With the powerful backing of such interested friends as the Earl of Warwick and Sir Ferdinando Gorges, undoubtedly already in league with Thomas Weston, who probably made the contract with Jones, as he had with Clarke, the suggestion of the latter as to the competency and availability of his late commander would be sure of prompt approval, and thus, in all probability, Captain Thomas Jones, who finds his chief place in history—­and a most important one—­as Master of the may-Flower, came to that service.

In 1619, as appears by Neill, the Virginia Company had one John Clarke in Ireland, “buying cattle for Virginia.”  We know that Captain Jones soon sailed for Virginia with cattle, in the Falcon, of 150 tons, and as this was the only cattle ship in a long period, we can very certainly identify Clarke as the newly-hired mate of the may-Flower, who, Cush man says (letter of June 11/21, 1620), “went last year to Virginia with a ship of kine.”  As 1620 did not begin until March 25, a ship sailing in February would have gone out in 1619, and Jones and Clarke could easily have made the voyage in time to engage for the may-Flower in the following June.  “Six months after Jones’s trip in the latter” (i.e. after his return from the Pilgrim voyage), Neill says, “he took the discovery (60 tons) to Virginia, and then northward, trading along the coast.  The Council for New England complained of him to the Virginia Company for robbing the natives on this voyage.  He stopped at Plymouth (1622), and, taking advantage of the distress for food he found there, was extortionate in his prices.  In July, 1625, he appeared at Jamestown, Virginia, in possession of a Spanish frigate, which he said had been captured by one Powell, under a Dutch commission, but it was thought a resumption of his old buccaneering practices.  Before investigation he sickened and died.”

That Jones was a man of large experience, and fully competent in his profession, is beyond dispute.  His disposition, character, and deeds have been the subject of much discussion.  By most writers he is held to have been a man of coarse, “unsympathetic” nature, “a rough sea-dog,” capable of good feeling and kindly impulses at times, but neither governed by them nor by principle.  That he was a “highwayman of the seas,” a buccaneer and pirate, guilty of blood for gold, there can be no doubt.  Certainly nothing could justify the estimate of him given by Professor Arber, that “he was both fair-minded and friendly toward the Pilgrim Fathers,” and he certainly stands alone among writers of reputation in that opinion.  Jones’s selfishness,