"Where they find the bigger ship come from London,
Mr. Jones, Master, with the rest of the company who had been waiting
there with Mr. Cushman seven days." Deacon Carver, probably from
being on shore, was not here named.
In a note appended to the
memoir of Robert Cushman (prefatory to his Discourse delivered at
Plymouth, New England, on "The Sin and Danger of Self-Love") it is
stated in terms as follows: "The fact is, that Mr. Cushman procured
the larger vessel, the MAY-FLOWER, and its pilot, at London, and
left in that vessel." The statement - though published long after the
events of which it treats and by other than Mr. Cushman - we know to
be substantially correct, and the presumption is that the writer,
whoever he may have been, knew also.
Sailing with his wife and son (it is not probable that he had any
other living child at the time), in full expectation that it was for
Virginia, he encountered so much of ungrateful and abusive
treatment, after the brethren met at Southampton, - especially at the
hands of the insufferable Martin, who, without merit and with a most
reprehensible record (as it proved), was chosen over him as
"governor" of the ship, - that he was doubtless glad to return from
Plymouth when the SPEEDWELL broke down. He and his family appear,
therefore, as "MAY-FLOWER passengers," only between London and
Plymouth during the vexatious attendance upon the scoundrelly Master
of the SPEEDWELL, in his "doublings" in the English Channel. His
Dartmouth letter to Edward Southworth, one of the most valuable
contributions to the early literature of the Pilgrims extant,
clearly demonstrates that he was suffering severely from dyspepsia
and deeply wounded feelings. The course of events was his complete
vindication, and impartial history to-day pronounces him second to
none in his service to the Pilgrims and their undertaking. His
first wife is shown by Leyden records to have been Sarah Reder, and
his second marriage to have occurred May 19/June 3, 1617, [sic]
about the time he first went to England in behalf of the Leyden
congregation.
Mrs. Mary (Clarke)-Singleton Cushman appears only as a passenger of the
MAY-FLOWER on her channel voyage, as she returned with her husband
and son from Plymouth, England, in the SPEEDWELL.
Thomas Cushman, it is quite clear, must have been a son by a former wife,
as he would have been but a babe, if the son of the latest wife,
when he went to New England with his father, in the FORTUNE, to
remain. Goodwin and others give his age as fourteen at this time,
and his age at death is their warrant. Robert Cushman died in 1625,
but a "Mary, wife [widow?] of Robert Cushman, and their son,
Thomas," seem to have been remembered in the will of Ellen Bigge,
widow, of Cranbrooke, England, proved February 12, 1638
(Archdeaconry, Canterbury, vol. lxx. leaf 482). The will intimates
that the "Thomas" named was "under age" when the bequest was made.
If this is unmistakably so (though there is room for doubt), then
this was not the Thomas of the Pilgrims.
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