“As for Master Lyford, he was, as you know, sent over at the company’s charges, him and his large family, Master Winslow who was then in England having been wrought upon by the Adventurers to accept him as a minister of the gospel, and fit to become our pastor. Arrived here, he received a house, a double portion of food and stores, a man to serve him at our charge, and all such honor and observance as we knew how to bestow, although we determined to tarry for a season before accepting him as our minister in full. But now, how have these two carried themselves among us? Have they repaid love with love, and good with good? or has it not rather been after the fashion of the hedgehog in the fable, which the coney in a bitter cold day invited to shelter in her burrow, which at first was meek and gentle enow, but anon when he was comforted and warm, thrust out his prickles and so vext the poor coney that in the end it was she who was thrust out into the cold.”
A low murmur of appreciation followed the parable, and Oldhame once more sprang to his feet, while Standish attentively followed every movement.
“So far as I can gather any serious meaning from the buffoonery Master Bradford intends for wit,” began he, “I take it that he accuseth me and this godly minister of treason to this colony, where as he meanly reminds us we have received certain benefits, for the which I am quite ready to pay”—
“Shame! Shame!”
“Shame as much as you will, Alden and Soule, Bartlett and Prence! I’ve marked you, my springalds, but what I’ve to say is that the inditing is false and altogether malicious. Neither Lyford nor I have writ any such letters, or sent any such message now or ever. Say you not so, Master Lyford?”
“Oh verily, verily, good gentlemen all, no such thought has ever”—
“There, that will do, man. And now we call upon you, Master Governor, for any warrant you may have for this insult, and if you have none, we demand an ample apology.”
“You positively deny writing any letters of complaint concerning us?” asked Bradford deliberately.
“We do.”
“Master Allerton, be pleased to bring forth the papers you hold in charge.”
Allerton, his crafty face illuminated with a smile of unusual satisfaction, brought forward a small table, and placed upon it some twenty or thirty letters, carefully arranged and docketed, in his neat and scholarly script. Laying his hand upon the papers, Bradford looked at the traitors with an austere sadness significant of his just yet gentle nature; then, turning to the people, he related how by the advice of his council he had seized these letters, already on their way to England, and with Winslow’s help copied the most of them, retaining, however, some of the originals with which to confront the writers in case of denial.
But as the governor in his calm and judicial voice made this announcement, glancing as he spoke at the documents spread out upon the little table, Oldhame, furious at the humiliating discovery of his lie, started again to his feet, foaming out all sorts of threats and defiance, and threatening indefinite but terrible vengeance. Finally turning to the benches with a gesture almost magnificent in its reckless abandon, he cried,—
“My masters, where are your hearts! Now is the time to show yourselves men! How oft have yougroaned in my ears under the tyranny of these oppressors, and now is your time to fling off the yoke! Stand to your arms, brethren! Make a move, and I am with you!”
As he recognized the intent of this seditious appeal, Standish sprang forward, his hand upon his sword’s hilt, but Bradford, without rising, made a slight repressive gesture, and ran his eye quickly over the ranks of faces confronting him, marking the expression on each.
A few, notably Billington’s, Hicks’s, Hopkins’s, and some of the new-comers’, wore an anxious, a sheepish, or a frightened air, combined in two or three cases with truculence, and in others with doubt, but the great body of the freemen met the eye of their governor with cordial sympathy and reassurance, and although no man stirred, several handled their weapons and looked around them with an eagerness boding ill for the traitors should they proceed to extremity.
Oldhame also reviewed the fourscore faces arrayed before him, and was quick to perceive and accept his defeat.
“Ye coward dogs! Crouch under your master’s lash till it cut your hearts out! What is it to me or mine!”
The bitter words ground between his teeth reached no ears but those of Lyford, upon whom, as he sank cowering back upon the bench, Bradford next turned his eyes demanding,—
“What isyouropinion, Master Lyford, upon this question of opening another’s letters?”
The ex-minister started as if stung by the lash of a whip, passed his hand across his trembling lips, and stammered,—
“I—I—I meant no harm. I”—
“Master Lyford answers the accusation of his own conscience rather than my question,” said Bradford serenely, as the quavering voice trailed away into silence. “The matter in his mind is this: When our brother, Edward Winslow, was about sailing out of England in the Charity, bringing with him this man who had been pushed upon him as a worthy substitute for our own revered pastor, he writ with his own hand to Master Robinson an account of the matter, with sundry other things touching the spiritual and temporal concerns of the company. This letter he sealed, addressed, and left lying in his state cabin, along with sundry others, some of his own inditing, and some intrusted to him by friends, to convey hither. One of these was from a well-known English gentleman to Elder Brewster, and bore both names upon the cover.
“Master Winslow’s affairs calling him back to London before the sailing of the vessel, he left all these letters in his writing-case under charge of Master Lyford, who used the same cabin. But no sooner was Winslow’s back turned than Master Lyford, opening the chest with keys of his own, read the letters, and made copies of the two mentioned, telling under his own hand how he obtained them. These copies he brought hither, and now is sending them back into England by the Charity, and small charity of the godly sort doth he show in his comments inclosed with the copies to one of our most powerful and unloving opponents among the Adventurers.
“And why hath he done this? Not to fulfill a heavy and painful duty, and to protect a people and an emprise laid upon him by Almighty God, even as the children of Israel were laid upon the shoulders of Mosesuntil he all but sank beneath the weight! No, Master Lyford can plead no such necessity for the opening and reading of letters writ and sealed by one who trusted him, but rather his motive seems to have been the desire of doing despite to his benefactors, and of working mischief and destruction to them who have never done him other than kindness, trusting and befriending him as one of themselves.
“And now, Master Allerton, I will ask you to read out these letters, and any who will may draw near and look at the originals signed both by John Oldhame and John Lyford.”
The letters were read, and as page after page of Lyford’s malignant treachery, and Oldhame’s fierce vituperation was turned, murmurs of indignation, ominous mutterings, with here and there a groan or a faint hiss arose from the benches, especially when the freemen heard it recommended that the Adventurers should, as soon as possible, send a body of men “to over-sway those here;” that they should at all risks prevent Pastor Robinson’s coming, and should, if possible, depose Winslow from his position as agent. Again a subdued commotion was excited by the advice to send over a certain captain, who had apparently been previously mentioned, with the promise that he should at once be chosen military leader, “for this Captaine Standish looks like a silly boy, and is in utter contempt.”
