Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was the first permanent English colony in New England, founded in 1620, and the third permanent English colony in America, after Newfoundland and the Jamestown Colony. It was settled by the passengers on the Mayflower at a location that had previously been surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement served as the capital of the colony and developed as the town of Plymouth, Massachusetts. At its height, Plymouth Colony occupied most of what is now the southeastern portion of Massachusetts. Many of the people and events surrounding Plymouth Colony have become part of American folklore, including the American tradition of Thanksgiving and the monument of Plymouth Rock.
Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of Protestant Separatists initially known as the Brownist Emigration, who came to be known as the Pilgrims. The colony established a treaty with Wampanoag chief Massasoit which helped to ensure its success; in this, they were aided by Squanto, a member of the Patuxet tribe. Plymouth played a central role in King Philip's War, one of several Indian Wars. The colony was ultimately merged with the Massachusetts Bay Colony and other territories in 1691 to form the Province of Massachusetts Bay.
Despite the colony's relatively short existence, Plymouth holds a special role in American history. The social and legal systems of the colony became closely tied to their religious beliefs, as well as to English custom.
History
Origin
Plymouth Colony was founded by a group of Brownists who came to be known as the Pilgrims. The core group were part of a congregation led in America by William Bradford and William Brewster. They began to feel the pressures of religious persecution by the Church of England while still in the English village of Scrooby, near East Retford, Nottinghamshire. In 1607, Archbishop Tobias Matthew raided homes and imprisoned several members of the congregation. The congregation left England in 1608 and moved to the Netherlands, settling first in Amsterdam and then in Leiden.In Leiden, the congregation gained the freedom to worship as they chose, but Dutch society was foreign to them. Scrooby had been an agricultural community, whereas Leiden was a thriving industrial center, and they found the pace of life difficult. The community remained close-knit, but their children began adopting the Dutch language and customs, and some also entered the Dutch Army. They were also still harassed by the English Crown: English authorities came to Leiden to arrest William Brewster in 1618 after he published sharp criticism of the King of England and the Anglican Church. Brewster escaped arrest, but the events spurred the congregation to move farther from England.
The congregation obtained a land patent from the Plymouth Company in June 1619. They had declined the opportunity to settle south of Cape Cod in New Netherland because of their desire to avoid Dutch influence. The Plymouth land patent allowed them to settle at the mouth of the Hudson River. They obtained financial backing through the Merchant Adventurers, a group of businessmen who sought to profit from the colony once the Pilgrims began working to repay their debts.
With the funds secured from the Merchant Adventurers, the Colonists bought provisions and obtained passage on the Mayflower and the Speedwell. They had intended to leave early in 1620, but they were delayed several months by complications with the Merchant Adventurers, including several changes in plans for the voyage and financing. The congregation and the other colonists finally boarded the Speedwell in July 1620 in the Dutch port of Delfshaven.
''Mayflower'' voyage
Speedwell was re-rigged with larger masts before leaving Holland and setting out to meet Mayflower in Southampton, England, around the end of July 1620. The Mayflower was purchased in London. The original captains were Captain Reynolds for Speedwell and Captain Christopher Jones for Mayflower. Other passengers joined the group in Southampton, including William Brewster, who had been in hiding for the better part of a year, and a group known to the Leiden congregation as "The Strangers", extra workers and staff largely recruited by the Merchant Adventurers. The term was also used for many of the indentured servants who paid for their passage by binding themselves to a period of service.Among the Strangers were Myles Standish, who was the colony's military leader; Christopher Martin, who had been designated by the Merchant Adventurers to act as shipboard governor during the trans-Atlantic trip; and Stephen Hopkins, a veteran of a failed colonial venture that may have inspired Shakespeare's The Tempest. The group who later became the Leiden Leaders after the merging of ships included John Carver, William Bradford, Edward Winslow, William Brewster, and Isaac Allerton.
The departure of the Mayflower and Speedwell was beset by delays, including further disagreements with the Merchant Adventurers. A total of 120 passengers finally departed on August 5: 90 on the Mayflower and 30 on the Speedwell. Leaving Southampton, the Speedwell took on significant leakage, which required the ships to immediately put in at Dartmouth. The leakage was partly caused by being overmasted and pressed with too much sail. Repairs were completed, and a further delay ensued as they awaited favorable winds. The two ships finally set sail on August 23; they traveled only beyond Land's End before another major leak in the Speedwell forced the expedition to return again to England, this time to the port of Plymouth. The Speedwell was found to be unseaworthy; some passengers abandoned their attempt to emigrate, while others joined the Mayflower, overcrowding the already heavily burdened ship. Later, it was speculated that the crew of the Speedwell had intentionally sabotaged the ship to avoid having to make the treacherous trans-Atlantic voyage. The delays had significant consequences; the cost of repairs and port fees required that the colonists sell some of their vital provisions. More importantly, the late-autumn voyage meant that everyone had to spend the coming winter on board the Mayflower off Cape Cod in increasingly squalid conditions.
The Mayflower departed Plymouth, England, on September 6, 1620, with 102 passengers and about 30 crew members in the long ship. The seas were not severe during the first month on the Atlantic, but in the second month the ship was badly shaken by strong north-Atlantic winter gales, causing leaks from structural damage. There were many hardships and dangers throughout the trip, including seasickness and the bending and cracking of a main beam of the ship. One death occurred, that of William Button.
