Publications of the Prince Society.

THE
Publications of the Prince Society.
Established May 25th, 1858.

THE NEW
ENGLISH CANAAN.

Boston:
PRINTED FOR THE SOCIETY,
By John Wilson and Son.
1883.

[Pg i] TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES.

THE
NEW ENGLISH CANAAN
OF
THOMAS MORTON.

WITH INTRODUCTORY MATTER AND NOTES
BY
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Jr.

Boston:
PUBLISHED BY THE PRINCE SOCIETY.
1883.

[Pg ii]

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1883, by
The Prince Society,
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

Editor:
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS, Jr.

[Pg v]

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.

[Pg vi]

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.

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:—

There is no other known record of Wollaston than that contained in this passage of Bradford.[2] His given name[Pg 2] 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[Pg 3] 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[Pg 4] 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[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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[Pg 9] 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[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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.

[Pg 12]

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.

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[Pg 13] 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:—

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[Pg 15] 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[Pg 16] 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 signifi[Pg 17]cantly 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,[Pg 18] 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:

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,[Pg 20] 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.

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.

[Pg 22]

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[Pg 23] 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[Pg 24] 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[Pg 25] “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:—

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, how[Pg 27]ever, 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.

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[Pg 29] 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[Pg 30] 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:—

[Pg 31]

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 pun[Pg 32]ishment 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[Pg 33] 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[Pg 34] 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[Pg 35] 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[Pg 36] 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 Mor[Pg 37]ton 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

Bradford, looking at the transaction from the other point of view, says:—

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[Pg 38] 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[Pg 39] 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[Pg 40] 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[Pg 41] 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[Pg 42] 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.

[Pg 43]

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[Pg 44] 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:—

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[Pg 45] 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[Pg 46] 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[Pg 47] “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[Pg 48] 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[Pg 49] 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[Pg 50] 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[Pg 51] 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,[Pg 52] 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[Pg 53] 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]

[Pg 54]

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[Pg 55] 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[Pg 56] 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.

[Pg 57]

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[Pg 58] 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[Pg 59] 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.[Pg 60] 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[Pg 61] the appointment of the Commission, and was addressed to William Jeffreys at Wessagusset:—

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[Pg 64] 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[Pg 65] 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[Pg 66] 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.

[Pg 67]

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[Pg 68] 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[Pg 69] 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.

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[Pg 71] 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[Pg 72] 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[Pg 73] 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[Pg 74] 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[Pg 75] 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 ener[Pg 76]getic 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,[Pg 77][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[Pg 78] 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[Pg 79] 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[Pg 80] 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[Pg 81] 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[Pg 82] 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[Pg 83] 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:—

[Pg 84]

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 subse[Pg 85]quently 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,[Pg 86] 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:—

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]—

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 Massachu[Pg 88]setts 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 Mave[Pg 89]rick 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:—

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:—

Upon this document, certainly humble enough in tone, appear the following endorsements:—

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,[Pg 91] 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.

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[Pg 92] 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[Pg 93] 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[Pg 94] 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[Pg 95] 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 unneces[Pg 96]sary 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[Pg 97] 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 col[Pg 98]lege 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.

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 com[Pg 100]pleted, 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[Pg 101] 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.

Very many of the errors both in typography and punctuation, with which the New Canaan abounds, are obviously due to the fact that it was printed in Amsterdam. The original manuscript it would seem was no more legible than the manu[Pg 102]script of that period, as it has come down to us, is usually found to be. At best it was not easy to decipher. The copy of the New Canaan was then put in the hands of a compositor imperfectly, if at all, acquainted with English; and, if the proof-sheets were ever corrected by any one, they certainly were not corrected by the author or by a proof-reader really familiar with his writing, or even with the tongue in which he wrote. Accordingly pen flourishes were mistaken for punctuation marks, and these were inserted without any regard to the context; familiar words appeared in unintelligible shapes;[194] small letters were mistaken for capitals, and capitals for small letters, and one letter was confounded with another. In addition to these numerous mistakes in deciphering and following the manuscript, ordinary typographical errors are not uncommon; though in this respect the New Canaan is less marked by blemishes than under the circumstances would naturally be supposed.

Neither is this explanation of the curiously bad press-work of the New Canaan a mere conjecture. One other composition of Morton’s has come down to us in the letter to Jeffreys, preserved by Winthrop.[195] Let any one compare this letter with a chapter from the New Canaan, and he will see at once that, while both are manifestly productions from the same pen, they have been preserved under wholly different circumstances. Take, for instance, the following identical passages,—the one from the New Canaan and the other from the letter to Jeffreys, and they will sufficiently illustrate this point.

[Pg 103]

The letter to Jeffreys is curiously characteristic of Morton. It is written in the same inflated, metaphorical, enigmatic style as the New Canaan. It is, however, perfectly intelligible and even energetic. The reason is obvious. It was correctly copied by a man who understood what the writer was saying. Accordingly it is as clear as Winthrop’s own text. The New Canaan would have been equally clear had it been deciphered at the compositor’s form by a man with Winthrop’s familiarity with English.

There is some reason to think that the fancy for exact reproduction in typography has of late years been carried to an extreme. Not only have peculiarities of spelling, capitalization and type, which were really characteristic of the past, been carefully followed, but abbreviations and figures have been reproduced in type, which formerly were confined to manuscripts, and are certainly never found in the better printed books of the same period. It is certainly desirable in[Pg 104] reprinting quaint works, which it is not supposed will ever pass into the hands of general readers, to have them appear in the dress of the time to which they belong. Indeed they cannot be modernized in spelling, the use of capitals, or even, altogether, in punctuation, without losing something of their flavor. Yet, this notwithstanding, there is no good reason why gross and manifest blunders, due to the ignorance of compositors and the carelessness of proof-readers, should be jealously perpetuated as if they were sacred things. This assuredly is carrying the spirit of faithful reproduction to fanaticism. It is Chinese.

The rule followed, therefore, in the present edition has been to reproduce the New Canaan as it appeared in the Amsterdam edition of 1637, correcting only the punctuation, and such errors of the press as are manifest and unmistakable. Very few changes have been made in the use of capitals, and those only where it is obvious that a letter of one kind in the copy was mistaken by the compositor for a letter of another kind. An example of this is found at the top of page *14, where “Captaine Davis’ fate,” in the author’s manuscript, is made to appear as “Captain Davis Fate,” in the original text. The compositor evidently mistook the small f, written with the old-fashioned flourish, for an initial capital. The spelling has in no case been changed except where the error, as in the case already cited of “muit” for “mint,” is manifestly due to printers’ blunders. Mistakes of the press, such as “legg” for “logg” (p. *77) and “vies” for “eies” (p. *152), have been made right wherever they could be certainly detected.

No conjectural readings whatever have been inserted in[Pg 105] the text. The few passages, not more than four or five in number, in which, owing probably to the failure of the compositor to decipher manuscript, the meaning of the original is not clear, are reproduced exactly. No liberties whatever have been taken with the original edition in these cases, and all guesses which are indulged in as to the author’s meaning, whether by the editor or others, are confined to the notes. In a few places the text is obviously deficient. Words necessary to the meaning are omitted in printing. Wherever these have been conjecturally inserted, the inserted words are in brackets. In a very few cases, words, which could clearly have found their way into the original only through inadvertence, have been omitted. Attention is called in the notes to every such omission.

The effort in the present edition has, in short, been to make it a reproduction of the New Canaan; but the reproduction was to be an intelligent, and not a servile one.

Right honorable,

The zeale which I beare to the advauncement of the glory of God, the honor of his Majesty, and the good of the weale publike hath incouraged mee to compose this abstract, being the modell of a Rich, hopefull and very beautifull Country worthy the Title of Natures Masterpeece, and may be lost by too much sufferance. It is but a widowes mite, yet {4} all that wrong and rapine hath left mee to bring from thence, where I have indevoured my best, bound by my allegeance, to doe his Majesty service. This in all humility I present as an offering, wherewith I prostrate my selfe at your honorable footstoole. If you please to vouchsafe it may receave a blessing from the Luster of your gracious Beames, you shall make your vassaile happy, in that hee yet doth live to shew how ready hee is, and alwayes hath bin, to sacrifice his dearest blood, as becometh a loyall subject, for the honor of his native Country. Being

your humors humble vassaile
Thomas Morton.

GENTLE READER,

I present to the publike view an abstract of New England, which I have undertaken to compose by the incouragment of such genious spirits as have been studious of the inlargment of his Majesties Territories; being not formerly satisfied by the relations of such as, through haste, have taken but a superficiall survey thereof: which thing time hath enabled mee to performe more punctually to the life, and to give a more exact accompt of what hath been required. I have therefore beene willing to doe my indevoure to communicat the knowledge which I have gained and collected together, by mine owne observation in the time of my many yeares residence in those parts, to my loving Country men: For the better information of all such as are desirous to be made partakers of the blessings of God in that fertile Soyle, as well as those {8} that, out of Curiosity onely, have bin inquisitive after nouelties. And the rather for that I have observed how divers persons (not so well affected to the weale publike in mine opinion), out of respect to their owne private ends, have laboured to keepe both the practise of the people there, and the Reall worth of that eminent Country concealed from publike knowledge; both which I have abundantly in this discourse layd open: yet if it be well accepted, I shall esteeme my selfe sufficiently rewardded for my undertaking, and rest,

Your Wellwisher.

Thomas Morton.

{14} This Torrida Zona is good for Grashoppers: and Zona Temperata for the Ant and Bee. But Frigida Zona [is] good for neither, as by lamentable experience of Capt. Davis froze to death. Captaine Davis fate is manifest, who in his inquest of the Northwest passage for the East India trade was frozen to death.[205] And therefore, for Frigida Zona, I agree with Aristotle that it is unfit for habitation:[206] and I know by the Course of the cælestiall globe that in Groeneland, many Degrees Groene Land too cold for habitation. short of the Pole Articke, the place is too cold, by reason of the Sunns absence almost six monethes, and the land under the continuall power of the frost; which thinge many more Navigators have prooved with pittifull experience of their wintringe there, as appeareth by the history. I thinke they will not venture to winter there againe for an India mine.

[Pg 119]

And as it is found by our Nation under the Pole Articke, so it is likewise to be found under the Antarticke Pole; yet what hazard will not an industrious minde and couragious spirit undergoe, according to that of the Poet: Impiger extremos currit Mercator ad Indos per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.[207] And all to gett and hord up like the Ant and the Bee; and yet, as Salomon saith,[208] he cannot tell whether a foole or a wise man shall enjoy it. Therefore let us leave these two extreames, with their inconveniences, and indeavour to finde out this golden meane, so free from any one of them. Behold the secret wisedome of allmighty God, and love unto our Salomon, to raise a man of a lardge hart, full of worthy abilities, to be the Index or Loadstarre, that doth point out {15} unto the English Nation with ease and comfort how to finde it out. And this the noble minded Gentleman, Sir Ferdinando Gorges,[209] Knight, zealous for the glory of God, the honor of[Pg 120] his Majesty and the benefit of the weale publicke, hath done a great worke for the good of his Country.

And herein this, the wondrous wisedome and love of God, is shewne, by sending to the place his Minister, to sweepe away by heapes the Salvages; and also giving him length of dayes to see the same performed after his enterprise was begunne, for the propagation of the Church of Christ.

This judicious Gentleman hath found this goulden meane to be scituated about the middle of those two extreames, and for directions you may proove it thus: Counting the space betweene the Line and either of the Poles, in true proportion, you shall finde it to be 90. Degrees: then must we finde the meane to be neare unto the Center of 90. and that is about 45. Degrees, and then incline unto the Sotherne side of that Center, properly for the benefit of heate, remembringe that Sol & Homo generàt hominem; and then keepe us on that same side, and see what Land is to be found[Pg 121] there, and we shall easily discerne that new England is on the South side of that Center.

For that Country doth beginne her boundes at 40. Degrees of Northerne latitude, and endes at 45. Degrees of the same latitude, and doth participate of heate and cold indifferently, but is oppressed with neither: and therefore may be truly sayd to be within the compasse of that golden meane, most apt and fit {16} for habitation and generation, being placed by Allmighty God, the great Creator, under that Zone called Zona temperata; and is therefore most fitt for the generation and habitation of our English nation, of all other, who are more neere neighbours to the Northerne Pole, whose Land lyeth betweene 50. and 54. Degrees of the selfesame latitude: now this new England, though it be New England 10. Degrees neerer the line then old England. nearer to the line then that old England by 10. Degrees of latitude, yet doth not this exceede that other in heate or cold, by reason of the cituation of it; for as the Coast lyeth, being circularly Northeast and Southwest, opposite towards the Sunnes risinge, which makes his course over the Ocean, it can have litle or no reflecting heat of the Sun-beames, by reason of the continuall motion of the waters makinge the aire there the cooler and the constanter; so that for the temperature of the Climent, sweetnesse of the aire, fertility of the Soile, and small number of the Salvages (which might seeme a rubb in the way off an effeminate minde,) this Country of new England is by all judicious men accounted the principall part of all America for habitation and the commodiousnesse of the Sea, Ships there not being subject to wormes as in Virginea and other places, and not to be paraleld in all Christendome. The Massachussets in the middel of New England. The Massachus[Pg 122]sets, being the middell part thereof, is a very beautifull Land, not mountany nor inclininge to mountany, lyeth in 42. Degrees, and 30. minutes, and hath as yet[210] the greatest number of inhabitants; and hath a very large bay to it divided by Islands into 4 great bayes,[211] where shippinge may safely ride, {17} all windes and weathers, the The Windes not so violent in New England. windes in those partes being not so violent as in England by many Degrees: for there are no shrubbs seene to leane from the windes, as by the Sea Coast of England I have seene them leane, and the groundage is a sandy sleech,[212] free from rockes to gaule Cables, but is good for anchorage: the rest of the Planters are disperst among the Coasts betweene 41. and 44. Degrees of Latitude, and as yet, have [made] very little way into the inland.[213] The riches of which Country I have set forth in this abstract as in a Landskipp, for the better information of the Travellers; which hee may peruse and plainely perceave by the demonstration of it, that it is nothing inferior to Canaan of Israel, but a kind of paralell to it in all points.

In the yeare since the incarnation of Christ, 1622, it was my chance to be landed in the parts of New England,[214] where I found two sortes of people, the one Christians, the other Infidels; these I found most full of humanity, and more friendly then the other: as shall hereafter be made apparant in Dew-Course by their severall actions from time to time, whilest I lived among them. After my arrivall in those partes, I endeavoured by all the wayes and meanes that I could to find out from what people, or nation, the Natives of {18} New England might be conjectured originlly to proceede; and by continuance and conversation amongst them, I attaned to so much of their language, as by all probable conjecture may make the same manifest: for it hath been found by divers, and those of good judgement, that the Natives of this Country doe use very many wordes, both of Greeke and Latine, to the same signification The Natives have a mixed language. that the Latins and Greekes have done; as en animia,[215] when an Indian expresseth that hee doth anything with a[Pg 124] good will; and Pascopan[216] signifieth gredy gut, this being the Pasco Pan greedy gutt. name of an Indian that was so called of a Child, through the greedinesse of his minde and much eating, for Pasco in Latine signifieth to feede, and Pan in Greeke signifieth all; and Pasco nantum,[217] quasi pasco nondum, halfe starved, or not eating, as yet; Equa coge,[218] set it upright; Mona[219] is an Island Mona an Island. in their language, quasi Monon, that is alone, for an Island is a peece or plott of ground standing alone, and devided from the mane Land by force of water.

Cos[220] is a Whetstone with them. Hame[221] an instrument to take fish. Many places doe retaine the name of Pan, as Pantneket[222] and Matta pan,[223] so that it may be thought that these people heretofore have had the name of Pan in great Pan the Shepheards God. reverence and estimation, and it may bee have worshipped Pan the great God of the Heathens: Howsoever they doe use no manner of worship at all now: and it is most likely that the Natives of this Country are descended from people bred upon that part of the world which is towardes[Pg 125] {19} the Tropicke of Cancer, for they doe still retaine the memory of some of the Starres one that part of the Cælestiall Globe, as the North-starre, which with them is called Maske,[224] for Maske in their Language signifieth a Beare: and they doe divide the windes into eight partes, and it seemes originally have had some litterature amongst them, which time hath Cancelled and worne out of use.

And whereas it hath beene the opinion of some men, which shall be nameles, that the Natives of New-England may proceede from the race of the Tartars, and come from Tartaria into those partes,[225] over the frozen Sea, I see no Not to proceede from the Tartars. probality for any such Conjecture; for as much as a people once setled must be remooved by compulsion, or else tempted thereunto in hope of better fortunes, upon commendations of the place unto which they should be drawne to remoove: and if it may be thought that these people came over the frozen Sea, then would it be by compulsion? if so, then by[Pg 126] whome, or when? or what part of this mane continent may No part of America knowne to be neare Tartary. be thought to border upon the Country of the Tartars, it is yet unknowne: and it is not like, that a people well enough at ease will of their one accord undertake to travayle over a Sea of Ice, considering how many difficulties they shall encounter with; as first, whether there be any Land at the end of their unknowne way, no Land beinge in view; then want of Food to sustane life in the meane time upon that Sea of Ice; or {20} how should they doe for Fuell, to keepe them at night from freezing to death, which will not bee had in such a place. But it may perhaps be granted that the Natives of this Country might originally come of the scattred Trojans: For after that Brutus, who Why Brutus left Latium. was the forth from Aneas, left Latium upon the conflict had with the Latines, (where although hee gave them a great overthrow, to the Slaughter of their grand Captaine and many other of the Heroes of Latium, yet hee held it more safety to depart unto some other place and people, then by staying to runne the hazard of an unquiet life or doubtfull Conquest, which as history maketh mention hee performed,) this people were dispersed: there is no question but the people that lived with him, by reason of their conversation with the Græcians and Latines, had a mixed language that participated of both, whatsoever was that which was proper to their owne nation at first I know not: for this is commonly seene where 2. nations traffique together, the one indevouring to understand the others meaning makes them both many times speak a mixed language, Two nations meetinge make a mixt language. as is approoved by the Natives of New England, through[Pg 127] the coveteous desire they have to commerce with our nation and wee with them.

