Thomas Morton (Merrymount Founder)
Encyclopedia
Thomas Morton was an early American colonist from Devon
, England
, a lawyer, writer and social reformer, famed for founding the colony of Merrymount
and his work studying Native American
culture.
, England around 1578, into a conservative Anglican family of the Devon gentry. Devon at that time was considered the “dark corner of the land” by Protestant reformers, due to its traditionalist intransigence, which included not only a High Church
Anglicanism
, that shared many traits with Catholicism
, but also a paternalistic populism combined with a rural folk tradition that for the Puritan
s came close to paganism
. To the local inhabitants however it was merely “Old England.” It was this culture that was firmly ingrained in him.
In the late 1590s Morton was studying law at London’s Clifford's Inn
where he made many influential contacts and lasting friendships. He was also exposed here to both a popular Renaissance
Classicism
and the ‘libertine
culture’ of the Inns of Court
themselves, where the bawdy revels included the Gesta Grayorum performances associated with Francis Bacon
and Shakespeare
, and it is most likely that he first met Ben Jonson
here, who would remain his friend throughout his life. Though an ardent Royalist, Morton became a proponent of the Common Law
against the emerging direct legal powers of The Crown and the Star Chamber
.
The early years of the 17th century saw Morton traveling between London and the Devonshire countryside as the legal champion of displaced countrymen ‘whose economic straits filled new tent-cities, furnished prisons and gallows, and pushed Devon men to the Bristol sea-trades’. He eventually settled into the service of Ferdinando Gorges
, the governor of the English port of Plymouth
, and a major colonial entrepreneur. Gorges, who was an associate of Sir Walter Raleigh
and had been part of Robert Devereux
’s Essex Conspiracy, was heavily involved in the ‘permissive’ economy of the seas, and with many interests in New England
was to become the founder of the colony of Maine
. Morton initially served him in a legal capacity in England, but following his failed marriage plans, due to the influence of a Puritan stepson, in 1618 he decided to become one of Gorges’ ‘landsmen’ who oversaw his interests in the colonies. Neither experience would enamour him of the Puritans.
s on a spit of land given to them by the native Algonquian
tribes, whose culture Morton is said to have admired as far more ‘civilized and humanitarian’ than that of his ‘intolerant European neighbours’. The Pilgrim separatists of the New England colony of Plymouth
objected to their sales of guns and liquor to the natives in exchange for furs and provisions, which at that time was technically illegal (although almost everyone was doing it). The weapons undoubtedly acquired by the Algonquians were used to defend themselves against raids from the Northern Tribes, however, and not against the fearful colonists. The trading post set up by the two men soon expanded into an agrarian colony which became known as Mount Wollaston
(now Quincy, Massachusetts
).
Morton fell out with Wollaston after he discovered he had been selling indentured servants into slavery on the Virginia
n tobacco
plantation
s. Powerless to prevent him, he encouraged the remaining servants to rebel against his harsh rule and organise themselves into a free community. Wollaston fled with his supporters to Virginia in 1626, leaving Morton in sole command of the colony, or its 'host' as he preferred to be called, which was renamed Mount Ma-re (a play on ‘merry’ and ‘the sea’) or simply Merrymount. Under Morton’s 'hostship' an almost utopian project was embarked upon, in which the colonists were declared free men or ‘consociates’, and a certain degree of integration into the local Algonquian culture was attempted. However, it was Morton’s long-term plan to ‘further civilize’ the native population by converting them to his liberal form of Christianity
, and by providing them with free salt for food preservation, thus enabling them to give up hunting and settle permanently. He also considered himself a ‘loyal subject’ of the British monarchy throughout this period, and his agenda remained a colonial one, referring to Book 3 of his New English Canaan memoirs as a manual on ‘how not to colonize’, in reference to the Puritans.
