Debts hopeful and desperate

by Ruth A. McIntyre

Too deep an involvement in colonial ventures was likely to harm one’s credit. The first deputy governor and treasurer of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Thomas Goffe, sank into heavy debt for a time, part contracted for Winthrop personally and part for the Company. Goffe complained bitterly when, in a difference with Winthrop, he received no payment. As a shipowner with a share in the Welcome and in two other vessels which seem to have crossed the Atlantic, he wrote that his shipowning was far from successful in 1630, the year of the initial Winthrop voyage. His affairs were “in an ambiguous and desperate estate” until some of his creditors, pitying him, took over part of the plantation debts and lent him enough capital to begin trading again. Though he suffered financial loss from the Puritan venture in Massachusetts, Goffe perhaps derived a greater measure of satisfaction from his donation to another Puritan cause. Along with a number of other Londoners he supported a daily lecture at the Church of St. Antholin’s. This afforded Puritan ministers and lecturers a platform for their views until the government suppressed the society, known as the Feoffees of Impropriations, which had been active in raising money to encourage a preaching ministry in London and elsewhere.[26]

By investing in the Pilgrims’ colony, John Pocock began what was a long association with New England. John Peirce called this merchant a leader in its support, and even after the composition Pocock extended it credit. Recruited as an officer in the Bay Company, he continued his generosity to that colony for about a quarter of a century. In fact, after Thomas Weld and Hugh Peter had concluded a mission in England in Massachusetts’ behalf, Pocock succeeded them as London agent; he also offered his shop in Watling Street, where he conducted business as a merchant taylor and woolen draper, to exhibit their disputed accounts. A fifteen years’ wait for payment of about £150 worth of cloth he had sent in 1641 to assist Massachusetts, did not deter him from investing substantially in John Winthrop Jr.’s project for establishing ironworks at Braintree, Massachusetts. Pocock fully sympathized with Puritanism and the parliamentary opposition to the King, as demonstrated by his contributions to the St. Antholin’s lectureship and his inclusion among the promoters of the London scheme to raise money for troops to help crush the Irish Rebellion. Parliament next made him one of the officials to whom were entrusted the Anglican church revenues so that they might be converted to the use of new Puritan preachers.[27] John Pocock’s range of activities indicates that he, too, looked kindly on Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay as outposts of Puritan influence.

Three of the merchants who had subscribed to the Plymouth venture, Robert Keane, John Revell, and Samuel Sharpe, actually emigrated to Massachusetts. The first to come over was Samuel Sharpe, who arrived in Salem as a member of the council chosen to assist Governor Endecott and to serve as business agent for the merchant, Matthew Cradock. In fact, Sharpe carried over the copy of the Company’s new patent. Had Endecott died, he was one of two designated to take over the government of the colony. Sharpe settled in Salem and became a freeman in 1632.[28]

John Revell’s part in financing the early Bay venture was clearly more important, however. Not only was he an assistant of the Massachusetts Bay Company, but he took a one-sixteenth share in a large ship for the transport of passengers and supplies to New England the Company could not afford. He also contributed £40 for freight during preparation for the 1630 fleet of vessels. He came aboard Winthrop’s vessel for dinner during the crossing, returning to his own under the salute of a volley of three shots. It is not known why he returned to England after a few weeks. He must have planned to stay, as his wife and children were with him. Back in London he belonged to the group of “Undertakers” supplying the Massachusetts plantation.[29]

The mind and temper of the final emigrant, Robert Keane, is clearer to us than that of any other adventurer in New Plymouth, with the possible exception of James Sherley. No career could illustrate better the compatibility of a calculated design to add to one’s wealth in the New World with the satisfaction of a sensitive Puritan conscience. At the same time that he was improving his worldly estate in London and Boston, Keane was walking the paths of salvation, he hoped, leaving in the interesting document, his last will and testament, a full discussion of both objectives. His account books, numerous as they were, can hardly have exceeded in bulk the handwritten ledgers he filled with comments on Scriptural books and on the sermons he had heard. In London, he laboriously noted in 1627 and 1628 the contents of discourses in several churches, including the famed St. Stephen’s, Coleman Street, where he listened to Mr. John Davenport, and one at Hackney visited by Master Hugh Peter. He attended some of the lectures at St. Antholin’s but most often, service at what he calls “Cornhill,” probably either St. Michael, Cornhill, or St. Peter’s, Cornhill. Between attending several services a month and writing down what was said, he gave a good deal of earnest thought to religion.

