An Old Planter and a "Queene of her Owne Countrey" on Noddles Island

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

Like most settlers, Nat and Thomas Steele aren’t farmers, and those who are realize that the peninsula can support only the barest subsistence crops. Nat becomes a small trader, buying directly from ships bringing settlers and supplies and selling to townsfolk and farmers spreading along the valleys of the Charles and the Mystic.

Nat frequently crosses the bay to Noddles Island, bailiwick of Samuel Maverick, an “old planter” who came with Robert Gorges. Maverick, a well-educated man of twenty-eight, keeps a lively court behind a stockade armed with four “murtherers” in what is now East Boston.

 

The most successful trader on the coast, Maverick owns three African slaves, one a female said to have been “a Queene of her Owne Countrey.”

 

Portrait of an African Slavewoman
Attr. Annibale Carraci 1580

 

Stung by onerous taxes and a governing council’s attempts to monopolize Boston’s trade, Nat joins Maverick and other merchants who fight tooth and nail to keep their market free.

 

From this scrappy beginning will come the great trading house of Steele & Sons, reaching across the oceans from Boston to the China Sea and beyond. – Spanning the centuries, too, to the boardroom of The Houqua Fund at 60 State Street, Boston, twenty-first century venture capitalists with all the dash and daring of their forbears who came first to these shores.

Thomas becomes a zealous watchdog for Governor Winthrop, eager to sniff out sumptuary offenders carrying one slash too many on a sleeve or extravagant needlework embellishing a bonnet.

Old village stocks, Chapeltown, Lancashire, England

 

When the first tavern opens, Thomas is there, a proto-prohibitionist with authority to cut off tipplers at Cole’s, “where he thrusts himself uninvited into a stranger’s company, and if the man calls for more burnt Madeira than he thinks he can soberly bear away, he countermands it and appoints the proportion beyond which the fellow cannot get one drop.”

Nat is on his toes around Thomas, believing his brother will cheerfully see him thrown into the stocks for the simplest error. This doesn’t stop Nat from carousing in the ordinaries or tramping to a mud-walled shack on one of Boston’s hills, where a mother and daughter from London’s Penny Lane have come to get rich in America.

Gin Lane - William Hogarth

 

How 200 Colonists' Perished in the First Wretched Winter in Boston

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

In July 1630, most immigrants quit Salem for Charlestown. Nat and twenty men cross to Shawmut peninsula to begin a settlement sponsored by Isaac Johnson. Thomas starts work as one of Governor Winthrop’s clerks. The move to Charlestown is not propitious, for as the summer heat intensifies, fever and scurvy strike the malnourished settlers.

 

1629 site of "Great House" of John Winthrop in City Square, Boston
 uncovered during the Big Dig

 

On August 31, 1630, her husband at her side, Arbella Johnson breathes her last. Seven days later, Isaac cannot hold back his tears at a meeting of the General Court, where it is ordered that Trimontaine be called “Boston.”

At the same court, an “old planter” is hauled before Governor Winthrop and his assistants. Thomas Morton is found guilty on trumped up charges brought against him by archenemies like John Endicott of Salem. He is sentenced to be put in the bilboes, to have his goods confiscated and his house burned to the ground.

 

Morton sees the smoke rise above Mar-re-Mount from a ship in the bay, where he is incarcerated until his transportation to England. – While Morton waits for the Handmaid to carry him into exile, he begins to pen New English Canaan, which contains a blistering attack on Master Temperwell (Winthrop) and the “sect of cruell Schismaticks.”

Image courtesy: Meet Thomas Morton

 

 



At two in the morning on September 30, Isaac Johnson dies, as much from a broken heart as illness. His last request is to be buried on his property, which is done in a ceremony performed by his old friend, William Blaxton. – Isaac still lies in a corner of his lot, where the first burying ground in Boston was laid out adjoining today’s King’s Chapel.

Encouraged by Blaxton, Winthrop moves from Charlestown in October 1630; by the middle of the month, one hundred and fifty people are living at Boston.

 

John Winthrop, signature - Wikipedia

 

The onset of winter finds settlers crowded into tents and rude shacks, in caves and cellars carved out of snake-infested hillsides. One colonist crawls into an empty barrel, his only protection from the bone-chilling weather.

