Book III. A Description of the People 243-345

TABLE OF CONTENTS OF THE NEW ENGLISH CANAAN 347-9

* * * * *

OFFICERS OF THE PRINCE SOCIETY 353

THE PRINCE SOCIETY, 1883 354-8

PUBLICATIONS OF THE PRINCE SOCIETY 359

VOLUMES IN PREPARATION BY THE PRINCE SOCIETY 360

INDEX 361-81

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

PREFACE.

Before undertaking the present work I had no experience as an editor.

It is unnecessary for me to say, therefore, that, were I now to

undertake it, I should pursue a somewhat different course from that

which I have pursued. The _New English Canaan_ is, in many respects,

a singular book. One of its most singular features is the extent

of ground it covers. Not only is it full of obscure references to

incidents in early New England history, but it deals directly with the

aborigines, the trees, animals, fish, birds and geology of the region;

besides having constant incidental allusions to literature,--both

classic and of the author’s time,--to geography, and to then current

events. No one person can possess the knowledge necessary to thoroughly

cover so large a field. To edit properly he must have recourse to

specialists.

It was only as the labor of investigation increased on my hands that

I realized what a wealth of scientific and special knowledge was to

be reached, in the neighborhood of Boston, by any one engaged in such

multifarious inquiry. Were I again to enter upon it I should confine my

own labors chiefly to correspondence; for on every point which comes up

there is some one now in this vicinity, if he can only be found out,

who has made a study of it, and has more information than the most

laborious and skilful of editors can acquire.

In this edition of the _New Canaan_ I have not laid so many of these

specialists as I now wish, under requisition; and yet the list is a

tolerably extensive one. In every case, also, the assistance asked

for has been rendered as of course, in the true scientific spirit.

My correspondence has included Messrs. Deane, Winsor and Ellis on

events in early New England history; Professor Whitney on geographical

allusions; Professors Lane and Greenough, Dr. Everett and Mr. T.

W. Higginson, on references to the Greek and Latin classics, or

quotations from them; and the Rev. Mr. Norton on Scriptural allusions.

Mr. J. C. Gray has hunted up for me legal precedents five centuries

old, and Mr. Lindsay Swift has explained archaic expressions, to the

meaning of which I could get no clew. On the subject of trees and

herbs I called on Professors Gray and Sargent; in regard to birds,

Mr. William Brewster was indefatigable; Mr. Allen, though in very

poor health, took the chapter on animals; Professor Shaler disposed

of the geology; Messrs. Agassiz and Lyman instructed me as to fish,

and Professor Putnam as to shell-heaps. I met some allusions to early

French and other explorers, and naturally had recourse to Messrs.

Parkman and Slafter; while in regard to Indian words and names, I

have been in constant correspondence with the one authority, Mr. J.

Hammond Trumbull, who has recognized to the fullest extent the public

obligation which a mastery of a special subject imposes on him who

masters it.

In closing a pleasant editorial task, my chief regret, therefore, is

that the notes in this volume contain so much matter of my own. They

should have been even more eclectic than they are, and each from the

highest possible authority on the subject to which it relates.

C. F. A., JR.

QUINCY, MASS., April 4, 1883.

[Illustration]

MORTON OF MERRY-MOUNT.

In the second book of his history of Plymouth Plantation, Governor

Bradford, while dealing with the events of the year 1628 though writing

at a still later period, says:--

“Aboute some three or four years before this time, ther came

over one Captaine Wolastone (a man of pretie parts), and with

him three or four more of some eminencie, who brought with them

a great many servants, with provisions and other implaments for

to begine a plantation; and pitched themselves in a place within

the Massachusets, which they called, after their Captains name,

Mount-Wollaston. Amongst whom was one Mr. Morton, who, it should

seeme, had some small adventure (of his owne or other mens) amongst

them.”[1]

There is no other known record of Wollaston than that contained in this

passage of Bradford.[2] His given name even is not mentioned. It may

be surmised with tolerable certainty that he was one of the numerous

traders, generally from Bristol or the West of England, who frequented

the fishing grounds and the adjacent American coast during the early

years of the seventeenth century. Nothing is actually known of him,

however, until in 1625 he appeared in Massachusetts Bay, as Boston

Harbor was then called, at the head of the expedition which Bradford

mentions.

His purpose and that of his companions was to establish a plantation

and trading-post in the country of the Massachusetts tribe of Indians.

It was the third attempt of the kind which had been made since the

settlement at Plymouth, a little more than four years before. The

first of these attempts had been that of Thomas Weston at Wessagusset,

or Weymouth, in the summer of 1622. This had resulted in a complete

failure, the story of which is told by Bradford and Winslow, and forms

one of the more striking pages in the annals of early New England.

The second attempt, and that which next preceded Wollaston’s, had

closely followed the first, being made in the summer of 1623, under

the immediate direction of the Council for New England. At the head

of it was Captain Robert Gorges, a younger son of Sir Ferdinando

Gorges. Weston’s expedition was a mere trading venture, having little

connection with anything which went before or which came after. That of

Gorges, however, was something more. As will presently be seen, it had

a distinct political and religious significance.

Robert Gorges and his party arrived in Boston Bay in 1623, during

what is now the latter part of September. They established themselves

in the buildings which had been occupied by Weston’s people during

the previous winter, and which had been deserted by them a few days

less than six months before. The site of those buildings cannot be

definitely fixed. It is supposed to have been on Phillips Creek,

a small tidal inlet of the Weymouth fore-river, a short distance

above the Quincy-Point bridge. The grant made to Robert Gorges by

the Council for New England, and upon which he probably intended to

place his party, was on the other side of the bay, covering ten miles

of sea-front and stretching thirty miles into the interior. It was

subsequently pronounced void by the lawyers on the ground of being

“loose and uncertain,” but as nearly as can now be fixed it covered the

shore between Nahant and the mouth of the Charles, and the region back

of that as far west as Concord and Sudbury, including Lynn and the most

thickly inhabited portions of the present county of Middlesex.

Reaching New England, however, late in the season, Gorges’s first

anxiety was to secure shelter for his party against the impending

winter, for the frosts had already begun. Fortunately the few savages

thereabouts had been warned by Governor Bradford not to injure the

Wessagusset buildings, and thus they afforded a welcome shelter to the

newcomers. These were people of a very different class from those

who had preceded them. Among them were men of education, and some of

them were married and had brought their wives. Their settlement proved

a permanent one. Robert Gorges, it is true, the next spring returned

to England disgusted and discouraged, taking back with him a portion

of his followers. Others of them went on to Virginia in search of a

milder climate and a more fertile soil. A few, however, remained at

Wessagusset,[3] and are repeatedly referred to by Morton in the _New

Canaan_[4] as his neighbors at that place.

When, therefore, Wollaston sailed into the bay in the early summer

of 1625, its shores were not wholly unoccupied. His party consisted

of himself and some three or four partners, with thirty or more

servants, as they were called, or men who had sold their time for a

period of years to an employer, and who stood in the relation to him

of apprentice to master. Rasdall, according to Bradford, was the name

of one of the partners, and Fitcher would seem to have been that of

another. Thomas Morton, the author of the _New English Canaan_, was a

third.

Not much more is known of Morton’s life prior to his coming to America

than of Wollaston’s. He had certainly an education of that sort which

was imparted in the schools of the Elizabethan period, for he had a

smattering knowledge of the more familiar Latin authors at least, and

was fond of classic allusion. Governor Dudley, in his letter to the

Countess of Lincoln, says that while in England he was an attorney in

“the west countries.”[5] He further intimates that he had there been

implicated in some foul misdemeanor, on account of which warrants were

out against him. Nathaniel Morton in his _Memorial_[6] says that the

crime thus referred to was the killing of a partner concerned with

him, Thomas Morton, in his first New England venture. Thomas Wiggin,

however, writing in 1632 to Sir John Cooke, one of King Charles’s

secretaries for foreign affairs and a member of the Privy Council,

states, upon the authority of Morton’s “wife’s sonne and others,” that

he had fled to New England “upon a foule suspition of murther.”[7]

While, therefore, it would seem that grave charges were in general

circulation against Morton, connecting him with some deed of violence,

it is necessary to bear in mind that considerable allowance must be

made before any accusation against him can be accepted on the word

of either the Massachusetts or the Plymouth authorities, or those in

sympathy with them. Yet Morton was a reckless man, and he lived in

a time when no great degree of sanctity attached to human life; so

that in itself there is nothing very improbable in this charge. It is

possible that before coming to America he may have put some one out

of the way. Nevertheless, as will presently be seen, though he was

subsequently arrested and in jail in England, the accusation never took

any formal shape. That he was at some time married would appear from

the letter of Wiggin already referred to, and the allusions in the _New

Canaan_ show that he had been a man passionately fond of field sports,

and a good deal of a traveller as well. He speaks, for instance, of

having been “bred in so genious a way” that in England he had the

common use of hawks in fowling; and, in another place, he alludes to

his having been so near the equator that “I have had the sun for my

zenith.”[8] On the titlepage of his book he describes himself as “of

Cliffords Inne gent.,” which of course he would not have ventured to do

had he not really been what he there claimed to be; for at the time the

_New Canaan_ was published he was living in London and apparently one

of the attorneys of the Council for New England.[9] Bradford, speaking

from memory, fell into an error, therefore, when he described him as a

“kind of petie-fogger of Furnefells Inne.”[10] That in 1625 he was a

man of some means is evident from the fact that he owned an interest in

the Wollaston venture; though here again Bradford takes pains to say

that the share he represented (“of his owne or other mens”) was small,

and that he himself had so little respect amongst the rest that he was

slighted by even the meanest servants.

In all probability this was not Morton’s first visit to Massachusetts

Bay. Indeed, he was comparatively familiar with it, having already

passed one season on its shores. His own statement, at the beginning

of the first chapter of the second book of the _Canaan_, seems to be

conclusive on this point. He there says: “In the month of June, Anno

Salutis 1622, it was my chance to arrive in the parts of New England

with thirty servants, and provision of all sorts fit for a plantation;

and, while our houses were building, I did endeavor to take a survey of

the country.”[11] There was but one ship which arrived in New England

in June, 1622, and that was the _Charity_;[12] and the _Charity_

brought out Weston’s party, which settled at Wessagusset, answering in

every respect to Morton’s description of the party he came with. Andrew

Weston, a younger brother of the chief promoter of the enterprise,

had then come in charge of it, and is described as having been “a

heady yong man and violente.”[13] After leaving Weston’s company at

Plymouth, the _Charity_ went on to Virginia, but returned from there

early in October, going it would seem directly to Boston Bay and

Wessagusset.[14] One part of the colonists had then been there three

months, and it was during those three months that Morton apparently

took the survey of the country to which he refers. As the Wessagusset

plantation was now left under the charge of Richard Greene, it would

seem that young Weston went back to England in the _Charity_, and the

inference is that Morton, who had come out as his companion, went back

with him.

In any event, the impression produced on Morton by this first visit

to New England was a strong and favorable one. It looked to him a

land of plenty, a veritable New Canaan. Accordingly, he gave vent

to his enthusiasm in the warm language of the first chapter of his

second book.[15] With the subsequent fate of Weston’s party he seems

to have had no connection. He must at the time have heard of it, and

was doubtless aware of the evil reputation that company left behind.

This would perfectly account for the fact that he never mentions his

having himself had anything to do with it. Yet it may be surmised

that he returned to England possessed with the idea of connecting

himself with some enterprise, either Weston’s or another, organized

to make a settlement on the shores of Boston Bay and there to open a

trade in furs. He had then had no experience of a New England winter;

though, for that matter, when he afterwards had repeated experiences

of it, they in no way changed his views of the country. To the last,

apparently, he thought of it as he first saw it during the summer and

early autumn of 1622, when it was a green fresh wilderness, nearly

devoid of inhabitants and literally alive with game.

News of the utter failure of Weston’s enterprise must have reached

London in the early summer of 1623. Whether Morton was in any way

personally affected thereby does not appear, though from his allusions

to Weston’s treatment by Robert Gorges at Plymouth, during the winter

of 1623-4, it is not at all improbable that he was.[16] During the

following year (1624) he is not heard of; but early in 1625 he had

evidently succeeded in effecting some sort of a combination which

resulted in the Wollaston expedition.

The partners in this enterprise would seem to have been the merest

adventurers. So far as can be ascertained, they did not even trouble

themselves to take out a patent for the land on which they proposed

to settle,[17] in this respect showing themselves even more careless

than Weston.[18] With the exception of Morton, they apparently had no

practical knowledge of the country, and their design clearly was to

establish themselves wherever they might think good, and to trade in

such way as they saw fit.

When the party reached its destination in Massachusetts Bay, they

found Wessagusset still occupied by such as were left of Robert

Gorges’s company, who had then been there nearly two years. They had

necessarily, therefore, to establish themselves elsewhere. A couple of

miles or so north of Wessagusset, on the other side of the Monatoquit,

and within the limits of what is now the town of Quincy, was a place

called by the Indians Passonagessit. The two localities were separated

from each other not only by the river, which here widens out into a

tidal estuary, but by a broad basin which filled and emptied with every

tide, while around it were extensive salt marshes intersected by many

creeks. The upland, too, was interspersed with tangled swamps lying

between gravel ridges. At Passonagessit the new-comers established

themselves, and the place is still known as Mount Wollaston.

In almost all respects Passonagessit was for their purpose a better

locality than Wessagusset. They had come there to trade. However it

may have been with the others, in Morton’s calculations at least the

plantation must have been a mere incident to the more profitable

dealing in peltry. A prominent position on the shore, in plain view of

the entrance to the bay, would be with him an important consideration.

This was found at Passonagessit. It was a spacious upland rising

gently from the beach and, a quarter of a mile or so from it, swelling

into a low hill.[19] It was not connected with the interior by any

navigable stream, but Indians coming from thence would easily find

their way to it; and, while a portion of the company could always be

there ready to trade, others of them might make excursions to all

points on the neighboring coast where furs were to be had. Looking

seaward, on the left of the hill was a considerable tidal creek; in

front of it, across a clear expanse of water a couple of miles or

so in width, lay the islands of the harbor in apparently connected

succession. Though the anchoring grounds among these islands afforded

perfect places of refuge for vessels, Passonagessit itself, as the

settlers there must soon have realized, labored, as a trading-point,

under one serious disadvantage. There was no deep water near it. Except

when the tide was at least half full, the shore could be approached

only in boats. On the other hand, so far as planting was concerned,

the conditions were favorable. The soil, though light, was very good;

and the spot, lying as it did close to “the Massachusetts fields,” had

some years before been cleared of trees by the Sachem Chickatawbut,

who had made his home there.[20] He had, however, abandoned it at the

time when the great pestilence swept away his tribe, and tradition

still points out a small savin-covered hummock, near Squantum, on the

south side of the Neponset, as his subsequent dwelling-place. Morton

says that Chickatawbut’s mother was buried at Passonagessit, and that

the Plymouth people, on one of their visits, incurred his enmity by

despoiling her grave of its bear skins.[21] So far as the natives were

concerned, however, any settlers on the shores of Boston Bay, after the

year 1623, had little cause for disquietude. They were a thoroughly

crushed and broken-spirited race. The pestilence had left only a few

hundred of the whole Massachusetts tribe, and in 1631 Chickatawbut had

but some fifty or sixty followers.[22] It was a dying race; and what

little courage the pestilence had left them was effectually and forever

crushed out by Miles Standish, when at Wessagusset, in April, 1623, he

put to death seven of the strongest and boldest of their few remaining

men.

Having selected a site, Wollaston and his party built their house

nearly in the centre of the summit of the hill, on a gentle westerly

slope. It commanded towards the north and east an unbroken view of the

bay and all the entrances to it; while on the opposite or landward

side, some four or five miles away, rose the heavily-wooded Blue

Hills. Across the bay to the north lay Shawmut, beyond the intervening

peninsulas of Squantum and Mattapan. Wessagusset was to the south,

across the marshes and creeks, and hidden from view by forest and

uplands.

