[64] It seems as if the Captain went into Scussett harbour, which goes up westward towards Manomet. Prince, p. 210.
[65] In the Indian dialects.
[66] Or Iyanough.
[67] See [note [54] on [page 78].
[68] Or Pamet, now called Truro.
[Chapter 4] (pp. 31-39)
[69] “All their refreshing in their sickness is the visit of friends and neighbours, a poor empty visit and presence; and yet indeed this is very solemn, unless it be in infectious diseases, and then all forsake them and fly.” Roger Williams, in Mass. Hist. Coll. iii. 236.
[70] It was conjectured by Belknap, Am. Biog. ii. 229, and has since been repeatedly asserted as a fact by other writers, that this person was the celebrated English patriot of the same name. But this is highly improbable. Hampden, who was born in 1594, and married in 1619, was a member of the parliament which assembled in January, 1621, and was dissolved by James in 1622, under circumstances and in a juncture of affairs which rendered it certain that a new parliament must soon be called. It is not at all likely that a person in Hampden’s circumstances, a man of family, wealth and consideration, would, merely for the sake of gratifying his curiosity, have left England at this critical period, on a long voyage to another hemisphere, and run the risk of not being at home at the issuing of the writs for a new parliament. For the passage to America was at that time precarious; the vessels were few, and the voyage a long one; so that a person who undertook it could not reasonably calculate upon getting back in much less than a year. Winslow’s companion, whoever he was, must have come in the Charity, which brought Weston’s colony, unless we adopt the improbable supposition that this “gentleman of London” embarked in one of the fishing vessels that visited the Grand Bank, and took his chance of getting to Plymouth as he could. Now the Charity left London the last of April, 1622, and arrived at Plymouth the last of June. The visit to Massasoit took place in March, 1623, and after this no vessel sailed for England till the Anne, September 10, in which Winslow went home. Of course this “gentleman of London,” must have been absent at least eighteen months, which it is altogether improbable that Hampden would have done, running the risk of not being at home to stand for the next parliament, to which he undoubtedly expected to be returned, as we know he actually was.
Besides, had this companion of Winslow been the great English patriot, the silence of the early Plymouth writers on the point is unaccountable. On publishing his “Good News from New England” immediately on his arrival in London, in 1624, one object of which was to recommend the new colony, how gladly would Winslow have appealed for the correctness of his statements to this member of parliament who had passed more than a year in their Plantation. How natural too would it have been for him to have mentioned the fact in his “Brief Narration,” published in 1646, only three years after the death of the illustrious patriot. Bradford, also, whose sympathies were all with the popular party in England, in writing an elaborate history of the Colony, would not have failed to record the long residence among them of one who, at the time he wrote, had become so distinguished as the leader of that party in the House of Commons. That his lost history contained no such passage we may be certain; for had it been there, it must have been quoted either by Prince or Morton, who make so free use of it, both of whom too mention this visit to Massasoit, and who would not have omitted a circumstance so honorable to the Colony.
Again, Winslow’s companion was “a gentleman of London.” Now although John Hampden happened to be born in London, when his father was in parliament in 1594, he was properly of Buckinghamshire. Winslow, who was himself of Worcestershire, if he knew who Hampden was, would not have called him “a gentleman of London;” and we cannot suppose that this English gentleman would have spent so many months in the Colony without making himself known to its two leading men, Winslow and Bradford.