The mortality that began at Charlestown doesn’t end. Before the wretched winter of 1630/1 is over, two hundred souls perish. Those who survive the northwest gales face starvation as food supplies fail, desperate settlers crawling over frozen mudflats to scrabble for mussels and clams. Some throw themselves on the mercy of the natives, begging food from Chitanawoo and the Massachusett. Strong-and-Bold has borne her share of suffering, and does all she can to help the English.

In a January blizzard, the Steeles watch in horror as their clay-daubed chimney bursts into flames and their house is destroyed. Adam Trane helps them build an “English” wigwam. He takes Nat to the Massachusett hunting grounds, providing the family with a supply of meat. – It’s not enough to save Jeremiah Steele who dies in late January, one of many to lie beside Isaac Johnson in the First Burying Ground.

 



Kings Chapel Burying Ground, Boston - Patricia Drury via Wikipedia



 

How Boston Got it's Name from an Old English Town

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

 

On June 1, while still at sea, Richard Steele’s wife, Mary, goes into labor. Arbella shoots off a piece to stay the Jewel sailing ahead of them. A midwife ferried over from Jewel delivers Mary’s child safely, but within days of landing at Salem, the baby is dead. – One month later, Richard and Mary sail back to England, never to return to America.
 

Five days after the landfall, Nat Steele goes with Isaac Johnson in one of two exploratory parties to Massachusetts Bay. Thomas is in the second boat with Governor Winthrop. – On the voyage from England, Thomas catches the eye of the governor and will in time join Winthrop’s inner circle. – Winthrop’s party rounds Shawmut and heads up the Mystic River. Isaac Johnson orders his boatmen to pull directly for the cove on the north of the peninsula.

 

At the ancient landing place, the solitary Englishman who lives at Shawmut comes to greet them, a tall, thin figure in shabby black clothes. William Blaxton joyfully embraces his friend, Isaac Johnson, who was a fellow student at Emmanuel College, Cambridge. After taking their degrees, both went to Peterborough, where they were made deacon and priest. A month before coming to New England, William attended the wedding of Isaac and Lady Arbella.
 

Striding briskly from one end of Shawmut to the other, William takes Isaac and his party on a tour of his estate. (The entire peninsula is his by a grant under the old New England Council patent.) At the pond below his house, William introduces the newcomers to Chitanawoo and her people, who continue to provide most of the reverend’s material needs.

The Indians prepare a feast of lobsters and venison for the visitors, who sit down to dinner in Blaxton’s house. No sooner do they fall to, than they hear a tremendous hubbub outside, making them grab their weapons.

Blackstone's ("Blaxton") House, artist impression, Edwin Whitefield 1889

 

Twelve Massachusett warriors stand there, and at their head a stocky, powerfully-built fellow in a renegade’s dress. The man wears deerskin leggings and moccasins, a Spanish cuirass and a battered French helmet. He has sword and snaphance but his weapon of choice is an Indian war club he carries, its crescent shaft embellished with mother of pearl. – He is twenty-five-year-old Adam Trane, come from the interior where he went to trade for furs. Standing next to Adam is Jacques Petit, only sixteen but already a giant like his father, half-French, half-Indian.

That night, while Johnson sleeps in the reverend’s house, Nat and the others camp below the stars. Their bivouac is under the spreading branches of a great elm, one of few trees on the meadow below the hill. Nat sits up late with Adam, listening to tales that include a report of “Merry Mount.” Thomas Morton is once more in residence at his trading post; now biding his time to see what mis-rule the newest band of saints will bring to Mine Host.

Great Elm on Boston Common, 1886,  Bacon's Dictionary

Nat and Johnson spend two days exploring the 780-acre peninsula, impressed by the headland’s strong natural defenses, especially the Neck where a land-based assault can be repelled at the narrows. Equally impressed, too, by excellent springs at Blaxton’s house and elsewhere.
 

Just before they leave, Isaac and Nat are with Blaxton on the shelf of land, where the village of Sha-um-ut stood before the Great Sickness.

 

“When will you return to Trimontaine?” William asks.

