April 29, 2026
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry continues describing how it wasn’t all religion in early America – the pious (dour?) Pilgrims objected to the “licentious” festivities at Thomas Morton’s Merrymount. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
“The old world and its inhabitants became mutually weary of each other. Men voyaged by thousands to the West: some to barter glass beads, and such-like jewels, for the furs of the Indian hunter; some to conquer virgin empires; and one stern band [the Pilgrims at Plymouth] to pray. But none of these motives had much weight with the colonists of Merry Mount.”
–Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The May-Pole of Merry Mount”
Today I continue with my story on Merrymount, now part of Quincy, Massachusetts, the Crown-sponsored colony run by Thomas Morton (dubbed the “Lord of Misrule” by Plymouth’s William Bradford because of Morton’s progressive colonization style, which contrasted with the more sober, pious lifestyle of the Pilgrims.
To recap: Part 1 ended with Captain Myles Standish, aka “Capt. Shrimpe,” and his men arriving at Merrymount to clean out the corrupted colony.
Before I begin with the drama of pursuit, a few other factors must be weighed regarding what motivated the need to get Morton and his merry band shut down.
Here is intel from Tom Henshaw’s article, “The Pilgrims’ Serpent,” published in several newspapers in 1960.
Henshaw writes:
Merrymount on Plymouth’s very doorstep was a bit like a dry town with a riotous roadhouse on its outskirts. It’s entirely possible that a few of the Pilgrim sons liked to sneak off for an occasional evening of high living with “mine host,” as Morton had taken to calling himself.
Worse than that, “mine host” also had an uncanny knack of getting along with the Indians – whom the Pilgrims never quite trusted – with the result that the lucrative beaver trade began to by-pass Plymouth in favor of Merrymount.
The secret of Morton’s success was simple: He had no qualms about trading guns and firewater to the red men in return for beaver, something the Pilgrims never could bring themselves to do.
Henshaw quotes part of William Bradford’s Of Plimoth Plantation regarding Morton not only trading guns to the Indians, but also instructing them on how to use them. Here is a passage from Bradford’s own writings:
“Morton, thinking himself lawless, and hearing what gain ye French & fisher-men made by trading of pieces [guns], powder, & shot to ye Indians, he, as ye head of this consortship, began ye practice of ye same in these parts; and first he taught them how to use them, to charge, & discharge, and what proportion of powder to give ye piece, according to ye size or bignes of ye same; and what shot to use for foule, and what for deare. And having thus instructed them, he employed some of them to hunt & fowle for him, so they became far more active in that employment than any of ye English.”
Additionally, Bradford writes about how the chiefs of other Indian tribes were so deeply concerned with Morton that they aligned with the Pilgrims to suppress “mine host.” The strategy was using their strength in numbers. Here are Bradford’s words:
“So sundry of ye chiefs of ye straggling plantations, meeting together, agreed by mutual consente to solicit those of Plimoth (who were then of more strength than them all) to join with them, to prevent ye further growth of this mischief, and suppress Morton & his consorts before they grew to further head and strength. Those that joined in this action (and after contributed to ye charge of sending him for England) were from Pascataway, Namkeake, Winisimett, Weesagascusett, Natasco, and other places where any English were seated.”
Here is a map of the Blue Hills Indian lands, which includes some Algonquian tribes (major groups included the Wampanoag, Narragansett, Pequot, Mohegan, and Abenaki) who traded with Morton.
Morton’s New English Canaan, a book written about his jolly colony in New England, also contains accounts of the Indians that are better than most colonial writers, and his work remains extremely valuable for those researching New England’s earliest inhabitants.
Myles Standish was chosen for the task of invading Merrymount and taking out Morton and his band of bawdy boys. There are various accounts about what went down. Henshaw includes both accounts in his article:
It was obvious that the Pilgrims had to do something about Morton, and it was equally obvious that the man to do it was Capt. Myles Standish, the dour, hot-tempered commander of the little Pilgrim army.
What followed is known jocularly as the “Battle of Merrymount,” which, when judged in the light of rival communiques, ranks as something less than one of the world’s most decisive engagements.
As Bradford tells it, “mine host” and his merry men locked themselves in their house and then proceeded to get so royally soused that they couldn’t even defend themselves.
Bradford noted in Of Plimoth Plantation there was no bloodshed as the “Lord of Misrule” and his cohorts were too drunk.
Back to Henshaw:
Morton tells it differently.
Standish and his men laid siege to Morton’s house and, as time wore on, it was the Pilgrims who hit the bottle so hard that “mine host” and his jolly boys had to tip-toe their way out of the house among sodden, snoring bodies.
Standish, wrote Morton, “took on most furiously and tore his clothes for anger to see the nest empty and their bird gone.” Later, Morton claimed, he surrendered to avoid bloodshed.
The Pilgrims deported Morton to England, and perhaps they held another Thanksgiving dinner, for they were certain that they had seen the last of the serpent in their Eden. They hadn’t.
Stay tuned…
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Note on the header image: Mayday at Merrymount. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
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