Nothing was to be done but to put back again to Plymouth, the nearest English port. Here the Speedwell was carefully examined, and pronounced to be, from general weakness, unseaworthy. The disappointment was very great. The vessel was abandoned; twenty passengers were left behind, who could not be received in the already crowded Mayflower.
“It was resolved,” writes Governor Bradford, “to dismiss the Speedwell and part of the company, and proceed with the other ship. The which, though it was grievous and caused great discouragement, was put in execution. So, after they had taken out such provisions as the other ship could well stow, and concluded what number and what persons to send back, they made another sad parting, the one ship going back to London, the other proceeding on her voyage. Those who went back were, for the most part, those who were willing so to do, either out of some discontent, or from fear they conceived of the ill success of the voyage, seeing so many crosses befal, and the time of the year so far spent. But others, in regard to their weakness and charge of many young children, were thought least useful, and most unfit to bear the brunt of this hard adventure; unto which work of God and judgment of their brethren they were contented to submit. And thus, like Gideon’s army, this small number was divided, as if the Lord, by this work of His providence, thought these few too many for the great work He had to do. But here, by the way, let me show, how afterwards it was found that the leakiness of this ship was partly caused by being overmasted and too much pressed with sails; for after she was sold and put into her old trim, she made many voyages and performed her service very sufficiently, to the great profit of her owners. But more especially by the cunning and deceit of the master and his company, who were hired to remain a whole year in America; and now, fancying dislike, and fearing want of victuals, they plotted this stratagem to free themselves, as afterwards was known, and by some of them confessed.”
Mr. Cushman, who wrote the doleful letter, was left behind at his own request. There was some excuse for his evil forebodings, for he was in a wretched state of health. He had written,
“Besides the imminent dangers of this voyage, which are no less than deadly, an infirmity of body hath seized me which will not, in all likelihood, leave me until death. What to call it I know not. But it is a bundle of lead, as it were, crushing my heart more and more these fourteen days; and, though I do the actions of a living man, yet I am but as dead.”
The whole number of persons who took their departure from Dartmouth, in the one solitary vessel, the Mayflower, for the New World, amounted to one hundred and two.
Among these passengers there was a marked man, to whom we have already alluded, Captain Miles Standish. He was a native of Lancashire, England, a gentleman born, and the legitimate heir to a large estate. He had been for some time an officer in one of the British regiments, which had garrisoned a town in the Netherlands. He was not a church member, and we know not what induced him to unite with the pilgrims in their perilous enterprise. Probably love of adventure, sympathy with them in their cruel persecution, and attachment to some of the emigrants, were the motives which influenced him. It is certain that he was very highly esteemed, and very cordially welcomed by the pilgrims. His military skill might prove of great value to the infant colony.
It is but little that we know of the early life of this remarkable man. He was born about the year 1584, and was, consequently, at this time, about thirty-six years of age. The family could boast of a long and illustrious line of ancestors. In the great controversy between the Catholics and the Protestants there was a division in the family, part adhering to the ancient faith, and part accepting the Protestant religion. Thus there arose, as it were, two families; the Catholics, who were of “Standish Hall,” and the Protestants, who were of “Duxbury Hall.” Both of these family seats are situated near the village of Chorley, in the county of Lancashire. The income of the whole property was large, being estimated at about five hundred thousand dollars a year.
It is probable that Miles Standish was the legal heir to all this property, and that, by gross injustice, he was defrauded of it. A few years ago the heirs of Miles Standish, in this country, sent out an agent, Mr. Bromley, to examine into the title. He thoroughly searched the records of the parish for more than a hundred years, embracing the period between 1549 and 1652. The result of this investigation was fully convincing, to the mind of Mr. Bromley, that Miles Standish was the rightful heir to the property, but that the legal evidence had been fraudulently destroyed. In reference to this investigation, Mr. Justin Winsor, in his History of Duxbury, writes:
“The records were all readily deciphered, with the exception of the years 1584 and 1585; the very dates about which time Standish is supposed to have been born. The parchment leaf, which contained the registers of the births of these years was wholly illegible; and their appearance was such that the conclusion was at once established that it had been purposely done with pumice stone, or otherwise, to destroy the legal evidence of the parentage of Standish, and his consequent title to the estates thereabout. The mutilation of these pages is supposed to have been accomplished when, about twenty years before, similar enquiries were made by the family in America.”
Young Miles was educated to the military profession. England was then in alliance with the Dutch, in one of those wars with which the continent of Europe has ever been desolated. Miles was sent to the Netherlands, commissioned as a lieutenant in Queen Elizabeth’s forces. After peace was declared he remained in the country and attached himself to the English exiles, who, in Leyden, had found refuge from ecclesiastical oppression. He joined the first company of Pilgrims for America, and by his bravery and sagacity, contributed greatly to the success of their heroic enterprise.