[In the following essay, published in two parts in the May and June, 1877, issues of the Atlantic Monthly, Adams presents the historical context in which Morton lived, comments on Morton's wit and reputedly “loose” moral character, and offers an account of Morton's life in New England, including his difficulties with the law.]

I. MAY-DAY, 1627.

The May-pole of Merrymount—that May-pole which inspired the historian Motley's first effort in literature, and which Hawthorne made the subject of a brilliant sketch—was erected on May-day of the year 1627. The 1st of May, old style, fell upon what is now the 10th of the month. Accordingly, on the tenth day of the coming month of May the full period of two hundred and fifty years will have elapsed since Thomas Morton and his motley crew awoke the echoes of the wilderness on the shores of Boston bay; greeting with noisy revels what may, perhaps, not inaptly be described as the English anniversary of summer's birth.

Two hundred and fifty years represent no trifling portion of the history of any people. They constitute in themselves a very respectable antiquity. In the case of America they carry us back to the beginning of all things,—to the genesis of the race; while even in connection with other and older lands, when we turn to the men and events of 1627, we are surprised to find ourselves on what is in reality the threshold of modern history. We always think of America as the youngest of the family, and so indeed it is; and yet even America's years begin to accumulate. When the May-pole was set up at Merrymount, a quarter of a thousand years ago the coming 10th of May, the names of Hampden and Cromwell and Milton were as unknown to history as those of Franklin, Washington, and Jefferson. Lord Bacon had died the year before, and a striking illustration is supplied of the little progress which modern science then had made by the fact that he—the greatest, wisest of mankind—to the last hesitated to accept as true that theory of the heavens which Copernicus had expounded only a few years less than a full century before, and the exact laws of which Kepler and Galileo were but then divining. It was but nine years since Harvey had discovered the circulation of the blood. The first collected edition of Shakespeare's plays was almost the latest novelty in English literature; it had been published four years, and the author had been dead fourteen. For Paradise Lost the world had yet to wait for forty years. Guido and Rubens were in the zenith of their artist fame, but Rembrandt was still a young and unknown man. Revaillac had murdered Henry IV. seventeen years before, and the memory of his deed was no less fresh in men's minds then than that of Booth's is now. Buckingham was destined to fall by Felton's hand just one year later. Russia existed, but had not yet begun to live; and the exploits of Bethlen-Gabor filled the mind of Eastern Europe. Germany had been torn through eight only of her thirty years' religious war, and Captain Dalgetty's master, “the Lion of the North, the immortal Gustavus Adolphus,” had not yet drawn his sword as the Protestant champion. His opponent Tilly was still in the full flush of victory, and four years later was to earn an immortal infamy in connection with the horrors of Magdeburg. In France, Richelieu, the Cardinal-Duke, had been three years in power, and Louis XIV. was not born until 1638. The recollections of St. Bartholomew still haunted the memories and consciences of survivors. Charles I. had been two years king of England; and his successor in the rule, Oliver Cromwell, was a clownish Huntingdon squire in his twenty-eighth year. Sir Walter Raleigh had gone to the block on Tower Hill in 1618; Sir Isaac Newton was not born until 1642.

In the midst of centennial memories names like these sound strangely remote. So far as America is concerned, they seem associated with a prehistoric past. Yet it was in that past, in the days of those men, that the events which are now to be described took place. It was while Richelieu governed, Gustavus fought, Rembrandt painted, Galileo pondered, and Milton wrote. The modern world was in its youth then, and the men who lived in it were filled with the spirit of its novelty.

Among the many who shared to a greater or less degree in this spirit of the day was a Captain Wollaston, who, in the summer of 1625, sailed into Boston bay in command of a vessel which there dropped its anchor. The country about those parts was even then not wholly uninhabited. The Indians, it is true, had some years before been nearly annihilated by a pestilence, and scarcely a cowed and slinking remnant of the once powerful Massachusetts tribe lingered about their former homes. It is said there were not over thirty warriors left in the whole region about the bay. It was an absolute wilderness, but here and there—very few and very far between—were straggling Europeans, living alone on the sea-shore. The Pilgrims had been settled at Plymouth, twenty miles further south, for five years, and their little community numbered then some one hundred and eighty souls, dwelling in thirty-two houses, surrounded by a stockade about half a mile in compass. Where Boston now stands there lived a solitary, bookish recluse, William Blackstone by name, cultivating his garden and watching the growth of some apple-trees; while Thomas Walford, a blacksmith, was his nearest neighbor, dwelling in “an English palisadoed and thatched house,” over at Charlestown. Either shortly before or immediately after Wollaston's arrival a Mr. John Maverick fixed his home at Noddle's Island, now East Boston, where for protection against the Indians he built himself a block-house, or stronghold of some sort, armed with four large guns, or “murtherers.” In this work he was aided by his neighbor, David Thomson, a Scotchman, who owned the peninsula of Squantum and the Farm-School island, which still bears his name. He, however, came a year later, in 1626, and was dwelling there in 1627 with his wife and infant son. In that part of the town of Weymouth then called Wessagusset and now known as “Old Spain,” still lingered the remnants of an unsuccessful colony, which a Captain Robert Gorges had sought to plant there two years before, in 1623, but which he himself had soon abandoned. At Nantasket, “an uncoth place,” there dwelt a few more straggling people; while across the bay, at Cape Ann, “a place more convenient for those that belong to the tribe of Zebulun than for those that chose to dwell in the tents of Issachar,”¹ tarried the outcasts from Plymouth, John Oldham, John Lyford, and Roger Conant. Two brothers by the name of Hilton were also established near where Portsmouth now stands, in New Hampshire; while on the Isles of Shoals and along the coast of Maine, there were transient stations to supply the needs of the fishing fleet, which with each returning spring visited the neighboring waters. In all, perhaps, some two hundred and fifty souls may have been scattered along the seven hundred miles of New England coast, most of them at Plymouth.

Among these Captain Wollaston made his appearance, one of a little company of adventurers, consisting of three or four men of some substance and thirty or forty servants, as they then were called, or persons who had sold their services for a term of years, and during that period occupied towards their employers the position of apprentices. Those in control of the enterprise had no object in view other than gain, and this they thought to secure by establishing a plantation, trading post, and fishing station on the shores of a region concerning the climate and resources of which, while no real knowledge existed, the vaguest and most fabulous stories had been told. Of Captain Wollaston almost nothing at all, not even his given name, is known. So far as New England history is concerned, he was a bird of passage; flitting out from an English obscurity, he rested for a brief space upon a hillock on the shore of Boston bay, giving to it his name as a memorial forever, and then forthwith disappeared into that oblivion from which he came. Among the Plymouth people he bore the reputation of being “a man of pretie parts” and of “some eminencie,” and that is both the substance and the sum of all we know about him.

What could ever have induced visionaries and gentlemen adventurers like Gorges, Gardiner, Weston, and Wollaston to seek to establish themselves amid surroundings of a nature so very unpropitious is ever a subject of honest wonder to the New Englander of to-day. That their attempts one after another failed calls for no explanation, as a ready one suggests itself in a niggard soil and an inclement winter. To face and overcome these required that dreary though admirable tenacity of purpose which religious fervor only supplies. In point of fact, however, there is a very simple way of accounting for those failures. Surprising as it now seems, the time was when New England also was accounted an unknown, earthly paradise,—a sort of garden of the Hesperides, even if it should not prove the veritable El Dorado. This time, it is true, was short, but it did exist; and it lasted from about 1610 to 1625. The idea had its origin with the early explorers, who saw nothing of New England's dark and repellent side. They did not come here when the rocks were covered with ice and the thin soil was seared and scarred by the winter's frost. They never saw that side of the picture; and the side they did see was pleasant enough. Their accounts, consequently, were of the most rose-colored and deceptive character; and from them one might yet well picture New England as a sort of nature's garden, in which perennial vineyards were circled by soft summer seas. Some of these descriptions are even now very pleasant reading. Not only Captain Robert Gorges, but Wollaston and even Weston had doubtless read, for instance, Captain John Smith's description of New England, which he published in 1616, six years before any of those named undertook personally to verify the accuracy of his account. Smith was here in the summer, and in July and August he explored the coast. Even more than those of most travelers, Smith's adventures lost nothing in the telling. He thus describes Boston bay, and under the glowing touch of the pen to which we owe that charming creation of American fable, the Princess Pocahontas Mediatrix, the stern reality is metamorphosed into this vision of delight:—

And surely by reason of those sandy cliffs and cliffs of rocks, both which we saw so planted with gardens and corn fields, and so well inhabited with a goodly, strong, and well-proportioned people, besides the greatness of the timber growing on them, the greatness of the fish, and the moderate temper of the air, who can but approve this a most excellent place, both for health and fertility? And of all the four parts of the world that I have yet seen, not inhabited, could I have but means to transport a colony, I would rather live here than anywhere. And if it did not maintain itself, were we but once indifferently well fitted, let us starve. …

Here nature and liberty affords us that freely, which in England we want, or it costeth us dearly. What pleasure can be more than (being tired with any occasion ashore) in planting vines, fruits or herbs, in contriving their own grounds to the pleasure of their own minds, … to recreate themselves before their own doors in their own boats upon the sea, where man, woman and child, with a small hook and line, by angling, may take divers sorts of excellent fish at their pleasures? … And what sport doth yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge than angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea? …

For gentlemen, what exercise should more delight them, than ranging daily those unknown parts, using fowling and fishing for hunting and hawking? … For hunting, also,—the woods, lakes and rivers afford not only chase sufficient for any that delights in that kind of toil or pleasure, but such beasts to hunt, that besides the delicacy of their bodies for food, their skins are so rich as may well recompense thy daily labor with a captain's pay.

