USA > Massachusetts > Plymouth County > Duxbury > The Mayflower town : an address delivered at the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the incorporation of the town of Duxbury, Mass., June 17, 1887 > Part 2
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You remember they were bound under the patent which
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they had received from the old Virginia Company to find land somewhere in the neighborhood of Hudson River, per- haps on the Connecticut, perhaps on the Jersey coast; and it is almost equally certain that they had with them the map of the New England coast which John Smith had made when he examined its bays and headlands six years before, and had later published with the native names displaced by the English ones marked by Prince Charles on the draught which the engraver followed. So when at last they sighted land they knew it by the description to be the sand-hills of that point which was called on Smith's map Cape James, after the Prince's royal father, but which the mariners who had been on the coast before, - and they had such among the crew, -told them was nevertheless known by those who frequented the region for traffic with the Indians by the designation which Captain Gosnold had given it eighteen years before, when. he was surprised at the numbers of fish which he found thereabouts, and called it Cape Cod. As soon as it became evident where they were, they turned to the south to seek the place of their destination ; but before long getting among the shoals off Nauset, and fearing that after all' their tribulations they were running too great hazards to proceed, they turned once more northward, and rounding the head of the Cape came at last to anchor in the shelter of what we know now as Provincetown harbor.
I fear that the visitor, who stands on yonder hill and reads inscribed on the base of that monument the names of those who came in the "Mayflower," associates them all with that Faith which is typified in the statue above them ; but the scrutiny of the historian can lay his finger
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upon more than one name in the list which stands for little of that sublimating virtue, for such names belong to men thrown fortuitously among them, - hired men, or forced into the company by the cupidity of the merchants who backed their undertaking on its mercantile side. There were honorable exceptions among this class of the "Mayflower" company ; and we can see here in John Alden, John Howland, and George Soule those whose hopefulness of character made them soon take on the Pilgrims' spirit. But with John Smith's map spread out before them on the deck of the " Mayflower," and finding that stress of weather and the lateness of the season had rendered it necessary to cease the attempt to find a haven within the privileges of their patent, and that they were brought beyond the pale of the delegated authority which that patent vested in their leaders, on territory not within the bounds of such necessary control, - it was then that mutterings from some at least of these same hired men and apprentices, eager to make the most of their freedom which chance had seemingly given them, made it necessary to draft that immortal compact, wherein by the subscrip- tion of all this band of exiles, in the very spirit of their religious independence, took on themselves the power of a body politic, fit to govern themselves and compel the sub- jection of any that were evil disposed. Look around this little group, and see who among them are left of those that signed that fundamental example of constitutional government, - William Brewster, Miles Standish, Edward Winslow, John Alden, John Howland, George Soule, - all here in Duxbury, and all except Soule men of the first consideration in the colony, of whom Alden was destined
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to be the latest survivor of all the signers, including the four others then living in Plymouth, - Bradford and Stephen Hopkins; with two of less consideration, - Francis Cooke and Edward Doten.
As a student of American history, I have often thought that of all the documents connected with that theme there were two I would give most to see. One is that early draught of the New World, making part of a map of the four quarters of the earth, drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, who of all men seemed easiest to stretch his vision to the periphery of all knowledge and of all mental capability, - drawn by Da Vinci, and bearing upon it, so far as existing original records can demonstrate, the written name of America, for the first time in human history. That paper it was my fortune, some years since, to gaze upon, in the cabinet of the Queen at Windsor. The other document, transcend- ing for us even in interest this of Da Vinci, - not that I would measure any name upon it with his in its superlative glory, but that they are significant, for us at least, above all others in the history of constitutional government, -is this bit of paper which bears this business-like and comprehen- sive compact, this germ that has grown till the branches of the tree have covered a vast continent, this experiment which has riveted the attention of students of political sci- ence everywhere. But, alas ! no one of this generation, no one of any generation within our record since the first comers themselves, has looked upon it ; and even to this little group, which we are, as it were, among to-day, and which may be now recalling it, it doubtless never had any interest beyond the few months when, as a temporary expedient, it served them as the foundation and guaranty of their liberties.
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Thus have we stood in our communion face to face for a while with these builders of a people's fame ; and as the sun goes down and they separate for their homes, - Wins- low, we may be sure, remaining for the night with Stan- dish, for he must accompany him to Plymouth in the morning, - we can ponder on their fidelity to the chiarac- teristics of race which they had brought with them from the Old World, giving never a thought to the ideas which have so perplexed the modern students of institutional history as to the origin of the methods of local government with which they were to be so soon clothed, and falling into the ways of that little democracy, the New England town, as easily as traditions are exemplified in conduct, and experience moulds what inheritance suggests.
