We do not know how La Salle and De Soto and the Sieur de Champlain would have looked upon the woods around Plymouth and the Cape. They would probably have thought of them as suburbs of the Mississippi. But as we sit on the Standish doorstep and glance out toward Plymouth, with the harbor between us and the Duxbury woods behind, we realize that the first settlers here were quite completely cut off from the shelter of that comely fort on Burial Hill. There was something very hardy and permanent about their pioneering, though there was always a reasonable explanation for the risks they undertook. There were no heroics about it. Their chronicler says simply, "now they must of necessitie goe to their great lots; they could not other wise keep their katle." They did not come over out of restlessness, or for adventure, or primarily for exploring the new continent, at all. Mr. John Alden spoke in the authentic colonial spirit. They came over to settle it—to open it up.
CHAPTER III
WINSLOW'S "GREAT LOT"
From John Alden's land, in early days, a footpath led out along the shore, over Stony Brook, by Duck's Hill, to Careswell, the "great lot" granted to Edward Winslow. The lot is now the town of Marshfield, made famous by Daniel Webster and by generations of notable Winslows.
The Pilgrim Winslow was Plymouth's favorite representative in foreign affairs, whether in dealings with the Dutch, or with the Indians, or with the English in London. His friendships were curiously varied and fortunate; he was admired and trusted by such forceful men as Roger Williams, Massasoit, and Oliver Cromwell—a vigorous trio. When he went plying back and forth on his diplomatic voyages between Plymouth and England, his duties varied from the responsibility of convoying twenty hogsheads of beaver to the old country and bringing back three heifers and a bull to the new, to defending the judicial policy of his friends in Boston, and writing such sprightly tracts as "Hypocrisie Unmasked" and "New England's Salamander Discovered." Oliver Cromwell appointed him Commissioner to go to Hispaniola and Jamaica, and to confer at Goldsmiths' Hall, London, on a question involving Denmark's seizure of English ships after the treaty of peace. The Commissioners were given a certain time to come to a decision; and if they could not agree by the day appointed, they were to be "shut up in a chamber, without fire, candles, meat, or drink, or any other refreshment, until they should agree." Cromwell believed in international agreements speedily arrived at.
On Winslow's land to-day stands the Winslow house, built on the old foundation by Isaac Winslow in 1699. This famous homestead, which a few years ago was going to wrack and ruin through sheer old age, has been restored as nearly as possible to its original state of comfort and dignity by the Winslow Associates, furnished throughout with a rare collection of antique furniture, and opened to the many visitors who come that way on their route to Plymouth. As you wander through the rooms, you find the place a perfect study in early building; every detail has been carefully preserved, from the "spatter-painted beams" in the kitchen and the old fire-back in the parlor, to the fine wood finish of the "Parlor Bedroom." You gain a notion of the interesting way in which the restoration was managed, when you learn that thirty-four coats of paint had to be removed from the woodwork of the entrance hallway, and that four fireplaces had to be taken out of the huge dining-room fireplace to bring it back to its original condition.
It is very fitting that this house, on the land of the most internationally minded man of the early colony, should be cordial to visitors now. Old houses make friends easily. They are like people who have known our grandfathers—able on that account to make us feel at home. And when an ancient house bears the name of one of the Pilgrim Forefathers, it plays homestead to the whole United States.
The Winslow House, Marshfield, (1699)