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Title: Debts hopeful and desperate
Financing the Plymouth Colony
Author: Ruth A. McIntyre
Release Date: April 23, 2023 [eBook #70625]
Language: English
Produced by: Steve Mattern and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images
generously made available by The Internet Archive)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DEBTS HOPEFUL AND
DESPERATE ***
Transcriber’s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_.
[Illustration]
Debts
Hopeful and Desperate
_Financing the Plymouth Colony_
by Ruth A. McIntyre
[Illustration]
PLIMOTH PLANTATION
© Plimoth Plantation, Inc., 1963
The publication of this study
was made possible through a grant to Plimoth Plantation
by the partners of Hornblower and Weeks
in memory of their senior partner
RALPH HORNBLOWER
who died at Plymouth
September 18
1960
_“For had not you and we joined and continued together, New England
might yet have been scarce known, I am persuaded; not so replenished
and inhabited with honest English people as now it is. The Lord
increase and bless them....”_ An extract from a letter written in 1633
by James Sherley, London merchant, to Governor William Bradford of the
Plymouth Colony.
Contents
Acknowledgments 7
Foreword 9
Part I 11
The Pilgrims decide to emigrate to America § They obtain a patent
and seek financial backing § Some London merchants offer to invest
in the colony § 1620--Pilgrims and merchants form a joint stock
company § Despite difficulties and controversy, the colonists set
sail § Contrary to their patent, the Pilgrims settle at Plymouth §
New Plymouth struggles with hardship and debt § Quarrels develop
among the London merchants § The joint stock company breaks up
§ The Pilgrims agree to purchase the merchants’ interest in the
company § The London investors were linked by common associations
Part II 47
The Colony looks to the fur trade to pay its debts § Three London
merchants agree to continue as Plymouth’s partners § The Pilgrims
encounter difficulties in the fur trade § Plymouth obtains a new
patent to protect its trading rights § Plymouth’s business agent
is dismissed for a “conflict of interest” § The colony and its
London partners dispute over their accounts § The London partners
quarrel among themselves § Through arbiters, Plymouth and London
reach a financial settlement § 1645--Plymouth’s debts, “hopeful and
desperate,” at last are discharged
Notes 69
Bibliography 79
Index of Personal Names 85
Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to thank all those who have assisted me with this
study. For careful reading of the manuscript and helpful suggestions,
I am particularly grateful to: Professor Bernard Bailyn, Harvard
University; Mr. Henry Hornblower II, President, Mr. David B. Freeman,
Director, and Mr. Arthur G. Pyle, Education Director, Plimoth
Plantation; Miss Juliette Tomlinson, Director, Connecticut Valley
Historical Museum; Dr. A. M. Millard, London, England.
I wish to give special thanks to Mrs. Millard for aid in research
in the Public Record Office, London, and to Professor Norma Adams,
Mount Holyoke College. The following persons were especially kind
in permitting use of the records in their custody: Miss Rose T.
Briggs, Director, and Mr. Warren Sampson in the Library, Pilgrim
Hall, Plymouth, Massachusetts; Mr. W. Wallace Austin, Curator, Old
Colony Historical Society, Taunton, Massachusetts; Miss Susan M.
Hare, Librarian, Goldsmiths’ Hall, London; Mr. John Bromley, Deputy
Librarian, Guildhall Library, London.
For permission to reproduce the engraving of the Royal Exchange of
London, I am indebted to Harper and Row, Inc., New York.
R. A. M.
Foreword
The story of Plymouth’s founding has been told many times, its simple
details transformed into a national legend. To reinterpret it and see
it in a new light is difficult, if not impossible. Yet the business
side of the Pilgrims’ undertaking is a relatively neglected aspect,
though Governor Bradford himself devoted many chapters to it. The
story has several familiar episodes--the support of Thomas Weston and
the company of merchant adventurers, the break-up of the company, and
the efforts of the leaders in Plymouth to pay its debts. The London
adventurers have often been described as hard-hearted profiteers, whose
innocent victims, the Pilgrims, were governed by religious enthusiasm
and without any business sense. We can understand better the real
financial problems in planting Plymouth by examining each one in turn.
We must begin with events in Holland and England and conclude with the
payment of all debts at the end of several decades.
The commercial affairs of this small colony have their own importance,
even if they are less acclaimed than the religious and political
experiment of the Pilgrims. They, too, reflect a constancy of purpose
and eventual success in mastering the practical requirements of the
first permanent settlement in New England. Regardless of hardships,
Plymouth held firm and survived, whereas earlier efforts to colonize
the rugged coasts to the north of Virginia had failed. As a business
venture, the colony provides an early example of business integrity and
responsibility.
Where does this venture belong in the larger canvas of English
expansion into the New World? An Englishman wrote recently[A] that
the Pilgrims’ importance has been greatly exaggerated. This is bound
to be the point of view of the mother island, from whose shores, in
the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, there scattered in various
directions a multitude of explorers, traders, and colonizers. Compared
with their total accomplishment, the work of the small band of
emigrants to Plymouth and of their petty capitalist backers appears
insignificant. To the American, on the other hand, their victory over
Plymouth’s starkness and meager resources, together with the leaders’
articulate faith and common sense, have taken on a symbolic quality
which tends to magnify their place in his early history. In fact,
students both of English expansion and of American origins find in the
materials for Plymouth’s history a rare opportunity to observe from
within the operation of one of the kind of small business partnerships
which originated many early English settlements.
[A] A. L. Rowse, _The Elizabethans and America_ (London, 1959), 130.
PART I
Financing the Plymouth Colony
The Pilgrims decide to emigrate to America
Of the motives which prompted the founding of New Plymouth, the search
of the members of John Robinson’s little English congregation at Leyden
for an assured religious freedom was certainly the foremost. If this
had been their only prospect, it appears that they might have remained
in Holland without persecution. They were dissatisfied, however,
with their hard economic lot. The most diligent labor brought them
little security even in the midst of the prosperous urban life of
the Netherlands. There were “fair and beautiful cities flowing with
abundance of all sorts of wealth.... Yet it was not long before they
saw the grim and ugly face of poverty coming upon them like an armed
man, with whom they must buckle and encounter....” The university town
of Leyden proved to be “not so beneficial for their outward means of
living and estate,” yet they “fell to such trades and employments as
they best could,” until they attained “a competent and comfortable
living ... with hard and continual labor.”
Most of those who emigrated from Leyden to Plymouth, like their friends
who remained behind, were artisans; several performed some operation
in clothmaking. William Bradford, for example, was a fustian weaver,
Robert Cushman was a wool-comber, and Isaac Allerton, formerly from
London, earned his bread as a tailor. Among the handicraftsmen were
watchmakers, cabinetmakers, carpenters, and makers of tobacco pipes.
Of all who took part in the Plymouth venture, less than a handful had
either the experience or capital to be a merchant or, as one might
call it, a capitalist. Edward Pickering, who did not take part in the
exodus, George Morton, and John Carver, who died in the colony’s first
year, were exceptions in having trading experience and some means.
Two of the leaders with a special competence in theological learning,
William Brewster and Edward Winslow, were printers.
As they went about their tasks, respected, yet earning only modest
incomes, the members of the English congregation at Leyden worried
about their children’s future prospects in a foreign country. The
young men were “oppressed with their heavy labours” and attracted
to soldiering and other occupations their parents considered full
of worldly temptation. They also dreaded renewal of the Dutch war
with Spain. Deeply aware that they were “men in exile and in a poor
condition,” they dreamed of a more satisfying life in “those vast and
unpeopled countries of America....” Some were eager to take up again
the familiar tasks of husbandry and looked forward to acquiring their
own houses and land. William Bradford, the historian of Plymouth,
asserts that while religious ideals were always basic to the founding
of their own community, an economic urge was also behind their fateful
decision. Pastor Robinson, on the other hand, feared that in removing
to America, his flock would “much prejudice both (their) ... arts and
means.”[1]
They obtain a patent and seek financial backing
The future emigrants now had to make several decisions. First, in
what part of the New World should they plant their colony; secondly,
how would they defray the heavy costs of shipping stores of food and
equipment required for a new settlement? By the time they sent two
agents to London in 1617, they had plunged deep into these questions.
Very likely the inexpensive contemporary pamphlets which extolled the
benefits of different parts of America helped the leaders at Leyden
to fix upon a site. They probably read, for example, the descriptive
brochures which the Virginia Company of London had issued in connection
with drives to raise money. Robert Harcourt’s _A Relation of a Voyage
to Guiana_ (1614) may have seriously tempted them to put to the test
the fruitful promise of tropical South America, but they were put off
by its unhealthy climate. Captain John Smith’s tract on New England
(1616), which Elder Brewster had in his library at the time of his
death, was consulted. Later, the Captain attributed the hardships
suffered at Plymouth to the settlers’ parsimony in using his “books
and Maps ... better cheap” than employing him in person as a guide
and counsellor. In the long discussions which preceded any action, it
was objected that settling too near the colony at Jamestown ran the
risk of Anglican religious persecution; on the other hand, it might be
dangerous to be far from help in case the Spaniards, the persistent
enemies of English expansion, attacked their infant colony. In the end,
“the Lord was solemnly sought in the Congregation by fasting and prayer
to direct us ...,” and it was decided to plant inside the bounds of
Virginia.[2]
John Carver and Robert Cushman, trusted members of the group, were the
agents selected to approach the political authorities and the Virginia
Company in London. They had to negotiate first the delicate matter
of how much religious toleration they would be allowed if they went
to Virginia. They sought help from influential friends in the inner
circle of the Company. Sir Edwin Sandys and Sir John Wolstenholme
intervened with the King and Privy Council to secure approval of a
statement of religious beliefs forwarded from Leyden to London. Sandys,
a leading colonial promoter, was treasurer of the Company after 1619.
As a wealthy merchant, whose financial interests included the colony
in Virginia, Wolstenholme was often consulted by the government on
commercial matters. Even the good offices of these important men
were not enough to win the approval of the royal or ecclesiastical
authorities. Not that the King himself, James I, was entirely
unfriendly to their plans. In a conversation with his Secretary of
State he is reported to have asked how the colony intended to support
itself. At the reply, “By fishing,” he was said to have exclaimed;
“So God have my soul, ’tis an honest trade, ’twas the apostles’ own
calling.”[3]
In spite of rebuffs, the agents from Leyden kept trying to secure
a patent for land from the Virginia Company. Crushing financial
difficulties had recently forced this body to give up underwriting
the Virginia colony by a single joint stock. Instead, small groups of
associates or partners were authorized to invest in separate stocks for
special purposes, such as selling supplies to the settlers. Several
groups of partners were also applying to the Company for grants of
land they meant to settle at their own expense. In fact, a few such
financially independent “private plantations” had already sent over
tenants and servants whom they were permitted to direct. It was
probably on such terms that the Leyden group hoped to obtain land and
to share in its control until the investors were paid off.
At the time of their first application to the Virginia Company the
little band of emigrants were depending upon certain “merchants and
friends” who had agreed to adventure with them, for the provision of
shipping and means. Bradford’s obscure chronology makes it puzzling as
to who these men were. Writing his _History_ much later than the events
he described, he seems to place in about February 1620 the offer of
support by Thomas Weston they finally accepted, although Weston must
have been associated with earlier plans. Several months before, the
Virginia Company had already granted them a patent in the name of John
Wincob, but the discouragement over the religious negotiations and the
state of turmoil in the Virginia Company’s management had made some
people withdraw their original promise to help. Meanwhile, two members
of the Leyden congregation, William Brewster and Thomas Brewer, were
in trouble with the English government for illegally publishing some
religious tracts. The danger of their capture was disheartening, as was
the news about Francis Blackwell, an elder of the English congregation
at Amsterdam, who had conducted a group to settle in Virginia. Together
with most of his shipmates Blackwell had perished in a vessel so
crowded that the 180 passengers were “packed together like herrings.”[4]
Some London merchants offer to invest in the colony
Fortunately, there now appeared in Leyden the venturesome fellow
countryman whose encouraging new proposals soon gave a lift to low
spirits. This was Thomas Weston, a London merchant who had trading
interests in the Low Countries. He persuaded the congregation to reject
the offers the Dutch West India Company had made to induce them to
plant in their territory. He promised, instead, that if the Virginia
Company failed to assist, he and his partners would do so.
Weston had served his apprenticeship and been admitted to the
Ironmongers Company, one of the London livery companies. A citizen of
London, he was altogether a minor figure in the English business world.
He engaged in the somewhat hazardous task of selling cloth and other
wares to the Low Countries as an “interloper,” that is, a trespasser
on the tight monopoly the Merchant Adventurers Company of London held
there. Although not an investor in Virginia, he evidently shared the
fever which was stimulating dreams of profit even in highly speculative
colonial ventures, and was willing to shift part of his funds to the
relatively untried business of shipping settlers to fish and trade in
the New World. It is also likely that he had some sympathy with the
religious views of the Leyden group.
For some years Weston’s agent at Amsterdam had been Edward Pickering,
a merchant married to a member of the Leyden congregation. He had left
England for religious reasons and enjoyed a reputation for honesty
and success as Weston’s factor. Perhaps it was during a routine visit
of Weston to his shop in Amsterdam that Pickering informed him of the
plans for emigration. None of the leaders at Leyden suspected that in
the long run Weston’s conduct would not bear out the brisk confidence
and easy promises with which he soon persuaded them to accept his
promise of assistance. Indeed, in a short time Pickering himself was
unable to obtain a proper reckoning of accounts with his employer
without returning to England and suing him for a large sum. Weston’s
finances finally became so crippled by debts, including those to some
of the partners in the Plymouth venture, that he left the country and
turned to small fishing voyages in New England.[5] This is looking
ahead of our story, however.
Weston had come to discern in the colonizing scheme commercial
prospects attractive enough to induce several other London businessmen
to join in an unincorporated company to send the Leyden congregation
overseas. Besides evidence to be presented later that to a certain
extent Puritan religious inclination prompted this support, it is
likely that the slump in the trade in woolen cloth, the traditional
mainstay of English commerce abroad, was also a factor influencing
their decision. The disturbance in the course of that trade due partly
to its reorganization by the Crown in 1614 helped favor an interest in
various new money-making projects. In the rapid growth and dislocation
characteristic of early seventeenth-century London relatively
few merchants had heard of New England, but Virginia’s financial
difficulties were well known. Captain John Smith had appealed in 1616
to investors in London and the ports of southwestern England to support
colonies to produce profits from the fish and furs of New England.
Fishermen, some sent by Londoners, already were sailing off the coast,
but Smith recommended settling there so that permanent posts could
lengthen the fishing season and permit cargos to be prepared for the
arrival of the fleets in the spring. Weston and his partners may have
regarded the Pilgrims as the human material to carry out such a plan.
Perhaps he suggested planting further north than Jamestown.
Be that as it may, this promoter was welcomed with enthusiasm when he
came to confer with Pastor Robinson and to reassure the discouraged
that there was no want of shipping or money. The next step was to
persuade his Leyden friends to draw up an agreement with his “merchant
adventurers,” and set forth in black and white the terms under which
they would receive aid and he could persuade his fellow-investors to
contribute.
1620--Pilgrims and merchants form a joint stock company
The discussions in England and Leyden over the articles of agreement
were protracted. Robert Cushman, as intermediary, thought he closed
a hard bargain with the “grasping” merchants. The terms of July 1,
1620, were not unlike those of other colonial enterprises tried in
Virginia and Bermuda. The entire capital, including lands, was to be
a joint stock fund, divided into shares. Every person over the age of
sixteen going to the new colony was rated at £10, and £10 was accounted
a single share. Any emigrant outfitting himself with £10 worth of
provisions was considered worth £20 or a double share. For example,
William Mullins, a well-to-do investor-planter, who died in the first
year, left in his will his stock of £40 worth of boots and shoes,
expecting it to increase to nine shares at the end of seven years. The
adventurers who contributed only money and stayed at home, and the
planters, were to continue the joint stock for seven years during which
time all profits from “trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing,
or any other means” must remain in the common stock. Then they would
divide equally the capital and profits, viz., lands, houses, and goods.
The common stock would furnish food, apparel, and provisions.