And when Brutus did depart from Latium, we doe not finde that his whole number went with him at once, or arrived at one place; and being put to Sea might encounter with a storme that would carry them out of sight of Land, and then they might sayle God knoweth whether, and so might be put upon this {21} Coast, as well as any other. Compasse I beleeve they had none in those dayes; Sayles they might have, (which Dædalus the first Dædalus the first that used Sayles. inventor thereof left to after ages, having taught his Sonne Icarus the second that used Sayles. Icarus the use of it, who to this Cost found how dangerous it is for a Sonne not to observe the precepts of a wise Father, so that the Icarian Sea now retaines the memory of it to this day,) and Victuals they might have good store, and many other things fittinge; oares without all question they would store themselves with, in such a case; but for the use of Compasse, there is no mention made of it at that time (which was much about Sauls time, the first that was made Troy destroyed about Sauls time. King of Israell.) Yet it is thought (and that not without good reason for it) that the use of the Loadstone and Compasse was knowne in Salomons time, for as much as hee sent The Loadstone in Salomons time. Shippes to fetch of the gould of Ophir, to adorne and bewtify that magnificent Temple of Hierusalem by him built for the glory of Almighty God, and by his speciall appointment: and it is held by Cosmographers to be 3. yeares voyage from Hierusalem to Ophir, and it is conceaved that such a voyage could not have beene performed, without the helpe of the Loadstone and Compasse.

[Pg 128]

And why should any man thinke the Natives of New England to be the gleanings of all Nations, onely because by the pronunciation and termination their words seeme to trench upon severall languages, when time hath not furnished him with the interpretation thereof. The thinge that must induce a man of reasonable capacity to any maner of conjecture of {22} their originall, must be the sence and signification of the words, principally to frame this argument by, when hee shall drawe to any conclusion thereupon: otherwise hee shall but runne rounde about a maze (as some of the fantasticall tribe use to do about the tythe of mint[226] and comin.) Therefore, since I have had the approbation of Sir Christopher Gardiner,[227] Knight, an able gentl. that lived amongst them, and of David Tompson,[228] a Scottish gentl. that likewise was conversant with those people, both Scollers and Travellers that were diligent in taking notice of these things, as men of good judgement, and that have bin in those parts any time, besides others of lesse, now I am bold to conclude that the originall of the Natives of New England may be well conjectured to be[Pg 129] from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium.[229]

It fortuned some few yeares before the English came to inhabit at new Plimmouth, in New England, that upon some distast given in the Massachussets bay by Frenchmen, then trading there with the Natives for beaver, they set upon the men at such advantage that they killed manie of them, burned their shipp, {23} then riding at Anchor by an Island there, now called Peddocks Island,[230] in memory of Leonard Peddock[231] that landed there, (where many[Pg 131] wilde Anckies[232] haunted that time, which hee thought had bin tame,) distributing them unto 5. Sachems, which were Lords of the severall territories adjoyninge: they did keepe them so longe as they lived, onely to sport themselves at them, and Five Frenchmen kept by the Salvages. made these five Frenchmen fetch them wood and water, which is the generall worke that they require of a servant.[233] One of these five men, out livinge the rest, had learned so much of their language as to rebuke them for their bloudy deede, saying that God would be angry with them for it,[Pg 132] and that hee would in his displeasure destroy them; but the Salvages (it seemes boasting of their strenght,) replyed and sayd, that they were so many that God could not kill them.[234]

But contrary wise, in short time after the hand of God fell heavily upon them, with such a mortall stroake that they died on heapes as they lay in their houses; and the living, that were able to shift for themselves, would runne away and let them dy, and let there Carkases ly above the ground without buriall. For in a place where many inhabited, there hath been but one left a live to tell what became of the rest; the livinge being (as it seemes) not able to bury the The livinge not able to bury the dead. dead, they were left for Crowes, Kites and vermin to pray upon. And the bones and skulls upon the severall places of their habitations made such a spectacle after my comming into those partes, that, as I travailed in that For[Pg 133]rest nere the Massachussets, it seemed to mee a new found Golgatha.

{24} But otherwise, it is the custome of those Indian people to bury their dead ceremoniously and carefully, and then to abandon that place, because they have no desire the place should put them in minde of mortality: and this mortality was not ended when the Brownists of new Plimmouth were setled at Patuxet in New England: and by all likelyhood the sicknesse that these Indians died of was the Plague, as by conference with them since my arrivall and habitation in those partes, I have learned.[235] And by this[Pg 134] meanes there is as yet but a small number of Salvages in New England, to that which hath beene in former time, and 2 Sam. 24. the place is made so much the more fitt for the English Nation to inhabit in, and erect in it Temples to the glory of God.

The Natives of New England are accustomed to build them houses much like the wild Irish; they gather Poles in the woodes and put the great end of them in the ground, placinge them in forme of a circle or circumference, and, bendinge the topps of them in forme of an Arch, they bind them together with the Barke of Walnut trees, which is wondrous tuffe, so that they make the same round on the Topp {25} for the smooke of their fire to assend[Pg 135] and passe through; these they cover with matts, some made of reeds and some of longe flagges, or sedge, finely sowed together with needles made of the splinter bones of a Cranes legge, with threeds made of their Indian hempe, which their groueth naturally, leaving severall places for dores, which are covered with mats, which may be rowled up and let downe againe at their pleasures, making use of the severall dores, according as the winde sitts.[236] The fire is alwayes made in the middest of the house, with winde fals commonly: yet some times they fell a tree that groweth neere the house, and, by drawing in the end thereof, maintaine the fire on both sids, burning the tree by Degrees shorter and shorter, untill it be all consumed; for it burneth night and day. Their lodging is made in three places of the house about the fire; they lye upon plankes, commonly about a foote or 18. inches aboue the ground, raised upon railes that are borne up upon forks; they lay mats under them, and Coats of Deares skinnes, otters, beavers, Ra[Pg 136]cownes, and of Beares hides, all which they have dressed and converted into good lether, with the haire on, for their coverings: and in this manner they lye as warme as they desire.[237] In the night they take their rest; in the day time,[Pg 137] either the kettle is on with fish or flesh, by no allowance, or else the fire is imployed in roasting of fishes, which they delight in.[238] The aire doeth beget good stomacks, and they feede continually, and are no niggards of their vittels; for they are willing that any one shall eate with them. Nay, if any one that shall come into their {26} houses and there fall a sleepe, when they see him disposed to lye downe, they will spreade a matt for him of their owne accord, and lay a roule of skinnes for a boulster, and let him lye. If hee sleepe untill their meate be dished up, they will set a wooden boule of meate by him that sleepeth, and wake him saying, Cattup keene Meckin[239]: That is, If you be hungry, there is meat for you, where if you will eate you may. Such is their Humanity.[240]

[Pg 138]

Likewise, when they are minded to remoove, they carry away the mats with them; other materiales the place adjoyning will yeald. They use not to winter and summer in one place, for that would be a reason to make fuell scarse; but, after the manner of the gentry of Civilized natives, remoove for their pleasures; some times to their hunting places, where they remaine keeping good hospitality for that season; and sometimes to their fishing places, where they abide for that season likewise: and at the spring, when fish comes in plentifully, they have meetinges from severall places, where they exercise themselves in gaminge and playing of juglinge trickes and all manner of Revelles, which they are deligted in; [so] that it is admirable to behould what pastime they use of severall kindes, every one striving to surpasse each other.[241] After this manner they spend their time.

[Pg 139]

It has bin a common receaved opinion from Cicero,[242] that there is no people so barbarous but have some worshipp or other. In this particular, I am not of opinion therein with Tully; and, surely, if hee had bin amongst those people so longe as I have bin, and conversed so much with them touching this matter of Religion, hee would have changed his opinion. Neither should we have found this error, amongst the rest, by the helpe of that wodden prospect,[243] if it[Pg 140] had not been so unadvisedly built upon such highe land as that Coast (all mens judgements in generall,) doth not yeeld, had hee but taken the judiciall councell of Sir William Alexander, that setts this thing forth in an exact and conclusive sentence; if hee be not too obstinate? hee would graunt that worthy writer, that these people are sine fide, sine lege, & sine rege,[244] and hee hath exemplified this thinge by a familiar demonstration, which I have by longe experience observed to be true.

And, me thinks, it is absurd to say they have a kinde of worship, and not able to demonstrate whome or what it is they are accustomed to worship. For my part I am more willing to beleeve that the Elephants (which are reported to[Pg 141] be the most intelligible of all beasts) doe worship the moone, for the reasons {28} given by the author of this report, as M^r. Thomas May, the minion of the Muses dos recite it in his continuation of Lucans historicall poem,[245] rather then this man: to that I must bee constrained, to conclude against him, and Cicero, that the Natives of New England have no worship nor religion at all; and I am sure it has been so observed by those that neede not the helpe of a wodden prospect for the matter.

The Indians in these parts do make their apparrell of the skinnes of severall sortes of beastes, and commonly of those that doe frequent those partes where they doe live; yet some of them, for variety, will have the skinnes of such beasts that frequent the partes of their neighbors, which they purchase of them by Commerce and Trade.

[Pg 142]

These skinnes they convert into very good lether, making the same plume and soft. Some of these skinnes they dresse with the haire on, and some with the haire off; the hairy side in winter time they weare next their bodies, and in warme weather they weare the haire outwardes: they make likewise some Coates of the Feathers of Turkies, which they weave together with twine of their owne makinge, very prittily: these garments they weare like mantels knit over {29} their shoulders, and put under their arme: they have likewise another sort of mantels, made of Mose skinnes, which beast is a great large Deere so bigge as a horse; these skinnes they commonly dresse bare, and Indians ingenious workemen for their garments. make them wondrous white, and stripe them with size round about the borders, in forme like lace set on by a Taylor, and some they stripe with size in workes of severall fashions very curious, according to the severall fantasies of the workemen, wherein they strive to excell one another: And Mantels made of Beares skinnes is an usuall wearinge, among the Natives that live where the Beares doe haunt: they make shooes of Mose skinnes, which is the principall leather used to that purpose; and for want of such lether (which is the strongest) they make shooes of Deeres skinnes, very handsomly and commodious; and, of such deeres skinnes as they dresse bare, they make stockinges that comes within their shooes, like a stirrop stockinge, and is fastned above at their belt, which is about their middell; Every male, after hee The modesty of the Indian men. attaines unto the age which they call Pubes, wereth a belt about his middell, and a broad peece of lether that goeth betweene his leggs and is tuckt up both before and behinde under that belt; and this they weare to hide their secreats[Pg 143] of nature, which by no meanes they will suffer to be seene, so much modesty they use in that particular; those garments they allwayes put on, when they goe a huntinge, to keepe their skinnes from the brush of the Shrubbs: and when they have their Apparrell one they looke like Irish in {30} their trouses, the Stockinges joyne so to their breeches. A good well growne deere skin is of great account with them, and it must have the tale on, or else they account it defaced; the tale being three times as long as the tales of our English Deere, yea foure times so longe, this when they travell is raped round about their body, and, Indians travaile with materials to strike fire at all times. with a girdle of their making, bound round about their middles, to which girdle is fastned a bagg, in which his instruments be with which hee can strike fire upon any occasion.[246]

[Pg 144]

Thus with their bow in their left hand, and their quiuer of Arrowes at their back, hanging one their left shoulder with the lower end of it in their right hand, they will runne away a dogg trot untill they come to their journey end; and, in this kinde of ornament, they doe seeme to me to be hansomer then when they are in English apparrell, their gesture being answerable to their one habit and not unto ours.

Their women have shooes and stockinges to weare likewise when they please, such as the men have, but the mantle they use to cover their nakednesse with is much longer then that which the men use; for, as the men have one Deeres skinn, the women have two soed together at the full lenght, and it is so lardge that it trailes after them like a great Ladies trane; and in time I thinke they may have their Pages to beare them up; and where the men use but one Beares skinn for a Mantle, the women have two soed together; and if any of their women would at any time shift one, they take that which they intend to make use of, and {31} cast it over them round, before they shifte away the[Pg 145] other, for modesty, being unwilling to be seene to discover The Indians ashamed of their nakednesse. their nakednesse; and the one being so cast over, they slip the other from under them in a decent manner, which is to be noted in people uncivilized; therein they seeme to have as much modesty as civilized people, and deserve to be applauded for it.[247]

The women of this Country are not suffered to be used for procreation untill the ripenesse of their age, at which time they weare a redd cap made of lether, in forme like to our flat caps, and this they weare for the space of 12 moneths, for all men to take notice of them that have any minde to a wife; and then it is the custome of some of their Sachems or Lords of the territories, to have the first say or maidenhead of the females.[248] Very apt they are to be with[Pg 146] childe, and very laborious when they beare children; yea, The women big with child very laborious. when they are as great as they can be: yet in that case they neither forbeare laboure, nor travaile; I have seene them in that plight with burthens at their backs enough to load a horse; yet doe they not miscarry, but have a faire delivery, and a quick: their women are very good midwifes, and the women very lusty after {32} delivery, and in a day or two will travell or trudge about.[249] Their infants[Pg 147] are borne with haire on their heads, and are of complexion white as our nation; but their mothers in their infancy Children bathed to staine the skinne. make a bath of Wallnut leaves, huskes of Walnuts, and such things as will staine their skinne for ever, wherein they dip and washe them to make them tawny[250]; the coloure of their haire is black, and their eyes black. These infants are carried at their mothers backs by the help of a cradle made of a board forket at both ends, whereon the childe is fast bound and wrapped in furres; his knees thrust up towards his bellie, because they may be the more usefull for them when he sitteth, which is as a dogge does on his bumme: and this cradle surely preserues them better then the cradles of our nation, for as much as we finde them well proportioned, not any of them crooked backed or wry legged: and to give their charracter in a worde, they are as proper men and women for feature and limbes as can be found, for flesh and bloud as active: longe handed they are, (I never sawe a[Pg 148] clunchfisted Salvadg amongst them all in my time.)[251] The colour of their eies being so generally black made a Salvage, that had a younge infant whose eies were gray, shewed him to us, and said they were English mens eies; I tould the Father that his sonne was nan weeteo, which is a bastard; hee replied titta Cheshetue squaa,[252] which is, hee could not tell, his wife might play the whore; and this childe the father desired might have an English name, because of the litenesse[253] of his eies, which his father had in admiration because of novelty amongst their nation.

It is a thing to be admired, and indeede made a president, that a Nation yet uncivilizied should more respect age then some nations civilized, since there are so many precepts both of divine and humane writers extant to instruct more[Pg 149] Civill Nations: in that particular, wherein they excell, the younger are allwayes obedient unto the elder people, and at their commaunds in every respect without grummbling;[254] in all councels, (as therein they are circumspect to do their acciones by advise and councell, and not rashly or inconsiderately,) the younger mens opinion shall be heard, but the old mens opinion and councell imbraced and followed: besides, as the elder feede and provide for the younger in infancy, so doe the younger, after being growne to yeares of manhood, provide for those that be aged: and in distribution of Acctes the elder men are first served by their dispensator; and their counsels (especially if they be powahs) are esteemed as oracles amongst the younger Natives.

The consideration of these things, mee thinkes, should reduce some of our irregular young people of civilized Nations, when this story shall come to their knowledge, to[Pg 150] better manners, and make them ashamed of their former error in this kinde, and to {34} become hereafter more duetyfull; which I, as a friend, (by observation having found,) have herein recorded for that purpose.

If we doe not judge amisse of these Salvages in accounting them witches, yet out of all question we may be bould to conclude them to be but weake witches, such of them as wee call by the names of Powahs: some correspondency they have with the Devil out of al doubt, as by some of their accions, in which they glory, is manifested. Papasiquineo,[255] that Sachem or Sagamore, is a Powah of greate estimation amongst all kinde of Salvages there: hee is at their Revels (which is the time when a great company of Salvages[Pg 151] meete from severall parts of the Country, in amity with their neighbours) hath advaunced his honor in his feats or jugling tricks (as I may right tearme them) to the admiration of the spectators, whome hee endevoured to perswade that he would goe under water to the further side of a river, to broade for any man to undertake with a breath, which thing hee performed by swimming over, and deluding the company with casting a mist before their eies that see him enter in and come out, but no part of the way hee has bin seene: likewise by our English, in the heat of all summer to make Ice appeare in a bowle of faire water; first, having the water set before him, hee hath begunne his incantation according to their usuall accustome, and before the same has bin ended a thick Clowde has darkned the {35} aire and, on a sodane, a thunder clap hath bin heard that has amazed the natives; in an instant hee hath shewed a firme peece of Ice to flote in the middest of the bowle in the presence of the vulgar people, which doubtles was done by the agility of Satan, his consort.

And by meanes of these sleights, and such like trivial things as these, they gaine such estimation amongst the rest of the Salvages that it is thought a very impious matter for any man to derogate from the words of these Powahs. In so much as hee that should slight them, is thought to commit a crime no lesse hainous amongst them as sacriledge is with us, as may appeare by this one passage, which I wil set forth for an instance.