This and not the reality was what Gorges, Weston, and Wollaston expected to find when they came to Boston bay; and it is small matter for surprise if they were proportionally disappointed, and even abandoned their ventures when the unwelcome truth forced itself upon them. Both the Weston and Wollaston expeditions, also, were on the most approved plan, specially recommended by the early explorers, consisting of some thirty or forty men unincumbered by wives or families; with such they were assured they need “not fear, but to do more good there in seven years than in England in twenty.” Captain Christopher Levett, by the way, to whom this last assurance was due, was one of Captain Robert Gorges' body of assistants, under that official's brief governor-generalcy, and when giving his impressions of the country, he thus refers to Smith's glowing account, at the same time imparting an air of moderation to his own sufficiently flattering statement:—

I will not do therein as some have done to my knowledge, speak more than is true; I will not tell you that you may smell the corn fields before you see the land; neither must men think that corn doth grow naturally (or on trees,) nor will the deer come when they are called, or stand still and look on a man until he shoot him, not knowing a man from a beast; nor the fish leap into the kettle, nor on the dry land, neither are they so plentiful, that you may dip them up in baskets, nor take cod in nets to make a voyage, which is no truer than that the fowls will present themselves to you with spits through them.

But besides these general descriptions of a land unoccupied and yet flowing with milk and honey, another account of the region of Massachusetts Bay, and perhaps the most glowing account of all, had privately reached Wollaston and his associates, and, doubtless, was the deciding motive of their venture. Of Thomas Morton it will remain to speak more at length presently; here it need only be said that he was one of Wollaston's company, and that he now came to New England not for the first time. Three years before he had passed a few months here, coming in June and returning to England in September, taking back with him a summer's impressions. He thus tells what those impressions were and what, doubtless, he led his companions to expect:—

And when I had more seriously considered of the bewty of the place, with all her faire indowments, I did not thinke that in all the knowne world it could be paralel'd. For so many good groues of trees; dainty fine round rising hillucks: delicate faire large plaines, sweete cristall fountaines, and cleare running streames, that twine in fine meanders through the meads, making so sweete a murmering noise to heare, as would even lull the sences with delight a sleepe, so pleasantly doe, they glide upon the pebble stones, jetting most jocundly where they doe meete; and hand in hand runne downe to Neptunes Court, to pay the yearely tribute, which they owe to him as soveraigne Lord of all the springs, Contained within the volume of the Land, Fowles in abundance, Fish in multitude, and discovered besides; Millions of Turtledoves one the greene boughes: which sate pecking, of the full ripe pleasant grapes, that were supported by the lusty trees, whose fruitfull loade did cause the armes to bend, which here and there dispersed (you might see) Lillies and of the Daphnean-tree, which made the Land to mee seem paradice, for in mine eie, t' was Natures Master-peece: Her chiefest Magazine of, all where lives her store: if this Land be not rich, then is the whole world poore.

As he who thus described this paradise of “Lillies and of the Daphnean-tree” was of the party, it would seem to be fairly matter of inference that he guided it to Passonagessit, as what is now Mt. Wollaston was called in the Indian tongue. This lay within the present limits of the town of Quincy, directly across the marshes from Wessagusset, now Weymouth, and less than two miles away, being separated from the site of the Weston and Gorges plantation only by the Monatiquot River and the salt-water creeks and estuaries which indent that shore in all directions. There is reason for believing that Morton had taken part in Weston's unfortunate experiment at Wessagusset three years before. Now that he was returning, therefore, again to try his fortune in those parts, he naturally turned his steps to those pleasant places which he so vividly recalled as he first saw them in the bright freshness of a New England June, and as he left them in the mellow softness of its September. He found Wessagusset still occupied by the remnants of Gorges' company, who had now been there nearly two years, so that he and his associates had necessarily to look elsewhere for an abiding place; Passonagessit was, moreover, in many respects, for the purposes of the adventurers, the better spot of the two. They came there to trade. While ranging the coast in his open boat, in 1614, Smith had “got for trifles near eleven hundred beaver-skins, one hundred martens, and near as many otters; and the most of them within the distance of twenty leagues.” In Morton's mind, therefore, the plantation was a mere incident, in all probability, to the establishing a regular trade in peltries. A prominent position on the shore in unobstructed view of the entrance to the bay would be with him an important consideration. Wessagusset, however, though it had the deeper water and the more sheltered anchorage, was quite hidden from the sight of vessels making the harbor, and could be approached only by a long and devious channel. Passonagessit, on the contrary, lay full in view of the harbor's entrance, a gentle upland, swelling into a hill, at the mouth of a salt-water creek which emptied into a quiet tidal bay, just midway between two promontories a couple of miles apart; while beyond these lay an apparently connected succession of islands, among which the main channel to Boston harbor threaded a devious way. The disadvantage of the place was that, except when the tide was in, it could be approached only by boats; but there was excellent anchorage beyond, and, so far as planting was concerned, Passonagessit, lying as it did close to “the Massachusetts fields,” had years before been selected for his residence by the Sachem Chickatabut, by whom it had been cleared of trees. Indeed, he had continued to live there until he abandoned it at the time of the great pestilence.

Hither Wollaston and his companions were guided by Thomas Morton. The part taken by this individual in the May-pole episode was so very prominent that everything which can be ascertained about him becomes of interest in connection with it. Unfortunately, it is not much. He seems to have been a man of strange, inexplicable character and, probably, wholly devoid of principle. He was not unknown in the Plymouth colony, whose grave elders contemptuously spoke of him as “a petie-fogger of Furnivalls Inn.” Of Morton's life before he came to America absolutely nothing can now be found out. He had certainly received a classical education of some sort; for, though he could not write English, throughout all the odd jumble of his composition he shows some familiarity with the more common Latin writers, amid an elaborate display of that pedantry then so much in vogue. An authority tells us that in England he had been an attorney in one of the western counties; while he subscribes himself as being “of Clifford's Inn, Gent.,” which means, of course, a barrister in London. That he was not wholly without means is evident from the fact that he owned an interest in the Wollaston enterprise. He was a man of convivial temper, endowed with a good deal of wit and a very well-developed sense of the humorous; but that his moral character was decidedly loose is sufficiently apparent from his own book. He had, too, a strong, innate love of nature, and of every description of field sports; and, withal, he was a close observer, for his strange, incoherent, well-nigh unintelligible work, the New English Canaan, contains one of the best and closest descriptions of Indian life, traits, and customs which has come down to us. What, unless the love of adventure, ever originally brought him to America is not likely to be known. But when once he came here, he was never able to take himself off, nor could he even be driven away. He certainly, at first, seems to have had no connection with Gorges, nor is there reason to suppose that he belonged to any established company of adventurers. He appears, in fact, to have been a broken-down and probably disreputable London lawyer, with a Bohemian nature and without clients, who was not unfamiliar with that Alsatian life which Scott has depicted in his Fortunes of Nigel, and who must have felt much more at home when ranging the fields with hawk or hound than while rummaging law-books. Indeed, he seems to have been an adept in the mysteries of falconry, having been bred, as he tells us, in the common use of hawks in England. Thomas Morton, probably, is the only man who in Massachusetts ever flew bird at quarry. In his description of the country he grows warm and almost lucid as he tells of its falcons and goshawks and lannerets,—of hoods, bells, and lures; and describes how, on his first coming, he caught a lanneret which he “reclaimed, trained, and made flying in a fortnight, the same being a passinger at Michuelmas.” This man, born a sportsman, bred a lawyer, ingrained an adventurer, by some odd freak of destiny was flung up as a waif on the shores of Boston bay. Robust of frame, eager in the chase, fond of nature, it was not strange he liked the life. He was one of those whom the rugged, variable New England climate, with its brilliant skies, its bracing atmosphere, its rasping ocean winds, and its extremes of heat and cold does not kill; and such it is apt to exhilarate. So, not even a succession of winters passed on the bleak summit of his sea-side hill ever made Thomas Morton swerve from his belief that New England was “Natures Master-peece,” without a parallel in all the world. He was clearly of one mind with the Rev. Francis Higginson of Salem, who did not hesitate to write, “A sup of New-Englands Aire is better than a whole draught of old Englands Ale.”

