110 
JOURNAL OF THE PLYMOUTH INSTITUTION. 
be Royalists, the rest, perverse spirits; the like are the planters 
and fishers, of which some be planters and fishers both, others mear 
fishers." The liquor traffic even in those days produced as much 
wretchedness as in later ones. Jocelyn describes it in lively 
colours : "The fishermen often get in one voyage £8 or £9 a man, 
but it doth some of them but little good, for the merchant, to 
increase his gain by putting off his commodity in the middest of 
the voyages, and at the end thereof, comes in with a walking 
tavern, a bark laden with the legitimate blood of the rich grape, 
which they bring from Phial, Madera, and Canaries, and with 
brandy, rum, the Barbadoes strong water, and tobacco ; coming a 
shore he gives them a taster or two, which so charms them that 
for no persuasions will they go to sea sometimes for a whole week, 
until they are wearied with drinking, taking ashore two or three 
hogsheads of wine and rum to drink when the merchant is gone. 
They often have to run in debt for their necessaries on account of 
their lavish expense for drink, and are constrained to mortgage 
their plantations if they have any, and the merchant, when the 
time is expired, is sure to turn them out of house and home, seizing 
their plantations and cattle, poor creatures, to look out for a new 
habitation in some remote place where they begin the world 
again." 
The fishers too find strange fish sometimes in Casco Bay. One 
Mr. Mitton was " a great fowler, and used to go out with a small 
boat or canoe, and fetching a compass about a small island, there 
being many islands in the bay, for the advantage of a shot, he en- 
countered with a triton or mereman, who, laying his hands upon 
the side of the canoe, had one of them chopt off with a hatchett 
by Mr. Mitton, which was in all respects like the hand of a man ; 
the triton presently sunk dyeing the water with his purple blood, 
and was no more seen." 
The original patent granted to Robert Trelawny and Moses 
Goody eare is lost, 1 and the tradition in the Jordan family, to whom 
this patent came, is that the wife of a son of the first Robert 
Jordan, needing some paper to keep her pastry from burning, took 
from a chest of papers Trelawny's patent, and used it for that 
purpose, which thus perished. 
I have but half finished the task which I had set myself ; I have 
been unable to touch upon Thomas Bedford, the divine ; Sir John 
1 1 Coll. Maine His. Soc. p. 49, note. 
