Of Pilgrims John and Elizabeth Howland1
by
Dale W Adams
January 18, 2008
A
violent October storm buffeted the ship about like a cork forcing the frantic
captain to order the sails furled and the helm tied to leeward, thereby
surrendering the ship to the mercy of the elements. Below deck frantic crewmen
struggled to plug leaks and repair a buckled beam that threatened the ship’s
survival. A hundred seasick passengers and a couple dozen off-duty sailors
huddled in a wet and cramped five-foot space between the hold and the deck. To
escape the oppressive sights and smells below, one of the young men sought
fresh air on deck but lost his balance and fell overboard. Providence dangled a
rope within reach; he grabbed it and held on for his life, knowing he could not
swim. His good fortune doubled as alert crewmen retrieved him with a pole and
hook. The Englishman’s brush with death was a foretaste of the harrowing
experiences the ill-fated Pilgrims would suffer in the New World.
Prelude
Some groups react to uncertainty and turmoil by hearkening back to earlier religious
practices. For Christians this involves nostalgia for the primitive church. Change
and stress were rampant in England in the late 1500s and early 1600s. Religious
turmoil gripped the country after Henry VIII distanced the English church from Rome
in the 1530s. Several subsequent monarchs whipsawed their subjects between
Catholicism and Protestantism, culminating in two civil wars in the late1640s and the
beheading of a king.
These
religious upheavals accompanied social and economic stresses.
Traditionally the English each knew their place in the “Great Chain of Beings.” God
was on top of the chain with the monarch next. The nobility, the gentry, the yeomen,
the husbandry men, the cottagers, the laborers, and the poor followed. The growth
of cities, trade, manufacturing, and professional guilds disrupted this Chain.
Debasement of the currency by monarchs and bad harvests in the 1590s added
inflation to the misery of a growing population.
The Pilgrims’ saga sprouted amidst this turmoil in the early 1600s.2 The nucleus of
the group, later called Pilgrims, first gathered in the community of Scrooby in central
1
I am related to John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley through a Chipman relative. Their daughter,
Hope, married John Chipman → Samuel → Thomas → Amos → Barnabas Lathrop → Elizabeth
who married Joshua Adams → Arza → Daniel → J. Arza → Dale W Adams. Thanks to Michele
Adams for editorial assistance.
2
For more details on the Pilgrims see Willison, Bradford, Philbrick, and the Discovery Channel
program on the Mayflower.
1
England where a few dozen non-conformists sought to revive the primitive church
and to separate government from organized religion -- the source of their nickname
Separatists.3 Like other non-conformists, they drew persecution for their beliefs. In
1608, after two failed attempts to flee England, a number of them slipped off to
Amsterdam. Led by their beloved Pastor John Robinson, they later relocated to
nearby Leiden where their flock gradually grew to about four hundred members.
St. Peter’s Cathedral in Leiden near Where
The Pilgrims Congregated
After a decade in the Netherlands, the Separatists increasingly fretted about losing
their cultural identity and began exploring ways to migrate to either Guyana or to the
Virginia Colony. Two group representatives, John Carver and Robert Cushman,
went to London to seek support for the trip. Two years later, a group of London
Merchant Adventurers finally agreed to finance their venture, and they received
permission to establish a settlement on the northern boundary of the Virginia
Company’s land grant, near the mouth of the Hudson River.
The Virginia Company resulted from a badly strapped monarchy that was attempting
to establish British colonies in America on the cheap. Walter Raleigh funded early
settlement attempts in America. He first tried to establish a colony on Roanoke
Island in the late 1500s. The initial attempt in 1585 soon failed with all survivors
returning to England. The second settlement in 1587 was a disaster with all
colonists disappearing -- later known as the Lost Colony of Roanoke.4 The costs
and risks of one person financing such a venture proved excessive, so joint stock
companies funded later attempts. The Virginia Company, founded in 1606, for
example, sponsored settlements in Maine that soon failed, and another settlement in
Jamestown, Virginia.
The
initial objective of early settlements was commercial, unlike later settlements
that had religious or social objectives. Investors hoped to find gold or possibly to
3
The Pilgrims sought more radical reforms than did the Puritans, who wanted to purify the
Church of England without separating it from government.
4
No attempt was made to re-supply the colony for two years because of the war between Spain
and Great Britain that culminated in the destruction of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
2
discover a water route to the Orient. Of the 104 original settlers in Jamestown, half
died the first year from famine, disease, and Indian attacks. In 1609, a fleet of nine
ships bound for the colony encountered a hurricane near Bermuda. Ships wrecked,
hundreds of colonists died, and many supplies were lost. Eventually, the surviving
ships limped into Jamestown with about 400 more mouths to feed, but little in the
way of additional sustenance. To make matters worse, the bedraggled passengers
brought plague to the colony. The winter of 1609-10 was a starving season when
nine in ten of the settlers perished. Only years later did tobacco exports revive the
settlement. The roof, however, fell in on Jamestown in 1622 when Indians killed 300
settlers and nearly eliminated the English settlements along the James River.
Without paying a dividend, the Company folded that same year.
The
best description of the Crown’s plans for the settlement of the Americas,
including the Plymouth Colony, was benign neglect. After prodding entrepreneurs to
lead the way, the Crown attempted to rid England of troublesome Pilgrims, Puritans,
persistent Catholics, and Quakers by shipping them off to America. It later expelled
the poor and other undesirables to Georgia to ease social problems in England. It is
little wonder that a land populated with malcontents and those unwanted would later
rebel and seek independence from the authority that cared so little about their
ancestors. John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley were among these rejects.
John Howland in England
John
Howland’s early history is murky and controversial. He left no information
about his birth year, his parents, or his grandparents. The ravages of time, religious
turmoil, bouts of the plague, civil wars, and the great fire of London in 1666 left
sizable gaps in English records. 5
His Birth
Plymouth
Colony records show John died on 23 February 1672/73.6 His death
notice mentioned that: “hee lived untill he attained above eighty years in the world
(sic).” If this is correct, his birth year was around 1592 and he would have been
about twenty-eight when he arrived in Plymouth in 1620. He married some three
years later when he was supposedly thirty-one.
Some evidence suggests, nonetheless, that John possibly was born a decade later.
Supporting this is a statement made by Governor William Bradford. When recalling
the 1620 voyage of the Mayflower, he described John as a “lusty young man.” Since
5
Many of the records kept by the Vicar General and by the Bishop of London’s Registry were
destroyed in the London fire.
6
All of the ancient dates in this article are given in the Old Style based on the Julian calendar, the
one used by the Pilgrims. To adjust these dates to the New Style Gregorian Calendar add ten
th
days. Since the Julian New Year started on March 25 , one must also add one to the Julian years
st
th
for the dates January 1 through March 24 to convert to the modern calendar.
3
Bradford was only thirty-one at the time of the voyage, it would be odd for him to
describe someone just three years his junior at twenty-eight a “young man.”7 In the
early 1600s, the average life expectancy in England was thirty-five to forty years,
which means a person aged twenty-eight would be middle-aged. Furthermore, it
seems more plausible that Howland would undertake a trip to America if he were a
young man of about eighteen, rather than as a mature single man of twenty-eight.
In
addition, Howland and his wife Elizabeth had ten children who survived to
adulthood. At the time, about one-fifth of the children in England died before age
ten, suggesting that the Howlands had more than ten children, perhaps a dozen or
more. For a man having this many children, it is likely that he would have married
and begun having children in his early twenties rather than in his early thirties.
