“Not so easy, perhaps, but to my mind more honorable,” replied Standish coldly. “Howbeit, I do not approve of arming the Indians.”
“Of course, Governor,” resumed Blackstone, who had been the principal speaker, “the peril is not great for you who can count a hundred fighting men with Captain Standish to lead them; but none other of the settlements is of any force, although friend Maverick here has fortified his island, and may depend upon a dozen men or so of his household, and the Hilton brothers at Piscataqua and Cocheco are stout and well-armed fellows, and my neighbor Thomas Walford at Mishawum[2] has a palisado round his house, and his blacksmith’s sledge with some other weapons inside. Then at Naumkeag[3] are Roger Conant, Peter Palfrey, and the rest, with your old friend Lyford as their parson, and Conant is a fighting man as well as a godly one. But I, as all men know, am a man of peace as befits a parson; and there is David Thompson’s young widow and child abiding on the island bearing his name, with only a couple of men-servants to defend them. If all of us drew together in one hold we should not count half the force of Plymouth, but we do not wish so to abandon our plantations.”
“Have you labored with Thomas Morton, showing him the wrong he does?” asked Elder Brewster coldly, and eying the Churchman with strong disfavor, for Blackstone, with questionable taste, had chosen to wear upon this expedition the long coat and shovel hat carefully brought by him from England as the uniform of his profession. Dressed in these canonicals, with the incongruous addition of “Geneva bands,” Blackstone regularly read the Church of England service on Sundays at his house upon the Common, sometimes alone, and sometimes to a congregation composed of the Walfords from Charlestown, the Mavericks from Noddle’s Island or East Boston, the settlers from Chelsea, and perhaps in fine weather the Grays from Hull, and some of the folk from Old Spain in Weymouth. For all these were adherents to the Church of England after a fashion, although by no means ardent religionists of any sort; and as such, held in considerable esteem the eccentric parson living in the solitude he loved among his apple-trees, and beside his clear spring, now merged in the Frog Pond of our Common. A lukewarm Churchman, he was friendly enough to the Separatists, and now replied to Brewster with a smile,—
“I have labored so vainly, Elder, that I fear even your authority would be of no avail. I opine that our friend Standish here is the only man whose eloquence Thomas Morton will heed in the smallest degree.”
“And the chief men of all the settlements are agreed in making this request of Plymouth?” asked the governor.
“Not only the chief, but every man among them,” answered Maverick. “And what is more to the purpose, each one of the settlements will bear its share in whatsoever charges the arrest and transportation may involve.”
“That is well, but should be set down in writing with signatures and witnesses,” suggested Allerton, to whom Maverick haughtily replied,—
“Oh, never fear, Master Allerton. The most of us are honest men and not traders.”
“No offense, Master Maverick, no offense; but it is well that all things should be done decently and in order,” returned the assistant smoothly, and the council soon after broke up with the understanding that Bradford, as the only recognized authority in New England, should write Morton a formal protest in the name of all the English settlers, reminding him that King James of happy memory had, as one of his latest acts, issued a royal proclamation forbidding the sale of fire-arms or spirits to the savages, and calling upon him as an English subject to obey this edict.
If this protest proved of none effect, the Governor of Plymouth pledged himself to suppress the rebel and his mischief with the high hand.