Of course, this purchase of the right of the home company necessitated a new organization, and a redistribution of property at Plymouth. After mature deliberation, it was decided to erect a commonwealth, in which each settler should own a share, but under an agreement that trade should be managed as before until the total discharge of the debt incurred for liberty.[548]
The division was at once made of the stock and land heretofore the joint estate of the adventurers and their partners in the soil. Every man had a share; and “every father of a family was allowed to purchase one share for his wife and one for each child living with him.”[549] One cow and two goats were assigned by lot to every six shareholders, “and swine, though more in number, yet by the same rule.” In addition to the land which each already held, “every person had twenty acres allotted him; but no meadows were to be laid out; nor were they for many years after, because they were straitened for meadow land. Every season each was given a certain spot to mow in proportion to the cattle owned.”[550] The houses became the private property of their respective tenants by an equitable assignment,[551] and henceforward there were to be New England freeholders. The vassalage to foreign merchants was ended.[552]
It should not be forgotten that in the allotment of land, there was a grant to the Indian Habbamak. He held by the Pilgrims and by their God, spite of enticements and obstacles, and died “leaving some good hopes in the settlers’ hearts that his soul had gone to rest.”[553]
“The first coveted luxury of the emancipated plantation was a reunion with their long-detained comrades in Holland. Hitherto the pleasure of others might decide who should join them. That embarrassment was now happily withdrawn. Their tender mutual recollections had naturally been refreshed by the common moaning for their ‘loving and faithful pastor;’” so now “the Plymouth governor and some of his chiefest friends had serious consideration, not only how they might discharge the engagements which lay so heavily upon them, but also how they might—if possibly they could—devise means to help their friends at Leyden over to them, these desiring to come as heartily as they to have them. To effect this they resolved to run a high course and of great venture, not knowing otherwise how to compass it; which was, to hire the trade of the colony for six years, and in that time to undertake the liquidation of the whole impending debt, so that when the specified time was ended the plantation should be set free, with freedom of trade to the generality.”[554]
Allerton was again sent to England with full power “under the hand and seal” of the Undertakers, to close the old bargain and to negotiate “with some of the special friends of the colony to join with them[555] in this trade.”[556] The mission was promptly completed. In the spring of 1628, Allerton returned, “bringing a reasonable supply of goods.” He reported that he had paid the first instalment to the Adventurers, delivered the bonds for the residue of the debt, and obtained the due conveyance and release; also that he had engaged a quartette of friends[557] to accept an interest in the six years’ hire of the colonial trade, in return for which they had agreed to charge themselves with the transportation of the Leyden congregation. Lastly, he had obtained from the New England Council a patent for land on the Kennebec, which was at once turned to account by the erection of a block-house “in that river, in the most convenient place for Indian trade” and a traffic with the Maine fishermen.[558]
At this same time Allerton brought out with him a young minister named Rogers, the first, save Lyford, if we may dignify him by that name, possessed by the Plymouth Pilgrims.[559] But he proved only a vexation and an expense; for, being “crazed in the brain,” he was sent back to Britain ere a twelvemonth had elapsed, and the plantation had recourse once more to stout old Brewster.[560]
By this time the charge of Brownism and bigoted exclusiveness, so often levelled at the Pilgrims, was well-nigh laid in England. Hard-fisted facts had smitten that slander so often in the face that it lost its hardihood. Indeed, remembering the character of that age, the Plymouth church was singularly catholic. Winslow cites many instances of the admission to its communion of communicants of the French, the Dutch, and the Scotch churches, merely by virtue of their being so.[561] He says: “We ever placed a wide difference betwixt those who grounded their practice on the word of God, though differing from us in their exposition and understanding of it, and those who hate reformers and reformation, running into anti-Christian opposition and persecution of the truth.” He adds: “’Tis true, we profess and desire to practise separation from the world; and as the churches of Christ are all saints by calling, so we desire to see the grace of God shining forth—at least seemingly, leaving secret things to God—in all whom we admit to church-fellowship, and to keep off such as openly wallow in the mire of their sins, that neither the holy things of God, nor the communion of saints, may be leavened or polluted thereby. And if any joining us, either formerly at Leyden, or since our New England residence, have with the manifestation of faith and the profession of holiness, held forth therewith separation from the church of England, I have divers times, both in the one place and in the other, heard either Mr. Robinson, our pastor, or Mr. Brewster, our elder, stop them forthwith, showing them that we required no such thing at their hands; but only to hold forth Christ Jesus, holiness in the fear of God, and a submission to the Scripture ordinances and appointments.”[562]
Such were the simple tenets of the Plymouth church under the instructions of Brewster—change of heart and a life regulated by the sacred writ the only tests.
And now the Pilgrim enterprise began to take a wide range; they had already acquired rights on Cape Ann, as well as an extensive domain on the Kennebec, now covered by patent; and they were the first to plant an English settlement on the banks of the silvery Connecticut.[563] All around them the lusty shouts of the pioneers were heard. They no longer stood alone on the verge of the unbroken and primeval forest. Civilization, pushing restlessly towards the setting sun, began to supplement this nucleus colony. English planters were already seated at Saco and at Sagadahoc, in Maine.[564] The red men who haunted the coast-line of Massachusetts Bay, were pushed from their marshy hunting-grounds by the Puritan colonists who followed Endicott into the wilderness. And in the west, the patient, phlegmatic Dutch, “without haste, without rest,” had founded New Amsterdam on the island of Manhattan, a town which bathed its feet in the waters of old Hendrick Hudson’s majestic river, and which has since expanded to be the metropolis of North America.[565]
No occasion, now, to complain of a lack of company. With all the settlements amicable and cordial relations were cemented by the Pilgrim Fathers of Plymouth. With the Dutch planters, especially, a correspondence was had, by means of which mutually kind wishes and commercial offices were interchanged.[566] In 1627, Isaac de Rasières, “a chief merchant at New Amsterdam, and second to the Dutch governor of the New Netherlands,” visited Plymouth, where he tarried “some days,” and received friendly entertainment.[567] A neighborly business intercourse was commenced, and it was at this time that the Pilgrims became acquainted with the value and the uses of wampum.[568] This was the Indian coin—the dollars and cents of barbarism. It was made of small pieces of shell, white sometimes, but often purple, and ground, polished, drilled, and strung or beaded.[569]