1021

SYSTEM OF COMMUNAL LAND TENURE.

73

orders of the Governor and Assistants. All produce was to be put into a common stock. Out of that the wants of the settlers were to be supplied, while the surplus was to form the profits of the Company, or, as Bradford usually calls it, the general.'

Some writers have imagined that a desire to copy the institutions of the primitive Church led to the adoption of this system. There is not a word in any contemporary document to show that the Puritans of Plymouth or their brethren in England had even a speculative preference for such a scheme. If the theory needed refuting, it would be disposed of by the fact, already mentioned, that a stipulation for private holdings was urged by the settlers and refused by their commercial associates, who are little likely to have been guided by scriptural precedent.1

Later inquirers have, with more plausibility, seen in New Plymouth and in the other New England townships which followed its model, the continuation of the old Teutonic village, with its mark, or common field, of which a portion is allotted in temporary holdings, to be tilled according to certain fixed rules. The truth of this view depends on the extent to which the analogy is pressed. That there is a likeness between the earlier and later tenure cannot be questioned. But to prove identity in the case of institutions, not merely likeness but continuity is needed. It must never be forgotten that to speak of institutions' is merely a convenient way of stating the fact that a body of men, in their corporate capacity, perform a certain class of acts. generations of the same race, widely separated in time, may perform the same acts; yet, unless the intermediate

1 See above, p. 55.

Two

2 This view is set forth in a monograph by Mr. Herbert B. Adams, entitled The Germanic Origin of New England Towns. This forms part of a historical series published by the Johns Hopkins University.

generations have also performed them, or unless the younger generation is consciously and deliberately copying the older one, it is hardly correct to speak of the institutions as identical. Here, then, we are at once met by two difficulties. If the New England system was the continuation of the mark, the English common field is needed as a link between them. But the identity of the mark with the English common field of later times, even the connexion between them, must be looked on as in itself an open question. And even if we allow that the common tenure, which has left such marked traces on the agriculture of later times, is but a continuation of that system which obtained among the English in their continental home, it has yet to be shown that the New England system was a continuation of the latter.

The manor may have been the continuation of the mark, or it may have been an alien system which only resembled it in some of its incidents. But it is certain that the manorial system had, in its turn, been largely superseded by that separate cultivation which has in our day become universal. Communal land tenure was not unknown to the Englishman of the seventeenth century, but it was not the form with which he was most familiar. The adoption of the system by the colonists was due to the necessity which forced them into unwilling partnership with a body of traders. Under these circumstances it is certainly safer, and probably more accurate, to say, not that the colonists carried on the primitive Teutonic usage, but that the usage revived and recovered its strength under circumstances closely resembling those which had originally

1 Less weight than this cannot, I think, be given to the views set forth by Mr. Seebohm in his recent work on The English Village Community. At the same time it would be premature to treat them as forming more than a plausible hypothesis.

1621

DISPUTES WITH THE LONDON PARTNERS.

75

favoured its growth. At the same time it must be admitted that the incidents of the new system often reproduce with startling fidelity those which patient inquiry has detected in the past.

Difficulties with the London partners.

We have already seen in the case of Virginia how the objects of a commercial corporation are likely to conflict with the welfare of a young community. The Virginia Company indeed in its later days, guided by men of singularly lofty and selfsacrificing spirit, postponed present gain to the enduring advantage of the community which it had founded. But the temper which animated Sandys and Ferrars found no counterpart among the merchants who were associated with the Plymouth colonists. We are reminded of the remonstrances addressed by the Virginia Company to its first party of emigrants,' when we find Weston, one of the chief London partners, writing to upbraid Bradford with the slender results of the undertaking. Later events make it likely that Weston did more than justice to the complaints of his associates in the hope of making mischief between them and the colonists, and thus securing for himself any profit that could be got out of the settlement. The difference between Smith's answer and that sent by Bradford is characteristic. Smith rebukes the Company for their folly in preferring immediate profit to the permanent welfare of the colony. Bradford's strain is of a higher mood. He reminds the partners that, if the Company had lost their profits, the settlers had suffered worse things in the loss of many honest and industrious men's lives. The alliance with a commercial company might be a needful stepping stone for the Puritan refugees in their search for a new home: it could never as a lasting arrangement be acceptable to

2 Bradford publishes Weston's letter and his own answer in his history, pp. 66, 67.

either side. The relations between the settlers and the London partners were made yet more unsatisfactory by the want of unity which prevailed among the latter. Weston's letter showed clearly that he had no sympathy with the peculiar aims and principles of the Plymouth settlers, and in his subsequent conduct he proved himself equally disloyal to his colleagues in England. He soon gave reason to suspect that he was endeavouring to alienate the settlers from their partners, and by thus wrecking the Company to get the trade of the colony into his own hands. This suspicion was confirmed by the fact that he was engaged in establishing a private plantation of his own. The fate of this abortive and discreditable effort will be more fitly dealt with hereafter.

Weston was not the only one of the partners who sought to make his own profit at the expense of the rest. Since the site occupied by the settlers formed no part of the Virginia Company's territory, it became necessary to obtain a patent from the grantees of the soil, the recently established Council for New England. Accordingly, in May 1621, a patent was issued making over to the adventurers the tract on which their emigrants had settled. This patent was granted to John Pierce, one of the partners, as agent or trustee for the whole body. What followed is somewhat obscure. Pierce, it is said, contrived in the next year to obtain from the Council a fresh patent, superseding the original one. This new instrument seemingly converted Pierce from the trustee of the Company into the actual recipient in his own right, and placed the partners in the position of his tenants. In the autumn of 1622 Pierce sailed for New England to put in force his fraudulently gotten claims. A storm, however, drove him back, and forced him to postpone his voyage till the next year. A second time he sailed, and a second time he 1 Bradford, p. 76.

1622-3

GRANT OF ALLOTMENTS.

77

was beaten back by contrary winds. In March 1623 Pierce's partners summoned him before the Plymouth Council. After a long dispute Pierce abandoned his claim. On the face of the matter it would seem as if a barefaced attempt at fraud had failed, but if it be true that Pierce received five hundred pounds as compensation, there must have been circumstances in the case beyond those which have been recorded.'

It is scarcely a subject for wonder that the partners, thus beset by dissension among themselves, should have neglected the welfare of the settlers. In the autumn of 1622 the colony was increased by the arrival of thirtyfive fresh emigrants. But after the first migration no supply of food was sent from England. This was treated by the settlers as a grievance against their partners in England. Yet it seemed in no way unreasonable that the colony should have been expected henceforth to maintain itself by its own labour.2

Grant of

Their necessities compelled the settlers to make an important change in their economical arrangements. Communism had, in all probability, only been allotments. tried as a temporary experiment, but even as such it had failed. The nature and causes of that failure are forcibly described by Bradford. The aged and graver' men resented having to take their place as labourers in a common gang, while the young and vigorous felt it hard that their labour should be no better rewarded than that of the old and infirm. Husbands, too, disliked an arrangement which compelled their wives to act as public servants, and to wash and cook for any members of the community as the government might appoint.

1 All that we know about Pierce's patent is derived from the Minutes of the council for New England, in the Colonial Papers, and from Bradford. That he received five hundred pounds compensation is stated in a letter written by the London partners, and published by Bradford, p. 99.

2 Winslow, p. 280.