Captain Myles Standish
True American Greatness In Moral Courage

There was a time in our past when America needed a hero and the people of those days just before the outbreak of the Civil War decided upon a founding father of the country that they chose to represent the spirit and the mettle of America herself. The man they chose to memorialize was Captain Myles Standish, a man still relatively unknown in a land that owes so much to his courage and his character. There are those rare times in history when a group of people are so superior in their love that they tower so high above the average that they leave a legacy that cannot be denied and cannot be destroyed. These are the people who devoted themselves to Jesus and became the bedrock of a nation that truly belongs to the Lord.

A Partial Biography of
Captain Myles Standish

Captain Myles Standish was never described by his contemporaries as a boastful man… quite the contrary.  We would know very little of his background if it were not for his will and a few writings of his contemporaries, including one who mentioned his English estate but without much elaboration.  Myles was a leader, chosen by his own men, and he was one of them and he loved them and they loved him.  He nurtured and cared for them through their sickness that claimed so many lives.  How could this great nation rise up out of widowers and orphans?  Myles was a man who could be counted on and these are the reasons he was determined to be the standard of men by those in 1860 who chose him as their leader again and built a 120 foot monument and statue of the man.  He may have been short in physical stature but he was tall in the finest attributes any living man can possess and the height of this monument attests to their high esteem of him.

As I have been digging through the remnants of the past, I have discovered a hidden treasure in plain sight.  As I have pondered and followed God’s leadings I have come to wonder just how many of these hidden treasures are there?  Well, whether one or one million, I will endeavor to paint with words a portrait of a man.  This man is in a sense a father to us all, and most have never even heard his name, the name of a Mystery Man, Captain Myles Standish.  It has been said that at about age 36 he was “born” the moment he set foot on Plymouth Rock in November 1620.  The records of his birth have been removed from the family records in the Standish Parish in Lancashire, England.  Further, evidence exists that shows this was deliberate and with malice to satisfy the greed of a usurper, who did in fact rob him of his inheritance, a substantial one at that.  His inheritance came due during his lifetime, and although he considered his New England estate a meager one compared to his English inheritance, as is clear when one reads his last will and testament, he was in reality a very wealthy man who was robbed of the vast holdings that were rightfully his.  He willed this inheritance to his eldest son Alexander, and yet both men died without ever receiving their lands and properties, though not for lack of effort by both Myles and Alexander, as has been customary practice for thousands of years in the affairs of men.

So what do we know of this man, a Founding Father of America, Captain Myles Standish?  Who is the Standish family, and how did they come by this great wealth?  And how did a man of his background and social standing come to cross the Atlantic on a small but now famous ship, the Mayflower?  Before we explore the contemporary events during which he lived, it is advantageous to take one more look back in time to more fully understand just WHO was this man? 

By the very nature of our humanity, each of us has hundreds, and more, of grandfathers and grandmothers who make up the unique body of genes that is us.  A being that would never have been born if just one life in all those hundreds had not survived and procreated.  It has been practiced, from the days of Adam and Eve, to document the “who begat who begat who’s” of this life here on Planet Earth.  And though most records have been lost to humanity along the way, there are those genealogies that serve the purposes of God and so survive.  The most prominent and certainly the most meaningful of genealogies are found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, concerning the bloodline of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, and such records have served as examples, if you will, that others have followed in the recording of their own records down through time.  And if one pays close attention, it is also apparent that the majority of those who have followed in this tradition also happen to carry the Birthright as given to Joseph, one of the sons of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.  This small but important fact should take residence in your mind as it will be explained later as to the significance not only in the life of Myles Standish, but billions and more of others worldwide.

So through the historical genealogies, it is known that Myles Standish is, as are so many others, a descendant of Matilda of Scotland who herself was a descendant of Alfred the Great, King of England and his ancestor kings from the House of Wessex, all who predate the Norman Invasion in 1066 by William the Conqueror by hundreds of years.