In hearing this philippic many an eye was turned upon its subject, but he, standing at ease with one hand upon Gideon’s hilt, only gathered his beard in the other fist and smiled good-humoredly. He at least was “moskeeto-proof.”
“And now, men,” demanded the governor, turning tothe people, “what have you to say? Let any one who would make a proposal as to our dealing with these two speak his mind freely.”
But before any other could reply to this demand, Lyford, breaking away from Oldhame’s fierce restraint, fell upon his knees, bursting into tears and sobs, wringing his hands, and cringing to the floor, while he howled out all sorts of self-accusations, calling himself a miserable sinner, “unsavorie salt,” Judas, and many other opprobrious epithets, doubting, as he professed, if God would ever pardon him, and in any case despairing of the forgiveness of his benefactors and hosts, for he had so wronged them as to pass all forgiveness. Finally, he confessed in the most abject terms that “all he had writ against them was false and naught, both for matter and manner,” and professed himself willing and anxious to retract everything in the presence of God, angels, and men.
But the scene was soon cut short, for the self-respecting men who listened to this abjection found it too great a humiliation of the divine image in man, and while the culprit still sobbed and whined at his feet, the governor, briefly ordering him to rise and be silent, turned to the people and repeated his demand for their suffrages.
A brief discussion ensued, chiefly among the elders, the younger men signifying their assent or dissent by a word or two, and Bradford, listening to all, watching the expression of all, and gathering the sense of the assembly as much by intuition as from spoken words, at last announced that the Court of the People found these two men guilty of the offenses with which they stood charged, and were decided to banish them from thesettlement as dangerous to its safety. A murmur of assent ratified this decision, and the details arranged by the governor and council were unanimously accepted. Oldhame was to depart at once, while his family had permission to remain until he could find a comfortable home for them, and then rejoin him without his coming to fetch them.
As for Lyford, his retraction and professions of contrition had their effect, especially with the doctor, whose earnest appeals for indulgence finally procured permission for the penitent to remain in the village for six months on probation, his sentence then either to be acted upon or, in case his repentance should prove sincere, to possibly be altogether remitted.
The two culprits received their sentence very differently, yet very characteristically. Oldhame, breathing fire and fury, departed from the Fort at once in a blue flame of profanity and vituperation, and before night set sail for Nantasket to join the Gorges men settled in that neighborhood.
But the meaner traitor could hardly be persuaded to stand upon his feet, preferring to grovel at those of his judges, who for the most part received his demonstrations very coldly, Bradford suggesting, as he twisted away the hand Lyford was moistly kissing,—
“There’s a homely old proverb, master, which you might do well to recall: ‘Actions speak louder than words.’”
“And still another,” broke in John Alden, “says that ‘Promises butter no parsnips.’”
Thus ended the first trial for treason in America, and so was decided the most important cause ever brought before the Court of the People, a tribunal soon to be replaced by the trial by jury.
HOW MISTRESS ALICE BRADFORD INTRODUCED HER SISTER PRISCILLA CARPENTER TO PLYMOUTH SOCIETY.
“Goodman, I’ve heavy news for you; so set your mind to bear it as best you may.”
“Nay, goodwife, your winsome face is no herald of bad news, and certes, I’ll not cross the bridge until it comes in sight.”
“Well, then, since words won’t daunt you, here’s a fact, sir! We are to have a merry-making, and gather all the young folk of the village, and Master Bradford will have to lay off the governor’s mantle of thought and worry, that he may be jocund with the rest.”
“Nay, then, Alice, ’tis indeed heavy news!” And the governor pulled a long face, and looked mock-miserable with all his might. “And is it a dispensation not to be gainsaid? Is there good cause that we should submit ourselves to an affliction that might, as it would seem, be spared?”
“Well, dear, you know that my sister Pris has come”—
“Do you tell me so! Nowthereis news in very deed! And how did Mistress Priscilla Carpenter reach these parts?”
“Now, Will! if you torment me so, I’ll e’en call in Priscilla Alden to take my part.She’llgive you quip for crank, I’ll warrant me.”
“Nay, nay, wife, I’ll be meek and good as your cosset lamb, so you’ll keep me under your own hand. Come now, let us meet this enemy face to face. What is it all?”
Alice, who, tender soul that she was, loved not even playful and mock contention, sighed a little, and folding her hands in her lap gently said,—
“It is all just as thou pleasest, Will, but my thought was to call together all the young people and make a little feast to bring those acquainted with Pris, who, poor maid, has found it a trifle dull and straitened here, after leaving her merry young friends in England.”
“Ever thinking of giving pleasure to others even at cost of much toil to thyself, sweetheart!” And the governor, placing a hand under his wife’s round chin, raised her face and kissed it tenderly again and again, until the soft pink flushed to the roots of the fair hair.
“Do as thou wilt, darling, in this and everything, and call upon me for what thy men and maids cannot accomplish.”
“Nay, I’ve help enough. Christian Penn is equal to two women, and sister Pris herself is very notable. Then Priscilla Alden will kindly put her hand to some of the dainty dishes, and she is a wonder at cooking, as you know.”
“Yes, she proved it in—early days,” interrupted Bradford, the smile fading off his face. “Had it not been for her skill in putting a savory touch to the coarsest food, I believe some of our sick folk would have died,—I am sure Dame Brewster would.”
“Oh, you poor souls! How you suffered, and I there in England eating and drinking of the best, and—oh, Will, you should have married good dear Priscilla to reward her care of what I held so carelessly.”
“Wonderful logic, madam! I should, to reward Mistress Molines for her care, have married her, when she loved another man, and I another woman, which latter was to thus be punished for carelessness in a matter she knew naught about!”
