Copyright 1940
By
PAUL W. BITTINGER
Plymouth, Mass.

Second Edition
October, 1947

Third Edition
June, 1950

Fourth Edition
June, 1952

Fifth Edition
April, 1955

Sixth Edition (revised)
April, 1958

Seventh Edition
January, 1963

Eighth Edition
January, 1966

Ninth Edition
April, 1968

Tenth Edition
May, 1971

Eleventh Edition
May, 1975

Twelfth Edition
April, 1980

Thirteenth Edition
April, 1984

Fourteenth Edition
July, 1987

Linotyped, Printed and Bound
by MPG Communications, Plymouth, Mass.

Distributed by Plimoth Plantation, Plymouth, MA 02360

CONTENTS

Page

CHAPTER I

Scrooby: Persecution 7

CHAPTER II

Escape: Holland 11

CHAPTER III

Holland: An Alien Peace 15

Historic Decision 16

CHAPTER IV

London: Preparation 20

Articles of Agreement 22

False Accusations 23

The Embarkation 25

Voyage and Arrival 26

Signers of the Compact 28

First Town Meeting 30

Search for Permanent Settlement 30

The Shallop Arrives 32

Historic Landing 33

Permanent Settlement 35

CHAPTER V

A New Home 37

First Winter Losses 40

CHAPTER VI

Samoset’s Visit 42

Treaty with Massasoit 44

The First Marriage 47

The First Duel 47

Visit to Massasoit 47

Arrival of Hobamock 48

The Fortune Arrives 49

Pierce’s Attempt 49

CHAPTER VII

Preparations for Winter 51

The First Thanksgiving 51

Bradford’s Letter 53

CHAPTER VIII

Indian Trouble 56

CHAPTER IX

Consolidation 61

Arrival of the Anne and the Little James 62

The First Cattle 64

The Wollaston Incident 67

The First Settled Minister 69

The First Capital Offence 69

Increase of Obligations 69

Roger Williams 70

Winslow Elected Governor 71

Boundaries Established 71

New England Confederacy 72

Conclusion 73

List of Mayflower Passengers 74

List of Fortune Passengers 75

List of Little James Passengers 75

Index to Illustrations

NOTE—Many well-known pictures of the Pilgrims have grossly misinterpreted their true spirit. A “Signing of the Compact” or a “Departure from Delfthaven,” for example, that employs the sentimental piety, the eyes and arms raised to heaven, of Italian Baroque art, (that Jesuitical, most Catholic art), fails to reflect the real spirit of the Protestant Pilgrims. The use of the gracefully reclining and swooning figures of Italianate renaissance art is likewise inappropriate.

Reacting sharply from this, the illustrations in the book portray in the modern spirit both the activities of the Pilgrims and their settings with strict realism.

Unsparing effort in consulting authorities, old documents, prints, and actual scenes was expended to secure convincing authenticity.

Stock Scene, showing church attended by Brewster and approximate location of the stocks in Scrooby 7

Birdseye view of Brewster Manor in Scrooby 9

Church at Scrooby 10

Capture of escaping Pilgrims by an English mob 11

Love Scene, showing actual bridge and the Cloth Hall in Leyden, headquarters of the guild of woolen workers, of whom the Pilgrims were a part 15

Destruction of Brewster’s printing shop 18

Cushman before the Merchant Adventurers 20

Embarkation, showing buildings and actual wharf from which the Pilgrims departed 24

Sighting of Provincetown, showing deck construction of Mayflower type of boat 26

Signing the Compact 29

The first building, showing position in relation to Town Brook and Pilgrim Spring 37

The First Street, in its true topographical setting 39

Samoset’s Visit 42

The Treaty with Massasoit, in its actual setting, “an unfinished building” 45

A Good Harvest 51

Thanksgiving Feast 54

The Snakeskin Warning 56

Capt. Standish Slays Pecksuot 58

The First Cattle 61

PREFACE

No phase of early American history presents a finer example of faith, fortitude and determination of purpose than the story of that little band of devout souls who landed at Plymouth in the winter of 1620 and to whom we refer as the Pilgrims.

