his death, desired them to pray for him, That he might go to the Englishman's God in Heaven. And besides the assistance of Squanto, they had also the help of another Indian, called Hobbamok, who continued faithful unto the English interests as long as he lived; though he sometimes went in danger of his life among his countrymen for that fidelity. So they jogged on till the day twelvemonth after their first arrival; when there now arrived unto them a good number more of their old friends from Holland, for the strengthening of their new Plantation; but inasmuch as they brought not a sufficient stock of provisions with them, they rather weakened it, than strengthened it.

If Peter Martyr could magnifie the Spaniards, of whom he reports, They led a miserable life for three days together with parched grain of maize only, and that not unto satiety; what shall I say of our Englishmen, who would have thought a little parched Indian Corn a mighty feast? But they wanted it, not only three days together; no, for two or three months together, they had no kind of Corn among them: such was the scarcity, accompanied with the disproportion of the inhabitants to the provisions. However, Peter Martyr's conclusion may be ours: With their miseries this people opened a way to those new lands, and afterwards other men came to inhabit them with ease, in respect of the calamities which those men have suffered. They were indeed very often upon the very point of starving; but in their extremity the God of Heaven always furnished them with some sudden reliefs; either by causing some vessels of strangers occasionally to look in upon them, or by putting them into a way to catch fish in some convenient quantities, or by some other surprizing accidents; for which they rendered unto Heaven the solemn thanks of their souls. They kept in such good working case, that besides their progress in building, and planting, and fishing, they formed a sort of a fort, wherein they kept a nightly watch for their security against any treachery of the Indians, being thereunto awakened by an horrible massacre, which the Indians lately made upon several hundreds of the English in Virginia.

§ 2. In one of the first Summers after their sitting down at Plymouth, a terrible drought threatened the ruin of all their summer's husbandry. From about the middle of May to the middle of July, an extream hot sun beat upon their fields, without any rain, so that all their corn began to wither and languish, and some of it was irrecoverably parched up. In this distress they set apart a day for fasting and prayer, to deprecate the calamity that might bring them to fasting through famine; in the morning of which day there was no sign of any rain; but before the evening the sky was overcast with clouds, which went not away without such easie, gentle, and yet plentiful showers, as revived a great part of their decayed corn, for a comfortable harvest. The Indians themselves took notice of this answer given from heaven to the supplications of this devout people; and one of them said, "Now I see that the Englishman's God is a good

God; for he hath heard you, and sent you rain, and that without such tempest and thunder as we use to have with our rain; which after our Powawing for it, breaks down the corn; whereas your corn stands whole and good still; surely, your God is a good God." The harvest which God thus gave to this pious people, caused them to set apart another day for solemn Thanksgiving to the glorious Hearer of Prayers!

§ 3. There was another most wonderful preservation vouchsafed by God unto this little knot of Christians. One Mr. Weston, a merchant of good note, interested at first in the Plymouth design, afterwards deserted it; and in the year 1622 sent over two ships, with about sixty men, to begin a plantation in the Massachuset-Bay. These beginners being well refreshed at Plymouth, travelled more northward unto a place known since by the name of Weymouth; where these Westonians, who were Church of England-men, did not approve themselves like the Plymotheans, a pious, honest, industrious people; but followed such bad courses, as had like to have brought a ruin upon their neighbours, as well as themselves. Having by their idleness brought themselves to penury, they stole corn from the Indians, and many other ways provoked them; although the Governour of Plymouth writ them his very sharp disapprobation of their proceedings. To satisfie the exasperated Salvages, divers of the thieves were stockt and whipt, and one of them at last put to death by this miserable company; which did no other service than to afford an occasion for a fable to the roguish Hudibras, for all accommodation was now too late. The Indians far and near entred into a conspiracy to cut off these abusive English; and lest the inhabitants of Plymouth should revenge that excision of their countrymen, they resolved upon the murther of them also. In pursuance of this plot, Captain Standish, the commander of the militia of Plymouth, lodging on a night with two or three men in an Indian house, the Indians proposed that they might begin the execution of their malice by the assassination of the Captain, as soon as he should be fallen asleep. However, the watchful Providence of God so ordered it, that the Captain could not sleep all that night; and so they durst not meddle with him. Thus was the beginning of the plot put by: but the whole plot came another way to be discovered and prevented. Massasoit, the southern Sachim, falling sick, the Governour of Plymouth desired a couple of gentlemen, whereof one was that good man, Mr. Winslow, to visit this poor Sachim: whom after their long journey they found lying at the point of death with a crue of hellish Powaws, using their ineffectual spells and howls about him to recover him. Upon the taking of some English physick, he presently revived; and thus regaining his lost health, the fees he paid his English doctor were, a confession of the plot among several nations of the Indians, to destroy the English. He said, that they had in vain solicited him to enter into that bloody combination; but his advice was, that the Governour of Plymouth should immediately take off the principal actors

