JANUARY MEETING, 1912
A Stated Meeting of the Society was held at No. 25 Beacon Street, Boston, on Thursday, 25 January, 1912, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Henry Lefavour, LL.D., in the chair.
The Records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.
The Corresponding Secretary reported that letters had been received from Mr. Arthur Fairbanks and Mr. Clarence Saunders Brigham, accepting Resident Membership.
Mr. Roger Bigelow Merriman, Mr. Fred Norris Robinson, and Mr. Chester Noyes Greenough, all of Cambridge, were elected Resident Members.
Mr. George Lyman Kittredge read a paper on Cotton Mather’s Election into the Royal Society.327
In the discussion which followed, Mr. Worthington C. Ford spoke of the draughts of many of Cotton Mather’s letters in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and offered copies of these for publication by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts in connection with the transcripts of Mather’s letters to the Royal Society in the possession of our associate Mr. Frederick L. Gay. This generous offer was referred to the Committee of Publication.
Mr. Henry H. Edes exhibited an original deed on parchment, given 14 January, 1656, by the Rev. John Wilson, first minister of the First Church in Boston, conveying to Jacob Sheafe a lot of land having a frontage of 42½ feet on State Street at the westerly corner of Devonshire Street (formerly Crooked Lane and Wilson’s Lane), the site being now covered in part by the Devonshire Building. The parchment bears the signatures of John and Elizabeth Wilson as grantors, of Edward Rawson and Hezekiah Usher as witnesses, and of Governor Bellingham, before whom the deed was acknowledged. The consideration was £70, and in less than a week after taking title to the estate Sheafe conveyed it to Hezekiah Usher for £80.328
On behalf of Mr. Albert Matthews, Mr. Edes presented the following remarks:
In December, 1910, Mr. Horace E. Ware communicated a paper on Observation with the Dipping Needle at Boston in 1722.329 The observation in question was made by Captain Othniel Beale. Writing in 1724, William Whiston stated that “Captain James Jolly set out in July, 1722. for Archangel, with one of my Dipping-Needles on Board;” and that “Captain Othniel Beal set out about the same Time for Boston in New-England, with the same Instrument.”330 When Mr. Ware’s paper was going through the press, I thought it would be worth while to ascertain as precisely as possible when Captain Beale made his observation “in the Haven of Boston;” but as no allusions to Captain Beale could be found in Sewall’s Diary or in other places where one would naturally look for them, the attempt proved unsuccessful. Recently, however, the needed data have turned up in an unexpected quarter. In the masterly paper to which we have just listened, Professor Kittredge alludes to a Henry Newman of London.331 This was the Henry Newman who graduated at Harvard College in 1687, and to whom there are numerous references in the Harvard College records. From Thoresby’s Diary we learn that Newman and Thoresby were intimate friends, and four of Newman’s letters are printed in Thoresby’s Correspondence. From these works it also appears that Newman was secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge — a fact barely alluded to by Sibley.332 This new information sent me to the History of the Society published in 1898, and there I found that Newman was chosen Secretary on June 24, 1708, and retained the office for the long period of thirty-five years.333 More interesting still was a series of letters written by Newman from 1722 to 1736.334 One of these, written to Governor Shute on July 14, 1722, was sent “By Capt Beale;” another, written to Paul Dudley on the same day, states that a “Box of books” was “sent by Capta Othniel Beale in the Gilbert;”335 and a third, written to Cotton Mather on August 3, was also sent “By Captn Beale.”336 Evidently, therefore, Beale sailed from London early in August, and it only remained to examine Boston newspapers to ascertain the date of his arrival here. In the Boston Gazette of September 24, 1722, is this entry: “Custom House Boston, Sept. 22. Entered Inwards, . . . Oth. Beale, . . . from London” (p. 2/2).337 Whiston also says that “After Captain Beal had made and sent me these Observations, he pursued his Voyage to Barbados, and thence to Cliarles Town in South Carolina; at both which Places he made Observations; but the best at Barbados.”338 In the Boston Gazette of October 15, 1722, is this entry: “Custom House Boston, Octob. 13. . . . Outward Bound, . . . Othniel Beale for Barbadoes” (p. 4/1), and a similar entry is in the New England Courant of October 15, 1722 (p. 2/2); while in the Boston News Letter of October 15 among those “Entered Out” is “Othniel Beal for Barbadoes” (p. 2/2), and in the same paper of November 5 among those “Cleared Out” is “Beale . . . for Barbadoes” (p. 2/2). Thus Captain Beale reached Boston on or about September 22, 1722, and remained here several weeks.
Mr. Horace E. Ware presented to the Society two letters, one from the Eoyal Society339 and the other from the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty,340 stating that Captain Othniel Beale’s original journal recording his observation with the dipping needle at Boston in 1722 was not preserved either in the archives of the Royal Society or in the Admiralty records from 1716 to 1736 in the Public Record Office.
Again on behalf of Mr. Matthews, Mr. Edes made the following communication:
A romantic story is told about John and Margery Sullivan, the parents of General John Sullivan and Governor James Sullivan. John Sullivan, then about thirty-three years old, sailed from Limerick in 1723, and on the voyage his attention was attracted to a child, then only nine years of age, named Margery Brown. Arrived at York, Maine, Mr. Sullivan applied to a clergyman of that place and obtained a loan sufficient to pay to the master of the ship his own passage money and that of Margery. He appears to have adopted Margery, and in due time a young man applied to him for her hand in marriage; but, finding that Margery did not reciprocate the feeling, the request was denied. This story was related by the late Thomas C. Amory, to whom it was told by an aged lady in Berwick, Maine, who in turn had received it, some sixty years before, “from the lips of Master Sullivan himself, in the presence of his wife.” Mr. Amory continues as follows:
Enlightened by this incident as to the nature of his own sentiments towards Margery, and discovering that he had himself already gained her affections, he made her, soon after, his wife. The disparity of age, for she was some twenty years younger than her husband, did not lessen their happiness; indeed, her greater dependence upon his superior experience served only to increase their mutual attachment. Although she did not at all times take kindly to his efforts to inspire her with a taste for knowledge, she was bright and sensible, and proved doubtless a better helpmate in the wilderness than if more highly educated. He was occasionally provoked by her violent ebullitions of temper, but she seems to have yielded ready obedience to his authority whenever he saw fit to exert it. Like all men possessed by any secret subject of sorrowful reflection, he shrunk from contention, and probably lived in his own recollections a life quite apart from his daily duties and employments, sharing but few of his deeper feelings even with his wife, who, from her own very different experiences in early days, could have had little power of understanding them.341
Mr. Amory speaks of Mrs. Sullivan’s “violent ebullitions of temper,” and says that Mr. Sullivan “shrunk from contention.” Recently I stumbled on a singular advertisement which, inserted in a Boston newspaper in 1743, shows that Mr. Sullivan not only “shrunk from contention,” but was once actually driven away from home by a violent ebullition of temper on the part of his wife. The document, at once curious and pathetic, is as follows:
ADVERTISEMENTS.
My dear and loving Husband,
‘YOur abrupt Departure from me, and forsaking of me your Wife, and tender Babes, which I now humbly acknowledge and confess I was greatly if not wholly the Occasion of, by my too342 rash and unadvised Speech and Behaviour towards you; for which I now in this publick Manner humbly ask your Forgiveness, and hereby promise upon your Return, to amend and reform, and by my future loving and obedient Carriage towards you, endeavour to make an Atonement for my past evil Deeds, and manifest to you and the whole World that I am become a new Woman, and will prove to you a loving, dutiful and tender Wife. If you do not regard what I have above written, I pray you to hearken to what your Pupil Joshua Gilpatrick hath below sent you,343 as also to the Lamentations and Cries of your poor Children, especially the eldest, who (tho’ but seven Years old344) all rational People really conclude, that unless you speedily return, will end in his Death; and the Moans of your other Children345 are enough to affect any humane Heart. — And why, my dear Husband, should a few angry and unkind Words, from an angry and fretful Wife (for which I am now paying full dear, having neither eat, drank nor slept in quiet, and am already reduced almost to a Skeleton, that unless you favour me with your Company, will bereave me of my Life) make you thus to forsake me and your Children? How can you thus for so slender a Cause as a few rash Words from a simple and weak Woman, cause you to part from your tender Babes, who are your own Flesh and Blood? Pray meditate on what I now send, and reprieve your poor Wife and eldest Son (who take your Departure so heavily) from a lingering tho’ certain Death, by your coming home to them again as speedily as you can, where you shall be kindly received, and in the most submissive Manner by your Wife, who is ready at your Desire, to lay her self at your Feet for her past Miscarriage, and am with my and your Children’s kind Love to you, your loving Wife,
Margery Sullivan.
Summersworth, New-Hampshire, July 11. 1743.346
1 Records of the General Court, xxv. 130–131. Cf. House Journal, pp. 196–197.
2 Hutchinson in his History of Massachusetts, iii. 105 note, speaks rather disparagingly of the loss:
The night after the 24th of January, the building called the old college was consumed by fire, which began in the library, the room where the council had eat the evening before. A very large collection of books, but the greatest part of them not very valuable, together with the apparatus for the use of the professor of natural and experimental philosophy, were wholly lost. A much better building was erected at the charge of the province, planned by the governor, who was a very ingenious architect, and a much more valuable library and apparatus were supplied by publick and private donations.
Cf. Publications of this Society, xi. 55; and below, p. 15.
3 Massachusetts Gazette, 2 February, 1764, p. 2/1; quoted in Quincy and Peirce. It was reprinted as a broadside, probably for purposes of distribution. President Holyoke, in his Diary, now in the possession of Mr. Andrew Nichols of Hathorne, mentions laconically, “Harvard Hall burnt,” under date of 24 January, and “Finished raising roof of Harvard,” under date of 29 September, 1764. I am indebted to Mr. Nichols for these two items.
4 History of Harvard University, ii. 112–116, 479–483; list of donations, ii. 484–496; illustrations of the halls, i. 43, 347, and ii. 122, 483 note.
5 History of Harvard University, pp. 281–299.
6 Sketch of the History of Harvard College, p. 75.
7 An interesting contemporary account of the conflagration appears in a letter dated 30 January, 1764, from which the following excerpts are taken, written by President Holyoke’s daughter Margaret to her husband, John Mascarene, then in London. The letter is printed in full in Henry F. Waters’s The College Fire in 1764 — A Contemporary Account, in the Harvard Register, iii. 294–297:
And now my Dear I shall begin with your matter of fact writing. First then our Friends are all well, our new College is Finished, and a Beautiful Building. The thirteenth of this month the General Court were invited to dine at College, at which time it was called Hollis Hall, in gratitude to the late and present worthy gentleman of that name — since that time the Small Pox has been in Boston in 20 familys which has drove a third almost of the people out of Boston, and the General Court adjourned to the College, the Council to the Library, and the house to the Hall where they have met for the dispatch of Public Business till last Wednesday, for on Tuesday night about 12 o’clock, in the severest snow storm I ever remember I heard the cry of Fire, one moment brought me to the window, when [I] saw the old Harvard College on fire, and it was with the utmost difficulty they savd the other Buildings. Stoughton was on fire an Hour, Massachusetts catchd in three places, and Hollis Hall is burnt much, at the Southwest corner, there was nothing saved in old College, except a bed or two, the whole [ ] Library, except some Books lent out and Mr. Hollis’s last donation, were demolished, [and] the whole apparatus. Mr. Hancock who lodgd out, on account of the storm lost everything except the cloths he had on, this is a most terrible accident, this Library in which were so many valuable Books, ancient manuscripts, the Labour of the Learned, and the work of ages, in a few hours turnd to ashes. Our College is now poorer than any on the Continent — we are all real mourners on this occasion and I doubt not your attachment to alma mater, will make you feel sorrowful upon this conflagration. As to Father he had very near lost his fife on the occasion, the snow was in drifts in many places four and five feet high, papa went thro it all with nothing more upon him than he sits in the house, the President’s house was in great danger [as] the wind was strong at N west the latter part of the time, and in short if Stoughton had gone all the houses in town to the Eastward of the College would have gone. I think I never saw so great a strife of elements before, it is supposed the Fire began in the Beam under the hearth of the Library, the Gov’r & a great number of the court assisted in extinguishing the Fire, it being vacation and no person in the college, the fire was past stopping in Harvard before it was percievd. I hope the K . . g will give something to repair the loss as he has never done anything for this College yet, and my Dear (tho I would not dictate to you) I believe if you was to try among your acquaintances for some donations by way of Books, or mathematical instruments, it will be very acceptable. Mr. Winthrop thinks that 3 Hd pd sterl’g would buy a compleat apparatus, and there are Books which are of no great act in a private gentleman’s Library, which are ornamental and useful to an ancient and Public one. Cahill is generous, and loves show. Suppose you was to ask him — if he gives anything worth while, he will have the Public thanks of the College, and his name will be enrolled among the worthy Benefactors to this Seminary, and will live when the Buildings themselves are crumbled into Dust, but I need say no more. I know you will want no stimulus in this affair, our Country men at the Coffee house I doubt not if properly applied to, would subscribe somthing Hansome. Any wealthy lady that is minded to make her Fame immortal cant have a more favorable opportunity, thus my Dear, I have given you as good an account as I can of this terrible afair which would have been nothing hardly if the Library and apparatus had been saved. If I can get a paper wherein the account is ile send it to you — and now partly to soften your grief and alleviate your sorrow, Ile tell you the proceeding of our worthy Court the next Day. the First vote that past was for rebuilding the College at the expence of the province Imediately, and two thousand lawful voted to begin with, and a sum to Mr. Hancock to repair his loss which with what of money Plate &c. they have found in the Ruins, I hope will make his loss light, £10 lawful apiece to those scholars who lost their Furniture, and £40 lawful to the Buttler, all which is thot very handsome. . . . I have begd last Monday’s paper of Mr. Flucker, which I shall enclose as this ship goes directly for London, you will find an Inventory as near as they could remember, of the library and apparatus, to the end that those that are minded to give may know what — the College Bell also is gone, the vacation is lengthened out to I don’t know what time.
8 For a copy of the inscription, see Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 496.
9 Massachusetts Gazette, 2 February, 1764, p. 3/2. Cf. College Book No. 7, p. 112.
10 These were Sewall’s, printed from a font of Hebrew type presented by Hollis and preserved from destruction by being in Boston at the time. For this information, I am indebted to Mr. William C. Lane.
11 Massachusetts Gazette, 9 February, 1764, p. 3/1. Cf. College Book No. 7, p. 113.
12 Massachusetts Gazette, 8 March, 1764, 3/1. Cf. College Book No. 7, pp. 112–113, 114–115.
13 Publications, xi. 55–61. It appeared in the Boston Gazette of 7 April, 1764, p. 1.
14 On p. 3/1 occurs this correction: “(In the first Column of this Paper, the 6th Line from the Bottom, the Word Scilicet, should be before Antiquos).”
15 For the history of the term “favorite son,” of which this is an earlier example than has hitherto been known, see Publications of this Society, xiii. 100–109.
16 The original Stoughton College, taken down in 1780, was injured in the earthquake of 1755.
17 Professor John Winthrop.
18 Positive identification of these four names seems unlikely, though it is fan-to assume from the context that the author of the poem refers only to contributors to Pietas et Gratulatio. Winsor’s Pietas et Gratulatio: an Inquiry into the Authorship of the several Pieces (in Bulletin, Library of Harvard University, i. 305–308) shows “Ch-ch” to be Dr. Benjamin Church, “L-w-ll,” the Hon. John Lowell, and “D—n,” the Rev. Samuel Deane. There was no contributor to whom “H—p—r” could refer, and I am led to think that the initial letter “H” is a misprint for “C,” and that the Rev. Samuel Cooper was intended.
Dr. Benjamin Church, son of Benjamin (Edward, Benjamin, Richard), was born at Boston in 1739; Harv. 1754; A.M. 1773; a student of medicine in London, returning to Boston about 1756 and becoming a successful practitioner; “physician, essayist, and poet, — a man of glib and fervid expression, with numerous showy gifts, but shallow, volatile, false” (Tyler). For a sketch of his career, which ended in imprisonment for treason, followed by a grant of liberty on account of bad health and a departure for the West Indies in a vessel which was never heard from, see Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, i. 612; Kettell, Specimens of American Poetry, i. 145; Tyler, Literary History of the American Revolution, i. 185; and for descent, History of the Church Family, p. 24.
The Hon. John Lowell, son of the Rev. John (Ebenezer, John, John, Percival) and wife Sarah Champney, born at Newburyport 17 June, 1743, Harv. 1760, and subsequently a fellow and the recipient of the degree of LL.D. in 1792, was a noted lawyer, jurist, and statesman. He died at Roxbury 6 May, 1802. (Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, iv. 42; Lowell, Historic Genealogy of the Lowells of America, pp. 34–35.)
The Rev. Samuel Cooper, son of the Rev. William (Thomas) of Boston and wife Judith Sewall, was born at Boston 28 March, 1725; Harv. 1743; M.A. Yale, 1750; S.T.D. Edin. 1767; a noted divine, and pastor of the Church in Brattle Square from 1744 to the date of his death, 29 December, 1783; fellow of the American Academy. (Appletons’ Cyclopædia of American Biography, i. 733; Tuckerman, Thomas Cooper of Boston and his Descendants, pp. 5–7.)
The Rev. Samuel Deane, son of Samuel (Samuel, John, John) and his second wife Rachel Dwight, was born at Dedham 30 August, 1733; Harv. 1760; tutor, 1763; settled at Falmouth (now Portland), Maine, 1764; poet and author. “He was a man of good personal appearance, and of grave and dignified deportment, but in hours of relaxation he was fond of indulging in social conversation, which he enlivened with pleasantry and wit” (Willis). He married Eunice Pearson in 1766, and died 12 November, 1814. (Brief Memoirs of John and Walter Deane, pp. 12–13; Willis, History of Portland, ii. 232.)
All places mentioned in these notes are in Massachusetts, unless otherwise specified.
19 Massachusetts Gazette, 26 April, 1764, p. 3/3.
20 Records of the General Court, xxv. 150–151.
21 Records of the General Court, xxv. 152. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lxxxviii. 416; House Journal, pp. 227–228; Province Laws, xvii. 469.
22 Records of the General Court, xxv. 152. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 491–492, for the Governor’s message in autograph, together with the action thereon; House Journal, pp. 228–229; Province Laws, xvii. 469.
23 Records of the General Court, xxv. 153. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 492, 501, 501a; House Journal, p. 229; Province Laws, xvii. 470.
24 House Journal, p. 231.
25 Records of the General Court, xxv. 174. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 495; House Journal, pp. 247, 252.
26 House Journal, p. 248.
27 Records of the General Court, xxv. 314. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 523a; House Journal, p. 135; Province Laws, xvii. 574.
28 See p. 2 note 2, above. I am indebted to Mr. Albert Matthews for the following extract, which is taken from the Boston Gazette of 31 July, 1769, p. 3/1:
HIS EXCELLENCY sir FRANCIS BERNARD, BARONET OF NETTLEHAM IN LINCOLNSHIRE OLD ENGLAND, sails for England the first fair Wind. — Note, Nettleham is a poor obscure little Village, about as far from the City of Lincoln, as the Baronet’s Tom Trott of a Country House at Jamaica-Pond is from Boston. The People of Nettleham subsist chiefly by carrying Garden Stuff to Lincoln: Here it may be presumed the Bart, learnt the little he knows of Gardening; but that he should also set himself up for an Architect and Politician, is altogether unaccountable.
29 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 537–539.
30 Records of the General Court, xxvi. 52. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 547; House Journal, pp. 79, 82.
31 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 540.
32 Records of the General Court, xxvi. 249. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 555a; House Journal, pp. 75, 77, 80–81.
33 House Journal, p. 238.
34 Son of Nathaniel Hancock (Nathaniel, Nathaniel) of Cambridge and his wife Prudence Russell, was born at Cambridge 24 April, 1709; Harv. 1727; tutor, 1742–1767; fellow, 1760–1767; librarian; died unmarried at Cambridge 8 November, 1771 (Paige, History of Cambridge, p. 572).
35 Records of the General Court, xxv. 190. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 496; House Journal, pp. 266–267; Province Laws, xvii. 497.
36 Son of John Langdon (Edward, John) of Boston and wife Mary Greenough, was born at Boston 7 February, 1746–47; Harv. 1765; “studied law with Jeremiah Gridley. Commencing practice in that part of Pownalboro’, Maine, which is now Wiscasset, he was appointed a Crown Lawyer before the Revolution; was a representative to the Provincial Congress in 1776; and in 1778 Admiralty Judge for the District of Maine. He was a man of brilliant talent, but of unstable character.” He died in 1808. (Alger, Descendants of Philip and John Langdon, in New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxx. 37.)
37 He is not mentioned in the Quinquennial Catalogue or the Faculty Records. It has not been possible to identify him, though it seems likely that he and Joseph Farrar were related, as Judge Russell was to receive the money voted for their use. It is possible that Samuel is a clerical error for Timothy, who was graduated in 1767, the same class of which Joseph was a member.
38 Son of George Farrar (George, Jacob, Jacob) of Concord and wife Mary Barrett, was born at Concord 30 June, 1744; A.M. Harv. 1767; ordained at Dublin, New Hampshire, when the church there was organized, 10 June, 1772; dismissed 7 June, 1776; married at Grafton, 28 July, 1779, Mary, daughter of Joel Brooks; was installed at Dummerston, Vermont, 24 August, 1779; dismissed in 1783; was settled at Eden, Vermont, 15 December, 1812, to 14 December, 1815; removed to Petersham, where he died 5 April, 1816. He “was a man of great eccentricity, amounting occasionally to absolute derangement of mind.” (Farrar, Memoir of the Farrar Family, p. 12.)
39 Possibly son of the Rev. Isaac Morrell (Isaac, Isaac, Abraham) of Wilmington and wife Dorothy —, was born at Wilmington 13 August, 1748; a physician; came to Natick in 1771; died at Needham about 1840. His name does not appear in the Quinquennial Catalogue. (Bacon, History of Natick, p. 135; Hoyt, Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury, i. 254, ii. 767.)
40 Son of Increase Sumner (Edward, George, William) of Roxbury and wife Sarah Sharp, was born at Roxbury 27 November, 1746; Harv. 1767; studied law while teaching at Roxbury; admitted to the bar in 1770; representative, 1776–1780; senator, 1780–1782; elected a member of Congress, 1782, but did not serve; associate justice of the Supreme Judicial Court, 1782–1797; governor, 1797–1799; a fellow of the American Academy. He married, 30 September, 1779, Elizabeth, daughter of William Hyslop; and died at Roxbury 7 June, 1799. (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, viii. 105–128c, 128n.)
41 Son of the Hon. Daniel Russell (James, Richard) of Charlestown and wife Rebecca Chambers, was born at Charlestown 4 July, 1713; Harv. 1731; married Mary, daughter of Francis Wainwright; settled in that part of Concord which is now Lincoln; was judge of the Court of Common Pleas for Middlesex, 1747; judge of Admiralty the same year; justice of the Superior Court of Judicature, 1752–1766; councillor, 1759; died at Guilford, co. Surrey, England, 24 November, 1766. (Washburn, Judicial History of Massachusetts, pp. 299–300; Shattuck, History of Concord, p. 317.)
42 Records of the General Court, xxv. 190–191. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 500a; House Journal, pp. 233, 267; Province Laws, xvii. 498.
43 Son of John Bradish (Joseph, Robert) of Cambridge and wife Hepzibah —, was born there 28 April, 1716, and died 17 October, 1785. He was a glazier by trade, and succeeded his father, who had been glazier to the College for forty years from 1701. On 26 January, 1749, “he bought the Blue Anchor Tavern, in Brighton [now Boylston] Street, where he continued through life. This house, under his direction, became very popular.” It was situated “on the westerly side of Brighton Street, about midway between Harvard Square and Mount Auburn Street,” and, no doubt, was the place of meeting of the House after the destruction of Harvard Hall. (Paige, History of Cambridge, pp. 225, 497.)
44 Records of the General Court, xxv. 192. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, 1. 190; House Journal, pp. 268, 269; Province Laws, xvii. 501.
45 Son of Joseph Sprague (Jonathan, John, Ralph) of Cambridge and wife Sarah Stedman, a saddler by trade, like his father, was baptized 18 November, 1716; married at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, 16 November, 1738, Hannah, daughter of Thomas Phipps; died 6 July, 1764, aged 48 years (gravestone, Cambridge). (Wyman, Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, pp. 887–890; Sprague, The Brothers Ralph and William Sprague and some of their Descendants, p. 9; Harris, Epitaphs from the Old Burying Ground, Cambridge, p. 115.)
46 Records of the General Court, xxv. 192. Cf. House Journal, p. 269; Province Laws, xvii. 501.
47 Records of the General Court, xxv. 193. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 486a; House Journal, p. 270; Province Laws, xvii. 501.
48 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 486.
49 Son of the Rev. Andrew Elibt (Andrew, Andrew, Andrew) of Boston and wife Elizabeth Langdon, was born at Boston 11 January, 1743; Harv. 1762, M.A. Yale, 1774; was butler of Harvard College shortly after his graduation, librarian, tutor (1768), and fellow (1773), was ordained 22 June, 1774, at Fairfield, Connecticut, where he remained until his death, 26 October, 1805; corresponding member of the Massachusetts Historical Society. He married Mary Pynchon. (Eliot, Eliot Family, pp. 41–42; 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, x. 188–189.)
50 Records of the General Court, xxv. 193. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 495a; House Journal, p. 270; Province Laws, xvii. 501.
51 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 529–530.
52 Records of the General Court, xxv. 322. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 531, giving the action of the House on January 12; House Journal, pp. 143, 150.
53 Son of Jonathan Hastings (Walter, John) of Cambridge and wife Sarah Phips, was born at Cambridge 1 January, 1708–09; Harv. 1730; justice of the peace; steward of Harvard College, 1750–1779; married, 30 October, 1750, Elizabeth, daughter of Rev. John Cotton of Newton; died at Cambridge 16 February, 1783. (Paige, History of Cambridge, p. 576; Publications of this Society, x. 55 note 2.)
54 Records of the General Court, xxv. 194. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 500. Cf. House Journal, pp. 270–271; Province Laws, xvii. 502.
55 Son of Cornelius White (Daniel, Peregrine, William) of Marshfield and wife Hannah Randall, was born at Marshfield 19 July, 1717; married, 1744, Joanna, daughter of Thomas Howland; suspected of being inimical to the United States, 11 February, 1778; died at, Plymouth 6 March, 1779. ([White,] Ancestral Chronological Record of the William White Family, p. 125; Davis, Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth, pp. 176, 283.)
56 Records of the General Court, xxv. 194–195. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 497; House Journal, p. 272; Province Laws, xvii. 502.
57 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 577.
58 Son of Amos Bond (Thomas, Thomas, William) of Watertown, and wife Hannah Bright, was born at Watertown 21 February, 1746–47; Harv. 1766; a physician; died in the army 7 March, 1777. (Bond, Watertown, second edition, p. 62.)
59 Records of the General Court, xxv. 195. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 498–499; House Journal, p. 273; Province Laws, xvii. 502.
60 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 498–499. The reverse of the account (p. 499) has, besides the endorsement, the action of House and Council, and the consent of the Governor entered upon it.
61 Son of the Rev. Willard Hall (Stephen, Stephen, widow Mary) of Medford and wife Abigail Cotton, was born at Medford 28 May, 1743; of Westford upon entering college; Harv. 1765; tutor, 1771–1778; fellow; educated for the ministry, but never settled; married, 1777 or 1778, Mary, widow of Moses Holt (see p. 28 note 12, below); removed to Portland, Maine, 1778; died 1795. (Hall, The Halls of New England, p. 520.)
62 Son of Dr. Joseph Lee (Joseph, Joseph, John) of Concord and wife Lucy Jones, was born at Concord 12 May, 1742; Harv. 1765; B.A. (Hon.) Yale, 1765; ordained 19 October, 1768, at Royalston, where he remained until his death, 16 February, 1819. He was married three times. (Lee, John Leigh of Agawam . . . and his Descendants, pp. 190–196.)
63 There were two Joseph Willards in the Class of 1765. A comparison of this signature and that attached to his inventory with the autographs of President Joseph Willard helps to identify the sufferer as Joseph, son of Benjamin Willard (Joseph, Benjamin, Simon) of Grafton and wife Sarah Brooks, born 7 January, 1741–42; Harv. 1765, B.A. Yale, 1765; successively minister at Mendon and Boxborough; died at Boxborough, September, 1828. (Willard, Willard Memoir, p. 433.)
64 Son of the Rev. James Pike (Joseph, Joseph, John, John) of Somersworth, New Hampshire, and wife Sarah Gilman, born at Somersworth 17 October, 1742–43; Harv. 1766; married at Newbury, 9 January 1779, Eunice, daughter of Sergeant Smith; published in 1788 the first edition of A New and Complete System of Arithmetick, “which was long the standard manual in New England schools;” for many years principal of the grammar school at Newburyport; town clerk; fellow of the American Academy; died at Newburyport 9 December, 1819. (Tate’s Diary, p. 92; Gilman, Gilman Family, pp. 58, 65; Hoyt, Old Families of Salisbury and Amesbury, ii. 800; Allibone, Dictionary of Authors, ii. 1595/2; Littlefield, Early Schools and School-Books of New England, pp. 179–183.)
65 Son of the Rev. Philip Curtis (Samuel, Isaac, William) of Sharon and wife Eliza Bass, was born at Sharon 1 September, 1747; Harv. 1766; a physician at Marlborough, and surgeon on a privateer in the Revolution, 1777; married twice; died at Amherst, New Hampshire, 1 April, 1822. (Clarke, Records of some of the Descendants of William Curtis, p. 13.)
66 Son of Joseph Barnard (Ebenezer, Joseph, Francis) of Deerfield and wife Thankful Sheldon, was born at Deerfield 24 November, 1746; Harv. 1766; lawyer; delegate to the first Provincial Congress at Concord, 1774; practised law in Hampshire County until his removal to Montgomery, Vermont, in 1795; married at Brookfield, 3 October, 1770, Abigail (daughter of Dr. Jabez Upham of Brookfield), who survived him, he dying 2 April, 1819. (Sheldon, History of Deerfield, ii. pt. ii. pp. 70–71.)
