The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the PeopleEggleston, Edward
History
The Beginners of a Nation: A History of the Source and Rise of the Earliest English Settlements in America, with Special Reference to the Life and Character of the People
Eggleston, Edward
United States -- History -- Colonial period, ca. 1600-1775
Morton's settlement has become the subject of a literature of its own,
and of some rather violent and amusing discussion even in our times.
Morton's New English Canaan has been edited by Mr. C. F. Adams for the
Prince Society. His defensive account of himself leaves the impression
that the author was just the sort of clever and reckless rake who is
most dangerous to settlements in contact with savages, and who might
be expelled neck and heels from a frontier community holding no
scruples of a Puritan sort. The Royal Proclamation in Rymer's Foedera,
xvii, 416 (and Hazard's State Papers, i, 151), 1622, sets forth the
evil of the sale of arms to the savages, but it was leveled at earlier
offenders than Morton. Compare Sainsbury's Calendar, September 29 and
November 24, 1630, pp. 120, 122. There are also references, more or
less extended, to Morton in the Massachusetts Records, Winthrop's
Journal, Bradford's Plimouth Plantation, Dudley's Letter to the
Countess of Lincoln in Young's Chronicles of Massachusetts, and in
other early accounts.
[Sidenote: Note 2, page 193.]
Abbott's account of Laud's rise, Rushworth, i, 440, is traced with a
bitter pen, no doubt, but the student Laud, as Abbott draws him, is so
much like his later self that one can not but believe that the
description of him picking quarrels with the public readers and
carrying information against them to the bishop has a basis of fact.
[Sidenote: Note 3, page 199.]
Rushworth, writing under the later date of 1637, says: "The severe
Censures in Star Chamber, and the greatness of the Fines, and the
rigorous Proceedings to impose Ceremonies, the suspending and
silencing Multitudes of Ministers, for not reading in the Church the
Book for Sports to be exercised on the Lord's day, caused many of the
Nation, both Ministers and others, to sell their Estates, and to set
Sail for New England (a late Plantation in America), where they hold a
Plantation by Patent from the King." Part II, vol. i, p. 410.
[Sidenote: Note 4, page 204.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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