The Project Gutenberg eBook of The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes, by Thomas Morton and Charles Francis Adams

The Project Gutenberg eBook, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes, by Thomas Morton and Charles Francis Adams

THE NEW ENGLISH CANAAN.

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

[Pg iii]

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Before undertaking the present work I had no experience as an editor. It is unnecessary for me to say, therefore, that, were I now to undertake it, I should pursue a somewhat different course from that which I have pursued. The New English Canaan is, in many respects, a singular book. One of its most singular features is the extent of ground it covers. Not only is it full of obscure references to incidents in early New England history, but it deals directly with the aborigines, the trees, animals, fish, birds and geology of the region; besides having constant incidental allusions to literature,—both classic and of the author’s time,—to geography, and to then current events. No one person can possess the knowledge necessary to thoroughly cover so large a field. To edit properly he must have recourse to specialists.

It was only as the labor of investigation increased on my hands that I realized what a wealth of scientific and special knowledge was to be reached, in the neighborhood of Boston, by any one engaged in such multifarious inquiry. Were I again to enter upon it I should confine my own labors chiefly to correspondence; for on every point which comes up there is some one now in this vicinity, if he can only be found out, who has made a study of it, and has more information than the most laborious and skilful of editors can acquire.

In this edition of the New Canaan I have not laid so many of these specialists as I now wish, under requisition; and yet the list is a tolerably extensive one. In every case, also, the assistance asked for has been rendered as of course, in the true scientific spirit. My correspondence has included Messrs. Deane, Winsor and Ellis on events in early New England history; Professor Whitney on geographical allusions; Professors Lane and Greenough, Dr. Everett and Mr. T. W. Higginson, on references to the Greek and Latin classics, or quotations from them; and the Rev. Mr. Norton on Scriptural allusions. Mr. J. C. Gray has hunted up for me legal precedents five centuries old, and Mr. Lindsay Swift has explained archaic expressions, to the meaning of which I could get no clew. On the subject of trees and herbs I called on Professors Gray and Sargent; in regard to birds, Mr. William Brewster was indefatigable; Mr. Allen, though in very poor health, took the chapter on animals; Professor Shaler disposed of the geology; Messrs. Agassiz and Lyman instructed me as to fish, and Professor Putnam as to shell-heaps. I met some allusions to early French and other explorers, and naturally had recourse to Messrs. Parkman and Slafter; while in regard to Indian words and names, I have been in constant correspondence with the one authority, Mr. J. Hammond Trumbull, who has recognized to the fullest extent the public obligation which a mastery of a special subject imposes on him who masters it.

In closing a pleasant editorial task, my chief regret, therefore, is that the notes in this volume contain so much matter of my own. They should have been even more eclectic than they are, and each from the highest possible authority on the subject to which it relates.

[Pg 1]

MORTON OF MERRY-MOUNT.

In the second book of his history of Plymouth Plantation, Governor Bradford, while dealing with the events of the year 1628 though writing at a still later period, says:—

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.

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.

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:—

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

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.

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]

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.

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.

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:—

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.

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.

[Pg 107]

NEW ENGLISH CANAAN
OR
NEW CANAAN.

Containing an Abstract of New England,
Composed in three Bookes.

The first Booke setting forth the originall of the Natives, their Manners and Customes, together with their tractable Nature and Love towards the English.

The second Booke setting forth the naturall Indowments of the Country, and what staple Commodities it yealdeth.

The third Booke setting forth, what people are planted there, their prosperity, what remarkable accidents have happened since the first planting of it, together with their Tenents and practise of their Church.

Written by Thomas Morton of Cliffords Inne gent, upon tenne yeares knowledge and experiment of the Country.

Printed at AMSTERDAM,
By JACOB FREDERICK STAM.
In the Yeare 1637.

[Pg 109]

To the right honorable, the Lords and others of his Majesties most honorable privy Councell, Commissioners, for the Government of all his Majesties forraigne Provinces.[196]

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

[Pg 110]

The Epistle to the 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,

[Pg 111]

NEW ENGLISH CANAAN,
OR
NEW CANAAN.

The Author’s Prologue.

[Pg 115]

NEW ENGLISH CANAAN,
OR
NEW CANAAN.

The first Booke.

Containing the originall of the Natives, their manners & Customes, with their tractable nature and love towards the English.

Chap. I.

Prooving New England the principall part of all America, and most commodious and fitt for habitation.

{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.

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.

[Pg 123]

Chap. II.

Of the originall of the Natives.

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.

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]

[Pg 130]

Chap. III.

Of a great mortality that happened amongst the Natives of New England, neere about the time that the English came there to plant.

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.

Chap. IV.

Of their Houses and Habitations.

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]

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.

{27} Chap. V.

Of their Religion.

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.

Chap. VI.

Of the Indians apparrell.

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.

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]

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]

Chap. VII.

Of their Child-bearing, and delivery, and what manner of persons they are.

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.

{33} Chap. VIII.

Of their Reverence, and respect to age.

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.

Chap. IX.

Of their pretty conjuring tricks.

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.

Chap. X.

Of their duels, and the honourable estimation of victory obtained thereby.

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.

{38} Chap. XI.

Of the maintaining of their Reputation.

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.

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.

Chap. XII.

Of their trafficke and trade one with another.

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.

[Pg 160]

Chap. XIII.

Of their Magazines or Storehowses.

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]

{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.

Chap. XIV.

Of theire Subtilety.

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.

{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.

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.

Chap. XV.

Of their admirable perfection, in the use of the sences.

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.

Chap. XVI.

Of their acknowledgment of the Creation, and immortality of the Soule.

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.

{51} Chap. XVII.

Of their Annals and funerals.

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]

{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.

Chap. XVIII.

Of their Custome in burning the Country, and the reason thereof.

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.

Chap. XIX.

Of their inclination to Drunkennesse.

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]

Chap. XX. {55}

That the Salvages live a contended life.

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]

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.

[Pg 179]

NEW ENGLISH CANAAN, {59}
OR
NEW CANAAN.

The second Booke.

Containing a description of the bewty of the Country with her naturall indowements, both in the Land and Sea; with the great Lake of Erocoise.

Chap. I.

The generall Survey of the Country.

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.

Chap. II.

What trees are there and how commodious.[286]

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Pg 188]

Chap. III.

Potthearbes and other herbes for Sallets.

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]

Chap. IV.

Of Birds, and fethered fowles.[311]

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.

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]

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.

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.

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.

Chap. V.

Of the Beasts of the forrest.[344]

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.

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]

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.

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]

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]

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.

Chap. VI.

Of Stones and Minerals.[381]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[Pg 221]

Chap. VII.

Of the Fishes, and what commodity they proove.[404]

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.

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.

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.

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]

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.

{92} Chap. VIII.

Of the goodnes of the Country and the Waters.

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.

{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.

{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.

Chap. IX.

A Perspective to view the Country by.

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]

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]

[Pg 234]

Chap. X.

Of the Great Lake of Erocoise in New England, and the commodities thereof.

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.

{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.

[Pg 241]

{101}

NEW CANAANS GENIVS.
EPILOGVS.

[Pg 243]

{103}

NEW ENGLISH CANAAN,
OR NEW CANAAN.

The Third Booke.

Containing a description of the People that are planted there, what remarkable Accidents have happened there since they were setled, what Tenents they hould, together with the practise of their Church.

Chap. I.

Of a great League made with the Plimmouth Planters after their arrivall, by the Sachem of those Territories.[449]

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.

Chap. II.

Of the entertainement of Mr. Westons people sent to settle a plantation there.

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.

Chap. III.

Of a Battle fought at the Massachussets, between the English and the French.[455]

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.

Chap. IV.

Of a Parliament held at Wessaguscus, and the Actes.

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.

{111} Chap. V.

Of a Massacre made upon the Salvages at Wessaguscus.

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.

{113} Chap. VI.

Of the surprizinge of a Merchants Shipp in Plimmouth harbour.

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.

{116} Chap. VII.

Of Thomas Mortons entertainment at Plimmouth, and castinge away upon an Island.[466]

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.

Chap. VIII.

Of the Banishment of Master Iohn Layford, and Iohn Oldam from Plimmouth.[470]

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]

Chap. IX.

Of a barren doe of Virginea growne fruithfull in New Canaan.[473]

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.

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.

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.

EPITAPH.

{122} Chap. X.[476]

Of a man indued with many spetiall guifts sent over to be Master of the Ceremonies.

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.

Chap. XI.

Of a Composition made by the Sachem for a Theft committed by some of his men, shewinge their honest meaninge.

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.

{126} Chap. XII.

Of a voyadge made by the Master of the Ceremonies of New Canaan to Neepenett, from whence hee came away; and of the manifold dangers hee escaped.

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.

{129} Chap. XIII.

Of a lamentable fit of Mellancolly that the Barren doe fell into, (after the death of her infant, seeing herselfe despised of her Sweete hart,) whereof shee was cured.

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:

CARMEN ELEGIACVM.

After this, the water of the fountaine at Ma-re Mount was thought fit to be applyed unto her for a remedy, shee willingly used according to the quality thereof.

And when this Elegy came to be divulged, shee was so conscious of her crime that shee put up her pipes, and with the next shipp shee packt away to Virginea, (her former habitation,) quite cured of her mellancolly, with the helpe of the water of the fountaine at Ma-re Mount.

{132} Chap. XIV.

Of the Revells of New Canaan.[484]

The Inhabitants of Pasonagessit, (having translated the name of their habitation from that ancient Salvage name to Ma-re Mount,[485] and being resolved to have the new name confirmed for a memorial to after ages,) did devise amongst themselves to have it performed in a solemne manner, with Revels and merriment after the old English custome; [they] prepared to sett up a Maypole upon the festivall day A Maypole. of Philip and Iacob, and therefore brewed a barrell of excellent beare and provided a case of bottles, to be spent, with other good cheare, for all commers of that day. And because they would have it in a compleat forme, they had prepared a song fitting to the time and present occasion. And upon Mayday they brought the Maypole to the place appointed,[Pg 277] with drumes, gunnes, pistols and other fitting instruments, for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of Salvages, that came thether of purpose to see the manner of our Revels. A goodly pine tree of 80. foote longe was reared up, with a peare of buckshorns nayled one somewhat neare unto the top of it: where it stood, as a faire sea marke for directions how to finde out the way to mine Hoste of Ma-re Mount.

And because it should more fully appeare to what end it was placed there, they had a poem in readines made, which was fixed to the Maypole, to shew the new name confirmed upon that plantation; which, allthough it were made according to the occurrents {133} of the time, it, being Enigmattically composed, pusselled the Seperatists most pittifully to expound it, which, (for the better information of the reader,) I have here inserted.

THE POEM.

{134} The setting up of this Maypole was a lamentable spectacle to the precise seperatists, that lived at new Plimmouth. They termed it an Idoll; yea, they called it The Maypole called an Idoll the Calfe of Horeb. the Calfe of Horeb, and stood at defiance with the place, naming it Mount Dagon; threatning to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount.

The Riddle, for want of Oedipus, they could not expound; onely they made some explication of part of it, and sayd it was meant by Sampson Iob, the carpenter of the shipp that[Pg 279] brought over a woman to her husband, that had bin there longe before and thrived so well that hee sent for her and her children to come to him; where shortly after hee died: having no reason, but because of the sound of those two words; when as, (the truth is,) the man they applyed it to was altogether unknowne to the Author.

There was likewise a merry song made, which, (to make their Revells more fashionable,) was sung with a Corus, every man bearing his part; which they performed in a daunce, hand in hand about the Maypole, whiles one of the Company sung and filled out the good liquor, like gammedes and Iupiter.

THE SONGE.

This harmeles mirth made by younge men, (that lived in hope to have wifes brought over to them, that would save them a laboure to make a voyage to fetch any over,) was much distasted of the precise Seperatists, that keepe much a doe about the tyth of Muit and Cummin, troubling their braines more then reason would require about things that are indifferent: and from that time sought occasion against my {136} honest Host of Ma-re Mount, to overthrow his ondertakings and to destroy his plantation quite and cleane. But because they presumed with their imaginary gifts, (which they have out of Phaos box,[487]) they could expound hidden misteries, to convince them of blindnes, as well in this as in other matters of more consequence, I will illustrate the poem, according to the true intent of the authors of these Revells, so much distasted by those Moles.

Oedipus is generally receaved for the absolute reader of riddles, who is invoaked: Silla and Caribdis are two danger[Pg 281]ous places for seamen to incounter, neere unto Vennice; and have bin by poets formerly resembled to man and wife. The like licence the author challenged for a paire of his nomination, the one lamenting for the losse of the other as Niobe for her children. Amphitrite is an arme of the Sea, by which the newes was carried up and downe of a rich widow, now to be tane up or laid downe. By Triton is the fame spread that caused the Suters to muster, (as it had bin to Penellope of Greece;) and, the Coast lying circuler, all our passage to and froe is made more convenient by Sea then Land. Many aimed at this marke; but hee that played Proteus best and could comply with her humor must be the man that would carry her; and hee had need have Sampsons strenght to deale with a Dallila, and as much patience as Iob that should come there, for a thing that I did observe in the life-time of the former.

But marriage and hanging, (they say,) comes by desteny and Scogans choise [488] tis better [than] none at all. Hee that {137} playd Proteus, (with the helpe of Priapus,) put their noses out of joynt, as the Proverbe is.

And this the whole company of the Revellers at Ma-re Mount knew to be the true sence and exposition of the riddle that was fixed to the Maypole, which the Seperatists were at defiance with. Some of them affirmed that the first institution thereof was in memory of a whore;[489] not knowing that it was a Trophe erected at first in honor of Maja, the Lady of learning which they despise, vilifying the two[Pg 282] universities with uncivile termes, accounting what is there obtained by studdy is but unnecessary learning; not considering that learninge does inable mens mindes to converse with eliments of a higher nature then is to be found within the habitation of the Mole.

Chap. XV.

Of a great Monster supposed to be at Ma-re-Mount; and the preparation made to destroy it.[490]

The Seperatists, envying the prosperity and hope of the Plantation at Ma-re Mount, (which they perceaved beganne to come forward, and to be in a good way for gaine in the Beaver trade,) conspired together against mine Host especially, (who was the owner of that Plantation,) and made up a party against him; and mustred up what aide they could, accounting of him as of a great Monster.

{138} Many threatening speeches were given out both against his person and his Habitation, which they divulged should be consumed with fire: And taking advantage of the time when his company, (which seemed little to regard theire threats,) were gone up into the Inlands to trade with the Salvages for Beaver, they set upon my honest host at a place called Wessaguscus, where, by accident, they found him. The inhabitants there were in good hope of the subvertion of the plantation at Mare Mount, (which they principally aymed at;) and the rather because mine host was a[Pg 283] man that indeavoured to advaunce the dignity of the Church of England; which they, (on the contrary part,) would laboure to vilifie with uncivile termes: enveying against the sacred booke of common prayer, and mine host that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family, as a practise of piety.

There hee would be a meanes to bringe sacks to their mill, (such is the thirst after Beaver,) and helped the conspiratores to surprise mine host, (who was there all alone;) and they chardged him, (because they would seeme to have some reasonable cause against him to sett a glosse upon their mallice,) with criminall things; which indeede had beene done by such a person, but was of their conspiracy; mine host demaunded of the conspirators who it was that was author of that information, that seemed to be their ground for what they now intended. And because they answered they would not tell him, hee as peremptorily replyed, that hee would not say whether he had, or he had not done as they had bin informed.

{139} The answere made no matter, (as it seemed,) whether it had bin negatively or affirmatively made; for they had resolved what hee should suffer, because, (as they boasted,) they were now become the greater number: they had shaked of their shackles of servitude, and were become Masters, and masterles people.

It appeares they were like beares whelpes in former time, when mine hosts plantation was of as much strength as theirs, but now, (theirs being stronger,) they, (like overgrowne beares,) seemed monsterous. In breife, mine host must indure to be their prisoner untill they could contrive it so that they[Pg 284] might send him for England, (as they said,) there to suffer according to the merrit of the fact which they intended to father upon him; supposing, (belike,) it would proove a hainous crime.

Much rejoycing was made that they had gotten their cappitall enemy, (as they concluded him;) whome they purposed to hamper in such sort that hee should not be able to uphold his plantation at Ma-re Mount.

The Conspirators sported themselves at my honest host, that meant them no hurt, and were so joccund that they feasted their bodies, and fell to tippeling as if they had obtained a great prize; like the Trojans when they had the custody of Hippeus pinetree horse.

Mine host fained greefe, and could not be perswaded either to eate or drinke; because hee knew emptines would be a meanes to make him as watchfull as the Geese kept in the Roman Cappitall: whereon, the contrary part, the conspirators would be so drowsy that hee might have an opportunity to give them a {140} slip, insteade of a tester. Six persons of the conspiracy were set to watch him Mine Host got out of prison. at Wessaguscus: But hee kept waking; and in the dead of night, (one lying on the bed for further suerty,) up gets mine Host and got to the second dore that hee was to passe, which, notwithstanding the lock, hee got open, and shut it after him with such violence that it affrighted some of the conspirators.

The word, which was given with an alarme, was, ô he’s gon, he’s gon, what shall wee doe, he’s gon! The rest, (halfe a sleepe,) start up in a maze, and, like rames, ran theire heads one at another full butt in the darke.

Theire grande leader, Captaine Shrimp, tooke on most furiously and tore his clothes for anger, to see the empty nest, and their bird gone.

The rest were eager to have torne theire haire from theire heads; but it was so short that it would give them no hold. Now Captaine Shrimp thought in the losse of this prize, (which hee accoumpted his Master peece,) all his honor would be lost for ever.

In the meane time mine Host was got home to Ma-re Mount through the woods, eight miles round about the head of the river Monatoquit that parted the two Plantations, finding his way by the helpe of the lightening, (for it thundred as hee went terribly;) and there hee prepared powther, three pounds dried, for his present imployement, and foure good gunnes for him and the two assistants left at his Hee provides for his enemies. howse, with bullets of severall sizes, three hounderd or thereabouts, to be used if the conspirators should pursue {141} him thether: and these two persons promised theire aides in the quarrell, and confirmed that promise with health in good rosa solis.

Now Captaine Shrimp, the first Captaine in the Land, (as hee supposed,) must doe some new act to repaire this losse, and, to vindicate his reputation, who had sustained blemish by this oversight, begins now to study, how to repaire or survive his honor: in this manner, callinge of Councell, they conclude.

Hee takes eight persons more to him, and, (like the nine Worthies of New Canaan,) they imbarque with preparation against Ma-re-Mount, where this Monster of a man, as theire phrase was, had his denne; the whole number, had the rest[Pg 286] not bin from home, being but seaven, would have given Captaine Shrimpe, (a quondam Drummer,) such a wellcome as would have made him wish for a Drume as bigg as Diogenes tubb, that hee might have crept into it out of sight.

Now the nine Worthies are approached, and mine Host prepared: having intelligence by a Salvage, that hastened in love from Wessaguscus to give him notice of their intent.

One of mine Hosts men prooved a craven: the other had prooved his wits to purchase a little valoure, before mine Host had observed his posture.

{142} The nine worthies comming before the Denne of this supposed Monster, (this seaven headed hydra, as they termed him,) and began, like Don Quixote against the A Parly. Windmill, to beate a parly, and to offer quarter, if mine Host would yeald; for they resolved to send him for England; and bad him lay by his armes.

But hee, (who was the Sonne of a Souldier,) having taken up armes in his just defence, replyed that hee would not lay by those armes, because they were so needefull at Sea, if hee should be sent over. Yet, to save the effusion of so much worty bloud, as would haue issued out of the vaynes of these 9. worthies of New Canaan, if mine Host should have played upon them out at his port holes, (for they came within danger like a flocke of wild geese, as if they had bin tayled one to another, as coults to be sold at a faier,) mine Host was content to yeelde upon quarter; and did capitulate with them in what manner it should be for more certainety, because hee knew what Captaine Shrimpe was.

Hee expressed that no violence should be offered to his person, none to his goods, nor any of his Howsehold: but[Pg 287] that hee should have his armes, and what els was requisit for the voyage: which theire Herald retornes, it was agreed upon, and should be performed.

But mine Host no sooner had set open the dore, and issued out, but instantly Captaine Shrimpe and the rest of the worties stepped to him, layd hold of his armes, and had him downe: and so eagerly was every {143} man bent against him, (not regarding any agreement made with such a carnall man,) that they fell upon him as if they would have eaten him: some of them were so violent that they would have a slice with scabbert, and all for haste; untill The Worthies rebuked for their unworthy practises. an old Souldier, (of the Queenes, as the Proverbe is,) that was there by accident, clapt his gunne under the weapons, and sharply rebuked these worthies for their unworthy practises. So the matter was taken into more deliberate consideration.

Captaine Shrimpe, and the rest of the nine worthies, made themselves, (by this outragious riot,) Masters of mine Hoste of Ma-re Mount, and disposed of what hee had at his plantation.

This they knew, (in the eye of the Salvages,) would add to their glory, and diminish the reputation of mine honest Host; whome they practised to be ridd of upon any termes, as willingly as if hee had bin the very Hidra of the time.

Chap. XVI.

How the 9. worthies put mine Host of Ma-re-Mount into the inchaunted Castle at Plimmouth, and terrified him with the Monster Briareus.

The nine worthies of New Canaan having now the Law in their owne hands, (there being no generall {144} Governour in the Land; nor none of the Seperation that regarded the duety they owe their Soveraigne, whose naturall borne Subjects they were, though translated out of Holland, from whence they had learned to worke all to their owne ends, and make a great shewe of Religion, but no humanity,) for they were now to sit in Counsell on the cause.

And much it stood mine honest Host upon to be very circumspect, and to take Eacus [491] to taske; for that his voyce was more allowed of then both the other: and had not mine Host confounded all the arguments that Eacus could make in their defence, and confuted him that swaied the rest, they would have made him unable to drinke in such manner of merriment any more. So that following this private counsell, given him by one that knew who ruled the rost, the Hiracano ceased that els would split his pinace.

A conclusion was made and sentence given that mine Host should be sent to England a prisoner. But when hee was brought to the shipps for that purpose, no man durst[Pg 289] be so foole hardy as to undertake carry him.[492] So these Worthies set mine Host upon an Island, without gunne, Mine host set upon an Island without anything, to shift for himselfe. powther, or shot or dogge or so much as a knife to get any thinge to feede upon, or any other cloathes to shelter him with at winter then a thinne suite which hee had one at that time. Home hee could not get to Ma-re-Mount. Upon this Island hee stayed a moneth at least, and was releeved by Salvages that tooke notice that mine Host was a Sachem of Passonagessit, and would bringe bottles of strong liquor to him, and unite themselves {145} into a league of brother hood with mine Host; so full of humanity are these infidels before those Christians.

From this place for England sailed mine Host in a Plimmouth shipp, (that came into the Land to fish upon the Coast,) that landed him safe in England at Plimmouth: and hee stayed in England untill the ordinary time for shipping to set forth for these parts, and then retorned:[493] Noe man being able to taxe him of any thinge.

[Pg 290]

Chap. XVII.

Of the Baccanall Triumphe of the nine worthies of New Canaan.

The Seperatists were not so contended, (when mine Host of Ma-re-Mount was gone,) but they were as much discontended when hee was retorned againe: and the rather because theire passages about him, and the businesse, were so much derided and in songes exemplified: which, (for better satisfaction of such as are in that kinde affected,) I have set forth, as it was then in use by the name of the Baccanall Triumphe, as followeth:

{146} THE POEM.[494]

THE ILLVSTRATIONS.

Now to illustrate this Poem, and make the sence more plaine, it is to be considered that the Persons at Ma-re-Mount were seaven, and they had seaven heads and[Pg 295] 14. feete; these were accounted Hidra with the seaven heads: and the Maypole, with the Hornes nailed neere the topp, was the forked tayle of this supposed Monster, which they (for want of skill) imposed: yet feared in time, (if they hindred not mine Host), hee would hinder the benefit of their Beaver trade, as hee had done, (by meanes of this helpe,) in Kynyback river finely, ere they were awares; who, comming too late, were much dismaide to finde that mine Host his boate had gleaned away all before they came; which Beaver is a fitt companion for Scarlett: and I beleeve that Iasons golden Fleece was either the same, or some other Fleece not of so much value.

This action bred a kinde of hart burning in the Plimmouth Planters, who after sought occasion against mine Host to overthrowe his undertakings and to destroy his Plantation; whome they accoumpted a maine enemy to theire Church and State.

{150} Now when they had begunne with him, they thought best to proceede: forasmuch as they thought themselves farre enough from any controule of Iustice, and therefore resolved to be their owne carvers: (and the rather because they presumed upon some incouragement they had from the favourites of their Sect in England:) and with fire and sword, nine in number, pursued mine Host, who had escaped theire hands, in scorne of what they intended, and betooke him to his habitation in a night of great thunder and lightening, when they durst not follow him, as hardy as these nine worthies seemed to be.

It was in the Moneth of Iune that these Marshallists had[Pg 296] appointed to goe about this mischeifous project, and deale so crabbidly with mine Host.

After a parly, hee capitulated with them about the quarter they proffered him, if hee would consent to goe for England, there to answere, (as they pretended,) some thing they could object against him principall to the generall: But what it would be hee cared not, neither was it any thing materiall.

Yet when quarter was agreed upon, they, contrary wise, abused him, and carried him to theire towne of Plimmouth, where, (if they had thought hee durst have gone to England,) rather then they would have bin any more affronted by him they would have dispatched him, as Captaine Shrimp in a rage profest that hee would doe with his Pistoll, as mine Host should set his foote into the boate. Howsoever, the cheife Elders voyce in that place was more powerfull than any of the rest, who concluded {151} to send mine Host without any other thing to be done to him. And this being the finall agreement, (contrary to Shrimpe and others,) the nine Worthies had a great Feast made, and the furmity [497] pott was provided for the boats gang by no allowance: and all manner of pastime.

Captaine Shrimpe was so overjoyed in the performance of this exployt, that they had, at that time, extraordinary merriment, (a thing not usuall amongst those presisians); and when the winde served they tooke mine Host into their Shallop, hoysed Saile, and carried him to the Northern parts; where they left him upon a Island.

Chap. XVIII.

Of a Doctor made at a Commencement in New Canaan.[498]

The Church of Plimmouth, having due regard to the weale publike and the Brethren that were to come over, and knowing that they would be busily imployed to make provision for the cure of Soules, and therefore might neglect the body for that time, did hold themselves to be in duety bound to make search for a fitting man, that might be able, (if so neede requir’d,) to take the chardge upon him in that place of imployment: and therefore called a Counsell of the A Councell called. whole Synagoge: amongst which company, they chose out a man that long time had bin nurst up in the tender bosome of the Church: one that had {152} speciall gifts: hee could wright and reade; nay, more: hee had tane the oath of abjuration, which is a speciall stepp, yea, and a maine degree unto perferment. Him they weane, and out of Phaos boxe [499] fitt him with speciall guifts of no lesse worth: they stile him Doctor, and forth they send him to gaine imployement and opinion.

What luck is it I cannot hit on his name: but I will give[Pg 298] you him by a periphrasis, that you may know him when you meete him next.

Hee was borne at Wrington, in the County of Somerset, where hee was bred a Butcher. Hee weares a longe beard, and a Garment like the Greeke that beggd in Pauls Church.[500] This new made Doctor, comes to Salem to congratulate:[501] where hee findes some are newly come from Sea, and ill at ease.

He takes the patient, and the urinall: eies the State there; finds the Crasis Syptomes, and the attomi natantes: and tells the patient that his disease was winde, which hee had tane by gapeing feasting over board [502] at Sea; but hee would quickly ease him of that greife, and quite expell the winde. And this hee did performe, with his gifts hee had: and then hee handled the patient so handsomely, that hee eased him of all the winde hee had in an instant.

And yet I hope this man may be forgiven, if hee were made a fitting Plant for Heaven.

How hee went to worke with his gifts is a question; yet hee did a great cure for Captaine Littleworth, hee cured him of a disease called a wife:[503] and yet I hope this man[Pg 299] may be forgiven, if shee were made a fitting plant for heaven.

{153} By this meanes hee was allowed 4. p. a moneth, and the chirgeon’s chest, and made Phisition generall of Salem: where hee exercised his gifts so well, that of full 42. that there hee tooke to cure, there is not one has more cause to complaine, or can say black’s his eie. This saved Captaine Littleworths credit, that had truck’d away the vittels: though it brought forth a scandall on the Country by it: and then I hope this man may be forgiven, if they were all made fitting plants for Heaven.

But in mine opinion, hee deserves to be set upon a palfrey and lead up and downe in triumph throw new Canaan, with a coller of Iurdans about his neck, as was one of like desert in Richard the seconds time through the streets of London, that men might know where to finde a Quacksaluer.[504]

Chap. XIX.

Of the silencing of a Minister in new Canaan.[505]

A silenced Minister, out of coveteousnesse,[506] came over into new Canaan to play the spie: Hee pretended, out of[Pg 301] a zealous intent to doe the Salvages good, and to teach them. Hee brought a great Bundell of Horne books with him, and carefull hee was, (good man,) to blott out all the crosses of them, for feare least the people of the land should become Idolaters. Hee was in hope, with his gifts, to prepare a great auditory against greate Iosua should arive there.

{154} Hee applyed himselfe on the weeke dayes to the trade of Beaver, but it was, (as might seeme,) to purchase the principall benefite of the Lande, when the time should come; for hee had a hope to be the Caiphas of the Country: and well hee might, for hee was higher by the head than any of his tribe that came after him.

This man, it seemes, played the spie very handsomely; for in the exercise of his guifts on the Lords day at Weenasimute,[507] hee espied a Salvage come in with a good Beaver This Caiphas that condemneth Covetousnesse, and committeth it himselfe. coate, and tooke occasion to reproove the covetous desire of his auditory to trade for Beaver on those dayes; which made them all use so much modesty about the matter for the present, that hee found opportunity, the same day, to take the Salvage a side into a corner, where (with the helpe of his Wampampeack hee had in his pocket for that purpose in a readinesse,) hee made a shifte to get that Beaver coate, which their mouthes watered at; and so deceaved them all.

But shortly after, when Iosua [508] came into the Land, hee had soone spied out Caiphas practice, and put him to silence;[Pg 302] and either hee must put up his pipes and be packing, or forsake Ionas posture, and play Demas part alltogether.[509]

{155} Chap. XX.

Of the Practise of the Seperatists to gett a snare to hamper mine Host of Ma-re-Mount.

Although the nine Worthies had left mine Hoste upon an Island,[510] in such an inhumane manner as yee heard before; yet when they understood that hee had got shipping and was gone to England of his owne accord, they dispatched letters of advise to an Agent they had there: and by the next shipp sent after to have a snare made, that might hamper mine Host so as hee might not any more trouble theire conscience: and to that end made a generall The generall collection made. collection of Beaver to defray the chardge,[511] and hee was not thought a good Christian that would not lay much out for that imployment.

Some contributed three pounds, some foure, some five pounds; and procured a pretty quantity by that Devise, which should be given to a cunning man that could make a snare to hamper him.

The Agent, (according to his directions,) does his endeavoure, (in the best manner hee could,) to have this instrument Noe cost spared for the getting of a skillfull man. made: and used no little diligence to have it effected.[512] His reputation stood upon the taske imposed upon him against mine Host, the onely enemy (accounted) of their Church and State.

Much inquiry was made in London, and about, for a skillfull man that would worke the feate. Noe cost {156} was spared, for gold hee had good store: first hee inquires of one, and then another: at the last hee heard newes of a very famous man, one that was excellent at making subtile instruments, such as that age had never bin acquainted with.

Hee was well knowne to be the man, that had wit and wondrous skill to make a cunning instrument where with to save himselfe and his whole family, if all the world besides should be drown’d; and this the best; yea, and the best cheap too, for, no good done, the man would nothing take.

To him this agent goes, and praies his aide: Declares his cause, and tells the substance of his greivance, all at large, and laid before his eies a heape of gold.

When all was shewd, that could be she’d, and said, what could be said, and all too little for to have it done, the agent The heape of gold. then did see his gold refused, his cause despised, and thought himselfe disgraced to leave the worke undone: so that hee was much dismaid, yet importun’d the cunning [man], who found no reason to take the taske in hand.

Hee thought, perhaps, mine Host, (that had the slight to escape from the nine Worthies, to chaine Argus eies, and by[Pg 304] inchauntment make the doores of the watch tower fly open at an instant,) would not be hampered, but with much a doe: and so hee was unwilling to be troubled with that taske.

The agent wondring to see that his gold would doe no good, did aske the cunning man if hee could give him no advise? who said, hee would: and what was that, thinke you? To let mine Host alone. Who, {157} being ship’d againe for the parts of New Canaan, was put Mine Host arrived againe in Plimmouth. in at Plimmouth in the very faces of them, to their terrible amazement to see him at liberty: and told him hee had not yet fully answered the matter they could object against him. Hee onely made this modest reply, that hee did perceave they were willfull people, that would never be answered: and derided them for their practises and losse of laboure.[513]

Chap. XXI.

Of Captaine Littleworth his new devise for the purchase of Beaver.

In the meane time, whiles these former passages were, there was a great swelling fellow, of Littleworth, crept over to Salem, (by the helpe of Master Charter party,[514] the Charter party Treasorer. Tresorer, and Master Ananias Increase,[515] the Collector for the[Pg 305] Company of Seperatists,) to take upon him their imployments for a time.

Hee, resolving to make hay whiles the Sonne did shine, first pretended himselfe to be sent over as cheife Iustice of the Massachussets Bay and Salem, forsoth, and tooke unto him a councell; and a worthy one no doubt, for the Cowkeeper of Salem was a prime man in those imployments; and to ad a Majesty, (as hee thought,) to his new assumed dignity, hee caused the Patent of the Massachussets, (new brought into the Land,) to be carried where hee went in his progresse to and froe, as an embleme of his authority: which {158} the vulgar people, not acquainted with, thought it to be some instrument of Musick locked up in that covered case,[516] and thought, (for so some said,) this man of little-worth had bin a fidler, and the rather because hee had put[Pg 306] into the mouthes of poore silly things, that were sent alonge with him, what skill hee had in Engines, and in things of quaint devise: all which prooved in conclusion to be but impostury.

This man, thinking none so worthy as himselfe, tooke upon him infinitely: and made warrants in his owne name, (without relation to his Majesties authority in that place,) and summoned a generall apparance at the worshipfull towne of Salem:[517] there in open assembly was tendered certaine Articles, devised betweene him and theire new Pastor Master Eager,[518] (that had renounced his old calling to the Ministry receaved in England, by warrant of Gods word, and taken a new one there, by their fantasticall way imposed, and conferred upon him with some speciall guifts had out of Phaos boxe.)[519]

To these Articles every Planter, old and new, must signe, or be expelled from any manner of aboade within the Compas of the Land contained within that graunt then shewed: which was so large it would suffice for Elbow roome for more then were in all the Land by 700000. such an army might have planted them a Colony with [in] that cirquit which hee challenged, and not contend for roome for their Cattell. But for all that, hee that should refuse to subscribe, must pack.

The tenor of the Articles were these: That in all[Pg 307] {159} causes, as well Ecclesiasticall as Politicall, wee should follow the rule of Gods word.

This made a shew of a good intent, and all the assembly, (onely mine Host replyed,) did subscribe: hee would not, unlesse they would ad this Caution: So as nothing be done contrary or repugnant to the Lawes of the Kingdome of England. These words hee knew, by former experience, were necessary, and without these the same would proove a very mousetrapp to catch some body by his owne consent, (which the rest nothing suspected,) for the construction of the worde would be made by them of the Seperation to serve their owne turnes: and if any man should, in such a case, be accused of a crime, (though in it selfe it were petty,) they might set it on the tenter hookes of their imaginary gifts, and stretch it to make it seeme cappitall; which was the reason why mine Host refused to subscribe.

It was then agreed upon that there should be one generall trade used within that Patent, (as hee said,) and a generall stock: and every man to put in a parte: and every man, for his person, to have shares alike: and for their stock, according to the ratable proportion was put in: and this to continue for 12. moneths, and then to call an accompt.

All were united, but mine Host refused: two truckmasters were chosen; wages prefixed; onely mine Host put in a All consented but mine Host. Caviat that the wages might be paid out of the cleare proffit, which there in black and white was plainely put downe.

{160} But before the end of 6. moneths, the partners in this stock, (handled by the Truckmasters,) would have an accoumpt: some of them had perceaved that Wam[Pg 308]pambeacke could be pocketted up, and the underlings, (that went in the boats alonge,) would bee neere the Wiser for any thinge, but what was trucked for Beaver onely.

The accoumpt being made betweene Captaine Littleworth, and the two Truckmasters, it was found that instead of increasing the proffit, they had decreased it; for the principall stock, by this imployment, was freetted so, that there was a great hole to be seene in the very middle of it, which cost the partners afterwards one hundred markes to stopp and make good to Captaine Littleworth.

But mine Host, that sturred not his foote at all for the matter, did not onely save his stock from such a Cancar, but gained sixe and seaven for one: in the meane time hee derided the Contributers for being catch’d in that snare.

Chap. XXII.

Of a Sequestration made in New Canaan.[520]

Captaine Littleworth, (that had an akeing tooth at mine Host of Ma-re-Mount,) devised how hee might put a trick upon him, by colour of a Sequestration; and got some persons to pretend that hee had corne and other goods of theirs in possession; and the {161} rather because mine Host had store of corne and hee had improvidently truckt his store for the present gaine of Beaver; in so much that his people under his chardge were put to short allowance, which caused some of them to sicken with con[Pg 309]ceipt of such useage, and some of them by the practise of the new entertained Doctor Noddy, with his Imaginary gifts. They sent therefore to exhibit a petition to grim Minos, Eacus and Radamant, where they wished to have the author of their greife to be convented:[521] and they had procured it quickly, if curses would have caused it: for good prayers would be of no validity, (as they supposed,) in this extremity.

Now in this extremity Capt. Littleworth gave commission to such as hee had found ready for such imployments to Commission for corne. enter in the howse at Ma-re-Mount, and, with a shallop, to bring from thence such corne and other utensilles as in their commission hee had specified. But mine Host, wary to prevent eminent mischeife, had conveyed his powther and shott, (and such other things as stood him in most steed for his present condition,) into the woods for safety: and, whiles this was put in practise by him, the shallop was landed and the Commissioners entred the howse, and willfully bent against mine honest Host, that loved good hospitality. After they had Mine Hosts corne & goods carried away by violence. feasted their bodies with that they found there, they carried all his corne away, with some other of his goods, contrary to the Lawes of hospitality: a smale parcell of refuse corne onely excepted, which they left mine Host to keepe Christmas with.

{162} But when they were gone, mine Host fell to make use of his gunne, (as one that had a good faculty in the use of that instrument,) and feasted his body neverthelesse with fowle and venison, which hee purchased with the helpe of that instrument, the plenty of the Country and the commodiousnes of the place affording meanes, by the[Pg 310] blessing of God; and hee did but deride Captaine Littleworth, that made his servants snap shorte in a Country so much abounding with plenty of foode for an industrious man, with greate variety.

Chap. XXIII.

Of a great Bonfire made for ioy of the arrivall of great Iosua, surnamed Temperwell, into the Land of Canaan.[522]

Seaven shipps set forth at once, and altogether arrived in the Land of Canaan, to take a full possession thereof: What are all the 12. Tribes of new Israell come? No, none but the tribe of Issacar, and some few scattered Levites of the remnant of those that were descended of old Elies howse.

And here comes their Iosua too among them; and they make it a more miraculous thing for these seaven shipps to set forth together, and arrive at New Canaan together, then it was for the Israelites to goe over Iordan drishod: perhaps it was, because they had a wall on the right hand and a wall on the left hand.

{163} These Seperatists suppose there was no more difficulty in the matter then for a man to finde the way to the Counter at noone dayes, betweene a Sergeant[Pg 311] and his yeoman: Now you may thinke mine Host will be hamperd or never.

These are the men that come prepared to ridd the Land of all pollution. These are more subtile then the Cunning, that did refuse a goodly heap of gold.[523] These men have brought a very snare indeed; and now mine Host must suffer. The book of Common Prayer, which hee used, to be despised: and hee must not be spared.

Now they are come, his doome before hand was concluded on: they have a warrant now: A cheife one too: and now mine Host must know hee is the subject of their hatred: the Snare must now be used; this instrument must not be brought by Iosua in vaine.[524]

A Court is called of purpose for mine host: hee there convented, and must heare his doome before hee goe: nor will they admitt him to capitulate, and know wherefore they are so violent to put such things in practise against a man they never saw before: nor will they allow of it, though hee decline their Iurisdiction.

There they all with one assent put him to silence, crying out, heare the Governour, heare the Govern: who gave this sentence against mine Host at first sight: that he should be first put in the Billbowes, his goods should be all confiscated, his Plantation should be burned downe to the ground, because the habitation of the wicked should no more appeare in Israell, and {164} his person banished from those territories; and this put in execution with all speede.[525]

The harmeles Salvages, (his neighboures,) came the while, (greived, poore silly lambes, to see what they went about,) and did reproove these Eliphants of witt for their inhumane deede: the Lord above did open their mouthes like Balams Asse, and made them speake in his behalfe sentences of unexpected divinity, besides morrallity; and tould them that god would not love them that burned this good mans howse; and plainely sayed that they who were new come would finde the want of such a howses in the winter: so much themselves to him confest.