And with a tender little laugh, the governor pressed another kiss upon his wife’s smooth cheek, before he went out to his fields, while she flew at once to her kitchen and set the domestic engine throbbing at double-quick time. Then she stepped up the hill to John Alden’s house, and found Priscilla, her morning work already done, washing and dressing her little Betty, while John and Jo watched the operation with unflagging interest.
“Come and help you, Alice? I shall be gay and glad to do it, dear, just as soon as Betty is in her cradle, and I have told Mary-à-Becket what to do about the noon-meat. John, you and Jo run up the hill to the captain’s, and ask Mistress Standish if Alick and Myles may come down and play with you in front of the governor’s house so I may keep an eye on you.”
“Two fine boys, those of Barbara’s,” said the governor’s wife, and then affectionately, “yet no finer than your sturdy little knaves.”
“Oh, ours are well enough for little yeomen, but the captain says his Alick is heir to a great estate, and is a gentleman born!” And the two young women laughed good-naturedly, while Priscilla laid her baby in the cradle, and Alice turned toward the door saying, “Well, I must be at home to mind the maids.”
“And I’ll be there anon. I trust you’ve good store of milk and cream. We did well enow without it for four years, but now we’ve had it for a while, one might as well be dead as lack it.”
“I’ve plenty, and butter beside, both Dutch and fresh,” replied Alice from outside the door, and in another ten minutes the wide kitchen recently added to William Bradford’s house on the corner of Leyden Street and the King’s Highway, now called Main Street, hummed again with the merry sounds of youthful voices, of the whisking of eggs, and grinding of spices, and stirring of golden compounds in wooden bowls, and chopping suet, and stoning raisins, and slicing citron, and the clatter of pewter dishes, which, by the way, with wooden ware were nearly all the “pottery” the Pilgrims possessed, hypothetical teapots and china cups to the contrary; for, since we all know that tea and coffee were never heard of in England until about the year 1666, and the former herb was sold for many years after at from ten to fifteen dollars per pound (Pepys in 1671 mentions it as a strange and barbaric beverage just introduced), it is improbable that either tea, teapot, or teacups ever reached America until after Mary Allerton, the last survivor of the Mayflower, rested upon Burying Hill.
All that day and part of the next the battle raged in the Bradford kitchen, for delicate appetites were in those times rather a defect than a grace, and hospitality largely consisted in first providing great quantities and many varieties of food, and then over-pressing the guests to partake of it. An “afternoon tea” with diaphanous bread and butter, wafer cakes, and Cambridge salts, as the only solid refreshment, would have seemed to Alice Bradford and her guests either a comic pretense or a niggardly insult, and very different was the feast to which as many as could sat down at a very early hour of the evening of the second day.
The company was large, for in the good Old Colony fashion it included both married and single persons, and would, if possible, have made no distinctions of age or position, but this catholicity had in the growth of the colony become impossible, and Mistress Bradford’s invitations were, with much searching of spirit and desire to avoid offense, confined principally to young persons, married and unmarried, likely to become associates of her sister Priscilla, a fair-haired, sweet-lipped, and daintily colored lass, reproducing Dame Alice’s own early charms.
“The Brewster girls must come, although I cannot yet be reconciled to Fear’s having married Isaac Allerton, and calling herself mother to Bart, and Mary and Remember—great grown girls!” exclaimed the hostess in consultation with her husband, and he pleasantly replied,—
“Oh, well, dame, we must not hope to guide all the world by our own wisdom; and certes, if Fear’s marriage is a little incongruous, her sister Patience is well and fitly mated with Thomas Prence. It does one good to see such a comely and contented pair of wedded sweethearts.”
“True enough, Will, and your thought is a rebuke to mine.”
“Nay, wife, ’tis you that teach me to be charitable.”
And the two, come together to reap in the glorious St. Martin’s summer of their days the harvest sown amid the chill tears of spring, looked in each other’s eyes with a smile of deep content. The woman was the first to set self aside, and cried,—
“Come, come, Sir Governor! To business! Mistress Allerton, and herdaughters, Mary and Remember,Bartholomew, and the Prences, Constance Hopkins with Nicholas Snow, whom she will marry, the Aldens, the captain and his wife”—
“He is hardly to be ranked with the young folk, is he?”
“No, dear, no more than Master Allerton, or, for that matter, the governor and his old wife; but there, there, no more waste of time, sir! Who else is to come, and who to be left at home?”
“Nay, wife, I’m out of my depth already and will e’en get back to firm land, which means I leave all to your discretion. Call Barbara and Priscilla Alden to council, and let me know in time to put on my new green doublet and hose, for I suppose I am to don them.”
“Indeed you are, and your ruffles and your silk stockings that I brought over. I will not let you live altogether in hodden gray, since even the Elder goes soberly fine on holidays.”
“Well, well, I leave it all to you, and must betake myself to the woods. Good-by for a little.”
“Good-by, dear.”
And as the governor with an axe on his shoulder strode away down Market Street and across the brook to Watson’s Hill, Dame Alice, a kerchief over her head, once more ran up the hill to Priscilla Alden’s.
As the great gun upon the hill boomed out the sunset hour, and Captain Standish himself carefully covered it from the dews of night, Alice Bradford stood in the great lower room of her house and looked about her. All was done that could be done to put the place in festal array, and although the fair dame sighed a little at the remembrance of her stately home in Duke’s Place,London, with its tapestries and carvings and carpets and pictures, she bravely put aside the regret, and affectionately smoothed and patted the fine damask “cubboard cloth” covering the lower shelf of the sideboard, or, as she called it, the “buffet,” at one side of the room, and placed and replaced the precious properties set out thereon:—
A silver wine cup, a porringer that had been her mother’s, nine silver teaspoons, and, crown of all, four genuine Venetian wine-glasses, tall and twisted of stem, gold-threaded and translucent of bowl, fragile and dainty of shape, and yet, like their as dainty owner, brave to make the pilgrimage from the home of luxury and art to the wilderness, where a shelter from the weather and a scant supply of the coarsest food was all to be hoped for.
But Dame Bradford, fingering her Venice glasses, and softly smiling at the touch, murmured to herself and to them, “’Tis our exceeding gain.”
