One month after the signing of the Compact, the exploring party of eighteen men in the ship’s shallop that had left the ship 16 December, landed at Plymouth. Plymouth was not just what they wanted, but as Brewster said, it was the best they had seen. They returned to the ship and on 26 December 1620 the Mayflower and her passengers reached Plymouth. It was 31 March that the last of them went ashore for good.
On 15 April 1621 the Mayflower sailed on her return trip, leaving every one of the survivors of the Pilgrim Company behind. It was a more striking picture than her departure from England. A situation more discouraging for the Pilgrims could hardly be conceived.
Some interesting occurrences which happened on board the Mayflower during the trip, are taken from the manuscript of “Prince’s Annals,” in his handwriting. Prince had drawn his pen diagonally across the passages, and they do not appear in his published work. They were first printed in the April number 1847 the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. It reads:
“In a mighty storme a lustie yonge man called John Howland came upon some occasion above ye gratings, was with a seele of ye ship throwne into ye sea; but it pleased God yt he caught hould of ye top saile halliards, which hung overboard and rane out at length; yet he held his hould (though he was sundrie fadomes under water) till he was hald up by ye same rope to ye brink of ye water and then with a boat hook and other means got into ye shipe again, and his life saved, and though he was somewhat ill with it, yet he lived many years after, and became a profitable member both of church and comonwelth.”
And the manuscript goes on to tell of a proud, very profane young man, one of the seamen of husky and able body, which made him the more haughty, who was always annoying the poor people in their sickness by cursing them daily and telling them he hoped to help cast half of them overboard before they came to their journey’s end and if he ever, by any was gently reproved, he would curse and swear most bitterly. But it pleased God to smite this young man with a grievous disease, of which he died in a desperate manner and so was himself the first to be thrown overboard.
John Carver, who had been chosen Governor, died the first winter, and William Bradford succeeded him. The Colony grew slowly. By 1630 it had but 300 persons in it, but it had paid the London merchants. There is little question that the contract was burdensome and oppressive. But as proof that the Pilgrims harbored no resentment is this laudable act: the Plymouth Colony General Court in 1660 ordered that twenty pounds should be sent to a Mr. Ling, one of the Merchant Adventurers, “who had fallen to decay and had felt great extremity of poverty, the same twenty pounds being bestowed on him towards his relief and if it was not given voluntarily that the amount that fell short ‘bee’ made up out of the ‘Countrey stocke’ by the Treasurer.”
The Colony made a treaty with Massasoit, Chief of the Wampanoag Indians, which lasted until broken by his son in 1675. By 1640 the population had increased to over 3000.
As for the Puritans, they became powerful in England and comprised many men of wealth and culture and social standing. Little bodies of them, encouraged by the example of the Pilgrims, began to settle upon the shores of Massachusetts. In 1628 John Endicott and a shipload took command of the place the Indians called Naumkeag and gave it the Bible name of Salem, or Peace. When they arrived they found Roger Conant and his followers, who were, after several years of struggling, happily settled. Endicott practically kicked them out. Within a few years all of Conant’s followers had moved across the river and established new homes in what became Beverly.
In 1629 a number of leading Puritans in England bought of the Plymouth Company a large tract of land, bounded by the Charles and Merrimac Rivers and stretching inland indefinitely. They got a charter from Charles I and incorporated as the Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay. Under John Winthrop, a wise and able man, they came over to Salem, bringing 1000 persons, with horses and cattle, and during that year Charlestown, Chelsea, and a small hilly peninsular, called by the Indians Shawmut and by the English Trimountain, or Tremont, and soon changed to Boston, from which the leading settlers had come, were settled. By 1634 nearly 4000 settlers had arrived from England, coming usually in congregations, led by their minister and settled together in parishes or townships until there were about twenty.
In 1636 it was voted to establish a college three miles from Boston at a place called New Town, now Cambridge. A young clergyman, John Harvard, bequeathed his books and half his estate and the new college was called by his name.