Morton’s ‘Christianity’, however, was strongly condemned by the Puritans of the nearby Plymouth Colony
as little more than a thinly disguised heathenism
, and they suspected him of essentially ‘going native’. Scandalous rumours were spread of the debauchery at Merrymount, which they claimed included immoral sexual liaisons with native women during what amounted to drunken orgies in honour of Bacchus
and Aphrodite
. Or as the Puritan
Gov. William Bradford
wrote with horror in his history Of Plymouth Plantation
: "They ... set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora
, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalia
ns." Morton had transplanted traditional West Country
May Day
customs to the colony, and combined them with fashionable classical
myth, couched according to his own libertine
tastes, and fuelled by the enthusiasm of his newly-freed fellow colonists. On a practical level the annual May Day festival was not only a reward for his hardworking colonists but also a joint celebration with the Native Tribes who also marked the day, and a chance for the mostly male colonists to find brides amongst the native population. Puritan ire was no doubt also fueled by the fact that Merrymount was the fastest-growing colony in New England and rapidly becoming the most prosperous, both as an agricultural producer and in the fur trade in which the Plymouth Colony
was trying to build a monopoly
. The Puritan
account of this was very different, regarding the colony as a decadent nest of good-for-nothings that annually attracted “all the scum of the country” to the area. Or as Peter Lamborn Wilson
more romantically puts it, ‘a Comus
-crew of disaffected fur traders, antinomians, loose women, Indians and bon-vivants’.
But it was the second 1628 Mayday ‘Revels of New Canaan’, inspired by ‘Cupid’s mother’, with its ‘pagan odes’ to Neptune
and Triton
, as well as Venus
and her lustful children, Cupid
, Hymen
and Priapus
, its drinking song
, and its erection of a huge 80 ft. Maypole
, topped with deer antlers, that proved too much for the ‘Princes of Limbo’, as Morton referred to his Puritan neighbours. The Plymouth Militia under Myles Standish
took the town the following June with little resistance, chopped down the Maypole and arrested Morton for ‘supplying guns to the Indians’.He was put in stocks
in Plymouth, given a mock trial and finally marooned on the deserted Isles of Shoals
, off the coast of New Hampshire
, until an ‘English ship could take him home’, apparently as he was believed too well connected to be imprisoned or executed (as later became the penalty for ‘blasphemy
’ in the colony). He was essentially starved on the island, but was supplied with food by friendly natives from the mainland, who were said to be bemused by the events, and he eventually gained enough strength to escape to England under his own volition. The Merry Mount community survived without Morton for another year, but was renamed Mount Dagon
by the Puritans, after the 'evil' Semitic Sea God, and they pledged to make it a place of woe. During the terrible winter famine of 1629 residents of New Salem under John Endecott
raided Mount Dagon’s plentiful corn supplies and destroyed what was left of the Maypole, calling it the ‘Calf of Horeb
’ and denouncing it as a pagan idol. Morton returned to the colony soon after and, after finding most of the inhabitants had been scattered, was rearrested, again put on trial and banished from the colonies without legal process. The following year the colony of Mount Dagon was burnt to the ground and Morton shipped back to England.
Barely surviving his harsh treatment during his journey into exile, he regained his strength in 1631 and following a short spell in an Essex
jail was released and began a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Company, the political power behind the Puritans. To the surprise of the Protestant English supporters of ‘Plymouther Separatists’, Morton won influential backing for his cause and was treated as a champion of liberty. With the help of his original backer Ferdinando Gorges he became the attorney of the Council of New England against the Massachusetts Bay Company. The real political force behind his good fortune, however, was the hostility of Charles I
to the Puritan colonists. In 1635 Morton’s efforts were successful, and the Company's charter was revoked. Major political rearrangements occurred in New England after this, though these were primarily due to the colonial rejection of the court decision, subsequent isolation, lack of supplies and overpopulation, and increased conflict with foreign colonists and natives. Nonetheless, Plymouth became a place of woe, and many left Massachusetts
for the relative safety of Connecticut
.
In 1637 Morton became a political celebrity with the publication of his three-volumed New English Canaan, based on the notes of his legal campaign. With the probable assistance of Ben Jonson
and his other literary friends at the Mermaid Tavern
, Morton produced in these three books an inspired denunciation of the Puritan regime in the colonies and their policy of land enclosure and near genocide of the Native population. In contrast, the latter were described as a far nobler culture, and defined as a Canaan
under attack from the 'New Israel' of the Puritans. He summed up his magnum opus with a call for the 'demartialising' of the colonies and the creation of a multicultural New Canaan along the lines of Merrymount, as well as tantalisingly describing the commercial worth of North America, though something very different would begin to emerge with the reorganisation of New England and the beginning of the Triangular Trade
rooted in slavery
.
