KINGSHIP

IN 1621, the leaders of Plymouth negotiated a treaty of amity and friendship with local leader Massasoit Ousamequin. After carefully orchestrating a meeting—through messengers who passed back and forth—the leaders of both communities met to hammer out the terms of their relationship. They agreed to offer mutual aid and support. Entering into these diplomatic negotiations, the men of tiny Plymouth drew upon the ritual forms of their European culture. They characterized themselves as representatives of the monarch James I and VI, king of England, Ireland, and Scotland. Their messenger relayed to Massasoit “that King James saluted him with words of love and Peace, and did accept of him as his Friend and Ally, and that our Governour desired to see him and to truck [meaning to trade] with him, and to confirm a Peace with him, as his next neighbor.” During the meeting that brought the English governor and the Wampanoag leader together, the English assured Massasoit of King James’s esteem. They interpreted the reaction of the Wampanoag men in the best possible light, noting “all which the King seemed to like well, and it was applauded of his followers.”¹ In making this overture, the Plymouth people confidently depicted themselves as the emissaries of a monarch who had most certainly not deputized them to act on his behalf. Considering their previous relationship with the king, their assertion that they represented the monarch was nothing short of remarkable.

The leaders of Plymouth Plantation, although they presented themselves as the king’s emissaries, actually had a rather fraught relationship with the monarchy. Some of the people residing in Plymouth, and most of the community’s leaders in 1621, had fled England rather than live under the religious establishment which James headed, the Church of England. Once in the Netherlands, the future religious leader of the plantation, William Brewster, launched a printing press that lobbed criticism at the English Church. The press eventually employed a young Edward Winslow as well, and he would go on to be involved in the negotiations with Massasoit (and to serve repeatedly as governor of Plymouth). This press was sufficiently critical of royal policy that the English authorities arranged to have their counterparts in Holland shut it down. Unwilling to live under direct royal rule, the Plymouth leaders took advantage of their distance from crown authorities to criticize James’s policies. Nonetheless, they displayed no qualms about later depicting themselves as having come to New England specifically on James I and VI’s behalf.

This interaction with Massasoit, with its invocation of the monarch, was far from an isolated incident. In later encounters with other Native neighbors, the Plymouth men made similar statements. They asserted that they represented James and that their king would be pleased to enter into any alliance they arranged. On various exploratory excursions around the area, they collected pledges of allegiance to King James. As some of them related to another Native leader, “divers Sachems [or Native leaders] … had acknowledged themselves to be King James’ men, and if he also would submit himself, we would be his safeguard from his enemies.” Robert Cushman, who visited briefly during Plymouth’s first year, was impressed by the success of these diplomatic efforts. Without “threats and blows, or shaking of sword and sound of trumpet,” but rather by “friendly usage, love, peace, honest and just carriages [or actions], good counsel, &c” the settlers had gotten many of their neighbors to acknowledge the king of England’s authority.²

The Netherlands, as depicted in this 1611 map, housed many English men and women. They moved there for many reasons, setting up churches that allowed them to worship in English. Even though the removal of the English church led by John Robinson to the small Dutch city of Leiden could be seen as a rejection of James I’s rule, when some of the church’s members moved to North America, they referred to themselves as loyal subjects to their king.

Whether the Native peoples who received these overtures understood their relationship to a distant monarch as the settlers hoped they did is doubtful, but Plymouth men remained confident that their efforts were both comprehensible and fruitful. Not only did they offer an alliance with England’s king, but they also promised protection—and seemed to imply that Plymouth Plantation would provide it. Even though they made this offer at a time when they were confident that their firearms made them all but invincible against any local enemies, this claim was bold, given their general lack of martial skill and their comparatively low numbers. Perhaps they imagined James sending protection, a hope that had no precedent and would never be fulfilled. Framed in familiar European terms—allegiance and protection—their efforts to use their relationship to the king continued to yield results, to their minds. They proudly reported that, with all the local residents desiring alliance and royal protections, numerous communities had become “subjects to our sovereign Lord King James.” That fact, they were certain, explained peaceful relations.³ Regardless of their own history with King James, they considered themselves tied to him by bonds of allegiance. Like many English people who ventured into the world away from their native shores, these people imagined themselves going as subjects of their monarch. In Plymouth’s case, they boldly cast themselves as emissaries as well.

Allegiance to the monarch did not simply serve as a convenient façade which the Plymouth people donned when presenting themselves to their neighbors. It appeared to be a deeply held idea. The title of Robert Cushman’s lay sermon, preached in December 1621 and published thereafter, declares as much: A Sermon Preached at Plimmoth in New-England In an assemblie of his Majesties faithfull Subjects. Whenever the Plymouth people had occasion to explain why they were in New England, they framed their effort in terms of the monarch, often mentioning him along with his divine counterpart; the twin sources of authority were the king and God. Narrating the history of their settlement in their own court records, the Plymouth magistrates declared they undertook the voyage to glorify God and extend the dominion of the English king.⁴ Edward Winslow, addressing the plantation’s “well-wishers,” commended them for helping to enlarge the king’s “Dominions, by planting his loyal subjects in so healthful and hopeful a Country.”⁵ That they were loyal subjects was a point of pride. Phineas Pratt, who joined the plantation after the collapse of Thomas Weston’s investment venture nearby, much later claimed that the migrants leaving Leiden to journey to America wanted to reside under English rather than Dutch authority because of “the entire love they bore to their King and Country; for in them there was never found any lack of loyal obedience.”⁶ Numerous people repeated the idea that the settlers planted Plymouth thinking of God and the king.⁷ While we anticipate that those who lived in Plymouth Plantation saw God motivating their undertaking, the fact that they gave equal weight to the need to serve the king—whose authority they had previously fled—contradicts the common understanding of their goals and attitudes.