And so the night fell upon the little community. The reddened sky of the west had paled in the gloaming. The full orb of our satellite had risen above the beach, and the moon-glade trembled athwart the bay. Tread lightly with me as we enter the habitation of their sainted Elder. Pause with me as we see him at his solitary devotion. The glimmer of the castern herald quivers on the lifting waves of his thin and silvered locks, as the gentle air from the tide enters the window of his chamber. Governor Brad- ford, his most reverent disciple, has told us of the singular felicity of invocation which belonged to this pious man ; and I seem to catch the cadence, far off and musical, of that tremulous voice, -
Father, near to all thy creatures, Howe'er distant is their lot, With thy vesture falling round us And thy mercies failing not, -
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In our exile have we planted Precious seed upon this soil, And are waiting for the harvests To be garnered for our toil ; In our living are our crosses Kneaded by thee like to leaven, For we know that we are pilgrims, And our dearest country, heaven !
Give this people, as thy chosen, What of chastisement they need, That for them thy gentle finger Stanch their bruises as they bleed ; May their best endeavor prosper As they buckle for the fight, If they move along the pathway On the stepping-stones of right.
Let not all the noonday visions Which their proud ambitions form, With the hopes of coming glories Which on eager spirits swarm, Make them heedless, as they wander, Of thy never-erring grace, Of thy hand that e'er sustaineth In the lifting of a race, - Make them heedless of the glory Of the Lord and all his hosts, Till they barter Zion's mountain For the littleness of boasts.
Grant them solace in this midnight, Groping for thy garment's hem, Watching in Orion's glory For Jehovah's diadem !
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Brilliantly rose the sun on the next morning. Standish and his guest were early astir, and as they stood on the bank above the tide the two formed a picturesque group. Winslow, despite the cloak and the peaked hat and the matchlock upon which he leaned, had something of the air of the courtly gentleman, as we see it in that portrait which hangs to-day in Pilgrim Hall, - the only indisput- able likeness which has come down to us of a " Mayflower" pilgrim. Standish wore his leathern doublet, his broad band athwart his breast sustaining that sword of the Oriental inscription along its blade which has puzzled modern scholars, his hose above his buckled shoes dis- closing the ribbed muscle of his calf. Hle handled ner- vously the fowling-piece, which the inventory at his death shows us was found among his effects, and which came easily to his shoulder as he sighted a flock of dipping crows among his young corn. The harried birds rose flapping, and flecked the sky as they surged away to the tall clump of whitewood trees which gave the name of Eagle's Nest to the vicinity of Elder Brewster's homestead, and some of whose gaunt and bleached trunks I remember to have heard in my youth old people say that they recalled. Coming along the lower slope of the hill three persons approached. Two of them were Thomas Prince, who lived within sight, and Timothy Hatherly, who had come from Scituate, both knowing they could find passage in the Captain's boat.
Here then these four with Collier, - who lived also within sight, but was debarred coming, - constituted the larger part of the Court which was this day to decide important questions for the little colony in Plymouth,
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where the Governor and John Jenney, the other assist- ant, were expecting their coming. Hobamok, the Indian who for sixteen years had been an attendant upon Standish and a companion in his wanderings, joined the group, as he carried the head of a wolf which he had recently killed, and which he was taking to Plymouth to claim his reward of five bushels of corn. The magistrates en- tered the boat, Hobamok pushed at the prow, there was a prolonged grating of the keel, and as the little craft shid off into deeper water the sail was hoisted, and in the fresh southerly breeze she bore away towards the channel over against Clark's island. On its welcome shore two at least of this little company had landed from the " Mayflower's" shallop on that fearful night in December, 1620; when, en- tering by the Gurnet's nose in a driving snow-storm, they barely succeeded in bringing their reeling boat under the lea of this island, where they passed two days and held their first religious service. Standish and Winslow might well remember the explorations of the next day, when they discovered that they were on an island. They could tell the others how they had recourse to Smith's map to see where they were. Before they left the " Mayflower," then lying in Cape Cod harbor, that map had told them how over against them on the mainland was a harbor with a considerable island in it, since Smith had so drawn it, and Prince Charles had called the spot Plymouth. The name could but have reminded them of the Devonshire Plymouth, the last English port they had left. But Smith, as we now know, had not made the only map of the harbor which had been engraved before this. There is no likeli- hood, however, that the Pilgrims ever knew any other.
