USA > Massachusetts > The landing at Cape Anne; or, The charter of the first permanent colony on the territory of the Massachusetts company > Part 3
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THE following information respecting Cape Anne, the birth-place of Massachusetts, has been gleaned from the accounts of the early navigators on the coast of New England, and the manuscripts of the first settlers, which furnish the history of the discovery and occupation of this region by the English.
The misfortunes of the Virginia planters discouraged for a while any further efforts at colonization, till the spirit of enterprise was revived by the young and accom- plished noble, Henry Wriothesley, Earl of Southampton, distinguished as the first to appreciate Shakspeare's ge- nius,1 his " especial friend," and his munificent patron.
1 He was scarcely twenty years of age when Shakspeare dedicated to him his " Venus and Adonis." He was liberated and restored on the accession of James the First. He died in the Netherlands, on the 10th November, 1624, and was buried at Titchfield. Charles Knight's Biography of Shakspeare, 223, 239, 268; Pictorial Ilist. of England, i. 658, 661, 664; iii. 383; Lodge's Portraits, iii. 158, 165; Rapin's Hist. of England, ii. 208. His memory was honored by the authors of the day, whose Poems were collected and published, in 1625, in a volume entitled, The TEARES OF THE ISLE OF WIGHT, shed on the Tombe of Henrie, Earle of SOUTH- AMPTON, and James, Lord WRIOTIIESLEY. The volume is now a rarity so highly prized, that it has been sold for upwards of £15.
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LORD SOUTHAMPTON. - BARTHOLOMEW GOSNOLD.
His character and position at the time, invest this inci- dent with peculiar interest. The companion in arms and in misfortune of the unfortunate Earl of Essex, Lord Southampton, now less than thirty years of age, held his life only by the clemency of Elizabeth. As Selden, Eliot, and Raleigh found in the Tower the leisure of the scholar, philosopher, and historian, so in the solitude of his prison, he enjoyed the resources of a noble mind. Some of the leisure hours of his long imprisonment were beguiled by romantic accounts of the new found world, which the adventures of Columbus, Cabot, Gilbert and Raleigh had brought only within the limits of reality, and whose outlines were almost as dim as those of the ancient Atlantis. Musing on the mysteries of the obscure regions far beyond the usual confines of navigation, where the sun sat in darkness, and inspired with the gran- deur of the discoveries, he generously contributed to, and perhaps originated, an expedition for the new world, there " to discover convenyent place for a new colony." It was placed under the command of Captain Bartholomew Gos- nold, and Captain Bartholomew Gilbert.
Captain Gosnold, an intrepid and experienced mariner of the West of England, is distinguished in history as the first Englishman who acquired
" a local habitation and a name"
within the borders of that territory, years afterwards denominated New England.
On the 26th of March, 1602, with a company of thirty-two men, consisting of a corps of twelve for dis- covery and observation, twelve to found a colony, and eight mariners, they set sail from Falmouth in a small and frail " bark of Dartmouth, called the Concord." On the 14th of May, after a passage of forty-nine days -
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CAPE ANNE, AND CAPE COD DISCOVERED.
the first ever accomplished in a direct course to this part of America - they discovered land, which, from their description, is supposed to have included what was after- wards named Cape Anne, "an out point of woodie ground, the trees whereof were very high and straight." They laid at anchor for a few hours, and were visited by the natives, who, "in bark shallops, came boldly abourd them, apparelled with wastcoats and breeches, some of black serdge, some of bleu cloth, made after the sea fashion, with hose and shooes on their feet; a people tall of stature, broad and grym visaged; their eye browes paynted white; and yt seemed by some words and signs which they made, that some barks of St. John de Luz, had fished and traded in this place. But the ship riding here in noe good harborow, and with all the weather doubted, the master stood off againe into the sea south- wardly, and soon after found himself imbayed with a mighty head land, where, coming to an anchor within a league of the shoare, Captain Gosnold commanded the shallop to be turned out, and went ashore, when he perceived this headland to be parcell of the mayne, and sundry islands lying almost round about yt; whereupon, thus satisfied, he repaired abourd againe, where, during the tyme of his absence, which was not above six howers, he found the ship so furnished with excellent codfish, which they hauled, that they were compelled to through nombers of them overbourd agayne." 1
This headland they called Cape Cod, the first name bestowed by an Englishman on any part of the coast, a harbinger of one of the most important interests of the future colonies and states, a History and a Poem in itself. Thus do
" Coming events cast their shadows before."