At this time Gorges was declared the new Governor of the Colonies by King Charles I
, though he would never set foot in America. Morton’s victory, however, was cut short by the beginning of the English Civil War
, triggered by both reaction to Charles’ absolutism and agitation from the Puritans. In 1642 Morton planned to flee to New England with Gorges, but his aged mentor failed to make the trip, and he returned alone as Gorges’ agent in Maine
.
Following an ill-considered triumphal return to the Plymouth Colony
he was arrested and accused of being a Royalist
“agitator”, and put on trial for his role in the revocation of the colony's charter, as well as charges of sedition
. By September he was imprisoned in Boston, but his trial was delayed, “so evidence could be sought” through winter, but none ever arrived. As his health began to fail, his petition for clemency and release was granted. Isolated from his English supporters during the English Civil War
, he ended his days amidst the West Country planters of Maine, under the protection of Gorges’ supporters. He died at the age of 71 in 1647.
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, a lawyer, writer and social reformer, famed for founding the colony of Merrymount
Merrymount (Quincy, Massachusetts)
Merrymount is a primarily residential neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts, located between the neighborhoods of Quincy Center and Adams Shore. Although it was the site of Quincy's initial settlement, Merrymount was not substantially developed for residential use until the first half of the 20th...
and his work studying Native American
Native Americans in the United States
Native Americans in the United States are the indigenous peoples in North America within the boundaries of the present-day continental United States, parts of Alaska, and the island state of Hawaii. They are composed of numerous, distinct tribes, states, and ethnic groups, many of which survive as...
culture.
Early years
Thomas Morton was born in DevonDevon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
, England around 1578, into a conservative Anglican family of the Devon gentry. Devon at that time was considered the “dark corner of the land” by Protestant reformers, due to its traditionalist intransigence, which included not only a High Church
High church
The term "High Church" refers to beliefs and practices of ecclesiology, liturgy and theology, generally with an emphasis on formality, and resistance to "modernization." Although used in connection with various Christian traditions, the term has traditionally been principally associated with the...
Anglicanism
Anglicanism
Anglicanism is a tradition within Christianity comprising churches with historical connections to the Church of England or similar beliefs, worship and church structures. The word Anglican originates in ecclesia anglicana, a medieval Latin phrase dating to at least 1246 that means the English...
, that shared many traits with Catholicism
Catholicism
Catholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
, but also a paternalistic populism combined with a rural folk tradition that for the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
s came close to paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
. To the local inhabitants however it was merely “Old England.” It was this culture that was firmly ingrained in him.
In the late 1590s Morton was studying law at London’s Clifford's Inn
Clifford's Inn
Clifford's Inn was an Inn of Chancery which is located between Fetter Lane and Clifford's Inn Passage, leading off Fleet Street, EC4.Founded in 1344 and dissolved in 1903, most of the original structure was demolished in 1934...
where he made many influential contacts and lasting friendships. He was also exposed here to both a popular Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
Classicism
Classicism
Classicism, in the arts, refers generally to a high regard for classical antiquity, as setting standards for taste which the classicists seek to emulate. The art of classicism typically seeks to be formal and restrained: of the Discobolus Sir Kenneth Clark observed, "if we object to his restraint...
and the ‘libertine
Libertine
A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior sanctified by the larger society. Libertines, also known as rakes, placed value on physical pleasures, meaning those...
culture’ of the Inns of Court
Inns of Court
The Inns of Court in London are the professional associations for barristers in England and Wales. All such barristers must belong to one such association. They have supervisory and disciplinary functions over their members. The Inns also provide libraries, dining facilities and professional...
themselves, where the bawdy revels included the Gesta Grayorum performances associated with Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
and Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
, and it is most likely that he first met Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
here, who would remain his friend throughout his life. Though an ardent Royalist, Morton became a proponent of the Common Law
Common law
Common law is law developed by judges through decisions of courts and similar tribunals rather than through legislative statutes or executive branch action...
against the emerging direct legal powers of The Crown and the Star Chamber
Star Chamber
The Star Chamber was an English court of law that sat at the royal Palace of Westminster until 1641. It was made up of Privy Counsellors, as well as common-law judges and supplemented the activities of the common-law and equity courts in both civil and criminal matters...
.