The adventurers established themselves where they did simply because it seemed good to them to do so. They had neither charter nor grant of land, and seemed to trouble themselves little about questions of title. They built their house nearly on the centre of the level summit of the hill, in Quincy, still called Mt. Wollaston, commanding to the eastward the broad bay with its distant islets, while to the north and south it looked over wide marshes and intersecting creeks, interspersed with upland to Shawmut and Wessagusset. Toward the west alone was it connected with the higher ranges of the interior, which were then still covered with their native forest growth.

The exact date of Wollaston's arrival is not known, but not improbably it was during the month of June. A season must have passed away while the party was engaged in the work of building a house and laying out a plantation, but this sufficed to convince Captain Wollaston that there was little profit to be hoped for out of that region. Accordingly, early in 1626, as would seem most likely, he determined to go elsewhere. Taking with him a number of the articled servants, he set sail for Virginia, leaving one of his associates, a Mr. Rasdell, in charge of the plantation. If he did not find anything else in Virginia, Captain Wollaston at least found a ready market for his “hired help;” as he is said to have there sold the time of those he carried with him on terms wholly satisfactory to himself. Having accomplished this stroke of business, Wollaston sent back to Rasdell, directing him to turn over the government of the plantation to a Mr. Fitcher, and himself to bring on to Virginia another detachment of the servants, whom he disposed of as he had of those which he himself brought down. It was after Rasdell's departure, and while Fitcher was in charge, that Morton's presence at Mt. Wollaston began to make itself felt. The evident intention on the part of his associates of breaking up the enterprise in no way accorded with his views; unlike them, he was pleased with the country, and he seems to have felt satisfied that a longer residence in it could be made a source of profit as well as of enjoyment.

Meanwhile, supplies had begun to run short, and the general spirit of the settlement was not one of contentment. Taking advantage of these facts, Morton gradually instilled into the minds of the few who remained unsold a suspicion, for which doubtless there was very good foundation, that it would be their turn next to go to Virginia; and to suggest that if they would make him the chief of the little settlement, they might then all dwell together as equals, protecting one another, and deriving profit from planting and from trade. The number of those left at the plantation was now reduced to nine, exclusive of Fitcher. All of these Morton won over to his views, and at last a species of mutiny broke out, as the result of which poor Mr. Fitcher was fairly put out-of-doors and compelled to ask food and shelter among the straggling settlers in the vicinity. Then began an episode so curious that it would be difficult to conceive one more so in connection with New England history,—one the bizarre effect of which it is not easy to describe. Certainly, no dram-shop in the midst of a conventicle, no billiard-room or bowling-alley in the basement of a Calvinistic meeting-house, could have seemed more out of place, more incongruous in its surroundings, than did the roistering Morton and his reckless crew among the devout, severe generation which had sought a home on that bleak and desolate coast.

Morton had two very distinct ends in view: one was enjoyment, the other profit. And he was equally reckless in his methods as regarded each. He delighted in wandering, fowling-piece in hand, over all the neighboring hills, or sailing in his boat on the bay. With the Indians he was evidently the most popular of Englishmen, for not only did they act as his huntsmen and guides, but they participated in his revels,—and not the men alone but the women also; for one of the principal allegations subsequently made against him referred to the very anomalous relations existing between himself and his followers and the neighboring squaws.

After the fashion of the period he was something of a scribbler of verses as well as a sportsman, and he had a decided partiality for those outdoor amusements which causes the England of those days to be referred to in ours with the pleasant prefix of “merrie.” Accordingly, Mt. Wollaston soon ceased to be known as such, and became instead Mare Mount, in which name lay concealed a play upon words of some significance; for whereas Merry Mount was a name well calculated to stir the Puritan wrath and to be alleged against the settlement as indicative of the evil practices there in vogue, yet Mare Mount, if the name were so pronounced and spelt, was simply an appropriate and characteristic display of Latinity. Having decided upon this name, it only remained for Morton to confirm it by suitable ceremonies as a memorial. As May-day of the year 1627 approached great preparations were on foot at Mt. Wollaston,—a pole was to be reared, with merriment and revels after the old English wont. Of what took place on this occasion we know through the account left us by Morton,—himself the arch reveler or Lord of Misrule,—and whether it be strictly accurate in all respects or not, that account lacks neither minuteness nor picturesque effect. They were not an abstemious set, those first residents in Quincy, and amidst the cheer gotten ready for all comers against the great occasion, a barrel of strong beer and a liberal supply of bottles containing yet stronger fluids are especially mentioned. The May-pole itself consisted of a pine-tree eighty feet in length, wreathed with garlands and made gay with ribbons, while near its top were nailed the spreading antlers of a buck. When at last the holiday came, this pole was dragged to the summit of the mount amid the noise of drums and the discharge of fire-arms, and there firmly planted, the savages lending a willing aid in the work. A poem suited to the occasion had been prepared beforehand by Morton, a copy of which was now affixed to the pole. Of it the author says that “it being Enigmattically composed pusselled the Seperatists most pittifully to expound it,” nor has time cast any new light upon its meaning. Bradford says that these “rimes” affixed to this “idle or idoll May-polle” tended “to y^e detraction & scandall of some persons,” but whom he does not specify, and Morton denied the imputation. In any event, with the exception of the two last lines, in which the first of May is proclaimed a holiday at Mare Mount, this earliest recorded effusion of the American muse is as unintelligible as it is inharmonious.²

Such as it was, however, it was ready, and no sooner did the May-pole stand erect than it was fastened to it, and then the revels and the merriment began.

As they danced and circled around the antlered and garlanded pine one of the company kept filling the cups of his companions, and as he did so he sang yet another song of Morton's composition, of a highly bacchanalian character, while from time to time the rest of the rout joined in the chorus.³ These verses Bradford apparently looked upon as “tending to lasciviousness,” but, though rather more intelligible, they were hardly more harmonious or better worth preserving than the others. Thomas Morton may have been a “petie-fogger,” but he certainly was not a poet. In the case of the “Songe,” however, one line at least, in which reference is made to “lasses in beaver coats,” has some significance, as throwing a gleam of light on the composition of the choice company which circled round the May-pole.

It has already been stated at the commencement of this narrative that, allowing for the difference between the old and new styles, May-day in the year 1627 fell upon what is now the 10th of the month, which renders it a little less improbable that it in some respects resembled the sweet English anniversary whose observances it was thus sought to transplant. The episode, however, breaks out like a single fitful gleam of sickly sunlight amid the leaden gloom of our early New England annals, exciting a sense of warmth, cheerfulness, and sympathy. That the Puritan ancestry of Massachusetts were a remarkable race, possessing qualities which inspired fear and awe in their presence, and command the deepest respect and admiration when studied from a distance, no one will deny. But they were not attractive; between us and them two centuries and a half of interval is none too much. And in no respect was the unattractive side of the Puritan character more clearly brought into view than in their sour, narrow-minded dislike of innocent and joyous relaxation. Before the May-day at Merrymount, there is a record of but a single attempt to introduce into New England the pleasant festivities of the motherland,—one single attempt, the result of which was wofully unpropitious. The incident is familiar enough, but it will bear to be repeated in this connection. It took place at Plymouth in December, 1621. Just as the first year of the little colony was drawing to a close there arrived a small ship bringing some thirty-five immigrants. They were not Puritans, but they were all landed, and disposed of into the several families. Presently Christmas day came round. It hardly needs to be said that of all days in the year Christmas is most associated in the English mind with sentiments of kindness and good-will to men; it is the day of feasting, games, and jollity. On this Christmas morning at Plymouth, however, the governor arose and, as was the custom on other days, called the men together to go out to work. Most of the new-comers, liking not the innovation, excused themselves on the ground of conscientious scruples against it. The governor, in his own quaint language, carrying in it still the echoes of a grim chuckle, thus goes on to tell of the ready wit with which he discomfited the revelers. They had alleged conscientious scruples against manual labor on Christmas day, and

so y^e Gov^r tould them that if they made it mater of conscience, he would spare them till they were better informed. So he led away y^e rest and left them; but when they came home at noone from their worke, he found them in y^e streete at play, openly; some pitching y^e barr, & some at stoole-ball, and shuch like sports. So he went to them, and tooke away their implements, and tould them that was against his conscience, that they should play & others worke. If they made y^e keeping of it mater of devotion, let them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling in y^e streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that way, at least openly.

