Hanging by a thread, er, rope

John Howland of Fenstanton preceded his brother Henry, subject of the last post, to America, catching passage on board the Mayflower, of all ships, as an indentured servant. I said in that post that he had staked out his own claim to fame, not including possibly being my 10th great grandfather, and now that I've mentioned the Mayflower, you may be inclined to think that my intent here is to brag about his being one of the earliest English settlers, etc.

I've found lots of materials to suggest that he had a stellar part in the early founding of our nation, but I want to focus on a couple of specific things involving him and remembering a well known piece of history we should remember. Of course this latter event is one of those I vaguely remember from my school days but well.

You may remember some of this first item from a previous post on what it was like to cross the Atlantic during colonial times ("Come Sail Away With Me," Feb. 21). I mentioned that one person was swept overboard and narrowly survived the encounter. Turns out, that was John Howland, who I did not at the time may be one of my ancestors.

(You may notice I am now qualifying my relationships with individuals whose lives lie in the more distant past. This change comes because I have seen several possible ancestors disappear from my family tree. I'm pretty sure the changes happen because new research by various descendants and possible descendants has shown that the links were inaccurate. Still, because many of the lost kin hail from the aristocracy, I tend to harbor an idea that a conspiracy lies at the heart of the alterations. In this (probable) fantasy, some employee at Debrett's peerage receives a Google alert about an English noble or royal I've written about and immediately jumps on some aggregate genealogy site to scrub the link while sipping tea and proclaiming to other workers, "I've dealt with yet another American upstart.)

Back to John Howland. William Bradford writes in his History of Plymouth Plantation (I have modernized the spelling):

"... In sundry of these storms the winds were so fierce, and the seas so high, as they could not bear a knot of sail, but were forced to hull [drift being pushed by the winds and seas] for diverse days together. And in one of them, as they thus lay at hull, in a mighty storm, a lusty young man (called John Howland) coming upon some occasion above the gratings [on the open deck], was, with a seele of the ship [a sudden lurch of the ship] thrown into [the] sea; but it pleased God that he caught hold of the top-sail halyards [the ropes used to raise the sails], which hung overboard, and ran out at length; yet he held his hold (though he was sundry fathoms under water) til he was hauled up by the same rope to the brim of the water, and then with a boat hooke and other means got into the ship again, and his life was saved; and though he was something ill with it, ;yet he live many years after, and became a profitable member both in church and commonwealth."

That rope was either improperly stowed or the storm was so great it broke the rope loose and blew it overboard. Either way, you can bet John thanked providence it was there.

After landing in Cape Cod, instead of their original destination, the crew and passengers had to decide whether to continue to Virginia, the intended site, or stay put. A split developed, with most of the Pilgrims wanting to move on and most of the rest of the passengers, whom the Pilgrims called "strangers," wanting to stay put, believing their obligation to go to Virginia was now null. They were under no further enforceable contract to continue to the original destination.  All recognized the odds of surviving improved greatly if they stuck together.

The leaders drafted an agreement, which we now refer to as the Mayflower Compact, The compact acknowledged the colonists' reliance on God and pledge loyalty to the king, James I. This despite the reasons for leaving the country. 

They then agreed to "covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil Body Politick, for our better Ordering and Preservation, and Furtherance of the Ends aforesaid: And by Virtue hereof to enact, constitute, and frame, such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices, from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the General good of the Colony; unto which we promise all due submission and obedience."

This document, while still giving loyalty to the king, established the first formal democracy for the English settlers, one in which neither Pilgrim or stranger determined what would happen. Instead, despite their differences and goals, they agreed to work together for the benefit of all the members of the colony. Though eventually the religious leaders among the Puritans would assert the need to impose regulations and laws based on their religious beliefs, they began with the idea that survival meant working together on everyone's behalf, Pilgrim or not. 

Oh, and the survivor of the potential drowning at sea, even though not yet a freeman, signed the document along with one other indentured servant and 39 adult male members of the colony. 

Image: This painting appears on a number of websites unattributed as to the event or the artist. I'm sure I could find that info with more studious application to the task, but I'm using it here because it might represent the signing of the Mayflower Compact. If it doesn't, I apologize.