For None Had Power To
Command Them, The Patents They Had Being For Virginia, And Not For
New-England Which Belonged To Another Government, With Which Ye
London [Or First Virginia Company Had Nothing To Doe, And Partly
That Such An Acte By Them Done .
. . Might be as firm as any
patent, and in some respects more sure." Dr. Griffis is hardly
warranted in making
Bradford to say, as he does (The Pilgrims in
their Three Homes, p. 182), that "there were a few people I
'shuffled' in upon them the company who were probably unmitigated
scoundrels." Bradford speaks only of Billington and his family as
those "shuffled into their company," and while he was not improbably
one of the agitators (with Hopkins) who were the proximate causes of
the drawing up of the Compact, he was not, in this case, the
responsible leader. It is evident from the foregoing that the
"appearance of faction" did not show itself until the vessel's prow
was turned back toward Cape Cod Harbor, and it became apparent that
the effort to locate "near Hudson's River" was to be abandoned, and
a location found north of 41 degrees north latitude, which would
leave them without charter rights or authority of any kind. It is
undoubtedly history that Master Stephen Hopkins, - then "a
lay-reader" for Chaplain Buck, - on Sir Thomas Gates's expedition to
Virginia, had, when some of them were cast away on the Bermudas,
advocated just such sentiments - on the same basis - as were now
bruited upon the MAY-FLOWER, and it could hardly have been
coincidence only that the same were repeated here.
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