Literature

Summary Analysis of Thomas Morton's New English Canaan

Thomas Morton of Merrymount, English adventurer in America, was a solicitor of Clifford's Inn, London, and appears to have performed in the west of England. He expended three months in America in 1622; returned in 1625, and resolved at Mount Wollaston, in what is now Quincy, Massachusetts; and in 1626, when most of the settlers taken to Virginia, he presumed order of the town, and renamed it Merrymount. Morton, a Royalist rake, shortly became a thorn in the body material of the sober colonists at Plymouth. On May Day in 1627 his companions erected a maypole, and, aided by Indians, indulged in all the revelry and permit then customary in England. "The setting up of this May-pole was a lamentable scene to the accurate Separatists that dwelled at New Plimmouth", states Morton. "They termed it an Idoll; yea, they called it the Calf of Horeb, and stood at defiance with the place. intimidating to make it a woefull climb on and not a merry mount" (Beaglehole, 25-118). In disregard of a regal proclamation, Morton traded rum and firearms to the natives, not only hurting the trade of Plymouth, but furthermore threatening the security of the colonists. Morton was thus apprehended and dispatched to England; and when John Endecott, with a patent from the assembly for New England, reached shortly afterward he travelled to Merrymount, which lay inside his jurisdiction, reprimanded the inhabitants, slash down the maypole, and renamed the location Mount Dagon. In 1629 Morton returned to America, but was apprehended on trivial allegations by the Massachusetts administration, and was confined in the stocks. Later his dwelling was burned and he was dispatched to England, where he expended a period in the Essex jail. After his issue he composed his New English Canaan (1637), ...