 

"Trimontaine" - 1836, Samuel Lancaster Gerry/James Burt /Bostonian Society

“Tri-mon-taine . . .?” Isaac repeats. He looks at the men setting the shallop’s sails. “The boat helper’s place . . .” he muses.

William knows immediately what’s on Isaac’s mind. “St. Botolph’s Town.”

“Yes, my friend, not French ‘Trimontaine’ – English ‘Boston.’”

“Lady Arbella will like that,” William says, knowing Arbella’s delight in Old Bostonstown.

“If only she was here to give her blessing.”

“Pray it won’t be long before she’s well.”

“God grant it, William. I will bring Arbella to our new Boston.”

St. Botolplh's Church, Boston, England - LOC/ppmsc.08031

 

Imgining Boston - 21

"We Shall be as a City on a Hill" - The Modell of a Gentle Puritan

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

The Steeles are sailing in the Arbella, flagship of eleven vessels with nine hundred people bound for New England. Nine days after weighing anchor, Arbella and three ships are riding off the Isle of Wight, waiting for seven vessels still outfitting for the voyage. On April 8, 1630, at six in the morning, Arbella sets sail, followed by three consorts, Talbot, Ambrose and Jewel in scattered formation.

Arbella - replica postcard  Boston Public Library 

On the second day out, Arbella’s decks are cleared for action against Dunkirk freebooters, but the ships sighted are friendly. On the edge of the ocean, they run into a gale that leaves so many groaning in their cabins the first Sabbath at sea passes without a service. In May, they’re battered ten days in a row by ferocious storms that blow out sails, create mayhem among animals tethered on the pitching decks and strike terror into the people below. On June 12, 1630, after seventy-six days at sea Arbella drops anchor off Cape Ann, where the first to go ashore gather “a store of fine strawberries growing wild in the Promised Land.”

On the voyage, the Steeles live at close quarters with leaders of the expedition: Isaac Johnson and his wife, Lady Arbella, sister of the Earl of Lincoln and highest-born passenger in the fleet; Thomas Dudley, deputy-governor; and John Winthrop, the governor, destined to serve four terms as head of Massachusetts Bay Colony.

 

John Winthrop - Artist unknown

 

At forty-two, Winthrop is considered by some to be too elderly and too gentle for the huge task ahead. He is lord of Groton Manor, West Suffolk, part of a confiscated monastery bought in 1544 by his grandfather, Adam. Born in 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, Winthrop attended Trinity College at Cambridge; he later studied law, gaining admission to

Gray's Inn, London  1677

Gray’s Inn, London in 1613. A justice of the peace, he got an appointment as an attorney in His Majesty’s Court of Wards and Liveries, a “rotten bench making money out of the misfortunes of widows and orphans.” Winthrop took the post because of diminishing income from Groton Manor, eventually relinquishing it in disgust at the corruption he encountered.

He was married at seventeen to sixteen-year-old Mary Forth, who died eleven years later, leaving six children. His second wife died on the first anniversary of their wedding. A year later at thirty, he married Margaret Tyndal, a gracious woman and the great love of his life. They have eight living children, seven sons and a daughter; three sons, including his first-born Henry, sail with him to New England. Margaret, who is expecting a child, remains at Groton Manor with the rest of the family, planning to follow John after the birth of the baby.

It was as a student at Cambridge  – “where the boys had a woman who was from chamber to chamber in the nighttime” – that Winthrop began his intense devotion to the Puritan ideal. He comes to New England with a profound sense of stewardship, seeking a Modell of Christian Charity:

“For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us . . . We must delight in each other, make each other’s conditions our own . . . The Lord will be our God, and . . . make us a praise and a glory, that men shall say of later plantations, ‘May the Lord make it like that of New England.’ ”

 

 

Modell of Christian Charity
New York Historical Society



Imagining Boston - 20

"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





"Bishops, Bailiffs and Bastards Bringing Ruin to England"

The Beaver
1629 - 1634

Landing at London in March 1629, Nathaniel Steele considers himself the luckiest man alive in England. Six months ago, Nat was ship’s factor in the Barbican, a bark running down to the Azores, when Sallee pirates captured the vessel. But for a hefty ransom, the twenty-three-year-old Londoner faced a life of slavery on the Barbary Coast.

