CHAPTER XX.

THE BEGINNING OF A PURITAN COLONY IN NEW ENGLAND, AND WHAT CAME OF IT.

It is no part of the work now in hand to tell the story of the great Puritan Exodus, or to describe minutely its beginning. The present design will be completed when we shall have seen what Puritanism becomes as soon as it finds itself free in the American wilderness; and how, notwithstanding its zeal in England for ecclesiastical Nationalism, and the bitter feeling which it has cherished against the schism of Separatism, it finds, under its new conditions—in a new world, where the Church of Christ is to be formed, instead of being, as in the old world, reformed-no other way than that of calling out from among the ungodly and profane those "who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus," and binding them together "as the Lord's free people" in a voluntary covenant of allegiance to their Saviour and of brotherly helpfulness to each other.

In Dorchester, the shire town of Dorsetshire, about one hundred and fifty miles southeast from London, the Rev. John White had long been rector of Trinity Church. He was an earnest Puritan, venerated for his goodness and zealous for church reformation, though he was one of the many who, either because their scruples did not bring them under the penalties of the Act of Uniformity, or because they were winked at by the ecclesiastical authorities, retained their livings under the imperfectly reformed establishment, and were called "Conforming Puritans." Dorchester, though not a seaport, was a place of some trade; and young men from its families were going, year by year, on fishing voyages to the coast of New England. The good rector of

Trinity Church, having served in that place more than twenty years, had learned to care for his parishioners abroad as well as at home; and so forward was he in plans and efforts for the general interest of religion, that he was sometimes called "the patriarch of Dorchester." In his solicitude for his own parishioners long absent on voyages to the New England coast, and especially for their spiritual welfare, he thought how many others endured the same hardships on the sea, and were subjected to the same temptations of the wilderness. He conceived the plan of a settlement at some convenient point, where sailors and fishermen, going ashore, might find more comfortable shelter and better supplies than the mere wilderness could give them, and might have the benefit of religious ministrations. At his persuasion, a few merchants and gentlemen formed an association (1624) of "Dorchester Adventurers" for that purpose, and contributed a capital of three thousand pounds.1

The town of Gloucester, famous as a fishing town, received its name long afterward; but its place, on the northern cape of the great Massachusetts Bay, became important as early as the first resort of fishing vessels to the coast. A patent for Cape Ann and a not well-defined extent of adjoining territory, was taken out, in the names of Cushman and Winslow and their associates, for Plymouth colony. It was under that patent, and therefore (we must infer) by some arrangement with the London Adventurers for Plymouth colony,2 that the Dorchester Adventurers began (1624) their

1 The “Planter's Plea," in Young's "Chronicles of Massachusetts,” p. 6 ; Hubbard's "History of New England," p. 106.

See ante, p. 433. Captain John Smith, in his "General History," 1624, as quoted by Dr. Palfrey, i., 285, says: "By Cape Ann there is a plantation a-beginning by the Dorchester men, which they hold of those of New Plymouth, who also by them have set up a fishing work." The date of the patent is Jan. 1=10, 1624. It has been suggested that there was already some beginning of a settlement before the date of the patent. Very probably the needs of the fishing vessels had induced the building of a house or

two.

plantation at Cape Ann. White and his friends could hardly fail to be in communication and in sympathy with the anti-Separatist or Puritan party among the Adventurers at London. Thus it naturally came about that when Oldham and Lyford had been expelled from Plymouth, and when the London partnership was breaking to pieces, the Dorchester Adventurers, whose plantation had been far from prosperous, were informed concerning "some religious and well-affected persons that were lately removed out of New Plymouth out of dislike of their principles of rigid separation." One of these, it is said, was Roger Conant, who seems to have been not unfitly described as "a religious, sober, and prudent gentleman." i Lyford and Oldham were also considered to be religious persons "well affected" toward the Puritan idea of a National Church and the Puritan method of church reformation. On the invitation of the Dorchester Adventurers, Conant removed from Nantasket to Cape Ann (1625), and undertook, in their behalf, the government of the plantation there. Lyford, by the same invitation, went to exercise there the ministry to which he had been ordained in the National Church, and which the incorrigible Separatists of Plymouth had refused to recognize. Oldham was also invited, and to him the superintendence of trade between the new colony and the Indians was offered; but he preferred to remain at Nantasket, trading with the Indians on his own ac

count.

