Making Haste from Babylon

by Nick Bunker

  8. Caleb H. Johnson, The Mayflower and Her Passengers (Philadelphia, 2006), p. 73.

  9. Charles Brooks, “Indian Necropolis in West Medford, Mass.,” PMHS, 1st ser., 6 (1862–63), pp. 362–64; and Carl Seaburg and Alan Seaburg, Medford on the Mystic (Medford, MA, 1980), pp. 3–4 and 93–95.

  10. Alonzo Lewis and James R. Newhall, History of Lynn, Essex County, Massachusetts (Boston, 1865), pp. 32–42; and Richard S. Dunn, James Savage, and Laetitia Yeandle, eds., The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649 (Cambridge, MA, 1996), pp. 47–49 and 105.

  11. Dexter, in the notes to his edition of Mourt’s Relation, published in Boston in 1865.

  12. Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, p. 65.

  13. W. N. Sainsbury, Calendar of Colonial State Papers, American, 1574–1660 (London, 1860), p. 124; and Alan James, The Navy and Government in Early Modern France, 1572–1661 (Woodbridge, UK, 2004), pp. 25–28.

  14. J. Gardner Bartlett, “John Peirce of London and the Merchant Adventurers,” NEHGR 67 (1913), pp. 147–53.

  15. “Records of the Council for New England,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (1867), pp. 91–93, entry for March 25, 1623.

  16. Beale’s output: Edward Arber, A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of London, 1554–1640 (London, 1875–94), vol. 3, entries under Beale’s name. Background: Carolyn Nelson and Matthew Seccombe, “The Creation of the Periodical Press, 1620–1695,” in The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, ed. J. Barnard and D. F. McKenzie (Cambridge, UK, 2002), vol. 4, pp. 533–37.

  17. On Butter, Bourne, and Bellamy, see Leona Rostenberg, Literary, Political, Scientific, Religious, and Legal Publishing, Printing, and Bookselling in England, 1551–1700: Twelve Studies (New York, 1965), pp. 75–91 and 97–129; ODNB entries for Butter and Bourne; and Bellamy’s entry in Henry R. Plomer, A Dictionary of the Booksellers… from 1641 to 1667 (London, 1968).

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DIABOLICAL AFFECTION

  1. Alexander Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers (Boston, 1844; repr., Baltimore, 1974), pp. 272–73.

  2. Arrival of Massasoit: Letter of Emmanuel Altham, Sept. 1623, in Three Visitors to Early Plymouth: Letters About the Pilgrim Settlement in New England During the First Seven Years, ed. Sydney V. James Jr. (Plymouth, MA, 1963), pp. 29–32. Map of Plymouth, 1830: The Bourne map, Massachusetts State Archives, vol. 68, no. 2161, p. 7.

  3. Sherley and Andrewes v. Weston et al. (1623), E 112/104/1569, NAK.

  4. C. M. Andrews, The Colonial Period in American History, vol. 1, The Settlements (New Haven, CT, 1934), pp. 332–34; and the comprehensive account in William Heath, “Thomas Morton: From Merry Old England to New England,” Journal of American Studies 41, no. 1 (2007), esp. pp. 143–47.

  5. Personal communication, April 2008, from Francis J. O’Brien Jr. (Moondancer) of the Aquidneck Indian Council.

  6. Roger Williams, A Key into the Language of America (1643), in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society for the Year 1794 (Boston, 1810), vol. 3, p. 228.

  7. London Port Book (exports) for 1619, entry for July 31, 1619, E 190/22/9, NAK.

  8. Kathleen L. Ehrhardt, European Metals in Native Hands: Rethinking the Dynamics of Technological Change, 1640–1683 (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2005), pp. 57–59 and 76–81; Laurier Turgeon, “The Tale of the Kettle: Odyssey of an Intercultural Object,” in Ethnohistory 44, no. 1 (winter 1997), pp. 1–21.

  9. The various accounts of Wessagussett are Bradford’s, in Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, by William Bradford, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison (New York, 1979), pp. 113–19; Winslow’s, in Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, pp. 296–311 and 327–41; the narrative of Phineas Pratt, in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser., 4 (1858), pp. 476–79; and Thomas Morton’s, in New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637). Morton’s text is now easily available as an e-book, via Google Books and other portals, in an edition first published in 2000 by Jack Dempsey.