Nat steps nimbly between the harlots in Cock Lane. His animated eyes pick out child cutpurses and footpads laying siege to Smithfield Market. A miasmic mist shrouds the grinding mills on the Fleet, a rank waterway adrift with offal cast into it by Smithfield’s butchers. Daily, too, the Stygian waters surrender three or four bodies disposed of like so many human beasts.

 

Cock Lane, near Smithfield Market (19th century)

 

Nat makes his way up Turnmill Street toward Clerkenwell Green, where the Knights of St. John built their priory in the 12^th century. The convent of St. Mary stood on the opposite side of the green. In 1381, Wat Tyler’s followers beheaded the Prior of St. John and put the vast pile to the torch. Two centuries later the nunnery was confiscated and its occupants driven off. Clerkenwell continued as a papist refuge, until three Catholics were hanged, drawn and quartered on the green.

Peasants' Revolt (Death of Wat Tyler) - Jean Froissart

In Nat’s day, the district has gained new notoriety as a haven for Puritan sympathizers. At Coleman Street just to the south, Puritans congregate at the Star tavern and in the Church of St. Stephen, where John Davenport, a charismatic young minister, walks a fine line between pulpit and prison.

Nat’s family is waiting to greet him at their house in St. John’s Lane. His father, Jeremiah Steele, fifty-two, is a cloth merchant and haberdasher. His mother, Agnes Steele, forty-five, is the daughter of a London apothecary. Nat is the middle of three sons. Richard, twenty-seven, works in the family business and is recently married. Thomas is twenty-two, a graduate of Cambridge University, who serves as a clerk in Clifford’s Inn.

Amid the joy at his homecoming, Nat discovers that the blow dealt his family by the Sallee pirates is disastrous. Jeremiah Steele was part owner of Barbican, the loss of the ship and payment of his son’s ransom burdening him with debt. A calamity compounded by the rot in England itself, where King Charles I believes he has a divine right to plunder every subject’s purse.

 

Charles 1 (1600-1649) - Sir Anthony van Dyck

Jeremiah and Agnes Steele are Puritans, with strong convictions and strong distaste for Anglican ceremonies and ritualism that tend toward Rome. Their sons share their faith in varying degrees. Thomas is most fervent, while Richard and Nat hold a middle course, accepting the tenets of Calvinism but remaining in good standing at the parish of St. Mary. Their presence in St. Mary’s epitomizes the hope of reforming the Church from within and checking the excesses of “bishops, bailiffs and bastards bringing ruin to England.”

 

Imagining Boston - 18

Magistrate John Endicott Seeks to Destroy the Joy in a Young Sinner's Heart

The Beaver
1623-1628

One year later, Morton’s enemies find an excuse to destroy him. He has taught his Massachusett hunters how to use firearms and supplied some Indians with weapons. Bradford uses this as pretext to accuse Morton of gunrunning, expressly forbidden by the Council’s charter. When Long Tom contemptuously dismisses the charges, Plymouth orders Myles Standish to march against Mar-re-Mount.

Matchlock musket

Standish and his force chance upon Morton at Wessagusset and take him prisoner. Morton watches soberly as “Captain Shrimp” and his stalwarts celebrate their easy victory. When his captors lie drunk and snoring, Long Tom escapes and races back to his plantation.

Adam is one of two men at Mar-re-Mount. The other man is a craven who flees on hearing that the Plymouth band is marching against them. Adam and Morton load four falconets and prepare enough powder and shot to pepper Captain Shrimp’s men like geese on the wing.

Waiting for the attack, Adam fortifies himself with sips of Amontillado. When the moment comes, he reels out of a doorway, running into the sword of a Separatist and slicing open his nose. It’s the only blood spilled in the Battle of Mar-re-Mount. Morton sees the futility of trying to blast his way out of a hopeless situation and asks quarter. – Transported to England to face charges of arming the Indians, nothing is proven against Long Tom. He soon returns to Nature’s Masterpiece, ever a thorn in the side of the righteous.



