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Thomas Morton
Born circa 1579
Devon, England
Died 1647
Nationality English subject
Occupation Lawyer, writer, social reformer
Known for Early New England colonist

Thomas Morton (c. 1579–1647) was an early colonist in North America from Devon, England. He was a lawyer, writer, and social reformer known for studying American Indian culture, and he founded the colony of Merrymount, located in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Biography

Mount Wollaston

Morton took a three-month exploratory trip to America in 1622, but was back in England by early 1623 complaining of intolerance among ruling elements of the Puritan community. He returned in 1624 as a senior partner in a Crown-sponsored trading venture aboard the ship Unity with his associate Captain Wollaston and 30 indentured young men. They began trading for furs on a spit of land belonging to the Algonquian tribes.

Morton immediately began selling liquor and firearms to the Indians, disregarding the laws of Plymouth Colony. Morton and his cohorts attempted to establish their own colony which they called Mount Wollaston. Captain Wollaston moved to Virginia in 1626, leaving Morton in command of the colony, which was renamed Merrymount.

A popular history of the United States, from the first discovery of the western hemisphere by the Northmen, to the end of the first century of the union of the states, page 425
Mayday at Merrymount
Maypole at Merrymount
Maypole at Merrymount

Morton's religious beliefs were criticized by the Puritans of nearby Plymouth Colony as little more than a thinly disguised form of heathenism.

Banishment by the Puritans

Thomas Morton of Merrymount arrested by Captain Myles Standish of the Plymouth Colony
Arrest of Thomas Morton

Morton's group performed a second Mayday ritual in 1628 by erecting an 80-foot (24 m) Maypole topped with deer antlers around which he and his followers caroused drunkenly. The Plymouth militia under Myles Standish took the town the following June with little resistance, chopped down the Maypole, and arrested Morton for supplying guns to the Indians. He was given a trial in Plymouth, then marooned on the deserted Isles of Shoals off the coast of New Hampshire until an English ship could take him home. The Merrymount community survived without Morton for another year, but was renamed Mount Dagon by the Puritans, after the sea god of the Philistines.

"New English Canaan"

New English Canaan, or, New Canaan containing an abstract of New England, composed in three bookes
New English Canaan's title page

In 1637, Morton published his three-volume New English Canaan, a denunciation of Puritan government in the colonies and their policy of building forts to guard themselves against Indian attack. He described the Indians as a far nobler culture and a new Canaan under attack from the "New Israel" of the Puritans.

Sedition trial and death

Morton returned to New England during the English Civil War where he was arrested for being a Royalist agitator. He was put on trial for his role in revoking the Plymouth Colony's charter and on charges of sedition. By September, he was imprisoned in Boston. His trial was delayed through winter but his health began to fail, so the Puritans granted him clemency. He ended his days among the planters of Maine, and he died in 1647 at age 71.

Legacy

The English government destroyed the first edition of New English Canaan in 1637, with a small number of copies surviving in the Netherlands. The Prince Society reprinted the original Amsterdam edition in 1883 with a foreword written by Charles Francis Adams Jr. Jack Dempsey produced an edited edition of Morton's book including a biography of Morton which was published in 1999.

Evaluation

In 1628, Plymouth Colony Governor William Bradford famously declared Morton a "Lord of Misrule.

Morton's The New English Canaan has been described as "an important work of early American environmental writing", as well as the first book banned in America. Harrison T. Meserole describes Morton as "America's first rascal". Ed Simon argues that Morton "remains a powerful disruptive presence in the common founding myth of American identity."

In literature

Nathaniel Hawthorne's story "The May-Pole of Merry Mount" in his Twice-Told Tales (1837) and J. L. Motley's Merry Mount (1849) are based on Morton's colonial career.

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