In the following limited pages the writer attempts to present something of the conditions obtaining in England prior to the Departure, also something of the struggles, privations, courage and forbearance during the first years of the settlement at Plymouth.

In so doing dependence is placed particularly upon the contemporaneous writings of Bradford and Winslow, both members of the Mayflower party.

With the vast bibliography relating to the Pilgrim history, together with the requirements of brevity, it is indeed fortunate that we are able to look to those who played such an important part in this historic episode and who were thoughtful enough to leave a record for posterity.

It is difficult to epitomize a story so broad and sweeping in its ramifications, its religious and material aspects and its touch of romanticism. Consequently it is intended to include only such events as may prove of interest and value to the reader as adduced from the recognized authorities.

These authorities as before indicated are:

Bradford, William: History of Plimouth Plantation. (Printed from the original manuscript in 1898 under the supervision of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.)

Young, Alexander: Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers. (1880.) Including Mourt’s Relation (London 1622) by William Bradford and Edward Winslow in collaboration; Good News from England, Winslow’s Journal of 1622-23 (London 1624); Winslow’s Relation and Winslow’s Brief Narrative.

Hazard, Ebenezer; Hazard’s Historical Collections, Vol. 1. Including Old Colony and Plymouth Records, Philadelphia (1812).

Note:—With regard to the original manuscript of Bradford’s History of Plymouth Plantation, it may be stated that it was first obtained by Thomas Prince, the historian, from Judge Sewall, to whom it was “lent but only lent” by Major John Bradford of Kingston, son of Major William Bradford, formerly Deputy Governor of the Plymouth Colony, and grandson of Governor William Bradford.

This precious document which seems to have passed through several hands, finally found refuge, together with Prince’s library, in the tower of the Old South Church in Boston, whence it later disappeared.

In 1856 it was found in the library of the Lord Bishop of London, at Fulham Palace. A transcript was made and it was printed in Boston the same year, under the auspices of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

In 1897 the original manuscript was brought to this country by the Hon. Thomas F. Bayard, our Ambassador to England at the time, to whom it had been delivered by the Rt. Rev. Mandell Creighton, Lord Bishop of London. Much credit is due to the late Senator George F. Hoar of Massachusetts, to the former Bishop of London, Dr. Temple, who later became the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the aforementioned Ambassador Bayard, who were all in accord as to the right and justice of the transfer.

This historic document now reposes in the state library in the State House in Boston, priceless in both historic and sentimental value.

W. F. A.

FOREWORD
Expansion on Cape Cod

The early settlements on Cape Cod all came about under the aegis of the parent colony in Plymouth. Several times in Pilgrim chronicles we read how Captain Myles Standish was sent to Sandwich, Barnstable and Yarmouth on tours of inspection and to supervise the division of lands purchased for little or nothing by the newcomers from the remnants of an Indian population decimated years before by disease.

Direct Pilgrim influence on the religious life, the administration and the courts of the Cape settlements continued from the earliest beginnings at Sandwich in 1637, with steadily diminishing strength, until the election of Thomas Prence of Eastham as Governor of Plymouth Colony in 1657. Meanwhile the parent settlement itself was coming under the domination of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and its Puritan hierarchs. The Plymouth connection finally lapsed, for all practical purposes, in 1685, when Plymouth Colony was divided up into Plymouth, Barnstable and Bristol Counties.

First Cape settlement was in 1637, when a band of Puritan families from Saugus and Lynn on the North Shore got permission from the Pilgrim Fathers to migrate to the precincts of the Plymouth Colony, of which the Cape was a part. Some Pilgrim families from Duxbury and Plymouth came along with these first settlers to carve out homesteads in the Sandwich area.

Next towns to be settled were Yarmouth and Barnstable, in 1639, an earlier attempt to populate the Mattacheesett section of what is now Barnstable having failed.

Yarmouth was a direct offshoot of Pilgrim Plymouth, and prominent among its settlers was Giles Hopkins, son of Stephen Hopkins, who came over with his father on the Mayflower.

