The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes. Thomas MortonЧитать онлайн книгу.
that which cannot be punished without proclamation cannot be punished with it.”[55]
In regard to the second point made by Morton, that the King’s proclamation died with him, the same distinction between statutes and proclamations, that the former were of perpetual obligation until repealed and that the latter lost their force on the demise of the crown—this distinction was, a century and a half later, stated by Hume[56] to have existed in James’s time. Lord Chief Justice Campbell has, however, exclaimed against the statement as a display of ignorant “audacity,” and declares that he was unable to find in the authorities a trace of any such doctrine.[57] On this point, therefore, the law of Thomas Morton was probably as bad as that of David Hume. Nevertheless the passage in Bradford affords a curious bit of evidence that some such distinction as that drawn by Hume, though it may not have got into the books, did exist in both the legal and the public mind of the first half of the seventeenth century.
Whether Morton’s law on the subject of proclamations was or was not found mattered little however. It was not then to be debated, as the question with the settlers was one of self-preservation. The Plymouth magistrates had gone too far to stop. If they even hesitated, now, there was an end to all order in New England. Morton would not be slow to realize that he had faced them down, and his insolence would in future know no bounds.
“So they mutually resolved to proceed, and obtained of the Governor of Plymouth to send Captain Standish, and some other aid with him, to take Morton by force. The which accordingly was done; but they found him to stand stiffly in his defence, having made fast his doors, armed his consorts, set divers dishes of powder and bullets ready on the table; and, if they had not been over armed with drink, more hurt might have been done. They summoned him to yield, but he kept his house, and they could get nothing but scoffs and scorns from him; but at length, fearing they would do some violence to the house, he and some of his crew came out, but not to yield, but to shoot. But they were so steeled with drink as their pieces were too heavy for them; himself, with a carbine (overcharged and almost half filled with powder and shot, as was after found) had thought to have shot Captain Standish; but he stept to him, and put by his piece and took him. Neither was there any hurt done to any of either side, save that one was so drunk that he ran his own nose upon the point of a sword that one held before him as he entered the house; but he lost but a little of his hot blood.”[58]
Morton’s own account of “this outragious riot,” as he calls it, is contained in the fifteenth chapter of the third book of the New Canaan.[59] It differs considerably from Bradford’s, but not in essentials. He says that the occurrence took place in June; and as Bradford’s letters of explanation, sent with the prisoner to England, are dated the 9th of June,[60] it must have been quite early in the month. He further says that he was captured in the first place at Wessagusset, “where by accident they found him;” but escaping thence during the night, through the carelessness of those set on guard over him, he made his way in the midst of a heavy thunder-storm to Mount Wollaston, going up the Monatoquit until he could cross it. The whole distance from point to point was, for a person familiar with the country, perhaps eight miles. Getting home early the next morning he made his preparations for resistance in the way described by Bradford. Of the whole party at Merry-Mount more than half, four apparently, were then absent in the interior getting furs. This fact, indeed, was probably well known to his neighbors, who had planned the arrest accordingly. Standish, having eight men with him, followed Morton round to Mount Wollaston, probably by water, the morning succeeding his escape; and what ensued seems to have been sufficiently well described by Bradford. One at least of the Merry-Mount garrison got extremely tipsy before the attacking party appeared, and Morton, seeing that resistance was hopeless, surrendered, after in vain trying to make some terms for himself.
Having been arrested he was at once carried to Plymouth, and a council was held there to decide upon the disposition to be made of him. According to his own account certain of the magistrates, among whom he specially names Standish, advocated putting him to death at once, and so ending the matter. They were not in favor of sending him to England. Such a course as this was, however, wholly out of keeping with the character of the Plymouth colony, and it is tolerably safe to say that it was never really proposed. Morton imagined it; but he also circumstantially asserts that when milder councils prevailed, and it was decided to send him to England, Standish was so enraged that he threatened to shoot him with his own hand, as he was put into the boat.[61]
Either because they did not care to keep him at Plymouth until he could be sent away, or because an outward-bound fishing-vessel was more likely at that season to be found at the fishing-stations, Morton was almost immediately sent to the Isles of Shoals. He remained there a month; and of his experiences during that time he gives a wholly unintelligible account in the New Canaan.[62] At last a chance offered of sending him out in a fishing-vessel bound to old Plymouth, England. He went under charge of John Oldham, who was chosen to represent the associated planters in this matter, and who carried two letters, in the nature of credentials, prepared by Governor Bradford, the one addressed to the Council for New England and the other to Sir Ferdinando Gorges personally.[63] In these letters Bradford set forth in detail the nature of the offences charged against Morton, and asked that he might be brought “to his answer before those whom it may concern.” These letters were signed by the chiefs of the several plantations, at whose common charge the expenses of Oldham’s mission, as well as Standish’s arrest, were defrayed, and towards this charge they contributed as follows, though Bradford says the total cost was much more:—
| £ | s | ||
| From | Plymouth, | 2 | 10 |
| „ | Naumkeag, | 1 | 10 |
| „ | Piscataqua, | 2 | 10 |
| „ | Wessagusset, | 2 | |
| „ | Nantasket, | 1 | 10 |
| „ | David Thomson’s widow, | 15 | |
| „ | William Blackstone, | 12 | |
| „ | Edward Hilton,[64] | 1 | |
| £12 | 7 | ||
Oldham and Morton reached Plymouth during the later summer or early autumn of 1628. They must, therefore, have passed the outward-bound expedition of Endicott, the forerunners of the great Puritan migration of 1630–7, in mid-ocean, as on the 6th of September the latter reached Naumkeag. The grant of the Massachusetts Company, which Endicott represented, had been regularly obtained from the Council for New England, and bore date the 19th of March, 1628. It covered the sea-front within the space of three English miles to the northward of the Merrimack and to the southward of the Charles, “or of any and every part of either of these streams;” while it extended “from the Atlantick and Western Sea and Ocean on the East Parte, to the South Sea on the West Parte.” It also included everything lying within the space of three miles to the southward of the southernmost part of Massachusetts, by which was meant Boston Bay.[65] It was clear, therefore, that Mount Wollaston was included in this grant.
Morton’s establishment was thus brought within Endicott’s government. Its existence and character must already have been well known in England, and it is not at all improbable that its suppression had been there decided upon. Whether this was so or not, however, Endicott certainly learned, as soon as he landed at Naumkeag, of the action which had been taken