in this business, whereupon the rest being terrifyed, would soon desist. There was a concurrence of many things to confirm the truth of this information; wherefore Captain Standish took eight resolute men with him to the Westonian Plantation; where, pretending to trade with the Indians, divers of the conspirators began to treat him in a manner very insolent. The Captain, and his little army of eight men, (reader, allow them for their courage to be called so,) with a prodigious resolution, presently killed some of the chief among these Indians, while the rest, after a short combate, ran before him as fast as their legs could carry them; nevertheless, in the midst of the skirmishes, an Indian youth ran to the English, desiring to be with them; and declaring that the Indians waited but for their finishing two canoos, to have surprized the ship in the harbour, and have massacred all the people; which had been finished, if the Captain had not arrived among them just in the nick of time when he did: and an Indian spy detained at Plymouth, when he saw the Captain return from this expedition, with the head of a famous Indian in his hand, then with a fallen and frighted countenance acknowledged the whole mischief intended by the Indians against the English. Releasing this fellow, they sent him to the Sachim of the Massachusets, with advice of what he must look for, in case he committed any hostility upon the subjects of the King of England; whereof there was this effect, that not only that Sachim hereby terrified, most humbly begged for peace, and pleaded his ignorance of his men's intentions; but the rest of the Indians, under the same terror, withdrew themselves to live in the unhealthful swamps, which proved mortal to many of them. One of the Westonians was endeavouring to carry unto Plymouth a report of the straits and fears which were come upon them, and this man losing his way, saved his life; taking a wrong track, he escaped the hands of the two Indians, who went on hunting after him; however e're he reached Plymouth, care had been already taken for these wretched Westonians by the earlier and fuller communications of Massasoit. So was the peace of Plymouth preserved, and so the Westonian plantation broke up, went off, and came to nothing; although 'twas much wished by the holy Robinson, that some of the poor heathen had been converted before any of them had been slaughtered.

§ 4. A certain gentleman [if nothing in the following story contradict that name] was employed in obtaining from the Grand Council of Plymouth and England, a Patent in the name of these planters for a convenient quantity of the country, where the providence of God had now disposed them. This man, speaking one word for them, spake two for himself: and surreptitiously procured the patent in his own name, reserving for himself and his heirs an huge tract of the land; and intending the Plymotheans to hold the rest as tenants under him. Hereupon he took on board many passengers with their goods; but having sailed no further than the Downs, the ship sprang a leak; and besides this disaster, which

alone was enough to have stopt the voyage, one strand of their cable was accidentally cut; by which means it broke in a stress of wind; and they were in extream danger of being wrecked upon the sands. Having with much cost recruited their loss, and encreased the number of their passengers, they put out again to sea; but after they had got half way, one of the saddest and longest storms that had been known since the days of the Apostle Paul, drove them home to England again, with a vessel well nigh torn to pieces, though the lives of the people, which were above an hundred, mercifully preserved. This man, by all his tumbling backward and forward, was by this time grown so sick of his patent, that he vomited it up; he assigned it over to the company, but they afterwards obtained another, under the umbrage whereof they could now more effectually carry on the affairs of their new colony. The passengers went over afterwards in another vessel; and quickly after that another vessel of passengers also arrived in the country: namely, in the year 1623. Among these passengers were divers worthy and useful men, who were come to seek the welfare of this little Israel; though at their coming they were as diversly affected as the rebuilders of the Temple at Jerusalem: some were grieved when they saw how bad the circumstances of their friends were, and others were glad that they were no worse.

