ROGER CONANT A FOUNDER OF MASSACHUSETTS BY CLIFFORD K. SHIPTON CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1 944 COPYRIGHT, 1944 BY THE PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA ROGER CONANT LONDON : HUMPHREY MILFORD OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS PREFACE EW men of the historical stature and importance of Roger Conant Fhave escaped a full-length biography. That he has been hitherto passed over by biographers has been due in no small part to the fact that it was not until the totalitarian states threatened our liberties as we would never have believed possible that the importance of his part in the planting of liberty in America has become apparent. In his day England had reached a parting of the ways between those two forces which today are struggling for the mastery of the world. On the one side was respect for human dignity, faith in the potentialities of the common man, and a longing for liberty of mind and body. From these have developed the humanitarian complex which we call democracy. On the other side, in Conant's day as in ours, was absolutism in mind and state, a contempt for the common man, and a belief that his only function was to slave for his masters. During these last few years mankind would have fallen five cen­ turies back down the ladder of human progress and the light of liberty would have been extinguished throughout the world had it not been fed the fuel of our blood. When Roger Conant, inspired by the vision of a refuge for English liberty, clung to his American foothold which lesser men abandoned for the security of established settlements, he little thought that from this refuge three centuries later there would flow back the strength which would save human liberty. True that if he had surrendered his foothold some later pioneer might have estab­ lished it, or Plymouth or Virginia might have played the part with­ out a Puritan Massachusetts. In the same way someone else would have discovered America had Columbus turned back, but we are grate­ ful to Columbus none-the-less. If we were the Fates we would not dare cast the dice again hoping for a better fall than that which brought to Massachusetts Roger Conant and in his footsteps the Puritan Mi­ .gration. VI PREFACE Even before the world-wide significance of the United States as the arsenal of liberty became apparent, it was recognized that Roger Conant had performed work of great importance, and for that reason he appears briefly in nearly every book on early Massachusetts; but if one were to write a life of him based on the accounts in the volumes in which he plays a secondary part, it would be a weird and curious collection of contradictions and erroneous assumptions. Even the best and most scholarly of the histories contain such errors as confusing him with his son and sending him to Ireland to die thirty-five years before his time. This confusion is inevitable, for none of the writers who have used him as a secondary character have had the time to stop and make a study of his life. It would be a vain show of erudition for me to cite by volume and page each mistake my friends and predecessors have made concerning him; anyone who undertakes to examine closely the secondary characters in this biography will find many similar failings on my part. It is in the hope of like mercy that in the pages which fol­ low I call attention to other men's errors only to correct them, without mentioning authors and books by name. In an effort to enable the reader to see the world through Roger Conant's eyes, I have included much background detail, all of which comes from the New England of his day. It is not, for example, a guess that the pioneers fed the chickens under the kitchen table; one of Conant's neighbors said that this was the custom. The tall stories and superstitions are culled from the lore of his New England, not from contemporary Virginia or old England. Considering the relatively compact body of source material, it has not appeared necessary to burden the book with footnote references and formal bibliography. Anyone familiar with the sources will some­ times recognize mingled in a single section material drawn from such seventeenth-century writers as Thomas Morton, William Wood, John White, and Thomas Lechford. My debt to such moderns as Frances Rose-Troup, Frederick Odell Conant, Samuel Eliot Morison, Law­ rence Shaw Mayo, Charles K. Bolton, James Duncan Phillips, Sidney Perley, and Alice Gertrude Lapham is obvious. I have freely appro- PREFACE Vll priated the results of their labors, knowing that there was no reason for me to work over the fields