Reverend Wake, the husband of Edward’s sister Magdalen, was a great friend of the poet Mildmay Fane. The king was godfather to Fane’s eldest son, and Fane had married into the celebrated military Vere family. Despite six children and a life managing a great estate, Mereworth Castle in Kent, Fane (now Lord Westmorland) had not lost his affection for his old friend. Nor had the Reverend Wake lost his love of poetry. But now Wake had fallen on very hard times, and Fane was helping out his old friend by paying him to make fair copies of Fane’s poetry in his prison cell. Poignantly one such poem was Wake’s own Latin translation of the best known of Fane’s verses, ‘A Happy Life’.
Magdalen was a spirited person who had the courage of her strongly anti-Puritan convictions. She had once been ‘a very active industrious woman’ who ‘did many services to the King in the time of the Civil Wars’. But now – despite the protection of Edward – she was perpetually anxious about her husband, who was in extremely poor health, and one of her sons, Captain William Wake, who had also been captured and imprisoned.
Throughout Edward’s time in London the Wakes were at the centre of Royalist rebellions. Captain Wake boasted that he and his father had been imprisoned over twenty times. Twice Captain Wake could have been executed. Edward’s natural kindness came to the fore. The Royalist connection had the potential to embarrass Edward but he refused to let it – years later Captain Wake described how what he called a ‘rebel uncle’ saved him from the gallows. To his colleagues, Edward’s Wake relations were simply traitors, the enemy – in the term of the day, ‘delinquents’.
Once Edward was employed by the well-paid Cromwellian bureaucracy as a member of the Committee for Compounding, his money worries eased for a time. His salary of £300 a year solved the issue of Plymouth or Massachusetts funding him in England. He was several times also appointed to committees to judge treasons against the Commonwealth. He could now support his daughter Elizabeth and his sister Magdalen Wake in pleasant lodgings, though the latter spent much time in the West Country tending to her imprisoned husband.
* * *
Elizabeth was a bright and determined character. She was amazed by London’s grandeur: despite the war the new squares and streets designed by Inigo Jones round Covent Garden and the Strand were still standing.
And she enjoyed meeting her Wake cousins. Magdalen’s second son, Edward, was less hot-blooded than his brother, Captain William. Edward Wake was interested in business, perhaps because of seeing the effective ways of his uncle, whose City connections probably helped his nephew to set up the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy in 1655. Existing to this day, it was begun by merchants of the City of London to raise funds for the children of indigent clergy, such as Edward Wake and his siblings, who had been dispossessed during the Commonwealth. Certainly his mother found him a great comfort. Many years later she would insist on being buried in his tomb, ‘as she had devised in her lifetime’.
Magdalen and her family were Edward’s flesh and blood. With his own eyes he had seen how a whole generation was traumatised by being on the losing side.
At the beginning of February 1654, on one of his outings from prison, Captain William Wake married the daughter of a rich Dorset farmer neighbour, Amie Cutler. Rather curiously the wedding took place in London in the Church of St Bartholomew the Less in Smithfield. This was almost next door to Edward’s office at Haberdashers’ Hall in Smithfield. Had it all been arranged by Edward? Normally Amie would have been married from her home parish, Stourpaine in Dorset, but these were not normal times. Perhaps her parents thought that, as she was marrying a dangerous Royalist, it was sensible to have the blessing of a government figure.
Amie had been brought up in a conventional and genteel fashion. But at the wedding ceremony, out of earshot of the guests – including her distinguished uncle by marriage – she gave a vow to her husband: ‘if there should be any opportunity given or methods used to restore the King, my father should be at liberty to return to his arms for that purpose’. He soon did.
When Captain Wake came out of the king’s army, he used her dowry to help set up his family in the clothing and stapling trade. This was business which brought raw wool from the Dorset countryside to towns such as Wareham and Dorchester which had exclusive royal charters for sale and export – trade with which Edward most likely helped. But Wake was soon back in prison.
Whatever Edward’s fondness for his sister, helping the Wakes over and over again was a big ask.