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Hobamok may well have remembered Smith's visit, and that of Dermer, who only the year before the Pilgrims came had been in the harbor to find that between Smith's visit and his - an interval of five years - a plague had swept off, hardly without an exception, the native villages which were scattered round the bay. Dermer had brought back to his native woods Hobamok's old rival for the good-will of the English, Squanto, who had been kidnapped by one of Smith's captains, and had had a little experience of civilized life in Europe in the mean time, and had acquired some knowledge of English, which gave him at first a certain advantage over Ilobamok.
The other map to which I refer was Champlain's, which he made on a visit in 1605, quite within the memory of HIobamok ; but the Pilgrims would probably have been as much surprised as their Indian friend to learn that while they were in Leyden a map of their harbor had been issued in Paris, in 1613, - not very accurate to be sure, but still as near the truth as the explorer's maps of that time were likely to be.
We may imagine our Captain's boat long before noon making her way where the deepest water lies, and bump- ing her stem against the very rock on which this same exploring party, whom we have thought of on yonder island, had landed, when on Monday after their Sabbath's rest they touched for the first time the mainland of the harbor. It is altogether improbable that Standish and his com- panions, landing there again as we may suppose on the 17th of June, 1637, had any suspicions that the name- less boulder on which they stepped would become historic, - such at least is the inference which we may naturally
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draw from the absence of any mention of it by any of the Pilgrims themselves. As they passed from the landing up the way which now bears the name of their Leyden home, the memories of that first winter might throng upon them. Here on the left what recollections chung to the Common House, built in their first month ! How up this incline they dragged the great guns from the " Mayflower " to mount thein on the hill ! Standish could tell how at one time he and Brewster, and four or five others, were the only ones left able to succor the many sick. Winslow could tell how he went to yonder hill across the brook to meet Massasoit, and to make through Squanto's help the treaty that brought peace between the English and the natives, and kept it for fifty years. Up the slope of the hill Standish could see the spot where he had first built his cabin ; and close at hand was Alden's carly home, before he had removed and built his house at the Bluefish, in Duxbury. Beyond and above stood the level-roofed fort with the cannon upon it, - not the same in appearance as it had been, for it had just been strengthened and enlarged, since there were rumors of war, as we shall soon sce.
The magistrates stopped at the door of the Governor's house, where two halberdiers stood without, making a suitable state for the little colony on its court day. Standish, we may be sure, got the salute which he claimed, as with the others he entered the honse. It was not long before, in the Governor's study, - for Bradford's inventory shows that his books were not few, and his nephew tells us of the room which contained them, - the dignified little Conrt proceeded to " handle business," as
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the phrase with them went. It is one of the remarkable phases of Plymouth Colony, that with very little of the paraphernalia of a code of laws they set to work to de- velop a practical autonomy, which answered every pur- pose through the seventy years of the colony's independent existence. Judge Story refers to the brevity and the fewness of their laws; and while allowing for the narrow limits of the population and the scant business of the colony as being in some measure the cause of it, he contends that this simplicity was in a large degree owing to their reliance upon the general principles of the English Common Law.
What the magistrates did during the meeting to which we have now brought them is a fair example of their ways in legislation, as done in this all-sufficient court of the Governor and five " justices of the peace of our sovereign lord the King and assistants in the govern- ment," - as the record reads. To understand the sig- nificance of all that was done at this meeting, while they make to this town the grant running after the fashion of the time, " to be holden of our sovereign lord the King, as of his manor and tenure of East Greenwich in the County of Kent," with a due reservation of gold and silver ore, - to understand this consummation, we must take for a moment a view of the somewhat broader re- lations of the colony, and see how these contributed to hasten, or at least to make compatible with existing circumstances, the incorporation of Duxbury.
