Upon the domain of the new corporation the Pilgrims had settled without leave; they were therefore liable to a summary ejectment.[279] The company of Merchant-adventurers, under whose auspices they had sailed, informed of their position by the return of the “Mayflower,” immediately applied to the Plymouth company for a patent which should cover the soil now colonized.[280] It was granted “to John Pierce and his associates,” and was in trust for the benefit of the colony.[281]
Thomas Weston, the agent of the Merchant-adventurers, sent a copy of this charter to the Plymouth colonists, accompanying it with a letter in which, after complaining of the long detention of the “Mayflower” in America, and of her return without a cargo, he said that “the future life of the business depended on the lading of the ‘Fortune,’” which being done, he promised never to desert the Pilgrims, even if all the other merchants should do so;[282] adding, “I pray you write instantly for Mr. Robinson to come to you; and send us a fair engrossment of the contract betwixt yourselves and us, subscribed with the names of the principal planters.”[283]
While the “Fortune” lay moored in Plymouth harbor, Bradford penned a weighty and dignified reply to Weston’s animadversions. After reciting the incidents which had checkered the twelvemonth of their settlement, including the death of Carver, to whom the agent of the Merchant-adventurers had directed his missive, he said, with an unconscious touch of pathos, “If the company has suffered, on the side of the settlers there have been disappointments far more serious. The loss of many honest and industrious men’s lives cannot be valued at any price. It pleased God to visit us with death daily, and with so general a disease that the living were scarce able to bury the dead, and the well not in any measure sufficient to tend the sick. And now to be so greatly blamed for not freighting the ship, doth indeed go near us, and much discourage us.”[284]
Preëminently conscientious, and earnestly desirous to give the Merchant-adventurers no just cause of complaint, the Pilgrim colonists made every effort to secure a speedy and profitable cargo for the “Fortune’s” homeward voyage. The ship was a small one of but fifty-five tons burden;[285] but she was at once “laden with good clapboards, as full as she could stow, two hogsheads of beaver and other skins, with a few other trifling commodities,” in all to the value of five hundred pounds.[286] Barely fourteen days elapsed between her arrival and her readiness to depart.[287]
Just before the “Fortune” sailed, the colonists were busy in preparing epistles for their friends in England and for the dear Leyden congregation. These were intrusted to Robert Cushman, who was to return to London and make a report of the situation of the Plymouth colony.[288] He himself, just on the eve of his return, delivered a memorial discourse in the block-citadel on Fort hill—which was at once church and castle—in which he recited vividly the cause of the emigration, the incidents attending it, the spirit of the actors, and the auguries of the future; and this was printed at London in 1622.[289]
In the dedicatory epistle to this sermon—whose object was to draw the attention of Puritans at home to the advantages of the Plymouth settlement as a residence where the virtues of religion might be more than ordinarily exemplified, as is proved by the fact that it was so speedily published in England—Cushman says: “If there be any who are content to lay out their estates, spend their time, labor, and endeavors for the benefit of those who shall come after, and who desire to further the gospel among the poor heathen, quietly contenting themselves with such hardships as by God’s providence shall fall upon them, such men I should advise and encourage to go to New England, for in that wilderness their ends cannot fail them. And whoso rightly considereth what manner of entrance, abiding, and proceeding we have had among the savages since we came, will easily think that God hath some great work in store for us. By reason of one Squanto, who lives amongst us, who can speak English, we can have daily commerce with the Indian kings; and acquaint them with our causes and purposes, both human and religious.”[290]
Three things, according to Winslow, are the bane and overthrow of plantations: The vain expectation of instantaneous profit, without work; ambition; and the lawlessness of settlers.[291] These rocks long wrecked the prosperity of the American colonies outside of New England. Cushman bade emigrants beware of entertaining the too common error of supposing that the wilderness was an actual Eldorado, as the Spanish had taught, and as the Virginia colonists had imagined.[292] “No,” he said, “neither is there any land or possession now like unto that which the Jews had in Canaan, being legally holy, and appropriated unto holy people, the seed of Abraham, in which they dwelt securely, and had their days prolonged, it being by an immediate voice said, that the Lord gave it to them as a land of rest after their weary travels, and as a type of eternal rest in heaven. But now there is no land of that sanctity, no land so appropriated, none typical, much less any that can be said to be given of God to any one people, as Canaan was, which they and theirs must dwell in till God sendeth upon them sword and captivity. Now we are all, in all places, strangers and pilgrims, travellers and sojourners. Having no dwelling but in this earthly tabernacle, no residence but a wandering, no abiding but a fleeting,”[293] where work makes a home, and labor keeps it.
In a private letter addressed by Edward Winslow to a friend in London, and which helped to swell the budget which went out by the “Fortune,” that stout old worthy says: “We have found the Indians very faithful to their covenant of peace with us, very loving and ready to pleasure us. We often go to them, and they come to us. Some of us have been fifty miles by land into the interior with them, the occasions and relation whereof you shall understand by our general and more full declaration of such things as are worth noting. Yea, it hath pleased God so to possess the Indians with fear of us, and love unto us, that not only the greatest king amongst them, called Massasoit, but also all the princes and tribes round about us have sent their messengers to us to make suit for peace, so that there is now great peace amongst the Indians themselves, which was not formerly, neither would have been but for us; and we, for our part, walk as peaceably and safely in the wood as in the highways in England. We entertain them pleasantly and familiarly in our cabins, and they as friendly bestow their venison on us. They are a people without any religion, yet trusty, quick of apprehension, ripe—withal just.”[294]