1. Josiah Cotton, “Account of the Cotton Family,” 36, Houghton Library, Harvard University.

2. See “Report of Committee to General Court of Connecticut Colony,” 20 March 1662.

3. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 39 (1961): 60–61.

4. Daniel Gookin, Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (New york, 1972), 50–51.

5. For Cotton’s missionary work on Martha’s Vineyard, see Len Travers, “The Missionary Journal of John Cotton, Jr., 1666–1678,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 109 (1999): 52–101.

6. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, 1855–61), 10:329.

7. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Collections (hereafter CSM), 22 (Boston, 1920), 144.

8. The records of the Plymouth church during Cotton’s tenure are printed in CSM, 22:144–86.

9. Josiah Cotton, “Account of the Cotton Family,” 47.

10. Josiah Cotton, “Account of the Cotton Family,” 46.

11. CSM, 22:146.

12. See the letter from Joshua Moodey, 1 April 1676.

13. CSM, 22:150, 151.

14. CSM, 22:148.

15. Josiah Cotton, “Account of the Cotton Family,” 36.

16. To Rowland Cotton, 8 and 9 December 1696.

17. Josiah Cotton, “Account of the Cotton Family,” 47.

18. Arthur Lord, “Rev. John Cotton of Plymouth,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Transactions 26 (1924–26): 79–81.

19. The Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas (New york, 1973), 1:378. If Cotton had gotten wind of Mather’s remarks, he might understandably have regretted his defense of Mather six years earlier.

20. “The Diary of Cotton Mather, 1681–1708,” ed. Worthington Chauncey Ford, Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 7th ser., 8 (Boston, 1911), 236–37.

21. To Joanna Cotton, 8 July 1698.

22. To Joanna Cotton, 8 July 1698.

23. From Rowland Cotton, 25 April 1699.

24. Josiah Cotton, “Account of the Cotton Family,” 37.

25. “Diary of Cotton Mather,” 23 October 1699, 1:319–20.

26. “Thomas Prince” in John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1873–), 5:341–68.

27. Thomas Prince, A Chronological History of New England in the Form of Annals, Being a summary and exact Account of the most material Transactions and Occurrences relating to This Country, in the Order of Time where in they happened, from the Discovery by Capt Gosnold in 1602, to the Arrival of Governor Belcher in 1730, with an Introduction Containing A brief Epitome of the most remarkable Transactions and Events Abroad from the Creation; Including the connected Line of Time, the Succession of the Patriarchs and Sovereigns of the most famous Kingdoms & Empires, the gradual Discoveries of America, and the Progress of the Reformation to the Discovery of New England (Boston, 1736).

28. John Van de Wetering, “Thomas Prince’s Chronological History,” William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 18 (1961): 546–57.

29. See below, for example, John Cotton to Rowland Cotton, 31 January 1691.

30. Wethersfield was already a troubled town by the time Cotton arrived there. In 1659 some townsmen, disgusted with the church’s changing baptismal policies, left Wethersfield and, along with Hartford dissidents, formed the Connecticut River town of Hadley in Massachusetts. Not all of the dissenters went, however, and lingering resentments may have fueled the impression that the town was subject to a “Judgment or Curse of god.” Samuel Harrison Rankin Jr., “Conservatism and the Problem of Change in the Congregational Churches of Connecticut, 1660–1760” (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1971), 21, 36.

31. Probably Joan Sheaffe Crittenden (d.1668), widow of William Crittenden of Guilford and New Haven. An influential man, Crittenden had been one of the founders of the New Haven church, a lieutenant in the colony’s militia, and a magistrate. James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (1860–62; facsimile reprint, Baltimore, Md., 1990), 1:382.

32. Christian.

33. Vex.

34. Elizabeth Deming Foote Wells, widow of Nathaniel Foote and second wife of Gov. Thomas Wells. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:478.

35. One of the sons of the late Gov. Thomas Wells, who with his siblings had recently made complaint to the court at Hartford concerning Cotton’s handling of Gov. Wells’s estate. Samuel was admitted a freeman of the colony in 1657 and in the year before had been named ensign for the Wethersfield militia. J. Hammond Trumbull, The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (Hartford, 1850), 1:297, 311; Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut 1639–1663, Collections of the Connecticut Historical Society, 22 (Hartford, 1928), 242.

36. A reference to Gen. 39, in which Joseph spurns the sexual advances of his master’s wife and is accused by her of the wrongdoing.

37. The names of the committee members are all entered in the same hand as that of the report. Samuel Willis (1632–1709) was chosen a magistrate in Hartford shortly after his graduation from Harvard in 1653; he held the position until 1685. A sometime commissioner to the United Colonies of New England and later an assistant to the Connecticut General Court, he was also actively engaged in trade, frequently traveling to the West Indies. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1873–) (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 1:323–25.

38. Rev. Samuel Stone (1602–1663). In 1637 he negotiated with Natives to purchase the Connecticut land that became Hartford, where he was minister until his death. Allen Tolman and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography (New york, 1957) (hereafter DAB).

39. Rev. Samuel Hooker (1635–1697), son of the famous Rev. Thomas Hooker, founder and first pastor of Hartford. Samuel preached in Plymouth Colony in about 1657; in 1661 he declined the pastorate of Springfield in favor of that of Farmington, Connecticut, where he remained until his death. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:348–52.

40. A lieutenant in the Hartford militia, John Allen was nominated for the magistracy in October 1661 and elected in May 1662. Trumbull, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1:373, 378.

41. Rev. John Davenport (1597–1670) was vicar of St. Stephen’s, London, when John Cotton Sr. fled his parish in 1632. The elder Cotton apparently stayed with Davenport while arranging transport for himself and his wife, John Jr.’s mother. Davenport emigrated five years later, in time to participate in the Antinomian controversy. He left Boston in 1638 to be pastor of New Haven. He strenuously opposed both the 1662 synod’s recommendations (dubbed the “Half Way Covenant” by later historians) and the 1665 union with Connecticut. His controversial return to Boston as the fourth pastor of First Church in 1668 led to the withdrawal of a group of members who then founded Third Church (Old South) DAB.

42. Not found.

43. Samuel Streete (c. 1635–1717) had not yet finished his degree at Harvard at this time but was of an age not to be styled the “Sir” customarily applied to younger matriculating students. Following his graduation in 1664 he taught the Hopkins Grammar School in Hartford and was ordained pastor of the Wallingford church in or about 1674. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:160–62.

44. “Up to that point.”

45. Samuel Hooker.

46. Origen of Alexandria (c. 185–253), a Greek Christian father, who supposedly asserted the ultimate probable salvation of all souls, including those of the fallen angels.

47. “The obstacle.”

48. Edmund Toolie or Tooly of New Haven (d. 1685). Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:312.

49. Jacob Moline of New Haven.

50. “Again, hail.”

51. John Winthrop Jr. (1606–1676), eldest son of Gov. John Winthrop of Massachusetts Bay, was named governor of the Connecticut plantations by founders lords Saye and Sele and Lord Brooke in 1635. After some years of moving among Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Haven, he settled permanently in Hartford after being elected governor in 1657. He served in that office continually until his death. On a mission to England from 1661 to 1663, Winthrop was made a member of the prestigious Royal Society and won a surprisingly liberal charter for Connecticut that annexed the New Haven colony. DAB.

52. Two or three words crossed out.

53. Probably Matthew Allyn, a magistrate and moderator of the General Assembly. Trumbull, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1:425.

54. Capt. John Talcot of Hartford was made Major of the Hartford County militias. George M. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War (1906; reprint, Baltimore, Md., 2000), 467.

55. Possibly James Richards of Hartford, merchant and Commissioner to the United Colonies of New England. Henry R. Stiles, The History of Ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut (New york, 1904), 1:291.

56. Probably Joseph Mygatt or Mygate of Hartford, who frequently served as a juryman for Connecticut’s Particular Court. Records of the Particular Court of Connecticut, 20–199 passim.

57. Winthrop Jr. married his second wife, Elizabeth Reade, in 1635. DAB.

58. Massachusetts Bay.

59. Four or five words crossed out.

60. Winthrop Jr.’s eldest daughter, Elizabeth, married Rev. Antipas Newman of Wenham, Massachusetts, in 1658. Robert C. Black III, The Younger John Winthrop (New york and London, 1966), 187–88.

61. Bryan Rosseter, Cotton’s father-in-law. See the letter of 24 September from Bryan Rosseter, below.

62. Despite whatever help Winthrop may have provided, Boston’s First Church excommunicated Cotton for “lascivious uncleane practices with three women and his horrid lying to hide his sinne.” Humiliated, Cotton made a “penitential acknowledgment openly confessing his sinnes” and was reinstated to church membership five weeks later. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts 39 (1961): 60–61.

63. The Connecticut General Assembly met at Hartford on 13 October 1664. Trumbull, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 1:431.

64. Cotton’s restoration to the Boston church apparently came with the condition that he make every sincere effort to mend fences in Connecticut.

65. Literally “under the seal.” Cotton probably means that he has learned of rumors to the effect.

66. Samuel Wells.

67. Len Travers, “The Missionary Journal of John Cotton, Jr., 1666–1678,” Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society 109 (1999): 52–101.

68. Bryan (bray) Rosseter (d. 1672), Cotton’s father-in-law, was among the first of the English from Massachusetts Bay to settle the Connecticut colony in 1636; here he served as a magistrate and recorder until 1652. His grandson Josiah Cotton wrote that Rosseter had a degree in “Physick” and that he was also a feisty character. When he first brought his family to Guilford, “it was under the Government of New-Haven,” and not liking “some Proceedings that were very rigid & arbitrary,” he signed a petition to the King for a union with Connecticut. “In which (altho lawfull for every subject) his House was beset by a Company of armed men Who surrounded the House day & night, But being a Man of good Courage he stood upon his Guard, till he made his Escape to Hartford.” When Rosseter returned to Guilford in 1664, boisterously confident of Connecticut’s consolidation, John Davenport and Nicholas Streete of New Haven complained that he “hath been long, and still is a man of a turbulent, Restless, factious spiritt.” He died in Guilford on 30 September 1672. “Memoirs of Prince’s Subscribers,” New England Historical and Genealogical Register (hereafter NEHGR) 9 (1855): 336–37; Josiah Cotton, Manuscript “Account of the Cotton Family,” 17–18; Isabel MacBeath Calder, ed., Letters of John Davenport, Puritan Divine (New Haven, 1937), 237.

69. Ps. 39:11: “When thou with rebukes dost correct man for iniquity, thou makest his beauty to consume away like a moth: surely every man is vanity. Selah.”

70. See Job 2:11–13.

71. Ps. 39:12–13: “Hear my prayer, O LORD, and give ear unto my cry; hold not thy peace at my tears: for I am a stranger with thee, and a sojourner, as all my fathers were. O spare me, that I may recover strength, before I go hence, and be no more.”

72. Isa. 22:4: “Therefore said I, Look away from me: I will weep bitterly, labor not to comfort me, because of the spoiling of the daughter of my people.”

73. That is, Joanna’s younger sister Sarah.

74. Joanna’s mother, Elizabeth.

75. This was apparently Sarah’s daughter.

76. Josias, or Josiah, Rosseter (d. 1716), Joanna’s brother, became a magistrate and recorder like his father and a member of the upper house of the Connecticut Assembly from 1701 to 1711. “Memoirs of Prince’s Subscribers,” 337. See the letter of 14 February 1683.

77. Ruth 1:20: “And she said unto them, Call me not Naomi, call me Mara: for the Almighty hath dealt very bitterly with me.”

78. Allen Tolman and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography (New york, 1957) (hereafter DAB), s.v. “Mather, Richard.”

79. Mal. 3:6: “For I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.”

80. A line and a half crossed out.

81. Cotton’s sister Maria (1642–1714) married Increase Mather (1639–1723) in 1662.

82. Lionel Lockyer (1600–1672) was famed in his day as an apothecary and physician, especially for the supposed efficacy of his cure-all pills, sold in latten boxes of about 100 pills each. In support of (and to market) the product, he wrote An Advertisement, Concerning Those Most Excellent Pills Called, Piluæ Radiis Solis Extractæ, Being an Universal Medicine (1664). It is not clear whether Cotton (or his wife) acquired the book or the pills themselves, but clearly Lockyer’s fame had reached across the Atlantic. His tomb at Southwark Cathederal, featuring a sculpture of a reclining Lockyer and an inscription of notably bad verse, remained a favorite of monument tourists through the nineteenth century (http://www.southwark.anglican.org/cathedral/tour/lockyer.htm); see also Charles J. S. Thompson, The Quacks of Old London (London, 1928).

83. A close-woven ribbon or braid made with gold, silver, or silk threads and used for trimming garments.

84. Most likely the premises of Joshua Atwater (d. 1676), “a busy trader” from New Haven who moved to Boston in 1659. James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (1860–62; facsimile reprint, Baltimore, Md., 1990), 1:76.

85. Rev. Noah Newman (d. 1678), son of Rev. Samuel Newman of Rehoboth, assumed his late father’s ministry in 1668. George H. Tilton, A History of Rehoboth, Massachusetts: Its History for 275 Years 1643–1918 (Boston, 1918), 58, 88.

86. Nemasket, or Namassaket, in what is now Middleborough, Massachusetts.

87. Eliz. Bullocke, possibly Elizabeth Billington, second wife of Richard Bullocke or Bulluk, married 21 September 1660. Samuel N. Arnold, comp., Vital Records of Rehoboth, 1642–1895 (Providence, R.I., 1897), 67.

88. John Miles or Myles (c.1621–1683), “a learned preacher of the Church of England,” took advantage of the atmosphere of religious experimentation and, sometime during Cromwell’s protectorate, became a Baptist and gathered a following. Ejected from his place after the Restoration, in 1662 he and some supporters emigrated to Dorchester in Massachusetts Bay. Probably realizing there would be no tolerance there for his views, Miles moved to Rehoboth. He apparently did some preaching in the area but in 1667 removed with some likeminded people to the western part of the town (now Swansea) to form a separate, Baptist worship with himself as pastor. After the destruction of Swansea in King Philip’s War, Miles established a Baptist gathering in Boston but returned to his rebuilt town in 1680 and died there three years later. Otis Olney Wright, ed., History of Swansea, MA 1667–1917 (Swansea, Mass., 1917), 197–98. See the letter of 6 January 1685.

89. Probably James Brown (1623–1710), a prominent resident and son of one of the town’s original proprietors, who was Rev. Miles’s brother-in-law, a founding member of Miles’s church, and an assistant to the Plymouth General Court. Wright, History of Swansea, 200.

90. At this time the Plymouth election court was held in the first week of June.

91. Jarret ingraham (d. 1717) lived in Rehoboth as early as 1665, when his child Mary was born. Arnold, Vital Records of Rehoboth, 653, 840.

92. Hannah Howland (b. c. 1637), the sixth child of Mayfower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley, married Jonathan Bosworth in 1661. It is probably to her that Cotton refers in an entry in the Plymouth church records for 1670: “A child of this chh who had bin here baptized, removing to Swanzey was rebaptized by the Pastor there, which the chh being informed of, did unanimously declare it to be a matter of offence, & sent letters to those concerned in that action to signify that such a practice would be a barre to our Ecclesiasticall communion & desired they would doe soe noe more.” Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History & People 1620–1691 (Salt Lake City, Ut., 1986), 310–11; Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Collections (hereafter CSM), 22 (Boston, 1920), 146.

93. Zachariah Eedy married Allice Paddock on 7 May 1663. Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of Plymouth Colony, 13 vols. (Boston, 1855–59), 8:23.

94. Exod. 8:25–26: “And Pharaoh called for Moses and for Aaron, and said, Go ye, sacrifce to your God in the land. And Moses said, It is not meet so to do; for we shall sacrifce the abomination of the Egyptians to the LORD our God: lo, shall we sacrifce the abomination of the Egyptians before their eyes, and will they not stone us?”

95. Christ.

96. Thomas Prence (c. 1600–1673) was governor of Plymouth Colony from the death of William Bradford in 1657 to his own death on 29 March 1673. CSM, 22:147; Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 340–41.

97. Two or three words illegible.

98. Henry Newman (b. 1670) graduated from Harvard College in 1687 and was the librarian there from 1690 to 1693. Sometime after 1695, he moved to London, where he lived with the Duke of Somerset’s family and served as the agent for both Harvard and the New Hampshire colony. He was also a corresponding secretary for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1873–) (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 3:389–94.

99. In the Plymouth Church records for the year 1670, Cotton wrote,: “Some persons, a brother & 2 sisters that had formerly walked with his chh being now removed & not owning their chh-relation, the chh agreed & it was openly declared by the Elder in the name of the chh, that wee esteemed them noe longer to be members of us.” CSM, 22:146.

100. Not found.

101. Heb. 6:1–2: “Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection; not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the doctrine of baptisms, and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment.”

102. 1 Cor. 10:32: “Give none offence, neither to the Jews, nor to the Gentiles, nor to the church of God.”

103. Roger Williams (c. 1603–1683), the famous founder of Providence Plantation. His brief and troubled career as teacher to the Salem church ended with his expulsion from Massachusetts in 1635. Williams traveled to the head of Narragansett Bay and negotiated with Narragansett sachems for land on which to settle. Other dissidents followed and formed the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, whose autonomy the neighboring New England colonies frequently threatened. Time and again, Williams proved instrumental in defending the colony from its detractors. DAB.

104. Glenn W. LaFantasie included this letter in his edition of The Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2 vols. (Providence, R.I., 1988), 2:627–33. While the letter appears in the present edition with some changes, these are chiefly matters of style. See LaFantasie’s notes for an excellent analysis of Williams’s more confusing passages and references.

105. Not found.

106. A reference to David’s self-abasement in 1 Sam. 24:14: “After whom is the king of Israel come out? after whom dost thou pursue? after a dead dog, after a flea.”

107. Cotton’s father had been one of those who attempted to turn Williams from his “errors” before his banishment. The elder Cotton remembered that he “spent a great part of the Summer [of 1635] in seeking by word and writing” to dissuade Williams from his defance of the Massachusetts General Court. Ultimately, Cotton and the rest of the Bay Colony ministers approved the court’s sentence of banishment later that year. Cotton and Williams’s correspondence continued for a short while afterward but broke down and ceased after some mutual recriminations. Cotton’s last, admonishing letter to Williams found its way into print in 1643 (apparently without Cotton’s approval), arousing Williams to his own defense in Mr. Cotton’s Letter Lately Printed (1644), then to an attack on the “New England Way” in The Bloudy Tenet of Persecution of the same year. Cotton countered with A Reply to Mr. Williams and The Bloudy Tenet Washed, published together in 1647. Williams made the final thrust with The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody in 1652, the year Cotton died. The initial volleys in this war of print debated the justice of Williams’s banishment, but Williams quickly raised the stakes, blasting what he considered the orthodox New England colonies’ intolerance, the impurity of Puritan churches, and the inappropriate partnership of church and state in New England. The language of the letters is often personal and acrimonious. For full texts of these works, see James Hammond Trumbull et al, eds., The Complete Writings of Roger Williams, 7 vols. (New york, 1963), vols. 1–4.