* * *
Edward’s meteoric rise continued, however, as did his friendship with Herbert Pelham, whose daughter Penelope had married Edward’s son Josiah, probably in New England sometime around 1651–2. Edward also resumed his friendship with Sir Arthur Hesilrige (who had reconciled with Cromwell and taken his seat in the Rump Parliament and on the Council of State). Fortunately, in what seems to have been a genuine love match in New England, Josiah now ticked all the boxes as far as the Pelhams were concerned. Josiah was doing well in business with his father, exporting iron along with beaver and sugar from Barbados to England, and importing clothing.
Edward was riding high in his own right, a considerable figure in London. His work on the Commmittee for Compounding involved eyesight-destroying paperwork determining who owned what sequestrated estates. People queued to beg for their property. Defeated Royalists appeared amazed to be asked to lay out their possessions and plead for them, paying a fine which was generally a year’s assessment of a third of the estate’s annual worth. The concentrated work it required – going through petitions, land deeds, subsidiary leases, women’s portions, minors’ trusts – might have killed anyone who was less of a workhorse than Edward. It may have contributed to the loss of the ox-like strength which had taken him through years of deprivation in New England.
Edward enjoyed the perks of office, but also continued to run up debts, including celebrating his new importance by commissioning a coat of arms. That was not cheap. Arthur Squibb the Younger, who was related to one of the heralds at the College of Arms, was also on the Committee for Compounding. Perhaps Squibb arranged for the coat of arms to be commissioned. Edward was evidently very proud of his new status, having his coat of arms engraved on a gold signet ring used to seal documents, including his will. In future years Josiah united the new Winslow arms (seven silver lozenges on a red background) with his wife’s aristocratic Pelham arms, adding the Pelham strap and buckle on the crest, which were then engraved on pewter plates by the English pewterer at Bristol, John Batchelor.
Edward’s thoughts could not be on the Second Coming all the time. The lure of luxury shops reopening in the West End could not be resisted. By the early 1650s the seas were clear for ships from the East India Company to berth in the London Docks. The East India factories had produced cotton, silk, tea and saltpetre (a crucial element in gunpowder), food preservatives and fertiliser since the beginning of the century. Now they could be landed again.
Edward enjoyed spending money in places such as the reopened New Exchange, with its dazzling textiles. It is no surprise that Edward also had his portrait painted. Not only was it another symbol of his status, it may have been prompted by his new alliance with the Pelham family. To mark the occasion, either Edward or Herbert Pelham, in a spirit of lavish celebration, also commissioned portraits of Josiah and Penelope in what may have been their wedding finery. Penelope wore a green satin dress with a salmon pink stole while Josiah had a festively gilded necktie similar to his father’s. They must have had these likenesses painted in Old England and subsequently shipped over to New England to hang on the walls of their home at Marshfield. (Today they are in the Pilgrim Hall Museum.)
There is no evidence that Josiah’s sister Elizabeth, now living in London as her father’s companion, was ever painted, which may indicate the grand portraits were Herbert Pelham’s idea to ensure his daughter did not forget the position she had been born to in England.
Edward’s portrait is the only one that exists of any of the Mayflower passengers. To their contemporaries in Plymouth, portraits would have seemed an extraordinary extravagance. But Puritan London was less austere. There has been much discussion about how the Roundheads and Cavaliers differentiated themselves through dress. Black is always assumed to be a Puritan colour, but in fact it was popular to be painted in black at court before the Civil War as it gave the subject status, since black dye was the most costly. Puritanism was a demanding way of life, but the court Cromwell presided over exulted in the display of magnificence, which made his regime seem legitimate and confident.
Edward’s new friends’ houses were full of portraits. In response to the elegant life of the English gentry perhaps he thought he too should have a portrait made of himself to hang in his own home at Careswell. There had been many letters from Careswell asking him what he thought about the price of cattle, how he was doing, when he was returning. But it is tempting to believe that Edward’s choice to be painted holding a tenderly signed letter from Susanna was a symbol that his wife was never far from his thoughts.
* * *
Despite earning around £300 a year for at least five years, Edward’s debts amounted to £500. Many of Herbert’s letters warn about Edward’s carelessness: Edward must not use his ‘own credit’ on behalf of New England when he should be demanding supplies from the Massachusetts government. But Edward not only had a fatal but good-natured inability to separate his personal finances from business expenses but also rather extravagant tastes and not much interest in balancing his account book, if such a book existed.
