Twelve Honest Men

In November 1620, the men aboard the Mayflower signed a document known as the Mayflower Compact, agreeing that they would come together as a political body to create “just and equal laws” for their new colony. One of their first laws in Plymouth Colony paved the way for jury trials. On December 17, 1623, the town court ordered that all matters of crime, trespass, and debt disputes “should be tried by the verdict of twelve honest men... in form of a jury."

Before this, crimes and legal disputes were handled within regular town meetings under the oversight of the governor, but as the colony grew, the town meeting became unwieldy for many tasks. The Pilgrim’s desire for freedom in religious practice did not mean they rejected the semblance of law and order, so as citizens of England they conducted their affairs in ways familiar to them, and that would meet the approval of governing authorities. Their differences with the Church of England may have motivated the young colony to work all the more to show themselves as conscientious and law-abiding citizens and loyal subjects of His Majesty, King James.

Although the jury system was rarely needed in the earliest days, it was certainly tested a few years later when the first murder occurred in their midst. In 1630, one of the original Mayflower passengers was put on trial before a jury and found guilty of "willful murder by plain and notorious evidence." He was soon after hanged for his crime. 

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“And I charged your Judges that same time, saying, Hear the controversies between your brethren, and judge righteously between every man and his brother, and the stranger that is with him. Ye shall have no respect of person in judgment, but shall hear the small as well as the great: ye shall not fear the face of man: for the judgment is God's....” 

(Deuteronomy 1:16-17;1599 Geneva Bible)

Arrival at Plymouth Harbor

On December 16, 1620, the Mayflower finally anchored in Plymouth Harbor on the western shore of Cape Cod Bay. The Mayflower’s passengers first set sail from England on August 5, however, they were stalled for weeks because their companion vessel kept leaking. After fruitless repairs to the Speedwell, they abandoned the smaller ship in early September, leaving behind some passengers and cargo, and sailed for two months on the restless Atlantic Ocean. When they reached Cape Cod on the American coast, far north of their destination, they waited weeks onboard the ship as search teams explored the coastland and as several passengers died onboard. 

It had been over four months after they first set sail from Southampton when Captain Jones gave the command to drop anchor in Plymouth Harbor. For many passengers, their shipboard ordeal began even earlier when they boarded the Speedwell in Holland on July 22 to meet fellow colonists awaiting them in England. 

After the ship reached Plymouth Harbor, there were several more days of exploration before settling on a place to establish their lives, and several more weeks of falling trees and building their crude village on the frozen ground before they could all leave the ship and become land-dwellers once more.

Even more passengers would die of various causes while they waited on the Mayflower. Though the passengers left no record of stepping down at any specific place, Plymouth Rock has since become an important symbol of their difficult journey and determination to begin anew. 

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“Albeit they were few in number, yea very few, and strangers in the land. And walked about from nation to nation, from one kingdom to another people.” 

(Psalms 105:12-13; 1599 Geneva Bible)

A “Dangerous Woman” Makes Her Stand

After her husband died, Lady Deborah Moody lived in London with her children for ten years, then found herself at odds with the Church of England. She was called into the Star Chamber, the court reserved for British nobles. They did not approve of her new religious associations. She was consorting with the Anabaptists, who insisted it was wrong to baptize infants, for they could not yet embrace Christian faith. The chamber ordered her to leave London and return home to Wiltshire. Instead, she sailed to New England, home of her friend, Governor John Winthrop of Massachusetts.

Lady Moody joined the church in Salem in the spring of 1640. She soon became a landowner, with over 1000 acres, renting it out to other settlers. Her social status and influential personality gave her the opportunity to share her religious convictions with friends and neighbors, and her Anabaptist ideas began to take hold. One influential neighbor took note. Reverend Hugh Peter, who succeeded in banishing Anne Hutchinson for her religious views, complained to other prominent men, and they soon labeled her a “dangerous woman.”

December 14, 1642, Deborah Moody and other women were brought to court and charged with falsely teaching that the baptism of infants was not an “ordinance of God.” Refusing to recant, or remain in another religiously intolerant environment, she moved again. This time to the more tolerant Dutch area of New Amsterdam, where she founded the settlement that eventually became Brooklyn and Coney Island.

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“But Peter and John answered unto them, and said, Whether it be right in the sight of God, to obey you rather than God, judge ye. For we cannot but speak the thing which we have seen and heard.” 

(Acts 4:19-20; 1599 Geneva Bible)

Another Desperate, Frigid Search

On the icy morning of December 7, 1620, several men set off again from the Mayflower. Two weeks anchored off the bitter New England coast, the ocean-weary passengers and over two dozen restless crewmembers hoped this would be the day the Pilgrims found a suitable home. 

While the men in the shallop searched for a harbor deep enough to bring in the ship, those on foot stumbled upon graves and the decayed structures of earlier inhabitants. Both groups found beached blackfish measuring nearly twenty feet long. One fish was cut up with several pieces strewn about. 

The land party found bare human footprints along the sandy beach and followed them toward the woods where one man thought he glimpsed an Indian shelter. As night fell, the ground team lost sight of the shallop. They scurried out of the woods to reconnect with the others. When they found the boat, they directed it toward a nearby creek. After both teams reunited, they gathered firewood and made their usual crude barricade for protection against wind and possible nighttime attacks. 

