Somewhat alarmed at first, but reassured by the others,
Placing her hand on the cushion, her foot in the hand of her husband,
Gayly, with joyous laugh, Priscilla mounted her palfrey.
Like a picture it seemed of the primitive, pastoral ages,
Fresh with the youth of the world, and recalling Rebecca and Isaac;
Old, and yet ever new, and simple and beautiful always,
Love immortal and young, in the endless succession of lovers.
So through the Plymouth woods passed onward the bridal procession.”[733]
But sometimes events of ruder and less joyous significance came to stir a ripple on the placid sea of frontier life. Even among these Pilgrims there were laws to be enforced and bad men to be curbed. Thomas Morton was one. This irrepressible torment was once more engaged at “Merry-Mount” in selling guns and “fire-water” to the Indians; nor did he hesitate to “shoot hail-shot into them,” because they refused to bring him a canoe in which to cross the river. He was apprehended on their complaint, and because he “discredited the whites.” His den was burned in the presence of the natives whom he had maltreated; and he himself, after being for a while “set in the bilboes,” was sent once more a prisoner to England.[734]
This occurred at Boston. At Plymouth a still more emphatic and sombre scene was enacted. John Billington, always a pest, of whom Bradford had said, “He is a knave, and so will live and die,”[735] was convicted of wilful murder. Conference was held with the most judicious men of Massachusetts Bay as to the disposition to be made of him. Winthrop and the rest favored his execution, basing the right to inflict that penalty, not so much on the English common law as on the code of Moses: “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed.”[736] Under this decision Billington was hung; and this was the first capital punishment ever inflicted in New England.