67 Son of John Barrows (Benajah, John) of Attleborough and wife Priscilla Philbrook, was born at Attleborough 24 August, 1736; Harv. 1766; for many years a schoolmaster; lived at Dighton; died at Wellington, Bristol County, Rhode Island, 24 July, 1816. (Barrus, History of Goshen, p. 140; Attleborough Records; Julius H. Tuttle and Henry E. Woods.)
68 Son of Lieut. Ebenezer Cheney (Thomas, Thomas, William) of Roxbury and wife Elizabeth Palmer, was born at Roxbury 25 December, 1746; Harv. 1767; studied medicine and practised at Walpole; served in the Revolution; master of the Boston South Writing School, 1785; married twice; died at Cambridgeport 13 November, 1820. (Pope, Cheney Genealogy, pp. 77–78. See Publications of this Society, vi. 119.)
69 Son of Thomas Ames (Thomas, Thomas, John, William, Oliver) of West Bridgewater and wife Keziah Hayward, was born at West Bridgewater 20 January, 1743–44; “tho’ absent Sylvanus Ames allow’d his Bachelrs Degree, being sick.” 15 July, 1767, “being Comencem’ Day;” Harv. 1767; died 1778. (Davis, Ancient Landmarks of Plymouth, p. 6; College Book No. 7, p. 112; Bridgewater records.)
70 Son of Trueworthy Dudley (Nicholas, Stephen, Samuel, Thomas) of Brentwood, New Hampshire, and wife — Gordon, was born at Epping, New Hampshire, 11 July, 1745; Harv. 1767; ordained at Townshend, Vermont, 28 June, 1777; removed to Ashford, Connecticut, where he married, 12 November, 1778, Priscilla Whiton. (Dudley, History of the Dudley Family, i. 447; Julius H. Tuttle.)
71 Son of Jonathan Holt (Oliver, Henry, Nicholas) of Andover and wife Lydia Blanchard, was born at Andover 19 January, 1744; Harv. 1767; married, 1771, Mary, daughter of Deacon William Cotton of Portland, Maine, who married secondly Stephen Hall (see p. 27 note 2, above); a lay preacher; also had charge of the Grammar School at Portland; died 9 January, 1772. (Durrie, Genealogical History of the Holt Family, p. 31.)
72 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 504.
73 Son of Ensign Man (Thomas, Richard) of Boston and wife Tabitha (—) Vinal, was born at Scituate 15 July, 1740; Harv. 1764; a teacher at Lancaster, 1764, and at Petersham, 1767; married, 19 August, 1773, Alice, daughter of the Rev. Aaron Whitney of Petersham; died at Petersham 21 December, 1829. (Mann, Mann Memorial, pp. 80–83.)
74 Brother of Samuel Barnard (see p. 27 note 7, above), was born at Deerfield 30 April, 1745; Harv. 1766; studied medicine with his uncle Lemuel Barnard at Sheffield; practised at Deerfield; married, about 1772, Sally, daughter of David Ingersoll of Great Barrington, who survived him; died at Deerfield 14 April, 1790. (Sheldon, History of Deerfield, ii. 68; McLean, Ingersoll, p. 6.)
75 Son of Samuel Biglow (Samuel, Samuel, John) of Shrewsbury and wife Jedidah Hathorn, was born at Shrewsbury 10 October, 1739; Harv. 1765; ordained at Paxton 21 October, 1767; married Mrs. Sarah Hall of Sutton; died at Paxton 16 November, 1769. (Howe, Genealogy of the Bigelow Family of America, p. 105.)
76 Records of the General Court, xxv. 314. Cf. Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 522; House Journal, pp. 110, 133–134.
77 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 518.
78 “That part of a garment which covers, or lies next, the neck” (Oxford English Dictionary).
79 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 508. Though this schedule precedes Stephen Hall’s account of losses by ten pages, it evidently refers to his “Sundries . . . 0 18 0”
80 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 517.
81 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 508a. This evidently gives in detail the “Sundries . . . 0 12 0” of the preceding account, though separated from it.
82 “Banian, a loose gown, jacket, or shirt of flannel, worn in India” (Oxford English Dictionary).
83 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 516.
84 Massachusetts Archives, lvii. 507.
85 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 519.
86 Massachusetts Archives, lvii. 520.
87 Doubtless a lottery ticket.
88 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 514–515. The various additions were corrected in the total and sum total and sum total.
89 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 521.
90 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 510–511.
91 Sagathy (origin unknown), a woollen stuff (Oxford English Dictionary).
92 One of the numerous misspellings of garlits, a kind of linen cloth; a corruption of Görlitz in Prussian Silesia, where there are linen manufactures (Oxford English Dictionary).
93 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 509.
94 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 513.
95 Lawful money.
96 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 512.
97 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 505–506.
98 House Journal, p. 232. Apparently no further action was taken.
99 Publications, xiii. 153–180.
100 Extracts from the Papers of Thomas Woodcock, edited by G. C. Moore Smith, p. 87 (Camden Miscellany, xi).
101 Pp. 53–54.
102 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1627–1628, p. 101.
103 Toulmin, History of Taunton, revised by James Savage (1822), p. 226 note. Savage states that “the old tattered colours of the 33d regiment of foot, under which they were engaged in several actions, during the revolutionary war with North-America, are hung up in the chancel of this church” — that is, St. Mary Magdalen, and that “on the arrival of that regiment in this town, after the peace of 1783, they had new colours presented to them, which were consecrated here, and the old ones deposited in the vestry” (p. 135 note). And also (p. 283) that the last recorder of Taunton was the Earl of Guilford — better known as Lord North.
104 History of the Town of Taunton (1791), pp. 56–57. The copy of this book in Gore Hall has on a fly-leaf the inscription: “From the Author to the Library of Harvard College in Cambridge in the Common-wealth of Massachusetts.” In 1776 Mr. Toulmin published “The American War lamented. A Sermon Preached at Taunton, February the 18th and 25th, 1776.”
Toulmin gives an account (pp. 39–41 of the 1791 edition, pp. 225–227 of the 1822 edition) of the Henley Almshouse, which was founded in 1637 by Dorothy Henley, the widow of Andrew Henley, the first mayor of Taunton. In the will of Andrew Henley, dated October 11, 1630, and proved January 14, 1630–31, there is this item: “My eleven Almshouses in Taunton, £4.8.0. to be paid quarterly, by 2/ to each house, for one year after my decease” (Somersetshire Wills, i. 14).
105 In a note to a previous paper it was stated that “‘scarlet days’ was a term peculiar to Yarmouth and meant those days on which the aldermen or bailiffs or mayor of Yarmouth attended church in their scarlet gowns” (Publications, viii. 361 note). Since then the section of the Oxford English Dictionary containing the term has been published, and it. appears that the term is not peculiar to Yarmouth but is found elsewhere in England, though the earliest extract quoted by Dr. Henry Bradley is from our Transactions.
106 Toulmin, History of the Town of Taunton (1791), p. 58. The names of those then elected are omitted in Savage’s edition. For references to the new charter see Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1675–1676, p. 39; 1676–1677, p. 551.
107 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1676–1677, p. 132.
108 Exeter, p. 131.
109 S. Palmer, Nonconformist’s Memorial (1803), ii. 32–35.
110 W. Cotton and H. Woollcombe, Gleanings from the Municipal and Cathedral Records relative to the City of Exeter (1877), p. 173.
111 Turning to the will itself (Publications, xiii. 176–180), no such item will be found; but no doubt Lyme Regis received the money under the following clause (xiii. 177):
Item I doe will and ordaine the sume of Two Thousand pounds shall be giuen and disposed of In and to such Charitable vse and vses as shalbe directed in and by a Schedule hereunto annexed or in or by other writing vnder my hand writing. The same to be paid within Two yeares next ensueing my decease. And for default of such Schedule and writing I doe entreate my Executors to dispose thereof in and to such Charitable vse and vses as they shall judge best.
The executors of Sir Matthew’s will were his wife and his father-in-law, Henry Henley of Leigh.
112 G. Roberts, History of Lyme Regis and Charmouth (1834), p. 301.
Roberts states (p. 95) that on June 16, 1644, “the day for returning thanks for the town’s deliverance” from the Royalist forces that were besieging it, Hugh Peters “preached in the forenoon, and chose the 23rd verse of the 136th Psalm for his text, and in the afternoon, the 7th verse of 1st of Luke.”
A frequent visitor to the town was Thomas Hollis (1720–1774), the second Harvard benefactor of that name, and some details about him are given by Roberts (pp. 165, 220, 292–294).
113 In Somersetshire Wills is the following: “Susanna Henley, of Colway, Dorset, decd. Admon. Jan. 13, 1650–1, to her husband Henry Henley” (v. 129). This was perhaps Henry Henley of Leigh’s first wife, who may have been living with her son Henry Henley of Colway.
114 History and Antiquities of the County of Dorset, i. 256.
115 “From this date,” wrote G. Roberts about 1834, referring to the year 1659, “several individuals of the Henley family, persons of large property, residing at Colway, were representatives [in Parliament] of the town: from 1711, many served the office of mayor. The borough was at one period under their influence” (Municipal Government of the Ancient Borough of Lyme Regis, p. 43 note).
116 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, ii. 255–260. Cf. v. 396–397; xi. 338.
117 Because in an unrecorded deed there is mention of “Robert Breck of Galway in Ireland Merchant,” it has been erroneously asserted that he was an Irishman. (See J. B. Cullen, Story of the Irish in Boston, 1889, p. 20; Journal of the American-Irish Historical Society, 1904, iv. 56.)
118 There are copies in the Library of Congress, John Carter Brown Library, and Watkinson Library. The last secured the Brinley copy (Brinley Catalogue, i. 65). Our associate Mr. Frederick L. Gay also owns a copy.
119 History of the Society of Friends in America, i. 35.
120 The title of the pamphlet reads as follows:
An / Answer / to a / Scandalous Paper, / Wherein were some / Queries / Given to be answered. / And likewise, / Therein is found many Lies and Slanders, and / false Accusations against those people whom he (and the World) / calls Quakers. Dated from Dorchester in New-England, August / 17. 1655. subscribed, Edward Breck, which was directed / to a People at Rainforth in Lancashire, which / he calls, A Church of Christ. / The Truth is cleared of his Scandalls, Lies, / and Slanders, and he found to bee a Reproacher of the / Church of Christ. / His Paper and Quæries answered by those people cal- / led, Quakers. / [Text quoted from Rom. 15. 3; Isa. 52. 14, 15; Matth. 5. 11, 12.] / London, Printed for Giles Calvert, at the Black / Spread-Eagle neer the West end of Pauls. 1656.
The pamphlet contains nineteen leaves. The title fills the recto of the first leaf. Breck’s letter fills the second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth leaves, ending at the top of the recto of the seventh leaf. The Answer begins on the verso of the seventh leaf, which though not numbered is regarded as p. 2, and fills pp. 2–21. Pages 22–24 contain twenty-seven “Quaeries,” headed as follows: “So now to thee, who hath confessed thou hath none other Light, nor knows none other way to Christ thy Saviour, then the holy Scriptures, a few Quaeries to thee, and all those thou calls Ministers in New-England and elsewhere.”
121 These figures are inserted for convenience, as the original is not paged. The text has been collated with Mr. Gay’s copy of the original pamphlet.
122 The author of the Answer replied to this passage in a characteristic manner:
Now let all honest hearts, who read this thy Story, read thy Spirit and thy envy, who hatcheth Cockatrice-Eggs, and weaves Spiders-webs, and he that eatheth of these Eggs dyeth, and that which is crushed breaketh into a Viper: Now if thou be not blind thou may read thy Spirit in this Scripture, but for this Cause God hath sent thee strong delusions, that thou should beleeve lyes; and I know assuredly that thousands there is about Bristol, from whence thou fetcheth this lye, that will witness and testifie that this is a gross lye also, and that there was never any such thing done or acted there by those people called quakers: And therefore let all who have but any moderation, or dram of honesty in them, judge thy boldness and impudence in lying, who should send such a lying pamphlet as this is into another Nation, which thou professeth love to; but thy hands is defiled with blood, and thy fingers with iniquity; thy lips hath spoke lyes, and thy tongue hath utterd perversness, and thy trust is in vanity and lyes; thou hast conceived mischief, and brought forth iniquity; and this is the fruits of thy Profession, which thou tells such a story of in the beginning of thy Paper, and of so many Generations which thou calls Churches of Christ; but there was never any Generation but might have such a Church as this is, whereof thou art a Member, which is grounded upon lyes, and reports, and stories; the Pope and Iesuits (which thou speaks of) can have no worse Foundation then thou hast: Therefore let all that profess this Faith, that thou art of, be ashamed of thee, and the fruits that thou brings forth, who hath made lyes thy refuge, and with falshood hast thou covered thy self as with a garment (pp. 13–14).
123 Breck’s charge on this head is thus replied to by the author of the Answer:
So thou goes on in thy accusing, and back-biting, and slandering: and thou brings up Grimdleton, whom thou sayes came up to Trances and Revelations, which thou saith fell at last to Popery and prophaneness. But this which we have only from thy own mouth, which is so stuft with lyes and slanders, who is set on back-biting, and slandering, and accusing, and thy ground is but by hearsay, we shall give little credit to what thou speaks, either of Grimdleton, or any else, for we know thy ground is falsity and lyes, and so there can no truth spring from that Root: But I do beleeve that thou does accuse Grimdleton falsly, and belye them, in that thou saith they are turned to Popery; but thy throat is grown so wide, that thou canst swallow any thing; and thou never heeds who thy Informers are, so that it feed that Root which grows in thee, which brings forth bitter fruit (pp. 14–15).
124 Miss Willis, now of London but formerly of Boston, is a descendant of Judge Phillips and a great-niece of the late William Willis, the historian of Portland.
125 Memoir of His Honor Samuel Phillips, pp. 179–180.
126 The tavern was kept by Isaac Abbott.
127 Billerica.
128 Diary of George Washington, from 1789 to 1791 (edited by Lossing, 1860), p. 47.
129 Memoir of S. Phillips, p. 254.
130 Mildred Washington, who married Thomas Lee, and Corbin Washington were the children of John Augustine Washington, and hence the sister and brother of the wife of the writer of this letter.
131 She died in 1791.
132 In his Writings of Washington, xiv. 427, our associate Mr. Worthington C.
Ford says that Col. Washington “died about 1792.” The letter in the text shows that he was still living in 1797.
133 Judge Phillips married Phoebe Foxcroft.
134 A letter to Mrs. Washington from her husband dated June 1, 1776, and another from her son Judge Bushrod Washington (1762–1829) dated March 13, 1778, were printed in our Publications, viii. 268–271.
135 Magnalia (1855), i. 340. Professor Kittredge in his valuable Note on Dr. William Ames at the January meeting, 1910, tells of the “gallant attempt” of Capt. Roger Wood “to divert him to the older colony in the Bermudas” (Publications, xiii. 60–69).
136 Magnalia, i. 245.
137 i. 310.
138 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 183.
139 Magnalia, i. 236.
140 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, v. 231.
141 College Book, iii. 2.
142 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 208.
143 i. 210.
144 i. 262.
145 Andrew McFarland Davis has given an interesting account of this bequest in his paper on John Harvard’s life in America (Publications, xii. 4–15).
146 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 262.
147 i. 208.
148 i. 217.
149 i. 202 (1747).
150 Possibly too the College Library in its earliest days included the books of the Rev. Jose Glover said to have been brought over by his family. His interest in the establishment of the College and of the printing press in connection with it is well known; and the grant of the General Court to Mrs. Glover in June, 1639, of six hundred acres was perhaps in recognition of this help. Mr. George E. Littlefield in his Early Massachusetts Press (i. 19–58) has given an account of Mr. Glover and of his aid to the College.
The library of the Massachusetts Bay Company may have served in a similar way, as a part of the College Library. Its habitat is not known. See Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society for April, 1910, New Series, xx. 271–273.
151 The drawings are in the Ridgway Branch. One is a water-color view of the “South Front of Harvard Hall at Cambridge in New England.” Another is a water-color view of Holden Chapel, Hollis Hall, Harvard Hall, the old Stoughton College (pulled down in 1780), and Massachusetts Hall. The third is a “plan of Harvard Hall built in 1764.” Reproductions of these drawings face pp. 16, 42, and 66.
152 The chair is a fine example of the Jacobean wainscot style, made of oak, and stands 41 inches high at the back, with a seat 16½ inches from the floor and 24½ inches wide. The panel at the back has been renewed, and the seat, which originally contained a drawer opening at the right side, has been repaired. The original owner’s initials are carved at the top.
153 For a sketch of Edward Breck of Dorcheste r, see pp. 49–52, above.
154 The pedigree of the chair is as follows: Edward Breck (died 1662); his son Capt. John Breck; his son the Rev. Robert Breck of Marlborough; his daughter Sarah Breck, the wife of Dr. Benjamin Got t of Marlborough; their daughter Anna Gott, the wife of Samuel Brigham; their daughter Anna Brigham, the wife of Isaac Davis of Northborough; his son Joseph Davis; his son George Clinton Davis; and his daughter Miss Mary Louise Davis, the present owner, formerly of Northborough, now of Troy, New York. For Dr. Benjamin Gott, see the Publications of this Society, xii. 214–219.
155 The first letter of the series is dated November 17, 1712; the last, November 29. Our associate, Mr. Frederick Lewis Gay, has copies of these letters and of many others which Cotton Mather addressed to the Royal Society, — of all, in fact, that are preserved in the MS. Letter-Book of the Society. I am deeply grateful to him for lending me these copies and for allowing me to print such extracts as I may desire. I shall cite the transcripts as the “Gay MS.”
The original draughts of many of Mather’s letters to the Royal Society or its members are in the possession of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society. I am obliged to our associate, Mr. Worthington C. Ford, for calling my attention to these manuscripts, which I shall cite as M. H. S. and A. A. S. respectively. Neither society has draughts of the series of 1712. There appear to be copies of this series in Sloane MS. 3339.
156 No. 339 of the Philosophical Transactions has the colophon, “London, Printed for W. Innys, at the Princes’-Arms in St. Paul’ s Church-yard. 1714.” It was afterwards assembled with other numbers to make up “Vol. XXIX. For the Years 1714, 1715, 1716,” which was issued as a whole in 1717. The excerpts are on pp. 62–71. They bear the title, “An Extract of several Letters from Cotton Mather, D. D. to John Woodward, M. D. and Richard Waller, Esq; S. R. Seer.” The Letter-Book of the Royal Society (M 2. 34) contains this article (as printed in the Transactions) in MS., prepared for the press (Gay MS., fols. 151–168).
157 See Lord Cornbury’s letter, quoted by C. R. Weld, History of the Royal Society, i, 421 (cf. Sloane MS. 4064, fols, 86, 93).
158 Philosophical Transactions, xxix, 67.
159 Mather to Woodward, Nov. 17, 1712, Gay MS., fol. 1 (from Royal Society Letter-Book M. 2. 21).
160 In July, 1716, Mather thanks Dr. Woodward for a “most acceptable present” (namely, “your Defence of your Natural History of the Earth”) and remarks: “I am overwhelmed with some Confusion, that I have not all this time yielded a due Obedience to ye Commands you laid upon me, to make a Collection of or Fossils. . . . But I am forming ye best Projection I can, in an Infant Countrey, entirely destitute of Philosophers, to have this, and other Intentions answered” (M. H. S.). On July 24, 1716, he sends Woodward, with further apologies, a piece of limestone from Sir William Phips’s famous treasure ship (M. H. S.). On October 15, 1716, Mather sends to John Winthrop (H. C. 1700) “a Book of my honour’d Dr Woodwards,” adding: “But how oblig’d would both he and I be, if Your Inquisitive Ingenuity employing the Liesure of a Gentleman of Erudition (which you are) for that purpose, would make as full a Collection as may be of the Fossils; (the Names written on each little Bundle:) to be in Your Name, transmitted unto him” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 419). Winthrop replies on November 5, 1716: “I shall doe my indeavor to answer both yors & Dr Woodwards requests in making a collection of ye fossils of country for Gresham Colledge . . . and as to ye utensills of ye Pagans, perhaps I may grattefye ye doctors curiosity in some of their originall instruments, ancient notions & traditions, &c, which I have lately learn’t & received among them” (6 Collections, v. 332–333). On July 25, 1717, Mather writes to Woodward that Winthrop has promised his assistance, “and as a Specimen of more to follow, he enables me now . . . to transmit unto you a Box, which contains between Twenty and Thirty of such Things as you have asked for” (M. H. S.). On January 13, 1720, Winthrop sent Mather “a Small Box directed to Dr Woodward;” but Mather did not receive the accompanying letter until May 2, and the box had not come to hand by May 9 (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 438). On April 3, 1721, Woodward writes to Winthrop, thanking him for shells, and asking for fossils and Indian bones and utensils, and to Mather begging him to be “more inquisitive” in seeking fossils (1 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, xiii. 110–111). In the same month, Winthrop writes to Mather: “I am making an other sett of rarities and curiositys for the Roy all Society, wch I am thinking to present wth my owne hands” (6 Collections, v. 399 note).
161 N. Darnell Davis, Was Cotton Mather a Fellow of the Royal Society? (The Nation, New York, February 18, 1892, liv. 128; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlvi. 116.)
162 By Dr. Slafter, for example, whose account of the matter runs thus: — “Dr. Cotton Mather, it seems, as early as 1713, sent a communication to the society, containing observations on ‘Natural Subjects,’ with a desire clearly expressed that he might be made a member” (John Checkley, Prince Society, 1897, i. 41).
163 Chapter vi, sect. 2 (Diplomata et Statuta Regalia Societatis, 1752, pp. 82–83). The Statute was “made in 1663.” It is to be inferred that Woodward, in requesting Mather for contributions, asked him if he should like to be proposed for membership, and that Mather, in a personal letter (not known to be extant), enclosing the series of thirteen formal letters, replied with a grateful affirmative. At all events, there is no evidence, and no probability, that Mather nominated himself.
164 Davis, Register, as above, xlvi. 117.
165 As quoted by Wendell, Cotton Mather, p. 244.
166 The draught is undated, but, in the manuscript volume which contains it, it follows immediately after the draught of another letter to Waller, entitled by Mather “A Woollen Snow” and intended as a communication to the Society. This letter about the strange fall of wool in a snowstorm, bears date “Dec. 1. 1713,” and the private letter of thanks to Waller (which I am reproducing) is headed, in Mather’s hand, “[Separate Letter.].” In printing the letter, I take no notice of cancelled words.
167 The heading (including the brackets) is in Mather’s hand.
168 The passage beginning with “The Academy” and ending with “Virtuosi” is in the margin, and the place where it was to be inserted is indicated by two carets in the text.
169 The passage beginning with “The Academy” and ending with “Virtuosi” is in the margin, and the place where it was to be inserted is indicated by two carets in the text.
170 This paragraph is written in the margin, and the place where it was to be inserted is indicated by three carets in the body of the letter.
171 The lower right-hand comer of the leaf is tom off. The words and letters in brackets are conjectural.
172 No signature.
173 The brackets are Samuel Mather’s.
174 Samuel Mather, Life of Cotton Mather, 1729, p. 77. Whether Samuel Mather is quoting from the original or from his father’s Diary we cannot tell, for the Diary of 1714 is extant only for January and part of February.
175 On March 30, 1714, Mather asks John Winthrop (H. C. 1700) for a description of the Connecticut moose, since he is “shortly writing for London, unto, you know who” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 417). You know who is doubtless Waller, for a letter from Mather to him (dated June 21, 1714) consists entirely of notes on the moose. It begins with an expression of satisfaction at learning of Waller’s good health, “which,” writes Mather, “has been demonstrated in your particular Enquiries, after the MOOSE in our Countrey” (Royal Society Letter-Book, M. 2. 35; Gay MS., fol. 169). These inquiries were, in all likelihood, contained in Waller’ s letter of December 4, 1713, which must therefore have come into Mather’s hands before the latter wrote to Winthrop on March 30, 1714.
On July 2, 1714, Mather writes again to Winthrop, remarking: — “I enclose a large Letter from one of the Secretaries of the Royal Society; which you will please to return unto me, by a safe Conveyance” (4 Collections, viii. 419). This large letter was, of course, the letter from Waller, dated December 4, 1713, which Samuel Mather quotes.
Either of the two limits thus fixed (March 30, 1714, or July 2) is near enough for our purpose. The earlier date, however, is much the more probable.
I am tempted to finish the story of the Moose, which is rather curious. Mather’s letter to Waller concerning that animal (June 21, 1714), preserved in the Letter-Book of the Royal Society (M. 2. 35), is endorsed: “Mather: read Oct: 28. 1714. Enter’d L. B. 15. 47. Phil. Trans.” This memorandum shows that it was read at a meeting of the Society, and indicates that it was to be published in the Philosophical Transactions. This, however, was not done, and in July, 1716, Mather recopied the little essay, and entrusted it (with other communications for the Society) to Samuel Woodward (Secretary of the Province), who was on the point of setting out for London (M. H. S.). Even then the article failed of publication, and it was reserved for Paul Dudley to enrich the Philosophical Transactions with a description of the moose. His account was communicated to the Society by John Chamberlayne, and may be found in No. 368 (for May August, 1721, xxxi. 165–168), printed in 1722 or 1723. It was supplemented by a paper from Samuel Dale in No. 444 (xxxix. 384–389).
176 Diplomata et Statuta Regalia Societatis Londini . . . Jussu Praesidia et Concilii edita, 1752. The copy in the Harvard College Library was given by Thomas Hollis in June, 1765, and contains a characteristic inscription in his beautiful handwriting: — “Liber Thomae Hollis, Angli, Hospitii Lincolniensis, Regalia et Antiquariorum Societatum Sodalis; libertatis, patriae, praestantisque ejus constitutionis laudatissime anno 1688 recuperatae amatoris studiosissimi.”
177 Chap. vi., sects. 1, 4 (pp. 82–83).
178 Diplomata et Statuta, p. 28.
179 Chap. ii (pp. 76–77). There is also a requirement as to fees (chap. iii, pp. 77–79), but this is of no importance in the present inquiry.
180 Chap. vi., sects. 5–6 (p. 83).
181 Sibley, No. 262. Mr. George Parker Winship, Mr. Clarence S. Brigham, and Mr. Albert Matthews have helped me to determine the earliest publication in which Mather styled himself F. R. S.
182 See p. 87, above.
183 The verso of the title-page has the following certification: — “Published by Order of His Excellency the Governour & Council. Isaac Addington, Secr. Boston: Sept. 29th. 1714.”
184 See p. 85, above.
185 Born 1684, M. D. 1716, F. R. S. 1717 or 1718, Secretary from November 30, 1721, to Nov. 30, 1727, died 1750 (Weld, History of the Royal Society, i. 435 note 1, ii. 561; Dictionary of National Biography, xxx. 229–230).
186 The Nation, New York, February 18, 1892, liv. 127–128 (republished in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xlvi. 115–116, and by Slafter, John Checkley, Prince Society, 1897, i. 41–44). I use the transcript in the Gay MS., fols. 173–178. The original is preserved in the Letter-Book of the Royal Society, M. 2. 36.
187 To put upon, in those days, meant either to “confer upon” or to “inflict upon,” according to the context. “Unexpected” requires a note, for it is easily misunderstood, and every word that Mathe wrote is likely to encounter hostile scrutiny. The adjective applies, not to Waller’s nomination of Mather on July 23, 1713 (for that was net unexpected, nor, under the Statutes, could it be unexpected: see p. 85, above). What Mather means is that the first suggestion that he should allow himself to be proposed as a candidate came as a surprise to him — and this is probably true (see p, 84), for it was an honor never yet conferred upon a born American.
188 This is probably not quite accurate, for the Statutes of 1663 provide that “no person shall be proposed, elected, or admitted a Fellow of the Society upon St. Andrew’s day, or the day of the anniversary meeting for electing the Council and Officers” (Chap. vi., sect. 9; Diplomata et Statuta, 1752, p. 84). The inaccuracy, however, is of no moment, as we shall sec presently.
189 I do not know whether this letter from Woodward is extant or not. But we may be sure that Mather does not misrepresent its tenor. He and Woodward had long been on friendly terms, and they so continued as long as Mather lived. Mather hoped for favorable action from the Royal Society on the question broached in this letter to Jurin. There was every probability that Woodward would sec the letter. It might even be read in the Society. And of course Mather was counting on Woodward’s support in case there was opposition or difficulty. For him to alienate his champion by misrepresentations would have been suicidal.
190 The annual Lists of the Royal Society each consisted of two parts, — British subjects and foreigners. Professor Carleton F. Brown has had the kindness to examine for me a file of these Lists (in the British Museum) for 1713–1730, and he informs me that Mather’s name occurs in none of them.
191 xxix. 51. True, in the title at the head of the article itself (p, 62), we have “Cotton Mather, D. D.,” without the F. R. S., but this is balanced by the fact that Woodward, in the same title, is designated simply as “John Woodward, M. D.,” also without the F. R. S., though he had been a Fellow for years.
192 On this point see Weld, History of the Royal Society, i. 518–522.
193 Richard Waller was Secretary from November 30, 1687, to November 30, 1709; and again from November 30, 1710. to November 30, 1714. Halley was Secretary from November 30, 1713, to November 30, 1721. Thus Halley’s term began before Waller’s second term expired. There are other instances of such overlapping. See Weld, ii. 561.
194 Letter of May 21, 1723 (see p, 94, and note 4, above).
195 This refers to the language of the Statute requiring every Fellow elect to “subscribe the Obligation.” The pledge includes the words “we will observe the Statutes and Orders of the said Society” (Chap. ii., Diplomata et Statuta, 1752, p, 77).
