Kidd hanging in chains. (From The Pirates' Own Book.)Kidd hanging in chains. (From The Pirates' Own Book.)"The Pirates' Stairs" leading to the site of Execution Dock at Wapping where Kidd was hanged. The old stone steps are visible beneath the modern iron bridge.
Kidd hanging in chains. (From The Pirates' Own Book.)Kidd hanging in chains. (From The Pirates' Own Book.)"The Pirates' Stairs" leading to the site of Execution Dock at Wapping where Kidd was hanged. The old stone steps are visible beneath the modern iron bridge.
Thus lived and died a man, who, whatever may have been his faults, was unfairly dealt with by his patrons, misused by his rascally crew, and slandered by credulous posterity.
[1] History of England.
[2] Published in 1701.
[3] Macauley.
[4] "From hence putting off to the West Indies, wee were not many dayes at sea, but there beganne among our people such mortalitie as in fewe days there were dead above two or three hundred men. And until some seven or eight dayes after our coming from S. Iago, there had not died any one man of sickness in all the fleete; the sickness shewed not his infection wherewith so many were stroken until we were departed thence, and then seazed our people with extreme hot burning and continuall agues, whereof very fewe escaped with life, and yet those for the most part not without great alteration and decay of their wittes and strength for a long time after."—Hakluyt's Voyages.—(A Summarie and True Discourse of Sir Francis Drake's West Indian voyage begun in the Year 1585.)
[5] TheQuedah Merchant.
[6] TheQuedah Merchant.
The flaw in the business of treasure hunting, outside of fiction, is that the persons equipped with the shovels and picks and the ancient charts so seldom find the hidden gold. The energy, credulity, and persistence of these explorers are truly admirable but the results have been singularly shy of dividends the world over. There is genuine satisfaction, therefore, in sounding the name and fame of the man who not only went roving in search of lost treasure but also found and fetched home more of it than any other adventurer known to this kind of quest.
On the coast of Maine, near where the Kennebec flows past Bath into the sea, there is a bit of tide water known as Montsweag Bay, hard by the town of Wiscasset. Into this little bay extends a miniature cape, pleasantly wooded, which is known as Phips Point, and here it was that the most illustrious treasure seeker of them all, William Phips, was born in 1650. The original Pilgrim Fathers, or some of them, were still hale and hearty, the innumerable ship-loads of furniture brought over in theMayflowerhad not been scattered far from Plymouth, and this country was so young that the "oldest families" of Boston were all brand-new.
James Phips, father of the great William, was a gun-smith who had come over from Bristol in old England to better his fortunes. With the true pioneering spirit he obtained a grant of land and built his log cabin at the furthest outpost of settlement toward the eastward. He cleared his fields, raised some sheep, and betimes repaired the blunderbusses with which Puritan and Pilgrim were wont to pot the aborigine. The first biography of William Phips was written by Cotton Mather, whom the better you know the more heartily you dislike for a canting old bigot who boot-licked men of rank, wealth, or power, and was infernally active in getting a score of hapless men and women hanged for witchcraft in Salem.
Cotton Mather deserves the thanks of all good treasure seekers, however, for having given us the first-hand story of William Phips whom he knew well and extravagantly admired. In fact, after this hero had come sailing home with his treasures and because of these riches was made Sir William Phips and Royal Governor of Massachusetts by Charles II, he had his pew in the old North Church of Boston of which Rev. Cotton Mather was pastor. But this is going ahead too fast, and we must hark back to the humble beginnings. "His faithful mother, yet living," wrote Mather in his very curiousMagnalia Christi Americana, "had no less than Twenty-six Children, whereof Twenty-one were Sons: but Equivalent to them all was William, one of the youngest, whom his Father dying, was left young with his mother, and with her he lived, keeping ye Sheep in the Wilderness until he was Eighteen Years old."
Then William decided that the care of the farm and the sheep might safely be left to his twenty brothers, and he apprenticed himself to a shipwright who was building on the shore near the settlement those little shallops, pinnaces, and sloops in which our forefathers dared to trade up and down their own coasts and as far as the West Indies, mere cockle-shells manned by seamen of astonishing temerity and hardihood. While at work with hammer and adze, this strapping lump of a lad listened to the yarns of skippers who had voyaged to Jamaica and the Bahamas, dodging French privateers or running afoul of pirates who stripped them of cargo and gear, and perhaps it was then that he first heard of the treasures that had been lost in wrecked galleons, or buried by buccaneers of Hispaniola. At any rate, William Phips wished to see more of the world and to win a chance to go to sea in a ship of his own, wherefore he set out for Boston after he had served his time, "having an accountable impulse upon his mind, persuading him, as he would privately hint unto some of his friends, that he was born to greater matters."
Twenty-two years old, not yet able to read and write, young Phips found work with a ship-carpenter and studied his books as industriously as he plied his trade. Soon he was wooing a "young gentlewoman of good repute, the daughter of one Captain Roger Spencer," and there was no resisting this headstrong suitor. They were married, and shortly after this important event Phips was given a contract to build a ship at a settlement on Sheepscot river, near his old home on the Kennebec, "where having launched the ship," Cotton Mather relates, "he also provided a lading of lumber to bring with him, which would have been to the advantage of all concerned.