The smoake that did assend appeared to be the very Sacrifice of Kain. Mine Host, (that a farre of abourd a ship did there behold this wofull spectacle,) knew not what hee should doe in this extremity but beare and forbeare, as Epictetus sayes [526]: it was bootelesse to exclaime.

Hee did consider then these transitory things are but ludibria fortunæ,[527] as Cicero calls them. All was burnt downe to the ground, and nothing did remaine but the bare ashes as an embleme of their cruelty: and unles it could, (like to the Phenix,) rise out of these ashes and be new againe, (to the immortall glory and renowne of this fertile Canaan the[Pg 313] new,) the stumpes and postes in their black liveries will mourne; and piety it selfe will add a voyce to the bare remnant of that Monument, and make it cry for recompence, (or else revenge,) against the Sect of cruell Schismaticks.

{165} Chap. XXIV.

Of the digrading and creating gentry in New Canaan.[528]

There was a zealous Professor in the Land of Canaan, (growne a great Merchant in the Beaver trade,) that came over for his conscience sake, (as other men have done,) and the meanes, (as the phrase is,) who in his minority had bin prentice to a tombe maker; who, comming to more ripenes of yeares, (though lesse discretion,) found a kinde of scruple in his conscience that the trade was in parte against the second commandement:[529] and therefore left it off wholely, and betooke himselfe to some other imployments.

In the end hee settled upon this course, where hee had hope of preferrement, and become one of those things that An Elder. any Iudas might hange himselfe upon, that is an Elder.

Hee had bin a man of some recconing in his time, (as himselfe would boast,) for hee was an officer, just under the[Pg 314] Exchequer at Westminster, in a place called Phlegeton: there hee was comptroller, and conversed with noe plebeians, I tell you, but such as have angels or their attendance, (I meane some Lawyers with appertenances, that is, Clarks,) with whome a Iugg of Beare and a crusty rolle in the terme is as currant as a three penny scute at Hall time.

{166} There is another place thereby, called sticks: these are two daingerous places, by which the infernall gods doe sweare: but this of Sticks is the more daingerous of the two, because there, (if a man be once in,) hee cannot tell how to get out againe handsomely.

I knew an under sheriff was in unawaires, and hee laboured to be free of it: yet hee broake his back before he got so farre as quietus est: There is no such danger in Phlegeton, where this man of so much recconing was comptroller.

Hee being here, waited an opportunity to be made a gentl. and now it fell out that a gentl. newly come into the land of Canaan, (before hee knew what ground hee stood upon,) had incurred the displeasure of great Iosua so highly that hee must therefore be digraded.

No reconciliation could be had for him: all hopes were past for that matter: Where upon this man of much recconing (pretending a graunt of the approach in avoydance,) helpes the lame dogge over the stile, and was as jocund on the matter as a Magpie over a Mutton.

Wherefore the Heralls, with Drums, and Trumpets, proclaiming in a very solemne manner that it was the pleasure of Master Temperwell. great Iosua, (for divers and sundry very good causes and considerations, Master Temperwell thereunto especially mooving,) to take away the title, prerogative and preheminence[Pg 315] of the Delinquent, so unworthy of it, and to place the same upon a Professor of more recconing: so that it was made {167} a penall thing for any man after to lifte the same man againe on the top of that stile, but that hee should stand perpetually digraded from that prerogative. And the place by this meanes being voyde, this man, of so much more reckoning, was receaved in like a Cypher to fill up a roome, and was made a Gentleman of the first head; and his Coate of Armes, blazon’d and tricked out fit for that purpose, in this Poem following.

THE POEM.

Now, that it may the more easily be understood, I have here endeavoured to set it forth in these illustrations following: Pigmalion was an Image maker, who, doteing on his owne perfection in making the Image of Venus, grew to be[Pg 316] a mazed man, like our Gentleman here of the first head: and by the figure Antonomasia [530] is hee herein exemplified.

Hee was translated from a tombe maker to be the {168} tapster at hell, (which is in Westminster, under the Ex-Chequer office,) for benefit of the meanes hee translated himselfe into New England, where, by the help of Beaver and the commaund of a servant or two, hee was advaunced to the title of a gentleman; where I left him to the exercise of his guifts.

Chap. XXV.

Of the manner how the Seperatists doe pay debts to them that are without.[531]

There was an honest man, one M^r. Innocence Fairecloath,[532] by M^r. Mathias Charterparty sent over into New Canaan, to raise a very good marchantable commodity[Pg 317] for his benefit; for, whiles the man was bound by covenant to stay for a time, and to imploy such servants as did there belong to M^r. Charterparty,[533] hee disdained the tenents of the Seperatists: and they also, (finding him to be none,) disdained to be imployed by a carnall man, (as they termed him,) and fought occasion against him, to doe him a mischeife. Intelligence was conveyed to M^r. Charterparty that this man was a member of the Church of England, and therefore, (in their account,) an enemy to their Church and state. And, (to the end they might have some coloure against him,) some of them practised to get into his debte, which hee, not mistrusting, suffered, and gave credit for such Commodity as hee had sold at a price. When the day of payment came, insteede of monyes, hee, being at that time sick and weake and stood in neede of the Beaver hee had Goode Payement. contracted for, hee had an Epistle full of zealous exhortations to provide for the soule; and {169} not to minde these transitory things that perished with the body, and to bethinke himselfe whether his conscience would be so prompt to demaund so greate a somme of Beaver as[Pg 318] had bin contracted for. Hee was further exhorted therein to consider hee was but a steward for a time, and by all likely hood was going to give up an accompt of his stewardship: and therfore perswaded the creditor not to load his conscience with such a burthen, which hee was bound by the Gospell to ease him of (if it were possible;) and for that cause hee had framed this Epistle in such a freindly maner to put him in minde of it. The perusall of this, (lap’d in the paper,) was as bad as a potion to the creditor, to see his debtor Master Subtilety (a zealous professor as hee thought) to deride him in this extremity, that hee could not chuse, (in admiration of the deceipt,) but cast out these words:

Are these youre members? if they be all like these, I beleeve the Divell was the setter of their Church.

This was called in question when M^r. Fairecloath least thought of it. Capt. Littleworth must be the man must presse it against him, for blasphemy against the Church of Salem: and to greate Iosua Temperwell hee goes with a Blasphemy an example for carnall men. bitter accusation, to have Master Innocence made an example for all carnall men to presume to speake the least word that might tend to the dishonor of the Church of Salem; yea, the mother Church of all that holy Land.

And hee convented was before their Synagoge, where no defence would serve his turne; yet was there none to be seene to accuse him, save the Court alone.

{170} The time of his sicknes, nor the urgent cause, were not allowed to be urg’d for him; but whatsoever could be thought upon against him was urged, seeing hee was a carnall man, of them that are without. So that it seemes, by those proceedings there, the matter was adjudged[Pg 319] before he came: Hee onely brought to heare his sentence in publicke: which was, to have his tongue bored through; his nose slit; his face branded; his eares cut; his body to be whip’d in every severall plantation of their Iurisdiction; and a fine of forty pounds impos’d, with perpetuall banishment: and, (to execute this vengeance,) Shackles,[534] (the Deacon of Charles Towne,) was as ready as Mephostophiles, when Doctor Faustus was bent upon mischeife.

Hee is the purser generall of New Canaan, who, (with his whipp, with knotts most terrible,) takes this man unto the Counting howse: there capitulates with him why hee should be so hasty for payment, when Gods deare children must pay as they are able: and hee weepes, and sobbes, and his handkercher walkes as a signe of his sorrow for Master Fairecloaths sinne, that hee should beare no better affection to the Church and the Saints of New Canaan: and strips Innocence the while, and comforts him.

Though hee be made to stay for payment, hee should not[Pg 320] thinke it longe; the payment would be sure when it did come, and hee should have his due to a doite; hee should Notable Pay. not wish for a token more; And then tould it him downe in such manner that hee made Fairecloaths Innocent back like the picture of Rawhead and blowdy bones, and his shirte like a {171} pudding wifes aperon. In this imployment Shackles takes a greate felicity, and glories in the practise of it. This cruell sentence was stoped in part by Sir Christopher Gardiner, (then present at the execution,) by expostulating with Master Temperwell: who was content, (with that whipping and the cutting of parte of his eares,) to send Innocence going, with the losse of all his goods, to pay the fine imposed, and perpetuall banishment out of their Lands of New Canaan, in terrorem populi.

Loe this is the payment you shall get, if you be one of them they terme, without.

Chap. XXVI.

Of the Charity of the Seperatists.

Charity is sayd to be the darling of Religion, and is indeed the Marke of a good Christian: But where we doe finde a Commission for ministring to the necessity of the Saints, we doe not finde any prohibition against casting our bread upon the waters, where the unsanctified, as well as the sanctified, are in possibility to make use of it.

I cannot perceave that the Seperatists doe allowe of helping our poore, though they magnify their practise in contributing to the nourishment of their Saints; For as much[Pg 321] as some that are of the number of those whom they terme without, (though it were in case of sicknesse,) upon theire landing, when a little fresh {172} victuals would have recovered their healths, yet could they not finde any charitable assistance from them. Nay, mine Host of Ma-re-Mount, (if hee might have had the use of his gunne, powther and shott, and his dogg, which were denied,) hee doubtles would have preserved such poore helples wretches as were neglected by those that brought them over; which Lame charity. was so apparent, (as it seemed,) that one of their owne tribe said, the death of them would be required at some bodies hands one day, (meaning Master Temperwell.)

But such good must not come from a carnall man: if it come from a member, then it is a sanctified worke; if otherwise, it is rejected as unsanctified.

But when Shackles [535] wife, and such as had husbands, parents or freinds, happened to bee sick, mine Hosts helpe was used, and instruments provided for him to kill fresh vittell with, (wherein hee was industrious,) and the persons, having fresh vittell, lived.

So doubtles might many others have bin preserved, but they were of the number left without; neither will those precise people admit a carnall man into their howses, though they have made use of his in the like case; they are such antagonists to those that doe not comply with them, and seeke to be admitted to be of their Church, that in scorne they say, you may see what it is to be without.

Chap. XXVII.

Of the practise of their Church.[536]

The Church of the Seperatists is governed by Pastors, Elders and Deacons, and there is not {173} any of these, though hee be but a Cow keeper, but is allowed to exercise his guifts in the publik assembly on the Lords day,[537] so as hee doe not make use of any notes for the helpe of his memory:[538] for such things, they say, smell of Lampe[Pg 323] oyle, and there must be no such unsavery perfume admitted to come into the congregation.

These are all publike preachers. There is amongst these people a Deakonesse, made of the sisters, that uses her guifts at home in an assembly of her sexe, by way of repetition or exhortation:[539] such is their practise.

The Pastor, (before hee is allowed of,) must disclaime his former calling to the Ministry, as hereticall; and take a new calling after their fantasticall inventions: and then hee is admitted to bee their Pastor.

The manner of disclaimeing is, to renounce his calling with bitter execrations, for the time that hee hath heretofore lived in it: and after his new election, there is great joy conceaved at his commission.[540]

And theire Pastors have this preheminence above the Civile Magistrate: Hee must first consider of the complaint made against a member: and if hee be disposed to give the partie complained of an admonition, there is no more to be said: if not; Hee delivers him over to the Magistrate to deale with him in a course of Iustice, according to theire practise in cases of that nature.[541]

{174} Of these pastors I have not knowne many:[542] some I have observed together with theire carriage in New Canaan, and can informe you what opinion hath bin conceaved of theire conditions in the perticuler. There is one who, (as they give it out there that thinke they speake it to advaunce his worth,) has bin expected to exercise his gifts in an assembly that stayed his comming, in the middest of his Iorney falls into a fitt, (which they terme a zealous meditation,) and was 4. miles past the place appointed before hee came to himselfe, or did remember where abouts hee went. And how much these things are different from the actions of mazed men, I leave to any indifferent man to judge; and if I should say they are all much alike, they that have seene and heard what I have done, will not condemne mee altogether.

Now, for as much as by the practise of theire Church every[Pg 326] Elder or Deacon may preach, it is not amisse to discover their practise in that perticuler, before I part with them.[543]

It has bin an old saying, and a true, what is bred in the bone will not out of the flesh, nor the stepping into the pulpit that can make the person fitt for the imployment. The unfitnes of the person undertaking to be the Messenger Lewes the II. sent a Barber Embassador. has brought a blemish upon the message, as in the time of Lewes the Eleventh, King of France, who, (having advaunced his Barber to place of Honor, and graced him with eminent titles), made him so presumptuous to undertake an Embassage to treat with forraine princes of Civile affaires.

But what was the issue? Hee behaved himselfe so {175} unworthily, (yet as well as his breeding would give The Embassage despised. him leave,) that both the Messenger and the message were despised; and had not hee, (being discovered,) conveyed himselfe out of their territories, they had made him pay for his barbarous presumption.[544]

Socrates sayes, loquere ut te videam. If a man observe these people in the exercise of their gifts, hee may thereby discerne the tincture of their proper calling, the asses eares will peepe through the lyons hide. I am sorry they cannot discerne their owne infirmities. I will deale fairely with them, for I will draw their pictures cap a pe, that you may discerne them plainely from head to foote in their postures, that so much bewitch, (as I may speake with modesty,) these illiterate people to be so fantasticall, to take Ionas taske [545] upon them without sufficient warrant.

One steps up like the Minister of Iustice with the ballance onely, not the sword for feare of affrighting his auditory. Hee poynts at a text, and handles it as evenly as hee can; and teaches the auditory, that the thing hee has to deliver must be well waied, for it is a very pretious thing, yes, much more pretious then gold or pearle: and hee will teach them the meanes how to way things of that excellent worth; that a man would suppose hee and his auditory were to part stakes by the scale; and the like distribution they have used about a bag pudding.

Another, (of a more cutting disposition,) steps in his steed; and hee takes a text, which hee divides into many parts: (to speake truly) as many as hee list. The fag end of it hee pares away, as a superfluous remnant.

{176} Hee puts his auditory in comfort, that hee will make a garment for them, and teach them how they shall put it on; and incourages them to be in love with it, for it is of such a fashion as doth best become a Christian[Pg 328] man. Hee will assuer them that it shall be armor of proffe against all assaults of Satan. This garment, (sayes hee,) is not composed as the garments made by a carnall man, that are sowed with a hot needle and a burning thread; but it is a garment that shall out last all the garments: and, if they will make use of it as hee shall direct them, they shall be able, (like saint George,) to terrifie the greate Dragon, error; and defend truth, which error with her wide chaps would devoure: whose mouth shall be filled with the shredds and parings, which hee continually gapes for under the cutting bourd.

A third, hee supplies the rome: and in the exercise of his guifts begins with a text that is drawne out of a fountaine that has in it no dreggs of popery. This shall proove unto you, (says hee,) the Cup of repentance: it is not like unto the Cup of the Whore of Babilon, who will make men drunk with the dreggs thereof: It is filled up to the brim with comfortable joyce, and will proove a comfortable cordiall to a sick soule, sayes hee. And so hee handles the matter as if hee dealt by the pinte and the quarte, with Nic and Froth.[546]

An other, (a very learned man indeed,) goes another way to worke with his auditory; and exhorts them to walke upright, in the way of their calling, and not, (like carnall men,) tread awry. And if they should {177} fayle in the performance of that duety, yet they should seeke for amendement whiles it was time; and tells them it would bee to late to seek for help when the shop windowes were shutt up: and pricks them forward with a freindly admonition not to place theire delight in worldly pleasures, which will not last, but in time will come to an end; but so to handle the matter that they may be found to wax better and better, and then they shall be doublely rewarded for theire worke: and so closes up the matter in a comfortable manner.

But stay: Here is one stept up in haste, and, (being not minded to hold his auditory in expectation of any long discourse,) hee takes a text; and, (for brevities sake,) divides it into one part: and then runnes so fast a fore with the matter, that his auditory cannot follow him. Doubtles his Father was some Irish footeman;[547] by his speede it seemes A very patorick. so. And it may be at the howre of death, the sonne, being present, did participat of his Fathers nature, (according to Pithagoras,)[548] and so the vertue of his Fathers nimble feete[Pg 330] being infused into his braines, might make his tongue out-runne his wit.

Well, if you marke it, these are speciall gifts indeede: which the vulgar people are so taken with, that there is no perswading them that it is so ridiculous.

This is the meanes, (O the meanes,) that they pursue: This that comes without premeditation; This is the Suparlative: and hee that does not approove of this, they say is a very reprobate.

{178} Many vnwarrantable Tenents they have likewise: some of which being come to my knowledge I wil here set downe: one wherof, being in publicke practise maintained, is more notorious then the rest. I will therefore beginne with that, and convince them of manifest error by the maintenance of it, which is this:

That it is the Magistrates office absolutely, (and not the Minsters,) to joyne the people in lawfull matrimony.[549] And[Pg 331] for this they vouch the History of Ruth, saying Boas was married to Ruth in presence of the Elders of the people. Herein they mistake the scope of the text.

2. That it is a relique of popery to make use of a ring in marriage: and that it is a diabolicall circle for the Divell to daunce in.[550]

4. That no child shall be baptised whose parents are not receaved into their Church first.[552]

5. That no person shall be admitted to the Sacrament of the Lords supper that is without.[553]

6. That the booke of Common prayer is an idoll: and all that use it, Idolaters.[554]

7. That every man is bound to beleeve a professor upon his bare affirmation onely, before a Protestant upon oath.

8. That no person hath any right to Gods creatures, but Gods children onely, who are themselves: and that all others are but usurpers of the Creatures.

9. And that, for the generall good of their Church and commonwealth, they are to neglect father, mother and all freindship.

{179} 10. Much a doe they keepe about their Church discipline, as if that were the most essentiall part of their Religion. Tythes are banished from thence, all except the tyth of Mint and Commin.[555]

11. They differ from us something in the creede too, for if they get the goods of one, that is without, into their hands,[Pg 334] hee shall be kept without remedy for any satisfaction: and they beleeve that this is not cosenage.[556]

12. And lastly they differ from us in the manner of praying; for they winke [557] when they pray, because they thinke themselves so perfect in the highe way to heaven that they can find it blindfould: so doe not I.[558]

Chap. XXVIII.

Of their Policy in publik Iustice.

Now that I have anottomized the two extreame parts of this Politique Commonwealth, the head and the inferior members, I will shew you the hart, and reade a short lecture over that too; which is Iustice.

I have a petition to exhibit to the highe and mighty M^r. Temperwell; and I have my choise whether I shall make my plaint in a case of conscience, or bring it with in the Compas of a point in law. And because I will goe the surest way to worke, at first, I will see how others are answered in the like kinde, whether it be with hab or nab, as the Iudge did the Countryman.[559]

Here comes M^r. Hopewell: his petition is in a case of conscience, (as hee sayes.) But, see, great Iosua allowes conscience to be of his side: yet cuts him off with this answere; Law is flat against him. Well let {180} me see another. I marry: Here comes one Master Doubt-not: his matter depends, (I am sure,) upon a point in Law: alas, what will it not doe, looke ye it is affirmed that Law is on his side: but Conscience, like a blanket, over spreades it. This passage is like to the Procustes of Roome, mee thinks; and therefore I may very well say of them,

And, if these speede no better, with whome they are freinds, that neither finde Law nor Conscience to helpe them, I doe not wonder to see mine Host of Ma-re-Mount speede so ill, that has bin proclaimed an enemy so many yeares in New Canaan to their Church and State.

Chap. XXIX.

How mine Host was put into a whales belly.

The Seperatists, (after they had burned Ma-re-Mount they could not get any shipp to undertake the carriage of mine Host from thence, either by faire meanes or fowle,) they were inforced, (contrary to their expectation,) to be troubled with his company:[560] and by that meanes had time to consider more of the man, then they had done of the matter: wherein at length it was discovered that they, (by meanes of their credulity of the intelligence given them in England of the matter, and the false Carecter of the man,) had runne themselves headlonge into an error, and had done that on a sodaine which they repented at leasure, but could not tell which way to help it {181} as it stood now. They could debate upon it and especially upon two difficult points, whereof one must be concluded upon: If they sent mine Host away by banishment, hee is in possibility to survive, to their disgrace for the injury done: if they suffer him to stay, and put him in statu quo prius, all the vulgar people will conclude they have bin too rashe in burning a howse that was usefull, and count them men unadvised.

So that it seemes, (by theire discourse about the matter,) they stood betwixt Hawke and Bussard: and could not tell[Pg 337] which hand to incline unto. They had founded him secretly: hee was content with it, goe which way it would. Nay Shackles [561] himselfe, (who was imployed in the burning of the howse, and therefore feared to be caught in England,) and others were so forward in putting mine Host in statu quo prius, after they had found their error, (which was so apparent that Luceus eies would have served to have found it out in lesse time,) that they would contribute 40. shillings a peece towards it; and affirmed, that every man according to his ability that had a hand in this black designe should be taxed to a Contribution in like nature: it would be done exactly.

Now, (whiles this was in agitation, and was well urged by some of those partys to have bin the upshot,) unexpected, (in the depth of winter, when all shipps were gone out of the land,) in comes M^r. Wethercock, a proper Mariner; and, they said, he could observe the winde: blow it high, blow it low, hee was resolved to lye at Hull [562] rather than incounter such a storme as mine Host had met with: and this was a man for their turne.

{182} Hee would doe any office for the brethren, if they (who hee knew had a strong purse, and his conscience waited on the strings of it, if all the zeale hee had) would beare him out in it: which they professed they would. Hee undertakes to ridd them of mine Host by one meanes[Pg 338] or another. They gave him the best meanes they could, according to the present condition of the worke, and letters of credence to the favoures of that Sect in England; with which, (his busines there being done, and his shipp cleared,) hee hoyst the Sayles and put to Sea: since which time mine Host has not troubled the brethren, but onely at the Counsell table: where now Sub iudice lis est.

Chap. XXX.

Of Sir Christopher Gardiner Knight, and how hee spedd amongst the Seperatists.

Sir Christopher Gardiner,[563] (a Knight, that had bin a traveller both by Sea and Land; a good judicious gentleman in the Mathematticke and other Sciences usefull for Plantations, Kimistry, &c. and also being a practicall Enginer,) came into those parts, intending discovery.

But the Seperatists love not those good parts, when they proceede from a carnall man, (as they call every good Protestant); in shorte time [they] had found the meanes to pick a quarrell with him. The meanes is that they pursue to obtaine what they aime at: the word is there, the meanes.

So that, when they finde any man like to proove an[Pg 339] enemy to their Church and state, then straight {183} the meanes must be used for defence. The first precept in their Politiques is to defame the man at whom they aime, and then hee is a holy Israelite in their opinions who can spread that same brodest, like butter upon a loafe: no matter how thin, it will serve for a vaile: and then this man, (who they have thus depraved,) is a spotted uncleane leaper: hee must out, least hee pollute the Land, and them that are cleane.

If this be one of their guifts, then Machevill [564] had as good gifts as they. Let them raise a scandall on any, though never so innocent, yet they know it is never wiped cleane out: the staind marks remaines; which hath bin well observed by one in these words of his,

And thus they dealt with Sir Christopher: and plotted by all the wayes and meanes they could, to overthrow his undertakings in those parts.

And therefore I cannot chuse but conclude that these Seperatists have speciall gifts: for they are given to envy and mallice extremely.

The knowledge of their defamacion could not please the gentleman well, when it came to his eare; which would cause him to make some reply, as they supposed, to take[Pg 340] exceptions at, as they did against Faire cloath:[565] and this would be a meanes, they thought, to blow the coale, and so to kindle a brand that might fire him out of the Country too, and send him after mine Host of Ma-re-Mount.

They take occasion, (some of them,) to come to his howse when hee was gone up into the Country, and {184} (finding hee was from home,) so went to worke that they left him neither howse nor habitation nor servant, nor any thing to help him, if hee should retorne: but of that they had noe hope, (as they gave it out,) for hee was gone, (as they affirmed,) to leade a Salvage life, and for that cause tooke no company with him: and they having considered of the matter, thought it not fit that any such man should live in so remoate a place, within the Compas of their patent. So they fired the place, and carried away the persons and goods.

Sir Christopher was gone with a guide, (a Salvage,) into the inland parts for discovery: but, before hee was returned, hee met with a Salvage that told the guide, Sir Christopher would be killed: Master Temperwell, (who had now found out matter against him,) would have him dead or alive. This hee related; and would have the gentleman not to goe to the place appointed, because of the danger that was supposed.

But Sir Christopher was nothing dismaid; hee would on, whatsoever come of it; and so met with the Salvages: and betweene them was a terrible skermish: But they had the worst of it, and hee scaped well enough.

The guide was glad of it, and learnd of his fellowes that[Pg 341] they were promised a great reward for what they should doe in this imployment.

Which thing, (when Sir Christopher understood,) hee gave thanks to God; and after, (upon this occasion to sollace himselfe,) in his table booke hee composed this sonnet, which I have here inserted for a memoriall.

{185} THE SONNET.

This Sonnet the Gentleman composed as a testimony of his love towards them, that were so ill-affected towards him; from whome they might have receaved much good, if they had bin so wise to have imbraced him in a loving fashion.

But they despise the helpe that shall come from a carnall man, (as they termed him,) who, after his retorne from those designes, finding how they had used him with such disrespect, tooke shipping, and disposed of himselfe for England;[Pg 342] and discovered their practises in those parts towards his Majesties true harted Subjects, which they made wery of their aboade in those parts.

{186} Chap. XXXI.

Of mine Host of Ma-re-Mount how hee played Ionas after hee had bin in the Whales belly for a time.

Mine Host of Ma-re-Mount, being put to Sea, had delivered him, for his releefe by the way, (because the shipp was unvitteled, and the Seamen put to straight allowance, which could hold out but to the Canaries,) a part of his owne provision, being two moneths proportion; in all but 3. small peeces of porke, which made him expect to be famished before the voyage should be ended, by all likelyhood. Yet hee thought hee would make one good meale, before hee died: like the Colony servant in Virginea, that, before hee should goe to the gallowes, called to his wife to set on the loblolly pot, and let him have one good meale before hee went; who had committed a petty crime, that in those dayes was made a cappitall offence.

And now, mine Host being merrily disposed, on went the peeces of porke, wherewith hee feasted his body, and cherished the poore Sailers; and got out of them what M^r. Wethercock, their Master, purposed to doe with him that hee had no more provision: and along they sailed from place to place, from Iland to Iland, in a pittifull wether beaten ship, where mine Host was in more dainger, (without all question,) then[Pg 343] Ionas, when hee was in the Whales belly; and it was the great mercy of God that they had not all perished. Vittelled they were but for a moneth, when they wayd Ancor and left the first port.

{187} They were a pray for the enemy for want of powther, if they had met them: besides the vessell was a very slugg, and so unserviceable that the Master called a counsell of all the company in generall, to have theire opinions which way to goe and how to beare the helme, who all under their hand affirmed the shipp to be unserviceable: so that, in fine, the Master and men and all were at their wits end about it: yet they imployed the Carpenters to search and caulke her sides, and doe theire best whiles they were in her. Nine moneths they made a shifte to use her, and shifted for supply of vittells at all the Islands they touched at: though it were so poorely, that all those helpes, and the short allowance of a bisket a day, and a few Lymons taken in at the Canaries, served but to bring the vessell in view of the lands end.

They were in such a desperat case, that, (if God in his greate mercy had not favoured them, and disposed the windes faire untill the vessell was in Plimmouth roade,) they had without question perished; for when they let drop an Anchor, neere the Island of S. Michaels,[566] not one bit of foode left, for all that starving allowance of this wretched Wethercock, that, if hee would have lanched out his beaver,[Pg 344] might have bought more vittells in New England then he, and the whole ship with the Cargazoun, was worth, (as the passingers hee carried who vittelled themselves affirmed). But hee played the miserable wretch, and had possessed his men with the contrary; who repented them of waying anchor before they knew so much.

Mine Host of Ma-re-Mount, (after hee had bin in {188} the Whales belly,) was set a shore, to see if hee would now play Ionas, so metamorphosed with a longe voyage that hee looked like Lazarus in the painted cloath.

But mine Host, (after due consideration of the premisses,) thought it fitter for him to play Ionas in this kinde, then for the Seperatists to play Ionas in that kinde as they doe. Hee therefore bid Wethercock tell the Seperatists, that they would be made in due time to repent those malitious practises, and so would hee too; for hee was a Seperatist amongst the Seperatists, as farre as his wit would give him leave; though when hee came in Company of basket makers, hee would doe his indevoure to make them pinne the basket, if hee could, as I have seene him. And now mine Host, being merrily disposed, haveing past many perillous adventures in that desperat Whales belly, beganne in a posture like Ionas, and cryed, Repent you cruell Seperatists, repent; there are as yet but 40. dayes, if Iove vouchsafe to thunder, Charter and the Kingdome of the Seperatists will fall asunder: Repent you cruell Schismaticks, repent. And in that posture hee greeted them by letters retorned into new Canaan; and ever, (as opportunity was fitted for the purpose,) he was both heard and seene in the[Pg 345] posture of Ionas against them, crying, repent you cruel Seperatists, repent; there are as yet but 40. dayes; if Iove vouchsafe to thunder, the Charter and the Kingdome of the Seperatists will fall a sunder: Repent, you cruell Schismaticks, repent. If you will heare any more of this proclamation meete him at the next markettowne, for Cynthius aurem vellet.[567]

[Pg 347]

A TABLE OF THE CONTENTS
OF THE THREE BOOKES:

The Tenents of the first Booke.

Chapters.

1. Prooving New England the principall part of all America, and most commodious and fit for a habitation and generation.

2. Of the originall of the Natives.

3. Of a great mortallity happened amongst the Natives.

4. Of their howses and habitations.

5. Of their Religion.

6. Of the Indians apparrell.

7. Of their Childbearing.

8. Of their reverence and respect to age.

9. Of their Juggelling tricks.

10. Of their Duelles.

11. Of the maintenance of their reputation.

12. Of their Traffick and trade one with another.

13. Of their Magazines and Storehowses.

14. Of theire Subtilety.

15. Of their admirable perfection in the use of their sences.

16. Of their acknowledgement of the creation and immortality of the Soule.

17. Of their Annalls and Funeralls.

18. Of their Custome in burning the Country.

19. Of their Inclination to drunckennes.

20. Of their Philosophicall life.

The Tenents of the second Booke.

Chap.

1. The generall Survey of the Country.

2. What trees are there and how commodious.

3. What Potherbes are there and for Sallets.

4. Of the Birds of the aire and fethered Fowles.

5. Of the Beasts of the Forrest.

6. Of Stones and Mineralls.

7. Of the Fishes and what commodity they proove.

8. Of the goodnes of the Country and the Fountaines.

9. A Perspective to view the Country by.

10. Of the great Lake of Erocoise.

The Tenents of the third Booke.

Chap.

1. Of a great legue made betweene the Salvages and English.

2. Of the entertainment of Master Westons people.

3. Of a great Battaile fought betweene the English and the Indians.

4. Of a Parliament held at Wessaguscus.

5. Of a Massacre made upon the Salvages.

6. Of the Surprizing of a Marchants Shipp.

7. Of Thomas Mortons Entertainement and wrack.

8. Of the banishment of Iohn Layford and Iohn Oldam.

9. Of a barren doe of Virginea growne Fruithfull.

10. Of the Master of the Ceremonies.

11. Of a Composition made for a Salvages theft.

12. Of a voyage made by the Master of the Ceremonies for Beaver.

13. A lamentable fitt of mellancolly cured.

14. The Revells of New Canaan.

[Pg 349]15. Of a great Monster supposed to be at Ma-re-Mount.

16. How the nine Worthies of New Canaan put mine Host of Ma-re-Mount into an inchaunted Castle.

17. Of the baccanall Triumphe of New Canaan.

18. Of a Doctor made at commencement.

19. Of the silencing of a Minister.

20. Of a practise to get a snare to hamper mine host of Ma-re-Mount.

21. Of Captaine Littleworths devise for the purchase of Beaver.

22. Of a Sequestration in New Canaan.

23. Of a great bonfire made in New Canaan.

24. Of the digradinge and creatinge of Gentry.

25. Of the manner how the Seperatists pay their debts.

26. Of the Charity of the Seperatists.

27. Of the practise of their Church.

28. Of their Policy in publik Iustice.

29. How mine Host was put into a Whales belly.

30. How Sir Christopher Gardiner, Knight, speed amongst the Seperatists.

31. How mine Host of Ma-re-Mount played Jonas after hee got out of the Whales belly.

[Pg 351]

THE PRINCE SOCIETY.

[Pg 353]

OFFICERS
OF
THE PRINCE SOCIETY.
1883.

[Pg 354]

THE PRINCE SOCIETY.
1883.

[Pg 359]

PUBLICATIONS OF THE SOCIETY.

A true, lively and experimentall description of that part of America, commonly called Nevv England: discovering the State of that Countrie, both as it stands to our new-come English Planters; and to the old Natiue Inhabitants. By William Wood. London, 1634. Preface by Charles Deane, LL.D.

A Collection of Original Papers relative to the History of the Colony of Massachusetts-Bay. Reprinted from the edition of 1769. Edited by William H. Whitmore, A.M., and William S. Appleton, A.M. 2 vols.

Letters written from New England A.D. 1686. By John Dunton in which are described his voyages by Sea, his travels on land, and the characters of his friends and acquaintances. Now first published from the Original Manuscript in the Bodleian Library, Oxford. Edited by William H. Whitmore, A.M.

Being a Collection of Pamphlets and Official Papers issued during the period between the overthrow of the Andros Government and the establishment of the second Charter of Massachusetts. Reprinted from the original editions and manuscripts. With a Memoir of Sir Edmund Andros, by the editor, William H. Whitmore, A.M. 3 vols.

Including three Royal Charters, issued in 1621, 1625, 1628; a Tract entitled an Encouragement to Colonies, by Sir William Alexander, 1624; a Patent, from the Great Council for New England, of Long Island, and a part of the present State of Maine; a Roll of the Knights Baronets of New Scotland; with a Memoir of Sir William Alexander, by the editor, the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A.M.

Including his Fast-day Sermon, 1637; his Mercurius Americanus, 1645, and other writings; with a paper on the genuineness of the Indian deed of 1629, and a Memoir by the editor, Charles H. Bell, A.M.

Including extracts from Icelandic Sagas relating to Western voyages by Northmen in the tenth and eleventh centuries, in an English translation by North Ludlow Beamish; with a Synopsis of the historical evidence and the opinion of Professor Rafn as to the places visited by the Scandinavians on the coast of America. Edited, with an Introduction, by the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A.M.

Including the Voyage of 1603, and all contained in the edition of 1613, and in that of 1619; translated from the French by Charles P. Otis, Ph.D. Edited, with a Memoir and historical illustrations, by the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A.M. 3 vols.

Containing an abstract of New England, composed in three books. I. The first setting forth the Originall of the Natives, their Manners and Customes, together with their tractable Nature and Love towards the English. II. The Natural Indowments of the Countrie, and what Staple Commodities it yieldeth. III. What People are planted there, their Prosperity, what remarkable Accidents have happened since the first planting of it, together with their Tenents and practice of their Church. Written by Thomas Morton of Cliffords Inne, Gent, upon ten Years Knowledge and Experiment of the Country, 1632. Edited, with an Introduction and historical illustrations, by Charles Francis Adams, Jr., A.B.

VOLUMES IN PREPARATION.

1. Captain John Mason, the founder of New Hampshire, including his Tract on Newfoundland, 1620, the several American Charters in which he was a Grantee, and other papers; and a Memoir by the late Charles W. Tuttle, Ph.D. Edited, with historical illustrations, by John Ward Dean, A.M.

2. Sir Ferdinando Gorges, including his Tract entitled A Brief Narration, 1658, American Charters granted to him, and other papers; with historical Illustrations and a Memoir by the Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A.M.

3. Sir Humphrey Gilbert, including his Discourse to prove a Passage by the North-West to Cathaia and the East Indies; his Letters Patent to discover and possess lands in North America, granted by Queen Elizabeth, June 11, 1578. With historical Illustrations and a Memoir.

4. Sir Walter Ralegh and his Colony in America. Containing the Royal Charter of Queen Elizabeth to Sir Walter Ralegh for discovering and planting of new lands and countries, March 25, 1584, with letters, discourses, and narratives of the Voyages made to Virginia at his charges, with original descriptions of the country, commodities, and inhabitants. Edited, with a Memoir and historical illustrations, by the Rev. Increase N. Tarbox, D.D.

[Pg 363]

INDEX.