In his business career, Keane asserted that he was “self-made,” with no inheritance from his father. After apprenticeship in the Merchant Taylors’ Company, he took a shop in Birchin Lane, a street where the sellers of clothing displayed their wares. Either because of his fortunate marriage to the daughter of a gentleman or, more likely, because of success in business which enabled him to accumulate an estate of some £2000 or £3000, he enjoyed the modest rewards of a prosperous citizen, such as membership in the Honourable Artillery Company of London. His routine business included supplying liveries for the pages and footmen of the Lord Chamberlain. Keane was associated with James Sherley and the other merchants who furnished Plymouth with capital and direction. With Sherley he signed a letter to the colonists in 1624, and Peirce mentions him as an “assistant.” In the list of 1626, Keane was among the five designated to receive the £1800 to be paid by the Colony. In the Massachusetts Bay Company he was one of the inner ring of “Undertakers.” Keane was also the leading spirit in the organization of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company of Massachusetts. He served as the first captain of this military company, the earliest to be chartered in America.

The religious pressures upon a conscience like Keane’s are unmistakable, for amidst all the troubles he suffered in Massachusetts he described the new commonwealth, in its closeness to the Gospel, as little different from that which had summoned him to leave England in 1635. Of those who came to Boston, he was remarkable for his wealth and his successful application of it to new kinds of profitable transactions, such as investment in land and trade to Bermuda or the West Indies. In time, he installed his son, Benjamin, in Birchin Lane in London to act as his agent and to sell cloaks. Keane’s career is a model of the intertwining of “merchandise, reading and writing,” all matters of importance to Puritans anxious to redeem their time on earth.[30]

Most London Puritans whose interests embraced first Plymouth and then Massachusetts Bay were merchants, but one was a prominent lawyer of the Middle Temple. This was “Counsellor” John White, so called to distinguish him from the minister, John White of Dorchester, another leader in New England colonization. The lawyer John White became an investor in the latter’s enterprise, the Dorchester Company. Many activities mark him as a sympathizer with nonconformity, but his record with the New Plymouth venture suggests that he was one of the adventurers opposed to Separatism. While these were debating hotly the treatment Bradford had meted out to Lyford, partly for his use of the Book of Common Prayer, the faction favoring Lyford chose John White to be moderator in their interest. On terminating his interest in Plymouth in 1626, he perhaps was the lawyer John Peirce chose to arbitrate in his behalf in the course of his lawsuit against the adventurers. By becoming one of the Lay Feoffees, a group of trustees raising money to support the preachers they favored in the churches, White lent his name to one of the most dangerous of the Puritan efforts to oppose the policy of strict conformity insisted on by English authorities. He attended meetings of the early Massachusetts Bay Company and perhaps at one time contemplated emigration to New England, as suggested by one of John Winthrop’s correspondents. Remaining in London, he became a strong influence instead in settling such difficult problems as whether the prospective emigrants or the London merchants were to control the joint stock. A friend of Winthrop wrote in 1640 of this consistent friend of Massachusetts: “... there is so little money stirring to be exc[h]anged for the Plantation and so many hands to catch for it, that there is no hopes of obtaining any ... nor of Mr. White the Lawyer ... it being disposed some other way....” John White’s greatest service to Puritanism and the parliamentary cause came when he was chosen to serve for Southwark in the Long Parliament. There he presided over two committees, one to replace “scandalous” ministers with Puritan preachers, and the other to care for ministers who had been “plundered” by the preceding government. A little of the affectionate regard in which he was held may be observed in that when he died in 1645, the House of Commons accompanied his body to Middle Temple Church for burial.[31]

So much for the investors in both the New England colonies. What we know of the other New Plymouth adventurers does not contradict the sketch set forth of men of moderate prosperity or wealth, Puritan in religious outlook, and usually of some prominence in the City’s affairs in the period of the Civil Wars. It remains to discuss more fully the two merchants who, along with Richard Andrews, did most to maintain the credit of the Plymouth “Undertakers” after 1627. These were John Beauchamp and James Sherley.

A member of the Salters’ Company, Beauchamp was an early associate of Thomas Weston, with whom he furnished the Sparrow, a small vessel sent to Plymouth on private account in 1622. Like Weston he had traded as an “interloper” to the Low Countries from about 1612 to 1619. In the composition, Beauchamp was one of the five chosen to receive payment of the settlement money, and Sherley requested that he be joined with him as agent or factor in London for the “Undertakers.” Another New England colonial interest of his was the Muscongus patent in which Edward Ashley served as agent in fur trade with the Indians. The merchant also had a share in at least one ship which received a commission to take pirates. About 1640 he was judged to be not among the first, but the third, rank of citizens able to contribute to the King’s financial needs. Beauchamp lent money to various persons and apparently was rigorous in collection, for even Sherley described him as “somewhat harsh,” while a debtor’s widow, suing him, accused him of “unconscionably” prosecuting her at law after her husband had discharged his debt to him. This appears to be in character with the attitude we shall see he assumed in the winding up of the Pilgrims’ debts.[32]