The Mayflower

by Rebecca Fraser

  A man on the make, Edward Randolph had come to New England in 1676 on behalf of his wife’s cousin, Robert Mason. Since the earliest days of the Pilgrims the Masons had links to land in New Hampshire. But once he arrived Randolph saw that his best chance for advancement was to work for the government in England. He turned himself into a spy on their behalf, writing a critical report of the highly irregular life across the Atlantic. By 1678 he was Collector of the Customs in New England, though this was a title honoured in the breach – Massachusetts ignored most of the English Navigation Acts. Exasperated by constantly coming up against Massachusetts’ celebrated charter and insistence on self-government, Randolph was the key figure who in 1684 suggested the charter be removed and a royal governor be introduced.

  Josiah’s courting of Edward Randolph earned him a great deal of dislike in Massachusetts. Ultimately Josiah’s loyalty was to Plymouth. Like many moderates – who were denounced as villains by fiery New England patriots – Josiah was a pragmatist. It was in his fellow colonists’ interests at Plymouth to ingratiate themselves with the powerful English government, even if it broke the line with Massachusetts. Charles II’s government had been frequently insulted by Massachusetts but Plymouth’s vulnerable position – it lacked a proper charter – meant that it had always been more accommodating. Josiah’s father would have been astonished by Josiah’s obsequious letters. He would never have called a king ‘Dread sovereign’ or compared him to the holy King of Kings. But like many a son with a powerful father, Josiah shrugged off his legacy of Puritanism, and told himself that these were different times.

  In June 1677 Josiah sent Charles II the highly symbolic war trophies of King Philip’s regalia which Annawon had handed over so solemnly to Benjamin Church. These extraordinary personal effects of the Indian chief who had terrorised New England might bring home to Charles the reality of what the settlers had experienced. The trophies were accompanied by a letter to remind the English king of the great losses Plymouth had endured defending the English Christian way of life they had planted in America. Josiah reiterated – as he was to do many times – that the war was not Plymouth’s fault, that relations with the Indians had been peaceful and that Plymouth had borne by far the greatest cost of the war: ‘100,000l. besides inestimable damage sustained by particular persons and plantations, and the loss of the lives of many hundred of their brethren, children, and choice friends’.

  Disingenuously, he claimed that Mount Hope was within the patent grant made to New Plymouth – a claim which would have astonished Massasoit. Josiah wrote ‘earnestly to beg that they may not be deprived of it, not only because they have fought and paid and bled for it, but because this Colony for want of good harbours could never get considerable improvement of the sea, whereas these places are well accommodated for the settlement of a sea-port town or two’. Many have seen the war against Philip as an attempt to seize his land. But taking the whole of Philip’s patrimony was something the colony was achieving by stealth in any case.

  The regalia which had once adorned Philip’s now decapitated and pathetic body were put on a ship to London for the attention of a merchant named Ashurst. It was to be despatched to Josiah’s brother-in-law Waldegrave Pelham, at Ferriers in Suffolk, for him to present at court. Unaware of its importance, Waldegrave probably thought nothing of what to him were simply strips of material covered in shells. Entrusting this task to Waldegrave Pelham was a mistake. Josiah’s ne’er-do-well brother-in-law never delivered the famous regalia of the Wampanoag chieftains. It vanished and has not been seen again.

  But until February 1679 – when he received a letter from London about Mount Hope – Josiah was completely unaware of this. At a time when communications were sparse, Plymouth had assumed Charles II’s silence meant acquiescence. Plymouth was already arranging the sale of the rest of the Mount Hope lands to Boston businessmen. No one in Plymouth could afford to be part of the consortium. Its economy did not recover for a hundred years.

  It would be extremely embarrassing if Charles II were to decide this land was not Plymouth’s to sell. As was explained to the English government: ‘Having written about two years since and doubted not till now that the letters were received,’ Plymouth ‘did believe the King was satisfied and thereupon disposed of some of the conquered lands.’

