Mayflower

whose descendants included future U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The newly remarried Edward Winslow greeted his twenty-four-year-old brother John. There was also Thomas Prence, the twenty-one-year-old son of a Gloucestershire carriage maker, who soon became one of the leading members of the settlement.
    The most notable new arrival was Robert Cushman, whose chest pains aboard the ill-fated Speedwell had convinced him to remain in England during the summer of 1620. Cushman had negotiated the agreement with Thomas Weston and the Merchant Adventurers that Bradford and the others had refused to honor in Southampton. It was now time, Cushman told them, to sign the controversial agreement. “We…have been very chargeable to many of our loving friends…,” Cushman tactfully exhorted them in a sermon entitled “The Sin of Self-Love” delivered in the common house. “[B]efore we think of gathering riches,” Cushman admonished, “we must even in conscience think of requiting their charge” by paying the Merchant Adventurers back in goods. Cushman also presented the Pilgrims with a new patent secured from the Council for New England.
    Unfortunately, from Cushman’s perspective, Weston had insisted on writing a letter. Addressed to the now deceased Governor Carver, the letter took the Pilgrims to task for not having loaded the Mayflower with goods. “I know your weakness was the cause of it,” Weston wrote, “and I believe more weakness of judgment than weakness of hands. A quarter of the time you spent in discoursing, arguing and consulting would have done much more.” Bradford was justifiably outraged by Weston’s accusation, apparently based on some letters that had made their way back to England on the Mayflower. Bradford acknowledged that the Merchant Adventurers had, so far, nothing to show for their investment. But their potential losses were only financial; Governor Carver had worked himself to death that spring, and “the loss of his and many other industrious men’s lives cannot be valued at any price.”
    Despite his criticisms, Weston claimed to be one of the few financial backers the Pilgrims could still count on. “I promise you,” he wrote, “I will never quit the business, though all the other Adventurers should.” Only after Cushman assured them that Weston was a man to be trusted did Bradford and the others reluctantly sign the agreement.
    Over the next two weeks, they loaded the Fortune with beaver skins, sassafras, and clapboards made of split oak (much smaller than modern clapboards, they were used for making barrel staves instead of siding houses). Valued at around £500, the cargo came close to cutting their debt in half. Certainly this would go a long way toward restoring the Merchant Adventurers’ confidence in the financial viability of the settlement.
    On December 13, 1621, after a stay of just two weeks, the Fortune was on her way back to London. Cushman returned with her, leaving his fourteen-year-old son Thomas in Bradford’s care. In addition to Bradford’s letter to Weston, Cushman was given a manuscript account of the Pilgrims’ first thirteen months in America that was published the following year and is known today as Mourt’s [an apparent corruption of the editor George Morton’s last name] Relation. Written by Bradford and Edward Winslow, the small book ends with Winslow’s rhapsodic account of the First Thanksgiving and the abundance of the New World. Just days after the Fortune ’s departure, the Pilgrims had reason to regret Winslow’s overly optimistic view of life in Plymouth.
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    The Pilgrims soon began to realize that their alliance with the Pokanokets had created serious problems with the far more powerful Narragansetts. The previous summer, Bradford had exchanged what he felt were positive and hopeful messages with the Narragansett sachem, Canonicus. Since then, however, Canonicus had grown increasingly jealous of the Pokanoket-Plymouth alliance. The Narragansetts, it was rumored, were preparing to attack the English settlement.
    Toward the end of November a Narragansett messenger arrived at the settlement, looking for Squanto. He had a mysterious object from Canonicus in his hands. When he learned that the interpreter was away, he “seemed rather to be glad than sorry,” and hurriedly handed over what the Pilgrims soon realized was a