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There are several key thing that should be noted in the following documentation regarding John Carman who arrived on the ship "Plough":
Although this article does not document this John Carman's move to Lynn, it does show his Religious and group leader did. There is no reason to believe John may not have moved also. In fact to the contrary, we know that the records of Lynn record the name of John Carman even after our John Carman is known to have moved to Long Island. So one can conclude that the other "man of Lynn" is the John Carman who arrived on the Plough. "In 1630 a small band of London merchants- 1, perhaps friends of Bachiler's son Nathaniel, formed a colonizing company, called the " Company of Husbandmen " and obtained from Sir Ferdinando Gorges, the great enemy to New England Puritanism, a patent to some 1600 square miles in his province of New England south of the river Sagadahock. This Company of Husbandmen sent to America in the fall of 1630 a small ship called the "Plough, with a meager band of colonists to settle on their new patent, probably about where the present city of Portland stands. The grant from Gorges seems to have conflicted with other grants, and the original patent is lost, so that we cannot exactly locate the land, which the Husbandmen thought embraced the seacoast from Cape Porpoise to Cape Elizabeth. This first little shipload, sent from England six months after Winthrop's well-found colony, appears to have landed on their grant in the hard winter of 1631-1, and were much disappointed in the outlook. The upper coast of New England was sterile and forbidding, bare of settlements except for a few scattering-fishing stages, and we may imagine the Husbandmen were poorly equipped with the necessaries for colonization. Whether Bachiler was an original member of the company I cannot state, for none of their records have survived that general loss of manuscripts which has occurred in the lapse of four hundred years. Presumably he was, since the first letter-2 from the London managers, dated in March, 1631-2, and sent to their New England colonists, speaks as though he had for some time been eager in the (1 Genealogist, vol. XIX, New Series, pp. 272-3. 2 Mass. Hit. Soc. Coll., 4 Series, vol. VII, pp. 91-4, notes. -11-) Companys work. In this letter the London members ask the colonists to remember their duty to return thanks to God who "hath filled the heart of our reverend pastor so full of zeal, of love and of extraordinary affection toward our poor society. Notwithstanding opposition yet he remaineth constant, persuading and exhorting,--yea and as much as in him lieth -- constraining all that love him to join together with us. And seeing the Company is not able to bear his charge over, he hath strained himself to provide provision for himself and his family, and hath done his utmost endeavor to help over as many as he possibly can, for your further strength and encouragement." For another year, then, or until the spring of 1632, the Plough Company worked in England to secure more colonists and to enlarge their resources. The London members were none of them rich, but all were bound together by some mystical religious fellowship, the exact significance of which has been lost in the ensuing centuries of oblivion. England was, indeed, from 1620 to 1630 a fruitful mother of diverse and complicated sects. The stern rule of Arch-bishop Bancroft had been followed by the gentler but less forcible Abbot, who was born in the same year as Bachiler, and of whom Lord Clarendon says, --" He considered Christian religion no otherwise than as it abhorred and reviled Popery; and valued those men most who did it most furiously." In the last years of Abbot's primacy he had lost credit with the Court, and had been supplanted by that Bishop of London who was to succeed him, William Laud, the bitter foe of the Puritans. Laud's narrow but determined spirit had quite changed the religious complexion of Oxford; and his promotion to the bishopric of London and to the King's Privy Council inaugurated an era of suppression and severity which aroused and united the hostility of these various sects against the established church. But two letters remain-1, so far as the manuscript records of the 17th century have been printed, to show who were the active members of that ill-fated and meager Company (1 Mass. Hist. Soc., Coll., 4 Series, vol. VII, pp. 91-6, note. -12-) of Husbandmen. John Dye, Grace Hardwin, and Thomas Jupe, three London merchants of