Although he was fitted by temperament and belief to be part of the Puritan revolutionary cadre after the Civil War, ideological purity did not trump his human qualities of loyalty and friendship. He used his position to do a good deed to the children of his old benefactor Lord Coventry.
Lord Coventry’s son and grandson were Royalists. The final battle of the Civil War in 1651 was a close-run thing and alarming for the Parliamentarians. The future Charles II and his army of Covenanter Scots marched to the West Midlands and met no opposition until they came to Worcester, where battle was engaged amongst Edward Winslow’s boyhood scenes. Charles commanded operations from the top of Worcester Cathedral Tower, next to Edward’s old school. He was eventually defeated and went into exile.
The republican victory at Worcester was an event of the greatest providential magnitude for Edward. He personally superintended a hundred narratives of the battle to be sent to New England with ‘Acts for a day of thanksgiving’.
However, Lord Coventry’s son and grandson were accused of having sent £1,000 in gold, horse and arms to Charles II shortly before the battle. Their entire estates, even their lives, could have been forfeited for treason. But the case against them mysteriously collapsed. In a strange twist of history, Edward was able to repay his old patron Coventry for all his help over the years. A key event was Edward’s interrogation of the Royalist general Edward Massey in the Tower of London as part of a deputation from the Committee for Compounding. Massey’s interrogation was supposed to strengthen the case against Lord Coventry, but in a dramatic development on 25 February 1653, the Committee for the Advance of Money, of which Edward was also a member, declared ‘on hearing the depositions, it is resolved, nem. con., that he [Coventry] is not guilty of the charge’. They ordered ‘that the seizure of all his estates in cos. [counties] Worcester, Gloucester, Warwick, Oxford, &c., be taken off, and his bonds and securities restored’. John Lyne, the secretary who had informed against him, was arrested instead. Coventry’s sons, whom many a witness had seen riding by the side of Charles II before the Battle of Worcester, also got off scot-free. By March 1655 all the Coventrys’ estates had been returned to them.*
* * *
Edward did not slacken doing what he could for the New England colonies in the continuous battle to establish land rights in the great American continent. He was the go-to person for colonists with contacts in London to promote claims, whether in contentious Rhode Island, or Maine or New Hampshire. Despite his grand life in London he never bought any property in England, assuming he would soon return to Careswell. He kept in close touch with Plymouth. William Bradford still entrusted him with attempting to obtain Plymouth’s claim to the whole Kennebec River. In 1653 he once again put to Parliament the point of view of the congregational churches, which was beginning to be known as the New England Way. He proudly published the Cambridge Synod’s Platform of Church Discipline in New England.
Edward continued to fight his friend Roger Williams in London. They had a new disagreement: the need for the Praying Towns, intended for converted Indians. In letters Williams talks of the Indians’ fear at being oppressed into becoming Christian. Williams was always fond of those he disagreed with and Edward was warm-hearted, even if disapproving. Williams met Cromwell several times to discuss the Indians and the millennium.
There were other New Englanders in town with whom Edward was more in sympathy, such as Edward Hopkins. Hopkins was a good friend whom Edward particularly admired because he was ‘a man that makes conscience of his words as well as his actions’. One of the earliest settlers of Connecticut, a governor and United Colonies commissioner, Hopkins returned to London in 1652 and became a navy commissioner and an MP. Living without his wife, not always satisfied with the company of his daughter and her youthful friends, Edward had found solace with Hopkins.
Hopkins’ wife Ann suffered from appalling depression. It was Mrs Hopkins of whom John Winthrop wrote in his diary – to what many regard as his shame – that this ‘godly young woman of special parts’ was ‘fallen into a sad infirmity, the loss of her understanding and reason, which had been growing upon her divers years, by occasion of her giving herself wholly to reading and writing … Her husband, being very loving and tender of her, was loath to grieve her; but he saw his error, when it was too late. For if she had attended her household affairs, and such things as belong to women, and not gone out of her way and calling to meddle in such things as are proper for men, whose minds are stronger, etc., she had kept her wits, and might have improved them usefully and honourably in the place God had set her.’
It is hard to believe Edward or indeed his feisty daughter Elizabeth agreed with this narrow view of women. In the future Elizabeth would show she was afraid of no man, including her stepson, the Salem Witch Trial judge Jonathan Curwen, who tried to bully her into handing over guardianship of her younger daughter after her husband’s death. Since we know Susanna could read and write, she too must have found Winthrop’s view of the education of women preposterous.