A good deal of controversy arose when it was learned that the
adventurers insisted on harsher terms than those in the original
agreement. The assets of the common stock, it was claimed, had not
included the houses and home lots of the settlers, nor were they to
work seven days a week, two days having been reserved for employment
for their own families. The future planters had some right here, for
they were the full partners and not the servants of the company. Robert
Cushman, who seems to have concealed the stiffer terms, nevertheless
vigorously defended them. When criticized by Pastor Robinson, who
considered him “... (though a good man and of special abilities in
his kind) yet most unfit to deal with other men by reason of his ...
too great indifferency for any conditions ...,” Cushman retorted to
Carver: “... what it is you would have of me I know not; for your
crying out, ‘Negligence, negligence,’ I marvel why so negligent a man
was used in the business.” If the disheartening new conditions insisted
on made many “ready to faint and go back,” he could only say that the
adventurers, other than Weston, would have withdrawn their help if he
had not altered the original ones. With much irritation he objected
to the “querimonies and complaints against me, of lording it over my
brethren and making conditions fitter for thieves and bondslaves than
honest men....” Bradford suggests that Carver never forwarded this
heated letter to Leyden, but its indignant tone suggests the vexations
which fretted the Pilgrims in their undertaking.[6]
The emigrants objected to the new articles and upon arrival in
Southampton from Holland rejected Cushman’s pleas. This refusal, even
though backed by their friends at Leyden and held to until Cushman
secured their adherence to the terms in 1621, unfortunately embittered
relations with the adventurers. Weston, coming down to Southampton to
see them off, “was much offended and told them they must then look to
stand on their own legs.” Bradford saw in this episode the origin of
the “discontent” which later developed between the planters and their
chief financial backer.
Despite difficulties and controversy, the colonists set sail
The preparation of the voyage presented practical problems the Pilgrims
were ill equipped to solve. The small number who sold their Leyden
property to convert it into shipping and stores, had no experience
along this line, and their ineptitude made Mr. Weston “merry with our
endeavours about buying a ship....” Edward Pickering was the most
knowledgeable of them in trade, but his money was not forthcoming,
even though Cushman and Weston had expected him to furnish “many
hundred pounds.” Pastor Robinson gave voice to pained surprise when he
discovered that at the time his flock had turned over the money raised
from their scanty possessions, Weston still withheld his own money and
had taken absolutely no steps to provide shipping.
The preparations in England bogged down while three purchasing agents
scattered their efforts to round up supplies, Cushman in London and
Kent, and Carver and Christopher Martin at Southampton. Martin was an
Essex man, a newcomer chosen to represent the “strangers” from Essex
and London whom the adventurers had recruited to swell the ranks of
the planters. He had taken part in settling the terms and was charged
with keeping track of matters at Southampton. This was a poor choice,
for Martin insulted the Leyden people, whose ways he probably despised.
When Cushman later called for an accounting and took up cudgels for
the complainers, Martin called them “froward and waspish, discontented
people.”[7]
In spite of all the “clamours and jangling” about the business end
of the voyage, there was one important accomplishment during the few
anxious months before the _Mayflower_ (180 tons) and the _Speedwell_
(60 tons) sailed from Southampton on August 5, 1620. Between £1200
and £1600 was raised to cover the expedition’s costs. Carver spent
£700 of this at Southampton. Unfortunately we do not know how much
was supplied by any particular investor. The £50 put in by Martin,
Cushman considered insignificant. £500 which the Ferrars, probably
John and Nicholas, prominent in the Virginia Company, had promised and
then, for some reason, withdrawn, is the only single large investment
mentioned. The amount John Carver furnished is not specified, but
he was credited by a later writer with having put in most of his
considerable substance. With seventy-odd “Gentlemen ... Merchants ...
[and] handy craftsmen” subscribing to the partnership, most investments
are likely to have been small. At the last minute the party had to sell
butter worth £60 to pay off a debt of £100. They left port dangerously
short of supplies, a fact which, as Cushman predicted, added to their
hardships in the New World.
Their financial difficulties also caused a fateful delay in beginning
their voyage. The August departure date was already too late to allow
time for crossing the Atlantic and building shelter in mild weather.
When the _Speedwell_, leaky and overmasted, forced the ships to put
back to land, a score of discouraged passengers withdrew from the
voyage. The _Mayflower_, now crowded with the entire group, departed
from Plymouth, leaving Robert Cushman behind to serve as chief agent
with the adventurers.
Contrary to their patent, the Pilgrims settle at Plymouth
The location where the Pilgrims planned to settle, and their rights to
it, were directly related to their future livelihood. Bradford says
that when they first made a landfall at Cape Cod they “resolved to
stand for the southward ... to find some place about Hudson’s River for
their habitation.” One of the earliest visitors to New Plymouth, John
Pory, wrote they had set out for Virginia with letters for the Governor
to “give them the best advise he could for trading in Hudson’s river.”
He blamed the master’s faulty navigation for bringing them to Cape Cod,
where the rough weather of early December forced them to decide not to
go southward, but to select a sheltered site nearby.[8] This turned out
to be New Plymouth.
The Pilgrims carried with them the patent John Peirce, an adventurer we
shall meet again, had taken out from the Virginia Company in February
1620. Realizing that it did not apply as far north as New England, the
chief colonists drafted the “Mayflower Compact” to avoid disputes over
the colony’s powers of government. The leaders probably knew before
they sailed that the old North Virginia Company had been revived under
Sir Ferdinando Gorges as the Council for New England. His grant had
been authorized in July 1620 but was not sealed until the _Mayflower_
was at sea. If before its departure there was any discussion of heading
north, Weston and his associates may have pointed out that later they
could solicit a grant from the Council in the Pilgrims’ behalf. When
the letters with the news of planting at Plymouth reached England
the next spring, they promptly secured such a grant. John Peirce was
again named as grantee in the indenture, dated June 1, 1621. Its terms
permitted Peirce and his associates to lay out 100 acres of land for
every person shipped over, and 1500 for public purposes. Besides giving
freedom to fish and trade along the coast, it underwrote the colony’s
authority to make laws. No boundaries were mentioned; a formal patent
was expected to specify them at a later date.[9]
New Plymouth struggles with hardship and debt
A successful relationship with the partners in England now lay at
the heart of the welfare of the infant colony. Even though some of
the London businessmen sympathized with the religious aims of the
Pilgrims, they expected the investment of their capital to yield a
return, and that rather quickly. Promotion of colonial ventures was new
and risky. Weston and the later leaders of the merchant adventurers
had not learned from the bitter experience of the large, incorporated
Virginia Company that a long time must elapse before any profit could
be expected from a colonial undertaking. They failed to calculate that
even if the colonists engaged promptly in trading furs or catching
fish, their initial task must be to build permanent dwellings and to
feed themselves and a fair number of women and children. They knew
that ships set forth annually by merchants had fished along the New
England coast for several years. These usually erected fishing stages
and sometimes traded for furs. They required only a modest outlay
by the investors in them and wound up their accounts at the end of
each voyage. It was much more costly, on the other hand, to uphold
a permanent settlement until it was self-sustaining. When even the
wealthy backers of Virginia and Bermuda complained about delayed
profits, the small group of capitalists supporting the Pilgrims
certainly could not afford to sink large funds for supplies year
after year without receiving goods in return. At the beginning they
apparently underestimated the extent of their task and seem to have
neglected consistently the necessary provision for the Plymouth colony.
The urgency of sending returns to these investors pressed on the
Pilgrims from the start. When the _Mayflower_ sailed home in 1621
without a profitable lading, Weston wrote a sharp criticism to the
Governor. He had been informed about how the high death rate and short
supplies had weakened the colony during the first dreadful winter,
yet he charged the settlers with greater “weakness of judgment than
weakness of hands. A quarter of the time you spend in discoursing,
arguing and consulting would have done much more.... The life of the
business depends upon the lading of this ship, which if you do to any
good purpose, that I may be freed from the great sums I have disbursed
for the former and must do for the latter [the _Fortune_], I promise
you I will never quit the business....”
Robert Cushman, the business agent in England, brought this rebuke
from the partners in November 1621. He came in the _Fortune_ to
inspect the colony briefly and to persuade the colonists to agree to
the conditions the adventurers had insisted on. He returned at once
to report his findings. The accomplishments of the first year appear
in the lively narrative, _Mourt’s Relation_ or _A Relation of the
beginning ... of the English Plantation settled at Plimoth_, printed
in 1622. Cushman, George Morton, William Bradford, and Edward Winslow
compiled this little tract to encourage the investors about the
colony’s progress. Although a bit rosy in coloring, it relates what
Cushman found.
New Plymouth was situated on a good harbor with plenty of fish and
woods close at hand. The settlers had built a fort at the top of the
hill and common storehouses containing the first harvest, the colony’s
precious arsenal and supplies from England. In the small, sturdy, frame
houses with roofs of thatch, scattered along the street running up the
hill, lived the survivors of the first winter’s illness and privation.
Their Indian friends, Squanto and Samoset, had helped them conciliate
the neighboring Indians and begin trade with them. William Bradford had
succeeded Governor Carver, with Isaac Allerton as his assistant.[10]
Yet an undercurrent of discontent and friction _Mourt’s Relation_ did
not mention disturbed the settlers. The system of sharing equally in
all the arduous labor and what it produced, was one source of unrest.
Upon the unloading of thirty-five newcomers sent in the _Fortune_
without proper clothing or “so much as a biscuit-cake or any other
victuals,” the most stout-hearted had a right to murmur at the addition
of extra consumers before another crop could be harvested. A gap
persisted between the Leyden immigrants and religious exiles, who had
ventured their persons and savings, and the London contingent, some of
them merely hirelings of the company. Bradford himself wrote Weston
about being “yoked with some ill-conditioned people who will never do
good....”
Since these strains threatened the successful execution of the
conditions with the London backers which he had just persuaded the
Pilgrims to sign, Cushman preached a sermon the Sunday before he left
on the text, “Let no man seek his own, but every man another’s wealth”
(1 Corinthians 10:24). Urging his hearers not to labor for self-love or
self-profit, he said: “Let there be no prodigal person to come forth
and say, Give me the portion of lands and goods that appertaineth to
me, and let me shift for myself.” No one must think of gathering riches
for himself until “our loving friends, which helped us hither, and now
again supplied us ...,” were paid off.[11]
Certainly the leaders of the colony had not been unmindful of their
responsibilities to the adventurers. Cushman’s ship was freighted with
good clapboard and two hogsheads of beaver and otter, a return cargo
they judged worth £500. Bad luck assailed them, however, in the first
of a series of disasters. A French privateer seized the vessel on its
way home and pillaged the returns they had collected with so much
effort.
Even so, it is hard for us to understand why the Pilgrims were
forced to endure such bitter hardship, indeed, at times, virtual
starvation, for a period of about two years after the _Fortune_’s
visit. They were continually disappointed at the failure to receive
replenishment of their scanty provisions, yet they had to share these
with newcomers whose arrival they did not expect. The explanation for
these harsh circumstances is to be found not so much in the colony as
among the partners in England. The situation was the result of three
major events: the defection of Thomas Weston from the ranks of the
adventurers; a quarrel with John Peirce over their patent; and the
irreparable rift developing inside the partnership itself, which was to
precipitate its final dissolution.
Quarrels develop among the London merchants
Up to now Weston had been the Pilgrims’ chief supporter in all the
business dealings with the London group. He had promised never to
fail them if only they signed the onerous terms required by the
latter. Before the plundered _Fortune_ returned to port, this giver of
plausible assurances was the first to desert them. One reason probably
was the dispute with his former factor in the Low Countries, Edward
Pickering. Near the end of 1621 Pickering left Amsterdam and broke off
dealings with Weston. In the suit about accounts connected with their
Dutch business, he asserted that Weston owed him hundreds of pounds. A
protracted legal wrangle, continued even after Pickering’s death and
after Weston had departed for New England, revealed the latter’s word
to be far from reliable. One witness claimed that he heard Weston’s
brother promise to give some kind of an accounting, not necessarily a
true account. Arbitrators investigating the contradictory claims of
both parties finally concluded that a matter of some £200 prevented a
settlement, but Weston, stubborn and contentious, filed a countersuit
against Pickering for a bond of £1500. It seems clear that other
adventurers for Plymouth agreed with Pickering in this contest, since
John Fowler, James Sherley, and Richard Andrews, as his executors,
continued the case after his death.
Weston meanwhile had written Bradford that he disagreed with the rest
of the adventurers over their course of action, reproaching them for
their “parsimony” in waiting for favorable receipts before they sent
provisions. Then he and another stockholder, John Beauchamp, sent out a
group of settlers on their own account as a private venture, entirely
distinct from the general stock. Weston’s men not only brought no
victuals for the colony, but relied on the Pilgrims to furnish them
necessary shelter and obliged them to dip into their own precious
stores of seed corn and salt.
Weston’s break with the company in London soon followed. The
adventurers held a meeting early in 1622, when the majority agreed to
put into the common fund what we might call an additional assessment
of one third of their original holding of stock. Those anxious to
go on with the business believed it should not be hindered by the
laggards, so they resolved to break off the joint stock as soon as the
shareowners in the colony should agree. This report of a decision to
break up came from Weston and his supporters, but it proved premature,
as indeed Bradford suspected so strongly that he did not show their
letter to more than a handful of intimates in counsel. Instead, Weston
got out. He wrote in April 1622: “I have sold my adventure and debts
unto them so as I am quit of you, and you of me....” The company’s
reaction was that they were “very glad they are freed of him, he being
judged a man that thought himself above the general....” Not unrelated
to his coming in person to New England in disguise and under an assumed
name may have been a large debt he owed the Crown for alum; a Treasury
warrant accused him of withdrawing beyond the seas with the purpose of
taking his estate after him.
Weston’s subsequent projects for colonizing and trading in New England
for some time created problems for the settlement at Plymouth. The
Pilgrims’ leaders more than repaid him for his early support by
receiving his men kindly and rescuing his rival colony on Massachusetts
Bay from imminent destruction by the Indians. When the promoter himself
arrived at their door, virtually destitute, but convincing in his
excuses, they fitted him out with enough furs to begin trade again.
Master John Peirce was the next to quarrel with his fellow adventurers
in London. A member of the Clothworkers’ Company, Peirce claimed that
he once employed more than a hundred persons. He was the merchant
who had received patents for the Leyden settlers from the Virginia
Company in 1620 and later from the Council for New England. He had
helped negotiate the terms of agreement between the merchants and the
planters. It was under his name that they held the right to take up
land around Plymouth. This had made him important enough for Cushman
to dedicate _Mourt’s Relation_ to him. In April 1622, according to the
story Bradford told, a version accepted uncritically by many writers,
Peirce secretly obtained from the Council for New England a new grant,
making the associates hold the lands at Plymouth as his tenants, rather
than of the Council. The London adventurers objected and forced him to
assign the grant to their Treasurer, now James Sherley, in return for
which Peirce demanded £500. The impression is left that Peirce deceived
the company and that they were justified in breaking with him.
Peirce, on the other hand, presented his side in a lawsuit in
Chancery against Sherley and the other New Plymouth adventurers. It
is unfortunate that the answers to the charges do not survive. Peirce
claimed an investment of £300 in the colony, reporting that when the
adventurers, “being moved by the distressed condition of the Planters
... in that place foreign to them and a vast desert,” wished to furnish
relief, they couldn’t raise the money. At the request of Sherley,
Peirce then tried to sustain the plantation by putting up funds to
outfit the ill-starred _Paragon_. This vessel, hired from Peirce by
the adventurers, sailed twice in the fall and winter of 1622–23 with
freight and passengers, chiefly women and children. When wintry seas
forced her to turn back the second time, Peirce said that, although
the adventurers had promised that he should not suffer any losses from
the voyage, contrary to such agreement, he bore the entire loss. After
Peirce was unable to refit his ship at Portsmouth quickly enough to
suit the adventurers, the latter sent a writ from Admiralty to arrest
him for £600. Under his brother Richard’s bond, the merchant returned
to London, where the adventurers “made a great clamour against ...
[him] for some supposed unjust dealing....” They attempted to buy out
his indenture, ultimately succeeding in obtaining from Peirce’s brother
a £500 bond to deliver it. This compelled Peirce to sign it over to
Sherley; besides he lost the chance to recoup his loss by another
voyage. In spite of a complex series of legal maneuvers (Bradford
wrote that Peirce “sued them in most of the chief courts in England
... [and] brought it to the Parliament”), he was unable to regain his
investment and reported that he suffered such inconvenience and damaged
reputation that he emerged a poor man.