196 F. R. S. 1695, died 1718. See Dictionary of National Biography, xlv, 85–86 Cf. Thoresby’ s Diary, ii. 32, 147–148.
197 This is the “Hortus Siccus of American plants” mentioned by Mather in a catalogue of his communications to the Royal Society enclosed in his letter to Jurin, May 21, 1723. Mr. Darnell Davis ignores this catalogue, but I have been able to consult it in the Gay MS. (fols. 178–181).
198 Mather’s draught of the letter and the observations is in M. H. S. The letter itself is among Petiver’s papers in the British Museum (Sloane MS. 4065, fol. 255). It is mark ed “Recd ♂ Jan: 15. 1716/7.” The sign ♂ stands for Tuesday. I am indebted to our Corresponding Member, Mr. Herbert Putnam, Librarian of Congress, for copies of Sloane MSS.
Mather is so often regarded as a pushing kind of person that it is worth while to remark that in this instance, as in the correspondence with Woodward which seems to have led to his nomination (sec p, 83, above), he did not obtrude himself. Petiver wrote to him first. This appears from the opening sentence of Mather’s letter: “Tis high time for me, to make some Return, that may expresse my sense of the obligations, which your Letters with what accompanied ym, have laid upon me.”
199 Petiveriana III, seu Naturæ Collectanea; Domi Forisque Auctori Communicata, London, 1717, p. 12, col. 2 (Harvard College Library).
200 That is, after the receipt of Waller’s letter of December 4, 1713, which Samuel Mather has just quoted.
201 Life of Cotton Mather, 1729, p, 78.
202 We know, however, that all of Waller’ s must have fallen within this limit, for he died before April 3, 1721 (see 1 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, xiii. 111),— I think about 1715 (see p. 111 note 3, below). So of most of Chamberlayne’s, for he died November 2, 1723 (Weld, History of the Royal Society, i. 414 note 29; Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 257 b; Dictionary of National Biography, x, 9). That the letters from Jurin come later than May 21, 1723, is a natural (but uncertain) inference from the general tenor of Mather’s letter to him of that date, and in particular from the way in which it begins.
203 These “remittances” were twelve letters of Curiosa Americana to which Mather often refers in his correspondence with Winthrop (see 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 435, 443, 448, 450, 452, 453, 455). They are enumerated in a catalogue enclosed in Mather’ s letter to Jurin, May 21, 1723 (Gay MS., fol. 180), but they appear to have perished. An unpublished letter from Mather to Henry Newman, February 17, 1720, sent with these communications and requesting him to hand them to Chamberlayne, is in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society. See p. 105 note 8, below.
204 John Chamberlayne, born about 1666, F. R. S. 1702, died November 2, 1723 (Weld, History of the Royal Society, i. 414, n. 29; Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 257 b; Dictionary of National Biography, x. 9).
205 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 444.
206 P. 219.
207 The tract is addressed “To J. C. Esq;” and the identity of J. C. with Chamberlayne is established by the two following passages: (1) “Had we yet Living and Shining among us, the Admirable Nieuentyt, who has by your Excellent Care and Exquisite Skill, become an Instructor of our Nation,” etc. (p. 14); (2) “Were I Master of as many Languages, as were Employ’d by the Learned for the Celebration of the Peyreskius, whom you have in so many things made your Pattern: Yea, or of as many Languages as you have lately given us, in a Collection which will Immortalize your Name far more than so many Statues,” etc. (p. 16). The first passage refers to Chamberlayne’s translation of Bernard Kieuwentyt’s Religious Philosopher, 1718–1719; the second to his publication of the Lord’s. Prayer in many languages (Oratio Dominica in diversas omnium fere gentium linguas versa, Amsterdam, 1715).
Mather himself describes the letter (“A Relation of a New Burning Island”) as addressed “to Mr Chamberlain” in the catalogue enclosed in his letter to Jurin, May 21, 1723 (Gay MS., fol. 180) and in a list of Curiosa in A. A. S. he designates “The World alarum’d, — with a New Burning Island” as a “L[etter] to Mr Chamberlain.”
The World Alarm’d is anonymous, but only formally so; for the author plainly identifies himself with “The Christian Philosopher” on the last page of the epistle (p. 16), and immediately facing that page is a list of books “To be Sold by Samuel Gerrish,” the first of which is “The Christian Philosopher . . . By Cotton Mather, D. D. and Fellow of the Royal Society.”
208 Thomas Thomson, History of the Royal Society, 1812, Appendix, p. xxxiii; N. Darnell Davis, Register, xlvi, 117.
209 He was present at a meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard College on March 16, 1713–14 (president Leverett’s MS. Diary, Harvard College Library).
210 On this day Sewall records his death, — “last night at midnight” (Diary, iii. 120).
211 Thomson, as above, p. xxxv; J. T. Hassam, 2 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, xvi. 35.
212 Nos. 364 (xxxi. 27), 367 (xxxi, 145), 368 (xxxi. 165), 374 (xxxii. 231), 376 (xxxii. 292), 384 (xxxiii. 129), 385 (xxxiii, 194), 387 (xxxiii. 256), 398 (xxxiv, 261), 437 (xxxix. 63). In each case the letters are attached to Dudley’ s name in the title of one of his communications. In the last-cited instance, Dudley, in describing the earthquake of October 29, 1727, in a letter to the Secretary, dated “Roxbury, Nov. 13, 1727,” makes use of the following language: “I think it my Duty, and hope it will be acceptable to the Society, to have the Particulars from one of their own Members.”
213 The Glorious Throne (1714) has already been mentioned (p. 89, above). The following volumes also append F. R. S. to Mather’ s name (there are doubtless others — I do not aim to be exhaustive): — Pascentius, Nuncia Bona e Terra Longinqua, Parentalia, Shaking Dispensations, The Religion of the Closet, 4th edition (all 1715); Fair Dealing, Life Swiftly Passing (1716); Hades Look’d Into, The Valley of Baca (1717); Concio ad Populum, Desiderius, Mirabilia Dei (1719); Undoubted Certainties (1720). In 1721 and 1722 I note the following books in which Mather lays claim to this honor: — The Christian Philosopher (probably published in 1720, though dated 1721); Genuine Christianity, India Christiana, A Vision in the Temple (1721). Coheleth (1720) and The Angel of Bethesda (1722) are described on the title-page as “by a Fellow of the Royal Society.” For The World Alarm’d (1721), see p. 95 note 2, above.
214 The book bears no date. Dr. Slafter assigns it to 1719 or 1720 (John Checkley, Prince Society, 1897, i. 34, ii. 230). The latter is the latest possible date and is more probable than the former.
215 Slafter, i. 145–148.
216 Letter to the Rev. James McSparran, June 26, 1721 (Slafter, i. 154–155).
217 See p. 100 note 2, below.
218 Checkley’s letter to Nicholson has not been found, but he mentions it, and gives the date, in his letter to Halley.
219 South Carolina Historical Collections, ii. 150; Acts of the Privy Council, ii, 794.
220 This I infer from a letter from Nicholson to Alban Butler, dated Plymouth, March 8, 1721 (MS. Letter-Book of the Royal Society, N. 1. 89, cited by Andrews and Davenport, Guide to the Manuscript Materials, 1908, p. 365), which was manifestly written just before sailing, — as well as from the date on which Nicholson arrived in South Carolina, May 22, 1721 (South Carolina Historical Collections, i. 232).
221 Checkley’s letter to Halley, April 26, 1721 (Slafter, ii. 151–152).
222 Probably he came with Captain Bourn, who arrived on April 8, 1721, seven weeks from London; or with Captain Tuthill, of the snow Anna, who arrived on April 14th, nine weeks from London (see Sewall, Diary, iii. 287, 288).
223 Jeremiah Dummer wrote to Mather from London on Sept ember 12, 1720, with regard to The Christian Philosopher: “Your Book is compleatly printed; but I don’t yett publish it, because in the Recess of Parlaiment, all people of Distinction are out of Town, and if it should come abroad now, it would be an old Book before the parlaiment meets. This is a piece of prudence that the best Authors are obliged to use. Besides, I have not yett determined upon the Patron” (quoted by Mather in a letter to John Winthrop, December 26, 1720: 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 445). A patron was soon found, for the dedication (“To Mr. Thomas Hollis, Merchant in London”), signed by the Rev. Thomas Bradbury, is dated “London, Sept. 22. 1720.” Doubtless the book was published before the end of the year, and the “1721” in the imprint was the customary bookseller’s t rick of post-dating. Checkley (in his letter to Halley) says it was published in 1720 (Slatter, ii. 152), and Samuel Mather puts it under that year (Life of Cotton Mather, p. 174). Cotton Mather himself, in an unpublished letter of December 10, 1720, to Josiah Everleigh of Crediton, England (in the collection of the American Antiquarian Society), remarks: “There is newly published (as I am told, for I have not yett seen it,) in London, a Book entituled, The CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER.” The first consignment of the books left England in that winter, but the ship was blown off the New England coast, took refuge in Antigua, and did not arrive in Boston until March 26–31, 1721. This appears from Mather’s Diary, March 31, 1721 (which was Friday): — “My, Christian Philosopher, in a vessel blown off our Coast last Winter,) is this Week arrived from England; an Hundred of the Books are come,” and from his letter to John Winthrop, April 17, 1721: — “Our CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHER (blown off the last Winter to Antigua) is newly arrived. And tho’ I am not myself made owner of more than one, yett our Bookseller has one Hundred” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 447). The bookseller was Samuel Gerrish: see his advertisement at the end of The World Alarm’d, 1721 (p. 95 note 2, above).
224 Slafter, ii. 152–153. It is well to remember that Checkley was involved, in some fashion, in the proceedings against Mather in the vexatious business of Nathan Howells’s estate. On December 31, 1720, Checkley writes to John Read: “The papers against Mr Mather I have still by me, the reason this; I shewed them to Mr Hearne, who said it wou’d be to no purpose to proceed without one of the Witnesses cou’d be present to prove the Bond. I wish this Affair had been committed to some other Person, lest my appearing in it shou’d seem to proceed from Spite & ill Will” (Slafter, ii. 145).
225 The Rev. Samuel Lee, in writing to Dr. Nehemi ah Grew, June 25, 1690, about the medical profession in Boston, remarks: “Practitioners are laureate gratis with a title feather of Doctor. Potecaries, Surgeons & Midwifes are dignified ace. to Successe” (Sloane MS. 4062, fol. 235 ro), Checkley, in Dr. Siafter’s phrase, kept “a variety store,” and “in this little shop he sold books and medicines, and such small articles of merchandise as would command a ready sale in a thriving New England village” (i. 13).
226 “A distinguished, & a diminutive Crue of Odd people here, when they could find no other Darts to throw at me, imagined their not finding my name in the printed List of the Royal Society, would enable them to detect me of an Imposture, for affixing an F. R. S. unto my Name, on some Just Occasions for it. And an Infamous Fellow, whose name is John Checkley a Sorry Toyman, (that yet had the Impudence to write as a Divine) wrote a Letter full of Scandalous Invectives against me, which was publickly read in the Royal Society. This wretched Man, ambitious to do the part of a Divine, printed here some Rapsodies, to prove, That the God whom K. William, and the Christians of New England, have Worshipped, is the D—l— A young and a Bright Kinsman of mine, bestowed such Castigations on the Blasphemer, that I became thereupon the object of his Implacable Revenges” (Mather to Jurin, May 21, 1723; printed by N. Darnell Davis, see p. 90 note 4, above: I follow the Gay MS., fols. 174–175).
Mr. Darnell Davis’s copy unfortunately made Mather call Checkley “a Sorry Toryman” instead of “Toyman.” The latter term describes Checkley by his occupation, since he kept a “variety store.” Toy, in the language of Mather’s time meant, not merely “plaything,” but “any small or trifling object.” Mather’s remark that Checkley “had the Impudence to write as a Divine” refers to the fact that Checkley’s anonymous tract, Choice Dialogues, professed to be “By a Reverend and Laborious Pastor in Christ’s Flock, by One who has been, for almost twice thirty years, a faithful & Painful Labourer in Christ’s Vine-yard.”
Dr. Slafter (John Checkley, i. 48) regards the charge which Mather brings against Checkley of “printing some rhapsodies to prove that the God whom K. William and the Christians of New England have worshipped is the Devil” as quite unjustified by the language of the tract. I must say, however, that a careful scrutiny of Checkley’s words (Slafter, i. 152–153) leaves upon my mind the impression that Mather has not seriously distorted their implication. Checkley certainly allows the Countryman to say that a cert ain doctrine of high Calvinism “seems all Blasphemy to me; to represent the infinit Goodness and Father of Mercies, in the Colours of Cruelty itself, that you cou’d not exceed it in the Description of the Devil!” and the Minister (who voices the author’s sentiments) seems rather to justify the Countryman by remarking, “Therefore the Lutherans have charg’d the Calvinists with Worshipping the Devil,” and by explaining their logical process in arriving at this conclusion. True, Checkley does not make the Minister accept the position of the Lutherans in so many words, but the Minister certainly appears to have no objection to it.
227 1 Massachusetts Historic al Proceedings, xiii. 110–111. On the same date (ibid.) Woodward writes to John Winthrop (H. C. 1700), whom Mather had brought into epistolary relations with him about 1718 (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 428). He thanks Winthrop for shells, asks for fossils and Indian bones and utensils, and mentions Mather: “Dr Mather has said nothing, as yet about the Water Doves that you Sent Him.” On the water dove see Collections, as above, viii. 435, 436.
228 “But of this matter I gave Dr Woodward a more full Account, a year and half ago.” “I shall keep such Terms, as I used unto my Doctor, when he had what he required [i, e., requested] of me upon it” (Mather to Jurin, May 21, 1723, Gay MS., fol. 175). Eighteen months before May, 1723, would be November, 1721.
229 This list (in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society) consists of thirteen titles and is headed: “Curiosa Americana, Continued — In letters to Dr John Woodward.” It is the table of contents once belonging to a sheaf of draughts which have perished, while it survives, a loose leaf laid in a MS. volume of other draughts (also of Curiosa). The same list of thirteen articles occurs (with variations in some of the titles) in the catalogue enclosed in Mather’s letter to Jurin, May 21, 1723 (Gay MS., fols. 179–181). There is much to be said about these thirteen Curiosa, but this is not the place to discuss them. I could make it practically certain, if space allowed, that the third of the thirteen was the “further Account” mentioned in the Diary, November 30, 1721.
230 See Dr. Reginald H. Fitz’s admirable paper, Zabdiel Boylston, Inoculator, and the Epidemic of Smallpox in Boston in 1721 (The Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, No. 247, September, 1911, xxii. 315–327).
231 For the date, June 6, 1721, see A Vindication of the Ministers of Boston, 1722 (dated at the end, January 30, 1721–2), p. 7, and [Isaac Greenwood,] A Friendly Debate; or A Dialogue between Academicus; and Sawny & Mundungus, 1722 (dedication dated February 15, 1721–2), pp. 5–6.
232 Boylston, An Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated, 1726, p. 2.
233 On this date Mather remarks, in his Diary, “I am writing for London, and sending more Things to serve the Kingdome of God.”
234 For Stuart, see Nichols, Literary Anecdotes, ii. 95, n.* He died on September 15, 1742.
235 The letter is preserved in the Letter-Book of the Royal Society, D. 2. f. 2 (Gay MS., fol. 259–261). It is endorsed as “read Novr. 16. 1721.”
236 On Jurin, see Nichols, Illustra tions of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, v. 122; Literary Anecdotes, vi. 92–93, n. §§, ix. 506. He died March 22, 1749–50, in his 66th year. For his interest in inoculation, and the eagerness with which he welcomed news on the subject from New England, see especially his essay entitled A Letter to the Learn ed Dr. Caleb Cotesworth . . . ; containing a Comparison between the Danger of the Natural Small Pox, and of that given by Inoculation (Philosophical Transactions, No. 374, for November-December, 1722, xxxii. 213–227), in which he quotes a letter from Mather, March 10, 1721–2 (preserved in Sloane MS. 3324, fol. 260), and to which he appends an account from Captain John Osborne which, as he says, “confirms the Extract given above from Mr. Mather’s Relation” (p. 225).
237 Inoculation of the Small Pox as practised in Boston, Consider’d in a Letter to A—— S—— M. D. & F. R. S. in London (Boston, 1722), pp. 1–2. The tract, though anonymous, was well known to be by Douglass.
238 P. 20.
239 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 440, 444, 448, 449, 452, 453, 455.
240 To Woodward, July, 1716, and July 25, 1717 (M. H. S.); to Jurin, May 21, 1723 (Gay MS., fol. 175). Cf. Woodward’s letter to Mather, April 3, 1721 (1 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, xiii. 111).
241 [Isaac Greenwood,] A Friendly Debate, 1722, pp. 19–20.
242 4 Massachusetts Historical Collect ions, ii. 169.
243 The dedication (“To my very Worthy Physician, Mr. Zabdi el Boylston”) is dated “E musœo meo, Feb. 15. 1721, 2.”
244 A Friendly Debate; or, A Dialogue, between Academicus; and Sawny & Mundungus (Boston, 1722), p, 13.
245 A Friendly Debate; or, A Dialogue between Rusticus and Academicus, Boston, 1722. The dedication, burlesquing Greenwood’s, is dated “From the South Side of my Hay-stack, March 9. 1721, 2.”
246 P. 2.
247 “What Mr. Oldmixon says in his History of the British Colonies, Page 108, 109.” The work referred to is Oldmixon’s British Empire in America, 1708, vol. i.
248 P. 5.
249 That is, of course, Samuel Mather (1706–1785), then (like Greenwood) a student in Harvard College, where he took his first degree in 1723.
250 P. 8.
251 The Abuses and Scandals of some late Pamphlets in Favour of Inoculation of the Small Pox, Modestly obviated, and Inoculation further consider’d in a Letter to A—— S—— M. D. & F. R. S. in London. Boston, 1722. This is dated at the end “Feb. 15th, 1721, 22.”
252 Pp, 6–7. He refers particularly to three: (1) a letter to Woodward, November, 1712, as reported in the Philosophical Transactions, xxix, [64]; (2) the squaring of the circle; (3) “the Longitude at Sea.” “The Quadrature of the Circle” was one of a series of twelve communications sent by Mather to John Chamberlayne, F. R. S., in February, 1720 (see catalogue enclosed in the letter to Jurin, May 21, 1723, Gay MS., fol. 180; Mather to John Winthrop, December 26, 1720, and March 12, 1722–3: 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 444, 455). In his letter to Winthrop on March 12, 1722–3, Mather writes: “Mr. Chamberlain tells me (and I feel it from other circumstances,) That my XII Letters to him have been published. And yett I have never to this Hour seen them.” The “other circumstances” which in Mather’ s mind confirmed Chamberlayne’s words, were, I suppose, this passage in Douglass’s book, for Mather did not see how Douglass could have known of his paper on squaring the circle unless it had been printed. But the essay is not known to exist, either in print or in manuscript. As for the paper on Longitude, that is not even mentioned in any of Mather’s list s of his Curiosa. I suspect it formed a part, either of this essay on the Circle or of some other letter of the twelve sent to Chumberlayne. If (as seems probable) these letters were not published, some member of the Society must have given Douglass his information, — Stuart, I should conjecture.
253 That is, the University of Glasgow. Douglass is referring to Mather’s degree of D. D.
254 Introduction, p. [ii].
255 Sewall, Diary, iii. 312. Sewall says that Checkley sailed for London “in Barlow,” — that is, in Capta in Henry Barlow’s vessel, probably the Hanover. At all events, that was Henry Barlow’s vessel in June, 1721 (“Hen. Barlow, Hanover for London” is recorded as “outward bound” in the Boston News-Letter for June 29–July 3, 1721, No. 908, p. 2). Dr. Slafter inadvertently confuses the vessel with the captain and says that Cheekley sailed “in the ship Barlow” (John Cheekley, i. 49). Checkley reached Boston, on his return, on September 23, 1723 (cf. Slafter, i. 49, 50 n. 40, ii. 162, with the Boston Gazette, September 30, 1723, p. 4/1 — a reference which I owe to Mr. Albert Matthews).
256 No reply had reached Mather by May 21, 1723, as appears from his letter to Jurin of that date.
257 Douglass begins his printed letter of February 15, 1721–2 (The Abuses and Scandals, etc.), with the words: “Our former Intimacy in our Travels and Study abroad is all the Apology I shall make for addressing you with this Letter.” In his Practical Essay concerning the Small Pox (Boston, 1730), which is dedicated to Stuart, Douglass is more specific: “Our former Intimacy in the Universities in Holland and Hospitals in Flanders, inclined me to this Address.”
258 Inoculation of the Small Pox as practised in Boston (1722) and The Abuses and Scandals (1722).
259 Royal Society Letter-Book, M. 2. 47 (Gay MS., fol. 222). Mather’ s draught (dated September 21, 1724) is in M. H. S. Mather’s informant as to the Newbury monster was the Rev. Christopher Toppan (see an extract from Toppan’s letter of July 6, 1724, in Joshua Coffin’s History of Newbury, 1845, p, 195). Unfortunately Mather’s words in the letter to Woodward are ambiguous; “your Protection” may mean either “protection at your hands” or “protection for you.” If the latter is the sense (as the context makes probable), Mather may be alluding to Dr. Richard Mead (1673–1754), who had attacked Woodward with a sword and put him in danger of his life in 1719. Woodward’s own account of the affray (headed “Relation of a Duel,” and dated June 13, 1719) may be read in Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes, vi. 641–642 (from The Weekly Journal, London, June 20, 1719); cf. vi. 212 ff. Woodward had sent Mather an account of the affair, which he received in July, 1720, and sent to John Winthrop (Mather to Winthrop, July 15, 1720, 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 440). Mather’s reply to Woodward, July 27, 1720, is in A. A. S. Mather also sent Winthrop, on August 29, 1720, a copy of his reply to Woodward (viii. 442), which Woodward acknowledged as a “very civil Letter of the later End of last Summer” on April 3, 1721 (1 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, xiii, 110).
260 I take this from the transcript in the Gay MS. (fol. 177), which seems to be a more exact copy than that printed by Mr. Darnell Davis.
261 “As a Token of my purposes this way, an d as an Earnest, of a much greater Variety, which I propose to send you by a not her Hand, about a Fortnight hence, I now present you with a tedious account of Sentiments & Occurrents, relating to a Subject, about which I perceive you are sollieitous to have ye exactest Informations” (Gay MS., fols. 177–178). What we know of Jurin would justify us in conjecturing that this subject was inoculation (cf. p. 103, above), but we can have certainty, for, in a later letter to Jurin (June 10, 1723), introducing Isaac Greenwood (“One of or Inoculates”), Mather says: “a few Days ago, I wrote you a Large Account of the Success web the Small Pox Inoculated has had in these parts of the World” (Gay MS., fol. 210). He refers to this account again in a letter to Jurin, October 5, 1724: — “I should not have been sorry, if my Letter to you, Justifying the Inoculation of the Small-pox, had been published: 2014 might it at all have contributed unto the more General Entertainment, of 60 Marvellous, — but, alas, how Satanically despised — a Blessing” (Gay MS., fol. 255).
We may confidently identify with “the tedious account” thus despatched to Jurin on May 21, 1723, a letter of which the draught (in Mather’s hand) is in A. A. S. It is dated May 4, 1723, is headed “The Case of the Small-Pox Inoculated; further Cleared. To Dr James Jurin,” and occupies twenty-one pages of manuscript. It well deserves printing.
262 Copies are in the Gay MS., fols. 181–209. Mather’s original draughts are in A. A. S. Two of these letters were read at meetings of the Society (as endorsements in the Letter-Book show), — that of June 7 (“The Land Sail’d upon”) on December 5, and that of June 10 (“A Singular Case”) on December 12, 1723. The covering letter (June 10, 1723) introduces the bearer of the packet, Isaac Greenwood.
263 Passage in brackets mine.
264 The Nation, liv. 128; Register, xlvi, 117.
265 Slafter, John Checkley, i. 47.
266 Sir Hans Sloane
267 The Diary of Ralph Thoresby, F. R. S., ed. Hunter, 1830, ii. 366. Thoresby himself was admitted into the Royal Society in 1701. He notes the ceremonies which we have already heard of in this discussion: — “This being the first time I was at London since my admission into the Royal Society, I subscribed my name in the book; the formality of the Vice-President’s taking me by the hand and publicly pronouncing me (in the name of the Society) a Fellow of the Royal Society, . . . may be seen in my Diary” (i. 339–340).
268 November 16, 1911.
269 See pp. 101–102, above.
270 The Statutes provide that “the Election and Admission of every person into the Society, with the time thereof, shall be recorded in the Journal-book” (Chap. vi., sect. 7, p. 83).
271 I have not found the date of Richard Waller’s death. Thoresby paid him a call on August 14, 1714 (Diary, ii. 251), and says nothing about his being in poor health. Weld gives November 30, 1714, as the date when he ceased to be Secretary (History of the Royal Society, ii. 561). Dr. Woodward, on April 3, 1721, speaks of his death as if it were not recent (1 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, xiii. 111). A passage in a letter from Mather to Dr. Woodward, July, 1716 (M. H. S.), mentions “our dear Mr. Waller” in a way which, taken in connection with the rest of the letter, makes me think that he is referring to him as a departed friend.
272 Diplomata et Statuta, 1752, pp. 83–84.
273 See p, 96, above.
274 The reason for so large an attendance was doubtless the election of a Librarian and Keeper of the Museum in place of Alban Thomas. Thoresby refers to the meeting again in a letter to Richard Richardson, M. D., June 21, 1723 (printed by Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century, i. 810): — “I never saw such a number of the Fellows as upon that occasion; three rooms almost full.” He mentions the fact that there were “many candidates put in for [Thomas’s] place.”
275 See p. 106 note 3, above.
276 John Checkley, i. 40.
277 Royal Society Letter-Book, M. 2. 45 (Gay MS., fois. 211–213).
278 Letter-Book, M. 2. 46–55 (Gay MS., fols, 213–253). The letters are dated October 1, and September 21–26, 28–30, 1724 (the year being omitted in the last). The letter of September 21 concerns the Amphisbrena of Newbury (see p, 107, above). That of September 23 describes the storm and high tide of February 24, 1723–4, and has been printed in 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 456–457. Draughts of all these ten letters, except that on the storm, are in M. H. S.
279 Letter-Book, M. 2. 56 (Gay MS., fols. 253–256).
280 Letter-Book, M. 2. 57 (Gay MS., fols. 256–259).
281 The name is variously spelled Humfrey, Humphrey, and Humphreys.
282 The third Earl of Lincoln is usually stated to have been born in 1571; but when he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on June 22, 1582, he was aged fourteen (Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, i. 292).
283 Wharton Dickinson: see the New York Times of October 10, 1911, p. 1/ 7, and subsequent issues.
284 A mass of evidence about Humfrey is brought together in Dr. F. Humphreys’s The Humphreys Family in America (1883), pp. 66–91. See also J. T. Hassam, 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xiii. 36–43.
285 Journal (1908), i. 52.
286 The Gift, it will be remembered, was the ship that was to have taken Thomas Mort on to England had not its captain refused to carry him (Winthrop, Journal, i. 53). It did not sail until after September 7, 1630 (Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 75).
287 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 1.
288 vi. 5.
289 vi. 9, 12. It is perhaps worth noting that in a letter dated March 4, 1636–7, written to her brother Governor Winthrop, Lucy Downing, the wife of Emanuel Downing, said: “I pray present my seruis to . . . Msr Humphryes and his Lady, Msr Saltinstall and hiss wife” (5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 20). Mrs. Downing apparently makes a distinction between the “Lady” of Humphrey and the “wife” of Richard Saltonstall.
290 Journal, i. 127.
291 Foster, Alumni Oxonienses, ii. 766.
Fairfax, Cromwell, and others reached Oxford on May 17, 1649, and on May 19 were given honorary degress, the first two that of D.C.L. The circumstances under which these degrees were given are thus stated by Wood (Fasti Oxonienses, edition of Bliss, 1820):
Creations.
The creations this year were made in all faculties, especially in that creation called by some the Fairfaxian creation, that is, that creation which was made when the lord Fairfax generalissimo of the pari, army and his lieut. gen. Cromwell were created doctors of law, and when others afterwards were created by the said general’s nomination when he was entertained by the then members of university (ii. 128).
Masters of Arts.
Those that were created this year masters of arts, were mostly officers that attended Fairfax the general and Cromwell his lieut. gen. to Oxon, when they were invited thither by the then members of the university, to see what a godly reformation the committee and visitors had made therein (ii. 130).
No fewer than twelve masters of arts, all of whom except one were officers, were created on May 19th, 1649; on May 21st two more officers, together with John Rushworth the historian, then Fairfax’s secretary; and on “Mar. 14.. . . Humphreys gent, of kin to the earl of Lincoln, and son of a colonel, &c.” (ii. 137).
292 Exactly when the Lady Susan died is not known, but Humfrey married again after her death: see the remarks of Mr. Henry E. Woods, pp. 120–121, below.
293 Roberts, History of the Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, i. 116.
294 See Essex Institute Historical Collections, iii. 107–108; New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxi. 307–308.
295 Essex County Court Files, xxxvi, 55–56.
296 Essex County Deeds, i. 3.
297 ii. 27.
298 Essex County Court Files, xxi, 56.
299 Essex County Probate, ii. 76–79.
300 Essex County Court Files, xxxi, 151.
301 Clonmel is about six miles from Ardfinnan.
302 Essex County Court Files, xxxvi. 54.
303 ii. 45–48, 85–86.
304 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 12–13.
305 ii. 273.
306 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxi, 308.
307 Ibid.
308 Ibid.
309 Ibid.
310 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 286; 2 Proceedings, xiii, 40; Humphreys Genealogy, Supplement, pp. 17–18.
311 Massachusetts Colony Records, i. 332.
312 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxvi. 39.
313 Massachusetts Colony Records, ii. 137
314 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxvi. 39.
315 xxxvi. 65.
316 xxxvi. 65.
317 xxxvi, 66–69.
318 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxxix, 179–182.