  Unfortunately Josiah’s anxiety to become Edward Randolph’s best friend made him overplay his hand. Boston politicians found out that Josiah had influenced Randolph’s highly critical reports. It emerged that on Randolph’s first visit to Careswell Josiah had suggested New England would do better and be more useful to the English government if ‘the several Colonies and plantations were reduced under your Majesty’s immediate government’ – i.e. there should be a royal governor general. Josiah had ‘expressed his great dislike of the carriage of the magistrates of Boston to your Majesty’s royal person and your subjects under their government’. The daily breaches of the English navigation laws, and the exorbitant rates charged by Massachusetts for using their harbours, were destroying trade profits for other colonies as well as the English government.

  Did Josiah really make these disloyal remarks? He denied them immediately. But he was a dying man, with little time perhaps for lofty thoughts of New England’s historic self-government. Perhaps by now proud colonial independence had become simply ‘the inconveniences of a divided government daily arising’, as Randolph reported. What energy Josiah had left had become domestic and small-scale.

  But Josiah and Randolph continued to be intimate. Randolph wrote regularly to Josiah. At the beginning of January 1680 from Maine he complained he had been received at Boston ‘more like a spy than one of his majesty’s servants’. He had been welcomed by a rude poem about himself – ‘scandalous verses’. He added rather sinisterly that he took all the more notice because it reflected ‘so much upon my master, who will not forget it’.

  The word was out that Josiah simply would not live much longer. He had told Randolph he was too unwell to go to England. But in his clumsy way Randolph still urged Josiah to make the effort: ‘Considering the necessity there is of renewing your charter, you can never do your colony greater service than to appear yourself at Whitehall.’

  But Josiah never did. He was still managing to sit in court, but on bad days the session had to come to him in Marshfield. Thomas Hinckley became deputy governor, a position invented precisely because it was now often too arduous for Josiah to make the journey from Marshfield to Plymouth. The shades were lengthening for him, and Plymouth Colony itself.

  But in January 1680 the cultivation of Randolph paid off. His Majesty’s reception of Josiah’s letters had been ‘kind’. Because of Plymouth’s ‘Loyalty and good Conduct in that War’ Charles II granted 7,000 acres of Mount Hope lands to Plymouth in exchange for a quit rent of seven beaver skins to be delivered to Windsor Castle every year on the feast of John the Baptist.

  * * *

  Though the governor was slowly dying, aged fifty-two, he had pressing personal legal concerns in England. Penelope’s father, Herbert Pelham, had died, and in March 1676 his will was published. Ever since then a legal dispute had been raging between Waldegrave Pelham and Penelope’s relations.

  At first Penelope and Josiah were oblivious of this. New England was deep in a battle for its very survival. Travel was severely disrupted by the war. Even in May when Penelope’s younger half-sister Anne and her husband Samuel Stannard began a suit against Waldegrave Pelham for another unpaid legacy – supposedly left them by Herbert in his dying days – Plymouth was still under threat. Most of its populations were gathered in stockades. But once Boston harbour reopened and it became safe to travel the countryside, communications resumed. Anne Stannard and her avid new husband had launched a suit very soon after their wedding, claiming £200 they said Anne had been left in a trust not mentioned in the will.

  Much more importantly for Penelope and Josiah, Herbert’s will did not mention the £450 left to Penelope by her grandfather Thoma
s Waldegrave, of which, since the mid-1650s, she had believed she was being deprived.

  What her father left her was respectable but not on that scale. Like her aunts in New England, Penelope got a small income from the rents of a farm on his Lincolnshire estates, though her sister Katharine, and Anne were more generously provided for. The Winslows were in the queue (after other younger English Pelhams) for a year’s rent here and there. Yet one of these sums was for money Josiah had been owed by Nathaniel Pelham, who had been dead for the past twenty years. Herbert had refused to pay up. Since Josiah was looking after Herbert’s property and cattle for him, and doing Herbert the favour of being the guardian of Penelope’s high-spirited brother Edward, it was rather grudging. Josiah was to administer Edward’s rents for the property he was to inherit – or not inherit, if Edward failed to become (as the will put it) ‘serious, sober and solid’, and be ‘reclaimed’. Penelope got half the goods, ‘all other brass, bedding, linen, with all my books and other utensils and movables’ which Herbert had in New England, but the family silver went to her younger brother.

