Proceedings at MerryMount. -- person left by Wollaston in charge. The habits of shameless license and revelry which he introduced at MerryMount, -as he called his hold, drunkenness, gambling, dancing about a maypole, singing ribald songs, debauching the Indian women, and other "beastly practices of the mad Bacchanalians," were a sore offence to their sober neighbors. By enticing away their servants, he increased his rabble rout. But what made his presence intolerable was, that, to support this wild course of life, Morton sold fire-arms and ammunition freely to the natives. It had been done before by the French, and by transient fishermen; but the extent to which the traffic was now carried on excited serious 1628. alarm, and messengers from the neighboring settlements, after deliberation upon the danger, solicited the Plymouth people to interfere. The messenger despatched to Morton, "in a friendly and neighborly way, to admonish him to forbear these courses," was sent back with affront. A second remonstrance was of no more avail. The third messenger was 66 Captain Standish, and some other aid with him." Morton barricaded his house, defied the invaders, and fortified his comrades with drink. But they were disarmed and dispersed without bloodshed, and their leader was con ducted to Plymouth, whence he was sent to EngJune. land, with letters to the Council and to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, setting forth the danger of his practices.1 He went in the custody of John Oldham, who, by large professions of repentance for his past miscarriages, had become reconciled with the Plymouth people. 1 Bradford, 235-243. The letters sent with Morton are in the Mass. Hist. Coll., III. 62-64. He has made his own report of these proceedings in his "New English Canaan "; with no little wit, it must be allowed, but not in such a way as to mend the aspect of his case, as described by his adversaries. He about Massa The contributions to the expense of this expedition, from settlements and individuals, are on record.1 The settlements were Plymouth and Piscataqua (Ports- English plantmouth), which paid each two pounds ten shil-in and lings, and Naumkeag and Nantasket, each as-chusetts Bay. sessed one pound ten shillings. Nantasket, now Hull, was the seat of Oldham's party. Of Naumkeag, now Salem, an account will be more appropriately given in another place. The share of "Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Burslem" was two pounds. Their cottages probably stood at Winnisimmet, now Chelsea. Edward Hilton, Mrs. Thompson, and Mr. Blaxton contributed respectively one pound, fifteen shillings, and twelve shillings. Edward Hilton was seated at Cochecho on the Piscataqua River; William Blaxton on the peninsula of Shawmut, afterwards Boston; and Mrs. Thompson, widow of David Thompson, formerly of Piscataqua, on the island called by his name in Boston harbor.2 Within the same circuit, there were perhaps solitary planters, whose names do not appear in the transaction. Thomas Walford may have been already, where he was found presently after, on the peninsula of Mishawum (since Charlestown), and Samuel Maverick on Noddle's Island, hard by. Cape Ann, lately a dependency of Plymouth, and Wessagusset (Weymouth) had probably a few inhabitants. Some of the individuals who have been named may have been of the company dispersed after the unsuccessful attempt of Robert Gorges to make a settlement at the latter place. Plymouth had extended itself westwardly to Buzzard's Bay by an outpost on Manomet River, kept by "some servants, who planted corn, and reared some swine." 3 Besides the settlements scattered from Plymouth on the one side to the river Piscataqua on the other, a few beginnings, and attempts at beginnings, of English plantations 1 See Bradford's Letter-Book, in Mass. Hist. Coll., III. 63. 2 Mass. Col. Rec., II. 245. 1598. 1612. beyond that river, have been mentioned.1 Similar undertakings of Frenchmen on the same line of coast still further east had as yet been attended with small success. When half a century had elapsed after those New France. frustrated expeditions which immediately followed the discovery of the St. Lawrence, the Marquis de la Roche conducted forty convicts from the French prisons to the Isle of Sable, fifty miles southeast from Cape Breton. At the end of seven years, a vessel came to convey them back to France, and found only twelve alive. When De Monts, on the revocation of his monopoly, abandoned his designs upon Acadie (the name given to the peninsula now called Nova Scotia, and to an indefinite extent of territory around it), his friend, De Poutrincourt, still remained with some companions at Port Royal. From this place, two Jesuit missionaries from France