319 Massachusetts Archives, lviii. 3–6. A few words have been cut off.
320 See Mr. Foster’s paper on the Burning of Harvard Hall, 1764, and its Consequences, pp. 2–43, above. For the second and third extracts, Mr. Foster is indebted to the kindness of Dr. Arthur H. Nichols.
321 That is, the Hall in Harvard Hall.
322 House Journal, p. 231; cf. p. 13, above.
323 Council Records, xv, 296.
324 Massachusetts Archives, cxxv. 280.
325 See pp. 4–5, above.
326 Boston News Letter, July 14, 1726, p. 2/2. The advertisement was repeated, with the change of “This Day is Published” to “Lately Published,” in the same paper of July 21, p. 2/2, and July 28, p. 2/2. The view was not advertised in the New England Courant; nor in the Boston Gazette of July 18 and August 1, which are the only issues of that paper I have seen.
327 See pp. 80–114, above.
328 See Suffolk Deeds, ii. 334, 336.
329 Publications, xiii, 183–197.
330 xiii. 186.
331 P. 94 note 2, above.
332 Harvard Graduates, iii. 392.
333 W. O. B. Allen and E. McClure, Two Hundred Years: History of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1698–1898, p. 134.
334 Pp. 229–257.
335 This recovers for us the name of Capt. Beale’s ship, not given by Whiston.
336 Allen and McClure, pp. 229, 231. Through the kindness of the Rev. George L. Gosling, Secretary of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, I am enabled to give the date of Henry Newman’s death, which has hitherto eluded research. It occurred June 15, 1743.
337 Beale’s arrival is also noted in the New England Courant of September 24, p.2/2; and in the Boston News Letter of the same date, p. 2/2.
338 Publications, xiii. 187.
339 Robert Harrison, Assistant Secretary of the Royal Society, writes, under date of July 20, 1911: “In regard to the matter about which you enquire in your letter, I beg to say that we are unable to trace Capt. Beale’s original Journals to which you refer. They do not appear to be among our Archives although we have much similar material. We have looked through our MS lists and printed catalogues and Indexes, but do not find any entry of such. I therefore think we may safely say they are not here. I would suggest it might be worth your enquiring whether they are at the Admiralty, as Molyneux was a Commissioner of the Admiralty. Or they might possibly be in Dublin, say at Trinity College, as the Molyneux were a Dublin family and Samuel was a Trinity College man.”
340 O. Murray, under date of December 20, 1911, writes from the Admiralty Office: “In reply to your inquiry as to Captain Othniel Beale’s journal containing an account of his observations, I am to inform you that careful search has been made in the Public Record Office amongst the Admiralty Records from 1716 to 1736, and it is regretted that nothing can be traced relating to this matter.”
341 Life of James Sullivan (1859), i. 10–12: cf. i. 14.
342 Misprinted “two.”
343 Gilpatrick’s letter is not printed in the Boston Evening Post.
344 Benjamin.
345 There were then three children: the above named Benjamin, Daniel (born about 1738; died June 21, 1785), and John (born February 17 or 28, 1740; died January 23, 1795). James was born April 22, 1744, and died December 10, 1808.
346 Boston Evening Post, July 25, 1743, p. 2/1. The date of John Sullivan’s death is usually given incorrectly. On May 25, 1847, Elias Nason copied the inscription on the stone at Berwick and it was printed in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, i. 376. The stone has since been removed from Berwick, Maine, to Durham, New Hampshire. It bears the following inscription, kindly copied for me by Mr. W. D. Spencer, town clerk of Berwick:
Here are buried the Bodies of John Sullivan, & Margery his wife. He was born in Limeric in Ireland in the year 1692, & died in the year 1796.
She was born in Cork in Ireland in the year 1714, & died in 1801.
This marble is placed to their memory by their son James Sullivan.
Governor Sullivan made a singular error, for John Sullivan died in 1795 and must, if the obituary notices are correct, have been born in 1689 or 1690. This notice app eared in the New Hampshire Gazette of June 30, 1795: “At Berwick, Mr. JOHN SULLIVAN, aged 106, fat her of the late Judge Sullivan, of Durham, and the present Judge Sullivan of Boston” (p. 3/4). The following notice appeared in the Oracle of the Day, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, of Saturday, June 27, 1795:
“At Berwick, on Sunday last, Mr. John Sullivan, aged 106, father of the late Judge Sullivan, of Durham, and the present Judge Sullivan of Boston” (p. 3/4). A longer notice, giving the exact date of his death, was printed in the Columbian Centinel of July 1, 1795:
At Berwick, in the District of Maine, on Saturday, the 20th June ultimo, Mr. John Sullivan, aged one hundred and fire years. His life had been usefully employed in the business of a School-m aster, and his conduct was marked with integrity and uprightness. Oppressed with an unusual weight of years, he ardently wished for, and cheerfully anticipate d the moment, which should release him from the ills incident to such an advanced stage of life. A firm reliance on the mercy of God, through the gospel dispensation, afforded patience, resignation, and tranquility, to the last hours of his life (p. 3/1).
Shortly after the January meeting was in type, Mr. T. Russell Sullivan in formed me that Margery Sullivan’s advertisement had been known to Mr. Thomas C. Amory, though that fact would not be inferred from the many books and articles on the Sullivan family written by Mr. Amory, and that it had been printed by Miss G. E. Meredith in her Family of John Sullivan of Berwick, pp. 34–35. As, however, that volume was not published but only privately printed (in 1893), the advertisement is allowed to stand here.
347 The letter is printed, and also reproduced in facsimile, in Libbie’s Catalogue, January 10–11, 1912, pp. 95–96; and in Goodspeed’ s Catalogue, January, 1912, No. 90.
348 Lee’s letter fills three pages. The fourth page, of course, formed the outside of the document as folded, and received the address.
349 i. 116.
350 It is on a four-page sheet. The third page is blank, and the fourth contains the address.
351 Cf. Publications of this Society, x, 32.
352 Obadiah Grew was of Balliol College; Nehemiah was of Pembroke Hall, Cambridge.
353 Diary, i. 304–305.
354 The Revolution in New England Justified.
355 Diary, i. 250.
356 i. 262.
357 Sewall, Diary, i. 148.
358 Wilfred H. Munro, History of Bristol, 1880, pp. 130, 131.
359 Under date of January 26, 1691–2, Sewall remarks: “Foy (in whom went Mr. Lee) taken into France.” On Captain Foy see the Transactions of this Society, x, 112 note 2.
360 Lee’s will was proved April 13, 1692, and in the Probate Act Book the testator is said to have died in France (“in regno Galliæ def[unc]ti”). See Waters, Gleanings, i, 470–471
361 Magnalia, 1702, Book iii. pt. iv. chap. 6, p. 224.
362 See a letter to her from the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Colman (February 7, 1700–01) in the Transactions of this Society, viii. 247–250.
363 P. 152, below.
364 S. Maclovius, i. e. St. Malo in Brittany.
365 The Library of the late Reverend and Learned Mr. Samuel Lee . . . Exposed at the most Easy Rates, to Sale, by Duncan Cambell, Bookseller at the Dock-head over-against the Conduit. Boston Printe d for Duncan Cambell . . . 1693. (Prince Library.) Dr. Samuel A. Green gives the title-page in his Ten Fac-simile Reproductions relating to Old Boston and Neighborhood (1901). Cf. 2 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, x. 540–544.
366 J. O. Austin, Genealogical Dictionary of Rhode Island, Albany, 1887, pp. 242–243.
367 No. 454, xli. 143–162.
368 The following works are sometimes cited by the authors’ names merely, to save repetition of titles: — Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New England, 2d ed., 1675; Morton, New English Canaan, 1637; Smith, A Map of Virginia, 1612; Strachey, The Historie of Travaile into Virginia Britannia, ed. By R. H. Major for the Hakluyt Society, 1849; Wood, New Englands Prospect, ed. of 1635.
369 Brackets indicate words or letters lost by the tearing off of the upper corners of the sheet. The words within brackets are supplied by conjecture.
370 The word England is certain; part of the gl may be made out.
371 Here the MS. is not dam aged, but there is a short (or abbreviated) word illegible after I. The clause as I [ ] is interlined, with a caret. It seems to belong to what precedes.
372 The figure 2 stands in the margin, — the lines being arranged thus:
as I [ ]
the yeere. 1642. ‸ not much salary: the
2 Revenue of Charleston Fery goes in ꝑt to it
3 I think, about 40 or 50 students: but stands
Since it would be absurd to try to reproduce this arrangement (which continues throughout the first series of replies), I have t ransferred the figure, in each case, to a place immediately before the reply to which it belongs. In the second series of replies (about the Indians), no such transfers are necessary, for Mr. Lee has put each figure where it belongs, not running his replies together so much as in the first series.
373 Here the figure 4 stands where it belongs. It is reasonable to begin a new paragraph here. Mr. Lee seldom indents, but I have done so wherever I thought he intended a paragraph.
374 “7000d” is repeated by Lee in the margin, the 7 in the text being unclear.
375 Here the 21 in the margin stands before its own reply, and I begin a new paragraph accordingly. There are no 22 and 23. Apparently Nos. 21–23 are all included under 21. No. 22 may begin with “Surgeons” and No. 23 with “not many.”
376 Here 24 is placed like 21 (see last note), and I begin a fresh paragraph.
377. Here the first column of the first page ends.
378 From this point there is no further complication of the kind described in note 4, p. 146, above, and I am able to follow the MS., which puts each figure before its proper reply.
379 So in the MS., the Greek, however, being written in abbreviated fashion (see p. 166, below). We should read καὶ ἐσσoμένoισι πυθέσθαι.
380 The brackets are in the MS. and the 9 is plain.
381 Here there is a slight defect, a little piece of the lower right-hand corner of the leaf being cut or torn off. There can be no doubt that “degenerate” is right. The first two letters are preserved and the tops of most of the others.
382 First column of second page ends.
383 First column of third page ends.
384 St. Maclovius, i. e. St. Malo in Brittany.
385 MS. obscure.
386 The arrangement is confusing. See the facsimile. “Some judge it a sort of wild Gentian” appears to belong with the remark about “Makerell.”
387 In Lee’s hand.
388 In Sewall’s hand.
389 The manuscript is tattered and soiled. Many words and letters have disappeared or are illegible. I have indicated such places by brackets, supplying what is missing as well as I could. A careful scrutiny of the manuscript enabled me, in August, 1909, to decipher some things that are unreadable in a photograph.
390 The leaf containing the text of the letter has lost the upper corners and has also suffered some mutilation on the upper and the right-hand edge. At the beginning, however, only the salutation and the first word or so (perhaps I) seem to have disappeared.
391 The word pipes is practically legible. The reading is established beyond question by Lee’s reply to No. 74 (see p, 150, above).
392 Part of the W is preserved. The following entry in Sewall’s Diary (i. 340) supplies the captain’s name: — “Satterday, Jan. 24, 1690/1. Wear comes in; came from Cows Decr 1.” Captain Wear is several times mentioned by Sewall (Diary, i. 277, 357; Letter-Book, i. 43, 44, 45, 46, 118, 128).
393 I. e., December 19. One of these two ships was evidently that whose coming is recorded by Sewall in his Diary, February 2, 1690–1 (i. 340): — “Capt. Brown arrives at Marblehead, came from Plimouth 19th December.” For Captain William Brown see Sewall’s Letter-Book, ii. 107, 154, 157.
394 Here ends the first page (fol. 140 v°). There is nothing lacking on this page after the word yet, which closes a paragraph.
395 The text of this page is so badly mutilated that it has seemed best to print it line for line. Some of the readings are not quite certain. The letter ends near the top of the page, all below the signature being blank. The third page is entirely blank.
396 Dr. Obadiah Grew had died on October 22, 1689.
397 Boston, 1694 (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, iv, 317).
398 Christopher Merrett, A Short View of the Frauds, and Abuses committed by Apothecaries, 1669, pp. 8–9.
399 C. R. B. Barrett, History of the Society of Apothecaries of London, 1905, p. 5.
400 Barrett, p. 24.
401 Pharmacopœia Londinensis. Or, the New London Dispensatory. In VI. Books. Translated into English . . . The Sixth Edition, Corrected and Amended. By William Salmon, Professor of Physick. London, 1702, lib. iv. cap. 22, p. 658.
402 Tribe ii. chap. 64, p. 297 (cr. p. 296, fig. 5).
403 See the remarks of our late associate, Dr. James Bourne Ayer, on Boston at the Time of the Battle of Bunker Hill (Proceedings of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, 1905, pp. 35–36). Dr. Ayer cites Robert W. Hebberd, The Charities Review, January, 1901, x, 515.
404 Dr. Samuel A. Green, 2 Massachusetts Historical Proceedings, i. 44.
405 Barrett, History of the Society of Apothecaries of London, p. 111.
406 Austin T. Young, Annals of the Barber-Surgeons of London, 1890, pp. 23, 27–8.
407 P. 35.
408 Pp. 52 ff.
409 P. 80.
410 Pp. 112, 129.
411 Pp. 146–147.
412 P. 146.
413 Young, pp. 154–162.
414 Barrett, History of the Society of Apothecaries of London, pp, xvi–xvii, l ff, 82–84.
415 A Discourse Setting forth the Unhappy Condition of the Practice of Physick in London (London, 1670), p. 21.
416 Barrett, pp. 94–95, 113–118.
417 Pp. 111–112.
418 A Short View of the Frauds, and Abuses committed by Apothecaries, London, 1669, pp. 43–44 (2d ed., 1670, pp. 50–51). See also Merrett’s tract entitled Self-Conviction, published in 1670. [Henry Stubbe] replied to Merrett in Medice cura teipsum! or The Apothecaries Plea, London, 1671. All these tracts are in the Harvard College Library.
419 This point is handled in a rather gingerly manner. It was notorious that most of the regular practitioners had left their patients in the lurch while the plague raged. In the second edition (1670) Dr. Merrett omitted the damaging parenthesis “most Physicians being out of town” (p. 51).
420 That is, the inspection of the apothecaries’ shops by the Censors of the Royal College of Physicians. See No. 9.
421 I. e., they’re. The second edition reads, “now they are past all restraint” (p. 51).
422 Dedham Records, iii. 132.
423 Church Records, in Dedham Records, ii. 32 (cf. 35). His name is given as “—— Avery” and “brother Avery,” but there can be no question of his identity.
424 Dedham Records, iii. 179.
425 Dedham Records, iv. 287.
426 Massachusetts Colony Records, vol. iv. part ii. p. 567.
427 Dedham Records, v. 34, 36.
428 v. 76.
429 v. 41.
430 v. 43, 45, 47, 48, 54, 55, 57, 60, 61, 65, 70, 73, 83, 89.
431 “Grant liberty to Do Auery to fell timber of the Towne Com̄ for a fram of a House to cary to Boston prouid he pay to the vse of the Town in mony 2s per tune not excding 7 tune” (Dedham Records, v. 63).
432 “Doc Will Auery doth tender mony sixty pounds for the incoragment of a latine Schoole in this Towne prouided thier be such incoragmt to a choole as may be sutoble of the Townes part and to that end to treet with him refering to his conditions we Chose Capt Dan Fisher and En Tho Fullar” (v. 98).
433 v. 100–101.
434 Dedham Records, v. 109.
435 v. 148–149, 367 (cf. v. 169).
436 Boyle’s Works, ed. Birch, v. 614–617.
437 This is a once famous treatise by George Stirk of the Harvard Class of 1646 (who changed his name to Starkey): — Pyrotechny Asserted and Illustrated, London, 1658. Cf. Publications of this Society, xiii. 145.
438 Boyle’s Works, v. 616.
439 Joseph Dudley, 1647–1720 (H. C. 1665).
440 1658–1713 (H. C. 1676).
441 Boyle’s Works, v. 617.
442 Dedham Records, v. 114 (cf. 116).
443 v. 121, 124, 128, 131, 136, 145, 146, 160, 163, 165, 166, 174, 178, 186, 194, 200, 279, 365.
444 v. 295.
445 “Dr. Wm Avery dies” (Sewall’s Diary, i. 170, March 18, 1686–7).
446 Mr. Lee writes his Greek with the ligatures and contractions then customary, which I have not tried to reproduce in type. By slips of the pen he gives ἐσσομένoισι as ἐσσαμένoισι and accents πυθέσθαι on the first syllable.
447 See book ii. chap. 1 (Hague, 1652, pp. 61 ff) for the Japanese question; book ii. chap. 7 (pp. 91 ff) for the passage from Diodorus.
448 Magnalia, 1702, book i. chap. 1, § 6, p. 4.
449 Letter-Book, i. 23; Phenomena quædam Apocalyptica, 1697 (2d ed., 1727, p. 2). Cf. the note on No. 67, pp. 178–179, below.
450 A Chronological History of North-Eastern Voyages of Discovery, London, 1819, pp. 298, 300, 301 (cf. pp. 302 ff). Burney had already advanced these opinions in a memoir read before the Royal Society on December 11, 1817 (Philosophical Transactions for 1818, part i. pp. 9–23). Cf. Adelbert von Chamisso’s reply, in Otto von Kotzebue, Voyage of Discovery, London, 1821, iii. 265 ff.
451 The first dated map to contain the name Strait of Anian (“Streto de Anian”) appears to be Zaltieri’s Map of North America, 1566 (“Il Disegno del discoperto della noua Franza . . . Venteijs seneis formis Bolognini Zalticri Anno. M.D. LXVI”). The Lenox Collection (New York Public Library) has this map, and I have had the pleasure of examining it. It is in the Lenox copy of Lafreri’s Atlas, fol. [81]. There is a fascimile in Nordenskiöld’s Facsimile-Atlas, fig. 81 (English translation, p. 129; cf. No. 103, p. 121), and in the Atlas to Kretschmer’s Entdeckung Amerika’s, 1892, Tafel XIX. 3 (cf. the text, pp. 440–443). See Sophus Ruge, Fretum Anian (Programm, Annenschule, Dresden, 1873, pp. 19–32; also in his Abhandlungen und Vorträge, Dresden, 1888, pp. 53 ff); O. Peschel, Geschichte der Erdkunde, 2d ed. (by Ruge), Munich, 1877, pp. 273 and n. 2, 816; K. E. von Baer, in Beiträge zur Kenntniss des Russischen Reiches, xvi. 289–290 (St. Petersburg, 1872); Nordenskiöld, Periplus, English translation, 1897, p. 193; William Goldson, Observations on the Passage between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, Portsmouth, England, 1793, pp. 57–122.
452 So for instance, Father Athanasius Kircher, the learned Orientalist, in his Introduction to the Coptic Language (Prodomus Coptus sive Ægyptiacus, Rome, 1636), expresses himself as “almost convinced by mathematical considerations” that Greater Cathay in the extreme north “angulo Americæ isthmo quodam coniungi” (p. 100).
453 Enquiries touching the Diversity of Languages, and Religions through the Cheife Parts of the World, London, 1614, pp. 96 ff (ed. 1674, pp. 117 ff). Brerewood opposes the “vain and cappricious phantasie” that the Tartars “are of the Israelites progeny” (pp. 94 ff; ed. 1674, pp. 114 ff).
454 P. 97 (ed. 1674, p. 118).
455 See Roger Williams, Key, 1643, p. [viii]; Montanus (van Bergen), De Nieuwe en Onbekende Weereld, Amsterdam, 1671, pp. 38 ff; John Ogilby, America, 1671, pp. 39 ff (a translation of Montanus); Nicolaas Witsen, Nord en Oost Tartaryen, new ed., 1785, i. 157 ff; S. G. Drake, Book of the Indians, Book i. chap, ii, 8th ed., 1841, pp. 6 ff; Winsor, Narrative and Critical History, i. 76 ff. Morton, New English Canaan, 1637, pp. 19 ff, rejects the Tartar hypothesis in favor of the Trojans. In so doing he simply followed the lead of learned combinations going back to Virgil and involving Franks, Britons, and Scandinavians (see especially Viktor Rydberg, Undersökningar i Germanisk Mythologi, i. 24–74, Stockholm, 1886).
456 For a sketch of the life of Father de Angelis see Crasset, Historie de l’Église du Japon, Paris, 1715, book xvi. chap. 26, ii. 429–432. He was burned to death at Jedo, December 3, 1623.
457 The report of Father de Angelis (Relazione del regno di Jeso) seems to have been first published in Relazione di alcune cose cavate dalle Lettere scritte negli anni 1619, 1620 & 1621, dal Giappone al molto Rev. in Christo P. Mutio Vitelleschi, Preposito Generale della C. di Giesu (Rome, 1624), pp. 217–232 (Léon Pagès, Bibliographie Japonaise, No. 173, p. 21). The Harvard College Library has a large number of these Jesuit Relations from Japan, but lacks this volume, and I have not seen it. It is quoted, however, in the original Italian, by Sir Robert Dudley, Dell’ Arcano del Mare, vol. i. book ii. chap. 17, p. 55, 1646 (and 2d ed., vol. i. book ii. chap. 17, p. 18, 1661). The substance of the letter, with a long extract, is given by de Charlevoix, Historie et Description Generale du Japon, Paris, 1736, vi. 24–41, and there is a sufficient extract (in Dutch) in Witsen, Nord en Oost Tartaryen, ed. 1785, i. 143–145. See also Buache, Considerations Géo-graphiques et Physiques, 1753, pp. 84–88.
458 Beschrijvinghe van het machtigh Coninckrijck van Iapan, gestelt door Francoys Caron, . . . ende met eenige aenteeckeningen vermeerdert door Hendrick Hagenaer, annexed to Verhael van de Reyze gedaen inde meeste Deelen van de Oost-Indien, door den Opper-Coopman Hendrick Hagenaer, p. 134 (in [Isaak Commelin,] Tweede Deel van het Begin ende Voortgangh der Vereenighde Nederlantsche Geoctroyeerde Oost-Indische Compagnie, 1646). There is also an edition of Caron’s Beschrijvinghe, Amsterdam, 1649, in the John Carter Brown Library. The Description (with Hagenaer’s additions) is translated in Recueil de divers Voiages qui ont servi à l’Établissement et aux Progrès de la Compagnie des Indes Orientales, formée dans les Provinces Unies des Païs-bas, v. 301 ff (Amsterdam, 1706); 2d edition, v. 381 ff (Amsterdam, 1716). In 1662 Caron published his report in a revised form, purged of Hagenaer’s additions. There is a translation of this (from a copy furnished by Caron) in Melchisédec Thevenot’s Relations de divers Voyages Curieux, part ii, Paris, 1664; reprinted in Recueil de Voyages au Nord, new edition, iv. 32–141 (Amsterdam, 1732). An English version, apparently from the Dutch edition of 1649, appeared at London in 1663: — A true Description of the Mighty Kingdoms of Japan and Siam. Written originally in Dutch by Francis Caron and Joost Schorten [error for Schouten]: and now rendred in English by Capt. Roger Manley (Harvard College Library).
459 “Vt vero facile credamus Americam Septentrionalem Asia? propius conjungi, nupera quam Franciscus Caron publicavit Iaponiae facit descriptio” (De Originibus Americanis, book ii. chap. 1, Hague, 1652, pp. 62–63).
460 “Quæ omnia magnam lucem Americanis tenebris inferunt. Quid enim vetat quominus Sesso vel pars Americæ vel ei admodum vicina sit? Et quam bene ilia barbaries novo orbi convenit?” (pp. 63–64).
461 Paul Teleki, Atlas zur Geschiehte der Kartographie der Japanischen Inseln, Budapest and Leipzig, 1909. Cf. O. Nachod, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde zu Berlin, 1910, pp. 196 ff.
462 Des Sauvages, ou Voyage de Samuel Champlain, 1604, fol. 11 v°.
463 In Henry Whitfeld, The Light Appearing, 1651, p. 11.
464 Dunton, ed. Whitmore, pp. 294–295 (or 2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 122); Williams, Key, chap. 32, pp. 193 ff (ed. Trumbull, pp. 215 ff).
465 A Short View of the Frauds, and Abuses Committed by Apothecaries, 1669, pp. 16, 17.
466 P. 24 (see Mr. Adams’s note, p. 133).
467 The Lives of the Right Hon. Francis North, Baron Guilford, the Hon. Sir Dudley North, and the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North, London, 1826, i. 167–168.
468 Διὰ τί ἀπò ϕθίσεως καὶ ὀϕθαλμίας καὶ ψώρας οἱ πλησιάζοντες ἁλίσκονται · ἀπò δὲ ὕδρωπος καὶ πυρετῶν καὶ ἀποπληξίας οὐχ ἁλίσκονται, οὐδὲ τῶν ἄλλων (vii. 8). Cf. Isocrates, Aegineticus, 29. See W. H. S. Jones, Malaria and Greek History, 1909, pp. 42–43, 128.
469 No. 339 (for April–June, 1714), xxix. 68. Paul Dudley’s account of the rattlesnake (dated Roxbury, October 25, 1722) may be seen in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 376, xxxii. 292–295. It is far more sober than Mather’s.
470 Letter of Nov. 27, 1712 (addressed to Richard Waller, the Secretary of the Royal Society). In the archives of the Society. From a copy kindly lent me by our associate Mr. Frederick Lewis Gay. The alkahest, or universal solvent, was passionately sought after in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Dr. William Avery in Boston was in hot pursuit of it in 1682–1684 (see No. 26, p. 164, above).
471 No. 3, i. 43. For thrilling experiments with live rattlesnakes in South Carolina in 1720, see Philosophical Transactions, No. 399, xxxv. 309–315. Cf. also xxxv. 377–381.
472 Musæum Regalis Societatis. Or a Catalogue & Description of the Natural and Artificial Rarities belonging to the Royal Society and preserved at Gresham Colledge. Made by Nehemiah Grew, M.D., London, 1681.
473 Pp. 50–51.
474 It was republished in 1699: — Vipera Caudi-sona Americana: or the Anatomy of a Rattle-snake, Dissected at the Repository of the Royal Society, in January, 1682–3 (appended to Tyson’s Orang-Outang, sive Homo Sylvestris: or the Anatomy of a Pygmie). There was a second edition in 1751. The Acta Eruditorum, Leipzig, 1684, pp. 138–149, contains “Viperæ: caudisonæ anatomia, descripta ab Eduardo Tyson . . . Excerpta ex Transactionibus Philosophicis Anglicis mensis Febr. 168⅔. No. 144.”
475 Young, Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, 1844, p. 357; 2 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ix. 92.
476 Young, p. 357.
477 Huron report, p. 100, appended to the Relation of 1639 (Paris, 1640).
478 Pp. 129–130. Cf. Huron report, p. 74, appended to the Relation of 1643 and 1644 (Paris, 1645).
479 New Englands Prospect, ed. 1635, part ii. chap. 19, p. 82 (quoted by Adams in his edition of Morton’s New English Canaan, p. 146).
480 Good Newes from New England (Young, 1844, p. 358), —also cited by Adams, ibid.
481 P. 154, above.
482 Philosophical Transactions, No. 423, xxxvii. 266–267.
483 4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, ii. 105.
484 Grafton Feveryear (see Zabdiel Boylston, Historical Account of the Small-Pox Inoculated, 2d ed., Boston, 1730, p. 13; Register, xv. 333).
485 Royal Society MS. Letter-Book, G. 2. 6 (quoted by Andrews and Davenport, Guide to the Manuscript Materials, 1907, p. 364).
486 Eliot’s letter in Thorowgood, Jews in America, 1660; Mather, Magnalia, 1702, book iii. part 3, pp. 192–193.
487 Key, 1643, pp. [viii–ix] (ed. Trumbull, p. 24).
488 Iewes in America, 1650, p. 7.
489 Americans no Iewes, 1652, pp. 19–20.
490 Magnalia, 1702, book iii. part 3. p. 193.
491 P. 147, above (cf. p. 166).
492 Letter-Book, i. 23.
493 Phænomena quædam Apocalyptica, 1699 (2d ed., 1727, p. 2).
494 Historical Collections of the Indians in New England (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 145).
495 The passage which Strachey quotes is in the Mostellaria, i. 3. 78 (dies noctesque estur).
496 See Morton, p. 25 (where Adams cites Wood and Josselyn).
497 In his edition of Josselyn’s Rarities, 1865, pp. 103–104 (or Transactions of the American Antiquarian Society, 1860, iv. 189).
498 See John Gerard, Herball, enlarged by Thomas Johnson, 1633, book ii. chap. 67, p. 356.
499 Cf. Strachey, p. 55. In the Dictionarie (p. 183) he enters apooke and apokan.
500 P. 153, above.
501 Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. Dexter, iii. 348.
502 Philosophical Transactions, No. 384, xxxiii. 129–132.
503 Cf. Kittredge, Notes on Witchcraft, 1907, pp. 51–52 (Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, New Series, xviii. 195–196).
504 The passages were contributed to the Dictionary by our associate, Mr. Albert Matthews.
505 Ed. Dexter, i. 386.
506 Musæum Regalis Societatis, 1681, part ii. section iii. chap. 1, p. 227.
507 Philosophical Transactions, No. 454, vol. xli. part i. pp. 144, 153–154.
508 Works, ed. Birch, iv. 305.
509 See pp. 81–114, above.
510 Petiveriana III, seu Naturæ Collectanea; Domi Forisque Auctori Communicata, London, 1717, p. 12, col. 2.
511 Letter of November 18, 1712 (addressed to John Woodward, M.D.), in the archives of the Royal Society. I quote from a copy belonging to Mr. F. L. Gay. The letter is excerpted in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 339, April–June, 1714 (xxix. 64).
512 Selections from an Ancient Catalogue, etc. (extracted from the American Journal of Science, vol. xlvii), New Haven, 1844, p. 6 (from the MS. Journal of the Royal Society).
513 Reprint for the Club of Odd Volumes, 1895, pp. 6, 19.
514 Probably Mather wrote Taututtipoag.
515 Letter of November 18, 1712 (addressed to John Woodward, M.D.); in the archives of the Royal Society. I use a copy kindly lent me by Mr. Frederick L. Gay. The letter is excerpted (briefly) in the Philosophical Transactions, No. 339 (for April–June, 1714), xxix. 63–64.
