Chapter II: Leiden
William Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation is the most important source for the Pilgrims’ lives, which he wrote around thirty years after they landed in America. Edward Winslow’s Hypocrisy Unmaskd also contains important details. Bangs, Strangers and Pilgrims, provides much new information from the Walloon Church Archives. For the unusually democratic nature of the Scrooby church, see Langdon. The Dexters have a detailed description of the Green Gate house. Information about patents is from Peggy M. Baker, Director Emerita of the Pilgrim Hall Museum, Plymouth, Massachusetts. Thomas Coventry’s name appears in the list of Adventurers who had to be paid back in 1626, noted in William Bradford’s Letter Book.
Chapter III: Leaving Holland
Following Jeremy Bangs’s research it is believed that about eighty people on the Mayflower were in some way connected to the church, even if they had not lived in Leiden and came from England. For whether Susanna White could have been the sister of the Fuller brothers, see Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, New England Historic Genealogical Society Register, 154 (January 2000), 109–18. For Elizabeth Warren, see Peggy M. Baker, ‘A Woman of Valour: Elizabeth Warren of Plymouth Colony’. Samuel E. Morison’s edition of Bradford’s Of Plymouth Plantation fn. 9, p. 121, and fn. 6, p. 363, drew attention to the fact that copies of the English translation of Jean Bodin’s Six Books of the Republic were included in the estate inventories of both William Brewster and William Bradford. Morison believed Robert Cushman was also informed by Bodin. For attitudes towards the elect and non-elect, see Gerald F. Moran and Maris A. Vinovskis, Religion, Family, and the Life Course: Explorations in the Social History of Early America (Ann Arbor, 1992).
Chapter IV: The Voyage
For William Brewster’s inventory, see John Davis Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. The Brewster notebook belonged to both William Brewster and his son Jonathan. It has recently been transcribed. For New England millenarianism, see Woodward. For the settlers’ fears of European corruption, see Douglas Anderson. For women and midwifery, see Ulrich, 126–35. ‘Beastliness’: John Winthrop’s Journal, 17 April 1630. On crossing the ocean in November 1619, see Ferdinando Yate, ‘The Voyage to Virginia’, New York Public Library Bulletin, Vol. I (1897), 68–72, Smyth of Nibley Papers.
Chapter V: Land
The original document known as the Mayflower Compact has vanished. It was written down in various places in the signatories’ lifetime and included by Bradford in Of Plymouth Plantation. The form of government on the private or particular plantation was left up to the settlers. In Plymouth Colony there was no legal necessity for freemen, that is voters, to be members of the Plymouth Church. See George L. Haskins, ‘The Legal Heritage of Plymouth Colony’, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, Vol. 110, No. 6 (April 1962). The John White paintings remain in the British Library, too fragile to be on display. ‘They marvel to see no monuments over our dead … the graves all alike’: Thomas Morton’s New English Canaan in Dempsey (ed.), 44. De Champlain’s map in 1605 shows Patuxet (Plymouth) as a village. For the effects of European plague, see Richter, Before the Revolution, 153, and Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (W. W. Norton, 2005), 78. For women in the early days of the colony, see Caleb Johnson, ‘Women on the Mayflower’ at Mayflowerhistory.com. ‘Long in silence’ from The Courtship of Myles Standish. God had ‘brought his people hither’: Edward Winslow, New England’s Salamander (1647).
Chapter VI: Massasoit
Powhatan’s cloak is now believed to be a wall hanging, though John Smith mentions a cloak being given by Powhatan to Captain Newport. Charles V commissioned a public debate about the treatment of the American Indians between the Dominican priest and Bishop of the Chiapas in Mexico, Bartolome de las Casas, and the academic Juan Gines Sepulveda. Sepulveda discussed the Indians along Aristotelian lines of classification. For the rediscovery of classical texts and their profound effects on English colonisers, see Andrew Fitzmaurice, Humanism and America: An Intellectual History of English Colonization 1500–1625 (CUP, 2003). For Indians coming to represent degeneracy, see Richard Slotkin and James Folsom (eds.), So Dreadfull a Judgement: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War 1676–1677 (Wesleyan University Press, 1999). Professor Neal Salisbury believes Edward was one of the few Pilgrims engaged in dialogue with the Indians about points of Christian doctrine: see Salisbury. For Massasoit’s relations with other tribes, see Richter, Before the Revolution, 155–6.
