The Nova Scotia Colony of Mayflower Descendants
3455 Highway 1 B5A 5T6 Port Maitland, NS, Canada

Becket Soule: Sunday, 22 November 1620 At anchor in Cape Cod harbour All hands piped to service; first Sunday in New England -- this must have been a welcome day of rest. Weather mild.

Becket Soule: Tuesday, 17 November 1620 Birds sighted The body of William Butten was committed to the deep. This was the first burial at sea of a passenger on this voyage; a crew member (the name of the first casualty is unknown) was buried at sea on 2 October, over a month ago. Sailors often see seagulls flying more than a hundred miles from the nearest shore, so the fact that birds were sighted today, while very encouraging, does not necessarily mean that the voyage is almost over.

Becket Soule: Saturday, 21 November 1620 Comes in with light, fair wind. Signing of the Mayflower Compact [This is a long post -- you may want to get a really hot cup of tea.] There is good reason to believe that sickness would not have prevented the obtaining of the signatures (by mark, if need be, since it is probable that some were illiterate) of the nine men who did not subscribe, if they were considered eligible. Two whom we know did not sign were Ely and William Tre...Continue reading

Becket Soule: Monday, 16 November 1620 First Death of a Passenger In all this voyage there died but one of the passengers, which was William Butten, a youth [born perhaps in 1605], servant to Samuel Fuller. Today marks the 400th anniversary of the death of the first of the passengers to die on this voyage. Caleb Johnson notes a William Butten, son of John Butten, baptised at Worksop, Nottinghamshire, on 13 March 1605 as possibly being this passenger. Worksop was not all tha...t far from Scrooby and briefly had a Separatist gathering in 1607. Some members of the Worksop congregation had joined with members of the Scrooby separatist congregation in the migration to Holland in 1608 and soon thereafter. There is at least one other possible William Butten in the area, but his birth date is too early for him to qualify as a youth in 1620. Nothing else is known about this passenger, his cause of death or his origins. The fact that the first passenger to die was the servant to the physician does not fill us with great confidence about how well everyone else will be. See more

Becket Soule: Friday, 20 November 1620 On course for Cape Cod harbour, along the coast Disaffection appeared among the colonists, on account of abandonment of their destination. Bradford (in Mourt’s Relation) says: This day before we come to harbor, observing some not well affected to unity and concord, but gave some appearance of faction, it was thought good there should be an Association and Agreement that we should combine together in one body; and to submit to such Gover...nment and Governors as we should, by common consent, agree to make and choose, and set our hands to this that follows word for word. Then follows the text of the Mayflower Compact. Bradford is even more explicit in his Of Plimoth Plantation, where he says: I shall a little returne backe and begin with a combination made by them before they came ashore, being ye first foundation of their governments in this place; occasioned partly by ye discontent & mutinous speeches that some of the strangers amongst them [i.e. not any of the Leiden contingent] had let fall from them in ye shipThat when they came ashore they would use their owne libertie: for none had power to command them, the patents they had being for Virginia, and not for New-England which belonged to another Government, with which ye London [or First Virginia] Company had nothing to doe, and partly that such an acte by them done might be as firm as any patent, and in some respects more sure. Bradford speaks only of Billington and his family as those shuffled into their company, and while he was not improbably one of the agitators (with Hopkins) who were the proximate causes of the drawing up of the Compact, he was not, in this case, the responsible leader. It is evident from the foregoing that the appearance of faction did not show itself until the Mayflower was turned back toward Cape Cod Harbor, and it became apparent that the effort to locate near Hudson’s River was to be abandoned, and a location found north of 41 N. latitude, which would leave them without charter rights or authority of any kind. Stephen Hopkins,then a lay-reader for Chaplain Buck,on Sir Thomas Gates’ expedition to Virginia, had, when some of them were shipwrecked on the Bermudas, advocated just such sentimentson the same basisas were now raised on the Mayflower, and it could hardly have been only a coincidence that the same were repeated here. That Hopkins fomented the discord is almost certain. His attitudes and actions caused him to receive a sentence of death for insubordination, at the hands of Sir Thomas Gates, in the first instance, from which his pardon was with much difficulty procured by his friends. The placing of Hopkins’ two servants at the very end of the signatories of the Compact has also been noted, suggesting that they were not in full agreement with either the course of action or the mechanism of the Compact. See more

Becket Soule: Thursday, 19 November 1620 Sighted land at daybreak. The landfall was made out to be the bluffs of Cape Cod in what is now the town of Truro, Mass. After a conference between the Master of the ship and the chief colonists, tacked about and stood for the southward. Wind and weather fair. Made course SSW, proposing to go to Hudson’s River, ten leagues south of the Cape. After sailing that course about half the day, between 12 noon and 1:00 pm the ship fell amongst... dangerous shoals and foaming breakers [the shoals off Monomoy]. The Mayflower got out of them before nightfall and, the wind being contrary, put round again for the Bay of Cape Cod. Captain Jones abandoned efforts to go further south and abruptly announced this to passengers at sunset. No one will question that Jones’ assertion of inability to proceed, and his announced determination to return to Cape Cod harbour probably fell upon many acquiescent ears, for, as Winslow says: Winter was come; the seas were dangerous; the season was cold; the winds were high, and the region being well furnished for a plantation, we entered upon discovery. Tossed for sixty-seven days on the north Atlantic at that season of the year, their food and fire wood well spent, cold, homesick, and gravely ill, the mere thought of once again setting foot on any land, wherever it might be, must have been an allurement that lent Jones some potential aid in his high-handed course. See more

