Colony of Massachusetts Bay
While the Pilgrims were thus establishing themselves as the first
occupants of the soil of New England, other men of various sorts and
motives were trying their fortunes within its borders and were
testing the opportunities which it offered for fishing and trade
with the Indians. They came as individuals and companies, men of
wandering disposition, romantic characters many of them, resembling
the rovers and adventurers in the Caribbean or representing some of
the many activities prevalent in England at the beginning of the
seventeenth century. Thomas Weston, former ally of the Pilgrims,
settled with a motley crew of rude fellows at Wessagusset (Quincy)
and there established a trading post in 1622. Of this settlement,
which came to an untimely end after causing the Pilgrims a great
deal of trouble, only a blockhouse and stockade remained. Another
irregular trader, Captain Wollaston, with some thirty or forty
people, chiefly servants, established himself in 1625 two miles
north of Wessagusset, calling the place Mount Wollaston. With him
came that wit, versifier, and prince of roysterers, Thomas Morton,
who, after Wollaston had moved on to Virginia, became "lord of
misrule." Dubbing his seat Merrymount, drinking, carousing, and
corrupting the Indians, affronting the decorous Separatists at
Plymouth, Morton later became a serious menace to the peace of
Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrims felt that the coming of such
adventurers and scoffers, who were none too scrupulous in their
dealings with either white man or Indian and were given to practices
which the Puritans heartily abhorred, was a calamity showing that
even in the wilds of America they could not escape the world from
which they were anxious to withdraw.
The settlements formed by these squatters and stragglers were quite
unauthorized by the New England Council, which owned the title to
the soil. As this Council had accomplished very little under its
patent, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, its most active member, persisted in
his efforts to found a colony, brought about a general distribution
of the territory among its members, and obtained for himself and his
son Robert, the section around and immediately north of
Massachusetts Bay. An expedition was at once launched. In September,
1623, Robert Gorges with six gentlemen and a well-equipped and
well-organized body of settlers reached Plymouth, — the forerunners,
it was hoped, of a large number to come. This company of settlers
was composed of families, the heads of which were mechanics and
farmers, and with them were two clergymen, Morrell and Blackstone,
the whole constituting the greatest enterprise set on foot in
America by the Council. Robert Gorges, bearing a commission
constituting him Governor-General over all New England, made his
settlement at Weston's old place at Wessagusset. Here he built
houses and stored his goods and began the founding of Weymouth, the
second permanent habitation in New England and the first on
Massachusetts Bay. Unfortunately, famine, that arch-enemy of all the
early settlers, fell upon his company, his father's resources in
England proved inadequate, and he and others were obliged to return.
Of those that remained a few stayed at Wessagusset; one of the
clergymen,William Blackstone, with his wife went to Shawmut
(Boston); Samuel Maverick and his wife, to Winnissimmet (Chelsea);
and the Walfords, to Mishawum (Charlestown). Probably all these
people were Anglicans; some later became freemen of the
Massachusetts colony; others who refused to conform returned to
England; but Blackstone remained in his little cottage on the south
slope of Beacon Hill, unwilling to join any of the churches,
because, as he said, he came from England to escape the "Lord
Bishops," and he did not propose in America to be under the "Lord
Brethren."
The colony of Massachusetts Bay began as a fishing venture with
profit as its object. It so happened that the Pilgrims wished to
secure a right to fish off Cape Ann, and through one of their number
they applied to Lord Sheffield, a member of the Council who had
shared in the distribution of 1623. Sheffield caused a patent to be
drawn, which the Plymouth people conveyed to a Dorchester company
desiring to establish a fishing colony in New England. The chief
promoter of the Dorchester venture was the Reverend John White, a
conforming Puritan clergyman, in whose congregation was one John
Endecott. The company thus organized remained in England but sent
some fourteen settlers to Cape Ann in the winter of 1623-1624.
Fishing and planting, however, did not go well together, the venture
failed, and the settlers removed southward to Naumkeag (Salem).
Though many of the English company desired to abandon the
undertaking, there were others, among whom were a few Puritans or
Nonconformists, who favored its continuance. These men consulted
with others of like mind in London, and through the help of the Earl
of Warwick, a nobleman friendly to the Puritan cause, a patent was
issued by the Council to Endecott and five associates, for land
extending from above the Merrimac to below the Charles. This patent,
it will be noticed, included the territory already granted to Gorges
and his son Robert, and was obtained apparently with the consent of
Gorges, who thought that his own and his son's rights would be
safely protected. Under this patent, the partners sent over Endecott
as governor with sixty others to begin a colony at Salem, where the
"old planters" from Cape Ann had already established themselves.
Salem was thus a plantation from September, 1628, to the summer of
1630, on land granted to the associates in England; and the
relations of these two were much the same as those of Jamestown with
the London Company.
Endecott and his associates soon made it evident, however, that they
were planning larger things for themselves and had no intention, if
they could help it, of recognizing the claims of Gorges and his son.
They wanted complete control of their territory in New England, and
to this end they applied to the Crown for a confirmation of their
land-patent and for a charter of incorporation as a company with
full powers of government. As this application was a deliberate
defiance of Gorges and the New England Council, it has always been a
matter of surprise that the associates were able to gain the support
of the Crown in this effort to oust Gorges and his son from lands
that were legally theirs. No satisfactory explanation has ever been
advanced, but it is worthy of note that at this juncture Gorges was
in France in the service of the King, whereas on the side of the
associates and their friends was the Earl of Warwick, himself deeply
interested in colonizing projects and one of the most powerful men
in England. The charter was obtained March 4, 1629— how, we do not
know. It created a corporation of twenty-six members, Anglicans and
Nonconformists, known as the Massachusetts Bay Company.
But if the original purpose of this company was to engage in a
business enterprise for the sake of profit, it soon underwent a
noteworthy transformation. In 1629, control passed into the hands of
those members of the company in whom a religious motive was
uppermost. How far the charter was planned at first as a Puritan
contrivance to be used in case of need will never be known. It is
equally uncertain whether the particular form of charter, with the
place of the company's residence omitted, was selected to facilitate
a possible removal of the company from England to America; but it is
likely that removal was early in the minds of the Puritan members of
the company. At this time a great many people felt as did the
Reverend John White, who expressed the hope that God's people should
turn with eyes of longing to the free and open spaces of the New
World, whither they might flee to be at peace. But, when the charter
was granted, the Puritans were not in control of the company, which
remained in England for a year after it was incorporated,
superintending the management of its colony just as other trading
companies had done.
SWORD OF MILES STANDISH. IRON POT AND PEWTER
PLATTER, BROUGHT BY STANDISH IN THE
" MAY FLOWER"
ELDER BREWSTER'S CHAIR, AND CRADLE OF PEREGRINE
WHITE, THE FIRST PILGRIM BABY
In the collection at Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth. Massachusetts.
Back to: Plymouth and New England Colonies
