in extreme danger. It caused the sea to swell in some places to the southward of Plimouth, as that it arose to twenty foot right up and down, and made many of the Indians to climb into trees for their safety. It threw down all the corn to the ground, which never rose more, the which, through the mercy of God, it being near the harvest time, was not lost, though much the worse; and had the wind continued without shifting, in likelihood it would have drowned some part of the country. It blew down many hundred thousands of trees, turning up the stronger by the roots, and breaking the high pine trees, and such like, in the midst; and the tall young oaks, and walnut trees, of good bigness, were wound as a withe by it, very strange and fearful to behold. It began in the south-east, and veered sundry ways, but the greatest force of it, at Plimouth, was from the former quarter; it continued not in extremity above five or six hours before the violence of it began to abate; the marks of it will remain this many years, in those parts where it was sorest. The moon suffered a great eclipse two nights after it.¹²

The general court gave Mr. Thatcher £26 13s. 4d., toward his losses, and divers good people gave him besides. Mr. Thatcher was the uncle of the Rev. Thomas Thatcher, who came over with him in the James, 1635, and who was ordained pastor of the church at Weymouth, January 2, 1645, and installed the first pastor of the Old South Church in Boston, February 16, 1670. He was the progenitor of the long line of clergymen who have distinguished the name of Thatcher. Cotton Mather says, that a day or two before that fatal voyage from Newbury to Marblehead, our young Thatcher (the same Thomas Thatcher) had such a strong and sad impression upon his mind, about the issue of the voyage, that he, with another, would needs go the journey by land, and so he escaped perishing with some of his pious and precious friends by sea.—Young’s Chron. Mass., 594. See also Ibid., pp.486–495, for a full account of this shipwreck.

1636

This year Mr. Edward Winslow was chosen governor of the jurisdiction of Plimouth; and Mr. William Bradford, Mr. Thomas Prince, Mr. William Collier, Mr. John Alden, Mr. Timothy Hatherly, Mr. John Brown, and Mr. Stephen Hopkins, were chosen to be his assistants in government.

This year the towns on the river of Connecticut began to be planted,¹³

Now followeth the tragedy of the war that fell betwixt the English and the Pequots, which I will relate according to my best intelligence; in order whereunto I thought good to mention some particulars first, that by discerning the whole matter, in the several parts and circumstances, the more of the mercy and goodness of God may be taken notice of to his praise, for destroying so proud and blasphemous an enemy.¹⁴

In the year 1634, the Pequots, a stout and warlike people, who had made war with sundry of their neighbours, and being puffed up with many victories, grew now at variance with the Narragansets, a great people bordering upon them. These Narragansets held correspondence and terms of friendship with the English of the Massachusetts. Now the Pequots being conscious of the guilt of Capt. Stone’s death, whom they knew to be an Englishman, as also those that were with him, and being fallen out with the Dutch, lest they should have over many enemies at once, sought to make friendship with the English of the Massachusetts, and for that end, sent both messengers and gifts unto them, as appears by some letters sent from the governor of the Massachusetts to the governor of Plimouth, as followeth :—