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bows and arrows, that the sailors were not able to get it again. At another place, they with two or three more, so filled their fellow Indians with a spirit of revenge, that they welcomed the English into the next harbor they entered with such a shower of arrows, that they were glad to betake themselves to their artillery, to keep off the savages. At one of the islands at Cape Cod, (by Capt. Smith called || Nohono ||) they took in that voyage an Indian called Sakaweston, who, after he had lived divers years in England, went a soldier into the wars of Bohemia, as saith Capt. Smith. Thus the said Harlow returned for England with five of the savages, some of which they detained so long in England that they began to learn our language, and were able to inform our merchants sundry things concerning their country, which inspired them with a fresh resolution to attempt another plantation in the place formerly deserted, but with not much better success; for Capt. Smith having endeavored to settle a plantation upon James River in Virginia, was not unwilling to set the design afloat for New England a second time. For such an end he was sent with two ships to take a farther view of the country, Anno 1614', at the charge of Capt. Marmaduke Royden, and the others, viz. Mr. Langham, || Buley, Skelton,|| and others, to make some further experiment of the commodities of the country, both by sea and land, in the waters of one to kill whales, in the bowels of the other to search for mines; but their best refuge was their common fishing and ordinary furs, those places use most to abound withal. Captain Smith returned the same year for England, well laden with furs, train oil, and core fish, and his mind as full fraught with hopes of great advantage the next return; but, as the wise man saith, "riches are not always to men of understanding, nor favor or prosperity to men of skill, for time and chance happeneth to them all." When the said Smith returned for England, he left one Thomas Hunt master of the bigger vessel, with order to sail directly, with the fish he made upon the coast, for Malaga, but he, like a wicked varlet, having gotten twenty-four of Buley Skelton ||

Nohone ||

1 Ecclesiastes ix. 11.-H.

2 July 18th.-H

the natives aboard his ship, from Patuxit, (who, in confidence of his honesty, had thus innocently put themselves into his hands,) clapped them under hatches, with intent to sell them for slaves amongst the Spaniards; but they not permitting him to make sale of the poor wretches in any of their ports,' some of them found means to escape back to their own country: but in the year following, some that had conceived better hopes of good that might ensue by prosecuting the former honorable and pious work, having dispatched Capt. Hobson from the Isle of Wight, with some others, to make a farther attempt for planting the country, they carried with them two of the aforesaid natives to facilitate the work. These, contrary to expectation, find their design as good as overthrown, before it was well begun, by that treacherous practice of Hunt: for, the two natives coming ashore, and understanding what had befallen their countrymen in their absence, contracted such a hatred against the whole nation, that they studied nothing but how to be revenged of them; contriving secretly with their friends how to bring it to pass, which no doubt they might easily have done, had not one of them, Manowet by name, been taken away by death soon after the ship's arrival there: but the other, called Epenow, observing the good order and strong guard the people kept, studied only for the present how to free himself from the Englishmen's hands; and laid his plot so cunningly that he effected his purpose; although with so great hazard to himself and those his friends, who labored his rescue, that the Captain and his company imagined he had been slain. Their design, not being well compassed, wrought the slaughter of some of their own people, as well as the hurt of some of the English, as appeared afterwards. The company, together with Capt. Hobson, looking upon the end of their attempt as wholly frustrate by this cross accident, resolved, without more ado, to return home, carrying back nothing with them but the news of their bad success. And a war now began between the inhabitants of these parts and the English. Thus was this little spark of their hopes, raked up in the embers of those long and

