During his absence one Thomas Morton, a lawyer of Clifford’s Inn, asserted his authority, freed the rest of the settlers, and engaged in a successful traffic with the Indians for beaver and other skins.  This circumstance was itself calculated to excite the jealousy of the Plymouth settlers, but the ceremonies and customs at “Merry Mount,” which name Morton gave to the settlement in lieu of “Mount Wollaston,” caused them to regard him with even greater disgust.  He instituted the Episcopal service and planted a May-pole eighty feet high, around which, for many days together, the settlers “frisked” hand-in-hand with the Indian girls.

As Morton was outside of the Plymouth jurisdiction, the colonists there had no right to interfere except in self-defence.  But the Plymouth people asserted that Morton sold arms to the Indians and received runaway servants.  This made him dangerous, and all the other “straggling settlements,” though, like Morton’s, of the church of England, united with the people at Plymouth in suppressing Morton’s settlement.  In June, 1628, a joint force under Captain Miles Standish was sent against Merry Mount, and Morton was captured and shipped to England in charge of John Oldham, who had made his peace with Plymouth, and now took with him letters to the Council for New England and to Sir Ferdinando Gorges, in which Morton’s offences were duly set forth.[18]

The settlements besides Plymouth which took part in the expedition were Piscataqua (Portsmouth); Nantasket (now Hull), then the seat of John Oldham; Naumkeag (now Salem); Winnisimmet (now Chelsea), where Mr. Jeffrey and Mr. Burslem lived; Cocheco, on the Piscataqua, where Edward Hilton lived; Thompson’s Island, where the widow of David Thompson lived; and Shawmut (now Boston), where Rev. William Blackstone lived.  Besides the settlements, there were in the neighborhood of Plymouth plantations of some solitary settlers whose names do not appear in this transaction.  Thomas Walford lived at Mishawum (now Charlestown), and Samuel Maverick on Noddle’s Island; Wessagusset also had probably a few inhabitants.

In 1627 De Rasieres, the secretary of state of the Dutch colony at New Netherland, opened a correspondence with Governor Bradford and assured him of his desire to cultivate friendly relations.  Bradford gave a kind reply, but questioned the right of the Dutch on the coast, and invited Rasieres to a conference.  He accepted the invitation, and in 1628 visited the Puritan settlement.  A profitable exchange of merchandise succeeded, and the Dutch taught the Plymouth men the value of wampum in trading for furs, and sold them L50 worth of it.  It was found useful both as a currency and commodity, and afterwards the settlers learned to make it from the shells on the sea-shore.[19] It was not till five years later that this peaceful correspondence with the Dutch was disturbed.