Further research has shown that Myles Standish is also a descendant of William the Conqueror and his son King Henry I through Robert, Earl of Gloucester as well as all of their ancestor kings dating back to Rollo, also known as Robert I, Duke of Normandy, the first king of the House of Normandy.  Rollo took captive Poppa, the third great-granddaughter of Charles I the Great, also known as Charlemagne and by this marriage Myles Standish is a descendant of Charlemagne.

When I thought I had discovered as much ancient lineage as possible, God led me to a very specific record that shows Charlemagne is a descendant of the first King of Troy, Darda.  And Darda has been proven to be a descendant of the Ancient Nation of Israel, the Israelites whose own lineage is recorded all the way back to Adam and Eve.  Needless to say, I was dumbfounded when I realized that God revealed the entire bloodline from Adam and Eve to Myles Standish, albeit in the culmination of painstaking research and of course the original recording of all the details that could make such a revelation possible.  Had God not directed me to some of the most obscure and odd places, I never in a million years could have discovered all this on my own.  I truly know that I am just a vessel in the Hand of God to further his own purposes.  And Hallelujah!!  His purposes are Divine and Good!!  Oh, how He loves us!!!

In painstakingly auditing the internet records of great numbers of the people in these lines, it has become apparent that there is a website that is deliberately posting false information to either mislead or confuse and God has confirmed to me that it is by deliberate intent.  For anyone who wishes to refute any facts as laid out in this discourse, I can only say “show me the proof”.  It is very easy to bandy about words as if they have no meaning or no value, or to assign parentage to erroneous persons thus creating fictitious bloodlines.  When God threw us out of the Garden for our lack of respect and love for Him, as any good father does when faced with a hopelessly rebellious child, he gave us blood… to teach us about life, about the value of life over death, to give us bloodlines as a way to find our way back to HIM.  In God’’s eyes, bloodlines are not to be tampered with (which of course includes DNA bioengineering and all that entails).  It is a sin against God.  With that said, any errors in my research are strictly accidental and I welcome anyone to show me the errors, all in the pursuit of Truth.  Anything that is not Truth is waste, worthless, and potentially evil.

To bring us back to the man of Myles Standish and this verbal portrait, let us continue.

Although Captain Standish was hired by the Pilgrims to protect the new colony that the Pilgrims set forth to establish as their Military Governor, he was also very active in civic affairs, from the inception of the colony until his death.  Having been raised and educated in a very prominent, wealthy and knightly family, he was the most qualified to understand legal matters and it was for this reason that it was he who drafted the Mayflower Compact, of which he was a signer of 58 men.  This simple but powerful document was the first contract ever written by free men to establish their own laws.  The Mayflower Compact, held in the left hand of his statue atop the monument erected to this humble and courageous man, was the seed of the Constitution of the United States that would follow but 169 years later.  And, incidentally, the first president of this same new nation, George Washington, was also a descendant of a Lancashire family with ancestral connections to the Standishes and a son of kings as well.

Because of his connections with the royal family of England, it should be no surprise that he was the one who went to England in 1627 to settle the debts of the colony with the colony financiers who had funded their endeavor. He managed the finances for Plymouth Colony throughout his lifetime, and it is written of him that there was never even one complaint in regard to his service.  He exhibited the knightly honor that had been bred into him and he had the highest regard for the people he committed to serve as well as the hundreds and thousands that came on ships over the next few decades of his life.

Mary Chilton (Winslow), 13 years old when the Mayflower landed and the first European woman to set foot on New England soil, was orphaned when both of her parents died upon the Mayflower six weeks apart.  She became a ward of Myles Standish and lived with him in his home.  His wife, Rose, also died on the Mayflower and Myles and Mary comforted each other and formed a friendship that lasted a lifetime.    Only 16 years old, Mary still received 3 shares in the land division of 1623, one for each of her parents and one for herself, which lay between those of Myles Standish and John Howland so that Captain Standish could manage them for her.