A.
Aberdecest, 130, n.
Acomenticus:
charter granted to, by Gorges, 81;
Morton dies at, 91.
Adams, John:
on name of Merry-Mount, 14, n.;
on fate of Wollaston, 15;
on Thomas Morton, 95, n.;
injuries to library of, 101, n.
Adams, John Q., 101.
Adders, 213.
Ælianus, 345, n.
Air of New England, 121, 137, 177, 190.
Alcides, 292.
Alecto, 275.
Alexander, Sir William, quoted, 140, 167.
Alder, the, 186.
Allen, J. A., notes on wild animals of New England by, 199-215.
Allerton, Isaac:
his course toward Morton in England, 35, 303;
his mission to England in 1629, 36;
carries Morton back to Plymouth, 36;
tries to obtain charter for Plymouth, 52;
brings over goods, 289, n.
Allize, 225.
Alsatian Squire, the, 92.
Amphitrite, 277, 281.
Animals, wild of New England, chapter on, 199-215.
Antinomian controversy, 81, 323, n.
Antonomasia, 316.
Anúnime, 123, n.
Arbor-vitæ, 185, n.
Archimedes, 291.
Argus eyes, 303.
Aristotle, cited, 117, 118.
Armoniack, 219.
Arms. (See Fire-arms.)
Arthur’s Table, King, 290.
Arundel, Earl of, 60, 70.
Ascowke, 213.
Ash, the, 183.
Aspinwall, William, 319, n.
Audubon, John James, quoted, 131, n., 192, n.
Auk, the great, formerly found in Boston Bay, 131, n.
B.
Bacchanal Triumph, poem, 290-4.
Bagnall, Walter, 22, 206, n., 218, n.
Baptism, 331, n.
“Barren doe, the,” 94, 264-6, 272-7.
[Pg 364]Barrowe, Henry, on Common Prayer, 332, n.
Bass, 222.
Beach, the, 183.
Bears: used by Indians, 142-4;
value of skins of, 205;
description of, 209;
Indian methods of hunting, 210;
flesh of, 210.
Beaver: value of skins of, 22, 205, 295;
gain in, 32, 282;
regulation of trade in, 39, 306;
virtues of tails of, 162, 205;
description of, 204;
muskrats passed for, 211;
Dutch trade in, 239, n.;
a theft compounded in, 269;
plenty of, at Nipnet, 270;
compared to Jason’s Fleece, 295.
Bible, the, 94, 212, 260.
Bibliography of New Canaan, 99.
Billington, John, 217.
Birch, the, 186.
Birds, chapter on, 189-99.
Black-lead, 219.
Blackstone, William: moves from Wessagusset to Boston, 24;
contributes to Morton’s arrest, 30;
an Episcopalian, 94.
Bluefish, 222.
Bole Armoniack, 219.
Book of Common Prayer, 22, 68, 82, 168, 260, 283, 311;
an idol, 69, 332;
Morton persecuted for using, 92-5.
Book of Sports, 260, n.
Boston Bay: savages about in 1625, 11;
settlers about in 1628, 24;
description of in 1630, 122;
great auks seen in, 131, n.;
French vessel wrecked in, 131, n.
Bradford, John, on Common Prayer, 332, n.
Bradford, Governor William: cited, 1, 6, 13, 18, 20, 22, 25, 27, 31, 35, 36, 37, 46, 49, 52, 79, 92, 133, n., 205, n., 217, n., 323, n., 325, n., 330, n., 332, n.;
letters of, on arrest of Morton, 30;
generally correct, 49;
literary skill of, 96;
absence of humor in, 97, 98;
referred to as Rhadamant, 291, n.
Brant, 189, 268.
Breames, 227.
Brereton, Sir William, grant to, from John Gorges, 34.
Brewster, William, notes on birds by, 189-99, n., 226, n.
Briareus, 288.
Bridges, Robert, 90.
Bright, Rev. Francis, 300, n., 325, n.
Brimstone, 220.
Bristol, 2.
Brown, Peter, 214.
Browne, Robert, 323, n.
Brutus, supposed descent of Indians from, 126, 127, 129.
Bubble, 266-8, 270-3.
Buckingham, Duke of, 178, n.
Burdet, Rev. George, corresponds with Laud, 83, 88.
Burglary, 319, n.
Burning undergrowth: Indian custom of, 172, 184, 186;
protection against, 173.
Bursley, John, at Wessagusset, 24, 31, 162, n.
Buzzard’s Bay, 266.
Butler, Samuel, 96, 98, 251, n.
C.
Caen, William and Emery de, 235, n.
Caiaphas, 300, 302, n.
Cain, 312.
[Pg 365]Campbell, Lord: on royal proclamations, 26;
cited, 35.
Canada: derivation of name, 235;
first conquest of, 235, n.
Canary Islands: as a market, 182, 222;
Morton at, 342-3.
Cane, 275.
Caunoŭnicus, funeral rites of his son, 170, n.
Cape Ann: Lyford moves to, 24;
Morton at, 261.
Cape Cod, 21, 23, 226;
French vessel wrecked on, 131, n.
Cape Verde Islands, 116, 117, n.
Carheil, Father, cited, 17.
Caribdis, 277, 280.
Cattup Keen, 137, n.
Carlisle, Earl of, 70.
Casco Bay, 221;
royalists about, 85.
Cau-ompsk, 124, n.
Cecrops, 293.
Cedars: at Mount Wollaston, 10;
where to be found large, 173;
abundance and size of, 184;
white, 185, n.
Cerberus, 294.
Chalk-stones, 216.
Champlain, lake: protection for discovery of, 77;
Morton on, 78;
Josselyn’s expedition to discover, 79;
when named, 234, n. (See Erocoise.)
Champlain: his Voyages quoted, 149, n., 150, n.;
his map, 236, n.
Charity of the Separatists, 320.
Charity, the, comes to New England in June, 1622, 7, 130.
Chauquaqock, 254, n.
Charles I.: corruption of court of, 52;
character and government of, 54;
financial straits of, in 1635, 73;
turning point in fortunes of, 78.
Charlestown: settlement of, 34, 300, n.;
deacons of church of, 319.
Charon, 274.
Charter party, 304, 316, 317. (See Cradock, Matthew.)
Chastity, absence of, among Indians, 16, 17, 145, n.
Chelsea, 229, 300.
Cheshetue, 148.
Chestnut, the, 183.
Chickatawbut, dwelling-place of, 11;
cunning of, 162, n.;
his mother’s grave despoiled, 170, 247;
speech of, 247-9;
Weston’s men living with, 252.
Chingachgook, 213, n.
Christmas, 18, 97;
“brave gambols,” 294.
Church practices in New England, 69, 260, 262, 322-34.
Church of England: Winthrop’s detestation of, 63;
and Morton, 92;
and Lyford, 263;
dignity of, advanced in New England by Morton, 283;
Ratcliff a member of, 317.
Churching of women, 331, n.
Cicero, quoted, 139, 181, 312.
Cithyrea, 278.
Clams, 227.
Clarendon, Lord, cited, 52.
Clayton’s Virginia, cited, 199, n., 208, n., 210, n., 214, n.
Cleaves, George: Morton in employ of, 77;
in employ of Rigby, 84;
“a fire-brand of dissension,” 85.
Clerk, Roger, 300, n.
Cockles, 227.
Coddington, Governor William, writes to Winthrop about Morton, 85.
[Pg 366]Cod-fish, 221;
markets for, 222;
superiority of New England, ib.
Cod-liver oil, 222.
Coins, old, found at Richmond Island, 218, n.
Coke, Sir Edward, on proclamations, 26, 35.
Colchos, 292.
Commissions, system of, in favor at court of Charles I., 57.
Conies, 204, 210, 211.
Common Prayer: Book of, treatment of in Massachusetts, 69;
trouble occasioned by in Scotland, 82;
Morton’s use of, cause of his persecution, 92, 260, 283;
reference to in New Canaan, 93, 169;
an idol, 332, n.
Connecticut, Blue Laws of, 252, n.
Copper, 220.
Cormorants, 226.
Cos, 124, 217.
Cottington, Lord, 60.
Cotton, John, 98.
Council for New England: efforts of to settle the Massachusetts, 2;
grant to Robert Gorges, 3;
secures proclamation about sale of fire-arms to Indians, 20;
gives patent to Company of Massachusetts Bay, 31;
quarrel of with Massachusetts Company, 33;
unequal to the emergency in 1634, 59;
plan for dividing territory of, 59;
divides New England, 70;
surrender of patent by, 72;
records of quoted, 130, n., 196, n.;
issues patent to Walter Bagnall, 219, n.
Court: held at Salem, 306;
at Boston, to try Morton, 311.
Cradock, Governor Matthew, 298, n.;
before Privy Council, 51, 56;
“an imposterous knave,” 62;
default of in quo warranto proceedings, 75;
on Morton, 77;
Master Charterparty 304, n., 316, 317.
Cranes, 192.
Cromwell, Oliver, 83.
Crows, 195.
Crow-blackbirds, 198.
Cupid, 278.
Cypress-trees, 185.
Cynthius, 345.
D.
Dagon, 32, n.
Davis, Captain John, 104, 118, n.
Deaconess, 323.
Deacons, 322.
Deane, Charles: cited, 30, 56;
accuracy of, 56.
Decameron, 94.
De Costa, B. F.: quoted, 92-4;
referred to, 100.
Deer: skins of, 135, 142-3, 202;
killed by Indians, 162;
followed by scent, 166;
kinds of, 200-2;
preyed on by wolves, 204, 208;
and luzerans, 206.
Deer-traps, 202.
Deer Island, 155, n., 204, n.
Delilah, 281.
Demas, part of, 302, n.
Demophoön, 273.
Dermer, Captain Thomas: redeems captives, 131, n.;
quoted concerning pestilence of 1616, 133, n.
Devil, the: estimation of among Indians, 139, n., 150, n., 165, 167;
rules the Powows, 178.
Dexter, Rev. H. M., 244, n.
Diogenes, 178;
tub of, 286.
Dodge, General, cited, 169, n., 174, n.
“Doe, the barren,” 94, 264-6, 272-7.
[Pg 367]Dog-fish, 223, n.
Don Quixote, 94, 272, 286.
Dorchester, Lord, 53.
Dorset, Earl of, 60.
Dover, N. H., Hiltons at, 30.
Downing, Emanuel: before Privy Council, 51;
account of, 52;
instructed to find evidence against Morton, 88;
on humming-bird, 198, n.
Drails, 223.
Drunkenness, Indian tendency to, 174.
Ducks: kinds of, 190;
preyed on by luzeran, 206, n.
Dudley, Governor Thomas, 43, 80, 90;
cited, 4, 46.
Duxbury, 84.
E.
Eacus, 288, 293, 294, 309.
Eager, Pastor Master. (See Skelton.)
East Indies, 239.
Edmunds, Sir Thomas, 60.
Eels, 224.
Egypt, 240.
Elder-tree, the, 186.
Elders of church, 313, 322.
Elephants, their supposed religion, 141, n.
Elias house, 310.
Eliot, Dr. John, 326, n.
Eliot, John, quoted, 124, 129, n.
Elk, 200, n.
Ellis, Rev. Dr. G. E., quoted, 145, n.
Elm, the, 183.
En animia, 123.
Endicott, John: arrival of, at Salem, 31;
visits Mt. Wollaston, 32;
occupies the Gorges grant, 34;
his instructions, 38, 40, 45;
meets “old planters,” 39, 306;
attempts to reärrest Morton, 43;
derided by Morton, 45;
mutilates royal standard, 66;
issues warrant to arrest Morton, 86;
governor, 88;
libelled in New Canaan, 88, 304;
called Littleworth, 220, 298-9, 304, 306, 308, 318;
Morton’s animosity to, 220, n.;
cured of a wife, 298, n.;
sends settlers to Charlestown, 300, n.;
at Salem, 303-7;
and the charter case, 305;
fraud imputed to, 308;
punishes Ratcliff, 316;
second marriage of, 330, n.
Epictetus, 312, n.
Episcopalians: take up Morton’s cause, 92;
in early Massachusetts, 95, 218, n.
Erocoise, lake of, 78, 234-7, 240, 241. (See Champlain.)
Esculapius, 278.
Executions. (See Hanging.)
Exercising in church, by lay members, 262, n., 322-30.
F.
Faircloath, Innocence (See Ratcliff.)
Fairfax, Lord, 83.
Falcons and falconry, 6, 196.
Falkland, Lord, 83.
Falstaff, 278, n.
Faustus, Dr., 319.
Fire-arms: supplied to Indians, 20, 95;
trade in forbidden, 21;
in hands of Indians in 1628, 25.
Firing the country. (See Burning.)
Fish, poisonous in the tropics, 116, n.;
kinds of in New England, 221-8.
[Pg 368]Fisheries, vessels engaged in, 221.
Fitcher: a partner of Wollaston, 4;
left in charge at Mt. Wollaston and expelled by Morton, 13.
Finch, Sir John, 35.
Flora, patroness of May-day, 19, 281.
Flounders, 226.
Flowers in New England, 228.
Footmen, running, 329.
Force’s Tracts, 99.
Foxes, 206-8.
Fox-skins, value of, 205, n., 207, n.
Franchise, the, in Massachusetts, 331, n.
Freeles, 227.
French authority, on Indians’ senses, 166.
Frenchmen, captured, among Indians, 131, n.
“Froth, Nick and,” 328, n.
Fuller, Dr. Samuel: dies of pestilence, 133, n.;
supposed to be alluded to as Eacus, 288, 291, n., 309;
note on, 297;
at Salem, 298.
Furmety, 163, n.; 296.
Furs: profit of trade in, 22, 32;
regulation of trade in, 39;
Indian use of, 141-4;
prices of, 205, n., 207, n., 209. (See Beaver, Deer, Bear.)
G.
Galena, found in Woburn, 219, n.
Ganymede, 279.
Gardiner, Sir Christopher: before Privy Council, 50, 86;
his prefatory verses to New English Canaan, 112;
on descent of Indians, 128;
intercedes for Ratcliff, 320;
note on, 338;
adventures of, 338-42;
sonnet by, 341.
Geese: descriptions of, 189-90;
preyed on by luzeran, 206, n.
Gellius, Aulus, quoted, 312, n.
Gentry, created and degraded by Winthrop, 313.
Gerard’s Herbal, referred to, 185.
Ghent, 236.
Gibbons, Major Edward, 90-1.
Gifte, the, 44, 289.
Gloucester, Morton at, 86.
Golgotha, a new-found, 133.
Goodman, John: adventure of, with a wolf, 208, n.;
hears lions roar, 214, n.
Gookin, Daniel, quoted, 160, 174.
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 2, 3, 36, 47, 95;
procures issues of proclamation on fire-arms, 21;
his curiosity as to New England, 32;
Morton ingratiates himself with, 36;
in correspondence with Morton, 41, 47;
intrigues against Massachusetts, 49;
failure in, 53;
works through Court influences, 54;
renews complaints against Massachusetts, 56;
shapes Laud’s policy to New England, 58;
his plan, 58;
to be governor-general, 59;
his influence with Lords Commissioners, 60;
represents “thorough” in New England, 60, 74;
thought to be on the New England coast in 1635, 66;
his plans in 1635, 67;
circumvents Winslow, 68;
grantee of Maine from Council for New England, 71;
appointed by King, governor-general, 71;
failure of, caused by want of money, 72;
age of, 75, n.;
death of Mason fatal to plans of, 76;
publication of New Canaan not agreeable[Pg 369] to, 80;
pretends to be friendly to Massachusetts, 80;
“casheers” Morton, 80;
grants charter to Acomenticus, 81;
career of, 119, n.;
eulogized, 189;
Sir C. Gardiner, an agent of, 338, n.
Gorges, John: succeeds to R. Gorges’s grant, 33;
deeds land to Brereton and Oldham, 34, 40.
Gorges, Lord, 71.
Gorges, Captain Robert, 2, 33, 143, 162;
arrives in Boston Bay, 3;
extent of his grant, 3;
returns to England, 4;
validity of grant to, denied, 34;
arrests Weston, 257, n.
Goshawks, 197.
Gover, Anna, 298.
Grant, John, 62.
Grapes in New England, 186.
Gray, Professor Asa, 182, 188.
Greek, supposed resemblance of Indian words to, 123, 126.
Greene, Charles, 99-101.
Greene, Richard, in charge of Wessagusset settlement, 7.
Greenland, excessive cold of, 118.
Grouse in New England, 194, n.
H.
“Habbe or nabbe,” 335.
Hacche, Roger atte, 300, n.
Hake, 226.
Hale, Robert, 319, n.
Halibut, 225.
Hame, 124.
Hamilton, Marquis of, 70.
Hampden, John, 83.
Handmaid, the, Morton’s voyage in, 45, 342-5.
Hanging: the Weymouth, 217, 249-52;
early in Massachusetts, 217, n.;
in Virginia, 342.
Hannibal, 263.
Hares, 204.
Harris, Rev. Thaddeus Mason, 101, n.
Harvard University: Library bulletin referred to, 99-100;
students at, whipped, 319, n.
Hawks and falcons in New England, 195-7.
“Hawk and buzzard,” 336.
Hawthorn-trees, 186.
Heath-hen, 194, n.
Hebrew tribes, 310;
origin of Indians traced to, 129, n.
Hedgehogs, 211.
Hemlock-trees, 185, n.
Hemp in New England, 187, 202, 231.
Herbs of New England, 188, 228.
Herons, 192.
Herring, 224.
Hickory, 183, n.
Higginson, Rev. F., quoted, 213, n., 221, n., 232, n., 300, n.
Higginson, T. W., quoted, 312, n.
Hiltons, the: at Piscataqua, 23;
contribute to Morton’s arrest, 30.
“Hippeus pine-tree horse,” 284.
Holbein, Hans, 253, n.
Holland, 70, 288.
Hollis, Sir William, 253, n.
Horace, quoted, 119.
Horeb, the calf of, 278.
Horse-mackerel, 223, n.
Howes, Edward, 317, n.
Howes, Edward, Jr., 334, n.
Hudibras, 96, 251, n., 339, n.
Hudson, Hendrick, voyages and fate of, 118, n.
[Pg 370]Hudson, the, 236, n., 238.
Hull, so called in 1628, 24, 337, n.
Hume, David, on royal proclamations, 26.
Humfrey, John: before Privy Council, 51;
“an imposterous knave,” 62, 64;
goes to New England, 64;
Gorges refers to patience of, 80.
Humming-bird, 102, n., 198.
Hunt, Captain Thomas, 244, n.
Hutchinson, Mrs. Ann, 81, 323, n.
Hyde, Sir Nicholas, 35.
Hydra, 286, 287, 292, 293.
I.
Indians: Morton’s popularity with, 10;
number in Massachusetts, 11;
modesty of women, 16;
desire for guns and spirits, 20;
fire-arms among, 20, 25;
pestilence of 1616 among, 120, 133, n.;
origin of, 123-9;
language of, 123;
descendants of Hebrew tribes, 129, n.;
Frenchmen captives among, 131;
their wigwams, 134-8;
their eating, 137, n.;
their hospitality, 137, n.;
their games and removals, 138;
their religion, 139-41, 167;
their dress, 141-5;
their trade, 141, 157-9;
their modesty, 142;
their children born white, 147, n.;
their bodies well shaped, 147;
color of their eyes, 148, 165;
their respect to age, 148-50;
their conjuring tricks, 150-3;
their duels, 153-4;
their money, 157-9;
their manufactures, 159;
their storehouses, 160;
their baskets, 160;
did not use salt, 161;
their cunning, 161-5;
acuteness of their senses, 165-6;
distinguish French from Spanish by smell, 166;
crimes among, 169;
their funerals, 169-71;
thievery among, 169;
their custom of firing the country, 172;
distant commerce of, 172, 220, n., 237;
contented life of, 175;
superiority to English beggars, 175-6;
utensils and method of drinking, 177;
deer-traps of, 202;
method of hunting bears, 209-10;
lobster-feasts of, 226;
belied by Plymouth people, 256;
compound theft at Wessagusset, 269;
accompany Bubble to Nipnet, 270;
return his property, 272;
witness Morton’s punishment, 312;
reprove punishment of Morton, 312. (See Massachusetts.)
Indian women: absence of chastity among, 16, 17, 145;
Morton’s relations with, 94;
their dress, 144;
their modesty, 145;
their child-bearing, 145-8;
their care of their infants, 147.
Ireland, no venomous beasts in, 48.
Irocoise, the great lake. (See Champlain.)
Iron-stones, 219.
Iroquois, 234.
Isles of Shoals, Morton at, 29, 296, 302.
Israelites, 310;
origin of Indians traced to, 129, n., 160, n.
J.
Jackals, 207, n., 214, n.
James I., 16, 35;
sends snake-stones to Virginia, 214, n.
[Pg 371]Jason, 292;
Golden Fleece of, 295.
Jeffreys, William: at Wessagusset, 24, 31, 162, n.;
corresponds with Gorges, 60, n.;
letters of Morton to, 61, 86;
carries letters to Winthrop, 65;
letters from quoted, 102.
Jews, origin of Indians traced to, 129, n.
Job, 281.
Johnson, Edward, 250.
Jonah, 103, 302, 327, 342-5.
Jonson, Ben, 98;
may have met Morton, 96;
note on “poem,” 290, 312, n.;
quoted, 335, n.
Jordan, 310.
Josselyn, Captain John, quoted, 16, n., 133, n., 136, n., 137, n., 147, n., 158, n., 160, n., 171, n., 182, n., 185, n., 189, n., 191, n., 198, n., 201, n., 205, n., 206, n., 210, n., 212, n., 214, n., 217, n., 221, n., 232, n., 235, n.
Josselyn, Henry, 237;
date of expedition of, to New Hampshire, 79, 238.
“Jove, let, vouchsafe to thunder,” 62, 103, 113, 345.
Jupiter, 279.
K.
Kantántowwit, 168, n.
Kennebec: Morton follows Plymouth people to the, 23, 295;
Plymouth grant on the, 36.
Kennet, White, 99.
Kytan, an Indian god, 139, n., 167, n., 168, 169.
Killock, 262.
King’s Bench, warrant did not run in Massachusetts, 47.
Kirk, David, Louis and Thomas, conquest of Canada by, 235, n.
Kodtup Kēn, 137, n.
Koüs, 124, n.
L.
Laconia, 235, 238, n.
Lannerets, 196, 198.
Larks, 195.
Latin, supposed similarity with Indian tongue, 123-6.
Laud, Archbishop William: becomes Primate, 55;
influence of, 57;
head of Lords Commissioners, 58, 60, 93, 322;
played upon by Gorges, 64;
and Morton, 68, 93, 322-34;
New England not to be suffered to languish, 71;
supreme in England in 1635, 74;
his fortunes turn, 78;
corresponds with Burdet, 83;
orders Common Prayer to be used, 333, n.
Lazarus, 344.
Lead ore, 219.
Leadstones, 219.
Learning, vilified in New England, 282.
Leather, made by Indians, 142, 201.
Lechford’s Plaine Dealing quoted, 147, 322-34.
Lenox, Duke of, 70.
Lerna, lake, 292.
Lewis, Alonzo, quoted, 129.
Libertines, New England will not brook, 48.
Lime, 215.
Limestone in Weymouth, 216, n.
Lions in New England, 214.
Littleworth. (See Endicott.)
Lobsters, 209, 226, 265.
Lords Commissioners of Plantations: appointment of board of, 58, 100;
[Pg 372]who composed, 60;
powers of, 60;
news of appointment of, in Massachusetts, 65;
last meeting of, 81;
Morton’s dependence on, 93;
dedication of New Canaan to, 109, 322.
Louis XI., 326.
Lowndes’s Manual, 100.
Lucan, 141.
Luscus, 263.
Luzerans: description of, 206;
value of furs of, 205, n.
Lyford, Rev. John:
at Hull, 24, 264;
moves to Cape Ann, 24;
at Plymouth, 262-4, 332, n.
Lyman, Theodore, notes on fish, 221-8.
M.
Machiavelli, 339.
Macháug, 237, n.
Mackerel, 223.
Mackerel-shark, 223, n.
Maine: trading-stations in, 23, 218, 221;
royalists in, 85.
Maja, 281.
Manchester, Earl of, 60.
Manittóoes, 207, n.
Maple, 186.
Marble in New England, 215.
Marblehead, quality of stone at, 215, n.
Ma-re-Mount, 14. (See Merry Mount.)
Marlins, 198.
Marriage in Massachusetts, a civil contract, 69, 330.
Mars, 292.
Martens: value of furs of, 205, n.;
described, 206.
Mary & John, arrival of at Hull, 42.
Maske, the North Star, 125.
Mason, Captain John: hostile to Massachusetts, 49;
grantee of New Hampshire from Council of New England, 71;
builds ships to take governor-general to New England, 73;
financial needs of, 74;
death of, and note on, 76, 238.
Massachusetts: latent spirit of rebellion in, in 1632, 51, 66;
emigration to, in 1634, 55;
panic in, in 1635, 66, 71;
preparations against, in 1635, 67;
church practices in, 69, 322-34;
complaints against, in 1638, 81;
appeals to king a misdemeanor in, 87;
location and advantages of, 112;
elk seen in, 200, n.;
population of, in 1632-7, 230;
baptism limited to franchise in, 331, n.;
description of community in, 334, n.;
justice in, 334-6.
Massachusetts Charter: attack on in Privy Council, in 1632, 49;
obtained by influence, 52;
sent for by Privy Council, 56;
second attack on, 58, 61;
not returned to England, 64;
plan for vacating, 67;
quo warranto proceedings to set aside, 75;
demand for return of, in 1638, 82.
Massachusetts Company: grant to, 31;
difficulty of, with Council of New England, 33;
procures charter, 34;
“old planters,” jealousy of, 38;
instructions of, to Endicott, 38, 40, 45;
policy of, to, 39;
regulates trade in furs, 39;
complaints against, 50;
treasurer of, 305;
patent-case of, 305.
Massachusetts Indians: number of, 11;
Weston’s men killed by, 252, n.;
humanity of, 256.
[Pg 373]Massasoit: a night in his lodge, 136, n.;
detains Samoset, 244, n.
Mather, Cotton, quoted, 129, n., 132, n., 150, n., 152, n., 160, n., 175, n., 331, n.
Matta, 237.
Mattapan, 12, 124.
Maverick, Rev. John, 325, n.
Maverick, Samuel: says that Morton had a patent, 8;
moves from Wessagusset to Noddle’s Island, 24;
in connection with Morton’s arrest, 30;
his assessment for charge of Morton’s arrest, 30;
cited, 46;
refers to Morton’s arraignment at Boston, 88;
an Episcopalian, 94.
May, Thomas, quoted, 141, n.
Mayberry, S. P., on Walter Bagnall, 218, n.
May-day festivities: immorality of, 18;
at Mount Wollaston, 18, 276-82.
May-pole, the: of Merry-Mount, 17, 270, 295;
custom of erecting, 17;
cut down by Endicott, 32.
Medusa, 292.
Meechin, 137.
Melpomene, 275.
Menhaden, 225, n., 226, n.
Mephistopheles, 319.
Mermaid, the, 97.
Merriam, Mr., identifies simpes as woodcock, 191, n.
Merry-Mount: fountain at, 276;
Mayday at, 276-84;
to be made a woeful mount, 278;
monster at, 282. (See Mt. Wollaston.)
Metawna, 194, n.
Mice, 214.
Milo, 270.
Milton, John, quoted, 129.
Minerals of New England, 215-21.
Ministers: ordination of, at Plymouth, 262;
at Salem, 300, n., 306;
use of notes by, 322, n.;
ordination of, in New England, 324;
superior to magistrates in New England, ib.;
first in New England, 325, n.;
absent-mindedness of a, ib.;
did not marry in New England, 330.
Ministers’ sons, whipped, 319, n.
Minos, 275, 293, 294, 309.
Mint and Cummin, tithes of, 102, 111, 280, 333.
Mittànnug, 193, n.
Mona, 124.
Monatoquit, 9, 28, 285;
limestone near to, 216.
Money, Indian. (See Wampum.)
Monsall, Ralph, 319, n.
Monthly Anthology, 101, 320.
Moose, description and uses of, 142, 200.
Morell, Rev. William, quoted, 143, n.
Morton, Nathaniel, cited, 5.
Morton, Thomas: comes to Massachusetts with Wollaston, 1;
suspected of murder, 2, 15, 46;
his previous life, 4-5;
his acquaintance with classics, 4, 345, n.;
his first coming to New England, 6;
his silence about Wollaston, 13;
inaccuracy of, 14, 63, 96, 123, n., 335, n.;
his fondness for field sports, 15;
his treatment of Indians, 16, 256;
relations of, with Indian women, 16;
his verses, 19;
supplies Indians with guns, 20;
silence of, on subject, 21;
trades in Maine, 23;
visits Wessagusset, 24;
number of his neighbors, 25;
remonstrated with for sale of fire-arms, 25;
[Pg 374]on proclamations, 26;
arrest of, by Standish, 27, 282-6;
escape of, 28, 283;
taken to Plymouth, 29, 296;
sent to England, 29, 289;
cost of arrest of, 30, 302;
reaches England, 31;
not proceeded against, 35, 303;
could have been proceeded against in Star Chamber, 35;
ingratiates himself with Gorges, 36;
and Allerton, 36, 325;
good results of, 37;
returns to Plymouth, 37, 304;
to Mount Wollaston, 38;
refuses to sign agreement, 39, 307;
disregards trade regulations, 40, 308;
an agent of Gorges, 41;
profits of, 41, 308;
attempt to re-arrest, 41, 308;
re-arrest of, 43;
trial and sentence of, 44;
sent back to England, 45;
charges against him, 46;
punishment of, 46-8, 311, 312;
a warrant for his arrest from King’s Bench, 47, 311;
a “libertine,” 48;
driven away from Massachusetts, 49, 336-7;
in Exeter jail, 49;
allies himself to enemies of Massachusetts Charter, 50;
makes complaint before Privy Council, 50;
gives reason of failure of complaint, 54;
forwards more complaints, 56;
elation of, in 1634, 60;
his letters to William Jeffreys, 61;
crying as Jonas, 61, 103, 344;
plays on Laud’s foibles, 64, 93, 322-34, n., n.;
has Winslow put in Fleet prison, 69;
Solicitor of Council for New England, 72;
promptness of, in legal proceedings, 75;
on Captain John Mason, 76;
Cradock on, 77;
in pay of Cleaves, 77;
in disgrace with Gorges, 80;
witnesses Acomenticus charter, 81;
starved out of England, 83;
at Plymouth in 1643, 84;
pretends to be a Commonwealth’s man, 85;
goes to Maine, 85;
to Rhode Island, 85;
to Boston, 86;
arraigned, 86;
extraordinary proceedings against, 87;
petition of, 88-90;
imprisonment, release and death of, 91;
a man out of place, 92;
Episcopalian defenders of, 92;
“his faults,” 93;
oppressively dealt with in Massachusetts, 94;
small literary merit of, 95;
may have met Butler and Jonson, 96;
sense of humor of, 97;
style of, 103;
at Richmond Island, 218;
uses Common Prayer, 260, 311;
at Cape Ann, 261;
at Nut Island, 268;
date of arrest, 295;
references of, to Winthrop, 310, n., 321;
gets game for settlers, 321;
at Salem, 325, n.;
at Canary Islands, 342;
his voyage to England, 342-5.
Mount Dagon, 32, 278.
Mount Wollaston: why so called, 1;
character and number of settlers at, 8, 286, 294;
description and sketch of, 9-10;
view from, 12;
location of, 15;
morals at, 17;
May-day festivities at, 18;
a refuge of runaways, 22, 23;
within grant to Massachusetts Company, 31;
destruction of house at, 45;
Common Prayer at, 94, 283;
fountain at, 229;
monster at, 282.
Muskrats, 204;
value of skins of, 205, n.;
description of, 210.
Muscles, 227.
Munnoh, 124, n.
[Pg 375]N.
Nan weeteo, 148, n.
Nantasket, 24, 25, 30, 325, n., 337, n.
Nanepashemet, 155.
Naumkeag, 25, 30.
Nebuchadnezzar, 116.
Necut, 193, n.
Neent, 194, n.
Neptune, 277.
Netherlands, 293.
New Canaan: political significance of, 68;
as a political pamphlet, 68, 322, n.;
reference to Lake Irocoise in, 78;
where written, 78, 233, n.;
referred to by Bradford, 79;
latest revision of, 79;
no copies of, get to New England, 79, 88;
publication of, not agreeable to Gorges, 80;
referred to by Winthrop, 86;
references to Book of Common Prayer in, 93;
ribaldry of, 94;
criticism of, 95-6;
referred to in Hudibras, 96;
humor in, 97;
a connecting link, 98;
bibliography of, 99-101;
titlepages of, 100;
printing of, 102;
cause of errors in, 103;
rules for present edition of, 104.
New England: emigration to, in 1634, 55;
royal policy towards, 57;
church practices in, 69;
division of, in 1635, 70;
commission for governing, in 1637, 77;
location and temperature of, 120-1;
winds not violent in, 122, 232;
plenty of, 175;
air of, 177;
beauty of, 180;
motives of settlers in, 181;
no boggy ground in, 228;
perfumed air of, 228, 231-2;
superiority of, to Virginia, 228, 229, 233, 265;
natural waters of, 229;
population of, 230;
fertility of, 231;
people of, never have colds, 232;
rainfall of, 233;
coast and harbors of, ib.;
fecundity of women in, 265;
universities vilified in, 282. (See Council for New England.)
New English Canaan. (See New Canaan.)
New Hampshire, population of, in 1634, 230, n.
Newburyport: galena found in, 219, n.;
silver ore, 220, n.
Newcomein, John, 216-7.
Niagara Falls, 236.
“Nick and Froth,” 328, n.
Nilus, 240.
Niobe, 277, 281.
Nipnets, 240, 270.
Nneesnneánna, 193, n.
Noddy, Doctor, 309.
Nokehick, 175, n.
North Star, the Indian name of, 125, n.
Northwest passage, interest in the, in 1632, 118, n., 239.
“Noses out of joint,” 94, 281.
Notes used in preaching, 322.
Nourse, H. S., on Elk in South Lancaster, Mass., 200, n.
Nowell, Increase, 305, n.
Nut Island, 268.
Nuttall’s Ornithology, cited, 194, n.
O.
Oaks in New England, 182.
Oates, Jack, 253, n.
Œdipus, 277, 280.
Oil, cod-liver, 222.
“Old Planters,” jealousy of Massachusetts Company, 38.
[Pg 376]Oldham, John, 40;
at Hull, 24;
takes Morton to England, 29-32;
his promises of gain in New England, 32;
his scheme for trading, 33;
does not press matters against Morton, 33, 36;
receives grant from John Gorges, 34;
tries to organize expedition, 34;
“a jack in his mood,” 40;
his treatment at Plymouth, 262-4.
Oliver le Daim, 326.
Om, 124, n.
Ordination. (See Ministers.)
Otters, value of furs of, 205, n., 206.
Ounce, the, 206, n.
Ovid, quoted, 217, 273.
Owls, 195.
Oysters, 227.
P.
Palfrey, J. G., quoted, 140, n., 148, n.
“Pan the Shepherds’ God,” 124.
Papasiquineo. (See Pasconaway.)
Parkman, Francis, quoted, 16, 17, 136, n., 140, n., 145, n., 158, n., 166, n., 168, n., 234, n.
Partridges, 194.
Pasconaway, the sachem, 150, n.;
his tricks and incantations, 151;
his daughter’s marriage, 154-5.
Pascopan, 124.
Paskanontam, 124, n.
Passonagessit: description of, 9;
signification of name, 14, 276;
grave at, desecrated, 247;
Master Bubble at, 267;
revels at, 276-82;
mine host, sachem of, 289. (See Mt. Wollaston.)
Pastors. (See Ministers.)
Patent of Massachusetts: granted, 31;
brought over by Endicott, 305;
its case, ib., n.
Paul’s Walk, 298, n.
Pawtucket, 124.
Peabody, W. B. O., referred to, 189, 192.
Peddock, Leonard, 130, n.
Peddock’s Island, 130, n.
Pemaquid, 244.
Penelope, 281.
Pennacook, the Bridal of, 155, n.
Pestilence among Indians in 1616-7, 11, 120, 130-4;
nature of, 133, n.;
Squanto’s fraud about, 245.
Phaethon, 293.
Phaos box, 280, 297;
explained, 345, n.
Pharsalia, May’s continuation of, quoted, 141, n.
Pheasants, 194.
Phillips, Rev. George, 326.
Phillips Creek, Weymouth, site of Wessagusset settlement, 3.
Phlegethon, 314.
Phœbus, 293.
Phyllis 273.
Pike, 227.
Pilchers, 226.
Pillory and whetstone, 300, n.
Pine-trees, 184.
Pipe-staves as merchandise, 182.
Piscataqua, 30;
Hiltons and Thomson at, 22, 25, 255, n.
Plague. (See Pestilence.)
Plaice, 226.
Plantations, Foreign, board of Lords Commissioners of. (See Lords Commissioners.)
Plato, Indians practise Commonwealth of, 177.
“Plough patent” in Maine, 85.
Plymouth, 30;
settlers at, in 1628, 25;
Morton carried to, 29;
Indians about[Pg 377] destroyed by pestilence, 133, n.;
Billington hanged at, 217, n.;
population of, in 1634, 230, n.;
Samoset’s appearance at, 244;
treatment of Weston at, 245-6, 255-7;
people of, at Passonagessit 247, n.;
Morton visits, 259;
cattle at, 260;
Lyford and Oldham at, 262-4;
reordination of ministers at, 262;
no vessel arrives at, in June 1628, 289, n.;
Christmas at, 294, n.;
Morton arrives again at, 304;
ministers at, 325, n.;
Book of Common Prayer at, 332, n.
Pocahontas, “a well-featured but wanton young girl,” 145, n.
Porcupines, 211.
Portland, Earl of, 60.
Portland Harbor, 221, n.
Potomac, the, 236, 239.
Powahs, Indian, 139, n., 150, n., 152, n.
Pratt, Phineas, cited, 131, n., 132, n.
Praying, manner of, 334.
Priapus, 94, 205, 281.
Privy Council: petition to, against Massachusetts Company, 51;
order of, stopping emigration to New England, 56, 333, n.
Proclamations, royal: about fire-arms, 20;
not law, 26;
violation of, punishable in Star Chamber, 35.
Procrustes, 335.
Proteus, 94, 281.
Purchase, Mr., cures himself of sciatica, 207, n.
Purification of women, 331.
Putnam, F. W., 131, n., 227, n.
Pygmalion, 315.
Pythagoras, 329, n.
Q.
Quacksalver, punishment of, 299.
Quail, in New England, 194.
Quebec, capture of, by Kirk, 235, n.
Quincy: seal of town of, 10;
slate in, 216, n.
Quo warranto proceedings to set aside Massachusetts Charter, 74, 77, 82, 86.
R.
Rabbits, 204, 211.
Rabelais, 94.
Raccoon, 207.
Rasdall: a partner of Wollaston, 1;
follows him to Virginia, 13;
disappears, 15.
Ratcliff, Philip: before Privy Council, 50;
thought a lunatic, 56;
promised cropping of Winthrop’s ears, 62, 64;
called Faircloath, 316, 340;
punishment of, 316-8.
Rattlesnakes, 213;
antidotes to poison of, 213, 214, n.
Rats, 214.
Razor-shell, 227.
Readings, conjectural, 105.
Red-lead, 219.
Reordination. (See Ministers.)
Reproductions, slavishness of, 104.
Reynolds, Dr. John, 331, n.
Rhadamanthus, 293, 294, 309.
Rhode Island, Morton in, 86.
Richmond Island: Walter Bagnall at, 200, n., 218, n.;
coins found on, ib.;
whetstones at, 217;
vessels at, 221.
Rigby, Alexander, 84.
Ring, use of, in marriage, 331.
Rogers, Mr., preacher at Plymouth, 325, n.
[Pg 378]Running footmen, 329, n.
Rupert, Prince, 83.
S.
Sables, value of, 205, n.
Sal, Isle of, 116, n., 117, n., 343, n.
Salem: suffering at, in 1629-30, 42;
a doctor made at, 298;
Dr. Fuller at, 299;
Endicott holds a court at, 306;
ordination of ministers at, 306;
Morton at, 306, 325, n.;
church of, abused by Ratcliff, 317, n.;
church of, vilified, 317-8;
use of Common Prayer at, 332, n.
Salmon, 224.
Salt: abundance of, in tropics, 117;
use of, unknown among Indians, 161, 175, n.;
given to them by Morton, 161.
Saltonstall, Sir Richard, 43;
before Privy Council, 51, 61.
Samoset, 244, n.
Samson, 281.
Sanaconquam, an Indian god, 167.
Sanderling, 191.
Sandpiper, 191.
Sargent, Professor C. S., 182, n.
Savage, James, cited, 30, n.
Scallops, 227.
Scent, acuteness of Indian, 166.
Sciatica, cured by raccoon grease, 207.
Scogan, John, 278;
choice of, 281.
Scotland: policy of Charles I. breaks down in, 78;
troubles of 1638 in, 82.
Scylla, 278, 280.
Sea-sickness, 298.
Sequestration, in New Canaan, 308.
Serat, 204.
Sesick, 213.
Shackles: possibly Aspinwall, 319;
whips Faircloath, 320;
fed by Morton, 321;
burns Morton’s house, 337.
Shad, 225.
Shakespeare, William, 98.
Shawmut, 12.
Shaler, Professor N. S., notes by, 215-20.
Shell-heaps: at Cotuit, 131, n.;
origin of, 226, n.
Ships, number of engaged in fisheries, 221.
Shoals, Isles of, 29, 289, 296, 302.
Shrimpe, Captaine. (See Standish.)
Silver in New England, 220, n.
Simpes, 191.
Skelton, Rev. Samuel, 39, 300, n., 325, n.;
called Eager, 306.
Slafter, Rev. E. F., quoted, 234, n.
Slate: in Quincy and Weymouth, 216, n.;
at Richmond Island, 217, n.
Smart, Captain, brings over falcons to the king, 196, n.
Smelts, 225.
Smith, John, 95;
quoted, 1, n., 136, n., 144, n., 147, n., 150, n.
Smith, Ralfe, 325, n.
Snakes, 212.
Snipes, 191.
Socrates, quoted, 327.
Solomon: sayings of, quoted, 119, 127, 228;
referred to, 184.
Sommers, Will, 253.
South Lancaster, Mass., elks in, 200, n.
South Sea, 239.
“Sparke,” 160.
Sparrow-hawks, 198.
Spruce-trees, 185.
Squanto, 271, n.;
made use of by Chickatawbut, 164;
kidnapped, 244, n.
[Pg 379]Squanto’s Chappel: chalkstones at, 216;
fountain at, 229.
Squantum, 12, 216, 229;
slate at, 216, n.
Squidraket, Sagamore, 218, n.
Squirrels, 212.
St. Michaels, 343.
St. Paul’s Church, 298.
Stam, Jacob Frederick, 100.
Standish, Miles: kills Indians at Wessagusset, 11;
sent to arrest Morton, 27;
threatens to shoot him, 29, 296;
takes offence at Morton, in 1643, 84;
at Wessagusset, 247, n.;
Captain Shrimpe, 285-7, 291, n., 296;
a quondam drummer, 286;
called Minos, 291, n.
Star Chamber, court of, 35.
Stenography, 266.
Sterling, Earl of, 70.
Stones, chapter on, 215-20.
Strachey, Edward, quoted, 145, n., 147, n., 208, n., 210, n., 215, n.
Strafford, Earl of, 60, 74.
Stubbs, his Anatomy of Abuses cited, 18.
Students of Harvard College, whipped, 319, n.
Sturgeon, 223.
Styx, 293, 314.
Swan, the, Weston’s vessel, 257, n.
Swans, 189.
Swift, Lindsay, quoted, 328, n., 335, n., 345, n.
T.
Tantoquineo, 152.
Tartars, supposed descent of Indians from, 125.
Tassell gentles, 196-7.
Teal, kinds of, in New England, 190.
Temperwell, Joshua. (See Winthrop, John.)
Thomson, David: at Piscataqua, 24;
moves to Boston Bay, 24;
on origin of Indians, 128;
authorities concerning, 128.
“Thorough,” Gorges policy, the New England branch of, 60, 74.
Tin, in New England, 220.
Titta, 148.
Tithes, 333.
Tornadoes, 217.
Trade with Indians, liquor the life of, 20, 174. (See Fire-arms.)
Trade: profits of in New England, 32;
regulations of Massachusetts Company, 39;
disregarded by Morton, 40, 306, 308.
Trade-winds, effect of, 118.
Traps, to take deer, 202.
Trees: effect of burning underbrush on, 172;
where to look for large, 172;
of New England, 182-7.
Triton, 281.
Trojans, supposed descent of Indians from the, 126-7, 129.
Trout, 227.
Trumbull, J. Hammond: on name of Passonagessit, 14;
notes by, on Indian words, 123, 124, 137, 148, 160, 167, 229;
his notes to Plaine Dealing referred to, 322-34.
Turbot, 225.
Turkeys: garments made of feathers of, 142, 144, n.;
hunted by Indians, 162;
wild, in New England, 192.
Turtledoves, 180.
Tuttle, C. W., 238, n.
[Pg 380]U.
Universities, vilified in New England, 281-2.
Uttaquatock, 216.
V.
Venice, 281.
Venus, 265, 315, 345.
Vermilion, 219.
Virgil, quoted, 217, 260, 345.
Virginia: prices of furs in, in 1650, 205, n.;
wolves in, 208, n.;
corn not planted in, 225;
inferiority of, to New England, 228, 229, n., 233, 265;
the “barren doe” of, 264, 276;
population of, 265;
execution in, 342.
W.
Walnut, the, 183.
Wampum, 157-9, 301.
Wampumpeack. (See Wampum.)
Warham, Rev. John, 322, n., 325, n.
Warwick, Earl of, had no influence at Court, 52.
Washburne, John, 305, n.
Walford, Thomas: moves from Wessagusset to Mishawum, 24;
an Episcopalian, 94.
Wessagusset: plantations at, 2, 246;
Robert Gorges at, 3;
dispersion of his settlement, 4;
Indians killed at, by Standish, 11, 247, n.;
locality of, 12;
separation of settlers at, in 1628, 24;
Morton arrested at, 27, 282, 290, n.;
Episcopalians, 95;
those dwelling at, 162, n.;
muscle-bank at, 227;
skirmish at, 247;
the hanging at, 249-51;
settlers killed at, 253-4;
Lyford at, 264;
Morton at, in winter, 268;
Indians compound theft at, 269;
bring Bubble’s things to, 271. (See Weymouth.)
Weston, Andrew: comes to New England in Charity, 7;
takes an Indian boy back to England, 130, n.;
date of his voyage, 130, n.
Weston, Thomas: establishes a plantation at Wessagusset, 2;
account of, 245-6;
his men killed by Indians, 252;
comes to New England, 255-7;
treatment of, 257-9, 261.
Wethercock, Mr., 337, 342-3.
Weymouth, 2;
slate and limestone in, 216, n. (See Wessagusset.)
Whetstones, 124, 216;
at Richmond Island, 217;
punishment of pillory and, 299, n. (See Cos.)
Whipping-post, 274, 319, n.
White, William and Susannah, 330, n.
Whitney, Professor J. D., on Isle of Sal and poisonous fish, 116.
Whitney, George, quoted, 101.
Whittier, J. G., 155, n.
Widgeon, 191.
Widow, the, 323. (See Deaconess.)
Wiggin, Thomas: cited in regard to Morton, 5;
before Privy Council, 52;
quoted, 320, n.
Wigwams, described, 134-8.
Wildrake, 92.
Williams, Edward, quoted, 182, n.
Williams, Roger, quoted, 16, 17, 124, n., 125, n., 136, n., 137, n., 146, n., 149, n., 158, n., 159, n., 168, n., 171, n., 194, n., 202, n., 207, n., 221, n., 232, n.
Willis, William, 218, n.
Wilson, Rev. John, 325, n.
[Pg 381]Winnisimmet, 25, 30, n., 300, n., 301;
origin of name of, 229, n.;
fountain at, 229, 265.
Winnepurkitt, the marriage of, 155.
Winslow, Governor Edward, 95;
quoted, 16, 125, n., 140, n., 145, n., 149, n.;
sent to England in 1634, 64;
sails, 65;
reaches London, 67;
petitions Lords Commissioners, 68;
put in Fleet prison, 69, 322, n.;
describes Morton at Plymouth in 1648, 84;
goes on mission to Massasoit, 136, n.;
marriage of, 330, n.
Winsor, Justin, 99.
Winthrop, Governor John, 43, 81, 95;
arrival of, in New England, 42, 310;
imposes sentence on Morton, 44, 311;
has warrant for Morton’s arrest, 47, 311;
criticism of, on complaint to Privy Council, 50;
rejoices over failure of complaint, 53;
“King Winthrop,” 63;
receives letter of Morton to Jeffreys, 65;
Gorges refers to patience of, 80;
excuses not sending out charter in 1638, 83;
on arrest of Morton in 1644, 86;
quoted, 91, 150, n., 218, n., 230, n.;
absence of humor in, 98;
course towards Bagnall, 218, n.;
called Joshua, 301;
referred to as Temperwell, 302, 310, 314, 318, 320, 335, 340;
degrades gentry, 313;
has Ratcliff whipped, 320;
responsible for wants of settlement, 321;
upon civil marriages, 330, n.;
on Book of Common Prayer, 332, n.;
methods of, as judge, 334-6;
course towards Sir C. Gardiner, 340.
“Without, them that are,” 316, 321, 332.
Woburn: galena found in, 219;
silver ore, 220, n.
Wollaston, facts concerning name of, 1, n. (See Mount Wollaston.)
Wollaston, Captain: settles at Massachusetts, 1;
composition of his company, 4;
leaves Massachusetts, 12;
sells his servants in Virginia, 13;
tradition as to death of, 15.
Wolves: deer persecuted by, 203;
black, value of furs of, 207, n., 209;
description of, 208-9.
Wonder-Working Providence, quoted, 94, 300, n.
Wood, William, 217.
Woodcock, 191, n.
Woodman, “Auld,” 216.
Wood’s Prospect: quoted, 16, 95, 129, 137, n., 138, n., 139, n., 140, n., 143, n., 150, n., 160, n., 168, n., 184, n., 186, n., 189, n., 191, n., 192, n., 198, n., 200, n., 206, n., 208, n., 210, n., 213, n., 223, n., 224, n., 230, n., 238, n.;
referred to, 139, 141, 154, 172, 182, n., 184, n., 200, n., 217, 221, n., 233;
when written, 233.
Worcester: black-lead found in, 219, n.;
country of Nipnets, 240, n.
Wotawquenauge, 254.
Wrentham, black-lead found in, 219, n.
Wrington, Samuel Fuller born in, 298.
Wunanumau, 123.
Y.
York, Archbishop of, 60.
York, Maine. (See Acomenticus.)
Z.
Zones, the: New England, how placed in, 115-22;
Aristotle’s theory of, 117.

