The Mayflower

by Rebecca Fraser

  * * *

  The year after Edward died, his brother John moved to Boston with his wife Mary. While Susanna was away there had been a great scandal with their daughter and son-in-law, Susanna and Robert Latham. Marshfield was shocked when their fourteen-year-old servant John Walker died of serious mistreatment. A whipping had broken the skin. The Lathams were accused of felonious cruelty. Robert was taken to Plymouth prison and convicted of manslaughter. He was allowed to plead benefit of the clergy, a legal loophole which meant first-time offenders could be treated leniently.* Plymouth Colony records show he ‘desired the benefit of law, viz, a psalm of mercy, which was granted him’. Though he and Susanna had not shown much mercy to John Walker, Latham intoned: ‘Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.’ Sentence was now pronounced: ‘that the said Robert Latham should be burned in the hand’. This was the branding on the thumb sometimes with an M for manslaughter or a T for thief which meant he could not plead mercy twice.

  The townsfolk believed Susanna to have been equally culpable: the jury presented her for being ‘in a great measure aguilty … in exercising cruelty towards their late servant’. She had not given him proper food, clothing or lodging and ‘especially in her husband’s absence, in forcing him to bring a log beyond his strength’. The presentment remained live for three years but she was never brought to trial. It was then ordered to be struck from the record.

  Some New England jurisdictions like Connecticut and Massachusetts exempted women from being tried for capital crimes such as perjury and idolatry. It may be that Susanna’s fellow citizens ultimately believed that a woman’s weaker nature meant she must have been overborne by her husband. Or it may be that no one wished to offend the powerful Winslows.

  The Lathams spent the rest of their lives in East Bridgewater. It seems likely that they moved from Marshfield after their humiliation (although Susanna Latham remained in her mother’s will).

  * * *

  As well as doing business in Boston, Josiah spent time there because Penelope was close to family members: Governor Bellingham and his wife, her aunt Penelope, and her father’s other sister Elizabeth, who had brought her up. Governor Bellingham was an outrageous and thunderous character, an impulsive and rather fierce man moved to great acts of kindness and used to having his own way.†

  Susanna visited Boston several times a year. There were always pots and pans which needed replacing by English manufactures. She was on visiting terms with Governor Winthrop’s children and families such as the Dudleys and the Bradstreets, elite families who had emigrated with the Winthrop Fleet.

  Governor Bellingham was one of the last living people who were patentees of the Massachusetts charter. Most of the major figures in the founding of New England, such as Thomas Hooker and Thomas Dudley, were dead. In 1649 – the year when both John Winthrop and Cambridge’s inspired preacher Thomas Shepard died – it had looked like winter even in springtime because a plague of caterpillars ate all the leaves off the trees. The beginning of John Cotton’s terminal illness had been marked by a comet in the heavens. Appropriately its light slowly faded, getting dimmer and dimmer until it was quite extinct. People said God had removed a ‘bright star’ to glory above.

  But Josiah and Penelope were young, and had their lives ahead of them. They also went to England on at least two occasions. Marriage and trade brought them renewed acquaintance with Penelope’s father and a number of siblings, step-siblings and English relations. Penelope might also have been seeking a professional opinion from the medical experts New England lacked about why she had problems having children. It was almost a decade after her wedding that Penelope gave birth to another Elizabeth Winslow, probably named after her sister-in-law.

  The later 1650s were not especially happy for Penelope. Her elder sister Jemima died after only three years of marriage to the exciting soldier chaplain Samuel Kem. In Bristol, Kem was said to have preached in a scarlet cloak with pistols on the cushions beside him. But in peacetime there was too little to occupy his strenuous energies. He was good friends with the hermetic philosopher and alchemist Thomas Vaughan, who died in Kem’s house after one experiment too many. Jemima seems to have been estranged from Kem at the time of her death, as she was buried at Ferriers. Perhaps Kem did not have the strength of character to nurse her through a long and painful illness. Ralph Josselin came to comfort her at a time when she was afraid of dying. He noted on 7 May 1657: ‘preacht this day at Bures, the Lord touch hearts, I was with Mrs Kem who is under fears, and endeavoured to persuade her to roll her soul on God in Christ’.

  More heart-rending for Penelope even than the deaths of Jemima and her stepmother – who died shortly after – was that of her cherished brother Nathaniel that November. He had been her companion and friend growing up in Boston after her family returned to England. Nathaniel was one of the ‘persons of great worth and virtue’ drowned when the magnificent 400-tonne ship of the highly reputable Mr Garrett sank with all hands on board. It was never recovered. The sinking was a national tragedy: a large number of New England’s most promising young people had been on board. They included the missionary Reverend Thomas Mayhew the younger, whose work among the Indians on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket Edward had been at such pains to describe.

  Josiah too knew Nathaniel well. By this time Josiah was a trusted agent for Herbert Pelham, looking after his hundreds of acres in New England.

