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Chapter XV
An end to Plymouth's preeminence
A fast-growing Boston eclipses the Pilgrim town as
New England's center, but the two colonies form close bonds,
both religious and commercial.
Plymouth's role
as the prime community and seaport of New England was drastically--and
in just a few years--changed by a rising tide of Puritan colonization
that began in 1628.
On Sept. 6, 1628 the 120-ton Abigail, which had left England
about 11 weeks earlier, sailed past Cape Ann into the harbor
of Naumkeag (Salem). On board was the willful, austere John
Endecott with some 40 colonists, along with cattle and supplies,
come to prepare the way for what would be larger contingents
of settlers of the then embryonic Massachusetts Bay Company.
Endecott preemptively took over the small, struggling pioneer
settlement initiated in Naumkeag by the Dorchester Company,
a group from the west of England that had been seeking since
1623 to establish a colony and religious haven on Cape Ann.
Endecott's backers had bought out the company. At the time
of Endecott's arrival the Naumkeag colony was being run by
a sturdy Puritan, Roger Conant [a teacher of mine, Helen Conant,
descendant of Roger Conant], who had arrived on his own in
Plymouth on the Anne in 1623, left the following year and
went on to found Naumkeag in 1626.
Happily, Endecott and Conant's "old settlers" were able to
compose their differences; and promptly, in gratitude, the
Naumkeag plantation was renamed Salem, a biblical word for
peace.
By the winter of 1628-1629 Salem was suffering difficulties
such as the Pilgrims had experienced in their early years--privations
and illness. Many, including Endecott's wife, were fatally
stricken.
Endecott appealed to Gov. Bradford for help, and he dispatched
Plymouth's only physician, Samuel Fuller, after which Endecott
thanked Bradford for his "kind love and care in sending Mr.
Fuller amongst us." This intercolony friendship would be long-lasting.
Plymouth's population of roughly 200 was exceeded in 1629
with the arrival in Salem of six vessels with 406 settlers
sent by the Massachusetts Bay Company. These vessels brought
the Puritans an impressive copy of the new Massachusetts Bay
charter that King Charles had approved March 4, 1629, along
with provisions, cows, goats, horses and "great pieces of
ordnance."
For the Pilgrims, there were some new settlers for whom Plymouth
had been waiting many years--about 45 of the Leyden congregation
were among the passengers on two of the vessels that arrived
in Salem.
Their passage had been arranged through Isaac Allerton in
London and the cost was contentedly added to the Pilgrims
debt. Among these Pilgrims was 19-year-old Thomas Willet,
who would ably serve the Plymouth colony and would one day
become the first English mayor of New York.
Fuller's influence on Salem's settlers was far more than medicinal.
Fuller had been a deacon since 1609 in Leyden, and in the
zealous Endecott he found an admiring supporter. Endecott
even wrote to Bradford, in May 1629, that Fuller had satisfied
him "touching your judgments of the outward form of God's
worship. It is, as far as I can gather, no other than is warranted
by the evidence of truth."
Endecott lost no time in acting on this belief. On July 20,
about a month after the 1629 ship arrivals began, Endecott
held "a solemn day of humiliation" to select a pastor and
a ministerial teacher. And he picked Aug. 6 for another day
of humiliation [fasting], to choose elders and deacons and
to hold ordinations.
Head winds prevented Gov. Bradford and other Plymouth leaders
from reaching Salem in time for the ordinations, but they
got there to join the feasting and to extend "the right-hand
of fellowship."
Thus the first Congregational Church, in the manner Fuller
had described to Endecott, was organized in the Bay colony.
The covenant adopted by the settlers is still extant.
Among the clergy who came over in 1629 was a Separatist Cambridge
University graduate, Rev. Ralph Smith. After serving briefly
as minister to a small, straggling settlement at Nantasket
(Hull) in outer Boston Harbor. Rev. Smith was late that year
chosen and ordained as the first pastor of the church in Plymouth,
in much the same way Salem had organized its church the prior
summer. (The Pilgrims' faithful pastor, Rev. Robinson, had
died in Leyden March 1, 1625.)