1 Chap. 5, 6, of Strachey's " Historie of Travaile into Virginie," edited by R. H. Major, Esq. London, 1850.
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MARTHA'S VINEYARD. - ELIZABETH ISLAND.
It is a name, says Mather, which I suppose it will never lose till shoals of codfish be seen swimming on the tops of its highest hills.
" Honorable and worthy countrymen," said Captain John Smith,1 "let not the meanness of the word fish distaste you ; for it will afford as good gold as the mines of Guiana or Potassie, with less hazard and charge, and more certainty and facility."
After doubling the Cape, Captain Gosnold discovered " many faier islands." One he called " Martha's Viniard, being stored with such an incredible nombre of vynes, as well in the woody parte of the island, where they run upon every tree, as on the outward parts, that they could not goe for treading upon them; the second, full of deare and fowle, and glistering minerall stones, he called by his own name, Gosnoll's Island; the third, about some sixteen miles in compasse, contayning many peeces and necks of land little differinge from several islands, saving that certaine bancks of small breadth, like bridges, seemed to joyne them to this island."? And on the 24th of May, they anchored at the north-west of the last named island, which was covered with the stately oak, ash, beech, walnut, cedar, sassafras, and other trees, and a luxuriant growth of grape vines, eglantine, honey- suckle, hawthorn, gooseberry, and raspberry. He named it Elizabeth, in honor of his Queen, but it has ever retained its Indian name of Cutty-Hunk,3 while to the whole group of islands, of which it is a member, belongs
" In "a perfect description of Virginia," 1649, it is said " that New England is in a good condition for livelyhood, but for matter of any great hopes but fishing, there is not much in that land."
2 Purchas' Pilgrims, iv. 1647- 1650 ; Belknap's Am. Biog. Art. " Gosnold ;" Bancroft, i .; Hildreth, i .; Stith's Virginia, 31.
3 " A contraction of Poo-cut-oli-hunk-un-noh, which signifies a thing that lies out of water." Belknap's Am. Biog. Art. " Gosnold,"
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GOSNOLD'S PLANTATION. - FIRST EXPORTS.
the name suggested by Gosnold's loyalty. On this island, hardly thirty yards from the shore, on the north-west side, was a lake of fresh water, abounding in tortoise, and the resort of birds, in the western end of which " was a rocky ilet, contayning neere an acre of ground, full of wood, on which they began a fort and place of abode." They built a punt, or flat-bottomed boat, to pass to and from the islet, and were occupied three weeks or more in building a house there, which they covered with the sedge growing abundantly about the shores of the lake.
After nearly two centuries, on the 20th day of June, 1797, the Rev. Dr. Belknap visited the spot, and had the supreme satisfaction to find the cellar of Gosnold's store- house; and a half century later, on the 22d of August, 1848, the writer1 examined the locality described with minute exactness in the journals of Gosnold's voyage, and the outlines of their works were then distinctly visible. The ship returned to England with a load of sassafras roots, the panacea of the day, which, with furs and other productions of the country, was the first cargo exported from New England.
The next special notice of Cape Anne is from the travels of the illustrious voyager, Captain John Smith. On the 3d day of March, 1614, he2 sailed from the Downes on a voyage to "North Virginia," and he then gave it the name of New England.3 To him we are
' In company with the Hon. George Folsom, of New York, and F. W. Sawyer, Esq., of Boston.
2 Then thirty-five years of age.
3 In Thevet's " Singularitez de la France Antarctique," published at Paris in 1558, ch. 74, fol. 148, it is said that " Sebastian Babate [Cabot], an Englishman," proposed to Henry VIII. of England,'" to go to Peru and America to people the country with new inhabitants, und to establish there u New England, which he did not accomplish : " quoted in "A Memoir of Sebastian Cabot," 2d ed. London, 1832. 8vo. p. 89. The council for the second colony "in the North Partes of
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SMITH'S MAP PRESENTED TO PRINCE CHARLES.
