1623-1628
The Katharine is bound for Virginia in
mid-November, and the Gorges party returns to Wessagusset by land. They march
off without Adam Trane, a deep disappointment to his master, who believes his
servant has run away.
Adam is aboard Katharine, locked in the embrace
of Recompense West. – Recompense’s owner is shipping her to Jamestown, where
planters will pay a pretty penny for a hard-working girl. – When the nights
turn frigid, the couple go ashore with members of Katharine’s crew and
bed down in the house of a fisherman, an old sinner marooned among the saints.
On November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, the seamen are
roistering in the fisherman’s house, making a great fire in the cold weather.
Adam and his Eve are having a glorious time beside the warm hearth, Adam
throwing on more and more fuel. The fire breaks out of the chimney and ignites
the thatch. The blaze swiftly consumes four houses and comes close to burning
down the brethren’s common store.
Four days later, Adam slinks out of
Plymouth, taking the path back to Wessagusset with a native carrying messages
to Gorges.
When Recompense West flees the inferno, she’s rescued
by one of the saints. Brother Garrick Stone pays his pretty penny for the girl,
who is indentured to him for seven years, a long and terrible trial for the
godly covenanter.
A brutal winter sees the Wessagusset settlers battling
sickness and boredom. Robert Gorges is in failing health, his gentlemen
companions stricken with ennui. In spring 1624, Gorges and his friends return
to England, leaving the settlement in the care of Reverend Morrell and his
assistant. Like Blaxton, Morrell is charmed by the natural wonders of New
England, but less approving of the country’s inhabitants:
“They’re wondrous cruel, strangely base and vile
Quickly displeased and hardly reconciled.
Themselves they warm, their ungirt limbs they rest.
In straw, and houses like to sties.”
In spring 1625, Morrell sails back to England. Some
settlers go to Virginia, while others move to better locations around
Massachusetts Bay. William Blaxton stays at Wessagusset as agent of the Gorges
family and shepherd of the remaining colonists.
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| North Carolina Algonquins eating. Engraving by Theodor de Bry after a watercolour painted by John White |
Imagining Boston -- 12
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