The early years of the 17th century saw Morton traveling between London and the Devonshire countryside as the legal champion of displaced countrymen ‘whose economic straits filled new tent-cities, furnished prisons and gallows, and pushed Devon men to the Bristol sea-trades’. He eventually settled into the service of Ferdinando Gorges
Ferdinando Gorges
Sir Ferdinando Gorges , the "Father of English Colonization in North America", was an early English colonial entrepreneur and founder of the Province of Maine in 1622, although Gorges himself never set foot in the New World.-Biography:...
, the governor of the English port of Plymouth
Plymouth
Plymouth is a city and unitary authority area on the coast of Devon, England, about south-west of London. It is built between the mouths of the rivers Plym to the east and Tamar to the west, where they join Plymouth Sound...
, and a major colonial entrepreneur. Gorges, who was an associate of Sir Walter Raleigh
Walter Raleigh
Sir Walter Raleigh was an English aristocrat, writer, poet, soldier, courtier, spy, and explorer. He is also well known for popularising tobacco in England....
and had been part of Robert Devereux
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex
Robert Devereux, 2nd Earl of Essex, KG was an English nobleman and a favourite of Elizabeth I. Politically ambitious, and a committed general, he was placed under house arrest following a poor campaign in Ireland during the Nine Years' War in 1599...
’s Essex Conspiracy, was heavily involved in the ‘permissive’ economy of the seas, and with many interests in New England
New England
New England is a region in the northeastern corner of the United States consisting of the six states of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut...
was to become the founder of the colony of Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
. Morton initially served him in a legal capacity in England, but following his failed marriage plans, due to the influence of a Puritan stepson, in 1618 he decided to become one of Gorges’ ‘landsmen’ who oversaw his interests in the colonies. Neither experience would enamour him of the Puritans.
Trip to America
Morton spent three months on an exploratory trip to America in 1622, but was back in England by early 1623 complaining of the intolerance of certain elements of the Puritan community. He returned in 1624 as a senior partner in a Crown-sponsored trading venture, onboard the ship the Unity with his associate Captain Wollaston and 30 indentured young men. They settled and began trading for furFur
Fur is a synonym for hair, used more in reference to non-human animals, usually mammals; particularly those with extensives body hair coverage. The term is sometimes used to refer to the body hair of an animal as a complete coat, also known as the "pelage". Fur is also used to refer to animal...
s on a spit of land given to them by the native Algonquian
Algonquian peoples
The Algonquian are one of the most populous and widespread North American native language groups, with tribes originally numbering in the hundreds. Today hundreds of thousands of individuals identify with various Algonquian peoples...
tribes, whose culture Morton is said to have admired as far more ‘civilized and humanitarian’ than that of his ‘intolerant European neighbours’. The Pilgrim separatists of the New England colony of Plymouth
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
objected to their sales of guns and liquor to the natives in exchange for furs and provisions, which at that time was technically illegal (although almost everyone was doing it). The weapons undoubtedly acquired by the Algonquians were used to defend themselves against raids from the Northern Tribes, however, and not against the fearful colonists. The trading post set up by the two men soon expanded into an agrarian colony which became known as Mount Wollaston
Mount Wollaston
Wollaston, Massachusetts, is a neighborhood in the city of Quincy, Massachusetts. Divided by Hancock Street/Route 3A, the Wollaston Beach side is called Wollaston Park, while the Wollaston Hill side is called Wollaston Heights....
(now Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy, Massachusetts
Quincy is a city in Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Its nicknames are "City of Presidents", "City of Legends", and "Birthplace of the American Dream". As a major part of Metropolitan Boston, Quincy is a member of Boston's Inner Core Committee for the Metropolitan Area Planning Council...
).
Morton fell out with Wollaston after he discovered he had been selling indentured servants into slavery on the Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
n tobacco
Tobacco
Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as a pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, used in some medicines...
plantation
Plantation
A plantation is a long artificially established forest, farm or estate, where crops are grown for sale, often in distant markets rather than for local on-site consumption...
s. Powerless to prevent him, he encouraged the remaining servants to rebel against his harsh rule and organise themselves into a free community. Wollaston fled with his supporters to Virginia in 1626, leaving Morton in sole command of the colony, or its 'host' as he preferred to be called, which was renamed Mount Ma-re (a play on ‘merry’ and ‘the sea’) or simply Merrymount. Under Morton’s 'hostship' an almost utopian project was embarked upon, in which the colonists were declared free men or ‘consociates’, and a certain degree of integration into the local Algonquian culture was attempted. However, it was Morton’s long-term plan to ‘further civilize’ the native population by converting them to his liberal form of Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, and by providing them with free salt for food preservation, thus enabling them to give up hunting and settle permanently. He also considered himself a ‘loyal subject’ of the British monarchy throughout this period, and his agenda remained a colonial one, referring to Book 3 of his New English Canaan memoirs as a manual on ‘how not to colonize’, in reference to the Puritans.