A neighbour of mine that had entertain’d a Salvage into his service, to be his factor for the beaver trade amongst his countrymen, delivered unto him divers parcells of commodi[Pg 152]ties fit for them to trade with; amongst the rest there was one coate of more esteeme then any of the other, and with this his new entertained marchant man travels amongst his countrymen to truck them away for beaver: as our custome hath bin, the Salvage went up into the Country amongst his neighbours for beaver, and returned with some, but not enough answerable to his Masteers expectation, but being called to an accompt, and especially for that one Coate of speciall note, made answer that he had given that coate to Tantoquineo, a Powah: to which his master in a rage cryed, what have I to doe with Tantoquineo? The Salvage, very angry at the matter, cryed, what you speake? you are not a very good man; wil you not give Tantoq. a coat? whats this? as if he had offered {36} Tantoquineo the greatest indignity that could be devised: so great is the estimation and reverence that these people have of these Iugling[256] Powahs, who are usually sent for when any person is sicke and ill at ease to recover them, for which they receive rewards as doe our Chirgeons and Phisitions; and they doe make a An Englishman cured of a swelling. trade of it, and boast of their skill where they come:[257] One amongst the rest did undertake to cure an Englishman of[Pg 153] a swelling of his hand for a parcell of biskett, which being delivered him hee tooke the party greived into the woods aside from company, and with the helpe of the devill, (as may be conjectured,) quickly recovered him of that swelling, and sent him about his worke againe.

These Salvages are not apt to quarrell one with another: yet such hath bin the occasion that a difference hath happened which hath growne to that height that it has not bin reconciled otherwise then by combat, which hath bin performed in this manner: the two champions prepared for the How the Salvages performe theire duells. fight, with their bowes in hand and a quiver full of arrowes at their backs, they have entered into the field; the Challenger and challenged have chosen two trees, standing within {37} a little distance of each other; they have cast lotts for the cheife of the trees, then either champion setting himselfe behinde his tree watches an advantage to let fly his shafts, and to gall his enemy; there they continue shooting at each other; if by chaunce they espie any part open, they endeavour to gall the combatant in that part, and use much agility in the performance of the taske they have in hand. Resolute they are in the execution of their vengeance, when once they have begunne; and will in no wise be daunted, or seeme to shrinck though they doe catch a clap[Pg 154] with an arrow, but fight it out in this manner untill one or both be slaine.

I have bin shewed the places where such duels have bin performed, and have fuond the trees marked for a memoriall of the Combat, where that champion hath stood that had the Trees marked where they performe a duell. hap to be slaine in the duell: and they count it the greatest honor that can be to the serviving Cumbatant, to shew the scares of the wounds received in this kinde of Conflict, and if it happen to be on the arme, as those parts are most in danger in these cases, they will alwayes weare a bracelet upon that place of the arme, as a trophy of honor to their dying day.

Reputation is such a thing that it keepes many men in awe, even amongst Civilized nations, and is very much stood upon: it is (as one hath very well noted) the awe of great men and of Kings. And, since I have observed it to be maintained amongst Salvage people, I cannot chuse but give an instance thereof in this treatise, to confirme the common receaved opinion thereof.

The Sachem or Sagamore of Sagus made choise, when hee came to mans estate, of a Lady of noble discent, Daughter to Papasiquineo, the Sachem or Sagamore of the territories neare Merrimack River, a man of the best note and [Pg 155]estimation in all those parts, and (as my Countryman M^r. A marriage. Wood declares in his prospect) a great Nigromancer; this Lady the younge Sachem with the consent and good liking of her father marries, and takes for his wife.[258] Great entertainement hee and his receaved in those parts at her fathers hands, where they weare fested in the best manner that might be expected, according to the Custome of their nation, with reveling and such other solemnities as is usuall amongst them. The solemnity being ended, Papasiquineo causes a selected number of his men to waite upon his Daughter home into those parts that did properly belong to her Lord and husband; where the attendants had entertainment by the Sachem of Sagus and his Countrymen: the solemnity being ended, the attendants were gratified.

Not long after the new married Lady had a great {39} desire to see her father and her native country, from whence shee came; her Lord willing to pleasure her and not deny her request, amongst them thought to be reasonable, commanded a selected number of his owne men to conduct his Lady to her Father, wher, with great respect, they brought her; and, having feasted there a while, returned to their owne country againe, leaving the Lady to continue[Pg 156] there at her owne pleasure, amongst her friends and old acquaintance; where shee passed away the time for a while, and in the end desired to returne to her Lord againe. Her father, An ambassage sent from Papasiquineo to his sonne in law, a Sachem. the old Papasiquineo, having notice of her intent, sent some of his men on ambassage to the younge Sachem, his sonne in law, to let him understand that his daughter was not willing to absent her selfe from his company any longer, and therfore, as the messengers had in charge, desired the younge Lord to send a convoy for her; but hee, standing upon tearmes of honor, and the maintaining of his reputation, returned to his father in law this answere, that, when she departed from him, hee caused his men to waite upon her to her fathers territories, as it did become him; but, now shee had an intent to returne, it did become her father to send her back with a convoy of his own people; and that it stood not with his reputation to make himself or his men so servile, to fetch her againe. The old Sachem Papasiquineo, having this message returned, was inraged to think that his young son in law did not esteeme him at a higher rate then to capitulate with him about the matter, and returne[d] him this sharpe reply; that his daughters bloud and birth deserved more respect then to be so slighted; and, therefore, if he would have her company, hee were best to send or come for her.

{40} The younge Sachem, not willing to under value himselfe and being a man of a stout spirit, did not stick to say that hee should either send her by his owne Convey, or keepe her; for hee was determined not[259] to stoope so lowe.

[Pg 157]

So much these two Sachems stood upon tearmes of reputation with each other, the one would not send her, and the other would not send for her, least it should be any diminishing of honor on his part that should seeme to comply, that the Lady (when I came out of the Country) remained still with her father; which is a thinge worth the noting, that Salvage people should seeke to maintaine their reputation so much as they doe.

Although these people have not the use of navigation, whereby they may trafficke as other nations, that are civilized, use to doe, yet doe they barter for such commodities Beads instead of Money. as they have, and have a kinde of beads, insteede of money, to buy withall such things as they want, which they call Wampampeak: and it is of two sorts, the one is white, the other is of a violet coloure. These are made of the shells of fishe. The white with them is as silver with us; the other as our gould: and for these beads they buy and sell, not onely amongst themselves, but even with us.

{41} We have used to sell them any of our commodities for this Wampampeak, because we know we can have beaver againe of them for it: and these beads are currant in all the parts of New England, from one end of the Coast to the other.

And although some have indevoured by example to have the like made of the same kinde of shels, yet none hath ever,[Pg 158] as yet, attained to any perfection in the composure of them, but that the Salvages have found a great difference to be in the one and the other; and have knowne the counterfett beads from those of their owne making; and have, and doe slight them.[260]

The skinnes of beasts are sould and bartered, to such[Pg 159] people as have none of the same kinde in the parts where they live.[261]

Likewise they have earthen potts of divers sizes, from a quarte to a gallon, 2. or 3. to boyle their vitels in; very stronge, though they be thin like our Iron potts.

They have dainty wooden bowles of maple, of highe price amongst them; and these are dispersed by bartering one with the other, and are but in certaine parts of the Country made, where the severall trades are appropriated to the inhabitants of those parts onely.

So likewise (at the season of the yeare) the Salvages that live by the Sea side for trade with the inlanders for fresh water, reles curious silver reles,[262] which are bought up of such as have them not frequent in other places: chestnuts, and such like usefull {42} things as one place affordeth, are sould to the inhabitants of another, where they are a novelty accompted amongst the natives of the land.[263] And there is no such thing to barter withall, as is their Whampampeake.

These people are not without providence, though they be uncivilized, but are carefull to preserve foede in store against winter; which is the corne that they laboure and What care they take to lay up corne for winter. dresse in the summer. And, although they eate freely of it, whiles it is growinge, yet have they a care to keepe a convenient portion thereof to releeve them in the dead of winter, (like to the Ant and the Bee,) which they put under ground.

Their barnes are holes made in the earth, that will hold a Hogshead of corne a peece in them. In these (when their corne is out of the huske and well dried) they lay their store in greate baskets (which they make of Sparke[264]) with matts under, about the sides, and on the top; and putting it into the place made for it, they cover it with earth: and in this manner it is preserved from destruction or putrifaction; to be used in case of necessity, and not else.[265]

[Pg 161]

{43} And I am perswaded, that if they knew the benefit of Salte[266] (as they may in time,) and the meanes to make salte meate fresh againe, they would endeaver to preserve fishe for winter, as well as corne; and that if any thinge bring them to civility, it will be the use of Salte, to have foode in store, which is a cheife benefit in a civilized Commonwealth.

These people have begunne already to incline to the use of Salte. Many of them would begge Salte of mee for to carry home with them, that had frequented our howses and had been acquainted with our Salte meats: and Salte I willingly gave them, although I sould them all things else, onely because they should be delighted with the use there of, and thinke it a commodity of no value in it selfe, allthough the benefit was great that might be had by the use of it.

These people are not, as some have thought, a dull, or slender witted people, but very ingenious, and very subtile. I could give maine instances to maintaine mine opinion of them in this; but I will onely relate one, which is a passage worthy to be observed.

[Pg 162]

{44} In the Massachussets bay lived Cheecatawback,[267] the Sachem or Sagamore of those territories, who had large dominions which hee did appropriate to himselfe.

Into those parts came a greate company of Salvages from the territories of Narohiganset, to the number of 100. persons; and in this Sachems Dominions they intended to winter.

When they went a hunting for turkies they spreade over such a greate scope of ground that a Turkie could hardily escape them: Deare they killed up in greate abundance, and feasted their bodies very plentifully: Beavers they killed by no allowance; the skinnes of those they traded away at Wassaguscus They trade away beavers skinnes for corne. with my neighboures[268] for corne, and such other commodities as they had neede of; and my neighboures had a wonderfull great benefit by their being in those parts. Yea, sometimes (like genious fellowes) they would present their Marchant with a fatt beaver skinne, alwayes the tayle was not diminished, but presented full and whole; although A beaver skinne with his tayle on of great estimacion. the tayle is a present for a Sachem,[269] and is of such masculaine vertue that if some of our Ladies knew the benefit thereof they would desire to have ships sent of purpose to trade for the tayle alone: it is such a rarity, as is not more esteemed of then reason doth require.

But the Sachem Cheecatawbak, (on whose possessions they usurped, and converted the commodities thereof to their[Pg 163] owne use, contrary to his likeing,) not being of power to resist them, practised to doe it by a subtile stratagem. A subtile plot of a Sachem. And to that end {45} gave it out amongst us, that the cause why these other Salvages of the Narohigansets came into these parts, was to see what strength we were of, and to watch an opportunity to cut us off, and take that which they found in our custody usefull for them; And added further, they would burne our howses, and that they had caught one of his men, named Meshebro, and compelled him to discover to them where their barnes, Magazines, or storehowses were, and had taken away his corne; and seemed to be in a pittifull perplexity about the matter.

And, the more to adde reputation to this tale, desires that his wifes and children might be harbered in one of our howses. This was graunted; and my neighbours put on corslets, headpeeces, and weapons defensive and offensive.

This thing being knowne to Cheecatawback, hee caused some of his men to bring the Narohigansets to trade, that they might see the preparation. The Salvage, that was a stranger to the plott, simply comming to trade, and findding his merchants lookes like lobsters, all cladd in harnesse, was in a maze to thinke what would be the end of it. Haste hee made to trade away his furres, and tooke anything for them, wishing himselfe well rid of them and of the company in the howse.

But (as the manner has bin) hee must eate some furmety[270] before hee goe: downe hee sits and eats, and withall had an[Pg 164] eie on every side; and now and then saw a sword or a dagger layd a thwart a head peece, which hee wondered at, and asked his {46} giude whether the company were not angry. The guide, (that was privy to his Lords plot) answered in his language that hee could not tell. But the harmelesse Salvage, before hee had halfe filled his belly, started up on a sodayne, and ranne out of the howse in such hast that hee left his furmety there, and stayed not to looke behinde him who came after: Glad hee was that he had escaped so.

The subtile Sachem, hee playd the tragedian, and fained a feare of being surprised; and sent to see whether the enemies (as the Messenger termed them) were not in the howse; and comes in a by way with his wifes and children, and stopps the chinkes of the out howse, for feare the fire might be seene in the night, and be a meanes to direct his enemies where to finde them.

And, in the meane time, hee prepared for his Ambassador to his enemies a Salvage,[271] that had lived 12. moneths in England, to the end it might adde reputation to his ambassage. A Salvage that had lived 12. Moneths in England sent for an Ambassador. This man hee sends to those intruding Narohigansets, to tell them that they did very great injury to his Lord, to trench upon his prerogatives: and advised them to put up their pipes, and begon in time: if they would not, that his Lord would come upon them, and in his ayd his freinds the English, who were up in armes already to take his part, and compell them by force to be gone, if they refused to depart by faire meanes.

[Pg 165]

This message, comming on the neck of that which {47} doubtlesse the fearefull Salvage had before related of his escape, and what hee had observed, caused all those hundred Narohigansets (that meant us no hurt) to be gone with bagg, and baggage. And my neighboures were gulled A good opportunity of traffick lost by the subtility of a Sachem. by the subtilety of this Sachem, and lost the best trade of beaver that ever they had for the time; and in the end found theire error in this kinde of credulity when it was too late.

This is a thinge not onely observed by mee and diverse of the Salvages of New England, but, also, by the French men in Nova Francia, and therefore I am the more incouraged to publish in this Treatice my observation of them in the use of theire sences: which is a thinge that I should not easily have bin induced to beleeve, if I my selfe had not bin an eie witnesse of what I shall relate.

I have observed that the Salvages have the sence of seeing so farre beyond any of our Nation, that one would allmost beleeve they had intelligence of the Devill sometimes, when they have tould us of a shipp at Sea, which they have seene {48} soener by one hower, yea, two howers sayle, then any English man that stood by of purpose to looke out, their sight is so excellent.

Their eies indeede are black as iett; and that coler is accounted the strongest for sight. And as they excell us in[Pg 166] this particular so much noted, so I thinke they excell us in all the rest.

This I am sure I have well observed, that in the sence of smelling they have very great perfection; which is confirmed by the opinion of the French that are planted about Canada, who have made relation that they are so perfect in the use of that sence, that they will distinguish between a Spaniard Salvages that will distinguish a Spaniard from a frenchman by the smell of the hand. and a Frenchman by the sent of the hand onely.[272] And I am perswaded that the Author of this Relation has seene very probable reasons that have induced him to be of that opinion; and I am the more willing to give credit thereunto, because I have observed in them so much as that comes to.

I have seene a Deare passe by me upon a neck of Land, and a Salvage that has pursued him by the view. I have accompanied him in this pursuite; and the Salvage, pricking the Deare, comes where hee findes the view of two deares A Deare pursued by the view of the foote, hee was found and killed. together, leading several wayes. One, hee was sure, was fresh, but which (by the sence of seeing) hee could not judge; therefore, with his knife, hee diggs up the earth of one; and, by smelling, sayes, that was not of the fresh Deare: then diggs hee up the other; and viewing and smelling to that, concludes it to be the view of the fresh Deare, which hee had pursued; and thereby followes the chase, and killes that {49} Deare, and I did eate part of it with him: such is their perfection in these two sences.

[Pg 167]

Although these Salvages are found to be without Religion, Law, and King (as Sir William Alexander hath well observed,[273]) yet are they not altogether without the knowledge of God (historically); for they have it amongst them by tradition that God made one man and one woman, and bad them live together and get children, kill deare, beasts, birds, fish and fowle, and what they would at their pleasure; and that their posterity was full of evill, and made God so angry that hee let in the Sea upon them, and drowned the greatest part of them, that were naughty men, (the Lord destroyed so;) and they went to Sanaconquam, The beleefe of the Salvages. who feeds upon them (pointing to the Center of the Earth, where they imagine is the habitation of the Devill:) the other, (which were not destroyed,) increased the world, and when they died (because they were good) went to the howse of Kytan, pointing to the setting of the sonne;[274] where they[Pg 168] eate all manner of dainties, and never take paines (as now) to provide it.

Kytan makes provision (they say) and saves them that laboure; and there they shall live with him forever, {50} voyd of care.[275] And they are perswaded that Kytan is hee that makes corne growe, trees growe, and all manner of fruits.

And that wee that use the booke of Common prayer doo it to declare to them, that cannot reade, what Kytan has commaunded us, and that wee doe pray to him with the helpe of that booke;[276] and doe make so much accompt of it, that a[Pg 169] Salvage (who had lived in my howse before hee had taken a wife, by whome hee had children) made this request to mee, (knowing that I allwayes used him with much more respect A Salvage desired to have his sonn brought up to learne the booke of common prayer. than others,) that I would let his sonne be brought up in my howse, that hee might be taught to reade in that booke: which request of his I granted; and hee was a very joyfull man to thinke that his sonne should thereby (as hee said) become an Englishman; and then hee would be a good man.

I asked him who was a good man; his answere was, hee that would not lye, nor steale.

These, with them, are all the capitall crimes that can be imagined; all other are nothing in respect of those;[277] and hee that is free from these must live with Kytan for ever, in all manner of pleasure.

These people, that have by tradition some touch of the immortality of the soule, have likewise a custome to[Pg 170] make some monuments over the place where the corps is interred: But they put a greate difference betwene persons of noble, and of ignoble, or obscure, or inferior discent. For, indeed, in the grave of the more noble they put a planck in the bottom for the corps to be layed upon, and on each Their manner of Monuments. side a plancke, and a plancke upon the top in forme of a chest, before they cover the place with earth. This done, they erect some thing over the grave in forme of a hearse cloath, as was that of Cheekatawbacks mother, which the Plimmouth planters defaced because they accounted it an act of superstition; which did breede a brawle as hath bin before related;[278] for they hold impious and inhumane to deface the monuments of the dead. They themselves esteeme of it as piaculum; and have a custome amongst them to keepe their annals and come at certaine times to lament and bewaile the losse of their freind; and use to black their faces, which they At burrials, they black their faces. so weare, instead of a mourning ornament, for a longer or a shorter time according to the dignity of the person: so is their annals kept and observed with their accustomed solemnity. Afterwards they absolutely abandon the place, because they suppose the sight thereof will but renew their sorrow.[279]

[Pg 171]

{52} It was a thing very offensive to them, at our first comming into those parts, to aske of them for any one that had bin dead; but of later times it is not so offensively taken to renew the memory of any deseased person, because by our example (which they are apt to followe) it is made more familiare unto them; and they marvell to see no monuments over our dead, and therefore thinke no great Sachem is yet come into those parts, or not as yet deade; because they see the graves all alike.

