The
Record Of The Action Of The "Council For New England" - Which Had Become
The Successor Of The Second Virginia
Company before intelligence was
received that the Pilgrims had landed on its domain - is not at hand,
but it appears
By the record of the London Company, under date of Monday,
July 16/26, 1621, that the "Council for New England" had promptly made
itself agreeable to the colonists. The record reads: "It was moved,
seeing that Master John Pierce had taken a Patent of Sir Ferdinando
Gorges, and thereupon seated his Company [the Pilgrims] within the limits
of the Northern Plantations, as by some was supposed,"' etc. From this
it is plain that, on receipt by Pierce of the news that the colony was
landed within the limits of the "Council for New England," he had, as
instructed, applied for, and been given (June 1, 1621), the (first)
"Council" patent for the colony. For confirmation hereof one should see
also the minutes of the "Council for New England" of March 25/April 4.,
1623, and the fulsome letter of Robert Cushman returning thanks in behalf
of the Planters (through John Pierce), to Gorges, for his prompt response
to their request for a patent and for his general complacency toward them
Hon. James Phinney Baxter, Gorges's able and faithful biographer, says:
"We can imagine with what alacrity he [Sir Ferdinando] hastened to give
to Pierce a patent in their behalf." The same biographer, clearly
unconscious of the well-laid plot of Gorges and Warwick (as all other
writers but Neill and Davis have been), bears testimony (all the stronger
because the witness is unwitting of the intrigue), to the ardent interest
Gorges had in its success. He says: "The warm desire of Sir Ferdinando
Gorges to see a permanent colony founded within the domain of the
Plymouth [or Second] Virginia Company was to be realized in a manner of
which he had never dreamed [sic!] and by a people with whom he had but
little sympathized, although we know that he favored their settlement
within the territorial limits of the Plymouth [Second] Company." He had
indeed "favored their settlement," by all the craft of which he was
master, and greeted their expected and duly arranged advent with all the
jubilant open-handedness with which the hunter treats the wild horse he
has entrapped, and hopes to domesticate and turn to account. Everything
favored the conspirators. The deflection north-ward from the normal
course of the ship as she approached the coast, bound for the latitude of
the Hudson, required only to be so trifling that the best sailor of the
Pilgrim leaders would not be likely to note or criticise it, and it was
by no means uncommon to make Cape Cod as the first landfall on Virginia
voyages. The lateness of the arrival on the coast, and the difficulties
ever attendant on doubling Cape Cod, properly turned to account, would
increase the anxiety for almost any landing-place, and render it easy to
retain the sea-worn colonists when once on shore. The grand advantage,
however, over and above all else, was the entire ease and certainty with
which the cooperation of the one man essential to the success of the
undertaking could be secured, without need of the privity of any other,
viz. 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. Dr. Neill, than whom there
can be no better authority, was himself satisfied, and unequivocally
states, that "Thomas Jones, Captain of the MAY-FLOWER, was without doubt
the old servant of Lord Warwick in the East Indies." Having done Sir
Robert Rich's (the Earl of Warwick's) "dirty work" for years, and having
on all occasions been saved from harm by his noble patron (even when
piracy and similar practices had involved him in the meshes of the law),
it would be but a trifling matter, at the request of such powerful
friends as the Earl and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, to steal the Pilgrim
Colony from the London Virginia Company, and hand it over bodily to the
"Council for New England," - the successor of the Second (Plymouth)
Virginia Company, - in which their interests were vested, Warwick having,
significantly, transferred his membership from the London Company to the
new "Council for New England," as it was commonly called.
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