"But just as the ship was hardly finished, the barbarous Indians on that river broke forth into an open and cruel war upon the English, and the miserable people, surprised by so sudden a storm of blood, had no refuge from the infidels but the ship now finishing in the harbor. Wherefore he left his intended lading behind him, and instead thereof carried with him his old neighbors and their families, free of all charges, to Boston. So the first thing he did, after he was his own man, was to save his father's house, with the rest of the neighborhood from ruin; but the disappointment which befell him from the loss of his other lading plunged his affairs into greater embarrassment with such as he had employed him. But he was hitherto no more than beginning to make scaffolds for further and higher actions. He would frequently tell the gentlewoman, his wife, that he should yet be Captain of a King's Ship; that he should come to have the command of better men than he was now accounted himself, and that he would be the owner of a fair brick house in the Green Lane of North Boston."[1]
Inasmuch as William Phips would have been a very sorry scoundrel indeed, to run away, for the sake of a cargo of lumber, and leave his old friends and neighbors to be scalped, it seems as Cotton Mather was sounding the timbrel of praise somewhat over-loud, but the parson was a fulsome eulogist, and for reasons of his own he proclaimed this roaring, blustering seafarer and hot-headed royal governor as little lower than the angels. Here and there Mather drew with firm stroke the character of the man, so that we catch glimpses of him as a live and moving figure. "He was of an inclination cutting rather like a hatchet than a razor; he would propose very considerable matters and then so cut through them that no difficulties could put by the edge of his resolution. Being thus of the true temper for doing of great things, he betakes himself to the sea, the right scene for such things."
Sir William Phips, first royal governor of Massachusetts.Sir William Phips, first royal governor of Massachusetts.
Sir William Phips, first royal governor of Massachusetts.Sir William Phips, first royal governor of Massachusetts.
Phips had no notion of being a beggarly New England trading skipper, carrying codfish and pine boards to the West Indies and threshing homeward with molasses and niggers in the hold, or coasting to Virginia for tobacco. A man of mettle won prizes by bold strokes and large hazards, and treasure seeking was the game for William. Among the taverns of the Boston water-front he picked up tidings and rumors of many a silver-laden galleon of Spain that had shivered her timbers on this or that low-lying reef of the Bahama Passage where there was neither buoy nor lighthouse. Here was a chance to win that "fair brick house in the Green Lane of North Boston" and Phips busied himself with picking up information until he was primed to make a voyage of discovery. Keeping his errand to himself, he steered for the West Indies, probably in a small chartered sloop or brig, and prowled from one key and island to another.
This was in the year 1681, and the waters in which Phips dared to venture were swarming with pirates and buccaneers who would have cut his throat for a doubloon. Morgan had sacked Panama only eleven years before; Tortuga, off the coast of Hayti, was still the haunt of as choice a lot of cutthroats as ever sailed blue water; and men who had been plundering and killing with Pierre le Grande, Bartholomew Portugez and Montbars the Exterminator, were still at their old trade afloat. Mariners had not done talking about the exploit of L'Ollonais who had found three hundred thousand dollars' worth of Spanish treasure hidden on a key off the coast of Cuba. He it was who amused himself by cutting out the hearts of live Spaniards and gnawing these morsels, or slicing off the heads of a whole ship's crew and drinking their blood. A rare one for hunting buried treasure was this fiend of a pirate. When he took Maracaibo, as Esquemeling relates in the story of his own experiences as a buccaneer, "L'Ollonais, who never used to make any great amount of murdering, though in cold blood, ten or twelve Spaniards, drew his cutlass and hacked one to pieces in the presence of all the rest, saying: 'If you do not confess and declare where you have hidden the rest of your goods, I will do the like to all your companions.' At last, amongst these horrible cruelties and inhuman threats, one was found who promised to conduct him and show the place where the rest of the Spaniards were hidden. But those that were fled, having intelligence that one discovered their lurking holes to the Pirates, changed the place, and buried all the remnant of their riches underground; insomuch that the Pirates could not find them out, unless some other person of their own party should reveal them."
From this first voyage undertaken by Phips he escaped with his skin and a certain amount of treasure, "what just served him a little to furnish him for a voyage to England," says Mather. The important fact was that he had found what he sought and knew where there was a vast deal more of it. A large ship, well armed and manned, was needed to bring away the booty, and Captain William Phips intended to find backing in London for the adventure. He crossed the Atlantic in "a vessel not much unlike that which the Dutchmen stamped on their first coin," and no sooner had his stubby, high-pooped ark of a craft cast anchor in the Thames than he was buzzing ashore with his tale of the treasure wreck.
