This story of the unscrupulous Morton furnished Butler with the materials out of which he constructed the following fable in his Hudibras, part ii., canto ii., line 409.
Choice malefactors to excuse,
And hang the guiltless in their stead,
Of whom the churches have less need;
As lately happened. In a town,
There lived a cobbler and but one,
That out of doctrine could cut use,
And mend men’s lives as well as shoes.
This precious brother having slain,
In times of peace, an Indian,
(Not out of malice, but mere zeal,
Because he was an infidel),
The mighty Tottipotymoy
Sent to our elders an envoy,
Complaining sorely of the breach
Of league, held forth, by brother Patch,
Against the articles in force
Between both churches, his and ours;
For which he craved the saints to render
Into his hands, or hang the offender.
But they, maturely having weighed,
They had no more but him of the trade,
A man that served them in a double
Capacity, to teach and cobble,
Resolved to spare him; yet to do
The Indian Hoghgan Moghgan, too,
Impartial justice, in his stead did
Hang an old weaver, that was bed-rid.”
It will be observed that Morton mentions this substitution merely as the suggestion of an individual, which was rejected by the company. Even had it been adopted by them, and carried into execution, it would not have implicated the Plymouth people at all, nor cast the least slur on their characters or principles. For Weston’s colony was entirely distinct from theirs, and composed of a very different set of men. Morton himself calls “many of them lazy persons, that would use no endeavour to take the benefit of the country.” As Belknap says, “They were a set of needy adventurers, intent only on gaining a subsistence.” They did not come over from any religious scruples, or with any religious purpose. There is no evidence that they had any church at all; they certainly were not Puritans. Neal says, in his Hist. of New England, i. 102, that Weston obtained a patent under pretence of propagating the discipline of the Church of England in America.
Grahame, i. 198, falls into an error in attributing this execution to Gorges’s colony, which settled at the same place in the autumn of the same year; and Drake, b. ii., 34, errs in saying that Morton was one of Weston’s company. Morton did not come over till March, 1625, in company with Wollaston, and settled with him not at Weymouth, but in Quincy. See Prince, pp. 221, 231. The accurate Hutchinson, i. 6, should not have made a fact out of the careless Hubbard’s supposition, which the latter mentions as barely “possible.” See Mass. Hist. Coll., xv. 77.
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