No
birth or baptism information for John Howland exists in his home village of
Fenstanton, Huntingdonshire, perhaps because sporadic church records there only
date from 1604.8 Nonetheless, there is a tantalizing record of a John Howland, son
of Henrie, being baptized on January 16, 1602 in Holy Trinity Church in nearby
Cambridge. (Fenstanton is about eight miles northwest of Cambridge.) It is certain
that the father of Pilgrim John Howland was named Henry. There is also a
baptismal record for Henrie Howland, son of Henrie, in the same church dated
November 25, 1604. Pilgrim John is also known to have had a brother named
Henry. The probability is low that two contemporary Henry Howlands who lived fairly
close to each other would have two sons with the same names (John and Henry)
with both pairs being born within a few years of each other.9
There is also a record of
a marriage between Henricus (Latin for Henry) Howland
and Alice Ayers dated July 26, 1600 in St. Mary’s Church, also in Cambridge. 10 If
this Henricus was John Howland’s father, it suggests that Henry Howland may have
sought marriage and baptismal services in Cambridge during the early 1600s
because religious ordinances were unavailable in Fenstanton.11
Another
explanation is that John’s mother may have had family in or near Cambridge and
7
Bradford, p. 109.
FHL 1,040,923 and 1,040,984. FHL refers to the microfilm number in the Family History Library,
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.
9
FHL 6,210,089. Anthony Wagner has argued that the Henricus Howland of Cambridge is not
the same person as the Henry Howland of Fenstanton: The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 28, JanuaryApril 1964, p. 6. There are several Houlets or Howlets, including a Henrie Howlet, mentioned in
these church records, and Wagner argues that these were alternative spellings for Howland at
the time. His conclusion may have been influenced by the supposed birth year of John Howland,
1592. Leon C. Hill earlier came to a different conclusion. He argued that Henrie of Cambridge
was the same person as Henry of Fenstanton: The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 14, No.1, July, 1949.
10
Some researchers read the maiden name of Henricus’s wife as Ames or Aires. Latin was still
widely used by the clergy at the time.
11
The sporadic church records available for Fenstanton for the early 1600s suggest the hamlet
did not consistently have a local vicar. This may have resulted from Protestant landowners in the
area being unwilling to pay for a priest or vicar who represented beliefs they did not support.
8
4
went there to birth two of her children, John and Henry. Between the baptisms of
John and Henry, the baptism of another son, Simon, is recorded in Fenstanton
church records on August 19, 1604, suggesting clergy, perhaps a vicar who served
several parishes, was available in Fenstanton on that date.12
Fenstanton is on an old Roman road that runs
north out of London. Located in a
radical protestant region, it suffered several plague attacks during the 1500s. During
the 1600s most gentry in the area were Protestants. In 1664 only twenty of 400
families living in Fenstanton were Anglican communicants.
As a result of his
surroundings, John was exposed to religious dissidents in Fenstanton, although he
and at least his younger brothers Simon and Henry were baptized by Church of
England clergy.
A birth year of 1602 fits more comfortably with Bradford’s description of Howland as
a young man, than for a person with a birth year around 1592. But, how do we
explain the Plymouth Colony record that states Howland was eighty years-plus when
he died? The simplest explanation is that the recorder made a mistake, and that he
should have written “more than seventy years old.” Perhaps the recorder’s hearing
was bad! A more plausible explanation is that Howland exaggerated his age in his
twilight years, something elderly men do occasionally in seeking notoriety or
sympathy. Living to an age twice the average life expectancy, indeed, would have
been viewed as remarkable at the time.
His Parents
Until
the 1930s the name of John’s father and his relationship to two other
Howlands in the Plymouth Colony (Henry and Arthur) were unknown. Joseph L.
Chester uncovered Humphrey Howland’s will in London in 1879 that mentioned
John, Henry, and Andrew Howland in New England.13 Humphrey was a member of
the Drapers’ Company. Later research in the 1930s by McClure Meredith Howland
on Company records showed that Humphrey was an apprentice in 1613 and that his
father was Henry Howland of Fenstanton.14 Drapers’ records also revealed that
Henry Howland Jr., and brother Simon Howland were apprenticed to Humphrey,
12
It is unclear how to reconcile the close baptismal dates of Simon and his brother Henry, one in
August and the other in November of the same year. Perhaps Simon’s baptism was delayed for
awhile after his birth because of irregular religious services in Fenstanton. Drapers’ Company
records show that Simon and Henry were enrolled as apprentices within only 7 months of each
other, Simon being first.
13
Franklyn Howland, p. 2; The will, dated May 20, 1646, is reproduced in The Howland
Quarterly, Vol. 28, July 1964, and in the Boston Evening Transcript, December 16, 1908. It can
also be downloaded from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk. The research that led to the discovery of
the will appears to have been sponsored by Louis M. Howland.
14
Charles Roscoe Howland, p. 8; and The Howland Quarterly, Vol.1, No. 3, January 1937, p.1.
Humphrey bequeathed his three brothers money owed him by a merchant in Salem, MA by the
name of Mr. Ruck (Rouke).
5
providing additional details on family members.15 Court records further show that
Humphrey was the administrator of the estate of his unmarried brother, George
Howland.16 Other court records reveal that their sister, Margaret Phillips, and her
husband Richard sued Humphrey and his third wife, Ann, over the disposition of
George’s estate. 17
Uncertainty
surrounds the name of John Howland’s mother. She has been
variously identified as Alice Ayres (Aires), Anne, Margaret, Anne Margaret, and Alice
Anne Margaret Aires. It is certain that one of Henry’s wives, most likely his last,
was the Margaret Howland noted in church records as wife of Henry, who was
buried in Fenstanton on July 31, 1629.18 Henry’s burial date in the same church
register: May 17, 1635.
The confusion over the name of Henry’s wife may be due to multiple marriages.
If
the Henricus of Cambridge is the same person as the Henry of Fenstanton, the
marriage to Alice recorded in 1600 might have been a second marriage for Henry.
In 1600, Henry of Fenstanton could have been thirty to thirty-six years old,
suggesting he was married earlier to someone else. If his wife previous to Alice was
Anne, and his third wife’s name was Margaret, it would clarify the confusion.
Disease or death at childbirth may have claimed his first two wives. This raises the
possibility that Henry had children by two or more mates. The date on Humphrey’s
indenture (1613) suggests he was born in about 1599, assuming he was indentured
at the customary age of 14. Arthur, George, and Humphrey possibly could be sons
of wives one or two, while wife number three, Margaret, bore the remainder of
Henry’s children.
Additional support for Henry Sr. having multiple
wives is found in Humphrey’s will
where he grants eight pounds to his brother Arthur, but only grants four pounds each
to his brothers John and Henry.19 Why the preference for Arthur? Could it be that
Arthur was Humphrey’s full brother, while John and Henry were his half brothers or
even step-brothers?
The
half- or step-brother possibilities raise some interesting questions about the
names of John Howland’s siblings. Numerous parents name their first son after the
father, or perhaps a grandfather, and their first daughter after the mother or perhaps
a grandmother. This custom is confirmed by Pilgrim John having a sister named
Margaret, the probable name of their mother. If George, Humphrey, and Arthur
15
Simon was enrolled in Company records on March 19, 1622/23 while Henry’s apprenticeship is
listed on Company rolls as starting on October 1, 1623.
16
George was buried February 14, 1643: A. W. Hugher Clarke, “The Register of St. Dunstan in
the East London 1558-1654, The Publications of The Harleian Society, Vol. 69, p. 216.
17
Plague may have killed Humphrey and some of his children. The 1654 will of Anne Howland
can be downloaded from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
18
FHL 1,040,984.
19
In the early 1600s the daily wage of a common worker in England was about one shilling.
6
were John’s older siblings, the naming pattern would be non-traditional. As near as I
can tell, these were not common Howland family names at the time. Why would
Henry Howland, Sr. wait to name his fourth son John, possibly the name of Henry’s
father or grandfather, and wait to give his sixth son his own name? Even if John
Howland was the first of Henry’s sons, and was born in 1592, why would the father
wait and give his sixth son the name of Henry?