* * *
In 1652 a trade war between Holland and the Commonwealth broke out, making the Dutch and English official enemies in New England. Many of the exiled English royal family were living in Holland, which lent the struggle additional importance. That July, ships including a ketch named John’s Adventure (which may have been owned by John Winslow – there was a ship by that name in his will) were sent to New England carrying one tonne of shot, 156 barrels of powder and 1,000 swords, ‘for increase of their present store’. Edward was pleased to note the damage done to the Baltic trade in masts, as he had long suggested that Baltic pines could be replaced with those from New England.
Cromwell dissolved the Rump Parliament in April 1653. Edward bravely joined Thomas Andrewes and forty other City figures in a petition to recall Parliament. Rumours went around New England that Edward had been imprisoned. This is unlikely, but Edward did lose the office that gave him his very pleasant income. Nevertheless within a year he was back in favour, reappointed to the Committee for Compounding and named by Cromwell as a member of his new High Court of Justice for treason.
Many thought revolution had gone far enough. The forced dissolution of the Rump by Cromwell and the army was a sticking point for Arthur Hesilrige. He became a leading member of the opposition to Cromwell’s Protectorate, which he regarded as a dictatorship.
Edward and Hesilrige came to a second parting of their ways – this time a permanent one. Edward had approved of the new version of Parliament at Westminster, an assembly nominated from members of congregational churches – the Praise-God Barebone’s Parliament, as it was nicknamed.
Its elevated agenda of godly reformation was what Edward wanted. Cromwell told the Barebone’s Parliament in July 1653: ‘You are as like the forming of God as ever people were … you are at the edge of promises and prophecies.’ Such a speech was balm to Edward’s soul.
Letters show Edward’s admiration for Oliver Cromwell. He always had a tendency to hero-worship, and here was a man after his own heart, strenuously trying to make a better world. In his tongue-in-cheek poem ‘An Horation Ode upon Cromwell’s Return from Ireland’, Andrew Marvell wrote of ruining the great work of time and casting the ‘kingdom old / Into another mould’. But for Edward that was a worthy aim.
* * *
As part of the Anglo-Dutch peace treaty, Edward, who had excellent Dutch, was tasked with assessing the price of English ships taken by the king of Denmark. Amongst the Winslow family papers lies a certificate, showing Cromwell and the Dutch States General had made him a member of the arbitration committee created by the Treaty of Westminster to agree on issues arising after the First Anglo-Dutch War.
Edward was brought into contact with the poet John Milton, who was the Latin Secretary responsible for diplomatic correspondence with foreign countries. During Charles I’s trial, Milton had boldly published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, which argued it was lawful and acceptable ‘to call to account a Tyrant or wicked King and after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death’.
By June 1654 Edward was a member of a High Court convened to try a conspiracy against Cromwell. Three Royalists – John Gerard, Peter Vowell and Summerset Fox – were accused of plotting to assassinate Cromwell and install Charles II. Increasing numbers of more moderate politicians wished to return to a system similar to the monarchy before the Civil War in which there were checks on the executive power, but Edward was not of their number. He did not object to the written constitution, the Instrument of Government, in which Cromwell adopted a quasi-monarchical role as Lord Protector. He was the only one of the original seven Compounders reappointed to office. No theoretician, Cromwell’s ideas chimed with Edward’s deepest convictions about conforming to God’s will. And perhaps the funds were useful to a man permanently short of cash.
* * *
On 21 February 1654 Lorenzo Paulucci, the Venetian ambassador, sent a description of Cromwell’s visit to the City of London. ‘At seven in the evening he returned to his dwelling in the same pomp, with the addition of three hundred lighted torches and all the outward signs of respect and honour, but with very scanty marks of goodwill from the people in general.’ Paulucci thought the rancour and hostility of the people increased daily because Cromwell had ‘arrogated to himself despotic authority and the actual sovereignty of these realms under the mask of humility and the public service’. Cromwell lacked ‘nothing of royalty but the name’ – though in fact Cromwell made it known he wished to be addressed as Highness.
