April 12. May 3. under pain of punishment." Three men were sentenced to be "whipped for stealing three pigs." Patrols of four men were appointed to be kept every night at Dorchester and at Watertown, the southern and western outposts; and military companies were to be trained every Saturday. The amount of ammunition to be kept by each soldier was prescribed; and the firing of a gun after the night watches were set was made punishable by whipping, and a second offence by measures more severe. Travellers to Plymouth were never to go single or unarmed. A servant of Mr. Humphrey was ordered to be "severely whipped" at Boston and Salem for striking an overseer "when he came to give him correction for idleness in his master's work." To a servant of Mr. Pelham was awarded a whipping for unjust selling of his master's tools." John Norman was "fined for his not appearing at the Court, being summoned." Rules were made for restraining stray cattle and swine, and for compensating any damages done by them. The indentures of a servant were transferred from one master to another. Walford, the smith, found at Charlestown, was fined forty shillings, "for his contempt of authority and confronting officers," and was enjoined to depart with his wife "out of the limits of this patent before the twentieth day of October next, under pain of confiscation of his goods." The Court entertained a charge against Endicott for assault and battery, and caused a jury to be impanelled which amerced him in forty shillings.1 66 1 On this occasion, Endicott, writing from Salem to Winthrop on other business, said: "Sir, I desired the rather to have been at Court, because I hear I am much complained on by goodman Dexter, for striking him. I acknowledge I was too rash in striking him, understanding since that it is not lawful for a justice of peace to strike. But if you had seen the manner of his carriage, with such daring of me with his arms on kembow, &c. It would have provoked a very patient man. But I will write no more of it, but leave it till we speak before you face to face. Only thus far further, that he hath given out, if I had a purse he would make me empty it, and if he cannot have justice here, he will do wonders in England, and if he cannot prevail there, he will Visit of There were very few natives in the neighborhood of the new settlements. Chickatabot, said to have been then chief sachem of the Massachusetts, visited Governor Chickatabot. Winthrop with an attendance of his principal March 23. men and their wives, bringing from his home on Neponset River the present of a hogshead of Indian corn.1 Pleased with his hospitable reception, he repeated his visit in a few weeks, and a communication of good offices was established. The Massachusetts Indians were interested to make the English their protectors against the Tarratines, of whose hostility they were in constant dread. April 13-15. Embassy from Connecticut River. April 4. A visit from another native had after a time more important consequences. An Indian from Connecticut River came to the Governor, with a request "to have some Englishmen to come plant in his country, and offered to find them corn, and give them yearly eighty skins of beaver; and that the country was very fruitful, &c., and wished that there might be two men sent with him to see the country." The object appeared to be to obtain an alliance with the English against the Pequots. "The Governor entertained them at dinner, but would send none with him." 3 At the opening of spring, several of the emigrants went to England; some, as Wilson and Coddington, to bring their families; others, discouraged or for other reasons, try it out with me here at blows. Sir, I desire that you will take all into consideration. If it were lawful to try it at blows, and he a fit man for me to deal with, you should not hear me complain; but I hope the Lord hath brought me off from that course." (Hutchinson, Collections, 51, 52.) 1 Dudley says of Chickatabot (Letter, &c.) that he "hath between fifty and sixty subjects. This man least favoreth the English of any sagamore we are acquainted with, by reason of the old quarrel between him and those Demonstration of True Love unto you the Rulers of the Colony of the Massachusetts," published in 1674, Coddington says: "Before Boston was named, . . . . . I built the first good house, in which the said Governor [Bellingham] and merchant Braxel now dwell." (p. 4.) some of the not designing to return. A number of the congregation assembled at the Governor's house to bid their Return of teacher farewell. There was a magistracy on the emigrants. spot, and the civil order could proceed; but in March 30. the teacher's absence, some provisional arrangement was necessary for the well-being of the church. Mr. Wilson, "praying and exhorting the congregation to love," committed to Winthrop, Dudley, and Nowell the ruling elder, the trust of conducting public worship; and, at his request, the Governor commended him and his fellowvoyagers to the Divine protection with prayer. 