indebted for the first tolerable outline of our coast. Before sailing, he had collected all the information to be obtained from Gosnold, Weymouth, and the fishermen who had been on the coast; but it was so imperfect, that he declared it was " even as a coast unknown and undis- covered. I have had six or seven severall plotts of those northern parts, so unlike each to other, and most so differing from any true proportion or resemblance of the country, as they did me no more good than so much waste paper, though they cost me more. It may be it was not my chance to see the best; but lest others may be deceived as I was, or through dangerous ignorance hazard themselves as I did, I have drawn a map from Point to Point, Ile to Ile, and Harbor to Harbor, with the sounding, sands, rocks, and land marks, as I passed close aboard the shore in a little boat." 1
Captain Smith presented his map and account of the country to Prince Charles, requesting him " to change the Barbarous names for such English as Posterity may say Prince Charles was their God-father." The Prince approved the name of "New England," and called " the faire headland " Cape Anne, in honor of his mother, Anne of Denmark, in preference to the less euphonious name of Smith's lady love, Charatza Tragabigzanda, so gallantly remembered by him in his wanderings in' the new world. She had become enamored of him while he was a prisoner in Turkey, and through her influence with one of the chief officers of State, the hardships of
Virginia in America," petitioned his Majesty that their territory " may be called (as by the Prince His Highness it hath bin named) NEW ENGLAND, that the boundes thereof may be settled from 40 to 45 degrees of northerly latitude, and soc from sea to sea through the maine as the coast lyeth." The petition, 3 March, 1620, is published in " Documents of Colonial Ilistory " of New York. 1853. Vol. iii. pp. 2, 3.
Description of New England, 1624, p. 205.
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MASSACHUSETTS THE PARADISE OF NEW ENGLAND.
his captivity were much alleviated. The Prince likewise conferred his father's name on Cape Cod,' but so appro- priate was the latter, that it never yielded even to royal claims.
Captain Smith published his "Description of New England "-for several years the only guide of voyagers to this coast-in the year 1616, and he2 passed that summer in distributing copies of it among the gentry of the principal towns of Cornwall and Devonshire, the maritime counties of England, in order to excite a new impulse in favor of colonization.
Of " the coast of Massachusetts " he said, " of all the four parts of the world I have yet3 seen uninhabited, could I have but means to transport a colony, I would rather live here than any where else; " and in another place he calls " the country of the Massachusetts 4 the Paradise of all those parts." Some years later Admiral Levett was on the coast, and found that by common consent " Massachusetts was called the Paradise of New England."
The Plymouth colonists, " hearing a great fame there- of," early in the next fall after their arrival, dispatched a boat with a company 5 of ten men, under Captain Standish, to explore the country, conciliate the natives,
I In 1632 its popular name was Cape Cod. IIist. Doc. New York, iii. 17. New Foundland, discovered by the Portuguese navigator about the year 1463, was, ut first, called Terra de Baccalhaos or land of cod-fish.
2 Horatio G. Somerby, Esq., has discovered in the Parish Register of Wil- loughby, County of Lincoln, England, the record of Smith's baptism. " 1579, John, the son of George Smith, was baptized the sixth day of January."
3 A critical examination of Smith's account of this region is in the History of Dorchester, " number one," pp. 1-4, but its strictures must be received with great caution.
4 The Indians told Roger Williams that " the Massachusetts were called so from the Blue Hills," in Milton ; and the learned Rev. John Cotton defined it as " an hill in the form of an arrow head."
5 Hubbard, 102 ; Prince, 112, 113.
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NANTASKET. - ROGER CONANT.
and " procure their truck." "They returned with some beaver, a good report of the place, and wishing they had been settled there." Having built " something like a habitation "1 at Nantasket, they probably trafficked with the natives for their peltry, and became familiar with the coast and its advantageous points.
Among the London merchants who aided the Ply- mouth colonists, and who were commonly called the " merchant adventurers," were many adherents of the established church, having no sympathy with the Pil- grims, and who viewed the enterprise only as a source of pecuniary profit. They introduced into the colony persons of opinions similar to their own, and of course unfriendly to the Pilgrims. Among them, John Lyford and John Oldham became unhappily conspicuous.
The Pilgrims were of that section of the Puritans who dissented from the establishment, and were stig- matized as "Separatists." There were in the colony a few Puritans of more moderate views, who resided there for a while, but "out of dislike of their principles of rigid separation," voluntarily withdrew with their fami- lies to Nantasket, where Captain Standish had built a house, in his tour of observation in the month of Sep- tember, 1621. Mr. Roger Conant, the principal person of the company at Nantasket, was " a pious, sober, and prudent gentleman," who had come to New England as early as the fall of the year 1622, or in the next spring.
As the serious charges against Lyford rest on the ex parte statements of Bradford and Morton, they may
1 Hubbard, the authority on this point, says, that after the dismissal of Oldham and Lyford, "some religious and well affected persons," of whom " Mr Roger Conant was one," " were [had] lately removed out of New Plymouth." He has been erroneously understood as representing others beside Oldham and Lyford, to have been expelled. Hubbard, 102, 106, 116 ; Young's Chron. of Massachusetts, 23, note 4.