[Pg 386]

Council of the Prince Society.
1883.

EDMUND F. SLAFTER.
JOHN WARD DEAN.
WILLIAM B. TRASK.
CHARLES H. BELL.
JOHN MARSHALL BROWN.
HENRY W. FOOTE.
DAVID GREENE HASKINS, Jr.
ELBRIDGE H. GOSS.

FOOTNOTES

[1] Bradford, pp. 235-6.

[2] A Captain Wolliston is mentioned by Smith (Description of New England, III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 136) as the lieutenant of “one Captain Barra, an English pirate, in a small ship, with some twelve pieces of ordnance, about thirty men and near all starved,” whom Smith encountered in 1615, while a captive in the hands of the French freebooters. Though it has found a place in biographical dictionaries on account of two eminent men of one family from Staffordshire who bore it, the name of Wollaston is rarely met with. It is not found, for instance, in the present directories of either Boston or New York, and but twice in that of Philadelphia. It has been given to islands in both the Arctic and the Antarctic oceans, but the family to which it belonged seems to have originated in an inland English county. (Lower’s Patronymica Britannica). The Captain, or Lieutenant, Wolliston, therefore, whom Smith fell in with in 1615 may have been, and probably was, the same who ten years later gave his name to the hill on Quincy Bay. It is not likely that two Captain Wollastons were sea-adventurers at the same time. That it actually was the same man is, however, matter of pure surmise.

[3] Bradford, p. 154.

[4] Infra, *44, *124-127, *138.

[5] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321.

[6] N. E. Memorial, p. 160.

[7] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 323.

[8] Infra, *13, *71, 343, note.

[9] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 401, n.

[10] Bradford, p. 236.

[11] Infra, *17, 130, note 2, *59.

[12] Bradford, p. 118.

[13] Bradford, p. 120.

[14] Young’s Chron. of Pl., p. 299.

[15] Infra, *60.

[16] Infra, *113-118.

[17] Palfrey, vol. i. p 397.

[18] Lowell Inst. Lectures of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1869, p. 147. Samuel Maverick, however, writing to Lord Clarendon in the year 1661, asserts that Morton had a patent. Coll. N. Y. Hist. Soc. 1869, p. 40.

[19] Palfrey (vol. i. p. 222) speaks of it as “a bluff.” This is an error. The slope from where Morton’s house stood to the water is very gradual.

[20] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 395.

[21] Infra, *51, 106.

[22] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 305.

[23] This View of Mount Wollaston is taken from Rev. Dr. William P. Lunt’s Two Discourses on Occasion of the Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Gathering of the First Congregational Church, Quincy, (p. 37). It represents the place very accurately as it appeared in 1840, and as it is supposed to have appeared from the time of the first settlement until recently. The single tree was a lofty red-cedar, which must have been there when Wollaston landed, as it was a large tree of a long-lived species, and died from age about 1850. The trunk is still (1882) standing; and, though all the bark has dropped off, it measures some 66 inches in circumference. The central part of the above cut, including the tree, has been adopted as a seal for the town of Quincy, with the motto “Manet.”

[24] Infra, *115-18.

[25] Infra, *59.

[26] Infra, *114.

[27] Bradford, pp. 236-7.

[28] Infra, *103, *117.

[29] Infra, *141-9.

[30] Morton uniformly speaks of the place as Ma-re-Mount, and John Adams on this point commented in his notes as follows:—“The Fathers of Plymouth, Dorchester, Charlestown, &c., I suppose would not allow the name to be Ma-re-Mount, but insisted upon calling it Merry-Mount, for the same reason that the common people in England will not call gentlemen’s ornamental grounds gardens, but insist upon calling them pleasure-grounds, i. e., to excite envy and make them unpopular.”

Ma-re-Mount, however, was a characteristic bit of Latin punning on Morton’s part, designed to tease his more austere neighbors. He himself says (Infra, *132): “The inhabitants of Passonagessit, having translated the name of their habitation from that ancient salvage name to Ma-re-Mount ... the precise seperatists that lived at New Plimmouth stood at defiance with the place threatening to make it a woefull mount and not a merry mount.” (Infra, *134.) In view of the situation of the place, Ma-re-Mount was a very appropriate name, but it may well be questioned whether it was ever so called by any human being besides Morton, or by him except in print. Bradford calls it Merie-mounte. (p. 237.) The expression used by Morton, that they “translated the name” from Passonagessit to Ma-re-Mount, would naturally suggest that the Indian name might find its equivalent in the Latin one, and mean simply “a hill by the sea.” On this point, however, J. Hammond Trumbull writes: “Morton’s ‘Passonagessit’ has been a puzzle to me every time it has caught my eye since I first marked it twenty years ago or more with double (??). Morton, as he shows in chap. ii. of book I., could not write the most simple Indian word without a blunder. What may have been the name he makes ‘Passonagessit’ we cannot guess, unless it survives in some early record. There is no trace of ‘sea,’ or ‘water,’ or ‘mount’ in it. If it stands for Pasco-naig-és-it, it means ‘at [a place] near the little point,’ but I know so little of the local topography that I hesitate to suggest this interpretation.” The rendering here suggested by Dr. Trumbull does apply sufficiently well to the locality. Mount Wollaston is a part of the neck which connects the peninsulas locally known in Quincy as Germantown and Hough’s Neck with the mainland.

[31] Bradford, p. 253.

[32] Whitney’s Hist. of Quincy, p. 18.

[33] Infra, *55.

[34] Josselyn says of the “Indesses,” as he calls them, “All of them are of a modest demeanor, considering their savage breeding; and indeed do shame our English rusticks whose rudeness in many things exceedeth theirs.” (Two Voyages, pp. 12, 45.) When the Massachusets Indian women, in September, 1621, sold the furs from their backs to the first party of explorers from Plymouth, Winslow, who wrote the account of that expedition, says that they “tied boughs about them, but with great shamefacedness, for indeed they are more modest than some of our English women are.” (Mourt, p. 59.) See also, to the same effect, Wood’s Prospect, (p. 82.) It suggests, indeed, a curious inquiry as to what were the customs among the ruder classes of the British females during the Elizabethan period, when all the writers agree in speaking of the Indian women in this way. Roger Williams, for instance, referring to their clothing, says: “Both men and women within doores, leave off their beasts skin, or English cloth, and so (excepting their little apron) are wholly naked; yet but few of the women but will keepe their skin or cloth (though loose) neare to them, ready to gather it up about them. Custome hath used their minds and bodies to it, and in such a freedom from any wantonnesse that I have never seen that wantonnesse amongst them as, (with griefe) I have heard of in Europe.” (Key, pp. 110-11.) And he adds, “More particular:

“Many thousand proper Men and Women,

I have seen met in one place:

Almost all naked, yet not one

Thought want of clothes disgrace.”

In Parkman’s Jesuits in North America (ch. iv.) there is a very graphic account of the missionary Le Jeune’s experience among the Algonquins, in which he describes the interior of the wigwam on a winter’s evening. “Heated to suffocation, the sorcerer, in the closest possible approach to nudity, lay on his back, with his right knee planted upright and his left leg crossed on it, discoursing volubly to the company, who, on their part, listened in postures scarcely less remote from decency.” Le Jeune says, “Les filles et les jeunes femmes sont à l’exterieur tres honnestement couvertes, mais entre elles leurs discours sont puants, comme des cloaques;” and Parkman adds, “The social manners of remote tribes of the present time correspond perfectly with Le Jeune’s account of those of the Montagnais.” See also Voyages of Champlain, Prince Soc., vol. iii. pp. 168-70.

[35] Parkman says that “chastity in women was recognized as a virtue by many tribes.” (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxiv.) Of the New England Indians Williams remarks,—“Single fornications they count no sin, but after marriage then they count it heinous for either of them to be false.” (Key, p. 138.) Judging by an incident mentioned by Morton, however, adultery does not seem to have been looked upon as a very grave offense among the Indians of the vicinity in which he lived. (Infra, *32.) On the general subject of morality among young Indian women, especially in the vicinity of trading-posts, see Parkman’s Jesuits in North America (pp. xxxiv, xlii) and the letter from Father Carheil to the Intendant Champigny, in The Old Régime in Canada (p. 427).

[36] Infra, *135.

[37] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 62.

[38] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 478.

[39] Hazlitt’s Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, p. 121. See also on this subject, Strutt’s Sports and Pastimes, p. 352.

[40] Infra, *132-7.

[41] Bradford, p. 237.

[42] Bradford, p. 238.

[43] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi, p. 70. See also note 202 in Trumbull’s ed. of Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, p. 117.

[44] Bradford, p. 240.

[45] Infra, *78, 218, n.

[46] Infra, *137.

[47] Bradford, p. 204.

[48] Ib. p. 233.

[49] Infra, *149.

[50] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 83.

[51] Infra, *124.

[52] Infra, *181.

[53] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii, pp. 63, 64.

[54] Bradford, p. 241.

[55] XII. Coke, p. 75.

[56] Hist. of England (Edition of Harper Bros.) vol. iv. p. 280.

[57] Lives of the Chief Justices, vol. i. p. 283. See also a paper on “Royal Proclamations,” in Disraeli’s Curiosities of Literature (ed. 1863), vol. iii., p. 371.

[58] Bradford, p. 241-2.

[59] Infra, *137-43.

[60] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. pp. 63-4.

[61] Infra, *150.

[62] Infra, *144, 155.

[63] The letters in full are in Bradford’s Letter-Book, III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. pp. 62-4.

[64] The names of neither Maverick nor Walford appear in this list, though in his history Bradford especially mentions Winnisimmet (p. 241) as one of the places the settlers at which contributed to the charge. They may, as Savage suggests, (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *43 n.) have been included with Blackstone, though, considering what Maverick’s means were, this does not seem probable. Edward Hilton lived at Dover, eight miles above Piscataqua. (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 315. Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1875-6, pp. 362-8.) Mr. Deane suggests that Little Harbor, the place formerly occupied by Thomson, was meant by Piscataqua. (Ib., 368.) The locality of Bursley and Jeffreys greatly confused the authorities for a time, but it no longer seems open to question. (Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1878, p. 198.)

[65] Hazard, vol. i. p. 243.

[66] Bradford, p. 238; Infra, *134. Dagon was the sea-god of the Philistines, upon the occasion of whose feast, at Gaza, Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple. Judges, xvi.

[67] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 79.

[68] Oldham’s “vast conceits of extraordinary gain of three for one” afterwards caused “no small distraction” to the sober-minded governor and assistants of the Massachusetts Company. Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 147.

[69] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 80.

[70] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 171; Hutchinson, vol. i. p. 6.

[71] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 147.

[72] Bradford, p. 243.

[73] Infra, *156.

[74] Supra, p. 26.

[75] XII. Coke, p. 76.

[76] Campbell’s Chief Justices, vol. ii. p. 42.

[77] Campbell’s Lord Chancellors, vol. iii. p. 256.

[78] Bradford, p. 237.

[79] Bradford, p. 250.

[80] Infra, *157.

[81] Bradford, p. 252.

[82] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 63.

[83] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 145.

[84] Infra, *158-9.

[85] Hazard, vol. i. p. 252.

[86] Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 96, 148.

[87] Infra, *119.

[88] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *57.

[89] Infra, *160.

[90] Infra, *161.

[91] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 311.

[92] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30.

[93] Records, vol. i. p. 74.

[94] Infra, *163.

[95] Records, vol i. p. 75.

[96] Infra, *163.

[97] Coll. of N. Y. Hist. Soc. (1869), p. 42.

[98] Infra, *186-7.

[99] Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1860-2, p. 133.

[100] Bradford, p. 253.

[101] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *57.

[102] Morton says (Infra, *163) “the Snare must now be used; this instrument must not be brought by Iosua [Winthrop] in vaine.”

[103] Mass. Hist. Soc., Lowell Inst. Lectures (1869), p. 377.

[104] I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 250.

[105] Bradford, p. 253.

[106] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 336.

[107] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *102.

[108] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 391.

[109] Bradford, pp. 251-2.

[110] Clarendon’s Rebellion, B. III. § 27; B. VI. § 404.

[111] Winthrop. vol. i. p. *100. Downing sent a detailed account of the hearing, now lost, to Winthrop; see Hutchinson, vol. ii. p. 2.

[112] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 33, n.

[113] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 392.

[114] Bradford, p. 297.

[115] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *190.

[116] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 338.

[117] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 80.

[118] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 338. The reference here, as at some other places, is to Deane’s chapter on “The Charter of King Charles I.” As a rule, in works of this description, dealing with the sources of history, it is not permissible to refer to contemporaneous authorities. Mr. Deane, however, so far as New England history is concerned, may fairly be made an exception to this rule. His knowledge is so exhaustive and his accuracy so great that a reference to him I consider just as good and as permissible as a reference to the original authorities.

[119] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *56, n.

[120] Palfrey, vol. i. pp. 391-3.

[121] Briefe Narration, III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 82. Hazard, vol. i. p. 390-4.

[122] Proc. of Amer. Antiq. Soc., 1867, p. 124. Winthrop, vol. ii. p. 233. Hazard, vol. i. p. 347.

[123] Hazard, vol. i. p. 347.

[124] William Jeffreys was one of the Robert Gorges Company. He had contributed to the cost of arresting Morton in 1628 and sending him to England. Morton, in writing to him, could not but have been aware of this; but not improbably, during the time of his return to Mount Wollaston in 1630, he had seen more of Jeffreys, and found that he too, like the rest of the “old planters,” looked on the Massachusetts Company with jealousy and apprehension. At that time, indeed, Jeffreys was in active correspondence with Gorges, and outspoken in his complaints. (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 3.) Hence the familiarity of the address. It is apparent from the letter, however, that Morton, when he wrote it, was so sure of his position and so elated with a sense of his own importance that he could not contain himself. He could not resist the desire to let his old acquaintances in America know what an important personage he had become, and he probably hoped they would show the letter to Winthrop and every one else. It was a childish outbreak of delight and vanity.

[125] There is some confusion about these dates. The letter itself is dated the 1st of May, and the commission is here said on that day to have passed the great seal. The commissioners may have designated Gorges as governor-general at this time, and ordered a commission as such to be at once made out to him; but a year later the King’s intention of appointing him was formally announced. (Proc. of Amer. Antiq. Soc., 1867, p. 120.) The probability is that the business relating to the colonies was regarded as of little moment and done in the most careless and irregular way, hardly a record even of it being kept. Some proceedings were thus begun and not carried out, and other things were done twice.

[126] Morton is here quoting from the New Canaan, (p. *188) and its very last page. It would seem, therefore, now to have been written, though it was not published until three years later. (See Infra, pp. 78-9.)

[127] Supra, pp. 44-5.

[128] This letter is in Hubbard, pp. 428-30 (II. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi.), and in Winthrop, vol. ii. pp. *190-1. The readings do not materially differ, but the punctuation has been corrected and the spelling is modern.

[129] Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 379, n.

[130] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *137.

[131] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *143.

[132] Ib., vol i. p. *102.

[133] Autobiography of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, vol. ii. p. 118.

[134] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *172.

[135] Infra, pp. *172-9.

[136] Bradford, pp. 329-30.

[137] Supra, p. 66. Winthrop, vol. i. p. *157.

[138] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 401 n. Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 341.

[139] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *161, *187.

[140] Palfrey, vol. i. p. 403. Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 343.

[141] In January, 1640, Richard Vines wrote to Governor Winthrop, of Sir Ferdinando, that he was then “nere 80 yeares ould.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 342.) This can hardly be correct, however, as subsequently he served on the royal side in the civil wars, and was among the prisoners taken by Fairfax when he stormed Bristol in September, 1645. (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iii. p. 342.) He must, however, have then been a very old man, as fifty-four years before, in 1591, he had distinguished himself at the siege of Rouen, in Essex’s English contingent. (Devereux’s Earls of Essex, vol. i. p. 271).

[142] Infra, *98.

[143] See further on this subject, Winthrop, vol. i. pp. *161, *187; which is also referred to in the same work, vol. ii. p. *12.

[144] Hazard, vol. i. p. 400.

[145] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 127.

[146] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *231.

[147] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 330.

[148] Infra, *96-100.

[149] Supra, 62, n.

[150] Infra, *98.

[151] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *137.

[152] Bradford, p. 254.

[153] III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 81.

[154] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *12.

[155] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 331.

[156] Hazard, vol. i. p. 474.

[157] Hutchinson’s State Papers, p. 106.

[158] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *264.

[159] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *266.

[160] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *269.

[161] Ib., p. *298.

[162] Bradford, p. 375.

[163] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 175.

[164] Supra, p. 77.

[165] See Mr. Deane’s note on the “Plough patent,” in IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. pp. 88-96. Also the note on Cleaves, Ib. p. 363. D’Israeli (Curiosities of Literature, vol. iii. p. 488) gives a singular anecdote of Rigby.

[166] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 343.

[167] IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 148.

[168] Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 147, n.

[169] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *189.

[170] Supra, 61-3.

[171] Winthrop, vol. i. p. *298.

[172] N. Y. Hist. Soc. Coll., 1869, p. 40.

[173] Records, vol. ii. p. 90.

[174] Hist. of New England, vol. ii. p. 225.

[175] Infra, *138.

[176] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *192.

[177] New York Hist. Soc. Coll., 1869, p. 40.

[178] “It is undeniable that Morton became an object of aversion largely for the reason that he used the Prayer Book.” (Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 83.)

[179] White’s Memoirs of the Protestant Episcopal Church, p. xxii. n. See also Oliver’s Puritan Commonwealth, pp. 37-9.

[180] Infra, *138. See, also, *50, 332, note 2.

[181] Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 89.

[182] Wonder-Working Providence, p. 30.

[183] “Such a rake as Morton, such an addle-headed fellow as he represents himself to be, could not be cordial with the first people from Leyden, or with those who came over with the patent, from London or the West of England. I can hardly conceive that his being a Churchman, or reading his prayers from a Book of Common Prayer, could be any great offence. His fun, his songs and his revels were provoking enough, no doubt. But his commerce with the Indians in arms and ammunition, and his instructions to those savages in the use of them, were serious and dangerous offences, which struck at the lives of the new-comers, and threatened the utter extirpation of all the plantations.” (Notes of John Adams, 1802.)

[184] Infra, 249-52, and note.

[185] Infra, 290, note.

[186] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *14.

[187] Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *166.

[188] See Deane’s note to Bradford, p. 254.

[189] Harvard Univ. Library Bulletin, No. 10, p. 244.

[190] Supra, pp. 78-9.

[191] Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 94, n.

[192] Mr. DeCosta says that the titlepage of the copy in the Library of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel reads in this way. Mag. of Amer. Hist., vol. viii. p. 94, n. 4.

[193] This copy was in the Adams Library for many years, and until within a quite recent period. It cannot, however, now (1882) be found. It would appear to have been stolen, together with many other volumes and almost innumerable autographs, which formerly lent a peculiar value to the John Adams Collection, given by him in 1822 to the town of Quincy.

[194] “Mint and cumin” uniformly appears as “muit and cummin;” “humming-bird” as “hunning-bird.”

[195] Ante, pp. 61-3.

[196] In regard to the Board of Lords Commissioners of 1634, see supra, 57-60. The royal letter patent in the original Latin is in Hazard, vol. i. pp. 344-7. There are translations of it in Hubbard (pp. 264-8) and in Bradford (pp. 456-8), together with notes by Harris in his edition of the former, and by Deane in the latter.

[197] [seth.] Wherever in this edition an apparently obvious misprint in the text of 1637 has been, as in the present case, corrected, the misprinted word, as it appears in the original, is printed between brackets as a foot-note.

[198] In regard to Sir Christopher Gardiner, see infra, *182-4 and note.

[199] [Connick.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[200] [stife.]

[201] [muit.]

[202] The Isle of Sall appears on the map in the Geography of Peter Heylyn, London, 1674, as one of the Cape Verde Islands. It is called in the text Insula Salis, and on other old maps Isle of Sal, or Ilha do Sal. There are some ten islands in the group. Professor J. D. Whitney writes that several islands are known by the name of Sall, and that the one referred to by Morton is probably that off the north shore of Cuba. “A good deal has been written about the poisonous fishes of the waters about the island of Cuba. The disease produced by eating poisonous fish is called ciguatera, and the fish itself is said to be ciguato. All that is definitely known about the matter seems to be that quite a large number of species of fish in that region are believed to be liable to some disease, the nature and course of which is unknown; and that those who eat the fish thus diseased are themselves liable to be attacked by the malady called ciguatera.”

[203] Morton here apparently refers at second hand to Aristotle’s resumé of the ancient belief of five zones, two only of which were habitable. Meteorologica, B. II. ch. v. § 11.

[204] From this passage it would appear that the Isle of Sall and the tropical waters, which Morton in this chapter refers to as having been visited by him, were in the neighborhood of the Western and Cape Verde Islands. In his time the word tornado had probably not been adopted into the English language, and in writing it Morton gives to the letter d the peculiar Western Island or Portuguese pronunciation.

[205] Morton here confounds Davis with Hudson. Davis’s three voyages were made in 1585-6-7, and it was in the first of them that he discovered the straits which bear his name. He afterwards made five voyages to the East Indies, in the last of which he was killed in a fight with some Japanese on the coast of Malacca. Hudson made four voyages between 1607 and 1610, during the last of which he passed a winter, frozen in, near the entrance to Hudson Bay. His crew mutinied, and turned him adrift in an open boat, on the 22d of July, 1610. He was never heard of again; and it is his “fate,” probably, which Morton had in mind. No other noted discoverer of the Northwest Passage was lost prior to 1634. The discovery of that passage, however, then excited as active an interest as it has since, or does now. In 1632 Edward Howes sent out to Governor Winthrop a printed “Treatise of the North-West Passage” (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 480) which is still in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

[206] The phrase in the Meteorologica (ubi supra, 117, note 1.) is, “the parts under the Bear (i.e., north) by cold are uninhabitable.”

[207]

Impiger extremos curris mercator ad Indos,

Per mare pauperiem fugiens, per saxa, per ignes.

Horace, Epist. I. ll. 45-6.

[208] “18. Yea, I hated all my labor which I had taken under the sun: because I should leave it unto the man that shall be after me.

“19. And who knoweth whether he shall be a wise man or a fool?”

Ecclesiastes, ch. ii. vers. 18, 19.

[209] Sir Ferdinando Gorges, of Ashton Phillips in Somerset, has already been frequently referred to in the introductory portions of this volume. Of an old West Country family and pure English descent, he was born about the year 1560 (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii. p. 329). He early devoted himself to a military and naval life, and in 1591 served under Essex at the siege of Rouen. Subsequently he is said to have been wounded, either at Amiens, or during the siege of Paris by Henry IV. In consequence of his services he was appointed by Queen Elizabeth royal governor of Plymouth, and in 1597 was designated as one of the staff of Essex in the Ferrol expedition, with the title of Sergeant-Major. In 1601 he was concerned in Essex’s insurrection, and was one of the principal witnesses against the Earl at his trial. After a considerable period of imprisonment he was released, and, on the accession of James I., was reappointed governor of Plymouth. In 1605 he became interested in American discovery and colonization, and in 1607 he was one of the projectors of the Popham colony in Maine. During the next thirteen years he was engaged in fishing and trading ventures to New England, and indefatigable in collecting information as to America. (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 79.) In 1620 he procured from James I. the great patent of the Council for New England. In 1623 he sent out the Robert Gorges expedition which settled itself at Wessagusset. (Supra, 2-4.) His subsequent connection with Morton, and his intrigues against the Massachusetts colony and charter, have been sufficiently referred to in this volume. During the Civil War Gorges espoused the royal side, and was made a prisoner when Fairfax captured Bristol in August 1645. He died probably about the 10th of May 1647, as he was buried on the 14th of that month.

In regard to Gorges, see Belknap’s American Biography; Folsom’s Catalogue of Original Documents in the English Archives relating to the Early History of the State of Maine; Williamson’s Maine; Palfrey’s New England (vol. i.); Poole’s Introduction to Johnson’s Wonder Working Providence; Devereux’s Earls of Essex (vol. i.); and the Briefe Narration (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 44), and Gorges’s own letters, to Winthrop and others, in the Winthrop Papers. (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vii.)

[210] That is, in 1634. See supra, 78.

[211] These are the Inner Harbor (Boston), so called, and Dorchester, Quincy, and Weymouth bays. The latter includes all the inlets south and west of Nut and Pettuck’s islands and Hull, among which is Hingham Bay.

[212] “Sleetch, n. The thick mud or slush lying at the bottom of rivers.” Webster.

[213] [iland.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[214] Supra, 6-7.

[215] In the letter already quoted from (Supra, 14), Mr. J. H. Trumbull remarked that “Morton, as he shows in chap. ii. of book I., could not write the most simple Indian word without a blunder.” As respects the words which Morton believed to be Indian-Greek, Mr. Trumbull has further kindly furnished the following notes: “En animia—Wunanumau, as Eliot wrote it, signifies ‘he is well disposed, or well minded toward another,’ or ‘is pleased with’ him. There is another word, nearly related, which Morton may have had in mind, meaning ‘to help,’ ‘do a favor to,’—aninumeh, ‘help me’ (Eliot), anúnime (R. Williams).”

[216] “Paskanontam (Eliot), ‘he suffers from hunger,’ ‘is starving.’ In Eliot’s orthography, paskuppoo would signify ‘he eats hungrily,’ or ‘as if starving,’ and from this comes the verbal Paskup-wen or Paskuppoo-en ‘a starving eater’—Morton’s ‘greedy gut.’”

[217] “Eliot’s paskanontam, as above, which is well enough translated by ‘halfe starved.’”

[218] “I can make nothing of these words. They certainly do not mean ‘set it upright.’”

[219] “An island is munnoh (Eliot).”

[220] “Here Morton mistook the word. Cos is, probably, Koüs (Eliot), ‘sharp-pointed,’ or, from the same root, mukqs, (Eliot), mucks (R. Williams), ‘an awl,’ used for boring wampum, beads, &c.; cau-ompsk (R. Williams) was ‘a whetstone,’ i. e., a sharpening stone.”

[221] “Om (aum, Eliot), is fish-hook; aumau-i, ‘he is fishing’ (with hook and line,) R. Williams; whence omaën, (Eliot) ‘a fisherman.’”

[222] “Probably misprinted for Pantucket—the equivalent of Pautucket, meaning ‘at the fall’ of the river. (The n was not distinctly sounded, but represents the nasalization of the preceding vowel.)”

[223] “Mattapan means ‘sitting down’—or ‘a setting down’—and usually designates the end of a ‘carry’ or portage, where the canoes were put in water again.”

[224] Winslow, in his Relations, says of the Indians: “The people are very ingenious and observative; they keep account of time by the moon, and winters or summers; they know divers of the stars by name; in particular they know the north star, and call it maske, which is to say, the bear.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 365-6.) See also to the same effect, Roger Williams’s Key (Publications of the Narragansett Club, vol. i.) and Mr. Trumbull’s note (p. 105). Mr. Trumbull now further adds: “The name (maske) was given to Ursa Major or Charles’s Wain, not to the North Star; and by nearly all Algonkin tribes. An interesting note on this point can be found in Hopkins’s Hist. Memorials of the Housatonic Indians (p. 11), and another in Dawson’s Acadian Geology (2d ed. p. 675), showing that the Micmacs still know that constellation as Mooin, ‘the bear.’”

[225] Roger Williams, in the preface to his Key (p. 23), says: “Wise and judicious men, with whom I have discoursed, maintain their [the Indians] original to be northward from Tartaria.” The Asiatic origin of the North American Indians was a necessary part of the scriptural dogma of the origin and descent of man. It is safe, however, to assert that, first and last, every possible theory on this subject has been carefully elaborated. It is not necessary, in connection with the New Canaan, to enter into the discussion, as the views of those, from St. Gregory to Voltaire, who have taken part in it, have been laboriously collected by Drake in his Book of Indians (ch. ii.).

[226] [muit.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[227] See Infra *182-4 and note.

[228] David Thomson occupied the island in Boston Harbor, which still bears his name, from some time in 1625, apparently, until his death in 1628 (supra, 24). He left a widow and an only son, who inherited the island. Originally, Thomson seems to have been a messenger, or possibly an agent, of the Council for New England. In November, 1622, a patent, covering a considerable tract of land, was issued to him, and the next year, he then being apparently a young man and newly married, he came out and established himself at Piscataqua, whence he afterwards moved to Boston Harbor. All that is known of Thomson can be found in Mr. Deane’s Notes to an Indenture, &c., in the Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1876 (pp. 358-81). See also, Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1878 (p. 204), and Memorial History of Boston (vol. i. p. 83).

[229] Morton’s attempt to trace the origin of the North American Indians from Brutus, and the support he finds for his theory in the resemblance of some Indian to Greek words, there being no reason to suppose that Brutus or the Latins had any acquaintance with Greek, reads like a humorous satire on the historical methods in vogue with the writers of his time. Until within the last century there were two historical events, or events assumed to be historical, to one or the other of which it was deemed safe to refer the origin of any modern nation. These events were the Siege of Troy and the Flood,—the profane and the sacred beginnings of modern history. Morton wrote in 1635, and his mind naturally had recourse to the profane theory. Fifteen years later, Milton began his history of England, and at the outset came in contact with Brutus. “That which we have,” he then remarks, “of oldest seeming, hath by the greater part of judicious antiquaries been long rejected for a modern fable.” He nevertheless “determined to bestow the telling over even of these reputed tales, ... seeing that ofttimes relations heretofore accounted fabulous have been after found to contain in them many footsteps and reliques of something true; as what we read in poets of the flood, and giants little believed, till undoubted witnesses taught us that all was not feigned.” Then passing on, he says: “After the flood, and the dispersing of nations, as they journeyed leisurely from the East, Gomer, the eldest son of Japhet, and his offspring, as by authorities, arguments and affinity of divers names is generally believed, were the first that peopled all these west and northern climes.” Coming down to Brutus and the whole progeny of kings, and following Geoffrey of Monmouth, Milton then recounts in detail the marriages, voyages, adventures and mishaps of the descendants of Æneas until Brutus reached an “island, not yet Britain but Albion, in a manner desert and inhospitable; kept only by a remnant of giants, whose excessive force and tyranny had destroyed the rest. These Brutus destroys,” and, after this, “in a chosen place, builds Troja Nova, changed in time to Trinovantum, now London.”

The superiority of Morton’s historical method to Milton’s, or to that in use in Milton’s time, is obvious. Accepting the common origin, he premises that he does not find that “when Brutus did depart from Latium his whole number went with him at once.” Accordingly, some of them being put to sea, “might encounter with a storm,” and then being carried out of sight of land, “they might sail God knoweth whether, and so might be put on this coast, as well as any other.” And hence the author is “bold to conclude that the original of the natives of New England may be well conjectured to be from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium.”

It would be easy to quote from many serious productions, contemporaneous with the New Canaan and a century after it, examples of the same method of daring historical hypothesis; a single instance will, however, suffice. In his history of Lynn, written in 1829, the Rev. Alonzo Lewis says (p. 21): “The Indians are supposed by some to be the remnants of the long lost ten tribes of Israel; and their existence in tribes, the similarity of some of their customs, and the likeness of many words in their language, seem to favor this opinion.”

More sensible than either Thomas Morton or Mr. Lewis, William Wood, in writing his New England’s Prospect, in 1633, remarks (p. 78), that “Some have thought they [the Indians] might be of the dispersed Jews, because some of their words be near unto the Hebrew; but by the same rule they may conclude them to be some of the gleanings of all nations, because they have words which sound after the Greek, Latin, French, and other tongues.”

There is in the Magnalia (book III. part iii.) a lengthy but highly characteristic passage, in which Mather recounts the points of resemblance which the evangelist Eliot saw between the Indians and “the posterity of the dispersed and rejected Israelites.”

[230] Peddock’s, or Pettick’s, Island, still so called, is one of the largest islands in Boston Bay. It lies directly opposite to George’s Island and Hull, from which last it is separated by a narrow channel, and is between Weymouth and Quincy bays, on the east and west. See Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 557.

[231] Leonard Peddock seems to have been in the employment of the Council for New England. In the records of the Council for the 8th of November, 1622, is the following entry: “Mr. Thomson is ordered to pay unto Leo: Peddock £10 towards his paynes for his last Imployments to New England.” Subsequently, on the 19th of the same month: “It is ordered that a Letter be written from the Counsell to Mr. Weston, to deliver to Leonard Peddock, a boy Native of New England called papa Whinett belonging to Abbadakest, Sachem of Massachusetts, which boy Mr Peddock is to carry over with him” (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, April, 1867, pp. 70, 74).

Andrew Weston had returned to England in the Charity, leaving Wessagussett in September, 1622 (supra, 7). He would seem to have brought over the Indian boy in question with him. From the entry in the records of the Council for New England, just quoted, it would appear that Leonard Peddock was in New England during the summer of 1622. The reference to him in the text is additional evidence that Morton was there at the same time, and in company with Weston.

[232] This is undoubtedly a misprint for Auckies, which was a sailor’s corruption for Auks. The Great Auk (Alca impennis) is probably referred to. This bird, now supposed to be extinct, was formerly common on the New England coast. Audubon, writing in 1838, says: “An old gunner, residing on Chelsea Beach, near Boston, told me that he well remembered the time when the Penguins were plentiful about Nahant and some other islands in the bay.” (Am. Ornithological Biog., vol. iv. p. 316.) Professor Orton, alluding to this passage, in the American Naturalist (1869, p. 540), expresses the opinion that the Razor-billed Auk was the bird referred to; but Professor F. W. Putnam adds, in a foot-note, that “the ‘old hunter’ was undoubtedly correct in his statement, as we have bones of the species taken from the shell-heaps of Marblehead, Eagle Hill in Ipswich, and Plum Island.” Dr. Jeffries Wyman found them in the shell-heaps at Cotuit. See Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 12.

There is an elaborate paper on the Great Auk, under the title of “The Garefowl and its Historians,” by Professor Alfred Newton, in the Natural History Review for 1865, p. 467.

[233] Morton would seem to be mistaken in this statement. Between 1614 and 1619 two French vessels were lost on the Massachusetts coast. One was wrecked on Cape Cod, and the crew, who succeeded in getting on shore, were most of them killed by the savages, and the remainder enslaved in the way described in the text. Two of these captives were subsequently redeemed by Captain Dermer (Bradford, p. 98). The other vessel was captured by the savages in Boston Bay, and burned. This is the vessel referred to by Morton as riding at anchor off Peddock’s Island. The circumstances of the capture are described in Phinehas Pratt’s narrative (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. pp. 479, 489). All the crew, he says, were killed, and the ship, after grounding, was burned. Pratt’s statement is distinct, and agrees with Bradford’s, that the captives among the Indians were the survivors from the vessel wrecked on Cape Cod, not from that captured in Boston Bay.

[234] Pratt’s account of this survivor among the French crew is to be found in IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. pp. 479, 489. He says that “one of them was wont to read much in a book (some say it was the New Testament), and that the Indians enquiring of him what his book said, he told them it did intimate that there was a people like French men that would come into the country and drive out the Indians.” The account given by Mather (Magnalia, B. I. ch. ii. § 6) is curiously like that in the text. After quoting the substance of Pratt’s statement he adds: “These infidels then blasphemously replied, ‘God could not kill them;’ which blasphemous mistake was confuted by a horrible and unusual plague, whereby they were consumed in such vast multitudes that our first planters found the land almost covered with their unburied carcases; and they that were left alive were smitten into awful and humble regards of the English by the terrors which the remembrance of the Frenchman’s prophecy had imprinted on them.”