108. Williams’s brackets; letter from Winthrop not found.

109. Apparently Cotton was upset by Williams’s final entry in the debate with his father, The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody, citing “wrong” done to his father in print. However, Williams’s letter suggests that Cotton may not even have read The Bloody Tenet Yet More Bloody until recently.

110. The reaction of the House of Commons to Williams’s Bloudy Tenet of Persecution was swift; on 9 August 1644 the House ordered the pamphlet to be publicly burned. James E. Ernst, “Roger Williams and the English Revolution,” Rhode Island Historical Society Collections 24 (1931): 12.

111. John Owen (1616–1683) left Oxford University in 1637 rather than submit to Archbishop Laud’s demands for clerical conformity. He wrote a blistering critique of the Anglican Church, Display of Arminianism, and became an independent in thought and practice, even tending toward antinomianism. He served in several civil offices during Cromwell’s Protectorate and pleaded for religious liberty after the Restoration. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, 63 vols. (London, 1885–1900) (hereafter DNB).

112. Charles I. As LaFantasie points out, it is difficult to understand how Charles could have agreed with Williams’s convictions, if indeed he actually read them. LaFantasie, Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2:632.

113. Bishops.

114. Daniel Cawdrey (1588–1664), a nonconformist cleric, inclined toward the Presbyterian party during the English Civil War and signed a petition condemning any harm to the captured Charles I. Rewarded with the offer of a bishopric after the Restoration, however, he declined, and he refused to submit to the 1662 Act of Uniformity. Despising both Anglicans and Independents, Cawdrey wrote two pamphlets attacking the liberal tenets of John Owen. DNB.

115. Isa. 64:8: “But now, O LORD, thou art our father; we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand.”

116. Cotton had apparently seen a letter from Williams to Gov. Thomas Prence and Maj. John Mason dated 22 June 1670, in which Williams offered to debate three points in Hartford, Boston, and Plymouth: “First that forc’t Worshipp stincks in Gods Nostrills. 2 That it denies Christ Jesus yet to be come, and makes the Church yet National, figurative and Ceremoniall. 3 That in these flames about Religion, as his Matie his Father, and Grandfather have yielded, there is no other prudent Christian Way of preserving peace in the World but by permission of differing Consciences.” LaFantasie, Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2:617.

117. Not found.

118. Possibly a reference to Thomas Prence’s reply to Williams (of July 1670?), printed in LaFantasie, Correspondence of Roger Williams, 2:625–26. If so, Williams interpreted Prence’s response oddly.

119. Failing to win ordination as pastor of the church in Salem, Williams moved to Plymouth in late 1631. Recounting the year 1633, William Bradford summed up Williams’s experience at Plymouth: “Mr Roger Williams (a man godly and zealous, having many precious parts, but very unsettled in judgemente) came over first to the Massachusets, but upon some discontente left that place, and came hither, (wher he was friendly entertained, according to their poore abilitie,) and exercised his gifts among them, and after some time was admitted a member of the church; and his teaching well approoved, for the benefite wherof I still blese God, and am very thankfull to him, even for his sharpest admonitions and reproufs, so farr as they agreed with truth. He this year began to fall into some strang opinions, and from opinion to practise; which caused some controversie betweene the church and him, and in the end some discontente on his part, by occasion wherof he left them some thing abruptly. Yet after wards sued for his dismission to the church of Salem, which was granted, with some caution to them concerning him, and what care they ought to have of him.” William Bradford, History of Plymouth Plantation, 2 vols. (New york, 1968), 161–63. Another Plymouth eyewitness added detail to Bradford’s restrained account, asserting that Williams actively recruited adherents to his “singular opinions,” some of whom were also dismissed from the church and left with him. Nathaniel Morton, New England’s Memorial (1854, reprint, Bowie, Md., 1997), 102.

120. Hugh Peter (1598–1660), the famous Puritan divine, came to Massachusetts Bay in 1635 and became pastor of the Salem church after Williams left. Returning to England in 1641, he became a chaplain of the Puritan armies in England and Ireland and the personal chaplain to Oliver Cromwell. He urged the trial and execution of Charles I in 1649, and for this he was tried and executed after the Restoration. American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New york and Oxford, 1999) (hereafter ANB).

121. A reference to Rev. 11:3: “And I will give power unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth.”

122. First Church, or Old Church, was gathered at Charlestown in 1630 and relocated to Boston that same year. It was situated at Cornhill, opposite the Town House.

123. Third Church was formed in 1669 by a group that split off from First Church over the controversial 1662 synod. It was known locally as South Church, later as Old South Church.

124. Thomas Cushman (1608–1691) became Ruling Elder of the Plymouth church in 1649, succeeding the venerable William Brewster. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 276–77.

125. Mary Chilton (1607–1679) arrived in New England on board the Mayfower in 1620. She married John Winslow (1597–1674), who arrived the year after. They removed to Boston in 1655. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 262, 374.

126. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, 1856–61) (hereafter PCR), 5:74–75.

127. Copartners.

128. Mount Hope, or Montaup, now in Bristol, Rhode Island, was the home of Metacomet (Philip).

129. Maj. Josiah Winslow (c. 1629–1680), eldest surviving son of Edward Winslow, founding member and governor of Plymouth Colony. Josiah served as Plymouth Colony Assistant (1657–1673) and as Commissioner for the United Colonies (1658–1672). In 1657 the General Court named him “Commander in Chief,” or Major, of the colony’s militia companies. DAB.

130. Nathaniel Morton (c. 1613–1685), the nephew of Gov. William Bradford, became Secretary (later Clerk) of the General Court of Plymouth, a post he held until his death. His access to colony records, and his uncle’s papers, facilitated his publication of New England’s Memorial in 1669. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 330–31.

131. See the letter from Hannah Johnson and Mary Blake of 20 February 1671, above.

132. See the letter from Hannah Johnson and Mary Blake of 20 February 1671, above.

133. Probably Josias Wampatuck, a Massachusett sachem living at the Mattakeesett Ponds in Plymouth Colony (modern-day Pembroke, Massachusetts). Although his mother had received a Christian burial, Josias was reluctant to embrace the new religion; even the “Apostle to the Indians,” John Eliot, had been rebuffed by Wampatuck. In 1669, Josias led a Native contingent against the Mohawks and was killed in battle. Russell Herbert Gardner, “Last Royal Dynasty of the Massachusetts,” Bulletin of the Massachusetts Archaeological Society 57 (1996): 19.

134. By the time Simon Bradstreet (1604–1697) retired from public office in 1692, he had amassed the longest record of public service in colonial New England history. He arrived with the Winthrop fleet in 1630, as secretary of the Massachusetts Bay Company, and after 1636 was elected magistrate every year except those of the Dominion of New England. He lived in Ipswich during most of this time but moved to Boston in 1672, after the death of his wife Anne, the famous poet. In 1678 he was deputy governor, and he became governor the next year. In the New England political spectrum he was a moderate Puritan and was frequently criticized for his moderation. When royal officials arrived after the suspension of the Massachusetts charter in 1684, hard-line Puritans denounced him for his apparent obsequiousness, but Bradstreet refused to serve in the Dominion government. It was to Bradstreet that colony leaders turned after the overthrow of Gov. Andros in 1689; he served as interim governor until the arrival of William Phipps in 1692. ANB.

135. Hezekiah Usher (d. 1676), merchant of Boston, was one of the founders of the Old South Church. He had been a selectman for the town since 1659 and was a member of the prestigious Artillery Company.

136. Thomas Danforth (1623–1699), emigrated to Massachusetts in 1634 and settled in Cambridge. He was a commissioner of the United Colonies, assistant to the General Court 1659–1679, and deputy governor when he sat on the court of Oyer and Terminer during the 1692 Salem witchcraft trials. ANB.

137. Increase Mather (1639–1723), the famous Puritan divine, was Cotton’s step-brother and brother-in-law, having married Maria Cotton (b. 1642) in 1662. After taking his degree at Harvard in 1656, Increase traveled to Dublin, where his older brother Samuel was minister. He took his MA at Trinity College and preached at several places in England and on the island of Guernsey. He rejected the conformity required after the Restoration and returned to New England in 1661. He was besieged with offers for employment, but he accepted a position at Second Church in Boston’s North End and was ordained there in 1664. He initially opposed the baptismal practices advocated by the synod of 1662, but gradually came to tolerate the measures. He was prone to illness from his youth, and his son Cotton described a fever in 1669 as so complicated by “that Comprehensive Mischief which they call, The Hypocondriacs Affection, that he lay confined all the Winter.” Active in religious and intellectual pursuits and a prolifc writer, he also played a crucial role in colonial politics. When Crown authorities demanded the return of the Massachusetts charter in 1683, Mather exhorted the Boston freemen to instruct their deputies to the General Court to reject the order. When the charter was annulled, Mather was chosen an agent to present colony grievances to the court of James II. After the 1688 revolution, Mather worked to get a new charter from William and Mary, a charter that ultimately subsumed Plymouth Colony under Massachusetts. Mather was allowed to nominate the first governor under the new charter, the Maine-born adventurer Sir William Phipps. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:410–70.

138. This appears to refer to Rowland Cotton (1667–1722), the dutiful second son of John Cotton and Joanna Rosseter, who was nearly four years old at this time. If so, the “griefs” are presumably connected to some childhood malady. A graduate of Harvard in 1685, Rowland accepted the call of the Sandwich church in 1692 over the invitation of Dedham, in part “being willing to live near his parents who were then at Plymouth.” Adapting to the local religious environment, he preached several lectures to the town’s Quakers when their speaker died and also preached once a month to nearby Natives, whose language he learned. Rowland achieved the worldly success that had eluded his father. Despite his large family and modest salary, “his excellent wife’s industry,” combined with timely legacies and prudent management, allowed his family to live in moderate wealth, “much of a gentleman in his garb and customs.” Perhaps in consequence of his lifestyle, he became fat and gouty in his last years. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 3:323–26.

139. Line added by Prince.

140. Thomas Walley (1618–1679) was “driven from the exercise of his ministry in London” after the Restoration, according to Cotton Mather, and arrived in New England about 1663. Shortly thereafter he was ordained minister of the church at Barnstable, which had been “miserably broken with divisions” begun by Quaker-inspired dissent in the mid 1650s. Walley seems to have been temperamentally suited to the task of healing the wounds in the religious community. Mather reports that he possessed a “charming wisdom,” a proper Christian humility, a capacity for independent thinking and a “well-bounded toleration” of “those that peaceably differ from the generality of God’s people in lesser things.” Walley was present at Cotton’s ordination and delivered “a solemne Prayer” for the occasion. Cotton Mather, Magnalia Christi Americana, or The Ecclesiastical History of New-England (1852, reprint, New York, 1967) 599–601; CSM, 22:144.

141. John Cotton Sr., The Way of the Churches of Christ in New England (London, 1645).

142. A reference to Thomas Hooker, A Survey of the Summe of Church-Discipline (London, 1648).

143. 2 Thess. 3:14–15: “And if any man obey not our word by this epistle, note that man, and have no company with him, that he may be ashamed. Yet count him not as an enemy, but admonish him as a brother.”

144. The word at the end of this mutilated part of the letter is probably a version of “uncleanness.” Since the previous October, the General Court had tried two cases of adultery and four cases of fornication, two of these last at the court held only four days prior to this memorandum. Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 5:81–84, 86–87.

145. The Old College building at Harvard was so decrepit by 1671 that the college governors decided to begin a subscription drive for a new building. The appeal went out to every town in the Bay Colony but apparently was extended to other New England colonies as well. Predictably, perhaps, Plymouth’s response was meager; though several towns pledged funds, there is no record that the college ever received them. By the end of the year the drive had raised £2280 in pledges. New College, or Old Harvard Hall, was sufficiently finished by the summer of 1677 to be used for Commencement. Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1936) 2:376–77, 423–25.

146. Morton left out the month, but it is probably July. The Plymouth General Court met on 5 July in 1672, and a letter from that court to the Commissioners for the United Colonies of New England dated 9 September 1672 declares “there is alreddy a contribution made” to the college “according to our low condition.” Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 10:354–55.

147. The writer consistently uses the letter w, when non-initial, as a double v.

148. Endeavors.

149. Thomas Crosby, a member of the “search committee” and whose signature appears below, had been ministering to Eastham but had not been ordained. He later turned up as “merchant” in neighboring Harwich. Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Baltimore, Md., 1936), 64; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:370–79.

150. Samuel Treat began preaching in the town that year. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 208.

151. John Freeman (1627–1719) was a prominent resident of Eastham and of Plymouth Colony. He came to New England with his father in 1635 and married Mercy, the daughter of Gov. Thomas Prence, in 1650. By the time of this letter he had been a selectman for nine years and also served intermittently as a deputy to the General Court, assistant governor, and in a variety of town and colony offices. In King Philip’s War he was a captain, afterwards rising to the rank of major. Mary Walton Ferris, comp., Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines: A Memorial Volume Containing the American Ancestry of Mary Beman (Gates) Dawes (private printing, 1931), 2:356–61.

152. Daniel Cole (1614–1694) was one of three brothers who emigrated to New England in 1633 and settled in Plymouth Colony. At this point he was both an Eastham selectman and a deputy to the General Court. Frank T. Cole, The Early Genealogies of the Cole Families in America (Columbus, Oh., 1887), 32.

153. Samuel Freeman (1638–1712), no relation to John, was deacon of the church. The American Genealogist 11:73–80, 171–79.

154. The day and month are obliterated. Beneath, in what appears to be Thomas Prince’s hand, is the date “July 31.”

155. Not found.

156. Perhaps one of the published sermons and discourses of John Tillinghast (1604–1655), English preacher and Fifth Monarchist. DNB.

157. Biblical reference superscribed by Cotton. 2 Pet. 1:12 reads: “Wherefore I will not be negligent to put you always in remembrance of these things, though ye know them, and be established in the present truth.”

158. Zech. 14:20: “In that day shall there be upon the bells of the horses, HOLINESS UNTO THE LORD; and the pots in the LORD’S house shall be like the bowls before the altar.”

159. Rev. George Shove (1634–1687), born in Dorchester, was ordained third minister of the church at Taunton in 1665. He was brother-in-law to another Cotton correspondent, Noah Newman, having married his sister Hopestill Newman (1641–1674). Samuel Hopkins Emery, History of Taunton, Massachusetts, from its Settlement to the Present Time (Syracuse, N.Y., 1893), 1:183–86; Tilton, History of Rehoboth, 49.

160. “To the church of Christ at Taunton.”

161. “Grace, Mercy, and Peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ be multiplied,” a standard greeting for church correspondence adopted from the New Testament epistles.

162. William Stoughton (1631–1701) became one of the most powerful men in late seventeenth-century Massachusetts. His family emigrated to the colony in its earliest years (it is not clear whether William was born in England or America) and settled in Dorchester. In 1644 his father returned to England to fght with the army of Parliament, and after William graduated from Harvard College in 1650, he followed him there. William studied at Oxford for a ministry in England but lost his support soon after the Restoration. In 1662 he returned to Massachusetts where, despite a talent for preaching and some offers of a ministerial position, he pursued a life as a landowner and magistrate. He was an assistant at the General Court from 1671 to 1686, served as a commissioner for the United Colonies, and when the Dominion of New England was formed, held positions in the unpopular government. This last notwithstanding, he survived the downfall of the Dominion, and under the 1691 royal charter government was named lieutenant-governor and chief justice of Massachusetts. To most scholars today he is notorious as the chief justice of the Court of Oyer et Terminer during the Salem witchcraft trials, of which he was an unrepentant supporter. He continued as lieutenant-governor until his death in 1701. ANB.

163. Thomas Hinckley (1621–1706), last governor of Plymouth Colony, emigrated from his native Kent to join his father, Samuel, at Barnstable, on Cape Cod, in 1639. He became a deputy to the General Court in 1645 and an assistant from 1658. In June 1681 he was chosen governor of the colony after the death of Josiah Winslow, and he served in that capacity until Plymouth’s absorption by Massachusetts Bay in 1692. As governor, he strongly supported missionary efforts in the colony. Edward Randolph (see 20 December 1679) characterized him as “a rigid independent” in terms of his religious temperament. Certainly he was no friend to Quakers and other dissidents in the colony: he strongly advocated, and enforced, a 1677 law establishing a general tax for the support of properly ordained ministers. This policy, and his position as governor, were suspended during the years of the Dominion of New England (1686–1689). Hinckley accepted a position in the Dominion government but resumed his gubernatorial duties when the Dominion collapsed and Gov. Andros was deposed. Hinckley allowed himself and Plymouth Colony to be drawn by Massachusetts Bay into a series of failed operations against the “Eastern” (Maine) Indians and Canada in the opening years of King William’s War. The high taxes levied to support the war led to a breakdown in colony authority, as strapped towns refused to pay their assessments or carry out directives of the General Court. Unable to marshal enough support for a new colony charter, Hinckley became resigned to Plymouth’s absorption by Massachusetts, made official by that province’s charter, 7 October 1691. He continued to serve as a council member in the new government and died at Barnstable in 1706. Jacob Bailey Moore, Lives of the Governors of New Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay; From the Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth in 1620, to the Union of the Two Colonies in 1692 (Boston, 1851), 201–32.

164. Daniel Gookin (1612–1687) settled in Virginia as early as 1630 and later served in the House of Burgesses. A zealous Puritan in a predominantly Anglican colony, Gookin emigrated to Massachusetts in 1644. He became a Deputy for Cambridge to the General Court in 1649, was a magistrate (1652–1686), and superintendent of Natives living in Massachusetts “praying towns” from 1656 until his death. DAB.

165. Gookin copied this letter, in parts, in chapters 8 and 9 of his manuscript “Indians Converted or Historicall collections of the indians in New england,” dated 1674, which was first printed as “The Historical Collections of the Indians of New England,” in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1792). In Gookin’s manuscript, the letter appears in segments on three different pages, but Gookin identifies all as bearing the same date. The segments appear here in the order in which Gookin copied them. The original letter has not been found.

166. Rev. Richard Bourne (c. 1610–1682), minister of Sandwich, was an active missionary to Natives on Cape Cod, and served as pastor of the Native congregation at Mashpee. Mary Farwell Ayer, “Richard Bourne, Missionary to the Mashpee Indians,” New England Historic and Genealogical Register 62 (1908): 139–43.

167. Kitteaumut was the area southward from modern-day Manomet, in Plymouth, to Buzzard’s Bay. William T. Davis, Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth (Boston, 1883), 152.

168. Gookin’s margin note reads “10 of them can read Indian.”

169. Namassaket, Ketchiqut/Kuhtiticut/Titicut, and Assowampsett were neighboring Native communities in what are now Middleborough and Lakeville, about halfway between Plymouth and Philip’s village at Mount Hope. Thomas Weston, The History of the Town of Middleborough, Massachusetts (Boston and New York, 1906), 18.

170. See the letter of Richard Bourne to Daniel Gookin, 1 September 1674, also in chapter 8 of Gookin’s manuscript.

171. Mamanuett was a sachem of Sakonet, modern-day Little Compton, Rhode Island. Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 5:224–25.

172. Probably Coksit, or Coakset, in modern-day Westport, Massachusetts.

173. The Native Acushnet was located at the head of what is now called the Acushnet River in southeastern Massachusetts, currently the border between New Bedford and the town of Acushnet.