[Illustration: MOUNT WOLLASTON.[23]]

During their first season, the summer of 1625, Wollaston’s party must

have been fully occupied in the work of building their houses and

laying out their plantation. The winter followed. A single experience

of a winter on that shore seems to have sufficed for Captain Wollaston,

as it had before sufficed for Captain Gorges. He apparently came to

the conclusion that there was little profit and no satisfaction for

him in that region. Accordingly, during the early months of 1626, he

determined to go elsewhere. The only account of what now ensued is that

contained in Bradford; for Morton nowhere makes a single allusion to

Wollaston or any of his associates, nor does he give any account of

the origin, composition or purposes of the Wollaston enterprise. His

silence on all these points is, indeed, one of the singular features

in the _New Canaan_. Such references as he does make are always to

Weston and Weston’s attempt;[24] and he seems to take pains to confound

that attempt with Wollaston’s. Once only he mentions the number of the

party with which he landed,[25] and the fact that it was subsequently

dissolved;[26] but how it came to be dissolved he does not explain. The

inference from this is unavoidable. Morton was free enough in talking

of what he did and saw at Passonagessit, of his revels there, of how

he was arrested, and persecuted out of the country. That he says not a

word of Wollaston or his other partners must be due to the fact that

the subject was one about which he did not care to commit himself.

Nevertheless Bradford could not but have known the facts, for not only

at a later day was Morton himself for long periods of time at Plymouth,

but when the events of which he speaks occurred Bradford must have been

informed of them by the Wessagusset people, as well as by Fitcher. As

we only know what Bradford tells us, it can best be given in his own

words:--

“Having continued there some time, and not finding things to answer

their expectations, nor profit to arise as they looked for, Captain

Wollaston takes a great part of the servants and transports them

to Virginia, where he puts them off at good rates, selling their

time to other men; and writes back to one Mr. Rasdall, one of his

chief partners and accounted their merchant, to bring another part

of them to Virginia likewise; intending to put them off there, as

he had done the rest. And he, with the consent of the said Rasdall,

appointed one Fitcher to be his Lieutenant, and govern the remains

of the plantation till he, or Rasdall, returned to take further

order thereabout. But this Morton, abovesaid, having more craft than

honesty, in the others’ absence watches an opportunity, (commons

being but hard amongst them,) and got some strong drink and other

junkets, and made them a feast; and after they were merry, he began

to tell them he would give them good counsel. ‘You see,’ saith he,

‘that many of your fellows are carried to Virginia; and if you stay

till this Rasdall returns, you will also be carried away and sold

for slaves with the rest. Therefore, I would advise you to thrust

out this Lieutenant Fitcher; and I, having a part in the plantation,

will receive you as my partners and consociates. So may you be free

from service; and we will converse, trade, plant and live together

as equals, and support and protect one another:’ or to like effect.

This counsel was easily received, so they took opportunity and thrust

Lieutenant Fitcher out a-doors, and would suffer him to come no more

amongst them; but forced him to seek bread to eat, and other relief,

from his neighbors, till he could get passage for England.”[27]

Wollaston’s process of depletion to Virginia had reduced the number

of servants at Passonagessit from thirty or thirty-five, as Morton

variously states it,[28] to six at most.[29] It was as the head of

these that Morton established himself in control at Merry-Mount, as he

called the place,[30] sometime, it would seem, in the summer of 1626.

He had now two distinct objects in view: one was enjoyment, the other

was profit; and apparently he was quite reckless as to the methods he

pursued in securing either the one or the other. If he was troubled by

his former partners appearing to assert their rights, as he probably

was, no mention is made of it. There were no courts to appeal to in

America, and those of Europe were far away; nor would it have been easy

or inexpensive to enforce their process in New England. Accordingly

nothing more is heard of Wollaston or Rasdall, though Bradford does say

that Morton was “vehemently suspected for the murder of a man that had

adventured moneys with him when he first came.”[31] There is a vague

tradition, referred to John Adams, that Wollaston was subsequently

lost at sea;[32] but as a full century must have elapsed between the

occurrence of the event and the birth of John Adams, this tradition is

quite as unreliable as traditions usually are.

Passionately fond of field sports, Morton found ample opportunity for

the indulgence of his tastes in New England. He loved to ramble through

the woods with his dog and gun, or sail in his boat on the bay. The

Indians, too, were his allies, and naturally enough; for not only did

he offer them an open and easy-going market for their furs, but he was

companionable with them. They shared in his revels. He denies that he

was in the habit of selling them spirits,[33] but where spirits were

as freely used as Morton’s account shows they were at Merry-Mount, the

Indians undoubtedly had their share. Nor were his relations confined

to the Indian men. The period of Elizabeth and James I. was one of

probably as much sexual incontinency as any in English history. Some

of the earlier writers on the New England Indians have spoken of the

modesty of the women,--Wood, in his _Prospect_, for instance, and

Josselyn, in the second of his _Two Voyages_.[34] Morton, however, is

significantly silent on this point, and the idea of female chastity

in the Indian mind, in the rare cases where it existed at all, seems

to have been of the vaguest possible description.[35] Morton was not

a man likely to be fastidious, and his reference to the “lasses in

beaver coats”[36] is suggestive. Merry-Mount was unquestionably, so far

as temperance and morality were concerned, by no means a commendable

place.[37]

Morton’s inclination to boisterous revelry culminated at last in that

proceeding which scandalized the Plymouth elders and has passed into

history. In the spring of 1627 he erected the May-pole of Merry-Mount.

To erect these poles seems at that time to have been a regular English

observance, which even the fishermen on the coast did not neglect.

When, for instance, the forerunners of Weston’s colony at Wessagusset

reached the Damariscove Islands, in the spring of 1622, the first thing

they saw was a May-pole, which the men belonging to the ships there had

newly set up, “and weare very mery.”[38] There is no room for question

that in England, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,

May-day festivities were associated with a great deal of license. They

were so associated in the minds of Governor Bradford and his fellows.

Christmas was at least a Christian festivity. Not so May-day. That

was distinctly Pagan in its origin. It represented all there was left

of the Saturnalia and the worship of the Roman courtesan. May-day

and May-day festivities, accordingly, were things to be altogether

reformed. They were by no means the innocent, grateful welcoming of

spring which modern admirers of the so-called good old times--which, in

point of fact, were very gross and brutal times--are wont to picture to

themselves. “I have heard it credibly reported,” wrote Stubbes in his

_Anatomy of Abuses_, “(and that _viva voce_) by men of great gravitie,

credite and reputation, that of fourtie, three score, or a hundred

maides goyng to the woode over night [a-Maying], there have scarcely

the thirde parte of them returned home againe undefiled.”[39] All this

it is necessary to now bear in mind, lest what Bradford wrote down in

his history of Morton’s doings should seem grotesque. He was speaking

of what represented in his memory a period of uncleanness, a sort of

carnival of the sexes.

Morton’s own account of the festivities at Merry-Mount on the May-day

of 1627, which came on what would now be the 11th of the month, will be

found in the fourteenth chapter of the third book of the _Canaan_.[40]

It does not need to be repeated here. Bradford’s account was very

different:

“They allso set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing aboute it many

days togeather, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts,

dancing and frisking togither, (like so many fairies, or furies

rather,) and worse practises. As if they had anew revived and

celebrated the feasts of the Roman Goddes Flora, or the beasly

practieses of the madd Bacchinalians. Morton likwise (to shew

his poetrie,) composed sundry rimes and verses, some tending to

lasciviousnes, and others to the detraction and scandall of some

persons, which he affixed to this idle or idoll May-polle.”[41]

Morton’s verses can be found in their proper place in the _New

Canaan_, but the principal charge now to be made against them is their

incomprehensibility. Judged even by the standard of the present day,

much more by that of the day when they were written, they are not open

to criticism because of their “lasciviousnes.” They are decent enough,

though very bad and very dull. As to the “detraction and scandall of

some persons,” alleged against them,--if indeed they contained anything

of the sort,--it was so very carefully concealed that no one could

easily have understood it then, and Morton’s own efforts at explanation

fail to make it intelligible now.

The festivities around the May-pole were, however, but Morton’s

amusements. Had he confined himself to these he might, so far as the

people at Plymouth at least were concerned, to the end of his life have

lived on the shores of Boston Bay, and erected a new pole with each

recurring spring. The only resistance he would have had to overcome

would have been a remonstrance now and then, hardly less comical than

it was earnest. The business methods he pursued were a more serious

matter. He had come to New England to make money, as well as to enjoy

the license of a frontier life. He was fully alive to the profits of

the peltry trade, and in carrying on that trade he was restrained

by no scruples. The furs of course came from the interior, brought

by Indians. In his dealings with the Indians Morton adopted a policy

natural enough for one of his reckless nature, but which imperilled the

existence of every European on the coast. The two things the savages

most coveted were spirits and guns,--fire-water and fire-arms. Beads

and knives and hatchets and colored cloth served very well to truck

with at first. But these very soon lost their attraction. Guns and

rum never did. For these the Indians would at any time give whatever

they possessed. The trade in fire-arms had already attained some

proportions when, in 1622, it was strictly forbidden by a proclamation

of King James, issued at the instance of the Council for New England.

The companion trade in spirits, less dangerous to the whites but more

destructive to the savages, was looked upon as scandalous, but it was

not prohibited. Morton cared equally little for either law or morals.

He had come to New England for furs, and he meant to get them.

“Hearing what gain the French and fishermen made by trading of

pieces, powder and shot to the Indians, he, as the head of this

consortship, began the practice of the same in these parts. And

first he taught them how to use them, to charge and discharge, and

what proportion of powder to give the piece, according to the size

and bigness of the same; and what shot to use for fowl and what for

deer. And having thus instructed them, he employed some of them to

hunt and fowl for him, so as they became far more active in that

employment than any of the English, by reason of their swiftness

of foot and nimbleness of body; being also quick sighted, and by

continual exercise well knowing the haunts of all sorts of game. So

as when they saw the execution that a piece would do, and the benefit

that might come by the same, they became mad, as it were, after them,

and would not stick to give any price they could attain to for

them; accounting their bows and arrows but bawbles in comparison of

them.”[42]

This was Bradford’s story, nor does Morton deny it. That he would

have denied it if he could is apparent. The practices complained of

were forbidden by a royal proclamation, issued at the instance of Sir

Ferdinando Gorges. In his speech in defence of the great patent, before

the House of Commons in Committee of the Whole, in 1621, Gorges had

emphatically dwelt on the sale of arms and ammunition to the savages

as an abuse then practised, which threatened the extinction of the New

England settlements.[43] Fifteen years later, when he wrote the _New

Canaan_, Morton was a dependent of Gorges. The fact that he had dealt

in fire-arms, in contemptuous defiance of the proclamation, was openly

charged against him. He did deny that he had sold the savages spirits.

These, he said, were the life of trade; the Indians would “pawn their

wits” for them, but these he would never let them have. In the matter

of fire-arms, however, he preserved a discreet and significant silence.

He made no more allusion to them than he did to Wollaston or his

partners at Merry-Mount.

In the whole record of the early Plymouth settlement, from the

first skirmish with the Cape Cod savages, in December, 1620, to the

Wessagusset killing, there is no mention of a gun being seen in an

Indian’s hands. On the contrary, the savages stood in mortal terror of

fire-arms. But now at last it seemed as if Morton was about not only to

put guns in their hands, but to instruct them in their use.

“This Morton,” says Bradford, “having thus taught them the use of

pieces, he sold them all he could spare; and he and his consorts

determined to send for many out of England, and had by some of

the ships sent for above a score. The which being known, and his

neighbors meeting the Indians in the woods armed with guns in this

sort, it was a terror unto them, who lived straglingly, and were

of no strength in any place. And other places (though more remote)

saw this mischief would quickly spread over all, if not prevented.

Besides, they saw they should keep no servants, for Morton would

entertain any, how vile soever, and all the scum of the country, or

any discontents, would flock to him from all places, if this nest was

not broken; and they should stand in more fear of their lives and

goods (in short time) from this wicked and debauched crew than from

the savages themselves.”[44]

Thus, in the only branches of trade the country then afforded, Morton

was not only pressing all the other settlers hard, but he was pressing

them in an unfair way. If the savages could exchange their furs for

guns, they would not exchange them for anything else. Those not

prepared to give guns might withdraw from the market. The business,

too, conducted in this way, was a most profitable one. Morton says that

in the course of five years one of his servants was thought to have

accumulated, in the trade in beaver skins, no less than a thousand

pounds;[45] and a thousand pounds in 1635 was more than the equivalent

of ten thousand now. This statement was undoubtedly an exaggeration;

yet it is evident that at even ten shillings a pound in England, which

Morton gives as the current price, though Bradford says he never knew

it less than fourteen, beaver skins, which cost little or nothing in

America, yielded a large profit. As Morton expressed it, his plantation

“beganne to come forward.”[46] When, in 1625, the Plymouth people

found their way up into Maine,[47] and first opened a trade with the

savages there, Morton was not slow in following them. In 1628 they

established a permanent station on the Kennebec,[48] yet apparently as

early at least as 1627, if not in 1626, Morton had forestalled them

there, and hindered them of a season’s furs.[49]

The injury done to the other settlers in a trading point of view,

however, serious as it unquestionably was, became insignificant in

comparison with the consequences which must result to them from the

presence on the coast of such a resort as Merry-Mount. The region

was vast, and in it there was no pretence of any government. It was

the yearly rendezvous of a rough and lawless class of men, only one

step removed from freebooters, who cared for nothing except immediate

gain. Once let such a gathering-place as that of which Morton was now

head become fixed and known, and soon it would develop into a nest of

pirates. Of this there could be no doubt; the Plymouth people had good

cause for the alarm which Bradford expressed. It mattered not whether

Morton realized the consequences of what he was doing, or failed to

realize them; the result would be the same.

It gradually, therefore, became apparent to all those dwelling along

the coast, from the borders of Maine to Cape Cod, that either the

growing nuisance at Merry-Mount must be abated, or they would have

to leave the country. The course to be pursued in regard to it was,

however, not equally clear. The number of the settlements along the

coast had considerably increased since Wollaston’s arrival.[50] The

Hiltons and David Thomson had established themselves at Dover Neck and

Piscataqua as early as 1623; and sometime in 1625 apparently, Thomson,

bringing with him his young wife and a servant or two, had moved down

into Boston Bay, and established himself, only a mile or two away from

Mount Wollaston, on the island which still bears his name. He had died

a little while after, and in 1628 his widow was living there alone,

with one child and some servants. In 1625 or 1626 the Wessagusset

settlement had divided. Those of Gorges’s following who remained there

had never been wholly satisfied. It was no place for trade. Accordingly

Blackstone, Maverick and Walford, the two last being married and taking

their wives with them, had moved across the bay, and established

themselves respectively at Shawmut or Boston, at Noddle’s Island or

East Boston, and at Mishawum or Charlestown. Jeffreys, Bursley and

some others had remained at Wessagusset, and were Morton’s neighbors

at that place, whom he says he was in the custom of visiting from time

to time, “to have the benefit of company.”[51] At Hull, already known

by that name,[52] there were the Grays and a few other settlers. These

had been joined by Lyford and Oldham and their friends, when the latter

were expelled from Plymouth in the spring of 1625; but the next year,

finding the place probably an uninviting one, Lyford had crossed over

to Cape Ann, and thence a year later passed on to Virginia. Oldham

still remained at Nantasket.

Such were those neighbors of Morton, the chiefs of the straggling

plantations, referred to by Bradford as being of “no strength in any

place.” Together they may possibly have numbered from fifty to an

hundred souls. The Plymouth settlement was, comparatively speaking,

organized and numerous, consisting as it did of some two hundred

persons, dwelling in about forty houses, which were protected by a

stockade of nearly half a mile in length. Nevertheless even there, by

the summer of 1627, the alarm at the increase of fire-arms in the hands

of the savages began to be very great. They had spread “both north and

south all the land over,”[53] and it was computed that the savages now

possessed at least sixty pieces. One trader alone, it was reported, had

sold them a score of guns and an hundred weight of ammunition. Bradford

thus takes up the story:--

“So sundry of the chiefs of the straggling plantations, meeting

together, agreed by mutual consent, to solicit those of Plymouth,

(who were then of more strength than them all,) to join with them to

prevent the further growth of this mischief, and suppress Morton and

his consorts before they grew to further head and strength. Those

that joined in this action, (and after contributed to the charge of

sending him to England,) were from Piscataqua, Naumkeag, Winnisimmet,

Wessagusset, Nantasket, and other places where any English were

seated. Those of Plymouth being thus sought to by their messengers

and letters, and weighing both their reasons and the common danger,

were willing to afford them their help, though themselves had least

cause of fear or hurt. So, to be short, they first resolved jointly

to write to him, and, in a friendly and neighborly way, to admonish

him to forbear these courses; and sent a messenger with their letters

to bring his answer. But he was so high as he scorned all advice, and

asked--Who had to do with him?--he had and would trade pieces with

the Indians in despite of all: with many other scurrilous terms full

of disdain.