“What, Elsie, not dressed!” cried Priscilla Carpenter’s blithe voice, as that young lady, running down the stairs leading to her little loft chamber, presented herself to her sister’s inspection with a smile of conscious deserving.
“My word, Pris, but you are fine!” exclaimed Dame Alice, examining with an air of unwilling admiration the young girl’s gay apparel and ornaments. It was indeed a pretty dress, consisting of a petticoat of cramoisie satin, quilted in an elaborate pattern of flowers, leaves, and birds; an open skirt of brocade turned back from the front, and caught high upon the hips with great bunches of cramoisie ribbons; a “waistcoat” of the satin, and a little open jacket of the brocade. Around the soft whitethroat of the wearer was loosely knotted a satin cravat of the same dull red tint with the skirt, edged with a deep lace, upon which Alice Bradford at once laid a practiced finger.
“Pris, thatjabotis of Venise point! Where did you get it?”
“Ah! That was a present from”—
“Well, from whom?”
“Nay, never look so cross on’t, my lady sister! Might not I have a sweetheart as well as you?”
“Priscilla, I’m glad you’re here rather than with those gay friends of yours in London. I suppose Lady Judith Carr or her daughters gave you these clothes, did they not?”
“Well, I earned them hard enough putting up with all my lady’s humors and the girls’ jealous fancies,” pouted Pris. “I was glad enough when you and brother Will wrote and offered me a home,—not but what Lady Judith was good to me and called me her daughter; but, Elsie, ’twas not they who gave me the laced cravat, ’twas—’twas”—
“Well, out with it, little sister! Who was it, if not our mother’s old friend?”
“Why, Elsie, ’twas a noble gentleman that I met with them down at Bath, and—sister—he is coming over here to marry me right soon.”
“Nay, then, but that’s news indeed! And what may be his name, pet?”
“Sir Christopher Gardiner, and he’s a Knight of the Holy Sepulchre.”
And Pris, fondling the lace of her cravat, smiled proudly into her sister’s astonished face; but before either could speak, Barbara Standish and PriscillaAlden appeared at the open door, the latter exclaiming in her blithe voice,—
“What, Alice, still in your workaday kirtle! Barbara and I came thus betimes to see if aught remained that we might do before the folk gather.”
“Thank you, both; I—I—nay, then, I’m a little put about, dear friends; I hardly know,—well, well! Priscilla Carpenter, come you into my bedroom and help me do on my clothes, and if you two will look about and see what is ready and what is lacking, I shall be more than grateful. Come, Pris!”
“Something has chanced more than we know about!” suggested Priscilla Alden, as the bedroom door closed behind the sisters.
“Likely. But ’tis their affair and not ours,” replied Barbara quietly. “Now let us see. Would you set open the case holding the twelve ivory-handled knives?”
“Yes, they’re a rarity, and some of the folk may not have seen them. Alice says that in London they put a knife to every man’s trencher now, and nobody uses his own sheath-knife as has been the wont.”
“You tell me so! Well, one knife’s enough for Myles and me, yes, and the boys to boot. But then I cut the meat in morsels, and spread the bread with butter, or ever it goes on the table.”
“Of course; so we all do, I suppose. Well there, all is ready now, and here come the folk; there’s Patty Brewster, or Patience Prence as she must now be called, and along with her Fear Allerton and Remember and Mary,—her daughters indeed! Marry come up!Imight have had Isaac Allerton for myself, but”—
“And there is Constance Hopkins, and Nicholas Snow,” interrupted Barbara, who was a deadly foe togossip, “and John and Elizabeth Howland; then there’s Stephen Dean with Betsey Ring, and Edward Bangs and Lyddy Hicks, and Mary Warren and Robert Bartlett, three pair of sweethearts together, and here they all are at the door.”
But as the more lively Priscilla ran to open it, the governor’s hearty voice was heard without, crying,—
“Welcome! Welcome, friends! I was called out for a moment, but have come home just in the nick of time and brought the captain with me.”
“Now I do hope Myles has put on his ruff, and his other doublet that I laid out,” murmured Barbara in Priscilla’s ear. “When the governor and he get together, the world’s well lost for both of them.”
“Nay, he’s all right, and a right proper man, as he always was,” returned Priscilla, with a quick glance at the square figure and commanding head of the Captain of Plymouth, as he entered the room and smiled in courtly fashion at Dame Bradford’s greeting.
“And here’s your John, a head and shoulders above all the rest,” added Barbara good-naturedly, as Alden, the Saxon giant, strode into the room and looked fondly across it at his wife.
Another half hour and all were gathered about the three long tables improvised from boards and barrels, but all covered with the fine napery brought from Holland by Alice Bradford, who had the true housewife’s love of elegant damask, and during Edward Southworth’s life was able to indulge it, laying up such store of table damask, of fine Holland “pillowbers”[1]and “cubboard cloths,” towels of Holland, of dowlas, and of lockorum, and sheets of various qualities from “fineHolland” to tow (the latter probably spun and woven at home), that the inventory of her personal estate is as good reading to her descendants as a cookery book to a hungry man.
Plenty of trenchers both of pewter and wood lined the table, and by each lay a napkin and a spoon, but neither knives nor forks, the latter implement not having yet been invented, except in the shape of a powerful trident to lift the boiled beef from the kettle, while table knives, as Priscilla Alden had intimated, were still regarded as curious implements of extreme luxury. A knife of a different order, sometimes a clasp-knife, sometimes a sheath-knife, or even a dagger, was generally carried by each man, and used upon certainpièces de resistance, such as boar’s head, a roasted peacock, a shape of brawn, a powdered and cloved and browned ham, or such other triumphs of the culinary art as must be served whole.
Such dishes were carried around the table, and every guest, taking hold of the morsel he coveted with his napkin, sliced it off with his own knife, displaying the elegance of his table manners by the skill with which he did it. But as saffron was a favorite condiment of the day, and pearline was not yet invented, one sighs in contemplating the condition of these napkins, and ceases to wonder at the store of them laid up by thrifty housekeepers.
Ordinarily, however, the meat was divided into morsels before appearing on the table, and thus was easily managed with the spoon,—orwith the fingers.