2 Sir Christo ner. It had been intended that the vessel in which Wilson sailed for England should carry a passenger of very different character. Christopher Gardiner was one of those mysterious visitors whose appearance in re- pher Gardimote settlements so easily stimulates the imaginations of men of more staid habits, and better mutual acquaintance. Who he was, and whence and why he came to New England, which he did just before the arrival of Winthrop, was never known with certainty. It is not improbable that he was an agent, or spy, of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, with whom he is known to have corresponded. Perhaps he was only one of those eccentric lovers of roaming and adventure who are attracted 1 After several months' experience of the country, Dudley had written: "If any come hither to plant for worldly ends, that can live well at home, he commits an error of which he will soon repent him; but . . . . if any godly men, out of religious ends, will come over to help us in the good work we are about, I think they cannot dispose of themselves nor of their estates more to God's glory and the furtherance of their own reckoning." (Letter to the Countess of Lincoln.) Winthrop had written to his wife (I. 453): "We here enjoy God and Jesus Christ. Is not this enough? What would we have more? 3 I thank God, I like so well to be here, as I do not repent my coming. And if I were to come again, I would not have altered my course, though I had foreseen all these afflictions." 2 Winthrop, I. 50. 3 "He came into these parts under pretence of forsaking the world, and to live a private life in a godly course; not unwilling to put himself on any mean employments and take any pains for his living, and sometime offered himself to join to the churches in sundry places." (Bradford, 294.) 4 Winthrop, History, I. 57. He by newly opened regions and new forms of life. called himself Sir Christopher Gardiner; and that he was entitled to the designation may be inferred from its being given to him in some proceedings of the Privy Council.1 Among other particulars of the ill repute which followed him, one was, that he was a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre, and another that he was a "nephew" (a kinsman at some remove) of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester in Queen Mary's day. Governor Dudley wrote, that, according to information received by the magistrates, he had been a great traveller in Europe and the East, and had now two wives living in England, while in Massachusetts he was attended by a female companion whom he gave out to be his cousin, but who, when examined, appeared to know but little of his position or his objects. His incognito, his apparent immorality, and his imputed Popery (afterwards ascertained from some papers dropped by him at Plymouth) were so many causes of the disfavor under which he labored, and united to make his presence undesirable. The wives, or one of them, sent a complaint against him to the Governor, who set on foot measures for his apprehension, which coming to his knowledge, he took to flight, and wandered about for a month among the Indians. At length, he was given up by them at Plymouth, from which place Captain Underhill, in the service of the Massachusetts magistrates, brought him to Boston,3 two months after the passage of the order which has been mentioned for his transportation to England. The master of the Lion could not be persuaded to take charge of him, and it was some months longer before he could be gotten rid of. Arrived in England, where he does not appear to have been restrained of his liberty, he August. soon found out the enemies of the colony, and engaged actively in intrigues to its prejudice. 1 See below, p. 365, note 2. 3 Bradford, History, 295.- Winthrop, History, I. 55, 57. CHAPTER IX. 1629. June. IT has been mentioned, that, at the time to which the history of the Massachusetts Colony has been brought down, the older settlement at Plymouth had increased to the number of about three hundred persons, and that, about the time of the discharge from their engagements to the London partners, they had extended their trading operations both to the east and to the west. The place of the crazy Rogers, the minister brought over by Allerton, and soon sent back, was supplied by Smith, who had come with Higginson's fleet. Some of the Plymouth people found him at Nantasket, "weary of being in that uncouth place, and in a poor house that would neither keep him nor his goods dry. So seeing him to be a grave man, and understood he had been a minister, though they had no order for any such thing, yet they presumed and brought him. He was here accordingly kindly entertained and housed, ... and exercised his gifts among them, and afterwards was chosen. into the ministry, and so remained for sundry years.' "1 Renewed A few weeks before the new minister came, thirty-five members of the Leyden church had joined their friends, accomplishing a long-deferred hope of both par- August. ties. The poor people at Plymouth, just in- emigration volved in new pecuniary obligations to an oppressive amount, were but too happy, not only to defray all the expenses of the new-comers, but to give them dwellings, and supply them with food for more than a from Leyden. 1 Bradford, 363.. Smith probably left Plymouth in 1635. (See Mass. Hist. Coll., IV. 108.) |