19

A WEIGHTY VOYAGE

NEWS OF THE Virginia Company’s search for colonists for private plantations spread far and wide. Eventually it reached a group almost completely unconnected to the network of merchants and courtiers, dreamers and mythologizers who had been working toward America for nearly seven decades.

In the fall of 1617, two Englishmen, Robert Cushman and John Carver, left the Dutch coastal city of Leiden, a university town and important hub of textile manufacture, to travel across the English Channel to London. Cushman, a wool comber about forty years old, and Carver, a merchant aged about thirty, were acting on behalf of a group of reformist English Protestants—so-called religious “separatists”—who had been living, working, and worshipping as a congregation in Holland for nearly a decade. In due course, they would come to be known as Pilgrims—the name the most celebrated of the congregants, William Bradford, first gave them in his book Of Plymouth Plantation.¹

The two men, both deacons of the Church of Leiden, as the separatist group was sometimes called, had been dispatched on a critical mission: to approach the Virginia Company of London to seek a patent that would allow the congregation to establish a plantation within the company’s jurisdiction in America. It represented a big step for the religious group. To bolster their case, the two men carried with them a document called Seven Articles which the Church of Leyden sent to the Councill of England to be considered of in respect of their judgments occasioned about their going to Virginia Anno 1618. This document asserted the Leiden Church’s “spiritual communion” with all members of the Church of England and acknowledged King James as “supreme governor.”² It was signed by the congregation’s leaders, two Cambridge men who would have commanded respect among the members of the King’s Council: John Robinson, the revered pastor of the group, who had begun his career in the established church as deputy to the minister at St. Andrew’s Church in Norwich;³ and William Brewster, the elder of the separatists’ congregation, who had served in Elizabeth’s court in the 1580s, working on the staff of Sir William Davison, one of her secretaries of state.

Carver and Cushman felt compelled to carry the Seven Articles because the loyalty of the Leiden group to the crown was far from obvious. It was in 1606, when religious tensions were running high in England, that leading members of the separatist congregation had first come together in the village of Scrooby, in the county of Nottinghamshire.^* Like Puritans, another group of radical Protestants, the separatists wanted to purge the Anglican Church of Catholic elements—especially the powerful bishops who, they believed, indulged in sexual licentiousness and looted the riches of the church for their own ostentatious living. But whereas the Puritans sought reforms from within the existing church, the Separatists concluded that they had no choice but to detach themselves completely from the corrupt church.

The Scrooby congregation renounced the church hierarchy and began worshipping privately, separately, and in secret. Such clandestine meetings, or conventicles, were illegal. The archbishop of Canterbury waged a campaign of persecution against separatist groups, imposing harsh penalties on anyone over the age of sixteen who deliberately and defiantly refused to attend an authorized church: a three-month prison sentence in the first instance; banishment from the realm for those who continued to resist; execution for those who left the country and returned without royal permission.⁴

William Bradford was just sixteen when he joined the group in Scrooby. By then, he was deeply devout and committed in his rejection of the Anglican Church. Born to a local family of tenant farmers, he was orphaned at the age of one and later suffered a grave illness that left him bedridden and housebound. According to his celebrated biographer Cotton Mather, the Puritan minister, it was this experience that probably accounted for his early and deep devotion to his religion and his willingness to cast his lot with the separatists. Through sickness, he avoided being caught up in “the vanities of youth,” Mather wrote, which “made him the fitter for what he would afterwards undergo.” When he was about a “Dozen Years Old,” Bradford began to read scripture, and this made “great impressions upon him.”⁵

According to Bradford’s own account, written many years later, the Scrooby congregation was tormented, “hunted and persecuted on every side.” Some of their members were “clapped into prison, and others had their houses beset and watched night and day.” That is why a number of the Scrooby people at last agreed, “by joint consent,” to leave Scrooby, flee England, and “go into the Low Countries.”⁶

There was a precedent for their move. In the 1550s, of course, many notable Protestants became exiles during Queen Mary’s reign—notably Sir Francis Walsingham. But they were not separatists. The earliest champion of separatism was Robert Browne, a member of a well-to-do family and yet another Cambridge alumnus. In 1582, he led a group of followers out of England, crossed the Channel, and settled in the Dutch city of Middelburg, south of Leiden. His adherents were often referred to as Brownists—and, over time, that epithet came to be applied in a general way to other radical Protestants.

