nking, carousing, and corrupting the Indians,
affronting the decorous Separatists at Plymouth, Morton later became a
serious menace to the peace of Massachusetts Bay. The Pilgrims felt that
the coming of such adventurers and scoffers, who were none too
scrupulous in their dealings with either white man or Indian and were
given to practices which the Puritans heartily abhorred, was a calamity
showing that even in the wilds of America they could not escape the
world from which they were anxious to withdraw.

The settlements formed by these squatters and stragglers were quite
unauthorized by the New England Council, which owned the title to the
soil. As this Council had accomplished very little under its patent, Sir
Ferdinando Gorges, its most active member, persisted in his efforts to
found a colony, brought about a general distribution of the territory
among its members, and obtained for himself and his son Robert, the
section around and immediately north of Massachusetts Bay. An expedition
was at once launched. In September, 1623, Robert Gorges with six
gentlemen and a well-equipped and well-organized body of settlers
reached Plymouth,--the forerunners, it was hoped, of a large number to
come. This company of settlers was composed of families, the heads of
which were mechanics and farmers, and with them were two clergymen,
Morrell and Blackstone, the whole constituting the greatest enterprise
set on foot in America by the Council. Robert Gorges, bearing a
commission constituting him Governor-General over all New England, made
his settlement at Weston's old place at Wessagusset. Here he built
houses and stored his goods and began the founding of Weymouth, the
second permanent habitation in New England and the first on
Massachusetts Bay. Unfortunately, famine, that arch-enemy of all the
early settlers, fell upon his company, his father's resources in England
proved inadequate, and he and others were obliged to return. Of those
that remained a few stayed at Wessagusset; one of the clergymen, William
Blackstone, with his wife went to Shawmut (Boston); Samuel Maverick and
his wife, to Winnissimmet (Chelsea); and the Walfords, to Mishawum
(Charlestown). Probably all these people were Anglicans; some later
became freemen of the Massachusetts colony; others who refused to
conform returned to England; but Blackstone remained in his little
cottage on the south slope of Beacon Hill, unwilling to join any of the
churches, because,