1630: John Billington, signer of the Mayflower Compact
September 30th, 2009 Headsman
On this date in 1630, Massachusetts’ Plymouth Colony held its first hanging — of a guy who’d come over on the Mayflower.
John Billington‘s John Hancock is on the Mayflower Compact, but he and his progeny had an ill reputation from the start.
Billington’s son almost torched the Mayflower while the pilgrims were still living in it; the old man himself achieved the distinction of “the first offence since our arrival … for his contempt of the captain’s lawful command with opprobrious speeches, for which he is adjudged to have his neck and heels tied together; but upon humbling himself and craving pardon, and it being the first offence, he is forgiven.”
(It wasn’t all bad. Another Billington kid gave the family name to an inland pond. (pdf))
Billington was condemned for shooting a neighbor.
This year John Billington the elder, one that came over with the first, was arraigned, and both by grand and petty jury found guilty of wilful murder, by plain and notorious evidence. And was for the same accordingly executed. This, as it was the first execution amongst them, so was it a matter of great sadness unto them. They used all due means about his trial and took the advice of Mr. Winthrop and other the ablest gentlemen in Bay of the Massachusetts, that were then newly come over, who concurred with them that he ought to die, and the land to be purged from blood. He and some of his had been often punished for miscarriages before, being one of the profanest families amongst them ; they came from London, and I know not by what friends shuffled into their company. His fact was that he waylaid a young man, one John Newcomen, about a former quarrel and shot him with a gun, whereof he died.
-Plymouth Gov. William Bradford (Source)
Billington is supposed to be a distant ancestor to American President James Garfield.
On this day..
- 1921: Fanya Baron, anarchist lioness - 2020
- 1915: Cerkez Ahmed, disposable fanatic - 2019
- 1921: Carl Wanderer, of the Ragged Stranger case - 2018
- 324 B.C.E.: Glaucias, negligent physician - 2017
- 1946: Takashi Sakai - 2016
- 1567: The Michelade of Nimes - 2015
- 1724: Christian George, Peter Rombert, Peter Dutartre, and Michael Boneau - 2014
- 1981: Mustapha Danso - 2013
- 1927: Huibrecht Jacob de Leeuw, dynamiter - 2012
- 1814: Mary Antoine, jealous lover - 2011
- 1860: Juan Rafael Mora Porras, President of Costa Rica - 2010
- 1952: George Muldowney, for loving and killing the original Bond girl - 2008
Entry Filed under: 17th Century,Capital Punishment,Common Criminals,Crime,Death Penalty,England,Execution,Hanged,History,Massachusetts,Milestones,Murder,Occupation and Colonialism,Public Executions,USA
Tags: 1630, 1630s, james garfield, john billington, john newcomen, john winthrop, mayflower, mayflower compact, plymouth colony, september 30, stephen vincent benet, william bradford
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