The Master Of The MAY-FLOWER, Captain Thomas Jones.
Let us see upon what the assumption of this ready and certain accord on
the part of Captain Jones rests.
Rev. Dr. Neill, whose thorough study of
the records of the Virginia Companies, and of the East India Company
Calendars and collateral data, entitles him to speak with authority,
recites that, "In 1617, Capt. Thomas Jones (sometimes spelled Joanes) had
been sent to the East Indies in command of the ship LION by the Earl of
Warwick (then Sir Robt. Rich), under a letter of protection from the Duke
of Savoy, a foreign prince, ostensibly 'to take pirates,' which [pretext]
had grown, as Sir Thomas Roe (the English ambassador with the Great
Mogul) states, 'to be a common pretence for becoming pirate.'" Caught by
the famous Captain Martin Pring, in full pursuit of the junk of the Queen
Mother of the Great Mogul, Jones was attacked, his ship fired in the
fight, and burned, - with some of his crew, - and he was sent a prisoner to
England in the ship BULL, arriving in the Thames, January 1, 1618/19. No
action seems to have been taken against him for his offences, and
presumably his employer, Sir Robert, the coming Earl, obtained his
liberty on one pretext or another. On January 19, however, complaint was
made against Captain Jones, "late of the LION," by the East India
Company, "for hiring divers men to serve the King of Denmark in the East
Indies." A few days after his arrest for "hiring away the Company's men,
Lord Warwick got him off" on the claim that he had employed him
"to go to Virginia with cattle." From the "Transactions" of the Second
Virginia Company, of which - as we have seen - Sir Ferdinando Gorges was
the leading spirit, it appears that on "February 2, 1619/20, a commission
was allowed Captain Thomas Jones of the FALCON, a ship of 150 tons" [he
having been lately released from arrest by the Earl of Warwick's
intercession], and that "before the close of the month, he sailed with
cattle for Virginia," as previously noted.
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