516 Petiveriana III, seu Naturæ Collectanea, London, 1717, p. 12, col. 2. Mather’s letter to Petiver, September 24, 1716, is in Sloane MS. 4065, fol. 255, and the original draught is in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
517 Philosophical Transactions, No. 454, xli. 149.
518 Herball, enlarged by Thomas Johnson, 1633, book ii. chap. 225, p. 681 (cited by the Oxford Dictionary).
519 Selections from an Ancient Catalogue, etc. (extracted from the American Journal of Science, vol. xlvii), New Haven, 1844, p. 6 (from the Journal Book of the Royal Society).
520 The name appears in so many forms that it is not always easy to run down references, as the different forms are often separately indexed. Among the forms are the following: Nenecrat, Nenekrat, Nenekunat, Ninechrat, Ninecraft, Ninecroft, Nenegelett, Ninegrad, Ninegratt, Ninegrett, Niniclade, Ninicraft, Ninicrite, Ninicroft, Niniglud, Ninigret, Ninigrett, Ninnecraft, Ninnecroft, Ninnegret, Ninnicraft, Ninnicroft, Ninnigret, Ninnigrett, Ninnycrate, Ninsecraft, Nonecraft, Nynigrett. For still other forms, see Plymouth Colony Records, ix. 234, x. 485. In addition, the first Ninigret also appears under the names of Anquawas, Ayanemo, Janemoe, Jvanemo, and Wanaconchat.
521 See E. R. Potter, Jr., Early History of Narragansett, in Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society (1835), iii. 98–99; W. F. Tucker, Historical Sketch of the Town of Charlestown, in Rhode Island (1877), pp. 23, note, 49, 50; H. C. Dorr, The Narragansetts, in Collections of the Rhode Island Historical Society (1885), vii. 205, 207, 230–233; S. G. Drake, Book of the Indians (1841), bk. ii. pp. 67–82. There is of course uncertainty about the genealogy of the Ninigrets: I follow Potter’s account.
522 Cf. p. 178, above.
523 Tucker says: “About one mile to the north-east of Cross’s Mills . . . is located the ancient burial-place of the royal family of the Narragansett Indians. . . . In May, 1859, an event . . . transpired in this town, and it may with propriety be mentioned here. The following citizens . . . repaired to the noted ‘Indian Burying Hill,’ and there opened a grave, to ascertain in what manner the Indians buried their dead, and to obtain, or collect, if possible, a few of the relics said to be deposited in the graves, as it was customary for them so to do. The grave which they opened was covered with large flat stones, and contained a log coffin. Two logs were split open, making four pieces; these pieces served as bottom, sides and top of the coffin; and were firmly bound together with iron chains. A brass kettle was found at one end of the coffin, and an iron kettle at the other end. Quite a large collection of relics were taken out of this grave, and carried to the village at Cross’ Mills, where a portion of them were sent to Brown University in Providence, as I have been informed” (Historical Sketch, pp. 79–80).
Subsequently, continues Tucker, Dr. Usher Parsons of Providence “opened quite a number of graves, to obtain a supply for a repository of scientific curiosities” (p. 80). This must have been in or about 1862, as at the meeting of the Massachusetts Historical Society held in February, 1863, Dr. Parsons “exhibited a large collection of curious relics of the Indians of Rhode Island, recently exhumed near the seashore, on the ground which formerly belonged to the Sachem Ninigret.” In January, 1869, shortly after the death of Dr. Parsons, Mr. Robert, C. Winthrop said that “many of us cannot fail to remember the enthusiasm which he exhibited in this apartment, when he explained some of the remains which had recently heen exhumed, and which were supposed to be those of one of the family of Ninigret.” (1 Proceedings, vi. 428, x. 410.) Undoubtedly it was the old sachem — the first of the name — whose relics Dr. Parsons thought he had found.
But in addition to the place called Burying Hill, “there is,” writes Tucker, “another Indian burying ground on Fort Neck, near the site of the old fort, where several graves are now [1877] visible” (Historical Sketch, pp. 80–81). It is possible that the Ninigret whose funeral is described in the text was buried in this place, as some of his descendants or family appear to have been.
524 About 1709 the Niantic Indians became practically wards of the Colony: see Rhode Island Colonial Records, vol. iv.
525 See p. 191, below.
526 New England Courant, February 4, 1723, p. 2.
527 Massachusetts Centinel, July 27, 1785, p. 3/l.
528 I am indebted to Mr. Gay for reminding me of this title. In the edition bearing the imprint “Cambridge, Printed for Hezekiah Usher, of Boston,” published about 1661, the title reads in part: “The Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs of the Old and New Testament, Faithfully Translated into English Metre. For the use, edification and comfort of the Saints in publick and private, especially in New-England” (Church Catalogue, iii. 1336).
529 Trip to New-England, London, 1699, p. 7. Ward also says that “they keep no Saints-Days, nor will they allow the Apostles to be Saints, yet they assume that Sacred Dignity to themselves; and say, in the Title Page of their Psalm-Book, Printed for the Edification of the Saints in Old and New-England” (p. 5). Cf. the preceding note.
530 This letter is now printed in full for the first time, though it was printed in part and in garbled form by Cotton Mather in his Magnalia, 1702, book iv. ch. ix. pp. 202–203 (edition of 1853, ii. 144–145), and (from Mather) by John Farmer in the American Quarterly Register, 1836, ix. 116–117. With it should be compared Leonard Hoar’s letter of March 27, 1661, to his nephew Josiah Flint (H. C. 1664) (1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vi. 100–108); and the letter of John Lowell (H. C. 1786) to his son John Amory Lowell (H. C. 1815), dated September 9, 1811 (Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, March, 1912, xx. 566–575). Many will not agree with Sibley that Shepard’s “Instructions are noticeable for their similarity to Hoar’s letter to Flint, cited on pp. 229–232” (Harvard Graduates, i. 334).
531 “Histories make Men Wise; Poets Witty; The Mathematicks Subtill; Naturall Philosophy deepe; Morall Graue; Logick and Rhetorick Able to Contend” (Bacon, Of Studies, in Essayes, 1625, p. 294).
532 “Virgilii Evangelisantis Christiados Libri XIII.. . . Instante Alexandre Rosaco Aberdonese. . . . Londini, . . . 1638.” There is a copy of this edition in the Boston Athenaeum. A notice of the Rev. Alexander Ross (1591–1654) will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. It is interesting to note that he died “at Bramshill, where he was living with Sir Andrew Henley,” the latter of whom was the brother of Mary Henley, the first wife of Sir Matthew Holworthy. (See Publications of this Society, xiii. 167 note, 170 note 1).
533 Publications, xiii. 259.
534 Massachusetts Centinel, May 22, 1784, pp. 1–2.
535 Publications, x. 253–258, xi. 195, xii. 254, xiii. 96–99.
536 Columbian Centinel, February 24, 1796, p. 2/4. For the derivation of “education,” see Greenough and Kittredge, Words and their Ways in English Speech, pp. 230–231.
537 The Laws published at Boston in 1798 contain the same provision, except that the fine is altered from “eight pence” to “eleven cents.”
538 Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts (1814), xi. 16–34.
539 Among others, Palfrey, History of New England, iii. 60 n, 69 n, 487 n; Sibley, Harvard Graduates, ii. 17, 130, 240, 266, 280, 304; Winsor, Memorial History of Boston, ii. 199, 413 n, 433, 495, 500, iv. 531; G. E. Littlefield, Early Boston Booksellers, pp. 139–143; S. G. Drake, History and Antiquities of Boston, 1856, pp. 459–467, 472 note, 595 and note.
540 “In the description of the Boston old maid — which must be taken entire if we would comprehend its truthfulness and its characteristic revelation of the time — the gay traveller [Dunton] records what he saw” (W. B. Weeden, Economic and Social History of New England, i. 299–300). This particular portrait, of which we shall say more later, may be found in the Letters from New England, pp. 98–102, or in the Life and Errors, i. 102–103.
Whitmore (Introduction to the Letters, p. xxiv, Boston, Prince Society, 1867) regards these letters “as unique sketches of New-England life, honestly drawn, and defective rather than erroneous.” Whitmore also (p. xviii) thinks that “the portraits of Mrs. Breck, Mrs. Green, and Comfort Wilkins, are descriptions of such Puritans as we may be proud to claim for Massachusetts.”
Throughout this article references to Dunton’s Letters from New England are to Whitmore’s edition made for the Prince Society, and — unless the contrary is stated — references to Dunton’s Life and Errors are to J. B. Nichols’s edition, in two volumes, London, 1818.
541 The sketches of his life in the Dictionary of National Biography, in John Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v. 59–83, in John Bowyer Nichols’s introduction to the 1818 edition of the Life and Errors, in Whitmore’s introduction to the Letters from New England, and elsewhere, all rest upon Dunton’s own account in the Life and Errors, first published in 1705.
542 Arber, Term Catalogues, i. 458.
543 Life and Errors, vol. i. p. 79.
544 Life and Errors, vol. i. p. 79.
545 In the Life and Errors (i. 87) Dunton gives the date November 2; in the Letters from New England (p. 16) he has it November 20. But Sewall (Diary for January 28, 1686) records that “Jenner came from He Wight the 13, of November” (5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 119). Dunton says (Letters, p. 22), “It was on Friday, the 29th October, we began to sail from the Isle of Wight.” It happens that in 1685 the 29th of October fell on Thursday.
546 “Being laid down upon the Bed one Day to repose my self, Palmer [Dunton’s apprentice and servant] comes down to me, and tells me, I had lost the sight of a very great and strange Creature, which our Captain call’d an Alligator; this Creature is of a vast length and breadth, (some say many yards in length:) in colour he is of a dark brown, which makes him the more imperceptable when he lies as a Trapan in the Waters. He is of so vast a strength that no Creature is able to make his Escape from him, if he gets but his Chaps fastened in them; for he has three Tere of Teeth in his Chaps and so firmly sealed and armed with Coat of Male, that you may as well shoot at a Rock, or strike against Bars of Iron, as offer to wound him” (Letters, p. 35).
547 Introduction to Letters, pp. xi, xxii.
548 History of New England, iii. 487 note 2.
549 Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v. 63.
550 Life and Errors, vol. i. p. xi.
551 Life and Errors, i. 89. In the Letters (p. 49) he says “almost four months.” Compare note 7, below. This is disproved by the fact (see p. 216 and note 2) that on February 16, 1686, Dunton was vouched for as a stranger by Francis Burroughs.
552 Letters, p. 69.
553 “I came from Boston on the Fifth of July and was in London on the fifth of August; which was three months shorter than my passage thither” (Letters, p. 302).
554 Letters, p. 26; Life and Errors, i. 86, 88.
555 Letters, pp. 53–54; Life and Errors, i. 89–90.
556 Capt. Roger Clap, Governor of the Castle.
557 On account of the critical state of affairs in England and their bearing on the matter of the charter, the arrival of a ship was just then an event of even more consequence than usual. It is not unlikely that Captain Jenner was particularly expected, for we know that just one year before, on January 28, 1685, “at the opening of this Court the Gouernor declared it, yt on the certeine or generall rumors in Mr Jenner, lately arrived, yt or charter was condemned, & judgment entred vp, &c, they lookt at it as an incumbent duty to acquaint the Court wth it, & leaue the consideration of what was or might be necessary to them, &c” (Massachusetts Colony Records, v. 465).
Our associate Mr. Henry H. Edes has kindly called my attention to the fact that there is much information about the Jenners in Wyman’s Genealogies and Estates of Charlestown, i. 551–553.
558 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 119.
559 Letters, p. 65 note. The record, which is herewith reproduced, is as follows:
Witnesse these presents that I ffrancis Burrowes of Bostone Merchant doe binde my selfe, my Executrs and Administratrs to Edward Willis Treasurer of the Towne of Bostone in the sume of ffortie pounds in mony that John Dunton booke seller or any of his ffamilie — shall not be chargable to this towne duringe his or any there abode therein. Witnesse my hand the 16th of ffebruary 1685.
That is sd Burrowes bindes him selfe as aboue to sd Willis & his successrs in the Office of a Treasurer, omited in ye due place aboue
Fran: Burroughs
John Dunton
The date in this entry is, of course, 1685–6. The entry is found in a small quarto book in the office of the City Clerk of Boston, who has kindly allowed it to be examined and photographed. The book is that described on p. 12 of City Document No. 171 (1899) as containing Bonds for Security against Strangers, 1679–1700.
560 Letters, p. 301; Life and Errors, i. 137.
561 Life and Errors, i. 138.
562 Life and Errors, i. 139.
563 Life and Errors, i. 151.
564 Life and Errors, i. 151.
565 “I am informed, that worthy citizen and bookseller, Mr. John Dunton, has made a faithful and painstaking collection [of speeches], which he shortly designs to publish in twelve volumes in folio, illustrated with copper plates. A work highly useful and curious, and altogether worthy of such a hand” (Swift’s Works, ed. Nichols, London, 1803, iii. 65).
566 vi. 182.
567 Life and Errors, ii. 760 note.
568 John Nichols (Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, v. 78 note) has “auction bookseller,” which J. B. Nichols (Life and Errors, vol. i. p. vi) repeats. But the reading in the annotated Dunciad (second edition) of 1729 (p. 107 note) is “broken bookseller.” So it is in Elwin and Courthope’s edition (iv. 140 note).
569 Pope’s Works, ed. Elwin and Courthope, iv. 140 note.
570 Life and Errors, ii. 465.
571 Life and Errors, Chapter xii, passim.
572 Life and Errors, ii. 759. The two letters from Key which Nichols reprints (Life and Errors, ii. 758–9) are distinctly those of a boon companion, not of a malicious critic.
573 The fourth “Project” in the second part of Athenianism (1710), for example.
574 Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century, iv. 88 note.
575 Remarks and Collections of Thomas Hearne, ed. C. E. Doble, Oxford (Oxford Historical Society), 1886, ii. 26.
576 “Philaret (or Lover of Vertue) was the Name that Cloris gave me in all the Letters she sent to me during the Time of our Correspondence” (Dunton’s Athenianism, 1710, p. 5 note). Cloris was Elizabeth Singer, afterwards Mrs. Rowe, “die göttliche Rowe,” with whom Dunton enjoyed a Platonic correspondence, if the evidence of his “Character of Madam Singer” (the first of the “Projects” in his Athenianism) can be relied upon.
577 Letters, pp. 56–57.
578 His own word.
579 Now Chelsea.
580 Now Weymouth.
581 Letters, p. 221.
582 Pp. 129, 130.
583 Letters, p. 249.
584 In it, however, Dunton writes, “In a few weeks I hope to take my Leave of this New World” (Letters, p. 298).
585 The / Life and Errors / Of / John Dunton / Late Citizen of London; / Written by Himself in Solitude. / With an Idea of a New Life; / Wherein is Shewn / How he’d Think, Speak, and Act, might he / Live over his Days again: / Intermix’d with the / New Discoveries / The Author has made / In his Travels Abroad, / And in his / Private Conversation at Home. / Together with the Lives and Characters of a Thou- / sand Persons now Living in London, &c. / Digested into Seven Stages, with their Respective Ideas. / He that has all his own Mistakes confest, / Stands next to him that never has transgrest, / And will be censur’d for a Fool by none, / But they who see no Errors of their own. / Foe’s Satyr upon himself, P. 6. / London: Printed for S. Malthus, 1705.
The copy formerly owned by Charles Eliot Norton is now in the Harvard University Library.
On the verso of p. 251 is advertised —
Preparing for the PRESS,
A Ramble through Six Kingdoms,
BY
JOHN DUNTON
LATE
Citizen of LONDON
Wherein he relates, 1. His Juvenile Travels. 2. The History of his Sea Voyages. 3. His Conversation in Foreign Parts.
With Characters of Men and Women, and almost ev’ry thing he Saw or Convers’d with.
The like Discoveries (in such a Method) never made by any Traveller before.
Illustrated with Fourty Cuts, representing the most pleasant Passages in the whole Adventure.
With Recommendatory Poems, written by the chief Wits in both Universities.
This Work will be finish’d by next Michaelmas and will be 2s. 6d. bound.
586 Second Series, ii. 97–124. About one-third of the account is omitted without notice, the text is “improved” somewhat in the manner of Sparks, and the paragraphing is greatly changed.
587 Even the edition of 1818, however, has omissions, generally not indicated: p. 98, character of Mr. C. (cf. ed. 1705, p. 131); p. 114, a paragraph omitted (cf. ed. 1705, pp. 156–157, and Letters, pp. 141–142); p. 122, one clause omitted (cf. ed. 1705, pp. 168–169); p. 133, a dialogue of about two and one-half pages on Platonic love omitted (cf. ed. 1705, pp. 125–128). These omitted passages, if restored, would make the book coarser and more discursive; in other words, more like the Chester MS of the Letters.
588 MS Rawl., Miscel. 71 and 72. See Life and Errors, ii. 753–760. These manuscripts contain Dunton’s version of the Letters from New England, and more than eighty other pieces, most of which seem to be either actual letters to or from Dunton, or parts of fictitious correspondence. Often they are love letters, with answers in shorthand. There would seem to be material here for a more thorough study of Dunton’s life and works than has yet been made.
589 This transcript, which I shall refer to as the Chester MS, is now in the possession of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the Librarian of which has kindly allowed me to consult it. The different letters are paged separately; in referring to the MS, accordingly, the letter as well as the page is specified.
590 Letters, pp. 24 ff.
591 There is no description of Medford in the Letters: perhaps because Josselyn has none. Whitmore noted (pp. 66–69) that Dunton’s description of Boston is borrowed from Josselyn.
592 The question where Josselyn got his descriptions of these towns is interesting. Some of them (Boston, Charlestown, New-Town, Lynn, Dorchester, Roxbury, Wenham, and Ipswich) he could have got, either wholly or in part, from Johnson’s Wonder-Working Providence (1654); in all of them except the description of Wenham he may have borrowed from Wood’s New Englands Prospect (1634). But of the three books (Wood, Johnson, and Josselyn) we know that Dunton must have used Josselyn. For convenience a list of these descriptions of towns is added, with page references to Wood (as edited by Charles Deane in 1865 for the Prince Society), Johnson (ed. J. F. Jameson, New York, 1910) and Josselyn (Veazie’s edition):
|
Boston |
Wood |
41–42 |
Johnson |
70–71 |
Josselyn |
124–125 |
|
Charlestown |
“ |
43 |
“ |
68–69 |
“ |
126 |
|
New-Town |
“ |
43 |
“ |
90 |
“ |
127 |
|
Winnisimet |
“ |
44 |
“ |
— |
“ |
128 |
|
Lynn |
“ |
45 |
“ |
73 |
“ |
128 |
|
Nantascot |
“ |
3 |
“ |
— |
“ |
122–123 |
|
Wissaguset |
“ |
40 |
“ |
— |
“ |
123 |
|
Braintree |
“ |
40 |
“ |
— |
“ |
123 |
|
Dorchester |
“ |
41 |
“ |
69–70 |
“ |
123–124 |
|
Roxbury |
“ |
41 |
“ |
71–72 |
“ |
124 |
|
Wenham |
“ |
— |
“ |
226 |
“ |
129–130 |
|
Ipswich or Agawam |
“ |
48–49 |
“ |
96 |
“ |
129 |
It is curious that Jossely follows Wood’s order very closely in describing these towns, and that Dunton follows Josselyn’s order with equal closeness.
593 So in Whitmore.
594 Genuineness as letters, I mean. The identity of the author is not being called in question.
595 P. iv.
596 Pp. 305–306.
597 P. 259.
598 Letters, p. 65.
599 Everett Kimball, The Public Life of Joseph Dudley (Harvard Historical Studies), New York, 1911, pp. 24–25.
600 Letters, p. 137.
601 Sewall’s Diary for May 14, 1686 (i. 137–139). What Randolph brought was the exemplification of the judgment against the charter and the commission for the new government. Sewall (Diary for May 17, 1686) describes the meeting at which Dudley showed these papers and announced to the General Court that he “could treat them no longer as Governour and Company.”
602 Letters, pp. 194 ff.
603 Sibley, No. 32. Cotton Mather’s Life of John Eliot was first published at Boston in 1691. In the same year Dunton brought out a second edition in London. According to advertisements in the Athenian Mercury this second edition seems to have appeared on or about August 3, 1691 (Athenian Mercury, vol. iii. nos. 2 and 3). There was a third edition (London: John Dunton) in 1694, and the work was also reprinted in the Magnalia. Which of these Dunton used I do not know.
604 “Having taken my leave of Mr. Cotton and Nathaniel Mather (whose Life I afterwards Printed) and after that, of their Reverend Father, I return’d home hugely pleas’d with my first Visit” (p. 75).
605 Sibley, No. 7. This work, “Printed by J. Astwood for J. Dunton, 1689,” was entered in Trinity Term, 1689 (Arber, Term Catalogues, ii. 268). Nathaniel Mather died October 17, 1688.
606 Magnalia, 1702, bk. iii. pp. 194–195.
607 Letters, p. 75.
608 Diary for August 20, 1697 (7 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 227). It seems almost impossible that “a Church-History of New England” can refer to any of Cotton Mather’s works except the Magnalia, which is regularly referred to by that title in the Diary and which is outlined under that title (“A Schæme of his Church-History of New England”) in Cotton Mather’s Johannes in Eremo, 1695 (Sibley, No. 52).
609 Letters, p. 112.
610 P. 112. In the first edition of the Life and Errors (p. 147) “Sir Daniel” and “More Reformation” are printed in capitals; in the Chester MS (Letter iii, pp. 52–53), they are not.
611 Arber, Term Catalogues, iii. 371. The Harvard University Library has a copy which, though quite clearly of the first edition, has the date trimmed off. Note that the motto on the title-page of the Life and Errors is from Defoe’s More Reformation, which is there referred to by its sub-title (see p. 220 note 7).
612 Possibly an exception should be made to this generalization. In his account (p. 194) of John Eliot, Dunton, who is following Cotton Mather’s account very closely, writes: “And this Wife of his Youth [Eliot’s] became also the Staff of his Age, and left him not until about half a year ago.” The italics are mine. Cotton Mather had written (Life of Eliot, London [John Dunton], 1694, p. 7; Magnalia, ed. 1702, bk. iii. p. 173), “she left him not until about three or four Years before his own Departure unto those Heavenly Regions where they now together see light.” This is very puzzling. John Eliot’s wife died March 22, 1687 (Savage, Genealogical Dictionary, ii. 110). “About half a year” after that takes us to September, 1687, as the approximate date when that particular sentence was written. But Dunton is quoting an account which, presumably, was not accessible to him before 1691. Why, when he was changing Mather’s words, he did not put the date back so that it would agree with the supposed date of his letter, is very hard to see.
613 “And thus, Reader, I have given you the humours of a far different sort of Ladies from the former” (p. 116). So on pp. 102 and 105. The word “Reader” is used in the corresponding passages (pp. 103, 106, 108) of the Life and Errors. I conjecture that Dunton neglected to remove the word when he elaborated these passages from the Life and Errors.
614 The point is made clearer by an examination of the Chester MS. The parts which Whitmore omits are, in almost every case, destructive of the idea that Dunton’s chapters are actual letters.
615 Chester MS, Letter i, p. 12. The poem, if inserted in the Letters, would be on p. 13, after the sentence which now concludes the paragraph.
616 This was Alexander Radcliffe’s “Bacchanalia Cœlestia: a Poem, in Praise of Punch, compos’d by the Gods and Goddesses,” 1680. It was reprinted in “The Ramble: an anti-heroick Poem. Together with some Terrestrial Hymns and Carnal Ejaculations,” 1682. There is a short sketch of Alexander Radcliffe in the Dictionary of National Biography. It is to be noted that the sub-title of Radcliffe’s poem explains the sentence referred to in the previous note.
617 Including one as important as Randolph, whom Dunton calls Randal (Life and Errors, ed. 1705, p. 152). He also has Higgins for Higginson and Geery for Gerrish (Letters, pp. 254–255, 272), although he says that he was entertained by both. Yet of course the spelling of proper names in the seventeenth century, even by their owners, was vagarious.
618 Sewall’s Diary for March 17, 1686 (i. 128).
619 Letters, pp. 118 ff. James Morgan, for the crime of murder, was executed on March 11, 1686.
620 “But before I leave off this subject, I must bring Morgan to his Execution, whither I rid with Mr. Cotton Mather, after the Sermon was ended. Some thousands of the People following to see the Execution. As I rid along I had several glimpses of poor Morgan, as he went” (Letters, p. 135).
621 “Mr. Cotton Mather accompanied James Morgan to the place of Execution and prayed with him there” (Sewall’s Diary, March 11, 1686, i. 126).
“There has been since, a second Edition of the Book [the sermons on Morgan’s crime and punishment preached by Increase Mather, Joshua Moody, and Cotton Mather. First edition, Boston, 1686; second edition, Boston, 1687], with a Copy of my Discourse with the poor Malefactor walking to his Execution added at the End” (Cotton Mather’s Diary for February 12, 1686, 7 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 123). Mather’s note is written in the margin. For an account of this book see Sibley, No. 5, and also p. 250 note 2, below.
622 “But from the House of Mourning, I rambled to the House of Feasting; for Mr. York, Mr. King, with Madam Brick, Mrs. Green, Mrs. Toy, the Damscll [Comfort Wilkins] and my self, took a Ramble to a place call’d Governour’s Island, about a mile from Boston, to see a whole Hog roasted, as did several other Bostonians. We went all in a Boat; and having treated the Fair Sex, returned in the Evening” (Letters, p. 137).
623 Sewall’s Diary, February, 1, 3, 7, 12, 13; March 12 (i. 120, 121, 126–127).
624 Sewall’s Diary, March 11, 1686 (i. 126).
625 Sewall’s Diary, March 11, 1686 (i. 126).
626 Letters, p. 105. On his title-page (p. [5]), Dunton announces “Particular Characters of Men and Women;” in outlining his third letter, he proposes to write “The Character of my Boston Landlord, his Wife and Daughter” and to “conclude with the character of Madam Brick as the Flower of Boston, and some other Ladyes” (p. 57). And cf. pp. 61, 63, 88, 93, 98, 102, 110, 112, 281.
627 The character becomes more intelligible as a manifestation of its time if we recall the fact that the influence of classicism was favorable to characterization by rather strict adherence to type. From Aristotle onward, in fact, there is a series of explicit instructions and criticisms on this point. The following passage, from Jeremy Collier’s Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage (1698), is a good seventeenth-century example:
The propriety of Manners consists in a Conformity of Practise and Principle; of Nature, and Behaviour. For the purpose: An old Man must not appear with the Profuseness and Levity of Youth; A Gentleman must not talk like a Clown, nor a Country Girl like a Town Jilt. And when the Characters are feign’d ’tis Horace’s Rule to keep them Uniform, and consistent, and agreeable to their first setting out. The Poet must be careful to hold his Persons tight to their Calling and pretentions. He must not shift, and shuffle their Understandings; Let them skip from Wits to Blockheads, nor from Courtiers to Pedants. On the other hand. If their business is playing the Fool, keep them strictly to their Duty, and never indulge them in fine Sentences. To manage otherwise, is to disert Nature, and makes the Play appear monstrous, and Chimerical. So that instead of an Image of Life, ’tis rather an Image of Impossibility (third edition, 1698, pp. 218–219).
628 P. 15.
629 Sir Thomas Overbury / His / Wife. / With / Addition Of / many new Elegies upon his / untimely and much lamented death. / As Also / New Newes, and diuers more Characters, / (neuer before annexed) written by him- / selfe and other learned Gentlemen. / The ninth impression augmented. / London, / Printed by Edward Griffin for Laurence L’isle, and / are to be sold at his shop at the Tigers head in / Pauls Churchyard, 1616 (British Museum, 12331. aa. 46).
630 Overbury’s Miscellaneous Works, ed. E. F. Rimbault (Library of Old Authors), London, 1856, pp. 168–169.
631 Overbury himself has a character of a prison; Earle (1628) has characters of a tavern, a bowling-alley, Paul’s Walk, and a prison; and of the thirty-six characters in Donald Lupton’s London and the Country Carbonadoed, and Quartred into Seuerall Characters (1632) only nine are of people. The last book, however, is exceptional in this respect.
632 There are definitions of the character in S. Person’s An Anatomicall Lecture of Man . . . in Essays and Characters, 1664; Richard Flecknoe’s Fifty-five Enigmatical Characters, 1665; Seventy-eight Characters of so many Vertuous and Vitious Persons, 1677; Sir Roger L’Estrange’s A Brief History of the Times &c. in a Preface to the Third Volume of Observators, 1687.
633 “Every line is a sentence, & every two a period . . . ; tis all matter, and to the matter, and has nothing of superfluity, nothing of circumlocution” (Flecknoe).
“Here a man writes a great deal in a little room” (Person).
634 That the character strives for wit has already appeared from the definitions of Overbury and Johnson.
635 “It not only delights but teaches and moves withall, and is a Sermon as well as Picture to every one” (Flecknoe).
636 “It is the Counterpane of Natures Book, and also of each Individuum” (Person).
“The subject of them is taken from the observations of several Natures, Humors, and Dispositions; and whilst I name no body, let no body name themselves if they be wise” (Seventy-eight Characters).
“A Character, . . . Shoots Hail-Shot, and Strikes a great many more than ever the Marks-man, either Aim’d at, or Dreamt of” (L’Estrange).
This last phase of the matter is excellently put in the dialogue about the “Character-Coat” in Defoe’s Review (vol. vii. numb. 15) reprinted in Mr. Andrew McFarland Davis’s A Bibliographical Puzzle (Publications of this Society, xiii. 9–10).
637 “It extols to Heaven, or depresses into Hell; having no mid’place for Purgatory left” (Flecknoe).
