Note 387 — NEW ENGLISH CANAAN OR NEW CANAAN. (continued 2)

This passage is more than usually confused, even for Morton. It is difficult to say whether he is perpetrating a clumsy joke, or indulging in a malicious insinuation. John Billington was hanged at Plymouth in September, 1630, being apparently the second person so executed in what is now Massachusetts, the first having been executed at Weymouth during the winter of 1622-3. (Infra, *108-10.) The man shot by Billington, and for whose murder he was hung, was John New-comin (Bradford, p. 277), whence Morton’s play upon the name. Billington had two sons, but he was by no means “beloved.” As Bradford, writing about him as early as 1625, said, “he is a knave,” adding prophetically “and so will live and die.” (Savage’s Winthrop, vol. i. p. *36). Why Morton should have called him “Ould Woodman” is not clear. From his immediately going on to talk of the “woodden prospect,” and the wish of its author to secure for himself a monopoly of the Richmond Island whetstones, which “Ould Woodman labored to get a patent of,” it would seem as if he had intended to convey the idea that William Wood, the author of the New England’s Prospect, was one of the “many sonnes” of “Old Woodman,” who had been hanged at Plymouth. That such was Morton’s intention, however, is not clear. The passage is muddled, but not necessarily malicious.