While John Peirce held the title to the Plymouth lands “in trust,”
he seems to have acted within his legal rights in his maneuver to
exchange the indenture of 1621 for a new patent, but his purpose in
doing so without informing his associates in London and New Plymouth
is not clear. It evidently so angered them that when they found out
they stubbornly refused to settle with him and pay the £500 fee he
demanded. They probably were not unwilling to ruin him. Bradford, on
the other hand, gave short shrift to the fact that the _Paragon_ sailed
at Peirce’s charge and clearly accepted the opinion of the adventurers
that God had directed her mishaps against him because of his action on
the patent.[13]
The joint stock company breaks up
Meanwhile the most active of the remaining adventurers had determined
to forget the fiasco of the _Paragon_ and prepared two vessels, the
_Anne_ and the _Little James_, to carry a “large and liberal” supply
and a contingent of passengers intending to settle. Both arrived in
Plymouth in the summer of 1623. A great part of the adventurers’ hope
for profit rested in the _Little James_, a small pinnace built to
remain in the colony for its use. Bradford said “the adventurers did
overpride themselves in her,” for her troubles began even on the way
over. Because her commission allowed her to capture prize vessels, when
the captain failed to seize a French vessel, the crew became “rude” and
mutinous, claiming they were hired on shares for privateering, and not
for employment in fishing or trade. Before they would sail on colony
business, Bradford was obliged to negotiate wage contracts with them.
The _Little James’_ first voyage to the Narragansett country returned
without success, because she was not equipped with trading goods to
match what the Dutch could offer the Indians. A series of calamities
assailed her; she lost her mast, and later, through negligence, sank
off the Maine coast. The loss of this voyage and the cost of raising
her came to about £400 or £500. In the next step of her unhappy career,
she was seized on her return to England by one of the adventurers for a
debt owed him by the others.[14]
Emmanuel Altham, the _Little James’_ captain, himself an adventurer,
expressed the hopes of the English businessmen for the little
plantation. He had observed the efforts of the “honest men” of Plymouth
to “do, in what lies in them, to get profit to the adventurers,” and
he anticipated that fishing voyages, collection of beaver, as well as
of timber, were all ways of raising their returns. Yet he warned those
back home that provisions for twelve months at least were needed to
allow the settlers time for building houses and making a success of
these different enterprises.[15]
New Plymouth at first had expected to engage in fishing, by now the
source of successful returns to many small West Country merchants whose
ships were cruising up and down the New England coast and then carrying
dried fish to market in southern Europe. The colony’s most ambitious
attempt in this direction did, indeed, secure a patent for Cape Ann
from Lord Sheffield, taken in the names of Robert Cushman and Edward
Winslow. Yet the hope that the Pilgrims “could fall once into the right
course” for profitable fishing and saltmaking proved unfounded. The
first fishing season was a failure; the boatmaker died; the saltmaker
turned out to be incompetent. The colony almost lost to rivals the
fishing stage erected on Cape Ann. Even the title to the land had flaws
in it. In short, this ended “that chargeable business” and added only
bitterness to the adventurers’ cup.[16]
The seven-year partnership between the London adventurers and the
planters at Plymouth, unless renewed, as once had been suggested,
was to end about 1627 or 1628. In fact, the succession of blighted
hopes and dissensions just described dissolved it earlier. Several
innovations prepared the way for a new arrangement satisfactory both to
the colonists and to their English supporters.
After two harvests the colony itself had decided that the task of
raising food for the settlers would prosper only if it was separated
from that of earning profits for London. In 1623 a parcel of land was
allotted to each man to till for his family and to maintain those who
were exempt from agricultural employment because of other duties. In
abandoning the “common course and condition” everyone worked harder
and more willingly. The food problem was ended, and after the first
abundant harvest under individual cultivation, the Pilgrims did not
have to endure the meager rations of the first years. The plots
assigned them permanently in 1624 became privately owned in 1627.
Three heifers and a bull sent over by the adventurers in response to
Bradford’s request throve and multiplied, so there was cattle to be
divided among the households when the general stock was terminated.[17]
[Illustration:
Print by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1644
reproduced here through the courtesy of the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
]
The alliance between the London adventurers and the colony began to
crack as early as 1623, when several men arrived in Plymouth “upon
their own Particulars.” This meant they were not financed by the joint
stock and thus had no share in the land or profits common to the
company; they were also free from employment for the common good. John
Oldham and his associates, arriving in the _Anne_, were the first.
Those of the “particulars” who accepted Bradford’s terms and stayed
soon displayed jealousy over the details providing for their inclusion
as members of the colony. The Reverend John Lyford, a Puritan clergyman
sent over by the adventurers, probably to restrain the Separatist
tendency of the Pilgrims, succeeded in fanning to flame the friction
smoldering among the colonists who held different religious views.
While Bradford’s scathing condemnation of Lyford is clearly biased,
it must be admitted that the minister was a malcontent and hypocrite,
to specify some of his more mentionable sins. He and Oldham secretly
wrote letters full of disgruntled complaints to the company about
how things were run. For example, the “particulars” disliked their
exclusion from the fur trade and the restrictions giving them so
small a voice in government. Fortunately, Bradford intercepted their
letters and held them until the elements of ferment gave rise to a
public display of the Oldham-Lyford opposition. The Governor skillfully
suppressed the dissidents, but when Lyford’s friends among the
adventurers in England heard about it, their distrust of the Pilgrims’
independent religious polity boiled over into indignation. Other
controversial issues, such as whether to send Pastor Robinson to join
his flock in Plymouth, coming together with all the financial losses,
now brought about such a gaping chasm in the company that it “broke in
pieces.”[18]
One group of the adventurers, led by Treasurer Sherley, remained
sympathetic to the Pilgrims and wrote that they did not care whether
the colony yielded worldly riches, provided it was rich in grace and
walking with God. Sherley, especially, defended it against the charges
of waste and inefficiency brought by its attackers. Perhaps he made
allowances based on the same information as reported by Emmanuel Altham
that “the burden lieth on the shoulder of some few who are both honest,
wise and careful. And if it were not for them few, the plantation would
fall, and come to nothing--yea, long before this time....” Altham
blamed the company for sending over so many helpless people and for the
fact that the planters had not enough “good trucking stuff to please
the Indians.”
When the dissolution took place, Sherley reported as the chief reason
“the many crosses and losses and abuses by sea ... which have caused
us ... so much charge, and debts ... as our estates ... were not able
to go on without impoverishing ourselves, and much hindering if not
spoiling our trades and callings....” Even the faction deserting on
the pretense of Brownism in the colony, suffered from the same want of
money which was “such a grievous sickness now-a-days ... that it makes
men rave and cry out....”[19] He referred, of course, to the depressed
economic conditions carried over into the reign of Charles I.
The Pilgrims agree to purchase the merchants’ interests in the company
It took two years of negotiations before the adventurers agreed with
Isaac Allerton to accept the following terms for winding up the
old stock. They signed them in London on November 16, 1626. Then,
reluctantly but courageously, the members of the colony known as the
“Undertakers” pledged their own credit to carry them out. The forty-two
adventurers signing the composition in London[20] consented to sell to
their associates in New Plymouth all the shares of the stock in the
lands or merchandise up to now belonging to them both. The “generality”
in Plymouth in turn undertook to pay £1800 in annual installments of
£200 each, to be paid at the west side of the Royal Exchange in London,
beginning in September 1628. The five merchants designated to receive
the payments were John Pocock, John Beauchamp, Robert Keane, Edward
Bass, and James Sherley. The Pilgrims also assumed £600 remaining of
the debts of £1400 which Sherley reported the company owed in 1624.
How this compared as a return with the original sums invested in the
plantation at Plymouth, we do not know. Captain John Smith reported in
1624 that altogether £7000 had been spent, and it has been suggested
that £5600 of this was share capital, and £1400 debts, so that in
repaying £1800 the colony was giving back to the London adventurers
only one third of the share capital.[21]
The London investors were linked by common associations
As we move beyond the period dominated by the company of merchant
adventurers, how are we to characterize this group? What was their
usual form of business, and had they other colonial interests besides
Plymouth? Did they sympathize with the religious aims of the emigrants,
or were they simply indifferent to them as long as profits beckoned?
Captain John Smith’s statement that Plymouth was financed by “... about
70. some Merchants, some handy-crafts men, some adventuring great sums,
some small, as their estates and affections served,” is revealing, but
to discover answers to these questions requires close analysis of the
names of the individual subscribers.
This is the complete list of merchants known to have invested in
the Colony. It includes the signers of the composition of 1626 as
Bradford recorded them in his Letterbook, and, in brackets, five
other persons. Names have been rearranged alphabetically. Spellings
follow Bradford.
Robert Allden
Emm. Alltham
Richard Andrews
Thomas Andrews
Lawrence Anthony
Edward Bass
John Beauchamp
Thomas Brewer
Henry Browning
William Collier
[Christopher Coulson]
Thomas Coventry
Thomas Fletcher
Thomas Goffe
[William Greene]
Peter Gudburn
Timothy Hatherley
Thomas Heath
William Hobson
Robert Holland
Thomas Hudson
Robert Kean
Eliza Knight
John Knight
Myles Knowles
John Ling
Thomas Millsop
Thomas Mott
Fria. Newbald
[John Peirce]
William Penington
William Penrin
[Edward Pickering]
John Pocock
Daniel Poynton
William Quarles
John Revell
Newman Rookes
Samuel Sharp
James Sherley
John Thorned
Matthew Thornhill
Joseph Tilden
Thomas Ward
[Thomas Weston]
John White
Richard Wright
If Smith’s figure of seventy is correct, the survival of a partial
list of subscribers is a handicap, for about one third are completely
unknown. Thomas Weston, John Peirce, Edward Pickering, Christopher
Coulson, and William Greene should be added to the list. A little
less than half have been identified as London merchants, but their
major contribution to the Colony’s support entitles them to close
inspection. John White was a Puritan lawyer in London, while Emmanuel
Altham belonged to a family of landed gentry. Many names are so
obscure that it has not proved practicable to seek them out. It may be
inferred, however, that the nonmercantile adventurers included some
with background in a craft, such as that of the printer, Thomas Brewer.
At the time of the _Mayflower_’s expedition most of the sponsors
were relatively young and attained maturity during the two or three
decades after 1620, when some became prominent in the City and in the
parliamentary opposition to Charles I.
Just as the threads in a tapestry vary in color, but the pattern of
the weave repeats itself, so with the detailed circumstances of the
careers of the adventurers. Most of those we know belonged to one of
London’s livery companies and were citizens. They held company or
City offices; some were listed in a particular ward as wealthy enough
to be noted by Crown officials as men of substance. One rose to the
important role of Lord Mayor. The merchants were engaged in foreign
trade and kept a shop or place of business in the heart of London. The
crowded, narrow streets and lanes adjoining the widest thoroughfare,
Cheapside, or close to the river, near London Bridge, then “replenished
on both sides with fair and beautiful buildings, inhabitants for the
most part rich merchants,” were their surroundings. They met to settle
debts and accounts in the arcades of the handsome building of the Royal
Exchange in Cornhill or in one of the taverns. The shipowners among
them said goodbye to their captains from the wharves lining the Thames,
the famous waterway connecting London with the sea. Some traveled on
business to the Netherlands. The members of companies could attend
meetings and feasts in a well-appointed hall, such as the Goldsmiths’
in Foster Lane, or on occasion one of the great banquets the Lord
Mayor gave at the Guildhall. They worshiped in the numerous parish
churches, and doubtless others, besides Robert Keane, often heard
lecturers or noted Puritan preachers, such as Hugh Peter. Sherley and
Beauchamp, at least, had an additional residence across the river in
Surrey; others held lands at some distance from the City. Like all
merchants of their time, they were apt to have connections with the
gentry; Thomas Andrews was himself knighted by Cromwell for service to
the parliamentary cause.
Thomas Andrews, in fact, was one of the most notable merchants attached
to the Puritan and parliamentary cause in the English Civil Wars.
Although not a member of an older family of wealth, he succeeded in
acquiring riches and a leading role in politics and finance under
the Commonwealth and Protectorate. In 1638 he became master of the
Leathersellers, his company. A share in collecting customs revenue
for the Crown provided him with what was usually a profitable
investment. Subsequently, he served the City as alderman and arrived
at the pinnacle of office as Lord Mayor in 1649. At the beginning of
the conflict with the King, this ambitious merchant served on the
City’s all-important Militia Committee, which, besides controlling
London forces, was “largely responsible for organizing money for the
parliamentary army.” One of the committees he served as treasurer,
collected about £1,000,000. He helped manage money raised for putting
down the Irish Rebellion and by selling lands confiscated from the
King and Royalists. Andrews himself contributed huge sums to the
parliamentary forces. Both Edward Winslow, a Plymouth colonist, and
James Sherley were his fellow members on other commissions, one to
judge treasons against the Commonwealth and the other to dismiss
ministers and schoolmasters thought to be “insufficient,” i.e., not
conforming to Puritan standards. In the later political struggle
between the Independents and Presbyterians, Andrews belonged to
the Independent party. It is difficult to explain in a short space
how these groups differed about church government and politics.
Roughly speaking, an English Independent developed ideas of religious
toleration, self-government for each congregation, and opposition to a
state church, which were rejected by Presbyterians. New Englanders, on
the other hand, enforced the congregational form of church government.
It is probable that a London merchant who had arrived at the position
of Independency by the 1640s would have sympathized earlier with the
religious views of the settlers of New England.
Andrews’ business interests were widely scattered in trade,
colonization, land speculation, and finance. He joined the effort
of the Massachusetts Bay Company to found a Puritan refuge in New
England; he agreed to lend it £25 and later became one of a group of
“Undertakers” who took over its debts in 1634. In the 1640s he had
a crucial role in financing new trades pioneered by the East India
Company. As a director of that Company for many years, he was required
to own at least £1000 of stock. At one time he invested in a rival
syndicate which traded on the Malabar Coast of India; another of its
schemes was to plant a colony on the West Coast of Africa. Eventually,
Andrews came to co-operate with the Company and rose to be its
governor.[22] These varied mercantile enterprises, and they could be
extended into land dealings, suggest that the young Thomas Andrews was
induced to support the Plymouth venture by calculations of profit as
well as initial approval of its religious aims.
On the whole, however, the religious bonds of the London backers of
Plymouth Colony have received too little attention and their mercenary
objectives have been contrasted too sharply with the purity of motive
of the Pilgrims. In the Massachusetts Bay Company, on the other hand,
it is acknowledged that the investors shared “Puritan” religious and
political ends inspiring them to encourage colonial ventures. This
company included among its members nine Londoners who previously had
been adventurers in the founding of Plymouth. These were Richard
Andrews, Thomas Andrews, just described, Christopher Coulson, Thomas
Goffe, Robert Keane, John Pocock, John Revell, Samuel Sharpe, and John
White.[23] Let us glance at the background of each and consider its
relation to his participation in both plantation schemes.
Richard Andrews persisted in a business career rather than sharing the
prominence of his brother in government affairs. He remained interested
in Plymouth even after 1626, becoming a partner with the “Undertakers.”
Thus, he certainly was not one of the adventurers whom Treasurer
Sherley described as offended by the Colony’s form of religious
worship. His enthusiasm for New England extended to Massachusetts Bay.
He, too, lent it money and entered the syndicate of those who furnished
supplies after 1634. He was a member of the Haberdashers’ Company,
a renowned sponsor of Puritan preachers. His business was conducted
at the sign of the Mermaid near the Cross in Cheapside; this was a
well-known tavern in Bread Street with an entrance from Cheapside. Late
in the 1620s he owned shares in the ships _Rebecca_ (200 tons), the
_Jane_ (200 tons), and the _Roebuck_ (80 tons), all of which received
letters of marque to capture pirates. Another of his ships prepared
to undertake a voyage to Massachusetts early in 1645. Most of his
trading probably was with the Netherlands, where in 1632 his factor ran
afoul of Sir Paul Pindar, a wealthy merchant who shared in collecting
customs revenue and was privileged to hold a patent for alum. Andrews
and the factor were charged with bringing in some alum contrary to
Pindar’s patent. In the 1640s Andrews spent several years in Rotterdam,
where there was a trading center of the Merchant Adventurers; he may
have been a member of that organization selling English cloth abroad.
