MISCELLANEOUS. 1165 



particularly, alludes to this colony when he says, "Divers worshipfull 

 citizens of the city of Bristol have undertaken to plant a large circuit, 

 and they have maintained a colony of his Majestie's subjects there 

 any time these five yeares, who have builded there f aire houses, and 

 done many other good services; who live there very pleasantly; and 

 they are well pleased to entertaine, upon fit conditions, such as will 

 be adventurers with them." Whitbourne also mentions by name in 

 the same paper, which I conclude was written in 1621, the " Wor- 

 shipfull John Slany, of London, merchant, who is one of the under- 

 takers of the Newfoundland plantation, and is treasurer unto the 

 patentees of that society, who have maintained a colony of his Majes- 

 tie's subjects there above twelve years;" but I find no other account 

 of Slany or his associates. It appears, too, that another company, 

 having obtained a grant of land at Newfoundland, sent out a party 

 who wintered there in 1613; but soon becoming weary of their at- 

 tempts for settlement, they transferred their grant to other adven- 

 turers. Among the obstacles to colonization at this period, piracy 

 is not to be overlooked. Whitbourne frequently suffered at the nands 

 of freebooters, and in 1612 Peter Easton, a noted pirate, with ten 

 w T ell-appointed ships, made himself complete master of the seas, 

 levied a general contribution on the vessels employed in fishing and 

 impressed from those at Concepcion Bay one hundred men for his own 

 fleet. Pirates continued to harass and plunder the fishermen for 

 several years. 



In 1613 we notice the birth of the first child of European parents. 

 Two years later, Richard Whitbourne, already mentioned, who had 

 made many voyages to Newfoundland, arrived at that island with a 

 commission from the admiralty to empannel juries and correct abuses 

 and disorders among the fishermen on the coast. He summoned a 

 court, and heard the complaints of one hundred and seventy masters 

 of English vessels. The abuses seem to have been flagrant. The 

 captains had been accustomed to leave their boats and salt on the 

 coast, hoping to find them at the beginning of the next season, but in 

 many cases not a vestige remained of either. The bait prepared for 

 the next day's fishing was frequently stolen out of the nets ; the for- 

 ests were often wantonly set fire to; the large stones used in pressing 

 the fish were sunk at the mouth of the harbors ; and little or no regard 

 was paid to the Sabbath. Whitbourne's courts and juries were the 

 first, probably, under the authority of England, in the New World. 



Manv thousand persons were employed as catchers and curers, and 

 the fisnery was in a flourishing condition. Besides the vessels of 

 foreign flags we found "then on that coast," says he, "of your 

 Majestie's subjects, two hundred and fifty sail of ships, great and 

 small."* In the paper from which I have cited he speaks of a settle- 

 ment of the "Worshipfull William Vaughan, of Tawacod, in the 

 county of Carmarthen, doctor of the civil law," who had "undertaken 

 to plant a circuit in the Newfoundland," and who "hi two severall 



* Richard Mather, who came over to Massachusetts in 1635, kept a journal of the 

 voyage. When on the Bank of Newfoundland, "on the end of it nearer to New 

 England," he records seeing "mighty fishes rolling and tumbling in the waters, twice 

 as long and big as an ox." He saw, too, "mighty whales spewing up water in the air, 

 like the smoke of a chimney, and making the sea about them white and hoary, as is 

 said in Job: of such incredible bigness that I will never wonder that the body of 

 Jonas could be in the belly of a whale." 



