Read Mayflower for Free Online Page A

and her longtime lover, Jacob Blakeway. When Catherine’s husband, Samuel More, an aristocrat who spent most of his time in London, belatedly realized that his children were not his own (their resemblance to Blakeway, he insisted in court, was unmistakable), he divorced his wife and took custody of the children. More determined that it would be best for the children to begin a new life in America. They were sent to London and placed under the care of Weston, Cushman, and Carver, who assigned Ellen, eight, to Edward and Elizabeth Winslow; Jasper, seven, to the Carvers; and both Richard, five, and Mary, four, to William and Mary Brewster, who were accompanied by their evocatively named sons Love and Wrestling.
    In the meantime, matters were coming to a head between the Leideners and Thomas Weston. Cushman had signed the revised agreement with the merchants in London, but the Leideners refused to honor it. Weston stalked off in a huff, insisting that “they must then look to stand on their own legs.” As Cushman knew better than anyone, this was not in their best interests. They didn’t have enough provisions to feed them all for a year, and yet they still owed many of their suppliers money. Without Weston to provide them with the necessary funds, they were forced to sell off some of their precious foodstuffs, including more than two tons of butter, before they could sail from Southampton.
    Adding to the turmoil and confusion was the behavior of Christopher Martin. The Mayflower ’s governor was, according to Cushman, a monster. “[H]e insulteth over our poor people, with such scorn and contempt,” Cushman wrote, “as if they were not good enough to wipe his shoes…. If I speak to him, he flies in my face as mutinous, and saith no complaints shall be heard or received but by himself.” In a letter hastily written to a friend in London, Cushman saw only doom and disaster ahead. “Friend, if ever we make a plantation God works a miracle, especially considering how scant we shall be of victuals, and most of all un-united amongst ourselves and devoid of good tutors and regiment. Violence will break all. Where is the meek and humble spirit of Moses?”
    When it finally came time to leave Southampton, Cushman made sure he was with his friends aboard the Speedwell. He was now free of Martin but soon found that the Speedwell was anything but speedy. “[S]he is as open and leaky as a sieve,” he wrote. As they watched the water spout through the gaps in the planking, he and his compatriots from Leiden were reminded of the earthen dikes in Holland, claiming that “the water came in as at a mole hole.” Several days after clearing the Isle of Wight off England’s southern coast, it was decided they must put in for repairs, and both vessels sailed for Dartmouth, a port only seventy-five miles to the west of Southampton.
    It was now August 17. The repairs were quickly completed, but this time the wind refused to cooperate. They were stuck in Dartmouth, a rock-rimmed harbor surrounded by high, sheltering hills, waiting for a fair breeze. People were beginning to panic—and with good reason. “Our victuals will be half eaten up, I think, before we go from the coast of England,” Cushman wrote. Many of the passengers decided it was time to abandon the voyage. Even though they’d lose everything they had so far invested, which for some of them amounted to everything they possessed, they wanted out. But Martin refused to let them off the Mayflower. “[H]e will not hear them, nor suffer them to go ashore,” Cushman wrote from Dartmouth, “lest they should run away.”
    The months of unremitting tension had caught up with Cushman. For the last two weeks he had felt a searing pain in his chest—“a bundle of lead as it were, crushing my heart.” He was sure this would be his last good-bye: “[A]lthough I do the actions of a living man yet