It was no less a person than the king himself whom Phips was bent on enlisting as a partner, and he was not to be driven from Whitehall by lords or flunkies. With bulldog persistence he held to his purpose month after month, until almost a year had passed. At length, through the friends he had made at Court, he gained the ear of Charles II, and that gay monarch was pleased to take a fling at treasure hunting as a sporting proposition, with an eye also to a share of the plunder.
He gave Phips a frigate of the king's navy, theRoseof eighteen guns and ninety-five men, which had been captured from the Algerine corsairs. As "Captain of a King's Ship," he recruited a crew of all sorts, mostly hard characters, and sailed from London in September, 1683, bound first to Boston, and thence to find the treasure. Alas, for the cloak of piety with which Cotton Mather covered William Phips from head to heels. Other accounts show convincingly that he was a bullying, profane, and godless sea dog, yet honest withal, and as brave as a lion, an excellent man to have at your elbow in a tight pinch, or to be in charge of the quarter-deck in a gale of wind. The real Phips is a more likeable character than the stuffed image that Cotton Mather tried to make of him.
While in Boston harbor in theRose, Captain Phips carried things with a high hand. Another skipper had got wind of the treasure and was about to make sail for the West Indies in a ship called theGood Intent. Phips tried to bluff him, then to frighten him, and finally struck a partnership so that the two vessels sailed in company. Refusing to show the Boston magistrates his papers, Phips was haled to court where he abused the bench in language blazing with deep-sea oaths, and was fined several hundred pounds. His sailors got drunk ashore and fought the constables and cracked the heads of peaceable citizens. Staid Boston was glad when theRosefrigate and her turbulent company bore away for the West Indies.
There was something wrong with Phip's information or the Spanish wreck had been cleaned of her treasure before he found the place. TheRoseand theGood Intentlay at the edge of a reef somewhere near Nassau for several months, sending down native divers and dredging with such scanty returns that the crew became mutinous and determined on a program very popular in those days. Armed with cutlasses, they charged aft and demanded of Phips that he "join them in running away with the ship to drive a trade of piracy in the South Seas. Captain Phips ... with a most undaunted fortitude, rushed in upon them, and with the blows of his bare hands felled many of them and quelled all the rest."
It became necessary to careen theRoseand clean the planking all fouled with tropical growth, and she was beached on "a desolate Spanish island." The men were given shore liberty, all but eight or ten, and the rogues were no sooner out of the ship than "they all entered into an agreement which they signed in a ring (a round-robin), that about seven o'clock that evening they would seize the captain and those eight or ten which they knew to be true to him, and leave them to perish on the island, and so be gone away into the South Seas to seek their fortune.... These knaves, considering that they should want a carpenter with them in their villainous expedition, sent a messenger to fetch unto them the carpenter who was then at work upon the vessel; and unto him they showed their articles; telling him what he must look for if he did not subscribe among them.
"The carpenter, being an honest fellow, did with much importunity prevail for one half hour's time to consider the matter; and returning to work upon the vessel, with a spy by them set upon him, he feigned himself taken with a fit of the collick, for the relief whereof he suddenly ran into the captain in the great cabin for a dram. Where, when he came, his business was only in brief to tell the captain of the horrible distress which he has fallen into; but the captain bid him as briefly return to the rogues in the woods and sign their articles, and leave him to provide for the rest.
"The carpenter was no sooner gone than Captain Phips, calling together the few friends that were left him aboard, whereof the gunner was one, demanded of them whether they would stand by him in this extremity, whereto they replied they would stand by him if he could save them, and he answered, 'By the help of God, he did not fear it.' All their provisions had been carried ashore to a tent made for that purpose, about which they had placed several great guns, to defend it in case of any assault from Spaniards. Wherefore Captain Phips immediately ordered those guns to be silently drawn and turned; and so pulling up the bridge, he charged his great guns aboard and brought them to bear on every side of the tent.
"By this time the army of rebels came out of the woods; but as they drew near to the tent of provisions they saw such a change of circumstances that they cried out,We are betrayed! And they were soon confirmed in it when they heard the captain with a stern fury call to them,Stand off, ye wretches, at your peril. He quickly cast them into more than ordinary confusion when they saw him ready to fire his great guns upon them.
"And when he had signified unto them his resolve to abandon them unto all the desolation which they had proposed for him, he caused the bridge to be again laid, and his men began to take the provisions on board. When the wretches beheld what was coming upon them, they fell to very humble entreaties; and at last fell down upon their knees protesting that they never had anything against him, except only his unwillingness to go away with the King's ship upon the South Sea design. But upon all other accounts they would choose rather to live and die with him than with any man in the world. However, when they saw how much he was dissatisfied at it, they would insist upon it no more, and humbly begged his pardon. And when he judged that he had kept them on their knees long enough, he having first secured their arms, received them aboard, but he immediately weighed anchor and arriving at Jamaica, turned them off."
