and when at last, in the bleak days of late November, they sighted land,
it turned out to be Cape Cod, and not the Virginia coast at all. The
master of the ship had let his reckonings go wrong, was many leagues
north of the land-fall he had been instructed to make, by the Bay of
Delaware, and found himself, as he closed with the coast he had blindly
come upon, involved in shoals from which he did not very well know how
safely to extricate himself. The Virginia Company had been divided into
two bodies, as Mr. Brewster’s people knew very well, and the gentlemen
in London from whom they had got their charter had no rights over this
northern coast. It belonged now to the separate “Plymouth” branch of
the company. The immigrants had half a mind to make for Hudson’s River,
after all. But the season was late and stormy, and the captain surly and
unwilling, and they determined to land where they were and make the best
of what they had hit upon. They took care first, however, to have some
sort of government made ready for the landing. Their charter from the
Virginia Company being no longer serviceable, and a few even of their
little group of settlers being persons taken aboard in England who were
not of their congregation,—and not certain, therefore, to submit without
compulsion to be governed by their authority and discipline,—they judged
it best to draw up an agreement before going ashore, by which all should
bind themselves to accept the authority of their leaders, until, at any
rate, they should obtain a grant of lands and of power from the Plymouth
Company, upon whose coasts they were thus unexpectedly to be set down.
That done, they were ready to make their landing, and see what sort of a
home the new coast would afford them.
[Illustration: FACSIMILE OF A LETTER FROM MYLES STANDISH TO GOVERNOR
BRADFORD]
The shores of the sea within Cape Cod by no means showed the soft summer
aspect which Captain John Smith had found upon them in 1614, when he
had cruised along these coasts. They had reminded him then of green
Devonshire and the soft slopes of England. But now they were bleak and
frosted and desolate. The pilgrims were not men to lose heart, however,
and their leaders were of such quality as to relish difficulty and find a
zest in daring. Besides Mr. Carver, who had been their agent in obtaining
the Virginia charter, which they could not use, and whom they had chosen
to be their governor, first under their Virginian grant and now again
under the voluntary compact signed there in the ship’s cabin, Captain
Myles Standish was of their company, whose people had served England ever
since Agincourt, and before, who had himself fought, for the love of it,
against the Spaniard in the Low Countries, and who, when the fighting
was over, had happened upon their little congregation at Leyden, and
had chosen to cross with them to America because he liked both them and
the enterprise. There was Edward Winslow, also, a young gentleman of
Worcestershire, who had in like manner chanced to come upon them in his
travels and had of like preference cast in his lot with them; and William
Bradford, of their own humble sort, who had gone with them into Holland
when but a lad of twenty, had made himself a bit of a scholar while he
plied his trade as a silk-weaver, and was now, at thirty, counted already
a tried man of counsel and of action.
[Illustration: EDWARD WINSLOW]
Several weeks elapsed before a suitable place was found for landing
and erecting shelter; and even then it was only “the best they could
find,”—the quiet harbor, within a little bay, upon which Captain Smith
had written “Plymouth” on the map he had sketched as he passed that way,
putting into bays and examining harbors with businesslike curiosity,
six years before. January had come, and the first rigors of winter,
before they got to work to put up shelter. Happily, the winter was mild,
though icy cold, for all that. The strenuous work and cruel exposure of
those first weeks, which wearily lengthened into months ere spring came,
and the poor and insufficient food eked out from their scant supplies,
brought upon them agues, fevers, scurvy, and all the other distempers
that want and exposure bring, and they saw what the settlers at Jamestown
had seen of the pitiless power of the wilderness. Before that dreadful
season of suffering had passed full half their number were dead, Mr.