In 1608, following Browne’s example, the Scrooby separatists left everything and, risking their lives, departed England in the dead of night and sailed to Amsterdam, finally settling in Leiden. There, they were able to establish themselves, form a community, work, and hold their religious meetings in peace and without harassment. Now, in 1617, nine years later, the Leiden separatists contemplated another, even more dramatic, move in seeking permission from the Virginia Company to establish a settlement somewhere in America.

It was not that they faced religious persecution in Holland. On the contrary, the Dutch province was famed for its religious tolerance. One visitor to Amsterdam declared that, on the street where he was staying, he counted as many religions as there were houses, and “one neighbor knows not, nor cares not much, what Religion the other is.”⁷ For the Leiden group, the pressing problem was economic. They were simply unable to make a decent living. Although most of them had been farmers in England, they had to turn their hand to cloth manufacture, since Leiden was a clothmaking city. The eighty-six members of the English separatist community followed fifty-seven different occupations, most of them associated in some way with the weaving and making of cloth. Bradford apprenticed with a French maker of silk before setting up his own operation as a producer of fustian.⁸

With economic hardship came other problems. With no lands, estates, offices, or inheritances to pass to the next generation, many of the separatists were seeing their older children abandon their religious way of life and fall into dissolute behavior. Meanwhile, some of the younger children—those born in Holland—were taking up the habits of the Dutch, having grown up knowing nothing of England.

And there was one other concern: the prospect of war. Back in 1609, Spain and the Low Countries had signed a twelve-year truce, which brought peace to this corner of Europe. But with the truce set to end in 1621, the members of the Leiden group were anxious to find another home, another place where they could pursue their worship of God in peace.

As all of these concerns started to coalesce, the leaders of the Leiden Church began to consider the idea of a colony in the New World. They, better than most, knew it would not be easy. As Bradford wrote, it had been hard enough for them to adjust to Holland, which was a “neighbor country” to England and a “civil and rich commonwealth.” Making a go of it in the New World would be almost unknowably more difficult. They knew of the famous failures, the “precedents of ill success and lamentable miseries.”⁹ Nevertheless, the Leiden group turned their minds to “those vast and unpeopled countries of America.”¹⁰ For all its risks, there really seemed no other place to go.

THE SEVEN ARTICLES that Cushman and Carter presented to the Virginia Company may have had some positive effect. In the end, however, it was personal contacts that unlocked the door to the Virginia Company. Although they were exiles from England, the Leiden group still had important connections in England. William Brewster had a link with Sir Edwin Sandys, one of the leaders of the Virginia Company. Edwin’s brother, Samuel Sandys, held the lease to the great manor house of Scrooby, where Brewster’s father had been bailiff (rent collector) and where the separatists had held their early conventicles. Thanks to this connection, Cushman and Carver were able to engage with the Virginia Company and put their case to the Privy Council.

During the negotiations, the leaders of the Virginia Company declared that they were “very desirous” for the Leiden group to “go thither” to America. Indeed, they were “willing to grant them a patent” and give them the “best furtherance they could.”¹¹ It was a big vote of confidence for the Leiden group.

