The Black Sheep of the Mayflower - Supplemental Episode #2

When one finds out that one is a direct descendent of the first person executed for murder in Colonial America, one has to share the story (it's me, I am one). My 11th Great Grandpa John Billington journey on the Mayflower and signed the Mayflower Compact, but he was not a Puritan, and 10 years later, he was hanged for the murder of a man named Newcomen based on very sketchy evidence (but I still think he did it).

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The Transition Music is Coastal Mandolin by mooncusser

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Transcript

Episode 69: The Black Sheep of the Mayflower – A Thanksgiving Supplemental Episode

Welcome back to Ghosts of Arlington and thank you for joining me for this supplemental Thanksgiving Episode: The Black Sheep of the Mayflower.

For those who celebrated last week, I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and were able to reflect on those things in life that you are most thankful for. And for everyone else, I also hope your Thursday was good. I teased last week that I would have a short non-Arlington related post this week but after finding a new source of information, there isn’t really anything short about today’s story – but I hope you enjoy it.

As a child growing up and attending public school in the United States, some of my earliest memories of learning about the first Thanksgiving include a group of religious refugees, known as the Puritans – and later also known as the Pilgrims – fleeing England because of religious persecution, who ended up founding the Plymouth Colony in what is present-day Massachusetts. These people were not entrepreneurs or indentured servants, like many of the early settlers, but were simply looking for a place where they would be free to practice their religion. Oh, and for some odd fashion reason, they also wore huge buckles on their shoes and hats… look, I now know that there were like 20 indentured servants on the Mayflower and that nearly half of the Mayflower’s passengers weren’t Puritans but right now I’m just telling how I remember the story from third or fourth grade.

Anyway, these Pilgrims set off for the new world on a ship called the Mayflower and landed exactly where they were trying to go, Plymouth Rock – they had not been blown off course by storms and then were unable to reach their actual destination because of various maritime reasons.

Before reaching Plymouth, the Mayflower Compact – a social contact that said the colony should be governed by just and equal laws – was drawn up and 41 men signed the document. Those that signed promised to abide by those laws.

The Pilgrims landed too late in the year to do any planting, let alone any harvesting, and almost half of the 100 or so settlers died from disease and poor nutrition that first winter.

In the spring, the surviving settlers made contact with the natives in the area – one of whom miraculously spoke English (and had even been to England) because of contact with the Jamestown colony in Virginia – and the natives helped the Pilgrims learn how to tend the land in this new area and after the harvest the following fall, held a feast of Thanksgiving with their native neighbors. Three surviving contemporary accounts say the feast, which was probably in October 1621, lasted three days and consisted of numerous types of waterfowl, wild turkeys, and fish provided by the colonists and five deer brought by the natives (okay so I don’t remember learning the menu in third grade, that tidbit of information came from the Smithsonian). Anyway, that was the first Thanksgiving – more or less – and is the basis for the modern commemoration the United States celebrated last week.

The 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving was in 2020, and there was not a whole lot going on at my house that year. We had a small celebration at home – just the five of us – and I received an email that eventually led me to my favorite story in my family’s history. I don’t remember the exact site I get the email from; it was either Ancestry or Family Search, but either way, it was the story I needed at that time. Not all passengers on the Mayflower were religious refugee who just wanted to worship according to the dictates of their conscience.  According to the Mayflower 400 website, almost half of the Mayflower passengers – including my ancestor John Billington – were seeking a new life not driven by religious conviction. Maybe that’s why they Mayflower Compact was drawn up before they made land fall, so the non-Puritans would agree to abide by Puritan values. Regardless, while they were not all Puritans, the Billingtons was the Black Sheep of the Mayflower – and John was the first person executed for murder in Colonial America. How’s that for a hook?