  10. CLIMOD statistics for Plymouth-Kingston (1893–2007) from Northeast Regional Climate Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.

  11. Appraisal of the Little James’s armament, anchors, rigging, and so forth (1624?), HCA 24/81/120, NAK.

  12. All quotations from Altham’s letters are from James, Three Visitors to Early Plymouth, pp.

  13. Wills of Edward Altham (1605) and Elizabeth Altham (1623), PROB 11/106 and PROB/11/139, NAK. On the Althams: Harleian Society, Visitations of Essex Part II (London, 1879), pp. 538–39; and transcripts of the Altham family papers, T/A 531/1, ECRO. The Altham family had strong kinship ties to the leading Puritan families of eastern England: the most important was the marriage of Emmanuel’s eldest brother, Sir James Altham, to Elizabeth Barrington. The Barringtons were active Puritan politicians in successive Parliaments and closely related by marriage to Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden.

  14. Records of the lawsuit Stephens and Fell v. the ship Little James et al. (1624), HCA 24/81/40, 41, and 158, NAK.

  15. Letters of John Bridges and Emmanuel Altham, 1623–24, PMHS 44 (1910–11), pp. 178–89.

  16. Will of Emmanuel Altham (1638): PROB/11/178, NAK. Altham at Armagon: W. Foster, ed., The English Factories in India, 1630–1633 (Oxford, 1910), pp. 183–84, and The English Factories in India, 1634–1636 (Oxford, 1911), pp. 47–48, 296, and 327; and E. B. Sainsbury, ed., A Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1635–1639 (Oxford, 1907), p. 318.

  17. Pelts imported into Plymouth, Devon, in 1622: See the Plymouth Port Book (new impositions), Easter 1622–Michaelmas 1622, E 190/1030/10, NAK. For 1624: E 190/1030/19, NAK. The first record of substantial imports of beaver skins into Plymouth comes in July 1626, when Abraham Jennings shipped home more than one thousand pelts on the Consent: E 190/1031/6, NAK.

  18. Bradford’s narrative of the Lyford affair, from which all my quotations come unless otherwise indicated, is in Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 146–70.

  19. “Malignant” entry in The Oxford English Dictionary.

  20. Winthrop: Francis J. Bremer, John Winthrop: America’s Founding Father (New York, 2003), pp. 72–73 and 98–99. Winslow: Jeremy Dupertuis Bangs, Edward Winslow: New England’s First International Diplomat (Boston, 2004), pp. 1–2. Slany: Court Minutes of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, 1611–20, MS 34010/5, pp. 77, 108, 150–51, and 173–75, Guildhall Library.

  21. W. H. Rylands, ed., The Four Visitations of Berkshire (London, 1907), vol. 1, p. 244, and vol. 2, pp. 172–73; William Page and P. H. Ditchfield, eds., The Victoria County History of Berkshire (London, 1924), vol. 4, pp. 81–84 and 110–14; and J. Foster, ed., Alumni Oxonienses, 1500–1714 (Oxford, 1891–92), vol. 3.

  22. Puritan clergy in Ireland: Alan Ford, “The Church of Ireland, 1558–1634: A Puritan Church,” in As by Law Established: The Church of Ireland Since the Reformation, ed. Alan Ford, J. I. McGuire, and Kenneth Milne (Dublin, 1995), pp. 56–67. Armagh cathedral prebendaries: J. B. Leslie, Armagh Clergy and Parishes (Dundalk, Ireland, 1911), pp. 59–73. On the Ulster Plantation generally: S. J. Connolly, Contested Island: Ireland, 1460–1630 (Oxford, 2007), pp. 290–302.

  23. For Lyford at Loughgall, see Diocese of Armagh, “Visitation Royal 1622,” fols. 54r–55, showing appointment of Lyford as prebendary on Oct. 21, 1613, Armagh Robinson Public Library; List of the Temporalities of 1622, file DIO/4/4/2, fol. 40, entry regarding Levalleglish, PRONI; and Leslie, Armagh Clergy, p. 351.

