to them, these desiring to come as heartily as
they to have them. To effect this they resolved to run a high course
and of great venture, not knowing otherwise how to compass it; which
was, to hire the trade of the colony for six years, and in that time
to undertake the liquidation of the whole impending debt, so that
when the specified time was ended the plantation should be set free,
with freedom of trade to the generality.”[554]
Allerton was again sent to England with full power “under the hand
and seal” of _the Undertakers_, to close the old bargain and to
negotiate “with some of the special friends of the colony to join
with them[555] in this trade.”[556] The mission was promptly
completed. In the spring of 1628, Allerton returned, “bringing a
reasonable supply of goods.” He reported that he had paid the first
instalment to the Adventurers, delivered the bonds for the residue
of the debt, and obtained the due conveyance and release; also that
he had engaged a quartette of friends[557] to accept an interest
in the six years’ hire of the colonial trade, in return for which
they had agreed to charge themselves with the transportation of the
Leyden congregation. Lastly, he had obtained from the New England
Council a patent for land on the Kennebec, which was at once turned
to account by the erection of a block-house “in that river, in the
most convenient place for Indian trade” and a traffic with the Maine
fishermen.[558]
At this same time Allerton brought out with him a young minister
named Rogers, the first, save Lyford, if we may dignify him by that
name, possessed by the Plymouth Pilgrims.[559] But he proved only
a vexation and an expense; for, being “crazed in the brain,” he
was sent back to Britain ere a twelvemonth had elapsed, and the
plantation had recourse once more to stout old Brewster.[560]
By this time the charge of _Brownism_ and bigoted exclusiveness,
so often levelled at the Pilgrims, was well-nigh laid in England.
Hard-fisted facts had smitten that slander so often in the face that
it lost its hardihood. Indeed, remembering the character of that
age, the Plymouth church was singularly catholic. Winslow cites
many instances of the admission to its communion of communicants of
the French, the Dutch, and the Scotch churches, merely by virtue
of their being so.[561] He says: “We ever placed a wide difference
betwixt those who grounded their practice on the word of God, though
differing from us in their exposition and understanding of it, and
those who hate reformers and reformation, running into anti-Christian
opposition and persecution of the truth.” He adds: “’Tis true, we
profess and desire to practise _separation_ from the world; and as
the churches of Christ are all saints by calling, so we desire to
see the grace of God shining forth—at least _seemingly_, leaving
secret things to God—in all whom we admit to church-fellowship,
and to keep off such as openly wallow in the mire of their sins,
that neither the holy things of God, nor the communion of saints,
may be leavened or polluted thereby. And if any joining us, either
formerly at Leyden, or since our New England residence, have with the
manifestation of faith and the profession of holiness, held forth
therewith separation from the church of England, I have divers times,
both in the one place and in the other, heard either Mr. Robinson,
our pastor, or Mr. Brewster, our elder, stop them forthwith, showing
them that we required no such thing at their hands; but only to hold
forth Christ Jesus, holiness in the fear of God, and a submission to
the Scripture ordinances and appointments.”[562]
Such were the simple tenets of the Plymouth church under the
instructions of Brewster—change of heart and a life regulated by the
sacred writ the only tests.
