Two Ships Came, 'THE GIFT OF GOD' And The 'MARY AND JOHN,'
Bringing A Hundred Persons.
Through August they found all delightful,
but when the ships went back in December, fifty five of the number
returned to England, weary of their experience and fearful of the cold
....
With spring the ships returned from England; "but by this time the
remainder were ready to leave," so every soul returned with Gilbert [the
Admiral] . . . . For thirty years Gorges continued to push
exploration and emigration to that region, but his ambition and
liberality ever resulted in disappointment and loss." The annals of the
time show that not a few of the Sagadahoc colonists were convicts,
released from the English jails to people this colony.
Hakluyt says: "In 1607 [this should read 1608], disheartened by the death
of Popham, they all embarked in a ship from Exeter and in the new
pynnace, the 'VIRGINIA,' built in the colony, and sett sail for England,
and this was the end of that northern colony upon the river Sachadehoc
[Kennebec]."
No one knew better than the shrewd Gorges the value of such a colony as
that of the Leyden brethren would be, to plant, populate, and develop his
Company's great demesne. None were more facile than himself and the
buccaneering Earl of Warwick, to plan and execute the bold, but - as it
proved - easy coup, by which the Pilgrim colony was to be stolen bodily;
for the benefit of the "Second Virginia Company" and its successor,
"the Council for New England," from the "First (or London) Company,"
under whose patent (to John Pierce) and patronage they sailed. They
apparently did not take their patent with them, - it would have been
worthless if they had, - and they were destined to have no small trouble
with Pierce, before they were established in their rights under the new
patent granted him (in the interest of the Adventurers and themselves),
by the "Council for New England." Master John Wincob's early and silent
withdrawal from his apparently active connection with the Pilgrim
movement, and the evident cancellation of the first patent issued to him
in its interest, by the (London) Virginia Company, have never been
satisfactorily explained. Wincob (or Wincop), we are told, "was a
religious Gentleman, then belonging to the household of the Countess of
Lincoln, who intended to go with them [the Pilgrims] but God so disposed
as he never went, nor they ever made use of this Patent, which had cost
them so much labor and charge." Wincob, it appears by the minutes of the
(London) Virginia Company of Wednesday, May 26/June 5, 1619, was
commended to the Company, for the patent he sought, by the fourth Earl of
Lincoln, and it was doubtless through his influence that it was granted
and sealed, June 9/19, 1619. But while Wincob was a member of the
household of the Dowager Countess of Lincoln, mother of the fourth Earl
of Lincoln; John, the eldest son of Sir Ferdinando Gorges, had married
the Earl's daughter (sister ?), and hence Gorges stood in a much nearer
relation to the Earl than did his mother's friend and dependant (as
Wincob evidently was), as well as on a much more equal social footing.
By the minutes of the (London) Virginia Company of Wednesday, February 2/
12, 1619/20, it appears that a patent was "allowed and sealed to John
Pierce and his associates, heirs and assigns," for practically the same
territory for which the patent to Wincob had been given but eight months
before. No explanation was offered, and none appears of record, but the
logical conclusion is, that the first patent had been cancelled, that
Master Wincob's personal interest in the Pilgrim exodus had ceased, and
that the Lincoln patronage had been withdrawn. It is a rational
conjecture that Sir Ferdinando Gorges, through the relationship he
sustained to the Earl, procured the withdrawal of Wincob and his patent,
knowing that the success of his (Gorges's) plot would render the Wincob
patent worthless, and that the theft of the colony, in his own interest,
would be likely to breed "unpleasantness" between himself and Wincob's
sponsors and friends among the Adventurers, many of whom were friends of
the Earl of Lincoln.
The Earl of Warwick, the man of highest social and political rank in the
First (or London) Virginia Company, was, at about the same time, induced
by Gorges to abandon his (the London) Company and unite with himself in
securing from the Crown the charter of the "Council of Affairs for New
England." The only inducements he could offer for the change must
apparently have resided in the promised large results of plottings
disclosed by him (Gorges), but he needed the influential and unscrupulous
Earl for the promotion of his schemes, and won him, by some means, to an
active partnership, which was doubtless congenial to both. The "fine
Italian hand" of Sir Ferdinando hence appears at every stage, and in
every phase, of the Leyden movement, from the mission of Weston to
Holland, to the landing at Cape Cod, and every movement clearly indicates
the crafty cunning, the skilful and brilliant manipulation, and the
dogged determination of the man.
That Weston was a most pliant and efficient tool in the hands of Gorges,
"from start to finish" of this undertaking, is certainly apparent.
Whether he was, from the outset, made fully aware of the sinister designs
of the chief conspirator, and a party to them, admits of some doubt,
though the conviction strengthens with study, that he was, from the
beginning, 'particeps criminis'. If he was ever single-minded for the
welfare of the Leyden brethren and the Adventurers, it must have been for
a very brief time at the inception of the enterprise; and circumstances
seem to forbid crediting him with honesty of purpose, even then. The
weight of evidence indicates that he both knew, and was fully enlisted
in, the entire plot of Gorges from the outset. In all its early stages
he was its most efficient promoter, and seems to have given ample proof
of his compliant zeal in its execution.
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