AUSTERE PURITAN GARDENS 91 



after the "paradise of plenty" wherein she had been 

 bred, and she died a month after landing. Her hus- 

 band survived the grief of her death but a few weeks 

 and there followed, before the autumn of that year, 

 upwards of two hundred of the thousand or so who 

 came under Winthrop "new planters" these were 

 called, to distinguish them from those already settled 

 on the Bay's shore where beginnings had previously 

 been made. 



These "beginnings" had been variously brought 

 about. There was, for example, a group of fisher- 

 men at Cape Ann; there were "some religious and 

 well appointed persons," grown weary of rigid Pil- 

 grim ideas as they prevailed at Plymouth, who had 

 shifted their abode; Nahumkeike or Naumkeag had 

 become Salem a definite little colony under Endi- 

 cott who, with three other "gentlemen" and two 

 knights, had obtained a grant in 1628 for a large 

 tract. An exploring party from this group had begun 

 preparations for a settlement at Mishawum now 

 Charlestown the same year; and there were here 

 and there independent and solitary planters who pre- 

 ferred to brave the wilderness alone rather than to 

 live among their fellows. William Blackstone, a 

 Church of England clergyman who had come with 

 Gorges in 1626, was one of these. He had estab- 

 lished himself in solitude at Shawmut now Boston 



