The disagreement over the White Angel and the Friendship plagued the partnership for some time to come, but the leaders on both sides of the Atlantic now concurred in the dismissal of Allerton as agent. Hatherley’s tour of inspection of the “down east” trading posts before his return to London demonstrated to him that “Allerton played his own game and ran a course not only to the great wrong and detriment of the Plantation who employed and trusted him, but abused them ... in possessing them [in England] with prejudice against the Plantation ... that they would never be able to repay their moneys....” Winslow, one of the most enterprising traders among the “Undertakers,” had journeyed to London earlier in 1631 and succeeded the discredited agent.
Should Allerton flatly be called a cheat? Unable to “be brief in so tedious and intricate a business,” Bradford himself struggled not to impute to Allerton thoroughly dishonest motives. The Governor even admitted that the agent’s commission to act in Plymouth’s behalf had given him a certain freedom of action. That Allerton had been led aside from the main desires of the Plantation by “his own gains and private ends,” we conclude from his managing to invest £400 under Sherley’s name in the brewhouse belonging to one of the former London adventurers, William Collier. Bradford became convinced that the agent had inspired both the schemes of Ashley’s rival trade and the purchase of the White Angel, persuading his London friends that the Kennebec trade alone was insufficient to pay them.
The partnership’s general account thus became simply a convenient place for Allerton to unload losses, with records “so large and intricate, as they could not well understand them, much less examine and correct them without a great deal of time and help....” His lists of all sorts of expenses took advantage of the Pilgrims’ weakness with accounts: “£30 given at a clap, and £50 spent in a journey.... Yea, he screwed up his poor old father-in-law’s [Elder Brewster] account to above £200 and brought it upon the general account ... because he knew they would never let it lie on the old man....” Puzzled, Bradford admitted that he did not know “how it came to pass, or what mystery was in it,” that Allerton even was able to present a list of all “disbursements,” though it was Sherley who made them during his own absence. In the final calculations a sizable discrepancy (£2300) arose. Whereas the agent claimed the partners owed him £300, the latter represented his debt to them as £2000.
When Sherley wrote that “if their business had been better managed they might have been the richest plantation of any English at that time,” he could blame the financial incompetence of the “Undertakers” at Plymouth as well as Allerton’s deficiencies. Their initial trust in the honesty of others, however praiseworthy, was no match for the shrewdness of the businessmen who soon were to make Boston and the Bay colony the center of trade in New England. Consider how they accepted their associate Hatherley’s unauthorized “honest word” that they would be discharged from the Friendship’s account, thus permitting Allerton and him to collect all its returns, even though they paid the Pilgrims only £200. Then, after Hatherley’s London partners repudiated this discharge, the Pilgrims were billed for losses, but with no countervailing credits. “... they were ... now taught how to deal in the world, especially with merchants, in such cases,” Bradford sadly noted in comment, but the lesson unfortunately did not improve their keeping of accounts.[43]
Without a single surviving letter of Allerton’s, stating his point of view about the Pilgrims, it is difficult to judge his career. We know that as a busy merchant and projector he continued to shuttle back and forth across the Atlantic and up and down the American coast from northern Maine to New Amsterdam. His own ventures in the White Angel, which he hired and later bought from Sherley, turned out badly, but the fault of placing part of its debts on Plymouth’s account seems to have been Sherley’s. Allerton set up a rival post at Machias, Maine, “to run into every hole and into the river of the Kennebec to glean away the trade ... there”; after its capture by the French, his pinnace traded in the Penobscot region. During a season of fishing at Marblehead for Matthew Cradock, a London promoter of the Massachusetts Bay Company, Allerton nevertheless continued to be named an assistant of the Plymouth colony and was a freeman there as late as 1637. In 1633 he was the richest man in Plymouth; he lent large sums of money to other settlers, including his sister’s husband. Merchants of Massachusetts and New Netherland did not distrust him, even though Winslow wrote from England in 1637 to warn Governor Winthrop of Massachusetts that Allerton was too friendly with “our common adversaries,” those who were thinking of securing a royal commission to govern all of New England. He wrote: “... the truth is he loveth neither you nor us.”
The former agent was, in fact, primarily a businessman, without strong religious or sentimental ties. He certainly “abused” the trust of his old comrades by saddling them with such heavy debts, but his acts seem unscrupulous rather than calculated dishonesty. He took risks which, if they turned out badly, hurt other people. In short, this maker of “fair propositions and large promises” was led into temptation by dreams of wealth; in this he was like many another promoter. Ultimately, his bad judgment and ill luck brought him losses, and he died insolvent in New Haven in 1659.[44]
The colony and its London partners dispute over their accounts
The stresses between the “Undertakers” and the London partners were not relieved simply by Allerton’s dismissal. A decade of acrimonious exchange of letters followed from 1631 to 1641. It was not easy for the Londoners to balance off Allerton’s debts, along with new expenses, against the receipt of furs shipped from Plymouth. They were determined to hold out until a settlement profitable to them was reached. Throughout this quarrel Bradford’s History has to be our guide for the most part, for only one fragment of reckoning between Sherley and Allerton has been found. Undoubtedly, when the great governor wrote his narrative he was trying to rehabilitate the Pilgrims’ financial reputation and counter the rumors in London and Boston mercantile circles that they were in default. In his chapters on finance he is repetitious, sometimes confusing, and yet omits certain business details. His judgment was charitable, however, and by recording Sherley’s letters he preserved at least some of London’s side of the controversy.
The first dispute arose from Edward Winslow’s unwillingness to accept the White Angel’s losses on the “Undertakers’” account. Sherley was displeased and warned that this “unreasonable refusal” might “hasten that fire which is a kindling too fast already....” Plymouth nonetheless declined to take on all the debts which appeared in Sherley’s accounting of 1631. It was found that in arriving at a total of £4770, in addition to £1000 unpaid of the purchase money, he had charged twice and even three times for certain items. £600 of this amount even Allerton could not identify.
The London partners’ dissatisfaction with the records kept in Plymouth led Sherley to insist on the appointment of Josiah Winslow, younger brother of Edward, as their accountant. The Pilgrims remarked crustily “that if they were well dealt with and had their goods well sent over, they could keep their accounts ... themselves.” Certainly, the new accountant, with his hopeless inaccuracy and carelessness, did little to mend matters. In fact, he “did wholly fail them, and could never give them any account; but trusting to his memory and loose papers, let things run into such confusion that neither he, nor any with him, could bring things to rights.” Ultimately, they lost several hundreds of pounds in this way for goods trusted out without any record clear enough to call in the payments. Also, goods arrived from England without prices or invoices.