The whole story implies that there was an intimate connection between the Dorchester men and those Puritan Adventurers in London, whose conscientious antipathies had convinced them that "they should sin against God by building up such a people" as those Pilgrims were who "renounced

1 No mention is made of him in Bradford's History, nor is any trace of him discoverable at Plymouth. Probably he was there only as a visitor. It may be that he came over in the Charity with Lyford and Oldham, and, instead of remaining in Plymouth with them, went eastward in the same vessel.

all universal, national, and diocesan churches." When Cushman wrote, "We have taken a patent for Cape Ann," the men of Plymouth assumed that the patent was for them, or at least for the great partnership in which they were members; and with great alacrity they went into the enterprise of making an establishment at Cape Ann. Immediately, though the season was inconvenient, they sent some of their men to build stages for the fishery there, and the next year they transferred their salt manufacture from Plymouth to the new plantation, that it might be near the fishery. But as soon as the Puritan majority of Adventurers had resolved to do nothing more for Plymouth, and to break up the partnership between themselves and the Planters, they seem to have determined on seizing Cape Ann as their own. "Some of Lyford and Oldham's friends, and their adherents," says Bradford-" some of the west country merchants," says Hubbard, showing incidentally that those "adherents" of Oldham's friends were the Dorchester Adventurers-" set out a ship on fishing on their own account; and getting the start of the ships that came to the plantation, they took away their [the Plymouth people's] stage and other necessary provisions that they had made for fishing at Cape Ann the year before at their great charge, and would not restore the same except they would fight for it." Captain Standish was there to assert the right of the Plymouth Planters, and was ready to fight for it. But wiser counsels prevailed against the martial spirit of the captain, and the dispute about that fishing-stage was compromised. Nevertheless the Plymouth memorial, addressed immediately afterward to his Majesty's Council for New England, made complaint against those Adventurers who had broken their compact with the Planters: "They have not only cast us off, but entered into a particular course of trading, and have by violence and force taken at their pleasure our possession at Cape Ann." The Pilgrims at Plymouth knew the Dorchester or Western Adventurers only as allies or adherents of those London Advent

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urers whose Puritan scrupulousness would not permit them to co-operate in building up a schismatic colony. Puritanism, not schism, was to characterize the new plantation, and the expectation was that such an enterprise would be in favor with God and with godly men.1

Yet the fishing settlement under Puritan patronage had its disasters. At the end of its second year, the Dorchester Adventurers were discouraged. Their expectations of present advantage were not likely to be realized. A large part of their three thousand pounds had been lost in unsuccessful voyages. The men whom they employed in their plantation, though unsuspected of any Brownist opinions, were not the men for such a work. "Being ill-chosen and ill-commanded, they fell into many disorders, and did the company little service." The well-intending Adventurers had begun a great work, without knowing-what Plymouth might have taught them that the successful founders of a colony, instead of hiring whom they can find to go and "bear the brunt," must go in person, full of the inspiring conception, and ready to suffer and to die for it. Unwilling to expend more money upon the unremunerative enterprise, they abandoned it; and we may suppose that they did so not without something of self-reproach that they had permitted their veneration for the patriarch of Dorchester to involve them in so great a loss. Ought they not to have remembered that the good man, being a Puritan minister, could not be expected to have much wisdom in secular affairs? They took order for the sale of their joint-stock property and the breaking up of their plantation. Yet they were so civil to those that were employed under them as to pay them all their wages, and proffered to transport them back whence they came." The majority of "the land-men" at Cape Ann accepted the offer and went home. "But a few of the most honest and indus

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1 Compare Bradford's account of the conflict at Cape Ann (p. 196, 197) with Hubbard's (p. 110, 111).