Prophecies were rife. People were talking about the tide in the Thames protracting its ebb and flow for two hours longer than usual. Credible witnesses declared they had seen the ghost of the beheaded king in the former royal palace. Paulucci believed ‘it is impossible for this kingdom to remain long quiet without the sceptre of its legitimate king … the majority of the people sigh for him, though threats and fears induce silence and resignation and prevent them from speaking out freely or complaining of the present yoke’.
Not content with banning plays, in July 1654 racing was banned for six months. Enemies of the Commonwealth had been ready ‘to take advantage of public meetings, and concourse of people at Horse-races, and other sports, to carry on such their pernicious designs, to the Disturbance of the Public Peace, and endangering new troubles’. The pleasure-loving English did not take kindly to this.
The constant attempts to enforce a cultural revolution by the godly reformation of the English way of life which began in 1647 by banning Christmas and Easter was hugely unpopular and largely ineffective. To Edward’s eyes, of course, such reforms were simply logical. Since the beginning of the colony such festivities had never been part of Plymouth life.
* * *
Edward’s burning desire to be of service had not gone away with office, neither had the fervour that had taken him to the New World and back. In December 1654, as the Republic took on fresh labours to reform the world, Edward could not resist volunteering for a great expedition to the West Indies.
The plan, known as the Western Design, was meant to give a base to England in the Caribbean to thwart the Spanish Empire and attack the shipments of silver which regularly crossed the sea to get to Spain. Hispaniola (the island which is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti) had great resonance because it was where Christopher Columbus first raised the Spanish flag on the American continent. The Western Design was another fulfilment of millennarian prophecies. Throwing the Spanish out of America could be viewed as the drying up of the Euphrates predicted in Revelation 16:12, ‘that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared’.
Edward was to be the chief of three civil commissioners in charge of planting these new colonies. He was also substantially remunerated. In December 1654 he was awarded £1,000 as salary, with £500 to be paid in advance.
Two well-known officers of the Civil War were in charge of the military side of things: Admiral William Penn, the father of the founder of Pennsylvania, and General Robert Venables, who for good or ill had successfully commanded the siege of Drogheda, which had ended in a massacre. Unfortunately they loathed one another, and squabbled continually.
Edward performed a last good deed in December 1654. He wrote to the navy commissioners to ask if they could release a boy named William Lygon who had been press-ganged out of a coal ship and put on board a warship, ‘as he is the chief support of his mother’.
Edward had laboured for the Commonwealth without a break for days at a time. His strenuous soul was pining for real action after the grinding days in his office at Haberdashers’ Hall. The physical side of him was yearning for the liberation of a sea voyage. He made his farewells to his daughter and sister, and the rest of his friends. His brother John was over from New England as he departed, and it is likely that John’s son had a place on one of the ships. (A letter from Roger Williams suggests that a couple of months later, Susanna went to London; perhaps Elizabeth was lonely and asked her mother to visit.)
The fleet left from Portsmouth for Barbados. As long letters written at sea reveal, Edward was desperate for the Western Design to be a success. The two principals were at daggers drawn, but Edward was determined everyone should get along. His optimism and enthusiasm meant he wanted to give the expedition its all. In beseeching letters he badgered John Thurloe, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for information to see how the great republican experiment in London was faring.
Edward was not especially well when he set sail to Hispaniola. He had cancelled a visit to a friend a few weeks before, and had insisted on an apothecary being on board. He may have felt the need for someone who could deal with stomach ills. One possibility is that he suffered from some hereditary ailment, perhaps a weak heart. It is also possible that he had picked up a virus or some kind of bacterial infection in London. The Great Plague of 1665 is believed to have started because of the poor housing round the areas Edward frequented. Slums lay cheek by jowl with the elegant new facades. The Fleet River was choked with the waste from Smithfield Market. Westminster itself was built on unhealthy marshes.
As an expert transatlantic traveller, Edward noted they made the crossing amazingly swiftly, in an unprecedented five weeks. But in spite of its distinguished military leaders, the Hispaniola expedition was a badly planned disaster, which might have been predicted from the outset. It had only 1,000 veteran soldiers. Most of the troops, including the 1,500 new English soldiers and 4,000 colonial conscripts raised in Barbados, had neither seen action nor had much training. Edward’s knowledge of the West Indies was ignored. Most of the food was inedible. More importantly, the planners had not included vessels to store water, and 200–300 men were to die of thirst. The apothecary never arrived. His ship was becalmed along with the food-store ships, and was then blown to Ireland. Almost a third of their stores were lost at sea and never reached the West Indies.