limited education and narrow resources, were the principal factors. On the first ship came over John Crispe, Bryan Binckes, and John Carman, who seem to have had some authority in the company, but concerning whom the records disclose nothing of note. The loosely knit little company seems to have been organized and kept alive by the strenuous efforts of Bachiler and his kinsmen. A second shipment of goods and colonists was sent out in March, 1632, on two ships, the "William and Francis" and the "Whale." The colonists on the former ship were captained by the stout old Hampshire parson, now over 70, and the party on the "Whale" by his relative, Richard Dummer, also a Hampshire man, who had not joined the religious circle of the Husbandmen, but who was doubtless induced by Bachiler to finance the enterprise to some extent. Dummer was a man of breadth and ability, whose connection must have been of value to the struggling company, though he soon foresaw its failure and identified himself with Winthrop's more permanent enterprise. While Bachiler, Dummer, and the London members of the Company were thus helping on the enterprise in England, imagining that the colony of the Sagadahock River was firmly planted in the new soil, that poor-spirited crew had left its northern settlement, aghast at the practical difficulties of colonization, and perhaps torn by some dissension. With their shaky little craft, the Plough, they had drifted down the coast looking for more substantial settlements, and Winthrop's journal of July 6, 1631-1, records their arrival at Watertown as follows: "A small ship of 60 tons arrived at Natascot, Mr. Graves master. She brought ten passengers from London. They came with a patent for Sagadehock, but not liking the place they came hither. Their ship drew ten feet and went up to Watertown but she ran on ground twice by the way." The Husbandmen, with their vague and mysterious religious tenets, were with some reason looked on askance by the compact and intolerant (1 Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p 65. -13- ) colony of Endicott and Dudley. They had failed in their enterprise, and had come from the neighborhood of those fishing settlements along the north coast, whose rude and lawless members were in bad odor with the magistrates. It is doubtful, however, if they deserved-l the opprobrium which has clung to them because of a note added later by Winthrop or some other hand--" They most of them proved familists and vanished away." The offensive term of Familist, with its hint of free love tendencies, was applied to many of the settlers who resented and differed from the arbitrary standards of the Massachusetts colony. Thus in June 1632, when Bachiler and Dummer arrived with their families and adherents, the ill-fated little venture was already doomed. The earnest letter which Bachiler brought over from the London merchants was addressed to a band already in disorder, and it seems probable that they remained near Boston only long enough to deliver their patent to the new comers, coupled with such gloomy reports of the northern coast as effectually put an end to any further attempt at colonization. The Company of Husbandmen was practically dead-2, its assets in the hands of the Massachusetts court, and its members scattered; some went back to England and some to Virginia. The L1400 of joint stock was a complete loss, and apparently the patent was seized on by Dummer as some security for his advances. This Plough Patent was for years a source of dispute-3, being assigned some time later to one of Cromwell's commanders, Alexander Rigby, whose agent, George Cleeves, disputed the bounds of the royal province of Gorgeana which fell to the heirs of Sir Ferdinando Gorges. The constant quarrels between the two factions existed until Massachusetts, through its agents in England, bought up their claims and established Maine as a dependency of the Bay Colony. It seems possible that the only person who derived a profit (1 N. E. Hist. Gen. Reg., vol. XLVI, p. 63., 2 Mass. Court Rec., pp. 92, 98, 143. , 3 Me.H.