[Pg 172]

The Salvages are accustomed to set fire of the Country in all places where they come, and to burne it twize a yeare, viz: at the Spring, and the fall of the leafe. The reason that mooves them to doe so, is because it would The Salvages fire the Country twice a yeare. other wise be so overgrowne with underweedes that it would be all a coppice wood, and the people would not be able in any wise to passe through the Country out of a beaten path.

The meanes that they do it with, is with certaine minerall stones, that they carry about them in baggs made for that purpose of the skinnes of little beastes, which they convert into good lether, carrying in the same a peece of touch wood, very excellent {53} for that purpose, of their owne making.[280] These minerall stones they have from the Piquenteenes, (which is to the Southward of all the plantations in New England,) by trade and trafficke with those people.

The burning of the grasse destroyes the underwoods, and so scorcheth the elder trees that it shrinkes them, and hinders their grouth very much: so that hee that will looke to finde large trees and good tymber, must not depend upon the help of a woodden prospect to finde them on the upland[Pg 173] ground;[281] but must seeke for them, (as I and others have done,) in the lower grounds, where the grounds are wett, when the Country is fired, by reason of the snow water that remaines there for a time, untill the Sunne by continuance of that hath exhaled the vapoures of the earth, and dried up those places where the fire, (by reason of the moisture,) can have no power to doe them any hurt: and if he would endevoure to finde out any goodly Cedars, hee must not seeke for them on the higher grounds, but make his inquest for them in the vallies, for the Salvages, by this custome of theirs, have spoiled all the rest: for this custome hath bin continued from the beginninge.

And least their firing of the Country in this manner should be an occasion of damnifying us, and indaingering our habitations, wee our selves have used carefully about the same times to observe the winds, and fire the grounds about our owne habitations; to prevent the Dammage that might happen by any neglect thereof, if the fire should come neere those howses in our absence.

{54} For, when the fire is once kindled, it dilates and spreads it selfe as well against, as with the winde; burning continually night and day, untill a shower of raine falls to quench it.

And this custome of firing the Country is the meanes to make it passable; and by that meanes the trees growe here and there as in our parks: and makes the Country very beautifull and commodious.

[Pg 174]

Although Drunkennesse be justly termed a vice which the Salvages are ignorant of, yet the benefit is very great that comes to the planters by the sale of strong liquor to the Salvages, who are much taken with the delight of it; for they will pawne their wits, to purchase the acquaintance of it. Yet in al the commerce that I had with them, I never proffered them any such thing; nay, I would hardly let any of them have a drame, unles hee were a Sachem, or a Winnaytue, that is a rich man, or a man of estimation next in degree to a Sachem or Sagamore. I alwayes tould them it was amongst us the Sachems drinke. But they say if I come to the Northerne parts of the Country I shall have no trade, if I will not supply them with lusty liquors: it is the life of the trade in all those parts: for it so happened that thus a Salvage desperately killed himselfe; when hee was drunke, a gunne being charged and the cock up, hee sets the mouth to his brest, and, putting back the tricker with his foote, shot himselfe dead.[282]

[Pg 175]

A Gentleman and a traveller, that had bin in the parts of New England for a time, when hee retorned againe, in his discourse of the Country, wondered, (as hee said,) that the natives of the land lived so poorely in so rich a Country, like to our Beggers in England. Surely that Gentleman had not time or leasure whiles hee was there truely to informe himselfe of the state of that Country, and the happy life the Salvages would leade weare they once brought to Christianity.

I must confesse they want the use and benefit of Navigation, (which is the very sinnus of a flourishing Commonwealth,) yet are they supplied with all manner of needefull things for the maintenance of life and lifelyhood. Foode and rayment are the cheife of all that we make true use of; and of these they finde no want, but have, and may have, them in a most plentifull manner.[283]

[Pg 176]

If our beggers of England should, with so much ease as they, furnish themselves with foode at all seasons, there would not be so many starved in the streets, neither would so many gaoles be stuffed, or gallouses furnished with poore wretches, as I have seene them.

{56} But they of this sort of our owne nation, that are fitt to goe to this Canaan, are not able to transport themselves; and most of them unwilling to goe from the good ale tap, which is the very loadstone of the lande by which our English beggers steere theire Course; it is the Northpole to which the flowre-de-luce of their compasse points. The more is the pitty that the Commonalty of oure Land are of such leaden capacities as to neglect so brave a Country, that doth so plentifully feede maine lusty and a brave, able men, women and children, that have not the meanes that a Civilized Nation hath to purchase foode and rayment; which that Country with a little industry will yeeld a man in a very comfortable measure, without overmuch carking.

I cannot deny but a civilized Nation hath the preheminence of an uncivilized, by meanes of those instruments that are found to be common amongst civile people, and the uncivile want the use of, to make themselves masters of those ornaments that make such a glorious shew, that will give a man occasion to cry, sic transit gloria Mundi.

Now since it is but foode and rayment that men that live needeth, (though not all alike,) why should not the Natives[Pg 177] of New England be sayd to live richly, having no want of either? Cloaths are the badge of sinne; and the more variety of fashions is but the greater abuse of the Creature: the beasts of the forrest there doe serve to furnish them at any time when they please: fish and flesh they have in greate abundance, which they both roast and boyle.

{57} They are indeed not served in dishes of plate with variety of Sauces to procure appetite; that needs not there. The rarity of the aire, begot by the medicinable quality of the sweete herbes of the Country, alwayes procures good stomakes to the inhabitants.

I must needs commend them in this particular, that, though they buy many commodities of our Nation, yet they keepe but fewe, and those of speciall use.

They love not to bee cumbered with many utensilles, and although every proprietor knowes his owne, yet all things, (so long as they will last), are used in common amongst them: A bisket cake given to one, that one breakes it equally into so many parts as there be persons in his company, and distributes it. Platoes Commonwealth is so much practised by these people.

According to humane reason, guided onely by the light of nature, these people leades the more happy and freer They leade a happy life, being voyd of care. life, being voyde of care, which torments the mindes of so many Christians: They are not delighted in baubles, but in usefull things.

Their naturall drinke is of the Cristall fountaine, and this they take up in their hands, by joyning them close together. They take up a great quantity at a time, and drinke at the wrists. It was the sight of such a feate which made[Pg 178] Diogenes hurle away his dishe, and, like one that would have this principall confirmed, Natura paucis contentat, used a dish no more.

{58} I have observed that they will not be troubled with superfluous commodities. Such things as they finde they are taught by necessity to make use of, they will make choise of, and seeke to purchase with industry. So that, in respect that their life is so voyd of care, and they are so loving also that they make use of those things they enjoy, (the wife onely excepted,) as common goods, and are therein They make use of ordinary things, one of anothers as common. so compassionate that, rather than one should starve through want, they would starve all. Thus doe they passe awaye the time merrily, not regarding our pompe, (which they see dayly before their faces,) but are better content with their owne, which some men esteeme so meanely of.

They may be rather accompted to live richly, wanting nothing that is needefull; and to be commended for leading a contented life, the younger being ruled by the Elder, and the Elder ruled by the Powahs, and the Powahs are ruled by the Devill;[284] and then you may imagin what good rule is like to be amongst them.

FINIS.

In the Moneth of Iune, Anno Salutis 1622, it was my chaunce to arrive in the parts of New England with 30. Servants, and provision of all sorts fit for a plantation: and whiles our howses were building, I did indeavour to take a survey of the {60} Country: The more I looked, the more I liked it. A famous Country. And when I had more seriously considered of the bewty[Pg 180] of the place, with all her faire indowments, I did not thinke that in all the knowne world it could be paralel’d, for so many goodly groues of trees, dainty fine round rising hillucks, delicate faire large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, Their fountaines are as cleare as Cristall. and cleare running streames that twine in fine meanders through the meads, making so sweete a murmering noise to heare as would even lull the sences with delight a sleepe, so pleasantly doe they glide upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meete and hand in hand runne downe to Neptunes Court, to pay the yearely tribute which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the springs. Greate store of fowles, fish and turtledoves. Contained within the volume of the Land, [are] Fowles in abundance, Fish in multitude; and [I] discovered, besides, Millions of Turtledoves one the greene boughes, which sate pecking of the full ripe pleasant grapes that were supported by the lusty trees, whose fruitfull loade did cause the armes to bend: [among] which here and there dispersed, you might see Lillies and of the Daphnean-tree: which made the Land to mee seeme paradice: for in mine eie t’was Natures Masterpeece; Her cheifest Magazine of all where lives her store: if this Land be not rich, then is the whole world poore.

What I had resolved on, I have really performed; and I have endeavoured to use this abstract as an instrument, to bee the meanes to communicate the knowledge which I have gathered, by my many yeares residence in those parts, unto my Countrymen: {61} to the end that they may the better perceive their error, who cannot imagine that there is any Country in the universall world which may be compared unto our native soyle. I will now discover unto them a Country whose indowments are by learned[Pg 181] men allowed to stand in a paralell with the Israelites Canaan, which none will deny to be a land farre more excellent then Old England, in her proper nature.

This I consider I am bound in duety (as becommeth a Christian man) to performe for the glory of God, in the first place; next, (according to Cicero,) to acknowledge that, Non nobis solum nati sumus, sed partim patria, partim parentes, partim amici vindicant.[285]

For which cause I must approove of the indeavoures of my Country men, that have bin studious to inlarge the territories of his Majesties empire by planting Colonies in America.

And of all other, I must applaude the judgement of those that have made choise of this part, (whereof I now treat,) being of all other most absolute, as I will make it appeare hereafter by way of paralell. Among those that have setled themselvs in new England, some have gone for their conscience sake, (as they professe,) and I wish that they may plant the Gospel of Iesus Christ, as becommeth them, sincerely and without satisme or faction, whatsoever their former or present practises are, which I intend not to justifie: howsoever, they have deserved (in mine opinion) some commendationes, in that they have furnished the Country so commodiously in so short a time; although it hath bin but for their owne profit, yet posterity will taste the sweetnes of it, and that very sodainly.

{62} And since my taske, in this part of mine abstract, is[Pg 182] to intreat of the naturall indowments of the Country, I will make a breife demonstration of them in order, severally, according to their severall qualities: and shew you what they are, and what profitable use may be made of them by industry.

Oakes are there of two sorts, white and redd;[287] excellent tymber for the building both of howses and shipping: and they are found to be a tymber that is more tough then the oak of England. They are excellent for pipe-staves, and such like vessels; and pipe-staves at the Canary Ilands are a prime commodity. I have knowne them there at 35. p. the 1000,[288] and will purchase a fraight of wines there before any[Pg 183] commodity in England, their onely wood being pine, of which they are enforced also to build shippinge; of oackes there is great abundance in the parts of New England, and they may have a prime place in the Catalogue of commodities.

Ashe[289] there is store, and very good for staves, oares or pikes; and may have a place in the same Catalogue.

Elme: of this sort of trees there are some; but there hath not as yet bin found any quantity to speake of.

{63} Beech there is of two sorts, redd and white;[290] very excellent for trenchers or chaires, and also for oares; and may be accompted for a commodity.

Wallnutt: of this sorte of wood there is infinite store, and there are 4 sorts:[291] it is an excellent wood, for many uses approoved; the younger trees are imployed for hoopes, and are the best for that imployement of all other stuffe whatsoever. The Nutts serve when they fall to feede our swine, which make them the delicatest bacon of all other foode: and is therein a cheife commodity.

Chestnutt: of this sorte there is very greate plenty, the tymber whereof is excellent for building; and is a very[Pg 184] good commodity, especially in respect of the fruit, both for man and beast.

Pine: of this sorte there is infinite store in some parts of the Country.[292] I have travelled 10. miles together where is little or no other wood growing.[293] And of these may be made rosin, pitch and tarre, which are such usefull commodities that if wee had them not from other Countries in Amity with England, our Navigation would decline. Then how great the commodity of it will be to our Nation, to have it of our owne, let any man judge.

Cedar:[294] of this sorte there is abundaunce; and this wood was such as Salomon used for the building of that glorious Temple at Hierusalem; and there are of these Cedars, firre trees and other materialls necessary for the building of many faire Temples,[295] if there were any Salomons to be at the Cost of them: and if any man be desirous to finde out in what part of the {64} Country the best Cedars are, he must get into the bottom grounds, and in vallies that are wet at the spring of the yeare, where the moisture preserves them from the fire in spring time, and not in a woodden prospect.[296] This wood cutts red, and is good for bedsteads, tables and chests; and may be placed in the Catalogue of Commodities.

[Pg 185]

Cypres:[297] of this there is great plenty; and vulgarly this tree hath bin taken for another sort of Cedar; but workemen put a difference betweene this Cypres, and the Cedar, especially in the colour; for this is white and that redd white: and likewise in the finenes of the leafe and the smoothnes of the barque. This wood is also sweeter then Cedar, and, (as it is in Garrets[298] herball,) a more bewtifull tree; it is of all other, to my minde, most bewtifull, and cannot be denied to passe for a commodity.

Spruce[299]: of these there are infinite store, especially in the Northerne parts of the Country; and they have bin approoved by workemen in England to be more tough then those that they have out of the east country: from whence wee have them for masts and yards of shippes.

The Spruce of this country are found to be 3. and 4. fadum about: and are reputed able, single, to make masts for the biggest ship that sayles on the maine Ocean, without peesing; which is more than the East country can afford.[300] And seeing that Navigation is the very sinneus of a flourishing Commonwealth, it is fitting to allow the Spruce tree a principall place in the Catalogue of commodities.

[Pg 186]

{65} Alder: of this sorte there is plenty by rivers sides, good for turners.

Birch: of this there is plenty in divers parts of the Country. Of the barck of these the Salvages of the Northerne parts make them delicate Canowes, so light that two men will transport one of them over Land whither[301] they list; and yet one of them will transporte tenne or twelffe Salvages by water at a time.

Mayple:[302] of those trees there is greate abundance; and these are very excellent for bowles. The Indians use of it to that purpose; and is to be accompted a good commodity.

Elderne:[303] there is plenty in that Country; of this the Salvages make their Arrowes, and it hath no strong unsavery sent like our Eldern in England.

Hawthorne: of this there is two sorts, one of which beares a well tasting berry as bigg as ones thumbe, and lookes like little Queene apples.

Vines: of this kinde of trees there are that beare grapes of three colours: that is to say, white, black and red.[304]

The Country is so apt for vines, that, but for the fire at the spring of the yeare, the vines would so over spreade the land that one should not be able to passe for them;[305] the fruit is as bigg, of some, as a musket bullet, and is excellent in taste.

[Pg 187]

Plumtrees:[306] of this kinde there are many; some that beare fruit as bigg as our ordinary bullis: others there be that doe beare fruite much bigger than peare plummes; their colour redd, and their stones flat; very delitious in taste.

{66} Cheritrees there are abundance; but the fruit is as small as our sloes; but if any of them were replanted and grafted, in an orchard, they would soone be raised by meanes of such; and the like fruits.

There is greate abundance of Muske Roses in divers places: the water distilled excelleth our Rosewater of England.

There is abundance of Sassafras[307] and Sarsaperilla,[308] growing in divers places of the land; whose budds at the spring doe perfume the aire.

Other trees there are not greatly materiall to be recited in this abstract, as goose berries, rasberies, and other beries.

There is Hempe[309] that naturally groweth, finer then our Hempe of England.

The Country there naturally affordeth very good pot-herbes and sallet herbes, and those of a more maskuline Potmarioram, Tyme, Alexander, Angellica, Pursland, Violets, and Anniseeds. vertue then any of the same species in England; as Potmarioram, Tyme, Alexander, Angellica, Pursland, Violets, and Anniseeds, in very great abundance: and for the pott I gathered in summer, dried and crumbled into a bagg to preserve for winter store.

{67} Hunnisuckles, balme, and divers other good herbes are there, that grow without the industry of man, that are used when occasion serveth very commodiously.[310]

[Pg 189]

Now that I have breifly shewed the Commodity of the trees, herbes, and fruits, I will shew you a description of the fowles of the aire; as most proper in ordinary course.

And first of the Swanne,[312] because shee is the biggest of all the fowles of that Country. There are of them in Merrimack River, and in other parts of the country, greate store at the seasons of the yeare.

The flesh is not much desired of the inhabitants, but the skinnes may be accompted a commodity fitt for divers uses, both for fethers and quiles.

There are Geese of three sorts, vize: brant Geese[313] which are pide, and white Geese[314] which are bigger, and gray Geese[315] which are as bigg and bigger then the tame Geese of Eng[Pg 190]land, with black legges, black bills, heads and necks black; the flesh farre more excellent then the Geese of England, wild or tame; yet the purity of the aire is such that the biggest is accompted but an indifferent meale for a couple of men. There is of them great abundance. I have had often 1000. before the mouth of my gunne. I never saw any in {68} England, for my part, so fatt as I have killed there in those parts; the fethers of them makes a bedd softer then any down bed that I have lyen on, and is Fethers pay for powther and shott. there a very good commodity; the fethers of the Geese, that I have killed in a short time, have paid for all the powther and shott I have spent in a yeare, and I have fed my doggs with as fatt Geese there as I have euer fed upon my selfe in England.

Ducks there are of three kindes, pide Ducks, gray Ducks, and black Ducks in greate abundance: the most about my habitation were black Ducks:[316] and it was a noted Custome at my howse, to have every mans Duck upon a trencher; and then you will thinke a man was not hardly used: they are bigger boddied then the tame Ducks of England: very fatt and dainty flesh.

The common doggs fees were the gibletts, unlesse they were boyled now and than for to make broath.

Teales there are of two sorts, greene winged, and blew winged:[317] but a dainty bird. I have bin much delighted with[Pg 191] a rost of these for a second course. I had plenty in the rivers and ponds about my howse.