Morton’s ‘Christianity’, however, was strongly condemned by the Puritans of the nearby Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
as little more than a thinly disguised heathenism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
, and they suspected him of essentially ‘going native’. Scandalous rumours were spread of the debauchery at Merrymount, which they claimed included immoral sexual liaisons with native women during what amounted to drunken orgies in honour of Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
and Aphrodite
Aphrodite
Aphrodite is the Greek goddess of love, beauty, pleasure, and procreation.Her Roman equivalent is the goddess .Historically, her cult in Greece was imported from, or influenced by, the cult of Astarte in Phoenicia....
. Or as the Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
Gov. William Bradford
William Bradford (1590-1657)
William Bradford was an English leader of the settlers of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, and served as governor for over 30 years after John Carver died. His journal was published as Of Plymouth Plantation...
wrote with horror in his history Of Plymouth Plantation
Of Plymouth Plantation
Written over a period of years by the leader of the Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts, William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation is the single most complete authority for the story of the Pilgrims and the early years of the Colony they founded...
: "They ... set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora
Flora (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Flora was a goddess of flowers and the season of spring. While she was otherwise a relatively minor figure in Roman mythology, being one among several fertility goddesses, her association with the spring gave her particular importance at the coming of springtime...
, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalia
Bacchanalia
The bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Greco-Roman god Bacchus , the wine god. The term has since come to describe any form of drunken revelry.-History:...
ns." Morton had transplanted traditional West Country
West Country
The West Country is an informal term for the area of south western England roughly corresponding to the modern South West England government region. It is often defined to encompass the historic counties of Cornwall, Devon, Dorset and Somerset and the City of Bristol, while the counties of...
May Day
May Day
May Day on May 1 is an ancient northern hemisphere spring festival and usually a public holiday; it is also a traditional spring holiday in many cultures....
customs to the colony, and combined them with fashionable classical
Classical antiquity
Classical antiquity is a broad term for a long period of cultural history centered on the Mediterranean Sea, comprising the interlocking civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome, collectively known as the Greco-Roman world...
myth, couched according to his own libertine
Libertine
A libertine is one devoid of most moral restraints, which are seen as unnecessary or undesirable, especially one who ignores or even spurns accepted morals and forms of behavior sanctified by the larger society. Libertines, also known as rakes, placed value on physical pleasures, meaning those...
tastes, and fuelled by the enthusiasm of his newly-freed fellow colonists. On a practical level the annual May Day festival was not only a reward for his hardworking colonists but also a joint celebration with the Native Tribes who also marked the day, and a chance for the mostly male colonists to find brides amongst the native population. Puritan ire was no doubt also fueled by the fact that Merrymount was the fastest-growing colony in New England and rapidly becoming the most prosperous, both as an agricultural producer and in the fur trade in which the Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
was trying to build a monopoly
Monopoly
A monopoly exists when a specific person or enterprise is the only supplier of a particular commodity...
. The Puritan
Puritan
The Puritans were a significant grouping of English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries. Puritanism in this sense was founded by some Marian exiles from the clergy shortly after the accession of Elizabeth I of England in 1558, as an activist movement within the Church of England...
account of this was very different, regarding the colony as a decadent nest of good-for-nothings that annually attracted “all the scum of the country” to the area. Or as Peter Lamborn Wilson
Peter Lamborn Wilson
Peter Lamborn Wilson , is an American political writer, essayist, and poet, known for first proposing the concept of the Temporary Autonomous Zone , based, in part, on a historical review of pirate utopias...
more romantically puts it, ‘a Comus
Comus
In Greek mythology, Comus or Komos is the god of festivity, revels and nocturnal dalliances. He is a son and a cup-bearer of the god Bacchus. Comus represents anarchy and chaos. His mythology occurs in the later times of antiquity. During his festivals in Ancient Greece, men and women exchanged...
-crew of disaffected fur traders, antinomians, loose women, Indians and bon-vivants’.