Cushman and Carver returned to the Dutch city with the encouraging news. But then no sooner had the separatists celebrated than a letter was sent with news from the Privy Council, forwarded to them by Sir John Wolstenholme, one of the leaders of the Virginia Company, and a principal investor in one of Jamestown’s privately run plantations—Martin’s Hundred and its central conurbation, Wolstenholme Town.¹²

The letter reiterated that the Virginia Company would do its best to forward the separatists’ enterprise but requested further details about the group and their plans. Robinson and Brewster swiftly responded and made the case for their commitment and capabilities. “We are well weaned from the delicate milk of our mother country,” they wrote, “and inured to the difficulties of a strange and hard land, which yet in a great part we have by patience overcome.” The Leiden group, they said, was “knit together as a body” and were not like other people “whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again.” In short, they were not likely to follow in the footsteps of colonists in Roanoke, Sagadahoc, and Jamestown. They would not quarrel among themselves, become factionalized, or abandon the settlement when the going got tough.¹³

But the Leiden group needed more than the go-ahead from the Virginia Company—they also needed to seek the king’s approval and secure from him the right to practice religion as they saw fit in America. The delicate assignment of sounding out James on this matter fell to Sir Robert Naunton, a royal official who was then in the running to be named, at age fifty, Secretary of State. Naunton had a fair amount of experience beyond England, having served in various roles in Scotland, France, and Denmark. He was known for his anti-Catholic, pro-Protestant views, and had little love for either Spain or France. He had endured a number of ups and downs in his life, including the loss of his family inheritance, and given this experience and his closeness to the king, it seemed that he might have some empathy with the separatists’ situation.¹⁴ In his presentation to the king, Naunton appears to have focused on the commercial impulse behind the venture, because James asked about the group’s plans for achieving a profit. Naunton replied that the goal was to generate revenue through fishing and James remarked approvingly that this was “an honest trade” and “the apostle’s own calling.”¹⁵ In the end, the king gave his blessing to the patent but he refused to issue a formal decree granting the Leiden group religious freedom in America. Even so, he assured Naunton that he would not “molest” them so long as they “carried themselves peaceably.”¹⁶

Just as it seemed that the way had been cleared, the group encountered one more delay, caused, according to Robert Cushman, by “dissensions and factions” within the Virginia Company. This was the time when Edwin Sandys seized control of the company, forcing Sir Thomas Smythe to step aside.¹⁷ It took several weeks for the Virginia Company to sort out its governance problems, “but at last,” Bradford wrote, “after all these things and their long attendance,” the long-awaited patent was granted to the Leiden group “and confirmed under the Company’s seal.”¹⁸

No copy of the patent survives, so we do not know all the details, but it was probably for land somewhere between the Delaware and Hudson rivers—although the exact location was not specified.¹⁹ The settlers were expected to travel to Jamestown and, once there, discuss possible locations for their settlement.²⁰

The patent was sealed on June 9, 1619, almost two years after the Leiden group had first approached the Virginia Company. The process had taken so long and been so tedious that many members of the Leiden group had given up and dropped out, frustrated by all the delays.

IF, AT LAST, the Leiden group had their patent, they still needed something else: capital. As they soon learned, the Virginia Company’s promise of “furtherance” would not take the form of money. It could allocate land—but not ready resources. For this, the separatists would have to look elsewhere. As it turned out, there was no shortage of suitors. These included the New Netherland Company, which was planning a colony around the Hudson River. Its representatives approached the Leiden congregation with an attractive offer. The Company would supply free transport to America, an allotment of cattle, and grants of land at New Amsterdam. The settlers would, of course, also have total religious freedom.

Too often, the people who signed up to be settlers were unsuited to the life they would have to lead: aristocrats who sought excitement and adventure; soldiers with no interest in farming or homebuilding; business people who expected immediate profits; and, of course, men who found it difficult to live without women. What was needed were solid, hardworking people with practical skills, leaders who were willing to learn and share responsibility, people with a long-term commitment to make the settlement work. The Leiden separatists offered all of these qualities. They had already demonstrated their ability to live and work together as a self-contained community.