One explanation for this naming puzzle is that the first or second wife of Henry Sr.
might have been married previously and had George, Humphrey, and possibly
Arthur by another husband. After marriage, Henry Sr. may have adopted the three
boys so they carried the Howland name. If John, Simon, and Henry were the first
sons that Henry Sr. sired, the naming pattern would be more in keeping with
tradition. Henry Sr. may have named his first biological son John after his father or
grandfather.
The will of Humphrey Howland provides a tantalizing clue about his mother’s name.
In the will, he gave his mother’s pewter, marked with the initials AH on them, to his
daughter Anne.20 Humphrey may have named his first daughter after his mother.
What is certain is that the initials of Humphrey’s mother were not MH which would
have been the case if Margaret were his mother. Might Humphrey’s mother,
possible Anne, have died about the time Humphrey was born with his father
marrying Alice soon after to provide care for several small sons? The initials on the
pewter, and the burial information for Henry’s wife Margaret, prove that Henry had at
least two wives.
Unfortunately,
there is no record that establishes beyond a reasonable doubt the
name of John Howland’s mother. It could have been Anne, Alice, Margaret, or some
combination of these names. If forced to choose, I would guess her name was
Margaret, perhaps the third wife of Henry Sr.
Henry’s Life in Fenstanton
The social class of Henry, Pilgrim John’s father, was yeoman.
Social class mattered
a good deal in England at the time. Nobility, peers, knights, and esquires were the
upper crust. Yeomen were something like the middle class with retainers, cottagers,
and customary tenants being lower in social rank. In addition, the country swarmed
with paupers who made up a sizable portion of the population and comprised the
lowest class. The term yeoman covered a relatively wide range of individuals.
Some were men who managed substantial farms tilled by tenants and were well
enough off to buy monastic lands when they were sold by the Crown during
the1540s. These individuals came to be known as “Upper Yeoman.” The term
20
Charles Roscoe Howland, p. 7. The plates may have been originally owned by Humphrey’s
alleged great-grandmother, Agnes (Anne) Howland. Women with the given name Agnes were
often called Anne at the time.
7
“Lower Yeoman” was applied to individuals who owned a medium-sized or small
farm and also to someone who was a tenant with a long-term rental contract.
Which type of yeoman accurately describes Henry is unknown. The fact that Pilgrim
John and most of his brothers were later trained for non-farm careers suggests
Henry did not anticipate any of them inheriting land, suggesting he was a tenant or a
farm manager, a Lower Yeoman.
John and his brothers certainly did farm work while young.
Most farms then were
diversified with a mix of crops and animals. John and his siblings likely milked cows,
herded sheep, tended pigs, and harvested hay, wheat, barley, and oats. His family
probably had a garden where he helped plant carrots, cucumbers, cabbages,
cauliflowers, turnips, parsnips, and peas.
London
Most of Henry’s sons served apprenticeships, and this sheds additional light on
his social status. He was well enough off as a yeoman to arrange these
apprenticeships, but unable to leave his sons property.21 Fragmentary evidence
suggests that most, if not all, of these family apprenticeships were in London.22
Samuel
Johnson said, “Let’s to London, for there is variety,” an admonition
Henry’s sons and many other young men at the time heeded. In the early 1600s
London was the largest and most prosperous city in Europe with 200,000
inhabitants, about one-sixth of the total population in England. Its growth was
largely due to the wool trade, mainly with the Netherlands, that made up about
three-quarters of all English exports.
It must have been a frightening experience for the Howland boys to leave at a
tender age the quiet village life in Fenstanton with its sense of community, and
then to be plopped into a bustling city where they were anonymous. The sights,
sounds, and smells of the city must have been overwhelming. When not working
for their masters, they likely enjoyed the freedom resulting from being on their
own. At the same time, London was an unhealthy place. Disease, crime, and
fires lowered the average life expectancy in the city to only twenty-five to thirty
years, about five years less than the national average. In 1603, 1625, and 1665,
a fifth or more of the city’s inhabitants succumbed to the plague. Outside the old
walled city, there was a warren of unpaved streets and a maze of ramshackle
wood and stucco buildings with a bizarre mixture of parish churches, taverns,
and brothels. The London Bridge was the only span across the Thames, St.
Paul’s Cathedral was the largest edifice in the country, and the docks and
customhouse bustled with trade. In their occasional times off, the Howland boys
21
Henry apparently died without leaving a will, suggesting he had little or no property to bequeath
to his children.
22
There is no evidence that son Arthur served an apprenticeship. If he was the oldest son, he
may have farmed with his father, the profession he later successfully pursued in America.
8
likely visited the Tower of London, then mostly a prison, passed by Westminster
where parliament occasionally met and where kings and queens were buried,
and gazed at White Hall where King James held his colorful, sometimes bizarre
court.
Henry Howland’s Ancestors
In
the 1870s, Joseph L. Chester asserted that most of the Howlands in England
were located in the shire of Essex and in London in the 1500s. They were
concentrated around the villages of Newport and Wicken, an area about halfway
between London and Cambridge. The name Howland came from a combination of
“how,” which in Old English meant high place on a hill, and land.23 The connection
between Henry Howland of Fenstanton and other Howlands is murky. The only
document that may identify Henry’s parents and grandparents is a pedigree of a
Howland family in the Heralds College (College of Arms) in London.24 In about
1830, an unidentified Howland relative viewed the record and concluded that the
name of Henry’s father was John² Howland (born 1541) and that his mother’s name
was Emma (Emme) Revell (born 1542).25 If so, Henry Howland’s grandfather was
also named John¹ (born about 1511) and his grandmother Agnes (Anne) Greenway
(born about 1515).
Nonetheless, in 1879 Col. Chester reviewed the College pedigrees and concluded
there was no information in them that identified the ancestors of Pilgrim John
Howland.26 He might have been less dismissive about the Heralds’ College
pedigrees if he had known then three pieces of information about Pilgrim John
Howland that were uncovered later: that the name of Pilgrim John’s father was
Henry Howland; that Pilgrim John was a salter; and that Pilgrim John may have
been born a decade later than 1592. Chester asked if Pilgrim John was the son of
John² and Emme Howland and came up with negative results. He may have come
to a different conclusion if he had researched the connection between Henry
Howland and John² and Emme Howland, or looked for a Henry among the
grandchildren of John¹ and Agnes Howland. Chester may have inadvertently
overlooked one generation of Howlands in his search for Pilgrim John’s ancestors.
23
William F. Gilson, p. 12.
The person who did this research in the College is unknown. Lawrence M. Howland in 1880
mentioned that a descendent of Henry Howland Jr. brought a copy of the family pedigree to
American in about 1830 (L. M. Howland, “ A Sketch of the Howlands”, The New England
Historical and Genealogical Register, Vol. 34, April, 1880, p. 192). The pedigrees are in the
Library of The College of Arms, Queen Victoria Street, London, EC4V 4BT. United Kingdom.
Some of this genealogy, apparently, is reproduced in Charles Roscoe Howland, pp. 1-8.
25
John² was buried on 15 January 1611/12 in St. Mary’s Church, Whitechapel, Middlesex,
London. FHL 94,691, p. 69. Charles Roscoe Howland (p. 6) states that Emma’s will was filed on
November 13, 1613. She was buried on 9 September 1614 in the same place as her husband,
and her will was probated the next day: FHL 94,991, p. 74 (death); FHL 1,752,134 (will).
26
Gary Boyd Roberts, pp. 378-79.
24
9
Howland Coat of Arms27
Chester’s
conclusion that Pilgrim John Howland’s grandparents were not
John²/Emma is reinforced by the wills of Emma and her son Nicholas. 28 Nicholas’
will was dated in 1612, and Emma’s will was probated in 1614. Pilgrim John’s
father, in turn, died much later in 1635. If Henry was Emma’s son and the brother of
Nicholas, one might expect his name to be mentioned in one or more of their wills,
but it is not! Neither is Henry’s name mentioned in a 1619 document about the
settling of Nicholas’ estate.29
Nonetheless,
several aspects are interesting about John¹, John², and Nicholas
Howland. First, all of them were salters, the profession later practiced by Pilgrim
John. Second, John¹/Agnes and John²/Emme were fervent non-conformists,
religious beliefs later exhibited by Pilgrim John and his brothers Henry and Arthur.
