Edward was brought into contact with the poet John Milton, who was the Latin Secretary responsible for diplomatic correspondence with foreign countries. During Charles I’s trial, Milton had boldly published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, which argued it was lawful and acceptable ‘to call to account a Tyrant or wicked King and after due conviction, to depose, and put him to death’.
By June 1654 Edward was a member of a High Court convened to try a conspiracy against Cromwell. Three Royalists – John Gerard, Peter Vowell and Summerset Fox – were accused of plotting to assassinate Cromwell and install Charles II. Increasing numbers of more moderate politicians wished to return to a system similar to the monarchy before the Civil War in which there were checks on the executive power, but Edward was not of their number. He did not object to the written constitution, the Instrument of Government, in which Cromwell adopted a quasi-monarchical role as Lord Protector. He was the only one of the original seven Compounders reappointed to office. No theoretician, Cromwell’s ideas chimed with Edward’s deepest convictions about conforming to God’s will. And perhaps the funds were useful to a man permanently short of cash.
* * *
On 21 February 1654 Lorenzo Paulucci, the Venetian ambassador, sent a description of Cromwell’s visit to the City of London. ‘At seven in the evening he returned to his dwelling in the same pomp, with the addition of three hundred lighted torches and all the outward signs of respect and honour, but with very scanty marks of goodwill from the people in general.’ Paulucci thought the rancour and hostility of the people increased daily because Cromwell had ‘arrogated to himself despotic authority and the actual sovereignty of these realms under the mask of humility and the public service’. Cromwell lacked ‘nothing of royalty but the name’ – though in fact Cromwell made it known he wished to be addressed as Highness.
Prophecies were rife. People were talking about the tide in the Thames protracting its ebb and flow for two hours longer than usual. Credible witnesses declared they had seen the ghost of the beheaded king in the former royal palace. Paulucci believed ‘it is impossible for this kingdom to remain long quiet without the sceptre of its legitimate king … the majority of the people sigh for him, though threats and fears induce silence and resignation and prevent them from speaking out freely or complaining of the present yoke’.
Not content with banning plays, in July 1654 racing was banned for six months. Enemies of the Commonwealth had been ready ‘to take advantage of public meetings, and concourse of people at Horse-races, and other sports, to carry on such their pernicious designs, to the Disturbance of the Public Peace, and endangering new troubles’. The pleasure-loving English did not take kindly to this.
The constant attempts to enforce a cultural revolution by the godly reformation of the English way of life which began in 1647 by banning Christmas and Easter was hugely unpopular and largely ineffective. To Edward’s eyes, of course, such reforms were simply logical. Since the beginning of the colony such festivities had never been part of Plymouth life.
* * *
Edward’s burning desire to be of service had not gone away with office, neither had the fervour that had taken him to the New World and back. In December 1654, as the Republic took on fresh labours to reform the world, Edward could not resist volunteering for a great expedition to the West Indies.
The plan, known as the Western Design, was meant to give a base to England in the Caribbean to thwart the Spanish Empire and attack the shipments of silver which regularly crossed the sea to get to Spain. Hispaniola (the island which is today shared by the Dominican Republic and Haiti) had great resonance because it was where Christopher Columbus first raised the Spanish flag on the American continent. The Western Design was another fulfilment of millennarian prophecies. Throwing the Spanish out of America could be viewed as the drying up of the Euphrates predicted in Revelation 16:12, ‘that the way of the kings of the east might be prepared’.
Edward was to be the chief of three civil commissioners in charge of planting these new colonies. He was also substantially remunerated. In December 1654 he was awarded £1,000 as salary, with £500 to be paid in advance.
Two well-known officers of the Civil War were in charge of the military side of things: Admiral William Penn, the father of the founder of Pennsylvania, and General Robert Venables, who for good or ill had successfully commanded the siege of Drogheda, which had ended in a massacre. Unfortunately they loathed one another, and squabbled continually.
