Thomas Morton: From Merry Old England to New England

Abstract

Nathaniel Hawthorne claims, in his brief preface to “The May-pole of Merry Mount,” that “the facts, recorded on the grave pages of our New England annalists, have wrought themselves, almost spontaneously,” into a “philosophical romance” and “a sort of allegory.” He later refers to these “true” and “authentic passages from history” as “a poet's tale.” Yet to anyone familiar with the sources available to Hawthorne,1 nothing is more striking than how much authentic history he has left out – most notably Thomas Morton himself, whose version of what transpired at his fur-trading post on Massachusetts Bay (New English Canaan) is indeed a tale told by a poet, albeit a minor one. What do we know about the man who put up the maypole that so outraged his pious neighbors? Who was Thomas Morton and why were the Puritans so offended by him? If his maypole symbolized the festive culture of Merry Old England, Morton epitomized its spirit. No wonder he was a persona non grata among the Puritans of New England, although Falstaff would have welcomed him to the Boar's Head Tavern. Like many a man of the Elizabethan Renaissance, he was enamored of classical learning and the New World; three times he abandoned London's Bankside to seek his fortune in Massachusetts Bay, at the risk of his life.