Andrews’ search for profit doubtless helped direct him to invest
in New England, but his gifts to the poor and to the ministers of
Massachusetts substantiate John Winthrop’s claim that the donor was a
“godly man,” consistently dedicated to Puritan causes. He even sent a
gift to the Indians to be distributed by John Eliot and Thomas Mayhew.
This included “8 little books against swearing,” “3 books against
drunkenness,” and “2 dozen of small books called the rule of the New
Creature,” all summoning up Puritan themes.[24]
Christopher Coulson was named in Peirce’s suit as an assistant of the
New Plymouth Company, but he had withdrawn before the composition.
While deciding not to participate in Isaac Allerton’s investment in the
Maine fur trade, he did become an assistant of the Bay Company. Coulson
was a dyer of cloth. As one of the well-to-do citizens of Dowgate Ward,
he served on the City’s Common Council and, with Thomas Andrews, on the
Militia Committee.[25]
Too deep an involvement in colonial ventures was likely to harm one’s
credit. The first deputy governor and treasurer of the Massachusetts
Bay Company, Thomas Goffe, sank into heavy debt for a time, part
contracted for Winthrop personally and part for the Company. Goffe
complained bitterly when, in a difference with Winthrop, he received
no payment. As a shipowner with a share in the _Welcome_ and in two
other vessels which seem to have crossed the Atlantic, he wrote that
his shipowning was far from successful in 1630, the year of the initial
Winthrop voyage. His affairs were “in an ambiguous and desperate
estate” until some of his creditors, pitying him, took over part of
the plantation debts and lent him enough capital to begin trading
again. Though he suffered financial loss from the Puritan venture in
Massachusetts, Goffe perhaps derived a greater measure of satisfaction
from his donation to another Puritan cause. Along with a number of
other Londoners he supported a daily lecture at the Church of St.
Antholin’s. This afforded Puritan ministers and lecturers a platform
for their views until the government suppressed the society, known as
the Feoffees of Impropriations, which had been active in raising money
to encourage a preaching ministry in London and elsewhere.[26]
By investing in the Pilgrims’ colony, John Pocock began what was a
long association with New England. John Peirce called this merchant a
leader in its support, and even after the composition Pocock extended
it credit. Recruited as an officer in the Bay Company, he continued his
generosity to that colony for about a quarter of a century. In fact,
after Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter had concluded a mission in England in
Massachusetts’ behalf, Pocock succeeded them as London agent; he also
offered his shop in Watling Street, where he conducted business as a
merchant taylor and woolen draper, to exhibit their disputed accounts.
A fifteen years’ wait for payment of about £150 worth of cloth he had
sent in 1641 to assist Massachusetts, did not deter him from investing
substantially in John Winthrop Jr.’s project for establishing ironworks
at Braintree, Massachusetts. Pocock fully sympathized with Puritanism
and the parliamentary opposition to the King, as demonstrated by his
contributions to the St. Antholin’s lectureship and his inclusion
among the promoters of the London scheme to raise money for troops to
help crush the Irish Rebellion. Parliament next made him one of the
officials to whom were entrusted the Anglican church revenues so that
they might be converted to the use of new Puritan preachers.[27] John
Pocock’s range of activities indicates that he, too, looked kindly on
Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay as outposts of Puritan influence.
Three of the merchants who had subscribed to the Plymouth venture,
Robert Keane, John Revell, and Samuel Sharpe, actually emigrated to
Massachusetts. The first to come over was Samuel Sharpe, who arrived in
Salem as a member of the council chosen to assist Governor Endecott and
to serve as business agent for the merchant, Matthew Cradock. In fact,
Sharpe carried over the copy of the Company’s new patent. Had Endecott
died, he was one of two designated to take over the government of the
colony. Sharpe settled in Salem and became a freeman in 1632.[28]
John Revell’s part in financing the early Bay venture was clearly more
important, however. Not only was he an assistant of the Massachusetts
Bay Company, but he took a one-sixteenth share in a large ship for the
transport of passengers and supplies to New England the Company could
not afford. He also contributed £40 for freight during preparation for
the 1630 fleet of vessels. He came aboard Winthrop’s vessel for dinner
during the crossing, returning to his own under the salute of a volley
of three shots. It is not known why he returned to England after a few
weeks. He must have planned to stay, as his wife and children were with
him. Back in London he belonged to the group of “Undertakers” supplying
the Massachusetts plantation.[29]
The mind and temper of the final emigrant, Robert Keane, is clearer
to us than that of any other adventurer in New Plymouth, with the
possible exception of James Sherley. No career could illustrate better
the compatibility of a calculated design to add to one’s wealth in the
New World with the satisfaction of a sensitive Puritan conscience. At
the same time that he was improving his worldly estate in London and
Boston, Keane was walking the paths of salvation, he hoped, leaving
in the interesting document, his last will and testament, a full
discussion of both objectives. His account books, numerous as they
were, can hardly have exceeded in bulk the handwritten ledgers he
filled with comments on Scriptural books and on the sermons he had
heard. In London, he laboriously noted in 1627 and 1628 the contents
of discourses in several churches, including the famed St. Stephen’s,
Coleman Street, where he listened to Mr. John Davenport, and one at
Hackney visited by Master Hugh Peter. He attended some of the lectures
at St. Antholin’s but most often, service at what he calls “Cornhill,”
probably either St. Michael, Cornhill, or St. Peter’s, Cornhill.
Between attending several services a month and writing down what was
said, he gave a good deal of earnest thought to religion.
In his business career, Keane asserted that he was “self-made,” with
no inheritance from his father. After apprenticeship in the Merchant
Taylors’ Company, he took a shop in Birchin Lane, a street where the
sellers of clothing displayed their wares. Either because of his
fortunate marriage to the daughter of a gentleman or, more likely,
because of success in business which enabled him to accumulate an
estate of some £2000 or £3000, he enjoyed the modest rewards of a
prosperous citizen, such as membership in the Honourable Artillery
Company of London. His routine business included supplying liveries for
the pages and footmen of the Lord Chamberlain. Keane was associated
with James Sherley and the other merchants who furnished Plymouth
with capital and direction. With Sherley he signed a letter to the
colonists in 1624, and Peirce mentions him as an “assistant.” In the
list of 1626, Keane was among the five designated to receive the £1800
to be paid by the Colony. In the Massachusetts Bay Company he was one
of the inner ring of “Undertakers.” Keane was also the leading spirit
in the organization of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of
Massachusetts. He served as the first captain of this military company,
the earliest to be chartered in America.
The religious pressures upon a conscience like Keane’s are
unmistakable, for amidst all the troubles he suffered in Massachusetts
he described the new commonwealth, in its closeness to the Gospel, as
little different from that which had summoned him to leave England in
1635. Of those who came to Boston, he was remarkable for his wealth
and his successful application of it to new kinds of profitable
transactions, such as investment in land and trade to Bermuda or the
West Indies. In time, he installed his son, Benjamin, in Birchin Lane
in London to act as his agent and to sell cloaks. Keane’s career is
a model of the intertwining of “merchandise, reading and writing,”
all matters of importance to Puritans anxious to redeem their time on
earth.[30]
Most London Puritans whose interests embraced first Plymouth and then
Massachusetts Bay were merchants, but one was a prominent lawyer of
the Middle Temple. This was “Counsellor” John White, so called to
distinguish him from the minister, John White of Dorchester, another
leader in New England colonization. The lawyer John White became an
investor in the latter’s enterprise, the Dorchester Company. Many
activities mark him as a sympathizer with nonconformity, but his
record with the New Plymouth venture suggests that he was one of the
adventurers opposed to Separatism. While these were debating hotly the
treatment Bradford had meted out to Lyford, partly for his use of the
Book of Common Prayer, the faction favoring Lyford chose John White to
be moderator in their interest. On terminating his interest in Plymouth
in 1626, he perhaps was the lawyer John Peirce chose to arbitrate in
his behalf in the course of his lawsuit against the adventurers. By
becoming one of the Lay Feoffees, a group of trustees raising money
to support the preachers they favored in the churches, White lent his
name to one of the most dangerous of the Puritan efforts to oppose the
policy of strict conformity insisted on by English authorities. He
attended meetings of the early Massachusetts Bay Company and perhaps at
one time contemplated emigration to New England, as suggested by one
of John Winthrop’s correspondents. Remaining in London, he became a
strong influence instead in settling such difficult problems as whether
the prospective emigrants or the London merchants were to control the
joint stock. A friend of Winthrop wrote in 1640 of this consistent
friend of Massachusetts: “... there is so little money stirring to be
exc[h]anged for the Plantation and so many hands to catch for it, that
there is no hopes of obtaining any ... nor of Mr. White the Lawyer ...
it being disposed some other way....” John White’s greatest service
to Puritanism and the parliamentary cause came when he was chosen to
serve for Southwark in the Long Parliament. There he presided over
two committees, one to replace “scandalous” ministers with Puritan
preachers, and the other to care for ministers who had been “plundered”
by the preceding government. A little of the affectionate regard in
which he was held may be observed in that when he died in 1645, the
House of Commons accompanied his body to Middle Temple Church for
burial.[31]
So much for the investors in both the New England colonies. What we
know of the other New Plymouth adventurers does not contradict the
sketch set forth of men of moderate prosperity or wealth, Puritan in
religious outlook, and usually of some prominence in the City’s affairs
in the period of the Civil Wars. It remains to discuss more fully the
two merchants who, along with Richard Andrews, did most to maintain
the credit of the Plymouth “Undertakers” after 1627. These were John
Beauchamp and James Sherley.
A member of the Salters’ Company, Beauchamp was an early associate of
Thomas Weston, with whom he furnished the _Sparrow_, a small vessel
sent to Plymouth on private account in 1622. Like Weston he had traded
as an “interloper” to the Low Countries from about 1612 to 1619. In
the composition, Beauchamp was one of the five chosen to receive
payment of the settlement money, and Sherley requested that he be
joined with him as agent or factor in London for the “Undertakers.”
Another New England colonial interest of his was the Muscongus patent
in which Edward Ashley served as agent in fur trade with the Indians.
The merchant also had a share in at least one ship which received a
commission to take pirates. About 1640 he was judged to be not among
the first, but the third, rank of citizens able to contribute to the
King’s financial needs. Beauchamp lent money to various persons and
apparently was rigorous in collection, for even Sherley described
him as “somewhat harsh,” while a debtor’s widow, suing him, accused
him of “unconscionably” prosecuting her at law after her husband had
discharged his debt to him. This appears to be in character with the
attitude we shall see he assumed in the winding up of the Pilgrims’
debts.[32]
James Sherley’s career is indeed the central one among the London
merchant supporters of the colony at Plymouth. In December 1624, when
he was thought to be fatally ill, his generosity was called “the only
glue of the company.” Without his “unfeigned love” for the Pilgrims,
his patience and willingness to disregard the harsh judgments of the
dissatisfied adventurers, it was said that the project would have
failed.
Sherley was apprenticed to his father, Robert Sherley, as a goldsmith
in 1604, and became a full member of the Goldsmiths’ Company in
1612. Like several other members of his family he remained in close
association with the Company throughout his life, although it is clear
that he did not follow the craft of making plate or objects of gold and
silver. Instead, he was in trade. Yet he was first active in Company
business through his collection of Company rents, and he was chosen
to take part in the ceremonial occasions of the Goldsmiths. On Lord
Mayor’s Day, 1633, attired in a rich livery gown “furred with Foynes,”
Sherley appeared at dinner at the Guildhall to “welcome the Lords
Ladies & other guests.” On another occasion, before dining with members
of a neighboring company, he joined them in a special service at St.
Mary Woolnoth’s. Beginning with the office of assistant, and refusing
the third wardenship in 1639, he had risen to the Company’s highest
office, that of prime warden, by 1644. In this capacity he attended
frequent wardens’ and court meetings and presided over a complex amount
of Company business involving leases, loans, relations to the Mint, and
other matters. Goldsmiths’ Hall, in Foster Lane, was a busy center for
financial transactions.
Sherley’s own London address is something of a puzzle. Letters were
directed to him in 1623 both as “dwelling on London bridge at the
Golden hoospyte,” and to Crooked Lane. His brother John had a shop on
London Bridge; perhaps in early years they shared a dwelling among the
fine merchants’ houses erected there. Crooked Lane was a winding artery
in Candlewick Ward, the site of a noted Dutch tavern; this may have
been where James Sherley maintained his business address. Like many
others who had left the stench, noise, and possible plague of London,
he later had a home in Clapham, Surrey, then a rural environment. He
wrote Bradford of carrying his records there in 1636 when the plague
was raging in London.
It was from Clapham that Sherley was chosen to serve in the public
capacities then filled by men of substance. He was a member of
the Surrey committee for levying assessments for the militia.
In confirmation of the strong religious tendency evident in his
correspondence with Bradford, he was an elder in the Croydon Classis
in Surrey, formed during a reorganization of the English Church along
Presbyterian lines. The New England Company, erected to spread the
Gospel to the Indians, included him among its members. Parliament made
him one of a Surrey group appointed in 1652 to deal with the problem
of supplying proper ministers and schoolmasters in the churches of his
county. His son was granted the right to administer his will in Clapham
in 1657.[33]
Early in his business career Sherley very likely was connected with
the Netherlands trade, for he was sufficiently friendly with Edward
Pickering, Weston’s agent, who died in 1623, to be one of the executors
of his will; in 1630 he wrote that he had spent nearly three months in
Holland. In underwriting the Plymouth “Undertakers,” he perhaps was
committed financially as deeply as he could afford, for he did not join
the Massachusetts Bay Company. He did own ships in the New England
trade, however, one of which was hired by Isaac Allerton. He had a
share in the Ashley scheme in Maine and in voyages to Massachusetts
Bay. The latter colony owed him money in 1648.[34]
Nothing has been discovered about the remaining adventurers to alter
the character of the group as described above; they were chiefly
Puritan merchants, possessed of substantial means but not great wealth.
It is true that Robert Alden, a prosperous salter, at the opening of
the Civil Wars adhered to the Royalist minority of London citizens.
William Greene, described as “one of the most religious of the
adventurers,” was among those whose opposition to sending out any more
emigrants from Leyden, made him withdraw his support. Another, Thomas
Brewer, lumped together and imprisoned by the royal authorities with
Brownists, by 1640 had become Anabaptist, a sect not tolerated by the
Pilgrims.[35] For the most part, however, a consistency of business,
religious, and political purposes seems to have prevailed among those
who closed out the Company of Adventurers to New Plymouth.
PART II
Plymouth Reorganizes Financially
The colony looks to the fur trade to pay its debts
The method devised for repaying what was a stiff debt for the young
colony, as one writer puts it, “shows considerable business ingenuity.”
With ownership transferred from London to Plymouth, the plantation
became a virtual corporation in fact. Two important matters still had
to be decided. Should all the settlers share in the disposition of the
corporate lands and assets and in the obligation of repayment to the
adventurers? How would they be able to guarantee satisfaction of the
London men? It was wisely decided to include as holders of shares, or
“purchasers,” all men, whatever their former status, who were either
heads of families or single and not indentured servants. At the 1627
division of assets in the form of land and cattle, every such person
received twenty acres of tillable land to add to the one-acre portion
allotted him when the plantation had ended the “common course.” The
livestock was parceled out for a time among twelve groups, a total
of 156 individuals, with every six persons receiving one cow and two
goats. These “purchasers,” of whom in 1640 fifty-three were listed as
living in Plymouth and five in England, were to benefit from subsequent
divisions of land as the colony opened up.
The immediate task of paying the Londoners fell upon a group of eight
leaders, including William Bradford, Miles Standish, Isaac Allerton,
Edward Winslow, William Brewster, John Howland, John Alden, and Thomas
Prence, known as the “Undertakers.” These men founded a partnership to
manage the fur trade of the colony for six years, the time during which
the returns from the Pilgrims’ most profitable business enterprise
were to be devoted to paying the debt and importing essential English
goods. This became the business of the eight who took possession at
once of the company boats and “the whole stock of furs, fells, beads,
corn, wampampeak, hatchets, knives, &c.”