Pratt, whom Mather followed, claims to have derived his knowledge of these events during the winter of 1622-3 directly from savages concerned in them. The probability is that the tradition of the French captive, and his book and prophecy, was a common one among the settlers both at Plymouth and about Boston Bay. Pratt apparently had a habit, as he grew old, of appropriating to his own account many of the earlier and more striking incidents of colonial history. (Mather’s Early New England, p. 17.)

[235] The mysterious pestilence, which in the years 1616 and 1617 swept away the New England Indians from the Penobscot to Narragansett Bay, is mentioned by all the earlier writers, and its character has recently been somewhat discussed. There can be no doubt that it practically destroyed the tribes, especially the Massachusetts and the Pokanokets, among which it raged. The former were reduced from a powerful people, able, it is said, to muster three thousand warriors, to a mere remnant a few hundred strong. The Pokanokets were in some localities, notably at Plymouth, actually exterminated, and the country left devoid of inhabitants (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 148; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 183). Winslow gave a description of the desolation created by this pestilence, and of the number of the unburied dead, very like that in the text (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 183, 206). On this subject, see also, Bradford, pp. 102, 325; Johnson, p. 16; Wood’s Prospect, p. 72; III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 57.

No definite conclusion as to the nature of this pestilence has been reached by medical men. It has been suggested that it was the yellow-fever (Palfrey, vol. i. p. 99, n). As, however, it raged equally in the depth of the severest winter as in summer, this could not have been the case (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 57; Bradford, p. 325). Other modern medical authorities have inclined to the opinion that it was a visitation of small-pox (Dr. Holmes in Mass. Hist. Soc., Low. Inst. Lect., 1869, p. 261; Dr. Green’s Centennial Address before the Mass. Med. Soc., June 7, 1881, p. 12). In support of this hypothesis Captain Thomas Dermer is quoted, who, sailing along the coast in 1619-20, wrote “we might perceive the sores of some that had escaped, who described the spots of such as usually die” (Purchas, vol. iv. p. 1778). On the other hand, none of the contemporaneous writers who speak of the disease ever call it the small-pox, though all of them were perfectly familiar with small-pox, and a very large portion of them probably bore its marks. Dermer speaks of it as “the plague.” Bradford, when the same pestilence raged on the Connecticut, described it as “an infectious fever.” Dr. Fuller, the first New England physician, then died of it (Bradford, p. 314). He could not but have been familiar with the small-pox and its symptoms; and it would seem most improbable that he should have died of that disease among his dying neighbors, and not have known what was killing him. Moreover, in 1633-4 the small-pox did rage among the Indians, and Bradford, in giving a fearfully graphic account of its ravages, adds, “they [the Indians] fear it more than the plague.” Josselyn also draws the same distinction, saying (Two Voyages, p. 123): “Not long before the English came into the country, happened a great mortality amongst [the Indians]; especially where the English afterwards planted, the East and Northern parts were sore smitten by the contagion; first by the plague, afterwards, when the English came, by the small-pox.”

It would seem, therefore, that the pestilence of 1616-7 was clearly not the small-pox. More probably it was, as Bradford says, “an infectious fever,” or some form of malignant typhus, due to the wretched sanitary condition of the Indian villages, which had become over-crowded, owing to that prosperous condition of the tribes which Smith describes as existing at the time of his visit to the coast in 1614 (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 109).

[236] “Their houses, which they call wigwams, are built with poles pitcht into the ground of a round form for most part, sometimes square. They bind down the tops of their poles, leaving a hole for smoak to go out at, the rest they cover with the bark of trees, and line the inside of their wigwams with mats made of rushes painted with several colors. One good post they set up in the middle that reaches to the hole in the top, with a staff across before it; at a convenient height, they knock in a pin upon which they hang their kettle. Beneath that they set up a broad stone for a back which keepeth the post from burning. Round by the walls they spread their mats and skins where the men sleep whilst their women dress their victuals. They have commonly two doors, one opening to the south, the other to the north, and, according as the wind sets, they close up one door with bark and hang a deers skin or the like before the other. Towns they have none, being always removing from one place to another for conveniency of food, sometimes to those places where one sort of fish is most plentiful, other whiles where others are. I have seen half a hundred of their wigwams together in a piece of ground and they show prettily; within a day or two or a week they have been all dispersed.” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 126). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 144.

[237] Giving in his Key (p. 48) the Indian combination of words signifying “let us lay on wood,” Roger Williams adds: “This they do plentifully when they lie down to sleep winter and summer, abundance they have and abundance they lay on: their fire is instead of our bed-clothes. And so, themselves and any that have any occasion to lodge with them, must be content to turn often to the fire, if the night be cold, and they who first wake must repair the fire.” Elsewhere he says: “God was pleased to give me a painful, patient spirit, to lodge with them in their filthy, smoky holes.” See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 150.

When Stephen Hopkins and Edward Winslow were sent on their mission to Massasoit, in June, 1621, they say of their entertainment on the night they arrived at his lodge: “Late it grew, but victuals he offered none; for indeed he had not any, being he came so newly home. So we desired to go to rest: he layd us on the bed with himself and his wife, they at the one end and we at the other, it being only planks layd a foot from the ground, and a thin mat upon them. Two more of his chief men, for want of room, pressed by and upon us; so that we were worse weary of our lodging than of our journey.” (Mourt, p. 45). Two nights of this entertainment sufficed for the embassadors who “feared we should either be light-headed for want of sleep, for what with bad lodging, the savages barbarous singing, (for they use to sing themselves asleep,) lice and fleas within doors, and musketos without, we could hardly sleep all the time of our being there.” (Ib., p. 46) Another observer remarked of the New England Indians: “Tame cattle they have none, excepting Lice, and Dogs of a wild breed” (Josselyn’s Voyages, p. 127); and to the same effect Roger Williams notes (Key, p. 74): “In middle of summer, because of the abundance of fleas, which the dust of the house breeds, they [the Indians] will fly and remove on a sudden to a fresh place.”

Smith, describing the Virginia Indians, says (True Travels, vol. i. p. 130): “Their houses are built like our arbors, of small young springs bowed and tyed, and so close covered with mats, or the barkes of trees very handsomely, that nothwithstanding either winde, raine, or weather, they are as warm as stoves, but very smoaky, yet at the toppe of the house there is a hole made for the smoake to go into right over the fire.

“Against the fire they lie on little hurdles of Reeds covered with a mat, borne from the ground a foote and more by a hurdle of wood. On these round about the house they lie heads and points, one by the other, against the fire, some covered with mats, some with skins, and some stark naked lie on the ground, from six to twenty in a house.”

In Parkman’s Jesuits in North America there is a lively account of Le Jeune’s experience in passing the winter of 1633-4 among the Algonquins: “Put aside the bear-skin, and enter the hut. Here, in a space some thirteen feet square, were packed nineteen savages, men, women and children, with their dogs, crouched, squatted, coiled like hedge-hogs, or lying on their backs, with knees drawn up perpendicularly to keep their feet out of the fire.... The bark covering was full of crevices, through which the icy blasts streamed in upon him from all sides; and the hole above, at once window and chimney, was so large, that, as he [Le Jeune] lay, he could watch the stars as well as in the open air. While the fire in the midst, fed with fat pine-knots, scorched him on one side, on the other he had much ado to keep himself from freezing. At times, however, the crowded hut seemed heated to the temperature of an oven. But these evils were light when compared to the intolerable plague of smoke. During a snow-storm, and often at other times, the wigwam was filled with fumes so dense, stifling, and acrid, that all its inmates were forced to lie flat on their faces, breathing through mouths in contact with the cold earth. Their throats and mouths felt as if on fire; their scorched eyes streamed with tears.... The dogs were not an unmixed evil, for by sleeping on and around [Le Jeune], they kept him warm at night; but, as an offset to this good service, they walked, ran and jumped over him as he lay” (pp. 27-8).

[238] In regard to the food of the Indians and their alternate gluttony and abstinence, see Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 129-30; Wood’s Prospect, p. 57. Wood’s account of the Indians is usually the best. As respects eating, he says: “At home they will eate till their bellies stand South, ready to split with fulnesse: it being their fashion, to eate all at sometimes, and sometimes nothing at all in two or three days, wise providence being a stranger to their wilder dayes.”

[239] “Cattup keen? ‘Are you hungry?’ Meechin, ‘meat;’ or, as an Indian would be more likely to say, Meech, ‘eat.’ In Eliot’s orthography, Kodtup kēn? Meechum, ‘victuals, food,’ or meech, ‘eat.’”—J. H. Trumbull.

[240] In regard to the hospitality of the Indians, Wood says (Prospect, p. 59): “Though they be sometimes scanted, yet are they as free as Emperors, both to their countrymen and English, be he stranger or mere acquaintance; counting it a great discourtesie not to eat of their high conceited delicates, and sup of their un-oat-meal’d broth, made thick with fishes, fowles and beasts boiled all together; some remaining raw, the rest converted by over-much seething to a loathed mass, not halfe so good as Irish Boniclapper.” See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153.

So also Roger Williams (Key, ch. ii. and iii.): “If any stranger came in, they presently give him to eat of what they have; many a time, and at all times of the night (as I have fallen in travel, upon their houses) where nothing hath been ready, have themselves and their wives, risen to prepare me some refreshing.”

“In Summer-time I have knowne them lye abroad often themselves, to make room for strangers, English, or others.”

“I have known them leave their House and Mat

to lodge a friend or stranger,

Where Jewes and Christians oft have sent

Christ Jesus to the manger.”

[241] In regard to the games and removals of the Indians, see Williams’s Key, chs. xi. and xxviii.; Smith’s True Travels, vol. i. p. 133; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 153; and Wood’s Prospect; pp. 63, 73-5. Wood gives an excellent description of the Indian game of foot-ball: “Their goals be a mile long placed on the sands, which are as even as a board; their ball is no bigger than a hand-ball, which sometimes they mount in the air with their naked feet, sometimes it is swayed by the multitude; sometimes also it is two days before they get a goal; then they mark the ground they win, and begin the next day.... Though they play never so fiercely to outward appearance, yet anger-boiling blood never streams in their cooler veins; if any man be thrown, he laughs out his foil, there is no seeking of revenge, no quarrelling, no bloody noses, scratched faces, black eyes, broken shins, no bruised members or crushed ribs, the lamentable effects of rage; but the goal being won, the goods on the one side lost; friends they were at the foot-ball, and friends they must meet at the kettle.” To the same effect see Strachey’s Historie, p. 78.

[242] Ipsisque in hominibus nulla gens est neque tam immansueta, neque tam fera, quæ non, etiam si ignoret qualem habere deum deceat, tamen habendum sciat (De Legibus, Lib. I. § 8).

Quæ est enim gens, aut quod genus hominum, quod non habeat sine doctrinâ anticipationem quandam deorum? (De Natura Deorum, Lib. I. § 16).

[243] The reference here is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect (p. 70). In regard to the time when this work was written and published, see Mr. Deane’s preface to the edition in the publications of the Prince Society. Morton makes numerous references to it in the New Canaan (infra, *38, 53, 64, 84, 99). The present reference is one of the few unintelligible passages in the book. Wood’s language, to which Morton apparently takes exception, is as follows: “As it is natural to all mortals to worship something, so do these people; but exactly to describe to whom their worship is chiefly bent, is very difficult; they acknowledge especially two, Ketan, who is their good God, to whom they sacrifice after their garners be full with a good crop: upon this God likewise they invocate for fair weather, for rain in time of drought, and for the recovery of their sick; but if they do not hear them, then they verify the old verse, Flectere si nequeo Superes, Acheronta movebo, their Pow-wows betaking themselves to their exorcisms and unromantick charms ... by God’s permission, through the Devil’s help, their charms are of force to produce effects of wonderment.” Morton would seem to have wished to depreciate Wood, as an authority on New England, and so, playing upon his name and the title of his book, he implied that he had taken a much more elevated view of the religious development of the Indians than could be justified either by the actual facts, or the judgment of the best informed.

Being unintelligible, the passage, from the word “neither” to the end of the paragraph, is reproduced here in all respects, including punctuation, as it is in the text of the original edition.

[244] There is no expression of this nature to be found anywhere in those writings of Sir William Alexander which have come down to us and are included in the publications of the Prince Society. He may have used the expression quoted in conversation, or in a letter. Winslow, in Mourt, says: “They [the savages] are a people without any religion, or knowledge of any God” (p. 61). This statement he subsequently, however, retracted in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 355), where he says, “therein I erred, though we could then gather no better.”

The subject of the religion of the North American aborigines has been treated by Parkman in the introduction to the Jesuits in North America (pp. lxvii.-lxxxix.), and he concludes that “the primitive Indian, yielding his untutored homage to an All-pervading grand Omnipotent Spirit, is a dream of poets, rhetoricians and sentimentalists.” To the same effect Palfrey, at the close of his vigorous discussion of the same subject (vol. i. p. 45), declares that the devout Indian of the “untutored mind is as fabulous as the griffin or the centaur.”

[245] Thomas May, better known as the historian and secretary of the Long Parliament, was born in 1595 and died in 1650. In 1627 he published a translation of Lucan’s Pharsalia, with a supplementum, or continuation (1630), by himself in seven books. This continuation he subsequently translated into Latin, and it is included in Lemaire’s edition of the Pharsalia in his Bibliotheca Classica Latina (Paris, 1832). The passage to which Morton refers is in the third book of the continuation (ll. 108-78). The following are some of the verses:—

“But in a higher kind (as some relate)

Do Elephants with men communicate.

(If you believe it) a religion

They have, and monthly do adore the Moon,

Besides the loftie Nabathæan wood,

Of vast extent, Amylo’s gentle flood,

Gliding along, the sandie mould combines.

Thither, as oft as waxing Cynthia shines

In her first borrowed light, from out the wood,

Come all the Elephants, and in the floud

Washing themselves (as if to purifie)

They prostrate fall; and when religiously

They have adored the Moon, return again

Into the woods with joy.”

[246] In his Latin poem on New England, which the Rev. William Morell wrote during his eighteen months’ residence at Wessagusset as the spiritual head of the Robert Gorges settlement of 1623, there is a description of the Indian and his garments. The following is the author’s English rendering of his more elegant Latin original:—

“Whose hayre is cut with greeces, yet a locke

Is left; the left side bound up in a knott:

Their males small labour but great pleasure know,

Who nimbly and expertly draw the bow;

Traind up to suffer cruell heat and cold,

Or what attempt so ere may make them bold;

Of body straight, tall, strong, mantled in skin

Of deare or bever, with the hayre-side in;

An otter skin their right armes doth keepe warme,

To keepe them fit for use, and free from harme;

A girdle set with formes of birds or beasts,

Begirts their waste, which gentle gives them ease.

Each one doth modestly bind up his shame,

And deare-skin start-ups reach up to the same;

A kind of pinsen keeps their feet from cold,

Which after travels they put off, up-fold,

Themselves they warme, their ungirt limbes they rest

In straw, and houses, like to sties.”

I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 131.

Wood’s description of the Indian apparel is very like Morton’s. He says, however: “The chiefe reasons they render why they will not conforme to our English apparell are because their women cannot wash them when they be soyled, and their meanes will not reach to buy new when they have done with their old; and they confidently beleeve, the English will not be so liberall as to furnish them upon gifture: therefore they had rather goe naked than be lousie, and bring their bodies out of their old tune, making them more tender by a new acquired habit, which poverty would constrain them to leave.” (Prospect, p. 56).

The description given by Winslow (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 365) is very similar to Morell’s. See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 152; Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 128-9, and Williams’s Key, ch. xx.

Smith (True Travels, vol. i. p. 129) says: “For their apparell, they are sometimes covered with the skinnes of wilde beasts, which in winter are dressed with the hayre, but in Sommer without. The better sort use large mantels of Deare skins, not much differing in fashion from the Irish mantels. Some imbrodered with white beads, some with copper, others painted after their manner. But the common sort have scarce to cover their nakednesse, but with grasse, the leaves of trees or such like. We have seene some use mantels made of Turkey feathers so prettily wrought and woven with threads that nothing could be discerned but the feathers.”

[247] Supra, 16, note.

[248] Speaking of a ceremony common to the Algonquins and the Hurons, of propitiating their fishing-nets by formally marrying them every year to two young girls, Parkman says: “As it was indispensable that the brides should be virgins, mere children were chosen” (The Jesuits in North America, p. lxix. note). The subject of female chastity among the Indians has already been referred to (supra, p. 17), and it is extremely questionable whether they had any conception of it. Winslow, in his Good News (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364) says:—“When a maid is taken in marriage, she first cutteth her hair, and after weareth a covering on her head, till her hair be grown out. Their women are diversely disposed; some as modest, as they will scarce talk one with another in the company of men, being very chaste also; yet others seem light, lascivious, and wanton.... Some common strumpets there are, as well as in other places; but they are such as either never married, or widows, or put away for adultery; for no man will keep such an one to wife.” Strachey (Historie, p. 65), says of the Virginians: “Their younger women goe not shadowed [clothed] amongst their owne companie, until they be nigh eleaven or twelve returnes of the leafe old, nor are they much ashamed thereof, and therefore would the before remembered Pochahuntas, a well featured, but wanton yong girle, Powhatan’s daughter, sometymes resorting to our fort, of the age then of eleven or twelve yeares, get the boyes forth with her into the markett place, and make them wheele, falling on their hands, turning up their heeles upwards, whome she would followe, and wheele so her self, naked as she was, all the fort over; but being over twelve yeares, they put on a kind of semecinctum lethern apron (as doe our artificers or handycrafts men) before their bellies, and are very shamefac’t to be seen bare.” Ellis, in his Red Man and White Man (p. 185), remarks on this point: “The obscenity of the savages is unchecked in its revolting and disgusting exhibitions. Sensuality seeks no covert.”

Under these circumstances it is unnecessary to say that Morton’s statements as to the red cap and the Sachem’s privilege are pure fiction, and what Parkman says of the Hurons is probably true of the Massachusetts,—their women were wantons before marriage and household drudges after it. (Jesuits in North America, p. xxxv).

[249] To the same effect Roger Williams says: “Most of them count it a shame for a woman in travell to make complaint, and many of them are scarcely heard to groane. I have often known in one quarter of an hour a woman merry in the house, and delivered and merry again: and within two dayes abroad, and after foure or five dayes at worke.” (Key, ch. xxiii.). See also Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 127. Wood’s account is almost as comprehensive, though not quite so detailed and graphic as Josselyn’s: “They likewise sew their husband’s shooes, and weave mats of Turkie feathers; besides all their ordinary household drudgery which dayly lies upon them, so that a bigge belly hinders no businesse nor a childbirth takes much time, but the young infant being greased and footed, wrapped in a Beaver skin, bound to his goode behaviour with his feete up to his bumme, upon a board two foot long and one foot broade, his face exposed to all nipping weather, this little Pappouse travels about with his bare-footed mother, to paddle in the Icie Clammbanks after three or four daies of age have sealed his passe-board and his mother’s recovery.” (Prospect, p. 82). See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 358.

[250] The idea that the Indian was born white was very commonly entertained in the first half of the seventeenth century. Lechford, in his Plaine Dealing, says (p. 50): “They are of complexion swarthy and tawny; their children are borne white, but they bedaube them with oyle, and colours, presently.” Josselyn also speaks of the Indians “dying [their children] with a liquor of boiled Hemlock-Bark” (Two Voyages, p. 128). Speaking of the Virginia women, Smith says: “To make [their children] hardie, in the coldest mornings they them wash in the rivers, and by paynting and oyntments so tanne their skinnes, that after a year or two, no weather will hurt them.” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 131). Strachey gives a more particular account of the supposed process: The Indians “are generally of a cullour browne or rather tawny, which they cast themselves into with a kind of arsenick stone, ... and of the same hue are their women; howbeit, yt is supposed neither of them naturally borne so discouloured; for Captain Smith (lyving somtymes amongst them) affirmeth how they are from the womb indifferent white, but as the men, so doe the women, dye and disguise themselves into this tawny cowler, esteeming yt the best beauty to be neerest such a kynd of murrey as a sodden quince is of (to liken yt to the neerest coulor I can), for which they daily anoint both face and bodyes all over with such a kind of fucus or unguent as can cast them into that stayne.” (Historie, p. 63).

[251] “If there was noticed a remarkable exemption from physical deformities, this was probably not the effect of any peculiar congenital force or completeness, but of circumstances which forbade the prolongation of any imperfect life. The deaf, blind or lame child was too burdensome to be reared, and according to a savage estimate of usefulness and enjoyment, its prolonged life would not requite its nurture.” Palfrey, vol. i. p. 23.

[252] Mr. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s nan weeteo stands for Eliot’s nanwetee (nanwetue, Cotton), ‘a bastard.’ Titta should be tatta, a word common among Indians, which is well enough translated by Morton. Eliot renders it ‘I know not,’ and R. Williams adds to this meaning, ‘I cannot tell; it may be so.’

“Cheshetue is unknown to me, but I am inclined to believe that Morton heard something like it, in the connection and substantially with the meaning he gives it,—some adjective of dispraise, qualifying squaa, or, as we write it, squaw.”

[253] [likenesse.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[254] The observations of Roger Williams led him to a different conclusion: “Their affections, especially to their children, are very strong.... This extreme affection, together with want of learning, makes their children saucie, bold and undutifull. I once came into a house, and requested some water to drink; the father bid his sonne (of some 8 yeeres of age) to fetch some water: the boy refused, and would not stir; I told the father, that I would correct my child, if he should so disobey me &c. Upon this the father took up a sticke, the boy another, and flew at his father: upon my persuasion, the poore father made him smart a little, throw down his stick, and run for water, and the father confessed the benefits of correction, and the evill of their too indulgent affections.” (Key, ch. v.)

To the same effect Champlain wrote (Voyages, vol. iii. p. 170): “The children have great freedom among these tribes. The fathers and mothers indulge them too much, and never punish them. Accordingly they are so bad and of so vicious a nature, that they often strike their mothers and others. The most vicious, when they have acquired the strength and power, strike their fathers. They do this whenever the father or mother does anything that does not please them. This is a sort of curse that God inflicts upon them.” Winslow, on the other hand, in his Good News, lends some support to Morton’s statement in the text. He says: “The younger sort reverence the elder, and do all mean offices, whilst they are together, although they be strangers.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 363.)

[255] This Sachem, “the most noted powow and sorcerer of all the country,” is better known by the name of Passaconaway. There is quite an account of him in Drake’s Book of the Indians (B. III. ch. vii). He is the Pissacannawa mentioned by Wood in his Prospect (p. 70), of whom the savages reported that he could “make the water burn, the rocks move, the trees dance, metamorphize himself into a flaming man.” Morton says of the Indian conjurers, “some correspondency they have with the Devil out of all doubt;” Wood, to the same effect, remarks that “by God’s permission, through the Devil’s helpe, their charmes are of force to produce effects of wonderment;” Smith declares of the Indians, “their chiefe God they worship is the Devil” (True Travels, vol. i. p. 138); Mather intimates that it was the devil who seduced the first inhabitants of America into it (Magnalia, B. I. ch. i. § 3), and Winthrop, describing the great freshet of 1638, records that the Indians “being pawawing in this tempest, the Devil came and fetched away five of them” (vol. i. p. *293).

See also Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 154; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 356; and Champlain’s Voyages, vol. iii. p. 171. Champlain says the Indians do not worship any God; “they have, however, some respect for the devil.”

[256] [Ingling.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[257] In regard to the Indian Powaws, priests, or medicine men, and their methods of dealing with the sick, see the detailed account in Champlain’s Voyages, vol. iii. pp. 171-8; Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 134; Wood’s Prospect, p. 71; Williams’s Key, ch. xxxi.; Gookin’s Indians, I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 154; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 317, 357; Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, (Trumbull’s ed.) p. 117; Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, pp. lxxxiv.-lxxxvii.; also Magnalia, B. III. part. iii., where Mather says: “In most of their dangerous distempers, it is a powaw that must be sent for; that is, a priest who has more familiarity with Satan than his neighbors; this conjurer comes and roars and howls and uses magical ceremonies over the sick man, and will be well paid for it when he is done; if this don’t effect the cure, the ‘man’s time is come, and there’s an end.’” For a summary in Indian medical practice, see further, Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, pp. 127-33.

[258] Passaconoway, already referred to (supra, p. 150, note), dwelt at a place called Pennakook, and his dominions extended over the sachems living upon the Piscataqua and its branches. The young Sachem of Saugus was named Winnepurkitt, and was commonly known among the English as George Rumney-marsh. He was a son of Nanepashemet, and at one time proprietor of Deer Island in Boston Harbor. (Drake’s Book of the Indians, ed. 1851, pp. 105, 111, 278.) The incident in the text has been made the subject of a poem, The Bridal of Pennacook, by Whittier, and Drake repeats it; but as Winnepurkitt is said by Drake to have been born in 1616, and to have succeeded Montowampate as Sachem in 1633, and as Morton, at the close of the present chapter, declares that “the lady, when I came out of the country [in 1630], remained still with her father,” the whole story would seem to be not only highly inconsistent with what we know of Indian life and habits, but also at variance with facts and dates.

[259] [not determined.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[260] Josselyn’s account of the Indian wampum is written, more than any other which has come down to us, in the spirit of the New Canaan: “Their Merchandize are their beads, which are their money, of these there are two sorts, blew Beads and white Beads, the first is their Gold, the last their Silver, these they work out of certain shells so cunningly that neither Jew nor Devil can counterfeit, they dril them and string them, and make many curious works with them to adorn the persons of their Sagamores and principal men and young women, as Belts, Girdles, Tablets, Borders for their womens hair, Bracelets, Necklaces, and links to hang in their ears. Prince Phillip, a little before I came for England, coming to Boston, had a coat on and Buskins set thick with these Beads in pleasant wild works, and a broad belt of the same; his Accoutrements were valued at Twenty pounds. The English Merchant giveth them ten shillings a fathom for their white, and as much more or near upon for their blew beads.” (Two Voyages, pp. 142-3.)

There is a much better description of wampum in Lawson’s account of Carolina, quoted by Drake (Book of the Indians, p. 328), in which he says that wampum was current money among the Indians “all over the continent, as far as the bay of Mexico.” Lawson’s explanation of the fact that wampum was not counterfeited to any considerable extent is much more natural than Morton’s. It cost more to counterfeit it than it was worth. “To make this Peak it cost the English five or ten times as much as they could get for it; whereas it cost the Indians nothing, because they set no value upon their time, and therefore have no competitors to fear, or that others will take its manufacture out of their hands.”

Roger Williams (Key, ch. xxvi.) devotes considerable space to this subject, and says: “They [the Indians] hang these strings of money about their necks and wrists; as also upon the necks and wrists of their wives and children. They make [girdles] curiously of one, two, three, foure and five inches thickness and more, of this money which (sometimes to the value of ten pounds and more) they weare about their middle and as a scarfe about their shoulders and breasts. Yea, the Princes make rich Caps and Aprons (or small breeches) of these Beads thus curiously strung into many formes and figures: their blacke and white finely mixt together.” See also Trumbull’s notes in his edition of the Key, and Palfrey, vol. i. p. 31. Parkman (Jesuits in North America, pp. xxxi., lxi.) says of wampum: “This was at once their currency, their ornament, their pen, ink and parchment.” He describes the uses to which it was put among the Hurons and Iroquois, but adds: “The art [of working it] soon fell into disuse, however; for wampum better than their own was brought them by the traders, besides abundant imitations in glass and porcelain.”

[261] “How have foule hands (in smoakie houses) the first handling of these Furres which are often worne upon the hands of Queens and heads of Princes!” (Williams’s Key, p. 158.)

[262] There is obviously some corruption of the original manuscript here, but I have been unable to obtain any even plausible suggestion of what word may have been turned into “reles” through the compositor’s inability to decipher copy.

[263] There is not much to be said on the manufactures, utensils and trade of the New England aborigines. Gookin (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151) has a comprehensive paragraph on the subject, and there is a passage in Josselyn (Two Voyages, p. 143). See also Williams’s Key, ch. xxv.

[264] Josselyn also speaks of “baskets, bags and mats woven with Sparke.” (Two Voyages, p. 143.) “Spart,” Mr. Trumbull writes, “was a northern English name for the dwarf-rush, and (as ‘spart’ in the glossaries) for osiers, and I guess, Morton’s and Josselyn’s sparke is another form of that name.” Gookin says (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151): “Some of their baskets are made of rushes; some, of bents; others, of maize-husks; others, of a kind of silk grass; others, of a kind of wild hemp; and some, of barks of trees.”

[265] Wood says of the Indian women: “Their corn being ripe, they gather it, and drying it hard in the Sun, conveigh it to their barnes, which be great holes digged in the ground in forme of a brasse pot, seeled with rinds of trees, wherein they put their corne, covering it from the inquisitive search of their gurmundizing husbands, who would eate up both their allowed portion, and reserved seed, if they knew where to finde it. But our hogges having found a way to unhindge their barne doores, and robbe their garners, they are glad to implore their husbands helpe to roule the bodies of trees over their holes, to prevent these pioneers, whose theevery they as much hate as their flesh.” (Prospect, p. 81.) Mather also, in enumerating the points of resemblance between the Indians and the Israelites, (Magnalia, B. III. part iii.) says: “They have, too, a great unkindness for our swine; but I suppose that is because the hogs devour the clams, which are a dainty with them.”

[266] See Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, p. 148; also, infra, 175, n.

[267] This Sachem has already been sufficiently referred to (Supra, p. 11.) All that is known concerning him can be found in Drake’s Book of the Indians, (ed. 1851), pp. 107-9.

[268] Morton’s neighbors at Wessaguscus were William Jeffrey, John Bursley and such others of the Robert Gorges expedition of 1623 as still remained there. (Supra, 4, 24, 30.) See also Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc. 1878, p. 198.

[269] Infra, *77.

[270] “Frumenty, n. [Also furmenty and fumety; from Lat. frumentum]. Food made of wheat boiled in milk, and seasoned with sugar, cinnamon, &c.” Webster.

[271] Squanto. See infra, *104.

[272] In reference to this passage, Mr. Francis Parkman writes: “I have searched my memory in vain for anything in the early French writers answering to Morton’s statement. I don’t think that Cartier, Champlain, Biard, Lescarbot or Le Jeune, the principal writers before 1635, make the extraordinary assertions in question. In fact, as there were no Spaniards in Canada, and likely to be none on French vessels going there, Indians of those parts would hardly have the opportunity of distinguishing between them by smell or otherwise. Indeed, they did not know the existence of such a nation.”

[273] Supra, *27, note.

[274] “Kytan was an appellation of the greatest manito. The word signifies ‘greatest’ or ‘pre-eminent.’ See my note (p. 207) in Lechford’s Plaine Dealing (p. 120), where is mention of ‘Kitan, their good god.’ Roger Williams in a letter to Thomas Thorowgood, 1635, names ‘their god Kuttand to the south-west’ (Jewes in America, 1650, p. 6) but in his Key, he writes the name Cautantowit (To the Reader, p. 24.) i. e., Keihte-anito—‘greatest manito.’

“I have not met with the name Sanaconquam elsewhere: at least I do not remember seeing it except in Morton. The derivation is apparently from a word meaning to press upon, to op-press, to crush, or the like.” (Manuscript Letter of J. H. Trumbull, June 25, 1882.)

See, also, authorities referred to supra, p. 140, note, and also Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, pp. 134-9. Morell has a passage on the Indian’s methods of worship in his poem. (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 136.)

[275] Roger Williams says: “They will relate how they have it from their Fathers, that Kantántowwit made one man and woman of a stone, which disliking, he broke them in pieces, and made another man and woman of a tree, which were the Fountaines of all mankind.” (Key, ch. xxi.)

“They believe that the soules of men and women goe to the Sou-west, their great and good men and women to Cantántowwit his House, where they have hopes (as the Turks have) of carnal Joyes: Murtherers, theeves and Lyers, their souls (say they) wander restlesse abroad.” (Ib.)

Wood, enlarging on this, says: “Yet do they hold the immortality of the never-dying soul, that it shall passe to the South-west Elysium, concerning which their Indian faith jumps much with the Turkish Alchoran, holding it to be a kind of Paradise, wherein they shall everlastingly abide, solacing themselves in odoriferous Gardens, fruitfull corn-fields, green meadows, bathing their hides in the coole streams of pleasant Rivers, and shelter themselves from heat and cold in the sumptuous Pallaces framed by the skill of Natures curious contrivement. Concluding that neither care nor pain shall molest them but that Natures bounty wil administer all things with a voluntary contribution from the overflowing storehouse of their Elysian Hospital, at the portall whereof they say lies a great Dog, whose churlish snarlings deny a Pax intrantibus to unworthy intruders.” (Prospect, p. 79.)

Parkman says: “The primitive Indian believed in the immortality of the soul, but he did not always believe in a state of future reward and punishment.” (Jesuits in North America, p. lxxx.) Referring to a case in which one of the Jesuits quoted an Indian as saying “there was no future life,” Parkman adds: “It would be difficult to find another instance of the kind.”

The romantic view of the Indian on this point was taken by Arnold, in his History of Rhode Island (vol. i. p. 78), and the realistic view by Palfrey, in his New England (vol. i. p. 49); and, though writing at the same time, the two seem to be controverting each other. See Ellis’s Red Man and White Man, p. 115.

[276] Supra, p. 93.

[277] Roger Williams, also, in a passage just quoted (supra, 168, note), speaks of the future punishment supposed, among the New England Indians, to be allotted to thieves and liars. Josselyn, on the other hand, describes them as “very fingurative or theevish” (Two Voyages, p. 125); and Gookin says: “They are naturally much addicted to lying and speaking untruth: and unto stealing, especially from the English” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 149). Winslow describes the severe punishments inflicted for theft (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 364). Dodge, in his Wild Indians (pp. 63-5), explains this discrepancy in the authorities. He says: “All these authors are both right and wrong. In their own bands, Indians are perfectly honest.... It [theft] is the sole unpardonable crime among Indians.” He then describes, like Winslow, the severity of the punishments inflicted for thefts; “but,” he adds, “this wonderfully exceptional honesty extends no further than to the members of his immediate band. To all outside of it, the Indian is not only one of the most arrant thieves in the world, but this quality or faculty is held in the highest estimation.”

[278] The reference is to ch. iii. of the Third Booke (infra, *106-8). This passage would seem to indicate that the third book of the New Canaan was written first, and that the two other books were prepared subsequently, probably in imitation of Wood’s Prospect. (See supra, 78.)

[279] “Yea, I saw with mine owne eyes that at my late comming forth of the Countrey, the chiefe and most aged peaceable Father of the countrey, Caunoŭnicus, having buried his sonne, he burned his owne Palace, and all his goods in it, (amongst them to a great value) in a sollemne remembrance of his sonne, and in a kind of humble Expiation to the Gods, who, (as they believe) had taken his sonne from him.” (Williams’s Key, ch. xxxii.) In the same passage Williams says: “Upon the Grave is spread the Mat that the party died on, the Dish he ate in, and, sometimes, a faire Coat of skin hung upon the next tree to the Grave, which none will touch, but suffer it there to rot with the dead.” See also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 142, 143, 154, 363; Strachey’s Historie, p. 90.

“In times of general Mortality they omit the Ceremonies of burying, exposing their dead Carkases to the Beasts of prey. But at other times they dig a Pit and set the diseased therein upon his breech upright, and, throwing in the earth, cover it with the sods and bind them down with sticks, driving in two stakes at each end; their mournings are somewhat like the howlings of the Irish, seldom at the grave but in the Wigwam where the party dyed, blaming the Devil for his hard-heartedness, and concluding with rude prayers to him to afflict them no further.” (Josselyn, Two Voyages, p. 132.) There is a highly characteristic passage to the same effect in Wood’s Prospect, p. 79.

[280] Supra, 143.

[281] The reference is to Wood’s New England’s Prospect, p. 13; where, also, the Indian custom of firing the country in November is described.

[282] Gookin says: “This beastly sin of drunkenness could not be charged upon the Indians before the English and other Christian nations, as Dutch, French, and Spaniards, came to dwell in America: which nations, especially the English in New-England, have cause to be greatly humbled before God, that they have been, and are, instrumental to cause these Indians to commit this great evil and beastly sin of drunkenness.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 151.)

In regard to the peculiarities of Indian drunkenness, see Dodge’s Wild Indians, pp. 333-5. What is there said of the Indians of “the plains” is probably true of all the northern American Indians. “This passion for intoxication amounts almost to an insanity.... To drink liquor as a beverage, for the gratification of taste, or for the sake of pleasurable conviviality, is something of which the Indian can form no conception. His idea of pleasure in the use of strong drink is to get drunk, and the quicker and more complete that effect, the better he likes it.”

[283] “They live in a country where we now have all the conveniences of human life: but as for them, their housing is nothing but a few mats tyed about poles fastened in the earth, where a good fire is their bed-clothes in the coldest seasons; their clothing is but a skin of a beast, covering their hind-parts, their fore-parts having but a little apron, where nature calls for secrecy; their diet has not a greater dainty than their Nokehick, that is a spoonful of their parched meal, with a spoonful of water, which will strengthen them to travel a day to-gether; except we should mention the flesh of deers, bears, mose, rackoons, and the like, which they have when they can catch them; as also a little fish, which, if they would preserve, it was by drying, not by salting; for they had not a grain of salt in the world, I think, till we bestowed it on them.” Magnalia, B. III. part iii. In his Letters and Notes on the North American Indians (Letter No. 17) Catlin comments on the failure of the Indians to make any use of salt, even in localities where it abounds. See supra, 161.

[284] The relations supposed to exist between the Indians and the devil have been referred to in a previous note, supra, 150. It is, however, a somewhat curious fact that the aboriginal hierarchy, suggested in the text, had a few years before found its exact political counterpart in the talk of the English people. “‘Who governs the land?’ it was asked. ‘Why, the King.’ ‘And who governs the King?’ ‘Why, the Duke of Buckingham.’ ‘And who governs the Duke?’ ‘Why, the Devil.’” (Ewald’s Stories from the State Papers, vol. ii. p. 117.)

[285] “Sed quoniam, (ut præclare scriptum est a Platone) non nobis solum nati sumus, ortusque nostri partem patria, vindicat, partem amici.” De Officiis, Lib. I. § 7. The words “partem parentes” are not in the original, but have been inserted by modern scholars as rendering the quotation from Plato more correct.

[286] In annotating this chapter I have been indebted to Professors Asa Gray and C. S. Sargent of Harvard University for assistance, they having sent me several of the more technical notes. This and the five following chapters of the New Canaan have a certain interest as being among the earliest memoranda on the trees, animals, birds, fish and geology of Massachusetts. The only earlier publication of at all a similar character is Wood’s New England’s Prospect, which appeared in 1634, and contained the result of observations made during the four years 1629 to 1633. Morton’s acquaintance with the country was earlier and longer than Wood’s, but the New Canaan was not published until three years after the Prospect, which it followed closely in its description of the country and its products. Josselyn’s first voyage was made in 1638, and his stay in New England covered a period of fifteen months, July, 1638, to October, 1639. His second visit was in 1663, and lasted until 1671. The New England’s Rarities was published in 1672, and the Two Voyages in 1674. Josselyn’s alone of these works can make any pretence to a scientific character or nomenclature, but the four taken together constitute the whole body of early New England natural history and geology. Only occasional reference to this class of subjects is found in other writers.

[287] The White Oake includes, no doubt, Quercus alba and bicolor, and the Redd Oake, Quercus rubra, tinctoria and coccinea.

[288] Edward Williams, in his Virginia (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11. p. 14), written in 1650, says: “Nor are Pipestaves and Clapboard a despicable commodity, of which one man may with ease make fifteen thousand yearely, which in the countrey itselfe are sold for 4 l. in the Canaries for twenty pound the thousand, and by this means the labour of one man will yeeld him 60 l. per annum, at the lowest Market.”

[289] Probably Fraxinus Americana, although two other species of Ash are common in Massachusetts, the Red and the Black Ash (F. pubescens and sambucifolia).

[290] It is interesting to note that, at this early day, two forms of our one species of Beech were distinguished by the color of the wood, a distinction which has often been adopted by Botanists and is still considered by mechanics and woodsmen.

[291] This refers, no doubt, to our different species of Hickory, although the Butternut (Juglans cinerea) is common in Massachusetts.

[292] Both the White and the Pitch Pine (Pinus strobus, and rigida) are probably referred to.

[293] “For I have seene of these stately high growne trees, ten miles together close by the River side, from whence by shipping they might be conveyed to any desired Port.” (Wood’s New England’s Prospect, p. 15.)

[294] The Red Cedar (Juniperus virginia).

[295] This is clearly a contemptuous reference to Wood, who in his Prospect (p. 15) had said, “The Cedar tree is a tree of no great growth, not bearing above a foote and a halfe square at the most, neither is it very high. I suppose they be much inferiour to the Cedars of Lebenon, so much commended in holy writ.”

[296] Supra, 173.

