It Is
Clear, However, That The "Overmasting" Cut But Small Figure In The Case;
"Confessed" Rascality In Making A Leak Otherwise, Being The Chief
Trouble, And This, As Well As The "Overmasting," Lay At The Door Of
Master Reynolds.
Even if the MAY-FLOWER had not been delayed by the SPEEDWELL'S condition,
and both had sailed for "Hudson's River" in midsummer, it is by no means
certain that they would have reached there, as Arber so confidently
asserts.
The treachery of Captain Jones, in league with Gorges, would as
readily have landed them, by some pretext, on Cape Cod in October, as in
December. But even though they had landed at the mouth of the Hudson,
there is no good reason why the Pilgrim influence should not have worked
north and east, as well as it did west and south, and with the
Massachusetts Bay Puritans there, Roger Williams in Rhode Island, and the
younger Winthrop in Connecticut, would doubtless have made New England
history very much what it has been, and not, as Professor Arber asserts,
"entirely different."
The cruel indictment fails, and the imaginary "turning point in modern
history," to announce which Professor Arber seems to have sacrificed so
much, falls with it.
The Rev. Dr. Griffis ("The Pilgrims in their Three Homes," p. 158) seems
to give ear to Professor Arber's untenable allegations as to the Pilgrim
leaders' responsibility for any error made in the "overmasting" of the
SPEEDWELL, although he destroys his case by saying of the "overmasting:"
"Whether it was done in England or Holland is not certain." He says,
unhappily chiming in with Arber's indictment:
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