It may be asked why the “Undertakers” were willing to saddle themselves
with such a responsibility. The answer is their sense of obligation to
their old friends in Leyden, as well as their fidelity to the London
merchants. Most of the former adventurers had so opposed sending
over any more people from Leyden that the beloved Pastor Robinson
prophetically, before his death, looked for no further help until means
came from Plymouth itself. The first example of such aid would cost the
partnership £500, the amount paid for the emigration in 1629 of what
was a welcome but “weak” addition to the colony.
Three London merchants agree to continue as Plymouth’s partners
It was extremely important to tap resources of English credit to
secure new working capital for the trade. It might have to be borrowed
at rates as high as 30–50%, instead of the 6–8% Sherley reported as
current for English business loans in 1628. This explains why Allerton
was sent to London to persuade the former treasurer of the company,
Sherley, and others in England to join the “Undertakers” as partners.
Together with Sherley, John Beauchamp and Richard Andrews consented to
the proposal. One immediate result was that Sherley forebore collection
of £50 he had lent at 30% two years earlier, and induced John Beauchamp
and Richard Andrews to do the same for goods they had provided while
the negotiations were in progress. At Bradford’s request, Sherley and
Beauchamp were designated as factors to receive the furs shipped to
London, while Allerton, long since Bradford’s right hand as chief of
the assistants in the colony, continued to act as business agent of
the “Undertakers.”[36]
The Pilgrims encounter difficulties in the fur trade
Under skillful and energetic management the Plymouth traders soon
succeeded in expanding their collection of pelts from the Indians. The
trade in furs had begun in 1621, when Squanto guided the Pilgrims’
shallop to the Massachusetts Indians. Unluckily, the first return
to England of two hogsheads, estimated to be worth about £400, was
captured in the _Fortune_. In fact, a considerable quantity of what
was collected in the first years never reached England at all and thus
produced no credit for the colony. Instead, Weston’s malice was all
they got for 170 pounds of beaver lent him on his arrival in 1623.
Another part of their precious hoard of skins paid some fishermen for
raising the _Little James_, while Turkish pirates seized an additional
800 pounds on its way to England in 1625. Finally, the colony purchased
with beaver about £500 worth of trading goods, including Biscay rugs,
from a wrecked ship they learned was for sale at Monhegan.
After the joint stock company had broken up, Standish took £277 worth
of beaver with him to pay Sherley. A large haul of 700 pounds was
the result of a single autumn voyage to the Kennebec, purchased,
remarkably enough, with home-grown corn. No lack of energy on the part
of the Plymouth traders had prevented returns, but scarcity of the
kind of English trading goods, such as hatchets, knives, and trading
cloth, which the Indians wanted. In the early stages such goods had
to be bought from passing vessels. On at least one occasion valuable
coat beaver, which Bradford expected to bring about 20s. per pound in
England, was sold to these at 3s. a pound, in exchange for beads and
knives.
As the “Undertakers” took over management, it was evident that
numerous competing trading posts, settled up and down the New England
coast, were beginning to cut into Plymouth’s sources of fur and to
raise the price the Indians demanded for it. The scapegrace, Thomas
Morton of Merrymount, in particular, aroused their ire by selling the
natives the forbidden articles, liquor, guns, and powder. On top of
this, his introduction of such pastimes as setting up a May Pole and
“drinking and ... dancing and frisking together” with Indian maidens so
seriously offended their religious sensibilities that they sent Captain
Standish to evict Morton in 1628.
In the early stages of the fur trade, transportation presented
considerable difficulty. Shallops or open boats were used at first, but
a small vessel was needed to coast in and out of the little harbors for
several weeks at a time, carrying a few traders and their supplies. To
provide for this, an ingenious house carpenter lengthened one of the
shallops and built a deck, affording a hold for long voyages in the
winter.[37]
The “Undertakers” now decided to build a pinnace on the Manomet River,
twenty miles south of Plymouth, and to erect there a permanent trading
house of hewn oak planks, furnished with trading goods and in the care
of two men the year round. Aptucxet was the name of their first post;
it was located so strategically in relation to Buzzard’s Bay that its
site is at the edge of the modern passage, the Cape Cod Canal. In the
seventeenth century a short overland portage, probably accomplished in
about six hours, took one across the neck of the Cape from a few miles
up the Scusset River, entered from Cape Cod Bay, and thus avoided the
hazards of sea passage around the Cape.
Just at this time the Pilgrims took advantage of a new contact.
Responding to earlier Dutch offers to trade for beaver, Governor
Bradford invited Isaack de Rasieres, the chief merchant in New
Amsterdam, to pay a visit. The portly burgher arrived at the Aptucxet
post in October 1627 and came ashore “accompanied with a noise of
trumpeters.” Finding the journey overland to Plymouth too far to walk,
he requested that a small boat be sent for him, visited the little
town, and in due course wrote a description of it. The intercourse
thus opened with the Dutch plantation at the mouth of the Hudson
lasted several years. It not only offered the Pilgrims desirable
goods, such as sugar, linen cloth, and other stuffs, but in the long
run greatly enhanced the colony’s opportunities for Indian trade by
selling them a quantity of wampum. This valuable native shell money,
made by the Narragansetts, now promoted gainful dealings with the
Abnakis of the Kennebec country and other tribes. De Rasieres felt it
necessary to justify his selling the Pilgrims the first fifty fathom
of sewan (wampum) by saying that he hoped to keep them from seeking
it themselves at its source of manufacture and so discovering the
profitable fur trade inland. He must have meant by this the trade with
the Iroquois the Dutch had tapped through their control of the Hudson
River, or that of the upper Connecticut Valley.[38]
Plymouth obtains a new patent to protect its trading rights
The rival shipmasters and settlers now ranging along the rocky coves
and inlets of the Maine coast alarmed Plymouth lest they take control
of the mouth of the Kennebec River. Since the autumn of 1625, most
of the beaver collected had been furnished by the Abnaki Indians of
this region. To secure this area and to define the boundaries of the
colony, which had been unspecified in the Peirce patent, Isaac Allerton
was directed to seek a new patent from the Council for New England.
Some money was laid out for this purpose in his accounts with Sherley
in 1628. The first grant he obtained proved to be so “strait and ill
bounded,” however, that he had to apply for its enlargement. Sherley
reported that Allerton was “so turmoiled about it” that he would not
have undertaken such trouble, even for a thousand pounds.
The fruit of these efforts was a patent the Council issued in 1630,
signed by the Earl of Warwick. It gave Plymouth not only its first
exact boundaries, but a strip of land along the Kennebec, with control
of fifteen miles on either side of the river, running up the river
as far as the site of Cushenoc or present-day Augusta, Maine. This
document, in the name of William Bradford and his associates, the first
of their grants reflecting the complete shift in ownership from London
to the New World, provided the basis for the colony’s land rights. At
the same time Allerton did not succeed in getting past the seals a
charter from the King, such as Massachusetts Bay had. He was criticized
for this, somewhat unjustly, on the grounds that he failed because he
and Sherley included among its terms some special customs privileges.
Yet several charters, notably that of Massachusetts Bay, carried
privileges similar to those Allerton requested, so it is more likely
that a lack of funds and influence at court blocked passage. Allerton
had apparently influenced Sherley to persuade Bradford that this
charter could be secured only if he was allowed to go back to England.
In fact, nothing more came of it, although £500 was reported to have
been spent on the patent.[39]
Plymouth’s business agent is dismissed for a “conflict of interest”
Until this time everyone had relied on Allerton; now the “Undertakers”
began to look on their business agent with disfavor. His previous long
record of helpfulness had caused them to disregard the grumblings of
the new settlers from Leyden, who were dissatisfied with his treatment
of them. Allerton had belonged to the original Leyden congregation and
had helped advise Carver and Cushman about preparations for the voyage
to America, had signed the Mayflower Compact, and had assisted Governor
Bradford after Carver’s death. As a member of the governing circle and
a trusted official, he completed negotiation of the dissolution of
the merchant adventurers for New Plymouth during trips to London in
1626–27. Quite naturally, Sherley’s praise of him as an “honest and
discreet agent” bolstered the colony’s belief in his “good and faithful
service.”
While this enterprising man began his mission without deliberately
dishonest intent, he expected successfully to combine with it the
pursuit of his own private interests. He soon joined Sherley in a
private arrangement, for in 1628 the London man referred to an “account
betwixt you and me,” which was separate from Allerton’s purchases for
Plymouth. There it was known and accepted that he brought over some
goods “upon his own particular, and sold them for his own ... benefit.”
His frequent journeys to England and the intimate knowledge he had of
the needs of New England obviously gave him special opportunities. One
of these was to buy provisions for the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, a
contract perhaps dating from a visit he made aboard the ship carrying
John Winthrop to New England in 1630. Emmanuel Downing and John
Humfrey, two leading supporters in London of the Bay colony, thought
highly of his advice that they move this plantation to the Hudson
River. Allerton’s relation with the Bay leaders outlasted those with
the Pilgrims.[40]
Plymouth’s agent nonetheless revealed an indifference to her wishes
when he brought back from England the very same Thomas Morton whom she
had expelled. It was an insult to shelter this man right on the main
street and even to employ him for a short time as a business secretary.
Then, too, while buying a much bigger quantity of goods to be sold
to the settlers than instructed, Allerton neglected to secure proper
supplies of trading goods. Sherley had pressured him into exceeding
the small quotas ordered by the “Undertakers,” he said in his defense.
Sherley’s letters did stress, of course, the need to turn over as
large an amount as possible during the relatively short duration of
the partnership’s monopoly of trade, arguing that a large outlay
was required to make a good profit in so short a time. “... we must
follow it roundly and to purpose, for if we piddle out the time in our
trade, others will step in and nose us....” Bradford and the others,
understandably, were much more anxious to pay off the debts already
owed than to overextend themselves just to make a profit.[41]
Such disagreements between Allerton and Sherley on the one hand, and
Bradford, Winslow, and others at Plymouth, multiplied as the result
of a new Maine venture, devised in 1629, which rivaled the Kennebec.
Sherley and three other Londoners sent Edward Ashley, a keen trader
but “a profane young man” by Pilgrim standards, to found a rival post
at Pentagoet, near the Penobscot River. Allerton had refused to commit
the Plymouth partners to the scheme without their consent, but on the
basis of later correspondence Bradford decided that he had been an
instigator of the plan. Since they had to send Ashley supplies, the
Pilgrims had little choice anyway but to come in, if they wished to
have some control of this potential competitor. Ashley soon was better
supplied with trading goods than Plymouth, which, indeed, had to buy
from Allerton himself, in return for part of their beaver taken at
reduced prices. Without their knowledge, their versatile agent next
borrowed money on their account at Bristol, at 50% interest, ostensibly
so that goods might be shipped early with the fishing fleet headed for
New England waters in the spring of the year.
Meanwhile, Winslow had conceived a plan to send a fishing ship laden
with trading goods from the West Country in England directly to Maine,
where a cargo of salt purchased the season before would await the
ship’s arrival. In fact, the vessel thus hired, the _Friendship_,
was badly delayed by “foul weather” so that Allerton reached Maine,
traveling on the _White Angel_, only just before Timothy Hatherley, one
of the London associates, finally reached Boston in the _Friendship_.
The latter revealed that most of the goods he carried were not for
Plymouth at all, but for Massachusetts. Plymouth’s mounting annoyance
and mistrust of Allerton reached its pinnacle with the disturbing
revelation that the English partners had bought outright the _White
Angel_, not merely hired her, as was customary. The “Undertakers”
suddenly were confronted by fresh, crushing debts, for each English
partner had contributed two or three times as large an investment
as before. Meanwhile, with a subtle note of mistrust of Plymouth’s
dealings with them, the latter had designated Hatherley as a
confidential agent to be informed of “the state and account of all the
business.”[42]
Thus commenced a new and tedious financial wrangle between Plymouth
and London. The former felt that the necessary control of their own
business and obligations ceased when the English members could “run
into such great things, and charge of shipping and new projects in
their own heads, not only without but against all order and advice....”
Confronted by their objections, Allerton undertook to convince them
that they need not have the _White Angel_ on the general account, if
they did not wish to. Years later, in 1639, he testified that he had
bought her at Bristol in 1631 only for the inner group comprising
himself, Sherley, Andrews, and Beauchamp, and even Hatherley, whereas
the _Friendship_ was hired for all the partners of Plymouth. London
contradicted this, saying that the ship would not have been purchased
at all, if it hadn’t been for the interests of Plymouth.
The disagreement over the _White Angel_ and the _Friendship_ plagued
the partnership for some time to come, but the leaders on both sides
of the Atlantic now concurred in the dismissal of Allerton as agent.
Hatherley’s tour of inspection of the “down east” trading posts before
his return to London demonstrated to him that “Allerton played his own
game and ran a course not only to the great wrong and detriment of
the Plantation who employed and trusted him, but abused them ... in
possessing them [in England] with prejudice against the Plantation ...
that they would never be able to repay their moneys....” Winslow, one
of the most enterprising traders among the “Undertakers,” had journeyed
to London earlier in 1631 and succeeded the discredited agent.
Should Allerton flatly be called a cheat? Unable to “be brief in so
tedious and intricate a business,” Bradford himself struggled not to
impute to Allerton thoroughly dishonest motives. The Governor even
admitted that the agent’s commission to act in Plymouth’s behalf had
given him a certain freedom of action. That Allerton had been led
aside from the main desires of the Plantation by “his own gains and
private ends,” we conclude from his managing to invest £400 under
Sherley’s name in the brewhouse belonging to one of the former London
adventurers, William Collier. Bradford became convinced that the agent
had inspired both the schemes of Ashley’s rival trade and the purchase
of the _White Angel_, persuading his London friends that the Kennebec
trade alone was insufficient to pay them.
The partnership’s general account thus became simply a convenient place
for Allerton to unload losses, with records “so large and intricate,
as they could not well understand them, much less examine and correct
them without a great deal of time and help....” His lists of all sorts
of expenses took advantage of the Pilgrims’ weakness with accounts:
“£30 given at a clap, and £50 spent in a journey.... Yea, he screwed
up his poor old father-in-law’s [Elder Brewster] account to above £200
and brought it upon the general account ... because he knew they would
never let it lie on the old man....” Puzzled, Bradford admitted that
he did not know “how it came to pass, or what mystery was in it,” that
Allerton even was able to present a list of all “disbursements,” though
it was Sherley who made them during his own absence. In the final
calculations a sizable discrepancy (£2300) arose. Whereas the agent
claimed the partners owed him £300, the latter represented his debt to
them as £2000.
When Sherley wrote that “if their business had been better managed they
might have been the richest plantation of any English at that time,” he
could blame the financial incompetence of the “Undertakers” at Plymouth
as well as Allerton’s deficiencies. Their initial trust in the honesty
of others, however praiseworthy, was no match for the shrewdness of the
businessmen who soon were to make Boston and the Bay colony the center
of trade in New England. Consider how they accepted their associate
Hatherley’s unauthorized “honest word” that they would be discharged
from the _Friendship_’s account, thus permitting Allerton and him to
collect all its returns, even though they paid the Pilgrims only £200.
Then, after Hatherley’s London partners repudiated this discharge, the
Pilgrims were billed for losses, but with no countervailing credits.
“... they were ... now taught how to deal in the world, especially with
merchants, in such cases,” Bradford sadly noted in comment, but the
lesson unfortunately did not improve their keeping of accounts.[43]
Without a single surviving letter of Allerton’s, stating his point of
view about the Pilgrims, it is difficult to judge his career. We know
that as a busy merchant and projector he continued to shuttle back
and forth across the Atlantic and up and down the American coast from
northern Maine to New Amsterdam. His own ventures in the _White Angel_,
which he hired and later bought from Sherley, turned out badly, but the
fault of placing part of its debts on Plymouth’s account seems to have
been Sherley’s. Allerton set up a rival post at Machias, Maine, “to run
into every hole and into the river of the Kennebec to glean away the
trade ... there”; after its capture by the French, his pinnace traded
in the Penobscot region. During a season of fishing at Marblehead for
Matthew Cradock, a London promoter of the Massachusetts Bay Company,
Allerton nevertheless continued to be named an assistant of the
Plymouth colony and was a freeman there as late as 1637. In 1633 he
was the richest man in Plymouth; he lent large sums of money to other
settlers, including his sister’s husband. Merchants of Massachusetts
and New Netherland did not distrust him, even though Winslow wrote
from England in 1637 to warn Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts that
Allerton was too friendly with “our common adversaries,” those who were
thinking of securing a royal commission to govern all of New England.