Carver among the rest, and they had seen a time when there were but six
or seven sound persons among them all to care for the scores who were
stricken. But they were steadfast, as always. They elected Mr. Bradford
governor in the stead of Mr. Carver, and went on as they could with their
fight to live. They knew of no place to which to go back, and no one
asked to go with the _Mayflower_ when she set sail for England again in
April.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF MOURT’S “RELATION”
_The earliest published book relating to Plymouth Colony_]
They worked against tremendous odds there on that barren coast; but they
wrung a living from it almost from the first, and year by year patiently
learned to succeed at the hard thing they had undertaken. It was a great
burden to them that they had had to borrow large sums of money from
exacting London merchants to pay for the ship that was to take them out
and for the stores she was to carry. They had been obliged to take the
lenders into a sort of partnership, and very soon found that they were
expected to return a profit almost from the outset, working for a common
store as the hapless colonists of the Virginia Company had worked till
sheer failure brought them a change of system. It was many a long year
before they were able to buy themselves out of that quandary and begin at
last a free life for themselves. Additional settlers came out to them in
small companies, season by season; but they were not always such persons
as they wished for. They were, too many of them, young fellows of an
irresponsible and unmanageable sort, “who little considered whither or
about what they went.” It was not until a full ten years had gone by that
the little congregation were able to fulfil their long-cherished hope and
bring over from Leyden considerable numbers of their old-time comrades in
exile; and before that time came Mr. Robinson, their beloved pastor, whom
they had most desired, was dead.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF EDWARD WINSLOW’S “GOOD NEWES”]
[Illustration: PAGE FROM BRADFORD’S “HISTORY OF PLIMOTH PLANTATION”
SHOWING BRADFORD’S HANDWRITING]
They were not a little troubled, and even endangered, moreover, by
helpless or unmanageable neighbors: bands of Englishmen of one sort or
another,—some mere adventurers, others sober and earnest but not fit for
the grim work of making homes or winning a livelihood in a wilderness
such as that was,—who came to attempt settlements, or trade with the
Indians, on the great Bay of Massachusetts near by. Sometimes it was
necessary in mere pity to succor these people; sometimes it was necessary
very summarily to check them or drive them off, lest they should make
irreparable mischief with the Indians.
Despite every difficulty, nevertheless, Mr. Bradford’s indomitable
colonists made their foothold secure at Plymouth; worked themselves
free from the London partnership; found how to get good crops, and what
sorts of crops to get, out of the unwilling soil; established fisheries
upon the near-by coasts, and trading posts here and there among the
more distant Indian tribes,—one as far away as Kennebec, in Maine. The
“Council for New England,” which represented the new company established
in England to control and develop these northern coasts once included in
the Virginia grants, was very glad to encourage these their unexpected
colonists at Plymouth, and sent a liberal charter out to them by the very
first ship that came from England after the return of the _Mayflower_;
and when they were ready to ask for more privileges,—as, for example,
for leave to set up a post on the Kennebec,—very promptly gave them what
they asked for. By the time their old friends from Leyden came to them,
in 1630, they had reason to feel secure enough in their new home, and had
only their neighbors to fear,—only the past to sadden them.
It was at first only unruly or shiftless English settlers who gave them
cause for uneasiness; but they had not been long at Plymouth before they
were given reason to think about the Dutch also, as jealous neighbors and
rivals who might cause them serious annoyance, if nothing worse. A very
cordial treaty of alliance between England and Holland had been concluded
when King James died, and his son, the first Charles, came to the throne,
in 1625; and there was likely, for the present at least, to be peace and
good will between the two peoples. But there was no telling how long
it would last, and the Dutch were meanwhile growing very numerous and
strong on Hudson’s River. The treaty with England had, indeed, seemed
to give the Dutch West India Company fresh heart for their enterprise
in New Netherland. They immediately despatched thither an active man
as governor, and began to erect warehouses and batteries of good stone
masonry at “Fort Amsterdam” on Manhattan Island, where guns could command
some portion of the great bay of the North River and the approaches to
the great river itself very handily. The scattered families at Fort
Orange and on the South River, at Fort Nassau, were brought together for
greater strength and security at Fort Amsterdam, and there were presently
close upon three hundred settlers there, so busy with their labor and
trading that before two years had gone by under the new governor (1628)
they had sent home, in two ships alone, sixty-one thousand guilders’
worth of timber from the forests, and of furs bought from the northern
Indians. Mr. Bradford and his people at Plymouth set up a trading post
some twenty miles to the southward on Buzzards Bay, but it turned out
that the Dutch could beat them there; for it was chiefly on Long Island,
which the Dutch controlled, that the _wampum_ was to be obtained which
the Indians accepted as money, and the Plymouth traders were at a serious
disadvantage without it. They were cut off from the lucrative fur trade
of the North River, and were every way pushed very hard by the shrewd
Dutch traders.