But it was the second 1628 Mayday ‘Revels of New Canaan’, inspired by ‘Cupid’s mother’, with its ‘pagan odes’ to Neptune
Poseidon
Poseidon was the god of the sea, and, as "Earth-Shaker," of the earthquakes in Greek mythology. The name of the sea-god Nethuns in Etruscan was adopted in Latin for Neptune in Roman mythology: both were sea gods analogous to Poseidon...
and Triton
Triton (mythology)
Triton is a mythological Greek god, the messenger of the big sea. He is the son of Poseidon, god of the sea, and Amphitrite, goddess of the sea, whose herald he is...
, as well as Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
and her lustful children, Cupid
Cupid
In Roman mythology, Cupid is the god of desire, affection and erotic love. He is the son of the goddess Venus and the god Mars. His Greek counterpart is Eros...
, Hymen
Hymenaios
In Greek mythology, Hymen was a god of marriage ceremonies, inspiring feasts and song. Related to the god's name, a hymenaios is a genre of Greek lyric poetry sung during the procession of the bride to the groom's house in which the god is addressed, in contrast to the Epithalamium, which was sung...
and Priapus
Priapus
In Greek mythology, Priapus or Priapos , was a minor rustic fertility god, protector of livestock, fruit plants, gardens and male genitalia. Priapus is marked by his absurdly oversized, permanent erection, which gave rise to the medical term priapism...
, its drinking song
Drinking song
A drinking song is a song sung while drinking alcohol. Most drinking songs are folk songs, and may be varied from person to person and region to region, in both the lyrics and in the music...
, and its erection of a huge 80 ft. Maypole
Maypole
A maypole is a tall wooden pole erected as a part of various European folk festivals, particularly on May Day, or Pentecost although in some countries it is instead erected at Midsummer...
, topped with deer antlers, that proved too much for the ‘Princes of Limbo’, as Morton referred to his Puritan neighbours. The Plymouth Militia under Myles Standish
Myles Standish
Myles Standish was an English military officer hired by the Pilgrims as military advisor for Plymouth Colony. One of the Mayflower passengers, Standish played a leading role in the administration and defense of Plymouth Colony from its inception...
took the town the following June with little resistance, chopped down the Maypole and arrested Morton for ‘supplying guns to the Indians’.He was put in stocks
Stocks
Stocks are devices used in the medieval and colonial American times as a form of physical punishment involving public humiliation. The stocks partially immobilized its victims and they were often exposed in a public place such as the site of a market to the scorn of those who passed by...
in Plymouth, given a mock trial and finally marooned on the deserted Isles of Shoals
Isles of Shoals
The Isles of Shoals are a group of small islands and tidal ledges situated approximately off the east coast of the United States, straddling the border of the states of New Hampshire and Maine.- History :...
, off the coast of New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, until an ‘English ship could take him home’, apparently as he was believed too well connected to be imprisoned or executed (as later became the penalty for ‘blasphemy
Blasphemy
Blasphemy is irreverence towards religious or holy persons or things. Some countries have laws to punish blasphemy, while others have laws to give recourse to those who are offended by blasphemy...
’ in the colony). He was essentially starved on the island, but was supplied with food by friendly natives from the mainland, who were said to be bemused by the events, and he eventually gained enough strength to escape to England under his own volition. The Merry Mount community survived without Morton for another year, but was renamed Mount Dagon
Dagon
Dagon was originally an Assyro-Babylonian fertility god who evolved into a major northwest Semitic god, reportedly of grain and fish and/or fishing...
by the Puritans, after the 'evil' Semitic Sea God, and they pledged to make it a place of woe. During the terrible winter famine of 1629 residents of New Salem under John Endecott
John Endecott
John Endecott was an English colonial magistrate, soldier and the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. During all of his years in the colony but one, he held some form of civil, judicial, or military high office...
raided Mount Dagon’s plentiful corn supplies and destroyed what was left of the Maypole, calling it the ‘Calf of Horeb
Golden calf
According to the Hebrew Bible, the golden calf was an idol made by Aaron to satisfy the Israelites during Moses' absence, when he went up to Mount Sinai...
’ and denouncing it as a pagan idol. Morton returned to the colony soon after and, after finding most of the inhabitants had been scattered, was rearrested, again put on trial and banished from the colonies without legal process. The following year the colony of Mount Dagon was burnt to the ground and Morton shipped back to England.