174. Modern-day Chappaquiddick, an islet at the east end of Martha’s Vineyard separated from the larger island by a narrow channel.

175. An area on the eastern shore of Edgartown Great Pond.

176. An area around what is now known as Sengekontacket Pond, between Edgartown and Oak Bluffs.

177. Takemmy is in modern-day West Tisbury.

178. Nashuakemmuk and Talhanio are locales in modern-day Chilmark, near Menemsha.

179. John Eliot (1604–1690), minister of Roxbury, was New England’s most famous missionary and the publisher of numerous texts in the Massachusett dialect. DAB. See Eliot’s letter to Cotton of April 1680.

180. Hiacoomes (d. c.1690), the first and most famous of the Reverend Thomas Mayhew’s converts, lived near Great Harbor (Edgartown) when the English arrived there in 1642. He learned to read English and began preaching to other Natives in 1646. Hiacoomes continued preaching after his mentor’s death in 1657, and when the Native church organized in 1670, John Eliot and John Cotton ordained him pastor and teacher. Experience Mayhew, Indian Converts or Some Account of the Lives and Dying Speeches of a Considerable Number of the Christian Indians of Martha’s Vineyard in New England (London, 1728), 1–12.

181. John Toquenosh (Tockinosh, d. 23 Jan. 1683/4) became teaching elder of the first Native church in 1670. A persuasive preacher, “he was reckoned to exceed Hiacoomes both in his natural and acquired abilities.” Mayhew, Indian Converts, 14–16.

182. John Nahnosoo, “one of the first called among the Indians” of Martha’s Vineyard, was ruling elder of the 1670 Native church, staying with the Vineyard contingent after the church split. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 17–18.

183. When the Martha’s Vineyard Natives formed their first church in 1670, they chose Joshua Momatchegin (d. c. 1703) to be their ruling elder. When the church later split between the converts of Chappaquiddick and of Edgartown, Momatchegin stayed with the former. According to Experience Mayhew, he struggled valiently, but futilely, to arrest the declension and drunkenness that descended on both the English and the Natives on the islet in the 1690s. Mayhew, Indian Converts, 34.

184. Thomas Mayhew Sr. (1593–1682) became the sole English proprietor of Martha’s Vineyard in the early 1640s. After his son, the Reverend Thomas Mayhew (b. 1621) was lost at sea in 1657, Thomas Sr. attempted to carry on his son’s missionary work to the island Natives.

185. Mashpee, on Cape Cod.

186. Josiah Winslow became governor of Plymouth Colony in 1673 upon the death of Gov. Thomas Prence.

187. Gookin identifies John Gibbs’s Native name as Assasamoogh. Gookin, “Indians Converted,” Massachusetts Historical Society.

188. Caleb also taught school for the Christian Indians of Nantucket. “He earnestly desires to learn to read and understand English; and entreated me to procure him an English bible, which accordingly he had by order of the Commissioners.” “Indians Converted,” Massachusetts Historical Society.

189. Not found.

190. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, 1855–61), 5:117, 168.

191. Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (New York, 1958), 36–43.

192. Own.

193. Coksit, or Coakset, corresponds to the area around modern-day Westport, Massachusetts, and Little Compton, Rhode Island.

194. Found.

195. Dispatched.

196. Swamp.

197. 19 July.

198. I.e., advance guard.

199. Pocasset Swamp.

200. Enemy.

201. Drave (i.e., “drove”).

202. Captain Samuel Mosely (1641–1680) commanded a company of volunteers recruited in Boston that included captured pirates and assorted n’er-do-wells. Though an effective fighting force, Mosely and his company soon became notorious for their brutal treatment of Natives, regardless of their loyalties. Jenny Hale Pulsipher, “Massacre at Hurtleberry Hill: Christian Indians and English Authority in Metacom’s War,” The William and Mary Quarterly 53 (1996): 459–86.

203. Daniel Henchman (d. 1685) first appears in Massachusetts records of 1666. A year later, he helped Daniel Gookin and others establish the plantation at Quinsigamond Ponds (Worcester). Made a freeman of the colony in 1672, he was appointed captain of the Fifth Boston Company in May 1675. He died 13 October 1685 in Worcester. George M. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War (1906; reprint, Baltimore, Md., 2000), 47–48.

204. Jer. 9:12: “Who is the wise man, that may understand this? and who is he to whom the mouth of the Lord hath spoken, that he may declare it, for what the land perisheth and is burned up like a wilderness, that none passeth through?”

205. Quaker dissidents first appeared in Plymouth Colony in the mid 1650s. The colony government enthusiastically participated in their subsequent persecutions until it was restrained by the restored King Charles II in 1661. Thereafter, Quakers found havens on Cape Cod and in the western towns of Plymouth Colony. They made themselves no more popular when, at the beginning of the war, they claimed that English reverses and losses were God’s judgement for having previously persecuted them.

206. So it might have seemed to historically-minded settlers; fifty-five years after Plymoth’s founding, many of the leading lights of the colony’s early days were dead, elderly, or had moved away. Most recently, Gov. Thomas Prence, that “terror to the ungodly,” had passed away in 1673.

207. John Hull (1624–1683), silversmith and goldsmith, was one of Boston’s most esteemed citizens. He was appointed in 1652 to coin money for Massachusetts—the famous “pine tree” currency. A ship owner and substantial property holder, he was colony treasurer in 1676 and a member of the Court of Assistants from 1680–1683. His diaries are among the most valued personal papers of early New England history. DAB.

208. Not found.

209. James 5:14: “Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.”

210. According to Walley’s will, Mrs. Clark’s Christian name was Sarah; no marriage record has yet come to hand. “The Island” frequently appears as shorthand for Rhode Island, certainly a place of religious “polutions” to Walley and Cotton, but considering Walley’s position on mid Cape Cod, he may mean the much closer island, Martha’s Vineyard.

211. Samuel Appleton (1624–1696) of Ipswich commanded English forces in the upper Connecticut River valley but lacked adequate numbers either to protect the western Massachusetts settlements or to prosecute an offensive war against the Natives. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 96–97; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 142–58. See the letter of 29 May 1695.

212. Captain Thomas Lathrop emigrated to Salem in 1634. He and eighty men were helping to evacuate the village of Deerfield when they were ambushed at Muddy Brook, five miles south of the village, on 18 September. Seventy-one soldiers and teamsters were killed, Lathrop among them. The stream was renamed Bloody Brook, the designation it bears today. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 88; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 133–41.

213. Major Robert Treat (c. 1622–1710) commanded Connecticut forces in the upper Connecticut River valley. DAB.

214. Mohegan Indians of Connecticut, allied with the English.

215. Quaboag, or Brookfield, was abandoned soon after a devastating attack and siege by Nipmuck Indians. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 81–84.

216. This is probably Cornelius Anderson, one of a number of Dutch privateers or pirates captured by Captain Mosely and reprieved in exchange for joining Mosely’s company to fight against the Wampanoag. Nathaniel Philbrick, Mayfower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War (New York, 2006), 238–39.

217. Massachusetts settlements in Maine came under attack beginning in September 1675. The colony government was forced to divert troops and supplies to that theater through 1677.

218. On 16 September 1676 the Massachusetts General Court gave the Council the discretion to dispose of all Native prisoners, advising that “such of them as shall appeare to have imbrued their hands in English blood should suffer death here, and not be transported into forreigne parts.” Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (1628–86), 6 vols. (Boston, 1853–54) (hereafter Mass Bay Recs), 5:115.

219. “Litle Jno Indian yt Came as a messengr from [blank] being prooved to be a murderer of the English in ye warr was Condemnd to be hangd & was executed accordingly [21 September 1675].” Records of the Court of Assistants of the Colony of the Massachusetts Bay 1630–1692, 3 vols. (Boston, 1901–28), 1:53. The Stoughton in question may be a relation of Nicholas Stoughton, who married Elizabeth Knapp in Taunton in 1673. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:214.

220. Rev. Zachariah Walker (1637–1700) was one of seventeen students who left Harvard College without a degree in 1655. He took up a ministry at Jamaica, Long Island, in 1662, but moved to Stratford, Connecticut, six years later. While in that place he married Joanna Cotton’s sister Susannah (b. 1652). The church in Stratford was divided into two factions; each was allowed its own minister. Walker was pastor for one of the parties, which eventually formed the town of Woodbury. Walker continued to minister at both places until 1678, when he moved permanently to Woodbury. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1873–) (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 1:567, 2:84–86.

221. Not found.

222. Joanna’s brother Josias Rosseter.

223. John Leverett (b. 1616), governor of Massachusetts from 1673 until his death in 1679. DAB.

224. Joanna gave birth to her eighth child, Josiah, 10 September 1675.

225. The Commissioners of the United Colonies elected Gov. Josiah Winslow to command the inter-colonial army that would invade the Narragansett country.

226. The war had gone badly for the English, and despite the fact that Christian Indians had fought with the colonists against Philip’s forces from the outset, by late summer English settlers were suspicious of Christian Indian loyalty. Instances of harassment, intimidation, and violence against these people increased ominously through the fall and winter of 1675–76.

227. Reference unclear.

228. Capt. Thomas Prentice of Cambridge (c. 1620–1709) commanded a troop of mounted soldiers in the Narragansett campaign. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 80.

229. Isaac Johnson of Roxbury (d. 1675) was captain of the Artillery Company of Boston in 1667 and commanded a company of Roxbury and Weymouth men in the Narragansett campaign. He was among the first to be killed in the attack on the Narragansett fort, falling just inside the obstacle-strewn entrance. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 159–61.

230. Narragansett.

231. Pawtuxet was a settlement near the mouth of the river by the same name (see note 6, below).

232. Pomham was sachem of the Shawomet Indians, near modern-day Warwick, who had been tributaries to the Narragansetts. In 1643 Pomham submitted himself and his people to the authority of Massachusetts Bay in order to terminate his obligation to the Narragansetts. When the war came, however, he sided with his former overlords and was killed in battle 27 July 1676 near Dedham. Samuel G. Drake, Biography and History of the Indians of North America (Boston, 1837), book 3:75–76.

233. The Pawtuxet River flows easterly into Narragansett Bay between Providence and Warwick, Rhode Island.

234. Richard Smith kept a trading post at Wickford, on the western shore of Narragansett Bay south of Warwick. The colonial army used it as an advance base during the campaign. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 122.

235. Jireh Bull’s stone garrison house stood at Pettaquamscutt, on the western shore of Narragansett Bay. It was to have been a rendezvous for the colonial army but was destroyed by Indians on or just before 16 December. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 127.

236. Jonathan Barnes (1643–1714) inherited most of the considerable estate of his father, John Barnes, one of Plymouth’s few general merchants. Jonathan married Elizabeth Hedge (1647–1731) in 1665 and was elected constable of Plymouth in 1677. Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850, comp. Lee D. Van Antwerp, ed. Ruth Wilder Sherman (Camden, Me., 1993), 665; Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 5:231.

237. Joshua Lamb (1642–1690), Roxbury merchant, owned lands in Roanoke, Virginia, which he had purchased from Sir William Berkley. Lamb married Mary Alcock (1652–1700) of Roxbury. Bowen, Early Rehoboth, 2:50; Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore, 1865), 448.

238. Probably the preceding letter from Noah Newman.

239. Probably “squaw.”

240. Captain (later Major) William Bradford (1624–1705) of Marshfield, son of Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford, served as assistant for many years and commanded the Plymouth contingent during the campaign. See 5 July 1676.

241. William Wetherell was a sergeant in the Plymouth regiment’s second company. Peleg Sanford of Rhode Island later presented a bill to the Plymouth court for “8 yds of Duffle to Sergt. Witherly, James Bell and other Taunton men that came wounded to my house December 24th,” “cash to James Bell, to bear his charges home,” and “To Serg’t Witherell, James Bell & Joseph White for their diett lodging and attendance two of them for one month and one of them three weeks at 8s. per week.” Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 183, 427; Samuel Hopkins Emery, History of Taunton, Massachusetts, from its Settlement to the Present Time (Syracuse, N.y., 1893), 1:404.

242. Rev. John Holmes, minister of Duxbury (1658–1675), died 24 December 1675, remembered as “a godly man . . . efficacious in the great and honorable work of preaching the Gospel.” Justin Winsor, A History of the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, with Genealogical Registers (Boston, 1849) 178–79; E. Waldo Long, ed., The Story of Duxbury 1637–1937 (Duxbury, Mass., 1937), 45.

243. At their 2 November meeting, the Commissioners of the United Colonies urged the the constituent governments to appoint Thursday, 2 December “as a sollemne Day of Prayer and humilliation; to supplycat the Lords p^rdoning Mercye and Compasion towards his poore people; and for successe in our Indeavours for the Repelling the Rage of the enimy.” Nathaniel Shurtleff, ed., Records of Plymouth Colony, 13 vols. (Boston, 1855–59), 10:358.

244. Prince’s note: “Dec.” The reference is to the Great Swamp Fight, 19 December 1675.

245. Not found.

246. After the Great Swamp Fight, the colonial army retired to Wickford. In late December the English raided Pomham’s deserted home village, destroying it.

247. Not found.

248. Narragansett sachem Quinnapin was a well-connected, prominent war leader of the Narragansetts. He was a nephew of the renowned Miantonomo, a brother-in-law to sachem Philip by his first marriage, and husband of the powerful Pocasset sachem Weetamoo. He was captured in August 1676, tried in Newport, and shot 25 August 1676. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 385.

249. Capt. Samuel Brocklebank (c. 1630–1676) of Rowley, Capt. Joseph Sill (1639–1692) of Cambridge, and Capt. Samuel Wadsworth (d. 1676) of Milton commanded reinforcements sent from camps at Dedham and Rehoboth. Brocklebank was a deacon of the church in Rowley and captain of the town’s militia company. Sill had served nearly from the outset of the war and narrowly escaped destruction with Capt. Richard Beers’s detachment on 4 September 1675 near Northfield. He returned to the Connecticut River area in the spring of 1676 and served in the “Eastward,” or Maine, operations in the autumn, after the war in southern New England had wound down. He moved to Lyme, Connecticut, after the war and died there at the age of 53. After garrisoning the Marlboro-Milton area through the winter, Wadsworth and his company of seventy men, including Brocklebank, were drawn into an ambush near Sudbury on 21 April 1676. Only thirteen English escaped the slaughter; Wadsworth and Brocklebank were not among them. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 140; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 206, 218–31, 266–72.

250. Not identified.

251. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 2:138–39.

252. James Oliver (d. 1682), son of Thomas Oliver, the ruling elder of Boston’s First Church, was made a freeman of Massachusetts Bay in 1640, was captain of the Artillery Company in 1656 and 1666, served in several town offices, and was captain of the First Military Company of Boston c. 1673. Appointed to command a Boston company in the Narragansett campaign, he was discharged in February 1676. The following September a would-be lynch mob approached him to obtain his support for the jailbreak and unlawful execution of some Native prisoners. Although generally no friend to Natives, an indignant Oliver reportedly drove the ringleaders off with his walking stick. In a 1680 petition in which he prayed to be released from further service, he described himself as aged and infirm. The petition was granted, and Oliver died two years later. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 173–78.

253. Tedious.

254. I.e., tenth month (December).

255. Prisoners.

256. Josiah Winslow.

257. Garrison.

258. I.e., “John, a rogue,” probably “Stone-wall John,” a Narragansett who had lived with the English before the war and apparently had learned stonemasonry. He led a parlay on 15 December, which the English suspected was a ruse to stall the attackers. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 181.

259. Errand.

260. Capt. Joseph Gardner of Salem, in the thick of the Great Swamp Fight, was killed instantly by a bullet through his head, apparently from indiscriminate “friendly” fire. Benjamin Church, “Entertaining Passages Relating to Philip’s War,” in Richard Slotkin and James K. Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgement: Puritan Responses to King Philip’s War, 1676–1677 (Middletown, Conn., 1978), 413.

261. Capt. Nathaniel Davenport (b. c. 1632) of Boston was killed just within the breach in the Narragansett fort. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 129; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 168.

262. The following line, ending with “undoes them” is written in the margin but seems to have been intended to go here. At least, that is how Cotton read it; see his transcription, which follows.

263. oshua Tifte, a former resident of Pettaquamscutt, had apparently been living with the Narragansett for some time, to the disgust of his family—his father cut him out of his 1674 will with the bequest of only a shilling. Captured near Providence and interrogated, Tifte admitted that he was present in the Narragansett fort during the 19 December battle and probably fighting against the English. Convicted of treason, the notorious renegade was hanged and quartered at Wickford on 18 January 1676. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 139–40.

264. Hinckley’s letter to Cotton (not found) contained the report relayed by Cotton that follows, based upon the testimony of James Quannapaquait, recorded by Daniel Gookin, 24 January 1675/6. The original relation is at the Connecticut Archives; the most recent transcription appears in Neal Salisbury, The Sovereignty and Goodness of God by Mary Rowlandson, with Related Documents (Boston, 1997), 24, 118–28.

265. James Quannapaquait, a.k.a. James Rumneymarsh of Nashaway, and Job Kattanannit were Nipmuck men released from internment on Deer Island to spy for the English. They pretended to be enemies of the English and successfully infiltrated the insurgents’ camps. On 24 January James brought Daniel Gookin word of an imminent attack on Lancaster, Massachusetts. Gookin was unable to persuade authorities of the report’s authenticity, however, and by the time Job brought confirmation on 9 February, it was too late; Lancaster was attacked the next day. Daniel Gookin, An Historical Account of the Doings and Sufferings of the Christian Indians in New England in the years 1675, 1676, 1677 (New York, 1972), 486–90.

266. Wamesit, a Pawtucket “praying town” on the Merrimack River.

267. James and Job were hardly exaggerating. The Christian Indians suffered terribly on the bleak island that winter. Some 400 were incarcerated there by March 1676. By that time, many more had died of exposure and privation. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 150.

268. One-eyed John, a.k.a. Monoco, led an attack on Lancaster the previous August and was shortly to lead another. He was captured in the final days of the war. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 164–65.

269. Matoonus was a Nipmuck war captain who led the first attack against a Massachusetts town, Mendon, at the beginning of the war. In late July 1676 another Nipmuck, Sagamore John, handed him over to Massachusetts authorities when he submitted himself and his followers. Matoonus was then executed by a Nipmuck firing squad on Boston Common. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 223.

270. New York Governor Edmund Andros kept a close eye on the war, especially since King Philip had come to seek help from the Mohawks in the winter of 1675–76.

271. Capt. Richard Beers of Watertown and a company of about thirty-six men were ambushed on 4 September 1675 near Squakeag, north of Deerfield on the Connecticut River. Robert Pepper, a young soldier, was wounded and taken captive at that time. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 87.

272. “Here ends the account.”

273. William Mayo (1654–1691), son of John Mayo and Hannah Reycraft of Eastham. Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 7:26; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:189.

274. Lancaster, Massachusetts, was attacked 10 February by a combined force of Narragansett, Nipmuck and Wampanoag warriors. They killed at least fourteen and captured twenty-three, one of whom was the now-famous Mary Rowlandson.