5. The immature death of Mr. Robinson in Holland, with many ensuing disasters, hindred a great part of the English congregation at Leyden from coming over to the remnant here separated from their brethren. Hence it was, that although this remnant of that church were blessed with an elder so apt to teach, that he attended all the other works of a minister; yet they had not a pastor to dispense the sacraments among them, till the year 1629, when one Mr. Ralph Smith undertook the pastoral charge of this holy flock. But long before that, namely, in the year 1624, the adventurers in England, with whom this company held a correspondence, did send over unto them a minister, who did them no manner of good; but by his treacherous and mischievous tricks, at last utterly destroyed that correspondence. The first neat cattle, namely, three heifers and a bull, that ever were brought into this land, now coming with him, did the land certainly better service than was ever done by him, who sufficiently forgot that scriptural emblem of a minister, the ox treading out the corn. This minister at his first arrival did caress them with such extream showers of affection and humility, that they were very much taken with him; nevertheless, within a little while, he used most malignant endeavours to make factions among them, and confound all their civil and sacred order. At last there fell into the hands of the governour his letters home to England, filled with wicked and lying accusations against the people; of which things being shamefully convicted, the authority sentenced him to be expelled the Plantation, only they allowed him to stay six months, with secret reservations and expectations to release him from that sentence, if

he approved himself sound in the repentance which he now expressed. Repentance, I say: for he did now publickly in the Church confess with tears, that the censure of the Church was less than he deserved; he acknowl edged, "That he had slanderously abused the good people, and that God might justly lay innocent blood to his charge; for he knew not what hurt might have come through his writings; for the interception whereof he now blessed God; and that it had been his manner to pick up all the evil that was ever spoken against the people; but he shut his ears and eyes against all the good; and that if God should make him a vagabond in the earth, he were just in doing so; and that those three things, pride, vain-glory, and self-love, had been the causes of his miscarriages."—These things he uttered so pathetically, that they again permitted him to preach among them; and some were so perswaded of his repentance, that they professed they would fall down on their knees, that the censure passed on him should be remitted. But, Oh the deceitful heart of man! After two months time, he so notoriously renewed the miscarriages which he had thus bewailed, that his own wife, through her affliction of mind at his hypocrisie, could not forbear declaring her fears, that God would bring some heavy judgment upon their family, not only for these, but some former wickednesses by him committed, especially as to fearful breaches of the Seventh Commandment, which he had with an oath denied, though they were afterwards evinced. Wherefore upon the whole, being banished from hence, because his resi dence here was utterly inconsistent with the life of this infant-plantation; he went into Virginia, where he shortly after ended his own life. Quickly after these difficulties, the company of adventurers for the support of this Plantation, became rather adversaries to it; or at least, a Be you warmed and filled; a few good words were all the help they afforded it; they broke to pieces, but the God of Heaven still supported it.

6. After these many difficulties were thus a little surmounted, the inhabitants of this Colony prosecuted their affairs at so vigorous and successful a rate, that they not only fell into a comfortable way, both of planting and of trading; but also in a few years there was a notable number of towns to be seen settled among them, and very considerable Churches, walking, so far as they had attained, in the faith and order of the Gospel. Their Churches flourished so considerably, that in the year 1642, there were above a dozen ministers, and some of those ministers were stars of the first magnitude, shining in their several orbs among them. And as they proceeded in the evangelical service and worship of our Lord Jesus Christ, so they prospered in their secular concernments. When they first began to divide their lands, they wisely contrived the division so, that they might keep close together for their mutual defence; and then their condition was very like that of the Romans in the time of Romulus, when every man contented himself with two acres of land; and, as Pliny tells us, "It was thought a great reward for one to receive a pint of corn from the people