Between each two plates stood a pewter or wooden basin of clam chowder, prepared by Priscilla Alden, who was held in Plymouth to possess a magic touch for this and several other dishes.
From these each guest transferred a portion to his own plate, except when two supped merrily from the same bowl in token of friendly intimacy. This first course finished and the bowls removed, all eyes turned upon the governor, who rose in his place at the head of the principal table, where were gathered the more important guests, and, looking affectionately up and down the board, said,—
“Friends, it hardly needs that I should say that you are welcome, for I see none that are ever less than welcome beneath this roof; but I well may thank you for the cheer your friendly faces bring to my heart to-night, and I well may pray you, of your goodness, to bestow upon my young sister here the same hearty kindness you have ever shown to me and mine.” A murmur of eager assent went round the board, and the governor smiled cordially, as he grasped in both hands the great two-handled loving-cup standing before him,—a grand cup, a noble cup, of the measure of two quarts, of purest silver, beautifully fashioned, and richly carved, as tradition said, by the hand of Benvenuto Cellini himself; so precious a property that Katharine White, daughter of an English bishop, was proud to bring it as almost her sole dowry to John Carver, her husband. With him it came to the New World, and was used at the Feast of Treaty between the colonists and Massasoit, chief of the native owners of the soil. Katharine Carver, dying broken hearted six weeks after her husband, bequeathed the cup to William Bradford, his successor in the arduous post of Governor of the Colony, and from him it passed down into that Hades of lost and all but forgotten treasures, which may, for aught we know, become the recreation-ground for the spirits of antiquarians.
Filled to the brim with generous Canary, a pure and fine wine in those days, it crowned the table, and William Bradford, steadily raising it to his lips, smiled gravely upon his guests, adding to his little speech of welcome,—
“I pledge you my hearty good-will, friends!” then drank sincerely yet modestly, and giving one handle to Myles Standish, who sat at his left hand, he retained his hold at the other side while the captain drank, and in his turn gave one handle to Mistress Winslow, who came next, and so, all standing to honor the pledge of love and good-will, the cup passed round the board and came to Elder Brewster, at the governor’s right hand; but he, having drank, looked around with his paternal smile and said,—
“There is yet enough in the loving-cup, friends, for each one to wet his lips, if nothing more, and I propose that we do so with our hearty welcome and best wishes to Mistress Priscilla Carpenter.”
Once more the cup went gayly round, and reached the Elder so dry that he smiled, as he placed it to his lips, with a bow toward Pris savoring more of his early days in the court of Queen Bess than of New England’s solitudes.
“And now to work, my friends, to work!” cried the governor. “I for one am famished, sith my dame was so busy at noontide with that wonderful structure yonder that she gave me naught but bread and cheese.”
Everybody laughed, and Alice Bradford colored like a red, red rose, yet bravely answered,—
“The governor will have his jest, but I hope my raised pie will suffer roundly for its interference with his dinner.”
“Faith, dame, but we’ll all help to punish it,” exclaimed Stephen Hopkins, gazing fondly at the elaborate mass of pastry representing, not inartistically, a castle with battlements and towers, and a floating banner of silk bearing an heraldic device. “Standish! we call upon you to lead us to the assault!”
“Nay, if Captain Standish is summoned to the field, my fortress surrenders without even a parley,” said Alice Bradford, as she gracefully drew the little banner from its place, and, laying it aside, removed a tower, a bastion, and a section of the battlement from the doomed fortress, and, loading a plate with the spoils of its treasury, planted the banner upon the top, and sent it to the captain, who received it with a bow and a smile, but never a word.
“Speak up, man!” cried Hopkins boisterously. “Make a gallant speech in return for the courtesy of so fair a castellaine.”
“Mistress Bradford needs no speech to assure her of my devoir,” replied the captain simply, and the governor added,—
“Our captain speaks more by deeds than words, and Gideon is his most eloquent interpreter. You have not brought him to-day, Captain.”
“No; Gideon sulks in these days of peace, and seldom stirs abroad.”
“Long may he be idle!” exclaimed the Elder, and a gentle murmur around the board told that the women at least echoed the prayer.
But Hopkins, seated next to Mistress Bradford, and watching her distribution of the pie, cared naught for war or peace until he secured a trencher of its contents, and presently cried,—
“Now, by my faith, I did not know such a pye as this could be concocted out of Yorkshire! ’Tis perfect in all its parts: fowl, and game, and pork, and forcemeat, and yolks of eggs, and curious art of spicery, and melting bits of pastry within, and stout-built walls without; in fact, there is naught lacking to such a pye as my mother used to make before I had the wit to know such pyes sing not on every bush.”
“You’re Yorkshire, then, Master Hopkins?” asked John Howland, who with his young wife, once Elizabeth Tilley, sat opposite.
“Yes, I’m Yorkshire, root and branch, and you’re Essex, and the captain and the governor Lancashire, but all shaken up in a bag now, and turned into New Englanders, and since the Yorkshire pye has come over along with us I’m content for one.”
A general laugh indorsed this patriotic speech, but Myles Standish, toying with the silken banner of the now sacked and ruined fortress, said in Bradford’s ear,—
“All very well for a man who has naught to lose in the old country. But for my part I mean to place at least my oldest son in the seat of his fathers.”
The governor smiled, and then sighed. “Nor can I quite forget the lands of Austerfield held by Bradfords and Hansons for more than one century, and the path beside the Idle, where Brewster and I walked and talked in the days of my first awakening to the real things of life”—
“Real things of life, say you, Governor?” broke in Hopkins’s strident voice; “well, if there is aught more real in its merit than this roasted suckling, I wish that I might meet with it.”
And seizing with his napkin the hind leg of the littleroasted pig presented to him by Christian Penn, the old campaigner deftly sliced it off with his sheath-knife and devoured it in the most inartificial manner possible.
It was probably about this epoch that our popular saying, “Fingers were made before forks,” took shape and force.