Third, one of the witnesses to the will of Emme (Emma) Howland was Ralph
Thickens, a mirror maker in London, who was the brother-in-law of Reverend John
Robinson and also brother-in-law of Deacon John Carver, both of Leiden.30 Might
the Pilgrim John Howland have gotten his job with Carver through a relative’s
friendship with Ralph Thickens?
Although
not conclusive, the Thickens’ connection, the name John, the salter
profession, and non-conformist beliefs among the Howlands of different generations
suggest that Pilgrim John Howland was related to the John¹/Agnes clan of Howlands
who lived in Newport and London, although it now appears that John²/Emma were
not his grandparents.
27
Pilgrim John Howlands’ alleged great-grandfather, John¹ Howland, disinherited his oldest son
Richard because he abandoned non-conformism and became a priest. Queen Elizabeth
awarded Richard this crest. It differed from an earlier Howland crest, having leopards instead of
lions, and the color was changed from the original sable to argent (William Berry, Encyclopedia
Heraldica: Complete Dictionary of Heraldry, Vol. II, London: Sherwood, Gilbert and Piper, 1828).
It is perhaps inconsiderate to view this as the Howland family crest for Pilgrim John when it
represents the conformist wing of the family, while Pilgrim John and Elizabeth were nonconformists.
28
The will of Nicholas can be downloaded from www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
29
“Sentence of Nicholas Howland of Saint Mary, Whitechapel, Middlesex,” 16 February 1619,
available at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk.
30
Charles Roscoe Howland, p. 6.
10
Salters
Salters included individuals who produced salt and those who used salt and other
chemicals to preserve food, especially meat and fish. Salt production in England
goes back to at least Roman times. For centuries, it was extracted from seawater
and from brine springs or salt marshes in several parts of the interior. In both cases,
it was made by heating brine in lead pans over a wood fire (Fawn). Later, coal and
iron pans were substituted for wood and lead. Typically, hundreds of workers were
involved in supplying firewood and in the boiling of brine at each major salt site.
Some owners of brine springs also provided therapeutic bathing facilities.
Several of
Pilgrim John Howland’s possible ancestors were Lords of the Manor of
Newport Pond in the shire of Essex where salt production was an important source
of income. If he was related to these Howlands, Pilgrim John was likely exposed to
salt production through this family enterprise, and he also may have learned food
preserving skills during an apprenticeship. Knowledge of salt production and food
preservation would be valuable in the Plymouth Colony.
Elizabeth Tilley in England
Elizabeth
was baptized in Henlow, Bedfordshire, England on August 30, 1607.31
The genealogy of her parents, John Tilley and Joan (Hurst) Rogers, is better
documented than is that of John Howland.32 Sometime after Elizabeth’s birth, her
family moved to London where her father worked in the silk trade. Along the way,
the parents became Separatist, and they had at least four children, including
Elizabeth.33 Their three oldest children (Robert, Rose, and John) remained in
England when Elizabeth and her parents migrated to American. There is no
evidence proving John and his family lived in the Netherlands, but it is possible his
brother, Edward Tilley and his wife Agnes (Ann), resided in Leiden as early as
1616.34
31
The records for the Parish of Henlow are in the Bedford Country Hall archives. See The
Howland Quarterly, Vol. 41, No. 1, October 1977.
32
Robert Leigh Ward, “English Ancestry of Seven Mayflower Passengers: Tilley, Sampson, and
Cooper,” The American Genealogist, Vol. 52, No. 4, October 1976; Robert Leigh Ward, “Further
Traces of John Tilley of the Mayflower, The American Genealogist, Vol. 60, No. 3, July 1984.
33
The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 1, March 2006.
34
See the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 143: 195-212. Dr. Jeremy Bangs
is credited with placing Edward in Leiden, at least in 1616, The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 71, No. 1,
March 2006, p. 12.
11
St. Mary the Virgin Church in Henlow and
Elizabeth’s Baptismal Record
Perhaps
John Tilley’s work with silk resulted in him also being involved in the
Drapers’ Company.35
Most likely, the Tilleys attended Separatist meetings in
London, and that may have been where John Carver recruited them for the trip to
America.
Alternatively, perhaps John’s brother Edward recruited the family.
Elizabeth likely did not have much say in the matter, since she was only about 13 at
the time of the voyage. Wherever they were living, Elizabeth probably worked
fulltime while still young, possibly in the textile industry.
John and Elizabeth in America
The reticent Pilgrims allocated little space in their skimpy writings to descriptions of
each other. Although we know some about what John and Elizabeth did, we have
next to no descriptions of them. As mentioned earlier, one cryptic comment by
Bradford describes John as a lusty young man. On John’s passing, Reverend John
Cotton described him as a plain-hearted Christian, and still another observer said he
was a godly man and an ancient professor of the ways of Christ. The historical
record is mute on Elizabeth’s features and characteristics. Nonetheless, the fact
that they endured what they did, raised a large family, and lived long lives shows
they had unusually sturdy constitutions.
One
author stated that Elizabeth could write her name (Marble, p. 85), but only
about six percent of the women at the time were literate. John came from a middleclass family, so he probably spent a few months over several years in grammar
school where he learned to read, cipher, and sign his name, as he did on the
Mayflower Compact.
An inventory of John’s goods after his passing listed an inkhorn that he used to write
letters and keep records associated with his numerous public assignments, and it
mentions him having seven books. An inventory of Elizabeth’s goods after her death
showed she still had five books. A couple of John’s tomes were on farming and two
were Bibles, one described as being small and the other a great Bible.
35
Willison assumed that John Tilley and family accompanied Edward Tilley and his wife from
Leiden to Southampton on the Speedwell. No other source conclusively places John in Leiden,
however.
12
John Howland’s Signatures, Early and Late
The
scriptures were most certainly the Geneva Bible, the first widely distributed
English translation of the scriptures, and the version preferred by the Pilgrims. 36 Its
name came from a small group of Protestant scholars who fled England for Geneva
and there translated, from original sources, the Old and New Testaments into
English. It first appeared in 1560 and was reprinted more than 200 times. The
Geneva Bible was distinctive from earlier and later versions because it was
extensively annotated.37 The other three books in their possession covered religious
topics by dissident authors, possibly inherited from John Carver: John Robinson,
Essays or Observations Divine and Moral; D. Day’s editor, Tindale’s Works (1572);
and another book by Wilson, Ye Romans.
John Carver
Bradford describes John Howland as a man servant to John Carver.38
Where and
when Carver first met Howland is unknown, but it was likely in London. 39 Carver
was a well traveled and successful merchant. He joined the Separatists and lived in
Leiden for a time. In addition to running his own business, he was a primary agent
for the Pilgrims in seeking financial support in London, recruiting others for the
voyage, obtaining permission to settle in America, and arranging for supplies for the
trip. Carver was a busy man and may have employed Howland as a clerk to help
with his affairs.
Carver first married Mary de Lanoy but they had no children.
She died in Leiden,
and Carver then married Katherine White Legatt, and they likewise had no children.
Katherine was the daughter of Alexander White and her sister was Bridget White
who married Pastor John Robinson.
Most
likely Carver also hired Howland because of his professional skills. In a
document dated 1623, John listed his occupation as salter, a trade he must have
acquired earlier in England.40 Typically, this involved young men working with a
professional for up to seven years before being admitted to the guild at age about
twenty-one.