[297] The White Cedar (Chamaecyparis thyoides); or perhaps Arbor-Vitæ (Thuja occindentalis), which is the “more bewtifull tree.”

[298] A misprint for Gerard, whose Herball, or Generall Historie of Plants, was published in 1597, and Johnson’s edition of it in 1633.

[299] This probably includes both the Black Spruce (Picea nigra) and the Hemlock (Truga canadensis).

[300] “Spruce is a goodly Tree, of which they make Masts for Ships, and Sail Yards: It is generally conceived by those that have skill in Building of Ships, that here is absolutely the best Trees in the World, many of them being three Fathom about, and of great length.” (Josselyn, Rarities, p. 63.) “At Pascataway there is now a Spruce-tree brought down to the water-side by our Mass-men of an incredible bigness, and so long that no Skipper durst ever yet adventure to ship it, but there it lyes and Rots.” (Two Voyages, p. 67.)

[301] [whether.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[302] Probably the Sugar, Red and White Maples are intended: Acer saccharinum, rubrum and dasycarpum. It is singular that no reference to the manufacture of maple sugar by the Indians occurs.

[303] (Elder) Sambucus Canadensis.

[304] Wood (Prospect, p. 15) says, “Two sorts, Red and White.” None of our native Grape vines bear White grapes.

[305] Supra, 173.

[306] Perhaps our little Beach plum (P. maritima) is intended. The wild American Plum-tree is probably not a native of Massachusetts, although it was early cultivated by the aborigines and settlers.

[307] (Sassafras officinale.)

[308] The Ginseng (Aralia quinquefolia), or the Wild Sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis).

[309] In Chapter IX. of this Book (infra, *94) Morton again refers to the growth of hemp in New England, as evidence of the fertility of the soil. He declares “that it shewteth up to be tenne foote high and tenne foote and a halfe.” Thomas Wiggin, also, in writing of New England in November, 1632, says: “As good hempe and fflax as in any parte of the world, growes there naturally.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Hemp, however, is not native to New England or America. That spoken of must have been grown from seed brought over by the colonists. Morton may have seen it growing in garden soil at Plymouth and Wessagusset, but that any field of it ever reached a height of ten or ten and a half feet in eastern Massachusetts is very questionable.

[310] Professor Gray of Harvard University has furnished me the following note on this chapter:—

“Unlike Josselyn, the author evidently was not an herbalist, and wrote at random. His pot-marjoram, thyme and balm, though not to be specifically identified, and none of them of the same species as in England, must be represented by our American pennyroyal (Hedeoma pulegioides), a native mint (Mentha borealis), wild basil (Pycnanthemum), and a species of Monarda, sometimes called balm, all sweet herbs of the New England coast. Alexander is hardly to be guessed. Angelica as a genus occurs here, but not the officinal species. Wild sarsaparilla (Aralia nudicaulis) was probably in view. Purslane is interesting in this connection, adding as it does to the probability that this plant was in the country before the settlement. There are no Anniseeds in New England, and it is impossible to guess what the author meant. It was probably a random statement founded on nothing in particular. The Honeysuckles were doubtless the two species of Azalea to which the name is still applied.” Wood also says (Prospect, pp. 11, 12), “There is likewise growing all manner of Hearbes for meate and medicine, and not only in planted Gardens, but in the woods, without either the art or helpe of man, as sweete Marjoram, Purselane, Sorrell, Peneriall, Yarrow, Myrtle, Saxifarilla, Bayes, &c.” See also Mr. Tuckerman’s introductory matter and notes, in his edition of New England’s Rarities [1865], and Professor Gray’s chapter (vol. i. ch. ii.) on the Flora of Boston and vicinity, and the changes it has undergone, in the Memorial History of Boston.

[311] For the greater part of the notes to this chapter, and for all those of a technical character, I am indebted to Mr. William Brewster, of Cambridge. To his notes I have added a few references to, and extracts from, other early works more or less contemporaneous with the New Canaan.

[312] Probably the Whistling Swan (Cygnus Americanus), now a rare visitor to New England. Wood, also, in his poetical enumeration of birds and fowls (Prospect, p. 23), speaks of

“The Silver Swan that tunes her mournfull breath,

To sing the dirge of her approaching death.”

Further on (p. 26) he says, “There be likewise many Swannes which frequent the fresh ponds and rivers, seldome consorting themselves with Duckes and Geese; these be very good meate, the price of one is six shillings.” In his enumeration of birds of New England, Josselyn (Two Voyages, p. 100) mentions “Hookers or wild-Swans.” This bird is not included in Peabody’s Report on the Ornithol. of Massachusetts (1839).

[313] The Brant (Bernicla brenta), common at the present day.

[314] The Snow Goose (Anser hyperboreus), now rare in New England, although common throughout the West.

[315] The Canada Goose (Bernicla Canadensis).

[316] The Black Duck (Anas obscura), still abundant. The identity of the other two is doubtful: the Pide Duck may have been the Pied or Labrador Duck (Camptolæmus Labradorius), a species formerly common but now nearly if not wholly extinct; the Gray Duck is probably the Pintail (Dafila acuta).

[317] The Green-winged Teal (Querquedula Carolinensis) and the Blue-winged Teal (Querquedula discors), both noted for the delicacy of their flesh.

[318] Probably the American Widgeon, or Baldpate (Mareca Americana). The name Widgeon is sometimes applied to other species, however.

[319] Probably some species of web-footed bird, but exactly what is not clear. Mr. Merriam, in his Review of the Birds of Connecticut (pp. 104-5), identifies Morton’s Simpe as the American Woodcock (Philohela minor), but in this he is doubtless in error. In the first place, it is not likely that a keen sportsman like Morton would have shot woodcock merely out of curiosity, and “more did not regard them;” in the second place, Josselyn, in enumerating the different sorts of ducks, speaks of “Widgeons, Simps, Teal, Blew wing’d and green wing’d.” (Two Voyages, p. 101.) But for the reference in the next paragraph in the text, and the disparaging manner in which the bird in question is alluded to, it would be inferred that Simpes was a natural misprint for Snipes. That, however, is clearly not the case.

[320] The Sanderling (Calidris arenaria), a common Sandpiper, peculiar in lacking the usual hind toe. The context indicates that other shore birds were included under this name. “There are little Birds that frequent the Sea-shore in flocks called Sanderlins, they are about the bigness of a Sparrow, and in the fall of the leaf will be all fat; when I was first in the Countrie the English cut them into small pieces to put into their Puddings instead of suet. I have known twelve score and above kill’d at two shots.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 102.) To precisely the same effect Wood says (Prospect, p. 27), “I myselfe have killed twelve score at two shootes.”

[321] Neither the Whooping Crane (Grus Americana) nor the Sandhill Crane (Grus pratensis) is now found in New England. The latter is probably the species referred to here. Our large Heron (Ardea herodias) is often called Crane by country people, but it does not eat corn, and “in a dishe” would hardly be considered “a goodly bird.”

[322] The Wild Turkey (Meleagris gallipavo Americana) is mentioned by all the early writers as an abundant bird; but it disappeared almost as rapidly as the Indians, before the encroachment of the white settlers. Peabody, writing in 1839 (Report on the Fishes, Reptiles, and Birds of Massachusetts, p. 352), says: “It is still found occasionally in our western mountains, and also on the Holyoke range, where some are taken every year.” Its total extinction probably occurred only a few years later.

[323] Probably an exaggeration, although Audubon mentions one that weighed thirty-six pounds; the ordinary weight of the full-grown male is from fifteen to twenty pounds, a gobbler weighing twenty-five pounds being an unusually large bird. Yet Morton’s statement is fully borne out by other contemporary authorities. Wood says, “The Turky is a very large bird, of a blacke colour, yet white in flesh; much bigger then our English Turky. He hath the use of his long legs so ready, that he can runne as fast as a Dogge, and flye as well as a Goose: of these sometimes there will be forty, three-score and an hundred of a flocke, sometimes more and sometimes lesse; their feeding is Acorns, Hawes, and Berries, some of them get a haunt to frequent our English corne: In Winter when the Snow covers the ground, they resort to the Sea-shore to looke for Shrimps, and such small fishes at low tides. Such as love Turkie hunting must follow it in Winter after a new falne Snow, when he may follow them by their tracts; some have killed ten or a dozen in halfe a day; if they can be found towards an evening, and watched where they peirch, if one came about ten or eleaven of the clocke, he may shoote as often as he will, they will sit, unlesse they be slenderly wounded. These Turkies remain all the yeare long. The price of a good Turkie cocke is foure shillings: and he is well worth it, for he may be in weight forty pound; a Hen two shillings.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 24.) So also Josselyn: “I have heard several credible persons affirm, they have seen Turkie Cocks that have weighed forty, yea sixty pounds; but out of my personal experimental knowledge I can assure you, that I have eaten my share of a Turkie Cock, that when he was pull’d and garbidg’d, weighed thirty pound.” He adds, however, that even then [1670] “the English and the Indians having now destroyed the breed, so that ’tis very rare to meet with a wild Turkie in the Woods.” (New England’s Rarities, p. 9.) See also Two Voyages, p. 99, where the same writer says: “If you would preserve the young Chickens alive, you must give them no water, for if they come to have their fill of water, they will drop away strangely, and you will never be able to rear any of them.” John Clayton, in his Letter to the Royal Society [1688], says of Virginia: “There be wild Turkies extream large; they talk of Turkies that have been kill’d, that have weigh’d betwixt 50 and 60 Pound weight; the largest that ever I saw, weigh’d something better than 38 Pound.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 30.) Williams, in his Virginia [1650], speaks of “infinites of wilde Turkeyes, which have been knowne to weigh fifty pound weight, ordinarily forty.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11, p. 12.) See also Strachey’s Historie, p. 125; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 253.

[324] In regard to this expression Mr. Trumbull writes: “Metawna is mittànnug (R. Williams), muttannunk (Eliot),—Englished by ‘a thousand;’ but to the Indians less definite, ‘a great many,’ more than he could count. Neent is possibly a misprint for necut (nequt, Eliot), ‘one,’—but, more likely, stands for ‘I have,’ or its equivalent, ‘there is to me.’ Roger Williams (p. 164) puts the numeral first, nneesnneánna, ‘I have killed two,’—shwinneánna, [‘I have killed] three,’” &c.

[325] The Pheasant of Morton and other early writers has been supposed by ornithologists to be the Prairie Hen or Pinnated Grouse (Cupidonia cupido), a species which, however, has dark not “white flesh,”—“formerly ... so common on the ancient busky site of the city of Boston, that laboring people or servants stipulated with their employers, not to have the Heath-Hen brought to table oftener then a few times in the week.” (Nuttall’s Ornithology, vol. i. p. 800.) There is good evidence that this bird once ranged over a large part of Southern New England; it is still found on Martha’s Vineyard, where it is carefully protected and is not uncommon. Elsewhere it does not now occur much to the eastward of Illinois.

[326] The Ruffed Grouse (Bonasa umbella).

[327] The American Partridge, Quail, or Bob White (Ortyx Virginiana).

[328] Of doubtful application. Our Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) is the nearest North American ally of the English Skylark, but it is so differently colored that Morton probably had in mind some other species, perhaps the Titlark (Anthus ludovicianus).

[329] Three species of Crows are found in New England: the Raven (Corvus carnivorus), now confined to the northern parts of Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont; the Common Crow (Corvus Americanus); and the Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus), which occasionally wanders to Massachusetts from its true home in the Middle and Southern States. The latter may have been the Rook. “Kight” is a dubious appellation, possibly referring to the Swallow-tailed Kite (Nauclerus furcatus), now a rare straggler from the South, but formerly, as some ornithologists believe, of regular occurrence in New England.

[330] The descriptions given for these Hawks are too vague to be of much use in determining species. A clew is often furnished by familiar terms of falconry, which, we may assume, would be naturally applied to American representatives of Old World forms. Morton, however, uses these terms very loosely, or, perhaps, with a regard to fine distinctions of meaning not now understood. In such a case nothing can be done beyond pointing out their accepted significance and probable application.

[331] The male of Falco lanarius, a Falcon found in the southern and south-eastern parts of Europe, as well as in Western Asia and the adjoining portions of Africa. An American variety, the Prairie Falcon (Falco lanarius polyagrus), has a wide range in the West, but is not known to have occurred to the eastward of Illinois. The bird referred to by Morton is doubtless the Duck Hawk (Falco peregrinus), an allied species not uncommon in New England.

[332] In the records of the Council for New England, under date of the 26th of November, 1635, or about the time that Morton was writing the New Canaan, is the following entry: “The Hawks brought over by Capt. Smart are to be presented to his Majesty on Saturday next, by the Lords of those Provinces. And the said Captain to be recommended to his Majestys service upon occasion of employments for his care and industry used to bring them over, and for other his services done in those parts.”

[333] The Cockchafer.

[334] I. e., like the Buzzard-Hawks of the genus Buteo, a sluggish tribe of Raptores.

[335] Properly of general application to the genus Falco; if used specifically here there is no clew to its precise meaning.

[336] Usually written tercel, and sometimes tiercel or tiërcel. The male of any hawk, so termed because he is a third smaller than the female, or, as some have thought, because it was believed that every third bird hatched was a male. The name, as used in falconry, almost always refers to the male Goshawk (Astur palumbarius), while with the addition of gentil, or gentle, it indicated the female or young of this species. The bird alluded to here is probably the American Goshawk (Astur atricapillus).

[337] The American Sparrow Hawk (Falco sparverius), a small and richly colored Falcon, would be likely to be used for such a purpose.

[338] If not applied to the male Goshawk (see note on “tassel gentles”), perhaps referring to Hawks of the genus Buteo, represented in New England by three species, Buteo borealis, B. lineatus and B. Pennsylvanicus.

[339] If Morton always uses tassel in its commonly accepted sense (see preceding notes), another application must be sought for the present name. The accompanying text may relate to the Marsh Hawk (Circus cyaneus Hudsonius), the adult male of which is our whitest New England Hawk, and the young or female perhaps the reddest. The Marsh Hawk does not prey on full-grown poultry, but it may have been credited with depredations committed by other species, a piece of injustice by no means uncommon at the present day.

[340] The Pigeon Hawk (Falco columbarius) is the New England representative of the European Merlin (Falco regulus).

[341] Probably the Crow Blackbird (Quiscalus purpureus æneus).

[342] The Sharp-shinned Hawk (Accipiter fuscus), a common New England species closely allied to the European Sparrow Hawk (Accipiter nisus). Our Cooper’s Hawk (Accipiter cooperi) also may be referred to under this name.

[343] The Ruby-throated Humming-bird (Trochilus colubris), our only New England species. The Humming-birds are peculiar to the New World; hence the wonder and interest with which they were regarded by the early explorers and colonists. There is a letter from Emanuel Downing to John Winthrop, Jr., of the 21st of November, 1632, in which is this paragraph: “You have a litle bird in your contrie that makes a humminge noyse, a little bigger then a bee, I pray send me one of them over, perfect in his fethers, in a little box.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. vi. p. 40^e.) There are many descriptions of this bird in the earlier writers, though none that I have found so early as Downing’s letter. Wood says: “The Humbird is one of the wonders of the Countrey, being no bigger than a Hornet, yet hath all the dimensions of a Bird, as bill and wings, with quils, Spider-like legges, small clawes: For colour, shee is glorious as the Raine-bow; as shee flies, shee makes a little humming noise like a humble bee: wherefore she is called the Humbird.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 24.) Josselyn’s description is especially good: “The Humming Bird, the least of all Birds, little bigger than a Dor, of variable glittering Colours, they feed upon Honey, which they suck out of Blossoms and Flowers with their long Needle-like Bills; they sleep all Winter, and are not to be seen till the Spring, at which time they breed in little Nests, made up like a bottom of soft, Silk-like matter, their Eggs no bigger than a white Pease, they hatch three or four at a time, and are proper to this Country.” (New England’s Rarities, p. 6.) See also Clayton’s Letter, &c. (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 33).

[344] For all the technical and scientific notes to this chapter I am indebted to Mr. Joel A. Allen, of the Museum of Comparative Zoölogy of Harvard College. To the matter contributed by him I have merely added, as in the immediately preceding chapters, extracts from other writers, more or less contemporaneous with Morton, which seemed to me to be illustrative of the text, or in the same spirit with it. This chapter of Morton’s is more complete, though probably of less value, than Wood’s and Josselyn’s chapters on the same subject.

[345] The Elke here mentioned is the Moose (Alces malchis) of American writers; it is specifically the same as the elk of Northern Europe. From Wood’s account (New England’s Prospect, p. 18), it would seem that the moose in Morton’s time ranged into eastern Massachusetts, though not found now south of northern Maine. The moose has but a single fawn at a birth, not three as stated in the text.

Mr. Allen then adds to the above note: “I have met with no published record of the occurrence of the American Elk, or Wapiti Deer (Cervus Canadensis), in eastern Massachusetts. Since publishing a statement to this effect (Mem. Hist. Boston, vol. i. p. 10), however, I have learned through the kindness of a correspondent (Henry S. Nourse, Esq., of South Lancaster, Mass.,) that early in the eighteenth century sixteen elk were seen near a brook in South Lancaster, one of which was killed. The tradition is supported by the fact that the antlers of the individual killed were preserved in the family of the lucky hunter (Jonas Fairbanks) for a long period, and afterwards placed on the top of a guide-board, where they still remain, moss-grown and weather-worn by eighty years of sun and storm. Since the receipt of Mr. Nourse’s letter (dated Feb. 25, 1882), his account has been corroborated by information from another source. That the antlers mentioned belonged to an elk and not to a moose is beyond question.”

[346] “The English have some thoughts of keeping them tame, and to accustome them to the yoake, which will be a great commoditie: First, because they are so fruitfull, bringing forth three at a time, being likewise very uberous. Secondly, because they will live in Winter without any fodder. There be not many of these in the Massachusetts Bay, but forty miles to the Northeast there be great store of them.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 18.) There are very good descriptions of the Moose, and the methods pursued in hunting them, in Gorges’s Brief Relation (II. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix. p. 18) and in Josselyn’s Two Voyages, (pp. 88, 137). See, also, New England’s Rarities, p. 19.

[347] The common Virginian Deer (Cariacus Virginianus), formerly more or less abundant throughout the eastern half of the United States.

[348] The number of fawns produced at a birth is commonly two, sometimes one, and still more rarely three; although three is stated to be the usual number in various seventeenth-century accounts of the natural productions of New England, Virginia, &c.

[349] Mourt, in his Relation (p. 8), records how Governor William Bradford, of Plymouth, was caught in one of these traps, and “horsed up by the leg,” when the first party from the Mayflower was exploring Cape Cod in November, 1620. Wood says: “An English Mare being strayed from her owner, and growne wild by her long sojourning in the woods ranging up and down with the wild crew, stumbled into one of these traps which stopt her speed, hanging her like Mahomet’s tombe, betwixt earth and heaven; the morning being come the Indians went to looke what good successe their Venison trapps had brought them, but seeing such a long scutted Deere, praunce in their Meritotter, they bade her good morrow, crying out, what cheere what cheere, Englishmans squaw horse; having no better epithete than to call her a woman horse, but being loath to kill her, and as fearefull to approach neere the friscadoes of her Iron heeles, they posted to the English to tell them how the case stood or hung with their squaw horse, who unhorsed their Mare, and brought her to her former tamenesse, which since hath brought many a good foale, and performed much good service.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 75.) Williams, in his Key (ch. xxvii.), describes how the deer caught in these traps were torn and devoured by wolves before the Indians came to secure them. See, also, Colonel Norwood’s Voyage to Virginia. (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 10, p. 39.)

[350] Wesil, obsolete for weasand.

[351] The “third sort of Deere,” of which the author evidently had no personal knowledge, is doubtless a myth, as the Virginia Deer is the only species of small deer found in the United States, south of New England, east of the Mississippi River. The statement that it is “lesse then the other” (i. e. Virginian Deer), together with the southern habitat assigned it, preclude reference to the Caribou of northern New England, which the name “rayne deare” otherwise suggests.

[352] “They desire to be neare the Sea, so that they may swimme to the Islands when they are chased by the Woolves.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 18.) Deer Island is consequently a very common name along the New England coast; and of the island bearing that name in Boston harbor, now the site of the city reformatory institutions, Wood says: “This Iland is so called, because of the Deare which often swimme thither from the Maine, when they are chased by the woolves: some have killed sixteene Deere in a day upon this Iland.” Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 405. See, also, Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 464.

[353] The Beaver (Castor fiber). The account of the way “they draw the logg to the habitation appoynted” is a fanciful exaggeration, hardly less ridiculous than the preceding statement about the precaution the animal takes in winter to preserve his tail!

Cunny, mentioned in the first paragraph, is doubtless a seventeenth-century barbarism for cony, a name at this time commonly applied to the rabbit. The context, both here and in the account of the muskewashe, seems to imply this, although the word is correctly written cony in the paragraph relating to Hares. In some of the early accounts of Virginia, published in the first half of the seventeenth century, hares and cunnies are enumerated in the lists of animals, where the latter name evidently means cony or rabbit. Serat, in the same paragraph, is a term of much greater obscurity of application.

[354] “The tail, as I have said in another Treatise, is very fat and of a masculine vertue, as good as Eringo’s or Satyrion-Roots.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, p. 93.)

[355] Bradford, writing of the year 1636, gives the following prices: “The coat beaver usualy at 20s. per pound, and some at 24s.; the skin at 15 and sometimes 16. I doe not remember any under 14. It may be the last year might be something lower” (p. 346). In 1671 Josselyn says: “A black Bears Skin heretofore was worth forty shillings, now you may have one for ten.” (Rarities, p. 14.) The following prices were named as ruling in Virginia in 1650; (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 11, p. 52.)

“Sables, from 8s. the payre, to 20s. a payre.

“Otter skins, from 3s. to 5s. a piece.

“Luzernes, from 2s. to 10. a piece.

“Martins the best, 4s. a piece.

“Fox skins, 6d. a piece.

“Muske Rats skins, 2s. a dozen.

“Bever skins that are full growne, in season, are worth 7s. a piece.

“Bever skins, not in season, to allow two skins for one, and of the lesser, three for one.

“Old Bever skins in mantles, gloves or caps, the more worne the better, so they be full of fur, the pound weight is 6s.” See infra, 207, note 4, and also *80.

[356] The servant here referred to was probably Walter Bagnall, of Richmond Island, who was killed by Indians, Oct. 3, 1631. See infra, 218, note 1.

[357] The common Otter (Lutra Canadensis), now of rare occurrence in the more settled parts of southern New England.

[358] The Luseran, or Luseret, is the Bay Lynx, or Wild-cat (Lynx rufus).

“The Ounce or the wild Cat, is as big as a mungrell dogge; this creature is by nature feirce, and more dangerous to bee met withall than any other creature, not feering either dogge or man; he useth to kill Deere which he thus effecteth: Knowing the Deeres tracts, he will lie lurking in long weedes, the Deere passing by he suddenly leapes upon his backe, from thence gets to his necke, and scratcheth out his throate: he hath likewise a devise to get Geese, for being much of the colour of a Goose, he will place himselfe close by the water, holding up his bob taile, which is like a Goose necke; the Geese seeing this counterfeiting Goose, approch nigh to visit him, who with a sudden jerke apprehends his mistrustlesse prey.” (New England’s Prospect, pp. 19, 20.) Josselyn says: “I once found six whole Ducks in the belly of one I killed by a Pond side.” (Rarities, p. 16.)

[359] The Martin. Under this name are doubtless confounded the Marten (Mustela Americana) and the Fisher (M. Pennanti). The size, however, even in case the Fisher alone were referred to, is greatly overstated.

[360] The Racowne is the common well-known Raccoon (Procyon lotor).

[361] Josselyn says of the Raccoon: “their grease is soveraign for wounds with bruises, aches, streins, bruises; and to anoint after broken bones and dislocations.” (Two Voyages, p. 85.) A little further on (p. 92) he notes: “One Mr. Purchase cured himself of the Sciatica with Bears-greese, keeping some of it continually in his groine.”

[362] The Redd Fox is our common Red Fox (Vulpes vulgaris, var. Pennsylvanicus). The Gray Fox is doubtless the Virginian or Gray Fox (Urocyon cinereoargentatus) of the South and West, an animal formerly occurring in New England but long since nearly extirpated. This is inferred from Josselyn’s account of the Jaccal (New England’s Rarities, p. 22), rather than from any clew given in Morton’s text. The absence of strong scent referred to relates to the Gray Fox, a character mentioned by Josselyn in his brief but sufficiently explicit description of his Jaccal.

[363] “The Indians say they have black foxes, which they have often seen, but never could take any of them. They say they are Manittóoes, that is Gods, spirits, or divine powers, as they say of every thing which they cannot comprehend.” (Williams’s Key, ch. xvii.) The black fox-skin, Josselyn says (Rarities, p. 21), “heretofore was wont to be valued at fifty and sixty pound, but now you may have them for twenty shillings; indeed there is not any in New England that are perfectly black, but silver hair’d, that is sprinkled with gray hairs.” The black wolf’s skin, he says (ib. p. 16), “is worth a Beaver Skin among the Indians, being highly esteemed for helping old Aches in old people, worn as a Coat.” Of the foxes Wood remarks: “Some of these be blacke; their furre is of much esteeme.” (Prospect, p. 19.) Elsewhere he says that the fur of a black wolf was “worth five or sixe pounds Sterling.” (Ib. 20.)

See, also, supra, 205, note 2.

[364] The Wolf is the large Gray Wolf (Canis lupus), formerly abundant throughout New England, and well known to vary in color as mentioned by Morton.

[365] “They be made much like a Mungrell, being big boned, lanke paunched, deepe breasted, having a thicke necke and head, pricke eares, and long snoute, with dangerous teeth, long staring haire, and a great bush taile.... It is observed that they have no joynts from their head to the taile, which prevents them from leaping or sudden turning.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 20.) See Josselyn’s Rarities, p. 14, and Two Voyages, p. 83. He says: “They commonly go in routs, a rout of Wolves is 12 or more, sometimes by couples.” Of the Virginia species, Clayton says: “Wolves there are great store; you may hear a Company Hunting in an Evening, and yelping like a pack of Beagles; but they are very cowardly, and dare scarce venture on anything that faces them; yet if hungry will pull down a good large Sheep that flies from them. I never heard that any of them adventured to set on Man or Child.” (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 37.) According to Strachey, these Virginia wolves were “not much bigger then English foxes.” (Historie, p. 125.) Wood, however, says that the Massachusetts wolves cared “no more for an ordinary Mastiffe, than an ordinary Mastiffe cares for a Curre; many good dogges have been spoyled by them.” Shortly after the landing from the Mayflower at Plymouth, John Goodman, one evening in January, “went abroad to use his lame feet, that were pitifully ill with the cold he had got, having a little spaniel with him. A little way from the plantation two great wolves ran after the dog; the dog ran to him and betwixt his legs for succour. He had nothing in his hand, but took up a stick and threw at one of them and hit him, and they presently ran both away, but came again. He got a pale-board in his hand; and they set both on their tails grinning at him a good while; and went their way and left him.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 178.)

[366] Supra, 205, note 2, and 207, note 4.

[367] The common Black Bear (Ursus Americanus).

[368] “For Beares they be common, being a great black kind of Beare, which be most fierce in Strawberry time, at which time they have young ones; at this time likewise they will goe upright like a man, and clime trees, and swim to the Islands: which if the Indians see, there will be more sportful Beare bayting than Paris Garden can afford. For seeing the Beares take water, an Indian will leape after him, where they goe to water cuffes for bloody noses, and scratched sides; in the end the man gets the victory, riding the Beare over the watery plaine till he can beare him no longer.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 17.) “He makes his Denn amongst thick Bushes, thrusting in here and there store of moss, which being covered with snow and melting in the daytime with heat of the Sun, in the night is frozen into a thick coat of Ice; the mouth of his Den is very narrow, here they lye single, never two in a Den all winter. The Indian as soon as he finds them, creeps in upon all four, seizes with his left hand upon the neck of the sleeping Bear, drags him to the mouth of the Den, where with a club or small hatchet in his right hand he knocks out his brains before he can open his eyes to see his enemy.” (Two Voyages, p. 91.) Wood adds that bear’s flesh was “accounted very good meete, esteemed of all men above Venison.” Clayton says that “their flesh is commended for a very rich sort of Pork.” (Virginia, III. Force’s Tracts No. 12, p. 37.) “Beares there be manie towardes the sea-coast, which the Indians hunt most greedily; for indeed they love them above all other their flesh, and therefore hardly sell any of them unto us, unles upon large proffers of copper, beads and hatchetts. We have eaten of them, and they are very toothsome sweet venison, as good to be eaten as the flesh of a calfe of two yeares old; howbeit they are very little in comparison of those of Muscovia and Tartaria.” (Strachey’s Historie, p. 123.) See, also, Josselyn’s New England’s Rarities, pp. 13-14, and Two Voyages, pp. 91-2.

[369] The well-known Muskrat or Musquash (Fiber zibethicus) of our ponds. The “stones” are the oder glands. In respect to Cunny, see supra 204, note 2.

[370] The Porcupine is the Canadian Porcupine (Erethizon dorsatus).

[371] The Hedgehogg is the same as the Porcupine, the author being in error in regarding it as “of the like nature to our English Hedgehoggs.” The English Hedgehog belongs to a very different order of mammals, and has no representative in America.

[372] The Conyes are Hares, the small ones of the “Southerne parts” being the little Gray Hare or Wood Rabbit (Lepus sylvaticus) of southern New England. Those of “the North” are the Varying Hare (Lepus Americanus), or White Rabbit, which is brown in summer and white in winter. The reference to black ones is an error, wild black hares being unknown except in cases of Melanism, which are of extremely rare occurrence. We have no species of hare which is black. Rabbit, it may be added, is a name not strictly applicable to any indigenous mammal of America, it being the vernacular specific designation of an Old World species of hare.

[373] The “Squirils of three sorts” are (1) the Gray Squirrel (Sciurus Carolinensis); (2) the Red Squirrel, or Chickaree (S. Hudsonius); (3) the Flying Squirrel (Sciuropterus volucellus). A fourth kind, the Striped Squirrel, or Chipmunk (Tamias striatus) is not mentioned. The “batlike winges” are of course neither batlike, nor even wings at all, but merely a narrow furred membrane extending along the sides of the body, from the fore to the hind limbs.

[374] [and] See supra, 111, note 1.

[375] “1639. May, which fell out to be extream hot and foggie, about the middle of May, I kill’d within a stones throw of our house, above four score Snakes, some of them as big as the small of my leg, black of colour, and three yards long, with a sharp horn on the tip of their tail two inches in length.” (Josselyn’s Two Voyages, pp. 22-3.)

[376] Mr. J. H. Trumbull writes: “Morton’s ascowke is Eliot’s askook, R. Williams’s askùg, ‘a snake.’ In Zeifberger’s Delaware, achgook; whence (through Heckewelder) Cooper’s Chingachgook, ‘the Great Serpent,’ in the Last of the Mohicans.”

[377] Williams, in his Key, gives the name as Sések. See, also, Mr. Trumbull’s note in his edition of the Key (p. 130), in the publications of the Narragansett Society. Wood gives it as seasicke. (Prospect, p. 86.)

[378] The stories first told in Europe of the Rattlesnake (Crotalus durissus) were of the most exaggerated kind. He was described as a reptile of prodigious size, which could fly, and which poisoned by its breath. (New England’s Prospect, p. 39.) The first mention of this snake in Massachusetts is found in Higginson’s New England’s Plantation [1630]. It is as follows: “This country being very full of woods and wildernesses, doth also much abound with snakes and serpents, of strange colors and huge greatness. Yea, there are some serpents, called rattlesnakes, that have rattles in their tails, that will not fly from a man as others will, but will fly upon him and sting him so mortally that he will die within a quarter of an hour after, except the party stinged have about him some of the root of an herb called snake-weed to bite on, and then he shall receive no harm.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 255.) Wood gives an admirable description of the rattlesnake (Prospect, pp. 38-9), and also speaks of “the Antidote to expel the poyson, which is a root caled Snake weede, which must be champed, the spittle swallowed, and the roote applied to the sore.... Five or six men have been bitten by them, which by using of snakeweede were all cured, never any yet losing his life by them.” Josselyn, in his Rarities (p. 39), says: “The Indians when weary with travelling, will take them up with their bare hands, laying hold with one hand behind their Head, with the other taking hold of their Tail, and with their teeth tear off the Skin of their backs, and feed upon them alive; which they say refresheth them.” He further says that the heart of the rattlesnake “swallowed fresh” (Rarities, p. 39), or “dried and pulverized and drunk with wine or beer” (Voyages, p. 114), is an antidote against its poison. In Clayton’s Virginia (III. Force’s Tracts, No. 12, p. 39), there is a very entertaining passage, too long to extract, on Rattlesnakes, and the use of East India snake-stones “that were sent [to Virginia] by King James the Second, the Queen, and some of the Nobility, purposely to try their Virtue and Efficacy,” at curing the bite of vipers, &c.

[379] The Mice, which our author found in “good store,” belong chiefly to three species,—namely, the common short-tailed Meadow Mouse (Arvicola riparius), the White-footed Mouse, or Deer Mouse (Hesperomys leucopus), and the Long-tailed Jumping Mouse, or Kangaroo Mouse (Zapus Hudsonius). The common House Mouse (Mus musculus) is an exotic pest, which doubtless had not at that time made its appearance. Morton is quite right in stating: “but for Rats, the Country by Nature is troubled with none.” The Black Rat (Mus rattus) was quite early introduced, but the Gray, Wharf, or Norway Rat (Mus decumanus) probably did not make its appearance till fully a century after Morton wrote his New English Canaan.

[380] Morton, as was natural for a keen sportsman who had himself been in the tropics, was wiser on the subject of Lions than other Englishmen in New England. From the first landing at Plymouth, when John Goodman and Peter Browne, getting lost in the woods, heard “two lions roaring exceedingly,” down to 1639, when Josselyn heard “of a young Lyon (not long before) kill’d at Pascataway by an Indian,” there were vague stories of these animals having been either seen or heard in the New England woods. Josselyn argued on the great probability that there were lions because there were jackals (Rarities, p. 21); and Wood said that “the Virginians saw an old Lyon in their Plantation, who having lost his Iackall, which was wont to hunt his prey, was brought so poore that he could goe no further.” (Prospect, p. 17.) Strachey speaks of having found the skins and claws of lions in the hands of the Indians. (Historie, p. 124.) The animal referred to in all these cases was doubtless the Panther or Catamount (Felis concolor). On this subject see also Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 176, note; Tuckerman’s New England’s Rarities, p. 57, note; and the Mem. History of Boston, vol. i. p. 9.

[381] For the scientific and technical notes to this chapter I am indebted to Professor N. S. Shaler of Harvard University. As in the three preceding chapters, certain other notes of my own have been added, which are of a wholly different character, and will readily be distinguished from Professor Shaler’s.

[382] The marble of Marble Harbor, or Marblehead, is not, in the present sense of the word, a marble at all, but is, in fact, a porphyry. In the old sense of the word it designated any smooth-striped or spotted stones, such as are found there.

[383] No limestone, good or bad, is known to exist on the Monatoquit now; the nearest limestone is at Bear (or Bare) Hill, in Stoneham.

[384] There is a locality in East Braintree, included in the Wainwright estate, at the foot of Wyman’s Hill and facing the Weymouth Fore-river, into which the Monatoquit flows, where is a quarry from which stone bearing some external resemblance to limestone was formerly taken for ballast. This place has always been locally called the Quaw, though the origin and meaning of the name have never been known. It would seem that this must be the place referred to in the text, and that Quaw, or Quor, is a corruption of the Indian Attaquatock.

[385] There are no “chalke stones” at Squanto’s Chapelle, i.e., Squantum, or anywhere else in this part of the world. Morton may possibly have mistaken pebbles of decayed felspar for chalk.

[386] There is some slate in Quincy and Weymouth that might be used for roofing, and a quarry of it was long worked for material for gravestones, &c., on Squantum Bay, a mile or so from Mount Wollaston; but it is slate of a very poor sort. The nearest workable slate is in Vermont and Maine.

[387] This passage is more than usually confused, even for Morton. It is difficult to say whether he is perpetrating a clumsy joke, or indulging in a malicious insinuation. John Billington was hanged at Plymouth in September, 1630, being apparently the second person so executed in what is now Massachusetts, the first having been executed at Weymouth during the winter of 1622-3. (Infra, *108-10.) The man shot by Billington, and for whose murder he was hung, was John New-comin (Bradford, p. 277), whence Morton’s play upon the name. Billington had two sons, but he was by no means “beloved.” As Bradford, writing about him as early as 1625, said, “he is a knave,” adding prophetically “and so will live and die.” (Savage’s Winthrop, vol. i. p. *36). Why Morton should have called him “Ould Woodman” is not clear. From his immediately going on to talk of the “woodden prospect,” and the wish of its author to secure for himself a monopoly of the Richmond Island whetstones, which “Ould Woodman labored to get a patent of,” it would seem as if he had intended to convey the idea that William Wood, the author of the New England’s Prospect, was one of the “many sonnes” of “Old Woodman,” who had been hanged at Plymouth. That such was Morton’s intention, however, is not clear. The passage is muddled, but not necessarily malicious.

[388] The words quoted are not Ovid’s, but Virgil’s. Eclogues, viii. 43.

[389] Supra, 124.

[390] Josselyn, in his Two Voyages (p. 202), speaks of the “excellent whetstones” then (1670) found at Richmond Island.

“There is a species of slate quite abundant on Richmond’s Island, and some other Islands in Casco Bay, which has been used for oil-stones. Josselyn, in his Voyages, says that ‘tables of slate could be got out long enough for a dozen men to sit at.’” See a communication on this passage of the New Canaan, signed J. P. B., in the Portland Press of January 2, 1883. Professor Shaler adds: “It is interesting to note the fact that Morton saw that whetstones could be made the basis for trade. Stones suitable for this purpose are rare in Europe, and to-day a New Hampshire company ships large quantities to Europe and even to Australia.”

[391] Richmond Island lies directly south-east of Cape Elizabeth and close to it. From what Morton says in the next chapter and elsewhere (infra, *149), it would seem that before his arrest by Standish in June, 1628,—that is, in the summer of 1627,—he had a fur station on the coast of Maine. (Supra, 23.) Winthrop, writing under date of October 22, 1631, mentions the murder of “Walter Bagnall, called Great Watt, and one John P—— who kept with him,” by the Indians at Richmond Island. He adds: “This Bagnall was sometimes servant to one in the bay, and these three years had dwelt alone in the said isle, and had gotten about £400 most in goods. He was a wicked fellow, and had much wronged the Indians.” (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *63). Bagnall would, from this, appear to have been one of Morton’s servants at Mount Wollaston, as he alone in “the bay,” at that time, had any number of servants, or was engaged in trade on the Maine coast. As Bagnall was killed in 1631, and had then lived alone at Richmond Island three years, he seems to have taken up his abode there in 1628, the time of the breaking up of the company at Mount Wollaston by Standish and Endicott, and the settlement at Richmond Island was thus the Maine offshoot of that at Merry-mount. Bagnall was probably that one of Morton’s servants who, he says, was reputed, when he died, to have made a thousand pounds in the fur trade in five years, “whatsoever became of it.” (Supra, *78). Morton’s expression here of “five years” agrees with Winthrop’s “three years,” and confirms this surmise. Bagnall had died in 1631. Morton had gotten control at Mount Wollaston in 1626. (Supra, 15.) Bagnall had remained there as his servant two years, until 1628; then had been frightened away and gone to Richmond Island, where he had lived three years more, as Winthrop says,—making in all Morton’s five years. In his phrase “whatsoever became of it” Morton characteristically throws out an insinuation in regard to Bagnall’s possessions. He probably meant to imply some underhand proceeding to get hold of them on the part of the Massachusetts Bay people. Recently a theory has been advanced in the Maine press, that Bagnall was an Episcopalian, and competitor in trade of the Massachusetts Company; and that Winthrop and his associates, not being able otherwise to get rid of him, compassed his death by indirect means. (See a letter of S. P. Mayberry in Portland Press of Jan. 9, 1883.) Winthrop says that most of the possessions in question were in goods. A portion would naturally be in the form of money, and it was left for the present generation to form a most plausible surmise as to “whatsoever became” of some of this money. On May 11, 1855, an old stone pot was turned up by the ploughshare, on Richmond Island, containing fifty-two coins; and Mr. Willis, the historian of Portland, then took occasion, in a letter to the Massachusetts Historical Society (Proceedings, May 1857, pp. 183-8), to “express the belief that the money [was] connected with the fate of Walter Bagnall, who was killed by Sagamore Squidraket and his party, Oct. 3, 1631.” There was nothing to show that any of the coins were of a later date than 1631. A patent for Richmond Island, together with fifteen hundred acres on the main land, was issued to Bagnall by the Council for New England, Dec. 2, 1631, just three months after his death. (Records of the Council, pp. 51-2.) Morton was then in England, and unquestionably in communication with Gorges. (Supra, 49.)

