162-.] OLDHAM'S ADVENTURES. -JOHN GALLOP. 273 ferred trading on his own account.1 At the end of 1625 this plantation, which had sunk £3,420, was abandoned. Conant, 1 Oldham's after-life was exciting and tragic. He stayed at Nantasket, trading with the Indians, until in 1626 he sailed for Virginia. At the Cape Cod shoals the ship fell into such danger that destruction was imminent. The passengers had recourse to prayer and the confession to each other of such sins as most burdened them. Oldham made full acknowledgment of all the wrongs which he had done or intended to the people of Plymouth. As he had sought their ruin, he said, God had now met with him, and might destroy him,—yea, he feared they all were faring the worse for his sake, and solemnly vowed to make amends if God would forgive him. The vessel was saved, though turned back; and Oldham, strange to say, remembered his pledge. He treated the Plymouth people with " an honorable respect," and once more declared the hand of God to be with them. He received full permission to come and go; and when, in 1628, the Colony sent a state-prisoner to England, they entrusted him and the evidence against him to their friend Oldham, who then went over. Oldham became a man of note in the Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and a member of its Church, which, while separating vehemently, disclaimed "separation." He was a member of the first General Court of Magistrates and Representatives which met at Boston, being a "deputy" from Watertown. His chief employment was trading with the Narragansets, in connection with which he bought in their Bay of Canonicus, — the beautiful island of one thousand acres, now called Prudence. Thereabouts, in 1634, Master William Peirce went with the "Rebecca," to bring away five hundred bushels of corn which Oldham had accumulated, and while there saw at least one thousand natives. # In July, 1636, John Gallop, of Boston, while sailing home from the Connecticut, encountered Oldham's pinnace off Block Island, with her deck occupied by fourteen Indians. Seeing that she had been captured, he determined to retake her. His crew consisted of his two young sons and a hired man. His fire-arms were two guns and two pistols, and for these he had only duck-shot. As he bore down, the savages stood ready to repel him with their stolen weapons; but his shot so galled them that they all ran below. Then arming his bow with his anchor, Gallop came on with all speed, and “rammed" the pinnace so violently that six of the savages, terrified at this form of warfare, leaped into the sea and were drowned; another stroke, and four followed them. Then, ranging alongside, Gallop grappled an Indian, and tying him, put him in his own hold. Next was taken the frightened sachem, who was the chief murderer, and he was bound; but as Gallop did not dare to put him with the other prisoner (for they would SUB-NOTE. Gallop (Galloupe?) died at Boston 1649, leaving 40s. for "the new meeting-house" (Old South). He was a Boston pilot, probably the first professional one. His successors are constantly reminded of him by a fine island in Boston Harbor bearing his name. He left three sons, all seamen, and a widow. To John, Jr., he gave his shallop, and to the other sons his barque, in which their mother had a half-interest. John was killed at the Narraganset fort, 1675, while captain of a Connecticut company. He took his first lesson in war at the attack on the murderers in Oldham's pinnace, and fell, thirty-nine years later, while bravely leading his men in the battle which destroyed the nation to which those savages had belonged. taking a few of the men and the outfit, then founded what is now Salem,1 Lyford going as their minister and serving as such until 1629.2 Some readers may be surprised to learn that for the first three years of its existence that ancient have quickly released each other), he consulted safety by casting him into the sea. The two surviving pirates remaining concealed in Oldham's hold, Gallop ventured on board; for he had seen a man's body in the stern-sheets hidden under a seine. While his crew covered him with their fire-arms, he examined the corpse, which was still warm, though the head was cleft and the hands and feet had been in process of amputation when the attack began. The head was too bloody for recognition, and Gallop proceeded to wash it. Soon he exclaimed: "Ah! Brother Oldham, is it thou? I am resolved to avenge thy blood!" Oldham, while peacefully trading, had been surprised and assassinated for the sake of plunder. (Bradford's Mms. says: "... being weakly mand, upon some quarell they knockt him on ye head with a hatched, so as he fell downe dead, & never spake word more.") His two Indian employés betrayed him ; and two boys, his kinsmen, who were with him, had been sent on shore as prisoners, but were eventually recovered through Roger Williams. Oldham's body was buried in the sea, which had just swallowed eleven of his murderers. The waves becoming too high for towing the pinnace home, everything accessible was removed for the benefit of Oldham's family, and then she was set adrift. She reached the land in safety, with the two Indians in her. All the minor sachems of the Narraganset nation had been privy to this piracy and murder; but the two grand sachems, whom Roger Williams "stimulated " with six fathoms of beads, pursued and killed Adusah, the immediate assassin. His confederates escaped to the Pequods, whose league with them was one leading cause of the war which the next year annihilated that cruel and treacherous nation. Jonathan Brewster terms Oldham "brother." A Thomas Oldham was at Duxbury 1643, and Scituate 1650. The name was among those of Duxbury's Revolutionary soldiers; and on the monument to Plymouth's volunteers lost in the Civil War is the name of J. T. Oldham. The relationship of these to John is probable. 