But suddenly, just when the psalm was supposed to have finally drowned the stave through all those parts, from close at hand Morton's noisy chorus broke in like a protest of human nature against the attempted suppression of its more attractive half. When its echoes reached Plymouth, language in which adequately to express their horror at such doings wholly failed the people there, and they were forced to have recourse to pagan times to find a parallel for them. “They allso set up a May-pole,” wrote Governor Bradford, “drinking and dancing aboute it many days togeather, inviting the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither, (like so many fairies, or furies rather,) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of y^e Roman Goddes Flora, or y^e beasly practieses of y^e madd Bacchinalians.” There was something very dramatic about the situation. On the one hand the sombre Puritan settlement, and on the other, close beside it, the rollicking trading post, with the solitary vastness encompassing both. Indeed, it seems almost strange at this distance of time that men should have been found daring enough to break the awe of that primeval silence by vulgar revels about a May-pole planted on their gravel ridge between the ocean and the wilderness,—an ocean rarely whitened by a sail, and a wilderness unbroken, save at Merrymount and at Plymouth, from the St. Lawrence to the Hudson; and Plymouth was scandalized beyond expression by the goings on at Merrymount.

Altogether the settlement at Merrymount lasted about five years, from the summer of 1625 to that of 1630; and during two years of this time, in 1627-28, it was that Morton traded with the Indians and curiously observed the country, its products, and its inhabitants, as well as conducted its revels. He wrote his book, which he called the New English Canaan, at a later period, probably after the year 1630, and in it he gave in his own way the results of his observation and experience. He divided it into three parts, the first of which treats of the natives, their manners and customs, the second of the country and its products, while the last and most bulky of the three deals in a confused, metaphorical, hardly intelligible way, half narrative and half satire, with the Massachusetts and Plymouth settlements.

In his observations on the savages there is a great deal which is of positive value, though at times he indulges in inferences and generalizations which would scarcely bear the test of modern historical criticism. Yet these passages are hardly more absurd than much which is to be found in the writings of the recognized historians of that time and even later. His explanation of the origin of the Indian race, for instance, reads like a very clever satire on all the historians of the old or credulous school, and even on those modern scripturalists who still insist on tracing the descent of the different races of men from the several sons of Noah.

It may perhaps be granted that the Natives of this Country might originally come of the scattred Trojans: For after that Brutus, who was the forth from Aneas, left Latium upon the conflict had with the Latines … this people were dispersed there is no question. … And when Brutus did depart from Latium, we doe not find that his whole number went with him at once, or arrived at one place; and being put to Sea might encounter with a storme, that would carry them out of sight of Land, and then they might sayle God knoweth whither, and so might be put upon this Coast, as well as any other … now I am bold to conclude that the originall of the Natives of New England may be well conjectured to be from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium.

Having thus provided the natives with an ancestry, he presently accounts for the color of their skin in this wise: “Their infants are borne with haire on their heads; and are of complexion white as our nation, but their mothers in their infancy make a bath of Wallnut leaves, husks of Walnuts, and such things as will staine their skinne for ever, wherein they dip and washe them to make them tawny.” … And finally he closes what he has to say of them by remarking that they are “to be commended for leading a contented life, the younger being ruled by the Elder and the elder ruled by the Powahs, and the Powahs are ruled by the Devill, and then you may imagin what good rule is like to be amongst them.”

When dealing with the country and its products, Morton, after the fashion of his time, indulged freely in the traveler's license, and some of his exaggerations are very humorous. For instance, when speaking of the excellent game with which New England then abounded, he exclaims, “Turkies there are, which divers times in great flocks have sallied by our doores; and then a gunne (being commonly in a redinesse) salutes them with such a courtesie, as makes them take a turne in the Cooke room. They daunce by the doore so well. Of these there hath bin killed, that have weighed forty eight pound a peece.” Nor, Captain Levett's authority to the contrary notwithstanding, did the turkeys alone among the wild animals of savage New England come up to the settlers' doors to be shot. The bear was equally obliging. According to Morton:

The Beare is a tyrant at a Lobster, and at low water will downe to the Rocks, and groape after them with great diligence. Hee will runne away from a man as fast as a litle dogge. If a couple of Salvages chaunce to espie him at his banquet, his running away, will not serve his turne, for they will coate him, and chase him betweene them home to theire howses, where they kill him, to save a laboure in carrying him farre.

This trait in the beaver, also, does not seem to have been observed by the naturalists, that he conveys food and wood “to his howse built on the water, wherein he sitts with his tayle hanging in the water, which else would over heate and rot off.” As respects rats, Morton makes the astounding statement that “the Country by Nature is troubled with none;” while of the rattlesnake he says, it

is no lesse hurtfull than the Adder of England, nor no more. I have had my dogge venomed with troubling one of these; and so swelled, that I had thought it would have bin his death: but with one Saucer of Salet oyle poured downe his throate, he has recovered, and the swelling asswaged by the next day. The like experiment hath bin made upon a boy, that hath by chaunce troad upon one of these, and the boy never the worse. Therefore it is simplicity in any one that shall tell a bug beare tale of horrible, or terrible Serpents that are in that land.

Nothing, however, can be more natural or prettier than the following description of a familiar bird which has now delighted many generations of New Englanders:

There is a curious bird to see to, called a hunning bird, no bigger than a great Beetle; that out of question lives upon the Bee, which he eateth and catcheth amongst Flowers: For it is his Custome to frequent those places, Flowers he cannot feed upon by reason of his sharp bill, which is like the poynt of a Spannish needle, but shorte. His fethers have a glasse like silke, and as hee stirres, they shew to be of a chaingable coloure: and has bin, and is admired for shape coloure, and size.

In reading the New English Canaan it is very curious to notice how old the names of the islands and localities are, in and about Boston bay. Morton speaks, for instance, of going over in his canoe to shoot ducks at Nut Island; and again he refers to Pettick's Island as being so called “in memory of Leonard Peddock that landed there.” Yet Nut Island is one of the smallest of the many small islands in the bay, and of Leonard Peddock not even a tradition remains. The fact that the pretty promontory of Squantum, also, was already as early as 1627 known by that name is apparent from Morton's book. It has since then been somewhat notorious for the houses of call on its rocky shores, which have not at all times been too particular as to the quality of the “intoxicants” they have supplied to their patrons. It was, therefore, in an almost prophetic spirit that Morton wrote “neere Squantos Chappell (a place so by us called) is a Fountaine, that causeth a dead sleepe for 48. howres, to those that drinke 24. ounces at a draught, and so proportionably.”

II. THE ARREST.

Had Thomas Morton contented himself during his residence in New England with the sports of the field, or with making observations on the habits and usages of the Indians, he might probably have lived and died at Ma-re Mount. At least such neighbors as he then had in the quiet Plymouth settlement would hardly have disturbed him, and the other straggling planters would have had no disposition to do so. He might, also, to the very end have persisted in observing his favorite anniversary, even though he had erected a new May-pole, gay with garlands and ribbons, every recurring spring. Unfortunately for him, however, he was not there for that purpose. He had a keen eye for a bargain as well as for nature and enjoyment. He was there to trade with the Indians, and trade with them he would and did after a fashion consistent neither with the well-being of the savages nor with the safety of the infant settlements. The two things the savages most coveted were spirits and guns,—fire-water and fire-arms. For these, then as now, they would give anything they possessed. The trade in fire-arms had been forbidden by royal proclamation issued by King James in 1622; the less dangerous “liquor traffic,” as it is now called, was scandalous, but not yet under the ban of law. Morton, however, cared little either for law or morals, and the savages flocked to him as to their natural ally. He probably treated them well; at any rate, though he denied that he was in the custom of giving them liquor, he unquestionably invited them to participate in his revels, and employed them to hunt and fowl for him, putting guns into their hands and instructing them in their use. They showed themselves apt pupils, also; for not only were they swift of foot, but they were remarkably quick of sight and thoroughly familiar with the haunts and habits of all descriptions of game. Learning thus how to use guns, the savages became eager to possess them. A petty and illicit trade in fire-arms had long been carried on by the adventurers and fishermen who trucked for furs along the coast, but it had never taken any regular shape or, indeed, assumed formidable proportions. Now, however, it seemed as though Morton was about to reduce it to a system. In cheap exchange for his surplus weapons there poured into the store-room at Merrymount a profusion of furs of the bear and the otter, the marten and the beaver, together with those choicer deer-skins which the savages valued at three or four beaver-skins, and the robes of the black wolf, one of which was looked upon as the equal of forty beavers, and as being a gift worthy of the acceptance of a prince.