After learning that I was related to Billington, I tried to learn more about him, but I couldn’t find a whole lot. So, imagine my surprise and excitement when, earlier this year, Simon Whistler, the host of the true crime podcast The Casual Criminalist, did an entire episode on Billington! Not only that, but the episode was written by a man named David Baker, who is a descendent of Billington – I assume that means Baker is a long-lost cousin of mine and that leaves me wondering why he hasn’t invited me to visit him in Australia yet. David, have your people call my people, we’ll work something out.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

John Billington is my 11th great grandfather and was born in England around 1580 in the southern part of Linconshire. Because of when and where he was born, its likely that he was a farmer, but the times they were a-changin’ and many people, including Grandpa John, were leaving the countryside, and moving to the city. In his early 20s, John moved to London and shortly thereafter, married a woman named Eleanor. John and Eleanor had two children together, John, Jr. born around 1604 and Francis, born around 1606.

While in London, John and Eleanor gained reputations for being outspoken, quarrelsome, and feuding with their neighbors. John is described in historical records as being QUOTE “a very profane man” which at this time likely didn’t just mean he had a big foul mouth, but was probably also not a religious man. By the time they were teenagers, the boys had reputations as juvenile delinquents. So, how did this family end up on the Mayflower? 

In the years leading up to 1620, John, accrued a lot of debt, and was nearly destitute when the creditors came to collect. In an effort to escape these debts and give his family a fresh start, John signed a seven-year labor contract with a merchant investor for a new colony being set up in North America.

This new colony – unimaginatively called New England – was supposed to be established just north of England’s first successful New World colony – Virginia – and would be run by a group of Puritans, a devoutly religious – some would say radical – group that had fled England for the Netherlands to escape persecution and had found it necessary to relocate again.

The Puritans struck up an agreement with the ambiguously named London Company, where the crown held all deeds for land in America. After seeing the success of the Virginia Company, the London Company wanted to get in on the action and granted the Puritans permission to settle just north of the existing colony. Though the Puritan’s religion would not be officially recognized by the Anglican King James I, they would be largely self-governing and they quickly agreed to the terms.

John Billington was not a Puritan, but circumstances dictated that he join this group of pilgrims. The Puritan faction in this colony-building expedition, that made up just over half of the 102 passengers on the Mayflower, referred to non-Puritans as “the strangers.” Depending on one’s personality, strangers could become prominent members of the community, but John didn’t stand a chance.

The Mayflower was a terrible choice for a trans-Atlantic crossing. It was usually employed as a cargo ship between England and France and would never be confused for an ocean liner. The Billingtons were crammed with 98 other passengers below decks – a space that would have been overcrowded with half as many passengers, and along the way, one man died, and one woman gave birth in those cramped quarters.

The terrible weather during the crossing made things even worse. Massive waves smashed into the Mayflower, loosening its timbers, and causing water to seep inside, so the Billingtons not only got to spend the entire trip clustered together with a bunch of Puritans, but they were also constantly soggy and cold, even as they lay in their beds. 

John Billington, meanwhile, set about alienating many of the passengers – you know, his future neighbors – with his curt and rather argumentative ways. One person in particular whose ire Billington drew was William Bradford, a rather prominent member of the group. Remember that name, Bradford will reenter the story at a crucial moment.

So, the journey finally ends, the pilgrims spot land, and even though it is 620 miles (or roughly 1000 kilometers) north of where they’re supposed to be, they are all quite done with life at sea and decided to weigh anchor where they were, thank you very much. Before leaving the ship, Billington found himself as one of the 41 Mayflower passengers to sign the Mayflower Compact. In this historic document, the colonists declared self-government, an embryo of US independence, while at the same time maintaining symbolic obedience to King James back in England.

On December 15th, nearly a month after arriving in the New World, most of the passengers were still living abord the Mayflower when John’s younger son Francis, ten about 14 years old,  was messing around with a musket and whether intentionally or not, fired the gun near a powder keg. The proximity of the gun fire to the powder keg threatened to ignite all the gunpowder on board which would have blow up and sunk the ship. The outrage at young Francis’s actions caused a scuffle between John Billington and several other passengers which increased the attitudes against John and his family. They had barely begun their new life and a large portion of the colonists already deeply disliked them.

Meanwhile, several expeditions onto the land began, led by Myles Standish, a hard-nosed and somewhat authoritarian English soldier. It is probable that John Billington joined some of these expeditions. The weather was freezing, and the ground caked in snow. The new arrivals were not used to such severe winter temperatures. The clothing they wore was inadequate. On their first night ashore, several of the men froze to death. And due to the build-up of snow, it became impossible for the colonists to move very far inland – which explains why most were still on the ship.