Barnstable, at its inception, was dominated by the personality of the Rev. John Lothrop, a very strongminded man of dissident Pilgrim persuasion who, together with fifty of his parishioners, had once served two years in jail in England for religious schism. For a time the spirit of controversy continued in the new Cape Colony, fanned by the radical views of Marmaduke Matthews, a firebrand Welshman. But by the time Captain Myles Standish and two companions came down from Plymouth in 1643 to divide up the salt hay marshes, cleared farmlands and woods of Barnstable into legally recorded homesteads, the colony had settled down and become absorbed with more workaday matters.

Last of the very early Cape Cod towns to be settled was Eastham in 1644, by a party led by the Rev. John Mayo, bearer of another of the names later to become famous on the Cape in its great mercantilist period.

Falmouth, in 1686, fissioned off quite directly from Plymouth, and was incorporated in 1686, originally under the name of Succonesset. Harwich officially came into being in 1694, as an offshoot from Barnstable, and very much later, in 1803, gave rise to Brewster. Dennis, meanwhile, had fissioned from Yarmouth in 1794. But by this time Pilgrim origins and influence were but the dimmest of memories.

Also influential on the early Cape, after the middle 1650’s, were the Quakers, at first persecuted, but eventually accepted as a manifestly superior kind of people. They, too, quickly merged during the following century into the Cape Cod way of life, and became indistinguishable from families of Pilgrim or Puritan origin.

CHAPTER I

Scrooby: Persecution

The Pilgrim story may well begin from the period of the Reformation or the ascendency of the Protestant Church in England. Previous to 1600 much friction had existed between the Crown and the Papacy in matters ecclesiastical and civil. The process of reform however had been crystalizing during the reign of Queen Elizabeth. This came to culmination in the establishment of the English Church (known as the Church of England) as the official or state church of which the King was to be the temporal head with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the spiritual head or primate.

But still there was friction. It was like a house divided against itself. There were those who could not conscientiously subscribe to the laws and rituals laid down by the established church. They were dissenters or non-conformists and are best described by Bradford as follows: “The one side labored to have the right worship of God and discipline of Christ established in the Church, according to the simplicity of the gospel, without the mixture of men’s inventions, and to have and be ruled by the laws of God’s word, dispensed in those offices and by those officers of Pastors, Teachers and Elders, etc., according to the Scriptures.”

“The other party endeavored to have episcopal dignity (after the popish manner) with their large power and jurisdiction still retained.”

Note: In the subject matter in quotations, the spelling of some words has been changed to the modern form without otherwise affecting the text.

This strained and anomalous situation led to the founding of the Separatist Church in 1602 in the Old Hall in Gainsborough, with John Smyth as pastor.

Smyth was highly esteemed by the non-conformist group. He was a graduate of Cambridge, “an eminent man in his time,” and his pastorate at Gainsborough extended from 1602 until 1606 when he was forced to retire.

The Scrooby fraternity, an off-shoot from Gainsborough, was presided over by Richard Clyfton as first pastor. Prominent among the non-conformists at Scrooby were William Brewster, born in Scrooby in 1560, William Bradford, born in Austerfield, a village three miles distant, in 1588, and John Robinson, born in Lincolnshire about 1576. Robinson received orders from the Church of England, was suspended for non-conformity and later joined the Congregation at Scrooby where he was made pastor.

This triumvirate became the ruling spirits of the Scrooby community, Brewster became the Elder of the Church and later the religious leader of the Plymouth settlement, of which Bradford became Governor. Robinson, to whom both looked for inspiration and guidance, was destined by circumstances to remain in Holland where he had later been forced to take refuge.

These independent thinkers who firmly asserted their right to worship according to their belief, were brought into constant conflict with the constituted authorities of the Church of England. As Bradford says: “This contention was so great, as neither the honour of God, the common persecution, nor the mediation of Mr. Calvin and other worthies of the Lord in those places, could prevail with those thus episcopally minded, but they proceeded by all means to disturb the peace of this poor persecuted church, even so far as to charge (very unjustly and ungodly, yet prelate like) some of their chief opposers, with rebellion and high treason....” And then regarding their treatment he says: “They could not long continue in any peaceable condition but were hunted and persecuted on every side.”