1 Conant's leading companions in the change from Cape Ann to Naumkeag (Salem) were John Balch, John Woodbury, and Peter Palfrey; also William Trask, captain in the Pequod war, and John Humphrey. All except Balch became members of the legislature in the future Colony of Massachusetts Bay, and all have a long line of worthy descendants, including many of eminence. Conant's wife seems to have been with him at Cape Ann, and probably at Plymouth. Their son Roger, Jr., was the first-born white child of Salem. Balch, from a Somersetshire family which dated from the Conquest, had a wife Annice, who may have come later; but they had in 1629 at Salem a son Benjamin (living 1706). Woodbury's wife was named Agnes, and Palfrey's Edith. 2 Lyford (about 1629) went to a Virginia parish, and soon after died. His widow returned with her children to New England, where she was ever respected, and seems to have been the Widow Ann Lyford, who in 1641-2 was at Hingham, as wife of Edmund Hobart, and whose children, Ruth and Mordecai, then released goods left by "their father, John." 1624.] CESSATION OF DISCUSSIONS. 275 town worshipped exclusively in the form of the Church of England, as also at that time did all the scattered settlers around Boston Bay. Thus ended the great Puritan conspiracy against the Church which the Pilgrims had planted with such sacrifices and watered with such sacred tears, and against that government which they had erected on the then novel principle of the equality of all men before the law. Plymouth lost something by the withdrawal of a few men like Roger Conant, and by the enmity of the Adventurers: but she gained much more by the increased zeal of those who remained; for many who had hitherto stood aloof from her religious organization, felt called upon to rally to its defence and join in its membership; and all felt a new respect for their government, generally so mild, but which had proved so vigorous in the time of peril. Thus came it that this momentous year of 1624 closed on a scene of harmony long to continue. What might have been, had Lyford's place been filled by some liberal and worthy Churchman? It is hardly probable that Plymouth's ceremonials - her formal informality - had become very firmly fixed. It is certain that in Holland the Pilgrims had invited to their communion all pious-minded Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Calvinists of various kinds, welcoming them as brethren of one great household; Robinson in his farewell remarks had suggested the employment of some Nonconformist minister by his people during his absence, and had advised them to seek union with the godly part of the English Churchmen, advice in which he was consistent, for it is recorded that he honored the godly ministers of the Church of England "above all other the professors of religion," for "his spirit cleaved unto them," and he urged "sweet communion" with them. Already in Plymouth were many "not of the Separation," and, as Bradford records, the Pilgrims "were glad of their company." Might 1 Winslow, Chron. Pil., 389. Governor Hinckley wrote in a letter (1684) to England: "Not that we would infringe the liberties of others of orthodox principles, much less. . . the way of the Church of England.”—4 Mass. Hist. Coll., v. 124. not such a congregation have slowly yielded in externals to a ministry of united wisdom, strength, love, and devotion? But unfortunately those ordinances and methods which the seniors had long before known as unnaturally allied with the cruelty and rapacity of bailiffs, now became associated in every mind with Lyford's frauds, vices, and sacrilege. There are those of us, yielding to none in loyalty to our ancestors, and feeling that if we had been with them we should have been of them, who regret the perversion of this opportunity to win them to perhaps some partial use of "that form of sound words," a form Separatists were taught to regard as one of "stinted prayers" and "dumb reading," but which three centuries of Churchmen have found so ample for devotion, so increasingly rich in associations, and so grateful in all the conditions of humanity. Yet our fathers' ways were sanctified to them. Judge them by their works, through which, though dead, they still live. CHAPTER XXVI. Official Business. More Cattle. - Cape Ann MONG the events of 1624, Governor Bradford became the father of a son (June 27th), who, like his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, received the name of William, and who in turn contributed to the next generation a fifth William Bradford (born March 11, 1654), as appears on the records in the writing of the delighted Governor. The William born in 1624 became a scholar, magistrate, and military leader, and was Deputy-Governor at the dissolution of the Colony. He had a grandson William, born at Plympton (Mass.), 1729, who became Lieutenant-Governor of Rhode Island, served her long in the Continental Congress, and was one of her most eminent patriots in the Revolution. There was also born a daughter to John and Priscilla Alden who was named Elizabeth; she was destined to outlive every individual then in the Colony (she died 1717), and, as the widow of William Paybody, to survive the Colony itself by twenty-five years. On August 15th Thomas Prence, the future governor, but then only twenty-two years old, married Patience, daughter of Elder Brewster. This was the ninth marriage since the landing, the others (pretty certainly) having been, 1. Edward Winslow and Mrs. Susanna White. 2. Francis Eaton and Mrs. Carver's maid. 3. John Alden and Priscilla Mullins. 4. Governor Bradford and Mrs. Alice Southworth. 5. Myles Standish and Barbara |