It Is Exceedingly
Difficult To Reconcile These Unquestionable Facts With The Equal
Certainty That, At The "Composition" Of The Adventurers With The Planters
In 1626, There Were Forty-Two Who Signed As Of The Adventurers.
The
weight, however, of evidence and of probability must be held to support
the conclusion that in June, 1620,
The organization was voluntary, and
that the charter-party of the MAY-FLOWER was signed - " on the one part
" - by each of the enrolled Adventurers engaged in the Leyden
congregation's colonization scheme. Goodwin' alone pretends to any
certain knowledge of the matter, but although a veracious usually
reliable writer, he is not infallible, as already shown, and could hardly
have had access to the original documents, - which alone, in this case,
could be relied on to prove his assertion that "Shortly articles were
signed by both parties, Weston acting for the Adventurers." Not a
particle of confirmatory evidence has anywhere been found in Pilgrim or
contemporaneous literature to warrant this statement, after exhaustive
search, and it must hence, until sustained by proof, be regarded as a
personal inference rather than a verity. If the facts were as appears,
they permit the hope that a document of so much prima facie importance
may have escaped destruction, and will yet be found among the private
papers of some of the last survivors of the Adventurers, though with the
acquisition of all their interests by the Pilgrim leaders such documents
would seem, of right, to have become the property of the purchasers, and
to have been transferred to the Plymouth planters.
This all-important and historic body - the company of Merchant
Adventurers - is entitled to more than passing notice. Associated to
"finance" the projected transplantation of the Leyden congregation of
"Independents" to the "northern parts of Virginia," under such patronage
and protection of the English government and its chartered Companies as
they might be able to secure, they were no doubt primarily brought
together by the efforts of one of their number, Thomas Weston, Esq., the
London merchant previously named, though for some obscure reason Master
John Pierce (also one of them) was their "recognized" representative in
dealing with the (London) Virginia Company and the Council for the
Affairs of New England, in regard to their Patents.
Bradford states that Weston "was well acquainted with some of them the
Leyden leaders and a furtherer of them in their former proceedings,"
and this fact is more than once referred to as ground for their gratitude
and generosity toward him, though where, or in what way, his friendship
had been exercised, cannot be learned, - perhaps in the difficulties
attending their escape from "the north country" to Holland. It was
doubtless largely on this account, that his confident assurances of all
needed aid in their plans for America were so relied upon; that he was so
long and so fully trusted; and that his abominable treachery and later
abuse were so patiently borne.
We are indebted to the celebrated navigator, Captain John Smith, of
Virginia fame, always the friend of the New England colonists, for most
of what we know of the organization and purposes of this Company. His
ample statement, worthy of repetition here, recites, that
"the Adventurers which raised the stock to begin and supply this
Plantation, were about seventy: some, Gentlemen; some, Merchants; some,
handicraftsmen; some adventuring great sums, some, small; as their
estates and affections served . . . . These dwell most about London.
They are not a corporation but knit together, by a voluntary combination,
in a Society, with out constraint or penalty; aiming to do good and to
plant Religion." Their organization, officers, and rules of conduct, as
given by Smith, have already been quoted. It is to be feared from the
conduct of such men as Weston, Pierce, Andrews, Shirley, Thornell,
Greene, Pickering, Alden, and others, that profitable investment, rather
than desire "to do good and to plant Religion," was their chief interest.
That the higher motives mentioned by Smith governed such tried and
steadfast souls as Bass, Brewer, Collier, Fletcher, Goffe, Hatherly,
Ling, Mullens, Pocock, Thomas, and a few others, there can be no doubt.
[Weston wrote Bradford, April 10, 1622, "I perceive and know as well
as another ye disposition of your adventurers, whom ye hope of gaine
hath drawne on to this they have done; and yet I fear ye hope will
not draw them much further." While Weston's character was utterly
bad, and he had then alienated his interest in both Pilgrims and
Adventurers, his judgment of men was evidently good.]
No complete list of the original "seventy" has ever been found, and we
are indebted for the names of forty-two, of the fifty who are now known,
to the final "Composition" made with the Pilgrim colonists, through the
latter's representatives, November 15/25, 1626, as given by Bradford,
and to private research for the rest. The list of original members of the
company of Merchant Adventurers, as ascertained to date, is as follows.
More extended mention of them appears in the notes appended to this list.
Robert Allden, Thomas Fletcher, Emanuel Altham, Thomas Goffe, Richard
Andrews, Peter Gudburn, Thomas Andrews, William Greene, Lawrence Anthony,
Timothy Hatherly, Edward Bass, Thomas Heath, John Beauchamp, William
Hobson, Thomas Brewer, Robert Holland, Henry Browning, Thomas Hudson,
William Collier, Robert Keayne, Thomas Coventry, Eliza Knight,
John Knight, John Revell, Miles Knowles, Newman Rookes, John Ling, Samuel
Sharpe, Christopher Martin(Treasurer pro tem.), James Shirley
(Treasurer), Thomas Millsop, William Thomas, Thomas Mott, John Thornell
William Mullens, Fria Newbald, Matthew Thornell William Pennington,
William Penrin. Joseph Tilden, Edward Pickering, Thomas Ward, John
Pierce, John White, John Pocock, John Wincob, Daniel Poynton, Thomas
Weston, William Quarles, Richard Wright.
Shirley, in a letter to Governor Bradford, mentions a Mr. Fogge and a Mr.
Coalson, in a way to indicate that they might have been, like himself,
Collier, Thomas, Hatherly, Beauchamp, and Andrews, also of the original
Merchant Adventurers, but no proof that they were such has yet been
discovered. It has been suggested that Sir Edwin Sandys was one of the
number, at the inception of the enterprise, but - though there is evidence
to indicate that he stood the friend of the Pilgrims in many ways,
possibly lending them money, etc.
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