For a time, trade at Merrymount was brisk, and the money of the adventurers was as recklessly spent as it was easily made. The profits of the peltry trade thus conducted were as large then as they were nearly two centuries later, when upon them the foundations of the largest private fortune in America were securely laid. Naturally, however, Morton soon found his available stock of spare fire-arms exhausted, and so he made haste to send to England for a new and larger supply. The reputation, such as it was, of his post was now established, and the masters of the vessels, of which an ever-increasing number, already amounting to fifty sail a year, frequented the coast, all looked into the bay for barter and refreshment. Things, indeed, went prosperously with the remnant of the vanished Wollaston's party, and those who had put their trust in its erratic leader doubtless looked forward to years of always larger accruing profits.

As might naturally have been expected, however, Morton's neighbors watched his proceedings with a disfavor which rapidly assumed the shape of deep alarm. At first they were merely scandalized at his antics and complained that his people, like Weston's before them, were destroying the trade in furs by their reckless modes of dealing. Nothing except fire-arms and ammunition possessed any attraction to the savages, and, in the strong language of Governor Bradford, “they became madd, as it were, after them, and would not stick to give any prise they could attaine too for them.” Now, although the neighboring settlers were Puritans and Separatists, they were also poor men and shrewd dealers, eager to turn an honest penny in the way of trade, and they by no means fancied being driven out of the market in this wise. But more than this, they had come into New England to stay. They were not mere adventurers on the shore of a savage land, seeking, regardless of every ultimate consequence, at once to secure whatever they could extract from it. They were here with their wives and their little children, living at best in feeble communities on the outskirts of the forest or, in the case of Morton's immediate neighbors, as solitary families or single individuals. To men thus situated the presence of such a reckless gang as Morton's was more than an annoyance; it was a menace. Accordingly, when Governor Bradford came to these events in his history he gave vent to an outburst of indignation and alarm which is in curious contrast with the usual moderation of his language.

O the horiblnes of this vilanie! how many both Dutch & English have been latly slaine by the Indeans, thus furnished; and no remedie provided, nay, y^e evill more increased, and y^e blood of their brethren sould for gaine, as is to be feared; and in what danger all these colonies are in is too well known. Oh! that princes & parlements would take some timly order to prevente this mischeefe, and at length to suppress it, by some exemplerie punishmente upon some of these gaine thirstie murderers, (for they deserve no better title,) before their collonies in these parts be over throwne by these barbarous savages, thus armed with their owne weapons, by these evill instruments, and traytors to their neigbors and cuntrie.

It is the commencement of a long refrain,—a lamentation and an ancient tale of wrong,—which has gone up from the frontier for two centuries and a half, and which is heard as clearly through the reports of the war department of to-day as through the pages of the annalist of 1627.

The frightened planters now began to meet Indians prowling through the woods armed with guns. As yet they were only in search of game or furs, but to men living in absolute solitude on the verge of an infinite, unknown wilderness, even the poor survivors of the Massachusetts tribe were a cause for apprehension. It was impossible that in imagination at least conspiracies should not always be forming behind the inscrutable veil of the forest, which would be revealed only as they had been revealed on the terrible 22d of March in Virginia, when the war-whoop had given the first intimation of danger. Five years had now elapsed since Pecksuot had vaunted his “pictured knife” in the face of Miles Standish at Wessagusset, and since Wattawamat's ghastly head had scowled from the top of the Plymouth block-house. The terror occasioned by the nervous blow thus dealt them by the Puritan captain could not be expected to remain forever fresh in the minds of the savages. Though cowed, the leopard does not change his spots, nor the Indian his nature. Thus the planter's safety grew daily more precarious. The instinct of self-preservation told him clearly enough that such a condition of affairs could not be suffered to continue. But, on the other hand, the remedy was not very clear. If it came to a trial of strength, the master of Merrymount, even without his Indian allies, was more than a match for all the settlers about Boston bay combined. The number of his retainers as yet was small, but the place threatened to become a refuge for loose and disorderly characters, whether runaway servants of the planters or deserters from the fishing fleet. Thus it might before long be a question whether even the Plymouth colony was able to abate the growing nuisance. Under these circumstances the heads of the straggling plantations met together to confer. The wide-spread apprehension which had been excited by Morton's proceedings is clearly proven by the extent of territory from which those who joined in this action were brought together. What are now Portsmouth and Salem were represented, as well as Nantasket, Weymouth, Boston and Charlestown on Boston bay; yet these settlements altogether probably did not number fifty souls of all ages and both sexes. It was finally determined to invoke the assistance of the comparatively powerful Plymouth colony, which then may have numbered a population of some two hundred in all. Letters were accordingly prepared and sent in charge of a delegation to that place, the people of which upon full consideration of the reasons urged upon them and of the common danger decided to interfere. Though the application very distinctly looked to the suppression of the Merrymount settlement, the Plymouth elders thought best not to have recourse to force at once. They were well enough aware that Morton was not a promising subject to labor with in the spirit, yet, knowing that their own standing with the authorities in England was not too strong, and being anxious above all things not to give King Charles's Council for New England any convenient handle against them, they wished to proceed deliberately and to exhaust every means of peaceable relief before going to extremities. A letter was accordingly dispatched to Morton, pointing out the perils to which his methods of dealing exposed the settlers, and admonishing him “in a friendly and neighborly way” to desist from such dangerous practices. The result of the interview between the Plymouth emissaries and the master of Merrymount was anything but satisfactory to the former. Morton carried matters with a high hand. He very distinctly told them that they were meddling in matters which did not belong to them, that the Plymouth colony had no jurisdiction over him or his plantation, and that he proposed to continue to deal with the Indians in any way he saw fit. The discomfited messengers returned with this reply, which was probably not unexpected, and the master of Merrymount pursued the uneven tenor of his ways. Then presently, as things did not improve but rather grew worse, the elders of Plymouth, following strictly the scriptural injunction, sent to him a second time.

and bad him be better advised, and more temperate in his termes, for y^e countrie could not beare y^e injure he did; it was against their comone saftie, and against y^e king's proclamation. He answered in high terms as before, and that y^e kings proclaimation was no law; demanding what penaltie was upon it. It was answered, more then he could bear, his majesties displeasure. But insolently he persisted, and said y^e king was dead and his displeasure with him, & many y^e like things; and threatened withall that if any came to molest him, let them looke to them selves, for he would prepare for them.

This insolent defiance, also, he seems to have enforced with a liberal use of expletives which were probably far more familiar to the mouths and ears of the dwellers at Merrymount than to those of Plymouth. Then at last patience failed; they were a generation slow to wrath, but there was an end even to Plymouth long-suffering. They had plainly gone too far now to hesitate. Morton, “petie-fogger” that he was, might be correct in his law that King James's proclamation had died with him in 1625 and had not since been renewed by King Charles, and that, even had it been, it bore no penalty; but of this they must take the risk. If they hesitated now there was an end to all order in New England. Conscious that he had browbeaten them, Morton's insolence would know no bounds. So it was at last resolved to send Captain Standish to Boston bay with a sufficient backing to insure Morton's speedy arrest. This conclusion was reached in the latter days of May or early in June, 1628. In obedience to orders Standish at once set sail, accompanied by a force of eight men. Whether a plot had been laid to assist him by entrapping Morton at Wessagusset does not appear; but in any event he found the man he sought at that place and there secured him. The moment he felt himself in custody the tone of the lately defiant Morton seems to have undergone a surprising change; for, assuming an air of virtuous astonishment, he innocently inquired why he was subjected to such violence. In reply he was reminded of the criminal acts to which his attention had been called, and he at once, with sublime impudence, requested to know who was the author of the complaint against him. Thereupon, when his custodians declined to furnish him with the desired information, he at once stood upon his rights as an Englishman, and, peremptorily refusing to answer any charges, demanded to be forthwith set at liberty. This view of the case naturally failed to recommend itself to Captain Standish, who prepared to remove his prisoner early the next morning to Plymouth. Meanwhile measures were taken to secure him over night. Six men, as he himself asserts, were put on guard over him, and one even lay on the bed with him to render more impracticable any attempt at escape. Elated with the complete and speedy success which had crowned their expedition, his captors during the evening appear to have indulged in some grim festivities with their Wessagusset hosts and confederates, in which their prisoner felt little inclination to join. In consequence their slumbers would seem to have been of the soundest, for presently the wakeful Morton contrived to slip off the bed, and passed two doors without being detected. As he went out, however, the last or outer door shut to so violently as to waken his custodians. What is supposed to have ensued can only be told in the fugitive's own language:

The word which was given with an alarme, was, ô he's gon, he's gon, what shall wee doe, he's gon? the rest (halfe a sleepe) start up in a maze, and like rames, ran theire heads one at another full butt in the darke. Their grand leader Captaine Shrimp [Standish] tooke on most furiously, and tore his clothes for anger, to see the empty nest, and their bird gone. The rest were eager to have torne theire haire from theire heads, but it was so short, that it would give them no hold.