We remember that as the Pilgrims began in their excur- . sions by land and water to know the country better, they had gradually come to doubt whether on the whole they
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had been wise in the selection of a spot for their settlement It was greatly in its favor, as they were aware, that the immediate country was withont Indian ocenpants, since the plague had swept it so thoroughly; and they could but re- joice in the friendly sentiments of the Wampanoags, their nearest native neighbors, and of Massasoit their chief. Still the soil they ploughed hardly gave the promise which they saw in it on that bright day when, after landing on the rock, their exploring party strayed back into the land and found " divers cornfields and little rimming brooks," which seemed inviting even under a winter's aspect. In the seventeen years during which their acquaintance with the country, then as now called New England, had been widen- ing, there was no region into which they had pushed for exploration and trade that on the whole pleased them so much as the valley of the Connecticut. Not long after the settlement of Boston, seven years before this, a sachem of that country had come to the Massachusetts people and to Plymouth, with an invitation to send colonists among his people. It turned out, indeed, that the Pequods, who lived not far off from this sachem, were making inroads upon the tribes of the Connecticut, and that the latter were more in want of allies than of neighbors, though they did not pro- fess it. The Massachusetts people declined the invitation : but Winslow, then governor of Plymouth, had heard from some of his own adventurous people, who in their pinnace had been up the river to trade, of the goodness of the soil and of the otherwise pleasant look of the valley. The Plymouth governor was enough satisfied with the pro- posal to visit the country himself, whene . he brought away favorable impressions. There were rumors at
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the time that the Dutch from Manhattan were intend- ing by occupation to enforce their right to the territory ; and to prevent this was held to be of so much conse- quence, that Winslow and Bradford had gone to Boston to urge a joint occupation by Plymouth and the Bay. Winthrop, however, pleaded various reasons in oppo- sition, among them poverty, -which in the light of the meagre treasury of the older colony was not very convincing. So the Plymouth people were left to or- ganize the enterprise alone, and to send out a vessel laden with the frame of a house, and to set it up on the river as the beginning of a trading-post. The Dutch, however, had anticipated them, and as the Plymouth vessel approached the site of the modern Hartford, the Hollanders turned the cannon of their fort upon it ; but they hesitated to fire, as the little sloop pushed boldly by. At a place above, where is now the town of Windsor, the adventurers bought of the Indians a tract of land, and erecting their house they began trading for furs. There were later symptoms of ani- mosity on the part of the Dutch, but it did not go to the length of violence ; and we know not how much the old-time relations of the two peoples in Leyden may have had to do with the forbearance.
Already the success of the Windsor settlement had begun to turn the eyes of the Plymouth people to the more inviting bottom lands of the Connecticut. We have seen how, because of the increase of their cattle and flocks, they had in search of pasturage made in the first place sunnner sojourns along the Duxbury side of the bay, which were naturally soon converted into
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permanent abodes. By 1632 it had become desirable for these distant worshippers to think of organizing a church for themselves, which was permitted under Brewster's paternal care; but the Court insisted that settlers so far distant from the protection of the Ply- mouth fort should be, every man of them, armed ; and in a short time their houses were palisaded, and a con- siderable defence of this nature was built across the entrance to what we know as the Nook. We find. in 1632, Standish, Prince, Alden, and Jonathan Brewster signing an agreement to return to Plymouth in the winter. It was thus early with the formation of their church that Duxbury became the first offshoot from the Plymouth stock. The church at Scituate was the second, in 1634, though from the greater remoteness of that region it was given its civil independence a year earlier than Duxbury.
I have referred to the apprehension which Bradford felt, that this scattering of the people might hazard the principles which had bound them together, and which had so far governed them. That many shared Brad- ford's distrust was evident from the growing conviction that the greater fertility of the Connectient valley might support their population more compactly. the Connecticut experiment was closely watched for the chance it might offer of a general emigration from the more sterile region about Plymouth Bay.
It soon became clear that there were causes which were to prevent the fulfilment of any such scheme. It became, in 1635, plain that the Massachusetts people were conscious of having made a mistake in allowing
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Plymouth to gain a footing in that attractive region. Winthrop confesses it when he says that neither the Dutch nor even other English must be allowed to estab- lish themselves there. In the struggle which the spirit of this acknowledgment rendered inevitable, it was evi- dent that the greater population of the Bay was equal to the same task which in our day the North under- took when they measured their strength with the South in the colonization of Kansas. When the Dorchester migration, in 1635, set towards the Connecticut the struggle was begun, and the migration under Hooker soon followed. The attack was reinforced when the new Connecticut patentees sent vessels up the river with other colonists. The Plymouth people could not mistake the warning which their agent, Jonathan Brew- ster, a Duxbury man, sent to them, in July, 1635. that the new-comers were occupying the land all about the Plymouth trading-house, - land which Plymonth had bought of the natives, and had taken possession of in due form. Remonstrance was in vain, both there by their agents and at Boston by their magistrates ; and in March, 1636, the Massachusetts people delegated powers for a year to magistrates appointed to govern their new colony of Connecticut.