In that iconic moment when the men on the first ship entered into a “civil combination” (as they called it), better known today as the “Mayflower Compact,” they used the language of kingship and affirmed their loyalty to the monarch. The agreement set up government among the disparate group of men who sailed on the Mayflower. Women were excluded as they generally had no role in governance. These arrangements were made only off the coast of Cape Cod because their intention to land in Virginia would have put them under the already-existing government of the Virginia Company. Landing unexpectedly farther north, they suddenly required some basis for organizing their affairs.

The agreement repeatedly invoked God and the king. They prefaced their agreement with formulaic language that lent solemnity to the occasion: “In the name of God, Amen. We whose names are underwritten, the loyal Subjects of our dread sovereign Lord King James, by the grace of God of Great Britain, France, and Ireland King, Defender of the Faith, &c.” The mention of James’s claim to rule France dated back to the days when the English monarch had, in fact, controlled part of northern France. The text then proceeded to explain the reason they had come to America, attributing their effort to their concern for “the glory of God, and advancement of the Christian Faith, and honor of our King and Country.” Their very purpose, in other words, was twofold: to support their Christian faith and to honor their king and their native country of England. They concluded quite formally with what is known as regnal dating—calculating the length of a monarch’s reign to date a legal document: “Cape Cod. 11. Of November, in the year of the reign of our sovereign Lord King James, of England, France, and Ireland 18. And of Scotland 54. Anno Domino 1620.”⁸ A royal charter would have been the best possible foundation for a new settlement, but in its absence, Plymouth’s leaders asserted their allegiance to their king as a basis for their government.

In the early years at Plymouth, their status as subjects to their king earned mention in various contexts. If other English people entered the area and caused problems, Plymouth cited the king’s authority to curb their excess. Whether the offenders were members of the unsuccessful encampment at Wessagussett or the irksome group at Thomas Morton’s trading post, Plymouth warned that the king would punish those who displeased him.⁹ William Bradford alleged that Morton dismissed this warning, stating “that king was dead, and his displeasure died with him.” This allegation of disrespect to monarchy was intended to undermine Morton’s reputation. Bradford’s nemesis adopted similar tactics: Morton depicted himself as far more loyal than the Plymouth people.¹⁰ In diplomatic dealings with the neighboring Dutch colony of New Netherland, the Plymouth governor and his council reminded those in the nearby jurisdiction that they operated under the authority of England’s new monarch, Charles I.¹¹ When they sat down to make a permanent record of lands granted in Plymouth since its inception, they formally cited their status as “the Kings subjects inhabiting within the Government of new Plymouth” to justify the grants.¹² Their personal relationship to the monarch and their status as his subjects supported their entire undertaking.

Thinking in terms of monarchs and subjects was so ingrained that the Plymouth people—like many early European sojourners in America—imposed those familiar categories on the people and societies they encountered. The language of kingship permeated their descriptions of Native political organization. As they traveled around, opening diplomatic relations and trying to build alliances, they categorized every Native leader as a king (or, in one case, a queen).¹³ Massasoit was the first, and although one author elevated him to the status of an emperor over various other kings, the title usually bestowed on him was that of king. This tendency to impose European categories on Native society was pervasive and unthinking. In a rich moment, Christopher Levett (a visitor to New England) remarked dismissively when Natives he encountered found some aspect of English cultural practice odd, “You may Imagine he thought their [Native] fashion was universal.”¹⁴ For their part, Levett and all the other English in the region did precisely that—assumed European practices were universal—when they equated Native and European political structures. All across the English Atlantic (and indeed everywhere seventeenth-century Europeans interacted with varied cultures), English people assumed cultural equivalences that did not exist. Thinking of Massasoit as a king who could form an alliance with James I and VI appealed to Plymouth leaders because it rendered Native culture comprehensible. Kingship was ingrained in their own world, and therefore they expected to find it everywhere.

Knowing about their differences over religion and looking (far) ahead to American independence, we might think of Plymouth planters as holding the king at arm’s length. Yet they embraced the relationship, even if they found it easier to be loyal subjects on the other side of the Atlantic where the details of their church order were not regularly scrutinized. That did not mean that their expressions of loyalty were false. They lived in a world that was largely organized around personal loyalty to a monarch. Despite their brief residence in the Dutch Republic, they gave no indication of wanting to escape their status as the subjects of a king. Even their willingness to host Captain Cromwell’s privateers cannot be read as an indication of disloyalty to the king or to the idea of kingship. The break between colonists and the British crown that occurred a century and a half later was not anticipated by the first men in Plymouth. Their descendants posthumously recruited them into the American patriot cause, declaring the Mayflower Compact an early expression of democratic striving—without the permission of their ancestors.