♂Robert Cushman

Robert Cushman (1578–1625) was a wool comber of Canterbury and a deacon of the English congregation at Leiden who spent the years 1617 to 1620 in London arranging the Pilgrims’ voyage to America, came to Plymouth on the Fortune in 1621 only to stay a month, and on the voyage home was robbed by the French and held in France for fifteen days. He was the ninth great-grandfather of Frederic Roger Curtis (1928–2007), through his son Thomas Cushman (1607–1691).

Early life

Robert was baptized at Rolvenden, in Kent, on 9 February 1577/78, the younger son of Thomas Couchman, a husbandman, and Elynour Hubbard, who had married there on 18 July 1568. Of the couple’s other children, Alys, Margaret and Henry died young; Robert’s elder brother Richard and his sister Sylvester grew up, and Sylvester married Stephen Evernden of Tenterden in 1593. Thomas died in February 1585/86, when Robert was eight, and his will leaves “my younger son Robarte” ten pounds.

The link between the Rolvenden boy and the Pilgrims’ agent rests on a 1914 article in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, which finds the two to be the same man “in all probability”; Robert Charles Anderson’s The Great Migration Begins accepts the identification. The article notes that no other Robert appears in the Rolvenden or Canterbury registers.

Canterbury and Leiden

In November 1603 the churchwardens of St Andrew’s, Canterbury, probably presented him as a servant of George Masters, for refusing to attend his parish church; he was excommunicated in November 1604 and absolved in July 1605, and in 1605 he was admitted a freeman of the city by apprenticeship to Masters.

He married Sarah Reder at Canterbury on 31 July 1606, and their son Thomas was baptized at St Andrew’s, Canterbury, on 8 February 1607/08. He is described as a wool comber, or woolcarder, of Canterbury; the same compiled genealogy calls him a grocer while at Canterbury and a woolcomber at Leiden.

He served as a deacon of the English congregation at Leiden, in Holland, from about 1609 until his death. Sarah was buried at Leiden in October 1616, and the compiled genealogy records two unnamed children of the family buried there in March and October 1616. In June 1617, at Leiden, he married Mary Singleton, a widow from Sandwich in Kent; the compiler finds no evidence that she ever came to Plymouth.

Agent for the Pilgrims

From 1617 to 1620 he was the congregation’s agent in London, working with John Carver and William Brewster to settle terms with the merchants who were to finance the voyage and to arrange its ships and provisions. An anthology of the Pilgrim narratives describes him as “their right hand with their freinds, ye adventurers”. He had meant to cross in 1620, but when the Speedwell^W put back for the third time and was abandoned, he was among those who stayed behind.

He came over the next year on the Fortune, which reached Plymouth on 10 November 1621 carrying him and his son Thomas. On 12 December 1621 he preached a sermon urging the settlers to accept the terms offered by the London merchants; it was printed in London in 1622, and Savage’s dictionary of the first settlers calls it the first sermon preached in New England. After about a month he sailed home in the same ship, leaving Thomas at Plymouth with Governor William Bradford, who brought him up. On the way the Fortune was stopped by the French and taken into France. His own letter to Bradford, printed in Bradford’s history, says they were “kepte ther 15. days, and lost all yt we had that was worth taking; but thanks be to God, we escaped with our lives & ship”, reaching England on 17 February.

Last years

He went on working in London for the congregation and for the settlers at Plymouth until his death. In the division of Plymouth land in 1623 he was assigned a share as though he had been a passenger on the Mayflower, which he was not; the compiled genealogy takes the grant as recognition of the voyage he had meant to make and of his other services to the colony. In December 1624 he wrote that he hoped to come over the next season, but he died suddenly at Benenden, in Kent, in 1625, probably while visiting relatives there, and was buried there on 6 May 1625. Myles Standish, returning to Plymouth early in 1626, “brought them notice of the death of their ancient friend Mr. Cushman”.

Notes

Canterbury court and freedom

The presentment of 14 November 1603, the excommunication of 12 November 1604, the absolution of 7 July 1605 and the 1605 freedom come from Elizabeth French’s compiled article “Genealogical Research in England: Cushman” in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register. The presentment spells the master’s name “Maisters”; the freedom entry spells it “Masters”. The article gives the trade as grocer at Canterbury, and it is a compiled account, not an original record.

Death and burial at Benenden

The burial entry for 6 May 1625, in the archdeacon’s transcripts of the Benenden burials for that month, reads “The 6 day Roberte Couchman a stranger”. Michael R. Paulick and Robert C. Cushman, in their article on the Pilgrim’s 1625 death in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register (volume 172, 2018, pages 25–29), place the death at Benenden, probably while he was visiting relatives there (page 28), and identify the stranger in the entry as him. The identification is the article’s argument, not a fact the transcript states. No evidence is known for a death in London from plague.