WEBVTT NOTE 18. The Founding of Plymouth Colony 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:05.840 Volume 1, Chapter 18, The Founding of Plymouth Colony 2 00:00:05.840 --> 00:00:11.280 The mere granting of land by the Crown did not yet create a settlement. 3 00:00:11.280 --> 00:00:15.940 The first successful settlement in New England was something of an accident. 4 00:00:15.940 --> 00:00:22.080 By 1617, the pilgrims had determined to leave the Netherlands, where their youth were supposedly 5 00:00:22.080 --> 00:00:29.000 being corrupted by the licentiousness of even the Calvinist Dutch, who, for example, persisted 6 00:00:29.000 --> 00:00:34.680 in enjoying the Sabbath as a holiday, rather than burying it as a penance. 7 00:00:34.680 --> 00:00:39.720 Deciding to settle in America, the Pilgrims were offered an opportunity to settle in New 8 00:00:39.720 --> 00:00:45.000 Netherland, but preferred to seek a patent from the South Virginia Company, which would 9 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:49.400 provide an English atmosphere in which to raise their children. 10 00:00:49.400 --> 00:00:54.840 The Pilgrims formed a partnership in a joint stock company with a group of London merchants, 11 00:00:54.840 --> 00:01:01.040 including Thomas Weston, an ironmonger, and John Pierce, a clothmaker. 12 00:01:01.040 --> 00:01:07.920 The company, John Pearson Associates, received in 1620 a grant from the Virginia Company 13 00:01:07.920 --> 00:01:11.680 for particular plantation in Virginia territory. 14 00:01:11.680 --> 00:01:16.920 In this alliance, each adult settler was granted a share in the joint stock company and each 15 00:01:16.920 --> 00:01:21.480 investment of 10 pounds also received a share. 16 00:01:21.480 --> 00:01:27.560 At the end of seven years, the accumulated earnings were to be divided among the shareholders. 17 00:01:27.560 --> 00:01:33.160 Until that division, as in the original Virginia settlement, the company decreed a communistic 18 00:01:33.160 --> 00:01:40.000 system of production, with each settler contributing his all to the common store and each drawing 19 00:01:40.000 --> 00:01:41.720 his needs from it. 20 00:01:41.720 --> 00:01:49.260 Again, a system of from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. 21 00:01:49.260 --> 00:01:57.260 Just over a hundred colonists sailed from England on the Mayflower in September 1620. 22 00:01:57.260 --> 00:02:03.860 Of these, only forty-one were pilgrims from Leiden, Holland. Eighteen were indentured 23 00:02:03.860 --> 00:02:09.660 servants bound as slaves for seven years to their masters, and the others were largely 24 00:02:09.660 --> 00:02:15.340 Anglicans from England seeking economic opportunity in the New World. 25 00:02:15.340 --> 00:02:21.340 Unsupposedly for the mouth of the Hudson River, the Mayflower decided instead to land along 26 00:02:21.340 --> 00:02:27.660 what is now the Massachusetts coast, outside Virginia territory. Some of the indentured 27 00:02:27.660 --> 00:02:32.340 servants began to grow restive, logically maintaining that since the settlement would 28 00:02:32.340 --> 00:02:38.340 not be made as had been agreed in Virginia territory, they should be released from their 29 00:02:38.340 --> 00:02:45.140 contracts. They would use their own liberty, for none had power to command them. To forestall 30 00:02:45.140 --> 00:02:51.140 All this rebellion against servitude, the bulk of the colonists and especially the pilgrims 31 00:02:51.140 --> 00:02:56.500 decided to establish a government immediately, even though on shipboard. 32 00:02:56.500 --> 00:03:01.900 No possible period without governmental rule was to be permitted to the colonists. 33 00:03:01.900 --> 00:03:08.140 The pilgrim minority straightway formed themselves on shipboard into a body politic in the Mayflower 34 00:03:08.140 --> 00:03:15.140 are compact, enabling them to perpetuate their rule over the other majority colonists. 35 00:03:15.140 --> 00:03:20.140 Thus, the first form of government in the New World established by colonists themselves 36 00:03:20.140 --> 00:03:24.140 was by no means a gesture of independence from England. 37 00:03:24.140 --> 00:03:31.140 It was an emergency measure to maintain the pilgrim control over the servants and other settlers. 38 00:03:31.140 --> 00:03:36.140 In mid-December 1620, the May Flower landed at Plymouth. 