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Rating: 
Summary: kirkus reviews
Review: "Richard More is a distant cousin of Lindsay's...a First Comer on the Mayflower who grew up to be a bigamous debauchee, and this is his tale: a mostly jolly entertainment that finishes on a reflective note. Lindsay has cobbled together More's life from extant records-adding surmises and conjectures as necessary-and squared it with the times:from landfall in 1620 to the era of witches' nooses in Salem. Product of a dalliance, More got shipped aboard the Mayflower at the age of five by his disgruntled father-in-name-only. Wonderfully, wryly told, Lindsay's tale charts More's wayward course. Put into the hands of a Saint-a particularly vibrant Puritan-for his first seven years at Plimouth Colony, he disappears from Lindsay's sights until surfacing aboard the Blessing, out of London for New England in 1635. Well on his way to becoming a dispossessed soul, More falls in with the fishermen of Maine outposts, who "drank like the damned and shared their wives as they did their boats." When he finally settles in Salem, he marries and starts to raise a family and gain a position in town. Problem is, he marries and starts to raise a family in London as well, which he takes pains to hide, as bigamy is a hanging offense. All this is painted against a rich historical backdrop of tobacco and bells, feuding between Separatists and Strangers, the Quaker and Antinomian controversies ("as usual, theology was not the real issue at stake, because no one was studying it"), the whole dissembling of the New England ideal, pretending to one course while following another. Like something out of Henry Fielding, a bad seed gets worse (More eventually wears the scarlet letter) in a quizzical story that keeps momentum and drollery all the way to its humanist end."
-Kirkus Reviews
Rating: 
Summary: Too much supposition
Review: MAYFLOWER BASTARD is riveting at first. The back story involving Richard More's parents reads like a gothic novel. Theirs was an arranged marriage that quickly unraveled with Samuel, Richard's father, living in London, and his mother, Katherine, carrying on an affair with another man, resulting in four bastard children. Richard More's father is such a snake it's hard to believe people like him actually exist. When his wife is too blatant in her affair, he divorces her and has their illegitimate children deported to America on the Mayflower. Richard is assigned to William Brewster the temporary minister at Plymouth Colony. Richard is pretty much treated like a servant and the Stranger (non Puritan) that he is and his brothers and sisters die.
Apparently Samuel's arrangement with Brewster was rather like that of an indentured servant. After seven years, Brewster's obligation was fulfilled. Richard then hooks up with Richard Hollingsworth, a shipwright whose daughter Christian he marries. They ultimately have seven children together. Richard becomes a sea captain and in the process takes another wife in England, an offense which could have gotten him hanged since the penalty for bigamy was death.
Richard More lived to be an old man and was known among the Puritans as one of the Ancient Ones. He was around at the beginning of the colony and was there for the Salem Witch trials. He was not hanged for being a witch but he did become embroiled in politic intrigue and was found guilty of adultery and required to wear a scarlet A, just like Hester Prynne.
Author David Lindsay, a descendant of Richard More, did extensive research on his subject, but the book is replete with supposition which cheapens his effort. Lindsay set out to prove Richard a rogue, but in the end he finds enough to like about him to determine that he was human just like the rest of us.
Lindsay has an annoying style of writing, addressing another character in the book. I got the impression this was supposed to be the person who accused Richard of adultery but I'm not really sure. I wasn't interested enough to read over the beginning to find out. History lovers will like the book. The fact that there was such a character as Richard More among the sanctimonious Pilgrims is enough of a hook.
Rating:
Summary: Real People on the Mayflower
Review: More often than not when people hear the word "Mayflower", a certain attitude surfaces in conversation. To those who bristle with ill disguised anger at the thought of someone else being a descendant of a First Comer, let him or her read this work. If another person gushes with adoration at the same thought, let him or her read the same. The fact is these First Comers were regular people who took a major risk in starting life anew in a place no one knew anything about. One may as well be a First Comer at Mars Colony #1. The major difference being that at present we know more about Mars than these Mayflower ventures knew about any part of the New World let alone the inhospitable coast of 17th century New England.This is the story of a five year old boy who was all but literally cast into the arms of the pilgrims and lived and grew up in earliest New England.It is an interesting read and throws light on various aspects of life in New England, the Plimoth Colony and the town of Salem in particular. Richard More arrived at Plimoth in 1620 and lived there until very late in the 17th century (1696). He was not only a First Comer but a Long Liver as well. He was regarded as being very ancient and a representative of Ancient Times. The story of the Salem Witch Trials is dealt with and not pawed over in morbid fascination. This was an interesting and useful read. I recomment it.
Rating:
Summary: Real People on the Mayflower
Review: More often than not when people hear the word "Mayflower", a certain attitude surfaces in conversation. To those who bristle with ill disguised anger at the thought of someone else being a descendant of a First Comer, let him or her read this work. If another person gushes with adoration at the same thought, let him or her read the same. The fact is these First Comers were regular people who took a major risk in starting life anew in a place no one knew anything about. One may as well be a First Comer at Mars Colony #1. The major difference being that at present we know more about Mars than these Mayflower ventures knew about any part of the New World let alone the inhospitable coast of 17th century New England. This is the story of a five year old boy who was all but literally cast into the arms of the pilgrims and lived and grew up in earliest New England.It is an interesting read and throws light on various aspects of life in New England, the Plimoth Colony and the town of Salem in particular. Richard More arrived at Plimoth in 1620 and lived there until very late in the 17th century (1696). He was not only a First Comer but a Long Liver as well. He was regarded as being very ancient and a representative of Ancient Times. The story of the Salem Witch Trials is dealt with and not pawed over in morbid fascination. This was an interesting and useful read. I recomment it.
Rating: 
Summary: Unreadable
Review: My review must be tempered by my inability to finish this work. I simply could not bear to keep reading it. The writing style changes constantly but at no point is it good. It is characterized by awkward figures of speech, flowery stylistics, unclear point of view and unfathomable structure. One cannot even tell if, or at what point, the work is historically based. It reads at points like bad James Joyce. I was disappointed, as I was intrigued by the idea of a fictionalized account of an early Plymouth settler.
Rating:
Summary: Unreadable
Review: My review must be tempered by my inability to finish this work. I simply could not bear to keep reading it. The writing style changes constantly but at no point is it good. It is characterized by awkward figures of speech, flowery stylistics, unclear point of view and unfathomable structure. One cannot even tell if, or at what point, the work is historically based. It reads at points like bad James Joyce. I was disappointed, as I was intrigued by the idea of a fictionalized account of an early Plymouth settler.
Rating:
Summary: Can't tell the facts from the fictions
Review: What a pity that the author put so much time and effort into the research for this book and then botched it all by making assumptions and jumping to conclusions, some of which may have a basis in fact (we will probably never know) but others which I truly believe are erroneous. Excellent footnotes cite original sources, but the writing style makes it impossible to determine conclusively which of the author's suppositions are backed up by good evidence and which are not. I would have preferred to read a straight chronological presentation of the evidence, more of it in the form of the full text (perhaps presented in appendices), and let the evidence speak for itself. It appears there wasn't enough evidence to fill out a complete biography, so the author padded it by filling in what he thought would make the most interesting and swashbuckling story. The text is further marred by several typographical errors which are unworthy of a publishing house of the stature of St. Martin's Press. Don't they proofread? This was one of the worst books I have read in a long time; it was given to me by a friend and I have no intention of keeping it, but I even hesitate to donate it to my local library.
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