Plymouth obtains a new patent to protect its trading rights
The rival shipmasters and settlers now ranging along the rocky coves and inlets of the Maine coast alarmed Plymouth lest they take control of the mouth of the Kennebec River. Since the autumn of 1625, most of the beaver collected had been furnished by the Abnaki Indians of this region. To secure this area and to define the boundaries of the colony, which had been unspecified in the Peirce patent, Isaac Allerton was directed to seek a new patent from the Council for New England. Some money was laid out for this purpose in his accounts with Sherley in 1628. The first grant he obtained proved to be so “strait and ill bounded,” however, that he had to apply for its enlargement. Sherley reported that Allerton was “so turmoiled about it” that he would not have undertaken such trouble, even for a thousand pounds.
The fruit of these efforts was a patent the Council issued in 1630, signed by the Earl of Warwick. It gave Plymouth not only its first exact boundaries, but a strip of land along the Kennebec, with control of fifteen miles on either side of the river, running up the river as far as the site of Cushenoc or present-day Augusta, Maine. This document, in the name of William Bradford and his associates, the first of their grants reflecting the complete shift in ownership from London to the New World, provided the basis for the colony’s land rights. At the same time Allerton did not succeed in getting past the seals a charter from the King, such as Massachusetts Bay had. He was criticized for this, somewhat unjustly, on the grounds that he failed because he and Sherley included among its terms some special customs privileges. Yet several charters, notably that of Massachusetts Bay, carried privileges similar to those Allerton requested, so it is more likely that a lack of funds and influence at court blocked passage. Allerton had apparently influenced Sherley to persuade Bradford that this charter could be secured only if he was allowed to go back to England. In fact, nothing more came of it, although £500 was reported to have been spent on the patent.[39]
Plymouth’s business agent is dismissed for a “conflict of interest”
Until this time everyone had relied on Allerton; now the “Undertakers” began to look on their business agent with disfavor. His previous long record of helpfulness had caused them to disregard the grumblings of the new settlers from Leyden, who were dissatisfied with his treatment of them. Allerton had belonged to the original Leyden congregation and had helped advise Carver and Cushman about preparations for the voyage to America, had signed the Mayflower Compact, and had assisted Governor Bradford after Carver’s death. As a member of the governing circle and a trusted official, he completed negotiation of the dissolution of the merchant adventurers for New Plymouth during trips to London in 1626–27. Quite naturally, Sherley’s praise of him as an “honest and discreet agent” bolstered the colony’s belief in his “good and faithful service.”
While this enterprising man began his mission without deliberately dishonest intent, he expected successfully to combine with it the pursuit of his own private interests. He soon joined Sherley in a private arrangement, for in 1628 the London man referred to an “account betwixt you and me,” which was separate from Allerton’s purchases for Plymouth. There it was known and accepted that he brought over some goods “upon his own particular, and sold them for his own ... benefit.” His frequent journeys to England and the intimate knowledge he had of the needs of New England obviously gave him special opportunities. One of these was to buy provisions for the settlers of Massachusetts Bay, a contract perhaps dating from a visit he made aboard the ship carrying John Winthrop to New England in 1630. Emmanuel Downing and John Humfrey, two leading supporters in London of the Bay colony, thought highly of his advice that they move this plantation to the Hudson River. Allerton’s relation with the Bay leaders outlasted those with the Pilgrims.[40]
Plymouth’s agent nonetheless revealed an indifference to her wishes when he brought back from England the very same Thomas Morton whom she had expelled. It was an insult to shelter this man right on the main street and even to employ him for a short time as a business secretary. Then, too, while buying a much bigger quantity of goods to be sold to the settlers than instructed, Allerton neglected to secure proper supplies of trading goods. Sherley had pressured him into exceeding the small quotas ordered by the “Undertakers,” he said in his defense. Sherley’s letters did stress, of course, the need to turn over as large an amount as possible during the relatively short duration of the partnership’s monopoly of trade, arguing that a large outlay was required to make a good profit in so short a time. “... we must follow it roundly and to purpose, for if we piddle out the time in our trade, others will step in and nose us....” Bradford and the others, understandably, were much more anxious to pay off the debts already owed than to overextend themselves just to make a profit.[41]
Such disagreements between Allerton and Sherley on the one hand, and Bradford, Winslow, and others at Plymouth, multiplied as the result of a new Maine venture, devised in 1629, which rivaled the Kennebec. Sherley and three other Londoners sent Edward Ashley, a keen trader but “a profane young man” by Pilgrim standards, to found a rival post at Pentagoet, near the Penobscot River. Allerton had refused to commit the Plymouth partners to the scheme without their consent, but on the basis of later correspondence Bradford decided that he had been an instigator of the plan. Since they had to send Ashley supplies, the Pilgrims had little choice anyway but to come in, if they wished to have some control of this potential competitor. Ashley soon was better supplied with trading goods than Plymouth, which, indeed, had to buy from Allerton himself, in return for part of their beaver taken at reduced prices. Without their knowledge, their versatile agent next borrowed money on their account at Bristol, at 50% interest, ostensibly so that goods might be shipped early with the fishing fleet headed for New England waters in the spring of the year.
Meanwhile, Winslow had conceived a plan to send a fishing ship laden with trading goods from the West Country in England directly to Maine, where a cargo of salt purchased the season before would await the ship’s arrival. In fact, the vessel thus hired, the Friendship, was badly delayed by “foul weather” so that Allerton reached Maine, traveling on the White Angel, only just before Timothy Hatherley, one of the London associates, finally reached Boston in the Friendship. The latter revealed that most of the goods he carried were not for Plymouth at all, but for Massachusetts. Plymouth’s mounting annoyance and mistrust of Allerton reached its pinnacle with the disturbing revelation that the English partners had bought outright the White Angel, not merely hired her, as was customary. The “Undertakers” suddenly were confronted by fresh, crushing debts, for each English partner had contributed two or three times as large an investment as before. Meanwhile, with a subtle note of mistrust of Plymouth’s dealings with them, the latter had designated Hatherley as a confidential agent to be informed of “the state and account of all the business.”[42]
Thus commenced a new and tedious financial wrangle between Plymouth and London. The former felt that the necessary control of their own business and obligations ceased when the English members could “run into such great things, and charge of shipping and new projects in their own heads, not only without but against all order and advice....” Confronted by their objections, Allerton undertook to convince them that they need not have the White Angel on the general account, if they did not wish to. Years later, in 1639, he testified that he had bought her at Bristol in 1631 only for the inner group comprising himself, Sherley, Andrews, and Beauchamp, and even Hatherley, whereas the Friendship was hired for all the partners of Plymouth. London contradicted this, saying that the ship would not have been purchased at all, if it hadn’t been for the interests of Plymouth.