That first dreadful winter of 1620 saw the preparation and building of Fort Hill and the Public House where the survivors came to live upon leaving the lower decks of the Mayflower.  Of 102 passengers, 48 survived and only seven of these were physically well, able and willing to care for the sick and dying.  Myles Standish was one of those seven and William Bradford made special mention of him and William Brewster as to their loving and devoted care in what Bradford called “loathesome” conditions.  It was this moment in Myles’ life that these horrific circumstances forever transformed his character, having lost his dear wife Rose to the devastating disease, as well as the others who were more than friends, but family in the Lord Jesus Christ and fellow adventurers, pioneers, colonists… extremely brave and courageous people.

Captain Myles Standish used wisdom and good judgment in performing his function with a fearlessness that always inspired his men.  He was friendly to the native peoples and cautious and respectful of their lives.  But when warned by friendly natives of an impending massacre of a new colony nearby, he and his men confronted the Indians who were planning such a thing.  Assessing the danger and accurately reading the man, he and his men went back the next day and killed the leader and planner of the impending massacre, along with his top two men.  It was a controversial decision and action which still elicits debate to this very day, but he knew that a successful massacre there would lead to another at Plymouth.  Experienced in the ways of violent men, Standish knew what he had to do and he did it. 

Although their lives were peaceful and harmonious with the other peoples of the land, there were several incidents when Standish had to deal with difficult and serious problems.  He was known to always rise to the occasion, achieve success and maintain the peace.  He was truly a Man of God.

As any man who has gone to battle knows, the brothers a soldier has are more real, more connected and share bonds that are forged in the fire.  Myles Standish fought many battles in his early life in Duxbury, and in the Low Countries of Holland against the most powerful army of his day, and in the belly of a tiny ship named Mayflower.  The most telling battle of his life was the battle of life and death as he spent every last drop of his own strength, along with those of his Pilgrim brothers, to overcome and subdue the last enemy… Death.  These men were brothers for life in their New England home of Plymouth.  Of 14 wives who came to this new land, only 4 survived.  These men shared the grief of bringing beloved wives in hopes of new life to meet their end instead.  Most of these men had a long history together in the decades they shared in pursuing freedom and their God, from England to Holland to America.

These men came, reduced in number, to face the unknowns of what they had been told was a hostile land.  And by the time they carved out their place there, they made friends with the native peoples and became stronger in their principles of love, honesty, honor and respect.  The warriors on both sides came out to play on the First Thanksgiving in the fall of 1621 as they celebrated their new alliance between native men and Englishmen and to thank God for their very survival and good harvest.  This was the seed of peace, the polar opposite of Captain Standish’s forebears who came into England in 1066 taking every last parcel of land and structure and beast at the end of a sword, turning kings and freemen into vassals and slaves.  What a contrast with those soldiers were these soldiers for Christ.

Myles Standish was largely responsible for inspiring Englishmen and their families to leave Lancashire, England and establish new homes in Plymouth Colony.  Interestingly, many people were spared the hardships and horrors of the civil war that broke out in England just following the departure of many of these families.

The Pilgrims were a breed apart and are often confused with Puritans.  They actually differ considerably and the distinction is worth mentioning here.  First of all, the King or Queen of England headed up the Anglican Church, and so is why William Brewster, an elder in the Leiden congregation and later in the colony of Plymouth, was so targeted by King James at that time due to the pamphlets he wrote, printed and had distributed throughout England.  These pamphlets criticized King, church, and religious intolerance.  We think the colonists had an original method when they were rising up against King George 150 years later with pamphlets pushing for independence and distributing them throughout the colonies but they learned these things from their forefathers.

The Puritans were Englishmen and women who believed the Anglican Church of England could be purified from the inside.  Purified of what one might ask.  Both Puritans and Separatists believed that neither the Anglicans or the Catholics adhered to the Bible and that all the man-made rituals and sacraments were unlawful.  The Separatists, of which the Pilgrims were, were of the belief and faith that the only true worship of God was from the inside of a person and not the inside of a church.  A church was only the gathering place for such persons.  They truly had a pure worship of God that existed between each soul and the Savior, individually.  This is the belief of many Christians today who are truly the spiritual sons and daughters of these people who came to establish New Israel in the land we now call America.