& G. Rec., vol. II, p. 66 & seq. -14- ) from the defunct Plough Company was Richard Dummer-1, who perhaps bought out Bachiler's interest in the patent, and who sold it through Cleeves to Rigby. Bachiler had disposed of his small estate in Hampshire-2 to provide funds for the colony; had brought over a little company of adherents and his own children and grandchildren; and found himself at 71 stranded in Newtown without a settlement or a pastorate, and equipped with a very moderate sum of money, a library of fair size, and a somewhat legendary coat of arms-3, which the fanciful herald, Sylvanus Morgan, says did "appertain to Stephen Bachiler, the first pastor of the church of Ligonia in New England." Bachiler's arrival in the new colony was welcomed. Winthrop mentions it in his journal-4, and it was undoubtedly a matter of moment that the aged Oxford scholar had chosen to settle in the Bay, with a considerable group of hardy immigrants. A man of education and cultivation, as his letters show him to have been, was no mean addition to Winthrop's settlement. Although contrary to the direct statements of Lewis and Newhall, the historians of Lynn, I do not believe that Bachiler and his little colony immediately established a church at Lynn. Bachiler's own letter to Winthrop5 shows his first sojourn was at Newtown, now Cambridge. Here, too, we find the name of John Kerman-6, one of the Plough Company, as an early settler. My idea is that here the handful of colonists left of the Plough Company set up their first tabernacle, and listened to the prophesying of Master Bachiler. The arbitrary General Court of Winthrop's colony promptly suppressed the influence of these doctrines, which were perhaps more tolerant, and thus more (1 Petition of Jeremiah Dummer to Mass. Gen. Ct. Dec., 1683; see Me., Hist. coll., 2 Feet of Fine Southants, Michaelmas Term, 6 Car. I (1630)., 3 Morgan'e "Sphere of Gentry", also Heralds, Coll. "E. D. N. Alphabet of Arms.", 4 Hosmer's Winthrop's Journal, vol. I, p. 80-1., 5 Mass. Hist. Soc. Coll., 4th series, vol. VII, p. 101., 6 First Records of Cambridge.) acceptable to many of the newly arriving colonists not yet firmly bound to the compact and narrow limits of the oligarchy. Bachiler and his adherents had not joined the church covenant by taking the "freeman's oath." The Court-l on Oct. 6, 1632, ordered that "Mr. Batchel'r is required to forbeare exercising his gifts a a pastor or teacher publiquely in our pattent, unless it be to those he brought with him, for his contempt of authority and till some scandles be removed." Probably after this he moved from Newtown to Saugus (Lynn) and established his church there. Massachusetts was fast filling up with immigrants, and new settlements were being established. These plantations either kept no records of their first years, or, if such there were, they have been lost. Thus the only definite data of these early years are contained in the records of the General Court, and in the fragmentary notes of Winthrop's journal. On March 4, 1633-2, the inhibition of the Court was removed, and Bachiler was free to preach at will. This I take to be the date of his first ministrations at Saugus. Here he continued some three years, preaching to his own little flock, and gradually attaching others to them until his church numbered a score of families This increase became less coherent as newcomers settled at Saugus, and on March 15, 1635, Winthrop records-3 that "divers of the brethren of that church, not liking the proceedings of the pastor and withal making a question whether they were a church or not, did separate from church communion." Bachiler and his followers asked the advice of the other churches, who, wishing to hear both sides, offered to meet at Saugus about it. Bachiler then asked the separatists to put their grievances in writing, which they refused to do. At this Bachiler's quick temper flamed up, and he wrote to the other churches that he was resolved to excommunicate these objectors, and therefore the conference at Saugus was not (1 Mass. Court Records vol. I., 2 Mass. Court Records, vol. I., 3 Hosmer's Winthrops Journal, vol. I, p. 148. -16-) needed. This hasty proceeding (as Winthrop calls it) met with no approval at the lecture in Boston where Bachiler's letter was read, and the elders at once went to Saugus to pacify the contending parties. After hearing both sides it was agreed that, though not at first regularly constituted as a church, their consent and practice of a church estate had supplied that defect, and so, Winthrop concludes, all were reconciled. Probably these reconciling elders pointed out to
Master Bachiler that he had not yet conformed to their custom and become a
"freeman"; and indeed the Lynn church resembled rather the voluntary
assemblings of the early Christians than the formal and solemn installations
practised in the Bay. At all events, on May 6, 1635-1, Bachiler yielded to their
practice, became a freeman, and thus joined the compact, if inelastic, body of
the Puritan colony."
07/19/2007 |