[Illustration]
The governors of the rival colonies exchanged very courteous letters, and
the secretary of New Netherland was sent on a visit of ceremony and good
will to Plymouth; but even in this friendly correspondence there were
prophetic hints of something less gentle and peaceable. Bradford called
Governor Minuit’s attention to the fact that the Dutch were settled
within the limits of grants made by the English crown to the Virginia
Company, and that their right to be there might some day be called in
question; and Minuit replied, very spiritedly, “As the English claim
authority under the King of England, so we derive ours from the States
of Holland, and will defend it.” No doubt, too, the secretary of the
Dutch colony was sent upon his visit of courtesy as much to see how the
English fared and report upon the strength of the Plymouth settlement
as to carry messages of good feeling. It is from him that we learn what
the pilgrim colony looked like in that early day, when it was but seven
years old (1627): how a broad street, it might be eight hundred feet
long, ran up the hill straight from the landing place in the harbor,
and was crossed midway by another street, with four cannon in the open
place at the crossing, and the governor’s house close by upon the upper
corner; how the houses, all of good hewn plank, stood in their little
gardens ranged at intervals along the streets, and stockaded against
attack; and how, crowning the hill, there stood a square building, large
and very stoutly made, on whose top, as on a platform, there were six
cannon placed, to command from their elevation the country round about
and the harbor below, and within which was their place of meeting and of
worship. They went always to church in military array, he said, their
captain commanding, and laid their arms down close beside them while they
worshipped and heard the sermon. They remembered their sojourn in Holland
with much gratitude, and accorded the Dutch secretary a hearty welcome.
But it was likely that New Amsterdam and New Plymouth would be keen
rivals, nevertheless, and no love lost between them in the long run.
_Authorities_ on the history of New Netherland and New
York in the seventeenth century. The first volume of John
Romeyn Brodhead’s _History of the State of New York_ gives
the history of the Dutch period in a narrative of unusual
dignity, lucidity, and fulness. The second volume brings the
narrative down to 1691. Edward B. O’Callaghan’s _History of
New Netherland_, in two volumes, is a careful and detailed
narrative of the Dutch period only. Mr. John Fiske, in his
_Dutch and Quaker Colonies_, sketches the whole length of New
Netherland and New York history in his well-known broad and
lucid way, with a wealth of incidental illustrative detail.
William Smith’s _History of the Late Province of New York from
its Discovery to 1762_ is contained in the _Collections_ of the
New York Historical Society. Bancroft and Hildreth both sketch
the history of New York in tolerably full outline in their
general histories of the country.
The _sources_ of New Netherland and New York history are to
be found chiefly in E. B. O’Callaghan’s _Laws and Ordinances
of New Netherland, 1638-1674_, and in the same author’s
_Documentary History of the State of New York_; in the fifteen
volumes of E. B. O’Callaghan’s and Berthold Fernow’s _Documents
Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New York_;
in the _Memoirs_ of the Long Island Historical Society; in
the _Publications_ of the Hakluyt Society; in Sainsbury’s
_Calendar of_ [English] _State Papers, Colonial V._; in Stedman
and Hutchinson’s _Library of American Literature_; in the
_Appendix_ to Read’s _Henry Hudson_; and in the _Records of New
Netherland from 1653 to 1674_, edited by Berthold Fernow.
