Among these passengers there was a marked man, to whom we have already alluded, Captain Miles Standish. He was a native of Lancashire, England, a gentleman born, and the legitimate heir to a large estate. He had been for some time an officer in one of the British regiments, which had garrisoned a town in the Netherlands. He was not a church member, and we know not what induced him to unite with the pilgrims in their perilous enterprise. Probably love of adventure, sympathy with them in their cruel persecution, and attachment to some of the emigrants, were the motives which influenced him. It is certain that he was very highly esteemed, and very cordially welcomed by the pilgrims. His military skill might prove of great value to the infant colony. It is but little that we know of the early life of this remarkable man. He was born about the year 1584, and was, consequently, at this time, about thirty-six years of age. The family could boast of a long and illustrious line of ancestors. In the great controversy between the Catholics and the Protestants there was a division in the family, part adhering to the ancient faith, and part accepting the Protestant religion. Thus there arose, as it were, two families; the Catholics, who were of “Standish Hall,” and the Protestants, who were of “Duxbury Hall.” Both of these family seats are situated near the village of Chorley, in the county of Lancashire. The income of the whole property was large, being estimated at about five hundred thousand dollars a year. It is probable that Miles Standish was the legal heir to all this property, and that, by gross injustice, he was defrauded of it. A few years ago the heirs of Miles Standish, in this country, sent out an agent, Mr. Bromley, to examine into the title. He thoroughly searched the records of the parish for more than a hundred years, embracing the period between 1549 and 1652. The result of this investigation was fully convincing, to the mind of Mr. Bromley, that Miles Standish was the rightful heir to the property, but that the legal evidence had been fraudulently destroyed. In reference to this investigation, Mr. Justin Winsor, in his History of Duxbury, writes: “The records were all readily deciphered, with the exception of the years 1584 and 1585; the very dates about which time Standish is supposed to have been born. The parchment leaf, which contained the registers of the births of these years was wholly illegible; and their appearance was such that the conclusion was at once established that it had been purposely done with pumice stone, or otherwise, to destroy the legal evidence of the parentage of Standish, and his consequent title to the estates thereabout. The mutilation of these pages is supposed to have been accomplished when, about twenty years before, similar enquiries were made by the family in America.”