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Book, page 22 / 42 Dr. Young remarks: "The MAYFLOWER Of Higginson's fleet is the renowned vessel that brought the Pilgrim Fathers to Plymouth in 1620." Hon. James Savage says "The MAYFLOWER had been a name of renown without forming part of this fleet [Winthrop's, 1630], because in her came the devoted planters of Plimouth [1620] and she had also brought in the year preceding [1629] some of Higginson's company to Salem." Goodwin' says: "In 1629 she [the Pilgrim MAY-FLOWER] came to Salem with a company of the Leyden people for Plymouth, and in 1630 was one of the large fleet that attended John Winthrop, discharging her passengers at Charlestown." Dr. Young remarks in a footnote: "Thirty-five of the Leyden congregation with their families came over to Plymouth via Salem, in the MAY-FLOWER and TALBOT." In view of such positive statements as these, from such eminent authorities and others, and of the collateral facts as to the probable ownership of the MAY-FLOWER in 1630, and on her earlier voyages herein presented, the doubt expressed by the Rev. Mr. Blaxland in his "Mayflower Essays," whether the ship bearing her name was the same, on these three several voyages, certainly does not seem justified. Captain William Pierce, who commanded the MAY-FLOWER in 1629, when she brought over part of the Leyden company, was the very early and intimate friend of the Pilgrims--having brought over the ANNE with Leyden passengers in 1623--and sailed exclusively in the employ of the Merchant Adventurers, or some of their number, for many years, which is of itself suggestive. To accept, as beyond serious doubt, Mr. Goffe's ownership of the MAY- FLOWER, when she made her memorable voyage to New Plimoth, one need only to compare, and to interpret logically, the significant facts;--that he was a ship-owner of London and one of the body of Merchant Adventurers who set her forth on her Pilgrim voyage in 1620; and that he stood, as her evident owner, in similar relation to the Puritan company which chartered her for New England, similarly carrying colonists, self-exiled for religion's sake, in 1629 and again in 1630. This conviction is greatly strengthened by the fact that Mr. Goffe continued one of the Pilgrim Merchant Adventurers, until their interests were transferred to the colonists by the "Composition" of 1626, and three years later (1629) sent by the MAY-FLOWER, on her second New England voyage, although under a Puritan charter, another company from the Leyden congregation. The
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