To the chowder, and the “pye,” and the roasted suckling succeeded a mighty dish of succotash, that compound of dried beans, hulled corn, salted beef, pork, and chicken which may be called the charter-dish of Plymouth; then came wild fowl dressed in various ways, a great bowl of “sallet,” of Priscilla Alden’s composition, and at last various sweet dishes, still served at the end of a meal, although soon after it was the mode to take them first.
“Oh, dear, when will the dignities stop eating and drinking and making compliments to each other?” murmured Priscilla Carpenter to Mary Warren at the side table where the girls and lads were grouped together, enjoying themselves as much as their elders, albeit in less ceremonious fashion.
“There! Your sister has laid down her napkin, and is gazing steadfastly at the governor, with ‘Get up and say Grace’ in her eye,” replied Mary, nudging Jane Cooke to enforce silence; whereat that merry maid burst into a giggle, joined by Sarah and Elizabeth Warren, and Mary Allerton, and Betsey Ring, while Edward Bangs, and Robert Bartlett, and Sam Jenney, and Philip De la Noye, and Thomas Clarke, and John Cooke chuckled in sympathy, yet knew not what at.
A warning yet very gentle glance from Dame Bradford’s eyes stifled the noise, and nearly did as much for its authors, who barely managed to preserve sobriety,while the governor returned thanks to the Giver of all good; so soon, however, as the elder party moved away, the painfully suppressed giggle burst into a storm of merriment, which as it subsided was renewed in fullest vigor by Sarah Warren’s bewildered inquiry,—
“Whatarewe all laughing at?”
“Never mind, we’ll laugh first, and find the wherefore at our leisure,” suggested Jane Cooke, and so the dear old foolish fun that seems to spring up in spontaneous growth where young folk are gathered together, and is sometimes scorned and sometimes coveted by their elders, went on, and, after the tables were cleared, took form in all sorts of old English games, not very intellectual, not even very refined, but as satisfactory to those who played as Buried Cities, and Twenty Questions, and Intellectual Salad, and capping Browning quotations are to the children of culture and æsthetics.
The elders, meanwhile, retiring to the smaller room at the other side of the front door, seated themselves to certain sober games of draughts, of backgammon, of loo, and beggar-my-neighbor, or picquet, while Elder Brewster challenged the governor to a game of chess which was not finished when, at ten o’clock, the company broke up, and with many a blithe good-night, and assurance of the pleasure they had enjoyed, betook themselves to their own homes.
Thus, then, was Priscilla Carpenter introduced into Plymouth society.
[1]Pillow-biers, now called pillow-cases.
A VIPER SCOTCHED, NOT KILLED.
“’Tis meat for my masters,” muttered William Wright, plodding stubbornly up the hill toward the Fort; but as he passed John Alden’s door the sturdy, middle-aged man paused to watch, with a smile of admiration rather strange to his commonplace visage, a game of romps between little Betty Alden and Priscilla Carpenter, and indeed it was a pretty sight. The maiden, her full yet lissome figure displayed in a short skirt of blue cloth and a kirtle of India chintz belted down by a little white apron, was teasing the child with a cluster of ripe blackberries held just beyond her reach, and, dancing hither and yon as Betty pursued, showed her pretty feet and ankles to perfection, while the exercise and fresh air had tinted her cheeks and brightened her eyes as cosmetics never could, and set a thousand little airy curls loose from the fair hair braided in a long plait down her back.
“You can’t catch me, Betty! You can’t have the plums till you catch me, and you can’t—ah, now—catch if you can—catch if you can!”
But Betty, shrieking with laughter as she dived this way and that, suddenly grew so grave and frowned so terribly as she pointed her chubby finger and stammered, “Go ’way—s’ant look o’ me—go ’way man!” that Priscilla turned sharply round, and catching theinterloper in the very midst of a broad smile, she frowned, almost as terribly as Betty, and loftily inquired,—
“Am I in your path, Master Wright?”
“Nay, how could that be?” stammered Wright, utterly abashed before his two accusers. “I pray you excuse me, Mistress Prissie, but I—I was looking for the governor, and”—
“The governor?” interrupted Priscilla scornfully; “well, he’s not in my pocket, is he in yours, Betty?”
And catching up the child, she was retreating into the house, when her admirer interposed with an air of dignity more becoming to his age and appearance than the confusion of a detected intruder upon a girl’s pastime,—
“Nay, mistress, I need not drive you away; I am going to the Fort.”
“Well, there is the governor coming down from the Fort so as to leave room for you,” retorted Prissie, and setting the child inside the door, she fled down the hill as lightly as the wind that chased her.
“Good-morrow, Wright,” cried Bradford cheerily, as the two men met.
“Good-morrow, Governor. May I have a word with you on business?”
“Surely. Come back to the Fort, where I have just left the captain. Ah, here he is now!”
And the three men were soon seated in the captain’s little den, flooded with sunshine through its eastern window.
“I sail in the Little James to-day, sirs,” began Wright abruptly; “and but now, not an hour agone, Master Lyford gave me this letter, praying me to hold it secret, and carry it to its address in London, and he wouldgive me five shilling when I returned. Now, sirs, I am not a man to be hired for five shilling to do any man’s dirty work, and I liked not Master Lyford’s look or voice as he gave me his errand, nor have I forgot the matters concerning him and John Oldhame a while ago, and so—here ’s the letter, Governor.”
“Ha! ’Tis to the same address, Captain! Our well-known enemy and gainsayer among the Adventurers.”
“Ay. The old proverb come true again of the dog that turns from good victual to vile,” muttered Standish grimly. “And I suppose it is to be opened like the rest? Work I do not relish, Governor.”
“Nor I. But Winslow and Allerton are both away, and you must come with me to the Elder. In his presence and yours I shall open and read this letter, as is my bounden duty.”
And Bradford, leaning back in his chair, looked straight into the face of the captain, who, returning the gaze with one of his keen glances, nodded assent, saying in a surly voice,—
“You are the governor. It is for you to order and me to obey, but I like it not.”
“As for you, Wright, you have done well and wisely in this matter. The James sails at three of the clock; come you to my house at two, and I will return you the letter with one of mine own.”
“Will Priscilla Carpenter be in the room!” wondered William Wright, as he took his leave.
