The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes. Thomas MortonЧитать онлайн книгу.
mentioned as then living, and as having fitted out the expedition of Josselyn. Mason, however, it has already been seen, died in December, 1635. Written consequently after May, 1634, the New Canaan, it would seem, received no revision later than 1635. It represented Morton’s feelings during the time when he was most confident of an early and triumphant return to New England. It was published just when the affairs of Charles and Laud were at their full flood, and before the tide had begun to ebb.
No mention is found of the New Canaan at the time of its publication. It is not known, indeed, that a single copy was sent out to New England. Though it must have caused no little comment and scandal among the friends and correspondents of the colonists, there is no allusion to it in their published letters or in the documents of the time, and in 1644 Winthrop apparently had never seen it. Bradford energetically refers to it as “an infamouse and scurillous booke against many godly and cheefe men of the cuntrie; full of lyes and slanders, and fraight with profane callumnies against their names and persons, and the ways of God.”[152] A copy of it may, therefore, have been brought over to Plymouth by one of the agents of the colony, and there passed from hand to hand. It does not appear, however, that at the time it attracted any general or considerable notice in America; while in England, of course, it would have interested only a small class of persons.
There is one significant reference which would seem to indicate that the publication of the New Canaan was not agreeable to Gorges. However much he might attack the charter of the Massachusetts Company, Sir Ferdinando always showed himself anxious to keep on friendly terms with the leading men of the colony. In the Briefe Narration he takes pains to speak of “the patience and wisdom of Mr. Winthrop, Mr. Humphreys, Mr. Dudley, and others their assistants;”[153] and with Winthrop he was in correspondence, even authorizing him and others to act for him in Maine. He deceived no one by this, for Winthrop afterwards described him as “pretending by his letters and speeches to seek our welfare;”[154] but he evidently had always in mind that he was to go out some day to New England as a governor-general, and that it would not do for him to be too openly hostile to those over whom he proposed to rule. He regarded them as his people. When, therefore, he had occasion to write to Winthrop in August, 1637, though he made no reference to the New Canaan, which had probably been published early in the year, he took pains to say that Morton was “wholely casheered from intermedlinge with anie our affaires hereafter.”[155]
It is however open to question whether, in making this statement, Gorges was not practising a little of that king-craft for which his master, James I., had been so famous. In 1637 Morton may have been in disgrace with him; but if so it was a passing disgrace. Four years later, in 1641, Sir Ferdinando, as “Lord of the Province of Maine,” indulged his passion for feudal regulation by granting a municipal charter to the town of Acomenticus, now York. A formidable document of great import, this momentous state paper was signed and delivered by the Lord Paramount, much as an English sovereign might have granted a franchise to his faithful city of London; and accordingly it was countersigned by three witnesses, one of them a member of his own family. First of the three witnesses to sign was Thomas Morton.[156] He evidently was in no disgrace then.
With the exception of this signature to the Acomenticus charter, there is no trace to be found of Morton between August 1637, when Gorges wrote that he had “casheered” him, and the summer of 1643, when he reappeared once more at Plymouth. During the whole of that time things evidently went with him, as they did with Charles and Laud, from bad to worse. Once only had the Lords Commissioners given any signs of life. This was in the spring of 1638, when on the 4th of April the Board met at Whitehall. The record of the meeting states that petitions and complaints from Massachusetts, for want of a settled and orderly government, were growing more frequent. This is very possible, for the Antinomian Controversy was then at its height, and indeed, the very day the Lords Commissioners met, Mrs. Hutchinson, having left Boston in obedience to Governor Winthrop’s mandate a week before, was on her way to join her husband and friends in Rhode Island. Under these circumstances, calling to mind the futile order for the return of the charter, sent to Winthrop in 1634 through Cradock, and taking official notice of the result of the quo warranto proceedings, the Board resolved upon a more decided tone. The clerk in attendance was instructed to send out to Massachusetts a peremptory demand for the immediate surrender of the charter. It was to be sent back to London by the return voyage of the vessel which carried out the missive of the Board; “it being resolved,” so that missive ran, “that in case of any further neglect or contempt by them shewed therein, their Lordships will cause a strict course to be taken against them, and will move his Majesty to reassume into his own hands the whole plantation.”[157]
If, as was probably the case, Morton was the secret mover of this action, it proved to be his last effort. It was completely fruitless also. When the order reached Boston, sometime in the early summer of 1638, it naturally caused no little alarm, for the apprehension of a general governor had not yet disappeared. Indeed, on the 12th of April, “a general fast [had been] kept through all the churches, by advice from the Court, for seeking the Lord to prevent evil that we feared to be intended against us from England by a general governor.”[158] With the missive of the Lords Commissioners, however, came also tidings of “the troubles which arose in Scotland about the Book of Common Prayer and the canons which the King would have forced upon the Scotch churches.”[159] The result was that in August, instead of sending out the charter, Governor Winthrop, at the direction of the General Court, wrote “to excuse our not sending of it; for it was resolved to be best not to send it.”[160]
Archbishop Laud molested the colony no further. Doubtless Morton yet endeavored more than once to stir him up to action, and the next year he received from New England other and bitter complaints of the same character as those which had come to him before. This time it was the Rev. George Burdet—a disreputable clergyman, subsequently a thorn in Gorges’s side as now in that of Winthrop—who wrote to him. The harassed and anxious Primate could, however, only reply that “by reason of the much business now lay upon them, [the Lords Commissioners] could not at present … redress such disorders as he had informed them of.”[161] Events in England and Scotland were then moving on rapidly as well as steadily to their outcome, and Massachusetts was bidden to take care of itself.
Nothing more is heard of Morton until the summer of 1643. The Civil War was then dragging along in its earlier stages, before Fairfax and Cromwell put their hands to it. It was the summer during which Prince Rupert took Bristol and the first battle of Newbury was fought—the summer made memorable by the deaths of Hampden and Falkland. Gorges had identified himself with the Royalist side, and now Morton seems to have been fairly starved out of England. When or how he came to Plymouth we do not know; but, on the 11th of September, Edward Winslow, whom he had eight years before “clapte up in the Fleete,”[162] thus wrote to Winthrop:—
“Concerning Morton, our Governor gave way that he should winter here, but begone as soon as winter breaks up. Captain Standish takes great offence thereat, especially that he is so near him as Duxbury, and goeth sometimes a fowling in his ground. He cannot procure the least respect amongst our people, liveth meanly at four shillings per week, and content to drink water, so he may diet at that price. But admit he hath a protection, yet it were worth the while to deal with him till we see it. The truth is I much question his pretended employment; for he hath here only showed the frame of a Common-weale and some old sealed commissions, but no inside known. As for Mr. Rigby if he be so honest, good and hopefull an instrument as report passeth on him, he hath good hap to light on two of the arrantest known knaves that ever trod on New English shore to be his agents east and west, as Cleaves and Morton: but I shall be jealous on him till I know him better, and hope others will take heed how they trust him who investeth such with power who have devoted themselves to the ruin of the country, as Morton hath. And for my part, (who if my heart deceive me not can pass by all the evil instrumentally he brought on me,) would not have this serpent stay amongst us, who out of doubt in time will get strength to him if he be suffered, who promiseth large portions of land about New Haven, Narragansett, &c., to all that will go with him, but hath a promise but of one person who is old, weak and decrepid, a very atheist and fit companion for him. But, indeed, Morton is the odium of our people at present, and if he be suffered, (for we are diversely minded,) it will be just with God, who hath put him