Barely surviving his harsh treatment during his journey into exile, he regained his strength in 1631 and following a short spell in an Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
jail was released and began a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Company, the political power behind the Puritans. To the surprise of the Protestant English supporters of ‘Plymouther Separatists’, Morton won influential backing for his cause and was treated as a champion of liberty. With the help of his original backer Ferdinando Gorges he became the attorney of the Council of New England against the Massachusetts Bay Company. The real political force behind his good fortune, however, was the hostility of Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
to the Puritan colonists. In 1635 Morton’s efforts were successful, and the Company's charter was revoked. Major political rearrangements occurred in New England after this, though these were primarily due to the colonial rejection of the court decision, subsequent isolation, lack of supplies and overpopulation, and increased conflict with foreign colonists and natives. Nonetheless, Plymouth became a place of woe, and many left Massachusetts
Massachusetts
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...
for the relative safety of Connecticut
Connecticut
Connecticut is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States. It is bordered by Rhode Island to the east, Massachusetts to the north, and the state of New York to the west and the south .Connecticut is named for the Connecticut River, the major U.S. river that approximately...
.
In 1637 Morton became a political celebrity with the publication of his three-volumed New English Canaan, based on the notes of his legal campaign. With the probable assistance of Ben Jonson
Ben Jonson
Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...
and his other literary friends at the Mermaid Tavern
Mermaid Tavern
The Mermaid Tavern was a tavern on Cheapside in London during the Elizabethan era, located east of St. Paul's Cathedral on the corner of Friday Street and Bread Street. It was the site of the so-called Friday Street Club...
, Morton produced in these three books an inspired denunciation of the Puritan regime in the colonies and their policy of land enclosure and near genocide of the Native population. In contrast, the latter were described as a far nobler culture, and defined as a Canaan
Canaan
Canaan is a historical region roughly corresponding to modern-day Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, and the western parts of Jordan...
under attack from the 'New Israel' of the Puritans. He summed up his magnum opus with a call for the 'demartialising' of the colonies and the creation of a multicultural New Canaan along the lines of Merrymount, as well as tantalisingly describing the commercial worth of North America, though something very different would begin to emerge with the reorganisation of New England and the beginning of the Triangular Trade
Triangular trade
Triangular trade, or triangle trade, is a historical term indicating among three ports or regions. Triangular trade usually evolves when a region has export commodities that are not required in the region from which its major imports come...
rooted in slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...
.
At this time Gorges was declared the new Governor of the Colonies by King Charles I
Charles I of England
Charles I was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. Charles engaged in a struggle for power with the Parliament of England, attempting to obtain royal revenue whilst Parliament sought to curb his Royal prerogative which Charles...
, though he would never set foot in America. Morton’s victory, however, was cut short by the beginning of the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, triggered by both reaction to Charles’ absolutism and agitation from the Puritans. In 1642 Morton planned to flee to New England with Gorges, but his aged mentor failed to make the trip, and he returned alone as Gorges’ agent in Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
.
Following an ill-considered triumphal return to the Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony
Plymouth Colony was an English colonial venture in North America from 1620 to 1691. The first settlement of the Plymouth Colony was at New Plymouth, a location previously surveyed and named by Captain John Smith. The settlement, which served as the capital of the colony, is today the modern town...
he was arrested and accused of being a Royalist
Cavalier
Cavalier was the name used by Parliamentarians for a Royalist supporter of King Charles I and son Charles II during the English Civil War, the Interregnum, and the Restoration...
“agitator”, and put on trial for his role in the revocation of the colony's charter, as well as charges of sedition
Sedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
. By September he was imprisoned in Boston, but his trial was delayed, “so evidence could be sought” through winter, but none ever arrived. As his health began to fail, his petition for clemency and release was granted. Isolated from his English supporters during the English Civil War
English Civil War
The English Civil War was a series of armed conflicts and political machinations between Parliamentarians and Royalists...
, he ended his days amidst the West Country planters of Maine, under the protection of Gorges’ supporters. He died at the age of 71 in 1647.
External links
- Morton's and Bradford's accounts of the Merrymount affair archive.org version of old aol.com site.
- More Morton on Merrymount at swarthmore.edu.
- Hawthorne's fictional version at virginia.edu.
- Morton's account of Native Americans at fordham.edu.a