Chapter VII: The Building of ‘Our Town’
Scurrilous rumours about women and children: letter to the Adventurers in London, 8 September 1623, American Historical Review, VIII (1902–3), 299. One of the few pieces of personal information about Susanna Winslow is contained in a letter from Edward to her uncle Robert Jackson, New England Historic Genealogical Society Register, Vol. 109 (1955), 242–3. See the Lincolnshire Archives Report, 30 March 1954 – 25 March 1955, ‘Robert Jackson gent. of Spalding … Clerk of Sewers for Holland, Kesteven and the City of Lincoln from about 1608 to his death early in 1625’. A ‘pivot of almost all local business … He was perhaps the son of his predecessor John Jackson, the servant of the earl of Lincoln (506/65)’. Edward Jr and John were the Winslows’ first children together. Both sons are named in the 1627 Division of Cattle. In 1651 William Bradford wrote that Edward Winslow married ‘the widow of Mr White, and hath two children living by her marriageable, besides sundry that are dead’.
Chapter VIII: Good Farms
The Secretary of the New Netherlands colony Isaac de Rasieres described how ‘the maize seed’ was sent ‘in sloops to the north for the trade in skins among the savages’: James (ed.), 76–8. See Thwaites for a description of John Winslow in 1650 near Cushnoc by Father Gabriel Drouillettes. For Indians and the scenery of New England, see Cronon. ‘Those poor savages, whose country we challenge, use and possess’: John Smith, The Description of New England 1616. Before he returned to England Gilbert Winslow may have gone with the Hilton family – successful English fishermen – to join their saltworks on the Pisquataqua River. All quotations from Thomas Morton refer to New English Canaan in Dempsey (ed.). For the Venetian ambassador, see Andrews, Vol. 1, 275.
Chapter IX: Massachusetts Begins
‘Religion stands on tiptoe in our land’, ‘The Church Militant’: George Herbert, c.1633. John Winthrop ‘ruling with much mildness and justice’: Captain Thomas Wiggin, The Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, Volume 1 (November 1632). Edward was always ‘employed for the Colony in occasions of great weight’: Hubbard, A General History of New England. Letter from Emmanuel Downing to Sir John Coke: Historical Manuscripts Commission, Manuscripts of Earl Cowper, 19 December 1634. The only record of Roger Williams’s lost treatise is in John Winthrop’s Journal, 5–27 December 1633. For John Cotton and Thomas Weld quotations, see LaPlante. The stillborn baby appeared to have horns. For ‘monstrous conception of his [Winthrop’s] brain’, see Kibbey.
Chapter X: The Pequot War
The ‘mintmasters of New England’: Kupperman, 213. Alfred A. Cave’s The Pequot War is the most scholarly account. For Uncas, see Oberg. ‘Very great captains and men skillful in war’: Mason. ‘Sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents’: Underhill. ‘The Indians’ persistent expectations of equality and reciprocity’: Pulsipher, 25. For land transfer from Indians to the English see Bangs, Indian Land Deeds, 27.
