Miles Standish

Miles Standish c.1584-1656, American colonist, b. England. After serving as a soldier for a number of years, Standish accompanied the Pilgrims to America on the Mayflower (1620) and was recognized at once as the military leader of Plymouth Colony . He was probably not a Puritan. He saved the colony from the Native Americans several times, most notably in 1623 when he defeated Native Americans threatening an attack on the settlement at Weymouth. In 1625 he was sent to England as a colonial agent particularly concerned with the colony's debt to its merchant backers in London. Standish was treasurer of the colony (1644-49), held other posts, and was a founder of Duxbury, Mass. Henry W. Longfellow's The Courtship of Miles Standish and James R. Lowell's Interview with Miles Standish are wholly fictional.

Bibliography: See biographies by J. S. C. Abbott (1872) and T. C. Porteus (1920).

Standish, Myles (Or Miles) (c.1584–1656),born in England, served in the Low Countries as a mercenary soldier, and was engaged by the Pilgrims to sail with them on the Mayflower (1620) as a military leader. His measures of defense and diplomatic ability in handling his soldiers soon made him more than an employee, and he may have become a member of their church. Among his important actions were the building of the first port; the dispersal of the settlement of Thomas Morton, by whom, in the New English Canaan, he was called “Captain Shrimp, a quondam drummer”; the negotiation for loans and property rights from English merchants and the Council for New England; the administration of the treasury; and the founding with John Alden of the town of Duxbury. There is no historical basis for Longfellow's “The Courtship of Miles Standish,” for Standish was twice married. He also figures in Jane G. Austin's Standish of Standish and Motley's Merry Mount.

Standish, Miles or Myles (1584?–1656) colonial founder, born in England, Standish came to America as the military leader of a group of English Leiden separatists who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620. He chose the site of the Pilgrims' settlement at Plymouth, Massachusetts, and designed its defenses; he also negotiated with the neighboring Indian tribes. He was part of the colony's governing structure, serving almost continuously in the Court of Assistants from 1624 until his death. From the 1630s he asserted Plymouth's ascendancy with regard to other settlements and enforced rules of social order, although eventually he had to give way to the larger Massachusetts Bay Colony. Standish was critical in maintaining the colony's financial solvency; he both obtained loans and financing from English investors and provided support from his own funds in return for land and various privileges. In 1637 he and John Alden established the new town of Duxbury, the first new town to separate from the Plymouth settlement; he lived there for the rest of his life.

There is no historical basis for the legend that Standish acted as a surrogate for another man who wished to court Priscilla Mullins, as asserted in Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem “The Courtship of Myles Standish.”