tedious delays, by this misfortune almost quite extinguished. But this is not all, for another occurrent fell in here, which was as disastrous in a manner as the former. The company of New England had, in the return of the year 1615, found means likewise to set out Capt. Smith, with Mr. Darmer, Rocraft and others, with a ship from Plymouth; either to lay the foundation of a new plantation, or strengthen and second that of Capt. Hobson; but they being scarce free of the English coast, were suddenly attacked by a violent storm, shaking his mast overboard, which forced him back into the harbor, where the undertakers furnishing them with another ship, they put to sea a second time; but after they got to the height of the Western Islands, they were chased by a French pirate, who took them prisoners, and detained them so long that their voyage was wholly overthrown; nor do we find that ever Capt. Smith had an opportunity in his own person afterwards to visit these coasts of New England, though his inclination and purpose ran strongly that way. However, Capt. Darmer, meeting with some one or more of those natives transported by Hunt, and encouraged by Capt. Mason, at that time Governor of Newfoundland,|| carried them to Plymouth, from whence he was sent again to New England, where, about the year 1619, by his prudence and great diligence, he procured a peace between our men and the savages of the place, that had been so much exasperated against them by the wrongs formerly received. This industrious and prudent gentleman, having spent almost two years in searching the coast between New England and Virginia, the fruit of whose labors and hazards many others have since reaped, was at the last, in his return to Virginia, set upon by some malicious savages in some parts beyond Cape Cod, from whom he receiving fourteen or fifteen wounds, upon which occasion, retiring to Virginia, he there ended his days, about the year 1621. What expeditions were made by the English, or attempts to plant any part of the country between the year 1614 and 1620, may be seen more at large in Purchas, fol. 1778, and in Capt. Smith's General History of New England,

||New England. ||

lib. 6, pag. 228 & 229; as likewise in a Script, published [in] 1622, in the name of the Governor and Company of New England. But they being, at the best, matters very inconsiderable and of small consequence, relating to the plantations that followed after that time, it is judged not worth the while to transcribe out of those imperfect relations any other particulars about those transactions, which may well be looked upon rather as dead and superfluous branches of the body of the following history, than any thing likely to confer much delight to the reader, or benefit to the compiler thereof.

CHAP. IX.

Of the Plantation at Patuxit, or New Plymouth, in the year 1620, with the occasions that led thereunto.

THE fore mentioned discoveries of the north parts of Virginia, being bruited abroad amongst the western country of Europe, no doubt filled the minds of many with expectations of famous plantations likely ere long to be erected in those parts of the new world: "Est enim natura hominum novitatis avida :" or, whether some divine virtue had inspired them with a desire of being instruments to promote some higher ends than ever as yet had been brought to light-all former attempts for planting those parts being vanished away, or like to come to little, about this time a strange impression was left upon the minds of some religious and well affected persons of the English nation, sojourning in a foreign country, that some place in that remote region might be found out far more convenient for their purpose, that seemed studious for reformation, than hitherto they elsewhere either had, or were like to attain unto, under the wings of a foreign state. Which consideration, for as much as it gave the first rise to the flourishing plantations of New England, since erected, we shall, in the first place, take a little notice of the occasion that led thereunto.

Notwithstanding the bright and clear rays of the Gospel light, that began to dawn and diffuse themselves

through the whole hemisphere of the English nation, promising an hopeful day of reformation to arise upon them after the long night of antichristian darkness, in the glorious reign of our English Josiah, king Edward the 6th, and Queen Elizabeth of blessed and famous memory; yet were not all that had opportunity to sit under the shadow of their royal authority so well satisfied with every part of that so happy and hopeful reformation by them begun, as to rest contented, without strenuous endeavors to shape and mould the business of church discipline more to the primitive pattern. Therefore sundry of them, having wearied themselves with their private contrivements all the whole reign of Queen Elizabeth, and finding little hope of bettering their condition under her successor, resolved to try, if change of air would not afford a remedy to the distemper at last, to their grievances and burdens they labored under at home. Divers therefore of that persuasion, that had about the year 1602 entered into a private covenant, first in the north of England, then in the Netherlands, Ann. 1610, to walk with God and one with another, according to the best and primitive patterns (as they conceived) of the word of God, finding the low and watery situation of that country as unwholesome and infectious to their bodies, and [the] national ||vices of the place [as] dangerous for their minds, by reason of bad example, as those of their own country [were] uncomfortable for their purses and estates, by reason of opposition, they at last projected the transporting themselves and their families into America, hoping by that means that if not all, yet the greatest and more general ends to be aimed at in reformation, might better be provided for, in a place of their own, free from all former inconveniences. The persons engaged in this design were Mr. Robinson's church, that ten years before settled at Leyden in Holland. The said Robinson, to give him his due, was a man of good learning, of a polished wit, and ingenious disposition and courteous behavior, yet not without Stoo great tinctures of the *sensorious* spirit of their rigid separation, as is too well known by sundry of his writings, published to the world about those times :

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