New English Canaan Quotes

“now I am bold to conclude that the originall of the Natives of New England may be well conjectured to be from the scattered Trojans, after such time as Brutus departed from Latium.[229]”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“Troy destroyed about Sauls time.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“Copies of the New Canaan are extremely rare. Savage, in his notes to Winthrop (vol. i. p. *34), said that he had then, before 1825, never heard of but one copy, “which was owned by his Excellency John Q. Adams.” It is from that copy that the present edition is printed. Mr. Adams purchased it while in Europe prior to the year 1801.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“It is even open to question whether this reference was due to Butler’s having read the book. The passage referred to is in the second part of Hudibras, which was not published until 1664, twenty-seven years after the publication of the New Canaan. It is perfectly possible that Butler may have known Morton; for in 1637 the future author of Hudibras was already twenty-five years old, and Morton lingered about London for six or seven years after that. There are indications that he knew Ben Jonson;[185] and, indeed, it is scarcely possible that with his sense of humor and convivial tastes Morton should not often have met the poets and playwrights of the day at the Mermaid.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“As to the allegation that his devotion to the Church of England and its ritual was the cause of his arrest by the Plymouth authorities, the answer is obvious and decisive. Blackstone was an Episcopalian, and a devout one, retaining even in his wilderness home the canonical coat which told of his calling.[182] Maverick and Walford were Episcopalians; they lived and died such. The settlers at Wessagusset were Episcopalians.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“The part he was endeavoring to play when he wrote this passage was one not very congenial to him, and he makes an awkward piece of work of it. The sudden tone of sanctimony which he infuses into the words quoted, hardly covers up the leer and gusto with which he had just been describing the drunkenness and debauchery of Merry-Mount—how “the good liquor” had flowed to all comers, while “the lasses in beaver-coats” had been welcome “night and day;” how “he that played Proteus, with the help of Priapus, put their noses out of joint;” and how that “barren doe” became fruitful, who is mysteriously alluded to as a “goodly creature of incontinency” who had “tried a camp royal in other parts.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“To secure these ends it was necessary to play continually on the Primate’s dislike of the Puritans, and his intense zeal in behalf of all Church forms and ceremonies, including the use of the Book of Common Prayer. The whole political and historical significance of the New Canaan lies in this fact. It was a pamphlet designed to work a given effect in a particular quarter, and came very near being productive of lasting results. Dedicated in form to the Lords Commissioners, it was charged with attacks on the Separatists, and statements of the contempt shown by them to the Book of Common Prayer.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“Of him it is not necessary here to speak at length, for his character is too well understood. Dignified in his bearing, and in personal character purer than his times—a devout, well-intentioned man—Charles was a shallow, narrow-minded bigot, with a diseased belief in that divinity which doth hedge a king. He would have made an ideal, average English country gentleman. After the manner of small, obstinate men, he believed intensely in a few things.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“In 1625 or 1626 the Wessagusset settlement had divided. Those of Gorges’s following who remained there had never been wholly satisfied. It was no place for trade. Accordingly Blackstone, Maverick and Walford, the two last being married and taking their wives with them, had moved across the bay, and established themselves respectively at Shawmut or Boston, at Noddle’s Island or East Boston, and at Mishawum or Charlestown.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“Morton’s inclination to boisterous revelry culminated at last in that proceeding which scandalized the Plymouth elders and has passed into history. In the spring of 1627 he erected the May-pole of Merry-Mount. To erect these poles seems at that time to have been a regular English observance, which even the fishermen on the coast did not neglect.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“The only account of what now ensued is that contained in Bradford; for Morton nowhere makes a single allusion to Wollaston or any of his associates, nor does he give any account of the origin, composition or purposes of the Wollaston enterprise. His silence on all these points is, indeed, one of the singular features in the New Canaan. Such references as he does make are always to Weston and Weston’s attempt;[24] and he seems to take pains to confound that attempt with Wollaston’s.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“Having selected a site, Wollaston and his party built their house nearly in the centre of the summit of the hill, on a gentle westerly slope. It commanded towards the north and east an unbroken view of the bay and all the entrances to it; while on the opposite or landward side, some four or five miles away, rose the heavily-wooded Blue Hills. Across the bay to the north lay Shawmut, beyond the intervening peninsulas of Squantum and Mattapan. Wessagusset was to the south, across the marshes and creeks, and hidden from view by forest and uplands.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“He had, however, abandoned it at the time when the great pestilence swept away his tribe, and tradition still points out a small savin-covered hummock, near Squantum, on the south side of the Neponset, as his subsequent dwelling-place.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“His party consisted of himself and some three or four partners, with thirty or more servants, as they were called, or men who had sold their time for a period of years to an employer, and who stood in the relation to him of apprentice to master. Rasdall, according to Bradford, was the name of one of the partners, and Fitcher would seem to have been that of another. Thomas Morton, the author of the New English Canaan, was a third.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences

“Robert Gorges and his party arrived in Boston Bay in 1623, during what is now the latter part of September. They established themselves in the buildings which had been occupied by Weston’s people during the previous winter, and which had been deserted by them a few days less than six months before. The site of those buildings cannot be definitely fixed. It is supposed to have been on Phillips Creek, a small tidal inlet of the Weymouth fore-river, a short distance above the Quincy-Point bridge.”
― Thomas Morton, The New English Canaan of Thomas Morton with Introductory Matter and Notes: Enriched edition. A Bold Exploration of Colonial Encounters and Cultural Differences