"Cract-Braines" Coming to Plant a Colony in New England

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

In September 1629, Thomas attends a lecture at Coleman Street by Isaac Johnson on General Considerations for Planting New England. Johnson, a wealthy landowner of Boston, Lincolnshire, founded the Massachusetts Bay Company with seven others, who have agreed to leave for America with their families by March 1, 1630.

 

Johnson is in London to drum up support for the colony. His visit coincides with St. Bartholomew’s Fair at Smithfield, already five centuries old and England’s greatest national entertainment.

 

Last Day of Old Smithfield Market 1855  London

 

“Here’s the Woman of Babylon, the Devil and the Pope.

And here’s the little girl just going on the rope.

Here’s Dives and Lazarus and the World’s Creation;

Here’s the Tall Dutchwoman, the likes not in the nation.

Here’s Jacob Hall that does so jump it, jump it;

Sound trumpet, sound trumpet for silver spoon and fork,

Come, here’s your dainty pig and pork!”

                             Wit and Drollery (1682)

Thomas takes his parents to meet Johnson at the Star, where Jeremiah and Agnes are swayed by arguments for the new colony. At fifty-two, it’s difficult for Jeremiah to consider abandoning London, and he suggests that their sons go over first.

 

Agnes Steele won’t hear of breaking up her close-knit family. It has been no small work to bring three boys to manhood in a city regularly visited by pestilence and teeming with the wicked and godless.

River Fleet, London

Agnes acknowledges they’ll face unknown dangers in the wilderness of America, but she welcomes the promise of New England. They can make a fresh start not plagued by debt or living without grace.

On March 20, 1630, the Steeles join other emigrants at Southampton, where Rev. John Cotton preaches a farewell sermon, God’s Promise to His Plantations. He takes the text of II Samuel 7:10: “Moreover I will appoint a place for my people Israel, and I will plant them, that they may dwell in a place of their own, and move no more.” Poignantly, Cotton calls on the settlers “not to forget old England, the wombe that bore you and gave you sucke.”

 

On the Southampton docks, idlers watching the families embark have only one word for them: “cract-braines.”

The Puritan 1899 Augustus Saint- Gaudens

 

Imagining Boston - 19