“They sent to him a second time, and bade him be better advised,

and more temperate in his terms, for the country could not bear the

injury he did; it was against their common safety, and against the

King’s proclamation. He answered in high terms, as before; and that

the King’s proclamation was no law: demanding, what penalty was

upon it? It was answered, more than he could bear, his Majesty’s

displeasure. But insolently he persisted, and said the King was

dead, and his displeasure with him; and many the like things; and

threatened, withal, that if any came to molest him, let them look to

themselves; for he would prepare for them.”[54]

However it may have been with the position he took as a matter of

public policy, Morton at least showed himself in this dispute better

versed in the law of England than those who admonished him. On the

first of the two points made by him he was clearly right. King James’s

proclamation was not law. This had been definitely decided more than

fifteen years before, when in 1610, in a case referred to all the

judges, Lord Coke, in reporting their decision, had stated on his own

authority that “the King cannot create any offence, by his prohibition

or proclamation, which was not an offence before, for that was to

change the law, and to make an offence, which was not; for _ubi non est

lex, ibi non est transgressio_; _ergo_, that which cannot be punished

without proclamation cannot be punished with it.”[55]

In regard to the second point made by Morton, that the King’s

proclamation died with him, the same distinction between statutes and

proclamations, that the former were of perpetual obligation until

repealed and that the latter lost their force on the demise of the

crown,--this distinction was, a century and a half later, stated by

Hume[56] to have existed in James’s time. Lord Chief Justice Campbell

has, however, exclaimed against the statement as a display of ignorant

“audacity,” and declares that he was unable to find in the authorities

a trace of any such doctrine.[57] On this point, therefore, the law of

Thomas Morton was probably as bad as that of David Hume. Nevertheless

the passage in Bradford affords a curious bit of evidence that some

such distinction as that drawn by Hume, though it may not have got into

the books, did exist in both the legal and the public mind of the first

half of the seventeenth century.

Whether Morton’s law on the subject of proclamations was or was not

found mattered little however. It was not then to be debated, as the

question with the settlers was one of self-preservation. The Plymouth

magistrates had gone too far to stop. If they even hesitated, now,

there was an end to all order in New England. Morton would not be slow

to realize that he had faced them down, and his insolence would in

future know no bounds.

“So they mutually resolved to proceed, and obtained of the Governor

of Plymouth to send Captain Standish, and some other aid with him, to

take Morton by force. The which accordingly was done; but they found

him to stand stiffly in his defence, having made fast his doors,

armed his consorts, set divers dishes of powder and bullets ready

on the table; and, if they had not been over armed with drink, more

hurt might have been done. They summoned him to yield, but he kept

his house, and they could get nothing but scoffs and scorns from him;

but at length, fearing they would do some violence to the house, he

and some of his crew came out, but not to yield, but to shoot. But

they were so steeled with drink as their pieces were too heavy for

them; himself, with a carbine (overcharged and almost half filled

with powder and shot, as was after found) had thought to have shot

Captain Standish; but he stept to him, and put by his piece and took

him. Neither was there any hurt done to any of either side, save that

one was so drunk that he ran his own nose upon the point of a sword

that one held before him as he entered the house; but he lost but a

little of his hot blood.”[58]

Morton’s own account of “this outragious riot,” as he calls it, is

contained in the fifteenth chapter of the third book of the _New

Canaan_.[59] It differs considerably from Bradford’s, but not in

essentials. He says that the occurrence took place in June; and as

Bradford’s letters of explanation, sent with the prisoner to England,

are dated the 9th of June,[60] it must have been quite early in the

month. He further says that he was captured in the first place at

Wessagusset, “where by accident they found him;” but escaping thence

during the night, through the carelessness of those set on guard over

him, he made his way in the midst of a heavy thunder-storm to Mount

Wollaston, going up the Monatoquit until he could cross it. The whole

distance from point to point was, for a person familiar with the

country, perhaps eight miles. Getting home early the next morning he

made his preparations for resistance in the way described by Bradford.

Of the whole party at Merry-Mount more than half, four apparently,

were then absent in the interior getting furs. This fact, indeed,

was probably well known to his neighbors, who had planned the arrest

accordingly. Standish, having eight men with him, followed Morton round

to Mount Wollaston, probably by water, the morning succeeding his

escape; and what ensued seems to have been sufficiently well described

by Bradford. One at least of the Merry-Mount garrison got extremely

tipsy before the attacking party appeared, and Morton, seeing that

resistance was hopeless, surrendered, after in vain trying to make some

terms for himself.

Having been arrested he was at once carried to Plymouth, and a council

was held there to decide upon the disposition to be made of him.

According to his own account certain of the magistrates, among whom

he specially names Standish, advocated putting him to death at once,

and so ending the matter. They were not in favor of sending him to

England. Such a course as this was, however, wholly out of keeping

with the character of the Plymouth colony, and it is tolerably safe

to say that it was never really proposed. Morton imagined it; but he

also circumstantially asserts that when milder councils prevailed, and

it was decided to send him to England, Standish was so enraged that

he threatened to shoot him with his own hand, as he was put into the

boat.[61]

Either because they did not care to keep him at Plymouth until he

could be sent away, or because an outward-bound fishing-vessel was

more likely at that season to be found at the fishing-stations, Morton

was almost immediately sent to the Isles of Shoals. He remained there

a month; and of his experiences during that time he gives a wholly

unintelligible account in the _New Canaan_.[62] At last a chance

offered of sending him out in a fishing-vessel bound to old Plymouth,

England. He went under charge of John Oldham, who was chosen to

represent the associated planters in this matter, and who carried two

letters, in the nature of credentials, prepared by Governor Bradford,

the one addressed to the Council for New England and the other to

Sir Ferdinando Gorges personally.[63] In these letters Bradford set

forth in detail the nature of the offences charged against Morton, and

asked that he might be brought “to his answer before those whom it

may concern.” These letters were signed by the chiefs of the several

plantations, at whose common charge the expenses of Oldham’s mission,

as well as Standish’s arrest, were defrayed, and towards this charge

they contributed as follows, though Bradford says the total cost was

much more:--

£ s

From Plymouth, 2 10

„ Naumkeag, 1 10

„ Piscataqua, 2 10

„ Wessagusset, 2

„ Nantasket, 1 10

„ David Thomson’s widow, 15

„ William Blackstone, 12

„ Edward Hilton,[64] 1

--------

£12 7

Oldham and Morton reached Plymouth during the later summer or early

autumn of 1628. They must, therefore, have passed the outward-bound

expedition of Endicott, the forerunners of the great Puritan migration

of 1630-7, in mid-ocean, as on the 6th of September the latter reached

Naumkeag. The grant of the Massachusetts Company, which Endicott

represented, had been regularly obtained from the Council for New

England, and bore date the 19th of March, 1628. It covered the

sea-front within the space of three English miles to the northward of

the Merrimack and to the southward of the Charles, “or of any and every

part of either of these streams;” while it extended “from the Atlantick

and Western Sea and Ocean on the East Parte, to the South Sea on the

West Parte.” It also included everything lying within the space of

three miles to the southward of the southernmost part of Massachusetts,

by which was meant Boston Bay.[65] It was clear, therefore, that Mount

Wollaston was included in this grant.

Morton’s establishment was thus brought within Endicott’s government.

Its existence and character must already have been well known in

England, and it is not at all improbable that its suppression had been

there decided upon. Whether this was so or not, however, Endicott

certainly learned, as soon as he landed at Naumkeag, of the action

which had been taken three months before. It commended itself to him;

though he doubtless regretted that more condign punishment had not

been administered to Morton and his crew on the spot, and did not delay

to take such steps as were still in his power, to make good what in

this respect had been lacking. As Bradford says, “visiting those parts

[he] caused that May-polle to be cutt downe, and rebuked them for their

profannes, and admonished them to looke ther should be better walking;

so they now, or others, changed the name of their place againe, and

called it Mounte-Dagon.”[66]

Morton and Oldham, meanwhile, were in England. As Oldham bore letters

to Gorges and landed at Plymouth, of which place the latter then was

and for many years had been the royal governor, there can be no doubt

that Morton was at once brought before him. As respects New England

Gorges’s curiosity was insatiable. Any one who came from there,

whether a savage or a sea-captain, was eagerly questioned by him; and

his collection of charts, memoirs, letters, journals and memorials,

relating to the discovery of those parts, is said to have been

unequalled.[67] Oldham and Morton had lived there for years. They knew

all that was then known about the country and its resources. They both

of them had unlimited faith in its possibilities, and talked about an

hundred per cent profit within the year, as if it were a thing easily

compassed.[68] Talk of this kind Gorges liked to hear. It suited his

temperament; and it would seem not improbable that Morton soon found

this out, and bore himself accordingly.

Meanwhile it was not possible for the Council for New England and

the Massachusetts Company to long move in harmony. The former was

an association of courtiers, and the latter one of Puritans. The

Council planned to create in the New World a score or two of great

feudal domains for English noblemen; the Company proposed to itself a

commonwealth there. Accordingly difficulties between the two at once

began to crop out. The original grant to the Company of March 19, 1628,

had been made by the Council, with the assent of Gorges. The tract

already conceded to Robert Gorges, in 1622, was included in it; but

Sir Ferdinando insisted that the subsequent and larger grant was made

with a distinct saving of all rights vested under the prior one.[69]

This the Company was not prepared to admit; and, as the business of the

Council was habitually done in a careless slipshod way, the record was

by no means clear. A question of title, involving some three hundred

square miles of territory in the heart of the Company’s grant, was

therefore raised at once.

Captain Robert Gorges meanwhile had died, and the title to his grant

had passed to his brother John. It would seem that Oldham, who was a

pushing man, had come out to England with some scheme of his own for

obtaining a patent from the Council, and organizing a strong trading

company to operate under it. The result was that John Gorges now deeded

to him a portion of the Robert Gorges grant, being the whole region

lying between the Charles and the Saugus rivers, for a distance of

five miles from the coast on the former and three miles on the latter.

This deed may and probably did bear a date, January 10, 1629, similar

to that of another deed of a yet larger tract out of the same grant,

which John Gorges executed to Sir William Brereton. The lands thus

conveyed were distinctly within the limits covered by the grant to the

Massachusetts Company, and a serious question of title was raised. The

course now pursued by the Company could not but have been singularly

offensive to Gorges. They outgeneralled him in his own field of

action. They too had friends at court. Accordingly they went directly

to the throne. A royal confirmation of their grant from the Council

was solicited and obtained. On the 4th of March, 1629, King Charles’s

charter of the Massachusetts Company passed the seals.

It now became a race, for the actual possession of the disputed

territory, between the representatives of the Company on the one

side and the Gorges grantees on the other. The former, under advice

of counsel, denied the validity of the Robert Gorges grant of 1622.

It was, they claimed, void in law, being “loose and uncertain.”[70]

They instructed Endicott to hurry a party forward to effect an actual

occupation. This he at once did; and the settlement of Charlestown, in

the summer of 1629, was the result. Meanwhile Oldham, having in vain

tried to coax or browbeat the Company into an arrangement satisfactory

to himself, was endeavoring to fit out an expedition of his own.[71] He

had not the means at his disposal; and, convinced of this at last, he

gave up the contest.

At an early stage in these proceedings he would seem to have wholly

lost sight of so much of the business he had in hand as related to

Thomas Morton. Bradford’s expression, in referring to what took place,

is that Morton “foold” Oldham.[72] Morton himself, however, says[73]

that Oldham did the best he could, and tried to set the officers of

the law at work, but was advised that Morton had committed no crime of

which the English courts could take cognizance. He had at most only

disregarded a proclamation. All this seems very probable. Nevertheless,

for violating a proclamation, he could at that time have been proceeded

against in the Star Chamber. It is true that in their decision in 1610,

already referred to,[74] the twelve judges had said, “Lastly, if the

offence be not punishable in the Star Chamber, the prohibition of it

by proclamation cannot make it punishable there.”[75] This, however,

was the language of the bench in the days of James, when Coke was

Chief Justice. In 1629 the current of opinion was running strongly in

the opposite direction. Sir Nicholas Hyde, as Chief Justice, was then

“setting law and decency at defiance” in support of prerogative,[76]

and a few years later Sir John Finch was to announce “that while he

was Keeper no man should be so saucy as to dispute these orders” of

the Lords of the Council.[77] Law or no law, therefore, Morton could

easily have been held to a severe account in the Star Chamber, had

Gorges been disposed to press matters against him there. He clearly

was not so disposed. The inference, therefore, is that Morton had

succeeded in thoroughly ingratiating himself with Gorges; and Oldham,

as he was now a grantee of Gorges’s son, did not see his account in

pressing matters. Accordingly Bradford’s letters and complaints were

quietly ignored; and his “lord of misrule,” and head of New England’s

first “schoole of Athisme,”[78] escaped without, so far as could be

discovered, even a rebuke for his misdeeds.

Nor was this all. Isaac Allerton was at that time in London, as the

agent of the Plymouth colony. The most important business he had in

hand was to procure a new patent for the Plymouth people, covering by

correct bounds a grant on the Kennebec, with which region they were now

opening a promising trade. They also wanted to secure, if possible,

a royal charter for themselves like that which had just been issued

to the Massachusetts Company. In the matter of the patent, Allerton

had to deal with the Council for New England; the granting of the

charter lay at Whitehall. Altogether it was a troublesome and vexatious

business, and the agent soon found that he could make no headway except

through favor. The influence of Gorges became necessary. In the light

of subsequent events it would seem altogether probable that Morton

now made himself useful. At any rate, when Allerton returned to New

England, in 1629, with the patent but without a charter, he astonished

and scandalized the Plymouth community by bringing Morton back with

him. They apparently landed sometime in August,[79] and we have two

accounts of Morton’s reception at Plymouth; one his own, and the other

Governor Bradford’s. Both are characteristic. Morton says that

“Being ship’d againe for the parts of New Canaan, [he] was put in

at Plimmouth in the very faces of them, to their terrible amazement

to see him at liberty; and [they] told him hee had not yet fully

answered the matter they could object against him. Hee onely made

this modest reply, that he did perceave they were willfull people,

that would never be answered: and he derided them for their practises

and losse of laboure.”[80]

Bradford, looking at the transaction from the other point of view,

says:--

“Mr. Allerton gave them great and just ofence in bringing over

this year, for base gaine, that unworthy man, and instrumente of

mischeefe, Morton, who was sent home but the year before for his

misdemenors. He not only brought him over, but to the towne, (as it

were to nose them,) and lodged him at his owne house, and for a while

used him as a scribe to doe his bussines.”[81]

In view of Morton’s escape from all punishment in England, and his

return a little later to Mount Wollaston, Bradford speaks of the

trouble and charge of his arrest as having been incurred “to little

effect.”[82] This, however, was not so. On the contrary, it is not

often that an act of government repression produces effects equally

decisive. The nuisance was abated and the danger dispelled; the fact

that there was a power on the coast, ready to assert itself in the work

of maintaining order, was established and had to be recognized; and,

finally, a wholly unscrupulous competitor was driven out of trade.

These results were well worth all that Morton’s arrest cost, and much

more.

It does not appear how long Morton now remained at Plymouth. It could

not, however, have been more than a few weeks before Allerton, who

himself went back to England the same season, was, as Bradford puts it,

“caused to pack him away.” He then returned to Mount Wollaston, where

he seems to have found a remnant of his old company,--apparently the

more modest of them and such as had looked to their better walking.

Hardly, however, had he well gotten back when he was in trouble with

Endicott. The first difficulty arose out of the jealousy which existed

between the “old planters,” as they were called, and those who belonged

to the Massachusetts Company. The old planters were the very men who

had associated themselves, eighteen months before, to bring about the

suppression of the establishment at Mount Wollaston. Now they also were

beginning to feel the pressure of authority, and they did not like

it. In their helpless anger they even spoke of themselves as “slaves”

of the new Company.[83] They could no longer plant what they chose or

trade with whom they pleased.

