Phipps, the First of Our Self-Made Men

WILLIAM PHIPPS was born Feb. 2, 1650, at a despicable plantation on the river of Kennebeck, and almost the furthest village of the Eastern Settlement of New-England. And as the father of that man, which was as great a blessing as England had in the age of that man, was a Smith, so a gunsmith, namely, James Phipps, once of Bristol, had the honor of being the father to him, whom we shall presently see, made by the God of Heaven as great a blessing to New England, as that county could have had, if they themselves had pleased. His fruitful mother, yet living, had no less than twenty-six children, whereof twenty-one were sons; but equivalent to them all was William, one of the youngest, whom his father dying, left young with his mother, and with her he lived, keeping of sheep in the wilderness, until he was eighteen years old; at which time he began to feel some further dispositions of mind from that providence of God which took him from the sheepfolds, from following the ewes great with young, and brought him to feed his people….

His friends earnestly solicited him to settle among them in a plantation of the east; but he had an unaccountable impulse upon his mind, persuading him, as he would privately hint unto some of them, that he was born to greater matters. To come at those greater matters, his first contrivance was to bind himself an apprentice unto a ship-carpenter for four years in which time he became a master of the trade, that once in a vessel of more than forty thousand tons, repaired the ruins of the earth; Noah’s, I mean; he then betook himself an hundred and fifty miles further afield, even to Boston, the chief town of New England; which being a place of the most business and resort in those parts of the world, he expected there more commodiously to pursue the spes majorum et meliorum, Hopes which had inspired him.

At Boston, where it was that he now learned, first of all, to read and write, he followed his trade for about a year; and by a laudable deportment, so recommended himself, that he married a young gentlewoman of good repute, who was the widow of one Mr. John Hull, a well-bred merchant, but the daughter of one Captain Roger Spencer, a person of good fashion, who having suffered much damage in his estate, by some unkind and unjust actions, which he bore with such patience, that for fear of thereby injuring the public, he would not seek satisfaction, posterity might afterward see the reward of his patience, in what Providence hath now done for one of his own posterity. Within a little while after his marriage, he indented with several persons in Boston, to build them a ship at Sheeps-coat River, two or three leagues eastward of Kennebeck; where having launched the ship, he also provided a lading of lumber to bring with him, which would have been to the advantage of all concerned. But just as the ship was hardly finished, the barbarous Indians on that river, broke forth into an open and cruel war upon the English; and the miserable people, surprised by so sudden a storm of blood, had no refuge from the infidels, but the ship now finishing in the harbor. Whereupon he left his intended lading behind him, and instead thereof, carried with him his old neighbors and their families, free of all charges, to Boston; so the first action that he did, after he was his own man, was to save his father’s house, with the rest of the neighborhood, from ruin; but the disappointment which befell him from the loss of his other lading, plunged his affairs into greater embarrassments with such as had employed him.

But he was hitherto no more than beginning to make scaffolds for further and higher actions! He would frequently tell the gentlewoman his wife, that he should yet be captain of a king’s ship; that he should come to have the command of better men than he was now accounted himself; and, that he should be owner of a fair brick-house in the green-lane of North-Boston; and, that, it may be, this would not be all that the Providence of God would bring him to. She entertained these passages with a sufficient incredulity; but he had so serious and positive an expectation of them, that it is not easy to say, what was the original thereof. He was of an enterprising genius, and naturally disdained littleness: But his disposition for business was of the Dutch mould, where, with a little show of wit, there is as much wisdom demonstrated, as can be shown by any nation. His talent lay not in the airs that serve chiefly for the pleasant and sudden turns of conversation; but he might say, as Themistocles, though he could not play upon a fiddle, yet he know how to make a little city become a great one. He would prudently contrive a weighty undertaking, and then patiently pursue it unto the end. He was of an inclination, cutting rather like a hatchet, than like a razor; he would propose very considerable matters to himself, and then so cut through them, that no difficulties could put by the edge of his resolutions. Being thus of the true temper, for doing of great things, he betakes himself to the sea, the right scene for such things; and upon advice of a Spanish wreck about the Bahama’s, he took a voyage thither; but with little more success, than what just served him a little to furnish him tor a voyage to England; whither he went in a vessel, not much unlike that which the Dutchmen stamped on their first coin, with these words about it, Incertum quo Fata ferant. Having first informed himself that there was another Spanish wreck, wherein was lost a mighty treasure, hitherto undiscovered, he had a strong impression upon his mind that he must be the discoverer; and he made such representations of his design at White-Hall, that by the year 1683 he became the captain of a King’s ship, and arrived at New England commander of the Algier-Rose, a frigate of eighteen guns, and ninety-five men….

