Note 458 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)
Reading edition
This is the famous Wessagusset hanging which Butler introduced into his poem of Hudibras (Canto II. lines 409-36), in the passage already referred to (Supra, 96). It is as follows:—
“Our Brethren of New-England use Choice malefactors to excuse, And hang the Guiltless in their stead, Of whom the Churches have less need; As lately ’t happen’d: In a town There liv’d a Cobler, and but one, That out of Doctrine could cut Use, And mend men’s lives as well as shoes. This precious Brother having slain, In times of peace an Indian, (Not out of malice, but mere zeal, Because he was an Infidel), The mighty Tottipottymoy Sent to our Elders an envoy, Complaining sorely of the breach Of league held forth by Brother Patch, Against the articles in force Between both churches, his and ours, For which he craved the Saints to render Into his hands, or hang th’ offender; But they maturely having weigh’d They had no more but him o’ th’ trade, (A man that served them in a double Capacity, to teach and cobble), Resolv’d to spare him; yet to do The Indian Hoghan Moghan too Impartial justice, in his stead did Hang an old Weaver that was bed rid.”
That a man was hung at Wessagusset, in March 1623, for stealing corn from the Indians, there can be no doubt. There is equally little doubt that it was the real thief who was hung. (Pratt’s Relation, IV. Mass. Hist. Coll., vol. iv. p. 491; Young’s Chron. of Pilg., p. 332; Bradford, p. 130.) I have already (Supra, 96) given my own theory as to how the incident came to take the shape it did in Butler’s poem. He wrote, I think, from a vague recollection of an amusing traveller’s-story, which he had heard told somewhere years before. There is no reason to suppose that he had ever seen the New Canaan.
It has always been assumed that Butler’s version of the affair,—the vicarious execution version,—coming out as it did in 1664, at a period of violent reaction against Puritanism, and when the New England colonies were in extreme popular disfavor,—obtained a foothold in English popular tradition; much such a foothold, in fact, as the Connecticut Blue Laws. It was an intangible something, always at hand to be cast as a mocking reproach in the face of a sanctimonious community. As such it was sure to be resented and disproved; but never by any disproof could it be exorcised from the popular mind, or finally set at rest. This may have been the case, and the references to the matter in Hutchinson (vol. i. p. 6, note), in Hubbard (p. 77), and in Grahame (Ed. 1845, vol. i. p. 202, note), certainly look that way. I do not remember, however, to have myself ever met this particular charge among the many and singular charges, much more absurd, which English writers have from time to time gravely advanced against America. In Uring’s Voyages (p. 116-8) there is a singular account of a similar vicarious execution, which never could have met the eye of the author of Hudibras, inasmuch as it was not published until 1726; but it shows that either some such event did take place, or that its having taken place was at one period a stock traveller’s-tale.