  Incomplete records mean it is hard to see what steps Penelope and Josiah had previously taken to obtain Penelope’s grandfather’s legacy in the twenty years since they had first learnt about it. But it seems that they let things slide and then hoped that they would retrieve the money from Waldegrave after Herbert’s death. In the past, during the angry confrontations between Herbert and the Winslows, Waldegrave had been sympathetic to the need for his father to give his sister her grandfather’s legacy.

  Sending King Philip’s trophies via Waldegrave may have been Josiah’s attempt to please him by giving him the privilege of attending court. But it had no effect. Josiah now believed that Waldegrave by then owed them £1,000. The funds additional to the £450, Thomas Waldegrave’s legacy, were most likely for business which Josiah had contracted on Herbert’s behalf.

  By the autumn of 1680 Herbert had been dead for six years, yet no money had appeared. Like everyone else in New England after the war the Winslows struggled financially. In September they sent a Letter of Attorney from Marshfield to Thomas Sergeant of the Middle Temple. It permitted Sergeant to receive ‘all and every legacy and legacies as were given and bequeathed unto the said Penelope by her grandfather Thomas Waldegrave’ and any rents from Waldegrave Pelham. It commissioned him to take any legal action necessary.

  Josiah was fading fast. He was too ill to travel to England in person, and it was urgent they should sort out the matter while Penelope still had a powerful male at her side. Once she was on her own, as a woman, it would be far more difficult to be taken seriously, as she knew well from the experience of her aunt, Mistress Bellingham. Most lawsuits were much more effective if a man put his name to them, which was probably why Penelope got a dying Josiah to issue a writ.

  Since the fifteenth century the Equity Courts of England had specialised in protecting the property of married women. Although upon marriage a woman legally became part of her husband’s body, the Equity Courts, unlike the ordinary courts, recognised a married woman had separate rights. A married woman could initiate a suit there on her own, but it was looked on more favourably if a husband helped press his wife’s claim.

  It was the last action Josiah carried out for his wife, but nothing happened.

  Penelope threw herself into the hopeless task of nursing a man dying before her eyes. She boiled sheets, kept broth going on the stove, and gathered herbs for purifying the blood, including elder roots, sage, comfrey and rosemary. The Charles River was frozen over, and we can imagine the sick Josiah trying to get warm at Careswell. Penelope would have liked him to be in bed but he insisted on trying to sort out the various claims to Mount Hope almost to the day he died. Penelope spent £20 on a doctor, a huge sum. Trained doctors in New England were rare. Ministers frequently combined healing with preaching. The country had not been an attractive arena for medical men. Settlers preferred divinity to cure them.

  Prayers were offered in all the colony churches for Josiah. Penelope was made of sterner stuff: she was determined to find someone with medical training. The doctor came from Boston and probably stayed in the house for several days.

  The appearance of a great comet generated a febrile and apocalyptic atmosphere. Josiah’s old friend Thomas Hinckley could not help thinking it signified the governor’s ‘dying state’.

  Poor Penelope had been badly hit by spiritual anxiety brought on by the war. Letters to her from Nathaniel Morton show that in the late 1670s she had passed through a painful religious crisis when she was in ‘great affliction of mind’ and ‘God’s people sought to God for you and God brought you through those difficulties’. Many New Englanders, however devout, passed through times of anguish about their faith or their godliness, or whether they were saved. Perhaps Penelope was angry with God for what happened to Josiah, and perhaps that made her feel sinful.

  On 18 December 1680, which was almost the anniversary of the triumph against the Narragansetts, the fight was too much for Josiah. To Penelope’s scarcely controllable anguish, he died. He had been her intimate companion for thirty years.