Edward performed a last good deed in December 1654. He wrote to the navy commissioners to ask if they could release a boy named William Lygon who had been press-ganged out of a coal ship and put on board a warship, ‘as he is the chief support of his mother’.
Edward had laboured for the Commonwealth without a break for days at a time. His strenuous soul was pining for real action after the grinding days in his office at Haberdashers’ Hall. The physical side of him was yearning for the liberation of a sea voyage. He made his farewells to his daughter and sister, and the rest of his friends. His brother John was over from New England as he departed, and it is likely that John’s son had a place on one of the ships. (A letter from Roger Williams suggests that a couple of months later, Susanna went to London; perhaps Elizabeth was lonely and asked her mother to visit.)
The fleet left from Portsmouth for Barbados. As long letters written at sea reveal, Edward was desperate for the Western Design to be a success. The two principals were at daggers drawn, but Edward was determined everyone should get along. His optimism and enthusiasm meant he wanted to give the expedition its all. In beseeching letters he badgered John Thurloe, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, for information to see how the great republican experiment in London was faring.
Edward was not especially well when he set sail to Hispaniola. He had cancelled a visit to a friend a few weeks before, and had insisted on an apothecary being on board. He may have felt the need for someone who could deal with stomach ills. One possibility is that he suffered from some hereditary ailment, perhaps a weak heart. It is also possible that he had picked up a virus or some kind of bacterial infection in London. The Great Plague of 1665 is believed to have started because of the poor housing round the areas Edward frequented. Slums lay cheek by jowl with the elegant new facades. The Fleet River was choked with the waste from Smithfield Market. Westminster itself was built on unhealthy marshes.
As an expert transatlantic traveller, Edward noted they made the crossing amazingly swiftly, in an unprecedented five weeks. But in spite of its distinguished military leaders, the Hispaniola expedition was a badly planned disaster, which might have been predicted from the outset. It had only 1,000 veteran soldiers. Most of the troops, including the 1,500 new English soldiers and 4,000 colonial conscripts raised in Barbados, had neither seen action nor had much training. Edward’s knowledge of the West Indies was ignored. Most of the food was inedible. More importantly, the planners had not included vessels to store water, and 200–300 men were to die of thirst. The apothecary never arrived. His ship was becalmed along with the food-store ships, and was then blown to Ireland. Almost a third of their stores were lost at sea and never reached the West Indies.
Nevertheless when Edward arrived in Barbados in mid-January he was full of excitement, anticipating a swift victory. Via John Thurloe, Edward entreated Cromwell to remember ‘that the settlement of the Protestant religion is one of the grounds he goeth upon’. The government should send out some ‘very able ministers’. He was critical about the low standard of public life in Barbados and the levels of corruption: ‘all places of trust are disposed of by favour, and not by a sound judgement, for few active able men are in power, that may prevent such a mischief’.
In mid-April the English ships left Barbados and set out for Hispaniola. They passed St Vincent, and dropped anchor at St Lucia for a council and to give orders. Then they streamed past Martinique (a new French colony) and Dominica (where they were becalmed), Guadeloupe, Montserrat an
d Nevis. When they made St Kitts, the French fired off thirty shots as a salute. After St John’s they were hovering off Hispaniola, a mass of white sails crowding the sea.
But nothing went as it should. The expedition was supposed to be top secret but because it was planned for so long, the Spanish had known about it for months. The 4,000 troops raised reluctantly by the Barbadians either could not or would not obey orders. There was no central command. The land and sea generals had to confer not only with one another but with the three civilian commissioners. Once the ships arrived off Hispaniola and the land army was dropped off, time was lost in endless consultations. Lieutenants rowed backwards and forwards to get each commander’s opinion. It was not clear who had precedence. Edward angered the rank and file by proclaiming death to any soldier who plundered, with what one witness called ‘his always unresistible affirmative’. This was announced as the men landed, which ‘proved fatal to the army’ in the view of another witness. But Commissioner Winslow would not be contradicted. The most he would agree to was to ‘give them their six weeks pay when they had taken this place’ – which was decent enough.