Morton was once more at liberty, nor in the night and so near the woods was it any easy matter to recapture him. In a direct line he was but a mile or two from his home, but the Monatiquot ran between him and it, and, as he had no means of crossing, it was necessary for him to take the longer road around, by the points where the river was fordable. This increased the distance to at least eight miles; but he was well acquainted with the path, and was moreover aided in finding it by the vivid lightning of a thunder-storm which illumined the night. He went resolved on forcible resistance. He reached his home before morning and at once set actively to work on his preparations. There was no time for idling; with the early day Standish and his party would cross the Monatiquot in their boats, or come round through the bay, and a short walk across the upland would bring them upon him. Morton's entire force now consisted of but seven men beside himself, and, fortunately for Standish, five of these had at this particular time gone up into the interior in search of furs. His available garrison, therefore, was reduced to three,—himself and two others. Nothing daunted by this disparity of force, he and his followers got out all the guns they could find on hand, four in number, and made ready on the table an ample supply of powder and ball. Having then made fast the doors they very fortunately proceeded to defy their enemies over their cups. It would seem that, whatever resulted, they were determined that at least Merrymount should to the last be Merrymount. They had not long to wait. A friendly savage presently appeared, and gave warning that the pursuers had left Wessagusset and were already close at hand. They soon made their appearance, and, blissfully unconscious of the preparations which had been made to receive them, marched directly up to the fortified house, where Standish called for an immediate capitulation. The unfortunate Morton was now reduced to a reliance for his defense on his own unsupported arm, for the courage had clean oozed out of one of his men, while the other was hopelessly and helplessly drunk. Nevertheless, putting on a bold face, he met Standish's summons with a defiance, and, when the latter proceeded to force an entrance, he sallied bravely out, musket in hand, followed by his single staggering retainer. He even made as if he would fire on the Plymouth captain. The struggle was, however, as ludicrous as it was brief. Pushing aside the carbine, Standish advanced and seized Morton, who was himself probably none too sober, as subsequently his weapon was found so overcharged as to be half-full of powder and ball. Even while this was going on, Morton's reeling follower completed his superior's overthrow by running “his owne nose upon y^e pointe of a sword y^t one held before him as he entered y_e house.” This man's hurt, however, does not seem to have been a very severe one, as Governor Bradford goes on to add that “he lost but a litle of his hott blood.” The result of “this outragious riot,” as he termed it, was that Morton became again a prisoner, and this time with small prospect of escape. Indeed, he was forthwith carried to Plymouth; while, of his retainers at Merrymount, some of the worst were dispersed, while others less irreclaimable remained about the house and deserted May-pole in the expectation that their master would ultimately be released and return.

The expense of this first police effort on the part of the embryotic New England confederacy, including, of course, the expenses of Morton's imprisonment and subsequent passage to England, fell upon the Plymouth colony, The sum of £12 7s. was contributed by those who had participated in it, although Bradford asserts that this by no means made good its cost. Of the amount, £2 10s. only were forth-coming from Plymouth, whose people considered themselves least of all benefited by the abatement of the nuisance, while Conant and the others at Salem paid £1 10s.; William and Edward Hilton at Rye, N. H., paid, the first £2 10s. and the last £1; two planters at Weymouth, named Jeffrey and Burslem, paid £2; the widow of David Thomson, on Thomson's Island, 15s.; William Blackstone at Boston, 12s.; and those living at Nantasket, whose names have not come down to us, £1 10s. This contribution was, of course, a voluntary one and in no way a proportionate levy, but it is interesting as showing the situation and, in some respects, the relative means of all those who then lived in New England. Referring to Morton's subsequent return, Bradford complained that the money was spent to little purpose; but it would not so appear. Practically, as a result of this expenditure, the Wollaston settlement was broken up and an end was put to the open trade in fire-arms and ammunition. Whether that in furs revived on a more legitimate basis does not appear.

Shortly after Morton was brought to Plymouth a council was held to deliberate on his case, at which it was decided to send him a prisoner to England, with letters to those in authority setting forth the reasons why he had been arrested and asking to have criminal proceedings instituted against him. From Plymouth he was in the first place sent to the Isles of Shoals, where he was detained for a month, and then dispatched to his destination under charge of John Oldham, who was also bearer of the letters respecting his case. There are not many names more frequently mentioned than Oldham's in the early history of Plymouth; and, indeed, he was once expelled from that settlement with divers strange and ignominious ceremonies, of which Morton has himself left the following graphic account: “A lane of Musketiers was made, and hee compelled in scorne to passe along betweene, & to receave a bob upon the bumme be every musketier, and then a board a shallop, and so conveyed to Wessaguscus shoare, & staid at Massachussetts.” Perhaps, remembering this experience, Oldham may have felt a little friendly sympathy with his prisoner. Whether that was the cause of it or not, however, Bradford distinctly says that Morton “foold” him, and that consequently no proceedings whatever were had in the matter in England. So Morton escaped without even a rebuke. Nor was this all. In the summer of 1629, to their unspeakable disgust and astonishment, the magistrates of Plymouth saw the irrepressible Morton again landed in their settlement; and when they remonstrated that he had not yet answered the charges preferred against him, with consummate impudence he coolly replied “that hee did perceave they were willfull people, that would never be answered; and derided them for their practises and losse of laboure.”

The most unaccountable thing of all about Morton's reappearance at Plymouth was that he had been brought back there by Isaac Allerton, the agent of the colony. Bradford very distinctly asserts that Allerton had received a bribe, but whether this was the case or whether he too, like Oldham, had been “foold” by the cunning adventurer cannot now be ascertained. Certain it is that his course gave great offense at Plymouth; but none the less, in defiance of public opinion, he continued for some time to harbor Morton in his own house, employing him as a scribe. At last, however, the quondam Lord of Misrule was once more compelled to depart and to seek refuge in his old haunts. But, during his year of enforced absence, great changes had taken place in New England,—changes nearly affecting the plantation at Passonagessit. On the 6th of September, 1628, just three months after Morton's arrest by Miles Standish, John Endicott had landed at Naumkeag, and the colony of Massachusetts Bay, which included Merrymount within its limits, had come into existence. One of the earliest acts of the new magistrate had been to take order as to the condition of affairs at Mt. Wollaston. Shortly after his arrival he had gone over there with a few followers and effectually quenched the smoking flax; for, after sharply rebuking the lingering remnants of Morton's band for their profaneness, and admonishing them to look well to their future conduct, he had emphasized his remarks by hewing down the May-pole and by rechristening the spot as Mt. Dagon. In the selection of this name he exhibited, also, a characteristic familiarity with scriptural mythology; for Dagon was that sea idol of the Philistines upon whose day of solemn feast Samson had pulled down the pillars of Gaza's temple. So when Morton at last returned to what had been Merrymount, it was only to find the very name of the place obliterated, his house deserted, his followers dispersed, and his darling May-pole level with the ground beneath the flying leaves of autumn.

He was, however, a man of cheerful temperament, and he seems to have accommodated himself as best he might to his altered circumstances. But his trials were far from over. Indeed, it was absurd to suppose that a loose roysterer such as he—believing in nothing, jeering at everything—could long live side by side with the austere, God-fearing Puritans who had now established themselves over against him at Salem. Under the circumstances of his past career had he been as pure as ice and as chaste as snow he would not have escaped calumny: but he was neither. He seems to have returned to Mt. Wollaston in the autumn of 1629, and by the summer of 1630 he was in serious trouble with Endicott. He refers to a General Court held in Salem, but of which we have no other record, and at which he says he was present. There Endicott submitted certain articles to the planters, which all of them were called upon to sign. Their tenor was “that in all causes, as well Ecclesiasticall, as Politticall, wee should follow the rule of Gods word.” Morton states that he alone refused to sign without the proviso, “So as nothing be done contrary or repugnant to the Lawes of the Kingdome of England.” He then refers to some provisions for the regulation of the peltry trade, to which also he refused his assent; and he intimates that an attempt was subsequently made to arrest him, which he frustrated by leaving his house and taking a temporary refuge in the woods. There seems to be little doubt that he proved himself a thorn in Endicott's side, in deriding whom, according to his own account, he passed much of his time. John Endicott, however, was not a man likely to be “derided” with impunity by such as Morton; and so, if they were not trumped up, which is more than probable, complaints began to come in against him from both the Indians and the English: it was alleged that he had stolen a canoe from the former; that he had fired a charge of shot into a party of them from across a river when they had delayed answering his call for them to come and ferry him over; that some years before he had murdered a man who had ventured money in his plantation; and so on. Accordingly under date of August 23, 1630, at the very first General Court held after the arrival of Governor Winthrop at Charlestown, it was “Ordered, that Morton of Mount Woolison should presently be sent for by processe.” Two weeks later, on September 7th, he was arraigned before the magistrates. In those days criminal proceedings were somewhat arbitrary in their character, and the principal part which would seem to have devolved on Morton upon this occasion was not to defend himself, but to receive, with as much philosophy as he might, the sentence which the court had already decided to be suitable to the nature of his offenses. It was in vain, therefore, that the gentleman of Clifford's Inn vehemently protested and entered his pleas to the jurisdiction of the tribunal; he was peremptorily silenced by cries from the assistants of “Hear the governor! Hear the governor!” And he did hear the governor with sensations which must have rendered him dumb with amazement as that dignitary proceeded to impose upon him the following swingeing sentence:

Ordered, that Thomas Morton of Mount Wolliston shall presently be set in the bilbowes, & after sent prisonor into England by the shipp called the Gifte, nowe returneing thither; that all his goods shal be seazed upon to defray the charge of his transportation, payement of his debts, and to give satisfaction to the Indians for a cannoe hee unjustly tooke away from them; & that his house, after the goods are taken out, shal be burnt downe to the ground in sight of the Indians, for their satisfaction, for many wrongs hee hath done them from tyme to tyme.