638 To bring to a close this explanation of the character there is reprinted below John Earle’s portrait of “A Modest Man,” which appeared in 1628 in the Microcosmography:
A Modest Man
Is a far finer man than he knows of; one that shewes better to all men then himselfe, and so much the better to al men, as lesse to himselfe: for no quality sets a man off like this, and commends him more against his will: And he can put up any injury sooner then this, (as he cals it) your Irony. You shall heare him confute his commenders, and giving reasons how much they are mistaken, and is angry almost, if they do not beleeve him. Nothing threatens him so much as great expectation, which he thinks more prejudiciall then your under-opinion, because it is easier to make that false then this true. He is one that sneaks from a good action, as one that had pilfered, and dare not justifie it, and is more blushingly deprehended in this, then others in sin. That counts al publike declarings of himselfe but so many penances before the people, and the more you applaud him, the more you abash him, and he recovers not his face a moneth after. One that is easie to like anything of another man’s, and thinkes all hee knowes not of him better then that he knowes. He excuses that to you, which another would impute, and if you pardon him, is satisfied. One that stands in no opinion because it is his owne, but suspects it rather, because it is his owne, and is confuted, and thankes you. Hee sees nothing more willingly then his errors; and it is his error sometimes to be too soone perswaded. He is content to be Auditor, where hee only can speake, and content to goe away, and thinke himselfe instructed. No man is so weake that he is ashamed to learne of, and is lesse ashamed to confesse it: and he findes many times even in the dust, what others overlooke and lose. Every man’s presence is a kinde of bridle to him, to stop the roving of his tongue and passions: and even impudent men looke for this reverence from him, and distaste that in him, which they suffer in themselves, as one in whom vice is ill-favoured, and shewes more scurvily then another. And hee is coward to nothing more then an ill tongue, and whosoever dare lye on him hath power over him, and if you take him by his looke, he is guilty. The maine ambition of his life is not to be discredited: and for other things, his desires are more limited then his fortunes, which he thinkes preferment though never so meane, and that he is to doe something to deserve this. Hee is too tender to venter on great places, and would not hurt a dignity to helpe himselfe. If he doe, it was the violence of his friends constrained him, and how hardly soever hee obtaine it, he was harder perswaded to seeke it.
639 E. C. Baldwin’s bibliography of character-books (Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, New Scries, xii. no. 1, pp. 104–114), though the largest in print, could be supplemented by hundreds of other titles. The collections and notes of Philip Bliss, appended to his edition (London, 1811) of Earle’s Microcosmography, are very useful. Some of the best characters are collected in Henry Morley’s Character Writings of the Seventeenth Century (Morley’s Carisbrooke Library, London, 1891).
640 Letters, pp. 88–89.
641 I have used Pickering’s edition, London, 1840. The character there occupies pages 88–91.
642 Lib. 13 de Trinitat. c. 3. The footnote is Fuller’s.
643 Of the Class of 1669. Sibley (Harvard Graduates, ii. 266) cites Dunton’s character of Epes.
644 i. 128. Cf. note 2 on p. 252, below.
645 The last sentence is from “A Contemplative Man;” the rest is from “a Downright Scholar” (Microcosmography, ed. 1811, pp. 61–63, 93).
646 Letters, pp. 11–12, 120–121, 169–170. The sources are indicated in the table (pp. 247–253, below).
647 Whitmore has “Beds.” Here, and several times elsewhere, Dunton is so faithful to the original that one can safely emend Whitmore’s text.
648 The three others are Mrs. Ab——1; Doll S——der; and Mrs. ——, who in the Life and Errors (i. 110–111) is called Mrs. H. For their sources, see the table, pp. 247–253, below.
649 Letters, p. 106 note.
650 The First Church of Boston. Whitmore might have added that Dunton’s Madam Brick had been a widow two years (Letters, p. 110). Whether this is true of Mrs. Robert Breck I do not know.
Joanna Mason, the daughter of Arthur and Joanna (Parker) Mason, was born March 26, 1664 (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ix. 92). The date of her marriage to Robert Breck seems not to be known. Of her two children, the elder, Joanna, was born June 12, 1681 (ix. 154), and the younger, Robert, on April 30, 1683 (ix. 159). The Widow Brick married Michael Perry on July 12, 1694 (ix. 218).
651 The first edition appears to have been printed at Oxford in 1673. The British Museum has a copy of the second edition (Oxford, 1673) and of the third edition (Oxford, 1675). The Harvard Library has a copy of the fifth edition (Oxford, 1677) as well as a folio volume, very well printed “at the Theater in Oxford” in 1684, containing The Ladies Calling as the first piece in The Second Part Of The Works Of the Learned and Pious Author Of The Whole Duty of Man.
On the much disputed authorship of The Whole Duty of Man, see the Introduction to Pickering’s edition of it (1842); Hearne’s Remarks and Collections, ed. C. E. Doble, Oxford Historical Society, i. 17, 19, 282, 324; ii. 299; iv. 420; C. E. Doble in the Academy (1882), ii. 348, 364, 382; and the articles in the Dictionary of National Biography on Richard Allestree, Richard Sterne, and John Fell. Mr. Doble thinks that The Whole Duty of Man was written by Sterne and revised by Fell.
652 It will be observed that Dunton uses, in addition to The Ladies Calling, two short passages from Thomas Fuller’s character of “The Good Widow” in The Holy and the Profane State (1642).
653 Fuller, “The Good Widow” (Holy and Profane State, ed. 1840, p. 19).
654 Fuller, “The Good Widow” (Holy and Profane State, ed. 1840, p. 19).
655 So Whitmore, and so Chester MS, Letter iii, p. 48. One would expect “she,” as in The Ladies Calling.
656 Whitmore notes: “Here the manuscript is imperfect.”
657 But to be found on p. 8 of Chester MS, Letter i.
658 This character originally appeared in the sixth edition (1615) of the Overbury collection, and is regularly spoken of, in a loose way, as Overbury’s. But in the second edition (1615) of John Stephens’s New Essayes and Characters, a person who signs himself I. Cocke claims as his own three of the Overbury characters, of which one is the Almanac-maker. There is a copy of Stephens’s book in the Harvard University Library.
659 Omitted by Whitmore. Chester MS, Letter i, pp. 23–24.
660 Omitted by Whitmore. Chester MS, Letter i, pp. 23–24.
661 Omitted by Whitmore. Chester MS, Letter i, pp. 23–24.
662 John Josselyn, An Account of Two Voyages to New England, Made during the years 1638, 1663, Boston, William Veazie, 1865.
663 Letter / From / New-England / Concerning their Customs, Manners, / And / Religion. / . . . / London. / Printed for Randolph Taylor near Stationers Hall, 1682. Reprinted in facsimile by the Club for Colonial Reprints of Providence, Rhode Island, Providence, 1905. Edited by George Parker Winship.
664 Dunton copies Josselyn’s statements of the punishments; i. e., p. 72, first paragraph as far as the colon; all of the second paragraph; the first sentence in the third; as far as the semicolon in the fourth; all of the last; the first sentence in the first paragraph on p. 73; the first sentence in the second paragraph on p. 73.
665 A / Collection / Of the choicest / Epigrams / And / Characters / of / Richard Flecknoe. / Being rather a New Work, / then a New Impression / of the Old. / Printed for the Author 1673, p. 34. There is a copy in the Harvard University Library.
666 Omitted by Whitmore. Chester MS, Letter iii, pp. 28–29.
667 Bodleian Library. Wood 868. (5.)
668 In the Life and Errors (pp. 110–111) she is called Mrs. H——.
669 Whitmore divides the third letter into two parts.
670 A Sermon / Occasioned by the Execution of / a man found Guilty of / Murder / Preached at Boston in N. E. March 11th 1685/6 / Together with the Confession, Last Expressions, / & solemn Warning of that Murderer to all per- / sons; especially to Young men, to beware of those / Sins which brought him to his miserable End. / By Increase Mather, Teacher of / Church of Christ. / The Second Edition. / [Texts: Deut. 19. 20, 21; Prov. 28. 17] / Boston, Printed by R. P. Sold by J. Brunning / Book-seller, at his Shop at the Corner of the / Prison-Lane next the Exchange. Anno 1687.
This seems to serve as the general title for the volume; at least, the copy in the Harvard Library, which is paged continuously, has no other title at the beginning. Increase Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 1–36. Then comes “The / Call of the Gospel / Applyed / Unto All men in general, and / Unto a Condemned Malefactor in particular. / In a Sermon, Preached on the 7th / Day of March. 1686. / At the Request, and in the Hearing of a man under / a just Sentence of Death for the horrid Sin of / Murder. / By Cotton Mather. / Pastor to a Church at Boston in N. E. / The Second Edition. / [Text] / [Motto] / Printed at Boston, by Richard Pierce. 1687.” Cotton Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 37–82, and is followed by “An / Exhortation / To A Condemned / Malefactor / Delivered March the 7th 1686. / By Joshua Moody, Preacher of / the Gospel at Boston in New-England. / [Texts] / Printed at Boston, by R. P. Anno 1687.” Moody’s sermon occupies pp. 83–113. Then follows (p. 114) an address from “The Printer to the Reader,” which is signed “R. P.” Then comes (pp. 115–124) “The Discourse of the Minister with / James Morgan on the Way to his Execution.”
671 These borrowings are, of course, acknowledged by Dunton.
672 A Sermon / Occasioned by the Execution of / a man found Guilty of / Murder / Preached at Boston in N. E. March 11th 1685/6 / Together with the Confession, Last Expressions, / & solemn Warning of that Murderer to all per- / sons; especially to Young men, to beware of those / Sins which brought him to his miserable End. / By Increase Mather, Teacher of / Church of Christ. / The Second Edition. / [Texts: Deut. 19. 20, 21; Prov. 28. 17] / Boston, Printed by R. P. Sold by J. Brunning / Book-seller, at his Shop at the Corner of the / Prison-Lane next the Exchange. Anno 1687.
This seems to serve as the general title for the volume; at least, the copy in the Harvard Library, which is paged continuously, has no other title at the beginning. Increase Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 1–36. Then comes “The / Call of the Gospel / Applyed / Unto All men in general, and / Unto a Condemned Malefactor in particular. / In a Sermon, Preached on the 7th / Day of March. 1686. / At the Request, and in the Hearing of a man under / a just Sentence of Death for the horrid Sin of / Murder. / By Cotton Mather. / Pastor to a Church at Boston in N. E. / The Second Edition. / [Text] / [Motto] / Printed at Boston, by Richard Pierce. 1687.” Cotton Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 37–82, and is followed by “An / Exhortation / To A Condemned / Malefactor / Delivered March the 7th 1686. / By Joshua Moody, Preacher of / the Gospel at Boston in New-England. / [Texts] / Printed at Boston, by R. P. Anno 1687.” Moody’s sermon occupies pp. 83–113. Then follows (p. 114) an address from “The Printer to the Reader,” which is signed “R. P.” Then comes (pp. 115–124) “The Discourse of the Minister with / James Morgan on the Way to his Execution.”
673 These borrowings are, of course, acknowledged by Dunton.
674 A Sermon / Occasioned by the Execution of / a man found Guilty of / Murder / Preached at Boston in N. E. March 11th 1685/6 / Together with the Confession, Last Expressions, / & solemn Warning of that Murderer to all per- / sons; especially to Young men, to beware of those / Sins which brought him to his miserable End. / By Increase Mather, Teacher of / Church of Christ. / The Second Edition. / [Texts: Deut. 19. 20, 21; Prov. 28. 17] / Boston, Printed by R. P. Sold by J. Brunning / Book-seller, at his Shop at the Corner of the / Prison-Lane next the Exchange. Anno 1687.
This seems to serve as the general title for the volume; at least, the copy in the Harvard Library, which is paged continuously, has no other title at the beginning. Increase Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 1–36. Then comes “The / Call of the Gospel / Applyed / Unto All men in general, and / Unto a Condemned Malefactor in particular. / In a Sermon, Preached on the 7th / Day of March. 1686. / At the Request, and in the Hearing of a man under / a just Sentence of Death for the horrid Sin of / Murder. / By Cotton Mather. / Pastor to a Church at Boston in N. E. / The Second Edition. / [Text] / [Motto] / Printed at Boston, by Richard Pierce. 1687.” Cotton Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 37–82, and is followed by “An / Exhortation / To A Condemned / Malefactor / Delivered March the 7th 1686. / By Joshua Moody, Preacher of / the Gospel at Boston in New-England. / [Texts] / Printed at Boston, by R. P. Anno 1687.” Moody’s sermon occupies pp. 83–113. Then follows (p. 114) an address from “The Printer to the Reader,” which is signed “R. P.” Then comes (pp. 115–124) “The Discourse of the Minister with / James Morgan on the Way to his Execution.”
675 These borrowings are, of course, acknowledged by Dunton.
676 A Sermon / Occasioned by the Execution of / a man found Guilty of / Murder / Preached at Boston in N. E. March 11th 1685/6 / Together with the Confession, Last Expressions, / & solemn Warning of that Murderer to all per- / sons; especially to Young men, to beware of those / Sins which brought him to his miserable End. / By Increase Mather, Teacher of / Church of Christ. / The Second Edition. / [Texts: Deut. 19. 20, 21; Prov. 28. 17] / Boston, Printed by R. P. Sold by J. Brunning / Book-seller, at his Shop at the Corner of the / Prison-Lane next the Exchange. Anno 1687.
This seems to serve as the general title for the volume; at least, the copy in the Harvard Library, which is paged continuously, has no other title at the beginning. Increase Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 1–36. Then comes “The / Call of the Gospel / Applyed / Unto All men in general, and / Unto a Condemned Malefactor in particular. / In a Sermon, Preached on the 7th / Day of March. 1686. / At the Request, and in the Hearing of a man under / a just Sentence of Death for the horrid Sin of / Murder. / By Cotton Mather. / Pastor to a Church at Boston in N. E. / The Second Edition. / [Text] / [Motto] / Printed at Boston, by Richard Pierce. 1687.” Cotton Mather’s sermon occupies pp. 37–82, and is followed by “An / Exhortation / To A Condemned / Malefactor / Delivered March the 7th 1686. / By Joshua Moody, Preacher of / the Gospel at Boston in New-England. / [Texts] / Printed at Boston, by R. P. Anno 1687.” Moody’s sermon occupies pp. 83–113. Then follows (p. 114) an address from “The Printer to the Reader,” which is signed “R. P.” Then comes (pp. 115–124) “The Discourse of the Minister with / James Morgan on the Way to his Execution.”
677 A Key into the Language of America: Or, An help to the Language of the Natives in that part of America, called New-England. Together, with briefe Observations of the Customes, Manners and Worships, etc. of the aforesaid Natives, . . . By Roger Williams . . . London, . . . 1643. (Reprinted by the Narragansett Club, Fifth Series, Volume i. Providence, 1866). My references, like Whitmore’s, are to the numbering of the volume, which contains other tracts besides the Key.
678 Through the kindness of Professor W. W. Lawrence of Columbia University, Mr. Will T. Hale transcribed for me from the copy of the original edition in the New York Public Library the port ions of Eliot’s book here used by Dunton. The text of Eliot is copied almost verbatim.
On the date of the original, Sabin (No. 22148) remarks: “The date of 1665 which has been assigned to it, is doubtless incorrect, as on page 25 following Eliot speaks of John Speen and Anthony as living in 1670, whose ‘Dying Speeches’ are given in the tract named.”
679 From his account in the Letters of the visit to Salem, Dunton omits a character of Mr. Daniel Epes (Life and Errors, p. 128), which is taken from Earle’s “A Down-right Scholar” (Microcosmography, 1811, pp. 61–64). Whitmore (p. 256 note) notices the omission, quotes the character of Mr. Epes and the two following paragraphs from the Life and Errors, and observes that they “doubtless should be in the text” of the Letters at this point. But he strangely fails to remember that the third of these paragraphs, very slightly modified to make it fit Boston instead of Salem, had been incorporated in the Letters and is to be found on pp. 62–63 of his own edition.
680 By Whitmore, in his Introduction, p. xxiii.
681 Whether Dunton did this out of self-esteem and the desire to steal a reputation, or with the wish to soften formal exposition into something more entertaining, does not for the moment concern us. Probably his motives were mixed.
682 “A King turn’d Thresher. By Mr. Dunton” (Athenianism, pp. 213–215; Maggots, pp. 91–96); “A Covetous old Fellow having taken Occasion to hang himself a little; another comes in, in the Nick, and cuts him down; but instead of thanking him for his Life, he accuses him for spoiling the Rope. — By Mr. Dunton” (Athenianism, p. 215; Maggots, pp. 68–70); “On the Bear-fac’d Lady. By Mr. Dunton” (Athenianism, pp. 218–220; Maggots, pp.29–31); “The Innocent Fraud: Or, the Lyar in Mode and Figure. By Mr. Dunton” (Athenianism, pp. 221–222; Maggots, pp. 62–63).
683 Maggots: / Or, / Poems / On / Several / Subjects, / Never before Handled. / By a Schollar. / London, / Printed for John Dunton, at the Sign / of the Black Raven, at the Corner of Princes / Street, near the Royal Exchange. 1685.
There is a copy in the Harvard University Library.
684 Life and Errors, i. 187.
685 Among the earlier characters drawn on are Earle’s “Grave Divine,” which furnishes parts of the sketches of Mr. Spademan (pp. 140–141), Mr. Lobb (p. 175), Mr. Trail (p. 176); Earle’s “Modest Man,” which becomes Mr. Cleave (p. 228) and also furnishes a part of Mr. Samuel Hool (p. 255); and Earle’s “Staid Man,” parts of which go to make up Mr. Grantham (p. 246), Mr. Darby (p. 247), and Mr. Littlebury (p. 256). Bishop Hall’s characters are also used: his “Humble Man” for parts of Mr. Merreal (p. 254) and Mr. Sheafe (p. 254), and his “Truly-Noble” man in Mr. Proctor (pp. 255–256) and in parts of Mr. Merreal (p. 254), Mr. Sheafe (p. 254), and Mr. Samuel Hool (p. 255). S. Malthus (p. 459), who published Dunton’s Life and Errors, could hardly have been pleased to find on reading it that she was thought to combine the faults of Earle’s “Detractor” and his “She Precise Hypocrite.”
686 See E. C. Baldwin, Character Books of the Seventeenth Century in Relation to the Development of the Novel, Western Reserve Bulletin, October, 1900; H. S. Canby, The Short Story in English, New York, 1909, especially Chapters viii and ix; F. W. Chandler, The Literature of Roguery, Boston and New York, 1907, especially Chapter vii; Martha Pike Conant, The Oriental Tale in England in the Eighteenth Century, New York, 1908, especially Chapter iv; W. L. Cross, The Development of the English Novel, New York, 1899; Rudolf Furst, Die Vorläufer der Modernen Novelle im aehtzehnten Jahrhundert, Halle, 1897; Charlotte Morgan, The Rise of the Novel of Manners, New York, 1911 (good bibliography); Sir Walter Raleigh, The English Novel, New York, 1904.
687 Present State of New-England, With Respect to the Indian War, London, 1675, pp. 12–14. An interesting discussion on “Indian talk” will be found in our associate Professor Kittredge’s Old Farmer and his Almanack, pp. 333–378.
688 C. Mather, Angel of Bethesda, 1721, p. 134; “Some Account of what is said of Inoculating or Transplanting the Small Pox. By the Learned Dr. Emanuel Timonius, and Jacobus Pylarinus. With some Remarks thereon. To which are added, A Few Quarries in Answer to the Scruples of many about the Lawfulness of this Method. Published by Dr. Zabdiel Boylstone,” 1721, p. 9. For these references I am indebted to Mr. Kittredge.
689 New York Gazette, October 12, 1747 (New Jersey Archives, xii. 406–410).
690 The Druid, Works (1802), iv. 458–460.
691 Rev. Samuel Cooper (H. C. 1743).
692 Works, iv. 259–261 note.
693 Independent Chronicle, September 2, 1779, p. 1.
694 Massachusetts Province Laws, v. 1194–1196, 1369–1370.
695 For references to a proposed academy in England, see the Nation, 1902, lxxiv. 287, 306, 365, 406, 425.
696 Works, vii. 249–250. The letter is also printed in Sparks’s Diplomatic Correspondence of the American Revolution (1829), v. 324–326; and in Wharton’s Revolutionary Diplomatic Correspondence of the United States (1889), iv. 45–47. In the latter work, the letter is wrongly dated in one place (i. 1) September 6, and in another place (i. 6) September 3, 1780. Congress apparently took no action in regard to Adams’s letter, and the receipt of the letter by Congress is not recorded in the Journals of the Continental Congress (1810), xviii, which volume ends with December 29, 1780.
697 ix. 510. Brief extracts from these two letters were communicated by the present writer to the Boston Evening Transcript of February 28, 1896, and thence were quoted by Professor William A. Neilson in the Nation of May 8, 1902 (lxxiv. 365).
698 Adams’s Works, ii. 340.
699 Royal American Magazine, January, 1774, i. 6–7. That number was advertised as “This Day Published” in the Boston Gazette of February 7, 1774, p. 3/2. The article was reprinted in the New Hampshire Gazette (Portsmouth) of April 22, 1774, p. 2/3, and very likely in other contemporary newspapers.
700 The third pamphlet is a reprint of Holmes’s article in 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, vii. 1–38.
701 It is possible that something further was written underneath this inscription, as apparently the tops of letters are visible; but if so, the rest of the inscription was cut off by the binder.
702 In his “Memorial Address read at the Funeral of John Angier Shaw, in the Meeting House of the First Congregational Society in Bridgewater, October 8, 1873,” published in 1874, the Rev. Richard M. Hodges said:
In connection with education, I call to mind that Mr. Shaw had a nice perception of the beauty of art in its relation to architecture. The plan of the Episcopal Church in this town was the product of his pencil. And there is extant in Christ Church, in Cambridge, a picture drawn by him in his undergraduate days at college, giving a pleasing representation of the church edifice — noted for its symmetry — and the surroundings, as they appeared in the beginning of this century (p. 23).
703 Other words were also written in this page, but have been erased. Attached to a fly leaf is a sheet (torn in two) containing notes, apparently in Everett’s handwriting, on early New Englanders.
704 Cf. 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, viii. 134; 2 Proceedings, xviii. 96; Harvard Graduates’ Magazine, March, 1912, xx. 571, 572, 573, 574.
705 The following works by Svinin are to be found in the Boston Athenæum, the Boston Public Library, and the Harvard College Library, the letters A, B, and H, indicating those libraries, respectively: (1) Sketches of Russia; Illustrated with Fifteen Engravings, London, 1814, B. The illustrations are by Svinin. (2) Quelques Détails sur le Général Moreau, et ses Derniers Moments; suivis d’une courte Notice Biographique, London, 1814, B. (3) Some Details concerning General Moreau, and his last Moments, Followed by a short Biographical Memoir, London, 1814, H. (4) Some Details concerning General Moreau, and his last Moments, Followed by a short Biographical Memoir, First American from the Second London Edition, Boston, 1814, B. (5) Some Details concerning General Moreau, and his last Moments, Followed by a short Biographical Memoir, To which is added, A Funeral Oration, Second American from the London edition, Boston, 1814, A, B, H. (6) Sketch of the Life of General Moreau: and the Details of his last Moments, To which is added, An Appendix, containing several interesting Letters, New York, 1814, A. (7) Description des Objets remarquables de St. Pétersbourg et de ses Environs (in Russian and French), St. Petersburg, 1816–1818, A. (8) Indicateur des Objets rares et précieux, qui se trouvent au Musée de Moscou, connu sous le nom d’Oroujeinaia Palata, St. Petersburg, 1826, H. He was also the author of Malerische Reise, but no copy is in the above libraries.
706 Transactions of the Philological Society, 1885–7, ii. 351.
707 (1) Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1669; (2) Boston, 1721, with “A Supplement to New-Englands Memorial. By another Hand,” namely, Josiah Cotton; (3) Newport, Rhode Island, 1772, reprinted from the 1721 Boston edition; (4) Plymouth, 1826, “Reprinted by Allen Danforth;” (5) Boston, 1826, “Fifth Edition,” edited by John Davis; (6) Boston, 1855, “Sixth Edition,” published, together with other matter, by the Congregational Board of Publication; (7) Boston, 1903, Club of Odd Volumes, with an introduction by Arthur Lord; (8) London, [1910], published, together with other matter, in “Everyman’s Library” under the title of Chronicles of the Pilgrim Fathers, with an introduction by John Masefield. Mr. Arthur Lord owns two copies of the 1826 Boston edition: one having a facsimile of “The Wine Hills” map dated 1826; the other having a facsimile of “The White Hills” map undated, but obviously later than 1826.
708 Plymouth Colony Records, xi. 220.
709 iv. 173.
710 iv. 186.
711 Marmaduke Johnson. Referring to the almanac for 1669 and Morton’s book, both of which were “Printed for S. G. and M. J.,” Mr. George E. Littlefield says: “As these are the first two books upon which this imprint appears upon the title-page since Johnson had opened his own printing office, it is very evident that Green and Johnson had not been caught napping by the Plymouth Treasurer, but had ceased competition and formed a master-printer’s union” (Early Massachusetts Press, Club of Odd Volumes, 1907, i. 255).
712 Plymouth Colony Records, iv. 189.
713 v. 25.
714 Taken from a copy of the almanac in the American Antiquarian Society. The advertisement is also quoted by Littlefield: see note 1, above.
715 P. Force’s Tracts and Other Papers (1846), vol. iv. no. 7, pp. 3, 17. Gorton’s letter is referred to, but not quoted, in Mr. Lord’s Introduction (p. 16).
716 5 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 415.
717 ii. 686t.
718 Bibliographer’s Manual of English Literature, iii. 1303. For a discussion of the date of this extract, see p. 295 note 1, below.
In 1867 Charles Leclerc, describing a copy of Judge Davis’s edition of Morton’s book, added this note:
Lowndes’ dans son Manual, indique la première édition comme étant imprimée à Londres; il doit y avoir certainement erreur, car elle a bien été exécutée à Cambridge dans la Nouvelle Angleterre (Cf. Ternaux). Maintenant il y auraitil eu deux éditions différentes sous la même date? ou bien aurait-on fait un titre pour des ex. envoyés à Londres? (Bibliotheca Americana, Paris, pp. 245–246).
This note was repeated by Leclerc in the 1878 edition of his Bibliotheca Americana, Paris, p. 256. Leclerc’s reference’is to H. Ternaux, Bibliothèque Américaine, Paris, 1837, lot 868, p. 148, where Morton’s book is stated to have been printed at “Cambridge in New-England. 1669.”
719 Catalogue of the Choice, Curious, and Extensive Library of the late George Nassau, Esq., Part the Second, p. 9. In a copy of the Nassau Catalogue in the Harvard College Library (B1658.1), bought of Thomas Rodd in 1841, the name “Taylor” is written in ink against, lot 187.
720 Catalogue of Books, relating principally to America, arranged under the years in which they were printed, London, lot 349*, p. 94. In 1844 Rich listed a copy of Judge Davis’s edition of Morton’s book, quoted a passage describing the first five editions from the North American Review for July, 1827, XXV. 207, and added: “The first edition was reprinted in the same year [1669] in London, making apparently six editions” (Bibliotheca Americana Nova, London, ii. 181–182). In an advertisement appended to his Bibliotheca Americana Vetus (dated February 1, 1846), Rich gave the following item, saying nothing about the alleged London edition: “1669 Morton: New England’s Memorial 4to. Cambridge” (p. 12). Rich’s statement was evidently based on Lowndes: see p. 295 note 1, below. In 1870 Henry Stevens, describing a copy of the 1721 Boston edition, said: “The second edition, imperfect, the title and many leaves gone, but a good deal of good reading left” (Bibliotheca Historica, London, p. 120).
721 The date “1722” for the Newport edition is an error in Lowndes for “1772.”
722 Bibliographer’s Manual, part vi. p. 1620. This edition of Lowndes was published in several volumes at intervals between 1857 and 1864. In it the sixth edition of Morton’s book is omitted, though that had been published in 1855.
723 iii. 206. The statement is repeated in the Catalogue of the Library of Robert Hoe, part ii. p. 364, lot 2394. This Catalogue is without date, but the sale took place January 15, 1912.
724 Mr. Wright also says: “There are many things in the line of bibliography that may never be proven, and above all the absurdity of considering that errors in typography in the time of hand presses, proved a first edition. The contrary is the more logical conclusion. The printer’s devil, and the muscular but uneducated pressman, made most of the typographical errors, after certain types had been lifted by a too adhesive roller.”
725 Library of Mr. William W. Allis, lot 609, p. 92.
726 In the Griswold Catalogue is the following statement:
Concerning the extreme rarety of this work it will be sufficient to remark that this book is wanting in nearly all the extensive libraries in this country. It is not in the Brinley collection. Indeed, we know of but three copies in the United States (Gems from the Library of a Bibliomaniac, 1878, p. 44).
As a matter of fact, the Brinley collection contained two copies of Morton’s book (Nos. 827 and 8664). About the same time Trumbull declared that “No American collector need to be informed that the original edition of Morton’s Memorial — one of the corner-stones of New England history — is EXCESSIVELY RARE.” (Brinley Catalogue, p. 111. The title-page of Part I is dated 1878, but the preface is dated January 1, 1879.) In 1880 Sabin said: “Concerning the extreme rarity of the first edition of this important work, it will be sufficient to remark, that we know of but three perfect copies in the United States” (Dictionary of Books relating to America, xii. 423–424). Sabin’s statement is repeated, either with or without indicating its source, in the Deane Catalogue, 1898, p. 233; in the McKee Catalogue, 1902, p. 864; and in the French and Chubbock Catalogue, 1904, p. 152. Let us examine these statements.
Copies of the 1669 edition are in the following libraries and institutions: American Antiquarian Society (imperfect); Boston Public Library (imperfect); British Museum (two copies); John Carter Brown Library (two copies); Library of Congress; Essex Institute; Harvard College Library (lacks leaf containing pp. 107–108); Long Island Historical Society (title-page imperfect); New York Historical Society; New York Public Library; Pequot Library; Dr. Williams’s Library, London; and Yale University Library.
