The New English Canaan: The first book banned in the United States
T
homas Morton’s blistering satire The New English Canaan is considered the first book to be banned in the United States (to be accurate, what would become the U.S.). Though Morton arrived in Massachusetts with the Puritans, he wasn’t on board with the strict, insular society they set out to build.
So Morton set up a dissenting colony, and seemingly went out of his way to be a perpetual thorn in the side of Plymouth’s governor, William Bradford, who declared him a “Lord of Misrule.”[1] Based on the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a Lord of Misrule is one who presided over raucous celebrations in England throughout the 16th century.[2]
And, Bradford wasn’t altogether wrong. The accusations he hurled toward Morton, like “inviting the Indean women, for their consorts, dancing and frisking togither,” (yes, that means exactly what you think it means) were apparently true.[3]
Morton’s nonconformist colony was a “neo-pagan experiment,” which he dubbed Merrymount (which also means exactly what you think it means).[4] The name is a play on the Latin phrase for sea, the Mother of God, not to mention an emotion not typically associated with the Puritans… joy.[5]
Things came to a head when Morton organized a Mayday celebration, complete with an enormous maypole erected with the help of indigenous people in the area. Intending to celebrate in a manner, “with Revels and merriment after the old English custome,” they:
…brewed a barrell of excellent beare and provided a cafe of bottles, to be spent, with other good cheare, for all commers of that day. And because they would have it in a compleat forme, they had prepared a song fitting to the time and present occasion. And upon Mayday they brought the Maypole to the place appointed, with drumes, gunnes, pistols and other fitting instruments for that purpose; and there erected it with the help of salvages, that came tether of purpose to see the manner of our Revels. A goodly pine tree of 80. foote longe was reared up, with a peare of buckshorns nayled one fomewhat neare unto the top of it.[6]
Dancing and singing ribald songs around a Maypole topped with a fertility symbol, in a drunken stupor with the local indigenous people — it doesn’t get more Pagan (and offensive to Puritan sensibilities) than that. [7]
Morton is highly critical of Puritan social order in general, to say nothing of the contemptible treatment the New World was receiving at the hands of these Puritans. His satire within The New English Canaan is biting (and amusing) indeed. One of his favorite targets is Miles Standish, who was ordered by the Governor of Plymouth to march a garrison into Merrymount and take Morton by force.
Standish was a diminutive man, and Morton’s jab by nicknaming him “Captaine Shrimp,” is but one example. Right alongside Standish’s band of inept soldiers, which Morton sarcastically dubbed “the Nine Worthies,” a reference to a group of legendary men who personify chivalric and military excellence. [8]
The New English Canaan was written from England where Morton was involved in a lawsuit against the Massachusetts Bay Company. Upon his return to Massachusetts in 1644, Morton was arrested for its publication and exiled to Maine where he died in 1647.
The may-pole incident inspired another piece of great American literature, written by an author known for his commentary on Puritanism. Nathaniel Hawthorne recounts this turn of events in his Twice-Told Tale “The May-pole of Merry Mount.” Hawthorne sums up the cultural environment that brought about the banning of The New English Canaan as only he can, stating in the opening paragraph that “jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.”[9]
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Endnotes:
[1] Mancall, Peter C. The Trials of Thomas Morton. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019) Pg 13.
[2] McMahon, Mary. “What Was the Lord of Misrule?” HistoricalIndex.org https://www.historicalindex.org/what-was-the-lord-of-misrule.htm
[3] Bradford, William. Bradford’s History of “Plimoth Plantation.” (Boston: Wright & Potter Printing Co., 1898), pg 285.
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/24950/24950-h/24950-h.htm
[4] Simon, Ed. “Lord of Misrule: Thomas Morton’s American Submersions.” November 24, 2020. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/lord-of-misrule-thomas-mortons-american-subversions#p-1-4.
[5] Simon, Ed. “Lord of Misrule: Thomas Morton’s American Submersions.” November 24, 2020. The Public Domain Review. https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/lord-of-misrule-thomas-mortons-american-subversions#p-1-4.
[6] Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan. (Boston: Publications of the Prince Society, 1858 edition). Pg 277.
[7]Wigington, Patti. The Symbolism of the Stag.” Learn Religions. June 25, 2019.
[8] Morton, Thomas. New English Canaan. (Boston: Publications of the Prince Society, 1858 edition). Pg 285.
Simon, Ed. “Lord of Misrule: Thomas Morton’s American Subversions.” The Public Domain Review. November 24, 2020.
“The Nine Worthies: Who Were the Greatest Knights of the Middle Ages?” Medievalists.net.
[9] Hawthorne, Nathaniel. “The May-pole of Merry Mount.” Twice Told Tales. (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1884), Pg 69.
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