The Colonies, 1492-1750

by Reuben Gold Thwaites

Dissatisfaction of the London partners.

Thirty-five new settlers came out in the autumn of 1622, and thereafter nearly every year brought increase in the number; but the partners failed to ship supplies with the new-comers, deeming it proper that the colony should be self-supporting; and this neglect still further strained existing relations.

Communal system partially abandoned.

In 1624 the communal system was partially abandoned, each freeman being allowed one acre as a permanent holding. This land was to be as close to the town as possible; for the climatic conditions, the necessity for protection against Indians, and the desire for ease of assemblage at worship, made it important that the settlement should be compact,—in sharp distinction to the scattered river-side plantations of the South. In 1627 each household was granted twenty acres as a private allotment; but for many years there existed as well a system of common tillage and pasturage similar to that with which the colonists were familiar in the English villages. About the same time (1627) the colonists purchased the interest of their London partners for eighteen hundred pounds, and became wholly independent of dictation from England.

The Pilgrims obtain sole control.

Up to this time many of the new colonists were sent or selected by the London shareholders, and were not always congenial to the Pilgrims. It now rested with them to invite whom they might; and as a result many of their faith from England were brought over. In 1643 there were three thousand inhabitants in the eight distinct towns comprising Plymouth colony; there were also several independent trading and fishing stations along the coast established under the auspices of the Plymouth Company. The colony was beyond the danger of abandonment.

The early history of Plymouth is a story full of painful details of suffering. It was a long time before the people became inured to the rigorous climate; the tedious winters were often seasons of much hardship and privation. The life they led was toilsome, but they bore up under it bravely.

Relations with the Indians.

The original colonists were kind and considerate to the aborigines, and for many years were the firm friends and allies of Massasoit, head chief of the Pokanokets, whose lands they had occupied. Whites were not always as comfortable neighbors as the savages. Thomas Weston, one of the London partners, sent out (1622) an independent colony of seventy men to Wessaugusset, about twenty-five miles north of Plymouth. They were an idle, riotous set, and after making serious trouble with the Indians, a year or two later returned to England. |Relations with white neighbors.| In 1623, Robert Gorges, son of Ferdinando, was appointed governor-general of the country by the Council for New England, and in person attempted to form a colony upon land patented to him "on the northeast side of Massachusetts Bay," but soon abandoned his enterprise and returned home. In 1625, Captain Wollaston appeared with a number of indented white servants and started a colony on the site of the Quincy of to-day. But this form of slave labor not being suited to the democratic conditions of New England life, Wollaston took his servants to the more congenial climate of Virginia, and his plant was taken possession of by his partner, Thomas Morton, who styled the settlement Merrymount. Morton was much disliked by the Puritans, who were scandalized at his free-and-easy habits, regarded the apparently innocent sports in which he encouraged his people as "beastly practices," and charged him with the really serious offence of selling rum and firearms to the natives. The Plymouth militia dispersed the merrymakers and sent Morton to England (1628).

Several Church of England men, representatives of Robert Gorges,—who had a patent for a strip of territory ten miles coastwise and thirty miles inland,—had come out in 1623, among them William Blackstone, settling on Shawmut peninsula, now Boston, Thomas Walford at Charlestown, and Samuel Maverick at Chelsea. Blackstone afterwards vacated his peninsula in favor of the Puritans of Charlestown. Maverick, in his palisaded fort, was a man of importance, and afterwards a royal commissioner to the colonies. There was also a small trading station at the mouth of the Piscataqua, and another at Nantasket, with here and there an individual plantation. With most of these the Plymouth people had business relations, but little else in common.