John Carver may have hired Howland toward the end of his
36
William Tyndale did the first translation of major parts of the Bible into English. He was burned
at the stake in 1536 for his efforts by order of King Henry VIII. His translation was also burned;
only three copies of the original six thousand copies of his translation survived.
37
The King James Bible didn’t circulate until 1611.
38
It is more likely that Howland would sign up as a man servant at the age of eighteen than if he
were a mature man of twenty-eight.
39
Charles Roscoe Howland, p. 13-14, assumes John Howland was apprenticed to Carver and
that he later served as his business manager, including Howland living in Leiden for a time. It is
more likely that Howland served an apprenticeship as a salter in England and that Carver hired
him there in 1619-20.
40
The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 64, No. 4, December 1999.
13
apprenticeship because he was a salter, and also because he had some business
sense, possibly gained through working for one of his older brothers.
Since
the Pilgrims planned to repay their debts to merchant adventurers with fish
product, salters who preserved foods and coopers who prepared and maintained
barrels would be critical group members. John Alden, a young man on the
Mayflower, was a cooper. Another young man on the Mayflower, George Soule,
likely was also a salter.
Still
another possible explanation for the hook up of Carver with Howland might
have occurred through brother Humphrey and the Draper’s Company in London. In
2008, the Company was a large London charity, but it was initially a medieval guild -a fraternal order -- that controlled the woolen and cloth trade in London. At one
time, no one could sell cloth in London unless they were a member of the Company.
Carver was likely a member of the Company and would have spent at least some of
his time mixing with other members at Drapers’ Hall on Throgmorton Avenue in
London, in addition to buying and selling cloth goods from various members in his
private business.
An Artist’s Rendition of Draper’s Co.
Square in London
Another older brother, George, became a prosperous merchant in St. Dunstan’s in
East London. After, or before, learning the salter trade, John may have worked for
either George or Humphrey in London, or he may have lived with one of his brothers
while he served his apprenticeship. Carver could have had business dealings with
one of these two older brothers, met John Howland, and hired him to help with
administrative tasks such as handling paperwork involved in the voyage, buying
supplies, and recruiting passengers.
Still
another possibility for Carver’s hiring Howland may have been through
Separatists’ meetings. In addition to growing up in a hot bed of religious dissent,
Pilgrim John was later a comfortable member of the religious community in
Plymouth, which may indicate he had early non-conformist sympathies. It is also
14
possible that Howland simply signed up for the trip as a young man seeking
adventure in the new world, as some authors have implied. Whatever the case,
Howland “bought” his trip to the new world by contracting to serve Carver and the
merchant adventurers for a time, much like an indentured servant.
The Voyage
With four centuries of hindsight, one marvels that the Pilgrims had the fortitude to
undertake the adventure. Earlier British attempts to settle in Virginia and Maine
were disasters, and the Pilgrims knew of these failures. Moreover, the Pilgrims
knew nothing about fishing or living on the frontier. Most of them were poor city folks
and their sponsors provided minimal support. They left their beloved pastor John
Robinson in Leiden, seriously weakening their leadership, and mixing believers with
non-believers resulted in an unwieldy group. A hazardous sea passage, hostile
Indians, Spanish and French threats, and the tiny number of Pilgrim settlers made
their venture extremely risky, perhaps even fool hardy. The belief that God would
carry them through trumped all risk considerations.
The Leiden congregation purchased the Speedwell to haul 46 Separatists, and the
English investors hired the larger Mayflower to haul other would-be-settlers from
England to the new world. Nothing was recorded about the voyage of the Mayflower
from London to Southampton that may have included John Howland and the John
Tilley family in mid-July 1620.41 The two individuals who later recorded the most
about the Mayflower voyage originated in Leiden and sailed to Southampton on the
smaller Speedwell: William Bradford and Edward Winslow. Howland and his
companions may have boarded the Mayflower at the London docks and then spent a
few days sailing down the Thames River and along the Dover Cliffs before pulling
into the Southampton harbor. Aside from acquiring “sea legs,” the passengers must
have found the journey uneventful and even somewhat pleasant. The ninety or so
passengers and about twenty crewmembers may have felt they had sufferable
accommodations for a long trip.
The Speedwell joined the Mayflower in Southampton a week later.
Howland and
Carver undoubtedly were busy doing the work associated with provisioning the
ships. The two vessels belatedly departed for the new world on August 5, 1620.
After three weeks cooped up in the Mayflower, John and his fellow passengers must
have been relieved to be underway. He may have gone to the bow of the ship more
than once – ala Leonardo DiCaprio in the movie Titanic – to smell the fresh ocean
breezes. Unfortunately, as a portent of what was to come, within a few days, the
Speedwell floundered in the open ocean, and the two ships returned to port. A
second departure yielded the same results, and the balky Speedwell was
abandoned in Plymouth. The distraught Speedwell passengers and their supplies
41
The Mayflower was an average-sized trading vessel for the time, being rated at 180 tons. That
meant it could haul up to 180 large barrels below deck.
15
were stuffed onto the Mayflower, and it finally departed from Plymouth, England on
September 6th.
Mayflower and Speedwell Depart
(Mike Haywood painting)
The late departure resulted in sailing with winds that were unfavorable for western
travel and arriving in America at the onset of winter. The decision by Pilgrim leaders
to continue the trip, after such a muddled start, illustrates the dominant role belief
played in their decisions. They saw the hand of God and his will at every turn. In
deciding to go forward, they placed their lives in divine hands.
The loss of the Speedwell was a near fatal blow.
It resulted in 20 colonists being
left behind in England, along with essential supplies. Even more critically, the
original plans had been for the Speedwell to remain behind in the new world for use
as a fishing vessel. Not having the Speedwell and lacking appropriate fishing
equipment and fishing experience meant that colonists would be unable to repay
their debts with fish products. The venture was hamstrung from the start.
The replica of the Mayflower anchored in Plymouth Bay, the Mayflower II, is a tiny
ship, only about 100 feet long. The original vessel was used in the wine trade
between Britain and the Mediterranean before being contracted for the trip to
America. The wine residue initially gave the ship a sweet smell. It boggles the mind
that 102 passengers, about 30 crew members, a disassembled shallop, two dogs,
and supplies for a year could be stuffed into the hold and into the five-foot space
between the hold and the deck. Much of the hold held large barrels of beer, fresh
water, food, and strong spirits. John Alden was charged with keeping the barrels
from leaking.42
42
The everyday drink of choice at the time was beer, both for adults and children.
16
Mayflower II
The
two-month plus journey was plagued with crosswinds, leaks, and seasick
passengers.43 Conditions below deck were horrendous: primitive sanitary facilities,
no privacy, slop buckets for waste, and a damp and dark environment. The sweet
smell of the boat was soon replaced by the overwhelming stench of 130 people
living elbow-to-elbow. One wonders how the teenage Elizabeth dealt with the lack
of privacy and sanitary facilities. A diet of hardtack, salted meat, and beer enabled
the passengers to persist, but it later took its toll in the form of scurvy. Surprisingly,
only two people perished during the voyage.
Given the wretched conditions below deck, it is little wonder that John sought fresh
air above deck during a storm and fell overboard. Bradford describes the incident
that “it pleased God that he caught hold of the topsail halyard which hung overboard
and ran out at length. Yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under
water) till he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with
a boat hook and other means got into the ship.”44
John Howland Overboard
(Mike Haywood paintings)
After an extraordinarily slow trip, the Mayflower made landfall at Cape Cod.
Captain
Jones attempted to sail south to the intended settlement site, but ran into storms and
a dangerous sailing area at the elbow of the Cape called the Pollack Rip. He
retreated north and found shelter in Cape Cod Bay on November 11, 1620.
43
When the Mayflower returned to England a few months later, under more favorable conditions,
it took the ship less than half the time that the west-bound trip took.
44
Johnson (Bradford), p.109.