_Authorities_ on the history of New Plymouth in the
seventeenth century. John Gorham Palfrey’s _History of New
England_ (1492-1774) and _Compendious History of New England_
(1497-1765), the former in five and the latter in four volumes,
are the standard general histories of the group of colonies of
which Plymouth was the first. Mr. J. A. Doyle, in the second
volume of his _English Colonies in America_, gives an excellent
account of the Plymouth colony in the modern critical method.
Mr. John Fiske sketches its history in his _Beginnings of New
England_. Bancroft and Hildreth set it forth at some length in
their histories. Mr. F. B. Dexter gives a brief critical sketch
of it in the third volume of Winsor’s _Narrative and Critical
History of America_.
The _original sources_ of the narrative are to be found,
for the most part, in William Bradford’s _History of the
Plymouth Plantation_, always admirable for its accuracy and
good temper, which brings the account down at first hand to
1647; in the _Plymouth Colony Records_; in the _Collections_
of the Massachusetts Historical Society; in Alexander
Young’s _Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers and Chronicles of
Massachusetts_; and in Stedman and Hutchinson’s _Library of
American Literature_.
For accounts of the general Puritan movement in England of
which the Plymouth emigration formed a part, see the references
following Section III. of this chapter.
III. THE MASSACHUSETTS COMPANY
The business of both Church and State had altered very ominously in
England during the eventful years which brought James’s reign to a close
and gave Englishmen their first taste of Charles’s quality. The air had
filled with signs of revolution; and it was one of the most serious of
these that the Puritans, who had once been merely champions of pure
doctrine and a simplified worship within the Church, had now become a
political party, and were trying to put a curb upon the King in every
matter. At first they had thought that they might reform the Church,
which they loyally loved, by the slow and peaceable ways of precept and
example,—by preaching the new doctrines of Calvin, and by systematically
simplifying the worship in their churches until they should have got
the forms and notions of Rome out of them altogether. Elizabeth taught
them that that was impossible while she was queen. Her harsh measures
hardened their temper, and made them a distinct and active party: first
for concert within the Church; now at last for concert also in matters of
state, because the times had changed.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF FIRST EDITION OF KING JAMES’S BIBLE]
James had come to the throne and grievously disappointed them; and
Charles, after him, had turned out to be not even a serious opponent
of Rome itself. In 1618, while James was yet king, the terrible Thirty
Years’ War had come, that mighty struggle between the Protestant and
the Roman Catholic states of the Continent, which threatened to tear
away the very foundations of liberty and of national life, should the
papacy prevail; and yet Charles had married a Roman Catholic princess,
and showed himself as ready to make bargains with Roman Catholic as
alliances with Protestant princes. Moreover, he was as indifferent to the
political rights of his subjects as he was to their Protestant opinions.
When his Parliament, disapproving his policy, refused to vote him money,
he levied taxes without their consent, and seemed determined to break as
he pleased every understanding of the constitution. The salvation of the
Church and the salvation of the liberties of England he made to seem one
and the same thing: for he would respect neither law nor opinion. And so
the chief Puritan gentlemen of the kingdom became politicians, and filled
the House of Commons with men of their way of thinking, grimly determined
to make a single piece of work of the purification of the Church and the
maintenance of liberty. Charles found no way to be rid of their protests
except to do without a Parliament altogether; and to that at last he made
up his mind. He dismissed the Parliament of 1629, resolved to have done
with Parliaments. For eleven years he kept his resolve. No Parliament was
summoned; money was raised without warrant of law; and the government was
conducted entirely as he willed.
[Illustration: JOHN CALVIN]
It was in that way he brought a great revolution on and lost his head,
for he was dealing with men who could not safely be defied. But for the
moment he seemed master. The first shock of such events was enough to
dismay men who were lovers of law and of right, who had intended no
revolution, who had meant to fight tyranny only by legal process and in
behalf of privileges acknowledged time out of mind. Even stout-hearted
men lost hope for a little, and thought their cause undone in that dark
year 1629, when they saw their leaders in the King’s prisons, and the
King masterful and hot against all who dared so much as protest. And so
a new exodus began, not to Holland this time, but direct to America,—an
exodus not of separatists, of whom the law had already made outlaws, but
of those sober Puritans who had remained in the Church, and had been its
hope of reform.