He wrote: “... the truth is he loveth neither you nor us.”
The former agent was, in fact, primarily a businessman, without strong
religious or sentimental ties. He certainly “abused” the trust of his
old comrades by saddling them with such heavy debts, but his acts seem
unscrupulous rather than calculated dishonesty. He took risks which, if
they turned out badly, hurt other people. In short, this maker of “fair
propositions and large promises” was led into temptation by dreams of
wealth; in this he was like many another promoter. Ultimately, his bad
judgment and ill luck brought him losses, and he died insolvent in New
Haven in 1659.[44]
The colony and its London partners dispute over their accounts
The stresses between the “Undertakers” and the London partners were
not relieved simply by Allerton’s dismissal. A decade of acrimonious
exchange of letters followed from 1631 to 1641. It was not easy for the
Londoners to balance off Allerton’s debts, along with new expenses,
against the receipt of furs shipped from Plymouth. They were determined
to hold out until a settlement profitable to them was reached.
Throughout this quarrel Bradford’s _History_ has to be our guide for
the most part, for only one fragment of reckoning between Sherley and
Allerton has been found. Undoubtedly, when the great governor wrote
his narrative he was trying to rehabilitate the Pilgrims’ financial
reputation and counter the rumors in London and Boston mercantile
circles that they were in default. In his chapters on finance he
is repetitious, sometimes confusing, and yet omits certain business
details. His judgment was charitable, however, and by recording
Sherley’s letters he preserved at least some of London’s side of the
controversy.
The first dispute arose from Edward Winslow’s unwillingness to accept
the _White Angel_’s losses on the “Undertakers’” account. Sherley
was displeased and warned that this “unreasonable refusal” might
“hasten that fire which is a kindling too fast already....” Plymouth
nonetheless declined to take on all the debts which appeared in
Sherley’s accounting of 1631. It was found that in arriving at a total
of £4770, in addition to £1000 unpaid of the purchase money, he had
charged twice and even three times for certain items. £600 of this
amount even Allerton could not identify.
The London partners’ dissatisfaction with the records kept in Plymouth
led Sherley to insist on the appointment of Josiah Winslow, younger
brother of Edward, as their accountant. The Pilgrims remarked crustily
“that if they were well dealt with and had their goods well sent over,
they could keep their accounts ... themselves.” Certainly, the new
accountant, with his hopeless inaccuracy and carelessness, did little
to mend matters. In fact, he “did wholly fail them, and could never
give them any account; but trusting to his memory and loose papers,
let things run into such confusion that neither he, nor any with him,
could bring things to rights.” Ultimately, they lost several hundreds
of pounds in this way for goods trusted out without any record clear
enough to call in the payments. Also, goods arrived from England
without prices or invoices.
Meanwhile, several circumstances fed Plymouth’s dissatisfaction with
James Sherley, including his continuing to do business with Allerton.
After selling the latter the controversial ship, Sherley nevertheless
could write with unctious fervor, “Oh the grief and trouble that man,
Mr. Allerton, hath brought upon you and us! I cannot forget it, and to
think on it draws many a sigh from my heart and tears from my eyes.”
Yet he rescued Allerton from trouble with his ship, sent Plymouth’s
supply on board it in 1632, and allowed him easy terms. It was hard to
reconcile Sherley’s depressing complaints about his own heavy debts
with this extension of credit to Allerton and participation in other
ventures, such as sending Captain William Peirce to Massachusetts Bay.
Unfortunately, Peirce’s ship met disaster on her way home in 1632, so
the beaver that Plymouth had entrusted to her, along with some of their
accounts, was “swallowd up in the sea.”
By 1636 Bradford reckoned that Plymouth had sent to England about
12,530 pounds of beaver estimated to be worth more than £10,000, with
1,156 otter skins to pay the freight charges. Because of Winslow’s
shaky accounts, they could only estimate the receipts of English goods.
They thought these cost about £2000, and even if the debt of £4770 was
increased, they could not understand why the fur receipts would not
have more than paid it off. One explanation probably is that Sherley
was unable to sell all of the beaver at the high prices they had
counted on. During the plague year of 1636 he complained that prices
dropped to 8s. a pound. Also, Sherley was unable to determine just
how many skins belonged to the “Undertakers’” account, and how many
Winslow had bought from settlers who had no part in the “Undertakers’”
scheme.[45]
The London partners quarrel among themselves
To the problem of extricating the Plymouth venture from its financial
straits a new one was now added. A quarrel had broken out among the
English partners themselves, James Sherley, John Beauchamp, and Richard
Andrews. These men had shared in the debts incurred after 1626 to keep
Plymouth supplied. The Pilgrims had expected all three to profit from
the large quantities of furs shipped after 1631. Instead, in 1640
Beauchamp and Andrews revealed a rift with Sherley of several years
standing. They complained in court that they had not received a fair
share of the returns on their investment and tried to force a full
accounting of Sherley’s transactions with Plymouth. This suit, with its
contradictory sets of figures, exposed the nature of their association.
In the joint adventure to trade with the Governor and the rest of the
Plymouth “Undertakers,” each of the three Londoners had promised to put
£1100 into stock. Richard Andrews paid in £1136, John Beauchamp £1127,
and, they claimed, James Sherley pretended to put in £1190 (a total of
about £3500). To meet pressing debts about 1636 Beauchamp contributed
£500 more. It was expected that Sherley, acting as sole factor, would
dispose of returns from the plantation, report occasionally to them,
and distribute any profits. In a few years, they asserted, he handled
beaver and otter worth from £12,000 to £13,000 but ignored their
requests to show his accounts; thus they had no way of checking whether
he had used some of the profits for his own business. He had exhibited
“a covetous disposition to gain ... [their dues] himself ...” and to
their “loving” pleas replied violently that he would rot and die before
giving an account. They suspected him of withdrawing his own stock and
profits.
How did Sherley answer these charges? First, he denied that Andrews was
a party to the suit, since before going abroad, he had told Sherley
of Beauchamp’s plan to sue and refused to join in it. Not he, but
Allerton, had been the “Undertakers’” agent, accredited to buy and
sell; he acted only in Allerton’s absence, although permitting his
warehouse in London to be used for Plymouth’s goods. In 1632 he had
given Edward Winslow copies of all his receipts and payments. Since
the chief function of all three London merchants had consisted of
making good Allerton’s demands for credit for Plymouth, they had laid
out sizable sums of money, urged on by hope of preventing loss of what
they had already invested. Sherley alone found himself “out of purse”
some £1866 in March 1631/32. If he was able to collect £675 owed to
Plymouth, this still left him with £1190 tied up in their enterprise.
The debts of the London men, on Plymouth’s behalf, ran up to £5900 in
1631, but Sherley had been paying these off slowly, as the planters’
returns trickled in. Indeed, had it not been for his own “deep
engagements” and his partners’ “earnest request,” Sherley protested,
he would have given up the business long before. He was not obliged to
give a detailed accounting to his copartners, but only to the Plymouth
associates. Actually, it was up to the latter to produce an exact
accounting to the three London men, not the other way about. Sherley
was anxious to reconcile his accounts with them and was willing to meet
their agent even in France or Holland; until then, he could not even
“book” (enter) the items for which he had loose records.
Sherley insisted that he had sold no furs for his own profit, but had
informed Beauchamp and Andrews when he disposed of any. In a final
balance of all records he was sure that Plymouth would still owe
him money, not he owe his copartners, for the latter had adventured
absolutely nothing since 1631. He, not they, had carried the burden
in London in the “sickly” years of 1635 and 1636. With this defense,
Bradford says, Beauchamp and Andrews failed to win the suit,[46] and
indeed, Sherley’s letters confirm that his credit was sorely taxed in
the 1630s.
Through arbiters, Plymouth and London reach a financial settlement
While this dispute was in progress, however, the Pilgrims were so
perplexed about its rights that they were persuaded to send 1,325
pounds of beaver directly to the other two partners, hoping to satisfy
their claims that Sherley had paid them nothing. After selling it,
Beauchamp chalked off £400 of their debt, but Andrews, through
mismanagement, sold his at a loss and in 1642 still claimed between
£500 and £600. He finally agreed to accept payment in cattle to
Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay and designated the “godly
poor men” and “poor ministers” of that colony as the beneficiaries of
Plymouth’s debt. In addition, Andrews and Beauchamp received land in
Scituate, one of several flourishing daughter towns now settled in
Plymouth.[47]
Meanwhile the business with Sherley was wound up at last. Trade with
him had already broken off because of distrust of his repeated delays
in accounting to his London partners. For fear of legal reprisals from
any of these, it was decided not to risk sending another agent to
London but to have some “gentlemen and merchants in the Bay” hear the
dispute. Even “though it should cost them all they had in the world,”
the “Undertakers” promised to accept their award. This decision was
prompted by two considerations. First, they feared that the price of
cattle, by now a greater source of income than furs, might drop and
change their circumstances. Also, the colony’s founders, surviving
into old age, wished to clear up their affairs before death overtook
them. Sherley himself believed that lawyers would be “the most gainers”
from legal action, and therefore selected John Atwood and William
Collier, recent merchant arrivals in Plymouth from London, to draw up a
composition. Another participant in the settlement was Edmund Freeman,
Beauchamp’s brother-in-law, and now the leading citizen of Sandwich.
After laborious days of investigation of accounts, they estimated
everything left in Plymouth of the old stock, housing, boats, the bark
and goods for the Indian trade, and “all debts, as well those that were
desperate, as others more hopeful,” at £1400.
By October 15, 1641, Atwood, Bradford, and Edward Winslow had
come to terms ending the partnership. The agreement of 1627 was
reacknowledged, but Plymouth, while admitting confusion in Josiah
Winslow’s bookkeeping, again repudiated the debts of the _White Angel_
and the _Friendship_. A full discharge from the obligations of the
beaver trade, the charges of the two ships, and the £1800 purchase
money agreed on in 1627 was promised by Atwood in behalf of the London
associates. Bradford and his partners for their part guaranteed payment
to them of £1400. £110 of this had already been paid to Winthrop for
Andrews’ account, and eighty pounds of beaver to Atwood. The rest was
to be discharged in appropriate commodities, at the rate of £200 per
year.
1645--Plymouth’s debts “hopeful and desperate” at last are discharged
To execute this agreement across the distance of the broad Atlantic
took some time. Recognizing the justness of the “Undertakers’” final
account but calling the venture “uncomfortable and unprofitable to
all,” James Sherley signed the release in June 1642. In the bargaining,
the Reverend Hugh Peter, Thomas Weld, and William Hibbins, in England
as agents of Massachusetts, put forth Atwood’s terms. At the same time
they succeeded in persuading the London partners to surrender for
charitable purposes in New England the £1200 debt. Three quarters, or
£900, was set apart for Massachusetts, while Plymouth was to receive
only £300.
A letter of Richard Andrews about this time fortunately permits us to
break away from the divergent points of view set forth in Bradford’s
narrative and Sherley’s letters. In many ways Andrews was the most
straightforward of the London partners and the most generous. While
forgiving the interest due on his own account, he charged that Sherley
and Beauchamp had “wronged [the business] many £100 both in principal
and interest” and knowingly presented unfair accounts. This remark
suggests one solution to the problem as to why the seemingly excessive
charges on the Pilgrims mounted year after year in spite of their
returns. Hinting that Sherley had manipulated some private losses so as
to place them on the general account, Andrews perhaps did not recognize
the rapidity with which the debts accumulated because of the high rates
of interest on them. The fact is that colonial ventures were considered
such poor financial risks that their debts tended to multiply faster
than they could be paid off. This explanation of their financial plight
is probably closer to the truth than that the Londoners deliberately
perpetrated a “manifest fraud” upon the plantation. It was Andrews also
who echoed the complaint common to all the London merchants engaged
in colonial enterprise. He wrote in 1645 that the conduct of the
“Undertakers” did not become “fair dealing men who make not so much
profession to walk according to the rule of the gospel as they.... I
hope that seven years time is long enough to keep my money before they
return the principal....”
John Beauchamp, unlike the more generous Andrews, continued to insist
on collecting his debt even though it could never be proved. To settle
this claim, Bradford and his partners in 1645 turned over to his
attorney houses and lands in Plymouth, Rehoboth, and Marshfield worth
£291.[48]
It is to Plymouth’s credit that all these obligations were met in
the 1640s, because the colony was no longer as prosperous as in the
preceding decade. Its wealth had come to consist increasingly of
cattle, so that the price collapse which took place when the influx
of new settlers into the Bay ceased, came suddenly and with severe
effect. Cattle came to be worth perhaps 25% of its former value. Even
the wealthier colony of Massachusetts discovered that it could no
longer secure credit in England. The Pilgrims nevertheless continued
to develop their modest resources in animal stock and land. A new land
arrangement reflected the ending of the old debts. Governor Bradford,
who had held title to the patent since 1630, along with the “old
comers” or “purchasers,” turned over the grant to the whole body of
freemen of Plymouth, retaining for himself only three reserved tracts
as his reward for carrying the responsibility for repayment.
As to Plymouth’s fur trade, the complaint John Winthrop had once voiced
that the colony had “engrossed all the chief places of trade” in New
England was no longer true. The “Old Colony” had been edged out of the
Connecticut River and Narragansett trade, some of its Maine posts had
been attacked by the French, and rival settlers and competitors had
made the rest less profitable. At Aptucxet commerce with the Dutch kept
on for a time, and on the Kennebec there remained an echo of the busy
activity of the 1630s. A small group farmed the Indian trade there so
that at his death in 1657 Bradford’s stock of trading goods and debts
due from it was worth £256. Within a few years, however, all trading
goods were brought home and the Kennebec tract sold.[49]
Thus ended the history of Plymouth Colony as a business venture.
Even after careful study of all the details we know, it is hard to
interpret and correctly assess whether the London capitalists or the
colony can really be blamed for the contradictory financial muddle.
In their somewhat uneasy alliance, the Londoners with spare funds and
the group of obscure artisans and small farmers, mostly dissenters
from the established church, no doubt emphasized different goals. Most
of the merchants, while Puritan in religious sympathies, nevertheless
anticipated profits. This appeared to them fitting, since they
risked great loss in so untried a speculation. Then, after Plymouth
was settled and valuable returns established, the Londoners held an
advantage to the end, for they were always in a creditor position as
they continued to supply essential goods at high prices and rates
of interest. The colonists’ payment was slow, interrupted by many
misfortunes and contingencies, but eventually it was made. Although
the investors in the original company lost most of their money, the
businessmen who stayed with the enterprise, such as Sherley, seem to
have increased their capital.
The Pilgrims, too, achieved success, for they had built the essentials
of a free and self-sustaining community. If they were never wealthy in
their new environment, the leaders of Plymouth, developing business
experience and judgment, by 1645 enjoyed modest prosperity. They had
paid off the expenses of shipping over their fellow exiles from Leyden
and bought the livestock and equipment needed as the foundation for
settlement. Ignorance, desertion by their first backers, cruel losses
at sea, their agent’s misdeeds, all had been overcome. They were now
rid of the burdens inherent in the London merchants’ sponsorship of the
colony. Their debts, both “hopeful and desperate,” lay behind.
Notes
[1] William Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Samuel E. Morison
(New York, 1952), 16–17, 24, 27, 33, 49. Quotations will ordinarily be
from this modernized version of Governor Bradford’s history. Quotations
from other sources have been modernized. Henry Martyn Dexter, _The
England and Holland of the Pilgrims_ (Boston, 1905), App. 601–641, for
list of occupations; Roland G. Usher, _The Pilgrims and Their History_
(New York, 1918), 35–40, on the economic and religious motives for
removal.
[2] John Smith, _Description of New England_ (1616), is in Smith,
_Works_, ed. Edward Arber (Westminster, 1895), II; for Brewster’s copy,
see “Plymouth Colony, Wills and Inventories,” 1641–1649 (typescript,
Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Mass.), 49; Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_,
ed. Morison, 28–29; Smith’s comment on the Pilgrims, Bradford, _History
of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. W. C. Ford, 2 vols. (Boston, 1912), I,
192n. Edward Winslow, _Hypocrisie Unmasked_ (1646), told the story
about consulting God’s will, cited _ibid._, 66n.