Widggens[318] there are, and abundance of other water foule, some such as I have seene, and [some] such as I have not seene else where before I came into those parts, which are little regarded.

Simpes[319] there are like our Simpes in all respects, with very litle difference. I have shot at them onely to see what difference I could finde betweene them and those of my native Country, and more I did not regard them.

{69} Sanderlings[320] are a dainty bird, more full boddied than a Snipe; and I was much delighted to feede on them because they were fatt and easie to come by, because I went but a stepp or to for them: and I have killed betweene foure and five dozen at a shoot, which would loade me home.

[Pg 192]

Their foode is at ebbing water on the sands, of small seeds that grows on weeds there, and are very good pastime in August.

Cranes[321] there are greate store, that ever more came there at S. Davids day, and not before: that day they never would misse.

These sometimes eate our corne, and doe pay for their presumption well enough; and serveth there in powther, with turnips, to supply the place of powthered beefe, and is a goodly bird in a dishe, and no discommodity.

Turkies[322] there are, which divers times in great flocks have sallied by our doores; and then a gunne, being commonly in a redinesse, salutes them with such a courtesie, as makes them take a turne in the Cooke roome. They daunce by the doore so well.

Of these there hath bin killed that have weighed forty eight pound a peece.[323]

[Pg 193]

They are by mainy degrees sweeter then the tame Turkies of England, feede them how you can.

I had a Salvage who hath taken out his boy in a morning, and they have brought home their loades about noone.

{70} I have asked them what number they found in the woods, who have answered Neent Metawna,[324] which is a thosand that day; the plenty of them is such in those parts. They are easily killed at rooste, because, the one being killed, the other sit fast neverthelesse; and this is no bad commodity.

There are a kinde of fowles which are commonly called[Pg 194] Pheisants,[325] but whether they be pheysants or no, I will not take upon mee to determine. They are in forme like our pheisant henne of England. Both the male and the female are alike; but they are rough footed, and have stareing fethers about the head and neck; the body is as bigg as the pheysant henne of England; and are excellent white flesh, and delicate white meate, yet we seldome bestowe a shoote at them.

Partridges[326] there are, much like our Partridges of England; they are of the same plumes, but bigger in body. They have not the signe of the horseshoe on the brest, as the Partridges of England; nor are they coloured about the heads as those are. They sit on the trees, for I have seene 40. in one tree at a time: yet at night they fall on the ground, and sit untill morning so together; and are dainty flesh.

There are quailes[327] also, but bigger then the quailes in England. They take trees also: for I have numbered 60.[Pg 195] upon a tree at a time. The cocks doe call at the time of the yeare, but with a different note from the cock quailes of England.

The Larkes[328] there are like our Larkes of England in all respects: sauing that they do not use to sing at all.

{71} There are Owles of divers kindes: but I did never heare any of them whop as ours doe.

There are Crowes,[329] kights and rooks that doe differ in some respects from those of England. The Crowes, which I have much admired what should be the cause, both smell and taste of Muske in summer, but not in winter.

There are Hawkes in New England of 5. sorts;[330] and these of all other fether fowles I must not omitt to speake of, nor neede I to make any Apology for my selfe concerning any trespasse that I am like to make upon my judgement, concerning the nature of them, having bin bred in so genious a way that I had the common use of them in England: and A Lannaret. at my first arrivall in those parts practised to take a Lannaret,[Pg 196][331] which I reclaimed, trained and made flying in a fortnight, the same being a passenger at Michuelmas. I found that these are most excellent Mettell, rank winged, well conditioned, and not tickleish footed; and, having whoods, bels, luers, and all things fitting, was desirous to make experiment of that kinde of Hawke before any other.

And I am perswaded that Nature hath ordained them to be of a farre better kinde then any that have bin used in England.[332] They have neither dorre[333] nor worm to feed upon, (as in other parts of the world,) the Country affording none; the use whereof in other parts makes the Lannars there more bussardly[334] then they be in New England.

There are likewise Fawcons[335] and tassell gentles,[336] admirable well shaped birds; and they will tower up {72} when they purpose to pray, and, on a sodaine when they esspie their game, they will make such a cancellere that one would admire to behold them. Some there are more black then any that have bin used in England.

[Pg 197]

The Tassell gent, (but of the least size,[337]) is an ornament for a person of estimation among the Indians to weare in the knot of his lock, with the traine upright, the body dried and stretched out. They take a great pride in the wearing of such an ornament, and give to one of us, that shall kill them one for that purpose, so much beaver as is worth three pounds sterling, very willingly.

These doe us but little trespas, because they pray on such birds as are by the Sea side, and not on our Chickens. Goshawkes there are, and Tassels.

The Tassels are short trussed bussards;[338] but the Goshawkes[339] are well shaped, but they are small; some of white male, and some redd male, I have seene one with 8. barres in the traine. These fall on our bigger poultry: the lesser chicken, I thinke they scorne to make their pray of; for commonly the Cocke goes to wrack. Of these I have seene many; and if they come to trespasse me, I lay the law to them with the gunne, and take them dammage fesant.

[Pg 198]

There are very many Marlins;[340] some very small, and some so large as is the Barbary Tassell.

I have often beheld these pretty birds, how they have scoured after the black bird, which is a small sized Choffe[341] that eateth the Indian maisze.

Sparhawkes[342] there are also, the fairest and {73} best shaped birds that I have ever beheld of that kinde those that are litle, no use is made of any of them, neither are they regarded. I onely tried conclusions with a Lannaret at first comming; and, when I found what was in that bird, I turned him going; but, for so much as I have observed of those birds, they may be a fitt present for a prince, and for goodnesse too be preferred before the Barbary, or any other used in Christendome; and especially the Lannars and Lannarets.

There is a curious bird to see to, called a hunning bird,[Pg 199][343] no bigger then a great Beetle; that out of question lives upon the Bee, which hee eateth and catcheth amongst Flowers: For it is his Custome to frequent those places. Flowers hee cannot feed upon by reason of his sharp bill, which is like the poynt of a Spannish needle, but shorte. His fethers have a glosse like silke, and, as hee stirres, they shew to be of a chaingable coloure: and has bin, and is, admired for shape, coloure and size.

Now that I have made a rehearsall of the birds and fethered Fowles, which participate most of aire, I will give you a description of the beasts; and shew you what beasts are bred in those parts, and what my experience hath gathered by observation of {74} their kinde and nature. I begin with the most usefull and most beneficiall beast which is bredd in those parts, which is the Deare.

[Pg 200]

There are in this Country three kindes of Deare, of which there are greate plenty, and those are very usefull.

First, therefore, I will speake of the Elke, which the Salvages call a Mose:[345] it is a very large Deare, with a very faire head, and a broade palme, like the palme of a fallow Deares horne, but much bigger, and is 6. footewide betweene the tipps, which grow curbing downwards: Hee is of the bignesse of a great horse.

There have bin of them seene that has bin 18. handfulls highe: hee hath a bunch of haire under his jawes: hee is not swifte, but stronge and large in body, and longe legged; in somuch that hee doth use to kneele, when hee feedeth on grasse.

Hee bringeth forth three faunes, or younge ones, at a time; and, being made tame, would be good for draught, and more usefull (by reason of their strength) then the Elke of Raushea.[346] These are found very frequent in the northerne[Pg 201] parts of New England: their flesh is very good foode, and much better then our redd Deare of England.

Their hids are by the Salvages converted into very good lether, and dressed as white as milke.

Of this lether the Salvages make the best shooes; and use to barter away the skinnes to other Salvages that have none of that kinde of bests in the parts where they live. Very good buffe may be made of the {75} hids. I have seene a hide as large as any horse hide that can be found. There is such abundance of them that the Salvages, at hunting time, have killed of them so many, that they have bestowed six or seaven at a time upon one English man whome they have borne affection to.

There is a second sort of Deare[347] (lesse then the redd Deare of England, but much bigger then the English fallow Deare) swift of foote, but of a more darke coloure; with some griseld heares, when his coate is full growne in the summer season; his hornes grow curving, with a croked beame, resembling our redd Deare, not with a palme like the fallow Deare.

These bringe 3. fawnes at a time,[348] spotted like our fallow[Pg 202] Deares fawnes; the Salvages say, foure; I speake of what I know to be true, for I have killed in February a doe with three fawnes in her belly, all heared, and ready to fall; for these Deare fall their fawnes 2. moneths sooner then the fallow Deare of England. There is such abundance of them that an hundred have bin found at the spring of the yeare, within the compasse of a mile.

The Salvages take these in trappes made of their naturall Hempe, which they place in the earth where they fell a tree for browse; and when hee rounds the tree for the browse, if hee tread on the trapp hee is horsed up by the legg, by meanes of a pole that starts up and catcheth him.[349]

Their hides the Saluages use for cloathing, and will give for one hide killed in season, 2. 3. or 4. beaver skinnes, which will yeild pounds a peece in that Coun{76}try: so much is the Deares hide prised with them above the beaver. I have made good merchandize of these. The[Pg 203] flesh is farre sweeter then the venison of England: and hee feedeth fatt and leane together, as a swine or mutton, where as our Deare of England feede fatt on the out side: they doe not croake at rutting time, nor spendle shafte, nor is their flesh discoloured at rutting. Hee, that will impale ground fitting, may be brought once in the yeare where with bats and men hee may take so many to put into that parke, as the hides will pay the chardge of impaleinge. If all these things be well considered, the Deare, as well as the Mose, may have a principall place in the catalogue of commodities.

I for my part may be bould to tell you, that my howse was not without the flesh of this sort of Deare winter nor summer: the humbles was ever my dogges fee, which by the wesell[350] was hanged on the barre in the chimney, for his diet only: for hee has brought to my stand a brace in a morning, one after the other before sunne rising, which I have killed.

There is likewise a third sorte of deare,[351] lesse then the other, (which are a kinde of rayne deare,) to the southward of all the English plantations: they are excellent good flesh. And these also bring three fawnes at a time; and in this particular the Deare of those parts excell all the knowne Deare of the whole world.

On all these the Wolfes doe pray continually. The best[Pg 204] meanes they have to escape the wolfes is by swimming to Islands,[352] or necks of land, whereby {77} they escape: for the wolfe will not presume to follow them untill they see them over a river; then, being landed, (they wayting on the shore,) undertake the water, and so follow with fresh suite.

The next in mine opinion fit to be spoaken of, is the Beaver;[353] which is a Beast ordained for land and water both, and hath fore feete like a cunny, her hinder feete like a goese, mouthed like a cunny, but short eared like a Serat. [He feeds on] fishe in summer, and wood in winter; which hee conveyes to his howse built on the water, wherein hee sitts with his tayle hanging in the water, which else would over heate and rot off.

Hee cuts the bodies of trees downe with his fore-teeth, which are so long as a boares tuskes, and with the help of other beavers, (which hold by each others tayles like a teeme of[Pg 205] horses, the hindmost with the logg on his shoulder stayed by one of his fore feete against his head,) they draw the logg to the habitation appoynted, placing the loggs in a square; and so, by pyling one uppon another, they build up a howse, which with boghes is covered very strongly, and placed in some pond, to which they make a damme of brush wood, like a hedge, so stronge that I have gone on the top of it crosse the current of that pond. The flesh of this beast is excellent foode. The fleece is a very choise furre, which, (before the Salvages had commerce with Christians,) they burned of the tayle: this beast is of a masculine vertue for the advancement of Priapus,[354] and is preserved for a dish for the Sachems, or Sagamores; who are the princes of the people, but not Kings, (as is fondly supposed.)

{78} The skinnes are the best marchantable commodity that can be found, to cause ready money to be brought into the land, now that they are raised to 10. shillings a pound.[355]

[Pg 206]

A servant of mine in 5. yeares was thought to have a 1000. p. in ready gold gotten by beaver when hee dyed;[356] whatsoever became of it. And this beast may challenge preheminence in the Catalogue.

The Otter[357] of those parts, in winter season, hath a furre so black as jett; and is a furre of very highe price: a good black skinne is worth 3. or 4. Angels of gold. The Flesh is eaten by the Salvages: but how good it is I cannot shew, because it is not eaten by our Nation. Yet is this a beast that ought to be placed in the number amongst the Commodities of the Country.

The Luseran, or Luseret,[358] is a beast like a Catt, but so bigg as a great hound: with a tayle shorter then a Catt. His clawes are like a Catts. Hee will make a pray of the Deare. His Flesh is dainty meat, like a lambe: his hide is a choise furre, and accompted a good commodity.

The Martin[359] is a beast about the bignes of a Foxe. His[Pg 207] furre is chestnutt coloure: and of those there are greate store in the Northerne parts of the Country, and is a good commodity.

The Racowne[360] is a beast as bigg, full out, as a Foxe, with a Bushtayle. His Flesh excellent foode: his oyle precious for the Syattica:[361] his furre course, but the skinnes serve the Salvages for coats, and is with those people of more esteeme then a coate of beaver, {79} because of the tayles that (hanging round in their order) doe adorne the garment, and is therefore so much esteemed of them. His fore feete are like the feete of an ape; and by the print thereof, in the time of snow, he is followed to his hole, which is commonly in a hollow tree; from whence hee is fiered out, and so taken.

The Foxes are of two coloures; the one redd, the other gray:[362] these feede on fish, and are good furre:[363] they doe not[Pg 208] stinke, as the Foxes of England, but their condition for their pray is as the Foxes of England.

The Wolfes are of divers coloures;[364] some sandy coloured, some griselled, and some black: their foode is fish, which they catch when they passe up the rivers into the ponds to spawne, at the spring time. The Deare are also their pray, and at summer, when they have whelpes, the bitch will fetch a puppy dogg from our dores to feede their whelpes with. They are fearefull Curres, and will runne away from a man, (that meeteth them by chaunce at a banke end,) as fast as any fearefull dogge.[365] These pray upon the Deare very much.[Pg 209] The skinnes are used by the Salvages, especially the skinne of the black wolfe, which is esteemed a present for a prince there.

When there ariseth any difference betweene prince and prince, the prince that desires to be reconciled to his neighboring prince does endeavour to purchase it by sending him a black wolfes skinne for a present, and the acceptance of such a present is an assurance of reconciliation betweene them; and the {80} Salvages will willingly give 40. beaver skinnes for the purchase of one of these black Wolfes skinnes:[366] and allthough the beast himselfe be a discommodity, which other Countries of Christendome are subject unto, yet is the skinne of the black wolfe worthy the title of a commodity, in that respect that hath bin declared.

If I should not speake something of the beare,[367] I might happily leave a scruple in the mindes of some effeminate persone who conceaved of more dainger in them then there is cause. Therefore, to incourage them against all Feare and Fortifie their mindes against needles danger, I will relate what experience hath taught mee concerning them: they are beasts that doe no harme in those parts; they feede upon Hurtleburies, Nuts and Fish, especially shell-fish.

The Beare is a tyrant at a Lobster, and at low water will downe to the Rocks and groape after them with great diligence.

Hee will runne away from a man as fast as a litle dogge. If a couple of Salvages chaunce to espie him at his banquet,[Pg 210] his running away will not serve his turne, for they will coate him, and chase him betweene them home to theire howses, where they kill him, to save a laboure in carrying him farre. His Flesh is esteemed venison, and of a better taste then beefe.[368]

His hide is used by the Salvages for garments, and is more commodious then discommodious; and may passe, (with some allowance,) with the rest.

The Muskewashe[369] is a beast that frequenteth the ponds. What hee eats I cannot finde. Hee is {81} but a small beast, lesse then a Cunny, and is indeede in those parts no other then a water Ratte; for I have seene[Pg 211] the suckers of them digged out of a banke, and at that age they neither differed in shape, coloure, nor size, from one of our greate Ratts. When hee is ould, hee is of the Beavers coloure; and hath passed in waite with our Chapmen for Beaver.

The Male of them have stones, which the Salvages, in uncaseing of them, leave to the skinne, which is a most delicate perfume, and may compare with any perfume that I know for goodnesse: Then may not this be excluded the Catalogue.

This Country, in the North parts thereof, hath many Porcupines,[370] but I doe not finde the beast any way usefull or hurtfull.

There are in those Northerne parts many Hedgehoggs, of the like nature to our English Hedghoggs.[371]

Here are greate store of Conyes[372] in those parts, of divers coloures; some white, some black, and some gray. Those towards the Southerne parts are very small, but those to the North are as bigg as the English Cony: their eares are very short. For meate the small rabbit is as good as any that I have eaten of else where.

[Pg 212]

There are Squirils of three sorts,[373] very different in shape and condition; one[374] is gray, and hee is as bigg as the lesser Cony, and keepeth the woods, feeding upon nutts.

Another is red, and hee haunts our howses and will rob us of our Corne; but the Catt many times payes him the price of his presumption.

{82} The third is a little flying Squirill, with batlike winges, which hee spreads when hee jumpes from tree to tree, and does no harme.

Now because I am upon a treaty of the beasts, I will place this creature, the snake, amongst the beasts, having my warrant from the holy Bible; who, (though his posture in his passage be so different from all other, being of a more subtile and aidry nature, that hee can make his way without feete, and lifte himselfe above the superficies of the earth, as hee glids along,) yet may hee not bee ranked with any but the beasts, notwithstanding hee frequents the water, as well as the land.