proceeded, with twenty or thirty companions, to found a colony on the island of Mount Desert, at the mouth of the Penobscot. It was broken up almost immediately by Captain Argall, from Virginia, as has already been related. In the same or the following year, Argall visited Port Royal, destroyed its fortification, and carried away a part of its inhabitants, while the rest dispersed themselves into the interior. It was six or seven years after this time, when the playwright, William Alexander, who began life as travelling companion to the young Earl of Argyll, and was subsequently raised to the Scottish peerage as Earl of Stirling, obtained from the Council for New England his patent for Nova Scotia, a country defined in that instrument as extending from the St. Croix to the St. Lawrence. The party which he sent out to take possession found Port Royal again occupied by Frenchmen, and returned without at 1613. 1621. 1623. 1 See above, pp. 205, 230. 2 See above, pp. 77, 78. 3 See above, p. 85. 1628. tempting its reduction. But in the war which broke out in the second year of Charles the First, it was taken by an expedition commanded by Sir William Kirk. The capture of Quebec by the same force followed in the next year, and for a little July 19. time New France disappeared from the map of America. 1029. On the western border of New England another nation seemed to have established itself with better prospects. It was in the service of the Dutch East India New NethCompany that Henry Hudson, an Englishman, erland. bound on the usual search for a northwestern passage to the Indies, had entered the river since called by 1609. his name, and explored its length for more than September. a hundred and fifty miles. Other navigators from the Netherlands, allured by his report, soon followed for traffic with the natives; and, within three or four years after his visit, they had erected some huts on the island of Manhattan,' and a warehouse and stockade near the spot where now stands the city of Albany. Adriaen Block, in a vessel of sixteen tons, built at Manhattan, explored Long Island Sound and Narragansett Bay, and probably sailed forty or fifty miles up Connecticut River, and into Massachusetts Bay as far as the promontory of Nahant. 2 1 In Plantagenet's "New Albion," published in 1648, is a story that Argall and his party, on their return from Mount Desert to Virginia, in 1613, "landed at Manhatas Isle, in Hudson's River, where they found four houses built, and a pretended Dutch Governor under the West-India Company of Amsterdam, who kept trading-boats, and trucking with the Indians; but the said knights told him their commission was to expel him and all alien intruders on his Majesty's dominions and territories, this being part of Virginia, and this river an English discovery by Hudson, an Englishman. The Dutchman con 1614. 1615. Jan. 1. Block carried home an account of his discoveries, and some merchants of Amsterdam obtained from the StatesGeneral a charter for three years' monopoly of the trade of New Netherland (as it was now called), defined as extending, between New France and Virginia, from the fortieth to the forty-fifth degree of north latitude. But the region appears as yet to have been visited only for trade, and not to have received any permanent Dutch inhabitants. In his last voyage from Virginia to New England, Captain Dermer1 had “met with some Hollanders that were settled in a place we call Hudson's River, in trade with the natives; who forbade them the place, as being by his Majesty appointed to us. Their answer was, they understood no such thing, nor found any of our nation there, so that they hoped they had not offended."2 Pursuing his way, Dermer had passed through Long-Island Sound, probably the first Englishman who ever sailed on its waters. 1021. At the expiration of the time limited in the charter of the Amsterdam merchants, the government refused to renew it, having in view more extensive operations in which its purpose would be embraced. The charter of the Dutch West-India Company followed, in six months, that June 3. of the Council for New England. It was while this measure was pending, that the merchants of Amsterdam had proposed to Robinson's congregation to emigrate under their patronage,3 and that, adopting a different plan, the colonists of the Mayflower had sailed for the vicinity of the Hudson, and, missing their way, had arrived at Cape Cod. New Netherland was not named in the charter of the Dutch West-India Company, but the powers conferred by it were construed to extend to operations on that 1 See above, pp. 99, 100. 2 Gorges, Briefe Narration, Chap. XXI. Comp. Briefe Relation of the President and Council of New England, 17. 3 See above, p. 149. note 2. |