good contente, and setled mens minds. Also they gave the Gove[rno]r and 4 or 5 of the spetiall men amongst them, the houses they lived in; the rest were valued and equalised at an indiferent rate, and so every man kept his owne, and he that had a better alowed some thing to him that had a worse, as the valuation wente. Ther is one thing that fell out in the begining of the winter before, which I have resserved to this place, that I may handle the whole matter togeither. Ther was a ship,' with many passengers in her and sundrie goods, bound for Virginia. They had lost them selves at sea, either by the insufficiencie of the maister, or his ilnes; for he was taking the benefit thereof." On the same day Peirce sold to Standish two shares in the same cow "for and in consideration of two Ewe lambs the one to be delivered at the time of weaning this present yeare and the other at the same time Anno 1628 freeing the said Abraham," etc. This cow belonged to the poor of the Company, p. 272, infra, and by these purchases Standish obtained full control of the thirteen shares she represented. As Winslow had married the widow of William White, he controlled the shares of the minor children, Resolved and Peregrine. At the rate named in the Winslow sale the cow would be worth £11. 18s. 4d., a figure reached in 1638, when Bradford remarked upon the good prices obtained (p. 269, infra). 1 Johnston, a Scotchman, was master of this ill-fated vessel. Morton, New Englands Memoriall, *67. In 1863 the remains of an "old ship" were discovered on Nauset Beach, and in the autumn of 1865 they were brought to Boston and exhibited on Boston Common. Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, vIII. 464. In the same year a pamphlet was published, The Ancient Wreck; Loss of the Sparrow-Hawk in 1626. Of this relic and description Mr. Deane wrote, in 1888: "This pamphlet gave a history of the discovery of the old ship, and a delineation of its restoration by experienced ship-builders, showing its dimensions, etc. . . . This pamphlet was issued in three editions, in the second of which the authority is given for calling the vessel the 'Sparrow-Hawk.' Reference is made to an able and interesting article by Mr. Amos Otis in the N. E. Hist. and Geneal. Reg. for January, 1864, giving an account of the changes which had taken place in the coast-lines and harbors of the eastern shores of Cape Cod since they were visited by the early navigators, and of the finding of the old wreck and its excavation in 1863, and of the tradition that a vessel had been cast away in that neighborhood, and also that she bore the name 'Sparrow-Hawk.' Mr. Otis speaks of this last as an 'uncertain tradition.' There is no other authority than this for the name." 2 Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings, IV. 217 n. The remnants were worked into the frame of a vessel and are now in Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth, Mass. |