There are of Snakes divers and of severall kindes, as be with us in England; but that Country hath not so many as in England have bin knowne.[375]

[Pg 213]

The generall Salvage name of them is Ascowke.[376]

There is one creeping beast or longe creeple, (as the name is in Devonshire,) that hath a rattle at his tayle that does discover his age; for so many yeares as hee hath lived, so many joynts are in that rattle, which soundeth (when it is in motion,) like pease in a bladder; and this beast is called a rattle Snake; but the Salvages give him the name of Sesick,[377] which some take to be the Adder; and it may well be so, for the Salvages are significiant in their denomination of any thing, and [it] is no lesse hurtfull than the Adder of England, nor no more. I have had my dogge venomed with troubling one of these, and so swelled that I had thought it would have bin his death: but with one Saucer of Salet oyle powred downe his throate he {83} has recovered, and the swelling asswaged by the next day. The like experiment hath bin made upon a boy that hath by chaunce troad upon one of these, and the boy never the worse. Therefore it is simplicity in any one that shall tell a bugbeare tale of horrible, or terrible Serpents, that are in that land.[378]

[Pg 214]

Mise there are good store, and my Lady Woodbees black gray-malkin may have pastime enough there: but for Rats, the Country by Nature is troubled with none.[379]

Lyons there are none in New England:[380] it is contrary to[Pg 215] the Nature of the beast to frequent places accustomed to snow; being like the Catt, that will hazard the burning of her tayle rather than abide from the fire.

Now, (for as much as I have in a breife abstract shewed you the Creatures whose specificall Natures doe simpathise with the elements of fire and aire,) I will come to speake of the Creatures that participate of earth more then the other two, which is stones.

And first of the Marble for building; whereof there is much in those parts, in so much there is one bay in the land that beareth the name of Marble harber, because of the plenty of Marble there:[382] and these {84} are usefull for building of Sumpteous Pallaces.

And because no good building can be made permanent, or durable, without Lime, I will let you understand that[Pg 216] there is good Limestone neere to the river of Monatoquinte,[383] at Uttaquatock,[384] to my knowledge; and we hope other places too, (that I have not taken so much notice of,) may have the like, or better: and those stones are very convenient for building.

Chalke stones there are neere Squantos Chappell,[385] shewed me by a Salvage.

There is abundance of excellent Slate[386] in divers places of the Country; and the best that ever I beheld for covering of howses: and the inhabitants have made good use of these materials for building.

There is a very usefull Stone in the Land, and as yet there is found out but one place where they may be had, in the whole Country: Ould Woodman, (that was choaked at Plimmouth after hee had played the unhappy Markes man when hee was pursued by a carelesse fellow that was new come into the Land,) they say laboured to get a patent of it to himselfe. Hee was beloved of many, and had many sonnes that had a minde to engrosse that commodity. And[Pg 217] I cannot spie any mention made of it in the woodden prospect.[387]

Therefore I begin to suspect his aime, that it was for himselfe; and therefore will I not discover it: it is the Stone so much commended by Ovid, because love delighteth to make his habitation in a building of those materials, where hee advises those that seeke for love to doe it, Duris in Cotibus illum.[388]

This stone the Salvages doe call Cos;[389] {85} and of these, (on the North end of Richmond Iland,) are store, and those are very excellent good for edg’d tooles.[390] I[Pg 218] envy not his happinesse. I have bin there:[391] viewed the place: liked the commodity: but will not plant so Northerly for that, nor any other commodity that is there to be had.

[Pg 219]

There are Loadestones[392] also in the Northerne parts of the land: and those which were found are very good, and are a commodity worth the noteing.

Iron stones[393] there are abundance: and severall sorts of them knowne.

Lead ore[394] is there likewise, and hath bin found by the breaking of the earth, which the Frost hath made mellow.

Black Leade[395] I have likewise found very good, which the Salvages use to paint their faces with.

Red Leade[396] is there likewise in great abundance.

There is very excellent Boll Armoniack.[397]

There is most excellent Vermilion.[398] All these things the Salvages make some litle use of, and doe finde them on the circumference of the Earth.

[Pg 220]

Brimstone[399] mines there are likewise.

Mines of Tinne[400] are likewise knowne to be in those parts: which will in short time be made use of: and this cannot be accompted a meane commodity.

Copper mines[401] are there found likewise, that will enrich the Inhabitants. But untill theire younge Cattell be growne hardy labourers in the yoake, that the Plough and the Wheate may be seene more plentifully, it is a worke must be forborne.

{86} They say there is a Silver, and a gold mine[402] found by Captaine Littleworth:[403] if hee get a patent of it to himselfe hee will surely change his name.

Among Fishes, first I will begin with the Codd, because it is the most commodious of all fish, as may appeare by the use which is made of them in forraigne parts.

The Codd fishing is much used in America, (whereof New England is a part,) in so much as 300. Sayle of shipps, from divers parts, have used to be imployed yearely in that trade.

I have seene in one Harboure,[405] next Richmond Iland, 15. Sayle of shipps at one time, that have taken in them driyed Codds for Spaine and the Straights, and it has bin found that the Saylers have made 15. 18. 20. 22. p. share for a common man.

The Coast aboundeth with such multitudes of Codd[406] that the inhabitants of New England doe dunge their grounds[Pg 222] with Codd; and it is a commodity better than the golden mines of the Spanish Indies; for without dried Codd the Spaniard, Portingal and Italian would not be able to vittel of a shipp for the Sea; and I am sure at the Canaries it is the principall commodity: which place lyeth neere New Eng{87}land, very convenient for the vending of this commodity, one hundred of these being at the price of 300. of New found land Codds: greate store of Oyle mayd of the livers of the Codd. traine oyle[407] is mayd of the livers of the Codd, and is a commodity that without question will enrich the inhabitants of New England quicly; and is therefore a principall commodity.

The Basse[408] is an excellent Fish, both fresh and Salte; one hundred whereof salted, (at a market,) have yeilded 5. p. They are so large, the head of one will give a good eater a dinner; and for daintinesse of diet they excell the Mary-bones of Beefe. There are such multitudes, that I have seene stopped into the river close adjoyning to my howse, with a sand at one tide, so many as will loade a ship of a 100. Tonnes.

Other places have greater quantities, in so much as wagers have bin layed that one should not throw a stone in the water but that hee should hit a fish.

I my selfe, at the turning of the tyde, have seene such multitudes passe out of a pound, that it seemed to mee that one might goe over their backs drishod.

[Pg 223]

These follow the bayte up the rivers, and sometimes are followed for bayte and chased into the bayes, and shallow waters, by the grand pise:[409] and these may have also a prime place in the Catalogue of Commodities.

The Mackarels are the baite for the Basse, and these have bin chased into the shallow waters where so many thousands have shott themselves a shore with the surfe of the Sea, that whole hogges-heads have bin taken up on the Sands; and for length, they excell {88} any of other parts: they have bin measured 18. and 19. inches in length and seaven in breadth: and are taken with a drayle,[410] (as boats use to passe to and froe at Sea on businesse,) in very greate quantities all alonge the Coaste.

The Fish is good, salted, for store against the winter, as well as fresh; and to be accounted a good Commodity.

This Sturgeon in England is regalis piscis;[411] every man in New England may catch what hee will: there are multitudes of them, and they are much fatter then those that are brought into England from other parts, in so much as by reason of their fatnesse they doe not looke white, but yellow,[Pg 224] which made a Cooke presume they were not so good as them of Roushea: silly fellow that could not understand that it is the nature of fish salted, or pickelled, the fatter the yellower being best to preserve.[412]

For the taste, I have warrant of Ladies of worth, with choise pallats for the commendations, who liked the taste so well that they esteemed it beyond the Sturgeon of other parts, and sayd they were deceaved in the lookes: therefore let the Sturgeon passe for a Commodity.

Of Salmons there is greate abundance: and these may be allowed for a Commodity, and placed in the Catallogue.

Of Herrings there is greate store, fat and faire: and, (to my minde,) as good as any I have seene; and these may be preserved, and made a good commodity at the Canaries.

{89} Of Eeles there is abundance, both in the Salt-waters and in the fresh: and the fresh water Eele there, (if I may take the judgement of a London Fishmonger,) is the best that hee hath found in his life time. I have with 2.[413] eele potts found my howsehold, (being nine persons, besides doggs,) with them, taking them every tide, (for 4. moneths space,) and preserving of them for Winter store:[414] and these may proove a good commodity.

[Pg 225]

Of Smelts there is such abundance that the Salvages doe take them up in the rivers with baskets, like sives.

There is a Fish, (by some called shadds, by some allizes,)[415] that at the spring of the yeare passe up the rivers to spaune in the ponds; and are taken in such multitudes in every river, that hath a pond at the end, that the Inhabitants doung their ground with them. You may see in one towneship a hundred acres together set with these Fish, every acre taking 1000. of them: and an acre thus dressed will produce and yeald so much corne as 3. acres without fish: and, least any Virginea man would inferre hereupon that the ground of New England is barren, because they use no fish in setting their corne, I desire them to be remembred the cause is plaine, in Virginea they have it not to sett. But this practise is onely for the Indian Maize, (which must be set by hands,) not for English graine: and this is therefore a commodity there.

There is a large sized fish called Hallibut, or Turbut:[416] some are taken so bigg that two men have much a doe to hale them into the boate; but there is {90} such plenty, that the fisher men onely eate the heads and finnes, and throw away the bodies: such in Paris would yeeld 5. or 6. crownes a peece: and this is no discommodity.

[Pg 226]

There are excellent Plaice,[417] and easily taken. They, (at flowing water,) do almost come ashore, so that one may stepp but halfe a foote deepe and prick them up on the sands and this may passe with some allowance.

Hake[418] is a dainty white fish, and excellent vittell fresh; and may passe with other commodities, because there are multitudes.

There are greate store of Pilchers:[419] at Michelmas, in many places, I have seene the Cormorants[420] in length 3. miles feedinge upon the Sent.

Lobsters are there infinite in store in all the parts of the land, and very excellent. The most use that I made of them, in 5. yeares after I came there, was but to baite my Hooke for to catch Basse; I had bin so cloyed with them the first day I went a shore.

This being knowne, they shall passe for a commodity to the inhabitants; for the Salvages will meete 500, or 1000. at a place where Lobsters come in with the tyde, to eate, and save dried for store; abiding in that place, feasting and sporting, a moneth or 6. weekes together.[421]

[Pg 227]

There are greate store of Oysters in the entrance of all Rivers: they are not round as those of England, but excellent fat, and all good. I have seene an Oyster banke a mile at length.

Mustles there are infinite store; I have often gon {91} to Wassaguscus, where were excellent Mustles, to eate for variety, the fish is so fat and large.[422]

Clames is a shellfish, which I have seene sold in Westminster for 12. pe. the skore. These our swine feede upon, and of them there is no want; every shore is full; it makes the swine proove exceedingly, they will not faile at low water to be with them. The Salvages are much taken with the delight of this fishe, and are not cloyed, notwithstanding the plenty: for our swine we finde it a good commodity.

There are in the rivers, and ponds, very excellent Trouts, Carpes, Breames, Pikes, Roches, Perches, Tenches, Eeles,[Pg 228] and other fishes such as England doth afford, and as good for variety; yea, many of them much better; and the Natives of the inland parts doe buy hookes of us, to catch them with: and I have knowne the time that a Trouts hooke hath yeelded a beaver skinne, which hath bin a good commodity to those that have bartered them away.

These things I offer to your consideration, (curteous Reader,) and require you to shew mee the like in any part of the knowne world, if you can.

Now since it is a Country so infinitely blest with foode, and fire, to roast or boyle our Flesh and Fish, why should any man feare for cold there, in a Country warmer in the winter than some parts of France, and neerer the Sunne: unles hee be one of those that Salomon bids goe to the Ant and the Bee.

There is no boggy ground knowne in all the Country, from whence the Sunne may exhale unwholsom vapors: Perfumed aire with sweet herbes. But there are divers arematicall herbes and plants, as Sassafras, Muske Roses, Violets, Balme, Lawrell, Hunnisuckles, and the like, that with their vapors perfume the aire; and it has bin a thing much observed that shipps have come from Virginea where there have bin scarce five men able to hale a rope, untill they have come within 40. Degrees of latitude[Pg 229] and smell the sweet aire of the shore, where they have suddainly recovered.[424]

And for the water, therein it excelleth Canaan by much; for the Land is so apt for Fountaines, a man cannot digg amisse: therefore if the Abrahams and Lots of our times come thether, there needs be no contention for wells.

Besides there are waters of most excellent vertues, worthy admiration.

{93} At Ma-re-Mount there was a water,[425] (by mee discovered,) that is most excellent for the cure of Melancolly probatum.

At Weenasemute is a water, the vertue whereof is to cure barrennesse. The place taketh his name of that Fountaine which signifieth quick spring, or quickning spring probatum.[426]

Neere Squantos Chappell,[427] (a place so by us called,) is a Fountaine that causeth a dead sleepe for 48. howres to those that drinke 24. ounces at a draught, and so proportionably.[Pg 230] The Salvages, that are Powahs, at set times use it, and reveale strang things to the vulgar people by meanes of it. So New Engl. excels Canaan in fountaines. that in the delicacy of waters, and the conveniency of them, Canaan came not neere this Country.

As for the Milke and Hony, which that Canaan flowed with, it is supplyed by the plenty of birds, beasts and Fish; whereof Canaan could not boast her selfe.

Yet never the lesse, (since the Milke came by the industry of the first Inhabitants,) let the cattell be chereshed that are at this time in New England, and forborne but a litle, I will aske no long time, no more but untill the Brethren have converted one Salvage and made him a good Christian, and I may be bold to say Butter and cheese will be cheaper there then ever it was in Canaan. It is cheaper there then in old England at this present; for there are store of Cowes, considering the people, which, (as my intelligence gives,) is 12000.[428] persons: and in gods name let the people have their desire, who write to their freinds to come out of Sodome to the land of Canaan, a land that flowes with Milke and Hony.

[Pg 231]

{94} And I appeale to any man of judgement, whether it be not a Land that for her excellent indowments of Nature may passe for a plaine paralell to Canaan of Israell, being in a more temporat Climat, this being in 40. Degrees and that in 30.

As for the Soyle, I may be bould to commend the fertility thereof, and preferre it before the Soyle of England, (our Native Country); and I neede not to produce more then one argument for proffe thereof, because it is so infallible.

Hempe is a thing by Husband men in generall ageed upon to prosper best in the most fertile Soyle: and experience hath taught this rule, that Hempe seede prospers so well in New England that it shewteth up to be tenne foote high and tenne foote and a halfe, which is twice so high as the ground in old England produceth it; which argues New England the more fertile of the two.[429]

As for the aire, I will produce but one proffe for the maintenance of the excellency thereof; which is so generall, as I assure myselfe it will suffice.

No man living there was ever knowne to be troubled with a cold, a cough, or a murre; but many men, comming sick[Pg 232] out of Virginea to New Canaan have instantly recovered with the helpe of the purity {95} of that aire;[430] no man ever surfeited himselfe either by eating or drinking.

As for the plenty of that Land, it is well knowne that no part of Asia, Affrica or Europe affordeth deare that doe bring forth any more then one single faune; and in New Canaan the Deare are accustomed to bring forth 2. and 3. faunes at a time.[431]

Besides, there are such infinite flocks of Fowle and Multitudes of fish, both in the fresh waters and also on the Coast, that the like hath not else where bin discovered by any traveller.

The windes there are not so violent as in England; which is prooved by the trees that grow in the face of the winde by the Sea Coast; for there they doe not leane from the winde as they doe in England: as we have heard before.[432]

[Pg 233]

The Raine is there more moderate then in England; which thing I have noted in all the time of my residence to be so.

The Coast is low Land, and not high Land: and hee is of a weake capacity that conceaveth otherwise of it, because it cannot be denied but that boats may come a ground in all places along the Coast, and especially within the Compas of the Massachusets patent, where the prospect is fixed.[433]

The Harboures are not to be bettered for safety and goodnesse of ground, for ancorage, and, (which is worthy observation,) shipping will not there be furred; neither are they subject to wormes, as in Virginea and other places.

{96} Let the Scituation also of the Country be considered, (together with the rest which is discovered in the front of this abstract,) and then I hope no man will hold this land unworthy to be intituled by the name of the second Canaan.

And, since the Seperatists are desirous to have the denomination thereof, I am become an humble Suter on their behalfe for your consents, (courteous Readers,) to it, before I doe shew you what Revels they have kept in New Canaan.[434]

Westwards from the Massachusetts bay, (which lyeth in 42. Degrees and 30. Minutes of Northerne latitude,) is scituated a very spacious Lake, (called of the Natives the Lake of Erocoise[435]) which is farre more excellent then the Lake of Genezereth, in the Country of Palestina, both in respect of the greatnes and properties thereof, and likewise of the manifould commodities it yealdeth: the circumference of which Lake is reputed to be 240. miles at the least: and it is distant from the Massachussetts bay 300. miles, or there Fowle innumerable. abouts:[436] wherein are very many faire Islands, where innumerable flocks of severall sorts of Fowle doe breede, Swannes, Geese, Ducks, Widgines, Teales, and other water Fowle.

[Pg 235]

{97} There are also more abundance of Beavers, Deare and Turkies breed about the parts of that lake then in any place in all the Country of New England; and also such Multitudes of Fish. multitudes of fish, (which is a great part of the foode that the Beavers live upon,) that it is a thing to be admired at: So The prime place of New Canaan. that about this Lake is the principallst place for a plantation in all New Canaan, both for pleasure and proffit.

Here may very many brave Townes and Citties be erected, which may have intercourse one with another by water, very commodiously: and it is of many men of good judgement accounted the prime seate for the Metropolis of New Canaan.[437] From this Lake, Northwards, is derived the famous Canada, so named of Monsier de Cane. River of Canada, (so named of Monsier de Cane,[438] a French Lord that first planted a Colony of French in America, there called Nova Francia,) from whence Captaine Kerke[439] of late, by taking that plantation, brought home in one[Pg 236] shipp, (as a Seaman of his Company reported in my hearing,) 25000. Beaver skinnes.[440]

And from this Lake, Southwards, trends that goodly River, called of the Natives Patomack, which dischardgeth herselfe in the parts of Virginea; from whence it is navigable by shipping of great Burthen up to the Falls, (which lieth in 41. Degrees and a halfe of North latitude,) and from the Lake downe to the Falls by a faire current. This River is navigable for vessels of good Burthen; and thus much hath often bin related by the Natives, and is of late found to be certaine.[441]

{98} They have also made description of great heards of well growne beasts, that live about the parts of this[Pg 237] Lake, such as the Christian world, (untill this discovery,) hath not bin made acquainted with. These beasts are of the bignesse of a Cowe; their Flesh being very good foode, their hides good lether, their fleeces very usefull, being a kinde of wolle as fine almost as the wolle of the Beaver; and the Salvages doe make garments thereof.