  24. The O’Neills and the confiscation of Loughgall: John McCavitt, “Rebels, Planters, and Conspirators: Armagh, 1594–1640,” in Armagh: History and Society, ed. A. J. Hughes and William Nolan (Dublin, 2001), pp. 253–58; and R. J. Hunter, “County Armagh: A Map of Plantation, c. 1610,” in the same volume, pp. 268–73. Copes at Loughgall: “A Book of the Plantation of Ulster” (1619), in Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, 1603–1624, ed. J. S. Brewer and William Bullen (London, 1873), pp. 415–16. ODNB; and will of Anthony Cope (1633), Cope Papers (28–1975), Armagh County Museum.

  25. Lyford and Church l
and: Entry regarding John Lyford in Robert C. Anderson, The Pilgrim Migration: Immigrants to Plymouth Colony, 1620–1633 (Boston, MA, 2004), p. 313; map of Loughgall in 1834, OS/6/2/8/1, PRONI; and James Morrin, ed., Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland in the Reign of Charles I (Dublin, 1863), p. 322. Hampton and long leases: Sir James Stuart, Historical Memoirs of the City of Armagh (Newry, UK, 1819), pp. 308–10; and “Orders Concerning the Church of Ireland 1623,” inside the manuscript “Visitation Royal 1622,” Armagh Robinson Public Library.

  26. Pory’s letters: James, Three Visitors to Early Plymouth. Bradford on Pory: Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 112–13.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: IF ROCHELLE BE LOST

  1. Massachusetts Historical Society, Winthrop Papers, vol. 2, 1623–1630 (Boston, 1931), pp.

  2. State Papers (France), SP 78/80, fol. 83 (Oct. 12, 1626); fol. 97 (Oct. 13); fols. 114–16 (Nov. 6); fol. 163 (Nov. 30); and SP 78/81, fol. 187 (1627), NAK. Also, Francisque Michel, Histoire de commerce et de la navigation à Bordeaux (Bordeaux, 1870), vol. 2, pp. 52–54 and 61–62; and Thomas R. Cogswell, “Prelude to Ré: The Anglo-French Struggle over La Rochelle, 1624–1627,” History 71 (1986), pp. 13–14.

  3. SP 78/80, fol. 116, NAK; and Charles de la Roncière, Histoire de la marine française (Paris, 1923), vol. 4, pp. 558–628.

  4. François de Vaux de Foletier, whose book first appeared in 1931.

  5. MP: Sir Benjamin Rudyerd, April 1, 1628, in Commons Debates, 1628, ed. R. C. Johnson and M. J. Cole (New Haven, CT, 1977), vol. 2, p. 228. French commerce in French hulls: See, for example, “Declaration du roy,” in Etienne Cleirac, Les us et coutumes de la mer (Rouen, 1671), pp. 2–3. La Rochelle, its defenses, and the preliminaries of the siege: François de Vaux de Foletier, Le siège de La Rochelle (La Rochelle, France, 1978), pp. 16–18, 81–94; and Cogswell, “Prelude to Ré.”

  6. Barnstaple: SP 16/51/25–26, Jan. 26, 1627, NAK. Sailors: J. F. Larkin, Stuart Royal Proclamations, vol. 2, 1625–1646 (Oxford, 1983), pp. 127–128.

  7. Samuel Eliot Morison, ed., Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, by William Bradford (New York, 1979), p. 34; and S. M. Kingsbury, ed., The Records of the Virginia Company of London (Washington, DC, 1906–35), vol. 1, pp. 221 and 228.

  8. Clinton’s pamphlet, SP 16/54/82.i, Jan. 24, 1627, NAK; and Richard Cust, The Forced Loan and English Politics, 1626–1628 (Oxford, 1987), esp. pp. 32–39, 102–3, 170–76, and 298–99.