Becket Soule: Sunday, 15 November 1620 Popham/ Sagadahoc Colony The Popham Colonyalso known as the Sagadahoc Colonywas a short-lived English colonial settlement in New England which in many ways provides an instructive contrast with the much less well organised Pilgrim voyage. It was established in 1607 by the proprietary Virginia Company of Plymouth and was located in the present-day town of Phippsburg, Maine, near the mouth of the Kennebec River. The Popham Colony was the...Continue reading

Becket Soule: Wednesday, 18 November 1620 Signs of land. Closing in with the land at nightfall. It is usually supposed that the Mayflower hit on Cape Cod by accident, but the fact that the Pilgrims felt reasonably sure that the land that they saw at daybreak tomorrow morning was Cape Cod is proof enough that they knew what land it ought to be. They were neither sailors nor navigators, and outside of one or two of them, none of them had ever seen North America before. Two of t...he ship’s officers had been in that locality previously, but it would take something more definite than that to account for the Pilgrims believing it was Cape Cod until they were close enough to make it out clearly. The logical answer is that when they sighted land Captain Christopher Jones knew that he was close to the 42nd parallel of north latitude, and was heading toward Cape Cod. It was usual for early navigators to strike out for the parallel they wanted to reach, and then keep to that parallel. Jones was not in a hurry to reach Cape Cod in particular, but circumstances beyond his control were getting so out of hand that he must have been quite anxious to get to land somewhere, anywhere, and soon. They had been held back by all kinds of bad weather, and winter was closing in. There was a broken main beam, and the ship was in no condition to handle heavy weather. Fresh water was getting scarce, fresh provisions were getting low, they were out of all firewood. Scurvy was breaking out among crew and passengers, and the stork was due to come on board again for the second time almost any day now. Any decent captain would head for the nearest land he could reach with whatever wind and weather he could manage. The Mayflower had enjoyed clear northwest winds for a day or two now; with a good noon sight of the sun yesterday and today, Jones’ cross staff would tell him he was on the 42nd parallel of latitude, which he undoubtedly knew would lead him in to Cape Cod if he followed it. He would probably not have known his longitudinal position, having no way to check up on it since leaving England. But he could be sure of his latitude. He must have known by the change in the colour of the sea water and by the general appearance of the western clouds that land was not far off, and it is more than likely that he had caught the earthy smell of the land in an offshore breeze. Bradford states distinctly that the weather was clear and crisp, and that there was a northwesterly breeze off the land, when daylight broke on Thursday. The sun rose on the back side of Cape Cod tomorrow morning at 6:55 AM. The moon, which was nine days after full, was a waning crescent in mid-sky, too thin to help. Daybreak, when the Pilgrims say they espied the land, was twenty or thirty minutes before sunrise; they thus caught their first glance of Cape Cod over the bow of the Mayflower at about half past six in the morning tomorrow. See more

Becket Soule: Saturday, 14 November 1620 Charter of the Council of New England JAMES, by the Grace of God, King of England, Scotland, France and Ireland, Defender of the Faith, &c. to all whom these Presents shall come, Greeting, Whereas, upon the humble Petition of divers of our well disposed Subjects, that intended to make several Plantations in the Parts of America, between the Degrees of thirty-ffoure and ffourty-five; We according to our princely Inclination, favouring ...much their worthy Disposition, in Hope thereby to advance the in Largement of Christian Religion, to the Glory of God Almighty, as also by that Meanes to streatch out the Bounds of our Dominions, and to replenish those Deserts with People governed by Lawes and Magistrates, for the peaceable Commerce of all, that in time to come shall have occasion to traffique into those Territoryes, And lastly, because the principall Effect which we can desire or expect of this Action, is the Conversion and Reduction of the People in those Parts unto the true Worship of God and Christian Religion, in which Respect, Wee would be loath that any Person should be permitted to pass that Wee suspected to affect the Superstition of the Ch[urch] of Rome, Wee do hereby declare that it is our Will and Pleasure that none be permitted to pass, in any Voyage from time to time to be made into the said Country, but such as shall first have taken the Oathe of Supremacy; for which Purpose, Wee do by these Presents give full Power and Authority to the President of the said Councill, to tender and exhibit the said Oath to all such Persons as shall at any time be sent and imployed in the said Voyage. Note three things: (1) the purpose of the grant is for the conversion of the people in those parts and the furtherance of the Gospel; (2) not only Roman Catholics, who were treasonous, but also anyone who refused to accept the King’s supremacy over the English Church were excluded (and thus, presumably, the Separatists, who denied not only the Royal Supremacy but also the legitimacy of the English Church as a whole); (3) the territory overlapped in its southern and western region with the northern region of the (first) Virginia Company. The land on which the Pilgrims landed thus was covered by a royal charter at the time of their arrival, but they had been at sea for so long that they were unaware of that grant. See more

Becket Soule: Friday, 13 November 1620 The Council of New England The Council of New England was established on this day four hundred years ago (3 November 620, o.s.), and was disbanded (although with no apparent changes in land titles) in 1635. It provided for the establishment of the Plymouth Colony, the Colony (and eventual State) of New Hampshire, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the New Haven Colony, and the eventual State of Maine. It was largely the creation of Sir Ferdin...ando Gorges. Some of the persons involved had previously received a charter in 1606 as the Plymouth Company and had founded the short-lived Popham Colony within the territory of northern Virginia (actually in present-day Maine). The company had fallen into disuse following the abandonment of the 1607 colony. In the new 1620 charter granted by James I, the company was given rights of settlement in the area now designated as New England, which was the land previously part of the Virginia Colony north of the 40th parallel, and extending to the 48th parallel. The Council would have full legal rights of governance and administration over the colonial plantation, and the members of the Council would elect a President to oversee administrative affairs. Although this explicitly covered the land that the Pilgrims would land on and settle, they were ignorant of this grant because they had now been at sea for more than two months when the charter was issued. They only found out about it when the Fortune arrived in November 1621, over a year from now. See more