17
Mayflower Approaching Cape Cod
And Anchored Inside the Cape
(Mike Haywood paintings)
Shortly after dropping anchor group leaders faced a near mutiny, mainly among the
young men, who argued they were no longer bound by the terms of their indenture
contracts because Cape Cod was further north than where they had agreed to serve
in the Virginia Company area.45 There is no indication that John was among this
disgruntled group. The leaders quelled the uprising by issuing the Mayflower
Compact that allowed for elected authorities in the colony.
Most of the adult men, including some of the servants, signed the document.
The
first twelve signers were men in the group who had earned the right to be called
master (Mr.). Separatists and non-separatists were equally represented among
these first signers. It is noteworthy that John Howland was the thirteenth person to
sign the Compact. His youth precluded him being called master, but his work with
Governor John Carver, who was the first to sign, appears to have earned him status
above other non-Masters in the group. Elizabeth’s father, John Tilley, and her uncle,
Edward Tilley, were other Compact supporters. The signers could not imagine the
long run impact of their document; it laid the foundation for democracy in America,
for citizens to choose their leaders.
45
The Virginia Company issued in 1620 a document, called the First Peirce Patent, to the
Merchant Adventurers who financed the Pilgrims to settle near the mouth of the Hudson River.
This patent was never effective because the Pilgrims settled outside the Virginia Company’s area.
In 1621 the Merchant Adventurers obtained another patent, called the Second Peirce Patent,
from the Council for New England that granted permission for the Pilgrims to settle in Plymouth.
This second Patent is on display in the Pilgrim Hall Museum in Plymouth.
18
The Mayflower Compact
The first
day in the Bay was a Sunday, so all the passengers stayed on board to
worship. Monday a few women went ashore to do some badly needed washing and
a group of men left to explore the area. (Is this what established Monday as a
traditional washing day in America?) Howland and the Tilley brothers participated in
many of the forays along the Bay for the next few weeks exploring for fresh water,
food, wood, and a place to settle. These trips included looting corn from an
abandoned Indian village, having an encounter with Indians, being wet and cold, and
finally deciding to locate in what is now Plymouth. While many of the men were out
scouting, the women and children remained cooped up in the Mayflower trying to
keep warm. One author pungently noted that, “Pilgrim Mothers had to endure not
only their [own] hardships but they [had to endure] the Pilgrim Fathers also” (Marple,
p.15).
Plaques Noting Corn Looting and Pilgrim’s First
Encounter with Indians
Unlike their British compatriots in Virginia who were plagued with Indian problems,
the Pilgrims initially encountered few Indians. Earlier contacts with sailors had
infected many of the tribes in the Cape Cod area with European diseases causing
wholesale deaths among the natives. Absent these diseases, the Pilgrims would
have faced large numbers of angry Indians who often had been abused by
19
marauding sailors. The Pilgrims were ill equipped in temperament, training, and
number to defend themselves against numerous hostile Indians.
Starting Their Plantation
With snow on the ground, the colonists finally selected Plymouth as their plantation
site in mid-December, primarily because it had fresh water, an acceptable harbor,
and some farmland. The Pilgrim leaders were desperate to build housing,
passengers were eager to leave the stinking bowels of the ship, and the ship’s
captain was anxious to return to England. In the midst of these frantic efforts,
disease and death overwhelmed the participants. Scurvy, combined with the cold,
made both sailors and settlers susceptible to other killer diseases such as
pneumonia and tuberculosis. At one point, most of the participants in the fledgling
colony were sick, with only a few well enough to tend the bedridden. Cold weather,
disease, hard work, and skimpy shelters resulted in nearly half of the colonists -- and
half of the sailors -- dying over the next few months, most of them in February and
March. All of the Tilleys, except Elizabeth, died that winter. John Carver and his
wife took the young orphan into their family. Only three women and two young girls,
including Elizabeth, survived that terrible winter. Elizabeth likely spent her time
during this period ministering to others while Howland did the backbreaking work of
fueling fires, digging graves, and building shelters.
Plymouth Brook
The colonists had only rudimentary shelters, no cattle or horses, and a small supply
of food when the Mayflower returned to England on April 5, 1621.46 Spring lifted
some of the gloom that hung over the colony, but their moods must have sunk again
while watching the Mayflower sail away. Knowing their food stores were critically
deficient, settlers rushed to plant corn and a few English crops in common fields.
About a week after the Mayflower left, still another disaster struck the colony, and
especially John and Elizabeth. The Governor and head of their household, John
Carver, died from sunstroke, and his bereaved wife passed away of a broken heart
several weeks later. At a tender age Howland became head-of-household with the
46
The art of building log cabins came to the Americas much later with Scandinavian immigrants.
The early Plymouth homes had clapboard sides and thatched roofs, similar to poor peoples’
homes in England.
20
responsibility of carrying for Elizabeth Tilley, William Latham, and Desire Minter. 47
Howland inherited Carver’s worldly possessions, and likely received the lot and
dwelling allocated to Carver on the north side of the brook. Stephen Hopkins and
Dr. Samuel Fuller were his immediate neighbors.
Initial Plymouth Lay-out
Aside
from native corn, the Pilgrims harvested few crops that first year. They
subsisted on sassafras, wild strawberries, clams, mussels, and eels that the Indians
taught them to collect. A so-called relief ship, the Fortune, brought 35 more settlers
but few additional supplies in the fall of 1621. For the return trip, it was loaded with
lumber and other wood products, along with a few pelts. The projected value of the
cargo was about half enough to pay the total debt of the colonists. The Pilgrims did
not learn until much later that a French privateer captured the ship before it reached
England, leaving the Pilgrims’ crushing debt unpaid.
Briefly
ignoring their precarious existence, the Pilgrims held a celebration of
thanksgiving that winter to share what little they had with Indian neighbors. At
various times over the next two hundred years politicians proclaimed a day of
thanksgiving, but it was not until 1863 that President Lincoln made Thanksgiving
Day a national holiday. Perhaps the original celebration attracted some divine
attention, since no more original settlers died until about three years later. The
47
Desire eventually returned to England where she died a few years later. Latham may have
later moved to Jamaica where he is said to have died.
21
celebration reinforced a mostly peaceful relationship with the natives that persisted
for some decades.
John and Elizabeth were married around New Years (old calendar style) possibly on
25 March 1623, when Elizabeth was about 15. The mores of the community
certainly meant that Elizabeth lived with, and possibly worked for, another family in
the community until she was formally engaged. The Howlands were fond of Desire
Minter and named their first daughter after her.
It
was not until March 1624 that the relief ship Charity brought a bull and three
heifers to the Colony. Before this, the Pilgrims had only a few sheep, poultry, and
swine to supplement their diets.
John’s Property48
In
general, New England has thin rocky soils, relatively little level land, and long
winters: conditions that limit farming. As a result, early settlers concentrated around
harbors such as Plymouth, Boston, and Salem. Unlike settlers further south, New
Englanders were ultimately forced to rely on commerce, waterpower, sea
transportation, timber, and fishing for their sustenance. In retrospect, the Pilgrims
chose a difficult place to scratch out a living.
Initially, they cultivated their lands collectively, partly as a way to survive, and partly
as a way to repay their joint debts that grew to about £1800 by 1626. The settlers
could call their own only a small housing lot and associated gardens. It took several
years for the Colony to begin abandoning communal living. About the time of John
and Elizabeth’s marriage, leaders allocated some nearby land for private cultivation.
The basic allotments were one acre, but the Howlands received four acres, possibly
because there were four members in John’s household who arrived on the
Mayflower. Later, in 1627, a few jointly-owned cattle were also divided among the
inhabitants.
The Pilgrims renegotiated the contract with their sponsors in 1626.