Nevertheless when Edward arrived in Barbados in mid-January he was full of excitement, anticipating a swift victory. Via John Thurloe, Edward entreated Cromwell to remember ‘that the settlement of the Protestant religion is one of the grounds he goeth upon’. The government should send out some ‘very able ministers’. He was critical about the low standard of public life in Barbados and the levels of corruption: ‘all places of trust are disposed of by favour, and not by a sound judgement, for few active able men are in power, that may prevent such a mischief’.
In mid-April the English ships left Barbados and set out for Hispaniola. They passed St Vincent, and dropped anchor at St Lucia for a council and to give orders. Then they streamed past Martinique (a new French colony) and Dominica (where they were becalmed), Guadeloupe, Montserrat and Nevis. When they made St Kitts, the French fired off thirty shots as a salute. After St John’s they were hovering off Hispaniola, a mass of white sails crowding the sea.
But nothing went as it should. The expedition was supposed to be top secret but because it was planned for so long, the Spanish had known about it for months. The 4,000 troops raised reluctantly by the Barbadians either could not or would not obey orders. There was no central command. The land and sea generals had to confer not only with one another but with the three civilian commissioners. Once the ships arrived off Hispaniola and the land army was dropped off, time was lost in endless consultations. Lieutenants rowed backwards and forwards to get each commander’s opinion. It was not clear who had precedence. Edward angered the rank and file by proclaiming death to any soldier who plundered, with what one witness called ‘his always unresistible affirmative’. This was announced as the men landed, which ‘proved fatal to the army’ in the view of another witness. But Commissioner Winslow would not be contradicted. The most he would agree to was to ‘give them their six weeks pay when they had taken this place’ – which was decent enough.
There was a superstition in the navy that women were unlucky on ships, and General Venables was not only resented for bringing on the expedition his new wife but also despised for meekly bowing to her domineering ways. A complaining Mrs Venables frequently disembarked and went on shore into the war zone, distracting her husband.
Years as a colonist had made Edward very aware of the weather. He pressed for the expedition to get going because they would otherwise lose the dry season and be at the mercy of hurricanes, storms and disease, but the high command continued to prevaricate.
Eventually, when the store ships had still not arrived, the leaders decided to cast themselves ‘into the arms of Almighty God, whose Providence we trust will be forever good, and will own us as instruments in his right hand’ to exercise vengeance on the Spanish.
The Almighty was not in a receptive mood. They had left it too late. The rains created landslides and turned much of the lower ground to mud. Sanitation problems meant disease spread like wildfire, and the army was attacked by dysentery and fever. A third of the men died and rotted where they lay. Some 3,000 men were sick. Horses got bogged down in the swampy terrain. They were swiftly eaten along with the dogs because of the lack of food.
Forty Spaniards defeated 400 English troops in one mortifying battle. The rest were taken off the island by Penn, a humiliation felt by all, especially Edward. Offers by Penn to have his ships bombard the main fort were rejected by Venables. By now Edward had lost faith in Venables’ judgement. One memoir has Edward trying to force the soldiers back for a last attempt on the citadel, to no avail.
Eventually Edward and the other commissioners pressed Venables to give up Hispaniola as a bad job. On board the Swiftsure on 28 April they wrote to the governor of Barbados saying that they had had to abandon the attempt because of ‘the cowardice of our men’ of which they were deeply ashamed. All stores which should by then have arrived at Barbados were to be sent on to Jamaica, where they were going next.
Edward had survived the Mayflower but he had been only twenty-five then. Although he had made many, many sea journeys, his previous transatlantic voyage had been almost ten years ago, when he was in his prime. Now he was almost sixty. He was not wounded but, like many of the soldiers, became very ill of the flux, as well as a despair which exacerbated his fever. The conservative herald Sir William Dugdale heard that Edward, whom he called disparagingly ‘a Committee man’, had raved ‘of Haberdashers’ Hall in his sickness’.