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BAD CONDUCT OF LYFORD AND OLDHAM.
be received with caution; but as the former wrote of his own personal knowledge, and Morton himself was a youth of about thirteen years of age at the time, and was also a prominent man in the colony, and both were men of known integrity, their positive testimony can be questioned only on the gravest considerations. Hubbard, the historian, passes lightly over the difficulties at Ply- mouth, but Prince1 suggests that "he is sometimes in the dark about the affairs of Plymouth, and especially those which relate to Lyford and Oldham, as also to Mr. Robinson."
If Bradford's testimony is to be believed, Lyford was the evil genius of New England. He had absconded from Ireland for acts of the vilest criminality; but before his true character was known, the Episcopal faction of the adventurers in London selected him for the ministry at Plymouth, from hostility to Mr. Robinson, who, with a portion of his church, was yet 2 at Leyden. At New Plymouth, he affected admiration of their order in church and state, and with tears and confessions sought admis- sion to their fellowship, into which he was received. So zealously did he approve their doings, that the Governor . advised with him on affairs of importance. Lyford found in the colony a dishonorable person, one John Oldham, described by Governor Bradford as " a private instrument of the factious part of the adventurers in England, whom we had also called to council in our chief affairs without distrust." These congenial fellows at once united in seditious proceedings, endangering the public interests. The very ship which brought Lyford, on her
' Prince, 146, 148; Morton's Memorial, 53- 60; Robinson's Letter, December 20, 1623, Works, i. Ivii.
2 Anno 1624, " Master Layford was at the merchant's chardge sent to Plimoth plantation to be their pastor." - New English Canaan.
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THEIR TREASON EXPOSED.
return voyage to England in July, carried about twenty letters from him, and some from Oldham, filled with slanders and false accusations of the colonists, tending to their utter subversion and ruin. Soon after, their mutin- ous behavior obliged the Governor to bring them before a court in the presence of the whole company, where their falschood and guilt were proved by their intercepted correspondence. They were banished the colony. Old- ham returned in the spring of 1625, without leave, and by his violence provoked a second expulsion with peculiar ignominy.
Bradford's quaint account of it is as follows: He " openly comes, and in so furious a manner reviles us, that even his company are asham'd of his outrage. Upon which we appoint him to pass thro' a Guard of Sol- . diers, and every one with a musket to give him a blow on his hinder part, is then conveyed to the water side, where a boat is ready to carry him away," "with this farewell," says Morton,1 " Go and mend your manners."
" While this is doing, Mr. Winslow and Mr. William Peirse 2 land from England, and bid them spare neither him nor Lyford: for they had play'd the villains with us; and their Friends in England had the like bickerings with ours there about Lyford's calumnious letters, &c. After many meetings, and much clamour against our agents, for accusing him; the controversy was referred to a further meeting of most of the adventurers to hear and decide the matter. Mr. Lyford's party chose Mr. White, a counsellor at Law ; the other chose the Rev. Mr. Hooker, Moderator; and many friends on both sides
1 Morton's Memorial, 58; Prince, 153. Running the gauntlet was a statute punish- ment as late as 1676. Plymouth Colony Laws, p. 179.
" Mr. Savage has a note about Peirse, Winthrop, i. 29,3 to which add p 140, vol. viii. of the N. E. Ilist. Gen. Reg., April, 1854.
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LYFORD EXPELLED FROM THE MINISTRY.
coming in, there was a great assembly; in which Mr. Winslow made so surprising a discovery of Lyford's car- riage when minister in Ireland, for which he had been forced to leave that kingdom, and coming to England was unhappily lit on and sent to New Plymouth, as struck all his friends mute, made 'em asham'd to defend him : and the Moderators declared, that as his carriage with us gave us cause enough to do as we did, so this new discovery renders him unmeet to bare the ministry more." 1
The character and relations of these persons, as here developed, will account for their part in the transactions at Cape Anne, as it appears in the course of the follow- ing narrative.
1 Prince, 153.
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CHAPTER IV.
PLYMOUTH COLONY SENDS WINSLOW AS AGENT. TO ENGLAND - FAME OF THE COLONY IN ENGLAND- REV. JOHN WHITE OF DORCHESTER. - LORD SHEFFEILD BECOMES INTERESTED-GRANTS A PATENT FOR CAPE ANNE- COPY OF THE CHARTER - CAPE ANNE OCCUPIED - FAILURE OF EFFORTS AT CAPE ANNE-DISAFFECTION OF THE LONDON MERCHANT ADVENTURERS - LEVETT'S ACCOUNT OF PLYMOUTH AND CAPE ANNE IN 1624.