And now the Pilgrim enterprise began to take a wide range; they
had already acquired rights on Cape Ann, as well as an extensive
domain on the Kennebec, now covered by patent; and they were the
first to plant an English settlement on the banks of the silvery
Connecticut.[563] All around them the lusty shouts of the pioneers
were heard. They no longer stood alone on the verge of the unbroken
and primeval forest. Civilization, pushing restlessly towards the
setting sun, began to supplement this nucleus colony. English
planters were already seated at Saco and at Sagadahoc, in Maine.[564]
The red men who haunted the coast-line of Massachusetts Bay, were
pushed from their marshy hunting-grounds by the Puritan colonists who
followed Endicott into the wilderness. And in the west, the patient,
phlegmatic Dutch, “without haste, without rest,” had founded New
Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, a town which bathed its feet
in the waters of old Hendrick Hudson’s majestic river, and which has
since expanded to be the metropolis of North America.[565]
No occasion, now, to complain of a lack of company. With all the
settlements amicable and cordial relations were cemented by the
Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth. With the Dutch planters, especially,
a correspondence was had, by means of which mutually kind wishes
and commercial offices were interchanged.[566] In 1627, Isaac de
Rasières, “a chief merchant at New Amsterdam, and second to the
Dutch governor of the New Netherlands,” visited Plymouth, where he
tarried “some days,” and received friendly entertainment.[567] A
neighborly business intercourse was commenced, and it was at this
time that the Pilgrims became acquainted with the value and the uses
of _wampum_.[568] This was the Indian coin—the dollars and cents of
barbarism. It was made of small pieces of shell, white sometimes,
but often purple, and ground, polished, drilled, and strung or
beaded.[569]
“Neither the English of this plantation nor of any other in these
parts,” remarks Bradford, “had knowledge of wampum till now. But the
settlers bought fifty pounds’ worth of it from De Rasières, who told
them how vendable it was at their Indian stations, and did persuade
them that they would find it so at Kennebec; and so it came to pass,
for though at first it stuck, and they were two years in working off
a small quantity, yet afterwards, when the inland tribes knew of it,
the traders could scarce ever get enough to supply the demand, for
many years together.”[570]
De Rasières was a close and shrewd observer, and nothing escaped
his keen eyes at Plymouth. On his return he wrote a letter in which
he described at length the salient characteristics of the Pilgrim
colony. Let us take a peep into the quaint old manuscript, and see
how New England in its Pilgrim babyhood looked in his eyes:
“New Plymouth lies on the slope of a hill stretching east towards the
sea-shore. It has a broad street about a cannot-shot of eight hundred
feet long, looking down the slope, with a street crossing this in the
middle, and running northward to a rivulet, very rapid but shallow,
which there empties into the sea, and southward to the land. The
houses are built of hewn planks, with gardens, also enclosed behind
and at the sides by hewn planks, so that their gardens, court-yards,
and houses are arranged in very good order, with a stockade against
a sudden attack. At the ends of the streets there are three wooden
gates. Their government is after the English form. The governor is
annually elected. In inheritance they place all children in one
degree, only the eldest has an acknowledgment of seniority. They have
made stringent laws on the subject of adultery and fornication, and
these ordinances they enforce very strictly, even among the savage
tribes which live amongst them.
“Their farms are not so good as ours at New Amsterdam, because they
are more stony, and consequently not so fit for the plough. They have
their freedom without rendering an account to any one; only, if their
king should choose to send them a governor, they would be obliged to
recognize him as sovereign chief. The maize-seed which they do not
require for their own use they deliver over to the governor, at three
guilders the bushel, who, in his turn, sends it in sloops to the
north for the traffic in skins amongst the savages. They reckon one
bushel of maize against one pound of beaver-skins. They have better
means of living than ourselves, since fish swim in abundance before
their very doors. There are also many birds, such as geese, herons,
and cranes, and other small-legged birds, which are seen in flocks
here in the winter.
“The tribes in this neighborhood have the same customs as with us,
only they are better conducted than ours, because the English treat
them fairly, and give them the example of better ordinances and a
better life; and also, to a certain degree, give them laws, by means
of the respect they have from the very first established amongst
them.”[571]
In 1629, the bulk of the long lingering Leyden exiles—among
the rest the wife and two sons of John Robinson[572]—at length
landed at Plymouth.[573] The reunited flock, now sadly thinned
by death, greeted each other with mutual tears and caresses; and
tightly-clasped hands and wet eyes told what the voice was too choked
to say. But in the midst of sadness they were joyous, for
“Hope was changed to glad fruition;
Faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”
The expense of transporting these friends was very heavy, amounting
in the aggregate to six hundred pounds, as we learn by opening
