His Disposition, Character, And Deeds
Have Been The Subject Of Much Discussion.
By most writers he is held to
have been a man of coarse, "unsympathetic" nature, "a rough sea-dog,"
capable of good feeling and kindly impulses at times, but neither
governed by them nor by principle.
That he was a "highwayman of the
seas," a buccaneer and pirate, guilty of blood for gold, there can be no
doubt. Certainly nothing could justify the estimate of him given by
Professor Arber, that "he was both fair-minded and friendly toward the
Pilgrim Fathers," and he certainly stands alone among writers of
reputation in that opinion. Jones's selfishness,
[Bradford himself - whose authority in the matter will not be
doubted - says (Historie, Mass. ed. p. 112): "As this calamitie,
the general sickness, fell among ye passengers that were to be left
here to plant, and were basted ashore and made to drinke water, that
the sea-men might have ye more bear [beer] and one in his sickness
desiring but a small can of beare it was answered that if he were
their own father he should have none." Bradford also shows (op.
cit. p. 153) the rapacity of Jones, when in command of the
DISCOVERY, in his extortionate demands upon the Plymouth planters,
notwithstanding their necessities.]
threats, boorishness, and extortion, to say nothing of his exceedingly
bad record as a pirate, both in East and West Indian waters, compel a far
different estimate of him as a man, from that of Arber, however excellent
he was as a mariner.
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