n the world of thought,
literature, or education. Their intellectual and material poverty, lack
of business enterprise, unfavorable situation, and defenseless position
in the eyes of the law rendered them almost a negative factor in the
later life of New England. No great movement can be traced to their
initiation, no great leader to birth within their borders, and no great
work of art, literature, or scholarship to those who belonged to this
unpretending company. The Pilgrim Fathers stand rather as an emblem of
virtue than a moulding force in the life of the nation.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] In 1606 King James had granted a charter incorporating two
companies, one of which, made up of gentlemen and merchants in and about
London, was known as the Virginia Company of London, the other as the
Virginia Company of Plymouth. The former was authorized to plant
colonies between thirty-four and forty-one degrees north latitude, and
the latter between thirty-eight and forty-five, but neither was to plant
a colony within one hundred miles of the other. Jamestown, the first
colony of the London Company, was now thirteen years old. The Plymouth
Company had made no permanent settlement in its domain.

CHAPTER II

THE BAY COLONY

While the Pilgrims were thus establishing themselves as the first
occupants of the soil of New England, other men of various sorts and
motives were trying their fortunes within its borders and were testing
the opportunities which it offered for fishing and trade with the
Indians. They came as individuals and companies, men of wandering
disposition, romantic characters many of them, resembling the rovers and
adventurers in the Caribbean or representing some of the many activities
prevalent in England at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Thomas
Weston, former ally of the Pilgrims, settled with a motley crew of rude
fellows at Wessagusset (Quincy) and there established a trading post in
1622. Of this settlement, which came to an untimely end after causing
the Pilgrims a great deal of trouble, only a blockhouse and stockade
remained. Another irregular trader, Captain Wollaston, with some thirty
or forty people, chiefly servants, established himself in 1625 two miles
north of Wessagusset, calling the place Mount Wollaston. With him came
that wit, versifier, and prince of roysterers, Thomas Morton, who, after
Wollaston had moved on to Virginia, became "lord of misrule." Dubbing
his seat Merrymount, dri