I saw, in the office of the Register, the records of the First Church of Plymouth, begun and continued by Nathaniel Morton to 1680. The court records, as well as the ancient charter, on which the ink is so faded as to be scarcely legible, are carefully kept.
But the compact, that august instrument, I did not see, nor is the fate of the original known. Its language bears an extraordinary similitude to the preamble of the Constitution of the United States, in its spirit and idea. The name of the king is there in good set phrase; but the soul of the thing is its assumption of sovereignty in the people. See now how King James figures at the head and the tail of it, and then look into the heart of the matter:
"In ye name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyall subjects of our dread soveraigne Lord, King James, by ye grace of God, of Great Britaine, Franc, & Ireland, King, defender of ye faith, &c., haveing undertaken, for ye glorie of God and advancemente of ye Christian faith and honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to plant ye first colonie in ye Northerne parts of Virginia, doe by these presents solemnly & mutualy in ye presence of God, and one of another, covenant and combine our selves togeather in a civill body politick, for our better ordering & preservation & furtherance of ye ends aforesaid; and by vertue hearof to enacte, constitute, and frame such just & equall lawes, ordinances, acts, constitutions & offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meete & convenent for ye generall good of ye Colonie, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience. In witnes wherof we have hereunder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd ye 11 of November, in ye year of ye raigne of our soveraigne lord, King James of England, Franc, & Ireland ye eighteenth & of Scotland ye fiftie fourth, Ano: Dom. 1620."
Bradford says the bond was partly due to the mutinous spirit of some of the strangers on board the Mayflower, and partly to the belief that such an act might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more sure. It is impossible not to be interested in the lives of such men; they were deeply in earnest.
In 1630 the first public execution took place in Plymouth. The culprit was John Billington, who, as Bradford wrote home to England, was a knave, and so would live and die. Billington had waylaid and shot one of the town,[174] and was adjudged guilty of murder. The colony patent could not confer a power it did not itself possess to inflict the death penalty, so they took counsel of their friends just come into Massachusetts Bay, and were advised to "purge the land of blood."
In 1658, the crime of adultery appears to be first noticed in the laws. The punishment of this offense was two whippings, the persons convicted to wear two capital letters "A. D." cut in cloth and sewed on their uppermost garment, on their arm or back; if they removed the letters, they were again to be publicly whipped. Another law, that would bear rather hardly on the present generation, was as follows: Any persons "who behaved themselves profanely by being without doors at the meeting-houses on the Lord's day, in time of exercise, and there misdemeaning themselves by jestings, sleepings, or the like," were first to be admonished, and if they did not refrain, set in the stocks; and if still unreclaimed, cited before the court.
Josselyn, writing of the old "Body of Laws of 1646," says, "Scolds they gag and set them at their doors for certain hours, for all comers and goers by to gaze at." And here is material for the "Scarlet Letter:" "An English woman suffering an Indian to have carnal knowledge of her was obliged to wear an Indian cut out of red cloth sewed upon her right arm, and worn twelve months." Swearing was punished by boring through the tongue with a hot iron; adultery with death.
The chronicles of the Pilgrims have undergone many strange vicissitudes, but are fortunately quite full and complete. It would be pleasant to know more of their lives during their first year at Plymouth than is given by Bradford or Morton. Governor Bradford's manuscript history of Plymouth plantation was probably purloined from the New England Library deposited in the Old South Church of Boston, during the siege of 1775. It found its way to the Fulham Library in England, was discovered, and a copy made which has since been printed, after remaining in manuscript more than two hundred years. The letter-book of Governor Bradford has a similar history. It was rescued from a grocer's shop in Halifax, after the destruction of half its invaluable contents.
The next best thing to be done is probably to go at once to the top of Burial Hill, which is here what the Hoe is to English Plymouth. Here, at least, are plenty of memorials of the Pilgrims, and here town and harbor are outspread for perusal. Seen at full tide, the harbor appears a goodly port enough, but it is left as bare by the ebb as if the sea had been commanded to remove and become dry land. Nothing except a broad expanse of sand-bars and mussel shoals, with luxuriant growth of eel-grass, meets the eye. Through these a narrow and devious channel makes its way. The bay, however, could not be called tame with two such landmarks as Captain's Hill on Duxbury side, and the promontory of Manomet on the shoulder of the Cape.