On these points Endicott had explicit instructions. They were contained

in the letters of Cradock of April 17 and May 28, 1629, which are to be

found in Young’s _Chronicles of Massachusetts_, and contain the policy

of the company, set forth in clear vigorous English. In pursuance

of those instructions, Endicott seems to have summoned all the old

planters dwelling within the limits of the patent to meet in a General

Court at Salem, sometime in the latter part of 1629. There he doubtless

advised them as to the policy which the Company intended to pursue; and

Morton says that he then tendered all present for signature certain

articles which he and the Rev. Samuel Skelton had drawn up together.

The essence of those articles was that in all causes, ecclesiastical as

well as political, the tenor of God’s word should be followed.[84] The

alternative was banishment.

Morton claims that he alone of those present refused to put his hand

to this paper, insisting that a proviso should first be added in these

words, “So as nothing be done contrary or repugnant to the laws of

the Kingdom of England.” These are almost the exact words of King

Charles’s charter;[85] and it would seem as though Morton, in proposing

them, sought an opportunity to display his legal acumen. Whether his

suggestion was adopted, and the articles modified accordingly, does not

appear. It probably was, though the change was not one which Endicott

would have looked upon with favor. If he assented to it he certainly

did so grimly. The matter of regulating the trade in beaver skins was

next brought up. This was intended to be a Company monopoly, to meet

the charge of providing churches and forts.[86] It was accordingly

proposed that a sort of general partnership for the term of one year

should be effected to carry it on. Morton says that on this matter

also he stood out, and it seems altogether probable that he did. It

is safe to say that he was there to make whatever trouble he could.

On the other hand it was not possible for Endicott to mistake his

instructions. They were as plain as words could make them. He was

to see to it that “none be partakers of [the Company’s] privileges

and profits, but such as be peaceable men, and of honest life and

conversation, and desirous to live amongst us, and conform themselves

to good order and government.” And further, if any factious spirit

developed itself he was enjoined “to suppress a mischief before it take

too great a head ... which, if it may be done by a temperate course, we

much desire it, though with some inconvenience, so as our government

and privileges be not brought in contempt.... But if necessity require

a more severe course, when fair means will not prevail, we pray you to

deal as in your discretions you shall think fittest.” Such instructions

as these, in Endicott’s hands to execute, boded ill for Morton.

Matters soon came to a crisis. Morton paid no regard to the Company’s

trade regulations. The presumption is that he was emboldened to take

the course he now did by the belief that he would find support in

England. He unquestionably was informed as to all the details of the

trouble between the Massachusetts Company and the Council for New

England, and knew that Oldham, whom he by the way speaks of as “a mad

Jack in his mood,”[87] held a grant from John Gorges, and was straining

every nerve to come out and take adverse possession of the territory

covered by it. He probably hoped, day by day, to see Oldham appear at

the head of a Gorges expedition. There is reason to suppose that he was

himself at this time an agent of Gorges,--that, indeed, he had come

back to New England as such, and was playing a part very much like that

of a spy. He was certainly in such correspondence with Sir Ferdinando

as the means of communication permitted, and the confidant of his

plans.[88]

When, therefore, he offered all the opposition to Endicott which he

dared, and thwarted him so far as he could, he was not acting for

himself alone. He represented, in a degree at least, what in England

was a powerful combination. Accordingly, with an over-confidence in the

result born of his sanguine faith in the power and influence of his

patron, he now seems to have gone back to the less objectionable of his

old courses. He did not renew the trade in fire-arms and ammunition,

for he probably had none to spare, and experience had taught him how

dangerous it was. He did, however, deal with the savages as he saw fit,

and on his own account, openly expressing his contempt for Endicott’s

authority, and doing all he could to excite the jealousy and discontent

of the “old planters.”[89] His own profits at this time were, he says,

six and seven fold.

This state of things could not continue. Accordingly, as the year drew

to a close, Endicott made an effort to arrest him. Morton, however,

was now on his guard. Getting wind of what was intended, he concealed

his ammunition and most necessary goods in the forest; and, when the

messengers, sent across the bay to seize him, landed on the beach at

the foot of Mount Wollaston, he was nowhere to be found. He says that

they ransacked his house, and took from it all the provender they

could find; but when they were gone he replenished his supplies with

the aid of his gun, and “did but deride Captain Littleworth, that made

his servants snap shorte in a country so much abounding with plenty of

foode for an industrious man.” This happened about Christmas, 1629.[90]

Could Endicott now have laid hands upon him there can be little room

for doubt that Morton would have been summarily dealt with; but for the

present the deputy-governor’s attention was otherwise occupied. This

was that winter of 1629-30, the famine and sickness of which came so

near to bringing the Salem settlement to a premature end. During that

struggle for existence the magistrate had no time to attend to Morton’s

case. But he was not the man to forget it.

With the following summer the great migration, which was to fix the

character of New England, began. Instead of a vessel fitted out for

Oldham under the patronage of Gorges, the _Mary & John_, chartered by

the Massachusetts Company and having on board 140 passengers from the

West of England, anchored off Hull on the 30th of May. A fortnight

later Governor Winthrop reached Salem, and on the 17th of June he also

came into Boston Harbor; and Morton, from Mount Wollaston, must have

watched his vessel with anxious eyes as, in full view from his house,

it made its way up the channel to the mouth of the Mystic. He must also

have realized that its appearance in those waters boded him no good.

In a few days more the whole fleet, numbering twelve sail in all, was

at anchor off Charlestown, and the work of discharging passengers was

going actively on. Of these there were nearly a thousand;[91] and now

the busy and fatal summer experience of 1630 was fairly entered upon.

For a few weeks longer Morton continued to live undisturbed at Mount

Wollaston. The confusion and bustle of landing, and afterwards the

terror and sense of bereavement which followed hard on pestilence,

protected him. It was not until the 23d of August, or the present

2d of September, that the magistrates held any formal session. They

then met at the great house at Charlestown,[92] as it would seem,

Winthrop, Dudley, Saltonstall, Pynchon, Bradstreet and others being

present. After some more important business had been disposed of, “It

was ordered, that Morton, of Mount Woolison, should presently be sent

for by processe.”[93] Of the circumstances of his arrest under the

warrant thus issued Morton has given no account. Apparently he felt

it was useless to try to evade the messengers, and resistance was

wholly out of the question. At the next session of the magistrates,

held two weeks later, on what would now be the 17th of September, he

was formally arraigned. In addition to those already named as being

at the earlier meeting, Endicott was now present. He had probably

come down from Salem to give his personal attention to Morton’s case.

It must from the outset have been apparent to the prisoner that the

tribunal before which he stood was one from which he had nothing to

hope. The proceedings were in fact summary. It would seem, from his

own account of them,[94] that he endeavored to humble himself, and,

that failing, he made a sort of plea to the jurisdiction of the Court.

Neither submission nor plea produced any effect. On the contrary he

was apparently cut short in his defence and his protest by impatient

exclamations, and even bidden to hold his peace and hearken to his

sentence. It appears in the records as follows:--

“It is ordered by this present Court, that Thomas Morton, of Mount

Walliston, shall presently be sett into the bilbowes, and after

sent prisoner into England, by the shipp called the _Gifte_, nowe

returning thither; that all his goods shalbe seazed upon to defray

the charge of his transportation, payment of his debts, and to

give satisfaction to the Indians for a cannoe hee unjustly tooke

away from them; and that his howse, after the goods are taken out,

shalbe burnt downe to the ground in the sight of the Indians, for

their satisfaction, for many wrongs hee hath done them from tyme to

tyme.”[95]

Unfortunately, Winthrop’s admonitory remarks in imposing this sentence

have not been preserved. There is, however, in the _New Canaan_, an

expression which apparently formed a part of them.[96] It is that in

which it is assigned as a reason for the destruction of the house at

Mount Wollaston, that “the habitation of the wicked should no more

appear in Israel.” In compliance with the terms of this sentence,

Morton was set in the stocks; and while there, he tells us, the savages

came and looked at him, and wondered what it all meant. He was not,

however, sent back to England in the _Gift_, as the master of that

vessel declined to carry him; for what reason does not appear. It was

not in fact until nearly four months after his arrest that a passage

was secured for him in the _Handmaid_. Even then, Maverick afterwards

stated that Morton, obdurate to the last, refused to go on board the

vessel, upon the ground that he had no call to go there, and so had to

be hoisted over her side by a tackle.[97] His house also was burned

down; but the execution of this part of his sentence, he asserts,--and

his assertion is confirmed by Maverick,--was vindictively delayed until

he was on his way into banishment, when it was executed rather in his

sight, it would seem, than in that of the savages. Of the voyage to

England there is an account in the _New Canaan_ that is rather more

rambling and incoherent than is usual even with Morton.[98]

The _Handmaid_ appears to have been unseaworthy, and insufficiently

supplied. She had a long and tempestuous passage, in the course of

which Morton came very near starving, no provision having been made for

his subsistence except a very inadequate one out of his own supplies.

The second arrest of Morton was equally defensible with the first.

According to his own account he had systematically made himself a

thorn in Endicott’s side. He had refused to enter into any covenants,

whether for trade or government, and he had openly derided the

magistrate and eluded his messengers. This could not be permitted. He

dwelt within the limits of the Massachusetts charter, and the Company

was right when it instructed Endicott that all living there “must

live under government and a like law.” It was necessary, therefore,

that Morton should either give in his adhesion, or that he should

be compelled to take himself off. This, however, was not the ground

which the magistrates took. Nothing was said in the sentence of any

disregard of authority or disobedience to regulation. No reference

was made to any illicit dealings with the Indians, or to the trade

in fire-arms. Offences of this kind would have justified the extreme

severity of a sentence which went to the length of ignominious physical

punishment, complete confiscation of property and banishment; leaving

only whipping, mutilation or death uninflicted. No such offences were

alleged. Those which were alleged, on the contrary, were of the most

trivial character. They were manifestly trumped up for the occasion.

The accused had unjustly taken away a canoe from some Indians; he had

fired a charge of shot among a troop of them who would not ferry him

across a river, wounding one and injuring the garments of another; he

was “a proud, insolent man” against whom a “multitude of complaints

were received, for injuries done by him both to the English and the

Indians.”[99] Those specified, it may be presumed, were examples of the

rest. They amount to nothing at all, and were afterwards very fitly

characterized by Maverick as mere pretences. Apparently conscious of

this, Dudley, the deputy-governor, in referring to the matter a few

months later in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln, says that Morton

was sent to England “for that my Lord Chief Justice there so required,

that he might punish him capitally for fouler misdemeanors there

perpetrated.” Bradford also, in referring to the matter, states that

Morton was “vehemently suspected” of a murder, and that “a warrant was

sent from the Lord Chief Justice to apprehend him.”[100]

There can be no doubt that there was a warrant from the King’s Bench

against Morton in Winthrop’s hands,[101] but in all probability it

was nothing more nor less than a sort of English _lettre de cachet_.

Morton’s record in New England was perfectly well known in London

at the time Winthrop was making his preparations to cross. His

relations with Oldham and Gorges must often have been discussed at

the assistants’ meetings, and they were not ignorant of the fact that

he had gone back to Plymouth with Allerton. They must have suspected

that he went back as an agent or emissary of Gorges, and they may have

known that he so went back. In any event, they did not propose to have

him live within the limits of their patent. He was an undesirable

character. The warrant, therefore, was probably obtained in advance,

on some vague report or suspicion of a criminal act, to be at hand

and ready for use when needed.[102] It could not legally run into New

England, any more than it could into Scotland or Ireland.[103] Then,

and at no later time, would Winthrop have recognized it in any other

case; and, even in this case, no reference is made to it in the colony

records. Had it been so referred to, it might have been cited as a

precedent.

Moreover such a requisition, though it might have warranted the return

of Morton to England, certainly did not warrant the confiscation of

all his property and the burning of his house in advance of trial

and conviction there. In point of fact the requisition was a mere

pretext and cover. The Massachusetts magistrates, so far as Morton was

concerned, had made up their minds before he stood at their bar. He

was not only a “libertine,” as they termed it, but he was suspected

of being a spy. His presence at Mount Wollaston they did not consider

desirable, and so they proposed to purge the country of him; and if not

in one way, then in another. His case is not singular in Massachusetts

annals; it is merely the first of its kind. It established a precedent

much too often followed thereafter. Morton was one of those who, as

it was expressed in a tract of the time printed in London, “must

have elbow-roome, and cannot abide to be so pinioned with the strict

government in the Commonwealth, or discipline in the church. Now why

should such live there? As Ireland will not brooke venomous beasts, so

will not that land [New England] vile persons and loose livers.”[104]

Many times, in the years which followed, the country was purged of

other of these “vile persons and loose livers,” in much the same way

that it was now purged of Morton. It may, however, well be questioned

whether it ever derived benefit from the process. Certainly Morton’s

case was as strong as any case well could be. There was absolutely

nothing to be said in his favor. He was a lawless, reckless, immoral

adventurer. And yet, as the result will show, in sending Morton back

to England, the victim of high-handed justice, the Massachusetts

magistrates committed a serious blunder. They had much better have

left him alone under the harrow of their authority. At Mount Wollaston

he was at worst but a nuisance. They drove him away from there and sent

him back to London; and at Whitehall he became a real danger. This part

of history is now to be told.

Bradford says, and he is generally correct in his statements, that

when at last Morton reached England “he lay a good while in Exeter

jail.”[105] There is no allusion to anything of the sort in the _New

Canaan_; and it would not seem that he could have been very long a

prisoner, as the next assizes and jail-delivery must have set him free.

There could have been nothing on which to make him stand a trial.

Accordingly the following year he was at liberty and busily concerned

in Gorges’s intrigues for the overthrow of the Massachusetts charter.

The house in which Gorges lived--as formerly it had been the point

of gathering of all who had visited the American coast, or could

add anything to the stock of information concerning it--was now the

headquarters for those who had any complaint to make or charges to

prefer against the magistracy of Massachusetts. Acting in concert with

Captain John Mason, the patentee of New Hampshire, he was exerting

himself to the utmost to secure a revocation of King Charles’s

charter. The attack was made on the 19th of December, 1632, and it

was a formidable one. It assumed the shape of a petition to the Privy

Council, asking the Lords to inquire into the methods through which the

royal charter for the Massachusetts Bay had been procured, and into

the abuses which had been practised under it. Besides many injuries

inflicted on individuals in their property and persons, the Company

was also charged with seditious and rebellious designs, subversive

alike of church and of state. The various allegations were based on

the affidavits of three witnesses,--Thomas Morton, Philip Ratcliff and

Sir Christopher Gardiner. Behind these was the active and energetic

influence of Gorges and Mason.[106]

It is not necessary in this connection to go into any detailed

statement of the wrongs complained of by Ratcliff and Gardiner. They

were of the same nature, though even more pronounced than those of

Morton. The country had in fact been purged of all three of these

individuals. The original document in which they set forth their cases,

and made accusation against the magistrates, has unfortunately been

lost. In referring to it afterwards Winthrop said that it contained

“some truths misrepeated.”[107] Apart from severe judgments on alleged

wrong-doers, including whipping, branding, mutilating, banishment and

confiscation of property, the burden of the accusation lay in the

disposition to throw off allegiance to the mother country, which was

distinctly charged against the colony.

A harsh coloring was doubtless given in the petition to whatever

could be alleged. So far as casting off their allegiance to the

mother country was concerned, nothing can be more certain than that

neither the leaders nor the common people of New England entertained

at that time any thought of it; but it is quite equally certain that

the leaders at least were deeply dissatisfied with the course public

affairs were then taking in England. They were Puritans, and this was

the period of the Star Chamber and the High Commission. No parliament

had been called since 1629, and it was then publicly announced at

Court that no more parliaments were to be called. There is no reason

to suppose that the early settlers of Massachusetts were a peculiarly

reticent race. On the contrary it is well known that they were much

given to delivering themselves and bearing evidence on all occasions;

and in doing so they unquestionably railed and declaimed quite freely

against those then prominent in the council-chamber and among the

bishops. That there was a latent spirit in New England ripe for

rebellion was also, probably, asserted in the lost document. However

Winthrop might deny it, and deny it honestly, this also was true; and

subsequent events, both in Massachusetts and in England, showed it to

be so. In the light of their sympathies and sufferings, Morton and

Gardiner probably realized the drift of what they had heard said and

seen done in New England a good deal better than Winthrop.

The result of the Morton-Gardiner petition was the appointment of a

committee of twelve Lords of the Council, to whom the whole matter was

referred for investigation and report. The committee was empowered to

send for persons and papers and a long and apparently warm hearing

ensued. The friends of the Company found it necessary to at once bestir

themselves. Cradock, Saltonstall and Humfrey filed a written answer

to the complaint, and subsequently, at the hearing, they received

efficient aid from Emanuel Downing, Winthrop’s brother-in-law, and

Thomas Wiggin, who lived at Piscataqua, but now most opportunely

chanced to be in London.