  The colony was devastated. Josiah’s pastor, William Witherell, said ‘deep engulfing sorrow’ had struck men dumb at the news Josiah was gone. The colony insisted on paying his funeral expenses as a mark of respect for his unstinting service during the nightmarish war. Samuel Sewall recorded that Josiah had died after terrible pain with gout ‘and griping’. He noted: ‘His flesh was opened to the bone on’s legs before he died.’ The description indicates it was an ulcer which would have had a more sinister origin, namely a thrombosis caused by disease of the veins.

  In a condolence letter, addressing Penelope as his ‘much respected Christian friend’, Nathaniel Morton attempted to stem the inconsolable grief which he heard ‘hath prevailed much on you’, and which her church and community regarded with some alarm. There would be a resurrection, Josiah’s soul would be in ‘a blessed state’, the poor governor would be free at last. Morton tried to explain that Josiah’s death taught, as ‘Mr Robinson sometimes our pastor in Holland’ had said, that they were ‘not to be fixated on the world here’. This ‘lower world’ was full of pain, temptation and sorrow, the times were ‘like to be very sad and dangerous to professors of the Gospel’ so men might seek death. But it should be remembered with thankfulness that Josiah had not fallen into the hands of the Indians: ‘The Lord brought him to you again and he died in his bed under your inspection, care, and diligence and the manifestation of your utmost and best endeavours you could do for his recovery.’

  Morton’s words showed Penelope how she should behave, but the reality that her beloved helpmeet was gone was unbearable. Even the taking of probate was agony. She refused to open the door of what had been their shared bedroom. The inventory dolefully remarks that the widow’s bed was ‘not priced’. The men tramping round the house opening drawers, making notes about every possession, could not help but be painfully intrusive despite their tactful demeanour.

  Josiah had been a major public official for Plymouth for a very long time. His tall figure investigating sites for mills, making sure the court ran properly, that all was orderly, had been a comforting sight for years. His determination had pulled the colony through the war and its aftermath. In Plymouth he was universally perceived as the man who had saved them from the Indians. It is clear from the outpouring of grief that Josiah’s confidence that God was ultimately on Plymouth’s side helped the community to fight through its darkest days. He had possessed the standing and confidence to negotiate aggressively on the colony’s behalf, and that would be missed in the days ahead.

  Despite air so cold it was painful to breathe, Josiah’s funeral was a ceremony of considerable grandeur, probably involving the English fashion of giving rings and gloves as a memorial, especially to the pall-bearers.

  The Puritan hatred of ceremony was dissolving, and religious occasions had become less plain. New Englanders prided themsel
ves on their verses for every event, especially funerals. They were frequently published with skulls and crossbones adorning them. It was all part of the erection of a self-consciously English culture, a sign of the country’s gentility, elegance and sophistication. The hundreds of lines of verse that poured out to ‘New England’s Phoenix, Plymouth’s glory’ were testimony to the overwhelming sadness. Who now could the colony trust to steer it to ‘blissful times, and peaceful days’? Who now would be a ‘tall Cypress’ who could shelter them? No fewer than four people wrote elegies. Two were clergymen, and one of these clergymen was his close friend William Witherell. The kindly commonsensical pastor, who for thirty-nine years had guided the Second Church of Scituate, was now a very old man. He was more than fond of Josiah.

  Over ploughed fields covered with hoar frost, Josiah’s coffin was borne. A sorrowful procession of those who lived nearby followed to the old Winslow burial ground which overlooks the Green Harbour River Valley.

  Overcome with emotion at the sight of Josiah’s nine-year-old son Isaac standing by the grave, Reverend Witherell prayed ‘that the Governor’s son might be made half equal to his father’. The site is now surrounded with huge trees, horse chestnuts and pines, and Josiah’s body lies there still.

  Josiah’s reputation waned over the next hundred years. The nineteenth-century historian John Gorham Palfrey viewed his decision to act unilaterally for Plymouth as a betrayal, writing sniffily: ‘he cannot be described as a New-England patriot of the highest type’. The point was that Josiah was a Plymouth patriot. The Old Colony had his loyalty first and foremost, before New England.

  Twelve years later, in 1692, the English government forced a reorganisation on the New England colonies. Plymouth became part of Massachusetts.