THE MURDERER OF JOHN NEWCOMER (1630)

LOCATION: Plymouth Colony

PERPETRATOR: John Billington

MOTIVATION: Murder

ANTECEDENTS: Little is known of the life of John Newcomer beyond the fact that in early September 1630 he was shot and killed.

He was a newcomer to the Plymouth Colony, the settlement established ten years previously by the group now known as the Pilgrim Fathers, arrived on board the Mayflower in December 1620.

John Billington was one of these  originals settlers and a signatory to the Mayflower Compact, the document written during the Atlantic passage setting out regulations to govern the new colony.

Billington may have sailed on the Mayflower, but he was not one of the group of religious separatists who would later become known as the Pilgrim Fathers. They were followers of the Protestant cleric Robert Brown, who, along with other Puritans did not think the Reformation had gone far enough in England so had moved to Holland in an attempt to find a place to live where they could practice their religion.

The original intention had been to settle in Virginia, where they had purchased a lease from the London Virginia Company and where an English colony had previously been established at Jamestown.

 The first winter proved to be extremely hard in the new colony. Half of the settlers died from disease and a lack of food.

After that terrible experience, the settlers held what is now called the "First Thanksgiving" after the success of the harvest in the following year.

Even before they had founded their first settlement, tensions existed between Billington and William Bradford, the leader of the separatists on board the Mayflower and the future governor of Plymouth Colony.

It is impossible to know the extent to which Billington deserved his reputation as a troublemaker; the only details we have come from Bradford´s writing and may have been a result of some unknown personal animosity between the two.

The murder of John Newcomen by Billington in the summer of 1630 provided Bradford with the opportunity he may have been looking for to take action against a man who had threatened his position as governor of the colony.

According to Bradford´s report account Billington had previously been involved in an argument with Newcomen over an unspecified subject and this disagreement, whatever its nature, led to Billington shooting Newcomen.

OUTCOME: On September 30, 1630, John Billington was hanged, becoming the first, but by no means the last, American to be executed for murder.