From 1603 when King James I succeeded Elizabeth who had reigned as Queen during the preceding forty-five years, conditions grew increasingly worse until as Bradford continues:

“Seeing themselves thus molested and that there was no hope of their continuance there, they resolved to go into the Low Countries, where they heard was freedom of religion for all men; as also how sundry from London, and other parts of the land had been exiled and persecuted for the same cause, and were gone thither and lived at Amsterdam and in other places of the land. So after they had continued together about a year, and kept their meetings every sabbath, in one place or other, exercising the worship of God amongst themselves, notwithstanding all the diligence and malice of their adversaries, they seeing they could no longer continue in that condition, they resolved to get over into Holland as they could which was in the year 1607-1608.”

CHAPTER II

Escape: Holland

The Migration to Holland was not accomplished without its set-backs and misgivings. In the first place it was unlawful under an old statute which made emigrating without authority a penal crime. They were several times intercepted in their attempt to depart from English soil. But they were determined in purpose and brave in heart.

“Being thus constrained to leave their native country, their lands and livings, and all their friends and familiar acquaintance, it was much, and thought marvellous by many. But to go into a country they knew not, but by hearsay, where they must learn a new language, and get their livings they knew not how, it being a dear place, and subject to the miseries of war,[1] it was by many thought an adventure almost desperate, a case intolerable, and a misery worse than death; especially seeing they were not acquainted with trades nor traffic, (by which the country doth subsist) but had only been used to a plain country life and the innocent trade of husbandry. But these things did not dismay them, (although they did sometimes trouble them,) for their desires were set on the ways of God, and to enjoy his ordinances. But they rested on his providence, and knew whom they had believed. Yet this was not all. For although they could not stay, yet were they not suffered to go; but the ports and havens were shut against them, so as they were fain to seek secret means of conveyance, and to fee the mariners, and give extraordinary rates for their passages. And yet were they oftentimes betrayed, many of them, and both they and their goods intercepted and surprised, and thereby put to great trouble and charge; of which I will give an instance or two, and omit the rest.”

“There was a great company of them purposed to get passage at Boston, in Lincolnshire; and for that end had hired a ship wholly to themselves, and made agreement with the master to be ready at a certain day, and take them and their goods in, at a convenient place, where they accordingly would all attend in readiness. So after long waiting and large expenses, though he kept not the day with them, yet he came at length, and took them in, in the night. And when he had them and their goods aboard, he betrayed them, having beforehand complotted with the searchers and other officers so to do; who took them and put them into open boats, and there rifled and ransacked them, searching them to their shirts for money, yae, even the women, further than became modesty; and then carried them back into the town, and made them a spectacle and wonderment to the multitude, which came flocking on all sides to behold them. Being thus by the catchpole officers riffled and stripped of their money, books and much other goods, they were presented to the magistrates, and messengers sent to inform the Lords of the Council of them; and so they were committed to ward. Indeed the magistrates used them courteously, and showed them what favor they could; but could not deliver them until order came from the Council table. But the issue was, that after a month’s imprisonment the greatest part were dismissed, and sent to the places from whence they came; but seven of the principal men were still kept in prison and bound over to the assizes.”

In the spring of 1608 another attempt was made to embark and another Dutch shipmaster engaged. This second party assembled at a point between Grimsby and Hull not far from the mouth of the Humber. The women and children arrived in a small bark which became grounded at low water and while some of the men on shore were taken off in the ship’s boat they were again apprehended. And to quote again:

“But after the first boat-full was got aboard, and she was ready to go for more, the master espied a great company, both horse and foot, with bills and guns and other weapons: for the country was raised to take them.”