In September 1628, Adam witnesses the final blow against “Merry-Mount.” John Endicott, magistrate of Naumkeag (Salem), orders that the Maypole be hurled to the ground. Endicott re-christens the polluted spot, Mt. Dagon. – It was after the riotous celebrations to this idol of the Philistines that Samson pulled down their temple.

Endicott delivers a sermon on the meaning of Mt. Dagon, but Adam sees the whole affair differently.

Samson in Dagon Temple - Gustave Dore

“You can throw down a Maypole, magistrate. It’s dead wood fit for a bonfire, nothing more. You can stop a merry man dancing a jig. You can’t kill the joy in his heart.”

Magistrate Endicott gives the Philistine a look so black it’s enough to blight the spirit of the merriest lad.


John Endicott

 

****

One evening in fall 1628, the lone occupant of Shawmut watches a group of people head across the Neck toward his habitation. It’s eighteen months since William Blaxton settled on the lower slopes of the hill overlooking the Back Bay, his house built with help from Chickataubut’s people, his apple orchard beginning to flourish. Through the cold and ice of the previous winter, he barely noticed a strapping young fellow dash through the snow to bring him sustenance. – Jacques Petit was ordered not to disturb the recluse but leave food for him and run back home.

Now he sees Jacques approaching with a group of nine men and women and five children. William recognizes Chitanawoo, walking proudly at the head of the small band. She orders a halt next to a pond filled with frogs, until now William’s only companions. Leaving others to set up the wigwams, Chitanawoo heads up the hill to Blaxton’s house.

“No man should live alone,” Strong-and-Bold says simply.

Chitanawoo, last sachem of Shawmut, has come home.

Map of Boston 1775, showing Boston Neck (lower left)



Imagining Boston - 17

How the first Englishman came to settle beside a Sparkling Spring at Sha-um-ut

The Beaver
1623-1628

Reverend Blaxton attends the Mar-re-Mount celebration, the ancient gods holding no fears for him, classical scholar that he is. Since his arrival, Morton has been a regular guest at Wessagusset, often staying overnight with the reverend.

Wapilanee is at the Maypole, with Chickataubut and Chitanawoo. Their visit marks a high point in relations between the Massachusett and Morton, who has gone a long way toward dispelling the notion that all Englishmen are Cut-Throats. Chitanawoo has mellowed, too, especially touched by Blaxton’s gentle wooing of Wapilanee.

 

 The revels at Mar-re-Mount:
Image courtesy: Meet Thomas Morton

 

In the midst of the revels at Mar-re-Mount, a heinous crime is committed that shatters lives and threatens a bloodbath.

A party of sailors from the trader Prophet Daniel is at the Maypole, including Thrush, a pockmarked brute with a cropped ear, scum of London’s Rotherhithe Wharf. When Wapilanee and Jacques Petit go to fetch lobsters impounded in a rock pool, Thrush follows the pair and grabs the young woman. Thirteen-year-old Jacques fights desperately to save Wapilanee but is smashed to the ground.

Thrush drags the girl down the beach to Squantum Head, where he rapes her. When he goes to assault Wapilanee a second time, she breaks free and flees toward the end of the promontory. Wapilanee, loveliest of the lasses in beaver coats, leaps to her death.
 

Squantum, Massachusetts
Image courtesy: Meet Thomas Morton

There is an uproar at Mar-re-Mount. Adam Trane diffuses the crisis, swiftly mustering his warrior friends and plunging into the wilderness after Thrush. They catch him on the long, narrow neck to Shawmut and summarily execute him. His right hand and mutilated ear are taken as evidence the deed is done.

No life is more shattered than Reverend Blaxton’s. For days, William sits alone at the spot that to this time is known as Chapel Rock, mourning a flower that was his and is now lost forever.

In May 1627, William asks Adam to perform one last service for him. Together, they pack up the reverend’s books and other belongings and take cuttings from apple trees in his orchard at Wessagusset. Everything is loaded aboard a shallop that sails to the landing place at Sha-um-ut. Blaxton settles down alone beside the sparkling spring where his nymph danced.