There was a superstition in the navy that women were unlucky on ships, and General Venables was not only resented for bringing on the expedition his new wife but also despised for meekly bowing to her domineering ways. A complaining Mrs Venables frequently disembarked and went on shore into the war zone, distracting her husband.
Years as a colonist had made Edward very aware of the weather. He pressed for the expedition to get going because they would otherwise lose the dry season and be at the mercy of hurricanes, storms and disease, but the high command continued to prevaricate.
Eventually, when the store ships had still not arrived, the leaders decided to cast themselves ‘into the arms of Almighty God, whose Providence we trust will be forever good, and will own us as instruments in his right hand’ to exercise vengeance on the Spanish.
The Almighty was not in a receptive mood. They had left it too late. The rains created landslides and turned much of the lower ground to mud. Sanitation problems meant disease spread like wildfire, and the army was attacked by dysentery and fever. A third of the men died and rotted where they lay. Some 3,000 men were sick. Horses got bogged down in the swampy terrain. They were swiftly eaten along with the dogs because of the lack of food.
Forty Spaniards defeated 400 English troops in one mortifying battle. The rest were taken off the island by Penn, a humiliation felt by all, especially Edward. Offers by Penn to have his ships bombard the main fort were rejected by Venables. By now Edward had lost faith in Venables’ judgement. One memoir has Edward trying to force the soldiers back for a last attempt on the citadel, to no avail.
Eventually Edward and the other commissioners pressed Venables to give up Hispaniola as a bad job. On board the Swiftsure on 28 April they wrote to the governor of Barbados saying that they had had to abandon the attempt because of ‘the cowardice of our men’ of which they were deeply ashamed. All stores which should by then have arrived at Barbados were to be sent on to Jamaica, where they were going next.
Edward had survived the Mayflower but he had been only twenty-five then. Although he had made many, many sea journeys, his previous transatlantic voyage had been almost ten years ago, when he was in his prime. Now he was almost sixty. He was not wounded but, like many of the soldiers, became very ill of the flux, as well as a despair which exacerbated his fever. The conservative herald Sir William Dugdale heard that Edward, whom he called disparagingly ‘a Committee man’, had raved ‘of Haberdashers’ Hall in his sickness’.
Edward had expected so much of this expedition. His letters had been full of an almost hysterical exaltation. In rapturous tones he had written: ‘Oh! what would we give, and how do we long to hear from England of the conclusion of the Parliament with his highness; and so what settlement is made in the nation. I beseech you, when you have occasion to write and send to us, let us not be strangers to England’s condition; but impart such news to us, as the time affords.’
As well as suffering from a fever which in the past he might have shaken off, there was also a psychological problem that no ship’s doctor or apothecary could alleviate: the Hispaniola debacle showed that God was no longer on his side. The expedition’s success was going to be yet another sign of God’s favour. Such failure was a sign the regime was cursed. Edward was so grief-stricken by what had happened it dealt him a mortal blow.
On the evening of 5 May Admiral Penn noted: ‘This evening we set sail and stood off the land all night south. The next day we stood westward, and kept between SW and NW. Mr Winslow began to grow bad in health, having complained a day or two before; taking conceit (as his man affirms) at the disgrace of the army on Hispaniola, to whom he told, it had broken his heart.’
On the 8th a fast was kept on board to seek the Lord’s favour. Edward, who had come up on deck to feel the breeze on his face, suddenly ‘fell very ill’. He was carried down in the afternoon to his cabin and ‘deceased in the evening’.