they have so well cultivated. Roger Conant manuscripts are few and widely scattered; there is no collection of family papers. Without the aid of Kenneth J. Conant the book would never have seen the light of day. Many a biographer working upon a subject of whom there have been no earlier studies has been mortified to have his man shrink into a pricked bubble of reputation or has uncovered unexpected and un­ pleasant traits of character. That has not been my experience with Roger Conant. He emerged, in the course of this work, as a solid, useful, gentle, honorable man, with whom it has been a pleasure to associate. C. K. S. CONTENTS I. DEVON DAYS 3 II. IN Tms REALM OF ENGLAND 8 III. WESTWARD Ho! • 21 IV. THE YEAR WITH THE PILGRIMS, MARCH, 1623, TO SUMMER, 1624 28 V. TAKING RooT: THE YEAR AT NANTASKET, 1624-1625 . 39 VI. CAPE ANN: 1625-1626 . 51 VII. THE WAITING AT NAUMKEAG: 1626-1628 60 VIII. ENDECOTT: CONFLICT AND ADJUSTMENT, 1628-1630 68 IX. THE LAUNCHING OF THE PURITAN COMMONWEALTH, 1630-1634 88 X. THE TowN FATHER. II8 XI. THE LAST YEARS: BEVERLY ILLUSTRATIONS IDEAL STATUE OF ROGER CONANT. (frontispiece) By H. H. Kitson, 1913; photograph by Eric Muller for Thomas Studio. No portrait of Roger Conant is known, but the sculptor suc­ ceeded in characterizing the face with Conant features. The costume is debatable. Signature from deposition for the suit of I 6 5 5. MAP OF SALEM AND BEVERLY, MASSACHUSETTS xiv To avoid the confusion of modern developments, this map was re­ produced from the Salem sheet of the United States Geological Survey, I 893, and reworked to give additional information pertinent to the text. Miss Alice G. Lapham of the Beverly Historical Society most obligingly communicated maps, detailed information, and advice for the making of this and the companion map. Details and bibliography are given in her book The Old Planters of Beverly in Massachusetts and the Thousand Acre Grant of 1635 (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1930). MAP OF THE OLD PLANTERS' GRANT AND SURROUNDINGS xv An enlargement of the preceding, with further additions. ALL SAINTS' CHURCH, EAST BUDLEIGH - EXTERIOR AND INTERIOR 6 The history of the building goes back to I 260, but it has the character of a church of about 1430, when its principal structure was erected. THE CONANT HOMESTEAD AND MILL, EAST BUDLEIGH . 16 Views made from old half-tone prints. The buildings were dis­ mantled not long after I 900. COTTAGES AND CHURCH AT EAST BUDLEIGH . From a photograph published by Frederick Odell Conant, I 8 8 7. Little changed since mediaeval times. THE EXERCISE CONANT HOUSE, BEVERLY, MASSACHU- SETTS 32 Photograph by Thomas Studio; for location and viewpoint, refer to No. 3 on the map of the Old Planters' Grant. This flank of the L-shaped building is believed to be the original house, built at the end of Roger Conant's lifetime, or just afterward. Sidney T. Strick- XU LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS land, A.I.A., Boston architect known for his work on the earliest buildings at Plymouth, considers the original work in this southerly ell to possess all the characteristics of the fourth quarter of the seventeenth century. A stairway leads up from a narrow hall inside the lateral door. The windows ( doubtless enlarged) and the front ell of the house have the general character of eighteenth-century work. PANORAMA OF ROGER CONANT'S HOMESITE PLOT IN THE OLD PLANTERS' GRANT. 80 Photograph by Eric Muller for Thomas Studio; taken from Her­ rick Street, at point I on the map of the Old Planters' Grant. The John Balch house is visible (left); Roger Conant's house stood between the brook and the road near the middle of the picture. THE OLD PLANTERS' PATH AND FIRST LANDING PLACE ON BASS RIVER . 128 Photograph by Eric Muller for Thomas Studio; taken from point 2 on the map of the Old Planters' Grant. A ferry to Bass River Side (fare id for "inhabitants," 2d for others) touched here from I 636 to I 64 7, when the second landing came into use, after the construction of the intervening tide gate. THE OLD BURYING GROUND AT NORTH BEVERLY 1 44 Photograph by Eric Muller for Thomas Studio; taken from point 4 on the map of the Old Planters' Grant. This burying ground lies entirely within the boundaries of the Old Planters' Grant, and Roger Conant may have been buried in it; but there are one or two other sites which are considered as likely places for his grave, especially the burying ground of the First Church in Beverly: he and his wife were founders, and loved the church. The headstone or slab, wherever it was, has doubtless crumbled, like almost all of its contemporaries.