After discussing various options, the Leiden group eventually entered into negotiations with Thomas Weston, a young English merchant, who had a business connection to them. Although he was a member of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers—one of the Great Twelve livery companies—Weston was not among the first rank of merchants. He was not rich enough to join the Merchant Adventurers, which had the exclusive right of trading of unfinished cloth to the Netherlands. The only way he could trade cloth was by paying a royalty to the Merchant Adventurers.²¹ This was an unreliable source of income, however. It meant that he was always subject to the whims of the Merchant Adventurers and the vicissitudes of the market. Down on his luck, he turned his focus to the business prospects in America. Like many other business people, he had heard the news coming from Virginia about land and tobacco.

Weston had a persuasive style. According to Bradford, he had “much conference” with the Leiden leaders and assured them that he could help them. He promised to reach out to his merchant friends, raise capital, and organize everything. They would have to agree on the business terms, of course.²²

The Leiden leaders chose to work with Weston and while they began drafting an agreement, he returned to England to begin the process of raising funds. He attracted some seventy investors, including gentlemen, merchants, and “handy craftsmen.” Some contributed hefty sums and others invested modestly. The total, according to John Smith, came to seven thousand pounds, although there is no record of the actual amount and others put the figure at less than two thousand pounds.²³ If Smith’s figure is correct, it is a remarkably large one. Most of the investors were Londoners, few of them separatists, and none seem to have invested in other New World ventures.²⁴ Clearly, the English business community was in a speculative mood and willing to take a risk on a venture with very uncertain commercial prospects.

Weston does not seem to have taken much care in the way he organized the enterprise.²⁵ He and his fellow investors had no long-range goals, beyond this single voyage, and they did not create a set of instructions or ordinances, as had become typical. Nor did they set aside capital for any resupply missions. Indeed, they seem to have thought the colony would be fully functioning and ready to ship saleable commodities back to England by the first return ship—a completely unrealistic expectation.

It was around this time that news filtered back from Weston that the Virginia Company had issued a second, revised patent to John Peirce, an associate of Weston’s. The new patent, dated February 2, 1620, was issued on the same day that the Virginia Company passed an ordinance defining a “particular” or private plantation and providing greater autonomy to the patent holder.²⁶

The Virginia Company’s decision to liberalize the terms of its patents reflected the reality of the high cost of settlement. After seven decades of overseas enterprise, it had become clear that the cost-per-mariner of a trading voyage was far less than the cost-per-settler of a colonization venture. Plus, an investor was likely to realize a return more quickly and reliably on a trading voyage—even one that took two or three years—than on the trade generated by a colony. If the Virginia Company was going to derive significant profits from licensing or franchising land rights, it needed to make the process of investing in plantations as attractive as possible.

For the Leiden group, the new patent was far preferable, since they would be free to “make orders, ordinances and constitutions” for their settlements and to draw commercial benefit from their industry on the land and from trade with Indians.²⁷ They accepted Weston’s recommendation to operate under the new patent.

IN MARCH 1620, while the Leiden group was making final preparations for the voyage to Virginia, a new entity emerged from the reorganization of the Virginia Company. As Bradford wrote, a number of “Honourable Lords” split off from the company and obtained a large grant of land from the king “for the more northerly parts” of America. One of the lords was Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and the new group was essentially a reconfiguration of the Plymouth Company, which had long lain dormant after the failure of the Popham Colony. It would have jurisdiction over the region of America that lay between the 40th and 48th parallels, north of the Virginia Company’s territory, and extended all the way from the Atlantic to the Pacific.²⁸ This was the land that Captain John Smith had first identified as promising territory.