The letter examined by the triumvirate of governor, Elder, and captain proved that Lyford’s penitence, if indeed it had ever existed, had spent its strength in protestation. The writer alluded to the letters the governor had allowed to go forward, either by originalor copy, and declared that all they had stated was true, “only not the half,” and that since their discovery he had been persecuted and browbeaten to the verge of existence, and all because he loved and clung to the Prayer Book and his Episcopal ordination. The letter closed with entreaties that a sufficient body of settlers, with military leaders, should at once be sent over to crush his present hosts and set him at liberty to follow his conscience.
“At least, we may at once grant our brother liberty to follow his conscience in matters spiritual,” remarked the Elder with a grave smile, as he laid down the letter. “I think it will be best to summon a church meeting for next Lord’s Day, and utterly dismiss Master Lyford from our fellowship and communion. It is no less than sacrilege for a man who can write after this fashion to sit down at the Lord’s table with us, professing to be of us.”
“You are right, Elder,” replied Bradford sternly, “and I leave the spiritual matter to you; but it is my duty, and one not to be slighted, to drive this traitor out of our body politic. He must leave Plymouth at once. Say you not so, Captain Standish?”
“I say, bundle him into the Little James and send him back to England to his dear cronies there, or, better still, strip off his gown and bands and hang him as a traitor.”
“To send him to England we have no warrant, nor would it be wise to invite English legislation in our particular affairs,” retorted the governor; “and as for hanging him, it is a course open both to these same objections and to something more. No, we shall simply bid him leave the colony and not return hither on anypretense. The wife and children may remain until he has a home whither to carry them.”
“A righteous judgment,” pronounced the Elder, and as Standish growled assent, the matter was settled, and so promptly carried into effect that in less than forty-eight hours the renegade forever turned his back upon the place and the people who had trusted and honored him, and whom, had he been a faithful servant of his Master and the Church, he might undoubtedly have led to a renewed allegiance to the venerable Mother whose unwise severity rather than whose doctrine had driven them from the home of their ancestors.
“There goes a viper scotched, not killed, and we shall feel his sting yet,” remarked Standish, as he with Peter Browne and John Alden stood on the brow of Cole’s Hill, and watched Lyford’s embarkation in a fishing-boat belonging to Nantucket, where Oldhame had pitched his tent for a while. Here also, or at neighboring Weymouth, Blackstone, Maverick, Walford, and a few other of the Gorges party had succeeded to the houses left empty by Weston’s men after their deliverance by Myles Standish from Pecksuot, Wituwamat, and their horde. In course of time, Blackstone, carrying his clergyman’s coat, removed to Boston Common, Walford to Charlestown, and Maverick to East Boston, each man representing the entire population of each place; but still some settlers remained on the old site, so that from the time of Weston’s arrival in 1622, this neighborhood has been the home of white men.
“Scotched, not killed,” repeated Standish, filling his pipe, as he sat and mused in the autumn sunshine outside of his cabin door, while Barbara in her noiseless but competent fashion got ready a savory supper within, andAlick, with a bow made for him by Hobomok, fired not unskillful arrows at a target set upon the hillside.
A week later the captain’s words came true, for the same fishing boat that had carried away Lyford put into Plymouth Harbor on an ebb tide, and sent off her boat with four men, one of whom was soon recognized as Oldhame. As the banished man leaped upon the Rock, followed by his comrades, all strangers to Plymouth, some of the older townsmen met him, and one of them gravely inquired his business.
“Business quotha!” blustered Oldhame, who was evidently the worse for liquor. “My business is first to tweak Billy Bradford’s nose, and then to kick Myles Standish into a rat-hole, and finally to burn down your wretched kennels, and root up this doghole of a place, where I and my friends have met such scurvy treatment.”
“An’ your errand is so large an one, you had better go and seek the governor and his assistants without delay,” replied Francis Cooke, waving his hand up Leyden Street, and restraining by a look some of the younger men, who seemed disposed to dispute the landing.
“Why, so I will, Cooke; I’ll go up and speak to your masters, but not my masters, mind you, good Cooke; good Cooke, ha, ha! Come, now, hop into my boat and I’ll carry you home to be my cook, mine own good cook, Francis! Hop in, I say!”
And the roysterer, with a roar of drunken laughter, strode up the hill, the strangers, who looked both anxious and ashamed, following slowly after him.
In the Town Square the invaders encountered Bradford with Doctor Fuller and Stephen Hopkins, and Oldhame, pushing himself into the group, began a violenttirade upon the abuses and insults that he averred had been offered both him and Lyford, and was proceeding to the most scurrilous threats and vituperations, when the governor, beckoning Bart Allerton, who, with several other young men, was hanging around the group of elders, said calmly,—
“Bart, find Captain Standish, and bid him summon a couple of the train-band, and bring them hither.”
“Oho! Captain Shrimp is to appear on the scene, is he? Well, I’ve come here to settle old scores with him as well as the rest! Go fetch him, Bart; trot, boy, trot!”
“It needs not to fetch him, Master Oldhame, since he is here at your service.” Thus speaking, the captain, who had been hastening down the hill before he was summoned, strode into the circle, a grim smile upon his face and the red light of battle in his eye.
“Ha! my little bantam cock! are you there?” And the reckless fellow aimed a backhanded blow at the captain’s face, which the latter easily evaded by a side-movement, and returned with a square blow from the shoulder, taking effect under Oldhame’s jaw, and sending him staggering back into the arms of one of his new comrades.
“Enough, enough!” exclaimed Bradford, holding up his hand. “A street brawl is not befitting or seemly. Captain Standish, arrest this man, and put him in the strong-room until we consider what measure to deal out to him.”
“The tide is gone, or we would carry him aboard and be off altogether,” suggested one of the strangers.
“Possibly not,” quietly returned the governor. “It might not seem right to so lightly dismiss such anoffense. We would bear ourselves meekly with all men, but it is not meet that our townsfolk should see their leaders insulted and braved thus insolently with impunity.”
“Captain Gorges would have run a man through for less,” replied the other. “But Oldhame said the Plymouth men were crop-eared psalm-singers, who would not fight.”