[3] Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, I, 70n., 77n. Winslow reported the
King’s conversation long after Plymouth’s settlement in _Hypocrisie
Unmasked_, cited in Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison,
30n. It sounds a bit overdrawn. William Brewster, a former tenant of
the Sandys family, may have introduced his associates to Sir Edwin
Sandys.
[4] Charles M. Andrews, _The Colonial Period of American History_ (New
Haven, 1934), I, 254–255, describes the system of private plantations.
Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 35, 37, identifying
the offer of support by Thomas Weston; the 1619 patent in Susan M.
Kingsbury, ed., _The Records of the Virginia Company_ (Washington,
1906), I, 221, 228; Edward Arber, ed., _Story of the Pilgrim Fathers_
(London, 1897), ch. XXV, on Brewster; Bradford, _Of Plymouth
Plantation_, ed. Morison, 356–357, for Cushman’s report on Blackwell.
[5] On the Dutch offer, Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, I, 99n. See
_Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, LIV, 166, 168, 177, and Astrid Friis,
_Alderman Cockayne’s Project and the Cloth Trade_ (Copenhagen and
London, 1927), 370, for Weston as an ironmonger and “interloper.” The
lawsuit against Weston filed in the Court of Exchequer by Pickering’s
executors, John Fowler, James Sherley, and Richard Andrews, appears to
confirm a streak of dishonesty in Weston. The original depositions and
award include interesting details about some of the Plymouth partners
and their associates, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, LIV (1922), 165–178
(summaries); P.R.O., E. 134, 22 James I, Mich. 22; Mich. 59; Hilary
22/8. The award, E. 178/5451, was kindly transcribed for me by Prof.
Norma Adams. “Governor Bradford’s Letter Book,” I _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Colls._, III (1794), 27, on Weston’s debts to partners.
[6] John Smith, _A Description of New England_ (1616), is a plea for
fishing and plantation; also Smith’s letter to Sir Francis Bacon, 1618,
transcript in Bancroft Mss., New England (New York Public Library), I,
19–23.
[7] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 49–50, 43, 42, 44,
50, 55.
[8] £1200 Cushman reported raised by June 1620 still left them £300 or
£400. Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 45–46, 55, 56;
104n., quoting John Smith, _Generall Historie ..._ (1626); 49, 50, 57,
on sale of supplies; 60, on landfall. Nathaniel Morton, _New England’s
Memoriall_ (1669), (Boston, 1903), 30, on Carver.
[9] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 75n.; Bradford,
_History_, ed. Ford, I, 234n., 246f. for the text and a photograph
of the original indenture now on exhibit in Pilgrim Hall; Frances
Rose-Troup, _Massachusetts Bay Company and its Predecessors_ (New York,
1930), 3–4, explains the difference between an indenture and a patent.
[10] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 93, Weston’s
letter; Henry Martyn Dexter, ed., _Mourt’s Relation or Journal of the
Plantation at Plymouth_ (Boston, 1865).
[11] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 95; Cushman’s
discourse, printed as _A Sermon Preached at Plimoth in New England ..._
(London, 1622), is reprinted in part in Alexander Young, _Chronicles of
the Pilgrim Fathers_ (2d ed., Boston, 1844), 255–268.
[12] See note 5 above; Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison,
100–103, 104, 105, 107, 119; Treasury warrant, Ms. Calendar of
Cranfield Papers, 8680, Hist. Mss. Commission, P.R.O., London. Charles
Francis Adams, _Three Episodes in Massachusetts History_ (Boston, 1892)
I, 45–104, is still the most readable account of Weston’s colony at
Wessagusset, although inaccurate in a few details.
[13] Dexter, _Mourt’s Relation_, xxxv-xxxviii; Bradford, _Of Plymouth
Plantation_, ed. Morison, 124–125; _New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg._, LXVII,
147–153; P.R.O., C2/P44/43, Peirce’s suit. Andrews, _Col. Per. Amer.
Hist._, I, 281–282 and 282n., takes Bradford to task for “pretty
deliberate misrepresentation” of the Peirce matter. The search in
English records for information on Peirce proved unusually difficult,
because of the commonness of his name. For example, two John Peirces
were admitted to the Clothworkers’ Company, one in 1597, the other in
1612 (letter to author from Mr. J. E. Coombes, Clerk, Clothworkers’
Company, Aug. 9, 1961). Mr. Coombes’ report of scanty records for the
period precluded further search. A Mr. John Peirce sold John Winthrop
provisions, _Winthrop Papers_ (Boston, 1931–47), III, 3, 4, 5.
[14] The leaders of the adventurers named by Peirce in his Chancery
suit were James Sherley, John Pocock, Christopher Coulson, William
Collier, John Thornell, and George [Robert] Keane, _New Eng. Hist. Gen.
Reg._, LXVII, 149. Usher, _The Pilgrims and Their History_, 147–148,
and John A. Goodwin, _The Pilgrim Republic_ (Boston, 1888), 252–254,
sum up the misadventures of the _Little James_. The original evidence
is in Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, I, 341–346, 350–351, 403–405,
433–435. Additional details are in the Admiralty suit of two crew
members, Stephens and Fell, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, LXI, 148–151;
H. C. A., Instance and Prize Court, Libel Files, Bundle 82, no. 124
(Library of Congress transcript). An effort to locate this document in
the Public Record Office under this reference was unsuccessful.
[15] For the transcript of Altham’s letters to his brother, Sir Edward
Altham, Sept. 1623, Mar. 1623/24, June 10, 1625, I am indebted to Dr.
Sydney V. James’s “Three Visitors to Early Plymouth,” a typescript in
the possession of Plimoth Plantation. The original letters belonged to
Dr. Otto Fisher of Detroit, Michigan, who gave permission for use of
quotations. James, “Three Visitors,” 36, 42, 46, 50. Altham invested
some of his friends’ money in the common stock and suggested that if
he came back on a fishing voyage, he could use £400 or £500 of their
ventures, _ibid._, 62, 66.
[16] William Bradford and Isaac Allerton to the adventurers, Sept.
1623, _Amer. Hist. Rev._, VIII, 297; John W. Thornton, _The Landing at
Cape Anne_ (Boston, 1854); Goodwin, _Pilgrim Republic_, 255; Bradford,
_History_, ed. Ford, I, 377–379, 407–410, for the patent.
[17] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 120–121, 132,
144–145, 187; Edward Winslow, _Good Newes from New England_ (1624) in
Young, _Chronicles of the Pilgrims_, 346–347; Bradford, _History_, ed.
Ford, I, 300n.
[18] For further light on these factions, see James, “Three Visitors,”
104ff., letter of June 10, 1625.
[19] _Ibid._, 70, 72; Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison,
170; Bradford, “Letter Book,” 28, 34, 29, 32.
[20] The most complete list of investors in Plymouth is that of the
signers of the composition of 1626, _ibid._, 48. To these should
be added Christopher Coulson, William Greene, John Peirce, Edward
Pickering, and Thomas Weston. The Plymouth leaders accepted in 1627 the
terms the merchants had signed in November 1626. Thus it is correct to
refer to 1627 as the date of the final business settlement with the
original company.
[21] W. R. Scott, _The Constitution and Finance of English ...
Joint-Stock Companies_ (London, 1910), II, 310–311, calculated the
share capital as £5600. Sherley spent the best part of £5000 in two
years as treasurer. This probably did not include the period when
Weston was in charge, Bradford, “Letter Book,” 49. On debts of £1400,
see _ibid._, 32.
[22] Smith is quoted in Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, I, 104n. Andrews
observed that even though the names of a number of the adventurers
were known, “of only a few can any further information be obtained,”
_Col. Per. Amer. Hist._, I, 287n. The research on which the following
paragraphs are based is probably the most sustained effort so far to
find out more. The late Col. Charles E. Banks was interested chiefly in
tracing the emigrants to Plymouth; see _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, LXI,
55–63, “William Bradford and the Pilgrim Quarter in London.”
For Sir Thomas Andrews, see Valerie Pearl, _London and the Outbreak
of the Puritan Revolution_ (Oxford, 1961), 309–311, 208, 240, 242.
This work is invaluable for its mass of biographical detail about
London merchants, interpretation of London’s role, and bibliography.
J. C. Whitebrook, “Sir Thomas Andrewes, Lord Mayor and Regicide, and
his Relatives,” _Trans. Congregational Hist. Soc._, XIII (1938–39),
151–165, informs us that Damaris Andrews, daughter of Thomas, married
the son of Matthew Cradock, first governor of the Massachusetts Bay
Company. The Richard Andrews connected with Plymouth and Massachusetts
Bay, appears to be the brother of Thomas, _ibid._, 159. For Thomas’s
official career, see C. H. Firth and R. S. Rait, eds., _Acts and
Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–60_ (London, 1911), 2 vols.,
_passim_, esp. I, 1150, 1255; II, 365, 595, 647, 917; A. B. Beaven,
_The Aldermen of London_ (London, 1908), II, 66. As an active member
of the directorate of the East India Company, he was expert on
shipping and the sale of Company wares; see E. B. Sainsbury, ed.,
_Cal. Court Mins. E. I. Co., 1635–1676_ (Oxford, 1907–35), III,
xi, xvi, xxii-xxiii, 218, 222, 128, 224, 267; V, xxxii, 333. Among
summaries of Independency in the Civil Wars, see J. R. Tanner,
_English Constitutional Conflicts of the 17th Century_ (Cambridge,
repr. 1947), 128; Pearl, _London and the Outbreak_, 6, who reminds
us of the distinction between religious Independents and “political
independents.” The complex situation in England is not easy to
summarize.
[23] This list has formerly been given as six, Bradford, _Of Plymouth
Plantation_, ed. Morison, 185n., and slightly different in Bradford,
_History_, ed. Ford, II, 7n. I add Richard Andrews and Christopher
Coulson and retain both Robert Keane and John White.
[24] For Richard Andrews’ address, _Winthrop Papers_, II, 306; Thomas
Lechford, “Notebook,” _Trans. Amer. Antiq. Soc._, VII, 142; P.R.O.,
Exchequer, Depositions, E. 134, 22 James I, Mich. 59, on reverse of
testimony by Francis Stubbs; Henry A. Harben, _A Dictionary of London_
(London, 1918), 407. He may have resided in the ward of Cripplegate
Within, where Richard Andrews, haberdasher, was one of the inhabitants
most able to contribute to a Crown request for money, W. J. Harvey,
ed., _List of Principal Inhabitants of London, 1640_ (London, 1886),
14. For links to Massachusetts Bay, _Winthrop Papers_, II, 306; _Recs.
Mass. Bay_, I, 128; role as shipowner, _Cal. S. P. Domestic, 1628–29_,
440, and _1629–31_, 469; Netherlands trade, P.R.O., E. 134, 12 Charles
I, Easter, 39, and Michaelmas, 23; _Winthrop Papers_, V, 4. Gifts to
Massachusetts in _Winthrop’s Journal_, ed. James K. Hosmer (New York,
1908), I, 128, and II, 70, 222; and discussion in R. P. Stearns,
“The Weld-Peter Mission to England,” _Pubs. Col. Soc. Mass._, XXXII,
199, and _The Strenuous Puritan: Hugh Peter_ (Urbana, 1954), 162,
erroneously calling Richard Andrews an alderman. _A.O.I., 1642–60_,
I, 970, 1088, 1240, for his public service; P.R.O., S.P. 16/515/146;
William Kellaway, _The New England Company, 1649–1776_ (London, 1961),
66, for donations to a Puritan lectureship and to Indians; _idem_,
“Collection for the Indians of New England, 1649–1660,” _Bull. John
Rylands Library_, XXXIX (1957), 458.
[25] Rose-Troup, _Mass. Bay Company and its Predecessors_, 138; _Recs.
Mass. Bay_, I, 37c, 40; P.R.O., Close Rolls, C. 54/2635/ no. 8; Harvey,
_Inhabitants of London_, 14; Pearl, _London and the Outbreak_, 169.
[26] _Winthrop’s Journal_, ed. Hosmer, I, 15n., 30, 53; _Winthrop
Papers_, II, 309, 317, 339, and III, 4, 5. Ownership of _Welcome_, S.P.
16/16/182. London addresses of Goffe in T. C. Dale, ed., _Inhabitants
of London, 1638_ (London, 1931), 112; “Return of Divided Houses ...
London, 1637” (typescript, Guildhall Library), 115.
[27] E. N. Hartley, _Ironworks on the Saugus_ (Norman, Okla., 1957),
69–70; Stearns, _The Strenuous Puritan_, 162, 166, 175, 180–181, 189;
Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, II, 5n., and facsimile opp. 5. Hartley
and Stearns disagree as to amount Pocock lent to Massachusetts Bay,
but _Recs. Mass. Bay_, II, 82, 262, and subsequent actions, appear to
uphold the latter. Gift to St. Antholin’s, S.P. 16/515/146; public
service, _A.O.I. 1642–60_, I, 143, 233, 371, and II, 1000.
[28] _Recs. Mass. Bay_, I, 60, 361, 386, 394, 395, 402, 367. Sharpe’s
later career has not been traced, but he is not especially prominent
after arrival in Massachusetts.
[29] _Ibid._, 60, 48, 53, 128. The ship’s name probably was the
_Eagle_, 400 tons. _Winthrop Papers_, II, 215n., and III, 3;
_Winthrop’s Journal_, ed. Hosmer, I, 44.
[30] Bernard Bailyn, “The _Apologia_ of Robert Keayne,” _Wm. and Mary
Quarterly_, 3d ser., VII, 568–587. His will, _Report of the Record
Commissioners of Boston_, X (Boston, 1886), 1–54; sermons attended in
London, _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, 2d ser., L, 204–207. See _Recs. Mass.
Bay_, I, 128; _Cal. S. P. Dom._, 1627–28, 458; _New England Hist. Gen.
Reg._, LXVII, 247; Bradford, “Letter Book,” 47; _Aspinwall Notarial
Records 1644–51_, 92; _Winthrop Papers_, V, 351; Oliver A. Roberts,
_History of the Military Company of the Massachusetts now called the
Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts 1637–1888_
(Boston, 1895), I, 12, 20.
[31] Mary Freer Keeler, _The Long Parliament, 1640–41_ (Philadelphia,
1954), 390; Frances Rose-Troup, _John White: the Patriarch of
Dorchester_ ... (New York, 1930), 56, 460, 163n., 73n.; _Winthrop
Papers_, II, 82n., 97; Andrews, _Col. Per. Amer. Hist._, I, 345,
citing Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, I, 406. The correct reference
is _ibid._, 416. Isabel M. Calder, “A Seventeenth Century Attempt to
Purify the Anglican Church,” _Amer. Hist. Rev._, LIII, 761, 774n.;
Pearl, _London and the Outbreak_, 194–195. It is possible that the John
White named as an owner of ships at Plymouth, Devon, is the lawyer,
although it might also be John White of Dorchester, _Cal. S. P. Dom.,
1628–29_, 301, 306, 440, 441; _ibid., 1629–31_, 154, 156.
[32] To identify John Beauchamp is particularly difficult. Ford has
him as the son of Thomas Beauchamp of Cosgrave, Nottinghamshire. Using
the same reference cited by him (_Visitation of London, 1633–35_,
59), I read it as Cosgrave, Northamptonshire. His marriage to Alice
Freeman, whose brother, Edmund Freeman, acted as Beauchamp’s attorney
in Plymouth in 1641, seems to establish him as the right Beauchamp. See
Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, II, 296n. Beaven makes John Beauchamp,
Salter, Alderman for Billingsgate Ward in 1651, and gives as his will
a reference to a John Beauchamp of the parish of St. Giles Cripplegate
Without (Beaven, _Aldermen of London_, II, 75; P.C.C. Hene [1668]), who
left as heirs no wife or children, whereas the John Beauchamp connected
with Plymouth had several sons and daughters. This will must be that
of another man. In 1649 and after, a John Beauchamp of Surrey appeared
in the same committees as James Sherley and Edward Winslow, such as
those for collecting the army assessment or to sell goods from the
estate of Charles I, _A.O.I., 1642–60_, II, 44, 160, 310, 479, 676. See
also Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 100, 198, 199,
386n.; Friis, _Alderman Cockayne’s Project_, 110n.; P.R.O., Chancery,
C. 3/431/12; _Cal. S. P. Dom._, 1628–29, 285; Harvey, _Inhabitants
of London, 1640_, 18; T. C. Dale, transcriber, “Citizens of London,
1641–43,” (London, 1936; typescript, Guildhall Library).