Neither was this sentence a mere empty threat. The master of Merrymount, Sachem of Passonagessit as he loved to call himself, and Lord of Misrule as the Puritans called him, did indeed sit in the stocks, while the neighboring savages, “poore, silly lambes,” came and looked at him with astonished eyes. Then his habitation at Merrymount was before his own eyes “burnt downe to the ground, and nothing did remaine, but the bare ashes as an embleme of their cruelty.”

Morton's first arrest by the Plymouth authorities was almost unquestionably justifiable from every point of view. With his usual graceless impudence he subsequently asserted that the real ground of complaint was not that alleged, but envy at the prosperity of his plantation and his gain in the beaver trade; nor yet that in chief, but most of all because he “was a man that indeavoured to advance the dignity of the Church of England; which they (on the contrary part) would laboure to vilifie; with uncivile terms: enveying against the sacred booke of common prayer, and mine host that used it in a laudable manner amongst his family, as a practise of piety.” Yet he never denied that he was in the custom of selling fire-arms to the savages; and, indeed, he studiously ignored that particular charge. That he would have denied it quickly enough if he could is apparent from the distinctness with which he declares that he never was guilty of the other crime of selling spirits to them. In arresting and sending him to England for trial, therefore, the Plymouth magistrates showed great moderation and their usual conscientious desire to act strictly within the law. Had they been of another and more modern type of settler, they would no doubt have disposed of him in a far more summary manner. Even as it was, Morton asserts that Standish was beyond expression enraged at the moderation shown towards him, and threatened to put him to death with his own hand. This, however, may well be questioned. Meanwhile, the justice of his second arrest and consequent punishment by the General Court of Massachusetts Bay is not so obvious. For his misdeeds prior to their arrival he had been arraigned before the proper authorities, and they had not proceeded against him. Legally at liberty, he had voluntarily returned to Plymouth and had at least been tolerated there for a considerable length of time. When he returned, therefore, to his home, until he should have committed some new misdemeanors the grounds for his further prosecution are not apparent. The charges alleged against him were certainly not of a character to justify the extremely harsh sentence inflicted, for they amounted to nothing more than taking an Indian canoe, and a vague suggestion of other offenses. Had he continued the illicit trade in fire-arms after his return, or even kept up his May-pole revels, we may feel very sure that due emphasis would have been given to the fact. Nothing of the sort was even intimated. Dudley says that he was punished that it might appear to the Indians and to the English that the magistrates meant to do justice impartially between them. If this was indeed the case, it would seem that in their eagerness for an example of doing justice impartially between races the magistrates were somewhat unmindful of impartial justice to individuals. It is true that both Dudley and Bradford also say that a warrant was received from the lord chief-justice of England for Morton's arrest to answer capitally for some more grave offense alleged to have been committed by him before he came to America. But, though this would unquestionably necessitate his being sent back to England, it hardly seems to warrant the confiscation in advance of conviction of all his goods and the burning of his house. These were high-handed acts of unmistakable oppression.

The probabilities in the case would seem to be that the Massachusetts magistrates had made up their minds in advance to drive the man out of the country. His presence at Mt. Wollaston was a standing menace to them in various ways. Apart from all illicit dealings which they may have apprehended between himself and the Indians, they seem to have regarded him with the same apprehension that they did the mysterious Sir Christopher Gardiner, and for the same reason. They suspected him of being an emissary of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and interested in the efforts to invalidate their grant of the territory of Massachusetts Bay. Both Sir Christopher Gardiner and Thomas Morton were accordingly hunted out of New England, with and without law. That Gardiner was an agent of Gorges admits of no doubt. Up to the time of his second arrest there is, however, no evidence whatever that Morton was, though there is no doubt he afterwards became one. That he was an extremely undesirable character to have about an infant colony like that presided over by Endicott and Winthrop admits of no dispute; and perhaps their severe treatment of him was justified by the exigencies of their position. But whether from this point of view justifiable or otherwise, it proved in the event a serious blunder. To have left him alone would have evinced in them a larger share of worldly wisdom. At most a mere nuisance at Mt. Wollaston, Morton rose to the dignity of a formidable enemy when driven away to Whitehall. In Massachusetts he was under Winthrop's eye and within reach of Endicott's hand; in London, as will presently be seen, he became the instrument of Gorges, and inspired the eager malignity of Laud. An end was indeed made of him in New England, and that quickly; but he could hardly be blamed for feeling a sense of wrong and injustice, or for nourishing against those who had despoiled him a bitter spirit of revenge. And this he passed the rest of his life vainly attempting to gratify.

The remainder of Morton's career may be disposed of in few words. The sun of Merrymount had forever set behind Governor Winthrop's bilboes. That portion of its master's sentence which provided for his transportation to England in the Gift proved more difficult of execution than those other portions of it which related to his exposure in the stocks or the destruction of his house. The master of the Gift wholly refused to carry him. Accordingly he remained a prisoner in Boston for nearly three months, until, towards the end of December, a passage was secured for him on the ship Handmaid. Upon his arrival in England he was thrown into Exeter jail. He could not, however, have remained there long, for the next year he was at liberty, and busily intriguing through Sir Ferdinando Gorges for the overthrow of the Massachusetts colony. A letter full of hope, which he wrote on the subject to Sir Christopher Gardiner, happened to pass through Governor Winthrop's hands, and was by him intercepted and opened without the smallest apparent scruple. Two years later he had developed into a truly formidable opponent, having in some way, doubtless through Gorges's influence, secured the ear of Archbishop Laud. In conjunction with Sir Christopher Gardiner and Philip Ratcliff (who for some animadversions on the Salem church and the government was sentenced to be whipped, lose his ears, and be banished, to which Morton adds, to have his nose slit, his tongue bored through, his face branded, and to pay a fine of £40) Morton then petitioned the king in council to vacate the Massachusetts charter. The attack excited the gravest apprehensions among the friends of the colony, and the danger was warded off only through their most strenuous exertions.

A year later, in 1634, Morton believed that his hour of triumph and revenge had at last surely come. For his old enemies, the magistrates of the colony, the news was indeed sufficiently startling. In consequence of a fresh assault on the charter, a special commission had been created for the management of the colonies and the revocation of their charters, with Archbishop Laud at its head. Sir Ferdinando Gorges was to be sent out as governor-general. Under these circumstances the destruction of the colony seemed nearly impending. Morton could not control his elation. Having himself seen the new commission, which had passed the privy seal, upon the very day on which it was sent to the lord-keeper to have the great seal annexed to it, he was so indiscreet as to write in triumph to William Jeffrey, one of the old settlers under Robert Gorges at Wessagusset, boasting to him of what had been done and indulging in many threats against Governor Winthrop, whom he called “King Winthrop,” and the gratification of “cropping” whose ears he stated had been granted in advance to his friend Ratcliffe. Unfortunately for him, however, “his very good gossip,” as he familiarly called Jeffrey,—who, by the way, had been one of the contributors to the expense of his first arrest,—was not entirely in sympathy with him on the subject to which his letter related. Accordingly it was forthwith carried by him to Governor Winthrop, who, having read it, methodically filed it away as another rod in pickle, so to speak, for the unlucky Morton, as he found out ten years later.

At this time, however, Morton not only became a place-holder, but he had the keen satisfaction of gratifying his spite against one at least of the Plymouth magistrates. It fell out in this wise: Edward Winslow, being at the time in London as agent of the Plymouth colony, exerted himself strongly against Archbishop Laud's new commission. Morton, thereupon, maliciously prompted the archbishop to charge him with having performed the marriage service in America, he being a layman, and then testified that he had himself seen him do it. Of course Winslow's answer that he had acted as a magistrate wholly failed to satisfy the primate, and the Plymouth agent was thrown into the Fleet prison and kept there seventeen weeks.