At the Court of Charles I. everything was matter of influence or

purchase. The founders of Massachusetts were men just abreast of

their time, and not in advance of it. There is good ground on which

to suspect that they did not hesitate to have recourse to the means

then and there necessary to the attainment of their ends. It has never

been explained, for instance, how the charter of 1629 was originally

secured.[108] When Allerton, at the same time, tried to obtain a

similar charter for the Plymouth colony, he found that he had to buy

his way at every step, and Bradford complained bitterly of the “deale

of money veainly and lavishly cast away.”[109] That the original

patentees of Massachusetts bribed some courtier near the King, and

through him bought their charter, is wholly probable. Every one bribed,

and almost every one about the King took bribes. That the patentees

had powerful influence at Court is certain; exactly where it lay is

not apparent. The Earl of Warwick interested himself actively in their

behalf. It was he who secured for them their patent from the Council

for New England. But Warwick, though a powerful nobleman, was “a man

in no grace at Court;” on the contrary, he was one of those “whom his

Majesty had no esteem of, or ever purposed to trust.”[110] Winthrop

says that in the Morton-Gardiner hearing his brother-in-law, Emanuel

Downing, was especially serviceable.[111] Downing was a lawyer of the

Inner Temple.[112] There is reason to suppose that he had access to

influential persons,--possibly Lord Dorchester may have been amongst

them.[113] However this may be, whether by means of influence or

bribery, the hearing before the Committee of the Privy Council was made

to result disastrously for the complainants. Gorges took nothing by his

motion. In due time the Committee reported against any interference

with the Company at that time. Such grounds of complaint as did not

admit of explanation they laid to the “faults or fancies of particular

men,” and these, they declared, were “in due time to be inquired into.”

King Charles himself also had evidently been labored with through the

proper channels, and not without effect. Not only did he give his

approval to the report of the Committee, but he went out of his way

to further threaten with condign punishment those “who did abuse his

governor and the plantation.”

Gorges’s carefully prepared attack had thus ended in complete

failure. The danger, however, had been great, nor was its importance

underestimated in Massachusetts. This clearly appears in Winthrop’s

subsequent action; for when, four months later, in May, 1633,

information of the final action of the Council reached him, he wrote

a letter of grave jubilation to Governor Bradford, giving him the

glad news, and inviting him to join “in a day of thanksgiving to our

mercifull God, who, as he hath humbled us by his late correction, so he

hath lifted us up, by an abundante rejoysing in our deliverance out of

so desperate a danger.”[114]

Though badly defeated, and for the time being no doubt discouraged,

Gorges and Morton were not disposed to desist from their efforts. As

the latter expressed it, they had been too eager, and had “effected

the business but superficially.”[115] They had also committed the

serious mistake of underestimating the strength and influence of

their antagonists. If Gorges, however, was at home anywhere, he was

at home just where he had now received his crushing defeat,--in the

antechambers of the palace. All his life he had been working through

Court influences. Through them, after the Essex insurrection, he had

saved his neck from the block. If Court influence would have availed

to secure it, in 1623 he would have pre-empted the whole territory

about Boston Bay as the private domain of himself and his descendants.

At Whitehall he was an enemy not lightly to be disregarded; and this

Winthrop and his colleagues soon had cause to realize.

Thwarted by strong influences in one direction, Gorges went to work to

secure stronger influences in another direction. He knew the ground,

and his plan of operations was well conceived. To follow it out in

detail is not possible. Here and there a fact appears; the rest is

inference and surmise. The King was the objective point. Of him it

is not necessary here to speak at length, for his character is too

well understood. Dignified in his bearing, and in personal character

purer than his times,--a devout, well-intentioned man,--Charles was a

shallow, narrow-minded bigot, with a diseased belief in that divinity

which doth hedge a king. He would have made an ideal, average English

country gentleman. After the manner of small, obstinate men, he

believed intensely in a few things. One was his own royal supremacy

and his responsibility, not to his people but to his kingship. He

was nothing of a statesman, and as a politician he was his own worst

enemy. His idea of government was the Spanish one: the king had a

prime-minister, and that prime-minister was the king’s other and second

self. In Charles’s case Buckingham was at first prime-minister; and,

when Buckingham was assassinated, he was in due time succeeded by Laud.

Abbot, Archbishop of Canterbury, had not died until August 4, 1633,

and a few days later Laud was appointed to succeed him. He thus became

primate almost exactly eight months after the first attack on the

charter. It was through him that Gorges now went to work to influence

the King and to control the course of events in New England. His method

can be explained in four words: Laud hated a Puritan.

At first the secret connection of Gorges and Morton with the events

which now ensued is matter of pure surmise. There is no direct evidence

of it in the records or narratives. At a later period it becomes more

apparent. As a matter of surmise, however, based on the subsequent

development of events, it seems probable that in February, 1634, the

attention of the Archbishop, and through him that of the Privy Council,

was called to the large emigration then going on to New England of

“persons known to be ill-affected and discontented, as well with the

civil as ecclesiastical government.”[116] As Gorges himself expressed

it, “numbers of people of all sorts flocked thither in heaps.”[117]

Several vessels, already loaded with passengers and stores, were then

lying in the Thames. An Order in Council was forthwith issued staying

these vessels, and calling upon Cradock to produce the Company’s

charter. So far as the vessels were concerned it soon appeared that the

Company was still not without friends in the Council; and, “for reasons

best known to their Lordships,” they were permitted to sail.[118]

Doubtless this detention, as the subsequent more rigid restraint, was

“grounded upon the several complaints that came out of those parts of

the divers sects and schisms that were amongst them, all contemning

the public government of the ecclesiastical state.” Ratcliff was now

looked upon as a lunatic,[119] and Gardiner had disappeared. Morton

alone remained; and it is safe to surmise that he was the fountain-head

of these complaints, as Gorges was the channel which conveyed them to

Laud. As respects the charter, Cradock made reply to the order for its

production that it was not in his hands,--that Winthrop, four years

before, had taken it to New England. He was directed to send for it at

once. Here the matter rested, and to all appearances Gorges had met

with one more check. The release of the vessels was ordered on the last

day of February, 1634.

A new move on the chess-board was now made by some one. Who that

some-one was is again matter of surmise. Hitherto the few matters

which from time to time came up, relating to the colonies, had been

considered in the full Privy Council. There the Massachusetts Company

had shown itself a power. Special tribunals, however, were at this

juncture greatly in vogue at Whitehall. The Council of the North, the

Star Chamber, the Court of High Commission, were in full operation. To

them all political work was consigned, and in the two last Laud was

supreme. Up to this time, however, the need of any special tribunal

to look after the affairs of the colonies had not made itself felt.

The historians of New England have philosophized a great deal over the

considerations of state which, during the reign of Charles, dictated

the royal policy towards New England;[120] but it is more than doubtful

whether considerations of state had anything to do with that policy.

The remoteness and insignificance of early New England, so far as the

English Court was concerned, is a thing not easy now to realize. It may

be taken for certain that King and Primate rarely gave a thought to it,

much less matured a definite or rational policy. Their minds were full

of more important matters. They were intent on questions of tonnage and

poundage, on monopolies, and all possible ways and means of raising

money; they were thinking of the war with Spain, of Wentworth’s Irish

policy, of the English opposition, and the Scotch church system. So far

as New England was concerned they were mere puppets to be jerked to and

fro by the strings of Court influence,--now granting a charter at the

instance of one man, and then restraining vessels at the instance of

another,--defending “our governor” one day, and threatening to have his

ears cropped the next.

In certain quarters it seems now, however, to have been decided that

this condition of affairs was to continue no longer. A special tribunal

should be created, to take charge of all colonial matters. This move

seems to have grown out of the Order in Council of February 21, and to

have been directed almost exclusively to the management of affairs in

New England, whence complaint mainly came. Accordingly, on the 10th of

April, a commission passed the great seal establishing a board with

almost unlimited power of regulating plantations. Laud was at the head

of it. There would seem to be every reason to assume that this tribunal

was created at the suggestion of Laud, and in consequence of the

undecided course pursued by the Council as a whole, two months before,

in the matter of the detained vessels. A further inference, from what

went before and what followed, is that Laud’s action was stimulated

and shaped by Gorges. He was the active promoter of complaints and

scandals from New England. In other words, the organization of this

colonial board, through Laud’s influence and with Laud supreme in it,

was Gorges’s first move in the next and most formidable attack on the

charter of the Massachusetts Bay.

The plan now matured by Gorges was a large one. He had no idea of being

balked of the prize which it had been the dream and the effort of his

life to secure. He meant yet to grasp a government for himself, and an

inheritance for his children, in New England. So far as the settlement

of that country was concerned, what he for thirty years had been vainly

ruining himself to bring about was now accomplishing itself; but it

was accomplishing itself not only without his aid, but in a way which

gravely threatened his interests. The people who were swarming to New

England refused to recognize his title, and abused and expelled his

agents. It was clear that the Council for New England was not equal to

dealing with such a crisis. It was necessary to proceed through some

other agency. The following scheme was, therefore, step by step devised.

The territory held under the great patent of the Council for New

England extended from Maine to New Jersey. This whole region was,

by the action of the Council, to be divided in severalty among its

remaining members, and the patent was then to be surrendered to the

King, who thereupon was to confirm the division just made.[121] The

Council being thus gotten out of the way, the King was to assume

the direct government of the whole territory, and was to appoint

a governor-general for it. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was to be that

governor-general.[122] He would thus go out to his province clothed

with full royal authority; and the issue would then be, not between

the settlers of Massachusetts, acting under the King’s charter, and

that “carcass in a manner breathless,” the Council for New England,

but between a small body of disobedient subjects and the King’s own

representative. The scheme was a well-devised one. It was nothing

more nor less than the colonial or New England branch of Strafford’s

“Thorough.” It was a part, though a small part, of a great system.

The first step in carrying out the programme was to secure the

appointment of the Commission of April 10. The influence of the

Archbishop being assured, there was no difficulty in this. The board

was composed of twelve members of the Privy Council. Laud himself was

at the head of it, and with him were the Archbishop of York, the Earls

of Portland, Manchester, Arundel and Dorset, Lord Cottington, Sir

Thomas Edmunds, Sir Henry Vane, and Secretaries Cooke and Windebank.

Any five or more of these Commissioners were to constitute a _quorum_,

and their powers were of the largest description. They could revoke all

charters previously granted, remove governors and appoint others in the

places of those removed, and even break up settlements if they deemed

it best so to do. They could inflict punishment upon all offenders,

either by imprisonment, “or by loss of life or member.” It was in fact

a commission of “right divine.” It embodied the whole royal policy of

King Charles, as formulated by Wentworth and enforced by Laud. The

new Commission was not slow in proceeding to its appointed work, and

the potency of Gorges’s influence in it was shown by his immediate

designation as governor-general.[123] How close Morton then stood to

him may be inferred from the following letter, which shows also that

he was well informed as to all that was going on.[124] It was written

exactly three weeks after the appointment of the Commission, and was

addressed to William Jeffreys at Wessagusset:--

MY VERY GOOD GOSSIP,--If I should commend myself to you, you reply

with this proverb,--_Propria laus fordet in ore_: but to leave

impertinent salute, and really to proceed.--You shall hereby

understand, that, although, when I was first sent to England to make

complaint against Ananias and the brethren, I effected the business

but superficially, (through the brevity of time,) I have at this time

taken more deliberation and brought the matter to a better pass. And

it is thus brought about, that the King hath taken the business into

his own hands. The Massachusetts Patent, by order of the council, was

brought in view; the privileges there granted well scanned upon, and

at the council board in public, and in the presence of Sir Richard

Saltonstall and the rest, it was declared, for manifest abuses there

discovered, to be void. The King hath reassumed the whole business

into his own hands, appointed a committee of the board, and given

order for a general governor of the whole territory to be sent over.

The commission is passed the privy seal, I did see it, and the same

was 1 mo. Maii sent to the Lord Keeper to have it pass the great seal

for confirmation; and I now stay to return with the governor, by whom

all complainants shall have relief:[125] So that now Jonas being

set ashore may safely cry, repent you cruel separatists, repent,

there are as yet but forty days. If Jove vouchsafe to thunder, the

charter and kingdom of the separatists will fall asunder. Repent you

cruel schismatics, repent.[126] These things have happened, and I

shall see, (notwithstanding their boasting and false alarms in the

Massachusetts, with feigned cause of thanksgiving,) their merciless

cruelty rewarded, according to the merit of the fact, with condign

punishment for coming into these parts, like Sampson’s foxes with

fire-brands at their tails.[127] The King and Council are really

possessed of their preposterous loyalty and irregular proceedings,

and are incensed against them: and although they be so opposite to

the catholic axioms, yet they will be compelled to perform them, or

at leastwise, suffer them to be put in practice to their sorrow. In

matter of restitution and satisfaction, more than mystically, it

must be performed visibly, and in such sort as may be subject to the

senses in a very lively image. My Lord Canterbury having, with my

Lord Privy Seal, caused all Mr. Cradock’s letters to be viewed, and

his apology in particular for the brethren here, protested against

him and Mr. Humfrey, that they were a couple of imposterous knaves;

so that, for all their great friends, they departed the council

chamber in our view with a pair of cold shoulders. I have staid long,

yet have not lost my labor, although the brethren have found their

hopes frustrated; so that it follows by consequence, I shall see my

desire upon mine enemies: and if John Grant had not betaken him to

flight, I had taught him to sing clamavi in the Fleet before this

time, and if he return before I depart, he will pay dear for his

presumption. For here he finds me a second Perseus: I have uncased

Medusa’s head, and struck the brethren into astonishment. They find,

and will yet more to their shame, that they abuse the word and are

to blame to presume so much,--that they are but a word and a blow to

them that are without. Of these particulars I thought good, by so

convenient a messenger, to give you notice, lest you should think I

had died in obscurity, as the brethren vainly intended I should, and

basely practised, abusing justice by their sinister practices, as by

the whole body of the committee, _una voce_, it was concluded to be

done, to the dishonor of his majesty. And as for Ratcliffe, he was

comforted by their lordships with the cropping of Mr. Winthrop’s

ears: which shows what opinion is held amongst them of King Winthrop

with all his inventions and his Amsterdam fantastical ordinances,

his preachings, marriages, and other abusive ceremonies, which do

exemplify his detestation to the Church of England, and the contempt

of his majesty’s authority and wholesome laws, which are and will be

established in these parts, _invitâ Minervâ_. With these I thought

fit to salute you, as a friend, by an epistle, because I am bound to

love you, as a brother, by the gospel, resting your loving friend.

THOMAS MORTON.[128]

DATED 1 MO. MAII, 1634.

Morton is always confused and inaccurate in his statements, and this

letter afforded no exception to the rule. It is impossible to be quite

sure of what particular occasions he refers to in it. He may in the

same breath be speaking of different things. Whether, for instance,

the hearing to which he alludes, at which the patent “was brought in

view,” was the same or another meeting from that in which Cradock’s

letters were produced, is not clear. It would seem as though he

were speaking of the February hearing before the whole Council, and

yet he may be describing a subsequent hearing in April before the

Lords Commissioners. He speaks of the “council chamber” and of “the

whole body of the Committee,” and then alludes to the presence of

Saltonstall, Humfrey and Cradock. Now these persons were before the

Council in the hearing of 1632, and they may all of them, as Cradock

certainly was, have been before it in February 1634; but Humfrey could

hardly have appeared before the Lords Commissioners, as he seems to

have sailed for New England early in the month during which they

were appointed. The meeting which Morton describes, therefore, was

probably that of February 28, 1634; and it would seem to have savored

strongly of the Star Chamber and High Commission. Cradock and Humfrey

were apparently scolded and abused by Laud in the style for which he

was famous, and the admission by the former, that the charter had gone

to America, had led to his being called “an imposterous knave,” and

sharply told to send for it back at once. The well-known foibles of

the Primate had been skilfully played upon by accounts of Winthrop’s

“Amsterdam fantastical ordinances, his preachings, marriages, and other

abusive ceremonies;” and they had much the effect that a red flag is

known to have on a bull. Nothing was now heard of the King’s intention

of severely punishing those who abused “his governor;” but, on the

contrary, Ratcliffe was “comforted with the cropping of Mr. Winthrop’s

ears.” Gorges was governor-general, and with him Morton expected soon

to depart.