275. This heading appears to have been appended some time after the text was copied and misdated at that time. From the context the actual date seems clear.

276. Gookin, Doings and Sufferings, 493–94.

277. Not found.

278. Henry Adams commanded the town’s militia and was killed in the attack. Gookin, Doings and Sufferings, 493; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 284.

279. One historian asserted that Mrs. Thurston had “probably” been partially scalped, but Newman’s second-hand account (the only source for this incident) will not support that conjecture. A simpler explanation is found further on in this letter, when Newman names some of the wounded, including Sgt. Thurston’s wife, whose “head had been peirct w^th one of their Tomheags.” Jill Lepore, The Name of War: King Philip’s War and the Origins of American Identity (New York, 1998), 92–94.

280. I.e., “suspect.”

281. Capt. John Jacob (d. 1693) emigrated with his parents to Hingham in 1633. A veteran of the Narragansett Campaign, he commanded a company of eighty soldiers at Medfield when it was attacked. Lieut. Edward Oakes commanded twenty mounted troopers, also quartered in the town. Gookin, Doings and Sufferings, 493; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 283.

282. Boggestow was the area of the Charles River valley between Medfield on the east and Medway and Sherborn on the west. William S. Tilden, ed., History of the Town of Medfield, Massachusetts 1650–1886 (Boston, 1887), 24.

283. Gookin relates that on the night following the attack that had left her a widow, Mrs. Adams was killed by none other than Capt. Jacob: “having a gun in his hand half bent [half cocked], with the muzzle upward towards the chamber, he being taking his leave to be gone to his quarters, by some accident the gun fired through, and shot floor, mat, and through and through the body of the Lieutenant’s widow.” Gookin, Doings and Sufferings, 494.

284. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 167; Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 347–49.

285. Not found.

286. Owing to the present condition of the letter, some names are missing or illegible. Names in brackets are supplied by Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 349–50. Bodge worked from the same letter a century ago, when it was presumably in better shape, but even then he reported that it was “much worn and mutilated.”

287. This postscript is in John Cotton’s hand.

288. Joshua Moodey (1633–1697), Harvard class of 1653, began his ministry in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1658. Following a falling out with Lt. Gov. Edward Cranfield in 1684, Moodey was convicted on a charge of refusing to administer sacraments according to the Church of England liturgy. He was imprisoned for thirteen weeks and forbidden to preach in the province again. He found succor in Boston and was reportedly one of the “Five Ministers of Boston” who participated in the downfall of Sir Edmund Andros in 1689. Cotton’s son John III was called to the Portsmouth church in 1691 but stepped aside when Moodey expressed an interest in his old post. Moodey defended Philip and Mary English during the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692 and encouraged their fight to avoid certain conviction. He then returned to Portsmouth, Cranfield having left in disgrace in 1685. Upon traveling to Boston in 1697 for medical help for “a Complication of Distempers,” he died and was buried there. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates 1:367–80.

289. Shubael Dummer (1636–1692, HC 1656) was a classmate of Increase Mather’s at Harvard. His mother, Mary, had been “led away into the new opinions in Mrs Hutchinson’s time,” after which his father moved to Newbury. Dummer began preaching at York (in what is now Maine) in 1662. Dummer lost only his house and possessions on this occasion; he was not so lucky the next time. On 25 January 1692, “divers hundreds” of snowshoe-shod French Canadians and Indians assaulted the town. As many as forty-eight English were killed and seventy-three were taken captive. Rev. Dummer was reportedly shot dead near his doorway as he was mounting his horse. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates 1:471–75.

290. The colonies increasingly resorted to enslaving Native prisoners, in part to defray the staggering costs of the war. Scores, perhaps hundreds, were sent to English Caribbean colonies. The practice, especially when used against Native women and children, obviously disgusted even English-allied or neutral Natives. James D. Drake, King Philip’s War: Civil War in New England 1675–1676 (Amherst, Mass., 1999), 136–39.

291. The Massachusetts election court was held 3 May 1676. Mass Bay Recs., 5:77.

292. Andover was attacked “in the beginning of April”; one man was killed, a house was burnt, and several animals were killed or mutilated. Increase Mather, A Brief History of the Warr with the Indians in New England, in Slotkin and Folsom, So Dreadfull a Judgement, 115.

293. On 9 April, Increase Mather reported, “sundry of the enemy were seen at Billerica, and (it seemeth) had shot a man there.” Mather, A Brief History, 115.

294. Probably Rhetorices Elementa: quaestionibus et responsionibus explicata (1657) by William Dugard (1606–1662), English schoolmaster, state printer, and friend of John Milton. DNB.

295. The Rehoboth men declined the offer to abandon their town, citing their concern that “we should in soe doing be wanting to the name of God and the interest of Christ in this place, and bewraye much diffidence and cowardice, and give the adversarye occasion to triumph over us, to ye reproach of that great and fearful name of our God.” Thomas Cooper et al to Thomas Hinckley, 14 April 1676, printed in “The Hinckley Papers,” Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 4th ser., 5 (Boston, 1861), 2–4.

296. Capt. George Denison of Stonington and Capt. James Avery of New London, Connecticut, commanded a force of forty-seven English and eighty Natives. Early in April they surprised a band that included the Narragansett sachem Canonchet, son of Miantonomo and presumed leader of the group that had demolished Pierce’s company the month before. Some of Denison’s Native allies captured the sachem and offered to spare his life if he would urge his people to surrender; this Canonchet steadfastly refused to do. He was taken to Stonington and executed there by the Mohegan Oneco (or Oweneco) and two Pequot sachems of equal rank. In an ambiguous passage, Mather’s account suggests that the English “caused” the allied Natives to shoot Canonchet, then cut off his head, in order to drive a permanent wedge between the Indians of Connecticut and the Narragansetts. Canonchet’s captors probably needed no prodding, however; Oneco was the son of Uncas, Canonchet’s old enemy, and the Pequots likewise had little reason to love the Narragansetts. Bodge, Soldiers of King Philip’s War, 383; Mather, A Brief History, 115.

297. Canonchet reportedly received a silver-laced coat in October 1675, when he and other Narragansett sachems, then in Boston, pledged not to participate in the war against the English. According to a chronicler of the war, Canonchet was wearing this coat when his band was surprised, and in his flight he threw off first his blanket, then the distinctive and encumbering coat. William Hubbard, The Present State of New-England, Being a Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians of New England (Boston, 1677) reprinted in Samuel G. Drake, ed., The History of the Indian Wars in New England from the First Settlement to the Termination of the War with King Philip, in 1677, 2 vols. (1865; facsimile, New York, 1969), 1:182, 2:58.

298. In the Plymouth church records Cotton wrote, “The war continuing & also sickness, the chh set apart April, 19: for fasting & prayer, & also May, 30: for the same grounds.” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Collections (hereafter CSM), 1:148.

299. Today’s East Braintree, on the north side of the Monatiquot River.

300. Edward Wanton (d. 1716), Boston shipcarpenter, moved to Scituate in 1661. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:406.

301. Not found.

302. Cape Cod, far removed from the fighting, was unquestionably the safest place for English and allied Native refugees.

303. Rehoboth was attacked 28 March. There was no apparent loss of life, as the people were holed up securely in the town’s garrison houses. This left the attackers free to burn deserted homes, barns, and mills, confiscate food stores, and drive off or kill the town’s cattle. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 168.

304. Valentine Whitman (c. 1627–1701) of Providence was a deputy, town treasurer, and an interpreter who had facilitated land transactions with Native peoples. Richard LeBaron Bowen, Early Rehoboth: Documented Historical Studies of Families and Events in this Plymouth Colony Township (Rehoboth, Mass., 1948), 3:18.

305. Probably John Myles, son of the controversial Reverend John Myles. Bowen, Early Rehoboth, 3:18.

306. Ps. 46:10: “Be still, and know that I am God: I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth.”

307. Probably a reference to the death of Rev. John Holmes of Duxbury the preceding December; see 3 January 1676.

308. A Narragansett by birth, Allumps (a.k.a. Hyems or James) was also related to Uncas, the influential sachem of the Mohegan people. Partly through Uncas’s influence, Allumps became sachem of Quinne-baug as early as 1644. Dennis A. Connole, The Indians of the Nipmuck Country in Southern New England, 1630–1750 (Jefferson, N.C., 2001), 144–45.

309. Andrew Pittimee was one of the Massachusett Christian Indians removed to Deer Island. He was subsequently recruited to scout for the English forces. His wife and two sisters were among a group of noncombatants killed by some of Capt. Moseley’s men on 7 August 1676; Pittimee was among those who discovered the bodies two days later. See Gookin, Doings and Sufferings, 501, and Jenny Hale Pulsipher, “Massacre at Hurtleberry Hill: Christian Indians and English Authority in Metacom’s War,” The William and Mary Quarterly 53 (1996): 459–86.

310. During the winter of 1675–76, Philip and his followers traveled to Schaghticoke on the Hudson River in hopes of engaging the aid of his traditional enemies, the Mohawks. Whether at the urging of New York’s Gov. Edmund Andros or for their own reasons, the Mohawks instead attacked Philip’s band, inflicting devastating casualties. Drake, King Philip’s War, 122.

311. A reference to a proposed renewal of the church covenant, a practice supported by both Cotton and Walley. Cotton had better success convincing his Plymouth congregation; see the letter of 19 July 1676 to Thomas Walley, below.

312. John Huckins (d. 1678) of Barnstable was a son-in-law to Elder John Chipman. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 2:487.

313. Probably a reference to the surprise English attack at Peskeompscut (Turner’s Falls) on 18 May, though the estimate of Native casualties is probably greatly inflated. The large number of remaining Natives counterattacked, and in the course of their retreat the English lost nearly one quarter of their men. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 201–4.

314. Elcanah Cushman (1651–1727), the fifth child of elder Thomas Cushman and Mary Allerton.

315. An area on the west shore of Greenwich Bay, now Warwick, Rhode Island.

316. For his second wife, Bradford married a widow whose name may have been Wiswall, nee Fitch. Robert S. Wakefield and Lee D. Van Antwerp, comps., Mayfower Families in Progress: William Bradford of the Mayfower and his Descendants for Four Generations (Plymouth, Mass., 1987), 3.

317. There is no mention of this boon in the Plymouth colony or Plymouth town records, but it is acknowledged in Plymouth Church records and is consistent with Connecticut’s subsequent actions. When news of the war’s devastation reached Ireland, sympathizers raised £1000 “for the reliefe of distressed persons” in the New England colonies. A grateful Plymouth church “set apart April, 26 [1677] to be kept as a day of thanksgiving for peace, health, supplyes of corne & provision by contribution from Connecticott & from Dublin in Ireland.” More help was to come. Connecticut had been spared most of the fighting, and its General Court, citing “good reason moveing them thereunto,” decided on 10 May 1677 to “remitt theire part of the Irish charaty to the distressed persons in the Massachusetts Colony and Plymouth Colony.” Trumbull, Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut, 2:304, 483, 496–97; CSM, 22:153.

318. Benjamin Church (1639–1718) of Duxbury had moved to Sakonnet (modern-day Little Compton, Rhode Island) just before the war began. He participated in the early campaigns and in the Great Swamp Fight. In the summer of 1676 he was given command of a mixed force of English and Natives from Plymouth Colony. Even before he took the field, Church was instrumental in persuading the Sakonnet sachem Awashonks to surrender herself and her followers to the colony government. Church recruited some of the Sakonnets to join his force, which captured several bodies of enemy Indians in the Middleborough-Monponset Pond area only days before Walley’s letter. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 208–10, 216–17. See also 13 January 1691.

319. A reference to Jethro, slave of Hezekiah Willet of Swansea. On 30 June Willet was killed in a raid on that place and Jethro was captured, but he soon escaped and found, or was found by, Bradford’s men. During his captivity he had learned of Philip’s plans for an impending attack on Taunton. Bradford detached some soldiers to warn and help protect the town, so that when the attack came on 11 July, Philip’ warriors found the town too well prepared and withdrew. Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk, 210, 215; Emery, History of Taunton, 1:388.

320. Not the modern-day town on Buzzards Bay, but Mattapoisett Neck in Swansea.

321. I.e., Quinnapin’s brother; see the following letter to Thomas Walley.

322. John Bradford (1653–1736), eldest son of William Bradford and his first wife, Alice Richards (c. 1644–1671). Wakefield and Van Antwerp, Mayfower Families in Progress, 2.

323. Letter not found.

324. An account of this event, written by Cotton for the Plymouth church records, is printed in CSM, 22:148–53.

325. Probably Gov. William Bradford’s manuscript history of Plymouth Colony. See the letter to Increase Mather, 24 November 1676, below.

326. Taunton River.

327. Cuinam (spelled Keweenam in Plymouth Colony records) was implicated in the assault on the Clark garrison house by Indians who had already been condemned for the killings (see the following note). He was found guilty and “immediately accordingly executed” by beheading. Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony 5:205–6.

328. William Clark’s garrison house, located on the Eel River three miles south of Plymouth center, was attacked about 9:00 a.m. on 12 March, a sabbath day. Clark was not at home, but his wife and two neighbors were killed in the raid. Totosan or Tatoson, “one of the most notorious of our enemies,” was accused of complicity in the murders along with ten others. Three of these, plus one informant who did not actually take part in the raid, were executed, but Tatoson was still at large two years later. Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 5:204–6, 209.

329. John Morton (1650–1718), son of one of the original purchasers of Middleborough, moved from Plymouth to take up residence there in 1669. Although he lived in Middleborough for the rest of his life he never transferred his church membership from Plymouth. Weston, History of the Town of Middleborough, 49–50. See 30 January 1688 and 9 July 1688.

330. Wantowapuct, or William Tuspaquin, was the son of Tuspaquin, known to the English as “the black Sachem,” and Amie, Philip’s sister. The senior Tuspaquin was sachem of the Indians at Assawompsett and one of Philip’s chief followers. He was captured by Benjamin Church’s rangers and put to death at Plymouth in September 1676, but Wantowapuct apparently escaped capture. This is the last reported sighting of him; although previous chroniclers have assumed that he was killed in the final stages of the war, there is no evidence that this was the case. Ebenezer W. Peirce, Indian History, Biography and Genealogy (North Abington, Mass., 1878), 211.

331. “Carsh” in the Providence Journal transcription, but the intention is “Church,” i.e., Benjamin Church, who was related to Bradford by his marriage to Alice Southworth.

332. Undoubtedly the word here was “Bay” in the original, i.e., the Massachusetts forces. These obvious errors in transcription, together with the apparent modernizations of capitalization and spelling (see Bradford’s other letters to Cotton for comparison), underscore how unfortunate it is that the original letter is unavailable.

333. Jonathan Sparrow (d. 1707) had come to New England as a child with his parents in 1632. The family settled in Eastham on Cape Cod, where Jonathan married and became active in town affairs. He served numerous terms as deputy to the General Court and married a daughter of fellow townsman Gov. Thomas Prence. He was promoted from ensign to lieutenant in October 1675, but apparently had achieved the rank captain by the time he [Bradford] wrote this letter. Mary Walton Ferris, comp., Dawes-Gates Ancestral Lines: A Memorial Volume Containing the American Ancestry of Mary Beman (Gates) Dawes (private printing, 1931), 2:765–68.

334. Presumably Samuel Arnold (1622–1693), minister of Marshfield.

335. Not found.

336. Noah Newman was married to Joanna Flynt, daughter of Rev. Henry Flynt of Braintree. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 3:390–91.

337. Probably the same Jethro mentioned in the letter of 18 July from William Bradford, above.

338. Thomas Shepard, minister of Charlestown. See letter from Daniel Gookin, 16 December 1677, below.

339. For a fuller account of this literary contest, see Anne Kusener Nelsen, “King Philip’s War and the Hubbard-Mather Rivalry,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 27 (1970): 615–29.

340. On 1 August, Church’s men surprised Philip’s band along the Taunton River in Bridgewater. Philip escaped, but his wife and son of about nine years were captured. A debate ensued over whether the boy’s life was forfeit according to Old Testament law. Douglas Edward Leach, Flintlock and Tomahawk: New England in King Philip’s War (New York, 1958), 230–31.

341. Deut. 24:16: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”

342. Either “for the good of the republic” or “without transgression of the republic.”

343. Walley had married the year before; see his letter of 20 September 1675.

344. Rev. James Keith (c. 1643–1719), first minister of the Bridgewater church, was educated at Aberdeen and emigrated to Boston in 1662. Introduced to the Bridgewater congregation by Increase Mather, he was ordained in 1664. Nahum Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater in Plymouth County, Massachusetts (1840; reprint, Bowie, Md., 1997), 43–44, 207.

345. William Brett (d. 1681) emigrated to New England by 1645. Described as “a grave and godly man,” he was made ruling elder of the Bridgewater church shortly after Keith’s ordination. Mitchell, History of the Early Settlement of Bridgewater, 45, 120.

346. Ps. 137:8–9: “O daughter of Babylon, who art to be destroyed; happy shall he be, that rewardeth thee as thou hast served us. Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.”

347. Deut. 24:16: “The fathers shall not be put to death for the children, neither shall the children be put to death for the fathers: every man shall be put to death for his own sin.”

348. 2 Chron. 25:4: “but he slew not their children, but did as it is written in the law in the book of Moses, where the LORD commanded, saying, The fathers shall not die for the children, neither shall the children die for the fathers, but every man shall die for his own sin.”

349. Samuel Arnold of Marshfield; see his letter of 3 April 1677, below.

350. Wamsutta (d. 1662), son and successor of sachem Massasoit of Pokanoket. In 1660, Wamsutta and his younger brother Metacomet adopted the English names Alexander and Philip, respectively, at least in dealings with the English. Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, 1855–61) (hereafter PCR), 3:192. The issue regarding Alexander will come up again; see the letter to Increase Mather of 19 March 1677, below.

351. A reference to Gov. William Bradford’s manuscript history of the colony, known today as Of Plimoth Plantation. Portions of the history appeared in print as early as 1669, but it was not printed in its entirety until the middle of the nineteenth century.

352. [G. Mourt et al.], A Relation or Journall of the beginnings and proceedings of the English Plantation setled at Plimoth in New England, by certaine English Adventurers both Merchants and others (London, 1622).

353. Edward Winslow, Good Newes from New England A true Relation of things very remarkable at the Plantation of Plimoth in New-England (London, 1624).

354. 1 Tim. 1:15: “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”

355. The object of the Cottons’ concern was their eldest son, John (1661–1706), then at Harvard, from which he graduated four and a half years later. After graduation he preached in Exeter, New Hampshire, for about six years, during which time he apparently took part in an armed protest against the unpopular Gov. Cranfield’s policies. “By reason of the Indian War, &c.” of 1690–91, he moved his family to his parents’ house in Plymouth and occasionally preached at Scituate. In 1691 he went to Yarmouth to assist Rev. Thomas Thornton, and when Thornton moved to Boston two years later, Cotton succeeded him as pastor. In 1704 he “was taken off from public service by a paralytic disorder,” and less than a year later, “being under weakness of body and mind,” he resigned. He resembled his father in one particular way: his brother Josiah descibed him as “of a loving liberal nature, but of a quick spirit so that his haste too often veiled his prudence.” John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1873–) (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 3:212–15.

