creasing number and a higher stamp of colonists. The interest of the mother country in the colony would naturally be extended when the dissolution of the company opened the way to general emigration and general enterprise. The development of Virginia seemed sure. Members. THE PLYMOUTH COMPANY. Among the members of the Plymouth Company were many personages of distinction. The lord chief justice of England, Sir John Popham, the governor of Plymouth, Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and two Gilberts, kinsmen and successors of Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh, all engaged in the enterprise. The higher the rank, however, of individual members in any association, the more likely, in most cases, are clashing pretensions and menacing divisions. The Plymouth Company never held together in such a way as to carry out any effective operations. Coloniza A few members made the first move by sending tion at out a colony of forty-five persons, who encamped tempted. for one brief year upon an island at the mouth of the Kennebec, (1607-8.) Some time elapsed before any new expedition was undertaken. Nor would any, it is probable, have been undertaken then, but for the active agency of John Smith, who, four or five years after his return from Virginia, entered the service of the Plymouth Company. A careful voyage from the Penobscot to Cape Cod impressed him so favorably, that he gave the country the name of New England, obtaining for himself the title of its admiral, (1614.) But his persevering exertions to discharge his office and to colonize his chosen land were in vain; nor was any thing more attempted by the company until it was transformed by a new charter into the Council of Plymouth for New England, with the right to all the territory from the latitude of Philadelphia to that of Chaleur Bay, (1620.) Various Even then, the Council for New England set on proprie foot no colonization of its own. Its energies seemed to be spent in making grants to individuals, tors and companies. some of them its members, or to associations, by whom the settlement of New England was to be accomplished. Singular enough, considering that it was New England, a large proportion of these subordinate agencies was directed to the establishment of what may be called a number of lordly domains upon the soil. In following this succession of proprietors and of companies, we lose sight of the Council for New England. ment of outh. One settlement, originally made without a grant Settle- from the council, was by much the most important Plym- for many years. It was on no large scale. One hundred and two passengers in the Mayflower landed at a place already called New Plymouth, (December 11, 1620.) They were a band of Puritans, whose extreme principles had led to their exile, first from England to Holland, (1608,) and then from Holland to America. Obtaining a grant from the London Company, they set sail for Virginia, but landed to the north of that province, in the limits of New England. The year following, they procured a patent from the Council for New England, (1621.) But not in their own name; the grant being made to one of a company of London merchants, with whom they had formed a partnership before sailing to the west. The Londoners, holding their title under the council, thus constituted a sort of company within a company. Nor was it until after six years, marked by many troubles and by many injuries, that the colonists extricated themselves from this twofold dependence by the payment of a large sum to the London merchants, (1626.) The difficulties with the merchants had been the least of the trials of the Plymouth settlers. Half of the one hundred and two of the Mayflower died within a year from the landing. "In the time of most distress," says the historian of the settlement, Governor Bradford, “there were but six or seven sound persons." After disease came want; "all their victuals were spent, and they were only to rest on God's providence; at night not many times knowing where to have a bit of any thing the next day." When a ship load of fresh immigrants arrived nearly two years after, "the best dish they," the earlier comers, present their friends with, was a lobster or a piece of fish, without bread or any thing else but a cup of fair spring water." Nevertheless the Pilgrims, as they were called, sustained and extended their settlements. A second patent from the council was obtained for the country near the mouth of the Kennebec, where a trading post was presently established, (1628.) The whole extent of settlements, both at Plymouth and on the Kennebec, was included in a third patent, two years afterwards, (1630.) Its distinction in history. "could One who reads the history of these times without personal or national prepossessions will not find any thing of a very extraordinary character in the settlement of Plymouth. They who came thither, braving the perils of the unknown sea and the unknown shore, were but doing what had been done by their countrymen in Virginia, and by others in other settlements in America. Solemnity is certainly imparted to their enterprise by the reflection that they came to maintain the doctrines and laws which their consciences approved, but which the authorities of England proscribed. Yet the Huguenots of Carolina had done the same thing more than half a century before. The true distinction of the Puritans of Plymouth is this, that they relied upon themselves, that they adopted their own institutions and developed their own resources, of course in a feeble, but not the less in a manly manner. Before they landed, they "covenant and combine themselves together into a civil body politic, to enact such just and equal laws as shall be thought most convenient for the general good of the colony." The state thus founded was continued in entire independence of external authority, except in so far as its territory was held by grants from the Council for New England. Political The political forms of Plymouth were singuforms. larly simple. Every settler admitted to the privileges of the colony, and not an apprentice or a servant, was a freeman, a member of the body by which all affairs were administered or directed. An assembly of a representative character was not held for nearly twenty years, (1639.) Out of the freemen a smaller body was taken to exercise the every-day functions of government. It was composed merely of the governor and his assistants, or council, of which he was simply the presiding officer with a double vote. The first governor was John Carver; the second was William Bradford, who retained the post, with a few interruptions, for thirty-six years. It marks the simplicity, not to say the distastefulness, of these offices, that there should have been a law subjecting a man not having served the preceding year, and yet refusing to be governor, to a fine of twenty pounds, equivalent to a much larger amount in our day. A military body was headed by Miles Standish, the hero of the settlement. Spirit. But the spirit beneath these forms is of more importance than the forms themselves. The earnest faith of the Puritans was at once the source from which the colony sprang, and the strength by which it grew. But it was also the principle of harsh and arbitrary measures. It transformed the exiles into persecutors, many of whose companions found themselves again exiles, escaping from the mother country only to be thrust out from the sandy coasts and chilly hovels of the colony. Grants. Attempt der various names. at gen- Meantime New England was portioned out unThe secretary of the council, John Mason, called his grant Mariana, stretching ernment. from Salem River to the head of the Merrimac, Chaos. (1621.) The lands between the Merrimac and the Kennebec were conveyed under the name of Maine, in a grant to Mason in company with Sir Ferdinando Gorges, (1622.) The first settlement, however, in that neighborhood was made by some fishermen on the shore near Monhegan Island, beyond the Kennebec, and therefore independently of Mason and Gorges, (1622.) The next year the sites of the later Portsmouth and Dover were occupied, each under a separate association, to which the two proprietors had partially transferred their claims, (1623.) Meanwhile the Council for New England had been attempting great things, commissioning Captain Francis West as "Admiral of New England," Captain Robert Gorges as "Governor General," and the Rev. William Morrell as "Overseer of Churches." The last named was a clergyman of the English church. "He had," says Governor Bradford, "I know not what power and authority of superintendency over other churches granted him, and sundry instructions for that end, but he never showed it or made any use of it." "It should seem," says the stout Puritan," he saw it was in vain; he only spoke of it to some here at his going away." The governor general and the admiral cut no better figure. The council, as if disgusted by the fate of their general officers, surrendered |