“If Plymouth men had not fought to some purpose on the spot where you have settled, you would have found but sorry housing there,” retorted Standish savagely, as he led his captive away, securely bound, and Bradford in his usual calm tones explained,—
“After our captain had slain Pecksuot and Wituwamat and dispersed their following, he nailed a placard to the tree at the gate of the stockade, whereon he had hung one of the ringleaders, warning the savages that if they burned or destroyed the dwellings that remained, he would come back and serve them as he had their misleader; and this cartel, although they could not read it, so terrified their superstitious fancies that Captain Gorges found housen for his men, and a stoccado to protect them.”
“Yes,” replied the stranger, gazing curiously after Standish, “we found the bones of the hanged man lying in a heap under the tree, and the marks of a deadly fray in the house where Pecksuot fell.”
“Ay, so. It was a sad necessity, and one almost as grievous to us as to the savages,” returned Bradford. “Now, sirs, we have no quarrel with you, nor wish for any. Your skiff will not float until three hours after noon, and when she does we shall doubtless send away Master Oldhame in her; meantime, you are welcome tolook about and see our town and Fort, and discourse with the people. Master Hopkins, will you see that these men have some dinner?”
“Such as ’tis, they’re welcome to some of mine,” promptly replied Hopkins, whose comfortable house stood on the corner of Leyden and Main streets just opposite the governor’s, and whose garden stretched along to Middle Street, not yet laid out. The size and convenience of his house, and the bountiful and cheerful hospitality of his wife, who, with the aid of her daughters Constance, Damaris, and Deborah, administered the domestic affairs, combining English thrift and neatness with colonial abundance, gave Hopkins the frequent opportunity of entertaining visitors to Plymouth, while Bradford saw that he was no loser by such a course.
Meanwhile the governor and his council sat in conclave, secure that their decision would find favor with the people, or at any rate with that nucleus and backbone of the commonalty known as “the first-comers,” meaning the passengers of the Mayflower, the Fortune, and the Anne, with her tender the Little James.
At noon the tide turned, and the town went to dinner. About half past two Bartholomew Allerton beat the “assembly” in the Town Square, and at the well-understood summons men, women, and children gathered in the square, or clustered in the open doorways, all filled with curiosity as to the mode of punishment about to be meted out to the returned exile, and yet none in the least doubt as to its justice. Even the men whom he had brought with him to be the witnesses of his triumph stood supinely to view his disgrace, muttering among themselves, and casting uneasy glances down the hill to where their shallop lay still aground at the foot of theRock, while the larger boat hardly swung afloat on the breast of the young tide.
Three o’clock, and the governor, the Elder, and the captain came out of the house of the first, robed in their official garments, and stood upon a platform of squared logs erected at the intersection of the streets and mounted with two small cannon called patereros. A blast from the trumpet, and the gate of the Fort upon the hill swung open, and out came a strange procession: first, Bart Allerton with his drum, and three other young fellows with wind instruments, who rendered a fair imitation of the Rogue’s March; then twenty picked men, mostly from among the first-comers, each carrying his snaphance reversed; then Master Oldhame, bareheaded and barefooted, and with his arms tied across his chest; and finally, Lieutenant John Alden, bearing a naked sword, followed by a guard of four men well armed.
Down the hill they came at a foot-pace, the bugles and trumpet shrilling out their contemptuous cadences, and Oldhame, his pride subdued and his pot-valiancy all evaporated, stepping delicately as Agog, for the pebbles hurt his bare feet, and perhaps feeling with Agog that the bitterness of death was at his lips.
Before the platform, where stood the magnates and the cannon, the procession paused, the music ceased, and upon the silence rose the governor’s calm, strong voice.
“John Oldhame, you have come hither in defiance of the formal edict of this government banishing you from the colony; and you have come with violence and insult, refusing to accept warning, or to depart peaceably. We therefore have resolved that since you return dishonorably, you shall depart in dishonor, taking with youthe warning for the future, that the barrels of our pieces are more deadly than their stocks. Go, and mend your manners!”
He waved his hand, and the bugles recommenced their blare, while the twenty men opened their ranks and ranged themselves in two lines some three feet apart, but not directly opposite each other.
“Go on, prisoner!” ordered Alden, touching Oldhame with the hilt of his sword. “Go, and mend your manners!” And as the cowed yet furious rebel stepped forward, the first man of the line struck upward with the stock of his reversed musket, saying,—
“Go, and mend your manners!” The next instant the same blow and the same words fell from the minuteman diagonally opposite, and so down the entire line, until as the twentieth blow and twenty-second adjuration to “Go, and mend your manners” fell upon the humiliated bully, he broke down utterly, and with a howl of mingled rage and pain bolted into the door of John Howland’s house next below Stephen Hopkins’s, but was met by Elizabeth, who with little John clinging to her skirts and Desire in her arms boldly faced the intruder for a moment, and then looking into his streaming face and hunted eyes cried pitifully,—
“Oh, poor soul!” and seizing the scissors at her girdle cut the band confining his arms, and catching up a tankard of ale set ready for her husband held it to his lips, muttering,—
“Mayhap ’tis treason, but there, poor creature, drink, and then slink away down the hill while— Why, what’s to do now in the street?”
“Why don’t you say, ‘Go, and mend your manners!’” hoarsely asked Oldhame; but still he drank, and then,glancing over his hostess’s shoulder as she stood in the doorway, he swore a great oath, and pushing her rudely aside dashed out and down the hill to his boat.
For, unseen by the townsmen, all of them absorbed in the punishment parade, the ship Jacob, Captain William Pierce, had sailed into harbor upon the flood-tide, dropped anchor beside the Nantucket fishing craft, and set ashore her master, with his distinguished passenger Edward Winslow, who had been to England to try to straighten the tangled relations between the Pilgrims and the Adventurers, already playing fast and loose with their promises.
Some good-natured raillery from Captain Pierce upon the negligent outlook kept by the colonists served to relieve the strain of the late occurrence, and as Winslow with a face full of portent followed the governor into his house, John Oldhame stepped aboard the fishing vessel, and sailed out of Plymouth Harbor in a condition of unwonted quiet and humiliation.