Twelve of the
original Pilgrims, including Howland, and three Londoners assumed the obligations
of the Colony, along with receiving important trade concessions. This resulted in
Governor Bradford, acting as trustee for the colony, receiving a land grant in
1629/30, called the Warwick Patent. It gave the Pilgrims authority to settle large
amounts of land around Plymouth, including all of Cape Cod, north to the Cohasset
River, and land to the west.49
48
For more details on his land transactions see White, Vol. 2, pp. 5-11.
The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 2 & 3, January-April, 1965; also Vol. 48, No. 2 &3
January-April 1984.
49
22
Later, the Old Comers, including Howland, selected two or three plantations each in
the Warwick Patent for themselves or their heirs. Howland received at least one
parcel of land in Yarmouth, part of which he later gave to his son Jabez. He may
have also received a grant of land five miles north of Plymouth, in Duxbury, where
he lived for several years around 1633, before moving back to Plymouth.50 In 1636,
John bought the services of George Kenrick for a year. 51 He may have helped John
with his Duxbury property. John’s brother Henry was also a resident of Duxbury at
the same time.52 John bought and sold land near Barnstable and Marshfield before
he purchased a dwelling and land at Rocky Nook (now Kingston) in 1638 where he
lived for many years. John’s other brother, Arthur, also settled further north in
Marshfield.
Howland’ Homestead in Rocky Nook53
Howland’s Civic Duties
Plymouth was never a large community.
In 1642 there were only 180 inhabitants in
the village living in about three dozen dwellings. Some of the original Pilgrims
colonized other communities around Plymouth. Because of the small size of the
village, it is not surprising that John Howland filled numerous public positions.
These included being a freeman, being a court representative, acting as an
assessor, being a surveyor of highways, and being deputy to the General Court for a
number of years.
Perhaps
John’s most important assignment was managing a fur trading post in
Maine. Furs were the primary way the Pilgrims eventually paid down their debts.
In 1625, Howland accompanied Edward Winslow to explore the possibilities of
54
50
Haxtun, p. 33.
White, Vol. 2, p. 9.
52
Gilson, pp. 16-17.
53
The drawing is based on an archeological digs at the homestead sponsored by The Pilgrim
John Howland Society.
54
Robert S. Wakefield, “John Howland in Maine,” The Mayflower Descendants, Vol. 42, No. 1,
January 1992, pp. 15-16.
51
23
building a trading post there. Frantic to find ways to repay their debts, Plymouth
leaders sent a small boat to the Kennebec River in Maine loaded with corn in 1626.
The grain was traded to Indians for about 700 pounds of beaver pelts, plus other
furs.55 Later, a Plymouth post was built on the Kennebec River about where the city
of Augusta is now located. In 1627, Howland was placed in charge of the post. A
year later, Isaac Allerton returned from London with a patent that granted the
Plymouth Colony exclusive jurisdiction over trade with Indians on a major segment
of the Kennebec River. The small post traded various goods, including wampum, for
furs.
Small Boat Used in Kennebec Trade
Howland made various trips to Maine before and after the post was established, but
it is unlikely he ever lived there with his family. In 1634, he and John Alden were the
magistrates in charge of the post. Their monopoly over the Indian trade was
challenged one day by the arrival of a group led by Captain John Hocking, from a
Puritan settlement in Portsmouth, who brazenly sailed past the Plymouth
establishment with the intent of building a trading post further up the river, closer to
where the Indians came down stream to trade.56 Howland and his companions were
infuriated over this intrusion into their concession. Howland confronted Hocking, told
him to leave, and several of Howland’s men attempted to cut the moorings of the
intruder’s boat. In the ensuing scuffle, Hocking shot and killed one of Howland’s
men, Moses Talbot. In turn, Hocking was killed by one of Howland’s men. The
Portsmouth crew retrieved their leaders’ body and retreated down the river. The
next month John Alden was visiting Boston and was arrested because of the fracas.
Later the Governor of the Bay Colony, Thomas Dudley, ruled in favor of Plymouth
and John Alden was released.
It took the Pilgrims until 1646 to repay the debts incurred in the establishment of the
colony and its early maintenance, an indication of their humble economic
circumstances. Initially, their backers and leaders expected to do this much more
quickly. With the benefit of hindsight, however, their expectation may have been
55
Helen I. Knowles and others, “The Kennebec River Trading House,” The Howland Quarterly,
Vol. 35, No. 2 & 3, January-April, 1971.
56
Charles Roscoe Howland, pp. 22-23.
24
wildly unrealistic. After all, in a much more affluent America many of us spend 30
years repaying our home mortgages.
The Massachusetts Bay Colony
The
isolation of the Plymouth Colony lasted only a few years. Various efforts to
establish small settlements north of Plymouth did not initially amount to much -except causing trouble with the Indians -- until much larger numbers of Puritans
began to arrive eight years after the founding of Plymouth. In 1628, John Endicott
and sixty others established a settlement in Salem. In 1629, the Crown issued a
charter that gave the Massachusetts Bay Colony a large concession of land. This
opened the floodgates for thousands of Puritans who were eager to leave England.
In 1630, John Winthrop led a thousand Puritans to the Boston area. Persecution by
the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud, and King Charles forced about 20,000
more Puritans to seek religious freedom in American over the next ten years.
The
tidal wave of Puritan immigrants soon swamped the influence of the small
Plymouth Colony. Absent the Church of England in Massachusetts, and the
remoteness of the Monarchy, the Pilgrim’s passion for separateness waned and
their original differences with the Puritans blurred.57 In 1691, the Plymouth and Bay
Colonies were merged officially, but the economic, social, religious, and legal
influence shifted from Plymouth to Boston much earlier.
The Quakers
At the height of the persecution of Quakers in New England in the late 1650s, John
Howland was dismissed by Governor Thomas Prence from the General Court in
Plymouth.
The Governor objected to John’s tolerance of Quakers, views
conditioned by the fact that his two brothers, Arthur and Henry, were fervent
Quakers.58 In a curious twist of fate, in 1661 one of Prence’s daughters, Elizabeth,
married one of Arthur Howland’s sons, Arthur Jr., despite strenuous objection by the
Governor.
The Pilgrims, and especially the Boston Puritans, were intolerant of other religions,
despite the intolerance and persecution that others had earlier heaped on them.
Both groups sought to live in what they defined to be pure and righteous ways. Both
practiced a theocracy that joined church and civil authority. Compulsory attendance
at church services, mandatory payments to support clergy, and corporal punishment
for religious deviation were practices of both sects. Over time, and as the original
Pilgrims died, the religious beliefs of the Pilgrims and Puritans merged, except that
the Pilgrims were a bit less strident in their intolerance.
57
Also, the English civil wars in the late1640s eliminated the monarchy for a time and also
staunched the flow of Puritans to America.
58
William Howland (1939), pp. 11-15.
25
Anabaptists
(re-baptizers) were the first religious sect to suffer the wrath of the
Puritans.59 Anabaptists first arrived in Massachusetts in 1651, and their doctrines
quickly attracted a storm of protests. One of their most objectionable doctrines was
that church and state should be separated, a doctrine earlier stressed by the
Pilgrims. Some Anabaptists were arrested, tried, fined and several of them were
flogged. The Puritans soon passed a law that banished Anabaptists from the colony
along with anyone else who disparaged infant baptism.
The
Quakers were the next sect to draw the ire of the Puritans, and to a lesser
extent, the Pilgrims. Various Quaker missionaries arrived in Plymouth between
1655 and 1662 and made numerous converts there. These believers were treated
with fines, whippings, excommunications, and expulsion from the Plymouth and Bay
colonies. The punishment for Quakers was harshest among the Puritans.
The
first Quaker missionaries in Boston were Anne Austin and Mary Fisher, who
arrived in May 1656 from Barbados. They were imprisoned, their jail windows
boarded up, their books burned, and they were nearly starved to death before being
shipped back to Barbados. Their boat was hardly out of sight before another group
of Quakers arrived from England. They were likewise jailed and then deported. A
law was passed that imposed a fine of a hundred pounds on any ship captain who
transported Quakers to the colony.
