o 1620, formed by fishermen and
traders who visited the New England coast to traffic with the natives.
But it was not until the arrival of Thomas Weston in 1622 that
Weymouth's history really begins. And then it begins in a topsy-turvy
way, so unlike Puritan New England that it makes us rub our eyes,
wondering if it is really true.

This Thomas Weston, who was a merchant adventurer of London, took it
into his head to establish a colony in the new country entirely
different from the Plymouth Colony. He had been an agent of the
Pilgrims in their negotiations with the Plymouth Company, and when he
broke off the connection it was to start a settlement which should
combine all of the advantages, with none of the disadvantages, of the
Plymouth Colony. First of all, it was to be a trading community pure and
simple, with its object frankly to make money. Second, it was to be
composed of men without families and familiar with hardship. And third,
there was no religious motive or bond. That such an unidealistic
enterprise should not flourish on American soil is worth noting. The
disorderly, thriftless rabble, picked up from the London streets, soon
got into trouble with the Indians and with neighboring colonists, and
finally, undone by the results of their own improvidence and
misbehavior, wailed that they "wanted to go back to London," to which
end the Plymouth settlers willingly aided them, glad to get them out of
the country. Thus ended the first inauspicious settlement of Weymouth.

The second, which was undertaken shortly after by Robert Gorges, broke
up the following spring, leaving only a few remnants behind. Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, who was not a Spaniard as his name suggests, but a
picturesque Elizabethan and a kinsman of Sir Walter Raleigh, essayed
(through his son Robert) an experimental government along practically
the same commercial lines as had Weston, and his failure was as speedy
and complete as Weston's had been.

A third attempt, while hardly more successful, furnishes one of the
gayest and prettiest episodes in the whole history of New England.
Across the somber procession of earnest-faced men and women, across the
psalm-singing and the praying, across the incredible toil of the
pioneers at Plymouth now flashes the brightly costumed and
pleasure-loving courtier, Thomas Morton. An agent of Gorges, Morton with
thirty followers floated into Wessagusset to found a Royalist and
Episcopalian settlement. This Episco