Chapter XI: The Pan-Indian Conspiracy
For the account of Miantonomo’s speech, see Gardiner. ‘Testimonies of the Indians’: Edward Winslow, Hypocrisy Unmaskd. The Pelhams were an early colonising family. John Humfrey’s second wife was Herbert’s aunt. Settler Edward Johnson describes the travails of founding Concord and other New England towns in Wonder Working Providence 1628–1651, Franklin (ed.). For Gorton’s account see his Simplicities Defence against Seven-Headed Policy. For Miantonomo as a statesman see Salisbury, 232. Daniel R. Mandell described the situation as a ‘Cold
War’ in King Philip’s War, 19. There are many versions of Passaconaway’s speech. See Alvin G. Weeks, Massasoit of the Wampanoags (originally published 1920; digital scanning 2001), 64.
Chapter XII: Leaving for London, 1646
For the Winslow family’s church and Vassall’s views see Deane, 389–90. For Mary Latham see John Winthrop’s account in his Journal, 501. Adultery was briefly a capital crime in Plymouth, but it was never punished as such. In Massachusetts the death penalty did operate – though like all colonies, lack of population meant it tended to be observed in the breach. The death of Edward’s old friend and patron Lord Keeper Coventry and resignation of Sir John Coke was ‘very sad: for New England in those two is stripped at once of our best friends at the Board: so that now we must live by Faith without any dependance on means at all’: Edward Winslow to John Winthrop, 27 April 1640, Winthrop Papers, Vol. IV, 258. For theories about the Indians and Jews, see Cogley, and Clark (ed.), 26.
Chapter XIII: Republican England
Details of the Wake family in Hutchins, 121, and Dr John Walker, The Sufferings of the Clergy of the Church of England during the Great Rebellion. Also MS 541A, ‘The Original Autobiography and Journal’ of William Wake, Archbishop of Canterbury, Christ Church, Oxford. Details of Colonel Godfrey Bossevile, Herbert Pelham and Sir Arthur Hesilrige from the forthcoming History of Parliament: Commons 1640–1660. Edward Winslow’s millenarian views: ‘The very years, in which many eminent and learned Divines, have from Scripture grounds, according to their apprehensions foretold the conversion of the Jews’ in the Epistle Dedicatory, The Glorious Progress of the Gospel Amongst the Indians in New England (London, 1649). Josiah Winslow’s Memorandum in the Massachusetts Historical Society, Winslow Papers, Vol. II, MSN 487, 16 December 1656, ‘Copies of Letters to London in ye year 1656’, reveals Josiah was in business with his brother-in-law Robert Brooks. Elizabeth Winslow married Brooks, a London merchant, earlier that year – see Caleb H. Johnson, ‘The Marriage and Children of Elizabeth Winslow, Wife of Robert Brooks’, Mayflower Descendant, Vol. 60, Issue 1 (Spring 2011). For Edward’s desire to return to New England, Shurtleff and Pulsifer (eds.), Vol. 9, Acts of the Commissioners of the United Colonies of New England.
Chapter XIV: Hercules
Character of Magdalen Winslow, and Amie Cutler wedding vow: Wake, Autobiography. Penelope Winslow never left New England with her father; see deposition in the National Archives, C8/338/282 ‘Plaintiff Penelope Wenslow [sic] widow 12th February 1682/3’. Anna Reynolds, curator of the Royal Collections, estimates the date of Penelope’s portrait to be around 1651; information in email, 21 January 2014. For Hesilrige, John Lilburne and the Harraton Colliery controversy, see Aylmer. Rumours about Edward: Thomas Stanton to John Winthrop Jr, ‘Mr Winslow out of prison and out of office only attends the Indian Corporation’ [before 24 November 1653], Winthrop Papers, Vol. VI, 345–6. ‘That the way of the kings of the east might be prepared (Rev.16:12)’: see David Armitage, ‘The Cromwellian Protectorate and the Languages of Empire’, Historical Journal, Vol. 35, No. 3 (September 1992), 537–8. Roger Williams: ‘his poor wife will miss him’, 23 March 1655, Williams, Complete Writings, Vol. 6, 288. Edward’s death: ‘His grave being the whole ocean sea’: Appendix E: Extracts from Henry Whistler’s journal of the West India expedition, in The Narrative of General Venables, ed. C. H. Firth (Longmans, Green and Co., 1900); also Memorials of the professional life and times of Sir William Penn, Volume II: From 1644 to 1670. By Granville Penn, esq. (James Duncan, 1833).
