But while these timely and gentle showers saved their crop and secured the future, the pinching want of the passing days was not stayed. Indeed, so bitter grew the famine, that on one occasion the colony was reduced to a single pint of corn; which, when divided among the Pilgrims, gave each five kernels.[447]
During the height of this suffering, a package of home-letters was received. From these the settlers gleaned some news which was of interest to them. It seems that Mr. John Pierce, in whose name their patent had been taken,[448] had grown covetous, and attempted to play both the Pilgrims and the Merchant-adventurers false. When he saw “how hopefully the Plymouth colony was seated,” the trustee grew desirous of becoming lord-proprietary, and holding them as his tenants, “to sue in his courts as lord.”[449] So he surreptitiously sued out a new patent, of much larger extent, in his own name, and then fitted out an expedition headed by himself, to go and take possession of his usurped domain.[450] But “God marvellously crossed him.” “Having sailed no farther than the Downs,” says Cotton Mather, “his ship sprang a leak; and besides this disaster, which alone was enough to have stopped the voyage, one strand of the cable was accidentally cut, by which means it broke in a stress of wind, and all were in extreme danger of being wrecked upon the sands. Having with much cost recruited this loss, and increased the number of emigrants, Pierce again put to sea; but in mid-ocean one of the saddest and longest storms known since the days of the apostle Paul drove the ship home to England once more, the vessel well-nigh torn to pieces, and the emigrants, though all saved, weary and affrighted. Pierce, by all his tumbling backward and forward, was by this time grown so sick of his patent that he vomited it up. He assigned it over to the home company;[451] but they afterwards obtained another, under the umbrage whereof they could more effectually carry on the affairs of their colony.”[452]
The letter from the Merchant-adventurers, which recited these facts, closed with a cheering promise: “We have agreed with two merchants for a ship of a hundred and forty tons, called the ‘Anne,’ which is to be ready the last of this month of April, to bring sixty passengers and sixty tons of goods to you.”[453]
While the Pilgrims, enlivened by this news, were living on hope and five kernels of corn, they received a visitor. Captain Francis West, admiral of New England, who sailed under a commission to prevent all trading and fishing on the coast-line without a license from the Home Council, called at Plymouth. Of him the necessitous Pilgrims purchased a few edibles at high prices.[454] The old sailor’s mission failed; the fishermen were too strong and independent to be repressed. Ere long, on their petition, Parliament decreed that fishing should be free.[455]
Two weeks after the departure of West, the promised reinforcements arrived; the “Anne” landed her recruits, and a goodly store of provisions besides.[456]
So low was the colonial larder, that “the best dish they could present their friends with was a lobster or a piece of fish, without bread, or any thing else but a cup of fair spring water.”[457]
The “Anne” was shortly followed by the “Little James,” a vessel of forty-four tons burden, “built to stay in the country.”[458]
“Among the pioneers just arrived,” says Cotton Mather, “were divers worthy and useful men, who were come to seek the welfare of this little Israel; though at their coming they were as differently affected as the rebuilders of the temple at Jerusalem; some were grieved when they saw how bad the condition of their friends was, and others were glad that it was no worse.”[459]
Among the arrivals at this time “were, Cuthbertson, a member of the Leyden church, the wives of Fuller and Coake, and two daughters of Brewster. There were at least twelve ladies. One of these became the wife of Bradford; Standish married another. Alice Southworth, Bradford’s second wife, is said to have been his first love. Both being widowed, a correspondence took place, in the sequel of which she came out from England, and married her some-time lover at Plymouth.”[460]
“Some of your old friends go to you with these lines,” wrote Cushman; “they come dropping to you, and by degrees I hope ere long you shall enjoy them all.”[461]