In addition to these fifteen copies, the following gentlemen own copies: Mr. Edward Everett Ayer of Chicago; Mr. Frederick L. Gay of Brookline; Mr. Frederic R. Halsey of New York; Mr. Henry E. Huntington of New York (formerly the Church copy); Mr. George E. Littlefield of Boston; and Mr. Arthur Lord (imperfect, formerly owned by J. Wingate Thornton, being the copy that was used in the preparation of the sixth edition published at Boston in 1855). In a “Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts, & Autograph Letters, recently added to the stock of T. Rodd,” London, not dated, but. printed in 1836 or 1837, a copy was priced at ten shillings (p. 1); in 1837 a copy was listed by H. Ternaux in his Bibliothèque Américaine, Paris, lot 868, p. 148; in 1887 Hazlitt described a copy (Bibliographical Collections and Notes, Third Series, p. 165); in 1895 Justin Winsor stated (2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 334) that Edward J. Young owned a copy, though where this now is I have been unable to ascertain; and a copy was owned by the late Levi Z. Letter (Leiter Library, 1907, pp. 149–156).
Turning to auction sales, we find that no fewer than twenty-one copies have been sold during the past ninety years. The following list gives the year of the sale, the name of the sale, the number of the lot, and an occasional remark:
- 1824 Nassau 187
- 1859 Crowninshield 723 (Judge John Davis’s copy: imperfect)
- 1862 Puttick & Simpson 1010 (bound by Bedford)
- 1878 Griswold 304 (bound by Bedford)
- 1879 Brinley 827
- 1883 Cooke 1761
- 1884 Murphy 1728 (bound by Bedford)
- 1884 Murphy 1729
- 1889 Barlow 1719 (bound by Bedford)
- 1891 Ives 720 (bound by Bedford)
- 1893 Brinley 8664 (imperfect)
- 1893 Simon 177
- 1896 Sotheby 657
- 1898 Deane 2503 (John Farmer’s copy)
- 1898 Deane 2504 (imperfect)
- 1902 Lefferte 224 (John Evelyn’s copy)
- 1902 McKee 4579 (Deane copy)
- 1904 French and Chubbock 1341
- 1912 Hoe 2394 (John Evelyn’s copy)
- 1912 Allis 609
- 1912 Moffat 435 (Brinley copy)
How many different copies these twenty-one sales represent, it would doubtless be impossible to determine with certainty. But enough has been said to show that Sabin’s statement, though it may have been substantially correct when originally made in 1878, long ago ceased to be in accordance with the facts, and ought not again to be repeated.
It may be pointed out, however, that though there are plenty of copies of the 1669 Cambridge edition, yet several either lack the title-page or have defective title-pages; and it is by no means impossible that some of the errors found in catalogues are due to this cause. Thus, the imperfect Deane copy (lot 2504) is described in the catalogue of the Deane sale (1898, part ii. p. 233) as printed at “Boston, 1669.”
Finally, it should always be remembered that absolute accuracy is difficult of attainment in any piece of bibliographical work and is hardly to be looked for in book catalogues and sale catalogues, which are so often compiled in haste. Thus, one of the Murphy copies (lot 1728) is described in the Murphy Catalogue (1884, p. 244) as “Printed by S. F. and M. F., for John Usher of Boston, 1669;” while the other copy (lot 1729) is described as “8vo.” Unquestionably “S. F.,” “M. F.,” and “8vo,” are errors for “S. G.,” “M. J.,” and “4to,” respectively. But the most remarkable cataloguer’s error I have noted in connection with Morton’s book is the following item from the “Catalogue of Books relating to America, in the Collection of Colonel Aspinwall, Consul of the United States of America at London,” London, p. 12:
177. Morton’s New England’s Memoriall. sm. 4to. cf. Cambridge, n. ed. 1667.
The Aspinwall Catalogue is not dated, but must have been published in or soon after 1832, for it contains a reference to “the excellent little catalogue of American books published before 1700 which has recently emanated from the accurate and indefatigable biographical [error for bibliographical] pen of the Proprietor’s friend and countryman, O. Rich, Esq. of London” — and Rich’s Catalogue (see p. 272, above) was published in 1832. The Boston Public Library (G. 352.30) owns a manuscript “Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts, Maps, Charts, Plans, Views &c Relating to America, Belonging to Col. Thomas Aspinwall.” In this catalogue, which was compiled by Mr. James O. Wright and by him given to the Public Library on April 8, 1890, the date is correctly given as “1669.”
727 Valuable American Historical Library of the late Thomas J. Moffat, Esq. and from other Sources, lot 435, pp. 66–67.
728 E. Arbor, Term Catalogues (1903), i. 38.
729 A notice of Chiswell will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. In a letter to Increase Mather dated February 16, 1676–7, Chiswell says: “I recd yours of July 19th, & have in Mr Vshcr’s Cask pr Anderson, in the Ship Blessing, sent you all the books you wrote for, . . . I have sent a few books to Mr Vsher without order, which I put in to fill up the Cask” (4 Massachusetts Historical Collections, viii. 575–577). This is corroborative evidence, were any needed, that Chiswell and Usher had business relations with one another. In 1676 Chiswell reprinted in London “according to the Original Copy Printed in New-England” Mather’s Brief History of the War with the Indians in New-England.
730 Collins’s mistake with regard to Morton’s christian name is not surprising. Once in the title-page and at least three times in the text (pp. 216, 228, 232) of George Keith’s Presbyterian and Independent Visible Churches in New-England, And else-where, Brought to the Test, published at Philadelphia in 1689, Nathaniel Morton’s name is transmogrified into “Samuel Norton.”
731 S. J. Rigaud’s Correspondence of Scientific Men of the Seventeeth Century (1841), i. 202–203. A notice of John Collins (1625–1683), who had a varied and interesting career, will be found in the Dictionary of National Biography. Collins’s letter is quoted in 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vi. 427, and in Mr. Lord’s Introduction (p. 14).
732 Arber, Term Catalogues, i. 206.
733 Speaking of the Rev. John Davenport’s Election Sermon of 1669, our associate Mr. Lindsay Swift wrote in 1904:
Certainly it is not so good a piece of work as Davenport’s Gods Call to His People, printed the year before at Cambridge by Samuel Green and Marmaduke Johnson for John Usher in Boston, and entered, by the way, in Arber’s Term Catalogues (i. 35) as also printed in London in May, 1670 (Publications of this Society, x. 3).
My friend Mr. Swift will not, I feel sure, consider me finical — for bibliography is nothing if not a close attention to the minutest details — when I take exception to his statement that the entry in Arber indicates that Davenport’s sermon was also printed in London. That entry describes the book as “Printed for R. Chiswell at the Two Angels and Crown in Little Britain,” and merely indicates that Chiswell had the book for sale in London. The advertisement quoted in the text of the present paper (on this page) proves that Chiswell in 1675 was selling copies of the Cambridge edition. Arber says that “A few words and phrases in this Bibliography require special attention: . . . To print, Printer = To publish, Publisher” (Term Catalogues, vol. i. p. xiii).
734 Attention should be called to the fact that Chiswell did not advertise Morton’s book until May, 1670 — thus allowing ample time for the copies printed at our Cambridge in 1669 to reach England.
735 Morton’s book is not listed in Robert Bowes’s Catalogue of Cambridge Books (1894), though that work “is only a bookseller’s catalogue, not a Bibliography, and it therefore contains only the books we [Macmillan & Bowes] actually possess” (p. v). Were any American books printed in the seventeenth century at Cambridge, England?
736 Pp. 102–107, above.
737 Reginald H. Fitz, Zabdiel Boylston, Inoculator, and the Epidemic of Smallpox in Boston in 1721 (The Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin, xxii. 315–327).
738 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlv. 418–479.
739 The Abuses and Scandals of some late Pamphlets in Favour of Inoculation of the Small Pox, Modestly Obviated (Boston, 1722), p. [iv].
740 A Vindication of the Ministers of Boston, from the Abuses & Scandals, lately cast upon them, in Diverse Printed Papers. By Some of their People (Boston, 1722), p. 3.
741 It is advertised in the Boston Gazette for January 29–February 5, 1722 (No. 115). In the Courant of the same date (No. 27) James Franklin speaks of it as “lately publish’d.”
742 “The villanous Abuses offered and multiplied, unto the Ministers of this Place, require something to be done for their Vindication. I provide Materials for some agreeable Pens among our People, to prosecute this Design withal” (Diary, January 19, 1722, ii. 672). “Something must be done towards the Suppressing and Rebuking of those wicked Pamphletts, that are continually published among us, to lessen and blacken the Ministers, and poison the People” (January 25, 1722, ii. 674). “Several Things of an exquisite Contrivance and Composure, are done for this Purpose. Tho my poor Hand is the Doer of them, they must pass thro other Hands, that I may not pass for the Author of them” (January 26, 1722, ii. 674). One of these “things” may have been A Friendly Debate, which passes for Isaac Greenwood’s.
The style of the Vindication, in many places, certainly seems to be Mather’s. Douglass thought the book was written (at least, in part) by the Rev. Benjamin Colman, and said as much in his Abuses and Scandals (p. 7, cf. p. 5). Colman promptly denied all knowledge of the authorship (Courant, March 5–12, 1722, No. 32; Gazette, March 5–12, 1722, No. 120), and Douglass retracted (Courant, as above).
743 Boston News-Letter for August 21–28, 1721 (No. 917).
744 Boston Gazette for August 28–September 4, 1721 (No. 93).
745 New-England Courant for December 25, 1721–January 1, 1722 (No. 22).
746 This appears from Franklin’s own account in the Courant for January 29–February 5, 1722 (No. 27).
747 Courant for January 1–8, 1722, No. 23. Cf. Douglass, Postscript to Abuses, etc., p. 6.
748 New-England Courant for January 29–February 5, 1722 (No. 27).
749 Boston Gazette for January 1–8, 1722 (No. 111).
750 The letter is plainly ascribed to Samuel Mather in the Courant for January 15–22, 1722 (No. 25): “It seems the venomous Itch of Scribbling is Hereditary; a Disease transmitted from the Father to the Son.” And in the Courant for January 29–February 5, 1722 (No. 27), James Franklin speaks of it as “his” (i. e. Increase Mather’s) “Grandson’s Letter.” Probably the ascription is correct. In A Friendly Debate; or, A Dialogue between Rusticus and Academicus (published by James Franklin on March 15, 1722), “A Short Answer” to John ‘Williams’s Several Arguments is printed (pp. 8–11), and is ascribed to “an Academical Brother (Son to a Fellow of the Royal Society),” — that is, of course, to Samuel Mather; and there is the further statement that the same person “has lately bless’d the whole Country with a matchless and superlatively excellent Letter in the Boston Gazette,” — that is, the letter of January 11. In the Courant for March 12–19, 1722 (No. 33), Mather disowns the “Short Answer,” but says nothing about the letter. His silence on that point is tantamount to an admission of authorship. The date of publication of the Rusticus dialogue is fixed by an advertisement in the Courant for March 5–12, 1722 (No. 32), in which the tract is announced for “Thursday next.”
751 Increase Mather also asserted the genuineness of the item (see his statement in the Boston Gazette for January 22–29, 1722, No. 114).
752 Boston Gazette for January 8–15, 1722 (No. 112). The Courant for May 6–13, 1723 (No. 93), reprints several items of Boston news (dated “Boston, Jan. 21”) from a London newspaper, — “the Post-Boy of March 16.” One of these is pertinent here: “If there was ever a Hell-Fire Club, it is believ’d without breach of Charity, that the Author of a Paper publish’d here under the Notion of the New-England Courant, was concern’d in that diabolical Society.”
753 See p. 100 note 2, above.
754 See pp. 96–101, above.
755 The Case of the Small-Pox Inoculated; further cleared. To Dr James Jurin (from the original draught in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society, p. 5). Cf. Douglass, Inoculation of the Small Pox as practised in Boston, Consider’d (Boston, 1722), pp. 12–13.
756 New-England Courant for January 15–22, 1722 (No. 25). In the Courant for February 5–12, 1722 (No. 28), Franklin published an account of the original Hell Fire Club, of course repudiating all connection with it. For various extracts relating to these matters, see J. T. Buckingham, Specimens of Newspaper Literature, Boston, 1850, i. 50 ff.
757 On April 15, 1718, “Mr Richard Halls Petition to Sell Strong drink as an Inholder at a Tenement of Simion Stoddard Esqr in Cornhill [now Washington Street] is disallowed by ye Sel. men” (Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xiii. 36). On July 6, 1719, Hall’s application for a license as “Inholder at Large” was similarly disapproved, but, on July 15th, the Selectmen “allowed” (i. e., approved), among other petitions “for Lycenee to keep comon victuallin Houses and coffee House,” the petition of “Richd Hall” to keep such a place of refreshment “at his House nigh ye T. House in Kink Street” (xiii. 54, 56). On July 4, 1720, they approved Hall’s petition to sell strong drink as an innholder “in King Street at his house there” (xiii. 70).
758 Slafter, John Checkley (Prince Society, 1897), i. 12–13.
759 New-England Courant for March 5–12, 1722 (No. 32). Unfortunately no copy of “last Monday’s Gazette” (for March 5, 1722) is known to exist.
760 Compare what Douglass says of Boylston in his Dissertation concerning Inoculation of the Small-Pox (Boston, 1730), p. 7: “This sort of Quackery is only fit for a Stage in a Country Market Town.”
761 New-England Courant for March 5–12, 1722 (No. 32). Another letter, dated “Hall’s Coffee-House, March 19” may be found in the Courant for March 19–26, 1722 (No. 34). It refers to the Gazette for March 19 (not known to be extant), and indicates that Hall’s was a political rendezvous.
762 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xiii. 115.
763 xiii. 118.
764 xiii. 128.
765 On July 5, 1728, the petition of “Richard Hall in maulbro Street” to retail strong drink “with out Doors” was disapproved by the Selectmen (xiii. 177).
766 Misprint for Jurin.
767 New-England Courant for May 14–21, 1722 (No. 42).
768 See p. 101, above.
769 Weld, History of the Royal Society, ii. 561.
770 See p. 103 and note 5, above.
771 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlv. 475–477.
772 See p. 103, above.
773 A Letter to Dr. Freind; shewing the Danger and Uncertainty of Inoculating the Small Pox. London, 1722.
774 That is, since June 12, 1722, the date of Wagstaffe’s letter.
775 Douglass here is certainly using the New Style.
776 See Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xlv. 457 note.
777 Pp. 88–89, 91–93, 95–96, 111–112, above.
778 Cf. pp. 95–96, above.
779 See p. 112, above.
780 Lieutenant-Governor Dummer died 10 October, 1761, and was buried in the Granary Burial Ground. He died childless, leaving a large estate to the children of his sister Anne, the wife of John Powell of Boston. He also endowed Dummer Academy. See New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xliv. 249–253; Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 140, 141; Suffolk Probate Records, lix. 397–408.
781 The same notice appeared in two other Boston newspapers, without change except in the last line, which read: “She was very honourably interred on Friday last” (Boston Evening-Post, Monday, 20 January, 1752, p. 2/1); and “Her Remains was decently and honourably interr’d on Friday last” (Boston Post-Boy, Monday, 20 January, 1752, p. 2/1).
782 God the Strength and Portion of His People, under all / the Exigences of Life and Death: / — / A / Funeral Sermon / On the Honourable / Mrs. Katherine Dummer, / The Lady of His Honour / William Dummer, Esq; / Late Lieutenant-Governour and Commander in Chief / over this Province. / Preach’d at Boston, January 9, 1752. / The Lord’s-Day after her Death and Burial. / — / By Mr. Byles. / — / [Two lines from Psalms, lxxxviii, 18; and five lines from 2 Cor. i. 3, 4.] / — / — / Boston; N. E. Printed by John Draper. 1752. 8vo. pp. 24, (1).
[On the last page:]
/ — / Extract from the Boston News-Papers. / January 13, 1752. / This Day Died here, after a painful sickness . . . [Continues the same as newspaper notice, but without the last sentence.] / — /
Our associate Mr. Frederick Lewis Gay brought this sermon to my attention. He had not, however, detected the error mentioned in the text.
783 Muskett, Suffolk Manorial Families, i. 27.
784 Sewall’s Diary, iii. 306, which states that Wainwright died at his brother-in-law Winthrop’s house in Boston.
785 A Lancastrian or Lancasterian school is one based on the principle established by Joseph Lancaster (1778–1838), of whom there is a sketch in the Dictionary of National Biography. That system was a monitorial one, and had a great vogue both in England and here early in the nineteenth century. He himself came to this country about 1820.
786 Some new facts in regard to Lowndes’s Bibliographer’s Manual have recently come to light, but too late for insertion in their proper place (p. 272 note 1, above). The various editions or impressions of the Manual, especially those edited by Bohn between 1857 and 1869, are, from a bibliographical point of view, very puzzling; but we need concern ourselves here only with the editions or impressions that appeared in or before 1834. What has apparently always been regarded as the first edit ion was published in 1834. A copy of this edit ion in two volumes is in the Harvard College Library. Vol. i contains title, p, (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); dedication, p. (iii); Preface, pp. (v)–xii; text, pp. (1)–1054. Vol. ii contains title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); text, pp. 1055–2002. A copy of the 1834 edition in three volumes is in the Boston Public Library. Vol. i contains title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); dedication, p. (iii); Preface, pp. (v)–xii; Address, two leaves, pp. (i)–iii; text, pp. (1)–638. Vols. ii and iii contain each title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, pp. (ii); and text, pp. 639–1316, 1317–2002, respectively. Two copies of the 1834 edition in four volumes are in the Boston Public Library. Vol. i contains title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); dedication, p. (iii); Preface, pp. (v)–xii; text, pp. (1)–530. Vols. ii, iii, and iv contain each title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); and text, pp. 531–1054, 1055–1528, 1529–2002, respectively. A copy of the 1834 edition in four volumes is in the Boston Athenaeum. Vol. i contains title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); dedication, p. (iii); Preface, pp. (v)–xii; Address, two leaves, pp. (i)–iii; text, pp. (1)–498. Vols, ii, iii, and iv contain each title, p. (i); printer’s imprint, p. (ii); and text, pp. 499–994, 995–1524, 1525–2002, respectively. Here, then, are five copies of the 1834 edition of which all but two differ in contents or in make-up. In the Address we read: “The Bibliographer’s Manual will extend to Three Volumes” (p. ii). Perhaps, therefore, the Address properly goes only with the three-volume edition of the work; and if so, it was bound into vol. i of the Boston Athenaeum copy by mistake.
In his Preface, dated January 1, 1834, Lowndes says that “this Manual was commenced in the year 1820” (p. xii). And also: “It was stated in the prospectus that these notices would exceed twenty thousand; but as the Editor proceeded, he was insensibly compelled to extend the limits which he had prescribed to himself; and the work does, in fact, contain notices of upwards of fifty thousand distinct books, published in, or relating to, Great Britain and Ireland, from the invention of printing to the present time” (p. vii). In his Address, we read: “In submitting the First Part of the Bibliographer’s Manual, the Compiler deems it necessary to state briefly the objects and plan of the work” (p. i). And again: “The Bibliographer’s Manual will . . . comprize upwards of Thirty Thousand Articles” (p. ii). Unfortunately this Address is not dated, but it must have been written long before the Preface; and it clearly indicates that a portion or portions of the Manual must have been issued before 1834. That this was the case can now be shown from other sources. The Rev. J. S. J. Gardiner died in 1830 and his library was sold in Boston on April 13, 1831. On the verso of the title-page of the Catalogue the compiler says: “Notices in the Catalogue of valuable editions, rare works, prices, etc. are wholly from Dibdin’s Introduction to the Greek and Roman Classics, Brunet’s Manuel de Libraire, Lowndes’ Bibliographer’s Manual, (as far as published.) printed catalogues of remarkable sales, and other well known authorities to which reference is usually made.” And the compiler quotes about fifty extracts from Lowndes, among them items under the names of Zachariah Mudge, Thomas Newton, John Parkhurst, John Pearson, and Beilby Porteus. Indeed, by 1831 the Manual had progressed certainly as far as Shakespeare. The items devoted to Shakespeare in all copies of the 1834 edition fill pp. 1644–1666 and a portion of the first column of p. 1667. This portion, consisting of thirteen leaves, the last page blank, was issued by Lowndes as a separate, but without pagination and without signatures 10c and 10d (which in the 1834 edition come on pp. 1659 and 1667), though signature 10b (on p. 1651 of the 1834 edition) is retained. The recto of the first leaf has this title: “Shakespeare / and his / Commentators, / from / Lowndes’ Bibliographer’s Manual. / 1831.” Facing the title is Droeshout’s portrait of Shakespeare, “London, Published by William Pickering, . . . 1825.” The Boston Public Library owns two copies of this separate. On a fly-leaf of one is written, “Sir Simon Clarke Bart. / With the Compiler’s Respects. / Fifty-two copies printed.” And on a fly-leaf of the other is written, “Mr Rodd / With the Compiler’s kind / Regards. / Fifty-two copies printed.” But from another source it is learned that the Manual was originally published in numbers, many of which had appeared in or before 1829; for in a “Catalogue of Books, Ancient and Modern, on sale at the prices affixed, by Thomas Rodd,” London, 1832, occurs this item (p. 329): “8032 Lowndes (W.) Bibliographers Manual, an account of rare, curious, and useful Books, published in or relating to Great Britain and Ireland, 5s per No., 15 Nos. 1829”. It would be interesting to know where such numbers could now be found. They do not appear in the Catalogue of the British Museum. But enough has been said to show that Rich’s statement about Morton’s book was doubtless taken from Lowndes.
787 From February, 1893, to April, 1899, both included, the meetings of this Society were held in the hall of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, then in the Boston Athenæum. From December, 1899, to March, 1912, inclusive, our meetings were held in the building of the American Unitarian Association, No. 25 Beacon Street. In November, 1912, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, having recently, through the generosity of the Agassiz family, erected a new building at No. 28 Newbury Street, courteously and generously invited this Society to hold its meetings there.
788 Copies of the photographs have been given to the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Athenæum, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, while the negatives have been given to this Society.
789 A. C. Potter and E. H. Wells, Descriptive and Historical Notes on the Library of Harvard University, second edition, Bibliographical Contributions of the Library of Harvard University, No. 60 (1911), p. 22.
790 On the recto of the first leaf is written “College Book N°. 5. In Folio.” The words “In Folio,” and probably the other words also, are in the hand of President Wadsworth. In addition to this “College Book V in Folio,” there was also at one time a volume known as “College Book V in Quarto,” as appears from various references to it by Wadsworth in the marginal entries in the Corporation Records. This volume was either burned in 1764, or has disappeared, or cannot now be identified.
791 Also known as “Long College Book” and “Old College Book.” When bound, presumably in President Quincy’s day (1829–1845), the back of the cover was labelled “College Book No. 1. & 2.” This was a mistake, as the volume contains College Book I only.
792 Many pages are blank. College Book I will fill pp. 3–168 of vol. xv of this Society’s Publications.
793 College Book I also contains, besides Corporation meetings, Overseers’ meetings, a list of graduates from 1642 to 1795, the Library Laws of 1736, the College Laws of 1734, and some miscellaneous records.
794 College Book III will fill pp. 171–332 of vol. xv of this Society’s Publications.
795 College Book III also contains, besides Corporation meetings, Overseers’ meetings, descriptions of College property by Presidents Wadsworth and Holyoke, specimens of College diplomas, and some miscellaneous records.
796 When bound in President Quincy’s day, the back of the cover was labelled “College Book No. 4. & 5.” This was a mistake, as the volume contains College Book IV only.
797 College Book IV will fill pp. 335–864 of vols, xv–xvi of this Society’s Publications.
798 College Book IV, though almost exclusively devoted to Corporation meetings, also contains some Overseers’ meetings, an account of bequests to the College, and a few miscellaneous records.
799 The Corporation meetings fill pp. 1–518, the remaining pages containing a few miscellaneous records.
800 Besides these 222 pages, there are fourteen unnumbered leaves containing miscellaneous records.
801 The Overseers’ Records fill pp. 1–296, the remaining pages containing miscellaneous records.
802 In the Faculty Records, the names of the scholars begin with the class graduating in 1729. With the class graduating in 1732, the residence and year of age at entrance are first given. With the class graduating in 1741, the residence and full date of birth are first given.
803 The binding is of course not old, since the word “Faculty” was not used until many years later.
804 The volume contains about 129 leaves, but they are mostly unnumbered and blank. Pages 1–63 contain records, as do nineteen other pages.
805 Why the words “in Folio,” which are certainly in the hand of Wadsworth, should have been added does not appear, for so far as is known there was no other book labelled College Book VI.
806 This paragraph is copied from College Book IV, p. 113.
807 College Book IV, p. 120.
808 In addition to the four volumes described in the text, there is also a volume labelled on the back of the parchment cover “H.Flint”. On the cover is written: “Presented to the President and Fellows of Harvard College by the Children of the late Jonathan Jackson Esq by whom this Mss was owned, and who was a relation of Docr Flint 1813”. This is the book usually known and cited as “Tutor Flynt’s Diary.” It contains 275 unnumbered leaves, measures 6¼ by 7⅞ inches, and is a commonplace-book rather than a diary. The entries appear to run from 1707 to 1747. As a whole the book is probably not worth printing, though perhaps selections might be made.
809 Rev. William Henry Furness (H. C. 1820) and Rev. George Washington Hosmer (H. C. 1826).
810 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxiv. 79.
811 M. D. Raymond, Gray Genealogy, p. 190, with portrait.
812 In 1772 Harrison Gray enjoyed a salary of £267 lawful and £120 for his “extraordinary services” (MS Records of the General Court, xxx. 218–220). Various other extras made the office worth over £400 lawful, so he afterwards testified before the Loyalist Commission in London. (Proceedings of Loyalist Commissioners, Lineolns Inn Fields, 1784, printed from the original MS, now in the Library of Congress, in the Second Report of the Bureau of Archives, Ontario, 1904, p. 1217. It may be noted that in these Proceedings the name of Harrison Gray appears as “Gray Harrison.”)
813 Works, ii. 163.
814 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xvi. 157.
815 New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxii. 106.
816 Works, x. 193.
817 Canto First (1775), p. 18:
What Puritan could ever pray
In godlier tone, than treas’rer Gray,
Or at town-meetings speechify’ng,
Could utter more melodious whine,
And shut his eyes and vent his moan,
Like owl afflicted in the sun?
818 Hollis MSS (Massachusetts Historical Society), fols. 95, 124–126; A. Bradford, Memoir of Rev. Jonathan Mayhew, pp. 431–434.
819 Bradford, p. 438 note.
820 Works, ii. 251.
821 Letter of H. G. Otis in Boston Columbian Centinel, June 9, 1830.
822 Quincy, Memoir of Josiah Quincy, Jr., 125.
823 Loyalist Commission, p. 1216.
824 By the Province charter, the Council was annually chosen by the whole legislature, and subject to the veto only of the Governor.
825 Letter of John Andrews (1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, viii. 354).
826 Massachusetts Province Laws, v. 507.
827 Republished, with comments, by Dr. Samuel A. Green in the Magazine of New England History (1892), ii. 42. Another pamphlet, published in Boston in 1775, with the title “Observations on the Reverend Pastor of Roxbury’s Thanksgiving Discourse,” by a “Friend to Peace and Good Order,” is probably not by Harrison Gray. The style is much more facetious and humorous than that of the Treasurer; the author attacks parsons in a way that Gray would be unlikely to do; and in his enumeration of his services to the Crown before the Loyalist Commission in London, Gray mentions only the “Two Congresses Cut Up.”
828 The only copy of this edition that I have found is in the Library of Congress.
829 Van Tyne, Loyalists of the Revolution, p. 57.
830 S. E. Morison, Life of Harrison Gray Otis, chap. ii.
831 Oxnard writes in 1776: “Judge Sewall invited me to dine with him, & I did myself the pleasure of accepting the same. Good haddock & roast beef for dinner, after which Mr. Blowers was sent for, & we had a fine bottle of Florence together. Mr. Bliss & Treasurer Gray dropt in, & from Mr. Gray we learnt that he was likely to suffer as Provincial Treasurer, having been threatened with a prosecution for a provincial note of £1400, if he should refuse to pay it himself.” Again, “Invited by Judge Sewall to dine & accepted the invitation. We had boiled Turkey & oyster sauce, — a saucy dish in this country. Spent the evening at Treasurer Gray’s” (New England Historical and Genealogical Register, xxvi. 121, 254).
832 Loyalist Commission, p. 1217. In 1830 an accusation was made that Harrison Gray carried off to England a considerable sum of Province money, that came into his hands as treasurer. Harrison Gray Otis took it upon himself to refute this charge in the Columbian Centinel, June 9, 1830. The points that Otis makes in his grandfather’s defence are: (1) That he had never heard of such a charge, and that if there had been the slightest evidence of defaulting against his grandfather, the patriots would certainly have worked it for all it was worth. (2) That had there been evidence of defaulting, it would have been charged against the estates of the Treasurer at their sale. (3) That in October, 1774, when the Provincial Congress superseded Harrison Gray by Henry Gardner, the treasury was entirely empty on account of the failure of the towns to pay their taxes in the last few years. This statement is confirmed by an examination of Harrison Gray’s books, which he left behind in his office in Boston. They were examined in April, 1776, by Ezekiel Price, who found nothing amiss (Diary, 1 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, vii. 254); were turned over to Henry Gardner by a legislative resolve of May 7, 1776 (Massachusetts Province Laws, v. 711); and are still kept in the State Treasurer’s office. The Ledger for 1771–74 shows that in October, 1774, a large proportion of the Province taxes for those years was still due, often as much as one-half. The town of Gorham owed £238 out of £313. In most cases none of the taxes for 1773 had as yet been paid. John Adams in his diary, under date of May 3, 1771 (Works, ii. 260), accuses Gray of not counting the public money “these twenty years,” — a charge which arouses to righteous wrath Mr. J. H. Stark (Loyalists of Massachusetts, p. 334). It is not to be taken seriously, however, since it was made while Adams was angry at receiving notice that Treasurer Gray had withdrawn his patronage, and “determined to have nothing more to do with me.” According to the records in the Massachusetts Archives, Gray squared his accounts with the Province in 1770.
833 Austin, Life of Elbridge Gerry, i. 269. Similar sentiments are expressed in a letter of August 1, 1791, from Gray to the Rev. Mr. Montague (MS in New England Historical and Genealogical Society, quoted in Loring, Hundred Boston Orators, p. 192).