356. Not found.

357. Boston’s second great fire (the first was in 1653) began on the morning of 27 November 1676. Samuel Sewall wrote an account of the blaze in his famous diary, noting especially that “the House of the Man of God, Mr. Mather, and God’s House were burnt with fire. Yet God mingled mercy, and sent a considerable rain, which gave check in great measure to the (otherwise) masterless flames; lasted all the time of the fire, though fair before and after. Mr. Mather saved his Books and other Goods.” Samuel Sewall, The Diary of Samuel Sewall 1674–1729, ed. M. Halsey Thomas, 2 vols. (New York, 1973), 1:28.

358. A grammatically suspect phrase, the sense of which is apparently “meet the three of us as one”; that is, Walley with Cotton and his wife.

359. The first meetinghouse in Barnstable, erected in 1646, was replaced in 1681 by a larger building on Coggin’s Pond, near Thomas Hinckley’s house. Donald G. Trayser, Barnstable: Three Centuries of a Cape Cod Town (1939; reprint, yarmouthport, Mass., 1971), 12–13.

360. The Cottons’ eighth child, Josiah (b. 10 September 1675), died 9 January 1677.

361. A confusing passage, but given the context it is probably “Religion never used to be in danger among clergymen.”

362. “Or among respectable persons.”

363. Hopestill Newman Shove, the wife of Taunton minister George Shove, died 7 March 1674. Rev. Shove married Hannah Bacon Walley, the widow of Rev. Thomas Walley’s son Thomas, on 18 February 1675. PCR, 8:65; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:554.

364. Not found.

365. James 5:11: “Behold, we count them happy which endure. Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy.”

366. Verses.

367. Not found.

368. Letter not found.

369. A reference to Cushman’s fifth child, Fear (b. 1653). Hubert Kinney Shaw, comp., Families of the Pilgrims (Boston, 1956), 36–37.

370. Not found.

371. Not the famous “Pilgrim” but his “marrinor” son (c. 1626–1702), who moved to Boston before 1669. Esther Littleford Woodworth-Barnes, comp., Alicia Crane Williams, ed., Mayfower Families through Five Generations, vol. 16 (Plymouth, Mass., 1999), 27, 30, 33.

372. Not found.

373. Probably Peter Thatcher. See the letter to Increase Mather of 15 & 16 July 1678, below.

374. Jabez Howland (b. c. 1644–1712), eighth child of Mayfower passengers John Howland and Elizabeth Tilley. Shaw, Families of the Pilgrims, 108.

375. Jether/Jethro/Jebber, who appears infrequently in the letters that follow, was a Native lad, perhaps one of the many captive Native children who were given to English settlers after the war. Cotton was obviously preparing the boy for service in Mather’s house.

376. Isa. 39:8: “Then said Hezekiah to Isaiah, Good is the word of the LORD which thou hast spoken. He said moreover, For there shall be peace and truth in my days.”

377. The “consolations” of this last passage, in particular, echo themes found in the above letters of Thomas Walley.

378. Luke 7:13: “And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not.”

379. A reference to Fulfilling of the Scripture: Or, An essay, shewing the exact accomplishment of the word of God in his works performed & to be performed (1669), by Robert Fleming (1630–1694), Scottish divine.

380. Not found.

381. A reference to Gen. 42:36: “And Jacob their father said unto them, Me have ye bereaved of my children: Joseph is not, and Simeon is not, and ye will take Benjamin away: all these things are against me.”

382. Ps. 119:71: “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes.”

383. Actually, Mather’s copy of William Hubbard’s The Present State of New-England, Being a Narrative of the Troubles with the Indians of New England (Boston, 1677). Mather apparently sent his copy to Cotton for comment as he was working on his own A Relation of the Troubles Which Have Happened in New-England (see letter to Increase Mather, 24 November 1676, n. 1). Hubbard’s book first appeared sometime after 16 February 1677, the date of Hubbard’s dedicatory letter printed with the volume. A later printing contained an endorsement of the book, dated 29 March 1677, by Boston magistrates Simon Bradstreet, Daniel Denison and Joseph Dudley. Mather and Hubbard (1621–1704), the minister of Ipswich, were rivals in the print-war of words to interpret the significance of King Philip’s War. See Nelsen, “King Philip’s War and the Hubbard-Mather Rivalry,” 615–29.

384. See the fuller account to which this refers, below in this letter.

385. I.e., “Treasurer”?

386. John Cotton, still at Cambridge.

387. Perhaps a reference to Newman’s exposed position in Taunton during the war.

388. This is the last known record indicating the fate of Philip’s son.

389. Monponset Pond, in present-day Halifax, Massachusetts.

390. Thomas Willet (c. 1607–1674) was captain of the Plymouth company of militia in 1648, a frequent assistant after 1651, and a commissioner of the United Colonies for Plymouth. His connections with the Dutch at Manhattan apparently spanned some years, for in 1654 he was chosen to advise English colonial forces who were preparing to support an attack on the Dutch colony by Cromwell’s government. The assault never materialized, and after the war Willet carried on with business there. When an English squadron seized Manhattan in 1664 and renamed it New York, Willet became the first English governor of the city. He later returned to Plymouth, residing in Seekonk, where he was buried on 3 August 1674. Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History & People 1620–1691 (Salt Lake City, Ut., 1986), 371–72.

391. William Collier (d. c. 1671), one of the original Merchant Adventurers of Plymouth Colony and one of the few to emigrate to New England, in 1633. He lived in Duxbury and served the colony in several high-ranking offices. He was an assistant at the time of this incident. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 268.

392. In Marshfield, Massachusetts.

393. Rev. Hubbard’s account, taken from an unknown source or sources, differs significantly from Winslow’s relation. See Hubbard, Present State of New-England, 1:49–51.

394. Morton’s New England’s Memorial outlines the main points of the General Court held on 6 August 1662, where Philip appeared at the insistence of the worried English. The record says that there he reaffirmed his friendship with the Plymouth government and acknowledged himself to be a subject of King Charles II. Nathaniel Morton, New England’s Memorial (1854, reprint, Bowie, Md., 1997), 187; see also PCR, 4:26.

395. John Philips (c. 1633–1726) was a master mariner of Charlestown who parlayed his success at sea into prominence on land. He was made a freeman in 1677; became first a lieutenant, then captain, of the Artillery Company; was a representative to the colony legislature from 1683 to 1686; and served on the Committee of Safety in the revolt against the Andros government. James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (1860–62; facsimile reprint, Baltimore, Md., 1990), 3:412–13.

396. Samuel Danforth (1652–1676), the eldest son of Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth, was a classmate of Samuel Sewall’s at Harvard. Amid some controversy, he was elected Resident Fellow, or Tutor, of the college in 1675. He contracted smallpox on a trip to London and died there on 22 December 1676. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:369–70.

397. Peter Bulkley (1643–1688), deputy from Concord, and William Stoughton (1631–1701), Norfolk County justice, left for England in October 1676 on a mission to answer a complaint that Massachusetts had usurped the proprietary rights of John Mason and Sir Ferdinando Gorges to lands between the Merrimack and Naumkeag Rivers. There were other complaints as well, emanating from the “odious and rapacious” Edward Randolph and from Quakers charging continued persecution in New England. In the event the agents could do little, as the Court was preoccupied with the Popish Plot and other political matters. Bulkley and Stoughton returned to Boston in late 1679, after three years of fruitless lobbying. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:194–96; 2:68–69.

398. Samuel Arnold (1622–1693) lived in Sandwich in the 1640s, then in Yarmouth as early as 1653; there he was elected deputy in 1654 and 1656. He was ordained Marshfield’s third minister in 1658 and served in that capacity until his death. Charles F. Swift, History of Old Yarmouth (yarmouth Port, Mass., 1884), 67.

399. The editors were unable to learn more about the situation to which Arnold here refers, but it sounds intriguing.

400. Gov. Winslow; see below.

401. Not found.

402. Peletiah Glover (1637–1692) attended Harvard College from 1651 to 1654 but did not graduate. He took up the ministry of Springfield, which Samuel Hooker had declined, in 1661. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:558–59.

403. A meeting of the Boston freemen on 5 March 1677 chose Anthony Stoddard and Maj. Thomas Savage as deputies to the General Court. Stoddard (d. 1687) was a merchant and linen draper. Formerly a selectman, he was a member of the Artillery Company and, according to Sewall, “the ancientest shopkeeper in Town.” Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:134. Thomas Savage (1607–1682), who married a daughter of Anne Hutchinson, was a tailor and shopkeeper and a founder of the Old South Church. He had also been a selectman, held the rank of captain in the Artillery Company, and during King Philip’s War had been a major of Massachusetts forces. Thwing Index of Boston Inhabitants, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston.

404. Seven selectmen for Boston were chosen on 12 March 1677, including Henry Allen and Jacob Eliot. Allen (1627–1696), a housewright, held his office for ten years. Eliot (1633–1693) was a deacon in the Old South Church; upon his death, fellow member Samuel Sewall remarked, “We shall hardly get another such a sweet Singer as we have lost. He was one of the most Serviceable Men in Boston.” Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:312–13; Thwing Index.

405. Two curious choices for the office of constable. John Saffin (c. 1634–1710), originally from Plymouth Colony, was a merchant of Boston and later Speaker of the House of Deputies. Anthony Howard or Haywood (c. 1639–1689) was also a well-off merchant. Thwing Index. For Saffin, see also 19 October 1696.

406. Ephraim Savage (1645–1731) served in King Philip’s War as a sergeant, became an ensign later in 1677, and eventually rose to the rank of captain. He was also town clerk of Boston. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:128–30.

407. Although the war in southern New England was entering its last months, fighting had spread to the Maine settlements; this continued for nearly a year after Philip was slain. In October 1676, Samuel Sewall wrote to a cousin that though “the late massacre” had ended for most of New England, “yet there is some trouble and bloodshed still in the more remote Eastern parts.” Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:26.

408. Wells is on the coast of southern Maine, between the Piscataqua and Saco Rivers.

409. Black Point is in modern-day Scarborough, Maine.

410. Winter Harbor is part of today’s Arcadia National Park, in Maine.

411. Rev. Samuel Willard (1640–1707) was pastor of the church in Groton, Massachusetts, when a series of Native assaults in March 1676 destroyed much of the town, leading to its evacuation by the English. Groton was resettled in 1678, but by that time Willard had accepted a call from Boston’s South Church, where he was installed in March 1678. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:13–14.

412. Hubbard.

413. Joseph Dudley (1647–1720), the son of Gov. Thomas Dudley, graduated from Harvard College in 1665. He began his career as a deputy from Roxbury in 1673, served in the campaign against the Narragansetts, and was chosen an assistant to the General Court in 1678. A vigorous supporter of closer imperial ties, in 1684 he was dropped from office by the voters. Under the Dominion government he flourished, however. He was president of the provisional royal government, and chief justice after Gov. Andros arrived. His part in the introduction of Church of England ceremonies to New England and his participation in the controversial land-grabbing schemes of the Andros government made him one of the most hated men in New England. Considered a traitor of the colony by the Puritan orthodoxy, in particular, he was deposed, imprisoned and ejected when the Dominion fell in 1689. Returning to the colony in 1692, he plotted continuously to become governor, an aspiration that he finally realized in 1702. American National Biography, ed. John A. Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (New York and Oxford, 1999) (hereafter ANB).

414. Probably Peter Thatcher. See the letter to Increase Mather of 15 and 16 July 1678, below.

415. Hubbard’s history says that Mosely and his men took ship at Swansea, landed somewhere on the coast near Smith’s garrison at Wickford, and on their way there “happily surprised thirty six Indians, one of whom he took along with him as a Guide, Peter by Name, that was at that Time under some Disgust with his Country-men, or his Sachim, which made him prove the more real Friend to our Forces in the Service.” Hubbard, Present State of New-England, 1:138–40.

416. See the letter to Increase Mather of 19 March 1677, above.

417. Probably “Letters of Imprematr.”

418. Not found.

419. Barnabas Lothrop of Barnstable; letters not found. See the letter to Thomas Hinckley of 14 February 1679, below.

420. Walley’s daughter Hannah (d. 1711) married Samuel Allen of Barnstable (d. 1726) on 10 May 1664. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 1:44.

421. It is not clear if this is the same Mr. Clark, or the same situation, referred to in Samuel Arnold’s letter of 4 April 1677.

422. Word missing? “Own” or “admit”?

423. Probably Nicholas Baker, see the letter of 9 July from Nicholas Baker, below.

424. Not identified.

425. I.e., “Churches of Jesus Christ.”

426. Shurtleff, Records of Plymouth Colony, 5:233. For the response of the elders, see the letter of 12 July 1677 to the General Court, below.

427. Not found.

428. Constant Southworth (c. 1615–1679), stepson of Gov. William Bradford, was treasurer for the colony and an assistant to the General Court. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 355–56.

429. There is no record of this event in Plymouth colony, town, or church records.

430. Rev. Arnold recovered from his illness and lived another sixteen years.

431. The Cottons were obviously relieved that their son was under his uncle’s watchful eye.

432. Not found.

433. Rev. Gershom Hobart (1645–1707, H.C. 1667), son of Rev. Peter Hobart of Hingham, found work when the displaced residents of Groton, Massachusetts, returned to their abandoned town in the spring of 1678. He was ordained there in November 1679. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:229–30. See also [11] August 1694.

434. Jethro, presumably.

435. In June 1677, Edmund Andros sent 100 troops with cannon, a prefabricated fort and a year’s supply of provisions by sea to the Maine coast in an attempt to end the fighting there and to secure the claim of the Duke of York to the region. Adding teeth to his diplomacy with the Wabenaki peoples was a large force of Mohawk and Oneida warriors that traveled overland from New York. Within a month, Andros and the Iroquois had persuaded the Wabenaki to make peace and to return English prisoners and several captured fishing vessels. Stephen Saunders Webb, 1676: The End of American Independence (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 387–88.

436. The Mohawks thoroughly distrusted Uncas and his son Oweneco. In June 1677 Oweneco was “surprised and taken from the English at Wegwanack & carried away captive,” probably to ensure Uncas’s good behavior while Mohawk war parties were far away helping Andros. By May 1678 the Connecticut government helped to secure Oweneco’s return. J. Hammond Trumbull, The Public Records of the Colony of Connecticut (Hartford, 1850), 2:499.

437. Maj. Thomas Clark (d. 1683), one of Boston’s wealthiest merchants and an officer in the Artillery Company, led a Massachusetts force to Maine on 28 June. Like Andros, the Bay men aimed to neutralize the Wabenaki and to reassert English authority, in this case represented by Massachusetts. Clark and his men fared less well, however, suffering heavy casualties in an ambush at Black Point. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 1:401; Webb, 1676, 388.

438. Rev. Nicholas Baker (d. 1678) “had but a private education,” according to Cotton Mather, but was invited to preach at Scituate’s First Church after the death of Henry Dunster in 1659. Ordained a year later, in 1675 he was instrumental in reconciling the First and Second Churches, which had been feuding for more than thirty years. Samuel Deane, History of Scituate, Massachusetts, from its First Settlement to 1831 (Boston, 1831), 181–82.

439. Rev. Thomas Thornton (c. 1607–1700) was educated for the ministry in England but was ejected from his pulpit there in 1662. He emigrated to New England and began preaching to the Yarmouth church in 1663, but was not confirmed there for another four years. Some residents had opposed his candidacy and had tried to discourage him. Apparently hard feelings remained, for after one of his sermons a listener declared, “half of it was lies” (he was later persuaded to retract his statement). Thornton also served the community as a physician and, like Cotton, ministered to Native congregations as well. Thornton moved to Boston in 1693, probably to live with his son Timothy, a merchant and representative. Swift, History of Old Yarmouth, 92; Marion Vuillemier, The Town of Yarmouth, Massachusetts: A History, 1639–1989 (Yarmouth, Mass., 1989), 9–10, 243; Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Baltimore, 1936), 203; Diary of Samuel Sewall, 1:426.

440. John Smith left the Barnstable church about 1663, “being different in opinion from them.” He sojourned in New York, returning to Barnstable in 1672. He assisted Thomas Walley in the pastorate until the latter’s death, filling the office until 1688, when he retired. Trayser, Barnstable, 37–38.

441. Rev. William Witherell (1600–1684) moved from Duxbury in 1645 to become the pastor of Scituate’s Second Church. Deane, History of Scituate, 190–92.

442. Thomas King (d. 1691), an early settler of Scituate, was an elder of the Second Church. Deane, History of Scituate, 301. See 3 October 1684.

443. Henry Cobb (d. 1679) was one of the early settlers of Scituate. He moved to Barnstable about 1641and became a deputy for the town and an elder of the church there. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 265–66.

444. John Chipman (c. 1620–1708) was one of two men chosen to be ruling elders of the Barnstable church in 1670. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 262–63.

445. For a fuller account of the activities of the “Indian Mariners,” see Hubbard, Present State of New-England, 2:238–40.

446. This harrowing incident, which occurred on 15 July 1677, is detailed in James Axtell, “The Vengeful Women of Marblehead: Robert Roules’s Deposition of 1677,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3d ser., 31 (1974): 647–52.

447. A paraphrase of Jabob’s complaint in Gen. 42:36.

448. Probably Simon Cooper, a Newport, Rhode Island, physician. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 1:454.

449. Abscess.

450. Not found; presumably not Mather’s letter of 23 July, above.

451. Prince’s note: “Cotton Mather was then 15 years old.”

452. More than a year after King Philip’s War came to an end in southern New England, the upper Connecticut Valley was still a dangerous place. Natives raided Hatfield, whose people were “a little too secure,” on 19 September. Several were killed and two dozen taken prisoner. “About a fortnight after,” according to William Hubbard [actually 10 October], “the same Indians attempted to take a Mill at Hadley, two miles from the Town,” but in Hubbard’s account they failed. Hubbard, Present State of New-England, 2:239–40.

453. On 10 October 1677 the Massachusetts General Court ordered that the third Thursday in November would be held as a day of thanksgiving for “the great plentifull harvest, a cessation of the wrath and rage of the ennemy in great measure, &c.” Nathaniel B. Shurtleff, ed., Records of the Governor and Company of the Massachusetts Bay in New England (1628–86), 6 vols. (Boston, 1853–54), 5:156.

454. I.e., “have.”

455. Not found.

456. Samuel Angier (1655–1719); see the letter of 17 September 1679 from Thomas Cooper et al., below.

457. On 1 November 1677, the General Court enacted a law that “noe pson whoe hath Not taken the oath of fidellitie shall have libertie to voate in any Towne meeting untill he hath taken the aforesaid oath.” PCR, 11:248.

458. Not found.

459. Capt. John Gorham of Barnstable died 5 February 1676 of wounds suffered in the Great Swamp Fight the previous December. His son John led a company of men in the 1690 campaign against Quebec. Trayser, Barnstable, 107, 112.

460. “Hail, dear sir.”

461. “Dearest relation.”

462. I.e., “timely”? The editors found no other record of this attempted suicide.

463. Samuel Mather (1626–1671) was the older brother of Increase Mather. Cotton Mather later wrote that his uncle was “the first that did Preach the Gospel to the North Church of Boston,” but he left for England in 1650, never to return. He became minister to a church in Dublin in 1656 and died there at the age of forty-five. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:78–87.