The second problem that the colonists encountered was that there was a shortage of food. The Mayflower’s departure from England was delayed for about a month after the passengers had come aboard so they had consumed more food than planned before their arrival and the ground in New England was also too hard by December to do any planting. To make things worse, the colonists had not bothered to bring fishing equipment with them – a source of food which probably would have saved them.

The third problem was illness struck the passengers and crew aboard the Mayflower. The winter weather caused many to die of pneumonia. Others contracted some other sort of fatal coughing disease (most likely tuberculosis). And the lack of Vitamin-C endemic to ocean voyages caused still others to die of scurvy. 

All told, of the 102 passengers who boarded the Mayflower, 49 men, women, and children died that winter. More would have died, but thankfully the colonists found a large cache of buried food left on the shore by the Native Americans, along with several graves. The next morning, the local Nauset people arrived, angered that the English had dug up their supplies and disturbed their graves. The natives shot at the landing party with arrows. The English returned fire with guns and ran the Nauset off. Not a great way to greet your new neighbors.

In just a few weeks, half of the Mayflower passengers had died. And in the words of the Casual Criminalist Podcast, a number of historians over the years have mused that it was a shame not a single one of the Billingtons were amongst the casualties. I’ve even heard one amateur historian go as far as to use the phrase “it was typical bad luck” for the New England colony that my family back then was not wiped from the human gene pool. Though I, for one, am glad that my 10th great grandfather Francis – the genius with the musket – survived long enough to reproduce.

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

In January 1621, Francis Billington, the same kid who nearly blew up the Mayflower, went ashore with an exploratory party. Not far inland from the Atlantic coast, Francis climbed up a tree and spotted what he called, “a great sea” which he thought might be the Pacific Ocean. In fact, the Pacific lay some 3000 miles or 5000 km to the West. What Francis had found was in fact was a small pond. But it is still to this day referred to as “Billington’s Sea.”

In March 1621, John Billington was brought up on charges for defying the orders of Myles Standish, the English soldier who was now leading the local militia. John apparently also made, quote, “abusive speeches” when Standish had tried to give him some orders.  I can only assume that dear old great grandpa used some of that profane language he was so well known for to let Captain Standish known what he could do with his orders. These charges were the first criminal proceedings in the New England colony – yet another proud moment in my Pilgrim history. Nevertheless, John displayed humility during his disciplinary hearing and escaped punishment, mostly thanks to the mercy displayed by the governor of the New England colony, and Puritan, John Carver. But the incident left a sour taste in the mouth of other Puritan observers.

In early April 1621, Governor Carver, was working in the fields on a hot spring day when he complained of a severe pain in his head, most likely a brain aneurysm. He went home, laid in bed, fell into a coma, and died on April 5th. His replacement was none other than William Bradford, the influential Puritan who had already developed a deep dislike for John Billington and his family – the one whose name I asked you to remember.

In June or July 1621, John Jr, Billington’s eldest boy, wandered away from the settlement and got lost in the woods for five days. John Jr walked around aimlessly, living off any roots, berries, and nuts he could find; he was eventually found by the local Nauset people. The colony dispatched a search party of ten men, including two native interpreters, to find him. This was done at great risk to their own lives, since much of the territory remained uncharted, and the Nauset were still fairly hostile to the English ever since that whole stealing Nauset supplies and desecrating Nauset graves incident caused the two groups to exchange fire.

Before dawn one morning, the settlers were confronted by 100 Nauset warriors, wielding bows and arrows, and outnumbering the search party 10 to 1. Fortunately, the Nauset had John Jr with them. He had been bedecked in a large quantity of beads and honored with the gift of a ceremonial knife. He was returned completely unharmed. 

In 1622, four houses in the colony burned to the ground. The cause of the inferno is unclear. It is also unclear whether the fire was an accident or arson. Nevertheless, many in the colony suspected John Billington of causing the fire, on account of his reputation and growing animosity toward several people. Naturally, the other settlers had no evidence to substantiate this rumor and no charges were ever brought against my grandpappy John.