  To add to her low mood, what Penelope perceived as ill treatment by her father overshadowed these years. Herbert Pelham had gone out of his way in England to be courteous to Josiah’s family, and he was warm to Penelope and Josiah themselves. At first Penelope had looked forward to getting to know her father better. But at some point she learnt that she was owed a legacy from her grandfather, Thomas Waldegrave. Penelope may have accompanied Josiah to England when he went to discuss what should happen to Herbert’s land in New England now that Nathaniel was dead. She may have come to Ferriers when she knew her sister Jemima was dying, and stayed to nurse her sick stepmother.

  News of the legacy came as a complete surprise. Penelope had only found out by chance, probably at a wedding or a funeral with a large gathering of relatives. Someone – a cousin, perhaps, or one of her sisters or half-sisters – may have asked her if she had received the £450 ‘in trust for them payable as they respectively came of age or at day of marriage’. As Penelope put it in her own witness statement some years later, ‘Your said orator, having lived at the time of the making of the said deed [1640] and ever since in New England was for a long time wholly ignorant of what her said grandfather did in the premises’. Penelope had never received the money. Taken aback, she asked her father what had happened to her legacy. At first he said that her grandfather Waldegrave had not been in a financial position to make such a disposal.

  When Penelope was tipped off – perhaps by the same relation – that her father was farming the land which was meant to fund the legacy, Herbert Pelham said the deeds did not exist. A bitter row took place. Herbert continued to make what Penelope regarded as feeble and ultimately criminal excuses. Suggesting a series of furious face-to-face discussions as well as demands by letters over the years, Penelope described how her brother Waldegrave ‘did often persuade and advise the said Herbert to pay the same as what was in equity due … by virtue of the said deeds’. Waldegrave himself had seen the deeds and knew ‘in whose custody they are or hath formerly been’. To Penelope the idea that the estates of her grandfather were in no condition to support such inheritances was a lie. Her father lived in great style in a magnificent manor house.

  At first glance the delicate little face of Penelope in her portrait, with huge soulful eyes, makes her appear fragile. Her actions, however, show she was a forceful character. It was brave of the young Penelope to challenge her father. Speaking out in New England could be positively dangerous, especially criticising a man and even more importantl
y a father, but Penelope refused to button her tongue. And she had her husband’s support.

  Herbert Pelham was a formidable figure who had held office in Boston and England. He had held a raft of county offices in Suffolk and Essex in the Interregnum, including being commissioner for expelling scandalous ministers, as well as joint treasurer for the charity for maimed soldiers. Penelope was proud of her family’s past and pleased by a sense of family history. She reproduced her Pelham coat of arms on many of her possessions. Her son had it etched on the tombstone over the family vault. But her keen sense of injustice overrode awe of her father.

  Staying in Suffolk, the young Winslows found out that Herbert Pelham had a reputation for being a little sharp when it came to property. Penelope’s aunt – the joint heiress with her mother to Thomas Waldegrave’s property – and her husband, Isaac Wincoll, had taken a case against Herbert about other Waldegrave inheritances. The issue there also concerned Thomas Waldegrave’s will. Had he intended Penelope’s branch of the family, the Herbert Pelhams, or the Wincolls, to inherit Ferriers and two other Waldegrave houses, Ravensfield and Payton Hall?

  During Herbert’s absence in New England all these properties had fallen into the hands of his brother-in-law, Isaac Wincoll. Brampton Gurdon, the father of the present inhabitant of Assington Hall, was chosen to arbitrate. An award was made which gave Herbert Ferriers, the largest Waldegrave manor house. The Wincolls refused to accept the ruling and moved into Ferriers. They also seized Herbert’s extensive inheritance in Lincolnshire. Sir Matthew Hale, the author of the Hale Commission, had been brought in to see whether it could be dealt with amicably. Isaac Wincoll died before the case was wound up, probably of stress. Although the outcome is not recorded directly, a later deposition and other sources indicate that the Essex lands were partitioned between the two families. The legal issues and payments of fines, to enter into binding agreements with one another, had only recently been resolved at the south porch of St Mary’s Church in Bures, as was customary. The whole subject was so painful that the Wincolls were not on speaking terms with their Pelham first cousins for the rest of the century.

  All this gave the young Winslows a sense that Herbert was not quite straight. Although Penelope did not go so far as to sue her father for the money, years later she did sue her brother.

  For the present there was nothing Penelope and Josiah could do about the situation. They did not want to alienate Herbert and he did not want to alienate them. Common sense and family feeling prevailed, and there was no permanent estrangement. It was important for the wily Herbert to remain on good terms with the conscientious Josiah, so Josiah could supervise Herbert’s land in America until Herbert’s son Edward was old enough to do so himself. Herbert kept a close eye on his New England property. In 1648 he successfully petitioned the Massachusetts General Court for 800 acres. His own investments and marriage to Elizabeth Harlakenden had made him what one nineteenth-century authority called ‘one of the largest landed proprietors in Cambridge’.

  Josiah and Penelope had no wish to get on the wrong side of a respected New England figure who had so many influential friends.