464. Urian Oakes (1631–1681) graduated from Harvard in 1649. About 1654 he traveled to England, where he served as “Chaplain to One of the most Noted Persons then in the Nation,” according to Cotton Mather. Bearing with the persecution of nonconformists after the Restoration, in 1671 he finally accepted the repeated invitations from the church in Cambridge to become its pastor. Along with Rev. Thomas Shepard of neighboring Charlestown, he opposed broad toleration in New England. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:173–85.

465. Wilhelm Schickard (1592–1635), German astronomer and mathematician, is perhaps best known today for having devised a calculating machine in 1623. Also in that year, however, he produced Horologium ebraeum, a Hebrew grammar book that was popular at Harvard.

466. Possibly a work by Thomas Tully (1620–1676), English divine. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, 63 vols., (London, 1885–1900).

467. Possibly a reference to letters of Pliny the Younger, who was governor of Bithnia, or Bithynia (later Byzantium) from 111 to 113. In one famous exchange, Pliny reported his actions against Christians to the emperor Trajen. If this is the reference, then presumably it is a small book used for the instruction of the scholars.

468. Thomas Shepard (1635–1677) was the second son of the famous Rev. Thomas Shepard of Cambridge. A graduate of Harvard College in 1653, he was ordained the teacher of the Charlestown church six years later. He supported the “Coercive Power” of the magistrates in matters of religious toleration, especially with regard to Baptists. During the smallpox epidemic of 1677–1678, more than ninety persons died in Charlestown. Shepard “went with his Life in His Hand,” according to Cotton Mather, to “One of his Flock, who lying sick of this Distemper, desired a Visit from him.” Shepard caught the disease and died on 22 December 1677. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:327–35.

469. Prince’s note: “Plimouth. Jan. 7. 1677/8.”

470. Cotton’s contemporaries believed that some diseases could be transmitted by “miasmas,” foul odors such as those caused by decaying vegetation (for example, in swamps) and flesh.

471. The Cottons’ ninth child, Samuel, was born 10 February 1678 and died 23 December 1682.

472. Seaborn Cotton; see the letter from Seaborn Cotton of 4 February 1679, below.

473. Possibly Richard Way (d. 1697), cooper of Dorchester, member of the Artillery Company and lieutenant at Castle Island. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:440–41.

474. Not found.

475. The details of Cotton’s “case,” to which the mutilated postscript in the previous letter may also refer, is unknown to the editors. In the following letter, Increase Mather appears also to be giving Cotton advice on the matter.

476. Probably the Jonathan Dunham and Mary Delanoy who married 29 November 1655. Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850, comp. Lee D. Van Antwerp, ed. Ruth Wilder Sherman (Camden, Me., 1993), 662. See also 20 July 1694.

477. Prince’s note: “ie George Shove.”

478. Thomas Wally died on 24 March 1678.

479. When John Cotton Sr. resolved to emigrate to New England, he resigned the vicarage of Boston, Lincolnshire. His cousin Anthony Tuckney (1599–1670) succeeded him in that place. By his first of four wives, Tuckney had a son, Jonathan (1639?–1693). As his letter reveals, Jonathan did not pursue the ministry, and he furnishes some reasons for his decision. One observer added that, although Jonathan was of good learning, it was “render’d useless by melancholy.” DNB, s.v. “Tuckney, Anthony.”

480. Not found.

481. Some of Tuckney’s works appeared in print as Forty Sermons (1676); Prælectiones Theologicæ followed (1679). DNB, s.v. “Tuckney, Anthony.”

482. Increase Mather.

483. Rev. Samuel Whiting (1597–1679), like John Cotton Sr., had come from Boston, Lincolnshire. He was pastor of the church in Lynn. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:520.

484. Boston in Lincolnshire.

485. Hab. 3:17–18: “Although the fig tree shall not blossom, neither shall fruit be in the vines; the labour of the olive shall fail, and the fields shall yield no meat; the flock shall be cut off from the fold, and there shall be no herd in the stalls: Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will joy in the God of my salvation.”

486. Mic. 7:7–9: “Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me. Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy: when I fall, I shall arise; when I sit in darkness, the LORD shall be a light unto me. I will bear the indignation of the LORD, because I have sinned against him, until he plead my cause, and execute judgment for me: he will bring me forth to the light, and I shall behold his righteousness.”

487. “The Lord’s will be done.”

488. In the records of the Plymouth church for 1678, Cotton wrote: “The chh set apart March, 27: as a day of Fasting & prayer for continuance of Peace healing the small px, & for sundry of our ministers that were languishing & for other mercies.” CSM, 22:154. This memo is apparently Cotton’s plan for a personal fast day as well.

489. “Everything as before.”

490. Samuel Treat (1648–1717), an active missionary to the Natives on Cape Cod, began preaching at Eastham in 1672 and was ordained there in 1675. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 208.

491. Dan. 5:27: “TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.”

492. Cotton Mather’s Harvard commencement took place on Tuesday, 13 August 1678.

493. “How you [I] play at nothing!”

494. “How changed I am from what I was formerly.”

495. “By another name.”

496. Cotton’s maintenance had to be approved by the town each year. A town meeting on 26 June 1678 agreed to pay him “four score pounds . . . on the same Conditions as it was performed the last yeer,” which was one-third in “country pay”—wheat, butter, tar, or shingles; one-third in rye, peas, or malt; and one-third in Indian corn and wheat. PTR, 1:154, 157.

497. Rev. Peter Thatcher (1651–1727) was a Harvard classmate (1671) of jurist Samuel Sewall. At the personal invitation of Gov. Hinckley, Thatcher preached twice in Barnstable in 1678. The church there responded favorably and entered into negotiations with him to settle a ministry in Barnstable. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:370–79. See the letter from Thomas Hinckley of 13 July 1680, below.

498. A reference to the recent capture by Mohawk raiders of twenty-two Natives at Magunkaquog, a “praying town” southwest of Natick. Jean O’Brien, Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650–1790 (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 65; Allen W. Trelease, Indian Affairs of Colonial New York: The Seventeenth Century (Lincoln, Neb., 1997), 237.

499. Punkapoag, located in modern-day Canton and Stoughton, Massachusetts, was the second of fourteen “praying towns” established in Massachusetts for Christian Indians. Richard W. Cogley, John Eliot’s Mission to the Indians before King Philip’s War (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1999), 140–41.

500. Samuel Hinckley (1653–1697). See 5 March 1696.

501. It is strange to think that a young Cotton Mather, or anyone else, would have come to Plymouth to “take the waters,” but this seems to have been the case. The operation of the spring is not otherwise documented to the editors’ knowledge, but there is a Watercure Street in the center of Plymouth that may suggest its original whereabouts.

502. “Bound to your rules, not to his own.”

503. Rev. Nicholas Baker of Scituate died of “the stone” on 22 August 1678. Deane, History of Scituate, 182.

504. On 12 August 1678, the James Frigate entered Plymouth harbor, having come via Carolina and, most recently, New York. Solomon Blackleach, or Blackleich, “commander in cheiffe,” Capt. Robert Daniel and one John Roads were aboard. Over the next several weeks the crew set about repairing and refitting the vessel, “theire designe unknown to the authoritie heer.” Their evasiveness raised suspicions, the more so when Blackleach began surreptitiously recruiting sailors from ships in Boston. Fearing that Blackleach and company intended a privateering or even piratical voyage, and at the urging of Massachusetts magistrates, Plymouth authorities detained the vessel and examined the officers and Roads. They discovered that in fact Blackleach had no privateer’s commission but had intended to use one issued to Daniel by the Dutch, and that Roads previously had been banished by Massachusetts for piracy. Furthermore, they learned that Roads had broken out of jail in New York and had come on board the James Frigate “in a private way.” The case is recorded in Plymouth Colony Records, 5:265–70.

505. John Sunderland (1618–1703), a parchmentmaker of Boston, had belonged to the Artillery Company in 1658 but had fallen on hard times by 1672. He subsequently moved to Eastham. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:232–33.

506. The reference is to Increase Mather’s The First principles of New-England, concerning the subject of baptisme & communion of churches (Cambridge, Mass., 1675).

507. John Bowles was an elder of the Roxbury church and the father of the John Bowles whom Cotton discussed in his letter to Increase Mather of 14 February 1679, below.

508. Not found.

509. “Oh that all Christians.”

510. Elder Brett; see the letter from James Keith of 30 October 1676.

511. Not found.

512. John Norton (c. 1651–1716), a graduate of the Harvard class of 1671, was ordained a minister at Hingham on 27 November 1678. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:394.

513. “Oh shame!”

514. “Up to/as far as the altars.”

515. Lutetia was an ancient city on the site of Paris.

516. A “calend” is the first day of a Roman month. Since the Greeks did not use calends in their months, the assurance that a thing may happen “in a Greek calend” translates roughly to “when pigs fly.”

517. Increase and Maria Cotton Mather’s fourth child, Nathaniel (1669–1688), who became a classmate of Cotton’s son Rowland at Harvard.

518. Increase and Maria’s fifth child, Sarah, born 1671.

519. Increase and Maria’s second child, Maria, born 1665.

520. “Poised between hope and fear.”

521. At the 3 June 1679 meeting of the General Court, Robert Latham was fined ten shillings “for being twise drunke.” PCR, 6:16.

522. Seaborn Cotton (1633–1686), eldest son of John Cotton Sr., received his name by being born at sea en route to New England. Like his brother after him, he preached in Connecticut following his graduation from Harvard (1651), but in 1657 he accepted a call from Hampton, now in New Hampshire, where he was ordained two years later. As he had required of Joshua Moodey, in 1684 Gov. Cranfield demanded that Cotton administer sacraments according to the Church of England liturgy. Rather than do so, Cotton absented himself from the colony until Cranfield left in 1685. Cotton died the next year. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:286–93.

523. Not found.

524. “Sound like slander.”

525. The identity of “Mr M” is unclear.

526. Bowles was not called back, however. He later preached in Dedham and became the ruling elder of the Roxbury church in 1688. Turning to politics, he was a representative to the General Court, and he was Speaker of the House when he died of smallpox in 1691. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:392–93.

527. Cotton’s son John, still at Harvard.

528. Barnabas Lothrop (1636–1735) was a son of the Rev. John Lothrop (1584–1653), one of the first English settlers of Barnstable. Barnabas became a judge of common pleas and of probate, an assistant, and after the union with Massachusetts, a councillor in the administration of Gov. William Phipps. Trayser, Barnstable, 174.

529. Constant Southworth died on 11 March 1679. His will is dated 27 February 1679; his inventory was taken the following 15 March. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 365.

530. James Cudworth (d. 1681) of Scituate was stripped of his office as deputy, his rank as captain, and his franchise in 1658 for “entertaining” Quakers, but eventually all three were restored. Early in King Philip’s War, he was appointed to command Plymouth Colony forces depite his (accurate) protestations of incompetence. Elected deputy governor in 1681, he was sent to England to press the ministry for a colony charter, but he died soon after his arrival there. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 275; George D. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth 1620–1691 (New Haven, Conn., 1966), 197–98.

531. Relations between the brothers-in-law apparently became strained after this time; in a letter from Joseph Dudley to Increase Mather, dated 12 December 1681, Dudley refers to a “coldeness” between Mather and Cotton and urges a change of sentiment. Mather Papers 4:23, Prince Library, Rare Book & Manuscripts, Boston Public Library. One wonders if the financial issues concerning the Boston property that are outlined in the letters above had anything to do with the frostiness Dudley observed.

532. Deacon Thomas Cooper (d. 1680) was a prominent citizen of Rehoboth. James N. Arnold, Vital Records of Rehoboth (Providence, R.I., 1897), 817.

533. Rev. Samuel Angier (1655–1719) graduated from Harvard College in 1673. Early in 1677 he was approached by Gov. Hinckley to teach children in Barnstable, but he declined. He became pastor of the Rehoboth church in 1679, in the place of the late Noah Newman. A year later he married Hannah, the only daughter of Harvard president Urian Oakes. Sometime in late 1692 or early 1693, claiming poor health, Angier removed to his native Cambridge, resigning his position in Rehoboth. Eventually recovering his health, in 1696 he became pastor for the church in the part of Watertown that is now Waltham, in which capacity he served the rest of his life. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates 2:422–28; Tilton, A History of Rehoboth, 96.

534. Daniel Smith (d. 1692), deputy and magistrate of Rehoboth. Arnold, Vital Records of Rehoboth, 876; PCR, 5:223.

535. Edward Randolph (1632–1703) first came to Plymouth in 1676 on a fact-finding tour for the Crown. Snubbed in Massachusetts, he received a better reception from Gov. Josiah Winslow, who decided that cultivating Randolph’s friendship would be more in Plymouth Colony’s interests. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 193–94; ANB.

536. See the letter from James Oliver of 27 March 1677, fn. Robert Mason was Randolph’s cousin. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 193.

537. Parliament enacted the first of the Navigation Acts in 1651. These were not enforced in New England, but the Act of 1673 sought to change that with the establishment of salaried customs officers based in Boston. Edward Randolph returned to New England to become the first Collector of Customs for the port. Viola Florence Barnes, The Dominion of New England: A Study in British Policy (New York, 1923), 15–16.

538. Edward Randolph and customs agents.

539. Collation, a light meal.

540. I.e., “volleys.”

541. Not found.

542. James Scott (1649–1685), the illegitimate son of Charles II and Lucy Scott, was born during the exile of the royals. Created Duke of Monmouth and officially recognized by his father after the Restoration, he followed a military career. The Protestant party championed his succession to the throne over Charles’s Catholic brother James, Duke of York, but Charles declared Monmouth’s ineligibility and banished him to Holland in 1679. Monmouth later led the dramatic but failed attempt to overthrow James II. His forces were defeated at Sedgemoor, and the captured leader was executed 15 July 1685. Chris Cook and John Wroughton, eds., English Historical Facts 1603–1688 (Totowa, N.J., 1980), 78.

543. James, Duke of York (1633–1701), the younger brother of Charles II, converted to Catholicism in 1669. In consequence, he was forced to resign his position as Lord High Admiral on passage of the Test Act in 1673. Sent abroad by his brother to avoid public hostility generated by the Protestant party, he returned in 1679 to become Lord High Commissioner to Scotland. Surviving attempts at impeachment and assassination, he was crowned King James II in February 1685. Cook and Wroughton, English Historical Facts, 71.

544. Anthony Ashley Cooper, first Earl of Shaftsbury (1621–1683), was a member of the Convention Parliament that welcomed the restored Charles II in 1660. He later fell from a position of favor with the king and became a leader of the opposition, intriguing with the Duke of Monmouth for the latter’s succession to the throne. He helped fan anti-Catholic sentiment during the Popish Plot scare (1678) and was appointed President of Temple’s new Council in 1679, but he was then dismissed for supporting the Exclusion Bill. Failing in his attempt to impeach the Duke of York as a Popish recusant in 1680, he was named in a plot to overthrow the government in 1682. In November of that year he fled to Holland, where he died two months later. Cook and Wroughton, English Historical Facts, 62–63.

545. In the hysteria following the Popish Plot, five Catholic Lords—Arundel, Powis, Petre, Stafford, and Belasye—were charged by the Protestant party with conspiring to kill Charles II. Arrested on orders of the House of Commons, they were held in the Tower of London to await trial. William Howard, Lord Stafford, was condemned and executed on 29 December 1680; Lord Petre died in the Tower; and the other three remained imprisoned there until 1685. The plight of these unfortunate victims of the Protestant party hardened Charles against the opposition and cost the Protestant party some public support. Antonia Fraser, Royal Charles: Charles II and the Restoration (New York, 1979), 360–61, 399–400.

546. Joshua Moodey of Portsmouth.

547. Major Richard Waldron (c.1616–689) of Dover, New Hampshire, was prominent in that colony’s political and military affairs. He was killed in a Native raid during the first year of King William’s War. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:390.

548. “Forlorn hope,” or vanguard.

549. In 1672 there was a Samuel Smith in Taunton, who had a son born that year. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:132.

550. Prince’s note: “D^r Thomas Goodwin was Born at Rolesby in Norfolk on oct 5. 1600; y^e eldest son of Richard & Catharine Goodwin, & sent to Cambridg Aug. 29. 1613. (his Life).” Underlining added by Prince.

551. Worship.

552. In a letter to Robert Boyle, dated 7 July 1688, Eliot pays tribute to Cotton’s facility with Native languages, asking Boyle to remit £10 to Cotton, “who helped me much in the second edition” of Eliot’s famous Massachusett Bible. Eliot further hoped that two additional translations of his might be printed, “but I cannot commit them to the press without a careful revisal, which none but M^r. Cotton is able to help me perform.” Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:598.

553. “Two eyes see better than one.”

554. Two or three words illegible.

555. Rev. Urian Oakes (1631–1681, H.C. 1649) emigrated to New England in 1634 and returned to England in 1653. After being silenced for nonconformity in 1662, he again sailed for New England. He became pastor of the church in Cambridge and was elected fourth president of Harvard College following the troubled tenure of Leonard Hoar. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:183.

556. Rev. Thomas Shepard (1658–1685), son of the Rev. Thomas Shepard felled by smallpox, was installed in his father’s place as Charlestown’s pastor on 5 May 1680. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:481–88.

557. Samuel Wakeman (d. 1692) was one of seventeen scholars who left Harvard College without a degree in 1655. Thomas Prince expressly mentions him as one of five of that number “who afterwards made a very shining Figure in New-England.” Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:16–17; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:388.

558. Cotton wrote two tributes in verse for Thomas Walley and Noah Newman, both of whom died in 1678.

559. Rev. Zecharaiah Walker (1637–1700), another of the seventeen scholars mentioned above, was pastor of the Second Church in Woodbury, Connecticut, from 1668 until his death in 1700. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 213.

560. Jer. 6:8: “Be thou instructed, O Jerusalem, lest my soul depart from thee; lest I make thee desolate, a land not inhabited.”

561. There is no record of this event in Plymouth colony, town or church records.

562. In the summer of 1680, Gov. Winslow received word from Secretary of State Henry Coventry that the King would be disposed, upon proper application, to grant Plymouth Colony a charter. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 194–95.

563. Despite repeated appeals from Barnstable during more than a year of negotiation, Peter Thatcher declined the pulpit there, settling instead at Milton in 1681. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:370–79.

564. Regarding Thomas Crosby, see the letter from John Freeman et al. of 31 July 1672. By this time Crosby was apparently enjoying his new career as a merchant and had no interest in returning to the ministry.

565. Elizabeth Saltonstall (1668–1725) was the daughter of Nathaniel and Elizabeth Ward Saltonstall. She was first married to John Denison (1666–1689), her brother Gurdon’s classmate and the settled minister in Ipswich. Denison died in 1689, while Elizabeth was pregnant with their son, John. Elizabeth married Rowland Cotton in September 1692 and had eleven more children. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 3:271–72, 277–86, 323–26.

566. Not identified.

567. Her brothers at that time were Gurdon (b. 1666), Richard (b. 1672), Nathaniel (b. 1674) and John (b. 1678).

568. Probably Elizabeth Ring Mayo (1652–c. 1691), who married William Mayo (1654–1691) of Eastham c. 1680. Clarence Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore, 1865), 500.

