WINDING UP ‘GODLY’ PURITANS IN 1628 NEW ENGLAND (SPRING 2026)

 


Children perform on May Day in front of East Budleigh’s Village Hall Photo: Facebook 

 It’s not so long ago that the tradition of maypole dancing was revived in Roger Conant’s birthplace of East Budleigh. It’s a serious art form say enthusiasts. Dancers in turn change places with the dancer opposite them on the other side of the pole, creating two spiral plaits. It’s fun to dance and visually stunning, and East Budleigh looks forward to seeing this May Day ritual. 

 An ancient English tradition which Roger Conant’s family would have enjoyed? Unlikely. In the increasingly puritanical England of the 1640s, maypoles were condemned by Parliament as ‘a Heathenish vanity, generally abused to superstition and wickedness’, and were banned outright. Christmas and other ‘ungodly’ practices were also outlawed. 

 Roger would certainly have had problems had he tried to introduce it in New England. With the arrival in 1628 of the ‘godly’ Governor John Endicott in Naumkeag, later to become Salem, such ‘pagan’ practices were viewed with horror.

That year, shocking news was received by Puritan leaders in Plymouth Colony, where the 1620 Mayflower Pilgrims had settled. Just over 20 miles away, in the settlement once called Merrymount and today known as the town of Quincy, colonists led by an English lawyer named Thomas Morton were scandalizing New England with their May Day activities. 

 Governor William Bradford in his History of Plymouth Plantation, records his disgust on learning that the inhabitants had ‘set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices’. 

 It was, he wrote, ‘as if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians’. Morton was vilified by Bradford as a ‘lord of misrule’ who ‘maintained (as it were) a schoole of Athisme’. When even more extravagant May Day celebrations took place around an 80-foot maypole a military offensive against Merrymount colony was led in June 1628 by Captain Myles Standish. Morton was arrested and imprisoned and the maypole was chopped down. 


A 19th-century engraving of Captain Myles Standish and his men observing the 'immoral' behavior of the Maypole festivities of 1628 at Merrymount. Image from Wikipedia. 

 More about Thomas Morton in a future issue of The Conant Courier  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

FROM EAST BUDLEIGH TO EASTERN UKRAINE, AND BACK (SPRING 2026)

Image
East Budleigh High Street from the tower of All Saints Church, and the consequences of a Russian missile attack on Dnipro on 14 January 2023. Image: Wikipedia   What makes an ex-Royal Marines officer choose to leave peaceful retire ment in a Devon village and join convoys delivering aid from Britain to an embattled country fighting for its survival? Andrew Canning OBE writes below about his most recent experience, which highlights the extreme situation of the people of Ukraine, and the small but significant part that he and his colleagues, and the people of East Budleigh, have played in helping them.   I am SO grateful to the many folk from East Budleigh and elsewhere that have donated either cash or material goods to the cause for which I volunteer in collecting and delivering much needed aid to Ukraine. The Ukraine Freedom Company (UFC) is a not-for-profit company, not a charity, that was estab lished shortly after Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022. The founder, ...
Read more

HOW DID THE CONANT COURIER START? BEVERLY MA JOURNALIST PAUL LEIGHTON EXPLAINS. (WINTER 2025)

Image
The front page of the first issue of The Conant Courier (Autumn 2025) When I heard there was a new newsletter having something to do with Beverly, I got a little nervous. Could this be competition for The Beverly Beat?  Then I found out the newsletter was from across the pond — and I’m not talking Kelleher’s. The new publication is called The Conant Courier, and it’s based in Devon, England, the birthplace of Roger Conant.  Roger Conant is the answer to the first question any self-respecting Beverly trivia contestant should be able to answer — Who was the founder of Beverly? READ MORE AT  https://thebeverlybeat.substack.com/p/roger-that
Read more

THREE CHEERS FOR UNTIDINESS! (AUTUMN 2025)

Image
 ‘Wow!’ exclaimed our 12-year-old grand-daughter Lucy as she saw the shambles of more than 80 years of clutter hidden in our garage. She settled down to explore. We both agreed that every family home should have something similar—a museum of untidily stacked curios and unfamiliar objects to surprise and delight visitors, especially children. Lucy’s reaction reminded me of how, as a child, the sister of a well known composer described her feelings as she explored the ‘rambling and dilapidated’ property at 31 Station Road in Budleigh Salterton. Budleigh artist Joyce Dennys had suggested that the family move to the town at the outbreak of World War Two, and then seek a permanent home away from the London bombs. ‘The house was thrilling!’ the sister recalled in Anthony Meredith’s biography of her famous brother, Sir Richard Rodney Bennett.  ‘I used to sneak about, taking everything in, and I went up to the attic once and it was full of assegais, masks and marvellous red-leather vo...
Read more