Cradock’s letter, enclosing the order of the Council for the return

of the charter, reached Boston in July. Winthrop was then no longer

governor, having been displaced by Dudley at the previous May election.

As is well known to all students of New England history, the famous

parchment, still in the office of the secretary of the Puritan

Commonwealth, was not sent back.[129] It is unnecessary, however, to

here repeat the story of the struggle over it. Presently Governor

Edward Winslow of Plymouth was despatched to England, as the joint

agent of the two colonies, to look after their endangered interests.

He reached London in the autumn of 1634, bringing with him an evasive

reply to the demand contained in Cradock’s letter.

Winslow sailed in the middle or latter part of July, and a few days

later, on the 4th of August,[130] Jeffreys came over from Wessagusset

to Boston, bringing to Winthrop the letter which he had shortly before

received from Morton. It was the first intimation the magistrates

had of the Commission and of the appointment of a governor-general.

Winthrop communicated the news to Dudley and the other members of the

Council, and to some of the ministers; and, doubtless, for a time they

all nursed an anxious hope that the exaggerations in the letter were

even greater than they really were. The General Court met on the 25th

of August. While it was still in session, vessels arrived bringing

tidings which dispelled all doubt, and confirmed everything material

that Morton had said. He whom the magistrates had so ignominiously

punished, and so contemptuously driven away, was evidently in a

position to know what those in authority intended. It began to be

evident that the Massachusetts magistrates had underestimated an

opponent.

A full copy of the Order in Council establishing the board of Lords

Commissioners of Plantations, was now received, and the colonists were

further advised, through their private letters, that ships were being

furnished, and soldiers gotten ready for embarkation in them. It was

given out that these troops and vessels were intended for Virginia,

whither a new governor was about to be sent; but Winthrop wrote that

in Massachusetts the preparation was “suspected to be against us, to

compel us by force to receive a new governor, and the discipline of the

church of England, and the laws of the commissioners.[131]”

The answer which best expressed the spirit of the colony, in reply to

Laud’s threats, was now found, not in the missive which Winslow had in

charge, but in the act of Morton’s old oppressor, Endicott, when a few

weeks later at Salem he cut the red cross from the standard. It was

an act, however, which seemed to indicate that there was more truth

than Winthrop was disposed to admit in Gardiner and Morton’s charge

that “the ministers and people did continually rail against the state,

church and bishops.”[132] Six months of great alarm and strenuous

preparation now ensued. Steps were taken to get together arms and

ammunition, and defences were ordered at Dorchester and Charlestown,

as well as at Castle Island. The magistrates were even empowered to

impress laborers for the work. In January the ministers were summoned

to Bolton, and the question formally submitted to them: “What ought we

to do if a general governor should be sent out of England?” The reply

was that “we ought not to accept him, but defend our lawful possessions

if we are able.” In April a rumor of strange vessels hovering off

Cape Ann threw the whole province into a tumult. It was supposed that

Governor-general Gorges, with Morton in his train, was at the harbor’s

mouth. It proved to be a false alarm, and after that the excitement

seems gradually to have subsided.

This was in the spring of 1635. Meanwhile Winslow had reached England

sometime early in the previous autumn. Though he had not brought the

charter with him, its production does not seem to have been again

immediately called for. He probably held out confident assurances

that it would be sent over in the next vessel, as soon as the General

Court met; but it is also probable that, in view of the course which

had now been decided upon, an examination of it was no longer deemed

necessary. The ensuing spring, that of 1635, had been fixed upon by

Gorges and Mason as the time for decisive action. The charter was then

to be vacated, and Gorges was to go out to New England with a force

sufficient to compel obedience. All this, however, implied considerable

preparation. Shipping had to be provided in the first place. A large

vessel was accordingly put upon the stocks. Rumor said, also, that the

new governor-general was to take out with him a force of no less than

one thousand soldiers.[133] Whether this was true or not, there can be

little doubt that all through the winter of 1634-5 active preparations

were on foot in England intended against the Massachusetts colony.

Besides watching these proceedings Winslow had other business in

London which required his appearance before the Lords Commissioners.

He had presented to them a petition on behalf of the two colonies

for authority to resist certain Dutch and French encroachments. This

proceeding Winthrop had not thought well advised,[134] as he very

shrewdly argued that it implied an absence of authority without such

special authorization, and might thus be drawn into a precedent.

Winslow, however, had none the less submitted the petition, and several

hearings were given upon it. Fully advised as to everything that was

going on before the Lords Commissioners, Gorges did not favor this

move. It authorized military or diplomatic action, the conduct of which

by right belonged to him as governor-general of the region within which

the action was to be taken. He accordingly went to work to circumvent

Winslow. What ensued throws a great deal of light on Morton’s standing

at the time, and the use that was made of him; and it also explains the

significance of certain things in the _New Canaan_.

Laud, it will be remembered, was the head and moving spirit of the

Lords Commissioners. His word was final in the Board. Upon him Gorges

depended to work all his results; which included not only his own

appointment as governor-general, with full power and authority as

such, but also the necessary supply of men and money to enable him to

establish his supremacy. To secure these ends it was necessary to play

continually on the Primate’s dislike of the Puritans, and his intense

zeal in behalf of all Church forms and ceremonies, including the use

of the Book of Common Prayer. The whole political and historical

significance of the _New Canaan_ lies in this fact. It was a pamphlet

designed to work a given effect in a particular quarter, and came very

near being productive of lasting results. Dedicated in form to the

Lords Commissioners, it was charged with attacks on the Separatists,

and statements of the contempt shown by them to the Book of Common

Prayer. Finally it contained one chapter on the church practices in

New England, which was clearly designed for the special enlightenment

of the Archbishop.[135] In this chapter it is set down as the first

and fundamental tenet of the New England church “that it is the

magistrate’s office absolutely, and not the minister’s, to join the

people in lawful matrimony;” next, that to make use of a ring in

marriage is a relic of popery; and then again “that the Book of Common

Prayer is an idol; and all that use it idolaters.” It now remains to

show how cunningly, when it came to questions of state, Laud was worked

upon by these statements, and what a puppet he became in the hands of

Gorges and Morton.

Winslow’s suit had prospered. He had submitted to the Lords

Commissioners a plan for accomplishing the end desired without any

charge being imposed on the royal exchequer, and he was on the point of

receiving, as he supposed, a favorable decision. Suddenly the secret

strings were pulled. Bradford best tells the story of what ensued.

“When Mr. Winslow should have had his suit granted, (as indeed upon

the point it was,) and should have been confirmed, the Archbishop

put a stop upon it, and Mr. Winslow, thinking to get it freed, went

to the Board again. But the Bishop, Sir Ferdinando and Captain Mason

had, as it seems, procured Morton to complain. To whose complaints

Mr. Winslow made answer to the good satisfaction of the Board,

who checked Morton, and rebuked him sharply, and also blamed Sir

Ferdinando Gorges and Mason for countenancing him. But the Bishop had

a further end and use of his presence, for he now began to question

Mr. Winslow of many things, as of teaching in the church publicly, of

which Morton accused him and gave evidence that he had seen and heard

him do it; to which Mr. Winslow answered that sometimes (wanting a

minister) he did exercise his gift to help the edification of his

brethren, when they wanted better means, which was not often. Then

about marriage, the which he also confessed, that, having been called

to place of magistracy, he had sometimes married some. And further

told their lordships that marriage was a civil thing, and he found

nowhere in the word of God that it was tied to ministry. Again they

were necessitated so to do, having for a long time together at first

no minister; besides, it was no new thing, for he had been so married

himself in Holland, by the magistrates in their Stadt-House. But

in the end, to be short, for these things the Bishop, by vehement

importunity, got the Board at last to consent to his commitment. So

he was committed to the Fleet, and lay there seventeen weeks, or

thereabout, before he could get to be released. And this was the end

of this petition and this business; only the others’ design was also

frustrated hereby, with other things concurring, which was no small

blessing to people here.”[136]

For the time being, however, “the others’ design,” as Bradford

describes Gorges’s scheme, so far from being frustrated, moved on

most prosperously. All the friends and agents of the colony were now

driven from the field. Cradock, Saltonstall and Humfrey had departed

the council-chamber with “a pair of cold shoulders.” Winslow was a

prisoner. Morton had demonstrated that his boast in the letter to

Jeffreys, that he would make his opponents “sing _clamavi_ in the

Fleet,” was not an idle one. He had not exaggerated his power. Gorges’s

course was now clear, and his plan developed rapidly. At a meeting

of those still members of the Council for New England, held at Lord

Gorges’s house on the 3d of February, 1635, the next step was taken.

The redivision of the seacoast was agreed upon. It was now divided into

eight parcels, instead of twenty as at the original abortive division

of 1623; and these parcels were assigned to eight several persons,

among whom were the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, and the

Earls of Arundel, Carlisle and Sterling. Arundel alone of these was

one of the Lords Commissioners. Gorges received Maine as his portion;

and Mason got New Hampshire and Cape Ann. Massachusetts, south of

Salem, was assigned to Lord Gorges.

The division thus agreed on was to take effect simultaneously with the

formal surrender by the Council of its great patent. Ten weeks later,

on the 18th of April, at another meeting at Lord Gorges’s house, a

paper was read and entered upon the records, in which the reasons for

surrendering the patent were set forth. At a subsequent meeting on

the 26th a petition to the King was approved, in which it was prayed

that separate patents might be issued securing to the associates in

severalty the domains they had assigned to each other. A declaration

from the King was also then read, in which the royal intention of

appointing Sir Ferdinando Gorges governor-general of New England was

formally announced. Speaking by the mouth of the King, the Primate did

not propose “to suffer such numbers of people to run to ruin, and to

religious intents to languish, for want of timely remedy and sovereign

assistance.” Curiously enough, also, this typically Laudian sentiment

was enunciated at Whitehall the very day, the 26th of April, 1635, upon

which, on the other side of the Atlantic, the Marblehead fishermen

had brought in word of strange vessels hovering mysteriously upon the

coast, causing the Governor and assistants to hurry to Boston and an

alarm to be spread through all the towns.[137]

Before proceeding to eject the present occupants of the New England

soil, or to force them to some compromise as an alternative thereto, it

remained for the grantees of the now defunct Council to perfect their

new titles. Proceedings to this end were not delayed. The division had

been agreed upon on the 3d of February, and on the 26th of April the

new patents had been petitioned for. Ten days later Thomas Morton was

“entertained to be solicitor for confirmation of the said deeds under

the great seal, as also to prosecute suit at law for the repealing

of the patent belonging to the Massachusetts Company. And is to have

for fee twenty shillings a term, and such further reward as those who

are interested in the affairs of New England shall think him fit to

deserve, upon the judgment given in the cause.” A month later, on the

7th of June, 1635, the formal surrender of its patent by the Council

took place.[138]

Morton, however, was not destined to land at Boston in the train of

Governor-general Gorges. The effort of 1634-5 was a mere repetition,

on a larger and more impressive scale, of the effort of 1623. The

latter had resulted in the abortive Robert Gorges expedition, and

the former now set all the courts at Westminster in solemn action.

Neither of them, however, came to anything. They both failed, also,

from the same cause,--want of money. The machinery in each case was

imposing, and there was a great deal of it. Seen from New England

it must have appeared simply overpowering. The King, the Primate,

the Lords Commissioners, the Attorney General, the Court of King’s

Bench, the Great Seal, and a governor-general representing the Duke

of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton and the Earls of Arundel, Carlisle

and Sterling, royal proprietors, were all at work together to bring

about the destruction of an infant colony. When, however, it came to

accomplishing anything in a practical way, it grew apparent by degrees

that behind all this tremendous display of machinery there was nothing

but Sir Ferdinando Gorges,--an active-minded, adventurous soldier,

skilled in Court ways, persistent and full of resource, but with small

means of his own, and no faculty of obtaining means from others. When

it became therefore a question of real action, calling for the sinews

of war, the movement flopped dead in 1635, just as it had stopped in

1623. In 1635 it is true, Gorges had the assistance of Captain John

Mason, who was an energetic man with means at his command, and it was

through him that a ship was to be provided.[139] The building of this

ship, however, without doubt strained to the utmost the resources of

all concerned; and when, in launching, it suffered a mishap, again

probably from insufficient means, they could not make the damage good.

The royal exchequer was then as empty as Gorges’s own purse. The King

was living on benevolences, and on fines levied upon the great nobles

for encroachments on the royal forests. The writs to collect ship-money

were issued in this very year. The next year public offices were sold.

Under these circumstances no assistance could for the present be looked

for from Charles or Laud. As for the noble associates, among whom the

New England coast had just been parcelled out, while perfectly willing

to accept great domains in America, they would venture nothing more to

take actual possession of them in 1635 than they had ventured in 1623.

Nothing at all was to be obtained from that quarter. Speaking of Gorges

and Mason, and the failure of their plans at this time, Winthrop wrote,

“The Lord frustrated their design.” This was the pious way of putting

it. In point of fact, however, the real safety of Massachusetts now

depended on more homely and every-day considerations. Gorges and Mason

could not raise the money absolutely necessary to carry their design

out.

Nevertheless, though this delay was disappointing, there was no

occasion for despair. Things moved slowly; that was all. Gorges

represented the New England part of that royal system which was to

stand or fall as a whole. In the spring and summer of 1635 it looked

very much as if it was destined to stand. There was then no thought of

a parliament at Court, or expectation of one among the patriots. The

crown lawyers were hunting up precedents which would enable the King to

levy taxes to suit himself. Wentworth had brought Ireland into a state

of perfect subjection. Laud was supreme in England. The prospects for

“Thorough” were never so good. If “Thorough” prevailed in England it

would in Massachusetts. There could be no doubt of that. Meanwhile,

though lack of ready means had put it out of Gorges’s power to go to

New England at once, there was no break or delay in legal proceedings.

In June, 1635, the attorney-general filed in the King’s Bench a writ of

_quo warranto_ against the Massachusetts Bay Company. This was the work

which Thomas Morton had a month before been “entertained to prosecute,”

and the promptness of the attorney-general would seem to indicate

that on Morton’s part at least there was no failure in activity. The

plan was to set the charter aside, not because of any abuse of the

powers lawfully conferred in it, but on the ground that it was void

_ab initio_. Every title to land held under it would thus be vitiated.

In answer to the summons some of the original associates came in and

pleaded, while others made default. Cradock made default. In his case,

therefore, judgment was given at the Michaelmas, or September term,

1635, and the charter was declared void, all the franchises conveyed

in it being resumed by the King.[140] This portion of the legal work

in hand, therefore, that more particularly entrusted to Morton, seems

to have been promptly and efficiently done. As respects the patents

for the domains granted under the last partition, things do not seem

to have moved so rapidly, for towards the close of November a meeting

of the associates of the now dissolved Council was held at the house

of Lord Sterling, and a vote passed that steps should be taken to

get patents to the individual patentees passed the seals as soon as

possible. Morton was in fact reminded of his duties.

A heavy blow was however impending over Gorges. He himself was now an

elderly man, verging close upon seventy years.[141] He could not have

been as active and as energetic as he once had been, and even his

sanguine disposition must have felt the usual depressing influence

of hope long deferred. Mason had of late been the mainstay of his

enterprise. Only a year before, that resolute man had sent out a large

expedition, numbering some seventy men, to Piscataqua, and he was

contemplating extensive explorations towards Lake Champlain. Morton

eulogized him as a “very good Commonwealth’s man, a true foster-father

and lover of virtue,”[142] and Winthrop referred to him as “the chief

mover in all the attempts against us.”[143] In December, 1635, Mason

died,[144] and not improbably it was the anticipation of his death

which led to that meeting of the Council at which the speedy issuing

of the individual patents was urged. However this may be, the loss of

Mason seems to have been fatal to Gorges’s hopes; it was the lopping

off of the right arm of his undertakings. From that time forward there

was obviously no source from which he could hope to get the money

necessary to enable him to effect anything, except the royal treasury.

Of this, for two or three years yet, until the Scotch troubles

destroyed the last chance of the success of the ship-money scheme,

there seemed a very good prospect. Gorges, however, could not afford to

wait. His remaining time was short. Accordingly, after Mason’s death,

little is heard of him or of the Lords Commissioners.