This is a very proper incident to have happened in a hunt for hidden treasure, and Cotton Mather tells it well. One forgives Phips for damning the eyes of the Boston magistrates, and likely enough they deserved it, when it is recalled that the witchcraft trials were held only a few years later. Having rid himself of the mutineers, Captain Phips shipped other scoundrels in their stead, there being small choice at Jamaica where every other man had been pirating or was planning to go again. His first quest for treasure had been a failure, but he was not the man to quit, and so he filled away for Hispaniola, now Hayti and San Domingo, where every bay and reef had a treasure story of its own.
The small island of Tortuga off that coast had long been the headquarters of the most successful pirates and buccaneers of those seas, and Frederick A. Ober, who knows the West Indies as well as any living man, declares not only that Cuba, the Isle of Pines, Jamaica, and Hispaniola are girdled with Spanish wrecks containing "as yet unrecovered millions and millions in gold and silver," but also that "during the successive occupancies of Tortuga by the various pirate bands great treasure was hidden in the forest, and in the caves with which the island abounds. Now and again the present cultivators of Tortuga find coins of ancient dates, fragments of gold chains, and pieces of quaint jewelry cast up by the waves or revealed by the shifting sands.
"It was not without reason that the only harbor of the buccaneers was called Treasure Cove, nor for nothing that they dug the deep caves deeper, hollowing out lateral tunnels and blasting holes beneath the frowning cliffs. The island now belongs to Hayti, the inhabitants of which have not the requisite sagacity to conduct an intelligent search for the long-buried treasures; and as they resent the intrusion of foreigners, it is probable that the buccaneers' spoils will remain an unknown quantity for many years to come."
Captain William Phips lay at anchor off one of the rude settlements of Hispaniola for some time, and his rough-and-ready address won him friends, among them "a very old Spaniard" who had seen many a galleon pillaged by the pirates. From this informant Phips "fished up a little advice about the true spot where lay the wreck which he had hitherto been seeking ... that it was upon a reef of shoals a few leagues to the northward of Port de la Plata upon Hispaniola, a port so called, it seemed, from the landing of some of a shipwrecked company, with a boat full of plate saved out of their sunken Frigot."
Map of Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) engraved in 1723, showing the buccaneers at their trade of hunting wild cattle. The galleon due north of Port Plate on the north coast is almost exactly in the place where Phips found his treasure.Map of Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) engraved in 1723, showing the buccaneers at their trade of hunting wild cattle. The galleon due north of Port Plate on the north coast is almost exactly in the place where Phips found his treasure.
Map of Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) engraved in 1723, showing the buccaneers at their trade of hunting wild cattle. The galleon due north of Port Plate on the north coast is almost exactly in the place where Phips found his treasure.Map of Hispaniola (Hayti and San Domingo) engraved in 1723, showing the buccaneers at their trade of hunting wild cattle. The galleon due north of Port Plate on the north coast is almost exactly in the place where Phips found his treasure.
On the very old map of Hispaniola, reproduced herewith, this place is indicated on the north coast as "Port Plate," and due north of it is the spirited drawing of a galleon which happens to be very nearly in the position of the sunken treasure which the old Spaniard described to Captain Phips. TheRosefrigate sailed in search of the reef and explored it with much care but failed to find the wreck. Phips was confident that he was on the right track, however, and decided to return to England, refit and ship a new crew. The riff-raff which he had picked up at Jamaica in place of the mutineers were hardly the lads to be trusted with a great store of treasure on board.
At about this time, Charles II quit his earthly kingdom and it is to be hoped found another kind of treasure laid up for him. James II needed all his warships, and he promptly took theRosefrigate from Captain Phips and set him adrift to shift for himself. A man of less inflexible resolution and courage might have been disheartened, but Phips made a louder noise than ever with his treasure story, and would not budge from London. He was put in jail, somehow got himself out, and stood up to his enemies and silenced them, all the while seeking noble patrons with money to venture on another voyage.
At length, and a year had been spent in this manner, Phips interested the Duke of Albemarle, son of the famous General Monk who had been active in restoring Charles II to the throne of the Stuarts. Several other gentlemen of the Court took shares in the speculation, including a naval man, Sir John Narborough. They put up £2,400 to outfit a ship, and the King was persuaded to grant Phips letters of patent, or a commission as a duly authorized treasure seeker, in return for which favor His Majesty was to receive one-tenth of the booty. To Phips was promised a sixteenth of what he should recover.
This enterprise was conceived in 1686, and was so singularly like the partnership formed ten years later to finance the cruise of Captain Kidd after pirates' plunder that the Earl of Bellomont, Lord Chancellor Somers, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and William III may have been somewhat inspired to undertake this unlucky venture by the dazzling success of the Phips "syndicate."
In a small merchantman called theJames and Mary, Captain Phips set sail from England in 1686, having another vessel to serve as a tender. Arriving at Port de la Plata, he hewed out a large canoe from a cotton-wood tree, "so large as to carry eight or ten oars," says Cotton Mather, "for the making of which perigua (as they call it), he did, with the same industry that he did everything else, employ his own hand and adze, and endure no little hardship, lying abroad in the woods many nights together." The canoe was used by a gang of native divers quartered on board the tender. For some time they worked along the edge of a reef called the Boilers, guided by the story of that ancient Spaniard, but found nothing to reward their exertions.