Now with a small company of other men he sailed from thence to Hispaniola, where by the policy of his address, he fished out of a very old Spaniard, (or Portuguese) a little advice about the true spot where lay the wreck which he had been hitherto seeking, as unprosperously, as the Chemists have their Aurisick Stone: That it was upon a reef of shoals, a few leagues to the northward of Port de la Plata, upon Hispaniola, a port so called, it seems, from the landing of some of the shipwrecked company, with a boat full of plate, saved out of their sinking frigate. Nevertheless, when he had searched very narrowly the spot, whereof the old Spaniard had advised him, he had not hitherto exactly lit upon it. Such thorns did vex his affairs while he was in the Rose-frigate; but none of all these things could retund the edge of his expectations to find the wreck; with such expectations he returned then into England, that he might there better furnish himself to prosecute a new discovery….

So proper was his behavior, that the best noblemen in the kingdom now admitted him into their conversation; but yet he was opposed by powerful enemies, that clogged his affairs with such demurrages and such disappointments, as would have wholly discouraged his designs, if his patience had not been invincible. He who can wait, hath what he desireth. This his indefatigable patience, with a proportionable diligence, at length overcame the difficulties that had been thrown in his way; and prevailing with the Duke of Albemarle, and some other persons of quality, to fit him out, he set sail for the fishing-ground, which had been so well baited half a hundred years before…. Nevertheless, as they were upon the return, one of the men looking over the side of the Periaga, into the calm water, he spied a sea feather, growing, as he judged, out of a rock; whereupon they bade one of their Indians to dive and fetch this feather, that they might however carry home something with them, and make, at least, as fair a triumph as Caligula’s. The diver bringing up the feather, brought therewithal a surprising story, that he perceived a number of great guns in the watery world where he had found his feather; the report of which great guns exceedingly astonished the whole company; and at once turned their despondencies for their ill success into assurances, that they had now lit upon the true spot of ground which they had been looking for; and they were further confirmed in these assurances, when upon further diving, the Indian fetched up a sow, as they styled it, or a lump of silver, worth perhaps two or three hundred pounds…. and they so prospered in this new fishery, that in a little while they had, without the loss of any man’s life, brought up thirty-two tons of silver; for it was now come to measuring of silver by tons….

But there was one extraordinary distress which Captain Phipps now found himself plunged into: For his men were come out with him upon seamen’s wages, at so much per month; and when they saw such vast litters of silver sows and pigs, as they call them, come on board them at the captain’s call, they knew not how to bear it, that they should not share all among themselves, and be gone to lead a short life and a merry, in a climate where the arrest of those that had hired them should not reach them…. Captain Phipps now coming up to London in the year 1687, with near three hundred thousand pounds sterling aboard him, did acquit himself with such an exemplary honesty, that partly by his fulfilling his assurances to the seamen, and partly by his exact and punctual care to have his employers defrauded of nothing that might conscientiously belong unto them, he had less than sixteen thousand pounds left unto himself: As an acknowledgment of which honesty in him, the Duke of Albemarle made unto his wife, whom he never saw, a present of a golden cup, near a thousand pounds in value. The character of an honest man he had so merited in the whole course of his life, and especially in this last act of it, that this, in conjunction with his other serviceable qualities, procured him the favors of the greatest persons in the nation; and he that had been so diligent in his business, must now stand before kings, and not stand before mean men…. Accordingly the king, in consideration of the service done by him, in bringing such a treasure into the nation, conferred upon him the honor of knighthood; and if we now reckon him, A Knight of the Golden Fleece, the style might pretend unto some circumstances that would justify it. Or call him, if you please, The Knight of Honesty; for it was honesty with industry that raised him….

Indeed, when King James offered, as he did, unto Sir William Phipps an opportunity to ask what he pleased of him, Sir William generously prayed for nothing but this, That New England might have its lost privileges restored. The king then replied, Anything but that! Whereupon he set himself to consider what was the next thing that he might ask for the service, not of himself, but of his country. The result of his consideration was, that by petition to the king, he obtained, with expense of some hundreds of guineas, a patent, which constituted him the high sheriff of that country; hoping, by his deputies in that office, to supply the country still with conscientious juries, which was the only method that the New Englanders had left them to secure anything that was dear unto them….