AFTER two years of colonial life and observation, the pilgrims deputed1 Edward Winslow, Esquire, to the merchant adventurers in England, to report the con- ditions and prospects of the colony, and to procure the needed supplies. He sailed from Plymouth in the ship Ann, on the eighteenth of September, 1623; and, on his arrival in London, conferred with Mr. Robert Cushman, of whom Governor Bradford says, "He was our right hand with the adventurers, and for divers years managed all our business with them." About this time, and probably through the agency of Winslow and Cushman, and the correspondence of Mr. Roger Conant, before named, the fame of the successful plantation at New Plymouth 2 was spread throughout the western parts of England, especially in the counties which Smith had visited a few years before. The Rev. John White, of
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2 Hubbard, 166.
1 Prince, 140.
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CUSHMAN AND WINSLOW INTEREST LORD SHEFFEILD. 29
Dorchester, loyal to the church, yet distinguished as a Puritan, took a zealous interest in these enterprises, and afterward exerted a most important influence in the colonizing of New England.
In about sixty or eighty days, supplies were provided for the colony, and preparations made to extend their fisheries and to transport more persons " further to plant at Plymouth, and in other places in New England," especially " in a known place there commonly called Cape Anne." 1
Among those whose interest was gained by Cushman and Winslow, the first colonial agents from New England to Old England, was Edward, Lord Sheffeild, then one of the leading statesmen of England, and a prominent member of the Council for New England. The creation of this company, its corporate powers, the distribution of the territory among its members, and the sanction of this by the king in council, establishing the title and right of government over the various portions, in the several proprietors, as emanating directly from the crown, have been already stated. In the exercise of this delegated authority, Lord Sheffeild granted the 'charter which is now presented to the reader.
It displays a political wisdom, superior to that of Locke, or any theorist, probably the fruit of colonial experience as suggested by Winslow and Cushman. No elaborate system was created. A few concise but com- prehensive sentences, embodied the essentials of a free government. The necessities of society create laws, suited to its position and character in its primitive con-
' " How great a difference there is between the theoretical and practical part of an enterprise. The Utopian fancy of any projector may easily, in imagination, frame a flourishing plantation in such a country as was New England." - Hub- bard, 87.
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POLITICAL PRIVILEGES OF THE CHARTER.
dition, few and simple, and in its progress becoming more complicated and minute; and thus the charter wisely left the polity of the colony, to be developed by and in itself. It establishes, as the basis of the body politic, institutions whose design and legitimate fruits are intelligence and virtue ; it secures to all, by fundamental laws, the opportunity of instruction, and of education in the principles of morality and religion ; and, thus pre- pared for the rights and duties of Christian freemen, it guarantees to them the exercise of those rights and duties in self-legislation, and the election of their own officers and magistrates.
THE CHARTER.
Chis Sndenture1 made the ffirst day of January Anno Dni 1623, And in the Yeares of the Raigne of o' Soveraigne Lord JAMES by the grace of God King of England ffrance and Ireland Defender of the ffaith &c the One and Twentyth And of Scotland the Seaven and flyftyth Betweene the right honorable Edmond Lord Sheffeild Knight of the most noble Order of the Garter on thone part And Robert Cushman and Edward Winslowe for themselves, and theire Associats and Planters at Plymouth in New England in America on thother part. aulytnesseth that the said Lord Sheffeild (As well in consideracon that the said Robert and Edward and divers of theire Associats haue already adventured themselves in person, and have likewise at theire owne proper Costs and Charges transported dyvers persons into New England aforesaid And for that the said Robert and Edward and their Associats also intend as well to transport more persons as also further to plant at Plymouth aforesaid, and in other places in New England aforesaid As for the better Advancement and furtherance of the said Planters, and encouragement of the said Vndertakers) Hath Gyven, graunted, assigned, allotted, and appointed And by these pnts doth Gyve, graunt, assigne, allott, and appoint vnto and for the said Robert and Edward and their Associats As well a certaine Tract of Ground in New England aforesaid lying in fforty-three Degrees or thereabout of Northerly latitude and in a knowne place there comonly called Cape Anne, Together with the free vse and benefitt as well of the Bay comonly called the Bay of Cape Anne, as also of the Islands within the
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