[392] Doubtless the magnetic iron oxides. None of these are known to me nearer than in the mountains forming the westerly part of the Berkshire Hills, from New York City to the Adirondacks, except in Cumberland, R. I., where there is some iron of this nature.

[393] No ironstones are known around Massachusetts bay; the nearest deposits are in Rhode Island.

[394] Small quantities of galena ore have been found in Woburn and that vicinity. There are some localities near Newburyport where the savages may have found small quantities of galena.

[395] Black leade is doubtless plumbago, or graphite; it is found in Wrentham and in Worcester, Mass., as well as at various points in Rhode Island.

[396] Red leade is doubtless an ochre, such as may have been found near Cranston, R. I.

[397] Boll armoniack is the Bolus armeniaca of the old apothecaries. Bolus is the prefix to several old pharmacopial names, having lost its original special signification and come to be a given term for all lumpy substances. Here it means a sort of reddish clay, such as may be used for marking,—a clayey ochre such as may have come from about Providence, R. I.

[398] Vermilion oxide of mercury is not known to occur this side of the Rocky Mountains. It is likely that he mistook some brilliant ochre for true vermilion. It may be, however, that the aborigines traded for it with western tribes. Their copper implements probably came from Lake Superior. Many evidences of almost as wide a commerce could be adduced.

[399] Brimstone, or sulphur, does not exist in its metallic state this side of the Cordilleras. He may have seen some pyrite-bearing schists, such as occur in Maine, which in dumping give a sulphuric smell.

[400] Tin does not occur in this region. Some localities are known in Maine and elsewhere in New England, but they could hardly have been found by the Savages, or known to Morton.

[401] Copper in its metallic state, the only form in which he would have recognized it, does not occur about Massachusetts Bay. A very little of it has been found in Cumberland, R. I., in the valley of the Blackstone River.

[402] No silver, except when combined with lead and zinc ore, has ever been found in this district. Some occurs in the district from Woburn to Newburyport. Metallic silver could not have been known to the natives. The nearest localities for metallic gold are the streams of Vermont, New Hampshire, and western Maine, in which district placer gold occurs in considerable quantities, and some auriferous quartz veins are known.

Professor Shaler adds to his foregoing notes: “The general impression which I get from the writer is that he was a bad observer, but not more untruthful than most of the seventeenth century travellers. He does not say that gold or silver had been seen by him, and limits his hearsay evidence to a single mine. Except for the extraordinary stuff about the whetstones,—wherein we may perhaps see something of the Maypole humor,—it is, for its time, a rather sober and reasonable story.”

[403] This is the name by which Morton invariably designates John Endicott. For reasons which have been explained in the preliminary matter to this edition of the New Canaan (supra, pp. 38-42), its author felt—and, as will be seen, never missed an opportunity to express—a peculiar bitterness towards Endicott.

[404] For the notes to this chapter I am indebted to Theodore Lyman, of the Massachusetts Fish Commission. Higginson, in his New England’s Plantation, has a passage on Fish (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 248-51), and Williams, in his Key, devotes a chapter (xix.) to the same subject. Wood again, in his Prospect (pp. 27-31), deals with it in his peculiar manner, and Josselyn, both in his Voyages (pp. 104-15) and in his Rarities (pp. 22-37), devotes a good deal of space to the enumeration of the different kinds of New England fishes, their peculiarities, and the methods of taking them. In editing the Rarities, Mr. Tuckerman remarked that he had “little to offer in elucidation of the list [of fishes], which, indeed, in good part, appears sufficiently intelligible,”—a remark equally applicable to the present chapter of the New Canaan.

[405] Portland Harbor. See supra, 218, note 1.

[406] This proves that the local Cod, i. e., those that breed close to the shore, have much decreased; and this partly by over-fishing, and partly by the falling-off of their food in the form of young fishes coming to the sea from rivers and brooks.

[407] This is perhaps the first mention in America of cod-liver oil, now so much used in medicine.

[408] The Striped Bass (Labrax). The Bass mentioned four paragraphs below, as chasing mackerel “into the shallow waters,” may perhaps be the Bluefish (Temnodon).

[409] This is either an expression which has wholly passed out of use, or else a misprint. Probably the latter. It may, however, also be surmised that Morton characteristically coined a word from the Latin, and here meant to refer to the various large fish in New England waters, such as the Horse Mackerel (Thynnus secundo dorsalis), the Mackerel Shark (Lamna punctata), and the common Dogfish (Acanthias Americanus), all of which follow schools of mackerel, bass, &c., into shoal waters and prey upon them.

[410] “These Macrills are taken with drailes, which is a long small line, with a lead and a hooke at the end of it, being baited with a peece of a red cloath.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 30.) This instrument still bears the same name and is used in the same way.

[411] When caught in the Thames, within the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor of London, the Sturgeon (Acipenser) is a royal fish reserved for the sovereign. “The Sturgeon is a Regal fish too, I have seen of them that have been sixteen foot in lenghth.” (Jossel., Two Voyages, p. 105.)

[412] But little attention has been paid as yet in the United States to the Sturgeon fisheries, in spite of their great abundance.

[413] [jieele.] See supra, 111, note 1.

[414] “There be a greate store of Salt water Eeles, especially in such places where grasse growes: for to take these there be certaine Eele pots made of Osyers, which must be baited with a peece of Lobster, into which the Eeles entering cannot returne backe againe; some take a bushell in a night in this maner, eating as many as they have neede of for the present, and salt up the rest against Winter. These Eeles be not of so luscious a tast as they be in England, neither are they so aguish, but are both wholsom for the body, and delightfull for the taste.” (New England’s Prospect, p. 30.)

[415] Morton confounds the Shad (Alosa præstabilis), or Allize (corruption of the French Alose), with the smaller Alewife. This, with the Smelt and the Eel, are among the few shore fishes that are still found in comparative plenty. The Menhaden is used in our time to set corn.

[416] At the present time the Halibut (Hippoglossus) is seldom caught near the shore or in shoal water. It is taken by the Gloucester fishermen along the outer banks, in depths of a hundred to two hundred fathoms. The New England Turbot (Lophopsetta) of our coasts is a different fish, and rarely ventures to the north of Cape Cod. The fishermen frequently sell our turbot as chicken-halibut.

[417] The Flounder (Pseudopleuronectes), whereof there are several species.

[418] Hake (Phycis) are still somewhat common.

[419] Morton probably means the Menhaden (Brevoortia). The European Pilchard, the adult of the Sardine, is not found on our coast.

[420] Probably the Double-crested Cormorant (Phalacrocorax dilophus). The Common Cormorant (P. carbo) also occurs in New England, but it is rare to the southward of Maine. Both species breed abundantly on rocky shores about the Gulf of St. Lawrence and northward, visiting New England waters during the autumn and winter. While with us they are exclusively maritime, frequenting by choice the vicinity of outlying ledges and small, rocky islands. When passing from place to place, they often fly in large flocks, which are usually arranged in long lines or single files. They live on fish, which they capture by diving.

[421] This paragraph, and the one on clams immediately following it, throw considerable light on the formation of the shell-heaps, a question which has been recently much discussed. See the paper of Professor F. W. Putnam, read at the meeting of the Maine Historical Society in Portland, in December, 1882, which will appear in the report of the proceedings of that meeting in the Collections of the Society.

[422] We, in this country, have not retained the European taste for mussels and for razor-shells (Solen).

[423] The eating of scallops (Pecten) has been revived within a few years.

[424] A strong spirit of emulation existed in the early years of the seventeenth century, between the advocates of New England and those of Virginia, as sites for colonization. Morton was always a stanch New Englander, and in this chapter, as well as in those which immediately precede and follow it, he loses no opportunity to assert the superiority of the Massachusetts climate and products over those of the country further south. It is needless to point out that his advocacy led him into ludicrously wild statements.

[425] There is no natural spring of any kind at Mount Wollaston, though water is easily obtained by digging.

[426] Winnisimmet, the Indian name of Chelsea. Upon the significance of the name Mr. Trumbull writes: “I have my doubts about Morton’s Weenasemute, but am inclined to believe that his interpretation is founded on fact. Ashim (= asim, in local dialect) is once used by Eliot (Cant. iv. 12) for ‘fountain.’ It denotes a place from which water (for drinking) is taken. Winn’ashim, or Winn’asim, means ‘the good fountain,’ or spring; and Winn’asim-ut (or et) is ‘at the good spring.’ The efficacy of the water ‘to cure barrenness’ may have been Morton’s embellishment, but not improbably was an Indian belief.”

[427] Squantum, in Quincy.

[428] This is a gross exaggeration. Thomas Wiggin, in November, 1622, wrote: “For the plantation in Mattachusetts, the English there being about 2000 people, yonge and old.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Writing on May 22, 1634, about the time Morton referred to (Supra, 78), Governor Winthrop says: “For the number of our people, we never took any surveigh of them, nor doe we intend it, except inforced throughe urgent occasion (David’s example stickes somewhat with us) but I esteeme them to be in all about 4000: soules and upwarde.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Dec. 14, 1882.) So in the New England’s Prospect (p. 42), Wood speaks of the population of Massachusetts as “foure thousand soules.” In the spring of 1634 there may have been five hundred persons in the Plymouth colony, and as many more in New Hampshire and Maine, making a total New England population of five thousand at the time Morton was writing. When the New Canaan was published, however, in 1637, the population undoubtedly was as large as 12,000.

[429] Supra, 187, note 4.

[430] This astounding proposition was in the early days of the settlement not peculiar to Morton. Higginson, in his New Englands Plantation, speaks of the “extraordinary clear and dry air, that is of a most healing nature to all such as are of a cold, melancholy, phlegmatic, rheumatic temper of body,” and concludes what he has to say on the subject with his often-quoted sentiment that “a sup of New-England’s air is better than a whole draught of Old England’s ale.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 251-2.) Williams, too, says in his Key (ch. xiii.): “The Nor-West wind (which occasioneth New-England cold) comes over the cold frozen Land, and over many millions of Loads of Snow: and yet the pure wholesomnesse of the Aire is wonderfull, and the warmth of the Sunne, such in the sharpest weather, that I have often seen the Natives Children runne about starke naked in the coldest dayes.” Again, in the pamphlet entitled New England’s First Fruits, printed in London in 1643, it was stated, in reply to the objection of extreme winter cold, that “the cold there is no impediment to health, but very wholsome for our bodies, insomuch that all sorts generally, weake and strong, had scarce ever such measure of health in all their lives as there.... Men are seldome troubled in winter with coughes and Rheumes.” (I. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. i. p. 249.) Josselyn, however, writing nearly thirty years later, remarks: “Some of our New-England writers affirm that the English are never, or very rarely, heard to sneeze or cough, as ordinarily they do in England, which is not true.” (Two Voyages, p. 184.)

[431] Supra, 201, note 2.

[432] Supra, *17.

[433] Wood in his Prospect (p. 2), referring to the approach to Boston Bay from Cape Anne, had said: “The surrounding shore being high, and showing many white Cliffes, in a most pleasant prospect.”

[434] The Second Book of the New Canaan, it would seem, originally ended with this chapter. The next chapter was an afterthought of the author, written before December, 1635, as is evident from the allusions in it to events then taking place. (Supra, 78.) Wood’s Prospect was published in 1634, and the constant references to it in the first two books of the New Canaan show that they were both written subsequent to its publication, probably during that year. In the Third Book there are no allusions to the Prospect, and the reference to the Third Book in the Second (Supra, *51), to which attention has already been called, show that it must have been written before the others, and probably during the year 1633. It would seem to have been completed in May, 1634. There is, however, also a reference to be found in the Third Book to the Second (Infra, *120), but it was probably interpolated during a revisal of the manuscript.

[435] Now Lake Champlain. “By the Indians north of the St. Lawrence and the Lakes, it was called the Lake of the Iroquois, as likewise the River Richelieu, connecting it and the River St. Lawrence, they called the River of the Iroquois. Champlain discovered the lake in 1609, and gave it his own name. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. ii. pp. 210-20; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, p. 316.) On some of the early maps it is put down ‘Lake Champlain or Irocoise.’ It is so called in Purchas’s Pilgrims (vol. iv. p. 1643). The region about the lake was sometimes called Irocosia. The Iroquois lived on the south of the lake, and, as their enemies on the north approached them through this lake, they naturally called it the Lake of the Iroquois.” (MS. letter of Rev. E. F. Slafter.)

[436] The measurement and distance here given are very nearly correct. Lake Champlain is 126 miles long by about 14 in width at its broadest part. Burlington is not far from 240 miles from Boston.

[437] In regard to the imaginary attractions and advantages of Laconia and its great lake, see Belknap’s American Biography, vol. i. p. 377.

[438] The two brothers, William and Emery de Caen, became prominent in the history of Canadian settlement in 1621, and remained so for a number of years. They did not, however, plant a colony of French in America, nor was the name of Canada, or of its famous river, derived from their name. On this point see Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 184, note, and 391-5. Morton’s derivation of the name Canada is entitled to much the same weight as his derivation of the names Pantucket and Mattapan. (Supra, 124.) It was not, however, peculiar to him as, forty years later, Josselyn also speaks (Rarities, p. 5) of “the River Canada, (so called from Monsieur Cane).”

[439] On the breaking out of the war between England and France in 1627, under the influence of Buckingham, Sir William Alexander had been instrumental in organizing an expedition to seize the French possessions in America. At its head were three Huguenots of Dieppe,—David, Louis and Thomas Kirk, brothers. The expedition was successful, and on the 20th of July, 1629, Champlain surrendered Quebec to Louis Kirk. Daniel Kirk, the admiral of the expedition, returned to England in November of the same year; but his brother Thomas remained in Canada and held Quebec as an English conquest until July, 1632, when, in accordance with the conditions of the peace of April 14, 1629, it was restored to France. See Kirke’s First English Conquest of Canada, pp. 63-93; Parkman’s Pioneers of France, pp. 401-11; also Mr. Deane’s note in Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. for 1875-6, pp. 376-7.

[440] The number of beaver-skins really carried to England by Kirk was seven thousand. (Kirke’s First English Conquest of Canada, p. 85.)

[441] It is unnecessary to say that Morton was here writing at random. He confounds the Potomac with the Hudson, though, a few paragraphs further on (Infra, *99), he states the facts in regard to the latter river correctly; and the latitude he gives has no significance, being that of Poughkeepsie, on the Hudson, and Cleveland, on Lake Erie. The Potomac nowhere flows so far north as 40°. The falls referred to are probably those of Niagara. They had not then been discovered (Parkman’s Jesuits in North America, p. 142), though vague reports concerning them had reached the French through the Indians, and they are plainly indicated on Champlain’s map of 1629. (Voyages, Prince Soc. ed., vol. i. p. 271, note.) Some loose stories in regard to the rivers, falls, lakes and islands of the interior had been picked up by Morton, probably in his talks with seamen and others who had taken part in Kirk’s expedition. He certainly fell in with these in London, and it is more than likely that at the house of Gorges he saw Champlain’s map of 1629; though upon that the falls are placed at 43½ degrees of latitude, instead of at 41½. In 1634 there was no other map. On the strength of the information thus gathered, he made the statements contained in this chapter. The little he knew had been obtained in England, after his return there in 1631; for the Massachusetts Indians can hardly have known much of the remote interior, and in 1630 no attempts even at exploration away from the seashore had been made by the straggling occupants of the New England coast.

[442] The stories here referred to probably came from the Indians of Connecticut and Maine, and referred to the rivers and lakes of New England, but were afterwards supposed to have had a wider significance.

[443] Williams (Key, 64) gives Macháug as the Indian word for No, but it really signifies no-thing (Key, 182). Matta, as Morton gives it, is the simple negative.

[444] Henry Josselyn was a brother of John Josselyn, author of New Englands Rarities and the Two Voyages to New England, frequently quoted in the notes to this edition of the New Canaan. He came out from England in the interest of Mason, as stated in the text, in 1634, and passed the remainder of his life in Maine, living at Black Point in the town of Scarborough. He died in 1683. He was deputy-governor of the province, and one of the most active and influential men in it, holding, through all changes of proprietorship and government, the most important offices. See Mr. Tuckerman’s Introduction to the New Englands Rarities; Hist. of Cumberland County, Maine, p. 362.

[445] Of Captain John Mason of New Hampshire and the Laconia enterprise, it is not necessary to speak at length in this connection. Mason was the most prominent character in the early history of New Hampshire, and the loss which his death, in December 1635, entailed on the projects of Gorges and Morton has already been referred to (Supra, 76). The late Charles W. Tuttle, of Boston was at the time of his death engaged in preparing a life of Mason, which would unquestionably have been a valuable addition to the history of the settlement of New England. The material he had collected is now in the possession of his family. In regard to the Laconia Company and its projects, see Belknap’s American Biography, under the title Gorges, and Mr. Deane’s note in the Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1875-6, pp. 376-80.

[446] Wood’s statement here referred to is found on the first page of the Prospect, and is as follows: “The Place whereon the English have built their Colonies, is judged by those who have best skill in discovery, either to bee an Island, surrounded on the North side with the spacious River Cannada, and on the South with Hudsons River, or else a Peninsula, these two Rivers overlapping one another, having their rise from the great Lakes which are not farre off one another, as the Indians doe certainly informe us.”

[447] In 1631 no less than 15,174 skins, the greater portion beaver, were exported from the New Netherlands, valued at about £12,000. (O’Callaghan’s New Netherland, p. 139.)

[448] The Nipmucks, or Nipnets, inhabited the present county of Worcester. (Hist. of Worcester County, vol. i. p. 8.)

[449] This is a confused, rambling account of the familiar Indian incidents which took place during the first year after the landing at Plymouth. There is nothing of historical value in it, and nothing which has not been more accurately and better told by Bradford, Winslow, Mourt and Smith.

[450] Captain Thomas Hunt, who commanded one of the vessels of Smith’s squadron, in his voyage of 1614. (Bradford, p. 95.)

[451] Morton, in this chapter, confounds Samoset with Squanto. It was Squanto who was kidnapped by Hunt and had been in England, but it was Samoset who walked into the Plymouth settlement, on the 26th of March [N. S.], 1621, and saluted the planters with “wellcome in the English phrase.” Squanto was a native of Plymouth, but Samoset belonged at Pemaquid, in Maine. (Mourt, Dexter’s ed., note 295, p. 83.) Hence Morton speaks of his having been detained by Massasoit as a captive. He apparently came to Massachusetts the year before on Captain Dermer’s vessel, in company with Squanto. Dr. Dexter is seriously in error in his account of Squanto in note 315 of his edition of Mourt. Squanto could not have been one of the Weymouth captives of 1605.

[452] This is the familiar anecdote of Squanto. (Bradford, p. 113; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 292.)

[453] See supra, 133, note.

[454] The most connected account of Thomas Weston and his abortive plantation at Wessagusset, already referred to (Supra, 2), is that contained in Adams’s Address on the 250th Anniversary of the Settlement of Weymouth, pp. 5-22. Winslow in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., Bradford, and Phinehas Pratt (IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv.) are the original authorities.

[455] This is a wholly confused and misleading account of the skirmish which took place between the Plymouth party, under command of Miles Standish, and the Massachusetts Indians living near Wessagusset, immediately after the killing of Pecksuot and Wituwamat, in March, 1623. The correct account of the affair is in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 341. Why Morton speaks of it as a battle between the English and the French is inexplicable.

[456] See supra, pp. 11, 162, 170. The Plymouth people may have despoiled the grave of Chickatawbut’s mother of its bear-skins during some one of their earlier visits to Boston Bay. Their last visit to those parts, prior to the “battle” spoken of in this chapter, was in November, 1622 (Young’s Chron. of Pilg. p. 302), when they got little in the way of supplies, and heard nothing but complaints from the Indians of Weston’s people, who had then been several months at Wessagusset. It is far more probable that these latter stripped the grave at Passonagessit. In any event there can be little doubt that Morton himself had visited the spot while taking his “survey of the country” during the previous summer (Supra, 6), and it is quite clear that the despoiling the grave had no connection with the subsequent “battle,” in which Chickatawbut took no part.

[457] “Insomuch as our men could have but one certain mark, and then but the arm and half face of a notable villain, as he drew [his bow] at Captain Standish; who, together with another both discharged at once at him, and brake his arm.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 341.)

[458] This is the famous Wessagusset hanging which Butler introduced into his poem of Hudibras (Canto II. lines 409-36), in the passage already referred to (Supra, 96). It is as follows:—

“Our Brethren of New-England use

Choice malefactors to excuse,

And hang the Guiltless in their stead,

Of whom the Churches have less need;

As lately ’t happen’d: In a town

There liv’d a Cobler, and but one,

That out of Doctrine could cut Use,

And mend men’s lives as well as shoes.

This precious Brother having slain,

In times of peace an Indian,

(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,

Because he was an Infidel),

The mighty Tottipottymoy

Sent to our Elders an envoy,

Complaining sorely of the breach

Of league held forth by Brother Patch,

Against the articles in force

Between both churches, his and ours,

For which he craved the Saints to render

Into his hands, or hang th’ offender;

But they maturely having weigh’d

They had no more but him o’ th’ trade,

(A man that served them in a double

Capacity, to teach and cobble),

Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do

The Indian Hoghan Moghan too

Impartial justice, in his stead did

Hang an old Weaver that was bed rid.”

That a man was hung at Wessagusset, in March 1623, for stealing corn from the Indians, there can be no doubt. There is equally little doubt that it was the real thief who was hung. (Pratt’s Relation, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 491; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 332; Bradford, p. 130.) I have already (Supra, 96) given my own theory as to how the incident came to take the shape it did in Butler’s poem. He wrote, I think, from a vague recollection of an amusing traveller’s-story, which he had heard told somewhere years before. There is no reason to suppose that he had ever seen the New Canaan.

It has always been assumed that Butler’s version of the affair,—the vicarious execution version,—coming out as it did in 1664, at a period of violent reaction against Puritanism, and when the New England colonies were in extreme popular disfavor,—obtained a foothold in English popular tradition; much such a foothold, in fact, as the Connecticut Blue Laws. It was an intangible something, always at hand to be cast as a mocking reproach in the face of a sanctimonious community. As such it was sure to be resented and disproved; but never by any disproof could it be exorcised from the popular mind, or finally set at rest. This may have been the case, and the references to the matter in Hutchinson (vol. i. p. 6, note), in Hubbard (p. 77), and in Grahame (Ed. 1845, vol. i. p. 202, note), certainly look that way. I do not remember, however, to have myself ever met this particular charge among the many and singular charges, much more absurd, which English writers have from time to time gravely advanced against America. In Uring’s Voyages (p. 116-8) there is a singular account of a similar vicarious execution, which never could have met the eye of the author of Hudibras, inasmuch as it was not published until 1726; but it shows that either some such event did take place, or that its having taken place was at one period a stock traveller’s-tale.

[459] Three of Weston’s company were among the Massachusetts Indians at the time of the Wessagusset killing; one of the three had before domesticated himself with them; the other two, disregarding Standish’s orders, had straggled off, the day before the massacre, to a neighboring Indian village. After the massacre the savages put all three to death by torture. (Pratt’s Narrative, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 486; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 344.)

[460] Will Sommers was the famous jester and court fool of Henry VIII. His witticisms are frequently met with in the plays and annals of the period; and the portrait, said to be by Holbein and of him, looking through a window and tapping on the glass, was formerly a prominent feature in the gallery at Hampton Court. It is very questionable, however, whether the story alluded to in the text belongs to Sommers. He had been dead eighty years or more when Morton wrote, and the stories connected with him had been gotten together by Armin, and printed in his Nest of Ninnies, in 1608. This book Morton had probably seen. In it there is a story of another famous fool, Jack Oates, of an earlier period, which is probably the one Morton had in mind. Oates is represented as giving an earl, the guest of his patron, Sir William Hollis, “a sound box on the ear,” for saluting Lady Hollis, and then excused himself on the ground of “knowing not your eare from your hand, being so like one another.” (Doran’s Court Fools, p. 182.) Remembering this story in the Nest of Ninnies, Morton, with his well-developed faculty for getting everything wrong, seems to have fathered it on the most famous and popular of the occupants of the Nest.

[461] For the detailed account of the Wessagusset killing, see Winslow’s Relation in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 336-41; Adams’s 250th Anniversary of Weymouth, pp. 18-22.

[462] Mr. Trumbull, in a note (125) to Williams’s Key (p. 59). explains a blunder here made by Morton. The correct word is wotawquenauge, which means “coat-men,” or men wearing clothes, the waútacone-nûaog of Williams. This, Morton confounded with another name for Englishmen, chauquaqock, meaning, “knife- [i. e., sword-] men,” which he understood to mean “cut-throats.”

[463] Weston, in 1622, got into serious trouble with the English government, in regard to some ordnance and military stores, which he had obtained a license to send to New England, and had then sold to the French, with whom the English were at war. (Bradford, p. 150.) He seems to have been in hiding in consequence of this transaction; and early in 1623 went on board of one of the fishing-vessels in the disguise of a blacksmith, and came out in her to the stations on the Maine coast. There he must have learned of the extreme straits, if not of the abandonment, of his plantation at Wessagusset, and he set out, with a companion or two, in an open boat, for Massachusetts Bay. He was wrecked near the mouth of the Merrimac, and barely escaped with his life. The savages there stripped him to his shirt, and in this plight he reached Thomson’s plantation at Piscataqua. Thence he found his way to Plymouth, arriving there, not as Morton says, “with supply and means to have raised [his company’s] fortunes,” but in absolute destitution. Bradford’s account of his reception and of what ensued (pp. 133-4, 149-53) is very different from that given in the text; and, it is hardly necessary to add, reads much more like the truth.

[464] Supra, 14.

[465] The incident here alluded to was the seizure of the Swan, under a warrant issued by Captain Robert Gorges, acting as Lieutenant of the Council for New England, in November, 1623. The Swan was a small vessel of 30 tons measurement, which Weston had sent out with his expedition, in 1622. His plan was, when the larger vessel—the Charity, in which his company went out—returned to England, to have the Swan remain in New England, to be used for trading purposes. Accordingly, all through the winter of 1622-3, it had been at Wessagusset, except when employed by the people there in obtaining supplies in connection with the Plymouth people. When, in March, 1623, Wessagusset was abandoned, the company went in the Swan to the Maine fishing-stations. Here Weston found the vessel in the course of the following summer, and recovered possession of her. He then began to trade along the coast. Meanwhile, in September, Captain Robert Gorges arrived, and immediately set out to look for Weston, in order to call him to account for the ordnance transactions referred to in the preceding note, and also for the disorderly conduct of his people at Wessagusset during the previous winter. Starting for the eastward, he was driven into Plymouth Harbor by heavy weather, and while he was lying there the Swan made its appearance with Weston on board. Bradford’s account of what ensued, including the seizure of the vessel, differs toto cœlo from that in the text. He says that Captain Robert Gorges, acting as governor-general under his commission from the Council for New England, at once organized a sort of a court,—he, Bradford, acting as an assistant in it,—and proceeded to arraign and try Weston. As a result of the whole proceedings Gorges threatened to send Weston under arrest back to England. Through the intercession of Bradford, however, he was mollified, and finally Weston was released on his own promise to appear when called for. Gorges then went to Wessagusset, leaving Weston with the Swan at Plymouth. After a time Gorges seems to have concluded that it would be very convenient for him to have control of the Swan, at any rate for that winter. Accordingly he sent a warrant to Plymouth for its seizure and the arrest of Weston. Bradford, not liking this proceeding, took some exception to the warrant, and refused to allow it to be served. At the same time it was intimated to Weston that he had better take himself and his vessel off. This he would not do. Apparently his crew was mutinous and unruly, their wages being long in arrears, and the Swan destitute of supplies. He seems to have looked upon arrest and seizure as the best way out of his difficulties. Presently a new warrant came from Gorges, and both vessel and prisoner were removed to Wessagusset. This was in November. There they passed the winter of 1623-4. Towards spring Gorges went in the Swan to the eastward, Weston accompanying him, apparently as a pilot. The tidings received there led the disappointed young Lieutenant of the Council to decide on immediately returning to England. Accordingly he came back to Wessagusset, and thence went probably to the fishing-stations, very possibly in the Swan. Before leaving he effected some sort of a settlement with Weston,—Bradford intimates much to the advantage of the latter,—who was released from arrest, had his vessel restored to him, and was compensated for whatever loss he had sustained. Weston thereupon reappeared at Plymouth, and thence went to Virginia. He seems to have traded along the coast for some years, but finally drifted back to England, where in 1645 he died, at Bristol, of the plague. (Bradford, pp. 140-53. Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 296-8, 302.)

[466] This chapter relates to incidents of no apparent consequence, and of which there is no other record. It is not easy even to fix the time at which they occurred, and it would seem as if Morton, in his rambling, incoherent way, had confused the events of one year with those of another. The only time when “35 stout knaves” were landed, at all in the way described, at Plymouth, was in July, 1622, when the Charity brought in there Weston’s company. Yet Morton speaks of there then being “three cows” at Plymouth, which would indicate that Morton’s arrival, referred to in the text, was not in July 1622, but at some time subsequent to the spring of 1624, when Winslow brought over “three heifers and a bull, the first beginning of any cattle of that kind in the land.” (Bradford, p. 158.) Yet Weston, again, had no “barque” at Plymouth after 1623. The chapter seems to have been introduced simply for the purpose of working on the church prejudices of Laud against the Puritans. (See supra, 93-4.) There is in it a combination of “the booke of common prayer” and “claret sparklinge neate,” which is suggestive of the Book of Sports as well as of “the Word of God.”

[467] Bradford, p. 158.

[468] Facilis descensus Averno. Æneid, vi. 127.

[469] A killock is a small anchor. The phrase in the text means that the wind caused the boat to drag her anchor, and she went ashore and was stove in.

[470] The episode of Lyford and Oldham, in the history of the Plymouth plantation, is told in detail by Bradford. The account in the text differs from Bradford’s account only in that it is the other side of the story. (See Bradford, pp. 172-88.)

[471] See infra, 324, note. Though Lyford frequently exercised in the Plymouth church, as an elsewhere ordained brother, he was never installed as its pastor. When admitted to it, Bradford says he made “a large confession,” saying, among other things, “that he held not himself a minister till he had a new calling.” (Bradford, pp. 181, 185, 188.)

[472] Supra, 24.

[473] This chapter and Chapter XIII. (pp. 273-6) relate to the same matter. It is impossible to venture a surmise even as to their meaning. It would seem clear that they have no historical value, but relate rather to some humorous incident—having the full seventeenth-century flavor of coarseness—which occurred in the settlement of Boston Bay. Apparently, judging by the expressions, “this goodly creature of incontinency” (Infra, *129), “that had tried a camp royal in other parts” (*121), some English prostitute found her way out to Mount Wollaston, in company with one of the adventurers there, and subsequently went on to Virginia. She may have come with Wollaston, and been left in Boston Bay when her companion went to Virginia, and then followed him, giving birth to a child on the way. This would explain the allusion to Phyllis and Demophoön subsequently made (p. *129). It is, however, a mere surmise on a subject not worth puzzling over.

[474] It does not need to be said that this is one of Morton’s preposterous statements. As the settlement of Virginia dated from 1607, the twenty-seven years he speaks of was equivalent to saying, “up to the time at which he was writing,” viz. 1634. Virginia was then not only a much older settlement, but it had a population largely in excess of that of New England.

[475] Supra, 229, note 3.

[476] This chapter and Chapter XII. are, historically speaking, as inexplicable as Chapters IX. and XIII. There is nothing in any of the contemporaneous records to indicate who is referred to under the pseudonym of Bubble.

[477] One of the smallest of the islands in Boston Bay, still called by the same name. It lies off Mount Wollaston, and a mile or so away, and between it and Pettuck’s Island. (See Shurtleff’s Description of Boston, p. 360.)

[478] [view] See supra, 111, note 1.

[479] Nipnet, or Worcester County; see supra, 240, note.

[480] [present] See supra, 111, note 1.

[481] Squanto is apparently referred to here. (Supra, 244, note 2.) There is no incident in Squanto’s life—of which there is a quite detailed account to be gathered from the early Plymouth records—which is suggestive of the events described in the text.

[482] The first part of Don Quixote was published in 1605, and the second part in 1615. It was first translated into English by Thomas Skelton, in 1612-20.

[483] The reference here is to the story of Demophoön and Phyllis, told by Ovid (Heroides, II.) Demophoön, son of Theseus and Phædra, accompanied the Greeks to Troy; and on his return, Phyllis, the daughter of the Thracian king Sithon, fell in love with him, and he consented to marry her. But before the nuptials were celebrated, he went to Attica to settle his affairs at home, and as he tarried longer than Phyllis had expected, she began to think that she was forgotten, and put an end to her life. She was metamorphosed into a tree. (See Smith’s Dictionary, title Demophoön.)

[484] Supra, 17-19.

[485] Supra, 14, note 4.

[486] John Scogan was the famous court buffoon, attached to the household of Edward IV., whose head Justice Shallow makes the youthful Falstaff break at the court gate (Henry IV. Part II. act iii. sc. 2), though Falstaff is represented as having died at least twenty years before Scogan could have been born. In regard to him, see Doran’s Court Fools, pp. 123-30. “Scogan’s choice,” in Morton’s day, seems to have been a popular expression, signifying that a choice of some sort is better than no power to choose at all. It was derived probably from the story of Scogan, that he was once ordered to be hanged, but allowed the privilege of choosing the tree. He escaped the penalty by being unable to find a tree to his liking. Morton uses the expression again, see infra, *137. But the reference here is as obscure as “the poem.”

[487] Infra, 348, note.

[488] Supra, 278, note 1.

[489] “Ye Roman Goddes Flora.” (Bradford, p. 237.)

[490] In regard to the arrest of Morton by Standish, in June, 1628, see supra, 27-9.

[491] See infra, 291, note.

[492] Morton here confounds his experience in Boston, two years later, with that at Plymouth in 1628. In 1630 the master of the Gift refused to carry him back to England. (Supra, 44.) In the spring of 1628, however, no vessel seems to have arrived at Plymouth from England, as Allerton then brought over an assortment of goods, and came in a fishing-vessel by way of the Maine stations. (Bradford, p. 232.) Allerton returned to London in the course of the succeeding summer or autumn, but it is not probable then any vessel left Plymouth in June, 1628, bound for England. (Supra, 29.)

[493] It was not until towards the close of the summer of the next year that Morton returned to Massachusetts in company with Allerton. (Supra, 36-7.)

[494] Morton implies above that the “Poem” which follows was written shortly after the events to which it relates occurred, and before his return to New England in 1629. It was then, it seems, “in use” in London. The name of Ben Jonson appears in the margin of the original edition, as of this reprint, and opposite the first two lines, as above. Exactly what this signifies it is impossible now to say. Some critics that I have consulted are inclined to think that Jonson, who was then about fifty-five years old and at the height of his fame, may have written all the verses. Others suggest that Morton, by putting the name in the margin, meant to imply that Jonson wrote them all, and that this was another of the unscrupulous tricks of the author of the New Canaan. Neither explanation commends itself to my judgment. The first five verified lines are a paraphrase of five lines at the beginning of one of Jonson’s productions, for a poem it is not. In his published works (Gifford’s ed. [1816], vol. viii. p. 241) they appear as follows:—

“I sing the brave adventure of two wights,

And pity ’tis, I cannot call them knights:

One was; and he for brawn and brain right able

To have been styled of king Arthur’s table.

The other was a squire, of fair degree.”

With the last of the foregoing lines the paraphrase stops, and the rest of the verses in the New Canaan are, it must in justice be said, not only more cleanly, but in other respects superior to those to be found in Jonson’s works. Indeed, where the latter are not unintelligible, they are almost unequalled for the nastiness in which the writer seems to revel. Gifford not too strongly remarks of them, “I dislike the subject.” Morton, it appears to me, abandoning, at the sixth line, the paraphrase with which he began, went on with a production of his own, but very properly put Jonson’s name opposite the lines he borrowed from him. The remainder is in his own style, and not inferior to the mass of the contemporary verse. He himself explains it. The “nine worthy wights” are Standish and his party, who were sent to arrest him. The “prodigeous birth,” was the establishment of the Mount Wollaston plantation. The “seven heads” were the seven persons composing the company at Mount Wollaston at the time of the arrest. The “forked tail” was the Maypole, with its antlered top. The fear that the Hydra of Ma-re Mount would devour “all their best flocks” refers to the apprehended competition in the fur trade. The “Soll in Cancer” indicates the season; the “thundering Jove” the storm, in which Morton made his escape from his captors at Wessagusset. The arrest at Mount Wollaston is passed over very lightly. Then follows the discussion among the magistrates at Plymouth, as to the disposition to be made of the prisoner. Standish would seem to be designated under the name of Minos. He recommends death. Eacus is more difficult to identify. In the preceding chapter (Supra, 288), Morton speaks of him as being the one whose “voice was more allowed of then both the others.” My supposition is that, by Eacus, Morton meant Dr. Samuel Fuller, who then apparently (Bradford, pp. 264, note, 306, note) stood, next to Standish, at the head of the assistants. Morton says that he “confounded all the arguments that Eacus could make;” and he afterwards, in the New Canaan, refers to Fuller with peculiar bitterness. (Infra, 298.) “Sterne Radamant” is clearly Bradford, “the cheif Elder.” The remainder of the poem calls for no explanation; and the whole of it is much less unintelligible than is usual with Morton.

[495] [what] See supra, 111, note 1.

[496] “Brave Christmas gambols” were, it may be remarked, not greatly in vogue in the Plymouth of 1628. (See Bradford, p. 112.)

[497] Supra, 163, note 1.

[498] The personage referred to, in this amusing but extremely scurrilous chapter, is Dr. Samuel Fuller. There is a notice of Dr. Fuller in Young’s Chron. of Pilg. (p. 222, note), and in Eliot’s Biog. Dict. He was one of those who came over in the Mayflower; but that he was born in the County of Somerset, and bred a butcher, appears only from the statement in the text. At Plymouth, besides being the physician of the colony, he was a magistrate and a deacon of the church. He died there, of an infectious fever, in 1633, and his best possible epitaph is read in Bradford (p. 314): “A man godly, and forward to do good, being much missed after his death.”

[499] Infra, 345, note.

[500] Paul’s Walk, as the central nave of old St. Paul’s was called, was in the reign of Charles I. much what a business arcade is now. There is a vivid description of it, with extracts from writers of the time, in W. H. Ainsworth’s romance, Old St. Paul’s (B. II. ch. 7). See also, Gardiner’s Charles I. (vol. ii. p. 11).

[501] The visit of Dr. Fuller to Salem, referred to in the text, may have taken place in 1628. Though he was also there in 1629; and again in 1630, when he likewise visited Charlestown. (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 222, note.)

[502] This description of the usual effect of sea-sickness I take to be peculiar to Morton.

[503] Endicott’s first wife was Anna Gover, a cousin of Governor Cradock. Little is known of her. She came to New England with her husband, and died during the very early days of the settlement, as she seems to have been in failing health in September, 1628. Endicott was married to his second wife August 18, 1630; on the 17th of the following month he sat among the magistrates at Boston in judgment upon the author of the New Canaan, who had been “sent for” just five days after the marriage, which seems to have taken place at Charlestown. (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30; Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 131, 292; Supra, 43-4.)

[504] This was the case of Roger Clerk, of Wandsworth, attached in the chamber of the Guildhall of London, before the mayor and aldermen, on the 13th of May, 1382, on a plea of deceit and falsehood as to Roger atte Hacche. The record is to be found in Riley’s Memorials of London and London Life (pp. 464-6), and is very curious as illustrating English manners in the time of Richard II. Morton’s reference would indicate that the case had then been handed down as a tradition for two hundred and fifty years. It seems that Clerk gave Hacche a bit of old parchment, rolled up in “a piece of cloth of gold,” asserting that it was very good for the ailments with which his wife was afflicted. Upon being arraigned, Clerk contended that upon the parchment was written “a good charm for fevers.” Upon examination, no word of the alleged charm was found in the paper. The court then told the prisoner “that a straw beneath his foot would be of just as much avail for fevers, as this charm of his was; whereupon, he fully granted that it would be so. And because that the same Roger Clerk was in no way a literate man, and seeing that on the examinations aforesaid, (as well as others afterwards made,) he was found to be an infidel, and altogether ignorant of the art of physic or of surgery; and to the end that the people might not be deceived and aggrieved by such ignorant persons etc.; it was adjudged that the same Roger Clerk should be led through the middle of the City, with trumpets and pipes, he riding on a horse without a saddle, the said parchment and a whetstone, for his lies, being hung about his neck, an urinal also being hung before him, and another urinal on his back.”

The punishment of the “pillory and the whetstone,” as it was called, was that ordinarily imposed on those telling falsehoods. In another case in the same volume (p. 316) it is thus given in detail: “The said John shall come out of Newgate without hood or girdle, barefoot and unshod, with a whetstone hung by a chain from his neck, and lying on his breast, it being marked with the words,—‘A false liar;’ and there shall be a pair of trumpets trumpeting before him on his way to the pillory.”