  9. Wincob, Coddington, and Lincolnshire loan refusers: SP 16/56/39, March 8, 1627, NAK; and the 1625 certificate of residence of “John Wincope… gent,” E 115/46/56, NAK. Dudley and the loan: SP 16/72/36, July 28, 1627, NAK. Identification of John Wincob: Records relating to taxpayers in Lincolnshire have survived in large numbers and in very good condition. They list only one gentleman with a name like John Wincob or Weyncopp. He was registered as a taxpayer in the parish of Kirkby Underwood. The village is eight miles from Sempringham, where the Clintons owned a manor house, and three miles from Folkingham, where they owned land and which they later chose as their principal residence.

  10. Bread Street Ward forced loan refusers: SP 16/71/15, July 16, 1627, NAK. Other City wards: SP 16/72/60, 61, 62, 64, and 65, NAK. Pocock’s arrest warrant, July 19, 1627: Acts of the Privy Council of England (January–August 1627) (London, 1938), p. 424.

  11. Deposition against Archbishop Laud, SP 16/500/4, NAK.

  12. The Marmaduke: London port book (exports) for 1627, E 190/31/1, fol. 113, NAK. John Gibbs and the Plymouth Colony: Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, p. 197.

  13. Lynn Ceci, “Native Wampum as a Peripheral Resource in the Seventeenth-Century World-System,” in The Pequots in Southern New England: The Fall and Rise of an American Indian Nation, ed. Laurence M. Hauptman and James D. Wherry (Norman, OK, 1990), pp. 48–63.

  14. For example, see household accounts of Lord Bayning, Jan. 30 and Oct. 17, 1634, SP 46/77, NAK.

  15. Robert Le Blant, “Le commerce compliqué des fourrures canadiennes au début du XVII siècle,” Revue Historique de l’Amérique Française 26, no. 1 (June 1972). I have converted the French prices in silver into English shillings of the period, using data from the history of the Royal Mint in London and in Natalis de Wailly, Mémoire sur la variation de la livre tournois (Paris, 1857). The price of twenty shillings in the late 1620s matches details given by Bradford.

  16. William Hubbard, A General History of New England from the Discovery to 1680 (Boston, 1848), p. 68.

  17. On the restructuring of the Plymouth Colony’s finances, see Morison, Of Plymouth Plantation, pp. 184–86 and 194–96.

  18. “Plymouth Company Accounts,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 3rd ser., 1 (1907), pp. 200–201.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: THE PROPHECY OF MICAIAH

  1. John Preston, “A Sensible Demonstration of the Deitie,” in Sermons Preached Before His Maiestie (London, 1631), p. 56.

  2. E. W. Harcourt, ed., The Life of the Renowned Doctor Preston, Writ by His Pupil, Master Thomas Ball… in the Year 1628 (Oxford, 1885). Also Irvonwy Morgan, Prince Charles’s Puritan Chaplain (Oxford, 1957), esp. pp. 111 and 126.

  3. The probate inventory of Miles Standish is available on the Web site of Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, MA: www.pilgrimhall.org.

  4. H. M. Colvin, ed., The History of the King’s Works, Vol. 4, 1485–1660, Part 2 (London, 1982), pp. 304–41; and Peter E. McCullough, Sermons at Court: Politics and Religion in Elizabethan and Jacobean Preaching (Cambridge, UK, 1998), pp. 31–42.

  5. Preston, Sermons Preached Before His Maiestie, pp. 47 and 52–61.

  6. Harcourt, Renowned Doctor Preston, pp. 158–62.

  7. Will of John Preston, signed 1618, proved 1628, PROB/11/154, NAK. When Preston’s sermon appeared in print in 1631, the volume was edited by the Puritan minister John Davenport, a London friend of John Pocock’s brother Edward. Davenport had close ties to the leading investors in the Massachusetts Bay Company.

  8. Samuel Eliot Morison, ed., Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, by William Bradford (New York, 1979), p. 382.

  9. N. M. Sutherland, “The Origins of the Thirty Years’ War and the Structure of European Politics,” English Historical Review 107 (July 1992), esp. pp. 590–91 and 618–22; and David Parrott, “The Mantuan Succession, 1627–1631: A Sovereignty Dispute in Early Modern Europe,” English Historical Review 112 (Feb. 1997), pp. 20–25, 48–50, and 64–65.