In 1624, John was again implicated in more criminal activity. But this time was different. Although today we see the Mayflower pilgrims as escaping religious persecution in England (which they undoubtedly were) they had not gone to North America to set up a pluralistic society akin to a modern secular democracy. They had gone to New England to set up a puritanical society. A quasi-theocracy, if you will. And the Puritan church of the Plymouth colony ruled the roost. Two settlers, John Oldham and John Lyford had written several letters that were critical of the puritanical church, which saw them banished from the colony. In North America, in 1624, this was a potential death sentence. 

During their interrogation, the two men implicated John Billington, claiming he partook in many of their heretical mutterings and supplied them with information about the colony. Billington denied all these charges. Though, given what we know of Billington’s character and his own religious affiliation, it seems likely that Billington had indeed grown tired of the austere moral governance of the Puritans. And he’d probably had difficulty keeping his mouth shut. Although these activities were technically criminal according to the scruples of the Puritans, in reality John Billington was likely just bristling at the lack of religious freedom in the colony, in a way that no one today could really fault him for.

In the following year, 1625, Billington allegedly continued his subversive activities. At least according to letters written by William Bradford. According to the governor, Billington was loudly and abusively outspoken against the puritanical church, the local government, and even against the agents of the colony back in London. Bradford, whose rule John had challenged, was now bitter in his dislike of my dear old grandpa. “Billington is a knave,” Bradford wrote, “And he will live and die a knave.”

In 1626, the people of the Plymouth colony gained full ownership of the land from their investors back in London. The farmland was accordingly divided amongst the settlers. When he received one of the smallest partials of land, John Billington felt he had been cheated. He was given a modest house and 63 acres of land and while that sounds like a lot, relative to his neighbors, this was a slap in the face. But nobody in the colony really cared because – again – the overwhelming majority of people, particularly the Puritans, deeply disliked and distrusted John.

In 1627, Billington’s eldest son, John Jr., died unmarried and childless. 

[TRANSITION MUSIC]

John Newcomen had not arrived on the Mayflower in 1620. He was one of the many settlers who came aboard later ships, as the English tried to inflate the population of the colony from the 50-odd people who initially survived that first winter, to several hundred. It is possible Newcomen came over in 1630, along with the first major wave of immigrants from England. Not much is known about John Newcomen or his family. In fact, we’re not even sure if Newcomen was his surname, or if it was simply a reference to the fact he was a new arrival in the Plymouth colony. All we really know was that Newcomen had arrived by 1630 – the year he died, the year my ancestor allegedly killed him.

By September of 1630, Billington and Newcomen reportedly despised each other – and knowing John like we do, that sounds about right. It is not clear what the source of their bad blood was. Some historians have speculated that it had arisen from a disagreement over a woman, or a night of drinking at a tavern which escalated to fisticuffs. Other theories speculate that Billington and Newcomen disagreed over religion or politics, which given Billington’s outspoken and rebellious nature, was absolutely possible. Another theory goes that Billington had caught Newcomen stealing rabbits from his traps out in the woods. Finally, it is possible that Billington and Newcomen were engaged in some other sort of illegal activity – possibly livestock theft – and Billington feared Newcomen would double cross him. All we know for certain is that, in September 1630, John Billington allegedly hated Newcomen’s guts and wanted him dead.  

Newcomen had headed out of Plymouth into the woods. John Billington was seen leaving town not long after, carrying a gun. According to one witness, Billington had claimed he was going out of town to hunt some deer. According to accounts of the trial, Billington cornered Newcomen, who hid behind some trees. Billington hit Newcomen in the shoulder, and the man went down. 

Despite what Hollywood would have us believe, gunshot wounds to shoulders are serious injuries. In one version of events, Newcomen’s artery was pierced and he rapidly bled out. He was later found dead lying in the woods where he originally fell. In another version of events, Newcomen actually made it to a doctor, but later died of infection after being operated on – as one did following a 17th century operation. I can only assume the colony surgeon was also the local barber.