“But the poor men which were got on board were in great distress for their wives and children, which they saw thus to be taken, and were left distitute of their helps, and themselves also not having a cloth to shift them with, more than they had on their backs, and some scarce a penny about them, all they had being on the bark. It drew tears from their eyes, and anything they had they would have given to have been on shore again. But all in vain; there was no remedy; they must thus sadly part; and afterwards endured a fearful storm at sea, being fourteen days or more before they arrived at their port; in seven whereof they neither saw sun, moon, nor stars, and were driven to the coast of Norway; the mariners themselves often despairing of life, and once with shrieks and cries gave over all, as if the ship had been foundered in the sea, and they sinking without recovery. But when man’s hope and help wholly failed, the Lord’s power and mercy appeared for their recovery; for the ship rose again, and gave the mariners courage again to manager her; and if modesty would suffer me, I might declare with what fervent prayers they cried unto the Lord in this great distress, (especially some of them,) even without any great distraction.”[2]

Those left ashore were in a pitiable state, women were left without their husbands and children without their fathers, their property had been sold in anticipation of a safe departure and the situation was, for a time at least, desperate. But a kind Providence intervened and while their purpose was thus hindered, they finally were united at Amsterdam. As Bradford states: “Notwithstanding all these storms of opposition, they all got over at length, some at one time and some at another, and yet met together again, according to their desires, with no small rejoicing.”

Let us pause here a moment and reflect. In our contemplation of the present and concern for the future, we must not be unmindful of the past. It was not easy to make final decision in such matter as permanently breaking away from homes, relatives and friends, not to mention the material factors involved. Fortunately however for them and for us, this devout band was imbued with enduring faith. Faith fortified by grim determination.

Thus they planned and executed. They left the land of their nativity. They braved the perils of an unknown ocean and a still more unknown future that they might find a refuge free from religious bondage and where they might worship God according to their conscience. This they accomplished in the face of almost insurmountable hardships.

They made concord with the Indians, they builded homes, they framed laws and agreements in accordance with the time and the necessity. They established a governmental process sufficient for their needs, an outgrowth of the government of their religious life in which decisions were made by the will of the majority. They paved the way for future generations. They suffered much. They attained much. They left a heritage that must not be sacrificed.

We of today are faced with ominous problems. A re-dedication to the faith, vision and determination of our fathers, will be America’s salvation.

CHAPTER III

Holland: An Alien Peace

They remained in Amsterdam about a year when for both material and spiritual reasons they decided to move to Leyden 22 miles distant. They had come into some contention with the church that had established itself before them which seemed difficult to settle to their satisfaction and their means of livelihood had become so restricted that they were threatened with poverty. “For these and some other reasons they removed to Leyden, a fair and beautiful city. But being now here pinched, they fell to such trades and employments as they best could, valuing peace and their spiritual comfort above any other riches whatsoever; and at length they came to raise a competent and comfortable living, but with hard and continual labor.”

The Final and Historic Decision

Some eleven or twelve years were spent in Leyden where they enjoyed “much sweet and delightful society and spiritual comfort together, in the ways of God, under the able ministry and prudent government of Mr. John Robinson and Mr. William Brewster, who was an assistant unto him in the place of an Elder, unto which he was now called and chosen by the church; so as they grew in knowledge and other gifts and graces of the spirit of God; and lived together in peace, and love, and holiness.”

Yet while they seemed to have more spiritual freedom and to have enjoyed the society of their Dutch neighbors and had established a good credit among them, they were confronted with the fear of final absorption in an alien country. They preferred to maintain their language and traditions as English men and women. Moreover, King James was beginning to exercise an unwarrantable influence in the Low Countries. This went to the extreme of confiscating their types[3] and presses and the suppression of the religious matter printed and issued by William Brewster, the Elder of the Leyden congregation. A compelling force seemed to drive them on to seek some place of permanent settlement. And to quote from Bradford:

“Although the people generally bore all their difficulties very cheerfully and with a resolute courage, being in the best of their strength, yet old age began to come on some of them; and their great and continual labors, with other crosses and sorrows, hastened it before the time; so as it was not only probably thought, but apparently seen, that within a few years more they were in danger to scatter by necessity pressing them, or sink under their burdens, or both; and therefore, according to the divine proverb, that ‘a wise man seeth the plague when it cometh, and hideth himself,’ so they, like skilful and beaten soldiers, were fearful either to be entrapped or surrounded by their enemies, so as they should neither be able to fight nor fly; and therefore thought it better to dislodge betimes to some place of better advantage and less danger, if any could be found.”