After his departure from Jamestown in 1609, Smith had established himself as one of the leading advocates of England’s fledgling colonies in Virginia. But if Smith hoped this would win him passage back into the favor of the Virginia Company’s leaders, he was mistaken. By 1614, it was clear to him that they would not be sending him back to Jamestown, and so he set his sights on north Virginia, which had been largely ignored since Raleigh Gilbert and his fellow Popham colonists sailed away from Sagadahoc, leaving Fort St. George to crumble into the ground. He managed to raise enough money from London investors to fund a two-ship venture to the region of present-day Maine.²⁹ Arriving in late April of 1614, Smith and his crew of eighteen men set about fishing and fur-trading. They caught nearly 60,000 fish. While the mariners hauled in their catch, Smith went ashore with eight others and accumulated 11,000 skins, predominantly beaver, through trade with Indians. All the while, Smith observed, measured, wrote, and mapped the territory, just as he had in Virginia. And when the fishing and fur trading was done, he sailed one of the ships for England laden with a cargo he valued at fifteen hundred pounds.³⁰

Back in England, Smith took the opportunity to meet with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, who had lost none of his enthusiasm for American ventures. Together, Smith and Gorges, with the support of a few of Smith’s friends and earlier supporters, developed a plan for a colony that would be sustained by the catching and processing of fish.³¹ In March 1615, Smith set sail once again with great hopes. These were soon dashed, however, when he was captured by French pirates and held hostage for three months on board a warship, only winning his freedom after effecting a daring escape. But if he did not establish a colony, he did manage to leave his mark on the land. In a book he wrote while in captivity, A Description of New England, he gave a memorable name to the region variously known as North Virginia and Norumbega. As the title makes clear, he christened the area “New England.”

Smith’s inspiration was Drake’s Nova Albion, on the far side of the continent. As he explained: “New England is that part of America in the Ocean Sea opposite to Nova Albion in the South Sea; discovered by the most memorable Sir Francis Drake in his voyage about the world. In regard whereto this is styled New England, being in the same latitude.”³²

In his descriptions, Smith took issue with the old view, which had taken root in the wake of the failed Popham Colony, that New England was not suited to the English. Rather he suggested that the region was like home in many ways, and even better. Above all, he made an impassioned argument for its commercial promise.

As well as his resonant prose, Smith created a remarkable map of New England that arguably surpassed his efforts with Virginia. Produced by Simon van de Passe, who completed the portraits of Pocahontas and Sir Thomas Smythe, the map carries a portrait of Smith himself along with a self-aggrandizing legend: “Admiral of New England.” Beautifully groomed and confident, Smith gazes upon a bucolic landscape dotted with pleasant trees, hills, and tidy dwellings. No Indians appear, and the only wild beast looks more like a housecat than a leopard. The map is crisscrossed with loxodromes, webs of lines that seem to reduce the vastness of the ocean and connect America with England. This is a country tamed and ready for colonization.

Smith had hoped to use this marvelous book to promote his own venture. But when that failed, he approached the Leiden group, offering his services as an adviser and guide. It was his last hope of returning to the New World. But despite his vast knowledge and expertise, the separatists said “thanks, but no thanks.”

They explained that it would be cheaper to buy his book than to hire him. Smith later scoffed at their “humourous ignorances” which subsequently caused them a “wonderful deal of misery” and could have been avoided if they had simply consulted with him instead of “saying my books and maps were much better cheap to teach them, than myself.”³³

BUT IF THE Leiden group said no to Smith, they said yes to a new proposal from Thomas Weston. Until the creation of the Council of New England, as the new group led by Gorges was called, they were all set on a private plantation in Virginia. But Weston sniffed a good business opportunity in this newly named area. For a start, the region, as detailed by Smith, was appealing to him, largely because “of [the] present profit to be made by the fishing that was found in that country.” Also, it seems, Weston believed that the new council would offer less scrutiny of his activities. He therefore urged the Leiden group that “it was best for them to go” to New England, rather than to Jamestown as they had originally planned.³⁴

As they reflected on this new opportunity, the Leiden group considered the pros and cons. On the negative side, they would not have easy access to an established community of English people who knew the ways of the place. On the positive side, however, they would not face any of the religious restrictions that the Jamestown governors might choose to enforce on them.³⁵

Eventually, they reached a consensus. “The generality was swayed” toward New England, wrote Bradford, even though they did not yet have permission from the Council for New England.³⁶ Weston assured them he would take care of this technicality and would be able to secure the patent for them.^*