  10. Harcourt, Renowned Doctor Preston, p. 174.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: THE FIRST BOSTONIANS

  1. Hakewill to Archbishop Ussher of Armagh, in The Whole Works of the Most Rev. James Ussher, D.D., ed. C. R. Elrington (Dublin, 1847–64), vol. 15, p. 418. Hakewill, a fellow of Exeter College, Oxford, preached often at Barnstaple, where he married the daughter of the merchant and mayor, John Delbridge.

  2. Regarding the St. Peter and the White Angel: Barnstaple port book (overseas) for 1628, entries for Jan. 7 and Jan. 23, E 190/947/5, NAK; and Patrick McGrath, ed., Records Relating to the Society of Merchant Venturers in the City of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century (Bristol, UK, 1952), p. 203. Drowned fishermen: Todd Gray, ed., Early-Stuart Mariners and Shipping: The Maritime Surveys of Devon and Cornwall, 1619–35 (Exeter, UK, 1990), p. xvi.

  3. Will of John Penrose, former mayor of Barnstaple (1624), PROB/11/145, NAK.

  4. Letters to Cecil, 1603–4: HMC, Salisbury, vol. 15 (London, 1930), pp. 337–38, and vol. 16 (London, 1933), pp. 6, 116, 127, 136, and 345. Delbridge and Palmer: Will of Anthonie Palmer (1596), PROB/11/87, PCC Wills, NAK. Micmac chieftain at Bayonne: This was a man called Messamouet; see Bruce J. Bourque and Ruth R. Whitehead, “Trade and Alliances in the Contact Period,” in American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture, and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega, ed. Emerson W. Baker et al. (Lincoln, NE, 1994), pp. 136–39. Delbridge and religion: Eastman v. Delbridge, STAC 8/134/5 (1616), NAK.

  5. For Barnstaple’s activities in New England in 1622–23, see Records of the Council for New England (Cambridge, MA, 1867), pp. 7
1, 83–84, and 96. Evidence of only very modest imports of beaver fur before 1628 comes from the Barnstaple port books recording payment of the customs duties on cargoes subject to the so-called new impositions, which included beaver skins. These are: Barnstaple Port Book (new impositions), Easter 1624–Michaelmas 1624, E 190/946/3, NAK; Barnstaple Port Book (new impositions), Michaelmas 1625–Easter? 1626, E 190/946/8, NAK; and Barnstaple Port Book (new impositions), Michaelmas 1626–Easter 1627, E 190/946/10, NAK. Three port books recording new impositions collected at Barnstaple survive from the years 1614–16 and show no beaver fur imports. On Barnstaple generally, see J. R. Chanter and Thomas Wainwright, Reprint of the Barnstaple Records (Barnstaple, UK, 1900); Lois Lamplugh, Barnstaple: Town on the Taw (South Molton, UK, 2002); and Todd Gray, ed., The Lost Chronicle of Barnstaple, 1586–1611 (Devonshire Association, 1998).

  6. Barnstaple’s trade by sea is clearly displayed in the town’s overseas port book for 1615, E 190/942/13, NAK. Also see contributions by Alison Grant and Todd Gray to The New Maritime History of Devon, ed. Michael Duffy et al. (London, 1992), vol. 1.

  7. Barnstaple port book (overseas) for 1620, entry for Aug. 30, E 190/944/8; and entries for Aug. 28 and Sept. 11, 1615, E 190/942/13, NAK. Irish livestock: Donald Woodward, “The Anglo-Irish Livestock Trade of the Seventeenth Century,” Irish Historical Studies 18 (1972–73), pp. 489–91.

  8. Richard W. Cotton, Barnstaple and the Northern Part of Devonshire During the Great Civil War, 1642–1646 (London, 1889), pp. 5–6 and 41.

  9. SP (France), 78/83, Jan.–Dec. 1628, NAK.

  10. E 190/947/5, NAK, shows only 37 outward voyages from Barnstaple to overseas ports in 1628, compared with about 60 in other years for which the port books survive. Of the 37, some 25 went to Ireland. Inward voyages from abroad numbered 67, compared with the usual total of about 160. Taking these figures together, we see the number of voyages falling from about 220 in a normal year to 104 in 1628.