569. John Alden (c.1599–1687), the Pilgrim made famous by Longfellow’s poem, helped establish the town of Duxbury in the early 1630s and resided there the rest of his life. Originally a cooper by trade, he also served for many years as an assistant in the colony government and was active in the church. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 232–33.

570. Rev. John Holmes died on 24 December 1675. See the letter of 3 January 1676.

571. Ichabod Wiswall (1637–1700) was another of the five “shining Figure[s]” from the nongraduating Harvard class of 1655 (see the letter from Samuel Wakeman of 16 April 1680, n. 1). He taught school in Dorchester for three or four years before moving to Duxbury in 1676 to take the place of the late Rev. Holmes. In 1689 he went to England as an agent for the colony to secure a new charter. He failed in the attempt, largely due to Plymouth’s inability to furnish necessary funds, and to the efforts of Massachusetts agent Increase Mather, who sought to have Plymouth joined to his own colony. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:16, 560–61.

572. Josiah Standish (c. 1633–1690) of Duxbury, son of the famous Captain Myles Standish, eventually moved to Connecticut, and died there. Robert S. Wakefield, ed., and Russell L. Warner, comp., Mayflower Families through Five Generations, vol. 14 (Plymouth, Mass., 1997), 6.

573. No address or endorsement, but Cotton is the most likely recipient.

574. Date added by Prince. Prince’s note: “Before Gov. Winslows Death on Dec. 18, 1680.”

575. Prince’s note: “Then minister at Rehoboth (settled in 1679 Dceas^d [Removd?] in 1693) Bristol cwancea [Swansea], & settled in 1681.”

576. After King Philip’s War, Massachusetts and Plymouth quarreled over the right to Philip’s lands in the vicinity of Mount Hope (modern-day Bristol, Rhode Island). Plymouth, especially, needed the land in order to settle the costs of the war. Gov. Winslow’s policy of cultivating Edward Randolph apparently paid off: even as the colony rejoiced in its prospects for a charter, Plymouth celebrated the Crown grant that had awarded the entire disputed territory to the colony earlier in the year. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 194–95.

839. Records of the Town of Plymouth (Plymouth, 1889–1903), 1:190–91.

840. To Increase Mather, 10 and 21 September 1688.

841. From James Keith, 6 March 1683; To Cotton Mather, 11 March 1684.

842. Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Baltimore, Md., 1936), 66; Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History & People 1620–1691 (Salt Lake City, Ut., 1986), 192, 276–77; George D. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth 1620–1691

843. Not found.

844. See above letters of 1 and 19 August 1687.

845. Rowland evidently received a call from the Bristol church.

846. The Plymouth records do not include this daughter of Lydia and John Nelson, who had two other children in 1683 and 1689. Lee D. Van Antwerp, comp., Vital Records of Plymouth, Massachusetts to the Year 1850 (Camden, Me., 1993), 11.

847. Winsor’s History of the Town of Duxbury mistakenly indicates that John Alden died on 12 September 1686, but Savage’s Dictionary correctly states that he died on 12 September 1687. Mayflower passenger John Alden left Plymouth in 1631 and settled in Duxbury, serving the colony in both government and military affairs for more than forty-five years. John Cotton is believed to have published an elegy to Alden after his death, Poem Occasioned by the Death of that Aged, Pious, Sincere-hearted Christian John Alden . . . who died September 12, 1687 . . . (Boston, 1687[?]) [Evans 426] Charles Evans, American Bibliography (New York, 1941–1959). Justin Winsor, History of the Town of Duxbury, Massachusetts, with Genealogical Registers (Boston, 1849), 55–63; James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (1860–62; facsimile reprint Baltimore, Md., 1990), 1:23; Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 232–33.

848. Not found.

849. John Cotton, son of Seaborn Cotton. See the above letter of 26 August 1687.

850. Caleb Cooke (b. 1651) lived in Plymouth. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 1: 446–47.

851. Not found.

852. Possibly Deacon Jonathan Metcalf (1650–1727) of Dedham, Massachusetts, listed as a freeman in 1683. New England Historic Genealogical Register, 6 (1852): 173–76.

853. A “pillow beere” is a pillow case. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1989), 11:839.

854. Walter Deane (1612–c.1694), one of the original forty-six settlers of Taunton, emigrated from England with his brother, John, in 1637. He served as a selectman for more than twenty years, as well as a deputy to the General Court in Plymouth. Samuel Hopkins Emery, History of Taunton, Massachusetts from Its Settlement to the Present Time (Syracuse, N.Y., 1893), 39–40; Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 279–80.

855. Tear; one or two words lost.

856. Tear; two or three words lost.

857. Tear; two or three words lost.

858. Tear; two or three words lost.

859. Tear; two or three words lost.

860. Most of line illegible or lost to tear.

861. William Harvey (d. 1691) was one of the original settlers of Taunton and served as a selectman, representative to the General Court in Plymouth, constable, and surveyor. Emery, History of Taunton, 50–51.

862. James Walker (c. 1620–1692) was one of the early settlers of Taunton, although not one of the “fortysix purchasers.” He emigrated as a teenager with his sister under the sponsorship of their cousin, John Browne. He became a freeman in 1650 and opened a tavern in 1679. Walker also served as a constable, deputy and selectman. Emery, History of Taunton, 85, 92; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:393–94.

863. George Bonum (Bonan), who often served as a surveyor in Plymouth, and his wife, Elizabeth, married in 1681 and had nine children by 1702. Van Antwerp, Vital Records of Plymouth, 4, 85; Plymouth Town Records, 1:184, 188, 194.

864. Cotton’s church records read “Wood” in both cases, possibly Nathaniel Wood (b. 1652), the son of John Wood of Plymouth. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 4:627; Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Collections (hereafter CSM), 22 (Boston, 1920), 163, 261.

865. Not found.

866. John and Joanna’s fifth child, Sarah, was born on 5 April 1670 and was named to replace an earlier daughter, Sarah, who died at age four in Guilford in 1669. Sarah survived the illness Cotton describes in this letter.

867. Lieutenant John Morton (1650–1718) settled in Middleborough, married Mary Ring in 1687, and had nine children by 1700. See the letters of 19 July 1676 and 9 July 1688. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3: 244; Vital Records of Plymouth, 11.

868. Not found.

869. Samuel Danforth (1666–1727, H.C. 1683) was the settled minister in Taunton from 1687 to 1727. Danforth also served as an Indian commissioner and compiled an Indian dictionary. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (Boston, 1873–) (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 3:243–49.

870. Not found.

871. There was a serious measles epidemic in New England over the winter 1687–88. John Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America (Baton Rouge, La., 1953), 166.

872. Joanna evidently offered medical advice in the February letter.

873. Mrs. Elizabeth Shove became a full member of the Taunton church on 27 November 1687.

874. “If it pleases God” or “God willing.”

875. Lieutenant George Macey was the son of George Macey, one of the original forty-six settlers of Taunton. The younger George served as a selectman seventeen years, represented Taunton to the Plymouth General Court from 1672 to 1677 and progressed through the military hierarchy in Taunton during the last decades of the seventeenth century, serving in several wars. Conflicts between Macey and Capt. Thomas Leonard escalated in the late 1680s, and by 1690, Maj. Thomas Whalley considered asking Cotton to convince Macey to step down: “Macey’s party by virtue of the order of the Council are daily listing soldiers and take all opportunities to wheedle in all the youngsters they can, the other party look upon the proceedings not to be proper and so lie still . . . there is nothing that will tend to peace but for some (Mr Cotton &c) that have an interest in Macey to persuade for the peace of the town to lay down.” A lengthy appeal from Leonard, “supposed to be forwarded to Mr. Cotton at Plymouth” in 1692, suggests that the division between Leonard and Macey continued. Emery, History of Taunton, 573, 85, 328–36.

876. “Not only for the moment (as well as) for all time.”

877. “Namely.”

878. William Hoskins; see 8 November 1684.

879. Samuel Angier; see 17 September 1679.

880. James Keith, minister in Bridgewater.

881. Not found.

882. Increase Mather was planning a trip to England for the early spring of 1688 to try to convince the Crown of Andros’s abuse of power in New England and to represent Massachusetts in her fight for a new charter. Michael G. Hall, The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639–1723 (Middletown, Conn., 1988), 207–11. See also 11 April 1688.

883. “The chh set apart, March 7: a day of Fasting & prayer, on account of the measles in the winter & for the mercies of the yeare, & for continuance of & Gods blessing upon the meanes of Grace.” CSM, 22:162.

884. Cotton’s tuition concerns continued. See the above letters of 26 November 1686 and 2 September 1687.

885. Measles; see 3 March 1688.

886. John Chipman (c. 1620–1708) emigrated by 1638 and became a freeman sometime between 1649 and 1658. He served as a grand juryman, deputy, selectman, and the ruling elder in the Barnstable church until he moved to Sandwich. Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 262–63.

887. Chipman’s second wife, Ruth Sargent Winslow Bourne, was the widow of Rev. Richard Bourne, who had been thirty years her senior. Like Joanna Cotton, Ruth Chipman was a midwife and healer, and evidently the two women shared medicinal herbs. Thomas Prince, born into Ruth Chipman’s hands, described her as “a little, lively smart gentlewoman of very good sense and knowledge, of the strictest piety.” R. A. Lovell, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, (Sandwich, Mass., 1984), 121–22.

888. Sir Edmund Andros, the new governor of the Dominion of New England, was given authority over much of modern-day Maine, along with his other jurisdictions. He quickly made that power felt by attacking the home and trading post of Baron Jean-Vincent d’Abbadie de St. Castin in the Pemaquid settlement on the Penobscot. Historians suggest that the attacks on Dover, New Hampshire, in June 1689 and on Pemaquid in August 1689 were in retaliation for this aggression. Castin, the son-in-law of the Penobscot chief Modockawando, was a powerful intermediary between Natives and French in the area. Alan Gallay, Colonial Wars of North America, 1512–1763: An Encyclopedia (New York, 1996), 180–81, 549.

889. After Andros arrived, Edward Randolph became the secretary and registrar of the Dominion of New England. Randolph tried to exploit Andros’s land policies to his own advantage: first he requested 500 acres of common land in Lynn, then 700 acres between Watertown and Cambridge. Both attempted land-grabs failed. Michael Garibaldi Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703, (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), 109, 113.

890. Plymouth church records list John and Rachel Churchel and Elizabeth Kenedy as “members admitted” in 1688. Kenedy was baptised at the same time. CSM, 22:261.

891. “Rebekah, the wife of our Brother Thomas Clarke, dyed, April, 4: she was not in full communion, a child of yarmouth church, & left in her owne hand-writing many gratious words that did fully evidence God was gratiously at worke with her soule, & that she was preparing for church-fellowship.” Her grandparents included Rev. John Miller (1604–1663) who emigrated in 1634 and served as the settled minister in Roxbury, Rowley, Yarmouth and Groton. CSM, 22:262; Weis, Colonial Clergy, 141.

892. Increase Mather sailed for London on 7 April. Hall, Last American Puritan, 210–11.

893. Not found.

894. Bottom of page torn, writing faint.

895. The queen’s pregnancy was covered in the London Gazette (#2316, 26–30 January 1687).

896. This story is covered in the London Gazette (#2315, 23–26 January 1687).

897. Not found.

898. There are two likely Edward Doteys: Edward Jr. (b. 1664) and Edward (b. 1671). See the letter of 9 July 1688; Edward Dotey was also mixed up in the Clark’s Island case. Vital Records of Plymouth, 4–5, Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 283–85; Vital Records of Plymouth, 4–5. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 220.

899. Cotton was evidently hoping that Rowland would pursue missionary work and receive some tuition help from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.

900. John Moses died on 22 April 1688. CSM, 22:134.

901. Ann King (wife of Samuel) died on 4 May 1688. CSM, 22:134.

902. “The chh set apart May, 3: as a Fast because of great drought, great raine came that very day & after, soe ready is God to heare the prayers of his people.” CSM, 22:163.

903. Joanna was probably worried about the measles epidemic; see 3 March 1688.

904. Joshua Moody (1633–1697, HC 1653) was the settled minister in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, from 1658 until he moved to Boston’s First Church in 1684, where he remained until 1693. He ended his ministerial career back in Portsmouth. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:367–80.

905. Samuel Torrey (1632–1707) was Weymouth’s settled minister when Cotton visited to hear the renowned preacher speak. Torrey attended Harvard but left without graduating when the college extended the course of study in 1656. He began his ministerial career in Hull and was ordained in 1664 in Weymouth, where he served as minister from 1656 until his death in 1707. Torrey was chosen to give the Artillery Election sermon in 1669 and the Election Sermon in 1674, 1683 and 1695. In 1684 he was also offered the presidency of Harvard College, but he declined. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 206; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:564–67.

906. Nathaniel Gookin (1656–1692, H.C. 1675) succeeded Urian Oakes as the settled minister in Cambridge from 1681 until his death at the age of thirty-five. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:474–80.

907. Three or four words illegible.

908. Mercy/Mary Cotton (1666–1715), daughter of Seaborn Cotton, was married to Peter Tufts (d. 1721). Seaborn and John Cotton were brothers. Torrey, New England Marriages, 758.

909. “Salute in my name.”

910. Probably Thomas Oakes (b. 1644, H.C. 1662), who practiced as a physician in Boston, served as a representative to the General Court, and was its Speaker in 1692. Oakes also joined Increase Mather, Elisha Cooke and Henry Ashurst in London to fight for the restoration of the Massachusetts Charter in 1692. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:130–32.

911. Possibly John Gilman (1657–1708) of Exeter, who served as a councilor under the Provisional Charter, a judge, and Speaker of the House. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 2:257–58.

912. George D. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth 1620–1691 (New Haven, Conn., 1966), 212–21, 225; Records of the Town of Plymouth (Plymouth, 1889–1903), 1:192–93, 197.

913. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Collections (hereafter CSM), 22 (Boston, 1920), 265–67.

914. John Foy (d. 1708) was a mariner in Boston. James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (1860–62; facsimile reprint Baltimore, Md., 1990), 2:198.

915. Mather was in London lobbying for the new Massachusetts charter.

916. The Gurnet is a point of land at the northern entrance to Plymouth harbor.

917. See the editorial note preceeding this letter.

918. “Old England.”

919. Thomas Shepard, Sincere Convert, Discovering the Paucity of True Beleevers (London, 1641); Shepard, Sound Beleever, or a Treatise of Evangelical Conversion (London, 1645).

920. It appears that Cotton received no “Indian pay” from 1684 to 1692. Until 1684, he earned £25 per year from the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel; beginning in 1695, his salary increased to £40 per year, and he received a raise the following year. MS 7946 New England Company: Accounts 1657–1731, Guildhall Library, London.

921. After graduating from Harvard, Jonathan Pierpont (1665–1709, H.C. 1685), kept a school in Dorchester, preached occasionally in Milton and was invited to the pulpit in Dedham. He declined the Dedham offer in December 1687. He would receive several additional offers by the summer of 1688, from New London (8 November 1687), Newberry (16 May 1688) and Northfield (22 May 1688), yet he would decline all of these as well. In April 1688, he was called to Sandwich but began preaching in Reading following some heavy lobbying at a ministerial funeral. In July he accepted his second degree at Harvard and returned to preaching in Reading despite Sandwich’s call. See letters of 25 September 1688 and October 1688 for continued problems between Pierpont and the Sandwich congregation. John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 3:349–52.

922. Joanna was then traveling to see her son John, Rowland’s brother.

923. Charles Morton was born in Cornwall, England, in 1627 and attended Wadham College, Oxford, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1649 and a master’s in 1652. After preaching in Blisland, Cornwall, for six years, he was silenced for non-conformity in 1662. Morton then taught school in Middlesex until he emigrated to New England in 1686. He ministered to the congregation in Charlestown from 1686 until his death in 1698. He also established a well-respected school there and served as vice-president of Harvard College from 1697 to 1698. Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Baltimore, Md., 1936), 146.

924. Not found.

925. Sir William Phips.

926. “The case is under judgment.”

927. Cotton had feared this would be the result of voluntary subscription; see his letter of 2 September 1687.

928. John Eliot lived nearly two more years, dying on 20 May 1690.

929. Cotton seems to have been angling to take over John Eliot’s job, partly as a way to augment his decreasing salary.

930. Cotton is referring to news of the Glorious Revolution.

931. John Chipman was at this time the elder in Sandwich, apparently having left Barnstable, to help his “old friend” John Smith, who asked to be relieved of his duties in 1688 at the age of seventy-four. R. A. Lovell, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, (Sandwich, Mass., 1984), 129, 128.

932. Samuel Prince (1648–1728) was one of the merchants who enjoyed Sandwich’s coastal access to Massachusetts Bay. He arrived from Hull in 1682, purchased land, became a freeman and served in various town offices. His second wife was Mercy Hinckley, the daughter of Gov. Thomas Hinckley. Lovell, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, 133.

933. Jonathan Pierpont’s father, Robert Pierpont.

934. Although Pierpont was invited to Sandwich and was “accompanied by Elder Chipman” on his visit, he ultimately rejected Sandwich’s call, partly because of his father’s counsel. As Pierpont wrote in his diary, “My honoured Father was averse to my going to Sandwich.” Pierpont was eventually ordained in the first church in Reading (Wakefield) on 26 June 1689; he remained there until his death in 1709. Ironically, Cotton’s son Rowland settled as the minister in Sandwich in 1690. Lovell, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, 131; Weis, Colonial Clergy, 165; “Diary of Rev. Jonathan Pierpont,” New England Historic Genealogical Register (hereafter NEHGR) 13 (1859): 255–58.

935. Cotton employed a less hostile vocabulary in the next letter, addressed to Robert Pierpont, the “surly old man” himself. See the letter below of October 1688.

936. According to Pierpont’s diary, Cotton was right. The young minister was clearly struggling with his choice, for he wrote that, “I had inclinations to go to Sandwich” but admitted that “most were for my going to Reading.” “Diary of Rev. Jonathan Pierpont,” NEHGR 13 (1859): 257.

937. Ministers often gathered at ordinations, and Cotton was clearly hoping to lobby Pierpont on Sandwich’s behalf at the Roxbury ordination of Nehemiah Walter. Cotton may also have been hoping to meet again with Pierpont’s father, who lived in Roxbury.

938. Probably William Bassett II, grandson of Leiden Separatist and emigrant William, who served in Sandwich as a militia captain and colonel as well as a Register of Probate. For two of his letters during King William’s War, see “The Hinckley Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., 5 (Boston, 1861), 214, 219; Lovell, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, 119, 147.

939. Thomas Prince notes, “This no doubt was wrote to the Father of m^r Jonathan Pierpont, by y^e R M^r John Cotton Plimouth, for Elder Chipman & others of Sandwich.”

940. For Pierpont’s call to Northfield, see the notes on the letter of 13 August 1688.

941. John Brock (1620–1688, H.C. 1646) began his career in Rowley (1648–1650), briefly returned to Harvard to pursue his studies after completing both bachelor’s and master’s degrees and spent eleven years as the minister in Isle of Shoals, later New Hampshire, until 1662, when he settled in Reading (modern-day Wakefield) until his death in June 1688. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:127–31.