Plymouth's ascendancy as New England's foremost port plainly
declined in June and July of 1630 with the arrival of Gov.
John Winthrop with the original Massachusetts Bay charter
and eleven ships, 700 settlers and tons of supplies--the largest
fleet of colonists that had, up to that time, set sail from
England.
Actually, besides hundreds of sailors to man the ships, the
overall number of settlers would approximate 1000. In May,
preceding Winthrop's eleven ships, came two others from the
west of England that brought 220 settlers, who would organize
the town of Dorchester. And four more ships would arrive later
in the year. One of the last of these was the Handmaid
from London, which, before proceeding to Boston, left 47 of
its 60 passengers at Plymouth. These were the last of the
Leyden congregation brought over by the Pilgrims.
"As one small candle may light a thousand," said Bradford,
the light kindled by Plymouth "hath shone unto many, yea in
some sort to our whole nation. Let the glorious name of Jehovah
have all the praise."
Plymouth had long been seen as a beacon to other colonists.
One of our earliest historians, Rev. William Hubbard, wrote
that the fame of Plymouth, "with the success thereof, was
spread abroad" and encouraged investors.
Friendship continued to grow between Plymouth and Boston settlers;
they were more naturally companions than rivals. Religious
convictions had inspired both their emigrations, and their
differences in religion was mostly in their degree of Puritanism.
Winthrop and Bradford made visits to each other's colonies.
They also consulted on problems. An immediate, grievous one
for Plymouth, a highly law-abiding community, was how it should
deal with its first murder, which occured just a few weeks
after Winthrop's arrival. (This was in the very month--September
1630--that the Puritans rechristened "Trimountaine," naming
it Boston in honor of Rev. Cotton, who came from Boston in
Linconshire [England].)
The violent and profane John Billington of London had waylaid
a young man in Plymouth after a quarrel, and shot him. Winthrop,
said Bradford, "concurred with them that he ought to die and
the land be purged from blood." Billington had been "found
guilty of wilful murder by plain and notorious evidence...and
was for the same accordingly executed." It was the first of
very few executions in Plymouth.
Rampant illness and death, the common lot of America's pioneer
plantations, would be the tragic experience of Winthrop's
colonists, too. Deputy Gov. Thomas Dudley [I know his direct
descendant, Tom Dudley] told of the Puritans shock when the
Arbella, Winthrop's flagship, arrived in Salem on
June 12, 1630. "We found the colony in a sad and unexpected
condition, above eighty of them being dead the winter before;
and many of those alive weak and sick; all the corn and bread
amongst them all hardly sufficient to feed them for a fortnight...."
In July Winthrop shifted his settlers to Charlestown. Salem,
as Dudley explained, had "pleased us not." But sickness and
mortality followed them. Plymouth's Fuller, who had already
treated the first settlers in Dorchester--where he "let some
20 of these people blood"--also went to Charlestown.
"The sad news here," he wrote Bradford, "is that many are
sick, and that many are dead. The Lord in mercy look upon
them! I can do them no good, for I want (lack) drugs, and
things fitting to work with."
When incoming ships brought word (for war was raging in Europe)
that there were "some French preparations against us," the
newcomers built "dispersedly" on the Charles and Mystic rivers.
The building effort--"lest the winter should surprise us"--was
interrupted by illness. "Many died weekly," said Dudley, "yea,
almost daily." It might be said of them, as of "those of Plymouth,"
that "there is not a house where there is not one dead, in
some houses many."
As the Puritans' ships started back to Europe, "not much less
than a hundred (some think many more), partly out of dislike
of our government, which restrained and punished their excesses,
and partly through fear of famine...went from us..." Later,
when Dudley learned that many of those who left had died,
he remarked, "We see there are graves in other places as well
as with us."