Penn wrote that it had pleased the Lord to call Mr Winslow away. Another observer, Henry Whistler, recorded in his journal that ‘some did say it was with grief, but he had a strong fever on him when he died’. Whistler also noted it was ‘fair weather and the wind at east’, and they steered away west. The next morning they arrived at the westernmost part of Hispaniola, very high land. On 9 May the burial of Commissioner Winslow was performed ‘as solemnly as might be at sea’. His body was put into a coffin with two cannon shot at his feet to weigh him down. His corpse was ‘held forth to the sea with ropes over the ship’s side ready to lower down. Command being gave they all let go. Our ship gave him twenty guns, and our vice admiral gave him twelve and our rear admiral ten, and so we bade him adieu.’ Edward’s linen was packed up, along with his watch.
The ships sailed on to capture Jamaica, leaving Edward Winslow behind. There he lies to this day.
Someone on board ship was making notes. Possibly it was Edward’s nephew John, or Henry Whistler. Whoever it was, the notes were later worked up into a poem, printed in New England’s Memorial.
The Eighth of May,
West from ’Spaniola shore,
God took from us our Grand Commissioner,
Winslow by Name; a man in Chiefest Trust,
Whose Life was sweet, and Conversation just;
Whose Parts and wisdom most men did excel;
An honour to his place, as all can tell.
Penn abandoned Jamaica without permission to return to London, and Venables followed shortly after. They were both arrested on suspicion of deserting their post, in Penn’s case of being a secret Royalist. Both were imprisoned in the Tower for not obeying orders. Cromwell was reported to have shut himself into his room for a day to discover ‘what “accursed thing” had provoked God’s wrath’. John Milton had to write an explanation of why the expedition should not be regarded as the judgement of God.
* * *
On 11 May 1657 Resolved White, Edward’s stepson, was in Barbados on family business: his sister-in-law was selling off part of the Vassall plantation. On the way his ship would have passed very close to the coast of Hispaniola where Edward lay on the ocean floor. Was past bitterness forgotten when Resolved remembered the larger-than-life character who had been like a father to him?
In the circles of the seventeenth-century Massachusetts colonial elite, Edward Winslow was regarded as a hero. He was a ‘Hercules’, wrote Cotton Mather, ‘From his very early days accustomed unto the crushing of that sort of serpents’ which got Massachusetts ‘deliverance from the designs of many troublesome adversaries that were petitioning unto the Parliament against them’. To give a proper account of what Edward did for the New England colonies would take so long it might not be ‘expected until the resurrection of the just’.
But in the here and now, his family had to suppress thoughts about why Edward could not have remained in London, rather than embark on another adventure. Perhaps ultim
ately Susanna herself did not disapprove. She had known her husband longest and had put up with so much, but she also understood the forces that drove him, because she shared his beliefs. They had also driven her to seek a new world. In his will Edward wrote proudly of being ‘now bound in a voyage to sea in the service of the Commonwealth’. For thirty years his life had been voyaging backwards and forwards across oceans for those dreamed-of commonwealths. Now it was time to rest.
CHAPTER XV
Generational Change
As the news spread, there was consternation amongst Edward’s friends. Roger Williams was still grieving for him twenty years later. For all his long absence, Edward was an irreparable loss to New England. As well as representing them in the councils of power in London, he had been a living link to the glorious past.
In London, however, Elizabeth and Susanna were discovering that a life lived on a heroic scale had its financial cost. Shell-shocked by his death, they found out that Edward still had huge unsuspected debts ‘to the value of £500 and upwards unsatisfied at his departure from England’. Edward’s ‘great disbursements’ buying provisions for himself and his servants for the voyage to Hispaniola had been very expensive, and most of the goods had been lost. The matriarch of a leading family in New England, Susanna was now stranded in London with little cash while she sorted out his affairs. In a petition to Cromwell and the Council of State, she said she was ‘in a low condition having little else to subsist on but the expectation of his salary’. She asked for the balance of £500 that he was owed for the Hispaniola expedition.
In the previous nine years Edward’s absence had thrust considerable responsibilities upon Josiah, who was approaching thirty years old. A soldierly man who, aged twenty, had become insignia-bearer and captain of the Marshfield militia, he had risen to the challenge. Now he had to rush to London, to ensure the English side of the family business continued.
The Mayflower Page 27