Now for a moment look at what was doing in Plymouth and Duxbury, in this month of March, 1636. There had become so general an apprehension of the risk attending the scattering of settlers round the bay, - and the remedy would become more imperative in case the Connecticut lands should allure large numbers, - that the matter was referred to Standish and other leading men whether the
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Plymouth and Duxbury people should not abandon their present settlements and unite compactly at Jones River, or at Morton's Hole, as the region lying neighboring to the present roads from Duxbury to Kingston was called. The majority voted for Jones River, where Kingston now is, but we have no record that anything further was done The reason seems to have been that the Connecticut ques- tion was approaching an issue. Winslow had been sent to Boston to adjust the dispute ; but delays ensued, till finally Plymouth saw that the struggle was a hopeless one. and in May, 1637, Thomas Prince was empowered to make for a consideration a formal transfer of their Connecticut lands - with the reservation only of a small portion lying about their trading-post - to an agent of the Connecticut people. "Thus," says Bradford, "the controversy was ended ; but the unkindness was not so soon forgotten." Thus, too, now that the settlements about the bay were not to be depleted for the Connecticut migration. it became a necessity to give those on the Duxbury side the form of an incorporation.
Bradford's reference to the lingering feeling of dis- trust which Massachusetts had forced upon the weaker colony, had its manifestation very soon in the way in which Plymouth met the appeal of Winthrop to afford his people some help in the war which they quickly found the ambitious Pequods were bound to wage. It was not the first ground of affront which Plymouth had against the Bay Colony, and they gave its magistrates a pointed rejoinder. They reminded them of a few years before, when the French had dispossessed the Plymouth people of a trading-post on the Kennebec.
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how Massachusetts had refused to join out of common interest in an attempt to recover it. They reminded them how they had virtually dispossessed the Ply- mouth people of their lands on the Connecticut ; and as if remembering how Winthrop had covered his refu- sal to join them in the Connecticut occupation by pleading poverty, the Plymouth magistrates now found that the same excuse could stand them in as good a stead.
But the interests of the two peoples were too much intertwined for any permanent estrangement to exist, especially as renewed letters from Massachusetts had shown that a common cause in defending the Narra- gansetts against the Pequods was becoming more and more a necessity
Thus it is that the first business done in this Court of the Plymouth magistrates which we are now watch- ing, was action taken on a further urgent request of Winthrop. Accordingly, the record tells us that a force of thirty men, with as many others as may be needed to manage the barque, shall be sent under Lieutenant William Holmes - the same who sailed his sloop past the cannon of the Dutch -to assist those of Massachusetts and Connecticut in their wars against the Pequods in " revenge for the innocent blood of the English, which they have barbarously shed." They also chose by lot Mr. Thomas Prince to accompany the party as counsellor to the Lieutenant. There is much else spread upon the record, of the necessary provisions which the expedition required. including a list of such as volunteered for the service. It was
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significant of the years that had passed since the " Mayflower" touched these shores. that among the-e willing soldiers appear the names of the child Henry Sampson, now a man of twenty-three. and Peregrine White, now a stripling of seventeen, who had been born in Cape Cod harbor. It is enough to add that a quick stroke mainly on the part of Con- necticut put an end to the war, the news whereof arrived in time to prevent the starting of the Ply- mouth quota.
We may imagine for the next business the whole story of these recent events to be gone over in the discussion which followed the introduction, very likely by Standish, of the order for the incorporation of the new town. There may have been an enlargement upon the justice and necessity of the case. upon the passing of the opportunity which might have rendered necessary the drawing of the scattered population closer together, if the Connecticut migration had been con- summated ; but though Bradford as governor made the necessary minutes of the meeting, he has not pre- served to us more than the vote, which we are this day assembled to commemorate. " It is enacted by the Court that Ducksborrow shall become a towneship. and unite together for their better securitie, and to have the pvreledges of a towne; onely their bounds and limmits shalbe sett and appoynted by the next Court."
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And so DUXBURY became one of those little demoera- cies which have made New England what she is ; for
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her failings as well as virtues can be traced to them. Such as it is, citizens of Duxbury, one of these little democracies is your heritage. You have met to-day to authenticate your title to it, and to pass it on to coming generations.
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