No Mention Is Found Of Any "Outfitting" Of The MAY-FLOWER
Passengers Except The London Apprentices.
There is no doubt that a
considerable supply of all the above-named articles was necessarily sent
by the Adventurers on the MAY-FLOWER, both for the Pilgrims' needs on the
voyage and in the new colony, as also for trading purposes.
There seems
to have been at all times a supreme anxiety, on the part of both Pilgrim
and Puritan settlers, to get English clothes upon their red brethren of
the forest, whether as a means of exchange for peltry, or for decency's
sake, is not quite clear. There was apparently a greater disparity in
character, intelligence, and station between the leaders of Higginson's
and Winthrop's companies and their followers than between the chief men
of the Pilgrims and their associates. With the former were titles and
considerable representation of wealth and position. With the passengers
of the MAY-FLOWER a far greater equality in rank, means, intelligence,
capacity, and character was noticeable. This was due in part, doubtless,
to the religious beliefs and training of the Leyden contingent, and had
prompt illustration in their Compact, in which all stood at once on an
equal footing. There was but little of the "paternal" nature in the form
of their government (though something at times in their punishments), and
there was much personal dignity and independence of the individual.
An equipment having so much of the character of a uniform - not to say
"livery" - as that furnished by Higginson's company to its people
suggests the "hedger and ditcher" type of colonists (of whom there were
very few among the Plymouth settlers), rather than the scholar,
publisher, tradesman, physician, hatter, smith, carpenter, "lay reader,"
and soldier of the Pilgrims, and would certainly have been obnoxious to
their finer sense of personal dignity and proportion.
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