942. Cotton seems to have been implying that Reading (modern-day Wakefield) should have had an easier time finding a minister because the town was closer to Harvard College in Cambridge—“the place of supply”—than Sandwich was.

943. See the above letter of 25 September 1688.

944. See the above letter of October 1688, to Robert Pierpont.

945. John Smith (1614–1710) emigrated to New England in 1630, preached in Barnstable on Long Island and settled in Sandwich in 1673. The Sandwich church had been without a settled minister for twenty years. Smith seemed well suited to the Sandwich congregation because of his moderate stance regarding Quakers, who made up a sizable portion of Sandwich residents. He was ordained in 1675 and remained in the pulpit until 1688, when he requested a dismissal due to his advancing age. See the above letter of 25 September 1688. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 189–90; Lovell, Sandwich: A Cape Cod Town, 109–11, 128–29.

946. Thomas Prince notes, “I suppose wrote to Elder Chipman of Sandwich.”

947. In the vital records, Clerk Thomas Faunce listed a Samuel and Suzannah Garner, who married in 1682 and had three children by 1687. Evidently, Suzannah survived the illness Cotton mentions, because she later married Joshua Ransom on 10 March 1692, after Samuel’s death on 3 September 1689. Lee D. Van Antwerp, comp., and Ruth Wilder Sherman, ed., Vital Records of Plymouth, Mass. to 1850 (Camden, Me., 1993), 6, 86, 134; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 2:230.

948. See the above letter of 1 October 1688.

949. Robert and Jonathan Pierpont.

950. Cotton seems to have wanted William Bassett to join the lobbying effort in Roxbury.

951. Increase Mather.

952. William Phips.

953. Thomas Danforth.

954. For more concerning the skyrocketing court costs incurred during the era of the Dominion of New England, see 9 July 1688.

955. Cotton clearly supported Mather’s charter efforts, a stance that he later regretted; see 6/7 July 1698.

956. “The word is enough.”

957. Jonathan Russell, minister of Barnstable.

958. Not found.

959. Probably Joseph Howland; see 9 July 1688.

960. Probably John Tulley, An Almanac for the Year of Our Lord MDCLXXXIX (Boston, 1689) [Evans 499]; less likely, but possibly Daniel Leeds, An Almanac for the year of Christian Account 1689 (Philadelphia, 1688) [Evans 446]. Charles Evans, American Bibliography (New York, N.Y., 1941–1959), 1:75, 82.

961. Possibly Thaddeus Maccarty (1640–1705) or his son, Thomas (Thaddeus?), who was a member of the Harvard class of 1691. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:139; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 4:106–7.

962. Lewis Bayly, Manitowompae Pomantamoonk Sampwshanau Christianoh Uttoh Woh An Pomantog Wnssikkitteahonat God, (London, 1685) [Evans 383]. This is the second edition of John Eliot’s abridged translation of Lewis Bayly’s Practice of Piety. Eliot’s first edition was published in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1665 by Samuel Green [Evans 95]. Evans, American Bibliography, 1:22, 63.

963. Not found.

964. For example, see the letter below to Thomas Hinckley, 15 February 1689.

965. For more on Walley, see 10 August 1694.

966. From John Cotton (1661), 5 August 1690.

967. From Shubael Dummer, 13 January 1691; From Samuel Sewall, 22 February 1692.

968. From Samuel Sewall, 22 February 1692.

969. From Samuel Sewall, 22 February 1692.

970. To Rowland Cotton, 23 July 1694.

971. From Henry Dering, 12 August 1693; To Joanna Cotton, [29 May 1695].

972. To Rowland Cotton, 12 February 1695.

973. To Rowland Cotton, 4 March 1696; To Rowland Cotton, [after 7 August 1696].

974. To Rowland Cotton, [30 October 1696].

975. From Henry Dering, 20 August 1692; From Henry Dering, 12 August 1693; To Joanna and Rowland Cotton, [11] August 1694; To Joanna Cotton, [29 May 1695]; To Rowland Cotton, 13 November 1695; To Rowland Cotton, [14 May 1698].

976. Howard H. Peckham, The Colonial Wars, 1689–1762 (Chicago, Ill., 1964), 25–56; Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History & People 1620–1691 (Salt Lake City, Ut., 1986), 133–34; George D. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony: A History of New Plymouth 1620–1691 (New Haven, Conn., 1966), 226–32; Records of the Colony of New Plymouth in New England, ed. Nathaniel Shurtleff and David Pulsifer, 12 vols. (Boston, 1855–61), 6:208–57.

977. Unknown.

978. Thomas Faunce (1647–1746) was ordained a deacon of the Plymouth church on 26 December 1686. Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Collections (hereafter CSM), 22 (Boston, 1920), 161, 259.

979. See 28 November 1688.

980. War erupted between the French and the English along the northern border of Massachusetts Bay Colony (present-day Maine) in 1688, and French Catholic Indians attacked Pemaquid in August 1689; Haverhill also reported Indian attacks. After an official declaration of war, these skirmishes were considered part of King William’s War. See the section above, “King William’s War.” Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 226–27; Eugene Aubrey Stratton, Plymouth Colony: Its History & People 1620–1691 (Salt Lake City, Ut., 1986), 132.

981. John Blake emigrated with his family as a child in 1630 and lived in Dorchester and Boston. Savage suggests that he died “early in 1689,” leaving no children. James Savage, A Genealogical Dictionary of the First Settlers of New England, 4 vols. (1860–62; facsimile reprint Baltimore, Md., 1990), 1:192–93.

982. Cotton Mather’s first wife was Abigail Philips, the daughter of mariner John and Catherine Anderson Philips of Charlestown. The “maiden-daughter” was most likely Catherine (b. 1672), since Mehitable (1667–1737) and Mary (b. 1676) were married by this time. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:412–13; Almon Torrey, New England Marriages Prior to 1700 (Baltimore, Md., 1865), 350, 565.

983. Not found.

984. The New England Company account of 1692 noted, “To m^r John Cotton for 3 years £40 p annu, & for the last year £ 50—170:00.” By comparison, John Eliot received 100 for two years, and Hinckley received sixty-two for three years. MS 7946 New England Company: Accounts 1657–1731, Guildhall Library, London.

985. “By voice.”

986. George Keith (c. 1638–1716) was a prominent, and controversial, Quaker minister and writer. In 1677 he traveled on a missionary tour through Germany and Holland with George Fox, William Penn and Robert Barclay. In 1689 he settled in Philadelphia as headmaster of the William Penn school. Conflicts with other Pennsylvanian Quakers led to a splintering of the Quaker meetings in the 1690s and Keith’s dismissal from the London Meeting. Eventually, he sought ordination in the Anglican Church and became an agent for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, attacking the Quaker church in his preaching and writing. Allen Tolman and Dumas Malone, eds., Dictionary of American Biography (New York, 1957), 289–90.

987. Samuel Fisher (1605–1665) was a powerful nonconformist minister educated at Trinity College and ordained in Kent in 1632. He officially became a Baptist in 1643, but he had been associated with the Anabaptists for some years. A Baptist congregation invited him to become their preacher by 1649, and he engaged in vociferous oral and print battles over infant baptism. In 1654, he converted again, this time to Quakerism, following a visit by leading English Quakers William Caton and John Stubbs. Fisher began an active traveling ministry, journeying to Rome and Constantinople, among other places. He was imprisoned for his work and died of the plague in 1665 shortly after his release. His published works defending the Quaker faith were standard Quaker reading throughout the seventeenth century and beyond. Dictionary of National Biography, ed. Leslie Stephen and Sidney Lee, 63 vols. (London, 1885–1900) (hereafter DNB), 70–72.

988. Samuel Fisher, Rusticus Ad Academicos In Exercitationibus Expostulatoriis, Apologeticis Quatuor. The Rustick’s Alarm to the Rabbies: Or, the Country Correcting the University and Clergy, And (Not Without Good Cause) Contesting for the Truth, Against the Nursing Mothers and their Children in testimony of Truth Exalted. (London, 1660) [Wing F1056].

989. One of the major fires of colonial Boston, the 1690 fire destroyed at least fourteen houses as well as warehouses; it also consumed Samuel Green’s printing press. Beginning at 2:00 a.m., the fire traveled across Mill Creek, increasing the destruction. Memorial History of Boston, ed. Justin Winsor (Boston, 1881), 388, 504.

990. Mohawks.

991. Fitz-John Winthrop and many Plymouth Colony soldiers participated in the attack on Montreal. See the above notes on King William’s War.

992. This smallpox outbreak spread to Boston in October 1689 via a ship from the West Indies. The major epidemic continued to ravage Boston in 1690 and was rampant on the ships that carried colonial forces to attack Port Royal; in this manner the disease spread throughout New France. John Duffy, Epidemics in Colonial America (Baton Rouge, La., 1953), 48. Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 232.

993. Samuel Green Jr. learned his trade from his father, Samuel, a Cambridge printer. The younger Green died in the smallpox epidemic in July and his wife, Elizabeth Sill, died a few days after. In August, Green’s press was destroyed in the Boston fire of 1690. Thomas, The History of Printing in America, 83–84; A History of the Book in America, vol. 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, ed. Hugh Amory and David D. Hall (New York, 2000), 94; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 2:306.

994. Sarah Cotton Pierce was the daughter of Seaborn and Dorothy Bradstreet Cotton and married Richard Pierce on 27 August 1680. Pierce was a Boston printer who likely emigrated to the town after 1679 and before 1684. He continued to practice his trade until 1691, when he either began working for someone else, left New England or died. Isaiah Thomas, The History of Printing in America, with a Biography of Printers & an Account of Newspapers, 2d ed., ed. Marcus A. McCorison (1810; reprint, New York, 1970), 84–85; Amory and Hall, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World, 94; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:430; John Langdon Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, In Cambridge, Massachusetts (hereafter Sibley’s Harvard Graduates), 1:292.

995. John Hale (1636–1700, H.C. 1657) was the minister in Beverly from 1664 until his death. He served as the chaplain to the military expedition against Canada in 1690 from 4 June to 20 November over the strong objections of his congregation, to which Cotton alludes in this letter. One historian suggested that he served as chaplain because such “a large number were engaged” and “he was anxious to accompany them that he might watch over their morals.” His son, Robert (1668–1719, H.C. 1686), carried out his father’s ministerial duties in his absence. Frederick Lewis Weis, The Colonial Clergy and the Colonial Churches of New England (Baltimore, Md., 1936), 98; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:509–20, 3:362–64.

996. John Wise (1652–1725, H.C. 1673) the minister in Essex, possibly John Overton, son of mariner Robert Overton (d. 1673), and John Emerson (1625–1700, HC 1656), the minister in Gloucester, all served as chaplains to Phips’s 1690 expedition to Canada. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 233, 80; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:485–87, 2:428–41; Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:325.

997. Written in margin.

998. See Ichabod Wiswall’s description of William’s Ireland campaign in the letter of 17 October 1690.

999. James II had “ruined the Committee for Trade and Plantations.” Michael G. Hall, Edward Randolph and the American Colonies, 1676–1703 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1960), 120.

1000. One of the agents for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Ashurst agreed to present Plymouth’s petition for a charter, despite the colony’s initial inability to support his efforts financially. On 3 March 1691 the Plymouth Court finally voted to send Ashurst 50 guineas “that he would be pleased to use his care & endeavour to procure a charter from the King for a distinct government for this colony,” and one hundred pounds sterling “towards the charge of procuring a charter as aforesaid” (Plymouth Colony Records, 6:260). Increase Mather repeatedly warned Hinckley that his hesitation was dangerous, as he did in a September 1689 letter: “You can never sufficiently requite Sir Harry Ashhurst for his concerning himself with such activity in your behalf. You must not think much to send over supplies of money for him to lay out to gratify some persons with for your benefit . . . My advice is, that you would raise money for that purpose, without any delay. You may do it too late: you cannot do it too soon.” “The Hinckley Papers,” Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, 4th ser., 5 (Boston, 1861), 211.

1001. Increase Mather.

1002. See the headnote “New England in Old England” on the Plymouth charter.

1003. George, 4th Lord and 1st Earl of Melville (1634[?]–1707), was made William II’s commissioner to the Scottish Parliament in February 1690. DNB.

1004. Possibly William Trail (1640–1714), minister at Borthwick, Midlothian, England, brother of Robert Trail (1642–1716), a noted Presbyterian minister. The books to which William referred in this letter belonged to his father, Robert (1603–1678), a zealous covenanter and one of the Scottish protestors, who ministered to the Scottish army in England in 1644. DNB, s.v. “Robert Trail.” “Beaumaris” is a city in Wales.

1005. “On the day, both memorable and miserable, because of the death of a brother.”

1006. Not found.

1007. Rowland had recently settled with Sandwich’s first church after rejecting a call from Dedham, preferring to be closer to his parents in Plymouth. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 3:324.

1008. Considered the first indigenous American newspaper, Publick Occurrences Both Forreign and Domestick was published on 25 September 1690 and was intended to be a regular serial. Focusing on local and colonial news rather than on international events, Publick Occurrences was silenced after only one edition, largely due to the war news it contained and the fact that it was published without official sanction. Editor Benjamin Harris implied in the paper that England’s Native alliances (“Maquas”) during King William’s War had been unnecessary and unsuccessful, and he reported rumors that Louism XIV of France (“monster Louis”) had been sleeping with his own daughter-in-law. Many people in Boston suspected that Cotton Mather was a central contributor—a claim he denied. Charles Clark, The Public Prints: The Newspaper in Anglo-American Culture, 1665–1740 (New York, 1994), 71–73, 79–81.

1009. Harris, a printer and newspaper publisher who left London in 1686, was the publisher of Public Occurrences.

1010. “Mohawks.”

1011. “King William.”

1012. New England.

1013. In the Battle of the Boyne, 1 July 1690, King William’s Anglo-Dutch Protestant army defeated the Jacobite forces of the deposed James II. James was back in France within three weeks.

1014. James Fitzjames, Duke of Berwick and son of James II (1670–1734), remained in Ireland until the fall of Limerick in 1691. Richard Talbot, Earl of Tyrconnel (1630–1691), and the French General Lanzun left Ireland on 12 September 1690. DNB.

1015. In fact, it took a second campaign, in the summer of 1691, to pacify the rest of Ireland.

1016. Arthur Herbert, Lord Torrington (1647–1716), commanded the Anglo-Dutch fleet in an engagement with a superior French force off Beachy Head on 30 June 1690. The allies fared poorly, temporarily ceding control of the English Channel to the French. Accused of cowardice or mismanagement, Torrington was subsequently arrested to stand court-martial on capital charges. He was acquitted of all charges but never received a command at sea again. DNB.

1017. After Torrington’s removal, command of the fleet was temporarily given to three admirals: Sir John Ashby (d. 1693), Sir Richard Haddock (1629–1713) and Henry Killgrew (d. 1712). DNB.

1018. Wiswall clearly hoped that Cotton would use whatever influence he had with Hinckley to encourage the Governor to appeal to the King directly. As Wiswall saw it, Plymouth’s silence would result in the colony losing its charter fight.

1019. New Plymouth.

1020. “Nothing except prayers remains.”

1021. Samuel Arnold (1622–1693) was the minister in Marshfield from 1657 until his death, and, before helping to settle that town, he was a representative to the General Court of Plymouth from Yarmouth (1654–1656). Weis, Colonial Clergy, 21; Marshfield: Autobiography of a Pilgrim Town (Marshfield, 1940), 27–28, 30–32.

1022. Mather may have been referring to Cotton’s letters of 10 and 21 September 1688. This letter seems to have been a reply to comments in those letters.

1023. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) was a noted English philosopher and scientist and a founder of the Royal Society. He also served as governor of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England, commonly called the New England Company (and hereafter called SPG), beginning in 1661. Although Mather seems to have been unaware of it, Boyle had resigned as Governor of the New England Company in 1689. DNB.

1024. There are no accounts for Cotton’s SPG salary from 1684 to 1692, but the 1692 account refers to Cotton’s salary “for 3 years £40 p annu, & for the last year £ 50—170:00.” MS 7946 New England Company: Accounts 1657–1731, Guildhall Library, London.

1025. Gov. Thomas Hinckley.

1026. Samuel Treat (1648–1717, H.C. 1669), minister at Eastham and Native missionary. Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 2:304–14.

1027. Gov. Simon Bradstreet (1604–1697). Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 1:236.

1028. William Stoughton.

1029. John Richards (d. 1694) lived in Dorchester and served as a lieutenant, captain and major, as well as a representative, speaker, assistant and judge. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:533.

1030. Perhaps Manasseh Marston (d. 1705), a blacksmith who served as a captain and a representative to the General Court and lived in Salem and Charlestown. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 3:161.

1031. “I suspect”—Mather again warned Cotton that Plymouth would be annexed to New York.

1032. Shubael Dummer was born in Newbury, Massachusetts, in February 1636 and graduated from Harvard in 1656. He was the settled minister to York, later in Maine, from 1662 until his death on 6 February 1692 during a Native attack that destroyed the town. In that same raid 160 people were either killed or carried into captivity. Weis, Colonial Clergy, 74. Cotton Mather, Decennium Luctuosum (Boston, 1699) in Narratives of the Indian Wars, 1675–1699, ed. Charles Lincoln (New York, 1913), 230–31; Sibley’s Harvard Graduates, 1:471–75.

1033. Not found.

1034. Cotton’s church collected money to send to communities ravaged by Native wars, including York. As Cotton noted in the church records, “This chh & people made a large contribution in the time of the warrs for the reliefe of those impoverished at & about Rehoboth; The like they did also in these wars & sent it to the distressed Eastward . . . This may truly be left on record, That upon any motion from the Elders for a contribution on such accounts, there was a great readynesse in the people to hearken thereunto & give freely & abundantly.” CSM, 22:165.

1035. Following a request from Massachusetts Governor Simon Bradstreet in July 1689, Benjamin Church agreed to recruit some Native soldiers and other Plymouth Colony volunteers to aid in defending the northern border against French and French-allied Native attacks, which had been raging since 1688. Church was one of the few veterans of King Philip’s War who drew on his earlier experiences to command Native and English troops in the larger theatre of King William’s War. He led men into the Battle at Brackett’s Woods near Casco Bay in 1689 and commanded a second raid in the fall of 1690 at a Native fort near Brunswick on the Androscoggin River. Before the war ended, Church led two more assaults along the Maine-Quebec border, but Plymouth’s participation in the war was half-hearted. Langdon and Stratton suggest that many colonists opposed sending Plymouth troops to fight in this war, largely due to a worsening financial crisis, reluctance to pay war taxes to support the effort and dissatisfaction over who would lead Plymouth troops. Colonial Wars of North America, 1512–1763: An Encyclopedia, ed. Gallay, 137–39; Langdon, Pilgrim Colony, 226–34; Stratton, Plymouth Colony, 132–35.

1036. Smallpox epidemic.

1037. John Davis served as a lieutenant, captain and major and lived in York. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 2:18.

1038. Job Alcock (1638–1716) lived in York and served as a lieutenant, captain and Councillor in the first post-Andros government. Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, 1:21.