  * * *

  Penelope chose to make her life in New England. The rows with her father and brother may have convinced her to focus on her Massachusetts and Plymouth family. The links with England were something from which she deliberately distanced herself. Anne Bradstreet’s poem ‘A Dialogue between Old England and New’ on the eve of the English Civil War reflects a sense of difference between the two societies. For Bradstreet New England was the more vibrant. ‘You are my mother, nurse,’ she wrote. Perhaps that expressed Penelope’s own feelings. She and Josiah, who were very close, were different from their kin in England. Life was harsh, but it was what they were used to. Penelope’s reality was the Winslow family home at Marshfield where her mother-in-law Susanna lived and farmed, and a neighbourly way of life, in which each villager had to do their bit to protect the community from the two main dangers: Indians and wolves.

  Josiah’s life was physically daring and adventurous. There were days at a time when he went up the Kennebec River looking for fish and furs, which he sold at the port of Boston amongst the other merchants. Since 1657 he had been a deputy to the General Court. He was military leader of the colony by 1659 and remained so until he became governor in 1673.

  Josiah’s disciplined dutifulness made him a popular local figure. As well as being a trader and a magistrate, he was also a surveyor, and sometimes rode for days looking for fast water for sawmills, marking bounds, or working out who could be relied on to oversee the plans for a house of correction attached to the prison. Colonists trusted Josiah’s considerable administrative abilities.

  At a time when all colonies were jockeying for precedence and territory, Josiah’s standing as a wealthy man and son of Governor Edward Winslow made Plymouth feel it was still an important colony that could punch above its weight.

  * * *

  In 1660 Charles II was restored to the throne. The Puritan experiment in England came to an end, with ruinous effects for many – especially those who had speculated in land confiscated from Royalists or the Church of England, which had to be returned. Governor Bellingham had four unfortunate nieces, the Misses Goodricke. During the Interregnum when all the royal palaces were sold off, their father, Colonel William Goodricke, bought the royal palace of Richmond as part of a syndicate. It seemed a marvellous bargain at the time.

  But Goodricke had backed the wrong horse. At the Restoration Richmond Palace was confiscated with immediate effect. The family was left in terrible straits. In May 1662 his daughters wrote Governor Bellingham a piteous letter. Their father had asked them ‘to let you know by these that he and [his wife] are yet alive, though much troubled both in body and spirit through old age and many infirmities and trials arising from the present times’. They hoped he would continue to pray for them and that one day they would meet in heaven. In 1668 the most enterprising Miss Goodricke decided Boston was easier to achieve than heaven. She tried unsuccessfully to emigrate to live near the Bellinghams as her circumstances and security began to crumble. Her husband, a gentleman’s son who had once had an estate in Yorkshire, was reduced to keeping a ‘Scrivener [printer’s] shop near the Pump in Chancery Lane’. She was grateful that when every house round them was visited by the plague they were spared, but it was a depressing situation. She felt surrounded by signs of God’s displeasure. By 1672 Governor Bellingham felt so worried about his nieces that he left them the rents of two of his farms in New England.

  Elizabeth’s Royalist aunt Magdalen briefly returned to the gracious, light-filled rooms of her rectory in Wareham when her husband was released from prison. But he was so unwell he died the next year. His health had been permanently damaged by his ordeals. Magdalen returned to live with her sons. She lived at Shapwick House in Dorset, the home of Captain William Wake, until her death just short of her ninetieth birthday.

  Elizabeth and Robert Brooks were much better off than the penniless Goodrickes. But Restoration London was an uncomfortable atmosphere to live in. By the Act of Oblivion the past was forgotten for most who had served on the side of Parliament in the Civil War. But anyone who could be linked to the execution of Charles I was not allowed oblivion. What were later called regicide trials began six months after Charles II’s return. Many escaped death for political reasons or because they had friends in high places, but several people who were part of the Pelhams’ and Winslows’ circle were executed in grisly ways. Hugh Peter was amongst them.

  There were attempts to crack down on the administration of the English colonies in America, especially New England. Even in faraway Boston there were rumours of future changes, that the free and friendly intercourse between New England and the motherland would be a great deal less favourable. It was regime change with a vengeance, and vengeance was the operative word for returning Royalists.

  Elizabeth had bad luck with raising children. Three sons were buried in the
graveyard of St Olave’s in Hart Street, where she had married; none of them lived to be older than two and a half. The only survivor was John, which may be the reason that his fond family showered him with gifts – he was the recipient of much christening booty, including twelve silver spoons. One of them came from Lord Mayor Andrewes, who perhaps sentimentally wanted to send a little something to the son of his deceased friend’s daughter. Josiah and Penelope sent a porringer.

  The parish registers of St Olave’s show that by April 1663 the Brookses had moved to a less prosperous area, Gravel Street in St Botolph without Aldgate. Life was now not quite so easy for Elizabeth. The Restoration made doing business more difficult. For Puritans associated with the old regime, much of their comfortable way of life fell away.

  The New England Corporation was reconstituted with different personnel. It continued to support John Eliot’s missionary work, but the republican merchant element was allowed to retire. As the clergyman Richard Baxter put it, ‘we all agreed that such as had incurred the King’s Displeasure, by being members of any Courts of Justice, in Cromwell’s days should quietly recede’.

  Elizabeth’s husband Robert Brooks died, probably of the last major outbreak of the plague which ravaged London, during the very hot summer of 1665. It is unsurprising that she then decided to return home to New England.