39 00:03:36.140 --> 00:03:45.140 In a duplication of the terrible hardships of the first Virginia settlers, half of the colonists were dead by the end of the first winter. 40 00:03:45.140 --> 00:04:01.140 In mid-1621, John Pearson Associates obtained a patent from the Council for New England, granting the company 100 acres of land for each settler and 1,500 acres compulsorily reserved for public use. 41 00:04:01.140 --> 00:04:07.140 In return, the Council was to receive a yearly quit-rent of two shillings for 100 acres. 42 00:04:07.140 --> 00:04:19.140 A major reason for the persistent hardships for the starving time in Plymouth, as before in Jamestown, was the Communism imposed by the Company. 43 00:04:19.140 --> 00:04:30.140 Finally, in order to survive, the colony in 1623 permitted each family to cultivate a small private plot of land for their individual use. 44 00:04:30.140 --> 00:04:43.140 William Bradford, who had become governor of Plymouth in 1621 and was to help rule the colony for 30 years thereafter, eloquently describes the results in his record of the colony. 45 00:04:43.140 --> 00:04:58.140 All this while no supply was heard of, so they began to think how they might raise as much corn as they could and obtain a better crop than they had done, that they might not still thus languish in misery. 46 00:04:58.140 --> 00:05:04.980 At length, the governor, with the advice of the chiefest among them, gave way that they 47 00:05:04.980 --> 00:05:12.660 should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves, and 48 00:05:12.660 --> 00:05:20.560 so assign to every family a parcel of land, for that end, only for present use. 49 00:05:20.560 --> 00:05:27.420 This had very good success, for it made all hands very industrious, so as much more corn 50 00:05:27.420 --> 00:05:56.460 The experience that was had in this common course and condition tried sundry years of 51 00:05:56.460 --> 00:06:26.460 "...despite sundry years, and that amongst godly and sober men may well evince the vanity of that conceit of Plato's, that the taking away of property and bringing community into a commonwealth would make them happy and flourishing. For this community was found to breed much confusion and discontent and retard much employment that would have been to their benefit and comfort. For the young men that were most able and fit for labor and service did repine 52 00:06:26.460 --> 00:06:31.820 They should spend their time and strength to work for other men's wives and children 53 00:06:31.820 --> 00:06:34.200 without any recompense. 54 00:06:34.200 --> 00:06:39.900 The strong had no more indivision of vitals and clothes than he that was weak and not 55 00:06:39.900 --> 00:06:42.660 able to do a quarter the other could. 56 00:06:42.660 --> 00:06:44.900 This was thought injustice. 57 00:06:44.900 --> 00:06:50.780 Upon all being to have alike and all to do alike, they thought one as good as another 58 00:06:50.780 --> 00:06:58.040 and so did work diminish the mutual respects that should be preserved amongst men. Let 59 00:06:58.040 --> 00:07:04.640 none object that this is men's corruption. All men have this corruption in them. 60 00:07:04.640 --> 00:07:10.820 The Antipathy of Communism to the Nature of Man Here receives eloquent testimony from 61 00:07:10.820 --> 00:07:17.620 a governor scarcely biased a priori in favor of individualism. Plymouth was destined to 62 00:07:17.620 --> 00:07:25.660 to remain a small colony. By 1630 its population was still less than 400. Its government began 63 00:07:25.660 --> 00:07:31.700 in the Mayflower Compact with the original signers forming an assembly for making laws, 64 00:07:31.700 --> 00:07:37.540 choosing a governor, and admitting people to Freemen's citizenship. The governor had 65 00:07:37.540 --> 00:07:44.180 five assistants, elected also by the Freemen. This democratic set-up signified a very loose 66 00:07:44.180 --> 00:08:01.540 Religious exclusiveness in a colony necessarily hampers its growth. We have seen that Lord 67 00:08:01.540 --> 00:08:07.220 Baltimore soon abandoned the idea of Maryland as an exclusively Catholic colony in order 68 00:08:07.220 --> 00:08:13.500 to encourage its rapid development. Thus, persecution of non-separatists for playing 69 00:08:13.500 --> 00:08:20.500 ball on Sunday and for daring to observe Christmas as a holiday was hardly calculated to stimulate 70 00:08:20.620 --> 00:08:23.260 the growth of the colony. 