During the next seven years, consequently, the traces of Morton are

few. There is a passing glimpse obtained of him in March, 1636, through

a letter from Cradock to Winthrop,[145] from which it appears he was

then in London and actively scheming against the Massachusetts Company.

He would seem at this time to have been in the pay of one George

Cleaves, a man of some importance and subsequently quite prominent in

the early history of Maine. Cleaves apparently had proposed some scheme

to Cradock touching the Massachusetts Company, and Morton came to see

him about it. Thereupon Cradock says, “I having no desire to speak

with Morton alone put him off a turn or two on the exchange, till I

found Mr. Pierce,” etc. Further on in the same letter he speaks of his

“greyffe and disdayne” at the abuse heaped on the Company, and of the

“heavey burdens, there lode on me by T. M.;” and adds, “God forgive him

that is the cause of it.”

Early in 1637, and in consequence probably of the _quo warranto_

proceedings, a commission of some sort would appear to have been

granted to certain persons in New England for the government of that

country.[146] How or under what circumstances this was obtained is

nowhere told. There is a mystery about it. Gorges afterwards assured

Winthrop that he knew nothing of it,[147] and only a copy ever reached

America, the original, Winthrop says, being “staid at the seal for

want of paying the fees.” He further says that Cleaves procured this

commission, as also a sort of patent, or, as he calls it, “a protection

under the privy signet for searching out the great lake of Iracoyce.”

From all this it would appear that the whole thing was some impotent

and inconsequential move on the part of Morton; for not only does

Winthrop say that the document was “staid at the seal,” but Cradock

wrote that the matter in reference to which Morton wanted to see him,

on behalf of Cleaves, related to paying the charge “in taking out

somewhat under the seale.” Gorges speaks of Morton as being at that

time Cleaves’s agent; and in the _New Canaan_, which either had just

been published or was then in the press, there is a glowing account of

the “great lake Erocoise,” and its boundless wealth of beaver,[148]

to which apparently the imaginative author had directed Cleaves’s

attention sufficiently to induce him to take out the “protection” which

Winthrop alludes to.

The year 1637 was the turning-period in the fortunes of King Charles

and of Archbishop Laud, and consequently of Gorges and Morton.

Up to that time everything had gone sufficiently well, if not in

Massachusetts, at least in England, Ireland, and even Scotland. Now,

however, the system began to break down; giving way first, as would

naturally enough be the case, at its weakest point. This was in

Scotland, where the attempt to force Episcopacy on the people resulted

in the famous “stony Sabbath” on the 23d of July. The _New Canaan_

was probably going through the press during the deceitful period of

profound calm which preceded that eventful day. Though now published,

there is strong internal evidence that the book was written in 1634.

Not only does this appear from the extract from its last page in the

letter to Jeffreys, already referred to,[149] but in another place[150]

there is reference to the expedition of Henry Josselyn for the more

complete discovery of Lake Champlain, which is mentioned as then in

preparation. Henry Josselyn left England about the time Morton was

writing to Jeffreys, or a little earlier, and reached Piscataqua in

June, 1634.[151] Mason, on the other hand, is mentioned as then living,

and as having fitted out the expedition of Josselyn. Mason, however,

it has already been seen, died in December, 1635. Written consequently

after May, 1634, the _New Canaan_, it would seem, received no revision

later than 1635. It represented Morton’s feelings during the time when

he was most confident of an early and triumphant return to New England.

It was published just when the affairs of Charles and Laud were at

their full flood, and before the tide had begun to ebb.

No mention is found of the _New Canaan_ at the time of its publication.

It is not known, indeed, that a single copy was sent out to New

England. Though it must have caused no little comment and scandal among

the friends and correspondents of the colonists, there is no allusion

to it in their published letters or in the documents of the time, and

in 1644 Winthrop apparently had never seen it. Bradford energetically

refers to it as “an infamouse and scurillous booke against many godly

and cheefe men of the cuntrie; full of lyes and slanders, and fraight

with profane callumnies against their names and persons, and the ways

of God.”[152] A copy of it may, therefore, have been brought over to

Plymouth by one of the agents of the colony, and there passed from hand

to hand. It does not appear, however, that at the time it attracted

any general or considerable notice in America; while in England, of

course, it would have interested only a small class of persons.

There is one significant reference which would seem to indicate that

the publication of the _New Canaan_ was not agreeable to Gorges.

However much he might attack the charter of the Massachusetts Company,

Sir Ferdinando always showed himself anxious to keep on friendly

terms with the leading men of the colony. In the _Briefe Narration_

he takes pains to speak of “the patience and wisdom of Mr. Winthrop,

Mr. Humphreys, Mr. Dudley, and others their assistants;”[153] and with

Winthrop he was in correspondence, even authorizing him and others

to act for him in Maine. He deceived no one by this, for Winthrop

afterwards described him as “pretending by his letters and speeches to

seek our welfare;”[154] but he evidently had always in mind that he

was to go out some day to New England as a governor-general, and that

it would not do for him to be too openly hostile to those over whom he

proposed to rule. He regarded them as his people. When, therefore, he

had occasion to write to Winthrop in August, 1637, though he made no

reference to the _New Canaan_, which had probably been published early

in the year, he took pains to say that Morton was “wholely casheered

from intermedlinge with anie our affaires hereafter.”[155]

It is however open to question whether, in making this statement,

Gorges was not practising a little of that king-craft for which his

master, James I., had been so famous. In 1637 Morton may have been

in disgrace with him; but if so it was a passing disgrace. Four years

later, in 1641, Sir Ferdinando, as “Lord of the Province of Maine,”

indulged his passion for feudal regulation by granting a municipal

charter to the town of Acomenticus, now York. A formidable document of

great import, this momentous state paper was signed and delivered by

the Lord Paramount, much as an English sovereign might have granted

a franchise to his faithful city of London; and accordingly it was

countersigned by three witnesses, one of them a member of his own

family. First of the three witnesses to sign was Thomas Morton.[156] He

evidently was in no disgrace then.

With the exception of this signature to the Acomenticus charter, there

is no trace to be found of Morton between August 1637, when Gorges

wrote that he had “casheered” him, and the summer of 1643, when he

reappeared once more at Plymouth. During the whole of that time things

evidently went with him, as they did with Charles and Laud, from bad

to worse. Once only had the Lords Commissioners given any signs of

life. This was in the spring of 1638, when on the 4th of April the

Board met at Whitehall. The record of the meeting states that petitions

and complaints from Massachusetts, for want of a settled and orderly

government, were growing more frequent. This is very possible, for

the Antinomian Controversy was then at its height, and indeed, the

very day the Lords Commissioners met, Mrs. Hutchinson, having left

Boston in obedience to Governor Winthrop’s mandate a week before, was

on her way to join her husband and friends in Rhode Island. Under

these circumstances, calling to mind the futile order for the return

of the charter, sent to Winthrop in 1634 through Cradock, and taking

official notice of the result of the _quo warranto_ proceedings, the

Board resolved upon a more decided tone. The clerk in attendance was

instructed to send out to Massachusetts a peremptory demand for the

immediate surrender of the charter. It was to be sent back to London by

the return voyage of the vessel which carried out the missive of the

Board; “it being resolved,” so that missive ran, “that in case of any

further neglect or contempt by them shewed therein, their Lordships

will cause a strict course to be taken against them, and will move his

Majesty to reassume into his own hands the whole plantation.”[157]

If, as was probably the case, Morton was the secret mover of this

action, it proved to be his last effort. It was completely fruitless

also. When the order reached Boston, sometime in the early summer of

1638, it naturally caused no little alarm, for the apprehension of a

general governor had not yet disappeared. Indeed, on the 12th of April,

“a general fast [had been] kept through all the churches, by advice

from the Court, for seeking the Lord to prevent evil that we feared to

be intended against us from England by a general governor.”[158] With

the missive of the Lords Commissioners, however, came also tidings

of “the troubles which arose in Scotland about the Book of Common

Prayer and the canons which the King would have forced upon the Scotch

churches.”[159] The result was that in August, instead of sending out

the charter, Governor Winthrop, at the direction of the General Court,

wrote “to excuse our not sending of it; for it was resolved to be best

not to send it.”[160]

Archbishop Laud molested the colony no further. Doubtless Morton yet

endeavored more than once to stir him up to action, and the next year

he received from New England other and bitter complaints of the same

character as those which had come to him before. This time it was the

Rev. George Burdet--a disreputable clergyman, subsequently a thorn

in Gorges’s side as now in that of Winthrop--who wrote to him. The

harassed and anxious Primate could, however, only reply that “by reason

of the much business now lay upon them, [the Lords Commissioners] could

not at present ... redress such disorders as he had informed them

of.”[161] Events in England and Scotland were then moving on rapidly as

well as steadily to their outcome, and Massachusetts was bidden to take

care of itself.

Nothing more is heard of Morton until the summer of 1643. The Civil

War was then dragging along in its earlier stages, before Fairfax and

Cromwell put their hands to it. It was the summer during which Prince

Rupert took Bristol and the first battle of Newbury was fought,--the

summer made memorable by the deaths of Hampden and Falkland. Gorges had

identified himself with the Royalist side, and now Morton seems to have

been fairly starved out of England. When or how he came to Plymouth we

do not know; but, on the 11th of September, Edward Winslow, whom he

had eight years before “clapte up in the Fleete,”[162] thus wrote to

Winthrop:--

“Concerning Morton, our Governor gave way that he should winter

here, but begone as soon as winter breaks up. Captain Standish takes

great offence thereat, especially that he is so near him as Duxbury,

and goeth sometimes a fowling in his ground. He cannot procure the

least respect amongst our people, liveth meanly at four shillings

per week, and content to drink water, so he may diet at that price.

But admit he hath a protection, yet it were worth the while to deal

with him till we see it. The truth is I much question his pretended

employment; for he hath here only showed the frame of a Common-weale

and some old sealed commissions, but no inside known. As for Mr.

Rigby if he be so honest, good and hopefull an instrument as report

passeth on him, he hath good hap to light on two of the arrantest

known knaves that ever trod on New English shore to be his agents

east and west, as Cleaves and Morton: but I shall be jealous on him

till I know him better, and hope others will take heed how they

trust him who investeth such with power who have devoted themselves

to the ruin of the country, as Morton hath. And for my part, (who

if my heart deceive me not can pass by all the evil instrumentally

he brought on me,) would not have this serpent stay amongst us, who

out of doubt in time will get strength to him if he be suffered, who

promiseth large portions of land about New Haven, Narragansett, &c.,

to all that will go with him, but hath a promise but of one person

who is old, weak and decrepid, a very atheist and fit companion for

him. But, indeed, Morton is the odium of our people at present, and

if he be suffered, (for we are diversely minded,) it will be just

with God, who hath put him in our hands and we will foster such an

one, that afterward we shall suffer for it.”[163]

The Rigby referred to in this letter was Mr. Alexander Rigby, an

English gentleman of wealth who, besides being a strong Puritan, was

a member of the Long Parliament, and at one time held a commission

as colonel in the army. Cleaves was the George Cleaves already

mentioned as having come out in 1637, with a protection under the

privy signet.[164] He had then appeared as an agent of Gorges, but

subsequently he had got possession in Maine of the “Plough patent,”

so called, under which the title to a large part of the province was

claimed adversely to Gorges.[165] This patent Cleaves induced Rigby to

buy, and the latter was now endeavoring to get his title recognized,

and ultimately succeeded in so doing. Cleaves, as well as Morton,

enjoyed the reputation of being “a firebrand of dissension,”[166] and

the two had long acted together. As Gorges had joined his fortunes to

the Royalist side, Morton clearly had nothing to gain by pretending

at Plymouth to be his agent or under his protection. So he seems to

have tried to pass himself off as a Commonwealth’s man, commissioned

by Rigby to act in his behalf. Winslow was probably quite right

in suspecting that this was all a pretence. Rigby’s claim was for

territory in Maine. It is not known that he ever had any interests in

Rhode Island or Connecticut. There can, in short, be little doubt that

Morton was now nothing more than a poor, broken-down, disreputable, old

impostor, with some empty envelopes and manufactured credentials in his

pocket.

At Plymouth, as would naturally be supposed, Morton made no headway.

But the province of Maine was then in an uneasy, troubled condition,

and there was reported to be a strong party for the king in the

neighborhood of Casco Bay. Thither accordingly Morton seems to have

gone in June, 1644.[167] His movements were closely watched, and

Endicott was notified that he would go by sea to Gloucester, hoping to

get a passage from thence to the eastward. A warrant for his arrest was

at once despatched, but apparently he eluded it; nor if he went there,

which, indeed, is doubtful, did Morton long remain in Maine. In August

he was in Rhode Island, and on the 5th of that month he is thus alluded

to in a letter from Coddington to Winthrop:--

“For Morton he was [insinuating] who was for the King at his first

coming to Portsmouth, and would report to such as he judged to be of

his mind he was glad [to meet with] so many cavaliers; ... and he had

lands to dispose of to his followers in each Province, and from Cape

Ann to Cape Cod was one.... And that he had wrong in the Bay [to the]

value of two hundred pounds, and made bitter complaints thereof. But

Morton would let it rest till the Governor came over to right him;

and did intimate he knew whose roast his spits and jacks turned.”[168]

Prospering in Rhode Island no more than at Plymouth, Morton is next

heard of as a prisoner in Boston. How he came within the clutches of

the Massachusetts magistrates is not known; his necessities or his

assurance may have carried him to Boston, or he may have been pounced

upon by Endicott’s officers as he was furtively passing through the

province. In whatever way it came about, he was in custody on the 9th

of September, just five weeks from the time of Coddington’s letter

to Winthrop, and the latter then made the following entry in his

Journal:[169]--

“At the court of assistants Thomas Morton was called forth presently

after the lecture, that the country might be satisfied of the justice

of our proceeding against him. There was laid to his charge his

complaint against us at the council board, which he denied. Then we

produced the copy of the bill exhibited by Sir Christopher Gardiner,

etc., wherein we were charged with treason, rebellion, etc., wherein

he was named as a party or witness. He denied that he had any hand

in the information, only was called as a witness. To convince him

to be the principal party, it was showed: 1. That Gardiner had no

occasion to complain against us, for he was kindly used and dismissed

in peace, professing much engagement for the great courtesy he found

here. 2. Morton had set forth a book against us, and had threatened

us, and had prosecuted a _quo warranto_ against us, which he did not

deny. 3. His letter was produced,[170] written soon after to Mr.

Jeffreys, his old acquaintance and intimate friend.”

This passage is characteristic both of the man and of the time. The

prisoner now arraigned before the magistrates had been set in the

stocks, all his property had been confiscated, and his house had been

burned down before his eyes. He had been sent back to England, under a

warrant, to stand his trial for crimes it was alleged he had committed.

In England he had been released from imprisonment in due course of

law. Having now returned to Massachusetts, he was brought before the

magistrates, “that the country might be satisfied of the justice

of our proceeding against him.” As the result of this proceeding,

which broke down for want of proof, the alleged offender is again

imprisoned, heavily fined, and narrowly escapes a whipping. Under all

these circumstances, it becomes interesting to inquire what the exact

offence alleged against him was. It was stated by Winthrop. He had made

a “complaint against us at the council board.”

“The council board” thus referred to was the royal Privy Council. It

represented the king, the supreme power in the state, the source from

whence the charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company was derived. The

complaint, therefore, charged to have been made, was made to the common

superior, and it alleged the abuse, by an inferior, of certain powers

and privileges which that superior had granted. It would seem to have

been no easy task for the magistrates to point out, either to the

prisoner or to the country it was proposed to satisfy, any prescriptive

law, much less any penal statute, which made a criminal offence out of

a petition to the acknowledged supreme power in the state, even though

that petition set forth the alleged abuse of charter privileges.

But it is not probable that this view of the matter ever even suggested

itself to Winthrop and his associates. It does not seem even to have

been urged upon them by the prisoner. On the contrary he appears

to have accepted the inevitable, and practically admitted that a

complaint to the king was in Massachusetts, as Burdet had some years

before asserted, “accounted a perjury and treason in our general

courts,”[171] punishable at the discretion of the magistrates. Morton,

therefore, denied having made the complaint, and the magistrates were

unable to prove it against him. The most singular and unaccountable

feature in the proceedings is that the _New Canaan_ was not put in

evidence. Apparently there was no copy of it to be had. Could one

have been produced, it is scarcely possible that the avowed author of

the libellous strictures on Endicott, then himself governor, should

have escaped condign punishment of some sort from a bench of Puritan

magistrates. But Winthrop merely mentions that he had “set forth a book

against us,” and Maverick says that this was denied and could not be

proved.[172] Had a copy of the _New Canaan_ then been at hand, either

in Boston or at Plymouth, a glance at the titlepage would have proved

who “set [it] forth” beyond possibility of denial.