After two months at sea, they sighted land on November 9, 1620, off the coast of Cape Cod. They attempted to sail south to the designated landing site at the mouth of the Hudson but ran into trouble at Pollock Rip, a shallow area of shoals between Cape Cod and Nantucket Island. With winter approaching and provisions running dangerously low, the passengers decided to return north to Cape Cod Bay and abandon their original landing plans.
Prior exploration and settlements
The Pilgrims were not the first Europeans in the area. John Cabot's discovery of Newfoundland in 1497 had laid the foundation for the extensive English claims over the east coast of America. Cartographer Giacomo Gastaldi made one of the earliest maps of New England, but he erroneously identified Cape Breton with the Narragansett Bay and completely omitted most of the New England coast. European fishermen had also been plying the waters off the New England coast for much of the 16th and 17th centuries.Frenchman Samuel de Champlain had explored the area extensively in 1605. He had specifically explored Plymouth Harbor, which he called "Port St. Louis", and he made an extensive and detailed map of it and the surrounding lands. He showed the Patuxet village as a thriving settlement. However, an epidemic wiped out up to 90 percent of the Indians along the Massachusetts coast in 1617–1619, including the Patuxets, before the arrival of the Mayflower. The epidemic has traditionally been thought to be smallpox, but a recent analysis suggests it was a lesser-known disease called leptospirosis. The absence of any serious Indian opposition to the Pilgrims' settlement may have been pivotal to their success and to English colonization in America.
Popham Colony, also known as Fort St. George, was organized by the Plymouth Company and founded in 1607 on the coast of Maine. Beset by internal political struggles, sickness, and weather problems, it was abandoned in 1608.
Captain John Smith of Jamestown had explored the area in 1614 and is credited with naming the region New England. He named many locations using approximations of Indian words. He gave the name "Accomack" to the Patuxet settlement on which the Pilgrims founded Plymouth, but he changed it to New Plymouth after consulting Prince Charles, son of King James. A map published in his 1616 work A Description of New England clearly shows the site as "New Plimouth".
In the Mayflower settlers' first explorations of Cape Cod, they came across evidence that Europeans had previously spent extensive time there. They discovered remains of a European fort and uncovered a grave that contained the remains of both an adult European male and an Indian child.
Landings at Provincetown and Plymouth
The Mayflower anchored at Provincetown Harbor on November 11, 1620. The Pilgrims did not have a patent to settle this area, and some passengers began to question their right to land, objecting that there was no legal authority to establish a colony and hence no guarantee of retaining ownership over any land that they settled. In response to this, a group of colonists drafted and signed the Mayflower Compact while still aboard the ship as it lay at anchor, which became the first governing document for the colony. The compact established a means of governing the colony along the lines of an English town. It also served as a first step to legitimize the colony, relieving the property concerns of many of the settlers. This social contract was written and signed by 41 male passengers. It was modeled on the church covenants that Congregationalists used to form new congregations. It made clear that the colony should be governed by "just and equal laws", and those who signed it promised to keep those laws.The group remained on board the ship through the next day for prayer and worship, as it was Sunday. They finally set foot on land at Provincetown on November 13. The first task was to rebuild a shallop, a shallow draft boat that had been disassembled for transport aboard the Mayflower. It remained with the Pilgrims when the Mayflower returned to England. On November 15, Captain Myles Standish led a party of 16 men on an exploratory mission, during which they disturbed an Indian grave and located a buried cache of Indian corn. The following week, Susanna White gave birth to son Peregrine White on the Mayflower. He was the first child born to the Pilgrims in the New World. The shallop was finished on November 27, and it carried a second expedition led by Mayflower master Christopher Jones. Thirty-four men went, but the expedition was beset by bad weather, though they did find an Indian burial ground with corn grave offerings, which they took for future planting. A third expedition along Cape Cod left on December 6; it resulted in a skirmish with Indians known as the "First Encounter" near Eastham, Massachusetts. The colonists decided to look elsewhere, having failed to find a proper site for settlement, and fearing that they had angered the Indians by taking their corn and firing upon them. The Mayflower left Provincetown Harbor and set sail for Plymouth Harbor.
The Mayflower dropped anchor in Plymouth Harbor on December 16 and spent three days looking for a settlement site. They rejected several sites, including one on Clark's Island and another at the mouth of the Jones River, in favor of the site of a recently abandoned settlement which had been occupied by the Patuxet tribe. The location was chosen largely for its defensive position. The settlement would be centered on two hills: Cole's Hill, where the village would be built, and Fort Hill, where a defensive cannon would be stationed. Also important in choosing the site was the fact that the prior villagers had cleared much of the land, making agriculture relatively easy. Fresh water for the colony was provided by Town Brook and Billington Sea. There are no contemporaneous accounts to verify the legend, but Plymouth Rock is often hailed as the point where the colonists first set foot on their new homeland.
The area where the colonists settled had been identified as "New Plymouth" in maps which John Smith published in 1614. The colonists elected to retain the name for their own settlement, in honor of their final point of departure from Plymouth, Devon.