71 00:08:23.260 --> 00:08:28.820 To inject some variety into the colony, the English merchants therefore sent the Reverend 72 00:08:28.820 --> 00:08:35.420 John Lyford, a Puritan within the Church of England, with a group of colonists to Plymouth. 73 00:08:35.420 --> 00:08:40.100 As soon as Liford began to administer the sacraments according to the Church of England, 74 00:08:40.100 --> 00:08:45.580 his correspondence was seized by Governor Bradford, and Liford and his chief supporter 75 00:08:45.580 --> 00:08:51.220 John Oldham were tried for plotting against Pilgrim rule both in respect of their civil 76 00:08:51.220 --> 00:08:53.400 and church state. 77 00:08:53.400 --> 00:09:00.180 To the charge of Liford and Oldham that non-Pilgrims were being discouraged from coming to Plymouth, 78 00:09:00.180 --> 00:09:04.580 Governor Bradford replied that strangers were perfectly free to attend the Pilgrim Church 79 00:09:04.580 --> 00:09:10.640 as often as they liked. When Bradford spread the stolen letters critical of the government 80 00:09:10.640 --> 00:09:17.300 upon the record, Oldham angrily called upon the assembly to revolt against this tyranny, 81 00:09:17.300 --> 00:09:23.900 but no one followed his lead. The Rev. Leifert instantly recanted and groveled in his errors 82 00:09:23.900 --> 00:09:30.500 before the court. Both men were ordered banished from the colony. Oldham went thirty miles 83 00:09:30.500 --> 00:09:37.580 First North were the number of the discontented to found a settlement at Nantasket, now Hull. 84 00:09:37.580 --> 00:09:42.760 Included in this company were Roger Conant and William and Edward Hilton, who shortly 85 00:09:42.760 --> 00:09:49.140 traveled further north to join David Thompson, a Scottish trader who had established a settlement 86 00:09:49.140 --> 00:09:55.620 at what is now Portsmouth, New Hampshire, at the mouth of the Piscataqua River. 87 00:09:55.620 --> 00:10:01.780 The Hiltons were later to found the nearby town of Dover, New Hampshire. In return for 88 00:10:01.780 --> 00:10:08.340 his abasement, the Reverend Liford was put on six months probation, but again some critical 89 00:10:08.340 --> 00:10:14.580 letters to England were purloined by the government and this time Liford was truly expelled and 90 00:10:14.580 --> 00:10:21.780 went on to join the Nantasket settlement. The Pilgrims, however, had not seen the last 91 00:10:21.780 --> 00:10:28.700 of the Rebellious Band. In the spring of 1624, the Pilgrims built a wharf some 60 miles 92 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:35.260 north on the current site of Gloucester, at Cape Anne in northeastern Massachusetts, only 93 00:10:35.260 --> 00:10:41.500 to find the following spring that Liford, Oldham and their group had moved there. They 94 00:10:41.500 --> 00:10:47.420 had been invited to Gloucester by the Dorchester Company of merchants from Western England. 95 00:10:47.420 --> 00:10:53.140 The company's founder, the Rev. John White, a Puritan, had already established a fishing 96 00:10:53.140 --> 00:10:59.940 village at Gloucester in 1623. Roger Conant was now installed as superintendent of the 97 00:10:59.940 --> 00:11:06.060 community and Liford became its pastor. Upon returning to Gloucester to find the dissidents 98 00:11:06.060 --> 00:11:12.140 established there, the first instinct of Plymouth's military leader, Captain Miles Standish, was 99 00:11:12.140 --> 00:11:18.100 It was typically to demand the surrender of the unwelcome wharf, but cooler heads prevailed 100 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:21.340 and a peaceful compromise was soon reached. 101 00:11:21.340 --> 00:11:26.260 The Pilgrims, however, could not make a go of this fishing station and abandoned it at 102 00:11:26.260 --> 00:11:28.660 the end of the year. 103 00:11:28.660 --> 00:11:34.300 Upon the bankruptcy of the Dorchester Company the following year, the Conan Oldham Group 104 00:11:34.300 --> 00:11:40.620 left Gloucester and moved 15 miles down the coast to found the town of Nommkeeg, later 105 00:11:40.620 --> 00:12:10.620 in 1625 Thomas Morton, gentleman lawyer and an agent of Sir Ferdinando Gorgias, organized another settlement, Marymount, north of Plymouth at the present site of Quincy, Massachusetts. Marymount was an Anglican settlement, and the citizens did not comport themselves in the highly aesthetic fashion to which they belonged. 