Allerton’s charge roll.[574] Nor was this all; destitute and
homeless, they had to be maintained the better part of fifteen months
before they were able to stand on their own feet, and pay their
way. They had no harvest of their own to reap. Land was given them
and block-houses were run up for their shelter. Then they planted
“against the coming of another season.”[575] The Pilgrims, though
already overloaded with debt, did not grudge this large addition to
the budget of expense, but showed herein “a rare example of brotherly
love and Christian care;” for Bradford says that “even thus they
were, for the most part, both welcome and useful, as they feared God
and were sober livers.”[576]
But if the devout colonists of the Plymouth slope were “sober
livers,” all their neighbors were not. It seems that some years
before this time, perhaps in 1625, perhaps a twelvemonth earlier,
an English Captain Wollaston, inoculated with the general rage for
planting settlements, had attempted to drop one on that rocky height
near Boston bay which still bears his name.[577] Like the foolish
architect in the Bible, he built on a sandy foundation, though
his colony was bottomed on a rock—so strange are the paradoxes of
this mortal life. “Not finding things to answer his expectations,”
he did not tarry long in his eyry, but pressed on into Virginia
with a portion of his emigrants, intending soon to return for the
rest.[578] So much for the intention. But in his absence one of
his followers, Thomas Morton, “who had been a kind of pettifogger,
of Fernival’s Inn,” London, and was now broken down into an uneasy
bloat, ripe for mischief, obtained an ascendency over the waiting
colonists, and thereby assumed control. “Then,” says the old recitor,
“they fell into great licentiousness of life, in all profaneness,
Morton becoming lord of misrule, and maintaining, as it were, a
school of atheism. Having gotten some goods into their hands by much
trading with the Indians, they spent all vainly in quaffing both wine
and stronger liquors in great excess—as some have reported, as much
as ten pounds’ worth of a morning. They also set up a May-pole, and
danced and drank around it, frisking about like so many fairies, or
_furies_ rather: and worse practices they had, as if they sought anew
to revive and celebrate the obscene feast of the Roman goddess Flora,
or the beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians. Morton pretended
withal to be a poet, and composing sundry rhymes and loose verses,
some tending to lasciviousness and others to detraction and scandal,
he affixed these to his idle, or _idol_, May-pole. The name of the
height was changed; it was called ‘Merry-Mount,’ as if this jollity
would have been perpetual.
“Now to maintain this riotous prodigality and profuse expenditure,
Morton, esteeming himself lawless, and hearing what gain the
fishermen made by trading muskets, powder, and shot amongst
themselves, decided, as head of this consortship, to begin the
practice in these parts among the Indians, teaching them how to use,
charge, and fire their pieces, and the kind of shot fitted to be used
for different purposes, as hunting and war. Infinite was the mischief
which came by this wicked man’s greed; in that, despite all laws for
the restraint of selling ammunition and weapons to the natives, base
covetousness so far prevailed, that the Indians became amply provided
with guns, powder, shot, rapiers, and pistols, also well skilled in
their use, and in the repair of defective arms.”[579]
These things, together with the debauchery of Indian women and the
incitement of his flaunting and unwhipped crimes, which drew the
dissolute from all directions to swell his rabble rout, filled the
surrounding colonists with mingled grief and alarm. At the outset
expostulation was essayed. “In a friendly and neighborly way, Morton
was admonished to forbear these courses.” A peculiar characteristic
reveals the man—_Ex pede Herculem._ The anarch refused to desist.
“Obtaining false rules prankt in reason’s garb,”
he denied the jurisdiction of Plymouth, and answered the remonstrance
with an affront. A second appeal was equally futile. Then, with their
accustomed stern decision, the Pilgrims acted. Standish was sent to
curb this bold blasphemer. “Morton fortified his comrades with drink,
barricaded his house, and defied assault.” But happily no blood was
spilled. The reckless, graceless rake succumbed without a fight.
He was taken first to Plymouth, and thence conveyed to England for
trial. And so ended this experiment of immorality.[580]
This episode, with others, is convincing proof that the Pilgrims had
not wandered into Utopia; nor did they seek that fabled bourne. They
expected trouble, and they serenely accepted toil, thanking God just
as joyfully for a little as for much. And, indeed, they felt that
they walked on mercies. They “found all things working together for
their good.” They had already planted a stable government, which had
been severely tested by open outbreak and by insidious assault. Their
friends had found their way to them across the sea; and since they had
“Informed their unacquainted feet
In the blind mazes of this tangled wood,”
their infant state had been emancipated from the mercantile dictation
of unfriendly men. The bitterness was past; the night was nearly
spent. Jocund day stood a-tip-toe on the misty mountain’s top. They
rested on God’s heart. Surely, they had occasion to
——“shake the depths of the desert gloom
With their hymns of lofty cheer.”
They might fitly chant pæans, and sing till
——“the stars heard and the sea!
And the sounding isles of the dim woods rang
To the anthem of the free.”