This crew was returning to report to Captain Phips when one of the men, staring over the side into the wonderfully clear water, spied a "sea feather" or marine plant of uncommon beauty growing from what appeared to be a rock. An Indian was sent down to fetch it as a souvenir of the bootless quest, that they might, however, carry home something with them. This diver presently bobbed up with the sea feather, and therewithal a surprising story "that he perceived a number of great guns in the watery world, where he had found the feather; the report of which great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company; and at once turned their despondencies for their ill success into assurances that they had now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been looking for; and they were further confirmed in these assurances when upon further diving, the Indian fetched up aSowas they styled it, or a lump of silver worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds. Upon this they prudently buoyed the place, that they might readily find it again; and they went back unto their Captain whom for some while they distressed with nothing but such bad news as they formerly thought they must have carried him. Nevertheless, they so slipped the Sow of silver on one side under the table (where they were now sitting with the Captain, and hearing him express his resolutions to wait still patiently upon the Providence of God under these disappointments), that when he should look on one side, he might see that Odd Thing before him. At last he saw it and cried out with some agony:
"'What is this? Whence comes this?' And then with changed countenance they told him how and where they got it. Then said he, 'Thanks be to God! We are made!' And so away they went, all hands to work; wherein they had this further piece of remarkable prosperity, that whereas if they had first fallen upon that part of the Spanish wreck where the Pieces of Eight had been stowed in bags among the ballast, they had seen more laborious and less enriching times of it. Now, most happily, they first fell upon that room in the wreck where the Bullion had been stored up, and then so prospered in this new fishery that in a little while they had without the loss of any man's life, brought upThirty Two Tonsof silver, for it was now come to measuring silver by tons."
While these jolly treasure seekers were hauling up the silver hand over fist, one Adderley, a seaman of the New Providence in the Bahamas, was hired with his vessel to help in the gorgeous salvage operations. Alas, after Adderley had recovered six tons of bullion, the sight of so much treasure was too much for him. He took his share to the Bermudas and led such a gay life with it that he went mad and died after a year or two. Hard-hearted William Phips was a man of another kind, and he drove his crew of divers and wreckers, the sailors keeping busy on deck at hammering from the silver bars a crust of limestone several inches thick from which "they knocked out whole bushels of pieces of eight which were grown thereinto. Besides that incredible treasure of plate in various forms, thus fetched up from seven or eight fathoms under water, there were vast riches of Gold, and Pearls, and Jewels, which they also lit upon: and indeed for a more comprehensive invoice, I must but summarily say,All that a Spanish frigot was to be enriched withal."
At length the little squadron ran short of provisions, and most reluctantly Captain Phips decided to run for England with his precious cargo and return the next year. He swore all his men to secrecy, believing that there was more good fishing at the wreck. During the homeward voyage, his seamen quite naturally yearned for a share of the profits, they having signed on for monthly wages. They were for taking the ship "to be gone and lead a short life and a merry one," but Phips argued them out of this rebellious state of mind, promising every man a share of the silver, and if his employers would not agree to this, to pay them from his own pocket.
Up the Thames sailed the lucky little merchantman,James and Maryin the year of 1687, with three hundred thousand pounds sterling freightage of treasure in her hold, which would amount to a good deal more than a million and a half dollars nowadays. Captain Phips played fair with his seamen, and they fled ashore in the greatest good humor to fling their pieces of eight among the taverns and girls of Wapping, Limehouse, and Rotherhite. The King was given his tenth of the cargo, and a handsome fortune it was. To Phips fell his allotted share of a sixteenth, which set him up with sixteen thousand pounds sterling. The Duke of Albemarle was so much gratified that he sent to that "gentlewoman" Mrs. William Phips, a gold cup worth a thousand pounds. Phips showed himself an honest man in age when sea morals were exceeding lax, and not a penny of the treasure, beyond what was due him, stuck to his fingers. Men of his integrity were not over plentiful in England after the Restoration, and the King liked and trusted this brusque, stalwart sailor from New England. At Windsor Castle he was knighted and now it was Sir William Phips, if you please.
Judge Sewall's diary contains this entry, Friday, October 21, 1687:
"I went to offer my Lady Phips my House by Mr. Moody's and to congratulate her preferment. As to the former, she had bought Sam' Wakefield's House and Ground last night for £350. I gave her a Gazette that related her Husband's Knighthood, which she had not seen before; and wish'd this success might not hinder her passage to a greater and better estate. She gave me a cup of good Beer and thank'd me for my visit."
Sir William would have still another try at the wreck, and this time there was no lack of ships and patronage. A squadron was fitted out in command of Sir John Narborough, and one of the company was the Duke of Albemarle. They made their way to the reef, but the remainder of the treasure had been lifted, and the expedition sailed home empty-handed. Adderley of New Providence had babbled in his cups and one of his men had been bribed to take a party of Bermuda wreckers to the reef. The place was soon swarming with all sorts of craft, some of them from Jamaica and Hispaniola, and they found a large amount of silver before they stripped the wreck clean.
