To Accept, As Beyond Serious Doubt, Mr. Goffe's Ownership Of The
MAY-FLOWER, When She Made Her Memorable Voyage To
New Plimoth, one need
only to compare, and to interpret logically, the significant facts;
- that he was a ship-owner
Of London and one of the body of Merchant
Adventurers who set her forth on her Pilgrim voyage in 1620; and that he
stood, as her evident owner, in similar relation to the Puritan company
which chartered her for New England, similarly carrying colonists,
self-exiled for religion's sake, in 1629 and again in 1630. This
conviction is greatly strengthened by the fact that Mr. Goffe continued
one of the Pilgrim Merchant Adventurers, until their interests were
transferred to the colonists by the "Composition" of 1626, and three
years later (1629) sent by the MAY-FLOWER, on her second New England
voyage, although under a Puritan charter, another company from the
Leyden congregation. The (cipher) letter of the "Governor and deputies
of the New-England Company for a plantation in Massachusetts Bay" to
Captain John Endicott, written at Gravesend, England, the 17th of April,
1629, says: "If you want any Swyne wee have agreed with those of Ne[w]
Plimouth that they deliver you six Sowes with pigg for which they a[re]
to bee allowed 9 lb. in accompt of what they the Plymouth people owe
unto Mr. Goffe [our] deputie [Governor]." It appears from the foregoing
that the Pilgrims at New Plymouth were in debt to Mr. Goffe in 1629,
presumably for advances and passage money on account of the contingent
of the Leyden congregation, brought over with Higginson's company to
Salem, on the second trip of the MAY-FLOWER.
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