“Lastly (and which was not the least,) a great hope and inward zeal they had of laying some good foundation, or at least to make way thereunto, for the propagating and advancing the Gospel of the kingdom of Christ in these remote parts of the world; yea, though they should be but as stepping-stones unto others for performing of so great a work.”

“The place they had thoughts on were some of those unpeopled countries of America, which are fruitful and fit for habitation, being devoid of all civil inhabitants, where there are only savage and bruitish people, which range up and down little otherwise than the wild beasts. This proposition being made public, and coming to the scanning of all, it raised many variable opinions amongst men, and caused many fears and doubts amongst themselves. Some from their reasons and hopes conceived, labored to stir up and encourage the rest to undertake and prosecute the same; others again, out of their fears, objected against it, and sought to divert from it, alleging many things, and those neither unreasonable nor unprobable: as that it was a great design, and subject to many inconceivable perils and dangers; as, besides the casualties of the seas, (which none can be freed from,) the length of the voyage was such as the weak bodies of women and other persons worn out with age and travail, (as many of them were,) could never be able to endure; and yet if they should, the miseries of the land which they should be exposed unto would be too hard to be borne, and likely, some or all of them, to consume and utterly to ruinate them. For there they should be liable to famine, and nakedness, and the want, in the manner, of all things.”

“It was answered, that all great and honorable actions were accomplished with great difficulties, and must be both enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted the dangers were great, but not desperate, and the difficulties were many, but not invincible; for although there were many of them likely, yet they were not certain. It might be that some of the things feared might never befall them; others, by providence, care and use good of means, might in a great measure be prevented; and all of them through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be borne or overcome. True it was that such attempts were not to be made and undertaken but upon good ground and reason, not rashly or lightly, as many have done for curiosity or hope of gain, etc. But their condition was not ordinary. Their ends were good and honorable, their calling lawful and urgent, and therefore they might expect a blessing of God in their proceeding; yea, although they should lose their lives in this action, yet they might have comfort in the same; and their endeavours would be honorable.”[4]

“They lived here but as men in exile and in a poor condition; and as great miseries might possibly befall them in this place; for the twelve years of truce were now out,[5] and there was nothing but beating of drums and preparing for war, the events whereof are always uncertain. The Spaniard might prove as cruel as the savages of America, and the famine and pestilence are sore here and there, and their liberty less to look out for remedy.”

“After many other particular things answered and alleged on both sides, it was fully concluded by the major part to put this design in execution, and to prosecute it by the best means they could.”

CHAPTER IV

London: Preparation

The coast of North America was not entirely unknown. There had been several attempts at settlement and exploration. One by Sir Walter Raleigh in 1584. He had taken possession under a patent confirmed by act of Parliament, of the territory from the Carolinas north to Virginia, the name Virginia being given the new country in honor of the Virgin Queen.

In 1606 another party under command of Capt. John Smith sailed in three small vessels under authority of a charter granted by James I. They landed at a point in Chesapeake Bay, thirty-two miles from the mouth of the James river in Virginia and established a settlement called Jamestown.

In 1614 Smith made a voyage to the North Virginia coast at which time he made a comprehensive map calling this section New England. Upon his return to England he showed this map to Charles I, then a prince, who in applying the names of English towns to points along the coast gave the place which was to become the Pilgrim settlement the name of Plymouth, which it has since retained.

There were many matters of moment to be settled before the Pilgrims could depart their native shores. The liquidation of what property they had acquired was to be augmented by further financing. It was necessary to obtain a patent to any land they might acquire for settlement and the matter of how many and who should go first had to be determined.

“Those that stayed, being the greater number, required the pastor to stay with them; and indeed for other reasons he could not then well go, and so it was the more easily yielded unto. It was also agreed on by mutual consent and covenant that those who went should be an absolute church of themselves, as well as those that stayed, seeing in such a dangerous voyage, and a removal to such a distance, it might come to pass that they should (for the body of them) never meet again in this world. Yet with this proviso, that if any of the rest came over to them, or of the other returned upon occasion, they should be reputed as members without further admission or testimonial. It was also promised to those that went first, by the body of the rest, that if the Lord gave them life and means, and opportunity, they should come to them as soon as they could.”