The King offered Sir William a place as one of the Commissioners of the Royal Navy, but he was homesick for New England and desired to be a person of consequence in his own land. His friends obtained for him a patent as High Sheriff of Massachusetts and he returned to Boston after five years' absence "to entertain his Lady with some accomplishment of his predictions; and then built himself a fair brick house in the very place which was foretold."
The "fair brick house" was of two stories with a portico and columns. It stood on the corner of the present Salem Street (then the Green Lane) and Charter Street, so named by Sir William Phips in honor of the new charter under which he became the first provincial or royal governor. There was a lawn and gardens, a watch-house and stables, and a stately row of butternuts. "North Boston" was then the fashionable or "Court end" of the town.
The Puritans and Pilgrims were seething with indignation against the royal government overseas. The original charter under which the Colony of Massachusetts Bay exercised self-government had been annulled, and Charles II was determined to bring all the New England Colonies under the sway of a royal governor. The question of taxation had also begun to simmer a full century before the Revolution. Sir William Phips found his berth of High Sheriff a difficult and turbulent business, and "the infamous Government then rampant there, found a way wholly to put by the execution of his patent; yea, he was like to have had his person assassinated in the face of the sun, before his own door."
This rough ship carpenter and treasure seeker weathered the storm and rose so high in the good graces of the throne that in 1692 he carried to Massachusetts the new charter signed by William III by virtue of which he became the first royal governor of that colony, and as an administrator he was no less interesting than when he was cruising off the coast of Hispaniola. The manners of the quarterdeck he carried to the governor's office. His fists were as ready as his tongue, and his term of two years was enlivened by one lusty quarrel after another. In nowise ashamed of his humble beginnings, he gave a dinner to his old friends of the Boston ship-yard and told these honest artisans that if it were not for his service to the people, he "would be much easier in returning to his broad axe again."
Hawthorne has given a picture of him in the days of his greatness, "a man of strong and sturdy frame, whose face has been roughened by northern tempests, and blackened by the burning sun of the West Indies. He wears an immense periwig flowing down over his shoulders. His coat has a wide embroidery of golden foliage, and his waistcoat likewise is all flowered over and bedizened with gold. His red, rough hands, which have done many a good day's work with the hammer and adze, are half covered by the delicate lace ruffles at his wrists. On a table lies his silver-headed sword, and in a corner of the room stands his gold-headed cane, made of a beautifully polished West India wood."
Cotton Mather helps to complete the presentment by relating that "he was very tall, beyond the common set of men, and thick as well as tall, and strong as well as thick. He was in all respects exceedingly robust, and able to conquer such difficulties of diet and travel as would have killed most men alive. Nor did the fat whereinto he grew very much in his later years, take away the vigor of his motions."
As a fighting seaman and soldier, Sir William Phips saw hard service before he was made royal governor. In 1690 he was in command of an expedition which made a successful raid on the French in Arcadia, captured Port Royal, and conquered the province. Among the English state papers in the Public Record office is his own account of this feat of arms of his expedition against Quebec. "In March, 1690," he wrote, "I sailed with seven ships and seven hundred men, raised by the people of New England, reduced Arcadia in three weeks and returned to Boston. It was then thought well to prosecute a further expedition. 2300 men were raised, with whom and with about thirty ships I sailed from New England on the 10th, August, 1690, but by bad weather and contrary winds did not reach Quebec till October. The frost was already so sharp that it made two inches of ice in a night.
"After summoning Count de Frontenac and receiving a reviling answer, I brought my ships up within musket shot of their cannon and fired with such success that I dismounted several of their largest cannon and beat them from their works in less than twenty-four hours. At the same time 1400 men, who had been landed, defeated a great part of the enemy, and by the account of the prisoners, the city must have been taken in two or three days, but the small-pox and fever increased so fast as to delay the pushing of the siege till the weather became too severe to permit it. On my leaving Quebec, I received several messages from French merchants of the best reputation, saying how uneasy they were under French administration, and how willing they were to be under their Majesties."
Permit issued by Sir William Phips as royal governor in which he uses the title "Vice Admiral" which involved him in disastrous quarrels.Permit issued by Sir William Phips as royal governor in which he uses the title "Vice Admiral" which involved him in disastrous quarrels.
Permit issued by Sir William Phips as royal governor in which he uses the title "Vice Admiral" which involved him in disastrous quarrels.Permit issued by Sir William Phips as royal governor in which he uses the title "Vice Admiral" which involved him in disastrous quarrels.
