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
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