106 00:12:10.620 --> 00:12:17.340 The Plymouth Separatist wished them to conform. Apparently Marymount was merry indeed, and 107 00:12:17.340 --> 00:12:23.580 whiskey and interracial white Indian revelry abounded, including the old Anglican, but 108 00:12:23.580 --> 00:12:29.460 denounced by the pilgrims as pagan, custom of dancing around a maypole, a practice which 109 00:12:29.460 --> 00:12:37.420 King James I had urged in his Book of Sports, 1617. Plymouth had established friendly relations 110 00:12:37.420 --> 00:12:44.420 The Pilgrims denounced Morton's Colony as a school of atheists and atheists. The Pilgrims denounced Morton's Colony as a school of atheists and atheists. 111 00:13:07.420 --> 00:13:15.460 Atheism apparently signifying the use of the Anglican book of common prayer, the maypole, 112 00:13:15.460 --> 00:13:21.300 and selling ramen firearms to the Indians and buying furs in exchange. 113 00:13:21.300 --> 00:13:26.220 The sale of ramen firearms was condemned even though relations with the Indians had been 114 00:13:26.220 --> 00:13:28.620 perfectly peaceful. 115 00:13:28.620 --> 00:13:36.420 Then in 1628, Plymouth established a virtual New England tradition of persecution by dispatching 116 00:13:36.420 --> 00:13:43.660 Captain Standish with an armed troop to eradicate Marymount. Having surrendered on the promise 117 00:13:43.660 --> 00:13:49.700 of safe treatment to himself in the settlement, Morton was assaulted by Standish and his men 118 00:13:49.700 --> 00:13:55.340 and almost killed. The Plymouth forces not regarding any agreement made with such a carnal 119 00:13:55.340 --> 00:14:01.040 man. Hauled into a Plymouth court, despite Plymouth's lack of legal jurisdiction over 120 00:14:01.040 --> 00:14:07.580 for Marymount, Morton was almost executed. His death was urged at great length by Miles 121 00:14:07.580 --> 00:14:12.800 Standish. Finally, he was deported back to England, with Standish still threatening to 122 00:14:12.800 --> 00:14:18.240 kill Morton personally before he could leave the colony. Before deportation, Morton was 123 00:14:18.240 --> 00:14:25.840 confined alone for over a month of severe winter at the Isles of Shoals without a gun, 124 00:14:25.840 --> 00:14:29.240 Knife or Proper Clothing 125 00:14:29.240 --> 00:14:34.040 Despite the destruction of Marymount and the failure of other attempts at settlement, the 126 00:14:34.040 --> 00:14:38.400 1620s saw several settlements dot the Massachusetts coast. 127 00:14:38.400 --> 00:14:43.520 The most important was the Roger Conant Group at Narmkeeg. 128 00:14:43.520 --> 00:14:49.920 Another was the settlement at Boston led by the Puritan minister, Rev. William Blackstone. 129 00:14:49.920 --> 00:14:57.440 In 1627, the inherent conflict between colony and company in Plymouth was finally resolved 130 00:14:57.440 --> 00:15:00.840 by the elimination of the company from the scene. 131 00:15:00.840 --> 00:15:06.800 In that year, the seven years of enforced communism by the company expired and all the 132 00:15:06.800 --> 00:15:12.200 assets and lands were distributed to the individual shareholders. 133 00:15:12.200 --> 00:15:16.540 Grants of land were received in proportion to the size of the stock so that the larger 134 00:15:16.540 --> 00:15:23.540 by 1633, the entire purchase price had been paid, and the colonists were freed from the last remnant of company or reserve. 135 00:15:46.540 --> 00:15:49.940 or indeed of any English control. 136 00:15:49.940 --> 00:15:55.020 There still remained, of course, the overlord council for New England. 137 00:15:55.020 --> 00:16:01.100 In 1630, the council granted a new patent to the Plymouth colony, clearly defining its 138 00:16:01.100 --> 00:16:06.740 territory and recognizing its right to freedom of trading and fishing. 139 00:16:06.740 --> 00:16:12.180 But Governor Bradford limited the privileges of trade to the original pilgrim partners, 140 00:16:12.180 --> 00:16:20.180 and the Old Commerce and kept the patent in his own possession before relinquishing it in 1641. 141 00:16:20.180 --> 00:16:27.180 Plymouth was destined to remain a small colony in which the nominal rulers, the free men, were rarely consulted 142 00:16:27.180 --> 00:16:32.180 and the governor and the council imposed an oligarchic rule. 143 00:16:32.180 --> 00:16:36.180 But after the Council for New England was dissolved in 1635, 144 00:16:36.180 --> 00:16:41.180 Plymouth nevertheless became a fully self-governing colony.