In a "Narrative of the Expedition against Quebec," written at the time, is this passage:
"Whilst these things were doing on shore, Sir Wm. Phips with his men of war came close up to ye City. He did acquit himself with ye greatest bravery. I have diligently enquired of those that know it who affirm there was nothing wanting in his Part, either as to Conduct or Courage. He ventured within Pistol shot of their cannon, and soon beat them from thence, and battered ye Town very much. He was for some Hours warmly entertained with their great Guns. The Vessel wherein Sir William commanded had 200 men. It was shot through in a hundred places with shot of twenty-four pound weight; yet through ye wonderful Providence of God, but one man was killed and two mortally wounded in that hot Engagement, which continued ye greatest part of ye night and ye next day several hours."
Another letter written by Sir William Phips, addressed from Boston to William Blathwayt, soon after he was made Governor, shows him in a light even more engaging. The witchcraft frenzy was at its height, and only three weeks before this date, October 12, 1692, fourteen men and women had been hanged in Salem. This letter, as copied from the original document, runs as follows:
"On my arrival I found this Province miserably harrassed by a most horrible witchcraft or possession of devils, which had broken in upon several towns. Some scores of poor people were taken with preternatural torments; some were scalded with brimstone; some had pins stuck into their flesh, others were hurried into fire and water, and some were dragged out of their houses and carried over the tops of trees and hills for many miles together.
"It has been represented to me as much like that of Sweden thirty years ago, and there were many committed to prison on suspicion of witchcraft before my arrival. The loud cries and clamor of the friends of the afflicted, together with the advice of the Deputy Governor and Council, prevailed with me to appoint a Court of Oyer and Terminer to discover what witchcraft might be at the bottom, and whether it were not a possession. The chief judge was the Deputy Governor, and the rest people of the best prudence and figure that could be pitched upon.
"At Salem in Essex County they convicted more than twenty persons of witchcraft, and some of the accused confessed their guilt. The Court, as I understand, began their proceedings with the accusations of the afflicted persons, and then went upon other evidences to strengthen that. I was in the East of the Colony throughout almost the whole of the proceedings, trusting to the Court as the right method of dealing with cases of witchcraft. But when I returned I found many persons in a strange ferment of dissatisfaction which was increased by some hot spirits that blew upon the flame. But on enquiry into the matter, I found that the Devil had taken upon him the name and shape of several persons who were doubtless innocent, for which cause I have now forbidden the committal of any more accused persons.
"And them that have been committed I would shelter from any proceedings wherein the innocent could suffer wrong. I would also await the King's orders in this perplexing affair. I have put a stop to the printing of any discourses on either side that may increase useless disputes, for open contests would mean an unextinguishable flame. I have been grieved to see that some who should have done better services to their Majesties and this Province have so far taken counsel with passion as to declare the precipitancy of these matters.... As soon as I had done fighting the King's enemies, and understood the danger of innocent people through the accusations of the afflicted, I put a stop to the Court proceedings till the King's pleasure should be known."
It was Governor Phips who suppressed the witchcraft persecutions and the special court that had passed so many wicked death sentences was shorn of its powers by his order. Other prisoners were later acquitted, and a hundred and fifty released from jail. No sooner was this burly figure of a man finished with the witchcraft business than he was leading a force of Indian allies against the French. "His birth and youth in the East had rendered him well known to the Indians there," says Cotton Mather, "he had hunted and fished many a weary day in his childhood with them; and when these rude savages had got the story that he had found a ship full of money, and was now become all one a King, they were mightily astonished at it; but when they further understood that he was now become the Governor of New England, it added a further degree of consternation to their astonishment."
He was too strenuous a person, was this astonishing William Phips, to remain tamed and conservative when there was no strong work in hand. With that gold-headed cane of his he cracked the head of the Captain of theNonesuchfrigate of the royal navy, and with his hard fists he pounded the Collector of the Port after swearing at him with such oaths as better befitted a buccaneer than the governor of the province. These quarrels arose from a dispute over the authority of Sir William to lay down the law as he pleased. By virtue of his commission as Vice Admiral of the Colony he held that he had the right to judge and condemn naval prizes. The Collector claimed jurisdiction and when he refused to deliver a cargo of plunder brought in by a privateer, the governor blacked his eyes for him.
As for the naval skipper, Captain Short, his experience with the Phips temper was even more disastrous. He refused to lend some of his men to man a cruiser which the governor wished to send after coastwise pirates. When next the twain met, Captain Short was first well threshed, then bundled off to prison, and from there skipped home to England in a merchantman.
Such methods of administration had served admirably well to rule those mutinous dogs of seamen aboard theRosefrigate, but they were resented in Boston, and after other altercations, Governor Phips found it necessary to go to England to answer the complaints which had been piling up in the offices of the Lords of the Council of Trade and Plantations. He sailed in his own yacht, a brigantine built in a Boston shipyard, and we may be sure that he was ready to face his accusers with a stout heart.
Hutchinson, in his History of Massachusetts, analyzed the trouble as follows:
"Sir William Phips' rule was short. His conduct when captain of a ship of war is represented very much to his advantage; but further talents were necessary for the good government of a province. He was of a benevolent, friendly disposition; at the same time quick and passionate....