[33] Bradford, “Letter Book,” 34; Goldsmiths’ Company, London,
Apprentice Book, I, 1578–1645, 151; Wardens’ Accounts and Court
Minutes, vol. P, pt. 1 (1611–17), 76, 198; pt. 2 (1617–24), 189 and
_passim_, 76, 77, 79; vol. Q, pt. 1 (1624–29), 79; vol. R, pt. 2
(1631–34), 193, 195, 199, 200, 223, 224, 225; vol. T (1637–39), 185,
186, 189; vol. V (1639–42), 58, 62; vol. unlettered [W] (1642–45),
228, 237. Presumably because he was living in Clapham, James Sherley
is not listed among those who paid poll money to the Commissioners. A
duty of the prime warden, with his second and third wardens, was to
have custody of the plate belonging to the City of London, _ibid._,
238. In 1652 Sherley was appointed with other wardens to prepare an
answer to a petition by the freemen of the Company to a committee of
Parliament concerning their rights in choosing the wardens, Sir Walter
S. Prideaux, _Memorials of the Goldsmiths’ Company_ ... (London, 1896),
II, 24.
Of the several James Sherleys who are contemporaries, I have concluded
that the James Sherley, third son of Robert Sherley, originally of
Wistonston, was the one involved with the Plymouth venture. The other
James Sherleys in this family are (1) the eldest son of John Sherley
of London, and (2) the elder son of James Sherley, son of Robert.
See _Visitation of London, 1633–35_, II, 235–236. It is difficult to
determine whether the James Sherley, merchant, who owned houses in
London in 1637 is the same, “Returns of Divided Houses in the City of
London, 1637,” 208. The one who appeared with Robert Sherley to turn
over property to Robert’s daughter, Sara, in 1632 is our man, P.R.O.,
C. 54/2950; see also _Registers of St. Vedast, Foster Lane_ (Harl.
Soc., 1902) 35, for birth of Sara in 1611.
“Foynes” or foins were originally fur of the weasel family, or more
generally, furs.
[34] On Sherley’s addresses, Marsden, _Amer. Hist. Rev._, VIII, 301;
Plooij, _Pilgrim Fathers from a Dutch Point of View_, 100. Plooij says
that London Bridge was his business address and Crooked Lane his “town
house.” I have been unable to verify it. Sir Ambrose Heal, _The London
Goldsmiths, 1200–1800_ (Cambridge, 1935), 242; Bradford, _Of Plymouth
Plantation_, ed. Morison, 287; Acts of Administration, 1657 (Somerset
House, London), fol. 242. Sherley’s public appointments, _A.O.I._,
I, 730, and II, 14, 310, 479, 676, 1082, 975; also William A. Shaw,
_History of the English Church during the Civil Wars and under the
Commonwealth_ (London, 1900), II, 434.
P.R.O., E. 134, 22 James I, Mich. 22; P.C.C. 86 Swann (1623);
Bradford, “Letter Book,” 68. The ships owned in part by Sherley were
the _John and Mary_ and the _Hector_ of London, 220 tons and 250 tons
respectively. Sherley refers to sending a letter in the _Mary and
John_, very likely the same ship. A vessel of that name brought goods
to Boston in 1633 and 1633/34, P.R.O., S.P. 16/17/83 and 16/17/117;
_Winthrop Papers_, III, 130, 149; Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_,
ed. Morison, 391; _Recs. Mass. Bay_, II, 262. The _Lyon_ sent to Boston
in 1632 belonged to Sherley and the other London partners in the
“Undertakers”; it was lost on its way to Virginia bearing 800 pounds of
beaver as returns, Bradford, _op. cit._, 254–255.
[35] Pearl, _London and the Outbreak_, 126n., 147, 148n., 255n., 265;
Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 104, 106; _Cal. S. P.,
Dom., 1625–26_, 430; _Journal of Sir Simonds d’Ewes_, ed. Wallace
Notestein (New Haven, 1923), 77.
[36] In his explanation of the division of the assets and value of
a single share, Professor Andrews appears to have applied the terms
of the 1627 division to the 1640 list of “purchasers,” _Col. Per.
Amer. Hist._, I, 285–286. Goodwin, _Pilgrim Republic_, 292–295, is
substantially correct in listing the 156 individuals who shared in
the 1627 division of land. The total assets in land prior to division
cannot be ascertained. See Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed.
Morison, 375, 376, Robinson’s comments; 194, 196, organization of
“Undertakers”; 382, 214, cost of bringing over company from Leyden;
Bradford, “Letter Book,” 58, 65, Sherley on other partners.
[37] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 94; _idem_,
_History_, ed. Ford, I, 268n. gives £400 as total value of the cargo
seized; this included some clapboards. The literary result of Morton’s
ignominious departure, _The New English Canaan_ (1637), satirizes the
“saints” at Plymouth, _ibid._, II, 75–77. Nathaniel C. Hale, _Pelts
and Palisades_ (Richmond, Va., 1959) included a lively narrative of
Plymouth’s fur trade, showing little interest in its business end and
letting by a few inaccuracies. Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_,
119, 163, 176, 178; Bradford, “Letter Book,” 36, on amounts collected;
_ibid._, 112, 183, on boats.
[38] See Percival Hall Lombard, _The Aptucxet Trading Post_ (Bourne,
Mass.: Bourne Historical Soc., 1943) for description of that post.
A reconstruction has been erected on the site. On the visit of de
Rasieres, Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 202, 203
and App. VI; Bradford, “Letter Book,” 51–55; J. F. Jameson, ed.,
_Narratives of New Netherland, 1609–1664_ (New York, 1909), 110, 112.
[39] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 200, 215–216,
242, 262, 384–385; Goodwin, _Pilgrim Republic_, 337–340; see text of
patent and map in Henry S. Burrage, _The Beginnings of Colonial Maine_
(Portland, 1914), 186–187; money spent for patent, 3 _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Colls._, I, 199.
[40] “Isaac Allerton,” _New Eng. Hist. Gen. Reg._, XLIV, 290–296;
Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 202, 198; 3 _Mass.
Hist. Soc. Colls._, I, 200; see also Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, II,
opp. 79; _Winthrop Papers_, II, 262, 205, 317, 329, 334–335, and III,
2, 4, 102; Bradford, “Letter Book,” 69.
[41] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 216–217;
Bradford, “Letter Book,” 71. Morison reads this “peddle,” _op. cit._,
385.
[42] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 219–220, 386–387,
22, 228; _Winthrop’s Journal_, ed. Hosmer, I, 65, 66. Morison’s note on
page 226, by its placement, is confusing in identifying Mr. Peirce’s
ship as the _White Angel_. He correctly states further in the note that
Peirce was master of the _Lyon_, which arrived in Massachusetts in
February 1631, _Winthrop’s Journal_, I, 57.
[43] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 229, 230, 237,
232, 238–244; Thomas Lechford, _Notebook, Archaeologia Americana_, VII
(Cambridge, 1885), 189–190, Allerton’s 1639 testimony on the _White
Angel_ and _Friendship_.
[44] Allerton appears often in _Winthrop’s Journal_, and in _Winthrop
Papers_, II, III; in Plymouth’s tax list and as an official, _Records
of Plymouth Colony_, eds. N. B. Shurtleff, _et al._ (Boston, 1855–61),
1, 9, 21, 52. Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 241n.,
244, 245, 250–251, 392. “Plymouth Colony, Wills and Inventories”
(typescript), 1620–39, 4, 5; 1641–49, 44, for debts to Allerton.
Allerton gave permission for his brother-in-law’s debts to be settled
first with his other creditors, _Recs. Plymouth Col._, I, 20. _Winthrop
Papers_, III, 437, July 1, 1637, Winslow’s remarks. For an estimate
less harsh than Bradford’s see Andrews, _Col. Per. Amer. Hist._, I,
288–289, 289n.
[45] Bradford said the beaver yielded 14_s._ to 20_s._ a pound. On one
occasion, however, the arrival of “the plimouth merchants great parcel
... brought down the price,” _Winthrop Papers_, III, 150. See also
Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 238, 243, 390, 250,
Winslow’s refusal to accept the debts of _White Angel_, and Sherley’s
reaction; 288–289, quantities of furs, 1631 to 1636; 392, 250,
Sherley’s remarks on Allerton; 255n., Peirce’s ship; 287, plague and
low prices; _Mass. Hist. Soc. Proc._, XLV, 619–620, Sherley’s doubts as
to who sent the furs.
[46] This contradicts Sherley’s letter to Bradford, Sept. 14, 1636,
Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 287, 288. The bill of
complaint in Chancery and Sherley’s answer are in _Mass. Hist. Soc.
Proc._, XLV, 611–623. Minor errors of form in transcription called to
my attention by Mrs. A. W. Millard, may be corrected by consulting
photostats of the original, P.R.O., C. 2, A/44/43, deposited at Pilgrim
Hall, Plymouth, Mass.
[47] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 298, 301,
309, settlement with Andrews and Beauchamp; Andrews’ arrangements,
_Winthrop Papers_, IV, 129–131, 257, 437; V, 2–4; Andrews, _Col. Per.
Amer. Hist._, I, 370, 370n.; Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, II, 289n.
Morison seems in error in saying the cattle were to go to the “poor of
Plymouth.” See _Recs. Mass. Bay_, II, 39, 89.
[48] Bradford, _Of Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 298, 302,
308–313, 399–402, 415–417; Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, II, 332n.,
294n., 158n., 336n., on Atwood, Collier, and Freeman; _Winthrop
Papers_, V, 3, Andrews’ comment. Atwood, owner of a servant and house
in Plymouth, was a business correspondent of Sherley, _Recs. Plymouth
Col._, I, 12, 47, 48; “Plymouth Colony, Wills and Inventories,”
1641–49, 39. Settlement with Beauchamp, _Recs. Plymouth Col._, XII,
128, 129, 130.
[49] _Recs. Mass. Bay_, II, 39; Bradford, _History_, ed. Ford, II,
333n., paid for Andrews are £490 or £534 9s. See _Aspinwall Notarial
Records, 1644–51_ (Boston, 1903), 21, Allerton’s acquittance. On
former prosperity and drop in cattle prices, Bradford, _Of Plymouth
Plantation_, ed. Morison, 252–253, 310; W. B. Weeden, _Economic and
Social History of New England_ (Boston, 1891), I, 165–166; _Winthrop’s
Journal_, II, 17, 23, 25. _Recs. Plymouth Col._, XII, 90, 127–132,
agreements with Edmund Freeman, Beauchamp’s attorney. Bradford, _Of
Plymouth Plantation_, ed. Morison, 428ff., Bradford’s surrender of
patent. _Winthrop Papers_, III, 167, on Plymouth’s pre-eminence in fur
trade; G. F. Willison, _Saints and Strangers_ (New York, 1945) and
Hale, _Pelts and Palisades_, describe the expansion and decline of the
fur trade. See “Plymouth Colony, Wills and Inventories,” 1650–59, 105,
110, Bradford’s Kennebec stock; _Recs. Plymouth Col._, I, III, VII,
later fur trade and Kennebec.
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Index of Personal Names
Alden, John, 47
Alden [Allden], Robert, 33, 45
Allerton, Isaac, 11, 23, 32, 38, 45, 47, 48, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56,
57, 58, 59, 71, 77
Altham, Sir Edward, 71
Altham [Alltham], Emmanuel, 29, 31, 33, 34, 71
Andrews, Richard, 25, 33, 37–38, 43, 48, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65,
72, 73, 78
Andrews, Damaris, 72
Andrews, Thomas, 33, 35–36, 37, 38, 72
Anthony, Lawrence, 33
Ashley, Edward, 43, 45, 54, 56
Atwood, John, 63, 64, 78
Bacon, Sir Francis, 70
Bass, Edward, 32, 33
Beauchamp, John, 25, 32, 33, 35, 43, 48, 55, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 74,
78
Beauchamp, Thomas, 74
Blackwell, Francis, 15, 69
Bradford, William, 4, 9, 11, 12, 14, 18, 20, 23, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31,
42, 45, 47, 48, 49, 50, 52, 54, 56, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 71, 78
Brewer, Thomas, 14, 33, 34, 45
Brewster, William, 12, 13, 14, 47, 56, 69
Browning, Henry, 33
Carver, John, 12, 13, 19, 20, 23, 52, 70
Charles I, 32
Collier, William, 33, 56, 63, 71, 77
Coulson, Christopher, 33, 34, 37, 38, 71, 72, 73
Coventry, Thomas, 33
Cradock, Matthew, 39, 57, 72
Cushman, Robert, 11, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 52, 69,
70
Davenport, John, 40
de Rasieres, Isaack, 50–51, 77
Downing, Emmanuel, 53
Eliot, John, 38
Endecott, [John], 39
Ferrar, John, 20
Ferrar, Nicholas, 20
Fletcher, Thomas, 33
Fowler, John, 25, 69
Freeman, Alice, 74
Freeman, Edmund, 63, 78
Goffe, Thomas, 33, 37, 38
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 21
Greene, William, 33, 34, 45, 72
Gudburn, Peter, 33
Harcourt, Robert, 12
Hatherley, Timothy, 33, 54, 55, 57
Heath, Thomas, 33
Hibbins, William, 64
Hobson, William, 33
Holland, Robert, 33
Howland, John, 47
Hudson, Thomas, 33
Humfrey, John, 53
James I, 14
Keane, Benjamin, 41
Keane, George, 71
Keane [Keayne], Robert, 32, 33, 35, 37, 40–41, 71, 73, 74
Knight, Eliza, 33
Knight, John, 33
Knowles, Myles, 33
Ling, John, 33
Lyford, John, 30, 31, 42
Martin, Christopher, 19, 20
Mayhew, Thomas, 38
Millsop, Thomas, 33
Morton, George, 12, 23
Morton, Thomas, 50, 53, 76
Mott, Thomas, 33
Mullins, William, 17
Newbald, Fria., 33
Oldham, John, 30, 31
Peirce, John, 21, 24, 26–28, 33, 39, 41, 42, 70, 71, 72, 77
Peirce, Richard, 27
Peirce, William, 60
Penington, William, 33
Penrin, William, 33
Peter, Hugh, 35, 39, 40, 64
Pickering, Edward, 12, 15–16, 19, 25, 33, 45, 69, 72
Pindar, Sir Paul, 37
Pocock, John, 32, 33, 37, 39, 71, 74
Pory, John, 20
Poynton, Daniel, 33
Prince, Thomas, 47
Quarles, William, 33
Revell, John, 33, 37, 39, 40
Robinson, John, 11, 12, 17, 18, 19, 31, 48
Rookes, Newman, 33
Samoset, 23
Sandys, Sir Edwin, 13, 69
Sharpe, Samuel, 33, 37, 39, 74
Sheffield, Lord, 29
Sherley, James, 4, 25, 27, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 40, 41, 43–45, 48, 49,
51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67,
69, 71, 72, 75, 76
Sherley, John, 44, 75, 78
Sherley, Robert, 44, 75
Smith, John, 13, 16, 32, 33, 70
Squanto, 23, 49
Standish, Miles, 47, 49, 50
Thorned [Thornell], John, 33, 71
Thornhill, Matthew, 33
Tilden, Joseph, 33
Ward, Thomas, 33
Warwick, Earl of [Rich, Sir Robert], 52
Weld, Thomas, 39, 64
Weston, Thomas, 9, 14, 15–17, 19, 21, 24, 25, 26, 33, 45, 49, 69, 70,
72
White, John, 33, 34, 37, 41–42
White, John (of Dorchester), 41
Wincob, John, 14
Winslow, Edward, 12, 23, 29, 35, 47, 54, 56, 58, 59, 61, 63, 69, 75,
77, 78
Winslow, Josiah, 59, 60, 64
Winthrop, John, 37, 38, 40, 42, 53, 58, 63, 64, 66, 71
Winthrop, John, Jr., 39
Wolstenholme, Sir John, 13
Wright, Richard, 33
Transcriber’s Notes
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a
predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they
were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation
marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left
unbalanced.
The left-justified layout of the Table of Contents closely matches
the layout in the original book.
Footnote 12 is unreferenced (has no anchor).
The index was not checked for proper alphabetization or correct page
references.
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