Hanging by Proxy

As printed in Samuel Adams Drake (1884)

Told by unattributed — the collector names no informant · collected by Samuel Adams Drake · 1884 · Boston and eastern Massachusetts

IN" his " New English Canaan," first published at London in 1632, Thomas Morton, the dispossessed and exiled planter of Mount Wollaston, alias Merry Mount, relates the droll doings " Of a Parliament held at Wessaguscus." Wessaguscus is now Weymouth, Mass. It was first settled by a trad- ing company sent out by Thomas Weston, — a London mer- chant with whom the Plymouth Pilgrims had had some dealings, but whose present enterprise they regarded with no particular favor. This Morton is a character about Avhich there are at least two opinions : the one generally received being that he was a lawless, dissolute, reckless, and able scamp, who led a vagabond life among vagabond followers; whence Hubbard styles him "lord of misrule." There is no question that the Pilgrims looked upon him as a dangerous neighbor, or that he regarded them with unconcealed aversion and disdain. So far as he was anything, he was a Churchman ; while they were out-and-out Separatists. He used the Book of Common Prayer ; they abhorred and rejected it. He calls them ironically the "Brethren;" they term him "pettifogger" and "atheist." Such opposite views in morals and government were not long coming into collision. Morton was, however, a man of education and ability, — ■ which by no means proves that he was not all the Pilgrims allege him 366 NEW-ENGLAND LEGENDS. to have been, — an unprincipled adventurer. Taking his " New English Canaan " as the index of his character, one reads at every few lines some evidence of his strong predilection for a life of indolence and pleasure. His idea was to establish an Arcadia, with the natives as his vassals. He restored the Old- English holiday customs, which the Puritans considered idola- trous, and which they had prohibited among themselves. He rechristened his plantation of Mount Wollaston by the name of Merry Mount, with the old May-Day ceremonies of wine, wassail, and the dance around the May-pole, to celebrate the change. He composed riddles in verse addressed to his followers that show an equal familiarity with classical lore and with the debased manners of the court wits and rhymesters of the day. He furnished the Indians with firearms to hunt for him, which they soon learned to use against their masters. Taking the alarm, the outraged Pilgrims seized and shipped Morton a pris- oner to England, without law or other warrant than the " higher law" that might makes right; and it was while smarting under the sense of injury that Morton wrote this most entertaining account of his personal adventures in the New English Canaan. This brings us back to Morton's story of how justice was administered at that early day in New England, notably at the plantation of Wessaguscus. It is no fault of Morton that the tale has grown since leaving his capable hands. But to him belongs the honor of having first set it down in black and white. He says : — " Master Weston's plantation being settled at Wessaguscus, his servants, or many of them, being lazy persons that would use no endeavor to take the benefit of the country, some of them fell sick and died. " One among the rest, an able-bodied man that ranged the forest to see what it would afford him, stumbled by accident on an Indian granary, concealed, as the custom was with those people, under- ground ; and from it he took a capful of corn, and then went his way. The Indian owner, finding by the footprint that the thief was an Englishman, came and made his complaint at the plantation. "The chief commander of the company immediately called to- gether a parliament of all those who were not sick, to hear and determine the cause of complaint. And wisely now," continues Morton, with playful irony, "they should consult upon this huge complaint, that a knife or a string of beads would well enough have disposed of, Edward Johnson being made a special judge of this business. The fact was there in repetition, construction made that it was a felony, and by the laws of England punished with death ; and this in execution must be put for an example, and likewise to appease the savage ; when straightway one arose, moved as it were with some compassion, and said he could not well gainsay the former sentence, yet he had conceived within the compass of his brain an Embrion (an unborn child) that was of special consequence to be delivered and cherished. He said that it would most aptly serve to pacify the savage's complaint, and save the life of one that might (if need should be) stand them in some good stead, being j^oung and strong, fit for resistance against an enemy, which might come un- expected for anything they knew. " This oration was liked by every one ; and the orator was en- treated to show how this end might be reached. He went on : — " Says he, ' You all agree that one must die, and one shall die. This young man's clothes we will take off, and put upon one that is old and impotent, — a sickly person that cannot escape death; such is the disease on him confirmed, tliat die lie must : put the young man's clothes on this man, and let the sick person be hanged in the other's stead.' ' Amen,' says one ; and so say many more. " And this had like to have proved their final sentence, and being there confirmed by Act of Parliament to after-ages for a precedent, but that one with a ravenous voice began to croak and bellow for revenge, and put by that conclusive motion, alleging that such deceits might be a means hereafter to exasperate the minds of the complaining savages, and that by his death the savages should see their zeal to do justice ; and therefore he should die. This was con- cluded. Yet, nevertheless, a scruple was made ; now to counter- mand this act did represent itself unto their minds, which was how they should do to get the man's good-will. This was indeed a special obstacle, for without (that they all agreed) it would be dangerous for any man to attempt the execution of it, lest mischief should be- fall them, every man. He was a person, that…

Samuel Adams Drake, A Book of New England Legends and Folk Lore in Prose and Poetry (Boston: Roberts Brothers, 1884)