Background
Thomas Weston was baptized on December 21, 1584, at Rugeley, Staffordshire England. He was the son of Ralph Weston and Anne Smith.
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Thomas Weston
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Thomas Weston was largely responsible for financing the first voyage of the Mayflower. A successful ironmonger at Aldgate in London, he had joined, by 1617, a group of merchants whose unlicensed shipments of cloth to the Netherlands brought them into conflict with the Merchant Adventurers of London. In 1618 he and his associates were ordered by the Privy Council to give up this trade, and began to seek another market. Having become acquainted with members of the Separatist congregation living in Leyden, Weston learned of their plans for emigration, of their overtures to the Virginia Company, and of the offer made them by Dutch capitalists during the years 1617-20. Securing a patent, Feburary 20, 1620, from the Virginia Company, under the name of John Peirce and his Associates, he went to Leyden and offered to underwrite the Pilgrims' adventure on such generous terms and with such strong, convincing personal assurances of continued and loyal support, that his offer was at once accepted. In the next few months, however, hope that the charter for the Council for New England - with perhaps a monopoly of fishing rights in the northern waters - would soon be issued caused some hesitation on the part of Weston and some of the other merchants as well as those of the Separatists who were especially averse to going to an Anglican colony. Weston's London associates refused assent to the offers he had made at Leyden and the Pilgrim leaders rejected the revised agreement drawn by Weston and Robert Cushman, but when summer came, and the Council for New England was still unchartered, the Pilgrims decided to go ahead under the Peirce patent. Weston himself hired the Mayflower and organized a group of sixty-seven, including Standish, Alden, and Hopkins, to accompany the thirty-five coming from Leyden, but when the united band met at Southampton and still declined to sign the revised articles, Weston refused to contribute any more money and "deserted" them. They took matters into their own hands, sold part of their goods, and sailed despite him. Some writers have declared that it was Weston's purpose to "steal" the colony, and that he bribed the captain to land in New England instead of in the territory of the Virginia Company, but this view has not been ordinarily accepted and Weston's honesty in the matter has been commonly believed. After news came of the colonists' safe arrival, Weston relented toward them, fitted out the Fortune, and sent thirty-five new colonists but no supplies (July 1621). Meanwhile a patent had been secured from the Council for New England. Cushman sailed on the Fortune, and during a three-week stay in New England obtained the requisite signatures to the agreement Weston had desired. In 1622, however, Weston, fired with new ideas, sold his interest to his associates and equipped an expedition of his own, which arrived at Plymouth in June of that year, asking assistance. This they received, although they were distinctly unwelcome, and they presently settled at the site of the later Weymouth. These men were laborers rather than colonists, come to make quick fortunes. They did no steady work, quarreled with the Indians, and in 1623 were rescued by Standish from one of the few dangerous Indian conspiracies of the early years. The remnant, brought back to Plymouth, was soon joined by Weston himself, who had come over alone and without funds on the fishing fleet. He now borrowed from the Pilgrims and began a series of trading voyages along the New England coast. In September 1623, when Robert Gorges came out with a commission from the Council for New England as governor, he carried orders to arrest Weston on the charges that his men had disturbed the peace and that he himself, licensed by Sir Ferdinando Gorges to export ordnance to New England, had sold the pieces abroad for his own profit. The Pilgrims charitably argued his case with Gorges, undertook to oversee his activities, and helped him to sail with his men for Virginia in 1624. Bradford certainly felt that they had borne much from him and had truly returned good for evil. Weston was a member of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1628 but subsequently moved to Maryland, where in 1642 he received a grant of 1, 200 acres known as "Westbury Manor, " was made a freeman of the colony, and became a member of the Assembly. In the next year, probably, he returned to England, and died at Bristol between 1644 and 1647.
Achievements
Personality
He was typical of one class of men of his age, a roving, resourceful trader, unstable and hot tempered, and in more or less trouble wherever his lot was cast.
Connections
Thomas Weston married Elizabeth Weaver by October 17, 1623. He had one child, Elizabeth Weston, born about 1630.