Edward had expected so much of this expedition. His letters had been full of an almost hysterical exaltation. In rapturous tones he had written: ‘Oh! what would we give, and how do we long to hear from England of the conclusion of the Parliament with his highness; and so what settlement is made in the nation. I beseech you, when you have occasion to write and send to us, let us not be strangers to England’s condition; but impart such news to us, as the time affords.’
As well as suffering from a fever which in the past he might have shaken off, there was also a psychological problem that no ship’s doctor or apothecary could alleviate: the Hispaniola debacle showed that God was no longer on his side. The expedition’s success was going to be yet another sign of God’s favour. Such failure was a sign the regime was cursed. Edward was so grief-stricken by what had happened it dealt him a mortal blow.
On the evening of 5 May Admiral Penn noted: ‘This evening we set sail and stood off the land all night south. The next day we stood westward, and kept between SW and NW. Mr Winslow began to grow bad in health, having complained a day or two before; taking conceit (as his man affirms) at the disgrace of the army on Hispaniola, to whom he told, it had broken his heart.’
On the 8th a fast was kept on board to seek the Lord’s favour. Edward, who had come up on deck to feel the breeze on his face, suddenly ‘fell very ill’. He was carried down in the afternoon to his cabin and ‘deceased in the evening’.
Penn wrote that it had pleased the Lord to call Mr Winslow away. Another observer, Henry Whistler, recorded in his journal that ‘some did say it was with grief, but he had a strong fever on him when he died’. Whistler also noted it was ‘fair weather and the wind at east’, and they steered away west. The next morning they arrived at the westernmost part of Hispaniola, very high land. On 9 May the burial of Commissioner Winslow was performed ‘as solemnly as might be at sea’. His body was put into a coffin with two cannon shot at his feet to weigh him down. His corpse was ‘held forth to the sea with ropes over the ship’s side ready to lower down. Command being gave they all let go. Our ship gave him twenty guns, and our vice admiral gave him twelve and our rear admiral ten, and so we bade him adieu.’ Edward’s linen was packed up, along with his watch.
The ships sailed on to capture Jamaica, leaving Edward Winslow behind. There he lies to this day.
Someone on board ship was making notes. Possibly it was Edward’s nephew John, or Henry Whistler. Whoever it was, the notes were later worked up into a poem, printed in New England’s Memorial.
The Eighth of May,
West from ’Spaniola shore,
God took from us our Grand Commissioner,
Winslow by Name; a man in Chiefest Trust,
Whose Life was sweet, and Conversation just;
Whose Parts and wisdom most men did excel;
An honour to his place, as all can tell.
Penn abandoned Jamaica without permission to return to London, and Venables followed shortly after. They were both arrested on suspicion of deserting their post, in Penn’s case of being a secret Royalist. Both were imprisoned in the Tower for not obeying orders. Cromwell was reported to have shut himself into his room for a day to discover ‘what “accursed thing” had provoked God’s wrath’. John Milton had to write an explanation of why the expedition should not be regarded as the judgement of God.
* * *
On 11 May 1657 Resolved White, Edward’s stepson, was in Barbados on family business: his sister-in-law was selling off part of the Vassall plantation. On the way his ship would have passed very close to the coast of Hispaniola where Edward lay on the ocean floor. Was past bitterness forgotten when Resolved remembered the larger-than-life character who had been like a father to him?
In the circles of the seventeenth-century Massachusetts colonial elite, Edward Winslow was regarded as a hero. He was a ‘Hercules’, wrote Cotton Mather, ‘From his very early days accustomed unto the crushing of that sort of serpents’ which got Massachusetts ‘deliverance from the designs of many troublesome adversaries that were petitioning unto the Parliament against them’. To give a proper account of what Edward did for the New England colonies would take so long it might not be ‘expected until the resurrection of the just’.
But in the here and now, his family had to suppress thoughts about why Edward could not have remained in London, rather than embark on another adventure. Perhaps ultimately Susanna herself did not disapprove. She had known her husband longest and had put up with so much, but she also understood the forces that drove him, because she shared his beliefs. They had also driven her to seek a new world. In his will Edward wrote proudly of being ‘now bound in a voyage to sea in the service of the Commonwealth’. For thirty years his life had been voyaging backwards and forwards across oceans for those dreamed-of commonwealths. Now it was time to rest.