It is tenne yeares since first the relation of these things came to the eares of the English: at which time wee were but slender proficients in the language of the Natives, and they, (which now have attained to more perfection of English,) could not then make us rightly apprehend their meaninge.[442]

Wee supposed, when they spake of Beasts thereabouts as high as men, they have made report of men all over hairy like Beavers, in so much as we questioned them whether they eate of the Beavers, to which they replyed Matta,[443] (noe) saying they were almost Beavers Brothers. This relation at that time wee concluded to be fruitles, which, since, time hath made more apparent.

About the parts of this Lake may be made a very greate Commodity by the trade of furres, to inrich those that shall plant there; a more compleat discovery of those parts is, (to my knowleadge,) undertaken by Henry Ioseline,[444] Esquier,[Pg 238] sonne of Sir Thomas Ioseline of Kent, Knight, by the approbation Henry Ioseline imployed for discovery. and appointement of that Heroick and very good Common wealths man, Captaine Iohn Mason,[445] Esquier, a {99} true foster Father and lover of vertue, (who at his owne chardge,) hath fitted Master Ioseline and imployed him to that purpose; who no doubt will performe as much as is expected, if the Dutch, (by gettinge into those parts before him,) doe not frustrate his so hopefull and laudable designes.

It is well knowne they aime at that place, and have a possibility to attaine unto the end of their desires therein, by meanes of the River of Mohegan, which of the English is named Hudsons River, where the Dutch have setled two well fortified plantations already. If that River be derived from the Lake, as our Country man in his prospect[446] affirmes[Pg 239] it to be, and if they get and fortifie this place also, they will gleane away the best of the Beaver both from the French and the English, who have hitherto lived wholely by it; and very many old planters have gained good estates out of small beginnings by meanes thereof.

And it is well knowne to some of our Nation that have lived in the Dutch plantation that the Dutch have gained by Beaver 20000. pound a yeare.[447]

The Salvages make report of 3. great Rivers that issue out of this Lake, 2. of which are to us knowne, the one to be Patomack, the other Canada: and why may not the third be found there likewise, which they describe to trend westward, which is conceaved to discharge herselfe into the South Sea? The Salvages affirme that they have seene shipps in this Lake with 4. Masts, which have taken from thence for their ladinge earth, that is conjectured to be some minerall stuffe.

{100} There is probability enough for this; and it may well be thought that so great a confluxe of waters as are there gathered together, must be vented by some great Rivers; and that if the third River, (which they have made mention of,) proove to be true, as the other two have done, there The passage to the East-Indies. is no doubt but that the passage to the East India may be obtained without any such daingerous and fruitlesse inquest by the Norwest, as hetherto hath bin endeavoured: And there is no Traveller of any resonable capacity but will[Pg 240] graunt that about this Lake must be innumerable springes, and by that meanes many fruitfull and pleasant pastures all about it. It hath bin observed that the inland part, (witnes Neepnet,[448]) are more pleasant and fertile then the borders of the Sea coaste. And the Country about Erocoise is, (not The Country of Erocois as fertile as Delta in Ægypt. without good cause,) compared to Delta, the most fertile parte in all Ægypt, that aboundeth with Rivers and Rivalets derived from Nilus fruitfull channell, like vaines from the liver; so in each respect is this famous Lake of Erocoise.

And, therefore, it would be adjudged an irreparable oversight to protract time, and suffer the Dutch, (who are but intruders upon his Majesties most hopefull Country of New England,) to possesse themselves of that so plesant and commodious Country of Erocoise before us: being, (as appeareth,) the principall part of all New Canaan for plantation, and not elsewhere to be paralelld in all the knowne world.

The Sachem of the Territories where the Planters of New England are setled, that are the first of the now Inhabitants of New Canaan, not knowing what they were, or whether they would be freindes or foes, and {104} being[Pg 244] desirous to purchase their freindship that hee might have the better Assurance of quiet tradinge with them, (which hee conceived would be very advantagious to him,) was desirous to prepare an ambassador, with commission to A Salvage sent an Ambassador to the English at their first-comminge. treat on his behalfe, to that purpose; and having one that had beene in England (taken by a worthlesse man[450] out of other partes, and after left there by accident,) this Salvage[451] hee instructed how to behave himselfe in the treaty of peace; and the more to give him incouragement to adventure his person amongst these new come inhabitants, which was a thinge hee durst not himselfe attempt without security or hostage, promised that Salvage freedome, who had beene detained there as theire Captive: which offer hee accepted, and accordingly came to the Planters, salutinge them with wellcome in the English phrase, which was of them admired to heare a Salvage there speake in their owne language, and used him great courtesie: to whome hee declared the cause of his comminge, and contrived the businesse so that hee brought the Sachem and the English together, betweene whome was a firme league concluded, which yet continueth.[Pg 245] After which league the Sachem, being in company with the other whome hee had freed and suffered to live with the English, espijnge a place where a hole had been made in the grounde, where was their store of powder layed to be preserved from danger of fire, (under ground,) demaunded of the Salvage what the English had hid there under ground; who answered the plague;[452] at which hee starteled, The Sachem feared the Plague. because of the great mortality lately {105} happened by meanes of the plague,[453] (as it is conceaved,) and the Salvage, the more to encrease his feare, told the Sachem if he should give offence to the English party they would let out the plague to destroy them all, which kept him in great awe. Not longe after, being at varience with another Sachem borderinge upon his Territories, he came in solemne manner and intreated the governour that he would let out the plague to destroy the Sachem and his men who were his enemies, promising that he himselfe and all his posterity would be their everlasting freindes, so great an opinion he had of the English.

Master Thomas Weston,[454] a Merchant of London that had been at some cost to further the Brethren of new[Pg 246] Plimmouth in their designes for these partes, shipped a company of Servants, fitted with provision of all sorts, for the undertaking of a Plantation to be setled there; with an intent to follow after them in person. These servants at first Court holy bread at Plimmouth. arived at new Plimmouth, where they were entertained with court holy bread by the Brethren: they were made very wellcome, in shew at least: there these servants goodes were landed, with promises to be assisted in the choise of a convenient place; and still the good cheare went forward, and the strong liquors walked. In the meane time the Brethren were in consultation what was best for their advantage, singing the songe, Frustra sapit, qui sibi non sapit.

{106} This plantation would hinder the present practice and future profit; and Master Weston, an able man, would want for no supplies upon the returne of Beaver, and so might be a plantation that might keepe them under, who had a Hope to be the greatest: besides his people were no chosen Seperatists, but men made choice of at all adventures, fit to have served for the furtherance of Master Westons undertakinges: and that was as much as hee neede to care for: ayminge at Beaver principally for the better effecting of his purpose. Now when the Plimmouth men began to finde that Master Westons mens store of provition grew short with feasting, then they hasted them to a place called Wessaguscus, in a weake case, and there left them fasting.

[Pg 247]

The Planters of Plimmouth, at their last being in those parts, having defaced the monument of the ded at Pasonagessit, (by taking away the herse Cloath, which was two greate Beares skinnes sowed together at full length, and propped up over the grave of Chuatawbacks mother,[456]) the Sachem of those territories, being inraged at the same, stirred up his men in his bee halfe to take revenge: and, having gathered his men together, hee begins to make an The Sachems Oration. oration in this manner. When last the glorious light of all the {107} skey was underneath this globe, and Birds grew silent, I began to settle, (as my custome is,) to take repose; before mine eies were fast closed, mee thought[Pg 248] A spirit mooving the Sachem to Warre. I saw a vision, (at which my spirit was much troubled,) and, trembling at that dolefull sight, a spirit cried aloude behold, my sonne, whom I have cherisht, see the papps that gave thee suck, the hands that lappd thee warme and fed thee oft, canst thou forget to take revenge of those uild people that hath my monument defaced in despitefull manner, disdaining our ancient antiquities and honourable Customes? See now the Sachems grave lies like unto the common people of ignoble race, defaced; thy mother doth complaine, implores thy aide against this theevish people new come hether; if this be suffered I shall not rest in quiet within my everlasting habitation. This said, the spirit vanished; and I, all in a sweat, not able scarce to speake, began to gett some strength, and recollect my spirits that were fled: all which I thought to let you understand, to have your Councell, and your aide likewise; this being spoken, straight way arose the grand Captaine and cried aloud, come, let us The grand Captaine makes a speech. to Armes, it doth concerne us all, let us bid them Battaile; so to Armes they went, and laid weight for the Plimmouth boate; and, forceinge them to forsake their landinge place, they seeke another best for their convenience; thither the Salvages repaire, in hope to have the like successe; but all The maine Battaile. in vaine, for the English Captaine warily foresaw, and, perceavinge their plot, knew the better how to order his men fit for Battaile in that place; hee, bouldly leading his men on, rainged about the feild to and fro, {108} and, taking his best advantage, lets fly, and makes the Salvages give ground: the English followed them fiercely on, and made them take trees for their shelter, (as their custome is,) from whence their Captaine let flie a maine; yet[Pg 249] no man was hurt; at last, lifting up his right arm to draw a fatall shaft, (as hee then thought to end this difference), received a shott upon his elbow,[457] and straight way fled; by whose example all the army followed the same way, The feild wonne by the English. and yealded up the honor of the day to the English party; who were such a terror to them after that the Salvages durst never make to a head against them any more.

Master Westons Plantation beinge setled at Wessaguscus, his Servants, many of them lazy persons that would use no endeavour to take the benefit of the Country, some of them fell sicke and died.

One amongst the rest, an able bodied man that ranged the woodes to see what it would afford, lighted by accident on an Indian barne, and from thence did take a capp full of corne; the Salvage owner of it, finding by the foote some English had bin there, came to the Plantation, and made complaint after this manner.

{109} The cheife Commander of the Company one this occation called a Parliament of all his people, but those that were sicke and ill at ease. And wisely now they[Pg 250] must consult upon this huge complaint, that a privy knife or stringe of beades would well enough have qualified; and Edward Iohnson was a spetiall judge of this businesse; the fact was there in repetition; construction made that it was fellony, and by the Lawes of England punished with death; and this in execution must be put for an example, and likewise to appease the Salvage: when straight wayes one arose, mooved as it were with some compassion, and said hee could not well gaine say the former sentence, yet hee had conceaved within the compasse of his braine an Embrion that was of spetiall consequence to be delivered and cherished; hee said that it would most aptly serve to pacifie the Salvages complaint, and save the life of one that might, (if neede should be,) stand them in some good steede, being younge and stronge, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might come unexspected for any thinge they knew. The Oration made was liked of every one, and hee intreated to proceede to shew the meanes how this may be performed: sayes hee, A fine device. you all agree that one must die, and one shall die; this younge mans cloathes we will take of, and put upon one A wise Sentence. that is old and impotent, a sickly person that cannot escape death, such is the disease one him confirmed that die hee To hange a sick man in the others steede. must; put the younge mans cloathes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the others steede: Amen sayes one; and so sayes many more.

{110} And this had like to have prooved their finall sentence, and, being there confirmed by Act of Parliament, to after ages for a President: But that one with a ravenus voyce begunne to croake and bellow for revenge; and put by that conclusive motion, alledging such deceipts[Pg 251] might be a meanes hereafter to exasperate the mindes of the complaininge Salvages, and that by his death the Salvages should see their zeale to Iustice; and therefore hee Very fit Iustice. should die: this was concluded; yet neverthelesse a scruple was made; now to countermaund this act, did represent itselfe unto their mindes, which was, how they should doe to get the mans good wil? this was indeede a spetiall obstacle: for without that, they all agreed it would be dangerous for A dangerous Attempt. any man to attempt the execution of it, lest mischeife should befall them every man; hee was a person that in his wrath did seeme to be a second Sampson, able to beate out their branes with the jawbone of an Asse: therefore they called Iesting turned to earnest. the man, and by perswation got him fast bound in jest; and then hanged him up hard by in good earnest,[458] who with a[Pg 252] weapon, and at liberty, would have put all those wise judges of this Parliament to a pittifull non plus, (as it hath beene credibly reported,) and made the cheife Iudge of them all buckell to him.

After the end of that Parliament, some of the plantation there, about three persons,[459] went to live with Checatawback Good quarters with the Salvages. and his company; and had very good quarter, for all[Pg 253] the former quarrell with the Plimmouth planters: they are not like Will Sommers,[460] to take one for another. There they purposed to stay untill Master Westons arrivall: but the Plimmouth men, intendinge no good to him, (as appered by the consequence,) came in the meane time to Wessaguscus, A plott from Plimmouth. and there pretended to feast the Salvages of those partes, bringing with them Porke and thinges for the purpose, which they sett before the Salvages. They eate thereof without suspition of any mischeife, who were taken upon a watchword given, and with their owne knives, (hanging Salvages killed with their one weapons. about their neckes,) were by the Plimmouth planters stabd and slaine: one of which were hanged up there, after the slaughter.[461]

In the meane time the Sachem had knowledge of this accident, by one that ranne to his Countrymen, at the Massachussets, and gave them intelligence of the newes; after which time the Salvages there, consultinge of the matter, in the[Pg 254] A revenge. night, (when the other English feareles of danger were a sleepe,) knockt them all in the head, in revenge of the death of their {112} Countrymen: but if the Plimmouth Planters had really intended good to Master Weston, or those men, why had they not kept the Salvages alive in Custody, untill they had secured the other English? Who, by meanes of this evill mannaginge of the businesse, lost their lives, and the whole plantation was dissolved thereupon; as was likely, for feare of a revenge to follow, as a relatione to this cruell antecedent; and when Master Weston came over hee found thinges at an evill exigent, by meanes thereof: But could not tell how it was brought about.

The Salvages of the Massachussets, that could not imagine from whence these men should come, or to what end, seeing them performe such unexpected actions; neither could tell by what name properly to distinguish them; did from that time afterwards call the English Planters Wotawquenange,[462] which in their language signifieth stabbers, or Cutthroates: The Salvages call the English cutthroats. and this name was received by those that came there after for good, being then unacquainted with the signification of it, for many yeares following; untill, from a Southerly Indian that understood English well, I was by demonstration made to conceave the interpretation of it, and rebucked these other that it was not forborne: The other callinge us by the name of Wotoquansawge, what that doth signifie, hee[Pg 255] said, hee was not able by any demonstration to expresse; and my neighbours durst no more, in my hearinge, call us by the name formerly used, for feare of my displeasure.

This Merchant, a man of worth, arrivinge in the parts of New Canaan and findinge that his Plantation was dissolved, some of his men slaine, some dead with sicknes, and the rest at Plimmouth, hee was perplexed in his minde about the matter; comminge as hee did with supply, and meanes to have rased their fortunes and his one exceedingly: and seeinge what had happened resolved to make some stay in the Plimmouth harbour.[463] And this suted to their purpose; wherefore the Brethren did congratulate with him[Pg 256] at his safe arrivall, and their best of entertainement for a A glosse upon the false text. swetning cast, deploring the disaster of his Plantation, and glozing upon the text, alledging the mischeivous intent of the Salvages there, which by freindly intelligence of their neighbours was discovered before it came to be full summed: so that they lost not all, allthough they saved not all: and this they pretended to proceede from the Fountaine of love and zeale to him and Christianity, and to chastise the insolency of the Salvages, of which that part had some dangerous persons. And this, as an article of the new creede of Canaan, would they have received of every new commer there to inhabit, that the Salvages are a dangerous people, subtill, secreat and mischeivous; and that it is dangerous to live seperated, but {114} rather together: and so be under their Lee, that none might trade for Beaver, but at their pleasure, as none doe or shall doe there: nay they will not be reduced to any other song yet of the Salvages to the southward of Plimmouth, because they would have none come there, sayinge that hee that will sit downe there must come stronge: but I have found the Massachussets Indian more full of humanity then the Christians; and haue had much better quarter with them; yet I observed not their humors, but they mine; althoug my great number that I landed were dissolved, and my Company as few as might be:[464] for I know that this falls out infallibly where two Nations meete, one must rule and the Where two nations meet one must rule the other must be ruled or no quietnes. other be ruled, before a peace can be hoped for: and for a Christian to submit to the rule of a Salvage, you will say,[Pg 257] is both shame and dishonor: at least it is my opinion, and my practice was accordingly, and I have the better quarter by the meanes thereof. The more Salvages the better quarter, the more Christians the worser quarter, I found; as all the indifferent minded Planters can testifie. Now, whiles the Merchant was ruminatinge on this mishapp, the Plimmouth Planters perceivinge that hee had furnished himselfe with excellent Commodities, fit for the Merchandise of the A Machivell plot. Country, (and holding it good to fish in trobled waters, and so get a snatch unseene,) practised in secret with some other in the land, whom they thought apt to imbrace the benefit The Vaile. of such a cheat, and it was concluded and resolved upon that all this shipp and goodes should be confiscated, for businesse done by him, the Lord knowes when, or where:[465] {115} a letter must be framed to them, and handes unto it, to be there warrant; this should shadow them.[Pg 258] That is the first practise; they will insane a man, and then pretend that Iustice must be done. They cause the Merchant (secure) to come a shore, and then take him in hold, shewing they are compelled unto it legally, and enter strait abord, peruse the Cargazowne, and then deliver up the Shipp and goodes confiscated. Charge of her to their Confederates: and how much lesse this is then Piraty, let any practise in the Admiralty be judge. The Merchant, his shipp and goodes confiscated, himselfe a prisoner and threatned so to be sent and conveyed to England, there to receave the somme of all that did belonge to him a malefactor, (and a great one to); this hee, good man, indured with patience longe time, untill the best[Pg 259] When every Conspirator had his share the shipp delivered againe. of all his goodes were quite dispersed, and every actor [had] his proportion; the Merchant was [then] inlarged; his shipp, a burthen to the owner now, his undertakinges in these partes beinge quite overthrowne, was redelivered, and Bonds taken not to prosecute. bondes of him were taken not to prosecute: hee, being greived hereat, betakes him to drive a trade betweene that and Virginea many yeares. The brethren, (sharpe witted,) had it spread by and by amongst his freinds in England, that Report Mr. Weston was mad in New England. the man was mad. So thought his wife, so thought his other freindes that had it from a Planter of the Towne. So was it thought of those, that did not know the Brethren Honest men in particular. could dissemble: why, thus they are all of them honest men in their particular, and every man, beinge bound to seeke anothers good, shall in the generall doe the best hee can to effect it, and so they may be excused I thinke.

