Editing Myles Standish (section)

==Settlement in Duxbury==
[[File:Standish Myles house.JPG|thumb|right|alt=A lithograph of a small, one and a half story shingled house| The [[Alexander Standish House]] (still standing) purportedly built by Myles Standish's son on the Captain's farm in Duxbury, Massachusetts]]

In 1625, Plymouth Colony leaders appointed Standish to travel to London to negotiate new terms with the Merchant Adventurers. If a settlement could be reached and the Pilgrims could pay off their debt to the Adventurers, then the colonists would have new rights to allot land and settle where they pleased. Standish was not successful in his negotiations and returned to Plymouth in April 1626.<ref>Porteus, p. 6.</ref> Another effort was successful later in 1626, this time negotiated by [[Isaac Allerton]], and several leading men of Plymouth, including Standish, ultimately paid off the colony's debt to the Adventurers.<ref name="Pillsbury23">Pillsbury, p. 23.</ref>

The leaders of Plymouth Colony were now free of the directives of the Merchant Adventurers, and they exerted their newfound autonomy by organizing a land division in 1627. Large farm lots were parceled out to each family in the colony along the shore of Plymouth, [[Kingston, Massachusetts|Kingston]], Duxbury, and [[Marshfield, Massachusetts]]. Standish received a farm of {{convert|120|acre|ha}} in Duxbury,<ref>Wentworth, p. 12.</ref> and he built a house and settled there around 1628.<ref>Winsor, ''History of Duxbury'', p. 10.</ref>

There are indications that Standish began to seek a quieter life by 1635 (after the Penobscot expedition), maintaining the livestock and fields of his Duxbury farm.<ref name="Wentworth29">Wentworth, p. 29.</ref> He was about 51 years old at that time, and he began to relinquish the responsibility of defending the colony to a younger generation. A note in the colony records of 1635 indicates that Lieutenant William Holmes was appointed to train the militia as Standish's immediate subordinate.<ref name="Winsor89">Winsor, ''History of the Town of Duxbury'', p. 89.</ref> When the [[Pequot War]] loomed in 1637, Standish was appointed to a committee to raise a company of 30 men, but it was Holmes who led the company in the field.<ref name=Winsor89/>

The families living in Duxbury (sometimes "Duxborough") asked to be set off from Plymouth as a separate town with their own church and minister; this request was granted in 1637. Historian Justin Winsor and others have insisted that the name of Duxbury was given by Standish in honor of Duxbury Hall, near Chorley in Lancashire, which was owned by a branch of the Standish family.<ref>Winsor, ''History of the Town of Duxbury'', p. 11.</ref> The coincidence would suggest that he had something to do with it, though no records exist to indicate how the town was named.<ref>Leach, p. 46.</ref>