Other
than Roger Williams, the president of Rhode Island, none of the leaders in
New England tolerated the persistent Quakers. Over the next several years a series
of increasingly punishing laws were passed to keep them out of New England.
Quakers who persisted in returning were first flogged and then imprisoned at hard
labor. A second offense called for cutting their ears, and a third offense prescribed
boring a hole in the tongue with a hot iron. Capital punishment was imposed on
several Quakers who came to Boston expressly to defy the cruel banishment laws in
1659. Public revulsion at these harsh treatments, fortunately, soon undermined
capital punishment, but for many years Quakers were fined, imprisoned, and
occasionally publicly flogged for practicing their religion.
John Howland’s brother, Arthur, and his younger brother, Henry, followed John to
Plymouth and may have lived there for a time before settling in communities further
north.60 A couple of sources state that Arthur was prosecuted in England for his
59
th
The Anabaptists originated in Switzerland and Southern Germany during the 16 Century and
later evolved into Amish, Brethren, Hutterites, and Mennonites in America.
60
Arthur may have been born in Fenstanton and died in Marshfield, MA on 30 October 1675.
Henry was baptized in Cambridge on 25 November 1604 and died in Duxbury, MA on 17 January
1671. When Arthur came to America is unknown. He is first mentioned in Plymouth Colony
records in 1640 (Wakefield and Sherman, 1983, p. 84). The earliest Plymouth Colony record of
Henry is in a tax list dated in 1633 (Wakefield and Sherman, 1987, p. 105).
26
non-conformist beliefs and this may have prompted his move to New England. 61
The Draper’s Company records show brother Henry entered his apprenticeship in
London in 1623 but there is no record of him fulfilling his contract. This suggests he
left his apprenticeship sometime before its completion in 1630, possibly to migrate to
the Plymouth Colony
Arthur eventually settled in Marshfield, about ten miles north of Plymouth, where he
came to own a large amount of land. Henry likewise acquired a substantial amount
of land in Duxbury, a town located about half way between where John eventually
lived in Rocky Nook and where Arthur lived in Marshfield. Henry’s wife, Mary
(Newland?) and her brother were Quakers, and Henry soon joined the Friends.
For their religious beliefs, Arthur and his wife Margaret were persecuted, fined and
or jailed, numerous times over several decades. Their “offenses” included holding
Quaker meetings in their home, avoiding Puritan church meetings, not paying their
minister tax, and entertaining Quaker preachers in their home. Several of Henry and
Arthur’s sons were likewise prosecuted for being Quakers.
There is no record of John’s and his wife’s involvement with Quakers.
They most
likely remained lifelong adherents to the Separatists beliefs, but had compassion for
their Quaker relatives.
Their Twilight Years
The last few years of John and Elizabeth’s lives must have been enjoyable. They
had a pleasant home and farm on the bay. John’s two brothers and their families
lived in nearby communities, and John and Elizabeth enjoyed their numerous
children who lived in the area. The couple turned their home and farm over to son
Joseph and moved back to Plymouth and lived with son Jabez for a while before
John died in 1672/73.62 He was buried in the Plymouth cemetery on a hill
overlooking the site of his first shelter in the new world.
John Howland’s Tombstone in Plymouth
61
Torrey, p. 215 and Boston Evening Transcript, December 16, 1908.
The Howland Quarterly, Vol. 10, No. 4, April 1946. See John’s will and inventory in William
Howland (1939), pp. 35-41.
62
27
In
1675, after the Howlands returned to Plymouth, their home in Kingston was
burned by Indians during the King Philip’s War. Eight percent of the inhabitants of
Plymouth were killed during the conflict along with several thousand Indians. One
of their grandsons, Zoeth Howland, was among the casualties. The leader of the
Indian revolt, Metacomet (King Philip), was killed, and his head was mounted on a
stake on the outskirts of Plymouth. About one thousand of the Indian survivors were
sold into slavery in the Caribbean.63 Ironically, the Pilgrims/Puritans treated the
Native Americans only slightly worse than they (non-conformists) had been treated
by their antagonists in England. This harsh treatment of natives set a brutal
precedent that was duplicated many times over the next couple of centuries in
America.
After her son Jabez moved to Bristol (now in Rhode Island) in about 1680, Elizabeth
went south to live with her daughter Lydia Brown and her husband James who lived
in Swansea. Elizabeth died there on December 31, 1687. She lived longer than all
but three of the original Mayflower passengers (Resolve White, John Cook, and
Mary Allerton Cushman).
A Modern Boat Named After
Elizabeth Tilley
Elizabeth
was buried in the Brown family plot in a cemetery now located in East
Providence, Rhode Island. A large black slate headstone was erected over the site
of her grave in 1949. Unfortunately, the inscription is not readable in a photograph.
A quotation from her will is inscribed on the stone: “It is my will and charge to all my
children that they walke in ye feare of ye Lord and in Love and Peace toward each
other (sic).” This quote is the only firsthand insight we have into her character.
63
Philbrick, p. 332.
28
Elizabeth Tilley’s Tombstone (far right) in
East Providence Cemetery
John and Elizabeth were humble people who neither sought nor anticipated fame.
Undoubtedly, they would have been amazed and embarrassed if they could have
foreseen the number of authors who would later trespass on their lives.
Conclusions
Even after nearly four centuries, interest persists in the Pilgrim saga because it is a
terrific story. It is loaded with suspense, drama, suffering, heroic accomplishments,
tragedy, religious conflicts, cruelty, intolerance, and success in the face of
overwhelming odds. It is a story about common people who accomplish more than
could be expected of them. Perhaps more importantly, it is a story about the
creation of a new society built on the approval of its citizens. The Pilgrims and
Puritans injected vital DNA into our culture, far more extensive than just the
Thanksgiving holiday and the Mayflower Compact.
The Pilgrim’s story reminds us that most history, both the good and the bad, stems
from the efforts of common people. Only 52 Mayflower passengers survived the
grim reaper’s harvest during the terrible winter of 1620-21. What is surprising is the
large number of Americans who trace their family line to one of these hardy
survivors. One guess places the number of living Mayflower descendants at over
10,000,000. John and Elizabeth made a major contribution to this through ten
children and 82 grandchildren. It is possible that their progeny number in the
millions.
Most of
John and Elizabeth’s descendants are folks who blend into the crowd. A
number of prominent people, nonetheless, trace their family lines to this gritty
couple. Three US presidents, FDR and the two Bushes, carry John Howland genes.
We are also related to several famous actors: Maude Adams, Humphrey Bogart, and
Lillian Russell. We even have a couple of poets in our backgrounds: Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow and Ralph Waldo Emerson. For those who are LDS it is also
noteworthy that Joseph Smith was a descendent of John and Elizabeth. If we
29
broaden the family net to include John’s brothers, Henry and Arthur, we capture
additional notables in our extended family: Winston Churchill, Presidents Nixon and
Ford, Johnny Carson, Bing Crosby, and Marilyn Monroe.
In addition to our political system, and a few distinguished relatives, the times of the
Pilgrims gave us something else immensely important, our rich and robust language.
It is no coincidence that the forces in seventeenth century England that resulted in
innovations in religion and government would also cause a flowering of our
language. Where would the English-speaking world be without the works of
Shakespeare, Milton, and the King James Version of the Bible?
One
wonders what the course of history would have been if providence had not
dangled a rope within John Howland’s reach when he tumbled overboard in 1620, if
he had not caught the rope and hung on, and if stout crewmembers had not
retrieved him? One thing is for certain, there would be no relatives around to study
and celebrate the fascinating lives of John and Elizabeth.
30
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Berry, William, Encyclopedia Heraldica: Complete Dictionary of Heraldry, Vol. 2,
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32
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33