 

Frog Pond, Boston Common, 19th century - NY Public Library via Wikipedia

Imagining Boston - 16 

Mine Host of Merry Mount Rejoices with Lasses in Beaver Coats

The Beaver
1623-1628

Adam Trane is present at the rebellion, his huzzahs loudest of all, though his own servitude is not harsh. Adam is twenty-one now, still a servant in name to Blaxton. The young ruffian has long gone his own way but does his duty, hunting and trading furs for his master. In the winters, Blaxton teaches him the rudiments of reading and writing, though Adam prefers the chatter in the wigwams to the mysteries of Homer and Pliny.

Adam becomes one of Mar-re-Mount’s liveliest adventurers. Long Tom admires the young man’s craft as woodsman and makes him a trusted lieutenant. Mar-re-Mount’s trader-settlers prosper, their Indian allies serving as hunters and guides in the quest for beaver, the Indian women gathering sassafras and sarsaparilla.

Wampum trade beads

At one time, five ships crowd the small bay off Squantum Head, their masters coming to trade with Morton.

The Plymouth brethren grow beside themselves with envy. Next to religious zealotry, their great purpose is to gain wealth and pay off loans made to the settlement by London investors. The Separatists also fear the freedoms in play at Mar-re-Mount, a mecca for non-believers.

“Lord of Misrule,” Governor Bradford dubs Morton. “His acolytes get much by trading with the Indians, but just as soon spend their gains in drinking wine in great excess – as much as £10’s worth in a single morning.”

Late April 1627, Adam and other knights of misrule prepare for the wildest spree yet. The tallest pine in a nearby forest is felled and carried to the summit of Mar-re-Mount. Garlanded with spring flowers, the eighty-foot spar is topped with a magnificent pair of antler horns.

The Revels at Mar-re-Mont  Image courtesy: Meet Thomas Morton

No helpers are more eager than the natives invited to celebrate the ancient revels of May. Morton playfully styles himself  “Mine Host of Merry Mount,” and composes a drinking song for his guests:
      

     “Give to the nymph that’s free from scorn
       No Irish stuff nor Scotch over-worn.
       Lasses in beaver coats, come away,
       You’ll be welcome to us night and day.
       Then drink and be merry, merry, merry boys,
       Let all you delight be in Hymen’s joys;
       Io! to Hymen, now the day is come,
      About the merry Maypole take a room.”

Imagining Boston -- 15 

How Thomas Morton, America's first frontiersman, struck a Blow for Freedom

The Beaver
1623-1628

 

In summer 1625, a group of planters led by Richard Wollaston arrive at Wessagusset with forty servants. They settle three miles to the north at Passonagesset, which offers better access to Massachusetts Bay. “Mt. Wollaston,” they call the plantation in honor of their captain but the real leader is Thomas Morton, born a sportsman, bred a lawyer, ingrained an adventurer. 

Thomas Morton  (reputed portrait)

 Long Tom has visited these shores before, as a member of the settlement financed by Weston. His three months in New England in 1622 left an indelible impression of the country: “The more I looked, the more I liked it. In mine eye ’twas Nature’s Masterpiece, her chiefest magazine of all. If this land be not rich, then is the whole world poor!”

Morton found the Massachusett Indians “more full of humanity than the Christians. The more savages the better quarter, the more Christians the worser quarter I had. These people lead the more happy and freer life, being void of care which torments the minds of many Christians.”

 

Secotan warriors in North Carolina.
Watercolour painted by John White in 1585.
British Museum, London via Wikipedia

 In many ways, Thomas Morton is the first American frontiersman, a bold and independent-thinker with contempt for bigots. Long Tom’s enemies will repeatedly banish him from the colony. Always he returns to a land he loves with passion.

 

Mount Wollaston (circa 1840)

In spring 1626, Wollaston decides that he can do better in Virginia and leaves with fifteen servants. He sells their indentures and sends word for his second-in-command, Rasdall, to bring fifteen more.

 

When only ten servants remain and the plantation is threatened with extinction, Thomas Morton strikes the first blow for freedom in New England:

“Will you be transported to Virginia to be sold like slaves or will you stay at Mar-re-Mount, my lads? Lusty, brave and free as the air you breathe?”

A great huzzah seals Long Tom’s declaration of independence and the birth of Mar-re-Mount, as he re-christens Mt. Wollaston.

 

Imagining Boston -- 14