Hang an old Weaver that was bed rid.”
That a man was hung at Wessagusset, in March 1623, for stealing corn from the Indians, there can be no doubt. There is equally little doubt that it was the real thief who was hung. (Pratt’s Relation, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 491; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 332; Bradford, p. 130.) I have already (Supra, [96]) given my own theory as to how the incident came to take the shape it did in Butler’s poem. He wrote, I think, from a vague recollection of an amusing traveller’s-story, which he had heard told somewhere years before. There is no reason to suppose that he had ever seen the New Canaan.
It has always been assumed that Butler’s version of the affair,—the vicarious execution version,—coming out as it did in 1664, at a period of violent reaction against Puritanism, and when the New England colonies were in extreme popular disfavor,—obtained a foothold in English popular tradition; much such a foothold, in fact, as the Connecticut Blue Laws. It was an intangible something, always at hand to be cast as a mocking reproach in the face of a sanctimonious community. As such it was sure to be resented and disproved; but never by any disproof could it be exorcised from the popular mind, or finally set at rest. This may have been the case, and the references to the matter in Hutchinson (vol. i. p. 6, note), in Hubbard (p. 77), and in Grahame (Ed. 1845, vol. i. p. 202, note), certainly look that way. I do not remember, however, to have myself ever met this particular charge among the many and singular charges, much more absurd, which English writers have from time to time gravely advanced against America. In Uring’s Voyages (p. 116-8) there is a singular account of a similar vicarious execution, which never could have met the eye of the author of Hudibras, inasmuch as it was not published until 1726; but it shows that either some such event did take place, or that its having taken place was at one period a stock traveller’s-tale.
[459] Three of Weston’s company were among the Massachusetts Indians at the time of the Wessagusset killing; one of the three had before domesticated himself with them; the other two, disregarding Standish’s orders, had straggled off, the day before the massacre, to a neighboring Indian village. After the massacre the savages put all three to death by torture. (Pratt’s Narrative, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 486; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 344.)
[460] Will Sommers was the famous jester and court fool of Henry VIII. His witticisms are frequently met with in the plays and annals of the period; and the portrait, said to be by Holbein and of him, looking through a window and tapping on the glass, was formerly a prominent feature in the gallery at Hampton Court. It is very questionable, however, whether the story alluded to in the text belongs to Sommers. He had been dead eighty years or more when Morton wrote, and the stories connected with him had been gotten together by Armin, and printed in his Nest of Ninnies, in 1608. This book Morton had probably seen. In it there is a story of another famous fool, Jack Oates, of an earlier period, which is probably the one Morton had in mind. Oates is represented as giving an earl, the guest of his patron, Sir William Hollis, “a sound box on the ear,” for saluting Lady Hollis, and then excused himself on the ground of “knowing not your eare from your hand, being so like one another.” (Doran’s Court Fools, p. 182.) Remembering this story in the Nest of Ninnies, Morton, with his well-developed faculty for getting everything wrong, seems to have fathered it on the most famous and popular of the occupants of the Nest.
[461] For the detailed account of the Wessagusset killing, see Winslow’s Relation in Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 336-41; Adams’s 250th Anniversary of Weymouth, pp. 18-22.
[462] Mr. Trumbull, in a note (125) to Williams’s Key (p. 59). explains a blunder here made by Morton. The correct word is wotawquenauge, which means “coat-men,” or men wearing clothes, the waútacone-nûaog of Williams. This, Morton confounded with another name for Englishmen, chauquaqock, meaning, “knife- [i. e., sword-] men,” which he understood to mean “cut-throats.”
[463] Weston, in 1622, got into serious trouble with the English government, in regard to some ordnance and military stores, which he had obtained a license to send to New England, and had then sold to the French, with whom the English were at war. (Bradford, p. 150.) He seems to have been in hiding in consequence of this transaction; and early in 1623 went on board of one of the fishing-vessels in the disguise of a blacksmith, and came out in her to the stations on the Maine coast. There he must have learned of the extreme straits, if not of the abandonment, of his plantation at Wessagusset, and he set out, with a companion or two, in an open boat, for Massachusetts Bay. He was wrecked near the mouth of the Merrimac, and barely escaped with his life. The savages there stripped him to his shirt, and in this plight he reached Thomson’s plantation at Piscataqua. Thence he found his way to Plymouth, arriving there, not as Morton says, “with supply and means to have raised [his company’s] fortunes,” but in absolute destitution. Bradford’s account of his reception and of what ensued (pp. 133-4, 149-53) is very different from that given in the text; and, it is hardly necessary to add, reads much more like the truth.
[465] The incident here alluded to was the seizure of the Swan, under a warrant issued by Captain Robert Gorges, acting as Lieutenant of the Council for New England, in November, 1623. The Swan was a small vessel of 30 tons measurement, which Weston had sent out with his expedition, in 1622. His plan was, when the larger vessel—the Charity, in which his company went out—returned to England, to have the Swan remain in New England, to be used for trading purposes. Accordingly, all through the winter of 1622-3, it had been at Wessagusset, except when employed by the people there in obtaining supplies in connection with the Plymouth people. When, in March, 1623, Wessagusset was abandoned, the company went in the Swan to the Maine fishing-stations. Here Weston found the vessel in the course of the following summer, and recovered possession of her. He then began to trade along the coast. Meanwhile, in September, Captain Robert Gorges arrived, and immediately set out to look for Weston, in order to call him to account for the ordnance transactions referred to in the preceding note, and also for the disorderly conduct of his people at Wessagusset during the previous winter. Starting for the eastward, he was driven into Plymouth Harbor by heavy weather, and while he was lying there the Swan made its appearance with Weston on board. Bradford’s account of what ensued, including the seizure of the vessel, differs toto cœlo from that in the text. He says that Captain Robert Gorges, acting as governor-general under his commission from the Council for New England, at once organized a sort of a court,—he, Bradford, acting as an assistant in it,—and proceeded to arraign and try Weston. As a result of the whole proceedings Gorges threatened to send Weston under arrest back to England. Through the intercession of Bradford, however, he was mollified, and finally Weston was released on his own promise to appear when called for. Gorges then went to Wessagusset, leaving Weston with the Swan at Plymouth. After a time Gorges seems to have concluded that it would be very convenient for him to have control of the Swan, at any rate for that winter. Accordingly he sent a warrant to Plymouth for its seizure and the arrest of Weston. Bradford, not liking this proceeding, took some exception to the warrant, and refused to allow it to be served. At the same time it was intimated to Weston that he had better take himself and his vessel off. This he would not do. Apparently his crew was mutinous and unruly, their wages being long in arrears, and the Swan destitute of supplies. He seems to have looked upon arrest and seizure as the best way out of his difficulties. Presently a new warrant came from Gorges, and both vessel and prisoner were removed to Wessagusset. This was in November. There they passed the winter of 1623-4. Towards spring Gorges went in the Swan to the eastward, Weston accompanying him, apparently as a pilot. The tidings received there led the disappointed young Lieutenant of the Council to decide on immediately returning to England. Accordingly he came back to Wessagusset, and thence went probably to the fishing-stations, very possibly in the Swan. Before leaving he effected some sort of a settlement with Weston,—Bradford intimates much to the advantage of the latter,—who was released from arrest, had his vessel restored to him, and was compensated for whatever loss he had sustained. Weston thereupon reappeared at Plymouth, and thence went to Virginia. He seems to have traded along the coast for some years, but finally drifted back to England, where in 1645 he died, at Bristol, of the plague. (Bradford, pp. 140-53. Young’s Chron. of Pilg., pp. 296-8, 302.)