They were so desperately praying for help to survive that the stability provided by their faith in God only emboldened their promise to live as purely as possible. One finds that the bedraggled band of fifty or so English and Dutch immigrants who got off the Mayflower with fear and malnutrition had little time or inclination for trouble. Ultimately, it may perhaps prove that the greater the initial repression the greater the eventual expression.īut some of this stuff is enough to crack Plymouth Rock. It’s enough to leave the most heathen of sinners gulping. In them, one finds eye-popping details of every imaginable sexual encounter. Mencken, “is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”Ĭlearly, Mencken never pawed through the court record of Plymouth Colony‘s first generations of Pilgrims.