A company had been formed among them for the purpose of attempting a
settlement in America even before the end of all Puritan hopes had seemed
to come. Lands had been purchased from the Council for New England in
March, 1628, and a party of settlers had been sent out that very summer
under John Endecott, a blunt, passionate, wilful man, hard to deal with,
but more efficient than any other the company could find, and more likely
to succeed. He chose Salem, not far within the northern cape of the great
Bay of Massachusetts, as his place of settlement; and when a large body
of new settlers were sent out to him the next summer he and his people
were ready for them, with houses built and crops ripening. That same
year, 1629, the company in England obtained a charter from the crown, and
assumed a new importance and authority as “The Governor and Company of
Massachusetts Bay in New England.”
[Illustration: JOHN ENDECOTT]
There could have been no better time to get recruits for a Puritan
colony,—not mechanics merely, and such humble folk, or men out of
employment, but people of substance also, who would give themselves and
their fortunes to the enterprise, in the hope that they might at any rate
find freedom of conscience, and establish a free state in America. Most
of those who entered the company meant also to become its colonists.
The company itself, therefore, was transferred over sea, its governor
and council themselves taking ship to the colony they were to govern.
There was not to be a “Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay” set
up in London to rule and dispose of a distant colony, as the Virginia
Company had ruled Virginia. It was to have its seat where it had its
possessions. It kept still a group of its incorporators in London,
organized for the management of its financial interests; and the law
officers of the crown no doubt for a time deemed these the council of
the company itself. But they learned presently that they were not. The
real rulers of the new colony had no mind to conduct their business in
London in open courts under the eye of the King and draw all the talk of
the town upon them, as the Virginia Company had done, to its undoing.
There was nothing in their charter which prescribed where the councils
of the company should meet. They made bold, therefore, to take their
charter and all the business done under it with them to America. More
than seventeen ships and a thousand colonists got away from the western
and southern seaports,—Bristol, Plymouth, Weymouth, Southampton,—in the
spring and summer of 1630, Mr. John Winthrop, a man of gentle breeding,
of education, of private means, and of the high principles of the best
Puritan tradition, a man trained to the law, and, what was much better,
schooled in a firm but moderate temper, sweet yet commanding, going out
as governor to supersede Endecott. Thomas Dudley went as his deputy, a
man cast in another mould, and of another type, a doughty Puritan soldier
who had served under Henry of Navarre; an uncompromising partisan, more
man-at-arms than statesman.
[Illustration: TITLE-PAGE OF FRANCIS HIGGINSON’S BOOK]
Want and disease had done their accustomed work among Endecott’s people
before the new governor and company reached the Bay. Mr. Higginson,
who had written them from Salem scarcely a year ago that “a sup of New
England’s air was better than a whole draught of old England’s ale,” was
hardly able to stand to preach to them when they landed, a fatal fever
having taken hold upon him. It was necessary to separate at once and
begin other settlements where Mr. Winthrop’s people might prepare shelter
for the winter. As soon as possible, therefore, places were chosen.
Watertown, Roxbury, Boston, Dorchester were begun, and the preparation of
Charlestown, already begun before their coming, was pushed forward,—all
places far within the Bay, where groups of sheltering islands shouldered
out the heavier seas, and harbors were quiet. But the work was sadly
belated. Autumn had come and was gone before much could be accomplished.
A full hundred of the immigrants lost heart and went back with the ships
to England. Winter found those who remained short of food and still
without sufficient shelter, and want and disease claimed two hundred
victims among them. Even the ships they despatched hastily to England for
corn brought very little when they came again, for grain was scarce and
dear at home also.