"A vessel arrived from the Bahamas, with a load of fustick, for which no bond had been given. Col. Foster, a merchant of Boston, a member of the Council, and fast friend of the Governor, bought the fustick at such price that he was loth to give up the bargain. The Collector seized the vessel and goods; and upon Foster's representation to the Governor, he interposed. There was at that time no Court of Admiralty. Sir William took a summary way of deciding this case, and sent an order to the Collector to forbear meddling with the goods, and upon his refusal to observe orders, the Governor went to the wharf, and after warm words on both sides, laid hands upon the Collector, but with what degree of violence was controverted by both. The Governor prevailed, and the vessel and goods were taken out of the hands of the Collector.
"There had been a misunderstanding also between the Governor and Captain Short of theNonesuchfrigate. In their passage from England a prize was taken; and Short complained that the Governor had deprived him of part of his share or legal interest in her. Whether there were grounds for it does not appear. The captains of men of war stationed in the colonies were in those days required to follow such instructions as the governors gave them relative to their cruises and the protection of the trade of the colonies, and the Governor, by his commission, had power in case of any great crime committed by any of the captains of men of war, to suspend them, and the next officer was to succeed.
"The Governor required Captain Short to order part of the men belonging to theNonesuchupon some service, which I do not find mentioned, probably to some cruiser, there being many picaroons about the eastern coasts, but he refused to do it. This was ill taken by the Governor; and meeting Captain Short in the street, warm words passed, and at length the Governor made use of his cane and broke Short's head. Not content with this, he committed him to prison. The right of a governor to commit by his own warrant had not then been questioned.
"From the prison he removed him to the castle, and from those on board a merchant bound to London, to be delivered to the order of one of their Majesties' principal secretaries of state; giving the master a warrant or authority to do so. The vessel, by some accident, put into Portsmouth in New Hampshire. Sir William who seems to have been sensible of some irregularity in these proceedings, went to Portsmouth, required the master of the merchantman to return him the warrant, which he tore to pieces, and then ordered the cabin of the ship to be opened, secured Short's chests, and examined the contents.
"Short was prevented going home in this vessel, and went to New York to take passage from thence for England; but Sir F. Wheeler arriving soon after at Boston, went for him and carried him home with him. The next officer succeeded in the command of the ship, until a new captain arrived from England. Short was restored to the command of as good a ship."
King William refused to depose the famous treasure finder without hearing what he had to say in his defense, and Sir William stoutly swore that those whom he had punished got no more than they deserved. A strong party had been mustered against him, however, and he waged an uphill fight for vindication until Death, the one foe for whom he did not think himself a match, took him by the heels and laid him in a vault beneath the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, London. A guide-book of that city, published in 1708, contained this description of the memorial placed therein:
"At the east end of the Church of St. Mary Woolnoth, near the northeast angle, is a pretty white marble monument, adorned with an urn between two Cupids, the figure of a ship, and also a boat at sea, with persons in the water; these beheld by a winged eye, all done in basso relieve; also the seven medals, as that of King William and Queen Mary; some with Spanish impressions, as the castle, cross-portent, etc. and likewise the figures of a sea quadrant; cross-staff, and this inscription:
"'Near this place is interred the Body of Sir William Phips, knight; who in the year 1687, by his great industry, discovered among the rocks near the Banks of Bahama on the north side of Hispaniola a Spanish plate-ship which had been under water 44 years, out of which he took in gold and silver to the value of £300,000 sterling: and with a fidelity equal to his conduct, brought it all to London, where it was divided between himself and the rest of the adventurers. For which great service he was knighted by his then Majesty, King James the 2nd, and at the request of the principal inhabitants of New England, he accepted of the Government of the Massachusetts, in which he continued up to the time of his death; and discharged his trust with that zeal for the interests of the country, and with so little regard to his own private advantage, that he justly gained the good esteem and affection of the greatest and best part of the inhabitants of that Colony.
"'He died the 18th of February, 1694, and his lady, to perpetuate his memory, hath caused this monument to be erected.'"
It is far better to know the man as he was, rough-hewn, hasty, unlettered, but simple and honest as daylight, than to accept the false and silly epitaph of Cotton Mather, that "he was a person of so sweet a temper that they who were most intimately acquainted with him would commonly pronounce him the Best Conditioned Gentleman in the World." After he had wrested his fortune from the bottom of the sea in circumstances splendidly romantic, he used the power which his wealth gained for him wholly in the service of the people of his own country.
During his last visit to London, when he had grown tired of being a royal governor, he harked back to his old love, and was planning another treasure voyage. "The Spanish wreck was not the only nor the richest wreck which he knew to be lying under the water. He knew particularly that when the ship which had Governor Bobadilla aboard was cast away, there was, as Peter Martyr says, an entire table of Gold of Three Thousand Three Hundred and Ten Pounds Weight. And supposing himself to have gained sufficient information of the right way to such a wreck, it was his purpose upon his dismission from his Government, once more to have gone upon his old Fishing-Trade, upon a mighty shelf of rocks and bank of sands that lie where he had informed himself."