Chapter XV: Generational Change
For the Winslows’ international business with Brooks, Barbadian merchants, and references to ‘Cuz Ed Wake’ see ‘Discussion of Previously Unpublished 1656 Memorandum of Josiah Winslow at the Massachusetts Historical Society’, Mayflower Journal (Fall 2016). For a list of Pelham lawsuits at the National Archives, see Bibliography. TNA C5/14/109 Pelham, Herbert vs Wincoll, Isaac was the attempt by Herbert Pelham to obtain possession of Ferriers, and other estates to which he believed he was entitled. For Penelope’s accusations, see Fraser, ‘Penelope Pelham and a Taste for Litigation’, where TNA document C8/338/282 is printed in full. For the Misses Goodricke, see ‘Letters to Governor Bellingham from the Massachusetts Archives’, New England Historic Genealogical Society Register, Vol. 7, 186, April 1853. Information about Edward Pelham from Joseph Dudley’s 1698 witness statement TNA C22/998/33. The exiled Dudley said he had known Edward ‘ever since he was about the age of twelve years for the space of about thirty years now last past’. Edward had been ‘bred at the Free School and College [i.e. Harvard] at Cambridge in New England within five miles of this deponent’s own seat there’.
Chapter XVI: The Coming of War
For Ninigret, see Fisher and Silverman. For the Atherton Company, see Martin. For population figures in New England, see James D. Drake, 240, quoting Sherburne F. Cook, The Indian Population of New England in the Seventeenth Century (University of California Press, 1976). Philip’s belief his brother was poisoned: Easton. For George Curwen’s activities, see Vickers. Philip ‘would not treat except his brother King Charles of England were there’: Nathaniel Saltonstall’s ‘Continuation of the State of New England’, Pulsipher. For Josiah and Governor Bellingham’s will, see Chamberlain, Vol. 1, 405. Weetamoo’s fears: letter from John Easton to Josiah Winslow, 26 May 1675, at the New England Historic Genealogical Society, MSS C 357, R. Stanton Avery Special Collections.
Chapter XVII: King Philip’s War
The best histories of the war are Leach; Lepore; Mandell; George M. Bodge, Soldiers in King Philip’s War (Boston, 1891); James D. Drake; Schultz and Tougias. See Bibliography for contemporary accounts by Benjamin Church, William Hubbard, Increase Mather and Mary Rowlandson. ‘The bloodiest war in American history in terms of its proportionate effect on a region’: Mandell, op. cit., 134. For the Revd Walley’s letters, see McIntyre and Travers (eds.). Josiah Winslow’s unpublished letters are at the Massachusetts Historical Society. For Indian military techniques, see Patrick M. Malone, The Skulking Way of War: Technology and Tactics Among the New England Indians (John Hopkins University Press, 1993). For Roger Williams’s confrontation with the Narragansetts in Providence, see LaFantasie (ed.), Vol. 2, 723. The death of Hezekiah Willett: Samuel Sewall diary, 1 July 1676. For tribal losses, see James D. Drake, 172. Of the rebel Indians, the Wampanoags, Narragansetts and Nipmucks, ‘on average the region lost 60 to 80 per cent of the population’.
Chapter XVIII: Penelope Alone
‘These dreadful frowns of providence’: John Cotton Jr, 3 January 1676. Waldegrave Pelham ‘detains from his sister above £1,000 due to them as legacies by her father and grandfather’: State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, 1 May 1680. For Pelham lawsuits, see Bibliography. Nathaniel Morton letters for Penelope’s spiritual crises, ‘you were in great affliction of mind some years since’, 28 December 1680, and an undated letter in feeble writing probably 1685, shortly before Morton’s death: Boston Athenaeum Library. For women keeping taverns, and property sales, see Krusell, Plymouth Colony to Plymouth County; also Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers: Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society (Vintage, 1997); ‘absolute authority’, Salmon, 9. John Cotton Jr, ‘I saw Madam Winslow & Mistress Pelham; Ned well in O:E [Old England] a 1000pd & more is due to them with Mistress Bellingham, which they have reason to think he will bring them this summer’, 22 March 1695, in McIntyre and Travers (eds.), 468.
