CHAPTER TWO

THOMAS MORTON

Charlotte Carrington

Thomas Morton established the Ma-re Mount settlement, near modern- day Quincy, Massachusetts, in the 1620s. Morton, an Anglican gentleman and lawyer, freed the servants at the plantation in order to trade and plant as equals. The Mortonites erected a maypole and embraced Old English traditions, which vexed the Pilgrims and Puritans. Morton, who was ban- ished from New England more than once, is primarily remembered as a marginal licentious anti-type to his Puritan opponents. This article addresses Morton’s disregarded side of the story, his numerous voyages across the Atlantic and the identities that he fashioned. In New England, Morton was a victim of Puritan persecution; he was arraigned fallaciously for trading guns to the American Indians and murder. He was whipped, imprisoned, banished and his property was sequestered. Morton operated entirely from outside of the ‘Puritan worldview’ and proffered an alterna- tive vision for the New World. However, across the ocean, Morton employed his flair with a pen and legal dexterity to challenge the Colony’s charter and put himself in a position of authority. Therefore, in order to truly place Morton at the center of the narrative, we must examine the life of this sojourner on both sides of the Atlantic. This article follows the voyages of Thomas Morton across the Atlantic between Old and New England in the early seventeenth century. In terms of identity formation, Morton is of interest precisely because he defies easy categorization. Morton illustrates that identities in an Atlantic world were multi-faceted and tailored to circumstance. Depending upon the situat­ ion, Morton fashioned a number of identities, including an Anglican, gen- tleman, royalist, lawyer, sportsman, colonizer, entrepreneurial trader, poet and exile. Morton’s identity and his dissent from the ‘New England way’ are also notable because in an Atlantic context Morton was simulta- neously a dissenter and criminal in New England, and a lawyer bringing other criminals to justice in Old England. Morton self-fashioned a number of identities, and used them freely when the circumstance called, depend- ing on which side of the Atlantic he found himself on. This article will

32 charlotte carrington center on examining some of the identities that Morton upheld in differ- ent situations and at different points in his life; it will include Morton as a lawyer, husband, colonizer, entrepreneurial trader, royalist, purveyor of Old English culture, poet and author. Morton has remained an ambiguous and often misunderstood figure. When historians care to mention him, they cast aside his more serious credentials and Mortonia remains dominated by the prevailing cont­ emporaneous Pilgrim and Puritan depictions of a dangerous drunken troublemaker. For example, William Bradford argued that Morton was an ‘example of wickedness’ unto his ‘profane crew’ and Cotton Mather referred to Ma-re Mount as a ‘plantation of rude, lewd, mad English peo- ple.’1 Building upon this, traditional histories discredit Morton, depicting him as a villain or clown in the Puritan drama of New England.2 An espe- cially telling sign of Morton’s disfavor is the fact that his name is frequently

1 Governor Thomas Dudley referred to Morton as ‘a proud insolent man.’ Edward Winslow described Morton as a ‘serpent’ to John Winthrop’ John Brown called him a ‘vyle person.’ William Bradford, Of Plymouth Plantation 1620–1647, ed. Samuel Eliot Morison, (New York: Knopf, 1953), 205; William Bradford, ‘A Copy of the Covenants’ in ‘Governor Bradford’s Letter Book,’ P. Watches, ed., Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 1 ser., Vol. III. (1794), 61–2; ‘Governor T. Dudley to Lady Bridget, Countess of Lincoln, 1630,’ in Letters from New England. The Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1629–1638, ed. Everett Emerson, (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1976), 66–82; ‘Edward Winslow to John Winthrop, 7 January 1643/4,’ in The Winthrop Papers, ed., Allyn Forbes, 1638–1644. Vol. IV (Boston, MA: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1943), 428–9; ‘John Brown to John Winthrop, 26 June 1644,’ in Ibid., 464–5; Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana Vol. I (London: 1702), 59. 2 See for example, Charles Francis Adams, Three Episodes of Massachusetts History: The Settlement at Boston Bay, the Antinomian Controversy, and Study of Church and Town Government, (Vol. I. New York: Russell and Russell, 1965, original published in 1892); Charles Francis Adams, ed., Prince Society Edition of New English Canaan (New York: Burt Franklin, 1883); John D. Seelye, Prophetic Waters: The River in Early American Life and Literature (New York: Oxford University Press USA, 1977); Philip Ranlet, Enemies of the Bay Colony (New York: Peter Lang Pub Incorporated, 1995); Winton U. Solberg, Redeem the Time: The Puritan Sabbath in Early America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977); James Duncan Phillips, Salem in the Seventeenth Century (Boston MA and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1933), 28. Even though Richard Slotkin, Michael Zuckermann, John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman offer slightly more positive depictions, they dismiss Morton as an Old English merry-making Cavalier or hedonist. Alden Vaughan and J. Gary Williams claim that Ma-re Mount was comprised of ‘brawling drunkards and unscrupulous traders.’ Richard Slotkin, Regeneration Through Violence: Mythology of the American Frontier 1600–1860 (Middletown, CT: University of Oklahoma Press, 1973), 58–62; Michael Zuckerman, ‘Pilgrims in the Wilderness: Community, Modernity, and the Maypole at Merry Mount,’ New England Quarterly, (Vol. 50, 1977), 255–77; John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America (New York: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 3; J. Gary Williams, ‘History in Hawthorne’s “The Maypole of Merry Mount”’ Essex Institute of Historical Collections, CVIII, 184–5; Alden Vaughan, New England Frontier, Puritans and Indians 1620–1675 (London: Little, Brown, 1965), 89.