After two harvests the colony itself had decided that the task of raising food for the settlers would prosper only if it was separated from that of earning profits for London. In 1623 a parcel of land was allotted to each man to till for his family and to maintain those who were exempt from agricultural employment because of other duties. In abandoning the “common course and condition” everyone worked harder and more willingly. The food problem was ended, and after the first abundant harvest under individual cultivation, the Pilgrims did not have to endure the meager rations of the first years. The plots assigned them permanently in 1624 became privately owned in 1627. Three heifers and a bull sent over by the adventurers in response to Bradford’s request throve and multiplied, so there was cattle to be divided among the households when the general stock was terminated.[17]
Print by Wenceslaus Hollar in 1644
reproduced here through the courtesy of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
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The alliance between the London adventurers and the colony began to crack as early as 1623, when several men arrived in Plymouth “upon their own Particulars.” This meant they were not financed by the joint stock and thus had no share in the land or profits common to the company; they were also free from employment for the common good. John Oldham and his associates, arriving in the Anne, were the first. Those of the “particulars” who accepted Bradford’s terms and stayed soon displayed jealousy over the details providing for their inclusion as members of the colony. The Reverend John Lyford, a Puritan clergyman sent over by the adventurers, probably to restrain the Separatist tendency of the Pilgrims, succeeded in fanning to flame the friction smoldering among the colonists who held different religious views. While Bradford’s scathing condemnation of Lyford is clearly biased, it must be admitted that the minister was a malcontent and hypocrite, to specify some of his more mentionable sins. He and Oldham secretly wrote letters full of disgruntled complaints to the company about how things were run. For example, the “particulars” disliked their exclusion from the fur trade and the restrictions giving them so small a voice in government. Fortunately, Bradford intercepted their letters and held them until the elements of ferment gave rise to a public display of the Oldham-Lyford opposition. The Governor skillfully suppressed the dissidents, but when Lyford’s friends among the adventurers in England heard about it, their distrust of the Pilgrims’ independent religious polity boiled over into indignation. Other controversial issues, such as whether to send Pastor Robinson to join his flock in Plymouth, coming together with all the financial losses, now brought about such a gaping chasm in the company that it “broke in pieces.”[18]
One group of the adventurers, led by Treasurer Sherley, remained sympathetic to the Pilgrims and wrote that they did not care whether the colony yielded worldly riches, provided it was rich in grace and walking with God. Sherley, especially, defended it against the charges of waste and inefficiency brought by its attackers. Perhaps he made allowances based on the same information as reported by Emmanuel Altham that “the burden lieth on the shoulder of some few who are both honest, wise and careful. And if it were not for them few, the plantation would fall, and come to nothing—yea, long before this time....” Altham blamed the company for sending over so many helpless people and for the fact that the planters had not enough “good trucking stuff to please the Indians.”
When the dissolution took place, Sherley reported as the chief reason “the many crosses and losses and abuses by sea ... which have caused us ... so much charge, and debts ... as our estates ... were not able to go on without impoverishing ourselves, and much hindering if not spoiling our trades and callings....” Even the faction deserting on the pretense of Brownism in the colony, suffered from the same want of money which was “such a grievous sickness now-a-days ... that it makes men rave and cry out....”[19] He referred, of course, to the depressed economic conditions carried over into the reign of Charles I.
The Pilgrims agree to purchase the merchants’ interests in the company
It took two years of negotiations before the adventurers agreed with Isaac Allerton to accept the following terms for winding up the old stock. They signed them in London on November 16, 1626. Then, reluctantly but courageously, the members of the colony known as the “Undertakers” pledged their own credit to carry them out. The forty-two adventurers signing the composition in London[20] consented to sell to their associates in New Plymouth all the shares of the stock in the lands or merchandise up to now belonging to them both. The “generality” in Plymouth in turn undertook to pay £1800 in annual installments of £200 each, to be paid at the west side of the Royal Exchange in London, beginning in September 1628. The five merchants designated to receive the payments were John Pocock, John Beauchamp, Robert Keane, Edward Bass, and James Sherley. The Pilgrims also assumed £600 remaining of the debts of £1400 which Sherley reported the company owed in 1624. How this compared as a return with the original sums invested in the plantation at Plymouth, we do not know. Captain John Smith reported in 1624 that altogether £7000 had been spent, and it has been suggested that £5600 of this was share capital, and £1400 debts, so that in repaying £1800 the colony was giving back to the London adventurers only one third of the share capital.[21]