Chapter XIX: Penelope’s Final Actions
The Curwen family papers, including Elizabeth Winslow Curwen’s Inventory, are at the Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. For John Alden’s trial, see Boyer and Nissenbaum, Salem Possessed. For Cotton Mather and the witchcraft crisis, see Silverman. For Edward Pelham, see Sibley, Vol. 2. For the land petitions of Penelope Winslow and her children, see Massachusetts Archives Collection, 45:296, 30 June 1703, SC1/series 45X, and Records of the Governor’s Council: Acts and Resolves, Public and Private, P
rovince of the Massachusetts Bay. Governor Benedict Arnold’s will refers to Freelove as ‘my dearly beloved and youngest daughter’. Indian sovereignty ‘however convoluted and contradictory, remains an important part of federal Indian law’: see Peter P. d’Errico, ‘Native Americans in American Politics’, in The Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics, Volume 2: Hispanic Americans and Native Americans, ed. Jeffrey D. Schultz et al. (Oryx Press, 2000).
Bibliography
On account of the huge amount of secondary literature, this is emphatically a select bibliography.
Primary Sources
Legal papers of Sir Matthew Hale, MS 3476, 1577–1672. Case and opinion in Isaac Wincoll vs Harbart [sic] Pelham, Lambeth Palace Library. Pelham cases at the National Archives, London, include C5/14/109, 1649, Pelham, Herbert vs Wincoll, Isaac; Samuel and Anne Stannard cases against Waldegrave Pelham beginning 8 May 1676, C8/303/127, C22/825/11 1679, C22/707/30 1681. Herbert Pelham, PROB 32/24/98-100 1683 [1674] and C8/338/282, Wenslow [sic], Penelope vs Pelham, Waldegrave. Edward Pelham’s suit against Waldegrave Pelham from 1696 to 1698: C9/152/15, C9/146/20, C5/118/39, C9/148/6, C9/322/24, C9/148/11, C5/131/22, C9/134/36, C22/998/33, C22/998/34. Penelope Bellingham vs Waldegrave Pelham is C9/151/43. Acts and Resolves, Province of the Massachusetts Bay: Resolves 1702, ch. 68; Resolves 1703/4, ch. 28; Resolves 1713/14, ch. 104; Resolves 1718/19; and 45:296, Petition from Penelope Winslow, 30 June 1703, Massachusetts Archives Collection. Josiah Winslow: ‘Copies of Letters to London in ye year 1656 December 16 Memorandum That in October 56 I wrote to my brother Brook by Mr Garrett’, and Josiah Winslow ‘Letter of Attorney to Thomas Sergeant of London’, September 1680, Massachusetts Historical Society. Estate Papers: 1684–5 Capt George Curwen, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts. Freelove Pelham’s will, Pelham vs Coggeshall, September 1733, the Supreme Court of Judicature Archives, Rhode Island. Two letters from Nathaniel Morton to Penelope Winslow, Boston Athenaeum Library. MS 541A, ‘The Original Autobiography and Journal of William Wake Archbishop of Canterbury’, Christ Church Library, Oxford. ‘Sermon Preached at the Funeral of Mrs Smythee Harlakenden June 28 1651 by R.J.’, the Earl’s Colne Project Database. New England Historic Genealogical Society Register, The American Genealogist, Mayflower Descendant. Pilgrim Hall Museum. Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies. Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660. Calendar of the Proceedings of the Committee for Compounding, 1643–1660.
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