The Village of Merry Mount

Within five or six miles of where stands our village, had been, a few years before, a settlement which one Captain Wollaston began, and, tiring of the enterprise, went back to England, leaving there some few of his followers, who were ungodly people.

This Thomas Morton, believing himself held in too close restraint at Plymouth, sought out these people at Wollaston, and became one of them, to the shame and reproach of all godly-minded people in this New World. He changed the name of the village to Merry Mount; was chosen leader of the company there, and made of the place a perfect Sodom.

It is said, so I have heard my father say, that they had no religious services, save now and then, when in a spirit of wickedness this Thomas Morton read from the prayer book. He increased the number of his following by enticing the servants away from the good folks of Plymouth.

It gave much offence to them that such a village should be in the land where they had come to set up the true worship of God, therefore Captain Miles Standish, a soldier of Plymouth, went with a force of men to Merry Mount, seized this Thomas Morton, and sent him to England that he might answer for his crimes to the London Company.