The body known as the Council for New England had at this time succeeded by degrees in getting its affairs into a condition of inextricable snarl. As a short way out of the difficulty, and as part of the Gorges-Laud commission scheme, it resolved to resign its charter into the hands of the king, on condition that all the territory included within its domain should be granted back to the members of the council individually. In view of the fact that large tracts of this territory had already been alienated by the council to others who then occupied them, the scheme was one of bare-faced spoliation, thoroughly in keeping with the Star Chamber dynasty which King Charles was then systematizing in England. Twelve associates accordingly proceeded to a distribution of New England among themselves by lot, and for the completion of the business it only remained to pass the deeds and oust the present occupants. Thomas Morton was then “entertained to be solicitor for confirmation of the said deeds under the great seal, as also to prosecute suit at law for the repealing of the patent belonging to the Massachusetts company; and is to have for fee twenty shillings a term, and such further reward as those who are interested in the affairs of New England shall think him fit to deserve upon the judgment given in the cause.” Like all the others this new and most formidable attack on the charters failed; but it failed only from circumstances which have never been accounted for, and which Winthrop attributed to the immediate interposition of the Almighty. John Mason, of New Hampshire, the most energetic, persistent, and dangerous enemy the colonies had, died in London about this time; and the ship which was being built to bring over the new governor-general “in the very launching fell all in pieces, no man knew how.” For the time being the charter was safe. Just at this juncture the long gathering civil trouble between king and Parliament assumed a definite shape in the ship-money issue, and from that time forward the attention of Charles and his primate was wholly absorbed in the increasing difficulties at home. New England was left to administer itself.

Morton's occupation was now gone, nor is it known where or how he lived during the next eight years. In 1637 his book, the New English Canaan, was printed in Holland, and in it he took such revenge as lay in his power upon his old persecutors, particularly Standish, Endicott, and Winthrop, who figure ludicrously enough under the names of Shrimp, Littleworth, and Temperwell. Endicott was, however, the object of his special animosity, and he thus contemptuously describes the state with which that sternest of Puritan magistrates sought to surround himself in primitive New England. After referring to him as “a great swelling fellow” who “crept over to Salem” he thus goes on:

To ad a Majesty (as hee thought) to his new assumed dignity, hee caused the Patent of the Massachussets (new brought into the Land) to be carried where hee went in his progresse to and froe, as an embleme of his authority: which the vulger people not acquainted with, thought it to be some instrument of Musick locked up in that covered case, and thought (for so some said) this man of little worth had bin a fidler. …

In connection with Endicott, too, the worthy Dr. Samuel Fuller of Plymouth, who went from there to Salem to minister to the sick emigrants shortly after their first arrival, did not escape him. He accuses him roundly of quackery, and says, “yet hee did a great cure for Captaine Littleworth, hee cured him of a disease called a wife.”

At last, in 1643, in the midst of the civil war and just as the scales trembled in the balance at Newbury before turning finally against King Charles, Thomas Morton once more found his way back to Plymouth. It was twenty-one years since he had first landed there “in the moneth of June, Anno Salutis: 1622,” and he must now have been a man in the decline of life. He seems, however, still to have retained his sportsman's tastes, for we next come across him exciting the intense wrath of Miles Standish by fowling over his domain at Duxbury. Subsequently we find him again in trouble in Boston, where on the 9th of September, 1644, after the lecture, he was called before the court of assistants and charged with having made the complaints against the colony before the council in 1633. He denied the charge, claiming that he was called only as a witness to facts stated in an information filed by others. Then at last he was confronted with his letter to William Jeffrey; and there was Governor Winthrop—“King Winthrop,” the “cropping” of whose ears was specially provided for in black and white under his own hand—sitting among the magistrates before him. Such evidence could not be gainsaid. In the early days of New England, and upon sound reasons of public policy also, to enter an appeal to the king was looked upon and treated as an aggravation of each original offense. To be summarily stripped of all one's possessions, see one's house burned down, and be banished by a colonial magistracy might not be pleasant, but at least it was final. Neither then nor subsequently did any sufferer do more than waste his time and remaining substance by seeking to carry his woes before the sovereign. Thus practically the magistrates of Massachusetts Bay exercised a somewhat singular jurisdiction. Not only did they settle what crime was and define its limits, but they also both meted out adequate punishments therefor and saw them summarily inflicted. The law was locked up in their bosoms, and the bilboes were handy. A lively recollection of past experiences probably satisfied Morton on these points. He was enough of a lawyer to know that it was useless for him to kick against the pricks. For the time being, however, he was merely committed to jail, there to await the arrival of yet other evidence which was expected from England. As this did not come, after about a year of imprisonment he was again called before the court, and, after some discussion, fined one hundred pounds and set at liberty. The reason for which leniency Governor Winthrop thus explains with delightful naiveté:

He was a charge to the country, for he had nothing, and we thought not fit to inflict corporal punishment upon him, being old and crazy, but thought better to fine him and give him his liberty, as if it had been to procure his fine, but indeed to leave him opportunity to go out of the jurisdiction, as he did soon after.

Broken down by years, imprisonment, and misfortune, the once roystering Thomas Morton left for the last time the province of Massachusetts Bay and sought refuge at Accomenticus, in Maine, where York now stands, and there about the year 1648 he died, old, poor, crazy, and despised.

Still, in Morton's case, also, the whirligig of time has not been without its revenges. It was Captain Miles Standish who in 1628 arrested him and destroyed his rising prosperity. There is probably no single legend connected with early New England history with which so many people are familiar as with Captain Miles Standish's vicarious courtship of the Puritan maiden who afterwards became Priscilla Alden:—

Still John Alden went on, unheeding the words of Priscilla, …
But as he warmed and glowed, in his simple and eloquent language,
Quite forgetful of self, and full of the praise of his rival,
Archly the maiden smiled, and, with eyes over-running with laughter,
Said, in a tremulous voice, “Why don't you speak for yourself, John?”

Among the descendants of John and Priscilla Alden was a granddaughter, Hannah Bass, who in 1688 married one Joseph Adams, of Braintree, whose descendants at the close of another century became by marriage and inheritance the owners of Mt. Wollaston. There one of them now resides close to where Morton's May-pole stood. It thus happens that while Miles Standish, with ignominious violence, expelled from his home the first master of Merrymount, the last master of Merrymount traces a descent from Miles Standish's successful rival.

Notes

1. Dwellers on Cape Ann curious as to the significance of this scriptural allusion of the historian Hubbard are referred to Genesis xlix. 13, 15.

2. The Poem

   Rise Oedipeus, and if thou canst unfould,
   What meanes Caribdis underneath the mould,
   When Scilla sollitary on the ground,
   (Sitting in forme of Niobe) was found;
   Till Amphitrites Darling did acquaint,
   Grim Neptune with the Tenor of her plaint,
   And causd him send forth Triton with the sound,
   Of Trumpet lowd, at which the Seas were found,
   So full of Protean formes, that the bold shore,
   Presented Scilla a new parramore,
   So stronge as Sampson and so patient,
   As Job himselfe, directed thus, by fate,
   To comfort Scilla so unfortunate.
   I doe professe by Cupids beautious mother,
   Heres Scogans choise for Scilla, and none other;
   Though Scilla's sick with greife because no signe,
   Can there be found of vertue masculine.
   Esculapius come, I know right well,
   His laboure's lost when you may ring her Knell,
   The fatall sisters doome none can withstand,
   Nor Cithareas powre, who poynts to land,
   With proclamation that the first of May,
   At Ma-re Mount shall be kept hollyday.

3. The Songe

   Drinke and be merry, merry, merry boyes,
   Let all your delight be in Hymens ioyes,
   Jô to Hymen now the day is come,
   About the merry Maypole take a Roome.
             Make greene garlons, bring bottles out;
             And fill sweet Nectar, freely about,
             Vncover thy head, and feare no harme,
             For hers good liquor to keepe it warme.
   Then drinke and be merry, & c.
   Iô to Hymen, & c.
             Nectar is a thing assign'd,
             By the Deities owne minde,
             To cure the hart opprest with greife,
             And of good liquors is the chiefe,
   Then drinke, & c.
   Iô to Hymen, & c.
             Give to the Mellancolly man,
             A cup or two of't now and than;
             This physick will soone revive his bloud,
             And make him be of a merrier moode.
   Then drinke, & c.
   Iô to Hymen, & c.
             Give to the Nymphe thats free from scorne,
             No Irish; stuff nor Scotch over worne,
             Lasses in beaver coats come away,
             Yee shall be welcome to us night and day.
   To drinke and be merry, & c.
   Jô to Hymen, & c