Either way, Newcomen was dead and John denied killing him. A witness claimed he saw Billington following the victim out of town. The gun allegedly used to kill Newcomen was claimed by Plymouth authorities to have belonged to Billington, though, John disputes that. Billington’s guilt rested entirely on hearsay, an unverified claim that he was the gun’s owner, and speculation that John headed out of town to track down Newcomen, when he could have gone anywhere in the woods, heading in any direction. Today, the degree of reasonable doubt and lack of concrete evidence would have seen the charges thrown out.

But this was the 17th century, 50 years before the Salem Witch Trials, and the frail evidence against the unruly Billington seemed solid to the Puritans. Documented Billington hater William Bradford said the evidence was, quote, “plain and notorious.” The case went to trial and there was little doubt of the outcome. The settlers, almost uniformly hostile to John after years of aggravation and his constant dissent, found him guilty and sentenced him to death.

During the trial, Bradford pointed out, the family was, quote, “one of the profanest families in the colony” and they had been punished for misconduct before. Bradford went on to add that he had no idea how the Billingtons managed to bluff and con their way onto the Mayflower in the first place. None of this is even remotely relevant to a murder charge, but such was the logic of the vindictive William Bradford. Given the flimsy evidence, he needed to get the jury to render the verdic he wanted any way he could. In his view, a rotten egg who had caused a little bit of trouble in the past, who did not easily follow orders, and who did not subscribe to his particular brand of Christianity, was likely to have committed every single crime of which he subsequently stood accused. Politically, Bradford had every motive for getting Billington out of the way, since the troublesome man had for nine years represented a threat to Bradford’s authority.

Billington was put to death by hanging only a few days after his arrest and hasty trial.

It is alleged that after John Billington’s death, the rest of his family continued to run afoul of the local government. In 1636, Eleanor Billington was convicted of slandering a local politician and was placed in the stocks and whipped, in addition to being given a fine. There is no record of what rumors Eleanor was spreading. She died in 1642. 

Francis Billington, meanwhile, the boy who nearly blew up the Mayflower, seems to have kept his nose relatively clean. He married in 1634 and had 9 children, a fact for which I am very grateful – I am descended from Francis through his fifth child, a daughter named Mary.

In the centuries following John’s death, many of his descendants have argued that John was either innocent of murder, or else was wrongly convicted and sentenced in a miscarriage of justice. Part of this may be motivated by the Billington desire to clear the clan’s name. We are decidedly more notorious than any of the other Mayflower families.  

The Casual Criminalist podcast wraps up John’s story like so. There is very little doubt that the claims of Billington following Newcomen out of town are entirely hearsay. No one saw the shooting. When it came to tying the murder weapon to Billington, it was his word against an accusatory Puritan government. And even if the gun was his property, that does not necessarily mean it was Billington who pulled the trigger. All of this leaves open significant reasonable doubt that should not have secured a guilty verdict. One could also, by modern standards, have called a mistrial given that the jury was almost uniformly biased against him. If this had happened a couple centuries later, the trial would have been moved to a different town, and placed in front of a jury who had no prior knowledge of Billington. As for fingerprints or testing for gunpowder on Billington’s fingers, or testing for DNA, you are about 350 years ahead of the forensics. There is next to nothing tying Billington to the murder. We don’t even know what Billington and Newcomen had quarreled over previously, if they had in fact quarreled at all, or assessed the likelihood the argument would have come to violence. Hell, we don’t even really know who Newcomen was.

What we do know is that Billington was not a Puritan, was not well liked, was prosecuted in 1621 for disobeying orders from Myles Standish, and was not convicted of anything again, though the townsfolk did gossip he was involved in other crimes and non-crimes they didn’t like, like criticizing the church and the government. We also know that once the guilty verdict was reached, William Bradford went to great lengths to secure Billington’s execution and to justify his death with irrelevant assaults on his family’s character. History is often written by the victors, and in this case it was William Bradford who wrote the history.

Now, as for me. I, dear listener, despite the circumstantial evidence, I believe that dear old granddad John did pull that trigger and I seem to be less troubled than some members of Team Billington to have a killer four hundred-some years back in the family tree. Being related to the first man to be executed for murder in Colonial America makes for a unique story.

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