This man arrived in those parts, and, hearing newes of a Towne that was much praised, he was desirous to goe thither, and see how thinges stood; where his entertainement[Pg 260] Brave entertainement in a wildernes. was their best, I dare be bould to say: for, although they had but 3. Cowes in all,[467] yet had they fresh butter and a sallet of egges in dainty wise, a dish not common in a wildernes. There hee bestowed some time in the survey of this plantation. His new come servants, in the meane time, were tane to taske, to have their zeale appeare, and questioned what preacher was among their company; and finding none, did seeme to condole their estate as if undone, because no man among them had the guift to be in Ionas The meanes. steade, nor they the meanes to keepe them in that path so hard to keepe.

Our Master, say they, reades the Bible and the word of God, and useth the booke of common prayer: but this is not the meanes, the answere is: the meanes, they crie, alas, poore Soules where is the meanes? you seeme as if betrayed, to be without the meanes: how can you be stayed from fallinge headlonge to perdition? Facilis descensus averni:[468] the booke of common prayer, sayd they, what poore thinge is that, for a man to reade in a booke? No, no, good sirs, I Booke learning despised. would you were neere us, you might receave comfort by in{117}struction: give me a man hath the guiftes of the spirit, not a booke in hand. I doe profess sayes[Pg 261] one, to live without the meanes is dangerous, the Lord doth know.

By these insinuations, like the Serpent, they did creepe and winde into the good opinion of the illiterate multitude, that were desirous to be freed and gone to them, no doubdt, (which some of them after confessed); and little good was to be done one them after this charme was used: now plotts and factions how they might get loose: and here was some 35. stout knaves; and some plotted how to steale Master Westons Villanous plots of knaves. barque, others, exasperated knavishly to worke, would practise how to gett theire Master to an Island, and there leave him; which hee had notice of, and fitted him to try what would be done; and steps aborde his shallop bound for Cape Anne, to the Massachussets, with an Hogshead of Wine; Sugar hee tooke along, the Sailes hoist up, and one of the Conspirators aboard to steere; who in the mid way pretended foule weather at the harboure mouth, and therefore, for a time, hee would put in to an Island neere, and make some stay where hee thought to tempt his Master to walke the woods, and so be gone: but their Master to prevent them caused the sales and oares to be brought a shore, to Prevented by discretion. make a tilt if neede should be, and kindled fire, broched that Hogshed, and caused them fill the can with lusty liqour, Claret sparklinge neate; which was not suffered to grow pale and flatt, but tipled of with quick dexterity: the Master And discovered in drinke. makes a shew of keepinge round, but with close lipps did seeme {118} to make longe draughts, knowinge the wine would make them Protestants; and so the plot was then at large disclosed and discovered, and they made drowsie; and the inconstant windes shiftinge at night did[Pg 262] force the kellecke home,[469] and billedge the boat, that they The Shallop billedged. were forced to leave her so, and cut downe trees that grew by the shore, to make Caffes: two of them went over by Two men of the Company cast away swim to shore upon trees. helpe of a fore saile almost a mile to the maine; the other two stayed five dayes after, till the windes would serve to fill the sailes. The first two went to cape Ann by land, and had fowle enough, and fowle wether by the way; the Islanders had fish enough, shel-fish and fire to roast, and they could not perish for lacke of foode, and wine they had to be sure; and by this you see they were not then in any want: the wine and goodes brought thence; the boat left there so billedgd that it was not worth the labor to be mended.

Master Layford was at the Merchants chardge sent to Plimmouth plantation to be their Pastor: But the Brethren, before they would allow of it, would have him first renounce his calling to the office of the Ministery, received in England, as hereticall and Papisticall, (so hee confest,) and then to receive a new callinge from them, after their fantasticall invention:[471] {119} which hee refused, alledging and maintaining that his calling as it stood[Pg 263] was lawfull, and that hee would not renounce it; and so Iohn Oldam, his opinion was one the affirmative; and both together did maintaine the Church of England to be a true Church, although in some particulars, (they said,) defective; concludinge so against the Tenents there: and by this meanes cancelled theire good opinion amonst the number of the Seperatists, that stay they must not, lest they should be spies: and to fall fowle on this occation the Brethren thought it would betray their cause, and make it fall under censure, therefore against Master Layford they had found out some scandall to be laid on his former corse of life, to blemish that; and so, to conclude, hee was a spotted beast, and not to be allowed where they ordained to have the Passover kept so zealously: as for Iohn Oldam, they could see hee would be passionate and moody, and proove himselfe a mad Iack in his mood, and as soone mooved to be moody, and this impatience would Minister advantage to them to be ridd of him.

Hanniball when hee had to doe with Fabius was kept in awe more by the patience of that one enemy, then by the Impatience confuted by example. resolution of the whole army: A well tempered enemy is a terrible enemy to incounter. They injoyne him to come to their needeles watch howse in person, and for refusinge give him a cracked Crowne for presse money, and make the New Plimmouth presse money. blood run downe about his eares; a poore trick, yet a good vaile, though Luscus may see thorough it; and, for his fur[Pg 264]ther behaviour in the Case, proceed to sentence {120} him with banishment, which was performed after a solemne invention in this manner: A lane of Musketiers was made, The Solemnity of banishment. and hee compelled in scorne to passe along betweene, and to receave a bob upon the bumme be every musketier; and then a board a shallop, and so convayed to Wessaguscus shoare, and staid at Massachussets: to whome Iohn Layford and some few more did resort; where Master Layford freely executed his office and preached every Lords day, and yet maintained his wife and children foure or five upon his industry there, with the blessing of God and the plenty of the Land, without the helpe of his auditory, in an honest and laudable manner; till hee was wearied and made to leave the Country.[472]

Children, and the fruit of the Wombe, are said in holy writt to be an inheritance that commeth of the Lord; then they must be coupled in Gods name first, and not as this, and some other, have done.

[Pg 265]

They are as arrowes in the hand of a Gyant; and happy, saith David, is the man that hath his quiver full of them; and by that rule, happy is that Land, and blessed to, that is apt and fit for increase of children.

I have shewed you before, in the second part of the discourse, how apt it is for the increase of Minerals, Vegetables, and sensible Creatures.

Now I will shew you how apt New Canaan is like{121}wise for the increase of the reasonable Creatures; Children, of all riches, being the principall: and I give you this for an instance.

This Country of New Canaan in seaven yeares time could show more Children livinge, that have beene borne there, then in 27. yeares could be shewen in Virginea;[474] yet here are but a handful of weomen landed, to that of Virginea.

The Country doth afford such plenty of Lobsters and other delicate shellfish, and Venus is said to be borne of the Sea; or else it was some sallet herbe proper to the Climate, or the fountaine at Weenaseemute[475] made her become teeming here that had tried a campe royall in other partes where shee had been; and yet never the neere, till shee came in to New Canaan.

[Pg 266]

Shee was delivered, (in a voyage to Virginea,) about Bussardes bay, to west of Cape Cod, where shee had a Sonne Dead and buried. borne, but died without baptisme and was buried; and being a thinge remarkable, had this Epitaph followinge made of purpose to memorize the worth of the persons.

This was a man approoved of the Brethren, both for his zeale and guiftes, yet but a Bubble, and at the publike Chardge conveyed to New England, I thinke to be Master of the Ceremonies betweene the Natives, and the Stenography one guift. Planters: for hee applied himselfe cheifly to pen the language downe in Stenography: But there for want of use, which hee rightly understood not, all was losse of labor;[Pg 267] somethinge it was when next it came to view, but what hee could not tell.

This man, Master Bubble, was in the time of Iohn Oldams absence made the howse Chaplaine there, and every night hee made use of his guifts, whose oratory luld his auditory Oratory another guift. fast a sleepe, as Mercuries pipes did Argus eies: for, when hee was in, they sayd hee could not tell how to get out; nay, hee would hardly out till hee were fired out, his zeale was such: (one fire they say drives out another): hee would become a great Merchant, and by any thinge that A great Merchant a third guift. was to be sold so as hee might have day and be trusted never so litle time: the price it seemed hee stood not much upon, but the day: for to his freind hee shewed commodities, so priced as caused him to blame the buyer, till the man this Bubble did declare that it was tane up at day, {123} and did rejoyce in the bargaine, insistinge on the day; the day, yea, marry, quoth his friend, if you have doomesday for payment you are then well to passe. But if he had not, it were as good hee had; they were payed all alike.

And now this Bubbles day is become a common proverbe. Hee obtained howse roome at Passonagessit and remooved thether, because it stood convenient for the Beaver trade: and the rather because the owner of Passonagessit had no Corne left, and this man seemed a bigg boned man, and therefore thought to be a good laborer, and to have store of corne; but, contrary wise, hee had none at all, and hoped upon this freind his host: thithere were brought the trophies Trophies of honor. of this Master Bubbles honor, his water tankard and his Porters basket, but no provision; so that one gunne did[Pg 268] serve to helpe them both to meat; and now the time for fowle was almost past.

This man and his host at dinner, Bubble begins to say grace; yea, and a long one to, till all the meate was cold; hee would not give his host leave to say grace: belike, hee thought mine host past grace, and further learned as many other Schollers are: but in the usage and custome of this blinde oratory his host tooke himselfe abused, and the whiles fell to and had halfe done before this man Bubble would open his eies to see what stood afore him, which made him more cautius, and learned that brevis oratio penetrat Cælum. Together Bubbles and hee goes in the Canaw to Nut Island[477] for brants, and there his host makes a shotte and breakes the winges of many: Bubble, {124} in hast and single handed, paddels out like a Cow in a cage: his host cals back to rowe two handed like to a pare of oares; and, before this could be performed, the fowle had time to swimme to other flockes, and so to escape: the best part of the pray being lost mayd his host to mutter at him, and so to parte for that time discontended.

The owner of Passonagessit, to have the benefit of company, left his habitation in the Winter and reposed at Wessaguscus, (to his cost): meane time, in the Depth of[Pg 269] Winter, the neighbour Salvages, accustomed to buy foode, The Salvages betake the howse & take the Corne. came to the howse, (for that intent perhaps,) and peepinge in all the windowes, (then unglased,) espied corne, but no body to sell the same; and having company and helpe at hand did make a shift to get into the howse, and, take out corne to serve but for the present, left enough behinde: the Sachem having knowledge of the facte, and being advertised likewise of the displeasure that had ben conceaved by the Proprietor thereof at this offence, prepares a Messenger, the Salvage that had lived in England, and sends him with commission for the trespasse of his men, who had tenne skinnes perposed {125} for it to bee payd by a day certaine: The Sachem, at the time appointed, bringes the Beaver to Wessaguscus where the owner lived, but just then was gone abroade: meane time the skinnes were by the Wessaguscus men gelded, and the better halfe by them juggled away before the owner came; and hee by the Actors perswaded A dishonest tricke. to bee contended with the rest, who not so pleased did draw the Sachem then to make a new agreement, and so to pay his remnant left in hand, and tenne skinnes more by a new day asigned, and then to bringe them to Passonagessit; but the Wessaguscus men went the day before to the Salvages with this sayinge, that they were sent to call upon him there for payement; and received tenne skinnes, and tooke a Salvage there to justifie that at their howse the owner stayed the while; hee verified this, because hee saw the man before at Wessaguscus: the Sachem did beleive the tale, and at that time delivered up tenne skinnes on that behalfe, in full dischardge of all demandes against the trespasse and the trespassers, to them; who consented to him, and them, to[Pg 270] the owner, and kept nine[478] to themselves, and made the A consenting tricke. The Heathen more just, then the Christians. Salvage take the tenth, and give the owner all that yet was to bee had, themselves confessinge their demaunds for him, and that there was but onely one as yet prepared: so that by this you may easily perceive the uncivilized people are more just than the civilized.

This woorthy member Master Bubble, a new Master of the Ceremonies, having a conceipt in his head that hee had hatched a new device for the purchase of Beaver, beyond Imagination, packes up a sacke full of odde implements, and without any company but a couple of Indians for Two Salvage guides conduct Iohn, to Neepenett alone. guides, (and therefore you may, if you please, beeleive they are so dangerous as the Brethren of Plimmouth give it out,) hee betakes him to his progresse into the Inlande for Beaver, with his carriadge on his shoulders like Milo: his guides and hee in processe of time come to the place appointed, which was about Neepenett,[479] thereabouts being more Beavers to be had then this Milo could carry, and both his journey men: glad hee was good man, and his guides were willing to pleas[Pg 271]ure him: there the Salvages stay: night came on, but, before they were inclined to sleepe, this good man Master Bubble had an evation crept into his head, by misapplying the Salvages actions, that hee must needs be gone in all hast, yea and without his errand: hee purposed to doe it so cunningely that his flight should not {127} be suspected: hee leaves his shooes in the howse, with all his other implements, and flies: as hee was on his way, to increase his feare, suggestinge himselfe that hee was pressed[480] by a company of Indians and that there shafts were let fly as thick as haile at him, hee puts of his breeches and puts them one his head, for to save him from the shafts that flew after him so thick that no man could perceave them, and cryinge out, avoyd Satan, what have yee to doe with mee! thus running one his way without his breeches hee was pittifully scratched with the brush of the underwoods, as hee wandred up and downe in unknowne wayes: The Salvages in the meane time put up all his implements in the sack hee left behinde and brought them to Wessaguscus, where they thought to have found him; but, understanding hee was not returned, were ferefull what to doe, and what would be conceaved of the English was become of this mazed man, the Master of the Ceremonies; and were in consultation of the matter. One of the Salvages was of opinion the English would suppose him to be made away; fearefull hee was to come in sight. The other, better acquainted with the English, (having lived some time in England,[481]) was more confident, and[Pg 272] hee perswaded his fellow that the English would be satisfied with relation of the truth, as having had testimony of his fidelity. So they boldly adventured to shew what they had They take a note of what was in the sack. brougt and how the matter stood. The English, (when the sack was opened,) did take a note in writing of all the particulers that were in the sack; and heard what was by the Salvages related of the acci{128}dents: but, when his shoes were showne, it was thought hee would not have departed without his shoes; and therefore they did conceave that Master Bubble was made away by some sinister practise of the Salvages, who unadvisedly had bin culpable of a crime which now they sought to excuse; and straightly chardged the Salvages to finde him out againe, and bring him dead, Mr. Bubble must be found againe or else they shall be destroyed. or alive, else their wifes and children should be destroyed. The poore Salvages, being in a pittifull perplexity, caused their Countrymen to seeke out for this maz’d man; who, being in short time found, was brought to Wessaguscus; where hee made a discourse of his travels, and of the perrillous passages, which did seeme to be no lesse dangerous then these of that worthy Knight Errant, Don Quixote,[482] and how miraculously hee had bin preserved; and, in conclusion, lamented the greate losse of his goods, whereby hee thought himselfe undone.

The perticuler whereof being demaunded, it appeared that the Salvages had not diminished any part of them; no, not so much as one bit of bread: the number being knowne, and the fragments laid together, it appeared all the bisket[Pg 273] was preserved, and not any diminished at all: whereby the Master of the Ceremonies was overjoyed, and the whole Company made themselves merry at his discourse of all his perrillous adventures.

And by this you may observe whether the Salvage people are not full of humanity, or whether they are a dangerous people, as Master Bubble and the rest of his tribe would perswade you.

Whether this goodly creature of incontinency went to worke upon even termes like Phillis, or noe, it does not appeare by any Indenture of covenants then extant; whereby shee might legally challenge the performance of any compleate Marriage at his hands that had bin tradeing with her, as Demopheon here to fore had bin with his ostis.[483]

Neverthelesse, (for his future advantage,) shee indeavoured, (like Phillis,) to gaine this Demopheon all to herselfe;[Pg 274] who, (as it seemes,) did meane nothing lesse by leaving her for the next commer, that had any minde to coole his courage by that meanes; the whipping post, (as it seemes,) at that time not being in publike use for such kinde of Cony katchers; but seeing herselfe rejected, shee grew into such a passion of Mellancolly, on a sodaine, that it was thought shee would exhibit a petition for redresse to grim Pluto, who had set her a worke; and knowing that the howse of fate has Shee cannot one the sodaine resolve which dore to goe in att. many entrances, shee was pusseld to finde the neerest way. Shee could not resolve on a sodaine which doore would soonest bring her to his presence handsomely.

{130} If shee should make way with a knife, shee thought shee might spoyle her drinking in after ages; if by poyson, shee thought it might prolonge her passage thether; if by drowning, shee thought Caron might come the while with his boate, and waft her out of sight; if shee should tie up her complaint in a halter, shee thought the Ropmakers would take exceptions against her good speede. And in this manner shee debated with herselfe, and demurred upon the matter: So that shee did appeare willing enough, but a woman of small resolution.

Which thing when it was publikely knowne, made many come to comfort her. One amongst the rest was by hir requested, on her behalfe, to write to her late unkinde Demopheon. The Gentleman, being merrily disposed, in steed of writing an heroicall Epistle composed this Elegi, for a memoriall of some mirth upon the Circumstance of the matter, to be sent unto hir, as followeth:

[Pg 275]