The only entry in the Massachusetts records relating to this proceeding

is as follows:--

“For answer to Thomas Morton petition, the magistrates have called

him publicly, and have laid divers things to his charge, which he

denies; and therefore they think fit that further evidence be sent

for into England, and that Mr Downing may have instructions to search

out evidence against him, and he to lie in prison in the mean time,

unless he find sufficient bail.”[173]

This entry is from the records of the General Court, held in November

1644. Among the unpublished documents in the Massachusetts archives

is yet another petition from Morton, bearing no date, but, from the

endorsement upon it, evidently submitted to the General Court of May,

1645, six months later, when Dudley was governor. This petition is as

follows:--

_To the honored Court at Boston assembled:_

The humble petition of Thomas Morton, prisoner.

Your petitioner craveth the favour of this honored Court to cast back

your eies and behould what your poore petitioner hath suffered in

these parts.

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

Secondly, his body clapt into Irons, and sent home in a desperat

ship, unvittled, as if he had been a man worthy of death, which

appeared contrary when he came there.

Now the petitioner craves this further that you would be pleased to

consider what is laid against him: (taking it for granted to be true)

which is not proved: whether such a poore worme as I had not some

cause to crawle out of this condition above mentioned.

Thirdly, the petitioner craves this favoure of you, as to view his

actions lately towards New England, whether they have not been

serviceable to some gentlemen in the country; but I will not praise

my selfe.

Fourthly, the petitioner coming into these parts, which he loveth,

on godly gentlemen’s imployments, and your worshipps having a former

jelosy of him, and a late untrue intelligence of him, your petitioner

has been imprisoned manie Moneths and laid in Irons to the decaying

of his Limbs; Let your petitioner finde soe much favoure, as to see

that you can passe by former offence, which finding the petitioner

hopes he shall stand on his watch to doe you service as God shall

enable him.

Upon this document, certainly humble enough in tone, appear the

following endorsements:--

The house of Deputies desire the honored magistrates to return them

a reason, wherefore the petitioner came not to his triall the last

quarter Courte according to graunte (as they conceave) of a former

petition presented to the Courte by him.

ROBT. BRIDGES.

The reason why he came not to his tryall was the not cominge of

evidence out of England against him which we expect by the next ship.

THO: DUDLEY _Gov^r_

The house of Deputies have made choyce of Major Gibbons, and Captain

Jennison to treate with the honored magistrates about this petition

of Morton.

ROBT. BRIDGES.

Singularly enough the Major Gibbons to whom Morton’s petition was

thus referred had, in former years, been one of his followers at

Merry-Mount. He was a man of ability and energy, the whole of whose

singular career, as traced in an interesting note of Palfrey’s, will

not bear a too close scrutiny.[174] At the time of Morton’s arrest by

Miles Standish, in 1629, Gibbons was probably one of those belonging

to the Merry-Mount company who had then “gone up into the inlands

to trade with the savages.”[175] During that summer he experienced

religion in a quite unexpected way, and now, in 1645, while his old

master was rotting in the Boston jail, Gibbons was a prosperous

merchant, a deputy to the General Court, and “chief military officer of

the train-band of the town.” Higher military honors and severe business

vicissitudes were in store for him. It nowhere appears whether under

these circumstances Major Gibbons had either the will or the ability to

be of service to his former chief, and Winthrop is the only authority

for what remains of Morton’s story. It is soon told.

“Having been kept in prison about a year in expectation of further

evidence out of England, he was again called before the court, and

after some debate what to do with him, he was fined 100 pounds, and

set at liberty. He was a charge to the country, for he had nothing,

and we thought not fit to inflict corporal punishment upon him,

being old and crazy, but thought better to fine him and give him his

liberty, as if it had been to procure his fine, but indeed to leave

him opportunity to go out of the jurisdiction, as he did soon after,

and he went to Acomenticus, and living there poor and despised, he

died within two years after.”[176]

Morton himself asserted that the harsh treatment he underwent in

prison, while waiting for that evidence from England which was to

convict him of some crime, broke down his health and hastened his end.

If he was indeed, as Maverick subsequently stated,[177] kept in jail

and, as he himself says, in irons, through an entire New England

winter, on the prison fare of those days, and without either fire or

bedding, this seems wholly probable.

* * * * *

There was about Thomas Morton nothing that was remarkable. On the

contrary he was one of a class of men common enough in the days of

Elizabeth and the Stuarts to have found their way into the literature

of the period, as well as into that more modern romance which

undertakes to deal with it. It is the Alsatian Squire and Wildrake

type. Morton chanced to get out of place. He was a vulgar Royalist

libertine, thrown by accident into the midst of a Puritan community.

He was unable or unwilling to accept the situation, or to take himself

off; and hence followed his misfortunes and his notoriety. Had he in

1625, or even in 1629, gone to Virginia or to New York, he would have

lived in quiet and probably died in poverty, leaving nothing behind to

indicate that he had ever been. As it is, he will receive a mention in

every history of America.

More recently also certain investigators, who have approached the

subject from a Church of England point of view, have shown some

disposition to adopt Morton’s cause as their own, and to attribute

his persecution, not to his immoral life or illicit trade, but to his

devotion to the Book of Common Prayer.[178] It is another article in

the long impeachment of the founders of New England, and it has even

been alleged that “it still remains for Massachusetts to do justice to

Morton, who had his faults, though he was not the man his enemies, and

notably Bradford, declared him to be.”[179]

The _New English Canaan_ is the best and only conclusive evidence on

this point. In its pages Morton very clearly shows what he was, and the

nature of “his faults.” He was a born Bohemian, and as he passed on in

life he became an extremely reckless but highly amusing old debauchee

and tippler. When he was writing his book, Archbishop Laud was the

head of the board of Lords Commissioners. On the action of that board

depended all the author’s hopes. In view of this fact, there are, in

the _New Canaan_, few more delightful or characteristic passages than

that in which, describing his arrest by Standish, Morton announces that

it was “because mine host was a man that endeavored to advance the

dignity of the Church of England; which they, on the contrary part,

would labor to vilify with uncivil terms; envying against the sacred

Book of Common Prayer, and mine host that used it in a laudable manner

amongst his family as a practice of piety.”[180]

The part he was endeavoring to play when he wrote this passage was

one not very congenial to him, and he makes an awkward piece of work

of it. The sudden tone of sanctimony which he infuses into the words

quoted, hardly covers up the leer and gusto with which he had just

been describing the drunkenness and debauchery of Merry-Mount,--how

“the good liquor” had flowed to all comers, while “the lasses in

beaver-coats” had been welcome “night and day;” how “he that played

Proteus, with the help of Priapus, put their noses out of joint;” and

how that “barren doe” became fruitful, who is mysteriously alluded to

as a “goodly creature of incontinency” who had “tried a camp royal in

other parts.” Though, from the point of view before alluded to, it

has been asserted that the Massachusetts magistrates “invented ...

insinuations respecting [Morton’s] treatment of [the Indian] women,

whom, in reality, he had fought to instruct in the principles of

religion,”[181]--though this and other similar assertions have been

made with apparent gravity, yet it is impossible to read the third book

of the _New Canaan_, saturated as it is with drunkenness, ribaldry

and scoffing, without coming to the conclusion that _Don Quixote_,

_Rabelais_ and the _Decameron_ are far more likely to have been in

request at Merry-Mount than the Bible or the Book of Common Prayer.

Not that the _New Canaan_ is in itself an obscene or even a coarse

book. On the contrary, judged by the standard of its time, it is

singularly the reverse. Indeed it is almost wholly free from either

word or allusion which would offend the taste of the present day. Yet

the writer of the _New Canaan_ was none the less a scoffer, a man of

undevout mind. As to the allegation that his devotion to the Church

of England and its ritual was the cause of his arrest by the Plymouth

authorities, the answer is obvious and decisive. Blackstone was an

Episcopalian, and a devout one, retaining even in his wilderness home

the canonical coat which told of his calling.[182] Maverick and

Walford were Episcopalians; they lived and died such. The settlers

at Wessagusset were Episcopalians. In the dwellings of all these the

religious services of the times, customary among Episcopalians, were

doubtless observed, for they were all religious men. Yet not one of

them was ever in any way molested by the Plymouth people; but, on

the contrary, they one and all received aid and encouragement from

Plymouth. Episcopalians as they were, they all joined in dealing

with Morton as a common enemy and a public danger; and such he

unquestionably was. It was not, then, because he made use of the Common

Prayer that he was first driven from the Massachusetts Bay; it was

because he was a nuisance and a source of danger. That subsequently,

and by the Massachusetts authorities, he was dealt with in a way at

once high-handed and oppressive, has been sufficiently shown in these

pages. Yet it is by no means clear that, under similar circumstances,

he would not have been far more severely and summarily dealt with at a

later period, when the dangers of a frontier life had brought into use

an unwritten code, which evinced even a less regard for life than, in

Morton’s case, the Puritans evinced for property.[183]

As a literary performance the _New Canaan_, it is unnecessary to say,

has survived through no merits of its own. While it is, on the whole,

a better written book than the _Wonder-Working Providence_, it is not

so well written as Wood’s _Prospect_; and it cannot compare with what

we have from the pens of Smith or Gorges,--much less from those of

Winslow, Winthrop and, above all, Bradford. Indeed, it is amazing how

a man who knew as much as Morton knew of events and places now full of

interest, could have sat down to write about them at all, and then,

after writing so much, have told so little. Rarely stating anything

quite correctly,--the most careless and slipshod of authors,--he took a

positive pleasure in concealing what he meant to say under a cloud of

metaphor. Accordingly, when printed, the _New Canaan_ fell still-born

from the press, the only contemporaneous trace of it which can be

found in English literature being Butler’s often quoted passage in

_Hudibras_, in which the Wessagusset hanging is alluded to.[184] It

is even open to question whether this reference was due to Butler’s

having read the book. The passage referred to is in the second part

of _Hudibras_, which was not published until 1664, twenty-seven years

after the publication of the _New Canaan_. It is perfectly possible

that Butler may have known Morton; for in 1637 the future author of

_Hudibras_ was already twenty-five years old, and Morton lingered about

London for six or seven years after that. There are indications that

he knew Ben Jonson;[185] and, indeed, it is scarcely possible that

with his sense of humor and convivial tastes Morton should not often

have met the poets and playwrights of the day at the Mermaid. If he

and the author of _Hudibras_ ever did chance to meet, they must have

proved congenial spirits, for there is much that is Hudibrastic in the

_New Canaan_. Not impossibly, therefore, the idea of a vicarious New

England hanging dwelt for years in the brain of Butler, not as the

reminiscence of a passage he had read in some forgotten book, but as a

vague recollection of an amusing story which he had once heard Morton

tell.

It is, indeed, the author’s sense of humor, just alluded to, which

gives to the _New Canaan_ its only real distinction among the early

works relating to New England. In this respect it stands by itself.

In all the rest of those works, one often meets with passages of

simplicity, of pathos and of great descriptive power,--never with

anything which was both meant to raise a smile, and does it. The

writers seemed to have no sense of humor, no perception of the

ludicrous. Bradford, for instance, as a passage “rather of mirth

than of weight,” describes how he put a stop to the Christmas games

at Plymouth in 1621. There is a grim solemnity in his very chuckle.

Winthrop gives a long account of the penance of Captain John

Underhill, as he stood upon a stool in the church, “without a band,

in a foul linen cap pulled close to his eyes,” and “blubbering,”

confessed his adultery with the cooper’s wife.[186] Yet he evidently

recorded it with unbroken gravity. Then, in 1644, he mentions that

“two of our ministers’ sons, being students in the college, robbed

two dwelling-houses, in the night, of some 15 pounds. Being found

out, they were ordered by the governors of the college to be there

whipped, which was performed by the president himself--yet they were

about twenty years of age.”[187] If Morton had recorded this incident,

he could not have helped seeing a ludicrous side to it, and he would

have expressed it in some humorous, or at least in some grotesque way.

Winthrop saw the serious side of everything, and the serious side only.

In this he was like all the rest. Such solemnity, such everlasting

consciousness of responsibility to God and man, is grand and perhaps

impressive; but it grows wearisome. It is pleasant to have it broken

at last, even though that which breaks it is in some respects not to

be commended. A touch of ribaldry becomes bearable. Among what are

called _Americana_, therefore, the _New Canaan_ is and will always

remain a refreshing book. It is a connecting link. Poor as it may be,

it is yet all we have to remind us that in literature, also, Bradford

and Winthrop and Cotton were Englishmen of the time of Shakespeare and

Jonson and Butler.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]

It remains only to speak of the bibliography of the _New Canaan_,

which at one time excited some discussion, and of the present edition.

Written before the close of 1635, the _New Canaan_ was printed at

Amsterdam in 1637. It has been reprinted but once,--by Force, in the

second volume of his _American Tracts_. The present is, therefore,

the second reprint, and the first annotated edition. For a number of

years it was supposed that copies of the book were in existence with

an alternative titlepage, bearing the imprint of Charles Greene, and

the date of 1632.[188] This supposition was, however, very carefully

examined into by Mr. Winsor in the _Harvard University Literary

Bulletins_ (Nos. 9 and 10, 1878-9, pp. 196, 244), and found to be

partially, at least, groundless. It was due to the fact that Force

made his reprint from a copy of the book in his collection, now in the

Library of Congress. That copy lacked a portion or the whole of the

titlepage; and the missing parts seem to have been supplied, without

mention of the fact being made, from the entry of the book under 1632

in White Kennet’s _Bibliothecæ Americanæ Primordia_. Apparently the

error originated in the following way. The _New Canaan_ was entered

for copyright in the Stationers’ Registers in London, November 18,

1633, in behalf of Charles Greene, the printer. There is no reason to

suppose that it was then completed, as it may have been entered by

its title alone. If it was, however, completed in part in 1633, the

internal evidence is conclusive that it was both revised[189] and added

to[190] as late as 1634; and, indeed, the Board of Lords Commissioners

for regulating Plantations, to which it is formally dedicated, was not

created until April 10th of that year. Greene did not print the book;

though, as will presently be seen, a certain number of copies may

possibly have been struck off for him with titlepages of their own. The

entry in the Stationers’ Registers was, however, afterwards discovered,

and seems then to have supplied by inference the date of publication,

which could not be learned from certain copies, the titlepages to which

were defective or wanting. The dates given in Lowndes’s _Manual_ would

seem to be simply incorrect.[191] Meanwhile, for reasons probably of

economy, though notice of publication had been given in London, the

book was actually printed in Holland, and the regular titlepage reads:

“Printed at Amsterdam by Jacob Frederick Stam, in the year 1637.” There

are copies, however, the titlepages of which read: “Printed for Charles

Greene, and are sold in Pauls Churchyard,” no date being given.[192] It

is not known that these copies differ in any other respect from those

bearing the usual imprint. The conclusion, therefore, would seem to

be that, as already stated, a number of copies may have been struck

off for Greene with a distinct titlepage. Properly speaking, however,

there seems to have been but one edition of the book. With the

exception of the Force titlepage, which has been shown to be erroneous,

there is no evidence of any copy being in existence bearing an earlier

date than the usual one of Amsterdam, 1637.

Copies of the _New Canaan_ are extremely rare. Savage, in his notes to

Winthrop (vol. i. p. *34), said that he had then, before 1825, never

heard of but one copy, “which was owned by his Excellency John Q.

Adams.” It is from that copy that the present edition is printed. Mr.

Adams purchased it while in Europe prior to the year 1801. It was that

copy also which was temporarily deposited in the Boston Athenæum in

1810, as mentioned in the _Monthly Anthology_ of that date (vol. viii.

p. 420), referred to in the _Harvard University Library Bulletin_,

(No. 9, p. 196). The Rev. George Whitney, in his _History of Quincy_

written in 1826, says (p. 11) that another “copy was lately presented

to the Adams Library of the town of Quincy by the Rev. Thaddeus Mason

Harris.”[193] In addition to these, some dozen or twenty other copies

in all are known to exist in various public and private collections in

America and Europe, several of which are enumerated in the _Literary

Bulletin_ just referred to.