The Battle of Dunbar occurred during the Third English Civil War. The English Parliamentarian forces under Oliver Cromwell defeated a Scottish army commanded by David Leslie, loyal to King Charles II, who had been proclaimed King of the Scots on 5 February 1649. Of the estimated 5,000 Scottish soldiers that began the march southwards from Dunbar, over 3,500 died either on the march or during their imprisonment in Durham Cathedral, more than the total killed on the battlefield. Of the 1,400 survivors, the majority were eventually transported as convict laborers to English colonies in the New World and the Caribbean.
The Unity arrived in Boston harbor in the early winter of 1650 - 1651 with a cargo of indentured Scottish men. A teenage John Law may have been on that ship, but we do not know for certain. We do know that some five years later he appears in West Concord tending sheep in a "new grant" of land that the town had petitioned from the Commonwealth. In writing of John Law's life in "The Immigrant", I mused about the Unity, so unlike the many ships that arrived in Boston during the Great Migration. Below is paragraph excerpted from the "The Immigrant" before John Law begins his life in the new world but after surviving a harrowing, yet eventually enlightening trans-Atlantic crossing.
The Unity, a mere speck of assembled timber that dared to cross the vast Atlantic, continued to be tossed until it neared the coastline of a new world. Twenty years earlier, another similar speck, the Arbella, dared to cross the great divide. That ship carried a leader, John Winthrop, and families from same parishes. They were united in religious purpose, supported by Lord Cromwell and inspired to begin life anew. A swarm followed the Arbella and each ship carried a similar cargo. The wilderness was carved to their specifications, a covenant with God was crafted and fledgling settlements grew into a Puritan theocracy. While the Unity was a similar construct to all previous ships to the new world, its cargo was far different; leaderless, dispirited men from different Scottish clans, Cromwell’s prisoners, Catholics in a Puritan theocracy. A swarm of similar ilk would not follow after these Scots. The Unity’s cargo was the first foreign drop of undesirables into a heretofore virgin sanctuary.
The Unity arrived in Boston harbor in the early winter of 1650 - 1651 with a cargo of indentured Scottish men. A teenage John Law may have been on that ship, but we do not know for certain. We do know that some five years later he appears in West Concord tending sheep in a "new grant" of land that the town had petitioned from the Commonwealth. In writing of John Law's life in "The Immigrant", I mused about the Unity, so unlike the many ships that arrived in Boston during the Great Migration. Below is paragraph excerpted from the "The Immigrant" before John Law begins his life in the new world but after surviving a harrowing, yet eventually enlightening trans-Atlantic crossing.
The Unity, a mere speck of assembled timber that dared to cross the vast Atlantic, continued to be tossed until it neared the coastline of a new world. Twenty years earlier, another similar speck, the Arbella, dared to cross the great divide. That ship carried a leader, John Winthrop, and families from same parishes. They were united in religious purpose, supported by Lord Cromwell and inspired to begin life anew. A swarm followed the Arbella and each ship carried a similar cargo. The wilderness was carved to their specifications, a covenant with God was crafted and fledgling settlements grew into a Puritan theocracy. While the Unity was a similar construct to all previous ships to the new world, its cargo was far different; leaderless, dispirited men from different Scottish clans, Cromwell’s prisoners, Catholics in a Puritan theocracy. A swarm of similar ilk would not follow after these Scots. The Unity’s cargo was the first foreign drop of undesirables into a heretofore virgin sanctuary.