[505] The person referred to in this chapter was probably the Rev. Francis Bright, of whom very little is known. He was one of the three ministers sent over by the Massachusetts Company in 1629, Higginson and Skelton being the other two. In June of that year, when Graves and the Spragues were sent by Endicott to effect a settlement at Charlestown, Bright accompanied them as “minister to the Company’s servants.” (Young’s Chron. of Mass., pp. 316, 376.) As such, he was the Caiaphas, or high-priest, of that region, and it naturally devolved on him to “exercise his guifts on the Lords day at Weenasimute.” Morton further says that the person he refers to had been a silenced minister in England. That Bright had been silenced is not known, but both Skelton and Higginson had been (Magnalia, B. I. ch. iv. § 4; Neal’s Hist. of Puritans, vol. ii. p. 229); and, though Hubbard intimates that Bright was a conformist (p. 113), yet, in the Company’s letter to Endicott, the three ministers are stated to have “declared themselves to us to be of one judgment, and to be fully agreed on the manner how to exercise their ministry.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 160.) Winthrop, Morton adds, “spied out Caiphas practise; and he must be packing.” Bright returned to England shortly after Winthrop’s arrival. Johnson says (Wonder-working Providence, p. 20) that he “betooke him to the Seas againe,” when he saw that “all sorts of stones would not fit in the building.”

Samuel Skelton is referred to by Morton a few pages further on (Infra, 306) as “Pastor Master Eager,” which name may be taken to imply “covetousness” in him. But, though Skelton might be termed the “Caiphas” of the country, he was not silenced by Winthrop. He can, therefore, hardly be the person here aimed at.

[506] [courteousnesse] See supra, 111, n. 1.

[507] Supra, 229, note 3, and 300, note 1.

[508] Iosua Temperwell. Under this name Morton always designates Governor John Winthrop.

[509] Caiaphas was the high-priest of the Jews; Jonas, or Jonah, was the first Hebrew prophet sent to a heathen nation. The propriety of these two Biblical allusions in this connection is, therefore, apparent enough. The allusion to Demas is more obscure, as he is only mentioned by Paul as a fellow-disciple who had forsaken him, “having loved this present world, and is departed unto Thessalonica.” (II. Timothy iv. 10.)

[510] Supra, *144, *151.

[511] Supra, 30.

[512] Supra, 35.

[513] Supra, 37.

[514] By this name Morton designates Matthew Cradock, the first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Company, though he never came to America. Cradock was a wealthy London merchant, and as such subscribed largely to the funds of the company. In regard to him, see Dr. Young’s note in Chron. of Mass. (p. 137).

[515] It is not clear who Morton may have intended to designate by this name. John Washburne was the secretary and “collector for the company” at the time Endicott was sent over, but of him nothing is known. (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 55.) It would seem more probable that Increase Nowell was the person Morton had in mind. Nowell was one of the original patentees, contributing money to forward the purposes of the company, serving on committees, &c. (Ib. p. 262.) He came to New England with Winthrop, and was among the magistrates who were present at the trial of Morton in September, 1630. (Records, vol. i. pp. 73, 75.) He was the first ruling-elder of the Charlestown church. He is described as having been “a worthy pious man” (Eliot); and if he was the person intended by Morton,—which is not at all clear,—the propriety of calling him Ananias, if it rests on anything, is not apparent from the record.

[516] The “covered case,” in which Governor Winthrop is supposed to have brought over the charter of 1629, is still to be seen in the office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth at the State House in Boston; and that in which Endicott brought over the patent of 1628 was, it may be inferred from the text, similar in appearance. It very much resembles the case for “some instrument of musick,” being a flat, narrow box, 2 feet 10 inches long, by 3½ inches wide and 3 inches deep. It has a species of circular annex, so to speak, at its middle, intended to contain the seal. This annex, like the box, is of wood, and is 7 by 8 inches in surface, and the same in depth as the main case, of which it is a part. The whole is covered with stamped leather, now brown and mouldered with age. There are, however, some things about this case which suggest doubts as to its having been made quite so early as the time of Charles I.

[517] In regard to this meeting at Salem, and the action taken at it, see supra, 38-40. No record or other mention of it, except that contained in the text, has come down to us.

[518] See supra 300, note 1.

[519] This refers to the famous Salem ordination of Skelton and Higginson, July 20 and August 6, 1629; in regard to which see Palfrey, vol. i. pp. 295-6.

[520] Supra, 41-2.

[521] [converted] See supra 111, note 1.

[522] The arrival of Winthrop’s fleet in June, 1630, is here referred to. It has already been stated that Iosua Temperwell is intended for Governor Winthrop. It will be noticed that Morton, much as he disliked him, always refers to Winthrop, if not with respect, yet with a certain restraint of tone and insinuation which he did not show to others, such as Endicott, Fuller and Standish.

[523] Supra, *156.

[524] Supra, 47. See, also, the petition of Winslow, while a prisoner in the Fleet, to the Lords of the Council. (Proc. of Mass. Hist. Soc. 1860-2, p. 133.)

[525] Supra, 43-5.

[526] T. W. Higginson, who in 1866 published a translation of Epictetus, furnishes me the following note on this allusion: “The phrase ‘bear and forbear’ has always been received as the formula especially characteristic of Epictetus. It is most explicitly preserved to us in the Noctes Atticæ of Aulus Gellius (B. XVII. ch. xix. §§ 5-6). Gellius says: ‘Verba duo dicebat: Ἀνέχου καὶ ἀπέχου,’ having previously explained their meaning. There was in 1634 no English translation of any portion of Epictetus containing the phrase; nor was he an author then much read at the English universities. Morton probably, therefore, got the quotation from the Latin of Aulus Gellius; if, indeed, he did not pick it up in listening to the talk of some more scholarly man,—possibly Ben Jonson.”

[527] Ille hæc ludibria fortunæ, ne sua quidem putavit, quæ nos appelamus etiam bona. (Paradoxa, I. 1.)

[528] I am unable to suggest any explanation of the allusions contained in this chapter. There is no apparent clew either to the “zealous Professor” whose conscience did not permit him to cut tombstones, or to the “gentleman newly come into the land,” who “incurred the displeasure” of Governor Winthrop and was degraded.

[529] “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.”

[530] “Antonomasia (Rhet.). The use of the name of some office, dignity, profession, science or trade, instead of the proper name of the person; as where his majesty is used for a king, or his lordship for a nobleman, or when, instead of Aristotle, we say the philosopher; or, conversely, the use of a proper name instead of an appellative, as where a wise man is called a Cato, or an eminent orator a Cicero, the application being supported by a resemblance in character.” (Webster.)

[531] The phrase “them that are without [the church]” calls for no explanation. It was common in early New England, and both Lyford and Bradford are found using it (Bradford, pp. 184, 187) exactly as Morton uses it, who probably picked it up at Plymouth.

[532] Innocence Fairecloath is the name under which Morton alludes to Philip Ratcliff. This man was a servant or agent of Governor Matthew Cradock. He got into trouble with Endicott and the members of the Salem church, and, according to Winthrop, “being convict, ore tenus, of most foul, scandalous invectives against our churches and government, was censured to be whipped, lose his ears, and be banished the plantation, which was presently executed.” (p. *56.) Another authority speaks of the offence as a “most horible blasphemy.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 323.) In the Records of Massachusetts (p. 88), under date of June 14 (24 N. S.), 1631, the sentence read as follows: “It is ordered, that Philip Ratcliffe shall be whipped, have his ears cut off, fined 40 l., and banished out of the limits of this jurisdiction, for uttering malicious and scandalous speeches against the government and the church of Salem, &c., as appeareth by a particular thereof, proved upon oath.” The severity of this sentence caused much scandal in England after Ratcliff returned there, and in April of the next year Edward Howes wrote out to John Winthrop, Jr.: “I have heard diverse complaints against the severitie of your Government especially Mr. Indicutts, and that he shalbe sent for over, about cuttinge off the Lunatick mans eares, and other grievances.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. ix. p. 244.) In regard to Ratcliff’s subsequent connection with the Gorges-Mason attacks on the company before the Privy Council, see supra, 50-2, 62, and Proceedings of Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xx., January meeting, 1883.

[533] See supra 304, note 2.

[534] The first two deacons of the church at Charlestown were Robert Hale and Ralph Monsall. The Charlestown church, however, was not organized until November, 1632, sixteen months after Ratcliff’s punishment. (Budington’s First Church of Charlestown, pp. 31, 34.)

The Boston church in June, 1631, had but one deacon, William Aspinwall (Ellis’s First Church of Boston, p. 328), in regard to whom there is a detailed note in Savage’s Winthrop (p. *32). He was the deacon of the Charlestown church at the time Morton was arraigned and punished, and it is possible that Morton refers to him as Shackles. Aspinwall was a man of prominence in the settlement; but it must be remembered that, thirteen years later, “two of our ministers’ sons, being students in the college, robbed two dwelling-houses in the night of some pounds. Being found out, they were ordered by the gouvernours of the college to be there whipped, which was performed by the president himself—yet they were about 20 years of age.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *166.) If the president of the college could officiate at the whipping-post in 1644, in a case of what Winthrop calls “burglary,” there seems no good reason why the deacon of the church should not have officiated there in 1631 in a case which the same authority calls “foul, scandalous invectives against our churches.”

[535] Supra, 319.

[536] The character of the New Canaan as a political pamphlet of the time, intended to effect a given result in a particular quarter, has already been referred to. (Supra, pp. 68-9.) In this respect the present chapter is the most significant one in the book. It was intended to act on the well-known prejudices of Archbishop Laud, the head and controlling spirit of that Board of Lords Commissioners of Foreign Plantations which then had supreme authority over the colonies. To that Board Morton dedicated his book; and at the time he was writing it the Lords Commissioners, and especially the Archbishop, were taking active measures to vacate the Massachusetts charter and to assume the direct government of the colonies. It is its connection with these facts which alone gives any great degree of historical value to the present chapter. In itself it is not deserving of careful annotation, as it contains nothing that is new, and the ground is much better covered by Lechford in his Plaine Dealing. Like Morton, Lechford was a lawyer; and, unlike Morton, he was by nature a devout man. A member of the Church of England he has given in his book a remarkably vivid and fair-minded description of the practice of the New England churches during the earliest days of the settlement. Mr. Trumbull’s very learned and elaborate notes to his edition of the Plaine Dealing, which is the edition referred to in the notes to the present chapter, have cleared up Lechford’s text wherever it is obscure; and they obviate the necessity of any careful annotation of the present chapter, except where it is desirable to call notice to the special bearing any particular assertion made may be supposed to have had on Archbishop Laud’s idiosyncrasies.

[537] “Teaching in the church publicly,” was, it will be remembered, one of the offences charged against Winslow before the Lords Commissioners at the hearing of 1634, for which, at Archbishop Laud’s “vehement importunity,” he was committed to the Fleet. (Supra, 69; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1860-2, p. 131.) On the real practice of the New England churches in regard to the exercise of their gifts by lay members, see Plaine Dealing, p. 42.

[538] “I suppose the first preacher that ever thus preached with notes in our New-England was the Reverend Warham.” (Magnalia, B. III. part 2, ch. xviii.) In regard to John Warham, first of Dorchester and subsequently of Windsor, Connecticut, see Dr. Young’s note in Chron. of Mass., p. 347.

[539] There probably never was any regularly chosen deaconess in New England. The office was recognized as having come down from the primitive churches (Dexter’s Congregationalism, p. 69); and Robert Browne in his definitions, in the Life and Manners of all true Christians, says: “The widow is a person having office of God to pray for the church, and to visit and minister to those which are afflicted and distressed in the church; for the which she is tried and received as meet.” (Bacon’s Genesis of the New England Churches, p. 84.) Bradford in his Dialogue, written in 1648, speaking of the Separatist church at Amsterdam, says, that besides the pastor, teacher, elders and deacons, there was “one ancient widow for a deaconess, who did them service many years, though she was sixty years of age when she was chosen. She honored her place and was an ornament to the congregation. She usually sat in a convenient place in the congregation, with a little birchen rod in her hand, and kept little children in great awe from disturbing the congregation. She did frequently visit the sick and weak, especially women, and, as there was need, called out maids and young women to watch and do them other helps as their necessity did require; and if they were poor, she would gather relief for them of those that were able, or acquaint the deacons; and she was obeyed as a mother in Israel and an officer of Christ.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 455.) It would be inferred from the passage quoted that there had in 1648 never been a deaconess in the Plymouth church, as in this Dialogue the old men are supposed to be describing to the young men events strange to the latter, as having occurred long before. Lechford says, speaking of the Massachusetts colony: “No church there has a Deaconesse, as far as I know.” (Plaine Dealing, pp. 24, 40) “I have not met with an instance of [the] actual institution [of the office of deaconess] in New England.” (Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 37, note.)

It does not seem, however, to have been even theoretically one of the functions of the deaconess “to use her gifts at home,” as Morton says, “in an assembly of her sex, by way of repetition, or exhortation.” This would rather have pertained to the office of teacher. Meetings of females, such as those described, were held in the parishes during the early days, and played an important part in the Antinomian controversy. The deaconess did not, however, officiate at them. The character of these meetings appears in the following passage at the trial of Mrs. Hutchinson:

“Court. ... What say you to your weekly public meetings? Can you find a warrant for them?

Mrs. Hutchinson. I will show you how I took it up. There were such meetings in use before I came; and because I went to none of them, this was the special reason of my taking up this course. We began it with but five or six, and, though it grew to more in future time, yet, being tolerated at the first, I knew not why it might not continue.

Court. There were private meetings indeed, and are still in many places, of some few neighbors; but not so public and frequent as yours; and are of use for increase of love and mutual edification. But yours are of another nature. If they had been such as yours they had been evil, and therefore no good warrant to justify yours. But answer by what authority or rule you uphold them?

Mrs. H. By Titus ii. 3-5, where the elder women are to teach the younger.

Court. So we allow you to do, as the Apostle there means, privately and upon occasion. But that gives no warrant of such set meetings for that purpose. And, besides, you take upon you to teach many that are older than yourself. Neither do you teach them that which the Apostle commands, viz: to keep at home.

Mrs. H. Will you please to give me a rule against it, and I will yield.

Court. You must have a rule for it, or else you cannot do it in faith. Yet you have a plain rule against it,—‘I suffer not a woman to teach.’ (I. Tim. ii. 12.)

Mrs. H. That is meant of teaching men.”

(Weld’s Short Story, pp. 34-5.) See also the version to the same effect in Hutchinson’s Massachusetts, vol. ii. pp. 484-7.

[540] Supra, 262, note 3, and 306, note 3. The effect such a statement as that in the text would have upon Archbishop Laud is apparent. The real practice of the early New England churches in the matter of ordination can be found in the Plaine Dealing, pp. 13, 16, 17.

[541] “There hath been some difference about jurisdictions, or cognizance of causes: Some have held that, in causes betweene brethren of the Church, the matter should be first told the Church, before they goe to the civill Magistrate, because all causes in difference doe amount, one way or other, to a matter of offence; and that all criminall matters concerning Church members, should be first heard by the Church. But these opinionists are held, by the wiser sort, not to know the dangerous issues and consequences of such tenets.” (Plaine Dealing, p. 34.)

[542] There was no minister at Plymouth in the spring of 1628, when Morton was there. William Brewster was the ruling elder in the church and officiated in its pulpit, where, from the beginning, he had “taught twice every sabbath, and that both powerfully and profitably, to the great contentment of the hearers, and their comfortable edification.” (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 467; Bradford, pp. 187-8.) In the summer of 1628, but after Morton had been sent to England, Allerton brought over Mr. Rogers as a preacher, who soon proved to be “crased in his braine” (Bradford, p. 243), and the next season was sent home. In the autumn, apparently, of 1629, and while Morton may have been at Plymouth at Allerton’s house (Ib. p. 253), before his final return to Mount Wollaston, the Rev. Ralfe Smith, who had come over with Skelton and Higginson in the previous June (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 151), was found at Nantasket and brought down to Plymouth. (Bradford, p. 263.) He was not, however, chosen into the ministry there until a later time. (Ib.) It is unlikely that Morton here refers to Plymouth personages. He was at Salem in 1629 (Supra, 306), and in Boston, where as a prisoner he was undoubtedly made regularly to attend divine service, from early September to the end of December, 1630. (Supra, 45; Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 321.) At Salem he had come in contact with Skelton and Higginson; and it has been seen (Supra, 300, note 1) that he probably knew something of Francis Bright of Charlestown. The only other ministers then in the colony were John Warham and John Maverick at Dorchester, George Phillips at Watertown, and John Wilson at Boston.

[543] It is scarcely necessary to point out that the three following pages are largely the fruit of Morton’s imaginative powers, and were intended for the special edification of Archbishop Laud. As Plymouth was much less well supplied with preachers than the towns of the Massachusetts colony, it is altogether probable—as Dr. John Eliot surmised, in his review of the New Canaan, in the Monthly Anthology for July, 1810—the allusions to the church-practises in this chapter found their largest basis of fact in incidents which Morton had been a witness of in the Plymouth meeting-house. It is safe to add, however, that he could have had no agreeable recollections of the meeting-houses at Boston and Charlestown.

[544] Oliver Le Daim, barber of Louis XI., created by him Comte de Meulan, and sent in 1477 on a confidential mission to Mary of Burgundy at Ghent. The account of his experiences is to be found in the Memoires de Commines, L. v. ch. xiv.

[545] Supra, 302, note 1.

[546] I am indebted to Mr. Lindsay Swift, of the Boston Public Library, for the following explanation of this, to me, very perplexing allusion: “Nic, or, more correctly, nick,—namely, ‘a raised or indented bottom in a beer-can, by which the customers were cheated, the nick below and the froth above filling up part of the measure.’ I take this definition from Wright’s Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English. That the expression was a common one the following quotations prove:—

‘We must be running up and downe

With cannes of beere (malt sod in fishes broth),

And those they say are fil’d with nick and froth.’

(Rowland’s Knave of Harts.)

‘From the nick and froth of a penny pot-house.’

(Fletcher.)

‘Our pots were full quarted,

We were not thus thwarted

With froth-canne and nick-pot,

And such nimble quick shot.’

(Spurious lines added to Rand’s 1624 edition of Skelton’s Elynour Rummynge.) Most of this information I have taken from Nares’s Glossary and Halliwell-Phillipp’s Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, second edition.”

[547] The reference here is apparently to the running footmen much in use in the eighteenth century, and also, judging by the text, as early as the reign of Charles I. Their duty was to run before and alongside the cumbrous coaches then in use, to notify innkeepers of the coming guests. They carried long poles to assist them in clearing obstacles, and to help pry the carriages out of the sloughs in which they frequently got stuck. (Brewer’s Dict. of Phrase and Fable, p. 773; Macaulay’s England, vol. i. pp. 374-8.)

[548] It was one of the doctrines of Pythagoras that the souls of the dying passed into the air, and thence into the living bodies of other men, taking controlling possession of them. That the nimbleness of the father’s feet might thus account for the volubility of the son’s tongue is, it is needless to say, a purely Mortonian deduction.

[549] “May 12. [1621] was the first marriage in this place, which, according to the laudable custome of the Low-Countries, in which they had lived, was thought most requisite to be performed by the magistrate, as being a civill thing, upon which many questions aboute inheritances doe depende, with other things most proper to their cognizans, and most consonante to the scripturs. Ruth 4. and no wher found in the gospell to be layed on the ministers as a part of their office.” (Bradford, p. 101.) The marriage here referred to was that of Edward Winslow to Mrs. Susannah White. It took place in May, Winslow’s wife having died seven weeks before, and Mrs. White’s husband, William, twelve weeks before. That he had married people was, it will be remembered, the other of the two charges advanced against Winslow himself, at the Privy Council hearing just referred to. (Supra, 322, note 2.) The practice of civil marriage already prevailed in the Massachusetts colony also, as, a week before the arrest of Morton was ordered, Governor Endicott, on August 18, 1630, was married, at Charlestown apparently, “by the governour and Mr. Wilson.” (Winthrop, vol. i. p. *30. See also Plaine Dealing, pp. 86-7.) There are few more edifying examples of the casuistical skill of Winthrop and his associates than is afforded by his method of dealing with the question of civil marriages, as explained in detail in his Journal (vol. i. p. *323). “In our church discipline, and in matters of marriage, to make a law that marriages should not be solemnized by ministers is repugnant to the laws of England; but to bring it to a custom by practice for the magistrates to perform it, is no law made repugnant, etc.” The charter of 1629 empowered the General Court of the colony “to make, ordeine, and establishe all Manner of wholesome and reasonable Orders, Lawes, Statutes, and Ordinances, Directions, and Instructions, not contrary to the Lawes of theis our Realme of England.” (Hazard, vol. i. p. 252.)

[550] At the conference between the Bishops and the Puritans, held in presence of James I. at Hampton Court in January, 1603, one of the practices of the English Church especially excepted to as a “relique of popery” by Dr. John Reynolds, the spokesman of the Puritans, was the ring in marriage. (Neal’s Hist. of Puritans, vol. ii. p. 42.) Among the reasons urged against its use I have not elsewhere found the “diabolical circle” argument. It seems rather to have been associated in the Puritan mind with the Romish traditions. (Jones’s Finger-Ring Lore, pp. 288-90.) This count, in Morton’s indictment, was based on good grounds. “In the Weddings of [early] New England the ring makes none of the ceremonies.” (Mather’s Ratio Disciplinæ, p. 116.)

[551] This refers to churching practice of the English Church. At the Hampton Court conference, referred to in the preceding note, another of the “reliques of popery,” specifically excepted to by Dr. Reynolds, was “the churching of women by the name of purification.”

[552] This count in the indictment was well laid. The children of the non-communicants in early New England could not be baptized; though they might be if either one of the parents was a member of the church. At a later period this became one of the leading causes of political agitation in the colony, and is referred to in the Dr. Robert Childs petition of 1646. In 1670 from four fifths to five sixths of the adult male inhabitants of Massachusetts were without the franchise, as being non-communicants. (Lechford’s Plaine Dealing, pp. 47, 48, 151; Mem. Hist. of Boston, vol. i. p. 156; Palfrey, vol. ii. p. 8, vol. iii. p. 41.)

[553] Supra, 316, note 2.

[554] This was the favorite epithet employed by the early reformers in referring to the Mass. Calvin called it “an execrable idol;” Hooper, “a wicked idol.” Bradford—not Governor William, but John, the Smithfield martyr of Queen Mary’s time—terms it an “abominable idol of bread;” and again, “the horriblest and most detestable device that ever the devil brought out by man.” Bland, rector of Adishan, repeated the familiar figure, calling it a “most blasphemous idol;” and Latimer improved upon this by adding the words, “full of idolatry, blasphemy, sacrilege against God and the dear sacrifice of His Christ.” (Blunt’s Reformation of the Church of Eng., vol. ii. pp. 399-402.) The derivation of the Book of Common Prayer, in many of its parts, from the Missal was unmistakable; and naturally the next race of religious reformers applied to the former the same earnest epithets of theological dissent which had before been applied to the latter. Accordingly, in Barrowe’s Brief Discovery of the False Church, we find the Book of Common Prayer referred to as “a detestable idol, ... old rotten stuff ... abstracted out of the pope’s blasphemous mass-book, ... an abominable and loathsome sacrifice in the sight of God, even as a dead dog.” Barrowe was one of the three Separatist martyrs, and as such held in deepest veneration at Plymouth. (Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 427-34.) The Book of Common Prayer was therefore undoubtedly looked upon and referred to at Plymouth as Morton says. Indeed, the Lyford schism was in some degree due to its use. (Bradford, p. 181.) That it was, in the early days, also so looked upon and so referred to at Salem and at Boston, is not clear. It is true that in 1629 it was again the cause of the Browne dissension at Salem (Young’s Chron. of Mass., p. 287), in consequence of which Skelton and Higginson both declared openly “that they came away from the Common Prayer and ceremonies, ... and therefore, being in a place where they might have their liberty, they neither could nor would use them, because they judged the imposition of these things to be sinful corruptions in the worship of God.” (Morton’s Memorial, p. 147.) The Puritans of Boston, however, were not Separatists, and it is open to question whether they at first felt towards the Common Prayer as the Plymouth people felt towards it, and as Morton says. In 1640 Governor Winthrop, it is true, noted it as a thing worthy of observation that his son “having many books in a chamber where there was corn of divers sorts, had among them one wherein the Greek testament, the psalms and the common prayer were bound together. He found the common prayer eaten with mice, every leaf of it, and not any of the two other touched, nor any other of his books, though they were above a thousand.” (Winthrop, vol. ii. p. *20.) When Governor Winthrop tried and sentenced Morton, however, he was anxious to preserve his connection with the Church of England, and it is very doubtful whether he then looked upon its Book of Prayer as “an idol.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., vol. xviii. p. 296.)

As one count in Morton’s indictment of the people of New England, that in the text now under consideration was not only sufficiently well founded, but it was peculiarly calculated to excite Archbishop Laud’s anger. It is unnecessary to say that he was the special champion of the Church of England ritual. To enforce exact conformity to it he regarded as his mission. When the ships loaded with emigrants for New England were, in March, 1634, stopped in the Thames by order of the Privy Council, they were not allowed to proceed on their voyage until the masters bound themselves to have the Book of Common Prayer used at morning and evening service during the voyage. (Council Register, Feb. 21, 28, 1634; Gardiner’s Charles I., vol. ii. p. 23.) This was Laud’s act, and it is more than probable that he was as much influenced by Morton on that occasion as he was subsequently in the matter of Winslow’s imprisonment for having performed the marriage ceremony. (Supra, 69, 93.)

[555] “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith.” (Matt. xxiii. 23.)

“But woe unto you, Pharisees! for ye tithe mint and rue and all manner of herbs, and pass over judgment and the love of God.” (Luke xi. 42.)

The significance of the text referred to lay, of course, in Morton’s mind, rather in its indirect than its direct application,—more in its denunciatory than in its contributory portions. The clergy in early Massachusetts were supported by the voluntary contributions in Boston, and by a regular town-tax levy outside of Boston. (Plaine Dealing, pp. 48-50; Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., 1860-2, p. 116.)

[556] Supra, Ch. XXV. pp. 316-20.

[557] “Wink, v. n. 1. to shut the eyes. obs.” (Worcester.)

[558] Edward Howes, in writing from London to John Winthrop, Jr., in November, 1632, describes how, on going home at noon one day, he met the master of a vessel which had just arrived from New England, together with three others who had come over with him. The master passing into the house on some matter of business, Howes had a talk with one of the other men, whom he describes as an “egregious knave.” The report given by this man of the Massachusetts community strikingly resembles that given by Morton in this chapter. He would, writes Howes, “give none of you a good word, but the governor [Winthrop]; he was a good man and kept a good table, but all the rest were Hereticks, and they would be more holy than all the world; they would be a peculiar people to God, but go to the Devil; that one man with you being at confession, as he called it, said he believed his father and mother and ancestors went all to Hell; and that your preachers, in their public prayers, pray for the governor before they pray for our king and state; ... that you never use the Lord’s prayer; that your ministers marry none; that fellows which keep hogs all the week preach on the Sabbath; that every town in your plantation is of a several religion; that you count all men in England, yea all out of your church, in the state of damnation. But I believe and know better things of you; but here you may partly see how the Devil stirs up his instruments.” (IV. Mass. Hist. Col., vol. vi. p. 485.)

[559] Mr. Swift (Supra, 328, note) suggests that Morton here alludes to the scene in Ben Jonson’s Tale of a Tub (act iv. sc. 1), where Justice Preamble says:

“And what say you now, neighbor Turfe?”

Turfe answers him:

“I put it

Even to your worship’s bitterment, hab, nab.”

Here the Countryman makes the remark, and not the Justice; but a wholly correct allusion by Morton is not to be looked for. (Supra, 123, note 2.) The meaning of hab, nab is, of course, “hit or miss, at a venture, at random,” and is probably derived from habbe, nabbe,—“to have or not to have.” (See Nares’s Glossary.)

[560] Supra, 44-5.

[561] Supra, 319, note.

[562] By the General Court of May, 1644, it was ordered, that “Nantascot shall be called Hull.” (Records, vol. ii. p. 74.) Mr. Savage, in his notes to Winthrop (vol. ii. p. *175), and Mr. Whitmore (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc. 1871-3, p. 397), think it was so called from Hull in Yorkshire. It would appear from the text that it had been locally known by that name among the “old planters” before the settlement of Boston.

[563] Sir Christopher Gardiner suddenly appeared in Massachusetts in May, 1630, and returned to England in 1632, arriving there in August. He is supposed to have come out as an agent, or emissary, of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. I had begun the preparation of a note on Sir Christopher, and “how hee spedd amongst the Seperatists,” for insertion at this point; but the subject developed on my hands until it assumed the shape of a study by itself. It can be found in the Proceedings of the Mass. Hist. Soc. for January, 1883, vol. xx.

[564] Machiavelli died in 1527, and The Prince was published in 1532. The reputation of the man and of the book were as well established in Morton’s day as they are now.

“Nick Machiavel had ne’er a trick,

(Tho’ he gave his name to our old Nick.)”

(Hudibras, p. III. can. i. lines 1313-4.)

This derivation is not accepted by the authorities. See Brewer’s Dict., p. 614.

[565] Supra, Ch. XXV. pp. 316-20.

[566] As Saint Michael is one of the Azores, it may have been during this voyage that Morton visited the Isle of Sal and the tropics, as mentioned in the first chapter of the New Canaan. (Supra, 117.) If the voyage did last nine months, it was August or September, 1631, before he got back to England.

[567]

“Cum canerem reges et prœlia, Cynthius aurem

Vellit, et admonuit:...”

(Virgil, Eclogues, vi. 3-4.)

There are in the New Canaan (Supra, 280, 297) two references to certain imaginary or special gifts from “Phaos box,” which in editing I had been unable to explain. Mr. Lindsay Swift (Supra, 328, note) now supplies me with a reference, which, if it is indeed, as seems most probable, the allusion which Morton had in mind, seems to indicate that his familiarity with classic authors was greater than I have been disposed to give him credit for. The reference is to the Varia Historia of Ælianus (lib. XII. cap. xviii.), and reads as follows: “Phaonem, omnium hominum formosissimum, Venus in lactucis abscondit. Alii dicunt, eum portitorem fuisse, et habuisse hoc vitæ genus. Veniebat autem aliquando Venus, trajicere volens; ille vero, nesciens quænam esset, libenter recepit, magnaque cura, quoquo voluerat, eam vexit. Pro quibus meritis Dea alabastrum ei donavit, et erat in eo unguentum, quo unctus Phaon speciosissimus hominum evasit, atque adeo amarunt eum Mitylenensium feminæ. Tandem vero deprehensus in adulterio, trucidatus est.”

	Page
Preface	v-vi
Thomas Morton of Merry-Mount	1-98
Bibliography of New English Canaan	99-105
New English Canaan	106-345
Book I. The Origin of the Natives; their Manners and Customs	115-78
Book II. A Description of the Beauty of the Country	179-242
Book III. A Description of the People	243-345
Table of Contents of the New English Canaan	347-9

Officers of the Prince Society	353
The Prince Society, 1883	354-8
Publications of the Prince Society	359
Volumes in Preparation by the Prince Society	360
Index	361-81

President.
THE REV. EDMUND F. SLAFTER, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Vice-Presidents.
JOHN WARD DEAN, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
WILLIAM B. TRASK, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
THE HON. CHARLES H. BELL, LL.D.	Exeter, N.H.
JOHN MARSHALL BROWN, A.M.	Portland, Me.
Corresponding Secretary.
THE REV. HENRY W. FOOTE, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Recording Secretary.
DAVID GREENE HASKINS, Jr., A.M.	Cambridge, Mass.
Treasurer.
ELBRIDGE H. GOSS, Esq.	Boston, Mass.

The Hon. Charles Francis Adams, LL.D.	Boston, Mass.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr., A.B.	Quincy, Mass.
Thomas Coffin Amory, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
William Sumner Appleton, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Walter T. Avery, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
Mr. Thomas Willing Balch	Philadelphia, Pa.
George L. Balcom, Esq.	Claremont, N.H.
Charles Candee Baldwin, M.A.	Cleveland, Ohio.
Samuel L. M. Barlow, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
James Phinney Baxter, A.M.	Portland, Me.
The Hon. Charles H. Bell, LL.D.	Exeter, N.H.
John J. Bell, A.M.	Exeter, N.H.
Samuel Lane Boardman, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
The Hon. James Ware Bradbury, LL.D.	Augusta, Me.
J. Carson Brevoort, LL.D.	Brooklyn, N.Y.
The Rev. Phillips Brooks, D.D.	Boston, Mass.
Sidney Brooks, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Horace Brown, A.B., LL.B.	Salem, Mass.
Mrs. John Carter Brown	Providence, R.I.
John Marshall Brown, A.M.	Portland, Me.
Joseph O. Brown, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
Philip Henry Brown, A.M.	Portland, Me.
Thomas O. H. P. Burnham, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
George Bement Butler, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
The Hon. Mellen Chamberlain, A.M.	Chelsea, Mass.
The Hon. William Eaton Chandler, A.M.	Washington, D.C.
George Bigelow Chafe, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
[Pg 355]Clarence H. Clark, Esq.	Philadelphia, Pa.
Gen. John S. Clark	Auburn, N.Y.
The Hon. Samuel Crocker Cobb	Boston, Mass.
Ethan N. Coburn, Esq.	Charlestown, Mass.
Jeremiah Colburn, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Deloraine P. Corey, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Erastus Corning, Esq.	Albany, N.Y.
Ellery Bicknell Crane, Esq.	Worcester, Mass.
Abram E. Cutter, Esq.	Charlestown, Mass.
William M. Darlington, Esq.	Pittsburg, Pa.
John Ward Dean, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Charles Deane, LL.D.	Cambridge, Mass.
Edward Denham, Esq.	New Bedford, Mass.
John Charles Dent, Esq.	Toronto, Canada.
Prof. Franklin B. Dexter, A.M.	New Haven, Ct.
The Rev. Henry Martyn Dexter, D.D.	Boston, Mass.
Samuel Adams Drake, Esq.	Melrose, Mass.
Henry Thayer Drowne, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
Henry H. Edes, Esq.	Charlestown, Mass.
Jonathan Edwards, A.B., M.D.	New Haven, Ct.
William Henry Egle, A.M, M.D.	Harrisburgh, Pa.
Janus G. Elder, Esq.	Lewiston, Me.
Samuel Eliot, LL.D.	Boston, Mass.
Alfred Langdon Elwyn, M.D.	Philadelphia, Pa.
James Emott, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
The Hon. William M. Evarts, LL. D.	New York, N.Y.
Joseph Story Fay, Esq.	Woods Holl, Mass.
John S. H. Fogg, M.D.	Boston, Mass.
The Rev. Henry W. Foote, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Samuel P. Fowler, Esq.	Danvers, Mass.
James E. Gale, Esq.	Haverhill, Mass.
Isaac D. Garfield, Esq.	Syracuse, N.Y.
Marcus D. Gilman, Esq.	Montpelier, Vt.
The Hon. John E. Godfrey	Bangor, Me.
Abner C. Goodell, Jr., A.M.	Salem, Mass.
Elbridge H. Goss, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
The Hon. Justice Horace Gray, LL.D.	Boston, Mass.
[Pg 356]William W. Greenough, A.B.	Boston, Mass.
Isaac J. Greenwood, A.M.	New York, N.Y.
Charles H. Guild, Esq.	Somerville, Mass.
David Greene Haskins, Jr., A.M.	Cambridge, Mass.
The Hon. Francis B. Hayes, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
The Hon. Rutherford B. Hayes, LL.D.	Fremont, Ohio.
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, A.M.	Cambridge, Mass.
W. Scott Hill, M.D.	Augusta, Me.
James F. Hunnewell, Esq.	Charlestown, Mass.
Theodore Irwin, Esq.	Oswego, N.Y.
The Rev. Henry Fitch Jenks, A.M.	Lawrence, Mass.
The Hon. Clark Jillson	Worcester, Mass.
Mr. Sawyer Junior	Nashua, N.H.
George Lamb, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Edward F. De Lancey, Esq.	New York, N.Y.
William B. Lapham, M.D.	Augusta, Me.
Henry Lee, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
John A. Lewis, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Henry Cabot Lodge, Ph.D.	Boston, Mass.
Orsamus H. Marshall, Esq.	Buffalo, N.Y.
William T. R. Marvin, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
William F. Matchett, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Frederic W. G. May, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
John Norris McClintock, A.M.	Concord, N.H.
The Rev. James H. Means, D.D.	Boston, Mass.
George H. Moore, LL.D.	New York, N.Y.
The Rev. James De Normandie, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Prof. Charles E. Norton, A.M.	Cambridge, Mass.
John H. Osborne, Esq.	Auburn, N.Y.
George T. Paine, Esq.	Providence, R.I.
Nathaniel Paine, Esq.	Worcester, Mass.
John Carver Palfrey, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Daniel Parish, Jr., Esq.	New York, N.Y.
Francis Parkman, LL.D.	Boston, Mass.
Augustus T. Perkins, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
The Rt. Rev. William Stevens Perry, D.D., LL.D.	Davenport, Iowa.
William Frederic Poole, LL.D.	Chicago, Ill.
[Pg 357]Rear Admiral George Henry Preble, U. S. N.	Brookline, Mass.
Samuel S. Purple, M.D.	New York, N.Y.
Edward Ashton Rollins, A.M.	Philadelphia, Pa.
The Hon. Nathaniel Foster Safford, A.M.	Milton, Mass.
Joshua Montgomery Sears, A.B.	Boston, Mass.
John Gilmary Shea, LL.D.	Elizabeth, N.J.
The Hon. Mark Skinner	Chicago, Ill.
The Rev. Carlos Slafter, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
The Rev. Edmund F. Slafter, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Charles C. Smith, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Oliver Bliss Stebbins, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
George Stevens, Esq.	Lowell, Mass.
George Stewart, Jr., Esq.	Quebec, Canada.
Russell Sturgis, A.M.	London, Eng.
William B. Trask, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Joseph B. Walker, A.M.	Concord, N.H.
William Henry Wardwell, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Miss Rachel Wetherill	Philadelphia, Pa.
Henry Wheatland, A.M., M.D.	Salem, Mass.
John Gardner White, A.M.	Cambridge, Mass.
William Adee Whitehead, A.M.	Newark, N.J.
William H. Whitmore, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
Henry Austin Whitney, A.M.	Boston, Mass.
The Hon. Marshall P. Wilder, Ph.D.	Boston, Mass.
Henry Winsor, Esq.	Philadelphia, Pa.
The Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, LL.D.	Boston, Mass.
Charles Levi Woodbury, Esq.	Boston, Mass.
Ashbel Woodward, M.D.	Franklin, Ct.
J. Otis Woodward, Esq.	Albany, N.Y.
LIBRARIES.
American Antiquarian Society	Worcester, Mass.
Amherst College Library	Amherst, Mass.
Astor Library	New York, N.Y.
Bibliothèque Nationale	Paris, France
Bodleian Library	Oxford, Eng.
Boston Athenæum	Boston, Mass.
[Pg 358]Boston Library Society	Boston, Mass.
British Museum	London, Eng.
Concord Public Library	Concord, Mass.
Eben Dale Sutton Reference Library	Peabody, Mass.
Free Public Library	Worcester, Mass.
Free Public Library of Toronto	Toronto, Canada.
Gloucester Public Library	Gloucester, Mass.
Grosvenor Library	Buffalo, N.Y.
Harvard College Library	Cambridge, Mass.
Historical Society of Pennsylvania	Philadelphia, Pa.
Library Company of Philadelphia	Philadelphia, Pa.
Library of Parliament	Ottawa, Canada.
Library of the State Department	Washington, D.C.
Literary and Historical Society of Quebec	Quebec, Canada.
Long Island Historical Society	Brooklyn, N.Y.
Maine Historical Society	Portland, Me.
Maryland Historical Society	Baltimore, Md.
Massachusetts Historical Society	Boston, Mass.
Mercantile Library	New York, N.Y.
Minnesota Historical Society	St. Paul, Minn.
Newburyport Public Library, Peabody Fund	Newburyport, Mass.
New England Historic Genealogical Society	Boston, Mass.
Newton Free Library	Newton, Mass.
New York Society Library	New York, N.Y.
Peabody Institute of the City of Baltimore	Baltimore, Md.
Plymouth Public Library	Plymouth, Mass.
Portsmouth Athenæum	Portsmouth, N.H.
Public Library of Cincinnati	Cincinnati, Ohio.
Public Library of the City of Boston	Boston, Mass.
Redwood Library	Newport, R.I.
State Historical Society of Wisconsin	Madison, Wis.
State Library of Massachusetts	Boston, Mass.
State Library of New York	Albany, N.Y.
State Library of Rhode Island	Providence, R.I.
State Library of Vermont	Montpelier, Vt.
Williams College Library	Williamstown, Mass.
Woburn Public Library	Woburn, Mass.
Yale College Library	New Haven, Ct.

		£	s
From	Plymouth,	2	10
„	Naumkeag,	1	10
„	Piscataqua,	2	10
„	Wessagusset,	2
„	Nantasket,	1	10
„	David Thomson’s widow,		15
„	William Blackstone,		12
„	Edward Hilton,[64]	1
		£12	7