Note 428 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)

This is a gross exaggeration. Thomas Wiggin, in November, 1622, wrote: “For the plantation in Mattachusetts, the English there being about 2000 people, yonge and old.” (III. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. viii. p. 322.) Writing on May 22, 1634, about the time Morton referred to (Supra, 78), Governor Winthrop says: “For the number of our people, we never took any surveigh of them, nor doe we intend it, except inforced throughe urgent occasion (David’s example stickes somewhat with us) but I esteeme them to be in all about 4000: soules and upwarde.” (Proc. Mass. Hist. Soc., Dec. 14, 1882.) So in the New England’s Prospect (p. 42), Wood speaks of the population of Massachusetts as “foure thousand soules.” In the spring of 1634 there may have been five hundred persons in the Plymouth colony, and as many more in New Hampshire and Maine, making a total New England population of five thousand at the time Morton was writing. When the New Canaan was published, however, in 1637, the population undoubtedly was as large as 12,000.