harbor a fleet of some ten or eleven ships, the
flagship, a vessel of three hundred and fifty tons, being named the
_Arabella_. She was thus called because of the presence on board of Lady
Arabella Johnson, wife of a commoner called Isaac Johnson. The pair had
come to America to breathe a purer atmosphere of freedom in religion
than they had been able to find at home; but Lady Arabella was not
destined long to enjoy the liberty she sought. The words of Cotton
Mather may be quoted in regard to her, the first of noble blood to
succumb to the rigors of the new climate:

"Of those who soon dyed after their first arrival, not the least
considerable was the lady Arabella, who left an earthly paradise in the
family of an _Earldom_, to encounter the sorrows of a wilderness, for
the entertainments of a _pure worship_ in the house of God; and then
immediately left that wilderness for the Heavenly paradise, whereto the
compassionate Jesus, of whom she was a follower, called her. We have
read concerning a noble woman of Bohemia, who forsook her friends, her
plate, her house and all, and because the gates of the city were
guarded, crept through the common sewer, that she might enjoy the
institutions of our Lord at another place where they might be had. The
spirit which acted that noble woman, we may suppose carried this blessed
lady thus to and through the hardships of an American desart. But as for
her virtuous husband, Isaac Johnson, Esq.,

'"Hetry'd
To live without her, lik'd it not, and dy'ed.'

"His mourning for the death of his honourable consort was too bitter to
be extended a year; about a month after _her_ death _his_ ensued, unto
the extreme loss of the whole plantation."

There is here much cause for smiling, especially in old Dr. Mather's
unconscious snobbery as to the "paradise of an earldom," even to
italicising the important word, and to his wonder how anyone could leave
such delights for the goal of a "desart"; but there is also some moving
if equally unconscious pathos, and for this, as well as for the fact of
Lady Arabella's being the first feminine name to come down to us from
Plymouth in the dignity of history, her virtues and fate are here
recorded. Moreover, that otherwise unfamed lady from Bohemia who left
her "plate" behind her in her search for religious liberty deserves to
be rescued from oblivion.

[Illustration 4: THE COURTSHIP OF MILES STANDISH.
After t