Note 466 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)

This chapter relates to incidents of no apparent consequence, and of which there is no other record. It is not easy even to fix the time at which they occurred, and it would seem as if Morton, in his rambling, incoherent way, had confused the events of one year with those of another. The only time when “35 stout knaves” were landed, at all in the way described, at Plymouth, was in July, 1622, when the Charity brought in there Weston’s company. Yet Morton speaks of there then being “three cows” at Plymouth, which would indicate that Morton’s arrival, referred to in the text, was not in July 1622, but at some time subsequent to the spring of 1624, when Winslow brought over “three heifers and a bull, the first beginning of any cattle of that kind in the land.” (Bradford, p. 158.) Yet Weston, again, had no “barque” at Plymouth after 1623. The chapter seems to have been introduced simply for the purpose of working on the church prejudices of Laud against the Puritans. (See supra, 93-4.) There is in it a combination of “the booke of common prayer” and “claret sparklinge neate,” which is suggestive of the Book of Sports as well as of “the Word of God.”