Things began improving for the colony early in 1631 when the
Lion, which had been hastened back to Europe by Winthrop
on this mission, arrived in Boston Feb 9 with "fresh supplies
of victuals." Its safe arrival led to Feb 22's being set as
"a general day of Thanksgiving throughout the whole colony."
There was still another Thanksgiving Day that fall in a much
better off, indeed, a comfortably supplied colony. On Nov.
4, after the Lion came again to Boston--this time with 60
passengers--Winthrop was able to welcome his wife and their
children. There was widespread joy despite the death en route
of the child whose birth had kept Margaret Winthrop from traveling
with her husband.
Compared to Plymouth, the Bay colony's growth in population
was meteoric. Fully 200 ships, with emigrants fleeing the
dictatorial, disintegrating rule of King Charles, arrived
in Boston in the decade of the 1630's. By 1635 the colony's
population was 7000 (which Plymouth colony would not approach
until the late 1670's) and by 1640 the Bay had 16,000 settlers.
[War is a great mover of populations and religious communities.]
Their arrival in the Bay, with many moving on into the interior,
created a highly profitable market. Telling of it, Bradford
wrote: "It pleased God in these times so to bless the country
with such access and confluence of people into it, as it was
thereby much enriched, and cattle of all kinds stood at a
high rate for divers years together...Corn also went at a
round rate." And so did the English wheat they had started
planting in the Plymouth colony.
Boston, with its harbor far broader and deeper than Plymouth's,
had quickly become the New England center for trade, commerce
and finance.
Plymouth, exchanging its cattle, corn and wheat, could more
advantageously obtain its English necessities in the Boston
rather than English market. When the London adventurers came
to settling accounts with Plymouth, one transaction was completed
by Gov. Bradford's sending cattle to Boston to settle an adventurers
account with Gov. Winthrop.
Rev. Roger Williams, who was banished from the Bay colony
in 1636, had been in New England for five years and had resided
in both Plymouth and Boston. The clergyman--who with Winthrop's
covert help, fled so as to escape deportation to England--was
certainly a firsthand and unprejudiced observer when he described
Boston, only five years after its founding, as "the chief
mart and port of New England. [And this same Roger Williams
went down to Rhode Island, obtained a charter, and established
Rhode Island with a Constitution which was a model for the
religious freedoms granted to us in The United States Constitution.
The total freedom of religion established in Rhode Island
made possible the founding of the first sabbatarian Church
of God in Rhode Island when Steven Mumford and his wife moved
from London and the severe persecutions being brought against
Sabbatarians at that time in 1661. I believe it was Roger
Williams who founded the Baptist movement in America and its first church,
right in Rhode Island. The very language of William the Silent
of Holland granting religious tolerance in Holland was copied
into Roger Williams' constitution for Rhode Island.] [To learn more about these Sabbatarian Church of God believers (and Roger Williams’) escape from England and their settling in Rhode Island, and then moving westward across America, log onto: http://www.unityinchrist.com/history/historycog1.htm ]
[If you are in the Boston area, be sure to pay a visit to
Plimoth Plantation, an interactive museum and recreation of
the Plymouth Plantation as it existed in the early 1620's.
Check out their web site at: http://www.plimoth.org ]
To
quote a famous 1960’s tune, “The times, they are
a changin”. After September 11, 2001 we have all become
aware of the fact that the world has become a more dangerous
place to live in, even within the borders of the United States.
September 11th should be a wake-up call for all Christians
and those who think they are Christians. If you were to die
today-tonight-would you be assured of your place in God’s
heavenly kingdom, a recipient of eternal life? The words of
the apostle Paul ring out across the centuries asking this
age-old question “Examine yourselves, whether ye be in
the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves,
how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates.”
Dr. Charles F. Stanley poses this same eternal question in
his sermon “What Does It Mean To Believe In Jesus”.
And he gives three essential criteria that will help you answer
that question in your own personal life. The assurance of
your eternity is worth confirming. http://www.unityinchrist.com/faith/whatis.htm
to find out if “Jesus Christ is in you.”
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