As the days of summer passed in 1620, Cushman and Carver negotiated their final deal with Weston. The contract called for joint ownership of the colony for seven years. All profits would go into a common fund, from which the settlers’ expenses would be paid. At the end of the seven-year period, the profits would be divided based on the number of shares held. One share cost ten pounds, purchasable with cash or provisions. Every settler over sixteen years of age received one share for the payout.³⁷

Everything was agreed. Then, at the last minute, in a brazen act of brinkmanship, Weston inserted two modifications to the contract that significantly changed the nature of the settlers’ commitment. First, land and houses would be included in the calculation of profit. This removed a key incentive for the settlers, who had expected to have full ownership of the homes they would build and lands they would cultivate. Second, the settlers would be required to work for the company seven days a week—not five days, as they had originally agreed—until the day they finally paid off their debt.

This caused an uproar. Some of the Leiden group threatened to withdraw if the terms were accepted, while one of Weston’s major investors threatened to back out if the new terms were not approved.³⁸ Cushman and Carver accepted the modifications, contending that it was the best deal they could get—and eventually it was signed. But several of the separatists who had agreed to go dropped out, and the final contingent of “saints”—as Bradford called them—now numbered just forty-six. To make up a reasonable community for a colony, they had to recruit many people whom they called “strangers” because they had no connection to the group. Some, like Stephen Hopkins, who had survived the Bermuda tempest and lived for a while in Jamestown, were devout Protestants, travelling with their families. Many others, however, did not necessarily have sympathy with the Leiden group’s religious goals.

Finally, on September 6, 1620—seven weeks after the planned sailing date—the Mayflower, a “sweet” merchant ship previously used to transport wine—at last departed on what William Bradford memorialized as its “waighty voyage” for America.³⁹ Two months later, on November 11, 1620, the ship was brought to anchor in what is today known as Provincetown harbor.⁴⁰

The Pilgrims settled at Plymouth under the challenging terms set by Weston and his associates. Weston himself sold his stake in the American enterprise after just a year, later serving as a member of Jamestown’s House of Burgesses and embarking on a series of other ventures with various degrees of success.⁴¹ After five years, the Pilgrims renegotiated their debt with a smaller group of the original investors, but it still proved so onerous that they did not pay it off completely until 1648.^* By then, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and its capital city of Boston, completely overshadowed the little community of Plymouth as the center of activity in New England. Eventually, in 1691, these two colonies—along with the Province of Maine, the islands of Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket, and (the now-Canadian provinces of) Nova Scotia and New Brunswick—merged to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay.

Although the Pilgrims survived, the colony was never particularly prosperous or profitable. What’s more, Bradford felt that the community had failed in its original purpose. The Pilgrims had planned a kind of socialist endeavor, where land would be communally owned and everyone would contribute their efforts to be shared among all. They had tried hard to make a go of this “common course,” as Bradford called it, hoping to prove the conceit, put forward by Plato and “other ancients,” that “the taking away of property” and “bringing in community into commonwealth” would “make them happy and flourishing; as if they were wiser than God.”

But instead, the plan had bred “confusion and discontent”: young, unmarried men did not want to labor, without recompense, for other men and their families; the stronger and fitter men felt they should get a greater share of the benefits; the “aged and graver” men felt disrespected by being “equalized” with everyone else; and women, who had been pressed into doing chores for the whole of the community, saw their lives as “a kind of slavery.”

By 1623, the experiment proved unworkable; the corn harvest was meager and they did not wish to “languish in misery” any longer. Bradford and his fellow leaders debated how they could improve the yield of their harvests. They settled on a program of private ownership and each family was assigned their own parcel of land. This approach “had good success, for it made all hands very industrious.”

Bradford did not lament what he called the “corruption” of his fellow settlers, by which he meant their desire to work for their own benefit, because “all men have this corruption in them.” He concluded that “God in His wisdom saw another course fitter for them.”⁴²

That course could well be called the American Dream.