failure.
Governor Winthrop came hurrying across the green to meet them, and Phebe curtsying and drawing aside noted the Lady’s gracious words, how she praised the beauty of the countryside, and even praised the compactness of the rough-planked two-room house which had been prepared for her.
The Governor and Mr. Johnson plunged at once into frowning consultation, and Phebe, warm from Arbella’s smile of thanks, slipped away, back down the lane to the South River. A hundred yards up the slope from the Landing Place, near to the Burial Point—Mark had found them a shelter. He had bought it for a barrel of meal from one of the men who wished to leave Salem. It was twelve feet long and eight wide, made from a sapling frame; the walls and roof were of woven rushes and pine bark. Its floor was the ground, its door a single batten of hewn oak planks, and its end fireplace of piled field stones cemented with fish-shell lime provided the only daylight through its wide square chimney.
It had been copied like its fellows from an Indian wigwam. It was dark and damp and smoky, but it was shelter.
Aye—but how will it be alone here—she thought, entering the wigwam to start their supper preparations, and the new trouble which the sight of Arbella had momentarily banished came back to plague her. For Mark was leaving her to sail southward with Governor Winthrop and most of the company and search for better lands.
At no time had Winthrop considered permanent settlement of his company in Salem, but he had found physical conditions far worse than he expected, nor were spiritual matters to his liking. The ministers Higginson and Skelton had unaccountably changed during their year here. They had come over as Puritans, averring their loyalty to the Mother Church and interested only in freeing her from certain forms of Papist corruption.
Had not Mr. Higginson upon taking the last sight of England a year ago cried, “Farewell the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England—but we go to practise the positive part of Church reformation, and propagate the gospel in America.”
And yet upon his arrival in Salem, Winthrop found that these same ministers had adopted the congregational polity and affiliated themselves with the Separatist Church at Plymouth. And so strict in conscience had they become that Winthrop’s company, being no members of the Salem Church, were not even invited to worship with them on the Lord’s Day.
There were besides many jealousies; the earlier settlers under Endicott and the ministers felt themselves dispossessed by new authority, just as Roger Conant and his settlers had been literally dispossessed, in 1628, by the arrival of Endicott.
So Winthrop would sail again tomorrow on the
Arbella
to explore Massachusetts Bay and decide on a more welcoming site for the new settlement. Most of the male passengers would accompany him, and Mark too of course, already impatient with Salem, but ever hopeful and eager for more adventuring.
I must be reasonable, thought Phebe, sighing, I can manage alone for a time. She moved around the wigwam trying to make it more homelike. Though all the
Jewell’s
freight had not yet been unloaded, the Honeywoods had found some of their household gear, and together carried it to the wigwam. There were blankets to sleep on, the two chests of clothing, a skillet and spoon, and an iron pot which Phebe, feeling very housewifely, hung from the green lugpole left by the earlier tenant. And there were the andirons. They gave an incongruous and elegant air to the rough Indian fireplace, and Mark had been impatient with her insistence that they must be used. But when their first fire blazed and they sat down on the blankets to eat, he admitted that they were sturdy, well-made dogs and did better than the stones the other new settlers were using.
They supped that night on pease porridge and a large catfish
Governor Winthrop came hurrying across the green to meet them, and Phebe curtsying and drawing aside noted the Lady’s gracious words, how she praised the beauty of the countryside, and even praised the compactness of the rough-planked two-room house which had been prepared for her.
The Governor and Mr. Johnson plunged at once into frowning consultation, and Phebe, warm from Arbella’s smile of thanks, slipped away, back down the lane to the South River. A hundred yards up the slope from the Landing Place, near to the Burial Point—Mark had found them a shelter. He had bought it for a barrel of meal from one of the men who wished to leave Salem. It was twelve feet long and eight wide, made from a sapling frame; the walls and roof were of woven rushes and pine bark. Its floor was the ground, its door a single batten of hewn oak planks, and its end fireplace of piled field stones cemented with fish-shell lime provided the only daylight through its wide square chimney.
It had been copied like its fellows from an Indian wigwam. It was dark and damp and smoky, but it was shelter.
Aye—but how will it be alone here—she thought, entering the wigwam to start their supper preparations, and the new trouble which the sight of Arbella had momentarily banished came back to plague her. For Mark was leaving her to sail southward with Governor Winthrop and most of the company and search for better lands.
At no time had Winthrop considered permanent settlement of his company in Salem, but he had found physical conditions far worse than he expected, nor were spiritual matters to his liking. The ministers Higginson and Skelton had unaccountably changed during their year here. They had come over as Puritans, averring their loyalty to the Mother Church and interested only in freeing her from certain forms of Papist corruption.
Had not Mr. Higginson upon taking the last sight of England a year ago cried, “Farewell the Church of God in England, and all the Christian friends there. We do not go to New England as Separatists from the Church of England—but we go to practise the positive part of Church reformation, and propagate the gospel in America.”
And yet upon his arrival in Salem, Winthrop found that these same ministers had adopted the congregational polity and affiliated themselves with the Separatist Church at Plymouth. And so strict in conscience had they become that Winthrop’s company, being no members of the Salem Church, were not even invited to worship with them on the Lord’s Day.
There were besides many jealousies; the earlier settlers under Endicott and the ministers felt themselves dispossessed by new authority, just as Roger Conant and his settlers had been literally dispossessed, in 1628, by the arrival of Endicott.
So Winthrop would sail again tomorrow on the
Arbella
to explore Massachusetts Bay and decide on a more welcoming site for the new settlement. Most of the male passengers would accompany him, and Mark too of course, already impatient with Salem, but ever hopeful and eager for more adventuring.
I must be reasonable, thought Phebe, sighing, I can manage alone for a time. She moved around the wigwam trying to make it more homelike. Though all the
Jewell’s
freight had not yet been unloaded, the Honeywoods had found some of their household gear, and together carried it to the wigwam. There were blankets to sleep on, the two chests of clothing, a skillet and spoon, and an iron pot which Phebe, feeling very housewifely, hung from the green lugpole left by the earlier tenant. And there were the andirons. They gave an incongruous and elegant air to the rough Indian fireplace, and Mark had been impatient with her insistence that they must be used. But when their first fire blazed and they sat down on the blankets to eat, he admitted that they were sturdy, well-made dogs and did better than the stones the other new settlers were using.
They supped that night on pease porridge and a large catfish
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