834 In the following résumé of Loyalist legislation I have made use of the excellent summary in A. McF. Davis, John Chandler’s Estate, chap. iii.
835 Joseph Jackson, who married Harrison Gray’s sister Susannah. This letter is from a copy of the original made by the recipient, and returned by one of the Grays to H. G. Otis many years later.
836 Massachusetts Province Laws, v. 966.
837 A. McF. Davis, John Chandler’s Estate, p. 57.
838 Cf. list of laws directed against the Loyalists of the different States in Appendix C to Van Tyne’s Loyalists.
839 The horse and chaise were used by Joseph Warren at the outbreak of hostilities, and confiscated by resolve of the Provincial Congress shortly after Bunker Hill (Sabine, Loyalists, i. 488).
840 Loyalist Commission, pp. 1215–1217.
841 Resolve of May 4, 1780.
842 J. T. Hassam’s transcripts of the Suffolk Probate Records (2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, x. 172).
843 Massachusetts Archives, cxxxix. 468.
844 This and other letters from Otis in this article are quoted from Otis’s MS letter book. Letters to Otis are quoted from the originals in the Otis MSS, unless otherwise noted.
845 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xli. 436–437.
846 Loyalist Commission, p. 1216.
847 It is the tract marked “A” in the original proprietors’ map (reproduced in Albert Smith, History of Peterborough).
848 Loyalist Commission, p. 1217.
849 And Harrison Gray, not being a native of New Hampshire, was not included in the “Act to confiscate Estates of sundry persons named” of November 28, 1778.
850 The following account is taken from an unsigned, undated memorandum in H. G. Otis’s handwriting. The testimony was undoubtedly furnished by Jeremiah Smith, later Governor of New Hampshire, and at that time practising law in Peterborough; for Otis in a letter to him dated March 31, 1790, asks for another copy of the testimony in regard to the Peterborough land that he furnished him “sometime since.”
851 Peterborough Town Records (MS), i. 57, 83.
852 i. 58.
853 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xli. 437.
854 Cf. Henning’s Statutes of Virginia.
855 Act of November 9, 1784.
856 Note of March 5, 1792, Wait’s State Papers, i. 198.
857 He probably refers to a resolve of February 18, 1794: “Whereas notifications are required by the act entitled ‘An act for confiscating the effects of certain persons called Absentees,’ and the same may have been duly issued and served but may afterwards have been accidentally lost or mislaid.. . . Resolved That whenever a judgement or confiscation on said act shall be questioned in the Supreme Judicial Court for failure of record of the issuing service and return of the notification . . . the said Court . . . hereby are authorized . . . to admit otherwise than by the record, evidence of the issuing service, and return of the notification aforesaid” (Resolves of General Court, ix. 43).
858 Printed in Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xli. 438.
859 Otis to Harrison Gray, June 2, 1789.
860 Statement of H. G. Otis in Columbian Centinel, June 9, 1830.
861 Loyalist Commission, p. 1216.
862 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, xli. 436.
863 Date omitted. Hancock was in the General Court in 1778 and 1779.
864 Quincy, History of Harvard University, ii. 182–209, 509–524; L. Sears, John Hancock.
865 Cf. A. E. Morse, Federalist Party in Massachusetts, pp. 19–21.
866 A committee of the General Court reported in March, 1804, that the treaty of peace had no effect on the confiscation of absentees’ property, even if the confiscation had not been made by that date. Resolves of Massachusetts, xi. 150.
867 This letter, rescued from the wreck of the Hancock papers, is in the possession of Mr. Charles P. Greenough, who kindly allowed the writer to use it and the following.
868 Hancock MSS. The letter is undated, but was probably written between 1790 and 1792, as Otis’s letter of April, 1792, refers “to my former communication.”
869 A reference to Bishop Cheverus, the gifted Catholic prelate, whose reception into good society in Boston aroused the ex-Treasurer’s deepest indignation. Cf. Loring, Hundred Boston Orators, p. 193.
870 A reference to Otis’s part in the controversy then raging in Boston over the legality of theatrical performances. Cf. S. E. Morison, H. G. Otis, chap. iii.
871 Another debt of the same character as John Hancock’s.
872 Otis’s stepmother.
873 One more instance of the convenient “indisposition” with which Hancock was wont to be overcome when there was anything disagreeable or embarrassing to be done: viz. the ratifying Convention of 1788, and Washington’s visit to Boston in 1789.
874 Skinner’s bill “directing mode of naturalization of conspirators, refugees, and proscribed persons.” Enacted March 6, 1792, vetoed March 10 (MS Journals Massachusetts House of Representatives, xii. 296, 311).
875 Capt. James Scott, who commanded one of Hancock’s vessels before the war, shortly afterward became the second husband of Mrs. Hancock (née Dorothy Quincy).
876 “About the middle of this Month Elisha Burgess, Esq; was declared Governor and Captain General of New-England, and New-Hampshire, in the Room of Colonel Joseph Dudley” (Political State of Great Britain, January, 1715, ix. 81). It will be observed that in this extract by “New England” is meant Massachusetts, a use of the name “New England” not uncommon at that time and which will form the subject of a future communication. All dates in this paper are New Style.
877 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, ii. 799.
878 Publications of this Society, ii. 91–100.
879 “News comes that Col. Burgess is to be our Governour” (Sewall, April 21, 1715, Diary, iii. 46). Curiously enough, Burges’s appointment apparently was not mentioned in the Boston News Letter.
880 Sewall, September 22, Diary, iii. 57; Boston News Letter, September 26, p. 2/2.
881 See p. 372, below.
882 New Hampshire Provincial Papers, ii. 677, where the letter is printed. For other allusions to Burges, see ii. 675, 680 note, 681, 682, 683, iii. 594, 597, 598, 599, 602, 605, 636, 637, 655. It will be remembered that at that time the Governor of Massachusetts was also the Governor of New Hampshire.
883 This letter, of which the original is not extant, was copied by Judge Sewall on November 25, 1715, and is printed in Sewall’s Letter-Book, ii. 49–50. Cf. p. 372 note 1, below.
884 This document found its way, about a century ago, into the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society; see Publications of this Society, ii. 100 note 1.
885 Boston News Letter, November 14, 1715, p. 2/2. See also Council Records, November 9, vi. 389–390.
886 April 13, 1716, Diary, iii. 77. (This entry appears in the printed Diary under date of “Feb. 13,” but that was Sewall’s own error for April.) The original of this letter, which was read in Council on April 13 (Council Records, vi. 438), is not extant, having probably been destroyed when the Boston Town House was injured by fire on December 9, 1747: see Publications of this Society, vol. ii. p. xix and note.
887 Boston News Letter, June 4, 1716, p. 2/2.
888 House Journal, p. 3. The allusion is to the Province House.
889 “Boston, By Letters from London of April 12th we are informed that His Excellency Col. Elizeus Burges Esq; Governour of this Province had resign’d his Office” (Boston News Letter, June 11, 1716, p. 2/1).
“April 15, . . . About this Time Samuel Shute, Esq; was appointed Governor of New-England, in the Room of Elizeus Burgess, Esq;” (Historical Register, 1716, i. 221).
“On the 20th Instant, it was declared, That his Majesty had been pleased to appoint Samuel Shute Esq; to be Governor of New England, in the Room of Elizeus Burgess Esq; who had resign’d that Government, being made Lieutenant Colonel of Dragoons in Ireland” (Political State of Great Britain, April, 1716, xi. 503).
“St. James’s, April 20. His Majesty has been pleased to appoint Samuel Shute, Esq; to be Governour of New-England, in the room of Elizeus Burgess, Esq; who has resigned that Government” (Boston News Letter, July 16, p. 2/1).
890 “Certain News is brought that Samuel Shute is made our Govr, to our great Joy. Mr. Burgess goes to Ireland a Lt Col. of Dragoons. The Lord is our Judge. Isa. 33. 22. Order is taken to send for the Packet from the Ship; and the Letter to Col. Burgess is now to Col. Shute, which I could not vote to” (Sewall, June 5, Diary, hi. 85). The scriptural passage reads: “For the Lord is our judge, the Lord is our lawgiver, the Lord is our King; he will save us.”
“A Vessel being arrived from Great-Britain with Intelligence, that Col. Burges is not now design’d to come Governour of this Province, A Message was sent up to the Board . . . moving that the Letter of this Court to Col. Burges, desiring him to prefer the Humble Address of this Court to His Majesty may be stopp’d” (House Journal, June 5, p. 7).
891 Hutchinson says: “Mr. Belcher, afterwards governor, who was very opposite to the bank party, was then in London, he joined with Mr. Dummer, the agent, and they engaged Sir William Ashurst with them, and prevailed upon Burgess for a thousand pounds sterling, which Belcher and Dummer advanced equally between them, to resign his commission, that Col. Shute might be appointed in his place” (History of Massachusetts, Boston, 1767, ii. 212). In a memorial to the Council and House, dated October 29, 1718, Belcher said that “Accordingly your Memorialist and the said Agent in Order to Obtain so Valuable a Blessing were under a necessity of advancing between them One Thousand pounds sterling” (Massachusetts Archives, xx. 183). The memorial was presented and read in the House on November 27. On the 28th it was read again, when Belcher “was admitted into the House, and heard thereon, and withdrew. And the Question being put, Whether any thing be Granted on the said Memorial? It pass’d in the Negative” (House Journal, p. 55).
892 John White graduated from Harvard College in 1685, was Treasurer of the College from 1715 to his death in 1721, and was also for many years Clerk of the House of Representatives.
893 William Tailer, who, as Dummer anticipated, was displaced, William Dummer receiving the appointment in 1716.
894 This sentence is incomplete, some words having obviously dropped out.
895 2 Proceedings Massachusetts Historical Society, iv. 192–193.
896 The following is hardly definite enough to be regarded as an exception: “You have heard of our new Govr ’ere now. He is a fine gent, as they say. I am to wait on him tomorrow, not haveing seen him as yett since my arrivall” (Thomas Lechmere to Wait Winthrop, May 14, 1715, 6 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 307).
897 Massachusetts Historical Society (C. 71. I. 96). This letter is printed in 1 Massachusetts Historical Collections, v. 197–199.
898 Massachusetts Historical Society (161. J. 12).
899 James Stanhope, afterwards first Earl Stanhope.
900 Massachusetts Archives, li. 273–277.
901 Samuel Woodward.
902 John Burrill, Speaker of the Massachusetts House.
903 Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford, who was dismissed from office in July, 1714.
904 Charles Montagu, first Earl of Halifax.
905 An allusion, of course, to the project to bring over the Old Pretender after the death of Anne.
906 Attention should be called to some suspicions that had been cast on Dummer’s conduct in regard to another matter: see Sewall’s Diary, ii. 78–79, Sewall’s Letter-Book, ii. 57, and C. Mather’s Diary, ii. 414, 418. Cf. also Sewall’s Letter-Book, i. 305 note.
907 Massachusetts Historical Society (161. J. 13).
908 See p. 383, above.
909 Massachusetts Historical Society (81. 1. 25).
910 That is, during the years 1715–1716. In a letter dated April 8, 1720, Dummer, apparently referring to the opposition that any governor would necessarily meet with in Massachusetts, said: “If Col. Burgess had well considered what he did, when he put in an appearance for the province, ’tis probable he would not have done it” (3 Massachusetts Historical Collections, i. 146).
Writing in 1767 Hutchinson said: “Colonel Burgess, who had served under General Stanhope, was by his interest, in February, appointed to the government, and his commissions passed the seals March the 17th, and Ashurst writes, that the General had promised to be answerable for his good behaviour” (History of Massachusetts, Boston, 1767, ii. 211). I have been unable to find such a letter by Sir William Ashurst either in print or in manuscript.
911 James Butler, second Duke of Ormonde. A letter from Capt. E. Burges, dated “The Centurion, in Torbay,” September 8, 1706, is in the Ormonde Manuscripts (Seventh Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, part ii. app. p. 811). This may or may not have been our Col. Burges.
912 Calendar of State Papers, Domestic, 1693, p. 63.
913 C. Dalton, English Army Lists and Commissions, 1661–1714, iii. 291.
914 Brief Relation of State Affairs, v. 550.
915 William Nassau de Zuylestein, by courtesy called Viscount Tunbridge, afterwards second Earl of Rochford. He was killed at the battle of Almenara in Spain in 1710.
916 Dalton, vi. 228.
917 Baron Bernsdorff was the German Minister of George I.
918 William Cowper, first Earl Cowper.
919 Diary of Mary Countess Cowper (1874), p. 47. Mary Clavering was the second wife of Earl Cowper.
920 Brief Relation, iv. 44. No doubt light is thrown on this episode in the State Papers, Domestic; but the Calendars have as yet been printed only through the year 1695.
921 Brief Relation, iv. 61.
922 Quoted by R. W. Lowe in his edition of Cibber’s Apology, i. 303 note. “Harding” and “Hatton Garden” are errors for Horden and Covent Garden.
923 Brief Relation, iv. 63. On June 6 Luttrell wrote: “One Lansdale has discovered the manner of capt. Burges’s escape out of the Gatehouse, and saves that one Callow, a Serjeant in the guards, with 3 corporals, &c. were the persons concerned in carrying him off, for which they had 7 guineas each; some of whom are since taken, and committed to Newgate” (iv. 68–69). On October 17, 1696, Luttrell stated that “Mr. John Pitts was tryed at the sessions for killing Mr. Horden the player, and acquitted, he being no waies accessory thereto, more then being in company when ’twas done” (iv. 126).
924 iv. 312. On July 25, 1702, Luttrell noted that Queen Anne had granted a “pardon to captain Burgis, condemned by the court of admiralty for 4 several pyracies” (v. 198). That this was not our Col. Burges is proved by the following extracts from the London Gazette of July 2 (p. 2/1) and July 16 (p. 2/1), 1702:
London, June 29. At a Session of the Court of Admiralty held this day at the Old-Batty, Captain Samuel Burgess was Indicted and tryed for 4 several Acts of Piracy, and found guilty of the same.
London, July 13. . . . the Trials being over, the Court proceeded to pass Sentence of Death upon Samuel Burges, . . . who had been convicted of Piracy.
925 Apology, Lowe’s edition (1889), i. 302–303. Cibber’s statement has often been repeated: cf. A Compleat List of all the English Dramatic Poets, and of all the Plays ever printed in the English Language, to the present year M, DCC, XLVII, appended to T. Whincop’s Scanderbeg (London, 1747), p. 249; T. Davies, Dramatic Miscellanies (1785), iii. 443; D. E. Baker, I. Reed, and S. Jones, Biographia Dramatica (1812), i. 366; Genest, Some Account of the English Stage, ii. 83; Wheatley, London Past and Present, iii. 171; sketch of Horden in the Dictionary of National Biography.
926 History of New England, iv. 386.
927 See p. 362 note 2, above.
928 Studies in the History of Venice (1907), i. 329.
929 “About the middle of this Month, it was declared, that his Majesty had been pleased to appoint,
“Elizeus Burgess, Esq; to be Resident with the Republic of Venice” (Political State of Great Britain, May, 1719, xviii. 508).
“May 9. . . . Eliseus Burgess, Esq; appointed his Majesty’s Resident at Venice, in the Room of — Cunningham, Esq.” (Historical Register, 1719, Chronological Diary, p. 15).
930 Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1720–1728, pp. 113, 189.
931 “Oct. . . . 21. Elizeus Burgess, Esq; appointed his Majesty’s Resident at Venice” (Historical Register, 1727, Chronological Diary, p. 47).
“About the Beginning of this Month of November, it was publish’d by Authority that his Majesty had been pleased to appoint,
“Elizeus Burges Esq; to be Resident to the Republick of Venice” (Political State of Great Britain, November, 1727, xxxiv. 505).
The only allusion I have found in this country to the after career of Burges is the following editorial note in Sewall’s Diary: “We may avail ourselves of this opportunity to say that, though Burgess never came here, he seems to have received diplomatic advancement. Oct. 21, 1727, Eliseus Burgess was made his Majesty’s Resident at Venice” (iii. 77). It may be added that the late William H. Whitmore inserted the following query in London Notes and Queries of February 1, 1868: “Colonel Eliseus Burgess. — Who was this gentleman, Commission Governor of Massachusetts, March 17, 1714–5? He sold his appointment to Colonel Shute, in April, 1716; and May 9, 1719, he, or a namesake, was made Resident at Venice. What else is known of him?” (Fourth Series, i. 100). This request met with no response.
932 Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, 1729–1730, p. 251.
933 There is frequent mention of payments to Burges in the Calendars of Treasury Books and Papers for 1720–1730, 1731–1734, and 1735–1738. The final payment, made to Burges’s executors on June 3, 1737, was for £138 0 0, “Ordinary, 1736, September 29 to November 14, day of his death, as late Resident at Venice” (Calendar of Treasury Books and Papers, 1735–1738, p. 417).
The following notice of Burges’s death appeared in the Political State of Great Britain for November, 1736: “Nov. . . . 3d, Died, at Venice, the Hon. Col. E. Burges, his Majesty’s Resident with that Republick” (Iii. 541). There is, I take it, no discrepancy between-the two dates November 3 and 14, one being Old Style, the other New Style.
An abstract of Burges’s will (Prerogative Court of Canterbury, Derby, 235), which was dated August 15 and proved November 24, 1736, follows:
I bequeath to Mrs Victoria Hernandez a Spanish gentlewoman who is now in the house with me 15000 French livres. To my valet de chambre Henry Longmore who has lived with me I think twenty years £400. To my secretary Mr Vincent Martinelli 60 Venetian Sequins. To all my other servants a year’s wages or a month’s board wages. I desire to be buried privately with the rest of my country men at Lido. Residuary legatee & executor: — my nephew, Mr Thomas Burges. Witnesses: — Neil Brown, Jos. Smith, Henry Longmore.
The second witness was doubtless the Joseph Smith (1682–1770) who lived at Venice from 1700 to 1770, who was British Consul there from 1740 to 1760, and of whom-there is a notice in the Dictionary of National Biography.
934 The original of this letter is not extant: cf. p. 360 note 8, above. The letter was copied by Sewall on November 25, 1715, and is printed in Sewall’s Letter-Book, ii. 48–49.
935 Publications, iii. 2–40.
936 Publications, v. 96–111.
937 Publications, vi. 6–11.
938 2 Proceedings, xvii. 184–208. In this account the following statement is made: “The files in our local libraries of the ‘News Letter’ and the ‘Boston Gazette,’ the papers to which we should naturally look for information, are almost absolutely destitute of copies published during the years 1733 and 1734” (p. 186). At that time the Check List of Boston Newspapers, 1704–1780, contained in vol. ix, Publications of this Society, had not been published, and it was not easy to determine how many or what copies of these early newspapers were at hand. The Boston Public Library has an almost complete set of the News Letter for that year. It probably was at the bindery when I made my search.
939 ii. 125–129.
940 Massachusetts Province Laws, ii. 743–744: passed and published April 18, 1735.
941 Massachusetts Province Laws, xii. 109: passed April 18, 1735.
942 Massachusetts Province Laws, xii. 746–747.
943 Then follows the report (from “New England, Board of Trade,” xl. 150, in the Public Record Office) which is printed under VI, p. 380, below.
944 New Hampshire Provincial Papers, iv. 685.
945 New Hampshire Provincial Papers, iv. 688.
946 Printed “or,” evidently an error.
947 New Hampshire Provincial Papers, iv. 697.
948 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, vi. 238–239. This volume has for a subtitle “The Unbound Papers.”
949 Printed from a copy obtained from the Clerk of the Privy Council. Cf. 375, above.
950 Printed from a copy obtained from the Clerk of the Privy Council.
951 Printed from a copy obtained from the Clerk of the Privy Council.
952 Jaffrey.
953 Peirce.
954 Rindge.
955 Peirce.
956 Wiggan or Wiggins.
957 Wibird.
958 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, 1720–1745, iii. 506–507.
959 Belcher Papers, ii. 159.
960 New England Historical and Genealogical Register (1903), lvii. 386–389.
961 Colonial Currency Reprints (Prince Society), iv. 88.
962 Pp. 213–257, above.
963 The map in the English Pilot of 1767, Dublin, B. Grierson, is practically a duplicate of the 1707 map, excepting that the Survey was by order of the Commissioners of His Majesty’s Navy.
964 The name Germantown first occurs about 1750. In that year a company leased Shed’s Neck, which was surveyed and laid out into lots; and a plan was recorded in the company’s books, in which it is said that “this tract of land is intended for a town, to be called Germantown” (W. S. Pattee’s History of Old Braintree and Quincy, p. 474). An indenture dated August 27, 1752, speaks of “a certain tract of land on Shed’s Neck, now called Germantown” (p. 475 note).
965 Now called Weir River.
966 That is, the houses and church are not shown on the Pilot map, though the name Pulling Point occurs. The name of Pulling Point was changed to Point Shirley on September 8, 1753, as appears from the following extract taken from the Boston Gazette of Tuesday, September 11, 1753:
On Saturday last His Excellency the Governour did the Proprietors of Pullin-Point the Honour of dining with them at the said Point, where a very elegant Entertainment was prepar’d for Mm; . . . The Proprietors, after taking Leave from His Excellency, gave it the Name of Point-Shirley (p. 3/2).
967 The letter is printed in Records and Files of the Quarterly Courts of Essex County, ii. 110.
968 For a sketch of Burges, see pp. 360–372, above. From a book which reached this country after that sketch was written, it appears that Burges was commissioned Lieut.-Colonel in Lieut.-General Francis Palmes’s Regiment of Dragoons on February 16, 1716, and that the regiment disbanded in June, 1717 (C. Dalton, George the First’s Army, 1714–1727, ii. 129). We also learn that between March, 1722, and December, 1723, Burges received £ 365 “from H.M. Bounty, without deduction for his long and faithful Services” (ii. 429).
969 See p. 367 note 4, above.
970 Palfrey, History of New England, iv. 446.
971 iv. 448.
972 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, iii. 101–102.
973 That is, Parliament.
974 Acts of the Privy Council, Colonial, iii. 102–104.
975 iii. 104.
976 iii. 104.
977 iii. 104.
978 It is dated “at Westminster the Six and twentieth day of August in the twelfth year of Our Reign” (Publications of this Society, ii. 33). As George I ascended the throne on August 1, 1714, this was August 26, 1725; but by a singular error the Explanatory Charter, as printed in the Massachusetts Province Laws (i. 21), is dated 1726 instead of 1725.
979 William Dummer.
980 Josiah Willard.
981 Wilham Dudley.
982 Dummer’s speech of December 14 was printed in the Boston News Letter of December 16, 1725, p. 2/1.
983 House Journal, p. 74.
984 P. 82.
985 P. 82.
986 P. 87.
987 P. 107.
988 P. 107.
989 P. 104.
990 P. 106.
991 P. 107.
992 P. 107.
993 P. 108.
994 P. 108.
995 P. 109.
996 For convenience of reference, the names have been rearranged and are here printed in alphabetical order — except the name of the Speaker.
997 House Journal, pp. 109–110. The New England Courant of January 15, 1726, said: “Our General Assembly have this Day accepted the Explanatory Charter, which His Majesty has lately granted to this Province” (p. 2/2). In its issue of January 22, the New England Courant published the passage in the text together with the list of names; but between the words “the List hereafter following, Viz.” and the names, the following sentence was inserted (p. 2/1): “[N. B. The Military Titles, &c. of some of the Members, and Names of the Towns which they represent, omitted in the Votes, are here added.]” In the list of names, that of “Mr. Elisha Bishey” was inadvertently omitted from the Nays in the Courant.
998 House Journal, p. 111. This was printed in the Boston News Letter of January 20, p. 2; and in the New England Courant of January 22, p. 2/2. The Courant added the following statement: “Four Gentlemen of the Council, viz. Nathanael Byfield Esq; John Clark Esq; Elisha Cook Esq; and Thomas Palmer Esq; voted against the said Charter, and the rest for it.” Besides these four, who voted in the negative, there were “Present in Council” (Court Records, xiii. 112; Council Records, viii. 349) on January 15 the following, who must have voted in the affirmative: Meletiah Bourn, John Cushing, Addington Davenport, Jonathan Dowse, Paul Dudley, Symonds Epes, Thomas Fitch, Joseph Hammond, Edward Hutchinson, Thomas Hutchinson, Daniel Oliver, Spencer Phips, Edmund Quincy, William Tailer, Samuel Thaxter, Penn Townsend, John Turner, John Wheelwright, Adam Winthrop. Samuel Browne, Benjamin Lynde, John Otis, and Samuel Sewall were also members of the Council in 1725 (Massachusetts Province Laws, x. 573–574; Whitmore, Massachusetts Civil List, p. 53). Apparrently, therefore, there was a single vacancy in the Council, as by the Province Charter the number of Councillors was fixed at twenty-eight.
In the Council Records (viii. 349–353) for January 15 nothing is said about the Explanatory Charter. But in the Court Records for January 15, after the “Vote for Accepting ye Explanatory Charter,” is the following:
In Council, Read & Concur’d: — Consented to, Wm Dummer.
In Council, Ordered that the Secretary do as soon as may be Enroll His Majestys Explanatory Charter Granted to this Province in the Book of Commissions from the Crown in his Office (Court Records, xiii. 113).
The record of this meeting in the Court Records is wholly in the hand of Secretary Willard, and the above entry confirms the statement recently made by me that “at one time there was apparently another volume of Crown Commissions, which has likewise disappeared.” (See Preface to Vol. ii of our Publications, p. xviii and note 4. When writing that Preface, I had not seen the entry quoted above in the present note.)
999 House Journal, p. 113.
1000 The words printed in italics are underscored in the original, and in the margin is written “A which We have accepted”. Immediately under these words Li written, in the hand of Secretary Willard, “A Wch Explanatory Charter We have Humbly Accepted of.” The address was voted in the House on January 17; the same day it was read and concurred in Council with the amendment; and the same day it was also read and concurred in the House.
1001 Massachusetts Archives, xx. 248–249.
1002 Publications of this Society, iv. 357, 381, 440.
1003 It was not printed in the New England Courant. As the only known copies of the Boston Gazette during the period under discussion are at Madison, Wisconsin, I have been unable to examine that paper. In his American Bibliography (i. 345, No. 2659), Evans enters the Explanatory Charter under 1725 and says: “[Boston: Printed by B. Green. 1725.]”
1004 The first difference is that the Massachusetts Historical Society’s copy lacks on the first page (which is not numbered in either copy) the line, “Printed for & Sold by D. Henchman. 1725.” The second difference is that in the Boston Public Library copy each page number of pp. 2–8 is enclosed within square brackets (as “[2]” “[8]”); while in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s copy pages 2, 3, 4, and 5 are enclosed within square brackets, but pages C, 7, and 8 are enclosed within round brackets. The third difference is that on p. 8 the vote of acceptance of the Explanatory Charter ends in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s copy with the words “Sent up for Concurrence” (as is also the case with the House Journal: see p. 397, above); while the copy in the Boston Public Library has in addition the three following lines:
In Council, Read and Concurr’d.
Consented to by His Honour the
Lieutenant Governour.
1005 Pp. 281–292, above.
1006 Suffolk Deeds, xxvi. 90.
1007 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, ii. 170. Cf. above, pp. 134, 135.
1008 This man was perhaps the father of Richard Hall the “baker,” or of Richard who kept the Coffee House; and he may have been the “Mr. Hall” whose burial the Boston Town Records state occurred on 17 March, 1701.
1009 Matthew Grosse kept the tavern known at different times as the Three Mariners, The Bear, and The Bight. It stood on a lot adjoining the westerly corner of Peirce’s Alley (now ’Change Avenue) and Faneuil Hall Square.
1010 On 8 February, 1715–6, the Selectmen divided the Town into Wards or Precincts. Precinct No. 5 is thus defined:
N° 5 Kings — Ward
Bounded Northerly by the South Side of Wings-Lane [Elm Street] from the uper end there of the South Side of Hannover Street, and the South westerly Side of Cambridge Street, and Southerly by ye north side of King [State] and Queen [Court] Streets to the South ward of the writeing School House [in Scollay Square], Mr Cotton’s House the Southermost House (xi. 241. Cf. Publications of this Society, x. 257 note 2).
1011 It is not improbable that our Richard Hall contemplated moving his establishment from King Street to one of Simeon Stoddard’s tenements on the westerly side of Cornhill, near the corner of what is now Williams Court, provided he could get an innholder’s licence, failing which he remained in King Street and the next year secured a licence there.
1012 “A Celler under N° Easterly corner of the Town-House” was rented by the Selectmen to James Gelchrist and another 7 September, 1714 (xi. 215, 240). This cellar was directly opposite Hall’s Coffee House.
1013 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 23.
1014 ix. 195.
1015 He may have been the “Richard Hall’s child” who was buried 10 September, 1719 (Boston Records).
1016 xxiv. 83, 91, 114, 129, 171.
1017 Suffolk Deeds, xxxix. 294; xiii. 108.
1018 Suffolk Probate Files, No. 5940.
1019 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 87.
1020 Suffolk Probate Files, No. 8091. For other Richard Hall Probates, see Nos. 1881, 5420, 7401, 15890.
1021 Boston Record Commissioners’ Reports, xxviii. 191.
1022 xxiv. 226.
1023 The Boston Records also note that “Mr. Hall, mariner” was buried 1 January, 1702; while Bridgman’s King’s Chapel Epitaphs (p. 166) records the death of Mary Hall, widow of Richard Hall, on 27 August, 1737, in her 72d year. See many references to Richard Hall in Index of Vols, i–1 of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register.
1024 The thoroughfare now known as Cornhill was not laid out till 1816. Washington Street was so named in 1824, embracing the four sections of that thoroughfare formerly known as Cornhill, Marlborough, Newbury, and Orange Streets.
1025 See p. 401 note 3, above.
1026 Boston Gazette, July 9, 1722, p. 2/2; August 13, p. 2/2. Apparently there was no further allusion to the race in the Boston newspapers.
1027 P. 359, above.
1028 ii. 12, 25, 29, 30, 33, 35, 36.