In the deepening darkness, they ate their meager rations and shared the stories they gathered from the day's events. At night, however, their sleep was interrupted by loud, bone-chilling cries. They jumped to their feet, grabbed their muskets, and fired into the darkness. After a long silence, seeing nothing in the dim firelight, they decided the howls were probably wolves. One crewman said he often heard the same unearthly sounds in Newfoundland.

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“For poverty and famine they were solitary, fleeing into the wilderness, which is dark, desolate and waste.” 

(Job 30:3; 1599 Geneva Bible)

Jasper Dies Far From Home

Six years after their 1610 marriage, Samuel More was convinced his wife had a long-term affair. All four children in the More household bore a noticeable resemblance to Katherine’s childhood friend, Jacob Blakeway. Long before Samuel and Katherine were married, she and Jacob promised themselves to each other, but her father had other plans. He arranged for Katherine to marry her cousin, Samuel, in order to keep their Shropshire County estate within the family. 

Months after their fourth child was born, despite Katherine’s wishes, Samuel placed the children with another family. Four years later, he placed them all aboard the Mayflower with those pious passengers intent on planting another English colony on the American continent. By sending them across the ocean, Samuel believed the children could leave behind a lifetime of questions about their parentage and have a far better chance for happiness and prosperity. But Samuel surely also knew it was an effective way to minimize his pubic humiliation, lash out against his cheating wife, and slash his financial burden for children he no longer wanted. 

On December 6, 1620, seven-year-old Jasper More died at Cape Cod from an infection, the first child to die on the journey. Within weeks, both sisters would follow him in death. Out of the four Mayflower siblings, only Richard More survived to adulthood, becoming an important sea captain for the colonists. 

Little is known of their mother's fate, but Samuel More became a member of England’s Parliament and a military officer. 

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“Behold, children are the inheritance of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb his reward. As are the arrows in the hand of the strong man; so are the children of youth. Blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them.” 

(Psalms 127:3-5; 1599 Geneva Bible)

Another Warrant for William Brewster

 On December 1, 1607, a second arrest warrant was issued for William Brewster, charged with being "disobedient in matters of religion." 

The Separatists who met in Brewster's home could no longer, in good conscience, worship with the Church of England. There were too many remnants of the Roman Catholic faith for their taste. In Brewster's Nottinghamshire home in Scrooby, England, they believed they could worship as their conscience dictated and avoid any conflicts with the local church authorities. This arrangement, however, did not last for long. 

Three years earlier, the Church of England issued 141 rules to force the Separatists into cooperation in matters of church beliefs and practices. But those new rules served only to toughen their determination to go their own way. King James feared that their religious rebellion may lead to a political rebellion and an attempt to overthrow his government. He angrily declared, "I shall make them conform themselves, or I will harry them out of the land." 

Archbishop Tobias Matthews made himself an expert on these religious radicals, reading every possible book on the subject. For harboring these disagreeable pietists and teaching them unlawful religious doctrines, the Archbishop declared that William Brewster was "a very dangerous schismatical Separatist." 

Brewster eventually paid the fines laid against him and two other Separatist friends, however he refused to appear in court to face the charges. Though he escaped arrest this time, it would not be England’s last attempt to bring him in for his religious rebellion. 

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“But before all these, they shall lay their hands on you, and persecute you, delivering you up to the assemblies, and into prisons, and bring you before Kings and rulers for my Name’s sake.” 

(Luke 21:12; 1599 Geneva Bible)

The Blustery Quest for a Home

On November 27th, 1620, the Pilgrims of the Mayflower sent over thirty colonists and sailors on a third expedition for a settlement site. Led by Shipmaster Christopher Jones, they piled into the newly repaired shallop (their small expedition boat). The winds lashed their faces as they clutched their coats tight against the chill.

As evening came, Master Jones, his bones aching from an endless march through snowy dunes, ordered the men to stop and make camp, though a few settlers wanted to keep searching. A few blasts from their muskets, and the famished men, who had not eaten all day, satisfied their rumbling bellies with three geese and six ducks before they bedded down beneath the pines. After a night huddled on the freezing shore, they awoke to six inches of snow. 

They soon found even more buried corn, and two abandoned wetus – native houses made from bent saplings and covered with bark. Recognizing some were too ill to continue, Jones headed back with the corn and sick men as the others pressed on. The explorers knew the corn was stored by the native people, but in their desperation, they considered it a blessing of God. Now that winter was already upon them, planting their own crops was impossible, and they promised themselves that they would repay the land’s residents at a later date. 

When they finally returned to the ship, the men found that some of their party had already died in the frigid cold of Cape Cod.

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“He giveth snow like wool, and scattereth the hoary frost like ashes. He casteth forth his ice like morsels: who can abide the cold thereof?” 

(Psalms 147:16-17, 1599 Geneva Bible)

“When they wandered in the desert and wilderness out of the way, and found no city to dwell in, both hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them.” 

(Psalms 107:4-5, 1599 Geneva Bible)