The next step was to secure a patent. Already letters-patent had been granted two companies of Englishmen to territory 100 miles in width on the Atlantic coast of North America from the 34th to the 45th degrees north latitude. These were designated as the South and North Virginia companies. Through emissaries sent to England a patent was obtained bearing date of Feb. 12th, 1620. This patent was issued to John Pierce and Associates and covered territory in the vicinity of the Virginia Capes. As it happened the Pilgrims settled outside the limits defined therein and another patent was granted covering the territory around Cape Cod Bay. This patent bears the date of June 1st, 1621, and was issued by the Council of New England which had been created by royal authority to succeed the North Virginia Company after the departure of the Pilgrims from England.

It shows the signatures of the Duke of Lenox, the Marquis of Hamilton, the Earl of Warwick, Lord Sheffield and Sir Ferdinand Gorges. Several parts of this ancient document have broken away, including the seal of Hamilton and the seal and signature of John Pierce, the party of the second part thereto. This valuable document, the oldest state document in New England, was brought over in the Fortune in 1621 and now reposes in Pilgrim Hall.

Arrangements were concluded with a group of London business men who styled themselves the Merchant Adventurers who were in sympathy with the movement and who had agreed to finance the expedition. Perhaps they are best described by Capt. John Smith who wrote in 1624:

“The adventurers which raised the stock to begin and supply this plantation, were about seventy, some gentlemen, some merchants, some handicraftsmen, some adventuring great sums, some small, as their estates and their affection served. These dwelt most about London. They are not a corporation, but knit together by a voluntary combination in a society without constraint or penalty, aiming to do good and to plant religion.”

Articles of Agreement

The Articles of Agreement entered into with the Merchant Adventurers were as follows:—

“1. The adventurers and planters do agree, that every persons that goeth, being aged sixteen years and upward, be rated at ten pounds, and ten pounds to be accounted a single share.

2. That he that goeth in person, and furnisheth himself out with ten pounds, either in money or other provisions, be accounted as having twenty pounds in stock, and in the division shall receive a double share.

3. The persons transported and the adventurers shall continue their joint stock and partnership together the space of seven years, (except some unexpected impediments do cause the whole company to agree otherwise,) during which time all profits and benefits that are got, by trade, traffic, trucking, working, fishing, or any other means, of any person or persons, shall remain in the common stock until the division.

4. That at their coming there they choose out such a number of fit persons as may furnish their ships and boats for fishing upon the sea; employing the rest in their several faculties upon the land, as building houses, tilling and planting the ground, and making such commodities as shall be most useful for the colony.

5. That at the end of the seven years, the capital and profits, viz., the houses, lands, goods and chattels, be equally divided among the adventurers and planters; which done, every man shall be free from other of them of any debt or detriment concerning the adventure.

6. Whosoever cometh to the colony hereafter, or putteth any into the stock, shall at the end of the seven years be allowed proportionally to the time of his so doing.

7. He that shall carry his wife and children or servants, shall be allowed for every person now aged 16 years and upward, a single share in the division; or if he provide them necessaries, a double share, or if they be between 10 years old and 16 then two of them to be reckoned for a person, both in transportation and division.

8. That such children as now go and are under the age of 10 years, have no other share in the division, but 50 acres of unmanured land.

9. That such persons as die before the seven years be expired, their executors to have their part or share at the division, proportionally to the time of their life in the colony.

10. That all such persons as are of this colony are to have their meat, drink, apparel and all provisions out of the common stock and goods of the said colony.”

False Accusations

It has been declared by some commentators that this agreement savored of communism. This interpretation is however unfair. As a matter of record it was not entirely satisfactory to the colonists but was imposed upon them by the Merchant Adventurers who, looking to the final liquidation of their advancements, preferred to hold the community as a whole to meet the obligation. Several letters written by Robert Cushman to his associates in Leyden tend to substantiate this view and emphasize that he had made the best possible terms under the circumstances.